Historians–at least, those historians who sport peyes and streimels and use the Chumash as a source text–say that all of these Jewish catastrophes happened on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. That's today, for those keeping track. The rub, though, is that Judaism is pretty clear on why these things happened: because Jews screwed up. The first temple was destroyed because Jews worshipped idols, slept around, and killed people. The second temple was destroyed because Jews were feeling too much hate toward their neighbors. The Holocaust happened because…well, whatever we did wrong there, it must have been pretty bad. I guess it takes a Chief Rabbi of Israel to explain such a thing. Pretty rough, this idea of Jewish karma. "Shit happens. But when it happens to you, you must have sinned." So how might we avoid sin and the catastrophe it brings? Surely the wisdom of our "elders" can help us out here, right? Not necessarily. Jewish scripture is clear: God will punish us for repeating the sins of our elders. Which brings me to the Agriprocessers scandal, in which the Orthodox Union certified a splendidly profitable but ethically abominable slaughterhouse run by Orthodox Jews.

Anyone who opposes the pointless torture of animals will agree that Orthodox Jews ought not use meat hooks to rip out the throat of cattle before leaving the animals to slowly bleed to death. Anyone who cares about this country's problem with illegal immigration will agree that Orthodox Jews ought not forge immigration documents in order to ruthlessly exploit undocumented Mexican workers, including children (one federal official called the mistreatment of workers at this Orthodox-certified facility "medieval.")

You don't have to be a Jew to recognize that the whole affair is a hillul hashem–a pitiful public disgrace in which Judaism and Jewish values are humiliated before all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike. Orthodox Union President Stephen Savitsky might as well have purchased a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, and broadcast himself shitting atop a copy of Pirkei Avot, the Talmud's foremost work of Jewish ethics. For non-Orthodox Jews, the coincidence of this year's Tisha b'Av and the Agriprocessors scandal should serve as a wake-up call. Judaism tells us that a good, safe, and honorable future for the Jewish people is ours to make. To create that future, we must honor the principles of the Jewish tradition; in so doing, we must not defer to the false authority of those who claim to be our "elders," but whose behavior desecrates the same Jewish tradition they claim to uphold. Let's start with this: After this year's Tisha b'Av, boycott kosher meat certified by the Orthodox Union. Just stop buying it altogether. Instead, buy the humane, eco-kosher meat recommended by the Shalom Center. It'll be better for you, and it may be better for the future of the Jewish people.

The post How to Avert Future Jewish Catastrophes in One Easy Step! appeared first on Jewcy.

But of course that's entirely irrelevant. There are cheaper and easier ways to edify and flatter ourselves than to hold a genocide denial panel discussion at UCLA. There were people who flew across the country for this discussion (afterward, one person came up to me and said she flew in from Chicago, and another said that he came from Arizona; Mr. Hamparian flew in from DC): presumably, they weren't there just to hear interesting or stirring things. They must have hoped that something significant was actually going to come out of it. On my end, there's one preeminent criterion by which I'll judge whether the event was a success: did it do anything at all that will make genocide denial a less acceptable political manuever to leaders of Jewish-American orgs such as the AJC (David Harris) and the ADL (Abraham Foxman). Will it cause anything to happen that in turn causes people lower down in these organizations to say to these men, "I understand how simple-minded and Polyanna-ish this sounds, but I really think we need to consider the idea that supporting a genocide denial campaign is really just deeply problematic, political considerations aside." If that's too much to hope, then I'd be satisfied if supporters came to them and said, "listen, this isn't just some bullshit about 'morality' or 'the memory of the Holocaust'—it's actually serious. People out there are saying all kinds of damnfool things about our supporting Turkey's campaign of 'genocide denial,' and it could turn out to have very negatives consequences for this organization." If that happens–if one person in either of those organizations can muster up the conviction to say either of those things to Abraham Foxman or David Harris–I'd call the event a success. But maybe I'm more easily satisfied than people who flew across the country hoping to witness some progress in ending denial of their family/community's systematic murder, I don't know.

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Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America: Your efforts to score points in Ankara at the expense of the Armenian Genocide issue is a transparent transaction that, I think, squanders the moral capital of the Jewish community, undermines our collective efforts to fight Holocaust denial, and, if the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] experience of the last few months is any indication, is very far outside of the mainstream of your own community, and it's just so painful to come and hear you echo those same themes again. I just had to share that with you. Barry Jacobs, Director of Strategic Studies of the American Jewish Committee: It's not about the position of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish community. It's not about, we are not historians, which is a polite, bullshit way of saying we're not going to take responsibility, we are not going to make a decision on 1915. But the relationship between United States and Turkey, if we want to, I don't know where you are, whether you are right or left, if you're left in the United States and want to get out of Iraq, well, look you at the map, Brits have pulled out of Basra, there are only two ways to get out of Iraq, you have to go south, you have to go north, and if you go north you got to go through Turkey. So the argument that finally persuaded Congress, and I know this is not – I'm looking for a strong enough word – [unintelligible] but, the message was that the bilateral relationship between the United States and Turkey will suffer greatly if this resolution is passed. The Jewish Community believed that also, and that's been our position. And the world is not made up of choices between good and bad, at least not in the Foreign Service when I was in it, it's made up between choices between bad and worse. So we take practical positions, and the position of all the Jewish organizations, including ADL, was not have a position on the facts of what happened, or not taking a public position on what happened in 1915, we did not think, do not think, that the United States Congress is the place to settle this. And that's all I can tell you. And that's the real world and that's the position of United States Government and of the Government of Israel.

UPDATE:

In a comment below, Pilisopa says "The AJC's and ADL's behavior is a reflection of what their membership will tolerate."

Unfortunately, that's the truth. All this will continue until enough members and donors call up these orgs and say, "Please don't waste your time calling me, or mailing me anything, or requesting my donations or support, until you've made the decision to stop supporting this campaign of genocide denial."

For that to happen, we need more people in the Jewish community to understand very clearly what's going on here. I sincerely hope and believe that the March 6 event at UCLA can help make this happen. But we'll see. — Joey

The post American Jewish Committee: First Half of 20th Century Was So Long Ago, Who Knows Whether Genocides Took Place? appeared first on Jewcy.

While some of their members might be crazy, though, the leadership of the church of Scientology is arguably anything but. The “leaked” Cruise video grabbed the attention of an information-addled audience afflicted with a notoriously short attention span. Osama Bin Laden famously mused that, while Westerners talked tough about Islam after 9/11, they also started buying a hell of a lot more Qurans. Likewise, while many people who watched the Cruise video may have found it bizarre or ridiculous, hordes of us also Googled Scientology for the first time. In 2008, this is surely the very definition of successful religious propaganda.

Was this dumb luck on the part of Scientology? Unlikely. What’s far more plausible is that David Miscavige, the leader of the religion, judiciously weighed the costs and benefits before signing off on this fortuitous "leak."

Tom Cruise is not crazy, either. In the video we see see a fiercely intense adult with an unbreakable sense of self and total confidence in the legitimacy of his own views. If we think Tom is a jackass and his religion laughable, he clearly doesn't give a shit. "I think it's a privilege to call yourself a scientologist," he declares at the beginning of the video, leaning forward and looking up at the camera. "You want to start shit?" he might have well asked. "Bring it." He appears less the fame-addled dipshit and more the persecuted heretic calling out the local clerisy.

No, Cruise isn’t crazy; but he may very well be dangerous. The Cruise we saw in the “leaked” videos is an extreme iteration of a particular type of religious fundamentalist: The "Grand Inquisitor,” scourge of all those whose faith is impure. The Grand Inquisitor is the fevered guardian of doctrinal purity who "looks into the eyes" of other men and knows that they are a danger to the cause. We've seen this type in many places and times: Tomás de Torquemada—the prototype of the class, who spent the latter 15th century torturing Spanish Christians to elicit confessions of disbelief; Che Guevara, the left-wing hero who spent romantic months in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains, eagerly shooting peasants in the head for suspected disloyalty; the henchmen of Al Qaeda, so-called “takfiri” Islamists who denounce other Muslims as non-believers, and kill them for it.

Every religion needs its Inquisitors, to be sure. In fact, any person—if they care at all about any religion, movement, or cause—must sometimes play the Inquisitor. For example: imagine that next Shabbat you attend New York's famously progressive B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, where you explain to the rabbi that you've chosen his synagogue because he understands that Judaism is a diverse and malleable tradition, and has always been adapted to the needs of its practitioners and the circumstances of time and place. So far, so good. But what if you further explain that your understanding of Judaism is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster governs the cosmos with great Grace and Majesty, and that on Friday evening we light two candles to symbolize our awareness of each of those two traits. The rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun, the very one who sings the praises of theological diversity and tolerance, must surely draw the line and tell you, well, "that's not Judaism."

So between the rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun and the most zealous evangelical minister there can be no disagreement on this one point: If our religion is to mean anything at all, we must exclude certain practices and ways of thinking. We must all play the Inquisitor—we disagree only on where the lines ought to be drawn, but on the necessity of lines there can be no disagreement.

Tom Cruise, as he convicts himself again and again through squinted eyes and gritted teeth to "Keep Scientology Working," and rails that "if you don't know [true Scientology doctrine], don't say you know," is, in one sense, no different from the current Pope, who once headed up the Congregation of the Faithful—formerly known as the Office of the Holy Inquisition. Both of them, like the rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun, seek to prevent people from polluting their faith with unwanted theologies and doctrines. Indeed, Keeping Scientology Working (a piece of scientology scripture) is one protracted plea by L. Ron Hubbard for Scientologists to stamp out incorrect interpretations of the religion. Scientologists, Hubbard says, should prefer to see someone dead rather than promoting incorrect beliefs about Scientology. Tough words, but no different from other such injunctions found in other scriptures. The anger Cruise demonstrates in this video and others, the pristine certainty and clarity with which he swears he will uphold the commandment to Keep Scientology Working, and most alarmingly, his certainty that he can detect lack of faith simply by looking into one's eyes: This is the mark not of a cult member, but of a personality type that haunts all religions and movements—an unnaturally ardent iteration of the Grand Inquisitor.

So the "leaked" Tom Cruise video may well have been a success for Scientology, but if it is true, as a recent biographer claims, that Tom Cruise is now ranked number two in the hierarchy of this growing religion, then this should give us pause. Most especially, it should give Scientologists pause. Tom Cruise will never again be the kid who danced in his underwear in Risky Business. But given real power to chart the course of a well-funded, well-organized, and rapidly growing religious movement, he may turn out to be something rather more formidable and more destructive, and the people least likely to enjoy the new Tom will be rank-and-file Scientologists themselves.

The post Is Tom Cruise Dangerous? appeared first on Jewcy.

If it's a bug you're reporting, please tell us what operating system and browser you are using.

Typing with my toes,

Joey

The post The Jewcy Redesign SUCKS!!! appeared first on Jewcy.

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Bernie says “the function of the media is to educate you to live in a democracy.” Really? If the media ought to serve a single function rather than lots of functions determined by lots of people with different goals, I imagine the state would have to take over, perhaps allowing Secretary of Mass Media Sanders to provide a list of appropriate topics along with guidelines about how the populace might be educated about them.

The post In a Democracy, Media Must Do As Bernie Sanders Says appeared first on Jewcy.

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Think it's just no good for a Jewish civil rights organization to support a campaign of genocide denial? Then come out with Jewcy tonight in Los Angeles as we join with the Armenian Youth Federation and survivors of the Armenian Genocide to protest the Anti-Defamation League's "2007 Los Angeles Celebration." Press release:

NEWS ADVISORY – December 1, 2007 – NEWS ADVISORY

Los Angeles calls on Abe Foxman to stop undermining the universal humanitarian principles of the ADL

WHAT: Jewcy Media and the Armenian Youth Federation, joined by victims of the Armenian Genocide, will protest outside the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Saturday, December 1^st, when the Anti-Defamation League holds a celebration at the hotel. The protest is being organized in response to efforts by ADL National Director Abe Foxman to use the ADL as a vehicle for genocide denial—starkly violating the universal human rights principles which the ADL claims to revere.

WHO: Ghazaros Kademian, survivor – Armenian Genocide

Joey Kurtzman, Executive Editor – Jewcy

Arek Santikian, Representative – Armenian Youth Federation

WHEN: Saturday, December 1, 2007 @ 6:00 p.m. PT

WHERE: On Wilshire Boulevard in front of the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

Address is 9500 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. GoogleMap.

BACKGROUND ON ABE FOXMAN and the ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: For many years, the ADL, working on behalf of the Turkish government, has refused to acknowledge that the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 was a genocide. Worse, they have lobbied for Turkey to prevent passage of a resolution by the United States Congress affirming this genocide.

This year, under pressure from the New England community, the ADL issued a highly ambiguous statement regarding the Armenian genocide. It stated that the “consequences” of events in Turkey were “tantamount to genocide.” This duplicitous statement sidestepped the legal definition of genocide by avoiding any language that would imply intent, a critical part of the 1948 UN Genocide treaty.

In the same statement, the ADL reiterated its opposition to the Congressional resolution recognizing the genocide, calling it “a counterproductive diversion.” The ADL then apologized to the Prime Minister of Turkey for having put his government “in a difficult position,” expressing its “sorrow over what we have caused for the leadership and people of Turkey.” No apology has been offered to date to Armenian Genocide survivors and their heirs.

On August 23, echoing Turkey’s call for an “impartial study,” the ADL suggested “further dispassionate scholarly examination” of the genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has labeled such proposals as propaganda, not scholarship. By the ADL’s own standards, casting doubt on the historical truth of genocide constitutes genocide denial. And asking Armenians to sit down with denialist historians on the payroll of the Turkish state is exceptionally offensive. Considering the ADL’s unceasing – and just – efforts to combat Holocaust denial, their actions are remarkably hypocritical.

Perceiving its Armenian Genocide denial and subsequent missteps as simply a public relations dilemma – not a moral issue – the ADL hired the most prominent public relations firm in Boston, Regan Communications, to clean up its image.

For immediate commentary on this news story, please call JEWCY at (323) 600-3243 or the AYF-WR at (818) 507-1933.

# # #

The post Protest of ADL’s “Humanitarian Awards Dinner” Tonight appeared first on Jewcy.

Michael Kinsley says that the digital age is a propitious time to be a cranky libertarian, but it's also springtime for leftist factionalism. On the web, every clique can sanctify its own luminoso blogrollo, forever excommunicating deviationists for doctrinal unorthodoxies, past affiliations, refusals to pronounce some shibboleth of our corner of the internet.

Not here. Take the stultifying provincialism of left politics, amplify it with the Circle Jerk culture of the blogosphere, and you have something of a Jewcy nightmare: a hothouse of unchallenged ideology and lazy self-congratulation that looks like everything Jewcy was born to combat. Neither the Jewish community nor the left need help making themselves sclerotic, conformist, or irrelevant. The promise of the internet, for us, is its capacity to smash those tendencies, rather than reinforce them.

This isn't just about this specific issue: about Brendan O'Neill, the RCP, Living Marxist, or the Oxford Union debate. It's about what breadth of views can be accommodated in Jewcy, and who gets to contribute. We agree that there are borders to the pale, and some people are beyond those borders. But we're also aware of all the barriers that stand in the way of productive communication between people with well-entrenched and opposing positions: a reluctance or flat-out unwillingness to process evidence contradictory to one’s own point of view, an application of nearly impossible standards of evidence for opposing points but a knee-jerk acceptance of supporting points, a presumption of one's own intellectual bravery and integrity and an assumption that the opposition is weak or foolish or venal or lazy, et cetera. These, too, are things we want to overcome, rather than reinforce.

So defining Jewcy's boundaries will be an ongoing process. We'll discuss them. But we won't define them by pronouncing takfir on anyone who joined an organization with which Jewcy itself would not wish to partner.

Meanwhile, Kvetcher, nee David Kelsey, has taken Jewcy to task for our handling of the Oxford Union kerfuffle.

Jewcy chose a symbol of November 9th Society to represent the debate, even though the November 9th Society is a hardline neo-Nazi party that is quite critical of the British National Party for being mere "conservatives on steroids." That Jewcy chose their logo (replete with swastika, of course) to represent Nick Griffin is as risible as it is shrill.

The post The Judean People’s Front, the Blogosphere, and Jewcy appeared first on Jewcy.

The paradigm-smashing theoretical framework of the moment is "Web 3.0." Theorists of Web 3.0 manage to use the language and tone of Viktor Frankl while describing what is, so far as I can tell, a plan to steal shit from other websites while keeping your ass covered legally.

My question: instead of "scraping" from other websites—"scraping" being trade talk for taking their stuff while ensuring they get nothing out of it—why can't we just revert to the old method of "transcluding" their content. Transcluding means that everyone on Jewcy gets to read their stuff, but they still get their pageviews and advertising revenue.

Transcluding seems to have gone of out fashion sometime in internet pre-history (the 90s? Is that possible?), but it seems like a more effective, less labor-intensive, and vastly fairer way to poach proprietary content.

You can't transclude a New York Times page, because they have some sort of fancy technical barrier set up. So in the spirit of ethnic fraternity I'll just sample the content of someone closer to home.

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