26 Sep
Culture, Latest

Sarah Silverman's Great Schlep

Trying to push American Jewish seniors to vote Democrat, the Jewish Council for Education & Research has enlisted Sarah Silverman as the face of its new hilarious canvassing campaign, "The Great Schlep." Besides Silverman's outrageous tactics (that often flirt with the inappropriate) are talking points such as, "Obama Loves Israel And So Do You" and "He's Black, Let's Talk About It," as well as Silverman's own assertion that if anyone should be able to relate to outsiders with funny names it should be the Jews. This comes in the wake of an AJC poll that concluded Jewish voters favor Obama to Republican nominee John McCain 57 to 30 percent. According to AOL News, Obama is sweeping the 18-29 demographic as well, with a 60 percent share. But what's most interesting is the AJC's finding that 13...

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18 Sep
Latest

Jews Go Gaga for Eggheads

By InTheMoment contributor Larry Kessner. Maybe in the Czech Republic, poets can become president, but not here. Maybe in France they like their presidents to be descendants of historians, education ministers, and even kings, but not here. Here, if you spring from the loins of the upper classes, like Bushes 41 and 43, you need to remember to gnaw on pork rinds, "clear brush," and drop your g's. (Oh yeah, and say "nuke-u-ler"). American Jews, by a wide margin, prefer intellectuals—actual or imagined—to cowboys or warriors when it comes time to vote for a president. But time and time again, when the votes are counted, they are disappointed. In America, even if you are a member of the intellectual elite, like Hillary Clinton, you want to make a point of challenging your opponent to a...

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12 Sep
Latest

Rabbis For McCain, Sort Of

Yesterday we wrote about Rabbis for Obama. Today, according to a Forward article, we should focus on Rabbis for McCain. Well, sort of. Says the Forward: A group of leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel is preparing to release a statement that urges the country’s American expatriates to exercise their voting rights in November by casting absentee ballots... Kalish said that the campaign, the first of its kind, is a nonpartisan effort to maximize the voting rate among American Israelis in order to strengthen the Jewish community’s bargaining power in Washington. The hope, he said, is that a high turnout will encourage the winning candidate — and other decision makers — to pay attention to the Jewish community’s priorities when formulating policy. So the first obvious difference between this movement and the one for Obama is that these...

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11 Sep
Latest

Rabbis for Obama

Over 300 American rabbis publicly announced their support for Barack Obama yesterday with the launch of a “Rabbis for Obama” website. The movement was founded by Rabbis Sam Gordon and Steve Bob of Illinois in response to what they call the “smear campaign against Obama” that “has been waged in the Jewish community.” “The smears and lies are specifically targeted to the fears and prejudices of Jews,” Gordon said in a phone interview this morning. “The kind of attacks and criticisms of him are totally unwarranted and caused me and others to respond in a way unprecedented in the history of Jewish rabbis.” While Gordon and Bob both belong to the Union for Reform Judaism, they say rabbinical support for Obama—and for their movement—comes from across the spectrum. Indeed, Gordon, who met Obama in small group settings during the...

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05 Sep
Latest, Misc

MO's Jewish Cousin, A Rabbi Close to the Obamas

The Forward recently reported that Michelle Obama, wife of Sen. Barack Obama, has a cousin once removed who is a rabbi on Chicago's South Side. His name is Rabbi Capers Funnye (fuhn-AYE) and he is head of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation (House of Peace for the Children of the Ancient Ethiopian Hebrews). WTTW Chicago (PBS) did a fascinating piece on Beth Shalom a while back: My parents live north of Chicago and have been to Beth Shalom a number of times. They say that the energy of the building is unmatched and that curiosity about the traditions, prayers, and customs of African-American Jewry is received with enlightening conversation and gracious enthusiasm. Indeed, according to The Forward, Funnye is known on Chicago's Board of Rabbis and elsewhere for such dialogue: for...

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18 Aug
Latest

Rabbis, Religion to Star at the Democratic Convention

In an effort to display the religiousness of its candidate and reach out to religious voters, the Democratic National Convention will feature numerous events, speakers and even prayer services next week in Denver. Four rabbis were invited to the conference. David Saperstein, the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, will offer a prayer before the 70,000 people who are expected to attend on August 28, the day Sen. Barack Obama is scheduled to be officially nominated. Other rabbis who will be in attendance include Orthodox rabbi Mark Schneier (left), the founding director of the Jewish-Muslim Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. He will take part in the opening ceremony alongside Reform rabbi Amy Schwartzman. The Democratic party and its Convention Committee are working hard to ensure that Obama secures a significant number of religious voters....

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15 Aug
Latest

Web Op-Ed: I Used to be a Democrat by David Epstein

By David Epstein My trajectory from Democrat to Republican had a few curves of my own making. First, I volunteered to work for George McGovern as the 1972 campaign's Ohio general counsel. I stood behind George McGovern, a brave World War II pilot and mushy foreign policy thinker, simply because he was the lesser evil alongside Richard Nixon. In 1976, I voted for Jimmy Carter. As President, Carter said we had made bad decisions based on "an inordinate fear of communism." I traveled in the Soviet Union and its satellites and spoke with the victims of the totalitarian states; my observation was that an inordinate fear of communism is totally warranted. Later, Carter had a rude awakening when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, saying, "My opinion of the Russians has changed more drastically in the last week...

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28 Jul
Latest

Jewish/Latino Relations the Next Issue?

As much as everyone is talking about Jewish/African-American relations these days, The Jerusalem Post blog presents an interesting new angle. Maybe Jewish/African-American relations in fact isn't as critical an issue this election cycle as everyone believes. Maybe the real issue is a reconciliation of Jewish and Latino communities. Before Sen. Barack Obama's trip to Israel, columnist Samuel Friedman wrote: With more young black men in prison than in college, with Hispanics surpassing them as America's largest racial minority, blacks actually have some other, slightly more pressing things to worry about. are the ones who keep that myth going, and it's time to give it a rest. While much of Obama's visit will rightly be concerned with issues of Israeli security and Iranian aggression...inevitably the subtext will be the supposedly special relationship between blacks and Jews. The myth...

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