A lot can be said about the recent events in our Jewish homeland. I feel a mixture of rage and pride for my people and a land I love.

Rage at the quick trigger of the UN Security Council to condemn Israel for trying to protect her self from Gaza rockets, but the failure to condemn this attack. Rage that Palestinians throw a party.

Rage that we are compared to Nazi’s, making our own Holocaust in Gaza. Do you ever read a fucking history book? When were we lobbing rockets at Germans all day? There is no question the Holocaust was a simple case of Christian based hatred for Jews. You always hate the ones that hold the secret to your lies. More pathetic is the use of this term, which is loaded and used with a particular kind of double sided hate; as it undermines the power of the term and simultaneously enrages Jews.

Rage at the restraint of Israel. If you are going to be damned either way, just level the place. Push them into the ocean.

Rage that no matter what concessions we give, we lose.

Pride that my people will bounce back and not let this slow the only democratic nation in the region. A nation which is not perfect, but affords the Arab citizens a hell of a lot more latitude than the other way around.

Pride that this is the first attack since 2004 and it vindicates the security fence.

Pride at the restraint of Israel. We are not barbarians, we calculate and surgically strike.

Pride that when Israel does respond it will matter.

Pride that our heritage helps us understand this battle:

A Psalm of Asaph. O God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; they have defiled Thy holy temple; they have made Jerusalem into heaps.

2 They have given the dead bodies of Thy servants to be food unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.

3 They have shed their blood like water round about Jerusalem, with none to bury them.

Psalm 79

The memo is simple: Dear Jews, if you plan on celebrating your holiday please do it quietly and in the corner and if you happen to ever think your holiday is as important as ours we will certainly remind you of your minority status.

When city officials planted a 7-foot-tall Christmas tree next to a 20-foot-tall menorah in the plaza in front of City Hall, some residents barked. They telephoned City Hall, wrote letters and testified at a public hearing that the tiny tree in the shadow of the huge Hanukkah symbol was an insult to Christians.

At the left you can see what this “Lamb of G-d” saved us from and how the vast majority of co-called Christians celebrate the redemption of the world from darkness - a vast array of crap imported from China, furthering our debt to them, filling our landfills with crap, and gutting all meaning from life. Anyway, a holiday that is about shopping, running up debt, and is not even held on their false messiah’ real birth day, but instead on a pagan winter festival, where they erect and worship a tree somehow needs to be visually equal to a holiday where a whole nation shirked off the world’s first superpower and prevailed in rededicating the Temple to the one true G-d. Who, by the way doesn’t like blood drinking, nor does G-d like erection of idols. But that never seems to stop the Christians from worshiping the wrong things.

They are at it again, those crazy Catholics and their pagan ways. Remember, Christianity converted to Rome, Rome did not convert to Christianity. It would seem these pagans have been at it for over 600 years and are up to their old pagan tricks this weekend in my neighborhood. Wonder if they ever read the bible? Specifically Exodus 20:2-6:

2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 you shall have no other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Instead of heeding the words of G-d, they make an idol, dance in the streets, throw a party, and the most disgusting part: they throw money at the idol in a tent down by the water. I wonder if they drink any blood or howl at the moon? Oh wait, they drink blood every Sunday:

…the Roman Catholic Church teaches that once an ordained priest blesses the bread of the Lord’s Supper, it is transformed into the actual flesh of Christ…and when he blesses the wine, it is transformed into the actual blood of Christ…

I have no idea how they can even begin to think they have any legitimate inheritance to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Looks like I am not the only one thinking about Christians as polytheistic idol worshipers. Check out the lectures of Rabbi Tovia Signer.

Try to imagine the astonished reaction of a Jew (who has his monotheism intact) as he discovers from your question that missionaries use his cherished national creed, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Hebrew: echad), to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. To the surprise of many, Trinitarians will often use this celebrated verse to support their belief in a triune nature of God.

You can read many answers and his thoughts on various interfaith issues or listen to his lectures on your iPhone.

It also might be of interest to read the thoughts of Martin Luther as pertaining to us Jews. From the intro:

He dares to pervert the scriptural passages which we cite in testimony to our faith, concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and to interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith.

The ‘He’ would be ‘Ye Olde Hooknose’ DBA ‘da Jew’. Love me those German Jew haters. I used to kind of admire ML for taking on the most corrupt institution in the history of mankind: The Catholic Church. Now, well, wow. I don’t know what to say.

I hold that if their Messiah, for whom they hope, should come and do away with their boast and its basis they would crucify and blaspheme him seven times worse than they did our Messiah; and they would also say that he was not the true Messiah, but a deceiving devil.

Because, you idiot, we are so clearly told that we should not expect a magical fairy to come save us and certainly not to count on miracles. We are told that G-d is not man and man is not G-d. Something you confuse several times a day. Oh man I wish for the day of the reverse inquisition.

Today is a bad day for Jews. Traditionally we are all sad because we lost our Temple. In general, the more, well, modern amongst us, see this as a time to be insightful and think about the big plan as manifested through events then, now and in the middle - we are talking about 2000+ years of history.

Today I would like to talk about how we are all doomed.

While we Jews cannot get along with our cousins the Arabs, I have real faith that we will figure out how to be friends someday - by we I don’t mean Americans I mean Jews.

But, the real enemy hates us both and that is what we should come to terms with. We both should fear the Christians. Yes, the Christians hate us both, my Arab cousin.

These are the people who brought us the original terrorism in the form of forced conversions, holocausts, inquisitions, crusades, etc… all because they hate true-blue monotheists like the Jews and the Muslims.

I am not certain exactly why they hate us both, cousin, but I think it has to do with the Trinity. Can you think of a larger pile of shit than saying, oh there are three g-ds, but really one, they are just parts of the same, equal parts, one the g-d part, one some kind of ghost part, and one a earthly man part. Um, what? That is a pantheon if I have ever seen one.

This isn’t even respectable Zoroastrian dualism, which is arguably monotheistic (well I will say I don’t know enough to argue either way). This is POLYTHEISM.

We, cousin, simply know how many times we are told by our prophets and by our historical rejection of adulteration by the Romans and Greeks that we are told to not only to eschew this notion, but to completely reject, dispel, and run away from this notion.

This is what I am thinking about on my 9th of Av. How come my cousin, who I share so much with, and I cannot get along, but my best friend is only waiting to off me in the name of his eternal salvation at the hand of his g-ds.

And the icing? I tell a tale:

Sunday morning I was at a local NJ diner having my eggs and toast. I was there with my friend Patrick. As I munched away I started to overhear the neighbor at the next table. Oh be warned, Tablemans are ever constant eavesdroppers! She was talking about how this lady she works with had perpetrated a series of unspeakable acts against her in the workforce as well as in their intersecting social lives. The issue at hand seemed to be that both parties were about to be fired for their inability to work together. The coup-de-christ? My neighbor diner lady made the following statement:

She acted in the most un-Christian way possible and I can never forgive that. I will never forgive that. I will make her life miserable for what she’s done.

*sigh* and I mean it, I almost said something to her. I almost did. But instead I thought about how so far her attitude is from the teachings of her lord and redeemer. About how much redemption she must need right now. About how probably no one has ever shown her what it really meant or felt like to act in a truly Christian, eg forgiving, way.

I realized just how fucked we are cousin.

I know this might be a complicated question - or the answer might be complicated - but what would Christians be today if there were no Jesus? Would they be more pagan than they are now? Would they be Jews, Muslims, or maybe Zoroastrians?

Welly, welly, welly, it would appear that the centerpiece of one the worlds great faiths is a fraud. Are we shocked? No. What, pray tell, might force the doctrine of infallibility and the fundamentalist evangelical movement into a seizure?

The discovery of Jesus’ tomb, complete with bones of his family. Yes, Jesus was a man with a penis and desires - normal things for a man - and appears to have sired one if not more children. Which, if you know anything about being a Jew, is one of the primary reasons for being alive, to have children. And again, it is IMPOSSIBLE for Jesus to have been the scholar he is purported to be with out being a married man. Simply impossible.

But more importantly, he was not resurrected and did not ascend to heaven magically. Now nuns can stop slapping little kids who ask what happened to Jesus’ body.

Moreover, I want to be clear about why this discovery is of particular importance. It may, finally, force Christians to admit what Jews have known forever, the scripture is not to be taken literally, a myth is a myth with deeper aggadic, metaphorical, & instructional purposes, and you owe us all a huge apology for the crusades.

We win. America Wins. The World Wins. Thank G-d we finally showed the world we are not all idiots. Democrats are on the way back.

Now!!!! No blow jobs, keep the curruption down, and fight for America. The America we all want, open, free, equitable, Christian right wing bullshit free, and a better world citizen.

One more though: DON’T FUCK IT UP!

This is great from The Times:

”The Democratic Party … will protect the interests of small and medium American enterprises and labor and that could produce an impact on China-U.S. trade relations,”

One can only hope. Can you imagine a day when jobs come back to America? A day when you can actually shop without sending $$ to China? A day when we force them to raise the value of their commie currency, slowing our economy down and returning us to normal instead of this bloated Wal*Mart/Target binge we are on now.
The nightmare is almost over, I might just cry.

In front of Twilo maybe 8 years ago, maybe longer, I was berated by Sean B. and George M. because I was taking a stance about sending garment production to Asia. I maintained that it was fundamentally un-American to allow your neighbors to loose their jobs so that you could have the perception of cheaper garments. They were so caught up in the PC notion that all people are equal, blah blah blah, that they couldn’t see the point. Here are the bullet points:

1. we have not seen a dramatic decrease in the costs of good and services in the country
2. increases in productivity and ease of shipment has allowed production of goods overseas to appear seamless to us
3. goods produced overseas are cheeper, but Levi’s are going up in price
4. profits are astonishing for modern corporations, stockholders have been forcing company to go abroad to increase stock values
5. healthcare is seen as something that can be shuffled off to the government
6. war on the middle class: people are poorer and poorer every year
7. shipping goods around the world is killing us through emissions
8. oil prices, or a transit shock will cause an economic disaster

And look-e-here: American Apparel has built a franchise on the notion. Whole Foods is another example. As much as you hate them, Starbucks is a semi-good corporate citizen.

This is only moderately effecting me, I have a very good job with amazing benefits, live in a degree of ease and wealth that my great-grandparents would have never imagined. But, this is about our neighbors, our countrymen, our planet.

Why have we lost our way? Why don’t we care about our neighbors? This labor day ponder when you lost your way. When a cheap piece of plastic shit from China suddenly became more important than a healthy thriving society.

More importantly, knowing a bit about Jewish and Christian thought I state here and now: obsession with the material and failure to live a balanced life with a concentration on ethics and community are the exact opposite of what we are taught. Stated more clearly: your 1000$ handbag is the devil.

I will add sources to this shortly, I have an errand to run.

Talmud tidbit, from 2 days go, a short version: Jews asked to be forgiven for sin of idol worship, and were sent a flaming lion cub to deal with, they did, putting it in a lead pot and sealing the pot closed. They figured, we are on a roll, lets ask for evil inclination to be removed. Evil inclination appeared. They were about to kill him and someone suggested that they shouldn’t because evil inclination is also needed for procreation. They decided to wound him instead, to slow him down a little. Then there was something about trying to find an egg, which I didn’t understand, but the end of the story is clear: a core concept of non fundamentalist religions is grey area with a heavy dose of understanding the relationships between complex esoteric forces.

And yes, if you missed it, I am making fun of anti-intellectual Christians and Muslims (and Jews). Fundamentalism is 100% anti-intellectual.