Jewish media

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Does megachurch pastor Paula White deserve to be trashed? Yes, says The Forward

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While many Christians of the evangelical and charismatic variety have run for cover whenever a discussion of Donald Trump comes up, others have run into the spotlight. One of the latter is Pastor Paula White, a Florida preacher who’s the closest thing the candidate has to a spiritual guide.

I first became aware of Paula back in 1994, when I encountered her second husband, Randy, at a prayer meeting I was assigned to cover for an article on the “holy laughter” movement so popular 20+ years ago. They were a husband-and-wife team leading the 10,000-member Church Without Walls in Tampa. 

As the years went by, Paula’s star went up as she founded her own media ministry in 2001, which included a TV show. By the time I heard her preach several years later at the National Church of God in Fort Washington, just east of Washington, DC, I was amazed at the wardrobe, her confidence and the professionalism of her entourage.

Recently, The Forward, a news and commentary publication that until last year was known as The Jewish Daily Forward, ran a piece proclaiming “David Trump’s favorite female evangelist wears a Jewish prayer shawl -- just like him,” referring to an incident last month where Trump was presented with a prayer shawl by a pastor, which I wrote about here. Here’s how it starts:

High Holiday appeals for money are nothing new to North American synagogue-goers.
But for sheer chutzpah, few could compare with the Yom Kippur video appeal from Paula White, Donald Trump’s most visible evangelical supporter.
White stares into the camera, with cascading blond hair and Botox-swollen lips. She tells those on her ministry email list that this is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, “God’s most holy day of the year [in a] supernatural miracle–working season.”
For the next three-and-a-half minutes, White, 50, explains why viewers need to contribute “sacrificially” to her Orlando-based organization -- $10,000, or just a thousand –- on this special day.


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Hello? Hello? Mindy Finn is a Jewish vice presidential candidate, so where's the ink?

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Evan McMullin, a third-party candidate for president based out of Utah, is a Mormon and he's chosen a very interesting vice presidential candidate: Mindy Finn, a businesswoman and tech entrepreneur living in DC. She's an interesting pick, not the least because she's conservative and Jewish.

But don't expect any decent take-outs about her faith. Even though it's been two weeks since she was announced as McMullin's running mate, there's been very little done about her and especially her beliefs. I can excuse the secular media not getting too worked up over Mindy Finn’s faith as she and her running mate are long shots at making a dent in this election. But Jewish media should be ahead of the game on this one.

Typical of the coverage-lite out there is this piece from the Forward: 

Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin announced a Jewish running mate last weekend: Mindy Finn.
 
Finn is a veteran GOP strategist who runs a feminist non-profit. She and McMullin, a former CIA agent, see their independent candidacy as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump.
With their religious makeup — a Mormon and a Jew — and their outspokenness, the McMullin/Finn ticket has been gaining traction lately. Following Donald Trump’s struggles after the release of a tape on which he makes lewd comments about women, they might win Mormon-heavy Utah, where McMullin is now statistically tied with both Trump and Clinton.
Their candidacy is a long shot — they are not even on the ballot in all states — but there technically is a way how it could work. If they manage to win one state and then both Trump and Clinton fail to get the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president, the House gets to decide the election.
More realistically, Finn sees their campaign as the start of a new conservative movement. “We are a glimmer of light in what many have seen as a sea of darkness in this election,” she told Glamour.


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RNS looks at 'new' Jewish Institute for women priests -- but not closely enough

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I get it -- we've all been there, all of us newspaper religion writers. Holidays come up, and our editor demands something besides the "same old same old." So we reach for the new and bizarre.

So it's understandable when the Religion News Service used Yom Kippur, which Jews observed on Wednesday, for a look at the Hebrew Priestess Institute, even though the institute is a decade old.

Still, why simply hand the mike to its boosters?

The institute is about as non-traditional as they come, as the article quickly establishes: dancing, beating a drum, sitting in a circle, placing women's pictures on the altar, praying to the "divine feminine." And, of course, ordaining women as priests -- something that would arch many Jewish eyebrows. But RNS offers only the slightest hint that not everyone buys into this approach.

That approach gets a loud, clear hearing in the article. Rabbi Jill Hammer, co-founder of the institute, wants to "re-imagine the role of a holy woman, an intermediary between the human and the divine who is part prophet, liturgist, shaman":

For inspiration, this Jewish priestess movement looks to biblical women such as Miriam, Moses’ sister, who drums and sings, and Deborah, the judge who held court beneath a palm tree.
It also embraces those ancient Israelite women who worshipped fertility goddesses condemned by the prophets, as well as modern teachings from various Earth-based religions with their healers and ritualists.
This Yom Kippur, as Jews crowd synagogues for the Day of Atonement, some women will gather in a circle for a mix of prayers, chants, songs and meditations — all of which incorporate references to the divine feminine – sometimes known in the Jewish mystical tradition as the Shekhinah.

Institute students are introduced to 13 women’s "archetypes" of leaders, including prophetess, witch and fool. Some participants refer not to God but the Goddess.  And Jill Hammer and cofounder Taya Shere use artifacts like stones and divination cards in worship.


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Donald Trump and the telltale tallit: Jewish media storm offers lots of heat but little light

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Picture it: Even though your grasp of the basics of Christianity isn’t the greatest, you’re visiting a church. A black church, at that.

Then the pastor throws a tallit over your shoulders.

Now, what’s a Jewish prayer shawl doing at a black church? And what’s the candidate to do? The only thing he could do: Graciously accept it. What happened next? Go to Twitter and put “Donald Trump tallit” in the search field. You’ll find lots to read.

One is the hot-button phrase “cultural appropriation.” But what was Trump supposed to do? Reject the gift and give it back? Here’s how Jewish Telegraph Agency wrote it up: 

(JTA) --  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was gifted a traditional Jewish prayer shawl by a pastor during a visit to a black church in Detroit.
Bishop Wayne Jackson of the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit draped the tallit around Trump’s shoulders after the candidate finished addressing the congregation.
“Let me just put this on you,” Jackson said as the congregation burst into applause.
The pastor said he fasted and prayed over the prayer shawl.
“This is a prayer shawl straight from Israel. Whenever you’re flying from coast to coast -- I know you just came back from Mexico and you’ll be flying from city to city -- there is an anointing. And anointing is the power of God,” Jackson said. “It’s going to be sometimes in your life that you’re going to feel forsaken, you’re going to feel down, but the anointing is going to lift you up. I prayed over this personally and I fasted over it, and I wanted to just put this on you.”

Wait, there's more. Clearly there is a theme going on here, in the mind of this pastor.


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Question for the Gray Lady: What did other Jews think of the 'Jewish Billy Graham'?

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The last time I checked, it was accurate to say that the Rev. Billy Graham had spoken in person to more people -- as in crowds at mass rallies, as opposed to on television -- than any other person.

That's a hard thing to calculate over history, but no one else comes close in the modern era, at least. That would make Graham a rather famous individual.

Thus, calling someone the "Jewish Billy Graham" is a significant statement, as in this New York Times headline the other day: "Esther Jungreis, ‘the Jewish Billy Graham,’ Dies at 80."

This story intrigued me for several reasons. I had heard this woman's name but knew little or nothing about her, which is interesting since I have always been interested in issues of Jewish outreach to secular Jews (and the religious and demographic impact of intermarriage, which is a related subject). My interests date back to a University of Illinois graduate-school readings class on post-Holocaust Jewish culture.

So who was Jungreis? Here is the Times overture:

Esther Jungreis, a charismatic speaker and teacher whose enormously popular revival-style assemblies urged secular Jews to study Torah and embrace traditional religious values, died on Tuesday in Brooklyn. She was 80. ...
Ms. Jungreis (pronounced YOUNG-rice), a Hungarian Jew who spent several months in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a child, was often called “the Jewish Billy Graham,” and her artfully staged rallies, with theatrical lighting and musical accompaniment, were in fact inspired by Mr. Graham’s Christian crusades.
She styled herself “rebbetzin,” the Yiddish honorific bestowed on wives of rabbis. Her husband, Rabbi Theodore Jungreis, led the Congregation Ohr Torah, an Orthodox synagogue in North Woodmere, N.Y., on Long Island.

So that explains the origin of the Billy Graham comparison. However, I still wondered how famous this woman was, not among Americans in general (like Billy Graham), but among modern American Jews. Also, what did the leaders of other Jewish movements think of her work?


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Anatevka resurrected? Feature in Foreign Policy Review misses a few Jewish details

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How many of us remember the mournful song that appears near the end of "Fiddler on the Roof" when the tzar’s soldiers kick the Jews out of their tiny village?

Hint: It goes like this. You can click here and watch the scene in the classic movie. You may want to have tissues nearby.

Anatevka, Anatevka.
Underfed, overworked Anatevka.
Where else could Sabbath be so sweet?

Anatevka, Anatevka.
Intimate, obstinate Anatevka,
Where I know everyone I meet.

Soon I'll be a stranger in a strange new place,
Searching for an old familiar face
From Anatevka.

When Sholom Aleichem wrote the story that inspired the 1964 musical (and 1971 film), Anatevka was a fictional name for a real life village just west of Kiev.

So what should pop up this week in Foreign Policy Review but the story of a real place called Anatevka? It's a fine story, yet it has one major hole, which we'll get to. Yes, we are talking about important religious details.

KIEV -- When the rabbi of Chernobyl, Mordechai Twersky, felt he was dying in 1837, he set out on a long walk from Kiev. He made it about 30 kilometers to the west, where he came upon a rolling green field of wildflowers on the banks of the Irpin River, outside the village of Hnativka.
It was there, he decided, that he would be laid to rest, having chosen the pastoral location, according to local lore, “because there is no house of idol worship, and the sound of impure bells won’t disturb my rest in the grave.”


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Israelis back Donald Trump because of his anti-Muslim talk, right? Well, actually...

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Israelis back Donald Trump because of his anti-Muslim talk, right? Well, actually...

There's an assumption circulating among some in the news media, some American Jews, both on the right and left, and among political-geeks in general that Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump is favored by Israelis over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The assumption is rooted in the belief that Trump -- based on his rhetoric (but ignoring his many contradictions) -- will be a more full-throated supporter of Israel than Clinton will be, and so of course Israelis back him over her.

How could they not? The United States is Israeli's most important international protector, so of course Israelis must want the toughest talking candidate.

As a #NeverTrump guy, I think this belief is very wrong. But this post isn't about who Israelis SHOULD support for president of the United States, but who they DO support. (Unless I state otherwise, when I refer to Israelis I'm referring in the main to Jewish Israelis. Israeli Arabs, or Israeli Palestinians, as many prefer to be called, have their own complicated political equations, be they Christian or Muslim.)

So who do Israelis prefer?

Here's a link from May to a Jerusalem Post story reporting on a survey that shows an Israeli preference for Clinton. Note that non-Jewish Israelis are included in this survey. And here's a CNBC analysis, also from May, that puts some meat on the bare-bones Post news report. 

Two salient CNBC paragraphs follow:


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Women-only pools: New York Times still says they are OK for Muslims, but not Jews?

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When is a pool not a pool?

When it’s a war zone. Which is what a certain pool in Brooklyn, N.Y., has become in recent months.

First, here's some background. You might recall a bucolic New York Times piece some months ago about a Toronto neighborhood pool that was the essence of Canadian openness. The Times called it a “model of inclusion” in the headline over the story of a pool that has separate women-only swim times for Muslims, then transgender people. The writer was positively rapturous over the gender-neutral locker rooms (it didn’t say what folks do in terms of showers), the yoga classes from women veiled up to their eyeballs with a niqab and disabled-friendly architecture.

Switch the venue east to Brooklyn, however, and a June 29 Times story about a similar pool with separate swimming hours for Orthodox Jewish women is about religious/gender intolerance. Yes, this is new coverage of the dispute that our own tmatt dug into recently in another post ("Swimmin' Orthodox Women").

Let's read further:

Under slate-colored light slanting from the skylights, the women entered the city pool on Wednesday morning, its oxidized copper ceiling lending a mint-green cast to the water’s surface. Their swimming outfits would have been considered prudish even by the standards of 1922, when the pool was built. They swam in dresses, some with long sleeves. One paddled in thick black tights. Inside the locker room, wigs sat upside down on window ledges and benches while their owners swam with heads under ruffled swimming caps or knotted silk scarves.
The swimmers were Hasidic women, who abide by strict codes of modesty and who go to the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for an unusual feature: It is one of two city swimming pools with gender-segregated hours. The other is the St. John’s Recreation Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.


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Next on religious-liberty beat: Orthodox Jews organize against their former high schools

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Next on religious-liberty beat: Orthodox Jews organize against their former high schools

An important intra-Jewish dispute in the New York City area has been featured in parochial papers like The Forward and The Jewish Week, as well as in mainstream local news outlets, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the PBS-TV “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” broadcast.

What happens next? Follow-up coverage should examine a significant religious liberty angle that’s  been downplayed or omitted in media accounts.

Three years ago, graduates of yeshivas operated by the strict Haredim or so-called “ultra-Orthodox” Jews, including Hasidic groups, founded Young Advocates For Fair Education (YAFFED.org). Their legal advisor is Norman Siegel, former executive director of the New York City Liberties Union. These Jews complain that their limited high school educations left them ill-equipped to support themselves as adults, and demand that the city and state education departments enforce laws on minimum school standards.

Last year YAFFED organized 52 parents, former students and former teachers to send officials the names of 39 New York City yeshivas where, they contended, boys receive inadequate general education. The officials promised an investigation but no progress has been reported. The campaign gained traction this year with two crackdown bills introduced in the state legislature in January and then in May.

Though state law mandates basic course requirements for religious as well as public schools, Haredi leaders strongly resist change, seeking to perpetuate their traditions and protect youths from secular influences. News accounts indicate politicians go along.

YAFFED Executive Director Naftuli Moster and Johns Hopkins University Professor Seth Kaplan co-wrote an op-ed in the Forward titled “Why Do Jewish Leaders Keep Ignoring Ultra-Orthodox Education Crisis?” They pleaded with non-Orthodox communal organizations like the UJA-Federation of New York to take up the cause.


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