Sad news today from the pirate-infested waters off the coast of Somalia: The four Americans who had been taken hostage while sailing around the world handing out Bibles were murdered by their pirate captors. Here’s the story from the ” title=”round-up of the story”>round-up of the story. And Somalian pirates murder American missionary sailors Read More »
Top White House Middle East adviser Dan Shapiro is set to be tapped to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Politico reported.
President Obama plans to nominate Shapiro, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, Laura Rozen reported Tuesday in her Politico blog, citing unnamed administration sources.
Shapiro reportedly has a good relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and accompanied U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell on several diplomatic shuttle missions to Israel. He also speaks fluent Hebrew.
Shapiro served as a key White House point of contact for the Jewish community and helped head up Jewish outreach for the Obama campaign.
He would replace James Cunningham, who has served in the envoy’s post for three years.
Shapiro reportedly to be named U.S. envoy to Israel Read More »
Some folks are afraid of spiders. Others are terrified of wide open spaces. Some shudder at the thought of public speaking, while others have nightmares about clowns. I am scared of germs. Like, “don’t you dare touch my child unless you’ve washed your hands with boiling water and antibacterial soap, and have used a paper towel when turning the bathroom door knob, or I will cut you,” scared. I’ve always been this way, and no amount of therapy or heavy drugs is going to change this. Since taking my kids outside to the grocery store is already hard enough, as you can imagine, going to the pediatrician’s office is a test in heroics.
And, to make matters more challenging, while some doctors offices have separate rooms to segregate the sick from the healthy, our Los Angeles pediatricians office only offers a narrow center divider, with colour-coded chairs on either side. Blue if you’re sick. Orange if you’re healthy.
Yeah, like the germs give a shit where you sit. Trust me, they will find you: The last time M had a ‘well baby’ visit, she came down with Roseola, and the time before that, she caught a nasty cold.
In other words, going to the pediatrician’s office is like enduring an intense session of immersion therapy.
The good news is, Dr. S is one of those rare pediatricians who is almost always available to offer advice over the phone, which means that 9 times out of 10, we’ve saved ourselves a trip to Pathogen Paradise.
The best thing about Dr. S is that he doesn’t care who calls him: He never asks for names or medical record numbers, because he figures that if you’re calling him, then there’s a sick kid involved and it’s his job to help. Period. The End.
Since we’re Fobby new immigrants getting smacked sideways by every virus and bacteria known to Israel, I’ve racked up a lot of long distance calls to Dr. S. (Hi B. You thought my cellphone bill was high? Just wait until you see our landline.) The best part is that when it’s 1:00 am here, and M is puking up a lung, or Little Homie’s poop has a decidedly greenish hue to it and my mind is swimming – no, drowning – in a sea of Very Scary Thoughts thanks to sleep deprivation and very real circumstantial evidence that Something. Is. Wrong. With. My. Children. Dr. S’s office is still open, and I can get him on the phone in two minutes.
And every time I hear Dr. S’s cheerful voice, I am comforted, remembering the halcyon days in Los Angeles when I could navigate the medical system in English.
And until we make our way back home to the blue and orange seats in Dr. S’s waiting room, I will continue to stay in contact with my favorite pediatrician from the other side of the world. Hell, I may even send him a postcard, because fair is fair. And if the phone charges are too high, I can always sell the number to his direct line to other exhausted, overwhelmed and terrified new immigrant parents facing wave after wave after wave of illness, again and again and again. And again.
Believe me, it’ll be more lucrative than selling weed on Ben Yehudah Street or hooking in South Tel Aviv.
And a lot less germy.
| I wonder what germs Little Homie’s licking now. |
Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children—including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.
I don’t often write pieces for upcoming events. I’m better at writing about them after the fact, when I figure I’ll have more to say. But this year, I have to make an exception and give a plug for a local Jewish woman who is universally loved by the community. How do I know this? I’ve done my research. I wrote a profile of her a couple of years ago, and it didn’t matter who I spoke to—the “Ashkefardicultrarefoconservadox” kaleidoscope of Los Angeles Jewry has a special place in its heart for this woman.
Her name is Rhoda Weisman.
She has devoted most of her life to helping the Jewish community, with a special emphasis on training future Jewish leaders. She could only have done that by being a great leader herself, and now, we have a chance to recognize her for all her contributions to our community.
On Thursday night, at the very cool El Rey Theatre in mid-Wilshire, Rhoda will receive the Jewish Unity Award from unity mavens and self-styled “catalysts for a Jewish renaissance” organizations JConnect and Jewlicious.
Two of my favorite entertainers—comedian Elon Gold and musician Peter Himmelman—will lead the festivities. You can reserve online at nightofunity.com, or email {encode=”Michal@nightofunity.com” title=”Michal@nightofunity.com”}.
She’ll probably be surrounded by a mob of admirers, so in case I miss you Rhoda: Thank you for all you do.
Oh, and there’s an open bar.
Thursday night with Rhoda Read More »
Following up on the conviction of the ” title=”this story” target=”_blank”>this story on “All Things Considered” this evening. It’s a pretty interesting piece that looks to set the media record straight on why Hassan killed his wife. The short answer: It was domestic violence, not a so-called honor-killing as it was originally dubbed.
Dina Temple-Raston reports:
Buffalo’s Muslim community already had its share of these kinds of stories. There were suspicions after the Sept. 11 attacks and then a year later six young Muslims from Lackawanna, a community just outside of Buffalo, were arrested for being America’s first sleeper cell. Eventually they pleaded guilty to training at an al-Qaida camp. The young men never planned anything against the United States, but against the post-Sept. 11 backdrop, stereotyping became easy. Just as they were seen as terrorists, the murder of Aasiya Hassan was seen as an honor killing.
Remla Parthasarathy, an instructor at the Women, Children, and Social Justice Clinic at University at Buffalo Law School, says the Hassan murder was a clear-cut case of domestic abuse.
“Honor killings are something that is sanctioned and approved by the extended family, that wasn’t the case here,” she said. “Religious leaders in the Muslim community came out and denounced it and they said it wasn’t an honor killing and I respect that.”
In fact, no one could recall ever seeing Mo Hassan at the mosque.
Listen to the NPR: Muslim beheading in Buffalo domestic violence, not honor killing Read More »
“The Human Resources Manager” struck out early in the best foreign-language film competition, while the documentary feature “Precious Life” was short-listed among the 15 semi-finalists but didn’t make the final five cut.
However, still in the running is “Strangers No More” in the documentary short category.
Directed by American filmmakers Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman, the film is set in the Bialik-Rogozin School in an impoverished, crime-ridden section of south Tel Aviv.
The school educates, and integrates, some 750 students from 48 countries, including Sudan, The Philippines, Ukraine, and points in between, many the children of foreign workers.
In barely 40 minutes, the doc takes a loving look at the difficulties and triumphs of the school and its passionately involved teachers, among whose supporters are the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the locally based Jewish World Watch.
A bloodier side of the Middle East is shown in “Killing in the Name,” in which a Jordanian wedding party is decimated by an Al Qaeda suicide bomber.
Among the dead are the groom’s father and 26 other relatives. The grief-stricken groom, Ashraf, decides to break the Muslim world’s silence on terrorism by starting a “de-radicalization” project, during which we meet an Al Qaeda recruiter and young boys in madrassa school training for jihad.
Jed Rothstein produced and directed the film.
Others in the running are “Poster Girl” by Sara Nesson, in which a gung-ho American woman soldier is traumatized by her experiences in Iraq.
In “The Warriors of Quigang” Chinese villagers battle bureaucrats to remove a poisonous chemical plant, while in “Sun Comes Up,” South Pacific islanders search for a new habitat when their tiny island is threatened by a rising ocean due to climate change.
All five films are currently playing at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood. Check box office at (310) 478-3836.
This is not Israel’s year in the Oscar races Read More »
A new campaign for clemency for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard has racked up a series of big name politicos in the last few weeks: former Vice President Dan Quayle, former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Chicago Rabbi Capers Funnye, a cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama.
The recent successes can be traced not to Washington lobbyists or a New York boardroom, but to a small team of four activists whose doggedness, rather than political connections, have yielded results.
The four men, spread across America, have managed to generate more momentum on the Pollard issue—or at least more expressions of support for clemency from public figures—than any public campaign in recent years.
Foremost among the activists is David Nyer, a 25-year-old Orthodox social worker from Monsey, N.Y., about 25 miles from New York City.
Nyer was the force behind a letter last November to President Obama from 39 congressional Democrats urging the president to grant clemency to Pollard, a civilian U.S. Navy analyst who received a life sentence in 1987 for spying for Israel.
Over the past few months, Nyer successfully elicited letters calling for Pollard’s release from Quayle, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, and President Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz. Korb went so far as to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to formally call for Pollard’s release, which Nyer says is a key gain in the effort to free Pollard.
“It’s not really hard,” Nyer said of his ability to get powerful or once-powerful officials on the phone. “I myself was very surprised by all of this. I guess that’s the great thing about living in a democracy. The average citizen can reach a former vice president.”
Along with Nyer, the team includes University of Baltimore law professor Kenneth Lasson, Phoenix attorney Farley Weiss and Rabbi Pesach Lerner, a longtime Pollard advocate and executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel. Weiss is a second vice president of the council and the president of a Young Israel synagogue in Arizona, as well as a national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America.
The four activists say they are in near daily contact, bouncing around ideas and names of prominent individuals to solicit for support.
Lasson has a long track record of involvement with Pollard, having penned more than a dozen articles in the past two decades calling for his release. Weiss, a trademark attorney, has a history of activism on issues related to Israel. Weiss was instrumental in reversing the views of former Arizona Sen. Dennis DeConcini, who long had opposed Pollard’s release.
Lerner has tended to Pollard’s personal needs, acting as his rabbi and paying him visits at the federal prison in Butner, N.C.
It is Nyer, however, who has done much of the legwork in recent months.
His start on the Pollard case came in graduate school, when Carlos Salinas, a former Amnesty International official, presented a lecture at the school and Nyer pushed Salinas to review the case. Salinas went on to join 500 signatories, most of them clergymen, in a separate letter to Obama on Pollard’s behalf.
Among the letter’s signatories were Pastor John Hagee, the Texas minister who founded Christians United for Israel, and Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official and now president of the conservative nonprofit American Values.
Nyer and company have been strategic in picking their targets.
They have recruited former officials who, like DeConcini, the former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, had access to classified material and can speak authoritatively on the appropriateness of Pollard’s sentence. The biggest score on that front was James Woolsey, the former Central Intelligence Agency director, who called on Obama in January to release Pollard.
DeConcini was a longtime opponent of clemency for Pollard, but he told JTA that he changed his mind at the repeated urging of his finance chairman, the late Earl Katz. He wrote to both Obama and former President George W. Bush on Pollard’s behalf at the behest of Weiss, whose credibility Katz had vouched for.
“He has been on my case for a couple of years,” DeConcini said of Weiss.
The group also has targeted those with particular influence on Obama, such as Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, a mentor to the president, who wrote to the White House in January. Several sources said the group is seeking support from others who are personally close to the president.
The activists hope that all the letter writing will give Obama the political cover he needs to take the potentially controversial step of freeing the spy. The fight for Pollard’s release typically has been spearheaded by the pro-Israel right wing in America, but the congressional letter was signed entirely by Democrats.
Nyer suggested that a pardon could boost Obama’s standing with American Jews and Israelis in advance of the 2012 election.
“The first thing we wanted to do was to create a political climate which would be easy to grant clemency,” Nyer said. “It would be very easy for Obama to do it. He has all the cover.”
Neither Nyer, Weiss nor Lasson were eager to speak about their efforts on Pollard’s behalf. Separately they emphasized that the injustice of the case speaks for itself.
Pollard has served 25 years of a life sentence for passing classified materials to Israel—a longer sentence than anyone else convicted of espionage on behalf of a U.S. ally.
While the activists would prefer that their names stay out of the media glare, they say their efforts have raised hopes that Pollard’s life sentence might soon be commuted.
“In 25 years,” Lasson told JTA, “I’ve never seen this degree of momentum or widespread support from both within and outside the Jewish community, both nationally and internationally.”
N.Y. activist enlists Quayle, Woosley, others in new Pollard clemency campaign Read More »
The two organizational arms of the Reconstructionist movement are set to merge.
Following a year-and-a-half of negotiations, the boards of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation have voted to form one body that will be responsible for Reconstructionist Judaism in North America.
Reconstructionist leaders say the merger will permit better use of limited resources and allow the movement to focus more effectively on its main concerns: education, movement services and social justice.
The federation represents the movement’s 105 congregations; the college is the Reconstructionist movement’s sole rabbinical seminary.
The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, which represents more than 300 member rabbis, endorsed the move and its rabbis will have a formal role in the newly merged entity.
The proposal will be voted on during an April 10 meeting in Philadelphia. If approved, the new organization will have one board, staff and chief executive.
Reconstructionist bodies set to merge Read More »
The Knesset has passed a bill requiring non-profit organizations to disclose funding from foreign governments.
The Foreign Government NGO Funding Transparency Bill passed Monday evening on second and third readings also requires the nonprofit groups to disclose on their advertisements which foreign governments and foundations contributed to the advertising campaigns.
The measure also requires that the organizations disclose whether they have to take certain stances in exchange for funding.
Likud lawmaker Zeev Elkin had submitted the bill before one was submitted by the Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud parties that would establish two panels to look into the funding sources and activities of left-wing organizations. A discussion and vote on that bill has been postponed after Likud members reportedly reconsidered their support for the bill, which means it likely will not pass.
NGO Monitor applauded the passage of the transparency bill, saying that it helps protect Israeli democracy and civil society from manipulation, and provides the appropriate framework to hold foreign governments accountable for their NGO funding.
“The Knesset action reflects a broad understanding that transparency for foreign government funding of political advocacy NGOs transcends partisan ideology, and is essential to the public’s right to know and to Israeli democracy,” NGO Monitor President Gerald Steinberg said in a statement.
“The new NGO Funding Transparency Law will shed light on the extent of foreign government involvement in Israel, and will demonstrate the failure of existing Israeli law to require funding transparency.”
Knesset passes bill requiring funding transparency Read More »
James Tisch, who has held several key positions in the Jewish world, has been elected as chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel’s board of governors.
Tisch, 58, the president and CEO of the Loews Corp., was elected Tuesday during the board’s meeting in Jerusalem to succeed Richard Pearlstone, who has served in the post since 2007.
Among his positions of Jewish leadership, Tisch has served as board chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and president of UJA-Federation of New York.
On Monday, the board of governors approved a restructuring of the agency to help it focus on connecting young Diaspora Jews with Israel and increasing aliyah, according to a strategic plan developed by Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky.
The plan aims to provide solutions to the challenges facing the Jewish world, including a distancing of young Diaspora Jews from their Jewish identity and the end of the era of “aliyah of distress” to Israel.
In a bid to connect young Jews to Israel and increase aliyah, one focus of the plan will be to create a series of Israel experiences and build unique aliyah tracks. The second area of focus will be increasing social activism of young Israelis and young Jews from around the world in projects for strengthening Israeli society and “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world.
“We are entering a new era,” Sharansky said. “The motivation to make aliyah is driven today by strong Jewish-Zionist identity and not by economic distress or lack of security. So in order to increase aliyah in the future, the Jewish-Zionist identity of young people in the Diaspora must be strengthened and their connection with the State of Israel deepened.”
The Jewish Agency will continue to work to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel and prepare them for life in Israel, and to provide special attention to the unique needs of Russian speakers and new immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union, according to a statement released by the agency. The organization also plans to place more emissaries on campuses in North America in light of the delegitimization campaign against Israel.
James Tisch elected Jewish Agency board chair Read More »
