September 24, 2007

I’m a Michael Chabon fan—“Wonder Boys,” “Final Solution,” “Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” and, oh yeah, that Pulitzer-Prize winner I haven’t yet read. It was a treat, then, to see last week that the Jewish weekly in San Francisco, j., had a cover story on Chabon and his wife, best-selling author Ayelet Waldman.

Being a Jewish author “is a great tradition to be part of, stretching back to …” She pauses.

“Moses?” suggests Chabon.

“Moses,” states Waldman definitively, adding Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow and Mordecai Richler for good measure.

 

Bintel Blogger Daniel Treiman, though, notes a glaring gap in the j.’s story, which doesn’t touch the controversy surrounding “Yiddish Policemen’s”:

Critics — some more sober than others — have argued that the book is hostile to Israel. It’s a disappointing omission, given that some have already started casually referring (perhaps unfairly) to Chabon as an anti-Zionist. It would have been good to hear what Chabon has to say on this issue.

You know what I would also consider unfortunate? That an author is branded an anti-Zionist—which has become a synonym for anti-Semite—because they write a fictional account of the efforts to create Zion in a parallel reality.

The New York Times’ City Room blog has live updates on Ahmadinejadathon.

Remember all that hub-bub in late 2005 when the Internal Revenue Service said it was investigating an anti-war sermon delivered at All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena? Well yesterday, congregants were told the liberal church is in the clear. Sort of.

The investigation is over, the church did not lose its tax-exempt status, but the IRS still said the speech—seen by some as supporting Kerry over Bush, which non-profits can’t do—was illegal. The LA Times reports that the rector wants a clarification and an apology. Good luck.

“To be sure, we are pleased that the IRS exam is over,” the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr. said in his 9 a.m. sermon, which was interrupted several times by applause. “However, the main issue of protecting the freedom of this church and other religious communities to worship according to the dictates of their conscience and core values is far from accomplished.”

Bacon predicted that the vague, mixed message from the IRS after its nearly two-year investigation of the All Saints case would have a continued “chilling effect” on the freedom of clerics from all faiths to preach about moral values and significant social issues such as war and poverty.

Although the church no longer faces the imminent loss of its tax-exempt status, All Saints has “no more guidance about the IRS rules now than when we started this process,” the rector said. He said the church would continue its struggle with the IRS, which he said so far had cost the 3,500-member congregation about $200,000.

(A quick note: The next line of the article—“One of Southern California’s largest and most liberal congregations”—is so far from accurate its comical. All Saints is both prominent and liberal, but certainly its not at the extreme end of the spectrum. But more hyperbolic is the “largest” claim. In the era of 7-Eleven mega-churches, a 3,500-member congregation seems quaint.)

This one has been creating quite a furor while I was away this weekend. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, the American antagonist and Holocaust denier, is scheduled to speak at Columbia University in New York today.

In defending the Ivy League university’s invitation, Dean John Coatsworth told Fox News that they’d invite Hitler if he were in town. Glad I live on the Left Coast. The dean’s message can be seen here and below:

The Manhattan campus has long been a destination for bright Jewish high school seniors, well before other Ivies dropped the Jew quotas. The New York Sun notes the irony of Jewish students learning of today’s globe-trotting guest after breaking fast and singing online after Yom Kippur ended Saturday.

Dean Coatsworth seems to be laboring under the illusion that had Columbia actually hosted Hitler in the late 1930s, World War II and the war against the Jews might have been prevented. The dean appears to be ignorant of history. The archives of the New York Times disclose that in December 1933, Columbia’s president, Nicholas Butler, extended an invitation to Hitler’s ambassador, Hans Luther. A protest was made by the Social Problems Club, which, according to the report in the Times, said: “Inviting the Nazi envoy to lecture on the foreign policy of his government and giving him an official reception means not only failing in our duty to oppose the Nazi onslaught on culture and in our duty to defend our German colleague but signifies, if not an open endorsement of the Nazi actions, at least placing their principles on the same level with other viewpoints.”