Orthodox larps for secular Jews

Last summer I was visiting a synagogue in Italy, in a city with a very small Jewish community. The synagogue was lovely, and so was the lady who was guiding the tour. The synagogue was also very obviously Orthodox - you can tell that from having separate sections for men and for women. The lady appeared to be considerably less Orthodox, although with the modern Orthodox you can't always tell.

The description of the local Jewish life was something I've heard before: a small community, the people are very secular, the synagogue is "of course" Orthodox, the young generation doesn't give a fuck, the leaders of the community are concerned.

"For fuck's sake," I thought. "Doesn't she see how those things are related, and why can't the so-called community leaders buy a fucking clue?" I did not say that out loud: first of all, she was a very nice lady whom I didn't want to upset, and second, the community leaders wouldn't recognize a fucking clue if it bit them right on the ass.

I've been on vacation in Italy 5 times. I haven't seen a single obviously Orthodox Jew over there. I've lived in Helsinki for 18 years now. I've seen an obviously Orthodox Jew once. I think he was the guy who runs the local Chabad house. This probably means that there is another one (Chabad houses are usually run by couples). The rabbi of the local synagogue makes three, if he is really Orthodox. I wonder if those guys even have enough for a minyan (you need 10; if you are Orthodox, you need 10 men).

Seriously: why? In the USA, they have different synagogues for the beard and wig brigade, for the ham and cheese brigade, and everyone in between. Nobody in their right mind would think of establishing an Orthodox synagogue and expecting the local young secular Jews to show up there and larp the Orthodox. I think everyone involved would be rather surprised if anyone did. So why is Europe so full of Orthodox synagogues run for (and, I suspect, often by) the secular folk, up to the point of asking said secular folk to show their dicks, if any? And, more importantly, why is anyone surprised when the young (OK, let's face it, "young" in the sense of secularization of Jews in Europe starts with my grandparents' generation and possibly even earlier) people fail to come to this badly written larp and go to some crayfish party instead?

The only explanation that I can think of is that somebody out there is really not in his or her right mind.

Dialog

A rabbi got beaten the other day in Berlin. He was just walking in the broad daylight with his 6-years+old daughter, and 4 men of Arab descent attacked them. It's kind of hard to fight 2 against 4, especially is one of the 2 is only 6 years old.

"Reminds me of my grandmother's story of how she was 6 and some Polish officers were torturing her brother right in front of her and how she was ashamed at not quite having the firepower to kill them."

"He teaches religious studies at a Jewish school and has pushed for years for dialogue with Christians and Muslims," said Levi Salomon, the spokesman for the Jewish forum for democracy and against anti-Semitism.. Well, it looks like he got some of his dialog. Or monologue, anyway.

Helsingin Sanomat forum moderators rather open-minded for once

"No Hitler oli hyvä mies ja oikealla asialla, kun pyrki hävittämään nämä tuholaiset maailmasta, mutta homma jäi vain hieman kesken. On vain ajan kysymys, milloin nouseva äärioikeisto hoitaa homman vihdoinkin loppuun!"

(Translation: "Well, Hitler was a good man and he was doing the right thing when he tried to remove this vermin [Jews] from the world, but he didn't quite get the job done. It's a question of time when the rising far right will finally get the job finished.")

That was one of the readers of Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest Finnish daily, commenting on an article about Israel asking its citizens to leave Sinai.

Now, I am all for the right of newspapers (and anyone else, for that matter) to have unmoderated forums, where anyone can write anything and where things get deleted only by a court order or not at all. This, however, is a pre-moderated forum that claims not to tolerate any racism or group hatred, and that has routinely removed messages that were even slightly offensive to some other groups. It's not the question of moderators not having noticed it yet, either - in order to be posted there the thing (signed with the nickname "Natsi" (nazi), although in my experience actual nazis for obvious reasons rarely compare Jews to nazis, as he/she does elsewhere in the posting) had to go through a moderator.

I would really like to know: what the hell was the moderator thinking?

Edit: Now they have removed that posting after more than 24 hours, but the question still stands.

Not only do we own Hollywood...

...but it sure looks like we have taken over Iran!

Apparently Mahmoud "Mad Jad" Ahmadinejad comes from a Jewish family.

Note to ourselves: we really should stop marrying our cousins. Once or twice in a long family line is OK, but do that 10 generations in a row and look what you end up with.

Juden verboten

Haus Sonnenhof, a hotel in Serfaus, Tyrol, Austria, decided to provide its customers with some of that old-days Austrian retro when they told a customer that due to bad experiences in the past they are not willing to take Jewish guests.

I should probably skip all the tempting little jabs about Jews' and Austrians' bad experiences in the past. Everyone else is doing them, anyway. I do remember an Austrian war museum, which, unlike any war remembrance I'd seen in Germany, considered the local (Salzburg) regiment great heroes. Their most heroic deed, incidentally, was to burn down Rovaniemi and to steal a Finnish soldier's boot. But I digress...

And before anyone asks: no, the owners of the hotel are not Muslim, or atleast they have perfectly German names.

What's really interesting is the stuff that is not mentioned:

1. How did they know that the guy was Jewish? Asking ethnicity or religion is not a standard operating procedure in Austrian hotels (not since they lost the war, anyway), and Austrian Jewish last names are not all that different from other Austrian last names. And the guy was an Austrian (and his wife a Belgian). Or did the guy ask for some particular Jewish accomodations?

2. Assuming the hotel just wanted to avoid Jewish guests, what made them stand up and say it? They must have known it would cause a scandal, and it is a lot easier just to say "sorry, we are full". Considering that there are a lot of hotels renting to Jews in the area, nobody is likely to notice or suspect anything.

If the man actually asked for some Jewish accommodations, getting rid of him is even easier. "Sorry, we are unable to provide..."

So, what is to be gained from an antisemitic grand stand? Do the owners actually want a scandal? What for? Did the owners even really write the email - my first thought was that some disgruntled employee did?

Swastika here, swastika there, swastikas everywhere!

I generally appreciate Anti-Defamation League's good work in documenting anti-semitic incidents.

That said, who the fuck has introduced those morons to Google Earth? Now instead of documenting actual incidents of anti-semitic vandalism and harassment they spend all their workdays playing with Google Earth and looking for swastikas.

The latest swastika discovered was the shape of Navy barracks near San Diego.

This might come as a shock to the ADL, but people have been using the swastika symbol for a long, long time before Hitler, and some are using it still. I seriously hope the ADL is not planning any group trips to Japan. All those tourist maps with Buddhist temples marked by swastikas would make them piss boiling water and have heart attacks.

Hmm, that's an idea: if the antisemites of the world want to reduce the ADL numbers, they should buy them all trips to Japan, with a tour of many temples. The more impressionable ones would croak for sure. (Antisemites of the world: if you decide to do that, tell me in advance so I can join ADL and tag along. I am not promising to get a heart attack upon seeing a swastika, but hey, you never know.)

Seriously, though: swastikas are very objectionable when vandals paint them on synagogues and cemeteries, but when you see them in the shapes of the buildings on Google Earth, it's usually because the good view from the air is not exactly the first or even the fifteenth priority of the architects. Try to live with it, as opposed to, say, having the Navy spend $600000 of taxpayer money to make up for the fact that the people who built the place in 1967 failed to predict the popularity of Google Earth.

Navy: please try to grow some balls and don't cave in to ADL, but if you definitely feel like you need to show that no offense was meant, can't you just buy a bucket of paint in a hardware store and send a sailor on the roof to write on it in big friendly letters "no offense meant"? Sheesh...

The modern antisemites tend to use a crescent moon symbol more often than a swastika symbol. Good thing that the ADL hasn't quite caught on to that trend - I'd hate to think what we'd have to cover if they had.

Going, going, gone!

The USSR census of 1979 counted about 1762000 Jews (as ethnicity, not as a religion). The census of 1989 counted 1378000. The combined next censues of ex-USSR countries, mostly taken circa 2000, counted 403000.

The numbers have recently attracted my attention because I realized that if it were any other ethnic group anywhere else, my reaction would have been "whoa, what happened to them?". But since it's just us, it's more like "huh, four hundred thousand of the fuckers are still there?".

If I had children, I would probably be idly wondering now what languages my great-grandchildren would be speaking. Finnish? English? Japanese? German?

I am also wondering where lies the line between ethnic cleansing and letting people the hell out of the damn shithole. If I ever become an evil dictator and want to get rid of some minorities, I will totally close the border and ban then from emigrating. They'll scream and demand to be let out, and UN, US, EU and god knows who else will also demand that I let them out in the name of human rights. Then I will negotiate, and the UN, US and EU will offer me a whole lot of goodies to let those poor trapped people out. I'll get the goodies, let all those unwanted minorities out, maybe get a Nobel Peace Prize as a very reformed dictator and will live happily ever after.

But hey, most of you can't even imagine how glad I am to be out of there.