Ah, there's nothing like a delicious amalgam of celebrity gossip and religious fervor. Tweak the details of the story to make the celebrities beautiful wealthy socialites who inherited their good fortune from their famous parents and make the religion Judaism and you find yourself with a story ripe for feature in the New York Observer, the Manhattan-centric publication that proclaims, "Everything is about style for New Yorkers, from what they wear to where they eat to how they entertain." Fittingly, The Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, who has entered the tabloid spotlight with his recent engagement to Ivanka Trump and subsequent insistence that she convert to Judaism before the nuptials are to take place.

Kushner and Trump are both the recipients of vast inheritance of real estate fortunes and have each landed in the public consciousness due to their affluent lifestyles: Kushner became the owner of The Observer while still in grad school in 2006, while Trump spends her days working as Vice President of Real Estate Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization. Both pretty standard-issue jobs for 26-year-olds, right?

With the overbearing coverage that accompanies any wedding of the glitterati comes word that Kushner had asked Trump to convert before they wed and that she was going through with it. Unlike Christianity and Islam, the other members of God's Big Three, Judaism does not generally lend itself to proselytizing. However, the 1981 book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, states about intermarriage:

If the non-Jewish spouse truly shares the same values as the Jewish spouse, then the non-Jew is welcome to convert to Judaism, and if the non-Jew does not share the same values, then the couple should not be marrying in the first place.

Partially due to Judaism's lack of any sort of central dogmatic governing body, reliable statistics on conversion are hard to come by, but spousal conversion is not uncommon. Other famous converts-upon-marriage include Tom Arnold, Connie Chung, Kate Capshaw, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and recently, Sacha Baron Cohen's fiancee, Isla Fisher.

We were a group of Jews that had come on an organized tour of Berlin with an organization funded by remnants of the Marshall Plan; the official goal was to brush up on our German and German-Jewish history, but most of us came with the loftier objective of attempting to reconcile the conflicting information that we'd received from our grandparents and the questions that the passage of time forces us to ask regarding the relationship between contemporary Jews and Modern Germany. On one of many beautiful, rainy days in Berlin, we stood on Rosenstrasse (Rose Street, if you must) with Dr. Dagmar Pruin, the program's director and German academic specializing in Hebrew Bible studies; she told us a rather fantastic story.

In early 1943, somewhere between 1700 and 2000 Jewish men were taken to a welfare office on Rosenstrasse. The men were to be brought to the Auschwitz death camp, but because their wives were non-Jewish Germans from prominent families, the SS brought the men here first in order to try and trick their families into believing that they were receiving special treatment and that they would likely be taken to labor camps rather than death camps. Eventually, the wives and other members of their families caught on. Although they were without leadership, unarmed, and completely unorganized, they staged a protest. Throughout the entire week that these men were being held on Rosenstrasse, somewhere around 6,000 Germans peacefully protested by standing in the streets and screaming "let our husbands go!" Although Goebbels, Gauletier of Berlin, was on a mission to racially cleanse the city, he was also responsible for the nation's public morale and thus the protesters were of great concern to him. For that reason, they didn't shoot into the crowd like they did when Jews had attempted to protest. Both Goebbels and Hitler agreed to free the men on Rosenstrasse-- and they even ordered the return of 25 men that were already on their way to Auschwitz-- making the assumption that this would only delay their inevitable fate, which was to be murdered. They were wrong, however-- the large majority of these men survived the war, rendering the Rosenstrasse Protest the most successful civilian protest during the Holocaust.

How could it be that a group of Jews who have been learning about the Holocaust from a very young age were first hearing about Rosenstrasse now? How could it be that if not for this trip, this professor, and this unremarkable memorial, that we may have never learned of such triumph? Apparently, a documentary about Rosenstrasse entitled Resistance of the Heart (Pierre Sauvage, 2003) was marketed to English speaking Jewish schools and organizations abroad and according to Dr. Pruin, the director of the film had no luck. Jewish communities didn't take a liking to it due to the fact that it could potentially promote intermarriage. The Germans aren't too keen on discussing the protest either, mainly because it begs the obvious question that Jews and non-Jews alike have been asking for years-- could the Germans have stopped the Nazis in their tracks? Surely if one non-violent protest saved over 1,000 lives, more lives could have been saved if more prominent Germans had committed to staging protests.

The German reluctance to tell this story, while cowardly and generally inexcusable, makes sense. The Jewish communal reaction to the film and their refusal to talk about Rosenstrasse is not only disgraceful, but based on faulty logic.

Yes, the Jews of the world are a people bound by history and for some, statehood, values, and/or religious beliefs-- but despite this fact, it may be worth restating the obvious fact that we share the world with gentiles. Jewish history is a complicated sequence of events that cannot be explained or understood thoroughly without true examination of our interactions with others, in addition to the fact that oversimplifying our narrative underestimates our ability to understand its complexities and frankly, it's insulting.

Attempting to shelter young people from the idea and reality of intermarriage simply does not help secure the future of the Jewish people and Jewish educators, professionals, and parents need to rethink their priorities and their approach. The only way to instill the value of people hood is to create Jewish communities that educate a generation of young Jews who intimately understand both their history and the potential merits and challenges of being a Jew. People who assimilate or essentially leave their Jewish communities do so because they've run out of good reasons to associate themselves with that community. It's plainly ridiculous to assume that learning about something such as the Rosenstrasse Protest would cause anyone to question an already established commitment to marry Jewish. If the older generation of American Jews is worried about assimilation and intermarriage among younger generations of Jews, they need to give young people real reasons for feeling an attachment to their Jewish identities while still maintaining the ability to understand, accept, and celebrate the relationship between Jews and the rest of the world. Judaism and Jewish life have enough to offer such that this could be accomplished without force-feeding ideas and manipulating the understanding of our history. It's dishonest, short-sighted, and shows little to no faith in the ability for our story, in its complete form, to inspire.

Today I thought it would be fun to interview my husband about the joys (the joys!) of being married to someone who was born in Israel and moved to the U.S. when she was ten.

Danit: How is it being married to me?
Bill: I’d give it a seven.
Danit: That’s only a C. What the hell??

Well, I guess that’s enough of that.

The truth is, my husband is a lapsed Catholic from Minnesota. That makes him nicer than just about everyone except Canadians. On snowy days, he drives around the neighborhood trolling for people digging their cars out, and then he stops to help them. If their car needs a jump, it makes his whole day.

I met my husband in graduate school back in 2001. I had spent the previous four years in Israel, and the one useful skill I’d picked up was the ability to yell at people—preferably from the services sector—without even breaking a sweat. “This soup is cold!” I’d yell. Or, “What do you mean my deposit is non-refundable?!”

You can imagine the wacky sitcom potential here, if we weren’t both so fundamentally dull. It also led me to expect that when we had children, my aggressive dark genes would beat the crap out of his wussy blond ones. Instead, we ended up with this:

The Exorcist

(Obviously, my older son is already casting out demons.)

I guess it’s too soon to tell about the little one, but the big one is all peaches and cream and, at least according to my parents, who aren’t at all bitter, he looks exactly like my mother-in-law. Plus, except when he’s screaming that his food is too hot, he tends to be kind and helpful and even-tempered.

The reason I’m sharing this is because I’m surprised. I’d honestly believed that the survival of the Jews in the face of millennia of adversity would translate into genetic dominance, if not necessarily athletic prowess.

One final story:

I had my second baby six and a half weeks ago. When the first one was born two years earlier, the nurses at the hospital fell all over themselves to tell me how handsome he was. "Oh, you say that to everyone, don't you?" my husband fake-protested modestly.

"Actually, we don't," said the nurse. "If the baby's ugly, we say something like, 'Boy, what a lot of hair!'"

With the birth of boy #2, we discovered that this nurse had been telling the truth. This time around, not one person complimented our new baby's looks. And it wasn't just that these nurses happened to be reticent: I had to share a room with two other women, and I could hear these very same nurses exclaiming, "So sweet! So beautiful!" once they reached the other side of the privacy curtain. (Like my parents, I'm not bitter.)

Is it a coincidence, then, that #2 is the one who supposedly looks like me? (I’m not bitter about that either.)

But back to my husband, who’s so nice that he’s fetching me a Popsicle from the kitchen as we ready ourselves to watch CSI Miami (no, we don’t have cable).

Danit: Any other tips for marrying semi-Israelis?
Bill: Learn to like gefilte fish. And never, ever make them angry

A custody battle is brewing in Indiana, and it hinges on whether or not Satanism is a real religion. Jamie Meyer, a 30-year-old factory worker, is the divorced father of three young girls, and a member of the Church of Satan. Meyer’s ex-wife is suing to restrict his visitation time to allow his girls to attend Christian church. She also argues that the Church of Satan isn’t a real religion, that Meyer’s beliefs embarrass the children, and that Meyer’s may not really believe in Satanism.
Satanic pentagram: tres creepy
But the Satanism being practiced by Meyer isn’t what you might think. It’s nothing like what you saw in Rosemary’s Baby. Instead, Satanism is a “carnal religion.” Its members are atheists, anti-spiritualists, and proponents of pride, liberty, and individualism. That’s according to the current high Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter Gilmore. Doesn’t sound so bad, right?

A trip to the Church of Satan website (definitely not safe for work) proves otherwise. Here are the slightly creepy Nine Satanic Statements: 

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!

There are also Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, including, “Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.” And my favorite: “Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.”

But what’s at stake in this case has little to do with mating rituals or magic. Meyer’s ex-wife is suing on grounds that raising the kids with two conflicting faiths in their lives could be emotionally damaging, in addition to her discomfort with the Church of Satan in general. In a time when more and more people are intermarrying, the core issue of whether two religions can cause emotional damage to a kid is fascinating and tricky. The Church of Satan is a particularly potent example of how things can conflict, but a kid with a Jewish father and Christian mother can be plenty confused, too (see: Half/Life). Or he can be totally well-adjusted. It may have more to do with the parents than the religion, right?

I never thought I’d feel a little defensive about the Church of Satan, but in this case, I don’t want an anti-interfaith precedent to be set. 

High school girls in the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat are being warned not to become romantically involved with Bedouins, via a program run by a social worker named Chaim Shalom. A 10-minute film called Sleeping With the Enemy cautions girls that Bedouins may shower them with gifts and then leave them pregnant and alone, or refuse to allow them to return to their families after ending the relationship. Single Bedouin Men: like kyrptonite for Jewish girls?

Despite a message that smacks of racism, Bedouins seem happy to have the Jewish girls stay away. Bedouin mayor Talal al-Krenawi had this to say:

"It hurts our families just like it hurts the Jews. It causes a lot of difficult problems and internal conflicts which often end in violence…If there are children as a result of these relationships, it becomes a burden on our society. The difference is that we oppose this just like the Jews, but we never used racist expressions...a person is allowed to live with whomever he wants. In any case, one can oppose something without presenting racist opinions."

Classic case of bad spin? The Jews and Bedouins actually seem to agree on the issue, but somehow the Jews haven't been able to present their case in inoffensive terms. Here's an idea: Teach girls about unhealthy relationships in general, and offer them good skills for dealing with men and dating, instead of just saying, “don’t date Bedouins.” Need I remind people that not all Bedouins seduce girls and then leave them alone and pregnant?

Learn more about Bedouins in Israel here. 

Fleet Week in NYC: tattoos, booze, and...jews?My mother recently learned how to text-message. She’s addicted now, and several weeks ago, I received the following message: “JUST RAN INTO SUSIE FEINSTEIN @ SUPER-MARKET. JACOB ENGAGED TO GENTILE! OY VEY!”

Mr. and Mrs. Feinstein are a couple of conservative Jews, long-time friends of my parents, and Jacob is their oldest son. I met Jacob when I was five, so now—almost twenty-five years later—I know a lot about him: I know he’s got a taste for buxom blonds with Southern accents; I know he likes a lady with a tiny gum-drop of a nose. I also know his parents would rather lose a limb than watch him date a gentile.

It’s a familiar situation: Jewish parents spend a lifetime configuring Marriage To Another Jew as the end all be all accomplishment, all the while counter-productively setting the stage for their child’s Shiksa-rebellion. They station us Jewish gals up on the pedestal of proper dating and, in so doing, nuzzle the rest of the female world into the seductive corner. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve had a Jewish boyfriend parade me around at some Briss or Bat Mitzvah and then later, behind closed doors, ask if I wouldn’t mind a little Catholic school girl role-playing action, I’d have, well, a dollar. It’s happened with disconcerting frequency, and I’m getting exhausted.

We Got Married in a Fever, Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout: we've been talking 'bout Jackson, ever since the fire went outI want to be the manifestation of rebellion for once! But for whom is a Jew Gal a novelty? Is such a thing possible if you live in New York City?

Well, it is if it’s Fleet Week. Which it was in New York, just two weeks ago.

In humiliating and unrestrained anticipation of the ‘Sex and the City’ movie, and in pathetic homage to the T.V. episode wherein the four characters celebrate fleet week by attending a sailors’ party off Chelsea Piers, I decided to celebrate two weeks ago by trolling for sailors myself. I met one, goy-lifically named Jackson, in a West Village bar. Jackson was 6'3", from West Virginia—“they might both have ‘west’ in ‘em,” he’d drawled in reference to both the village and his native state, “but they ‘sho different!”—and in an effort to keep our belabored conversation afloat—HA!—I tossed off this numb-skulled hypothetical: “Alright Jackson, so let’s say this. Let’s say you’re on your ship and it’s sinking—God forbid!—and you end up stranded on a desert island and you can only take three items with you. What would they be?”

Jackson didn’t seem bothered by my insensitive mention of a sinking ship; it was the equivalent, I later decided, of someone saying to me, “Alright Sara, so let’s say this: you’ve just been diagnosed with Melanoma. Who do you tell first: your mom or your dad?” Jackson considered my question for a moment, then answered, “Well, there’re only two things I’d need, really: a twelve-pack of cold beer, and a good woman.”

“Interesting,” I replied. “And what constitutes ‘good’?”

“Well if I had my pick,” he said, “I guess I’d like a lady with tattoos.”

Sinking Ship: vs melanomaI have no tattoos, of course: I want at least the option of a Jewish burial. (Also, tattoo parlors instill in me an unmatched sense of fear – I can’t handle the idea of people strapped in chairs or the voluntary puncturing of human skin. The by-product is fine—even sexy, as Jackson suggested—but when I see the reality of where the magic happens, I get queasy.) Jackson praised tattoos and all they tend to connote, and I felt disappointed. West Virginian Sailor struck me as being one of the more exotically attractive types I’d ever get the chance to meet (Eskimos or Tibetan monks notwithstanding), and I’d banked on the feeling being mutual, but apparently not.

Or so I thought. See, I told Jackson I was sans tattoo, offered up the aforementioned reasons as to why, and he said, “Jewish, huh? That’s cool. I never met no Jewish gal before.” Then he inched in closer and put his hand atop my knee. I’m not sure this meant I was his forbidden fruit per se; and frankly, I didn’t care to probe lest I unearth some genuine strain of anti-Semitism on behalf of his parents. Instead, I reveled in the moment, this chance to act as someone else’s novelty.

An hour later, Jackson invited me back to his ship, but I declined. I mean, I’d won my Rare Bird status and shouldn’t that suffice? Did I want to chase after the prize of middle-bunk sex in addition? Didn’t that seem greedy? I thought it did. I felt reinvigorated, after all, and so decided: quit while you’re ahead.

This way, when I get Jacob Feinstein’s notice telling me to Save the Date, I’ll have the strength to listen.

Please don't look under the veil, mom and dad: Why having a secret non-Jewish significant other is, um, impracticalThis week, the advice column Dear Prudence takes on a problem familiar to anyone whose parents expect them to marry within their own religion and/or ethnic group: The secret significant other. Writes a 25-year-old Indian-American guy:

I started dating a Caucasian classmate four and a half years ago in college…. I see us together for the rest of our lives. There is only one problem: My parents are very traditional Indians and have told me since I was a young boy that they wanted me to have an arranged marriage, and if I did "bring home an American girl" that they would disown me. After two years, I told them about the relationship, and they were rightfully hurt and upset I'd kept it a secret. They say now that they were "joking" about disowning me and that I should have come to them. But it is close to three years later, and my girlfriend has still never met my parents.

Obviously, there are some Jewish resonances here, as well as Persian resonances, and Vietnamese resonances, and Italian-last-century resonances, ad infinitum. My evidence is, of course, totally anecdotal, but among the people I know with strictly tribal parents—Jewish and otherwise—there’s a distressingly large number with long-term “study partners,” and even more whose parents think they’re asexual because they’ve never brought home a date. It’s kind of like being gay before the seventies, except for one major, major difference: The parents don’t approve, but the rest of America truly does not care. So the kids wind up keeping a secret from their family that’s open knowledge in every other part of their lives.

Witness the reactions in Slate’s online forum, all variants on the general sentiment of “Dude, by the time you’re 25 you ought to be able to date whoever you want.” As for Prudence, she sensibly suggests bringing the girlfriend home for the holidays and insisting that everyone get along. Because duh, this is America, and all that Romeo and Juliet stuff is so old-world. Jewcy contributor Neal Pollack got a similar reaction in the comments section of a Salon article he wrote about his choice not to circumcise his son: Nobody seemed to understand how parents could threaten to disown a grown man.

Ultimately, this is one of the toughest things about the lingering taboo against intermarriage in certain cultures within America. It’s nice when the whole world agrees that your parents are crazy, but isn't it also kind of horrible?

Two old friends from Hebrew School: OK, I don't know that for a fact, but they COULD beStuffWhitePeopleLike.com gets the Nerve treatment:

I drink too much bottled water (#76). I wear overpriced vintage t-shirts (#84), loved studying abroad (#72) and stand completely still at concerts (#67). I'm a fan of Michel Gondry (#68), Apple products (#40) and Stephen Colbert (#35). I've threatened to move to Canada on more than one occasion (#75). And I don't mind that StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — a blog that lampoons the over-educated yuppies and hipsters who populate the nation's trendy urban centers and mixed-use development zones — pinpoints me with such eerie accuracy, assessing my predilections like a gifted psychic reader. The site is a fairly amusing send-up of the slightly embarrassing, clearly predictable culture I'm a part of.

But the fact that it also describes virtually my entire dating history — that really unnerves me. When I moved to New York, I imagined my dating repertoire would reflect the diversity of a Barack Obama rally (#8). But this doesn't happen, or at least, it didn't for me. I ended up dating exactly the people StuffWhitePeopleLike.com depicts: other white people who'd come to New York lusting after authenticity, ponying up their ample disposable income to purchase something that feels like "the real thing." People like me who moved here to drink from some mystical font of urban cultural capital, then just kept on dating within the tight-jean pool.

This strikes me as incredibly central to all the hand-wringing about intermarriage. Because while the Jewish community at large is busy panicking about young Jews marrying out, the truth is that “out” is a lot more complicated than anyone is willing to admit, at least if you’re not going by strict Halachic law.

The most modern argument against intermarriage goes like this: “But honey, you’ll just be so much happier with someone who shares your culture.” Certainly this is a lot easier to digest than “But honey, God doesn’t like his people as much as He likes our people.” And in a less secular country, maybe it would make sense.

The truth is, though, that unless you’re fairly observant, “your culture” probably doesn’t have that much to do with your Judaism. In fact, for many Jews, “your culture” is just the culture of all privileged, college-educated creative types—the white people of StuffWhitePeopleLike. And if what you want is someone who shares your love of sushi, indie rock, and Michel Gondry, there’s no reason to hang out at Jewish singles events. All you really need to do is go stand in front of Whole Foods.

Don't be fooled by his innocuous nickname: Schwarztie This week in J-media:

• Did you know that the gays cause earthquakes? The ultra-Orthodox Israeli political party Shas just suggested that instead of reinforcing buildings, the government should spend more money discouraging homosexuality. Insert obligatory San Francisco joke here, and then bang your head against the wall while wondering how you’ve managed to get stuck in the same religio-ethic group as these people. [Jewschool via Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post.]
• At JSpot, Hannah Farber asks the world’s rabbis to please stop insisting that she (and every other Jewish professional woman) pop out some babies right this very minute. Jewschool responds. [JSpot, Jewschool]
  
• This writer is really, really angry at Jerry Seinfeld, and not because of Bee Movie. [San Diego Jewish Journal]
• From the department of How Not to Grow the Jewish People: Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, who runs the Chai Center in California, just can’t stop sending angry text-message-speak e-mails to women who appeal to him for Jewish knowledge. A steller example: “Shame on U 4 yr disgusting unpaid whoring ways 2 try & take Jewish men away from Jewish women. Hitler murdered Jews & U R also trying 2 exterminate Jews." [LA Jewish Journal]
• An Orange County task force says antisemitism is so rampant at UC Irvine that Jewish students should stay away. [JTA]
  
• Heeb gets at the biggest issue facing young Jews today: Beefy men playing strip dreidel. [Heeb Magazine]

Ronna and Beverly are loud, opinionated, and wear too much lipstick. Watch as they harass an innocent bookstore employee while publicizing their new book for Jewish singles, "You'll Do a Little Better Next Time." Yes, these yentas are fictional (yet eerily reminiscent of my mom's friends), and if you love them as much as I do, there are many more chapters in the Ronna and Beverly saga to enjoy. Here is one of the best.

There was a time when a Fat Old Jew (FOJ) like Harvey Weinstein marrying a Skinny Young Gentile (SYG) like Georgina Chapman would have caused a perfect storm of cultural anxieties around sex, power, and religion. Today, it's just another small gossip item.

The nuptials of the conniving, overeating, materialistic Hollywood mogul – the flesh-and-blood quintessence of the kind of crudely drawn stereotypical Jewish male who equates acceptance into the broader American culture with the acquisition of a hot shiksa – passed without so much of a media peep. More interestingly, the Jewish chattering class (a wild generalization referring to my friends) barely found it worthy of cocktail prattle.

Beatles Wrong: Money Buys Love: Beauty and the beast Such a high-profile FOJ triumph would once have tweaked all sorts of anxieties. Some Jews would have worried what it meant for the future of the people; others would have been scared at what gentiles thought about it. Jewish and non-Jewish feminists alike would have been horrified at the way a prominent man was so shamelessly using power and wealth to win such a “yummy mummy,” to use a phrase wielded by Maureen Dowd.

Chattering away about this curiosity with my friends, editors at Jewcy, and others, I realized that none of them interpreted the union as a suppressed lust for inclusion, but instead that less psycho-dramatic, nonsectarian lust…for a hot piece of ass.

 

What’s interesting is how that particular lust is no longer the sole province of the male beast. The enfranchisement of males at the expense of females (particularly Jewish males and Jewish females) is coming to an end. Firmly ensconced in the middle and upper classes, our generation of Jewish women find power, and its application (sexual, or otherwise), far less problematic than their predecessors.

Hot Piece of Ass: She loves this gentleman for his mind

Unlike the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -- who came of age in the late 1960s in male-dominated universities and workplaces, and has become known for bemoaning a perceived return to 1950s courtship rituals -- our generation of women are achieving unlike any other. They’re used to female-dominated universities, and, soon, workplaces too. And with that equality, they’re becoming a bit beastly themselves.

Edith Wharton's single woman's ambivalence toward marriage has given way to fearless casual sex (with only a smidgen of ambivalence about getting herpes). Women are marrying later. They’re marrying twice, sometimes three times. And like Harvey, their second and third marriages are occurring from a place of greater social stability and financial prosperity.

That particular place – successful women of an advanced age reveling in their single-dom – has been fertile fodder for pop culture, with TV and film glorifying its wonderful lusty freedoms. There’s Sex and the City, The L Word, Cashmere Mafia, The Real Housewives of Orange Country, and on and on.

Get the Get: If at first you don't succeed... Being a “pig” no longer has a gender, or for that matter an age. It’s hard to condemn Weinstein for being shallow after watching A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila, in which 16 men and 16 women competing for the right to “love” Tequila, who is known mainly for having 2 million “friends” listed on MySpace.

Tila first entertains the men, interviewing some of them and making out with others. Then she does the same with the women. That’s the show. It might not have the novelistic complexity of The Wire, but it does prove you can be young, female, and utterly unaccomplished and still get a place at the trough.

Maybe I’m just a cynic. Maybe Harvey swoons over the way Georgina thinks. Maybe Georgina just loves portly men with prominent noses, liberal attitudes, and discerning taste in films. Maybe it’s not “love” Tila is looking for but love. Or maybe, when it comes to relationships and sex these days -- casual, matrimonial, queer, straight, and everything in between -- we’re all allowed to be pigs.

(While Tamar's at Jewish learning conference Limmud, she'll be bringing us regular updates.)

This morning at Limmud I went to shacharit (one of about four women at the egal service, and the only chick under forty, which again makes my blood boil) and then saw another amazing movie, “Out of Faith” about a Holocaust survivor, and her struggle to deal with her grandchildren marrying non-Jews. Weirdly, I know the grandmother and one of the grandchildren in question and much of the film was shot in the neighborhood where I grew up. It was a fascinating and gut wrenching film, and I of course got all teary at the end (deep down, I’m a total marshmellow). Definitely a must watch for anyone with survivor grandparents.
Elaine Welbel: of 'Out of Faith'

After lunch I went to Niles Goldstein’s session about “Gonzo” Judaism. I was all excited about this session, because it was billed as a look at how to return to the counter-cultural, rebel roots of Judaism, but honestly, I walked away fairly disappointed. As far as I can tell Goldstein doesn’t have much of a concrete message or instructions for people who sign on to his thinking. The one thing he told us to do was to turn Judaism back into an
“open tent” religion, so that when we see new people in our community we welcome them, encourage them to participate more and feel like they’re a part of the group. I’m all for welcoming people (inviting people over for Shabbat meals is one of my favorite pastimes) but I just don’t think that’s enough. We need more than just hospitality, and Goldstein didn’t seem willing to call out specific organizations or groups that are causing problems and need to be given some punk attitude. I agree with his general ideals, but I’d like a little more specificity, I think.

In addition to going to sessions I’ve done plenty of schmoozing and networking (the check-in table is the best place to pick up guys and Shabbat lunch invitations, in case you were wondering), and last night did some whiskey drinking with my friends from Yeshivat Hadar. Shabbat promises to be more of the same. Have a Shabbat shalom!

Whoa ... JDate! Since 1997, the Jewish singles site has given the world tons of Times wedding announcements, inspired plenty of trend pieces, and spawned a bunch of similar dating sites aimed at members of ethnic groups whose parents will disown them if they find love outside the tribe. Personally, I’ve never used it, being both categorically opposed to the idea of socializing only with other Jews and fanatical about proofreading. (Speaking of which, Ml3302, if you’re reading this, you might want to reconsider using the tagline “Disover me.”)

Like a lot of secular Jews, though, I’m kind of fascinated by the way JDate blends Craigslist’s obsessive focus on the bottom line with Nerve’s desperate posturing. So starting today, every Tuesday I’m going to feature a JDate profile of the week.

This can't be a real person...can it?: The JDater known as Babypackwell It was hard to pick just one when confronted with:

• The gay man in giant sunglasses who said “I have a rabbit, she’s a Jew too”
• A woman named Babypackwell (pictured), who I’m 99% sure co-starred with Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl
• The guy who listed one of his interests, unironically, as “discovering new soy products”
• The profile that ended “PLEASE DO NOT BE INTIMATED ... I AM NOT HIGH MAINTANCE !!!!!!!”

But my favorite was CreativeandFun6417, a surprisingly cute 40-year-old music-business entrepreneur from Chicago who described himself as follows:

I'm a perfect cross between Jerry Seinfeld, Ansel Adams, James Bond and a little George Castanza [sic].

In other words, he’s a nebbishy superspy who takes meditative black-and-white pictures of the American West. Ladies, the line forms on the right.

A recent report to the UN by Doudou Diène addressed the problem of the legitimization of racism at the highest intellectual and political levels in democratic societies. He cited French President Sarkozy’s Dakar speech, which stated that the African “man never launched himself towards the future. The idea never came to him to get out of this repetition and to invent his own destiny,” and the recent comments of James Watson, of stolen DNA fame, claiming that Africans are less intelligent than ‘us’, i.e. white males.

Sarkozy’s speech has been criticized in France, most notably by Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom nevertheless laid the blame squarely on the speech-writer’s shoulders (generating a mini-internet feud). The French diplomat at the UN, however, was shocked:

The representative of France said the Special Rapporteur had referred to his country twice in an unacceptable way.  Public statements by the highest authorities of France could be debated, of course, but it was unacceptable to say that they sought to legitimize racism.  President Sarkozy had reaffirmed several times that the fight against racism and xenophobia was among his priorities…

Notwithstanding the habitual racism of French presidents, it seems that France’s fascination with its own way of doing things does lead it to believe that xenophobia is fought off successfully in a very ‘Republican’ way, which can be summed up as the rejection of all differences in the public sphere. It seems the heirs of the Enlightenment -and of the Terror- have scarce asked themselves about the norm from which the different could be deduced. For all the acculturation talk, the norm is clear: if you’re not a visibly white, Catholic man, things are not so great.

Watson’s asininity, on the other hand, is nothing new. One can find it baffling that he got to direct Cold Spring Harbor lab for so long. But his cronies abound. A review of his latest book published last month in Nature demonstrates the ambient blindness:

We learn who and what has earned Watson's respect, affection and tenderness: his father, his wife Liz, the University of Chicago, former Chicago president Robert Hutchins, teaching, Harvard students, art, and those he injudiciously refers to as 'girls'.

Injudiciously? Girls? Wait one. Oh, yeah:

Watson is highly critical of science at Harvard, while expressing sympathy for the demise of former Harvard president Larry Summers. These events would seem to be largely irrelevant to the rest of the book, had Watson not been in hot water in the mid-1970s over 'girls' in science, and had he not been curious about the role of the genome in shaping human intellectual ability and in predisposing to such 'developmental failures' as autism, schizophrenia and Asperger's syndrome. He tellingly concludes: "If Summers' tactlessness does, in fact, have a genetic basis, much of the anger toward him should rightly yield to sympathy." In genome, veritas.

“Been in hot water in the mid-70’s” is what I call a sympathetic assessment of a deeply bigoted man. Discounting the obvious stupidity of assuming intelligence is somehow tied to the white man’s Y chromosome (and yes I do believe that any special case for “Jewish intelligence” would have to be exclusively cultural), would you not find it disturbing in the least that the claims of a supposed foremost scientist sound exactly like the centuries-old pseudo-science of racism?

The most fervent hope I have against all forms of xenophobia is in the increasing rate at which people of different backgrounds (ethnic, religious and atheistic, national) get together. This seems to happen everywhere, from the American continent to Old Europe, and with a bit of luck –and whatever the mechanism– it will spell the downfall of racism before we have time to get married with robots.

Vive la difference: The event flier Last Thursday night, NYU hosted a debate between Birthright Israel founder Michael Steinhardt, rabbi and TV personality Shmuley Boteach, and law professor Noah Feldman on the question “Are Jews different?” But as commenter agenious put it over in the Noah Feldman thread, what took place wasn’t really a debate. (I suspect agenius and I don’t agree on much, but we’re together on that.) It was more like a chance for three very different Jews to air their beliefs about Judaism, followed by a mini-drubbing of Noah Feldman by the NYU audience.

Rabbi Shmuley, who spoke first, testified to the virtues of Torah-based Jewish values. I can't top Jewlicious's hilarious description, so I'm just going to quote it: "Shmuley Boteach is, and I do not exaggerate, an evangelical Protestant minister with a beard and hand gestures." The girl sitting next to me, wearing a sensible skirt and loafers that I can only describe as tsniut, leaned over and whispered “Isn’t he great? I was at his house for dinner last Shabbat.”

Michael Steinhardt, up next, argued that Jewish values are indeed worthy, but not because of the Torah. He believes that Jews developed a series of core values over the centuries: education, tzedakah, belief in the here and now, a beneficial sense of outsiderness, a strong sense of group responsibility, and an ability to succeed any society based on individualism and meritocracy. These six values make Jews special, he explained, so we can really scrap the rest, including the Torah. At this most of the crowd gasped, and the NYU freshman in front of me put down her Sidekick and reapplied her lip gloss.

Noah Feldman: Dapper! Noah Feldman was up next. (“He’s so cute!” said my new Orthodox friend. She was right—if Tiger Beat made pin-up posters of Jewish intellectuals, he’d be their best seller.) He put forth a third opinion: There’s no point in preserving Jewish values if they’re not worth saving. Rather than argue about how best to sell them to the 12 million unaffiliated Jews of the world, we should be examining them critically, to see what good they do. “We are not in the business of preservation for its own sake,” he said, “at least we ought not to be.”

To me, this makes perfect sense. I should reveal my biases: I’m one of those 12 million unaffiliated Jews. My family belongs to a Reform synagogue which I attend twice a year on the high holidays because, like a lot of Jewish girls, I’m fairly close with my parents. I had a Bat Mitzvah the year My So-Called Life debuted; the latter had a much greater influence on my adolescence. I’ve tried Shabbat on occasion and I basically enjoy it, but I enjoy bacon-wrapped shrimp too. My mind is open: I’m curious about Judaism and I think about it constantly. But nothing has ever successfully convinced me that a life of Jewish observance would be better than my current secular existence.

Both Shmuley and Steinhardt, it seemed to me, were preaching to the converted—or the unconverted, I suppose, in Steinhardt’s case. Shmuley’s points seemed tautological: The Torah is great because it’s great. Steinhardt seemed to be participating in a different discussion altogether; he was essentially arguing for a re-definition of “unaffiliated,” since the Jewish values on his list don’t require any kind of behavior change for most of us prodigal types. Only Feldman took the conversation away from describing Judaism and towards engaging with it.

The Jewish community's best mustache: SteinhardtI may have been the only unaffiliated Jew in the audience, though, because everyone seemed less interested in discussing Judaism’s role in contemporary society than in Noah Feldman’s family life. The moderator started the pile-on by asking a spectacularly wimpy question about a legal case Feldman had handled between two different members of the Jewish community. At the time, Feldman had said it was a shame this intra-Jewish conflict couldn’t be resolved without bringing in the Federal government. “So,” asked the moderator, “when is it appropriate to bring inside Jewish issues to the outside world?”

“Nothing is ‘inside’ anymore,” Feldman replied. If you’re proud of your community, you should be public about what takes place there. Also, he added, it was pretty obvious that the real issue at stake wasn’t the intra-Jewish legal case he’d handled a few years ago; it was his infamous New York Times article.

An effusive 2004 NYU grad stood up to gush about Birthright. He said he’d been to the recent reunion, and the whole room burst into applause—I guess a lot of people had been there. On the bus on the way up to the Steinhardt estate, he’d been struck by what he described as a spiritual experience: a sudden, overwhelming certainty that someday he would have his own kids, and Birthright would send them to Israel too. “You’re doing a good job,” he concluded to Steinhardt, “and it’s working.”

Then he turned to Feldman. “My question is for you. How are you going to raise your children?”

“Ooooooooooh,” said everyone in the room. This was the Jewish equivalent of smacking your dueling partner with a silk-lined glove.

Feldman replied that of course he was raising his kids Jewish—it’s a part of who he is. But he’s also raising them in his wife’s tradition.

Preach on: Rev ShmuleyThe girl next to me chose this moment to whisper that she has a friend who thinks it’s evil to raise as Jewish the children of a non-Jewish mother, because when they turn 18 they’ll find out that they’re not real Jews. “Can’t they convert?” I asked her. Just like that, our friendship ended.

Agenius wonders why Feldman wants to be accepted by his community. He’s a success in every other aspect of his life—Shmuley compared him to Einstein, another intermarried Jew who did his people proud—so why does he want to be a star among Jews, too?

This question may have been intended rhetorically, but it’s a good one. Why would someone embrace both Judaism and a non-Jewish spouse? Perhaps because, for most of us, Judaism is only once facet of our fractured 21^st-century personalities. We’re not used to swearing total allegiance to any single identity, and we see no reason to join organizations that ask us to give up every other part of our selves. That’s why unaffiliated Jews don’t show up to debates about Jewish values—because they’ve come to believe that you can’t engage curiously with Judaism without becoming a Super-Jew. (I see this all the time as a Jewcy editor recruiting writers; I ask them if they want to participate in a professional relationship with the magazine, and they react as if I’m trying to get them join a cult.) Of course it’s risky to ask secular Jews to participate in honest discussions about Judaism; they might discover that they don’t like it. But to me it seems like a worthwhile pursuit – much more useful than fretting about Noah Feldman’s personal life.

* * *

Past Jewcy coverage of Noah Feldman:

Q&A with the Author of "Orthodox Paradox"
JTA Misses the Point on Feldman
The Rules of Engagement
The Feldman Flare-Up

At the 1998 reunion of Noah Feldman's Maimonides yeshiva class, no one could possibly have imagined that a few group photographs--all wide Jewy smiles and shapeless sorta-Orthodox outfits--would spark a seat-ripping public debate almost a decade later, and a messy media scandal a month after that. But here we are, with everyone all hot and bothered by the innocuous-looking pics that played so central a narrative role in Noah Feldman's "Orthodox Paradox." ...

For the third week running the Shabbat lunch I attended ended up focusing on Noah Feldman’s Orthodox Paradox article from the Times magazine. Besides the fact that this is getting old, I’m pretty frustrated that no one really seems to be engaging with the issue at hand, i.e. that the Jewish community treats people who are intermarried like crap, no matter their interest in staying in the community.

Let’s just skip over the part where people actually get intermarried, okay? They’re going to do it, you’re going to be mad, blah blah blah, move on. I’m not saying it’s okay or good, I’m just saying, it’s going to happen. At that point, once those people have made the choice, ignoring, insulting or generally treating them poorly is a really bad idea. It merely propagates the assimilation problem. If we tell people that one choice is enough to excommunicate them, then can we blame them for not sending their kids to Hebrew school, having regular Shabbat dinners, or even joining a JCC?

Out Ya Go Little Christopher: no bar mitzvah for you!
I’m not a fan of intermarriage, but I don’t see it as the end of the world, perhaps because I know so many people who are the products of intermarriages, and who subsequently decided they were interested and invested in Judaism, and wanted to be involved in the community. Sadly, many of them faced conflict in their families because their parents didn’t want them going back to a community that had rejected the interfaith marriage. And can you blame the parents for being so angry? Would you want your kids embracing a community that had made it well known they wanted you to scram?

This is especially frustrating because I can’t leave the house these days without hearing someone else bemoaning the assimilation of the Jewish community, or whining about how young Jews aren’t affiliating and how can we reel them back in? I think the reason synagogues and federations aren’t seeing lots of young Jews who want to be involved is because children of interfaith couples feel out of place at lots of synagogues, and they’re more comfortable being irreverent and ironic. That sentiment is much better served by the places like Jewcy and Heeb, and I think it’s because we engage with everyone, not just the middle class families from solidly eastern European backgrounds.

I don’t know how to solve the intermarriage problem, and I would concede that it’s pretty problematic. But I just can’t sit around and say, “Well, intermarriage is a boundary our community has set, and we just can’t condone that kind of behavior so these people can’t be offended when we don’t include them.” You can’t tell people when they can’t be offended. It doesn’t work that way, and it never has. We can set boundaries all we want, but at some point we have to recognize that we’re pushing people away. And in these times of serious discussion about what the future of Judaism will look like, do we want to exclude thousands of couple who have shown by the nature of their decision to be together, that they’re willing to make compromises? I don’t, and I won’t.

Noah Feldman’s “Orthodox Paradox,” an article published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, is a shanda fer da goyim, a skewed and distasteful takedown that invites non-Jews to gawk at the internal problems of a modern Orthodox Jewish community. Or maybe it’s a poignant and brave discussion of the challenges of bringing a traditional faith into modern life, written by a man who cherishes his people. Either way, it’s kicked up a storm of impassioned chatter throughout the interweb, where you can find both these judgments and many more.

“Orthodox Paradox” hits on themes close to Jewcy's editorial heart, what with Feldman trying to figure out what a cosmopolitan Jew’s to do with this bewildering, antiquated faith that we just can't seem to leave behind. So we had to pick his brain a bit. Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School who was raised modern Orthodox, agreed to answer my questions via e-mail.

In the hot seat: Noah FeldmanWhy did you write this article?

These are issues I've been thinking about for a long time, and that have recurred again and again in my work on the U.S. and the Muslim world. My thinking on those topics is influenced by my education in the modern Orthodox world, and I came to think that others might be engaged with similar issues.

You were surprised when Maimonides—the yeshiva from which you graduated—removed* you and your (non-Jewish) wife from a photo published in the alumni newsletter. Your surprise struck many readers as rather strange, since the community makes no secret of its rejection of intermarriage. It’s a bit as if you’d pulled out a bag of pork rinds, devoured them with relish throughout the evening, and then expressed bewilderment when someone asked you if you'd set them aside until later. What are your critics missing here?

My classmates are great. As it happens, the reunion was lots of fun and we were all warm towards one another, as one would hope. What is troubling about the view you describe—which I never sensed from my classmates—is its implication that somehow modern Orthodox people should be protected from my living my life as I choose. As if choice of life partner were as trivial as a snack. Going to a reunion is a perfectly normal part of life, and choosing not to attend, in order to shield people from my life, would be absurd. People who are comfortable with their own life choices don't get "offended" when others choose differently.

Continue reading...

Tonight is the beginning of a major fast in commemoration of the destruction of the first and second temples (plus a bunch of other bad things). First the Jews were kicked out by the Assyrians and shipped off to Babylonia. Then, after seventy years Jews were allowed back in Israel to rebuild the Temple, only to have it destroyed again by the Romans.

Living in exile is a notoriously difficult experience for Jews. (Over Shabbat I learned of a custom of removing all the knives from the table before saying birkat hamazon, because when we read the part about our exile we might be tempted to stab ourselves). On the one hand, we’re supposed to feel incomplete and forlorn without Zion, on the other hand, we’ve gotten pretty good at this whole galut thing (and, frankly, pretty bad at this whole having our own state thing). It can be hard for me to sympathize with a tradition that thinks I might want to stab myself just because I don’t live in Israel. I simply don’t connect with a sense of national/ethnic exile. This was put into profound relief this weekend as I read The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which was great, but felt ideologically distant to me.
Noah Feldman: he was a Rhodes AND a Truman scholar, and we want to kick him out of the fold?
On the other hand, the article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend about intermarriage and the unnecessary alienation that it causes seemed very relevant and relatable. If you haven’t read the article yet (though chances are you have--it’s currently number two on the ‘Most E-Mailed’ list) I highly suggest you give it a once-over. The gist is that a graduate of the Maimonides School of Brookline, a man to whom Jewish life is obviously very important, has been effectively ignored and even erased from alumni photos because he’s married to a non-Jew. Noah Feldman, the article’s author, has struggled with his Modern Orthodox upbringing because it seems unprepared to deal with his own choices. He writes with a consistently positive tone about Judaism and Jewish life, and yet he feels as if he’s been pushed away from it, as if his there is a gulf between himself and the community he clearly loves. His article is one of the most potent descriptions of exile I’ve ever read.

Partially as a result of Feldman’s article, I spent much of my Shabbat meals discussing intermarriage with friends, and heard yet again the damn doomsday prediction about the future of the Jewish people. We can’t intermarry, because then who will have the Jewish babies? If that is really the argument, if all we really need is Jewish babies, then I guess it’s no problem for me to inter-date. I don’t want kids, so it shouldn’t matter whom I end up with, right? No. Of course not. I should date Jews because I spend all day being Jewish. I lay tefillin in the morning, and say kriat shma before I close my eyes at night, and in between I learn text, give tzedakah, read Torah and try to build an inspiring and exciting Jewish community for myself and my friends. I want to share all those things with someone I love. And frankly, if that person can’t read Hebrew, or thinks the Torah is stupid and outdated, I’d having trouble imagining myself with him in the long term anyway.

Last night I read Shmuley Boteach’s fantastic response to Feldman’s article. Boteach gave his editorial the simple title, Stop Ostracizing the Intermarried, and it contains one of the most sensible and mature responses to intermarriage that I’ve ever seen:

Of course I had wanted Noah to marry Jewish, and I took pride in the fact that I had helped to sustain his observance during his two years at Oxford. But the choice of whom he would marry was not mine to make. Before his wedding I wrote him a note that said, in essence, that we were friends and my affection for him would never change.

I told him that he was a prince of the Jewish nation, that his obligations to his people were eternal and unchanging, that whether or not his wife, or indeed his children, were Jewish, he would never change his own personal status as a Jew. I added that I knew he would do great things with his life as a scholar of world standing, and that he would always put the needs of the Jewish people first.

In this response Boteach seems to be exhibiting Ahavat Israel, the practice of loving and respecting fellow Jews. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is famous for saying that the second temple was destroyed as a result of gratuitous hatred, and the third will be constructed as a result of ahavat Israel.

So maybe I don’t connect with national exile. It turns out the personal exile that I see and feel deeply in the Jewish community stipulates that my response be the same as the person stabbing himself with the challah knife during birkat hamazon.

Tonight, maybe you’ll sit in a dark room with other Jews, reading the book of Lamentations, and crying for the loss of Zion. I hope that in those moments of grief you’ll remember the grief of members of our own community, and you’ll join me in committing to practicing more ahavat Israel every day.

Yesterday, Michael kindly leapt to my defense against those who assert that I'm unentitled to speak on Jewish issues, what with my being not only a "neo-Nazi shemale prick," but, less forgivably, a non-Jewish neo-Nazi shemale prick.

Michael volunteered that I'm "100% halachically Hebrew," and he’s probably right about that. Still, my great-grandmother—the halakhically relevant one—was named Mary and was illiterate in Yiddish. I assume Mary was Jewish, but there seems cause to wonder, and I really can’t be bothered to find out. For anyone who places importance on such things as matrilineal succession, I encourage you to operate from the assumption that my mother is Margaret Thatcher.

And isn't that the point? We am ha-ares are so incurious about this stuff, so cavalier about life's BIG questions such as the Jewishness of one’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother. It's really not much of a surprise if, as one commenter said, some ultra-Orthodox will no longer drink wine prepared by secular Jews. How can they be sure?

Michael also says "For the record, Joey's reference to "mongrel" or "FrankenJews" in his dialogue with Jack Wertheimer applied to only a few of us at Jewcy who were born of virgin Gentile mothers (myself included)." Actually, I did not intend terms such as Frankenjew to apply only to those whose mothers are not Jewish, or to children of intermarriage generally. I regret that I seem to have left myself open to that interpretation.

As I said to Jack Wertheimer in my second e-mail, “I don’t believe intermarriage is the cause of all this turmoil, but rather a consequence…your enemy is not intermarriage, but the pluralistic, endlessly permeable culture of the modern American city.” As an example of my own Frankenjew “patrimony,” I mentioned my high school experiences at a Korean Baptist Bible study, rather than anything about the diversity of my family. That’s because my point was that it’s our “polyglot, postmodern American creole culture,” rather than our ancestry, that makes for “Jewish-American mongrels” or “Frankenjews.” It’s a culture we share with people from an endless array of backgrounds, and in which our worldview is shaped by all sorts of non-Jewish influences, even as we also retain Jewish influences and connections.

Continue reading...