The keynote plenary is well under way.

Following a standard reception from TN governor Phil Bredesen, U of T Coach Bruce Pearl got the crowd going with a hilarious personal account of his rise to success amidst the challenges he’s faced as Jew in a non-Jewish dominated arena.

Howard Dean followed, and it was a little awkward. For example: Dean took an indirect stab at Bush (which ought to be safe territory considering Bush’s approval ratings and the overwhelming disapproval of the Iraq war within the Jewish community) saying that, after seven years the US needs to regain the moral high ground. Instead of a cheer, Dean received a lukewarm applause. However, when he added that the reason Israel has managed to survive is because it’s maintained the moral high ground — thunderous applause.

Overall Dean was very definitive in his pro-Israel message and credited UJC with providing unparalleled opportunities to, among others, Ethiopian olim.

His most interesting remark though was, in the context of grassroots organizing, that “The Democratic Party can’t win an election. Only you can.”

Hey, this is Dan Sieradski, JTA’s Director of Digital Media, writing to you live from the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, TN, where the 2007 UJC General Assembly is currently under way. Over the next few days, I, JTA Managing Editor Ami Eden, Publisher Mark Joffe, and Staff Writer Jacob Berkman will be bringing you live coverage as events proceed. Keep an eye out here on the Telegraph for regular updates.

This year’s Forward 50 list is out, which means plenty of Jewish machers and shakers are smiling — or, in the case of those who didn’t make the cut, grumbling. We’ve put together our own panel of experts to weigh in on the list (and invite you to chime in via the comments section below, where we’ll hopefully be carrying on the conversation for a few days).

It’s worth reading the full descriptions of each Forward 50 selection. For now, here are the “Top Picks” on the list: Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s pick for attorney general; Elyse Frishman, the rabbi who edited the Reform movement’s new prayer book; Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow, the creative minds behind “Knocked Up” and “Superbad”; Sheldon Adelson, casino mogul and philanthropist with a new foundation reportedly set to dole out up to $200 million per year, and Peter Deutch, the former Democratic congressman whose now working to create a movement of Hebrew-language charter schools.

First my thoughts:

If, as the Forward claims, the list really is about recognizing those who “are doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves” — where are the authors of perhaps the two most debated essays of the year: Noah Feldman and Alvin Rosenfeld.

Certainly in Orthodox circles, no article generated more debate and sermons than Feldman’s essay in the NYT Mag, in which he paints his yeshiva high school as primitive for allegedly leaving him out of a reunion photo and not publishing his family announcements because he married a non-Jew. In general, intermarriage may seem like an old story, but in many ways it still is the story in American Jewish life — and, however flawed, Feldman’s article was the focal point of the issue this year.

And where is Rosenfeld, who sparked a national controversy with his essay, “‘Progressive Jewish Thought’ and the New Anti-Semitism,” published by the American Jewish Committee? Coupling him with Cecilie Surasky, of Muzzle Watch, would have been a good entry addressing the raging debate over whether the Jewish Left is defaming Israel or the mainstream Jewish community is stifling all criticism of Israel.

I loved the culture picks, all very smart, but not thrilled with the idea that telling a few Jewish jokes in two movies merits a Top Pick for Rogen and Apatow. (While we’re on the topic, far be it from me to take issue with YIVO or the brains at the Yiddish Forward, but the word is s-h-l-u-b.) Much more significant on the cultural front, I think, is Michael Chabon’s increasing focus on the Jewish condition. He’s on the list, but is more deserving of being in the “Top Picks” than Rogen & Apatow.

Enough quibbling. Overall, the list is great, and anyone with an interest in Jewish life would do well to give it a thorough read. I’ll end with praise for one of many smart picks: Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, the top Chabad guy on the West Coast. The choice is strong on two levels: It speaks to the fact that Chabad is taking over the world — and that it is doing so because of the people on the ground, not back at some headquarters in New York.

Now for the guest experts: (more…)

A month or so back, JTA’s Jacob Berkman reported on one Jewish organization’s plan (later dropped) to auction off a subscription to Playboy and a trip to the mansion. What we missed (yes, I know this is old) was the bigger scandal: the magazine’s anti-Israel bias.

Just when you thought it was safe to read the articles, Heff’s mag runs a piece by Jonathan Tasini slamming Israel. Among other things, he insisted that Jimmy Carter was right to describe “the control over Palestinians’ movements as similar to South Africa’s apartheid system” and criticized politicians for pandering to Jewish voters.

(Hat tip: CAMERA)

Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel have both come out in the past week calling for wide-ranging negotiations between Iran and the United States as an alternative to the stick-only sanctions-focused approach of the Bush administration.

Jewish organizations have been major proponents of tightening the economic screws on Tehran in an effort to get the Islamic Republic to abandon its nuclear program. Will any of the key groups move to embrace an equally robust diplomatic offensive along the lines proposed by Obama and Hagel?

I caught up with Likud leader and prime ministerial frontrunner Benjamin Netanyahu last Friday at a speech to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Bibi did not object to sweeping talks between Iran and the U.S., but dismissed the notion that anything but an “increase of pressure” would work. The executive vice-chairman of the Conference, Malcolm Hoenlein, was more critical, arguing that Iran had previously used negotiations as a tool for playing the Europeans, and suggesting that talks at this point would serve to undercut internal opponents of the regime.

Also last week, at the ADL’s national convention, the organization adopted a new resolution on Iran that simply calls for tougher international sanctions.

Here’s a thoughtful response from the editor of the New Jersey Jewish News, Andrew Silow-Carroll, to my post on the New York Times Magazine.

My standard joke on Larry King is that he could have Adolf Hitler on for two hours and the Holocaust would not come up. But Jerry Seinfeld may have outdone me…

All that said, maybe Jerry needs to lighten up.

For those of you who read through my entire Q & A with Abe Foxman, this will be hard to believe: There was actually some stuff that didn’t make it in. One line was his claim that James Traub and The New York Times Magazine had tried to undercut his credibility by comparing him to Al Sharpton.

“It’s tempting to compare Abe Foxman with Al Sharpton, another portly, bellicose, melodramatizing defender of ethnic ramparts,” Traub wrote in his profile of Foxman last January. “But you never feel that Foxman is admiring his own performance, as you do with Sharpton.”

The P.S./punch line to all of this? Foxman and Sharpton issued a joint statement last week “regarding the series of recent displays of nooses and swastikas in our community”:

The recent epidemic of nooses and swastikas appearing in various places in our communities are acts of hate and are intended to intimidate and instill fear. Such acts are despicable, and we call upon all people of good will – of all races, religions and ethnicities – to stand up and say such acts will not be tolerated.

Together we call for swift passage of proposed legislation to modify the existing New York state law which prohibits the depiction of a swastika on someone’s property, to similarly prohibit the public display of a noose with the intent to threaten or harrass. Nooses, like swastikas, are remnants from a tragic period of history, and the impact of their display still resonates deeply in our souls and in our communities. They cry to their intended targets, “You still do not belong!”

We must encourage an open and honest examination of the underlying hatred and potential for violence that these recent rash of incidents represent. They are attacks against not just a person or a group but against democracy and pluralism. We must use these incidents to educate people—especially our youth—about the consequences of racism, anti-Semitism, and all forms of bigotry and prejudice.

Earlier this year Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, talked a little smack about Chabad’s willingness to sign kids up for Bar Mitzvahs without requiring them to attend a ton of classes or forcing their parents to start showing up to shul:

Chabad, however, is often the address for those who wish to avoid serious requirements for the child or family. It is the place that you go when you do not want to join a synagogue or subject your child to a meaningful course of study. The rationale offered is that no child should be denied a Bar Mitzvah, and even with little serious training, the child and family – who are probably unaffiliated – may later be drawn into Jewish life. Perhaps.

More likely, the lesson that is absorbed is that Judaism is not a serious endeavor and that even the most significant milestones require only a modicum of work and preparation. Let me be clear: no family should ever be denied membership in a synagogue because of inability to pay. But we should protest when Chabad, or anyone else, becomes a voice of Jewish minimalism that lowers educational standards in our communities.

Now Chabad is firing back. Here’s a snippet from the recently posted reply from Chana Silberstein, the educational director at Chabad at Cornell:

What Yoffie fails to consider is that Chabad’s willingness to offer all children a bar mitzvah stems not from lowering of religious standards, but from a refusal to make children the pawns in a game of institutional extortion.

The reason most temples demand certain requirements be met before allowing children to be bar mitzvahed has nothing to do with standards—and everything to do with increasing synagogue revenue. The present system of front-loading fees such as synagogue membership and building fund, while creating an economic base for synagogue operations, discourages many Jews from getting involved.

Thus, many American Jews affiliate with synagogues only because they believe that if they do not, their child will not be able to become a bar mitzvah. In effect, the children are forced to pay the price for the failure of congregations to give their members a reason to want to join of their own volition. And so the kids become hostages. Parents are told that unless they ante up, their children will be denied this most significant of milestones. Some parents pay the ransom. Others leave the temple in disgust.

Michael Chabon had a piece this week in The Telegraph (not my blog, the British newspaper), discussing his discarded plan to name his new book “Jews With Swords.” Bet he wouldn’t mind taking a stab at Alexander Nazaryan, who ripped the book (actual title: “Gentlemen of the Road”) in the Village Voice:

Chabon’s heavy-handed Hebrew pride might be excusable in an otherwise brisk narrative, but this slim volume packs considerable flab. Hemingway could summon Spain in a single sentence; Chabon spends 200 pages kicking around the Central Asian plain without digging beneath the sun-baked surface. The real culprit here is not Biljan but unabashed logorrhea, with clunkers like “the migraine blaze of day” and the “honeyed hand of a dream” turning every page into a sort of verbal ambush. It’s not unfair to wonder if Chabon, like his Victorian predecessors, was being paid by the word.

But stylistic indiscretions, however irritating, are secondary to Chabon’s inability to treat Jews with the humanity that has so often been denied to them. In Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, the oversexed Alexander Portnoy sears unease into the page with prolonged riffs on masturbation. He may not shed light on the Holocaust, but Portnoy is far closer to flesh than any of the tortured abstractions peddled by the Jewish New Wave. Despite lofty intentions, the likes of Chabon and [Jonathan Safran Foer] are unwilling to examine history on its own harsh terms, parading the Jews as little more than evidence of their own nuanced sensitivity or refined moral palate. As such, their project is no less self-serving than Madonna’s public flaunting of the Kabbalah. But hey, at least the girl can sing.

Hey, Chabon, you going to take that? As you would put it: What are you — a Maccabee or a Motel Kamzoil?