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Jewish Journal

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July 25, 2010

‘A Contract With God’ heads to silver screen

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Will Eisner‘s “A Contract With God, And Other Tenement Stories,” released in 1978, is considered one of the first graphic novels … and an intensely Jewish one to boot. During the Eisner Awards ceremony at Comic-Con on Friday night, Denis Kitchen announced Eisner’s influential work will be adapted into a live-action feature film.

“A Contract With God” explored stories and memories from Eisner’s childhood growing up in a New York City tenement, with each tale capturing the brutality, fragility and tenderness among people living in a New York City tenement in the 1930s. In the film version, four directors will take on the graphic novel’s separate but related stories: “A Contract With God” (Alex Rivera), “The Street Singer” (Tze Chun), “The Super” (Barry Jenkins) and “Cookalien,” (Sean Baker).

Writer-producer Darren Dean said he looks “forward to finding the fine balance of offering Eisner fans a very faithful interpretation of his work and allowing the voices of these strong and competent filmmakers to be heard. We are all approaching the inaugural stage of this project with respect, honor and anticipation and hope that the fans will welcome us with both faith and scrutiny. This is for them, as much as any of us.”

Principle photography will begin in 2011.

The film adaptation will be produced under the auspices of the Eisner estate. Bob Schreck, a 30-year veteran of the comic book industry, and Michael Ruggiero, former head of original programming at STARZ, will serve as co-executive producers.

“Getting to know Will Eisner was one of the great honors of both my personal and professional journeys,” Schreck said. “We are all well aware that the work ahead has a very high bar of excellence to aspire to set by Mr. Eisner’s pioneering achievements in storytelling.”

‘A Contract With God’ heads to silver screen Read More »

New Zealand Jews mount lawsuit against shechitah ban

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New Zealand’s Jewish community is mounting a legal case against the country’s new law banning kosher slaughter.

Community spokesman David Zwartz told JTA last Friday that an agreement between the community’s working group on shechitah and Agriculture Minister David Carter “could not be reached.”

Carter announced the ban in late May, overruling advice from the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to exempt shechitah from a new Animal Welfare Slaughter Code. The law leaves New Zealand’s 7,000 Jews without access to kosher chickens; kosher meat can be imported from Australia.

“The minister is firm in his resolve to preserve his position, which does not give the Jewish community a secure continuing supply of kosher meat,” Zwartz said. “This is disappointing and has meant turning to progress the work on a legal action.”

A leading law firm has been engaged and has prepared draft proceedings, Zwartz said.

“These are currently being reviewed by a Queens Counsel, and a final decision will be made following receipt of his advice,” he said.

The legal case is likely to center on the law’s apparent violation of New Zealand’s Bill of Rights, which protects the right to a person’s religion, and its possible breach of the Animal Welfare Act, which contains provisions for religious rights.

Jewish leaders met on the issue in mid-June with Prime Minister John Key, whose mother was a Jewish refugee who escaped Austria on the eve of the Holocaust. A spokesperson for the six-member delegation said at that time that the small Jewish community would be left with “no option” but to take legal action “if there was no solution forthcoming.”

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Church group urges boycott of West Bank Jews

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The elected leader of Australian Jewry blasted his Christian counterpart over an “ill-considered” resolution asking churches to boycott goods produced by West Bank Jews.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry President Robert Goot, in a letter last Friday to the National Council of Churches in Australia’s general secretary, the Rev. Tara Curlewis, said the resolution passed by Australia’s top ecumenical body “revived painful memories for Jews in Australia of earlier times in Europe when churches allowed themselves to be swept up in the tide of popular prejudices against the Jewish people.”

The resolution, passed during the organization’s seventh triennial forum held July 9-13, called on member churches to “consider boycotting particular goods produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Curlewis said in a statement that she “hoped that such actions will liberate the people from an experience of injustice to one where a just and definitive peace may be reached.”

The resolution also affirmed the right to exist for Israel and a Palestinian state within secure internationally recognized borders, and it condemned all acts of terrorism.

Goot, saying he felt “badly let down by people we have long thought of as our friends,” asked to be able to present a critique of the resolution to the executive of the National Council of Churches.

The council of churches comprises 17 groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and the Uniting Church. It was a founding partner of the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews, a body founded in 2003 alongside the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.

Church group urges boycott of West Bank Jews Read More »

PA gives Irish flotilla passengers honorary citizenship

Leave a Comment / Israel /

The Palestinian Authority has granted travel documents and honorary citizenship to Irish anti-Israel activists who participated in a Gaza aid flotilla.

A spokesman for the General Delegation of Palestine in Ireland confirmed the offer and said passports and honorary citizenship had been offered to all activists who were on the May 31 flotilla, according to a report in the Irish Times.

Eight Irish citizens and one Irish-registered vessel, the MV Rachel Corrie, were part of the six-ship convoy that tried to reach Gaza from Turkey two months ago. Some of the Irish citizens were detained in Israel after Israeli forces detained the ships, including the Marmara, where fighting resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish passengers and injuries to several Israeli commandos

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Brazilian Jewish schools receive high marks

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Two Jewish schools were ranked among the best high schools in Brazil.

The Brazilian Israelite School received the highest average grade among all high schools in Porto Alegre, according to the newly released 2009 results of the High School National Exam, known by the acronym ENEM. Porto Alegre is the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state Rio Grande do Sul, which is home to Brazil’s third largest Jewish community with some 12,000 Jews.

Also, A. Liessin Scholem Aleichem was ranked second among high schools in Rio de Janeiro state, where other Jewish schools also attained good rankings. Rio has some 40,000 Jews, Brazil’s second Jewish community after Sao Paulo, with 60,000.

“With some 150,000 Jews, we are a minority in the Brazilian population of some 180 million, but we do stand out in education,” said Osias Wurman, Israel’s honorary consul in Rio. Wurman, a Rio native, was appointed to the position in 2009.

“It is the first time that a Jewish school conquered such distinguished position in an exam with the credibility and the visibility that ENEM has,” said Edith Napchan, A. Liessin’s director. “It makes our community proud to prove that it is possible to put together outstanding teaching and Jewish education.”

The ENEM is a non-mandatory national exam that evaluates high school education in Brazil. Students’ grades are used to generate their schools’ scores, so that the Ministry of Education of Brazil can learn which are ranked the best and worst schools in the country.

Since 2009, the ENEM grade is used as an admission test for students to enroll in 23 federal universities and 26 educational institutes, including the most prestigious ones.

Brazilian Jewish schools receive high marks Read More »

Greece’s Jewish museum defaced

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Vandals painted red swastikas on the walls of the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens.

Thursday’s attack marked the first time that the museum has been the target of anti-Semitic expression, according to an Athens community news release.

Greece has been beset by a chain of anti-Semitic events this year, including twin arson attacks on the Synagogue of Hania, vandalism against Jewish cemeteries in Ioannina and Thessaloniki, and an attack against the Holocaust memorial in Rhodes.

Security cameras recorded the eight perpetrators during the museum attack.

Greece’s Jewish museum defaced Read More »

‘Anti-Zionist’ Palestinian bishop elected to a top Lutheran post

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A Palestinian bishop who has been a harsh critic of Israeli settlements and a proponent of a shared capital in Jerusalem was chosen for a top post in the Lutheran Church.

Munib Younan, 59, told Lutheran leaders after his election as head of the Lutheran World Federation in Stuttgart on Saturday that he hoped to contribute to building peace in the Middle East.

The Jerusalem native said his church must dedicate itself to fighting “extremism and xenophobia, especially anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” according to the Deutsche Welle news agency.  He added that “The conflict in my own home is never far from my thoughts.”

Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, will head a church federation with 145 member churches in 79 countries.

Some critics have charged Younan with being anti-Zionist. While he declared support for a two-state solution in a 2009 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/by-topic/middle-east/bishop-munib-younan-seeing-god-in-the-other/3045/).”>interview with PBS, he also suggested that Israeli policies were to blame for violent attacks on Israel.

“We Palestinians, Christian or Muslim, care for the security of Israel,” he told PBS. “But the security of Israel depends on the freedom and justice of the Palestinians.”

In 2006 he signed “The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism,” condemning the pro-settler Christian movement as “detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel.” The declaration also promoted “nonviolent resistance as the most effective means to end the illegal occupation.”

In the PBS interview, Younan also said that Palestinians had to understand the trauma of the Holocaust for Jews, and Jews and Israelis must “understand the deep trauma of occupation in the depth of us Palestinians. Although there is no comparative suffering. Suffering is suffering.”

‘Anti-Zionist’ Palestinian bishop elected to a top Lutheran post Read More »

PLO’s D.C. office will fly Palestinian flag

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The Obama administration will allow the PLO office in Washington to fly the Palestinian flag and assume the title of “delegation.”

The change in status comes with no enhancement in diplomatic status, U.S. officials said.

The new privileges for the Palestine Liberation Organization office do not mean the representation has “any diplomatic privileges or immunities,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said last Friday.

“At the request of the PLO representative, which we have granted given the improvement in the relations between the United States and Palestinians, they have requested permission to fly the Palestinian flag,” he said. “And they have requested permission to call themselves the General Delegation of the PLO, which is a name that conforms to how they describe their missions in Europe, Canada, and several Latin American countries.”

Crowley said the steps have symbolic value and reflect improved relations between the United States and Palestinians, but they have no meaning under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

A White House spokesman suggested the changes would help spur the Palestinians toward direct peace talks with Israel, a key demand of the Israeli and U.S. governments.

“This decision reflects our confidence that through direct negotiations, we can help achieve a two-state solution with an independent and viable Palestine living side by side with Israel,” Tommy Vietor said. “We should begin preparing for that outcome now, as we continue to work with the Palestinian people on behalf of a better future.”

PLO representation in Washington was made illegal under a number of laws in the mid 1980s, when the group was widely regarded as terrorist.

Since 1993, at the launch of the Oslo peace process, U.S. presidents have exercised their prerogative to waive the ban every six months. Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, have cultivated the PLO and its leadership of the Palestinian Authority as a means of stemming the influence of Hamas, a radical Islamist terrorist group.

A number of lawmakers have sought to reinstate the ban, saying the Palestinian Authority has not moderated enough, citing among other factors the Palestinian refusal to enter direct negotiations.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the ranking member on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, tied her efforts to eject the PLO from Washington to congressional efforts to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another law that presidents have routinely waived since its passage in 1995.

“Instead of giving more undeserved gifts to the PLO, it’s time for us to kick the PLO out of the U.S. once and for all and move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, where it belongs,” she said in a statement.

PLO’s D.C. office will fly Palestinian flag Read More »

希伯来字母表 Hebrew Alphabet

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在前面的多篇文章中，都提到了某些词在希伯来语中是怎么写的，但解说时用英文字母来表示希伯来语，本文配图向大家展示希伯来字母真貌。

下面是每个字母的名称：

第一个字母名叫“alef”，这个名称的读音似“阿莱夫”；

第二个字母名叫“bet”，这个名称的读音似“贝特”；

第三个字母名叫“gimel”，这个名称的读音似“吉迈珥”；

第四个字母名叫“dalet”，这个名称的读音似“达莱特”；

第五个字母名叫“he”，这个名称的读音似“嘿”；

第六个字母名叫“vav”，这个名称的读音似“瓦乌”；

第七个字母名叫“zayin”，这个名称的读音似“咋因”；

第八个字母名叫“chet”，这个名称的读音似“亥特”；

第九个字母名叫“tet”，这个名称的读音似“泰特”；

第十一个字母名叫“yod”，这个名称的读音似“哟的”；

第十二个字母名叫“kaf”，这个名称的读音似“卡夫”；

第十三个字母名叫“lamed”，这个名称的读音似“拉迈德”；

第十四个字母名叫“mem”，这个名称的读音似“迈姆”；

第十五个字母名叫“nun”，这个名称的读音似“努恩”；

第十六个字母名叫“samekh”，这个名称的读音似“撒迈赫”；

第十七个字母名叫“ayin”，这个名称的读音似“阿因”；

第十八个字母名叫“pe”，这个名称的读音似“佩”；

第十九个字母名叫“tsadi”，这个名称的读音似“擦迪”；

第个字母名叫“qof”，这个名称的读音似“阔夫”；

第二十个字母名叫“resh”，这个名称的读音似“蕾士”或“瑞士”；

第二十一个字母名叫“shin”，这个名称的读音似“新”；

第二十二个字母名叫“tav”，这个名称的读音似“塔乌”。