Tamar Katz

The NY Times gives us the absurd story of an Israel figure skater who qualified for the Olympics, but did not qualify to make the Israeli Olympic team.

Tamar Katz, the three-time national champion, met the International Skating Union’s standards for Olympic eligibility. But the Olympic Committee of Israel has a rule that says a skater must place among the top 14 at the European championships to earn a trip to the Olympics, the group’s president said. Katz finished 21st at the recent championships in Tallinn, Estonia.

“This issue is not about resources or gender — it’s purely professional,” Efraim Zinger, the secretary general for the Israeli Olympic Committee, said in a telephone interview. “We set the target about two years ahead of time for our athletes. Those who don’t make it must stay back. Some countries’ main goals are to participate, some send their athletes to win. We are interested in our athletes reaching the top.”

Let me guess. One day, Efraim Zinger, having nothing better to do with his time, and upset that Syria had beaten Israel to its first Olympic gold medal, decided that Israel should only send “top” international athletes. What is “top?” Hmmmm…Wait, I know! Let’s make it the top 14 spots! After all, the Olympics isn’t about competing, it’s about WINNING. In fact, there are rumors that Mr. Zinger is considering shutting down the country of Israel and dispersing its citizenry because it doesn’t rank in the top 14 (or 20, for that matter) internationally in population size, GDP, per capita income, water resources or average male height.

So here is Tamar, working away year after year, her parents paying private coaches small fortunes to train her, just for a chance to compete at the highest level of amateur competition. The World Championships are good, but the Olympics, as we all know, are the dream of every athlete. They are certainly Tamar’s dream. And her dream is infused with representing Israel at the Olympics because apparently she loves her country. AND SHE WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO QUALIFY.

Sadly, her country has decided that it has so many eligible winter athletes (4) to send to the Winter Olympics, that they can skip over a skater who’s likely to end up in the top 20 IN THE WORLD in her sport. A young woman who would proudly bear her Israeli connection and present it to an international and Canadian audience in the positive light that surrounds figure skating in general. A figure skater, representing Israel, a country with virtually no snow or ice, who is attractive and can speak English without an accent.

Yup.

Schmucks!

Would somebody explain to these people that there’s a much smarter way to run Israel’s Olympic team?

Here is an interview with Tamar.

Here is Tamar’s website. Make sure to look at the photos in the Media section, to see how photogenic the young woman looks with “Israel” plastered on her uniform.

A Facebook “support” group can be found here.

The Olympic Committee of Israel can be reached at nocil@nocil.co.il
Phone, +972 3 649 8385. Fax, +972 3 649 8395

The Israel Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport is led by:
Minister of Education, Gideon Sa`ar, MK at 972-2-560 2330 and its Director General, Shimshon Shoshani, Ph.D, who can be found at 972-2-560 2242.

HOLY ROLLERS was one of the most anticipated films at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. A film, inspired by the actual events of a few Hasids who acted as drug mules for an Amsterdam-to-NY Ecstasy smuggling drug operation, could either be a “Shanda for the Goyim” or an interesting, gripping story. Cue the klezmer soundtrack and glue on the pais? (Actually, I was happily impressed that the soundtrack had no klezmer cues, and it worked well in progressing the story)

HOLY ROLLERS is directed by Kevin Asch, a graduate of NYC’s School of Visual Arts, and stars Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and The Whale; Adventureland; The Social Network) as Sam Gold, a young Hasidic man in Brooklyn, who is irritated by strictures of his religious community and feels restricted when working in his father’s fabric store. It’s a hard-knock life, boychik. He is ripe for temptation; one notices that he peeks out his window at his neighbor’s tv — a neighbor who enjoys watching “The Robin Byrd Show,” a porn program on community access tv.

The man with a taste for porn and ‘gelt’ is Yosef (Justin Bartha), Sam’s next door neighbor. Yosef wears a Rolex and seems happy; and Sam becomes enamored by Yosef’s exciting, well-paying “medicine importing” operation, which is run by an Israeli and staffed by Hasidic drug mules. Sam initially thinks he is just transporting medicine from Europe, but then finds that he is good at this operation and has a “kopf” for the business. He gets the praise he seeks from his new friends, something that was lacking at home and in his other endeavors. The characters are very slightly inspired by the real life story of Jacob “Cookie” Orgad, a bud of Heidi Fleiss, and an Israeli sociopathic “beeper” salesperson, who allegedly smuggled 9 million Ecstacy pills into North America wother over $200 million, using Hasidim, strippers, and others as mules.

Sam’s father, Mendel is more interested in happy customers. He does not know how to maximize his profits. Leon (Jason Fuchs) is Sam’s best friend, next door neighbor, and perhaps a future rabbi, who values learning over business. Jackie Solomon (Danny A. Abeckaser), is like a Jewish Al Pacino; the character is an Israeli-born drug smuggler (though he calls his mother in Israel each Shabbat). Rachel (Ari Graynor) is Jackie’s main squeeze and Hebrew School dropout.

If you think this is going to be a Jewish “Mean Streets” or “Trainspotting” you would be wrong. Asch stressed that, “it is actually a story about a young man’s struggle with faith and blind faith.”

Sam is hoping for an arranged match with a lovely Hasidic woman from a respected family, but the outcome of his initial meeting with her helps to push him down an alternate path, to isolation, and to a sense of foreigness when he visits nightclubs and is introduced to the drug subculture. Astute observers will note that the Torah parshot discussed in the synagogue scenes concern God asking Adam “where he is” in the Garden of Eden, and two of Aaron’s sons offering up a “strange fire.”

Much of the screenplay was written by Antonio Macia. Macia, the son of immigrants from South America, grew up as a Latino in Stamford CT, and converted independently to the Mormon Church. He performed his missionary work in Canada. These experienced prepared him to write a tale of change, faith, and apartness. Macia said, “I just did a lot of research on my own, and received information provided by the crew. I took the perspective of the character, Sam, and his journey, and how he takes these small little steps of compromise.” The title, “Holy Rollers,” is a double meaning, since “rolling” is a term used by users of Ecstasy to describe the feeling of drug’s high. Asch said, “I really dig the title. The story is lively. There were ideas for other titles. I wanted it to be accessible, and I did not want it to sound like a somber film.”

Two years before filming began, Asch came up with a list of possible actors who could play Sam. His first choice was Jesse Eisenberg, and therefore sent a script to the actor through channels. Eisenberg read the script, and on his own, drove to Brooklyn, explored one of the Hasidic communities, discussed the project with his mother, and then called his agent to sign on for the role. He then recommended that Jason Fuchs play his friend and neighbor.

Asked if he and the cast did any “ride-alongs” with Hasidim, Asch told how a Chabad ‘Mitzvah Tank’ was parked across from their rehearsal space one day. Asch said, “…Ari, Jessie, and I spent an hour on the Tank with the young Hasids who manned it, and incorporated some of the dialogue into the story.” (I guess, one could say that it was like a police “ride-along,” accept it used tefillin, instead of guns and arrests.)

By the last day of Sundance, the international distribution rights to the film were purchased. And Asch is already at work developing his next two films. “Great Neck” will be about growing up in a materialistic world in Great Neck, Long Island; and “Kings Highway” will focus on the rise of the Israeli Mafia in New York City. Both are set in the late 1980’s.

There were so many films of Jewish interest at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, that it was nearly impossible to view them all given ticket availability and timing. One of the most prominent films was:

HOWL:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix;
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

(AND… BREATHE)

Howl was one of the three opening night films at Sundance. It was written and directed by Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk, Celluloid Closet) and Jeffrey Friedman (Celluloid Closet), and it began as a documentary about the beat movement poet, Allen Ginsberg, and the fiftieth anniversary of the publishing of his groundbreaking poem, “HOWL.” But while making the documentary, the directors felt they should break new ground, just as the poem had. They decided to turn it into a feature with three stories. Epstein recalled, “We’d been given this treasure, but now we were faced with how in the world do we actually do this? We started out with a traditional documentary approach, but it soon became clear we weren’t getting to the essence of Ginsberg. We had to find a way to bring together all these different element – the text of the poem, Ginsberg’s life and ideas, this landmark trial – to create a multi-faceted picture of “Howl’s” creation and the world’s response. The thrilling part was that we were inventing the form as we went along.”

The three stories in the film are: the landmark 1957 obscenity trial in San Francisco which sought to determine if the publication of the poem was obscene and whether it should be banned and censored; an animated exploration of the poem, including some (frightingly) large genitalia; and the story of Allen Ginsberg at a time when America was changing, a man was finding his prophetic voice. and Ginsberg was discovering a way to perform his masterpiece. (The end credits include the voiceover of Ginsberg playing an instrument and performing one of his works, which reminded me that I had seen him perform that same work with the organ at a Jewish book fair two decades ago.)

James Franco (Milk, Spider Man) plays Allen Ginsberg at 29. Franco, whose mother is of the Jewish faith, said he was not raised Jewish. He once noted that he felt deprived because he never had a bar mitzvah. Maybe playing Ginsberg made him a man? Raised in the San Francisco Bar Area, Franco became enamoured of the beat poets at the age of 14. He recalled, “… we were all so taken with the whole idea of ‘live, live, live.’ We were into “HOWL,” “On The Road,” “Naked Lunch,” and we would go up to City Lights (bookstore) to see where it all started.” He continued, “I always envisioned himself playing someone like Jack Kerouac.”

As a teen, Franco also went to Palo Alto‘s Aquarius Theatre to see Epstein’s and Friedman‘s “The Celluloid Closet” when it was first theatrically released. Familiar with the directors’ works, when Franco was approached about the film, a combination of Friedman, Epstein, and Ginsberg, Franco knew it was not the name of a California law firm, but it was the name of a new passion project for him.

Franco, having acted in the roles of the actor, James Dean; Harvey Milk’s boyfriend, Scott Smith; the poet, Allen Ginsberg, and next, Aron Ralston, the man who cut off his own arm, he related that, “I enjoy playing real character,s since the roles present difficult challenges and I feel compelled to work harder to give them their due on screen.”

One third of the film focuses on the 1957 San Francisco obscenity trial, The People v. Ferlinghetti, that the publication of “HOWL” initiated. David Strathairn plays the conservative prosecutor, Ralph McIntosh, who is out to protect the man in the street from filth and sets out to officially and legally censor and ban the book. Jon Hamm, who Americans know as the star of MAD MEN and the uncredited phone voice from A SINGLE MAN, is the Jake Ehrlich, the defense attorney who argued the case for the promotion of the freedom of expression. The case was argued before Judge Clayton Horn, who is played by Bob Balaban. Balaban, wh plays the conservative judge, actually faced censorship in one of his first feature film roles. “Midnight Cowboy” actually received an “X” rating from the MPAA as a result of a blowjob scene involving Bob Balaban’s student and Jon Voight’s cowpoke characters. The rating was later changed to a “R” rating, after the film received several outstanding reviews and, later, award nominations.

“

In a process that was new to Sundance this year, it seemed that many audience members at the world premiere, were more interesting in being the first to Twitter and blog about the film, even before the end credits were rolling.

I saw the best bloggers of my generation destroyed by madness, trying to twitter hysterically,
dragging themselves through the Sundance streets before the end credits looking for a WiFi fix;

I thought this was rather rude, or perhaps I am just jealous that I had not WiFi or twittering capabilities. Where was the time to digest the film? As in eating and swimming, one should wait a few hours before jumping into the Twitter pool. HOWL has received mixed positive reviews from the offical press, but I would give it even more positive reviews. Jeffrey Freidman said, “As a film, “Howl,” is a lot of things, but I hope audiences will relate to it as the story of a man finding a way to be true to himself. Allen Ginsberg was searching for a way to express fully who he was – and, in doing so, he changed himself and the culture.

For David Saranga, Twitter and Facebook remain the best weapons in an ongoing battle to maintain a positive image of Israel and make the Jewish State easily accessible and approachable to everyone.

Saranga, the former consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in New York, brought this mission to full speed just over a year ago, when he held live Twitter debates on behalf of the Israeli government during the Gaza war, opened Israel’s YouTube channel and revamped Isrealli.org, the State of Israel’s official blog. His latest task, now serving as a faculty member of the Asper Institute at IDC-Herzliya’s Sammy Ofer School of Communications, is to launch this year’s 10th Annual Herzilya Conference on social networks for the first time and reach out to a broader, ideally younger audience.

“If we want to approach young people as well we have to bring it to the language that they use,” Saranga said.

In the past decade, the Herzliya Conference has become an increasingly vital stage for Israel’s leaders to gather and discuss government policies and national security issues.  This year’s conference begins tomorrow (Jan. 31) and ends on Feb. 3, hosting a wide range of leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Foreign Minister and MK Tzipi Livni, Deputy Foreign Minister and MK Daniel Ayalon and World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder. One of the newest speakers to confirm attendance is Dr. Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, who will join Tuesday evening’s panel: “Prospects of Peace: The Israeli-Palestinian Track.”

In addition to streaming the various panels in real-time throughout the week, Saranga and his team will also be editing and uploading shorter, more user-friendly versions of each panel, which will remain available online after the fact. Conference enthusiasts can meanwhile receive play-by-play updates about the various speakers, panels and issues addressed via Twitter and Facebook.

“People can see the essence of the conference,” added Saranga, who said he’ll be working with a team of 10 people, predominantly students, to accomplish this mission. He has also been working closely with Dr. Noam Lemelstrich-Latar, director of the Asper Institute and dean of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications.

Saranga’s hope is that viewers and readers all over the world will repost and “ReTweet” conference updates to their friends, giving Israel a bigger voice all over the world, and a continued chance to make a positive impact.

“One of the goals of the project is to enlist organizations and private bodies in Israel and abroad, for whom Israel is both relevant and important,” Saranga said. “This is one of the first projects ever undertaken, whose purpose is to enhance the message emerging from the Herzliya Conference, by allowing organizers to tap into the potential of the social network.”

_ _

For live updates, follow @HerzliyaConf and @DavidSaranga on Twitter, or become a fan of the Herzilya Conference on Facebook. To see the preliminary PDF version of the conference program, click here to download. Further details about the new media launch are available here.

Sharon Udasin is a staff writer at The Jewish Week. E-mail her at sharon@sharonudasin.com, or follow her on Twitter.

…so far

Yes, we’re still accepting donations, but here is a list of folks and organizations that have helped make the Jewlicious Festival happen:
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Just in time for Tu B Shvat!

This is a fight that has been going on since well before I was a college forest activist, trying to prevent the State of Oregon to preserve the last un-logged watershed in the state. We didn’t succeed.

Today a lawsuit was filed to halt a slate of new clear cutting in the Sierra Nevadas - the forest destroying technique that is commonplace across the third-world and still used in the USA.

The logging companies have a bogus claim that since they will replant more trees than they cut down, it is GOOD for the world to clear cut. This perverted and warped thinking is what guides much of US forest policy on Federally owned land.

Meanwhile, clear-cutting clogs streams and kills fish and causes erosion. It Not to mention that if they are clearing Old Growth, they are destroying ancient forests that cannot be replaced. The LA Times reports:

Today, the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental group, filed lawsuits against the California Department of Forestry in seven California counties to halt logging plans for 5,000 acres across the Sierra Nevada and Cascade regions. The group contends that the agency approved the projects without properly analyzing carbon emissions and climate consequences under the California Environmental Quality Act. “Clear-cutting is an abysmal practice that should have been banned long ago due to its impacts on wildlife and water quality,” said Brian Nowicki, CBD’s California climate policy director. “Now, in an era when all land-management decisions need to be fully carbon-conscious, there is no excuse to continue to allow clear-cutting….”

Today’s lawsuits were filed in superior courts in Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Modoc, Shasta, Tehama and Trinity counties. “By continuing to rubber-stamp Sierra Pacific Industries’ clear-cutting plans, the Department of Forestry is chopping a gigantic hole in the credibility of California’s climate policy,” Nowicki said. He added that, last August, Sierra Pacific withdrew plans to log more than 1600 acres following CBD lawsuits over the greenhouse gas effect. Several dozen new Sierra Pacific plans are pending.

Tonight is Tu B Shvat. This should not be happening, but it is.

Of course the company, Sierra Pacific, claims that the environmental groups know nothing and want to kill jobs. Another lie.

By destroying what is left of the natural ecosystem of the Sierra Nevada we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Many more jobs can be created in sustainable industries like tourism if there are forests there to visit, fish to fish, streams to travel, and vistas to photograph.

There is nothing evil about logging – we need timber. The question is how do we get that timber, and from where? There are sustainable models for logging, and forest management. They are just being ignored by Sierra Pacific and others because they cost more, take more time, and require that forests not be felled in one swoop. They have lobbied for years to keep stricter forest protection from being enacted.

Clear-cutting is just not an option. Not now, not ever. Go to ForestEthics.org for more info.

(photo from http://www.stopclearcuttingcalifornia.org/)

This year’s Jewlicious Festival, our 6th in as many years, is going to be an Open Source event. What does that mean? Well, allow me to explain. From day one, it was our fondest hope to run similar festivals in other cities. To date however, the only Jewish community that has been able to get it together enough to host a Jewlicious Festival has been that of Long Beach, CA (and this year Los Angeles as well). The Festival has been otherwise successful beyond all our original expectations, attracting young Jews from across the US and Canada and top notch speakers and musical acts from around the world. Why hasn’t Jewlicious spread beyond Long Beach? Maybe it’s because we’re just exhausted. Maybe only Long Beach can muster the necessary, albeit modest resources and communal will to make it happen. Maybe it’s because people continue to assume we’re a Chabad Kiruv organization. Maybe we just suck at writing grant proposals. I don’t know.

But this year, we’re going to do something different. We’re going Open Source so that anyone who cares to can follow along and learn about what it takes to run the largest Jewish Student and Young Adult Festival in the world. And I promise you, it’ll be interesting. Seriously.

So what am I working on now? About a zillion things, but for my first Open Source Post I decided I’d write about t-shirts. Seems like a pretty straight forward issue, right? Wrong. Every year we print up a mess of commemorative t-shirts, hoodies and other apparel. Everyone loves a good t-shirt and we figure if folks wear the shirts after the festival, the wearer essentially becomes a walking advertisement for us, the organization.
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Cross-posted at my personal blog.

Tu B’Shvat is tonight. Since it’s been a while that I’ve been part of something Jewish (living with Mr. B does not count as doing something Jewish, although sometimes I try to pass it off as such,) I wanted to celebrate, which involves planting trees and eating fruits of the Torah (pomegranates, dates, olives, and Bamba.)

Unfortunately, we don’t have any Bamba and Mr. B hates olives in the same way that Hamas and Fatah hate each other. So, instead, I tried to get Mr. B and myself enthused about going to a Tu B’Shvat event, namely this event by the awesome Sixth and I (where we’ve gone for stuff before). Here is a description of the event:

Embrace your inner environmentalist by joining us for a Tu B’Shvat celebration. Dine and drink your way through a traditional seder as we sprinkle in tasty Kabbalistic tidbits and nature-inspired yoga poses. Tu B’Shvat; its more than just trees.

Tu B’Shvat, traditionally known as the birthday of the trees, is a time to think about relating to the natural world. This holiday can be celebrated by planting trees, eating fruits, and having a Tu B’Shvat seder, a ritual that began with the Kabbalists of the 15th century. At our seder, we’ll enjoy some new and exotic fruits, discuss issues of sustainability, and discover connections between environmentalism and Judaism.

Not to be a drag, but yoga poses? Really? And sustainability? I hate that word more than Mr. B hates olives because it’s overused so much it’s essentially nothing but a buzzword. Which makes me wonder, what have we as a Jewish people turned into?

Here’s how hipsters spend Tu B’Shvat:

Please take note of:

• The ironic hipster glasses
• The ironic bright orange almost American Apparel-like tee
• The ironic non-leggings sweatpants meant to resemble sweatpants from the 1980s
• The ironic laugh that just looks like it’s enjoying life but inside is full of more misery and pain than Unhappy Hipsters

And here’s how real Jews spent Tu B’Shvat. You know, building the land of Israel. Although Guy on the Left’s yoga shorts look really comfy. He probably got them at American Apparel.

source

I think, through all of this, it’s incredibly important not to underestimate the blows to his sanity that Mr. B experiences on a regular basis by being married to me:

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

J.D. Salinger,
Franny and Zooey

After 45 years of hiding from the public and the press, J.D. Salinger has passed away at 91 years of age. His work still holds up. His work will hold up in 50 years. I don’t know how to explain the magic of his tone, but it is there and every time I’ve read his work, a new layer of understanding came about. Was it intentional? Did he really consider each and every word in what he wrote? It seems that way. There was an economy of words, but somehow he was able to create a feeling and a mood. He was able to tell us about people and about ourselves.

He was, by the way, half Jewish. His father was Jewish (a kosher cheese salesman), his mother was Irish Catholic. I read somewhere that only later in life did Salinger discover that his mother wasn’t Jewish by birth because she had changed her name to Miriam. I’m not sure whether he also discovered that she hadn’t converted. Either way, he identified as a Jew in his younger life…and nobody has a clue with what he identified later in life since he kept to himself in the most severe way.

The LA Times had a reasonable obituary.

Ah, the NY Times has a better obit.

Virginia Heffernan has an interesting take on Salinger at Tablet.

Eretz Nehederet is an Israeli sketch comedy show that I never, ever watch. I think it airs on Friday night when I am usually in the company of my Sabbath posse. Also, I don’t own a television. In any case, they poke fun at pretty much all elements of Israeli society in a way that makes us laugh, squirm uncomfortably or get angry. Or all three at the same time. But I still love those little fuckers. The clip above is a commentary on the media hype that accompanied Israel’s humanitarian mission to Haiti in the aftermath of an earthquake that left over 200,000 people dead and many more injured. And of course there was hype – but the fact that it came equipped with a fully functional and rapidly deployed IDF field hospital manned by experienced staff – makes it hype with substance. That my country was sending help to people who desperately needed it was more important to me than whatever positive publicity we were gaining. And while perhaps the PR angle of this operation made me a tad uncomfortable, again, the most important thing was that we were helping.

But of course, those that hate us glommed on to the PR angle while almost completely diminishing the actual good that was done by the IDF. And that’s the beauty of this clip. Watch it carefully and note that while it’s fairly critical of the PR aspect of Israel’s mission, it is equally if not more critical of those idiots out there who claim that the mission was 100% PR driven and meant solely to deflect world attention from the never ending plight of the Palestinians as they suffer from the jack booted oppression of racist Israeli Apartheid military machine. Blah. The journalist in this clip is clearly so over the top, you’d have to be an idiot to take his depiction seriously.

So uhm, yeah. Go Israel! Heh…

Today, in honor of the international Holocaust memorial day, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz. Netanyahu spoke of the memory we, as Jews, must keep. We must remember our people, who have died at the hands of others due to hatred. We must remember those who have done and would do us harm. And we must remember that while we live, and are still here, we must continue to defend ourselves.

Opening with the Kaddish, Netanyahu spoke of those slain. “From the cursed ground at Auschwitz, Birkenau and other camps rise the voices of our brothers and sisters, our people who choked to death and were burned and murdered.” Quoting Deuteronomy, he said, “Remember what Amalek did to you.” He warned that with the “Nazi Amalek” having past, a “new Amalek is appearing and once again threatening to annihilate the Jews. We will not allow it … We will never forget and always stand guard.”

Speaking of Iran, and the threats of today, he stated that, “Murderous hatred must be stopped in its tracks, stopped right from the beginning. All countries in the world must learn this lesson, just as we did after losing a third of our people in blood-soaked Europe. We learned that the only guarantee for the protection of our people is the State of Israel and its army, the IDF… I promise, as head of the Jewish state, that never again will we allow the hand of evil to sever the life of our people and our state.” He discussed that Israel “must warn of the impending danger to the rest of the world and at the same time to be ready to defend ourselves… the most important lesson from the Shoah is that murderous evil must be stopped as soon as possible, before it can realize its schemes.”

Speaking of Israel, Netanyahu proudly exclaimed, “Am Yisrael Chai, we have returned to our homeland, to the land of our forefathers, to Jerusalem, our capital. We have converged from all corners of the world, Holocaust survivors, Arab Jews, Jews from former Soviet Union states, Ethiopian Jews.” Israel is the homeland of the Jews, all Jews; not as Obama alluded, a land built of Holocaust survivors. Ending his speech, Netanyahu expressed that, “we bow our heads in memory [of Holocaust victims] and raise our heads as our flag waves with its two blue stripes and the Star of David at its center.” Netanyahu quotes the Israeli national anthem, proudly reminding the world, “We still haven’t lost our hope.”

Click here to watch Netanyahu speak at Auschwitz. Note: the speech is mostly in Hebrew.

Hat tip to Ynetnews for writing about this. Three Jewish Israelis sit and discuss Israel with three Palestinians. In Arabic.

From the Israeli side, Avi Melamed, a history teacher by profession, Yohanan Tzoref, an academic and expert on Palestinian affairs, and Yoni Yahav, a student, were invited to participate on the panel.

As they conversed in fluent Arabic, the three confronted their Palestinian counterparts who were invited to the broadcast on a series of issues on the political agenda. The Palestinian panel members were Ayesha a-Sayafi, a nurse by profession, Ayoub a-Tutanji, a student, and Dr. Jamal Amar, a building engineer.

This took place live, in Arabic, on BBC’s Arabic service. This is a good thing because there are few Israeli voices heard unfiltered in the Arab world.

This serves as another reminder that half of Israel’s population comes from the East, many from Arab lands. A reminder to those who continue to falsely claim that Israel is a foreign European colony in the Middle East.

In any case, I can’t understand a word of what is being discussed, but watching sections of the debate (it flips in and out of the discussion, but look for the parts where 3 Israelis are seated across from the 3 Palestinians) is fascinating. The passion of the debate on both sides is evident.

By Little Billy Eichner ft. Rachel Dratch

Ok first JayZ and Alicia Keys did this song called New York State of Mind which, unless you’re some kind of snob who only listens to like, classical music or obscure Garage Rock bands from Istanbul, you must have heard like 1000 times by now. It is kind of catchy. So this dude Billy Eichner did a Jewish take off and frankly, it’s awesome. I mean I’ve never been to Forest Hills but I assume it’s a Jewy suburb of New York. The other obscure references? Stuyvesant High, which is where I think Ariel Beery went to school and Bronx Science, another high school that I’m pretty sure that Beery didn’t attend. Otherwise, the messages contained in this video are totally universal, albeit a little uhm… full of foul language. Enjoy:

Hat tip to Heshy at FrumSatire for the heads up.

OK so you jokers put up a pic of me in a tux, presented absolutely no context and of course the conversation inevitably devolved into football and Brett Favre. Before that happened though, one of our readers left a comment stating that our Night of Unity fundraiser was “epic.” That it was. I had just flown in the night before after a whirlwind tour of New York and Montreal via Rome and Tel Aviv. Of course our crew in LA had worked like crazy people to organize the event and by the time I walked in, everything was basically done. The El Ray Theatre was packed to capacity with fancy shmancy LA Jews who donated big time to JConnectLA and Jewlicious and who enjoyed an awesome evening in honor of fellow Moroccan Jew David Suissa. Suissa who is a columnist for the LA Jewish Journal, a community activist and philanthropist, received our first annual Jewish Unity Award and we all enjoyed the open bar, yummy food, various entertainers and the musical stylings of Moshav and Matisyahu.

OK so really? I was totally overwhelmed and tux or no tux I felt completely out of my element. Everyone was all fancy and dressed up! The one thing that stood out in my mind though was that none of this would have happened, none of it, without the support and imagination of the Jewish community of modest little Long Beach, CA. Both on a communal and individual level, the Jewlicious Festival has benefited from the sort of support for innovation that many talk about endlessly, but few actually bring to fruition. Except for those guys down in the ELBEE.

It’s no secret that we’ve always wanted to do a Festival on the East Coast. I’ve even managed to start basic discussion on the issue with some communal leaders here and there, but after 6 years, the Jewlicious Festival is still available only in Long Beach. This despite many requests from young Jews around the country. Only modest lil’ Long Beach has been able to pull this off year in year out, both in times of plenty and times of economic distress. So yeah, big ups to the Alevys and the Alperts and the Booksteins and the inumerable volunteers who help make our Festival happen and prosper.

The Night of Unity provided an opportunity for the Jewish Community of Los Angeles to step up and put in their 2 cents, so to speak. Truth is we didn’t make a massive amount of cash, but we did increase our local profile significantly. That’s been a problem as even after 6 years, many people still think we’re some kind of Chabad program.

Seriously. I mean do I fucking look like a Chabadnik?

I know Rabbi Yonah is well, a Rabbi. And that’s been obvious in all the publicity he’s been getting of late, from being featured in Vanity Fair, to being a Jewish Heroes Finalist to his selection in the Forward 50. But message to secular Jewish America: NOT ALL RABBIS ARE LUBAVITCHERS, ok? And the Jewlicious Festival is the only gathering in the world where you will find everything from Breslav Chassidim to Lesbian Peace Activists. OK? OK! Now give us some money so that we can help spread the love!

So, back to the original point of the post. Our fundraiser. It was an old skool affair featuring an honoree, VIP tables, big donations, sponsors and all that. But it wasn’t stuffy. People mingled, shmoozed and rocked out. All our student and young adult leaders were in attendance and rubbed shoulders with the attendees. It really was an old skool meets new skool kind of thing and please shoot me if I use the term “skool” one more time. Whatever, it was fun. Now we’re in full Festival prep mode. Oh what fun awaits. Yay. Stay tuned!

Boarding the E-train en route to my most recent international reporting endeavor, I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect. I was about to tag along with 40-some-odd American peers who were visiting Israel for the first time, not through the auspices of Taglit-Birthright Israel, but under the newly independent wing of Oranim Educational Initiatives. I was placed with the 25- to 30-year-old age group, the eldest of three different groups that Oranim founder, Shlomo “Momo” Lifshitz, was taking to Israel at his own expense.

Initially the largest Birthright trip provider, Oranim split with the huge umbrella organization this past June, following continued disagreements over registration numbers and Lifshitz’s commitment to vocalizing the message, “raise your children Jewish.” Eager to continue supporting the

message he deemed crucial to Israel’s future, Lifshitz decided to launch his own trips, with a particular focus on an older age group of young adults, many of whom no longer even qualified for the Birthright age maximum (no older than 26).

Waiting on line for security that Dec. 27 afternoon, I winced, as my ears picked up on some joking among participants as to whether or not they should be purchasing bottles of Duty Free alcohol before boarding the plane. Oh no, I thought — this is going to be the same alcohol-obsessed, sex-crazed frenzy that swept through the 18-year-old scene on my own trip 2.5 years before (I was 22 at the time). I loved my own Oranim Birthright trip back in June 2007 — in fact, it triggered an obsession with Israel that brought me back there five times since and will likely lead me to spend extended time there at some point soon. But as a reporter, I cringed at the thought of spending 10 days among cliquey girls and guys who were more interested in clubbing than seeing Israel.

Boy, was I wrong.

Sure, group members enjoyed lounging under the Tel Aviv night sky with a beer or two in hand and a hookah nearby, or dancing the occasional evening at a kibbutz pub or Eilat club. And don’t worry, there were enough matches made among these same participants that would render Momo proud. But their ultimate goal — to learn about Israel and take advantage of their free 10-day journey to the utmost. Why risk a hangover when there’s a rocky mountain climb the next morning?

“This whole experience — I love it,” Shira Prigat, one of eight Israeli university students who accompanied the American travelers, told me for my Jewish Week article about the trip. “Everyone has been really excited about hiking. I’ve heard more enthusiastic comments about hiking than about clubbing, which really made me happy.”

What I saw those 10 days was a mature group of mid to late 20-somethings, who were riveted by their tour guide Yariv Ofer, 38, a criminologist and IDF commander turned Oranim staffer, whose knowledge about Israel seemed endless and whose physical prowess could’ve propelled him up the Aggro Crag with a blink of an eye. At every stop — be it a muddy corner of the Mount Carmel forest or the wind-chilled outskirts of a Yom Kippur War bunker — the participants listened to Ofer intently, absorbing his discussions on Israeli history, culture and modern society, and asking questions that sparked countless debates to follow.

“I feel like this room is a melting pot of a wealth of intelligence and knowledge,” said Brandon Cohen, 26, on the last night of the trip. “It left me hungry for more.”

I’m in favor of sending Jews of all ages to Israel, which would be optimal if today’s Jewish community had unlimited financial resources. But after witnessing both my typically younger Birthright trip’s age group as well as the 25-30 group from Oranim, the difference in maturity between the two was astounding to me. Rather than coming to Israel on winter breaks from school, many participants had to take precious vacation days — some even unpaid vacation days — to come on this trip. Their time was precious, and they wanted to get the most out of their 10 days in Israel, willingly waking up as early as possible to maximize their cultural intake.

“I think I took in 50 percent more information than I would have if I had come when I was younger,” said participant Evan Ryan during the group’s closing session. “It’s not a question of if I want to come back to Israel – it’s a question of when I want to come back to Israel.”

His peer, 26-year-old Brad Goldstein, agreed, adding more recently, “Being older, and more mature, and having a better sense of world news, you can appreciate the everday struggle of being in Israel and seeing Israelis.” On the last day of the trip, Goldstein — who himself had come to Israel expecting little — organized a fundraising effort among his fellow trip members, collecting a grand total of 2,000 shekels ($500) from them for Oranim’s future free trip, an idea he said came to him in a hotel shower.

“The amazing leadership of Yariv made me want to share this experience with more people and do anything I could to help that happen,” Goldstein said, noting that he and his fellow group members wanted to do everything they could to make sure that these trips continue.

While $500 will hardly send an entire bus of future participants to Israel (a bus, Lifshitz says, requires $80,000, in comparison to Birthright’s price of $130,000), the money raised by these trip members is certainly a start, and a group of them are already planning fundraising events in the future, entirely independent of the Oranim staff. Oranim already has a host of successful long-term programs in Israel, but if the company wants its 10-day trips to survive independently of Birthright, it is certainly a wise business strategy for Lifshitz to focus his efforts on this older age group. In terms of attracting investors and philanthropists, they will not be competing with Birthright because they are offering an entirely different product — a different, but equally valuable product. If the funds are available, the two can exist simultaneously.

“For the first time in my life, I’m really proud to be a Jew,” said participant Adam Nolan, on the last full night of the trip, as the circle of participants shared their opinions in a small conference room at their Neve Ilan Hotel.

A few seats away, his cousin — David Pinsky — began tearing.

“I just broke out in tears when my cousin said that for the first time he’s proud to be a Jew,” Pinsky said about 15 minutes later, still sniffing. “I feel like with the relationship I’ve built here, I don’t want to leave you guys.”

“I’m going to go home tomorrow night with the feeling that I didn’t go to work,” Ofer said. “I went on a trip with a bunch of my friends.”

Sharon Udasin is a staff writer at The Jewish Week. E-mail her at sharon@sharonudasin.com.

With the world in awe of the Israeli response to the tragedy in Haiti, much energy has focused on the reason that Israel is good at this kind of disaster relief. Yes it is true that Israel deals with these traumatic crisis on a regular basis. But experience alone cannot simply account for excellence.

It turns out that three Israeli officers that are part of the rescue efforts – who trained the people on the ground in Haiti – all went to the same school, Boys Town Jerusalem.

As the world intently watches the horrifying earthquake destruction in Haiti, three Israeli Army colonels are closely following the events from 6,500 miles away—with an eye on gaining know-how that will save lives in future catastrophes. The three officers, experts in human rescue, have worked closely in training and equipping the Israeli rescue team who rushed to the scene in Port-au-Prince, and with whom they maintain 24-hour-a-day contact from afar. All three men are on alert to be dispatched to Haiti at any moment. And all three share a personal bond: each graduated from Boys Town Jerusalem where they developed a mission to save human lives, anywhere in the world.

“The Israeli rescue and medical team was among the very first to arrive in Haiti, even though they traveled a much farther distance than the others. And with each hour, they are gaining world renown for working miracles,” explains Colonel Ben-Tzvi Elyassi, who serves as a commander in the IDF Home Front Command. One of Israel’s top experts in rescue and relief operations, Elyassi’s 25-year military career has provided him with “hands-on” experience in saving human lives in disasters of untold proportions. Col. Elyassi assumed second-in-command control of Israeli search-and-relief missions and was dispatched to the 2002 earthquake in India, the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, and the 1999 earthquake in Greece—in addition to a host of military and civilian disasters in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Rav Shmuel’s annual Jewlicious promo done in stop animation – very cool. Rav Shmuel has jumped around fields, bars, and tables all in the pursuit of the great promo video. Check out his offering for this year.

An if you have not purchased your ticket — do so before the costs goes up on Jan 31!

Hi, it’s me again.  I’ve been away, but now I’m back.  I blame Jersey Shore.

Here’s a review I wrote for one of the movies I saw in the DC Jewish Film Festival in December, but it’s still relevant because Gad Elmaleh’s still hot.

I don’t think there’s anything more awesome about DC than being able to go to Le French Embassy for a Jewish Film Festival (you can read about the last movie I saw here, and please note that I was compensated with free tickets for the festival, but as always, I don’t endorse anything that’s lame). I did just that last week. Can you tell I was excited by my tweets?

There, we saw the short film 10 Weizman Street, which turned into the feature, Comme ton Pere (Father’s Footsteps in English.)

I wish everyone could see both movies. Fortunately, I’ve found 10 Weizman Street on YouTube.

It takes place in 1991, somwhere in Tel Aviv, amongst abandoned back streets. It is the Gulf War and three Soviet immigrants-a father, mother, and daughter and straight from Ben Gurion, lugging their suitcases in hand and Soviet, stiff, mothball-filled clothes looking extremely out of place in the shimmering dry dust of the Holy Land of Florentin. The daughter is weaing a Soviet school uniform. They struggle with all the things that immigrants struggle with when they put on the new uniform of their adoptive homeland. All of a sudden, an air raid siren sounds, signaling that they have 45 seconds to get to a miklat (bomb shelter)-it’s Saddam Hussein and the SCUD missiles, and alien people wearing gas masks run through the street.

The film is only 13 minutes long, but in a way, it sums up the whole of the post-Soviet immigrant experience in Israel-the fear, the frustration, the completely new laws of the West. And, although the episode is surreal, it happened hundreds and thousands of times, in slight variations, for thousands of immigrants in the same way. All in all, a completely subtle, quiet, and extremely powerful film. Here it is:

Part I

Part II

Everything in the short resonated completely with me, especially as a single girl child of Soviet immigrants who went through much the same process over a longer period of time.

And then, there is Comme on Pere. The scene below showcases one of the things I loved most about it-the period outfits.

The next movie, Father’s Footsteps, or Comme ton pere in French, was also a jewel. The showing was prefaced with an introduction by the director, Marco Carmel, who sought to recreate the story of his childhood in France with a father who he originally thought was larger than life. In the movie, Marco as Michel, is the youngest of two sons of Algerian immigrants to Israel who have decided to go to France to experience the world in the early 1970s. He sees his father, played by even hotter than Clive Owen talented thespian and Moroccan-born Jew Gad Elmaleh, as a superhero. Instead, Elmaleh, while well-meaning and extremely concerned about -

-where was I? Oh, yes. Elmaleh’s character, Felix, falls in with the wrong crowd while selling antiques at a market in Paris and-

-em. Elmaleh’s character falls in with a bad crowd and eventually resorts to crime with his partner, an older Jewish gangster from the same town in Algeria as he is, Gabes, leaving his family broken and his youngest son, Michel, devastated and without a solid base.

This movie is about so many things, and all of the actors in it are skilled on so many levels. Not only does Elmaleh carry the movie as a family man and a gever gever, but his wife, played by Yael Abecassis (who also did an excellent job in Lech, Lechi in 2006), also has excellent on-screen presence that is subtle but just right as she struggles to raise two teenage boys and rise above the circumstances. The relationship between Elmaleh and Abecassis is most touching because, although it is flawed in many ways by Felix’s schemes, it is a relationship between husbands and wives that you don’t see too much anymore-one built on clearly-defined roles but also admiration, and, most evident, class. In the background are the beginnings of the Arab-Israeli conflict as it is currently playing out in France and the Yom Kippur War, all shot in a backdrop of brilliant 70s clothes and hairdos and a combination of Sephardi North African culture that is so foreign to me as an Ashkenazi and that I found fascinating.

The movie is essentially wrapped up as a jewel with an amazing, and ultimately warming plotline, yet one that doesn’t feel saccharine at all, and also at the same time gives us a peek at how people lived in Paris in the 1970s. With this movie, you can really tell that the director was trying to write down his story for absolution so he could move on to other projects. I loved it. Both of them are 100% worth your time.

One Week Left!

I love contests that are fun and easy. In that respect Leadel.Net’s Jews That Do video contest scores 100% on both counts. It’s fun and easy because for a video contest, it doesn’t require any superb equipment or spectacular cinematographic skills. The folks at Leadel just want you to feature interesting Jews, and interesting is defined broadly. For instance check out this entry below. The featured Jew is an anonymous husker in Jerusalem’s central market, singing Jerusalem of Gold, middle eastern style:

This video looks like it was shot on a cell phone, but it’s still pretty darn sweet! Speaking of the Shuk, another entry, also shot and edited very simply, features one of the great characters of the Shuk – the Yemenite healer man? What does this Jew do? He sells various juices with various healing properties. Listen to him talk about what he does (is that Darboukatron by Soulico in the background??):

So as you can see, this is a hella easy contest to enter and the prizes? Not too shabby at all! A 13 inch Mac Book Pro, 2 iPod touches and some iPod Nanos – as well as the opportunity to have your videos viewed by a whole mess of people! Walla!! So nu? If you know any remotely interesting Jews… shoot them and maybe you can win something. And apparently they don’t all have to be denizens of the shuk. Oh, and you have one more week to enter. Good luck! Visit Leadel.net for further contest details.

Ooooh, the man is really angry. Shlomo Sand (also known as Shlomo Zand) is angry that historians like Simon Schama have critiqued his work unfavorably. Does he bother to refute their claims? No, he has a different response: “I live there and you don’t, therefore I can speak and you should not criticize me.”

Here is how he put it to The Guardian:

“The book fails to sever the remembered ­connection between the ancestral land and Jewish experience,” Schama wrote. “What chutzpah coming from Simon Schama, speaking about his ancestral land!” Sand says, eyes widening. “He doesn’t want to come to his ‘ancestral land’ to live!”

Sand is scathing about accusations made by Jews living elsewhere that his book is anti-Israel. From the comfort of the diaspora they charge him with sedition. Some say his thesis fuels antisemitism. Overseas donors to Tel Aviv University have called for him to be sacked.

But Sand has voted for Israel with his feet. He is not anti-Zionist, he says, but post-Zionist: accepting modern Israel as a fait accompli. Besides, his interest in the country’s survival as a democracy is not theoretical. His family lives there.

Diaspora Zionists can nurture the Jewish myth of biblical nationhood as dual citizenship alongside their passports from safer states. When they refer to “Israel” and “Jerusalem” in their prayers, they do not have to distinguish between scriptural metaphor and political reality. It is a distinction on which Israel’s survival depends.

“A lot of pro-Zionists in London and New York don’t really understand what their great-grandparents felt about Zion,” says Sand. “It was the most important place in the world in their imagination, as a religious, sacred land, not a place to emigrate.” That “Israel” was a metaphysical destination to be reached at the End of Days. The modern Israeli state is a political enterprise, conceived in the late 19th century, made necessary by the Holocaust, founded in 1948.”

Methinks Mr. Sand doesn’t get it. First of all, he is forgetting that well-regarded Israeli historians such as Anita Shapira have criticized his work for shoddy scholarship and they also live in Israel.

He also forgets that a person who lives outside of Israel, Jewish or not, has the right to find flaws with his work and point them out. They don’t need to live in Israel in order to do that and their arguments and claims are no less valid just because they live elsewhere. His resources for the research of history are no greater than the resources available to Simon Schama. The same goes for the discussion of a link between Jews and their ancestral homeland. A Tibetan monk could discuss this link and if his resources or knowledge are good and the argument is historically sound, his views are just as valid as those of Israeli scholars.

Why does Mr. Sand think that he gets a pass on doing good research and coming to correct conclusions simply because he lives in Israel? He doesn’t.

What is particularly galling is that he actually admits that his thesis is wrong!

“”A lot of pro-Zionists in London and New York don’t really understand what their great-grandparents felt about Zion,” says Sand. “It was the most important place in the world in their imagination, as a religious, sacred land, not a place to emigrate.” That “Israel” was a metaphysical destination to be reached at the End of Days.”

Precisely, Mr. Sand. Except for the part about it not being a place to emigrate. This is exactly what your critics have been telling you. For almost two millenia this particular idea has been at the center of Jewish life and Jewish imagination. Whether a person was genetically connected to our ancestors in Judea or Israel is not what defines our connection as Jews to the Land of Israel. It is exactly what you say it is: “the most important place in the world in their imagination, as a religious, sacred land.” After all, you’re the one who talks about the Jewish people being the result of mass conversions. Yet, you know well that the idea of Israel that you mention in the interview was a bond that Jews shared throughout the world, whether in Yemen, Morocco, Germany or anywhere else. It is this link that made them a nation and a people. It is this link that connected them and connects us to modern Israel.

The claim that the Jews did not envision Israel as a place to which they could emigrate is a red herring. They did not have the option. Not only was there no economic infrastructure in the area, but there were often hostile forces, Christian and Muslim, who controlled the place and who would have made it difficult to travel there or live there. Sand knows the story of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi who traveled to visit the Western Wall and was then, according to legend, run over by a horse and killed. Why would such a legend crop up? Because Jews did not believe they could safely return to their homeland.

It took a political movement and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire facilitating this movement’s activities (not the Holocaust, as Sand mistakenly claims) to bring Jews to the belief that they could return to their homeland. While many opposed the idea, many accepted it as real and possible.

The bottom line is that Shlomo Sand’s claim about the supposedly invented nationhood of the Jewish people is the real invention here. He decided that his political views could be justified and perhaps even brought into being if he could reconfigure the meaning of the link between the Jewish people and Israel. While his book is like manna from heaven to many Israel haters and anti-Israel activists and will now become part of the debate about Israel, the simple fact is that his ideas are wrong and based on a false understanding and odd recording of history. The saddest part of all is that under it all he is seeking peace, but his book will only serve those who seek war. Wittingly or unwittingly, he has become a weapon in their arsenal.

Our other articles about Shlomo Sand:

The one about Simon Schama ridiculing him

Shlomo Sand excoriated for shoddy history once again

And our original,

The French Love Sex a Good Anti-Zionist, Socialist Book

It’s been what? A week in Babylon? And it’s been mad weird. The only place the weather was kind was in Montreal and “It never rains in Southern California” has been inundated with rain storms of biblical proportions – I’m here to prepare for the Jewlicious Festival and I have yet to see Long Beach because it seems the roads down there are flooded to high hell! So I’m chatting with a friend, who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons, and she tells me “OMG! The season finale of Jersey Shore!” Curious I watched about 5 minutes of this MTV reality show tribute to “guidos and guidettes,” young Italians who spend the summer working by day and partying by night on the Jersey shore. Viewers who follow the adventures of 4 dopey, juiced up guys and 4 potato head girls can’t help but wince at how stupid and shallow these people are. It’s truly beyond belief and is full of drunkenness, random hooking up, inanity and lots of Ed Hardy Apparel – couturier to the doucheoisie. But… before you start feeling all superior, please allow me to introduce you to Danielle.

From what I could determine, Danielle is a traditional Israeli girl from Jerusalem. She doesn’t believe in sex before marriage and urged Pauly D to come visit her in Israel and eat kosher. Also she’s a moron and a crazy stalker and isn’t so religious that she wouldn’t throw herself on a moron guido and get kissy face on camera with him after giving him an I heart Jewish girls t-shirt with a magen david/Italian flag combo. So yeah, we’re not that superior. Not at all. In fact, in Israel, reality shows similar in intelligence to MTV’s Jersey Shore are ubiquitous. The vaunted and otherwise much admired Israelis are reality show junkies, and reality shows are the stupidest entertainment available – the television version of crack. No wait, not even crack – more like huffing glue from a paper bag. Bad, bad stuff, and Israelis love it like Lebanon loves its hummus.

Here’s an episode of Ahmed and Salim where they infiltrate the set of Israel’s Big Brother. “Where does the Qur’an say you have to blow up reality shows?” asks the host. Ahmed and Salim’s Father replies “Huh? What Qur’an? I just hate this stupid fucking show!” Now there’s some terror we can all get behind!

Films, filmmakers, actors, others, and snow came to Park City, Utah for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and many of the films are of Jewish and Israeli interest. As snow fell atop already fallen snow, the festival opened not with a traditional Opening Night feature, but with three film events: a narrative, a documentary, and a shorts program. That was just one of several ways that the festival organizers are trying to “RE”new, “RE”vitalize, and “RE”generate the festival, and “RE”turn it to its indie roots.

John Cooper, the long term festival staffer and newly appointed festival director, views the fest as a “great independent pause between the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.” I guess in my terms, the fest is like the Days of (cinematic) Awe that are between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The festival opened Thursday with a press conference by Robert Redford, who opined that the festival was getting staid and scared of trying new things and was creatively “in “danger of flat-lining.” For this reason, Sundance is shaking things up in 2010. One change is its section for “Next” films, films that are low-budget or no-budget; a partnership with YouTube to show films; and even a 3D film. Yes, Sundance will screen a 3D film, albeit it is a documentary and about toads. See it before lunch.

Redford, paraphrased a poem by T. S. Elliot., “The Four Quartets,” which ends with the idea that we must return to the beginning with new fresh eyes and see it anew, when it reads,

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Sort of like the rabbis, who tell us to turn and turn the Torah, to see it from various angles and facets with new eyes.

As for Jewish films, there are plenty. The festival opened with “Howl,” directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Set in 1957, it is the story of Allen Ginsberg and his gamechanging poem, “Howl.” The filmmakers began the project as a documentary, a form with which they are familiar. They are the directors of award winning documentaries on the “celluloid closet” and Harvey Milk. They had been approached by Ginsberg’s estate to make a film to mark the 50th anniversary of the poem. After much effort, they decided to turn it into a narrative feature film with documentary-like aspects. James Franco, who Adam Sandler would point out is half-Jewish, stars as the gay, Jewish, Kaddish-reciting, beat-movement poet, Allen Ginsberg.

Another greatly anticipated film is “Holy Rollers,” directed by Kevin Asch. It stars Jesse Eisenberg as a young Hasid who, angry at his father’s failing economic status, turns to the drugs trade, and with other Hasidic youth, act as drug mules to smuggle Ecstasy to the US from Amsterdam in the late 90’s. A shanda? yes. But based on the true events of the Israeli grug traffickers and their scheme to use young Hasidic men and woman as drug mules. It is a story of faith and “blind faith.”

Documentaries of special interest include “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” about Jack Abramoff, the Washington DC super lobbyist and observant Jew who was convicted of corruption and fraud; “Freedom Riders,” directed by Stanley Nelson, about the 1961 fight against segregation in the American South; “Joan River – A Piece of Work,” directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, about the private dramas of comedian and entrepreneur, Joan Rivers; “A Film Unfinished,” a documentary by Yael Hersonski, is a German/Israel co-production about the Nazi-produced propaganda films of the Warsaw Ghetto, and their later postwar discovery and use by historians; and “Fix Me” by Raed Andoni, an Arabic language documentary set in Ramallah that follows the filmmaker through twenty therapy sessions as he tries to cure his condition of being Palestinian.

More on these films, and the Israeli filmmakers with shorts in the festival in my next posting.

Sadly, the pilot and flight crew on a U.S. Airways Express flight on January 20, 2010 from New York City to Louisville Kentucky were not aware of tefillin, the leather phylacteries that are worn by some Jewish men and women during their morning prayers. When Caleb Leibowitz, 17, wrapped himself with tefillin, crew members became concerned, and it was decided to divert the flight to Philadelphia so that the student could be questioned in greater depth. The Philadelphia police mentioned that these “olfactories” posed no cause for concern, and that these devices, which were connected together were safe. Some chalk this up to a lack of knowledge among some people of Jewish religious practices. I, on the other hand, believe that the jet’s pilot was a student of the Zohar, and knew that the Torah that was contained inside the tefillin was “black fire on white fire,” and therefore the jet needed to be grounded, spiritually, before continuing on to the Blue Grass state. Plus, wasn’t “Caleb” a “spy?” Kudos to the pilot for quick thinking.

For more Ilana Donna videos, click here.