JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL TEAM FACES PLAYOFF REPLACEMENT OVER SHABBAT

Jewish School Team Faces Replacement Over Championship on Sabbath (FoxNews)
DENVER — State senators have taken up the cause of a Jewish school's basketball teams whose playoff runs may be halted because its players can't play on their Sabbath.

Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy's boys team could be headed for a regional championship on Saturday, March 8, if it wins one more game Thursday. But the Denver school's religious beliefs prohibit students from playing on the Jewish Sabbath between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.

Earlier this month, the Colorado High School Activities Association, which governs sports and other high school activities, rejected the team's request for a schedule change.

If Herzl/RMHA makes it to the regional championship and refuses to play a Saturday game, another school would be chosen to take its place, CHSAA Commissioner Bill Reader said.

Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, said Wednesday the athletic association is sending the wrong message to schoolchildren, but he acknowledged there is little lawmakers can do to the privately funded organization.

Gordon, the Senate majority leader, said the association could leave itself open to a lawsuit because it passed a rule barring playoff games on Sundays. The association has said that was to give children and coaches a day off.

Reader said CHSAA can't accommodate everyone.

ISRAELI ORTHODOX WOMEN IN BURKAS?

The Frumka 
Miriam Shaviv, of London's Jewish Chronicle, offers her take on a growing trend: Israeli Orthodox women wearing a Muslim-style burka. (Jewish Chronicle)

MOST TASTELESS BRIS EVER?

PENIS BALLOONS WELCOME AGUILERA'S BABY SON TO JUDAISM (SFChron)
Christina Aguilera insisted on turning her baby son's bris into a big celebration and decorated her home with penis balloons.

Aguilera, a Catholic, has adopted all the customs and holidays of her husband Jordan Bratman's religion, and admits she now knows how to celebrate the rite of male circumcision.

The pop star refused to allow the sacred ceremony to become a somber affair and turned the bris into a big party.

She says, "I'm not Jewish, my husband's Jewish ... I never really knew a lot of Jewish people growing up either, so I really had no idea about the bris and all the Jewish holidays. It's all a learning process for me.

"It was a very sweet experience; we had a lot of close friends come over and experience the bris with us.

"We're such a non-conventional couple, we had a lot of penis balloons everywhere."

Aguilera and Bratman welcomed little Max Liron Bratman into the world on January 12. The naming and circumcision ceremony took place on January 20.

WHAT KIND OF BALLOONS WILL SHE BUY WHEN IT'S TIME TO TOILET TRAIN LITTLE MAX?

WHY BEARDS?

Why Beards? 
An in-depth look at the history of beards in Judaism. (Commentary)

A TOUGH CASE FOR THE LAW OF RETURN

His father was Jewish. His adoptive family is Catholic. Can he make aliya? by RUTH EGLASH (JPost)
A US citizen of Jewish descent, who was adopted as a baby by a devout Catholic family with some anti-Semitic leanings, is posing a tough challenge to the Law of Return.

Two years ago, Timothy Nicholas Steger, 37, discovered that his biological father, Robert J. Kates, was a Jew who had been a member of Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, New York.

But attempting to make aliya last August, Steger was turned down by the Interior Ministry, which deemed that the connection with his biological parents had been severed as a result of the adoption and that he was therefore not eligible for citizenship.

Citing the Law of Return, which states anyone with at least one Jewish parent or grandparent is entitled to immigrate, Steger appealed the decision four months ago, and he has been waiting for an answer ever since....

Steger's connection to Israel and the Jewish people is not a logical conclusion of his upbringing in a devout Catholic and often openly bigoted family.

"Half of my family had overt neo-Nazi leanings and my [adoptive] parents never told me that I had a Jewish father, even though they must have known," said Steger; his adoptive sister was an outright neo-Nazi.

Steger became an active member of the anti-neo-Nazi movement in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and the 1990s.

"I can't explain why I chose that path, but inside I always hated any form of racism," said Steger, who organized concerts to combat the growing skinhead movement and worked closely with the Anti-Defamation League during that time.

Back then, Steger started dating a Jewish woman and the relationship became serious.

It was through that relationship that he began learning about Judaism and Israel, making his first trip to Israel in 2000.

"It always felt like home for me here," said Steger.

Although he has yet to establish contact with his father, Steger did appeal to his father's former rabbi, Harry S. Rosenfeld, who vouched for Steger's Jewish paternal lineage.

"I am Jewish," said Steger, who has had little contact with his adoptive family since coming here. "And this [bureaucractic battle] is the greatest tragedy that could befall a Jew. I am being rejected from the land that is promised to me as a sanctuary from those who would persecute me."

ISRAELI RELIGIOUS REVIVAL?

A Jewish Revival? (Contentions)

According to Anshel Pfeffer, writing in Haaretz, there is a major religious revival going on in Israel:

This renaissance of Jewish learning is going unreported and largely unremarked upon because it has not resulted in a perceptible shift toward one religious stream or denomination. There is no new mass movement, and none of the charismatic rabbis or teachers has turned into a guru with a following of thousands. On the surface, the old fault lines between Haredi (ultra-Orthodox), dati (modern Orthodox), traditional, and secular Israelis are still in place, but just beneath, these boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred.

What’s fascinating here is that it is not really an Orthodox shift, so much as an increased interest among “secular” Israelis in a whole variety of new and old forms of religious expression. A wide range of institutions of Jewish learning, festivals, and synagogues have emerged for and by non-Orthodox Jews—each with its own angle, not necessarily to the exclusion of more traditional Jews, and mostly without affiliation to the Reform and Conservative movements known in America.

In other words: Something serious is afoot in non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel. It’s a creative period, and new movements may be about to emerge—trends which could easily reverberate back to the diaspora. Stay tuned.

ADAM SANDLER'S HANUKKAH SONG

ENVIRONMENTALISTS: HANUKKAH CANDLES CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING

'Green Hanukkia' campaign sparks ire (JPost)
In a campaign that has spread like wildfire across the Internet, a group of Israeli environmentalists is encouraging Jews around the world to light at least one less candle this Hanukka to help the environment.

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

"The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won't need another miracle," said Liad Ortar, the campaign's cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site's environmental forum. "Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation."

THERE'S ALSO THIS.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS ATTACKS HANUKKAH

Self-proclaimed athiest Christoper Hitchens writes of his distain for Hanukkah, which he views as a cheap knockoff of Christmas and as the triumph of the imposition of theocratic darkness over the forces of intellectual progress.

He's wrong on both counts. See here and here.

STUDY: U.S. JEWS' BOND WITH ISRAEL DECLINING

Study finds U.S. Jews distance selves from Israel (Reuters) (Hat tip: Rav. J.S.)
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Young U.S. non-Orthodox Jews are becoming increasingly lukewarm if not alienated in their support for Israel in a trend that is not likely to be reversed, according to a study released on Thursday.

Blending into U.S. society, including marriage to non-Jews and a tendency to look on Judaism more in religious terms than ethnic ones, is part of what's happening, the study found.

"For our parent's generation, the question that mattered was, how do we regard Israel? For Generation Y (born after 1976) the question is indeed, why should we regard Israel?" said Roger Bennett, a vice president of The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which sponsored the study.

"Until people recognize that a healthy and animated dialogue about Israel is the first step to a meaningful connection, the 'Israel debate' that takes place in America is liable to become moot well before Israel celebrates its 100th birthday," he added.

U.S. support backed by a vocal and politically powerful Jewish lobby has been a key feature of the Jewish state's success since its founding in 1948, an event that is widely backed by U.S. Jews and non-Jews.

But the study found that "feelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation."

The study found only 48 percent of U.S. Jews under age 35 believe that Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy for them, compared to 77 percent of those 65 and older. In addition, only 54 percent of those under the age of 35 are "comfortable with the idea of a Jewish State" as opposed to 81 percent of those 65 and older.

It did find higher levels of support among U.S. Jews, regardless of age, who had visited Israel. ...

The findings were based on a representative sample of 1,704 non-Orthodox Jews in 2006 and 2007 contacted in writing. Its error margin was plus or minus three percentage points. The authors said they excluded Orthodox Jews because they tend to be overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. ...

The trend is part of a long-term historic slide not likely to be reversed since "people do not seem to significantly grow in their attachment to Israel as they age," the study said.

Steven Bayme, director of contemporary Jewish life for the American Jewish Committee, a major pro-Israel lobbying group, said "assimilation is the biggest problem" with declining support among U.S. Jews, but he said it is not new.

"People growing up where there always has been an Israel" are more detached, he said.

But the study breaks new ground, he added, in finding that politics do not underpin declining support -- that it is not as many assume a response to Israel's handling of the peace process or problems with religious pluralism in the country.

JONAH'S DILEMMA

Jonah's Dilemma by MICHAEL B. OREN and MARK GERSON
(WSJ)
This year, as on every Yom Kippur, Jews throughout the world will recite the Book of Jonah, one of the Hebrew Bible's shortest and most enigmatic texts. Jonah is the only Israelite prophet to preach to Gentiles, and the only prophet who clearly hates his job. And yet Jews read the book on their holiest day of the year because of its message of atonement and forgiveness. But Jonah also conveys crucial lessons for all Americans as they grapple with crises in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and yearn for far-sighted leadership.

CHELSEA CLINTON THINKING OF CONVERTING?

Chelsea Clinton: Good for the Jews? (Contentions)
It’s hard to grasp the point of yesterday’s front page New York Times article on Chelsea Clinton by wunderkind reporter Jodi Kantor. While it’s clear that Kantor intended her piece to reveal the “real” Chelsea, she admits at the outset that the former first daughter and her parents “turned down interview requests for the article, as they have for countless others on the subject.” So, how does Kantor remedy this lack? With received wisdom and banalities, naturally. Kantor helpfully informs readers that the young Clinton has strawberry blond hair and favors tasteful pantsuits, that she graduated in 2001 from Stanford, did a stint at McKinsey, and works at a hedge fund run by a donor to various Clinton causes. That’s hard-hitting reportage.

The only mildly interesting nugget in the piece was the paragraph near the end, in which we discover that Chelsea hopes to learn “more about Judaism,” the faith of her boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky. Clinton, a “churchgoing Methodist,” has, of late, been attending Sabbath dinners. Perhaps Judaism will reach the White House in 2008 after all.

HARRY POTTER CREATES SHABBOS CONTROVERSY

Harry Potter 7 creates row in Israel (JPost)
The figure responsible for Israel's latest religious row is a bespectacled British teenager who is gifted with magical powers, world famous and entirely fictional.

The synchronized worldwide launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last installment in the wildly popular series, falls at 2:01 a.m. local time this Shabbat, when the law requires most businesses to close.

With Israelis already clamoring for Deathly Hallows, many bookstores are planning to launch the book on time anyway. That has drawn fire from haredi lawmakers, including Industry, Trade, and Labor Minister Eli Yishai (Shas), who threatened to fine any store that opens Saturday.

"Israeli law forbids businesses to force their employees to work on the Sabbath, and that applies in this case as well. The minister will fine and prosecute any businesses which violate the law," said Roei Lachmanovich, a spokesman for Yishai.

MK Avraham Ravitz (UTJ) slammed the Potter books for their "defective messages."

"We don't have to be dragged like monkeys after the world with this subculture, and certainly not while violating our holy Shabbat," Ravitz said in a statement.

Steimatzky, Israel's biggest bookstore chain, is holding a gala event in Tel Aviv beginning Friday night to launch the book, and the company has no plans to change the time, said spokeswoman Alona Zamir.

"We're required by our agreement with the book's publisher to launch the book at the same time as everywhere else in the world," Zamir said.

REFORM MOVEMENT BACKS IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

the statement that the movement’s leadership wishes to have ratified today at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the URJ’s board of trustees. [ED. IT HAS NOW BEEN RATIFIED].

In case its thirteen pages are a little turgid for you, let me summarize: We were opposed to this from the start, even though you could make a “just war” case for deposing Saddam. In 2005 we said it was time to leave. We are upset about the “surge.” We want President Bush to announce a timetable for withdrawal. And, of course, we must ensure that the cost of the war does not fall only on the poor and future generations.

The URJ, a religious organization, justifies taking this expressly political position, replete with policy suggestions, on rather thin grounds: in a Gallup Poll which the organization cites, 77 percent of the 303 Jews polled agreed that “the war is a mistake.” And what of the significant minority of Jews affiliated with Reform congregations who disagree with these views?

Republican Jewish Coalition leader Adam Cohen argues forcefully that this is an illegitimate use of power by Reform leaders putting politics ahead of religion.

Given that there is no end in sight to the global war on terror, and given that Jews—even peace-loving Reform Jews—are a targeted population in this war, the URJ’s statement sends a message of utter lack of seriousness to both allies and enemies.

In case it’s still unclear why a religious movement believes so fervently that the world awaits its evaluation of the war and of U.S. policy and strategy, the URJ’s website helpfully includes a long essay: “Why Advocacy Is Central to Reform Judaism.” And no, it doesn’t come out and admit, “because politics is more fun than spiritual self-improvement.”

NEW STUDY: INTERMARRIAGE LEADS TO FEWER KIDS RAISED AS JEWS

Latest salvo in intermarriage debate suggests a split in Jewish community
By Sue Fishkoff
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 6 (JTA) -- Steven M. Cohen, a prominent Jewish sociologist, has fired the latest salvo in what is becoming an increasingly vituperative debate about outreach to the intermarried.

In his newest paper, "A Tale of Two Jewries: The `Inconvenient Truth' for American Jews," Cohen uses his own research and data from the 2001 National Jewish Population Study to argue that inmarried and intermarried Jews form two distinct halves of the Jewish community. And the Jewish future, he argues, rests with the inmarried, who are more Jewishly engaged and much more likely to raise their children as Jews.

Jewish leaders better face up to this, even if it's unpleasant, Cohen told JTA.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

What's the blessing for seeing an elephant in a dream? (Haaretz)
Did Noah's Ark travel on Shabbat? Is wheat still kosher if rat droppings are found in it? An earthquake destroyed a village synagogue - what should the congregants do? What blessing does one make upon seeing an elephant in a dream? Is a man whose wife died in a bus fire allowed to marry her sister? And is a female hospital patient allowed to hear the havdala service, concluding Shabbat, over the telephone?

These are just a few of the 80,000 questions in Bar-Ilan University's Responsa Project (Global Jewish Database), one of the largest computerized databases of Judaic literature. After about 15 years, during which the database was available on CD alone, it has now been launched as a paid subscriber Internet Web site, at www.responsa.co.il.

CONVERSIONS TO JUDAISM (NOT FOR MARRIAGE) RISING

Converting, on their own terms
Conversions to Judaism -- and not for purposes of marriage -- are rising. (New York Jewish Week)