FAT & SOUTH BEACH

Chewing the fat

• By ELLIOT JAGER

Blame it on Sidney Taubenfeld. Sidney and I were childhood pals in the early 1960s on New York's Lower East Side. I was a skinny runt who, especially at the table, made my mother's life miserable. One day, Mrs. Taubenfeld invited me for supper and put a bottle of ketchup on the table. Suddenly, foods I wouldn't touch became flavorful. That's when my addiction to sugar, and - with it, a life-long struggle with being fat - began.

Roger Cohen, who writes the always-worth-reading 'Globalist' column for the Herald Tribune, recently described returning to New York from an extended overseas journey. As his taxi made its way from JFK Airport, Cohen looked out the window and noticed that Americans had become fatter and fatter - something he attributes to dysfunctional American culture.

Cohen wrote that he always worried about being squashed up next to a fat person during a plane journey. Then the blubber-basher added: 'Let's face it: Nobody likes to be shapeless or gets that way without suffering. And let's face this: If you punish yourself by getting fat, you may also want to punish others. In obesity lurks anger.'

I'd always had a lot of anger in me, and I have always been fat, but I never put the two together. Maybe one day I'll find myself sitting next to Cohen on a plane and he can elucidate.

It may be hard for the skinny and smug to appreciate this, but grappling with obesity - like post-aliya absorption into Israeli society - is a-one-day-at-a-time struggle.

Some 39 percent of Israelis are overweight and 23% are grossly overweight, or obese. Men tend to be overweight; women, obese. Israeli Arabs are fatter than Israeli Jews. Partly, this reflects a preference for larger women in Arab society, but it's also the paradoxical result of poverty: In developed societies being fat is associated with being poor.

That may be changing. Obesity is America is growing fastest among those making more than $60,000 a year.

For many of us, the day after Pessah signaled the dawn of yet another Sisyphean effort to lose weight. Yet for all the chatter about obesity - blame it on metabolism, social class, emotions, genetics, lack of exercise - whatever, according to The Merck Manual its actual cause 'is unknown, [though] the mechanism is simple - consuming more calories than are expended.'

Some blame the financially gluttonous purveyors of addictive junk food for the fat epidemic. Take Hardee's, a McDonald's wannabe, which markets a 'Monster Thickburger' packing 1,420 calories. Critics label such processed meals 'food porn.' But by the time you realize how ghastly processed foods are for you, it's too late. You're hooked.


NOW, I could join a class-action suit against companies which produce addictive foods - maybe go after Heinz over my craving for their scrumptious, sugar-saturated, condiment. But that would be like saying I have no free will. And, whatever my weaknesses, I take personal responsibility over what goes into my mouth.

Then there's an outfit called the Center for Consumer Freedom, which has been placing full-page advertisements in major US newspapers warning that the common man is being 'force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths by the 'food police,' trial lawyers, and even the American government.' The campaign is being orchestrated by Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist for Big Food, Big Restaurants and Big Tobacco. Berman recently told The Washington Post that 'junk science, intimidation tactics, and even threats of violence' are being used to push an 'extremist' food agenda.

Maybe Berman is a follower of economist Milton Friedman, who commented back in 1974: 'Do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? My answer to that is, no they do not.'

But it strikes me that there's a third way between 'junk science' and 'food porn.' People have a personal responsibility to resist Monster Thickburgers. And corporations have an ethical responsibility not to market damaging foods.

And whether out of altruism or pragmatism, the good news on the corporate front, at least in America, was Kraft's announcement back in January that it would stop advertising addictive snacks to children. And other US companies are promising to remove harmful trans fats, added in processing to promote shelf life, from their products. Unfortunately, Big Food in Israel has made no similar moves. Only now is there talk in government circles about listing trans fats on product ingredient labels.

Myself, I'm not waiting for government or industry to get off their fat asses. For the past six months I've been on Arthur Agatston's South Beach Diet, which emphasizes breaking sugar addiction. I've learned to pick foods low on the glycemic food index so my blood sugar level doesn't fall too rapidly (making me famished). Generally speaking, Agatston advocates keeping away from processed foods, white bread, white rice, potatoes, pasta and corn.

I'm not pushing South Beach - though I've lost 10 kilos. Anyone with a weight problem should do what works for them, such as checking out the 2005 Dietary Guidelines recently issued by the US government. These emphasize fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat milk, as well as the avoidance of trans fats and added sugars.

During Pessah, I cheated. It's almost impossible not to.

But I am back on the wagon, Sidney.


– From a May 2, 2005 Jerusalem Post column

Louis Farrakhan, the Jews & "Middlesex"

Unrepentant bigot

• By ELLIOT JAGER


In his brilliant epic Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides tells the story of a white swindler, Jimmy Zizmo, who poses as the light-skinned black 'prophet' Fard Muhammad. It is during the Depression, and Zizmo has established a cult among Detroit's downtrodden Negroes. But after he dupes some of them into conducting a human sacrifice, and with the FBI on his tail, Fard/Zizmo mysteriously disappears, leaving Calliope, the novel's central character, to declare: 'My maternal grandfather returned to the nowhere from which he'd come.'

The nonfiction account of the Nation of Islam's founding is even wackier. It is the spring of 1931 and Elijah Poole is recovering from yet another drunken stupor. His long-suffering wife, Clara, brings home the 'real' Jimmy Zizmo, an inspirational 'Muslim' preacher who calls himself Master Wallace D. Fard. 'I know you think I'm white,' Fard tells Poole, 'but I'm not. I have come to save [black America].'

Fard explains that he's assumed the appearance of a Caucasian to spy on the white man, and instructs Poole on the fundamentals of NOI theology: Caucasians are 'human devils,' inferior to blacks. The white race is the result of a gene-manipulation experiment gone awry, conducted by a black scientist named Yakub 6,000 years ago. Everything the white man does is rooted in 'trickology' - deception.

In 1933, before the 'real' Fard disappears, he urges Poole to study Henry Ford's anti-Semitic diatribes and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, as well as the Bible and Koran. Armed with this knowledge Poole, now known as Elijah Muhammad, reinvigorates the cult. He eventually converts Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Malcolm Little (Malcolm X) and the charismatic calypso balladeer, Louis 'the Charmer' Walcott.

When Muhammad died in 1975, Walcott - now known as Minister Louis Farrakhan - took charge of the cult. And over the past 30 years this talented demagogue has become black America's paramount leader.

No one but Farrakhan can bring a million African-Americans into the streets; no one but Farrakhan commands instant respect among the black masses; and no one but Farrakhan is held in such esteem that neither the inanity of his theology nor his long trail of xenophobic vitriol can scare away mainstream black politicians and pastors - or even, for that matter, Bill Clinton.

Forget the negatives, his defenders say; focus on Farrakhan's positive messages of black self-help. Indeed, a dysfunctional black America needs all the help it can get. As The New York Times's Brent Staples wrote last week: 'African-American teenagers are beset... by dangerous myths about race. The most poisonous one defines middle-class normalcy and achievement as 'white,' while embracing violence, illiteracy and drug dealing as 'authentically black.'

It is within this toxic environment that Farrakhan has been tirelessly preaching abstinence, family values and responsibility. Precisely, I think, because he laces these messages with chauvinism, racial supremacy and Jew-hatred, his movement has achieved an unheard-of level of legitimacy in black America - where 30 percent of the population is contaminated by classical anti-Semitism.

On May 2 Farrakhan was back in the limelight - he'd been sidelined by cancer and acute back pain - holding a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington to announce a 'Millions More Movement,' a march on Washington set for October 14-16 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first Million Man March.

Farrakhan grows increasingly savvy with age. But even with a cleaned-up act his attitude toward Jews comes across. He told a February gathering: 'Listen, Jewish people don't have no hands that are free of the blood of us. They owned slave ships, they bought and sold us. They raped and robbed us. If you can't face that, why you gonna condemn me for showing you your past, how then can you atone and repent if somebody don't open the book with courage - you don't have that - but I'll be damned, I got it.'


AMERICAN JEWRY faces a dilemma: Should Jewish organizations urge mainstream African-American leaders to dissociate themselves from the October march on the grounds that it is spearheaded by an unrepentant bigot, or should they keep shtum since black leaders won't be deterred anyway and Farrakhan will only feed off Jewish opposition?

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, a man whose thinking I respect, cautioned me not to get too worked up about Farrakhan - 'I detect a certain been-there-done-that flavor to this new event' he wrote in an email exchange. Page also challenged my assessment that Farrakhan is the paramount black leader: 'Black Americans are getting past their 'Black Moses syndrome,' in which we long for another Martin Luther King.' Farrakhan 'still has rap-star charisma among young black males,' Page says, but 'anti-Semitism has never been Farrakhan's major draw' and attacking him only wins him sympathy.

Among the black leaders who turned out for the Farrakhan news conference were: Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams and Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women. Not present, but reportedly backing the event, were Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC's delegate in Congress and NAACP chairman Julian Bond, as well as Coretta Scott King, widow of Rev. Martin Luther King.

Referring obliquely to the Jewish community, Farrakhan told the gathering: 'There are those who... are threatened that we are all here together. And so, one by one, they will come to pick us off.'

But the presence of Farrakhan's co-organizer and, some suggest, heir-apparent, Malik Zulu Shabazz, sent an even more sinister message. At a July 2003 news conference, Shabazz declared: 'If 3,000 people perished in the World Trade Center attacks and the Jewish population is 10 percent, you show me records of 300 Jewish people dying in the World Trade Center... We're daring anyone to dispute this truth. They got their people out.'

In advance of the press club announcement, the ADL's Abe Foxman sent letters to black leaders, imploring: 'When will someone in the African-American community stand up and say the Million Man March has a positive message but the pied piper is a racist and anti-Semite?' Merely asking that question strikes rap impresario and black power broker Russell Simmons, who dialogues with liberal rabbis and does big business with Jewish and Israeli Hollywood, as 'disrespectful' and likely to 'spread anti-Semitism.'

'A few days ago,' Simmons announced, 'I personally witnessed [Farrakhan] affirm, 'A Muslim cannot hate a Jew. We are all members of the family of Abraham and all of us should maintain dialogue and mutual respect.''

It's not easy to find a Jewish macher willing to publicly address the Farrakhan dilemma - or criticize Foxman for his confrontational approach. But Rabbi David Saperstein, of Reform Judaism's Religious Action Center - who seems to reflect the dominant Jewish line - did tell me that public criticism of Farrakhan is counterproductive.

His is not a position easily dismissed. Let's face it: Protesting is unlikely to change any minds, and is certain to antagonize. So I went to see Foxman, who happened to be in Jerusalem last week. He has been in his current job for 18 years and with ADL since 1965. Foxman, who survived Hitler's war against the Jews, sheltered by a Polish Christian nursemaid, is not a man riddled with self-doubt.

He has zero tolerance for racism, calling it 'a sad, sad commentary that the only pied piper African-Americans have is somebody so infected with Jew-hatred.' And it is the Jews' decade-long failure to get this message across to the black leadership that has allowed anti-Semitism to fester.

Tactically, he realizes that speaking up gives Farrakhan more prominence, but for Foxman that's beside the point. He isn't telling blacks not to march or calling for a Jewish counter-demonstration, but he won't airbrush out Louis Farrakhan's racism.

It's a tough call. Our challenge is to decide whether Jews' experience with a fruitcake Austrian painter has anything to teach us about the rantings of a black American calypso performer.


–From a May 16 column in The Jerusalem Post

Ultra-Orthodox Jews

American haredi triumph

• By ELLIOT JAGER

By May 1912 the idea that European Jewish life should be governed by Halacha had been under assault for some 200 years; first by the Enlightenment, then by Emancipation, next by the birth of Reform Judaism and finally by political Zionism. Modernity - defined by historian Paul Johnson as the end of absolute right and wrong and the birth of moral relativism - had dawned.

Still, I wonder what impelled a group of German, Hungarian and Polish-Lithuanian rabbis to gather in Kattowitz, a town east of Krakow near what is today the Czech border, precisely 93 years ago this month to establish Agudat Israel.

The holy men, both hassidim and mitnagdim, united by their opposition to the liberal Jewish response to modernity, put aside their own differences. They set up a supreme religious authority, the Council of Torah Sages, and hunkered down. Faced with undermining societal threats within Europe and the seductive allure of emigration to a 'Godless' America, the rabbis could not have been sanguine about the future prospects for ultra-Orthodox or haredi Judaism.

And then things got worse. The rise of Nazism left some haredi luminaries, such as rabbis Aaron Kotler and Abraham Kalmanowitz, no choice but to abandon the Old World for the goldene medina.

So in 1939, the year Joe DiMaggio led the American League with a .381 batting average and Manhattan's Sixth Avenue elevated subway was being torn down, the American branch of Aguda was established. The organization united hassidic tzadikim, the yekke Breuer community in Washington Heights and pious mitnagdim.

The American ultra-Orthodox establishment was up and running. But who would have imagined it would get very far? The societal threats faced by European Orthodoxy must have seemed trivial compared to what the Old World rabbis were up against now: a welcome mat to American decadence.

And, yet Aguda proved remarkably adaptive, establishing yeshivot for boys and girls as well as seminaries for rabbinical students. Politically, the Nazi menace caused the movement to shift from being singlemindedly anti-Zionist to pragmatically non-Zionist. While some fanatics rebelled to create the Neturei Karta sect, in Israel an Agudat Yisrael Party has competed (and won) seats in every Knesset; and American Agudath, only loosely affiliated with the movement in Israel, is staunchly supportive of Israeli security.

The Aguda world - here and in the US - has steadfastly adhered to roughly the same reactionary theological, societal and political worldview it first articulated 93 years ago. No to acculturation; no to non-halachic Reform Judaism; no to Masorti's efforts to harmonize Halacha with modernity; mostly no to a secular higher education, and no to political Zionism.

Of course changing times have brought new 'nos': no to homosexual unions; no to the Internet (you won't find an Aguda Web site, nor will the movement give an imprimatur to home use of the Internet); no to doctor-assisted suicide, and no to the egalitarian participation of women in Judaism.

While US Agudath is purely an advocacy group representing mitnaged, yeshivishe and hassidic movements (though not Chabad or Satmar) under the direction of an eight-member Council of Torah Sages chaired by the Novominsker Rebbe, Yaakov Perlow, in Israel Aguda is a political party with its own Council of Torah Sages. A schism with the mitnagdim led them to form a separate Degel Hatorah Party; however, together with Aguda's hassidim they campaign under the United Torah Judaism ticket and have five seats in the current Knesset.

Aguda's constituency tends not to serve in the IDF (because it would expose their boys and girls to alternative lifestyles); young males tend not to work, and families tend to be dependent on government subsidies and charity. Aguda haredim here are fragmented over ethnicity and ritual. They oppose the political messianism of national-religious extremists, but that does not win them any points with the country's secular majority.


AMERICAN HAREDIM are far better integrated into the Jewish mainstream. There's no love lost between them and the more liberal streams, but, on the bright side, there are no theological differences within American Orthodoxy. What most distinguishes Agudath types from the OU and Young Israel crowd is the haredi emphasis on living life - geographically, linguistically and culturally - as separately as possible from the majority; the more inward-looking, the more haredi.

When Agudath's Rabbi Avi Safran recently denounced the biased portrayal of Orthodoxy on the popular American television program Grey's Anatomy, his arguments were based not on personal observation - he doesn't own a television - but on the complaints of non-haredim.

Yet not only have American haredim not gone the way of the dodo, their lifestyle is thriving. Haredi rabbis easily fill Madison Square Garden for religious revivals; their scholarship dominates Orthodoxy; their Artscroll publications set Orthodoxy's liturgical direction; and the stringent haredi approach to ritual has largely become the Orthodox norm.

What's more, American haredim have managed to thrive with minimal government aid to their yeshivot, with only a handful of elected politicians, and with most of their young men in the workforce. Because they pay their taxes and go to work no one but the most closed-minded or self-hating bigot can call US haredim 'parasites.'

It is a healthy haredi lifestyle that has taken root in America, one that balances steadfast commitment to religious ultra-conservatism with dutiful responsibility to the wider society. Haredi America is raising a future generation of accountants, lawyers, physicians and businesspeople - many of them also Torah scholars.

Paradoxically, and by contrast, 'our' haredim here, operating in a Jewish political and social milieu, have failed to calibrate the May 1912 Aguda platform to meet the needs of modernity. Why? Because Israel's political system fosters a partisan rigidity, where splinter groups vie for a piece of the loser-takes-something pie.

That haredim here operate in an environment of secular nihilism further complicates matters. A cute Puerto Rican girl wearing a provocative outfit on the F train is no great peril to haredi values. A cute secular Jewess similarly clad on Jerusalem's No. 4 Egged bus is an entirely different matter. When Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman warned back in 1937 that 'The Jewish state is our greatest woe' my hunch is that's what he meant.

American Agudath is a success story. With government support it operates a network of social service centers and a lobbying office on Capitol Hill. It has achieved entree to the White House. American haredim have earned the respect of even those who reject their theological worldview.

Those rabbis gathered in Kattowitz could not have been unaware that, as they were meeting, the first investigatory reports on the April 15 sinking of the Titanic were being issued. I'd like to believe that today's Torah sages are not unaware of the disaster that awaits haredi Israel if it does not rethink its response to modernity. I'd recommend along American haredi lines.

– From a May 30, 2005 Jerusalem Post column

INDIA & ISRAEL

India is the interest

• By ELLIOT JAGER


Last Tuesday North Korea supposedly agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. The headline writers were all upbeat: 'North Korea signs pact on nuclear arms' (The Age, Australia), 'North Korea agrees to scrap nuclear weapons program,' (Bloomberg). And, from Reuters, a change of pace: 'Reclusive North Korea opens door to US tourists.'

The only dark cloud was an AP report the next day out of Seoul headlined: 'N. Korea accuses US of plotting attack' and warning that Pyongyang is 'fully ready' to respond with a 'strong retaliatory blow.'

That's the thing about headline writers - they cannot help focusing on big-picture breakthroughs, trusting the reader to plough through the fine print for a more comprehensive account.

Then there was the hoopla surrounding the Israel-Pakistan rapprochement, which culminated with President Pervez Musharraf's widely-heralded September 15 speech before a Jewish audience in New York City: 'A historic event,' (The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles), 'Pakistan pledges Israel ties,' (Totally Jewish.com) and 'Pakistan may open Israel embassies' (The New York Sun).

But The Jerusalem Post got the tone just right: 'Musharraf: Israel must leave West Bank soon - Pakistan president tells 'Post' he has no timetable for ties with Israel.'

Over the weekend many analysts had sufficiently deconstructed Musharraf's speech to point out that there would be no embassies, diplomatic relations or exchange of tourists anytime soon.

Indeed, as the ADL's feisty Abraham Foxman put it, bluntly: 'What have we achieved? In [Musharraf's] world, in his culture, this is a major step. From our perspective it isn't.'

Still, Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress and a key player in helping to make the Musharraf connection, told The New York Jewish Week: 'We couldn't have expected him to become a Zionist Saturday night. It takes time.'

Well, while Jack Rosen waits for Musharraf's Zionist tendencies to bloom, we should pray this ephemeral infatuation of ours does not derail the relationship Israel has already established - with India.


I'M DUBIOUS of the claim by Khursheed Kasuri, Pakistan's foreign minister, that his country attached such 'great importance' to disengagement that it 'decided to engage Israel.' Everyone knows there have been on-and-off back-channel talks between Israel and Pakistan. Disengagement is a convenient peg, but something else had to explain Musharraf's willingness to go public just now and allow his foreign minister to publicly meet with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, shake hands with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an orchestrated 'chance meeting' at the UN and make the Big Speech before the AJCongress audience.

Here's my suspicion: The object of Islamabad's affection is not Jerusalem, but Washington. Pakistan has come under increasing criticism for its handling of the American-led war against Islamist terrorism inside Afghanistan. People in Washington are wondering just how on-board Pakistan really is.

While the Pakistani leadership continues to maintain ties with the Taliban insurgency, it seems genuinely committed to fighting al-Qaida. Still, there are suspicions that the last thing Islamabad wants is to actually capture Osama bin Laden. He's probably hiding in Pakistan's mountainous border region with Afghanistan. Were OBL captured, there would be less justification for continued US economic aid (to the tune of $3 billion a year) to the military regime in Islamabad.

So in this context, a public flirtation with Israel is good for Pakistan's image. It buys Musharraf time with an impatient Congress and administration.

Secondly, with India and the US growing increasingly closer - including joint military exercises - Pakistan hopes to play its American Jewish card to hinder ties between Washington and New Delhi.

Can Israel's friends in Washington be so easily co-opted? In a word, yes.

India and America have already had a row over Iran. Congressman Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to have served in Congress, says he's infuriated by a recent visit to Teheran by Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh and the possibility that New Delhi and the mullahs are cooperating on nuclear weapons.

But analysts of India-Iran relations insist there is no nuclear cooperation. They say that India simply needs to get on with Iran, if for no other reason than because 80 percent of India's oil comes from Iran. And India has the largest non-Arab Shi'ite population outside Iran, so there is a good domestic reason for keeping relations with Teheran on an even keel. Finally, Iran is an important transit country for Indian goods (which can't pass through Pakistan).

And then there's this minor detail: Pakistan, not India, helped boost Iran's nuclear ambitions. It was A.Q. Khan, father of Islamabad's nuclear program, who supplied deadly technology to the regime in Teheran.


I'M NOT arguing that good ties with Pakistan are undesirable; of course they're a good thing. In fact, I doubt the Indians themselves would be bothered if Israel and Pakistan had normal diplomatic relations; many countries have ties with both states. But as we cozy up to Pakistan we have every reason to be mindful of India's sensitivities.

New Delhi granted Israel recognition in 1950; we've had a consular presence in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, since 1952 (and a visit by Moshe Dayan back in 1978 broke the ice a bit more).

Relations took off in 1992 when Israel and India established full diplomatic relations. And boy, did they take off. The total turnover in trade between our two countries stands at a staggering $2.8 billion a year. I'm told Israel's annual 'trade' with Pakistan stands at about $6,000. India is Israel's ninth largest trading partner (and second largest in Asia). In the first six months of 2005, India-Israel trade increased by 23.5%.

Both countries have put up $1 million each to foster bilateral economic development. India goes out of its way to attract Israeli business. And our connection with India goes beyond a buy-sell relationship. Joint R&D projects are flourishing.

There is also a robust, and mutually beneficial, defense relationship. And as the Post's diplomatic correspondent, Herb Keinon, pointed out in a September 1 analysis piece, Israel is a key arms supplier to New Delhi.

Then there is the cultural connection: 70,000 Jews of Indian ancestry live in Israel and tens of thousands of young Israelis trek to India after army service to decompress and broaden their horizons.


THE MORE you compare India and Pakistan, the more obvious it becomes that we must not jeopardize our valuable relationship with the former out of ineptitude or arrogance.

India is a genuine multicultural democracy: Its president, and father of its nuclear program, is a Muslim. To date, not a single Indian Muslim has been implicated in Islamist violence.

Pakistan, in contrast, is completely controlled by its military junta. Not much - not even 'spontaneous' burnings of Israeli flags - happens without the army's acquiescence.

India is home to more than a billion people; Pakistan's population is 162 million. India's GDP is something like $3.319 trillion; Pakistan's $347.3 million.

With all that, a cultural gulf separates our two ancient peoples, Jews and Indians. I wish, for example, that India more fully appreciated the genuinely non-colonial nature of the Jewish national liberation struggle. But the relationship is on the right track.


IN MARCH 1848 Lord Palmerston told the British House of Commons: 'We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.'

That's the way nation-states operate. But it's an approach that requires wisdom in accurately identifying the national interest, and diplomatic skill in calibrating between competing ones.

So while headline writers can get away with a degree of hyperbole, those who conduct Israeli foreign policy need to cautiously weigh their actions and make sure, among other things, that India knows how much we prize our bilateral connection.

– From a September 26, 2005 column in The Jerusalem Post