By Marista Lane
Sen. Specter
Republican Senator Arlen Specter (Penn.) decided earlier this week to switch parties and become a Democrat. Anxious that he would not be able to win reelection as a republican, Specter announced his decision to move across the aisle on Tuesday.
His move, along with the expected victory of Al Franken in the drawn out Minnesota Senate race, gives democrats a 60 seat, filibuster-proof majority.
Specter was the only republican Jew in the Senate.
By Marista Lane
There has been one confirmed case in Israel
There was an interesting story in a USA Today blog the other day. Apparently, an Israeli health official was offended by the name “Swine” flu:
As the swine flu outbreak continues spreading, an Israeli health official is making waves by saying the name should be changed to “Mexican” flu, because the reference to pigs is offensive to Jews and Muslims, who consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products.
As the Associated Press reports, scientists are unsure where the new virus originally emerged. The current strain of swine flu is believed to have originated in Mexico, where more than 100 people have died from it, but the virus was first identified in the USA. Scientists say there is nothing about the virus that makes it “Mexican” and worry that label would be stigmatizing.
Thoughts? Should the name change?
By Benjamin Schuman-Stoler
Moment’s Rabbi Harold S. White Fellow Jeremy Gillick (left) has an interesting–and important–piece over at New Voices.
It’s called “The Coming of the Intermarried Rabbi” and is definitely worth checking out.
One quick excerpt:
If the [rabbinical schools’ harsh intermarriage] policies affect only a small number of potential rabbis, they channel strong ideological currents. Rabbinical leaders contend that the policies are not only consistent with halacha, but actually embody core notions of Jewishness. “Jewishness has not historically been understood as a matter of individual faith or choice,” explains Jonathan Boyarin, a professor of modern Jewish thought at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “but as entitlement and obligation based ultimately on descent.” With this notion of Jewish collectivity already threatened by high intermarriage rates in America, the schools see rabbis as the last remaining bulwark in the fight to keep liberal Judaism Jewish; if the levees break and the policies are washed away, they worry, Jewishness as we know it could disappear.
That’s exactly what some policy opponents want: to expand the boundaries of Jewishness with the goal of ultimately redefining what it means to be a Jew. “At stake in this debate,” explains Rabbi Shirley Idelson, dean of HUC’s New York campus, “are competing visions of our people’s future—if and how we will survive, what we will look like, and the role that rabbis and cantors will play in shaping our people’s future.”
Tagged Jimmy Kimmel, New York Jets, NFL, Rosh Hashanah, yom kippur
By Marista Lane
For the now legendary White House Seder, the Obamas used the widely popular Maxwell House Haggaddah, (which we wrote about in our last issue). Roughly 20 people attended the Seder, including the Obama family, White House senior adviser David Axelrod (who helped organized the event), and other White House staffers.
Posted in Arts & Culture, religion
Tagged Barack Obama, David Axelrod, Maxwell House Haggaddah, Obama Family, passover, seder
By Marista Lane
According to the AP (via NYT), the Jets have successfully changed the start of their game against the Tennessee Titans on Sept. 27 from 4:15 p.m. to 1 p.m. so as not to interfere with Yom Kippur:
N.F.L. has moved the start time of the Jets’ game against the Tennessee Titans on Sept. 27 to 1 p.m. from 4:15 after the team complained about having to play home games on consecutive Jewish holidays. The change was made a day after the Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson, sent a letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell suggesting the switch to allow fans to arrive home before sundown on Yom Kippur.
How considerate.
Posted in Politics
Tagged Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Football, New York Jets, NFL, yom kippur
By Marista Lane
Asher Roth is now number one on iTunes. The white Jewish rapper from Morrisville, Pennsylvania, struck it big with “I Love College,” an anthem/satirical ode to college life. It was the first hit off his debut album, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, which climbed atop iTunes rankings after it’s release on Monday.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
[“I Love College”], which Roth calls ‘satire at its finest,’ has sold nearly a million copies since its release in January, and been streamed more than 36 million times on his MySpace page….
[The Guardian proclaimed] “rap is about to get its first white Jewish superstar since the Beastie Boys.”
The Inquirer also said, “A spokesman for Roth said he does not consider himself Jewish and does not practice Judaism.”
Posted in Arts & Culture, Culture
Tagged Asher Roth, Hip-Hop, iTunes, Jewish Rapper, Music, Rap, Rapping
By Benjamin Schuman-Stoler
European delegates walk out during Ahmadinejad's speech (via JTA)
Well, it’s not as if the United Nations Durban II conference against racism was ever going to avoid controversy. The primary storyline going into the conference was the contentious–if not by any means surprising–abstention by the United States and Israel (as well as Canada, Italy, Germany, Australia, and Holland).
But news has just come out about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech earlier today that we must post first.
JTA has the scoop on the speech, which occurred a few hours ago, in which European diplomats walked out in protest:
In a speech at the U.N.-sponsored anti-racism conference in Geneva, the Iranian president first blamed the West for injustice, then went on the offensive against Israel, calling it the “racist perpetrators of genocide.”
“Under the pretext of Jewish suffering, they have helped bring to power the most oppressive, racist regime in Palestine,” Ahmadinejad said, to heavy applause from Iranians in the upper gallery and pockets of Muslims elsewhere on the floor. “They have always been silent about their crimes.”…
At the first mention of “Jewish,” representatives of the 23 European Union countries that chose to participate in the conference noisily got up from their seats and marched out the door—a move met by more clapping from Iranian and Arab delegates, while other diplomatic delegations refrained…
Ahmadinejad went on to criticize the United States for the bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the global economic crisis.
He railed against those who use their “economic and political influence” and control of the media to back the “barbaric racism” of the “Zionist regime.” He called for the world to “put an end to abuses by the Zionists” and the “conspiracies by some powers and Zionist circles.” Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Tagged Ban Ki-Moon, Barack Obama, Durban II, Iran, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Racism, UN
By Marista Lane
Judges at a circuit court of appeals in Ohio granted suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk a stay of removal late Tuesday night after his attorneys claimed that removing him from the United States would be harmful to his health.
CNN says Demjanjuk, who suffers from pre-leukemia, kidney problems, spinal problems and “a couple of types of gout,” according to his attorney, was going to be deported after the German government issued an arrest warrant on March 10 for “being an accessory to 29,000 counts of murder as a guard at Sobibor from March to September 1943.”
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is quoted as saying that “[Demjanjuk] wants to plead the sense of fairness that he regularly denied all of the victims at Sobibor.” Hier says the justifications for the stay of removal are “preposterous coming from a person that served the S.S. in a death camp. It is a preposterous argument and insulting to the survivors of the Holocaust.”
The United States government filed charges against Demjanjuk in 1999 for his alleged history as a concentration camp guard, and stripped him of his U.S. citizenship. Although the U.S. has been awaiting his deportation since 2005, Demjanjuk has successfully delayed the process via a series of appeals.
By Maxine Springer
I was delighted to discover that one of my favorite blogs, CakeWrecks, had a special post dedicated to Passover. (If you’re not familiar with CakeWrecks, daily posts include photos of real (disastrous) cakes and snarky comments about them.
The other wrecks included in the post reminded me of Spicebox, one of Moment‘s most popular departments. If you haven’t checked out our humorous Passover Spicebox entries, you can see them here.
InTheMoment 