Letters to the Editor: Seidler-Feller, Fish in a Barrel, Prager
In support of Rabbi Grater’s efforts
As members of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, we write to support the efforts of our Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater to fight for social and economic justice in the United States, the Middle East, and globally. A handful of current and former members recently wrote a letter last week to the Jewish Journal attacking Rabbi Grater for his outspoken views, including his support for President Barack Obama. We disagree.
We admire Rabbi Grater for his courage in tackling controversial topics in his sermons, his writings, and his public actions. His support for Israel is unswerving and is reflected in many aspects of our congregation’s life and activities. At the same time, his criticism of certain policies of the Israeli government reflects Judaism’s prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power.
As a scholar and spiritual leader, he draws on Jewish tradition not only to educate the congregation and the public about the importance of combating social injustice but also to stir debate. He actively encourages a diversity of opinion and dialogue within the synagogue. Since he arrived at PJTC seven years ago, Rabbi Grater has emerged as a powerful voice of conscience and commitment. We value his leadership, as do the overwhelming majority of members of our congregation, which recently renewed his contract . We do not agree on all social and political issues, but we share a common admiration for Rabbi Grater’s bold leadership.
Susan Auerbach, Hal Barron, Jared Becker, Cindy Cohen, Douglas Crane, Mike Davidson, Peter Dreier, Mark Esensten, Jennie Factor, Betty Fishman, Jane Fishman, Yudie Fishman, Cecilia Fox, Jon Fuhrman, Rebecca Golbert, Claire Gorfinkel, Allen Gross, Karen Gross, John Guest, Sandy Hartford, Ed Honowitz, Cara Jaffe, Susan Kane, Patricia Kirkish, Kathy Kobayashi, Sandra Lavine, David Lorin. Brian Mark, Madeline Mark, Maureen McGrath, Peter Mendel, Terry Meng, Amy Nettleton; Jenny Owen, Ellen Pais, Meredith Rose, Glenn Rothner, Faith Segal, Mickey Segal, Diana Selig, Ruth Several, Mike Several, Debby Singer, Jack Singer, Jonathan Swerdlow, Ruth Wolman, Steven Youra.
We Are Commanded to Forgive
I found the angry letters condemning The Jewish Journal for its profile of Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller (“To Nudge and to Support,” April 30) to be so cruel and unforgiving. By including Seidler-Feller’s 2003 physical assault of a female journalist and his subsequent apology and teshuvah, The Journal offered a fair rendering of the rabbi as a worthy yet flawed human being, like the rest of us.
The letter writers should get off their high horses and remember, “It is forbidden to be obdurate and not allow yourself to be appeased. On the contrary, one should be easily pacified and find it difficult to become angry. When asked by an offender for forgiveness, one should forgive with a sincere mind and a willing spirit … forgiveness is natural to the seed of Israel” (Mishnah Torah,Teshuva 2:10).
Stephen F. Rohde
Los Angeles
‘Fish in a Barrel’ Is Provocative Bait
Thank you for your terrific column on online dating from the perspective of middle-age Jewish women (“Fish in a Barrel,” May 7). This is a sorry truth that many of us know, but it is gratifying to read your unflinching description of the dramatic gender imbalance that creates the context in which single Jewish women conduct [their] love lives. I understand why you hung your column on the hook of Mother’s Day, but I trust you realize that the desire for a companion is not the same as the desire for a father for a child. There are many other dimensions to the lives of Jewish singles — of all ages — that I hope The Journal will continue to explore. Reverence for the chuppah should not be taken to invalidate or diminish the various and interesting ways of living — and loving — that more and more of us enjoy outside of matrimony.
Ellen Carol DuBois
Los Angeles
Rob Eshman’s column was on point, condoning interdating and the notion it could lead to intermarriage, Jewish conversion and making more Jews. Yes, intermarriage can be positive. More must be done in the opposite situation to keep committed Jews from straying when rabbis fail to recognize them as Jews because they were adopted.
Recently, a rabbi was approached by two life-long Jews to perform a marriage ceremony, but he was not so eager to accept the gig because the bride-to-be was adopted. It did not matter that her bat mitzvah was in Israel, the parents who adopted her in infancy are Jewish, and Judaism is the only religion she ever has known.
The rabbi said she must appear before a council of rabbis to be questioned about her Jewishness, and she must go to a mikveh. He also had the chutzpah to tell her she must seek pre-marriage counseling because the couple does not know each other long enough.
Let’s hope all segments of the rabbinate will be supportive to the notion proposed in the editor’s column as one way to add to the declining Jewish population. But let’s pray that religious dogma does not contribute to chasing committed Jews away.
Roger Pondel
Los Angeles
It is with great unhappiness that I write my comments on a recent article in The Jewish Journal. In “Fish in a Barrel,” Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman writes, “Why not create a ‘path to Jewishness’ that begins with interdating? Interdating has existed for centuries, in reality; why not codify, organize and condone it? The alternative isn’t just fewer Jews, it’s more loneliness.”
Since when does Eshman justify ignoring the institutions of the Torah to marry Jewish? The very first intermarried Jewish woman recorded in the Torah was Dina, the daughter of our Patriarch Jacob. When that happened, all hell broke loose! Not only did the Jewish woman Dina get ostracized from her family, the whole town of non-Jews were wiped out by her brothers Shimon and Levi. The lesson for intermarriage was very clear in those days. There was no talk in the Torah of feeling Dina’s loneliness. No one spoke of intermarriage as a way to increase the numbers of Jews.
I live in the South Bay where there is a very high rate of intermarriage. I am very sensitive and caring. But I always remember, as a rabbi, it is one thing to help an intermarried couple make sense of their lives’ decisions, but to suggest an intermarriage is always wrong. And I believe no Jew is to be left out of the congregation.
JDate was made by Jewish people for Jewish people. How sad it is that we have turned the pyramid upside down on its head. Putting the top goal of providing lonely Jewish people a way to become happy married Jewish people. To suggest that JDate be used to cure loneliness is insane. What will it cost, you may ask? To me, it’s the cost of the future of the Jewish nation.
As we approach our holiday of Shavuot, celebrating the giving of our Torah, it would do us good to remember the following facts.
The answer to intermarrying is inner faith. Shavuot reminds us of conversion. King David’s family was established from a converted Ruth, the Moabite. Moses, our greatest prophet, married Tzippora, a converted Midianite. Rabbi Akiva, the leader of the Jewish people, came from a converted family. Even Joshua, who took the Jewish people into the Promised Land, married Yael, who converted.
In all the cases, there was no talk of allowance being made for loneliness. If anything, and when needed, there was conversion, and the rest is history.
We need to reach out and help the lonely ones find their soul mates. So, for many fish that are stuck in the barrels while other fish take their time, remember, when in the barrel they get more pickled and more wanted, getting ready to be married with a Jewish person.
Rabbi Eli Hecht
Chabad of South Bay
There is a major flaw in Rob Eshman’s reasoning in his story and that is the assumption: no Jewish husband, no Jewish children! I have no Jewish husband and yet I have three beautiful Jewish children — Eliana, Lev and Ian — perpetuating the Jewish religion, Jewish values and Jewish education. You see, I am single and I chose to have children without a husband. Yet I am honoring the patriarchs of my family (my father and grandfather) since my last name is still my father’s and continuing a legacy as my two sons are named after my father, each taking one of his Hebrew birth names. I will agree that this is not the ideal for most women who want (need?) a partner, and certainly the financial commitments are enormous, but it can and has been done.
Robin Ann Gorelick
Calabasas
After only a few years, Rob Eshman has once again encouraged intermarriage and expects us to consider it. Consider the destruction of our people, religion and nation. For thousands of years, Jews kept themselves Jewish through marriage with other Jews. Samaritans, followers of a sister religion, nearly died out because of intermarriage. The best we can hope for is “chrismaka” for the next generation before the Jews are left for the history books.
Daniel Pereg
Beverly Hills
Rob Eshman’s idea of Jewish women marrying non-Jews and hoping to lead by example for them to convert has merit. The woman is the likely one to lead the family in faith.
While in college in the early ’70s, my Jewish roommate swore she’d marry a Jewish man. Growing up unaffiliated, I couldn’t see why it was such a big deal. Forty years later, I was shocked to find she married a non-Jew and didn’t maintain the faith for her two sons. I married a Jewish man, converted and keep a Jewish home.
With intermarriage, you win some and you lose some. My college roommate didn’t lead by example and her husband was not inspired to convert. In my situation, it did work. Intermarriage is here to stay, and it is up to the Jewish partner to practice his or her faith and hope it takes hold.
Kathleen Vallee Stein
via e-mail
Crime and Punishment
In the article “New Documentary ‘Casino Jack’ Considers Abramoff’s Jewish Roots” (May 7), the writer identified Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, along with Abramoff and Bernard Madoff, as “the recent roster of financial manipulators.” Abramoff and Madoff are convicted “financial manipulators” and currently incarcerated. Mr. Blankfein has been named in a suit by the SEC charging Goldman Sachs and one executive (not Mr. Blankfein) with fraud. Goldman Sachs has stated, “The SEC’s charges are completely unfounded in law and fact,” and it said, “We will vigorously contest them and defend the firm and its reputation.”
The Jewish Journal should be more careful about editing articles it publishes.
Lewis J. Kaufman
Santa Monica
Election Name-calling
I was very privileged to volunteer for President Obama in the last election. I worked in the Las Vegas office for nine weeks before the election. I canvassed thousands of voters. I cannot even count the number of registered Republicans (many Jewish) who repeatedly compared our president to Adolf Hitler. And believe me, Mr. Prager (“When Jews on the Left See Americans on the Right as Nazis,” May 7), their point of view had absolutely nothing to do with his economic policies. This misplaced rhetoric flows both ways.
Martin H. Kodish
Woodland Hills
Correction
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion regrets the error in last’s week advertisement announcing its student and alumni degree recipients. Dr. George M. Goodwin was listed incorrectly.
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Facing Hatred on Campus: You Can’t Fight Fire With Flowers
An increasing number of students report that efforts to demonize Israel have intensified on college campuses. Most recently, the student senates at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), held marathon debates about anti-Israel divestment resolutions. In May, the annual Hate Israel Week will be held on many campuses yet again.
Bruised by these painful experiences and taken aback by their increasing frequency, many pro-Israel students are concerned about the growing trend. They wonder why each time they douse anti-Israel fires, the flames reignite. They wonder what they are up against.
It’s simple. They face a dedicated anti-Israel movement that is not discouraged by temporary setbacks. The Muslim Student Union (MSU) and Muslim Student Association (MSA), allied with extremist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), focus single-mindedly on one goal: demonizing Israel. This is not your normal student activism. MSU and MSA members are obsessively driven by their mission. They are determined, methodical, focused, well-funded and strictly organized. The leaders are usually devout and infuse religious and moral justifications into the movement, making hatred of Israel akin to a religious as well as social justice cause.
The MSU, MSA and SJP groups don’t just plan actions for their own schools. SJP and the 600 MSU/MSA chapters across North America use the Internet to coordinate their anti-Israel strategies and to share their best practices. They exchange anti-Israel propaganda. They share fliers, props and slogans. They analyze what was effective and refine their tactics and execution for the upcoming year.
The MSU and MSA also maintain continuity. New leaders are groomed to replace leaders who graduate. Incoming students are actively recruited, welcomed into the supportive fold of the organization, indoctrinated and fired up with zeal. Other methods also ensure continuity. For example, a young man standing at the “apartheid wall” display on a California campus this past April told a reporter for the Daily 49er at California State University, Long Beach, that he is a Muslim missionary who is volunteering for three years to accompany the wall and “educate” students about it.
The methods used by the MSU, MSA and SJP have only one goal — instilling hatred and intolerance against Israel and anyone who dares to defend it and the sincerity of its search for peaceful coexistence. They launch slick campaigns, street theater and campus displays like the “Apartheid Wall.” They orchestrate demonstrations against pro-coexistence speakers and host pseudo-academic panels. They showcase far too many speakers whose only credentials are a Jewish background and a willingness to spew anti-Israel propaganda. They bid for academic credibility by asking professors hostile to Israel to co-sponsor their events. (For example, the programs for UCSD’s May 2010 anti-Israel week are co-sponsored by academic departments.) They form coalitions with campus groups by supporting popular student causes and by claiming they are activists for social justice and human rights, when in fact their only purpose is to vilify Israel, and they ignore the serial human rights abuses rampant in other countries. They work to promote their agenda in student government and the student newspaper.
Once they’ve laid this groundwork, the MSU, MSA and SJP move on to bolder measures: recommending punishment for Israel that their new allies will support, such as divestment. Divestment resolution campaigns, in turn, mainstream their anti-Israel message and bring it to an ever-wider circle through debates in student government and media coverage.
All of these tactics are part of a carefully thought-out, well-orchestrated, long-term offensive for turning Israel and its supporters into campus pariahs. This larger movement is at the root of anti-Israel actions on campuses. Most Israel supporters ignore this larger picture, hoping that the fires will burn out and go away. But they are not going away. The movement is becoming more entrenched and more aggressive for two reasons: One is that the zeal of MSU, MSA and SJP membership is growing, fed partially by their successes and by their financial supporters. Even when they don’t win campaigns like divestment resolutions — and in most cases they know in advance that winning is impossible — they consider it a victory that divestment was seriously discussed and that they created a platform to air their propaganda and to put Israel on trial. As divestment leaders commented after losing the vote at Berkeley, “We lost the vote but won the night. We made a statement recorded for posterity and forced everyone to listen and watch.”
The second reason for the growing aggression of MSU, MSA and SJP is their expectation of a disorganized response from Israel’s supporters. Pro-Israel students are focused on other things, like school, their social lives and their futures, as students should be. They did not go to college expecting they would have to defend their identity or Israel. But on too many campuses, they are rudely awakened. Most become involved not because they intended to or have some sense of mission, but out of necessity.
Consequently, pro-Israel students are often caught off guard and unprepared for new anti-Israel ambushes, as happened with the UCSD student senate divestment bill this past April. The bill suddenly appeared on the agenda, and they had only a few days to put together presentations opposing it. Yet the divestment proponents had prepared for a year, recruiting allies and polishing their speeches, slogans and video presentations of Jewish far leftists and anti-Israel activists like Anna Baltzer and Hedy Epstein.
The pro-Israel students cannot be entirely faulted for their inconsistent responses. They are often conflicted about what to do. They are hamstrung by concerns about offending other groups on campus and by often unsupportive or nonconfrontational administrations who give cover to these bigoted campaigns under the umbrella of free speech. Most university systems lack standards that protect the rights of all students, including those who are under attack by hostile campaigns. Pro-Israel students also sincerely believe that reaching out with sympathy and understanding for the other side’s grievances and engaging in reasonable debate will help defuse the situation. Unfortunately, this has rarely been the result.
Pro-Israel students are also taken aback by the other side’s use of half-truths and racist anti-Semitic stereotypes, by their aggressive violation of the usual rules of conduct on campuses, and by some measure of discomfort, intimidation and even outright fear. The 11 MSU students who tried to shout down Ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in February violated standards of civil decorum and free speech, and they were arrested. One of those arrested was the president of the MSU at UCI. In the United Kingdom, where, in May, Israel’s deputy ambassador was virtually assaulted by a menacing crowd, the constant intimidation has made Israel’s supporters there fearful of organizing pro-Israel events. At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, students placed a Palestinian flag on top of a pro-Israel exhibit. When a Jewish student removed the flag, MSU students physically attacked him.
Roz Rothstein is the co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, and Roberta Seid is director,
research-education, StandWithUs.
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Jerusalem court acquits Islamic Movement leader
A Jerusalem court acquitted the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel of involvement in a 2007 riot in Jerusalem.
Sheik Raed Salah, who leads the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, was arrested and charged with assaulting a policeman during a riot in the Old City of Jerusalem in protest of Israeli archeological excavations next to the Mugrabi Gate, which leads to the Temple Mount from the Western Wall plaza.
A panel of judges from the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court ruled Tuesday that footage taken during the protest and submitted by Salah’s defense “could prove inaccuracies in the indictment.”
In a speech during the riot, Salah said, “It is now the duty of every Arab and Muslim to launch an intifada from one end to another to save Jerusalem and the Al-Aksa Mosque. We are not the ones who allowed ourselves to eat a meal based on bread and cheese soaked in children’s blood.”
Salah also accused Israel of undertaking the dig in order to cause the Temple Mount, upon which sits the Al-Aksa Mosque, to collapse.
According to the indictment, Salah waved a Syrian flag and spit in the face of a Border Guard officer. He also tried, with several other Israeli Arabs, to break into the excavation site.
Salah delivered fiery speeches and called his followers to the Temple Mount during recent rioting over the restoration and rededication of an Old City synagogue.
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Stanford getting $12 million for Jewish doctoral program
The Jim Joseph Foundation will give Stanford University $12 million to renew its Jewish education studies department.
The funding for the California university’s School of Education will create a doctoral concentration in education and Jewish studies, and establish and endow a Jim Joseph professorship in education and Jewish studies.
The gift is the largest in the history of Stanford’s School of Education. Stanford had offered a concentration in Jewish education from 1992 to 2002.
The school and the foundation say the grant will allow Stanford to join New York University as one of only two research universities in the United States offering a doctoral program in Jewish education.
Stanford will admit two students per year for the first three years of the program. One student will be added per year afterward to reach a total of seven.
“Through this generous gift, Jim Joseph Foundation is helping to pioneer a new paradigm for thinking about the intersection of religion and education,” Sam Wineburg, the Margaret Jacks professor of education and history at Stanford, said in a news release from the foundation. “We’re putting our energy into the intersection of education and Jewish studies because Stanford has a record of success in this field and because there’s a need to produce more scholars with this background.
Wineburg said the impact of the foundation’s gift will be felt broadly.
“More children across the globe are educated in religious institutions than secular ones,” he said. “However, we don’t yet know, and have not yet begun to properly study, what ramifications this may have for future generations.”
School of Education faculty at Stanford will collaborate with scholars at the school’s Taube Center of Jewish Studies to create the curriculum for the new concentration.
“The promise of this initiative is that it will accelerate the examination of new and important subject matters, strengthen students’ educational experience, and ultimately enable us to infuse the field with talented educators whose collective good work will positively impact the world of Jewish education,” said Jim Joseph’s executive director, Chip Edelsberg.
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What We “Need to Know” About PBS After Moyers
Ever since the right began crying “liberal media,” the challenge for the targets of those tantrums has been to figure out how to respond to the mewling. What PBS has done in the wake of Bill Moyers’ retirement is a case study in the futile effort of trying to appease the little brat.
If you think that PBS, NPR, and the New York Times—and maybe CBS, NBC and ABC – are liberal mouthpieces; if you think that what Sarah Palin calls the “lamestream media” is biased against conservatives; if you think that FOX News really is “fair and balanced” – well, there’s no way I can change your mind.
This dispute can’t be settled by evidence. Each side thinks it’s advocating accurate, honest and professional journalism. And each side thinks the other is using journalism as a front for waging the culture wars.
Two things are notable about this, and I wish PBS understood them.
One is that the center has been pulled way over to the right. The emergence of MSNBC as a countervailing force to FOX is fairly recent, and there’s still no leftward mass-media equivalent in print to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. By attacking the middle ground that NPR and the establishment press attempt to occupy, the right has moved the goalposts.
The other is that there is no winning this fight. In Congress, nothing short of complete and total surrender by Democrats would cause Republicans to say that the other party is acting in a bipartisan fashion. Their definition of compromise is conversion. In the media wars, it’s the same. No matter how many conservative voices you put on the op-ed page or on the air, no matter how supinely you adopt the idiotic notion that every dispute has two equally plausible sides, liberal is what you’ll be called.
The program that’s replaced “” target=”_hplink”>Need to Know,” hosted by John Meacham and Alison Stewart. If its first appearance is indicative of what’s to come, PBS’s response to the “liberal media” charge is to hope that being nice will stop people from calling them bad names.
The centerpiece of the program was a 13-minute piece about the national movement to enable anyone to carry a loaded handgun in public. It profiled Ed Levine, a regular-guy open-carry advocate in Virginia who posted on the Web site after the show aired that the crew who followed him for three days was “nice as can be and open minded.” So much for “’normal PBS liberal’ style,” he wrote.
The bumper sticker on Ed’s Hyundai says “GUNS Save Lives.” When correspondent John Larsen says, “I think statistics would say that’s not true,” citing “the hundreds of surveys that have been done showing that the more guns are around, the more accidents that there are, the more people get shot, the more people get killed, the more people that take their own life,” Ed’s response is, “That’s not true…. The people that are putting out those statistics are the people that want guns to go away.”
“That’s not true” versus “that’s not true”: what an opening to commit journalism! A perfect chance for PBS to put the studies on the table, establish or refute the claims of bias, and then let the cameras roll while either Ed changes his mind, or Ed changes ours.
No such luck. With Ed off camera, we hear this voiceover: “But in fact there are a number of studies showing that having a gun in the home increases the likelihood that someone in the home will be harmed. On the flip side, no one pays attention to countless dramatic examples where someone with a gun prevented a crime from happening.”
Fabulous: “But in fact” versus “on the flip side.” You decide for yourself, dear viewer.
When gun advocate Larry Pratt tells Larsen that 9/11 would have turned out differently had passengers been allowed to bring hidden weapons onto planes, Larsen commendably says, “I gotta tell you, that amazes me, and I suspect it amazes most people watching.” He asks Pratt whether a gunfight at thirty thousand feet really would have been an improvement. Pratt replies, “That would have been an improvement on flying into an office building.” Larsen’s response: “Hmmm.”
There it is, in one word. Hmmm. I guess it’s meant to be our cue to appreciate how very swell it is, how journalistically responsible of PBS, to help us, in Meacham’s words, “understand all sides of passionately held beliefs,” and presumably to come to our own conclusions.
“Need to Know” positions itself as an antidote to the poisonous advocacy of cable news. What it succumbs to instead is the on-the-one-hand/other-the-other-hand pathology that makes mainstream news so impotent. For this we need public television?
Lloyd Blankfein is as passionate about Goldman Sachs as the Tea Partiers who revile the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Creationists are as passionate about Scripture as Darwinians are about the scientific method. It’s not understanding that’s missing; that’s the refuge of a PBS so intimidated by its “liberal bias” antagonists that it’s narrowed its niche to a morally vacuous empathy for all.
I want “Need to Know” to succeed: PBS needs to prove to foundations and viewers that it deserves the public’s money. (Disclosure: its terrific executive producer once executive produced a radio show I hosted.) But I think valuing “Hmmm” more than “Aha!” is too high a price to get Congress to keep kicking in its miserly 15% of public broadcasting’s budget.
Marty Kaplan holds the Norman Lear endowed chair at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Reach him at {encode=”martyk@jewishjournal.com” title=”martyk@jewishjournal.com”}.
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Landesberg Joins Scheyer
May 8th has passed and Sylven Landesberg has decided to remain in the NBA draft and end his college career at Virginia. Landesberg has been a solid player over his two seasons for Virginia. While his team struggled Landesberg excelled by averaging 16.6 ppg his freshman season. He followed that up with 17.3 ppg in his sophomore campaign. This past season he also grabbed 4.9 rpg and dished out 2.9 apg.
Landesberg was missing in the discussion of top NCAA players all season long because he played for a sub-par team. But he made national headlines when he struggled academically and was benched for his final ACC tournament. His negative publicity forced his hand to enter the draft. Now Landesberg will join Jon Scheyer with the hopes of getting drafted this summer. This could mean, if both players get drafted, that the amount of Jewish NBA players will double to four. Landesberg and Scheyer hope to have the same kind of success Omri Casspi enjoyed in his rookie season.
Keep an eye on both of them during the up coming draft.
With Jewish basketball on the mind I wanted to announce that for TGR’s one year anniversary we will be releasing our exclusive interview with NBA Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes on July 8th. Check it out at WWW.THEGREATRABBINO.COM.
And Let Us Say..Amen.
-Jeremy Fine
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California’s Bankruptcy Dance
” target=”_blank”>the state may stop fixing sidewalks.
I guess that almost makes sense. I mean, who walks in LA? It’s the same logic I used when deciding not to fix my botched circumcision.
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U.S. Jewish leaders to Netanyahu: Withdraw conversion bill
Jewish leaders sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging the withdrawal of a proposed conversion bill they called “disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”
The letter, signed by the leader of the Jewish Federations of North America and the heads of the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements and their rabbinical arms, says the proposed conversion bill will fail to ease the bottleneck in the conversion process that affects thousands of olim from the former Soviet Union and “will dangerously alter the Law of Return by consolidating conversion power in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate in ways that would be disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”
The letter follows a visit to the United States by bill sponsor David Rotem and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to meet with leaders of U.S. Jewry to garner support for the bill.
Delivered to Netanyahu’s office on Monday, the letter says that the bill’s granting the power of conversion solely to the chief rabbinate, which is Orthodox, disregards the conversions of 85 percent of Diaspora Jewry. “It will undoubtedly alienate many North American Jews from Israel widening an already precarious and growing rift that should concern us all,” read the letter.
“We are fully committed to a secure Israel, safe from the threats she courageously faces each day. Yet, the proposed conversion law offends with its disregard for any religious authority outside the Chief Rabbinate. As strongly as we support Israel, we oppose this law,” the letter said.
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A CONVERSATION ON THE FRONTLINE OF HISTORY
The conversation about the Middle East is changing fast nowadays, both in America and around the world, and here’s a unique opportunity to find out why.
Kai Bird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is coming to the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, May 17, 2010, to talk about “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and the Israelis, 1956-1978” (Scribner: $27.00, 384 pps). You can find out more about the event at ” title=”previously reviewed here” target=”_blank”>previously reviewed here, is unsettling but also wholly fascinating personal memoir that allows us to glimpse the history and politics of the Middle East through the eyes of a young man who grew up, almost literally, on the frontline between Arabs and Israelis.
Bird’s father was an American diplomat whose postings took the family to the Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. But Bird also understands the Jewish perspective, thanks to his Jewish wife and her parents, who were both Holocaust survivors. By his upbringing, professional experience and personal affiliations, Bird is uniquely positioned to reframe our view of what is at stake in the conflict that continues to fill the headlines.
Much of what Bird has to say in “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate” is deeply challenging, especially to Jewish readers, and I predict that his conversation at the Central Library with Nicholas Goldberg, editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, will be a lively and provocative event. But I am also confident that more light and than heat will be forthcoming.
Jonathan Kirsch is the book editor of The Jewish Journal and author of, among other titles, “The Woman Who Laughed at God: The Untold History of the Jewish People.”
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