Man, I love Jews.

From the Baltimore Sun:

On a typical summer Sunday, the doors of Temple Oheb Shalom are locked tight. With observances of the Jewish Sabbath taking place on Friday night and Saturday and religious school out until fall, the Park Heights Avenue building sits empty.

Not yesterday. Hundreds of congregants of a different faith poured into the sanctuary, bringing along their love of God, their upbeat music and their fervent prayer to the otherwise quiet house of worship. A fire July 1 damaged the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Upton and left its flock with no place to come together. But an offer from the synagogue's leaders gave them temporary refuge as their landmark building is repaired.

. . .

"It solidifies what I've always believed," said Joshua Lawton, 23, of Towson, a relatively new member of the church. "It doesn't matter what religion you are - it's all about God. Period. End of story. Everything else is just about details."

I like this story, and wanted to share.

What it means to be Christian

Antisemitism is NOT Catholic

(From JTA):

A Catholic archbishop in Brazil minimized the Holocaust and declared that Jews dominate the world media.

Dadeus Grings, the archbishop of Porto Alegre, declared that "more Catholics than Jews have died in the Holocaust, but this is not usually told because Jews own the world's propaganda."

. . . .

"It's not the first time Mr. Grings refers to the Holocaust in a twisted way," said Henry Chmelnitsky, president of the Rio Grande do Sul Jewish Federation. "Fewer Jews died in World War II because there were and there still are fewer Jews in the world. Proportionally, the extermination minimized by the archbishop meant the slaughter of most of a people that was already small. By reproducing stereotypes created by the Nazis, Grings positions himself on the wrong side of history."

Grings is the second Catholic bishop in recent months to publicly minimize the Holocaust.

The other night, I went out to see the incredible Bob Wiseman perform. I'd been a bit of a fan of his music for some time, but I'd never seen him live before. Turns out he was nothing short of amazing. I could go on for hours about his show, but this is not the place. There was one song of his, however, that I will talk about. It's called "How Round the Earth" and these are the lyrics:

I was 12 years old
I was walking home
From a soccer game

He was an older kid
I seen him cross the street
He pulled a knife out on me

I said I got no money
He said I don't believe that's true
I know your last name
I know the house you live
Everyone knows that you're a Jew

He stabbed me in the arm
He punched me in the face
He tripped me as I tried to run
The cars drove by
His girlfriend was laughing
Finally they let me crawl away

My father said 'what happened?'
I told him nothing happened at all
'Cause he knew my last name
He knew the house where I lived
I never ever felt so small

Now it's been years since then
Ice Cube's got a new record out
I read about his press conference

He talked about history
About the Jewish conspiracy
And it occurred to me to say

Ice Cube, I live at 848 oak street
You should come over and have tea
I'll show you my bank account
I'll show you the car i drive
And then maybe you'll decide
The earth isn't flat

I was pretty upset about this song, and I'd venture to say that it's fate this news story came out so quickly after I'd heard it for the first time, because I really want to say something: fuck antisemitism. Seriously, fuck it. Saying "Jews control the media", aside from being a stupid fucking thing to say, makes violent idiots think they can go out and stab little Jewish kids while they're walking home from soccer practice. My mom's dad is Jewish (a fact I discovered on the way to my first Passover when I was seven). He's unbelievably lapsed, of course, or I imagine he wouldn't have allowed his children to be raised Catholic, but he loves his gefilte fish and still speaks some Hebrew and likes to call my sister and me "meshugganas." So, you know, he's culturally Jewish (kind of like how I'm culturally Catholic).

I never got a sense from him of a fear of antisemitism, which is probably because the man is fearless. But this fear is something I've seen in every other Jewish person I've ever known. In high school, my friend Lisa would pretend not to be Jewish around the Muslim kids because she was afraid of what they'd say (personally, I think that as all this took place in the wake of September 11th, I would have been more afraid to be the Muslim kids. Some asshole burnt down their mosque. Fuck that shit too). My friend David told me that when he first went to college, he was militantly Jewish and would wear t-shirts to that effect, but his mother would beg him not to because she was afraid somebody would do something to him.

I can't imagine living with that kind of fear, which is so culturally ingrained from centuries of antisemitism. In this day and age, do we really want to continue that bullshit? I mean, haven't we learned anything from South Park? Eric Cartman is the (hilarious) embodiment of cartoon evil. Don't people realize that diatribes about the "Jewish conspiracy" just make them sound like him? Do you really want to sound like Eric Cartman, Archbishop Grings? WTF is with the Brazilian Catholic Church?

The Catholic Church may have fucked up the Holocaust, but in 1965, Pope Paul VI made it very clear that "in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone." So your position, Archbishop Asshole is inherently un-Catholic, and inherently un-Christlike.

Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17). Christ himself never, ever preached violence against the Jews. He took issue with a corrupt church body, much like he would probably take issue with much of the Christian church of today. He did not, however, preach hatred against his own people because, well, they were his own people. Antisemitism has no place in Christianity. Hate in general has no place in Christianity. Get your head out of your ass, Archbishop. WTFWJD?

David Plotz - Blogging the Bible

(From JTA)

Like many lax but well-educated Jews (and Christians), I have long assumed I knew what was in the Bible—more or less. I read parts of the Torah as a child in Hebrew school, then attended a rigorous Christian high school where I had to study the Old and New Testaments. Many of the highlights stuck in my head—Adam and Eve, Cain vs., Abel, Jacob vs. Esau, Jonah vs. whale, 40 days and nights, 10 plagues and Commandments, 12 tribes and apostles, Red Sea walked under, Galilee Sea walked on, bush into fire, rock into water, water into wine. And, of course, I absorbed other bits of Bible everywhere—from stories I heard in churches and synagogues, movies and TV shows, tidbits my parents and teachers told me. All this left me with a general sense that I knew the Good Book well enough, and that it was a font of crackling stories, Jewish heroes, and moral lessons.

So, the tale of Dinah unsettled me, to say the least. If this story was strutting cheerfully through the back half of Genesis, what else had I forgotten or never learned? I decided I would, for the first time as an adult, read the Bible. And I would blog about it as I went along.

This is such a great idea. I know that I'm not as well educated about the Bible as I'd previously assumed I was. I find new stuff in there every day, even in the Gospels, which I thought I had down. Reading it straight through would be something. I mean, time-consuming and tedious but also probably really fascinating and enlightening.

Plotz says something else in this interview that I found really fascinating:

Christians have the New Testament, which softens and explains and cleans up a lot of the messiness of the Hebrew Bible. Jews don't have Jesus to fall back on. The result, I think, is our amazing tradition of argument. We have a holy book that is full of immoral heroes and an erratic, vindictive God. How do we grapple with that? My Bible reading, though deeply ignorant and naïve, is very much in that Jewish tradition of addressing the holy book by arguing with it, rather than simply accepting it, sheep-like.

I've often wondered how the Jews could seem to be such reasonable, intelligent, hilarious, nice people when their God is the same God that those fundies running around quoting the Old Testament pray to. I mean, Leviticus is a Jewish book. The Hasidic Jews (like my cousin the Rabbi) pretty much follow it to the letter. But this idea of arguing with the Bible... I have to confess, I love it. Not only that, but I totally do that. Just as much as I take my morality from the words of Jesus Christ, I often try to make the words of Jesus Christ fit with my morality. Who knew there was an entire religion full of people who do the same thing (only, you know, without the Jesus part).

And speaking of Jesus, wasn't he Jewish? Wasn't what he did while he was preaching just arguing with the Old Testament? His words were simultaneously steeped in the Jewish tradition yet completely opposed to so much of it. Who's to say that we can't do the same thing today? I think this idea is certainly food for thought. If we see the Bible not as a dead set of laws that we must follow or perish, but a living organism with which we can have a conversation, then we can find ways to make our faith work in this new world. Oh, and we can also stop giving gay people shit all the time. Just sayin'.

Catholic Politics

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston had to meet with Jewish community leaders to smooth over this whole Holocaust-denying bishop thing. While I'm glad that he did that, I think it's sad that he had to. Here's what he had to say about it (from Boston.com):

I think it was a very positive meeting. Stuart Rossman, the president of the Jewish Community Relations Council, organized us, and we had the opportunity to listen to two Holocaust survivors, Israel Arbeiter and Stephan Ross, who shared with us, in very moving terms, their firsthand experience of the horrors of the Holocaust. It was an opportunity, for myself and other members of the Catholic community there, to assure the leadership that was present that the Catholic Church repudiates this denial of the Holocaust, and to restate that we see the Holocaust as the worst crime in the history of humanity. We were happy to hear it stated, once again, the wonderful relationship that we’ve had historically between our two communities here in Boston.

I announced that we will be hosting a Holocaust memorial service around the transfer of the menorah from the old chancery to our new pastoral center, and immediately Stuart Rossman and others volunteered to participate with us. We also mentioned that we’re very hopeful that the Holy Father’s visit to Israel will be a wonderful occasion for him to be able to clarify before the world the church’s strong feelings about the Holocaust, and our special friendship with the Jewish community. I also mentioned to them that on Thursday I will be going to Washington for a memorial service for my friend Rabbi Leon Klenicki, hosted by the ADL and the Pope John Paul II Center, and after the memorial service I’ve been invited to a working lunch with leaders from the ADL and other Jewish organizations and the Bishops’ Conference to discuss ways, moving forward, to improve communications between our communities.

Now here's where it gets interesting:

The Holy Father lifted this excommunication unaware of the statements that Bishop Williamson had made, and that his intention was to try and begin a dialogue that might lead to reconciliation with this group. The alternative is that this group is going to evolve farther and farther away from the Catholic church and probably embrace more and more an anti-Semitic agenda. I think some of the leadership that is there does exhibit some very disturbing theories, and some of these things have been exhibited on the web sites. I sincerely believe that many of the Catholics who have gravitated towards this movement have done so because of nostalgia, and a desire to participate in the old Mass, but in some of their leadership there’s a broader agenda that’s very poisonous, so it’s in everyone’s interest for the Holy Father to be successful.

So what he's saying is that the Society of St. Pius X is dangerous if left outside of the Roman Catholic fold. By trying to bring them back in, the Vatican can control some of their anti-Semitic views. It's an interesting theory, Cardinal, but come on. How can you say in the same breath that Pope Nazipants didn't know Richard Williamson was a Holocaust denier and then say not only that the Pope re-communicated him in the interest of controlling anti-Semitism, but that the Society of St. Pius X's anti-Semitic leadership is well known? I'd like to believe you, but I think it's foolish to think anything but the obvious about this situation: the Pope is making a deliberate effort to push the Roman Catholic Church further to the right. And honestly, fuck that shit. WTF?