fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

February 9, 2012

Shalit and parents meet with Sarkozy in Paris

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, Worldwide /

Former captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and his parents met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the presidential palace in Paris.

“We are very happy to be here at the Elysee Palace,” said Noam Shalit, speaking to journalists Wednesday morning.  “We are very touched.”

Hours later, Shalit’s parents attended the annual gala hosted by the French Jewish umbrella group CRIF.

Sarkozy had met repeatedly with Gilad’s father, Noam, after the young Israeli soldier, who has dual French citizenship, was captured on the border with Gaza in 2006 and held hostage there for more than five years by Hamas.

During the CRIF dinner, Noam Shalit thanked Sarkozy and the French people for their efforts to help to free his son, adding that due to poor health, Gilad was not able to attend the event.

Sarkozy, a regular speaker at the CRIF event, is struggling in popularity polls and still has not declared his candidacy for president ahead of spring elections. But the self-described enthusiastic “friend of Israel” gave an energetic and occasionally emotional speech at the gala, condemning Shalit’s “barbaric” captors.

“Shame on those who did this!” he said to rousing applause.

Sarkozy also gave a warning against resorting to military force in Iran. He called for reinforced sanctions against Iran “to avoid tragedy: the drama of a military conflict that would solve nothing and would complicate everything.”

By toughening sanctions, he added, “We want to reassure the leaders of Israel, so that the irreparable is not committed,” he said, adding that “the solution is never military.”

Sarkozy also touched on anti-Semitism in France, the Arab Spring and a sensitive French vote in favor of the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO’s recognition of Palestinian statehood. He also appealed for accelerated efforts toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Bipartisan political heavyweights, including Sarkozy’s chief rival for the presidency, Socialist Francois Hollande, made their traditional appearances at the gala in support of France’s Jewish community.

Shalit and parents meet with Sarkozy in Paris Read More »

Poll: Half of U.S. voters back strike on nuclear Iran

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

A poll showed that nearly half of likely voters believed the United States should use military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

According to the poll, published this week in The Hill, a newspaper that specializes in Congress,  49 percent of respondents stated that the U.S. should use military force, while 31 percent said the U.S. should not use military force and 20 percent of respondents were unsure of a course of action.

In that same poll, 62 percent of likely voters indicated that they were “somewhat or very concerned” about Iran conducting a terrorist attack on the United States, while 37 percent indicated they were not really concerned.

Pulse Opinion Research surveyed 1,000 likely voters on Feb. 2. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Poll: Half of U.S. voters back strike on nuclear Iran Read More »

Two Jews on Film: ‘Safe House’ review [VIDEO]

Leave a Comment / Hollywood, Is Featured?, Mobile Sections, News /

Rogue agent Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) has been off the grid for the past ten years and he’s been on the CIA’S most wanted list for the last decade.

CIA agent, Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) has been posted to a remote, empty Safe House in Capetown, South Africa for over a year. He’s job is to make sure the Safe House is always ready for ‘visitors’. Weston is bored and longs for action.

When, out of the blue, Tobin turns himself in, he’s transported to Weston’s Safe House and the novice operative gets his wish…and then some…

Mercenaries attack the house, killing practically everyone in sight. Everyone except… Matt and Tobin, who manage to escape and go on the run.

Matt is determined to protect Tobin at all costs and ‘bring him in’. Tobin, however, has other ideas and what happens next is…

unfortunately, what you’ve seen hundreds of times up on the screen….

We have numerous car chases, explosive gun battles (are there any other kind?), stunts galore, lots of action and a few twists, that you can see coming, a mile away.

The best part of ‘Safe House’ are the quiet scenes between Denzel and Ryan. The two actors have great chemistry. Denzel’s character is intense, at times scary, but in the end…sympathic. Ryan conveys his usual charismatic self and you can’t help but like him.

The supporting cast includes Sam Shepherd as a CIA big shot, Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson as CIA operatives and Ruben Blades as a forger. Ruben and Washington also have a couple of nice scenes together that reveal more about the Frost character.

The director, Daniel Espinosa has shot the film in a ‘cinema verte’ style and has chosen to speed up the action, so at times…it’s hard to tell who’s kicking whose butt.

If you want to see a movie, that is filled with car crashes, action, violence but has really nice performances from Denzel and Reynolds, then ‘Safe House’ is the film to see.

The ‘Two Jews On Film’ are actually almost in agreement. Check out our video to see our bagel rating…and to see our…kung fu moves.

‘Safe House’ opens in theatres, Friday, February 10, 2012.

Two Jews on Film: ‘Safe House’ review [VIDEO] Read More »

Opinion: Now is the time for a determined course of action on Iran

Leave a Comment / News, Opinion /

Counterpoint: Will AIPAC and Bibi get their war?

We should not be too surprised that Iran continues to defy international calls to open its nuclear program to greater scrutiny and transparency. Even as the toughest U.S. sanctions yet were enacted, and Europe was considering a ban on Iranian oil imports, the militant theocracy threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 40 percent of the world’s seaborne supply of crude oil flows. But such bluster, typical of the Tehran regime, was also accompanied by the usual call for new negotiations, this time with both the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany), and also with the EU. Such talks have been going on for years with little to show for the effort.

While the various sanctions imposed by our country on Iran since 1996 have certainly made life increasingly difficult for the Islamic Republic, these restrictions have not been adequately implemented by any U.S. administration to date. The result has been all too predictable – continued Iranian defiance and support of worldwide terrorism, accompanied by increased efforts to accelerate nuclear programs leading to weaponization capability.

U.S. policy must be to use all means to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran with its potential for a disastrous impact on the region. What is needed is the strictest application of the latest sanctions aimed at Iran’s Central Bank, with the administration’s strong encouragement for Europe to follow suit. Both France and the UK are actually ahead of our own country in this regard, and are making real attempts to get a number of European countries that rely on Iranian oil, such as Spain, Greece, and Italy, to join in banning these imports. A unified EU position is expected to be announced on January 23. Meanwhile, a full spectrum of covert actions should be intensified, along with “soft power” efforts to encourage Iran’s oppressed opposition to push for change. Such efforts should include more focused broadcasting by Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Voice of America. We must pursue opportunities to achieve real change in Iran, having squandered the potential for transformation in the aftermath of the 2009 sham elections there.

There is growing evidence that sanctions are beginning to bite deeply into the Islamic Republic’s economy. The Iranian currency, the rial, is trading at its lowest rate ever, while inflation and unemployment are rapidly increasing. Iran’s continued support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s bloody attempts to cling to power has severely hurt its standing among many Arab states, as well as with Turkey, which until now had been a particularly close ally.

It is likely that a number of countries, including Japan and South Korea, will seek the waivers that the Administration insisted be added to the most recently enacted sanctions bill, in order to continue their energy trade with Iran. Only under the most serious circumstances should these waivers be granted and the timetable for action on oil imports be extended. Sanctions will work only if the United States succeeds in getting friendly and not-as-friendly countries alike to change their trade patterns with Iran, which is so dependent on its oil revenues.

We should not expect Iranian goals and behavior to change unless the White House demonstrates a more consistent and forceful approach. With the newest sanctions offering the possibility of greater success, it is a propitious time for the United States to chart a determined course of action leading to the prevention of a nuclear-armed Iran, as well as regime change. With these goals in mind, the United States must remain committed to a policy of sanctions and other punitive measures until the menace of Iran as a nuclear power is overcome.

This article originally appeared on JINSA.com.

Opinion: Now is the time for a determined course of action on Iran Read More »

A Jesus even Jews can love?

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture, Entertainment, Judaism, Mobile Sections, News /

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has been accused of nothing less than apostasy by at least one of his fellow rabbis, all thanks to his newly published book, “Kosher Jesus” (Gefen Publishing House: $26). And I am confident some Evangelical Christians will reach the same conclusion if only because Boteach insists that Jesus was not “holier than any other human being and certainly not divine.”

If Boteach has managed to offend both Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, he must be doing something right.

The search for the historical Jesus is an enterprise that started at least a couple of centuries ago. Thomas Jefferson and Albert Schweitzer are among its more famous practitioners, and Bart D. Ehrman, whose book “Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are” was reviewed in The Journal last year, is perhaps the best-known among the contemporary Bible scholars who have undertaken the same quest. Nowadays, the historical Jesus is variously seen as an early and enduring symbol of social revolution, feminism, gender equality, liberation theology and much else besides.

Boteach is a standout among those who ask us to consider Jesus as a historical figure, and for more than one reason. First, as author of the best-selling “Kosher Sex” and a frequent guest commentator on television, he has been called the single most famous rabbi in America. Even more surprising, however, is the fact that Boteach is an Orthodox Jew who was taught to associate Jesus with “the suffering Christians laid upon Jewish communities for two thousand years.”

“In my neighborhood, we did not even mention his name,” Boteach writes. “We said ‘Yoshke,’ a Hebrew play on his name, or some children learned to say ‘cheese and crust’ in place of ‘Jesus Christ.’ ”

Now Boteach is rejecting what he calls “the fictional, anti-Semitic Jesus” and reclaiming the historical Jesus in a quite remarkable way. Christian depictions of Jesus, he insists, “ripped a Jewish patriot from his people.” Jesus, at least according to Boteach, “defined himself and his Jewishness in much the same way as today’s Torah-observant Jews.” So Boteach’s goal is to teach his Jewish readers to “see in the Christian Bible one of our rabbis, Jesus, ever our brother” and to “celebrate the family bond we have with Jesus.”

Boteach credits the late scholar Hyam Maccoby for opening his eyes to what he calls “the real truth of the Jewish Jesus.” He also explains that his own take on Jesus has been “sharpened by challenges, years of discussion, and debate … with Christian scholars all around the world.” Significantly, his disputations have always been in service to the idea of rapprochement between Christians and Jews, whom he regards as “allies” and “spiritual kin.”

To his credit, Boteach does not overlook the 2,000 years of anti-Semitism in thought and action that have blighted the history of Western civilization. But he wholly acquits the historical Jesus of any taint of Jew-hatred and blames the Christian spiritual leaders and theologians who never actually knew Jesus, starting with Paul and continuing for generations thereafter, for “one of the greatest acts of character assassination in all of human history.”

Thus, for example, he points out that there are at least two ways to understand the famous saying of Jesus: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” According to Christian tradition, Jesus was rejecting Jewish law in favor of a new covenant between God and all of humankind. But Boteach points out that the saying “is wholly in keeping with the Talmud, which says, ‘The Sabbath is committed to your hands, not you to its hands.’ ” The real point, according to Boteach, is that Jesus “allowed his followers to break the Sabbath to preserve life, as any other rabbi would do.”

Jesus was surely a revolutionary, according to Boteach, but he was rebelling against Roman oppression and not against Jewish tradition. Here begins the rationale for the remaking of Jesus in the Christian Scriptures: “The early Christians, led by Paul, needed to promote the idea that Jesus was a religious reformer rather than a political rebel,” he explains. “After all, they couldn’t upset Rome, which already looked disdainfully on the fledgling Church.” Thus was Pilate absolved of any role in the Crucifixion in Christian Scriptures, and the biblical life story of Jesus was “edited to reflect a conflict between himself and the Jews.”

“Kosher Jesus” is not a work of scholarship. Rather, it is a kind of sermon in print, an earnest effort at ecumenicalism, gracious and appealing, but uncompromising in its Jewish assumptions. In many of its passages, “Kosher Jesus” can be seen as another example of Boteach’s self-appointed mission to build bridges between the Jewish people and the wider world. But he never compromises his own Jewish beliefs. Quite to the contrary, by insisting that Jesus was a good Jew, he is seeking to accomplish exactly what the title promises — he is putting a hechsher on the historical Jesus.

If Jewish true believers are unwilling to entertain the notion that Jesus was actually a shayna Yid — “a beautiful Jew” — what will Christian true believers make of the same remarkable assertion? By giving us a Jesus that even the Jews can love, he is denying the fundamental belief of Christian theology that Jesus was not merely the long-promised Messiah of Jewish tradition but literally the son of God.

Boteach, perhaps with a twinkle in his eye, asserts that Christians should be able to hold two apparent contradictions in their heads at the same time. “After all, Christian theology itself claims that Jesus was both wholly human and wholly divine, which is also a great contradiction,” he writes. “Why then can he not be both the namesake of Christianity and a hero of the Jewish faith?

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is book editor of The Jewish Journal. He blogs on books at books@jewishjournal.com.

A Jesus even Jews can love? Read More »

Israel public sector strike headed for third day

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Lead Story, News /

Israel’s banks, ports and stock market were closed in the second day of a general strike on Thursday that threatened to drag on for another 24 hours after negotiations between unions and government hit new obstacles.

The strike called by the Histadrut labor federation, an umbrella organization for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, also halted trains and closed Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv for more than an hour.

The Treasury estimated economic damages from the strike as totaling as much as $500 million a day.

Histadrut wants the government to hire about 250,000 contract workers, such as cleaners and security guards, saying their employment conditions are inferior to workers directly on the public payroll.

The Finance Ministry said it cannot take on that many new workers but has offered to improve conditions by raising salaries by at least 20 percent and giving them more holiday.

Talks, which many hoped would settle the dispute, hit problems on Thursday afternoon when the union said Treasury negotiators asked it not to strike again for another four years.

“There is not a chance I would agree to that,” Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini told Israel’s Channel 10 television.

Eini said the strike may stretch into Friday, when most government offices are normally shut. Israel’s air and seaports would operate normally, Israel Radio said.

Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Andrew Heavens

Israel public sector strike headed for third day Read More »

‘Rampart’ director brings his Israeli military service to L.A.’s mean streets

Leave a Comment / Hollywood, Is Featured?, Mobile Sections, News /

In the Los Angeles film noir “Rampart,” Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Dave Brown patrols the broiling-hot city hunting for bad guys. A Vietnam War veteran, Brown sees himself as a soldier and the streets as an urban jungle. He’s the cop of your worst nightmare: racist, alcoholic and prone to pummel a suspect with his baton first and ask questions later. He’s also reminiscent of the real-life Rampart scandal of the 1990s, in which dozens of LAPD officers in an anti-gang unit were accused of serious corruption, leading to convictions for such crimes as dealing drugs and planting evidence.

The drama, directed and co-written by Israeli-born filmmaker Oren Moverman, uses the Rampart scandal as a backdrop for a character study of Brown (Woody Harrelson), who refuses to mend his ways amid a changing LAPD and the disintegration of his family. Brown’s ex-wives (played by Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon), sisters who live next door to each other and mothers to his two daughters, are trying to kick him out of their garage. 

And so he spirals downward into a kind of personal hell illuminated by scorching cinematography.  Along the way, the camera claustrophobically frames his face in extreme close-up to spotlight his escalating turmoil and paranoia. “We wanted to get very, very close, so that the only other option is to literally get inside his brain,” Moverman, 45, said during a recent interview at a West Hollywood hotel.  “You can even see the vein that is pop-pop-popping in his head.”

The tall, sturdily built Moverman came to “Rampart” when he was asked to rewrite a sprawling draft by the infamously hard-boiled Los Angeles crime novelist James Ellroy (“L.A. Confidential,” “The Black Dahlia”), whose gruff police characters are more often the good guys on the mean streets. 

The two writers met over coffee in Ellroy’s favorite red booth at the Pacific Dining Car — a noirish spot west of downtown. Ellroy had the kind of tough persona typical of a character in his novels, Moverman recalled. He asked plenty of questions about the Israeli’s service as a paratrooper in the first Lebanon War and the First Intifadah: “James is very close to the police; he loves the stories, the capers that come out of that culture,” the filmmaker said.

Oren Moverman

“My favorite book of James’ is his memoir, ‘My Dark Places,’ in which he talks a lot about the rape and murder of his mother, when he was a 10-year-old boy,” Moverman added. “That [explains] how somebody could grow up fascinated with gruesome crime stories and siding with the police. … I can totally understand what draws him to powerful male models of law and order and power.”

Moverman came to the script — and to its ideas about masculinity — from a very different perspective. He left his Israeli military service with a profound sense of how power can be abused, as well as how veterans can be scarred for life.  His interest in how soldiers reintegrate into society was the subject of his well-received directorial debut, “The Messenger,” which won Moverman an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and also starred Harrelson. 

To continue probing these issues, Moverman turned the character of Dave Brown into a veteran of the Vietnam War: “The Israeli part of it is a fascination I have with exploring masculinity as it breaks apart,” he said. “If you’re raised in a culture that expects you to be brave, strong and powerful in your expression, and you realize it’s not doable because you’re a human being, it can eat you up from the inside. It’s an invitation to a breakdown, and Dave Brown is an accident that’s waiting to happen. He thinks his war experience is no longer part of him, but everything about him really is — in his militaristic belief in law enforcement as an expression of power, domination and occupation. It’s not only in his work life, but also in his private life. It’s the chip that’s in his head.”

Moverman helped prepare Harrelson for the role through discussions about post-traumatic stress disorder and other war-related trauma: “Oren went through some heavy stuff …[in] Israel, so there was always something going on,” Harrelson said.  “But he’ll never talk about his own experiences, and if you do bring it up, he’ll kind of sidestep the issue.”

“Oren is interested in these solitary male characters,” said actor Ben Foster, who starred in “The Messenger” and plays a homeless Gulf War veteran in “Rampart.”  “He doesn’t judge them … and that’s his humanity, his pursuit of saying we don’t know where anybody’s been or where they’re going, but they are human beings.” 

Moverman’s “Rampart” revisions elaborate upon Brown’s private world:  “I wanted to explore questions such as, ‘What do you look like when you’re at home alone and nobody can see you act? What do you do with your emotions, and how do you deal with your personal relationships in a job that’s dirty? When you do bad things to bad people, how does that reflect on your domestic life, on your relationship with daughters, who look at their dad as the one shining example of masculinity?’ ”  Moverman said. 

Ellroy was tolerant of these changes to his screenplay. “It helped that I served in the Israeli military, I’m as tall as he is, and that it doesn’t appear automatically that he can beat me up — and I’m not kidding,” the director said.  “He jokes about it, but he doesn’t respect everyone, and physicality is a big part of respect for him.” 

In the movie,  the impact of the Rampart scandal within the LAPD proves to be Brown’s undoing. After he is caught on tape beating a suspect, Rodney King style, a police investigation and getting the boot from his ex-wives prompt his decline. “He has an almost anorexic disdain for eating,” Moverman said. “His soul is corrupted to the point where his only sustenance is power and sex.”

Toward the end of the film, the harsh sunlight appears to burn out Brown’s image as he drives around the city. “It’s as if the sun is consuming him,” the director explained.  “It’s like he’s driving into purgatory, and he’s condemned himself.”

“Rampart” opens Feb. 10.

‘Rampart’ director brings his Israeli military service to L.A.’s mean streets Read More »

Washington state Republican chokes up talking about gay marriage

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /