What do Purim, werewolves, Native Americans, Celtic horsemen, Halloween, and the Greek deity Diana have in common?

I was going to do a post on this, but then figured I’d let you find out about this on your own.

Oh, and the prize?
First prize will be a picture of CK dressed as a Maori tribesman.
Second to fifth prizes will be vouchers for VIP admission to my Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech once the Nobel Committee has figured out that I’ve got a huge, theoretical potential as well.
If you live nearby or in a place I travel to more or less regularly, I’ll throw in some coffee and European chocolates (if you’re not a creep, I’ll even post the latter but then you’d have my address, so it would depend a lot on how creepy my fellow contributors and I determine you to be).

Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity!

Well, something’s going on…

Vinny, Snooki and Pauly D spared God's full wrath

I know. You’re thinking a Purim party? Run by Aish? Hosted by a guy called “Chris?” Featuring a bunch of proud Guido reality TV stars?

Well, someone on high must have taken notice, because right in the middle of the party, some of the glass panels in the atrium came loose and fell, showering the VIP section with glass. Clearly this wasn’t divine wrath at it’s worst because, thankfully, no one got hurt. But I can just imagine the big guy upstairs thinking “Chris Noth? Is that the best you can do? Sex and the City was a million years ago! And frankly, I’ve had it with Snooki, Vinny and that “The Situation” guy. So yeah, here’s a little sign of my displeasure.”

Snooki for her part tweeted the following message: “Its okay Vin and I are still alive … Omg roof just collapsed at the purim event! We thought the dj was beatin the beat hardcore but nope,the roof couldn’t handle snooki and vin…”

That’s right Snookster. Your reality TV show and the foisting of your cast members on our collective psyches is so dumb that it offends both inanimate objects and dieties. Either that or crazy Israeli Danielle tried to kill Pauly D. Either way… wtf??

Purim and Activism from Eli Joseph – Taken from my living room in Maaleh Adumim

Some thoughts..

When I was growing up, I had a very minimal relationship with Purim. For me, it felt like the Jewish version of Halloween with everyone dressing up in crazy costumes, masquerading around Shul and acting in bizarre ways. I knew there was a story to it with a bad guy and a hero, but I still found the whole thing boring because I couldn’t find a way to connect with it and the parties at shul were pretty lame.

Until the day came when I moved to Israel and Purim came alive.

I learned the Megillah for the first time, and realized there was so much more to it then just another story of the Jewish people nearly being slaughtered and then saved. According to our tradition, the story in Megillat Esther takes place after the Jews had been exiled to Babylon and the First Temple was destroyed. Rulership eventually passed over to the Persians, and 52 years after the destruction, Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to the Land and rebuild the temple… But only 42,000 Jews out of millions actually went! Soon after, Achashverosh became king and things yet again took a turn for the worse; construction was halted, and in this context, the story of Purim takes place.

One of the key parts of the Purim story and the one that speaks to me the most, was the Fast of Esther. The Jews were living in a foreign land, assimilating, comfortable, and relatively at peace until Haman came to power and convinced king Achashverosh to murder them because they posed a potential threat. And how did Haman describe the Jews to Ahashverosh? He said, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm.”  Hmm… Sounds eerily familiar. Mordechai picked up on this and immediately went out in tears until Esther found him and asked what in the world was the matter. He told her of the decree to murder the Jews and that she had an obligation to go to the king and face him – to speak up and try to save the millions who were threatened! She resisted.. And her excuse? “Everyone knows that if anyone approaches the king without being summoned, they’ll be put to death.” Mordechai then told her that she could not keep silent and that her fate would not be separate from all those who would be slaughtered. He told her that perhaps the entire reason why she had become Queen was to plead on behalf of the Jews. She finally woke up and told Mordechai to assemble all the Jewish people, and together, they would fast for three days. Only then would she go and confront the king.

In Judaism, there is the idea of Tikkun, of ‘fixing.’ The three day fast was a tikkun for the Jewish people who up to that point had avoided standing together and sharing the burden of responsibility for each other as a whole. Once they fasted, the Tikkun was made and Esther was able to go to the king and plea on behalf of the people successfully.

There is a deep lesson here.. Purim is actually considered spiritually to be on a higher level than Yom Ha Kippurim, our day of atonement (if you look at the words, the first part ‘Ki’ means ‘as’, and we are left with Purim, so that Yom Kippur is striving to reach a level of spiritual depth that Purim achieves). And why? Nowhere in the entire Megillah of Purim is God mentioned, and yet, the greatest Tikkun of standing together was still able to happen without any visible Godly hand telling us what to do. This teaches us the power we have within ourselves to shape our reality, to positively affect our present and future if we are able to stop judging each other and unite through a place of love.

And why do we drink on Purim? Our venerable Rabbis taught that on Purim, we’re supposed to reach a level of “Nahafochu,” where everything is reversed or flipped, to get to the point were you’re so drunk, you can’t even tell the difference between Mordechai and Haman.  So we drink to go even deeper, beyond all boundaries, to a place where walls melt and we see the oneness in us all.

The Rabbis also said “Mi she nichnass Adar, Marbim be Simcha!” He who brings in the month of Adar is full of Joy!” From a place of brokeness, we are able to rise, through loving each other, growing, taking responsibility for one another, and bringing goodness, joy and light to the world.

May we all have a Purim Sameach!!

I like my ties with poppy seeds (zazzle.com)

Hilary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State has put all issues on hold worldwide, in order to work on a gefilte fish importation crisis. No, seriously, this is not a Purim spoof. According to the Associated Press, there is a trade dispute. Clinton drew chuckles from a congressional panel when she said that getting nine containers of Asian Carp filets from an Illinois fishery to a processing plant in Israel in time for the Jewish holiday “sounds to me like one of those issues that should rise to the highest levels of our government.” She promised Republican Congressman Don Manzullo (IL) that she would find out why Israel slapped a 120% import duty on the fish.

Speaking of Asian carp, Affirmative Action, Affirmative Reaction, Josh Li vs. Josh Leibowitz, Jeff Yang, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, asked whether Asian Americans are the “New Jews.” Such a minor story, subtitled “Is it really kosher to call Asians the “new Jews”?”, blew up when he received 300+ comments in just a few hours, many of them of the anti-Jewish flavor.

Over in Europe. the BBC reports the the EU has determined that products made in West Bank settlements may not be consdiered products of Israel. The ruling on Thursday by the EU court in Luxembourg stems from a case brought by the German drinks company Brita. It imports products from an Israeli company based in Mishor Adumin in the West Bank and was refused preferential trade treatment by the German customs authorities. The EU Court has not yet ruled on whether Alsatian products are French or German

What would Esther Do?? The Seattle Times reports on the Northwest yeshiva of Mercer Island (Seattle), WA. They were to play a prestigious basketball tournament game during the Fast of Esther, against St John-Endicott. They chose to forfeit the game. (Note: St John-Endicott is a US public high school in St. John WA, and not a parochial religious high school)

And What Would Mordechai Do? The NYT reports on another case in which a suburban community is wary of the effect of a Chabad center or synagogue on its community property values or suburban master plans. It seems as if residents in Millburn NJ are choosing sides and debating whether a variance shall be approved for a homeowner to change his home into a “chai” center. And so the story continues.

And What Will a Family Court Judge Do? A story over the transom last week was that of a divorced couple and their child. Newsweek writes on the upcoming case of Joseph Reyes, a law student who converted to Judaism to marry Rebecca Shapiro in 2004. The divorced in 2008 and Joseph Reyes has non custodial parent visitations with their 3 year old daughter. But, when Mr. Reyes had the daughter baptized during one visitation, and then took her to church with camera crews in tow… well, the the hamantaschen hit the fan. A judge (Mr. Reyes says their divorce judge was Jewish) will have to decide future visitation rights, issues of contempt, restraining orders, and whether visiting church is harmful to the child.

Speaking of shalom bayit, one of the most talked about NYT obituaries continues to be that of Yitta Schwartz, who, having passed away at 93, probably left 2,000 or more Satmar Hasidic descendants. That’s a lot of DNA.

While none of Ms Schwartz’s girls went bad, the same can;t be said for these women. The most important story is from the Denver Daily News. Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad will perform in Denver, the mile high city, for Purim.

Comedian Lizzy Cooperman at Jewlicious 6.0 (photo by David Miller in The Forward)

Yonah and their gang had a very good time at Jewlicious 6.0 held in Long Beach last week. The LA Jewish Journal has covered it, and included an interesting clip of WBC world welterweight boxing champion (and rabbinical student?) Yuri Foreman giving a brief boxing lesson to the tall and fit Matisyahu at this year’s festival.

From Ryan Torok’s Jewish Journal article:

His [Matisyahu's] 45-minute set was the final performance of the festival, though he had made surprise appearances over the weekend. On Saturday, he joined comedian Smooth-E for a parody of “King Without a Crown.” He could also be seen walking with his family in the main hallway, gym, auditorium and the several event rooms of the JCC.

During the concert, one of Matisyahu’s children, dressed in a Superman costume, went up to the stage and said, “Hi, Daddy.” To which his famous father replied: “Hi, Superman,” a simple, normal exchange that captured the spirit of the weekend.

Adam Weinberg, music director for the festival, reinforced that there should be no preaching at the festival—that attention, instead, should be on the music. “I think music should speak for music’s sake,” Weinberg said.

Weinberg, also a musician, accompanied Matisyahu on acoustic guitar, as did Dave Holmes, a member of Matisyahu’s band.

Matisyahu spoke afterward about how strongly the performance resonated with him. “When you have an audience listening, taking the journey with you, it’s pretty special,” he said. “For some reason, we seem to be having these kinds of performances at Jewlicious shows.”

There’s also some more coverage in The Forward, where Gordon Haber finds some flaws with the festival, but still asks to be invited back next year…which perhaps tells us a little about just how flawed it really was. Our own Rabbi Yonah, co-founder of Jewlicious Festivals, responded to and corrected some of Haber’s assumptions, but I found Yonah’s report on the survey of the people attending Jewlicious 6.0 more fascinating. Here are the details he provided about the make-up of the 900 or so people in attendance:

How do you define your Jewish affiliation?

Unaffiliated 8.3%
Other 9.7%
Reform 30.6%
Conservative 34.7%
Orthodox 16.7%

Seems fairly representative of the Jewish community at large, if one excludes the unaffiliated which make up about half of American Jewry these days.

UPDATE: More Jewlicious 6.0 videos from Jewish Journal

Mark LeVine, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine said in 2007, about attempts to quell some initiatives taken by the MSU and other UCI organizations involved in anti-Israel activism:

“The only thing that would satisfy the critics now would be if they expelled every Muslim student and painted stars of David on all the buildings.”

So don’t be too surprised that he has written a lengthy article defending the 11 students, 8 from UCI and 3 from UC Riverside, who disrupted the Michael Oren talk at UCI a couple of weeks ago.

Before I proceed, however, I’d like to remind everybody of a couple of events led by students from the UCI MSU and other anti-Israel groups on that campus.

LeVine’s arguments on behalf of the disruptive students can be boiled down to:

1. Yes, the students intended to disrupt Oren’s speech but “not to…scuttle it.”

2. “UC Irvine’s policies on student conduct offer little guidance as to whether the protests against Oren’s speech crossed the line.” “Since Oren was not ultimately prevented from speaking, how the “Irvine 11″ actually interfered with the university’s obligation to protect the Israeli ambassador’s 1st Amendment rights is unclear.

3. “The utter disparity in power between the students and the views they represent, and Oren and the government he represents.” “Oren’s appearance was part of a sophisticated effort by the Israeli government and its supporters to present Israel in the most positive light possible.”

4. “In fact, hard-line advocates for Israel aren’t strangers to “uncivil” behavior against adversaries.” He brings up “the Jerusalem-based World Union of Jewish Students’ “Hasbara Handbook” and explains that it encourages Jewish students to use negative language when referring to anti-Israel organizations. He then adds, “Given this, calling for a pound of flesh from the Muslim students for their protest seems disingenuous to say the least.”

5. “The chilling effect on free speech and dissent the response to the student protests could have on UC Irvine” because UCI sent out an email following the Oren event stating, “if anyone ‘without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character . . .’ [they] can be charged with a misdemeanor.”

5 Continued: LeVine adds, “Imagine how a 19-year-old student would react to being told that she could be arrested and face expulsion from the university for merely engaging in vigorous protest against a speaker who supports forced female genital mutilation or the execution of homosexuals — or, more to the point, a speaker who represents a government that engaged in these practices.”

6. He concludes: “Marginalized voices sometimes have little recourse except to push the boundaries of polite debate to get their messages heard…In this case, the “Irvine 11″ played into deeply ingrained stereotypes of irrational and unreasonably angry Muslim men. But should they be punished without clear standards in place and when similarly rowdy protests in the past led neither to arrests nor university discipline?

If I may, I’d like to respond to Professor LeVine, who actually claimed in 2007 that only Stars of David painted across UCI buildings would satisfy critics of anti-Israel advocates on campus and is now using the laden phrase “pound of flesh” to make his case (after the break).

(more…)

Muffti has been a way for a while, and he sees that the landscape has changed in his absence: writers are throwing around words like ‘reificatory’ akwardly and the Middle is back to posting (ugh) Idan Raichel videos. But anyhow, he saw this in the news and thought it worth posting. It’s long; but Muffti thought the most interesting quote was this:

Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis…That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels, only a cease-fire, and no one knows that better than I.”

Mosab Hassan Yousef’s God these days is the Christian one, as he converted years back. The story is extremely interesting as Muffti is sure his book will be. Here’s the rest from the Times Online.

The son of one of Hamas’s founding members was a spy in the service of Israel for more than a decade, helping prevent dozens of Islamist suicide bombers from finding their targets, it emerged today.

Codenamed the Green Prince by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, supplied key intelligence on an almost daily basis from 1996 onwards and tracked down suicide bombers and their handlers from his father’s organization, the daily Haaretz said.

Information he supplied led to the arrests of some of the most wanted men by Israeli forces, including Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader often tipped as a potential president who was convicted of masterminding terrorist attacks, and one of Hamas’ top bomb-makers Abdullah Barghouti, who is no relation of the jailed Fatah chief.
(more…)

Wellp, my Purim costume is all set.

As Purim approaches, a new poll found that the political figure whom the most Jewish Israelis want to dress up as is—drum roll, please—Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman! Over 40 percent of respondents picked the Yisrael Beiteinu leader.

Although it will be trickier than last year’s Moshe Dayan attempt.

What up y’all?  This is Rabbi Drew a/k/a Drewlicious a/k/a Drew Kaplan a/k/a the newest Jewlicious blogger.  I think this was a dream of mine when I began blogging four and a half years ago – especially to be on the same blogteam as Esther K. & CK.  Now, it’s reality.

Rabbi Drew & wife along with CK manually representing their geographical location

Although I have a post in the works that is not a meta-blogging post, I just have to holler at the Blog-editor for including me up on the Jewliciousness that is this blog: David Abitbol.  Having just experienced the reificatory ability of this abstract entity, known as the world-famous Jewlicious Festival as a member of the team putting it together (which went well (including getting an interview with Patrick from Punk Torah)), I’m happy to be the newest member of Jewlicious.  Heck, how many blogs do you know that have a rabbis ordained from both Ohr Somayach-Monsey and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah?  Get ready for some good stuff to pop off

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

One of the more disturbing hair trends of the past decade is on its way out, at least judging by the latest looks on the runway. What am I talking about? I’m talking about straight, flat hair achieved via daily use of a heating Iron and product. This look was and remains popular, particularly amongst Jewish women who seek to control their unruly Semitic hair. But what is considered unruly by some is considered hot by others, and now, it’s not just hot, it’s fashionable! Female Jewish fashionistas can put away the horrible Iron and laugh at their naturally flaxen haired counterparts as they buy expensive product and waste countless hours every month in order to look more Semitic.

I’m not kidding. Check out the suggested regime and product required:

1. Braid your hair in tiny braids (the thicker the braid, the less textured your hair will be).
2. Using hairspray (we like Bumble and Bumble Spray de Mode – $25), spray all over, then flat iron each braid to set the crimp. I also like using a product called Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray. Just spray it on before or during ironing.
3. After the hair is set, take the braids out and use your fingers to separate.
4. Spray the ends of your hair with hair powder (Bumble and Bumble Dry Hair Powder – $35), it’s the absolute secret weapon for giving your hair a frizzy, full finish.

Thank goodness for the inevitable end of that straight hair trend. It was just plain stupid. And this isn’t some cool Jew nonsense – we’re not talking about the ironic sporting of Jewfros as a statement of pride for one’s heritage. This is a legitimate fashion trend and applies to all, Jews and non-Jews. Sort of like circumcision! OK, maybe I added that last line in just to piss David Kelsey off. Sue me. I mean he’ss all flipped out about deceased 93 year old women with 2000 descendants, and I’m expressing concern for my sisters! But yes, frizzy/curly hair is back. Yay!

With all the buzz in LA this week about the Oscar voting – here is my vote— Inglorious Basterds should win Best Picture, and many other accolades for Quentin Tarantino and his brilliant cast. Basterds is the most intriguing movie about WWII and the Holocaust to be made in decades.

Writing about the film this week, a few days before the holiday of Purim, I am drawn to a parallel between Basterds and Purim. In the Purim story, Jewish salvation came not at the hands of politicians and power-brokers, but through a Jewish woman who had hidden her identity from everyone including her husband. In Basterds, it is also a Jewish woman, whose past and Jewish identity a secret, and is being romanced by a Nazi poster-boy, who is the heroine.

Basterds is a film about WWII and the “face of Jewish revenge” portrayed by a band of American Jews scalping Nazi behind enemy lines. There is also the Jewish woman who plots to murder the entire Nazi leadership as revenge for her murdered. None of these things actually happened, Basterds is a fairy tale.

The film is brilliant from every angle. It has drama, humor, romance, and suspense. The plot twists are compelling. The story, the photography, the script, the acting, and the drama all are detailed, textured, nuanced, colorful, and captivating.

I was apprehensive. I had never seen a Tarantino film, and heard there is a lot of violence. While Basterds has some pretty graphic violence, it is a WWII movie after- all. The scalping made everyone cringe. Yet the violence pales in comparison to portrayals of mass murder by Nazi death squads or gas chambers.

The Jews are tough in this film. More James Bond than Woody Allen, more Mossad, that Seinfeld. There are no sheep being led to the slaughter. The Nazis are brutal, interesting, grotesque – not unlike the real Nazis. The leader of the Basterds played by Brad Pitt brands Nazis with Swastikas on their foreheads so they cannot escape into regular life afterward. They cannot escape what they have done.

It is clear that Tarantino did a ton of research on his subject matter. He read up on the Nazi film industry, and the war, and real life WWII spy stuff. He digested all the previously exulted WWII movies and hints of them appear in the film

I enjoyed many parts of the film for their poetic justice, suspense, and dialogue – but this one I love to retell.

Winston Churchill, when hearing of the Germans plans to replace Jewish cinema with Nazi cinema, says “You say [Goebbels] wants to take on the Jews at their own game?”

If we cannot laugh we cannot heal. If we cannot dream we cannot move on. Tarantino’s film helps us heal, and move on, but that is not why he made it – he made it because it needed to be made.

If they would have murdered Hitler – millions would have been saved, but it was not the priority of the Allied forces. In fact, the only ones that made a serious attempt at it late in the war were fellow Germans.

The Allies tried to win the war the old-fashioned way, with infantry, tanks, planes and bombs, with propaganda, cloaks, daggers and brute force. I don’t know if this was Tarantino’s goal, but Basterds shows that redemption can come from average people doing extraordinary things. To stop an evil tyrant we cannot depend solely on conventional means, and conventional players, we need to act and hope that we are helped by the hand of God.

(I know I live in New York, but today I need to comment on an issue surfacing across the Atlantic Ocean — in the United Kingdom.)

If a new bill passes next month in the United Kingdom, British same-sex couples will soon be crushing glasses and signing ketubahs with the official blessings of their rabbis and families.

A group of Liberal Jewish rabbis and Anglican ministers have come together in favor of an amendment to the country’s 2010 Equality Bill, which would allow same-sex civil partnerships to take place in British synagogues and other religious institutions, writes Jessica Elgot, a reporter at The Jewish Chronicle in London. The Equality Bill, she continues, will be up for debate in the House of Lords next month, and currently has the support of Liberal Jews, Unitarians and Quakers. You can read through Parliament’s discussion of the bill here, by scrolling down to the paragraph just above sub-head “25 Jan 2010 : Column 1199.”

“[The amendment's] intention is to remove the prohibition against civil partnerships taking place in religious buildings,” the document reads. “I shall repeat that: it is to remove the prohibition against civil partnerships taking place in religious organisations. It is a straightforward amendment. It does not seek to force religious institutions to host civil partnerships and I would not intend it to. It simply has to be a matter for them to decide whether or not they wish to do so.”

Rainbow flags in Tel Aviv - Wikimedia Commons

As in most of the United States, gay marriages are still not recognized by law in the United Kingdom. But in Britain, where church is not separate from state, the government can take this prohibition one step further. Civil unions may be permitted throughout the country, but at the moment, these same-sex partnerships cannot occur within the boundaries of a house of worship.  That’s right, it’s currently illegal for a rabbi to unite two men or two women under a chuppah in England.

And now, at the behest of some forward-thinking Quakers, the House of Lords is aiming to repeal this ban.

While same-sex marriages are only legal in a few select states here in America, all religious institutions have the power to conduct same-sex civil unions if they so choose, and many have been doing so for quite some time. Synagogues all over the US perform same-sex marriages, like Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco, where marriages went from being not recognized by law, to being recognized, to now unfortunately not being recognized by law once again. In New York, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah performs many marriage ceremonies, even though gay marriage has never ever yet been legal in New York State. Even in Israel, where laws are strongly influenced by an Orthodox rabbinate, is doing a very good job welcoming the LGBT community into its fold.

Although the laws should certainly be changed to make same-sex marriage legal both here and in the United Kingdom, a religious institution should always be a place of refuge for every congregant it serves — no matter what the law says.  I hope that when the House of Lords takes this bill to the floor next month, the British government does decide to allow for marriages to occur within the synagogues, whether or not they are officially recognized by the country.

And in yet another progressive move for Britain, Schools Secretary Ed Balls recently decided that all secondary schools, including parochial schools, will be forced to teach “full, broad, balanced curriculum on sex and relationship education” — which includes topics like sexually-transmitted diseases, contraception, pregnancy, abortion and homosexuality, The Telegraph reported today. This means that religious schools — even Orthodox Jewish schools — will need to address topics like civil unions and same-sex parenting without any homophobia whatsoever.

I wonder how Britain’s haredi communities are going to respond to this…

_ _

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

Last week, we all enjoyed Amira Hass elaborating on the evils of Israel’s “hostile” control of Judea and Samaria/West Bank as she told us the story of the young Palestinian teenager who was arrested by Israeli forces. According to her claims, the boy was not only entirely innocent, he had to be told what a slingshot was. Oy, the pain! Her story failed to elicit much sympathy from yours truly since the very next day three young Palestinian teenagers were captured at a checkpoint with explosives and knives in their pockets. I didn’t report it, but the following day, a 16 year old Palestinian boy was also captured with explosives at a checkpoint.

Fortunately for Ha’aretz, they do not rely on just one columnist or reporter to regularly find fault with Israel, they have an experienced team in place. I thought today would be a propitious day to introduce Akiva Eldar’s latest wonder.

Akiva, like Amira, has no difficulty finding numerous faults with any of Israel’s activities. He has been a journalist for some decades and rarely misses an opportunity to attack Israel while giving the Palestinians a pass. Now, lest you think that I’m just making this up, be assured that he is not shy about providing this information himself.

The prominent Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in November 2000…that “there are Israeli reporters who do not pass the ‘lynch test.’” These, he wrote, are journalists who could not bring themselves to criticize the Arabs even when two Israelis were savagely murdered by a mob in Ramallah…I was honored to be mentioned as one of those journalists, alongside my fine colleagues Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.

I admit to being guilty as charged. I am a journalist with a mission, and also no small amount of passion. Every Israeli with a conscience, in particular one who watches reality from up close on a daily basis, cannot write about the occupation from an objective observer’s neutral point of view. My parents immigrated to Israel in 1933 out of choice and hope, not out of despair or fear. Sixty years ago, shortly after I was born, they sat glued to the radio when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state that would be democratic, egalitarian and peaceful. My primary mission is to leave behind for my children and grandchildren a state that is loyal to these principles and values. The occupation of a people, while denying its basic rights, robbing its lands and trampling its dignity, is turning us Israelis into prisoners–prison guards spend a significant part of their lives behind prison walls.

There are many Jews who believe that there is no difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv, or between West and East Jerusalem. As far as they are concerned, the Land of Israel was promised solely to the People of Israel. Yet anyone who perceives the West Bank (and not “Judea and Samaria”) and East Jerusalem as occupied territories cannot accept the policies of Israel’s governments for the past forty years. Occupation does not have two sides. There is no symmetry between the occupier and the occupied. This is true even if the occupied fight the occupier with despicable and contemptuous methods.

Well, it must be noted before I proceed that I, too, wish for an Israel that is democratic, egalitarian and peaceful. I, too, believe that having Israeli soldiers in the midst of another population is a terrible thing for Israeli society. I understand the difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv, although not so much the difference between West and East Jerusalem.

Yup, I dare say that I want peace just as badly as Akiva Eldar. Which is why I wish he would stop with his war-mongering.

The idea that the occupation is entirely Israel’s fault is absurd and flatly false. The idea that Israel isn’t peaceful by its own design is also entirely false. That’s even before we get to the contentious question of why one should accept the moniker “West Bank” for a territory that was so named during an illegal occupation that included a failed attempt at annexation by Jordan. Why is that narrative more acceptable than “Judea and Samaria?” Why is the true proposition that Jordan was the part of Mandate Palestine given to the Arabs so far-fetched that Eldar deems “West Bank” to be appropriate? How does he accord to the Palestinians lands that were never controlled by them?

Those are minor problems, nowhere near as great as his acceptance of the despicable and contemptuous methods used by the Palestinians to fight the Israelis. It is reprehensible and absolutely immoral to accept the violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians over these decades. To remind Eldar, this violence began long before 1967 and long before 1948. It was not excusable then and the Six Day War did not make it more acceptable now.

The idea, furthermore, that the “occupier” has an asymmetrical relationship with the “occupied” ignores Israel’s reality over these past decades. As has been noted elsewhere by others, it is not the “Palestinian-Israel” conflict, but rather the “Arab-Israel conflict.” Israel has built its army to fight other armies for good reasons, and did not construct their army around Palestinian violence. The asymmetry that exists between the Palestinians and Israel becomes symmetrical when one considers that other countries are involved in this conflict and Israel must remain on its guard. Example? Iran provides Hamas with its rockets…

Anyway, today Eldar blamed Palestinian violence on Netanyahu.

The cabinet’s decision to renovate Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron illustrate what awaits, reminding veterans of the Oslo Accords of Netanyahu’s directive in September 1996 to open the Western Wall Tunnel. Netanyahu’s weakness for Jewish heritage and his lack of sensitivity to the neighbors’ dignity cost dozens of Israeli and Palestinian casualties.

Eldar is referring to Netanyahu’s government’s declaration that Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are officially Israeli heritage sites. Of course, they are also Muslim heritage sites, which means that Muslim Palestinians might become very upset by this desire of the Israelis to proclaim these sites as having historical importance to them. Eldar obviously expects Palestinian violence to result from the assignment of Jewish heritage status to these sites, violence that he blames on the nasty Jewish Israelis who would dare to declare the cave of their patriarchs part of their heritage. The resulting violence, Eldar asserts, will be the fault of Israel, not the Arabs.

He dares to compare it to Netanyahu’s decision to open a tunnel at the Western Wall, which led to riots and violence instigated by Palestinians that left both Israelis and Palestinians dead. Then, too, the connection to a historic Jewish site was asserted by the state of Israel. Apparently, any action taken by Israel leads to Palestinian violence. Those snarky Jews in Israel should stop thinking they control or have any right to places like the Western Wall!

To recap: Eldar opposes declarations of this sort because they lead to Palestinian violence and any Palestinian violence is the fault of Israel because it is an asymmetrically superior power to the Palestinians who are therefore permitted contemptuous acts of violence against Israeli civilians. He forgot to add “while they pursue the destruction of Israel.”

Wait! He doesn’t really believe they’re pursuing the destruction of Israel. How do we know this? His wacky article tells us that he had a long chat with Saeb Erakat, the ubiquitous Palestinian bald guy spokesman, in which Erakat hinted that the Palestinians not seeking to destroy Israel. Erakat reported sending out a plaintive booklet to European diplomats outlining how Obama screwed disappointed the Palestinians by backing off on his hard-hitting agenda with respect to Israel and how this, not the Palestinian recalcitrance to negotiate, has led to the current impasse in talks.

Needless to say, there was no mention in there of the Washington Post article outlining the Palestinian leadership’s decision to boycott talks with Israel under the assumption that it would bring down Netanyahu’s government. Nope, Erakat’s world, like Eldar’s, is filled with underdog Palestinians and monstrous Israelis. Erakat can provide no evidence that he or his colleagues seek peace, while Israel can show three peace offers in the past decade, but according to the current Palestinian narrative, effectively conveyed by Erakat and echoed rigorously by Eldar, the fault for absence of negotiations or peace lies with Israel.

Nevertheless, Erekat in his document refuses to rule out the two-state solution. In the concluding section, he mentions the option of a binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but stressed to me this is the worst possible option. He assured me that he would do everything possible to avert a descent into that abyss.

Gee, thanks Saeb! He “refuses” to rule out the two-state solution. Imagine a people without a state being so magnanimous! Better yet, it is a relief to know that Erakat believes that a single state “solution” is the “worst possible option” and that he would personally do everything to “avert” that outcome. This is indeed first-rate reporting where Eldar’s passion comes through loudly and clearly. All Israel needs to do is give in and then give in some more and then just maybe, the Palestinians will be willing to talk about peace. And if Israel doesn’t give in? They get the Palestinians going for a single state.

I love that Eldar appreciates blackmail of this sort with equanimity. With people like him having a soapbox like Ha’aretz, peace is surely just around the corner. If, that is, the Palestinians don’t believe that it’s the worst possible option. They wouldn’t believe that, would they?

Check out our articles about the Palestinian endgame…

First:
The Palestinians Think They Are in the Endgame

Second: The Palestinian Endgame Enters High Gear

Third: More About the Palestinian Endgame

Fourth: Palestinians believe they have Israel in the corner

We all know that UC Irvine has been a hotbed for intense anti-Israel activism, which sometimes has slipped into outright anti-Semitism. Even when it’s not anti-Semitic, UCI activities, often led by their Muslim Student Union or affiliated parties, have taken on-campus anti-Israel activism to another level. Fortunately, most of the time, these attacks reflect poorly on the activists, so that even though they succeed in getting their message publicized, reasonable people often conclude that the protesters are in the wrong.

Similar conclusions have been drawn by many regarding the disruptions of Michael Oren, a historian who is currently Israel’s ambassador to the US, a couple of weeks ago at the UCI campus. One by one, 11 students, 8 from UCI and 3 from UC Riverside, disrupted the talk so that the audience heard his speech in bits and pieces and never had a chance to ask him questions. The students were warned that they would be removed and there would be consequences, yet they persisted to disrupt the speech. Upon removal from the auditorium, they were arrested and their names were released. It turned out that the president and vice-president of UCI’s MSU were involved as were other members. Despite this, and the website posting against Oren’s appearance, the MSU has denied any connection to the disruptions.

Since then, the campus has entered into a debate about freedom of speech. The defenders of the disruptions claimed that the offenders were merely exercising their free speech rights and, in fact, by removing them from the hall and by arresting them, those rights have been being quashed. Those who oppose the disruptions make the claim that the First Amendment does not give carte blanche to disrupt the right of a speaker to express his views or to have his listeners be prevented from hearing those views.

Well, it turns out that UCI has a recently opened law school and it is headed by Erwin Chemerinsky, its founding dean. As a side note, it appears that his hiring involved unfavorable attention by some Repubicans. Chancellor Drake at first announced that Chemerinsky wouldn’t receive the job he was offered, and denied any outside interference. However, after it was shown that he had been contacted by interested parties, he traveled to meet with the professor, who had recently been called one of America’s top 20 legal thinkers by a prominent legal publication. It appears that Mr. Chemerinsky schooled Mr. Drake about academic freedom, because he got his offer and the job back again.

Needless to say, between allowing UC Irvine to become a punching bag for all sorts of interests, his weak condemnation of the MSU protesters at the Oren speech and the quick turnaround with Chemerinsky and his job prospects, one wonders whether another leader would serve this campus better than Drake.

Anyhoo, Chemerinsky is an expert in “constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation.” He’s also Jewish. And, he wrote an editorial in the LA Times about “UC Irvine’s free speech debate.” What does he think?

College campuses, especially at public universities, are places where all ideas should be expressed and debated. No speech ever should be stopped or punished because of the viewpoint expressed. Of course, there must be rules to regulate the time, place and manner of such expression to preserve order and even to make sure that speech can occur.

These general principles are unassailable, but their application to recent events at the University of California, Irvine, has attracted international attention. …

Eleven individuals were arrested, and those who are UCI students are facing disciplinary action. In the last week, I have been deluged with messages from those saying the disruptive students did nothing wrong and deserve no punishment, and also from those saying that the students should be expelled and that others in the audience who cheered them on should be disciplined.

Both of these views are wrong. As to the former, there are now posters around campus referring to the unjust treatment of the “Irvine 11″ and saying they were just engaging in speech themselves. However, freedom of speech never has been regarded as an absolute right to speak out at any time and in any manner. Long ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained that there was no right to falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater.

The government, including public universities, always can impose time, place and manner restrictions on speech. A person who comes into my classroom and shouts so that I cannot teach surely can be punished without offending the 1st Amendment. Likewise, those who yelled to keep the ambassador from being heard were not engaged in constitutionally protected behavior.

Freedom of speech, on campuses and elsewhere, is rendered meaningless if speakers can be shouted down by those who disagree. The law is well established that the government can act to prevent a heckler’s veto — to prevent the reaction of the audience from silencing the speaker. There is simply no 1st Amendment right to go into an auditorium and prevent a speaker from being heard, no matter who the speaker is or how strongly one disagrees with his or her message.

…
At the same time, I also disagree with those who call for draconian sanctions against these students or of punishment for a larger group. Only the students who were actually disruptive should be punished. Whether there will be criminal prosecutions is up to the Orange County district attorney. Within the university, the punishment should be great enough to convey that the conduct was wrong and unacceptable, but it should not be so severe as to ruin these students’ educational careers.

I bow my head in humility to Mr. Chemerinsky’s deep knowledge of the law and accept his verdict that “There is simply no 1st Amendment right to go into an auditorium and prevent a speaker from being heard.” I thank him for teaching me about the “Heckler’s Veto.”

My problem with his conclusion, however, is that it only deals with this incident and treats it as an anomaly instead of part of a larger pattern, which is easily provable. By absolving the MSU from any involvement in this case, despite their online call against Oren’s speech and the involvement of key members of this group in the disruptions, Chemerinsky only encourages groups to foment disruptive behavior on campus and if there are consequences to their members, claim innocence or ignorance and let those individuals hang without support. Of course, this type of absolution will mean that any group can organize these sorts of protests without fear of consequences.

I can understand this in matters where there is a bigger question mark about the involvement of the group in question, but in this case, this disruption was part of a much broader pattern.

A meaningful punishment is required for another reason. Chemerinsky himself notes that “Prior to this event, campus officials heard rumors that some members of the Muslim Student Union planned to disrupt the ambassador’s speech…When asked, the officials of the Muslim Student Union denied any plans to do this.”

We don’t know who the MSU officials were, but we can assume that the president and vice-president of the group have to take responsibility for any actions taken by their officials when they are speaking on behalf of the group. Since those two individuals (the pres and VP) were directly involved in the disruptions at the Oren talk, their responsibility not only grows far beyond that of the average MSU student, but it directly implicates the MSU as an organization since they would have had prior knowledge that the university was concerned about such disruptions.

In other words, to allow the MSU to get away with officially denying involvement in the disruptive activities that the university sought to quell, even though its members, and particularly its leadership, were direct participants, is no different than an abuser punching somebody after being asked not to, and then denying that the punch came from the abuser because his right hand acted independently.

Along with punishing the MSU, Chemerinsky should reconsider his position about what makes for an appropriate punishment for these protesters. He doesn’t believe that they deserve the punishment “so severe as to ruin these students’ educational careers.”

In light of the fact that it is virtually impossible that MSU members who participated in the disruption did not know that the university had asked them not to cause disruptions, and in light of the fact that the individuals involved were senior enough to be leaders of this on-campus group and in light of the fact that they are adult students who were given the opportunity not to behave in a manner inimical to the request and best interests of the university, why should the university permit them to continue with their studies? They openly lied to the university.

They may be able to claim that the university was speaking to the MSU, not to its individual student members, but since those members comprise the MSU’s leadership, even as individual students with no MSU backing for their actions, they knowingly went against the university’s desire to avoid disruption.

It seems to me that a severe punishment is due. Should they be expelled? Maybe not. That would galvanize support around them. However, a break from studies to mull over their behavior and learn from it seems appropriate here, as would some permanent mark on their school transcripts explaining why there is a gap between semesters.

The issues here go beyond stealing the opportunity for students at the university to hear a speaker and learn from the exchange of ideas. They touch directly on the ideals of a university as a place where integrity is a must because a lack of integrity undermines properly imparting and receiving knowledge. This is why plagiarism is treated severely in the academic world. Lying to a university’s administration would seem to be on the same plane.

Walla.

One of the most anticipated parts of the Festival is the Saturday night show. After a day of Sabbath rest, food and speakers, people just need to let it all out and at Jewlicious we try not to disappoint! This year’s show featured Kosha Dillz, Diwon, Electro Morocco, Rinat Gutman and Moshav with a surprise appearance by Matisyahu – first time on the main stage! Afterward, those who just had to dance enjoyed an afterparty featuring Diwon and DJ Eric Rosen with performances by Rinat Gutman and Kosha Dillz. You want more pics? Click on our Flickr badge to the right for much, much more.

Rabbi Yonah Welcoming the Crowd

Flex performing with Kosha Dillz

Matisyahu jumps on stage

Electro Morocco. Just add a sprig of mint.

Someone was having fun!

Moshav in Socal? No Way!

Rinat Gutman Takes No Prisoners

Amazing

Afterparty with DJ Ereic Rosen and Diwon

Gallup survey has us on top, Iran and PA on bottom

A recent Gallup poll ranked Israel 5th among countries viewed most favorably by Americans. Canada ranked in 1st place, followed by Britain, Germany and Japan. In last place was Iran with only 10% of Americans viewing it favorably, preceded by Afghanistan (18%) and the Palestine Authority (21%). The poll is interesting given that many Jewish opponents of US President Obama claimed that his Presidency would fuel anti-Israel sentiment, yet “Most countries’ favorability ratings … were essentially unchanged during the first year of the Obama administration, Gallup said.” So the question is, what does this mean? Does it mean that having Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli on the cover of Sports Illustrated is the best PR Israel can ever have? Does it mean that there are many Americans who will continue to view Israel favorably regardless of the situation? Keep in mind, this survey, conducted in February, happened after the Gaza war and after the Goldstone Report. I don’t have the answers but I think that it’s obvious that the image of Israel in the US is clearly not as bad as some would have you believe and that I welcome any opportunity to post photos of Bar Refaeli.

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

I hope this works because it’ll be an awesome show. Maybe even Matisyahu might sing as well as Basya Schechter of Pahroah’s Daughter and other assorted guests!

I love this guy

EV had the idea, and I somewhat like it. (Admittely, I love travelling and Jewish European history, so I’d be, ehmm, terribly qualified to staff an enterprise like this.)

What if there weren’t only a “Birthright Israel” for Jewish young adults from the Diaspora but also a chance for young Israeli adults to get more hands-on knowledge of Diaspora Jewry than school and media education could ever provide? What if there were exchanges for young people from and between Jewish Diaspora communities? With some thorough preparation and guidance throughout the trips, such exchanges could further mutual understanding and acceptance.

Here are a few lines from EV’s original post:

Birthright Diaspora will make Jews proud again.

It’s a strange thing to say, isn’t it? For one thing, despite the insistent proclamations of Jewish fund-raising letters and Israeli political and cultural leaders, most Jews in the Diaspora are not living on the brink of physical, spiritual or cultural devastation. In fact, by and large they’re pretty proud of who they are already. Secondly, to associate Diaspora experiences with “pride” is to break one of the major taboos of modern Jewish education. Israel is the pinnacle of pride; Diaspora the domain of destruction. That’s why education about the Diaspora designed for fifteen-year olds has meant role-playing “discrimination, persecution, forced conversion, outmarriage, assimilation, [and] (im)migration” so that “the message of a diminishing Jewish world and Israel as the only country with a growing Jewish population should be apparent.”

Yay, let’s role-play some more! [Read the complete post here.]

To explain why I’m particularly fond of EV’s idea, here’s some personal experience with, well, Israelis that could have needed more intercultural education: when I was in Israel, I went on a school exchange to a city in the Negev. Out of the entire group of German students, I was the only one staying with a family of Russian background. My exchange student wouldn’t mingle with the Sefardi exchange students of my friends. There wasn’t any apparent hostility between those youths from Russia and the Sefardi majority, but neither group cared to socialise with the other one. (When asked, neither side deemed the other side eligible to be in Israel.) To highlight the mutual indifference, I’d like to share one incident: one of the girls of Moroccan background asked me why my exchange student spoke such good Ivrit – she’d mistaken her for a member of our group from Germany even though they were classmates at school.
During the Israeli return visit, many host parents complained about the often lack of manners, lack of consideration (even though all host parents went out on a limb to accomodate their guests’ wishes) and plain lack of understanding that things work differently in different countries, e.g. minors don’t get admitted to clubs or bars past 10pm, there’s no overabundance of security forces out on the streets at any given time during the night that will ensure your safe return home if you’ve gone out clubbing dressed as if you wanted to be a background dancer in a late 1990s’ hiphop video etc. It was a nerve-wrecking experience as the host families had no idea what difficulties to expect and the guest group largely had problems grappling with the idea that the freedom we enjoy in Germany did not coincide with their idea of liberality. The result was that neither side really enjoyed the stay as much as it could have been enjoyable, better preparation provided.

So I’m supportive of EV’s idea. Set this up professionally. Hire staff that know what they’re doing (and not just people that are friends with somebody “on the inside”). Make it a part work / part travel-experience, so both the participants as well as the host communities will benefit from the trips. It’ll be a win-win situation.

JPost:

Israeli lawmakers are seeking a law that will make compensation for Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries after 1948 an integral part of any future peace negotiations.

… According to the international advocacy group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), some 850,000 Jews were displaced from Arab countries after the State of Israel was established. These include Jews from Syria, Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

Irwin Cotler helped to bring this law about:

“We’re not just speaking about financial compensation or indemnification,” Cotler said. “We’re talking about justice for Jews from Arab countries. This speaks to the question of, among other things, rectifying the justice and peace narrative of the last 62 years where the question of Jews from Arab countries has not been part of the narrative.”

“There have been more than 160 UN resolutions on the matter of refugees,” he continued. “All 160 dealt with Palestinian refugees only. I’m not saying they shouldn’t address Palestinian refugees, but I’m saying there’s no justice and no truth if it does not also address the plight of Jews seeking justice from Arab countries.”

It’s about time. How ridiculous is it that so many refugees have been forgotten while the Palestinian narrative has taken root everywhere. They deserve the same consideration as the Palestinians deserve. At least.

In the past, we have had organizational resistance to putting our Festival Schedule online. Folks were concerned that potential competitors would be handed a veritable blue print for what we do and simply copy our program ideas.

However, this year, we are committed to an open source model and so here it is – a pdf version of our program over the next three days. You think the Festival is just a program? It’s so much more. it’s a community that rallies its resources to make this happen, it’s untold unsung people who gave freely of their time, it’s donors and organizations and bands and maintenance people and hard friggin work. You want to reproduce what we do? Go right ahead. Best of luck. As for the rest of you, check it out and see what’s happening!

You know, these have been challenging months for Israel, with many embarrassments and situations that really defy explanation. Coming across Bradley Burston’s op-ed today was a sad moment for me, because much of what he says is true, even if extraordinarily difficult to read.

The fact is that Israel is governed by people who should not be governing it, and this has been the case for many years. Israel’s political system does not breed the types of leaders or workers who can guide Israel through the complex challenges it faces, and the government is full of individuals whose capabilities are either hidden by their bureaucratic constraints or are simply not as capable as they need to be. Their leaders, the elected class, may be experts at elbowing their way to the front of the pack while absorbing the elbows of others, but that doesn’t mean intelligent governing or handling of complex situations.

There’s more I’d like to say, but I’ll stop and let Burston do it. They won’t, but his words should serve as a wake-up call.

See him at Jewlicious this weekend!

Jewish Boxing Champ Foreman Featured in LA Times

Foreman, the unbeaten “Lion of Zion,” became the latest to join the list after twice knocking down heavily favored Daniel Santos to win the World Boxing Assn. junior middleweight title last November in Las Vegas. That made him the first Israeli fighter to win a world title and earned him one of the championship banners that cover the walls of the dingy gym… Yet after climbing to the top of a sport he has long attacked with zeal, Foreman finds that his accomplishment has to share the spotlight with his other pursuit. The boxer, you see, is studying to be a rabbi, spending each morning in the middle of the Torah learning how to interpret the will of God, and each afternoon in the middle of a gym learning how to break the will of his next opponent.

The LA Times also interviewed our own Rabbi Yonah Bookstein:
(more…)

Not Richard Silverstein. Nope.

A Moser in Judaism is basically a Jew who informs on another Jew to non-Jewish authorities. The law relating to a Moser has evolved over time. Jewish communities that lived in societies that discriminated against Jews, treated Mosers more harshly than those who lived in societies with fair justice systems. For instance, one who informs on a Jewish pedophile or criminal today in the United States, ought not be considered a Moser. The law of Moser is not, in fact, akin to the Mafia’s code of Omerta. The law of Moser was never meant to help criminal Jews escape Justice. It was meant to prevent injustice.

The law of Moser’s harsh strictures, often requiring the administration of the death penalty, also reflected the fact that such informants often lied in order to curry favor with the anti-Jewish authorities.

Recently, a team of at least 11 and as many as 17 people, killed the leader of Hamas’ Military wing, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Mabhouh was said to be in charge of Hamas weapons procurement from Iran and was personally involved in the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers. The suspects arrived in Dubai bearing a number of fake European passports and are suspected of being Israeli but that has yet to be proven unequivocally.

Despite that, self-described pro-Israel, pro-Zionist Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein, after posting photos of the suspects, expressed his fondest hope for those that carried out this extra-judicial killing as follows:

I would like to see Dubai take out Interpol warrants for these Israeli murderers. Then I would like to see Dubai request that the ICC try them when they are caught. I would like Israeli progressives to watch out for these people and report them when they see them so they can be identified even if they choose to stay in Israel where they can’t be captured. No more impunity

Are the people that committed this killing Israelis? We don’t absolutely know. Are they murderers? Is killing an enemy combatant, with blood on his hands, actively engaged in plotting the deaths of civilians, a murder? Or is it the sort of measured response to terrorism originating in Gaza, urged for by no less than Justice Goldstone in his infamous Report?

But one cannot help but be struck by the bile and pure hatred emanating from Richard Silverstein’s exhortation. He not only wishes ill against people defending Israel, he seeks to recruit fellow progressives in Israel to root out and bring to justice the suspects he hopes they will find in their midst. Will such suspects receive a fair trial in Dubai? I’m guessing… not so much. Will they receive a fair trial in the International Criminal Court? Well, Richard Silverstein is no expert on International law amongst other things he’s not an expert on. If he was he’d know that this sort of operation falls outside the ambit of the ICC. But whatever. This isn’t the first time Richard Silverstein has made a completely idiotic statement, and I suspect it won’t be the last.

Of course we can debate the merit of such killings. I have no doubt that Mabhouh will soon be replaced by someone else. But for a Jew to express such unbridled hatred against another Jew, and to actively urge people to turn them in, one has to wonder how the law of Moser ought to apply in such an instance.

Traditionally, no one was ever held in greater contempt than the Moser, and the sages often compared the informant to a serpent. Sanctions against Moserim range from death to excommunication. There isn’t much information about the penalty for one who encourages another to be a Moser. I would never suggest that Richard Silverstein be killed for his opinions and he excommunicated himself from Klal Yisrael a long time ago.

I guess the bottom line is that whatever the actual Jewish law is, Richard Silverstein has proven himself to be a world-class douche bag.

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…and why is he talking like he knows Jewlicious?

He’s not the king of Jewlicious. Jewlicious is this crazy multi-headed hydra fed by angst and motivated by fun. The bastard love child of the Chofetz Chaim, Charlie Chaplin and Dahliah Queen of the Berber tribes, Jewlicious is an anarchist collective with cholent. And now there’s this crazy Jewlicious Festival happening this weekend in Long Beach, CA. If you are near there (unlike me) and you don’t go, then you are a massive loser. Massive.