by Aliza [➚] · Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
Back from a long blogging hiatus:
Editorial in last week’s Boston Globe calls out for Jews to remember and draw from their own history to protect immigrants’ access to health care:
US Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, a medical doctor, said on the House floor in July that “Obamacare,’’ as he calls it, “is going to give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance at the cost of taxpayers.’’
Never mind that Americans already pay for illegal immigrants through emergency room and charity care, which drives up the cost of insurance for everybody. The Senate bill already written clearly defines eligible individuals only as “citizens or lawfully admitted permanent residents.’’ The House bills include an explicit section titled “No federal payment for undocumented aliens.’’
What part of “legal’’ don’t the opponents understand?
“Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,’’ immigrants are no different from the Jews Shylock was defending in a great drama 400 years ago. The country needs to stop pretending that they don’t also bleed.
This is a problem we feel acutely in Massachusetts as the state tries valiantly to cover 30,000 LEGAL immigrants with 1/3 of the money they need, due to the funding pulled by the state legislature, removing Aliens with Special Status from eligibility for Commonwealth Care, the subsidized health care created by MA health care reform which sought to ensure universal health care for all MA residents, immigrants and citizens alike.
How many now middle-class Jewish families were once “aliens with special status?” If you prick them, do they not bleed?
What will YOU do about this? Or will it set a precedent for denying coverage to legal immigrants nationwide, as many fear?
by Aliza [➚] · Monday, January 12th, 2009
An interfaith group of religious leaders in the Boston area have created a petition calling for a ceasefire and organized a silent peace vigil to end the crisis in Gaza and Israel to be held tomorrow:
Tuesday, January 13th | 5:30-6:30 PM | near Park Street T Station, Boston, MA
Similarly to those who organized yesterday’s peace rally in NYC, Boston-area Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders desired to create a different kind of response than the rhetoric emerging on both “sides” of the conflict; instead of perpetuating these “two sides” the leaders have chosen to “stretch our hands out to each other” and “stand shoulder to shoulder” to make their declaration public, to end the violence and express their anguish for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
The petition, calling for a ceasefire, has been signed by many faith leaders from Massachusetts. It states, in part:
In the face of many competing narratives, we recognize that the overriding common need of the peoples of the region is the prompt implementation of a just and lasting peace. Toward that end, and particularly in response to the current hostilities,
We call upon the United States and the international community immediately to intercede to help reestablish a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, toward the goal of a permanent cessation of hostilities
We call upon Hamas immediately to end all rocket attacks on Israel, and upon Israel immediately to end its military campaign in Gaza
We call for an immediate end to all strikes on civilian centers and citizens, both Israeli and Palestinian
We call for lifting of the blockade on Gaza as to all non-military goods, for an immediate and significant increase in humanitarian aid to address the needs of the people of Gaza, and for all parties involved to join in taking responsibility to address those human needs
We call on all parties involved in the conflict to work sincerely and vigorously toward a just and lasting peace that addresses and promotes the national aspirations of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples
We call on President-elect Obama to make clear that as President he will urgently assert US leadership to achieve a comprehensive diplomatic resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts
You are encouraged to add your voice to the growing number of voices calling for peaceful resolutions to the conflict by signing the petition and attending the vigil.
Logistics for the vigil are being coordinated by the Boston Workmen’s Circle. Organizers will be providing signs and request that no additional signs be brought. See the Workmen’s Circle page or Facebook event notice for more details.
by Aliza [➚] · Thursday, March 13th, 2008
The two photos above, shot by Dotan Greenvald, are part of the Breaking the Silence exhibit, supported by your very own Jewschool, which remains open for guided tours at Harvard Hillel in Boston through through March 16th. My recent visit to the exhibit was intense, eye opening, and almost magical in its ability to cut through all of the rhetoric and illustrate humanity.
These photos, like much of the exhibit, seek to demonstrate the realities experienced by many IDF soldiers serving at checkpoints, on patrols and fulfilling other tasks in the Occupied Territories, as told through the narratives of soldiers giving tours of the photo exhibit, and testimonials available at the exhibit and online.
All of the photos were from the personal collections of soldiers who served in the territories- they took pictures as part of their daily life, and to document their experiences serving their country. According to my guide at the exhibit, Oded Naaman, a former IDF soldier affiliated with Breaking the Silence, one of the behaviors mastered quickly by soldiers serving in the territories, is the practice of pointing one’s gun ahead of one’s body before moving in any direction, in order to “show presence” and be ready for danger. Greenvald, who is the other former IDF soldier who has been giving tours of the exhibit in Boston, was interested in capturing some of the nuance of this behavior–the degree to which one ends up viewing everything through the scope of his weapon. In the first shot, he views an innocent thirteen year old boy tending pigeons on his roof in the West-Casba. Juxtaposed with this, he photographed two of his friends talking, also through the lens of his gun, with his nigh-vision scope. Oded explained the quickness and ease with which humans adapt to the many behaviors necessary for these soldiers carrying out the work of the occupation–such as pointing your gun at children and your friends.
This is one of several visual memories which stand out as ideas and feelings which can never be captured in a policy briefing paper, newspaper editorial or email. They are the very real experiences happening each to day to adolescents barely old enough to vote, in whose hands the day-to-day necessities of the occupation are held.
When we [rightfully] consider the lives of innocent Israelis killed in bombings or innocent Palestinian children killed by IDF fire, this exhibit asks us also to consider the toll that the occupation takes on those who carry out its essential functions, and the effect these experiences have on Israeli society more broadly. For those in the Boston area, I highly recommend a visit to glimpse the images and hear the stories of the occupying soldiers.
by Aliza [➚] · Monday, February 11th, 2008
You know things have gotten weird when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) writes an opinion column in The Forward. With a
similar message to Rabbi Arthur Waskow‘s letter to the editor last week, Durbin criticized a weak Forward editorial, which managed to simultaneously support and criticize the baseless inflammatory emails about Barack Obama’s supposed secret Muslim life that have been circulating among the Jewish community. Durbin sets the record straight on the truth with certainty, something the Forward editorial board was sadly unwilling to do with its wishy-washy “Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Almost certainly not.”
The editorial board released a clarification last week, claiming that it meant to criticize the defamatory emails all along. But many reading the editorial would not get that impression–would you?
If you still have any doubts, Mobius’s recent blog post reminds us of the true Barack Obama’s speech to the Sojourners conference last summer.
by Aliza [➚] · Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
In a move heard loudly around the environmental world, the Israeli government has reached a deal with Project Better Place and Renault-Nissan for the three partners to create an electric car infrastructure throughout the holy land by 2011. Israel is cited as the perfect site for such a project due to its small size and the fact that electric cars currently can not go long distances without being recharged. The tax incentives and system are expected to make the electric car cheaper than using fuel for most drivers, given the increasing cost of fuel.
Using the pre-paid cellphone system as model, Renault-Nissan will build battery recharging stations around the country, and the government will provide tax incentives to purchasers. One of the impetuses behind the project, Idan Ofer, of Project Better Place, hopes this can be a model that will eventually go international. “If Israel will ever produce a Nokia, it will be this,†he told the NYTimes.
by Aliza [➚] · Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
There are only a few days remaining to vote in the JFSJ poll to shape the upcoming Domestic Jewish Agenda. I’m very excited about this campaign for which Hazon, Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, Jdub Records, Jewcy.com, Jewish Student Press Service, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, Jews United for Justice, Jewschool.com, Moishe/Kavod House Boston, Progressive Jewish Alliance, The Shalom Center, The Tribe, VelveteenRabbi.com , and Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring are sponsors.
I’m only dissapointed that reforming our food system did not make it to the 10 issues that voters can choose from to help shape the new domestic social agenda for Jews/Jewish organizations. Does this mean that food systems will not be included in the agenda? Some might argue that food is encompassed by the “Environment” choice, but there is much that needs reform in our food system beyond its environmental implications. Perhaps someone from Hazon can clue me in to whether this was discused and why it was left out.
(cross-posted on JCarrot)
by Aliza [➚] · Thursday, March 8th, 2007
In the past few weeks, I heard words and music from several wonderful folks promoting action on the genocide in Darfur, both sponsored by different segments of the Boston Jewish community. The first was a benefit for AJWS at the Kavod House, advertised in the first “Raise your Voice Against Darfur” post,where the wonderfully talented and inspiring Minna Bromberg sang a collection of her own works and mostly Pete Seeger- folk songs. The concert also included teaching about our responsibility to act on Darfur from Rabbi Or Rose of Hebrew College, and a brief column about supporting targeted divestment from Sudan by Nicholas Kristof of the NYTimes.
Then, a week ago Tuesday, Tufts Hillel sponsored a dinner with and lecture by Nicholas Kristof, who has been a lone passionate voice in the public sphere on Darfur.
Although I was at the May 2006 DC rally and have remained [very] marginally informed on the issue, these two events marked a more specific mental engagement with the issue on my part. Nick Kristof presented footage of some individuals he had met in recent trips to Darfur and neighboring Chad, which, coupled with his commentary about their situations, seemed difficult for the audience to take. My initial reaction to the lecture, was that it was overall pretty good but not stunning. Kristof alluded to the regret we would feel, as Americans, in the future, if we looked back and saw that we had done nothing. In the same vein, he seemed to list future reflection as a primary reason for which we should act and encourage action by others on Darfur. To me, this seemed pat at best, and disconcerting at worst– I couldn’t imagine that this was his primary reason for continuing to visit and write about Darfur, in a way to which nobody else has come close.
I remembered some things he had said at the dinner, when he was asked how he has the courage to return to such dangerous situations knowing he has a family and a life back home. More »
by Aliza [➚] · Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
Since the AJCommittee diatribe last fall and the subsequent ZOA/Israel on Campus debacle about the Union of Progressive Zionists sponsorship of the “Breaking the Silence” tour, I’ve heard a lot of muttering in the form of emails and blog comments, but aside from formal efforts to keep UPZ in the Israel on Campus Coalition, nobody has stepped up to say — stop bullying us. we won’t allow it.
On a more recent smaller matter, however, Ken Bob, of Ameinu and my hometown, has a letter to the editor in the March 1st Forward, explaining the real story of a recent Conference of Presidents meeting at which Morton Klein claimed to have dressed down Richard Jones, US Ambassador to Israel, about towing the Jewish-American “line” and not working with the PA under Mahmoud Abbas. Bob called Klein on his lie that the whole room broke out in applause after his lecture. In fact, according to Bob, when he got up to show support for Jones’ diplomacy, there may have been even more applause.
Also, the CA-based Jewish Voice for Peace (not expressly Zionist) has launched a new blog, MuzzleWatch, ostensibly, as their deck says, to “track efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy.”
Keeping the topics on the table of public debate, seems a wise move in an attempt to prevent the individual-bashing and marginalizing tactics that have been par for the course for too long now.
As Mobius mentioned last month here, it is high time for the Jewish left fractions to unite, but there seems to be only divisiveness and no willingness to unite above egos. I think the “two Jews, three opinions” thing is coming back to bite us in the ass.
But seriously, this reminds me of More »
by Aliza [➚] · Thursday, October 5th, 2006
I really should be studying for my nutrition exam right now, but I’m too inspired by the connections in my life to put off sharing this with others. In my agriculture science and policy class we just begin studying “water” as it relates to soils and other issues in agriculture. I must admit, it’s been a little hard, as someone who has never spent a day working on a farm (2 hours in a compost garden in Oaxaca notwithstanding) to conceptualize, let alone memorize, many of the detailed scientific characteristics and irrigation strategies I am learning about.
After class I helped a few other students put together a pre-fab Sukkah outside of my school building. It was a lot more down-to-earth than other sukkah-building I’ve done, becuase there were really just a few of us, scattered from my school (the nutrition school) and the medical school across the street, and even one staff member; you could tell how genuinely touched each of was that it was really coming together, and we’d really have a little sukkah to spend time in throughout the coming week, in planned programs (as of yet unplanned, but still…) and quiet individual moments, eating, studying, shivering…
While looking for resources to prompt a lunchtime discussion in the Sukkah next week about connections between Judaism, food and agriculture, I also just read about a [relatively] new organization called Canfei Nesharim to encourage environmental awareness and conservation in the Orthodox community, an organization which has put together a number of resources and activities around the upcoming holidays, and also specifically to celebrate Simchat Beit Ha-shoeva, the “Water-Drawing Ceremony,” about which I previously knew nothing.
Subsequently I saw that a college friend of mine now works for COEJL, and stumbled upon this wonderful d’rash for Sukkot by the illustrious Frances Kreimer’s mom…
I think when my friends and I sit around and bitch and moan about how spending time with the Jewish community is frustrating because of all the–what someone I recently met termed them–”Princeton i-banker types,” we tend to feel like we are alone in this frustration and are on the constant path of existential crisis.. So it’s nice to read that Mordechai Kaplan
“agonized over his rabbinic role serving wealthy capitalist Jews in a synagogue in New York City, when his heart was with the workers.”
Wow. Rabbi Fuchs-Kreimer just keeps hitting on all the insightful points in this piece, tying together both the social justice and “socially-conscious living/back-to-nature” being reclaimed by young Jews these days. She also writes, of Kaplan:
In a relatively rare mood of contentment, after a morning of teaching sermon-writing followed by a brisk two mile walk home, he wrote: “The lunch I found at home was the ideal one for the appetite I had worked up on [my] walk, oatmeal…asparagus tips on toast in an ocean of cream sauce and a cup of coffee with the dried crumbs of chocolate cake…I gave the world three hours of homiletics and the world gave me back a nourishing lunch. I can never cease marveling at the miracle of the exchange of goods and services… It is for this marvel of marvels that I thank God whenever I say grace [after meals], and I say it quite often with cap on or without a cap.”
mmm….too bad it’s not asparagus season right now. I think now I can get to studying with a clean conscience and stop agonizing over the fact that I missed participating in my program’s local food week…..you know, it was Yom Kippur and then I suddenly had to catch up on work….I think this coming week should be the real local food week…I can’t imagine a better way to honor the earth, and all those who tire to conserve it, improve it and bring us tasty, nutritious foods, then to celebrate them and think about the ways Judaism provides me with these perfect opportunities to integrate my studies into my life. Here’s to Mordechai Kaplan! Maybe his blessed memory can give me the strength and inspiration to concoct a Simchat Beit Ha-Shoeva ceremony in the sukkah of a Boston medical school near you next week! After all, according to Canfei Nesharim, the Mishnah (Sukkah 51a) says that anyone who has not participated in it has not known true joy.
cross-posted on The Great Work Begins
by Aliza [➚] · Saturday, May 6th, 2006
Hey y’all–I’m a new contributor. To start off with I’d like to declare my undying love and support for Tony Kushner with the following:
After joking with a friend about how bubble-like her Boston Jewish community is in its progressiveness, I’ve recently become very excited to join this community when I move to Beantown to begin graduate school this fall. It seems that not only did Brandeis remove Palestinan art, but is being heckled from the center/right for having chosen to give an honorary award to the playwright Tony Kushner.
I wonder, then, if this sudden attack on Brandeis for having chosen to honor Kushner, represents a right-ward turn, or merely the country trying to inflict its conservative notions on one of the remaining bastions of Jewish liberality. Some students, alumni as well as Charles Jacobs of The David Project and the head of the ZOA have called for the honorary degree to be rescinded, ignoring, I think the primary reason for and opportunity in a graduation speaker like Kushner. As Kushner states in a letter he wrote to Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz,
“the world’s a big, scary mess, and there’s no reason why graduation, which is when students leave academia and enter the world, ought to be stress-, dissent- or anger-free. Ma nishtanah, if you don’t mind my saying so, why should this gathering be different from all other gatherings?”
The letter is one of the most well-written and concise counterpoints to the prevalent rhetoric toted by the likes of the ADL and Frontpagemag.com.
If your want proof that Kushner has the potential to be a much more engaging commencement speaker than Gen. Wesley Clark was at my graduation , then look no further.
I do hope that the absurd McCarthyite tactics of the ZOA will be overcome the University’s sensibilities. The commentary is already flying all over the Internet, and I anticipate receiving some forwarded email from my mother within the next few days, urging me to call Brandeis and express my fervent wishes for Kushner’s honorary degree to be revoked, but I think maybe the content of that letter will get around. Maybe even the watchdogs for anti-Zionist behavior will try to understand Kushner’s words, which, in my opinion, do echo the sentiments of Justice Brandeis and his legacy:
“I don’t think, write or speak in soundbites, and people at a university shouldn’t either. Israel, and everything else on earth worth arguing about, deserves more than a sentence-worth’s consideration, and a person shouldn’t be judged on the basis of surgically selected quotes gleaned from right-wing websites.”
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email