Barack Obama has been the subject of some serious rumblings among Jews lately, so much so that in January a group of prominent Jewish leaders put out a letter condemning a “whispering campaign” against the Illinois Senator. But why are older Jews so anxious about him? Recently Richard Cohen and Roger Cohen each wrote a column that together usefully illustrate two main fears that Jews of their generation have about Barack Obama:

A) Blacks think it’s acceptable to hate Jews.

B) Because of their experience of racism, blacks identify with other minorities, but not Jews, whom they perceive as whites masquerading as a “false minority.”

Obviously an anti-Semite Richard Cohen struck first, back on January 15th, in a Washington Post column provocatively titled “Obama’s Farrakhan Test.” Few people symbolize black antisemitism more powerfully than Louis Farrakhan, who once lauded the achievements of Adolf Hitler. Though Cohen does not say that Obama shares Farrakhan’s views, the juxtaposition of these two African-American public figures (who share little besides skin color) inevitably invites comparisons. In reality the only link between these two men is that the magazine run by the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, the minister of Obama’s church, gave an award to Farrakhan. Cohen wonders what Obama makes of all this. (For the record, Obama has stated publicly and repeatedly, including at last night's debate, that he deplores Farrakhan’s antisemitic rhetoric and disagrees with the award.)

Is it disappointing that Obama’s minister would make such a move? Definitely. But considering that it is possible to play "Six Degrees of Louis Farrakhan" with any prominent African-American politician, such a sensationalizing column could only be justified on the assumption that any potential African-American presidential candidate personally owes Richard Cohen a denunciation of Farrakhan.

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On Nov. 30, Jewcy published an article titled “Are Armenians Angry at Jews?” in which I argued that although the Armenian community is upset that a prominent Jewish civil rights organization (ADL) supports Turkey’s campaign to the deny the Armenian Genocide, it is also aware of the Jewish-American writers, bloggers, and activists who speak out against ADL’s hypocrisy. Armenians know, I said, that throughout the 20^th century there was never a shortage of righteous Jews, individuals who spoke out against the Armenian genocide. I then proceeded to name three such righteous Jews: Henry Morgenthau, Franz Werfel (to whom I dedicated an entire article later), and Raphael Lemkin.

I received dozens of comments—made either to me in person or posted on Jewcy—immediately after the posting of the article. In one of the emails, a reader advised Jewcy to continue “kicking Foxman’s ass.”

I will not dwell on the positive remarks and the many emails, some from prominent academics, suggesting several other names of righteous Jews (about whom I might write in the future). I will, however, bring to the reader’s attention one point of view—from a fellow Armenian—that I thought was outrageous and, I believe, is shared by some other Armenians and non-Armenians.

“It is with great reluctance,” my fellow Armenian said, “that I wish to tell you that your article is oversimplified, very naïve and, at bottom, worthless. The Jewish involvement in Armenian Genocide is much complicated, intricate and perplexing.” He went on to cite historians who studied the “Zionist Jewish participation and their ominous role in Armenian Genocide.”

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Heath Ledger's recent death reminded us that the all-American heroes on our movie screens have lately been, well, Australian. Of course, it's also worth remembering some of Hollywood's toughest leading men are Jewish.

Click here to view a slide-show essay about Jewish macho men.
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Gimme a J! Gimme an E! Gimme a W!There’s a lot to love about Jewcy’s new(ish) office in Dumbo. It’s not in Manhattan, for starters. The office number is 613, corresponding with (cosmic?) accuracy to the mitzvot. The virtues of the ping-pong table and heedlessly fornicating neighbors have already been well articulated. But perhaps the funnest part? Why, I’d say it’s the touch-screen building directory in the lobby!

You walk into 45 Main St., come upon this sleek little machine, touch “Find a Company”, and are instructed to enter the first three letters of the company’s name. Which are, in this case, straightforwardly enough: J-E-W. Love. It.

Think, 9 x 12 inches, Oil on panel, 2007 The painter Dana Frankfort is known in the art world for her word paintings, which manage to invoke color-field, graffiti, and graphic art in an exultant chorus that feels fresh, moving, and very, very alive.

“The words,” observed New York Times art critic Roberta Smith of Frankfort’s first solo show in 2005, “usually rendered in large, blocky letters that fill the canvases, glide in and out of view, a little like towering neon signs seen through fog. ‘Now’ emerges from a field of yellow, as ‘Hallelujah’ does from a horizontal blur of red-pink-orange, and ‘Yes’ from a small square of progressively greener greens. Other less distinctive works use exuberant but more notational writing to broadcast phone numbers, list the days of the week or exclaim, ‘For the Love of God.’”

Lines, 57 x 96 inches, Oil on linen on panel, 2007 Frankfort’s latest show, DF, ran at Bellwether Gallery in Chelsea from late September through early October. In it, she moved further into her word work but also introduced a (controversial) new subject: Stars of David. Jews have expressed indifference to, contempt for, and revulsion at these new paintings, which attempt to bring the much-maligned (but not oft-painted!) symbols into high-art context.

I first met Frankfort at the least likely bastion of artistic genius imaginable: Camp Ramah in California. 

***

How did you come to the use of words in your paintings?

I’ve always been interested in color field painting. In grad school I was painting abstract, large, geometric fields of color. I came to realize that my decisions were arbitrary. There was no reason why I was putting red next to yellow -- it was based on what I liked, and that wasn’t enough. I needed something to back up my decision.

I was freaking out and I stopped painting. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. I was lost. Mel Bochner -- a teacher of mine -- told me to just paint what I know. That simplified everything. It was months before I made a painting again, but then I started painting my name. Because I knew my name. I was going through a personal crisis - getting divorced - and things were falling apart. Then I started painting my address. And my studio number. Things I knew. Facts I could rely on. Old prayers I had to memorize in Day School. I was positive that these things existed. It was a way of working myself through an existential crisis. I could rely on these things. A yellow circle and a pink circle were meaningless but I knew my name.

Cute and Useless, 24 x 36 inches, Oil on panel, 2006And how did this early work evolve?

I was interested in born again religion/spirituality. I was taking a class on Hasidic Judaism in grad school. Looking at the art like revival. This minister Howard Finster -- he painted signs to get people to believe in Jesus. And having grown up in Texas I’m used to seeing Jesus shit everywhere. I just really liked the idea of a billboard that would speak to me personally -- so I was sort of painting my own billboards. What I wanted my billboards to say. I also like Marsden Hartley.

So you started to think more about color in that context?

Yeah.

How do you pick words now? Bananas, 72 x 72 inches, Oil on panel, 2007

It’s still the paint what you know thing. If you look at paintings from my most recent show, “Possibly Permanent” refers to the painting itself, to words, to me, to you... It’s coming out of an existential place. “Lines” refers to the formal aspect of a painting -- lines can come together to form a word or a star or just come apart to be abstract.

People (including me; see above) often invoke graffiti art in describing your work. What's the connection as you see it between graffiti and your word paintings?

Whatever.

Disaster, 60 x 60 inches, Oil on panel, 2007You’ve begun to explore the Star of David as a recurring symbol. What led you there?

I was interested in the idea that a word is made up of lines and becomes a symbol in itself. But there’s never an original, and same with a star. I like the idea that a star can’t be original. It’s a symbol that anyone can draw and have. There are finite ways of arranging lines into a star.

What are the challenges and rewards of trying to address such an iconic symbol? What are some pitfalls you'd like to avoid, and what's the ideal aim? How might people begin to see the star anew?

There’s a huge history of Christian art, but a relatively small history of Jewish art. And associations with the Star of David are pretty much lame and tired – like the Holocaust. I had a personal goal -- could I make a Star of David not look lame in a painting? Jewish art doesn’t have the same history as Christian art because you’re not allowed to render the image of a figure -- it’s sacrilege.

The Star of David -- no one knows where it comes from, what its origins are, for sure. Its earliest association with Judaism is believed to have been on King David’s shield -- the bolster/support behind his shield were these interlocking triangles.

What's the reaction been to the star paintings?Star of David, 72 x 72 inches, Oil on panel, 2007

Artists have been very excited about them. Dealers, too. People wanted to show them before they were done. This gallery in Belgium where I’m having a show in February -- in a city where there’s been a lot of religious tension -- are really excited about showing the stars. The harshest response has come from collectors. The stars have been slow to sell. One collector told my gallery that, though she thought the star paintings were beautiful, she was “too much of a self-hating Jew” to buy one.

 

Star of David, 72 x 60 inches, Oil on panel, 2007

My favorite of the stars are the orange and purple -- in the orange the star is really not immediately apparent; it’s revealed through brush strokes rather than color. And the purple is partially painted over. So it’s almost like you’re avoiding the most overt representation (the Israeli-flag-type of star, wham). Is that a commentary on “self-hatred”?

No, it’s about color field painting and form and the idea of lines coming together to make meaning and then falling apart into elements. And about the star as a symbol without there being one original. But I guess a person could psychoanalyze that.

 

 

Star of David, 4 x 7 inches (oval), Oil on canvas, 2007

You’ve been influenced by the color field painters, right?

I want to name my first son Morris after Morris Lewis.

So -- Rothko, Lewis, Reinhart, Franz Kleinz: Jews. Do you think it’s interesting -- out of this religion that frowns on representational images of the figure of man (whatever that may be) comes a group of painters who paint abstract blocks of color?

Morris Lewis was a genius. Underrated. A lot of stuff has been written about Rothko and Jewish philosophy. And I do think it’s interesting: the spirituality represented by those paintings. But there were a lot of non-Jews making abstract paintings too. Sort of like how there are a lot of Jewish writers, but writing isn’t a uniquely Jewish thing...

Of your first solo show, “What’s So Funny” (at Brooklyn Fire Proof gallery in Williamsburg, 2005), New York Times art critic Roberta Smith said: “She has gained enough access to her medium to make one curious about what will come next.”

Now, Smith has weighed in a second time: “Some shows have ‘back to the drawing board’ written all over them, and Dana Frankfort’s Chelsea debut is one... Ms. Frankfort has put down stakes where painting and language meet, but a greater effort is needed.”

Seems like she was invested in your career and is being extra harsh now. How do reviews affect you, if at all?

Reviews are very important, career-wise. And also, it’s nice to be a part of the dialogue. But I’m gonna keep painting either way, so they don’t matter in terms of whether I’m going to be a painter, you know? I’m not making paintings for anyone else. But in the art world people care about that shit.

These days I feel a lot more comfortable tossing out what is written. It’s artists opinions that matter to me; other painters. Those are truly whose opinions matter. Old professors, grad school colleagues. A small, tight group. First thing I do when I’m having trouble with a painting is call those people into my studio. The critics have their own agenda.

***

Got a spare twenty grand lying around? Buy a Frankfort! Contact Bellwether Gallery for details.

Monday's rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN attracted the full spectrum of New York Jewry, from Conservadox to Hasidic and everything in between. I went during lunch hour and took some photos.

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Jewcy hosted its first lit cafe at the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side last night. We read from various pieces published in the mag, drank Jell-O shots whenever someone unwittingly spoke a "banned" word or construction ("Trotsky," "neocon," "Hitler," "Manhattan is an island ghetto," etc.)

One of the more interesting discussions occurred in response to Jeff Koyen's "Israeli Asshole" essay, which argued that in places like Myanmar -- where hotels post signs saying they won't cater to obnoxious, peremptory Israelis -- what we're seeing is not old-fashioned Jew-hatred but the equivalent of anti-Americanism. This is a good thing in that Israel has now taken on its own national and cultural identity divorced from the aery and baroque tendencies of the Diaspora, and so even mean generalizations about Israelis are not ipso facto generalizations about Jews.

Think of how far, then, the tribe has come in such a short time. Henry James surveyed a ghettoized (chug!) Second Avenue at the turn of the century and decried the pungency of Yiddish vaudeville and "hard glitter of Israel" that had everywhere transformed his beloved, abandoned city. What would the Victorian novelist of expatriation have made of Menachem Begin or Golda Meier, or Ariel Sharon, I wonder.

There were a few Israelis on hand last night, who, despite seeing themselves mercilessly treated in Koyen's piece, stood the very picture of good humor. By and large they agreed that the Jewish-American luftmensch has got less in common with a retired IDF soldier than he does with a Hapsburg in Vienna, or a skittish bellboy in southeast Asia. It then occurred to me that the Jewish relationship to motherland on the one hand and exile in the United States on the other was an inversion of the Irish relationship.

Not long after Henry James' nostril-wrinkle, James Joyce remarked that second and third generation Irish-Americans in New York had little in common with Dubliners. Consider the Hibernian stereotypes now. The Diaspora Irish are seen as brusque and rude renditions of their sweet-tempered originals. (The Notre Dame mascot could go a few rounds with any Jim Crow depiction of a pickaninny for the simian nature of its caricature.) Yet cultural assertiveness was conditioned in the orphans of Eire not by messianic, Jabotinskyite rhetoric -- "we do not have to apologize for anything" -- by a hellish immigration and assimilation experience in the 19th century. The racism of "Irish Need Not Apply" went a long way toward yielding the kitsch of "Kiss Me, I'm Irish," not to mention the green beer and the clean-up crews of St. Patrick's Day parades.

My brother-in-law is from Moville, a smallish town in Donegal. He's constantly embarrassed at pubs in Manhattan when the brogue gives him away to some investment banker who thinks true blood flows black and tan under the skin. The look on his face at moments like these is the closest approximation to the look on an Israeli's face when some aliyah-averse JewBu talks of "one people, one destiny." (The Sabra's response to this is always the same: Bullshit.)

So in honor of this holiest of holy days, I offer a tribute to the complicated comforts of Diaspora and the hard-knock glories of ethnic authenticity. Below you'll find the Irish band Black 47 performing "Funky Ceili."

Someone just forwarded this to me and I thought I’d toss it up here for anyone to whom it applies:Is China: Jewcy?

Hello,
My name is Karen and I work on a nationally syndicated public radio show called Weekend America (www.weekendamerica.org) aired on over 135 NPR stations. We are currently working on a segment about Jews from China who are living in America. We are looking for individuals and/or families who fit this profile and would be interested in sharing a bit of their story with us. If you know anyone or have an organization who may be involved with this community please feel free to either email me back or call me at (213) 621-4640.

Thank you very much for your time,

Karen Krausen
Weekend America 
www.weekendamerica.org

I recently returned “home” to Indiana from spending the summer at Cornell’s School of Criticism and Theory. Basically, SCT is like the ultimate nerd camp, where young intellectuals (mostly professors and advanced PhD students) attend seminars and lectures—on literary theory, philosophy, political theory, postcolonialism, and everything in between—all day, everyday, and with a smile. Fortunately, evenings were devoted to reclaiming our cool-ness by going out to all the Ithaca, NY hotspots and drowning our livers in whatever libations the all-too-eager-to-close-at-1am bartenders would pour us (seriously, last call was at 12:30!).My Liver: Is floating somewhere at the bottom of this martini I consumed in Ithaca.

But what does any of this have to do with Jews? Nothing. And, everything, it seems.

In addition to the public lectures and colloquia that all participants (approx. 60) attended, we were each enrolled in one of four seminars that we attended twice a week. I chose a seminar led by Eric Cheyfitz called “What is a Just Society?” On the last day of the seminar, we were asked to fill out evaluation forms. One participant in my seminar, a lusty Latina, was openly angry, groaning and mumbling as she filled out her form. Later, as a few of us sat outside, I overheard her complaining that there was no diversity at SCT—that all of the seminar leaders and public speakers were white, that there was no minority representation. The few people around her seemed to agree.

Leave it to me to infiltrate myself into a conversation where I am not wanted. “Uh, what about Gayatri Spivak?” I said. Spivak, a heavy-hitter in the world of literary theory, and a South Asian woman, had given a public lecture that was rather bizarre, and in which she relayed too much information about her physical ailments before demanding—ahem, requesting—that the air conditioner be turned off. We were all sweating in sync by the end of her talk. A regular diva, that one. I hope to emulate her one day."Token Minority"?: Or great sage of the hour? Gayatri Spivak sits surrounded by students. I am off, in the distance, as far away as possible, my back to the camera, wearing an ugly multi-colored shirt.

In response, one participant did one of those half-laugh, half-snort things, and said, “Spivak was the token minority.” I was confused. And I was confused because I had counted at least two or three speakers who were Jewish. And Jewish is a minority, right? White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are not minorities. But Jews are minorities. Right?

Apparently not.

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A welcome JTA article on the peaceful coexistence of Zionist Jews and Palestine-supporting Arabs in Panama:

Inside the stores here -- wholesale distribution centers for Asian goods seeking Latin American importers -- businesses run by Orthodox Jews and Arab Muslims operate side by side with nary a hint of conflict. In some cases, businesses are co-owned by Jews and Arabs.

Nightclubs are packed with young Jews and Arabs more concerned about partying the night away than the faith of their fellow partygoers.

Both religions are thriving in this small Caribbean country. Disregard the "ever-growing flocks" condescension of making these people sound like sheep:

With three Jewish congregations -- two Orthodox and one Reform -- and thousands of kosher and Sabbath-observant Jews, Panama stands out in Latin America as having one of the most devout and practicing Jewish populations. Muslims are as practicing as their Jewish counterparts here; synagogues and mosques are under construction to attend to the ever-growing flocks.

TB-Press-Conference

Is anyone else enjoying the historical oddity of tuberculosis patient Andrew Speaker being treated at the Infectious Disease Division at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, with the name of the hospital showing up behind the speakers at today's press conference? Anyone?

Well I'm enjoying it. The obsessively fraught connection of Jews and tuberculosis -- and, more specifically, of Jews and tuberculosis in the minds of turn-of-the-20th-century "scholars" and "scientists" -- is too complicated to go into fully here, especially when I've felt a gnawing scratch in my throat/chest all day, but suffice it to say that Jews were considered both especially susceptive to and especially immune to the disease. I'll whet your lungs with words by the Master himself, historian Sander Gilman. The following is from his hypochondriacally amazing Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient. The passage starts by referencing French historian Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (1842 - 1912):

Leroy-Beaulieu uses tuberculosis as a means of distinguishing between two classes of Jews -- the "healthy" and the "sick." And being a tubercular Jewish male is being doubly feminized -- for if circumcision is the first act that "unmans" the Jewish male, acquiring tuberculosis is the second:

Let us take tuberculosis, the disease that creates most havoc in Europe. Although in London, even in the most squalid dens of Whitechapel, consumption is, according to medical testimony, less frequent among the Jews than the Christians, it has been proved that in Poland and Russia the Jews are often subject to consumption as well as to scrofulous diseases. Indeed, they seem predisposed to these evils. The Jews of Lithuania, Poland, and Little-Russia are frequently characterized by narrow chests. This alone would suffice to render them liable to consumption. The Russian councils of revision are well aware of this. They are obliged yearly to reject as invalids, or to put off for future examination, a number of Jewish conscripts whose chests are not sufficiently developed. The narrowness of chest must not be ascribed to the origin of the race or to its Semitic blood. ... The "healthy" are those males who can serve in the military; the "sick" cannot, and thus are feminized. [Israel Among the Nations: A Study of the Jews and Anti-Semitism, p. 162]

Now there is a basic contradiction in Leroy-Beaulieu's argument typical of the discourse about the Jewish body in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the one hand, Jews have an immunity to certain diseases, such as tuberculosis, though an affinity for others, such as neurasthenia and hysteria. On the other hand, the male Jew's body is depicted in terms of the habitus phthisicus, the tubercular patient, especially the female tubercular patient. How can the Jew be both immune to and defined by tuberculosis? Here the stereotype's peculiar power to accommodate antitheses comes into play. At the turn of the century, Jews are both the arch-bankers and the arch-revolutionaries, both the false nobility of Paris and the Wandering Eastern Jews of Warsaw, all things to all groups who need to define outsiders. Thus their supposed immunity, whether racial or acquired, is a sign of their "nature," as is the assumption that the Jew, because of his body form, is predisposed to tuberculosis. Both point to a close association between the body of the Jew and the Jew's character. This difference from an established norm of "beauty/health" comes to be inscribed on every part of the Jew's anatomy, especially the chest.

A Happy Fourth of July to all, but remember, whether you're an arch-banker or an arch-revolutionary, you're still a narrow-chested Jew. So do like me and take your Airborne.

Who knew that nearly 2 years after Israel pulled up stakes in that troublesome stretch of land, leaving Palestinians to their own misery, that any Jews continue to live in the Gaza Strip? It turns out that there is one last Jewess named "Nina," who does advocacy work for human rights NGOs in the Gaza Strip. Good intentions aside, it seems like a fool's errand to me.

She lives in a "bourgeois section" of Gaza City which probably means that the sound of RPG's and mortar fire is drowned out by the half an hour a day of television the sporadic jolts of electricity allow. With kidnappings of Westerners rapidly becoming the most popular sport in the Gaza Strip, outstripping suicide bombing and honor killings as de rigueur for those hoping to earn their radical stripes, let's hope that she keeps her head and does not reveal the secret that she comes from a Zionist family.

Daniel Pearl's noble reporting in Pakistan could never erase the fact that his great-grandfather Chaim Pearl was a founder of the town of Bnei Brak in Israel.

Haven't we had enough martyrs over the last 5,000 years?

By most measures, my great-uncle Lawrence was a hippie. He ate vegetarian, grew his hair long, preached pacifism, fasted in the woods to find his purpose in life, and eked out his living as a painter. But, Lawrence lived during the 1930’s and 40’s. So, when he explained his anti-violence to the draft board, they didn’t peg him as a tie-die wearing follower of Abby Hoffman. They just thought he was nuts.

Dig the paint-spattered background: My great grandfather Sam painting.

My whole family falls along this vein. Take my great grandfather, Sam Rothbort, recently mentioned in the Guardian as “an amateur artist” in Jules Olitski’s obituary. In fact, he was anything but. His work hangs in the Smithsonian. Booted from Russia in 1905 for being involved in the proto-communist Bunde, Sam made the unwise financial decision to open up a no-kill chicken farm during the Depression. He later opened up the Rothbort Home Museum of Direct Art, a rather gorgeous display of his neo-impressionist paintings that became a stop for class fieldtrips for years. He was convinced that it competed with the MOMA. Sam hated war, was a committed vegetarian, and strongly believed that his letter to Eisenhower halted the conflict with Korea.

Other family members were similarly bohemian, like the Stanislovsky-trained Ethel (who posed for a series of photos dressed as a tree), or my great-aunt Vivian, who followed the Baba. My great-uncle Jack walked across America on a diet of nuts and berries. Legend has it that when he reached New York Mayor LaGuardia presented him with the key to the city, but that he kept walking to Boston before his feet would let him stop. Though, given the chronology, I think this might just be my aunt Ida embroidering.

They were all clearly Jewish, but not the least bit orthodox, believing instead in notions like the “group soul” and “summerland” (genuine quote from a theosophist cousin’s letter.) Sam, towards the end of his life, painted hundreds of watercolors of his schtetl childhood. The Jews they show are observant but earthy. He was just as likely to paint a child being wormed as a glorious synagogue ceiling.

So, when people ask me if my family disapproves of my naked-posing, scandalous drawing, day job shunning existence, I can say no. In the Rothbort history, I scarcely stand out. In fact, I feel like I’m joining the family business.

Well, folks, it's the end of my week here, and I have to say that I pretty much enjoyed it, except for the minor technological glitches.

I fought the temptation to publish cat pictures, what with that being the super-cliche of blogging, but hey, there's always next time.

I'm not sure I should tell you this, but I went fairly light on most of my subjects this week. Over on my place, I have such categories as "Jew Cooties" and "Israel Derangement Syndrome," and I long ago declared my blog a "No Israel-Bashing Zone." (In a nutshell: There are enough places in the media and in the world where people bash the crap out of Israel in every possible way, and I am unwilling to provide a forum for Israel-haters on my dime.)

Now it's back to regular blogging for me, and spending my Tuesday afternoons and Sunday mornings teaching little Jews to be big Jews. So they can grow up and write for sites like Jewcy.

Bubbe MaryashaThe Brooklyn bubbe who survived Russian pogroms, Communism, and Nazis, died on Wednesday.

"Bubbe" Maryasha Garelik, who lived through the entire 20th century, surviving the pogroms of czarist Russia, Soviet anti-Semitism and Nazi terror and then dispensing her wisdom to thousands of Lubavitch Jews, has died. She was 106.

She died Wednesday night in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood and was buried Thursday at the Old Montefiore Cemetery near the grave of the ultra Orthodox sect's revered "rebbe," Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.

I'm waiting for the Jewish newspaper obituaries. The AP simply has this at the end of the article (emphasis added):

Some of Garelik's more than 500 descendants are Lubavitch emissaries in Australia, China, England, France, Panama, Poland and South Africa.

I'd really like to see that broken down by grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. But, wow. Just--wow. My grandmother's descendants haven't hit triple digits yet, and aren't likely to for a long, long time.

A religious Jew has chosen jail over house arrest because he says the house arrest ankle bracelet violates Shabbat. I think this particular case illustrates what I've thought for years: If Gentiles left us alone, our own infighting would tear us apart. Case in point: The Haredi riots.

A haredi activist arrested for allegedly pummeling opponents during a violent turf war demanded an exemption this week from wearing a house-arrest monitor on Shabbat.

But a Jerusalem Magistrate's Court judge ruled that if the man does not wear the ankle bracelet monitor at all times, he must go to jail. As a result, Avraham Zarbiv, 24, who first made a name for himself in haredi circles by spearheading an angry and sometimes violent offensive against attempts to enlist yeshiva students in the IDF, was removed this week from house arrest and imprisoned because of his punctilious observance of the Jewish day of rest.

This man is definitely no angel. And yet, the Haredi are threatening riots if he goes to jail this weekend. This would be on top of the riot they threw when a security company arrived after he took the bracelet off.

Various rabbis have given their opinion on the legality of wearing a house arrest bracelet on Shabbat.

Rabbi Haim Kanyevsky, one of the most respected in the Lithuanian community, ruled by proxy that use of the monitoring system on Shabbat was prohibited.

Metzger, quoting Kanyevsky, Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Landau, and Rabbi Tuvia Weiss, head of the Edah Haredit's Rabbinic Court, joined the opposition against the monitoring system. However, none of the rabbis explained why the Zomet Institute's halachic opinion was wrong.

In contrast, Zomet's Rosen explained why he permitted the use of the bracelet. "In the prisoner's house there is an electronic receiver that constantly receives broadcasts from the ankle bracelet," explained Rosen.

"The prisoner's movements do not activate anything. As long as the prisoner does not leave the perimeters of the house he remains within broadcast range of the electronic receiver and no alarm is activated. There is no difference between the ankle bracelet and any conventional battery-powered wrist watch."

I am far from an expert on Halacha, but it seems to me that in this respect, the Haredi don't have a leg to stand on. So to speak.

Harbin synagogueEhud Olmert is in China this week, discussing (among other things) the Iranian threat to Israel. But most people probably don't know that Olmert's grandparents fled to China from the pogroms in Russia. In fact, Harbin had a large Jewish population for some time. And Harbin sheltered thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis during WWII.

Bein expressed her appreciation of the peaceful childhood she enjoyed in Harbin.

"During the war, when the whole of Europe was aflame, we enjoyed a comfortable life," she said.

By the end of the World War II, there were about 30,000 Jews in China.

"Thirty thousand people came and 30,000 people left China," said Teddy Kaufman, President of Association of Former Residents of China and Israel China Friendship Society.

"Nobody was killed," he said.

China is one of the few nations of the world that opened its doors to Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Today, China is preserving the buildings that housed the Jewish community, a thing that is almost unheard of.

Harbin has preserved the largest Jewish cemetery in East Asia, which has about 600 tombstones and includes the grave of the grandfather of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The city's dozens of Jewish assembly halls, hotels, schools, hospitals, banks, shopping malls, dwelling houses, kindergartens and office buildings, some of which are nearly a century old, are protected by Harbin municipal government.

Some of buildings have been repaired and maintained in large scale, like the Jewish New Synagogue, which was restored in 2005.

How do you say "Thank you" in Chinese?

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.

I spent a wonderful and exhausting weekend in Easton Pennsylania, and though I generally try not to  share the "Dear Diary" (itty-bitty) details of my personal life on this particular stretch of the web, I wanted to mention my crazy weekend here, because I think it might be of interest.

Why? 

Because I did something I've never done before... in the space of 48 hours, I managed to have Friday night services with a Reform Congregation, Saturday services (and brunch on Sunday) with a Conservative Congregation, and Havdalah (and coffee on Sunday evening) with a small Orthodox Shul.  And NONE of them had anything nasty to say about the others.

It was a remarkable experience, in part because it reminded me of something... that in small Jewish communities (like Chattanooga, and Iowa City, where I've spent many years) everyone does a much better job of getting along than the Jewish communities in larger cities.  Because they have to. 

Like this:

Imagine that you're in a small college town, a 19 year old student, and that your dad died last year (if this really happened to you I'm so sorry, and don't mean to make light of it) . Now you (though you might not be otherwise religious) find yourself on campus for your dad's first yarzheit, and you want to say Kaddish.  But you don't know other Jews, and there aren't many of them.  It might take the whole community to make sure you can get a minyan.  But you can bet everyone will scramble to make it happen.

Or imagine you're a family in such a small town, and you have observant cousins, who come to town for your daughter's wedding.  They need kosher food, but the Reform Temple you attend doesn't keep kosher... you'll need help from the Orthodox Jews in the area, to make your guests feel welcome.  And they'll do what they can to help, because you're a part of the world they live in.  And you're a Jew.

See, this is how it is in a town like Easton, as it was for me in Iowa, and Tennessee.  People don't have the luxury of infighting. Or if they do fight, they try to mend fences quickly.  At Iowa, the Chabad minyan met in the Hillel house, and in exchange for the space, the Chabad rabbi oversaw the Hillel kitchen, so that the community would have at least one kosher industrial kitchen. 

Pretty cool, no? 

By contrast, I found that when I arrived in Atlanta, the Emory (3000!!! Jewish kids) chapters of Hillel and Chabad were engaged in a war.  I literally couldn't mention Chabad without screaming matches.  Which is sad.

I just thought I'd mention this now, because I think that those of us in places like New York, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and Atlanta... we forget how much more we have in common with other Jews... than we have to argue about.  And if we could all try to bear in mind that there might come a time when we NEED each other, we'd all be better off.

How many godforsaken hours can one possibly pass via Chinese food and movies? How many hours of our lives must we watch tick away waiting for the world to start up again? Unlike Ms. Chupak, I do not get off on appropriating the (a)religious rituals of others.You smell like chimney and old people.

Humiliatingly enough, tried to take part in revelry with my purported peeps, but was turned away at the door for insufficient proof of ticket purchase. Alas!

There is nothing to be done but get fucked up, haul out the best Hanukkah present ever, and start taking bets as to how long until those jackass decorations go away for another year.

And! Compose a Haiku:

Christmas is boring
Everything is closed and shut
I want a latte.