liam getreu

Here are a selection of articles about a boy refused a bar mitzvah by Rabbi Moshe Gutnick in Sydney because he wasn’t properly circumcised. Following is my letter to the editor, sent to The Age about it. Hopefully it will be published (I’ve only ever had letters published in the Herald Sun).

Shame on you, Rabbi Gutnick for your ultra-Orthodox power trip (The Age, 27/10).

Shame on you for telling a young boy he was not Jewish, and then slamming a progressive synagogue for “fooling” him into believing it. Surely humanity has pushed aside physical attributes of an individual defining himself? Surely the colour of your skin, the makeup of your DNA, or even the size and shape of your penis cannot decide your claim to Judaism. Judaism is more than that, which Rabbi Gutnick clearly fails to acknowledge.

The fact that the boy wants to enter Jewish adulthood, wants to participate in the Jewish community and would like to feel Jewish is enough for him to be considered Jewish in my book. Judaism isn’t about receiving a letter-of-the-law circumcision, it’s aboutbelieving that you’re Jewish and practicing your Judaism — be it in a religious or cultural sense, or any other way that you feel does it justice for you.

Shame on you Rabbi Gutnick — you may be a smart man, but you have no right to tell anyone, let alone a 13 year old boy, that they are Jewish or not.

This would never happen on Fox… titled: “Is Bush an idiot?”

Marking the five year anniversary of the iPod, people have been spouting ideas for the future, musings on the past, and lots of “iPod helped me get a girlfriend” stories. Also, people have been talking about that video — the video at Macworld where Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod in 2001. This is his story:

Take a look at Flickr. I don’t know for how long I’ve been able to do this, but I can geotag all of my photos. It means that, as simple as dragging-and-dropping using ‘Organizr’ (God bless AJAX) I can tell people where I took different photos.

For example, you can now see that I took this photo of my friend Loni on Kibbutz Revivim in Israel. Neat, hu? You can also see a map of the world with little thingos where I took my photos, and also a map of photos from everyone using Flickr. Wow. Talk about Cool++.

Disgraced Congressman Mark Foley, when he resigned, claimed that one of the contributing factors to his inappropriate conduct (have a read of the multitude of articles in the New York Times and entries on Wikipedia for a background) was, in addition to alcohol abuse, the fact that he had been molested as a child by a member of the Church.

Well, today Father Anthony Mercieca who lives in Malta, off the coast of Italy, admitted to things that, according to the New York Times, may have been sexually inappropriate. This is reportedly what Father Mercieca admitted to:

Among them: massaging Mr. Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping with him at a secluded lake and being naked in the same room on overnight trips.

Just out of interest, Father, how can these ‘perhaps’ be sexually inappropriate? They get ten out of ten in my book on the sexual-inappropriateness-with-children-o-meter.

At least Father Mercieca didn’t claim that “we all envy him” a la President Vladimir Putin.