"Welcome to Atlanta, where the players play/And I hope you can make my Bar Mitzvah day..."

(Via Metafilter, where the post just went up, so you can't tell yet whether people are going to trash this kid or love him.)

The Bnei Menashe — one of the "lost tribes" — immigrate from India to Israel.

BBC reports:

"The members of this tribe have never forgotten where they came from and we are excited to be able to help them come back," [said  said Michael Freund, chairman of the Shavei Israel group which helped organise the journey for the Bnei Menashe members.]

But some critics say the Bnei Menashe's link to Judaism are "historically untenable". They accuse the community of using their status to escape poverty India.

There were 10 lost tribes in all. Were these people one of them? They maintained an oral tradition — dating back to the 8th century B.C. — telling of their migration through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, China, and ultimately to settle in northeastern India. Should skepticism be aimed at these people, or is it better to honor them and welcome them as symbolizing the idea of the lost tribes — which itself may be only a myth?

Here's the Wikipedia article on the 10 lost tribes, including details of all the various claims and speculations. There are so many candidates — in Africa, all over Asia (the Pashtuns, the Japanese), in Europe (the Irish), and even in the Americas. The Book of Mormon goes into this topic:

In the Book of Mormon, Lehi (Hebrew לחי Léḥî / Lāḥî "jawbone") was an ancient prophet who lived around 600 BC...

Shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, Lehi escaped with his family, along with his friend Ishmael and his family, and another man named Zoram. Together, Lehi led them south down the Arabian Peninsula until they reached a fertile coastal region they named Bountiful. There, they built a ship, and sailed across the ocean to the Americas. Lehi's sons Nephi and Laman are said to have established themselves and to have founded Israelite nations: the Nephites and the Lamanites....

Many Mormons consider Native Americans to be descendants of the Lamanites. Officially, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints appears to accept this position....

"When [mohel, A. Romi Cohn] circumcises an infant, he said, he almost always put his mouth on the baby’s penis to pull blood away from the wound..."

"... in an ancient part of the circumcision ritual, known in Hebrew as metzitzah b’peh, that is still commonplace in parts of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community but is rare in other branches of Judaism."

The city estimates that metzitzah b’peh is used in some 3,600 local circumcisions each year. The city’s health department says that, between 2000 and 2011, 11 babies contracted herpes as a result, and 2 of them died. This spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that the procedure created a risk for transmission of herpes and other pathogens and was “not safe.”

So on Thursday, the city’s Board of Health is scheduled to vote on a proposal that would require parents to sign a consent form indicating that they are aware of the risk of herpes transmission when a circumcision procedure, or bris, includes direct oral contact.

Cohn is an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor who has performed the ritual 25,000+ times, free of charge, and, he says, without ever causing an infection. He says he'll go to jail before complying with this new regulation (which only requires informed consent — it's not a prohibition). He's sought out by parents who say things like "I don’t want a 99 percent job, I want a 100 percent job... I want [my son] to be fully Jewish."

"A German rabbi is facing charges for performing a circumcision..."

"... less than two months after a Cologne court outraged Jews and Muslims by outlawing the procedure."

"It has been many decades since a Jew was charged for practicing Judaism openly and is reminiscent of far darker times," [said Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress.] "We hope that in Germany, of all places, the authorities would remain far more sensitive to this issue."

"It wasn’t a gloved-fist salute from the medal stand, but Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman made quite a statement yesterday..."

"... by winning a gold medal and invoking the memory of the Israeli athletes killed 40 years ago in Munich."

Raisman finished first in the women’s floor exercise, but she deserves to have another medal draped around her neck for having the chutzpah to face the world and do what needed to be done and say what needed to be said.

What did she do? The linked NY Post column is really obtuse. Is it that she had "Hava Nagila" as her background music? That she said "Having that floor music wasn’t intentional... But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me"?

"By the time Mitt Romney meets with Israel’s leaders on Sunday, the Republican Jewish Coalition will have kicked off an unprecedented political campaign..."

"... back in the U.S. to pick off Jewish American voters in traditional Democratic strongholds in three battleground states."

The RJC campaign comes down to four numbers: 11, 16, 19, and 24. That is the percentage of Jewish voters who went Republican in presidential elections between [1992] and 2004, [Ari] Fleischer said, noting the upward trend. The backward slide to roughly 21 % in 2008 can be attributed to factors such as the popularity of Mr. Obama.

If Republican Jewish voters can push the number closer to 25 % this time, Mr. Fleischer said, “that’s huge.” But the number if 30%, the election’s over, he said, based on gains in his voter group in those three swing states.

Here's the pitch:

German court says a boy's right to physical integrity trumps his parents' religious interest in having him circumcised.

Jewish and Muslim groups are reportedly outraged.

"Literally, it’s called ‘he who is inserted by his fellow man into his throat,’ about oral sex between two men."

"It doesn’t say it is permitted, but it doesn’t use the word ‘abomination’... and I was so happy, I called my friends in Baltimore. This was the first time I had ever seen a loophole that allowed me to have a sex life within a halachic framework.”

Says Y-Love — Yitz Jordan — "who decided to become Jewish at 6 years old, after seeing a 'Happy Passover' announcement on TV." Jordan is black (and a rapper) and says he's always known he is gay. 

I'd like a link to that powerful ad, and I have not done my own research on that text with the loophole. 

40,000+ "ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, all dressed in black suits and white shirts" rally — at the Mets' stadium — about "the dangers of the Internet."

The NYT reports:

For the attendees, many of whom said they came at the instructions of their rabbis, it was a chance to hear about a moral topic considered gravely important in their community: the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the uncensored, often incendiary Web....

“Desires are out there,” [said Shlomo Cohen, 24, of Toronto], adding that men could be particularly susceptible. “We have to learn how to control ourselves.”...

Eytan Kobre, a spokesman for the event, delivered a more intense message to reporters outside the stadium. “The siren song of the Internet entices us!” he pronounced in a booming voice. “It brings out the worst of us!”

Romney having trouble raising money from Jewish donors who say they prefer "the Jewish candidate" — Michele Bachmann.

What's going on here? Republican fund raisers are exploiting Obama's weak support for Israel, but Mitt Romney is not doing so well with Jewish donors. If these donors aren't responding to Romney, and if they are indeed calling Bachmann "the Jewish candidate," are they really making a mistake, as the NY Post puts it, not realizing that she's Christian? I doubt it! Bachmann flaunts her Christianity, and her critics critique her for it. And a mere mistake could simply be corrected.

[S]ome in Romney's camp have been wondering whether Bachmann and her allies are pushing the "Jewish" rumor to help their own fund-raising, sources said.

Some! The dreaded some! Sources said. Maybe some in Romney's camp are pushing the Jewish rumor rumor to to help their own fund-raising!

The NY Post article goes on to say:

[Bachmann] has enjoyed strong popularity among Jewish voters and often talks about her stay on a kibbutz during the summer of 1974, when she was a teenager.

In a speech to the American Israel Political Action Committee last year, Bachmann recalled being guarded by soldiers while working on the kibbutz.

"While we were working, the soldiers were walking around looking for land mines," she said. "I really learned a lot in Israel."

She went on to say, "I am a Christian, but I consider my heritage Jewish, because it is the foundation, the roots of my faith as a Christian."

Bachmann also told an AIPAC gathering earlier this year that she and her family make sure each year to attend at least one Jewish-theme play or movie.

I think if any of these donors are calling Michele Bachmann "the Jewish candidate" they mean it in the figurative and satirical sense that Toni Morrison used when she called Bill Clinton the first black President.

People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.

There's a somewhat common phrase "honorary jew." It's noted in the Urban Dictionary. It turns up over 20,000 Google hits, and, on the first page, we see discussion of whether Sarah Palin and, elsewhere, Hillary Clinton should be counted as "honorary Jews." Here's a cute blog post about Sarah Palin, noting 10 reasons why Palin counts as a Jew. You get the idea. The big one is support for Israel.

What might have motivated the Romney people to get the idea out there that Michele Bachmann is really Jewish? It could be to generate unease among voters who have some anti-Semitism.Think of the rumor that Barack Obama is really Muslim. The Romney people should not want people to think they meant to ignite that kind of suspicion about Bachmann. Oddly, Romney himself has to deal with the antagonism toward his religion — the religion he actually follows. You'd think his campaign folk would be more sensitive. It's almost as if they're trying to generate a rumor that Bachmann's not Christian at all to deal with his problem with some people thinking Mormons aren't Christian enough (or at all).

But what was the point of saying that the prospective donors are mistaken about such a basic fact about Bachmann? If you're trying to warm people up to your candidate, you don't normally insult them!

UPDATE: I'm told this proves she's not Jewish:

"They’d still like you to perform a bris but don’t want to put him through any unnecessary pain."

"Can you do it after he dies?"

The effort to drag down Sarah Palin for using the term "blood libel" has backfired.

The criticism had to do with wanting to restrict the term to its specific original context, a longstanding vicious lie about the Jewish people. The result of the criticism is that now when someone searches the term "blood libel," they see Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. If the intent of the criticism was to preserve the purity of the reference, it's had the opposite effect. (If the intent of the criticism was to take advantage of a perceived opportunity to take another shot at Sarah Palin, the hypocrisy is too nauseating to describe.)

Meanwhile, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says "Sarah Palin Is Right About 'Blood Libel.'"

A woman with 2,000 living descendants has just died at the age of 93.

2,000 living descendants — think about it. Yitta Schwartz had 15 children and a number of grandchildren that the family rounded at 200. The great- and great-great-grandchildren were so numerous that the family only estimated.

Schwartz was a Satmar Hasidic Jew who lived in the village of Kiryas Joel — a place we read about in the Supreme Court case Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grument:

The residents of Kiryas Joel are vigorously religious people who make few concessions to the modern world and go to great lengths to avoid assimilation into it. They interpret the Torah strictly; segregate the sexes outside the home; speak Yiddish as their primary language; eschew television, radio, and English language publications; and dress in distinctive ways that include headcoverings and special garments for boys and modest dresses for girls. Children are educated in private religious schools, most boys at the United Talmudic Academy where they receive a thorough grounding in the Torah and limited exposure to secular subjects, and most girls at Bais Rochel, an affiliated school with a curriculum designed to prepare girls for their roles as wives and mothers. See generally, W. Kephart & W. Zellner, Extraordinary Groups (4th ed. 1991); I. Rubin, Satmar, An Island in the

According to the NYT article (the first link):

Like many Hasidim, Mrs. Schwartz considered bearing children as her tribute to God. A son-in-law, Rabbi Menashe Mayer, a lushly bearded scholar, said she took literally the scriptural command that “You should not forget what you saw and heard at Mount Sinai and tell it to your grandchildren.”

Ahmadinejad is...

... Jewish!

"I will never forget the sight of our table... with Brando on his left and that childhood friend, who just happened to be Dylan, on his right."

"At first... the Seder progressed normally without anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary. But after about 45 minutes, 'the rabbi figured out that ours was not your average Seder table.'"

"'Mr. Brando, would you please do us the honor of reading the next passage from the Haggada?' he asked. Marlon replied, 'It would be my pleasure.'"

Brando rose and delivered the passage "as if he were reading Shakespeare on Broadway. Mouths fell open and eyes focused on the speaker with an intensity any rabbi would covet. When he was done, I think people actually paused, wondering if they should applaud."

Next... the rabbi approached another member of our table: "Mr. Dylan, would you do us the honor of singing us a song?"

"Did Ezra Klein post anti-Semitic comments to set up Ann Althouse?"

A fair post title?

Protein Wisdom on what Ezra Klein said about my commenters.

Jeff G. — linking to yesterday's post of mine — said:

JournaList is keeping an eye on your behavior.

(Note: it's JournoList.)

I wonder, are they putting together a dossier on those sites that, you know, traffic in hate?

Because that might come in useful to some, especially in a climate wherein the Fairness Doctrine is ascendant.

Top 10 Jewish Movie Characters.

From Idol Chatter. Excerpt:

5. Obi-Wan Kenobi from "Star Wars" (Sir Alec Guinness) - His name seems more Japanese than anything else, but "don't tell me he's not Jewish," a friend says confidently. Sir Alec Guinness's rabbi-like Jedi talk of a Force that runs through us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together is proof.

Throwing Things takes offense:

[This] may be among the most poorly-constructed lists I've ever seen, a BFTJ compendium focusing on characters that are just brutally bad stereotypes (Judd Hirsch in Independence Day), in bad movies (Melanie Griffith in A Stranger Among Us), or who aren't even Jewish at all (Obi-Wan Kenobi and Gov. William J. Lepetomane, and just because the Native American chief spoke some Yiddish doesn't make him Jewish -- see Powell, Colin.)

And yet he's miffed that Yentl isn't on the list.

"I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel."

That's the name of a Facebook group that I just got an invitation to join. I click over:

ONCE WE REACH 100,000 MEMBERS, WE WILL PETITION FACEBOOK TO REMOVE ALL GROUPS WHICH SAY THINGS SUCH AS "G-D BLESS HITLER," "F--K THE JEWS," "F--K ISRAEL," ETC., AND GROUPS WHICH ENCOURAGE VIOLENCE AGAINST AND/OR THREATEN JEWS, ISRAELIS, OR THE NATION OF ISRAEL AS A WHOLE.

Though this may appear to be a violation of the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech), we have learned it is not. The Bill of Rights only applies to the Government, and entails that the Government cannot obstruct with the rights of the people. Facebook is a private company, and not owned, funded, or operated by the Government; thus the Freedom of Speech law does not apply for them. The rules for Facebook are made by it's creators, and listed in the Terms of Use page. There, on the fourth bullet point under the User Conduct section, it clearly states that no Facebook user can "upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable."

Sorry. My free speech values extend a lot farther than what's protected by the First Amendment. And I think Facebook's Terms of Use are horrifyingly restrictive. Censoring everything "hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable"? Ridiculous! I'd rather join a Facebook group called "Facebook's Terms of Use Are an Affront to Free Speech."
________________

P.S. I support Israel.

Christmas, secularism, and how Reason Magazine owes me a photo credit.

Reason's Hit and Run blog uses my photograph of a Freedom From Religion sign as it links to an article by Jacob Sullum about secularism and Christmas. How do I know it's my photograph of the sign? Look at my original 2005 blog post that includes the photo. Yes, anyone might have photographed that sign -- in the Wisconsin Capitol -- that year or some other year, or an identical sign somewhere else some other year, but look closely the reflections. It's obviously a cropped version my photograph.

Anyway, here's Sullum's article:

[I]t's remarkable how many people at this time of year will insist with a straight face that they are celebrating a secular winter holiday season, when the reason for the season—the birth of the Christian Savior, whom his followers believe to be the Son of God—is about as religious as things get....

So Jesus's birthday was actually December 25th? Which came first, Christmas on December 25th or the tradition of celebration at the time of the solstice? It's way dark this time of year, and we need some encouragement one way or another.

I'm not sure this sort of thing rises to the level of a constitutional complaint, but maybe we'd all get along better if the majority did not pretend that everyone can comfortably celebrate Christmas. The other day, as we were preparing for the first night of Chanukah, we had a visitor who remarked that she had always thought of Christmas as a secular holiday. My wife, a rabbi, explained to her why that view is problematic. Upon leaving, our visitor wished me a happy Chanukah and a merry Christmas.

The majority doesn't "pretend that everyone can comfortably celebrate Christmas"! The majority of Americans may be Christian, but even within this majority, many prefer for the shared public forum to be secular. And most of those who want to see more Christmas displays and to hear more wishes of "Merry Christmas" are not expecting nonbelievers to celebrate the religious holiday. They may also think -- as many nonChristians also think -- that it can be happy and heartwarming to see the signs of other people's religion -- at least in a free country where no one is trying to make you do anything other than passively witness what other people choose to do.

I've always loved this short blog post that my ex-husband, Richard Lawrence Cohen, published 4 years ago on Christmas Eve:

Merry _________

As a Jew, a liberal, a lover of the Constitution, and a loather of Fox News, I wish to declare that the word “Christmas” does not faze, throw, offend, upset, or disconcert me in the slightest.

When I was in a 90% Jewish public elementary school in the Bronx, we learned Christmas carols at this time of year. The songs were pretty, and it was a way of finding out about another culture, one that was all around us and well worth finding out about.

On the shopping street of our 90% Jewish neighborhood, the lampposts and subway girders were strung with lights, Santas, and snowmen, to attract customers.

If anyone had suggested establishing Christianity as the official religion of our country, we would have been outraged. But the fact that we lived in a predominantly Christian country was no outrage.

Many Sunday mornings I woke to the ringing of bells from the Catholic church across the parkway. It sounded nicer than the El going by every five minutes. And I took Driver’s Ed at a Catholic girls’ school, Mother Cabrini High—which is another story.

Yesterday, I was doing some Christmas shopping down on State Street here in Madison -- a city with various religions and quasi- and non-religions. There were hardly any shoppers, and I thought that was pretty sad -- and way too desolate 2 days before Christmas. I wondered if the place was deserted because of the lack of stimulating decorations. There are huge piles of snow everywhere, and the decoration the city has chosen to display is the large snowflake. There's just a big white snowflake affixed to each lamppost. [ADDED: Actually, only a few lampposts have these snowflakes.]

And then, in one store, where I bought 5 gift items, the shopkeeper put everything in separate boxes, nicely folded inside colored tissue, and gave me a hug. I said "Merry Christmas," and this seemed to flummox him. He said: "Happy... Happy!"

Oh, the conflicts!