BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE! For me, the convert, faith and reason together mean Judaism is the logical answer. And once your reason has embraced Judaism - love for Israel strikes you like a welcome infection and spreads. Love for Israel is again the result of people who pay attention and don't believe what the media says. If you are a logical, intelligent person - defending Israel and your Judaism is not just a matter of pride - its a matter of truth! On a personal note - the comfort vs. self-sacrifice has always been a personal issue. I am not a lazy person. I am one of those fools who sometimes thinks with her heart and takes the road not taken. My personal comfort has never been given much thought until I got sick - and even then I made some really bad mistakes. I put others before myself always - and its a 'habit' I can't seem to break. As far as my embracing Judaism is concerned - I will share a personal story: I was out of town for a conference and wear the Sta...

Regulating Women What I see going on in the World today upsets me. Not as much for myself but for my children. It appears that battles fought and won need to be refought against those who are still having tantrums about losing their ability to control others - particularly - control women. I know men who would swear they aren't misogynists - but have some streaks of male domination in them that smell faint of eau de misogyny . I am including in that - those who think only men should be rabbis, those who think only men should run things, those who think only men should be in the military, men who prey on 'chicks' via pick-up lines - casual sex - use of prostitutes or multiple relationships at the same time, those who think only men can do certain jobs. I had an abortion. Two of them. One just before I left high school. I was barely 18 and was legal in my state at that time. I went alone because the guy had dumped me (no closure of course) after a long relationship and...

WE'VE TRADED OUTRAGE FOR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS! The Outrage of Allowing American Muslim Women to Hide Their Face For a Driver's License Photo M. Toomey, PhD In 2002, Florida allowed a Muslim woman to have her driver's license picture taken with her face hidden. In the name of civil rights, religious custom was allowed to supersede a woman's human right to exist as an individual with an identity of her own. With her face hidden, a woman is declared the property of a man. Sexism of this magnitude should never be tolerated, yet without any public outcry, it is not only tolerated it is given legal sanction, in the name of freedom of religion. Why do we use a picture as identification on a driver's license in the first place? For the same reason I am decrying the permission to have a woman's face covered for the picture. To make it possible to identify us from our picture. Our face is the primary basis for this photo recognition. Not our hands. Not our feet. Not our ...

MY THANKS TO THE CARNIVAL OF 16 DAYS OF ACTIVISM AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE BLACKLOOKS did a great job . Carnivals are a lot of work and those who do them are to be applauded. This one included a lot of important posts about gender violence across the globe. Blacklook's included some terrific posts (including mine) so go give it a read and pass it on and raise awareness!

The Year's Most Laughable Political Antics by Daniel Kurtzman The late-night comedians may have made an early exit from the scene, but fortunately there was no shortage of political punch lines in 2007. From tapping toes and UFO encounters to prostitution scandals and $400 haircuts, it was a year in which politicians did their best to satirize themselves. As a salute to our nation's fine public servants, here's a look back at the year's most memorable feats and foibles. The envelopes, please. Winner of the George Orwell Award for Outstanding Achievement in Historical Revisionism: Karl Rove, for claiming that Senate Democrats prematurely forced President Bush to go to war in Iraq when Congress passed the war resolution in 2002. It was the White House's position, Rove insisted, that the issue should not have been politicized right before an election. On hearing that claim, Andrew Card, former White House chief of staff, laughed and said sometimes Rove's "mout...

IT'S STILL ISRAEL Is there anyone who didn't see FIELD OF DREAMS ? In it, Kevin Costner's character, Ray Kinsella, is plagued by hearing voices telling him to turn part of his cornfields in a baseball field. He eventually succumbs to it and "they" do come along with his dreams. When I was an actor I once had an acting coach give me a really lousy piece of advice. "Barbara, if you ACT happy... then you will BE happy. That works in life, too." I was willing to give it a shot and while it worked somewhat on stage or in front of a camera - Hello? That's why they call it ACTING! - it didn't work in real life. You can walk around with a big grin on your face and still feel horrible inside. The only thing it accomplishes is making people think you're an idiot. I guess I am far too empathic for that 'trick to work.' Admittedly I also believe that coach had no clue what they were talking about. At least it wasn't touchy-feeling co...

JUNIOR HIGH POLITICS I have a theory, and at my half-century - it hasn't been proven wrong to me yet. The theory is this: You meet all the "types" of people you are ever going to meet by the time you leave high school. And you just keep meeting them over & over & over again. The names change, the faces change, even the gender changes - but its that same jerk. Even the personality dynamics don't change. You only have to look as far as politics to see it. Unfortunately. ~~~~ Everything I Need to Know About the Regressive Right I Learned In Junior High by David Michael Green Regressive conservatives aren't really so hard to figure out. You just need to know the key. It's junior high. Remember those delightful years of comity and enlightenment, comradeship, maturity and social inclusiveness? Yeah, me neither. For most folks, those junior high years might as well have been a Wes Craven movie, full of Freddies and Jasons and metaphorical (not to mention...

Kudos to T.A.P.S. I wanted to give a big thumb up to TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors who help the families and loved ones of Military Personnel who have died in the service to cope - long after the military is out of the picture. Here's more: The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, Inc. (TAPS) was founded in the wake of a military tragedy -- the deaths of eight soldiers aboard an Army National Guard aircraft in November 1992. In the months and years following the loss of their loved ones, the survivors turned to various grief support organizations for comfort; but when they turned to each other for comfort and to share common fears and problems, they found strength and truly began to heal. They realized that the tragedy they shared, losing a loved one in the line of military duty, was far different from other types of losses. They shared pride in their spouses' service to America, and tremendous sadness at the ultimate sacrifice their loved ones made. ...

MORE NEWS CHANNELS, LESS NEWS I used to be a news junkie. By the time I hit high school I was rivetted by the Watergate trials being televised and the Roe v. Wade trial. My friends couldn't understand that I really enjoyed the evening news. It made me think about the world outside of the small, oppressive little town I lived in. And somehow, I felt it connected me to the rest of humanity. But that's all changed. News is now slanted. Stories rise and fall in a few days with zero follow up. The public has a short attention span and big, smokin' ALL ABOUT ME attitude. Everyone's up for their 15 minutes or to cover their own ***. My father, of blessed memory, used to tell me it was the "hooray for me , scr*w you" attitude. He was so right. Nothing real gets covered unless someone up on the media food-chain approves it. Nothing. The news bores me now. It gives me sound bytes instead of facts. Its so blatantly downslid into some sort of sick tabloid-esq...

Freeing Afghan Women Will Take More Than Allowing Them to Take off Their Burqua Michele Toomey, PhD The graphic pictures of Afghan women walking around covered and hindered by their burqua is so painful to see, but as they become free to take them off, that may be pain that we don't see. They have not only been forced to be hidden, they have grown accustomed to it and to the violence directed at them as women. What will exposure feel like? Will it feel freeing or frightening? I would like to address the prospect of fear. These women have been raped, beaten, and even shot, at a moments notice and at a man's whim. They have known slavery and captivity, all because they are women. Now they are going to uncover for all the men to see. How safe is that going to feel? How freeing does that seem? For some, probably not freeing at all, only more frightening at the prospect of such exposure. If we really do care about the plight of Afghan women, we had better provide them with psycholo...

"Teachers' Religious War On Kids Is Everywhere"* Really It Is. Bill Said So...Over...And Over. By Steve Young *Everywhere: How Bill O'Reilly defines the battle when a teacher in Bismark, ND, purporting to push religion is thrown out and a teacher in Santa Ana, CA purporting to push atheism is not. You can tell when the War on Christmas is waning. O'Reilly has put out the warning. All over the country, Christian and conservative kids are being persecuted by secular progressive teachers. "SP teachers are running wild all over America, bullying conservative kids like crazy!" Bill has the tape to prove it. Dr. James Corbett, a high school history teacher in California, was caught on tape calling religion "irrational," accusing conservatives of wanting women to be "pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen," and calling Bill and Sean Hannity "liars." He even pronounced Roger Ailes name wrong and said that Ailes had advised President...

Vilifying Jews By Ruthie Blum Likening anti-Semitism to pollution, Manfred Gerstenfeld makes a distinction between that "which comes out of a chimney and spreads over a huge area," and that "which comes from the exhaust pipes of millions of cars, each one contributing its little bit." The former, he says, was characteristic of the Nazi era - with its "boss," Adolf Hitler, as the central smokestack the world over. The latter, he claims, describes today's post-modern form of the phenomenon: global, but fragmented, with no single leader or source - and primarily aimed at the Jewish state. The academic area Gerstenfeld - chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) - has spent the last few years researching is one he feels has been given short shrift precisely among those most immediately and directly threatened by it. It is what he sees as the gradual mushrooming of anti-Israel bias on campuses across the world, culmi...