In Other Jewish Newspapers: Uri Geller Speaks, Seeking Mt. Sinai, Rabbi Against Multiculturalism
ARABS AGAINST DIVIDING JERUSALEM: New York’s Jewish Week finds that some East Jerusalem Arabs aren’t too excited about the prospect of Palestinian rule.
Also in the Jewish Week: Writing about a Charles Bronfman-sponsored contest seeking “The Next Big Jewish Idea,” editor Gary Rosenblatt questions whether Jews really need another one. We already have a big idea, he explains. It’s called Judaism.
MISSIONARY POSITION: Writing in Brooklyn’s right-wing Jewish Press, Pastor Kenneth Rawson warns Jews to be wary of Christian Zionists. Evangelicals may like Israel, he writes, but they also want our souls. Rawson’s advice? “[A]ccept their money. But be sure to stand strong against any conversion agenda.”
SPOON MAN: Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent has a long, strange and alternately amusing and befuddling interview with famed spoon-bender Uri Geller, who is promoting his television show.
THEY’VE GOT THE BEAT: New York’s Rabbi Andrew Hahn is headed to Baltimore — percussion instruments in tow. During an evening of “Hebrew mystical chant,” the rabbi and his “drum circle facilitator,” The Baltimore Jewish Times reports, “will unleash the life force through a participatory song session of Hebrew call-and-response chanting.” (A bold claim, Baltimore Jewish Times. I expect to see a correction in the event that the rabbi fails to “unleash the life force.”)
MOVE TO THE BURBS: The Jewish Federation of Cleveland is pondering a possible move to the suburbs. The Cleveland Jewish News has the story.
KOSHER CRISIS: Where have all the small-time kosher meat suppliers gone? Boston’s Jewish Advocate finds that they’re buckling from competition from chains. And kashrus-keeping consumers are suffering.
NUTS: The Chicago Jewish News reports from a gathering of academics critical of Israel. The newspaper titled its article “Nuts Gather in Chicago…” Fair and balanced? You decide.
MT. SINAI IS OURS: The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle speaks with a local geographer who is looking for the site of the biblical Mt. Sinai — and thinks it may actually be in Israel’s Negev.
CHEAP NEWS: The University of Arizona’s student newspaper recently published an antisemitic cartoon lampooning Jews as cheap. The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix showed with the first sentence of its article about the cartoon that actually we’re just melodramatic: “Many readers were stunned to find a comic panel that appeared to be calling Jews cheap, in the Oct. 9 issue of the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper at University of Arizona in Tucson, as if to revive a hateful stereotype for another generation.” (Emphasis added.)
WHY THEY HATE US: L.A. Jewish Journal editor Rob Eshman writes that al-Qaeda’s fury isn’t really about Israel. And he has evidence — thanks to an Arabic-speaking librarian who has translated some primary sources relating to al-Qaeda’s ideology. (Okay, I agree 100%. But doesn’t rage against Israel help al-Qaeda just a little bit in selling its anti-Western message to the Muslim masses? That’s not to say that the anti-Israel rage is reasonable, but it is real — and, I have to believe, not without consequences.)
HAMMER, YES. HEBREW, MAYBE NOT: Celeb-watcher Nate Bloom says that we may have jumped the gun in dubbing Milwaukee Brewers star slugger Ryan Braun “the Hebrew Hammer.”
STARS DOWN UNDER: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Carl Bernstein is headlining a Jewish National Fund campaign in Australia. Bernstein stepped in after actor Richard Dreyfus caught pneumonia, The Australian Jewish News reports.
THE CASE AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM: British Chief Rabbi (and outstanding public intellectual) Jonathan Sacks makes the case against multiculturalism. London’s Jewish Chronicle reports on the rabbi’s latest book, which is causing a stir.
Also in the J.C.: Ulster Unionist David Trimble says Northern Ireland’s peace process doesn’t offer a model for Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Beatles shoo away Elvis.
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