I find the simultaneous appearance of these two columns (1, 2) about Glenn Greenwald in yesterday’s Ha’aretz to be hilarious.
Is the lack of a bar mitzvah meant to somehow call into question the character of the journalist who published classified documents which angered the American government, its intelligence community and also their close, although duplicitous allies, in the Israeli government and intelligence services? If so, will this surprising part of his personal history have traction with the readers of the well-regarded and purportedly progressive newspaper?
I doubt very strongly if this revelation, which comes from an interview Greenwald gave to GQ magazine, would be very meaningful to even most pro-Israeli American readers, who would seem to prefer their character denigration of those critical of Israel to come from the Israeli Defense Forces spokespersons, American political analysts, Jewish community leaders or in this case directly from the Israeli intelligence community.
Maybe if the editors of Ha’aretz would have not used the identical picture for both stories it would have been easier to ignore this bizarre juxtaposition.
Ha’aretz suggests: GG is not qualified to receive the polite attention of the American (or other) public, because, as it now transpires, he was never Bar Mitzvaed. OMG! And there I was, actually listening to (or reading) him!
Well, well, a declaration of religious power if I ever saw one: WE (who were BM’d) are ELECTORS !! And We elect to “out” GG for not being a member of the electors !!
This was not a story about GG at all. It was a story indicating the primacy, the centrality, the POWER, of we, who were BM’d, as ELECTORS. May we aspire even to be known far and wide as the ELECTORS
ELDERSOF ZION? (But let me come clean. I was never BM’d either. I’m just a member of the non-elector 99.99%.)Or was there another newsworthy reason for mentioning this at all? Africa and China and America (really, most of the world, even Laos!) are full of people who were never BM’d. Does Ha’aretz policy call for a “story” on each of these? (Did they do a story on Obama never having been BM’d?
Must have been a bad news day.
Greenwald does record in his new book that he attended the bat mitzvah of his best friend (he elsewhere says that his lifelong best friend is Norman Fleisher, “one of the world’s best and bravest investigative journalists”). However, Greenwald criticizes what the rabbi said at that ceremony, because the rabbi said or implied that one must always follows the rules imposed by the supreme authority, God, which lesson Greenwald says enforces orthodoxies, compels adherence, and quashes dissent. The bat mitzvah is mentioned at Kindle location 2356.
I didn’t read the Haaretz article. I had already read the Algemeiner version and all the really classy comments. http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/05/14/glenn-greenwald-reveals-he-never-had-a-bar-mitzvah/
Sorry Ira, but I would chalk this up to clumsy coincidence rather than any attempt to discredit Glenn. Haaretz runs articles like this all the time about prominent people who happen to be Jewish – purely hypothetical examples: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg has second bat mitzvah at age 78”; “Ryan Braun trying to reconnect with Jewish roots during suspension.” With GG, neither article appears critical of him. Surely someone should have noticed what you accurately describe as “bizarre juxtaposition,” and said maybe we should do these on different days, but it looks to me that the folks who do these personal stories and the ones who do the news stories were not collaborating, and the guy who slaps on the file photo thought, oh, this is easy, two for one. Still, the humor in this is irresistible.
Could someone here offer a little cultural background for the three or four of us goyim who still check out MW occasionally?
I have a pretty good idea about the BarM ceremony because I recall how my Jewish buddies used to talk about it when I was a kid. What I don’t have a feel for is the intra-cultural blow-back for not being BarM’d, or whether most Jews would find it offensive or repulsive or whatever. I mean, I’ve never really thought about it. I presume it’s like baptism for a Christian, but with more Hebrew and a bigger party. Most Christians could care less if another one isn’t baptized — it just means they’re going straight to Hell, which is not a reflection on them as a human per se. Of course, the hard-core, snake-handling, fundamentalists are another thing, and I suspect Judaism has its hyper-ritualistic counterparts. But, still, I have never heard anyone criticize anyone else for not being baptized – or even asked. I mean, “Are you baptized” hasn’t been used as an opening line in the nightclub scene since the Middle Ages.
I presume that Jewish reprobation for being non-BarM’d falls only on Jewish men, and Jews don’t hold it against us goyim. IOW, it’s a Jew-on-Jew reprobation. But how seriously is it taken? I mean, are there Jews that take it so seriously that they would not let a non-BarM’d Jew in their house? Is it as objectionable, say, as not being “genitally circumscribed?”