I once lit candles for Hannuka at my old friend Joanna Angel's home in north Jersey. Joanna invited me and my then-girlfriend over, and it was a lovely time: her parents, especially her mother, and her younger sister were lovely, lovely people. I was about to leave for my first trip to Israel, which raised a lot of questions from people -- it was only a few months after 9/11, the bombs were exploding in Jerusalem every day, why would I do this? Joanna's mother, an Iraqi-born Israeli, understood intuitively. As we lit candles, she guided my ignorant, secularist hand.

Next week I'll be blogging with Opinionista for Jewcy, and today a friend sent along a horrible coincidence: Jewcy has interviewed Joanna's mother. The entire conversation is extremely hard to read. Not only is she extremely ashamed of Joanna's profession, but she's ashamed of Joanna -- she seems to believe that her daughter's slide into perversion is the outgrowth of very deep-seated flaws in Joanna that, as her mother, she tried and failed to correct. I'd be foolish to pretend I knew Joanna better than her mother does, but my heart breaks for her when I read this: Joanna has built quite an impressive business empire for herself, and any mention of her pornography should include that recognition. But consider such awful statements from Joanna's heartsick mother:

How can she not understand that this is a horrible thing for a woman? Look at a suicide bomber.

This is a terrible situation, and I hope Joanna isn't too upset by this interview. Jewcy has taken a very cheap holiday in other people's misery.