“But I did hope that Lieberman’s exposure could help change the media-created perception of Orthodox Jews as closed-off-to-the-world, ghetto Jews who could not function in the secular world.” — Ben Shapiro, from his column

I haven’t seen where the media portrays Orthodox Jews in this way. I’ve not gotten this image of them from the media or anywhere else. Maybe I’ve missed something, but I don’t have this image of them at all. I hope Orthodox Jews don’t have the idea people think that about them.

Most people, of course, don’t think about them at all because they know absolutely nothing about them. Those comparatively few gentiles who know anything about Orthodox Jews think they’re generally fine people, more or less like everyone else except they are stricter than Conservative Jews in their observance of some religious rules, holy days, and the sabbath, they take morality seriously, and the men often wear yarmulkes. (In case anyone’s wondering, in NYC where I grew up, “yarmulke,” the Jewish skull cap, was pronounced YAH-muh-kuh by all the Jewish kids — the R and L didn’t get pronounced.) Yes, they do want to marry only each other, as Shapiro says, but certainly there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that — so do Chinese-Americans, Armenian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Catholic-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, Old-Order-Amish Americans, many Negro-Americans, and, once-upon-a-time, even WASP-Americans … and the list goes on.

I’ve always sort of respected Sen. Lieberman, and that hasn’t changed … YET. I must say he has flirted with some slimy tactics, the worst in my view being his joining at one point with other sleazy Dems in publicly saying Bush stole the election. Anyone who could support the transparently criminal Dem manual recount fraud in Florida — “just keep manually counting until you win, by a single vote if necessary” — either needs to have his head examined or is a one hundred percent sleazy crook. It’s to Lieberman’s credit that he never spouted that swill very enthusiastically or very long. If he ever spouts it again he’ll lose every shred of legitimate reputation he might still be clinging to.