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Jewish Journal

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August 12, 2016

Rosner’s Torah-Talk: Parashat Devarim

Leave a Comment / Israel, News, Rosner's Domain, Rosner's Video, Rosners Domain-mobile, Worldwide /

This week we do not have a new Torah-Talk video, so we decided to revisit our three existing videos on Parashat Devarim.

First a few words on the Torah portion: Parashat Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22) – is the first portion from the book of Deuteronomy. In this parasha, Moses begins his review of the story of the people of Israel in the 40 years following their exodus from Egypt. In his narrative, he recalls events such as his appointment of Judges and magistrates; the wandering through the desert; the sending of the spies; the people's spurning of the Promised Land; the wars fought against the Emorite kings; and his own words of encouragement to his successor Joshua.

Here is our talk with Rabbi Alan Freedman on the need to retell the story of the people of Israel:

Here is Rabbi Rachel Isaacs on the role of personal narrative and life experiences in forming our attitude towards our legacy:

And here’s Rabbi Elie Kaunfer on the interesting opening of the retelling of the story of Israel in the desert:

Rosner’s Torah-Talk: Parashat Devarim Read More »

Jewish Democratics push back against Canova’s attacks on Wasserman Schultz’s Israel Record

Leave a Comment / Jewish Insider, United States /

In the final stretch of the competitive primary in Florida’s 23rd congressional district, Jewish Democrats are pushing back against Tim Canova’s attacks on Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Israel record.

As first  Canova, who is backed by former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, tied himself to top Democrats who voted against the Iran nuclear deal, including two local House members who have endorsed his challenger, the incumbent Congresswoman. “When called upon to protect Israel some legislators step up,” the pamphlet reads, quoting excerpts from statements issued by Reps. Ted Deutch and Lois Frankel and Senator Chuck Schumer against the Iran deal. “Debbie Wasserman Schultz waffled back and forth before voting for the Iran nuclear deal, choosing party and personal political ambition over principle. Tim Canova sides with Deutch, Schumer, and Frankel.”

“As Jewish representatives from South Florida, we are frankly disappointed that Mr. Canova would use us so disingenuously,” Congress members Lois Frankel and Ted Deutch said in a joint statement on Thursday. “We both strongly support Debbie Wasserman Schultz for re-election, in no small part due to her deep commitment to Israel and her tireless advocacy on behalf of the Jewish community in South Florida and around the world. We are calling on Tim Canova to immediately stop using our names and images.”

But despite his harsh attack on Wasserman Schultz, Canova seems to be still conflicted with himself over the nuclear deal. During an event at the Sunny Isles Beach Democratic Club last Monday, Canova said he can’t tell if he would’ve voted for or against the nuclear deal since he wasn’t a member of Congress at the time. He added, “I don’t want to get into a big debate about Iran. I will say that now that the agreement has been adopted, I’m for it. I don’t believe in tearing it up. It should be enforced, it should be strictly implemented.”

In an interview with Jewish Insider, former Congressman Ron Klein accused Canola of playing politics with an issue like Israel just to play to the anti-Iran deal voters in the district while at the same time appeasing the Bernie Sanders side of the party. “I’ve known [Wasserman Schultz since 1992. She is a stalwart pro-Israel person, and there’re very few exceptions to that,” Klein said. “I think him criticizing her about the Iran deal vote, and then himself going back and forth in his own position is a little bit credulous.”

According to Klein, Canola is trying to have it both ways. “He is trying to play to the Bernie Sanders side of the Democratic primary, which supports the Iran deal, and on the other hand, there are a lot of people in the Jewish community who don’t support it,” he said. “It is just hypocritical to call her out on her position when she gave it a lot of thought and has a lifetime record of being pro-Israel. He is playing politics with this issue, and it is not something we should play politics with.”

Wasserman Schultz is heavily favored to keep her seat in the August 30 primary. Just this week, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton endorsed her reelection bid during a campaign swing through South Florida, and President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe bIden announced their support for Wasserman Schultz in March.

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Jewish Democratics push back against Canova’s attacks on Wasserman Schultz’s Israel Record Read More »

Obama’s final religious freedom report slams Muslim countries’ blasphemy laws

Leave a Comment / United States /

The Obama administration’s final report on religious freedoms focused on oppressive blasphemy laws and societal norms in Muslim countries.

The report for 2015, posted Wednesday on the State Department’s website, begins with a harrowing account of the stoning death last year of Farkhunda Malikzada, a resident of Kabul who was wrongly accused of burning a Koran.

It notes also the swift justice Afghanistan authorities delivered to her killers, saying this “demonstrates that change is possible.”

“In many other Islamic societies, societal passions associated with blasphemy — deadly enough in and of themselves — are abetted by a legal code that harshly penalizes blasphemy and apostasy,” said the report, compiled under the direction of Rabbi David Saperstein, the ambassador at large for religious freedoms, and until this appointment, the longtime director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center.

“Such laws conflict with and undermine universally recognized human rights,” it said. “All residents of countries where laws or social norms encourage the death penalty for blasphemy are vulnerable to attacks such as the one on Farkhunda.”

It singled out for criticism, in the executive summary, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan.

The report’s tough tone comes after years of Obama administration outreach to the Muslim world, launched with a Cairo speech in 2009, shortly after he was elected.

That speech figured on a list of Obama administration accomplishments in advancing religious freedoms the White House posted Wednesday, separately from the State Department report.

The “Fact Sheet: Promoting and Protecting Religious Freedom Around the Globe” covering both of Obama’s terms had a slightly defensive tone.

“Throughout the Obama Administration, the U.S. Government has prioritized efforts to promote freedom of religion globally as a universal human right, a strategic national interest, and as a key foreign policy objective,” it said, and noted that advocacy to release religious prisoners of conscience often takes place behind the scenes.

Republicans and conservative Christian groups have accused Obama of deprioritizing advocacy for religious freedoms, compared with his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Among other accomplishments listed in the White House release are speeches in 2014 and 2016, when Obama decried the rise of anti-Semitism among other religious persecutions, and the convening in 2015, at the behest of the United States, Israel, Canada and the European Union, of a special United Nations session on combating anti-Semitism.

The State Department report’s Israel section noted a rise in attacks on Israeli Jews last year over tensions regarding Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, a site holy to Muslims and Jews, as well as retaliatory Jewish attacks on Muslims and Christians.

“Because religion and ethnicity were often closely linked, it was difficult to categorize much of this violence as being solely based on religious identity,” it said.

It also noted the monopoly that the Orthodox rabbinate continues to maintain over Jewish religious life there.

“The government allowed persons of all religions to access the Western Wall, but with the strict separation of women and men,” it said. “The government implemented policies based on Orthodox Jewish interpretations of religious law; in July it reversed its previous decision to allow a wider spectrum of Orthodox rabbis to perform conversions. The government did not permit civil marriages, interfaith marriages, or marriages performed by non-Orthodox rabbis or nonrecognized religious authorities.”

In a separate section on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the report noted that “anti-Semitic material continued to appear” in official Palestinian Authority media in the West Bank and in Hamas media in the West Bank, and that Hamas and other radical groups often followed their rocket attacks on Israel with anti-Semitic statements claiming responsibility.

Obama’s final religious freedom report slams Muslim countries’ blasphemy laws Read More »

Top 10 reasons to have a flu shot

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Every year I write a post in the late summer letting you know that flu season is approaching and to get a flu shot. I try to keep my posts informative and evidence-based, but I don’t have anything new to tell you about that.

Actually, I do have one bit of news. Some of you may have heard of FluMist, the flu vaccine given by nasal spray. It’s especially popular with children and with patients with needle phobias because it’s not injected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks the effectiveness of flu vaccines every flu season. In the 2015-2016 season FluMist offered essentially no protection against the flu, and this followed the previous two seasons in which its effectiveness was much lower than expected. So the ” target=”_blank”>see my post in 2012. If you’re over 6 months old, you should probably have one. If you want to read my responses to frequently raised objections to the flu shot, ” target=”_blank”>Martian Death Flu terrified you.
2. If you don’t, the week of high fever, body aches, and cough will pale next to the months of regret.

And the number one reason to get a flu shot: It will briefly distract you from the election.

Our shipment of flu shots came in this week. Please make an appointment to get yours.

Learn more:

” target=”_blank”>ACIP votes down use of LAIV for 2016-2017 flu season (CDC)
Top 10 reasons to have a flu shot Read More »

Moses the Spoken Word Artist – A poem for Parsha Devarim

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Have you ever started a new book, the last in a series
you’ve been reading for a while? You’re invested and

this is the beginning of your final time in that world.
Well here we are at the beginning of the fifth of five.

It opens like a story arced TV show. Previously in the
Torah as Moses recounts everything that led to this

moment. There’s veiled scolding for transgressions.
We recount the time Moses said, thirty-nine years ago

when the people were first at the foot of the promised
land, I’ll turn this Exodus right around. And he made

good on that promise. The family vacation was
cancelled and we realize, these decades later, those

people whose feet touched Egyptian soil, are not the
same people who will cross the Jordan. How’s that

for follow-through parenting? Oh, Moses I love, as a
poet, that this book, this chapter, this parsha is called

Words, and that you’ll spend most of it saying them.
I am a person of the words just as we are a people

of the Books that contain them. This oral history
your final classroom, reads like a spoken word event.

Did the Israelites snap when you showed how God
multiplied them? You are today as many as there

are stars in the heavens. We’ve got a population
explosion on our hands and that’s a promise kept

if I’ve ever seen one. I know I would have snapped
at every pause out of habit. Or maybe I did. I keep

forgetting I was there. I could describe what I was
wearing, but mundane details aren’t what this is about.

Watch out Canaanites! As soon as Moses gets done
with this piece, we’re coming for you, or at least

the land you sit in. That’s our other promise.
I’m going to read this book slow. Not more than one

chapter a week. I have a feeling when it’s all over
I’m going to start the whole series again.

Moses the Spoken Word Artist – A poem for Parsha Devarim Read More »

Jonathan Pollard loses bid to have post-release restrictions lifted

Leave a Comment / United States /

Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy intelligence officer convicted of spying for Israel, lost a bid to overturn restrictive probation conditions imposed when he was released in November after 30 years in prison.

US District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan on Thursday denied a challenge by Pollard to requirements imposed by the US Parole Commission that he wear an electronic tracking device and submit his work computer to monitoring, Reuters reported.

Pollard’s lawyers argued the conditions were arbitrary. They argued that he posed no flight risk, nor a threat to disclosing secrets as he would need to remember information from over 30 years ago that they said had no remaining value.

They contended that leaving the computer restriction in place was preventing Pollard from taking an investment firm job.

But Forrest ruled that the commission had a rational basis for imposing both conditions, such as Pollard’s expressed desire to leave the United States for Israel, where his wife lives and where he was granted citizenship while in prison.

She also noted that the commission also had reviewed a letter from US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stating that documents Pollard had compromised remain classified at the levels of “top secret” and “secret.”

“The Commission was certainly within its discretion to credit Director Clapper’s characterization of the intelligence Pollard compromised over the characterization advanced by Pollard’s preferred sources,” Forrest wrote.

Eliot Lauer, a lawyer for Pollard, said he was disappointed with the ruling and said his attorneys were studying it.

Pollard, 62, pleaded guilty in 1986 to conspiracy to commit espionage in connection with providing Israeli contacts with hundreds of classified documents he had obtained as a naval intelligence specialist.

He was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison. After serving 30 years, which included time in custody following his 1985 arrest, Pollard was released on parole on Nov. 20 from a federal prison in North Carolina and now lives in New York.

Jonathan Pollard loses bid to have post-release restrictions lifted Read More »

Live & Dine 2016: Fantastic Food, New Friends and Great Music at the Fairmont

Leave a Comment / Travel /

Angeleno Magazine from Modern Luxury celebrates each summer at the ” target=”_blank”>Live and Dine 2016