In the end, the play did have its premiere last night – and it went well, I think. At least the audience seemed to think so. The lead actress was on a ton of painkillers and could barely stand up, but she made it through rather bravely. The interesting thing was the humour didn’t seem to fly – Nazi jokes especially (Ooh. You could hear the walls breathe). I was told by the company dramaturge that German audiences don’t laugh very much and this evening was no exception. But I also think that people found the absurdist comedy aspects of the play to be taboo – Israel and Palestine are not something that is discussed in Germany in a critical way, and certainly not with screw-all humour.

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• A mistrial was declared in the case of Naveed Haq who stormed into a Seattle JCC in July 2006, fatally shot one woman, and seriously injured several others. Naveed Haq: free for the time being After eight days of deliberations the jury was still deadlocked. Prosecutors hope to retry later this year.

• The famous Jewish quarter in Paris is slowly being overtaken with fashion boutiques and chains like H&M. Kosher businesses are being pushed out, and Jewish Parisians aren’t pleased.

• The Jewish Agency gave twenty-one Israeli Arab students at University of Haifa grants of NIS 10,000. A scholarship had been created to give funding to students who had been adversely affected by the Lebanon war, and those who have been given the money are students of psychology, hoping to address the trauma and shock the war caused in the Arab community.

• A poll by the Immigrant Absorption Ministry in Israel has found that a majority of Israelis are concerned that non-Jewish immigration to Israel will lead to greater assimilation of Judaism, but generally support immigration and conversion as ways of keeping the Jewish state definitively Jewish.

• The World Union of Progressive Judaism may lose its credentials in the UN Human Rights Councilbecause its representative brought up a Hamas charter during a recent session that was meant to be about Israeli human rights violations in Gaza.

• The Times of London explains why it’s so important to get Jews on your side when you’re running for office in America.

• The Reform Movement in the UK is hoping to revitalize its congregations with its new “grass-roots siddur.” It took eight years to design and edit Seder Ha-t’fillot, which includes several different options of services.

• It’s nice to see that there are still some religious figures who can keep their pants on: Prominent cantor of the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, Naftali Hershtik, seems to have been the target of an entrapment scheme that aimed to get him fired for sexual misconduct. Hershtik was lured into the hotel room of a young woman while hidden cameras caught everything on tape. Apparently, though, nothing untoward happened. The plot seems to have been the work of Israel Rand, a former student of Hershtik’s.
  

• Gravestones were defaced and smashed in a London Jewish cemetery, Damaged fences and a small fire were also reported in the apparently anti-Semitic attack. So far there have been no arrests.
  

• Also in England, the Jewish community is catching some flack because several state-aided Jewish schools have been asking parents for inappropriate personal information and/or requesting donations on admissions applications. This is in breach of the government admissions code. The problem seems to stretch to most state-aided Jewish schools, and the Jewish Chronicle reports that some schools have violations in up to seven categories.
  

• The Pope’s big news for Jews again. He’ll be attending Park East Syangogue in Manhattan on erev Pesach. This is the first papal visit to an American synagogue. Meanwhile, the Vatican has just released a statement about the revised version of the traditional Good Friday prayer for Jews. Though some rabbis and Jewish leaders are still not happy with the text, the Vatican maintains that the Good Friday prayer, "in no way intends to indicate a change in the Catholic Church's regard for the Jews."

• On a lighter and slightly bizarre note, this week is the premiere of Margot Frank: The Diary of the Other Young Girl, at Shea Center for the Performing Arts at William Paterson University. The premise is a musical exploration of Anne Frank’s sister’s diary, where Margot reveals that she and Peter are in love, and calls Anne, “a conniving little bitch.” Writers Diana Rissetto and Lori Mooney say that the show is a serious attempt to ponder the voices silenced by the Holocaust and history. Um, okay.

Breaking news on American and Scottish bilateral relations: The country famous for kilts, Scotch whiskey, and Annie Lennox may ask the U.S. to lift a longstanding ban on haggis imports. Why the longstanding ban, you ask? Oh, you know: Just because the Scottish dish traditionally contains offal (pronounced "awful," thank you very much) ingredients which have been linked to BSE (also known as Mad Cow Disease). But lo! Mr. Eugenides generously provided us all with a kosher recipe (minus the sheep's lung) for haggis in today's Tuesday Taste Test. Bon Appetit!

Unleavened and Unlawful: when good matzo goes badIn other strange food news, an illegal matzo factory, which had been operating in the basement of a Brooklyn apartment building, was swiftly shut down when authorities discovered two apparently explosive grain silos used for baking the unleavened and unlawful bread. All of the building's residents were evacuated indefinitely.

London has become the official home of the world's largest fish finger. Need we say more? Meanwhile, the U.K. is introducing mandatory cooking classes for 13 and 14-year-olds in an effort to empower them against the temptations of said fish fingers, and thereby avoid obesity. Brilliant, as they say across the pond.

Finally, the Land of the Rising Sun is entering Kit Kat season, as Japanese high school students take the university entrance exams that will all but decide their futures. They gorge themselves on Kit Kat bars because of a totally random, phonetic coincidence: in Japanese, the phrase "kitto katsu" means "you will surely win." Give me a break!

 

This week’s comment of the week goes to Zbird’s response to my post about Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and his new anti-multiculturalism book.

My second paragraph was saying that you have no evidence to support your statement that the problems Sacks attributes to multiculturalism are actually the fault of a bureaucracy that somehow mistreats immigrants.

Bureaucracy: so helpful

I'm not saying that anyone should be mistreated, but I question your knee-jerk liberal belief that what immigrants need is more/better bureaucratic (I assume you mean "taxpayer-funded") support to make them feel at home--as if they were children in their first year at sleep-away camp who need extra attention from the counselor lest they feel homesick. The U.S. coddles immigrants and non-immigrants alike a lot less than in Europe, where government supported housing, healthcare, jobs, etc. is the norm. Yet somehow the US' immigrants, exposed to the vicissitudes of the market and forced to fend for themselves, are better assimilated and more at peace with the larger society than in Europe (i.e.: see the Paris riots from last year, or the fact that nearly all the 9/11 hijackers, the 3/11 Madrid and the London bombers, were radicalized in Europe).

btw--I'm not trying to make a statement about the degree to which a government should help its citizens and immigrants in general. Frankly, I think the US should "coddle" its residents a lot more when it comes to healthcare. My point is that you shouldn't assume government is the answer to the segregation Rabbi Sacks describes.

Zbird’s got me here. I’ve got no idea how precisely immigrant bureaucracy works in England or elsewhere in Europe. But I just can’t imagine why my assumption is that it doesn’t work well…

You might have heard about a big legal battle happening in England now about whether a “purity ring” signifying a commitment to chastity before marriage can be worn in violation of school uniform rules. The case involves a 16-year-old girl named Lydia Playfoot (I swear I'm not making that name up) who doesn't want to take off her "purity ring" while she’s in school. Here’s a brief from the NY Times:

The case offered a counterpoint to a broader discussion concerning Muslim women who wear the full-face veil known as the niqab. But it also revealed stirrings of resentment among some members of Britain’s Christian majority, who say they are the victims of discrimination over how they display their faith.

Keep Sweet: For Jesus

The young woman, Lydia Playfoot, said her school, at Horsham, south of London, had told her that the ring broke the school’s rules on uniforms and jewelry.

But Ms. Playfoot argued that the prohibition breached her right to express a religious belief. Not only that, she said in a statement to the court, Sikh and Muslim pupils were permitted distinctive dress to show their religious identity.

Ms. Playfoot belongs to a British branch of an American-based evangelical movement known as Silver Ring Thing. Both her parents work for the branch, according to its Web site, www.silverringthing.com.

Two Guys At A Silver Ring Thing: should they have to take off their rings to take the SATs?

“The real reason for the extreme hostility to the wearing of the S.R.T. purity ring is the dislike of the message of sexual restraint, which is ‘countercultural’ and contrary to societal and governmental policy,” Ms. Playfoot said in a written statement to Britain’s High Court.

“It is this message from the Judeo-Christian position that is suppressed: exemptions are allowed or permitted for other messages,” she said, arguing that her school “doesn’t offer equal rights to Christians.”

Her remarks showed another aspect of a tangled debate here that has largely centered on concern among British leaders that the Muslim full-face veil has become what Prime Minister Tony Blair called a “mark of separation.” That led some Muslims to say they were the object of discrimination.

But Ms. Playfoot’s remarks suggested that Christians like her see themselves as being treated unfairly.

Much of the debate hinges on whether the purity ring is a religious requirement.

In a statement to the court, Leon Nettley, principal of the school, Millais, said, “It is not a Christian symbol, and is not required to be worn by any branch within Christianity.”

Full Story

Now, I think we all know how I feel about sex. I mean, I think it’s important to have an understanding of the consequences of sex, and I really hope people think seriously about all kinds of things before they jump into bed with someone else, but I cannot in good conscience endorse chastity. The only situation in which chastity seems to make any sense to me is when someone is getting married incredibly young. If you marry your high school sweetheart the day after your high school graduation, then waiting is not such a big deal. But in a world where people are marrying later and later, asking people to wait for physical affection is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

That said, let the girl wear her fucking (or, not fucking, I guess) ring! No, it’s not an obligatory religious garment or piece of jewelry, but it’s a big deal to her, and it’s not like chastity is an offensive or otherwise problematic virtue. A girl who says she doesn’t want to have sex in high school—isn’t that a great thing? Shouldn’t we applaud this girl for being ballsy enough to walk around wearing something that probably makes her pretty unpopular with the gentlemen of the senior class?

I don’t know anything about British law, so I have no sense of how likely it is that this girl will win the case, but regardless, I’m appalled by the whole thing, not least because it’s giving the Silver Ring Thing people more exposure than I’m comfortable with.

The camp calling for academic boycotts of Israel has got an ingenious little plan for deflecting charges of antisemitism: condemn antisemitism:

The first item of business for the first congress of the University and College Union addresses matters under the heading “Equality,” noting that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain rose 31 percent from 2005 to 2006. A resolution stating, “Anti-Semitism is becoming acceptable in the U.K., including on university campuses” is to be voted on.

But that debate, said Dan Ashley, a spokesman for the University and College Union, is separate from another resolution, which “condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation” of Palestinian lands, “which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.”

When P.J. O'Rourke was still funny he had a good line about seeing men at "Take Back the Night" rallies on college campuses. There wasn't anything wrong with it, of course, but it still seemed suspicious, sort of like seeing a sign for "The International Association of Pitbulls Against Toddler Mauling."  

Witnessing a gaggle of tenth-rate British academics trying to alienate the entire intellectual class of the Jewish state and then claim Jew-hatred is an awful and still-dangerous phenomenon indeed is another vigorous spin on that O'Rourkean wheel. 

At the very least, I'll be interested to hear Mr. Ashley define "complicity" and name names. Then I'll even help him register the domain name for additional academic boycott websites. You know, one for Sudan, one for Iran, one for Nigeria, one for Zimbabwe, one for Russia, etc., etc.

Over at the religion blog for the Times of London, Ruth Gledhill has a fascinating post about SPCK bookshops. The SPCK is a trust that, according to their website

is actively engaged in identifying, acquiring and supporting redundant churches throughout Britain. Its purpose in doing so is to provide them as a place of worship for new or existing Orthodox Christian communities of all stripes: Greek, Russian, Romanian and other Orthodox bishoprics. Saint Stephen is not a church, para-church, religious sect or denomination. It is a trust which aims to save church buildings so they can be used for their founders’ intent: worship of the Holy Trinity according to the praxis of England’s Christian Orthodox heritage.

Young Man, There's A Place You Can Go: But the SPCK isn't it
Um, okay. Sounds fine, I guess. SPCK bookshops are just stores that sell Bibles and Christian books and church supplies (hymnals and stuff, I guess?). So here’s what Gledhill has to say:

More amusing leaks from SPCK, where staff have been given a strong theological Christian argument for why they must work on Sundays. And on Bank Holidays. And, incredibly, even Good Friday! I think this is the first time I've heard of a Christian organisation telling its staff they actually must work on Sundays. Normally they're on the other side of the argument. But apparently, staff at the St Stephen the Great bookshops must be there on Sundays and holy days to fulfill their vital mission of selling bibles and other literature to the faithful who flock to the churches and cathedrals in which the bookshops sit. The argument of the heads of the company comes from the Council of Laodicea, which said that for a Christian to try to take the Sabbath off was to be guilty of Judaising. Willing and happy Judaiser that I am, I post this up on Friday afternoon before disappearing to have my sacrosanct Saturday off. I wish you all a joyful 'shabbat shalom'.

(Emphasis mine)

I love it when people try to say that resting on the Sabbath is bad for business. But when they say it’s bad for religious business, I just get confused. The Sabbath is not supposed to be about business, guys. Seriously. And the people using your stores to buy stuff for their churches and their worship are mostly in Church on Sunday mornings. Yes, you might get a few people in the store on Sunday who can’t come on any other day, but are they worth sacrificing your principles? I mean, I assume one of the Ten Commandments carries some weight for you “Orthodox” guys, right?

Let’s “Judaise” a little this Shabbat, shall we? Don’t buy anything during the 25 hours of the Sabbath just to show the SPCK who’s boss.

Almost all of my friends are glued to their television sets during March because of the NCAA tournament, and I always feel like a freak because I just can’t make myself care about who’s going to be this year’s Cinderella. Also, the alliteration irritates me. Sweet sixteen, elite eight, final four… amazingly annoying. I like sports and competition (I adore the Olympics), but I don’t follow any one team with the devotion and fervor of most of my friends.
Yossi Benayoun and Friends: the faith of thousands rests in their hands...
I also find it somewhat creepy how intense some people can get about their fandom. I know a number of families who are shomer Shabbat except when they have tickets to the game. Or, they’re shomer Shabbat, but when the game is going to be on they put the TV on a timer. I mean, I’m all about loyalty, but do you really put the Cubs and God on an even keel?

Once a friend of mine explained his devotion to a baseball team to me by equating watching a game with praying. He said when he watches the field, and is holding out for a run and then it happens, it feels like his prayers have been answered in a way that never happens when he’s at shul. Now, I can see how it might be more fulfilling in that way because you can see immediate results, but of course it wasn’t his little, “Oh please God let there be a hit!” that made the bat make contact with the ball. It was years of batting practice and good coaching.

I bring all this up because a number of my English friends are up in arms about the England versus Israel soccer game tomorrow afternoon. The winner advances towards qualifying for the European Cup. A reform rabbi named Jonathan Romain is on the record saying that British Jews should feel fine supporting England. But in the standard Jewish newspaper in the UK, the Jewish Chronicle, Conservative Rabbi Jeremy Gordon of St. Albans, debates the merits of the various options and declares for Israel.

For a lot of people this is a real conflict of sports and religion in a way that they haven’t ever felt before. It’s kind of amusing, since the outcome rests on a 26-year-old from Dimona named Yossi Benayoun. Luckily, the game isn’t on Shabbat. That would be too much for anyone to take.

Last week in England David Cameron, the leader of the Tory party, made a comment about how he wants his daughter to go to a Church of England school. This is normal, because CoE schools are generally better than their unaffiliated state counterparts. But to get into the schools you apparently have to convince someone that you’re sincere about your Church of England convictions, and when Cameron’s aides asserted that their boss goes to Church because he wants to and not purely to get his child into a good school, he got skewered by the Times, because actually believing is apparently way worse than pretending to believe so your kid can go to a good school.
Look! It's the Intersection of Church and State: Somebody call the ACLU
The anti-religious tirade that the Times unleashes, written by Michael Portillo, seems to be less concerned with Cameron’s religiosity than with Tony Blair’s, and frets, “I worry because men of power who take instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics.”

Actually, you’re wrong, douchebag. But thanks for playing.

Does one’s conscience count as an unseen force? How about data gathered secretly? I mean, I’m not Tony’s biggest fan these days, but I don’t think Tony’s problem is that, as Portillo puts it, “he takes on holiday 12th-century theological texts for poolside reading.” I think Tony’s problem is that he trusted Bush too much, and I think Bush’s problem is that he’s a douchebag and he has no idea how to do his job. Sure, his religious inclinations offend me, but not half as much as his really fucking poor leadership skills.

It’s hard for me to imagine that Portillo would be so concerned about the instructions of “unseen forces” if said forces generally agreed with him. And when he reminds Cameron, that, “Under the brief reign of Bloody Mary 300 Protestants, including bishops, were burnt at the stake for refusing to accept Catholicism,” it’s clear that he’s lost the point completely. Since when does Cameron’s willingness to attend church make him as bloodthirsty as Mary Tudor? It’s Portillo who comes off as the fanatic.

I’ll be the first person to say I want to keep religious fanaticism out of 10 Downing Street, but much as Blair can irritate me, I can’t legitimately call him a fanatic. For one thing, I don’t think he’s taking instruction from God or the Bible, I think he’s interested in it. He maybe blaming his poor choices on religion convictions now, but I don’t believe they were what motivated him to begin with. He doesn’t strike me as that pure-hearted.

But I’m straying from my point, which was that it’s unconscionable for Portillo to say that Cameron’s church-going makes him untrustworthy. As I pointed out already in my post about Abraham Lincoln, dude was a big time believer, but he also thought the Bible was wrong about slavery and made it his business to change the way a whole country understood labor. It is possible to be moral and religious.

IQ of 180. Body weight 100 lbs.Bridget Jones with a bit of edge is the best way to describe Belle de Jour, the popular London-based Jewish call girl blog that made such huge waves in England that it eventually became a book. Now comes the TV series starring Billie Piper as our favorite Belle.

What better than a nice, dirty Jewish girl and a sassy Brit all rolled into one and better yet, one that stars an actress that exudes a nubile Lolita melange of Kylie Minogue and Sienna Miller?

But enough drooling boys. Back to the blog and our favorite cynical, world-weary hooker du jour who is so admirably independent and bold she can express the same sentiment echoed by many a fearless single gal: Is it wrong to have made no plans for Valentine's Day, and be happy with that?

I really really REALLY hate it when people bring up the Holocaust as a trump card. I have a huge respect for everyone who died in camps, and on death marches, and in ghettoes, and everywhere else during World War II, and that’s why I cringe whenever camps, ghettoes and death marches are brought up in political conversations. It seems disrespectful, and it also often seems whiny. And then when people start calling Jews Nazis for any reason whatsoever I just turn my back on the conversation entirely, because it seems to me that there’s NOTHING to be gained when you call someone a Nazi, and when that person is Jewish, you’re gonna get your tush kicked by someone’s Israeli soldier cousin, or the ADL, depending on who “you” are.
British Muslims Have Their Houses Searched for Explosives
But I have to admit, I didn’t know what to think when I saw this headline on an article in the London Times: We’re victimised like Jews by the Nazis, says Muslim leader.

On the one hand, all kinds of alarm bells are going off in my head right now. On the other hand, the article presents some pretty compelling evidence. There are nine Muslim men being held without charges in British prisons, and Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, is understandably pissed about it. Muslims feel like they’re being “picked on,” he says, and feel that they’re being made the scapegoat of a terrorist witch hunt.

I think those are legitimate sentiments. I mean, when 13 Jewish men were randomly accused of espionage in Iran, the Jewish community completely freaked out.

Clearly, though, the British Muslim community is producing some terrorists who are committing acts of terrorism (like 7/7) fueled by a certain understanding of the Q’uran. And those people are causing all the negative response. But in Nazi Germany I’m pretty sure there was a blatant disregard for facts one way or another. The government was going out of their way to be explicitly anti-Semitic, more interested in broad strokes than making scapegoats of particular people (and if I’m wrong about this, somebody please correct me).

I guess what I’m saying is, I think the Nazis solution was generally just to fabricate things completely, and wait until some random case came along that happened to uphold their view, and then to glorify that case. And in Britain it seems like people are just scared, so they’re taking the little information they have and applying it way too broadly, which results in the demonization of Muslims. This isn’t helped by an inept and insensitive government (but what is?).

Just when I was ready to write off the Times article as useless and over-the-top, I came across this penultimate quote, by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former leader of the Muslim Council of Britain: “I wouldn’t have used the Nazi reference but I know from the number of calls that we are getting that people are really disturbed by the onslaught on the Muslim community.”

Well, yeah. That’s pretty reasonable. But if you’re looking for something really helpful, check out this article from The Guardian about how eerily parallel the treatment of Jews and Muslims has been in Britain. Pretty much left my head spinning.