“Guess what?” My mother sounded positively bubbly--I hadn’t heard her this excited since her latest colonoscopy came back clean. “Harry Potter is Jewish!”

“Harry Potter is a fictional character,” I explained patiently. “But if Harry Potter had a religion, I’m pretty sure it would be some kind of magical Druidic paganism or something. Isn’t that what the Fundies were all up in arms about?”

“Well, not the real-life Harry Potter,” my mother replied, imbuing this paradoxical statement with all the disdainful petulance of a thwarted middle-schooler. “The actor. I just read an interview with his Bubbe in the Jewish Press. What’s his name?”

“Daniel Radcliffe.”

“Radcliffe, huh? I wonder what it used to be.”

“It’s his mother that’s Jewish,” I said automatically. “His father isn’t.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. But she soon brightened again. “But if his mother is Jewish, then he’s Jewish! And you already knew!”

Yes. I had known the truth about young Mr. Radcliffe for some time, since my usual procrastination technique of looking up random bits of useless knowledge on the internet had seized me with a burning need to know whether it was Alicia Spinnet or Katie Bell who played Chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch Team (answer: both did!) which led me to the Harry Potter Lexicon, which led me to Daniel Radcliffe’s Wikipedia page, which led me to the “List of English Jews” where I spent a full two hours glorying in the achievements of Matt Lucas, Nigella Lawson and Vanessa Feltz until I pulled myself together enough to go to the bodega for my seventeenth diet Coke of the day.

This kind of behavior is hardly atypical. Before my grandmother passed to that giant entertainment center in the sky, she used to adore cataloguing the co-religionists on her favorite television programs, pointing a knobby finger at the screen as the stale rugelach crumbs spilled down her housedress. “That Paul Reiser is just adorable! And he’s a Jew!” (Really? Paul Reiser? You don’t say.) As a child, I often shut myself in my bedroom, poring over the copy of Great Jews of the Stage and Screen, the soothing presence in those pages of Debra Winger and Jill St. John assured me that I could still be rich and famous, without having blond hair or being able to do a complete split. Despite the fact that my sister possessed a fine head of pale, buttery ringlets, and nearly every girl in my ballet class at the JCC was suppler than me, at the time I associated my failings in this area, like everything else I disliked about myself, with my Jewishness. Lauren Bacall gave me hope.

We lived in Nebraska, where Jews were thin on the ground, but had we dwelt in Great Neck or Tel Aviv I hardly think my mother’s delight that a Jewish boy had been chosen to portray the world’s most beloved teenage wizard would have been more acute.

There is only one other group of people that monitors the identities of prominent Jews as assiduously as the Jews themselves; who can, off the top of their heads, rattle off the names of each Jewish member of the United States Senate (thirteen, if you count Joe Lieberman) and Nobel Prize winner.

These people are white supremacists.

Thanks to the Internet, climbing into the mind of your friendly neighborhood neo-Nazi is easier than ever. Simply type in the name of any celebrity or public figure you believe or suspect to be a landsman into a search engine, along with the word Jewish. You’ll find glowing-with-naches profiles a la Harry Potter’s proud grandma, but you’ll also immediately be directed to David Duke’s website or the aptly named Jew Watch, which will assure you (accompanied by detailed genealogical charts) of the problematic ancestry of dangerous and powerful Semites like Estelle Getty, Scarlett Johanssen, and Kyle Broflovski. The attention to detail is so astounding—Robin Williams appears on the list, with the caveat that he once mentioned that he was Jewish on Oprah, but was “most likely joking and is of probable Christian ancestry” which is a relief, since the organizers of the next Aryan Brotherhood Autumn Retreat had already a Bicentennial Man/The World According to Garp double feature for Movie Night. Other heroes of American comedy don’t get off so easy; although the author acknowledges that “he is a funny motherfucker” and that he has “laughed his fucking ass off as some of his shit before”, Larry David is most certainly a Jew and none of us should forget get it.

Don’t worry, dude. We won’t.

Lists of names feature prominently in Jewish culture. The Book of Genesis teems endlessly with long recitatives of who begat who. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we pray with our eyes trained on the Book of Life, a kind of gargantuan cosmic database cataloguing all our virtues and trespasses that judges us accordingly (growing up, I always explained it to my Gentile friends as something like Santa’s naughty-and-nice list, except that the punishment for naughtiness was not fewer toys, but death. Is it any wonder we don’t attract more converts?) The names of the deceased are printed in pamphlets and solemnly read aloud on the anniversaries of their passes, and the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem has taken on almost talismanic properties—at once a memorial and an affirmation of existence. After all, the Nazis had their lists too. And apparently, they still do.

Perhaps what is most interesting (and eerie) is that whether these lists of famous Jews are available in glossy coffee table books and sold at the gift shop of the Jewish Museum on 5th Avenue, or posted in inept HTML on a website festooned with German Eagles and misspelled quotes from David Irving, they serve a roughly analogous purpose: to document the influence and reach of a people whose dizzying level of achievement on the world-stage is vastly disproportionate to their relatively miniscule numbers. Of the major world religions, we outnumber only the Ba’hai, and not by much. And how many Ba’hai are staff writers on The Daily Show?

For Jews, this legacy of prominence is a cause for celebrations, for the triumphs of a people that, to put it gently, the world has been rough with. For our antagonists, this never-ending parade of Jews in the news is evidence of precisely that—of a people of undue influence, an encroaching threat, a giant yarmulke-wearing octopus that gouging the world in its tentacles. And it’s precisely this sentiment that lends the streak of buried melancholy to Aunt Sharon’s discovery of the Beastie Boys, to Adam Sandler’s Hanukah Song, and to the doctrine of Jewish overachieving in general. If we can only keep churning out doctors, lawyers, rock stars, Nobel laureates, and ribald comedies about tubby, curly-headed stoners and the Gentile women who reluctantly love them, we will at last make ourselves indispensable. To committed populists like Kennebunkport’s own George W. Bush, elitism is a term of contempt. But for Jews it means something quite different. We know that even the Nazis let some of the elite—scientists, musicians, artists---slip through the cracks.

The elite survive. When we are all elite, then we will all be safe.

And on a personal note, I’m still trying to make it there myself, so Jew Watch, if you’re reading, put me on your list! Keep an eye out for my nefarious doings—I beg you! I’ll send you any biographical information that you need. And if you’d like to link to my Amazon page as well, who am I to stop you? I don’t care if you burn my book, as long as you buy it.

This photo: inspired Liverpool's RESPECTacles Project. In November, Liverpool was chosen to hold England's national Yom HaShoah observance, led by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. So Liverpool decided upon the RESPECTacles Project, a result of a collaboration between the Liverpool Town Hall and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

The project was inspired by a photo of a pile of damaged glasses worn by Shoah victims, which will be on display from January 21st through 26th in Liverpool. According to the Liverpool city website:

The unique project wants to put across the message that all individuals, particularly our young people, can play their part in genocide prevention simply by having, showing and insisting upon RESPECT for other human beings and for their differences.

Danny Radcliffe (Harry Potter) gave a pair, along with his costar Jason Issacs, who will be taking part in the services held on Yom HaShoah at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall on January 27th. Jerry Springer gave a pair, too, along with Yoko Ono, Stephen Fry, Paul O’Grady and Ronnie Corbett. (Elton John? I'm looking in your direction. Ahem. Glasses? Hi?)

On Liverpool City Council's website, there is still a call out for donations of glasses, sun and non. Eyewear donors are invited to label their glasses with a name in honor or memorial, as well. No specifics are given on donating by mail from stateside, but there is a bit of contact info (scroll about midway down) on their site, including a name and phone number, and I'm sure there's still time to coordinate something if you have old specs to give.  After Yom HaShoah, all glasses will be donated to Vision Aid Overseas, which aids people in obtaining much-needed prescription glasses in developing countries.

As someone who's dutifully stayed away from the Harry Potter series, I can't really see what all the fuss is about over Dumbledore's preference for the company of wizards over witches. This is perhaps because it was round about the time I heard someone refer to Tom Cruise as "so far in the closet, he's in Narnia" that I alighted on the somewhat natural parallels that exist between children's fantasy and gay themes. What I mean to say is this: What made-up magical realm of your adolescence can you cite that would have been downright hostile to jazz hands or California wine country? The Freudian uses of enchantment are well documented, and I'm sure there's some graduate thesis being written on the subject -- if it hasn't already.

Indeed, Oscar Wilde is considered by some to have been a better children's author than he was a playwright (though I find this judgment absurd). An openly gay English professor at, I think, NYU supplements his income by ghost-writing the admittedly non-magical and hard-boiled Hardy Boy stories. He's copped to infusing them with homoeroticism. When asked by a friend of mine if he didn't worry that this might make for inappropriate reading material for the 10-14 year-old set, he replied: "The reader is not my problem." Roald Dahl meets John Waters.

Anyway, try Google image-searching "wizard" and see what you turn up. A random sampling:

 

THEIR KIDS NEED SHRINKS

THE NEWS:
Children of Holocaust survivors are suing Germany to pay for their psychotherapy. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

THE CHATTER:
The suit brought by the conservative Fisher Fund. [YNet]

Baruch Mazor, the fund’s director, acting on behalf of “the Israelis, calling themselves second-generation Holocaust survivors, say the scars of the Nazi genocide on their parents have crossed generations. Many still live with an irrational fear of starvation and incapacitating bouts of depression, the lawsuit claims.” [Time]

But what exactly is the psychological damage? I mean, specifically? “Others of the second generation say they cannot ride buses because it reminds them of the transports their parents took to the concentration camps, or they fear dogs because they were used by the Nazis to control crowds.” Can’t ride buses! Fear of dogs! To overcome these fears, the psychotherapists are planning immersion activities such as taking the bus and visiting the pound. Better idea: the German-Jewish kiddos head to Kalamazoo, Michigan and heckle outside of Hal Turner’s Jew-hating radio show. It would be like when your mother told you to punch a pillow instead of your little sister. Same thing. [Media Mouse]

 

JEWS ON ICE

THE NEWS:
The first World Jewish Ice Hockey Tournament is being held in Metulla, Israel. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

THE CHATTER:
Taking after the earth-warming brains behind the indoor ski mountain in Dubai, let’s play ice hockey in the desert. Brilliant! [SkiDubai]

Even in the icy air-conditioned rink, few fans came out and the play was uninspired. But the U.S. beat France! Oh wait, it’s hockey, nobody cares. [YNet]

CLUBBING 101: NOW, YOU PUT THE TABLET ON HER TONGUE…

THE NEWS:
Project Rabinovich holds Jewish dance parties at Moscow's hottest clubs to bring together Jewish youth outside of shul. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

THE CHATTER:
But can they land MC Rebbe, the Rapping Rabbi, for their Moscow ragers? [MCRebbe]

After brunch the next day, there will be a screening of the newest Jewish lesbian comedy. They’re pricking interests in Hollywood. [AlDatingNews]

Speaking of educating our adolescents, Jewish youth camp serenaded by “Puff the Magic Dragon.” [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

In fact, what all of these cool Jewish youths really want is to be first in line for the release of the new Harry Potter. Too bad their country is up-in-arms over its Sabbathical release date. [Newsvine]

 

A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO HIJAB AND TZNIUS

THE NEWS:
Unlikely alliance of Orthodox Jewish lawyer and African-American Pentacostal Christian woman and the right to religious dress in the workplace. [The New York Times]

THE CHATTER:
Ms. Tahita Jenkins was fired by the MTA on May 31 because, according to NYC Transit spokesman Charles Seaton, Jenkins could put the passengers in danger by taking her hands off the wheel to adjust her skirt. [The New York Post]

A blogger agrees that skirts could be hazardous in the public-safety workplace. [Jewess]

The MTA had offered the culottes option to Ms. Jenkins which she dubbed “just wide pants.” [New York Press]

 

ISRAELIS TURN AMISH?…NAH, JUST A LITTLE DRAFT-DODGING

THE NEWS:
Rising draft-dodging rates in Israel point to a growing weariness with Israel’s constant state of war. Is this the end of Zionism? [Haaretz]

THE CHATTER:
Maybe, but at least it’s not the end of acapella Jewish hip-hop! [Arutz Sheva]

Speaking of war, Iran supposedly has 600 planned targets in Israel for missile strike. Like that’s thorough or something. 600. I can count twice that high. [Haaretz]

There’s a pretty interesting article in the Washington Post about the Christian Fantasy genre that is really taking off in the wake of Harry Potter’s success:

Secular and Christian publishers are churning out titles aimed at the lucrative and growing audience of readers, who are snapping up an estimated $2.4 billion in Christian books a year -- about a 30 percent increase in the past four years.

Some Christian religious leaders and Christian parents have expressed unease with the Potter series, believing, among other issues, that humans' use of magic is forbidden by the Bible. The series is on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books at school libraries.

Tapping into that unease are an increasing number of Christian writers who are producing Potteresque books without the elements that some Christians say violate the Bible.
"For a Christian family who's a little skeptical of some of the messages in the Harry Potter books, then they would find my books safe," said Wayne Batson, a Howard County middle school teacher who has written a popular three-book series called the Door Within. His latest book, "Isle of Swords," part of a new series, is due out next month.

Baton's Door Within series, published by Christian publishing giant Thomas Nelson, features Maryland teenager Aidan Thomas, who is suddenly plunged into an enchanted world. He must choose to join the forces of good or evil. The forces of good are led by a saintly king who has risen from the dead after being slain by an evil knight, who now leads a corrupt kingdom.

Full Story

My issue with Christian fantasy is that it always seems to have vaguely anti-Semitic undertones. I mean, if, in the Door Within series the “saintly king who has risen from the dead” is Jesus, then the “evil knight, who now leads a corrupt kingdom” is a Jew, no? It just makes me feel kind of yucky.

Elsewhere on Jewcy we’ve got much discussion of Harry Potter fan fiction, and I recently found a disturbing and convincing post over at Sabbath Meals that suggests Severus Snape, the Benedict Arnold of the Harry Potter series, is a Jew.
Severus Snape: a bitter old Jew?

In Snape, Rowling has created a angry villain who has a hooked nose, greasy dark hair, sallow skin and glittering dark eyes, an inscrutable, sneering, untrustworthy double agent -- who hisses. I don't think Rowling was intentionally trading in anti-Semitic stereotyping. Does that sound funny after my litany of stereotypical adjectives? But I don't! I think those are general negative physical characteristics in Western culture, and that a person could use them without intending anything racist. It's just kind of pervasive. After all, Rowling does have at least two very minor characters among the student who actually have Jewish names (Anthony Goldstein in Ravenclaw house, Harry's acquaintance in the DA club, and possibly also Rose Zeller). At least one reader has pointed out that this is part of a concerted effort on JKR's part to show the diversity of present-day Britain. (Though hello, do you see a single Muslim name here? Are there no Pakistani immigrant wizards at Hogwarts?) Her intentions aside, Rowling's Snape does bum me out. What's with the languid movements and the hairy eyebrows and the general ickiness of her Snape? In the Half Blood Prince he's practically Judas ferchrissakes. (Or you could read it that way. At least you could at the end of book six, book seven might turn the whole thing on its head.)

Later on in the post, Balabusta links to a piece of fan fiction that gives Snape a backstory as the son of a German Jewish refugee. Which almost makes Snape into a ruthless Israeli-soldier type.

All of this business of casting fantasy books with a religious light really bothers me, because in fantasy there’s a clear good and evil, and I don’t see religious life as that clearly divided. I don’t want Christian kids reading about the corrupt kingdom of evil Jews, and I don’t want Jewish kids creating fantasy books of their own that cast Pat Robertson as the devil, even though I really don’t like him. When fantasy is really just fantasy I think it’s a great genre for kids. But when fantasy is suddenly religious, I’m not on board. (And yes, I know the CS Lewis books are Christian, but luckily I hated them). The reason I like the Harry Potter books is because they’re so distant from my life. The idea of bringing my own cultural and theological history into a reading of the text takes too much of the fun out of the books.

Anyway, wishing everyone a Shabbat Shalom and a fun time reading the seventh book

• From the JTA main page, rules of the Sabbath: thou shalt not drive, have sex, or read Harry Potter. Oh, they also headline news from the Frenchies: Hamas definitely possibly could-be-a-chance that they are linked to Al-Qaeda. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

• Abbas calling for early Palestinian Authority elections. [The Jerusalem Post] The truth is, he's hooked on the CBS show "How I Met Your Mother" and doesn't want to miss next season's opening episode. His favorite is band camp girl.
  

• Some disturbing news from the Israeli State Controller:

The 600-page report submitted to the Knesset Speaker Wednesday, July 18, finds PM Ehud Olmert, ex-defense minister Amir Peretz, former chief of staff Dan Halutz and homeland security chief Yitzhak Gershon guilty of abandoning to their fate the population of northern Israel. He notes especially that the handicapped, sick, poor and those unable to flee the bombed towns and villages were left without food or medicines in the 34 days of the Hizballah rocket blitz against northern Israel. [DebkaFile]

• Worsening economic woes in Gaza. [International Herald Tribune]

• Pakistani troops and militants clash again along the Afghan border. [BBC]

JERUSALEM: The figure responsible for Israel's latest religious row is a bespectacled British teenager who is gifted with magical powers, world famous and entirely fictional.

The synchronized worldwide launch of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and last installment in the wildly popular series, falls at 2:01 a.m. local time this Saturday — on the Jewish Sabbath, when Israeli law requires most businesses to close.

With Israelis already clamoring for "Deathly Hallows," many bookstores are planning to launch the book on time anyway. That has drawn fire from Orthodox Jewish lawmakers, including Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai, who threatened to fine any store that opens Saturday.

"Israeli law forbids businesses to force their employees to work on the Sabbath, and that applies in this case as well. The minister will fine and prosecute any businesses which violate the law," said Roei Lachmanovich, a spokesman for Yishai, of the ultra-0rthodox Jewish Shas party.

Avraham Ravitz of the United Torah Judaism Party slammed the Potter books for their "defective messages."

"We don't have to be dragged like monkeys after the world with this subculture, and certainly not while violating our holy Sabbath," Ravitz said in a statement.

A friend writes, "Stay tuned for the sequel, Harry Potter and the Wrath of the Pharisees. And if there was any doubt as to who is responsible for the death of young Harry, let me suggest a certain time-tested storyline proven popular in market segments the world over . . ."

I have a sick fascination with fan fiction, those often epic-novels written by ardent fans of movies, television shows, books, boy bands, video games and, strangely, real people. It’s not simply that I’m interested in the intense fandom exhibited by the creators of the work, but also that I wonder what separates the writers from the average student I might have in a writing workshop. There must be something that makes someone decide that they’d rather dream up ways for the Oompa Loompas to get their revenge on that bastard Wonka to share with fellow Magic: The Gathering fans vs. creating entirely fresh characters and worlds.

Fanfic isn’t exactly a new phenomenon: Sherlock Holmes starred in some of the earliest examples (off-line, obviously) and there are those who’d argue derivative works are in the same class. Now, of course, just like any decent form of art, there are different kinds of fan fiction, though the one that seems to get the most attention is slash, which involves, essentially, Kirk and Spock and a sudden realization that the hungry touch of man flesh (or, well, Vulcan flesh) is what both have long desired. Not all fan fiction is slash fiction, but I find slash by far the most amusing and confounding, particularly when I read about how the relationships are clearly in the subtext of the work, and when the characters are played by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Or children. I'm less inclined to find fan fiction stories about real people harmless -- like, you know, stories about the actors from Boy Meets World meeting up in real life for hot sex with their fans. The characters? Fine. The actors? That's just weird. And troubling. And disturbing. And a little hot. Well, I mean, if I wasn't married and didn't have easy access to Cinemax.

 

Continue reading...

Harry: Has a passion for horses."Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe is starring in the new Peter Shaffer play, Equus, in London next month. Both the play and role have garnered their share of controversy. The seventeen-year-old Radclife appears nude in many scenes and photos of the cheeky actor baring much of his pale scrawny bod are popping up all over the Internet. As one might conclude, the photos have "Harry Potter" fans seeing Daniel in a whole new light.

"He is no longer the shy boy in the prefects' bathroom anymore. His body is .... I can't even say or I will no doubt be banned but he has grown a lot and I am very proud of Daniel."

Another wrote: "When I saw it I couldn't breathe for a moment. I was shocked. But [the] pictures are very cool and very good. I like it ... They're awesome!"