Sorry I missed the last night of Hanukkah this year (sundown on the 19th). But this FB status-update by someone I was friends with during high school reminded me of (part of the reason) why I'm a Jew:
They may want to take Christ out of Christmas, but they can never take Christ out of me. If you are proud to be a Christian and are not ashamed of Christ then post this as your status for 1 day as a light to the world. Most people will be to ashamed or scared to do this. "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in Heaven"
To which I wanted to (but didn't) respond...
They may want to put Christ back in Christmas, but they can never put Christ back in me. If you are in the majority of humans on this planet for whom Jesus has no special significance and are not ashamed that these kinds of Christological status-updates make you roll your eyes, cringe, or retch, then post THIS as your status for 1 day as a light to the REST of the world. Most people will be too ashamed or scared to do this (or to spell 'to' correctly).
Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah, and Merry Christmas to all! :)
This evening, before leaving for our Farewell Dinner, I was able to light the candle for the first night of Hanukkah. Thanks to my awesome new menorah (it's a K-Wad original!) which fits in my windowsill, this is the first time I've ever been able to fulfill the mitzvah to publicize the miracle! And I know it's totally hokey, but there is something kinda magical about candlelight in the dark winter night.
So if you're cruising around town early tomorrow night or Sunday evening, drive by Casa de Pickles for a peek. In case you don't remember my house number, it'll probably be the only one in my neighborhood with a menorah in the front window :)
Vodka gimlets might be on their way out of Sweet Pickles' world. I love vodka gimlets as much as I love cocaine and unsafe sex, but as with those two, it's hard to know when to slow down. Now that I'm nearing my 30th birthday, I have to realize that my body just can't do what it could when I was 20.
Have you been seeing Wal-Mart's television commercials in which they promise to rock your world with how many check-out lanes they're gonna have open during the holiday season. This, however, is a bald-faced lie. Not just an exaggeration, but an Orwellian opposite of reality. There were a grand total of 7 check-out stations open at lunch time today: 1 was the cigarette lane (10 items or less), 4 were express lanes (20 items or less), and 2 were for the rest of us poor suckers. I was fifth in line behind four other customers, none of whom had less than $200 worth of merchandise to be checked out. Uh, hello... it's DECEMBER! I felt like leaving my shopping cart in line, marching over to the manager's desk, telling him or her "Don't piss on my head, and then have your national advertising campaign tell me it's raining," and then strike him or her across the face with an open palm.
Headed from Wal-Mart to campus, I sat in traffic behind an SUV with plates from Anderson County, Tennessee, that had a blue-and-white bumpersticker in Hebrew language and with a Star of David. I couldn't get close enough to make out what it said (not that my Hebrew is good enough to read it, unless it was something simple). I don't know where Anderson County, Tennessee is, but I like their style.
I'll be heading back home in a while. Before my 4:00pm final exam (in which we're sharing an international potluck dinner), I've got to cook. I'm bringing latkes!
This NYTimes story, A Senator's Gift to the Jews, Nonreturnable, is about the Hanukkah song (video below) written by Utah's Orrin Hatch, as a gift to the Jews. I find it utterly delightful, and his interfaith gesture of goodwill at this time of year makes me feel good. For years I've been intrigued, slightly bemused, and a little bit flattered by Mormons' philosemitism. But Sen. Hatch takes it to a whole new level. I realize that people can reasonably question his motivations. I choose not to, and accept this gift at face-value. I'm not suggesting that everyone should agree with Hatch's sentiments, but here are some quotes and excerpts that either made me blush or made me verklempt:
“Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do.”
“Mormons believe the Jewish people are the chosen people, just like the Old Testament says.” [I would prefer the term "Hebrew Bible" to "Old Testament," but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.]
The doorways of his homes in Utah and DC have mezuzot. [Even mine don't!]
He keeps a copy of the Torah in his Senate office.
“I feel sorry I’m not Jewish sometimes.” [I used to feel the same way, Senator. There's something that can be done about that... call me!]
“People need to know the story of Hanukkah. It was a miracle.” [Yes, they do. Not necessarily because it was a miracle, but thank you for recognizing that.]
All of this is getting me in the mood for what is probably my favorite holiday of the Hebrew calendar! I need to get out the menorah that K-Wad made for me... first candle gets lighted at sundown on Friday!
Nothing give me goosebumps like the blast of a shofar. It's an ancient call... the sound that trumpeted down from the top of Mount Sinai, and that brought down the walls of Jericho. And it's especially powerful inside a synagogue filled with Jews. Not just two or three Jews, but several hundred assembled together and in prayer-shawls. P.S. - You know who looks great in his prayer-shawl? Sweet Pickles.
With everyone I know going to Uganda this past summer or in the near future, Entebbe had been on my mind recently. This BBC story about the Israeli Foreign Minister's recent wreath-laying at the old terminal there was weirdly timely. The breathtaking audacity of the surprise raid still gives me goosebumps. Sadly, I was also reminded that, while fair-minded critics of Israel's policies make good-faith efforts to distinguish between the Israeli government and all Jews, people like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Baader-Meinhof seldom do.
All my Entebbe-destined friends, I want you to go there and take a picture of it for Sweet Pickles!
Mark Sanford (the the married politician billing taxpayers for his international airfare to a booty-call in the Pampas), has apparently decided that he will not resign his position as governor of South Carolina, citing King David as his example. The biblical hero David, progenitor of the messiah? OH REALLY? If casting about for a biblical adulterer with which to compare yourself, try Potiphar's wife. Because your political résumé doesn't quite hold up. David was a giant-slaying anointed dynasty-founder. You are the sleazy governor of a not-all-that-important state. On The Daily Show tonight, host Jon Stewart (and Member of the Tribe) said it best... something to this effect: If you are a conservative Christian caught in adultery, don't use my book in your justifications... use your own!
I love it! And you thought Sweet Pickles' name sounded goyish! :)
What a fascinating story about an isolated community of Peruvian Jews. This quote in particular resonates: "We were isolated for so many decades, living on the jungle’s edge
in a Catholic society without rabbis or a synagogue, in which all we
had were some vague notions of what it meant to be Jewish. But when I was a child, my mother told me
something that forever burned into my mind... She told me,
‘You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.’ "
Not just as a reaction, but if more highways around our country were named afterAbraham Joshua Heschel, we'd all be better off. Literally, one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century. I wish more Americans knew more about him. In The Sabbath, his idea "that Judaism is a religion of time, not space, and that the Sabbath symbolizes the sanctification of time" totally blew my mind, and changed the way I thought about religion.
Brad Bagby just emailed me this website: Old Jews Telling Jokes. It's exactly what the title says it is. Now, most of you probably already know how Sweet Pickles ain't down with jokes. He is, however, down with old Jews.
Ilan Halimi was a French 23-year-old who was kidnapped by a gang of immigrant youths because he was Jewish. He was tortured for over three weeks. On this date in 2006, Ilan Halimi was found in a Paris suburb... handcuffed to a tree, bound, naked, stabbed multiple times, an ear and a toe severed, and burns covering 80% of his body. He died en route to the hospital. The linked Wikipedia article deserves to be read.
I'm a big fan of Smooth-E, who made the parody song. And even though the Gentile who later made an animation to accompany it obviously isn't familiar with such Judeo-specific concepts as l'chaim!, Manischewitz, yarmulke, or kosher, it's a laudable effort that still makes for a pretty delightful video. I watch it ever year.
Not to marginalize the wanton slaughter that happened throughout Mumbai by becoming overly focused on the Jewish part of this tragedy, but these 'soft' targets weren't chosen at random.
Is it just me, or does this news footage of what happened at Mumbai's Chabad center seem disconcertingly similar to 1972 news footage from Munich's Olympic Village?
Moshe Holtzberg's parents were younger than I am. [Note: ima, which you hear him scream over and over here at his parents' funeral, is "mama" in Hebrew.]
My new hero, Sandra Samuel:
Regrettably, there hasn't been much positive to say about most journalistic coverage of the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai's Chabad center. However, below is the text of two of the best opinion columns about the attacks that I've read since they happened. While I don't agree with everything they have to say, I fear that the analysis of both writers and the conclusions they draw are, unfortunately and for the most part, dead-on (absolutely no pun intended).
Friday, December 5, 2008
Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable
By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Shortly
after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, The
Sydney Daily Telegraph's columnist wag, sent him a note-perfect parody
of a typical newspaper headline:
"British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing."
Indeed.
And so it goes. This time round – Mumbai – it was the Associated Press
that filed a story about how Muslims "found themselves on the defensive
once again about bloodshed linked to their religion".
Oh, I don't
know about that. In fact, you'd be hard pressed from most news reports
to figure out the bloodshed was "linked" to any religion, least of all
one beginning with "I-" and ending in "-slam." In the three years since
those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned
the offending formulations – "Islamic terrorists," "Muslim extremists"
– and by the time of the assault on Mumbai found it easier just to call
the alleged perpetrators "militants" or "gunmen" or "teenage gunmen,"
as in the opening line of this report in The Australian: "An Adelaide
woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage
gunmen ran amok."
Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.
The
veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the
more cryptic locution "practitioners." "Practitioners" of what, exactly?
Hard
to say. And getting harder. For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross
produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Mumbai media coverage: The
discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity,
Jews had been attacked, tortured and killed produced from the New York
Times a serene befuddlement: "It is not known if the Jewish center was
strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."
Hmm.
Greater Mumbai forms one of the world's five biggest cities. It has a
population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in
a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting
therein. An "accidental hostage scene" that one of the "practitioners"
just happened to stumble upon? "I must be the luckiest jihadist in
town. What are the odds?"
Meanwhile, the New Age guru Deepak
Chopra laid all the blame on American foreign policy for "going after
the wrong people" and inflaming moderates, and "that inflammation then
gets organized and appears as this disaster" in Mumbai.
Really?
The inflammation just "appears"? Like a bad pimple? The "fairer" we get
to the, ah, inflamed militant practitioners, the unfairer we get to
everyone else. At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in
almost all the Western media as "ultra-Orthodox," "ultra-" in this
instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized
code for "strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but
they probably shouldn't have been over there in the first place."
Are
they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two "inflamed moderates"
entered the Chabad House, shouted "Allahu Akbar!," tortured the Jews
and murdered them, including the young rabbi's pregnant wife. Their
2-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny
who hid in a closet and then, risking being mowed down by machine-gun
fire, ran with him to safety.
The Times was being silly in
suggesting this was just an "accidental" hostage opportunity – and not
just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it's not a hostage
situation, it's a mass murder-in-waiting. The sole surviving "militant"
revealed that the Jewish center had been targeted a year in advance.
The 28-year-old rabbi was Gavriel Holtzberg. His pregnant wife was
Rivka Holtzberg. Their orphaned son is Moshe Holtzberg, and his brave
nanny is Sandra Samuels. Remember their names, not because they're any
more important than the Indians, Britons and Americans targeted in the
attack, but because they are an especially revealing glimpse into the
pathologies of the perpetrators.
In a well-planned attack on
iconic Mumbai landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the
"militants" nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their
manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the
city's poor in a nondescript building. If they were just "teenage
gunmen" or "militants" in the cause of Kashmir, engaged in a more or
less conventional territorial dispute with India, why kill the only
rabbi in Mumbai? Dennis Prager got to the absurdity of it when he
invited his readers to imagine Basque separatists attacking Madrid:
"Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid
Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous."
And yet we take it for
granted that Pakistani "militants" in a long-running border dispute
with India would take time out of their hectic schedule to kill Jews.
In going to ever more baroque lengths to avoid saying "Islamic" or
"Muslim" or "terrorist," we have somehow managed to internalize the
pathologies of these men.
We are enjoined to be "understanding,"
and we're doing our best. A Minnesotan suicide bomber (now there's a
phrase) originally from Somalia returned to the old country and blew up
himself and 29 other people last October. His family prevailed upon
your government to have his parts (or as many of them as could be
sifted from the debris) returned to the United States at taxpayer
expense and buried in Burnsville Cemetery. Well, hey, in the current
climate, what's the big deal about a federal bailout of jihad
operational expenses? If that's not "too big to fail," what is?
Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel "vulnerable." Au contraire,
they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might:
They're the world's fastest-growing population. A prominent British
Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a
Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying
them as infidels. If he's feeling "vulnerable," he's doing a terrific
job of covering it up.
We are told that the "vast majority" of
the 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate)
are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDS
activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of
the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not
murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of
Bush's foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam – "Allahu
Akbar."
I wrote in my book, "America Alone," that "reforming"
Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign
of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to
accept that. Spread a rumor that a Quran got flushed down the can at
Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish
some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be
protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a
rabbi in Mumbai in the name of Allah, and that's just business as
usual. And, if it is somehow "understandable" that for the first time
in history it's no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are
greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline
informs us, "worry about image." Not enough.
It was obvious to observers around the world
that one of the designated targets of the Pakistani Islamist terrorists
was the Mumbai Chabad House, the one Jewish center in Mumbai. The 10
Islamic terrorists who came from Pakistan to India chose their targets
with great care.
If one assumes that the terrorists' primary goals were to
destabilize India, weaken growing Indian-Pakistani cooperation in
fighting terrorism, and greatly increase Indian-Pakistani tension,
hopefully to the point of military war between the two countries, every
one of the targets made strategic sense. Slaughtering as many people as
possible in India's major economic center, including as many foreign
tourists as possible at Mumbai's finest hotels, also made sense.
But one target seemed to make little sense. In fact, until the
attack was over people were uncertain whether the terrorists' attack on
the Jewish center known as the Chabad House was part of the original
plan or chosen spontaneously. Only when the lone terrorist who was
captured told his interrogators that the Chabad House was planned a
year earlier was it indisputable that killing the Rabbi, his wife,
their children and any other Jews present was part of the plan.
The question is why?
Why would a terrorist group of Islamists from Pakistan whose primary
goal is to have Pakistan gain control of the third of Kashmir that
belongs to India and therefore aimed to destabilize India's major city
devote so much of its efforts — 20 percent of its force of 10 gunmen
whose stated goal was to kill 5,000 — to killing a rabbi and any Jews
with him?
The question echoes one from World War II: Why did Hitler devote so
much time, money, and manpower in order to murder every Jewish man,
woman, and child in every country the Nazis occupied? Why did Hitler —
as documented by the late historian Lucy Dawidowicz in her aptly named
book “The War against the Jews” — weaken the Nazi war effort by
diverting money, troops, and military vehicles from fighting the Allies
to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps?
From the perspective of political scientists, historians, and
contemporary journalists, the answer to these questions is not
rational. But the non-rationality of an answer is not synonymous with
its non-validity.
For the Islamists, as for the Nazis, the destruction of the Jews —
and since 1948, the Jewish state — is central to their worldview.
If anyone has a better explanation for why Pakistani terrorists,
preoccupied with destabilizing India, would expend so much effort at
finding the one Jewish center in a country that is essentially devoid
of Jews, I would like to hear it.
With all the Pakistani Islamists' hatred of Hindus, they did not attack one Hindu temple in India's major city.
With all their hatred of Christian infidels, the terrorists did not seek out one of the 700,000 Christians in Mumbai.
To reinforce my point, imagine a Basque separatist terrorist organization attacking Madrid. Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid
Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous. But no one seems to find it odd
that that Pakistani Muslim terrorists who hate India and want it to give up control of Indian Kashmir would send two of its 10 terrorists
to kill perhaps the only rabbi in Mumbai. As Newsweek reported during
the siege, “Given that Orthodox Jews were being held at gunpoint by
mujahideen (sic), it seemed unlikely there would be survivors.”
Newsweek, like just about everyone else, simply assumes Islamists will
murder Jews whenever and wherever possible.
They are right.
For years I have warned that great evils often begin with the murder
of Jews, and therefore non-Jews who dismiss Jew-hatred (aka
anti-Semitism, aka anti-Zionism), will learn too late that Jew- and
Israel-haters only begin with Jews but never end with them. When
Israeli Jews were almost the only targets of Muslim terrorists, the
world dismissed it as a Jewish or Israeli problem. Then it became an
American and European and Filipino and Thai and Indonesian and Hindu
problem.
Two final points:
One is that it is exquisitely fitting that the same week the murders
in Mumbai were taking place, the United Nations General Assembly passed
six more anti-Israel resolutions. As it has for decades, the U.N. has
again sanctioned hatred for a good and decent country as small on the
map of the world as the Chabad House is on the map of Mumbai.
Two: Statements from Chabad in reaction to the torture-murders of a
28-year-old Chabad rabbi and his wife called on humanity to react to
this evil “with random acts of kindness.” Evil hates goodness. That's
why the terrorists targeted a Chabad Rabbi and his wife.
Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a
visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is
the author of four books, most recently "Happiness Is a Serious
Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.pragerradio.com.
If I were in charge at that school, Principal Pickles would be instituting a "Kick an Antisemite's Ass Day" to see how the four or five little bastards who organized this enjoy being singled out in front of their classmates. Of course, I realize that sixth-graders aren't really capable of antisemitism, but I want those kids' mothers to feel the exact same emotions that the mother of the Jewish kid who was slapped in the face felt.
Since Tuesday evening, Sweet Pickles has been feeling poorly. It's that time of year when my seasonal sinus infection gears up. Enough so that I've had a temperature and sore throat and upset stomach that made me cancel class on Wednesday, and miss Yom Kippur services. At least being sick and bedridden did help me obey the prohibitions associated with the Day of Atonement... no eating or drinking; no bathing; no wearing leather shoes; no sexual relations; etc. For Sweet Pickles, the not eating is a cinch... it's the no sex from sundown to sundown that is next to impossible. Euhhhhh!
Today I started feeling better in late afternoon. One thing that helped was this site. It comes recommended by both Frenchie and Ruby (so you know that shite is good)!
At sundown tonight, the High Holidays begin, and another year will have come and gone. It's hard to believe. Lots of wonderful things happened in the world of Sweet Pickles during the year 5768. I'm sad to see it go, but look ahead hopefully to an even better 5769! Tomorrow's service is one of the few occasions in the year when I get to wear my tallit (prayer shawl), which I love, and the only occasion in the year when I get to hear a shofar sounded, which I love even more! After services, I'll be eating some apples and honey at the rabbi's house with friends. L'Shanah Tovah! Happy New Year!
Courtesy of Brad Bagby, check out the the Jewiest Websites Around! For the most part, I find all of it to be true, except that I read the English edition of Haaretz instead of the Jerusalem Post.
Tomorrow is Yom Ha'Atzmaut, i.e., Israel's Independence Day. In the Hebrew calendar, it begins tonight at sundown. So happy birthday, ya sexy badasses!!
This graffiti in very modern Tel Aviv is a Hebrew phrase that is centuries old: Am Yisrael Chai! ("The Jewish people still live!")
The sound clip below is fricking amazing. It's a BBC recording from April, 20 1945 of Jewish survivors of Bergen-Belsen just five days after their liberation. In this first Sabbath ceremony conducted openly on German soil since the beginning of WWII, with people still dying around them, they sing Hatikva ("The Hope"), which would later become the Israeli national anthem. At the end of the song, you hear an old man's voice shout "Am Yisrael Chai!"
A little animation/music video for one of my favorite holidays (Purim), featuring one of my favorite robots (Shabot 6000), to the tune of one of my favorite songs (Kanye West's "Gold Digger")... "Now I ain't sayin' you ain't queen, Esther!"
Recent Comments