Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

From left: Sephardic Educational Center (SEC) director Rabbi Daniel Bouskila; SEC president, Neil. J. Sheff; and festival honorees Joelle Rimokh, Yehoram Gaon, Jack Rimokh and Ronald J. Nessim. Photo by Michelle Mivzari

Israeli Sephardic actor Yehoram Gaon, Los Angeles attorney Ronald J. Nessim, and philanthropic couple Joelle and Jack Rimokh were the honorees at the opening gala of the Los Angeles Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, taking home the Cinema Sepharad Lifetime Achievement Award, the Maimonides Leadership Award and the Sephardic Legacy Award, respectively.

The Nov. 9 event at the Paramount Pictures studio lot featured an array of activities, including a silent auction, dinner buffet, a screening of the film Operation Sunflower (starring Gaon) and an award presentation.

And the late-afternoon gathering marked, in celebratory fashion, the official kickoff of the annual Sephardic film festival in Los Angeles, which featured films depicting the Sephardic Jewish experience. The weeklong festival, which ended Nov. 16 at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills, featured films about Jewish communities in Iran, Morocco, Yemen and India, among others.

The Sephardic Educational Center (SEC), an international nonprofit education and culture organization that has its own historic campus in the Old City of Jerusalem, organizes the festival every year. Nessim, a former chairman of the center, is the son of the late Jose Nessim, the SECs founder.

Neil J. Sheff,SEC president and a Westside immigration attorney who helped create the film festival, also attended the gala.

Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) featured the Los Angeles premiere of social justice-oriented filmmaker Ann P. Merediths 2014 Holocaust documentary, Triangles: Witnesses of the Holocaust on Nov. 9.

From left: Triangles filmmaker Ann Meredith and her film subjects, Gabriella Karin, Eva Nathanson and Anne Berkovitz, appeared at Beth Chayim Chadashim. Photo by Glenn Berkovitz

The movie explores the lives of Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles and others who were victims of the Shoah, according to the films publicity materials.

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Moving and shaking: L.A. Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Beth Chayim Chadashim and more

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Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

Published on November 20th, 2014 | by Chris Bonito

By Sydney Perry

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them -John F. Kennedy, Jr.

On Thanksgiving my extended family usually gathers at my sisters home. We look forward to a day of feasting; of watching the grandchildren play with their cousins; of family unity; of physical satiety and spiritual recognition of our many blessings. A veritable cornucopia of gratitude. And then we head home, each in our own direction, in time for the football games.

But there is something missing. We depart without leftovers for the next day. No leftovers from the enormous golden brown bird, no cornbread stuffing with sausage and chestnuts, or mashed potatoes, rich gravy, veggies or slices of the countless pies. Its almost a crying shame.

Because I love leftover turkey, because Shabbat inevitably follows the fourth Thursday in the month of November, we make a second Thanksgiving. My immediate family can enjoy our own sideboard, groaning with its burden of enormous quantities of food, in order that we can have sliced turkey sandwiches on challah rolls the next day, and turkey tacos on Sunday, turkey hash on Monday, curried turkey salad on Tuesday, shredded turkey moo shu on Wednesday and turkey gumbo soup from the carcas on Thursday.

Leftovers. Who, after all, were the men and women who celebrated that first Thanksgiving in 1621, a pilgrim re-creation of Sukkot done by leftovers of England? Look at American history. Who came to Georgia? To Virginia? The off-scourings of debtors prisons. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland? Those who couldnt conform to the religious norms in England? Who made up the waves of migration from Germany, Italy or Ireland? And later from Poland and Russia? Were they the prosperous? Far from it. They were the poverty-stricken, the downtrodden, the desperate outcasts.

The leftovers came to Americas shores as they still do today with nothing but hope. Hope for a better life, for religious freedom, for security from intolerance, for advancement for their children.

On the base of the Statue of Liberty is a quote from the Sephardic poet Emma Lazarus: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of our teeming shore, send these, the tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

The test of a great nation is what it does with the leftovers. Unless you are a Native American, every one of us is an immigrant whose family made the decision to risk the voyage in order to start a new life. As Jews, we have much to be grateful for in our lives in this great country as we sit down to our Thanksgiving meal.

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On Thanksgiving: Celebrating the leftovers

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Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

The Temple Mount. File photo

With tensions still high in Jerusalem and throughout the rest of Israel, the latest buzzword that is being bounced around in the regional and international media is "status quo". More specifically, Israel is accused by the Arabs and their supporters of trying to change the status quo on the Temple Mount while senior government officials in Washington praise Israel for easing restrictions to Muslim worshipers on the Temple Mount in order to preserve the status quo.

Similarly, within Israel itself various Jewish MKs criticize other Jewish MKs who insist on ascending the Temple Mount with charges that they're aggravating an already tense situation with the Arabs while the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel goes even further and blames Jews who ascend the Temple Mount with provoking Arab terror and causing Jewish blood to flow (a charge which is akin to blaming the raped rather than the rapist).

In such a situation, how could anyone question the validity of the claim that Israel is trying to change the status quo, for if everyone talks about it, it must be true?

Nevertheless and with all due respect to the purveyors of disinformation, the truth is there is no clearly defined existing state or condition, otherwise known as a status quo, between the Jewish and Arab populations in Israel. In fact, one can argue that the very opposite is true and that the state of affairs between the two groups is not static but rather has been changing for years. Still further and contrary to the current claim, this ongoing shift in relations has been mainly to the detriment of the Jews, and not the Arabs.

Already for years the Arabs in many parts of the country have become increasingly brazen in their disrespect for any semblance of Israeli sovereignty. Although it's certainly not every Israeli Arab, overall there's a clear trend in the direction of growing radicalization and mounting anti-Israel sentiment amongst the Arab population of Israel.

Moreover, when one looks at the total bedlam engulfing the region ever since the beginning of the Arab Spring - the uprising, so we were told, which was to usher in a new era of peace and democracy in the region - the trend in Israel should not come as a surprise.

I personally witnessed this on a visit to a kibbutz in the normally tranquil Jezreel Valley two summers ago when our night-time barbecue was interrupted by the menacing sound of gunshots emanating from the nearby Arab village. When I asked one of the members of the kibbutz if this was something new, the young man, who for more than two hours was on the phone pleading with the police and regional security officers to get involved, explained that this insanity had been going on for more than three years and that despite the periodic direct hit of a bullet on a kibbutz home nothing was being done since the police were afraid to enter the Arab village.

He then explained, as did members of a nearby kibbutz the following day, that in addition to the occasional Arab attack, Arab thefts in the region were out of control and that nothing was being done to stop it.

This is just one small example, far from the Temple Mount, of what has been taking place in Israel in recent years. Once again, this is not to suggest that each and every Israeli Arab is becoming increasingly radicalized and aggressively hostile to Israeli sovereignty. There are plenty of Arabs in Israel that are not this way. Nevertheless, like their Arab brethren in other parts of the Middle East, they are practically irrelevant when it comes to halting the frightening changes that are taking place.

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The Status Quo Myth

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Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

Meet Brooklyn #39;s Hasidic Hipsters | Style Out There
Subscribe to the Refinery29 channel: http://bit.ly/subscribe-to-r29 No matter your cultural or religious background, you have some conception of what #39;s okay and not okay to wear in public....

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Meet Brooklyn's Hasidic Hipsters | Style Out There - Video

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Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

Vionnet: Designer #39;s Inspiration with Goga Ashkenazi | Spring/Summer 2015 Paris | FashionTV
http://www.FashionTV.com/videos PARIS - FashionTV talks to designer Goga Ashkenazi about the Vionnet Spring/Summer 2015 collection. See highlights from the r...

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Vionnet: Designer's Inspiration with Goga Ashkenazi | Spring/Summer 2015 Paris | FashionTV - Video

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Posted By richards on November 20, 2014

parenting

Alina Adams TODAY contributor

13 hours ago

Last month on Ebony.com, a white father wrote that he hopes his biracial son will stay light-skinned and pass as white. The post went viral and triggered such an outcry that he followed it up with 7 Things I Can Do That My Black Son Cant.

As the white mother of three biracial African-American children, I can understand his fears about racism. But as someone whose oldest child is very light-skinned and blue-eyed, I have my reasons for why I hope he doesnt stay white.

Courtesy of Alina Adams

The author's son with his father. Alina Adams, who is white, writes that she hopes her son's skin gets darker so people perceive him as black.

My son is 15. This summer, he participated in a program to teach minority youth how to start their own businesses. At the end of it, my son told me hed never do another minority-oriented program again.

Im tired of being told I dont act black, I dont talk black, and I dont look black. Im sick of being told Im not actually black.

(My African-American husbands response was, I got the same thing because I spoke properly and did well in school. And I had two black parents. Suck it up.)

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Why I hope my mixed-race son doesn't stay 'white'

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Posted By admin on November 20, 2014

Anne Frank Final project This video is about Anne Frank Final project.

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Anne Frank Final project - Video

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Posted By admin on November 20, 2014

Montpellier BDS France 34, Montpellier: Baptme de la Place de GAZA Dans le cadre de la campagne pour la suspension du jumelage de Montpellier avec la ville isralienne de Tibriade, le Comit BDS France 34 a dbaptis et rebaptis la place de Tibriade... By: Jos Luis Moragues

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Montpellier BDS France 34, Montpellier: Baptme de la Place de GAZA - Video

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Posted By simmons on November 20, 2014

One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States Mathias Mossberg presents "One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States," a new book that imagines a solution for a long-standing and seemingly intractable conflict. By: EastWest Institute

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One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States - Video

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Posted By simmons on November 20, 2014

Coming to America, Returning to Judaism Beatrice Garrard, summer 2013 Steiner student, recounts her family #39;s history, addressing the pogroms in Odessa, child labor in New York, tragedy in World War II, and her own search to reconnect...

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Coming to America, Returning to Judaism - Video

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