The Vicious Babushka

DOOFUS OF THE DAY: TN Rep Thinks the Bible Says Poor Kids Should Not Eat

No gruel for you!

Addicting Info reports:

As the GOP keeps looking for somewhere to cut government spending that won’t affect their pockets at all, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is now in their sights for cuts that could potentially devastate families who need it most.

Almost 47 million Americans are now receiving benefits under SNAP, also known as ‘food stamps’, and many of those are children, elderly, disabled, or working poor. As expected in troubled economic times, enrollment in the program skyrocketed and with it the costs of the program, which more than doubled to $80 billion. What many people don’t know is that food stamps are funded under the Farm Bill, the same bill that funds Federal subsidies for farmers.

So as the House Agriculture Committee debated this week over how much to cut from SNAP, it was not surprising that Representative Juan Vargas, a California Democrat, would remind the committee to follow the example set forth by Jesus, who said that how we treat the least among us is how we treat him. Of course, not to be out-Bibled, Representative Stephen Fincher, a Tennessee Republican, came back with his own Bible verse, quoting the Old Testament when he said, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” [Actually this quote is from the New Testament, Thessalonians 3:10--VB]

Really? Is that how we see the least fortunate among us? As lazy? Last I checked, there were laws against child labor in this country, and children make up almost half of all SNAP beneficiaries. Further, since many of the jobs that have been created since the economic recovery began are low wage jobs, it is to be expected that many of the families on the program are what are called ‘working poor’; families that do work but do not make a living wage.

But Rep. Fincher certainly doesn’t fall under this category. The Fincher family owns a 2500 acre farm in western Tennessee that brings in MILLIONS of dollars in Federal farm subsidies from the very bill he says needs to be targeted for its food stamps benefits. Make no mistake, this is no small family farm. Not one to miss out on any free government money, Fincher also took a grant from the state of Tennessee, as did his father, that allowed for taxpayers to buy them new farm equipment. That’s free to them. Free work related materials. FREE.

Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/21/tn-rep-the-bible-says-not-to-feed-the-unwilling-to-work-so-we-should-cut-food-stamps-to-kids/#ixzz2Tw1NqjAD

Mel Brooks Top 10 Jewy Jewish Movie Scenes!

JTA reports:

Monday night marks the national premier broadcast of the American Masters installment on Mel Brooks. To mark the occasion, we’ve put together a collection of Brooks’ best Jewish clips.

What exactly that means is a good question. As with two others recent subjects on the PBS series — Woody Allen and Phillip Roth (hey, guys, maybe change it up a bit, before Pat Buchanan notices) —  you could make the argument that Brooks’ entire oeuvre is an extension of his very Jewish background, sensibilities, hang-ups, etc., and hence any and all of his work can be considered Jewish. Take “Young Frankenstein”: It lacks any explicitly Jewish gags, but some critics (here and here) have no trouble making the case that the film is very Jewish.

See JTA's full list: http://www.jta.org/2013/05/20/arts-entertainment/mel-brooks-top-10-jewy-jewish-scenes#ixzz2TrENHW7X

Babushka's all time favorite Mel Brooks films are:

Blazing Saddles
History of the World Part I
The Producers
Spaceballs 

The Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski" is a challenger to the best of Brooks, but Woody Allen and Philip Roth are lame, lame, lame. Monty Python's "Life of Brian" is way more hilarious than anything produced by "I Shtupped My Stepdaughter" Allen or penned by the excruciatingly self-hating Mr. Literary Giant Douche Roth, even though Monty Python is not really Jewish humor.

Sole Survivor of 1987 Plane Crash at Detroit Metro Airport Tells Her Story

Cecelia Chihan-Lumpkin Crocker, survivor of Flight 255 Crash

Daily Mail Reports:

Cecelia Crocker’s body provides her with a constant reminder of the most traumatic event of her life - one that she doesn’t otherwise remember.

At only 4 years old, Crocker was the lone survivor of a 1987 plane crash that killed 154 people aboard and two on the ground near Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

In the new documentary film, Sole Survivor, Crocker breaks her silence, discussing how the crash of the Phoenix-bound jetliner has affected her.

‘I think about the accident every day. It’s kind of hard not to think about it when I look in the mirror,’ she said.

‘I have visual scars. My arms and my legs. And I have a scar on my forehead.’

Crocker, 30, also sports an airplane tattoo on her left wrist.

‘I got this tattoo as a reminder of where I’ve come from. I see it as - so many scars were put on my body against my will - and I decided to put this on my body for myself,’ she says in the film.

It’s been more than a quarter-century since Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed in the Detroit suburb of Romulus.

The plane was just clearing the runway at 8:46pm on Aug. 16, 1987, when it tilted slightly. The left wing clipped a light pole, and the damaged airliner sheared the top off a rental car building.

The MD-80 left a half-mile trail of bodies, charred wreckage, magazines and trays of food along Middle Belt Road when it crashed.

Read more at Daily Mail.

Babushka remembers this horrific disaster very well. It is the only commercial passenger jet crash that has ever occurred at DTW airport.

Gazan Must Have Their KFC!

Smuggling KFC Through the Gaza Tunnels

NY Times reports:

GAZA CITY — The French fries arrive soggy, the chicken having long since lost its crunch. A 12-piece bucket goes for about $27 here — more than twice the $11.50 it costs just across the border in Egypt.

And for fast-food delivery, it is anything but fast: it took more than four hours for the KFC meals to arrive here on a recent afternoon from the franchise where they were cooked in El Arish, Egypt, a journey that involved two taxis, an international border, a smuggling tunnel and a young entrepreneur coordinating it all from a small shop here called Yamama — Arabic for pigeon.

“It’s our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world enjoy,” said the entrepreneur, Khalil Efrangi, 31, who started Yamama a few years ago with a fleet of motorbikes ferrying food from Gaza restaurants, the first such delivery service here.

There are no name-brand fast-food franchises on this 140-square-mile coastal strip of 1.7 million Palestinians, where the entry and exit of goods and people remain restricted and the unemployment rate is about 32 percent. Passage into Egypt through the Rafah crossing is limited to about 800 people a day, with men 16 to 40 years old requiring special clearance. Traveling through the Erez crossing into Israel requires a permit and is generally allowed only for medical patients, businessmen and employees of international organizations.

Palestinians generally refer to Gaza as being under siege or blockade by Israel, and isolation from the world is among the most common complaints of people here. That can create an intense longing for what those outside Gaza see as mundane, or ordinary.

“The irregular circumstances in Gaza generate an irregular way of thinking,” explained Fadel Abu Heen, a professor of psychology at Al Aqsa University in Gaza City. “They think of anything that is just behind the border, exactly as the prisoner is thinking of anything beyond the bars.”

Professor Abu Heen noted that when Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, breached the border with Egypt in 2008, during the height of the Israeli siege, thousands of Gazans flooded into El Arish and bought not just medicine and food staples but cigarettes, candy and things they did not need — just to show they had managed to bring something back from outside. Breaking the blockade, then and now, is seen as part of resisting the Israeli enemy, giving a sense of empowerment and control to people here, even if it comes in the form of fried chicken.

Even as Israel has relaxed restrictions on imports over the past few years, hundreds of illegal tunnels have flourished in Rafah. Weapons and people are smuggled underground, but so are luxury cars, construction materials and consumer goods like iPads and iPhones. And now: KFC.

Formerly called Kentucky Fried Chicken, a KFC franchise opened in El Arish, just over Gaza’s southern border, in 2011, and in the West Bank city of Ramallah last year. That, along with ubiquitous television advertisements for KFC and other fast-food favorites, has given Gazans a hankering for Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe.

Read more at NY Times.

 

After Triangle Shirtwaist X10, Where Can You Buy Humane Clothing?

Sweatshop worker pulled alive from building collapse that killed 1,038

New York Times reports:

The revolution that has swept the food industry is expanding to retail: origins matter.

With fair-trade coffee and organic fruit now standard on grocery shelves, consumers concerned with working conditions, environmental issues and outsourcing are increasingly demanding similar accountability for their T-shirts. The issue has been brought to the forefront by the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 800 people.

And some retailers are doing what was once unthinkable, handing over information about exactly how, and where, their products were made.

Everlane, an online boutique, last week added paragraphs to its Web site describing the factories where its products are made.

Nordstrom says it is considering adding information about clothes produced in humane working conditions.

An online boutique breaks down the number of workers involved in making each item and the cost of every component, while a textiles company intends to trumpet the fair-trade origins of its robes when Bed Bath & Beyond starts selling them this month.

And a group of major retailers and apparel companies, including some — like Nike and Walmart — with a history of controversial manufacturing practices overseas, says it is developing an index that will include labor, social and environmental measures.

New research indicates a growing consumer demand for information about how and where goods are produced. A study last year by professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard showed that some consumers — even those who were focused on discount prices — were not only willing to pay more, but actually did pay more, for clothes that carried signs about fair-labor practices.

“There’s real demand for sweat-free products,” said Ian Robinson, a lecturer and research scientist at the University of Michigan who studies labor issues. Consumers “don’t have the information they need, and they do care.”

Read more at New York Times.

Workers Sacked After Joke About "Baking Jews" in Toy Oven

Des Moines Register reports:

Two northern Iowa women were fired from their jobs at a New Hampton assembly plant for allegedly joking about “burning the Jews” inside a toy oven they were carrying.

Christina Ott of New Hampton and her sister, Susan Ott of Lawler, were fired in late January from the Trimark Corp. assembly plant in New Hampton.

According to plant officials’ testimony at two public unemployment claims hearings, five Trimark workers reported seeing the two walk through an area of the plant Dec. 19, carrying a toy Easy Bake oven with gingerbread men inside.

One of the workers said the women told their colleagues, “Happy Hanukkah. We’re burning the Jews.” The other workers were some distance away and said they didn’t hear any such comments by the women.

After the two were fired, they applied for unemployment benefits and the state scheduled separate public hearings to deal with each claim. Both women testified that they didn’t make the comment, and said the only reason they were carrying the toy oven around was so they could participate in a Christmas sweater contest at the plant.

“We did not have a Christmas sweater, so we decided to give out gingerbread men instead,” Susan Ott testified.

Read more at Des Moines Register.

 

Chabad of Thornhill Convinced to Cancel Appearance by Hateblogger Pamela Geller

Rabbi Mendel Kaplan as Toronto police chaplain

Toronto Sun reports:

TORONTO - York Regional Police threatened to remove a rabbi as one of the force’s chaplains if he hosted a controversial anti-Islamist speaker at his Thornhill synagogue.

Insp. Ricky Veerappan, of the force’s diversity, equity and inclusion bureau, confirmed he and officers from the service’s hate crimes unit met with Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue on Tuesday.

They expressed concern about an upcoming talk to be given by Pamela Geller, a vocal critic of radical Islam. She protested past plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, and has posted anti-Jihad messages in that city’s subway system.

Subsequent to his meeting with police, Kaplan cancelled Geller’s May 13 talk, which was sponsored by the Jewish Defence League (JDL) — a hard-line advocacy group that had rented space in Kaplan’s synagogue for the event.

“I think the police are turning a blind eye to who they should be keeping an eye on,” said the JDL’s Meir Weinstein, referring to radical Islamists. Weinstein said another location will be chosen for Geller’s appearance.

Veerappan said he told Kaplan that Geller’s speech “would not be endorsed by York Regional Police” and that the rabbi’s role as a force chaplain would be thrown into question if he were to permit the event.

“If he did (host Geller), then we’d have to reassess our relationship with (Kaplan),” Veerappan said. “We serve the needs of the entire community. Some of the stuff that Ms. Geller speaks about runs contrary to the values of York Regional Police and the work we do in engaging our communities.”

Veerappan said a member of York Region's Muslim community, whom he wouldn’t identify, brought Geller’s scheduled talk to the attention of police.

York Regional Police enlist eight chaplains of different faiths to counsel police officers and their families. Among them is a Muslim chaplain, Imam Abdul Hai Patel.

Read more at Toronto Sun.

Pamela, of course, is shrieking that this is "Sharia' suppressing her "Free Speech" even though Canada has no First Amendment.

Kudos to the Toronto police for their prompt action in warning the clueless Mendel Kaplan about the piece of poison he was about to ingest.

Co-Opting the Holocaust: End Times Host Claims American Christians Are So the Next Holocaust Victims!!

End Times Rick Wiles

Right Wing Watch reports:

On Friday's radio broadcast, End Times radio host Rick Wiles and his guest, John McTernan, engaged in a long discussion about how things like abortion and homosexuality are bringing a curse on America.  Eventually McTernan and Wiles asserted that President Obama is linked "at the hip" with Kermit Gosnell before declaring that what is happening to Christians in America is just what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany, meaning that the next victims of a holocaust will be American Christians:

McTernan: We've murdered 60 million babies. And they've got the case in Pennsylvania, I don't know if you've been following or not ...

Wiles: Yes, Gosnell.

McTernan: I mean ... how do you describe this? Well, this is what Obama stands for.

Wiles: Barbaric.

McTernan: Obama is linked arm in arm, at the hip with this butcher.

Wiles: He hasn't denounced it. He's expressed no sorrow over what this butcher did to those children.

McTernan: And I must warn your listeners, that cold-heartedness that you see in Obama will translate into physical violence against us.

Wiles: That's right.

McTernan: He can't do it right now. Just like the Nazis, when they took power in Germany, the next day they couldn't kill the Jews.  They wanted to, but it took preparation and they had to get society ready for it. They had to marginalize the Jews, demonize the Jews, blame them for everything.  Well, that's the process that's going on in America now.

Wiles: And the Christians are the new Jews.

McTernan: We're the new Jews.

Wiles: The next holocaust are American Christians.  That's what's coming.

Read more at Right Wing Watch.

Of course they don't really want to be hauled away to die in gas chambers and stuff and they totally know that's never going to happen, they just want to get straight to claiming Angel Victim Status because they are, you know, so much more deserving than those Juice.

*FACE PALM* Michigan Mom Complains "Diary of Anne Frank" is PORNOGRAPHIC

NY Daily News reports:

A mother in Northville, Mich., has filed a formal complaint against her daughter’s school district, stating that some passages in the definitive edition of “The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank” are too graphic for seventh graders.

As Detroit’s Fox 2 reports, parent Gail Horalek says the unedited version of the diary, published in 1996, is too graphic for her daughter’s seventh grade class at Meads Mill Middle School. In the book, Frank describes in some detail the discovery of her genitalia. 

 

Horalek told the Northville Patch that the school should have asked for parents’ permission before assigning seventh graders a book that she describes as “pornographic.”

“The problem is the school is giving the seventh graders inappropriate material and not explaining it to the parents,” Horalek told the Patch.

Horalek said the school should have sent a letter home to parents, as it has with similarly sensitive material.

“If they watch any kind of movie with a swear word in it, I have to sign a permission slip," Horalek said.

Horalek also claimed that every parent she spoke to was unaware of the passages in the unedited version. Her daughter brought them to her attention when she told Horalek that reading the book made her uncomfortable.

Given that the book is a firsthand account of Frank’s experiences during the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl, Horalek originally thought her daughter’s discomfort was due to the book’s depressing nature. It wasn’t until her daughter pointed out the book’s allegedly graphic passages that Horalek became concerned.

Now Horalek says she wants the unedited version of the diary, which became part of the school’s curriculum last year, removed from classrooms.

Read more at NY Daily News.

The paragraph in question is reprinted at Fox News Detroit. This passage did not appear in any of the previously published editions, it was edited out by Otto Frank for a reason. The unedited diary should be studied by historians and academics, but school children can read the classic.

Holocaust Survivor Dies with $40 Million Fortune, No Heirs

Roman Blum (no shirt) with a bunch of people who did not inherit his estate.

NY Times reports:

When Roman Blum died last year at age 97, his body lingered in the Staten Island University Hospital morgue for four days, until a rabbi at the hospital was able to track down his lawyer.

Mr. Blum, a Holocaust survivor and real estate developer, left behind no heirs and no surviving family members — his former wife died in 1992 and the couple was childless. His funeral, held graveside at the New Montefiore Jewish Cemetery in West Babylon, N.Y., was attended by a small number of mourners, most of them elderly fellow survivors or children of survivors.

Much about Mr. Blum’s life was shrouded in mystery: He always claimed he was from Warsaw, although many who knew him said he actually came from Chelm, in southeast Poland. Several people close to Mr. Blum said that before World War II, in Poland, he had a wife and child who perished in the Holocaust, though Mr. Blum seems never to have talked of them, and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, has no record of them in its database. Even his birth date is in question. Records here give it as Sept. 16, 1914; identity cards from a German displaced persons camp have it as Sept. 15.

But perhaps the greatest mystery surrounding Mr. Blum is why a successful developer, who built hundreds of houses around Staten Island and left behind an estate valued at almost $40 million, would die without a will.

That is no small matter, as his is the largest unclaimed estate in New York State history, according to the state comptroller’s office.

“He was a very smart man but he died like an idiot,” said Paul Skurka, a fellow Holocaust survivor who befriended Mr. Blum after doing carpentry work for him in the 1970s.

Gary D. Gotlin, the public administrator handling the case, sold Mr. Blum’s home on Staten Island, auctioned off his jewelry and his furniture and is putting other properties that he owned on the market. Mr. Gotlin’s office, which is overseen by Surrogate’s Court in Richmond County, is also using Mr. Blum’s estate to pay his taxes, conduct an in-depth search for a will and hire a genealogist to search for relatives. If none are identified, the money will pass into the state’s coffers. That, Mr. Blum’s friends said, would be a tragedy, compounding the one that befell him as a young man in Eastern Europe.

“I spoke to Roman many times before he passed away, and he knew what to do, how to name beneficiaries,” said Mason D. Corn, his accountant and friend for 30 years. “Two weeks before he died, I had finally gotten him to sit down. He saw the end was coming. He was becoming mentally feeble. We agreed. I had to go away, and so he told me, ‘O.K., when you come back I will do it.’ But by then it was too late. We came this close, but we missed the boat.”

Read more at NY Times.

DOOFUS OF THE DAY: Borough Park Man Goes All Westboro

World's Most Offensive Bumper Stickers

Gothamist reports:

Last week we published a photo of a car in Brooklyn plastered with a ridiculous amount of offensive bumper stickers. That car turned out to belong to Heshi Fried—Fried is a Hardei, which is considered the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. Considering our negative take on his vehicle, we were pretty surprised when Fried called us this week to thank us for writing about him. "I think it was great, and you know, most people are very much with me, the people who are religious are basically all giving me a thumbs up," Fried said. "Except secular Jews, who usually like, express shock. They feel like I'm causing anti-Semitism or something. They feel really embarrassed."

Fried, who was a follower of Rabbi Avigdor Miller, was incredibly civil during our 30 minute conversation, during which we tried to pose questions based around the offensive bumper stickers he so proudly shows up. Fried confirmed he used to be a member of the fringe Hasidic group Jewish Political Action Committee, but after the big "Jews against the internet" protest at Citi Field a few years ago, they removed their website. "[The Rabbis] didn't want us to have anything that may cause religious kids to go look at the internet to see what's going on. So that's one of reasons we removed the website."

As for those bumper stickers, which he makes himself, Fried says it's part of his goal to make as many people more observant as possible. He proceeded to explain each bumper sticker to us in detail, and how it stems from some passage in the Torah. But we pushed him about the Hurricane Sandy sticker in particular—how can someone possibly connect a weather phenomenon with a legislative action? Below, you can read Fried's answer, which involves a very vengeance-happy, hail-and-brimstone Old Testament reading of God.

Read more at Gothamist.

Well, I just feel like I want to Throw Up. It's very disturbing to read about a religious Jew who embraces the crackpot ideas of the Westboro cult and the extreme creationists. Babushka remembers Avigdor Miller from the 1970's. He was a fire-and-brimstone stand-up comedian-preacher whose lectures about young-earth creationism and anti-gay diatribes were taken primarily from fundamentalist Christian sources and crackpots like Emanuel Velikovsky. It's very embarrassing to recall that at one time I actually thought he was entertaining, kind of the same way that Rush Limbaugh used to be funny back in the day.

Having these hateful notions is one thing--a person really ought to work on his middos (good qualities), keep hateful feelings to oneself and concentrate on loving one's fellow human, even if that person has different beliefs, skin color, or sexual orientation. To plaster one's vehicle with hateful messages just invites reciprocal hatred, key-scratching, tire-slashing and windshield smashing.

Hateful people suck.

DOOFUS OF THE DAY: OK Legislator Apologizes to Jews who were Offended by Anti-Jewish Slur

 

An Oklahoma lawmaker who was advocating that the state drop a 70-year-old law protecting small businesses from large retails stores apologized on Wednesday after he used the slur “Jew me down” during a debate on the state House floor.

Republican state Rep. Dennis Johnson on Wednesday insisted to his colleagues that Senate Bill 550, which gives an advantage to large stores by repealing a ban on “loss-leader” selling, would not hurt small businesses because they offered better customer service.

“What you do, you find out what you do better than somebody else and that’s what you market, that’s what you advertise, that’s what you do as a small business and then you get the reward of success,” he explained. “People come back to you, they like what you do, they like the service they get. And they don’t ask me — they might try to Jew me down on a price, that’s fine. You know what? That’s free market as well.”

After a few more moments of rambling about how small businesses could buy merchandise at lower prices than large retailers, someone on the House floor advised Johnson that he had made an offensive comment.

“Did I?” he asked.

“I apologize to the Jews,” Johnson added, smiling in response to laughter that could be heard off camera. “They’re good small businessmen as well.”

MOAR FAIL at RawStory.

My Message to the Congregations Who Invited Pamela Geller to Speak, After She Was Turned Away by Great Neck Synagogue:

Hate Speech is Not Free Speech

I am sure that you are familiar with all the anti-Semitic myths and libels that have been going around for centuries, and the excuses that anti-Semites make for themselves.

“The Talmud says that Jews are commanded to hate Goyim!”
“Circumcision is cruelty to little babies!”
“Jews make you pay a Kosher Tax on food!”
“Jewish ritual slaughter is cruelty to animals!”
“Mikvah is degrading to women!”
“A Jew was convicted of child molesting, so all Jews must be child molesters!”
“I don’t hate all Jews but those Ultra-Orthodox sure are scary!”
“We must ban those rabbinical courts that judge according to Halachah!”

You have heard them all.

You are probably also aware that some of the people who believe in these myths are active in movements to ban brit milah [circumcision] and shechitah [kosher slaughter], to prevent Jews from constructing eruvin [Sabbath boundaries] and have joined with neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. If they are not marginalized in society, they can do a lot of damage to our community.

Would you invite such a person into your shul, to address your congregation? Or would you say they can enjoy their right to free speech, somewhere far away from you?

Yet you invited Pamela Geller to speak at your shul, after she was turned away from another synagogue who realized that her message is identical to the myths and libels that I have listed above, yet substituting “Koran” for “Talmud,” “Halal” for “kosher” and “Sharia” for “Halachah.” Her accusations against Muslims are just as false and offensive as the same accusations that are made against us. She may have a right to free speech according to the law of the land, but that does not mean any right to any venue.

I am deeply disappointed as an Orthodox Jew, that you have offered a platform to someone who spreads hate speech and is affiliated with neo-Nazis.

We should not stand for the same hatred and intolerance towards others that we have endured for so many long centuries.

Sincerely,

The Vicious Babushka

Bridge Troll Sues U.S. State Department, TSA, DHS and Canada to Protect Bridge Monopoly

The Troll & His Bridge

WASHINGTON -- The owner of the Ambassador Bridge has filed a lawsuit against a number of federal officials -- the U.S. secretaries of state, transportation and homeland security among them -- and the Canadian government as the company tries to block the building of a rival Detroit River bridge, and force approval for its own second span to Windsor.

The new complaint, now quietly winding its way through federal court in Washington, D.C., was filed in February but was dated Nov. 9, just three days after last year's referendum in which Michigan voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have required a statewide and local vote before the state spent any money on a new international bridge or tunnel to Canada.

In the lawsuit, the Detroit International Bridge Co., the family business controlled by Manuel (Matty) Moroun that owns the 84-year-old Ambassador Bridge, claims a "perpetual and exclusive franchise right" to operate the crossing free of competition from another span. It says the proposed New International Trade Crossing would "destroy" the value of its franchise, and argues that the process by which the State Department would approve a deal between Michigan and Canada to build the rival bridge is unconstitutional.

Read more at Detroit Free Press.

20 Photos That Will Change the Way You Look at the Holocaust

Buchenwald survivors toast their liberators, 1945

Victims. Helpless. Downtrodden.

That’s the narrative that’s been spread about Jews for the last 70 years since the Holocaust. We’ve embraced it to our detriment. We can’t seem to address antisemitism without running to the world and screaming that we’re being persecuted, rather than standing up strongly in defiance, aware of our own inner strength.

The Holocaust has scarred us, a yetzer hara (sneaky bastard of a voice in our heads), that keeps trying to tell us how we are defined by our past, controlled by events that happened to us, instead of using those moments as points of growth.

And, in a weird way, that’s why all those images of us looking so helpless, so gaunt, in heaps of nameless bodies, have become a morbid fascination for us. We, and by extension the rest of the world, has chosen to define the Holocaust with these images.

But there are other images. Images that show a more subtle, more true, story. A story that shows our inner power, our inner turmoil in dealing with a situation we cannot comprehend, our attempts to gain justice, and our final steps into moving above and beyond our past and into a new future.

View the gallery at PopChassid.

Polish Academic Claims Jews Were Responsible for the Holocaust

KRAKOW – Krzysztof Jasiewicz, a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a well known expert on Polish-Jewish relations, has caused outrage by claiming in an interview with Polish magazine Focus last week that Jews took an active part in the murder of other Jews during WWII.

The interview appeared in a special edition of the magazine focusing on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising this week.

In the interview, titled “Are the Jews themselves guilty?” Jasiewicz shared views that sound like they were taken from a Nazi propaganda bulletin.

“This nonsense about Jews being killed mostly by Poles was created to hide the biggest Jewish secret. The scale of the German crime was only possible because the Jews themselves participated in the murder of their own people,” Jasiewicz said.

Jasiewicz also said that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves.

“For many generations, the Jews, not the Catholic Church, worked to bring the Holocaust about. It looks like the Jews haven’t learned their lesson and haven’t come to any conclusions yet,” he said.

He continued, accusing the Jewish people of harming their relations with Poles.

“The Jews have a problem because they are convinced they are the chosen people.

They feel that they are entitled to interpret everything, including Catholic doctrine. They will always criticize whatever we did or will do. It will never be enough, it will always be wrong and not generous enough. I am convinced that there is no point in a dialogue with the Jews, because it leads nowhere,” said Jasiewicz.

Read more at Jerusalem Post.

HOW did this colossal douche bag become an "expert on Jewish-Polish relations"?

"Are There Still Jews in Germany?" Museum Puts Jews on Display.

Ido Porat, the Jew in the Exhibit Case

BERLIN -- "Are there still Jews in Germany?" ''Are the Jews a chosen people?"

Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, there is no more sensitive an issue in German life as the role of Jews. With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany's 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them.

To help educate postwar generations, an exhibit at the Jewish Museum features a Jewish man or woman seated inside a glass box for two hours a day through August to answer visitors' questions about Jews and Jewish life. The base of the box asks: "Are there still Jews in Germany?"

"A lot of our visitors don't know any Jews and have questions they want to ask," museum official Tina Luedecke said. "With this exhibition we offer an opportunity for those people to know more about Jews and Jewish life."

But not everybody thinks putting a Jew on display is the best way to build understanding and mutual respect.

Since the exhibit - "The Whole Truth, everything you wanted to know about Jews" - opened this month, the "Jew in the Box," as it is popularly known, has drawn sharp criticism within the Jewish community - especially in the city where the Nazis orchestrated the slaughter of 6 million Jews until Adolf Hitler's defeat in 1945.

"Why don't they give him a banana and a glass of water, turn up the heat and make the Jew feel really cozy in his glass box," prominent Berlin Jewish community figure Stephan Kramer told The Associated Press. "They actually asked me if I wanted to participate. But I told them I'm not available."

The exhibit is reminiscent of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann sitting in a glass booth at the 1961 trial in Israel which led to his execution. And it's certainly more provocative than British actress Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at a recent performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Eran Levy, an Israeli who has lived in Berlin for years, was horrified by the idea of presenting a Jew as a museum piece, even if to answer Germans' questions about Jewish life.

"It's a horrible thing to do - completely degrading and not helpful," he said. "The Jewish Museum absolutely missed the point if they wanted to do anything to improve the relations between Germans and Jews."

But several of the volunteers, including both German Jews and Israelis living in Berlin, said the experience in the box is little different from what they go through as Jews living in the country that produced the Nazis.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/29/3313042/exhibit-of-jews-in-germany-raises.html#storylink=cpy

Happy Passover!

HAPPY PASSOVER!

President Barack Obama Arrives in Israel

Air Force One at Ben-Gurion Airport

Shalom.  President Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and most of all, to the people of Israel, thank you for this incredibly warm welcome. This is my third visit to Israel so let me just say tov lihiyot shuv ba’aretz..

I’m so honored to be here as you prepare to celebrate the 65th anniversary of a free and independent State of Israel. Yet I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here, tended the land here, prayed to God here. And after centuries of exile and persecution, unparalleled in the history of man, the founding of the Jewish State of Israel was a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.

Today, the sons of Abraham and the daughters of Sarah are fulfilling the dream of the ages — to be “masters of their own fate” in “their own sovereign state.” And just as we have for these past 65 years, the United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.

Read more at Haaretz.

13 Annoying Things Most People Assume About Orthodox Jews

Because Juice are scary!

You likely base your knowledge of Orthodox Jews on ridiculous caricatures which were dreamed up in Hollywood and the headlines that capture the worst in our community. It's time to straighten things out.

By JewintheCity

1. You guys have sex through a hole in the sheet, right?

No, but I've been asked this numerous times — once even by my cleaning lady. Which is pretty funny because she's SEEN my sheets. I'm thinking,"Hey, lady, you make my bed! Ever seen any hole anywhere? Nuh-uh? It's cause we don't got 'em!" People assume that because we're outwardly modest that our modesty continues behind closed doors. It doesn't. (News flash: We also shower like regular people!) It's a big mitzvah for a husband and wife to be together — and not just for procreation. A wife's sexual satisfaction is actually part of her marital contract, and if her husband doesn't fulfill his end of the deal, it's grounds for divorce. Don't assume that because you don't see us being overtly sexual we aren't doing so in private places. That's the point: We believe these matters are *private.*

2. You wear a wig? Oh, so then you shave your head, right?

No, actually, I don't. And none of my friends who cover their hair do either. It's only a small segment of the Hasidic community that does. Why do I cover my hair in the first place, then, and with *gasp* a wig that makes me look beautiful? Well, that's a longer discussion than we have time for in BuzzFeed land, but I'll keep it simple: Jewish modesty is not about looking unattractive, it's about keeping certain parts of yourself private. The wig creates a barrier between me and the rest of the male population, and there's only one man who can cross that barrier. Again, there's no space to do the topic justice, but let's get one thing straight, folks: If you see a wig, assume there's hair underneath, because there usually is.

3. You're a woman, so you're subjugated, right?

No. I'm not, and I don't think any of the women in my community are either. But of course there are SOME subjugated Orthodox women in the world because there are jerky men everywhere including in the Orthodox world. Orthodox Jews have many shared values with second-wave feminists, and the vast majority of Orthodox women that I've come across feel respected and are choosing their way of life. Does Judaism consider men and women to be different physically, emotionally, and spiritually? Heck, yeah! But different in a yin-and-yang sort of way, not a in a Coke-Pepsi sort of way (Coke clearly being the superior of the two). Orthodox Jews are second-wave feminists. We believe in celebrating women's unique womanhood, not trying to make her more like a man.

But don't take my word for it! Go out and meet some Orthodox Jewish women yourself and see directly from them how they're treated. You can come to us for Shabbos, if you'd like. (Did I mention that my husband is an excellent cook?! ;) )

4. You're a woman, so you don't work, right?

Actually, I do. And most of us do. I once literally had a fight with a reporter from a major news outlet about this because she wouldn't believe me. She had no real knowledge of the Orthodox community, yet she INSISTED that Orthodox women don't (and can't) work. She noted at one point that "maybe my secular bias is getting in the way." (Ya think?!) When she finally conceded that Orthodox women could work, she asked, "Well, what do they do — run shops?" *Eye roll.* "Well," I began, "Some run shops, and some run companies" (like Rickie Freeman, CEO of Teri Jon). "And some run hospital departments" (like Dr. Laurel Steinherz, director of pediatric cardiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering.) "And some run legal cases at major law firms" (like Lydia Kess, a Hasidic Jew who was the first *female* partner at Davis Polk — one of the most prestigious law firms in the country). And frankly, there's more Orthodox Jewish woman - from all walks of Orthodox life — excelling in so many more professions than I even have space to mention. [Such as Vicious Babushka, who works in the auto industry--VB]

Read more at Buzzfeed.