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Olympics
The Sanhedrin vs. the Beijing Olympics
Human rights activists critical of the upcoming Beijing Olympics have gained a surprising new ally: the “re-established Sanhedrin.”
Yes, that’s right, the re-established Sanhedrin — a body launched in 2004 by a group of Israeli Orthodox rabbis in a somewhat audacious attempt to reconstitute the ancient supreme rabbinic court of the same name — has reportedly ruled that “participating in these Olympics will be deemed a danger to the well-being of humanity,” pointing to the Chinese communist regime’s human rights abuses.
Even more surprising is that, according to YNet, these Orthodox rabbis were spurred in part by claims from Israeli athletes who are practitioners of Falun Gong and complained of the persecution of Chinese members of the Buddhist-influenced exercise movement. The Sanhedrin also approached the Chinese embassy in Israel to hear the regime’s side. Ultimately, however, the Sanhedrin appears to have weighed in firmly on the side of the Falun Gong practitioners.
YNet reports:
Little-Known Fact: Nazis Lit the Flame of Olympic Torch Relay
Against the backdrop of this year’s tumultuous Olympic torch relay, New York Times polymath Edward Rothstein locates the origins of this peculiar ritual:
If you want to know how the Olympic torch really began its “Journey of Harmony,” as the Chinese call its current relay, if you want to see why the torch has had to pass through a human obstacle course composed of protesters, SWAT teams and police in San Francisco, Paris and London, then do not look to Tibet’s grievances against China. Look to the opening of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film, “Olympia.”
In that homage to Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Games the origins of this ritual are revealed. Never before had a lighted torch been relayed from a Greek temple in Olympia to an athletic competition, let alone by thousands of runners trying to keep it from being extinguished.
Rothstein writes that with the 1936 torch relay Nazi Germany was staking its claim as “the living heir to Ancient Greece.” He also points out that the Nazis had plans for a 400,000-seat stadium in Nuremberg, since future Olympic Games, as Hitler put it, “will take place in Germany for all time to come” (with the exception of a 1940 turn at hosting for fellow Axis power Japan).
Unsurprisingly, Rothstein notes, the International Olympic Committee “offers a slightly different account of the torch relay.”
Olympic Logo Rorschach Test
An article in today’s New York Times reports that the newly-unveiled — and wildly unpopular — logo for the 2012 London Olympics has, among other things, been compared to a swastika. But not all have seen grounds for charging antisemitism. Daniel Finkelstein of the London Times sees embedded in the design the word “zion.”
