by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Above, the Chilean Federation of Jewish Students protests discrimination.
Over at New Voices Magazine (my day job), we launched a new blog this week that Jewschoolers might be interested in. It’s called the Global Jewish Voice and it’s a way to jump-start a wider conversation that we normally have at New Voices. While New Voices is normally American or Israeli (and occasionally Canadian) in scope, the Global Jewish Voice is a fully international conversation about the lives of Jewish students and young adults.
The blog is staffed by 10 writers reporting on their lives on campus, in the workplace and at home. They are writing in from every corner of the globe, including Israel, the US, Chile, Spain, China, Canada, the UK and–no joke–Serbia. The blog’s student editor is based in Portland, Ore. There’s also an open submission policy.
A few highlights so far:
Reporting from the West Bank, Liran Shamriz describes the constant dilemma of being an army soldier and same-time sociology student:
This could quickly turn to riots – we need to get the hell out of here. We don’t even have bulletproof vests – any jerk in the street can knife me and disappear. I started to walk toward the trucks and my phone blinks again, this time from a Facebook message: “Shlomo gave us grades! I got a 91! I think he is good after all, he probably didn’t even check that well… how much did you get?”
Meanwhile in Chile, sometimes the struggle is more symbolic of living Jewishly in a non-Jewish world. University student Maxamilliano Grass is on the vanguard of Jewish student activism and pro-Israel work in a country with 75,000 Jews—and over 400,000 Palestinians: More »
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Who says there are no paying jobs left in journalism?
By day, I’m the editor of New Voices, the national Jewish student magazine, and the director of the 40-years-young organization that publishes it, the Jewish Student Press Service. Since the JSPS was founded (New Voices itself is 20 years old), we’ve been a home for independent Jewish journalism–written and published entirely by college students.
We operate on the most shoestring of budgets, but occasionally, we get the exciting the chance to actually hire someone. In this case, I’m looking for 10 someones! If you know a student journalist who might be interested in this, let me know in the comments or by emailing me at david(at)newvoices.org.
Here’s my full pitch:
Jewish Student Journalists: We Want to Pay You!
New Voices Magazine, the national Jewish student magazine, is seeking student journalists to do paid reporting from their campuses this fall! More »
by guestpost [➚] · Friday, March 11th, 2011
One more from ImproveUSCJ:
The USCJ strategic planning committee received comments regarding the draft strategic plan and released the final version of the strategic plan yesterday. I figure this was worth another commentary summarizing the changes and my major concerns.
The USCJ board is scheduled to take a yes/no vote on the plan this Sunday. Despite serious flaws, I strongly suspect it will be approved simply because a “no” vote might cause a rapid collapse of the organization. If I had a vote, I’d seriously consider voting “no” both because I think the plan takes USCJ in some damaging directions or non-directions and I suspect the shake-up from the collapse might actually bring about some better institutions. I recognize that would be a radical step that would risk damaging some successful parts of USCJ. This is a risk that board members might not be willing to take. Still, I’m worried that a “yes” vote would lead to a more gradual collapse of USCJ that could bring successful programs, like USY, down with it and would cause more damage to the movement in the long run.
The first clear change in the plan is that it has a new supertitle, “VeAsu Li Mikdash” (And let them make me a sanctuary…). I suspect this addition is intended to emphasize that synagogues are still central to an organization that will now serve “kehilot.” Several other changes, including an additional priority to re-engage synagogues that left USCJ, support this interpretation. I think this phase is also, unintentionally, a beautiful summary of my critiques of the plan. They cut off the rest of the sentence “VeShachanti BeTocham” (…that I may dwell among them). The plan clearly focuses on the imperative to build and support synagogues and institutions, but the purpose of those institutions is an unwritten afterthought. While the plan charts out what’s necessary to keep USCJ alive, I still have no clue what USCJ sees as its role in the Conservative movement and the larger Jewish community. Why are we supposed to build this sanctuary?
This lack of vision is highlighted by some of the changes to the strategic plan. There’s a lot of text making clear that USCJ can no longer view itself as a content creator. It needs to connect groups and collaborate for content creation. That’s why it confuses me that, “USCJ will provide kehillot with programmatic and managerial resources,” was added to the final plan. USCJ can be both a collaborator and a creator, but it doesn’t have the staff or budget for both priorities, and it seems like they are unwilling to accept that they can’t do everything. They talk about core focuses and the need to prioritize, but it’s unclear what those core focuses practically mean, who gets to decide what is or is not core, and what is done in-house vs. collaboratively. This uncertainty of mission is also observable in little changes. For example most of the instances where draft plan said “USCJ needs to” do something have now been changed to “USCJ should” do something. Even taking the plan’s goals at face value, they are afraid to clearly state what needs to be done.
On a positive note, the draft plan didn’t give a clear vision of USCJ’s role in adult learning. The plan now says “While the emphasis here is on reforming the educational system for children, this strategic plan recognizes the importance of adult learning and the need to sustain a culture of lifelong Jewish learning. There are many sound programs available for adult learning, which should be encouraged. The greatest need, however, is in re-imagining the educational system for our children.” Agree or not, it’s one example of a clear priority for the organization while still recognizing needs it might not be able to meet itself. Regarding education, they also added a direct reference to “Linking the Silos: How to Accelerate the Momentum in Jewish Education Today (Avi Chai Foundation, 2005)” as a model for their education plans. That document talks about the need to focus on identifying and collaborating to meet common educational needs rather than fighting over which organizations get ownership of ideas. Good things can happen if they take that to heart. (As a starting suggestion the executive director of TaL AM would be glad to collaborate with USCJ on Hebrew language curricula.) On a negative note, their goal of having their “blue-ribbon” education panel develop a plan in 3-5 years has completely lost that time limit. There’s a real fear of committing to anything specific.
I was also glad to see them alter their plans for college students. The new version essentially says they don’t know how to pay for it or what they’re supposed to do, but they recognize a direct Conservative presence on college campuses is important. They plan to keep Koach running until the movement figures out something better. Oddly the to-do list at the end of the document still calls for a Koach reorganization in July 2011. I don’t know if they are still planning major changes or just forgot to remove this sentence from the plan.
One of the more surprising changes relates to how they view their relationship to non-denominational communities. I was so intrigued by their desire to become “a nexus for serious, post-denominiational Judaism,” that I focused an entire section of my commentaries envisioning what USCJ would look like if they seriously meant this. Assuming they read it, I guess they didn’t like my vision because they expunged this sentence from the final plan. Reading the plan as a whole, it is now very clear that they are only interested in engaging unaffiliated communities (i.e. indy minyanim) if there’s a potential for them to affiliate. They might ask a few indy minyan leaders to join a focus group or fill out a survey, but they won’t be partners in expanding the numbers of Conservative-friendly communities unless those communities are willing to call themselves Conservative. Sadly, the plan still doesn’t present a compelling rationale or mechanism for minyanim to affiliate with USCJ, even if they wanted to. This is a major lost opportunity.
I was also disappointed to see that they refused to reassess their fundraising plans. Several commentators, including me, were very critical of their plan to sell most of their lay leadership positions to people who can donate or raise at least $10,000 per year. As I wrote before, I feel this was included because they couldn’t create a rational for large donations without selling leadership positions. Assuming they find 30 people who are willing to buy those board seats, this will do immense damage to USCJ’s ability to attract new voices into its volunteer ranks and leadership.
It was recently occurring to me that I’ve written many emails, using both my real name and this pseudonym, to USCJ leaders over the past several years. When I’ve written as a representative of an organization, or when a USCJ board member forwards my email, I’ve gotten replies from USCJ professionals. Until yesterday, when I got a response after noticing a missing website link, I have never had a personal reply from any USCJ professional. I never got a personal reply after sending several emails to the 4tomorrow@uscj.org address. Months after I sent emails to that address and after the draft plan was released, I got a form response that they were starting to look at comments and will send them to the appropriate people. I doubt this only happened to me. Sadly, they look at this planning process as a communications success. The plan states, “The new USCJ’s potential lies in its ability to create settings where all kinds of leaders can come together and work together for the improvement of Conservative Judaism. The strategic planning commission that produced this document models the kind of cooperation we envision and know to be possible.” Considering entire constituencies (college students, Fuchsberg Center users, etc.) were shocked at never being consulted about basic elements of the plan that would affect them, I seriously wonder what the planners were thinking when they wrote that sentence.
In the end, I suspect that the selling of leadership positions combined with a complete inability to engage new voices and volunteers at even the most basic level will doom USCJ to irrelevancy as new generations of Jews create or find other organizations that want their volunteer time and leadership skills. Regardless of the vote on this plan, this inability to engage new voices and volunteers is the main issue that I think USCJ needs to reconsider if it doesn’t want to collapse in less than a decade.
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
Last week, I blogged here that J Street U was going to begin offering its own Birthright trip this summer.
New Voices Editor Ben Sales reports that Birthright has unilaterally cancelled the trip, less than a week after announcing it!
J Street U President Moriel Rothman’s statement begins:
Within 48 hours of our announcement that J Street U was facilitating its first Birthright trip, “Explore Israel: Progressive Zionism and Social Justice,” over 100 students had signed up expressing interest in participating.
Rothman explains Birthright’s rationale (emphasis mine):
Despite their initial approval for a trip that would provide such an experience, Birthright’s leadership has now decided that it is inappropriate for J Street U to organize a trip because we are politically oriented, according to Israel Experience. Nonetheless, comparable organizations with different politics than ours participate and help organize trips every year. For instance, AIPAC’s “Capital to Capital” Birthright trip is designed for Jewish political activists who are “significantly involved in the American political process.”
So, in Birthright’s universe, there is one set of rules for those they agree with and another set secret rules for those they don’t agree with.
It’s pretty disturbing to see Birthright abandoning their mission like this. If their purpose is to get as many young Jews to Israel as they can, how can they possibly explain cancelling a trip that registered 100 people in the first two days following the trip’s announcement?
by dcc [➚] · Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
So for those of you who had anything better to do than say keep up with Princeton’s great hummus debate of 2010 may not have heard the news out of the Central Jersey Ivy League last week.
The referendum failed. According to The Daily Princetonian a total of 1,014 students voted against the referendum, while 699 students voted in favor (out of 4,878 undergraduates total).
In a follow-up article about the vote, both sides seem to claim victory and honestly I think the real winners are the food service workers who have to deal with both sets of entitled Princetonians.
As I wrote before, this is possibly the stupidest student government action I have ever heard of…however it did spark some sort of real conversation about boycotts and divestment. In the same article, Yoel Bitran, of the poorly named PCP, said, “We’re having a big panel on boycott, divestment and sanctions coming up next week, and we’re very excited to plan for next semester.”
Maybe the pro-Israel group can have an equally constructive conversation about the reasons building settlements is ok because God said it was cool.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Friday, December 10th, 2010
originally posted at Diverge
A few weeks ago, I went to a JStreet event with John Ging, the head of the United Nation’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip since 2006 . He told us about some young Palestinian girls who came into his office concerned about the security situation and the threat to the UN and the work it was trying to do. “You must be brave,” they said. My cynical heart beat quickly in my ears.
Optimism for me is like math: I need to be tutored in it. I have trouble believing that things can get better, in spite of the fact that I also have to believe that it can in order to get up in the morning, often literally. I just keep wondering, how do we make it better? What are the answers? Is it to punch through the wall from the inside, or build a new structure entirely? (Both, perhaps?) How much longer and harder will it take?
Tonight I had a conversation with someone who is amazing and exhausted, like too many smart, dynamic activists I know. Some of us know the potential we hold to make change, and I think that those are the people who are in the most trouble. Potential is perhaps the most excruciating burden to have, it can make us fearful and exhilarated and so tired. It depends on energy and patience and the willingness of others to move and be moved, things we cannot control. It’s also terrifying because it requires confrontation with our priorities and limitations, and ultimately, with our mortality. We are one of a kind, whether we know it or not, and no one can do things quite like we can.
This last part is something I’ve struggled with for a long time, and continue to. Leadership saturation is really powerful, and dangerous. It happened in 2008 with Barack Obama, when people pinned all their hopes for change on him. His campaign slogan invited that hope, but when change proved slower and harder than people would like, there came a backlash. It happens to any activist when they have to admit they’ve had enough, they’re burnt out, they’re not taking care of themselves. Who will do it? Who will take on their role? The answer, I’ve been forced to admit, is no one, at least not the way I would. This doesn’t mean I have to be the one who always does it, but it does mean I have to have some faith, in spite of the petulant child/control freak inside me.
by dcc [➚] · Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
By now you all have heard of the Princeton referendum being offered by a group of concerned students at the Ivy League campus in New Jersey. Sabra Hummus has been declared an enemy of Palestine and should be banned from campus there should be other options for students to purchase when they desire a creamy Middle Eastern dip.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for meaningless political action in college; after all I was an elected member of the student senate back in college, so I know all about that. But when it comes to an elite institution of higher learning such as Princeton, I kind of expect more than a call to action that involves the inclusion other chickpea spreads. More »
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Thursday, November 18th, 2010
Crossposted to New Voices
On Tuesday, Nov. 23 Hebrew College is hosting a conversation with four Boston-area Jewish presidents of colleges: Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann of Hebrew College, Leonard A. Schlesinger of Babson College, Jehuda Reinharz of Brandies University and Lawrence S. Bacow of Tufts University.
I’ve got universities on the brain lately as my own Drew has recently intensified our so-far lackluster work on our “Strategic Plan.” So this event caught my eye.
The HC website lists these questions as up for discussion at the event:
- How will colleges and universities meet the challenges of the shifting paradigms in higher education?
- What should their roles be in developing the next generation of Jewish leadership?
- Students who have experienced Birthright Israel are ready for more engagement with Israel and with Jewish life; are we ready for them?
- What aspects of higher education should the Jewish community support?
The first, second and fourth questions sound great. The third one is giving me some trouble.
First of all, it acknowledges a premise that I reject: that the Birthright is the source of engaged young Jews in America. It’s part of the clod of notions that spring forth from the idea that young Jews, especially college Jews, are not engaged with Jewish life, and that the only way to engage them is through Israel.
Second of all, and even more narrow-sighted, is this problem: Do any of these college presidents think that the only source of engaged Jewish students at their institutions is Birthright? If they’re focused on “are we ready for them [Birthright alumni]?” how is that going to affect their readiness for Jewish students engaged with Jewish life in some other way? And what does it even mean that they need to be ready?
These questions are not meant as rhetorical, by the way. I’m looking for y’all’s ideas on this. So if anyone goes to this, I’d love to hear how it goes.
by dcc [➚] · Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
In his May 6, 2010 Op-ed “Fighting the new divestment effort on campus,” Hillel CEO Wayne Firestone puts forth a plan that continues to ignore any sort of reality that might allow local student groups to beat back the ever growing Israel divestment movements.
The Firestone Plan outlines three steps to address the divestment movement. First student groups should address their needs locally, without outside help which is interesting coming from the CEO of Hillel International. Then students should build coalitions (again without outside help) by bringing student government officials to AIPAC events and other such “get to know Israel” programs. And finally, student groups should remain on the branding message that Israel is a high-tech leader that shares Western values. As a former student senator and Jewish activist at the University of California, Davis, I can tell you without any shadow of a doubt that the Firestone Plan is fatally flawed. More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
I used to work at New Voices Magazine, the only independent publication written by and for Jewish undergrads. It was the best (and worst) crash course in nonprofit management and journalism I could ask for. Thrown in the deep end of the Jewish philanthropic pool, it was sink or swim.
I can count myself as half-successful, since our editorial line of publishing critical student thought ran us into trouble with the David Project, who in 2007 intervened in our funding with the UJA-Federation of NY. We had to cut staff, I got the axe. This is a heretofore unreported detail which is harmless now to mention — yes, I lost my job because of the David Project’s branding New Voices as “bad for young Jews, bad for the Jewish state.” (As quoted to me by a UJA official who kindly read me the email David Project circulated to my funders. There was plenty more to it also.) Needless to say, I harbor a small grudge against the David Project and some of the UJA. The first is zealotry incarnate, the other a paragon of spinelessness.
So when I read Sam Green’s opinion piece in New Voices chastising all the Jewish anti-Zionists out there, I could only chuckle at the unintended (and likely unaware) incongruity. The misfortune of arguing a politics of exclusion in a publication that lost $30,000 and a staffer to being too open-minded diminishes his intended impact. Then again, only myself, my friends then, and those involved remember that episode, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect him to “know your roots” as he says. More »
by renaissanceboy [➚] · Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Alan Dershowitz, professional Israel apologist and demonizer-of-those-who-disagree-in-the-slightest, has done it again, with a new article over at FrontPage Magazine. It’s a pretty standard condemnation of Israel Apartheid Week (that is, for all the wrong reasons). Right off the bat, it starts off with this gem:
Every year at about this time, radical Islamic students—aided by radical anti-Israel professors—hold an event they call “Israel Apartheid Week.”
Does Prof. Dershowitz seriously believe that Israel Apartheid Week is only run by “radical Islamic students”? And what does that even mean? Does he think that the people staffing the BDS tables are all Al-Qaeda members? For crying out loud, this isn’t just stupid and biased, it’s stupid, biased, and wrong. More »
by Ari Hart [➚] · Monday, March 1st, 2010
Here’s an op-ed I wrote in the Jerusalem Post about the Size Doesn’t Matter campaign
(video and intense discussion on Jewschool here) and Israel advocacy/hasbara on college campus in general. Love to hear Jewschoolers’ reactions, especially those on college campuses. What is happening on the ground? Is meaningful conversation possible? What are the organizations, people, clubs, etc., that help you engage with Israel in meaningful ways?
by Raysh Weiss [➚] · Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
(Yiddish lives)
A recent article in the Washington Jewish Week reports that the University of Maryland in College Park may discontinue its Yiddish language courses after a 30 year run. As a campus with one of the most vibrant Jewish student populations in the U.S., UMD’s decision carries a special symbolic weight. Many Yiddish language activists and supporters are discouraged by the impending decision, which the UMD Meyerhoff Jewish Studies Center director and history professor Hayim Lapin attributes to general university-wide budget cuts. If you would like to show your support for the continuation of Yiddish study, please visit www.jewishstudies.umd.edu/academic/YiddishLetter.html, and sign on to the petition to save the Yiddish program at the University of Maryland.
by masthead [➚] · Monday, March 31st, 2008
Some stories have been floating around the media with varying levels of accuracy, but Jewschool has obtained the full (or fuller) story from reliable sources. The real story here isn’t about gay and lesbian rabbis in the Conservative movement (that was last year’s story); it’s about the lengths to which people and institutions will go out of fear, demonizing their own students and losing all perspective.
The story begins a year ago this week, when the Jewish Theological Seminary announced that it would begin admitting openly gay and lesbian students to its rabbinical and cantorial schools. (The American Jewish University, formerly the University of Judaism, is now also admitting gay and lesbian students.) One year later, to mark the anniversary, JTS held a program on Wednesday called Hazak Hazak V’nithazek: Celebrating Strength Through Inclusion, a full day of study, conversation, and celebration.
Several JTS students studying this year at Machon Schechter (the Conservative rabbinical school in Jerusalem where American Conservative rabbinical students are required to spend a year) wanted to participate in the celebration going on in New York in some way, and since they couldn’t attend physically, they organized a small parallel event in Israel. According to email invitations sent to the Conservative Yeshiva and other rabbinical students in Jerusalem, the students invited Yonatan Gher, former Director of Communications for the Masorti (Israeli Conservative) movement, incoming director of the Jerusalem Open House, and a member of Masorti congregations his whole life (and recently profiled in the New York Times because he and his partner are having a child via a surrogate mother in India), to speak over lunch about his personal experiences as a member of a GLBT family in the Masorti movement.
More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Saturday, March 15th, 2008
You might not call this direct support of Breaking the Silence, but you can call it standing up against right-wing blowhards like Mort Klein. This I can definitely respect. Rabbi Bernie was distraught by the “lack of context” to the exhibit but nonetheless stood by his students’ decision to bring the exhibit into a Jewish space. He, like many others, disagree with the soldiers on many points. But thank the Lord this doesn’t mean he’s like some of the people who’ve come to exhibit simply to tell the soldiers that they should be shot as traitors. Or even attack them (and Hillel International at large) for being anti-Israel, as Mort did in a press release.
The highlights here, the full open letter below the fold.
On the ZOA:
I do not know the mission of the ZOA. If, however, your mission does include working with young Jews, you have done a grievous disservice to the ZOA. If it is not part of your mission, you should not intrude clumsily and aggressively into the Harvard campus, and undermine the good work of young Jews…
…Truth from a skyscraper in New York City looks different than on the ground of a campus in Cambridge. Every campus and every Hillel has its own unique culture.
On the student body:
Many students feel inconvenienced by the presence of the exhibit in the building. Many more criticize the presentation of the exhibit itself. Some feel that it humanizes the soldiers and they come away with a more positive feeling about Israel. I myself did not anticipate this response. It is more widespread than I would have thought.
On what Mort’s press release did:
…As a result of your actions, our students are receiving hate emails [from ZOA members]. In light of what you have said and have not said, this is a totally predictable response. If you intended to injure and hurt young Jews, your recent actions and words are a success. If your goal is to inflame and to defame Harvard Hillel, you should justly feel a sense of pride – mission accomplished.
Whether you’re into Breaking the Silence or otherwise, you can also tell Mort to fuck off here.
More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Mort Klein is at it again: playing Jewish communal chicken with forces bigger than himself. This excellent reportage from Larry Cohler-Esses at the NY Jewish Week about Breaking the Silence:
“This is a fight over the identity of Israel and Judaism,†said group co-founder Yehuda Shaul…“This is why American Jews must take part in the debate.â€
But Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, declared he would call the national president of Hillel this week to protest the Harvard chapter’s decision to provide Breaking the Silence a venue.
“Harvard Hillel should be ashamed of itself and should immediately rescind giving legitimacy to a program that only promotes hatred against Israel and Jews,†he declared. “They should not be allowing programs that harm Israel’s image, in this case falsely. Donors give to Hillel because they think they will be promoting love for Israel, not a negative and distorted image of the Israeli Army.â€
Mort’s private ZOA soapbox is noisy. But if he wants to go head-to-head with 500 Israeli soldiers who saw it, did it, and regretted it, then he’s more than welcome to embarrass himself once more. (Hell, he should do it more often.) He’s called BTS a lie. A year ago, Mort Klein tried and failed to get the UPZ kicked out of the pro-Israel campus umbrella for sponsoring a tour by the veterans. It comes as no surprise to anyone that his goat is got again.
More »
by chillul Who? [➚] · Thursday, February 21st, 2008
I had an acquaintance in college, a man whose parents had moved to America from Bangladesh, an observant Muslim with whom I would spend late nights discussing religion and watching the mountain fog coalesce. We lost touch after he moved off-campus and later graduated, but I still remember one comment he made to me after I did my best to explain to him what a “machloket” is and how the halachic system accomodates (or otherwise deals with) disagreements in matters of law.
He was impressed, and complained about the Muslim student group on campus, saying the form of Islam espoused there was too strict and particularistic. Muslims from Bangladesh, he said, don’t practice the religion the same way as Muslims from Arabia, and the Arab students in charge were intolerant of that diversity. He and other non-Arab Muslims were told that their clothing was “un-Islamic” and their observances were faulty. He objected, saying, “I’m not Arab. I shouldn’t have to follow Arab cultural norms to be a good Muslim.”
Apparently, policy clashes between conservative and liberal Muslim students, and between Muslim students with different traditions, are common on college campuses. Sound familiar? But unlike in the Jewish community where Hillels have a set policy of pluralism dictated from on high by philanthropists and “Jewish professionals”, according to this article by the New York Times’ gloriously-named Neil MacFarquhar each franchise Muslim Students Association chapter (there are more than 200 in the US) sets its own rules as to what food/clothes/events/philosophies are acceptable. Depending on where you go to school, your local MSA may alternately scandalize traditional parents or Imams, and shun students who aren’t “Muslim enough”.
The reporter, who apparently attended last weekend’s MSA West Conference in San Jose, got some good anecdotes, including community reaction to the sexes mingling at a barbecue, a potential member driven away because he wore a Budweiser t-shirt, liberal Yale vs. Wahhabist UC-Irvine, and the kinds of sermons given by Imams who visit college campuses.
I’m wondering what can we learn from this article, and what those of us still in school can learn from our Muslim fellow students. And what can we teach them? Keeping in mind the extensive similarities and deep differences between Judaism & Islam and between the Jewish community & the Muslim community, there’s got to be some productive knowledge to be gleaned. What do you think it could be?
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
JPost covers UPZ’s birthright israel trip — the only progressive such trip in existance, now in partnership with the New Israel Fund. And I couldn’t agree more with the impact of showing people the real Israel over showing them the facade of a Jewish Disneyland:
[UPZ Executive Director Tammy] Shapiro believes that bringing young Jews into direct contact with the often unsettling reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can help to strengthen the connection of young Jews with Israel. “When people actually go to these places and learn about things for themselves, they can go back to their campuses in America and talk about it better than they did before,” she says.
American pro-Israel activism is pretty pathetic. And it’s failing. American Jewish students are in a miserably uneducated place to defend accusations of human rights abuses in the West Bank — the daily reality, as attested to by soldiers themselves — but they are expected to do so by the pro-Israel establishment as it stands. This is the success of UPZ’s progressive birthright israel tours, NIF’s social activist tours, Encounter’s tours of Bethlehem and Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence’s tours of Hebron. Support for Israel should be divorced from support for the occupation. But presently they go part and parcel, to the uncomfortable disaster of students connected to Israel. And non-students, not to mention.
But just whipping a little checkpoint-and-poverty on students is detrimental and thus wasteful, as they leave Israel feeling that reconciliation is impossible between their values and their Israel aspirations. This is why the UPZ is so important and why they, NIF, Encounter, and Shovrim Shtika stand out amist the plethora of other tours which happen to be organized by Jews also:
…But the UPZ’s program isn’t the only tour bringing Diaspora Jews into contact with Palestinians. Birthright Unplugged, which has no connection to birthright israel, brings North American Jews to the Holy Land to engage in Palestinian solidarity activism, many of whom return to US campuses as anti-Zionist activists, says Shapiro.
“Birthright Unplugged is an alternative to birthright which includes the Palestinian narrative, but ignores the Jewish narrative,” she says. “Our tour is more complex and doesn’t ignore either one. We are not coming from the perspective of animosity toward Israel; we care about the country deeply.”
I fully believe it’s impossible to understand the conversation about settlements without seeing the varieties of settlements yourself. I think it’s fully impossible to address the first-hand testimonies of ISM and pro-Palestinian activists without also having experienced East Jerusalem and the territories. And I think it’s disgustingly disingenuous to laud Israel’s civil rights record in relation to her Arab neighbors without paying heed to the pains and struggles of disenfranchised Israelis. We are all dangerously vulnerable of being mindless pundits if we have read only what other people say. (Read our comments exchange about Hebron to see what happens when talking heads fall under the bulldozer of first-hand experience.)
UPZ/NIF’s trip won’t take you to Gaza City. But the closer you can get, the more credibility you bear and the more able you can defend Israel interests — her moral interests and her security interests.
Registration for UPZ/NIF’s two trips are now open at www.israelexperts.com, 1st trip: May 19th-May 30th and open to ages 18-26. 2nd trip: July exclusively for ages 22-26, exact dates for this trip will be determined after registration. Email UPZ director Tammy Shapiro at director@upzshalom.org for full details.
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