Syndication
Everybody’s ‘Pro-Israel’ Nowadays
From Republicans to Democrats and Aipac to JStreet almost everybody in the American political mainstream says they’re “pro-Israel” nowadays. Heck, if you define pro-Israel as supporting Israel’s right to exist, even Jimmy Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer would qualify. That’s why Ha’aretz’s Shmuel Rosner wants to ” dump the term.”
“Without specifics, being ‘pro-Israel’ is almost like being pro-great-weather or pro-tasty-food,” Rosner writes in Slate.
Lebanon’s ‘Cell Phone Civil War’?
Things are getting ugly in Lebanon. The months-long standoff between Lebanon’s pro-Western government and Hezbollah and its allies has escalated into violence. The trigger? Cell phones.
Time magazine reports:
The country has been politically paralyzed for 16 months, unable to elect a new president because of a deadlock between government and opposition forces in which neither side has the strength to prevail over the other. Then came the telephone crisis: Last weekend, Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon’s Druze minority and an arch enemy of Hizballah, accused the militant Shi’ite party of maintaining its own private telephone network, and of using security cameras to monitor Beirut airport with the possible aim of staging attacks or kidnappings. On Tuesday, the government followed up with an edict declaring Hizballah’s telephone network “illegal and unconstitutional”. It also launched an investigation into the alleged monitoring of the airport, and dismissed airport security chief General Wafiq Shuqeir, on suspicion of opposition sympathies.
Hizballah was having none of it, angrily declaring that the telephone network is part of its military wing — which it justifies as necessary to defend Lebanon against Israel — and warning anyone seeking to dismantle it would be treated as an “Israeli spy”. Within days, the two sides were shooting at one another.
Read the full article.
Good Tidings From a Muslim Macher, a Former Archbishop, a Movie Mogul — and Don’t Forget the Fresh Prince
Over on Cross-Currents, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein writes:
In the space of a single hour this evening, I heard:
The former President of the most populous Muslim country on the globe declare that he will not rest until his country recognizes Israel. He then dedicated the honor he received to an unnamed rabbi (in Indonesia!), deceased for a few years, who enriched his life by introducing him to Talmud and Kabbalah.
The previous Archbishop of Canterbury close his remarks with a beautiful piece of derush based on a beraisa in the first perek of Berachos. Lord Carey has campaigned against anti-Semitism for over twenty years, and stood up to his own church when it moved to divest its funds from Israel.
A French-Catholic priest with tears in his eyes tell an audience why he has trekked for a decade through the Ukraine to uncover the previously unknown mass graves that hold the remains of a million and a half Jews murdered by Nazi mobile killing units. So far, he has found over five hundred of such graves. Invoking the words of the previous Pope in his visit to a Rome synagogue, he called Jews his “elder brothers;” he considered it intolerable that so many should be killed and their memories obliterated without any remembrance.
The Chairman of one of the largest studios in Hollywood speak with depth, passion, content and conviction – and with Jewish pride.
Anyone who believes that everything out there is dark and evil does not live on the same planet as I do.
The Muslim ex-president is Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia; the former archbishop, Lord Carey of Clifton; the priest, Father Patrick Desbois; and the studio chair, Sony’s Amy Pascal. The venue was the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s National Tribute Dinner in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.
Adlerstein didn’t even mention the one royal guest in attendance: the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith.
Why Do Jews Love Irish Music?
Why do Jews love Irish music? Actually, I didn’t know they did, until Gwen Orel told me so.
Writing in The Village Voice, Orel presents some anecdotal evidence that Jews are particularly well-represented in New York’s Irish music scene — which, of course, begs the question: “What makes so many Jewish-Americans with no Celtic heritage pour sweat equity into presenting, producing, writing about, and traversing long distances to enjoy Celtic music?”
But, as Orel learns, it’s a question easier asked than answered.
Rabbinical student Tom Gardner says that Celtic music “felt familiar. I’m not sure what it is, but it speaks somehow to our souls.”
“There’s a sorrow that unites both of those peoples,” Irish singer Susan McKeown says. “The Irish have been put down and moved on for hundreds of years, and the Jews have been moved on since time began. And nobody could put it into words in a miserable song that could touch your heart and be more beautiful than the Jews or the Irish … there’s a lot of hope.”
“I think part of it is longing,” says Riverdance composer Bill Whelan. “There’s a longing in the slow airs that’s expressed in the music. The first time I came to New York to work in 1992, I was brought out here by Leon Uris. He thought the Irish and the Jews had a load of shared cultural and emotional connection.”
But, Orel finds, not everyone buys the notion of some sort of deep spiritual affinity:
“There is no overlap between the styles—no emotional overlap,” contends klezmer pioneer Andy Statman. “It’s really just great music. Music can transcend culture.” Piper Bill Ochs, who teaches at the Irish Arts Center, agrees: He’s Jewish, and finds the idea of a mystical connection “kind of a romantic blarney.” His students come from Japan, China, Singapore, Russia, Latvia, Germany, and France. “It’s just great music,” he insists.
While Columbia Students Stormed Buildings, at Y.U. They Just Wanted To Play Some Coed Volleyball
New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt looks back on the tumultuous spring of 1968 — from the vantage point of a not-too-radical student at a not-too-radical college campus. While his peers at Columbia were busy occupying buildings, Rosenblatt and his fellow Yeshiva University students were engaged in some mischievous — if decidedly less political — rebellion of their own:
Despite the fewer than 60 blocks that separated them, the Columbia and YU campuses were really light years apart. One was at the cutting edge of revolution; one was framed by Talmudic study steeped in disputes of centuries past.
So the edginess of the times, compounded by final exams, played out in a major water fight in the main dorm one spring night at YU, with scores of students in their swim trunks heaving large cans of water on each other, and sometimes out the window onto Amsterdam Avenue.
Soon, the fire department arrived, with firemen wading through the puddles in the dorm halls, axes at the ready, responding to calls from neighbors. Surveying the scene, though, they were good-natured about the mess and didn’t stay long.
Hours later, well after midnight, two student activists from Columbia’s SDS chapter appeared at my dorm room. SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was the radical group behind the Columbia protests, and it seems they had received notice that, in their memorable words to my roommate and me, “Yeshiva was being liberated.”
They said they were there to help us plan a takeover of the president’s office.
Too embarrassed to explain that the commotion at YU was a water fight, not a student protest — and that any prospective rebellion at YU would have been quelled by a rabbinic scholar announcing that such acts were halachically not permissible, or just not right — we listened as they urged us to secure maps of the administrative buildings and fortify ourselves for a long stay.
We nodded, scribbled notes, thanked them for their advice, and finally were rid of them, raising our fists to meet theirs in solidarity.
Then we had a good laugh before going back to sleep in preparation for another day of Talmud study and exams.
But wild water fights weren’t the sum total of Rosenblatt’s youthful rebellion. He goes on to describe a guerrilla volleyball game with some female students from Stern College that drew a pretty stern police response.
Read the full article.
Yid Vid: Birthright Enlists Israel’s Reigning YouTube Queens
In the past decade, Birthright Israel has established itself as the Jewish community’s unquestioned leader in providing free Israel trips to young Jews. More recently, it has also become, quite possibly, the Jewish community’s No. 1 patron of the art of YouTube video-making.
For its latest effort, Birthright enlists Israel’s leading lip-syncers, Tasha and Dishka, two young ladies from Ramle who became YouTube sensations with their lively interpretation of The Pixies’ “Hey” — which has now been viewed more than 22 million times(!).
For Birthright, the dynamic duo of viral video lip-syncs in various holy land hot spots to the song “All Eyes on Me” by Israeli power-pop band The Carsitters — all in honor of Israel’s 60th birthday.
The verdict?: It’s not bad, but it’s no “Hey.”
Hat tip: Jewlicious.
Mama, Don’t Let Your Rabbis Grow Up To Be Cowboys
When Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb took the reins at the Orthodox Union in 2002, observers took note of the fact that the new executive vice-president of the centrist congregational umbrella group was fond of wearing a black hat of the sort popular in more religiously right-leaning precincts. Now that Weinreb is wrapping up his tenure, I’m left wondering whether his newly named successor, Rabbi Steven Weil of Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, will wear a cowboy hat.
Granted, I have no evidence whatsoever that Weil actually wears cowboy hats. But the Lyndonville, N.Y., native is, apparently, something of a country music fanatic.
On Beth Jacob’s Web site, Weil’s biographical page reveals a set of interests that one wouldn’t necessarily expect from a leader of American Orthodoxy.
Among his favorite Web sites, he lists www.mesorah.org and www.yu.edu — nothing too unusual so far. But then, for his third and final choice, there’s this one: www.cmt.com. (For all you city slickers, that’s the site for Country Music Television.)
Then, under hobbies, he lists “The Rambam” and “country music.”
Given Weil’s taste in music, we shouldn’t be too surprised that when he turns east to Zion, he also sees another locale beckoning. Responding to the prompt “I will retire and live in..”, he answers: “Israel or Nashville, TN.”
So let’s all wish the O.U.’s next executive vice-president a big mazel tov — and a yee haw!
Poof, You’re Not Jewish Anymore
Jewschool’s Josh Frankel is up in arms — and with good reason:
Just when you thought the conversion mess couldn’t get any worse - the good folk in Israel drop another bomb. The Jerusalem Post reports that the High Rabbinical Court has ruled to invalidate, retroactively, all of the conversions performed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman since 1999.
Get this straight, Rabbi Chaim Druckman isn’t a reform, conservative, or heck even some strange liberal YCT guy. Rabbi Chaim Druckman is a major Rosh Yeshiva, a recognized halakhic scholar, and at times has been in charge of the national religious education system in Israel. His only offense apparently - he wears a knitted yarmulke.
This isn’t a little thing. Rabbi Druckman isn’t just a private rabbi in a little synagogue. He was the head of the official, government conversion authority. This means that thousands of people’s conversions have been effectively invalidated. Also, this isn’t just a question of whether your local synagogue will let you enroll your kids in day school. This means that thousands of people are no longer Jewish, their kids are no longer Jewish, they are no longer married, they can not get married, they can no longer be buried in ordinary cemetaries, and can no longer go to religious schools. They have been placed as second class citizens. All apparently because one woman, more than fifteen years after she converted was no longer shomeret shabbat - according to the ideals of this rabbinic court.
Here’s The Jerusalem Post’s article on the ruling.
UPDATE: Writing in Ha’aretz in response to this ruling, Asher Maoz opens fire. Meanwhile, The Jerusalem Post reports, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, is trying to reassure converts, and the Knesset is planning to take up the issue.
UPDATE II: The Rabbinical Council of America is lending is voice to the chorus of critics of the rabbinic court’s opinion, JTA reports.
Israel Turns 60, and Britain Rejoices With… Jackie Mason
Comedian Jackie Mason — former rabbi, self-proclaimed “ultimate Jew” and possessor of the world’s schmaltziest Borscht Belt accent — is topping the bill at Britain’s “Israel at 60” gala show at Wembley Arena. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg of the New North London Synagogue, for one, thinks he’s “a terrible choice.”
Writing in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, the rabbi explains:
His love of Israel is unquestionable. He abandoned his show to stand with the Jewish state while the Scuds descended in 1991. He will be funny and robust. He will draw the crowds and, with so much venom about Israel, solidarity matters. But solidarity with what?
The authors of the Declaration of Independence asserted that the Jewish state would “be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel”, ensuring complete equality for all its inhabitants. They espoused the same idealism as Isaiah when, in a Jerusalem surrounded by the Assyrian army, he spoke of the redeemer who would come not with the sword, but with righteousness and justice. Twenty-seven centuries later, in 1948, with Jerusalem again under siege, my father’s uncle, a jurist who had fled Nazi Germany, died for that same vision. Those values are far removed from the kind of stereotyping of which Jackie Mason’s work is full.
I think Rabbi Wittenberg is way off base: I rarely find Jackie Mason funny.
The rabbi goes on to note that Mason isn’t exactly Mr. Compassionate when it comes to his views on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Nor, I might add, is he Mr. Sensitivity when it comes to interethnic and interreligious affairs in general.
In any case, I’m sure Europeans will love his shtick. And if, perchance, they don’t, well, thankfully, their support for Israel is unshakable.
While we’re on the topic, check out Jackie Mason’s interview with the Jewish Chronicle, in which he explains how he’s like a piece of furniture, suggests that he may be bigger than Benjamin Netanyahu and shares his thoughts (if they can be called that) on the upcoming presidential election.
Espionage and its Apologists
Writing in San Francisco’s J. newspaper, Douglas Bloomfield, former chief legislative lobbyist for AIPAC, analyzes the circumstances surrounding the arrest of retired Army engineer Ben-Ami Kadish, who is accused of spying on the United States for Israel. Bloomfield zooms out and looks at the larger context, including the debate over long-imprisoned spy Jonathan Pollard — and he doesn’t have much patience for those he regards as apologists for Israeli espionage in America.
Bloomfield writes:
The greatest damage of the Kadish case may come from a tiny minority in the Jewish community that seems to justify spying by claiming Washington has not supported Israel with intelligence about its enemies and with political backing.
And they make things worse when they belittle the latest case by ridiculing it as government harassment of a zayde. Such conduct can be as destructive as the crime itself; it says that spying for Israel is not only acceptable but honorable and even necessary — and it reinforces accusations that Jews put loyalty to Israel ahead of loyalty to America.
Read the full article.
In Other Jewish Newspapers: Ben Stein Repels, Letter-Carriers vs. Israel, Prince Charles’s Tzedakah
FOUNDING FIREFIGHTERS: Connecticut’s Jewish Ledger explores the history of Lake Waubeeka, a summer community that was founded in 1950 by Ner Tormid, a fraternal organization of Jewish firefighters. The society’s name, the Ledger explains, was a misspelling of the Hebrew ner tamid, or “eternal flame.” Apparently, the firefighters were better at fighting flames than spelling them.
HASIDIC VIGILANTES?: The New York Jewish Week reports that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is likening a Hasidic community patrol group to the Bloods and the Crips following an attack on a black man by a group of Jews in Crown Heights. Meanwhile, some Hasidim are complaining that while Hynes is coming down hard in response to this incident, a string of attacks on Jews in the neighborhood remain unsolved. But this isn’t Hynes’s only Jewish problem. The Jewish Week also reports on the aftermath of a controversial plea bargain in which critics say Hynes let a rabbi accused of molesting yeshiva students off easy.
A CLUB THAT WILL HAVE THEM: Rabbis Marc Angel and Avi Weiss have launched a new Modern Orthodox rabbinic association as an alternative to the established and rightward-drifting Rabbinical Council of America, which recently adopted more stringent conversion policies. But, The Jewish Week notes, the new association will also serve another purpose, providing a home to graduates of Weiss’s Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, who have been denied membership by the RCA.
‘REPELLED’ BY BEN STEIN: Ben Stein’s new pro-“intelligent design” documentary “Expelled” repels the editorialist of the New Jersey Jewish News with its linkage of Darwinism and Nazism. “Expelled draws a direct line between Darwin and Hitler, between natural selection and the Selektions of the Holocaust,” the editorialist writes. “It’s like blaming Shakespeare for the English major who committed the Virginia Tech massacre.”
BAT MITZVAH HISTORY: The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle catches up with two women who, 62 years ago, were among the first five girls in the city’s Jewish community to have a bat mitzvah ceremony. “Practically the whole Pittsburgh showed up,” recalls former bar mitzvah girl Gerri Ash Bronk, now 75. “The shul was absolutely packed. Some people thought it was a fantastic idea, some didn’t.”
BALTIMORE’S LIST-LOVERS: In February, the list-lovers of the Baltimore Jewish Times offered up their “Favorite 54” — chronicling the best things about Jewish life in their town. Now, apropos an important anniversary, they’ve come up with a list highlighting on 60 aspects of Israel that they thought their readers should know about — from an all-chocolate restaurant in Rosh Pina to “Jews” (“They’re everywhere and permeate everything”).
IRAQ VETS SPEAK: The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle speaks with some local Jewish veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
TWISTED SISTER CITY: Kansas City chose the Israeli town of Ramle as a sister city of in part because of its diverse population of Arabs and Jews. But then Ramle’s Jewish mayor was quoted in an Israeli newspaper cursing his city’s Arab citizens — and the controversy came to Kansas City. The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle has the story.
IT BEATS EGYPT: The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix reports that Arizona has become a hot spot for Passover vacations:
Like the Israelites who journeyed through the desert and whose story is retold each year during the seder, nearly 3,000 people made their own journey to the desert this year to commemorate this occasion.
However, this time it was a little different.
Instead of tents, today’s “wanderers” celebrated in luxury at four Valley resorts: The Arizona Biltmore, JW Marriott Desert Ridge, the Millennium Resort Scottsdale McCormick Ranch and the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess.
They dined on modern-day manna in the form of bagels (made from potato starch), made-to-order omelets, Belgian waffles, chocolate soufflés, pancakes, pizzas, pastries and sushi (made with quinoa instead of rice).
Wandering in the desert has never been easier.
TEHRANGELES ON OBAMA: The Los Angeles Jewish Journal finds that some leaders of the local Iranian Jewish community are wary about Barack Obama’s calls for engagement with Iran. “Any agreement to negotiate with the [Iranian] regime will give it the sort of legitimacy that it does not currently have but so desperately needs in order to put the last nails in the coffins of those who still have hope for a democratic Iran,” Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian American Jewish Federation, tells the Journal.
GOING POSTAL: The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has passed a resolution backing the use of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, making it, according to The Canadian Jewish News, the first national union in North America to do so. But will they deliver mail addressed to Israel?
‘RIDE TO REMEMBER’: Members of the Jewish Motorcycle Alliance mount their bikes to memorialize the Holocaust, as part of the fourth-annual “Ride to Remember,” which will take place later this month in Omaha, Neb. ““For a Jewish group, we have a unique way of honouring the Holocaust,” Steve Stein, past president of Toronto’s Yidden on Wheels, tells The Canadian Jewish News.
CONSERVATIVES LOSE LARGEST: The biggest Conservative-affiliated congregation in North America has left the movement. Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation is the latest in a string of Canadian synagogues to split with the American-dominated United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. While there have been some complaints by Canadian Conservative congregations over the larger movement’s increasingly liberal stances on the religious roles of gays and women, the rabbi of Beth Tzedec tells The Canadian Jewish News that ideology didn’t play a role in his synagogue’s decision. Rather, he said, the split was prompted by issues having to do with the movement’s allocation of resources.
BLAME MY WIFE: A mayor from New South Wales in Australia is apologizing to Jews after he made the following statement at a public meeting: “Why don’t you jack up the price, why don’t you be a good Jew, why don’t you screw the last dollar out of it like public enterprise would?” The mayor, however, also had a ready explanation for why his remarks were not motivated by malice toward Jews. His wife is Jewish, and the phrase he used is “a phrase my wife uses a lot at home.” The Australian Jewish News has the story.
TEL-AVIV GOES QUACK: Residents of Tel Aviv have fallen in love with a giant inflatable duck that has been perched on top of their city hall. When a municipal worker accidentally pulled the plug on the big bird, causing it to deflate, “hundreds of concerned citizens called us,” one of the project’s organizers tells London’s Jewish Chronicle.
PRINCELY PATRON: London’s Jewish Chronicle reports that Britain’s Prince Charles “was so taken by his involvement in creating a new Polish Jewish community centre, which he opened in Krakow on Tuesday, that he now intends to become involved in another Jewish project in Eastern Europe.”
Two Views From Hebron
The Jewish Press and Jewschool this week offer two very different takes on the situation in Hebron. The Jewish Press article is by a 19-year-old American Jewish seminary student who went to spend the Sabbath with the holy city’s Jewish community. The Jewschool post is written by a young Jew who traveled to Hebron with a group of activists to show solidarity with the city’s Palestinian population.
Yom HaShoah
Here’s the view from Jerusalem on this somber day, courtesy of Jewlicious.
Here is a selection of Yom Hashoah-related news and commentary:
Wright’s Praise for Farrakhan Is ‘Ridiculous,’ Obama Says in Repudiating Pastor
Barack Obama took off the gloves in going after his longtime pastor over his appearance yesterday at the National Press Club:
Here’s a short snippet:
When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century, when he equates the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced.
Will Obama’s remarks put the Wright controversy behind him? Here’s the verdict from the partisan peanut gallery:
Roto: A New Passover Tradition — Challah!
Aaron Yonka of Cincinnati, Ohio, writes:
Busken Bakery is a locally owned and operated bakery that has been in Cincinnati since 1928. They have a long-standing tradition of making some of the city’s best baked goods, and they support a lot of fundraising efforts in town. On this rare occasion, Busken may have missed the mark a little in their product selection and timing. But their hearts were in the right place.
Editor’s Note:
In 1923, the Forward launched a weekly photography supplement known as the Rotogravure. The feature took its name from a process for engraving images onto metal plates for printing. While other newspapers of the era had their own Rotogravure pages, the Forward’s “Roto” stands out as a visual record of the richness and diversity of the Jewish experience. It tackled themes ranging from a “Beauty and Charm Contest” to “Interesting Jewish Types from Africa and Palestine.” Readers from all corners of the globe mailed in their photos for publication.
Our revived Roto creates an online photographic record of the richness and diversity of today’s Jewish world. We invite our readers to send us their photos.
E-mail your photo to the Roto at roto@forward.com, along with a brief explanation of the image and its meaning.
For previous installments of the Roto, click here.
Where Jeremiah Wright Turns for Mideast Analysis
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s views on Israel have been an interesting footnote (and for Jews, far more than a footnote) in the larger controversy that has swirled around him. Many American Jews, it’s safe to say, have been angered by his strident criticism of Israel, as well as the publication of anti-Israel polemics in his church’s newsletter. Indeed, Barack Obama, in his speech responding to the Wright controversy, went out of his way to criticize his former pastor’s “view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”
Now, Wright is giving us a glimpse into his preferred source of information when it comes to Israel. In his press conference today at the National Press Club, Wright was posed the following question:
Sorry, Rev. Wright, You’re No Barbara Jordan
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is back in the spotlight — this time of his own volition. Those hoping for contrition, or even a little bit of self-reflection, will be sorely disappointed. In a PBS interview with Bill Moyers and a speech today at the National Press Club, Obama’s former pastor went after his critics — with a vengeance. At the National Press Club, Wright said that attacks on his sermons were actually “an attack on the black church.”
“This is about Barbara Jordan,” he said. “This is about Fanny Lou Hamer. This is about my grandmamma.”
So apparently Wright — who fancies himself a prophetic voice — thinks that criticizing his sermons is akin to attacking the late Barbara Jordan, a beloved stateswoman who was the first African-American woman from the South elected to Congress. Since the Rev. Wright’s views and sermons are already fresh in our minds, let’s refresh our memories about Jordan’s brand of prophetic oratory.
A Master Passes
Painter Joseph Solman died last week at the age of 99. In these pages last fall, Albert Fayngold penned a timely appreciation for this “fabulously gifted yet woefully underappreciated American master.”
Jerusalem of Ghosts
JTA has a great article on how Jerusalem students are organizing against absentee homeownership. Diaspora Jews are buying up large chunks of the capital’s housing stock and turning entire neighborhoods into virtual ghost towns for much of the year:
When the masses of visiting American Jews who own vacation homes in Israel’s capital leave Jerusalem to return home after Passover, they’ll be leaving behind mostly empty apartments – and frustrated Jerusalemites.
While many Diaspora Jews consider their Israeli homes an important investment in the Jewish state, many locals say absentee homeowners have driven up market prices, drained the market of available rentals and made many Jerusalem neighborhoods unaffordable for Israelis.
That’s why a coalition of student activists has launched a campaign to persuade the absentee homeowners to open up their homes to Israeli renters.
“We think it’s great that foreign Jews are buying here and investing in Jerusalem,” said David Uziel, 29, a graduate student in urban planning at Hebrew University. “But if they keep their apartments empty, they are weakening Jerusalem.”
…
To highlight the problem, a group of some 80 students held a demonstration last December in which the students dressed as ghosts and marched through “ghost town” neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including the upscale David’s Village development opposite the Old City’s Jaffa Gate.
“We walked with megaphones through these neighborhoods shouting, ‘Is anyone home?’ ” said Roy Folkman, the head of Hebrew University’s student union. “We saw no one. No one came out.”
Read the full article here.
There’s also, of course, a larger point to be made about the ethical and practical implications of real estate speculation, and what happens (as we’re now seeing here in America) when homes come to be seen, primarily, not as places to live, but as investment opportunities.
Casting Call: Coen Bros. ISO Bar Mitzvah Boy, Nose-Job Seeker, Wise Rabbi
Minneapolis’s Star-Tribune reports that native sons made good (filmmakers), the Coen brothers, are holding a casting call at the JCC in their hometown of St. Louis Park:
Their new film “A Serious Man,” about a Midwestern Jewish family in the late 1960s, will hold an open casting call to fill those roles with performers from the community. No acting experience is required.
The roles are Danny Gopnik (a boy preparing for his bar mitzvah), Sarah Gopnik (a typical teenager obssessed with getting a nose job) and Rabbi Marshak (the wise emeritus rabbi at the synagogue).
The paper has the details.
The Forward staff blogs the Jewish world.
