And, to make matters worse, the notes were entrusted to me personally and in confidence to wedge between the cracks in the Herodian stones. But I read them in advance! So – whether or not Obama’s people leaked the candidate’s “message to his Maker” left in the Western Wall (see Maariv via Instapundit) – I cannot go on longer with my own intolerable guilt and must come clean now. I broke the sacred trust!
Here are the circumstances:
About twenty years ago I was traveling in Israel to research a novel. My companion for a few days (name withheld to protect the semi-innocent) was a William Morris Agent. That agent, a woman, had to return to the US ahead of me and realized she had forgotten to deposit about a half-dozen messages in the cracks of the Wall. The messages were from secretaries and assistants who work at William Morris. I agreed to take them and the agent left me with those half-dozen folded messages with the admonition not to read them.
Yes, I opened them. And I read them. And, yes, they all said the same thing and, sadly, there is probably not one reader who could not predict it. [Dear Lord, help me find a nice Jewish man.-ed. Right the first time.]
Now, I wonder, what did Obama’s message say? [Dear Lord, help me find a nice Jewish vote.-ed. Right again!]
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
35 Comments
1. Punditarian:Roger,
Please excuse this off-topic question. I have been racking my brain about this and can’t come up with the answer.
As a child in the 1950s, I remember watching a movie about the Revolutionary War, I think along the Ohio River, on television. It must have been made in the 1930s.
There was a character in it who lived in a houseboat on the river, and hated Indians. He took their scalps, and justified himself by repeating, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; that’s what the Good Book says.”
Can you identify the film?
Thanks.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:31 am 2. Fake Craig:“Kilroy was here.”
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:56 am 3. Roger L Simon:Cannot identify film. Sorry.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:39 am 4. chuck:I wouldn’t have predicted it, I thought all those jokes were exaggerations. Is there some sort of Jewish breeding program I haven’t heard about?
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:31 am 5. Roger L Simon:Remember, Chuck, these are the kinds of people who had someone carry a note half way across the world to stick in a wall. Not your average Joe…or Jane. (Jewish or not)
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:46 am 6. Xixi:Was the film called, “Rutting Along the Monongahela” with the Natty Bumppo character written by J. F. Cooper?
Jul 29, 2008 - 12:07 pm 7. david levavi:Herod’s wall has no religious significance. Nor would the wall have religious significance if it were Solomon’s. Those who push notes between its stones are engaging in silly superstition and idolatry. They’re ignorant yahoos, black hats and long beards notwithstanding.
As for yearnings for a nice Jewish man, I once served as Executive Director of my Orthodox Manhattan synagogue and ran singles events. You don’t know the half of it, Roger.
Jul 29, 2008 - 12:51 pm 8. Jay:The story is days old, Roger, and as usual, your cynicism continues to amaze.
Max Boot has contended that McCain can reach Jewish voters in a way Bush couldn’t, and he’s right; the president’s syrupy, pseudo-folksy and hardly learned Christianity really grates, and I’m a Christian.
I’m not a McCain supporter, but I quite like McCain’s flinty, close-to-the-vest Christianity. There is something very New England about it. All this is best summed up, I think, in the famous story from “Faith of My Fathers”-the Senator’s first memoir-about one of his captors drawing a cross in the sand on Christmas Eve.
The lesson here is that faith shows in awful situations, through the smallest of signs. That is something we Yanks can relate to.
As for the above Obama story, an interested student snapped up the note and gave it to the media, yet you continue to peddle this “OBAMA HATES THE JEWS!!!!!!!!!!” narrative. What garbage. If a Democrat had only 60 percent of the black vote, you’d be calling it a breakthrough, but you only insult Jews by assuming they’ll always vote for a Democrat, and so it must be some kind of oddity if the Dem’s Jewish support isn’t somewhere near, oh, 90 percent. 60 percent is a healthy number, and it’s higher than Joe Lieberman’s in the Jewish community. I expect Obama to recieve a couple more general bounces-after he picks a veep and after the Dem convention ends-and in turn, the righty blogosphere will get more desperate, peddling with increased speed the same bogus narratives.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:15 pm 9. Jay:By the way, here is Zvika Krieger with a follow-up: (http://tinyurl.com/5altru)
“Yesterday, I posted an item about an accusation from Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that the Obama campaign had leaked a copy of his Western Wall note to the foreign press (rather than Ma’ariv having bought it from some yeshiva kid who stole it out of the wall). After some additional reporting last night, I noted that the story sounded a bit fishy–not only has Ma’ariv not offered any tangible evidence to supprot this claim, but they also have only made the claim via a spokesman to various Israeli papers rather than printing the accusation in their own paper.
I just got off the phone with a Ma’ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is ‘completely false,’ and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma’ariv. ‘No official spokesman for Ma’ariv told this to any of the papers.’ I’ve got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I’ll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that ‘the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing.’ “
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:43 pm 10. Lem:I’m not a McCain supporter.
You had me fooled Jay.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:49 pm 11. buddy larsen:LOL Lem –& a brevity salute
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:44 pm 12. ricpic:Everything about Obama screams antisemite.
I am confident that 2/3’s of the Jewish vote will go to him.
So much for Jewish brilliance.
Jul 29, 2008 - 3:08 pm 13. Lem:This is a wonderfull opportunity for McCain to take up the NY Times offer that he mirror his Oped after Obama’s writing.
Dear Obama.
Give my family and me a chance at the WH before I die.
Forgive my service record and years of experience in foreign affairs.
Teach me some of that Hope and Change jive.
And make me worthy of your highest prize; the typical white person award.
Jul 29, 2008 - 4:21 pm 14. buddy larsen:I think ricpic is right. Call me a neanderthal moron, but when President Obama backs Israel in a crunch is when snowballs won’t melt in hell. it’s not just the jeremiah wright/malcolm x thing, it’s the entire oeuvre of basic pro-arafatism (for lack of a better word) woven into the fabric of a particular current politics. maybe Obama’s charm offensive is for real, but that wouldn’t be the way to bet.
Jul 29, 2008 - 5:19 pm 15. Roger L Simon:Jay, whoever you are, you are among the most square deadheads to ever post on this site. You have absolutely no sense humor. To be clear, nitwit, I don’t give rat’s patootie whether Obama leaked or didn’t the contents of his message in the Wall. I am nigh on to an atheist and none of that means a damn thing to me. It’s all silliness and my reflection on my experiences with lonely Wm. Morris Agency secretaries is no more than an amusing anecdote. Does Obama want the Jewish vote? Sure. Doesn’t any candidate? Sure. Go home and stop boring us with your anonymous drivel.
Jul 29, 2008 - 5:39 pm 16. Lem:I cant say how OB feels about Israel, but his comments on the surge speak volumes as to what kind of president he would be.
Obama has been willing to backtrack/change his mind about everything under the sun. But on Meet the press he acted as if he would melt if he acknowledged that he was wrong about the surge. The political calculation must be that if he acknowledges that he was wrong about the surge then his original view about removing Sadam might also be wrong. Leaving him with the first black in American history to ever be nominated by a major party as his only claim to the WH. Iraq was key to beating Hillary. So, yes the situation has improved but not because the surge was the catalyst.
If Obama is willing to be so political about the hardest desision that a president has to make, that should be enough to convince anybody that Obama is not presidential material. Specially one facing Iran.
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:01 pm 17. buddy larsen:david, something sure motivated that IDF paratroop brigade, in the the 1967 war, to make the last-gasp final push to take that wall from the elite Jordanian units holding it. There’s a grainy black & white film somewhere showing a tattered exhausted begrimed company commander mumbling to the reporter that his unit had just done the impossible, and must’ve had divine help. So, maybe that idea was all in his head, but as ben stein asks in his film “Expelled”, how the heck did it get in there.
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:36 am 18. david levavi:Buddy:
Divinity is a troublesome discussion full of brambles, thistles and snarls and I’d rather not get into it. You sound like a noble and well meaning Christian and I bow to your manifest Grace.
“Elite Jordanian units” units has a nice ring. Strong stuff. It happens that at a young age I encountered the elite of the elite of Jordanian soldiery. They were Glubb Pasha’s Transjordan Legionnaires and they were shelling Jerusalem twenty-four-seven.
We took a direct hit and my infant brother expired of cordite poisoning. British cordite invented by Chaim Weitzman who won the heart of Lord Balfour to the Zionist cause by his invention of acetone which so reduced the cost of cordite it made British victory possible in WW I. I have often pondered the irony. Where fate or the Divine enters into it, I don’t venture to guess.
The injunction against worship of stone is plainly stated in Scripture. The injunction falls most heavily against star and stone worship which this Hebrew reader has always taken for a reference to meteorites. I believe that star/stone worship and Baal (Baal Zevel; Baal Zevuv; Beelzebub) and Ashter (Ishtar: Astarius; Esther; Easter) mentioned in Genesis refer to one and the same worship. The Pagan side of both Christianity and Islam are rooted in the myth of the Virgin Star, impregnated by Baal, whom the Magi followed to Tyre for the birthing of Lord Dagon (Dagan V’tirash) of the grain.
The Rabbi who condemns some rambunctious kid’s copping of Obama’s silly photo-op-note is a jerk. Such fools in rabbinical garb were the bane of my youth. The wall is just a wall. If Obama wanted to accomplish something worthwhile and substantive at the Wall, he might have raised his voice against the deliberate Arab unearthing and destruction of Jewish antiquities at the site, important to both Christians and Jews.
In any event, Bud, modern times call for modern thinking. The rabbis of yesteryear like the Christian theologians of yesteryear were limited in the range of their conception and religious formulation by the limitations of human knowledge. We all need to take St. Paul’s words to heart and put childish things behind us. The Wall is an important Jewish national site. It has no religious significance.
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:48 pm 19. buddy larsen:Wonderful, terrible, enlightening post, David. I feel about one inch tall at the moment so let me just thank you for it, and retire to the peanut gallery, where i shoulda stood in the first place –except then we perhaps wouldn’t have gained your deeper briefing.
Jul 30, 2008 - 5:50 pm 20. promoguy:Men who write on Western Walls roll their hair in tiny peyot. Folks who read those words of wit………..eat those tiny peyot.
Nah, didn’t really work.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:14 pm 21. buddy larsen:next, i’m gonna get in touch with Peyton Manning and explain to him how to throw a football
Jul 30, 2008 - 9:31 pm 22. Gary Rosen:In regard to this controversy over the Western Wall, Buddy, this admittedly nonobservant Jew advises you to remember the old adage, “Wherever you find two Jews you’ll find three opinions.”
Jul 30, 2008 - 10:15 pm 23. buddy larsen:LOL — good one — reminds me of the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time” (the “…while wearing a straitjacket” is usually left out).
Jul 31, 2008 - 7:02 am 24. Ben:The wall may not have biblical religious significance, but to ignore the contemporary significance of it is pretty ridiculous. All religion is superstition and idolatry, based on faith, and the way the Western Wall is revered by the Jews is no different than the way they revere the Torah.
Aug 1, 2008 - 11:24 am 25. Tom O'Bedlam:Re: the exchange between Buddy and David.
Sometimes I’m awed by the civility of (some of) the commenters here. I actually feel humbled by the humanity displayed by both.
Well done and well said, by both of you.
Aug 1, 2008 - 6:52 pm 26. mjk:I put two prayers in the Western Wall on two seperate occasions and they both came true. And they were fairly “out there” prayers.
It’s a lovely tradition. Much like going to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and rubbing the statue of St. Peter’s foot. Or three coins in the Trevi fountain.
I know I’m probably a heathen or some such crap, but I have to tell you, they are fun.
Aug 3, 2008 - 6:59 am 27. buddy larsen:What a nice thing to say, tom — yes, i was gearing up to use a few things i’ve read about in order to ’splain the diff between objective & subjective to what i thought was probably a young inexperienced university student. Oops!
Aug 3, 2008 - 12:20 pm 28. david levavi:Thank you, Tom. Buddy is aptly named.
Ben:
What a terrible insult to the Bible, the greatest piece of literature in human history. Widely distributed, little read and even less understood.
Herod’s Temple was a physical artifact as were the Altar and the Holy of Holies. The structure and the holy sacrificial utensils were ornamented with Hellenic motifs. Herod’s place on the throne was owed more to Rome than to Jerusalem. The priests who served in the Second Temple were a corrupt and ignorant lot.
The Bible is literature. The greatest piece of literature in human history. Whether oral, written with quill on parchment or printed and quarto-bound, it is entirely abstract. Its power is the power of the word.
Judaism fundamentally if not puritanically iconoclastic. Stone worship is specifically proscribed in the Bible. The wall is an ancient site of Jewish sacrifice and prayer. It is a religious site. But it has no religious significance. A note pushed into the wall is at best a literal prayer. At worst it is idolatry plain and simple.
The suggestion that “…the way the Western Wall is revered by the Jews is no different than the way they revere the Torah…” is wildly inaccurate. There is a reason why Jews are called the people of the Book.
Aug 3, 2008 - 6:34 pm 29. buddy larsen:“Its power is the power of the word.”
Well, that much more perfectly reveals the cryptic ‘the medium is the message’ than the hot/cool radio/tv McCluhan was explaining. That is indeed pure abstraction — the word itself as sacred, immortal (once written) creator (by language of a ‘People’, a higher power than the people of it).
A tiny mark upon a surface, miraculously making meaning. The tiniest movement of a hand and eye together creating life for a thought in the mind. A word a symbol, a symbol a meaning, a meaning a message from, or to, what is that makes us not alone.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God”
yes, and Amen, and bless us all, if possible.
Aug 3, 2008 - 11:00 pm 30. mika.:“The priests who served in the Second Temple were a corrupt and ignorant lot.”
They were more than that, they were agents of Rome. That is why Jesus wept for his nation Israel. America is Rome.
Aug 4, 2008 - 5:28 am 31. buddy larsen:Some of America is Rome –and some is Jerusalem. And some is Texas.
Aug 4, 2008 - 11:27 am 32. mika.:Hi Buddy. Rome was killed for a reason. There’s no need to resurrect it. As for Texas and Jerusalem, let’s keep them where they are.
Aug 4, 2008 - 1:45 pm 33. buddy larsen:’sup, Mika — how ’bout, Rome, Jerusalem, Texas as the past, the timeless, and the future — or the fist, the heart, and the hand — or death, life and (in August) hell.
Aug 4, 2008 - 3:18 pm 34. mika2k1:Har! Here’s to the future.
Aug 4, 2008 - 5:45 pm 35. buddy larsen:I’ll drink to that!
Aug 4, 2008 - 8:46 pm