Hi folks it is time for Haveil Havalim, number 61. Just call me Roger Maris and join me for a tour of the ballparks and blogs of the JBlogosphere. And just because it needs to be said, this blog is steroid free.
One more thing. Due to circumstances beyond my control this is not as organized as I would like it to be. Because I like to share my pain let me tell you that I have had the pleasure of explaining to my children that sometimes when we get sick we have two exits that are used. Can you say Clorox. Ok, that is enough about that.
The miscellaneous section is filled with some really good posts. Take some time to check it out and explore some of the J-blogosphere’s fine material.
One more note, this post is approved by both the Bishop of BullFrog and Shola Rhodes. And now on to the show:
Israel
Different River writes about our own Batya and the news that it looks like she is going to be evicted from her home. Over at Israel Matzav Carl has blogged about an interesting meeting and The Rise of Islamism in Israel and the Administered Territories.
SnoopyTheGoon sends us to the Zionism-Israel weblog to read about a baby named Jenin. He also takes us to an aquarium to learn about the mysterious stealth shark project. Israel Perspectives offers On the value of Democracy in the Jewish State.
And now for our Red Sox fans I present Phishaliyah who is concerned about watching Johnny Damon light up the basepaths in Yankee Stadium. Or should I say that he is preparing to make aliyah and is worried about how to catch a Yankee game in the holy land.
Personally I don’t care about the Yanks or the Sox. I am a diehard Dodger fan who can’t stand the DH, but tolerates it in the Angels, but I digress.
Olah Chadasha has a nice post about her father- in- law and she also writes about Baruch Marzel coming to the Yishuv of Eshchar in the Galil to over-view the illegal houses of Sachnin, an Arab city, after being told he couldn’t actually enter the city.
Israel Matzav asks What would Sharon Do? From Westbank Mama: A No-Show on March 28th Is A Vote for the Left.
The Front Line offer his commentary about peace with this post called Fool Me Once. I don’t know about you but the Zionification of The Haredim sounds like a film George Lucas might make. Read it, you’ll enjoy it. And while you are there Rafi suggests you look at this post too.
Phishaliyah is concerned about criticism levelled by the U.S. State Department. Sushi Kiddush suggests building a wall to the sky. A Dance Magazine is filled with Horah at the thought of publishing positive news about Israel. Mensa Barbie offers Peace For Israel.
Want a rundown on Finkelstein at Columbia? Click here or here. Speaking of education Daled Amos writes Jay Bennish: Anti-Bush…and Anti-Israel.
How about The Most Moral Army In History. I put this one in because he links to me in the post. Ok, I did it because I like it but the link didn’t hurt. 😉
Was this an accident? Intercontinental Hotels wipes Israel off the map.
It is not a movie title, but it could be A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Guard Duty…
Purim
Adar is a happy-go-lucky time in which all sorts of wackiness ensues. Over at the Muqata Jameel has organized numerous blog parodies. I’ll let you determine whether these links are real or parodies.
DovBear has his own thoughts on parodies.
DovBear has an excellent post about the nonsense that spews out of some mouths. Where are Mordecai and Esther buried. Who wants some Mishloach Manot. What about these?
Elder of Ziyon is right, Purim brings out all sorts of interesting stories. Check out his piece about The Legacy of Goering. Megilla reading for dummies… oops, I meant mommies is worth checking out.
Yourish shows us that love conquers all barriers. Seforim blogged about Purim, Mixed Dancing and Kill Joys. Over at the Shmata Shack the Shmata Queen made Hamantaschen and even discussed the merits of chocolate.
It is not quite about Purim, but this love story is filled with so much happiness it is appropriate to link to it here.
Elie has the inside scoop on the Uncle Mordy controversy. Speaking of scoops Roger Simon has the lowdown on Purim in Japan.
Need a recipe for Purim? Try the Kosher Cooking Carnival. Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day Falls on Shushan Purim this year. Or there is always the Halal Hamasnikim #1 — New Hamas Blog Carnival.
The Saturday Night Before Purim sounds like a good read to me. Dave says that The etymology of hamentaschen is fairly well known. Is there a real Purim Code? There is nothing like Purim Politics to put a smile on your face.
Miscellaneous
Psychotoddler is dreaming but without the commentary. Robbie blogged about skills everyone should have. Treppenwitz blogged about the Secret Magic of a Father’s Shoulder.
Bored with these, then maybe you need to read about the Pornification of America. Or better yet read about one writer’s battle to change a lightbulb. I’m Haaretz says she is a little different from the other women in school.
The Bacon Eating Atheist Jew offered an explanation for some of the chaos in the ME here. SOXBLOG has an interesting post about Sharia’a Finance. Attila discusses negative perceptions.
Check out Elie’s post about Inheritance and Inspiration. It is interesting. So is Soccer Dad’s post about his Chassidic Ancestry.
It is an older post, but I suggest reading Tevye-san. Chaim is back from his hiatus. Check out Oh the Sweet Irony ….MBD on Stealing Music! and his interview with Treppenwitz.
Shoshana blogged about love. Ezzie wrote about how he and Serach fell in love. A Whispering Soul is still MIA,as is Bloghead.
Gail offers The Great Stampede. Mirty saw Brokeback Mountain. The Beach Boys work for Abarbanel.
Judaism
Not The Godol Hador writes Who Wrote The Torah. Irina is hiding from G-d. Elie really enjoys his matzah. Ger Tzadik has an interesting post called Speed III: Self-Destructing Shul – Starring Keanu Reeves. He also asks What are My Minhagim?
Snoopy asks: Fighting Anti-Semitism: Is Anything Working? At Kesher Talk I encourage you to read Snapshots From the Edge. Things are still rough in France. Robert at Seraphic Secret is not real optimistic about there being any sort of real change there.
Sometimes life as a Rebbetzin makes you want to throw a bag over your head. There are still more Jewish Questions.
That is all folks. Send in your submissions for the next edition of HH to shilohmuse at yahoo dot com.
Listed at the Truth Laid Bare Ubercarnival
Hi Shira,
What can I say, I have an obscure mind. 😉
I want you to know that I had to fine-tooth-comb my way through this post something like half a dozen times before I finally found the link to my post–at which point I burst out laughing. I kept looking for something such as, ya know, like, my name, my blog’s name, the name of the post. But really, you deserve some kind of prize for the most obscure, and funniest, link to a post of mine that I’ve ever seen. “The Beach Boys work for Abarbanel.” ??!! Hmm, must be Adar or somethin’. 🙂 🙂 🙂
ANTI-SEMITIC JEW SPEAKS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
BY: FERN SIDMAN
Columbia University students including the College Conservatives and campus Democrats plan to protest a speech Wednesday by a professor who has written that Jewish organizations exploit the Holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel and to extort European banks and governments for compensation.
Norman Finkelstein, an assistant professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago, wrote in his 2000 book “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering” that some Jews have used the Holocaust as an “extortion racket” to get compensation payments, and he has referred to Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel as the “resident clown” of the “Holocaust circus.”
His most recent book, “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History,” is largely an attack on lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel.” In it he argues that Israel uses the outcry over perceived anti-Semitism as a bully weapon to stifle criticism.
In an editorial in Columbia University’s student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, Columbia sophomores, Chris Kulawik and Josh Lipsky write the following: “Those who assume that Finkelstein is just another “controversial” speaker, one of many in Columbia’s recent past, fail to grasp the absurdity that is Finkelstein. Taking a job at DePaul University after being fired by New York University for his ludicrous and factually inaccurate book, The Holocaust Industry, this “scholar” makes his living off of absurd statements that garner comfortable speaking engagements. At a recent speech delivered at Yale University, Finkelstein equated the Jewish concern over Holocaust denial with a “level of mental hysteria.” Clearly, we must first question his very “professorship.” Anyone who so blatantly disregards facts and vehemently supports the murder of innocent children is worthy neither of academia nor of the title of professor.
Well, what precisely is Mr. Finkelstein’s crime? It is not that he is a Holocaust revisionist. It is not that he denies the right of the Jewish state to exist. It is not that he cheapened the lives of the millions of innocents lost to the concentration camps by equating their systematic murder to any other large disaster. No, his crime both includes and transcends these radical, depraved stances. Only months after Sept. 11, 2001, Finkelstein asserted his support of terrorism. In that 2001 interview, Finkelstein exclaimed, “Frankly, part of me says—even though everything since Sept. 11 has been a nightmare—’You know what, we deserve the problem on our hands because some things [Osama] bin Laden says are true.'”
It is this sentiment that forces students to take a stand against Finkelstein’s unique blend of pure idiocy and potent evil. Columbia attempts to teach its students to respect all opinions, listen to all viewpoints, and embrace the free exchange of ideas. We will listen, but we will not let a petty ploy to incite tension and turmoil go unnoticed.”
In defense of Professor Finkelstein, the Columbia Spectator also published the views of Arab students. Maryum Saifee and Athar Abdul-Quader who write, “Finkelstein’s critics, most notably Alan Dershowitz, charge Finkelstein with anti-Semitism precisely because of his criticism of Zionism, i.e. criticism of the Israeli occupation and Israeli state-sponsored human rights abuses committed against Palestinians. This isn’t the first time that a reputable scholar has been typecast as anti-Semitic for critical views against Israeli policies (see David Horowitz’s The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America). Undoubtedly, anti-Semitism is an ugly, appalling form of bigotry that deserves universal condemnation. However, Zionism is a political ideology and must never be confused with the Jewish religion, culture, or population. Contrary to the anti-American label commonly placed on Finkelstein, his critique of political Zionism is precisely the type of controversial political discourse that is characteristically American and is analogous to the College Democrats’ stimulating debate on the Bush administration.
Finkelstein is often met with accusations of Holocaust revisionism, generally associated with Holocaust denial. Finkelstein’s book The Holocaust Industry is actually a critique of Holocaust revisionist arguments that privilege the Holocaust as exceptional in the historiography of genocide. Far from the Anti-Defamation League’s claims that Finkelstein is a Holocaust denier, his proof is an unambiguous affirmation that the Holocaust did occur — his parents are living proof of its horrors! — noting that the tragedy of the Holocaust has since been ruthlessly exploited and commercialized into what Finkelstein outlines as an industry to promote Zionist interests.”
In Norman Finkelstein’s own words, he states, “The problem is when you get to the United States. In the United States among those people who call themselves supporters of Israel, we enter the area of unreason. We enter a twilight zone. American Jewish organizations, they’re not only not up to speed yet with Steven Spielberg, they’re still in the Leon Uris exodus version of history: the “this land is mine, God gave this land to me,” and anybody who dissents from this, you can call it, lunatic version of history is then immediately branded an anti-Semite, and whenever Israel comes under international pressure to settle the conflict diplomatically, or when it is subjected to a public relations debacle, such as it was with the Second Intifada, a campaign is launched claiming there is a new anti-Semitism afoot in the world.”
There is no question that Professor Norman G. Finkelstein is a self hating, viciously anti-Semitic Jew. One of his biggest supporters is David Irving, the Holocaust denier who was recently sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for statements he made denying the veracity of the Holocaust. Despite the fact that Finkelstein in the son of Holocaust survivors, his vituperative and twisted and patently distorted logic is being embraced the world over by legions of devoted Jew haters.
We are told that a person can be honest, decent, moral and ethical without belief in G-d. We know that at the beginning of the 20th century, the false gods of education and culture began to replace the One true G-d of Israel. Jews began to believe that a moral and ethical person was one who was highly educated, one who attended the best of most prestigious universities and institutions of higher learning. We believed that an educated and cultured person was a moral person, who would never even entertain the notion of murder, of dishonesty and engaging in unethical practices.
At the beginning of World War II, that fallacy fell apart at the seams. For it was highly educated and extremely cultured German scientists who invented the gas chambers, who invented techniques to transform Jewish fat into soap and who discovered ways of making Jewish skin into lampshades. It was highly educated and cultured lawyers who devised and created laws that developed a society predicated on racism, fascism and xenophobia.
Let us never be fooled. “Reishis Chochma Yiras AdoShem”. The beginning of wisdom is the fear and knowledge of G-d. Without that we have nothing. Without that, even highly educated and cultured people can and do engage in immorality, unethical conduct and become purveyors of lies, hatred, distortions, bigotry and Jew hatred. Professor Finkelstein is the personification of such evil.
Excellent job Jack – thank you for the links. Now I have something to take my mind of fasting today…
Jack- the urim and tumin worked 🙂 very comprehensive! Thanks for the link.
Irina,
Thanks for participating and for the well wishes.
Hi Randi,
Thank you.
Elie,
It is my pleasure.
Thanks so much for including me three times – I’m very honored!
Elie
Wow…big job, Jack…nice of you to do this.
Thanks so much for the links. I hope the kids are feeling better!