No, it’s not what you think. I am not referring to a healthy (and Biblically-mandated) fear of G-d and his Ineffable Name, but an aversion to mentioning G-d as a motivating force in our lives. Joel Alperson, a past national campaign chair for United Jewish Communities, wrote about this in a recent Op-Ed entitled “Don’t fear ‘G-d,’ ‘Torah’ and ‘Judaism’” published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He writes:

I’ve collected the mission statements of the largest 17 Jewish federations in North America, and not one mentions “G-d,” “Torah” or “Judaism.” Nor do the mission statements of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, Hillel, the National Council of Jewish Women, The Wexner Heritage Foundation, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah and the Jewish National Fund. Of all the organizations I looked into, only United Jewish Communities mentions but one of the three words, Torah, in its mission statement.

Mr. Alperson’s theory is that these terms are avoided because they are “more particularistic. Tzedakah [Charity], tikkun olam [Repairing the World] and klal yisroel [the People of Israel] are considered universal and inclusive terms.” He bemoans this phenomenon, and considers this problem to be one with a uniquely Jewish angle. He believes that the reason these terms induce such discomfort is because communal organizations, aiming to serve the breadth of the entire Jewish community, are afraid of any mention of a term that might highlight our numerous and profound internal divisions.

He may be right. But at the same time, I am reminded of an article written over 20 years ago by Daniel Polisar* — today the director of the Shalem Center, and at that time a fellow student at Princeton University. He described an experience in a class in Philosophy and ethics, in which the students were asked to respond sequentially to a classic question of moral and ethical behavior: when confronted by an assailant who orders you to murder another, on threat of your own life, what are you supposed to do?

Rabbi David Mark of Temple Sholom in Pompano Beach, Florida, is anxious to fill a void. “There was a need out there among the public for something like this,” he said. “It hurt me so much to my very core that I could not help these people.”

Perhaps more to the point, though, Rabbi Mark was very anxious to help his Temple away from the old, stodgy, tradition-laden Conservative movement. The Temple “recently shed its ultra-conservative image” and now calls itself “progressive conservative.” I think there’s a confusion there between Conservative and conservative, because from a religious standpoint, it’s not the conservatives usually called “ultra-.”

And how better to prove how “progressive” they are by hosting the “first ever commitment ceremony in the county?” This refers, of course, to an alternate form of marriage for two people of the same gender. This was the “need out there” that Rabbi Mark found, that pained him so greatly while the Conservative Movement’s Committee of Jewish Law and Standards refused to give its blessing.

And now that that’s changed, he’s advertising. And advertising. And now it’s in the news: “Rabbi Searches in Vain for Kosher Gay Couple to Marry.” The Temple “wants to be the first of its kind in Broward County to hold commitment ceremonies for gay couples… But it has to find two people who want to take the plunge together.” And thus far it isn’t finding them.

In the wake of the shooting attack at Washington’s Holocaust Museum last week, many organizations issued public statements. Most of those were similar to these words from President Obama: “This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.”

Agudath Israel, the Jewish communal organization representing the interests of traditionally Orthodox Jews, issued a statement as well. Its statement, though, was different — it consisted solely of an open letter to the young son of the security guard who gave his life defending the visitors to that Museum.

This letter’s personal touch reminds us all that this was not only an outrage against the national consciousness, but an acutely personal tragedy as well.

To the Young Son of Stephen Tyrone Johns:

While I contemplated writing this article before hearing from Rabbi Oberstein that he wanted to send his remarks as well, I believe that our two perspectives together provide yet more fodder for dialogue. Here, then, is where I stand on President Obama and Israel, in the wake of a visit to the Middle East that has the Israelis frowning, and its Arab enemies crowing.

It’s not always enjoyable to be proven right. Sometimes you’d much rather be wrong. My early assessment of President Obama’s attitudes towards Israel — which was joined, of course, by many other pro-Israel writers — is a case in point.

In advance of the election, when Obama called for “an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” I was sharply criticized for terming that “an inability to discern between good and evil.” Similarly, when I questioned why the President-elect refused to support Israel during the recent Gaza conflict — unlike so many of his colleagues in the Senate — I was accused of a “desire to assume the worst about Obama.” When Rabbi Avi Shafran posted words of hope about Obama, that same commenter asserted that “those who once vilified our incoming president are now scurrying to demonstrate their moderation and seek his favor.”

It wasn’t our moderation that was the issue, but Obama’s. And now we fast-forward to the present day, as the President charts out an anti-Israel course without precedent in the last 50 years of US-Israel relations. One is reminded of the Eisenhower administration, which refused to sell weaponry to Israel while simultaneously demanding that Israeli Naval vessels leave the Gulf of Aqaba — leaving Eilat defenseless from a naval assault.

With Baltimore’s Shabbos Rally now a week behind us, I’m a bit overdue on posting about it… but better late than never. I think it is important that this rally/demonstration be discussed far beyond Baltimore — because I would call it a model for how a protest rally should be done. I am at a loss to recall hearing about any protest, anywhere, that has been held with this level of decorum, honor and mutual respect. In fact, it could barely be called a protest or demonstration at all; it was a rally in favor of Shabbos.

For the second time in 12 years, the boards of the JCC and the Associated (Jewish Charities of Baltimore) are considering opening the Owings Mills branch of the JCC on Shabbos afternoons — and for the second time in 12 years, the Orthodox community conducted a rally dedicated to the honor of Shabbos, and requesting preservation of the status quo. We (Torah.org) posted audio and video (as we did last time). A few thoughts and impressions follow, in no particular order.

First of all, the crowd conducted itself with near-perfect decorum. The Baltimore Police Department had advised organizers that they would be unable to assist with crowd control, having already maxed their overtime resources for the Preakness, held the previous day. Given that the location was the local public high school, the task thus fell to the Baltimore City Public Schools Police, which is, of course, much less familiar with handling crowds of adults at a demonstration.

Cpl. Johnson, the commanding officer, said that the eight to ten officers he’d assigned were fewer than he would have, had he known how large the crowd was to be. [I've seen a news stories claiming "over 4,000," or simply "larger" than the turnout estimated at 3500 last time -- honestly, I would say at least 6,000 were there.] And yet they had nothing to do besides traffic control before and after, which was conducted with convivial, even jovial interactions between police and attendees. Cpl. Johnson had “nothing but high praise” for the way people acted. Yes, I realize that it’s different when the demonstration is against something the government is doing, and the police represent that government — but at the same time, it is too unusual for comfort to be able to say that every aspect of the event was a Kiddush HaShem, an honor to G-d’s Name in the world.

Those moving from America to Israel on aliyah are predominantly Orthodox, while Reform and Conservative Jews are staying put in America. Most of us would attribute this to Orthodox “willingness to pay a personal price, both in quality and comfort of life,” for the sake of the “mitzva of settling the land,” compared to the 88% of Sunday School graduates who don’t feel a strong connection to Israel. But if you’re the executive director and CEO of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel, the obvious (and obviously correct) answer is unacceptable. Thus readers of the Jerusalem Post were recently treated to an alternative theory authored by Yizhar Hess: the Orthodox make life nice and comfy for their own, and miserable for everyone else. Yes, the reason Reform Jews don’t immigrate to Israel can be traced to the Chassidic Rebbes of Meah Shearim.

The article is notable primarily for the petty nature of its grumbling against the Orthodox. Hess spends two paragraphs documenting the financial advantages of children’s Jewish education in Israel vs. the United States. Besides the laughable assertion that a chareidi classroom is “more comfortable, less crowded” than a secular one, he’s clearly missed the obvious: anyone moving to Israel for an improved standard of living — material living, that is — is smoking something of which the Rabbis don’t generally approve.

The article then goes on to recycle a number of tired and overused claims of state-sponsored Orthodox discrimination. Hess claims, for example, that the state government funds Orthodox synagogues, exclusively. Not only are the vast majority of synagogues funded privately, but this tired old claim was recycled once too often — it’s no longer true. Yet government funding of Reform Temples had absolutely no known impact upon the likelihood of American Reform Jews to make aliyah. It was, in fact, so insignificant that Hess himself apparently forgot about it.

His memory lapse continues when he speculates, “With which feeling will the Conservative girl return after almost being attacked at the Kotel for wanting to pray with a kippa and tallit?” To date, no Jew has been almost, nearly, or otherwise attacked at the Kotel for wanting to pray, as compared to wanting to make a political statement. Mixed “Kabbalat Shabbat” services on the Kotel plaza were a weekly feature of a summer’s Friday night during my time in Israel, and I presume this remains true even with the rehabilitation of Robinson’s Arch (see below). This is something the Conservative and Reform movements tried to obfuscate well into the 1990’s, but spokespersons (such as Anat Hoffman, Meretz politician and entirely secular in Jewish affiliation) developed an annoying habit of admitting to open microphones that the only “prayer services” generating controversy were more aptly described as political rallies.

Whatever your stance on the abortion debate, no decent human being can fail to be repulsed by the story: “Baby Trashed After Botched Abortion.” Apparently the doctor didn’t show up in time to abort the child of his 23-year-old patient, so she gave birth instead. At which point one of the clinic’s owners wrapped the breathing infant in a biohazard bag, and threw her out.

The defenders of abortion-on-demand will, of course, decry this horrid aberration. The president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women talked about how important it is to be sure women don’t go to “these types” of clinics. But is it really an aberration? True, one doesn’t see stories like this at all frequently — yet. But one line in this story reflects, in my opinion, a very clear sign of the true state of affairs: “The case has riled the anti-abortion community, which contends the clinic’s actions constitute murder.”

According to the autopsy report, the baby filled her lungs with air. There is nothing to contend. There is nothing to discuss, nothing to debate. The clinic owner murdered the baby. If this was not murder, plain and simple, then any baby, any terminally ill patient, anyone with a birth defect or mental retardation can be “put out of their misery” without hesitation, the philosophy of Peter Singer made real. And by claiming that only the “anti-abortion” community “contends” that suffocating a baby is murder, CBS News has declared that the entire “pro-abortion” camp shares Singer’s lack of moral compass.

What is truly frightening is that I’m not at all sure that CBS is wrong.

Armed with my backpack and the Let’s Go Guide to Israel, I descended from the intercity bus at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station, planning to spend a few days exploring the city for the first time. I intended, based upon the Let’s Go recommendation, to stay in a youth hostel on King George Street — but at that point I was approached by a young student like myself, in T-shirt, jeans, the mandatory Israeli sandalim, yarmulke and tzitzis. Okay. Almost like myself. I had a yarmulke too, somewhere back in Be’er Sheva. And after inquiring to determine that I was both Jewish and looking for a place to stay, he suggested that I visit the Heritage House, a free Jewish youth hostel in the Old City. Given that it was centrally located and the price couldn’t be beat, it wasn’t a hard decision.

Rabbi Meir Schuster’s youth hostel had one limitation — it closed at 9 a.m., while many popular tourist destinations did not open until 9:30 or 10. For this reason, the hostel manager suggested going to a class at nearby Aish HaTorah, which oh so conveniently happened to start at nine. And thus I was introduced to a Jewish yeshiva, and to Rabbi Noach Weinberg, zt”l, Rosh Yeshiva of Aish HaTorah, who passed away on Thursday after a long illness.

Rabbi Weinberg was giving one lecture of what became one of his most well-known and acclaimed series of classes, on “48 Ways to Wisdom,” based upon the list offered in Pirkei Avos, the Chapters of the Fathers. If I am not mistaken, the morning’s topic was the attribute of Happiness. But what I remember more clearly is that the discussion turned to the topic of the Moshiach, the Messiah, the Anointed Leader of the Jewish People who will rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and usher in an era of Peace. Rabbi Weinberg looked at us and asked, “have you ever wondered if you could be… the Moshiach?”

And with similar clarity, I remember my answer: “no.”

Long-time readers may remember that the same was done during the War in Lebanon. Your prayers are needed!

An open letter to Acheinu Benei Yisroel [Our Brethren, the Children of Israel]

After learning about the heart-rending appeal of the Gedolei Torah [Leading Torah Scholars] to intensify our Tefilos [prayers] and Torah learning during this very trying time for Klal Yisroel, we have undertaken to join and aid them in their prayers.

The Medrash Rabah and the Yalkut relate that during the war against Midyon, for every one that went out to battle there was a designated person whose task it was to pray and learn for him.

As we follow the current “conflict” in the Gaza Strip, it’s easy to discern who cares about the facts, who displays a genuine understanding for the realities of the situation, and who is only interested as casting the Jews and Israel as the evil aggressors. When we look at media reporting about the Orthodox community, it is similarly easy to discern who is attempting to present a balanced picture, and who is primarily interested in finding yet another opportunity to say something bad about frum Jews.

Exhibit A: The NY Jewish Week’s “Group Charged With ‘Playing G-d’ Over Genetic Testing,” Gary Rosenblatt’s one-sided slur of Dor Yeshorim, the Committee for Prevention of Genetic Diseases, a charitable organization which has done simply amazing things in behalf of the Jewish community. The facts are wrong, the science is lousy, the judgment unrealistic and poor, and the bias, self-evident and inexcusable.

Dor Yeshorim, says Rosenblatt, is no stranger to “controversy.” A more accurate statement would be that Dor Yeshorim is no stranger to bad reporting. Back in 1994, the US News & World Report accused Dor Yeshorim of practicing “eugenics,” which is both an incendiary charge in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, and also stands truth on its head. The net effect of the Dor Yeshorim screening program is to increase the population of carriers of fatal genetic defects, by enabling carriers to marry and reproduce without giving birth to afflicted children. Time after time, reporters have demonstrated their lack of knowledge regarding how Dor Yeshorim screening works, how the stigma of being identified as a carrier is avoided, and why it is necessary.

Put briefly, there is a disconnect between what we know intellectually, and our fears. According to a geneticist MD friend of mine, it is well-established in the research community that the average person is carrying around seven “recessive lethals,” the vast majority of which result in an (often undetected) miscarriage. We are all “carriers,” and carriers of Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis or Familial Dysautonomia are no less healthy than anyone carrying any of the myriad other recessive abnormalities. But try telling that to a high school kid who’s just been told to avoid marriage with another carrier — or try explaining it to the nervous mother of a prospective spouse. And before reaching the conclusion that this is because the “insular” Orthodox are “ignorant” of human genetics, note that the U.S. Air Force dismissed 143 healthy African-American applicants because they were carriers of the Sickle-cell gene — a practice it abandoned only after being sued.

The reason I call your attention to this article is not so that you can have a look at an anti-Semitic diatribe in the guise of a serious position about the current state of affairs.

It is so that you can see the comments.

Britain is not known to have nearly such a strong understanding of Israel’s need to defend itself. These comments are, in that context, surprisingly heartening.

We’ve already gone several rounds on how Bush, McCain and Obama stack up when it comes to Israel. Now that Olmert has finally decided that Kassam rockets raining on Sderot deserve a bit more than improved bomb shelters in response, all our statements about Bush’s amazingly pro-Israel position, and our concerns about Obama, are all-too-rapidly being verified. First, let’s look at the current US Administration’s response to the violence on the Israel-Hamastan border:

The U.S. on Saturday blamed the militant group Hamas for breaking a cease-fire and attacking Israel, which retaliated with strikes of its own during what became the single bloodiest day of fighting in years…

It was “completely unacceptable” for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to launch attacks on Israel after a truce lasting several months, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

“These people are nothing but thugs, so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas that indiscriminately kill their own people,” Johndroe said in Texas as President George W. Bush was spending the week before New Year’s at his ranch here. “They need to stop. We have said in the past that they have a choice to make. You can’t have one foot in politics and one foot in terror.”

Recently, a commenter reacted with both surprise and disdain to the hopeful messages here following the election of Barack Obama as our next President. Referring correctly to the fact that many of our writers — including myself — had grave reservations about Obama (the word he used was “villified” [sic]) and strongly favored McCain, he wondered how Cross-Currents writers could be “scurrying to demonstrate their moderation and seek his favor.”

The simple answer is that we did not “vilify” anyone, but referred critically to Obama’s public record — and now that the election is over, it’s time to work with our President-elect rather than against him.

During the election, I said Obama’s record on Israel worried me — and for good reason. For example, in an essay on the Middle East, paragraphs referring to Hizbollah and Hamas categorized the former, but not the latter, as a terrorist organization. Could anyone concerned for Israel’s safety not find that troubling? John McCain’s decades-long relationship with Israel is unquestioned, his attitude towards Arab terrorism consistent, and his belief in Israel’s right and need of aggressive self-defense, refreshingly frank.

But John McCain isn’t going to be our next president, and instead of focusing our energies upon water under the bridge, it is only appropriate that we look forward. It would be far from the first time that a politician dramatically exceeded expectations created from his or her past record.

The NY Jewish Week noted a thread of criticism of media coverage of the terrorist attack on the Chabad of Mumbai, one both different and more subtle than the media’s obfuscation of the terrorists’ identity as Islamic radicals and their Jewish victims as deliberate targets (though, to be certain, it took note of that as well). What exercised the Jewish Week is that the news reports called the Chabad shluchim “ultra-Orthodox.” But lest you think that the NY Jewish Week took this as an opportunity for soul-searching, to perhaps finally discard its consistent use of a disparaging term to describe our community, prepare to be disappointed — for that impression would be sadly mistaken.

Mark Steyn, writing in the National Review and Washington Times (Dec. 6), noted that “ultra” was used “in almost all the western media … less a term of theological precision than a generalized code for ‘strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but.” And Steyn adds, were these ultras “stranger or weirder than their killers?”

Mark Steyn, in this passage quoted in the NYJW, gets it exactly right. Frequent readers will note that many of us at Cross-Currents have protested the “ultra” label for exactly this reason. Steyn is not at all Orthodox himself; he just knows an offensive smear when he sees one. He correctly outlines the offensive bias inherent in the “ultra” label and calls it unfair, thus implying that it should be jettisoned from civilized discourse — and not a moment too soon.

The NYJW takes what Steyn said, twists it around, and comes out with a message that is both wrong and offensive. Associate Editor Jonathan Mark contributes no special insight to make sure Mark Steyn’s message hits home. On the contrary, to Mark there is nothing wrong with retaining the “ultra-” term in the NYJW lexicon. According to the Mark, the problem is not that the bigoted term is universally offensive and to be discarded — rather, it is that Chabad Chassidim aren’t “ultras.” He attempts to take Chabad out of the world of charedi Judaism, something which neither Lubavitchers nor anyone else should find acceptable.

A Letter to the Editor in the Baltimore Jewish Times, December 5, restates a common theme in modern Jewish thought: whereas assimilation and low birth rates are lowering the Jewish population, we should be as welcoming as possible to prospective converts. Now, they argue, is the time to lower the barriers to entry for anyone wishing to identify with the Jewish people.

Jews make up less than two percent of the American population and less than one quarter of one percent of the world’s people. Each year, assimilation and low birth rates lower the Jewish population, both in relative and absolute terms. We are becoming fewer and fewer and yet there are some among us who would reject the handful of brave souls who wish to identify as Jews.

One can only wonder how the above writer would disparage the attitude towards conversion of Rabbi Tzion Levi, zt”l, who led the Jewish community of Panama for fifty-seven years. A short news item in Mishpacha, December 3, remarked on his petirah (passing), and included the following:

Rabbi Levi laid down the law on conversions. He decreed that no conversions were to be performed in Panama; whoever wanted to convert would have to go to an Orthodox beis din (religious court) outside the country. Afterward, the person would be required to demonstrate for two years that he/she lives a Torah life, before being accepted as a Jew by the community.

You may have read it here first, but the NY Times’ nonsensical, even demented speculation that the Mumbai Chabad house might have been “an accidental hostage scene” has cascaded through the hands of many media critics. Mark Steyn, in particular, so precisely echoed my own sentiments on the matter that I could almost wonder if he’s now reading Cross-Currents:

Hmm. Greater Bombay forms one of the world’s five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An “accidental hostage scene” that one of the “practitioners” just happened to stumble upon? “I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?”

Those critics found many additional examples scattered throughout the international media of what Andrew McCarthy calls Willful Blindness, “the refusal among academics and political leaders to confront fundamentalist Islamic tenets, the 800-pound gorilla that is somehow always in the middle of the room when terror strikes.” Caroline Glick goes a step further, calling it “The jihadist-multicultural alliance.” [Thanks to Scott Johnson of Power Line for these sources.]

Again and again, the media bent over backwards to avoid labeling the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre “Islamic” “terrorists,” to avoid identifying their preferred victims as “Jews,” and to avoid placing the blame where it belonged: upon the murderers and their Islamic clerics, rather than their innocent victims. Tom Gross provided a litany of examples in the National Review:

Maybe it seemed a foregone conclusion, from the moment the two-year-old child of the directors of the Chabad House in Mumbai, Rabbi Gavriel & Rivka Holzberg hy”d, was reported to have been removed from the house with “blood-soaked pants.” But we hoped (and prayed) against hope, and the moment on Erev Shabbos when the news reports confirmed that they had been killed was very painful. At such moments, internal differences of opinion are completely irrelevant. These were Jews dedicated to G-d and Torah, who died al Kiddush HaShem, in sanctification of G-d’s name — selected for slaughter for being Jews… and, as one news agency described it, the “crime” of offering help to Israeli travelers and others in need.

No one of intelligence doubted for a moment that they were targeted. Do we need further evidence that the “grey lady” has severe Alzheimer’s? Who could justify the NY Times reporting with a straight face that “it is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene?” It was obvious within minutes that this was a well-planned attack on a variety of pre-selected targets, and for a group of terrorists to coincidentally stumble upon the Chabad of Mumbai would be somewhat less likely than their winning the PowerBall.

In the video below, the Chabad shaliach in Atlanta, Rabbi Yossi Lew, talks about the need to respond to this evil by filling the world with goodness. And there are unconfirmed reports that new Shluchim have already been selected to return to the site, rebuild, and continue the work of the Holzbergs, zichronam livrocha. May they meet with much hatzlacha in all their efforts on behalf of all our Jewish brothers and sisters.

Speaking of prescience, I must admit that when I wrote my recent post on media bias, I had no idea that the father accused of abusing and killing his infant son was sentenced on the 18th. So, understandably, Moshe, Rabbi Natan Slifkin and others want to know how a sentence of 6 years plus 2 years suspended fits with what I’ve said.

Indeed, where is the media bias if we see the father was found guilty, and is going to jail for six years? Doesn’t this mean that everything the media reported was correct all along, and now the father is getting the punishment befitting a parent who abused and murdered his child?

Well, no. Not at all. The more I look into it, the less I understand how the sentence could possibly be adequate for what the media told us was the crime.

Let’s not forget — according to the most charitable version of the father’s actions, he dropped his child and this resulted in the child’s death. The father never claimed he tripped — he says he fell asleep. Well, if a person falls asleep driving and kills someone, that’s manslaughter. When a father is holding his baby, it’s the same thing. Even if, despite the judge’s statement, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing… we cannot say he was entirely innocent. But the point is that this sentence is much more in accordance with the conclusion that the father did something irresponsible, rather than brutal.

If the reputation of the “Mainstream” Media as an impartial provider of information has taken a severe beating in recent years, its behavior during this election put that idea to death and nailed closed the coffin. On “HowObamaGotElected.com“, you can learn the impact of the media in making sure the average Obama voter knew the issues, the candidates, and the change for which they were voting.

Even the most jaded among us will be stunned by the results. Reporters decide what to report, and we fail to realize the incredible impact of their choices. We often rail about the biased coverage of Orthodox Jews in the press, but don’t recognize the potency of the poison being fed to our uninformed brethren. John McCain certainly had far greater resources to combat the media image than we do… so just take a look at what Obama viewers knew, and what they didn’t.

For example, nine out of ten Obama voters knew that Sarah Palin was the candidate for whom her party spent $150,000 on her wardrobe, and nearly 94% correctly identified her as the one with the pregnant teenage daughter. Over 80% knew it was John McCain who didn’t know how many houses he owns — and an even higher percentage “knew” that Palin said she could see Russia from her house, although she never said it.

I believe that getting America to the point of electing a black President was one of America’s finest hours. — Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein, November 12.

He beat me to it, as I was going to make a similar comment. As a strong McCain supporter, I did not expect to have such positive feelings about the statement made by Americans about America today, through this election. Less than 50 years after whites had to be forced to share classrooms and bathrooms with black Americans, they elected one to be President of the United States. If I read the electoral college numbers correctly, then although it is true that over 90% of African-Americans voted for him, Obama would have won without the black vote.

Despite his selection of the very partisan Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, Obama has begun with a number of overtures across the aisle. If he governs the way he campaigned — namely, in the center — then the next four years may be a pleasant surprise, and we should give him the chance to prove himself.

This does not change the fact that thoughtful Americans, especially Jewish voters and those concerned for Israel, had legitimate and extremely serious reasons to oppose him that had nothing to do with bigotry and racism. It would behoove Obama’s supporters to recognize that a slanderous and unsubstantiated accusation of bigotry is, itself, bigoted. Both during and after the election, we’ve heard that Jewish opposition to Obama, especially Orthodox Jewish opposition, was based upon his race — without a scintilla of valid evidence. I include, among these, Gary Rosenblatt’s recent editorial in the Jewish Week (”Racial Comments ‘Shock’ Principals“), so approvingly cited by “Reb Yid” in the comments to Rabbi Adlerstein’s recent post.

Several weeks ago, Project Genesis was sent a paid advertisement from the Republican Jewish Coalition — which it then distributed. Although it was a paid ad, and we’d have accepted one from the National Jewish Democratic Council as well, it elicited a predictable level of protest.

One of our correspondents is an old friend and staunch Democrat, and he sent a sharp protest directly to me. He wrote that sending the ad endangers Torah.org’s tax-exempt status, and besides, he can argue with most of the points made in the ad. I wish he’d have pursued that second line of reasoning a little further, given that he is entirely mistaken on the first: an organization may not endorse one candidate, but can, of course, accept paid advertising on a non-discriminatory basis.

Perhaps he did not undertake the task of arguing with the RJC because — despite his protestations to the contrary — he can’t. Honestly, the RJC ad says nothing that we shouldn’t already know. Did Obama oppose labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization? Yes, he did — as I already noted, his web site carefully avoids applying this label to Hamas, as well. And yes, he did say that he would meet Iranian President Ahmadinejad without any preconditions. The RJC also asserts that “Sen. Obama told a Jewish group he supports an undivided Jerusalem, only to flip-flop the very next day.” Judge for yourself:

In an election season, every candidate needs to appear pro-Israel — especially the Democratic candidates most beholden to Jewish donors in order to get elected. Snide words from a politically conservative Jew? Not really. The Arab-American and global Arab press has made this point repeatedly, in order to explain the “transformation” of Barack Obama — who as recently as the 2000 election cycle (when he failed in his bid for a congressional seat) “was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” and in 2004 called Israel’s security wall an “example of the neglect of this Administration in brokering peace” [demonstrating a lack of both global and domestic political knowledge in a single sentence]. Hamas “unendorsed” Obama after his AIPAC speech, although Obama backtracked on his commitment to an undivided Jerusalem a day later.

But there is a big difference between platitudes and positions, and the Jewish community cannot afford to be deceived. Obama offers up the glib generalities we want to hear while simultaneously raking in Arab cash as well (including tens of thousands of dollars illegally sent in from Gaza). McCain makes it very clear why Arab donors are notably absent from his FEC filings.

Case in point: Sderot. No cheating now — which candidate said which remark? Candidate A said: “I will work from the moment that I return to America, to tell the story of Sderot and to make sure that the good people who live here are enjoying a future of peace and security and hope.” Candidate B remarked: “Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction… I can tell you that I believe that if rocket attacks came across the border of the United States of America, that the American people would probably demand pretty vigorous actions in response.”

I submit to you that the substantive difference between the two comments is no less obvious than the respective identities of the candidates who made them.

When I wrote two weeks ago that I was “back,” and hoped to resume posting more frequently, I also wrote that I planned a post on “Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and telecommunications.” That post never materialized, simply because I waited to gather information. A good friend of mine is a strong left-winger, and I knew that once he had a moment he could fill me in on “the other side of the issue.” The result of that conversation is that the post I had contemplated won’t be written. My initial understanding of the subject was wrong; once corrected, I can’t see a particularly Jewish spin to one side of the issue over the other.

Not only information, but misinformation, can spread quickly once published. Yes, the writer can look foolish once shown to be wrong, but it’s also all too easy to “stick to your guns” and not publish the correction with nearly the prominence needed.

Just think for a moment about the damage done by the myth of the “shooting” of Mohammed Al-Dura, which I put in quotes because of the very serious possibility that he was never shot at all. It was published worldwide, and even Jewish “leaders” rushed to take Israel to task. [Even had a child been shot by Israeli troops, it would only have been an accident caused by the willingness of terrorists to use children (intentionally) as human shields.] But, in fact, if he was killed at all, the gunfire didn’t come from the correct angle to be Israeli. And the tapes now shown (we still have not seen it all) make it clear that this was a staged event, one of a series of staged events filmed that day.

It should be obvious that Cross-Currents won’t try to create a myth, especially on such an incendiary issue. But nonetheless, even inadvertent errors of fact can color opinions (personally, I don’t believe the myth that Senator Obama is Muslim has any “traction” and warranted Mayor Bloomberg’s comment, but here again, I could be wrong). It’s always worth it to wait a few days, and get the facts straight before wasting pixels on misinformation. On that, there is most definitely a Jewish side to the issue — one that speaks for patient, careful judgment.

While Eytan Kobre wasn’t referring to me when he wrote “Jack is Back” early last week, it would be true in any case. [Yaakov -> Jacob -> Jack. In my Yeshiva days it was a nickname at one point. Assigned by others, of course!] It’s been two months since I wrote an article, as a few people have noted, and I’m happy to be back to writing. As I do so, I reflect upon why we created Cross-Currents in the first place, and what we can hope to accomplish in its next several years (yes, it has really been that long).

The idea of publishing Cross-Currents in blog format came from the 2004 Presidential elections, when I recognized that blogs like Power Line were able to influence public debate when the “Mainstream media” — largely comprised of Democrats with their own biases — was lining up behind the Democratic candidate at that time, Senator John Kerry. The Jewish media was similarly biased, but worse — at the time, there were no more than a handful of charedi reporters in the largest Israeli / Jewish media outlets, and the biases (and simple ignorance) of the secular writers was often evident. I brought that to Rabbi Adlerstein’s attention, and the result was a new face and new home for the Cross-Currents email journal that he created and briefly operated perhaps a decade ago. Presto, we became part of the new media.

The depiction of the Orthodox does seem to be somewhat more balanced than it was four years ago, and Cross-Currents has played its own not-insignificant part. For that, we are grateful — but we also recognize that there is a great deal of ground left to cover before we could claim an equal playing field in the Jewish press (small ‘p’). It is also worth noting that when we started off, little was known or predicted about the less constructive uses of blogging; at a certain point, it became detrimental to our mission to have the word “blog” associated with Cross-Currents. But we’re stuck with it, and besides, Cross-Currents is a stand-alone entity — much of its content is either published elsewhere, or at least fit for publication elsewhere. Whether called a journal, a blog, or simply “Cross-Currents,” its content can be judged by its own standards. And while I hope we will return a bit towards the warmer, more interactive tenor of blogs vs. traditional media, I think we can do so without diminishing how seriously we treat our subject matter and the reader’s intellect.

Given, as well, our description of Cross-Currents as a journal about the intersection of current events with the timeless Torah, and the blogs that first inspired Cross-Currents, it is unavoidable that we will talk about politics — as we always have, on two continents. Cross-Currents isn’t an official organ of Project Genesis, and is supported no more or less than over 100 other Jewish web sites. So I will venture my opinions — not those of my organization — on U.S. politics as I have in other areas. Which brings us to Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and telecommunications… the subject of my next post, iy”H.

The Rosh Hayeshiva of Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, Horav Hagaon Rav Henoch Leibowitz, zecher tzaddik l’vrocha, has passed away. The funeral is scheduled to take place at Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, 76-01 147th Street in Kew Garden Hills, at 1:30PM on Wednesday.

Rav Leibowitz was a Rosh Yeshiva for over 60 years, inspiring generations of students. This is a tremendous loss for all of Israel.