washington | When “Saturday Night Live” alum Father Guido Sarducci (aka actor Dan Novello) delivered the benediction at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, he ran through a list of religions seeking the true faith — and Judaism received the biggest applause.
That didn’t surprise Rivka Burstein-Stern.
“There were a lot of Jews there,” she said of the Oct. 30 rally organized by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. “But when it comes to rallies and social activism, you’re going to have a lot of Jews.”
Jewish participants — many from the Washington, D.C., area, some from farther away — seemed to compose a hefty proportion of the estimated crowd of 250,000 attending the event conceived the Comedy Central stars.
At least three liberal Jewish organizations —
J Street, the New Israel Fund and Jewish Funds for Justice — were represented in a crowd that spilled over the National Mall. Jewish Funds for Justice used the occasion to launch its “Fear Not” campaign, aimed at convincing voters to tune out political forces depicting President Barack Obama and his allies as a threat to the nation.
All three groups chose to emphasize Stewart’s overarching message of keeping down the shouting and keeping up the listening. People from the NIF held fielded posters saying, in Hebrew and English, “Sanity, Sanity, Shalt Thou Pursue,” a play on the justice commandment in Deuteronomy.
Naomi Paiss, the NIF spokeswoman who headed her group’s delegation, said many of the queries from attendees were from participants who saw the Hebrew characters.
“Some other people said, ‘What language is that?’ ” Paiss said. “Everyone we explained it to was very supportive. We thought the message of lowering the temperature and civil discourse and not demonizing the opposition was an appropriate message.”
Jennifer Helburn, a Washington gardener, said she joined the rally partly as a statement for those she described as “refusing to be open to facts that contradict what they want to believe.”
While she said it’s “disturbing” that “Jews [have] been targeted by groups who have determined they know who we are,” she also said that some Jews do the same when they stand against the planned Islamic center near Ground Zero.
Josh Pudnos, a graduate student in political management at George Washington University in Washington, also cited the Islamic center controversy as a factor spurring him to apply for a ticket to sit up front at the rally.
“The tea party and the religious right really worry me,” said Pudnos, 22. “Calling the Manhattan mosque ‘terrorist’ — that’s a little extreme.”
Bess Dopkeen, a Pentagon analyst who hosted her brother and a friend for the rally, said the point was to gather with the like-minded.
“The overall fun was seeing all the great signs,” she said. One of her favorites, she said, was held by a man dressed as Indiana Jones that read, “No one in American politics is a Nazi. Trust me, I know Nazis.”
Paiss echoed many other attendees when she reported that a friend who watched the event unfold from home, on C-SPAN, caught more of the rally than she did.
“I wish,” she said, “we could have caught the ‘jump rope with Muslims’ people.”
Jon Stewart named most influential man
Jon Stewart has been voted the most influential man of 2010 by the online magazine AskMen.com. More than half a million readers took part in the poll, which had its results announced Oct. 26.
Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, is the host of the satirical news program “The Daily Show.” He beat out Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who finished second and third. President Barack Obama came in 21st.
“Stewart’s show was once dubbed the ‘fake news,’ but these days it’s become our youths’ most trusted source of information and its host the most trusted man in America,” the magazine said in introducing its winner.
“While the U.S. wages war in the Middle East, Jon Stewart has been fighting his own brand of war in the vicious battleground of cable television, leading the charge of personalities and ideals against the behemoth, ultra-right American news media. Stewart may host his ever-popular ‘The Daily Show’ from behind a desk, but make no mistake: He’s on the front lines, and it’s getting ugly.”
Stewart made the news recently after CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez called him a bigot and suggested that Jews control the media. Sanchez was fired. — jta