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Read the entire January 2007 issue exactly as it is printed! Pictures and Bonus articles in the print edition, not online

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The Current Crisis

 By Susan Rosenbluth, Editor
The Jewish Voice and Opinion
Englewood, NJ 07631

Far be it from us to tell you how to plan your Sunday afternoons, but, if the emails making the rounds speak true, the nine or ten Neturei Karta-niks in Rockland County are about to be spammed by a “loud and legal protest” against their inglorious presence at the Iranian Holocaust Deniers Confab last month. The rally organizers are aptly calling it “Operation Screwball.”

On Sunday, Jan. 7, at 1pm, the organizers are inviting everyone—but especially those who favor black hats (so don’t hesitate to put one on)—to rally with them in front of Neturei Karta headquarters in Monsey. You can get not only that address, but also the home addresses and phone numbers of all the Neturei Kartna-niks who snuggled up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The organizers have listed them on their website, www.e-agle.com/nk/

And who are the organizers? It’s our bet they’re probably other hareidim who are just furious with the Neturei Karta-niks for making all those with black hats and beards (to say nothing of those who live in Brooklyn or Monsey) look awful. It’s one thing to vilify Israel, we guess, and quite another to play pupik with those who believe Hitler didn’t murder Jews, but should have. Ahmadinejad’s motto seems to be: the Holocaust didn’t happen and we’re going to stage another one just as soon as possible. Adolf Hitler, call your office.

***

He may not be a Holocaust denier, but Don Imus and his staff would probably feel right at home reading Der Stürmer and cozying up to the crew in Iran. At the beginning of December, Imus engaged in some banter on his program about some singers he wanted to bring on (“The Blind Boys of Alabama”) against the better judgment of his station supervisors, whom Imus referred to as “the Jewish management at whoever we work for.”

The show’s executive producer, a regular on the show, then said, regarding first the supervisors and then the Blind Boys, “Even if you wear a beanie, how can you not love these guys?”

Imus’s co-host, Larry Kenney, who had just finished doing his impersonation of the Rev Jerry Falwell, suggested, “They probably were trying to push a more Semitic group on you. I don’t know, maybe the Paralyzed Putzes of Poland, or something like that.”

“You can’t believe what goes on behind the scenes, at least with me with these people. And fortunately, I don’t care,” said Imus.

We don’t either, Don, but we wish the guys who wear “beanies” at WFAN, who produce the morning show, and MSNBC, who simulcast it, did.

***

The Conservative movement, which just gave its hechsher to openly homosexual rabbis, is now toying with the idea of telling the poor benighted Orthodox community that its current level of kashruth supervision is, well, treif. The Conservatives want to establish their own “tsedek hechsher” to make sure food meets standards of “social responsibility,” particularly in the area of workers’ rights. The Conservatives are not pretending to know whether the food is kosher according to traditional kashruth standards, so any product they certify will probably have to bear a “real” hechsher as well. The question is: If pig farmers treat their animals humanely and pay their workers minimum wage, can chaza feeselech have the Conservative rabbis’ hechsher? Makes as much sense as ordaining an openly homosexual rabbi.

The Jewish Voice and Opinion is a politically conservative Jewish publication which present news and feature articles not generally available elsewhere in the Jewish or secular media. Articles may be reprinted in their entirety with attribution.