I never thought Jack Abramoff would make me laugh, but his bio...

[Bucky]

From Wikipedia:

When he was 10, Jack's family moved to Beverly Hills, California, where he eventually became a high-school weightlifting champ who once squatted 540 pounds. He was raised in a secular Jewish household, but a viewing of Fiddler on the Roof at the age of 12 changed his life...

It's funny, because it's true.

[Name removed]

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[Behind the Aegis]

4. Fiddler on the Roof is about Zionism?

[Name removed]

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[Behind the Aegis]

8. WHAT!?!

The characters in "Fiddler on the Roof" are RUSSIANS! The play takes place in 1905! Their quest for OIL?! Who?

[Name removed]

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[Behind the Aegis]

10. This has to be the MOST ignorant review I have ever heard!

The song "If I were a Rich Man..." has NOTHING to do with the "crusade" to become wealthy! Zionism is about the establishment of a JEWISH HOMELAND, not the aquisition of wealth! Do you get the same "message" when watching "Roots?"

[Name removed]

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[Caleb]

11. Huh?

[Colorado Blue]

14. Zionism has NOTHING TO DO with being rich and powerful.

It has to do with the establishment of a Jewish homeland - Israel - where Jews can be Jewish without being in danger of persecution, bigotry and extermination.

Period.

I really do not believe what I am reading today.

Barf.

[Name removed]

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[KharmaTrain]

27. This is MY Story...Not That POS...

My grandparents came to this country in 1905 from a little town in what is now Belarus. They were running from my grandfather being drafted...or should I say conscripted...into the Russo-Japanese war (and being shipped off on the Trans-Siberian railway)...and making a run for America.

He and my grandmother (who was pregnant), went to Denver then onto Chicago where he was able to use his rabinical training working inside the infamous Chicago Stock Yards. I was born 3 months before he passed away but I have many of his artifacts and have always wondered what would make him, or me, do something as drastic as to leave the country of one's birth.

I did have the fortune of knowing my maternal grandmother...she came from a shtettl outside Warsaw a few years later...the country was under Russian control and would relate stories of drunk cossacks rampaging throug her village, and her family all be being forced to leave as they were caught between the hatred of both the Russians and the non-Jewish Poles.

Fiddler was a great play and movie, but it's like Gone With The Wind symbolizes the agony of the South...or Roots really expressed the real pains of slavery.

Abramoff has always been a lucky slimeball who could smooze, lie and intimidate his way. This bio smacks of such insincerity that I could see how effective it would be with the fundies and neo-cons he profited with. Here's hoping he's squeezed like he's done to others.

BTW...any word on what's happening with that money-laundering investigation in Guam? This guy could be facing all sorts of hard time if all these cases come to trial.

[Colorado Blue]

13. WHAT?????????

My grandparents came from a little village much like that depicted in Fiddler on the Roof. Belief me they were so poor they were tiny, little people who hadn't had enough food to eat in their entire lives, who worked like slaves and who finally fled in fear of their lives with absolutely nothing in about 1905. They WALKED from Russia to Vienna, to Trieste Italy, then caught a boat to Liverpool and finally a ship to America. My grandfather was sent back because he was sick. He FINALLY was allowed to enter America and wound up in the great paradise of Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked like a slave only to lose his house in the Great Depression. But he had seven children, one of whom died in WWII, one of whom was a Communist (my aunt), a commercial artist (my mother) a son who joined him in the house painting business, and finally 17 grandchildren, among whom are doctors, an opera conductor, musicians, a mathematician, a UPS delivery person, a computer scientist/biologist and a dancer and painter (me).

Your assertions about that song are utterly absurd and reflect the fact that you have no knowledge about real poverty, or about the conditions under which these people lived, about the daily fear they suffered, the Cossack raids, the Czar's army and the bigotry of the Russian peasants who surrounded their tiny village.

Being RICH to them meant having enough to eat.

For pity's sake.

[Name removed]

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[Behind the Aegis]

21. What he got from the film...

"I made the decision that I would become religious in order to preserve the faith in our family," he said. He immediately bought books on Judaism with his own savings." He 'got' a sense of pride in his religion!

[CBGLuthier]

22. If you are arguing that Fiddler on the Roof is zionist

I don't really give a fuck what your point is.

I don't want to read such garbage on a progressive board.

Period.

Just imagine the fucking field day that could be had by culling your first few posts and spreading them around the internet.

I can see the headline now "DU says Fiddler on the Roof is Zionism."

[Name removed]

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[Behind the Aegis]

2. Why is that funny?

[Catherine Vincent]

3. I didn't see Fiddler on the Roof, so I don't get it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. It's wonderful. Rent the video version with Topol. :^)

[Caleb]

5. I don't get it

?

[Logansquare]

6. I saw "Jesus Christ, Superstar"

and became an atheist. Coincidence?

[SpiralHawk]

16. I saw Farenheit 9/11

and I became a believer in LIHOP

(actually, I had figured it out long before. The "facts" on 9/11 just don't jive. You would have to be a complete skillethead to belive the BushCo "official" version/propaganda.)

It follows, and also goes without saying, that the corporate media are a pack of slavering skilletheads, and worse.

[Behind the Aegis]

20. The missing quote...

"I made the decision that I would become religious in order to preserve the faith in our family," he said. He immediately bought books on Judaism with his own savings."

[Must_B_Free]

25. If I Were A Rich Man Lyrics

Artist: Zero Mostel
Album: Fiddler On The Roof

(SPOKEN Dear God, you made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, that it's no great shame to be poor... but it's no great honor, either. So what would have been the difference if I had... a small fortune?

If I were a rich man,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I'd biddy-biddy-bum
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
If I were a biddy-biddy rich,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle man.

I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town,
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below.
There would be one long staircase just going up
And one even longer coming down,
And one more leading nowhere, just for show.

I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese
And ducks for the town to see and hear,
Squawking just as noisily as they can,
And each loud "pa-pa-geeee! pa-pa-gaack! pa-pa-geeee! pa-pa-gaack!"
Would land like a trumpet on the ear,
As if to say, "Here lives a wealthy man."
Oy!

If I were a rich man,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I'd biddy-biddy-bum
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
If I were a biddy-biddy rich,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle man.

I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man's wife,
With a proper double chin,
Supervising meals to her heart's delight.
I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock,
Oy! What a happy mood she's in,
Screaming at the servants day and night.

The most important men in town will come to fawn on me--
They will ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise--
"If you please, Reb Tevye?"--
"Pardon me, Reb Tevye?"--
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes--
(chanting) Ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum...
And it won't make one bit of difference
If I answer right or wrong--
When you're rich, they think you really know.

If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray,
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall,
And I'd discuss the learned books with the holy men
Seven hours every day--
That would be the sweetest thing of all...
Oy!

If I were a rich man,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I'd biddy-biddy-bum
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
Lord who made the lion and the lamb,
You decreed I should be what I am--
Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan,
If I were a wealthy man?

[Doo_Revolution]

26. Thank you.

It's been sometime since reading the song in its full entirety, specifically for me. Now put yourself in Jack Abramoffs shoes, who now owns everything he can touch and has squandered his wealth to corruption because he felt it was his god-given right.

He owns his own synagogues. The moral of the story is great wealth can lead to fortune, and also the root of evil. Its all in how you look at it.

[Moderator]

28. Locking...

This has become inflammatory.