Comments on: In a NY synagogue, Roger Cohen demolishes neoconservative Bret Stephens

By: yonira

yonira — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:59:47 +0000

That is very cool, sounds like a very interesting dynamic.

What are their opinions on the I/P issue?

By: Call Me Ishmael

Call Me Ishmael — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:36:33 +0000

We got along famously from the start. Residents of Japan, his Jewish father was a professor at Tokyo University and his Japanese stepmother was a concert pianist and classical singer, steeped in German classical traditions. (I deeply enjoyed long conversations with each of them.) His many Jewish cousins from the Northeast were visibly surprised that someone like me from deep fly-over country could be so liberal-minded and would fondly remember the Brooklyn Dodgers as MY baseball team and would still be mourning their leaving Brooklyn.

By: yonira

yonira — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:00:22 +0000

Ishmael, how did your son-in-law’s family take the marriage, I know when my father married my shiksa mother they didn’t talk to her until they had my sister (like 4 years into their marriage)

By: Chaos4700

Chaos4700 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:40:47 +0000

A smile, I dare say.

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:28 +0000

Although I’m not Jewish, I’ve run into that box of yarmlkes at the entrance to various
events. I never wore one–perhaps it’s because as a person raised Roman Catholic, a former Altar Boy, I also rebelled from that institution? Hell, I would never even wear a lapel flag charm. Then again, I’m not running for political or ideological anything. What’s the proper symbol for an individual who is a humanist?

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:19:52 +0000

So, Mooser, you disagree with the Goldhagen thesis? You would have protested
Morganthau’s recipe for post WW2 Germany–which was the controlling POV on Germans until 1950–and under German American Ike?

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:16:45 +0000

CMI, it was the other way around according to a cable channel special I watched recently.

By: Call Me Ishmael

Call Me Ishmael — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:52:58 +0000

“To a crowd of aging Jews–at least it looked that way, the men were all asked to wear yarmulkes, including Cohen, who’d come bareheaded …”

What does wearing a yarmulke at a public event signify? At the entrance path to my daughter’s outdoor Reform wedding, someone set a box of maroon yarmulkes. I asked my soon-to-be son-in-law if he thought I, along with other male wedding party and guests, should wear one if not Jewish. He said it would be a nice gesture to his family and the presiding rabbis. I have the little skullcap tucked away to this day as a keepsake. But I have no idea what wearing it meant to anyone.

By: Call Me Ishmael

Call Me Ishmael — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:36:02 +0000

“Well, no society is monolithic, Stephens said. Actually many societies have been monolithic, Cohen said. North Korea, Iraq under Saddam, Nazi Germany– all monolithic.”

Actually, no. No human society comprised of tens of millions of people is monolithic. Stephens scores a point on that one. Still, it was apparently a route.

By: Call Me Ishmael

Call Me Ishmael — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:28:30 +0000

Thanks for this observation, Les.