Archive for November, 2008

Becoming a Jewish communal professional, memory #45


Scene: UJA-Federation of NY meeting room, East Midtown Manhattan, Summer 2005. Six people in a room representing grantees of the Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal (COJIR).
UJA wonk: Let’s introduce our organizations and what your COJIR grant is for.
Andy Bachman: I’m a rabbi running a shul without walls for unaffiliated young Jews in Brooklyn.
Aaron [...]


Humor is the barb to fight the truth


The American Thinker is up in arms about EV’s latest comic (as is Commentary). I already addressed this in my post at Jewschool. In part, I said:
But that doesn’t mean I want them making foreign policy decisions about Israel. Their love of Israel is as uneducated as you can get — and not a tap [...]


The shande in the Negev


New entry into the nomenclature catalog here: Shande. noun.
1. an embarassment, a shame.
2. The Jewish community’s ignorance of and disinterest in what Israel does to the Bedouin. All. Year. Round.


Palestinian Authority puts full-page peace plan ad in Israeli papers


Courtesy of the BBC.


Because I’ve not posted anything bad about Hebron settlers recently


From earlier in the year, Israeli TV news broadcast about the growing settler problem of Hebron. Well, they’ve always been a problem. But now it’s in the news thanks to everyone carrying a video camera. Document, document, document. Document it all and let the world shame Israel into doing something about their hatred and antics. [...]


How do you teach Jews about Israeli racism?


Racism is bad. Racism in Israel is bad. So we should address it. Right?
Last night I attended the social justice-themed “A Taste of Limmud“ and a presentation about racism in Israeli soccer. The Israeli news clip shown was not easy to watch. (A less-intense clip of which you can watch here.) It showed whole stadiums dancing and [...]


This is what happens during an occupation


And expecting anything else is not just naive, it’s fucking blind. So long as 18 to 20 year olds are given total power and control over anything under their gun, this kind of shit will happen: in this clip, which was broadcast on Israeli TV last earlier this week, Israeli soldiers humiliate a Palestinian detainee.
Of course, in [...]


Obama promised Carter peace


Embedded video from CNN Video


Transdenom Tales, Part One


My parents consider themselves Conservative, aspire to orthodoxy, practice closer to Reform, their favorite rabbi was a Reconstructionist, and most of their children’s upbringing was spent in places with zero institutional Jewish presence…
Which makes me a nothing, an everything, a trans- or post-denominational defiant mess.
So transport yours truly’s transdenominational mess to Jew York City, where [...]


Inadvertently baiting the establishment


So some of us have a habit of opening our big, fat mouths and saying, oh God, what we actually think about things. And blogs are lovely, private, secluded places to say them.
Like on popularly-trafficed small blogs.