Archive for February, 2007

Fighting Haman and Cancer at the Same Time

As Washington University students gather this weekend for Relay for Life, one of the largest fundraisers of the year, the Jewish community will be preparing for its own gala event: Purim.
Efforts have been made to integrate the two events, allowing students to partake in both.
Students will have the opportunity to hear the megillah read at the business school adjacent to Francis Field, the venue for Relay. And for those most imbued with the spirit of Purim, there will be a Costume Contest.
The university’s Israeli dance troupe, Magniv, will also be performing on stage, followed by open dancing.
Relay, which runs from 6 p.m. on Saturday to 6 a.m. on Sunday, is a fundraiser for the American Cancer society; last year Washington Universities event was the largest of any American university.
The megillah reading will take place at 10:15 and the costume contest will take place from 11:40 to midnight; for more information view the Facebook event.

This Week in JSU

When March rolls in like a lion this Thursday, Jewish Awareness month 2007 will kick off at the Swamp, 1642 W. University Ave.
The JAM kickoff event will start at 10 p.m., following a Jewish Student Union general meeting at 9:45 p.m., which will also be held at the Swamp. This meeting is one of the last few meetings until JSU elections in April, and JSU members need to sign in at and attend at least three meetings in order to be eligible to vote.
Keep checking this page later in the week for more information about JAM and the Purim Palooza described below.

In other UF news:

The Israeli Student Organization is holding its 4th Annual Israeli Film Festival as part of JAM on March 5 through March 8 at 8 p.m. at Hillel. Free snacks and drinks will be provided every night. The schedule for the movies is as follows:
Monday: Free Zone
Tuesday: Campfire
Wednesday: Operation Thunderbolt
Thursday: Someone to Run With
As usual, Cafe Ivrit is held on Wednesdays at 7:30pm at the Hillel Coffee Shop for anyone who wants to practce their conversational Hebrew or get help with their Hebrew homework, and Israeli Dancing is held on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at Hillel.

Hillel is hosting a weekend of “Purim Palooza,” beginning Saturday March 3 at 10 p.m. with a concert and club night at Rehab featuring a performance by Y-Love, a Jewish rapper, with DJ Handler, an open bar, the Megillah reading and a night of dancing. The celebration continues Sunday, March 4 at 1 p.m. with the Purim Festival at the Hippodrome State Theatre featuring carnival games and prizes, free food and an open bar, live bands, the Megillah reading and performances of the traditional Purim Shpiel.

Celebrate Purim with “A Night in Shushan”

Esther and MordecaiTonight Hillel becomes part casino, part Shushan as Temple’s students gather with others to celebrate Purim. Hillel teamed up with AEPi to plan and execute the event, which will feature casino games, mocktails, contests and the traditional Purim pastries, hamentashen.
Rachel Surden was in charge of the event’s planning that began as soon as the students returned from winter break, and she says, “I suggested the theme, and after everyone’s approval, we got started on putting it into action.”
The second floor of Hillel will become a casino with various games including, poker, blackjack, and roulette, and even host two professional dealers. There will, of course, be no real gambling, but plenty of betting chips to keep the night rolling, nonetheless.
The first floor, Surden said, will be “draped in colorful and flowing fabric, emulating the markets and tents of Shushan.”
The party will also feature a 50/50 drawing, and Hillel will raffle off various donated items and gift certificates. The proceeds of these contests will be donated, along with the five dollar cover charge, to a charity to be chosen by the party guests, in the Purim tradition of giving charity.
As for the costume tradition, Surden says, “if the guests are feeling rather gutsy and want to dress up, we are certainly encouraging that!”
The party will be held tonight between nine p.m. and midnight at Hillel, located at 2014 North Broad street, across from the Johnson and Hardwick dorms.

Gay Rabbi Discusses Marriage Rights At Emory

Orthodox gay Rabbi Steve Greenberg spoke in support of civil unions in a recent lecture at Emory. Anushka Rahman covered the event for The Emory Wheel.

Greenberg talked about the differences between civil unions and religious marriage. He argued that marriage in religious contexts has no place in states that have ceased to define themselves along religious lines or institutions.
Calling civil marriage “an invention under the guise of the liberal state,” Greenberg implied that not recognizing gay marriage causes social unrest.
He used France as an example of a country in which civil unions are separated from religious marriage.
“[Civil marriage] is confusing,” Greenberg said. “It puts government in a position of choosing which religion is right.”
Greenberg acknowledged the right for religious institutions to refuse marriage rights to homosexuals. But he argued that religious marriage aids the creation of a hierarchy favoring men.
“Religious marriage is a myth that is recreated with every heterosexual marriage,” Greenberg said. “If the whole world disappeared, Adam and Steve could not restart it. What God is doing with gay people is teaching men and women to wear a crown without hierarchy,” he said.

Keeping JSU Going At Sacramento State

Ten Sacramento State students gathered last week to watch “Everything Is Illuminated” in an event hosted by the Jewish Student Union. The State Hornet’s Bailey Mannisto-Iches reports on the group’s struggle for survival.

The Jewish Student Union has been at Sacramento State for awhile. However, previous attempts to keep it up and running in campus have deteriorated.
“Many people have put effort into it and it hasn’t been successful. So with my background at UC Davis in the frat and with JSU, I felt it was my duty to start it up again,” said Aaron Kass, a senior business major and the Jewish Student Union president.
Kass has been the president of the organization for two semesters, and right now its main goal is to make its name known on campus and increase membership.
“It’s a religious slash cultural club, it’s not to influence religion. It’s just a place for those interested in Judaism and a resource for Jewish students,” Kass said.
Junior public relations major, Jane Rodstein appreciates the club on campus.
“I was involved in a lot of youth groups in high school and then became a non-active Jew. I was looking to get back into it and the nearest center for students was in Davis. Now that it is accessible here, I hope more students find out and join,” Rodstein said.

Holocaust Awareness Week, And The White Supremacist TA

It’s Holocaust Awareness Week at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The school employs a white supremacist to teach students English.
Specifically, an award-winning white supremacist. Teaching assistant Joshua McNair wrote an essay, “Organization, Cooperation and Action,” that was recognized by the “white nationalist” group Stormfront. He is pictured here shaking Holocaust denier David Irving’s hand in a picture from the Institute for Historical Review.
For some students, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, and Campus Press writer Tate Delloye talked to some of them.

“I don’t feel so great about him teaching at my school. I respect the University’s decision to keep him as a teacher, but I was shocked to find out that he was part of our faculty,” said Kara Zucker, co-chairwoman of Holocaust Awareness Week.
Zucker is worried that McNair is going to cause trouble during next week’s keynote speech for Holocaust Awareness Week. Debra [sic] Lipstadt is set to speak on Wednesday in the Glenn Miller Ballroom. Lipstadt is a long time critic of David Irving, a noted Holocaust denier.
McNair formed a student group, Student Advocates for Free Expression, that sponsored a speech by Irving in September of 2004.
“I’m really concerned that there will be a problem during Debra’s presentation. If Josh offends her, it would be disrespectful to her and my organization,” Zucker said.
Emem Ekiko, president of the Black Student Association feels much the same way.
“Having a narrow-minded professor is counteracting the University’s actions taken towards diversity. The University is hypocritical and simply paying a lot of lip service to diversity,” Ekiko said.

Deborah Lipstadt responds in the comments:

From my perspective, Mr. McNair is welcome to attend my lecture. He might actually learn something about David Irving, a man who was declared by Judge Charles Gray of the Royal High Court, to be a liar, Holocaust denier, a man with racist and antisemitic views, whose claims about history are a “travesty.”
See Judge Gray’s evaluation of Irving at www.hdot.org [click on Verdict and go to Part XIII].
See you this week.

The Colorado Daily’s Nicole Danna covers Holocaust Awareness Week, but writes nothing about the above controversy.

During late February each year, CU-Boulder student volunteers gather on campus at Norlin Quad to begin the painstaking task of setting up flags to represent the victims of the Holocaust.
The exhibit, a total of 25,000 flags, of which 17,787 represent the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, is a physical reminder that accompanies the university’s 23rd annual Holocaust Awareness Week.
[…]
This year’s speakers not only include Holocaust survivors, said Zucker, but also stories from resistance fighters, people from the Middle East and Africa, an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker and a child survivor.

And in the Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State junior Travis Dykes writes in a letter to the editor:

It irks me to see Holocaust remembrance solely remembering the Jewish dead. Yes they were the largest group targeted, but they don’t make up half the number of dead, especially when the figures for the number of Jewish dead include those killed in the ghettos and shootings and those of other targeted groups include only those killed in the camps. I don’t mean to say however that we shouldn’t remember the Jewish dead, what I mean is that during Holocaust remembrance week we should remember all those that died in the Holocaust, as well as those who died in similar slaughters such as Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and the current genocide in the Sudan.

MIT Jews, Muslims Offended By Speakers

When Neturei Karta member and Holocaust denial conference attendee Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss was chosen to represent the “Jewish view” in a school-sponsored foreign policy discussion, Jewish students at MIT weren’t happy.
Now Kristina M. Holton reports in the Tech that some Muslim students also rejected their representative in the discussion, Imam Mohammed al-Asi.

Members of the Jewish community distributed pamphlets to forum attendees posing the questions, “Does this man [al-Asi] represent true Islam?/Does this man [Weiss] represent true Judaism?” The presidents of many Jewish campus organizations also advertised a statement in Friday’s edition of The Tech.
Part of the advertisement read, “The organizers chose Weiss without consulting any element of the campus Jewish community. Furthermore, when we [the Jewish community] repeatedly expressed our concerns, all of the sponsors, including the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, refused to take measures to rectify the problem.”
[Social Justice Cooperative member Abdulbasier] Aziz said that before advertising the forum, “We [SJC] made it a point to ask Hillel and MIT Students for Israel for sponsorship, we did speak in person, and agreed to change the title for the event to “A Jewish View.”
The selection of speakers garnered the contempt of some members of the Muslim community as well. Abdulaziz Albahar ‘10 said, “I know that some of my Saudi Arabian friends boycotted the event because of the Imam’s [anti-Saudi] views.”

Ali Wyne, founder and president of co-sponsoring group Forum on American Progress, defends the choice of speakers in a Tech op-ed:

We should experience no difficulty in sponsoring lectures by individuals whose beliefs we find offensive. Such offensiveness does not necessarily depend on political affiliation: Weiss is at the far-left of the political spectrum, while al-Asi locates himself at the far-right. To classify any type of speech as “legitimate” while others are “illegitimate” is to suggest that statements of fact and statements of opinion can (and should) be evaluated by the same standards.
Some would object that we should not allow individuals to preach unvarnished ‘hate’ (if such a term can even be meaningfully defined), but one could well argue that they pose less of a danger than those who do so while masquerading as scholars. At least the former individuals make no pretense as to the objective validity of their claims.
We cannot claim to support free speech if we only invite individuals whose views fall within an acceptable continuum — that continuum, after all, is constructed by human beings who despite their best efforts will sometimes render fallacious judgments. We can only claim to defend free speech if we support it as vigorously for individuals whose views we support as we do for those whose positions we criticize.

Robert Hadad-Zlokower

I am a Binghamton University student majoring in English. I’m also a staff reporter and news wire editor for Pipe Dream, editor-in-chief of Hatikva Magazine, and beat reporter for CampusJ.com.
You can feel free to contact me at rhzlokower -at- campusj.com.

Welcome, NYTimes Readers

Those of you visiting from today’s story on Obsession will be interested to see all of our Obsession coverage, as well as all of NYU reporter Jill Goldstein’s coverage of the Middle East Sustained Dialogue Group at the school.
If you’re interested in NYU Jewish news as a whole, here’s the place to go.

Emily Glazer

I’m a freshman in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. I’m looking to find interesting news on campus and I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Check out what I’ve got in store- I promise I won’t bore you!




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