JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

The News Shticker: “Post-racial” black haredim… on ice!

By Daniel Sieradski · June 17, 2008

• The N.Y. Times profiles Yosef Abrahamson, the black chasidic Crown Heights teen who won an essay contest a couple of weeks ago, suggesting he may be Brooklyn's perfect representative.
• Over at Jewschool, Y-Love takes an axe to the Times' suggestion in the aformentioned story that John McCain, who Abrahamson supports, is a "post-racial" candidate.
• See also: My interview with Y-Love over at Jewcy.
• The Independent reports, "The Israeli military has come under renewed pressure to explain why its tank shells killed a Reuters cameraman and eight other Palestinians on a road in Gaza two months ago."
• The N.Y. Times' Philip Galanes tells a non-Jewish reader who joined JDate – and who still hasn't told the guy she met on the site that she's not a member of the tribe – to come clean.
• Former Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo is heading to Israel to perform with his band Down next month. Alarmingly, when a blogger (my sister, incidentally) pointed out the fact that Anselmo has connections to the White Nationalist movement and a history of making racist remarks, furthermore suggesting that he shouldn't be welcomed to Israel, the show's promoter Lior Kamali responded by threatening to "smash [her] face." What a mentsch!
• And finally, two rich Jews make another shonde for the goyim.

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Under the chupah

By Ami Eden · June 17, 2008

The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles reports on a lesbian couple's long road to the chupah:

Amid a crush of photographers, a handful of largely drowned-out protesters, and hundreds of supporters tossing rose petals, Diane Olson and Robin Tyler stood under a chuppah on the Beverly Hills Courthouse steps on Monday evening to become one of the first lesbian couples to legally marry in California.

The couple had been among the original plaintiffs to sue the state for discrimination in the lawsuit that eventually led the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. In recognition of that, the County of Los Angeles arranged for the Olson and Tyler to receive their marriage license at 5:01 Monday, just after the courthouse closed for regular business, ahead of the hundreds of same-gender couples who would flood the courthouse the next day.

The moment was an electrical mix of the spiritual, personal and political.

In the Huffington Post last week, Tyler wrote about the challenges posed not only by marrying her same-sex partner, but also by the fact that her partner is not Jewish:

[A] reporter for a mainstream Jewish newspaper asked me last week[,] "What do you think of intermarriage?" I replied: "If women want to marry men, it's perfectly okay with me!" But when the reporter phoned to interview me, she said she meant "interfaith marriage."

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Caught on tape

By Ami Eden · June 17, 2008

Ha'aretz has an article on how B'Tselem's decision to distribute cameras to Palestinians may end up landing several Jewish settlers in jail for a recent attack on Arab shepherds.

Three months ago, the B'Tselem human rights organization gave Muna al-Nawaja a video camera. Nawaja, 24, lives near the Israeli settlement of Sussya, in the southern West Bank. Between caring for her young son and tending the family's sheep, she learned to use the camera, fell in love with it and now carries it with her everywhere.

But its "baptism of fire" occurred last week, on Sunday afternoon. Most Israelis were busy preparing for the Shavuot holiday. But some had a different priority: savagely beating Nawaja's relatives. She managed to capture a few seconds of the beating - in which her 57-year-old aunt was severely injured, and two uncles, age 60 and 33 were hurt - on film. But she never dreamed that it would prove to be the main, and possibly only, evidence available to the police investigating the assault.

B'Tselem has posted video clips from the incident in question.

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