JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Video of Israeli naval raid (IDF)

By Ami Eden · November 5, 2009

The Israeli military releases video of its raid on a ship it says was carrying some 300 tons of arms and ammunition from Iran for Hezbollah:

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Rally in Rutgers, Hip hop in day school, Heckling Olmert in San Fran

By Gil Shefler · November 2, 2009

From around the American Jewish world:

• In the Phoenix area, a rabbi held a conversion ceremony welcoming crypto Jews back into Jewish fold. (Jewish News of Greater Phoenix)
• At a speaking gig in San Francisco, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was heckled 22 times. Olmert tells audiences he's used to people shouting at him, saying it's "part of the political game." (J)
• The Jews have a new King: Amanda Pazornick of J writes about Israeli basketball player Omri Casspi's debut for the Sacramento Kings against Memphis on Monday. (J)
• In Florida, Palm Beach celebrates the opening of new JCC. (Florida Jewish Journal)
• Students at Pittsburgh's Hillel Academy are studying hip hop. (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle)
• Concordia Lutheran Ministries has purchased a B'nai B'rith-sponsored retirement community in the Steel City that was B'nai B'rtih's first foray into the senior housing market. (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle)
• Actress Helen Hunt is the keynote speaker at St. Louis' 31st annual Jewish book festival, which will include comedian Susie Essman and actress Alicia Silverstone. (St. Louis Jewish Light)
• The Chicago Jewish News takes a look at Jill Weinberg's efforts to support the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. (Chicago Jewish News)
• In New Jersey, Rutgers students rally to protest an anti-Semitic and anti-gay group. (New Jersey Jewish News)

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‘New Jews’ claiming, constructing their identities (CNN)

By Ami Eden · November 2, 2009

From CNN:

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai about 3,300 years ago, he couldn't have seen these Jews coming.

A blogger writes about how one of Judaism's holiest days ended, for her, in a strip club, while elsewhere a guy strolls into a tattoo parlor requesting a Star of David. Two women exchange wedding vows in a Jewish ceremony, and hipsters toss back bottles of HE'BREW, The Chosen Beer. A full-time software developer prepares to lead a group in Jewish prayer, as a PhD candidate in Jewish thought pens a letter criticizing Israel's policies.

Meet the "New Jews," as some call them: pockets of post-baby boomers -- or more accurately Generation X and Millennial (Gen Y) Jews -- who are making one of the world's oldest known monotheistic faiths and its culture work for them and others in a time when, more than ever, affiliation is a choice. ...

For Atlanta, Georgia, punk-rock musician Patrick A, or Aleph (the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet), this means he can seamlessly blend who he's been with his newly embraced religious observance.

"When I'm on stage screaming, hitting my face with a microphone and pouring beer on my head, at least I'm singing about the Torah," said the 26-year-old founder of PunkTorah, an outreach effort to inspire Jewish spirituality. ...

Read the full story.

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Forgiving Ronan Tynan

By Gil Shefler · October 30, 2009

Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, a fixture at New York Yankees games, stole the show from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the ADL's Annual Meeting Thursday when he apologized for making an anti-Jewish comment. At the dinner, Tynan received a standing ovation after delivering a dramatic rendition of "God Bless America" -- which he regularly sings at Yankee Stadium during the sevent inning, until he was temporarily banned by the team.

Tynan was invited by ADL national president Abraham Foxman, who said he accepted Tynan's public apology for the joke as sincere.

"We need to give a message to people that they can be forgiven if they own up to their bigotry," Foxman said. "Otherwise, it's counterproductive to our fight against racism."

Who connected Tynan with the ADL? Meet Abraham Cohen, 37, from Teaneck, N.J. Cohen spoke exclusively to the JTA about how the shiduch came into being.

"When I heard what happened, I called Jeff Sulivan, who's a mutual friend of mine and Ronan Tynan's, and I said 'what happened? This isn't the guy! It isn't him!' Then Ronan called me and said 'Abe, I may have said something but I didn't mean it.' Then it was in Sports Illustrated and other meida. It got worse and worse. I called Jeff again and I was livid. At this point Ronan was starting to lose business. I said, hey, I live in Teaneck, New Jersey," where Foxman also lives, "and the ADL is someone who stands up for you."

"It was a lesson well learnt," Tynan, who was standing nearby, added. He said he hopes to sing at Yankee Stadium again in the future.

As he departed, the soft-spoken Irish singer said "lehitraot," the Hebrew equivalent of see you later.

UPDATE: Click here and scroll down to read Sullivan's defense of Tynan.

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Ask The Expert: Why does kosher meat cost so much?

By The Expert · October 30, 2009

Question: Why is kosher meat more expensive than non-kosher meat? Is it all a scam or is there actually justification for the prices?

-- James, Montreal

Answer: I feel your pain, James. Kosher meat is not cheap. So what accounts for the hefty price tag on your steak?

I spoke with Alan Kaufman, owner of the Kosher Marketplace on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Alan explained that there are a number of factors that drive the price of kosher meat higher than its non-kosher counterparts.

The first thing Alan mentioned is supervision. Kosher meat is supervised from the time the animal is slaughtered until it is packaged and sold. Kosher slaughterhouses must employ shochtim -- those trained in the laws of shechita, ritual slaughter -- as well as supervisors who can be consulted on unusual or contentious circumstances.

Jewish law also requires that kosher meat be soaked in water for half an hour, salted, and then washed thoroughly three times. In non-kosher meat plants where these extra steps aren't taken, much more meat can be processed and shipped out. The more meat a company sells, the lower it can afford to set its prices. Because the nature of kosher processing requires more inefficient time for soaking and salting, kosher plants produce less meat and cannot set their prices as low as their non-kosher competitors.

Finally, Alan reminded me that kosher meat isn't so easy to come by. To be kosher, an animal must be healthy, and must have no broken bones, no diseases, and no scarred or punctured organs. Downer cattle, or cows that are unable to stand on their own, are never used.

Alan estimated that only 20 percent of the cows in any given slaughterhouse pass the inspection that is required for them to be kosher. I've seen other estimates from 30 percent to 40 percent. Either way, it's much lower than at facilities where every cow that comes in gets slaughtered and sold. Screening the kosher from the treif also takes time and money.

So there are some reasons why the consumer is charged top dollar for your kosher hamburger. Ensuring that something is done in a kosher way is a pricey endeavor, and this means that the base price for kosher meat is going to be higher than non-kosher meat.

Does it mean that the meat is cleaner or better quality? It might, but as we learned from the Postville scandal last year, kosher meat can still be produced under very problematic circumstances.

Still, a major advantage of eating kosher meat in this day and age is the ability to easily trace its whereabouts and origins. As we learn more about the dangers of contemporary meat distribution, including a real risk of E. coli contamination, it becomes increasingly important to know where our food comes from and what's in it. E. coli is a bacteria found in the feces of both humans and animals. In America, kosher slaughterhouses do not deal with the hindquarters of cows -- they're usually sold to non-kosher plants, which decreases but does not completely eliminate -- the likelihood of kosher meat coming in contact with cow feces and thus E. coli.

And if the price of kosher meat is hitting you harder than usual, might I suggest making a nice spinach lasagna? Or perhaps a vegetable tart?

"Ask The Expert?" appears each Friday on JTA's The Telegraph blog, courtesy of MyJewishLearning.com. Do you have a burning question about Judaism and Jewish life? Ask away!

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Nervous in Los Angeles

By Ami Eden · October 30, 2009

The Los Angeles Time reports on the nervous mood that took hold after Thursday's shooting at a local synagogue:

When the sound of gunfire shattered the peace of morning prayer Thursday at a North Hollywood synagogue, the shock waves traveled fast and far.

Was it a hate crime? An act of terrorism? An isolated incident or part of a wider plot? These were all real fears in a city where, 10 years ago, a white supremacist gunman terrorized a Jewish preschool and murdered a postal carrier, and where police have been on alert for acts of terror since Sept. 11, 2001.

By day's end, authorities had come to believe that the shooting, in which two men were wounded, was probably a far more mundane crime. ...For a few hours, though, the shooting in the synagogue garage set nerves on edge throughout the city. Word traveled rapidly from temple-goers to police to city leaders to members of a joint regional terrorism task force.

Read the full story.

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Breaking the tattoo taboo

By Ami Eden · October 30, 2009

As part of Tablet's "Jewish Body" week, Jo-Ann Mort writes about her decision to break the tattoo taboo during a trip to Israel last summer:

I remember a moment from my first trip to Israel 29 years ago. I was waiting for a friend at the entrance to Beit Hatfutsot, a museum on the Tel Aviv University campus. It was during a conference convened for Holocaust survivors, and as I watched older survivors flow out of the building, I glanced at the occasional uncovered arm to see the tattooed numbers there, remnants of their Holocaust experience. It was a powerful vision for a first-time visitor to Israel, one that underscored triumph over adversity and the human will to survive along with the need for the country as a safe haven for the Jews.

But now, as a regular visitor to Israel, I see a different country, especially in Tel Aviv, a city that has pioneered a free-flowing hedonistic lifestyle that promotes free expression in art and fashion. The campus of Tel Aviv University offers a parade of inked bodies. Which is partly why, though I’m not an Israeli, I decided to join Israel’s tattooed ranks during a visit this summer. But, unlike the bulk of Tel Aviv’s inked masses, I’d recently survived a harrowing ordeal, and a tattoo seemed as good a way as any to mark it.

At a related event in Washington sponsored by Nextbook, Tablet's parent company, Israeli tattoo artist Ami James discussed his craft. Suzane Kurtz has the story in The Washington Jewish Week:

His body is nearly fully covered with tattoos, and he's often inked hamsas and Stars of David for others.

Yet, Israeli-born tattoo artist Ami James, star of TLC's reality TV show Miami Ink says he is uncomfortable with Jewish-themed body art.

Exploring the subject of "Tattoos & Taboos," at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in the District on Sunday evening, James addressed an audience of 250, as the synagogue concluded its series, "Jewish Body Week: Exploring What It Means to Have a Jewish Body in the 21st Century."

Fielding questions from fellow tattooed Jew Todd Weinberger, creative director for Inked magazine, James discussed his childhood in Israel -- "when no one had tattoos" -- his Jewish mother's outrage at his first tattoo at age 15, his aversion to drawing biblical ink, and stated that, for him, tattoos are an expression of art, not Jewish identity.

"If I could carry a painting on my back all day, I would," he said.

And, although he has tattooed others with Jewish symbols, he stops short of inking biblical verses on fellow Jews, referring to the biblical injunction that forbids making "any marks on yourselves."

Judaism "does say, 'you shall not' [mark on yourself], and at the end of the day, I don't want to be the one doing it. It's kind of a slap in the face to the religion," he said.

Jeez, what's the point of being a Jewish tattoo artist if you can't shake the guilt?

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Kosherfest: a reporter earns his (chicken) wings

By Ami Eden · October 29, 2009

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Debating Israeli-Palestinian issues on ‘The Daily Show’

By Gil Shefler · October 29, 2009

Tension was tangible Wednesday at the taping of "The Daily Show" as host Jon Stewart interviewed guests Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and activist Anna Baltzer.

The interview was interrupted twice by a heckler, who was eventually escorted out of the studio.

During the interview, Stewart asked Barghouti and Baltzer, who recently wrote a book based on her experience as a human rights activist in the West Bank, various questions pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Palestinians have been subjected to the longest occupation in modern history, and a system of segregation which is totally unjust," Barghouti said.

"Liar!" a heckler shouted in the crowd in response.

"Apparently we have Joe Wilson with us tonight," Stewart said, using his famous wit to defuse the situation.

Viewers knowledgeable in Middle Eastern affairs are probably familiar with Barghouti, a moderate member of Fatah and one of the prominent Palestinian signatories of the Geneva Initiative, an unofficial peace plan drafted by Israelis and Palestinians. But the name Baltzer may not ring a bell.

A 29-year-old Columbia grad and Jewish American, Baltzer says on numerous videos posted on YouTube that she became a pro-Palestinian activist after visiting the area and witnessing Palestinian plight.

At one point during the interview, Stewart asked Barghouti and Baltzer whether they believed in Israel's right to exist.

While the Palestinian Barghouti has publicly supported Israel's right to exist, Baltzer has said she believes having a Jewish State in the Middle East is unjust.

Here's what she said in May 2008 at a University of California, Irvine pro-Palestinian rally under the header of "Never again? The Palestinian Holocaust."

"What Israel is doing is doing to the Palestinian people is not a perversion of what Israel could be or should be," she said at the UC-Irvine event. "It is an inevitability of having a Jewish state in a place where the majority of the people who have rights to the land are not Jewish."

During the interview Baltzer evaded Stewart's question regarding Israel's right to exist, choosing instead to focus on human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians.

"But they would say we are defending ourselves," Stewart responded.

"There's nothing defensive in denying Palestinians water," Baltzer said.

When Baltzer began saying that historically Jews lived better in the Arab world than they did in the Western world she was cut off by the host.

"I don't think they felt particularly comfortable there, I mean in 1948 when the Palestinians were forced to leave their land many Jews were forced to leave their land in Iraq, Iran," Stewart said. "Its not necessarily comfortable living in exile."

Stewart tried to lead the conversation in a way that would suggest hope, and veteran politician Barghouti ended the interview on a conciliatory tone.

"Jon, if I may say so, Israel has tried for 60 years the language of power to achieve security," he said. "The only road that was not tried fully is to have peace with Palestinians, and I am sure this is the best guarantee for security."

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Remembering Rabin

By Ami Eden · October 29, 2009

On the 14th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Ha'aretz columnist Ari Shavit says the slain prime minister was not a saint and was no genius -- but he was great:

But even though he was neither a saint nor a genius, Rabin was great. He was great not just because he saved Jerusalem in the War of Independence and whipped the Israel Defense Forces into shape ahead of the Six-Day War. He was great not just because he helped create a strategic alliance with the United States in 1970 and began the peace process with Egypt in 1975. Rabin was great because during his second term as prime minister he realized the existential danger of occupation and decided to take action. The specific action he took - the Oslo process - was quite flawed. But the septuagenarian's willingness to foment change and take risks to extricate Israel from its troubles turned Rabin into a historic figure and role model.

When Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak give speeches about Rabin a this week's memorial ceremonies, they should ask themselves where they are compared to him. Nine months have passed since the general election, and seven have passed since the government was established. But so far, the captains of this ship haven't bothered to let the passengers know where we're going - what the objective is, what the destination is. This ambiguity gives the Bibi-and-Barak government the charm of a Rorschach test: People can see in it whatever they want to see. The problem is that at the end of the day, the government is just as politically effective as a Rorshach test.

Liat Collins of The Jerusalem Post offers her own poignant reflections on Rabin, and ends with a plea for partisans to stop using his murder as a political weapon:

This year, the first to raise the ghost of Rabin was Haaretz, which saw fit to publish private letters by Leah Rabin in which she called Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (then in office for the first time) "corrupt" and "a liar." Their publication was condemned by his daughter, Dalia Rabin, who presumably realized it brought no honor to either of her parents or to Netanyahu in Round II as premier.

Equally embarrassing were the attempts by Peace Now activists to encourage right-wing MKs and personalities into condemning anybody connected with Oslo and the peace process in a mock documentary. The fiasco resulted in the desired outrageous statements being aired, alongside news that Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin had banned Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer from entering the Knesset until further notice.

Left-wing politicians and activists, those whose camp had no problem shouting "murderer" outside the window of prime minister Menachem Begin in the First Lebanon War - or even condemning Ariel Sharon until his sharp Left turn produced the Gaza disengagement plan - once more accused the Right of dangerously abusing the rights of freedom of expression.

More than a decade later, it is sadder than ever that instead of focusing on the real dangers facing Israel - the country and its society - there are those who prefer to use Rabin's name as a tool of delegitimization. May he rest in peace.

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