Category: Politics

Why Chelsea Clinton’s Wedding Matters & the Celebrity Double-Standard

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date July 12, 2010

I’m hesitant to write about Chelsea Clinton’s upcoming wedding to Marc Mezvinsky, who was raised in Conservative Judaism, because I want to respect the private lives of the bride and groom. However, when the bride is the daughter of the 40th President of the United States, I suppose she is classified as a celebrity and her wedding is fair game as a topic for discussion.

This marriage will spark conversation in the Jewish world about two main issues: How intermarriage affects the Jewish community; and, whether there is a double-standard in the Jewish community when it comes to the intermarrying ways of celebrities.

David Gibson, in his article in Politics Daily, brings to light the key points surrounding this wedding. The question of whether Chelsea Clinton will convert to Judaism is something that Jews wonder (from Jews who are vehemently against intermarriage and those who are accepting of it). This high-profile wedding will bring many of the implications of intermarriage to a more public forum, forcing the conversation about, among other things:

whether a rabbi should officiate at an interfaith wedding;
whether intermarriage really erodes Jewish continuity;
whether a non-Jewish mother can raise Jewish children;
whether conversion for the sake of marriage is genuine enough to count; and,
whether there’s a double-standard in the Jewish community when a high profile person marries outside of the faith.

Gibson quotes my colleague, Conservative Rabbi David Wolpe, who claims it’s his dream that Chelsea Clinton will convert to Judaism. Gibson also read the ongoing conversation at the InterfaithFamily.com website about Chelsea’s upcoming wedding.

In a lively discussion at the InterfaithFamily.com website, one commenter said that even if Chelsea does not convert, a rabbi should take part in the wedding “if the couple agrees to raise the children Jewish.” Another, however, cautioned that “this cannot be a Jewish wedding — a Jewish wedding is one where both people are Jewish, either by birth or by choice.” And yet another commenter gave what is perhaps a more characteristic answer: “I believe that Chelsea and her fiancé should do whatever will make them happiest.”

In real life, of course, questions about the role of religion often animate wedding planning, given that so many young people feel freed from old prohibitions against marrying outside the faith, if indeed they adhere to the religion of their parents or any religion at all.

Last month I was quoted in a Detroit Free Press article about interfaith marriage (“Do Interfaith Marriages Threaten Jewish Identity?”) and then took part as a panelist in a Free Press online chat on the subject.

After taking part in the online chat with Edmund Case, the CEO of InterfaithFamily.com, and an intermarried couple, I can only conclude that this is a very challenging issue because people’s lives, and children, and feelings of love and affection are in conflict with thousands of years of tribal law. It’s really about clubs and who can join and who can’t and who decides the rules.

Regarding the Gibson article in Politics Daily, my teacher Rabbi Irwin Kula comments, “This is great article for studying just about every pathology in American Jewish life… an entire article on intermarriage and Jewish weddings all about its threat and not one sentence on the possible meaning of the ritual that might actually create meaning and value. It’s chuppah/Jewish wedding as tribal marker and intermarriage as either threat to the tribe or grudging opportunity to increase numbers. Why should Chelsea convert? To make sure we don’t lose her kids to our tribe so worried about our size!”

Some interesting questions surrounding the Chelsea Clinton wedding should make this even more interesting:

The wedding will take place on Shabbat (July 31, 2010), so how will this affect whether observant Jewish (shomer Shabbat) guests will attend. Even if they stay within walking distance of the Astor mansion, according to Jewish law weddings are not to take place on the Jewish Sabbath.
If Chelsea does convert before the wedding, will her conversion be disputed publicly by the Orthodox who will claim that a Conservative (or Reform) conversion isn’t “kosher.” And, many will question her commitment to Judaism — didn’t she do this only for the sake of marriage and how much preparation and deliberation did she put into this?
If Chelsea doesn’t convert, how many of the Bill and Hillary’s Orthodox friends will attend the wedding anyway? Will their attendance at an interfaith wedding (and on Shabbat to boot) signify an endorsement? And what about Conservative rabbis who are technically not supposed to attend interfaith weddings? Will some make an exception for such notable nuptials?
Finally, might this high-profile interfaith wedding turn the tides and lead to greater acceptance and sensitivity toward interfaith marriage? After all, as Gibson writes, “The main body of Conservative Judaism [CJLS] voted to allow interfaith families to be buried in Jewish cemeteries, and in March, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America hosted a two-day workshop “sensitizing” students to “issues of intermarriage and changing demographics.” There is even talk of allowing Conservative rabbis to attend the interfaith weddings of friends — and this just four years after the movement adopted an official policy emphasizing the importance of converting a non-Jewish spouse.

Chelsea Clinton’s wedding is sure to grab headlines because of the main actors and the supporting cast, but in the Jewish world this wedding might just be an interfaith “game changer” in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people.

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Top 10 Reasons I Hate Lists: The Newsweek Ranking of the Rabbis

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 30, 2010

Within hours of the publication of yesterday’s 50 Most Influential Rabbis list by Newsweek Magazine, I began to hear complaints about this list.

On Twitter and Facebook, as well as in the blogosphere and in person, people complained about the idea that a mainstream magazine like Newsweek (which is for sale if anyone’s interested) would publish an unscientific listing of top rabbis.

Year after year, the only rabbis who seem to like this list are the ones who make the ranking and can then add the accolade to their bio and have their temple, synagogue or organization issue a press release.

One comment on Facebook regarding the list chastised these influential rabbis. “Personally, I have little respect for influential rabbis. It means they are spending too much time on their public image and too little on being rabbis.”

Others took exception with the high number of non-congregational rabbis who made the list. “Really? They’re more influential than the rabbi who has spent his (or her) whole life in a pulpit serving the needs of their congregants? I’d have to say, I’m not sure that’s really true. They’re more visible certainly, but fame isn’t the same as influence.”

Julie Wiener of The NY Jewish Week wrote the Top Ten Reasons To Hate Newsweek’s Annual Top Rabbis List. I have to agree with many of her arguments. I too was surprised at the number of misspellings on the list. After all, if Shmuley Boteach and Avi Weiss are so influential and famous, how can their names be botched in a high-profile magazine like Newsweek (Schmuley and Weis!)? By the way, I know a few out-of-work, not-very-influential rabbis who’d be willing to proofread future articles on the Newsweek website.

I agree with Julie that it’s odd that Newsweek runs such a list for rabbis and not for any other group of religious leaders. Honestly, I don’t think I’d find a Top 50 list of imams or priests to be very interesting and that’s exactly how I imagine the 98% of the country’s population that isn’t Jewish feel about this list (not to mention the 98% of Jewish Americans who have never heard of these rabbis and could care less about how influential two guys think they are).

The #1 rabbi on the list, Yehuda Krinsky, is the leader of Chabad Lubavitch. He’s very influential when it comes to Chabad, but probably much less influential for non-Chabad following Jews. Not to mention, there’s a deceased rabbi who still holds more influence over Lubavitchers than even Krinksy.

I’ve never really liked these lists anyway. After all, some “Who’s Who” lists are just made up of the people in that field who agreed to purchase the “Who’s Who” book after it was published. Other lists (e.g., 40 under 40) are just made up of people who were nominated by one person rather than an actual election.

This list really comes down to who are the most well known rabbis in the country. Getting published, running an organization, or being elected president for a two-year term in your denomination’s rabbinic group should put you somewhere on this list. Short of that, having a television show and hanging out with Michael Jackson or the President puts you in the top ten. A rabbi of a 100-member congregation in a small, nobody-ever-visits city may be very influential in that community but the two Hollywood moguls (Sony Pictures Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and Time Warner Exec VP Gary Ginsberg) who make the Newsweek list will never have heard of him/her.

If Newsweek really wants to know who the most influential rabbis in the country are, they should probably take a field trip to any Hebrew School where a rabbi stands in front of a class of 2nd graders once a week.

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Kagan Rules in Favor of Chinese Food on Christmas

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 30, 2010

On Christmas Day 2007, I wrote that Mike Huckabee, then a presidential hopeful, liked to eat Chinese food on Christmas like many Jewish people.

Huckabee explained his family’s Christmas tradition: “…we have an unusual tradition that after the Christmas Eve service we go out and eat Chinese food. Don’t ask me why.”

Jewish people flock to Chinese restaurants on Christmas because they’re the only restaurants open. The oft told joke is that the difference between the Hebrew calendar and the Chinese calendar is about 1,000 years — which means that this was how long Jews had to go without Chinese food.

Now, today we get word from the woman who is likely to be the next Supreme Court justice that she also frequents Chinese restaurants on Christmas.

In Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina probed Kagan on the threats to the United States, asking her if she was unnerved by the Christmas day bomber. He asked her, “Where were you on Christmas Day?”

To which the Jewish Kagan responded, “Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee chairman quipped, “I could almost see this one coming.”

And Senator Chuck Schumer explained to the committee, “Those are the only restaurants that are open!” (Video below)

Perhaps this Christmas Eve at a table in a Washington D.C. Chinese restaurant will sit Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Elana Kagan, just having a nice Chinese dinner like many other Jews around the country.

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Newsweek Magazine Affirms Female Orthodox Rabbi

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 29, 2010

Newsweek Magazine released its annual list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America.

Now in its fourth year, Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president of Time Warner Inc., list who they think are the 50 most influential rabbis in the U.S.

While the yearly ranking is merely based on the opinions of two Hollywood moguls and some unscientific criteria, it generates a lot of buzz. There’s also a certain amount of ego that becomes manifest among rabbis when the list is released each year, in addition to debate regarding who was ranked too high and who was missing from the list altogether. My teacher Irwin Kula, who ascended from #10 in 2009 to an impressive #7 this year, tweeted a link to the Newsweek list with the question “How can I not share this!”

What is most interesting in this year’s list is which rabbi was ranked as the 36th most influential rabbi in the U.S. She is new to the rabbinate and new to the Newsweek ranking. Her name is Sara Hurwitz and a lot of controversy surrounds her. Rabbi Avi Weiss (#18) ordained her as a rabbi a couple years ago giving her an acronym for a title and then changing it to “rabba,” a title that irked many in the Orthodox world. Earlier this year, under much pressure from the Right, he backed down and decided to not go through with creating women rabbis.

However, it would appear that Lynton and Ginsberg side with Avi Weiss on this one. And so Rabba Sara Hurwitz becomes one of the most influential rabbis in the country according to Newsweek Magazine, while among the people she is supposed to serve she is not even considered a rabbi.

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Even the Weather in Jerusalem Has Become Political

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 16, 2010

Cross-posted to Jewish Techs

The LA Times Babylon & Beyond blog reported on Sunday that Apple has reunified Jerusalem.

Has Steve Jobs become a United Nations peacekeeper? Did Apple release a new app that unites the holy city of Jerusalem during these tense times? Maybe you thought Jerusalem had already been reunified several decades ago.

Well, it turns out that even the weather in Jerusalem has been politicized. Yahoo, who runs the Apple iPhone Weather app with information gathered by Weather.com changed created two choices for viewing the weather in Jerusalem – East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. This is different than the designations on Yahoo’s own site and on the Weather.com site.

Edmund Sanders reports from Jerusalem for the LA Times:

Right-leaning Israeli politicians like to refer to Jerusalem as their “undivided capital.” But iPhone users here and around the world found recently that the storied, disputed city had been split in two.

In the smart phone’s weather application, the listing for “Jerusalem” disappeared earlier this month and was replaced by “West Jerusalem” and “East Jerusalem.”

Both Israelis, who dominate the west part of the city, and Palestinians, the majority in the east, claim Jerusalem as their capital. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East War, though Palestinians (and most of the international community) never accepted it.

The debate over how, or whether, to divide Jerusalem is still one of the thorniest issues in Mideast peace talks.

Perhaps frustrated with the lack of progress in the peace process, iPhone engineers apparently decided to impose their own mini-version of a two-state solution by partitioning the city and, in essence, forcing users to pick sides.

A similar change took place on Yahoo’s weather site, which gave users the option of checking the temperature in “Jerusalem, West Bank, Palestine” or “Jerusalem, Israel.”

Reaction was mixed. A few Israelis and Palestinians got a kick out of the option, even though temperature information and other data were identical for East and West Jerusalem.

But many Israelis, here and in the U.S., took deep offense and accused Apple, the company that makes the iPhone, of “political propaganda.”

One Jewish advocacy group, American Israeli Action Coalition, called the changes “extremely hurtful to the American Israeli community” and said they “smack of anti-Semitism.” Israel’s U.S. ambassador reportedly sent a letter of protest to Apple chief Steve Jobs and Yahoo chief Carol Bartz.

Well, it turns out that both Apple and Yahoo reversed their political decision and reunified Jerusalem.

The following statement was released: “The issue for the iPhone Weather app has been fully resolved. The fix was pushed to all production servers and verified…. This resolves both the issue with the default weather location Jerusalem as well as searches for “Jerusalem”, “East Jerusalem” and “West Jerusalem”. One note: Users who have already added the locations “West Jerusalem” or “East Jerusalem” on the Weather app will continue to see these names on the client until they remove these locations and add Jerusalem again.”

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Rahm Emanuel’s Son’s Bar Mitzvah & Religious Pluralism in Israel

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 15, 2010

As I was preparing to board a plane home at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport a few weeks ago, I followed the news reports that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s son’s bar mitzvah would be moved outside of Jerusalem for security concerns. Rahm Emanuel and his Hollywood agent brother, Ari Emanuel, brought their families to Israel on vacation and for their respective son’s Jewish rite of passage. Apparently, protesters were heckling the Emanuel family’s delegation as they toured Jerusalem’s Old City because of the Obama Administration’s purported views on Middle East affairs.

Ultimately, Zach Emanuel’s bar mitzvah went ahead as planned at Robinson’s Arch, the archaeological site along the remaining Southern Wall of the Temple at which Conservative and Reform rabbis are allowed to officiate at bar and bat mitzvahs. The two cousins had their b’nai mitzvah on a Sunday, perhaps to confuse paparazzi, and it was officiated by each family’s rabbi –Rabbi Jack Moline, of Rahm Emanuel’s synagogue (Congregation Agudas Achim in Alexandria, Virginia) and Rabbi Kenneth Chasen, of the Reform Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles where Ari Emanuel’s family belongs.

Having recently spent the early dawn hours of Shavuot at Robinson’s Arch, known as the “Masorti Kotel” since the Masorti/Conservative Jews can pray there freely, I was thrilled to read the op-ed in the Jerusalem Post by Masorti Movement CEO Yizhar Hess about the Emanuel boys’ b’nai mitzvah and the lack of religious pluralism in Israel, especially at the Western Wall (Kotel).

Hess took the opportunity of this newsworthy double bar mitzvah to focus on the Ultra-Orthodox control of the Western Wall, including the plaza. He writes:

The [Emanuel] family stood together, prayed together. There was no mehitza [separation between the sexes]. Some women donned a tallit [prayer shawl]. There was an abundance of Judaism, an abundance of Zionism and an abundance of love.

It is sad that one cannot pray in the same way at the main Western Wall Plaza. For a decade now, the Masorti Movement has been facilitating prayers at the Masorti Kotel. This is a forced arrangement. The majority of the world’s Jews pray without a mehitza, but when they come to Jerusalem, to the most symbolic site for Jewish prayer, they are forbidden from praying together. The Kotel, whose holiness has enthused Jews from all over the world, has been transformed into a haredi synagogue.

The Masorti Movement has never relinquished its right to pray at the Kotel, but has agreed, in compromise and with great pain, to hold its prayers at the [Davidson] archeological park.

With all of Israel’s international struggles right now, one would hope that it would strive to solve this matter of domestic disharmony. Here’s hoping that when Rahm Emanuel returns to Jerusalem for his daughter’s bat mitzvah, the family will be allowed to mark this rite of passage at any part of the Kotel they choose — and be free from protesters and paparazzi.

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Rabbi Nesenoff’s 25,000 Pieces of Hate Mail

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 9, 2010

Cross-posted at Jewish Techs

Before this past weekend, Rabbi David Nesenoff was a virtually unknown rabbi who lives and works on Long Island. When his teenage son finished his high school exams and uploaded a 2-minute video of Helen Thomas expressing her anti-Israel views on the Whitehouse lawn, Nesenoff gained global fame. That 2-minute video on his RabbiLIVE.com website brought Helen Thomas’ long career in journalism to an abrupt and embarrassing end.

In addition to the media inquiries, Rabbi Nesenoff has also received some 25,000 messages of hate in the past few days since uploading the Helen Thomas video for worldwide consumption. Tonight, he updated the RabbiLIVE.com website to read:

RabbiLIVE.com reported a story from the White House lawn.

We received over twenty five thousand pieces of hate mail. Emails will be continuously posted TONIGHT.

“Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”

-Elie Wiesel

Nesenoff and his son, the site’s webmaster, will post some of the nastiest, hate-filled email messages they received without concealing the sender’s name or email address.

The first posting to the site includes the text “Helen Thomas was right” followed by profanity and an apparent threat to the rabbi and his family. The sender also attached a photograph of death row inmate and convicted mass murdering cult leader Charles Manson with a swastika tattoo between his eyes.

This is undoubtedly not what Rabbi Nesenoff expected when he posted the now famous Helen Thomas video.

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BP Oil Spill Hits Day 50

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 8, 2010

If BP was trying to make a Jewish connection to the oil spill off the Louisiana coast, they got it all wrong.

Yesterday marked the 49th day of the BP oil spill. Perhaps BP was going for the Hanukkah story connection, which is “The Oil lasted for 8 days.” Instead, BP got confused with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which is 49 days of counting the harvest and the 50th day (Shavuot) is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Hopefully this environmental mess will be remedied soon as the effects on wildlife are certainly a violation of the Jewish principle of “tzar ba’alei chayim” — the responsibility to treat animals ethically.

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Complete Helen Thomas Interview

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 8, 2010

Here is the complete video of Rabbi David Nesenoff (RabbiLIVE.com) asking Helen Thomas her views on Israel. Watching it, one gets the idea that Helen Thomas has always held these opinions, but can no longer keep them to herself now that the almost 90-year-old has lost her filter and says whatever she’s thinking. Listen carefully and you can hear the woman sitting next to her remark, “Helen is blunt.”

Perhaps that’s the understatement of the year!

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The Rabbi Who Took Down Helen Thomas

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date June 7, 2010

In May 1996 I sat in the Breslin Center arena in East Lansing as I watched my then girlfriend (now wife) graduate from Michigan State University. A year prior I watched President Bill Clinton speak to the crowd at Spartan Stadium for MSU commencement. The speaker at this graduation was none other than Helen Thomas, former UPI and Hearst Newspaper columnist of Lebanese descent.

Fast forward more than a decade. A couple years ago I watched an interesting documentary on HBO about Helen Thomas titled “Thank You Mr. President.” It detailed Helen Thomas’ long career in the front row in the White House Press Corp where she always got to ask the first question.

This past Saturday night, my wife asked me if I had heard what Helen Thomas said about Israel. I tuned into YouTube to find an impromptu interview conducted by none other than my colleague, Rabbi David Nesenoff, a Conservative rabbi on Long Island (Temple Tikvah Synagogue of Hope in East Northport). At the White House for last week’s Jewish Awareness Month dinner, Nesenoff asked the 89-year-old Thomas what she thought of Israel and she responded that the Jews should leave Israel and return to Germany and Poland.

Nesenoff (pictured) runs a website called RabbiLIVE.com in which he posts various video footage of him interviewing people (sometimes undercover with a hidden camera). I’m sure when Nesenoff pointed the camera at Helen Thomas he wasn’t expecting that her recorded words would eventually bring about her downfall, but that’s precisely what happened.

Helen Thomas retired today and issued the following statement: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today that Thomas’s comments about Israel were “offensive and reprehensible.” During his press briefing this morning, which Thomas did not attend, Gibbs said that though he hasn’t spoken with Obama about the her comments, they “do not reflect” the view of his administration. He added, “she should, and has apologized.”

Some might argue that it’s not the place of a rabbi to conduct interviews like the one Nesenoff conducted of Helen Thomas. However, Nesenoff’s video showed the world what Helen Thomas really thinks of Israel. It should be a wake-up call that someone with those views has not only been covering the news for so many decades, but has had such a high level of access to our nation’s leaders.

Even before Helen Thomas resigned, she had been dropped by her speaker’s agency, Nine Speakers, Inc for her comments posted on RabbiLIVE.com. Also, Craig Crawford refused to work with Helen Thomas on any future book projects and she was dropped from a High School graduation key note speaker position.

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis, former White House counsel, both called for Hearst Corporation to fire Helen immediately.

Thanks to Rabbi David Nesenoff, Helen Thomas now ends her storied career on a very sour note. And deservedly so.