It’s not too often we find people in support of dear Yeezus, the self-proclaimed “God” of hip-hop. Leave it to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam to defend the rapper and his alleged anti-Semitic comments made about President Obama’s “weak” global connections.

During Farrakhan’s weekly “Time and What Must be Done Series” the minister offered his two cents on Kanye West’s bold comment: “Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don’t have the same connections as oil people.”

Here are the highlights from the minister’s lofty sermon on Abe Foxman’s press release, which requested an official Kanye apology:

“Did he (Kanye) lie? No he told the truth,” at the 25 second mark.

(About Jews) “You’re not all powerful, but you certainly are powerful, and you control the levels of government. You don’t want to admit it,” at the 1 minute mark.

“Kanye West, don’t bow to the pressure to apologize to anybody. You said nothing wrong. I am directly from the christ and the messiah, so what I tell you has more weight than anything that these enemies might want to say,” at the 2 minute mark.

If he wasn’t before, it looks like Minister Farrakhan is now president of the Kanye West fan club. He calls for Yeezus to stand firm on his overreaching comments, and it’s highly doubtful that the filter-less West will break from his beliefs.

But what can we say? Just another day in the life of a God.

(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images For BET)

The post Louis Farrakhan Tells Kanye West Not to Apologize to Jews appeared first on Jewcy.

Over the weekend, during President Obama’s weeklong vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, he took to the green with comedian Larry David. Because nothing helps the mind rest quite like nine holes with The Fussiest. The two were joined by former U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and private equity investor Glenn Hutchins. You know, just your average motley crew.

David has been staying on the affluent Massachusetts island producing and starring in Clear History, a new HBO comedy released this month, starring fellow comedians Bill Hader and Danny McBride. They probably weren’t invited.

It was especially thoughtful of the president to invite David to the Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs because he did only play 27 hours of golf all week. The two men had spoken at a party earlier in the week, perhaps that’s when they made the plans:

Obama and the Seinfeld co-creator also crossed paths on Wednesday, at a sunset cocktail party thrown in the president’s honor by cable TV mogul Brian Roberts. David discussed his new movie, set in Martha’s Vineyard, The New York Times reports. Attorney General Eric Holder, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett were also in attendance.

We can only speculate, but it probably went exactly like this:

(Photo by Shutterstock)

The post The President Goes Golfing with Larry David appeared first on Jewcy.

Maurice Sendak, beloved illustrator and children’s book author, died this morning of complications from a stroke. He was 83. Sendak was likely part of your childhood, having written Where the Wild Things Are, Chicken Soup with Rice, and In the Night Kitchen, proving that children’s stories needn’t—and shouldn’t—be sugar-coated and neatly packaged. From his New York Times obituary:

A largely self-taught illustrator, Mr. Sendak was at his finest a shtetl Blake, portraying a luminous world, at once lovely and dreadful, suspended between wakefulness and dreaming. In so doing, he was able to convey both the propulsive abandon and the pervasive melancholy of children’s interior lives.

In the wake of Sendak’s death, tributes have surfaced and old memories have resurfaced. His deeply moving 2011 interview with Terry Gross for NPR’s “Fresh Air” is certainly worth another listen, taking on a new, eery prescience after his death. “There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die,” he explains, “but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”

There is the wonderful story of Sendak responding to a child’s letter, only to learn the child loved the response so much he ate it. There’s President Obama reading Where the Wild Things Are to children at the White House in 2009, and BuzzFeed’s list of the outspoken Sendak’s greatest quotes. On the Scroll, Marc Tracy writes of the Jewish kid from Brooklyn who would go on to collaborate with Carole King, Tony Kushner, and Art Spiegelman:

Sendak’s life and work are pretty inseparable from his Jewishness, and particularly his dark, cynical inflection of it. “The Holocaust,” he once said, “has run like a river of blood through all my books” (he was born in Brooklyn, but many relatives died in the Shoah).

Image: catwalker / Shutterstock.com

The post Remembering Maurice Sendak, Children’s Literary Pioneer and Champion appeared first on Jewcy.

• President Obama really, really likes the show Homeland.

• Adam Levine will be in season two of FX’s American Horror Story.

• A guide to New York and its Jews, for Tim Tebow.

• Bill Maher wants people, Gilbert Gottfried included, to stop apologizing.

The post Daily Jewce: Gyllenhaal Hates Hipsters, Obama Really Likes ‘Homeland,’ and more appeared first on Jewcy.