The issue of same-sex marriage is a complicated enough one without having idiots getting involved to stifle our freedom to express what we believe in, or without the Politically-Correct police swooping down on us.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the recent controversy involving a Miss USA contestant and Perez Hilton, the celebrity blogger and gay activist. It seems Mr. Hilton, who served as a judge at the pageant last weekend, had a decidedly pointed question for Miss California, a.k.a. Carrie Prejean, about whether she supports same-sex marriages.
Ms. Prejean did something that’s getting to be pretty rare in American life – she said how she really felt.
In a respectful, gracious way, she replied, “I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman—no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised. And that’s how I think that it should be, between a man and a woman.”
Everyone agrees that the candid response likely cost Ms. Prejean—who was the runner-up—the Miss USA crown, including the young woman herself. Meanwhile, Perez Hilton has gone on just about every TV talk show that will have him, screaming bloody murder about this woman and basically accusing her of extreme homophobia and sectarian myopia.
Furthermore, other pageant judges have criticized Ms. Prejean for not making her response more parve and for not hitting that fastball right down the middle, to not offend anyone. (How lame.)
“I am so disappointed in Miss California representing my country,” Mr. Hilton ranted on a video blog on his Web site. “Not because I believe in gay marriage, but she doesn’t inspire and she doesn’t unite.”
(Hold on? Miss USA is supposed to inspire and unite us? Especially about something as complex and potentially divisive as same-sex marriage? Isn’t Miss USA just supposed to be a well-poised babe who looks swell in a bikini and doesn’t – usually—trip on a runway? Isn’t the whole thing a bit of an annual charade?)
Anyway, on a morning talk show the other day, Mr. Hilton also said, “There were various other ways she could have answered that question, and still stayed true to herself without alienating millions of people.”
So let’s get this straight, Senator McCarthy: she basically should’ve lied or fudged her answer, just to make everyone happy, to be able to snag the crown?
Look, I don’t like beauty pageants much, and I don’t happen to agree with Ms. Prejean about her views on same-sex marriage. But I think her stance on this matter has become irrelevant here. Something bigger is going on. She is entitled to her opinion – one that is shared by millions and millions of Americans, by the way, for a variety of reasons – and I don’t appreciate anyone who says she’s not.
To use a timeworn cliché (and I say this as the proud son of a World War II veteran), American soldiers fought for Carrie Prejean’s right to answer that question.
To say she is not entitled to her opinion is an un-American impulse, one that is embraced far too often these days by liberals and conservatives alike. We’ve gotten so caught up in our narrow agendas that we’ve lost a sense of mutual respect, graciousness and acknowledgment in our discourses. I might disagree strongly with you, it might even infuriate or repulse or alienate me, but I’m still willing to hear what you have to say.
At best, Perez Hilton is standing up for gay rights, certainly a noble cause, but at worst he’s using this moment in the spotlight to simply augment his fame. Whatever. But where I come from, I always heard that if you ask someone a question, don’t be shocked if you don’t like the answer.
When discussing this matter of Perez Hilton vs. Miss California the other day, a friend – half-jokingly, I suspect—said to me, “Oh, you’re just on her side because she’s really hot!” But it’s not about being on sides, or the banality of beauty pageants. It’s about being allowed to express yourself, which by the way is something that folks in quite a few corners of this planet still aren’t allowed to do.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/23/09 at 08:37 AM
The final, fleeting hours of Passover are now upon us. With visions of garlic bagels, croissants and pizza slices dancing in our heads, we prepare to reenter the leavened realm, hopefully with a new appreciation of the role of bread in our lives and, more importantly, the great privilege of living in a free, open society.
I was honored recently by a request from Rabbi Ron Shulman of Chizuk Amuno Congregation to write a piece, to be sent out via the synagogue’s email list, on how I mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepare for Passover. Rabbi Shulman asks several congregants every year to share their reflections on how they get ready for Pesach.
I must confess, I don’t do as much as I should to prepare for the holiday. We’re all so busy, the holiday just seems to sneak up on us, without any warning. Wisely, Rabbi Shulman gently prods us into participating in this process, and I must say that it enhanced my Passover and forced me to really contemplate what it’s all about, from my perspective.
I’m not sure that I completely delivered the goods. After all, I never brought up Moses and the Children of Israel, Pharaoh, the seder, or even how (or if) I clean my house from top to bottom of chametz. But since I’ve received some good feedback from others on the piece, I decided to reprint my “Kavanah” here.
Passover may be just about over, but its essence is eternal.
Chag Samayach!
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Growing Young Again
by Alan Feiler
Years ago, I went with a close friend to a trendy coffee house where a rock band was performing. Not far from us, while we sat and enjoyed our joe, a young woman, dressed in a flowery dress and swaying beads, danced alone, uninhibited, like a child. She was either blissfully ignorant or utterly indifferent to the stares fixed in her direction.
My friend simply gazed at her, sighed and said to me, “Can you imagine being that free? How did we ever get so old?”
What a drag it is, to paraphrase an ancient sage. But is there a way to regain the sense of freedom we felt when we were younger, when such issues as family commitments, mortgages, bills and health concerns were merely something we overheard others talking about?
Passover forces us to revisit our concepts of freedom, from interior and exterior perspectives. To get mentally and spiritually prepared for the holiday, we have to reacquaint ourselves with the notions of freedom we enjoyed as young people. It was a freedom that filled us with the exhilaration for life, optimism for our future and what we could achieve in this world. (We once had the well-intentioned hubris to think we could make a difference.)
We’ve lost that elasticity in our lives, and it hurts. Deadlines and commitments prohibit our ability to do what we want to do. True, every adult must own up to this and grow up. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to reconnect with the joy that is life at its core.
Freedom will increasingly be in short supply. Things once taken for granted—our livelihoods, our homes, the “American Dream” itself, our children’s inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness—are now up for grabs. Thanks to the merchants of greed and self-indulgence (translation: us), it all now seems quite up in the air and fragile, flimsy and wispy, like a sheet of matzoh.
Faith is the key, not in human beings so much (for we too are fragile, flimsy and wispy) but in some kind of higher power, to direct us to our source for true freedom.
Is Passover only about cleaning our homes, obliterating all that pesky hametz, and cooking enough food to feed Cameroon? Is it only about avoiding all leavened products, just so we can say, “Well, I’m not much of a Jew, but at least I don’t eat bread on Pesach”?
It’s about recommitting to the sacred, and to what really matters to you. That means turning internally, to your past and your values system, and to looking externally at what freedom has meant, and continues to mean, for us as a people, as Jews and Americans.
It means, in many ways, to grow young again.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/16/09 at 10:40 AM
Maybe I’m just getting a little overly-sensitive or cranky in my old age. I don’t think I’m a right-winger. And as someone who has worked in journalism his entire adult life, I’m certainly not a media-basher.
But the headline slapped me upside my head and made me, well, annoyed. It was an article in today’s Sun about Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli who was brutally killed by a Palestinian man wielding a pickax on April 2. The headline was, “Palestinian Kills Israeli Settler, 13.”
Now it’s true that Bat Ayin, where Shlomo lived, is a settlement located in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. I’m not going to start getting into that whole thing.
My point is, this was a 13-year-old boy. He was a boy. This was a terrible, senseless tragedy. I would never call a boy a “settler,” even if some Palestinians would.
The article starts off by mentioning this horrific act, but then gets bogged down in the fact that it was the Netanyahu administration’s second day on the job, and as a conservative government pondered how it may or may not respond. It’s not until the eighth paragraph that you get the terrifying details about what happened in Bat Ayin. Then, the article quickly transitions into a financial probe regarding Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Look, I’m not an advocate for holding onto lands conquered in the Six Day War, and I’m certainly not in the habit of criticizing other publications. But this is not good journalism, and it’s not sensitive, humane reporting about a tragic situation.
Maybe I’m getting mired down in semantics but, again, this was not a settler. It was a boy.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/03/09 at 02:09 PM
So word has it today that a judge in Malawi has turned down a petition by Madonna – oops, I mean Esther, as she’s known in kabbalistic circles – to adopt a second child from that southeastern African country.
Madge, now 50, adopted her 3-year-old son, David Banda, in Malawi in 2006. Now, it seems that a residency requirement there has prevented the pop superstar and mystical dabbler from adopting 3½-year-old Chifundoercy James, whom she first encountered in an orphanage three years ago. The residency requirement for prospective parents is 18 to 24 months in Malawi.
Shockingly, Madonna, who lives in New York and London, doesn’t apparently plan to move to Malawi anytime soon.
I admit, I’ve never been a big fan of the Material Gal. But I do admire the tremendous amount of good work she’s done for poor and abandoned children in Malawi. Quietly and publicly, she’s raised a lot of money and awareness for orphanages and fighting AIDS and poverty there, and kicked in her own bucks as well. She also co-founded a non-profit group called Raising Malawi, which provides programs to help the needy.
She obviously cares.
But at the same time, I’m getting pretty sick and tired of goofball American entertainers zipping into struggling and impoverished lands, snatching their kids (largely because their wealth and celebrity status bring special privileges and hyper-expedited red-tape treatment) and then parading themselves in the media for their mitzvahs
.
Intention must count for something.
Perhaps Madonna’s star doesn’t shine as brightly as it did in the mid-‘80s when she first came to the public eye. Maybe she’s bummed over her most recent broken marriage, and series of failed relationships. Perhaps now in the throes of middle age, she needs a new toy.
But a child is not a toy.
Besides David, Madonna already has two other children, daughter Lourdes, 12, and son Rocco, 8. She should focus on them and be satisfied, or if she must adopt, there’s a few kids here in the ol’ U.S of A. that wouldn’t be averse to moving into one of her manses.
This judge in Malawi was absolutely right when she said children need real parents, “not someone who just flies in and out.” My guess is the judge wasn’t just talking about Madonna and this particular adoption case, but also about American society and its feel-good hubris and condescending attitude toward Third-World nations and cultures.
Of course, I’m sure Madonna will appeal, and eventually win her adoption bid. She’s not the type who gives up easily, or likes to lose.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/03/09 at 10:42 AM
Let me just say this: I’ve never been to Prague. Much to my dismay. I think I flew over it once, on my way to Israel. And I’ve read some Kafka. (He drives me buggy. Bad joke.) But I’ve never visited the Czech capital.
At the same time, I’ve always been interested in cemeteries. I know that sounds somewhat depressing. Having written about local Jewish cemeteries over the years (including the really old, compelling ones in eastern Baltimore and Baltimore County), I think such final resting places can tell you a whole lot about communities and their history and sense of priorities. Plus, they can be aesthetically fascinating.
As a result, I was mesmerized by the documentary “House Of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague,” which will air next Monday at 10 p.m. on Maryland Public Television (Channel 67). I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of the 54-minute film, and I was impressed by what I saw.
You wouldn’t think a doc about an old graveyard halfway around the world would be all that interesting, and maybe even more than a tad morbid, right?
Not so. This film is about the living. It’s a celebration of life and culture, and of being a Jew. After all, we’re still here, and so is the old Jewish cemetery in Prague.
“The film is really about the survival of the Jewish people,” Mark Podwal, one of the documentary’s creators, told me last week. “The cemetery is a metaphor for the Jewish people. The fact that the old Jewish cemetery survived intact—despite pogroms, fires, floods, plagues, Nazis, communists—is a miracle.”
Indeed. The cemetery, which dates back to the 16th century, is the home of approximately 12,000 tombstones, but as many as 100,000 members are believed to be buried there, on various different levels of earth. It just confounds the mind. You can see how you could spend weeks or months there, just walking around, reading the stones and looking around, and still not see nearly everything.
The Prague cemetery is haunting, to say the least. But its allure stems largely from its austere and brooding ambience, with its thousands of gravestones seeming to grow like wildflowers and inhabiting a beauty, grace and poetic asymmetry of their own. And of course the history there – Prague’s old, once-vibrant Jewish ghetto, the great Rabbis of the Middle Ages, the folklore, the legends, the Golem tale—is amazing.
It goes without saying that Prague itself is absolutely gorgeous. The filmmakers brilliantly marry images of the cemetery with scenes of the city today, reflecting the deep relationship and synergy between the two.
Mr. Podwal made “House Of Life” with Allan Miller, an Academy Award-winning documentary maker, with narration by actress Claire Bloom. One particularly amusing and bizarre passage in the film is when a Prague resident, a woman in her 60s or 70s, recalls the days after World War II when people used to have sexual escapades in the cemetery. (Do these people have no respect or sense of propriety? Does that really turn them on? Can’t they get a room somewhere?)
So why should someone in Baltimore watch this film, or even care about the old Jewish cemetery in Prague?
Mark Podwal, a New Yorker, puts it this way: “I want people to see what the Jewish people experienced in Europe. The cemetery serves as the focus of all this history, for us to tell these stories about what happened around the cemetery.”
These stones speak to us, about ourselves and our faith and tradition. This film is a revelation, the next best thing to going to Prague and seeing the cemetery itself. Check it out.
For information about the film, check out houseoflifefilm.com/ .
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/02/09 at 10:04 AM
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