Jesse Jackson, who three and a half months ago expressed his desire to amputate Obama's testicles, apparently believes that "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain influential, but will lose much of their prominence if and when Obama is elected, according to a story in the New York Post.

This is the characteristic position for Jackson to take, considering his past run-ins with the Jewish community. In 1984, Jackson referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in an interview. Instead of apologizing and moving on, the reverend played the always-popular, "The Jews are conspiring against me" card, with predictably limited success. Jackson eventually relented and apologized in a speech at a New York City synagogue.

Jackson's comments come at a time when politically conservative Jews are trying to portray Obama as bad for Israel and are even linking his views with those of -- wait for it -- Pat Buchanan and running attack ads featuring the slogan, "Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be."

However, there really isn’t any indication that Obama’s policies -- at least since he began running for president -- reflect what Jackson has implied. As Marty Peretz noted in an essay in The New Republic, Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, have both publically declared their continued support for Israel on numerous occasions. Peretz argues that Jackson’s comments about Obama and Israel are mostly just self-serving attempts to remain relevant.

More About Obama and Israel: Why Not To Vote For Barack Obama, J'Accuse!, Putting Jews Back in Their Place

 

The recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life told us what we already knew: America is becoming more and more religious. The draw of a spiritual life is growing in all sectors, and apparently all over the world—even in the officially atheist China. Christians in China: no longer in hiding(I guess this is another case of "atheists" who believe in God). The Chicago Tribune has a fascinating article on the rise of Christianity in China, that mentions some of the reasons that people are coming to church: 

Many of the church's new adherents profess a common belief that 30 years of ungoverned capitalism, amid the fading of communist ideology, has opened a yawning spiritual gap.

A public debate in China over ethics in business has bloomed in recent years from an unlikely source: the same unsafe products that have bedeviled U.S. consumers. In the most infamous case, 13 Chinese babies died and 200 were sickened in 2004 when a manufacturer skimped on the ingredients in infant milk. The case became a symbol of an economy so out of control that people could no longer trust their countrymen to adhere to the most basic ethical standards.

Later in the article, a Chinese professor is quoted saying that he thinks Christianity may be what helps Communism to survive in China.

And in the States, though evangelical Christianity continues to attract hordes of worshippers to mega-churches every week, the quest for spirituality leads in all directions. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covers the trend of black Americans converting into Judaism. Many of these converts feel they are “coming home”: 

That's how Sivan Ariel sees her experience. Born to a Catholic family in the Virgin Islands, Ariel now believes her biracial grandmother practiced Jewish customs she learned from her mother.
"She would always talk about the laws of God" and the Exodus story, Ariel said. Her grandmother would light white candles, which now remind Ariel of those lit on the Sabbath.
"She was the only person I knew that actually did that, so I wondered if it was actually witchcraft," Ariel said with a chuckle.

Ariel left Catholicism when she moved to Atlanta for college and joined a Pentecostal church for a while. But she never felt comfortable there, and she began a spiritual search that led her to convert to Judaism.
…
Ariel, referring to her experience and those of other black Jews, said, "Some of us know beyond a shadow of a doubt we're here because we're home."

Rabbi Norry called this an "unprecedented time" of interest in Judaism.

"Business is booming," he said. "On any given Shabbos, there's 10 non-Jews at our service, visiting or studying to be Jewish."

Still, he asks every convert: "Why would you ever want to be Jewish? Don't you know how many people hate us?"

The black converts respond differently, he said. They look at him as if to say: "Welcome to my world."

People seek religion for a variety of diverse reasons.  How the spread of Christianity might influence the nation of China, and how the growing number of black Jews might ultimately influence Judaism remains to be seen.

There’s an awesome article over at the Forward about a group of 55 African American men, women and children from Cairo, IL who just underwest conversions at a Conservative shul in Memphis:

Rural Converts Journey Into Judaism
By Jennifer Siegel

Cairo: probably not your next vacation stop

A rural community described as “far away from everywhere,” Cairo, Ill., boasts 40 churches, 40 blocks and fewer than 4,000 people — and as of earlier this month, it also has 55 brand-new Jews.

Dozens of Cairo’s residents — all African American and ranging from toddler to senior citizen — visited a mikveh in Memphis, Tenn., on December 9 and took the plunge into conversion. It was the culmination of an 18-month spiritual journey that has brought a number of Reform and Conservative Jews into common cause with a group of spiritual seekers from a town that is predominantly black and poor.

“It was incredible. Who would have thought that rabbis in St. Louis and Memphis would increase the number of Jews of color in America appreciably?” said Rabbi Micah Greenstein, who attended the conversion ceremonies and serves as the spiritual leader of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation in Memphis. “Judaism saved my life,” one of the converts told Greenstein. “That’s the first time in 100 converts that I’ve ever heard that,” the rabbi said.

The conversion odyssey, which was first reported on by Memphis’s Commercial Appeal newspaper, began in Cairo roughly four or five years ago, when a now 39-year-old computer repairman named Phillip Matthews grew disaffected with the Baptist faith in which he was raised and became interested in Judaism. Described as having a magnetic personality by several rabbis involved in the Cairo conversions, Matthews quickly found himself at the center of a study circle that involved an extended network of friends and family — including, by his estimation, 17 or 18 relatives, among them his mother, siblings, nieces and nephews — who ultimately converted to Judaism along with him.

Full Story

It’s pretty incredible on a number of levels. For one thing, that particular part of Illinois has a reputation for being both incredibly racist and incredibly Anti-Semitic. Cairo (pronounced Kay-ro) has never had a real Jewish presence before, and I’m a little concerned about possible backlash against this community. But I have to say that what made me pretty uncomfortable in this article are two quotes from Matthews, who was the one who got the ball rolling:

“By the grace of the father in heaven, we had no accidents going up and down the highway for 18 months,” Matthews said of the long journeys.

 

 

“When you read the Bible, when you read the Old Testament, and you see all the things that the ancestors of old endured, you see what it is to have endured,” Matthews said.

The thing is, “By the grace of the father, in heaven” sounds to me like Jesus talk. And Jews don’t call it the Old Testament—it’s the Bible, or Tanach.

Those are little things, and it certainly sounds like these guys are serious about what they do:

Mordecai Miller, a Conservative St. Louis rabbi who helped authorize a number of the conversations, said he was impressed by the converts’ sincerity. “Did they have a halachic consciousness?” he asked. “The truth is that they do. And sadly, there are many Jews who do not have that sense of being commanded.”

So okay, I’m glad they feel an obligation to halacha but I wonder how that plays out in a community where there aren’t really any other Jews? On the one hand it’s great that there are really 55 of them all in it together, but I hope they’re all serious about this, and as committed as they seem, because something tells me being a black Jew in Southern Illinois is not going to be the most pleasant or easy experience.

With the lingering Imus debacle and now this new slew of racial insults from a German army instructor, Al Sharpton (who is "outraged") is going to have his hands full. Yikes. Apparently, the instructor ordered a soldier to imagine himself in New York City -- the Bronx, specifically -- facing hostile blacks while firing his machine gun. All this was caught on a video that aired on Saturday on national television.

The clip shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. ... Act.” The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.

Ah, I see -- it's a lesson not only in how to physically destroy the "enemy" but also in how to dehumanize him. And yet, it's kind of funny that the instructor used the politically correct term (African American) instead of a racial slur.

Coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, the video seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany’s conscript army.

You think? Well, all I'm going to say is that it looks pretty darn bad that it happens to be a German.