If you've been listening to the radio show, you know I've been traveling this week (California and Georgia), so it's been difficult for me to keep up with the blog.  Nevertheless, my wife, Dr. Diane Medved, wrote such a beautiful piece about Israel's birthday that it seemed to me appropriate to share it with you here.

Happy 60th Birthday, Israel

It's modern Israel's 60th birthday. As every day, today is a miracle; even more so for Israel.

I grew up wondering what it was about Israel that had all my Jewish friends so reverent, so stalwart. Israel was one topic about which you did not joke, about which there was no dissent, a rare subject for a group of argumentative people. Most of my childhood friends were "very Reform," meaning they didn't even know, much less keep mitzvot (commandments). They ate "kosher style" bagels and sandwiches at Junior's Deli (on Westwood Blvd. near Pico in West L.A.). They went to services, usually at some overflow location, for the High Holidays; they lit menorahs. That was about it.

My family did none of it; my Jewish father had married a non-Jew and our home was basically devoid of religion, save for the Guideposts pamphlet-size magazine my mom got by subscription every month, the "God loves you" publication of Norman Vincent Peale. Though she kept each issue by her bed, she never spoke of it.

Though all my school friends were Jewish, there had been the interlude when at age ten a new friend moved onto the block--the daughter of an Episcopal priest, who made it a condition of our friendship that I attend their church in Beverly Hills. Dutifully, I tagged along with the "PK" and sincerely wanted some of the spiritual goodies that family lived by--but try as I might (and I did try, learning their liturgy and even becoming "confirmed" at age 12 along with my friend), that lightening bolt from heaven never struck, and when my friend moved away, so did any attachment to her brand of religion.

That left me back with all the Jews, just when they were having bar and bat mitzvahs. I had a great time attending those, but watching my friends give speeches about the arrival of their adulthood was more ludicrous than meaningful. In high school, along with my friends, I joined the George Gershwin chapter of the B'nai B'rith Girls (the Reform youth group, the goal of which is to insure that Jews date only Jews). This was before the Reform branch declared that lineage moves through the father as well as the mother, so I was the group's blond "ringer." I dated the Jewish guys, cozied in with my new best friend, whose family ate chocolate babka, and attended high holiday services, leaving the tedium with my cohort for acceptable breaks and then tip-toeing back to the endless prayers.

What does all this have to do with Israel? Even in such a non-spiritual Jewish world, Israel was sacred. It was understood that Israel was God's apology for the Holocaust. You gave tzadaka (charity) to Israel. You prayed for Israel. You planted trees in Israel. You evaluated political candidates on their support for Israel. Then you voted for the Democrat.

My family was conservative. My Jewish daddy, who never made any reference to his birth-faith, read US News and World Report at the dinner table. He voted for Nixon and in 1964 Goldwater--I still have a metallic gold campaign button that reads, "I'm an extremist, I love liberty!" written around Barry Goldwater's smiling, bespectacled face. But when it came to Israel--well, Israel was special and worth defending at all cost.

My first trip to Israel was 22 years ago, after my Orthodox conversion and much intense study. In order to make a phone call then, you had to deposit hexagonal silver tokens with holes in their centers into the pay phone--if you could find one. Then, you hoped there was an operator to put the call through. Sometimes people lined up waiting to use the public phones, since many private citizens did not have their own. The traffic was sparse; the country had the feel of a third-world, developing nation where not everything worked as it should.

I have been to Israel many times since; this summer my husband and I will escort 200 tourists there again (taking our fourth tour), eager to amaze and awe them with the ruach (spirit) so palpable there. Our daughter lived in Jerusalem for a seminary year; close relatives have made Jerusalem their permanent homes. Israel has emerged as a high-tech center for the world (the assonance nearly compelled me to write "a high tech mecca," but I just couldn't do it), where cell phones are ubiquitous and sophisticated. The pace is fast; cars squeeze through non-lanes and park on the sidewalks. And religiously, as the level of Jewish connection around the globe has grown, its fervency and urgency in observance at its source and center has burgeoned exponentially.

So, Happy Birthday, Israel! Sixty years is not a long time in the sweep of history, and only a blink after an exile of 2,000 years. But the amount of change, advancement and strength that has gathered in that short span only confirms it as the Land wonder-fully blessed and unique.

Amidst all the raging controversy, a few brave voices have come forward to defend Pastor Jeremiah Wright. They deserve more attention than they’ve received because they illustrate the pompous fatuity so typical of the religious left. 

For instance, within his own denomination, the Rantin’ Rev most certainly enjoys his supporters. Reverend Richard Wagner of Union Congregational Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, says the Pyrotechnic Pastor displays Biblical stature, and speaks “with the same passion and hyperbole as the Hebrew prophets.” The New York Times adds that “clergy members have cited Amos, who cursed all the nations, saving his harshest words for his own.” 

There are no end of ridiculous elements to this comparison, but we might as well start with the fact that Jeremiah Wright doesn’t see the U.S. as “his own” nation; he considers himself a loyal son of the African Motherland, and speaks no harsh words about the continent that produced his ancestors. 

Moreover, the Hebrew prophets lived ascetically and humbly (remember Elijah being fed by ravens in a cave?) and it’s hard to imagine them relishing a multi-million dollar home built with congregational funds, or gleefully commanding the spotlight on PBS or the National Press Club. 

Finally, the prophets were profoundly serious people, virtually possessed by the voice of God, willing to disregard their personal welfare to convey a message.  

Despite the carefully cultivated image as a dashiki-wearing rebel, Jeremiah Wright is a self-serving careerist, a media-mad showoff who will even say things he knows to be untrue (lying about the nature of the Tuskegee Experiment to make people believe the government created AIDS) in order to advance his own standing and interests.  

His egotistical behavior in putting his own standing and publicity ahead of the fate of his supposed friend, Barack Obama, simply provides the latest indication that this unbridled showman is more about profit than he is about prophet.  

The recent headline in the New York Times proclaimed:  

“81% IN NEW POLL SAY THE NATION IS HEADED ON THE WRONG TRACK.” 

When you read the body of the poll (by the New York Times and CBS News) the numbers tell an oddly contradictory story. 

“How would you rate the financial condition in your household—72% Good, 27% Bad 

“In the last couple of years have you been….”Getting Ahead or Staying Even, 71%, Falling Behind, 28% 

“How concerned are you that someone in your household might be looking for a job in the next year---Not at all Concerned, 45%; Somewhat concerned  26%, Very Concerned, 28%” 

As usual with these polls, in other words, the respondents make a clear distinction between the state of the country at large (which they learn about from the media) and their own situation (which they know first-hand). 

The contradiction looks as striking as always – 72% who say their own financial condition is “good,” while 81% say the nation at large is on the wrong track. 

Once again, the people express the sense that “I’m Okay…. But everybody else is in a mess.” 

When a majority embraces this puzzling contradiction, it’s evidence of confusion and uncertainty – not desperation.

An important new study of divorce and out-of-wedlock birth shows that taxpayers lose more than a hundred billion each year to cover the costs of family break-up.  

The Institute for American Values and allied organizations analyzed the additional costs to the legal system, welfare programs, and anti-poverty efforts as bureaucrats, cops and social workers try to cope with the tens of millions of kids and adults in fatherless households.  

The report proves that even a minor improvement in family stability would save the taxpayer billions. A mere 1 percent decline in family fragmentation would, for instance, save the taxpayer at least $1.1 billion every year. Defending and repairing the institution of marriage is therefore not just a moral issue: it’s a major factor in healing a wide range of social problems, rejuvenating our troubled economy, and avoiding governmental bankruptcy.  

Those who can’t depend on strong families far too often become the dependents of government.

Rabbi Mark Glickman of the very liberal Reform branch of Judaism recently wrote a Seattle Times column decrying Christian congregations that celebrate their own Passover Seders. Rabbi Glickman claims the Seder was developed long after the Exodus events it commemorates, and was supposed to convey powerful anti-Christian messages, making Christian participation inappropriate.  

In truth, there’s nothing in the ancient formulation of the Passover Haggadah—the book of Seder liturgy—that disrespects or contradicts Christianity or Jesus, and most Jews passionately disagree with Rabbi Glickman. Retelling the story Exodus and affirming Jewish faith doesn’t amount to an attack on Christianity – any more than affirming Christian faith amounts to an attack on the Old Testament or Judaism.  

The two religions certainly disagree on key theological points, but share a commitment to remembering God’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage as a liberating moment in human history. Christian rediscovery of the Jewish roots of Christianity is actually good for Jews, Christians and humanity. 

The biggest mystery about Barack Obama’s relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright is why the ambitious young politician ever chose to affiliate himself with such a controversial and radical congregation in the first place? 

With all its emphasis on “blackness” and loyalty to “black values” and “black leadership,” its “non-negotiable commitment to Africa” (rather than the USA that nourished and privileged him), why would Trinity United Church of Christ appeal to a bi-racial rising star, raised entirely by white relatives, who seems so sincere in his emphasis on trans-racial unity and patriotism?

In an excellent column in today’s Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaefer Riley provides the answer by quoting Obama himself. “As Mr. Obama recounts in his memoir,” she writes, “he went to meet Pastor Wright because he was advised that it would ‘help your (community organizing) if you had a churchhome…It doesn’t matter where really.’ So he became a member of the largest black church in the neighborhood thereby furthering his activism and eventually getting the votes of Trinity’s 8,000 congregants. Which is fine, but such an attachment is more utilitarian than religious. And sooner or later its true character will show.”

In other words, Obama’s never felt particularly committed to the Afro-Centric ideology of Pastor Wright and his church – with its stained-glass windows highlighting the life of a black-skinned Jesus.

This may reassure the public about his racial attitudes, but it’s hardly reassuring as a testimonial to his character.

We’re left with only two alternatives to consider this odd relationship, both of them highly unflattering to Senator Obama.

Either (as Ms. Riley argues) he joined the church out of political convenience, rather than faith or else he this week jettisoned the long relationship with Pastor Wright out of convenience rather than conviction.

There’s no sense that he can claim he was sincere and honest in both his initial attraction to the church and his current efforts to distance itself from its black supremacist stance.

It’s possible that both decisions reflect political calculation rather than heart-felt faith, or that one of the two shows his true feelings, but there’s no credible way to claim that he was completely straight and genuine in both his original decision to join the church and his recent denunciations of the intemperate extremism of its spiritual leader.

So, Senator, which is it—you were either a phony when you joined Trinity, or you’re a phony now – or else you’ve spent all of the last twenty years manipulating  symbols of faith for political convenience.

None of the available choices make the presidential candidate look good, let alone heroic and fresh as an agent of messianic change.

 In a heavily hyped new book,  British scholar Tudor Parfitt claims to have found “The Lost Ark of the Covenant” after a twenty year search. Actually, the artifact he discovered in Zimbabwe is a “sacred drum” worshipped by the Lemba tribe, which claims descent from ancient Israelites. It's true that DNA testing shows these remote Africans as geneologically related to the Kohanim (or priestly families) among the Jews, but unfortunately, carbon dating shows their “ark” as less than 700 years old, so it can’t be a Biblical relic. Parfitt (who was a guest on my radio show last week) claims it may be a “replacement ark,” an argument that gives reason to respect, rather than doubt, religious tradition. Ancient Jewish sources say the original ark, containing the tablets of the law, was hidden as a precautionary measure before the Babylonians destroyed the first Temple in the sixth century B.C. It was never found, so the Second Temple functioned more than 500 years with no sacred ark, no revered tablets of the law. The priests easily could have fabricated their own “replacement ark,” but their failure to do so indicates that the original existed and exuded, as reported, an incomparable spiritual power. Parfitt's long search also suggests that this lost ark won't be found any time soon -- and will remain hidden from both saints and scholars. 

. Recent headlines announced a sudden rise in the teen birthrate and Planned Parenthood and CNN lost no time in blaming the abstinence education programs backed by Christian conservatives. For one thing, the unexpected increase in pregnancies among teenagers hardly represents a crisis: it’s a 3% increase after 14 straight years of decline, and teen pregnancy rates are still more than 30% lower than they were in 1991. It’s also ridiculous to single out the limited funding for abstinence education, when the federal government still devotes six times the money toward programs that emphasize birth control and that Planned Parenthood enthusiastically supports. Moreover, most commentators forgot to mention that birthrates not only increased for teenagers, but also went up for women in their 20’s, 30’s and even 40’s. This increase could even indicate a cultural change that’s basically positive: with more and more Americans looking at children as a blessing rather than a burden. Unfortunately, it also no doubt reflects the rapidly disappearing stigma attached to out-of-wedlock birth and the general obsession with sexuality in our society. In any event, it’s outrageous to blame religious conservatives who are the strongest voice for placing that sexuality in a responsible marital context.  

Every year, the media churn out stories about the so-called “December Dilemma” --- accounts of mixed families trying to balance Christmas or Hanukah. Considering that far less than a million households feature partners of split Jewish and Christian commitment this fascination seems odd, even bizarre. A recent New York Times story called “A Holiday Medley, Off Key” focused on these Jewish-Christian conflicts, citing the absurd figure of 28 MILLION mixed-religion households – when the highest number ever cited for all Jews in the United States is 5.2 million. The times featured a gay couple in which the Jewish partner said he “felt guilty” about decorating their Christmas tree. Actually, Jewish tradition is far more emphatic in disapproval of homosexuality than of hanging ornaments. The problem with all these stories – about blending religious elements, with Menorahs and “Silent Night,” dreydels and manger scenes – is that they trivialize both religious traditions. One of the couples described by the Times made that trivialization sickeningly explicit by describing a Jewish husband married to a Christian wife who honored his “tradition” by taking a bagel, covering it with shellac, inserting a red Christmas bulb into its hole, and placing it atop their tree as an interfaith ornament. I don’t believe that the Children of Israel have survived exile and pogroms and holocausts over the course of two millennia in order to see their faith expressed by a non-edible (and no doubt non-kosher) “Everything Bagel” that’s been carefully shellacked. The truth is Christmas is a serious holiday about the birth of the Savior; Hanukah (just concluded tonight)  is a serious holiday about resisting assimilation and standing up to paganism. Both deserve more respect than they get in cutesy stories about the “December Dilemma.”

The brutal truth about the holiday of Hanukah, which begins this year on December 5^th, is that it is intensely and incurably politically incorrect. The heroes of the Hanukah story—the Maccabees—were uncompromising zealots and fundamentalists, vigorous representatives of the Judean “religious right” of the Second Century B.C.  

There was nothing tolerant or relativistic about them: they risked their lives to take back the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Hellenistic multi-culturalists who had installed a variety of idols and pagan gods to provide worship alternatives. The very name Hanukah comes from the Hebrew for “dedication” or “consecration”: it’s about purification and re-commitment on a national and personal level, and standing up to misguided alien cultures, no matter how popular, seductive and powerful.

This year, when the Jewish holiday arrives nearly three weeks before Christmas, there’s a good chance to keep its bracing and challenging themes appropriately distinct from the generalized seasonal cheer. 

Polygamy advocate Mark Henkel asks a powerful question: “If it’s all right for Heather to have two mommies, then why can’t she have two mommies and one daddy?” His challenge provides perspective on current demands that government endorse same-sex marriage. Why should society support the novelty of gay relationships ahead of polygamy, which was practiced nearly everywhere for thousands of years and would probably appeal to far more people than homosexuality?  

The right answer to polygamists should be government neutrality: if private relationships involve consenting adults, then it makes no more sense to prosecute a male who claims he has two wives than to go after a guy who boasts of two girlfriends. But that doesn’t mean government should license polygamous relationships, any more than it should sponsor homosexual coupling.  

In both cases, those who choose unconventional alternatives to one-man/one-woman marriage—still the best situation for child-rearing—shouldn’t be punished, but they shouldn’t be promoted either.

The Thanksgiving holiday provides an opportunity to refocus on the motivations of early New England settlers, who crossed the ocean not to escape the Old World, but to change it by the force of their example. For Pilgrims in Plymouth, or their Puritan neighbors in Massachusetts Bay, the idea of a “city on a hill” was to create an ideal society that the corrupt world would be forced to admire and, ultimately, emulate it. In the fine new book “Dangerous Nation,” Robert Kagan makes clear that the drive to bring justice and democracy to the rest of the world didn’t begin with “neo-cons,” or even with Woodrow Wilson. It began with our New England forefathers, and it’s always been a motivating force in America’s international role.  Among many reasons to feel grateful to New England’s founders on this Thanksgiving, we can appreciate them as originators of the idea of our nation’s special, even sacred, mission in the world.

A national gathering of prominent black pastors deserves praise for confronting the AIDS crisis in the African-American community, but also merits criticism for counting on government to provide solutions.

According to the most recent statistics, blacks make up 49% of new HIV diagnoses, though only 13.5% of the overall population. Widely admired Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas wants to tie this epidemic to politics and to the presidential campaign of 2008. “We can hold our politicians accountable,” he says. “Now is the time for the church to give a clarion call to government that this is one of the issues high on our radar screen.”

Wouldn’t the church do better to issue that “clarion call” to its own members to alter intimate behavior, rather than relying on federal protection against a disease spread almost entirely through sex or drugs? Holding politicians “accountable” sounds like a way to let individuals feel less responsible for consequences of their own actions. 

The current Ann Coulter controversy stems from unscripted and clumsy responses to obnoxious questioning by CNBC host Donny Deutsch. When discussing her vision for a better America, she described a country where everyone would be patriotic and “Christian.” When the host bristled (inevitably and appropriately) at that ill-considered, off-hand remark, she allowed that, like other Christians, she wanted Jews someday “to be perfected.” Under subsequent attack she refused (in the best Coulter tradition) to back down. This exchange drew condemnation from nearly all of the leading Jewish organizations in the United States, but the outrage provoked by her remarks – one typical columnist, Florie Brizel called her “a poison-filled hate monger” – seems utterly inappropriate for two reasons.

First, any American Jew who doesn’t already understand that sincere Christians want the whole world ultimately to come to Christ – including us – is an ignorant fool. Yes, Christianity believes in converting people: and most of us received that memo about 2000 years ago. The proper response to the declaration that Christians want all of humanity to become Christian shouldn't be outrage or indignation; it ought to be, "Duh!" If your friends or neighbors seek to share with you the greatest gift they've ever received, it's not usually a sign that they hate you; in fact, it's very likely an indication that they love you.

Second, the Jewish people face far more serious enemies today than those who seek to share the joy and fulfilment of their faith. Millions of Muslims want to kill us, Jimmy Carter wants to smear Israel as an “apartheid state,” and Professors Walt and Mearsheimer claim that a Jewish conspiracy dominates American policy. In this context, the rage against a pro-Israel, pro-American, anti-Jihad commentator like Coulter is wildly misguided. After all, in the same conversation on CNBC she allowed that in her view of "heaven" all Democrats would be "like Joe Lieberman" (the most famous religious Jew in America) and affirmed that she believes, with the late Jerry Falwell, that Jews certainly have our own place in heaven.
 
Actually, I don't worry about Ann Coulter making the final determination about my entry into the afterlife: even though I've always considered her an ally, a kindred spirit and a personal friend. But I do worry, intensely, about the suicidal tendency of some leaders in our community to try to make enemies out of sympathetic commentators like Ann Coulter, who supports policies and values that will help to ensure Jewish survival, while giving a "pass" to open anti-Israel fanatics on the left like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader, as well as senior Democrats in Congress like John Conyers, John Dingell ("there's no difference between Israel and Hezbollah"), David Obey, Nick Rahall and many more.

Actually, I dearly wish I could agree with some of the hysterical over-reaction and say that Ann Coulter reprsented the "world's most dangerous anti-Semite" -- because if that were true, it would be an indication that we are safer, more secure and with fewer enemies than at any time in our long history. Unfortunately, we have many adversaries who menace our present and future far more substantially than Christian conservatives who help to lead the ideological fight against Islamo-Nazis and anti-religious bigots.

For years, I’ve taken a lonely but outspoken stand against ubiquitous and, in fact, nearly universal lies about the state of marriage and the prevalence of divorce in the United States. In the past in this space I’ve used the authoritative Census Bureau figures to prove that the “50% divorce rate” that everyone loves to cite is, in fact, a pernicious myth: nearly 70% of first marriages manage to last until one of the partners dies.

On Saturday, I was pleased to see America’s “Journal of Record,” the New York Times, running a valuable column similarly decrying the current tendency to inflate and exaggerate the purported “collapse” of the institution of marriage. This column, by two professors of business and public policy at the prestigious Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, counts as especially significant because this same New York Times had previously run numerous articles by the shameless and agenda-driven Sam Roberts, who outrageously manipulates available data in order to prove his favorite point: that traditional marriage is finished in the USA and we need to get used to a brave new world of fresh romantic arrangements.

In any event, Professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers take on Roberts and all the other wedlock-is-dead advocates with their powerful, persuasive piece.

“The great myth about divorce is that marital breakup is an increasing threat to American families, with each generation finding their marriages less stable than those of their parents,” they write. “The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10^th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began in the 1970s.”

Near the conclusion of their column, Stevenson and Wolfers cite specific numbers: “The narrative or rising divorce is also completely at odds with counts of divorce certificates, which show the divorce rate as having peaked at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married couples in 1979 and to have fallen by 2005 to 16.7…. The facts are that divorce is down, and today’s marriages are more stable than they have been in decades.”

Given these figures, and the easily available and profoundly reassuring news about the persistent strength of the institution of marriage, how can we explain the widespread claim that traditional, life-long marriage is outdated and increasingly irrelevant?

The left promotes the lie in order to indicate that timeless family institutions no longer apply in the 21^st Century, and we need new, experimental, exciting and “liberating” arrangements--- like living together without commitment, or single mother households, open multiple partner relationships, or gay marriage, or whatever. The right goes along with the claims about moral collapse because the bad news conforms to the gloomy, “we’ve-lost-America” temperament of too many conservatives, as well as confirming the (often ill-informed) nostalgia for the recent past.

Of course, people of conscience and foresight need to work to defend the institution of marriage and, yes, the traditional family faces multiple threats and challenges that ought to give us pause. But one hardly helps the cause of matrimony by going along with the dumb and dishonest idea that the battle to preserve it is already lost. The column in the New York Times bears the appropriate title: “Divorced From Reality.” Thoughtful conservatives can’t afford that sort of divorce—and need to fight and win our crucial battles within the parameters of the real world.