Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on June 29, 2017

San Diego Symphony

The San Diego Symphony kicked off its Bayside Summer Nights season with Star Spangled Pops Concert, a tribute to the music of America including Broadway tunes and patriotic favorites. This first concert under the stars will complete its weekend run onJuly 2. Wynonna Judd returns to Bayside Summer Nights onJuly 4with a celebration of the nations birthday, featuring her new band.

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall perform a romantic evening onJuly 6, followed onJuly 7-8by Leslie Odom Jr. (of Hamilton fame). Tony Bennett is on tap forJuly 12, and Air Supply bring their classic hits to the EmbarcaderoJuly 14-15. A free community day concert is slated forJuly 16.

New Orleans Jazz series kicks off its second year at the EmbarcaderoJuly 27, followed onJuly 28by Hooray for Hollywood, a salute to movie music. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is slated forJuly 29. The orchestra will accompany the movie. All these alfresco concerts will include a fireworks display at the end.

La Jolla Playhouse

The La Jolla Playhouse extended its popular world premiere production of Escape to Margaritaville until July 9. If you can snare a ticket, this music-based show is eventually headed for Broadway. The Playhouse will unwrap an intimate contemporary play onJuly 5. At the Old Place, by Rachel Bonds, deals with a search for the roads not taken. This thoughtful piece will inhabit the Mandell Weiss Forum throughJuly 30.

Broadway-San Diego

Broadway-San Diego is bringing back the popular satirical musical, The Book of Mormon for a week-long run at the Civic TheatreJuly 25-30. This 9-time Tony Award-winning musical has become an international phenomenon, so it should sell out fast even the second time around!

Cygnet Theatre

Cygnet Theatre has a rare treat in store for local theater-goers of all ages. Animal Crackers, a show adapted from the Marx Brothers classic hit, will shake things up at Cygnets Old Town TheatreJuly 5 through Aug. 13. The madcap musical comedy is a barrel of fun with puns, physical comedy, and non-stop hilarity.

Lambs Players

The Lambs Players reeled in Big Fish (a movie-based musical) for a run at its Coronado home. This new musical a reminder of the importance of imagination and storytelling was directed by Deborah Gilmour Smyth. It will continue throughJuly 30.

North Coast Repertory Theatre

North Coast Repertory Theatre will present the San Diego premiere of At This Evenings Performance, a farce about a Bohemian theater troupe performing in an Eastern European police state. With romantic entanglements, political intrigue, and plenty of laughs, the show has all the ingredients for an entertaining evening of theater. You have fromJuly 12 to Aug. 6to get in on the fun.

Old Globe Theatre

The Old Globes summer season on the outdoor Festival Stage continues with Shakespeares King Richard II. This moving and insightful portrait of the way a nations political landscape can be affected by the forces of history is one of the Bards greatest historical plays and one of the most challenging to stage.Count on director Erica Schmidt to get it right. The dramatic work will be performed throughJuly 15.

The Globes Main Stage production of Guys and Dolls will make its debut onJuly 2, where it will delight audiences throughAug. 13. This masterpiece of Americana (based on the tales of Damon Runyon and propelled by Frank Loessers marvelous music) is chock full of memorable songs and dance numbers.

The Globes White Theatre extended its world premiere adaptation of Molieres The Imaginary Invalid toJuly 2. The farcical bauble, Robin Hood, by the ever-amusing Ken Ludwig, will move into the White Theatre onJuly 22, where it will keep audiences rolling in the aisles throughAug. 27.If you enjoyed last years Baskerville (also penned by Ludwig), you wont want to miss this clever comedy.

San Diego Musical Theatre

San Diego Musical Theatres Off Broadway Series at the Horton Grand continues onJuly 28with Pump Up the Volume. The musical (described as a 90s palooza) will stay put throughSept. 11.

Museum of Contemporary Art

The Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla is closed for renovation and expansion, but theres a lot going on in the downtown facility. It is showing off Jennifer Steinkamp: Madame Curie a digital video animation inspired bythe artists research into atomic energy throughAug. 27. Dimensions of Black: A Collaboration with the San Diego African American Museum of Art is on view downtown through next January.

Andrea Chung: You broke the ocean in half (an immersive installation on colonialism and migration) is on tap throughAug. 20, as are some selections from the museums collection.

Also this month, the Museum of Contemporary Art takes its collection to North County for California Connections at the California Center for the Arts. Members of the two museums will receive reciprocal free admission for the duration of the exhibition, which runs July 8-Aug. 27.

Fleet Science Center

The Fleet is unveiling its latest exhibition Game Masters. Showcasing the work of the worlds best video game designers, from the arcade era to todays console and online games. The work of more than 30 designers is on display in this unique exhibition that tracks the growth of this huge industry.

San Diego Museum of Art

The San Diego Museum of Art is opening its vaults to show off a treasure trove of artwork usually kept under lock and key. Visible Vaults, a collection of 300 pieces, including works by Andy Warhol, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec and other great artists, will be on view throughNov. 12of next year.

Also on display at the Art Museum are Richard Deacon: What You See is What You Get (on view through July 25) and Modern Japan: Prints from the Taisho Era (ensconced throughAug. 13). The Deacon show is the first major survey of the artists work, and includes 40 pieces. The Japanese exhibit encompasses pieces from 1912-26 and includes some very rare prints.

The newest exhibition at the museum opensJuly 1and runs throughJan. 7, 2018. Titled Brenda Biondo: Play, it features 25 photographs (circa 1920-1970).

Mingei International Museum

Mingei International Museum is showcasingKanban: Traditional Shop Signs of Japan, an exhibition that features a variety of forms and mediums, throughOct. 8. Joining that show is Homage to the Horse and Other Steeds, an exhibition of objects celebrating the nobility and power of horses from all over the world. This new exhibition is slated to stay on throughNov. 12.

Timken Museum

The Timken Museum has two new exhibitions. Private Devotions: Italian Paintings and Sculptures from San Diego Collections features more than a dozen masterpieces. It will be on exhibit throughAug. 20. The Modernist Presents Bianca Luini: Meeting of the Arts, is an installation that includes fashion images and permanent artworks. That exhibition is slated to remain throughAug. 27. Also featured is an exhibition of notable Russian Icons. Among them are 12 never before exhibited.

San Diego History Center

The San Diego History Center is celebrating The History and Heritage of the San Diego Jewish Community in its new exhibition, which has been extended through winter 2018. Also on display is Irving Gill: New Architecture for a Great Country, and closing this month is Art and Heritage: Maurice Braun, Belle Baranceanu, and Harry Sternberg.

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What's Goin On July | SD JEWISH JOURNAL - San Diego Jewish Journal

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Posted By simmons on June 29, 2017

Jewish Chronicle

Summer of song and dance Jewish Chronicle The summer school, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) centres on Ashkenazi culture, with intensive Yiddish classes, a dance school named Tants Tants Tants and courses on Yiddish song and klezmer. This year, for the first time, ...

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Summer of song and dance - Jewish Chronicle

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Posted By richards on June 29, 2017

With her infectious energy, you would never know Emily Kramer-Golinkoff is battling Cystic fibrosis.

Kramer-Golinkoff will speak this fall at JUF's Norton & Elaine Sarnoff Center for Jewish Genetics' "Jean Therapy" event in Chicago. The event raises awareness about genetic disorders that disproportionately affect Jewish and interfaith families.

Cystic fibrosis, or CF, causes life-threatening infections, lung damage, and, overtime, respiratory failure, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. For the 70,000 people like Kramer-Golinkoff battling CF worldwide, mucus builds up in their lungs, pancreas, and other organs, clogging their airways and trapping dangerous bacteria, as well as preventing the release of digestive enzymes that enable their bodies to break down food and absorb essential nutrients.

"There are no days off and no breaks and no vacations," Kramer-Golinkoff said in regards to her treatment that takes three to four hours to do each day-when she's healthy. Her treatment consists of various inhaled breathing therapies of antibiotics, bronchodilators, and mucociliary clearance, and strapping on a vest that inflates and forcefully shakes her chest to dislodge mucus that builds up in her lungs and airways. On top of that, she takes 30 pills each day and pokes herself with four to five insulin injections to treat her CF-related diabetes, which, according to Kramer-Golinkoff, affects nearly half of the CF population over the age of 18.

At just 6 weeks old, Kramer-Golinkoff was diagnosed with CF. Today, at age 32, she has about 35 percent lung function and advanced-stage CF. The next stage is end-stage. At that point, her only treatment option is a lung transplant. "Our desperation and urgency is to try and save Emily and others like her," said Liza Kramer, Kramer-Golinkoff's mother.

There are over 1,700 known mutations of CF, but Kramer-Golinkoff has what's called a nonsense mutation, a rare and untreatable mutation of CF. Her mutation, specifically, is known as the Ashkenazi (Jewish) mutation, which affects only some 2 percent of the CF community.

While recent medical advances have helped people with CF live past their average life expectancy of 41, there were no organizations focused on finding treatments and cures for people with Kramer-Golinkoff's nonsense mutations. So back in 2011, she and her family and friends launched Emily's Entourage. The non-profit organization has raised over $2.5 million to fast-track research and drug development for nonsense mutations of CF with a focus on the Ashkenazi mutation. And, this summer, the organization is giving out approximately $500,000 in research grants to a group of researchers all around the world.

Finding a breakthrough for CF won't only help Kramer-Golinkoff and people like her, according to Kramer, but could potentially help 12 percent of people with genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations, which adds up to about 30 million people.

Kramer-Golinkoff remains optimistic. "We are laser-focused on accelerating breakthroughs that can reach patients in the next five years," she said. "Our sincere hope is that those breakthroughs will allow us to sustain people, so that they can live longer and better than ever before."

But she wants to get the word out to the Jewish community. "It's imperative for the Jewish community to know that there are these game-changing breakthroughs that are happening in the treatment of Cystic Fibrosis, but our Ashkenazi mutation of CF is being left behind. It's really up to us to light the fire to change that."

With one in 25 to 27 Ashkenazi Jews being carriers of the Ashkenazi mutation of CF and CF being the most common fatal Jewish genetic disease, Kramer-Golinkoff hopes that Jewish people comes to realize that "this is our shared disease and the time to act is now."

The Norton & Elaine Sarnoff Center for Jewish Genetics is working with Emily and her Entourage to spread the word about Jewish genetic health at their Jean Therapy event, taking place on Nov. 1 at the Chicago Athletic Association in downtown Chicago. The Center is a community resource for education, access to expertise, and a comprehensive carrier screening program.

For more information about the Jean Therapy event on Nov. 1, contact Sarah Goldberg at sarahgoldberg@juf.org or (312) 357-4718. For more information about Emily's Entourage, visit EmilysEntourage.org.

The Norton & Elaine Sarnoff Center for Jewish Genetics is a supporting foundation of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, and is supported in part by the Michael Reese Health Trust.

Carly Gerber is a freelance writer living in Chicago.

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Jean Therapy: Getting the word out about a disease all too common in the Jewish community - Jewish United Fund

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Posted By richards on June 29, 2017

Published June 29, 2017 by Lee R

Shareholders have approved relocation and restructuring to launch the new Amaya era.

Amaya has a new look, and a new venue within its home country of Canada as it looks to the future.

Rebranding

Amayas new plans for a rebrand as The Stars Group Inc. were finalised at its last annual general meeting in Montreal on Wednesday as shareholders approved the new name to reflect the dominance of the groups flagship PokerStars brand.

Moving On

With the switch officially scheduled for August, the rebrand will also put further distance between the unsightly association with David Baazov. The companys former CEO is currently under indictment for insider trading in Amayas 2014 acquisition of PokerStars parent company Rational Group, charges for which he will be tried in November.

Toronto Tabbed

Toronto was chosen over Quebec as the spot where Amaya could more effectively manage its business and affairs.

The first stage of Amayas new office implementation includes the placing of 20 key staff in the office in downtown Toronto in July, with another 300 Amaya technology staffers currently working in the northern Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill.

Amaya will leave a minimal 15-person finance team in Montreals Griffintown.

Expansion Plans

At the shareholder meeting, CEO Rafi Ashkenazi, who replaced Baazov, also alluded to a poker deal with the emerging market of India in the works, calling India quite an exciting market based on the scale of its billion plus population of 1.3b souls and high smartphone penetration. Ashkenazi further projected Indias online poker market to be worth as much as $150m in a few years.

Ashkenazi also has his eyes set on Asia and the United States.

Restructuring

Amaya has also brought on former Playtech and Scientific Games veteran Jerry Bowskill as the companys new chief technology officer.

While some other senior level new hires are expected in the transition, the general personnel structure will remains stable, with senior executives Divyesh Gadhia, Harlan Goodson, Alfred Hurley Jr., David Lazzarto, Peter Murphy and Mary Turner all retaining their roles as directors within the company.

Gadhia will continue as chairman of the board; Lazzarto will chair the Audit Committee, and Hurley the Corporate Governance, Nominating and Compensation Committee.

CEO Sets Course

Via conference call, Ashkenazi said of the moves:

"As we undergo this transformation, we look to embrace the future of our business while also recognizing the incredible consumer goodwill and loyalty associated with our primary brand."

As for that primary brand, since its founding in 2004, Amaya has risen to become the largest publicly listed online poker brand in the world after purchasing PokerStars parent for US $4.9 billion.

Outlook

Amaya seems to be doing what it takes to move on from the Baazov incident, and investors and industry insiders keeping an open mind may yet see a true Phoenix rise from the ashes for one of iGamings earliest stars and pioneers.

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Amaya Prepares for a Fresh Reboot in a New Location - Online Casino Reports (press release)

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Posted By admin on June 29, 2017

Its extraordinary, when you think about it, this country of ours.

Thats always a loaded statement to make these days; tempers are so high, political divisions are so deep, mistrust is so pervasive.

But still.

We are celebrating the Fourth of July this week, the time when the founders of this country, along with the less powerful people they represented, risked everything we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor, they said, the exuberance of their capitalization underscoring the depth of their resolve to create a new kind of state in the New World.

It was, of course, not an untarnished state the founders created human beings were enslaved but it was the start of a brave new experiment. It remains very far from perfect, but on the Fourth of July we still explode fireworks of hope and joy.

Some of those fireworks soar and crest and rain colored fire on the Statue of Liberty.

Although there were Jews in the 13 colonies that became the first United States, none were represented among the entirely white male Christian founders. We extrapolate the promises those men made to themselves to cover all of us as well.

Overwhelmingly, most of us are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. It is no accident that the Statute of Liberty, one of the great symbols of the freedom that this country offers, holds her torch up to immigrants. This country grew from immigrants, was built by immigrants, welcomes immigrants, enriches and is enriched by immigrants.

Like this country itself, though, immigration was not all glorious. It was hard, painful, dark, impoverishing, at times fatal. It could divide families, maim hope, kill love. The only way truly to acknowledge the great gifts immigrants have given us is to honor their sacrifices and their despair as well as their joy and success.

So what does this have to do with the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene?

Everything!

The Folksbiene, under the direction of its artistic director, Zalmen Mlotek of Teaneck, is producing Amerike The Golden Land, a show about Jewish immigration whose month-long run at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan is set to begin on July 4, in the shadow cast by the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

Amerike is less a plotted musical than a series of songs sung by characters whose stories viewers can follow, or at least piece together. The songs all are authentic; most of them were unearthed by Mr. Mlotek and his mother, the great Yiddish musicologist Eleanor Gordon Mlotek, and by Mr. Mloteks cousin, Moishe Rosenfeld.

Zalmen Mlotek of Teaneck is the Folksbienes artistic director.

The beginning of Amerike goes back to 1982, when Moishe and I were asked to create a pageant for the Workmens Circle celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Forward, Mr. Mlotek said. Some explanations Mr. Rosenfeld and Mr. Mlotek are not only first cousins but also frequent collaborators. The Forward, the newspaper that began as a daily Yiddish publication and now publishes in Yiddish, Russian, and English, almost entirely on line, was closely linked with the Workmans Circle, the Yiddishist, socially progressive organization that helped fresh-off-the-boat immigrants adjust to their bewildering new home. The Folksbiene began as a branch of the Workmens Circle. Mr. Mloteks father, Joseph, another prominent and beloved Yiddishist, was the Workmens Circles education director. Everything connects, and everyone is connected.

In 1982, Zalmen Mlotek did not work for the Folksbiene; I was involved only tangentially with Yiddish theater, he said. I developed my own career as a musician. But when he and Mr. Rosenfeld were asked to put together a theatrical piece about immigration, they said yes.

Bryna Wasserman, a luminary of Yiddish theater, directs Amerika.

They researched the period beginning in the late 1880s and going through the next few decades of the twentieth century. Research involved listening to recordings of Yiddish theater and looking at music that had never been published before, Mr. Mlotek said. We wanted to find material that was an honest portrayal of the immigrant experience, from the immigrants themselves.

What excited us was the power of the songs and the lyrics we discovered. We were able to be transported dramatically and emotionally to the generation of immigrants who experienced this country for the first time.

Uncovering this music took detective skills, including not only the ability to follow barely-hinted-at trails and allusions, but also to decipher fading scrawled handwriting and to have the patience to sit still for the huge chunks of time that deciphering demanded.

There were problems specific to reading music conventionally read from left to right set to lyrics in Yiddish conventionally read from right to left often transliterated into Roman letters conventionally read from left to right. It was complicated and time-consuming, Mr. Mlotek understated. So hed do triage. Id look at the music, and if it interested me I would take the time to decipher it. Sometimes hed find what he calls jewels.

It was like being on an archaeological dig, he said.

This crumbling handwritten page has music and transliteration for Lost Arayn, which means let them in. Its a heartwrenching plea to immigration officials.

Some of the jewels were songs like Vatch Your Step. In that song, Mr. Mlotek said, were exciting phrases that the immigrants heard all the time and turned into English. Or at least into Yinglish; the rest of the lyrics were in Yiddish. Other songs would talk about upward mobility, about no longer living in the tenements but moving uptown, to much nicer places in Harlem or the Bronx.

Its always key for us that the experience be told honestly, he added. These experiences were from the immigrants pens and minds and spirits.

When Mr. Mlotek and Mr. Rosenfeld first wrote Amerike, it was mainly in Yiddish, although there was enough English and Yinglish for non-Yiddish speakers not to feel entirely lost.

Watch Your Step thats Vatch in Yiddish is among the songs in the show.

The production was a great success, Mr. Mlotek said. Dick Shepard of the New York Times gave it a five-column rave review, with our pictures, and for a week our phones rang nonstop. We were in a little office in the old Workmans Circle building, and the phones just kept ringing. It was an incredible experience. It just exploded. People from the theater world started to come down and see it.

The show evolved. As it got more popular, a producer came to us and said that he wanted to do it Off Broadway, but wed have to put more English into it. That meant translating some of the songs that had very little English in them.

It worked. The show continued to attract and charm audiences. After Off Broadway, it toured, and Leonard Bernstein recommended that we go to Italy with it, Mr. Mlotek reported. We went to Palermo and to Venice. The experience in Palermo was incredible. One time, the audience was all high school kids. They were rowdy, regular high school kids and then when we talked about sweatshops and unionizing workers, they all hushed.

It was as if they were seeing something holy. That resonated for them. The rest of it well, they were rowdy high school kids.

Amerike was revived again, soon after September 11 the need for some hope was obvious and again in 2012; that version played well until Superstorm Sandy knocked out most of lower Manhattan, including Baruch College, where it was playing. And then when we came here to the museum, to our new home, last year, we were wrestling between Amerike and The Golden Bride as the first piece to present here. The Golden Bride won. Its representative of Second Avenue material, and we opted for that, to give people a taste of actual Yiddish theater, Mr. Mlotek said. The musical had a brief but critically acclaimed run at the museum.

Now, though, we decided that because immigration has become such an important issue today, and because we are constantly inspired by our location it doesnt escape us that the Statue of Liberty is right outside our windows we felt that it was time to bring the show back.

Theyve made a change, though. Theyve stripped the English they added. There is English throughout, Mr. Mlotek said. Its the story of immigration, so as the immigrants assimilated their Yiddish became peppered with English. But now much of the material is back to the original authentic Yiddish sources that we picked. Also, the production includes supertitles so even the most Yiddish-challenged of audience members will know whats going on.

The cast rehearses for the Folksbienes new production of Amerike.

Now, he said, a challenge they face is how to pick a cast that can sing Yiddish honestly, authentically, and dramatically and also look good and of course also sound good.

We auditioned more than 300 people in New York, and we came up with a terrific ensemble of 12 people, he said. Some have experience in Yiddish, and some learned it. And then there is one major standout. Daniel Kahn, who we brought from Berlin.

Daniel Kahn came back to the United States from Berlin to be in Amerike.

Daniel Kahn is the young Detroit native who has lived in Berlin for the last decade; he broke into Americas consciousness last fall, soon after the singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen died, by translating Mr. Cohens brilliant, popular, and hauntingly and undeniably Jewish song Halleluyah into Yiddish, and singing it on YouTube right into the camera, looking right at the viewer as he sang in a language that the song hadnt been written in but seemed as if it should have been.

That Daniel Kahn.

We are not making a political point with this show, Mr. Mlotek said. This is a nation of immigrants. The Yiddish theater in America became American theater, and it came from immigrants. We are celebrating that tie.

To that end, the Folksbiene also is hosting the first immigration arts summit, set for Monday and Tuesday, July 17 and 18. The summit, which will include a keynote address by John Leguizamo, will bring together the Pan Asian Repertory, the Repertorio Espaol, the Irish Repertory Theatre, the Kairo Italy Theater, the Irish Arts Center, and the Turkish American Repertory Theatre, as well as Israels Office of Cultural Affairs in the USA, the Romanian Cultural Institute, and the Cumbe Center for African and diaspora Dance. The point is to talk about shared experiences, brainstorm shared ideas for paths forward, and share performances and audiences with each other. (See box for more details.)

To go back to the American Jewish experience, there are many lighthearted lyrics in the show. Its not at all a depressing experience it is in fact the opposite, and Vatch Your Step is in it but there still are moments of deep sadness. It is hard to leave behind all that you know, and it is hard to learn to adapt to something new. And it is also hard, very hard, more than hard, it is soul-rending, to come to a new country, stand hopefully at its gates, and then be turned away.

Lost Arayn Let Them In is a song written at the turn of the century, Mr. Mlotek said; of course, that turn is not the most recent one but from the 19th to the 20th centuries. We found it in a recording by Aaron Lebedev. My mother transcribed it. We used the first verse but not the second one. It was in one of Ms. Mloteks books about Yiddish music; for the purposes of her argument, one verse was enough.

My mother passed away three years ago, and I found this in her papers, Mr. Mlotek said. She never published this verse, and it is the killer verse.

Its the story of a young family:

A young father with bent shoulders is on Ellis Island.

He raised two small children by himself.

They lost their mother, and came here with great difficulty.

The gates are locked before them.

Their father is kept away from them.

Hearts are broken here at the door.

It ends, in a universal plea that is as relevant today as it was then then to Jews, today to others:

Dont have hearts of stone.

Open the gates to the Golden Land.

You see people falling, reach out your hand.

Let them in, let them in.

Dont break any more hearts.

The whole world will bless you for it.

Open the gates and let them in.

Zalmen Mlotek hopes that everyone will come to see the story of Amerike, down in southern Manhattan, facing the Statue of Liberty and the torch that lit the way for so many of our families, and to keep Yiddish theater alive as they do so.

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Amerike singing - The Jewish Standard

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Posted By admin on June 28, 2017

Organizers of the Chicago Dyke March on Tuesday defended their decision to eject three participants who displayed Jewish symbolsby claiming thatZionism is an inherently white-supremacist ideology.

The groupsofficial statement also included screenshots of a chat betweenan organizer and Laurel Grauer, one of the individualstargeted for holding arainbow LGBT flag emblazoned with a Star of David,which is closely associated with Judaism.Grauer is an official at A Wider Bridge, which works to build ties between the LGBT communities in the United States and Israel.

The chat appears to confirm Grauers account of the incident, which was published Monday in Haaretz. The organizer told Grauer via text that the Chicago Dyke March Collective does not support any form of anti-Semitism and that she would notbe subject to any harassment. However, during the march, she and two other marchers were told to leavefor displaying Jewish pride flags.

What made these people feel unsafe was the presence of Jews, Jamie Kirchik observed in Tablet Magazine. Censoring this Jewish symbol, meanwhile, organizers were perfectly content to let participants wave the flag of Palestine, a political entity where LGBT people are routinely harassed and murdered.

With the acceptance of anti-Israel groups into more LGBT events, Kirchick reported, the effort has shifted from inserting anti-Israel activism into the gay rights movement to outright discriminating against Jews.

Noting the account of a second womanwho was thrown out of Dyke March for being Jewish, Bari Weiss wrote in The New York Times, For progressive American Jews, intersectionality forces a choice: Which side of your identity do you keep, and which side do you discard and revile?

The organizers are also making the spurious claim that theJewish staris necessarily a symbol of Zionist oppression a breathtaking claim to anyone who has ever seen a picture of a Jew forced to wear a yellow one under the Nazis, he added.

The incident in Chicago is a sign that anti-Semitism remains as much a problem on the far-left as it is on the alt-right, Weiss concluded.

[Photo: Twitter ]

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In Official Statement, Chicago LGBT Group Calls Zionism a ''White-Supremacist Ideology' - TheTower.org

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Posted By admin on June 28, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

As a young man coming from a left-wing pedigree, I embraced a liberal agenda which included most notably, a belief in Israel as a bastion of socialism and democracy. In the 1950s, a good progressive was a good Zionist. Oh, how the world has changed. Now a progressive has moved 180 degrees to an anti-Zionist position. As one wag put it, the left is now the congenial home of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Linda Sarsour, the leader of the Womans March in Washington and a commencement speaker at the City University of New York, clearly embodies the new spirit on the left. She has praised Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, once anathema to liberals. She has honored Embrased Rasmesh Odeh, a terrorist murderer. She has spoken in favor of Shariah finance. One of the supporters of Ms. Sarsour said, Nothing is creepier than Zionism.

What is truly remarkable, and to some degree ideologically shattering, is that The New York Times wrote a fawning profile about this woman who challenges all liberal principles. She had the audacity to say that the vagina of Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be taken away, the same Ayaan who has worked so hard to promote womens rights throughout the Muslim world. Yet the Anti-Defamation League defends Ms. Sarsour. Why do liberals not recognize that the Muslim countries do not give women and people in the LGBT community the same civil rights that Israel does?

For the left, Zionism has promoted Islamophobia a false critique from the standpoint of Islamists. As a consequence, anti-Semitism is rendered a virtue, as a way to discourage negative sentiment about Islam. Yet even when the evidence of anti-Semitism is incontrovertible, the left contends anti-Semitism is a figment of a hysterical, oversensitive imagination. For the most part, Jews are being systematically written out of the progressive agenda, even though they were responsible for that agenda in the first place. But why quibble?

This new age, already upon us, has sheltered many Jews from the harsh reality of contemporary progressivism. Jews still gravitate to a Democratic Party led by two men (Tom Perez and Keith Ellison) avowedly anti-Zionist. In casual conversation, Jews will say Democrats represent grass-roots movements and people. However, it is important to note the party of the hard left is the government party relying on rules and mandates imposed by Washington D.C. bureaucrats. It no longer represents the blue-collar worker who built the party during the New Deal.

At the Chicago Dyke March held recently, Jewish pride flags were banned because Jews made people feel unsafe and, after all, the march was pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist. The irony is that the Dyke March preaches inclusion and is billed as anti-racist, anti-violent, volunteer-led grass-roots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual and transgender resilience. Yes, the march includes every permutation of homosexuality, but it does not include Jews, presumably these are the people found to be offensive.

In January 2016, a Shabbat service and reception for Jewish participants at a gay conference in Chicago was disrupted by hundreds of protesters who chanted, Hey hey, ho ho, pinkwashing has got to go. Pinkwashing is a term to describe efforts by Israel to cover up its treatment of Palestinians by touting its strong record on gay rights. What the incident shows is that even on gay rights Israel will not be given the benefit of the doubt because anti-Zionism trumps homosexual acceptance.

That progressives would find common quarter with Islamists is the shocking part of this ideological evolution. Obviously, secularism has played a role for many Jews. But the Anti-Defamation Leagues support for the Council on American Islamic Relations is nothing short of jarring, despite the extent of Jewish secularization.

To have been a progressive and to see how the word and movement have gone through the caldron of ideological change demonstrates the influence of Orwellian logic. Orthodoxy is liberalism, dogma is openness; Shariah is expansive. Who would have thought that the modern Jew would imbibe this logic? But as Norman Podhoretz noted in his splendid book, Why Are Jews Liberals? Jews are liberal because liberalism is the new religion of Jews.

Herbert London is president of the London Center for Policy Research.

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The rise of inflexible progressivism - Washington Times

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Posted By richards on June 28, 2017

Anti WoW protest at Kotel 150. (photo credit:News 24 Agency)

I am a classic old-fashioned Zionist. I came of age in Young Judaea, the pluralistic Zionist American youth movement founded by Hadassah. After years of Zionist activism and leadership, I made aliya to Jerusalem, fulfilling Zionisms ultimate goal, nearly 40 years ago. I chose Jerusalem as my lifelong home because of its mosaic-like social-cultural-ethnic-religious- national nature. My own personal Zionist fulfillment (or hagshama as we called it in Hebrew) was to dedicate my life to working to build peaceful relations between Israel and its neighbors and within Israel between its Jewish and Palestinian citizens.

My Zionism has always been based on a very strong connection to the Jewish People, history, heritage and culture. I fell in love with the Hebrew language and became enthralled by the expansion of my Jewish identity through the miraculous achievements of the development of Israeli cultural expressions in literature, music, theater, cinema and even journalism. I am a secular Jew. I am very secular and very Jewish. As such I have always struggled to find meaning in many of the religious symbols of the State of Israel.

I cherish our flag even though it is based on the tallit a religious symbol. I identify with the menorah the official symbol of the State of Israel, even though its roots come from the Temple, which as a secular Jew I hope will never be rebuilt. I still get chills when we sing Hatikva at national ceremonies and occasions, even though it too is based on religious symbolism.

I have never, though, been moved or identified with the Western Wall. I sang the famous song as a youth, there are people with hearts of stone, and stones with hearts of people, but other than liking the tune, the words never really became part of my identity.

When I first visited the Western Wall for my bar mitzva in 1969, I touched the Wall and even placed a note between its cracks, but was not moved. I did not have a religious moment of awakening and every time I have visited the Wall since, even at the swearing-in ceremony after completing basic training in the IDF, I did not feel the connection. I grew up with the version of Judaism which taught me that Moses was not allowed to enter the Land of Israel also because God did not want to create a sacred physical place of burial which would turn into a shrine.

That is what the Western Wall has become a physical shrine where Judaism has turned into a pagan, ritualistic form of Temple fetishism. I dont go to the Western Wall and dont care about it. I understand that it is very important to a lot of Jews, but not to me.

What I do care about is that Israel is supposed to be the democratic nation-state of the Jewish People.

Herzls book Der Judenstaat is not The Jewish State but rather The State of the Jews. That is the basis of Zionism and of establishing the State of Israel in the Land of Israel. The State of Israel is supposed to be the state of all Jews if they identify and want to be part of it. How is it that the State of Israel is the only democratic state in the world where non-Orthodox rabbis are not allowed to officiate at weddings or funerals? Kind of absurd! In Jewish law, the presence of a rabbi is not even required, yet there is a monopoly on Judaism in the hands of an institution that was created by foreigners before Israel was even born.

I am angered by the decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to drop the development of a non-Orthodox prayer plaza at the Western Wall not because it angers American Jewry, but rather because it is a symbol of the continued control and monopolization of Jewish expression in the democratic state of the Jewish People. The message is a clear slap in the face of millions of non-Israeli Jews, but it is a bigger slap in the face of those of us Israelis who continue to express our Judaism with non-religious identities. Our space within the State of Israel is on a sharp decline and it is an existential threat to me, my family, my community and a large part of Israeli society.

This threat is attacking our educational system. It is pushing its ugly face into cultural avenues of expression in theater, music, the print media, television and radio. It is trying to close down the few successes in providing public transportation on Shabbat for those in our society who need it most those who cannot afford to own a private car. The threat against us is also expressed against those who seek alternative kashrut certification, removing the monopoly of the Orthodox corrupt kashrut authorities.

Netanyahu and his government have taken a stand against a large part of the Jewish People, in Israel and around the world. He may have pleased my great-grandfather Rabbi Yehuda Rosenblatt, who is buried in Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv an ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist who sent his children to America but wished to die in the Holy Land. His great-grandsons reversed history and made aliya and raised the next generation of Zionist, Israel-loving Jews in the State of Israel. In order to survive politically, Netanyahu rejects the present and the future by appealing to the past. This is too much to accept and for me signals the much-needed coming of the end of Netanyahus reign over the State of Israel.

The author is the founder and co-chairman of IPCRI, Israel Palestine Creative Regional Initiatives.

http://www.ipcri.org.

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ENCOUNTERING PEACE - IL the democratic nation-state of the Jewish People? - The Jerusalem Post mobile website

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Posted By admin on June 28, 2017

Astronomy involves the study of planets and it is a lot easier to pursue when you know the planets names. The Torah does not offer individual monikers for each of the celestial bodies that comprise our solar system.

Planetary names, however, were created many moons ago by certain cultures based on Roman and Greek mythology. After thousands of years, such planetary names have become accepted universally.

Of course, the commonly used names for the planets are not Jewish names. (In fact, the only space-related term that is remotely Jewish is supernova, which refers to an exploding star but sounds more like a gigantic piece of lox). So, the question is: how would the Jews of today name the planets?

For the record, the Talmud actually offers alternative names for some of the planets. The Babylonian Talmud, at Shabbat 156a, indicates that Mercury is Kokhav, (star), Venus is Nogah, (light), Mars is Maadim (red), Jupiter is Tzedek (justice) and Saturn is Shabbtai, (the Sabbath, i.e., the seventh day of the week, because in Talmudic times Saturn was considered the seventh planet). The Talmud does not specifically refer to Uranus, Neptune or Pluto because they were not discovered until after the Talmudic era. Naturally, there are other things in life that were not discovered until after the Talmudic era and thus are not mentioned in the Talmud, including Titanium, Pterodactyls and Teletubbies.

There are other ways of naming the planets with a bit more of a Jewish flavor. For example, Mercury is the planet closest to the sun, which necessarily means that its average temperature is even hotter than summertime in Phoenix or Miami. Jews in these blazing cities seem to enjoy living in a perpetual sauna or steam room so if they were living on ridiculously hot Mercury, they probably would name it Planet Shvitz.

Lets try renaming another planet. How about Jupiter? Wait, thats way too easy. The answer, of course, is Jewpiter. Next!

Venus is a planet associated with beauty so we can keep it simple by calling it Planet Sheyna Punim.

Mars is known for its reddish hue and, based on Roman and Greek mythology, is associated with war and strife. Guess what? There is a Yiddish word that literally means fuss or disturbance and also refers to a stew with a somewhat reddish hue. Thus, the ideal Yiddish name for Mars is Planet Tsimmes.

Saturn is arguably the blingiest planet because of all of its rings. Indeed, Saturn has more rings than Michael Jordan (but fewer than the phones at a successful telethon.) Given the amount of jewelry that Saturn is constantly wearing, an appropriate name for the planet would be Planet Tsatskeleh, i.e., Planet Fancy Schmancy.

Neptune typically is associated with the sea because it is blue. Of course, when a person is blue, it means that the individual is feeling sad due to some troubles, aggravation or other unpleasant events. Based on this interpretation of blueness, a possibly proper name for Neptune is Planet Tzuris.

Diminutive Pluto, as noted above, was demoted to a dwarf planet so perhaps it should be referred to as Planet Bisele, i.e., Planet Pipsqueak.

Finally, there are those who refer to our lovely planet as Mother Earth, which is appropriate because her bountiful natural resources have sustained her inhabitants for thousands of years. It therefore might make sense to refer to Earth as Planet Balebusta.

Bottom line: When secretive astronomers refuse to answer questions about new astronomical sightings, they need to respond very carefully because no comment could easily sound like no comet which, in this context, is a comment.

Jon Kranz is an attorney living in Englewood, N.J., and a weekly humor columnist for the Jewish Link of New Jersey. Send your comments, questions or insults tojkranz285@gmail.com.

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Letters, commentaries and opinions appearing in the Cleveland Jewish News do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company, its board, officers or staff.

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Astronomical appellations - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By simmons on June 28, 2017

New YOrk times/file 2005

Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz helped run ArtScroll for 41 years.

NEW YORK Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, who took a small wedding-invitation print shop and turned it into ArtScroll Mesorah, the leading publisher of prayer books and volumes of Torah and Talmud in the expanding Orthodox Jewish world, books notable for their easily readable typography, instructions and translations, died Saturday in Brooklyn. He was 73.

His son Rabbi Gedaliah Zlotowitz said the cause was a liver ailment.

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Though Jews often refer to themselves as people of the book, the canonical books they studied and prayed from into the 1970s were often dense with undifferentiated Hebrew and Aramaic typeface and translated in inflated or turgid English. They were suitable for cognoscenti but not for novices or rusty yeshiva alumni.

ArtScroll, founded by Rabbi Zlotowitz in the mid-1970s, worked to make the books accessible to both, starting with the megillah (scroll) of Esther and crowning the companys output in 2005 with a 73-volume set of the Babylonian Talmud.

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Every day, in basement study halls, office buildings, and commuter railroad cars, hundreds of thousands of Jews study the same two sides of a page of Talmud until, after 7 1/2 years, they complete the entire work together. Many have joined this Daf Yomi (page a day) bandwagon because of the congenial typography, translations, and commentary of the ArtScroll edition, known as the Schottenstein Talmud.

ArtScroll made it possible for anyone to study Talmud on his or her own, said Samuel C. Heilman, who specializes in Jewish studies as a professor of sociology at the City University of New York.

The elegant ArtScroll siddur, or prayer book, used for daily Sabbath and holiday prayers is so popular that more than 1 million copies have been printed. It is used even by some synagogues in the more liberal Conservative Jewish movement.

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ArtScrolls sales have been helped by the striking growth of the Orthodox movement; 10 percent of American Jews identify themselves as Orthodox, according to a Pew Research Center study in 2015, but 27 percent of children under 18 are Orthodox, foreshadowing a mushrooming share of the Jewish population in years to come.

Rather than assume that every Jew knows the sometimes arcane procedures and rationales for prayer, the siddur lays them out in clear contemporary English and features explanatory footnotes, in the way that an annotated edition of Joyces Ulysses might ease that novels reading.

For example, the siddur tells those unfamiliar with the central Amidah prayer to take three steps backward, then three steps forward at the start, and urges a worshipper to pray loudly enough to hear himself but not so loudly that its recitation is audible to others.

J. Philip Rosen, a lawyer whose donation financed the siddurs 1992 edition, said Rabbi Zlotowitz, concerned about making books very user-friendly, agreed to make the type large enough for those with diminishing eyesight, like Rosens father.

I dont think theres an organization other than Chabad or Birthright Israel that has helped bring people closer to Judaism, Rosen said of ArtScroll.

Rabbi Zlotowitz, ArtScrolls president, ran the business with his partners of 41 years, Rabbi Nosson Scherman, who has served as general editor, and Rabbi Sheah Brander, its graphics expert. Both are continuing with the company.

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Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, 73; helped make Torah and Talmud accessible - The Boston Globe

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