April 15, 2008

The Forward Q&A returned this Tax Day, adding more good company to the interview they did with me last summer, the headline for which—“Funny, Brad Greenberg Doesn’t Look Christian”—still makes me chuckle. The latest subject is Ed Koch, the former New York mayor and anti-Semite skullcracker. He’s got a new book out, which sits on my desk, called “The Koch Papers: My Fight Against Anti-Semitism.”

How did you come to be so committed to this issue — to fighting antisemitism?

Well, I’ve only been subjected to one antisemitic situation in my whole life, and that was when I was in basic training in World War II. I was 19 years of age, and about 25% of the young men in the platoon were Jewish from New York City, and many of them were refugees from Germany, and the rest of the platoon was from all over the country. There was one guy who was antisemitic, and he would make fun of the Jewish young men who couldn’t get over the obstacle course. I could get over it; I’m not even that great an athlete, but I practiced so I could get over the course.

But the Jews excelled in the afternoon, when they had some learning in map-reading and other things of that kind, lectures. They’d get up and ask questions, and nobody else got up. I could hear this guy say loudly, “Who will be the next yid, the next kike, to get up?” And I said to myself, “I can’t take this.” And I knew that if I went over, he’d beat the hell out of me. I was not in great shape; he was in great shape. So I decided to practice and exercise and build myself up.

Basic training was 17 weeks; in the 15th week, he was doing this, and I went over to him and I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, “When we get back to the battalion, we’re going to have this out.” And he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you doing this?” He didn’t put me in the same category as these other kids. And I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. So all I could say was, “You know, you know!” And then he realized what it was, and so did everybody else. And when we got back to the battalion, they gave us leather gloves to fight, and we fought three rounds, and he beat the hell out of me. But I got up whenever I was knocked down, and I fought as well as I could, which wasn’t so terrific. And from that point on — just two weeks left — there was not one antisemitic remark. And it taught me the lesson that you must stand up, you must stand up no matter what, no matter whether you will be beaten or not, you’ve gotta stand up. And I would say that’s basically the beginning.

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With the outbreak of the intifada and 9/11, there has been a surge in antisemitism around the world. Some in the Jewish community have taken to saying that the threats now facing Jews are analogous to those we faced back in the 1930s —

They’re right. They’re absolutely right. Antisemitism is rising in Europe and has reached proportions in Great Britain where it’s not yet violence against Jews, but in the academies and the colleges, it’s terrible. And Tony Blair appointed a commission of parliamentarians — none of whom were Jews — who reported back that they saw antisemitism escalating like they had never seen before. That’s one. In France, up until Sarkozy, who is, I think, changing things, but before him, under Chirac, antisemitism was violent, the violence coming from French Muslims who assaulted — and still do — French Jewish children and adults on their way to the synagogue. And it’s true in other countries.

And in other countries, and in France and England, it takes the guise of being anti-Israel. And people say to me, “Can’t you be anti-Israel and not be antisemitic?” I say, “Sure.” I’m critical of actions and policies of the Israeli government, but the difference is this: that when you criticize the Israeli for doing things which you don’t criticize other countries for doing, that’s antisemitism. I say to people, “You criticize Israel for going into Gaza to punish them when they are lobbing artillery shells and rockets at Sderot and Ashkelon, as [Israelis] have every right to do under the rules of self-defense that apply to every other country. But nobody has criticized — nor should they — Turkey for doing the same thing, going into Iraq to kill the Turkish Kurds who are part of a terrorist organization.” And that’s the best illustration. What the Turks are doing is exactly what the Israelis are doing vis-à-vis the Palestinian terrorists.

You know, I’ve really been looking for a Jewish ophthalmologist who performs laser eye surgery.

Pope Benedict XVI said on Tuesday that following the Roman Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandals in the United States, the church is reviewing candidates for the priesthood with the objective of excluding those with a tendency to molest children.

Speaking to reporters on an airplane taking him for his first visit to the United States as pope, he addressed the scandal in the U.S. that has produced more than 5,000 sexual abuse victims since it erupted in 2002 and cost the church more than $2 billion.

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen,” he said. “As I read the histories of those victims it is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way. Their mission was to give healing, to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future.”

Apparently drawing a distinction between priests with homosexual tendencies and those inclined to molest children, the Pontiff said “I would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.”

“Who is guilty of pedophilia cannot be a priest,” he added.

The Pope said church officials were going through the seminaries that train would-be priests to make sure that those candidates have no such tendencies. “We’ll do all that is possible to have a strong discernment, because it is more important to have good priests than to have many priests.”

This from the NY Times. It seems like such a simple declaration, and yet it has taken so many years and cost so much pain for it to be made. Here’s more on the pope’s visit.

(That’s a cutout image of the pontiff from the Mercury News.)

In a scoop reserved for the Jewish Journal‘s often-irreverent Up Front feature, Amy Klein got an advanced copy of this year’s list of America’s top rabbis, which followed last year’s inaugural expedition in ranking the rabbinate.

Last year, when Newsweek published its inaugural list of America’s 50 most influential rabbis, Jay Sanderson, one of the list’s creators, said he was surprised by how much buzz it generated.

“We had hoped it would be provocative and it would open up conversation about religious leaders in America today,” Sanderson said.

But he was shocked at how many newspapers and bloggers—more than 100—picked up the story. Even the Aryan Nation Web site used the list to show how the Jews run Hollywood, he said.

Jews around the country—including many rabbis—were talking about who made the list, who didn’t make the list, who shouldn’t have made the list and what would be a better list.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, again topped the list of influentials. A new category was added this year, though, that ranked top pulpit rabbis, and it too was headlined by an Angeleno: Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple, who at this time seven years ago gave one of the more memorable Passover sermons in a long, long time.

Sanderson collaborated on the list with News Corp EVP Gary Ginsberg and Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, whose Jewish journey I profiled last fall. Newsweek‘s got the list up now.

Yeah, the guy who is running into the ground the parent company of my old papers, media baron Dean Singleton, showed the error today of axing so many of his editors when he referred to Mr. Most Wanted as “Obama bin Laden.” From the AP wire:

Sen. Barack Obama’s name has been mangled plenty of times, though not always in the presence of 1,200 news executives and TV cameras.

It happened Monday at The Associated Press’s Annual Luncheon, where the Democratic presidential candidate spoke and took questions. Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP’s board of directors and head of Denver-based MediaNews Group, slipped when asking the senator if he could envision sending many more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where “Obama bin Laden is still at large.”

Obama gave a quizzical look and said, “I think that was Osama bin Laden.” Singleton quickly replied, “If I did that, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, no,” the senator said. He called it “part of the exercise that I’ve been going through over the last 15 months, which is why it’s pretty impressive I’m still standing here.”

The crowd laughed and gave him a sympathetic round of applause.

Here’s more from Editor & Publisher.