Next Up For Amar’e Stoudemire: a Bar Mitzvah?

The New York Knick and Hapoel Jerusalem owner might also become a man

By Stephanie Butnick for Tablet Magazine
Amar’e Stoudemire, New York Knicks power forward, six-time NBA all-star, Jerusalem Hapoel part-owner, and Torah study enthusiast, might undergo that sacred Jewish rite of passage popularized by acne-ridden and braces-laden teenage boys: a bar mitzvah.

TMZ posted video footage of Stoudemire’s wife Alexis answering all sorts of invasive questions about Stat’s religious observance. Asked whether the 6’11 basketball player, who is also in the process of becoming an Israeli citzen, had been bar mitzvahed, she said, “We can always have one later on, you never know.”

The TMZ reporter, naturally, suggests a NBA theme for the party, to which Alexis replied. “And then you put him on the chair.”

Their four young children, Alexis added, will be b’nai mitzvahed as well.

Stat should be careful though—if we’ve learned anything from Michael Douglas’ hora-related injury at his son’s bar mitzvah, those parties can be dangerous.

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California School Asks 8th Graders To Debate Whether the Holocaust Happened

The assignment materials cited Holocaust deniers, and represent a gross failure of judgment—and historical awareness

By Deborah E. Lipstadt

After decades spent in the sewers of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, I don’t horrify easily. But yesterday I learned that a school district in Rialto, California, assigned 2,000 8th-grade students to write an essay on whether or not they believe the Holocaust was “an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme.”

Put simply, this is the greatest victory for Holocaust denial in well over a decade, if not more.

The language of the assignment is worth reading in full:

When tragic events occur in history, there is often debate about their actual existence. For example, some people claim the Holocaust is not an actual event, but instead is a propaganda took that was used for political and monetary gain. You will read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based upon cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe this was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth. Remember to address counterclaims (rebuttals) to your stated claim.

When you ask a Holocaust denier why Jews would go to such great efforts to create the myth of the Holocaust, nearly all have the same ready answer: Jews have created this myth in order to deviously exercise political power and enrich themselves. They will cite the two things it is commonly said Jews “got” out of the Holocaust—reparations, and the State of Israel. It’s classic anti-Semitism founded on the notion that Jews deviously access power and do virtually anything for monetary gain, an idea that can be traced to the New Testament’s depiction of Jews in relation to the death of Jesus: The Jews sold out the Messiah and caused great grief to billions of his future followers all for a few pieces of silver. (Never mind the fact that everyone in the story is Jewish, with the exception of the Romans—who were the ones who actually did the killing.)

Along with entries on the history of the Holocaust from About.com and the History Channel, they offered the students supporting “material” titled “Is the Holocaust a Hoax?” that was taken from a Christian site. The document cites the execution technology “expert” Fred Leuchter, a leading denier, and presents a “theory” that Anne Frank’s diary was forged. “Israel continues to receive trillions of dollars worldwide as retribution for Holocaust gassings,” the document continues. “Our country has donated more money to Israel than to any other country in the history of the world—over $35 billion per year, everything included. If not for our extravagantly generous gifts to Israel, every family in America could afford a brand new Mercedes Benz.”

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A Jewish Daughter Reads ‘The Jewish Daughter Diaries’

by Dani Plung for newvoices.org 
 

 I must have told my mother one too many times that she embodies the Jewish Mother stereotype. (She really does, by the way. Ask, as one example, the ten cast and crew members of a show I worked on in high school for whom my mother provided enough food for forty people, lest anyone starve to death in suburban Pittsburgh.) She must have been fed up, or more likely anxious, that I kept branding her a Jewish Mother, because after my umpteenth comment, she finally responded, “But I’m not like other Jewish Mothers, right? I’m a cool Jewish Mom, right?” Unintentional Mean Girls reference or not, this desperate question made me wonder why exactly my mother felt a need to add an addendum to the title “Jewish Mother” unless being one was not a positive thing. After this conversation occurred, I myself experienced a dark side of the stereotype, as I’ve written about, when a subconscious need to embody it made any dormant neuroses I might have had reveal themselves in Technicolor. Perpetrating these stereotypes, then, is problematic to me, and I was worried, therefore, that The Jewish Daughter Diaries, Rachel Ament’s anthology of women’s experiences with their Jewish mothers or grandmothers would do just that.

I was immensely and pleasantly surprised, therefore, when, in the introduction, Ament writes, “A Jewish mom is not a one-size fits all archetype,” and that the aim of her project is merely to enrich others’ lives with charming, touching, funny, or otherwise enriching stories of experiences with Jewish mothers or grandmothers. In reading them, I found that the character of each featured Jewish woman, far from recapitulating only vaguely relevant generalizations, varied immensely. Many, it seemed, actually actively debunked these generalization. For instance, Rachel Shukert’s “Ominous Pronunciations of Doom” begins “My mother always prided herself on not being the typical Jewish mother,” and Mara Altman’s “Jewish Mom Genes” tells the story of a mother who exemplifies the opposite of stereotype. In other essays, authors focus on more stereotypical Jewish Mother characteristics, such as neuroses or a nosy desire for their daughters to marry. But while the essays might have acknowledged the stereotype, the authors always placed the quirks into the context of a woman. I never felt like I was reading about Jewish mothers as much as about particular mothers that happened to be Jewish, and that is exceedingly refreshing.

Yet, though each essay presents a story unique to the woman it features, I somehow found something very familiar in each of them. True, some mothers had personalities and habits that more closely matched my mother’s, but I felt like I could relate even to the stories for which this wasn’t the case, like I found something of my relationship with my own mother in them. Reflecting on this after reading the book, I remembered something else Ament wrote in the introduction: “What makes a Jewish mother stand out is not the degree of her love, but how her love materializes. Love suffuses a Jewish mom’s every thought, her every behavior.” Perhaps this too is a stereotype, or perhaps this is something that is not actually unique to Jews. But it is at least in many cases true and something that The Jewish Daughter Diaries captures well. Though she expresses it in odd or eclectic ways, each mother written about obviously bursts with love for her daughter or granddaughter. When a book is full so much love, a reader can’t help but feel it too.


 

10 Photos to Remind You That Jews Don't Fit Into a Stereotype

Okay, let’s be real. Most of the world, and especially America, when it imagines what Jews look like, usually has an image ... sticking out in their mind. PopChassid debunks that myth with photos of folks whom you would ordinarily not think of as Jewish. Take a look.