Sarah Silverman On Your Voice Mail!

If you’re already in the market for a really spectacular Hanukkah gift, look no further.  For the next 12 days, Moment will be auctioning off spectacular vacations, rare books, and, yes, even Sarah Silverman’s voice for your voice mail or answering machine.

Click here to bid!

This Week’s Links

By Michelle Albert

• Four car bombs exploded in front of Shiite mosques in Baghdad this morning, killing 39 people and wounding 54.
• The Rabbinical Council of America is meeting this Sunday to discuss the possibility of female leadership in Orthodox synagogues. This comes a few months after a woman was almost ordained as a rabbi by one of the RCA’s members.
• The XX Factor reviews Sarah Silverman’s new book, The Bedwetter.
• England’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, answers questions about dealing with anti-Semitism on university campuses, Israeli use of British passports in Dubai and how he feels about being the first British Prime Minister to address the Knesset.
• Berlin’s Free University has launched an Internet database documenting more than 20,000 works of art deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis and removed from German museums in 1937.
• In honor of Israel’s 62nd birthday, the Israeli army marched in a formation resembling Zionist founder Theodor Herzl’s head.

The Forward 50: 2008 Jews of the Year

By Jeremy Gillick

The Forward has published its annual list of America’s 50 most important Jews: the Forward 50.

Winners include Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, about whom you can read here.

There’s also Morris Allen, a Conservative Rabbi from Minnesota who helped re-invent kashrut as a moral rather than merely legal imperative, just as Agriprocessors, America’s largest kosher meat producer, sunk deeper and deeper into sin, exploitation and eventually, bankruptcy.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder of the new, liberal Jewish, Israel lobby group J-Street, is at the top of the list too. Although this choice is perhaps more a reflection of the Forward‘s editorial stance than of Ben-Ami’s success, the creation of a viable alternative to AIPAC is, at the very least, a major symbolic accomplishment. And it could become much more than that. Here’s what Moment columnist Eric Alterman had to say about J-Street back in July.

Finding the “Real (Jewish) Americans”

More than 200 professors of Jewish studies have joined to form the latest Jews-for-Obama group, reports The Jewish Daily Forward. But the Republican Jewish Coalition poo-poos the new alliance’s potential impact. Jews won’t listen to eggheads, reasons RJC executive director Matt Brooks. “[T]hese elites in many regards just speak for themselves,” he explained to The Forward.

Brooks hits the nail on the head (if you’ll permit a workingman’s metaphor those ivory tower types probably wouldn’t understand): Anyone knows that, say, Jewish seniors in Florida wouldn’t hold much truck with woolly-headed, four-eyed academics. Jews’ disdain for the university sort is legend.

No, as Brooks implies, undecided Jewish voters are much more likely to take political guidance from “real” Americans like Moshe the Plumber and all his buddies at the Nuremberg Sarah Palin rallies. You’ve probably seen them on YouTube—they’re the ones going nuts and shouting “Trotskyist!” when talk turns to Obama’s tax plan.

Granted, no matter whose bubbe or zayde they are, few oldsters worried about Obama are likely to be swayed by comedian Sarah Silverman’s “Great Schlep”, a stunt my (strongly pro-Obama) father found patently insulting. And certainly the Obama campaign would gladly sacrifice a chunk of its record-breaking cash haul (at least, as much as the McCain campaign spent on Sarah Palin’s make-up artist) to anyone who could divine exactly how to reach those elusive Jewish holdouts. But I sense Brooks doesn’t have the answer, either.

Photo by Mike Licht.

—Mandy Katz

This Week’s Links

• Stop bitching and pick up a knife. Activists, upset with the kosher meat industry, have taken matters into their own hands. [JTA]
• A profile of Jewish rapper Kosha Dillz. [Forward]
• Alan M. Dershowitz is endorsing Obama for President. [JPost Blogs]
• A US soldier was beat up. That soldier was Jewish. Is there a connection? [Jewish Journal]
• “What does make this an unusual election is that the Democratic candidate is largely unknown to the Jewish community. It’s relatively rare that that happens.” An interview with Jonathon Sarna on the election. [JUF News]
• Craving some unnecessarily bloody violence? Be patient. Quentin Tarantino started filming his Brad Pitt flick about killing a bunch of Nazis. [Nextbook]
• As long as Philip Roth keeps hating on Swedes, he’ll never win a Nobel Prize. [AP via 16th and Q]
• Who wins in a fight: Sarah Silverman or Jackie Mason? They’re battling over the election. I’ll take the one with more makeup. Which one is that? [Totally Jewish]

Photo by Ligadier Truffaut.

—Benjamin Schuman-Stoler

Sarah Silverman’s Great Schlep

Trying to push American Jewish seniors to vote Democrat, the Jewish Council for Education & Research has enlisted Sarah Silverman as the face of its new hilarious canvassing campaign, “The Great Schlep.”

Besides Silverman’s outrageous tactics (that often flirt with the inappropriate) are talking points such as, “Obama Loves Israel And So Do You” and “He’s Black, Let’s Talk About It,” as well as Silverman’s own assertion that if anyone should be able to relate to outsiders with funny names it should be the Jews.

This comes in the wake of an AJC poll that concluded Jewish voters favor Obama to Republican nominee John McCain 57 to 30 percent. According to AOL News, Obama is sweeping the 18-29 demographic as well, with a 60 percent share.