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NYPD surveillance; Anne Frank baptized (again); Shabbat buses; and more. [Required Reading]

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Courtesy. Professionalism. Respect. | Photo by Flickr user Giacomo Barbaro (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

NYPD tracked Muslim students, organizations [Columbia]

Recent news that the New York Police Department willfully performed surveillance on Muslim student organizations in the name of anti-terrorism measures has been met with harsh criticism by many. In light of the fears this news may provoke, the Spectator, newspaper for Columbia College, unpacks the threat to free speech that these “investigations” may have instigated, and their implications for the future.

“There, in Low Library, one of the students representing the ISO heralded terrorist actions like targeting civilians with missiles or suicide bombs as a legitimate form of resistance to the Israeli government. I was appalled that a fellow student would hold such views, but I would have been more appalled if that student had left her ideas unexpressed for fear of being filed away as a potential threat by the NYPD. The chilling effect that the surveillance program might have on campus speech would mean that such views would go unsaid, and thus certain ideologies left unexposed for the truly deleterious modes of thinking that they pose—something more harmful in the long run than a few dilettantes sitting around and speaking reverently of Sayyid Qutb.”

Anne Frank baptized… again? [Huffington Post]

Here at New Voices, we recently shared a story about the controversy surrounding the recent posthumous baptism of the parents of Simon Weisenthal. The Mormon Church had issued an apology for its actions, there was an understandable amount of criticism (an agreement between the Church and the Jewish world a couple years ago was to put a stop to this sort of thing). Apparently, not everyone got the memo, as the Huffington Post reports Anne Frank has been baptized again– her ninth baptism at the hands of the Mormon Church, if anyone’s counting. A church whistleblower provided Huffington Post with all the allegations.

“Radkey said she discovered that Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank, who died at Bergen Belsen death camp in 1945 at age 15, was baptized by proxy on Saturday. Mormons have submitted versions of her name at least a dozen times for proxy rites and carried out the ritual at least nine times from 1989 to 1999, according to Radkey. But Radkey says this is the first time in more than a decade that Frank’s name has been discovered in a database that can be used both for genealogy and also to submit a deceased person’s name to be considered for proxy baptism — a separate process, according to a spokesman for the church. The database is only open to Mormons.

A screen shot of the database sent by Radkey shows a page for Frank stating “completed” next to categories labeled ‘Baptism” and “Confirmation,’ with the date Feb. 18, 2012, and the name of the Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Temple.”

Tel Aviv makes move toward public transportation on Shabbat [Jerusalem Post]

While tension between traditionally observant Jews and modern communities doesn’t look to be resolved anytime soon, the city of Tel Aviv has ruled that it will offer public buses at various points around the city on the Sabbath. But the battle is far from over. The Jerusalem Post reports:

“A Transportation Ministry spokesman indicated Tuesday that the ministry would not approve Tel Aviv’s request. The Transportation Ministry will ‘not infringe [upon] the status quo which has been in place for decades regarding all aspects of public transport on Shabbat,’ the spokesman said.

Nevertheless, Huldai on Wednesday vowed to continue the mission to bring buses to Tel Aviv on Shabbat. ‘We must determine if we want to live in a democratic, Jewish state or a solely Jewish state – which will be similar to Iran,’ Huldai told Army Radio. ‘The citizens have the right to visit their relatives on Shabbat or go out for a trip,’ he added.”

Russia warns of the fallout of Israel – Iran conflict [Haaretz]

It looks like the string of international leaders urging Israel to avoid an all-out attack on Israel can add yet another name to its list: the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, who urged Israel to consider the nuclear fallout, and impact on international peace-keeping efforts, such a strike would have. Haaretz is there:

“‘Therefore I hope Israel understands all these consequences … and they should also consider the consequences of such action for themselves,’ Gatilov said at a news conference..

A top UN nuclear official said on Wednesday his team could ‘could not find a way forward’ in attempts to persuade Iran to talk about suspected secret work on atomic arms.”


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Posted in Abroad, activism, anti-Semitism, community, Culture, Diaspora, holocaust, Interfaith, iran, Israel, New Voices Magazine, Orthodoxy, politics, Reading List, Religion | No Comments »

Jews have a historical right to the land of Israel [Decent Dissent]

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

In his response to my op-ed, Harpo Jaeger touches on the issue of Israel’s treatment of Judea and Samaria – better known today as “the disputed territories.” Jaeger alleges that “millions of Palestinians…live under occupation” and that their lives are “endangered by checkpoints, raids and searches.”

I take issue with the allegation that millions of Palestinians live under occupation. From my understanding, Jaeger’s allegations dealing with the Israeli “occupation” of Palestine – a country that, by the way, has never actually officially existed – are rooted in an interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Resolution 242 mandates “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The term ‘occupation’ is defined as “the control of a country by military forces of a foreign power.”

Israel’s sovereignty in the West Bank does not constitute occupation. We, the Jewish people, are not “foreign” to the land of Judea and Samaria and are therefore not “occupying” any land that does not belong to us. We have legal claim, in addition to historical claim, to the entire country of Israel – Judea and Samaria included – as per the original League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (a document that was adopted by the UN and is still legally binding today) and Article 80 of the UN Charter.

In addition to the legal documents, the Jewish people have been present in the land of Israel for thousands of years. If Israel’s presence in the disputed territories does not constitute occupation, then Resolution 242 is not applicable in this instance.

Regarding the Geneva Convention: the  occupation exists when one sovereign state (referred to, in the document, as a “high contracting power”) takes over land belonging to another sovereign state.

This is not the case when it comes to Israel. “Palestine” never existed and Jordan only controlled Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967. The territories of Judea and Samaria were never officially a part of sovereign Jordan. If the Geneva Convention is also not applicable in this instance, then I fail to see which international laws Israel has violated through its continued presence in the West Bank.

Israel’s retaining control over the disputed territories is in its citizens’ best interests. Yes, there have been isolated incidents. Israel has in no way condoned these incidents and has expressed dismay at every loss of innocent life. At the same time, Israel needs to have control over the high ground in Judea and Samaria in order to preserve its tactical advantage over countries that seek to destroy it.

As for the security fence, there is documented proof that the fence and security checkpoints have helped prevent many terrorist attacks – suicide bombings and the like – that would have had a severe impact on innocent Israeli civilians.

The situation is hardly ideal. But that does not negate the fact that Israel is responsible for its citizens’ safety and must consider that point above the comfort level of civilians whose safety does not fall under its mandate. It is unfortunate that circumstances require such measures, but the Israeli government is tasked with protecting its innocent civilians. When those civilians are put at risk, Israel must react in whatever way it deems fit. Israel is still determined to bring peace, but will not do so at the expense of the safety of its civilians and its borders and, at this point in time, the real barrier preventing peace is the Arab States’ intransigence and blanket rejection of a Jewish State on any borders.

Giving up land will not get us any closer to a peaceful Middle East. One of the beliefs of the Islamic religion involves the creation of a Dar-al-Islam, a solely Arab world, in which the values of Shariah law are kept to the highest degree. At this point, the Arab states have made it very clear that they see Israel as a threat to, what they feel should be, a purely Islamic Middle East. In their founding charters, many of the terrorist organizations that are run as proxies of various Arab states, declare their goal to “liberate Palestine [through armed struggle],” presumably in order to realize their ultimate goal of creating a Dar-al-Islam within the Middle East (this specific quotation was taken from the Palestinian Liberation Organization Charter). Are we really supposed to believe that giving them a small portion of land will appease them, if they advocate for our total destruction?

We are fighting a war with very different rules from anything that we have come across before, and many of these “rules” defy our Western logic.

Let’s relate this understanding of the Middle East to the current issue of the Iranian nuclear program. The international community is currently trying to reason with the Iranian dictatorship by imposing sanctions as a deterrent to further development of the nuclear weapons program. The world is treating this situation similarly to its treatment of the situation in the 1980s, during the Cold War. The reason that, ultimately, no nuclear weapons were detonated, during the Cold War, is that the United States and Russia, both countries in possession of nuclear power, did not want the world to meet with certain destruction.

The situation today is totally different: Iran is a Muslim country with a Shiite majority. Radicalized Shi’a Islam believes in an “End of Days” type scenario. Shiites believe that provoking an event akin to an apocalypse will bring about the coming of the twelfth Imam: the ultimate messianic goal of Shiite Islam.

Iran wants to wreak devastation on the world. Bargaining and sanctions will not do anything to stop them. Is it any wonder that current United States policy, vis à vis Iran, has been ineffective? I disagree with Jaeger’s opinion on this matter: The only chance that the world has to prevent certain disaster is to take invasive action that will put a halt to the Iranian nuclear program.

I fail to see how encouraging Israel to give up its territory, to appease one of the powers that admits its goal is to destroy the entire country, is “acting in Israel’s best interests.” By definition, acting as a friend involves caring about that “friend’s” well-being. Giving up the land of Judea and Samaria is tantamount to Israel announcing its annexation to the Dar-al-Islam that the Muslim states are so eager to create within the Middle East. So yes, I completely agree with Jaeger: should Israel decide to realize its suicidal aspirations, it will have an amazingly helpful friend in the form of U.S President Barack Obama.

AUTHOR’S CORRECTION: In the original op-ed, it said the IAEA report stated Iran has enough nuclear fuel to build four nuclear bombs; this is an error. In reality, this fact was found in a different article, which has since been taken offline by the website that published it. This recent article from the Jerusalem Post cites similar information.

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Posted in iran, Israel | 1 Comment »

Boycotts and big people pants [Palestine]

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Last week, New Voices pointed out a report by +972 Magazine on Norman Finkelstein, Palestinian rights activist and controversial thinker. In a move that has surprised many, Finkelstein came out in opposition to the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), which seeks to protest the conflict between Israel and Palestine through a variety of boycotts of Israel. Because of Finkelstein’s frequent criticism of Israeli policy, many were shocked to see him liken the movement to “Maoists.”

Political voice Noam Chomsky has had similar criticisms of the BDS movement, citing the “hypocrisy [that] rises to heaven,” and questioning why similar boycotts haven’t been leveled at the United States or parts of Europe due to human rights concerns. Chomsky went so far as to suggest the movement was calling for the “destruction of Israel.” Is Chomsky, or Finkelstein for that matter, right?

While no one can gauge individual motivations for persons in the BDS movement, the movement as a whole is going about its activism all wrong. Urging the self-determination of Palestine isn’t innately anti-Semitic. But cutting off, and in essence damning, the whole of the Israeli people because of the policies of the current (or past) administration(s), ignores and inflames an issue of great complexity. A crisis of this magnitude will never find itself bettered without an approach that is sensitive, subtle, and mindful.

Lumping the entire Israeli people together through calls for a wide-sweeping boycott is not the answer anymore than assuming every Palestinian is a terrorist who calls for the disbanding of the Israeli government; such categories are feeble in their ignorance.

We’re big people. We have to put on our big people pants and get our hands dirty, stop thinking in black and white and prepare to have our assumptions challenged. Punishing all for a situation many have been born into (whether Palestinian or Israeli) won’t solve anything. It will only compound social tensions a hundredfold.

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Posted in Abroad, activism, anti-Semitism, Arab Israelis/Israeli Arabs, community, Diaspora, Israel, New Voices Magazine, opinion, politics | 2 Comments »

Occupy Passover; ultra-Orthodox military draft; and more. [Required Reading]

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Ultra-Orthodox men in Jerusalem. | Photo by Flickr username asafantman (CC BY 2.0)

The responsibility of Jewish federations [Forward]

With the economic recession hitting many organizations, religious or otherwise, with hard times, leaders must make choices to ensure survival. But are some federations unfairly compromising the well-being of their employees in the process? The Jewish Daily Forward takes a look:

“In this flip exchange lies a serious issue. As our Nathan Guttman has reported, Jewish social service groups, along with other nonprofits seeking to cut pension costs, are using a controversial tax loophole to skirt federal rules that protect workers from being left with little or nothing if their retirement plans collapse. Among the Jewish non-profits availing themselves of what is known as the “church plan” are federations in Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Detroit, along with nursing homes and health care facilities.”

Occupy the Exodus 2012 [The Shalom Center]

Jewish groups around the country have responded to the Occupy movement with a certain degree of enthusiasm, incorporating religious projects within the framework of these social protests. Rabbi Arthur Waskow of Jewish Renewal now suggests that there’s no better time to explore the pressing social, economic, environmental, and spiritual crises of our age than at Passover. He’s putting out a call to religious leaders and active laypersons to participate in an Occupy Passover event:

“We hope that the immediate impact of this specific action will be to empower and strengthen the disempowered 99% of our society, and to help dissolve the overweening power of the 1% and their giant corporations — the Pharaohs and Caesars of our day. We hope to do this by evoking the soul-force (satyagraha, often mislabeled “nonviolence”) that is implicit in our religious traditions, and bringing them into active public reality again.”

Praise the Lord, pass the ammunition [Haaretz]

Since the Israeli Defense Forces have suffered a decline in numbers in recent years, new measures are being taken to concentrate draft efforts on members of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, many of whom have not served in the IDF before. But is the decrease a combination of ultra-Orthodox Jews avoiding the draft and the lack of new aliyah (immigration) candidates willing to serve? Haaretz reports:

“Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, ‘we enjoyed huge waves of aliyah that increased the number of new recruits,’ a personnel directorate official said. ‘This year saw a decline in the number of new immigrants, and that is the one factor that immediately influences the number of conscripts. Today’s situation − no aliyah and many ultra-Orthodox youths − can be directly felt.’”

Another voice calls for Israel to refrain from attacking Iran [Jerusalem Post]

With tensions between Israel and Iran the highest in years, governmental officials from the world over are asking Israel to avoid military conflict for the time being, until other efforts to quell the violence are attempted and seen through. The Jerusalem Post shares:

“British Foreign Secretary William Hague advised Israel on Sunday not to attack Iran, saying that the international sanctions against Iran should be given a chance to work.

His comments in a BBC interview came as US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon met with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem for talks focused on Iran.

Neither the Prime Minister’s Office nor the US put out a statement after that two-hour meeting, and Netanyahu said nothing about it – or the Iranian nuclear program – at a speech immediately after the meeting at the opening of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem.”


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Posted in Abroad, activism, community, Culture, Diaspora, Interfaith, iran, Israel, journalism, New Voices Magazine, Orthodoxy, passover, politics, Reading List, Religion | 1 Comment »

Chasids do the Dougie; wigless photo controversy; and more. [Required Reading]

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Video mashes up Chasidic celebration with “Teach Me How to Dougie” [Youtube]

A hilarious YouTube video featuring a clip from what appears to be a Chasidic wedding dance paired up with Cali Swag District’s meme-tastic song has hit the web. Hey, they’re better than the Black Eyed Peas. Curlier too.

Wigless photo of former chief rabbi’s wife sparks debate on Orthodox modesty [Forward]

Prepare yourselves; this one is a doozy. An old photo of Rav Ovadia Yosef’s family is making the rounds on the web. Rav Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, is both a beloved and controversial figure in the Jewish world. Yosef has been known for his hell-raising threats about women who wear “modesty wigs” instead of full-on head coverings. But the photo, which includes Yosef’s wife (Missus former Sephardic Chief Rabbi?), is particularly steamy because it features– wait for it– her hair and collarbone. Not a wig, scarf, censor bar, or bag-with-eye-holes in sight. We’ve seen a lot here at New Voices, but there’s nothing that throws us into a hormonal rage more than a little collarbone-hair action (although ankles are a close second). If your hearts are strong enough, check the link above for all the “saucy” details.

Reform world mourns death of beloved scholar [Forward]

W. Gunter Plaut, author of the celebrated “Torah: A Modern Commentary” recently passed away at the age of 99. Plaut, whose commentary on the Torah is one of the most widely-circulated texts in Judaism, is being remembered as a man of principle, as rooted in tradition as much as modernity, and one of the best-loved teachers in the history of Reform Judaism. Eric Yoffie, until very recently the president for the Union for Reform Judaism, had this to say:

“Plaut was a man of great courage in many realms. In the Reform movement, his was a generally traditional orientation. Proudly Reform and liberal in a classical sense, he nonetheless advocated for those elements of tradition that he saw as central, even when it was unpopular to do so. He spoke out against rabbinic officiation at interfaith marriages when many in the Reform movement were adopting a more flexible view; he called for more emphasis on Saturday morning worship at a time when Friday evening, Erev Shabbat, worship was central in Reform synagogues, and he urged greater Sabbath observance at time when the subject was hardly discussed.”

Women who chant Torah are being progressive and traditional at the same time [Tablet]

As more and more women are participating in the act of making aliyah (going up) to read from the Torah, it becomes apparent that a fascinating marriage of ancient and modern ways is being joined. Blazing new trails by taking the old paths, what do women have to offer to their communities by this ritual undertaking? Siân Gibby shares her own journey, both to Judaism, and to this act:

“But as Leora Tannenbaum, an Orthodox woman writing for Tikkun, has argued, there’s no reason to believe that women would take this any less seriously than men—and indeed much to suggest the opposite. ‘When I am learning and practicing my leyning, I feel as though the Torah is inside my head, heart, and body. It is an organic part of me,’ she wrote. ‘Why would anyone want to deny this experience to girls and women?’”

Death of Palestinian children sparks racist reactions [+972]

After a crash between a bus and a truck near one of the Jerusalem-West Bank borders, taking the lives of nine children and an adult, web comments took the time to “thank god” that the lives were “merely” Palestinian. +972 Magazine shares just a few of the comments cropping up online, then offers some thoughts on why this sort of racism continues.

“I decided to bring these comments to the fore for one reason. Israelis tend to accuse Palestinians of being immoral because once and again the Israeli media shows Palestinians gloating and celebrating over the death of innocent Israelis. The reaction of these ordinary Israelis to the death of Palestinian children shows that the ‘moral’ party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not so moral after all.”

 

 

 

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Posted in Abroad, Blogs, community, Culture, Diaspora, humor, Israel, journalism, New Voices Magazine, opinion, Orthodoxy, Reform | No Comments »

Staying in touch during Seminary [Long Distance Friendships]

Thursday, February 16th, 2012
friends

Arielle Wasserman discusses the trials of conducting long distance friendships | photo by flickr user ROSS HONG KONG (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I’ve known them since I was 10 years old. We’ve gone through everything together- pimples, training bras, hating our parents, loving our parents, hating boys, loving boys (we’re back to hating them, FYI) high school, mean girls – you get my point. We were that group of girls who spent every waking moment together, who knew everything about each other, and considered the term ‘best friends’ a promise, not a label.

And then we came to Israel. And while Israel is undeniably amazing, it brought about a whole new string of challenges. Ironically enough, we all ended up going to different seminaries. Which is fine – friendships are not always about being the same. I love my school, and I love my friends, but it’s not the same as the people you grew up with, and it’s not exactly easy to keep in touch.

You’d think it would be – after all, don’t we all have blackberries and FaceBook and IM? Shockingly enough, we don’t all have blackberries (Yes, I have one, stop judging me!) and as far as FaceBook goes, well, seminary internet leaves quite a bit to be desired. I may or may not have resorted to standing in the lobby screaming at my laptop, and it may or may not have worked.

We’re all on different schedules, and it is near impossible to coordinate them for a Shabbos or a dinner or even a Skype date. Staying friends is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. It sucks.

But, as my mother told me – can someone explain to me how they’re always right, and how I can get those powers without having another human being inside of me for 9 months? – this year is really just a ‘practice round’ for our real lives. And if we’re suffering while we’re all in the same time zone, how much harder is it going to be when we’re halfway across the world and desperately juggling work, school and boyfriends all the while praying we don’t let any of them fall to the ground?

So we’re learning. We’re learning that just because we don’t speak everyday doesn’t mean we’re not friends. We’re learning how the little things – a quick email, a picture of something that makes us think of the others – count, and how they matter. We’re learning that if a friendship is dependent on proximity, it’s not a real friendship at all.

I’m not going to lie to you – some of my friendships have been unable to withstand the distance. Some relationships wither away, and you mourn for what used to be.

Now, before you all cancel your tickets to Israel and kidnap your friends and stick them in a padlocked basement, be aware that while I have lost some friends, I have kept even more. We’ve adapted. We’re not the same people, and we’ve all come to the realization that we don’t have to be. It’s an amazing experience, and not what you should shy away from just because you’re afraid of what you may lose.

It’s hard. But the friends you keep? They make it all worth it.

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Posted in Israel, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Is Shit Zionists Say a Meme? [Enough]

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Shit Girls Say was funny, at least the first time around. Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys was surprisingly accurate. But Shit Zionists Say took the meme out of its playfully mocking intentions, placing it in the midst of the conflict no one wants to touch. There was nothing funny about the video. Memes are intended as exaggerated portraits whose humor is derived from their hints of veracity, and this video only had the latter. It rounded up a collection of all too real statements said about a real world conflict and tried to pass it off as witty and fun. There’s humor in girls complaining about their computer troubles, or their lack of sleep, but not in a thinly veiled political commentary about an all too real issue. Memes are lighthearted, memes are fun, but this, being neither, is not a meme. The creators of this video have appeared to try and capitalize on the movement for publicity. However, as they probably know, anything even pertaining to Israel these days is going to be marred with controversy. Perhaps they should have stayed away from the topic altogether, or possible tried to create this video in a way that would reflect the playful spirit of the meme rather than bring in real world arguments. You can’t take a viral sensation and place it in the real world – the purpose of memes is that they exist on the internet, rather than in actuality. The creators would have done better to title it “another video about the Israeli-Palestinian  conflict”, and skip the pretense that it reflects anything other than reality.

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Posted in Israel | No Comments »

Shit Zionists Say; Mikvah controversy; Jewish Twitter; and more. [Required Reading]

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Norman Finkelstein, a noted advocate for Palestinian rights slammed the BDS movement, likening it to “Maoists”. His shift in position is indicative of a greater pattern in which the conflict is viewed as a matter of civil rights, rather than tension between two states, Sean O’Neill claims. [+972]

“There is a paradigm shift in the works in how the Israel/Palestine conflict is understood and approached.  There is an increasing consensus among Israel’s critics to see the issue as one of civil rights, rather than a conflict between two nations.  Indeed, some BDS activists harbor a desire to see the end of the Jewish state, and others believe this is the inevitable outcome of a civil rights movement, whether they desire it or not.  But many others, I would argue most Palestinians among them, simply don’t care about this abstract One State v. Two State argument.  They just don’t think civil rights -  indeed human rights -  can be trumped by someone’s nationalist claims.”

The latest in the Shit ___ Say meme has hit the internet: Shit Zionists say. However, instead of poking fun, it takes the meme as an excuse to make not so thinly veiled commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Heeb]

Tablet magazine rounds up the best of Jewish tweeters, a group, though not cohesive or well-defined, possessing playful self-deprecation, humor, and razor sharp wit. [Tablet]

“You would expect a people known since ancient times as the go-betweens par excellence and renowned for their facility with language and humor to use Twitter with similar brio and specificity, and, duly, a large number of Jewish writers and media types clearly enjoy the medium.”

A picture of a nude Ethiopian woman bathing in a Mikvah has caused controversy after an Israeli photojournalist posted it to Facebook. [Haaretz]

“Internet surfers questioned whether the photographer asked the woman for permission to take and publish the photo, and said the authenticity of any consent would be questionable, given her vulnerable status at the time it was taken.”

 

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Posted in Culture, Israel, Reading List | No Comments »

Baptism of Holocaust victims spurs controversy; Israeli supermodel hits Sports Illustrated; and more. [Required Reading]

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Holocaust Memorial in California. | Photo by flickr username Dubgael (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Mormons apologize for baptizing deceased Jewish family [Forward]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has issued a public apology after accidentally allowing the posthumous baptism of the parents of the late Simon Wiesenthal, an Austrian Holocaust survivor who pursued fugitive Nazis during his lifetime. The baptismal practice, which involves church members acting in place of the individual who is being baptized, has been a source of controversy between Jews and church members for a number of years. The Mormon Church had previously agreed not to allow the practice to be used on behalf of Jewish Holocaust victims. The Jewish Daily Forward writes:

“Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, participated in many of the high-level meetings between Jewish leaders and Mormon officials.

‘We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon Temples,’ he said in a statement on the organization’s website. ‘Such actions make a mockery of the many meetings with the top leadership of the Mormon Church dating back to 1995 that focused on the unwanted and unwarranted posthumous baptisms of Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.’”

Israeli supermodel in new swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated [6 Degrees No Bacon]

Israeli model Bar Refaeli is set to make an appearance in this year’s swimsuit edition of the popular sports magazine. While Refaeli once faced controversy for avoiding a draft into the Israeli Defense Forces, the model’s career has never been better, having since appeared in GQ.

Co-authored book explores history of Jewish conversion [Jerusalem Post]

A new book by Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College, and Rabbi Daniel Gordis, president of the Shalem Foundation, seeks to unpack centuries of halachic interpretations on conversion to Judaism. The book, recently published, makes its debut at a time when the recognition of converts in Israel has reached a sort of critical mass, with conversions being retroactively revoked, Jewish status called into question, and an Israeli rabbinate that is increasingly stringent. The Jerusalem Post reports:

“Many Orthodox Jews will instinctively dismiss as tainted any work produced by non-Orthodox scholars. Yet the joint authors of this fascinating work avoid expressing their opinions or promoting their personal attitudes toward halacha. They merely quote responsa, dating from the 18th century until today, by universally respected giants of the Orthodox rabbinical world from all corners of the world, including Israel.”

Can we teach ourselves to consume less? [Sh'ma]

In a society that has become increasingly defined by its high levels of consumption and waste production, can Jews carve a path toward a more moderate lifestyle? Particularly when it comes to food, are we at the mercy of our impulses, or are there lessons to be learned about the value of temperance and restraint? Sh’ma, the Journal of Jewish Ideas, offers this food for thought:

“Ethical consumption is not only about being mindful of where we shop and what we ingest. It’s also about reforming government policies that perpetuate a cycle of poverty and widen the gap between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough,’ making ethical consumption nearly impossible for even the most conscientious among us.”

 

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Posted in Abroad, activism, anti-Semitism, Arts and Culture, Blogs, Conservative, Culture, Diaspora, Food, holocaust, Interfaith, Israel, New Voices Magazine, Orthodoxy, politics, Reading List, Reform, Religion | No Comments »

Speaking up for Israel [Reactions]

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
BDS 1

BDS advocates have had little economic impact on Israeli businesses, despite the hype | photo by flickr user :::mediActivista::: (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

As David Bernstein points out in this JTA Op-ed, the BDS movement which has seemed to permeate campus culture has had little to no financial ramification for Israel. For something that has been widely discussed in American Jewish circles since its inception, been the target of an Israeli law imposing financial ramifications for anyone who openly calls for a boycott of Israeli goods, it appears to have been just another load of hot air directed towards Israel. The op-ed also raises the striking question of how to advocate for Israel without being another reactionary fighting off those who would wish her harm. What are the ways to be a pro-Israel activist on campus without simply responding to allegations against her?

- Bring Israeli culture to campus. By simply showing the human side of Israel to those who might not know anything besides the exaggerated portraits painted by the media, and taking the country out of a political context by placing it in the sphere of another culture to be celebrated and enjoyed, one can foster support of Israel by simply removing oneself from the debate entirely. Paint a picture not of the embattled country seen on the news, but a vibrant Mediterranean culture attempting to grow and thrive amidst adversity.

- Facilitate conversation. Create a discussion panel for both sides of the issue, making sure everyone’s concerns are addressed. When campus discourse consists merely of two sides shouting at each other, third parties tend to be confused by the noise, and end up forming an opinion on the basis of propaganda strength. By creating a safe atmosphere where both sides may discuss their opinions, one can ease tensions and create an open conversation, rather than a battlefield.

- Don’t feel the need to jump upon every single statement. Yes, there will always be ideas you find impossible to accept, however, pick your battles, and don’t feel the need to address everything. Know the line between those who aim at eliciting a reaction and those who actually mean business, and respond accordingly. Don’t waste your time and energy defending Israel to someone just looking for an argument.

Posted in Campus, Israel | 1 Comment »

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