The Passion of Roseanne

By Daniel Treiman May 18, 2007

Roseanne Barr has been flaunting her love for Jesus — but she’s no Christian Zionist.

In a slew of recent Kabbalah-referencing blog posts, Barr has been talking up Jesus (“Jesus is the revolution, and the revolution is Jesus”), while offering up harsh critiques of Israel (“I believe that Israel is a walled in ghetto in the middle east, and I do not support walled in ghettos for jews anywhere on earth, even if they are heavily armed”) and traditional Judaism (“I do not any longer buy the blood feud/child genital torture/twisted matriarchy that is a disgusting part of Judaism”). (Late last year she had penned a whole series of often bizarre posts about her visit to the Jewish state.)

Now, in response to buzz that she could be tapped to replace Rosie O’Donnell on ABC’s “The View,” she has written:

In reality, I could never host that show, or any network show, because I have opinions that are not sanctioned by the powers that be who refuse to allow even one dissenting voice over the airwaves of television(in this a “free” country).

I truly believe that millions of jews are not zionists, and that even if they are, they do not support Israeli occupation. I believe that Jews all over this planet choose peace in the middle east over the never ending death machine of hatred and division and terror that exists there now.

It’s quite a turnaround for the comic legend, who had previously mulled having an adult bat mitzvah and joked that she wanted to be Israel’s prime minister.

One can only wonder what’s next: Will John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt include a chapter on Roseanne’s muzzling in the upcoming book-length version of their essay “The Israel Lobby”? Will John Goodman — who played Roseanne’s husband on her eponymous hit sitcom and later was a hilariously punctilious convert to Judaism in “The Big Lebowski” — announce that he is now rolling on Shabbes? The silver lining, at least, is that we won’t be subjected to any crotch-grabbing renditions of Hatikva.

Hat tip: Jewschool and the JTA.

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