Why I am a Jew

As a general principle, Jewish holidays are divided between days on which you must starve and days on which you must overeat.

Many Jews observe no fewer than 16 fasts throughout the Jewish year, based on the time-honored principle that even if you are sure that you are ritually purified, you definitely aren’t.

Though there are many feasts and fasts, there are no holidays requiring light snacking.

Note: Unlike Christians, who simply attend church on special days (e.g. Ash Wednesday), on Jewish holidays most Jews take the whole day off. This is because Jews, for historical and personal reasons, are more stressed out.

The Diet Guide to the Jewish Holidays* (some of which are very obscure):

Rosh Hashanah ——- Feast
Tzom Gedalia ———  Fast
Yom Kippur ————- More fasting
Sukkot ——————– Feast for a week +
Hashanah Rabbah —- More feasting
Simchat Torah ——— Keep right on feasting
Month of Heshvan —– No feasts or fasts for a whole month. Get a grip on yourself.
Hanukkah —————- Eat potato pancakes
Tenth of Tevet ——— Do not eat potato pancakes
Tu B’Shevat ———— Feast
Fast of Esther ——— Fast
Purim ——————— Eat pastry
Passover —————- Do not eat pastry for a week
Shavuot —————— Dairy feast (cheesecake, blintzes, etc.)
17th of Tammuz ——– Fast (definitely no cheesecake or blintzes)
Tish B’Av —————– Serious fast (don’t even think about cheesecake or blintzes)
Month of Elul ———— End of cycle. Enroll in Center for Eating Disorders before High Holidays arrive again.

There are many forms of Judaism:

Cardiac Judaism ———- in my heart I am a Jew.
Gastronomic Judaism — we eat Jewish foods.
Pocketbook Judaism —– I give to Jewish causes.
Drop-off Judaism ——— drop the kids off at Sunday School; go out to breakfast.
Twice a Year Judaism — attend service Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

You know you grew up Jewish when:

You did not respond to the teacher calling roll on the first day of school because you thought your name was “Princess”.

You’ve had at least one female relative who drew eyebrows on her face that were always asymmetrical.

You spent your entire childhood thinking that everyone calls roast beef “brisket.”

Your family dog responds to complaints uttered in Yiddish.

Every Sunday afternoon of your childhood was spent visiting your grandparents.

You’ve experienced the phenomena of 50 people fitting into a 10-foot-wide dining room hitting each other with plastic plates & forks trying to get to a deli tray.

You thought pasta was the stuff used exclusively for kugel and kasha with varnishkes.

You watched Lawrence Welk and Ed Sullivan every Sunday night.

You were as tall as your grandmother by age seven.

You never knew anyone whose last name didn’t end in one of 6 standard suffixes (-man, -witz, -berg, -stein, -blatt, -feld, or -baum).

You grew up and were surprised to find out that wine doesn’t always taste like year-old grape jelly.

You can look at gefilte fish without turning green.

You grew up thinking there was a fish called lox.

You can understand some Yiddish but you can’t speak it.

You know how to pronounce numerous Yiddish words and use them correctly in context, yet you don’t exactly know what they mean.

Is that Kinnahurra or is that kaninehurra?.

You have at least one ancestor who is related to your spouse’s ancestor.

You grew up thinking it was normal for someone to shout “Are you okay? Are you okay?” through the bathroom door if you were in there for longer than 3 minutes.

You have at least six male relatives named Michael or David.

Your grandparent’s furniture smelled like mothballs, was covered in plastic and was as comfortable as sitting on Saran Wrap.

We are a small people. We have multiple and powerful external enemies. Striving for Jewish political unity is our natural and rational impulse. Criticizing other Jewish leaders and mainstream Jewish organizations is usually just not done.

But these are extraordinary times. We face daunting challenges for which there are no known answers. Chief among them are Islamic anti-Semitism and the global jihad that pose enormous, unanticipated threats to Jews around the world.

In my last column I criticized the Anti-Defamation League and its head, Abraham Foxman, for its inadequate response to these threats. In truth, it is not only the ADL that is failing: Few Jewish leaders and almost no mainstream organizations have alerted our community that we face a radically new and potentially existential threat profile.

Jews are caught up in a perfect storm: In Western societies, real danger to Jews no longer comes from Christian hatred of Judaism or from Nazi-like animus against our “race”; it comes instead from a hatred of the Jewish state and its Jewish supporters. That this animus comes mostly from the ideological left, with which a majority of Jews identify, is painful and confusing to many.

At the same time, blowing in from the Muslim world is a different sort of anti-Semitism, one which combines modern anti-Zionist themes with primordial Islamic theological hatred. Jew-hatred now drives countless masses around the globe. Imbibing this poison, Muslim radicals have attacked and murdered Jewish people from Israel to Europe, from India to Seattle .

Islamic hatred has indeed come to America . In 1999, Sufi Sheikh Hisham Kabanni, head of the Supreme Islamic Council, testified to the State Department that 80 percent of American mosques are in the hands of radicals. A study by Freedom House, a Washington , D.C. policy center, found Saudi-produced anti-Semitic literature in Islamic Centers around the country. “Close Guantanamo , Re-open Auschwitz” has been shouted by Muslims at anti-Israel demonstrations in Fort Lauderdale and posted on Bostonbased Muslim Web sites.

Jewish leaders, at least at the national level, are not blind to these threats. Two years ago at an international conference on global anti- Semitism in Jerusalem , the heads of many major American Jewish organizations heard speakers like Robert Wistrich, the director of Hebrew University ’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, who described Muslim Judeophobia as an existential threat. Last March, Wistrich wrote in Haaretz that “the scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Islamist websites, on the Middle Eastern radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and educational materials, is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst.” Through the Internet, this material is available to Muslims living among us here.

Because the mainstream media for various reasons downplay these threats, Jews who depend on The New York Times, The Boston Globe or CNN mostly don’t see how our situation has been radically altered. And so the question remains: If they know, why haven’t our leaders told us?

I suggest three reasons. First is a fear of being attacked as racists, bigots and Islamophobes – a line of attack that has been particularly effective against Jewish organizations. Second is a fear of being targeted for “defamation” suits like the one launched against activists and media outlets in Boston who reported on, or asked questions about the radical connections of leaders of the Saudi-funded Roxbury mosque. “Lawfare” works: Legal defense costs can be crippling. But I think the real reason that our leaders are silent is that they simply don’t know what to do. Rather than admit this, they stay mum and mostly limit their public efforts to issuing reports and posting on their Web sites.

In this context, the letter to the Advocate by ADL’s New England head, Derreck Shulman – in which he protests that I am “unaware of ADL’s activism” against radical Islam – was a bit disappointing. Shulman points to articles about Islamic extremists and Arab anti-Jewish cartoons on ADL’s Web site, instances of Congressional testimony and consultations with world leaders. Surely this is not a serious effort for an operation with a $50 million annual budget that claims to be our chief defender. Where is the big-picture strategy?

I don’t blame Derrick – in fact his letter exposing CAIR (Committee on American Islamic Relations) just published in the Globe is a step in the right direction. The problem resides in New York . Should Jews not expect Foxman – and our other leaders – to level with us? To tell us what they know – about the penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our communities and about the proliferation of radical mosques across America , and about the intimidation of Jewish students by Muslims on campuses?

Help us, Abe. We cannot continue with PC-denial and with timidity. Silence is potentially deadly. Let us face this challenge forthrightly, and together.

Charles Jacobs is president of Americans for P eace and Tolerance. www.peaceandtolerance.org

The prize doesn’t always go to the most deserving…. Irena Sendler There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ‘ulterior motive’ … She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the! war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted. Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize … She was not selected. Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming. Powerful message, especially the “cartoon.”  Let us never forget! 63 years later In  MEMORIAM  - 63 YEARS LATER In Memoriam It is now more  than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe  ended This e-mail is  being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the  20 million Russians, 10  million Christians, 6 million Jews and 1,900 Catholic priests  who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned,  starved and humiliated with the German and Russian Peoples looking the other  way! Now, more than ever, with Iraq , Iran , and others, claiming the  Holocaust to  be ‘a myth,’ it’s imperative to make sure the  world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.