Political Insider: The Presbyterians Meet, Talk About Israel, Who Cares?

Recently the Jewish Week reported on a new dustup between Jewish leaders and the Presbyterian Church (USA), the mainline church that played an early role in promoting the idea of targeted sanctions aimed at Israel.

The latest controversy involved the revision of a "resource paper" on anti-Semitism that started with a draft widely praised by Jewish groups but ended up including what critics saw as a backhanded endorsement of anti-Semitism based on hostility to Israeli policies.

Now, at the conclusion of the group's marathon "general assembly" in San Jose, Calif., we learn from Jewish groups that the church actually took a few steps forward by approving a resolution - or "overture," in church lingo - calling for more balance in its approach to the Mideast conflict.

At the same time, delegates approved as resolution endorsing the "Amman Call," a 2007 document calling for a full right of return for all refugees that critics see as a roundabout way of calling for the end of the Jewish state.

Do you see a pattern here? Every time the Presbyterians meet they take some steps forward, some backward,  and the Jewish groups that invest huge amounts of time in the debate are left with results that are, at best, ambiguous.

And that leads to this question: how many Jews across the country are sitting up nights, worrying that the Presbyterians may be taking positions on a conflict that has almost nothing to do with them?  Is there any evidence that positions on a distant Mideast conflict by a church that is hemorrhaging members and facing grave internal conflicts overt issues such as gay rights are having an impact?

The Presbyterians, it seems, are no longer particularly influential on the national political scene. So do they wield a bigger bat when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or are their Mideast debates just a lot of noise about something only small handfuls of church activists care about?

But left to their own devices - to the devices, actually, of a tiny church minority that is passionately involved in the issue - won't that inevitably hurt Israel's standing in the world and give solace to those who now support a one-state solution to the conflict?

The questions aren't facetious; after reporting on the issue for several years, it's still unclear to me how deeply the issue resonates with your basic Jew on the street, or how influential Presbyterian positions on Israel really are.

Have views on the subject? Email them to jwblogs@gmail.com and let's talk about them.

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Route 17:  Tania Grossinger's Book

Summer's here and there's a new book in the bookstores, "Growing Up At Grossinger's" (Skyhorse Publishing), by Tania Grossinger that turns out to be an old book, a reprint of what she first published in 1976, that has almost nothing to do with the hotel that many of us remember and miss. Considering that the hotel closed after the original publication, one could have hoped for a serious autopsy, but that would be hoping for too much.

Her autobiography - awkwardly self-centered, even for the genre -- is about life as a second-class Grossinger cousin, a self-described "hotel brat" in the 1950s. Summer may be timeless but Tania's summers are more dated than most. She tells us what it was like when Eddie Fisher worked and flirted there, and when he brought Debbie Reynolds there, and then Elizabeth Taylor. Tania's book has cameos by Kim Novak, Jackie Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Jayne Mansfield, Milton Berle, and how Tania liked one of the pool boys, and how she didn't particularly like the guests, not that any of the guests are anything more than shadowy, stick-figures that are rarely given names, let alone life.

In other words, gentle reader, her book has nothing to do with you.

And when I think Grossinger's I think of you, not a Cindy Adams column from the Korean War years.

I miss those Catskill venues where New York's Jews could be with each other in a way we no longer can.

Anyone who ever spent time in the Catskills knows that the celebrities and entertainers were the sideshow; the guests, like you, were the main attraction. Any journalist who tells you otherwise probably wasn't there, or wasn't paying attention. The guests were the story, which is why I'd rather read a book about the Pine View Hotel, or any of a hundred other hotels, where the comedians and entertainers were less famous than Eddie Fisher or Milton Berle but were considerably more interesting and entertaining; where the staff and owner-families were  socially integrated with the guests; and where a Jewish milieu was created that was as enchanting, as magical, as anything by Chagall or the best Yiddish writers - or anything found in Israel, for that matter.

I'd rather be in the Pine View tearoom one more time than in a suite at the King David or some generic seaside joint in Tel Aviv. I'd rather sit in the Grossinger's lobby at two in the morning than listen to politicians address the Israel lobby in some D.C. ballroom.

I can watch Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor on late-night TV movies, but there is no channel that could show me you on the Grossinger's lawn on Shevuous when the sky opened at midnight (K'tonton fans) in 1979. If I wanted A-list entertainment I could go to Vegas. I'd rather watch, in my mind's eye, old men in winter coats walking around and around the empty Grossinger's pool on a cold day on Pesach than interview Tania Grossinger about how she got to know the "stars," but she never got to know you.

Readers wanting to see some photo and postcard galleries spanning the entire "mountains," along with wonderful Catskills musings, may enjoy a visit to both the Catskills Institute,  a project of Brown University, and Classic Catskills,  photos and columns from the files of the Times Herald-Record, the upstate daily that may be the best non-urban newspaper in the country. The Times Herald-Record also is a superb source for news coverage of current Jewish life in "the country," from Kiryas Joel to Sullivan County.

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Route 17: A Strained Clash

Just hours, really, into the Hamas-Israel truce, rockets flew out of Gaza and landed in Israel.

"Gaza truce strained by rocket fire," headlined Reuters (June 28). Strained? Sending rockets into another country is an act of war. What would the Palestinians of Gaza have to do to advance this beyond strained?

When John Wilkes Booth fired shots at Lincoln, did that strain his  relationship with Mrs. Lincoln? If a man consistently beats a woman up, does that strain their relationship or does it end it? Of course, Israel is very much like a battered woman, she sees the good in the Palestinians. She calls the cops, every now and then, but she won't press charges  or go to "war," as divorce lawyers call it. She wants peace, says the battered woman.

If Israel bombed Gaza City, B'tselem and Rabbis for Human Rights would call it a war crime, not something strained. When rockets fly from Hamas into Israel, no one calls it very much of anything, certainly not a reason for a massive retaliation. The battered woman loves peace, you see.

Speaking of strained language, we saw an item the other day that the saintly black-Jewish coalition "clashed" in Crown Heights in 1991. That's what too many journalists like to call it, a clash, which implies an equity of complaint. It was a clash the way a rock hitting glass is a clash, the rock complaining that the broken window hit him first.

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Political Insider:  Joe Klein vs. Abe Foxman on Iraq, Iran and "Jewish Neoconservatives"

Jewish leaders are understandably nervous as they continue pressing for a stronger U.S. and international response to Iran, while trying to avoid stirring up recurrent charges that Jews somehow caused the seemingly endless Iraq war and are now trying to do the same with Iran.

So it wasn't surprising that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reacted sharply to the charge by Time Magazine analyst Joe Klein that "Jewish neoconservatives" interested mostly in protecting Israel are distorting U.S. foreign policy.

What was a little more surprising is that Klein didn't take the ADL rebuke lying down.

In his June 24 commentary, Klein wrote that President Bush's troop surge in Iraq seems to be working, not because of the numbers of additional troops but because of a "change in tactics" and a lot of luck.

But he also argued that "this war is simply too expensive and too exhausting for our military."

Then he touched a raw nerve for Jewish leaders.

"The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel," he wrote.

"Divided loyalties?" "Plumped" for war?  Not exactly subtle, and it quickly caught the attention of ADL chief Abraham Foxman, who shot a letter to Klein.

"Whether or not one feels that America's war on Iraq was justified, the charge that it is being fought by the United States on behalf of Israel is both offensive and categorically false," Foxman wrote.

The ADL leader pointed out that some of the biggest boosters for the Iraq war "hardly fit the mold of a 'Jewish neo-con' - Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell being the most prominent among them."

And he said Klein's charge that "'divided loyalties' were behind the decision to go to war is reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government, which has unfortunately gained new currency of late."

But Klein didn't back down; in an acerbic response, he said that while they were not the "primary reason we went to war in Iraq…Jewish neoconservatives certainly played a subsidiary role in providing an intellectual rationale for the war."

And now, he said, there is an "even more dangerous tendency among Jewish neoconservatives to encourage a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering-given the vast dangers and complexities of an attack on Iran--is nauseating."

Then he got personal. 

"I am disappointed, but not surprised, by your claim of anti-Semitism," Klein wrote. "But that's what you do for a living, isn't it? I find your 'outrage' particularly galling because the people you defend are constantly spewing canards against those who favor talking to the Palestinians, or who don't favor witless bellicosity when it comes to Iran. Their campaign of defamation has cost people jobs, damaged reputations and careers. I am very tired of having reasonable people accused of being 'soft on terrorism' or 'unpatriotic' or favoring 'surrender'--Joe Lieberman's favorite-by Jewish neoconservatives who seem to have a neurotic need to prove their toughness.

Foxman's quickly fired back: "Contrary to your assertion, ADL is extremely careful in making accusations about anti-Semitism and we spend every day in our work all over the country assessing the validity -- or lack thereof -- of such accusations," he wrote. "The notion you posited that ADL is looking to find anti-Semites everywhere in no way reflects the reality."

Neoconservatives, Foxman said, "have the right to make their case without having their religion brought up." 

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A Rabbi's World: Playing the Wedding Game… Literally

Close to two weeks ago, Israel's Masorti movement, the sister movement of North America's Conservative Judaism, launched a new campaign to interest non-religious Jews in Israel in considering a Masorti wedding- fully grounded in tradition, but also sensitive to issues of egalitarianism and the particular wishes of the couple.  There is a website set up for the campaign, and the media blitz of print ads and radio commercials directs interested Israelis to the site.  There they can play "The Wedding Game," featuring an interactive, colorful format to personalize their traditional but innovative wedding.

Within the first three days of the launching of the campaign, there were 25,000 hits on the website, and now, that number is closer to 30,000.  There have also been many dozens of phone calls.

If the great medieval commentator Rashi were here, he might be moved to say Ein hamikrah hazeh omer elah darsheini.  This text demands interpretation.  Thirty thousand hits on the website in a few days??  What is going on here?

Estimates are that, on a yearly basis, some twenty percent of Israeli couples  either choose to live together without any wedding ceremony, or travel to Cypress, the Czech Republic or elsewhere for a civil ceremony, which the State of Israel will recognize.  It does not recognize a ceremony officiated at by a Masorti rabbi.  A civil ceremony celebrated outside the State of Israel qualifies you to be registered as married in Israel.   A religious ceremony officiated at by a Masorti rabbi does not.

The sad reality is that most young secular Israelis are so profoundly alienated from Judaism that they want no part of the State's official rabbinic arm.   Those rabbis sanctioned by the state too often exacerbate the situation by the careless and insensitive way they relate to the couple- or don't relate.  This is not an unknown reality in Israel, even to the Orthodox sector. 

"Modern" Orthodox Jews in Israel also lament the stranglehold of the very right-wing rabbinate on rites of passage, and religious life as a whole.  But the absence of clear political consensus in Israel on much of anything virtually guarantees that small, ultra-Orthodox parties will be needed to cobble together a governing coalition, and the portfolio that those parties invariably demand is of the Interior.  All matters of personal status, where Jewish law is the law of the land, are controlled by Misrad HaPnim, and if you want religious power, that's where it's to be found.  Hence the current situation.

What do we learn from thirty thousand hits on the wedding website in one week? 

Well, the first thing we learn is that there are obviously many so-called "secular" Jews in Israel who are not quite as secular as we might think, and the religious establishment is not only not servicing them, it is preventing others from servicing them.  That is a situation that is not good for Israel.   In a country with more than enough problems not of its own making, why use religion to create more- other than to stay in power?

I would also draw the conclusion that, as is so often the case, broad brushstrokes are inadequate to paint a picture of a complicated reality.  Israel is not a country where eighty percent of the population is ideologically secular and anti-religious.  It is, rather, a country whose citizens have never had the opportunity to learn what true religious pluralism is about, for a variety of unhappy reasons.  In this particular area, we here in the diaspora do Judaism better than our brothers and sisters in Israel.  Even with multiple options, you can still make the choices that you want, or none at all.  Maybe we should be sending shlichim to Israel instead of the other way around…

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Route 17:  AIDS and  Insincerity

My uncle, Michoel Shmuel, died of AIDS a while back, murdered by a blood transfusion given to him in a Bronx hospital, so I take the AIDS issue seriously and with some measure of resentment.

Back when he died, in the late 1980s, AIDS was the equivalent of global warming -- partially science, partially politics, partially hysteria. My uncle was neither gay nor a drug addict, the two constituencies from whence the spread of AIDS primarily originates. Yet, it was politically correct for even doctors to say that AIDS would quickly move into the heterosexual community, as well. It didn't, other than scattered deaths, such as my uncle's.

We were all threatened, supposedly, even if we were neither gay nor needle-users. AIDS predictions from the 1980s now sound as ridiculous as Barack Obama already sounds when he promises that his presidency will be "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow."

He must have been watching "Atlantic City," when Burt Lancaster's old-timer looks at the ocean and says, "You should have seen it in the old days, kid. It was something."

A 1987 Time cover story, "How Heterosexuals Are Coping With AIDS," told us: "The numbers as yet are small, but AIDS is a growing threat to the heterosexual population. Straight men and women in some cases do not believe it, in some cases do not want to believe it," just as some of us do not want to believe that the "rise of the oceans" are about to cover the Throgs Neck Bridge. But it was the skeptics about the "political" science and probability of AIDS that proved to be correct.

Even in 2008, AIDS activists still prefer to say that "all" of us are in danger even though "all" of us are not.

This past week, The New York Times front-page headlined (June 26):  "Push in Bronx for H.I.V. Test for All." This is like saying that terrorism is best fought by strip-searching elderly Jewish ladies at the airport instead of profiling young Islamic men.

According to the Times, "The New York City health department plans to announce… an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx." That can only mean the health department thinks its limited resources is best spent by testing Rabbi Mordechai Willig and the morning minyan at his Young Israel of Riverdale, and then taking blood from old Jewish guys in the Amalgamated co-ops near Van Cortlandt, before wrapping up the day by setting up a table outside Glatt Shop on Johnson Avenue.

When the health department says "all" it means all. But why not tell the truth about who in the Bronx really needs testing, and where health officials could really be doing some good and perhaps even save some precious lives?

This is akin to another front-page story, a few months ago, in the Times (March 12) headlined: "Sex Infections Found in Quarter of Teenage Girls."

There are tens of thousands of teenage girls in Kiryas Joel, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Borough Park, and another two dozen Orthodox neighborhoods where teenage Jewish girls are taught tzniut, modesty in clothes and behavior. Make fun of them all you want, but do you think sex infections are found in a quarter of those teenage girls?

All the comedians and journalists who love taking shots at religious hypocrisy in the name of "honesty" ought to be honest as to which community is raising its girls to be a "quarter" infected and which community is not.

Since so many Jews are infatuated by the phantom black-Jewish coalition, this is an interesting stat: The Times reports, "Nearly half of the African-Americans in the study of teenagers ages 14 to 19 were infected with at least one of the diseases monitored in the study - human papillomavirus (HPV), Chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite.  The 50 percent figure compared with 20 percent of white teenagers." And what's the percentage of white teenagers who go to Orthodox schools? The modern Orthodox and chassidic school systems would be the fifth largest in New York State if Orthodox New York was measured as a single city. How many of these kids have sexual infections? I'll bet you not many kids at all.

When it comes to AIDS testing, "It's not about one group doing it, it's about everybody doing it," said Dr. Sweeney of the health department.

No, not everybody. Not that there is "nobody" infected in the Orthodox world, but let's give these rabbis, parents and most of all, our teenage girls, some credit. Maybe if everyone wasn't so obsessed with the "unaffiliated" we could spend more time looking at this "affiliated" community to see what works and why.

It was George Orwell's birthday (June 25) this week, and the great prophet once warned, "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns ... instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

Our health officials, our politicians, even some journalists forsake clear language for insincerity when it comes to fingerpointing exactly where the sexual health crisis exists, where terrorism exists, where danger exists, and where it doesn't.

If Obama could hear Bush speak of appeasement in the appeasement-infested Knesset and be so sure Bush was talking about him on the other side of the globe, maybe a lot of politicians and "social activists" can read that Orwell quote and guess if it applies, just the same.

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Political Insider:  Evangelical Group Expresses "Love" for Jews, Takes Indirect Swipe at Hagee's Christian Zionism

Jews tend to view the evangelical community as a political and religious monolith, but that segment is every bit as diverse as …well, the Jews.

What brings this to mind: Thursday's ¾ page ad in the Washington Post business section by the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) politely informing Jews that they like us and everything, but have a duty to try to convert us.

"As evangelical Christians we want to express our genuine friendship and love for the Jewish people," the group says, but added "we believe the most loving and Scriptural expression of our friendship toward the Jewish people and to anyone we call friend, is to forthrightly share the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ."

And oh yes, they also support ministries "specifically directed to the Jewish people."

What gives? Why take to the nation's biggest newspapers - the ad has been running for months in a number of major publications - with this message?

The answer centers on huge rifts in the evangelical world, many of them centering on Pastor John Hagee, the founder and president of Christians United for Israel (CUFI).

As he has cranked up his pro-Israel political organization, Hagee - a megachurch pastor from San Antonio with a radio and television ministry believed to reach more than 100 million worldwide - has deemphasized the mandate to convert Jews to Christianity.

Indeed, CUFI activists say conversion has never been on the group's to-do list, although critics say that dire apocalyptic prophecies about what happens to the Jews during the Second Coming ARE major motives.

In any event, critics within the evangelical community say Hagee has crossed the line and now espouses a "dual covenant" theology, in which Jesus Christ was not actually sent as the Jewish messiah.

That was how many Christian critics interpreted his last book, "In Defense of Israel" ;  that caused a firestorm of controversy in evangelical circles and forced Hagee to revise the book and issue a clarification about exactly what he meant by the word "messiah."

But that clarification didn't close the gap in the evangelical world between those who believe evangelism "to the Jew first" remains a priority - and those like Hagee who, for reasons of biblical commandment, apocalyptic prophecy or both, seem to believe the focus now should be on supporting Israel.

Translation: American evangelicals may be increasingly supportive of Israel, as polls indicate,  but Hagee's particular brand of Christian Zionism is far from universal within that movement.

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Behind the Headlines:  A Play About Koby Mandell

Koby Mandell would have turned 21 last week, and probably would be finishing his service in the Israeli army.

Instead, slain at 13, with a friend, in a cave near their home in the community of Tekoa on Lag B'Omer, 2001, Koby is a memory to those who loved him and a symbol of the hundreds of innocent Jewish victims of the intifada, an eighth grader stoned to death on a day he skipped school.

Somehow, Koby¹s parents managed to channel their anger and grief into positive work, creating a foundation in their son's name that offers summer camp and other healing programs to children in Israel who have lost close relatives to terror. And Sherri Mandell, a journalist and author, wrote an award-winning book about dealing with the loss of her son, "The Blessing Of A Broken Heart."

Now her book has been adapted as a play (with the same title) by Todd Salovey, associate artistic director of the San Diego Repertory Theater, and has been performed in the New York area in recent days.

I saw it last night at the JCC On The Palisades in Tenafly, NJ, and was deeply impressed by the thoughtful adaptation, and by the powerful performance of Lisa Robins, who plays Sherri Mandell, at times with pain and tears and at times with humor.

To their credit, the creators and actors (there are several gifted teens who play the Mandell children), never drift into the mawkish but maintain a dignity that is real, and all the more touching.

Rabbi Seth Mandell, Koby's dad, answered questions after the show and acknowledged that he had seen it for the first time the night before, and had not read the script. Some of the questions from the audience were quite personal, about his and his family's feelings and coping mechanisms, but he handled them forthrightly, at one point noting that while there is much laughter in the Mandell home ­ there are three younger children ­ there is never a sense of complete joy.

For more information on the play and the Koby Mandell Foundation, click on www.kobymandell.org

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Political Insider: Obama/Bloomberg 08?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's spirited defense of Barack Obama before a Jewish organization in Florida this week leads to the obvious questions about whether he's positioning for a veep nomination, trying to stay politically relevant, simply speaking his conscience, or some combination of the above.

"As I'm sure many of you know, there are plenty of emails floating around the Internet targeting Jewish voters and saying that Senator Obama is secretly a Muslim, and a radical one at that," Bloomberg told some 200 guests at a  breakfast of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County. "Let's call those rumors what they are: lies." (Read full text here)

In addition to his comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee, Bloomberg also had some praise for Obama's Republican counterpart,  John McCain, noting that the Arizona senator has denounced some of the attacks on Obama,  "which speaks to his character as a stand-up guy and an honest leader. [He] knows what it's like to be the target of a whisper campaign. He faced the same slimy, lowball tactics during the 2000 South Carolina primary."

Bloomberg also praised both candidates as strong supporters of Israel.

Viewed in the context of a bigger development in the campaign over the weekend, Obama's announcement that he would opt out of public financing, thus setting aside spending limits, Bloomberg's cozying up to the meteoric Obama might be seen as highly telling.

His two campaigns in New York demonstrated that, unlike other recent national candidates (including a fellow New Yorker who once lived in the White House) he has no qualms about using his personal fortune to get his message out, without any hopes of getting it back. (In fairness, Bloomberg does have billions more to spare than most candidates.)

Does all this suggest an Obama-Bloomberg ticket?

"I can't see Michael Bloomberg being the vice president of anything," says Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf, skeptically, of the former media mogul and current chief executive of New York City.

That's not to say Obama wouldn't want Bloomberg on board, he added.

"Would anyone want Mike Bloomberg on the ticket? The answer is yes. It certainly would answer any questions about the economy. But people generally don't elect presidents because of vice presidents."

Bloomberg's speech, Sheinkopf figures, is likely a way for him to be seen defending someone against  "scurrilous lies." But the big question is whether it will matter.

"Will Florida Jews listen to Mike Bloomberg? The answer is they probably won't. This is a speech that helps Bloomberg more than it helps Obama." Nationally, he said, Jews in large part will still support the Democrat, regardless of the smear campaign against Obama.

"The probability of Jews is a group voting in the majority against a Democrat nationally are is about as good as Mike Bloomberg growing two heads."

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Route 17: Fenway, Crosley And 770

For a number of years, cynics would get a good laugh out of the fact that Kfar Chabad, the Lubavitch town in Israel, built a duplicate
of the rebbe's headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway .

The duplicate 770 was said to be indicative of how crazy and messianist the Chabadniks were, they must have been expecting the rebbe to drop in, pretty funny. Only a chasid could be so nuts, right?

Wrong. I'm not a chasid and I understand completely. When I went to Epcot I got a kick out of the recreations of town squares in Paris and Morocco, and the animatronic presidents in the Magic Kingdom. I like seeing the duplicate Statue of Liberty on a rooftop near Lincoln Center.

Any Jewish soul with a sense of history would be understanding of an Israeli chasid's natural longing to be reminded of a place so beautiful, historic, and evocative of perhaps the greatest Jewish story of the 20th century -- second only to the rebirth of Israel -- the rebbe's campaign to find, love and serve every single Jew on the planet, from the Congo to Kansas.

Baseball fans have built replicas of Fenway's Green Monster.

After the Cincinnati Reds abandoned Crosley Field, those who loved it built a duplicate in Blue Ash, Kentucky, with 600 of the original seats. You can see the outfield wall here , here and here .

The new Yankee Stadium will attempt to replicate the original, the way it was before it was redone in 1976.

Last week, The New York Times (June 15) ran a front-page photo, with an accompanying story, about a beachfront hotel in Turkey,
designed to appeal to Russian tourists. The Kremlin Palace Hotel's buildings are replicas of the Kremlin and the onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral .

This summer, thousands will be visiting Williamsburg, Virginia to see the recreations. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, attempts a spiritual recreation of Satmar in the Carpathians.

A few days ago, I was in Crown Heights, at the original 770, for a wedding in the alley - an alley just big enough for a chuppah, and ten flanking rows of folding chairs -- between 770 and the Chabad library.

After the ceremony I touched the outer bricks; touched the brick fountain that's gone dry in the small yard in the rear; walked through the old hefty front door into 770's hallway where the rebbe used to stand;  and down the narrow, twisting stairway into the great block-long  fabrenegen hall.

In 1979 it seemed much larger, the size of a football field, or the Temple Mount's plateau. It now seems the size of a shul, or yeshiva study room.

Were there some signs and stickers about Moshiach? Yes. Did it matter? No more than a visit to Jerusalem's Wall would be disturbed by seeing foxes or Palestinians on the Temple Mount. It wouldn't matter anymore than it would to see bumper stickers for McCain and Obama, evidence of mortals and lesser men, in Jefferson's Monticello. What the rebbe did here goes far beyond anyone's poor power to add or detract.

There was holiness in 770, such as tourists would spend thousands of dollars in airfare to see on heritage tours to the Polish woods or  the Ukrainian countryside. In Brooklyn, you can see it - the real thing - for the price of a subway token.

I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over the bricks like a blind man running his fingertips over the face of a beauty queen from some year before I was born.

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A Rabbi's World: Thoughts on Tim Russert's Death

The sudden, shocking death of Meet the Press host Tim Russert last Friday has unleashed a powerful torrent of grief from a very wide swath of Americans.  I readily admit that I, too, was horrified and saddened greatly by his untimely death.

Although my work most often prevents me from sitting in front of a TV on Sunday mornings, programs like Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and The McLaughlin Group have long been among my favorites.  For those of us seeking greater insight into America and its politics, those programs are indispensable, and Tim Russert consistently displayed a remarkable commitment to speaking truth to power that I both admired and respected.  I will miss his voice, and his unbridled enthusiasm for his family and his work.  He always seemed like a guy you would love to go out for a beer with… or two.  And he understood American politics and politicians as well as anyone.

As the days have passed since Russert's death, I have been intrigued by the degree to which Americans of all stripes have responded with such sadness, and also by those who seem equally stupefied by exactly that response.  I read some comments yesterday complaining that the spate of news coverage devoted to the story was another example of the media's love affair with itself, assuming that we would care so deeply about what is essentially the loss of one of their colleagues.  But clearly, Russert's death, and how he died, is more than that.

I think there are a few dynamics at work here, and each of them is significant in its own way.

The first and most obvious is about death itself, and how we respond to it.

I've been around sudden death enough to understand that the powerful sadness and sense of dislocation that we feel when someone dies so unexpectedly is our mind's way of coping with what is, essentially, a severe blow to our sense of reality and balance.  Like sweating helps an overheated body cool down, shock, disbelief, and a terrible feeling of emptiness are the ways our minds gradually absorb a new, painful and unexpected reality.  When you factor in that Russert, at age 58, appeared to be excellent health, you add another layer of existential dread, particularly for all of us fifty-something boomers.  There's nothing like staring at your own mortality to unhinge you a bit.

The second issue is television itself, and the nature of the connection we have to people who appear regularly on it.

I know it is true that the internet is changing the way Americans get their news, and the networks' news divisions are all in crisis.  But that reality notwithstanding, we still have powerful if unconscious connections to the people who, to use the old cliché, come into our living rooms and kitchens each day and night.  I would wager that, on 9/11, most New Yorkers watched coverage of the events of that day based on which news anchors brought them some sense of solace and predictability.  Walter Cronkite was, in his day, more trusted and admired than any American president.  And if you watched Meet the Press every Sunday morning, or remember Tim Russert's "Florida, Florida, Florida" little white chalkboard from the 2000 presidential election, then you came to see him as a trusted member of the family.  And losing a trusted member of the family hurts- badly.

Last but not least is Tim Russert himself, and what and whom he appeared to be.

There is a wonderful rabbinic commentary on the ancient ark that was to reside in the desert sanctuary and hold the tablets received by Moses on Sinai. The Torah teaches that the ark was to be coated in pure gold on both the inside and outside, leading the rabbis to see this as a metaphor for the person learned in Torah.  He, too, needed to be pure, and beautiful, on both the inside and the outside, not presenting as a gentle person to the public and showing a darker side when "off camera," so to speak.

Tim Russert was, by all accounts, the same on the inside and the outside.  All who knew him attest to the unaffected nature of this very powerful man.   What you saw was what you got.  He was a genuinely devoted father and husband, a loving son, a religious Catholic for whom faith was an anchor, a loyal friend and wonderful boss, and a celebrity who never forgot his humble roots in Buffalo. 

I think we mourn for him not least of all because he was real, despite his fame.  So many people in the public eye these days are creations of their handlers and "image people."  Tim Russert didn't need an image person, because he was an authentically integrated personality, and Americans intuited that.  We miss him for who he was both on and off the screen.

To be sure, the world continues to spin on its axis, the sun is shining by day and the moon by night.  Life goes on in its petty pace, and the real challenge here is not ours, but the Russert family's.  My heart goes out to them, as it does to all who suffer such a grievous loss.  But I, for one, have no trouble understanding why we feel his death so intimately.  TV can make you feel like you know a person when you don't.  But I think we actually did know Tim Russert, and like him.  And that's why he'll be missed.

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Political Insider: ADL and Hagee Make Nice. But Will That End the Controversy?

So will the exchange of make-nice letters between ADL chief Abe Foxman and Pastor John Hagee tamp down the controversy swirling around the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) leader once an for all?

Don't bet on it; while Hagee seems to be winning growing support from top Jewish leaders, or at least acceptance of his sincerity as a supporter of the Jewish state, critics are unrelenting, and bloggers keep turning up new material mined from Hagee's sermons guaranteed to make some Jews uneasy.

Last week Foxman responded to a Hagee letter about the pastor's comments in a sermon suggesting that Hitler was a "hunter" sent by God to help bring the Jews back to Israel.

"In a sermon in 1999, I grappled with the vexing question of why a loving God would allow the evil of the Holocaust to occur," Hagee explained in his letter to ADL.  "I know how sensitive the issue of the Holocaust is and should be to the Jewish community and I regret if my Jewish friends felt any pain as a result.'"

Foxman responded with thanks.

"We are grateful that you have devoted your life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel," he wrote.  "We wholeheartedly support your efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism, including its historic antecedents in the Christian community. We especially appreciate your extraordinary efforts to rally so many in the Christian community to stand with Israel."

Foxman said ADL leaders "look forward to meeting with you to promote a dialogue between Christians and Jews based on mutual respect, reconciliation and the recognition of God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people."

(Read both letters here )

A leading Jewish critic brushed off Foxman's words.

"Hagee's apology is meaningless and Foxman is not forgiving Hagee's true offense -- his thought process," said Rabbi Haim Beliak, co-director of JewsOnFirst.Org, a Web site that  criticizes the domestic and foreign policy activism of the Christian right.  "Hagee has made it clear that he still believes that God is a cosmic bell boy who doles out punishment to whomever Hagee sees as an offensive sinner. He's just promised to tone down his statements."

And blogger Bruce Wilson, a relentless Hagee critic, said Hagee wasn't exactly telling the truth when he said the sermon in question dated from 1999.

"Hagee's 'God sent Hitler' sermon, the actual source of the controversy, was in fact given in late 2005," he wrote in the Huffington Post this week.  "In short, despite Pastor John Hagee's claims to the contrary, his 'God sent Hitler' sermon was anything but 'historic'. It was shockingly contemporary."

And Hagee's ministry organization continues to sell tapes of the sermon, he said.

Wilson also dug up a 2003 Hagee sermon "heavily loaded with anti-Jewish themes, stereotypes, slurs and conspiracy theories," the blogger wrote, including allegations about international banking cabals controlled by the Rothschilds.

There is also grumbling about Hagee coming fro Israel.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz,  Knesset member Colette Avital referred to Hagee's Hitler sermon.

"The outrageous statement by Reverend John Hagee, an evangelist who disseminates his opinions not only in his church in Texas, but also through popular television broadcasts, is an example of extremist views that are being ignored by those who laud the support Israel gets from evangelicals," she wrote.

But anti-Hagee forces appear to be preaching to the choir; among major Jewish leaders, only Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, has been critical.

And efforts by anti-Hagee groups to convince Sen. Joe Lieberman to cancel his appearance as keynote speaker at Hagee's upcoming Washington conference have been unsuccessful.

Why is Hagee gaining ground?

 "People don't deny he writes this conspiracy stuff, but they see it as just kooky," said a prominent pro-Israel activist who said he has reservations about the expanding relationship with Hagee and his pro-Israel organization. "So it's easy to discount his conspiracy theories and his books about the apocalypse, and just welcome his support for Israel. People are able to separate the two."

"Jewish leaders believe he has repented for what he has said, and that he is now trying to deal sensitively with the Jewish community," said Kean University political scientist Gilbert Kahn.  "Having said that, there is a fundamental Jewish principle that says: give him honor, but be careful. Respect that the person has changed his mind, but keep your guard up."

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Route 17: A Community Raw And Unformed

There will be hundreds of articles still to be published in Jewish newspapers and magazines in the next six months, but I have already identified one that is surely to be one of the most ridiculous of 2008.

The new issue of the very glossy "Jewish Living (June/July) has a big cover story, "Where We Live Now: Top Ten Neighborhoods" in North America to "raise a family, get involved, meet a mate, score a great nosh."

According to the magazine, "it's not merely size or even longevity that counts. Along with quantifiable criteria like the number and variety of synagogues, proximity to kosher restaurants, and options in day schools‚ all of which are included in our descriptions‚ we unearthed the qualifiable, as well. We have identified neighborhoods across the continent that are growing, rebuilding, reinventing themselves, unifying their disparate parts, and exploring our traditions in unconventional ways."

Fair enough. Here's the one neighborhood they pick in all of New York City, in the entire tri-state area: Soho-Tribeca.

In fact, other than Lower Merion in Philadelphia, we're told that Soho-Tribeca is the hottest Jewish neighborhood in the United States north of Florida and east of St. Louis.

Let's see, is it lacking kosher restaurants? Check.

Lacking a mikveh? Check.

Lacking a strong variety of shuls? Check.

Lacking day schools? Check.

In the magazine's own words, "the community is raw and unformed."

In the magazine's own words, the people are trying to create a Jewish community "where there has never been one."

What do the have? A Chabad - like 5,000 other neighborhoods.

They have a "post-denominational" shul "without walls," the SoHo Synagogue, "attracting a largely unaffiliated crowd," which means these people - sweet though they surely are -- have little to no experience with the nuts and bolts of community.

And those are the bragging points.

Oh, in the fall, "the 92nd Street Y will bring its hip uptown Makor arts and culture programs down to Tribeca." Makor is so hip it couldn't survive uptown where "there are more Jews per square inch than some parts of Israel," but we're supposed to believe that in Tribeca, where there are far fewer Jews, Makor will thrive. We're told of several other arts and culture options in Soho-Tribeca.

Look, I love Jewish arts and culture as much as the next guy, and probably more than most, but no Jewish neighborhood in New York ever thrived for long based on art but absent any day schools or serious big-time shuls appealing to the affiliated. That's right, the affiliated.

Art won't make the unaffiliated affiliate. It won't make too many people into serious Jews. I love James Joyce, the Boys of the Lough and the Clancy Brothers but that won't make me Irish. I can tell you lyrics to Leadbelly and The Temptations but that won't make me vote for Obama. The Lower East Side had the greatest Yiddish theater but the Yiddish theater closed and the Lower East Side shuls are still open for davening.

I don't think of myself denominationally - as Yitz Greenberg says, "I don't care what denomination you are as long as you're ashamed of it" - but I've never really been sold on shuls that get too cute about being post-denominational. A synagogue's denomination tells me what to expect. It tells me the shul has some basic theological coherence.

Of course, I wish Soho-Tribeca all the best and I admire what the people there are trying to build, but to tell me that this is already one of the "Top Ten Jewish Neighborhoods" is just silly, if not insulting to both readers and at least 30 other Jewish neighborhoods in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut that are not "raw and unformed" but terrific places to live and find community.

There's another list in the new issue of "Jewish Living," a guide to salami. The third best salami is "completely not kosher." Thanks, pal.

That's why I need a Jewish magazine, to help me find non-kosher meat, sure.

If "Jewish Living" made a list of the kind of Jewish reader they seem to have little use for, I'm their man: I'm kosher, I'm affiliated, I give a damn.

Of course, most Jews aren't and don't. I get it. Any kind of Jew is worth a loving look. A general newspaper or magazine would do a story on any of Abraham Lincoln's descendents, even if none of them were interested in politics. A Jewish newspaper or magazine can justify a story on any of Father Abraham's descendents, even if none of them were interested in God. I'm fine with that.

I almost never pass a baseball field where I don't stop to watch and even pick a team. I almost never see a new Jewish newspaper or magazine that I don't root for.

But I don't get where "Jewish Living's" kind of Jewish journalism is going. You don't see football magazines aimed at people who aren't really interested in football, or cooking magazines aimed at people who prefer eating in Wendy's.

It's hard to figure a specialty magazine aimed at people who don't think the specialty is all that special.

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Political Insider:  J Street PAC Makes First Endorsements to Group of Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Process Candidates

J Street PAC, the new political funding group created to help candidates who support a more active U.S. peacemaking role in the Middle East, is moving quickly to put itself on the political map.

In a teleconference on Monday, executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami announced the group's first seven endorsements -- a mixed group of House incumbents and candidates who have one thing in common: they all want stronger action to advance the two-state solution President Bush insists is still a goal of his administration.

The group is bi-partisan - just barely, with one Republican.

For its initial electoral push, the group "specifically sought out newer voices in the American political scene - members with one or two terms of service, and candidates seeking election for the first time in November," said Ben-Ami.  "We believe fresh voices are needed on the national political scene to carry the message that a strong, sensible American foreign policy that will make resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict quickly and diplomatically is a priority."

What does the J Street endorsement mean in terms politicians understand the best - campaign dollars?

Ben-Ami said the new group's Web site will be an "online hub for large numbers of small donors who will contribute to the candidates we support.  We will also be actively soliciting funds from our network of supporters to provide financial support for the candidates we endorse."

And J Street's finance committee will be "committing up to $10,000" in donations to a "limited number of candidates we endorse,"  he said.  Decisions about  who will get the larger donations, he said, "will be made in the fall based on competitiveness and a range of other factors."

The list of initial endorsees includes Rep. Steve Cohen, the Jewish Democrat who represents a black majority district in Memphis, and Dennis Shulman, running to defeat a veteran House member from New Jersey.  Shulman, who recently won his party's nomination in the race, is a psychologist, a rabbi - and blind.

Also endorsed:  Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a Lebanese-American lawmaker who last  year authored a letter with Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) calling for a reinvigoration of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process;  Darcy Burner, a Democratic House contender from Washington;  Donna Edwards, who was expected to win a special election to the House from Maryland this week; Debbie Halvorson, the Majority leader of the Illinois State Senate who is running for an open House seat ; and  Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), also running for an open seat.

Ben-Ami said the group, which has raised $1 million so far, will eventually endorse "several dozen" candidates before voters go to the polls in November.

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A Rabbi's World:  Songs of Youth

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Route 17:  Sholom Aleichem's Phone Number

The other week, a local Jewish elementary school put on a heckuva production of "Fiddler On The Roof," but totally corrupted the ending, having Tevye and his family move from Anatevka to Israel, rather than to America. Now isn't that Zionist of the school; Zionism being so noble that even a creaky old musical must corrupt itself as homage to corruption in Olmert's government.

Of course, most Russian Jews didn't move to Kedumim in the early 1900s, they moved to New York City. Mendel Beilis, arrested for killing a Christian kid, Yuschinsky, to make matzahs in 1913, ended up in the Bronx. His daughter, Raya, lives near Tremont - at least, I hope she does. I had a great conversation with her in 1999 (you can read it here), but she was well over 90 when we lost touch and if anyone knows of her whereabouts, please e-mail.

Albert Maysles, the great documentary filmmaker ("Gimme Shelter" and "Grey Gardens") called a while back and said he was thinking of doing a documentary on Beilis. Is there anyone left, along with Rae Beilis, who can speak in first-person about the most pivotal blood libel trial of them all?

Sholom Aleichem, whose stories were the basis for "Fiddler," and who wrote letters on behalf of Mendel Beilis, didn't move to Israel, either. He moved to the Bronx, also. You'd think the day school, which is in the Bronx, too, could find a way to learn about Sholom Aleichem and Bronx Jewish history, if "Fiddler" had to be educational and not simply entertainment.

I once saw Sholom Aleichem's 'business' card, of all things, and I copied it down, as if I could look him up, or call him up, on some magical Bronx night.

According to his card, he lived at 968 Kelly Street. Maybe the "March of the Living" guys could take some yeshiva kids there. I once drove deep into the Bronx to find 968 Kelly Street, and I learnt that Sholom Aleichem lived a few doors down from the trestles of the elevated subway. He, who wrote about Jewish dairy farmers coaxing their cows on dirt roads, also knew what the New York City inner borough streets looked like when forever in the shadows of the tracks.

My friend Sholom Aleichem's phone number (I consider him a friend) is IN(tervale)-2-215, according to his business card. There was one less digit in phone numbers then, and (for all you kids) all phone numbers commenced with the first two-letters of a phone exchange, like BUtterfield-8.

I shouldn't have to explain this history, but there are kids tonight who think Mottle Kamzoil spent the year after high school "learning" in an Israeli yeshiva.

Never listen to anyone who tells you "there's nothing to see" in shtetls or Bronx neighborhoods. I once went "back" to Ciechanow, my grandfather's hometown that the Nazis did a job on before the first snows of World War II. (You can check out Ciechanow's absolutely riveting Yizkor Book here, and look up my old uncle, Benjamin Malina.

So I go back to Ciechanow and this is what I see in a place where there was nothing to see: I see a red sun sinking over trees on a short Friday, exactly what I could have seen in 1833; I see the river, with overhanging willows, where they went for Tashlich; I see the same City Hall that was there in 1839 and 1939, and the nobleman's castle on the edge of town; I pay a couple of kopeks for a ticket to a one-ring circus that pulls into town, with gypsies and fantastical circus wagons and a canvas tent, surely every bit as rickety and charming as the circus must have looked in 1895. I see and hear little dirty-faced Ciechanow children clapping and whistling for a lady in sequins sewn into a worn-out dress, balancing atop a galloping horse going in circles around the ring.

And I saw all that in a town where everyone told me there was nothing to see.

You can see plenty on Kelly Street, too, but you need eyes that see in the dark.

There was a wonderful piece in The New York Times from 1916, a couple of days after Sholom Aleichem was buried in Queens. The Times did a long article on his final goodbyes, advice and instructions to his children, what some  people today might call "an ethical will."  It is as compelling as anything in the genre.

The hefty headline and subheadlines: "Aleichem Begs To Lie With The Poor; Will of Noted Writer Says His Ambition Is to Rest Among Plain Jewish Laborers; Wants Works As Monument; Humorist Makes Touching Appeal For Family And Provides Funds for Yiddish Authors."

You can read the article here.

Don't let anyone tell you that Tevye would move to Ashdod when his friend had a place on Kelly Street.

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Route 17:  RFK - 1968 And 1948

Regarding the previous post, "Sympathy for the Devil," here's a good piece in The Boston Globe that looks at the increasing awareness - 40 years late - of Bobby Kennedy as America's first victim of Palestinian terror.

In 1948, 20 years before his death, young Bobby was in Jerusalem covering Israel's War of Independence for another Boston paper, the old Boston Post.  Here are several of his interesting dispatches - insightful about Kennedy as well as Israel's birthpangs -- and some photos of young Kennedy in Israel.

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Route 17: Sympathy For The Devil

"I shouted out 'Who killed the Kennedys,' when after all
it was you and me."

   -- Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"

With all the dust kicked up after Hillary dared mention the assassination of Bobby Kennedy the other week, let's remember one thing. It wasn't you and me that killed the Kennedys, or at least it wasn't me. A pair of leftists killed the Kennedy's: JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald, a defector to the Soviet Union and a "Fair Play for Cuba" guy; RFK by Sirhan Sirhan, a fair play for Palestinian guy from the West Bank.

Go throuh The New York Times archives, or even the archives of most Jewish newspapers, and you'll find more references to Yigal Amir being Orthodox than you will to Sirhan Sirhan being Palestinian; even though the newspapers have had 26 more years to write about the Sirhan  shooting than about the Amir shooting; even though you'd think American newspapers would be more curious about a Kennedy assassination than an Israeli one.

When a politically active, affiliated leftist kills a Kennedy, we're told the assassin was a "lone gunman."

When a lone gunman kills Yitzhak Rabin, we're told the assassin was Orthodox.

Yes, Amir acted alone, said Israeli Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz.

Even most American Jews have been drilled to believe that Amir embodied and embraced all the hopes and darkest dreams of Orthodoxy - even though the Israeli AG declared in 2005 that Amir acted alone. You can read the Yediot article reporting the attorney-general's statement that there was "no proof" of Orthodox incitement right here.

It's not that Amir wasn't exposed to vile bitterness and contempt for the prime minister from a rabbi or two, but no more so than Oswald and Sirhan were exposed to vile bitterness and contempt for the United States from their fellow Communists and Palestinians.

If Bar-Ilan University or pro-settlement yeshivas can be indicted for Yigal Amir, City College can be indicted for the Rosenbergs selling the bomb to the Russians.

When Islamic fascists flew four jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, there were news anchors who told us we shouldn't judge Islam. Even Colin Powell said, the very next day, that the attacks "should not be seen as something done by Arabs or Islamics; it is something that was done by terrorists."

The enlightened ones absolve Islam for September 11, 2001, but indict Orthodoxy for November 4, 1995.

It is incredible that in the same week of the anniversary of Kennedy being killed by a Palestinian terrorist, Mike Lupica, in his memoriam to Jim McKay in the Daily News (June 8), writes that McKay "will be remembered best for Munich in 1972 and what was really the beginning of terrorism, real and public terrorism, with the murder of Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village by the Black September group."

No, the killing of Bobby Kennedy by a Palestinian terrorist was "really the beginning of terrorism" for America.

Lupica's confusion exemplifies the free pass that the Palestinians get for killing Bobby, the greatest persistent example of selective media amnesia in the past generation.

The left would have you believe that Bobby was killed because of his "Abraham, Martin and John" civil rights liberalism. In fact, Bobby's murder had nothing to do with civil rights. It had nothing to do with Bobby "walking over the hill" with Abraham, Martin or John because they freed "a lotta people."

No, Bobby was killed in June 1968, on the first anniversary of the Six-Day War because a Palestinian terrorist perceived Kennedy to be unsympathetic to the almost-Final Solution one June earlier. And so, the Palestinian arranged a Final Solution for Kennedy.

Sirhan was not just anti-Zionist, he was anti-Semitic. Evan Thomas, in his 2000 book, "Robert Kennedy: A Life," reports that as the race for the 1968 California primary was drawing to a close, "an olive-skinned, bushy-haired Palestinian-American named Sirhan Sirhan, who had seen an earlier TV report of Kennedy wearing a yarmulke outside a synagogue, bought a box of ammunition for his .22-caliber pistol."

Kennedy putting on a yarmulke was the final straw for Sirhan.

Never has an American tragedy been so mourned, its importance reverberating for generations, and yet so poorly reported or understood.

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Political Insider: New Air Force Chief a MOT

Remember the recent controversy over proselytizing at the U.S. Air Force Academy? And charges by some groups that the service branch has become a very uncomfortable place for religious minorities, including Jews?

That could change with Defense Secretary Robert Gates' appointment last week of a new Air Force chief.

His pick: Lt. General Norton Schwartz, a 1973 Air Force Academy graduate,  onetime cargo aircraft pilot and official Member of the Tribe.

According to the Web site Jews in Green, which serves Jewish members of the armed services, Schwartz received a Jewish Community Centers Armed Forces and Veterans Committee leadership award in 2004, at which time the general told the group he was "proud to be identified as a Jewish as well as an American military leader."

The changes at the top - Gates also appointed Michael Donley, currently a senior Pentagon official, as Secretary of the Air Force, the service's top civilian position -- come in the wake of several embarrassing incidents suggesting something less than competent management in the service.

Schwartz and Donley must still be confirmed by the Senate.

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Behind the Headlines: World's Busiest News Cycle

Jerusalem – Nothing too exciting happened in the world yesterday, except in Israel.

The front-page stories in today's International Herald Tribune deal with economic concerns, mostly about rising oil prices. But even a quick glance at several Israeli newspapers reveals the heightened drama of daily life here, from the latest plan to rescue kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit, to speculation on renewed war in Gaza and renewed peace talks with Syria, all against the backdrop of Prime Minister Olmert's struggle to resist resigning from office.

Just another day in the Israeli news cycle, with more news happening in this small country than seems possible, and much of it of an existential nature.

It's life-and-death stuff – reports on what, if anything, is being done to counter Iran's plans to destroy Israel with a nuclear bomb; security concerns about more sophisticated rocket attacks on Israeli cities from Hamas; speculation on precisely when and to what degree Israel will next attack Hamas. (Isn't that what the military censors are suppposed to censor?)

Israelis are big consumers of their newspapers, and the talk around the table is always about politics and "the matsav," or, the condition, referring to the latest and ongoing crisis with the Arabs.

Clearly, the easiest job in this country is weatherman, at least during the spring and summer. Here's the weather forecast for the next few days (and every day during this season) from today's Jerusalem Post: a cartoon of a bright sun, and the following text: Today Sunny, Wednesday Sunny, Thursday Sunny.

Can't wait to see Friday's forecast.

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Behind the Headlines: A Walk Through the Darkness

Jerusalem – In the Bible, Jews are commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Temple three times a year, on each of the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot – a tradition that was revived after Israel's victory in the Six Day War reunited the city of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, at the site of the Temple.

Based on the belief that the Torah was given at dawn, tens of thousands of people come to pray at the Wall on Shavuot morning just as darkness gives way to light, many having been up all night studying Torah, another custom of the holiday that seems particularly fitting for insomniacs.

Not wanting to miss out on this experience, my wife and I set out at 4:20 a.m. on Monday from Emek Refaim, in the heart of the German Colony, to make the hilly, holy trek to the Old City.

From the outset, we were enthralled by the vision of a steady stream of people walking quietly but purposefully in the cool night air. Many were teenagers, part of Bnei Akiva [religious Zionist] youth groups, in their white shirts and dark pants, but there were people of all ages, and we joined them for the half-hour walk. Men carried their tallit bags and prayer books, some people carried portable chairs on their backs [anticipating the two-hour prayer service], and just about everyone had water with them, since the walk back would be in the heat of the day.

Along the way, we could not help thinking that we were retracing the footsteps of our ancestors thousands of years ago, and of the miracle of an Israel reborn in our time. And for all the divisions that plague Israeli society, the sight, on arrival in the plaza leading up to the Kotel, of many thousands of Jews here to share this experience was heartening, though it was clear that this was overwhelmingly an Orthodox crowd, from chasidim to haredim to the more modern.

We had rarely seen the plaza so densely packed, with prayer services sprouting up every few yards, and the space between people quite limited. But there was little noise, considering the multitude. There was an air of dignity; people knew where they were, and why they had come.

The words of the ancient prayers, calling for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and celebrating the festivals there, took on an added meaning during the service we joined, and we felt part of a tradition and people that seem to transcend history.

But the memory most vivid for me is that purposeful, almost silent walk in the still of night, joining with so many others on the way to the Old City. It was a feeling of connectedness to those around us and to our ancestors as well, symbolizing the faith of generations who made their way through the darkness, driven by the belief that the dawn of their deliverance awaited them on the path ahead.

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Political Insider: The Next Senator from Minnesota: A New York Jew, For Sure

It's official: Minnesota's Senate contest in November will feature two Jews, and that's no joke even though the Democratic challenger is a former Saturday Night Live humorist.

On Saturday comedian Al Franken won the right to challenge Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican who is seeking a second term.

There was a time when national Democrats saw Coleman -- a GOP loyalist in a state that was turning sharply against President Bush's policies in Iraq - as one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents. Franken, a liberal with more than the  usual star quality, was supposed to cruise to an easy victory.

But Coleman, one of two Jewish Republicans in the U.S. Senate, has put some daylight between himself and the Bush administration, and the Franken campaign has been uneven.  Recently the comedian-turned-politician has been on the defensive  because of complaints about some of his sexually suggestive humor.

Many women in the state didn't find it particularly funny.

On Saturday he offered an apology at the convention of the state's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), saying "It kills me that things I said and wrote sent a message ... that they can't count on me to be a champion for women, for all Minnesotans. I'm sorry for that. Because that's not who I am."

Most political oddsmakers say he now faces an uphill battle against Coleman in a state deeply divided between the liberal Twin Cities metropolitan area and deeply conservative western Minnesota. But a strong showing by Barack Obama, fueled by opposition to the Iraq war,  could boost the Franken campaign.

Jews are less than 1 percent of the population of Minnesota, so it's noteworthy that the next senator is guaranteed to be a New York City-born Jew.

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A Rabbi's World:  You Are What You Eat

The recent federal raid at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, and the accompanying allegations brought against the Rubashkin family and brand, represent a particularly sorry and damaging episode in the cause of religious Judaism in this country.

The Agriprocessors story, at least for me, is not about the hundreds of illegal aliens who were arrested.  That is a separate issue, and a very sad statement on the inability of our government to enact any kind of sane immigration policy.  That they were allegedly mistreated is nothing short of tragic, and a black stain on those who employed them. 

Nor is it about kosher meat or food.  One particular family business is at the center of this story, not kosher food.  That there is Chillul Hashem involved in the story- embarrassment to the cause of religious Judaism in general, and kashrut more specifically- is the collateral damage, if you will, of a particular business' lamentable labor practices. 

The truth is that the Agriprocessors story is but an egregious example of a much bigger issue for us in the traditional Jewish community, namely: what is the connection between the food that we eat, and the values that we espouse as Jews?

To be sure, this is not a new issue.  Vegetarians have been preaching this lesson forever, and many people within the kosher community long ago gave up eating veal, and some all red meat, because of ethical concerns.

But the Agriprocessors incident has brought into sharper focus a different dimension of the same issue, having to deal not with the animals themselves, but with the workers involved in the plants where the food is produced. 

The fundamental question is not whether the food is kosher; that is actually not the question.  No one is questioning the kashrut of the product.  The issue now before us is whether the means by which the food is produced need to meet ethical standards, and whether or not those standards are also part and parcel of Judaism's understanding of what kashrut is all about.

It is exactly this issue that, in the Conservative movement of which I am a part, gave rise to the creation of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, a joint project of the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. 

The raison d'etre of Hekhsher Tzedek is to state clearly and unambivalently that issues like wages and benefits, employee health and safety, environmental impact and the like must also be a part of the kosher equation.

Our natural instinct when we think "kosher" is to associate the term with whether or not we may put the food in our mouths.  But kashrut is about holiness- it's all about holiness.

And it stands to reason that if the goal of kashrut is to sanctify ourselves and our lives, then closing our eyes to the abuse of those who are asked to produce the food is simply not acceptable.  The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission's goal is to create a new symbol to be placed on those kosher products whose producers are found to be corporately responsible, and adhering to proper treatment of workers and related employment issues.

Some have alleged that we in the Conservative movement are trying to "muscle in" on the Kashrut industry.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Others have said that rabbinic supervisors are ill equipped to do what they see as human resources work, and that we are naïve.  Further, they argue, the kinds of standards that we are asking for in the industry will drive the price of kosher meat up.

Well, that just might be.  But if a lower price for kosher meat and poultry (such that there is such a thing) is possible only by exploiting the most vulnerable sectors of our society, not to mention violating the kinds of laws that virtually every food provision corporation in America is legally obliged to adhere to, then perhaps the time has come to either tighten our belts and pay more, or find other ways to satisfy our appetites.

Yes, I remember Nike, and I deplore sweatshops and unfair labor practices in whatever contexts or countries they rear their ugly heads.  But Nike and its ilk do not pretend to wrap themselves in a proverbial tallit and be about the quest for holiness.  For them, it's all about the money.  And when the kosher food industry becomes all about the money, and loses track of the other values that are inherently a part of the kosher equation, then we are all in trouble, and so is religious Judaism.  Yes, businesspeople are in business to make money.  But how?

Hekhsher Tzedek is an idea whose time has come, and Agriprocessors is the proof text.

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This Jewish Life:  Faithful Reform in Health Care

It occurred to me that in a few short months, I will have to forfeit my legislative portfolio to a new cohort of legislative assistants.  My major issues, namely the separation of church and state and health care, have quickly become a seemingly core part of my identity in DC, so the idea of leaving them behind is a bit disconcerting.

This realization came during my attendance this week at an Interfaith Health Care Reform Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio.  This meeting was an assembly of local, state, and national faith leaders and lay leaders who are interested in helping to determine and shape the role that the faith community will play in discussions about health care reform.  We came together to find common ground between our various faith traditions and identify language that could transform conversations about health care reform into conversations about justice.

The energy in the room was contagious.  The participants were excited to share their thoughts and experiences and learn from each other.  Ultimately, we were able to understand the potential impact of eliminating highly politicized language like "universal and single-payer" in favor faith-inspired language like "moral imperative and health and wholeness."  This shift will hopefully make discussions about health care reform more palatable and accessible to a broader community of people.

Along with the other delegates at the c