JustASC

A colleague reports on Saturday night’s anti-Israel event at Rutgers, which was grotesquely timed to coincide with 2011 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and featured Hedy Epstein, described as a “Jewish refugee of the Holocaust”:

Last night was a wild and raucous affair. Yes, it’s true the Jewish students were essentially barred from the event… There were easily way more than 400 protestors there. And that was the issue: There were only about 200 program attendees and they didn’t want the program to be co-opted by the protestors. The program was billed as being free and open to the public. I saw the notice myself.

However, they quickly ditched the sign and notices and decided to charge $5 to get in.

That’s when the trouble began. The protestors began chanting “Let us in” and “free free” and there was a lot of heated exchanges and pushing and shoving and more campus police came in and blocked the door to any more people coming in, including many of those from the other side. The program was delayed almost an hour and a half while “the Zionists” rallied in the student center and everybody decided what to do.

At first the campus police told the protestors with signs they would have to stand outside and not block the student center. However, those wanting to attend the program could get on line, which got so long university officials were struggling to figure out what to with everyone. The outside protestors, who had been singing, came inside.

While the program was delayed, Hillel director Andrew Getraer got a bullhorn and stood on the steps leading to the second level. He was followed by Hillel president Sarah Morrison, Rabbi Goodman from Rutgers Chabad and a Chabad student leader.

Big turnout from the community, especially Middlesex–most of the Middlesex rabbis were there–but also other areas.

Including me, about 10 Jews–about half adults and half students– did get into the program. They actually did not equate the Holocaust with the current situation, but it was extremely anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. By far the worst were the Holocaust survivors, not the Palestinians, especially the male survivor, who sympathized with the terrorists (he was the only one) and said Zionism and Judaism were incompatible.

Star-Ledger has coverage here.

 If Jewish weekly editors had late night talk shows:

Crazy stuff in the Middle East this week. Al-Jazeera leaked memos showing the Palestinians were willing to give up parts of Jerusalem.  But Israelis found out that the offer included ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and turned it down.

Congressman Steve Cohen apologized for comparing the Republicans to Joseph Goebbels. That’s right. He even upset Sarah Palin, who said he should go even farther and “apologize to the entire cast of Hollywood Squares. “ 

Do you know that Israeli commission investigating last year’s shooting aboard a Turkish ship? It tuns out the average age of the commission members was 85. That’s right — 85. A bunch of old men sitting around talking about Turkey — it was like Thanksgiving at John McCain’s house.

Israel’s Holocaust museum has started a new YouTube channel  in Farsi, so Iranians can learn about the evils of fascism. Or as it’s called in Iran: State-run television.

Singer Macy Gray asked her Facebook fans to vote on whether she should go to Israel. So far 300 people said yes, 275 people said no, and 15 asked that if she does go, can she drop off a package for their cousins in Ashkelon.

Boy, it’s cold in New York this week. How cold? Iranian bankers were at the U.N., complaining about their frozen assets.

We have a great show! Our guests tonight  include Alan Dershowitz, comedian Jackie Mason and musical guests the Klezmatics! We’ll be back, right after this!

Newark’s Congregation Ahavas Sholom marked the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday with a keynote address Sunday on King and Heschel by Rabbi Capers Funnye, who has become the nation’s most prominent African-American rabbi in part thanks to the fact that he’s Michelle Obama’s first cousin, once-removed.

But it’s not just the Obama connection that distinguishes Funnye: Among the black Jewish leaders of the Hebrew Israelite movement, Funnye has been the most prominent in building a bridge between his movement and Judaism’s white mainstream.

Sunday’s event stood at the juncture between two worlds, and maybe more. Ahavas Sholom is Newark’s last functioning synagogue, after its one mighty Jewish population migrated and then fled west from the 1950s on. (more…)

Sad, interesting, and probably a significant sign of a generational shift: The National Yiddish Book Center, a hot ticket when it was founded 30 years ago and a magnet for donations and good press, has fallen on some hard times. The Boston Globe paid a recent visit:

Charles Krauthammer writes:

Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one.

Wow — the reliable conservative actually thinks we should be exploring Jared Loughner’s political motives in his attempted assassination on Gabrielle Giffords!

No wait — Krauthammer wrote the above in 2009, in a column criticizing the mainstream media for ignoring the possible political motives of Nidal Hassan, the Ft. Hood gunman. In this week’s column on Loughner, Krauthammer lambastes those who suggest the killer was motivated by the ”climate of hate” created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, etc.:

 There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head….

[His] is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder – ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.

These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one.

So to recap: When a Muslim goes on a shooting rampage, it’s a political act –and it is “condescending, politically correct and deadly” to talk about his mental health. 

But when a wild-eyed white guy targets a Democratic congresswoman in a highly polarized state, it is “absurd” for a journalist to even raise questions about his politics.

In truth, I’m inclined to agree with Krauthammer that Loughner’s rampage was an act of insanity. But it’s also a little nuts that Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, in applying such a glaring double standard to two recent massacres, doesn’t pick up on his very own cognitive dissonance.

Boing Boing endorses Settlers of Cataan, a boad game which is sort of like Monopoly for the Dungeons and Dragons set. I only mention it here because my college boy plays it at the campus Hillel, and I suspect from some fairly meager first-hand evidence that it is disproportionately popular among the kind of brainy Jewish kids who, well, play board games at Hillel.

Here’s a nice 15-year-old profile of Debbie Friedman, who died over the weekend at age 59, written by Debra Nussbaum Cohen. I believe I had a hand in editing this when I worked at Moment, and always remembered it as a fine piece:

Packed into a hotel ballroom last November, more than 1,000 Jewish convention-goers in business suits and high heels found themselves standing together and swaying arm-in-arm to the resonant melody and lyrics of Debbie Freidman’s “Mishebeyrach,” a song based on the prayer asking God for healing.

It was a jolting charge to the spiritual batteries of many of those attending the General Assembly (G.A.) of the Council of Jewish Federations. Usually the G.A. is about as inspiring as its name: a mass meeting of Jewish technocrats, funders, and fundees trying to figure out how to solve the Jewish continuity crisis and balance budgets at the same time.

But this year’s G.A. saw — or rather heard — something new. “We need to get in touch with our Judaism,” said a teary Marci Erlebacher, vice president for community relations at the Jewish Federation of Syracuse, New York, shortly after Friedman’s appearance. Singing prayers together “was like being cleansed inside,” she added.

The article details some of the health problems she had faced over the years.

Hamakom yinechem…

A Princeton freshman argues that the university has lost its reputation as a WASP bastion hostile to Jews and other minorities:

The acceptance of the Jewish community by the greater student body was made most evident to me over the course of Hanukkah, where various parties were hosted by eating clubs, the historic epicenter of Princetonian elitism and exclusion. An image that will likely stick with me is a room full of Cloister Inn members gathered around a table playing with dreidels (spinning-tops) while eating traditional holiday foods such as latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts). Princeton’s changing diversity-related trends, while old news, are only now being realized by the religious Jewish community. An immediate manifestation of this awareness is evidenced by more than a dozen Israel-seminary-bound Jewish students who will help make up the Class of 2015.

A headline from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Jewish teens aspiring to repair the world to gather in Pittsburgh

This story, from from Long Island’s Jewish Star, kind of annoys me:

Orthodox win Maccabi Basketball tournament:
Jewish kids can jump