Emunah Magazine

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

 So Brian Williams asks President Obama what he thinks of the fact that one fifth all Americans believes he is a Muslim. The President gets defensive and sheepishly responds that this issue was put to bed during the campaign.

But let’s ask ourselves an honest question for a moment. If he were a Muslim, would it matter? Yes, he isn’t, and has said time and again that he is a Christian. But if he were a Muslim I couldn’t care less. My problem with Obama is not his faith or lack thereof but his policies. If Obama were an Islamic president of the United States who berated instead of coddled Arab dictators, like King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, he would have my vote. If he were a practicing Muslim who prayed in the direction of the Had but promoted democracy across the Middle East, rather than Kissingerian realpolitik, which seems to be the foundation of his foreign policy, I would endorse him. If he were a devout Muslim first magistrate of the United States who spoke out against the abuses of women in the Islamic world, I would deeply respect him. If he were a Muslim who prayed in the Oval Office five times a day and fasted all of Ramadan and then lectured Hamas and Hezbollah to stop putting all their money into rockets against Israel and invest it instead into Universities for their people, he would inspire me.

The problem with President Obama is that he does none of these things, rarely holding the Islamic world accountable for its absence of freedoms, refusing to personally condemn Iran for its plan to stone a woman to death, and putting the pressure on Netanyahu of Israel to make territorial concessions rather than place the blame for the failure of the progress toward peace squarely on the real culprits: the terrorist organizations of Hamas and Hezbollah, both Iranian proxies.

I have devout Muslim friends who love Israel and wish Arab countries emulated its democratic institutions, just courts, and freedom of worship and press. Likewise, I have G-dfearing Islamic friends who love America, would fight and die to protect her, and believe America is the light in an increasingly dark world. I would support anyone like this for President any day of the week over, say, Jimmy Carter, a devout and self-declared evangelical Christian, who goes against the stalwart evangelical Christian support for Israel and has the chutzpa to call Israel, a thriving democracy facing existential enemies, an apartheid state. I would take a competent Muslim President who believes in lowering the burden of taxation, controlling runaway spending, and vastly reducing the appalling Federal deficit over a President like Jimmy Carter, who as our leader, ran this country into the ground.

As a Jew I am trained to judge someone by their actions not their beliefs. I will choose an atheist president, who loves and respects all of humanity and would put an end to the genocide in Sudan any day over a religious president who believes that we Americans have no such responsibilities to people beyond our border.

If an American president believed in elves and the Easter bunny but fought Taliban misogynists who pour acid on women who attend University, I would follow him.

And if an American president spoke Klingon in his private moments and worshipped Capt. James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise as a divinity, but set up an alternative to the United Nations, to be known as the United Democratic Nations, open only to governments that were of the people and by the people, I would support him, too.

In short, I could not care less what a person believes but in what they do. 

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international best-selling author of 23 books and was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium. As host of ‘Shalom in the Home’ on TLC he won the National Fatherhood Award and his syndicated column was awarded the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. Newsweek calls him ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.’ He has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’ Shmuley hosts ‘The Shmuley Show’ live every Sunday from 7-9 p.m. on 77 WABC Talk Radio. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

His dancing stops traffic — literally.

Moving and grooving NYPD traffic agent Wil bert Castillo (pictured) has been directing the flow of cars and pedestrians under the Brooklyn Bridge for just over a year, keeping everyone safely in sync.

Castillo, 47, a 10-year veteran, says dancing on the job makes him more approachable.

“I keep people safe. That’s my job, but pe destrians and tourists love to come up to me. I want to change the image of New Yorkers so people know we’re approachable,” said the Queens resident.

The married father of three began practicing his moves in the mirror and for his wife — and before long, he’d danced into the hearts of commuting curmudgeons heading to the unforgiving BQE.

“If they’re sad or worn out and I make them smile, I’ve done my job,” said Castillo.

His spins and pivots are rhythmically timed to the changing lights, and it’s not rare for soccer-mom-driven vans and sedans filled with suits to honk and wave to the affable agent.

“I told my girlfriend to put him on YouTube. He could be the next Internet sensation,” said Sheepshead Bay resident Justin Thomas, 23, who often passes Castillo.

Castillo’s bosses moved him from Canal Street and Hudson to the intersection of Old Fulton Street and Hicks Street because the traffic there was getting too backed up.

The 47-year-old native of Belize stepped up to the challenge and soon cleaned up the flow with his own flow.

And his moves happen rain or shine — often attracting photo requests from tourists.

“I’m a happy man,” Castillo said, “and I want to sell New York.

Source: NY Post

They've celebrated Pac-Man's anniversary, Einstein's birthday, the World Cup, the Fourth of July, Persian New Year, the Olympics, U.S. elections, and just about everything in between. Who are they? Google's Doodlers, of course.

A band of artists whose job it is to translate special events into those colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo, the Doodlers almost certainly have one of the best jobs in the world.

This team's members mix artistic skills with an ability to fit into Google's culture–meaning they can speak engineering and hold their own among the uber-geeks–in order to do the one thing at Google designed specifically to put a smile on people's faces the world over.

After working on a story about Google's creation of a special playable Pac-Man doodle back in May, I arranged for a visit with the Doodlers to witness their process and the creation of an actual doodle. So it was on a sunny Tuesday morning last month, I found myself among the Doodlers in a small conference room at the search giant's headquarters here.

A brief history
A little context first. In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the whole "out of office" idea by putting up a Burning Man logo behind the Google site's corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert. "While the first doodle was relatively simple," a corporate history of the Doodle recalls, "the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was well received by our users."

In 2000, "Larry and Sergey asked current [Google] Webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day," the history continues. "Pleased with the result, Dennis was then appointed Google's chief doodler and doodles became a regular occurrence on the Google home page."

The first doodle signaled that Google's co-founders were attending Burning Man.

(Credit: Google)

Today, the team is made up of five people–chief doodler Micheal Lopez and doodlers Susie Sahim, Jennifer Hom, Ryan Germick, and Mike Dutton.

And as part of my visit, they agreed to let me listen to their discussions about–and see their concepts for–future creations, so long as I didn't publish anything before September 4, when one of the new doodles celebrating the discovery of the Buckyball, would run worldwide.

It's notable that the doodle was running globally because just a fraction of the total creations are meant for a world audience. Most of their work is aimed at specific countries and celebrates local events, such as the birthdays of those countries' famed composers, scientists, and artists or national days of independence.

Regardless of whether a doodle is meant for the eyes of billions or just a fraction of that, Lopez said, the creative process is basically the same: the team tries to find a way to conceptualize the event and then tries to find the most fun representation of that idea.

Each year, the team creates about 200 doodles, and with each, it tries to instill Google's technology and its culture.

"The company feels pretty good about it. With all our products, we think of the user first, and this is another example where we really enjoy sharing….We get to have a human hand in our company as part of our interaction with users," said Germick, who led the Pac-Man effort.

Checking the facts 
With huge audiences viewing the doodles, those on the team know that it's important their work accurately represents the subject matter. Because if they get it wrong, the public will let them know.

For example, said Lopez, when the team put out a doodle commemorating the discovery of DNA, "we actually had drawn the double helix the wrong way…Scientists started writing us…[and] we revised it on the fly."

That's why, Germick said, when working on a doodle celebrating Pi Day–March 14, or 3/14–"I made sure to get a Princeton Ph.D.'s check on my representation of different geometric equations before I pushed [the doodle] out to hundreds of millions of users."

While team members will often have days, or even weeks, to finish their creations, that's not always the case. Hom recalled the day when water vapor was discovered on the moon, and it was decided that the team should get a doodle up that same day. "It looked like we had inside information," Hom said,"but really, we were reading the news."

When the so-called 'missing link' fossil was found, the team put up this logo within hours.

(Credit: Google)

When the so-called "missing link" fossil, was found in 2009, paleontologists felt it might fill in holes in their understanding of primate evolution, and the news created a splash worldwide. At the time, several of the Doodlers were at an awards ceremony in New York. But this piece of news was considered such geek manna that it was decided on the spot that Google needed to put up a doodle celebrating it. There was no time to lose, Germick said. Within hours, the resulting Doodle was bringing word about the fossil's discovery to untold millions.

Concepts 
While the Pac-Man doodle would have made the news any time, it was particularly notable because it was the first example of a special logo that was fully playable and interactive. But over the years, the team has experimented with a number of dynamic doodles. Among them are the celebration of Isaac Newton's birthday in which an apple falls from a tree, a UFO's creation of a series of crop circles, and one that people could click to collect candy wrappers. That one, of course, ran on Halloween.

After about half an hour of sharing the history of Doodles, it was time for the team to get down to business: discussing current projects and giving one other feedback on their progress.

Generally, one person is assigned a specific doodle, and each usually works on two or three at a time. This means that as a team, they can make progress on a lot of doodles at once.

The first concept doodle they discussed while I was in the room was one that was scheduled to–and did–run in Russia on August 19 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the space flight of Belka and Stelka, the two Russian dogs who became the first animals to go into space–and return alive.

Sahim was creating it. Her design, I was told, was inspired by the famed Nintendo franchise, The Legend of Zelda.

At this point, just two days prior to the doodle's publication, Sahim had already gotten the sign-off from a Google marketing manager in Russia, who had reviewed and approved it.

Next up was a doodle celebrating the 205th birthday of Danish ballet dancer and choreographer August Bournoville, which was scheduled to–and did–run on August 21.

This is one of the doodles–celebrating August Bournoville–that the team discussed during CNET's visit.

(Credit: Google)

Dutton explained that he had wanted to give the doodle a "dreamy feel," a "lost-edge quality," and a sense that the "body mass is fading." In the concept sketch, one could see a chair fading a bit into the background.

Next up was a doodle commemorating Ukraninan Independence Day on August 24, and then one for the 213th birthday of "Frankenstein" creator Mary Shelley on August 30. The Shelley doodle ran in the U.K. that day. In Lopez's conception, the doodle depicted a hallway in Dr. Frankenstein's home to pay homage to Shelley.

I asked why it was important to commemorate Shelley's 213th birthday, rather than one with a rounder number. Lopez said that Google simply likes to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. "We're not going to wait for a big, round number," Lopez said. "We want to do it now."

Of course, as Germick put it, by celebrating birthdays like Shelley's 213th, it maintains the "element of surprise…We want to be somewhat serendipitous."

Buckyball 
After discussing a couple of more potential doodles, it was time to see some early concepts for a doodle celebrating the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene, a molecule that, Wikipedia says, is "composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube." Spherical fullerenes are known as "Buckyballs" because these compositions have some of the same elements as geodesic domes, which were invented by Buckminster Fuller.

This logo was created to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene.

(Credit: Google)

These molecules are commonly used in science, particularly in materials science, nanotechnology, and electronics, according to Wikipedia, yet they are also seen in the design of many different kinds of soccer balls.

That's why, when Hom began drawing her concept for a Buckyball doodle on the whiteboard, she incorporated what looked to everyone like a soccer ball. "Let's just re-use the World Cup doodle," someone joked.

Hom explained that she was thinking of two different ideas for the final design. One was slightly interactive, she said, and would feature a tiny particle rotating in circular motion around the fullerene. "Hopefully, this would spark user interest," she said, "and they'd mouse over it. And when they do, it would zoom in to a gigantic Buckyball. The user's mouse would cause it to rotate and spin."

She said that if that approach wasn't appealing to the team, she had also been conceiving of a static doodle.

I asked about the animation in her interactive idea. Germick said if they went in that direction, they'd "probably try to con an engineer into working with us in their 20 percent time." He was referring to the Google tradition of giving employees 20 percent of their work time to address personal projects.

"Some of the people I'm talking to about animating this are Buckminster Fuller fanatics," Hom said.

Indeed, she said that working on the project had felt like being in school because she felt a lot of pressure to get it right. "If I get it wrong," she said, "then everyone's going to be upset."

Source: CNET

 With November's midterm elections less than two months away, a new national poll indicates that the Republicans' advantage over the Democrats in the battle for Congress is on the rise.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday, the GOP leads the Democrats by 7 points on the "generic ballot" question, 52 percent to 45 percent. That 7-point advantage is up from a 3-point margin last month.

The generic ballot question asks respondents if they would vote for a Democrat or Republican in their congressional district, without naming any specific candidates.

"The survey indicates that independents and voters who dislike both parties are starting to break toward the GOP," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "In a year when anger at incumbents is a dominant political force, the key to the election lies among those who aren't rooting for either side."

According to the poll, the two parties are equally unpopular. Forty-nine percent of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Democrats, with the same percentage feeling the same way about the Republicans. Just over one in five questioned dislike both parties.

Back in April, Americans who dislike both parties appeared to mildly favor the GOP on the generic ballot, by a 43-to-39 percent margin, with a large number saying at the time that they would pick a minor-party candidate or stay at home.

"Now, a lot of those voters appear to be bolting to the GOP," Holland said. "Republicans now have a whopping 38-point advantage on the generic ballot among voters who dislike both parties."

Republicans also have a large and growing advantage among independents. Sixty-two percent of independents questioned say they would vote for the generic Republican in their district, with three in 10 saying they'd cast a ballot for the generic Democrat. That 32-point margin for the Republicans among independents is up from an 8-point advantage last month.

"It's not surprising that those two groups are voting the same way, since almost by definition independents don't like either party," says Holland.

What will the "Obama factor" be in November? The poll indicates that most say that their vote for Congress will not be intended as a message for the president.

Twenty-four percent say their vote will be in opposition to Obama; with one in five saying their vote will be a message of support for the president. In 2006, anti-Bush voters outnumbered pro-Bush voters by more than two-to-one.

"Among those who plan to send a message with their vote this fall, Obama is having a negative effect but nothing like the effect George W. Bush had on Republican candidates in 2006," says Holland.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted September 1-2, with 1,024 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

California-based computer technology and database management systems company Oracle Corporation has offered a job to former HP CEO Mark Hurd, who resigned on August 6 following a sexual harassment investigation, according to a Monday morning report from Reuters.

Hurd, who stepped down as part of a probe into inaccurate expense reports that were allegedly meant to cover up a personal relationship with a female marketing contractor, is close friends with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison–who, according to Reuters, ripped HP for their handling of the investigation. The news agency, citing an anonymous source, said that a final decision had not yet been made and did not specify exactly what position Hurd would be offered at Oracle.

"Hurd's resignation was stunning because he was widely praised on Wall Street," AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson said on Sunday. "Investors praised his cost-cutting; HP announced about 50,000 job cuts over the five years Hurd was CEO. Wall Street also liked that he engineered more than $20 billion in acquisitions, which helped HP reduce its dependence on printer ink for the bulk of its profits… Those traits could help Hurd at Oracle, which is also known for aggressive dealmaking and cost cuts."

According to Robertson, Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, has gone on record as calling HP's decision to force Hurd to resign the worst personnel decision since Steve Jobs was forced out at Apple a quarter of a century ago. He also ripped the company's decision to make the harassment claims public, as they ultimately found that he did not violate HP's sexual harassment regulations.

"The substance of her claim was that her work helping organize HP events dried up after she rebuffed Hurd's advances," the AP technology writer also said. "Hurd, 53, who is married with two children, denies making any advances on Fisher. Hurd also insists he didn't prepare his own expenses and didn't try to conceal his outings with Fisher, which often included dinner after the events Fisher helped organize and that Hurd attended."

Hurd, a 1979 graduate of Baylor University, spent 25 years with NCR Corporation, and served two years as the ATM and point-of-sale kiosk manufacturer's President and CEO. Under his leadership, HP took over the top spot in laptop computer sales in 2006 and desktop computers in 2007. Shares of the company have fallen 13-percent since he stepped down, according to Reuters.

A stunning lawsuit accuses Citibank of costing a 104-year-old Manhattan heiress’s trust fund up to $80 million by failing to invest its money properly, The Post has learned.

More than 70 years after a $3 million fund was established for reclusive, eccentric Huguette Clark in 1926, "the trust’s value was still only $3 million" because it was never invested in stocks and bonds as it should have been for at least part of that time, claim explosive documents filed by two former Citibank trust officers.

The money had apparently been parked completely in bonds for decades, generating some income for Clark to live on but little or no growth for the fund balance, the court papers claim.

Citibank’s handling of the fund "needs to be independently investigated because the liability is now about $80 million which [the bank] owes to [Clark’s] trust," according the lawsuit filed by former Citibank trust officers John Cullen and Veronica Juliano.

The two former trust officers are soon set to meet with the DA’s office, which is probing possible mismanagement of Clark’s $500 million fortune by her lawyer, Wallace Bock, and accountant, Irving Kamsler.

In addition to the bank’s alleged mishandling of Clark's so-called charitable remainder trust, the trust officers' lawsuit charges that Bock knew about Citibank’s screw-up at least as far back as 1998.

But the legal papers say Bock dropped his threatened lawsuit against the bank after it hired him for $10,000 to represent it during an accounting of the trust.

"I asked, ‘Isn’t that a conflict of interest, since [Bock] wants to sue us,’¤" Cullen wrote in court documents.

He said his manager told him that that’s what the bank’s legal department had instructed.

Clark's trust fund was set up by the heiress’s mother, Anna, the year after Clark’s father, US Sen. William Clark of Montana, died.

Huguette Clark spent her life obsessively collecting dolls and shunning visitors, marrying once — briefly — and having no children. She has lived for the past two decades in Manhattan hospitals.

Her story only came to light recently after the media reported that Bock has kept her few, distant relatives from visiting her and not objected to a convicted sex offender, Kamsler, serving as her accountant.

Meanwhile, Bock and Kamsler have sold off her $23 million Renoir painting and $6 million Stradivarius violin, supposedly with her blessing, as her two massive mansions have stood vacant for nearly 60 years, costing her millions in upkeep.

Under the terms of the trust that Citibank was managing, Clark received income from the fund's investments, but whatever balance is left when the now-feeble heiress will go to the famed Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, where there is wing named after her father, who donated 800 works to it upon his death.

Cullen, 68, filed a lawsuit against Citibank alleging the trust-fund mismanagement in 2008, after the bank fired him earlier that year. Juliano, who also was terminated, later joined the action, which is pending in White Plains federal court.

At his Westchester County home Friday, when asked if he believed he was fired because of his concerns about Clark’s trust fund, Cullen replied, "I don’t believe it, I know it."

A spokesman for Citibank’s corporate parent, Citi, said "Citi has acted appropriately in carrying out our fiduciary responsibilities in this matter and the allegations first made several years ago by a former employee are entirely baseless."

Bock’s spokesman, Michael McKeon, the lawyer "has and continues to act in the best interests of Ms. Clark. Any allegation to the contrary is without support."

According to the lawsuit, another alleged debacle involving also occurred involving the theft of some of Huguette Clark’s jewelry, which was kept in a bank safety-deposit box.

At one point, Bock told Citibank that "[its] trust department forgot to pay [Clark’s] safe-deposit-box fees," the suit says.

"After a few years, the branch drilled open the box, took an inventory and took [Clark’s] jewelry into a cardboard box, sealed it, and sent it down to its main vault for storage.

"A vault attendant slit open the box from the bottom, and took the jewelry. The jewelry was put into a Sotheby’s catalog, recognized and recovered," the suit says.

Dick Cheney wanted to invade several Middle East nations, not just Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals in his new book.

"I don't want to see it, but I'm saying you cannot exclude it because the primary objective has got to be to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon," Blair said.

Source: NY Daily News

KITTY HAWK, N.C. — Hurricane Earl hit hard and flooded roads that left thousands of people without power along North Carolina’s coastline on Friday morning, but the storm was weakening and seemed to have passed without inflicting any serious harm as it tore north through the Atlantic.

Two families from Newport, Va., stood on the deck of their house on Avon Beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina as Hurricane Earl was heading for the East Coast.

The storm was still thrashing the Outer Banks with heavy rain and torrid winds, but it was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane from a Category 3 early Friday morning.

In Hyde County, there were reports coming in of 5,000 people without power and three feet of flooding along barrier islands that received the brunt of the storm’s impact. But all emergency officials in neighboring Dare County said that thankly the night had passed quietly, with few and moderate calls for help from the residents who had decided not to evacuate the area.

“It’s been sort of a brush-by blow,” said Mark Van Sciver, a spokesman for the state’s Emergency Operations Center, who said that there were no reports of injuries or deaths.

At 5 a.m., Hurricane Earl was roughly 85 miles east of Cape Hatteras with winds of 105 miles per hour, and was steadily marching north, unleashing severe rain and gusts of wind.

Hurricane Earl is expected to reach Cape Cod in Massachusetts by early Saturday morning, and the National Weather Service warned Friday morning it would remain a “large hurricane” expected of bringing four to eight inches of rain and ripping away strips of beach even as it gradually loses weakens over the next three days as it steadily heads into colder waters.

At the inns on seaside Long Island and the Jersey Shore, owners had boarded up windows, pulled down their canvas awnings, and were handing out flashlights to guests who had come to try to enjoy in an extended Labor Day weekend.

On the eastern tip of Long Island, surfers in Montauk zipped up their wetsuits and were paddling out to take advantage of the waves before the weather grew too severe, and surfcasting fishermen were exulting that the approaching hurricane had pushed their catch of striped bass closer to shore.

“The fish here have been blitzing,” said Gerry Muro, 70, who spends his summers in Montauk.

On Nantucket, officials urged people to pull in their boats and planned to open an emergency shelter at a high school Friday morning.

Forecasters said that after passing North Carolina, the storm would most likely continue weakening as it headed north into colder waters.

In Massachusetts, where Earl is expected to pass perilously close to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Friday night, Gov. Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency and asked residents near the coast to consider relocating. In New York, the Long Island Railroad said it was canceling all service on the East End of the island for Friday, with trains set to shut down east of Speonk and Ronkonkoma. And in many communities along the Atlantic seaboard, residents and business owners began boarding up their windows and shuttering their homes as they anticipated the lashing from the storm.

The National Weather Service said Earl was heading north with winds of 105 miles per hour, and issued a tropical storm warning for parts of Long Island and a hurricane warning for coastal Massachusetts, including Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, which lie along the storm’s expected path as it curves to the northeast and sweeps up the coast. The storm could bring winds of at least 75 miles per hour, four to eight inches of rain and severe coastal flooding and erosion.

By 8 p.m. Friday, the hurricane should reach a point about 100 to 120 miles southeast of Montauk at Long Island’s eastern tip, bringing tropical-storm force winds of up to 74 miles per hour to parts of Long Island itself, said Ross Dickman, the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service’s office in Brookhaven. He warned that such winds and heavy rains could start knocking down trees and power lines even earlier in the day Friday and urged residents to stock up on batteries and secure boats, beach chairs, outdoor umbrellas and any other objects that could turn into missiles.

On Nantucket, officials said they planned to open an emergency shelter at a high school Friday morning. No one has been asked to evacuate, and it would be very difficult, said Gregg Tivnan, the assistant town administrator.

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about the consumption of alcohol had been the consistent finding that those who don't drink tend to pass sooner than those who do drink. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous reason for this finding is that many of those who show up as people who abstain in such research are actually former very heavy drunks who had already incurred severe health problems known to be associated with drinking.
But a article in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't exactly clear — abstaining from alcohol tends to increase one's risk of passing, even when you do not include former people who have a problem drinking. The most astonishing part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of people who are heavy drinkers.
Moderate drinking, which is defined (but debatable) as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the drink of choice is red wine) is thought to improve a healthy heart, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don't have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.
But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It's true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors — job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don't get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.)
But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who were not current drinkers, regardless of whether they used to be alcoholics, second highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.
The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over 69% of the abstainers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died.
These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than those who don't drink, even if they never had a problem with alcohol. One important reason is that alcohol helps lubricate so many social interactions, and social interactions are healthy for maintaining mental and physical well being. Nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party.
The authors of the new paper are careful to note that even if drinking is associated with longer life, it can be dangerous: it can impair your memory severely and it can lead to nonlethal falls and other mishaps (like, say, the cause to cheating while under the influence) that can really create turmoil in your life. There's also the dependency issue: if you become addicted to alcohol, you may spend a lifetime trying to abstain.

 MEMPHIS, Aug. 30 – The Organizers of the 22nd Kosher World Championship Barbecue at a synagogue in Memphis said they had a big turnout of 42 groups that competed in this year's main event.

Ira and Debby Weinstein, board members of the Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth synagogue and the creators of the event, estimated about roughly 2,000 people came out Sunday to the barbecue to enjoy the many dishes prepared by the 42 teams, The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal reported Monday.

The Weinsteins said the barbecue is a big fund raiser for the synagogue and draws kosher barbecue enthusiasts from Arkansas, Georgia, New York, and Alabama.

Rick Baer, the congregation president said "It's the one event in the city that brings all of the Jewish community together — Orthodox, conservative — it's a true community event,"

BEIRUT — A Lebanese Shiite cleric known to be a critic for Syrian-backed Hezbollah has been arrested in Syria on the suspicion of espionage for Israel, a high-ranking Lebanese security official said on Thursday.

"Sheikh Hassan Msheymish had been arrested in July in Syria based on Lebanese police intelligence had sent to Syrian authorities informing them that he was implicated in collaborating with Israel," the official told AFP.

Msheymish was still being questioned by Syrian authorities as preliminary information gathered by Lebanese intelligence indicated he may have allegedly spied on targets in Syria, the official said.

One of the sheikh's sons told AFP in July that Msheymish, a vocal critic of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, had been arrested while on his way to the Saudi city of Mecca on a religious pilgrimage.

A judicial source, meanwhile, said two Lebanese nationals and two Palestinians have been charged in military court with collaborating with Israel, including a telecom ministry official, Toni Boutros.

The other Lebanese, Joseph Kassis, is on the lam, he said.

More than 100 people have been arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of espionage since April 2009, including several telecom employees, members of the security forces and members of the military.

Most of the suspects are accused of helping Israel identify targets during its defeat in 2006 war with Hezbollah.

Five of those tried have been already sentenced to death for spying for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

Lebanon and Israel remain technically in a state of war, and convicted spies face life in prison with hard labour or the death penalty if found guilty of contributing to Lebanese loss of life.

Tripoli – Two Jewish women who are currently living in Italy will be allowed to visit their old families’ homes in Libya, the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reported Thursday.

This news came on the same week of Libyan leader Moamar Qaddafi's visit to Rome to meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The two countries have been seeing more eye to eye in recent years after Italy agreed to pay 5 billion dollars in reparations for its three decades of colonial rule in North Africa.

According to the report, the women have not been able to visit Libya, where they were born, since they and their families emigrated to Italy in 1967.

Jews lived in Libya for centuries, but faced harsh conditions during World War II when the country was ruled by fascist occupiers.

After the war, the situation became more difficult when the state of Israel came into existence. After Qaddafi's revolution more Jews left the country, for Italy or Israel.

The last Jew that was living in of Libya left the country in 2003, though starting last year, Qaddafi has allowed some members of the community in Italy to pay visits to the places where they were born, mostly in Tripoli or Benghazi.

With one final, fitting blast of 96-degree heat on Tuesday, the summer of 2010 went down in the National Weather Service’s record books as the hottest ever in New York City.

Hotter than the previous high of 77.3 degrees set in 1966, when more than 1,100 deaths were attributed to heat that repeatedly exceeded 100 degrees. Hotter than 2006, when a heat wave set off a blackout in northern Queens that left more than 100,000 residents without power for days.

But in this record-breaking season — defined by the Weather Service as June through August — there was no cataclysm, no singular event that was likely to define a three-month period when the temperature averaged 77.8 degrees. Instead, the summer of 2010 might be more properly measured in more subtle ways.

For Sal Medina, a newsstand operator from the Bronx, it could be measured by the number of frozen water bottles that he slipped into his pants this week to stay cool (three).

For John Natuzzi, it could be all the ice cubes used during the first day of the United States Open tennis tournament on Monday (80,000 pounds).

For lifeguards, it could be the number of total visitors to the city’s beaches (17.2 million).

For executives at Consolidated Edison, it would surely be the number of 90-degree days the utility struggled through without any widespread disruptions of its power network (34).

Tally it all up and the sum of the last three months is a rarely interrupted stretch of hot days that forced New Yorkers to keep cool in ways both traditional and creative.

Mr. Medina, 56, who lives in Pelham Bay, could barely stand to be inside his metal-jacketed newsstand at Clinton and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. To cool off, he devised a system using frozen pint-sized bottles of Poland Spring water.

He would tuck three inside the waistband of his pants. A fourth he would sling in a plastic bag whose handles he would knot just under his chin, holding the icy cylinder against the back of his neck.

Even with that gear, Mr. Medina said he had quit early a few days this summer, heading home at 3 p.m. on the hottest days, instead of the usual 6. The heat, he said, “affects your whole nervous system, makes you grouchy; it makes you so you can’t stand your customers.”

At Natuzzi Brothers Ice Company in Queens, the phones ring nonstop once the temperature hits 90, Mr. Natuzzi said. This summer, he said, his company has been supplying dry ice to ice-cream stores to keep their products frozen, a request he said he rarely got last summer.

The shortage of orders during the cool early months of last summer led to significant losses, Mr. Natuzzi said, but this summer has been a different story. The company, whose warehouse holds 40 tons of ice, sold out its supply during the heat wave that started on the July 4 weekend. It has been running its delivery trucks up to 15 hours a day since then.

“It’s been quite a ride this summer,” Mr. Natuzzi said.

Exhausted as he is, it is not quite over. His company supplies ice to the food-service operations at the United States Open, which runs for two weeks. On the first day, the Open used about 20,000 pounds more than usual, he said. “I’ll look back and say that this is one summer I’ll never forget,” Mr. Natuzzi said.

At Con Edison, the summer of 2010 will be memorable for what did and did not happen. In the past three months, the utility’s customers drew more power off its grid than during any previous three-month period, according to data compiled by the company. But through successive heat waves, the electric distribution system held up, with only occasional localized disruptions.

“For two days we suffered,” said Theo Trilivas, 65, a retired plumber who lost power in his home in Astoria, Queens, in July. “No power. No cooking. No A.C. No lights. Nothing. We had to throw out everything in the freezer.”

The growing demand for power from residential customers has been one of the bigger surprises to Con Ed officials this summer. Of the company’s 36 distribution networks, 14 — all in residential areas — exceeded the forecast for peak demand, said John F. Miksad, a senior vice president who oversees the company’s electric operations. Reflecting the weak state of the economy, power usage by commercial customers declined this summer, he said.

The increased use of air-conditioning has been one constant of life in the metropolitan region. According to Con Ed’s estimates, 6.6 million air-conditioners are in use in its service area, and that number is rising by at least 170,000 a year.

Sam Sharma and his wife tried placing buckets of ice cubes on window sills and in front of fans in their apartment on the second floor of a house in Woodside, Queens. But eventually they broke down and did what so many other New Yorkers have done: they bought an air-conditioner.

“We have it in the living room and only run it when it is extreme heat, and then only for a few hours,” said Mr. Sharma, an immigrant from Nepal who works as a parking lot attendant. “Maybe we used it 10 days this whole summer. It’s expensive.”

In search of relief, some people actually sought out the city. On Monday, Sharon Fredman, 38, a Web consultant from Tenafly, N.J., had run out of suburban options to entertain her daughter, Margot, 8, and keep her cool at the same time. So she drove in for the day to let Margot splash around in a sprinkler in Tompkins Square Park. “When it’s 90 degrees,” Ms. Fredman said, “it’s equally hot everywhere.”

When New Yorkers sought to escape the heat indoors, they flocked to the beaches, particularly Coney Island. According to the city’s parks department, total attendance at Coney Island’s beach slightly exceeded 12.8 million people, more than triple the total from 2009.

“There were tremendous increases at all the beaches,” said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner. “The beaches were our natural air-conditioners.”

Many of those beachgoers were repeat visitors, like Stephen Fybish, who said he went to Coney Island or neighboring Brighton Beach to swim in the ocean 11 times this summer. He said that he found the sand to be crowded some days but that he always had ample room to swim.

A weather historian who has kept detailed records on temperatures in the city for many years, Mr. Fybish was already looking ahead to September and calculating what sort of weather it would take to extend the hottest-ever distinction. By his reckoning, the average temperature for the month has to be higher than 71 degrees for New York to have its hottest June-through-September period on record.

I guess Tiger Woods isn’t trying to lay low after all, considering all of the events that has gone on in his life in the past nine months.

The now divorced golfer, who’s still feeling the effects of his infamous promiscuous scandal, is reportedly moving to the Big Apple, the biggest stage in the world.

Woods, 34, moved into some downtown apartment over the weekend, but sources are still unknown, according to an Us Weekly report Monday.

The magazine quoted a witness who wanted to remain anonymous saw Woods "introducing himself as the new neighbor."

The move by Woods coincidentally coincided with his entry in the nearby Barclays tournament in Paramus, N.J., over the weekend.

Woods’ spokesman could not be reached and did not respond to a request for comment.

Some New Yorkers who are big fans of Woods said Monday that he will fit right in.

"What’s one more promiscuous guy for New York City? The city’s got enough of them already," said Peter Corvington, 31, of Brooklyn.

Other New Yorkers didn’t seem to care whether Tiger called New York home but had some of their own ideas on where the golfer may be spending a lot of his fortune.

"Tiger Woods is free to live wherever Tiger Woods wants to live. It neither pleases nor upsets me in any way," said Neal Block, 30, of Park Slope. "I look forward to running into him at the local party scenes."

As of last week Woods officially divorced from his wife of five years, Elin Nordegren, the Swedish model he cheated on with numerous amounts of women, including waitresses, actresses among others.

Nordegren, 30, reportedly walked away with $100 million of Woods’ money to date.

The divorce came nine months after Woods crashed his car into a tree following their Thanksgiving weekend blowup at their Orlando, Fla., estate. Nordegren denied reports she attacked Tiger that night.

The couple has two kids, 3-year-old daughter Sam and 18-month-old son Charlie.

"Good for Tiger Woods," said Alex Yakubov, 23, of Forest Hills. "I wish him the best of luck. I wish he played better because he’s horrible now."

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

As a seventeen-year-old student at Rabbinical college, a riddle was put to me. A beggar is invited to a billionaire’s home for dinner. The homeless man has never had such scrumptious food. He throws his entire being into slopping down his soup and devouring his chicken. Meanwhile, the rich man puts a napkin on his lap, sticks out a pinky, and eats with meticulous etiquette. The question, which of the two men is more attached to the food? I answered, ‘Why, the poor man, of course. He’s wolfing the stuff down as if it’s his last meal.’ ‘Wrong,’ my teacher told me. ‘The rich man is much more attached. Want proof? Try taking the food away from each. For the poor man its easy-come-easy-go. He ate on the street yesterday, he’ll find a way to make do today. But the rich man? Just try taking away his meal. His butler will assault you, the police will be called, his lawyer will sue…’ You get the picture.

As America endures its worst recession since the great depression, a cleansing of sorts is taking place. All the status symbols that give our lives meaning – designer clothes, fancy cars, expensive jewelry – are becoming outside our reach. Now status symbols are strange things. Who would have thought Dolce and Gabbana on our backside, Prada on our feet, and a $9000 Birkin bag on our shoulder would make us feel so good about ourselves. But, curiously, we spend our lives pursuing these ephemeral and flimsy objects that somehow lend significance to our lives. Descartes may have said, “I think, therefore I am.” But in America we respond, “I have, therefore I am.”

But in this recession, our status symbols are under threat. How attached have we become to these things? Will our egos survive their absence? Most importantly, will we finally fill the void with new status symbols of greater depth and more lasting endurance?

Tiger Woods just lost his wife. His career is also going down the toilet. Which makes him feel worse? The answer, of course, depends on which was the real pillar of his self-esteem, his money and celebrity or his family.

Values, of course, create character. A love of money creates a greedy character while a love of people creates a nurturing character. But what is often overlooked is how values also determine a culture’s status symbols. A culture that values wealth will develop super-expensive cars and gold encrusted watches that people compete to purchase. And a culture that values virtue will develop status symbols based on public service.

After Ted Turner pledged $1 billion in 1997 to the UN, he made the valid point that the Forbes 400 list prevented many of his friends from following suit. They feared that if they gave away a large portion of their wealth they would fall off the list. For many, status is attained through the hording of wealth. But a little over a decade later Bill Gates and Warren Buffet obliterated that model by creating a new status symbol: giving away half your assets in your lifetime, making it almost embarrassing to remain on the Forbes list with all your assets intact.

A conversation last week with an executive assistant to American Express CEO Ken Chenault, gave me an epiphany about my own susceptibility to shallow symbols of status, even though I decried all such nonsense in my 2009 book about the near-collapse of the American economy, The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger.

In 1994, while serving as Rabbi at Oxford University, I took my wife for our wedding anniversary to the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. After an evening event we found ourselves in a freezing village late at night with no way to get back to our hotel in Oslo. I saw a bus passing and it stopped to pick us up. Turns out there were several British executives from American Express on board. One was charged with launching a new card – a black card – in the UK as a pilot. The Centurion Card was meant to be American Express’s most elite card and, though the necessary earnings and spending were completely outside my reach, the executive and I became friendly and, having heard that my organization regularly hosts world leaders lecturing to Oxford’s students, he found what I do interesting and offered me the card. Since it was a few years before the card made it into the US, it was a novelty to all who saw it. I was reluctant to ever show it off. Still, I knew I had it in my wallet.

Turns out that amid the status it was far from the blessing I thought it would be. Every year American Express raised the membership fee it until it was completely outside our budget (unbelievably, the policy is to keep the fee even if they cancel the card). Were they crazy? And especially for the abysmal service it offered. A concierge that was often incompetent, travel ‘professionals’ who were well-meaning but so often inept. Account managers who were impossible to reach. I complained numerous times and was apologized to by the head of Centurion in the US, who acknowledged the poor service I had received and promised to make it better. Regardless, the mistakes continued and the service remained highly substandard.

Matters came to a head when a temporary hold was put on the card because of a bicycle I bought from my brother’s business and American Expresses’ simple inability to distinguish between me, the cardholder, and my brother, an American Express merchant of many years.  The hold was, of course, quickly removed but rather than the apology I had requested from Mr. Chenault’s office, so that he be made aware of the considerable problems with Centurion, what followed was a painful and arrogant phone call from an insufferable corporate type in the CEO’s office which only reinforced for me all the negative stereotypes that Americans have about credit card companies and their contemptuous treatment of those who make their businesses possible.

It was then that I had my epiphany. The next day, as I discussed my unfortunate  experiences with another of Chenault’s executive assistants, she asked me, given my abysmal experience with the card, why did I even want it? I went silent. I wished to give her an honest response.

So here it is. For all the books and columns I had written about how the viper of materialism had coiled itself around the American soul, and for all the lectures I had given to audiences around the world about how we are drowning our children in an ocean of excess, and for all the resources I am prepared to put into giving each of my nine children a Jewish education in religious schools so that they have a values-based education, I somehow found this silly piece of metal edifying. I could not admit it to myself but, having fallen into a club outside my means, I had also fallen victim to a simple marketing ploy that told me that possessing a rarity reserved for exclusive members – however ridiculously exorbitant and useless – somehow made me special.

Lois XIV, of France, the Sun King, confronted a dilemma as sovereign. Kings earned the loyalty of Dukes and Barons by granting large tracts of land. But the grants depleted the holdings of the Crown and the taxes they brought in. How could he sustain the loyalty of his most powerful subjects without giving away the realm? He came up with an ingenious solution: create a new status symbol that will cost him nothing and will simultaneously display the subordination of the barons to the King. Thus was born the almost laughable spectacle in Versailles of the daily royal dressing, know as the levee (rising). The King would awaken and the nobles of the realm would compete to take away his chamberpot, remove his nightshirt, and dress him with his britches. Incredibly, the nobles actually purchased the privilege of grande entrée, which commenced when the king’s nightshirt was pulled over his head. When it comes to status symbols you can make anyone your sucker. My black American Express had become my own royal chamberpot.

My experience immediately called to mind a recent, brilliant op-ed by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal entitled, ‘We Pay them to Abuse us,’ which followed Steven Slater’s meltdown on JetBlue where passengers were subjected to his profanity-laced harangue after paying JetBlue to fly on the plane. Here, I was the sucker who had strained to pay a membership fee to be subject to corporate America’s shocking arrogance and to endure degrading phone calls from their executive offices.

In the 1980’s American Express conducted a smear campaign against the celebrated orthodox Jewish banker and philanthropist Edmond Safra, brilliantly chronicled by renowned journalist Bryan Burrough in his best-seller 'Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Banking Rival Edmond Safra.’ Safra, who was a major supporter of my work at Oxford University and sponsored an annual lecture for my organization that each year featured a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, including Elie Wiesel and Mikhail Gorbachev, won an apology and $8 million from American Express, all of which he donated to charity. The case, with its insinuations of anti-Semitism from what was perceived at the time to be a Waspy American Express, did much to tarnish the reputation of the bank and ultimately led to a change in management. In 2001 Chenault became only the third African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

That is, of course, something to be admired. But it would be nice to know that the executives of America’s most important companies change not only their personnel but their attitudes as well. Every company has the right to promote their status symbols and we, the public, have a right to either buy into them or rise above them. But in this age of Wall Street greed, corporate aloofness, and abusive employees, it would be nice to see companies that still believe, and insist, that the customer is king and should be treated with simple courtesy and respect.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the host of ‘The Shmuley Show’ on 77 WABC in NYC, America’s most listened-to talk radio station. He is the international best-selling author of 23 books and was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium. As host of ‘Shalom in the Home’ on TLC he won the National Fatherhood Award and his syndicated column was awarded the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. Newsweek calls him ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.’ He has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’ Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

An armed bank robber was nabbed in a Brooklyn alley by cops Monday following a failed heist, a carjacking and a wild chase involving a Jewish neighborhood patrol, police and witnesses said.

Members of the Emergency Service Unit were searching the area for the robber's handgun, police said.

Source: NY Daily News

Baghdad – Israel should return rare Babylonian Jewish artifacts to Iraq, an official at the Tourism Ministry in Baghdad was quoted as saying Monday.

In particular, the Baghdad authorities want back an ancient handwritten scroll, known in Hebrew as a Torah, which contains the core five books of the Jewish Bible on parchment.

Iraq once had a large Jewish population, which numbered well over 100,000 people, prior to the formation of Israel in 1948. In the following decades, nearly all of Iraq's Jews migrated abroad under turbulent circumstances, leaving behind less than a dozen members of the community when US-led troops invaded in 2003.

Abd al-Zahra al-Talqani, a spokesman for the Iraqi Tourism Ministry, charged that the scroll was removed from Iraq illegally.

'A clear admission appeared on Israeli TV that shows there was a copy of the Torahwhich was smuggled from Iraq to Israel using bribery,' he told the pan-Arab al-Sharq al-Awsat daily.

Similar claims by Iraqi officials regarding allegedly illicit exports to Israel have been made over the last seven years.

The latest charge followed internal investigations by the ministry into the missing artifacts, al-Talqani said.

The rare scroll was originally thought to have been looted, along with other precious items across Iraq, in the anarchy that reigned following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The United Nations believes thousands of items are missing from Iraq. Many have yet to be located, including dozens of pieces of high cultural or historical significance.

Earlier this year, Iraq pressed the United States for the return of key Jewish artifacts found by US soldiers as those artifacts were soaking in sewage water in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police headquarters.

The Jews of Iraq – whose presence in the Middle Eastern land goes back to the 6th century BC, during the reign of the ancient Babylonian empire – now mostly reside in Israel. This has prompted some to say the Jewish state should house artifacts related to the community.

Discovered at the bottom of the secret police station were items dating from the 15th century that indicated the presence of a vibrant community which maintained open religious and cultural ties with the Jews of Europe and other Arab lands. Washington says it was holding the items for safekeeping.

Though Jews were heavily involved in Iraqi politics, including the anti-colonial independence movement, the formation of Israel, which Baghdad declared an enemy, led to a deterioration in the community's standing and an exodus.

As a Jewish Republican, I often meet non-Jewish Republicans who do not understand why Jewish voters continue to back the Democratic Party when it has abandoned its strong support of Israel, while at the same time the Republican Party has unapologetically stood by Israel.  I share my fellow Republicans' frustration at this lack of electoral progress. However, there are some encouraging signs that the GOP might finally be able to shake its brand's stigma among Jewish voters.  If so, the likelihood of GOP electoral success in states with significant Jewish populations, such as Ohio, Florida and California, will be greatly enhanced. 
 

As a Jew raised in Southern California, I took as an article of faith that "Jewish values" are antithetical to Conservatism.  In fact, my mother and uncle were both teachers and active members of their respective teacher's unions, a dependable bulwark of the Democratic Party.  My first vote for president was for William Jefferson Clinton. In my limited universe, the term Republican was synonymous with rich, mean-spirited bigots. This was all I knew. 
 

This view carried on until the most enlightening period of my life — undergraduate education in America.  At UCLA, I quickly was introduced to the radical liberalism of academia, on the part of both professors and student activists. The angry upper middle class, mostly white, liberals were upset about many issues, including free trade agreements, environmental issues and the like.  Interestingly, the one issue that unified all leftists within the campus environment was their universal hatred of Israel.  I found this incredibly frustrating, not only because I support Israel, but because of the utter silliness of the liberal groupthink.  Thus began my slow transition toward conservatism. 
 

Although the answer seemed evident to me, I had to ask myself: Why would the Jewish Community support a political movement like the left and its manifestation in the United States — the Democratic Party — when logically Jews should be more supportive of the GOP?  Sadly, there is no one answer that would allow for an easy GOP electoral strategy.  The phrase "Tikkun Olam," or "repair the world," taken from the Talmud, has been a galvanizing mandate for many liberal American Jews, who are ironically the most personally secular.  This emphasis on social activism causes Jews to remain loyal to the Democratic Party despite its lackluster support for, or even open hostility toward, Israel. 
 

Jewish leftism has its roots in Eastern Europe, from which most of the American Jewish population traces their family origin. Following the wave of Jewish immigration to the United States in the early 1900's, the newly-minted Americans quickly and enthusiastically adopted the "can-do" self-reliance that defines the American dream.  The new immigrants forged an unusual mix of intellectual socialism, which they knew from Russia and the East, and pragmatic individualism.  Jews in America worked extremely hard and focused like a laser on education.  They did not wait for a government program to advance their place on the socioeconomic ladder.  Rather, they did it for themselves.  This is still true today.  Unfortunately, Jewish Americans, while living like conservatives, vote like liberals.  In short, the Jewish brain is conservative but the Jewish heart is liberal, and far too often Jews think and vote with their heart.  In their heart, it is simply un-Jewish to be a conservative.  

The genesis of the Democratic Party's lock on the Jewish vote can be traced to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.  Before FDR, Jewish leftism was nebulous and not directly in line with the mainstream Democratic Party.  In fact, many were active in the now-defunct Socialist Party.  However, FDR's activist governmental involvement in social welfare, coupled with his bringing the US into WWII and eventually ending the Holocaust, cemented American Jewish politics as synonymous with the Democratic Party.  While the American Jewish community had been leaning left for at least a generation before FDR, the trend became codified during this era.  

However, the left in America has changed dramatically from the Democratic Party of the 1940's – 1960's.  The party of JFK, Harry Truman, and Scoop Jackson is dead and the party that once stood for spreading democracy and liberty abroad has changed. The current Democratic leadership, embodied by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama, have very few similarities to the Democrats of that era. 

Philosophically, the liberal value system supported the pro-Israel community until 1967, when Israel emerged successful from the Six Day War.  Following Israel's decisive victory, the Jewish nation emerged as the dominant military power in the region.  Almost overnight, Israel went from a darling of the Left to an oppressive power.  Since 1967, the Jewish community has struggled with this political tension. 

This is in direct contrast to the mainstream Republican view that Israel is a free market- driven, modern Democracy, with robust rights for women, homosexuals and minorities, within a sea of totalitarian Islamic and Arab dictatorships.  Does Israel make mistakes as it fights to balance its democratic ideals with realistic national security policies? Sure.  However, as Larry Elder wrote, referring to the recent flotilla issue, "Western countries once again fail to distinguish the arsonist from the firefighter." This failure to apply an accurate moral compass is far too common among the left, including the current U.S. administration. 

American Jews will face a very difficult dilemma this November, and in November 2012.  The Republican Party, rightly, argues that we are spending far too much money on failed social spending that helps very few while exacerbating our crippling national debt. Furthermore, the GOP platform will never call for expanding abortion rights, nor should it.  Unfortunately, a large percentage of American Jews will not be able to overcome their emotional support for these issues. For many Jewish Americans, unfettered access to abortions is elevated to the top of their policy positions when deciding between political candidates.  It is simply a bridge too far for many Jews, especially the older generation and women, to vote for a conservative who might circumscribe abortion access, no matter how modest the restrictions may be, and regardless of how pro-Israel their policy stance.  Not surprisingly, demographic studies show Jewish women and older Jews remain stalwart Democrats.  For many Jews, it comes down to Israel vs. unfettered abortions, and far too many Jews choose abortion. 

However, recent polling data shows that male Jews under 50 are now more than 50% self-identified Republicans.  In addition, Jews donate large amounts of money to the GOP, far larger than their voting numbers would suggest.  At times, such as 1984 when Jews voted for Ronald Reagan at a 40% rate, it looked like the GOP brand was becoming less toxic.  However, more recently George W. Bush was vilified by much of the Jewish community in spite of his unflagging support for Israel. 

Recent polls suggest Obama's support among Jewish voters has fallen by over 30%. This, admittedly, should be taken with a grain of salt, as Obama's support across most demographic lines has also fallen.  Furthermore, there is a long time between now and 2012.  However, for the first time in my lifetime, there is hope that Jewish voters can no longer be taken for granted by the Democratic Party.  The Jewish vote, in the near term, is still the Democrats' to lose.  However, if Jewish Republicans continue to make the case to vote Republican, eventually our community will play a historic role in the likely-upcoming GOP wave, starting this November.

**Morgan P. Muchnick is a 2001 graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  He previously served as professional staff to Senator Fred Thompson and as a volunteer for Senator Thompson's presidential campaign.  In addition, Mr. Muchnick served as chief speechwriter for Daniel Ayalon, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, and as a policy analyst for various organizations on Capitol Hill.**