"FIRST NIGHT OF PASSOVER -- Rabbi Mayshe Schwartz held a tray of matzos on the first night of Passover as he explained the meaning of the holiday to three of his eight children at Chabad Chai Center at a community Seder Monday (Boston Globe March 26 2013)."
I'll pass on the meal, thanks.
"A White House seder and Lincoln" March 26, 2013
President Obama’s decision to celebrate Passover in the White House was born on the campaign trail in 2008, when then-Senator Obama joined a few of his Jewish aides for a makeshift seder in the basement of a Pennsylvania hotel. “Next year in the White House,’’ quipped Obama after the ritual feast concluded with the traditional wish, “Next year in Jerusalem.’’
Since then the Obamas have added their own touch to the retelling of the story of the exodus of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The White House seder now concludes with the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and its demand that “all persons held as slaves . . . are, and henceforward shall be free.’’ The affirmation dovetails perfectly with a holiday that Jews around the world call the “Season of Our Freedom.’’
These are not mere retellings of miraculous escapes. The central message of Passover is that freedom from slavery — anywhere and in any form — depends on the actions of people as much as it rests in the hand of God.
Why were Palestinians the first to come to mind?
Slaves in America knew this well, having taken many steps to win their freedom long before Lincoln delivered the proclamation in 1863.
Yeah, about Lincoln -- although I suppose I need to apply some Weiss's wisdom and remember it's just Hollywood.
While preparing his table for a Jewish holiday, Obama also set a place for human history.
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I thought we has separation of church and state in this country?
Also see: O-Seder Makes His Life Easier
Hate to say it, but ever notice the ones most vociferously protesting religion in the public sphere are Jews?
I guess you do what you have to get by, huh?
Another president with a Jewish problem:
Ulysses S. Grant’s greatest regret
All in all, the eight years of Grant’s presidency proved to be a “golden age” in US Jewish history. When he died in 1885, he was mourned in synagogues nationwide. It was a remarkable saga of atonement. From scourge of the Jews to their great friend in Washington; from the general who trampled Jewish liberty to the president who made protection of their rights a priority. Only in America.
So that is when the Zionist usurpation of American government actually began.
Related: Sunday Globe Insults: Jews Were Tory Traitors
Yeah, only in AmeriKa.
You know, it has nothing to do with Jewish for me, and everything to do with the WAY PEOPLE ACT! I could care less what color, gender, preference, or whatever it is. It is what PEOPLE DO that is the determinator in my judgment.
Having said that, I will say -- in a bit of a taste of a new format -- That I am tired of reading about the vitality of Jewish life and Israelites’ pain and sadness in my paper. I'm sick of the Jewish girl makes good and achieves glory with a quick step. I could go on and on about the Holocaust™, but I've already covered some of that today. Leaving aside the anomalies and other things, I'm just tired of seeing the words "Hitler" and "Nazi" in my paper nearly every day.
Maybe I need to go to synagogue:
"Synagogue devotes 3 years to reengage on Israel" by Lisa Wangsness | Globe Staff, January 07, 2013
BROOKLINE — Several years ago, the clergy of Temple Israel, the state’s largest Reform congregation, began to notice something unsettling. Israel could be a contentious topic in the synagogue — when people paid attention to it at all.
They don't even care? Got their own lives, do they?
Some congregants hesitated to bring it up. Others knew little about Israel’s complex political situation, or felt frustrated by it, so they avoided the subject. This self-perpetuating cycle of disconnection concerned the rabbis most.
Poor Jews, hey. All the internal conflict and self-retrospection. I'll bet the mistreatment and mashing down of Palestinians weighs hard on their consciences.
So they decided to talk about Israel. Not for a night, or a weekend, or a month — for three solid years. The conversation would involve classes, lectures, congregation-wide discussions, even a clergy-led trip to Israel.
I see enough (and not nearly enough) about them in my paper every day.
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
“Our goal is not actually to create staunch supporters [of Israel], it’s really to move the dial on apathy,” said Rabbi Jeremy S. Morrison, who oversees education at the synagogue. “I’m hopeful that more and more people will be able to talk about these issues in ways that are more productive.”
Temple Israel is not alone in its effort to get serious about improving the dialogue on Israel within its congregation.
Why is this necessary? Certainly there can't be anything wrong with good Israel?
The synagogue is one of a dozen in Greater Boston offering iEngage, an intensive seminar on the political and moral quandaries facing Israel and the relationship between Israel and Jews elsewhere in the world, developed by the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and education center. Combined Jewish Philanthropies, which is helping to sponsor the course, says that interest has been so high that some synagogues have waiting lists.
Probably one of the reasons the Globe's readership is declining; however, the Grand Depression doesn't seem to have hurt them at all, huh? The most successful run of fund-raising in its 117-year history, while its endowment accounts weathered the recession and the Madoff scandal with minimal losses? I gue$$ we know where all the money has gone. And then insult is added to injury?
I must admit, I've calmed down a lot over the years. I think it's jaded exhaustion.
And at Brandeis University, students dismayed with the animosity among Israel-related organizations on campus recently started Brandeis Visions for Israel in an Evolving World , or bVIEW, which has gained an enthusiastic early following for its open, experimental approach. A recent panel discussion featured the usual representation from left, right, and center groups, but with a twist. Instead of rehashing arguments about past events, they could only ask and answer questions about the future.
Jews are fighting amongst themselves? That's the sign of something about to fall.
“I think that there is a concern that, just as America has polarized and found it difficult to see left and right talk to one another — witness what we’ve just seen on Capitol Hill — so in Jewish life, the left and the right have trouble talking to one another,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis.
In November, the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta canceled a talk by Peter Beinart, author of “The Crisis in Zionism.” Lamenting this in Tablet Magazine, Rabbi Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and a frequent critic of Beinart’s, wrote: “Have the People of the Book really become so uninterested in thinking?”
Their self-delusional, huh?
(Soon after, Gordis drew criticism for harshly chastising a colleague and former student for urging Israelis to empathize with Palestinian suffering, even as she voiced support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket fire from Gaza.)
Wow. Jewish intolerance is ugly.
And about that rocket fire. Ever notice it always happens when peace talk is near?
In 2010, a Newton synagogue rescinded an invitation to Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street, an advocacy group that advocates for a two-state solution and has been critical of some Israeli government policies, after some members complained.
It's AIPAC-lite.
Related: Delahunt and the Jewish Divide
Is that why he quit Congress?
And last year, at another Newton synagogue, members of Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine and other activists, screaming “Israel is an apartheid state” and other slogans, were ejected from an event featuring five members of the Israeli Knesset.
Just when I'm feeling down you kids give me hope.
Temple Israel had had some experience with similar disruptions in the past. Within the last decade or so, two Israel-related public events the synagogue hosted soured when non-members in the audience grew hostile; in one case, people in the crowd heckled the speakers, and in the other, sharply worded questions created tension.
Gotta get their attention somehow.
So the congregation took special care to set a respectful tone as it launched its three-year endeavor, called “Israel and Us.”
It began with three, open, congregation-wide discussions, the first of which established ground rules — people’s willingness to speak, for example, should match their willingness to listen.
“I really believe that there is a genuine middle,” said Rabbi Ronne Friedman, Temple Israel’s senior rabbi. “It’s a middle that wants to hear, and more than it wants to hear, it also wants the disputation to be thoughtful and civil.”
But Friedman and Morrison said apathy was by far a greater concern than incivility among their congregants; so “Israel and Us’ is not about the airing of views so much as it is about education.
The synagogue established a loose theme for each year: Last year’s was Jerusalem, and civil discourse itself; this year is democracy and nation building; next year’s will be Israel’s relationship with its neighbors in the modern Middle East.
Translation: attack on Iran this year.
The congregation has hosted a range of speakers, including, during the conflict with Gaza in November, Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel. The synagogue is now hosting advocacy groups with different perspectives. Ben-Ami of J Street came last month; later this month, Eric Giesser, regional director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a more hawkish pro-Israel lobby, will address the congregation.
This spring, David E. Matz, founder of the Graduate Programs in Conflict Resolution at UMass Boston, will offer a three-part course on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and S. Ilan Troen, a professor of Israel studies at Brandeis, will lecture on Jewish claims to the land of Israel.
They don't have any claims. DNA proves Palestinians more closely resemble the ancient Israelites. The current crop are a bunch of land-stealing and usurping Khazar converts from Central Asia.
Just Vision, whose films highlight Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, will also offer a presentation.
The iEngage course at Temple Israel late last year drew about 30 people — a small fraction of the 2,000 or so adults in the congregation. But one participant, Mitchell Shames, said it offered those at the table a common language and framework for people thinking through their own views, and for continuing the discussion within the congregation.
“These are very complicated issues,” he said. “People come to the discussion with varying backgrounds and perspectives.”
Edmond Murad, another participant, said a major focus of the iEngage course was on connecting the moral teachings of Judaism and the conduct of a modern state, which he found interesting.
Murad is a native of Iraq who vividly recalls hiding, as an 8-year-old child in 1941, in the basement of his Baghdad apartment building with his family while pogroms raged in the streets outside.
Oh, yeah, every Jew in the world faced a pogrom, I forgot.
His family eventually immigrated to the United States, but many of his relatives went to Israel and remain there with their families today.
How come non of Iran's 25,000 Jews have done that?
The fact is, it was a Zionist plan to encourage all Middle East Jews -- who had lived in relative peace and security for thousands of years, sorry. I know it conflicts with the current conventional myth narrative, but -- to emigrate to Israel in the late 1940s. It met with limited success. Predicated on gather 6 million (there is that magic number again) Jews to Israel.
He knows that many in the congregation do not feel as strongly about the importance of Israel as a Jewish homeland as he does, and that some are very critical of the government’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Good for them, and I applaud them.
But he says “Israel and Us” has given the congregation a chance to talk over their differences. Some of the speakers, he said, have opened his eyes to complexities he had not considered before.
“I think the nature of the problem is so polarizing that it’s hard . . . just to see another person or another valid viewpoint just across from you,” he said.
No it isn't. Maybe for you.
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Let's head on over to the school:
"Group at Brandeis stirs debate on Israeli politics; More than 250 students from area schools join conversation led by new organization" by Lisa Wangsness | Globe Staff, January 28, 2013
WALTHAM — When the leaders of a new Brandeis student group created to foster a more productive dialogue about Israel began planning their first conference, they did not know that Israel would hold elections just days before. Nor could they know that gains by centrists would lend fresh energy to discussions around the world about Israel’s future.
Actually, I haven't gotten around to posting about Israeli politics, but the fact is nothing has changed. The centrist party that won a surprising second capitulated on the Palestinian question and all the rest.
The unforeseen Israeli political developments helped animate the conversation at Sunday’s gathering hosted by Brandeis Visions for Israel in an Evolving World, despite what many regard as dim prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal anytime soon. More than 250 students from Brandeis and colleges and universities around the region met to discuss how they could make campus dialogue more civil, and more focused on the future.
“Thoughts change reality — that’s what happened in Israel over the last two years,” said Gil Zamir, an Israeli sophomore at Brandeis and one of five students who founded the group last fall. “Definitely you can feel that here.”
In addition to the state of campus dialogue on Israel, the conference focused on Israeli politics, culture and national security. Speakers included Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to a number of US secretaries of state; Yousef Bashir, a Palestinian student from the Gaza Strip who at age 15 was shot by Israeli soldiers; and Bambi Sheleg, a prominent Israeli journalist.
Oh, I will be LOOKING FORWARD to see what the Globe says he said.
In one session, students were asked to represent the different Israeli political parties and try to form a coalition government. Viktoria Bedo, a conference leader and president of J Street U., an advocacy group that supports Israel but is often critical of its government, tried to challenge participants by assigning them to represent views different from their own.
“It was a microcosm of what I think coalition-building looks like,” she said afterward. “It was especially fascinating for American students who live in a totally different political reality.”
More than three dozen students trained in fostering civil dialogue ran small group discussions that let students practice the art of conversation throughout the day.
“By being an organization that’s about the conversation itself, we are able to foster collaboration, build community, and create a safe space for conversation,” said Erica Shaps, a senior.
Not that the conversations were easy.
“I think it’s raising even more questions,” said Ilana Pomerantz, a senior who was one of the discussion leaders. “Is it really possible to not have a heated debate? . . . if somebody says, for instance, they’re completely against the state of Israel even existing, and that feels very threatening to somebody, how do you not have a hostile debate?”
Related: Memory Hole: Future Vision of Israel
And that was in 2005. How you gonna make a state out of that when Israel is keeping all settlements?
And one student said he would have rather have kept the focus on substance, not the conversation itself. Rida Abu Rass, who said he is the only undergraduate on campus who is Palestinian, said few American students are well-informed about important political developments, such as the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority....
A token Palestinian?
Related(?): Palestinian prime minister quits
Maybe they should call it Brandweiss.
But many students said they took heart at the sight of the banners for two groups on campus that are often at odds in their views on Israel — J Street U and the more conservative Brandeis Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is generally supportive of the Israeli government — hanging next to each other on the wall.
Zamir and his two roommates, Natan Odenheimer and Chen Arad, were soldiers in the Israeli army before they came to Brandeis.
Now I'm wondering if they are not intelligence agents planted here in the U.S.
When they arrived as freshmen in the fall of 2011, they were surprised at the hostility among the different Israel-focused groups on campus – and disappointed that students rarely attended the events of organizations with whom they disagreed. So they invited the campus to an event they called “Meet your Israeli soldier classmates.” Scores turned out to listen, and the three roommates answered questions freely.
Zahava Horowitz, a junior at Brandeis, said that the new group has already helped shift the tone. Israel was a toxic subject when she arrived at Brandeis as a freshman.
“When I say screaming matches, literally people didn’t want to be at these events,” she said.
A wonderful display of tolerance.
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Notice how the article turned into Jewish communication concerns and that's all?
How self-centered, but I guess that comes with the supremacism.
UPDATES:
"Gathering hears Holocaust survivors’ accounts; Hundreds in Boston celebrate those who testify to its epic inhumanity" by Gal Tziperman Lotan | Globe Correspondent, April 07, 2013
Nazi German Holocaust survivors’ stories must continue to be told to ensure that survivors are not forgotten.
“If [the Holocaust] can happen in Europe, the civilized, enlightened Europe, it can happen again, every day, every time, everywhere.”
Yeah, and the current versions are in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, all of Africa, and anywhere else EUSraeli Empire forces are raising hell.
**************************
Mayor Thomas M. Menino used the event to thank the members of the Jewish community he has worked with during his 20 years in office.
“We must always keep the victims of the Holocaust in our thoughts,” Menino said. “We can continue to ensure that their legacy will remain for years to come.”
And then he fell and broke his leg?!?!
(While never wishing ill upon anyone, even scum bankers and war criminals -- I just want them to be held to justice -- I truly believe in the higher forces of cosmic karma. Didn't Hitlery take a spill, too? Meanwhile, Congo had more killed, but that would shatter that magic number again, so.... Native Americans lost far more to European conquest, yet.... Kaganovich and Yagoda lost to "history." Why is that inappropriate for me to see?)
White steam rose from vents under the nearby Holocaust Memorial’s six glass towers, representing the 6 million Jews killed in the six main death camps over six years. Teenagers stood between the towers, reading the names and hometowns of people killed....
Even though the numbers have been revised downward they still cite the conventional myth.
About a dozen protesters stood outside Faneuil Hall, holding signs in support of Palestinians and against what one of the protesters, Bob Bowes of Somerville, called “the politicization of the Holocaust.”
There i$ that, too; however, how nice to see this in my paper.
“This is something most activists don’t come to,” Bowes said of the ceremony. “There is a lot of good in the religion and culture of Judaism, but then there’s a lot of bloodshed that’s happening on the Palestinian side with Zionism.”
Woah, the Z-word makes a rare appearance in my Globe -- and when you do see it, it is usually out of context.
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Here's a test: mention the word Zionism in passing conversation and see what reactions you get from people. Most of the time it is a puzzled, quizzical look on Amerikan faces.
"Daughters of Abraham celebrate ties in Cambridge; Interfaith book group connects" by Zachary T. Sampson | Globe Correspondent, April 08, 2013
CAMBRIDGE — The story of how the Daughters of Abraham came to be....
A Christian, Howe was seated by a Muslim woman and a Jewish woman, Peace said....
And thus, the Daughters of Abraham were born....
The organization is named for Abraham, who is viewed as a founding father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by members of each of those faiths.
Several Daughters of Abraham said the book club has helped them handle religious stereotyping. Saadia Husain Baloch, 45, of Newton, said joining Daughters of Abraham forced her to study her own Islamic faith. “I had to learn more about Islam so I could knowledgeably discuss it with people who are not Muslims [and] people who are Muslims.”
***************
Anne Minton, 71, of Lowell, said, “I’m never now in a situation where I would think, well how would a Jewish person hear this or how would a Muslim person hear this.”
I never did think that way, so WTF?
One of my faults is I always looked at people as being as intelligent, aware, and knowledgeable as me, with the same values as me, you know, truth and justice, that sort of thing -- and I was often disappointed.
That comment says more about her than anyone else.
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