Dov Hikind's Purim Blackface Draws Outrage

We don't see anything wrong with wearing an afro wig on Purim. In fact we did it this year (with a kippah clipped to it) and walked around giving generous "peace" signs and got no criticism.

Hardly any mention of an afro wig in the New Yorker or in the other media that is critical of Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

Mostly it's the blackface part of his Purim costume that raised people's hackles.

...The revelation that Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman from Brooklyn, had hosted a Purim party while wearing a costume intended to represent an African-American basketball player was first made by the New York Observer, which published a photograph of Hikind wearing an orange jersey, a nimbus of black wig, and sunglasses, with his face darkened with cosmetics. The image first appeared on the Facebook page of Hikind’s son, Yoni...Read more.

Hey Dov, give us a call. We'll explain all this to you. What you aren't calling? OK here is what you need to say, "I get it; I am sorry; I did a stupid insensitive thing; I won't do it again."

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Is Movie Violence Kosher?

We had a short discussion with our son on Purim about whether the animated film "Wreck-It Ralph" had too much violence for the kids. Our son was worried that if the kids see violence on film that will cause them to act more violently towards each other. We argued that violence in film can be an outlet for the kids that may lessen their physical hitting of each other, as Kubrick put it, “a catharsis rather than a model."

In the book of Esther there is violence: the hanging of Haman and his sons and more, "...in Shushan the palace the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men (Esther 9:6)," not to mention the implied violence in the Biblical statement by God that we read in the synagogue the day before to wit, "...that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."

Back to our question: Who is right? Is film violence kosher? Can our kids safely consume it?

The case can be made on both sides of this issue. In January 2013, the Atlantic ran a piece on the subject which collects the opinions of ten film directors, "'There's Violence in the Bible': Famous Directors on Violence in Film." The context of the article was set like this:

The Internet has been abuzz recently about Quentin Tarantino's explosive interview with a British journalist for Channel 4, in which the director snapped after being asked why he didn't think film violence and real violence were connected. "Don't ask me questions like that. I'm not biting. I refuse your question," he retorted. "I'm not your slave and you're not my master. You can't make me dance to your tune. I'm not your monkey." Though he goes somewhat off the handle, Tarantino is right about one thing—he has been asked about violence quite a bit. And so have many other directors that use it in their films. Below, I've collected a few of their answers, which range from quippy to sincere, to get a better view of how violent Hollywood views itself.

See the article here. The bible comparison in the essay's title appears in an interview with Stanley Kubrick that started out, "There has always been violence in art. There is violence in the Bible, violence in Homer, violence in Shakespeare, and many psychiatrists believe that it serves as a catharsis rather than a model."

We find Kubrick's opinions to be eloquent. The excerpt from him concludes:

The simplistic notion that films and TV can transform an otherwise innocent and good person into a criminal has strong overtones of the Salem witch trials. This notion is further encouraged by the criminals and their lawyers who hope for mitigation through this excuse. I am also surprised at the extremely illogical distinction that is so often drawn between harmful violence and the so-called harmless violence of, say, Tom and Jerry cartoons or James Bond movies, where often sadistic violence is presented as unadulterated fun. I hasten to say, I don’t think that they contribute to violence either. Films and TV are also convenient whipping boys for politicians because they allow them to look away from the social and economic causes of crime, about which they are either unwilling or unable to do anything.”

The full Kubrick interview (c. 1982) is here.

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Is air kosher?

No, according to rabbis in Israel and Brooklyn, air is no longer kosher.

Air contains microscopic organisms that neither chew the cud nor have split hooves.

Kosher true Jews are now required to wear rabbinical approved gas masks when they wish to breathe.

Happy Purim.

44 Talmudic Books for Kindle
36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English 
Whence and Wherefore
God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

New York Times Merges With Tzvee's Talmudic Blog

The New York Times announced that it has merged with Tzvee's Talmudic Blog to form "The New York Times Talmudic Blog."

The Times was already known as a premier Jewish newspaper in the city with high visibility Jewish editorial writers like Tom Friedman, Roger Cohen and Paul Krugman and Israeli news bureau chief Jodi Rudroren.

"We lacked Talmudic depth of analysis," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher of the Times. "This merger with the Talmudic blog will fill in that lacuna in our content."

Tzvee Zahavy, Chairman & Publisher of the Talmudic Blog said, "Contrary to some popular opinion in the Talmud blogosphere, we always liked the Times' Jewish stories and its coverage of Israeli politics." In Talmudic style he added, "Sometimes we vehemently objected to the Times and everything that it stands for. This merger will advance the ability of the Times' Jewish writers to seek out new modes of conflicted Jewish identity."

In other Jewish media merger news, the three major Jewish comedy publications announced that they will join together, "The Jewish Press," "The Onion" and "The Borowitz Report." The new entity will be called, "The Everything Bagel."

In worldwide Purim news, our old friend the peripatetic master journalist Yori Yanover reports on major developments from Israel and Cleveland:

• First White Power Talmudic Yeshiva Opened in Ohio
• Defying Boycotts, Jagger, Stones, to Honor Israel’s 65th Birthday

Whence and Wherefore

God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Are mannequins kosher?

From The New York Times we found a Purim article published just a bit early: 

Modesty in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Is Enforced by Secret Squads: "Shadowy committees have threatened shop owners over mannequins they don't like, and reportedly have invaded homes to seize computer equipment."

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

Some men are sexually aroused by mannequins! Definitely not kosher!

Ha ha ha, how funny is this!?

Read More

Is David Yerushalmi Jewish?

Previously we wrote about anti-Shariah crusader David Yerushalmi. He is back in the news again at the National Review and Mother Jones, according to Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches.

A strong objection at NR to Yerushalmi's crusade is that he proposes a preemptive solution to a problem that does not yet exist.

On 7/31/11 we wrote: The Times has a front page article on the lawyer, David Yerushalmi, "The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement" by Andrea Elliot. It is quite negative in tone, critical of his anti-Shariah agenda, his campaign against Islamic law.

We are opposed to every facet of Yerushalmi's bigoted campaign. Let us make it as clear as possible. Attacking Sharia as an evil by association with terrorism is equivalent to attacking Nike shoes because terrorists wear them. Law, scripture, propaganda -- all those can be the clothing of evil and terror. Going after the garb to make it outlawed is a misdirection of gargantuan proportions that will accomplish nothing except to engender a backlash.

Finally, the Times is catching up and catching on. Nearly five months ago we criticized this agenda, based on what we read in a Mother Jones article. On 3/7/2011, we posted this about David Yerushalmi:

Yes, David Yerushalmi is a Jew. According to an email by him published in Mother Jones, he is an Orthodox, practicing Jew. He says, "My parents are Russian Jewish immigrants who came to this country ...in the 20th century." Yerushalmi is an attorney and a right wing political activist.

The article in Mother Jones is quite negative and accusatory from the title on through, "Meet the White Supremacist Leading the GOP's Anti-Sharia Crusade." Its author Tim Murphy summarizes his attack on Yerushalmi, "States across the country are considering far-right bills to ban Islamic law. For that, we have hate-group leader David Yerushalmi to thank."

He goes on to describe the Yerushalmi campaign quite negatively:

Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make "material support" for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.

The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn't come out of nowhere. Though it's the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. (A court might refer to Sharia law in child custody or prisoner rights cases.) Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states. And while fears of an impending caliphate are myriad on the far-right, the surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a "war against Islam" and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.

The anti-Sharia movement gets quite Talmudic in the ways that tries to avoid the appearance of racism, while accomplishing its anti-Islamic aims. Yerushalmi's sample legislation, which he promotes, cloaks itself in language substitutions, as in,

...a sample bill Yerushalmi drafted at the behest of the American Public Policy Alliance, a right-wing organization established with the goal of protecting American citizens from "the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law."

In a 40-minute PowerPoint that's available on the organization's site, Yerushalmi explained the ins and outs of the sample legislation. His bills differ from the failed Oklahoma amendment in one key way: They don't mention Sharia. Instead, they focus more broadly on "foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines." As Yerushalmi explained in an interview with the nativist New English Review in December, the language is "facially neutral," thereby achieving the same result while "avoiding the sticky problems of our First Amendment jurisprudence."

We are not pleased to read about Yerushalmi accusations that he supports racists and racism,

Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that's consistent with SANE's mission statement, which emphasizes that "America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white." And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews "destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite." Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the "undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State."

Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. He's been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times. And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox.

Oy, we are liberal and Jewish and simply don't like being compared to "a fatal parasite" -- so Mr. Yerushalmi has not exactly won us over, even with his sharply argued Talmudic rhetoric.

The man replies after the fact to the article, having refused to be interviewed by the writer whom he accuses of "bigoted journalism." Okay but why now write an email? In it Yerushalmi denies that he is a "white supremacist" because, "As an Orthodox Jew, whose grandparents and parents were immigrants to this country, I am the first person that real white supremacists wish to murder. Have you not read neo-Nazi or KKK literature?" Murphy probably did read that literature, which adds to the contradictions that enhance the newsworthiness of this story.

Yerushalmi denies he is racist, even though he admits that his writings are suffused with racist discussions.

And he gets worked up because something else Murphy says.

Secondly, you suggest I am a racist because I criticize liberal Jews. I dare say that insofar as I am an orthodox, practicing Jew, my criticism of liberal Jews can hardly be counted as "racism;" yet, indeed, you make this asinine argument.

This fails the Talmud test, there is no logic here in the refutation. If Murphy sees fit to apply the tag racist to a Jew because of how he attacks other Jews, that is his right - and it is all the more ironic and interesting.

And then we listen as Mr. Yerushalmi calls other charges in Murphy's essay, "patently absurd" or a "patent falsehood" or "a bigoted ad hominem attack" and threatens Murphy with "a legal brief" and implies that he will sue Murphy for "actual malice."

Whew!

We are grateful that this article and reply came out before the Jewish holiday of Purim. It gives us a chance to point out a timely seasonal irony.

To preface this, when we were twelve we wrote a school report on Judah P. Benjamin, a Jewish politician who supported slavery in the US Senate and then rose to political prominence in the Confederacy during the civil war. While in the Senate, once after Benjamin delivered an eloquent pro-slavery speech, one of his opponents rose to criticize Benjamin, calling him "an Israelite with Egyptian tendencies." Even at the age of twelve we could see that this a was delicious political rhetorical irony.

Shifting to the case at hand, the enemy of the Jews in the book of Esther is the nefarious Haman, the Agagite.

He conspires with the King of Persia in a racist anti-Semitic plot to have the Jews killed,

Then Haman said to King Ahasverus, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not for the king's profit to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed..." (Esther 3:8-9).

Well certainly, Yerushalmi is not seeking to pass legislation to kill all the Muslims in our kingdom.

But  he does go after a certain people dispersed among us, the Muslims. And he does go after their laws that are different from those of every other people. We do think it is fair to rise in the chamber of debate and to ask ironically, is Mr. Yerushalmi a Jew with Agagite tendencies? Is he acting in ways that appear nefarious and racist against another people? Obviously, Murphy thinks that he is, and it makes for an interesting article.

Read More

Happy Purim. Absolut Talmud

Absolut Talmud

Hat tip to Yitz, Bernice, et. al.

Read More

Is Rush Limbaugh Jewish?

Yes, Rush Limbaugh is a Jew. Rush's Conservative Gentile persona is a successful act that has earned him record multimillion dollar contracts in the radio business.

Rush's real name is Ronald Levy. He was born on the upper West Side of Manhattan. His father was a dermatologist and his mother a junior high school librarian. He attended the Ramaz School where he excelled at floor hockey and then Amherst College where he double-majored in art history and chemistry.

Rush was accepted to Albert Einstein Medical School of Yeshiva University. He had to withdraw during his first semester because he could not control his mocking derisive laughter when confronted with the illnesses and infirmities of the hospital patients.

Happy Purim everybody. א פריילעכן פורים
Rush! Rush! Rush! !רָשׁ! רָשׁ! רָשׁ

חַג פּוּרִים, חַג פּוּרִים,
חַג גָּדוֹל לַיְּהוּדִים!
מַסֵּכוֹת, רַעֲשָׁנִים,
שִׁירִים וְרִקּוּדִים!

הָבָה נַרְעִישֶׁהָ:
רָשׁ רָשׁ רָשׁ!
הָבָה נַרְעִישֶׁהָ:
רָשׁ רָשׁ רָשׁ!
הָבָה נַרְעִישֶׁהָ:
רָשׁ רָשׁ רָשׁ!
בָּרַעֲשָׁנִים

//repost from 5769//

Read More

Rabbi Norman Lamm's Book on Purim and the Megillah

Rabbi Norman Lamm is one of the most influential Orthodox Jewish scholars and leaders of our generation. I consulted with him for guidance when I was a young professor starting out on my academic career in Jewish Studies and when Rabbi Lamm was just appointed president of Yeshiva University. He steered me in the right directions. He also steered YU through some turbulent times and helped to rescue it from financial disaster in the late 70s and 80s.

Rabbi Lamm is a staunch and eloquent spokesman for Orthodox Jewish values and philosophies. His new book on Purim is a work of art and of poetic expression. It is an exciting statement of Torah-true theology and commentary. His work is supported by rich knowledge of the texts of the prayers and of the Book of Esther and it is greatly enriched by two thousand years of rabbinic insights.

As a bonus this handsome book includes some of the Rabbi's sermons on other "days of salvation and thanksgiving" that are celebrated by modern Jews. The book speaks in a popular voice accessible to the layperson, Jew and non-Jew alike, thanks to the brilliant editing and contributions to the book by the noted Orthodox theologian, and talented writer, Dr. Joel Wolowelsky.

No doubt, I have faith that this book will enrich this year's Purim celebration for us at home and in the synagogue.

Read More