JTE Storytellers will be putting on My Super Sweet 13 this Friday and Saturday at 8 and 11 p.m in Shanley Pavilion. According to their website, they will “explore the humorous world of over-the-top bar mitzvahs with a night of non-stop music, comedy and, of course, fabulous storytelling.”
Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for general admission.
Ilan Hall, winner of Bravo’s Top Chef, cooked “crispy lamb” for about 50 students and Hillel staff at Hillel’s Fiedler Center yesterday. It was easily the best-cooked dinner I’ve ever had on campus. Between the snaps, crackles and pops of the broiling lamb, Hall dished a little about himself to me.
Emily Glazer: How did you become involved in cooking?
Ilan Hall: My father was the cook of the house and I’d watch him and imitate and copy. My grandfather was a kosher butcher in Jerusalem. I guess the males have the [cooking] genes in my family.
EG: How did you get on Top Chef?
IH: All I did was sent in a video of me heating up Ramen noodles. I went in with no preconceived notions. The first day I got there I started writing a journal of everyone.
EG: What’s your favorite Jewish food?
IH: I love pickled herring and other eastern European dishes, and all things with matzoh.
EG: What’s your favorite meal to cook?
IH: French fries with salt. Both to prepare and to eat. A perfect french fry is hard to master. You have to poach it in oil, blanch it. It has to be crispy on the outside.
EG: What’s your favorite meal in general?
IH: Breakfast and dinner. I like the act of breakfast even though I usually don’t eat it because I’m running around in the morning- but I love brunch. Dinner is sexy. I’ve been cooking dinner service for years. You just go out, drink… it’s dinner.
The Jewish world is abuzz with Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld’s controversial report, “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” which claims that progressive Jews have been giving succor to antisemitism by criticizing Zionist ideology and Israeli foreign policy. Here in Why Must Jews Support a Jewish State?, Rosenfeld’s Indiana University colleague Prof. Shaul Magid disputes Rosenfeld’s argument, suggesting that the anti-Semitic quotes he has used were taken out of context. Paul Bogdanor, whose book provided Rosenfeld with much of his original material, responds in Dissent or Hatred by providing, for the very first time, the original sources for Rosenfeld’s essay, as well as additional citations. In Response to Paul Bogdanor, Magid counters by arguing that Judaism as a religion is distinct from its manifestation in a nation-state and suggests that Bogdanor and Rosenfeld have abandoned Judaism for a secular Zionist nationalism.
All of Temple’s organizations were out in full force this Tuesday for Spring Fling. Temple’s Jewish organizations were no exception, representatives from both Hillel and the Jewish Heritage Program tabled patiently in the near-80-degree weather, only feet apart from each other. On this sunny day, exceptionally dense crowds milled around the various booths, eager for free merchandise and food. Both JHP and Hillel were selling t-shirts, the former reading either “JHP” or “Be all Jew can be,” and the latter reading “Israel” or printed Hebrew lettering. JHP also offered falafel with a variety of toppings, and Hillel, lollipops.
President Joel emailed all Yeshiva University students yesterday with an open letter he wrote to Virginia Tech:
Dear President Steger,I am overwhelmed with sorrow and shock at the unfathomable tragedy that occurred on your campus. As former President and International Director of Hillel: The Foundation of Jewish Campus Life, I visited hundreds of campuses around the country and can only imagine the shattering impact this act of carnage is having on the idyllic and harmonious campus of Virginia Tech.
I admire your courage and forthrightness in coping with this horrific loss as you strive to comfort students, faculty, and most of all, the parents whose children have been torn from them in the prime of their lives. Our prayers are with you and it is my hope that you will find the strength and fortitude to heal the wounds of your community as you mourn this terrible, terrible tragedy.
Richard M. Joel
Another email, this one from the undergraduate student councils, went out, acknowledging Yeshiva students’ desire to share condolences and sympathy with students at VT, and announced the opening of a blogspot account to post those condolences. The email read:
News of the shooting at Virginia Tech has shocked and horrified many of us. Many students expressed the desire to respond to the attack with condolences, comments of support and reflections. We have the opportunity to do so, as individuals and as a group of YU students, through a link on the YU homepage.Please take a moment to post your thoughts by clicking on the link. Send a message of condolence (http://yustandswithyouvt.blogspot.com/) to the Virginia Tech community at www.yu.edu and encourage your friends to join you in this act of solidarity.
Your comments and notes will be sent to Virginia Tech University’s Hillel as an expression of our condolences and support.
May we only share and join as a community for good things, be’ezrat Hashem, Undergraduate Student Councils and OSA
At this moment, President Joel’s open letter has a number of comments on the blog, including messages like, “I can’t imagine what you are going through. All I can do is send my love and hope that everyone will be comforted and find peace. God Bless,” by Danny YC ‘06, and “This terrible tragedy has been on our minds the last few days. We can’t even begin to imagine what the Virginia Tech community is going through at this time. Stand strong and don’t lose hope- our thoughts and prayers are with you,” by Stern Student ‘07.
The President of the Student Organization of Yeshiva, Josh Vogel, released an open letter as well:
To the students at Virginia Tech:
My heart and prayers are with you in this difficult time. The idea that someone would be so distressed to the extent that he took 32 lives, and injured many others, is unfathomable. Words of wisdom at this time are hard to find, but it is often said that through tragedy we become stronger. It is my sincere hope that in the future we will be able to support the Virginia Tech community in times of good as well.
Blessings,
Josh Vogel
President, Student Orgranization of Yeshiva
Iran’s increasing significance, and the ramifications of that for Israelis and Arabs, were discussed by Middle East Analyst David Makovsky on March 21st, and controversial professor Norman Finkelstein spoke the next day.
In “Shifting Sands of the Mideast,” a program sponsored by Hillel-JSU, Makovsky met with small groups during the day, and presented a 45-minute lecture in the evening. Makovsky is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former editor of the Jerusalem Post.
Nicolas Kolios, Hillel ICA representative summarized Makovsky’s appearance in a letter to the editor in April’s Hatikva Magazine:
He spoke on involvement of countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan in trying to oppose Iran’s apparently growing influence in the region. [He] Encouraged the pursuit of alternative energy and stressed its role in helping the U.S. avoid having dual and opposing roles, i.e. military involvement in the region, while also buying oil. The lecture was followed by a 40 minute Q&A session, after which several students stayed around, talking more personally with David about his early career in journalism, and getting further political analysis.
The next day, Norman Finkelstein, professor of political theory at DePaul University in Chicago, gave a lecture entitled “A Question of Justice: Historical Origins of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and the Prospects for Peace.” The talk was sponsored by the Middle East Cultural Association, Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Graduate Student Organization and the graduate vice president for multicultural affairs.
Sal Rosenkranz, an 89 year-old Holocaust survivor, spoke at the Queens College Hillel Monday afternoon. Mr. Rosenkranz told students about his experience in the holocaust, starting from the initial Nazi invasion of his hometown of Krosniewice, Poland. Rosenkranz spoke about living in concentration camps, including the six weeks he spent at the infamous Buchenwald. He explained that he faced a number of situations in which he felt his death was inevitable, but that somehow he had survived, though much of his family was killed in Treblinka.
The speech was accompanied by the presentation of a miniature museum, modeled after the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The mini-museum was built by members of the Queens College Hillel.
About forty people attended the event, which was followed by a free lunch, sponsored by the Hillel.
Michigan State University’s Jewish Studies Program is presenting the 15th Annual David and Sarah Rabin Holocaust Memorial Lecture today at 7:00 p.m. at the Kellogg Center Auditorium. Entitled “Oneself as Another: Identification and Mourning in Writing about Victims of the Holocaust“, the lecture will be given by Sarah Rubin Suleiman, C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
The presentation is free and open to the public.
The Maimonides Leaders Fellowship program, designed to cultivate future Jewish communal leaders, is scheduled to start at Temple and Drexel in Fall 2007, and it now has somebody to lead it. Rabbi Shimon Kay is moving to the United States from Israel to take the reigns of the program.
After growing up in London, he was recently ordained in Jerusalem after almost ten years of study at various yeshivas. Kay is no stranger to working with students either; he’s done so at the Kesher Yeshiva and Hebrew University.
[My wife] Shoshana and I host many students in our home on a regular basis for weekly social events and for the Sabbath; we have always had an open, warm home environment and this is something we hope to continue in Philly. I’ve also been involved with student social/educational trips. Most recently I took 50 college students from the Boston area (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BU, etc.) on a two week trip to Chile for the purpose of Jewish education and leadership.
He became involved with the Maimonides program after meeting Rabbi Lynn, who operates the program at the University of Pennsylvania, in Jerusalem last year. Rabbi Kay says:
I was very impressed by the program and what it had to offer students on campus. The open curriculum, combined with the interactive teaching opportunities, as well as the high caliber students that the program attracted, is what actually attracted me to this position.
Shoshana was born in South Africa, but grew up in Toronto, and received an honors degree in International Relations from McGill University in Montreal. She’s worked in marketing and public relations for several years, and now serves as Director of External Affairs for Mesila, a nonprofit organization. Shoshana went to Israel to study Judaism at Neve Yerushalayim College, and met Shimon after spending a year and a half there.
The couple has three children, a three year-old boy named Nosson, a one and a half year-old girl named Yocheved, and their youngest boy, Simcha was born two months ago. Rabbi Kay says they have vacationed in the US many times, often visiting Shoshana’s sister in California, but only he has been to Philadelphia before this week. They are scheduled to move in August, so they can be prepared to start the Maimonides program when September comes.
A very small internship program exists deep in the Jewish Studies department of the College of Liberal Arts that allows students to get hands on experience working at a Jewish organization in the city. Called “Service Learning,” it is open to all students in the department.
“We mostly work with students to build intellectual links between the work they are doing in the community and reading and writing assignments that enhance and help historicize that work,” explains program coordinator, Laura Levitt (also director of the department), She commented that while only a handful of students actually do the program, they maintain contacts with several organizations.
“What generally happens is a student comes with an interest and a connection that he or she wants to pursue and we work with them to make this happen,” says Levitt.
This semester Jewish Studies Junior Jonathan Alexander is interning at the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, located at Temple. Working under Center Director Michael Alexander (no relation), and Assistant Director Nancy Isserman, Michael is creating a DVD based on a textbook series on American Jewish history; his DVDs, which are created with pictures, music clips, maps, and more, are designed to be a compliment to the textbook that will help students learn. He says of his internship:
All I am hoping to get out of it is a sense that I did a good job and Jewish kids who are the future of American Judaism are going to have a better understanding of where they came from and who they are. If they are able to grasp the material better because of the work that I have done, then my job was a success and I will feel completely fulfilled and satisfied with the job that I did.
In the past students have interned at Jewish summer camps, after school programs, and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, also located at Temple.
Center founder and Temple professor Lewis Gordon says, “We’ve focused mostly on graduate students and research, but we did have some undergraduates work with us on four projects with happy results: the ISRST [Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought ] Newsletter, organization of some on campus symposia, assistance with a meeting at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research think tank, and the local filming of a documentary on Jewish diversity.”
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