I just had a beer and a cookie and I'm feeling great

מימונה שמחה
Happy Mimuna

A big religious-zionist rabbi in Israel is hoping to get rid of "gentiles striving to undermine the country" by coming out with a bill that will revoke non-Jews of their citizenship. They are also trying to give citizenship to Jews who are not even living in Israel.
The ultra-orthodox religious-zionist agenda has become to clear to me now. Just as Mea-She'arim is a community that tries to close itself off from the rest of the world, so too do the leaders want to close off Israel from the rest of the world, making it a national shtetl. What nudnikim.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg (AKA Professor X) being interviewed by beliefnet about his book on Jewish-Christian relations. I love pluralism and I love Yitzy for loving pluralism too, especially when it involves meeting the Dali Lhama. He's one of my favorite (living) Orthodox rabbis. I should make a list of them one day.
Ok, fine... I'll start now:
Yitz Greenberg
Avi Weiss
Shaul Judelman
Aryeh Trugman
I'll add more later.

About two years ago, a Jewish 23 year old boy from France was captured, tortured, and held ransom by a group of anti-semetic animals, most of whom were Muslim. Now this is obviously a terrible act, and it should be known that I'm not posting this to be a right wing conservative, Kahanist, Honest Reporting, Islamophobic asshole, but because I stumbled upon a blog written by "an unapologetic liberal and a proud American Muslim" named Akram's Razor who covered this story and does a great job. It's really interesting to read this post from an eloquent, liberal, Western Muslim's point of view. He touches on the issue of anti-semetism in the Muslim world and I think its a topic that isn't dealt with enough from the inside. I get annoyed by Jews who call on "moderate Muslims" to take back the true message of Islam blah blah blah, but its reassuring to see it actually happening without some asshole like David Horowitz telling them what to do.

I also wanted to post this great article by the Forward about how progressives who are into social justice love Passover, even if they do go a little overboard with the seder plate sometimes.