Faith & Spirituality

Eight Underappreciated Tourist Gems in Israel

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:48:18 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: May 08, 2008 5:48 pm
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Whether you're contemplating your first or fifteenth trip to Israel, the following destinations are unique, hidden gems that won’t be crawling with tour groups. Birthright, Ulpan, and Federation trip alums can rest assured that these won't be repeats. Care For Some: Biblical grass?1. Stroll in Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve You may have already visited the amazing Biblical Zoo, but how about a botanical gardens that shows you all of the plants and flowers mentioned in the Bible? It’s gorgeous, fun, and educational in the marginal ‘not-too-boring’ kind of way. 2. Check Out the Rockefeller Museum of Archaeology It’s easy to skip most of East Jerusalem on your first few trips because there’s so much going on in West Jerusalem, but the Rockefeller Museum is definitely worth a trip. They have some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, displayed differently than the big exhibit in the Israel Museum, and all kinds of cool things that have been dug up in Israel from the Iron Age to the Byzantine Empire. Shen Ramon: mean's...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/hidden_gems_israel

Are Messianic Jews Jewish Enough For a Bible Competition?

Wed, 07 May 2008 15:16:00 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: May 07, 2008 3:16 pm
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Who Should Win Israel's National Bible Quiz: the person with the right answers, or the person with the "right" beliefs?An international youth Bible quiz is held annually in Israel, and the competition is fierce. (I went to a high school with several competitors, and they spent months studying the minutia of Tanach only to make it through the first round of testing.) This year, one of the contestants, an Israeli who won the Jerusalem district quiz in Israel, is a Messianic Jew. Bat El Levy is a world class Old Testament scholar, but she also brings some knowledge of the New Testament to the table, and that’s making a handful of Israeli rabbis, well--a bit testy. Some rabbis are concerned that if Levy competes and win, her success might encourage Jews to convert to Christianity. Another worry they're harboring: That Levy could make the Jewish competitors who have only mastered Tanach--and not the gospels--look bad. Levy’s Jewishness is being called into question, but so far the Education Ministry has no plans to bar her from the competition. Messianic Jews have always been a hot button issue in the Jewish community, and it’s hardly a surprise that groups like Yad...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/are_jews_jesus_jew_y_enough_bible_competition

Join the (Re)velation Art Project

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:49:52 -0500

Author: Jewcy Staff
Posted to Jewcy: May 07, 2008 10:49 am
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Jews are supposed to follow 613 mitzvot (commandments from God). Some make sense, while others seem antiquated and irrelevant. For an art installation to debut at DAWN, a special event for the grand opening of the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum, we'll be creating an interactive environment involving the mitzvot and your creative reinterpretations. GET STARTED: STEP 1: Select a Mitzvah to Remix. STEP 2: Ponder and Submit your new Mitzvah. STEP 3: See recent remixes others have submitted. function topper(element) { location.href = "#top"; document.getElementById('headlineHolder').innerHTML = getLabelForId(element.id).innerHTML; document.getElementById('headlineHolderHead').style.display = 'block'; document.remix.headline.select(); document.remix.headline.style.backgroundColor = 'yellow'; document.getElementById('step1').style.backgroundColor = '#FFFFFF'; document.getElementById('step2').style.backgroundColor = '#FFCCCC'; document.getElementById('step3').style.backgroundColor = '#FFFFFF'; } function step3() { location.href = "#notTop"; document.getElementById('step1').style.backgroundColor = '#FFFFFF'; document.getElementById('step2').style.backgroundColor = '#FFFFFF'; document.getElementById('step3').style.backgroundColor = '#C6C6FF'; window.open("","Window1", "menubar=no,width=800,height=600,toolbar=yes,menubar=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,location=yes,resizable=yes"); } function getLabelForId(id) { var label, labels = document.getElementsByTagName('label'); for (var i = 0; (label = labels[i]); i++) { if (label.htmlFor == id) { return label; } } return false; } ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/join_the_revelation_art_project

How Should We Pray for Israel on Her 60th Anniversary?

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:47:41 -0500

Author: Ari Y Kelman
Posted to Jewcy: May 07, 2008 10:47 am
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Don't say a prayer for me now: Save it 'til the morning after What kind of prayer suits the relationship that American Jews have with Israel, a country they don't live in, but that many feel an affinity toward? What kind of prayer is appropriate where national politics, ideological differences, and theological concerns all vie for the attention and intention of the person praying? Mishna (Avot 3:2) tells Jews to pray for their government regardless of who is in charge, and Jews have been doing so for hundreds of years—but we do not live in Israel. Why a prayer for a state and a government which is not the place where we live? When the Prayer for the State of Israel was published in Israel in 1949, not everyone was immediately on board. The prayer was omitted from the 1951 Conservative High Holiday prayer book, and it does not appear as a formal element in Conservative worship until the 1957 edition of the Conservative Prayer book. In its 1975 prayer book, Gates of Prayer, the Reform Movement included a paragraph, in English, under the heading “For Our People and Our Nation,” praying for Israel’s peace and protection. The first stand-alone Prayer for Israel in American Reform liturgy doesn’t appear until 1978, when the High Holiday Prayer book, Gates of Repentance, includes it. Even Orthodox Jews, who are the most inclined to closely follow the liturgy, exhibit some...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/how_should_we_pray_israel_her_60th_anniversary

My Big Fat Hassidic Bar Mitzvah

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:19:06 -0500

Author: Peter Bebergal
Posted to Jewcy: May 06, 2008 11:19 am
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It’s 1979. I’m high in the air. For a split second I look down and below me are ten dark men with large hats and larger beards. I come down into their arms, safe, and they toss me up again, smiling, laughing, shouting. I have been in this room with them for less than an hour, yet they are tossing me around as if I was their own son. I spot my mother peeking out from behind a long white sheet that cuts the room in half. She winks at me. It’s my bar mitzvah, and I’m a Reform-raised thirteen-year-old in the house of a Hassidic rabbi in Florida. I’m watching myself take to the air as if powered by some esoteric magical spell. I know this is happening, but something about it is quite unreal, like the fantasy world I have been designing in my room with ten- and twenty-sided dice. * * * Miami: Nothing like some kosher cuisine while lounging under a palm tree The rabbi's home was a quiet, dark enclosure filled with the wafting smell of fruit punch and cleaning fluid. The television was up on top of a high shelf crowded with books. The TV could not be really watched from that height, but it still wasn’t exactly hidden, suggesting it had some use. Later my father told me that the Hassidic men in the community would gather at the rabbi’s house to watch the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, then the messianic leader of the Lubavitch sect of Hassidic Judaism, address his followers over cable access. There were three of us that came every Sunday morning to this Miami Chabad house, each of us twelve, preparing...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/my_big_fat_hassidic_bar_mitzvah

Roundtable: The Synagogue/ Israeli Politics Mash-Up

Tue, 06 May 2008 08:15:00 -0500

Author: JewcyCraig
Posted to Jewcy: May 06, 2008 8:15 am
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Zeek Contributing Editor (and Velveteen Rabbi) Rachel Barenblat asked Rabbis Camille Angel (Reform), Lynn Gottlieb (Renewal), Fred Guttman (Reform), and Meyer Schiller (Orthodox/Hasidic) to discuss the impact of the Israeli state and its politics on their rabbinate. Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with? Schiller: I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general. The right of Orthodoxy and the Modern Orthodox share a certain fear and demonization of the Other. It's difficult to offer a different perspective than that of the comunities in which I live. I try, but by the time I come in contact with students, attitudes are already set. It's very difficult to move people from a sense of victimhood, from a sense that there's one side to the conflict and the failure of the world to recognize that is an indication of the world's persistent antisemitism. Zeek: Do you think there's a sense in which your own background, coming originally from a secular family and choosing Orthodoxy as a pre-teen, has an impact on how you approach this? Schiller:...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/roundtable_rabbis_discuss_impact_israel_their_rabbinate

Celebrate Shavuot With Cambodian Surf Rock

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:59:48 -0500

Author: Izzy Grinspan
Posted to Jewcy: May 05, 2008 2:59 pm
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Better than blintzes: Dengue FeverThree reasons we like the idea of DAWN ’08, the all-night Shavuot celebration sponsored by the New Jew group Reboot: It’s not on Hanukkah or Passover. Both holidays have been co-opted by a ton of Jewish organizations running “fun” events for young, curious, marginally affiliated Jews, but Shavuot never gets any love. It’s in San Francisco, thereby disproving the general misconception (at least among New Yorkers) that New Jew culture only exists in NYC. It features Dengue Fever, the Cambodian surf rock band we profiled way back in January of last year. This year, DAWN coincides with the opening of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s new Daniel Libeskind–designed building. It takes place June 7, and you can find out more about it here. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/celebrate_shavuot_they_did_ancient_judea_cambodian_surf_rock

Jewish Mythbusters: Yom HaShoah is Exclusive to Jews

Fri, 02 May 2008 10:22:22 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: May 02, 2008 10:22 am
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On Holocaust Remembrance Day we tend to focus on the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. We read from Night, sing that song by Hannah Szenes, and light six Memorial candles for the nearly two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population who were systematically wiped out by the Nazis. It’s important to remember that Jews bore the brunt of the Nazis wrath, but also that they were far from the only group singled out. Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi: the retired managing editor of Ebony magazine was born in Germany and narrowly escaped being sent to a concentration camp with his mother Homosexuals, Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Romani Gypsies, blacks, and all kinds of political dissidents were also sent to concentration camps and murdered in large numbers. In total, an estimated 5 million non-Jews were killed by the Nazis....

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/jewish_mythbusters_other_communities_persecuted_nazis

Third Generation Descendents of Holocaust Survivors and the Future of Remembering

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:32:46 -0500

Author: Eva Fogelman
Posted to Jewcy: May 01, 2008 2:32 pm
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Memory: across the generations"Why are Holocaust survivors obsessed with future generations remembering? Why do they command us all to Zachor, to remember? What is it they want us to remember?" That is the challenge every post-Holocaust generation will continue to face, just as all Jews at the Passover Seder are asked to think of themselves as slaves freed from Ancient Egypt. The significance of re-thinking the past and what it means in the present is best explained by Leon Wieseltier, social critic, literary editor of the New Republic and a 2G—second generation descendant of a survivor—who writes, “A tradition that is transmitted more or less as it is received will not live long.” Survivors wonder if the 3Gs—third generation descendants—will continue to tell of the destruction of European Jewry, or if the story will die with them. It took two generations—40 years—for the silence to be broken, for psychological denial to erode, and for survivors to have an audience that did not silence them the moment they attempted to share the stories of their horrific experiences. Parenthetically, it took 40 years after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain before the liturgical poems to commemorate the loss of that era were written. And after slavery in Egypt, according to tradition, God waited 40 years before deciding that the Israelites were ready to the enter the Promised Land. Sixty-three years after the liberation, is there an identifiable group of Third Generation descendants of Holocaust survivors? Second Generation became a visible group in America in the mid-1970s, when a large...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/future_remembering_generational_differences_among_descendants_survivors

12 Books and Films That Put a Different Spin on the Holocaust

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:27:35 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: May 01, 2008 1:27 pm
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Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and if you’re like most of us, you’ve already seen Schindler’s List, Escape From Sobibor, and Life is Beautiful. You read Number the Stars and Anne Frank’s diary in middle school, and you know the basics from the Nuremberg laws and the Warsaw ghetto to Bergen-Belsen and Terezin. Here are some books and movies with distinctively different ways of looking at the events of World War II, and the way they still affect us today. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink: A German teenager has an affair with an older woman and later realizes she was involved in some of the worst Nazi cruelty. Beautifully and simply written (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway) it stays away from the detailed descriptions of Jewish suffering, and instead wonders about the complicity of average Germans, and how to make amends. The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman: A fictionalized account of the true story of Jan and Antonina Zabinisky, who hid...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/12_books_and_films_put_different_spin_holocaust

"Don't Blame Darwinism for Hitler! Blame Christianity!"

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:47:12 -0500

Author: Joey Kurtzman
Posted to Jewcy: April 30, 2008 10:47 pm
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It was from an obsessive Darwin-defender that I learned of the Anti-Defamation League's attack on the theatrical documentary Expelled, for "misappropriat[ing] the Holocaust." This guy is constantly emailing me. He warned that the ADL had just "issued a terse press release today condemning the equation of ‘Darwinism' with Nazism in Expelled. How can you call yourself a religious Jew and still believe in such Fundamentalist Protestant Christian nonsense like Intelligent Design?" I thanked my email correspondent for a good laugh. The idea that, having defended Expelled's thesis concerning Hitler's intellectual debt to Charles Darwin, I would now feel chastised and repentant because of a statement from the ADL, an organization for which I have not a feather's weight of respect! This was rich stuff. Just to be clear, however: Expelled doesn't equate Darwinism and Hitler. That basic point was also missed by Professor Sahotra Sarkar, who published a confused attack piece on me here on Jewcy. Sarkar attributed to me the view, "If you believe in the theory of evolution, you are an anti-Semite" -- something that, obviously, I would have to be a fool to write or believe. Dealing primarily with the academic suppression of Darwin-doubting scientists on campuses around the country, Expelled only spends about 10 minutes on the Hitler-Darwin connection. But it draws upon a solid, mainstream body of scholarship by the chief Hitler biographers and others. Undeterred, the ADL wailed that "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/dont_blame_darwinism_hitler_blame_christianity

Happy Godwin Day, From Our Home To Yours

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:40:35 -0500

Author: Jewcy Staff
Posted to Jewcy: April 30, 2008 3:40 pm
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Newsflash: Hitler is dead. In fact, today is the 63rd anniversary of his death. Alas, since World War II, Jewish discourse on absolutely every single matter of import to Jews has been crippled by the rhetoric of comparing perceived enemies and threats to Hitler. Whether it's intermarriage, Israel, matrilineal succession (i.e. "who is a Jew?"), whether Jews should retain their separateness, how America should deal with Iran, or whether we should care about Jeremiah Wright's sermons, again and again and again, Nazism and Hitlerism are invoked on every side. In 1990, a guy named Mike Godwin noticed a similar problem in the online community Usenet. He formulated what's now known as Godwin's Law: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." In the intervening eighteen years, Godwin's Law spread far beyond Usenet to became a bona fide Internet meme. It's now shorthand for any conversation riddled with useless comparisons to Hitler or the Nazis. It's fine to be sensitive to the historical lessons of WWII, but the tragedy of Godwin's Law is that the Hitler fetish doesn't improve our understanding or insight into any problem. Instead, it diminishes our ability to discuss it. The preoccupation with Hitler and WWII prevents us from honestly considering the opposing side of any debate. We dehumanize our opponent as complicit in genocide, and isn't that very dehumanization and strawmanning and simplifying of people's motives...sort of like Hitler? In honor of the anniversary of Hitler's death, we looked for some unexpected personalities to Godwin. It's surprisingly easy! More are on their way, so check back often. Hitlery Rodham Clinton propels herself to...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/happy_godwin_day_our_home_yours

John Sidney Hitler McCain

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:48:25 -0500

Author: Daniel Koffler
Posted to Jewcy: April 30, 2008 2:48 pm
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Last week, Fareed Zakaria pointed out that John McCain's recent major foreign policy address "contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed. In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries...It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war." Well sure, but Zakaria doesn't have the courage to go where the facts should lead him. In McCain's own lifetime, there was another world leader who saw politics as a break in between wars and sought to impose his country's values on the rest of world. That leader saw confrontation with Russia, specifically, as his world-historical destiny, and embarked on an unprovoked attack on the Great Bear that led not only to his own downfall, but to the utter destruction of his state and its political order. That leader's name? Do I even need to spell it out? Also would have thrown Russia out of the G8 ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/john_sidney_hitler_mccain

Santa Claus, Enemy of the Jews

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:46:52 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: April 30, 2008 2:46 pm
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Photographic evidence: Santa gives the Nazi saluteI know it’s almost May, and Christmas isn’t exactly around the corner, but I’d just like to go on the record and say how fed up I am with Santa Claus. I saw someone yesterday in a Santa suit (I didn’t ask why) and it got me thinking about how completely perilous Santa is and always has been. When you think about it, Santa’s a lot like Hitler. He lives far away and so doesn't really seem like a direct threat. He keeps slaves of a lower caste to do the labor he needs. He steals into people’s houses late at night when they're least expecting it. He discriminates, makes lists (and apparently checks them twice), and has some eerie way of knowing who’s naughty (Jews, ahem) and nice (informers, possibly?) He wears a strange uniform. He has at least half of the world’s children under his thumb. Oh yeah, and he saturates the media with his own likeness, ideas, and philosophy. Does anyone else think this might be dangerous? And don’t give me any crap about him having anything to do with Christmas—show me where it says Santa in the New Testament. Show me the nonsense about cookies and milk and Rudolf. Give me chapter and verse and we can chat. Until then, keep Santa away. Santa is an anagram of Satan, and as far as I’m concerned, Santa-themed sweaters might as well have big black swastikas on them. Mark my words: One of these days "Heil Santa" will catch on as a holiday...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/santa_claus_enemy_jews

Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla Open Jewish Center in Krakow

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:51:17 -0500

Author: JessM
Posted to Jewcy: April 29, 2008 2:51 pm
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Prince Charles: goes looking for a mezuzah Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla arrived in Poland today to take part in the opening ceremony of a new Jewish community center in Krakow’s Kazimierz Jewish quarter. While the project was overseen by World Jewish Relief (a charity group based in London and credited with aiding Jewish children in escaping the Nazi regime during World War II), the inspiration for and funding of the center came directly from the Prince of Wales. In 2002, Charles met with many of Krakow’s Holocaust survivors and was so moved by their stories that he decided to commit himself to the building of a community center. Many of the survivors he initially spoke with were present at today’s ceremony, including Ryszard Orowski, who lost all of his relatives in the Holocaust. Orowski expressed his joy and amazement over the project: "Never did we imagine that we would have a center, a home for the whole community of Krakow." ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/prince_wales_and_duchess_cornwall_open_jewish_center_krakow

From Neo-Nazi to Kosher Connoisseur?

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:20:30 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: April 28, 2008 5:20 pm
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Kosher prison food: like kosher plane food, but worse? A former neo-Nazi in Missouri has won a case requesting kosher food in prison. Prison officials don't want to deal with the cost or hassle (kosher food is twice as expensive and might cause pushing and shoving in the meal lines, apparently), and doubt exactly how serious Norman Lee Toler—serving a 10-year sentence for statutory rape—really is about his Judaism. On the one hand he has several white supremacist tattoos, including one that says SS, and has been caught with pictures of Hitler and white supremacist pamphlets in the past. On the other hand, he's said to regularly read Torah and maintain contact with rabbis, and he has a reputation among the inmates for being Jewish. For now, Toler has to make do with treyf food, but the prison is under court order to look into its options. Other neo-Nazis and white supremacists turned (friend of the) Jews who have made recent news include Pinchads Zlotosvksky and Tim Zaal. Related: We commented on a similar case in Georgia last year, but in that instance it wasn’t a neo-Nazi requesting kosher food—it was a child molester/murderer. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/neo_nazi_kosher_fiend

The New Jew Canon: The Black Atlantic

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:03:57 -0500

Author: Helen Jupiter
Posted to Jewcy: April 28, 2008 2:03 pm
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The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or email. Title: The Black Atlantic Author: Paul Gilroy Description: Much hay has been made of life in the diaspora, and this book—while occasionally a little theory/jargon heavy—is an incredibly rich conceptualization of the material and cultural life of diaspora. For Gilroy, it's not diaspora as a sense of exile in which one is always longing to return "home," but rather about the ways that culture, ideas, and material circulate in and around diasporic communities. This is not a book about Jews, but it sheds important light on life in the diaspora. Recommended...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/new_jew_canon_black_atlantic

Must Have: Y-Love's This is Babylon

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:12:00 -0500

Author: Helen Jupiter
Posted to Jewcy: April 25, 2008 8:12 pm
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Put down the Matisyahu and pick up the Y-Love. "This is Babylon," the new album from Hasidic emcee Y-Love (AKA Yitz Jordan), seamlessly blends rhymes in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, and even Aramaic, all the while mixing sounds and beats evocative of DJ Shadow, The Streets, Mos Def, Chuck D, and a host of others. Thought-provoking political verses reside naturally beside electronic dance tracks. Y-Love calls it "global hip hop," and considering that he's a convert to Judaism, he can spit some pretty fast Yiddish. The album functions on a couple of levels: You can chill with it and meditate on his words, or let them seep in as you move. Fresh and inspired, Urb calls "This is Babylon" a "soundtrack to social progression" and describes it as "a head nodding, fist lifting, wake-up and do something kind of record." Already available for download on iTunes and Amazon, the album will be in stores on Tuesday, April 29. Previous: God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of Nature with the Adventure Rabbi ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/must_have_y_loves_babylon

Jews in the News, a Weekly Roundup

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:09:49 -0500

Author: Tamar Fox
Posted to Jewcy: April 25, 2008 6:09 pm
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Matzah and Nudity: a winning combination?In one last round of Passover-related news, a 27-year-old yeshiva student in Israel went into a supermarket and got totally undressed, save for a sock on his cock. He was protesting the recent Israeli ruling that allows chametz to be sold during Pesach in places that are not public—including supermarkets and pizza places. The nude student was arrested by Israeli police for suspicion of performing an indecent act in public. In Jerusalem, Israel's national water company, Mekorot, has shut off the pipeline that brings water from the Kinneret because of crumbs of bread that fisherman on the lake drop into the water. During Passover the water in Jerusalem comes from local reservoirs and wells. Tonight in Tel Aviv a number of Conservative, Reform, and independent congregations will be gathering at the beachfront for a cross-denominational prayer to commemorate the splitting of the Red Sea, and to ask for the speedy release of the three captive Israeli soldiers Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. In non-Pesadik news: A New Year’s card that Anne Frank sent in 1937 has been found in an antique shop in Amsterdam. Jdate was nominated...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/jewish_news_roundup_1

Grandmas Patrolling Israel's Checkpoints

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:46:32 -0500

Author: JessM
Posted to Jewcy: April 25, 2008 5:46 pm
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Grannies On Patrol: unafraid of hot sun, long lines, or jaded soldiersAny effective Israeli checkpoint guard must have the following defining characteristics: Fearlessness Stubbornness Nosiness Chutzpa Sound like your Jewish grandmother? Well, that’s what the ladies over at Machsom Watch thought too. Upset about the current state and management of Israeli checkpoints, they formed an organization of female Israeli peace activists to offer civilian supervision. Too many times, they say, lengthy holdups at checkpoints have caused students to miss exams, women in labor to give birth before they reach the hospital, and degrading incidents. They especially lament the treatment of Palestinians at these checkpoints, who are often not permitted to travel freely even within their own townships. They decided that checkpoints would benefit from neutral civilian supervision. But who would they send to do the job? The solution: Jewish grandmas. Take Rahel Weinberg and Julia West, for example. Armed with sunhats, clipboards, and water bottles, they brave the heat on a daily basis in order to monitor the behavior of the Israeli checkpoint soldiers. What do they have that the soldiers do not? It's more about what they don't have: A lack of military training and an absence of M16’s on their shoulders....

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/grandmas_patrolling_israels_checkpoints