Via Consumerist

Happy Hannukah!

There are a lot of jokes about Jews not getting along with each other (told only by other Jews, please), from the saying "Two Jews, Three Opinions", Monty Python's rivalry between the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front, and jokes such as the following:

A rescue party finally finds a Jewish man who's been shipwrecked on a deserted island for many years. They are amazed to see how industrious he's been. He's dug a well and constructed a complex system to bring running water to the sturdy house he's built from reeds, wood and leaves. He has domesticated some small animals and bred them for food. He's built a fishing raft from which he can catch nets full of fresh fish. The rescuers, however, are perplexed by two buildings, on opposite ends of the island.

"What are those?," they ask.

"Well, this one is my synagogue."

"And the other?"

"That's a synagogue too, but I wouldn't be caught dead in that one!"

I was amused by a San Francisco Chronicle article by Jason Motlagh about article "The Last Jew in Afghanistan", which contains:

The only other Jew in Afghanistan, Yitzhak Levin, died in 2005. The pair had lived together in a shabby synagogue on Flower Street throughout the Soviet invasion, a civil war and the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban government, but grew to hate each other. They held separate services, had vicious shouting matches neighbors could hear a block away, and when valuable Torah scrolls went missing, each blamed the other.

As the article continues, it unfortunately becomes less amusing:

They also denounced each other to the Taliban as spies for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, prompting Taliban police to beat them with rifle butts and jail them on occasion....

The feud was so intense that Afghan police suspected Simentov of murdering Levin when he died, until a post-mortem examination proved that he had died from diabetes.

This reminds me of how my mother used to try to get me to go to the Jewish Hillel organization when I was an MIT student until the president-elect committed arson in a dispute with a suite-mate about the level of kashrut (kosherness) in the suite's kitchen.

From the Associated Press (via OregonLive.com):

The Museum of Tolerance started off with good intentions, over $100 million in donations, an eye-catching design by architect Frank Gehry, a 2004 kickoff ceremony attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a great piece of Jerusalem real estate.

But underneath that real estate, it turned out, there were Muslim graves. As a result, instead of bringing this contentious city's warring tribes together, the museum has sparked a fight with political, religious and historical dimensions between Muslims and Jews — and all this before it has even been built.

Months of arbitration have ended in deadlock, the site is enclosed in aluminum walls, and the dispute is now before Israel's Supreme Court. Even if the court gives the go-ahead, however, the Museum of Tolerance could well remain permanently tainted by allegations of intolerance....

Muslim opponents have found unexpected allies: Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who aren't known for their sympathy for Arab causes but who care about preserving graves.

Warning: This will probably only be funny to (some) Jews or their spouses.

I just got back from a conference, where I chatted with someone who works at Microsoft in Redmond. I told him about when I worked at Microsoft and said he should let me know if he wanted any information about nearby Google Kirkland. He said that a lot of his friends work at Google Kirkland, and he was recently at a wedding between a Microsoftie and a Googler. I said: "It must have been a reform rabbi."

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