View From a Height

If she's not careful, young Rima Barakhat is going to acquire quite a name for herself. Probalby one she wants, but that the rest of us could do without.

A little while back, I mentioned the visit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to Denver, and Ms. Barakhat's somewhat, er, defensive reaction to the AJC and the ADL's calling an anti-Semite an anti-Semite. Since Ms. Barakhat lives in America, and not the Islamic state envisioned by the Mufti, papers like the Rocky often offer space for alternative viewpoints, and she took her chance to, well, change the subject.

Instead of defending the indefensible, she decided to attack the Indispensible MEMRI, supposed source of all the confusion about the Mufti's gentle nature and kind-hearted spirit. Fine. We all make mistakes; MEMRI is included in, "we all." Then, this:

Today, the standards of Israeli-Palestinian political and religious discussions have been redefined by pro-Israeli organizations that are working amongst us.

"Working amongst us." Ah, yes, those shadowy cabals, meeting in dark alleys and at Bingo Night down at Rodef Shalom. No doubt many of the Men's Clubs and all of the Ladies' Auxiliaries - not to mention most editorial boards - have been infiltrated, even compromised, by those "working amonst us." Soon, she'll be accusing doctors at Rose Hospital of infecting Muslim youths with AIDS.

She goes after a translation here, a missed word there, not because MEMRI is wrong, but because they perform a valuable service. The imams and muftis they translate say one thing on Friday morning and another thing Sunday morning, and here, she perceives a threat.

Of course, this is a diversion. The real issue, that being what in God's name a "moderate" group in the middle of the United States is doing inviting a bigot to come speak, is too embarassing to deal with. Ah, you want non-MEMRI proof. Fair enough:

"It is shocking to hear a mufti say that there was never a temple there," Palazzi said. He was referring to recent comments by Jerusalem Mufti Sheikh Ekrima El Sabri in which he said "there is not even the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple on this place in the past. In the whole city (of Jerusalem) there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history." (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram)

Sabri, addressing this week's Friday congregation in the Aqsa Mosque, said that all Zionist governments ever since occupation of the eastern sector of Jerusalem in 1967 were indulging in a series of excavations underneath the holy site in a desperate attempt to find whatever could prove their illusions (on presence of the remains of the first and/or second Jewish temples). (Palestine Info.)

Speak ing at a press conference at his office on the Temple Mount, Sabri said the Western Wall and the plaza in front of it are part of the holy Mount and are also Waqf property. He stressed there were no political overtones in the timing or content of the fatwa , but that the fatwa compelled a billion Muslims around the world to act accordingly. (Haaretz)

Sheikh Sabri, in his weekly sermon at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque on September 12, 1997, declared: "Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents, and her allies! Cast them into their own traps, and cover the White House with black!"
The speech was broadcast on the PLO's Voice of Palestine Radio, immediately after it broadcast a speech by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. (Likud)

The figure of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust is exaggerated and used by Israel to gain international
"It's true, the number was less than 6 million and Israel is using this issue to get sympathy worldwide," Sabri said in an inter

He repeated his accusations to other media outlets.

"Six million? It was a lot less," Sabri told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. "It's not my fault if Hitler hated the Jews. Anyway, they hate them just about everywhere. The Jewish people has found a formidable means of winning solidarity from the world."

He told Reuters that he does not deny the Holocaust, but "I think the figures have been exaggerated. We denounce all massacres, but I don't see why a certain massacre should be used for political gain and blackmail." (JPS)

The mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Akrameh Sabri, says that suicide bombings are justified and should be encouraged, according to a report published on Friday in the international Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat. (Haaretz)

Wow, no wonder MEMRI thought he said all those terrible things. Jews have no right to Israel. Jews have to reason to be in Israel. Jews were lucky enough to have to the Holocaust to so they could get to Israel. These are not criticisms of Zionism; they're barely criticisms of Judaism; they're attacks on Jews. If Barakat wants to pretend that they're not, she'll have to perform contortions that I'd pay to see.

Americans like tending to their own gardens, and I can't begin to tell you how much I hate having to write these pieces. I would rather be writing about baseball, design, business, or finance. I'd rather be photoblogging my latest roadtrip. I'd much rather be hanging out someplace warm trying to keep my attention on a good book in the face of delightedly un-burkha-ed babes. The fact that we have to spend time engaged in intellectual combat with people whose intellect stopped creating around the year 700, and who have a conveniently post-modern idea of truth, isn't just annoying, it's stealing my life, and yours.

And next time, if they're as interested in getting along with Jews and Israel as they pretend, they could invite this guy instead. They might actually learn something.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Take a look ah the Issue groups focused on the Middle East that Project Vote-Smart tracks:

Today marks Purim, the annual celebration commemorating the Jewish people's escape from annihilation at the hands of a Persian genocial maniac.

Le plus ca change, plus le meme chose.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Simi Peters of Nishmat has published a fine, fine introduction to reading Midrash. Read the review (below, or here), then, if you're at all interested in rabbinic Biblical interpretation, read the book.

Continue reading "Book Review - Learning to Read Midrash" »

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 8:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It occurs to me that Sunday night will be the Tu B'Shevat Show for Backbone Radio. There's absolutely no reason to take up air time talking about this, but that's what blogs are for.

Tu B'Shevat is, literally, the 15th of Shevat, and it's the New Year for Trees on the Jewish calendar. What on earth does that mean? Trees, they're so important, they get their own calendar? Well, it turns out that, not surprisingly for an agricultural economy, there are a whole lot of rules about produce, especially the kind that grow on trees. You can't actually eat a tree's fruit for its first three years, so Tu B'Shevat is meant to answer the question: when do we start counting the year?

Plant a tree before Sunday night, and on Sunday night it's one year old. Plant a tree after sundown on Sunday, and you're going to wait an extra year for those delicious peaches. Needless to say, if the weather was good, a lot of trees got planted just before Tu B'Shevat, earning it the nickname "Jewish Arbor Day," although not in Russia. Because of the ecological associations, it's gotten a lot of attention from environmentalist-types, and it's a little in danger of turning into Jewish Earth Day, which would be a shame.

There are no real rituals associated with the day, but leave it to the mystics and the Chassidic Jews to try. There was a somewhat neglected tradition of the Tu B'Shevat Seder that's come back over the last decade or so. It involves drinking grape juice (or wine) and eating a variety of tree-produce, like fruits and nuts, and it's popular even outside of California. Because it's one of the few areas of the religion that hasn't been tightly scripted, it's also one of the few areas where there's a fair amount of innovation, even among the Orthodox.

I guess I'll bring some trail mix to the studio, after all.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CNN is reporting that by a margin of 48-43, Israelis want to leave the door open to negotiations with Hamas. The reporter claims that this is because the Israelis "don't want to believe that there's no partner on the other side."

He's got it completely backwards: such a result is only possible because Israelis have already given up on the Palestinians. It also suggests that public grasps and accepts the logic behind Kadima's platform.

It's a mark of how effectively Sharon changed the political equation by taking the initiative, promoting disengagement behind the security fence. Israelis don't really believe they'd be negotiating peace with Hamas; they understand they'd be negotiating temporary accomodations, which they'd be doing with Abbas as well. The election of Hamas isn't going to alter the strategic balance between the two sides.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Washington Post article on bar mitzvahs that only a Congressman could love really struck a nerve. Sure, it's all fun and games to rent out Wings over the Rockies for Yoni Tidi to do his patented recreation of the Entebbe rescue operation. But there's something fundamentally misdirected about celebrating the onset of adult moral responsibility with Peter Pan-like wish-fulfillment.

In fact, we've been here before. The reason that Jewish funerals use simple pine caskets is to spare the feelings of the poor who could barely scrape together enough for one, while the wealthy were spending money on oak sarcophagi. A similar thing has happened recenly in the Orthodox community, where weddings were turning into family potlatches, with social pressure forcing families to spend more than they had to keep up appearances.

In the spirit of school uniforms, a number of rabbis have since written letters forbidding overdoing it at weddings. In the case of the bar mitzvahs, though, it's unlikely that the offenders are paying attention. Still, with so many real community needs going unmet (East Denver's mikvah, for instance, is closed, pending enough funds to buy a new roof; yes, this is a shameless bleg, and anything at all you feel moved to contribute is greatly appreciated), spending $100K to boost a kid's popularity is warped.

Nobody ever said you can't buy friends, but 50 Cent seems a poor substitute for real community.

UPDATE: Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers. See, now there's a mensch...

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In his recent peroration to the biennial Reform convention in Houston, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, spiritual guiding light mentioned the Holocaust twice. Once to condemn fellow Jews, the other time to condemn believing Christians. Unfortunately, he got it wrong both times.

Here are the two quotes:

We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations. And today, we cannot feel anything but rage when we hear about gay men and women, some on the front lines, being hounded out of our armed services.

...

The settler leaders and their Rabbis fomented civil rebellion, urged soldiers to disobey orders, and profaned the Holocaust by making despicable comparisons between Nazi expulsions and actions of the Israeli government. The pain of the evicted could not, in any way, excuse or justify such outrages.

So in one case, vicarious pain on behalf of those willfully violating the law is sufficient to invoke Hitler, while in the other case, being forced to turn your house over to rapacious jackals is just another day at the office. It brings to mind Mel Brooks's definitions of comedy and tragedy: Tragedy is when I slip on a banana peel; Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die.

But the double standard really has to play second fiddle to politicized historical revisionism of the worst sort. In fact, Yoffie has invoked the Holocaust where it's grossly inappropriate, and twisted the words of his opponents (or at least focused on the exceptions) to shut off a debate he thinks he's won.

I have no sympathy for rabbis who were encouraging mutiny; any society, and especially one under constant threat of extinction, can only hold together if people put up with decisions they don't like. And in the end, that's pretty much what everyone did. There was a fair amount of civil disobedience, but surely old Leftie Yoffie can remember his own student protest days. Going limp and getting carried off to the wagon by the Establishment Lackeys is hardly an "outrage" by his standards.

Yoffie's sin here his one of the definite article: "the settler leaders and their Rabbis..." I remember about 20 years ago, when someone asked Wynton Marsalis about jazz's relative obscurity, and he remarked that it was because "the Jews" controlled the media. A cousin of mine pointed out that while "Jews" might indicate bad taste, "the Jews," in implicating us all, indicated bad manners.

The same sleight of tongue is at work here. Almost all the references I heard to the Holocaust compared Gaza to Europe - Judenrein to Judenrein - and lamented the fact that this time Jews themselves were acting as the moving company. I remember pointing out myself the fact that any decent, civilized neighbors would settle for sovereignty without expulsion. And truth be told, it's hardly an original observation that a great deal of Arab propaganda over the last few years has looked more and more like Der Sturmer. All of which adds up to perhaps less than a historical repetition but a great deal more than a rhyme. Rabbi Yoffie's outrage seems to be somewhat misdirected.

And here we come to his other Holocaust observation, the one that really does debase the currency. Paul Johnson, in Modern Times, describes the anti-Semitism of a British "thinker" particularly influential in pre-War Germany:

[Houston Stewart] Chamberlain, whom Hitler was to visit on his deathbed to kiss his hands in 1927, argued that God flourished in the German and the Devil in the Jewish race, the polarities of Good and Evil. The Teutons had inherited Greek aristocratic ideals and Roman love of justice and added their own heorism and fortitude. Thus it was their role to fight and destroy the only other race, the Jews, which had an equal purity and will to power. So the Jew was not a figure of low comedy but a mortal, implacable enemy: the Germans should wrest all the power of modern technology and industry from the Jews, in order to destroy them totally.

Leave aside the evident absurdity of comparing this mindset with the evangelical attitude towards homosexuals. (Again, I remind you that a couple of dozen Kansans in search of adventure hardly counts as a world-historic movement.) By invoking the comparison with Hitler, and all its Holocaust overtures, Yoffie is effectivel,y demoting Jews to Just Another Group that Hitler Didn't Like, You Know, Like Gays.

In fact, there was from the beginning something special about Hitler's attitudes towards Jews. Gays may have been subhuman, but they didn't pose the threat of world domination. Neither did Gypsies. And when modern-day evangelicals suggest that maybe they don't want to redefine the basic social unit, and don't want to be subsidizing health insurance for long-term committed partners, either, that's not the same thing as clamoring to take the Zyklon-B canisters out of mothballs.

Most evangelicals I know are of the hate-the-sin-but-love-the-sinner attitude on the issue, in any case, and in 21st Century America, even that's too much for most people. Contrast that with 1920s Germany, where the Germans were pre-occupied with the "Jewish Problem" to a far greater degree even than the French were worried about the German Problem.

Yoffie can get away with this sort of double-talk, of course, because the ADL and other groups have spent the last 60 years arguing that Jews aren't special and that anti-Semitism as Chinese laundry jokes gone bad. It's led to everyone with a grievance invoking the Holocaust as what happens when you let things get out of hand. No, the Armenian genocide by the Turks, or the Hutus and the Tutsis are what happens when things get out of hand. There's no ideology or world-ending world view at work there, just generations of hatred and maybe a little fertile farmland.

But the Jews occupied a special place in the Holocaust, however inconvenient that may be for the Reform movement's Chief Social Activist, and trying to substitute gays for Jews and James Dobson for Adolf Hitler is a repugnant act of self-betrayal.

On a par with failing to recognize real anti-Semitism when it shows up and burns synagogues.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over at the American Thinker, Clarice Feldman has noticed a disturbing trend - the re-emergence of the so-called "dual loyalty" accusation, the myth that American Jews are appendages of the Israeli Foreign Ministry first, Americans second. (That this myth has been perpetrated by Citizens of the State Department and Citizens of the World, whose own loyalty might be questioned, is ironic if not surprising.)

At the same time, the Israel Project has commissioned a survey which finds that American Jews, while strongly supportive of Israel, don't spend a lot of time actually defending it in conversation.

No doubt, some of this reticence comes from wanting to avoid arguments with non-Jewish co-workers and friends, many of whom have been fed a on steady diet of the Crescent News Network. At the same time, I can remember growing up being confronted with the dual-loyalty question, and having to find an answer. So there's some reason to believe that many American Jews, even if they don't doubt their own loyalties, don't want to push the question for fear of having it doubted by others.

This silence lets hostile Muslim-American and Arab-American groups have it both ways. Their existential opposition to Israel is overwhelmingly more monolithic and intractable than is American Jewish support for Israel. But the repetition of the Bie Lie of Jewish Dual Loyalty makes it possible for the LA-area leader of CAIR - a group whose loyalty lies solely with Islam and not at all with America - to accuse Frank Gaffney of being in the pay of the Israeli government on the air. Gaffney's more than able to defend himself, but many more of us are not.

The problem is that by lying low, we don't reverse the problem but reinforce it. After all, if your opponent is silent on a question, the most natural thing in the world is to assume that they're hiding something. When Jews do support Israel, their arguments are immediately suspect because of who they are. In effect, failing to support Israel now makes it much harder to do so later, when that support may be even more critical. After all, what happens if a democratic Lebanon and a democratic Iraq still find themselves opposing Israel? You'd better have serious arguments ready, and you'd better have an audience willing to take them seriously.

Right now, evangelical Christians are among the most vocal and strongest supporters of Israel. In fact, this support, while welcome, may be allowing some Jews to duck their responsibilities to hone arguments and engage in debate. After all, the obvious answer to the dual-loyalty charge is twofold: 1) there are Jews who don't support Israel much, and 2) there are non-Jews who do. But ultimately this is not their fight. It saddens and perplexes the evangelicals I know when it turns out that Jews don't automatically rise to defend Israel. Americans will eventually tire of fighting for someone who won't take risks for themselves, no matter the eschatological consequences.

This is still a reversible problem. And the best way to reverse it is for American Jews to have confidence in the rightness of Israel's cause, and to be willing to defend it when necessary.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Corner and the permanently blogless Dennis Prager have spent some time on this today, and if you happened to hear "Joshua from Denver" call in to the show, then, yes, that was me, and you can stop reading now.

Prager was spending a great deal of time decrying the progressive (and Progressive) renaming of the Christmas Tree to the Holiday Tree. His ire was centered on what he saw as an attack on Christianity among the mendacious, and excessive sensitivity on the part of the immature. Right on both counts.

My object, however, was different. As an Orthodox Jew, my concern is with building and perpetuating a cohesive and resilient Jewish community. The rationale for renaming Christmas Trees to Holiday Trees is that "Christmas" is exclusive, whereas "holiday" is inclusive. Personally, it just makes me want to be more reclusive, but that's another matter. So the question is, what exactly are the revisionists including?

What do you think? They're trying to include Hannukah. But I don't want Hannukah included. Hannukah doesn't have anything to do with trees, except perhaps burning them for the fire to make the latkes. Trees have no place in Hannukah, just as Christmas has no place in Judaism. This is the kind of syncretist nonsense that can only serve to undermine, dilute, and corrupt my holiday, and it reveals a leftist hostility not merely to Christianity, but to religion as a whole.

Christmas in the public square is fine, as long as it doesn't try to include me.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Official Carnival of Jewish Blogging is up for the week.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I still plan to write more about Eric Yoffie and the Reform Movement's biennial convention in Houston. For the moment, I'll yield the floor to Richard Baehr (a politically conservative Jew himself) of the American Thinker:

A comparison to Nazis? That is the kind of cheapening of the uniqueness of the Holocaust that normally gets one in trouble with the Anti-Defamation League and its President Abraham Foxman. At least most of the time, it does. But Foxman did not find any problem in Yoffie’s outrageous and vile comparison of the Nazi killing machine to anti-gay marriage advocates among the Christian right. When you do not agree with the political and social priorities of Rabbi Yoffie or Rabbi Saperstein, you must be a Nazi or sinful. This is the wonderful language of these temperate, thoughtful leaders.

...

It is not evangelical Christians who hijacked airplanes and crashed them into tall buildings in New York. And it is not evangelical Christians calling for the elimination of the state of Israel or murdering Jews there, or murdering Americans in Iraq and elsewhere. Of course, Abe Foxman and Rabbi Yoffie believe we have bigger threats than radical Islamic terrorism, such as silent prayers before a school day begins, a nativity display next to a Menorah in the town square, and making sure that minority students do not get a better education in a private school with a religious affiliation financed by education vouchers.

By failing to recognize the most basic realities around them, focusing on imagined enemies while ignoring and even cozying up to those who support real enemies of the Jewish people, the liberal Jewish panjandrums have clearly entered pathological territory.

He's actually kinder than I would have been. For instance, he fails to note that, later in his address, Yoffie (rightly) condemns radical settlers for comparing Sharon to the Nazis, thereby "cheapening the Holocaust."

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm no fan of Eric Yoffe. But the religious head of the Jewish Reform Movement in America gives a biennial sermon at the national convention, to set the tone and the agenda for the next tow years. This time, he's outdone himself. In discussion the "religious right" and its approach to gay issues:

We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations.

I'm going to have more - a lot more - to say about this, especially about his call for "discussion with civility", but for the moment, just consider the irony from the press's point of view. He's sought out for quotes on Supreme Court nominees. When Senators call him "The Antichrist," they back down. Political meetings he attends are front-page news. The Post and the News report about James Dobson as though the Colorado Springs exits off of I-25 have toll booths with direct deposit to Focus on the Family, and participants in City Council meetings need to kiss his ring before they can go into chambers.

But when the spiritual head of one of the three major Jewish denominations compares him to Hitler, that's unremarkable.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The 45th edition of Haveil Haveilim or (Habel Habelim, if you're Yemenite) is up, over at Mirty's Place.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So it turns out that with about 2 minutes to go until sundown, I discovered I was short of dog food, and wouldn't have enough to get the big guy through Shabbat. It was suggested that I go get enough for the dog's breakfast and dinner from some friends, but I couldn't.

You're not allowed to be mikibble on Shabbat.

And with that, on to this week's Haveil Havelim. I had a hard time deciding whether some posts belonged in the Israel section or the Archaeology section, an occupational hazard when dealing with a country with so much history, so close to the surface, I suppose.

In addition to the submissions, I've added a few postings from other Jewish blogs I read. These postings aren't necessarily an endorsement of their opinions, but you may take them as an endorsement of the blogs themselves.

Archaeology

Israel Perspectives finds immediacy in history at Latrun.

Shiloh Musings lets us know that the Vatican has its eyes on a prime piece of historic Jewish real estate.

Mirty draws attention to readin' and writin', 10th Century BCE-style.

Israel & The Middle East

Chayyei Sarah explains why government offices need to treat immigrants differently from tourists.

Uber-Haveil Soccer Dad has some thoughts about the New York Times of Israel, and exactly how apt that appellation is.

Daled Amos notes that the Palestinians lead the Iraqis in one important category.

Samizdat has a suitably depressing take on the state of Israel's political parties, sparing no one.

CosmicX suggests that Shimon Peres may not be the loser we all assume he is, despite the similarity between his general election record and that of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowls.

IRIS blog has collected a bunch of links that point to more Islamic influence in the French riots than we may have thought.

And TheRaphi has some friendly suggestions for the French on dealing with their Muslim populations.

Religious Stuff

Out of Step Jew revisits a great article by Haym Soloveitchik, and wishes the tenor of the debate were a little more contructive and respectful.

Judith Plaskow's Standing Again At Sinai has inspired quite a debate over at Western Jew.

And Modern Orthodox Woman notes some changes on women's roles in the Orthodox community.

Me-ander meditates on Parshah Lech Lecha, and has some comparisons between Abraham and Ruth.

The 37th Tzaddik has some fairly high-level discussion of what happens after you die. Warning: Hebrew required.

For those of you contemplating yet another schism, On the Main Line has some thoughts on Karaism.

Jewish Book Month

A Whispering Soul notes that it's Jewish Book Month, and has some personal favorites to suggest.

A Simple Jew has the story of some books from a Judenrein shtetl, the last living remnants of that place.

Personal

Elie continues Aaron's Story, at the halfway point of saying Kaddish.

Gadol Hador signs off.

And let's finish with a little poetry from Musings of a Jewish Soul.

Haveil Havalim (The Jewish/Israeli blog carnival) can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Passover is a expensive holiday that demands extensive preparation. So a lot of people (usually with a lot of money) decide to go away to a Pesach program, at a hotel, and Leave the Kashering to Them. Some friends of ours run such a program, and were kind enough to have us as guests a few years ago.

The logistics of preparing a tour like this are complex. Not only is there the catering, but also the kashering of the kitchen, the programming, setting up a synagogue in the hotel, programming, children's programming, arranging local tours, and so on. Families want special rates. They need special room arrangements for wheelchairs. Some people arrive in the middle, some people leave in the middle, and some families partially arrive in the middle, and want rooms near each other. D-Day took less preparation.

Now, these programs are pretty expensive, especially for a family. A family of four can easily spend $30,000 on such a trip, and some families do it every year. Which means that when things go wrong - and they always do - people complain. As my friend Avi put it, "when you're paying $30,000 for a vacation, every meal is a $30,000 meal, because that's the number they remember."

And that's where C&D come in. When we were interviewing Bob Beauprez, he recalled a conversation with the police department in Delta, and how desperate they were for their piece of that $3.7 billion. "How much of that do you really think you're going to get?" he asked them, in a conversation since repeated a few hundred times. "I think they thought they were getting the whole $3.7 billon."

In fact, since nobody really knows how much they're going to get, $3.7 billion is the number they remember. So every slice, every nonprofit, ever fair-to-middle Montessouri school in the middle of Montrose turns into Mr. Berger, Esq, from Manhattan, and his family of five. Just as every seder turns into a $30,000 meal, and every broken TV remote turns into a $30,000 call to the hotel staff, every non-existent allocation turns into $3.7 billion.

Remember, there is abosolutely nothing statutory about where this money gets spent, how it gets spent, or who gets to see it. Legislatures can't bind their successors that way. The C&D proponents simply dangled this $3.7 billion number in front of these guys, and they all figured they're get a generous helping. They foolishly looked at the long list of advocates, and thought this must be a good thing. In fact, tonight, if C passes, every name on that list makes each piece that much smaller.

When those guys who put their names on the line for $3.7 billion get a check for $5,000, they're going to be more than a little disappointed. And no, don't expect them to have second thoughts about the process. Expect them to ask for even more money.

Which just goes to show that generous non-profits can be just as short-sighted and selfish as anyone with retained earnings.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sukkot (and its appendage holiday, Shemini Atzeret) is eight days long, so it always falls on at least one Shabbat. Never able to resist the temptation to lengthen the service, the rabbis instituted the practice of reading the Book of Kohelet (that's Ecclesiastes to you). It's a longish book, and it usually adds about half an hour to the service, but it's one of my favorites.

Academics will tell you that Kohelet is a perfect example of ancient "Wisdom Literature," turning the book's author, King Solomon, into a earlier-day Poor Richard, without the poor. In fact, it's a Jewish "Carpe Diem," which on reflection risks turning the great King into Robin Williams. Nonetheless, it's a perfect counterpoint to Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur, where we spend the whole day reflecting on what we've done wrong. While "Unetaneh Tokef" reminds us that life is fleeting, and once it's gone, it's gone, "Kohelet" gives us a reason to care about living that life.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you wondering where the blog has been the last two days, Monday night was the start of an 8-day Jewish Festival known as Sukkot (most of the Christian world knows it as the Feast of Tabernacles, which isn't quite the same thing). There's a fall harvest component to the holiday, but the main thrust of it is the booths, or Sukkot, that Jews build to eat and spend time in during the holiday. It's dark now, of course, but I'll get my own sukkah pictures up tomorrow.

The other main symbols are the lulav and the etrog. The lulav is a bundle of myrtle, willow, and a palm frond, while the etrog is a more-or-less-inedible citrus, apparently only grown in Israel. Most of the palms come from Egypt for some reason. Now, the palms in southern California and Arizona are, in fact, Kosher for Festival Use, and to the best of my knowledge, the country also has some areas that do fairly well in producing citrus. So why on earth someone hasn't put together a local business growing these things is beyond me. There's a market of at least several hundred thousand for the etrogs, and there's only a palm tree on every other corner in LA, SD, and Phoenix.

Go here or here for further information.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog's going dark for the next two days - Rosh Hashanah, 5766.

Shanah Tovah, and a happy, healthy new year to everyone.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)