Ever wonder who’d win in a fight between Moses and Jesus? With Bible Fight, the new online Street Fighter-style video game from Adult Swim, you need wonder no more.

Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Tony Lake, was at NYU today, talking to students at the Bronfman Center about why he thinks the Democratic presidential hopeful is so great. But before he got into details, Lake, who served as national security adviser in the Clinton administration, described his own history of first being mistaken for, and then actually becoming, a Jew.

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What does the Winograd Commission’s final report on Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon mean for Ehud Olmert’s future? JTA Jerusalem correspondent Leslie Susser speaks with JTA Associate Editor Uriel Heilman about the war, the report and Olmert’s political prognosis.

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This post should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the International Solidarity Movement nor the cameraman’s take on the land dispute in question. But rather a hope that if the day of turning swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks is not around the corner, then at least the Israelis and Palestinians could make progress by dropping their drawers instead of picking up their guns.

In other words, what many of you may see as boorish, I call progress.

Courtesy of cracked.com…

Barack Obama just finished a conference call with Jewish reporters. He took four questions, the first from JTA’s own Ron Kampeas. But while questions dealt with the Middle East, and the recent controversy about Obama’s church, what the candidate really wanted to talk about was the smear campaign that has circulated by email among Jewish leaders in recent weeks.

The allegations — that Obama is a Muslim and took his oath of office on a Koran — have been thoroughly, and repeatedly, refuted. Still, Obama said he wanted folks to hear the refutation from the “horse’s mouth.”

Before the call broke up, Obama urged reporters to use their “megaphone” to let readers know “that there’s no substance there and that my strong and deep commitment and connection to the Jewish community should not be questioned.”

Asked why it was sufficient for him to denounce his church’s recent praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan but not resign from the church itself, Obama repeated his condemnation of Farrakhan’s “reprehensible” anti-Semitic views. Then he added what sounds like a promise: “My church has never issued anti-Semitic statements, nor have I heard my pastor utter anything anti-Semitic. If I have, I would have left the church.”

Obama also took questions on the peace process, the situation in Gaza, and how he would deal with Iranian nukes.

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Hillel got a shoutout on last night’s episode of the Simpsons, which had some sort of weird flashback thing going with Marge attending college in the ’90s.

The following image appears as she mentions “fraternity pledges in their beanies”:

At times, the most challenging (or lamest, depending on your take) aspects of my job is trying to find the Jewish angle in the story that everyone is talking about. So, for example, for the past few days, Heath Ledger’s death has been a huge story.

Maybe it’s because my brain is too wrapped up in election coverage, but I’ve come up with nothing.

But then I received the following press release, and a news brief was born:

Heath Ledger’s Funeral Is No Place For Bigots

New York, NY, January 24, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), responding to the Westboro Baptist Church’s plan to turn Heath Ledger’s death into a homophobic spectacle, said the actor’s funeral “should be no place for haters, and especially a gay basher like Fred Phelps.”

Phelps and his virulently homophobic church have vowed to picket the actor’s funeral, objecting to what they view as the actor’s support of homosexuality through his starring role in the film “Brokeback Mountain.” It is a time-honored strategy for Phelps, a notorious hater who uses high-profile funerals as a means to promote his unique brand of bigotry to the masses.

“It is time to say to Fred Phelps and his ilk, enough is enough,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “Heath Ledger’s funeral should be no place for haters, and especially a gay basher like Fred Phelps. It is outrageous that the Westboro Baptist Church would attempt to turn the untimely and sad death of a Hollywood celebrity into a homophobic spectacle.”

Since the summer of 2005, the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church has picketed the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with placards reading “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Phelps believes that the soldiers represent a nation tolerant of homosexuality, and their deaths are God’s punishment for their sins. The group also routinely rails against Jews, Catholics and other minority faiths.

In October 2007, a federal court ordered the group to pay $11 million to the father of a slain Marine after it was found guilty of violating a right to privacy and inflicting intentional emotional distress.

Members of the WBC first gained national notoriety when they appeared at the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard bearing signs reading “No Fags in Heaven” and “God Hates Fags.”

Enough with the bad news from Amy Winehouse and the Spears sisters. Finally a Mazal Tov in celebrity world:

E! News has learned exclusively that new parents Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman held a bris, the Hebrew baby naming and circumcision ritual ceremony, at their Beverly Hills home Sunday.

More than a dozen family and friends attended the gathering. Jewish rituals aren’t new to the Bratman family. In 2005, the couple wed in a Jewish ceremony in Napa Valley, California.

A bris is typically done on a baby’s eighth day of life, and sure enough, son Max Liron was born Jan. 12. He came home from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center earlier this week.

The ceremony formalizes the child’s name; his middle name, Liron, means “my song” in Hebrew. Fittingly, Christina is “already singing to Max,” we’re told.

Arlen Specter, one of only two Jewish Republicans in the Senate, has held back from endorsing a candidate. In a brief interview with JTA Friday, he said the field was too muddled to make a decision so far in advance of the Pennsylvania primary in April. Oh, and by the way, if the Republicans end up brokering their nominee come convention time, Pennsylvania will have way more clout if Specter keeps quiet. Good thinking Arlen!

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