January 04, 2011

Burn Your Siddur Award Nominee

Martin Peretz may be a racist old coot who's not a great writer with whom I'm ashamed to share an alma mater. But I do agree with one of his opinions. From a recent profile in New York magazine:

Peretz has never belonged to any synagogue. “I don’t know that world,” he says. His children like the liberal congregation B’nai Jeshurun, on 88th Street and Broadway, and so Peretz goes now and then. He went for Yom Kippur this year and found that during the Al Chet prayer—the traditional confession of sins—the congregation had added some of its own. “I lie, I cheat, I steal”—this part is standard. “They added, ‘I’m homophobic. I’m lookist.’ Do you know ‘lookist’? We look at good-looking people. ‘I am ageist.’ And”—here was the breaking point for Peretz—“we crawl to peace and rush to war.” He shook his head. “I mean, fuck these fancy Upper West Side rabbis.”
I've been to that synagogue. He's right-on about "these fancy Upper West Side rabbis."

Posted by Stephen Silver at January 4, 2011 01:54 AM
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