Respect Your Elders. Now take that basic commandment and kick it up a notch. Apply that amped up concept to a fashion blog, pepper it with Jew and you have Advanced Style, Ari Seth Cohen's style site that takes your basic street style blog and exclusively shoots the elder set. Cohen describes himself as a writer/photographer who "roams the streets looking for New York's most stylish and creative older folks." He then offers some wise words, "respect your elders and let these ladies and gents teach you a thing or two about living life to the fullest." After surely spending much time on Manhattan's Lower East and Upper West Sides, Ari Seth Cohen has managed to provide his readers with some pretty stylish, often Jewish elder folk who he hopes will inspire young, urban hoodlums. Through almost each subject, Cohen pinpoints and explains what about them he finds most inspiring which usually involves his evoking childhood memories of his grandparents and their generation. Setting aside the nature of a young man who spends more of his time in old women's living rooms than in bars with twenty-somethings, Cohen uses his adorable blog to make us appreciate the little things in life: dressing up, books, going to the movies and understated elegance to name a few. Furthermore, his appreciation for an age group that iDJ Mamy Rocks so rarely revered by fashion folk is refreshing in the climate of today's blogosphere filled with the young, the new, the current and the pin-thin. Images of older women in their jewels bought so long ago that us youngins would jump to call them "vintage" as well as men far too dapper to even know what beer pong is fill the pages of Advanced Style, at times making way for a more groundbreaking senior citizen. Case in point: Ruth, a.k.a. DJ Mamy Rock, a 69 year old DJ living in England who discovered the art of DJ'ing at her grandson's birthday party at a London nightclub. She now throws words like "track" and "spinning" around and relishes in the fact that she'd rather "sign a contract with a record company than sign up for a nursing home." Through his affinity for those well beyond his years, it seems that Ari Seth Cohen has accomplished what his site claims has been his goal all along - to proove that its not only men that better looking as they get older. From costume wearing nap-takers to 60-somethings that know their accessories, Cohen has certainly given his readers "proof from the wise and silver-haired set that personal style advances with age."

Let me get this little bit out of the way right now: Louis Menand of The New Yorker wrote the following about "The Catcher in the Rye" ten years ago and I don't think it's been said any better and I have the good fortune of being wise enough not to try to.

“The Catcher in the Rye” is a sympathetic portrait of a boy who refuses to be socialized which has become (among certain readers, anyway, for it is still occasionally banned in conservative school districts) a standard instrument of socialization. I was introduced to the book by my parents, people who, if they had ever imagined that I might, after finishing the thing, run away from school, smoke like a chimney, lie about my age in bars, solicit a prostitute, or use the word “goddam” in every third sentence, would (in the words of the story) have had about two hemorrhages apiece. Somehow, they knew this wouldn’t be the effect.

Menand adds:

Supposedly, kids respond to “The Catcher in the Rye” because they recognize themselves in the character of Holden Caulfield. Salinger is imagined to have given voice to what every adolescent, or, at least, every sensitive, intelligent, middle-class adolescent, thinks but is too inhibited to say, which is that success is a sham, and that successful people are mostly phonies. Reading Holden’s story is supposed to be the literary equivalent of looking in a mirror for the first time. This seems to underestimate the originality of the book. Fourteen-year-olds, even sensitive, intelligent, middle-class fourteen-year-olds, generally do not think that success is a sham, and if they sometimes feel unhappy, or angry, or out of it, it’s not because they think most other people are phonies. The whole emotional burden of adolescence is that you don’t know why you feel unhappy, or angry, or out of it. The appeal of “The Catcher in the Rye,” what makes it addictive, is that it provides you with a reason. It gives a content to chemistry.

Alright, are we good? Good. So let’s start with what is generally (?) known of J.D. Salinger: American writer, famous recluse, Holden Caulfield, Mark David Chapman/Lennon, and perhaps some stories about the Glass family. And to that, add this: J(erome) D(avid) Salinger, grandson of a rabbi, son of a *ham* and cheese importer/father and a mother who hid her true Irish-Scottish (read: not Jewish) roots until after his bar-mitzvah.

Of course, it was not until the deluge of tributes today that some (most) of us may have first sifted through his biographical information with any topical urgency. Now that we have, can we just concede that there is enough material in that early biography for a lifetime's worth of not only storytelling--Great American or other--but a level of torture that is so specifically Jewish that, if amplified, it might give the entire Bernard Malamud canon a run for its money? (This is, of course, not even a slight knock on Malamud.)  

So why do we not place Salinger in the Malamud-Bellow-Roth-Mailer pantheon of 21st century Jewish American writers? Well, first of all, while we know about his roots, little is known about whether he identified as Jewish later much beyond his youth and, from the few interviews he gave in his long and winding life, not much has been parsed. We do know that later in his life he was partial to some eccentric ideologies.

Some literary authorities suggest that because Salinger so deftly camouflaged the Jewish experience in his writing it became unrecognizable. Therefore we, tortured as we are, couldn’t really claim him. Janet Malcolm, in a typically blistering essay, adds it’s not that Salinger didn’t find the Jewish experience salient or pure (she admits we’ll never really know), but rather, that because those edges were blurred the alchemy of solitude in his stories were made more universal.

Characters, beyond the obvious Caulfield, like Franny Glass exhibited symptoms of isolation and outsiderness that really feel particularly “Jewish” (gleamed from what is either known by us or found in the works of the aforementioned the Jewish greats). But they also feel human in a way washed of any explicit tribal suffering. This irked Jews like Maxwell Geismar whom Malcolm quotes:

"The locale of the New York sections is obviously that of a comfortable middle-class urban Jewish society where, however, all the leading figures have become beautifully Anglicized. Holden and Phoebe Caulfield: what perfect American social register names which are presented to us in both a social and a psychological void!"

To echo Malcolm, perhaps it resonated because it was a sting so bare and unadorned.

As for the rest of Salinger’s bio, well, a glancing over of it smacks of what many (or at least I, perhaps foolishly) would consider a very American experience: he hated high school on the Upper West Side, flunked out, hated military school, wrote about that, hated college, popped in and out of places, wrote banal and formulaic stories, they were rejected, wrote more, was published, was drafted for World War II (spoke German well enough to interrogate POWs and deserters), wrote about his service ("For Esmé — With Love and Squalor" is one of his best and most haunting), landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, had a breakdown, was one of the first to walk into a liberated camp, befriended Hemingway all the while, published more brilliant stories, slipped off the radar more, experimented with Eastern religions, Christian Science, Dianetics/other crackpot philosophies, wrote more stories, then wrote ones without stark endings that were circular and so brilliant that people called them too weird to be enjoyed, had affairs with younger women, married a few times and had a few children (one delegate from both his wives and children wrote damning books about him calling him abusive, brooding, drinker of his own urine), sold the movie rights to a story for money, was dismayed by the outcome of the movie, never sold film rights again, had more affairs with younger women while locked up in the New Hampshire hinterlands, kept fellow reclusive friends, stopped publishing stories in 1965, remarried, stopped interviewing in 1980, sat quietly on a growing cache of unpublished work for 45 years, died at 91.

Perhaps this later Salinger biography (sparse in its convention, mythical in its hermeticism), the adult version of the one to which Menand so aptly links youth and Caulfield, is a reflection that says something about Jews in America. Something unspecific, something, like his work, inchoate and generally unsaid by the great Jewish American writers: we’ve arrived, our travails are universal, we don’t have to name our experiences so much. Or perhaps we do. I suppose once all of Salinger’s hidden treasures are pillaged and finally published, we can enjoy trying to claim him.

Is the leftist Obama administration simply naive and apathetic when it comes to Israel, or antagonistic? Let actions (or lack thereof) speak for themselves. Let us investigate the strategies used by administration members both before and after Obama's election, which included deception, using uneven moral equivalences and ignoring the big picture.

Even before his election, then-Senator Obama referred to the 'question' of Israel and the Palestinian statehood a one of a "constant wound," a "constant sore" which does "infect all of our foreign policy" in a May 2008 interview with Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg. Obama aides and associates were quick to reshape the context in which the statement was made, but the damage was done: even by slipping, Obama showed the world that in his mind, the issue of Israel protecting itself from hostile and terror-embracing neighbors, was somehow akin to a festering wound. This was also an example of the president's tendency to present two uneven groups or ideas as being inherently equal: Israel is on a significantly higher moral footing than Hamas or the nations which sponsor Hamas and other anti-Semitic Islamic militant groups. Wit can be defined as the successful comparison of two apparently different things or ideas, showing how they are in fact, similar. If the former senator was aiming for wit in his statements, he missed.

It's no surprise that an administration would mislead the public: it's been done many times before. The surprise this time around was that deception played a key role in the president's agenda, considering his repeated calls for transparency and his mantra of uber-awesome "change." The background of presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a former Illinois congressman, was trumped to appeal to pro-Israel voters. Emanuel had gone to Israel to volunteer in factories during the first Gulf War, and this was relayed in a way to appeal to those voters who perhaps were unsure of Obama's already nebulous committment to Israel. Emanuel has reportedly been a harsher voice on Israel than voters were swayed to believe he would be, and according to Politico, many Israelis have also become "increasingly disenchanted" with the man who should have been a strong pro-Israel voice in what is shaping up to be a hard-line left administration.

By throwing their weight behind no one in particular, the Obama administration commits the greatest mistake of all: forgetting who its real friends are. Israel is the one nation which can be counted on, thick or thin, for total support in an hour of need. Israel has never declared war on the United States, and Israel is the one functional democracy in the entire Middle East: that's the truth, and even the most virulent anti-Semite cannot deny that (assuming they follow any form of logic). In the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Harrison Ford (as the title character) responds to a Nazi sympathizer who claims she only sides with the Nazis in an effort to get ahead, not out of genuine political alignment. "You stood up to be counted with the enemies of everything the Grail stands for, who gives a damn what you think!" If the Obama administration fails to see the bigger picture of the moral underdog surrounded by bloodthirsty tyrants, then the administration dooms itself to be counted among the morally weak, those remembered in history books only for their wavering when the hour of need came upon their friends.

The match-up between Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova and Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosny had gone four excruciating rounds. The prize was the title of general director for UNESCO, the U.N. cultural and education agency charged with building "peace in the minds of men." The two candidates had tied in the previous round with 29 votes each, ensuring a fifth and final showdown vote.

But then, the Jewish winds of manipulation wound their shifty clouted ways. In the final round, two countries changed votes in support of Ms. Bokova, who won by a tally of 31-27. Much to the relief of the UNESCO executive board, the Egyptian ambassador approached Ms.Bokova following the vote, hugged her, and then said "We are all in this together."

Hosny, however, was not so sure about that. "It was clear by the end of the competition that there was a conspiracy against me," Hosny said upon his arrival back in Egypt. "There are a group of the world's Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position."

During the campaign, Hosny's candidacy had been tarnished by a statement he made in the Egyptian Parliament in which he promised to burn any Israeli book found in the landmark Alexandria library as well as charges of censorship and anti-Semitism throughout his tenure as culture minister. Also, according to the Arabic language site Elaph.com, Hosny may or may not have boasted about aiding hijackers in their escape after they took an Italian cruise ship hostage in 1985, shot a wheelchair-bound Jewish American tourist, and threw him into the sea.

So whither now Farouk Hosny? Now that the dust has settled on the divisive vote, Hosny has proven that the misgivings regarding his candidacy were warranted. Without trying to completely single out one group, it's a little bit like the protests of the Muhammed cartoon. Masses were irate, in part, because the cartoon suggested that Islam preached violence and protestors manifested their anger at the characterization by burning things down and threatening to kill the author of the cartoon.

I kinda feel sorry for Hosny. And not in a Yom Kippur kind of way. I know his irrational anger. Every time that I strike out with a non-Jewish girl, I know it's because she's anti-Semitic. We all have these tendencies. Maybe the UNESCO mission to build peace in the minds of men would work best if its director was honestly afflicted with a precondition of paranoia toward a particular culture. He'd be a poster child for the world's continued grappling with multiculturalism. There would be no lip service. If nothing else, it would certainly suit the U.N. aptly.

Criticism of European anti-Semitism always neglects its context. That is, it mistakes its object, frequently construed as being Israel, for being more important than what it has in common with other continental racisms. It is always a criticism of the Jewish right to statehood, to political freedom, never an acknowledgment of a larger prejudicial impulse towards towards persons of Mideast descent, which attaches itself to different European Semitic communities at different times.

Indeed, contemporary accounts of anti-Jewish racism bear little to no difference from descriptions of the phenomenon in the 1930s, when Jews were the primary representatives of ethnic difference in Europe. This should come as no surprise. Anti-Jewish racism is an ancient prejudice, one whose roots go back over two millennia. Its age guarantees a sense of continuity, of feeling as though nothing has changed, that when it comes to European Jewry, history always remains at a standstill.

The problem is that it never does, that time moves on irrespective of how it favors us. Take, for example, the fact that for nearly sixty years, Europe has been, comparatively speaking, 'Jew-free', even though in countries such as Germany, Jewish populations have begun to grow. Most significantly, during this time Muslim migrants have begun calling the continent their home. Frequently hailing from Arab countries and from Turkey, as well as east Africa and south Asia, Muslims have come to bear the same kind of difference for Europeans as Jews.

The irony of this change is its timing. Taking place at precisely the same moment that European Jewry was formally reestablishing itself in the Mideast, these migrants came to live in a Europe that had only recently emerged from the Holocaust, and was disengaging itself from its colonial holdings in many of these immigrants own home countries. Living in the shadow of both of these events, their European presence has always been a challenge, in turn creating relations between Muslims and Jews different than those impacted by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Reading the mountain of Jewish-authored op-eds last week about the Aftonbladet affair, I could not help but wonder why, if we were really dealing with a case of anti-Semitism, not a single charge ever sought to place itself within the context of greater trends in contemporary European xenophobia. Was it because of the political persuasions of the persons making the claims, who, even if they are not sympathetic to Arabs, cannot see the similar ideological mechanism that substitutes Muslim for Jew, and vice versa?

Or was it because the  critique of anti-Semitism took form before the advent of large scale Muslim immigration to Europe, and never had the opportunity to redefine itself to include both peoples? I’m inclined to believe the latter, especially considering the degree to which the critique of anti-Jewish racism became problematized in left circles following the Six Day War. ‘Anti-anti-Semitism’, as it is often called, came to be considered an ideology masking Israeli transgressions against Palestinians, not a critique of anti-Jewish racism.

To the post-1967 progressive mind, we had become Europeans, when, until Israel's independence, we were considered neither fully white nor adequately oriental, even though it was not uncommon for Jews to be derided as 'Muslim'. The problem is that the contemporary judgment of the left, committed as it is to the colonial critique of Zionism, oversimplifies this history, forgetting it, impeding the Arab connection. It also fails to acknowledge any other Jewish ethnicity than Ashkenazi, further severing any ties between Jews and the Levant. 

Anti-Arab racism had to unnecessarily get segregated, independent of European Muslims’ experience of the same basic prejudices as the continent’s former Jewish population. There would be no concentration camps, but there would be facsimiles of practically everything else: specifically a combination of ghettoization and integration. Muslims would be similarly treated as 'outsiders within the bourgeoisie', as Max Horkheimer once described Europe’s Jews, as well as icons of the global south, as perennially itinerant migrant laborers.

This is why the obsession over medieval blood libels and the like, in the case of Swedish allegations of organ harvesting, is so troubling. Its historic specificity repeats this act of segregating European racisms towards Jews and Arabs by unnecessarily privileging the archaic quality of the charge, in certain instances, contending that is also a product of outside influences, i.e. Arab agitation, if not representative of a coalescing of left-wing anti-Semitism and Palestinian-Muslim interests.

What if the accusation isn't reflective of such influences, but, rather, is an attempt to harness the distress of the Mideast conflict for the purposes of staging anti-Semitic prejudices, writ large? Might we not see it as equally exploitative of the Palestinian victim alleged to be the embodiment of this macabre crime, that he is also being exploited in a racist fashion, just like we are? What would that teach us about the kind of prejudice being exercised here, particularly the company Jews and Arabs are forced to keep by it?

It is not that identification of the resurfacing of the blood libel narrative is wrong, though, in my view, there is an uncomfortably narcissistic quality to its emphasis. The problem is that the charge of blood libel is not tied to anything else, that it is decontextualized. That this might be, perchance, a reflection of the way that the Arab-Israeli conflict has determined how we talk about racism, such that we could misconstrue its breadth. Or for that matter, discourage us from asking why Europeans would indulge it now, in such a highly complex manner.

Joel Schalit is Zeek's online editor. His next book, Israel vs. Utopia, will be published this October by New York's Akashic Books. Schalit lives and works in Milan, Italy.

Long before the promotional campaign for the new Star Trek film started in earnest, commentators had already discerned an uncanny similarity between the personalities of Spock and Barack Obama. Calm in the face of anger, collected when others are scattered, the President-to-be struck many as the ideal to which anger management aspires. Far from taking offense at the analogy, Obama was happy to declare his love for the original television series. Leonard Nimoy reported with obvious delight that, upon meeting the actor, the junior Senator from Illinois forsook the usual pleasantries for their Vulcan equivalent, saying “Live long and prosper” while making the shape of a V with his fingers. Anecdotes of our new President engaging in other Trekkie behavior, such as pretending that his wife’s new belt buckle concealed a teleportation device, added more fuel to the fire. By the time the film was released, the link between Obama’s White House and the USS Enterprise was being insisted upon with a vigor usually reserved for official marketing campaigns.

Part of that, surely, had to do with the curious circumstance that, at a time of unprecedented crisis in the print media, pictures of the Commander-in-Chief were blanketing newsstands to an unprecedented degree. At times, it was easier to pick out the magazines that didn’t feature Obama on the cover, like Hot Rod and Needlepoint Now than the ones that did. Not only was the man struggling to rescue free enterprise from the aftermath of a grave systemic failure, his public image was serving as a substantial source of economic thrust in its own right. From this perspective, connecting his Presidency to Star Trek made as much sense as tying in other commercial ventures like the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to it.

Don’t Believe the Hype

No matter how much one admires Barack Obama or wants him to succeed, it is more important than ever to obey Public Enemy’s injunction: “Don’t believe the hype.” Whether positive or negative, the media attention devoted to him is both excessive and deceptive. If asked, I’m sure he’d say so himself. Caution is especally crucial for the Left, whose membership is divided between acolytes who see every decision the President makes another confirmation of his strategic brilliance and detractors who complain that the new boss looks an awful lot like the old one. There has to be middle ground for progressives, a position from which they can give Obama the respect he deserves without giving up the right to call him on his shit.

That’s why our initial reaction to comparisons of Spock and Obama should involve raising an eyebrow to heights worthy of Mr. Nimoy. Clearly, this coupling has been backed by the rich and powerful, which provides reason enough to be suspicious. Whoever floated the rumor that the President had requested a special screening of the new film at the White House made it painfully clear that the analogy was breathtakingly safe.

Political Allegory and Popular Culture

Once upon a time, the move to interpret popular culture allegorically was fraught with risk. Even when artists intended to spur such reflections, the social pressure to regard their work as disposable entertainment, with no function other than to bring temporary and limited pleasure to the masses, was often too strong to overcome. But things have changed. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, a number of mainstream pieces pondered whether Americans had been prepared to have an African-American President by seeing one represented in fictional texts like 24 and Armageddon. Whatever their conclusions, they took it for granted that the entertainment world has a profound effect on our perception of the real world. Instead of being dismissed as the work of out-of-touch academics or amateur conspiracy theorists, this exercise in connecting the dots between fantasy and reality was presented as a legitimate form of political analysis.

There is much to applaud in this development. Paying to attention to how and why people identify politicians – classifying them as members of some categories and not others – and, just as importantly, identify with politicians is a critical step in transcending the debilitating belief that they choose leaders by simply making a rational assessment of their own self-interest. Because identification is a fundamentally cultural process, shaped by textual influences from preschool onward, paying attention to the ways in which fiction interwines with fact enables insights that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with an approach that focuses narrowly on the domain of electoral politics.

Proceeding on the assumption that “throwaway” popular culture can have profound politicial significance also directs scrutiny to the relationship between money and power. Success in the cultural marketplace is not merely the result of a neutral competition in which innate quality prevails. On the contrary, a work’s popularity more often than not reflects the force of its financial backing. While this support sometimes converges with critical acclamation, there is no guarantee that it will. In the case of the new Star Trek film, for example, the extensive advance promotional campaign – posters started showing up in multiplexes last year – and wide range of product tie-ins emphatically demonstrate that a lot of time and money was spent trying to make it a hit.

The danger, though, in embracing this conception of popular culture is that we will let the mainstream media dictate how we interpret particular texts. To put this another way, just as the promotional give-aways at fast food restaurants are carefully orchestrated to increase a film’s profile without inspiring potentially counter-productive reflection on its deeper implications, so might analyses of the sort that equate fictional and real-world characters. Everyone knows that Barack Obama isn’t really Spock. But repeatedly emphasizing the similarities between them can have the effect of naturalizing the analogy, exempting it from critical scrutiny.

We need to let this metaphor shape our perspective on the new President without forgetting that the invitation to see Spock in Obama serves the interests of powers that stand to benefit from the analogy. One way of doing that would be to compile a list of points where the analogy breaks down. We could, for instance, focus on moments in which the President has appeared to place passion before reason. A more interesting approach, though, might be to follow through on the comparison, constructing a series of if-then scenarios.

Was Spock a Jew?

To give an example of how this latter strategy might play out with particular resonance for readers of Zeek, we can start by considering the origins of Spock’s character. The greeting Obama mimicked, making the sign of a V with one’s fingers, supposedly derives from one that actor Leonard Nimoy witnessed as a child. In his autobiography I Am Not Spock – tellingly followed by a sequel titled I Am Spock – Nimoy wrote that the idea for the hand gesture came from the childhood experience of being taken to an Orthodox temple, where he saw the Kohanim make the sign for the Hebrew letter Shin. In effect, this codes Spock’s otherness vis-à-vis the Enterprise’s multicultural human crew as analogous to the status of Jews held in the postwar American society of the original television show, a “model minority” imagined to be superior to other marked ethnicities, occupying a privileged position – Spock is First Mate on the Enterprise – but one that is in some ways further removed from the WASP norm than that of other characters.

It’s important to note that Spock is only half-Vulcan, however. As the new film repeatedly reminds us, his decision to exemplify characteristically Vulcan traits is the result of hard work, performed on him by others and by himself alike, to restrain his human tendencies. His upbringing has conditioned him to identify with his Vulcan side without entirely repressing the knowledge that he could have turned out quite differently. Within the context of the mid-1960s, the trajectory of his character combined with Nimoy’s background to imply that, in attaining the status of “model minority,” Jews were forced to suppress traits incompatible with that image. This was the price of assimilation.

Half and Half

The most compelling argument for seeing Spock in Obama derives from the President’s biracial identity. The product of a short-lived union between a dark-skinned African father and a light-skinned American mother, his life story provides an interesting comparison to Spock’s. On the one hand, his education at a mostly Caucasian prep school, Columbia University and Harvard Law suggests that he followed a characteristically “white” path. On the other, however, Obama's subsequent political career, based in the predominantly African-American areas of Chicago’s South Side, indicates that he eventually chose to embrace his minority heritage. In other words, the President's biography comprises a tale of both assimilation – suppressing his otherness – and self-conscious identity politics – celebrating his otherness.

Crucially, while Leonard Nimoy’s Spock distanced himself from the passion-ruled irrationality associated with dominant WASP culture, Obama’s rise was predicated on a careful negotiation of the relationship between a dominant WASP culture identified with being calm, cool and collected and an African-American heritage that has been historically aligned, often with gravely pernicious consequences, with an excess of passion and a concomitant dearth of reason.

We must remember, however that the coupling of Spock’s non-human side with a worldview in which the rule of logic was paramount reflected a major shift in the perception of Jewish ethnicity in the postwar United States. There was a time, during the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the stereotyping of Jews borrowed heavily on long-standing anti-Semitic traditions. Far from being considered a “model minority,” they were identified with a series of negative character traits – untrustworthy, rapacious, lustful – that were also applied, though with more force and political malice, to Americans of African descent. This is what gave both Jews and African Americans a common experience of racism, but also distanced them from one another as well. 

The Passion of Dispassion

To the extent that commentators have pushed the Spock = Obama equation, then, they have implied, however unwittingly, that our new President has ushered in a new era for African-Americans, in which they have the potential, finally, to wriggle free of the negative stereotypes that have limited their advancement. Indeed, his stunning ascent from the Illinois State Legislature to the U.S. Senate to the White House has been heralded by both African-Americans and members of the Caucuasian majority as a fundamental turning point in the country’s attitude towards race.

But what about the Jews? Here is where following through on the analogy pays particularly interesting dividends. The new Star Trek film seeks to reanimate a rather morbiund franchise by fleshing out an origin story for the special relationship between Spock and James T. Kirk, the Captain of the Enterprise. While the familiar tension between Spock’s devotion to reason and Kirk’s willingness to act first and think later is retained from the original television series, we also get new insight into Spock’s human heritage.

To make a long story short, the film shows us how the appearance of disinterestedness can be a cover for self-interest. The new film’s twist on the original Star Trek narrative is to have Spock, not Kirk, assume command of the Enerprise. After First Mate Kirk questions Spock’s ability to make the right decisions after witnessing the destruction of his home planet Vulcan, Spock sends him into exile. With the assistance of a much older Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, Kirk finds a way to return to the Enterprise and convince the younger Spock that he is unfit for command, thereby securing the post of Captain that he held on the original television series. The point, ultimately, is that Kirk’s impulsiveness is not necessarily less rational than the dispassionate façade Spock works so hard to maintain.

Teacher/Student

This point is reinforced by a scene from early in the film. As the new cadets of Star Fleet are being mustered to respond to an unexpected threat, Spock, who has served as one of their instructors, is confronted by Uhura. She demands to know why, despite her superb marks, she is not being assigned to the Enterprise, the most sought-after post. Spock responds, rather cryptically, that he did not want to give the impression of favoritism. But he quickly relents and lets her transfer to the Enterprise. Only later does it become clear that he and Uhura have been having a teacher-student love affair that continues to smoulder on the mission. What this deviation from the original Star Trek confirms, in short, is that the appearance of disinterestedness can just as easily indicate that one is overwhelmed by unruly passions as that one is ruled by logic.

The fact that Uhura is the Enterprise’s only featured African-American woman crew member further complicates matters. We see Spock, who was already being identified with Barack Obama before the new film was finished, getting to occupy the position that Kirk famously assumed on the original series, when he and Uhura shared one of television’s first interracial kisses. In light of the previously mentioned ethnic coding to Spock’s character, the amorous relationship between him and Uhura encourages us to scrutinize the new film for insight into the current state of the often fraught relationship between Jews and African-Americans in the United States.

One of the most interesting developments to which the original television series led was the popularity of so-called “slash fiction,” in which sexual relationships between well-known characters of the same gender are narrated. These days, the Harry Potter books are probably the most fertile source for such copyright-flaunting tales. But the original coupling, the one that started it all, in a sense, was Kirk and Spock. Interestingly, most of the people responsible for getting that romance off the ground were female fans of Star Trek who identified themselves as heterosexual. Even today, that demographic plays a significant role in the communities that have developed around slash fiction.

Because copyright issues ensure that slash fiction based on franchises like Star Trek can only exist outside of the conventional marketplace, it has managed to retain a resolutely anti-commercial aura. That hasn’t stopped copyright holders from trying to stop its production and distribution. George Lucas, for example, is reported to have strenuously opposed the “queering” of Star Wars characters. With Star Trek, however, the situation is more complicated. Although series creator Gene Roddenberry obviously could not endorse tales in which Kirk and Spock make love, his openly stated intention of promoting diversity of all sorts made many fans feel more welcome to repurpose the show’s characters.

Whether the team responsible for the new Star Trek film was self-consciously responing to the history of slash fiction associated with the franchise is unclear, though it seems likely that at least some of the people involved were thinking of it when they concocted the forbidden love subplot between Spock the instructor and his student Uhura. Given the vast quantity of Kirk/Spock fan fiction out there, though, the invocation of such transgressive behavior and the emphasis on Spock’s passionate nature provides plenty of fuel for reanimating that subculture.

Who Is Obama’s Kirk?

Less obviously, it also provides the raw material to radicalize the comparison of Spock and Obama in intriguing ways. The invitation to see the Spock in our new President typically seems to proceed from the assumption that fictional characters can be pried loose from the narratives in which they originally appeared and treated as self-sufficient entities. But what if this analogy were returned to its place of origin, the tale of the Startship Enterprise?

Latent within the Spock = Obama equation is the notion that he must work in tandem with a figure equivalent to Captain Kirk. Shortly after Inauguration Day, The New York Times ran an interesting piece on Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that described the former Congressman from Illinois as a “fierce partisan” with a partially justifiable reputation as a “relentless hothead” who was trying hard to “rein himself in.” Those are all traits identified with James T. Kirk. But the similarities don’t stop there. Consider this sentence. “How will the feisty, bombastic and at times impulsive former congressman blend with the cool, collegial and deliberate culture of Obama World?” Substitute “Iowa farm boy” for “congressman” and “Vulcan” for “Obama World” and you have the perfect tag line for a campaing to promote the new Start Trek film.

But it’s not just the adjectives associated with Emanuel and Obama here and those used to describe Kirk and Spock that make the current White House sound eerily like the Enterprise. Again and again stories on Obama have emphasized the crucial role that Jewish advisers like Emanuel and campaign strategist David Axelrod have played in his political life. Frequently, the implication is that the President needs the passion, fight and basic willingness to get dirty identified with these advisers in order to be successful. In a reversal of longstanding stereotypes in the entertainment industry, where performers were typically depicted as passionate and lacking in self-discipline, we are being sold a storyline in which an excessively cool and calm African-American requires the heated frenzy of Jews working behing the scenes to get things done.

More subtly, we are also being encouraged to conceive of post-WASP leadership as a hybrid of superficially opposed ethnic legacies. In an era when the notion of the “model minority” has been turned on its head, the only truth that seems to persist is that cultural self-sufficiency is an illusion. Without intimate relationships that are by definition transgressive in nature, like the coupling of Kirk and Spock in slash fiction, attempts to take command of the political situation will always fall short of their goals.

Birchat Hachama, for those who don't know, is the pagan-turned-Jewish tradition of blessing the sun, and its being made a big deal of mostly because of the rapidly expanding holes in the ozone layer which have many environmental groups mad at the Jews for blessing the sun which is bound to fry us like eggs on asphalt if we don't stop taking the sun for granted and start using it to power our crock pots and minivans.

The first time I heard of Birchat Hachama was last year when my old man mentioned something about how he remembers the last time they did it. He made it sound like this grand and glorious event, where people gathered around for a daytime kiddush levana (blessing of the mood) type of event and stared up at the sun and said some ridiculously long prayer in unison as everyone wished shalom aleichem to each other.

I figured Birchat Hachama was once every 28 years so its probably not even in the siddur, purposefully done by Artscroll in its attempt to monopolize the Orthodox siddur market so they could sell something like a Birchat Hachama bencher or guidebook as to what exactly the prayers were and the laws surrounding them. I figured there would also be T-shirts that said "I survived Birchat Hachama and all I got was this T-shirt." 

But then I discovered today that the blessing we make for the blessing of the sun is merely the same blessing which is said countless times a week by anyone who appreciates God's awesomeness and knows the blessing to be said. You see folks, it's not some crazy blessing that requires you to say some really hard-to-read paragraph with really long Aramaic words 7 times before you get to the blessing: Birchat Hachama is merely a very short blessing ending in "Ose Maasa Bereshis," which leads me to wonder how they can make such a short prayer into such a big event. I have been thinking that if there was lightning at the point of Birchat Hachama you may be screwed, since it is the same blessing and it just wouldn't be that special. I guess I just wish it had its own unique blessing rather then one used all the time for beautiful sights. Wait a second, what if the sun doesn't come out that day? Do we say the blessing for Birchat Hachamah anyway?

I was told today that the last time Birchat Hachama was said on the eve of Pesach was when we left Egypt with Charlton Heston. It didn't seem like so long ago, but seriously that's pretty cool and this year's Birchat Hachama is the last time it will occur until 2037, which, if any of the futuristic films of Hollywood predicted right we should all be dead, frozen or unable to have children - so get your kicks in now. I hear the after parties are going to be hopping!

It is incredible the lengths to which those filled with hate will work to spread and justify their irrational behavior. Two particularly nasty examples come to mind: the ongoing Fifth Annual (has it been five years already?) Israel Apartheid Week. Actually, the title is misleading: though it appears to celebrate apartheid (brilliant planning, no?) this is actually an event that claims to be pro-human rights by focusing rage on the sole democracy of the entire Middle East. The other active anti-Israel event that is continuing is the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Like its no-holds-barred brother-in-action, the Israel Apartheid Week website also directs inquiries to be sent to a number of different email addresses, depending on region, including a number of email addresses through the free Gmail server, including apartheidweeknyc@gmail.com for New York residents. This anti-Semitic and anti-Israel "celebration" masquerades as an anti-apartheid, pro-human rights week. Started in Toronto five years ago, this sham of an awareness week officially takes place in only a small number of large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Boston and Berkeley. It's going on right now, from March 1 - March 8, 2009. The invitation to join is startlingly jolly: "Mark your calendars - the 5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week will take place across the globe from March 1-8, 2009!" The IAW is further described, with a congratulatory pat on the back, as "one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. Last year, more than 25 cities around the world participated." The goal of this week is to commemorate the false "expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and land in 1947-1948." This is a widely accepted falsehood, and belies the organizer's ignorace of history. During Israel's fight for independence, some residents of what is now referred to as Palestine, were encouraged by Arab brethren to briefly leave their homes, as upon the hoped-for defeat of the Jews, they expected to pillage the Jewish homes and belongings. There was never a forced exodus, and this is backed up by the fact that some non-Jewish residents of the same territories, did not leave, and never saw themselves as Palestinians. The same people who left on the expectation of the Jews' defeat, generally chose not to return. The true apartheid and discrimination that is ignored, is that the neighboring nations, including Egypt, refused to settle any of those leaving the newly-created state of Israel. These people were kept as "refugees" by the huge, neighboring nations, in a sick display of untenable vengeance.

The official mission of this weeklong "week of awareness" is based on some sort of drug-induced false reality: 

Continue reading...

By Simona Kogan via TheJewSpot.org

Stars of David and other Jewish symbols like the Hamsa (known as the protecting hand of G-d that wards off the evil eye) are no longer only strictly worn by the ultra-Orthodox. Now Jews across the country are slipping them on, if merely for fashion purposes.

Now celebrities, Jewish and not, are in on the trend, too. Israeli rapper Subliminal has been seen wearing a rhinestone-studded Star of David necklace in the same way other rappers hang gold chains hanging from their necks to show off their bling. Actor Jeremy Piven clenched a handmade .925 sterling silver Jewish Star of David Magen chain and pendant made by Ari Soffer in a recent Gap T-shirt ad.

Back in February, Britney Spears was photographed wearing a large Star of David chain, a gift from Isaac Cohen, a male model who was said to be romantically involved with her at the time.

Then there's Agyness Deyn, a popular model known for her sultry runway walk, popular fashion campaign ads, and independent hipster style. One night she noticed a guy wearing an interesting Hamsa amulet on the end of a rosary chain and asked him where he got it. When he told her, she requested one was made for her and a new wave of Jewish symbol followers were born.

Carlen Altman, the creator of the Jewish Rosaries line that gave Agyness that pendant, says that was the moment the line really took off, but believes perhaps it was because Jews were looking for a new, unique, and innovative way to proclaim their pride.

Continue reading...

Ah, Chicken Soup. The Jewish version of Soul Food. There is something so basic yet delightful about chicken soup, something reminiscent of sick days as a child, weekend trips to grandma's house, cozy winter nights spent in pajamas in front of the television, and diner excursions in Brooklyn.

Chicken soup has maintained a longstanding reputation in the American lexicon as being the hearty, home-cooked soup that serves a various array of purposes. The combination of the chicken stock with various other ingredients such as noodles,carrots, celery, or any and every other garden vegetable that suits your fancy makes this not only healthy but is thought to restore one to tip-top health on a cold winter day when you are feeling sick.

Well, at least for me. However, I am fairly certain that the mere mention of chicken soup will rouse memories in a fair percentage of Jewish minds. My love affair with chicken soup (and soup in general) began with my grandma. She made the best chicken vegetable soup the South has ever tasted. And by South, I mean South Brooklyn.

As a child my mouth would begin to water as soon as we got off the Belt Parkway onto Pennsylvania Avenue, anticipating the chicken vegetable soup that awaited my taste buds. My grandmother has since passed, and I am very angry that in the chaos and grief of having to sort through her apartment, I forgot to save her recipes, particularly her chicken soup recipe. But, even if I had, I know it wouldn't be the same as when I was a kid and she made it for me.

Chicken soup is comfort food. When there is nothing to eat and I cant seem to make a decision on what my tummy is desiring, I know I can always turn to my good, old-fashioned,trusty chicken noodle soup. But, in those instances it comes out of a can. There is the chicken soup that comes from a diner or a Kosher deli, often mixed with Matzah balls which give it that extra Jewish soul food treat which is my personal favorite variety. When searching "kosher chicken soup recipes" on Google, 624,000 hits come up. That is a lot of Jewish mothers and bubbys! Either way you cook it, boil it, or buy it, there is something undeniably comforting about chicken soup.

Which brings me to this nifty little contest: "The Better Than Your Bubby's Chicken Soup Challenge," which is a search for the best chicken soup recipe in America! It is in affiliation with the National Jewish Outreach Program. If you have a delicious or new and exciting recipe for this Jewish comfort food, I totally encourage you to send it in. And besides, this blog has the cutest name and banner logo.

Over the weekend Facebook swelled with postings from British Jews seeking to verify an unusual and unexpected email appearing to have been sent by Britain's primary Jewish institution. The email claimed that a pro-Israel rally in London's Trafalgar Square planned for Sunday was canceled because it "might be perceived as the community taking one side in the tragic war in Gaza and Israel, and might be seen as supporting Israel's military campaign."

The email, which also called, in the voice of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for "an immediate ceasefire, immediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and for lifting the economic blockade of Gaza," was apparently a hoax initiated by a group of young British Jews affiliated with the organization Jewdas.

Billed as a "radical Jewish diaspora group," Jewdas is well-known for having pulled off other provocative stunts in the past. Though they have not yet publicly disclosed their involvement, on Sunday an unidentified member of the group was apprehended by the London police as the alleged sender of the email. He is presently awaiting arraignment.

An anonymous source close to Jewdas told Jewcy, "We wanted to show another possible reality, to suggest that another Jewish community is possible. Those who believed it, even for a moment," he said, "were being given a gift -- a vision of a Jewish leadership which stands up for peace and justice rather than mindless ethnic solidarity."

The Board of Deputies did not respond to Jewcy's requests for comment, but a spokesperson, Samantha Cohen, described the incident to BBC as "an attempt to silence the Jewish community's support for peace for the people of Israel and Gaza."

Not at all, says the anonymous source. "This action was a call for new or radically reformed Jewish communal organizations. Ones that promote peace and justice over solidarity, and pluralism and democracy over hierarchy and backroom politics."

Taking issue with the Board of Deputies' branding of the Trafalgar Square rally as one that was "pro-peace," he said, "A rally that puts all the blame on one side and fails to call for a ceasefire would be better be described as a pro-war rally."

"We will not allow the notion of 'peace' to be bastardized, to become 'peace on our terms,'" he added.

I just picked up Patrick Tyler's forthcoming book, A World of Trouble, about America's tortured relations with the Middle East, and the prologue contains this whopper of a scene, one that is  quite devastating, if true: An enraged George Tenet, drunk on scotch, flailing about Prince Bandar's Riyadh pool, screaming about the Bush Administration officials who were just then trying to pin the Iraq WMD fiasco on him: 

   A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.
"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up," Tenet said, but "I am not going to take the hit."

"According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the rlght wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exaxperation as, "the Jews."

Read the rest at The Atlantic.

1. A Christian wrestling match: To be fair, this was Ultimate Christian Wrestling where "good" wrestlers did battle against "evil" wrestlers. Fallen wrestlers, I kid you not, are actually resurrected at these matches. And you thought Rowdy Roddy Piper was weird.

2. The mosh pit at a Christian rock concert: I'm not a concert kind of a guy. I don't enjoy loud music, smoky joints, or - to be perfectly honest - any activity involving long periods of standing. But jamming with Jesus proved to be a pretty inspirational experience. Even if it did convince me to change all my car radio buttons to Christian rock stations. It gives Judas Priest a whole new meaning.

3. On Jesus' JumboTron: While attending a Baptist megachurch in suburban Georgia, the camera operators thought it was a good idea to focus in on the one Jew in the house among the 15,000 dancing faithful - thereby ensuring my fate as the proverbial Wicked Son in the eyes of my rabbinic father.

4. A monastery hanging out with 48 monks: Trying to clear my head from this holy headache spending 12-months church-hopping from denomination to denomination, I figured I should relax on 2,000 serene acres with a fraternity of men who have devoted themselves to peace, God, and loving kindness. If only I could pull myself away from my BlackBerry.

5. A Confession booth: After a year of going to churches every Sunday, I did what any good Jewish boy would do - go to Confession. Riddled with guilt and curiosity, I told a Catholic priest my deepest, darkest secrets. Well, except for the small part about me being Jewish. I guess I'll have to go back and confess for that sin another time. Maybe that's the sequel...

Benyamin Cohen, author of My Jesus Year, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

It is a problem that will not speak its name. We all know that there is bigotry, prejudice, and intolerance in the American Jewish community; that much is inevitable, and that's not the problem I'm talking about. The problem I'm talking about is this: how do we react when we encounter those things among our Jewish "friends"?

I am thinking about this because I recently had a troubling conversation with a good friend; let's call him Bob. Bob has another friend who is an Orthodox Jew (of a certain kind), and they have a mutual acquaintance who is transgendered. Bob is struggling with the moral problem of determining his appropriate response. Does he allow his Jewish friend to spout homophobic garbage, or call him on his bigotry and stand up for the dignity their transgendered acquaintance at the risk of losing a relationship that he values deeply? This is not a new conundrum, of course; it is a basic problem that arises from living in a community marked by value pluralism. But as I listened to Bob's description of the situation, I couldn't help but think of the particular form that this conundrum takes within the community of American Jews.

We may pride ourselves on our cosmopolitanism and our open-mindedness. We cringe at the kind of question I was once asked by my grandfather on meeting two of my school friends: "are they Jewish?" We would never dream of insisting that our community of friends be limited to members of a certain religion or nationality or ethnicity. Except that when American Jews go to Israel they are often heard to say something like what a friend of mine once said: "Here, they're all Yidden. Good Yidden and bad Yidden, but all Yidden." He assumed that would mean something to me, and of course it did. Life is easier, more comfortable, when we have common bonds with the people around us. "Birds of a feather flock together,"lunchroom tables self-segregate. It's only natural.

Against that impulse there is a kind of politically correct lip-service to diversity. In America right now, it's politics. Many of us would be appalled if people thought we only had conservative or liberal friends, or that we only talk to members of a certain political party. I recently heard the chair of the College Republicans on my campus express dismay at the idea that anyone would ever vote a straight party ticket. Sure, out there in the blogosphere there are the Dailykos.com's and the Redstate.com's, but we are more sophisticated, more open. Some of my best friends voted for the wrong candidate.

The problem, of course, arises when the discussion of differences in political affiliation or religious background or historical identification are understood to be something more than the equivalent of rooting for different sports teams. What happens when these differences reflect fundamental differences in human values? A friend is someone whose feelings I care about, whose thoughts I value, whose well-being is important to me. A friend can rely on me to come to their aid in a time of need. Can I have a true "friend" who denies the humanity of other friends? Who is a homophobe or a racist, an uncaring laissez-faire capitalist or a theocrat? How -- no really how?, through what set of discursive maneuvers and exercises in rationalization? -- can I have a "friend" whose respect for me is diminished because of others who are also my friends?

It is always easy, of course, to turn this into a kind of moral relativist ju-jitsu. "You see?," cries the homophobic religious zealot, "you claim to be tolerant and open-minded but here you are rejecting my beliefs!" There can even be a point at which this move carries some substance: am I more comfortable with the raving atheist who derides all religious believers as naifs than with the religious believer who accuses atheists of (as another old friend puts it) "epistemic blindness? Maybe. Ultimately, to quote yet another old friend, we choose our hypocrites, starting with ourselves. But that answers nothing. We still have to choose among our hypocrisies, and those choices require justification, if only to ourselves.

These are universal challenges. But among Jews they take a particular set of forms. I have friends - I think they're "friends" - who say things that go far beyond ignorance or wrongheadedness, the kinds of things that if one of my children said them I would immediate sit that child down for a long talk. "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people" is a good one. "Arabs have plenty of countries, it's only fair that we take this one,"there's another. This is not simply Jabotinskyite Revisionism (Jabotinsky understood very well that his Zionist project involved the displacement and defeat of a people). This is something later and uglier, a manifestation of an intellectual cancer that degrades historical memory in the service of recrudescent tribalism.

The Zionist version of the disease, like many others, goes beyond the basic symptoms of the disease by virtue of its selectivity. Curious that the same people never make the same argument about the Protestants of Northern Ireland, or propose that because there is no Gypsy nation residents of Romania should be forcibly displaced to create one. Fascinating - as writers on this blog, among other places, have noted - that genocidal violence fills us with existential horror when and only when it is directed against Jews. That same selectivity appears in the willful blindness, the resolute refusal to know what goes on in Israel and in the Territories. Is that in the same category of moral corruption?

I could go on, we could all go on. An American Jew who says he or she has not encountered this kind of ignorance and prejudice among their fellow Jews is either in denial or a liar. From my own experience I can quote examples of pure, outright racism: "Arabs only understand violence" and "Muslims don't have Western rationality" were popular for a time. Then there was the woman, my hostess for lunch, who simply described Palestinians as dirty. Followed, brightly, by "shall we bench, now?" I know what you're thinking. What did I do? Did I stand up self-righteously and howl in outrage? Make a scene? Refuse to join in prayers in the house where I had just been a guest for lunch? Actually, yes, and I have not spoken with that person since that date. But that's not very satisfying. And in other, less obvious cases I have remained silent.

When I think about these things, I always remember a little girl named Aisha whom I met in Bethlehem twenty years ago. I was staying with her parents - her father, J, was a journalist. He spoke Hebrew so we could communicate, but with Aisha I had only my 50 or so words of Arabic. She would not believe that I was Jewish for the longest time; everyone knows Jews are vile, horrible monsters who kill children and blow up houses and torture people, and as a guest in her house I didn't quite fit that mold. Eventually, though, we found a way to pass the time. You know the clap-slap-clap game American children play while reciting "Miss Mary Mack/All dressed in black," etc.? So I showed Aisha that game. After a while we starting making up more complicated versions; we got up to sequences of eleven and fifteen precise moves. When we demonstrated for the rest of the family she would shout out a number -"t'maanye"! "tish'a!" - and we would run through that particular routine to the cheers of the audience. I loved that household; full of love and warmth and commitment. Oh, and spotlessly clean, of course; on my best day I have never been able to keep a house as sparkling as that apartment.

It comes down to the children. To sacrifice a child on an altar was supposedly a Canaanite practice of Moloch worshippers; the story of Isaac is supposed to tell us not to follow those ways. So . . . can we have"friends" who would sacrifice children on the altar of their self-righteousness? Can I have a "conversation" with someone who would relegate Aisha to the ash heap of history for the sake of gratifying their own sense of tribal superiority? How about friends who would insist that the children of same-sex couples do not deserve families secured by the same legal protections as those afforded to the families of children born to mixed-sex couples? How about "friends" who relegate women to a second order of rationality and therefore deny education to girls? Are any of these things made more tolerable just because the people involved are Jewish? That question surely answers itself.

Part 3 focuses on the Antisemitic motifs in Islamic eschatology and how they have become enmeshed with the "corporeal" Antisemitism from Islam's foundational texts to engender a contemporary atmosphere of genocidal Muslim Jew hatred. This third and final installment also illustrates the interaction between indigenous Islamic Antisemitism, and two salient "imports" from colonial Europe-specifically, the blood libel, and Nazism. Concluding observations illustrate the scope of contemporary Muslim Jew hatred fueled by orthodox motifs in Islam's foundational texts, and reinforced by Islam's central religious educational shrine, i.e., Al Azhar University, and its Muslim Pope equivalent, to textbooks widely used in Islamic schools across the globe, even those within the United States.

The recent annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Charter, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology]. As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews' supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl-the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ-or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith included in the 1988 Hamas Charter (in article 7). Another hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, has Isa (the Muslim Jesus) leading the Arabs in a rout of the Dajjâl and his company of 70,000 armed Jews. And the notion of jihad "ransom" extends even into Islamic eschatology-on the day of resurrection the vanquished Jews will be consigned to Hellfire, and this will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate. Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shi'ite eschatology, its key point of consistency with Sunni understandings of this doctrine, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad's deep personal attachment to "mahdism":

Since the late ninth century, the Shi'ites have been expecting the emergence of the hidden imam-mahdi, armed with divine power and followed by thousands of martyrdom-seeking warriors. He is expected to conquer the world and establish Shi'ism as its supreme religion and system of rule. His appearance would involve terrible war and unusual bloodshed.

Ahmadinejad, as mayor of Teheran, built a spectacular boulevard through which the mahdi would enter into the capital. There is no question that Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen to be the herald of the mahdi.

Shi'ite Islam differs from Sunni Islam regarding the identity of the mahdi. The Sunni mahdi is essentially an anonymous figure; the Shi'ite mahdi is a divinely inspired person with a real identity.

However both Shi'ites and Sunnis share one particular detail about "the coming of the hour" and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent death, to the last one. Both Shi'ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith [Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985] attributed to Muhammad: The last hour will not come unless the Muslims fight against the Jews, and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and the stone or the tree would say: "Muslim! Servant of Allah! Here is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!" Not one Friday passes without this hadith being quoted in sermons from one side of the Islamic world to the other.

Here I think it is helpful (and sobering) to illustrate the still dominant understanding of so-called "Islamic" Antisemitism that persists in the public domain, as expressed, for example, in the brief Michael Ezra posting, and by journalist Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower, his widely acclaimed investigative account of the events leading to the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on September 11, 2001.

Until the end of World War II...Jews lived safely -although submissively-under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice [antisemitism]. After the war, Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

Wright's statement was not accompanied by documentation-this was the accepted "wisdom" after all, promoted, sadly, even by historian Bernard Lewis. And on Thursday, June 5, 2008 during an interview on the National Public Radio Boston affiliate (WBUR) program "Here and Now," with Robin Young, author James Carroll opined with distressingly ignorant certitude, "The Christian tradition of antisemitism has spread like a virus and it has been picked up-caught by segments of Arab, Islamic culture but one of the things to be quite aware of is that there is nothing endemic to the religion of Islam or to certainly the text of the Koran that leads to Antisemitism." [emphasis added].

Why are these (admittedly) imported motifs considered "Islamic," and what is their impact, relative to the Jew-hatred engendered amongst Muslims, for over a millennium, by indigenous, motifs from Islam's foundational texts?

The infamous 1840 Damascus blood libel represents a classic Christian Antisemitic motif transferred to the Islamic world. One cannot simply affirm (while grossly exaggerating) the "catastrophic effect" of Christian motifs "at work" in Islamdom, relative to Islam's own intrinsic Antisemitic motifs-the impact of the former has to be proven, and the historical "proof" is a negative proof, by any objective standard.

For example, morbid as such comparisons may be, the actual body count from the "watershed" 1840 Damascus event was paltry in comparison to the numerous Muslim anti-Jewish pogroms precipitated by purely Islamic motifs, like Koran 2:61 and the related apes (2:65 and 7:166) or apes/pigs (5:60) verses used to incite great massacres in Granada (1066), Baghdad (1291), and Touat, Morocco (~1490). Hundreds to thousands died in these earlier pogroms; despite the heinous accusations of the Damascus blood libel, only four of the thirteen Jews imprisoned for the 1840 Damascus blood libel died during their incarceration and torture. The other nine were released unconditionally, and one of these survivors, Moses Abulafia, became a Muslim in order to escape his torture.

Historical analyses of the 1840 Damascus blood libel by Tudor Parfitt and Jonathan Frankel emphasize these two key features which were independent of Christian anti-Jewish motifs, per se: the general support that the persecution of the Jews was given by the Arab Muslim population at large, in reaction against the various reforms introduced (under Muhammad Ali) which sought to ameliorate some of the most oppressive aspects of dhimmitude; the fact that this negative reaction by the Muslim masses to these reforms had much more serious repercussions-against Christians-during the anti-Christian pogroms which marred Damascus in the 1860s. Indeed as Frankel observes, despite their own bigoted anti-Jewish attitudes, it was the European consuls who drew the line in 1840,

... when it came to the threat of wholesale massacre...advising that the Jewish communities receive military protection. Just how real that danger was would become apparent twenty years later, when the Christian population of Damascus was decimated in a Muslim, primarily Druse, slaughter

With regard to the later impact of Nazism in the Muslim Middle East, thirty-fours years ago (in 1974) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably foresighted analysis of the Islamic Antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Islamic world. (A full English translation of this book chapter, till now only available in Hebrew, is included in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.) Bat Ye'or demonstrated that the primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.

The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are equivalent-due to the inferior status of Jews in Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad. Here the Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce religious anti-Judaism. The religious and political fuse in a purely Islamic context onto which are grafted foreign elements. If, on the doctrinal level, Nazi influence is secondary to the Islamic base, the technique with which the Antisemitic material has been reworked, and the political purposes being pursued, present striking similarites with Hitler's Germany.

That anti-Jewish opinions have been widely spread in Arab nationalist circles since the 1930s is not in doubt. But their confirmation at [Al] Azhar [University] by the most important authorities of Islam enabled them to be definitively imposed, with the cachet of infallible authenticity, upon illiterate masses that were strongly attached to religious traditions.

In The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, I have elaborated on how the earlier tragic mass killings-in Bat Ye'or's accurate parlance, these decimations by Jihad-for "breaching" the dhimma, which afflicted the Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire (Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians) throughout the 19th century, culminating in the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I (and documented, by historian Vahakn Dadrian [pp. 403ff] to have inspired Hitler to express the notion of predictable impunity with regard to future genocides), were nearly replicated in historical Palestine, but for the advance of the British army.

During World War I in Palestine, between 1915 and 1917, the New York Times published a series of reports on Ottoman-inspired and local Arab Muslim assisted antisemitic persecution which affected Jerusalem, and the other major Jewish population centers. For example, by the end of January, 1915, 7000 Palestinian Jewish refugees-men, women, and children-had fled to British-controlled Alexandria, Egypt. Three New York Times accounts from January/February, 1915 (reproduced in the book) provide details of the earlier (i.e., 1915) period.

By April of 1917, conditions deteriorated further for Palestinian Jewry, which faced threats of annihilation from the Ottoman government. Many Jews were in fact deported, expropriated, and starved, in an ominous parallel to the genocidal deportations of the Armenian dhimmi communities throughout Anatolia. Indeed, as related by historian Yair Auron,

Fear of the Turkish actions was bound up with alarm that the Turks might do to the Jewish community in Palestine, or at least to the Zionist elements within it, what they had done to the Armenians. This concern was expressed in additional evidence from the early days of the war, from which we can conclude that the Armenian tragedy was known in the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine]

A mass expulsion of the Jews of Jerusalem, although ordered twice by Djemal Pasha, was averted only through the efforts of [the Ottoman Turks World War I allies] the German government which sought to avoid international condemnation. The 8000 Jews of Jaffa, however, were expelled quite brutally, a cruel fate the Arab Muslims and the Christians of the city did not share. Moreover, these deportations took place months before the small pro-British Nili spy ring of Zionist Jews was discovered by the Turks in October, 1917, and its leading figures killed. A report by United States Consul Garrels (in Alexandria, Egypt) describing the Jaffa deportation of early April 1917 (published in the June 3, 1917 New York Times), included details of the Jews plight, and this ominous warning:

The same fate awaits all Jews in Palestine. Djemal Pasha is too cunning to order cold-blooded massacres. His method is to drive the population to starvation and to death by thirst, epidemics, etc, which according to himself, are merely calamities sent by God.

Yair Auron cites a very tenable hypothesis put forth at that time in a journal of the British Zionist movement as to why the looming slaughter of the Jews of Palestine did not occur-the advance of the British army (from immediately adjacent Egypt) and its potential willingness "..to hold the military and Turkish authorities directly responsible for a policy of slaughter and destruction of the Jews"-may have averted this disaster.

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine-anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional Record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about "Turkish and Arab agitators... preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against...the Jews" of Palestine. Earlier, in 1921, leaders of the Indian Khilafat (Caliphate) movement made clear at conferences held in (far removed) India that Islamic suzerainty must prevail over all of historical Palestine. And in 1920, at the local level, within British controlled Palestine, Musa Kazem el-Husseini, former governor of Jaffa during the final years of Ottoman rule, and president of the Arab (primarily Muslim) Palestinian Congress, in a letter to the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuels, demanded restoration of the Shari'a-which had only been fully abrogated two years earlier when Britain ended four centuries of Ottoman Muslim rule of Palestine-stating that this Religious Law, was "... engraved in the very hearts of the Arabs and has been assimilated in their customs and that has been applied ...in the modern [Arab] states..." During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current -epitomized by both Hajj Amin el-Husseini and shortly afterward, Izz ad din al-Qassam-promulgated the forcible restoration of Shari'a-mandated dhimmitude via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, i.e., in 1918-ten years before the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood-Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish co-worker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I.A. Abbady, "This was and will remain an Arab land...the Zionists will be massacred to the last man...Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country."

Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers' writings and personal career trajectory-as a favored contributor in Goebbel's propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser's regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965-epitomizes this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and racist, Nazi antisemitism, as described by Bat Ye'or, in 1974. Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his formal conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.

Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Koran 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka'b ibn Ashraf, and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers in his 1942 essay "Judiasm and Islam as Opposites,"-fully translated and annotated for the first time in English in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism-chronicles Muhammad's successful campaigns which vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, "...or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax." Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad's poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith which records Caliph Umar's rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad's earlier campaigns:

On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: "There must not be two religions in Arabia." One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.

And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith which 46 years later became the keystone of Hamas' 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:

Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: "Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: ‘Behind me stands a Jew, smite him.'"

Von Leers' 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:

They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised...

Mohammed's opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect-oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken. Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism's massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question-and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam's traditional hostility to Jews-to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.

And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers further sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem [Hajj Amin el-Husseini] in the Arabians' battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim, "...the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever' who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet." Leers' description of the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin he adopted as part of his formal conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson, highlights his personal and doctrinal connections to the Mufti, with whom he engaged in a longstanding collaboration:

I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hadj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.

This October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers' writings and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphalist Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad-a vision all too prevalent today:

He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail.

The hypothesis that Nazism, as imbibed and promulgated by the Muslim Brotherhood is somehow the penultimate source of all "genocidal" Jew hatred in the modern Middle East, is completely untenable, as revealed in this simple exchange. I posed the following basic question to one of the champions of this Nazi-centric viewpoint, and recorded their reply:

[Question] "...what would have happened, say in late 1922-the Muslim Brothers were not formed until 1928; the Nazis do not come to power until 1933-with regard to Islamic jihad and Islamic Jew hatred, specifically, if the British had created some rump state Jewish homeland, actually governed by Jews, and rapidly departed, bearing in mind both the fate of other dhimmi nationalisms in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Serb, Greek, Bulgarian, Armenian), and the special place occupied by dhimmi Jews in Islamic eschatology?"

[Reply] "Yes. They [the Jews] would have been slaughtered, possibly to the last man, woman and child."

The rise of Jewish nationalism-Zionism-posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order-jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews-of apocalyptic magnitude.

This is exactly the Islamic context in which the widespread, "resurgent" use of Jew annihilationist apocalyptic motifs-exemplified by the Hamas charter, the utterances by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, and the messianic beliefs of Ahmadinejad-would be an anticipated, even commonplace occurrence. The Shi'ite jihadist organization Hezbollah, not surprisingly, proclaims these sentiments with triumphant exuberance. Hezbollah is viscerally opposed to Judaism and the existence of Israel, stressing the eternal conflict between the Jews and Islam. Eradicating Israel represents an early stage of Hezballah's Pan-Islamic ambitions, and its jihad against the rest of the non-Muslim world.

The most senior clerical authority for Hezbollah, Husayn Fadlalah has stated, "We find in the Koran that the Jews are the most aggressive towards the Muslims...because of their aggressive resistance to the unity of the faith." Fadlallah repeatedly refers to anti-Jewish archetypes in the Koran, hadith, and sira: the corrupt, treacherous and aggressive nature of the Jews; their reputation as killers of prophets, who spread corruption on earth; and the notion that the Jews engaged in conspiratorial efforts against the Muslim prophet. Fadlallah argues, ultimately, "Either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us."

Muhammad. Hassan Nasrallah, current Secretary General of Hezbollah, and a protége of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, presently Iran's highest ranking political and religious authority (i.e., its "Guardian Jurisprudent"), has reiterated these antisemitic and annihilationist views with particular vehemence. Invoking motifs from Islam's foundational texts, Nasrallah has characterized Jews as the "grandsons of apes and pigs," and as "Allah's most cowardly and greedy creatures." He elaborates these themes into an annihilationist animus against all Jews, not merely Israelis.

Anyone who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history...

Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment...There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.

If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli...[I]f they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.

Unfortunately, the orthodox Islamic archetypes of Jew hatred promulgated by Hamas and Hezbollah, are also being disseminated by the most respected, mainstream Islamic institutions. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, Banu Isra'il fi al-Qur'an wa al-Sunna [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness...only a minority of the Jews keep their word....[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims {Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, "carefully researched" views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope-the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world's Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on "dialogue" (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as "enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear.

Tantawi's statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis:

...anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward. My stance stems from Allah's book [the Koran], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews...[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah. I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, cited above]

Al-Azhar Grand Imam Tantawi's case illustrates the prevalence and depth of sacralized, "normative" Jew hatred in the contemporary Muslim world. Arnon Groiss' thorough examination of modern Egyptian school textbooks, published in April 2004, reveals that that this sacralized hatred continues to be inculcated among future generations of Egyptian Muslims. Groiss observed, regarding the critical depiction of Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Arabia,

The Jews are stereotyped and presented in a prejudiced manner, and the themes of treachery and hostility on the part of the Jews toward the Muslims are present here...

Once again, in this context Koran 5:82 ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews.." is invoked to remind these students, what "God Almighty says about the Jews' hatred toward the Muslims."

And a 3-month long NY Daily News investigation of textbooks widely used in New York city area Islamic schools published March 30, 2003, demonstrated that the same Antisemitic archetypes-based on central motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira-are being taught to American Muslim students. The report provided these examples:

In Long Island City, Queens, for example, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Ideal Islamic School on 12th St. learn that Allah has revealed [pace Koran 2:61/3:112] that "the Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah."...Yet a third book, in use at the Ideal school, describes the hostile relations between Jews and the [Muslim prophet] Muhammad in Medina in the 7th century. "The reasons for Jewish hostility lies in their general characteristics," the book says. Numerous Koranic citations follow with negative references to Jews - for example, "You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them." [3:71; 4:46]

On Jewish hostility to Islam: "The reasons for Jewish hostility toward the Muslims of 7th century Medina lies in their general characteristics described in the Koran." Example: "You will find the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans." [Koran 5:82; from a textbook "The Messenger of Allah," p. 34; targeting Grades 6-9]

Finally a review of textbooks from the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax, VA published in October 2007 by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, concluded, according to commissioner Nina Shea, that they contain "...blatant Antisemitism, blaming the Jews even for divisions within Islam.." The latter charge is an allegation made continuously for over a millennium since the earliest Sunni historiographies (for example by al-Tabari, d. 923) that a renegade Yemenite Jew, Abdallah b. Saba, is responsible-identified as a Jew-for promoting the Shi'ite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam's "political innocence," culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian strife.

When questioned for the March, 30 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying they were inflammatory. Emerick opined,

Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that...[The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.

Emerick's triumphant denial at once affirms standard Islamic theological supremacism, while deliberately ignoring Islam's intrinsic, virulent Antisemitism-the latter denial being pathognomonic of the mindset of its Jewish victims, past and present.

The uncomfortable examination of Islamic doctrines and history is required in order to understand the enduring phenomenon of Muslim Jew hatred, which dates back to the origins of Islam. Even if all non-Muslim Judeophobic themes were to disappear miraculously overnight from the Islamic world, the living legacy of anti-Jewish hatred, and violence rooted in Islam's sacred texts-Koran, hadith, and sira-would remain intact. The assessment and understanding of Islamic antisemitism must begin with an unapologetic analysis of the anti-Jewish motifs contained in these foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer view Muslim Jew hatred-including annihilationist strains of this apocalyptic hatred-as a "borrowed phenomenon," seen primarily, let alone exclusively, through the prism of Nazism and the Holocaust, the tragic legacy of Judeophobic Christian traditions, or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" from Czarist Russia.

Moreover, the jihad against the Jews is but one aspect-albeit primal-of the jihad to establish global Islamic hegemony.

Concluding Remarks

When the late 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, as Nidra Poller wrote in the Wall Street Journal "...phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background." In the heart of Western Europe, Ilan Halimi's torturers/murderers did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.

And Halimi's murder reflects this broader, ugly context: European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, Franco Frattini, who is the European Union official responsible "for combating racism and Antisemitism in Europe," as reported by The Jerusalem Post February 2 of this year, revealed that Muslims are responsible for fully half (50%) of the documented Antisemitic incidents on the European continent. Demographic data from 2007 indicate that the total number of Europeans is 494.8 million; estimates of the number of Muslims in Europe range from 15-20 million, or some ~3.0-4.0% of the total European population. Thus, on a population percentage basis, Muslims in Europe account for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the number of Antisemitic incidents as their non-Muslim European counterparts.

As a pre-condition to real dialogue-not its miserable simulacrum-Jews and their leadership-religious, political, and intellectual-must demand a mea culpa from their Muslim counterparts for the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which is still being taught in Islamic schools, and contributed to Ilan Halimi's death, and countless other similar atrocities across space and time, since the advent of Islam.

Almost 850 years ago, elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction.

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation...All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages-vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude-can be excused for their submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era given the existence of an autonomous Jewish State of Israel, and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora, particularly here in the United States, living under the blanket of hard won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.

With 2002's Help America Vote Act coming into play in Tuesday's election, let's take a look at HAVA's brethren in the fraternity of stuff with Jewish-sounding names that aren't actually Jewish:

• The Lox: The rap trio scored a minor hit in 1998 with "Money, Power & Respect," but actually have nothing to do with the salty delicacy with which they share their name.
• David Eckstein: Rocking the requisite "-stein" on the end of his surname, the diminutive shortstop has been criticized for playing on Yom Kippur despite his status as a confirmed gentile.
• Gollum: The swap thing of Lord of the Rings fame sounds suspiciously close to the legendary creature of Jewish folklore, but has probably never recited the Shema or pledged his love of Hashem.
• Shool: 1999 Bollywood cop-drama features no references to it's Semitic counterpart, Shul.
• Milk & Honey: A members-only gentlemen's club in London that likely does not serve kreplach.
• Numb3rs: While sporting a Jewish leadng man in David Krumholtz, the CBS drama is loaded with pithy dialogue and heart-wrenching drama while lacking in anything relating to the fourth book of the Old Testament.

Are social conservatives failing the most elementary test of ethics: to not discriminate? They seem to hand out boatloads of free passes to McCain and his political partner, while withholding the high marks due to Obama and kin.

For decades, social conservatives have extolled the value of marriage. However, we do not hear them cheering for Barack and Michelle, who are clearly honoring their marital vows, and they have precious little to say about John McCain's extra-martial affair or the fact that he has been divorced. (They need not be concerned about engaging in gossip or rumor mongering; McCain openly acknowledges both the divorce and the affair.)

Maybe social conservatives are saying to each other that not all moral transgressions or sins are created equal. Indeed, Catholicism, Judaism, and the secular legal codes of all major nations grade transgressions. One can hold that abortion is a much more serious offense than divorce and extra-marital affairs put together. Hence, one may try to argue that McCain's failings can be much more quickly overlooked than those of Obama. However, such a claim does not stand for a minute, as it disregards that all the Obamas have done is to talk about the right of women to choose; McCain committed adultery and got a divorce. I am hard put to find a religious or secular ethic, legal system, or set of values that does not draw a sharp line between talking and doing.

Then there is a matter which is difficult to approach but should not be shoved under the rug. For decades, social conservatives from Pat Moynihan to Charles Murray had a special beef with African Americans, especially the men. They were depicted as promiscuous, quick to move on, unwilling to marry, and neglectful of the children they spawned. Social conservatives promoted various plans to encourage marriage -- including denying welfare to single mothers, many whom were African American -- and they looked for positive role models for African Americans who did marry, stayed married and attended to their offspring. They could call them--the Obamas. I am not insisting on confetti, but how about some coast to coast acknowledgment that here is the couple we have being praying for, role models by any standard? And how about one more heartfelt round of applause for Obama for being willing to take the heat for supporting responsible fatherhood, especially among African Americans?

I do not blame Sarah Palin for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter, although Palin's advocacy of abstinence-only sex education may well have contributed to the pregnancy of some girls. But it seems curious to hear from those who have weighed in for decades against pre-marital sex and teen pregnancy that the news from Palin's family is welcome because it shows that theirs is a "normal American family, with its share of travails." It is not hard to imagine what social conservatives would have shouted from the rooftops if the shoe had been on the other foot, if Obama had a 17-year-old, unmarried daughter who became pregnant. Would they not have argued that it showed a profound character flaw in the parents?

Then there is a point best made by a leading social conservative, the former dean of the Catholic University Law School and an official in several past Republican administrations, Douglas W. Kmiec. (A man who, by the way, was subject to a tirade from the pulpit and denied communion for his support of Obama.) Kmiec says he expects that Obama and Biden will fulfill the call by Pope John Paul II to "ensure proper support for families and motherhood."

I take it for granted that social conservatives share the precept that "whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me." Better yet, these days they not care only about poverty and social justice, but also about the environment and climate control, about preserving God's gifts to mankind. I assume we can agree that the argument over who scores better on these points is going to be a short one.

I am not opposed to devout people who draw on their values to judge political candidates. I am merely concerned when they play it the other way around: shade, shave and tailor their moral judgments to fit their political preferences. Such bias surely is not the greatest moral failing, but it ranks somewhere far from the bottom of the scale of what is right vs. wrong.

The book trailer for "Jewish Wisdom for Business Success" takes the viewer across the United States where random people (all non-Jews) explain why they think Jews are disproportionally successful in business. Here is the video:

This is an unfair charge. A stereotype would be to say that all Jews are rich or even that most Jews are good at business. However, saying, as I do, that in comparison to other groups Jews are disproportionally successful in business is not adding to a stereotype. It is a fact backed by statistics.

I must, however, thank Rabbi Yonah for posting the video on Jewlicious. His post was picked up by others and, all in all, it helped get the word out about the book. Plus, a bit of controversy doesn’t hurt the book either.

Jewish Business Wisdom
As promised here's some Jewish business wisdom for our current difficult financial times:

Fear:
Do not let fear motivate your financial decisions. Fear causes us to make irrational decisions. There are in general four fear-based reactions: 1. Give up; 2. Return to what was comfortable; 3. Fight; 4. Rely on others to deal with the problem. Whilst any of these responses might be correct at any given moment, if they are motivated by fear they may well be wrong. Fear magnifies problems and makes us think they are unsolvable. So, in the current financial climate, realize that your fear may be magnifying the problem. Then face your fear and make a rational decision based on facts rather than on your fear. There's more about fear in chapter 1 of the book.

Involvement:
You need to balance between hands-on and hands-off approaches to your business and finances. You must review and assess your financial situation often. It is good to have a professional manager—who has the time to do all of the necessary research—to run your investments, but make sure that you still remain involved and have oversight. The same goes for your household expenses: keep an eye on them—have oversight but don’t be overly controlling. The same should apply to the way you manage your business. You must be able to delegate, but you must have oversight as well. More detailed insights and guidance for correct managerial balance in chapter 4 of the book.

Rabbi Levi Brackman, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Buisness Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned. 

I've been collecting data regarding Jews and money for the purposes of marketing Oh, the Jews and their money...our book, Jewish Wisdom for Business Success. When talking in the press about Jewish success in business, I want to make sure I stand on firm empirical ground in regards to whether there's statistical evidence that the Jewish community is more successful than the population at large when it comes to making money.

In the course of my reading, I've identified some surprising themes, which I'll summarize here as the five myths of Jews and money. It's a teaser: I'll provide more depth and breadth to the assertions in the weeks ahead. But here are my big five:

*Jews developed the banking industry because they dominated the money-lending industry in the middle ages, thanks to a Church proscription against usury (something which didn't apply to Jews).

*Jews are more successful in business than any other immigrant community in the United States in the last 100 years.

*The Jewish religious tradition views poverty as an emblem of piety.

*Karl Marx's theories were based on traditional Jewish concepts of communal partnership and the sympathy for the victimhood of the lower class.

*The patriarchs of the Torah were penniless wanderers who lived from day to day on the kindness of others.

Anybody who has any thoughts, advice or suggestions for data sources on any of the above assertions, please drop me a note at samjaffe@gmail.com. Likewise, if you think of a more obvious candidate for a myth--something that is commonly accepted in popular culture but is in fact baseless in fact--please make a suggestion.

Cross-posted from Gates of Emporia, personal blog of Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Buisness Success.  He's also guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

There is no doubt that there is a major connection between Jews and money. Even as Jews seek to sweep it under the carpet, it is still the largest elephant in the room, especially in these bad economic times.

Here is an example of this. I contacted a famous young Jewish entrepreneur and asked him to endorse Jewish Wisdom for Business Success. The publisher sent him an advance copy of the book. He looked at it and then said he didn’t like the notion written in the book that Jews are associated with making money. Then he stopped replying to my email. After much persistence on my part, his assistant sent me a message saying he did not have time to read the book and therefore would not endorse it.

Now, whether this particular person likes the notion or not, the notion is out there. From my research talking to people across America, Jews are associated with money in everybody’s mind. And it is not a bad thing. The bad thing is if we allow others to believe that the reason why Jews are good at making money is because they cheat, or because there is some other conspiracy that Jews all share in.

The Israeli Daily Newspaper the Maariv, in an extensive article about Jewish Wisdom for Business Success and the anti-Semitic association between Jews and money, claimed that the book could not have come out at a worse time.

I respectfully and passionately disagree. This is the most important time for this book to come out. At a time when the disgusting anti-Semites are coming out and trying to take charge of the conversation about Jews and money, and as these vile creatures are spreading their hatred and idiotic conspiracy theories all over the internet it is about time that we Jews take charge of the conversation.

This is exactly what my book intends to do. Yes it is a fact that Jews are disproportionally successful in business. We Jews only make up 0.2 percent of the world population (yes less than half of one percent) but we make up more than ten percent of the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the world. Also forty six percent of Jews in the United States make over 100k a year while only fifteen percent of the rest of the population make that amount. These are facts not stereotypes.

So why are Jews disproportionately successful? Why are so many of them making more money when compared to the general population? This is a legitimate question and it deserves our attention. Just because the vile anti-Semites use these facts for their own nefarious means does not mean that we should avoid or try and ignore them. If we do they will certainly remind us of them and not in a way we enjoy.

Some have tried to answer this question by saying the Jewish success has to do with the fact that in Europe they were forced to only be involved in finance. But if this was the case then why are thirty percent of Noble Prize winners in the sciences Jewish? Some say it has to do with genetics. But I don’t buy that type of racist ideology either.

The real reason for Jewish success in all areas (not just finance) in my opinion has to do with the Torah. There are wisdom teachings found in the Torah that Jews have imbibed for thousands of years. These wisdom teachings feed directly into successful practices not just in finance, but in the sciences as well as in many other fields.

Now some Jews may not know that there outlook comes from the religion of Judaism. However, I have found that Jews who have never even opened a Jewish book still believe in intrinsically Jewish ideas that stem from the Torah. After probing, often they heard these ideas from a Jewish grandmother they were close with or from a great uncle. But in the end they can almost always be traced back to Jewish ideas that come from the Torah.

The beauty of this theory is that these ideas that feed into successful practices do not have to remain exclusively with the Jews. If we are magnanimous we can share them with others. This is what Sam Jaffe and I have done with our book Jewish Wisdom for Business Success. Now, by reading the book, anyone—even anti-Semites—can learn the secret of Jewish success.

Jewish Wisdom for the difficult economic times:

In the Torah we find Abraham negotiating with G-d. Here is an idea that can help you in the current financial times. Like Abraham don’t always just negotiate over the bottom line. Sometimes other things might be more important and you will win through them. For example keeping your current job may be more important than seeking a raise. If you hear that your company is going to cut jobs you may even suggest to your boss that you will be willing to take less money in order to keep your job in these troubled economic times. In all negotiations in these troubled times where capital is scarce look beyond the dollar signs and try and negotiate on other things (the terms and conditions) that are also very important to you. (Learn how to negotiate in Chapter 5 of the book).

Rabbi Levi Brackman, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy with fellow co-author Sam Jaffe. He'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

It is great to be blogging on Jewcy.com. My blog posts this week will be about my recent experiences with the media and the reactions to my book: Jewish Wisdom for Business Success. Some Jews were not impressed by the title. 

They don’t realize that the title I originally wanted was “Become Rich Like the Jews: A How-to Guide” but the publisher refused to go with it claiming that is was too antisemitic, so we settled on the less explosive title we currently have.

OK OK… Before the ADL's Abe Foxman (who the Maariv Newspaper says won't endorse my book) lynches me, let me say—for those without a sense of humor—that I am joking. Of course I am not trying to use a nasty stereotype to sell books.

Israeli Daily Newspaper The Maariv says ADL's Abe Foxman wont endorse Jewish Wisdom for Business SuccessThe point “Jewish Wisdom for Business Success” makes is that there is profound wisdom within Judaism's ancient teachings and holy books that instruct successful financial and business practices. This wisdom is needed now—when the current financial crisis is hitting many of us in our pocket books— more than ever.

Here are a few tips from Jewish wisdom that will help you through.

1. Do not let fear motivate your financial decisions. (Chapter 1 of the book).
2. Don’t allow yourself to be pulled into a cycle of negative thinking. Remember that many will get hurt but some will prosper as well. Why should you not end up being one of those that will prosper? (Chapter 8 of the book)
3. When you need to purchase something, know that it is now a buyer’s market and you can negotiate better terms and conditions for yourself on large item purchases. (Lern how to negotiate in Chapter 5 of the book)
4. Remember that failure is a state of mind not a state of being. So if things do not go well for you there might be a lesson there for you to learn from. (Chapter 6 of the book)
5. Don’t allow the bad economy to take you off your path towards your ultimate goals. (Chapter 2 of the book)
6. Be involved with your finances; don’t completely rely on others. (Chapter 4 of the book)

Each day this week, at the end of my blog posts, I will elaborate on one of the above-mentioned tips, so look out for them.

Rabbi Levi Brackman, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Buisness Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Just how thoroughly ignorant of the world beyond Crawford, Texas is George W. Bush? How steadfastly determined is he to remain so ignorant? Enough, in both cases, that seven years after he came to Washington seeking to chart a new course of humble, non-interventionist foreign policy, only to have his presidency to hijacked from the outset by a cabal of Jewish war-mongers (that is what happened, right?), he could describe his daughter's wedding to two Israeli journalists this way:

It was --- as my Jewish friends tell me, there was mazel tov.

Was there, George? Was there really?

The Hebraicization Of The West Wing Begins... To be sure, fluency in basic Yiddish and Yinglish phrases isn't a sufficient condition for a good presidency, nor even a necessary condition. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower† would have stuck out in a minyan of chosen persons like a bacon-and-shrimp cheeseburger at Zabar's, but they all did a fine job. (The Freemasons among them might have picked up a bit of crappy liturgical Hebrew.) Harry Truman, the first president for whom relationships with Jews was a high-profile matter of foreign affairs, acquitted himself well in his correspondence with Chaim Weizmann and inaugurated an unbending policy of near-total cooperation with Israel. But it's still hard to picture the man from Independence, MO feeling at home on the Lower East Side. And of course, despite our strategic commitment to Israel, it was still possible in 1968 and 1972 for a deranged, pathological antisemite to be elected president. Only in the Reagan years did pictures like this one start to pop up, let alone this one or this one.

However, it took a half-Kenyan, half-undifferentiated white candidate with Luo-Swahili Christian first and last names flanking the middle name "Hussein," to make the matter of whether the probable next president (the bid/ask spread on Intrade is 57.1/57.4 as I write) can really connect with Jews an issue of high salience in our political coverage.

One of the highest-trafficked items in Jewcy last week was my annotated clipping of Barack Obama's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. I said at the outset that the interview demonstrated Obama's deeper and richer connection to American Jewish and Israeli experience than anyone who has been in his position before. Which is a sword with two very sharp edges, a point both Obama's supporters and opponents missed in interpreting the Goldberg interview.

...And Collapses Into Self-Parody To borrow a couple of aphorisms from David Samuels' recent work here, alone among other constituent groups in the American experience, "Jews and blacks...[often] embrac[e] an alternative historical narrative that at times trumps the mainstream narratives commonly accepted by our fellow citizens."

Obama in particular embodies that common thread between my community and his by being (again from Samuels) "a self-made man, part con artist, part performer, living in an imaginary future that will make him and his audience whole."

The flip side is that, truly unlike any potential president since the early days of the Republic (except Lincoln, maybe), he is a person of the book, and of books, and of philosophy and literature. If he does get to be president, his memoirs will be vastly more penetrating in their insights than anything a president has produced since Ulysses Grant more than a century ago, and radically unlike any president's literary output since presidents stopped writing for themselves sometime last century. That literariness is balanced by an Ivory Tower-trained analytic intelligence --- as the Clinton campaign found out to their chagrin, he was in fact a fairly skillful and accomplished legal academic.

All of which means that if elected, Obama will be the first president in ages (if not ever) to suffer from what Joyce called the agenbite of inwit (from ME, meaning "remorse of conscience"), the near-universal soul-sickness of introspective literary and intellectual types in the modern age, grasping for and unable to find concrete, stable concepts of identity and historical progression by which to gain a foothold on their world.

The condition is a two-edged sword for scores of reasons. For example, on the positive side of the ledger, it can provide fuel for empathy, for a creativity in problem-solving, and for just enough misanthropy to motivate the enlightened governance that rejects crude, short-sighted populism (his stand against the gas tax pander, his connections to and education from people like Austan Goolsbee and Lawrence Lessig are the encouraging data points here). And on the negative side, consider that Woodrow Wilson was the closest precedent in this regard, and one of the worst presidents we've ever had, and Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon are next closest. Intellectuality, especially when self-aware, can be a straitjacket and an amplifier for mistakes.

But more to the point here, the agenbite is, if not a Jewish condition, then more pervasive among Jews than any other group, by a wide margin. (It wasn't merely for the sake of wordplay that Buck Mulligan described Stephen Dedalus as "a jesting jew jesuit," nor was it coincidental that the greatest song ever written about the suffering and dispossession of American southerners in the Civil War was written by a half-Jew half-Mohawk from rural Ontario.) Virtually every significant feature of Obama's biography --- from his name, to his twice-over paternal abandonment, to the clash of skin colors with all his relatives, to his drug years, to his Ivy League education, to his admission to modern day Talmud study in a law faculty --- scream of the agenbite, and through it, to a connection with the experience of overwhelming numbers of post-Haskalah Jews (which may or may not come to the same thing as the Jewish experience).

The connection includes, moreover, his spiritual wanderings from inchoate ecumenicism in Indonesia, to a default atheism, and finally to the liberationist Christianity of a turbulent priest preaching an improbable amalgam of social conservatism, theological pacifism, and racial resentment (the first two in vastly greater proportions than the third, incidentally). How many of the Jews who took the greatest offense to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright belong to congregations that feature a regular call for a bloodletting of Arabs or Persians? A lot. How many of them are among those calling regularly for a bloodletting of Arabs or Persians? Also, a lot. Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright makes him more rather than less Jewy, in this case for ill, no matter how it affects the feelings of some Jews about him.

His reflexive detractors, especially his reflexive Jewish detractors, would make better use of their time criticizing the Obama that actually exists, with all his numerous flaws, instead of wrestling against some phantom existing only in their minds. But then his election would raise certain disquieting questions about their pat conception of the American character, and indeed, of the American Jewish character, so I wouldn't hold my breath expecting them to decide to be relevant.

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.

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