Mosques in Southern California sponsored prayer services in support of 10 students going on trial for interrupting a university speech last year by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren.
The students from the University of California, Irvine and the University of California, Riverside are set to go on trial Monday. Each is charged with one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and one misdemeanor count of the disturbance of a meeting. If convicted, each student could face a sentence of up to a year in jail or lesser punishments, including probation with community service and fines.
Charges against an eleventh student were dropped earlier this month.
During Oren’s Feb. 8, 2010 speech at UC Irvine, the 11 defendants stood one by one and shouted at the ambassador, calling him a “mass murderer” and a “war criminal,” among other insults. The disruptions, organized to protest Israeli actions in Gaza, prompted Oren to walk off the stage twice.
Eight of the defendants were students at UC Irvine and were members of the Muslim Student Union, which was suspended by the university for a year. The others attended the University of California, Riverside.
“There is no question that these students are being treated like criminals because they’re Muslim,” Kifah Shah, spokesperson for the Stand with the Eleven Campaign, said in a statement on the group’s website. The organization also is signing up supporters to attend each court session.
The Turkish government announced it will return property confiscated from Jews and Christians over the past seven decades.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday told the leaders of 150 Jewish and Christian foundations of the government order during a Ramadan break-fast dinner, according to reports. The trusts will be compensated for property that has been sold. The order, opposed by nationalist groups in the Turkish Parliament, is being seen as part of an attempt to endear Turkey to the European Union, which Turkey wants to join.
Most of the properties, including schools, hospitals, orphanages and cemeteries, were taken over by the Turkish government after the 1936 Law on Foundations, which required the trusts to list their assets, according to The New York Times.
“Times that a citizen of ours would be oppressed due to his religion, ethnic origin or different way of life are over,” Erdogan reportedly told the leaders according to the Anatolian News Agency.
There are about 23,000 Jews in Turkey, which has a population of about 70 million.
The foundations have 12 months to apply to the government to regain their property, according to Today’s Zaman, a Turkish daily.
“Holocaust survivors welcome Turkey’s announcement on the properties of religious minorities and now call on the Turkish authorities to return hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen property—particularly gold—hidden by the Nazis there during World War II,” Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said in a statement.
Steinberg cited a report issued by the U.S. State Department in 1997 that found that more than 14 tons of gold looted by the Nazis from Europe was acquired by Turkey, now worth more than $1 billion.
“It is time for Turkey to come clean. If it wishes to enter the family of European nations, it should take the moral position adopted by the other European states and return to the victims—Jew and non-Jew—the properties stolen by the criminal Nazi regime,” Steinberg said.
Journal Mother Love 8/29/11
When our son Jonathan was a teenager, we made it clear that he was expected to get a summer job. He tried hard but couldn’t find anything, so I asked my architect friend Charles to give Jonathan some office work. We made a deal that I would pay Jonathan’s salary in secret: he was not to know that his proudly earned paycheck was coming from his mommy.
Jonathan came home one day and announced that Charles was not happy with his appearance. He had been showing up for work in his usual attire of stained t-shirts and scuffed sneakers – at a company that was all about style and image. So I had to go out and buy my son a whole new wardrobe so that he could earn a salary that I myself was underwriting!
We ran out of money just around the time that Jonathan graduated from college, so he knew he would have to make it on his own. This turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. He struggled for a few years, and shared expenses with a few roommates. He tried a variety of jobs in film, photography, carpentry – even waiting tables when he got really desperate. Finally I said, “What kind of job do you think would make you happiest?”
He said he’d love to work in publishing – a notoriously low-paying profession. I did not advise him to go for the money. Instead, I encouraged him to follow his dream. He got a low-level job at a dot.com which was just starting to produce audio books on the Internet. The company, Audible.com, took off, and Jono ended up being head of a department with a good salary, stock options, interesting travel, and all those other perks that I’m told people with real jobs enjoy.
Eventually, Jonathan got tired of the corporate grind, and decided to take a lower-paying, less stressful job at a non-profit do-goody institution. Again, I encouraged him to follow his heart and not use “Show me the money!” as his only mantra: a relaxed, meaningful life-style also counts for something. Of course, I may regret this high-mindedness when I’m in my dotage and Jonathan can’t afford to take care of me.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister visited an Israeli business that has been targeted by supporters of the Israel boycott.
Wayne Swan, who is also the nation’s treasurer, joined Jewish legislator Michael Danby and more than 100 Israel supporters Sunday at Max Brenner, the Israeli chocolate shop, in Brisbane.
The visit came 24 hours after about 50 supporters of the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign protested outside the Brisbane store in the latest of a series of demonstrations across Australia against Max Brenner outlets.
They were met by a counter-demonstration of more than 100 Israel supporters organized by a student from the University of Queensland. Pro-Palestinian organizers claim the Strauss Group, Max Brenner’s parent company, supports the IDF and is complicit in “Israel’s apartheid and occupation policies.”
Danby, who has spearheaded a non-violent counter-campaign to show solidarity with Max Brenner, slammed the “hate campaign” of the boycotters.
“The event held today with the Deputy Prime Minister illustrates that these campaigners do not represent mainstream Australia,” he said.
“It is disgusting that this group of leftists were also demanding that Australians boycott Revlon and Westfield simply because their owners were Jewish. Fair-minded Australians want nothing to do with such bigotry,” Danby added.
A spokesman for Swan said: “The vast majority of Australians would think boycotts of individual business … are misguided.”
Swan’s visit to Max Brenner follows similar solidarity visits by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and other legislators.
On July 1, 19 protesters were arrested in a fracas with police outside Max Brenner in Melbourne. Several are scheduled to appear in court next month for breaching bail conditions.
A Borough Park woman is among the at least 16 killed by Hurricane Irene’s six-state onslaught.
Leah Stern, a Jewish woman reportedly in her 70s, was trapped in the Valkyrian Motel in Fleischmann’s, New York, approximately 140 miles north of New York City, when the motel was uprooted and swept away by torrential water, reported VIN News.
On-lookers could hear Stern’s cries for help until around 3:30 PM, when the cries faded.
Stern was found dead by the fire departments from neighboring Broome County some hours later, reported Yeshiva World.
The motel, including Stern’s husband, had been evacuated earlier in the morning. It was not immediately apparent why she did not leave as well.
In 1989, on the eve of the fall of communism, the American poet Jerome Rothenberg published a powerful series of poems called “Khurbn” that dealt with the impact of the Holocaust on Eastern Europe.
In one section, he recorded conversations he had had in Poland with local people who had little recollection of the flourishing pre-war Jewish presence.
“…were there once Jews here?” the poem goes. “Yes, they told us, yes they were sure there were, though there was no one here who could remember. What was a Jew like? they asked […] no one is certain still if they exist.”
I often think of this poem when I travel to far-flung places in Eastern and Central Europe, and it was certainly on my mind on a trip to Slovakia this August.
That’s because—yes—there are still Jews here, and the post-communist revival has reinvigorated Jewish communities in the region.
But also—despite this—numbers are still so small that even in many places where Jews once made up large parts of the population, Jewish history and heritage have been, or run the risk of being, forgotten.
“Look,” my friend Maros Borsky reminded me in Bratislava. “Kids who were born after 1989 don’t even remember communism.”
Borsky is trying to do something about this—and this, in fact, was why I was in Slovakia.
The vice president of the Bratislava Jewish community, Borsky is also Slovakia’s leading Jewish scholar and expert on Slovak Jewish heritage.
At 37 he is, I would say, the leading Slovak Jewish activist of his generation, engaged in everything from religious, cultural and educational initiatives to his own personal commitment to raising his daughters in a Jewish home.
“I’ll do anything to support his efforts, he has made such a difference to Jewish life here,” said Andrew Goldstein, a British Reform rabbi who has played a hands-on role in nurturing Jewish revival in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for more than two decades.
Now chairman of the European Union for Progressive Judaism, Goldstein comes to Bratislava once a month to hold classes and lead a non-Orthodox Shabbat service as an alternative to that conducted by the city’s only resident rabbi, Baruch Myers, who is affiliated with Chabad.
Goldstein and I met in Bratislava nearly six years ago when he officiated at Borsky’s wedding.
This time, Goldstein and his wife and I, along with half a dozen Israeli journalists, were on a five-day tour that Borsky led to Jewish communities and heritage sites around the country.
The aim was to introduce the Slovak Jewish Heritage Route, an educational and touristic itinerary Borsky devised as a means of integrating Jewish heritage and memory into local tourism, culture and education so that Jews, their history—and their fate—are not forgotten.
I have followed the development of the route ever since Borsky first conceived it five years ago, and I believe it is an important strategic endeavor that could provide a model for other countries.
Only 3,000 Jews live in Slovakia today, but there are synagogue buildings or Jewish cemeteries in literally hundreds of towns and even major cities.
The Slovak Jewish community does not have the resources to save or even to care for all these places.
So Borsky convinced communal leaders to sanction a strategy that concentrates on just a few.
This resulted in his Slovak Jewish Heritage Route. The route includes 24 flagship sites in all eight regions of the country: mainly synagogues, but also Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials and museums. They are marked with plaques bearing a distinctive logo.
Each was chosen for its historic or architectural significance but also for its sustainability. This does not mean, of course, that other sites should be forgotten. But to be included on the route, there must be a partnership in place with a local body to ensure long-term care and maintenance.
Our tour took in more than a dozen of the sites: from the active synagogue in Bratislava to Presov in the far east, where the magnificence of the surviving synagogue utterly dwarfs the potential of a Jewish community that now numbers only a few dozen people.
We saw synagogues used as art galleries, and one now used as an art school. There were little Jewish exhibits, and ruined synagogues still undergoing repair. In one of these, the partially ruined synagogue in Liptovsky Mikulas, Goldstein and his wife stopped to chant prayers so that the sounds of Jewish liturgy could once again be heard.
One of our most meaningful encounters was with a high school teacher in the small town of Spisske Nova Ves who for nearly a decade has made care of the Jewish cemetery and continuing research into the history of the destroyed Jewish community an integral part of her class curriculum.
I had visited most of these places in the past. But going from one to the next in the space of five days hammered home a range of challenges that face both Jewish heritage and Jewish life.
“The saddest thing for me was not to see the empty synagogues,” Goldstein told me after the trip. “But to learn that the Orthodox synagogue in Zilina is still intact but not used for services. On Rosh Hashanah the tiny community just meet in a nearby hall and reminisce—there is seemingly nobody to lead even a short service.”
Rothenberg’s poem was rarely out of my thoughts.
“…were there once Jews here?”
Ruth Ellen Gruber’s books include “National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe” and “Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.” She blogs on Jewish heritage issues at jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com
Mexican singer Adam Kleinberg, a distant cousin of David Ben-Gurion, became the Jewish world’s newest star.
Kleinberg, 21, whose great-grandmother was Ben-Gurion’s first cousin, beat out 30 finalists from around the world to win the Hallelujah music contest. He sang the song “Zeh Lo Kal,” or “It’s Not Easy” by Israeli band HaYehudim.
The finals were held on Aug. 25 in front of a live audience in Hod Hasharon.
The 30 finalists spent three weeks in Israel touring and performing.
Some 260 Jewish young people ages 16-26 from around the world submitted video auditions for the contest, resurrected after nearly 20 years.
Kleinberg won the top prize of $8,000 and will record a duet with a popular Israeli singer; the song will be distributed to Jewish radio stations throughout the world. He will also go on tour, singing in Jewish venues around the world.
Oliver Ghnassia, 20, from Brussels, was the first runner-up, and David Kobiashvili of Russia came in third place. They were awarded $4,000 and $2,000 respectively.
Captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit spent his 25th birthday in captivity.
Sunday was the sixth birthday that Shalit has marked in captivity since he was captured by Hamas terrorists in a cross-border raid in June 2006.
Shalit’s parents led a protest in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem on Sunday, with banners reading “We won’t let Gilad celebrate alone.” Another banner called on Netanyahu to give Shalit “his life back” for his birthday.
In a letter to their son to mark his birthday, Noam and Aviva Shalit wrote:
“With the burning sun beating on our heads, on the sidewalk adjacent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home, we are trying to digest the fact that 1,890 days have passed and you still are not with us. …
“We’re here. We haven’t given up, we haven’t surrendered, and we have not been broken. And we are not alone. Our dearest Gilad, many many people who are strangers to you, who you have never met, think as we do, that it is inconceivable to speak of social solidarity, of national fortitude and of having faith in the State while abandoning you to your fate. Day after day, lonely and abandoned in Hamas dungeons for over half a decade.”
Israel’s “Kochav Nolad” (“A Star is Born”) TV singing competition has a new reality spinoff—a criminal case against one of its judges, accused of using strongarm tactics to ensure she got a cut of a former contestant’s earnings.
The judge, Margalit Tsanani, a popular singer in her own right, was indicted on Monday along with her alleged enforcer on extortion charges which both have denied.
The case has made front-page news in Israel, where the show, loosely formatted along the lines of the unaffiliated American Idol franchise, has been a ratings winner.
According to the charge sheet, Tsanani, popularly known as “Margol”, co-managed along with a musical agent the lucrative career of one of the competition’s former contestants.
But the agent withheld Tsanani’s cut and she went to legal arbitration, which she won. The agent still refused to pay and Tsanani turned to an enforcer—nicknamed “Tooth Puller”—to collect, the indictment said.
Tsanani’s arrest two weeks ago stunned the Israeli entertainment world, but parts of the indictment dealing directly with the singing competition could prove even more disturbing to fans.
Prosecutors alleged the judge awarded points to one contestant—who did not win—in accordance with a text message she received from the enforcer during a live broadcast of the show.
And, the indictment said, Tsanani also did her enforcer a favour by making a friendly reference, during the show, to a convict watching the programme in prison.
Now, though, a Russian court has banned Alexander Savko’s depiction of the Sermon on the Mount, with Jesus portrayed by Mickey Mouse. As with “South Park,” the drawing, which was part of an exhibit titled “Forbidden Art,” was considered “” title=”Huffington Post has a little more”>Huffington Post has a little more from the court hearing:
A statement on the prosecutor’s website says, “During the court hearing, it was established that Savko’s technique of uniting the image of Jesus Christ, which is sacred for Christians, and the comical image of Mickey Mouse, which in this situation is vulgar, has turned the graphic work into a caricature of Jesus Christ. The Gospel story is therefore presented by the artist in the form of a comic, which is an extremely cynical and mocking insult to the religious beliefs and feelings of Orthodox Christian believers.”
HuffPo also got this reaction from Savko:
THE PUPROSE OF THIS PAINTING IS NOT ABUSE OF CHRIST AND NOT ABUSE OF CHRISTIANS. THIS IS DISPLAYING OF CURRENT REALITY: THE SUBSTITUTION OF HUMAN SPIRITUAL, MORAL VALUES WITH MASS-CULTURAL VALUES.
