November 20, 2008 | 9:41 am

Worsening economy takes further toll on Jewish nonprofits

I was tied up last week writing a cover story about what the bad economy means for the Jewish community:

These are tough times for all Americans. The drama working its way through the economy—surging gas and food prices, crises in the housing and financial markets, climbing unemployment rates and a dismal overall outlook—has been written into the American Jewish story, too.

That paragraph, however, was the nutgraph for a cover story I wrote about the economy only four months ago. It’s amazing how much worse it’s gotten since then.

The stock market, which closed under 8,000 yesterday fro the first time since 2003, has been so schizophrenic that it’s been up 500 points in the morning only to close down 200 or more. Everyone, Americans and those abroad, are being affected. Nonprofits have less money coming in the front and more demands knocking on the back door. And we’re not even technically in a recession yet.

Already, though, people are praying for help:

Something needed to be done. Something maybe only God could do. So the leaders of Israel’s largest seminaries designated Nov. 13 a day of prayer for Jewish philanthropists—“a united effort to storm the gates of heaven and plead for the financial health of Jewish philanthropists, so that they can continue to support Torah institutions in Israel.”

No one has gone unscathed by the convulsions of the global economy. Even the wealthy are losing money—and if they cut their charitable giving, it is likely to ripple across the Jewish nonprofit sector.

Birthright Israel appears to be an early victim.

The charity, which sends Jews between the ages of 18 and 26 on all-expenses-paid 10-day pilgrimages to the Jewish state, had a sugar daddy in casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who gave a combined $60 million in 2006 and 2007—about a third of the program’s operating budget. Since October 2007, the value of Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, has plummeted from a stock price of $138 to just above $5 on Nov. 12. Adelson personally has lost more than $30 billion.

Not coincidentally, Birthright announced this month that it is slashing its budget by $35 million, down from $110 million. Next year, the organization plans to send only 25,000 young Jews to Israel, compared with 42,000 this year.

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Tags: charity, los angeles

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November 20, 2008 | 9:23 am

‘South Park’ creators developing ‘Mormon Musical’

“South Park” spares no one in its ridicule, and a few years ago the Mormons got their share. It looks, though, like the show’s creators didn’t get their fill:

The New York Post and playbill.com, among other sources, reported Tuesday that South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are at work on a Broadway-bound show titled “Mormon Musical.”

An openly gay actor, Cheyenne Jackson, is said to be cast as the lead — a Mormon missionary. “It’s hilarious — very acerbic and biting. It offends everybody but does what ‘South Park’ does best, which is by the end it comes around and has something great to say,” Jackson is quoted as saying in the Post’s Pop Wrap blog.

“I play the main missionary, Elder something,” he said.

The announcement comes two weeks after the LDS Church helped lead a successful voter referendum against gay marriage in California. Ever since, gay rights protesters have picketed LDS temples in three states, threatened to boycott Utah businesses and blacklisted donors to the campaign supporting Proposition 8 in California.

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Tags: mormonism, proposition 8, south park

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November 19, 2008 | 6:34 pm

Once Virgin Mary statue was lost, now she’s found

Photo: OC Register

Remember when thieves stole that eight-foot-tall statue of Jesus in Detroit? Well, over the weekend his mother got similar treatment in Newport Beach, where a $30,000 bronze statue of the mother of God was swiped.

The statue was returned today to Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church after a Tustin woman returned from vacation to find the little greenish lady sitting on her lawn like a garden gnome. The OC Register reports:

The resident noticed the statue when returning home from vacation on Monday, but didn’t know what to do with it until she saw a photo and news article in the Orange County Register newspaper at about 6:30 this morning. The resident immediatly called police, who picked up the statue.

“The son had no explanation for it,” Fox said. “The resident is cooperating as best they can. They’re trying to find out how it got in the yard and who took it.”

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November 19, 2008 | 6:10 pm

California Supreme Court to hear Prop. 8 challenges

While I was in meeting, you probably heard the news. California’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to Proposition 8, the ballot measure passed this month that would amend the state Constitution to prevent gay marriage:

Meeting in closed session, the state high court asked litigants on both sides for more written arguments and said a hearing on the cases could come as early as March. The court also signaled its intention to decide the fate of existing same-sex marriages, asking litigants to argue that question.

Today’s decision to review the lawsuits against Proposition 8 did not reveal how the court was leaning. The court could have dismissed the suits, but both opponents and supporters of Proposition 8 sought review to settle legal questions on a matter of statewide importance.

Some legal challengers also sought an order that would have permitted same-sex couples to marry until the cases were resolved, a position opposed by Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and Proposition 8 supporters. Only Justice Carlos R. Moreno voted in the private conference to grant such a stay.

The order was signed by six of the court’s seven justices. Justice Joyce Kennard did not sign, and the court said she would have invited a separate filing to determine the fate of existing same-sex marriages. She voted against granting review of the lawsuits

The court overturned a ban on same-sex marriage on May 15 in a 4-3 historic decision. Opponents of gay marriage gathered enough signatures to place Proposition 8 on the ballot as a proposed constitutional amendment.

Gay rights advocates argue that the measure was actually a constitutional revision, instead of a more limited amendment. A revision of the state Constitution can be placed before the voters only by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or a constitutional convention.

Lawsuits to overturn the initiative contend it was a revision because it denied equal protection to a minority group and eviscerated a key constitutional guarantee. Supporters of Proposition 8 counter that it merely amended the constitution by restoring a traditional definition of marriage.

The court’s previous rulings on similar lawsuits have been mixed. The court has upheld at least six initiatives and rejected only two that were challenged as illegal revisions.

Supporters of Proposition 8 have threatened to mount a recall of any justice who votes to overturn the measure. The court’s members serve 12-year terms and appear on the ballot unopposed in retention elections.

Although the court tends to defer to voter sentiment on initiative challenges, it has overturned popular ballot measures in the past.

More from the LA Times.

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November 19, 2008 | 10:16 am

Columnist: GOP must move away from GOD

Kathleen Park, the same conservative columnist who said that the Rev. Rick Warren’s presidential faith forum was bad for America and who kindly asked Gov. Sarah Palin to drop her bid for the vice presidency, has a column in today’s Washington Post that argues the Republican Party won’t survive unless it kills God. Well, the GOP doesn’t actually have to kill God; it just needs to stop pandering to evangelical voters.

Parker writes:

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth—as long as we’re setting ourselves free—is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

But they need those votes!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.

Short break as writer ties blindfold and smokes her last cigarette.

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Here’s the deal, ‘pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party—and conservatism with it—eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs.

Read the rest of the column here. I understand what she is saying. I really do. Though i am an evangelical and a Republican, I don’t identify with the party’s social conservatism, which has led the GOP incredibly far from its historic base. The problem with Parker’s logic is that Republicans can’t just not afford to get the votes of conservative Christians—they can’t afford for the Democrats to pick them up.

If you take abortion and gay marriage and other assorted red meat out of the mix, why wouldn’t evangelicals move to the more socially conscious Democratic Party?

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November 18, 2008 | 6:55 pm

Israeli mafioso killed in carbombing

The don of Israel’s largest crime family, Ya’acov Alperon, was killed in a car-bombing Monday. The JPost has a story about the assassination, the latest attack in a Mafia war that appears have moved from trash to recycling. Heeb’s blog explains:

The current organized crime war in Tel Aviv is, in part, over the “lucrative bottle recycling racket”. Shamefully, this proves the stereotype – a Jew will kill you over a nickel – to literally be true.

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Tags: crime, israel

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November 18, 2008 | 4:15 pm

The Obama Christian question

“When people say to me, ‘What about the fact that Obama is always talking about religion?’ All I can do is say to them, ‘I hope he’s lying,’” Bill Maher told me in a portion of the interview about “Religulous” that didn’t make the story. “I hope he is faking it for the election.”

This is why I don’t put much stock in what politicians say about their religious beliefs. It’s far too easy to be bluffing. But was Obama? We know Obama is not a Muslim, but can he really call himself a Christian?

That question has erupted on Christian blogs during the past few days because of the comments Obama made to Cathleen Falsani in an interview four years ago. I mentioned Sunday that Obama essentially gave the Jesus-was-a-great-teacher answer to the question of what his personal Lord and Savior meant to him. Moral relativism overwhelmed his discussion of sin. And Obama said he didn’t believe his God would send people who didn’t accept Jesus to hell.

Ethan remarked that these comments left him in awe at how naturally gifted Obama was at being political, at speaking in a language that offends as few people as possible. The CT politics blog has a round-up of what some bloggers have said about Obama’s theology. I particularly like Rod Dreher’s reflection:

“Unless Obama was being incredibly and uncharacteristically inarticulate, this is heterodox. You cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense and deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. You just can’t.”

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Tags: barack obama, christianity

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November 18, 2008 | 3:18 pm

Playing Gods: ‘Vengeance is Yours!’

Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination is a supreme riff on Risk. A satire on religious-inspired violence, the game comes with playing pieces that include Jesus wielding a deadly, club-sized cross; Buddha with a machine gun; and a turbaned man with a bomb and a dagger. The goal of the game is to force people to worship you.

The game was introduced in September at DragonCon, the annual pop culture, fantasy and science fiction convention in Atlanta, where it caught on with “religious folks with a sense of humor” as well as skeptics, says its creator, Ben Radford, 38, of Rio Rancho, N.M., managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Says Radford, “I didn’t want to leave out a Muslim figure just because it might be offensive. The game is satire. But I went out of my way to be innocuous. The figure is not named. It could be any Muslim leader.

Maybe it could be any Muslim leader, but USA Today reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman describes the figurine as “vaguely hinting at Mohammed”—whatever that means.

The funny thing is this isn’t the first game based on religion. A few video games, including one that promotes killing Muslims, have hit the market. But this one is certainly unique in that it is both satire and an equal-opportunity derider.

Jeffrey Weiss at the DMN religion blog connects Playing Gods with the Jesus vs. Santa battle royal that launched the “South Park” phenomenon. The five-minute short, which was created as an office video card for the holidays and in which all the kids sound like Cartmen, is after the jump. WARNING: It is incredibly offensive and hilarious.

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Tags: satire

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November 18, 2008 | 2:15 pm

Late to the party: How Obama got the Jewish vote

I’m frankly a bit surprised. Politico has been absolutely amazing during the past 20 months. But yesterday—13 days after Barack Obama won the presidential election and bragged ”What Jewish problem?” and after Philip Weiss and Omri Ceren and Jeffrey Goldberg all discussed why on this blog—David Paul Kuhn editorialized about why Obama fared better with the Jews than had been feared.

I could understand the delay if Kuhn had uncovered some shocking ZOG conspiracy about how Obama ended up with 78 percent of the Jewish vote, but the column essentially parrots what has been said for the past two weeks. In short, Obama never had a Jewish problem, though many Jews remained undecided until Election Day when they returned to the party of the majority of their people; Sarah Palin and a bad economy helped.

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Tags: american jews, barack obama, president 08

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November 18, 2008 | 12:13 pm

Palestinian negotiator: Jews have no claim to Temple Mount

This is not an uncommon opinion among Palestinian leaders. It’s about politics and rhetoric and deception. And it’s ridiculous. Causes and solutions to the I-P conflict aside, you can’t argue that Jews have no historic connection to Jerusalem or the Temple Mount. Evidence of the Exodus may be thin but not that Jews inhabited Eretz Yisroel for millenia.

The story from the conservative WorldNetDaily, via Solomonia:

JERUSALEM - The Jewish Temples never existed and Israel has been working to “invent” a Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, the chief Palestinian negotiator asserted.

Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian Authority official leading all peace talks with the Jewish state, made the controversial statements in a small media briefing Wednesday attended by WND as well as by a Palestinian media outlet and an Arab affairs correspondent for a major Israeli newspaper.

But the Israeli publication decided not to print Qurei’s comments, while the Palestinian publication, the Al-Ayam daily newspaper, made news of the remarks.

Qurei said “Israeli occupation authorities are trying to find a so-called Jewish historical connection” between Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, “but all these attempts will fail. The [Temple Mount] is 100 percent Muslim.”

“The world must be mobilized against all these Israeli attempts to change the symbols and signs of Jerusalem,” he said. “There is nothing Jewish about the Al Aqsa Mosque. There was no so-called Jewish Temple. It’s imaginary. Jerusalem is 100 percent Muslim.”

Continued Qurei: “The Arab world is called to interfere to stop the Israeli plans in Jerusalem, to stop the Israeli attempts to create a Jewish character to Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa mosque. Also to the Old City, which is the first step in the war to defend Jerusalem and Al Aqsa.

“They are competing against time in order to create facts on ground in the surrounding the imaginary Temple,” Qurei added.

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Tags: israel, jerusalem, judaism

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November 18, 2008 | 10:18 am

Prince—yes, that prince—says ‘it’s all about religion’

I never would have guessed that the artist once again known as Prince was a religious guy. But seven years ago he became a Jehovah’s Witness and this past spring took a greater leap of faith—moving to Los Angeles to be a minor missionary to music executives.

“I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” Prince told sometimes religion writer Claire Hoffman. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”

He continued: “I don’t see it really as a conversion,” he said. “More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’ ” He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. “Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it.”

More interesting, though, is Prince’s reference to the biblical debauchery and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’”

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Tags: jehovah's witness, los angeles, music

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November 17, 2008 | 4:29 pm

Like Obama: If I could Bibi like Barack

I can’t imagine Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have much in common politically and certainly not in regards to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (See: Reports that Obama supports the Arab Peace Plan.) But Bibi does seem to be a fan of at least Obama’s emphasis on using social media and the Internet to connect with voters.

Most stunning is how much Netanyahu’s Web site looks like it was designed by the folks who did Obama’s. (It was not.) Bibi is also trying to make his presence known on social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Sani Sanilevich, who is managing Mr. Netanyahu’s Internet campaign, said the Web was one of the biggest focuses of the campaign, and with good reason.

The campaign said that like the Obama operation, it would bombard its supporters with messages for volunteering and donating and set up a site where supporters could communicate with one another without the campaign’s direct involvement.

Indeed, before I read this article in The New York Times I had begun following Bibi on Twitter, though he tweets mostly in a language I can’t read. It’s amazing that a far-right politician in Israel can figure out how to use the Internet but the Republican Party for the second presidential election in a row was left looking like they still write letters on typewriters. In fact, John McCain just might.

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Tags: barack obama, benjamin netanyahu, israel, politics

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November 17, 2008 | 3:12 pm

Chargers’ Olshansky is one huge Jew

Forget what you have heard about Jews being academically gifted at the expense of being athletically stupid.

Jews once dominated boxing and basketball. A few have long excelled at baseball—Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg, Kevin Youkilis and Ryan Braun. They’re great at swimming and not bad at fencing. Card-carrying members of the tribe even include WWE wrestler Goldberg and a powerlifting world-record holder.

But football? Benny Friedman has been dead 26 years, and still no one has stepped up to assume his role. One of UCLA’s kickers is named Jimmy Rotstein, though I’m not sure he’s Jewish, and I thought the Texans’ Sage Rosenfels could be, but what kind of name is Sage ... for anyone? After that, I’m at a loss, which is why I was all the more surprised to learn from Nextbook that Igor Olshansky, a defensive end for my San Diego Chargers, is a huge Jew—literally.

In Knocked Up, Seth Rogen extols Steven Spielberg’s Munich for so demonstratively debunking the myth of the Semitic Wimp. “Every movie with Jews, we’re the ones getting killed,” he says. “Munich flips it on its ear. We’re capping motherf---ers!” When reminded of the quote, Igor Olshansky, the laconic football player for the San Diego Chargers, grunts out a giggle of approval in his hushed baritone. That’s because this intimidating, Ukraine-born defensive end knows he’s the antithesis of that stereotype. You see, Olshansky is not just Jewish huge; at 6-foot-6 and 309 pounds, he’s homo sapien huge.

(skip)

“I know Jewish people take pride in me, and I’m comfortable with that. But I don’t consider myself religious…. I play for myself and my te