JEWISH INFLUENCE
IN POPULAR CULTURE

"It just seems the whole world is Jewish ... The Jewish Connection can be found in so many people, places ... and even animals."
M. H. Goldberg, The Incredible, Ironic, Bizarre, and Provocative Story of the Jews, Stein & Day, NY, 1976, p. 105]



"After a while I began looking around and seeing that the ghetto merchants and landlords were all Jewish and were exploiting the blacks like mad. And all those self-righteous Jewish liberals openly spout the most incredible racism. That finally clinched it for me."
Steven Cohen,
in Adelson, Alan. SDS. A Profile. Charles Scribners' Sons, NY, p. 126]



"Economic power in America and Wall Street was shifting [after World War II] ... Fresh faces came forward as if answering a call ... They were the children and grandchildren of Italian, Irish, Poles, and other Europeans who were not of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. But most of all they were Jews."
Judith Ehrlich/Paul Rehfeld.
The New Crowd. The Changing Face of the Jewish Guard on Wall Street. Little, Brown, & Co., 1989, p. 12



Five of the last eight American "poet laureates" (since 1988) have been Jewish:
Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Howard Nemerov, Mark Strand, and Joseph Brodsky.



"A few years ago, Tyrone Guthrie speculated that if Jews withdrew from the American theatre, the institution 'would collapse about next Thursday.' Guthrie was no doubt assessing Jewish contributions at every level of show business from artistic, to administrators, to 'angels.' [i.e. philanthropists]."
Ellen Schiff,
Mispochech: Antisemitism in the American Stage [in Gaber, David A., Ed; Anti-Semitism in American History, University of Illinois Press, 1986



"Have you noticed "that three-quarters of the agony aunts [advice columnists] in the world are Jewish? We have carried common sense with us. Why are Jews violinists? You can pick it up and run."
British Jewish advice columnist
Irma Kurtz,
[SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY, 2-13-94]



"The New York literary world began to acquire a recognizable identity .... [one could] think of it as a Jewish family."
Norman Podhoretz, former editor of Commentary magazine,
Making It, Random House, p. 109




In 1997 a book by George Gilbert identified over 500 Jews who have been prominent in the field of photography as photographers, critics, scientists, or curators. As Jewish photography critic A. D. Coleman observed about the volume:
"This selection can't exhaust the list of prospects, indeed it barely scratches the surface (as a parlor game of sorts, I sat with a friend for two evenings and compiled a list of at least one hundred figures Gilbert missed) ... [These 'hundreds and hundreds' of Jews are] so integral to photography's history as we habitually think of it that a written version of that history excluding these figures is difficult to imagine."
A. D. Coleman
No Pictures: Some Thoughts on Jews in Photography, Exodus from Austria: Emigration of Austrian Photographers, 1920-1940, Kunstahalle, Wien, Austria, 1998



"Jews represent 80 percent of the pioneers and leaders of the comic book industry."
M. H. Goldberg,
Just Because They're Jewish, Stein & Day, 1979, p. 118



In 1974, the results of a survey of America's in-crowd intellectual elite were published. It found that, according to respondents' opinions, 15 of the top 21 American "intellectuals" were Jewish, as were about half of the top 200.
Charles Kadushin,
The American Intellectual Elite, Little, Brown, & Co., 1974, p. 30
(Many of the publishing forums for entre into this elite circle, of course were Jewish-owned and edited -- for example, the New York Review of Books, Partisan Review, etc. and most of the intellectual "elite" were found to live in New York and other parts of New England)



"With the exception of Cole Porter, almost every writer of musicals in the pre-rock [music] era was Jewish, even if their names sometimes suggested otherwise."
Chris Arnot,
Jewish Roots in Rock, The Guardian [London], October 4, 2000, p. 6

In 1992, the Jewish film critic and talk show host, Michael Medved, was taken aside by an unnamed "best-selling author" and "popular television commentator" at a "media accountability" conference for a heart to heart talk. "What I don't get," the unnamed Gentile said, "when I look at Hollywood, is why is it that so many of the people who are responsible for the worst garbage turn out to be Jews? It's sort of become an obvious question, but nobody likes to talk about it, because nobody wants to sound like a bigot ... How come they're so set on trashing everything that the rest of us care about? I'm afraid we've got more and more people out there who are wondering about the same thing."

"To hear this sophisticated and dynamic public figure draw a connection between Jewish involvement in Hollywood and the current degradation in Hollywood," says Medved, "hit me with the force of a blow to the chest. No one could ever accuse him of anti-Semitism; for many years he had compiled an admirable record of service to Jewish causes and he'd made several trips to Israel."
Michael Medved, Hollywood vs America. Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values, HarperCollins, 1992, p. 315, p. 70]

"Much has been made of the abundance of high-profile Jews in the lower-depths of the entertainment industry. While it won't do to simply say it ain't so, for it is ... I do not feel especially guilty because of the wrongful behavior of certain Jews, whether they are secular sleaze merchants or chasidim ... But I am embarrassed, even hurt, when wrongdoers are honored, which happens too often in our fervid world of organizations and fund raising. It is my understanding that in Hollywood 'humanitarian' awards are handed out promiscuously, with Jewish organizations well in the lead ... It's ... a mistake for our community to have so little to say about the cultural depravity all around us ... It is insufficient for us to act like a community of amateur constitutional lawyers whenever someone shouts 'First Amendment' to protect the cesspool of moral corruption."
Marvin Schick,
Vantage Point: Blame the Messengers, Jewish Week, July 7, 1995, p. 5

"The Jew at the start of the century was identified as the pure marginal, the outsider, the immigrant incapable of integration. As this century draws to a close the Jew is now identified as the very apotheosis of American dominant values and culture."
Irving Horowitz,
The Decomposition of Sociology, Oxford University Press,
1993

"In the century of Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Dinah Shore, need we ask who but a Jew is best a packaging unwhining blonde fantasy figures? I don't know about you, darlings, but ever since I found out that Kathie Lee Gifford was nee-Epstein, I don't

assume anything. Why be surprised then, that Barbie, the ultimate shiksa goddess, was invented by a nice Jewish lady, Ruth Handler (with her husband Eliot, co-founder of Mattel?)

Indeed, the famous snub-nosed plastic ideal with the slim hips of a drag queen is in fact named after a real Jewish princess from L.A., Handler's daughter, Barbara (who must have been hell to know in high school!) Her brother's name was Ken."
Rhonda Lieberman, 'Jewish Barbie', in 'Too Jewish?; Rutgers University Press, l996, p. 108,
(also quoted in: Karen Brodkin,
How Jews Became White Folks, Rutgers University Press, 1998, p. 143 )

In 1999 the Jewish Week worried about an "ugly racial clash" between striking professional basketball players (85% Black)" and the teams' owners of which "nearly half of the 29 team's owners were Jewish ... [Also] most top NBA officials are Jews, beginning with Commissioner David Stern ... [Today's Jewish presence in the NBA is that of] landlords and shopkeepers ... Jewish sports executives as a group are unusally devoted to Jewish causes. Most are major UJA [United Jewish Appeal] donors. David Stern has been honored by both UJA and Israel Bonds, and personally supported a [Jewish] Soviet refugee family. New Jersey Nets owner Henry Taub is a former national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal. Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin actually changed his team's name from the Bullets after [Israeli prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated."
J. J. Goldberg,
Jewish Week, January 22, 1999, p. 14l."

"It would be an interesting study to determine just how the United States evolves in the popular mind from a 'Christian' nation into a nation made of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews ... [and] how the Jewish group, which through most of the history of the United States has formed an insignificant percentage of the American people, has come to be granted the status of most favored religion."
Jewish sociologist
Natan Glazer, quoted in Eisen, A. The Chosen People in America, Indiana University Press, 1983, p. 129

"Both as a business and as an expression of talent and creative artistry, American popular music was in large part shaped and formed by Jews, many of them immigrant newcomers to the American scene ... Virtually all the great names that come to mind when one considers popular music -- Rogers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Lorenz Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Caesar, and Charles Harris, for instance, are Jewish names. Jews wrote the songs, Jews sang the songs, and Jews made sure that the songs were circulated to every corner of the country, for they founded and built America's publishing industry. Among the vanguard publishers were M. Witmark, Charles K. Harris, Joseph Stern, Shapiro and Bernstein, Harry Von Tilzer, Leo Feist, T. B. Harms, and Irving Berlin [born Israel Baline]. Collectively their publishing firms came to be known as 'Tin Pan Alley' ... It was the Tin Pan Alley ethos, combining the commercial with the aesthetic, that gave our popular music its distinctive character."
Kenneth Kanter,
The Jews in Tin Pan Alley. The Jewish Contribution to Popular Music, 1830-1940, KTAV Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1982

"By the early 1960s,the large numbers of Jews in sociology led to a faculty-club banter to the effect that sociology had become a Jewish discipline. In the literary world the triumph of Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and J. D. Salinger led Leslie Fiedler to hail the great takeovers by Jewish-American writers of a task 'inherited from certain Gentile predecessors.'"
David Hollinger, Sciences, Jews, and Secular Culture, Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 28

"One after another, the Jaguars, the BMWs, and the odd Porsche pulled off the Avenue of the Stars and slipped into the nearly deserted underground parking garage. The owners of these cars, about two dozen of the top lawyers in West Los Angeles, greeted each other with slightly embarrassed smiles ... They came because everyone wanted a piece of the case -- the defense of Orienthal James Simpson against charges that he had murdered his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman [also Jewish] ... This was, as they sometimes joked, the West L.A. Jewish mafia. ([Skip] Taft and [Robert] Kardashian were among the very few non-Jews in the room). In fact, as the group settled in, Alvin Michaelson whispered to his neighbor, 'This is what it must have been like at Apalachin' -- the infamous gathering of mob chieftains in upstate New York in 1957. It was a famously inbred group, and their connections to each other often stretched back decades."
Jeffrey Toobin,
The Run of His Life. The People vs OJ Simpson, Simon and Schuster, 1997

"All the Israeli press wants to know how a Jew can represent the head of Hamas. I ask them, 'How can a Jew NOT represent the head of Hamas?'"
Stanley Cohen,
American attorney for Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzook, "the senior official in the militant organization Hamas," jailed in New York City,
New Yorker, September 11, 1995

Today, the international "diamond pipeline" is a "critical component of the diamond invention -- made up of a network of brokers, diamond cutters, bankers, distributors, jewelry manufacturers, wholesalers, and diamond buyers for retail establishments. Most of the people in this pipeline are Jewish, and virtually all are closely connected through family ties or long-standing business relationships."
Edward Jay Epstein,
The Rise and Fall of Diamonds. The Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion, Simon and Schuster, 1982



"Some of the most notoriously foul-mouthed and obscene-minded entertainers are Jewish and earn no reproof for their public aggrandizement of filth."
Rabbi Daniel Lapin,
America's Real War, Multnomah Publishers, Oregon, 1999



All four entrepreneurs of the famous 1969 Woodstock rock & roll mecca were Jewish: Joel Rosenman, Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, and John Roberts. The site of the festival was owned by dairy farmer Max Yasgur, who was also Jewish. The Director of Operations for Woodstock Ventures was Mel Laurence (born Melvin Bernard Lachs). The head logistics man for the festival was Stanley Goldstein.

"Most of the [Las Vegas] hotel builders were Jewish Americans. Jay Sarno and Nate Jacobson were associated with Caesar's Palace [Sarno later created Circus Circus]; Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, and Sam Tucker with the Desert Inn (and, along with Jake Factor, with the Stardust after [Italian-American Tony] Cornero's death); Sidney Wyman, Al Gottesman, and Jake Gottleib with the early years of the Dunes; Gus Greenbaum, Moe Sedway, and Charlie Resnick with managing the Flamingo after [mobster] Bugsy Siegel's death; Ben Goffstein, Willie Alderman, and David Berman with the booking and running of the Riviera; Milton Prell with the establishment of the Sahara and then with the transformation of the Tally-Ho into the Aladdin; Hyman Abrams, Carl Cohen, and Jack Entratter with the ownership and operation of the Sands; and Ben Jaffe, Phil Kastel, and Jell Houssels (of Anglo-Saxon background) with the construction and operation of the Tropicana ... A few Italian-Americans hold minor ownership shares in casinos."
Alan Balboni,
Beyond the Mafia. Italian Americans and the Development of Las Vegas. University of Nevada Press, 1996



"There is probably less anti-semitism and certainly less overt anti-semitism in the world today than at any other time since the rise of Christianity. Auschwitz is, of course, one reason; another is the decline in religious fanaticism and, indeed, in religious belief in general, and while rampant secularism may be a threat to Judaism it has made life easier for the Jew. A third reason, which is connected to the second, is that the western world has become more Jewish. The commerical drive which was said to characterize the Jew and which was regarded with such disdain by the European (if not the American) bourgeoisie, has become, if not respectable, then at least more widespread and
acceptable ..."
Chaim Bermant,
The Jews, Times Mirror, 1977, p. 37

---

Humor in U.S. is Getting 'Yiddishized,' Professor Says.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. June 5, 1998
"While assimilation is a big concern in the Jewish community, [professor Arthur Asa] Berger contends that, conversely, Jewish culture has 'Yiddishized' American humor. 'When the Jews disappear,' he joked, 'the Jewish humor will be written by non-Jews because they've been Yiddishized and they'll be able to carry it on.'"


Thinking Yiddish, Writing British. (Jewish) Forward. May 25, 2001
"What could be prompting the increased visibility of so many Jewish figures in the modern British literary scene? The rise of Margaret Thatcher may have something to do with it, she represented a heavily Jewish constituency in Parliament and counted many Jewish politicians in her cabinet and among her advisers."


How the Holocaust Captured America.
The Jerusalem Report. [May 31, 2001/September 27, 1999]
"Has the tragedy that befell European Jewry come to occupy a disturbingly central place in U.S., and U.S. Jewish, consciousness?"


From Neil Diamond to Carole King, Saluting the Brill Building Beat.
[Jewish] Forward, January 19, 2001
"From the late 1950s through the early 1960s, the Brill Building (and its lesser-known cousin across the street at 1650) housed publishing companies that employed the era's best-known songwriters. Almost all of those songwriters were Jewish, including such pop legends as Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Neil Diamond, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. (That's not even including prominent producers and music-biz figures of the time, such as Don Kirshner and Phil Spector)."


Alleged Jewish 'Control' of the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. Debunking the Lie. ADL [Anti-Defamation League, the foremost Jewish "defense" organization: a branch of B'nai B'rith.]
"In an essay headed 'Who Says Jews Control Hollywood?' published in the February/March 1995 issue of Midstream magazine, Steven G. Kellman, a professor at the University of Texas in San Antonio, wrote: 'Boosters and antisemites agree: Jews have been prominent and predominant in all phases of the [motion picture] business: production, distribution and exhibition.' He noted that, at the time, 'Of the 100 most powerful people in the industry according to a recent survey by Premiere, most, including the top 12, are Jewish,' but observed, 'Though individual Jews control Hollywood, Jewishness does not.' In fact, Hollywood studios are publicly owned corporations and motion pictures are made by the efforts of individual men and women, some of whom are Jewish, many of whom are not. While statistics and studies on the subject are not readily available, the Anti-Defamation League believes that the recitation of numbers and percentages is not the answer to the false charges of Jewish 'control' of the motion picture industry, or, indeed, of similar accusations involving the media, banking, finance and other businesses. Reliance on statistics alone plays into the hands of anti-Semites."


Jews in Bush's Cabinet? Don't Hold Your Breath, by Philip Weiss.
New York Observer, January 22, 2001
"At least when it comes to blacks in sports, you can talk about it; you can say that blacks changed sports. But no one is allowed to speak up about something we all quietly know: Jews changed America. There is hardly an area of public life on which Jews have not had a profound impact in the last generation, as discrimination against them ended and as they gained power. The civil rights movement reflects Jewish values of justice. Feminism is a reflection of liberal Jewish matriarchal values (note the Jewish groups that are talking about Roe v. Wade in opposing John Ashcroft for Attorney General). Ever-more-powerful Jews in the media have ushered in the information age. Psychologically attuned Jews and Hollywood Jews changed the language of popular culture—Seinfeld, Weinstein ... Altogether they represent the force of Jewish values coming into public life. In a recent study, Jews and the American Public Square, the Center for Jewish Community Studies argues that Jews have fostered an important legal trend in the last half century, the separation of church and state. I’d go further and argue that the greatly diminished influence of church on public mores wouldn’t have happened without secularized Jews gaining cultural power. And no one ever talks about it. The most important change in establishment culture in the last 25 years, and it goes unspoken ... Yes, there were Italian-Americans, Asians, but the sea change that was upon us was that middle-class Jews were taking up an important place in the establishment ... The Jewish silence comes out of a profound fear among Jews that this powerful moment will pass, that Jewish prominence in America is like Jewish prominence in Vienna in 1920, teetering on the brink. The more power, the less anyone wants to talk about it ... If you talk about Jewish influence, you’re risking a Holocaust. So there’s no public acknowledgment of something almost everyone understands: Jews are major players in the establishment ... There are so many Jews in the media that the cone of silence falls over the territory where you might expect wider discussion ... So long as Jews continue to see themselves as powerless, they fail to recognize the effect they have had on society and, worse, fail to move outside a privileged position of wounded self-regard and come to terms with their real spot: big winners in the new order."


Projecting Culture: Jewish Art Historians and the History of Art History. Judaism (American Jewish Congress); [at findarticles.com], Summer 2000
"Jewish emigres in flight from the Nazi genocide and Jews of earlier emigrations, such as Meyer Schapiro and Clement Greenberg, for example, had a definitive and formative influence on art and art history in America and England and by today in the English-speaking world as a whole. The impact of these Jewish art historians, critics, and artists in the interpretation and exhibition of art in America and elsewhere was central for art history."


I am Being Villified for Telling the Truth about Palestinians, by Robert Fisk [Middle Eastern correspondent for London's The Independent] Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Jan/Feb 2001
"Ignorance of the Middle East is now so firmly adhered to in the United States that only a few tiny newspapers report anything other than Israel's point of view ... The attempt to force the media to obey Israel's rules is now international."


Jewish Voters Still in the Swing of Things. [Jewish] Forward, April 6, 2001
"The available evidence on Jewish voting patterns, when examined closely, shows that the Jewish community is in fact an extremely potent political force in the United States and will likely be so for years to come ... Jews are strategically located in the places that make the most difference on Election Day ... Jews are concentrated and communally active in [the so-called swing states], especially Florida, Pennsylvania and California ... While most Jews will not base their votes on the issue of Israel alone, if at all, a large portion apparently will switch parties when a candidate seems threatening to the Jewish state ... Jewish communal identity remains politically potent. If the strident pro-Israel stances taken in the most recent presidential election are any indication, the politicians -- if not the rabbis -- have already figured this out."


Literary Jewish Girls. Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 6-21-01
"It’s time to make room for a newer generation of American Jewish writers, many of whom are young women who have not even hit 30. Their debut novels on Jewish themes are earning large advances, garnering stellar reviews and reaching best-seller lists .... The interest in Jewish themes may be part of the wave of multiculturalism — from African American to Asian American — that has captured public imagination, says Gail Hochman, an agent with Brandt and Brandt Literary Agents ... Three themes predominate in contemporary Jewish fiction, says Hochman: the legacy of the Holocaust, survival in Israel or living in the secular world as a practicing Jew. ... Laura Mathews, senior editor at Putnam, calls it 'curious but coincidental' that she has just published two books with Jewish subthemes ... But, notes [Carolyn Starman] Hessel [director of the Jewish Book Council], the audience for these books reaches beyond the Jewish market. 'Society has become more open. What Jewish women have to say is of interest to the American public.' [Jewish novelist Susan] Isaacs agrees. 'If we’re willing to read novels about medieval monks a la ‘The Name of the Rose’ or Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, about a little Anglican lady in a small town in England, then why shouldn’t we read about American Jews?'"


The Full Monica. Yahoo! News [Associated Press], July 9, 2001
"Now that Madonna is boringly, happily married and middle-aged, guess who is emerging as the new darling, the pet subject, of the academic elite? Monica Lewinsky [who is Jewish], that's who. A new academic volume by New York University Press, 'Our Monica, Ourselves,' features essays by a variety of 'progressive' scholars and thinkers on such topics as 'Monica Dreyfus,' 'The President's Penis' and 'The Culture Wars of the 1960s and the Assault on the Presidency: The Meaning of the Clinton Impeachment,' by Eli Zaretsky ... Now, HBO is running around the country taping interviews between Monica and top professors and students. Elaine Showalter, a chi-chi professor of English at Princeton, recently brought 23 of her own students to the mountaintop to earnestly engage Miss Lewinsky in a cultural studies debate. Monica is now a full-fledged cultural icon, but an icon of what? We won't get Monica's full, mature reflection on the meaning of her life's story until January, when the HBO special is expected to air. But, Professor Showalter coyly notes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Monica may not share the professor's story. 'Was the Lewinsky I saw at Cooper Union aware of this range of cultural nuance and allusive complexity? Without violating the terms of the confidentiality agreement, I think I can say that her intellectual journey has not included exposure to cultural studies.' Good thing. In a new book, 'Her Way,' feminist scholar and journalist Paula Kamen (like many younger feminists) defends Monica as the new sexual beau ideal. Monica, according to Kamen, is the new type of woman 'shaped by the sexual revolution,' who shares 'more of men's power, sense of entitlement and social clout.' Monica was 'brazen, relentless and self-centered in her quest for sex and power; in other words, she acted like a man.' Huh? Monica, you may recall, was a young woman who snapped her thong at a powerful, indiscriminate older man for reasons she did not fully understand, and who ended up falling in love, waiting by the phone, fantasizing about the wedding, obsessing about his neckties, and generally acting about as unmasculine in the conduct of her sexual affairs as possible. At the last moment, when she realized her utter dispensability and therefore utter sexual humiliation, she tried to blackmail the president into getting her a paltry, pathetic, $40,000-a-year PR position in the cosmetics industry. Monica's path led neither to much sex nor any power. Except the power, of course, to feed an endless cycle of grad student theses and academic essays on the joys of self-defined sexuality."


Chandra, Monica and the Return of the 'Jewess.' (Jewish) Forward, July 20, 2001
"They're both Jewish girls from California, well-to-do doctors' daughters with luxuriant manes of dark hair, fetching curves, coquettish smiles and a taste for shopping and clothes. Both grew up in Conservative synagogues, attended decent, if not stellar, West Coast colleges and worked hard at launching careers. Both have fancy, ultra-feminine given names and surnames indicating that they come from the tribe of Levi, the servants of ancient Israel's priests. Both were 24 years old when they began what turned out to be disastrous dalliances with handsome, well-connected, non-Jewish, 50-ish married men who they thought could help them get jobs. As young Jewish women of their generation, Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy are pretty typical, probably even in their bad-news affairs with married men. (It's an old story: Doctor [professional] daddy spends more time with patients [clients] than he does with his little girl, who takes up with a father figure.) Which is why wags from Washington to Westwood are asking, 'Why does it seem to be Jewish female interns who get caught having affairs with big-time Democratic politicians?'"


The Jewsweek Fifty. The Fifty Most Influential Jews in America. Jewsweek, July 18, 2001
"Something to consider when perusing this list: You will see some 'small local' people higher up on the list than some of the big power brokers. That’s because being an influential Jew means touching people’s lives and helping promote the Jewish ideal of 'being a light unto the nations.'”


On Passing for Jewish. Village Voice, September 6-12, 1998
[THE definitive self-hating WASP -- Jewish wanna-be -- story]
"Everyone always assumes I'm Jewish ... So why do people think I'm Jewish? My name? My profession? But more interesting than why I pass for Jewish is why it pleases me so much ... I was immediately drawn to the Jews because they seemed so attractive and because the WASPS seemed so repellent ... I came to see WASP life as a rigid, dececitful facade that had to be penetrated if one cared at all about what was real. ... I've always been attracted to Jewish women -- in fact, every long relationshp I've ever had , including my marriage was with a Jewish woman."

The Education of Mike Milken. The Nation, May 3, 1999
"Three years after leaving a minimum-security prison near San Francisco, where [Jewish mogul Michael Milken] served twenty-two months for fraud, rigging securities and prices and other felonies, Milken [has] engineered a comeback as the putative Bill Gates of the untapped gold mine known as American education ... In 1996, a $500 million pot from Milken ..., his brother Lowell, and [Jewish] Oracle Corporation chief executive Larry Ellison launched Knowledge Universe (KU), a holding company for an impressive transnational array of enterprises in the business of training human minds ... Milken's company, with annual revenues of $1.2 billion, has bought or purchased stakes in everything from Children's Discovery Centers ..., the nation's sixth-largest preschool company, with 25,000 toddlers in nearly 300 locations across the United States, to Spring, Britain's largest vocational-training firm. KU owns or has invested in more than a dozen companies involved in computer training, proficiency testing, educational toys, strategic consulting and CEO training, as well as private, for-profit schools (nearly 400 at last count, ranging from preschool to secondary) ... Companies like Milken's are not just competitors with public schools; they are poised to supplement the traditional classroom ... Thanks in part to Milken's financial secrecy, his flurry of acquisitions has received remarkably little public attention ... Educators worry that if curriculum and the tools of teaching (let alone schools themselves) are controlled by conglommerates like Milken's, many of the virtues of public education will be lost."

Spielberg Enables Editors to Start a New Magazine -- Heeb. New York Observer, August 4, 2001
"And now, flush with grant money from a fellowship supported by Jewish big shots like Steven Spielberg, Charles Bronfman and others, Ms. [Jennifer] Bleyer and her post-collegiate buddies are busily working on bringing this new cool-Jew magazine to life. The first issue is due in January. They have assigned some articles and taken some photos, and they also have a title: Heeb, as in the old ethnic slur, short for 'Hebrew' ... 'We also want to be the magazine that gives big props to Monica and Chandra,' Ms. Bleyer said. 'Like, Jewish sluts of the world, unite! ... [Managing editor] Schiller ... said he was interested in non-Jews who reference Jewish culture. 'I’d love to talk to Jay-Z and ask him why he throws up the sign of the kohanim on his album. And, I’d like to talk to some reggae artists about their connections to the whole idea of Zionism,' he said. 'It’d be cool to interview Michael Jackson and ask him what he does with [Rabbi] Shmuley Boteach.' ... The whole idea behind Heeb, Ms. Bleyer said, was to be a general-interest magazine in which everything is connected somehow to Jews.... 'We’re just trying to hold a mirror up to it and reflect what’s going on. There are so many Jewish filmmakers; there are so many Jewish musicians, actors and writers and da da da da, and we want to, like, just create a total venue for it.'"

The Next Jewish Pope. Sydney Morning Herald [Australia], August 6, 2001
"He started life as Aaron Lustiger. Now he is Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, prince of the Catholic Church, confidant of Pope John Paul II. As the Pope grows more and more frail, Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, grows more crucial to the leadership of the church ... [He serves] as Archbishop of Paris and leader of the college of cardinals ... Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and chronicler of the Holocaust, has written that when he thinks about the career of Jean-Marie Lustiger he thinks about the history of transgressions against Jews: 'I think of the tensions and conflicts that over centuries have marked the relations between our two religions: the hateful writings of the church fathers, the massacres during the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms, the public humiliations. I think of the silences of [Pope] Pius XII; his intercessions with Third Reich authorities were restricted to converted Jews. Only those mattered to him.' Of Lustiger himself, Wiesel wrote in his memoir And The Sea Is Never Full: "His evident sincerity makes him seem vulnerable and profoundly disarming ... But he insists that having been born a Jew, he will die a Jew. I try to explain to him why this stand seems untenable to us; I cite laws and customs.' In the end Wiesel pronounces himself a friend of Lustiger, yet, so driven by his career-long documentation of anti-Semitism, Wiesel seems oblivious to the racism of his own argument. Anyone can convert to Judaism, but can a convert ever become a chief rabbi? Whereas anyone can become a Catholic and even an archbishop because it is a religion, not a tribe ... Could this man be the first Jewish pope in almost two millennia? He certainly sits in the first rank of the crimson aristocracy ... His schedule includes visits with current and former governors-general, premiers, religious leaders and business titans. Dick Pratt, the billionaire member of the Jewish community, put on a big bash for him in Melbourne."
('I feel Jewish,' [Lustiger] responds. 'I refuse to renounce my roots, my Jewishness' .... He goes on to make the point that his Jewishness annoys anti-Semites and that this does not displease him. Why should he make them happy by turning his back on the people they execrate?' [WIESEL, E., 1999,  p. 171] ... [He] is determined to remain a son of the Jewish people ... He acts accordingly; anyone who requests his assistance in defending a Jewish cause can count on his support ... During the scandalous affair of the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz [the 'scandal' was that nuns wanted to keep a cross at their convent next to the former concentration camp, against international Jewish demands to take it down] , for example, his interventions [on behalf of Jews] must have raised a few eyebrows in Rome. As must his sympathy for the State of Israel, of which he is the most devoted defender inside the Catholic Church.") [WIESEL, E., 1999, p. 171-172] [Wiesel, Elie. And the Sea is Never Full, Memoirs, 1969- , Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999]

Sam Israel's Legacy. Washington CEO, 1997
"To many, Sam Israel was the invisible slumlord. Seattle's mystery real estate tycoon was an eccentric, cantankerous voice on the telephone, the person who received the rent checks. Few ever saw him and even fewer actually knew him ... His holdings included a wheat farm, extensive waterfront property at his beloved Soap Lake, parcels on the Olympic Peninsula, and more than 2 acres on Mercer Island. But the focus of his holdings was Seattle where he had about 30 pieces of property in the downtown area, 14 of which are in historic Pioneer Square. They include some of Seattle's most famous addresses, such as much of the block between Pike and Pine streets, First and Second avenues. The worth of the portfolio isn't public knowledge, but is believed to exceed the $100 million to $200 million reported in the early 1990s. Israel had one firm rule that earned him a bad reputation throughout the town: He put as little money as possible into the properties. The result was that over decades, some of Seattle's prime and most historic real estate decayed and urban blight set in ... Before his death, Israel created the Samis Foundation, a charitable organization which oversees the management of his vast holdings with the revenue supporting Jewish education in Washington as well as immigrant housing and archeological programs in Israel."

Child Watch. WHDH, Channel 7 News, Boston
"Is it an ad campaign . . . or child pornography. If anything, the new Calvin Klein [who is also Jewish] jean ads are definitely a controversy. Today the designer agreed to pull the mutli-million dollar campaign saying people have the wrong idea about the ads. Did Calvin Klein go too far? Child Watch Reporter Jilda Unruh has the story. When it comes to selling sex . . . nobody does it better than Calvin Klein. First he puts together an ad campaign that industry insiders say . . . crossed the line into child pornography! Then he makes headlines saying he's just been misunderstood! Is it erotica? Or just another jeans ad? You decide ... Calvin Klein is no stranger to controversy. It began in the 80's with a nubile Brooke Shields, then came raunchy rapper Marky Mark and underwear waif Kate Moss. Experts say Klein has continually pushed the advertising envelope. But this time experts say he's gone too far. 'This is much bigger than Calvin Klein. The ads are exploiting our children. This is child pornography basically.' 'And horrifyingly perhaps five years from now this won't be shocking either, because Calvin Klein will be having children having sex on camera in order to sell his jeans.' -- Jean Kilbourne/Marketing Analyst ... Kilbourne says Klein caters to teens who will be turned on by the outrage, and pulling the ads is just another calculated controversy."

A Stylish Obsession: Calvin Klein. Entrepreneur.com
"[Calvin Klein] managed to single-handedly create the designer-jeans craze of the 1970s and revolutionized fashion advertising in the 1980s. Now his name adorns everything from underwear to perfume. And his stylish designs and business acumen have built an empire ... In 1968, at the age of 26, with $2,000 of his own money and a $10,000 loan from his boyhood friend Barry Schwartz, Klein founded his own company, Calvin Klein Inc., with Schwartz as his partner ... After his divorce, Klein embarked on a self-described 'wild period,' spending his nights partying at Studio 54, where cocaine and casual sex were part of the scene ... The year 1980 marked a big turning point for Klein's empire. A series of commercials featuring 15-year-old model Brooke Shields saying, 'Nothing comes between me and my Calvins,' made Klein's new line of tight jeans a nationwide phenomenon, selling 200,000 pairs the first week alone. The provocative commercials marked a revolution in clothing advertising, but prompted criticism from feminist leaders. The negative publicity only fueled sales. Klein once again courted controversy in 1982, when he put his name on the waistband of men's underwear and then started a campaign featuring near-naked men modeling the new designer skivvies. Many publishers rejected the sexy ads. But again, the controversy spilled over into Klein's favor, and stores couldn't keep the underwear in stock."

James Bond Actor Denounces Calvin Klein. Nando Times [from the Times of London], 1996
"Advertisers and film-makers who use childlike girls in alluring roles were accused by Roger Moore Thursday of blurring the distinction between "sexually ready" and "way too young." The former James Bond actor rounded on Calvin Klein and the fashion industry over waifs such as Kate Moss, in his role as UNICEF goodwill ambassador at an international conference against child-sexual exploitation. Mr. Moore said: 'Whereas Lolita the film caused a storm in the 1960s, the many Lolitas of advertising and entertainment today hardly raise a murmur. The creators of these images will argue that this is art. But surely we cannot accept that the dignity, childhood, even lives of thousands of children might be sacrificed for the sake of art without responsibility' ... Calvin Klein's jeans advertisement sent shock waves through the advertising world and President Clinton is said to have intervened personally to have it withdrawn. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority said Thursday it had upheld complaints made in Britain about Calvin Klein's Obsession advertisement featuring Kate Moss lying on her stomach naked on a couch. Critics claimed the androgynous image was designed to make Miss Moss appear childlike beneath the headline 'Obsession for Men.' The Calvin Klein jeans campaign which ran in America was stopped by the ASA before it came to Britain, after being accused of promoting pornographic images of children."

Behind the Velvet Rope. New York Times Books [review of a book about the notorious Manhattan celebrity nightclub Studio 54], April 13, 1997
"For [author] Mr. Haden-Guest, Studio 54 was not just a nightclub; it 'occupies a niche in history' ... [Studio 54 Owners] Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager are interesting characters, no doubt about it. Rubell, who died of AIDS in 1989, was the son of a Brooklyn postman. Schrager, whose father reputedly worked for [gangster boss] Meyer Lansky, is now a hotelier. He would plan every detail of the parties held at Studio and then disappear once the revels began. Rubell, on the other hand, loved the parties, as well as the Quaaludes and cocaine; his sex life, Mr. Haden-Guest reports, was 'brusque and commercial' (isn't everyone's?)."

Interview: David Allyn. Time-Warner Bookmarks.
"Q: Tell me about Plato's Retreat.
A: First of all, you have to picture the Ansonia Hotel, which is a late 19th century wedding-cake of a building in the heart of the upper west side in New York. In the basement of the Ansonia was Plato's Retreat, then the world's most famous sex club. Men and women would stroll about the Ansonia lobby in nothing but towels. In the club, they would have sex with possibly a dozen or so people in a single night. Plato's Retreat represented the commercial version of what was happening in people's apartments and living rooms across the country." The owner of Plato's Retreat was Larry Levenson. Its antecedent, in the same building, was one of the original -- and one of the most influential -- American gay bathhouses (from whence Jewish performers Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, among others, began their ascent to fame): The Continental Baths. Its owner was Steve Ostrow. [Jewish?]

Ker-plat! How Comic Books Lost Their Edge. Washington Monthly, June 2001
"[Bradford Wright] argues that [comic book] editors, mostly Jewish and liberal, sought to challenge racism, fascism, poverty, and the threat of nuclear war. Perhaps his most provocative argument is that the dress rehearsal for today's culture wars about television and rap music took place in comic books ... According to Wright, comic books, which first appeared in the early 1930s, occupied a status just above pornography. Crude and formulaic, they were written by aspiring artists eager to see their names in print. The genre didn't take off until 1939, when Superman was published by Detective Comics (DC). Wright shows the extent to which Superman was a New Deal creation. His two young [were] creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster ... More conservative figures had their doubts about the new form. Frank Vlamos, writing in The American Mercury, complained that comics represented 'the most dismaying mass of undiluted horror and prodigious impossibility ever visited on the sanity of a nation's youth ... So enthusiastic for war were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who produced Captain America, that they inspired isolationist outrage by having the good captain denounce Nazism before the U.S. had entered the war. According to Wright, Captain America 'came to epitomize not only the values and fighting spirit of the national war effort but also the fortunes that comic book publishers would reap from their enlistment into patriotic wartime culture' ... Stan "the Man" Lee revived Marvel Comics ... A 1965 college poll conducted by Esquire,' Wright says, 'revealed that student radicals ranked Spider-Man and the Hulk alongside the likes of Bob Dylan [born Robert Zimmerman] and Che Guevara as their favorite revolutionary icons ... The outsider hero had arrived as the most celebrated figure in youth culture, and Marvel had him."

Comic Book Nation. City Beat, May 10-14, 2001
"In the late 1940s Frederic Wertham, a liberal New York City psychologist, argued that comic books were degrading the morals of America's youth. It was time, Wertham said in a 1948 issue of Colliers, to legislate the violent and sexually aggressive books off the newsstands. In retrospect, the notion of comics as a corrupting force seems quaint. However, as Bradford W. Wright explains in Comic Book Nation -- a history of comics and their social, political, and economic implications -- comics were, for a time, the most vital expression of youth culture in America. Although popular music trends and television have eclipsed comics in cultural influence, comics remain an invaluable document of American social history ... Wright's Comic Book Nation presents an entertaining historical overview of the comic book industry. We get the bad deals, [Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster giving away Superman for $130; the court battles, William Gaines unsuccessfully defending his gruesome EC comics in front of a senate committee ... Also reflecting America's Cold War anxiety were William Gaines' EC comics. With titles such as Shock SuspenStories and Weird Fantasy, EC comics presented a surrealistically horrifying vision of America." [A list of expressly Jewish characters in the comic Super-hero genre is at Mikel's Midnight Jewish Supers List]

What, Me Gone? Instant Classics
"William M. Gaines ... founded Mad Magazine and so belongs to that small company of Americans, along with Hefner and Steinhem and Felker and Glaser, who, after World War II and in the face of King Broadcasting, made magazines that changed our lives and our thoughts and our culture ... . By 1950, he hit his stride and, with editors Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, created the latest and the greatest of the under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight genre. Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, Shock Suspensestories, Frontline Combat, and a few other titles made the struggling company profitable and Gaines a fully employed pop culture mentor of the first magnitude ... But this upstart Jewish kid was soon put out of business by a crusading psychiatrist from the old country, a nasty bunch of Senators, and a coalition of PTA and American Legion, sheriffs and bishops, editors and aldermen. The Comics Code that was created to deflect the heat couldn't help Gaines. The slander was so thorough that his books were returned unopened by retailers even after the Code seal was applied. By the end of 1954, after just a four year run, the EC comics were all gone, except for the satirical Mad, reborn as a magazine beholden to no advertisers."

Allen Ginsberg. Daze Reader
"[Allen Ginsberg] was from a family of Jewish Russian immigrants, his family had ties to the radical labor movement, his mother was insane, and he was a homosexual: four prescriptions in the conventional 1940s and 1950s for a sense of deep alienation ... In a now famous 1955 poetry reading, he performed his most famous work, 'Howl,' with its famous opening line, 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.' The publication of Howl and Other Poems and a high-profile, unsuccessful obscenity trial made Ginsberg famous as both a poet and a counterculture icon. Unlike [Jack] Kerouac, who retreated from the limelight and came to despise the 1960s generation, Ginsberg cultivated his outsider celebrity and became a ubiquitous figure in American radicalism."

Shock Jock's Spew Ticks Off Wrong Guy. Cincinnati Enquirer, May 15, 1999
"On the air after the high school murders in Littleton, Colo., Mr. [Howard] Stern wondered why the murderers hadn't first raped the 'good-looking girls' before they murdered them. 'At least if you're going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why wouldn't you have some sex?' he asked. It's the sort of stuff that makes a human being aspire to be a porcupine. Mr. Stern couldn't care less that he wounded the victims' families. That he demeaned females. That he made the good guys' job that much harder. All Howard Stern cares about is turning a buck. That and Howard Stern. This man is a manifestation of evil."  

Radio 'Shock Jock' Lands $US 100 million. The Age [Australia], May 17, 2000
"Howard Stern, the American disc jockey who has pushed back the boundaries of bad taste with jokes about blacks and lesbians, is about to become the highest-paid performer in radio history. The 'shock jock' is negotiating a five-year contract worth $US100 million with CBS/Infinity taking his annual earnings past US$25 million. Stern has made a career out of political incorrectness, delivering a mixture of obscenity and humiliation on his daily live show. The 46-year-old broadcaster, once described as 'a sex-obsessed suburban nihilist', bounces risque humour off sidekicks in his New York studio and embarrasses and humiliates callers ... The New York-born presenter, whose show has run since 1985, has been fined record sums by the Federal Communications Commission for obscenity. On one occasion he and CBS were fined US$500,000 for discussing on air the relative merits of shaving and waxing pubic hair. His targets on air include blacks, Hispanics and Wasps (white Anglo-Saxon protestants)."

Stern's CBS Show Is a Slap in the Face to Most Americans. Morality in Media, April 2, 1998
""There is a much larger potential audience for good TV than for shock and depravity, but producing good TV requires talent and a moral vision. Instead of doing that, the 'Tiffany Network's' present owner, Westinghouse, named Mel Karmazin [also Jewish] to head operations -- the man who built a radio empire by befouling the nation's airwaves with Howard Stern's shock, vulgarity, prurience, mean-spiritedness and bigotry." [See also American Decency's Howard Stern Information and Action Page.

Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality, "compiled by his daughter Zeena and Nikolas Schreck," Church of Satan, February 2, 1998
"Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997), along with Charles Manson, Timothy Leary, and other messianic pop gurus, was a notorious figure of the 1960s' subculture of social experiment. As the flamboyant High Priest of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible, he served as an ideal bogeyman for the sensation-seeking American media of that tumultuous period. His curious celebrity was based largely on a self-created legend. This carefully-orchestrated legend may, in the final analysis, be LaVey's most enduring legacy. LaVey disseminated his legend through interviews with journalists, personal discussion with his disciples, and two LaVey-approved [auto]biographies ... LEGEND: Claimed that 'Anton Szandor LaVey' was his genuine birth name. REALITY: Born 'Howard Stanton Levey'. SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook County, Illinois. Confirmed by relatives ... "LaVey [was] a self-loathing man of Jewish descent  [scroll down to What About Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey?] who embraced fascism toward the end of his life."

Jerry Springer, by David Plotz.
slate.msn.com [from the Slate archives],March 21, 1998
"Two weeks ago Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., demanded the feds stop funding Springer's closed captioning, calling the [Jerry Springer] show the 'closest thing to pornography on broadcast television.' Activists for free speech and the deaf rose to Springer's defense: It's always good business to be censored ... The Jerry Springer Show is unrepentantly vicious. It's dedicated to strife and misery, to the principles that human frailty should be ridiculed, that the weak and the stupid should be humiliated, and that there is no better cure for your problems than the sorrows of others ... How did Springer, with his do-gooding résumé, end up here? The child of Holocaust survivors ... he resigned [from the Cincinnati City Council] in 1974 when he was fingered in a vice investigation--he had paid a prostitute with a check (duh). But a year later he ran for council again and won. In 1977 he was elected Cincinnati's mayor."

Lieberman, Former Education Secretary William Bennett to Present First 'Silver Sewer Award' to Seagram, Inc. Online Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman, March 17, 1998
"Sen. Joe Lieberman today joined former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett in presenting the first "Silver Sewer" Award to Seagram, Inc. [CEO: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., whose father was the head of the World Jewish Congress] for underwriting the cultural pollution of the Jerry Springer [also Jewish] talk show and the distribution of music by shock-rocker Marilyn Manson ... We have chosen the venerable distiller Seagram, Inc., as the first recipient of the Silver Sewer. While you may be familiar with some of Seagram’s more prominent brands --Tropicana Orange Juice, Captain Morgan’s Rum, and the namesake Seagram’s 7 --we doubt most Americans are aware that Seagram is also responsible for introducing our children to pregnant strippers, teenage prostitutes brawling with pimps, and a woman who wanted to go on national television to boast about sleeping with her sister’s three husbands. "Those are just some of the folks who pop up and punch out each other regularly on the infamous 'Jerry Springer Show,' which up until recently Seagram owned, produced and distributed through its subsidiary Universal Studios. Seagram still co-owns the Springer show after entering into a partnership with TV mogul Barry Diller [also Jewish], as it does 'Sally Jessy Raphael,' another talk show that often spews cultural sewage through our televisions as well. Both of those programs are now produced by the newly-formed USA Networks. Seagram also is a co-owner of Interscope Records, a company that made its name distributing obscenely violent and destructive gangsta rap records for which it made Seagram millions of dollars, and which continues to trade trash for cash by distributing Marilyn Manson, who makes music about pedophilia and the benefits of suicide and targets it to kids."

Love Her or Hate Her, Dr. Laura Has Had a Profound Effect on American Culture. canoe.ca [from the Toronto Sun], October 10, 1999
"The radio phenomenon that is Dr. Laura Schlessinger, undisputed queen of morality on the North American airwaves, inspires devotion in her 20 million listeners and loathing in her many detractors ... Her mother was a Catholic married to a Jew, and their battles were constant (no wonder Schlessinger is against 'mixed' marriages). Schlessinger hasn't spoken to her mother for 14 years, and is equally estranged from her younger sister and her family -- more fodder for critics who claim she's a hypocrite for espousing strong family values ... She fell in love with and married zoology professor Lew Bishop (who was married with three children at the time they met) ... Schlessinger converted to Judaism after watching a show on the Holocaust with her son. The whole family are now Orthodox Jewish and practise traditional Judaism."

Dr. Laura, How Could You? Salon.com, November 3, 1998
"Dr. Laura Schlessinger -- talk radio phenomenon and morality maven to the masses, whose syndicated show receives upward of 60,000 phone calls a day from listeners seeking her counsel on subjects such as premarital sex, fidelity and the importance of being a stay-at-home mom -- had been caught with her pants down. Literally. True, the resulting [nude] photographs [of her] were ancient history, 20 years old or more. But suddenly they were on dozens of Web pages and newsgroups across the Net. How was the best-selling author of 'Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives' going to spin this? It all began on Oct. 19, when Web-porn giant Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), which previously made headlines with the Pamela and Tommy Lee honeymoon sex tapes, posted a dozen pictures purporting to be Schlessinger on its ClubLove Web site. The photos -- taken by Schlessinger's mentor, California radio personality Bill Ballance -- displayed a sportive, 20-something Dr. Laura in various stages of undress, including one classic open-legged money shot. To enhance viewing pleasure, IEG offered 'Live Picture Technology,' enabling users to zoom in on specific body parts. As Seth Warshavsky [also Jewish], the entrepreneur behind IEG, boasted on the site, 'You can point your arrow on any part of her body and blow it up to full size! ... ["The Seattle-based firm said that it bought the photos from Bill Ballance, a retired radio personality. Ballance told IEG he photographed Schlessinger in 1978, while he was having an affair with her during her first marriage"]. ... If her radio faithful failed to see Dr. Laura in the buff at ClubLove, they've certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so since. 'The Dirty Dozen,' as IEG dubbed the photos, have been popping up on pages all over the Web like mushrooms after an Oregon rainstorm. And, almost as quickly, IEG's lawyers have been shutting those sites down. In other words, while Dr. Laura is suing IEG for violating her copyright, IEG is going after others on the Net for violating its copyright. For the time being, at least, Dr. Laura and IEG are complicitous -- though while the former wants to quash the pictures entirely, the latter is merely trying to control their distribution. 'We shut those sites down,' says Warshavsky. 'We own the copyright to those photos and we intend to protect that copyright. If anyone, including Dr. Laura herself, tries to print those pix, we will shut them down.'" [A free site posting the nude images of radio's great Jewish moralist may be found here].

Twice Blessed. Members of the Tribe.
The Jewish GLBT [Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Jewish] Archives Online
A long listing, with extensive informational links, of prominent Jews in these categories.

John McCain Breaks Up a Fight. Phoenix New Times, February 12, 1998
"[Eddie] Goldman, a sports journalist and extreme-fighting evangelist, has been tracking [Senator John McCain's] successful attempts to snuff out this sport for two years. Goldman sounds like Rocky Balboa and writes much better than he sounds. He recently became editor of a small extreme-fighting publication; now he has a pulpit ... It wasn't until Robert Meyrowitz created UFC in 1993 that extreme fighting became known in the U.S. ... Meyrowitz, whose background is in radio syndication--he created the King Biscuit Flower Hour--owns a company called Semaphore Entertainment Group. It produces programs that are sold to pay-per-view providers; Meyrowitz has the distinction of having brought Ozzy Osbourne into America's living room ... The only real rule, at first, was no eye gouging. In the first UFC matches--now available on tape at your local video store--it's not unusual to see a contender kick out his opponent's teeth, or beat continuously on his head, closed-fisted. The blood flowed, and so did the money. In 1994, according to Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm, 'combat sports'--of which UFC takes the lion's share--grossed $11 million. In 1995, the figure rose to $25 million; combat sports represented almost 10 percent of the entire pay-per-view event market ... In 1996, McCain and his colleague Colorado Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse-Campbell wrote to the governors of all 50 states, calling UFC 'a brutal and repugnant blood sport . . . that should not be allowed to take place anywhere in the U.S.' State and local politicians joined the senators' crusade. Eventually, by McCain's own estimate, the boxing regulators of 40 states banned extreme fighting. By 1996, profits had plummeted."

Ann Landers. Jewish Virtual Library, 2001
"Translated into over twenty languages, Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, known professionally as Ann Landers, reaches millions of readers with her clear, witty and sometimes sarcastic columns. Her parents, Abraham and Rebecca Friedman, were Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States in 1908 ... Nicknamed 'Eppie,' Esther Pauline was born only seventeen minutes apart from her twin, Pauline Esther (later known as columnist Abigail Van Buren). The two girls experienced many important events simultaneously, participated in similar activities, and shared the same interests ... By 1959, 'Ann Landers' had already received 1,004 speaking invitations and made 101 appearances in 30 cities, and had visited China. [She was] active in national and local causes, such as the Christmas Seal Campaign of which she was national chair in 1963."

Jews in Photography. Hebrew History
"Who does not recognize the name of Margaret Bourke-Weiss? No, her name is not spelled wrong. Max Weiss, her grandfather, and her grandmother, were Orthodox Jews from Poland! Margaret Bourke-White’s work in LIFE became the standard of the trade. LOOK owes its success to Arthur Rothstein, its Director of Photography, chosen because of his documentary work for the Farm Security Administration, and winner of 36 photographic awards, and to Ben Shahn, who later became even better known as a painter. They made the magazine a formidable rival to LIFE. The Jewish photographer 'Weegee' is no less famous as a photojournalist. Alfred Stieglitz, among the most renowned of the nineteenth century photographers, left his family’s printing business to become one of the first to promote photography as a fine art. Stieglitz left an incomparable legacy of images of nature, portraits, and street scenes. In wartime, Jewish army photographers Walter Rosenblum, Robert Capa, Martin Lederhandler, and Cpl. Louis Weintraub are the most recognized of the multitude of Jewish photographers who documented the events from D-Day to V-Day. The most famous WWII photograph was taken at Iwo Jima by Associated Press photographer Joseph Rosenthal."

And Then I Met the Rolling Stones, The Scotsman, November 13, 2001
"Best-known for his work as the unofficial photographer for the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s, [Gered] Mankowitz didn’t just take pictures, he created some of the most enduring images of that era. Working with talents such as Jimi Hendrix and the Stones, he produced the kind of photographs that led nice teenagers astray to worship at the altar of rock ... Now 55, the photographer has been creating pop images for so long he has become part of the mythology himself. As integral to swinging London’s music scene as flowing hair and weed, Mankowitz’s studio was deep at the heart of it all. Mason’s Yard, in SW1, was squeezed between the hip nightclub, Scotch of St James, where Hendrix and other stars played regularly, and the Indica art gallery and bookshop, where John Lennon first met Yoko Ono."

Drug Advocate Oscar Janiger Dies at 83 -- Psychiatrist Administered Almost 3,000 Does of LSD. AP/Yahoo! News, [posted at freerepublic.com], August 17, 2001
"Psychiatrist Oscar Janiger, an early advocate of psychedelic drugs who was credited with turning on Cary Grant and numerous other celebrities to LSD, died Tuesday of kidney and heart failure. Janiger was 83. Between 1954 and 1962, 'Oz,' as he was known to friends, administered almost 3,000 doses of LSD to 1,000 volunteers. Among them were Grant, fellow actors Jack Nicholson and Rita Moreno, author Aldous Huxley and musician Andre Previn. Janiger bought the drug, then legal, from Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Sandoz Laboratories and administered it at his Los Angeles office ... He had abandoned his own LSD studies in 1962, however, after the federal government began investigating researchers. The drug was outlawed in the United States in 1966. Born in New York City, Janiger, who was a cousin of poet Allen Ginsburg."

Zapruder Heirs to Receive $16 Million -- And Receive Publishing Rights??? clintonbradford.com.The Source for JFK Assassination Materials.
"A three-member arbitration panel decided on July 16, 1999, that the Zapruder family heirs will be paid $16 million by the U.S. government for taking possession of the JFK assassination film taken by Abraham Zapruder. The announcement of the decision was delayed until August 3. John F. Kennedy, Jr., was killed in a plane crash the same day that the decision was reached. The arbitration panel's decision cannot be reversed. The film will remain in climate-controlled conditions at the National Archives center in College Park ... apparently at taxpayer expense. $16 million amounts to $615,384 per second of film. US District Judge John R. Tunheim, former chair of the now-defunct Assassination Records Review Board, stated it was 'ironic' that the final $16 million award was close to what the Zapruders had proposed in negotiations for both the film and the copyright: $18.5 million. The three-member arbitration panel was selected: one member chosen by the government; one member chosen by the Zapruder heirs; and the third chosen by the first two. This week's arbitration decision disclosed that the film earned $878,997 for the family from 1976 through 1997. The vote for this sum was 2-1. The two arbitrators who approved the award were Arlin M. Adams, a Philadelphia attorney and former US Circuit Court of Appeals judge chosen by his colleagues, and Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington attorney chosen by the Zapruders. In their statement, they said they were 'comfortable that the sum of $16 million is a fair and accurate reflection of the true value of the Zapruder film at the time of taking.'" [This page has links to various mass media reports about this news item].

Daniel H. Cohen, 45, Journalist, Ex-Fugitive.
Columbia University [Columbia AIDS Memorial List]
"Daniel Howard Cohen, an educator who grew up in Baltimore and went from being an outlaw leftist to running the photography program at one of the nation's most prestigious journalism schools, died Wednesday of complications from AIDS. He was 45. Mr. Cohen, who became a free-lance writer and photographer, spent his teen-age years in Baltimore before joining the leftist Weathermen group in the 1960s. He went underground for several years while he was wanted by the law. In recent years, he contributed to such national publications as Smithsonian magazine, Historic Preservation, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine. From 1987 until his death at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, he was director of the photography program at Columbia University's graduate school of journalism."

A Secret History of the Sexual Revolution. linguafranca.com, March 1999
"Today the name Wilhelm Reik evokes a dim memory of the orgone box fad, or, more likely, nothing at all. But odd though it may seem (and it is far from the oddest thing about him), there was a time when Wilhelm Reich enjoyed enormous prestige on both sides of the Atlantic. Reich was once Sigmund Freud’s star pupil and an important player in the radical psychoanalytic movement of the 1930s. His diagnosis of the neurotic roots of fascism would influence thinkers from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. And his ideas about the transcendent power of the orgasm inspired an astonishing number of postwar American writers and critics–Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Irving Howe, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs–who would become central figures in the cultural upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s ... A freelance writer named Mildred Brady wrote a scathing article for The New Republic in 1947, called 'The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich,' in which she accused Reich of fraud and sex-cultism. (Reich thought she had an unspoken motive for lashing out: 'Brady believes that I am the only man who could help her achieve an orgasm, which she so desperately needs.') The FDA was soon alerted to his activities, and it determined that the orgone energy accumulators were hoaxes that fell under its jurisdiction."

Fleeced in Florida. Orlando Sentinel [at pulitzer.org], April 1, 1999
"There are ways to get rich feeding off the finincial woes of those who have little. It's interesting to note who shares in the feast. Who's making money off the poor? Steve McKenzie for one. He owns a company called National Cash Advance, based in Cleveland, Tenn ... His company advances money to people who need a little cash to get by until payday ... But payday advances aren't the only way to get rich taking money from people who have far too little to lose already. There also are title loans that can wrest from their pockets whatever money is left. Title lenders typically lend a small portion of a car's worth and charge 22 percent a month in interest and fees. When a borrower falls behind in payments -- as often happens -- the lenders are quick to repossess and sell the car, usually keeping any excess profit. The giant of the industry is Title Loans of America Inc., based in Atlanta. Yet the principal owner is Alvin Malnik, a multimillionaire lawyer from Boca Raton. Mr. Malnik was reputed for many years to work for the late Meyer Lansky, financier to the mob -- an allegation Mr. Malnik denies. Whatever his background, he's prospering. By contrast, the people who patronize these businesses often live modestly, some even in homeless shelters. And when the high-rate lenders share their ill-gotten wealth, it is not with the unfortunate but with lobbyists and lawmakers who protect these companies' interests. They hire men such as Robert Levy. He represents the Florida Check Cashers Association, many of whose members offer payday advances."

Las Vegas, Guardian Weekend [London]; [posted here at journalist/novelist Melanie McGrath's web site]
"Everyone knows Vegas is a made-up world, a desert Disneyland, but I had been trying over the weeks to build up a picture of the town beneath the smile and what I had found was troubling me. If there is a single truth about Las Vegas, it is that nowhere on earth so efficiently evades it. In a city whose $5.7bn-a-year gambling business it is to serve up pleasure, reality doesn't sit so well as fantasy. Vegas is a city in denial of the facts. A city where the birds are scared from the trees by ultrasonic bleepers to stop them pooping on passers-by, where prostitution is illegal but there are seventy pages of Yellow Pages ads for private entertainers, where to water a single golf course costs $12m a year ... It wasn't so much the Mob 'n' Mormons who built Las Vegas as the Jews. Bugsy Siegel and his boss, the Mob financier Meyer Lansky, were Jewish. Casino moguls Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn are Jewish too. The town boomed not because gambling was legal but because the railroad ran right through it. And far from being the centre of licence it likes to think itself, Vegas was racially segregated right into the mid-seventies. (Twenty years before Bugsy Siegel booked Lena Horne to perform at the Flamingo but made her sleep elsewhere and instructed the chambermaid to burn her bedlinen.)"

Roots of the Temple. Las Vegas Life, February 2000
"With 70,000 congregants, Las Vegas has the fastest-growing Jewish population in North America ... A growing contingent of Jewish hoteliers in the '50s meant holiday dinners at the Dunes, Riviera and the Sahara. Jack Entratter brought in such celebrities as Steve Lawrence and Met star Jan Pierce to sing the 'Kol Nidre' for Yom Kippur ... Many of these Jewish hotel-casino execs were 'connected,' or at least came from mob backgrounds. Entratter, Moe Dalitz, Moe Sedway, Gus Greenbaum, Davie Berman, and Jake Kozloff all were industry kingpins. Some were seen regularly at services, many were not. 'These men were not deeply religious,' [Barbara] Greenspun says, 'but they longed for a sense of community, and they were very concerned about providing the younger generation with education and training in the traditions. These men raised a lot of money and volunteered a lot of time.'"

The Sun King. Jerusalem Report, 1993
"The anchor of [gambling resort mogul Sol Kerzner's] 62-acre development [in Bophuthatswana, Africa], the 350-room Palace Hotel, is a monument to detail: hand-carved furniture, hand-painted ceilings, ornate crystal chandeliers, animal sculptures, exotic decor. It is surrounded by acres of jungle and rain forest (more than 1.6 million plants, trees, shrubs and ground covers were brought in from around the world). A bird sanctuary was created. Millions of gallons of water were pumped into the area and artificial beaches built to round out the entertainment that includes a wave pool and water slides. Indeed, the local branch of the African National Congress agrees that the Lost City is about as far from reality as you can get in this tiny part of Africa. George Mathuse, a spokesman for the ANC in the area of South Africa bordering Bophuthatswana, suggests that visitors to the area take a look around. To get to Sun City, visitors pass a number of tiny villages where families live in shacks with no running water or electricity. Not as obvious to the casual observer, notes Mathuse, is the Bophuthatswana government's denial of basic human rights to its 2 million residents. Unions are banned and there is no freedom of expression or free political activity ... In March Kerzner was named South African Jewish Business Achiever of 1992, an award sponsored by the Herald Times of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest Jewish newspaper."

Now Gary Stern is King of Pinball-Machine World Ka-Ching! Just One Manufacturer Left. Philadelphia Inquirer [one of four articles posted at sternpinball.com]
"No more machines from [David] Gottlieb, Bally, or [Harry] Williams, three of the industry's former giants? [Gary] Stern feels your pain. After all, he grew up in the pinball business ... 'We don't say we're the last pinball company,' he said. 'That makes us sound like we're going out of business. We say we are the only pinball company' ... Stern's father, Sam, moved from Philadelphia to Chicago in 1948, three years after his son was born, when he bought half of the thriving pinball business of Harry Williams. Coincidentally, that was the year when Gottlieb, the company that ruled the pinball roost for years, introduced 'Humpty Dumpty,' the first pinball machine with flippers ... Through all that, the vast majority of the world's pinball machines have been made at four factories in the environs of Chicago, long known as the pinball capital of the world ... Sixty percent of Stern's machines, which retail for about $4,500, are exported. Germany, Italy and France are all hotbeds of pinball, especially France. 'There is a pinball machine in every cafe in Paris,' Stern said."

The Last of the Bally Bingo Kings, by David Samuels.
Civilization magazine, [posted at rwatts.cdyn.com], 1998
"In the summer of 1941, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, affectionately known as 'the Little Flower' to his constituents, took leave from his normal duties to declare all-out war on an evil that threatened his city. Before an assembled crush of photographers and reporters, La Guardia spoke for a few moments and then picked up a sledgehammer. His eyes popping nearly out of his head, he flexed his shoulders, hoisted the sledgehammer into the air, and brought it crashing down on the polished glass face of the enemy: a shiny, brand- new pinball machine. As strange as the mayor's behavior might seem today, in 1941 a war against pinball was no laughing matter. Pinball machines were devices for gambling ... Every nickel fed to the machines, La Guardia warned, was a contribution to the racketeers, to men like Frank Costello and Charles 'Lucky' Luciano; Meyer Lansky and Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel; Jacob 'Gurrah' Shapiro and Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter, who terrorized the garment district and ran Murder, Inc., the nationwide murder-for-hire syndicate; and Abner 'Longy' Zwillman, who ran the territories across the Hudson River, from Newark all the way down to Cape May. New York would remain pinball-free for 35 years. But despite La Guardia's campaign against the rackets, illegal gambling machines did return to New York City. This was thanks in large part to Uncle Myron, a short, stocky man with an easy smile, a hip-rolling strut, and the excitable air of a kid in junior high with a stash of Playboys at the bottom of his locker ... That a bootlegger's son would make good on the past by transforming New York City into a giant casino--more than 35 years after Mayor La Guardia went after the family pinball table with a sledgehammer--suggests a rare degree of historical feeling in a man whom federal sentencing reports depict as a longtime associate of the Genovese crime family. But that is only part of the story. Myron was loyal to the world of his fathers, of the Jewish gambling machine operators, Jewish bookies, hustlers and thieves, strong-arm men and numbers bosses, all the way up to the boss of bosses of Newark, Abner "Longy” Zwillman."

Wild Man, The Nation [book review], January 6, 1997
"Born into an unremarkable middle-class Jewish family in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1936, [Abbie] Hoffman was from teenage on: a delinquent, a scam artist, a hustler; taunting and impish; driven repeatedly to positions of resistance that made his raging bull of a father beat the shit out of him. Then in 1960 he became a graduate student at Berkeley ... Then came drugs. In 1965 he took his first acid trip, and discovered that he could give a talk without following a prepared text. 'Years later, Abbie would insist that it was LSD that had led him to become a full-time political activist.... For a great many sixties radicals, taking LSD...was the psychic equivalent of 'bursting through the barricades.' Then the addiction to publicity: His wedding to Anita, his second wife, in Central Park in 1967 was performed by Freeman House of the Diggers, whose only request of Abbie was that he not invite the media. But that was the wrong request. 'A modern revolutionary group,' Abbie wrote, is 'headed for the television station, not for the factory' ... In the summer of 1967, after major riots in Newark and Detroit, Abbie 'urged his contemporaries to analyze less and act more. "Riots -- environmental and psychological -- are Holy, so don't screw around with explanations." As a Yippie, Abbie called on his generation to become life-actors: 'Fuck nuns: laugh at professors: disobey your parents: burn your money.... turn your life into an art form, a theatre of the soul and a theatre of the future."

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Women's Intenational Center
"Dr. Ruth Westheimer ['Dr. Ruth'] is a Psychosexual Therapist who helped pioneer the field of Media Psychology with her radio program 'Sexually Speaking' which began in September, 1980 as a 15-minute taped show that aired in New York ... . At 16 she went to Israel where she fought for that country's independence as member of the Haganah [early Israeli army] ... Dr. Westheimer is a pioneer in spreading what she has labeled 'sexual literacy.'"

Growing Up Jewish in America, by Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, travel-watch.com, 2001
"YITZ GREENGERG: From the age of about 12 on, I went out with Jewish National Fund boxes into the Brooklyn subways to collect money for Israel. It seemed the riders on the West End line which ran through Borough Park didn't give much. The best subway was the Brighton Beach line. Somehow Jews gave more money there. The technique was to get on a train with a box in each hand and stand in front of the doors. As soon as they closed, I would shout: 'Open the doors!' Everyone would look up-at which point I'd continue: 'Open the doors of Israel to new immigrants.' It was a great attention getter. My older brother had an old broken down car that he used to transport the boxes from our local branch to the main office. One day he parked his car in a no parking zone to deliver the money and got a parking ticket. The price of the ticket could have broken the back of the organization. Besides that my brother was very headstrong; fighting that ticket was a matter of principle. At the traffic court, everyone was 'guilty, guilty,' no matter what they said. When it was his turn, he said, "Well, I had these boxes to deliver and so I had to park.' 'What boxes were they?' asked the judge. 'Those were JNF boxes,' he answered. 'It's a good cause.' 'Not guilty,' the judge said. Back at the office, no one believed my brother. They called up the traffic court. It turned out that the judge was Manuel Rothenberg, president of the Jewish National Fund."

As Cable Applies Pressure, Network TV Sputs Expletives, by Jim Rutenberg,
New York Times [posted here at lucianne.com], September 1, 2001
"Aaron Sorkin, the executive producer of 'The West Wing' on NBC, says he hopes to break a longstanding network taboo this coming television season: he wants a character to use the Lord's name in vain. Steven Bochco [also Jewish], the executive producer of 'Philly,' a new legal drama on ABC, has proposed having a character use a scatological reference that has never before been uttered on an ABC series -- one considered tougher than the profanities already in use on his police drama, 'NYPD Blues.' CBS executives say that writers are submitting scripts for programs that include every curse word imaginable, including one considered to be on the furthermost reaches of decorum (let's just say it has to do with the making of stem cells)."

Hot British Writer Uses Judaism in Play,
JTA [Jewish Telegraphic Agency], September 6, 2001
"Welcome to 'Howard Katz,' the latest play by one of London's hottest playwrights. Patrick Marber, 36, shot to fame in 1995 with his first play, 'Dealer's Choice,' which he wrote and directed for Britain's National Theatre. He cemented his status two years later with 'Closer,' which grabbed fistfuls of awards in London and New York, where it was named best foreign play of 1999. His new play might at first seem to be a departure for Marber. While 'Dealer's Choice' concerned a circle of small-time gamblers and 'Closer' looked at four lovers, Katz is the tale of a middle-aged show-business agent facing a midlife crisis that threatens to become an end-of-life crisis. And, as the opening moment of the play makes clear, Howard is a Jew with a very complicated relationship to his religion and to God. But Marber told JTA that 'Howard Katz' is not as big a change from his previous work as it might appear. For starters, he said, the main characters of his two previous plays have been Jewish, too."

The Greatest Vendetta on Earth, Salon.com, August 8, 2001
"Charles F. Smith [was] a former top executive with Feld Entertainment, owner of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circuses, Disney Shows on Ice, and other subsidiaries that make it the largest live entertainment company in the world ... For years, Smith had been the right-hand man of Ken Feld, who had inherited the circus when his entrepreneurial father died in 1984. But Smith had been fired 18 months earlier. Now he was apparently ready to spill the beans ... [Investigative journalist Janice] Pottker, who had written a controversial, 11,000-word piece on the circus and its colorful owners, Washington's Feld family, for a local business magazine in 1990. Her piece had recounted the Feld family's Horatio Alger-like story, but it had also exposed some unpleasant secrets about the famously tight-lipped Felds -- such as a bitter feud that had broken out between the two chief heirs, and the bisexuality of the family's patriarch, Irvin Feld. The circus had refused to talk to her ever since ... Over lunch, Smith recounted a campaign of surveillance and dirty tricks Feld had unleashed on [Pottker] in the wake of her 1990 magazine piece in the now-defunct Regardie's magazine. Feld, he said, had hired people to manipulate her whole life over the past eight years. Feld had spent a lot of money on it, he said. He may have even tried to destroy her marriage. In fact, Pottker would eventually learn of a massive dirty tricks operation, involving former CIA officials and operatives, that would target Ringling enemies such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups, not just Pottker."

Meet Bush's Guru, CBS News [60 Minutes II], September 12, 2001
"When George W. Bush wants to describe himself to voters, he only needs two words: 'compassionate conservative.' It's a term Bush uses in almost every speech, but it wasn't concocted by speech writers. The man behind 'compassionate conservatism' is an obscure journalism professor at the University of Texas. His name is Marvin Olasky and he is a man with a past -- many pasts, in fact. He's a Jew-turned-atheist-turned-Marxist-turned-evangelical Christian. He's been advising Bush for years - and his ideas are so influential that he's known as 'Bush's Guru.' And his philosophy of compassion features a warm heart and a very hard head. Critics blast Olasky for claiming that people are poor by choice, by their own insanity, or because of parental abuse ... Olasky sends out the word in the pages of World, the weekly Christian magazine he edits; in a syndicated newspaper column; and in more than a dozen books. And it was Olasky's reputation that led George W. Bush, then a candidate for governor of Texas, to first call Olasky back in 1993. Olasky's been advising Bush ever since. He is called 'the country's most controversial Christian writer,' perhaps because he always writes about politics and politicians in religious terms ... Olasky was a student radical - so radical, in fact, that after college Olasky became an official, card-carrying member of the Communist Party. But a few years later, Olasky - like the Great Gatsby - reinvented himself. He threw away The Communist Manifesto, left his wife, and discovered Jesus."

Scientists Look for a Nation to Host Human Cloning Project, Incyte Genomics (originally from the Philadelphia Inquirer), May 17, 2001
"A controversial team of scientists is on the hunt for a nation willing to host one of the most daring ventures in the history of medicine. Using the same technology that conjured up a cloned sheep named Dolly in 1997, they want to clone a human being. And now they have brought their quest to Israel ... The storm over human cloning blew into Israel last week when [Avi] Ben-Abraham arrived to pitch his case. The 43-year-old Israeli-born doctor made a small fortune in the United States in the biotech industry and in the less conventional fields of medicine. He was president of the American Cryonics Society—a non-profit firm based in California that freezes peoples' bodies and tissue with the hope they can be brought back to life later. In Israel, he gained some fame in 1999 by spending what one colleague estimated was close to $1 million running for parliament in the [right-wing] Likud party. He lost. It is only in the last few weeks that Ben-Abraham has hooked up with [Panos] Zavos and [Severino] Antinori's cloning project. Zavos described him as a consultant or adviser, while Antinori told Italian news agencies that Ben-Abraham is providing financing. Ben-Abraham himself said he is a partner and that he recently incorporated a company known as Abaclone to carry out cloning research in Israel."

Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965, by Kevin MacDonald (professor of psychology at California State University at Long Beach), PDF Files (64 pages)
"In addition to a persistent concern that America be a safe haven for Jews fleeing outbreaks of anti-Semitism in foreign countries, there is evidence that Jews, much more than any other European-derived ethnic group in America, have viewed liberal immigration policies as a mechanism of ensuring that America would be a pluralistic rather than a unitary, homogeneous society (e.g., Cohen 1972). Pluralism serves both internal (within-group) and external (between-group) Jewish interests. Pluralism serves internal Jewish interests because it legitimates the internal Jewish interest in rationalizing and openly advocating an interest in Jewish group commitment and non-assimilation, what Howard Sachar (1992, p. 427) terms its function in 'legitimizing the preservation of a minority culture in the midst of a majority’s host society.' The development of an ethnic, political, or religious monoculture implies that Judaism can survive only by engaging in a sort of semi-crypsis. As Irving Louis Horowitz (1993, 86) notes regarding the long-term consequences of Jewish life under Communism, 'Jews suffer, their numbers decline, and emigration becomes a survival solution when the state demands integration into a national mainstream, a religious universal defined by a state religion or a near-state religion.' Both Neusner (1987) and Ellman (1987) suggest that the increased sense of ethnic consciousness seen in Jewish circles recently has been influenced by this general movement within American society toward the legitimization of minority group ethnocentrism."

Pauline Kael. On the Critic, LA Weekly, September 14-20, 2001
"Pauline Kael died last week at the age of 82 ... Kael wasn’t just the most important film critic in this country, she was also a woman, a great and obvious fact that both she and many of those who’ve written about her have tended to ignore. (That, and the fact that she was Jewish.)"

Israeli Becomes BBC Orchestra's Youngest Conductor,
Jerusalem Post, November 13, 2001
"At just 25 years old, Israeli-born Ilan Volkov is the youngest conductor to be appointed to lead a BBC orchestra ... Volkov has been described as one of the most outstanding young conductors of his generation and has already built up a portfolio worthy of his eminent predecessor."

A Passover Posting of Rare Beauty / Connections Column,
Cincinnati Post, April 21, 1997
"To my mind, no one is more Jewish than Bugs Bunny. Or more resourceful. Surrounded by enemies, he survived by his wits, thwarting all the Elmer Fudds of this world unwilling to let him live in peace. Happily, I'm not alone in that view. Another transplanted New Yorker recognizes Bugs' ethnicity too. 'It was no accident,' observes David Gilner, director of Libraries for Hebrew Union College, 'that his animator was Fritz Freleng, and his voice supplied by Mel Blanc - both of whom were Jewish.'''

Jewish Organizations Urge Energy Vote in Senate, CNS News (Capital Hill News), December 5, 2001
"Members of a major Democratic constituency Tuesday joined the growing list of groups urging Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to bring the energy bill to the Senate floor. 'We simply can't go on assuming we will have cheap gasoline, cheap power, or cheap home heating oil without doing anything about it,' said Mort Zuckerman, Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Zuckerman, who also owns U.S. News and World Report, has, in the past expressed support for Republican energy policy and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, he stopped short Tuesday of endorsing any single version of energy legislation, instead appealing to senators to develop the right version. In an April editorial entitled, 'The Caribou Conundrum,' Zuckerman compared the proposal for drilling in the Arctic with the environmental concerns. 'The argument over oil versus environmentalism is too important to be decided by slogans and slick imagery,' Zuckerman wrote. "The mating habits of 129,000 porcupine caribou are obviously of concern. But so is the welfare of 281 million Americans.'"

The Gidge and i, aceweekly.com
"No no, not Sandra Dee or Sally Fields, not Deborah Walley or Cindy Carroll or any of the legions of Gidget impersonators of the big screen or the small screen or even, yes, the stage. We're talking the Real Deal here, the original Gidget, the ür-Gidget you might say, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman herself, whose father, a Hollywood screenwriter named Frederick Kohner, wrote the hugely popular little novel - eponymously entitled Gidget, a best seller in 1957 - that begat all those other Gidgets, and made his daughter Kathy, who inspired it, a legend in the world of surfing. Frederick Kohner's novel is about a high-spirited, vivacious - albeit short - Southern California teen-ager named Franzie and her semi-clandestine adventures with an all-male band of young Malibu surfers, who dub her 'Gidget' - a conflation of 'girl' and 'midget' - and grudgingly admit her to their company, teach her to surf, and even allow her to fall in love with one or another of them on occasion. The book was regarded as mildly scandalous in its day. ('Any parents,' fulminated the Nebraska Farmer, 'who allow their teen-agers to talk as Gidget does should be soundly spanked.') Nowadays, in the era of Sex in the City, it seems as innocent as Rebecca at Sunnybrook Farm. Still, the Gidget character is a bit of a potty-mouth (it was she who brought the adjective 'bitchen' into the language), she cops a smoke now and then, and even knocks back a beer or two when the opportunity presents itself."

Kent State Embraces Its Past, Beacon Journal, May 5, 2000
"It was supposed to be a solemn moment to remember the four Kent State students killed by Ohio National Guard bullets 30 years ago. But near the campus Victory Bell -- rung in memory of the students -- came the clicking of dozens of camera shutters, breaking the silence between the tolls. The bell was nearly surrounded by news photographers when it was rung at 12:24 p.m. yesterday -- the time of the shootings. 'It's kind of a bizarre thing,' said Ken Hammond, noting all the reporters and news organizations that had turned out for yesterday's 30th commemoration of the shootings ... Next to the parking lot yesterday was a big bucket with dozens of small rocks. It was provided by KSU's Hillel Jewish Student Center. A sign explained that three of the [four] slain students were Jewish, and in Judaism it is customary to place rocks instead of flowers at grave sites. Visitors picked up the rocks and placed them on the spots where the students fell."

Jewish Manhood Strikes Out, Jewish World Review, December 24, 2001
"Three of the most-hyped new shows, one for each major network, just disappeared. And they all had something in common: They were about Jewish men [Inside Schwartz, Danny, Bob Patterson] ... Hopefully, the indisputable failure of these depictions of 'Jewish manhood' will cause TV writers and producers to reassess their depiction of Jewish men and of Jews in general."

Looking Back in Anger, Boston Globe, January 10, 2002
"It's been 45 years since Andras Grof left Budapest. He's wealthy now, and famous in a way few scientists or businessmen will ever know. He could pick up a phone, say a few words in his native tongue, and climb onto a plane for Hungary. And at the other end, the nation's leading citizens would wait for him on the tarmac, ready to smile and embrace him and welcome him home. But Hungary isn't Grof's home. It's the place that tried to squeeze the heart out of him, the place that almost killed him. He's called Andrew Grove now, he's 65, and he's the chairman of Intel Corp., maker of Pentium microprocessors and one of the most powerful corporations on earth. But it's no use telling Grove that his enemies in Hungary are long dead now, or out of power. He knows. Still, Grove has never gone back to Hungary. He probably never will. ''I just don't want to do it,'' he says. ''That's how I feel.'' Is he scared, after all this time? 'Not scared. Angry.' In his early days at Intel, Grove flung a dictionary at a secretary who had corrected his English. He's known for aiming paint-peeling tirades at subordinates who fall short of the mark. But this is a different sort of anger, deep and cold. It's the rage of a survivor."

Police State Zionism and Its Discontents. A Deeper Look at the Neo-Paleo Libertarian/Conservative Divide, Pravda [Russia], January 25, 2002
"Gathering around the banner of the Center for Libertarian Studies (http://www.libertarianstudies.org/) and its related organs – Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, these websites have been notable for being a major voice of libertarian and 'market anarchist' critiques of conservative imperialism. Their renewed uprising represents the latest stage in the decades old battle between the 'paleo-' and 'neo-' wings of the Republican Party. But recently questions have been raised as to how well this circle of writers represents the real populist impulse behind the 'paleo-' critique of the 'neo-'conservative argument. Dedicated to the study of 'Libertarian' ideas derived from Jewish objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, the Center is produced by Jewish publisher Burt Blumert, a former aid to Texas Congresman Ron Paul, and runs organizations like LewRockwell.com, dedicated in large part to the ideas of Jewish libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard, and the noted Von Mises Institute, dedicated to promoting the ideas of Jewish capitalist economist Ludwig Von Mises and the 'Austrian school.' These facts alone have left many of the Center’s White readers, who are generally supportive of the groups flagship issues – an end to war and a reduction of the hopelessly corrupt US Federal government – feeling alienated from much of the group’s writing. Most of the Center’s staff and commentators are also Jewish. Webmaster Eric Garris, assistant webmaster Sam Koritz and assistant Jeremy Sapienza are among the men behind the scenes that have full or partially ethnic-Jewish background."

Ali G Rapped for 'Damaging Jewish Community,'
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), February 21, 2002
"The Jewish actor who plays British comic character Ali G has been branded an embarrassment to his religion because of his trademark insults and political incorrectness. The founders of jewish.co.uk, Britain's largest Jewish website, have sent comedian Sacha Baron Cohen an 'open letter' saying his recent acts were damaging to their community. Ali G's interview on BBC radio on Monday morning caused a storm after he referred to a stuttering contestant in the hit television show Pop Idol as 'spasticated' amid a smattering of four letter words and not so subtle sexual innuendoes. The satirical hip-hop rapper, whose television series featured on the ABC last year, bases his act on crude and politically incorrect jokes at the expense of all walks of life, including homosexuals, women and ethnic groups."

Jewish Culture Plays Across Europe, Often in Places Where Few Jews Live,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 17, 2002
"Since 1988, new Jewish museums or exhibitions have opened in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland and elsewhere. Several dozen have opened in Germany alone, ranging from large-scale museums in Frankfurt and Berlin to small private collections. Paris-based historian Diana Pinto uses the term 'Jewish Space' to describe the place occupied by the Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish memory within mainstream European society. Jewish Space, she says, entails the ways in which European countries now integrate Jewish history and memory, and also the Holocaust, into an understanding of their national history, regardless of the current size or activity of the local Jewish population. 'There is a Jewish Space in Europe that will exist even in the absence of Jews,' Pinto told a 1995 conference in Prague on Planning for the Future of European Jewry. 'The ‘Jewish thing,´' she said, 'is becoming universal.'"

What Betty Friedan Didn't Want You to Know,
Toogood Reports, August 15, 2001
"If I said Stalin was a Communist, would you accuse me of Red-baiting? No? Then you won´t mind if I say Betty Friedan, the 'mother of modern feminism' hid the fact that she was a Communist activist ... Betty Friedan´s The Feminine Mystique (1963) which sold more than five million copies, is considered the manifesto of the modern feminist movement. Friedan and Simon de Beauvoir, are the pioneers of modern feminism. In the book, Friedan describes herself as a typical suburban housewife and mother who had a revelation. She realized that women like herself are being exploited and dehumanized; and, she actually compared their plight to that of Nazi concentration camp inmates. She pointed to career as a woman´s only path to identity and self-fulfillment. What Friedan didn´t say is that she wasn´t a typical housewife. Rather, she had been a Marxist activist since her undergraduate years at Smith College (1938-1942) where she wrote for the college newspaper. She dropped out of grad school to work for a radical left wing news service. From 1946-1952 she was a reporter for the union newspaper of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE) 'the largest Communist-led institution of any kind in the United States.' Daniel Horowitz, a Professor of History at Smith who has impeccable Liberal and feminist credentials, documents all of this. His book, published in 1999, is entitled Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism (University of Massachusetts Press)." [See Horowitz's online article Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminist Mystique ... in the American Quarterly]

Rock of Ages. Jews and Rock,
jewhoo, November 16, 2002
[A long article about Jews in the rock and roll world] "This piece was originally published in 1998 as part of Mr. Benarde’s research into a book he is writing on the contribution of Jews to popular music, 1953-present. If you have something interesting to relate about Jews and rock music, drop me a line. It may be of interest to Jewhoo visitors and I will make sure that Mr. Benarde is made aware of anything quite interesting. Mr. Benarde formerly was the music reporter for the Palm Beach (Florida) Post and Sun Sentinel newspapers."

The Testament of Jean-Paul Sartre,
CLAL (originally in Sh'ma), April 2, 1982
"Jean-Paul Sartre, the most wide-ranging and brilliant mind of his age, died with a broken heart. His final despair, which he bravely resisted with the help of a study of Judaism, began long before, during the occupation of France ... .Sartre dealt with his loss of historical hope by painfully acquiring another kind of hope. He replaced both existential dread and Marxist utopianism with a Jewish messianic patience. In the final interview with his friend and associate, the unlikely baal t'shuva, (returnee to Judaism), Benny Levy (formerly Pierre Victor), he reports his discovery that 'the messianic idea is the base of the revolutionary idea.' For many months before he died, Sartre studied Salo Baron's voluminous, magisterial work on Jewish history and, with Levy, came to a new-old view of the human prospect ... As [Steven] Schwarzschild puts it, the apocalypse of revolutionary terrorism must give way to the ethical possibility of Jewish messianism if we are to fulfill the goal of a humane social order ... In the end, Sartre became a kind of 'Jew.' Already in the resistance of 1940-45, he had risked his life against Fascism. In Les Temps Modernes, at the very time of the Six Day War, he published what remains the most balanced and useful collection of essays on Arab Jewish peace and declared his solidarity with Israel. He did not accept the Nobel Prize of literature, giving reasons that are well-known. But he did accept an honorary degree from the Hebrew University in 1976, reminding the Israelis how deeply he shared their dreams, and telling them that the more he cared about them, the more he cared also about the Palestinian people. 'In order to understand the Jew from the interior, I would have to be a Jew,' Sartre told Benny Levy (himself worth a story, one which might be titled, 'From Mao to Masorah'), and he tried hard enough to achieve that very goal. Studying Jewish history, like many thinkers before him, he caught a vision of the messianic hope: survival, obedience and loyalty to humanity itself. 'The Jew lives. He has a destiny. The finality toward which every Jew moves is to reunite humanity....It is the end that only the Jewish people (knows)….It is the beginning of the existence of men for each other.'"

Kiss Founder Extols Virtues of Selfishness,
Gainesville Sun, March 27, 2002
"Rock star Gene Simmons attributes his success to being completely selfish, and he says that selfishness is the core of everybody's strength. Simmons spoke Tuesday night at the O'Connell Center in honor of Jewish Awareness Month. His appearance was sponsored by the University of Florida ACCENT speakers bureau and the Jewish Student Union. Although he had no prepared speech, Simmons, 52, told the audience of more than 800 about the things he had found important in his life, including the necessity of being selfish. He said people should act as they are told to on airplane flights in the event of an emergency - first put the oxygen mask on themselves before doing so for others. He encouraged listeners to live their lives as they want and to remove any "blinders" that might impede success ... Simmons, whose real name is Chaim Witz, was born in Israel, the son of a Holocaust survivor. He co-founded KISS in 1973, and has since marketed the band on everything from caskets to Visa credit cards. KISS has sold more than 90 million records and has broken concert attendance records set by Elvis Presley and the Beatles. The band is known for its outrageous makeup, black leather and chains, and Simmons' lengthy tongue ... He said his mother, Florence Witz, was his biggest influence."

In Effort to Lift Their Rankings, Colleges Recruit Jewish Students,
Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2002
"Vanderbilt is far from the only U.S. university seeking to boost Jewish enrollment. In fact, competition for top Jewish students is prompting a flurry of new Jewish cultural centers and Judaic Studies programs at universities across the country. But at Vanderbilt and a few other universities, including some officially Christian campuses, the unabashed wooing of the Jewish community has struck some Jews and non-Jews alike as a questionable new form of ethnic profiling -- even though it's based on a seemingly positive stereotype ... 'Yes, we're targeting Jewish students,' Chancellor Gordon Gee told a March 17 board meeting of the Vanderbilt affiliate of Hillel, the nonprofit national Jewish campus organization. 'There's nothing wrong with that. That's not affirmative action. That's smart thinking.' Mr. Gee, who left the presidency of Brown University for Vanderbilt two years ago, says niche marketing to Jewish students is part of his 'elite strategy' to lift Vanderbilt to Ivy League status ... Scott Allen, Vanderbilt's Baptist chaplain, says the strategy of recruiting Jews to improve academic stature denigrates the Southern white Christians who dominate the school's student body. If he were told that Jews were better students than other groups, he says, 'my first reaction would be, 'Wait a minute. I want to see factual research that would support this. Because I don't believe it' ... At Ivy League schools, about 23% of students are Jewish, even though Jews comprise just 2% of the U.S. population, according to Hillel. These universities say they seek top students regardless of ethnicity. As a result of federal-court rulings against racial preferences in college admissions, it's considered dicey for a non-denominational college to recruit students of a particular faith. Specialists in affirmative-action law say that, while Vanderbilt as a private school has more leeway than public universities, it could be vulnerable to an anti-discrimination claim from an equally qualified Christian student turned down in favor of a Jew."

Jews and the Beatles

It's Alive! It's Alive!, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg
New York Times, May 5, 2002
"It was the early 1970's, the dawn of the era of gene-splicing, when Prof. Paul Berg, a Stanford University biochemist, proposed slipping a bit of DNA from a cancer-causing rodent virus into a bacteria, E. coli. Even his colleagues were alarmed. So Professor Berg, faced with panicky accusations he was breeding some kind of Andromeda strain, temporarily halted his own research and helped impose a moratorium. Congress, frightened, wanted a ban. Recombinant DNA was not banned, of course, thanks in part to lobbying by Professor Berg. Rather, the field he pioneered has exploded into the modern biotechnology industry. Professor Berg, meanwhile, went on to win the Nobel Prize. Today, at 76, Professor Berg is back in Washington, trying to talk the United States Senate out of banning research using human cloning. The House of Representatives has already passed a bill that would prohibit cloning, either for reproduction or to generate human embryos that could give rise to cells and tissues to treat disease. If the Senate, expected to vote this month, does the same, an entire area of scientific inquiry would be branded a federal crime - a felony, punishable by 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine ... Critics say opponents of cloning opponents have fallen prey to the myth of the mad scientist. "I think that somehow these people have become susceptible to bogeyman nightmares about cuckoo scientists run amok," said Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "In fact, the history of the rogue or outlier scientist has been far more likely to produce Nobel Prizes and praise than condemnation." In Dr. Caplan's view, it is the politicians who exploit scientists, and not the scientists themselves, who are to be feared."

Davis: Corporate Gadfly, CEO Groupie,
Yahoo!Finance (from Reuters), May 5, 2002
"Evelyn Davis, a 70-something who chides CEOs as easily as if they were her grandchildren, this week put in a typical performance at IBM's shareholder meeting. "When are you going to start building revenues?" the shareholder activist asked the chief executive of the world's No. 1 computer company, Louis Gerstner. "Instead of big blue, it has been a little bit of pale blue recently," the corporate gadfly said, playing on the computer giant's nickname. She did not cede the floor gracefully -- Davis is renown for many things but retreating is not one of them -- and chided Gerstner for not allowing newly appointed chief executive Sam Palmisano to speak ... The exchange -- which involved prodding questions along with a healthy dose of flirting -- was quintessential Davis, who has been a longtime fixture on the U.S. shareholder meeting circuit. With a preference for donning the labels of European designers like Chanel, Armani and "old" Valentino, Davis has been attending these gatherings for over 40 years. IBM in 1959 was her first, she said -- after she inherited stock from her father. The heads of some the country's largest corporations are on a first-name basis with her and don't hesitate to take her calls. Davis counts some executives, like No. 1 U.S. financial services firm Citigroup Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Sanford "Sandy" Weill, as her close friends. By some measures, she has helped make companies more responsive to small shareholder wants. But there are those who believe Davis has lost touch with reality and only wants to rub shoulders with top-level CEOs. Davis, who was born Jewish in the Netherlands and survived the Holocaust, has also been faulted for her harsh manner with women or anyone who is not a bigwig ... Davis, who said she owns shares in about 86 companies, is one of a tribe of gadflies who tour the country to attend shareholder meetings. Often these people own just a few shares, enabling them to file proposals and take the floor."

Untangling a Web of Intrigue at a Comic Book Giant,
[Jewish] Forward, May 10, 2002
"Sure, Spider-Man's great. He's a nebbish who happens to have super-human powers. He's got radioactive blood, he detects trouble with his Spider sense, he catches thieves just like flies, all while smashing box-office records by taking in $114 million his first weekend as a movie star. According to Dan Raviv, however, the real heroes of Marvel Comics are the two Israeli men at the company's helm, Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter and Avi Arad. In this real-life drama, they're the two little guys who wrestled Marvel away from sparring billionaires, transforming a bankrupt company into a highly profitable one. Exactly how two underdogs beat seasoned tycoons at their own game is the kind of fairy tale that movies are made of, and it makes for interesting reading in Raviv's latest book, 'Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire and Both Lost' (Broadway Books). The good guys are the immigrant owners of a small toy company — albeit one with exclusive rights to license Marvel toys. And the bad guys are two titans of finance: Ronald Perelman, the Revlon chief and takeover artist who ran Marvel into bankruptcy, and corporate predator Carl Icahn — a model for Michael Douglas's character in 'Wall Street' — who attempted a hostile takeover. In the end the Israelis, predicting the Marvel superheroes' ability to jump from comic book pages to the silver screen, unexpectedly seized control of the company ... The story of Marvel is a Jewish one indeed. Founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman, Marvel was a part of the so-called "golden age" of comics, when hordes of young Jewish writers and artists, most of them struggling immigrants' sons, created armies of imaginary superheroes like Superman and Captain America, whose mission was to wage war against Nazis and their ilk. At Marvel in particular, the key players throughout the decades, including Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Lieber — better known as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the creators of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the early 1960s — have been almost exclusively Jewish."

Judaism has become a light for non-Jewish rock stars, including Carlos Santana, Dion DiMucci and Artimus Pyle,
Detroit Jewish News, August 26, 2002
"[Carlos Santana] stepped to the microphone and acknowledged God by reciting part of a Hebrew prayer: 'Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Adonai tzfa’ot.' Translation: 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts' ... Those weren’t the first instances he appears to have been influenced or inspired by Judaism. In 1992, he used a photograph of himself wearing a kippah and praying at the Western Wall for the cover of his album Milagro ... Judaism has influenced the lives of other prominent non-Jewish rock stars as well [including] Dion DiMucci ["Dion"] ... In 1984, at the suggestion of Jewish friends who had made aliyah to Israel, ex-Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle moved from Florida to Jerusalem to work and study at the Diaspora Yeshiva with no intention of returning to the United States ... He lived on Mount Zion in a room in the King David’s Tomb complex, which housed the yeshiva. He worked as a caretaker, sat in on Torah classes, learned about the concepts of tzedakah and mitzvot (righteous acts and commandments), listened to students engage in talmudic debate, learned Hebrew prayers, kept kosher, observed Shabbat and joined the Diaspora Yeshiva Band. Pyle also imported his APB bandmates to perform benefits for the yeshiva, as well as tour Europe. Three years after moving to Israel, Pyle accepted an invitation to join a Lynyrd Skynyrd reunion commemorating the 10th anniversary of the plane crash ... In 1998, Allen Woody, the bass player for the Allman Brothers Band (1989-1996) and Gov’t Mule, asked his friend Matt Eichen, an Orthodox Jew, oral surgeon and owner of Musicvox Guitars, to put a Star of David on his Musicvox bass. Eichen asked the burly long-haired rocker, who was not Jewish, if he wanted the Star done in a pearl inlay. Woody’s reply, according to Eichen: 'Burn it on. I want it to look like the numbers tattooed on Holocaust victims. I want the guitar to have a [don’t-mess-with-me] look, just like I do' ... . During his two months in the Promised Land, he picked up a little Hebrew, became acquainted with many of Judaism’s holidays, rituals and commandments, and learned about the Holocaust. Woody, who died in 2000, was deeply moved by the devastation of the Holocaust and hated the Nazis for what they had done. He even had Stars of David tattooed on his upper arms, explaining to Eichen that if Nazism ever reared its ugly head again, 'I’d have to cut off both my arms to deny how I feel about the Jewish people.'"

Googley-eyed over success,
USA Today, August 27, 2001
"Walk into Google's headquarters, and the first thing you see on the wall is a constantly changing real-time projection of some of the 100 million daily searches taking place on its site — everything from the song-swap service Kazaa to condoms to Martha Stewart. On the Web Google At Google, with 1,800 queries a second, searching is what it's all about. "Our decision early on, and it turned out to be the right one, is that just being the best search engine was enough," says Sergey Brin, 27, who co-founded Google in 1998 with fellow Stanford University Ph.D. candidate Larry Page ... Brin [is the] son of a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who has lived in the USA since age 6."

Kertesz Wins Nobel Literature Prize,
Yahoo News (from Associated Press), October 10, 2002
"Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian who survived Auschwitz as a teenager, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for writing that 'upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.' The Swedish Academy singled out his 1975 debut novel, 'Sorstalansag' ("Fateless"), in which he writes about a young man who is arrested and taken to a concentration camp but conforms and survives ... 'There is no awareness of the Holocaust in Hungary. People have not faced up to the Holocaust. I hope that in the light of this recognition, they will face up to it more than until now,' he added."

Security — Israeli Style,
Jewish Journal of Greter Los Angeles, October 11, 2002
"For a nice Jewish boy who grew up on Beverly Hills’ Whittier Drive, Aaron Cohen has an unusual skill: He can kill people. He’d prefer not to, but if he must, he will. And it’s not a joking matter. It’s part of the training that he picked up in three years in the counterterrorism unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It’s part of the package he delivers if you sign up to work with his year-and-a-half-old company, IMS (Israeli Military Specialists). 'There’s definitely a respect not just in the Jewish community but elsewhere for the IDF," Cohen said. "That gets you in the door' ... Cohen, 26, likes to tell people he was "born and raised here, but grew up in Israel.' After graduating Beverly Hills High School in 1995, he went to Israel, volunteered for the IDF and was selected for counterterrorism work. He won’t give details of training or assignments, which adds to the mystique. He will say he spent three years undercover in the disputed territories, then he came home. He started his company in October 2000. Jackie Chan was one of his first clients from the showbiz world, one of the few famous ones Cohen will talk about, because they’ve been seen in public together."

The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR, [Book Review]
PR Watch, 2nd Quarter, 1999
"Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to figure on historians' lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century. It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays--widely eulogized as the 'father of public relations' at the time of his death in 1995--played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods. Eddie Bernays himself desperately craved fame and a place in history. During his lifetime he worked and schemed to be remembered as the founder of his profession and sometimes drew ridicule from his industry colleagues for his incessant self-promotions. These schemes notwithstanding, Bernays richly deserves the title that Boston Globe reporter Larry Tye has given him in his engagingly written new book, The Father of Spin ... The portrait that emerges is of a brilliant, contradictory man. Tye writes that Bernays' papers . . . provide illuminating and sometimes disturbing background on some of the most interesting episodes of twentieth-century history, from the way American tobacco tycoons made it socially acceptable for women to smoke to the way other titans of industry persuaded us to pave over our landscape and switch to beer as the 'beverage of moderation.' The companies involved aren't likely to release their records of those campaigns, assuming they still exist. But Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in. . . . In so doing, he let us see just how policies were made and how, in many cases, they were founded on deception.' In an industry that is notable for its mastery of evasions and euphemisms, Bernays stood out for his remarkable frankness. He was a propagandist and proud of it ... Many of the new insights that Tye offers have to do with Bernays's relationship with his family and his uncle Sigmund Freud, whose reputation as 'the father of psychoanalysis' owes something to Bernays' publicity efforts. Bernays regarded Uncle Sigmund as a mentor, and used Freud's insights into the human psyche and motivation to design his PR campaigns, while also trading on his famous uncle's name to inflate his own stature ... . Bernays ... used psychological techniques to mask the motives of his clients, as part of a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping the public unconscious of the forces that were working to mold their minds. Characteristically (and again paradoxically), Bernays was remarkably candid about his manipulative intent. 'If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it,' he argued in Propaganda, one of his first books. In a later book, he coined the term 'engineering of consent' to describe his technique for controlling the masses. 'The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,' Bernays argued. 'Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. . . . In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.' This definition of 'democratic society' is itself a contradiction in terms--a theoretical attempt to reconcile rule by the few with the democratic system which threatened (and still threatens) the privileges and powers of the governing elite ... During Bernays' lifetime and since, propaganda has usually had dirty connotations, loaded and identified with the evils of Nazi PR genius Joseph Goebbels, or the oafish efforts of the Soviet Communists. In his memoirs, Bernays wrote that he was 'shocked' to discover that Goebbels kept copies of Bernays' writings in his own personal library, and that his theories were therefore helping to 'engineer' the rise of the Third Reich. Bernays liked to cultivate an image as a supporter of feminism and other liberating ideas, but his work on behalf of the United Fruit Company had consequences just as evil and terrifying as if he'd worked directly for the Nazis. The Father of Spin sheds new and important light on the extent to which the Bernays' propaganda campaign for the United Fruit Company (today's United Brands) led directly to the CIA's overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala. The term 'banana republic' actually originated in reference to United Fruit's domination of corrupt governments in Guatemala and other Central American countries. The company brutally exploited virtual slave labor in order to produce cheap bananas for the lucrative U.S. market ... Bernays relished and apparently never regretted his work for United Fruit, for which he was reportedly paid $100,000 a year, a huge fee in the early 1950s. Tye writes that Bernays' papers 'make clear how the United States viewed its Latin neighbors as ripe for economic exploitation and political manipulation--and how the propaganda war Bernays waged in Guatemala set the pattern for future U.S.-led campaigns in Cuba and, much later, Vietnam.' As these examples show, Tye's biography of Bernays is important. It casts a spotlight on the anti-democratic and dangerous corporate worldview of the public relations industry. The significance of these dangers is often overlooked, in large part because of the PR industry's deliberate efforts to operate behind the scenes as it manages and manipulates opinions and public policies. This strategy of invisibility is the reason that PR academic Scott Cutlip refers to public relations as 'the unseen power.' Bernays pioneered many of the industry's techniques for achieving invisibility, yet his self-aggrandizing personality drove him to leave behind a record of how and for whom he worked."

Reliable Columnists,
American Zionist Information Network, October 2002
The following are noted as"Reliable Columnists" at the home page of the American Zionist Information Network: Charles Krauthammer, George F. Will, Jonah Goldberg, Victor Davis Hanson, William Safire, Daniel Pipes, Steven Plaut, Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, Mortimer Zuckerman, Michael Kelly, Cal Thomas, John Podhoretz, Joseph Farah, Zev Chafets, Linda Chavez, Mona Charen, Naomi Ragen, Mark Steyn, David Horowitz, Andrew Sullivan, Martin Kramer.

Preface to the First Paperback Edition of The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, by professor Kevin MacDonald
"The profound idealization, the missionary zeal, and the moral fervor that surround the veneration of figures like Celan, Kafka, Adorno, and Freud characterize all of the Jewish intellectual movements discussed in CofC (see Ch. 6 for a summary). That these figures are now avidly embraced by the vast majority of non-Jewish intellectuals as well shows that the Western intellectual world has become Judaized—that Jewish attitudes and interests, Jewish likes and dislikes, now constitute the culture of the West, internalized by Jews and non-Jews alike. The Judaization of the West is nowhere more obvious than in the veneration of the Holocaust as the central moral icon of the entire civilization. These developments constitute a profound transformation from the tradition of critical and scientific individualism that had formed the Western tradition since the Enlightenment. More importantly, because of the deep-seated Jewish hostility toward traditional Western culture, the Judaization of the West means that the peoples who created the culture and traditions of the West have been made to feel deeply ashamed of their own history—surely the prelude to their demise as a culture and as a people. The present Judaized cultural imperium in the West is maintained by a pervasive thought control propagated by the mass media and extending to self-censorship by academics, politicians, and others well aware of the dire personal and professional consequences of crossing the boundaries of acceptable thought and speech about Jews and Jewish issues. It is maintained by zealously promulgated, self-serving, and essentially false theories of the nature and history of Judaism and the nature and causes of anti-Semitism."

'Bartlett's' gets more familiar, contemporary,
USA TODAY, October 17, 2002
"Bill Clinton, Jerry Seinfeld and Rudy Giuliani are in. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexander Pope aren't out, but they're fading. That's the current state of popular culture, says Justin Kaplan, editor of the 17th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Little, Brown, $50), which goes on sale Tuesday. Kaplan, the savior of after-dinner speakers and students everywhere, spent the past decade combing through thousands of citations, relegating some to oblivion and preserving others for speeches and term papers. Among the new entries: 'It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.' — Clinton. 'Everybody lies about sex. People lie during sex. If it weren't for lies, there'd be no sex.' — Seinfeld. 'Our hearts are broken, but they continue to beat, and the spirit of our city has never been stronger.' — New York Mayor Giuliani after Sept. 11, 2001." [Interview with Kaplan by USA TODAY: Do you feel any pressure at being what amounts to a cultural arbiter, relegating some quotations to oblivion while raising some other up into popular lexicon? It's basically an anthology. An anthology reflects a particular taste and a particular editor. You can't claim a book like this is definitive. There's definitely your mark on the book — Twain is allotted 3 ½ full pages. Is that a conscious decision? Did you shy away from an editorial voice, or did you embrace it? Only implicitly. There's a statement by Henry Burrows that no matter what you read in a book, it's always the author talking. You can't help it. It's always personal."]

The Jewish Connection, by Edward Jay Epstein, [from his book about the diamond industry]."The syndicate in London to which Rhodes contracted to sell De Beers' entire production of diamonds in 1893 was made up of ten firms. These were Wernher, Beit & Company, Barnato Brothers, Mosenthal Sons & Company, A. Dunkelsbuhler, Joseph Brothers, I. Cohen & Company, Martin Lilienfeld & Company, F. F. Gervers, S. Neumann, and Feldheimer & Company. All these firms were interconnected by marriage and family ties, and all were owned by Jewish merchants. The fact that Jewish companies completely dominated the distribution of diamonds at the end of the nineteenth century was not particularly surprising. For a thousand years, diamonds had been almost entirely a Jewish business."

Who Has Hijacked Google?
[Commentary, and links, about the Jewish dimensions of the Google World Wide web search engine]
Focal Point, October 28, 2002

Best of the Web Today: Oh, Those Presidents All Look Alike,
Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal), October 28, 2002
"Slate, the online magazine that gave us 'monkeyfishing,' has also created a tiresome feature called the 'Bushism of the Day.' Jacob Weisberg, who succeeded Michael Kinsley [both are Jewish] as editor, scours the president's statements and takes short quotes out of context, attempting to make Bush look stupid by putting into writing his spoken quotes. This is a cheap gimmick; few people speak in polished sentences and paragraphs, and you could make almost anyone look dumb by employing the Weisberg method. Still, today's 'Bushism of the day' breaks new ground. Here it is: 'I would like to express my deep condolences for the loss of the Senate.'--Commenting on Sen. Paul Wellstone's death, Crawford, Texas, Oct. 25, 2002. Now, let's go to the transcript, which is of a joint appearance with Bush and China's President Jiang Zemin. It begins with Bush speaking: 'Thank you for coming, President Jiang.' PRESIDENT JIANG: 'Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen. I just learned that one plane crashed. I would like to express my deep condolences for the loss of the Senate. And also I would like to express my condolences to the bereaved family.' Did Weisberg deliberately present Jiang's words as Bush's in a dishonest attempt to make Bush look bad? It's hard to imagine he did, and we certainly know of no reason to question the Slate editor's integrity. More likely, Weisberg was just being sloppy. Even so, this is pretty stunningly slipshod. Someone who demands perfect syntax in spoken expression ought to be more careful in his own writing."

Breyer refuses to help endangered minnow,
UPI, October 18, 2002
"[Jewish Supreme Court] Justice Stephen Breyer Friday refused an environmental coalition's request to help save the endangered silvery minnow. The group told the Supreme Court of the United States in an emergency application the minnow will die off this weekend or next week unless authorities stop releasing water from the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Breyer oversees the 10th U.S. Circuit, which includes New Mexico, so the coalition's request was automatically routed to him. The justice could have referred the matter to the full court for a vote, but denied the request on his own without comment."

Setting the Stan-dard. How one man transformed a basement tutoring service into an American dream machine known as the test prep industry,
Moment, October 2002
"Stanley H. Kaplan is a nice Jewish boy who was never able to become a doctor—and that might have been the best thing that ever happened to him. Convinced that anti-Semitism and his lack of an upper-crust academic pedigree kept him out of medical school, Kaplan pursued his first love: teaching. In the process, he became so successful that today, his name is a household word among aspiring collegians. Yes, that Stanley H. Kaplan, whose moniker has become synonymous with college test preparations, a burgeoning industry he singlehandedly created ... Apparently Kaplan, who was first exposed to big-time standardized testing 56 years ago when a high school student from his hometown of Brooklyn approached him and asked him for help on an exam he'd never heard of. That exam—the Scholastic Aptitude Test—became his meal ticket ... Over the years, his tutoring operation grew into Kaplan, Inc., the nation's largest test preparation company. It has helped more than 3 million students—200,000 last year alone—prepare for not only the SAT, but dozens of other standardized tests ... Despite Kaplan's belief that standardized testing enables students 'to show off their skills on a level playing field,' it has been accused of being both elitist and trivial. Likewise, Kaplan's own test prep program has come under fire. Critics have called it elitist, charging that its high cost (about $800 to $900 for a 30-hour-plus seminar) effectively discriminates against poor and middle class students—the very population Kaplan had sought to serve."

Showbiz Jews in the News Reports from across the globe,
jewish.co.uk, (Great Britain) January 14, 2001
"The Vanessa Feltz comeback is gathering pace. The former daytime chat show host has now been snapped up by top weekly celebrity magazine OK! to be its health columnist ... Rumours have also started that Vanessa will be appearing in the Daily Express following the paper’s takeover by kosher businessman Richard Desmond. Sacha Baron Cohen, otherwise known as Ali G, is to front the launch night of Channel Four’s new cable and digital channel, E4 ... Fans of David Baddiel will be pleased to hear that the kosher funnyman is back on TV in a big way. Sunday January 14 not only sees the premiere of his self-penned new sitcom Baddiel’s Syndrome, on Sky One at 10 pm, but a mere 40 minutes later his improvised show Unplanned, in which he appears with co-host Frank Skinner, returns for a second series ... Latest kosher talent to hit the big screen is director Jonathan Glazer. Jonathan, whose mum is involved with Jewish communal work, is getting the pundits crazy with his debut movie, Brit gangster flick Sexy Beast ... Meanwhile, kosher American director Darren Aronofsky, whose new movie Requiem For A Dream is released next Friday, is being tipped to direct the next movie in the Batman series. Aronofsky’s first film Pi covered Jewish spiritual themes and his latest film also features a prominent Jewish character."

A List of Influential Jewish Feminists
The Birdman

Persian Jews in the Oriental Rug Business,
by Bob Gibson, ICOC Paper delivered in Tehran, Iran, 1992,
From Oriental Rug Review, Vol. 13/2, Rug Review,
"I originally became interested in the history of the Iranian Jews in the carpet business when I first got involved in the business myself 14 years ago. It intrigued me that so many of the Iranian carpet dealers with whom I came into contact were Jews when they represent such a small minority of the Iranian population. At no time have they exceeded more than one half of one percent. My first contact with them was on Ferdowsi Street in Tehran where, with a few exceptions, the merchants were Jewish. Then in the early 1980's upon returning to the United States, I discovered to my surprise that most of the dealers in Los Angeles and New York were recently arrived Iranian Jews. Upon investigating this phenomenon further, I learned that in the history of the Iranian carpet business the Iranian Jews have truly played an important role. Originally from Tehran, Abdolrahim Etessami left Iran for the first time in 1960. With his sons he is now owner of Alfandari and Etessami in Manhattan. About his long partnership with Turkish Jew Albert Alfandari, he says, 'Even though we are not related we worked together for 40 years' ... Living in both the Greco-Roman and Persian worlds, Jews developed and maintained social and economic ties between the two. This tradition of contacts between East and West gave the Jews an economic advantage which contributed, as we will see later, to their recent success as exporters and importers in Iran ... With the advent of Islam, the Jews and Christians lived under the Covenant of Umar, a comprehensive code governing their activities, which they agreed to abide by in exchange for protection from the Muslim state. In addition, an annual poll tax, or jizyah, was levied. The Persian Jews prospered under this condition and the trend of urbanization continued. Most lived in separate quarters in the cities but interacted with the general populace in the bazaar. The Abbasid revolt, which started in Khorassan, benefitted all non-Arab peoples of the empire, including the Jews. The Mesopotamian Jews were particularly fortunate that the capital shifted from Damascus to Baghdad for this enhanced their economic position. ... It was in the beginning of this century that the social-economic situation of the Jews, as well as for the rest of the Iranian population, began to improve. This was primarily because of an increasing participation by Iran in a worldwide trading economy, the coalescence of an increasingly more important bazaar class, and the development of Persian carpets as an industry and an export commodity. Throughout this century as the Persian carpet industry evolved and expanded, Iranians, and the Jews in particular, used this economic resurgence as a vehicle for financial and social betterment. The Jews rode the crest of the carpet business expansion to positions of wealth and mobility. The most successful example of this is found in the experience of the Mashhadi Jews. In the mid-18th century the Jewish population in Mashhad was increased by Nadir Shah's relocation of some 50 families from Qazvin. This community of Jews prospered over the years, relative to those elsewhere in Iran. It is supposed that this was a direct result of their forced mass conversion to Islam in 1839. Although they secretly maintained their religious practices (like the Monanos in Spain and elsewhere had done before), they were more able to integrate, as new Muslims, into the community on the whole, as well as into the bazaar. (Even today Mashhadi Jews have Islamic names.) They were able to thrive commercially and gain acceptance and wealth. They engaged in domestic trade with Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz and in external trade with Afghanistan and Turkestan. Those dealing in carpets and Karakul lamb skins became rich, while others joined the middle class. They traded effectively with the sizeable Jewish population in Herat, Samarkand, Bokhara, Merv and Khiva ... In other cities most Jewish communities remained poor up until recent times. There were a few wealthy merchants who dealt in gold, antiquities, silk and precious stones, but it wasn't until the 1950s that many Jewish merchants prospered tremendously in the business of dealing carpets. Iranian Jews can take credit for being instrumental in the development of export markets for carpets. As mentioned before, Mashhadi Jews were exporting carpets in central Asia 100 years ago. When the Soviet Union closed its borders to them in the 1920s, a number of them moved their base of operation to Karachi in India. There they acted as commission agents, bringing carpets from Khorassan and other parts of Iran through Zahedan to be transported on to carpet merchants in London ... In the 1930s and '40s Jewish antiquities dealers in Tehran, who sold mostly to the diplomatic community, began to get involved with carpets as well. As more and more carpets were being exported abroad, Tehrani Jews took advantage of their relationships in the West to develop more trading contacts in Europe. When the West, as a carpet market, developed to the extent that it did, the somewhat cosmopolitanized Iranian Jews were ready to interact commercially. Many traveled to France, England, Germany and Italy to set up agencies to import Persian carpets and distribute them throughout Europe and on to America. By the 1950s Tehran was booming economically. Iranians and especially Jews were migrating in large numbers to the capital city to participate in the new opportunities. India had gained its independence and Mashhad had become even more provincial, so most of the Mashhadi Jewish carpet dealers moved there also. They, and to a lesser extent those dealers already working out of Tehran, formed the core of the large scale Iranian carpet exporters of the 1960s and '70s. Seven or eight of these Jewish firms were exporting goods in excess of $80 million annually and another half a dozen were exporting in the range of $30 to $40 million annually. In addition to this group there was another important group of Jewish carpet merchants that rose to prominence at this time. This was the Ferdowsi Street carpet cartel which numbered some 50 shops at its apex. This group was made up almost exclusively of recently arrived Isfahani Jews who developed a thriving business, not so much in the export trade but rather in retailing carpets to Tehranis, tourists, and the burgeoning population of foreigners working in Iran at this time."

Raymond Vernon, 85, Pioneer Scholar in Field of Globalization,
New York Times, August 28, 1999
"Raymond Vernon, who helped shape the postwar system of international trade as a government official and influenced thinking about the global economy as a scholar, died on Thursday at his home in Cambridge, Mass ... Vernon was a member of the Marshall Plan team that guided the economic revival of Europe after World War II, and worked on the development of the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. After serving in the government in the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of State for nearly two decades, he went to Harvard University in 1956 and never left. At Harvard, Vernon first led an ambitious three-year research project on the New York metropolitan region, supported by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which was regarded as a pioneering work in urban studies. Afterward, at the Harvard Business School and later at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of government, Vernon focused for decades on the study of the international economy -- especially the increasing role played by multinational corporations and the limits to governmental power. 'Ray Vernon was the father of globalization long before people used that term,' said Daniel Yergin, an author and business consultant. 'His work has had a phenomenal effect on several generations of thinking about how the global economy works' ... Born on Sept. 1, 1913, in New York City, Vernon was one of four children in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. ... 'His view was that state-owned enterprises could not compete with the investor-owned multinationals, which are more flexible,' said Robert Stobaugh, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School. 'His research became part of the foundation for the privatization push of the 1980s.'"

Island Def Jam Brings on Da Noise, How Lyor Cohen is cranking up the volume in a downbeat market,
Business Week, November 28, 2002
"Lyor Cohen couldn't help himself. Speaking at a September marketing conference sponsored by Rolling Stone, the imposing 6-foot, 5-inch CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group let loose. 'Our industry is run by fat, lethargic, incompetent people,' he snarled ... Cohen, 43, has thumbed his nose at the status quo ever since he came on the scene in the early 1980s as a road manager for Run-DMC following a successful stint promoting rap acts on the streets of Los Angeles. Now, as head of a thriving collection of labels whose 70 artists range from R&B newcomer Ashanti to Jersey rock icons Bon Jovi, he's goosing revenues in new ways while the rest of the industry continues to feel victimized by CD piracy and Web file-sharing. Total U.S. music sales were down 13% on a unit basis in the first half of 2002, after an 11% drop for all of 2001, according to music-sales tracker Soundscan. Cohen isn't one of those wringing his hands. Instead, he's fashioning himself as a sort of post-Napster music exec, focusing less on what's being lost over the Net and more on promoting his talent in ways fans will pay to hear. He is cutting prices on new-artist CDs to help generate buzz. While most competitors are cutting back, he has opened offices worldwide for Island Def Jam, part of Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group ... Born in New York to Israeli parents but raised mostly in Los Angeles, he founded Def Jam with rap impresario Russell Simmons and producer Rick Rubin in 1984 and sold it to Universal 15 years later for $120 million. Rock label Island was added to his mix after Universal bought Polygram ... 'Lyor helped create a huge platform for all of us,' says Tracy Perlman, director of entertainment programming for the National Football League. It was Cohen who hatched the idea of having Bon Jovi kick off the NFL season with a nationally televised concert in Times Square on Sept. 5."

BUT HE DOESN'T LOOK JEWISH, Hadasseh Magazine [Women's Zionist organization], by Libby Goldberg, October 2002, [paper edition] p. 27 "Turns out the Thing is a member of two tribes, the Fantatic Four and the Jews. The orange, craggy skinned comic-book creature first appeared in the original 1961 installment of the Fantastic Four, and though Stan Lee and Jack Kirby -- the Jewish creators of the series -- always intended that this superhero be Jewish, they never got around tp revealing his religious affiliation. But in June's "Remembrance of Things Past,' Marvel Comics offers a full bio on the Thing, ne Benjamin Jacob Grimm. 'While such subject matter wasn't the province of comic books of the era in which Ben Grimm was created ... there is no such cultural taboo [today],' explains Marvel editor Tom Brevoort ... Posessing superhuman strength, endurance and durability, the Thing often returns to Yancy Street: This time, it is to confront issues from his past, and in the course of events he even dusts off his Judaism when he recites the Shema."

The Overachievers: Starbucks Delivers,
Forbes, November 4, 2002
"Every single day, somewhere in the world, three or four new Starbucks coffeehouses open. The company debuted more than 1,000 stores this year alone, with plans for 1,200 more next year. That's a fairly stiff brew for expansion, but it's not giving the company the jitters. This year, Starbucks predicts that sales and profits will be up by about 20% to $3.1 billion and 53 cents per share, respectively ... The Seattle-based company is trying all kinds of new ideas to get people into their stores and keep them there longer. In August, Starbucks rolled out high-speed wireless Internet services in about 1,000 locations. Customers can get online with their laptops or PDAs and sit for hours while, the company hopes, buying more coffee and snacks ... Not everything has been perfect, of course. Recall the ugly scene several years ago when anti-globalization protesters looted a Seattle Starbucks during a riot. The company settled a lawsuit--for $18 million--with workers who claimed Starbucks owed them overtime .... The satirical Web site TheOnion.com last year ran a spoof of a news story called 'Starbucks to begin sinister 'phase two' of operation,' which detailed its expansion plans. The phony article closed with a quote from Chairman Howard Schultz telling customers they'll have 'no choice but to love' the changes." ALSO, THERE IS A BOYCOTT AGAINST STARBUCKS' ACTIVIST PRO-ISRAELISM. See the website Boycott Israel Campaign: "Howard Shultz, the chairman of Starbucks is an active zionist. In 1998 he was honoured by Israel with 'The Israel 50th Anniversary Tribute Award' for his services to the zionist state. His work as a propagandist for Israel has been praised by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as being key to Israels long-term PR success. Recently whilst the Israeli army was slaughtering Palestinians in Jenin, Nabulus and Bethlehem he made a provocative speech blaming the Palestinians of terrorism and asking people to unite behind Israel.. Starbucks has investments in Israel - a joint venture with Israeli conglomerate Delek Group for Starbucks outlets in Israel ( Shalom Coffee Co)."

TWQ Interview: Dishing with Lucianne Goldberg, The Den Mother of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,
The Women's Quarterly, Fall 2002
"When Lucianne Goldberg, the Vikingesque New York literary agent turned Clinton nemesis [and founder of the website lucianne.com] turned web hostess extraordinaire, chortled, early in the Clinton administration, that a White House secretary was willing to come forward to reveal the secret sex life of the leader of the free world, the future editor of TWQ rolled her eyes in disbelief. She lived to recognize a simple truth: When Luci speaks, you'd better listen. Lucianne is an expert on the foibles of the human heart. Remember how she got Monica Lewinsky to keep that semen-stained Gap dress in its-er-pristine condition? Lewinsky was on the verge of sending the outfit to the evidence-destroying cleaners before a party ... Versed in the art of public relations, scandals, and life in general, Lucianne spoke to TWQ Editor Charlotte Hays by phone from her elegant apartment on New York's Upper West Side ... TWQ: Where do you stand on Iraq? GOLDBERG: Oh, I think we should go pave it. Blow it off the face of the earth. Just boom, boom, boom. Kill people, break things, get it over with. Take a long weekend and finish the job."

For Russian Jewish women, owning a business is the thing,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 10, 2002
"[Elina] Vilenskaya now owns a fitness club and a small consulting firm that works with the local energy industry. She was among some 100 Jewish businesswomen from Israel and the former Soviet Union who met in Moscow last month to form a social and professional network. The meeting, organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, was part of a larger initiative designed to establish exchanges between Russian Jewish and Israeli businesswomen — and create avenues for business partnerships among women entrepreneurs from both regions ... Zlata Elbaum, who first got involved in business management 15 years ago, is one of the pioneers of Russian women’s entrepreneurship. Even today, she more often sees “men’s suits across the negotiating table,” says Elbaum, an owner of a successful tourism company and the vice president of Moscow’s Jewish community ... The Jewish Agency has another motive for the forum: helping unaffiliated Diaspora Jews to connect with the Jewish state. 'We are trying to connect people with each other and with Israel, using those things that speak to them. It’s a new outreach concept,' says Lisa Gann-Perkal, Associate Durector of the JAFI’s two-year-old People-to-People Center that co-organized the event ... 'Some will make aliyah [move to Israel] down the line, but the goal is to create ties between them and Israel,' Gann-Perkal says."

Selections from the landmark 1911 work -- JEWS AND CAPITALISM -- by German economist Werner Sombart, Neither Aryan, Nor Jew,
"For what we call Americanism is nothing else, if we may say so, than the Jewish spirit distilled. But how comes it that American culture is so steeped in Jewishness? The answer is simple - through the early and universal admixture of Jewish elements among the first settlers. We may picture the process of colonizing somewhat after this fashion. A band of determined men and women - let us say twenty families - went forth into the wilds to begin their life anew. Nineteen were equipped with plough and scythe, ready to clear the forests and till the soil in order to earn their livelihood as husbandmen. The twentieth family opened a store ... It was they, too, who were most likely in possession of ready cash, and in case of need could therefore be useful to the others by lending them money. Very often the store had a kind of agricultural loan-bank as its adjunct, perhaps also an office for the buying and selling of land. So through the activity of the twentieth family the farmer in North America was from the first kept in touch with the money and credit system of the Old World."

The Bronfman Canadian Green Party & Jewish Congress Private HolyCost,
David Icke

Startup Nation. Israel has more startups than anywhere outside of Silicon Valley,What's fueling the Internet boom? Soldiers, officers, code-breakers, and spies,
Business 2.0, November 2000
"On the northern tip of Tel Aviv, where the old port used to be, sits a nightclub called Dugit. One of many open-air clubs on this stretch of beach, Dugit also rubs shoulders with auto shops, abandoned warehouses, and a pet-supplies store. During most summer evenings, Dugit and the other hot spots here attract some of Tel Aviv's hippest after-hours club crawlers. But one recent sweltering night, Dugit turned into a teeming nest of spies. They were Israeli soldiers -- 300 elite operatives from some of the nation's most secretive high-tech intelligence and electronic warfare units. They were on a mission so sensitive that their superior officers had been deliberately left out of the loop -- no need for them to know, and they wouldn't have been happy had they known. Many had been enticed here by one of the oldest tricks in the spy handbook: an invitation from a pretty young woman working for the other side. Some of the operatives were armed, M-16s hanging loosely from their shoulders. All were hunting for what has become one of the most coveted objectives in Israeli intelligence circles today: startup funding. L'affaire Dugit was, in fact, a recruiting party thrown by a group of Israel's big-gun high-tech companies. The attendees were targeted because they are among the brains behind the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF. They belong to units that dream up the state-of-the-art intelligence and communications technologies that give the IDF its tactical edge. These technological innovations power Israel's far-ranging high-tech boom. In Israel, yesterday's soldier is tomorrow's entrepreneur, and the event's sponsors, established Israeli tech outfits that include Comverse Technology, RoseNet, and Yazam, are trying to get an early line on ideas to fund or geniuses to hire ... The United States has MIT, Stanford, and a handful of other academic hothouses that nurture the talent and research from which many high-tech powerhouses emerge. In Israel, the military, much to its own discomfort, increasingly plays that role. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, the military has compensated for its lack of resources and manpower with brainpower. Particularly in the past 20 years, the IDF has invested billions of dollars in developing technological warfare. The result is a number of secret, semisecret, and open-secret divisions devoted to coming up with cutting-edge technologies designed to help Israel know what its enemies are doing -- and to kill them when the need arises .. With the spread of the Internet, the kind of technological wizardry once used to guide missiles, beam secure communications, and break codes suddenly presents enormous commercial opportunities. 'By sheer luck," says Professor Shimon Schocken, dean of the school of computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a private Israeli university, 'Israel already had the solutions to so many of the problems of the Internet.' Even a short list of hot tech companies that have recently spun out of Israel's military-technological complex is long, [including Amiram Levinberg's] Gilat Satellite Networks, which last year made more than half of the interactive VSATs (small satellite earth stations used in communications networks) sold in the world. Several of the founders of Israel's best-known tech success, the Internet security firm Check Point Software Technologies, are former members of 8-200 who specialized in developing firewalls between classified military computer networks. Today, the seven-year-old company has a market cap of $23.4 billion and commands 52 percent of the worldwide market for commercial firewall software. Gideon Hollander, CEO of wireless software maker Jacada, is a veteran of those units, where he worked on artificial intelligence systems. Founders of new startups iWeb (software for delivering Web ads), CTI2 (Web telephony), AudioCodes (voice-compression technology), and hundreds of others are former secret warriors. All this technological ferment has catapulted Israel into the front ranks of global tech powers -- and transformed an economy that just a decade ago was a disaster. There are now more startups in Israel than there are anywhere outside Silicon Valley. Israel, a country of 6 million people, ranks third in the world in the number of Nasdaq-listed companies, behind the United States and Canada. ... (More recently, according to Israeli and international press reports, Israel acquired a urine sample from ailing Syrian president Hafez Assad by clandestinely doctoring a toilet that was set aside for his exclusive use at the funeral of Jordan's King Hussein in February 1999. The toilet's pipes were rerouted to lead to a specimen jar; Israeli agents later analyzed the sample for clues about the Syrian leader's health and concluded that he was living on borrowed time. Assad died 16 months later.) But it is military intelligence, more than any other single factor, that accounts for Israel's tech prowess. In fact, the demands made by the elite intelligence units seem as if they're meant to be basic training for startup entrepreneurs. Soldiers work in small, highly motivated teams, with brutal hours and little sleep. The pressure to innovate is crushing -- national survival is at stake ... Aryeh Finegold ... recently founded his third company, Orsus, an e-commerce software maker. As an engineer for Intel in the United States in the 1980s, Finegold was a principal architect of the 286 and 386 chips. One of his previous startups, Mercury Interactive, an e-commerce monitoring software company, has a market cap of about $11.2 billion ... Talpiot's [a special military division] role in the current tech boom is no secret. Assaf Monsa and another Talpiot graduate, Yair Mann, along with two other alumni of elite tech units, three years ago founded RichFX, which has developed streaming video technology that Monsa says uses between one-twentieth and one-hundredth of the bandwidth gobbled up by competing systems ... Marius Nacht, another Talpiot grad, is a co-founder of Check Point. Eli Mintz, CEO and president of Compugen, a gene sequencing technology firm, and Yuval Shalom, co-founder and CTO of Wiseband, a maker of wireless phone technologies, also went through Talpiot .... [Another military group, Mamram] comes from its founding members: 8 Ashkenazi Jews and 200 Iraqi immigrants who were specialists in wireless communications and had worked for Iraqi Railways. Their skills became the cornerstone of the electronic intelligence gathering, encryption, and other activities known to be among the unit's specialties. It's illegal for past and present members to talk about 8-200, although it has become something of an open secret in the tech world. The unit has also attained a mythical status among venture capitalists for the entrepreneurial wizards who are veterans of the unit ... About 90 percent of Israeli startups are incorporated not in Israel but in the United States. That's in part because the United States is such a huge market, but it's also because the country has a less troublesome tax regime and deep ranks of managerial and marketing expertise from which Israeli companies can draw. Some of Israel's largest and most successful tech companies call the United States home: Comverse, a voice messaging company with a market cap of $14.9 billion, is based in Woodbury, N.Y.; Mercury Interactive is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. More common these days is what's known as the fast exit, whereby startups either sell out to a foreign multinational entirely or split themselves in two, keeping R&D in Israel but moving sales and marketing to the United States."

Sigmund Freud's Influence on Pre World War II America,
Dan Peters web site

The Featherman File of Noteworthy Items in the Press,
by Andrew Silow-Carroll, [Jewish] Forward,
"Woman of Valor: Don't believe the critics who call the Osbournes America's favorite 'dysfunctional family.' Sure, the stars of MTV's highly rated reality series curse a blue streak, the kids have dropped out of high school as they pursue separate music careers and dad Ozzy Osbourne shows the wear and tear of a career as a heavy-metal rock god ... Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's iron-willed wife and manager, is clearly the straw that stirs this Zoloft-laced lemonade, as 17-year-old Jack Osbourne, in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, makes clear. 'Anything to do with the family, the show or Dad goes through Mum. Anything the label does goes through Mum. If it didn't go through Mum, people would just like, take advantage of us,' Jack said. 'When they know that there's this 5-foot-3 angry Russian Jewish woman there, it's kind of intimidating.' Sharon Osbourne elaborated on her background in a November 16 interview with The Scotsman daily. She is described as 'the daughter of the infamously hard-nosed music promoter Don Arden, who shaped the careers of Gene Vincent, The Small Faces and the Electric Light Orchestra."

Question for book award judges: Is this reading really necessary? Michael Kinsley confessed that he didn't read the 402 books he was supposed to evaluate. High literary crime or a case for Evelyn Wood's seven-day course?,
Philly.com, December 3, 2002
"Who says you can't judge a book by its cover? A National Book Awards judge just did it - possibly with hundreds of books - and he's practically bragging. Late last month, former Slate editor-in-chief Michael Kinsley, a National Book Awards judge this year in nonfiction, rocked the sedate world of book prizes. He wittily informed readers in a Slate piece that he hadn't read many of the books assigned to him. He suggested that he hadn't even read every page of the book to which his committee gave the prize on Nov. 20: the latest mammoth volume in Robert Caro's gargantuan LBJ biography ... In his sardonic piece about the awards experience, Kinsley declared that his motives for becoming a judge after that 'were ignoble - mainly vanity and a desire for free books.' Kinsley joked that his taking on the task was 'especially hypocritical because two things I have long claimed to oppose in principle are books and awards. Nonfiction books are especially regrettable. There is too much nonfiction going on in the world already without writers adding to it.' When the 402 books he was expected to read over six months started arriving, he panicked. He admitted that solely by 'bold and fearless procrastination,' and 'without my having to crack a single spine,' he cut the pile from 402 to under 50. In the closest thing to justifying his behavior within a mischievous, lighthearted piece, Kinsley asserted that awards were 'the purest example of gratuitous or superfluous meritocracy,' that comparing different sorts of nonfiction reeked of 'inherent arbitrariness' ... Even in his latest Slate piece, Kinsley warns readers: '[D]on't expect total honesty.'" [RELATED ARTICLE: The man who won the award that Kinsley (who is Jewish) judged -- without reading too much -- was also Jewish -- Robert Caro. Also, at least 2 of the 4 National Book Award winners noted in the following piece, plus a special "lifteime achievement" winner, were Jewish: Ruth Stone, Robert Caro, and Philip Roth] A First Novel Gets National Book Award, by Dinitia Smith, from: New York Times, November 21, 2002
"The National Book Award for Fiction went to a relatively unknown author, Julia Glass, last night for her first novel ... After being a finalist twice before for the nonfiction award, Robert A. Caro finally won it last night for 'Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson" (Knopf) ... The poetry award went to Ruth Stone, 87, for her eighth collection ... Nancy Farmer won the Young People's Literature award ... [Host Steve] Martin also introduced Philip Roth, who received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Noting that Mr. Roth had won two National Book Awards himself, Mr. Martin wondered aloud, 'If he's so great, where's his Golden Globe, his Emmy, his house's layout in In Style magazine?' ... In his speech he praised the American language and the freedom that America gave his Jewish parents in Newark. He decried the self-division of Americans into subgroups, like 'American Jewish.' Those labels, he said, are 'self-limiting.'"

Partners make yoga stylish,
Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, December 6, 2002
"Long lines give most people an anxiety attack. To the young entrepreneurs who founded At One Yoga, they gave inspiration. 'We could see yoga was booming,' says co-founder David Romanelli, who credits fellow co-founder Ian Lopatin with recognizing the business opportunity that offered ... Aaron King, Alex Kump, Ian Lopatin, and David Romanelli decided to take the concept and go it one better: creating a yoga studio that would embody the whole yoga lifestyle ... They developed At One Yoga to fulfill the experience of health club and social center along with spiritual sanctuary. Facilities include massage rooms and a boutique stocked with clothing, candles, and yoga props, along with yoga videos, books and compact discs ... Notwithstanding its spiritual aspect, yoga is not a religion, notes Romanelli, explaining that there is no contradiction in the fact that he and co-founders King and Lopatin all are Jewish and yogis. Yogis seek to find universal truths but recognize there are different ways of realizing those truths, and, he points out, many well-known yoga teachers are Jewish. In fact, At One Yoga members include a rabbi from a local synagogue, and the company is exploring ways to get involved with an outreach program of that synagogue ... This was, then, a male-run company, but ironically, Romanelli reports, most clients have been women."

Freud, Race, and Gender,
by Sander L. Gilman
Paper | 1995 | $21.95 / £15.95 | ISBN: 0-691-02586-X 293 pp. | 6 x 9 |
Princeton University Press,
[Book blurb]
"A Jew in a violently anti-Semitic world, Sigmund Freud was forced to cope with racism even in the 'serious' medical literature of the fin de siècle, which described Jews as inherently pathological and sexually degenerate. In this provocative book, Sander L. Gilman argues that Freud's internalizing of these images of racial difference shaped the questions of psychoanalysis. Examining a variety of scientific writings, Gilman discusses the prevailing belief that male Jews were 'feminized,' as stated outright by Jung and others, and concludes that Freud dealt with his anxiety about himself as a Jew by projecting it onto other cultural 'inferiors'--such as women. Gilman's fresh view of the origins of psychoanalysis challenges those who separate Freud's revolutionary theories from his Jewish identity."

"The Peace of Objectivism,"
by Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski,
[Including "An exchange between Steve Sniegoski and Ronn Neff"],
The Last Ditch, August- September 2002
[A discussion of Jews and support for Israel in the Ayn Rand Objectionist world]

Gesherim 2002, The Career Mentoring Program,
indiana.edu- Hillel
"The Business Leadership Initiative is a unique opportunity for exceptional Jewish business students to learn from and network with some of the leading Jewish business executives in the country ... Sid Tuchman, President and Founder of Tuchman Training Systems. He is a business consultant, seminar leader, writer, and one of the country's top teachers in the art of selling ... Prior to founding Tuchman Training Systems, Mr. Tuchman was President, CEO, and co-founder of Tuchman Cleaners, one of the largest cleaning organizations in America with 32 operating plants and stores, an industrial uniform plant, and a suede and leather service covering five states. He was also co-founder of Apparelmaster, a uniform rental company with 300 Licensees throughout the world ... Arnold Hanish, Executive Director, Finance, Chief Accounting Officer of Eli Lilly. Lilly is a leader in the pharmaceutical industry. The company employs more than 41,000 people worldwide and markets its medicines in 158 countries ... Richard Leventhal, Co-founder of Top Value Fabrics, Inc., a company specializing in sales of canvas, nylon, and polyester fabrics for industrial, marine, recreational and active/outerwear applications ... Joel Beren, Vice-President of the Norhern Ohio Group of OmniSource Corporation. Based in Ft. Wayne, OmniSource is among the largest processors, brokers, and traders of recycled metal products in the United States ... Barry Effron, Founder of one of the most prestigious investment consulting firms in the country. Nationally heralded, EFFRON Enterprises, Inc. (founded in 1976) is a financial consulting and software firm, specializes in providing investment counsel and proprietary software to corporate pension funds, brokerage firms, investment consulting organizations, and professional investment management companies. Mr. Effron is one of the pioneers in the development of computer assisted software systems for analyzing investment portfolios ... Gene B. Glick, entrepreneur and CEO of the Gene B. Glick Company, a real estate development firm. We will carpool to the Broadmoor Country Club in Indianapolis, IN. The Gene B. Glick Company is one of the largest privately owned builders and managers of low- and moderate- income housing in the nation. Mr. Glick has won almost every award his industry offers, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and election to the National Housing Hall of Fame of the National Association of Home Builders and many awards for entrepreneurship outside the industry ... Jerry Litwack, Founder of Action Steel, a full line steel service center specializing in heavy carbon products including wide flange beams, standard I-beams, structural and mechanical tubing, pipe, angles, channels, flats, sheet, and plates. Mr. Litwack founded Action Steel in 1984 and retired in 1996. Prior to Action Steel, he founded and operated Shelby Dealers Supply which became Shelby Steel in 1968."

Global Jewish Agenda,
THE JEWISH WORLD. THE ECONOMY,
Jewish Agency, 2001
"TEVA ON VERGE OF FIRST LARGE DEAL IN ASIA: ACQUISITION OF INDIAN PHARMACEUTICALS COMPANY The Israeli companyTeva Pharmaceuticals, the largest manufacturer of generic drugs in the West today, is on the verge of closing its first large deal in Asia. Teva is reportedly negotiating the purchase of Indian pharmaceuticals manufacturer JK Drugs. Its parent company, JK Industries, also manufactures tires, cement, textiles, cosmetic products, rubber, steel, and other products. The company's pharmaceuticals division manufactures, among other things, components and raw materials for the worldwide pharmaceuticals industry. This deal will reportely give Teva a foothold in the Asian market and access to cheap sources of production, as well as access to a market with a great potential for growth.
ISRAELI COMPANY ACQUIRES DUTCH PHARMACEUTICALS COMPANY FOR $99 MILLION The Israeli pharmaceuticals company General Biotechnology is acquiring the Dutch Rosemont Pharmaceuticals Ltd. for $99 million. General Biotechnology employs 370 workers, and its market value is $173 million. Rosemont, which is located in Leeds, England, employs 120 workers. It specializes in the development of liquid medications (syrups) for people who cannot swallow pills."

JEWISH ACTORS AND DIRECTORS,
Cinerhama
[List of Jewish actors and directors]

Novelist Bids for Eagles' Guitar,
Top 40 Charts, June 12, 2002
"Best-selling novelist Jonathan Kellerman placed the winning online auction bid for a guitar signed by Don Henley and his fellow Eagles bandmates. Henley is donating the $7,900 from the sale to the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas for use in supporting Israel and Jewish organizations. Kellerman, the author of 23 books who lives in Los Angeles, is a longtime musician and collector of vintage guitars. But he said he bought the new, Takamine G330 acoustic guitar expressly because the proceeds will provide support for Israel. 'I've lived in Israel, set a novel ('The Butcher's Theater') there and am dedicated to supporting organizations that strengthen Israel,' he said in a statement Tuesday." *

Who Bassist John Entwistle Found Dead,
CBS, June 27, 2002
"John Entwistle, the bassist for the innovative 1960s rock band The Who, was found dead Thursday in his hotel room of an apparent heart attack ... The Vegas show was canceled but the rest of the tour was undecided, said Beckye Levin of promoter Clear Channel Entertainment. 'I was told he passed away in his sleep last night,' Levin said, breaking into sobs during a telephone interview. Who manager Robert Rosenberg said he was 'saddened and shocked.'" *

[FROM PAPER EDITION]
"News in Brief; Rushdie's Translator's Plea,
Jewish Chronicle [Great Britain], December 6, 2002, p. 13
"The man who translated Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses' into Persian -- and was threatened with death for his work -- is seeking asylum in Israel. Dr. Jamshid Hasni, 57, is married to an Israeli woman and is undergoing a conversion to Judaism. He told the Ma'ariv newspaper that he could not "return to my homeland because extremists will harm me. I prefer to live in a Jewish country. I want to be part of the Jewish people."

The inner Einstein,
U.S. News and World Report, December 9, 2002
"Nearly 50 years after his death and a century after the then unknown physicist started challenging doctrine and stretching brains with his ideas, Albert Einstein remains not just scientifically relevant but a multipurpose icon as well. If anything, his stature has grown over the decades, fed by a steady stream of books, pop-culture references, and posthumous appearances in commercials and on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and most anything else that will sit still long enough to be stamped with a photo and a quote ... Albert never saw his illegitimate daughter, who may have been given up for adoption if she did not die in infancy ... He had lovers throughout his life, leading some critics to label him a misogynist. Perhaps longtime Papers Project editor Alice Calaprice, echoing an affection common among Einstein scholars, says it best. 'I wouldn't have wanted to be married to him, but we still like him despite his faults.' The most controversial 'revelation' may be the line from the 1901 letter to Mileva in which Albert refers to 'our work on relative motion.' Did Einstein steal his theory from his first wife, as some critics have speculated? 'The quote is real, and he did end up being a bastard to her,' says Einstein scholar Robert Schulmann, 'but there's absolutely no evidence that she made critical contributions to the 1905 paper' ... He worked tirelessly to help refugees flee Nazi Germany and to establish Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a haven for his fellow Jewish academics. Einstein also supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine but warned in 1955, 'The most important aspect of our policy must be our ever-present, manifest desire to institute complete equality for the Arab citizens living in our midst.'"

Marvel Comics to unveil gay gunslinger,
CNN, December 9, 2002
Monday, December 9, 2002
"Marvel Comics plans to break new ground in the comic book industry by introducing the first openly gay title character in a comic book. The character will appear in a revival of the 1950s title, 'The Rawhide Kid.' Marvel expects a February debut. The new series pairs the original artist, John Severin, now 86, with Ron Zimmerman, a writer for the 'Howard Stern Show.' The Rawhide Kid has been a Marvel character since the 1950s both as a main and a secondary character. However, it was not until Zimmerman approached Marvel with his idea of a homosexual Rawhide Kid that sexuality was mentioned in the discussion of the character. Although shy with girls, the original Rawhide Kid was not intended to be gay. The new version uses double entendres and euphemisms to reveal his homosexuality without saying anything explicitly. Based on a blurb on Marvel's Web site, the tone may be campy ... Although Rawhide Kid is the first gay title character, Marvel does have several existing gay characters, such as North Star of the 'X-Men' comic book series. The Rawhide Kid series, beginning with the first edition 'Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather,' will run about 22 pages and have a suggested retail price of $2.95."

Historian traces Jews' pivotal role, hasty exit in Napa,
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California,
December 13, 2002
"Before Calistoga was a brand of bottled water and a Napa Valley wine center, it was a failed resort. So when spa-resort founder Sam Brannan decided to reverse fields and create an actual town, he knew just what to do -- call in a Jewish shopkeeper and get things started. When it comes to the cities of Napa, St. Helena and Calistoga [California wine country], 'Jews played such a big role in the founding of these communities. That's really important and something that people didn't know,' said Lin Weber, a St. Helena historian and author ... A number of Jewish families from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France (and sometimes Germany) were pivotal in establishing the dry-goods trades that allowed boom towns to grow roots ... Jewish-owned shops lined the main streets of all the Napa Valley towns. In addition to dry goods, Jews sold tobacco, paper products, books, watches and jewelry, and a guy named Max Bagelspecher sold, appropriately, bagels. Additionally, for a stretch of many years, Weber discovered, every postmaster in Calistoga was either a Jew or married to one. ... Weber is 'up to 1936' in her history of the Jews of the region and hopes to have the tentatively titled 'Under the Vine and the Fig Tree' on bookstore shelves by the spring. 'This is something nobody knows about,' Weber said of her subject matter. 'Jews are a very big part of human history here.'"

Day of the Jewish Trojan. USC's recruitment effort makes significant gains, countering the school's embarrassing history of sometimes alienating Jews,
by Stuart Silverstein, Los Angeles Times, December 11, 2002
"In the University of Southern California admissions office, Jessica F. Pashkow works alongside colleagues who specialize in bringing Latino and black undergraduates to campus, a goal of many universities around the country. Pashkow's job is a rarer sort: She recruits Jews. She urges co-workers — only half jokingly — to alert her to top prospects whose last names end, for example, in 'berg,' 'baum' or 'bloom.' She makes the rounds of college fairs at high schools in Southern California's Jewish neighborhoods. Wherever she goes, she strategically places 'Jewish Life at USC' brochures on the edge of her display table. If someone picks up a copy, Pashkow discreetly mentions her role in Jewish recruitment. Often, parents 'pull back a little bit and say, 'Really'?' said Pashkow, who is Jewish. 'They want to make sure we're doing it for a kosher reason' ... Many people with USC ties privately say the university is trying to win over more Jewish donors too. USC has a long and embarrassing history of offending Jews. Its past includes a longtime president who was rumored to be a Nazi sympathizer, a cross-burning incident on a Jewish fraternity house lawn and an uproar in the dentistry school involving alumni accusations that a dean was 'pro-Jewish' ... One of its important initiatives was to court Jewish Los Angeles, a community known for its success in education, not to mention the arts, sciences, professions and business ... In fact, USC sits amid the second largest Jewish population in the nation — Jews number about 600,000 in Southern California. Sample had an assessment done of USC's Jewish resources, and found they were surprisingly vast: One-third of the faculty was Jewish, as were one-third of the deans and up to 2,000 of the campus' more than 27,000 students, although many were in graduate or professional schools. USC officials knew, too, that a good portion of the university's major donors through its 122 years have been Jewish. And although USC leaders say their outreach isn't intended as a fund-raising ploy, they acknowledge that Jews are giving more money to the university than ever. Sample also determined that USC had an unheralded asset in Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which is next to USC and offers courses in Jewish studies that USC students can take for credit ... Today, a Jewish touch is evident all over campus. USC's dean of religious life, Susan Laemmle, is a reform rabbi. A cooler in the student center is stocked with kosher food. The campus is home to the 4-year-old Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, which organizes academic lectures and conferences, as well as public forums on issues affecting the local Jewish community ... According to the university's informal polling, the percentage of Jews in this year's freshman class is 8.2%, up from 4.6% a decade ago. That's still far below the 20%-plus level estimated for some Ivy League schools, but comparable with UCLA, where the latest available survey showed that 7% of freshmen were Jews. Jews also have become more influential in the leadership of USC. A symbolic breakthrough came in September, when businessman Gold became chairman of the board of trustees. (A Jewish newspaper, Forward, headlined the story: 'Once-WASPy USC Names First Jew as Board Chair.') .... [M]any Jews in Los Angeles were angered by USC's plan to house a Middle East Center that, at the urging of Saudi Arabian officials, was to be funded by American corporations doing billions of dollars of business with the Saudis. The American Jewish Committee charged that the unusual deal threatened the academic integrity of the university, and later the faculty senate and a USC advisory council both condemned the idea. USC ultimately backed away from the deal ... As a lighthearted reminder, Pashkow circulates around the admissions office a three-page memo called 'Jews Clues.' The first piece of advice is to spot names ending in 'baum,' 'berg,' 'burg,' 'bloom,' 'man,' 'stein,' 'thal,' 'vitz' or 'witz.' Another dead giveaway mentioned in the memo: If applicants mention that they have had a bar or bat mitzvah. Her co-workers 'think it's cute, they laugh at it,' Pashkow said. But the memo also prompts her colleagues to put a 'JWSH' coding on applications from Jewish students."

Minstrel or Moron,
by Josh Kern, omag (Top Forty magazine)
"You've seen him on video and endured his phly style during last years MTV Europe Music Awards. His a huge star in the UK, but who is this crass 'wigger' anyway? Perhaps Madonna decided to anoint this particular light-skinned black man with a coveted cameo opportunity rather like the black Jesus she once championed in Like a Prayer. Anyway, she liked him enough to feature him in Music, a girl-powered romp parodying today's music moguls (if one makes a guess at the license plates on her white limousine, the target is Puffy). But that man - Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G - is no ordinary taxi driver ... Cohen is a British comedian, an inspired cult figure who is widely mimicked by white and Asian boys in England. He was voted 'Personality of the Year' at the UK's TV Quick Awards last year, and if the rumour circulating is true - that he will soon star in his own film - it will be Ali G [Cohen's character] who teeters dangerously on that problematic 21st century colour tightrope. Cohen, a white, Jewish, Cambridge University-educated man, has captured a generation's hearts (as well as Madonna's, who calls him the 'Peter Sellers of our generation') in his wholesale and unprecedented masquerade as an uneducated, misogynistic black man ... Notwithstanding how offensive the concept of a "wigger" (ie a white "nigger") is, if indeed he were a "wigger," then most British black people would feel comfortable with Ali G. But to complicate things, equally as many people think that Ali G is, or is pretending to be, an Asian who pretends to be black ... Three questions: Why are black people deemed so amusing by popular culture? Would it still be funny if we were to fully masquerade the worst of a Jewish or white stereotype? ... Many black comedians brand his act racist - in an interview published by a weekly black newspaper, The New Nation, only one of the eight black comics contacted didn't find Ali G offensive. But that doesn't matter to the viewing public, black, white and Asians. One British newspaper found nearly 80% of its readers were fans of Ali. Some black viewers say his impersonations of white and Asian people are based on truth, and allow a good healthy poke at an industry that nurtures and produces figures of ridicule."

The ACLU's Most Important Supreme Court Victories,
lectlaw.com

When Mary Met Lillian,
Interview with Nora Ephron, writer and director,
by Janet Saidi, The Christian Science Monitor, September 20, 2002
[Efron and Hellman are Jewish]
"It's hardly a surprise that two smart-talking, literary women like Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy would attract a smart-talking, literary woman like Nora Ephron. What's more surprising is that, while remembered largely as bitter rivals, the two literary legends have so much in common with each other ... Ephron, writer and director of 'Sleepless in Seattle' and 'You've Got Mail,' has a new play, 'Imaginary Friends' – her first ... It is part extended argument, part mock trial, part boozy conversation between Lillian Hellman, who wrote plays like 'The Children's Hour' and 'The Little Foxes,' and novelist Mary McCarthy, best known for 'The Group' and 'Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.' Ephron finds the rivalry especially potent, since 'they had almost nothing to do with one another and yet they ended up part-famous for this thing that happened at the end of their lives.' 'The thing' Ephron refers to is a lawsuit that Hellman brought after McCarthy made the now-famous statement on 'The Dick Cavett Show' in 1980, in reference to Hellman: 'Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the' '... Both Hellman and McCarthy wrote prolifically, lived flamboyantly, and conducted liaisons with literary men like Dashiell Hammett (Hellman's longtime love), Edmund Wilson, and Philip Rahv [also Jewish] (McCarthy's loves, though Hellman may have had a fling with Rahv). ... [Ephron's] 1983 novel, 'Heartburn,' famously chronicled her real-life relationship with Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein."

An Overview of American Manners From 'Tel Aviv Epstein'. Snobbery: The American Version, [Review of a book by Joseph Epstein. Houghton Mifflin]
[Jewish] Forward, December 27, 2002
"In the year just ending, how did it happen that an overview of American manners and mores could be presented without self-consciousness by a man who says about himself that he 'might as well be named Tel Aviv Epstein'? As Joseph Epstein entered the coffee shop in Evanston, Ill., where he lives, I picked out details of his dress and manner that I learned about in his book, 'Snobbery: The American Version.' He wore a crisp polo shirt with no logo (reverse snobbery?), carried his own coffee mug so as not to use a paper one and under his arm held a copy of one of Henry James's more obscure works. When he began speaking, I could not help noticing a slightly British cadence to his sentences. Nor was I alone in my scrutiny. Ever since he published 'Snobbery,' the noted essayist and former American Scholar editor has been under a microscope, from radio station security guards who assess the style of his glasses to countless book reviewers who see fit to declare that he himself, America's latest chronicler of snobbery, is a snob. Their reasons: His son went to Stanford, he drives a Jaguar, he has consorted with the likes of Saul Bellow. And then there is that rarefied accent. 'Snobbery' is a lettered yet lighthearted tour of contemporary American social manners. After defining snobbery and explaining how it works ('The essence of snobbery... is arranging to make yourself feel superior at the expense of other people'), Epstein delves into its various manifestations ... One of the questions I found myself pondering had to do with Epstein himself. How was it that the son of what he calls a "culturally lower-middle class" Jewish family in Chicago's West Rogers Park has become the nation's newest authority on all things snobbish? Echoing one of the book's chapters, titled 'Fags and Yids,' Epstein explained that the WASP aristocracy is dead, and in its stead homosexuals and Jews now constitute the preponderance of this country's taste-makers: designers, decorators, curators, magazine editors, movie and television producers, art and literary critics ... Forty years ago, a Jew could not have written a book like his without it being a cri de coeur, a claim to be one of snobbery's victims. 'Who Killed Society?,' the authoritative book on the ruling class in 1960, had after all been written by no less a WASP personage than Cleveland Amory, scion of a long line of Boston merchants who had earlier written the best-seller 'The Proper Bostonians' (1947). By contrast, he joked, his own name may as well be 'Tel Aviv Epstein.' Epstein's earliest experiences, which he recounts in the book, primed him to become a student of snobbery. His non-snobbish parents, he writes, 'had almost no cultural interests apart from occasionally going to musical comedies,' but from the outset he himself 'had a keen sense of the various arrangements that make for snobbery: social class, money, taste, religion, status of all kinds' ... Coming of age in the early 1950s, Epstein experienced a 'vast antisemitism' ... While proud of his Jewish background, Epstein said he is a qualified admirer of the fallen WASP aristocracy."

Is She Dr. Laura or Dr. Strange Love? Recent Columns: Is She Dr. Laura or Dr. Strange Love?, Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2002
"Your 77-year-old mother lies dead and decomposing for two months in a condominium not far from the radio complex where you sternly hector millions about how to live a moral life while attacking those who 'deviate.' And you never bothered once to inquire how your own mom was doing? Maybe send a minion over to knock on the door once in a while? For two months, the mail piled up, the condo fees went unpaid, and you, successful syndicated radio advice guru 'Dr. Laura' Schlessinger, never noticed these and other worrying signs that, as the police suggested, your mother may have been murdered? Of course, when you finally found out, after the building manager called the police, you were 'horrified by the tragic circumstances' of her death. But was it really appropriate to add, self-servingly, that she 'died as she chose to live, alone and isolated.' You said, 'My mother shut all her family out of her life over the years, though we made several futile attempts to stay connected.' Those are not kind words to speak of one's dead mother. Ties it all in a neat little bow, doesn't it? ... [H]onoring and caring for one's parents is at the heart of your philosophy, as spelled out in your own presumptuous 1998 book, 'The 10 Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life.' You wrote: 'God's commandment of honoring parents is basically the message that parents are a conduit of God. Any profanity or harm to the parent is as if we've profaned God.' You wrote, 'By honoring our parents, we learn to honor God. By honoring God we become decent human beings.' You obviously failed that test. 'Even bad parents deserve to be honored if only at a minimal level,' you wrote. Thus surely 'honor thy father and thy mother' intends something more than letting a septuagenarian woman go months at a time without even a drive-by visit from her daughter ... [T]he 'Dr. Laura' show typifies the dangerous hypocrisy of those who build profitable and politically potent empires on the basis of claiming a monopoly on simplistic answers to complex problems. The guilt and shame they induce in those who might resist their nostrums is loathsome, made more so when they themselves so casually ignore them."

Jewish Studies Popular With Non-Jews Around the World,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 27, 2002
"'Contrary to widespread fears of a rising global wave of anti-Semitism, we, as Jews, have many more friends than we think we have,' said professor Lawrence H. Schiffman, president of the Association of Jewish Studies, which recently held its 34th annual meeting in Los Angeles. The Dec. 15-17 conference attested to the growth of Jewish studies on university campuses in the United States and around the world, with an increasing number of non-Jews joining the ranks of scholars and students. In Europe, as in China, there is 'the phenomenon of Jewish studies without Jews,' said Schiffman, a man of rabbinical mien with a kippah and full black beard, who chairs the Skirball department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York Universit ... Jewish studies in the United States really took off after the Six-Day War in 1967, a time that also brought a new awareness 'of the centrality of Jews in the general culture,' Schiffman said. 'Jewish studies are no longer a sideshow, but are now a respected part of the academic mainstream,' said the NYU professor, whose own specialty is the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Current anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian agitation at U.S. colleges has not affected the popularity of Jewish studies but does indicate a need for more emphasis on Israel in the curriculum, Schiffman said. One practical yardstick of an academic program’s viability is the number of jobs open to rising young doctoral graduates. At the Association of Jewish Studies (AJS) meeting, which also serves as a job fair, 50 openings at various universities were advertised ... The AJS membership stands at 2,000 professors, librarians, archivists and graduate students, with Israelis representing about 20 percent of the number. There is also a scattering of European and Latin American members ... Schiffman believes that the early Jewish studies centers not only proved that intellectual objectivity is possible in ethnic studies, but served as models for Black, Chicano and Asian centers." [EDITOR'S NOTE: WHAT?!!]

The Droves of Academe,
New York Obeserver, January 2, 2003
"Two days earlier, nearly 11,000 English literature and modern-language professors had descended on midtown Manhattan for the start of the Modern Language Association’s annual conference, the place where intellectual superstars like Stanley Fish, Elaine Scarry and Kwame Anthony Appiah share hotel space with hundreds of desperate Ph.D.’s interviewing for a meager handful of jobs. The jittery orgy of power, insecurity and angst is the other academy’s answer to the Cannes Film Festival, except that as these strivers fan across the city between standing-room-only panels, instead of Anita Ekberg emerging from a fountain, they strain to catch a glimpse of aging Harvard nymph Marjorie Garber emerging from Barneys. The bacchanal of the bespectacled was back in New York for the first time in a decade, thrilling all those Ph.D.’s who had really planned to find jobs near the city, until the job market crashed and that tenure-track spot at Ball State started looking pretty appealing. But this year, as the stratified masses of academic hot shots and wannabes made their reservations at Esca (or Pasta La Vista) and scored tickets to La Bohème (or The Lord of the Rings), even an alcohol-soaked weekend in New York did nothing to calm the anxiety. It was palpable among more than just the job-seekers. Tension over the future of the profession could be felt all the way to the top of the pecking order, in the person of dashing M.L.A. president, Harvard professor and well-known Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt, who in May sent 'A Call to Action' to every M.L.A. member, asking them all to begin to face a growing crisis in their industry: The academic presses that publish their esoteric work are shrinking, even as the publish-or-perish system of academic evaluation and promotion continues unabated, forcing lit professors to do some painful reckoning ... It’s a bleak landscape for academic job-seekers in any field, but this year, a flyer in the conference press room trumpeted "the sharpest decline in Language and Literature jobs" since the 1992 recession. The total number of English-language jobs fell from last year’s 983 to 792. Only half of these are tenure-track. These jobs are all that are available for the 977 people who received English doctorates in 2000-2001, not to mention the hundreds of frustrated job-seekers from previous years, on top of those with so-so jobs who are looking to trade up. ... In 1997, Mr. Greenblatt moved east with his second wife, Ramie Targoff, whom imaginative gossips claim is an heiress and a former Chanel model. Ms. Targoff teaches in the English department at Brandeis University ... Mr. Greenblatt has also co-edited The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare ... Retired Princeton historian and famous leftie Natalie Zemon Davis, whom one conventioneer called 'the haute couture Communist,' was schmoozing in an adjoining room with Clifford Geertz. This was not her first M.L.A., she said, adding that she was mostly there because of her close personal and professional connections with Mr. Greenblatt. ... Descending from the party in the elevator, the University of Texas’ well-regarded Mark Twain specialist Shelley Fisher Fishkin was practically beside herself about the publishing question."

Man Arrested After Stealing German Plane,
iwon, Jan 5, 2002
"A man stole a small aircraft at gunpoint Sunday and flew it over downtown Frankfurt, circling skyscrapers and threatening to crash into the European Central Bank. He landed safely after about two hours and was arrested. The man, apparently a German, told a television station he wanted to call attention to Judith Resnik, a U.S. astronaut killed in the 1986 post-launch explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Military jets chased the stolen, two-seat motorized glider as the man began circling slowly above Frankfurt's banking district. Hundreds of people were evacuated from the main railway station and dozens more from several skyscrapers, which were mostly empty on a Sunday afternoon at the end of the Christmas season. Authorities refused to identify the man, who was being questioned at the airport. But news channel n-tv named him as Franz-Stephan Strambach. 'I want to make my great idol Judith Resnik famous with this,' he said in a call from the plane to the channel. 'She deserves more attention, she was the first Jewish astronaut, and maybe that's why she isn't really considered.' Police said the man had identified the Central Bank headquarters as a possible target ... Though the man told n-tv he didn't want to harm anyone, he threatened to commit suicide once his fuel ran out. He landed at 5:11 p.m. at Frankfurt's international airport, where flights were halted during the drama ... Strambach's name appears as the webmaster of an Internet site devoted to Resnik, with links documenting her career, death and efforts to remember her, including the position in the night sky of an asteroid carrying her name."

Questions abound after wild ride for love of dead Jewish astronaut,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 8, 2002
"Some Germans may be obsessed with Jews, but few demonstrate their fixations the way Franz Stephan Strambach did. On Sunday, Strambach, a psychology student now under lock and key at the Hadamar psychiatric hospital, stole a small plane from an airport near Frankfurt and took it on a wild ride through the skies of the city, threatening to crash into the European Central Bank tower. He finally landed without incident. Strambach, 31, said he wanted to call attention to his hero, the Jewish astronaut Judith Resnik. 'I want to make my big idol Judith Resnik famous,' Strambach told German TV journalist Leo Busch, who spoke to the amateur pilot while he was still airborne. Resnik, who died in the explosion of the Challenger shuttle 17 years ago, 'deserves more attention,' Strambach said. 'She was the first Jewish astronaut. Perhaps that’s why she never got proper attention' ... There is no indication that Strambach is Jewish ... Journalist Henryk Broder, an observer of relations between Jews and non-Jews in Germany, told JTA he did not think the case was 'an example of the usual German sickness vis-a-vis the Jews' — a philo-Semitism that sometimes manifests itself in a fascination with Jewish life and culture. Rather, he said, this is 'an individual problem.' But reporting of the incident reflected another problem: a lingering discomfort in Germany about Jewish issues. While live feeds carried Strambach’s comments about Resnik’s Jewishness, it was cut out of later news broadcasts. There also was no public reaction from Jewish leaders ... . 'Although the pilot made it clear on the telephone that he wanted the world to remember Judith Resnik as the first Jewish astronaut in the world, the adjective ‘Jewish’ was suppressed from most evening news reports,' the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper wrote in an editorial on Tuesday. 'This single piece of information was kept under quarantine. It should perhaps be handled carefully, but instead it was suppressed.' When it comes to Jewish topics, 'German journalists and people in general are very cautious, and they don’t want to make mistakes. Rather than making a mistake they prefer to do nothing,' Thomas Schmid, a political editor at the newspaper, told JTA in an interview Wednesday. Reporters 'were astonished hearing and seeing on TV that the hijacker wanted to promote ‘the Jewish astronaut Judith Resnik.’ They said, ‘Oh, this is very strange and maybe a dangerous case for Germans, so we won’t put it in the news,’ 'Schmid said ... Asked what German journalists might have feared, Schmid said he thought many journalists 'believe there may be attitudes among the population against Jewish people, so if it’s possible not to mention that the person is a Jew, it’s better.'"

Moral Defense of Israel,
Ayn Rand Institute
[This links to an entire web page with various articles in defense of the brutal, racist Jewish state; Ayn Rand was Jewish, as are many in her "Objectivist" movement, including current Executive Director, Israeli-born Yaron Brook] This ARI web page includes titles such as "Israel Morals Match Rand Ideology"] See also "Ayn Rand on the Death of Innocents in War", also War, Nuclear Weapons and "Innocents" : "With full moral certainty we must urge our government to defend our lives, even if that requires nuclear weapons and hundreds of thousands of deaths in terrorist countries." Also, "The Immorality of a "Compassionate War" on Terrorism" "On the first day of bombing Afghan military targets, our Air Force was busy delivering charity food packages stamped 'This food is a gift from the United States of America.' We have already lavished on the Afghans more than 450,000 aid packages. Not only is such alms-giving expensive (the President has pledged $320 million worth of food and medicine), but it also betrays an obscene inversion of morality."

[ 1) Circumcision is medically unnecessary. 2) Jews, by self-definition, must be circumcised 3) Non-Jews in the Western world have had no religious reasons for circumcision. 4) Circumcision has always been the absolute way to recognize a Jew from the rest of the population, and this way was used by the Nazis. 5) Jews are preeminent in the medical field. Do these things have anything to do with each other? ]
The unkindest of cuts,
Times Online (UK), January 13, 2003
"There is one operation being carried out on thousands of British children by NHS doctors without any clinical need — and without the patient’s consent. This procedure has an irreversible physical effect, yet there has been minimal public debate about the extent to which it is being performed. The procedure is non-religious circumcision, carried out on 'therapeutic' grounds on 4 to 6 per cent of boys under 15. Increasingly, the expert consensus is that most non-religious circumcisions are carried out for reasons of family history, medical myth and professional laziness. Some campaigners claim that as many as five in six of these circumcisions are unnecessary and potentially traumatising. Circumcision has become the subject of bitter debate in the US, where 80 per cent of men are circumcised. Doctors Opposing Circumcision is one of a range of groups challenging the medical orthodoxy of circumcision at birth; their campaign has been buoyed by a statement from the American Medical Association that there is insufficient evidence of benefit to recommend routine neonatal circumcision. Here, the British Medical Association is reviewing its guidelines and is due to announce its findings in March; current guidance makes it clear that it is unethical to circumcise for therapeutic reasons where research shows that less invasive techniques are available. Norm-UK, an organisation which campaigns against circumcision, estimates that fewer than 1 per cent of boys require the operation, and that most of those performed on the NHS are unnecessary ... Yet the psychological issues are complex: in a largely Jewish or Islamic community, this argument works as much in favour of circumcision as against it. Dr Lotte Newman, a former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners who chairs the circumcision working party of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is troubled by developments in Sweden which may lead to a ban on child circumcision there."

Student's Search for Albert Einstein's Wife and Daughter Illuminates the Theory of Relativity,
Mt. Holyoke (college)
"What started as a simple translation job led Marija Dokmanovic '99 on a three-year search for information about the lives of the wife and the illegitimate daughter of Albert Einstein. The puzzle began when, as a student at Armand Hammer United World College, Dokmanovic was approached by an author planning to write a book on Mileva Maric Einstein and the daughter Albert sired while he and Mileva were young physics students. Dokmanovic was fascinated with the topic because she (like Mileva) is from Serbia, where Mileva is known as an important scientist despite her obscure life history. Dokmanovic collaborated with author Michelle Zackheim, translating letters and faxes between Serbo-Croatian and English. Later, she, her mother, and Zackheim scoured Serbian, German, Austrian, and Swiss archives and unearthed surprising facts about the great physicist's wife and daughter. Mileva and Albert were lovers as students, and Mileva probably gave their daughter, Lieserl, up for adoption in 1902, apparently because the scandal might hurt his career. They later married, and--as letters that Dokmanovic and fellow researchers found make clear--Mileva helped Albert refine many of the ideas for which he became famous. Mileva was devoted to Albert; as a 'typical Serbian woman,' Dokmanovic says, she would do anything to please her husband. Mileva did Albert's university homework, gave up her own physics career for his, took care of their schizophrenic son even after Albert divorced her, and was his scientific partner. Dokmanovic has seen letters indicating that Albert adopted some of his wife's ideas. 'Mileva's not given any credit, but she had a great impact on Albert's research ... [Mileva] was the only woman studying in Zurich Polytech Institute. But she stopped her thesis work, married Albert, and gave him all the credit. I would never do that, not even for Albert Einstein.'"

Building Morningside Heights, [upper Manhattan area]
Columbia University
"The builders responsible for the development of most early twentieth-century apartment houses in New York City a nd almost all of the apartment buildings on Morningside Heights reflect the major changes that were occurring in the city's ethnic composition during this period, especially the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Italians and Eastern European Jews. The entry of immigrant Italians and Jews and the children of these immigrants into the worlds of real estate, building, and investment coincided with the advent of the apartment building as the most popular form of middle-class residence in Manhattan ... The most active builders on Morningside Heights were members of the Paterno family, which had emigrated from Castelemezzano near Naples. The Paterno family built 37 buildings on Morningside Heights ... The vast majority of other builders active in the Morningside Heights neighborhood were Jewish. Many were small-scale builders involved with only a few buildings, but others established major careers as apartment-house developers. Some built under their own names or as corporations that bore their names, but the most active Jewish builders incorporated as real estate firms with names stripped of Jewish ethnic identity. For example, Edgar A. Levy, Jacob Stein, and Leo S. Bing were partners in the Carlyle Realty Company, Jacob Axelrod was president of the West Side Construction Company, and Charles Newmark headed the Carnegie Construction Company. Like the builders, many, but by no means all of the architects commissioned by the speculative developers to design apartment buildings were also from Italian and Jewish backgrounds, including Gaetan Ajello, Simon Schwartz, Arthur Gross, George and Edward Blum, and William Rouse."

Hitler's clairvoyant. A new biography tells the bizarre tale of the Jewish psychic who met with the future Führer for private sessions and predicted his rise,
Salon.com, February 27, 2002
"In the weeks leading up to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reichschancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, there was nothing inevitable about the Austrian corporal's ascension to power. Results of the 1932 November Reichstag elections were disappointing for his National Socialist Party, with the Nazis suffering losses in the German parliament while retaining about a third of the seats there. Nazi coffers had been drained dry by the campaign. Hitler had endured significant defections from his movement and threatened suicide. Some Nazis began to wonder if he had the right stuff to be their Führer. It was at this point that Hitler, falling back on his belief in the occult, called the most renowned clairvoyant in the land to his headquarters at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin for a private session. The man Hitler met with that day is the subject of a recent biography (the first in the English language), 'Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant,' by Mel Gordon. Hanussen, 43 at the time of the Hotel Kaiserhof session, was a man whose name was synonymous with psychic phenomena in Central Europe. The Vienna-born con man/celebrity seer was known for predicting the future, casting prescient horoscopes and astounding audiences with his feats of hypnotism and mind reading. In Berlin, Hanussen [born Hermann Steinschneider] was a rock star before there were rock stars, with a vast business enterprise trading on the voracious German hunger for all things paranormal. Hitler became a Hanussenite when in March of 1932 the psychic's own weekly newspaper, Erik Jan Hanussen's Berliner Wochenschau, printed the startling prophecy that within one year's time the future Führer would become Reichschancellor. Most Berliners scoffed. For many, Hitler was a megalomaniacal clown. But if the average Berliner thought Hanussen's prognostication absurd, Hitler certainly didn't. When Hanussen came to him that cold day in January, the Nazi leader was filled with dread anticipation, and kept the meeting secret should the results be negative. Hanussen placed Hitler on a seat in the middle of the room, examined his hands, counted the bumps on his head and sank into a mystical trance. The words he spoke filled the Führer with elation, says Gordon. 'I see victory for you,' Hanussen said. 'It cannot be stopped.' By the end of the month, Hitler had cut a deal with his enemies and become titular head of a coalition government. Hanussen's vision had given him hope in his hour of uncertainty. One can only wonder the intensity of his rage, if the raving anti-Semite had known at the time that the man he had adopted as his personal soothsayer, the chap nicknamed 'the Prophet of the Third Reich,' the decadent mystic who had just run his hands through his Aryan locks, was in fact ... a Jew ... The burning of the Reichstag on Feb. 27, 1933, for which German communists took the fall, paved the way for the consolidation of power in Hitler's hands and the suspension of all civil liberties. Eerily, the day before, Hanussen had predicted the event through a medium during the opening soiree of his newly minted pagan temple, the Palace of the Occult, a marble and gold-decked Taj Mahal of the black arts in Berlin decorated with astrological signs and religious statues."

Nobody’s Punching Bag,
Moment, December-January
"Jackie Kallen thinks of Jews as natural-born fighters. It’s part of our heritage to do battle,' she says—and she should know—she’s made a career of it. And now Hollywood has taken notice. Known by many as the 'first lady of boxing,' this 56-year-old ex-journalist has managed four champions, including six-time crown-holder Tommy 'Hit Man' Hearns and middleweight champion James 'Lights Out' Toney. What’s a nice bubbe from Detroit doing in the fight game? Doing what comes naturally, that’s what. 'Managing a boxer,' she says matter-of-factly, is 'a lot like being a Jewish mother. A manager has to take care of her fighter’s living situation, meals, grooming, you name it.' While catering to the needs of her surrogate family members—she’s even played Scrabble with them to soothe big-fight jitters—Kallen became the inspiration for a soon-to-be released major motion picture starring Meg Ryan called Up Against the Ropes."

Sorting through the Shuttle Debris,
Hoffman Wire, by Michael A. Hoffman II, February 2, 2003
"NASA astronaut Ilan Ramon was a scientist, conducting dust particle experiments under the supervision of Yehoyahin Yosef, professor of planetary physics at Tel Aviv University. Ramon was also a colonel in the Israeli air force, a war hero according to the Washington Post, '...who took part in Israel's famed 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor...Ramon clocked more than 3,000 hours as a combat pilot in A-4, Mirage III-C and F-4 Phantom fighter planes, and he logged more than 1,000 in the U.S.-built F-16....He fought in the 1982 war in Lebanon.' But what burnishes Ramon's image more than any other of his dazzling accomplishments, is his hallowed niche in the pantheon of Holocaustianity, the West's state religion. In an interview published by Israel's Foreign Ministry, Col. Ramon declared, 'I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor. I carry on the suffering of the Holocaust generation...' In an interview with NASA, he noted that his mother had been imprisoned in Auschwitz and held the exalted status of 'Holocaust Survivor.' The Washington Post reported, 'Like many astronauts, Ramon took a variety of personal effects with him into space...He...took a pencil drawing entitled 'Moon Landscape' by a 14-year-old Jewish boy, Peter Ginz, who was killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.' And thus a legend is born, Ilan Ramon, patron saint of astronauts and that lofty class of congenital sufferers, the Children of Holocaust Survivors. To this pious category must be added another in the taxonomy of victimhood, the Survivors of Dead Zionist Astronauts. Prior to Ramon there was Resnick, one of seven astronauts killed in the January 28, 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion. One hesitates to raise puckish questions during a funerary rite, but perhaps we might be forgiven if we pause in the midst of Col. Ramon's hagiography just long enough to burn a requiem candle to the memory of the French scientist and the two other people Ramon killed when he bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981. Back then, Col. Ramon's bombing was infamous rather than 'famed.' Even the NY Times characterized it as 'a sneak attack...an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.' The celebrated Israeli scientist-astronaut is thus guilty of the murder of a scientist, but the life of the French scientist and the status of his survivors is, under the circumstances, not worth the faintest mention. Moreover, our hero 'fought' in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, logging thousands of hours in military aircraft. The use of the word 'fought' with regard to Lebanon smacks of some slight hyperbole, in that the Israeli air force was unopposed over Beirut's skies, as Ramon and his fellow heroes dropped wave after wave of napalm and cluster bombs on schools, hospitals and apartment buildings, culminating in the around-the-clock terror-bombing of downtown Beirut in August, 1982. The Israelis killed an estimated 20,000 civilians in Lebanon. Would it be opportune to light a candle for those Arab victims of this Israeli holocaust, or is Arab blood undeserving of recollection? ... As Israeli newscasters reported that the shuttle catastrophe had been visible over a town in Texas named Palestine, it was, said Reuters Jerusalem correspondent Michele Gershberg,"a bitter irony lost on no one." The medium is the message. The symbolism of the Israeli 'combat air force' pilot blowing up in the approximate vicinity of Palestine, Texas requires no embellishment or explication. This is sunrise language rather than twilight language, telegraphing a message as unmistakable as a left hook to the jaw. Rarely does what we might call 'the hand of God' move so dramatically in world affairs, but when it does there are no excuses for ignorance; it is 'a bitter irony lost on no one.' Human beings are often muttering, 'Why is God silent?' On the morning of Feb. 1, He fairly shouted at a deaf, dumb and blind western world, which, until then, had been content to celebrate NASA's selection of an Israeli astronaut in the midst of the ongoing collective punishment of the Palestinian people. When this writer learned that an Israeli was in orbit on NASA's shuttle, the first image that came to my mind was of all the dead and dying in Palestine, and of how America had lost all sense of shame. Now there are other dead strewn across the landscape of an alternate Palestine. It remains to be seen whether from this disaster we learn the sobering message that the Supreme Power wishes to impart, or if we submit ourselves instead to the beguiling electronic spectacle generated by the rulers of this world, who are not yet, for all their space age gizmos and gadgets, masters of the heavens. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."

Rivers of ridicule, STAGE REVIEW: JOAN RIVERS,
Australian Jewish News, February 24, 2003
"Once you have seen her perform, there is no way to be neutral about American entertainer Joan Rivers. You are either a fan and they packed her Australian tour shows last week, roaring with laughter or you're not. As a first-timer at a Rivers performance, I'm afraid I now belong to the latter category. Strutting on stage to deliver a localised version of her London West End show Broke and Alone, Rivers unleashed a blizzard of one-liners that savaged just about every subject imaginable. Wall-to-wall obscenities actually were not the turn-off although the ferocious speed with which she spits them out made them tedious and somehow took away that acerbic underscore that comedians hope for when they swear. The stream of four-letter words simply had the effect of making the content of her material even more vituperative. It's an age of receding boundaries, with almost every subject fair game, yet some might find Holocaust humour distressing. I did. There was an Anne Frank joke. No thanks. Rivers' comic universe is a parade of crude 1970s-era stereotypes. It is a realm in which the world belongs to the rich and the thin and where the poor, the obese, the aged and infirm are pariahs to be ridiculed ... If Rivers' comic business is perpetuating the persona of the bad New York broad, then she excels."

Erich Fromm, Judaism, and the Frankfurt School,
By Douglas Kellner, Illuminations
"The Frankfurt School had a highly ambivalent relation to Judaism. On one hand, they were part of that Enlightenment tradition that opposed authority, tradition, and all institutions of the past -- including religion. They were also, for the most part, secular Jews who did not support any organized religion, or practice religious or cultural Judaism. In this sense, they were in the tradition of Heine, Marx, and Freud for whom Judaism was neither a constitutive feature of their life or work, nor a significant aspect of their self-image and identity. And yet the Frankfurt School's relation to Judaism was varied. Several of the key members of the group had orthodox Jewish upbringings, or at least studied and practiced some elements of Judaism. Moreover, for some of the members, Judaism played an important role in their life and work. For Walter Benjamin and Erich Fromm, their Judaic heritage figured importantly in key stages of their lives and works. Judaism was of some but arguably not major significance at different stages of their lives for Lowenthal and Horkheimer; and Judaism appears not to have been particularly important for Marcuse and Adorno. Yet all Jews were outsiders in Weimar Germany and all of the Frankfurt School were forced into exile because of their Jewish background after the rise of fascism in 1933. One could argue that the members of the Frankfurt School were also to some extent outsiders in the United States where they found exile in part at least because of their Jewishness. At this time, the Frankfurt school made anti-semitism, prejudice, and the situation of the Jews a major thematic focus of their work. During the years in Weimar prior to emigration in 1934, however, the Frankfurt School did not thematize the issue of the situation of the Jews in their major works and in a 1938 article the Director of the Institute for Social Research, Max Horkheimer, wrote an article 'The Jews in Europe' in which anti-semitism was explained as a mere reflex of the vicissitudes of monopoly capitalism in the end of its liberal phase ... In this entry, I will discuss the ways that Judaism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism intersected in the work of Erich Fromm, constituting a distinctive mode of Jewish writing that combined religion and Enlightenment conceptions. I argue that Fromm was at once traditionally Jewish and radically secular, and that his early immerse in Jewish religion and culture came to shape his distinctive views and work ... Fromm himself was born into an orthodox Jewish family and both of his parents came from families of rabbis ... Throughout his youth, Fromm was deeply involved in the study of the Talmud and with his friend Leo Lowenthal, later an important member of the Frankfurt School, he joined the circle around the eminent Rabbi Nehemiah Nobel, rabbi of the largest Frankfurt synagogue ... In the middle of the 1920s, Fromm was introduced to psychoanalysis via the Jewish psychoanalyst Frieda Reichmann, who later became his wife. Reichman ran a private psychoanalytic institution in Heidelberg which practiced Jewish traditions, earning the Institute the nickname of the 'Torah-peutic Clinic.' Fromm himself trained as a psychoanalyst, opened his own practice in 1927, and married Reichmann. Fromm's first published essay was on 'The Sabbath' and, drawing on psychoanalysis, he argued that 'The Sabbath originally served as a reminder of the killing of the father and the winning of the mother; the commandment not to work served as a penance for original sin and for its repetition through regression to the pre-genital stage' ... One of his first major essays was on 'The Dogma of Christ' (1930; reprinted 1963) in which Fromm argued against the interpretation of the origins of Christianity of another psychoanalyst, Theodor Reik."

Goldenberg candy,
(web site)

[Charles Hurwitz, a United Jewish Appeal-Federation official, is the majority stockholder in Maxxam]
Logging Pollution Damages North Coast Watersheds,
Environment News Service, January 29, 2003
"Accelerated logging has polluted some 85 percent of the waters in California's North Coast region, uprooted protected redwoods and damaged private property, but state officials continue to permit logging companies to avoid complying with environmental regulations. California environmentalists are fighting back with lawsuits, and activists continue to take to the trees in a desperate attempt to save ancient redwoods and their surrounding ecosystems ... The controversy over the management of the North Coast forests has deep roots. In 1985, Maxxam, a Texas based corporation, succeeded in a $900 million hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber, a company with local ties stretching back to the 1850s. Maxxam kept the Pacific Lumber name, but tripled the rate of its logging operations. A chorus of protests soon followed, as activists took to the streets and to the trees, appealing to the public and the logging industry to protect many of the world's last redwood forests. The result of these protests came 10 years later, with the Headwaters Forest deal between the federal government and Pacific Lumber. At the heart of the deal was the exchange of $480 million in public money for some 7,500 acres of ancient redwoods, which is called the Headwaters Forest. Although it included a 50 year ban on logging within some additional 7,000 acres, it allowed Pacific Lumber to bypass many logging restrictions on much of its land, including protections for endangered species and limits on the rate of logging. The company owns some 210,000 acres in Humboldt County. It is nearly four years later and many local activists are clearly not happy with the consequences."

[Another Jewish monopoly:]
Ever wonder why the stars come out for charity? Thank celebrity brokers,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 3, 2003
"Celebrity Connection, founded 20 years ago by Barry Greenberg, is the exclusive coordinator for all of B’nai B’rith’s fund-raising dinners in the United States. Greenberg, 51, is a pioneer in the celebrity brokering business, which involves finding, matching and hiring celebrities to make appearances on behalf of organizations. While celebrity brokering is still a small industry, it’s growing fast as America becomes ever more obsessed with celebrity. Curiously, virtually all the major players in the field are Jewish. 'Initially, Celebrity Connection was conceived as a clearinghouse for celebrity participation in charity,' recalls Greenberg, who previously worked for Jewish nonprofit organizations, including B’nai B’rith and the Jewish National Fund, and currently is vice president of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Calif ... While Celebrity Connection is the oldest and biggest firm in the industry, another key player is Celebrity Source in Los Angeles. Established in 1988 by Rita Tateel, who has a background in Jewish communal service, Celebrity Source also is a full-service firm, which often arranges video or satellite celebrity if celebrities can’t attend an event in person ... Another player in the field is Mark Goldman, founder and principal of the Oxnard, Calif-based Damon Brooks, a boutique firm in the niche market of celebrities and athletes who have overcome disabilities ... [Billy] Crystal, for example, 'throws his energy into big projects, like the planned Performing Arts Peace Center at the Hebrew University, to which he has personally donated $1.5 million,' Brezner says."

Leaders of the Pack.A new book recounts the large Jewish influence on rock ’n’ roll, but misses a few beats,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angles, February 14, 2003
[Review of “Rock ’n’ Roll Jews,” by Professor Michael Billig - Syracuse University Press, $19.95]
"Mothers, politicians (Southerners, especially) and clergy alike worried that rock music would rot the morality of their children. To classical music aficionados, rock was merely a geological formation, certainly not a musical form. Nevertheless, it has not only endured for a half-century, but rock music has created a volcano in popular world culture. Today rock music is a multibillion dollar industry, by far the most profitable and distributed of all musical genres. In 'Rock ’n’ Roll Jews' — a personal passion of Professor Michael Billig of England’s Loughborough University — we discover that Jews were, and continue to be, major players in the rock industry. For every 'name' performer, like Bette Midler, there are hundreds of behind-the-scenes Jewish figures who have enabled rock to thrive. To Billig, rock is very 'Jewish' ... Irving Berlin, who popularized Tin Pan Alley music (the forerunner of rock), was a commercially successful role model for many of the pioneer Jewish rock ’n’ rollers. The heroes of Billig’s rich work are not the household names we recognize as performers. Rather, they are the obscure and often tormented lives of songwriters with names like Doc Pomus (R&B songwriter for Elvis), who was confined to a wheelchair due to childhood polio. Other personalities in the book include Los Angeles’ own enigmatic producer, Phil Spector Another interesting story is told of Lou Reed, the urban music legend of 'Take A Walk on the Wild Side' fame. He wrote racy lyrics at a time when radio stations were fearful of having their licenses lifted by the Federal Communications Commission. We also find colorful sketches of Monterey Rock Music Festival maven Lou Adler, but not his co-producer, Holocaust survivor Bill Graham. And then there are the 'black lyrics' of co-writers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller ... Billig defends the role of the Jews. He observes that Jews wrote, produced and successfully distributed to white radio stations many top hits for black groups ... ” Only in the “counterculture” 1960s did other obviously Jewish performers surface. The nonethnic Tom and Jerry of the 1950s became the very Jewish Simon and Garfunkel of the 1960s and ’70s. Billy Joel, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is another rock idol of the new type. Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow represent a middle-of-the-road musical sound and a very Jewish persona. Paradoxically, the two groups that bemoan “satanic” rock music the most — Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews — both use this medium to effectively communicate the human relationship to God. For trivia buffs, Norman Greenbaum is the Jewish singer-songwriter behind one of the most popular Christian rock songs of all-time, 'Spirit in the Sky.' Yet, he never converted to Christianity."

Old Smoke: The Death of Daniel Burros,
New York Press, February 18, 2003
"A Jewish Klansman who did more than just hate himself. The Times reporter was wrapping up his breakfast interview with the Grand Dragon of New York, the state boss of the Ku Klux Klan. They were in a luncheonette near Lefferts Blvd. in Queens, a little before 9:00 a.m. on Fri., Oct. 29, 1965. They had gone over the Klansman’s education, jobs, and military career. Then John McCandlish Phillips asked Daniel Burros how he had become a Nazi. The 28-year-old Burros, squat, blue-eyed, with crew-cut blond hair, talked about his admiration of the Third Reich and his hatred of the Jews, gloating that their purge in the United States would be far more violent than it had been in a 'civilized and highly cultured' country like Germany. The conversation continued until Phillips murmured, 'Your parents were married by the Reverend Bernard Kallenberg in a Jewish ceremony in The Bronx.' Before leaving the luncheonette, Burros said that he would kill Phillips. Daniel Burros, son of George and Esther Sunshine Burros, grandson of Russian Jews, was born March 5, 1937. He attended Hebrew school at Talmud Torah in Richmond Hill; his bar mitzvah was held there on March 4, 1950, the fifteenth day of Adar ... Burros worked as a printer at the Queens Borough Public Library. Though a diligent, conscientious employee, he talked of nothing but his admiration for Hitler and his hatred of Jews. His parents knew. They prayed it would go away. In his spare time, Burros operated the one-man American National Socialist Party from a post office box in South Ozone Park. He rubber-stamped swastikas onto his letters; distributed fliers such as 'There’s Nothing Wrong with America That a Pogrom Wouldn’t Cure.' He preached that 'the Jews must suffer and suffer and suffer.' In 1960, Burros moved to Arlington, VA. He lived at the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, where the rug was an ark curtain from a synagogue. He swore an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and to George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi leader ... While working at a Manhattan printing company, Burros joined other dissident Nazis in founding the American National Party."

[So, what does the following article signify? That Jewish author Daniel Levitas is a fraudster, trying to pin the label of  "Jewish" upon virtually all and everything -- wherein virtually ANYTHING is coopted to the "Jewish" root, or that "Jews" DO turn up at the helm of virtually all and everything? In either case, apparently unbeknownst to Mr. Levitas, he makes a bizarre case for "Jewish" omnipresence.]
Hate thy neighbor,
by Daniel Levitas, Creative Loafing, November 27, 2002
"The raspy voice of 'Reverend' William Potter Gale filled the airwaves over western Kansas on a summer night in July 1982. From the studios of country music station KTTL in Dodge City, Gale's tape-recorded sermon carried into homes, diners, cars and the cabs of combines that rolled across the last unharvested fields of winter wheat. The retired Army lieutenant colonel spoke in short rapid-fire bursts: ...'If a Jew comes near you, run a sword through him.' Like Gale's other speeches and sermons, this broadcast had a hate-filled theme: A satanic Jewish conspiracy disguised as communism was corrupting public officials and the courts, undermining the sovereignty of America and its divinely inspired Constitution. Gale, a self-proclaimed 'minister' in the Christian faith, believed that white Anglo-Saxon Christians were the true descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel to whom God's covenant belonged. Jews were children of the devil,and the nonwhites that swarmed the planet were 'mud people,' incomplete renditions of the pure Aryan man that God created in Adam. Obsessed with maintaining white supremacy, Gale railed against all forms of 'race-mixing' as a violation of 'God's law.' Other sermons warned of racial Armageddon, attacked Catholics and other minorities, and advised listeners to learn guerrilla warfare so they could garrote people in their sleep. 'You're damn right I'm teaching violence!" Gale acknowledged. You better start making dossiers, names, addresses, phone numbers, car license numbers, on every damn Jew rabbi in this land ... and you better start doing it now. And know where he is. If you have to be told any more than that, you're too damn dumb to bother with.' But William Potter Gale had a secret -- something that ultimately exposed the hypocrisy of all he preached ... Inspired by his hatred of the government, Gale created the paramilitary group known as the Posse Comitatus ... Gale officially established the Posse Comitatus in 1971. And a decade later, he helped launch the Christian Patriot movement ... During the early '70s, when other right-wing organizations were collapsing, the Posse thrived by disseminating its ideas and spawning successive waves of violence. It was largely unaffected by Gale's death in 1988, 17 years after its founding. Like children grown to maturity, the forces he shaped have fueled the radical right to the present day. From Gale's original ideas and comparatively narrow base of tax protesters and Christian Identity believers, the message of the Posse Comitatus has spread across America, spawning crime and violence and pushing seemingly marginal ideas into the mainstream. It ultimately metamorphosed into the broader Christian Patriot and militia movements of the late '80s and '90s. For decades, the Ku Klux Klan and its various allies had created social movements and sought political power based upon explicit appeals to racial purity and Christian Nationalism. Gale was no less fanatical in his devotion to 'white survival' or his denunciations of world Jewry -- a fanaticism that may well have grown out of a fervent self-denial of his own genealogy ... Even today, millions of Americans share the belief that the United States should be a predominantly Christian nation. That blacks breed crime and are innately less intelligent than whites. That interracial marriage should be against the law. That Jews are clannish, cunning and too powerful for the good of the country. Added to these essential themes of bigotry -- which resonate well beyond the ranks of the far right -- is the vague but popular notion that the nation is on the verge of relinquishing its sovereignty to a shadowy cabal of 'globalistic' forces known as 'the New World Order' ... The resulting threats and violence prompted the United States Department of Justice to launch a full domestic security investigation of the Posse in 1976 ... But the story of the Posse Comitatus begins not with a litany of its failures and achievements, or with the Oklahoma City bombing, or with manifestos and sermons, or with violent altercations that made headlines and left lawmen and others dead. It starts at a personal level, a century earlier, with the ancestors of William Potter Gale and their arrival in America. Like other 19th-century immigrants, they were fleeing tyranny and seeking freedom. And remarkably, the Gale family was Jewish. Over his three decades of right-wing activism, Gale successfully hid the secret of his Jewish roots, even as he preached the anti-Semitic theology of Christian Identity, claiming that Jews were satanic and white Anglo-Saxon Christians were the true descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Ironically enough, Bill Gale was a Jewish anti-Semite who spent a lifetime trying to convince Christian anti-Semites that they, too, were Jews."

[The Anti-Defamation League has for years co-opted the FBI in ADL's search for "hate" and "anti-Semitism." The Jewish American Lobby's private, pro-Israel spy agency has morphed into America's government surveillance system.]
Remarks prepared for delivery,
by Robert S. Mueller III, Director,
Federal Bureau of Investigation at the Anti-Defamation League's 24th Annual National Leadership Conference Washington, DC May 7, 2002
"I have long admired and respected the work of ADL, and I appreciate your longstanding support of the FBI. I know that under my predecessor, Louis Freeh, this partnership reached new heights. As I told Abe and Jess [heads of the ADL], I am absolutely committed to building on that relationship. We in the FBI tremendously value your perspectives and your partnership. Your insights and research into extremism are particularly helpful to us, shedding light on the changing nature of the terrorist threats facing America. Your support of hate crime and terrorist investigations, which are now front and center in the work of the FBI, is essential to us. And the training and education you provide for the FBI and for law enforcement have never been more relevant. That includes the conference on extremist and terrorist threats you are sponsoring later this month at the FBI Academy. And it especially includes the classes at the Holocaust Museum that Abe and Jess helped arrange for our New Agents and for National Academy students."

Police On My Back. Costa Mesa cops bomb U.S. Bombs show, Kona Lanes is collateral damage,
Orange Country Register (California), August 1999
"Is the Costa Mesa Police Department, in its zeal to protect the public, slandering OC bands by branding them 'Nazis' or 'skinheads' when they’re nothing of the kind? That’s the question in the wake of a canceled July 10 show by local punkers U.S. Bombs. The band was set to play a record-release party for the group’s latest disc, The World, at Kona Lanes, a Harbor Boulevard bowling alley. Tickets had been sold for the all-ages show, and everything seemed in order—until July 7. That’s when Costa Mesa police Sergeant Clay Epperson approached Kona Lanes management and told them the show could not go on. The reason: Epperson allegedly asserted that U.S. Bombs is a Nazi band, citing as evidence an event flier depicting a shaven-headed, skanking youth. Epperson also told promoters they didn’t have the right permits, and the show was pulled. Scott Tucker, the promoter who booked the U.S. Bombs show at Kona Lanes, admits he may not have had his paperwork in order, but, he says, he had booked shows at the venue last summer under the exact same permits, and there had never been any problems with police before. He says the cancellation cost him and U.S. Bombs about $4,000, as well as a Muffs gig that had to be moved. Tucker says he eventually contacted Epperson in an effort to get to the bottom of things. 'The first thing he asked me was, ‘Do [U.S. Bombs] have a Nazi following?’ I said they didn’t,' says Tucker, who is Jewish."

Rockin’ for Israel. Musicians provide Holy Land support for a song,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, February 23, 2003
"Whereas nightclub gigs seem unlikely places for political rhetoric, Rebbe Soul and a number of other Los Angeles-based musicians are finding that the concert stage provides them with a mini soapbox, where they can espouse their views and galvanize support for Israel from a younger, otherwise disinterested crowd in a way that other political efforts cannot. These musicians, such as Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, The Wallflowers’ Rami Jaffee, Peter Himmelman, the Moshav Band, the Jukebox Junkies and rapper Etan G, are using their art for a cause, either by singing songs that call for the support of the Holy Land, donating their appearance for concerts where the proceeds go to Israel, or both. While the artists tend to steer clear of erudite analyses of Middle East problems, they allow their music to create a supportive, feel-good milieu that will leave listeners feeling positively about Israel. 'Music has a way of breaking down doors, and musicians can really educate the next generation,” said Stuart Wax, the founder of Midnight Music Management, who organized a Rock for Israel concert last May at The Mint nightclub. 'I remember a few years ago years ago, Metallica played a concert in Russia that was televised on MTV, but the same night Slash from Guns N’ Roses was playing ‘Hava Nagila’ at a concert in Tel Aviv, and it was not mentioned anywhere,' he said. 'If kids saw that Guns N’ Roses are playing in Israel and Perry Farrel was playing in Israel, they could understand that Israel is not the [demonized country] they see on TV' ... 'Whenever an organization calls up and says we want to do something for Israel, I usually do it for free,' said Etan G, otherwise known as the Jewish Rapper, who often travels to Israel to perform ... Another Rock for Israel act, the Moshav Band, a Los Angeles-based group made up of three Israeli ex-pats from Moshav Modiin, the settlement founded by the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, have spent the past few years playing gigs in college campuses in order to raise awareness of Israel and Judaism. Many of the concerts were performed as part of an Edgar Bronfman sponsored effort called the Wake Up Tour."

[Jews are the navel of the universe. Is this not an established premise of modern Western culture? And now Judeocentrism declares that the Enlightenment -- the ideological opening that drew Jews out of their self-imposed Talmudic ghettos -- is the basis for fascism. Today's Judeocentrism is the real "fascism" and suffocating totalitarianism in intellectual thinking, wherein all thought, all reality, is twisted to revolve around the presumed Jewish sun against all the rest that is declared now to be darkness.]
The Rage of Reason. A scholar argues that Enlightenment thought was shaped by its obsession with Judaism,
by Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 28, 2003
"For all their championing of reason, toleration, and individual rights, the heroes of the Enlightenment were not exactly enlightened about Jews. A 'vile people, superstitious, ignorant, and both scientifically and commercially stunted,' wrote no less an Enlightenment icon than Voltaire. Such pronouncements were not out of step with the views of many other Enlightenment thinkers. But in his highly anticipated first book, Adam Sutcliffe, a 33-year-old assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, makes the bold claim that what has for centuries been referred to as 'the Jewish question,' rather than being merely a less-than-admirable aspect of Enlightenment thought, was actually of central importance in shaping it. 'Like a stubborn shard of intellectual grit,' Judaism was a 'ubiquitous, troubling, and often frustrating presence' for the philosophical architects of the movement, writes Mr. Sutcliffe in Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press). Regarded as 'not only the most venerably orthodox but also the most inscrutable and most potentially subversive strand of theology,' he says, Judaism was 'uniquely difficult for Enlightenment thinkers to negotiate.' The 'Jewish question' brought out what Mr. Sutcliffe regards as important paradoxes in their thought -- unresolved tensions that he maintains constantly threatened to undermine the very Enlightenment idea. The British-born historian is not the first writer to knock Enlightenment thinkers off their pedestals. The period's 'dark side' has been a recurring theme for more than a century now. Critics (among them Friedrich Nietzsche, the Romantic poets, and Michel Foucault) have charged the Enlightenment as an accomplice to a range of crimes that include not only racism, sexism, and 'phallologocentrism,' but also bureaucracy, technocracy, ecological devastation, Western imperialism -- even fascism. Indeed, in the eyes of some postmodernists, the 'totalizing' tendency of Enlightenment thought -- the aspiration to subsume all of reality in its province -- leads inexorably to totalitarianism. Despite the long tradition of such critiques, scholars are calling Mr. Sutcliffe's work groundbreaking ... During the early years of the Enlightenment -- in the mid-1600s -- there was an intense fascination with Jewish themes and texts. The Reformation ushered in a renewed emphasis on the Old Testament, a turning to Christianity's Jewish roots. Scholars in the new discipline of Christian Hebraism mastered Hebrew and pored over ancient Jewish texts like the Kabbalah, 'scouring' them, Mr. Sutcliffe writes, 'for further proofs of the truth of Christianity' and drawing inspiration from the study of Jewish history. But much of this new focus on Judaism was laced with animosity toward its subject. In what Mr. Sutcliffe describes as a 'barbed embrace,' early Enlightenment thinkers simultaneously idealized and repudiated Judaism, an attraction-repulsion that surfaced repeatedly. Indeed, Mr. Sutcliffe writes, philo-Semitism and Judeophobia were 'frequently intertwined in the same text and even in the same sentence.' Paradoxically, however, as Enlightenment thought became increasingly hostile to religion, it focused on Judaism as the source of Christendom. To attack Christianity at its roots, thinkers such as John Toland and Voltaire turned their critical ire on its Jewish foundations. For the champions of the new Empire of Reason, Judaism came to represent everything they were against. To them, Judaism embodied tribalism, scripturalism, legalism, and irrational adherence to tradition. Where the Enlightenment upheld reason, Judaism wallowed in myth. The Enlightenment stood for the universal, Judaism for the particular. Enlightenment meant cosmopolitanism, Judaism insularity. The Enlightenment promised progress, Judaism threatened atavism. In short, the Enlightenment came to define itself, Mr. Sutcliffe argues, as the antithesis of all things Jewish. It was against the backdrop of this self-image, he argues, that the Enlightenment faced a vexing challenge to its own logic. At the deep heart's core of Enlightenment values was the principle of tolerance. Jews, for Enlightenment thinkers, represented the quintessence of intolerance: intellectually closed off and culturally sealed in. Can an intolerant group of people be tolerated? ... Mr. Sutcliffe, who himself has Jewish roots, 'succeeds in showing that a true understanding of the Enlightenment must take Judaism into account' and will thus change the way scholars approach the subject."

["Burt Prelutsky is a veteran TV writer whose credits include, among others, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show and Diagnosis Murder."]
Diversity, schmiversity,
by Burt Prelutsky, Jewish World Review, March 6, 2003
"A few years ago, I was an Executive Story Consultant on the Dick Van Dyke series, 'Diagnosis Murder.' There were five on us working in the writers' room. We were, by most measures, a fairly diverse group of individuals. Two of us were born in New York, one in New Orleans, one in Chicago, one in a small town in Utah. Three of us were Jews, ranging from Conservative down to merely cultural; one was an ex-Catholic; one was Mormon."

Tearing it up. Michael Savage, once an angry white man who couldn't get the job he wanted, is now a voice of ultraconservatism.. His popular radio talk show can be nasty and politically incorrect. Tough,
Los Angeles Times, March 7 2003
"Operating from his private radio studio on the 15th story of a San Francisco luxury apartment building, Michael Savage, host of the nationally syndicated 'Savage Nation' talk show, is on a tear ... Take a current issue, mine it for possible political correctness, and recast it as a left-wing conspiracy. It is a formula that works. After an earlier career as a writer of homeopathic medicine and folk-remedy books, Savage has emerged as one of the hottest radio hosts in America, reaching 6 million listeners in a network of more than 300 stations nationwide, including KPLS-AM (830) in Los Angeles. His book, also called 'Savage Nation,' has been atop the New York Times bestseller list for weeks. MSNBC has hired him to host his own live TV show, which is to be seen for the first time Saturday. That news sparked an immediate wave of protest, led by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the National Organization for Women and the liberal media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting ... Savage, whose real name is Michael A. Weiner, began his radio career in 1995 at San Francisco's KSFO, a Walt Disney Co. all-talk station that detractors have dubbed 'seig heil on the dial' because of its steady stream of conservative programming, led by the gravel-voiced 60-year-old shock jock, who lives in Marin County. By dwelling on his pet peeves -- illegal immigration, multilingualism and cultural diversity -- Savage trails only Rush Limbaugh (14.5 million listeners); Sean Hannity (10 million); Howard Stern and Dr. Laura Schlessinger (8 million each) at the top of the national talk radio heap, according to Talkers Magazine, the authoritative industry publication ... Who knows how things might have turned out if just one of the 50 colleges Michael A. Weiner applied to for a job beginning in 1978 had responded positively. Weiner, father of two young children, had just received his PhD in epidemiology and nutrition from UC Berkeley. Instead, the grandson of a Jewish immigrant who grew up in the Bronx and who worked previous jobs as a social worker and a high school teacher, met rejection on all fronts."

American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition, Judge Tells Harvard Law School,
MassNews, March 7, 2003
"The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28. She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism ... 'The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: 'The law of nature … dictated by God himself … is binding … in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority … from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation,' said Jones. She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is 'just wrong,' or 'way overblown.' She says they believed in 'faith and reason,' and this did not lead to intolerance. 'This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism,' she continued, 'for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect. ... The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business, pressure mounts to give clients the advice they want to hear, to pander to the clients' goal through deft manipulation of the law. … While the business mentality produces certain benefits, like occasional competition to charge clients lower fees, other adverse effects include advertising and shameless self-promotion. The legal system has also been wounded by lawyers who themselves no longer respect the rule of law. The judge quoted Kenneth Starr as saying, 'It is decidedly unchristian to win at any cost,' and added that most lawyers agree with him. However, 'An increasingly visible and vocal number apparently believe that the strategic use of anger and incivility will achieve their aims. Others seem uninhibited about making misstatements to the court or their opponents or destroying or falsifying evidence,' she claimed. 'When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes essential to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to respect the process?"

Jewish Music,
Jinfo
"Western classical music is an outgrowth of the Gregorian chant, which had its origins in the liturgical chants of the synagogue service. In modern times, Jews have played a major role in music as performers, conductors, and composers. Of the one hundred leading virtuoso performers of the twentieth century listed at http://www.oboss.nl/muziek/100players.htm, approximately two-thirds of the violinists, half the cellists, and forty percent of the pianists were, or are, Jews. Of the one hundred leading conductors of the twentieth century listed at http://www.oboss.nl/muziek/100conductors.htm, approximately one-fourth were, or are, Jews. Among the leading classical composers, the Jewish representation is a more modest ten percent (cf., Master Composers). Jewish composers have, however, played a predominant role in the development of the American musical theater and in the development of film music (at least nine of the "Hollywood Ten" who pioneered this genre were Jews). Finally, approximately one-half of the membership of the Songwriters Hall of Fame is Jewish."

BROADWAY AND HOLLYWOOD MUSICALS WRITTEN BY JEWS,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
ANNIE, Martin Charnin (w) and Charles Strouse (m) ANNIE,GET YOUR GUN, Irving Berlin (w&m) BABES IN ARMS, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) BARNUM, Michael Stewart1 (w) and Cy Coleman (m) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, Howard Ashman (w) and Alan Menken (m) BELLS ARE RINGING, Betty Comden/Adolph Green (w) and Jule Styne (m) THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) BRIGADOON, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) BYE BYE BIRDIE, Lee Adams2 (w) and Charles Strouse (m) CABARET, Fred Ebb (w) and John Kander (m) CAMELOT, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) CANDIDE, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Leonard Bernstein (m) [lyrics also by Richard Wilbur (?)] CAROUSEL, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) CHICAGO, Fred Ebb (w) and John Kander (m) A CHORUS LINE, Edward Kleban (w) and Marvin Hamlisch (m) CITY OF ANGELS, David Zippel (w) and Cy Coleman (m) COMPANY, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) CRAZY FOR YOU, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) DAMN YANKEES, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (w&m) DO I HEAR A WALTZ?, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) FAME, Jacques Levy (w) and Steve Margoshes (m) FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Sheldon Harnick (w) and Jerry Bock (m) FINIAN'S RAINBOW, E. Y. Harburg (w) and Burton Lane (m) FLOWER DRUM SONG, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) 42ND STREET, Al Dubin (w) [music by Harry Warren (non-Jewish)] FUNNY GIRL, Bob Merrill (w) and Jule Styne (m) A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) GIGI, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) GODSPELL, Stephen Schwartz (w&m) THE GOODBYE GIRL, David Zippel (w) and Marvin Hamlisch (m) GUYS AND DOLLS, Frank Loesser (w&m) GYPSY, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Jule Styne (m) HELLO, DOLLY, Jerry Herman (w&m) HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, Frank Loesser (w&m) JEKYLL AND HYDE, Frank Wildhorn (m) [lyrics by Leslie Bricusse (?)] THE KING AND I, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Fred Ebb (w) and John Kander (m) LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, Jerry Herman (w&m) LADY, BE GOOD!, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) LES MISERABLES, Alain Boublil3/Herbert Kretzmer (w) and Claude-Michel Schönberg3 (m) A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, Howard Ashman (w) and Alan Menken (m) LOST IN THE STARS, Kurt Weill (m) [lyrics by Maxwell Anderson (non-Jewish)] MAME, Jerry Herman (w&m) MAN OF LA MANCHA, Joe Darion4 (w) and Mitch Leigh5 (m) MARTIN GUERRE, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (m) [lyrics also by Stephen Clark (?)] MARY POPPINS, Richard and Robert Sherman (w&m) MISS SAIGON, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (m) THE MOST HAPPY FELLA, Frank Loesser (w&m) MY FAIR LADY, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) OKLAHOMA!, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) OH, KAY! Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) OF THEE I SING, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) OLIVER!, Lionel Bart (w&m) ON YOUR TOES, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) ON THE TOWN, Betty Comden/Adolph Green (w) and Leonard Bernstein (m) PAJAMA GAME, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (w&m) PAL JOEY, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) PAINT YOUR WAGON, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) PETER PAN, Betty Comden/Adolph Green/Carolyn Leigh6 (w) and Mark Charlap/Jule Styne (m) PIPPIN, Stephen Schwartz (w&m) PORGY AND BESS, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) [lyrics also by Du Bose Heyward (non-Jewish)] THE PRODUCERS, Mel Brooks (w&m) PROMISES, PROMISES, Hal David (w) and Burt Bacharach (m) RENT, Jonathan Larson7 (w&m) ROSE MARIE, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Rudolph Friml8 (m) [lyrics also by Otto Harbach (?)] 1776, Sherman Edwards9 (w&m) SHOW BOAT, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Jerome Kern (m) THE SOUND OF MUSIC, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) SOUTH PACIFIC, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) STATE FAIR, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) STRIKE UP THE BAND, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) SUNSET BOULEVARD, Don Black3 (w) [lyrics also by Christopher Hampton (non-Jewish) and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (non-Jewish] SWEENEY TODD, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) SWEET CHARITY, Dorothy Fields (w) and Cy Coleman (m) THEY'RE PLAYING OUR SONG, Carole Bayer Sager (w) and Marvin Hamlisch (m) TITANIC, Maury Yeston (w&m) UP IN CENTRAL PARK, Dorothy Fields (w) and Sigmund Romberg (m) WEST SIDE STORY, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Leonard Bernstein (m) THE WIZARD OF OZ, E. Y. Harburg (w) and Harold Arlen (m)

Jewish Song Writers and Composers,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
CLASSICAL COMPOSERS George Antheil Milton Babbitt Leonard Bernstein Marc Blitzstein Ernest Bloch Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Aaron Copland Richard Danielpour1 David Diamond Paul Dukas Hanns Eisler Rudolf Friml2 George Gershwin Philip Glass Reinhold Gliére3 Louis Moreau Gottschalk4 Morton Gould Emmerich Kalman Aaron Jay Kernis Leon Kirchner Erich Korngold Fritz Kreisler5 György Ligeti Gustav Mahler Felix Mendelssohn Giacomo Meyerbeer Darius Milhaud Jacques Offenbach Shulamit Ran Steve Reich George Rochberg Sigmund Romberg Alfred Schnittke6 Arnold Schoenberg William Schuman Robert Starer Johann Strauss, Sr.7 Oscar Straus Ernest Toch Emil Waldteufel Kurt Weill POPULAR SONGWRITERS Harold Arlen Burt Bacharach Lionel Bart Alan and Marilyn Bergman Irving Berlin Leonard Bernstein Don Black8 Jerry Bock Eric Carmen9 Cy Coleman Betty Comden Hal David Neil Diamond Bob Dylan Fred Ebb Dorothy Fields Rudolf Friml2 Art Garfunkel George and Ira Gershwin Adolph Green Marvin Hamlisch Oscar Hammerstein, II E. Y. Harburg Lorenz Hart Jerry Herman James Horner10 Billy Joel Sammy Kahn John Kander Jerome Kern Carole King Burton Lane Mitch Leigh11 Alan J. Lerner Frank Loesser Frederick Loewe12 Johnny Mandel Barry Mann Melissa Manchester Barry Manilow Alan Menken Randy Newman Laura Nyro13 Richard Rodgers Sigmund Romberg Claude-Michel Schönberg14 Neil Sedaka Carly Simon Paul Simon Stephen Sondheim Charles Strouse Jule Styne Cynthia Weil Kurt Weill Victor Young15 FILM SCORE COMPOSERS Elmer Bernstein Danny Elfman Jerry Goldsmith Dave Grusin Bernard Herrmann James Horner10 Erich Wolfgang Korngold Johnny Mandel Alfred Newman Thomas Newman16 Alex North17 Michael Nyman André Previn David Raksin Leonard Rosenman Miklós Rózsa18 Lalo Schifrin Howard Shore Max Steiner Morris Stoloff Dimitri Tiomkin Franz Waxman Victor Young15

Jewish Violinists,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
SHORT LIST Leopold Auer Joshua Bell2 Mischa Elman Jascha Heifetz Joseph Joachim Fritz Kreisler4 Sir Yehudi Menuhin Nathan Milstein David Oistrakh Itzhak Perlman Gil Shaham Isaac Stern Henryk Szeryng Joseph Szigeti Henri Wieniawski Pinchas Zukerman COMPREHENSIVE LIST Joseph Achron Licco Amar Leopold Auer Yuri Bashmet1 Joshua Bell2 Adolf Brodsky Ferdinand David Mischa Elman Aldo Ferraresi3 Carl Flesch Pamela Frank Miriam Fried Vadim Gluzman Ida Haendel Emil Hauser Jascha Heifetz Gustav Hollaender Bronislaw Huberman Joseph Joachim Leonid Kogan Rudolf Kolisch Fritz Kreisler4 Gidon Kremer5 Sir Yehudi Menuhin Anne Akiko Meyers6 Nathan Milstein Shlomo Mintz Erica Morini7 Tivadar Nachez David Oistrakh Igor Oistrakh Itzhak Perlman Michael Rabin Aaron Rosand Arnold Rosé Alexander Schneider Gil Shaham Oscar Shumsky Joseph Silverstein Tossy Spivakosky Vladimir Spivakov Isaac Stern Henryk Szeryng Joseph Szigeti Henri Temianka Lionel Tertis Maxim Vengerov Henri Wieniawski Efrem Zimbalist Pinchas Zukerman Paul Zukofsky

JEWISH PIANISTS,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
Charles Alkan Vladimir Ashkenazy1 Emanuel Ax Victor Babin Daniel Barenboim Simon Barere Lazar Berman Alexander Borovsky Alexander Brailowsky Yefim Bronfman John Browning Ignaz Bruell Shura Cherkassky Bella Davidovich Misha Dichter Samuil Feinberg Annie Fischer2 Leon Fleisher Claude Frank Ignaz Friedman Emil Gilels Leopold Godowsky Gary Graffman Grigory Ginsburg Mark Hambourg Clara Haskil Myra Hess Vladimir Horovitz Byron Janis Joseph Kalichstein William Kapell Julius Katchen Louis Kentner Evgeny Kissin Wanda Landowska Ruth Laredo Josef Lhévinne Rosina Lhévinne Radu Lupu3 Hephzibah Menuhin Benno Moiseiwitsch Ignaz Moscheles Murray Perahia Menahem Pressler André Previn Michael Roll Moritz Rosenthal Anton Rubinstein Artur Rubinstein András Schiff4 Artur Schnabel Peter Serkin5 Rudolf Serkin Solomon (Cutner) Mark Taimanov Carl Tausig Sigismund Thalberg Rosalyn Tureck Alexis Weissenberg Paul Wittgenstein6

Jewish Orchestra Conductors,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
SHORT LIST Vladimir Ashkenazy2 Daniel Barenboim Leonard Bernstein Antal Doráti Istvan Kertész Otto Klemperer Serge Koussevitzky James Levine Lorin Maazel7 Gustav Mahler Felix Mendelssohn Pierre Monteux Eugene Ormandy André Previn Fritz Reiner Leonard Slatkin Sir Georg Solti George Szell Bruno Walter COMPREHENSIVE LIST Maurice Abravanel Karel Ancerl1 Vladimir Ashkenazy2 Moshe Atzmon Carl Bamberger Daniel Barenboim Rudolf Barshai Sir Julius Benedict Leonard Bernstein Gary Bertini Leo Blech Artur Bodanzky Leon Botstein Semyon Bychkov3 Edouard Colonne Sergiu Comissiona Sir Michael Costa Leopold Damrosch Walter Damrosch Issay Dobroven Antal Doráti Arthur Fiedler Adam Fischer4 Ivan Fischer4 Lukas Foss Osip Gabrielovitch Vladimir Golschmann Sir George Henschel Jascha Horenstein Eliahu Inbal Harry James Mariss Jansons5 Istvan Kertész Otto Klemperer Paul Kletzki André Kostelanetz Serge Koussevitzky Josef Krips6 Emmanuel Krivine Erich Leinsdorf Hermann Levi Yoel Levi James Levine Norman Luboff Lorin Maazel7 Gustav Mahler Walter Burle Marx Felix Mendelssohn Mitch Miller Pierre Monteux Felix Mottl Eugene Ormandy André Previn Eve Queler Fritz Reiner Artur Rodzinsky Sir Landon Ronald Julius Rudel Max Rudolph Victor de Sabata8 Kurt Sanderling Gerard Schwarz Fabien Sevitzky Leonard Slatkin Sir Georg Solti William Steinberg Josef Stransky Walter Susskind George Szell Kate Tamarkin Henri Temianka Michael Tilson Thomas Alfred Wallenstein Bruno Walter Paul Whiteman David Zinman

Jewish Cellists,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
Karl Davydov Jacqueline du Pré1 Emanuel Feuermann Bernard Greenhouse Natalia Gutman Matt Haimovitz Ofra Harnoy Steven Isserlis Mischa Maisky Gregor Piatigorsky David Popper Leonard Rose Nathaniel Rosen János Starker

Information Technology & The North American Mass Merchandisers,
Prepared by: IHLConsulting Group
"The end of WWII brought an economic boom that was a direct result of the pent-up demand for goods during the war. This demand was fed by the construction of new shopping centers in suburban areas. The old chain and catalog stores continued to hold a powerful share of the market, but the rise of the discounters was the most important marketplace development at this time. One man that took advantage of the demand was Eugene Ferkauf. Ferkauf was a Jewish WWII veteran who understood that people like to buy things cheaper, and he set out to let them do just that by founding E.J. Korvette’s. By using a membership card gimmick, he attempted to sidestep the intent of Robinson-Patman. In 1948 he founded E.J. Korvette’s (no, the name did not stand for 'Eleven Jewish Korean Veterans.' According to Ferkauf, 'I had a name picked out for the store, E.J. Korvette. ''E'' is for Eugene, my first name, and ''J'' stands for Joe Swillenberg, my associate and my pal. As for ''Korvette,' it was originally meant to be spelled with a 'C' after the Canadian marine sub-destroyer, simply because I thought the name had a euphonious ring. When it came time to register the name, we found it was illegal to use a naval class identity, so we had to change the spelling to 'K'). This company is generally cited as being the first of the discount stores that did not have a 5-and-dime root. Korvette’s was soon joined by numerous other discount stores such as Zayres, Arlans and Gibson’s. For many consumers, drawn by generally lower prices despite the low service, these large stores were exciting arrivals in the new shopping centers and suburban tracks that were appearing around all the old urban centers in the 1950s."

[Connie Chung is married to Jewish talkshow host Maury Povich.]
Connie Chung,
by John Koch, Boston Globe, June 29, 1997
Q: I was surprised to read that you're a Jewish mother.
CHUNG: Matthew had a bris, and I am very much a Jewish mother, which is not far from a Chinese mother. My favorite emotion is guilt. Both Chinese families and Jewish families have Chinese food on Sundays. I never converted, but we observe all the high holidays: By osmosis, I'm as Jewish as my husband."

Ben Bernie, 1891-1943. The Old Maestro,
btinternet.com
"Although Ben Bernie and 'all the lads' existed with prominence during the visceral part of the Jazz Age, it is Bernie's success with radio, primarily during the 30s, by which he is remembered ... He was born into a large family in New York as Bernard Anzelevitz. He showed such early brilliance at the violin, his parents encouraged him and believed one day he would be famous ... During his school days however, he seems to be more consumed with being involved with the college shows and such than his engineering pursuit. During these days, he first uses a strange word a lot to describe a feeling. Yowsah. Yowsah. 'Yowsah' is not in my desk dictionary. It is clear to be Bernie's invented word which eventually became a trademark of his radio persona. Even today the word seems oddly familiar; but more about 'yowsah' later. After Ben Bernie left school, he began as many, in the vaudeville shows travelling as far as the midwest ... His big break came when his speaking voice caught the attention of people from the ritzy Reisenweber's Restaurant. Reisenweber's was known for getting talent and that included a good MC ... Ben and 'all the lads' remained popular into 1940s, yet Ben Bernie never quite caught the swing bug. He loved cigars and when not holding a violin, he always had one. He chain smoked them and it probably didn't help any with his sudden illness which resulted in his death in 1943. Ben Bernie is a Jazz Age personality only by the technicality of having an orchestra during the period. He is more of an emergent from it, which led to his radio career."

The Emergence of Jewish Law in Postmodernist Legal Theory,
by Suzanne Last Stone, Harvard Law School

One of the Kurds’ leaders is Jewish? So they claim in Turkish newspapers, by Yigal Schleifer, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 7, 2003
"In the weeks leading up to the war, the Turkish press was filled with various articles reporting, mostly with suspicion, about the Iraqi Kurds’ postwar plans. A Feb. 17 article in the respected daily newspaper Hurriyet offered an interesting take on the situation: Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of two political factions that control the autonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq, is Jewish and comes from a long line of Kurdish rabbis, the article claimed ... In the article, the researcher — a history instructor named Ahmet Ucar — said Barzani’s 'Jewish roots' should lead to a different understanding of the region and its history, since the Hebrew Bible states that the Jewish 'Promised Land' stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates, an area that would include Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. A series of articles and columns in the Haber Turk newspaper, printed after the Hurriyet story ran, took things even further. 'Brothers, we should quit the stories of Mosul and Kirkuk belonging to us,' said one column, referring to two oil-rich northern Iraqi cities that some Turks believe were unfairly taken from Turkey when the Ottoman Empire was divided up after World War I. 'The real owners have started to come out. I am sure you understand who they are.' 'Turkey, don’t be asleep!' the column warned. Yona Sabar, a Kurdish Jewish professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at UCLA and author of  'The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews,' said the articles are based on an inaccurate reading of Kurdish Jewish history ... Rifat Bali, a Jewish historian in Istanbul, said the Barzani story is part of a larger theory circulating for the past few years that has particularly strong popular support in Turkey’s conservative nationalist and Islamist circles. 'Islamists here always say that Israel has a Kurdish card it wants to play — that it has good relations with the Kurds and it wants to create a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates, and that includes the Kurdish area,' Bali said. 'It’s fueled, first of all, by the obsession that Jews are behind everything, and that they use in front of them a crypto-Jew,' Bali said. 'There is also a Turkish fear that the world is looking from the outside and trying to divide Turkey up.' Indeed, a book titled 'Israel’s Kurdish Card,' which describes the possibility of Israel expanding its borders through an alliance with the Kurds, has been sold in Turkey for the last few years."

Sigmund Freud,
by Peter Gay, Time (The Time 100)
"Although the second pillar of Freud's psychoanalytic structure, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905), further alienated him from the mainstream of contemporary psychiatry, he soon found loyal recruits. They met weekly to hash out interesting case histories, converting themselves into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1908. Working on the frontiers of mental science, these often eccentric pioneers had their quarrels. The two best known 'defectors' were Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. Adler, a Viennese physician and socialist, developed his own psychology, which stressed the aggression with which those people lacking in some quality they desire--say, manliness--express their discontent by acting out. 'Inferiority complex,' a much abused term, is Adlerian. Freud did not regret losing Adler, but Jung was something else. Freud was aware that most of his acolytes were Jews, and he did not want to turn psychoanalysis into a 'Jewish science.'"

MEDIA: 2002 AND BEYOND. After a Rocky Year, Time to Face the Music A look at the record firms, one by one, as the industry's problems mount,
Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2002
"Because companies report in different currencies and under varying methods, these comparisons reflect estimates made in consultation with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. For foreign-owned companies -- that is, all the major distributors except Warner Music Group -- figures are based on average currency rates for the period ... How far has the value of music fallen? Look no further than the world's biggest record label, which was assembled just four years ago in a deal then worth $10.4 billion. This year, new accounting rules forced French parent Vivendi Universal to take a charge of about $3 billion to reflect the decline in the worth of its music company. Despite the hit to the bottom line, Chairman Doug Morris [Jewish?] again dominated the charts with blockbusters from every genre. Jimmy Iovine's Interscope Geffen A&M complex takes the crown as the nation's top seller of new releases ... The Lyor Cohen-led Island Def Jam machine, for its part, delivered one of the year's biggest debuts with Ashanti ... Universal Records' Mel Lewinter and Monte Lipman once again struck platinum with hip-hop stars Nelly and Big Tymers. Things were far quieter over at Jay Boberg's MCA Records ... Even in a down year for the industry, Epic Records, led by executives Dave Glew [Jewish?] and Polly Anthony, still is regarded as a hit factory ... Bertelsmann Music Group [Major labels: Arista, J, RCA] BMG rediscovered its catalog ... BMG gave observers whiplash, bringing music icon Clive Davis back as chief of a combined J Records-RCA operation, less than three years after driving him from his seat of power at its Arista label ... EMI Group [ Major labels: Capitol, Virgin] ... Now, top executives Alain Levy and David Munns have vowed that by spring EMI will break even in North America, where its record division has long been a money-loser."

The Frankfurt School of Social Research and the Pathologization of Gentile Group Allegiances, Chapter 5, from the Culture of Critique,
by Kevin MacDonald
"Chapters 2-4 reviewed several strands of theory and research by Jewish social scientists that appear to have been influenced by specifically Jewish political interests. This theme is continued in the present chapter with a review of The Authoritarian Personality. This classic work in social psychology was sponsored by the Department of Scientific Research of the American Jewish Committee (hereafter, AJCommittee) in a series entitled Studies in Prejudice. Studies in Prejudice was closely connected with the so-called Frankfort School of predominantly Jewish intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research originating during the Weimar period in Germany. The first generation of the Frankfurt School were all Jews by ethnic background and the Institute of Social Research itself was funded by a Jewish millionaire, Felix Weil (Wiggershaus 1994, 13). Weil's efforts as a "patron of the left" were extraordinarily successful: By the early 1930s the University of Frankfurt had became a bastion of the academic left and "the place where all the thinking of interest in the area of social theory was concentrated" (Wiggershaus 1994, 112). During this period sociology was referred to as a "Jewish science," and the Nazis came to view Frankfurt itself as a "New Jerusalem on the Franconian Jordan" (Wiggershaus 1994, 112-113). The Nazis perceived the Institute of Social Research as a communist organization and closed it within six weeks of Hitler's ascent to power because it had "encouraged activities hostile to the state" (in Wiggershaus 1994, 128). Even after the emigration of the Institute to the United States, it was widely perceived as a communist front organization with a dogmatic and biased Marxist perspective, and there was a constant balancing act to attempt not to betray the left "while simultaneously defending themselves against corresponding suspicions" (Wiggershaus 1994, 251; see also p. 255).1 Gershom Scholem, the Israeli theologian and religious historian, termed the Frankfort School a "Jewish sect," and there is good evidence for very strong Jewish identifications of many members of the school (Marcus & Tar 1986, 344). Studies in Prejudice was under the general editorship of Max Horkheimer, a director of the Institute. Horkheimer was a highly charismatic "'managerial scholar' who constantly reminded his associates of the fact that they belonged to a chosen few in whose hands the further development of 'Theory' lay" (Wiggershaus 1994, 2). Horkheimer had a strong Jewish identity that became increasingly apparent in his later writings (Marcus & Tar 1986, 6; Jay 1980). However, Horkheimer's commitment to Judaism, as evidenced by the presence of specifically Jewish religious themes, was apparent even in his writings as an adolescent and as a young adult (Maier 1984, 51). At the end of his life Horkheimer completely accepted his Jewish identification and achieved a grand synthesis between Judaism and Critical Theory (Carlebach 1978, 254-257). (Critical Theory is the name applied to the theoretical perspective of the Frankfurt School.) As an indication of his profound sense of Jewish identity, Horkheimer (1947, 161) stated that the goal of philosophy must to be vindicate Jewish history: 'The anonymous martyrs of the concentration camps are the symbols of humanity that is striving to be born. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny.'"

---

SEE ALSO:

MASS MEDIA MOGULS

JEWISH POWER

ART

and CRIME in:
ART, GOVERNMENT, HISTORY, HOLLYWOOD, INTERNATIONAL, ISRAEL, SEX/PROSTITUTION/PORNOGRAPHY; RABBIS AND CHASIDS; THE 'RUSSIAN' MAFIA, AND MISCELLANEOUS CRIME.


* Not Enough? There's much, much more about Jewish Influence in POPULAR CULTURE, THE MASS MEDIA, ART, THE LITERARY WORLD, GOVERNMENT, and the ECONOMIC sphere.