When British comedy writer Ariane Sherine saw a bus ad with the Bible quote ‘When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?’ she was not amused. When she followed the web link accompanying this quote from the book of Luke, she was positively alarmed. The website, jesussaid.org, warns that those who reject the anointed one’s musings will face the wrath of God and all the unpleasantness that entails, including torment in hell.

Rather than succumbing to a sudden urge to throw herself under the bus, Sherine sought guidance from that secular arbiter of right and wrong, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ASA informed the comedienne that the Advertising Standards Code – which with its 10 sections of do’s and don’ts reads like a modern-day version of the ten commandments – does not prohibit advertising religious messages.Then, Sherine had a revelation. The brewer Carlsberg famously claims in its ads that its lager is ‘probably the best beer in the world’, so she, a devout atheist, should surely be allowed to claim that ‘there’s probably no God’. Under the influence of Carlsberg, Sherine decided to pen an article for the Guardian, urging fellow godless travellers to donate a fiver towards a counter-ad campaign on London’s red ‘bendy buses’.  There was a flurry of excitement around ‘the atheist bus campaign’, with nearly 1,000 individuals pledging money to counter what they see as a pro-religion bias in the advertising world. The British Humanist Association (BHA) agreed to administer donations and the distinguished British scientist and bestselling author of The God Delusion, Professor Richard Dawkins, agreed to match all contributions up to £5,500.

The atheist bus ad campaign is scheduled to run in London in January 2009. The rather timid poster will read ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life’. Observant London commuters will notice a web link to atheistcampaign.org, a rather slick and colourful website, adorned with pretty flowers and links to other god-unfriendly websites. Across the Atlantic, fellow atheist travellers have jumped onboard the atheist bus campaign, with the American Humanist Association (AHA) launching its own ads last month. Their rather uncatchy slogan ‘Why believe in god? Just be good for goodness’ sake’ can be seen on buses across Washington DC. The AHA, too, has a website (whybelieveingod.org) which apparently crashed twice – not because of divine intervention, but because of the huge media flurry around the campaign leading to a sudden, high volume of visitors to the site The question is, why do humanists feel the need to preach the (probable) non-existence of the Lord to the commuting masses of London, Washington DC and beyond? After all, ours has been hailed as a godless age and the influence of religion is, indeed, at a low ebb. The past couple of years have seen a steady stream of anti-religious books, many of which have topped bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, by a range of atheists, agnostics and secular humanists. The most prominent of them - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are now referred to collectively as ‘The New Atheists’. They have launched a zealous, no-holds-barred attack not so much on God as on the devout.

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On May 1^st, Londoners go to the polls to elect a new Mayor. London’s only ever had one: Ken Livingstone. From the moment the Blair government announced its desire to shake up the city’s system of government in the late 1990s, and despite their subsequent efforts to block him from the job, he was the obvious candidate. An unabashed hard-leftist who made his name fighting Thatcherism in local government, “Red Ken” is, whatever else may be said about him - of which more in a moment - something of an original.

I’m no fan of Livingstone or his politics, to put it mildly, but any fair assessment of his record over two terms in the job must include a number of positives. He has fulfilled his brief in helping to build and maintain London’s status as unquestionably the world’s most vibrant and dynamic capital city. His flagship policy, the $15-a-day congestion charge for London’s notorious traffic, is certainly not without its detractors, but has inspired similar schemes worldwide. And he played a high-profile role in securing the 2012 Olympic Games for the city.

The very next day, when suicide bombers killed 52 on Livingstone’s LondonRed Ken (L) and Red-faced Boris (R): Two outsized personalities that deserve one another transport system, the mayor made a stirring speech in which he vowed to the extremists that "whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail." But just two weeks later, he was sympathizing with (though not endorsing) suicide bombings against Israelis, noting that "the Palestinians don't have jet planes, don't have tanks, they only have their bodies to use as weapons", and asking why home-grown jihadists who went to “defend [their] Palestinian brothers and sisters” were any worse than British Jews who enlisted in the Israeli army.

That wasn't the first or the last time Ken put his foot in his mouth or made a questionable judgment call. The most high-profile incident was a suspension from office (later successfully appealed) for comparing a Jewish reporter to “a concentration camp guard," but there have been many others. A long-time sympathizer with the aims and methods of the IRA, he has also used his office to promote links with, and visits by, Muslim clerics such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (who has ruled that unborn Israeli children are legitimate targets for ‘martyrdom operations’, as they will one day wear a uniform), and last year he signed a co-operation agreement with his buddy Hugo Chavez to provide “expertise” in town planning and public transport in return for discounted oil for London’s buses. Even among his natural allies on the left, there has been real disquiet about the way he operates, with widespread allegations of cronyism and corruption. The recent resignation of his race relations adviser has only added to the sense among many that his time as London Mayor should be brought to a close.

This year, for the first time, Ken faces a genuine challenge to retain his job. Up against him is one of the few politicians in the country who is also instantly recognizable by his first name alone: Boris Johnson, a Tory MP who fits the clichéd label “maverick” almost as well as the incumbent. A staple of TV quiz shows and the gossip columns of the press, Boris is an irresistibly buffoonish figure whose initial expression of interest in the job was treated as something of a joke. But the realization has grown that he is in with a real chance of winning; opinion polls have them neck and neck six weeks out from the poll. Opponents in politics and media cannot quite decide whether to deride him as a bumbling toff or warn darkly of a hidden right-wing agenda waiting to be unleashed on the unsuspecting citizens of the capital.

“Better the devil you know” seems to be the rallying cry for candidates on both sides of the Atlantic right now. No one would claim that the race for London Mayor is anything like as important as the American election, of course, but it’s getting just as dirty, and it’s going to be even harder to call.

So I’ve returned from all of my far-flung travels. I spent an inordinant amount of time in Golders Green in London, and had one of the best Shabbatot of my life in Oxford. Someone confessed his love to me, and someone else told me to go to rabbinical school and I pretty much didn’t sleep for more than a week. I got made fun of for being a Stupid American more than I’m really comfortable with.
BAers: looking busy

One of the things that struck me most about my time in England is how different Jewish youth groups are in the UK than in the States. In high school, I was very active in USY, the Conservative youth group. This meant that I helped plan and staff events for other teenagers, but I was always supervised by adult staff members who basically ran the show. In the UK, programming is planned and carried out almost entirely by members and former members of the youth group. There are no “adults” per se. Seventeen-, eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds plan week-long camps for younger members of whatever group they’re involved in (Noam, Bnei Akiva, FZY etc.) from beginning to end. They staff all programming, and train other counselors, and do all of the preparation and cleanup work. As a result, I’ve never met so many youth group fanatics as you’re likely to find in the UK.

I wish I could share Matthue’s optimism about the Jewish community in the UK, but for the most part I see it as a divided and cold atmosphere. But the youth groups really are a light at the end of the tunnel. There is so much that youth groups in the US could learn from this kind of initiative and innovation, and I really wish there was a more formal partnership between English and American counterparts of the same organizations. I’m not aware of such a partnership already in existence, but until something like that is created, check out the websites of the big Jewish youth groups in the UK. There’s Bnei Akiva, The Federation for Zionist Youth, Noam, and Netzer.

Life imitating art: Do you picture yourself here?Do you ever feel like everyone is watching you? You may not be as paranoid as you think, at least not if you're one of the 8,760 lucky folks selected to be a part of artist Antony Gormley's proposed plan for London's "Fourth Plinth" -- an empty pedestal in Trafalgar Square with a changing exhibition of statues and installations. If Gormley's plan is selected, volunteers from all walks of life will be chosen to grace the plinth for one hour each, over the course of 2009. Once on the pedestal, they're free to do whatever they like.

"I'm sure we'll get a wide range of wackiness but I have this image of somebody coming from Pinner, clutching their handbag and standing in the breeze for an hour, not doing anything at all, and that being very valuable," says Gormley. Interested? See, you're not paranoid, just attention hungry.

Since Matthue has been blogging from the UK all week, and since I’ll be winging my way over on New Year’s Day I thought it might be a nice time to recommend some great Jewish travel tips for my two favorite places in England.

In London:
If you’re in London for a while and can spare a day just hanging out in Golder’s Green, that’s what you should do. Take the Northern Line to the Golders Green station, and just wander up and down Golders Green Rd and Finchley Rd. Corner Outside Golders Green Tube Station: a number of optionsThere are a bunch of kosher restaurants, Judaica shops and places of interest. I recommend Solly’s on Golders Green and Milk N Honey, just down the street. The best kosher bakery in London, in my not-so-humble-opinion, is Daniel's Bagel Bakery, on 12 Hallswelle Parade, Finchley. Also in Golders Green is a really beautiful Jewish cemetery (on Hoop Lane) just across from the Golders Green Crematorium. Kind of creepy, but an interesting and beautiful place nonetheless. Peter Sellers, Anna Pavlova, Bram Stoker, T S Eliot and Sigmund Freud were all laid to rest here, so it’s worth it to stop by.

Now that you’re all nourished and meditated and looking for some entertainment, hop back on the Tube and head over to Camden, where you can go to the Jewish Museum. The museum itself is wonderful, and they even do walking tours of various neighborhoods every once in a while, so check ahead and see if you can get signed up for one such tour.

Another fun sight is the Bevis Marks Synagogue, the oldest synagogue still in use in Britain, completed in 1701. Saced Destinations has a nice summary of the synagogue’s history, but it’s definitely worth a trip.

My favorite place to daven in London is Assif, a fun and funky egal minyan in Finchley. But if egal isn’t your thing, you’ve got plenty of other options.

Now, I highly recommend a day trip to Oxford. I’m partial, of course, but I definitely think it’s worth your time and money. If you book in advance you can take megabus for I quid each way. Awesome!

In Oxford:

Mainly I love Oxford because most of my favorite people in England are there, but it helps that they have the most amazing Jsoc (that's British for Hillel) ever. They have all kinds of events, from garden parties, to learning, to Shabbat meals, and the best shabbos zmirot I have ever heard. Jsoc meets at the Oxford Jewish Congregation, which is a gorgeous building with wonderful facilities for all kinds of activities, and every part of the community. OJC: Awesome davening, and cute boys with accents

I was never really into Oxford Chabad while I was there, but they have an amazing website that gives you instructions for a great Jewish walking tour of Oxford, including a lark through Christ Church Meadow and “Dead Man’s Walk,” the path of Jewish funeral processions. The Meadow is worth a trip even if you aren’t interested in any of the Jewish stuff. It’s gorgeous and huge.

Typically when I’m in Oxford I end the day with a certain British gentleman, which you probably can’t do, but you can wander around some of the other gorgeous colleges. I recommend Worcester which has its own lake, and Oriel, which is just pretty. Worcester College: in some rare sunshine

If you’re looking for more awesome Jewcy things to do in England, check out SomethingJewish and Jewdas.

We have some mad makeover shows in Britain.

In You Are What You Eat, "Dr" Gillian McKeith moves in with a morbidly obese couple, pokes around in their poo (literally), and tells them that if they don't stop scoffing chips they will die. In What Not To Wear, two posh women with a penchant for botox claim to be able to improve people's self-esteem—and thus the mental health of the entire nation—by giving them fashion advice. In The Sex Inspectors, a group of "sexperts" watches a couple frolicking late at night and then gives them advice on how to improve their love life.

But these shows seem perfectly sane compared with the maddest makeover series yet: Make Me a Muslim (watch the show at bottom of this page).

This mini-series, which kicked off on Channel 4 this week, features four "MuslimIslamic Eye for the Queer Guy: Channel 4's crack team of Muslims tries to whip various classes of deviant into order mentors" who try to instill Islamic values into a bunch of slovenly Brits. In the first episode, we were introduced to a beer-swilling taxi driver (scum!), a mum and part-time glamour model (slag!), and a gay man with a high-pitched voice who wears pink t-shirts (deviant!), all of whom will be whipped into shape by the pious Islamic lifestyle gurus.

Make Me a Muslim borrows heavily from other makeover shows. It has the snobbish dietary element of You Are What You Eat: on Sunday the Muslim mentors visited the contestants' homes and emptied their fridges of pork and alcohol. And the show is fixated on fashion: One of the Muslim mentors, a bearded imam, took the gay contestant to a clothes store to buy him some "manly clothes." It was like Islamic Eye for the Queer Guy.

The female Muslim mentor encouraged the mum-cum-glamour-model—who normally wears skimpy outfits—to don an ankle-covering, hair-hiding hijab. I sympathised with the glamour model when she complained: "This thing is choking me....I feel I am being oppressed by clothes."

The mentors were disgusted to find that one of the contestants—a feisty blonde— sleeps in the same bed as her partner even though they're not married! They demanded that she decamp to the spare room.

Channel 4 describes the show as a "unique social experiment" in which the mentors try to "rescue" Britons who have no moral values. This got me thinking: we hear a lot about "institutional Islamophobia" these days, where Britain's political and cultural elites allegedly whip up fear of Muslims to justify draconian measures. But what about its twin: institutional Islamophilia, the authorities' bizarre belief that Islamic values might make Britain great again?

Trendy opinion-formers and officials promote Islam as the solution to Britain's moral decline. Earlier this year, Time Out magazine, the bible of "An Islamic London Would Be a Better Place": —Time Out magazine, the bible of London's latte-drinking classesLondon's latte-drinking, theatregoing classes, argued that an "Islamic London would be a better place".

Apparently we'd all be healthier since alcohol would be banned. "Turning all the city's pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health", said Time Out. And the capital would be greener, too, because "the Islamic concept of halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world". Save the planet and your health: go Islamic now!

Last month London's Evening Standard hosted a debate titled "Is Islam good for London?", in which some participants argued that Islam's "core values" might help to anchor out-of-control Brits. The daft notion that drunken and disrespectful Britons might benefit from a short sharp dose of Islam is becoming widespread. In 2005, six Tory Members of Parliament wrote a letter to the Spectator in which they said that Islamists who describe Britain as decadent are "right". "Whether it is lawlessness, family breakdown, the menace of drugs, binge-drinking, teenage pregnancies or merely the coarse brutishness which has infested British culture... the results of years of woolly-minded liberal thinking are plain to see", they said.

Meanwhile, everyone from London mayor Ken Livingstone to former PM Tony Blair speak of their "deep respect" for Islamic values.

We've ended up with a kind of colonialism-in-reverse. Once, arrogant British elites sought to force their Christian, imperialist values on "the natives", including Muslims, in the Third World; today a bereft and confused British elite hopes that importing some of the natives' culture over here might help to keep unruly Brits in their place.

The terrible irony is that Islamic radicals, the biggest Islamophiles of all, are driven by a stunningly similar fear and loathing of the feckless masses. The Crawley plotters, found guilty of terrorist offences earlier this year, wanted to blow up nightclubs and kill "those slags dancing around." Those who planted car bombs outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London on ladies' night in June, and crashed car bombs into Glasgow airport during the height of the summer holiday season, also seemed keen to target Britain's "slaggish", hedonistic culture.

These hot-headed extremists fancy themselves as rebels. In fact they're more like the armed wing of Institutional Islamophilia. Where Channel 4 wants to make us into Muslims through makeover shows, violent Islamophiles want to make us into Muslims through fear and terror. Both sides are motivated by a desire to save Britons from their own alleged beastliness.

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London Calling: it seems to be saying something about cute Jewish boys with accents...Calling all Jewcy readers in London! I’ll be in Blighty for a few days in early January and am thinking of hosting a Jewcy get together at a pub. We can all hang out, rouse rabble, and you can tell me what kinds of things you want Jewcy to cover.  If you think you’d be up for such a venture leave a comment, or email tamar@jewcy.com. I want to make sure we’d have a critical mass before I make it official. Otherwise it’s just me in a bar. Or, as we say in America, Thursday.

• Conan O'Brien snubbed for Simpson's movie. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Traffic cameras in London follow your every move. [Guardian Unlimited]
  
• White House buying time for its Iraq strategy. [The Huffington Post]
• Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter on hand for Nelson Mandela's 89th birthday. [Christian Science Monitor]
• Breathe easy: no asbestos in air after yesterday's steam explosion. [Chicago Tribune]
• Bon Jovi says the new energy drink, Mojovi, is stealing his name's thunder. [The New York Times] 

Police investigators cordon off the Mercedes filled with explosive material outside Tiger Tiger, a Piccadilly nightclub today. A devastating terror attack was thwarted by the perpetrators' incompetence.

Londoners inconvenienced by otherwise ain't bovered.

• London police defuse car packed with explosives. [Chicago Tribune]
• Legal screwups in case against President Moshe Katsav. [The Jerusalem Post]
• In 5-4 decision, Supreme Court rules against school integration. [The New York Times]
• As the Court outlaws busing, Jewish groups lament the decision; Spaniards rally against Ahmadinejad; Amos Oz wins Spanish lit prize. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]
• Mexico's got its Bloomberg: proposal to ban lighting up in Mexico City bars. [The Los Angeles Times]
• How many frequent flier miles to go to the moon? [SPACE.com]
  
• Iron Mike says, "Smile, it's Friday!"

If you think referring to the British left as a congeries of fellow traveling with Islamism is unfair or a straw-man, consider that the mayor of London is still Ken Livingstone. I began my New York Post review of Nick Cohen's What's Left highlighting some of Ken's charms:

IMAGINE if Mayor Bloomberg invited a Muslim cleric from Egypt known for his advocacy of female genital mutila tion, wife-beating, "martyrdom" bombings in Israel and Iraq, and the murder of homosexuals and converts from Islam to be an honored guest of the city.

New Yorkers would naturally rebel against the mayor, who would certainly survive politically. But what if he did something even more brazen and perverse: invite the cleric back.

Surely, it couldn't happen here. But it did happen in London last year under the aegis of left-wing mayor, Ken Livingstone.

Livingstone considers Yusuf al-Qaradawi (the cleric's name) a huggable, "moderate" liaison between East and West. Anyone arguing otherwise Livingstone accuses of xenophobia or - a ridiculous term now gaining traction in the United Kingdom - "Islamophobia."

And here's an ad sponsored by 18 Doughty Street, a UK campaign designed to keep Livingstone from snagging another term in office:

NYU is full of rich brats. Proof lies on the school newspaper's website in an article about London shopping by Andrea Feckzo. Her lead:

A week ago, I decided to treat myself (courtesy of the parental unit) to a weekend of birthday shopping and post-midterm retail therapy — in London.

Oh the dramaticism of the dash--brilliant indeed! Sadly Feckzo's amateur belittling of London's fashionistas that follows lacks the, er, wit of Sentence Number 1. But thank god it retains the snobbery, reinforced by Annette's especially obnoxious comment:

OMG! I love daddy's credit card too! Seriously, after the demands of midterms I too like to avail myself of transatlantic travel to shop. Yes, the exchange rate is a bitch, but at least it's not like I worked for the money.

Where does this whole NYU is full of privileged, spoiled brats stereotype come from?

Annette

I don't have the heart to post the last line of this comment here because it contains her email address. If you're truly dying to know it, you'll have to put in the miniscule effort required to read the article.