fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

June 11, 2012

Israel and the world Pt. 8- weekly news from Israel

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

•Musicians Ivri Lider and Johnny Goldstein, which are the musical duo- TYP, are well known here, in Israel, and apparently also in France. After conquering the top of the local music charts, TYP (The young Professionals) are on the right track to becoming a French smash. After a number of successful concerts there, their French producers, Universal, decided to issue a French release of their latest album “9am to 5pm, 5pm to Whenever.”

•Israeli Roswell? Last Thursday, Israeli police lines were occupied with citizens calling to report an unidentified flying object in the sky. A check made by an astronomer confirmed it was not a meteor, and the IDF reported there was no activity in the area at the time. The UFO was visible in northern Israel. Where are the Men in Black when needed?

•Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, joins the world effort to stop water shortage. Mekorot will use their expertise in finding unconventional sources for clean water.

•Right before leaving for D.C to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama, our adored president, Shimon Peres, received a petition signed by a group of artists, musicians and cultural figures, including the returning son- Gilad Shalit, requesting to use this opportunity to persuade the US President to release Jonathan Pollard, the American intelligence analyst caught for spying for Israel 25 years ago. The very special award will be presented to Peres on Wednesday.

•Deputy Prime Minister, Silvan Shalom participated in the World ORT’s quadrennial conference in DC. The conference provided a platform for the world’s Jewish educational organizations to set their programs and strategy for the next four years.The Israeli ORT operated the “Kadima Mada” (forwards science) program, which advances science and technology education in schools while integrating advanced teaching technology.  The program is also active in Gaza.

•Nadav Shmueli was critically injured in a car accident in 2008, while serving in the army. Since then, he has been hospitalized, unable to respond to anything. 18 months after the accident. Shmuely was transferred to the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit in Elisha hospital in Haifa, still defined as 100% disabled. One ordinary day, his sister, who was sitting by his bed, played him a comedy sketch of the famous Israeli comedy trio- Ma Kashur. During one of the punch-lines, Shmueli suddenly smiled and winked. When hearing his story, Ma Kashur immediately agreed to meet with him. Last week, Zion, Shalom and Asi, the funniest comedians in Israel, made their way to Elisha hospital and met with Shmueli, who is still in a wheelchair, unable to speak.

Israel and the world Pt. 8- weekly news from Israel Read More »

Brazilian Jewish leaders ask President Rousseff not to meet with Ahmadinejad

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, Worldwide /

Representatives of Brazil’s Jewish communities urged the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, not to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to Brazil.

Ahmadinejad is expected in Brazil next week for Rio +20, a United Nations summit on sustainable development that opens June 20.

A delegation of members from the umbrella organization of Brazil’s Jewish communities, Confederação Israelita do Brasil, or CONIB, stated their request during a meeting last week with the country’s foreign minister, Antonio Patriota.

“Ahmadinejad is arriving to Brazil at the invitation of the U.N., not the Brazilian government,” said Ricardo Berkiensztat, executive vice president of the Sao Paolo Jewish community. He added the Iranian Foreign Ministry has asked for a meeting with Rousseff, but no such meeting has been scheduled. Berkiensztat said he did not believe such a meeting would take place.

In explaining their objections, the members of the Jewish delegation cited fears that Iran’s nuclear program is military in nature and recalled Ahmadinejad’s repeated denials of the Holocaust, as well as Iranian persecution of minorities and critics of the regime.

CONIB and other Jewish organizations are planning protest rallies against Ahmadinejad’s arrival in several cities across Brazil for June 17.

Walter Feldman, a Brazilian congressman, warned his fellow lawmakers last week that Ahmadinejad was a “danger to Brazil and South America” and urged the Brazilian government to deny him entry.

Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who belongs to Rousseff’s party, hosted Ahmadinejad in 2009 in Brazil and visited Tehran the next year, when he brokered a deal to allow Iran to enrich uranium in Turkey.

Brazilian Jewish leaders ask President Rousseff not to meet with Ahmadinejad Read More »

Obama signs bill extending investor visa to Israelis

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, United States /

President Obama signed legislation that would that would add Israel to the list of countries eligible for non-immigrant investor visas in the United States.

The legislation, which was spearheaded by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), would grant Israelis E-2 investor visas, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. in order to be closer to their investments.

The legislation, signed Monday, passed the House and the Senate in recent months by wide bipartisan margins.

Seventy-nine countries are party to longstanding treaties with the United States that allow their citizens to apply for E-2 status.

Obama signs bill extending investor visa to Israelis Read More »

Cemetery chief Herbert Klapper’s salary among highest in Jewish communal world

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, United States /

Herbert Klapper, the president of a New Jersey not-for-profit cemetery, has one of the top salaries in the Jewish communal world.

Klapper, of Cedar Park & Beth El Cemetery in Paramus, took home a base salary of $729,000 in 2009, according to tax documents, the paper reported.

The Forward’s 2011 survey of Jewish communal salaries—a survey that did not include Jewish cemeteries—found only two individuals earning more than Klapper: Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center received $739,000 in 2009, and Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, received $853,000.

The paper found that only one other not-for-profit cemetery in the country with comparable revenues paid its top executive a higher salary in 2009. The cemetery, which is not Jewish, had assets 3 1/2 times larger than those of Cedar Park.

Lawrence Rose, Cedar Park’s general manager, defended Klapper’s salary.

“We have 300 acres of property and over 25,000 crypt spaces in modern beautiful buildings. There are no other facilities like ours on the East Coast,” he told the paper. “If you had visited other cemeteries, especially those in New York, you would have concluded that none offer the quality and dignity at burial, or offer mourners and visitors the opportunity to reflect in an environment like ours.”

Cemetery chief Herbert Klapper’s salary among highest in Jewish communal world Read More »

June 11, 2012

Leave a Comment / Israel, Must Reads, News, Rosners Domain-mobile, Worldwide /

Noteworthy

Middle East Peace Fantasies and the Israeli Reality

The international community and the Israeli left are mistaken if they believe Netanyahu will abandon Israel’s settlers, writes Arik Elman in Algemeiner.

To think that in Israel, today, there’s a viable constituency that is willing to support massive destruction of settlements, restoration of the suicidal “borders” of 1949 (with swaps, of course with swaps, always with swaps) and the carving out of the heart of the Jewish people in Jerusalem in exchange for an empty piece of paper, is to repeat the grievous mistake that the Obama administration made in the beginning of its dysfunctional relationship with Netanyahu.

How challenging is it to be Israel’s ‎First Lady? ‎

Bild newspaper finally publishes its much discussed interview by Stephanie Bilges, in which Sara Netanyahu talks about her life as the wife of Israel’s prime minister, her ‎work and her family. ‎

How does she manage to pursue a career while, at the same time, juggling the duties of ‎a First Lady and mother of two sons? “It is very important for me to work and pursue my ‎career, despite being First Lady”, says Sara. “I have studied for so many years and put ‎so much effort in to my education.”‎

Israel and the United States in Disagreement over Iran

Differing demands on Iran regarding its nuclear program is causing a rift between ‎the key allies, writes Zaki Shalom for the Institute of National Security Studies. ‎

Against the backdrop of the dialogue between the P-5+1 and Iran in recent weeks, ‎two major issues have emerged that display clear differences between Israel and the ‎United States. First, Israel’s timetable vis-à-vis Iran differs vastly from America’s. ‎While Israel operates out of a sense that it has very little time left, the United States ‎seems to be in no hurry because it has a much longer timeframe. Second, Israel is ‎making very specific and concrete demands of Iran, much more far-reaching than ‎those being made by the United States, at least for now.‎

Media Digest

Jerusalem Post: PA denies behind-the-scenes talks with Israel

Times of Israel: IDF brass warns of Syria’s ‎chemical weapon threat

Haaretz: Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial desecrated with anti-Semitic ‎slogans

New York Times: Syria’s Assads Turned to West for P.R.‎

Washington Post: The rapid ascent of ‎a Mubarak minister

Wall Street Journal: Syrian ‎Opposition Picks New ‎Leader

June 11, 2012 Read More »

United Synagogue’s Koach campus program gets a reprieve

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Mobile, News /

The Conservative movement has reduced funding for its college campus organization, and expects Koach supporters to come up with the remaining requested money, according to United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism’s executive vice president.

In its board meeting in Detroit on Sunday, USCJ voted to provide Koach with $100,000 for fiscal year 2013, beginning July 1, provided that the campus group’s supporters come up with an additional $130,000 by the end of December, Rabbi Steven Wernick told JTA.

The board also will work to develop a three- to five-year business plan for the organization, Wernick said. He called the program, which serves some 25 campuses and 3,000 students, a “high-impact program with minimal participation.”

The United Synagogue outlay is enough to fund the campus group until the end of December, he said.

“If they don’t raise the funds by then, they don’t have the resources to be able to continue it,” Wernick said.

Reports last week that United Synagogue might cut funding altogether led to the creation of savekoach.org, a petition to rescue the campus group.

The Women’s League of Conservative Judaism came to Koach’s rescue earlier this year when it raised about $35,000 in a “last-minute” campaign to save February’s Koach kallah, its annual conference, The Jewish Standard reported.

“We have continued to raise funds,” Rhonda Jacobs Kahn, Women’s League communications director, told JTA.

Rabbi Ari Israel, the Hillel director at the University of Maryland at College Park, called the decision “a step in the right direction.”

“We need to have ideologically based interests for those kids looking for it,” he said.

United Synagogue’s Koach campus program gets a reprieve Read More »

Ethicist Peter Singer awarded Australia’s highest honor

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, Worldwide /

Peter Singer, a U.S.-based philosopher and ethicist, was awarded Australia’s highest honor.

The Melbourne-born Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, on Monday was named a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s birthday awards for leading public debate on global poverty, animal rights and the human condition.

Singer, a vegetarian and a utilitarian, has been controversial for the Jewish establishment, signing a petition in 2010 renouncing his “right of return” under Israeli law and criticizing shechitah, or ritual slaughter, last year as “not the most humane way of killing an animal.”

He was joined on the honors list by Rosalind Fischl, who became the first female president of Sydney’s Great Synagogue in 2005 and is the inaugural president of the Council of Orthodox Synagogues in New South Wales, receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia; and Alice Spigelman, whose citation highlighted her work as a human rights advocate, particularly for women and refugees, named a Member of the Order of Australia.

More than a dozen Jews were listed among the 540 recipients of Orders of Australia, including Michael Zylberman, a champion of the revival of Yiddish in Melbourne, and David Cohen, who co-founded two Jewish schools in Sydney.

Ethicist Peter Singer awarded Australia’s highest honor Read More »

Student apologizes for sporting Hitler look, offering Nazi salute on ‘Mustache Day’

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, Worldwide /

A student at a Johannesburg private school who mimicked Adolf Hitler on “Moustache Day” and gave a Nazi salute has apologized, the school’s headmaster said.

Roger Cameron, headmaster of St. John’s College, in a letter that appears on the school’s website wrote that the boy, as well as the prefect who was managing the process, “have apologized for the insensitivity and hurt.” The letter also said that the school also “apologises unreservedly for the offense caused by this incident.

The boy had gone on stage recently sporting a mustache and hairstyle similar to Hitler and performed the Nazi salute. Most of the students laughed, and more than half stood up and returned the salute, according to reports.

A Jewish student at St. John’s, a Christian school for boys from nursery school to high school, wrote an emotional letter to Cameron saying that as a Jewish boy who lost family to the Nazis, he was disgusted, according to the Sunday Times of South Africa. The boy said he broke down after the incident and had to leave school early due to the “pain and hurt inside me.” He said he didn’t want the offending students to be sanctioned, but wanted them to understand that their behavior was unacceptable.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies, the community’s umbrella body, and the Johannesburg branch of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Centre met with the school administration on June 8. Cameron told the Times that the school had immediately begun the process of educating the boys about the incident that had caused “much distress and anger among staff, boys and our wider community.”

Wendy Kahn of the Board of Deputies said her group was working with the school “to find constructive ways to help teach pupils tolerance.”

Student apologizes for sporting Hitler look, offering Nazi salute on ‘Mustache Day’ Read More »

Israel skips U.S.-hosted counterterrorism meeting

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, Worldwide /

Israel did not attend the inaugural meeting of a counterterrorism forum established by the United States.

The Israeli business daily Globes reported Monday that Israel was not invited to the meeting because of objections by Turkey, while Israel’s Foreign Ministry told the Times of Israel that it is “not estranged” from the forum.

The Global Counterterrorism Forum held its first meeting June 8 in Istanbul. Established last September by the Obama administration, the forum is made up of 29 members, according to Globes, 10 of which are Arab countries: Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Asked by a reporter whether Israel has requested membership in the forum or whether the United States, as a co-host of the forum, has sought to get Israel involved, a U.S. State Department spokesman replied that “Our idea with the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) was to bring together a limited number of traditional donors, front-line states, and emerging powers to develop a more robust, yet representative, counterterrorism capacity-building platform. A number of our close partners with considerable experience countering and preventing terrorism are not included among the GCTF’s founding members.

“We have discussed the GCTF and ways to involve Israel in its activities on a number of occasions, and are committed to making this happen.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the Times of Israel that the Israeli government will participate in working groups formed by the forum, and said that Israel had not been planning on attending last week’s meeting.

In May, Turkey blocked Israel’s participation in the NATO summit in Chicago.

Turkey and Israel have broken off diplomatic relations and military agreements since the Mavi Marmara Gaza flotilla incident.

Israel skips U.S.-hosted counterterrorism meeting Read More »