Rabbi Jason Miller

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Kazakhstan -- Great Place to Be a Jew!

From The Forward

Ali G's Jokes Aside, Report Lauds Kazakhstan
By Rick Harrison

When Jewish organizations lobbied for a law requiring the U.S. Department of State to issue an annual report on antisemitism around the globe, they probably weren't looking to do a favor for Kazakhstan.

The Central Asian country is a frequent target of "Da Ali G Show," the HBO program in which British Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen portrays the character of Borat Sagdiyev — a genial, mustachioed Kazakh reporter who paints a portrait of his homeland as a wild den of misogynistic dog-shooting Gypsy- and Jew-haters. Perhaps the most notorious Borat segment had the disguised Cohen leading patrons at an Arizona country music bar in a rousing chorus of "In My Country There Is Problem" — a catchy song that had the room clapping and singing along to such lyrics as, "Throw the Jew down the well/so my country can be free."

The Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington has objected to the show, claiming it defames the country on many fronts and ignores its solid record of religious tolerance. And now, in its recently released Report on Global Anti-Semitism, the State Department has taken this Jewish question by the horns, as it were, releasing the former Soviet territory from claims of widespread prejudice against Jews. Apparently, in Borat's country, there is no problem.

The government report, released January 5, mentions antisemitic leaflets distributed by a group called Hizb ut-Tahrir, but otherwise states that no problematic acts were reported during the observation period. In fact, in August the chief rabbi of Kazakhstan told an international religious conference in Brussels that he never had witnessed a single case of antisemitism in his decade living in the country. In September, Kazakhstan dedicated the largest synagogue in Central Asia, with the chief rabbi of Israel in attendance.

Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary of the Kazakhstan Embassy, said of the report: "It is a fair assessment of the situation on the ground in Kazakhstan and the efforts of our government to promote religious harmony."

Baron Cohen was unavailable for comment when contacted through an HBO publicist.

Vassilenko said that he can laugh at the jokes, but wishes Baron Cohen had chosen to poke fun at an imaginary country, like Krakozhia, from Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal."

"I do have a sense of humor," Vassilenko said. "But it's not quite helpful and perhaps harmful to portray a country where 'Throw the Jew down the well' is a famous folk song."

The State Department report sheds no light on Borat's assertions that Kazakh women are kept in cages and that the wine there is made from fermented horse urine.

Copyright 2004 © The Forward

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Condi Rice praises Natan Sharansky

From the Jerusalem Post

On Tuesday, during her opening remarks at the Senate confirmation hearing, Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice said, "The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the 'town square test': if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a 'fear society' has finally won their freedom."

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Tay Sachs almost eradicated

This is great news and how often do we hear about great news in the Jewish genetic disorder sphere?

From Haaretz Daily English Edition

Tay-Sachs, the `Jewish disease,' almost eradicated
By Tamara Traubman, Haaretz Correspondent

The genetic mutation disease Tay-Sachs, a fatal inherited disease of the central nervous system that mostly affects Ashkenazi Jews, has been almost completely eradicated, experts say, who claim that a genetic illness has become extinct for the first time.

"Last year not a single Jewish baby throughout North America was born with Tay-Sachs," says Prof. Robert Desnick of the Department of Human Genetics at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. Prof. Desnick is in Israel as the guest of Jerusalem's Hadassah hospitals. He said Monday that of the 10 babies born in North America in 2003 with Tay-Sachs, not a single one was Jewish.

Figures from Israel paint a similar picture. According to Prof. Joel Zlotogora, who heads the Health Ministry's Department of Community Genetics, just one baby was born with Tay-Sachs in Israel in 2003. Insofar as is known, not a single baby in Israel was born with Tay-Sachs last year, but as the disease takes some six months to manifest itself, the figures for 2004 are not final.

Desnick says that the data for the past two years may stem from a coincidental fluctuation in the incidence of the disease, and that isolated cases may appear this year or the next. He stresses, nevertheless, that whatever the case may be, the disease appears to have disappeared almost completely from among the Jewish nation.

Prof. Gideon Bach, who heads the Department of Genetics at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, says the eradication of Tay-Sachs can be attributed primarily to the fact that the general public in Israel is advised to carry out, at the expense of the state, genetic tests to diagnose the disease before the birth of the baby. In the event an unborn baby is diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, the pregnancy is usually terminated.

Another reason for the eradication of the disease, Bach says, is the work of the ultra-Orthodox association, Dor Yesharim. The association carries out tests on young individuals to check whether they are genetically "suitable." The results of these tests are passed on to the matchmaker. If there is a risk that a designated couple may give birth to children affected with Tay-Sachs, the matchmaker will report that the match is unsuitable.

Bach, who works with Dor Yesharim, says that numerous intended couples have been split up in the wake of genetic testing.

Some 1,000 years ago a Jew developed the genetic mutation which, it turned out, causes the fatal inherited disease. It has since been passed on among the Jewish people through the generations.

Tay-Sachs is a fatal genetic disorder mostly found in children that causes progressive destruction of the central nervous system. In general, children affected by the disease do not live beyond the age of 4.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Natalie Portman at Hebrew U.

I keep getting e-mail updates from my students who are studying abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Inevitably, each of the e-mail updates ends with a story about how the student has run into Natalie Portman who is also taking classes at the Mt. Scopus campus. Here is an update on what she's doing in Israel:

From the London Times Online
Profile: Natalie Portman: Not quite as innocent as she first appears

Portman is now preoccupied with a new project in Israel, which she considers her homeland. She is working with Amos Gitai, the Israeli director, on a film about a JewishAmerican girl’s attempts to discover her heritage. In the same spirit, Portman has been studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“Living in Israel is really beautiful,” she said recently. “One of the most shocking things is how peaceful it feels.”

She could be in line for an Oscar, but the prospect leaves her unmoved. “It’s not important,” she says.

She was born Natalie Hershlag in Jerusalem to Avner, a Jewish fertility specialist, and Shelley, an artist from Ohio. At the age of three she accompanied them to New York, where they settled in the upmarket suburb of Syosset.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Conservative Rabbis May Expel Colleague

New York Times (1/14/2005)
By JOSEPH BERGER

rabbi who has officiated at the marriage of gay and lesbian couples has been threatened with expulsion from the Conservative movement's rabbinical association, though movement officials say it is not her activism that is at issue but her repeated defiance of the movement's rules.

Ayelet S. Cohen, the junior rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a largely gay and lesbian synagogue in Greenwich Village, says she is being punished for her openness in performing the ceremonies. Officials of the association say it has nothing to do with the gay marriages. Rather, they say, she faces expulsion because she has repeatedly defied long-established rules for taking a job at a synagogue.

The Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement, with 1,600 rabbis, voted in 1992 not to ordain gays as rabbis and said that rabbis should not perform same-sex marriages. But the assembly stopped short of declaring the ban on marriage or commitment ceremonies a binding standard, tacitly allowing individual rabbis some discretion. Various rabbis within the movement have estimated that 20 to 40 rabbis have performed these ceremonies. Both the Reform and Reconstructionist movements ordain people who are gay and allow rabbis to marry gay people. Orthodox Jews neither ordain nor marry gays.

Rabbi Cohen said the assembly's Joint Commission on Rabbinic Placement told her in recent days that it would recommend her expulsion from the assembly for taking a job at an unaffiliated synagogue without obtaining a waiver and, after getting a waiver, letting it expire. Officials confirmed that part of her account, and said her case would be heard on Jan. 25 by the assembly's administrative committee and on Jan. 26 by the executive council, whose decision would be final.

Expulsion would make it virtually impossible for Rabbi Cohen to get jobs at 760 North American synagogues affiliated with the Conservative movement, or to use the movement's pension and insurance plans. She could continue serving at Beth Simchat Torah, which was discouraged from joining the Conservative movement and has not affiliated itself elsewhere.

In an interview before leaving for a vacation in Spain, Rabbi Cohen, who is 30 years old and heterosexual, said she was being punished for her vocal advocacy on gay rights.

"It's because I have performed same-sex wedding ceremonies," Rabbi Cohen said. "I made it clear from the outset that I plan to do it, and I have done it."

Rabbi Cohen, whose father is Stephen P. Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, has performed four wedding ceremonies for people of the same sex, having them exchange vows under a chupah, or canopy, and having them sign a ketubah, or marriage contract. Last March, she was interviewed by The New York Times after charges were brought against two Unitarian ministers for performing same-sex ceremonies in New Paltz for couples who did not have marriage licenses. She said at the time that she would "continue to conduct ceremonies, even if illegal."

Rabbi Joel H. Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, denied that Rabbi Cohen's activism on gay issues had anything to do with the charges against her, and added, "She's no more public about it than other rabbis."

Rather, he said, she is facing sanctions because of her repeated defiance of bedrock rules on how rabbis get placed, rules that prevent synagogues from poaching one another's rabbis with lucrative offers.

Rabbi Cohen was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement's fountainhead, in May 2002 and took a job at the unaffiliated Greenwich Village synagogue before being formally granted a waiver to do so. Rabbi Meyers eventually gave her a waiver for two years, but Rabbi Cohen let it be known that the time was insufficient. By July 31, 2004, she should have applied for an extension but did not, waiting two months beyond the waiver's expiration.

"It's painful and unfortunate," Rabbi Meyers said. "Ayelet Cohen is a very good rabbi. She gets people to talk about her positively in terms of her work, and it's a shame she's raising this - trying to push this off on the movement and its gay and lesbian stance - rather than looking at her own actions."

Rabbi Cohen has received a letter of support from eight colleagues, including Rabbi Gordon Tucker of Temple Israel in White Plains, the former dean of the seminary's rabbinical school, and Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun on the West Side. Noting that the movement has lost gay members and their families, the eight rabbis wrote: "Surely the opportunity to have Rabbi Cohen serve a community of gay and lesbian Jews who seek a Conservative rabbi is too important to be thrown away in favor of punishing her for such a technical error."

Whatever happens to Rabbi Cohen, the issue is not going to go away. The assembly's committee on Jewish law and standards is meeting in April and will revisit the issue of gay and lesbian unions.