Pandering, but pretty: Warhol's KafkaWhat the Jewish media has been getting up to this week:

• In a Dear Abby column last month, Abby answered a question from a man who thinks one of his brothers tricked his wife into sex. Rather than get outraged on the part of the wife—because, um, isn’t that rape?—Abby suggests maybe she was in on the deception. Feminist bloggers called this victim-blaming; Dan Savage called bullshit on the question. Given the opportunity to ask Abby about this controversy in their interview with her this week, Jewishsf.com instead wonders: If she had to eat one Jewish food every Saturday for the rest of her life, would she go with chopped liver, gefilte fish or matzo ball soup? [JewishSF.com]
• Clinton administration policy advisor Jeremy Ben-Ami is launching an “alternative AIPAC”—a liberal pro-Israel group. “About freakin’ time” says Jewschool. [The Jewish Week, Jewschool]
  
• Ugh, this is a terrible story: Remember the haredi women in Israel who wear burqas? The leader of the group was just arrested for child abuse and the failure to report incest. [Jewlicious]
• Heeb discovers it has a Christian twin in Geez Magazine. [Heeb]
• Andy Warhol’s portraits of Jews at the Jewish Museum: Was he exploiting the Jewish community, or vice versa? [The Forward]
• In his seminal book about life as a chef, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain refers to veganism as a “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarianism. So a bunch of vegans have started a blog called Hezbollah Tofu in which they veganize Bourdain recipes. Is the name offensive? Eric Schulmiller at the Jew and the Carrot thinks it might be. (By the way, best post title ever.) [The Jew and the Carrot]
  
• Uplifting story of the week: The IDF gives a residency permit to a gay Palestinian man so that he can live in Tel Aviv with his Israeli boyfriend. [YNet]

There was a bizarre moment in the Democrats' Nevada debate, in which Tim Russert asked all three candidates if they would enforece legislation that's been on the books for years depriving funding to academic institutions that don't support ROTC programs. And who could be against that? So all three candidates, predictably, answered yes.

Neither Russert nor anyone else at the debate even hinted at the subtext to this question, namely, the reason that many schools, including essentially every prestigious school in the country, do not have ROTC programs, is the prohibition on gays serving openly in the military. The original incarnation of the legislation Russert mentioned, the Solomon amendment of 1996, merely blocked federal funding to any sub-element of a university that disallowed ROTC or military recruitment, and only to such a sub-element. So Yale Law School, for example, could have lost funding if it chose not to allow military recruiters access to its careers website. But the Yale chemistry department, where a lot of important cancer research goes on, which relies heavily on government grants, and which has nothing to do with military recruitment, would not suffer.

After George W. Bush came to office in 2001 with two houses of Congress in Republican control, the Solomon amendment was revised so that an entire university would be deprived of all federal funding if any sub-element within it did not acquiesce to military recruitment. Both the intent and the effect was to blackmail law schools. The upshot is an absurd game of chicken, with the federal government prioritizing Don't Ask Don't Tell over both national security --- dismissal of, say, gay linguists makes us objectively less safe --- and important scientific research.

That's what the Democratic candidates just signed onto.     

Singapore will forever occupy a distinct and sexually enticing place in the minds of many a Gay American. I was only a 4th grader at the time, but I distinctly remember the caning of Michael Fay, who received the brutal punishment for vandalizing some cars with spray paint. To be sure, I'm not a fan of S&M, but there was still something darkly sexual about the whole affair. Mercifully for Fay, the Singaporean president at the time, Ong Teng Cheong, reduced from 6 to 4 the number of times the bamboo stick would strike Fay's 20-year-old ass.

Whatever one thinks of the erotic undertones of being beaten on the behind with a bamboo cane, surely the Singaporean government just turned off a huge potential tourist market by deciding to retain its ban on gay sex. Thankfully, at least for breeders, anal and oral sex is now legal.

The Singaporeans, if anything, are good businessmen. Surely they know about the billions of dollars that are to be made from the gay tourism industry? Here is a very wealthy Asian island city-state frequented by many a businessman and just a hop, skip and a jump from Bangkok, that other sex capital. For a view into gay life in Singapore (where, at least, the leader does not go around proclaiming the non-existence of homos), it's advisable to defer to Sir Ian McKellan, who recently traveled to Singapore to perform King Lear.

Makes one pine for the Headline News of the 90's, when our attentions were drawn to dramas like the football star who murdered his wife, the white trash figure skater who had her nemesis beaten with a pipe, and the distraught lady who cut off her husband's Johnson.

Gramoz Prestreshi, left, was accepted as a legal refugee in the United States, and Korab Zuka awaits an asylum hearing. Both were abused in Kosovo for being homosexual. The Washington Post reports today on persecuted gay refugees.

Ann Hulbert shares some insight from a recent Pew study on sexual and political principles of Gen Next that are worth a look in today’s Sunday Times Magazine.

It captures, certainly from my own experience, the rooted openness of a cross section of this generation. Though specifically geared toward views on gay marriage and abortion, the study sheds light on their independence of thought as well as their deep connections to their parents’ generation. And dovetails with one aspect that summarizes their essence: they are, without a doubt, charting something of a new path–wherever it leads, in American political life.

More in relationship to homosexuality than on the abortion question, one sees this study validated, which I suppose makes sense given the more public nature of seeing or knowing two gay people than knowing who had an abortion.

Hulbert writes, “On one level, Gen Nexters sound impatient with a strident stalemate between entrenched judgments of behavior; after all, experience tells them that in the case of both abortion and gay rights, life is complicated and intransigence has only impeded useful social and political compromises. At the same time, Gen Nexters give every indication of being attentive to the moral issues at stake: they aren’t willing to ignore what is troubling about abortion and what is equally troubling about intolerant exclusion. A hardheadedness, but also a high-mindedness and softheartedness, seems to be at work.”

The Cast Of The Bubble.Israeli film director and screenwriter, Eytan Fox's latest film "The Bubble" will be released for major distribution in the U.S. in the Summer. Fox's previous film, "Walk On Water" was one of the best foreign films screened in the U.S. in 2005.

The release of "The Bubble" is a signficant coup for Israeli cinema as most Israeli films never make it to the U.S. No doubt the huge commercial success of "Walk on Water" (which grossed $2.7 Million in the U.S.) helped the Strand Company in their decision.

"The Bubble" centers around young urbanites living on Tel Aviv's Sheinkin Street and sends a clear anti-war message to audience members. Incidentally, it also focuses on a gay love affair between an Israeli and a Palestinian. The film is currently being screened at the Berlin International Film Festival.

A new piece of British legislation aimed at protecting gay rights is concerning religious groups- Muslims, Christians, and Jews, on the basis of "moral grounds" that they feel threaten the collective "freedom of conscience."

The rules, which are in line with European Union requirements, will punish businesses and organisations which discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. Hotels which refuse to let double rooms to gay couples could, for example, be taken to court.

Nadia Lipsey, a spokesperson from the Board of Deputies gave a statement on behalf of Britain's Jewish community:

"It must be possible for people to live their lives in the manner in which they choose as long as it does not impinge upon the rights of others.

"We hope that to this effect the regulations will be framed in such a way that allows for both the effective combating of discrimination in the provision of goods and services whilst respecting freedom of conscience and conviction."

Speaking for the Muslim community, Dr. Majid Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association called for Muslims "to join our Christian friends in their campaign against the new proposed law on sexual orientation." He elaborated further with: "It is against our religious rights and against our human rights and against our conscience and religious beliefs to have this new unjust law forced on all of us British Muslims."

Note, in the above paragraph, the glaring absence of the word jew.

It’s not a new film, and it got a HUGE amount of press, so a lot of you know all about it, but I’m thinking today about Trembling Before G-d.  So I suggest that if you haven’t seen it, you should!  (It follows the stories of several Orthodox Jewish gay men and women).

I’m not sure why this movie popped into my head today, but maybe it’s because the conservative movement took a great step forward this week, in deciding to “allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex commitment ceremonies.”  Which means that the entire Jewish community (at least formally) agrees on the issue…

Except the Orthodox. 

Which makes the divide a little greater.

Of course, my own way of thinking places me solidly in support of gay men and women who choose any religious affiliation or lifestyle.  I’ll always argue in support of inclusion. To a fault. 

And yet I’m also someone who believes that it’s hugely important NOT to live a life in conflict.   I’m an advocate for telling people what you think, reconciling yourself TO yourself, kicking your neurosis in the ass.  

And so I cringed (in a good way) while watching this movie.  NOT because I don’t support the rights of gay men and women to live as observant Jews, but because it seemed to me that in choosing to do so (live observant lives), they were choosing a life of perpetual conflict.   The movie helped me understand why, but it still hurt me to see them forced into such a choice… the abandonment of their worlds, or their selves.

Then  today, as I was thinking, I read this article at Aish… which is harsh (Aish is a pretty Orthodox organization, however it describes itself as pluralistic). 

The article closed by saying:

"Trembling Before G-d" wrongly answers the most important Jewish question imaginable: Is Judaism about what we'd like God to do to accommodate us, or about what we are honored, exalted and sanctified to do to obey Him?

And I think it’s a good point, though I disagree with how they see the film. 

I think that the men and women in the movie DO want to honor and exalt God.  I DON’T think they are asking for accommodation. I think they are trying to help affect change for the better, whether they know it or not. 

I think that in the struggle to continue living observant lives, they are a light to the rest of us.  God’s light.  They are teaching us (the secular world) just how much observance is worth.  And they are teaching the Orthodox world that the gay community cannot be dismissed as a new/crazy lifestyle choice created by the nutty secular world.

Today, as the conservative movement debates gay marriage and gay ordination, (Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever linked to FOX News before!) I want to direct you all to this incredibly interesting blog! The Shaigetz describes itself as “Chassidic life from one on the edge of the gefilte-fish cradle” and it’s a site we can all learn a lot from.

By a blogger within the Chassidic community, but one openminded enough to link to Muslim sites (with the disclaimer, “These are blogs by individuals proud to be Muslim yet critical of the some of the wrongs done in the name of Islam…I don't agree with some of what they say but I have to admire their courage and honesty. Recommended reading!”)

It’s not often we’re given such a clear, honest, direct voice from the far right (religiously and politically) and while you may not agree with many of the sentiments in The Shaigetz, you’d do well to check the site out if you’re trying to understand the range of perspectives in your own religious community.

For me, raised in a super-lefty intermarried family, it’s an important part of knowing what Judaism is. And it’s really interesting to see the cultural and social situations an observant Jew is faced with. Not enough to change my mind about politics (or gay rabbis), but truly worth reading.

This isn't so much Jewish, but The Advocate (via Muslim LGBT organization Al-Fatiha) reveals the fairly awesome fact that Zanzibar has a Freddy Mercury-themed restaurant, along with the far less awesome news that the owner has been prevented from throwing an AIDS fundraiser for what would have been Mercury's 60th birthday due to anti-gay protests.

This is a pretty depressing story. But the article points out what might be a larger humanitarian issue:

"Few on Zanzibar are aware of Queen or Freddie Mercury, who was born Farrokh Bulsara on the main island of Unguja to ethnic Persian parents on September 5, 1946."

Forget gay rights, religious tolerance, or AIDS in Africa -- Freddy Mercury-awareness is a cause worthy of all of our support. I'm calling Bono ASAP.