Comments on: Norman Mailer: 1923-2007

By: Rabbi Yonah

Rabbi Yonah — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:48:50 +0000

What about his stabbing his ex-wife?

By: themiddle

themiddle — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:47:23 +0000

Allbert sounds trollish.

By: Jim R

Jim R — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:37:30 +0000

“America is a very sick Christian country, I hate to say it. There, I said it.”

You hate to say it so much David, you repeat it. I’m guessing you’ve repeated it many times to yourself before this post, and long before Mailers death.

Jesus, get a grip. You can find all kinds of kooks on the intertubes if you’re looking for them. America and its ‘Christians” are Jews and Israel’s best friends, generally speaking.

By: themiddle

themiddle — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:01:18 +0000

Where are you from Allbert?

By: DAVID ALBERT

DAVID ALBERT — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:32:40 +0000

Yes, the blogosphere is very telling. Whnever there is news about a Jewish person in current news, many many blogs run by white supremacist groups and just average normal antisem Christian brainwashed people, make comments about such people as George Soros, or the rabbi in Brazil who got caught stealing ties in Florida or Mailer or anything related to Jews, and BAM! the commentariat comes alive with the most ugly hatred one has ever seen! Some reporter needs to investigate this. It’s a very very deep sickness of the American Christian paranoid mind, and it comes out loud and clear on the Internut. You don’t see these kinds of comments in non-Christian countries (except for Muslim countries yes), but in Japan or China, for example, posters never attack a person because he was Jewish. Again, I remind you all: America is a sick sick antisem country, and Christianity is a sick sick antisem religion. Don’t believe me? It is true.

By: Theodoor

Theodoor — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:04:39 +0000

By the way, Jim Kirk is dead wrong as far as the Jewlicious people here are concerned. I mean any Shoah obsessed person here would already have volunteered to tell me where I went wrong, my Harvard contact thought it was interesting, but was too busy.

By: Shy Guy

Shy Guy — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:23:01 +0000

Yes, sorry for mixing Jim’s and David’s posts. Just noticed.

By: ck

ck — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:18:06 +0000

Shy Guy: jim kirk made the comment about the Holocaust, not david allbert. There’s no way of knowing if a persn making a comment on the Internets is a Muslim or an atheist or a Christian. But the sheer volume of venomous rhetoric aimed at Mailer’s Judaism and the tepid response to that is telling.

As for jim kirk – well, I think using the holocaust and anti-semitism as the focal point of Jewish identity is destructive, like the deification of mass murder – no wonder people are leaving Judaism in droves, it’s just not very compelling, know what I mean? But calling out injustice being characterized as “cowardly?” Saying tha Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism because they confront it? Man did Mailer get that wrong.

By: Shy Guy

Shy Guy — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:08:05 +0000

David, for all your talk about toning down mention of the holocaust, your following posts show levels of venemous anti-semitism that cannot help but recall the kind of atmosphere that can lead to a holocaust.

As for America being a sick Christian country, sre you privy to the beliefs of the posters you are quoting? For example, do you have any knowledge how many of them actually associate with Christianity or whether any of the posters are Muslim or aetheists, etc.?

By: david allbert

david allbert — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:42:14 +0000

sample comment on youtube now:
“Another poop-obsessed jew gone. Anerica is that much better off w/o him. ”

go to google blogs and see all the antisem stuff in comments about Mailer’s death. America is a very sick Christian country, I hate to say it. There, I said it.

By: david allbert

david allbert — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:38:37 +0000

One thing that some on of you here should look at is all the venomous antisemitic comments about Mailer’s death in blogs worldwide. Blogs and comments. People saying things on Youtube comments like “GOod that Jew dog Mailer is dead!”

America is a sick sick sad country!

By: jim kirk

jim kirk — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:31:47 +0000

One thing Mailer is right about, Jews have become fixated on the holocaust. Let it go already. No-one is saying to forget it ever happened, however, scaling back the propaganda to a dull roar may just be good for the soul.

By: david allbert

david allbert — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:29:44 +0000

He did not die of renal failure. He died of old age. All old people die of old age. Please correct that. He did not have kidney disease. His kidneys failed because he was old. We all get old. You will get old one day and die too.

RIP, Norman. We hardly knew ye….

By: Shalom Freedman

Shalom Freedman — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:48:22 +0000

1) Mailer espoused and exemplified a love of violence antithetical to basis Jewish values.
2)Mailer never denied his Jewishness and probably was in one sense proud of it as he seemed to be about anything related to himself- but he also never supported any Jewish communal struggle including those of Israel and those of the American Jewish community.
3) Mailer was a tremendously courageous and innovative writer, a man whose talents and power of mind were truly extraordinary. But he often used those talents for stupid and even immoral ends. So the last project of his life in which he deepens in interest of the mind of Yimach Shmo, so his work on ancient Egypt in which he revels in the very kind of practices the people of Israel were called upon to deplore.
4) Mailer was in his collective and communal identity a super-American, a second- generation Jew who proved himself to be more concerned with and more bound up with the essential issues of American identity than almost any other writer.
5) Despite his strutting his ego-mania, his head- butting and fisticuffs many people said he was a genuinely good and generous person. He had a winsome twinkle that it was hard not to like despite the posturing and the bull-ing.
6)In a sense he exemplifies a lost second-generation kind of assimilated American Jew. He had the genius but unfortunately he did not use any of it in service of the Jewish people.

By: Shy Guy

Shy Guy — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:36:42 +0000

What CK said. This is a simple example of "Kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh" - Jews are guarantors for one another. General reading: Insights Into Saying Kaddish.

By: ck

ck — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:13:52 +0000

Well it doesn’t hurt for people to say Kaddish and I can say that without going into sticky issues of who is a Jew. We know Norman is for sure. So let Chaye Netzach say kaddish for him, who cares?

By: themiddle

themiddle — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:33:47 +0000

ck, Mailer’s first wife has a name which would probably be identified as Jewish. Her children might identify as Jews, which would meet your criteria.

As you know, Reform would consider any of his children Jewish if they consider themselves Jews.

I don’t think it’s good form, to put it nicely, to say that somehow a group of “real” Jews has greater authority than a Jewish person’s children to determine whether they can say kaddish or not. That’s not to suggest that Chaye Netzach isn’t a worthy organization, they may be. This is a tender time for the family who have just lost their father and husband and it isn’t right to bring this issue up right now.

By: zulubaby

zulubaby — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:09:28 +0000

Oh please. It’s not like the Mormons doing ex post facto conversions of Holocaust victims.

LOL, you are funny.

By: ck

ck — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:09:08 +0000

“Identify as a Jew?” What does that mean exactly? Jews for Jesus identify themselves as Jews, can they say kaddish? Sorry to be a nudnick but Jewish Peoplehood has come up a number of times this week…

By: themiddle

themiddle — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:27:19 +0000

You missed my point, which is that we don’t know whether any of his children identify as Jews and may already be saying kaddish for him.