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In this issue
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (1 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 14, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Add pesto to bean soup and get ready for yum --- in minutes!
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: How To Recognize A Control Freak, Part II (A VERY fast 14 minutes)
Oct. 13, 2009
Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Palestinian Incitement Matters So Much
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: How To Recognize A Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 12, 2009
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Shimmering paradoxes
JWisdom.com: One Small Spark … One Great Fire By Gavriel Aryeh Sanders (7 minutes)
Oct. 9, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Illusion of Influence
JWisdom.com: Take the Sage of St. Louis' Challenge by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The newest round of war
Oct. 8, 2009
Joseph Aaron: What the Chicago Olympics failure must teach Jewry
JWisdom.com: Rehabbing The Thief Within by Sara Yoheved Rigler (9 minutes)
Oct. 7, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Sumptuous supper in the sukkah
JWisdom.com: Know an 'invincible' teen? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe (6 minutes)
Oct. 6, 2009
Alan H. Luxenberg: The Twilight Zone's Jewish soul
JWisdom.com: A Sage for Our Age --- and Only 238 Years old! by Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz(10 minutes)
Oct. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com: Harvesting Happiness By Rabbi Eytan Feiner (7 minutes)
Oct. 2, 2009
Rabbi Yitzhak Adlerstein: Happiness is a Warm Sukkah
JWisdom.com:Getting out of the rut and into the hut by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Oct. 1, 2009
Barry Horn: A spiritual force: Cowboys' Igor Olshansky takes a fierce pride in his Jewish faith
JWisdom.com:Defeating Your Inner Saboteur By Sara Yoheved Rigler (6 minutes)
Sept. 30, 2009
Yaffa Ganz: The Other 'Evil Eye'
JWisdom.com: Strong Willed Children make the best leaders: How to get them to that point by Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Richard Z. Chesnoff: Killing Kasztner, the Jew who bargained with Eichmann
Sept. 29, 2009
Mona Charen: Who Needs Religion?
JWisdom.com: Sukkos: Journey to Joy by Rabbi Harvey Belovski (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 3, 2009 / 11 Tamuz 5769

Bless This Honorable Court

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In what let's hope will prove a landmark decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that all Americans have civil rights — not just those belonging to certain specified groups. Whereupon said honorable court proceeded to protect those rights. And justice was done. Take that, cynics.


In a case out of New Haven, Conn., a bare majority of the court ruled that a group of firefighters who passed the test for promotion should indeed be promoted. How remarkable. Especially in these strange times of groupthink and sociospeak.


Openings for captains and lieutenants in New Haven's fire department are limited, but the ones available are now to be filled in due course on the basis of, of all things these strange days, objective criteria. Like scoring high on a test for promotion.


When not enough black firefighters passed the test to suit the city's political movers-and-shakers, they had decided to ignore it. Shades of how the old Jim Crow laws used to work in these Southern latitudes. Only now the colors have been reversed. But the basic proposition has been retained — that one's place in society, as in old India, stems from caste, not merit. Back in the bad old days, the system was jimmied in favor of the white folks. Or to put it in today's proper racespeak, Caucasians were privileged. But some things don't change: In both instances, the fixers didn't count on the Supreme Court of the United States disrupting their game.


Forgive me if I don't jump up and down in celebration. Deciding that all men are created equal regardless of race by a vote of 5 to 4 wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the Declaration of Independence as the Fourth of July approached. But with this Supreme Court, court, you celebrate even the narrowest victory for clear law and simple justice.


The four dissenters on the court all had their reasons, or rather poor excuses. My favorite ploy was the one used by Her Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who began her opinion by expressing sympathy for the firefighters whose rights she was about to deny under color of law. She dutifully noted that "the white firefighters who scored high on New Haven's promotional exams understandably attract this court's sympathy."


That's ni-i-i-ce, to quote the phrase of a very large, very black man who was attending a meeting of the Pine Bluff, Ark., school board at a time when America's own caste system was falling apart. He was in town as a representative of the U.S. government — specifically the Department of Education, if memory serves. It was his job to consider whether the school board's attempt to evade the letter and spirit of the law would result in its losing federal aid. When one of the segs on the school board went on and on about how much he loved black folks and would do nothing to stand in the way of their equal (if decidedly separate) education, Mr. Federal Official just looked at him, expressionless, and let a long silence descend. No doubt to let the sheer hypocrisy of that claim resound in the room.


And then all Mr. Federal Official said, his strong white teeth shining as his smile widened and widened into one great big grin, was: That's ni-i-i-ce. His phrase came back to me after all these years on reading Mrs. Justice Ginsburg's words of sympathy for the firefighters whose rights she was about to gut. That was a long ago, but I haven't forgotten the scene. Or the phrase.


I have to admit that The Hon. Samuel Alito, in his opinion concurring with the majority in this case, came up with as good or perhaps even better response to Justice Ginsburg's sympathy card: " 'Sympathy' is not what petitioners have a right to demand," wrote Justice Alito. "What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law — of Title VII's prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today's decision, has been denied them."


Justice — and he certainly earned the title with his concurring opinion — Alito had made his and justice's point. His words were almost as eloquent as those quotation marks he put around "sympathy." For what good is sympathy without acting on it, words without action, crocodile tears without doing what one can to stand up for those who have been treated unjustly? As these firefighters had been by one court after another till they got to the highest in the land, G-d bless this honorable court.

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JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here. Paul Greenberg Archives

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