This is the final post from our guestposters, Rae Abileah and Ariel Vegosen, Jewish Voice for Peace volunteer youth activist members on the ground at the United Methodist general conference leading up to the divestment vote.-ed.
When it comes to the nonviolent tactic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, the United Methodist Church now has B and S covered. But without the D, is it just BS? No, not entirely.
Yesterday, May 2, the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) failed to pass a measure to divest from three companies – Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and HP – profiting from Israeli occupation and human rights abuses of Palestinians, but succeeded in resolving to boycott Israeli settlement products. We were in Tampa at the UMC conference this past week as part of a Jewish advocacy team for boycott and divestment, and returned home to the San Francisco Bay Area just a day before the vote took place. Yesterday we watched the UMC livestream, twitter and twitter feed on the edge of our seats. The outcome was a deeply divided church that takes a firm stand against Occupation but isn’t yet willing to put its money where its values are. And “yet” is the operative word here, because the church is clearly now one step closer to a day when this will happen. More »
This is a guest post by David Kelsey. David is a former baal teshuvah who left ultra-Orthodoxy after witnessing the dark side of Jewish fundamentalism. He is a proud fourth generation secular Jew who has written about the recruitment techniques of kiruv organizations and their Liberal backers on Jewschool before, especially NCSY and the Jewish Student Union (JSU).
The Washington Post has shamefully printed an advertorial for Aish HaTorah in DC without even marking it as such.
In September, Aish will launch a new Sunday School program for children ages 5-13, encouraging diversity, and imbuing the vibrancy, relevance and joy of Jewish life, regardless of background or affiliation.
In fact, despite Rabbi Buxbaum’s denunciation of “labels and sects,” Aish promotes a specific brand of black hat Judaism, which includes contempt not only for secular and Liberal Judaism, but even Modern Orthodoxy. More »
This is the second of a three-post series from Jewish Voice for Peace volunteer youth activist members on the ground at the United Methodist general conference leading up to the divestment vote. The second post is from Rae Abileah. -ed.
On Tuesday morning just as the sun rose over the Keys, I touched down in Tampa, Florida to join a team of volunteers and organizers working to support a United Methodist resolution for church divestment from three companies that profit from the Israeli Occupation: Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett-Packard. Walking into the Tampa Convention Center only hours later, I asked myself, “What am I, a Jew, doing at this conference, and can I make a difference?” 72 hours later, I know exactly why I’m here. More »
This is the first of a three-post series from Jewish Voice for Peace volunteer youth activist members on the ground at the United Methodist general conference leading up to the divestment vote. The first post is from Ariel Vegosen. -ed.
As a young Jewish person the words “Tampa, Florida” immediately make me think of bubbes and zadies, clear water, manatees, and a lack of good bagels. This week Tampa is taking on a whole new meaning for me as I join United Methodists at their General Conference in Tampa. You might be wondering what’s a nice Jewish girl like me doing at the United Methodist General Conference?
For many years United Methodist resolutions have called for an end to the Israeli occupation and a sharing of the city of Jerusalem, which along with being a holy city to Jews, is also a holy city to Christians and Muslims. Despite these resolutions, the United Methodist boards and agencies hold stock in companies sustaining the occupation including Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard. At the 2012 10-day conference in Tampa the United Methodists are voting on a resolution that would divest the church from these companies. I am here as a Jewish ally to support divestment and to support my Methodist brothers and sisters as they make this important and historic decision. More »
Following is a guest post by Rabbi Rebecca Lillian, current resident of Malmo, Sweden.
In early March, when I was asked to write a column about Jewish life in Malmö, I began like this: Google “Jews in Malmö.” Most of the results will be about the rise in anti-Semitism, the hostility between Muslims and Jews, the anti-Semitic rants of the mayor, and the number of Jews who are fleeing Sweden’s third largest city.
Six weeks later, you can skip the Google search. The Jewish media have their eye on Malmö, thanks to the most recent spewing of idiotic, anti-Semitic rants by mayor Ilmar Reepalu. This time, he tried to claim that the Jewish community of Malmö had allowed itself to be infiltrated by the white supremacist Sweden Democrat party in order to attack Muslims. When confronted, Reepalu admitted that his accusation was baseless. Dominos have begun to fall since then. The leader of his Social Democrat party scolded the mayor, and word has it that Reeplu might even be open to hearing from Jewish citizens. It remains unclear whether there will be any real impact on Reeplalu’s mayorship.
Yet, although Malmö’s Jews do face anti-Semitism from some hateful, even violent neighbors as well as from the mayor, things have changed since 2010, when the Forward published an article titled, “For Jews, Swedish City is a Place to Move Away From.” In fact, last month I used that title as a foil, declaring Malmö to be a delightful place to move to. The Jewish community here is undergoing a true renaissance and, on this Yom Hashoah, many members look toward the future with hope.
For those in the DC area:
Bethesda Jewish Congregation/Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church event with Jen Marlowe The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker – Sami Al Jundi and Jen Marlowe, co-authors
April 29, 7 pm
6601 Bradley Blvd
Bethesda, MD
As a young Palestinian boy, Sami Al Jundi had one ambition: to help overthrow the Israeli occupation. When a bomb that he was building with friends exploded prematurely, killing one of the teenagers, Al Jundi was sentenced to ten years in Israeli prison. It was while there, unexpectedly, that ideas about nonviolence and reconciliation first took root and changed the course of his battle forever. More »
This is a guest post by Naomi Paiss, Communications Director for the New Israel Fund.
Today, a full-page advertisement supporting the New Israel Fund will appear in the New York Times. Paid for by a generous donor who is launching a matching-gift campaign, the ad features a news photo of an actual billboard in Jerusalem, with a poster of a woman’s face that has been clawed and defaced by ultra-Orthodox extremists. The ad specifically references the troubling growth of gender segregation and the exclusion of women in Israel, a phenomenon now in the public eye but not yet defeated.
In his defense of Israeli democracy last week, Ambassador Michael Oren wrote that “gender equality, not prejudice, remains an Israeli hallmark,” and cited the numerous women serving in the Knesset and in other leadership roles. Stipulated and granted. And it was heartening to see, after Secretary of State Clinton criticized gender-segregated buses and other evidence of a troubling turn towards repression of women, that so many Israeli leaders stepped forward to defend women’s equality as intrinsic to Israeli society.
But words and deeds differ. The Israel Broadcasting Authority just permitted Kol Barama, the haredi radio station, to reduce the number of hours of women on the air from six to four – weekly. Groups of ultra-Orthodox men are approaching female passengers on El-Al, requesting to switch seats. Israeli women still earn only 66% of men’s wages, and women with higher education degrees earn 77% of the wages earned by their male counterparts. And a special report commissioned by Cabinet Minister Limor Livnat and an inter-ministerial committee on the subject of exclusion of women is filled with high-sounding declarations, but very little in the way of policy change or budget.
In this atmosphere, the organizations supported by the New Israel Fund are more important than ever. Long responsible for various aspects of feminist social change, these organizations find that their strategies must now take the growth of religious extremism into account. Organizations focused on women’s education are responding to the increase in single-gender schools in the religious sector, or schools that attempt to exclude Mizrachi or Ethiopian students. The Israel Religious Action Center, the activist arm of the Reform movement in Israel, researched and published an exhaustive report on gender segregation. Kolech, the feminist Orthodox organization, staffed a hotline for Orthodox women to report involuntary segregation on buses and other public spaces, and led the successful attempt to persuade the Israeli Medical Association to boycott a conference on women’s fertility issues in which women were barred from speaking.
The new pluralism group Yisroel Hofshit (Be Free Israel) has established local activist groups in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, Haifa and Ra’anana, and is working closely with NIF to restore the sight and sound of women to the public sphere in Israel. Yerushalmim (“Jerusalemites”), a vibrant coalition of secular and pluralistic Jerusalem residents, ran a public campaign to restore images of women and girls to the streets of the city, hanging pictures of women from balconies in the city. (One of these defaced campaign posters is the centerpiece of the New York Times ad.) This campaign was later expanded by New Israel Fund supporters overseas who sent their photos for a “Woman Should Be Seen and Heard” campaign, resulting in another 50 posters of women’s images appearing in Jerusalem.
With the current governing coalition heavily dependent on ultra-Orthodox support, it appears that official measures against gender segregation will be cut to fit political reality. Since many ultra-Orthodox commentators have claimed that the new push to exclude women is a fringe phenomenon, NIF and its civil society groups hope to find ways to work with the mainstream Orthodox community on gender issues in ways that are respectful of the community’s traditions. In the meantime, we continue to monitor, respond to and publicize the continuing and disturbing trend of gender segregation and exclusion in Israel.
This is a guest post by Leora Mallach, the Co-Founder and Director of Ganei Beantown: Beantown Jewish Gardens. You can join her this Sunday April 22nd to celebrate Earth Day at the first Boston Jewish Food Conference at Hebrew College in Newton Centre, MA. When not shifting paradigms in the Boston Jewish community, she can be found doing batik.
There feels to be a lot of energy currently around the “new Jewish food movement.” It’s not new, nor a passing fad, but a logical element within the continuum of the broader Jewish food conversation.
If we acknowledge it is a movement, and the growth in both national and place-based organizations over the last few years would indicate it is, we must consider where this momentum comes from. What we eat as Jews has been discussed, dictated and consumed from the earliest of days. The story of the migration of our ancestors and their adaption to local culture and cuisine is well documented. It has produced such great rifts like the debate over whose bagels are better: Montreal or NYC. (Duh, NYC)
All religion is interested in sustainability. According to Wikipedia , “Sustainability is the capacity to endure.” Our current rabbinic tradition has origins in the preservation of culture and community after the destruction of the Temple. We are a religious continually struggling with adaption to the period of galut (exile) while still holding true to values, ritual and community. This too has manifested and morphed over the centuries. More »
This s a guest post by independent filmmaker Eli Ungar-Sargon. His first feature-length film, Cut, is about circumcision and Jewish identity. He is currently in post-production on his second feature length film, A People Without a Land.
When Gilad Atzmon blew through Los Angeles to promote his latest book The Wandering Who?, I knew nothing about him. As I sat down to hear him speak I was handed a flyer by a nervous looking young woman. The flyer declared: “LEVANTINE CENTER HOSTS ANTI-SEMITE” and it furnished a series of Atzmon quotes to support its aspersion. The young woman and knit yarmulka-clad man who were handing these flyers out were politely asked to leave and they did so without protest. As I listened to Atzmon first speak and then perform a few musical numbers on his saxophone, it occurred to me that antisemite or not, I was genuinely interested in what this man had to say.
The Wandering Who? seeks to answer the seemingly simple question: “What do people mean when they call themselves Jews?” Near the beginning of the book, Atzmon makes a foundational tripartite distinction between three kinds of Jews. In the first category are people who follow the Jewish religion. The second contain those who were accidentally born to Jewish parents, but see themselves as human beings. And the third category is “Those who put their Jewish-ness over and above all of their other traits.”
The obvious problem with these categories is that real Jewish people seldom fall into only one of them. I know as many religious Jews who fall into categories 1 and 2 as I do secular Jews who fall into categories 2 and 3. Do their identities contain logical contradictions? Surely they do. But these contradictions do not emerge as a consequence of their Jewish-ness, rather they come from the nature of identity itself. To his credit, Atzmon points out that similar contradictions emerge within feminist and gay identity politics and it could be argued that his categorical distinctions are there for conceptual clarity. Nevertheless, Atzmon includes both ardent Zionists and self-identified Jewish Leftists in his third category, arguing that they belong to the same identity continuum:
“If we redefine Zionism as a modern form of Jewish activism that aims to halt assimilation, we can then reassess all Jewish tribal activity as an internal debate within a diverse Zionist political movement…The Israel lobby and the Alan Dershowitzes of the world are the voices of Zionism; the third-category socialists are there to stop proud, self-hating Jews from blowing the whistle.”
This is a guest post from Pork Memoirs, a story project about pork and identity by friend-of-the-blog and food journalist Jeffrey Yoskowitz. His project seeks to “explore the struggles and celebrations of our often complicated relationship to the ‘other white meat.’” This Purim-themed memoir introduces Ari, a disaffected secular Israeli whose anti-religiousness manifested itself in baking pork-themed hamantaschen.
Ari Miller • Tel Aviv, Israel
Hamantaschen were an annual feature of my American-Jewish childhood. I made them with my mom and siblings. They were filled with poppy seeds because dad liked them, cherries because we all liked them and prunes because Jews will purchase any pie filling if put on sale.
When I became a baker in Tel Aviv it seemed only natural that I would make oznei haman, as the cookies are called locally. (It became hard to explain hash-entaschen in Hebrew, but that’s another story.) I have no religious leanings, mind you, it’s just that there are professional expectations of a baker. More »
This is a guest post by Marisa Harford. Shir HaMaalot is a new monthly Friday night havurah with full Hebrew liturgy services and musical instruments, followed by vegetarian dinner, socializing and singing. Our next service is Friday, March 9th at 7 pm at Union Temple, 17 Eastern Parkway. RSVP with your potluck contribution here or email shirhamaalotbk@gmail.com to join the listserv.
We’ve just named our new havurah Shir Hamaalot, Song of the Heights, a new traditional, egalitarian havurah in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I’m honored to be able to share some information about the meaning of the phrase in context in the Bible and how its significance might help us reflect on the goals and the sacred work of this new community.
The 150 hymns in the book of Psalms are divided into different sections, usually by introductory phrases, some of which are very familiar to us, such as “mizmor l’David” (meaning “a song of David”). “Shir hamaalot” is one. There are 15 consecutive “shir hamaalot” psalms, numbers 120-134. Shir means song or poem, and ma’al can mean ascents, stairs, or anything that is above or over. For example, in Sukkah 5:4, the Mishnah explains that there were 15 stairs between the men’s and women’s courts of the Temple where the Levites would stand to sing these psalms during Sukkot. More »
This is a guest post by Joshua Schwartz, editor-in-chief for Uri L’Tzedek’s “Ve-Nahafoch Hu: Making Your Way Through an Upside-Down World.”
It with great pride and attendant humility that I announce the release of Ve-Nahafoch Hu: Making Your Way Through an Upside-Down World, a collection of essays, reflections and calls-to-action on the theme of Purim, published by Uri L’Tzedek. I was privileged to serve as the editor-in-chief on this publication, and I am deeply grateful for all of the amazing work my teammates and fellow contributors donated to its production.
“…these days, on which the Jews had rest from their oppressors, this month in which sorrow was turned to joy, mourning to festivity, to make them days of feasting and celebration, sending gifts to friends and giving to the poor.” (Esther 9:22)
Would it be so weird to take Purim seriously?
After all, Purim is that most confusing of conflations. On one hand, Purim is the craziest day of the Jewish year, a day on which we are encouraged to indulge ourselves. But on the other hand, Purim is the only holiday in which giving to others is a central practice. What does it mean when the day on which we let ourselves go is the very day on which we are commanded to provide for others?
This is a guest post by The Neo Nazir, a nomadic Jew who spends zes time worrying that the US might actually elect Santorum and that ze and everyone reading this post will be hurled into a den of wild, indigenous mountain lions, only to be devoured limb by limb.
Newsflash! Orthodox Judaism is not the bellwether of queerness. Given Orthodox Judaism’s official position on non-heterosexuality, one hardly expects Orthodox communities to offer a fully understanding dialogue on homosexual identity. But today, even the orthodox are realizing that they can no longer simply sweep LGBTQ issues under the rug.
Tonight in the Chicago area, a controversial event originally scheduled for early January, will be held at Congregation Or Torah, a large modern-Orthodox community in Skokie, IL. This event, sponsored by a number of major Chicago-area Orthodox synagogues and a local Chabad community, will attempt to broach the subject of homosexuality in the Orthodox community, featuring two out-of-town speakers, described by the event’s promotional blurb as “two of the world’s leading authorities on the Torah’s perspective on homosexuality,” Rabbi Dr. Barry Freundel and Rabbi Chaim Rapoport. More »
Inspired by Judaism’s commitment to justice, American Jewish World Service (AJWS) works to realize human rights and alleviate poverty in the developing world. AJWS is a Philanthropy 400 international human rights organization that works within the American Jewish community to promote global citizenship and social justice through activism, volunteer service and education. In its first 26 years, AJWS has had extraordinary impact around the world, working in 32 countries and sending over 400 American Jewish volunteers to the developing world annually. Throughout its history, AJWS has remained committed to its core values: essential dignity of every human being, sense of possibility, partnership and community, initiative and accountability, and humility.
The $50-million organization has 120 national employees, four national offices in NY, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and 25 country representatives in Africa, Asia and the Americas. AJWS has 125,000 activists engaged in fighting for global justice, 60,000 donors who understand the intersection between Judaism, international development and human rights, and has granted over $100 million to help grassroots organizations build civil society, foster economic development, expand access to education and health care, and advance human rights. More »
This is a guest post by Lillian Cohen-Moore, a freelance writer, editor and stage manager who calls the West Coast home. She often tours and travels to cover assignments; she lives out of a suitcase and on twitter.
Earlier this month in Beit Shemesh, Israel, a group of women did something unthinkable to their critics: they danced.
The population in Beit Shemesh ranges from ultra-Orthodox Jews to socially active long-time residents, as well as recent waves of English speaking immigrants. As Beit Shemesh and Israel at large undergo social change, much of it religious and class based, the clashes between segments of the population happen more often, with an often vociferous intensity from the ultra-Orthodox. As members of many Orthodox families begin university and military service, the extremists in the community lash out, believing their peers should stay as removed from larger society as possible. In this current social climate, women across Israel have been subject to escalating harassment by these members of the ultra-Orthodox. Media outside of Israel began to sit up and take closer notice of the harassment of women in Israel after Naama Margolese, an eight year old resident of Beit Shemesh, was spat upon and had rocks thrown at her by ultra-Orthodox men. Parents escorting their daughters to the same school are subject to similar harassment, being told by grown men that their daughters are ‘whorish’ because their school uniforms are not modest enough.
Women like Brenda Ganot, who works at Partnership 2Gether of the Jewish Agency for Beit Shemesh, and Miri Shalem, director of the Ramat Beit Shemesh community center, wanted to respond to the harassment going on in their community. The negative coverage of the city, which has included media attention on the ultra-Orthodox push for segregated bussing, got to both women. Ganot describes Beit Shemesh possessing a large moderate community with a deep engagement in charity and community events, a community that has been eclipsed in the eye of many media outlets while they cover the actions of the ultra-Orthodox community. More »
This is a guest post by Naomi Kramer, longtime friend of Jewschool and even longer time lover of cooking and cookbooks.
You don’t have to love women or Zionism to enjoy the beautiful Hadassah Everyday Cookbook. Non-female identified cooks, post-zionists, never-were-zionists, and everyone else will still enjoy the delicious eats from Leah Koenig. I regularly rely on its easy-to-browse recipes for hosting Shabbat dinners. I use it so much that I voted it for Best New Kosher Cookbook here.
For me, a cookbook needs a few key ingredients to get me excited: mouth watering pictures, tasty recipes, and guidelines that are easy enough but not written for four year olds. But this gorgeously-photographed book isn’t just sexy gastro-porn — though there are lots of spectacular photos in full color. More »
This is a guest post by Joelle Novey, Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, Rabbi David Shneyer, Jonah Adels, Phil Aroneanu, Laura Bellows, Lisa Jo Finstrom, Robert Friedman, Elizabeth Gaines, Johanna Galat, Richard Graves, Glenn Hurowitz, Joshua Kahn Russell, Lawrence MacDonald, Jeff Mann, Geri Maskell, Karen Menichelli, Sam Novey, Lore Rosenthal, Leslie Schwartz Leff, Harriet Shugarman, Joe Solomon, and Basia Yoffe, who were among 1,253 people arrested at the White House in August and September protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline.
We are Jewish folks who joined more than a thousand others in getting ourselves arrested in front of the White House this past summer protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Some of us are rabbis; many of us wore kippot that day; all of us did what we did because it felt, among other things, like a mitzvah.
Before the project was delayed last month, the pipeline would have carried crude oil from the Canadian tar sands across 1,700 miles and six states. The extraction of tar sands oil generates more heat-trapping climate pollution than other oil. Climate scientist James Hansen has said that fully exploiting the tar sands would essentially spell “game over” for our climate.
It would have been nice for us to know — as our Catholic, Methodist, Quaker, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist sisters and brothers knew — that our larger religious community supported our stand. But on the Keystone XL Pipeline, the major Jewish organizations were mostly silent. More »
This is a guestpost from two national leaders of J Street U:
Simone Zimmerman, a Junior at the University of California Berekely, majoring in Middle Eastern Studies. She is from Los Angeles, has spent many months in Israel, and is in the process of founding the J Street U chapter at the UC Berkeley.
and Ben Elkind, a Senior at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, majoring in Philosophy. He is the President of J Street U at UNC, and is the South East Representative on the J Street U National Student Board.
On Friday, September 30, 2011, a violent mob attacked Assaf Sharon and Sara Beninga in the Anatot settlement outside of Jerusalem. Reportedly, during the attack, police stood idly by and watched. Though badly beaten, Assaf and Sara remained fervently committed to democracy and social justice. In response to the violence at Anatot, my friend Simone and I wrote this letter expressing our solidarity with Assaf and Sara. We have since been joined by more than 100 students across the country. You can stand with Assaf and Sara too. Add your name by clicking here.
Dear Assaf and Sara,
We are humbled writing to you with the knowledge that as we celebrated the new year and the Jewish holidays here in the United States, your Rosh Hashanah in Israel was neither good nor sweet. We are frustrated knowing that our words cannot repair broken bones or ease bruised faces, yet we are compelled to speak.
This is what we understand of what transpired in Israel on Rosh Hashanah:
On September 30, you traveled to the settlement of Anatot, just outside of Jerusalem. A Palestinian farmer owns land in Anatot, and asked members of Ta’ayush – an organization that has gained respect and acclaim for its non-violent activism – to accompany him in planting trees on his land. He and members of Ta’ayush were met with violence, both physical and verbal. More »
We’ve just named our new havurah Shir Hamaalot, Song of the Heights, a new traditional, egalitarian havurah in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I’m honored to be able to share some information about the meaning of the phrase in context in the Bible and how its significance might help us reflect on the goals and the sacred work of this new community.
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