We have been spilling digital ink about this for the last 6 years. Lo and behold there is an anti-Semitic group on the campus called the MSU! While the administration and the deans deny that there are any problems, it seems that in fact that is not the case.

Recently, the UCI student government passed a first reading of a resolution BACKING the MSU, and the anti-Semitic thugs trying again to shut up the Jews from speaking freely at UCI.

Thoughtful piece on how to direct our energies on Israel.

Engaging Israel: Beyond Advocacy By Donniel Hartman(09/03/2010)

Since Operation Cast Lead and the subsequent Goldstone Report, there has been an increasing sense that anti-Israeli opinion has moved beyond criticism of some of Israel’s actions and policies to the delegitimization of the Zionist project as a whole. ….

In Israel and throughout the Jewish world there has been a marshalling of forces to develop materials, programs, and new advocates to make the case for Israel. The aim of these programs is to combat distortions and present Israel’s side of the facts. However important and valuable these efforts are, they often fail to achieve their end. When the case for Israel is grounded only on a factual narrative it is often unconvincing to those who hold a counter factual perception. In general, positions are rarely formed purely around facts, but rather by ideological, moral, and psychological propensities which then construct factual narratives to reinforce the preexisting commitment.

The concentration on the above form of Israel advocacy, while valuable in educating the completely uninformed, overlooks an audience which in my mind needs to be a major focus of our efforts, and for whom current Israel advocacy either is unnecessary or ineffective. I am referring to the mainstream Jewish community itself, which has been raised to care about Israel and is now finding that the foundations of its connection is being undermined.

The reality is that the majority of committed Jews, for the most part, lack a language to understand or articulate their feelings about Israel and their desire to continue to support it. This leaves them vulnerable and exposed by the campaign of delegitimization, for they do not possess a framework from which to combat it.

The reason for this predicament is the fact that since its inception the standard arguments for support of Israel amongst world Jewry no longer resonate with most Jews, especially those 50 years and younger. These arguments can be divided into three. We must support Israel either because:

1.
Israel is necessary as a safe haven in the event of a new Holocaust;
2.
The survival of the State of Israel is in danger;
3.
Israel is a central ally in the West’s war against the “Axis of Evil.”

Besides being mutually contradictory, a common feature of all three as stated is that are increasingly irrelevant. Most Jews in North America feel increasingly at home in their societies and do not feel called to combat the urgency of the threat of a potential Holocaust. Secondly, their political consciousness regarding Israel was not formed by the angst preceding the Six Day War, or by the precariousness of Israel’s existence exposed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Their first war as adults was the war in Lebanon in 1982 and then there was the Intifada. They were raised on the story of Israel’s power and military might. Protecting Israel from its “stronger” neighbors is not a meaningful or persuasive argument. Finally, as voting patterns in the Jewish community in North America have revealed, most do not see the war against the “Axis of Evil” as either central or compelling to their lives and an enterprise to which they want to contribute.

It is time for us to recognize that the Jewish community in general and Israel in particular have failed to develop a new Jewish narrative for the Jewish people around the world on which to base their relationship with Israel. Jewish organizations and Israel have held steadfast to the three arguments above for they were successful in creating a crisis-centered relationship with Israel which was effective in raising money. These actions, however, have mortgaged our future on the altar of immediate and short-term institutional needs. Repayment is now due, and the resources are lacking.

The Jewish community is not in need of an Israel advocacy campaign of facts and figures alone, but also of a new Jewish narrative based on Jewish ideas and values for engaging Israel in a way that will help integrate Israel into a modern Jewish identity. Jews today need to be able to address crucial questions for which they currently do not know the answer. For example: What is the role of “peoplehood” in modern Jewish identity? What is the meaning and purpose of Jewish sovereignty connected to territory rooted in the land of Israel to modern Jewish life? What are the requirements of morality of war, and how can Israel use its power in a way that is consistent with the highest standards of Jewish morality and values? How does Israel balance its legitimate right of self defense with the rights of others? Can a Jewish state be reconciled with the values of Jewish pluralism and freedom? Does the aspiration for a Jewish state automatically define Israel as a racist, apartheid state?

These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed and answered by this new Jewish narrative of Israel and Zionism. If one cannot answer them, there is neither a foundation for connecting to Israel nor the ability to sustain a viable and meaningful relationship. We need to educate and empower the Jewish community to engage Israel in a meaningful way before we can even think about asking them to advocate on its behalf.

Israel has been formed under almost impossible conditions and is still a young and deeply imperfect democracy. Not only are we not beyond criticism, we are in dire need of committed voices within our community who will lovingly challenge Israel to not accept the status quo and to continue to strive higher. If engaging Israel will be successful it will be so only because we will find a way to integrate commitment to Israel within a larger Jewish value conversation and invite people of all political and religious sensibilities to be engaged and participate in thinking about and shaping the unfinished experiment which is modern Israel.

Two weeks ago Los Angeles was rocked by a Purim party of Olympic proportions. JConnectLA, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and Atid – the young professional group of Sinai Temple and took over the entire Rodeo Collection on Rodeo drive. Music was provided by Moshav, Ram2, DJ Miles, and one of LA’s top DJ’s DJ Felli Fel.

When the party hit about 1000 people, the Beverly Hills Fire Marshall said enough. Purimpalooza party goers filled Purim baskets that were delivered to the Jewish elderly, and a local bone marrow registry swabbed party goers for bone marrow matches.

Purimpalooza in LA was started by Cheston Mizel, when he began the organization that became JConnectLA. The first event drew about 50-75 people. Purimpalooza has grown from year to year, changing venues and designs.

I just want to give a huge mazal tov to all the organizers, and the participants, for making the dream blossom that started seven years ago – an event to draw together Jews from all backgrounds – to help unify, inspire, and connect young Jewish people in Los Angeles. Shabbat Shalom!

Co-Sponsors: Valley Alliance, LEV Foundation, Jewlicious Festivals, Chai Center
Partners: Jews for Judaism, JAMS (of USC), Sephardic Mizrahi Young Leadership (SMYL), LA Jewish Chamber of Commerce, Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters
Media Sponsor: www.LosAngelesBlueprint.com

From Seth Cohen at Boundless Drama of Creation Blog – a discussion about a school in North Carolina that is 40k short and will close. The parents created the school from scratch in 2006.

There are nineteen Jewish children in Asheville, North Carolina, far from the Jewish centers of life in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta. These children are getting a daily dose of Jewish education, culture and language, and they are sharing experiences that will help cement their identities for years to come. They may go elsewhere in life, far from Asheville – perhaps even to our own communities. We know this.

So with all we know, let me ask this – will we, the Jewish people, let this school fail? And if we do, what does it mean about what we say?

Please read the whole story if you have a chance. This issue is huge – there are many facets. Perhaps they are better off in a public school with a really good after-school program?

From a halachic perspective it is fairly clear that these children’s education comes before even paying the mortgage on a shul, or any other program, except giving out food and money to the poor – it is that important.

Peter’s show, if you have not seen this, is an extension of Peter, a creative and talented genius. He has been producing this online live music variety show for almost a year. I truly enjoyed tonight’s episode. (perhaps not the chatroullette segment so much.) I first met Trevor Hall when he was playing with Matisyahu at the final Langerado festival. Trevor played a bunch of shows that season with Matisyahu, and is a regular guest on tours.

Check it out after the break

Free TV : Ustream

We all knew that Biden had a serious life-long case of foot-mouth disease. The man cannot help but make guffaws. But this trip to Israel was to be a make nice party, a chance for the US and Israel to rekindle their strong friendship and worry about BIG PROBLEMS like Iran.

Israel announced on the eve of his visit that it was halting the project that was causing so much fuss in East Jerusalem – Sheik Jarrah hood. (Remember that fake Purim video purporting to be Jews celebrating with songs in praise of Baruch Goldstein?)

UPDATE – Apparently the remarks were in response to 1600 homes in Ramat Shlomo, Wiki writes :Ramat Shlomo was founded in 1995. As of 2000, it had a population of 18,000, mostly Haredi Jews. Ramat Shlomo borders Ramot to the west, Har Hotzvim to the south, and Shuafat to the east.

Apparently, that is the “provocation” that was needed for Biden to dump a ton of rotten shwarma on Israel.

Leave it to Joe. This from the JTA:

Biden says Israeli housing starts ‘undermining’ trust

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vice President Joe Biden denounced a decision to authorize new Jerusalem housing starts as “undermining the trust” that he needs to advance peace while in Israel.

“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Biden said in a statement issued Tuesday, the second day of a visit that had been aimed at underscoring the closeness of the U.S.-Israel relationship. “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”

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 have to say that I initially was very skeptical of the idea of building adjacent to the Mamilla Cemetery. I know that area very well, and thought that the project was going to damage Mamilla Cemetery. Then I went and saw for myself last year the area of excavation and building, and saw that a lot was being done to improve the Mamilla Cemetery. The Mamilla Cemetery has been abandoned for years. Although Jerusalem has a large Muslim community, Mamilla Cemetery was never kept up . It became a place for drug dealing and prostitution, a place you don’t want to be at dark. Where were the Muslim religious authorities when drugs and prostitutes made their home in the place?

But what is MORE amazing is: 1) the efforts the SWC made to reach agreements with parties that were against their project 2) the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem wanted to biuld there himself 3) the amount of money that the SWC is spending to rebury remains from the site of the parking lot, restore parts of the cemetery, and create a needed revival of an unsafe part of the city in need of rehab.

Please be open minded — the SWC has been the latest victim of the deligitimization of Israel and Jewish claims to Jerusalem. LA TIMES –

February 12, 2010
Opinion

A Proper Site for a Museum of Tolerance
The Wiesenthal Center’s project has been approved by the government and the courts, and will be built on property that is not a cemetery but a parking lot.

By Marvin Hier

Listening to the few vocal opponents of our Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem project — among them the notorious Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the extremist Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel — you would never know that the Israeli Supreme Court deliberated for almost three years before unanimously rejecting all their claims and authorizing the Wiesenthal Center to begin construction. Just six weeks ago, Chief Justice Dorit Beinish also rebuked those who re-petitioned the Supreme Court for an “abuse of court proceedings,” ordering them to pay professional costs.

Still, our opponents would have you believe that in the name of tolerance, our bulldozers actually have invaded the adjacent Mamilla Cemetery, desecrating ancient Muslim tombstones and historic markers.

They don’t want you to know the real facts. The museum is not being built on what can rightfully be called the Mamilla Cemetery, but on a three-acre site in the heart of West Jerusalem that, for more than half a century, served as the city’s municipal car park. Each day, hundreds of people of all faiths parked in the three-level underground structure without any protest from Muslim religious or academic leaders or interest groups. Additionally, telephone and electrical cables and sewer lines were laid deep below ground in the early 1960s, again without any protest.

As the Supreme Court noted in its ruling, “for almost 50 years the compound has not been a part of the cemetery, both in the normative sense and in the practical sense, and it was used for various public purposes.” It also noted: “During all those years no one raised any claim, on even one occasion, that the planning procedures violated the sanctity of the site, or that they were contrary to the law as a result of the historical and religious uniqueness of the site. . . . For decades this area was not regarded as a cemetery by the general public or by the Muslim community. . . . No one denied this position.”

In fact, the entire area of the Mamilla Cemetery had long been regarded by Muslim religious leaders as mundras — abandoned. A cemetery not in use for 37 years is considered mundras and without sanctity. That explains why in 1946 the most prominent Islamic religious figure of the day, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, presented plans to build a Muslim university on a large portion of the Mamilla Cemetery itself (a rendering of which we presented to the court). Today, the concept of mundras is widely accepted and practiced in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian territories and throughout the Arab world.

Though Judaism does not have a mundras concept, the Supreme Court noted in its decision that “despite the Jewish religious law prohibitions . . . to prevent the removal of graves or building on top of them, in practice, in cases where public needs required this, an agreed Jewish law solution has usually been found, and this allowed the building to be carried out in a way that minimized . . . the violation of the graves. . . . Jewish religious law also allows, as we have said, the removal of graves in a dignified manner. Balanced solutions of this kind were also proposed by the respondents [Simon Wiesenthal Center], and they even agreed to pay all the expenses involved in them.”

Recent critics such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Americans for Peace Now and the Center for Constitutional Rights argue that the Museum of Tolerance should abide by a higher standard than the letter of the law. We do, as the above quote from the court confirms. When we first heard of protests against our plan, in January 2006, our lawyers attempted to meet with Salah but were rebuffed. Once a legal case was filed, the Supreme Court’s mediator tried, but fared no better. We offered solutions to build without disturbing the bones — also rejected. We offered to restore the neglected and virtually abandoned nearby Mamilla Cemetery — not interested.

Since the Israeli government gave us the parking lot nine years ago, the center has endured a process replete with checks and balances: attending planning and architectural hearings and Jerusalem City Council meetings; placing ads announcing the project in Arabic and Hebrew newspapers. During all the years leading up to the groundbreaking, while millions were spent, not a single documented protest was heard from any group or citizen claiming that the parking lot was part of the Mamilla Cemetery.

The irony is that it was Salah and his supporters who petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court in the first place. Unhappy with the verdict, they’ve gone to the United Nations, seeking to rubber-stamp a “lawfare” assault besmirching the Jewish state. Imagine the chaos in the U.S. if a unanimous decision by our highest judicial body could be thwarted by such a protest.

During excavations on our site, the Israel Antiquities Authority found artifacts including a wine press dating back to Solomon’s Temple, and bones, 300 to 400 years old — none older. Those remains were respectfully reinterred in a Muslim cemetery. The Antiquities Authority has declared that there are no more bones on the site. Infrastructure work at the site has proceeded.

Jerusalem is an ancient city. Hardly a neighborhood is without history’s ruins or remains. We could declare it off-limits — a city of the past, with no future — or we could find a better way to honor the past without holding our children hostage. Ultimately, a Museum of Tolerance in the heart of Jerusalem will honor that past and safeguard that future.

Rabbi Marvin Hier is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Back by popular demand - buy tickets to see the concert portion of Jewlicious Festival 6.0 while supplies last!
$25 Online Concert Tix Sat or Sunday / $30 at the door.

2/20 Saturday Night Bands (9 p.m.- 1 a.m.)
Kosha Dillz Band (NY)
Rinat (Jerusalem)
Electro Morocco (NY)
Moshav (LA)
and other special guests

2/21 Sunday Acoustic Series (11 a.m. – 3 p.m.)
Basya Schechter (of Pharaoh’s Daughter) (NY)
Rav Shmuel (NY)
Yael Meyer (LA)
Adam Weinberg (Miami)
And other special guests