Jewish Holidays: a primer from the hard Left

Painting spotted in a Columbus, GA coffee shop. (Photograph: Dave Bender)

The Daily Kos weblog (uber-Left, for those just returning from exile on Saturn) recently posted a wickedly clever "explanation" of the Jewish holidays for the "covenentally challenged," apparently.

An excerpt:

"Thursday evening, September 27 starts Sukkot, the Jewish festival commemorating our ancestors wandering around with Moses 40 years in the wilderness (or as the less theatrical among us refer to it, the desert). Sukkot also tries to serve the incongruent purpose of celebrating the harvest – which one has reason to believe probably only happens every 40 years in the desert. Or perhaps never. FEMA was said to have been heavily involved in that relocation effort.

(Photos - ed.)
Our people wandering in desert. Our people wandering in mall.

"During Sukkot, Jews are supposed to "dwell" for 7 days in crude temporary shelters called sukkahs, because, why create a whole completely new word? These "dwellings" are meant to represent the ones our people had to schlep around in the desert for 40 years after leaving Egypt. As you'll see later, 40 is apparently not a terribly lucky number for our people, not even on a scratch off lottery ticket. More also on the construction of these sukkahs later.

"Sukkot runs, or to be more precise, sits, outside in these huts, through Wednesday evening, October 3. Immediately on the heels of Sukkot, Thursday, Oct. 4, we’ve got Shemini Atzeret, or as it is known technically "The Day after the Last Day of Sukkot." A holiday unusual in the Jewish calendar, because it is celebrated far more for when it is than for what it is. Shemini Atzeret is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the eighth day of the festival of Sukkot, simply because loosely translated Shemini Atzeret means "the eighth day of the festival of Sukkot." Go figure. The Talmud explains that there are six ways in which Shemini Atzeret is different from Sukkot, which you can learn only by reading the Talmud – because apparently nobody else is talking."

Read the rest. And as for the politics? Take an anti-nausea pill first...

Fox buys Israeli TV series

From Ynetnews:

"20th Century Fox Studios acquired the format of the Israeli drama show 'The Ex', and will produce a pilot for CBS based on the Israeli series. If the network is happy with the pilot, the show will go into production.

'The Ex' was written and directed by Sigal Avin, produced by Israeli network Keshet and broadcast on Channel 2 in the past year."

Simchat Torah: 'Gonna' tanz da' night away'

Simchat Torah: joyous "Hakafot Shnyiot" dancing at Jerusalem's Liberty Bell park. (Dave Bender)

A sweet meditation from Chabad:

"Once a year, Jews around the world gather in their synagogues and joyously celebrate, dance and sing. The holiday is a celebration of the Torah -- as is indicated by its name, Simchat Torah. The timing of this holiday is often questioned: why celebrate our connection to the Torah more than four months after the date when it was given: Shavuot? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to do the hakafot [dancing with Torah scrolls - ed.] on the day when we actually received the Torah?

"The answer given is that our celebration on Shavuot is somewhat muted because the First Tablets were eventually destroyed. Simchat Torah, however, is a celebration of the Second Tablets, which Moses brought down from Heaven when G‑d granted forgiveness for the sin of the Golden Calf on Yom Kippur.

"Simchat Torah is the culmination of the three-part Biblical holiday season. With each holiday, the joy steadily increases. After Passover and Shavuot we have Sukkot, a holiday dubbed "the Season of our Joy" -- and then we are treated to the unbridled joy of Simchat Torah which eclipses even the joy of Sukkot. And the reason for this great joy? We are celebrating our 'second chance.'"

Read the rest.

Playboy bunny takes on Israel

Via Camera:

"This time it's Playboy. As we've noted previously, distorted articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict have increasingly turned up in popular magazines and professional journals that don't ordinarily cover world affairs (eg: Vogue, Architectural Review, Oprah and Lancet). Editors of such publications are generally unequipped to spot inaccuracies, distortions and lack of context on Middle East issues. Because these publications usually provide information on non-controversial or human interest stories, when they promote fringe, false and inflammatory points of view the mainstream public is likely to accept these views as credible.

"It is most troubling, then, that Playboy magazine, the racy but popular men's magazine, has published in its October 2007 issue an article comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa. The article, "Israel shouldn't get a free pass" by Jonathan Tasini, argues that "Jimmy Carter is correct in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid when he describes the control over Palestinians' movements as similar to South Africa's apartheid system."

Read the rest.

Great. Tits and ass and anti-Israel. Can't wait to, umm, read the article. It was tough enough finding the bunny logo without a pic, I'm telling you...

'Dig: Noam Chomsky, Mordechai Vanunu & Edward Said are Jewish. Elie Wiesel is goyish.'

Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Emanuele Ottolenghi deconstructs a common nihilistic ailment afflicting Jewish intellectuals among the hard Left:

In an essay published in the Jewish magazine Tikkun last January, Bertell Ollman, one of the world’s best-known Marxist theorists, recounted how, on his way into the operating room, he realised that if he did not survive his surgery, he would die a Jew. The prospect was so unsettling that, once healed, he wrote his Letter of resignation from the Jewish people. The reasons were Zionism, Israel, and the support its policies enjoy from other Jews.

Ollman might yet reconsider, but for that to happen, Jews would have to embrace his own version of Jewish identity. Paraphrasing a Lenny Bruce joke, he said:

"Noam Chomsky, Mordechai Vanunu and Edward Said are Jewish. Elie Wiesel is goyish. So, too, all ‘Jewish’ neo-cons. Socialism and communism are Jewish. Sharon and Zionism are very goyish. And, who knows, if this reading of Judaism were to take hold, I may one day apply for readmission to the Jewish people."

Painfully important reading.

Here's Bruce's original Jewish-Goyish rap, and an updated version.

Succot: checking out the goods

Hassidic youth at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open-air market scrutinizing etrog (citron) used in week-long Succot (Feast of Tabernacles) holiday. (Dave Bender)

More Flickpics here, and more posts are here.

A fascinating - if unlikely - Succot story is here.

Breaking: Ahmadinejad Tased at Columbia

(2007-09-24) — Columbia University promised a full investigation into charges of police brutality after today’s reported Tasering of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had come to the Ivy League school to give the annual Adolph Hitler Memorial Peace and Tolerance Lecture.

Like a similar incident at the University of Florida last week, the stun-gun assault by police followed a lengthy anti-American rant by the alleged victim, and was immediately condemned by civil rights advocates. According to eyewitnesses, Mr. Ahmadinejad was dragged from the room shouting: “Do not make to Tase myself, slang brother man.”

It was not immediately known whether the victim was legitimately attempting to exercise his freedom of speech or if, as one unnamed witness said, “he’s little more than a publicity hound and prankster who will do anything to get news coverage.”

Imagine my surprise (if only).

Previous coverage.

Who you callin' a 'settler?!'

City of Ma'ale Adumim (Google)

Ok. Now it's personal.


David Brinn, managing editor, Israel21c.org

Colleague, mentor, editor, music-reviewer and all-around great guy David Brinn weighs in (...finally, Dave...) about life as a "settler," in - oh, the horror! - Ma'ale Adumim. His riposte is in reply to a book review appearing in Haaretz that dissed him without a second, critical thought:

"I always bristle when I’m referred to as a ‘settler’. It happened recently in the national left-leaning daily paper Ha’aretz, all so innocently, in an article about my friend, author Matt Rees, who just released his first mystery novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, about a Palestinian private eye.

"‘Rees lives with his wife in the Old Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem. He has organized an office where he can sit in front of the keyboard and look out at the city’s landscapes through the window. There is a guitar in the room. He is also a musician and plays bass guitar in an ensemble formed by some of his friends who live in Jewish settlements in the territories.’"

I just happen to be one of Matt’s band mates. And all right, I do live in Ma’aleh Adumim, a city situated three miles from Jerusalem, just over the ‘Green Line’ - that invisible boundary that separates Israel from the West Bank.

Read the rest.

(Full disclosure: David Brinn was my editor and bud over at Israel21c.org. Here's a partial list of articles that I wrote, and he edited. I also posted to their blog, Israelity). Here's a video slideshow I photographed and produced of an event co-sponsored by Israel21c:

Breaking: Israel Dismantles, World's Problems End (update 3)

Oh, hey: and about the blather 'n' swill that there are "no homosexuals in Iran" (graphic photos)?

Update: the wave of cheers and applause by Columbia University students to Ahmadinejad's speech leave me with an appalling sense of nausea, revulsion and despair.

Words. Fail. Me.

"...the new Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has kicked off a popular "Iran-loves-Jews" campaign that will include a sensitive re-writing of the laws to accommodate religions other than Islam. He explained, "With the Zionist entity out of the way, the Iranian government will tone down its violent and threatening rhetoric, dismantle its nuclear program, and stop funding Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. As a matter of fact, I might even resign my position and award the presidency to someone else. Do you think Schwarzenegger is available?"

"A spokesperson for Hezbollah stated that Iran's proposal wouldn't matter. "We don't need the funding because we no longer have any reason to exist. We disposed of our weapons, and will now re-focus on opening a chain of pizzerias. You just can't get decent pizza around here, and we're going to change that."

"He was joined by a former high-ranking member of Hamas: "Yeah, we also pretty much accomplished what we wanted. We'll get together for reunions now and then, but otherwise, we'll just settle down into normal lifestyles. You know... mortgage, house, bowling, PTA meetings..."

Read the rest here.

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger's introductory remarks.

(Yes, this is a segment of a previous post - but what with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia, at the United Nations and the National Press Club, etc, well, "the 'troofer' shall set you free," right? Oh, wait... or was that "work shall set you free?" Well, no doubt the Iranian leader has his own thoughts about that).

Click here for more posts about Iran.

Ahmadinejad: Handing out heaven's key

Does you remember this phenomenon, during the Iran-Iraq war?:

"In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small plastic key would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was supposed to open for them the gates to paradise.

“In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the mine fields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.
(...)
"The western media showed little interest for the Basiji – perhaps because journalists could not be present during the hostilities or perhaps because they did not believe the reports. Such disinterest has persisted to this day. The 5000 dead of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on the Kurds of Halabja have remained in our memory. History has forgotten the children of the minefields.

"Today, however, Ahmadinejad appears in public in his Basiji uniform. During the war, he served as one of the Basiji instructors who turned children into martyrs."

This is what the man who is to speak at Columbia University directly, personally represents.

Read the rest.