Posted by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster. Categories: Human Rights Education, Torture, United States
on Jun 7th, 2011 | Comments Off
In the weeks before the death of Osama bin Laden thrust the debate over the efficacy and morality of torture back into the headlines, a disturbing report was released by the American Red Cross. After speaking with hundreds of American teenagers, it became clear that the generation that has grown up since 9/11 is woefully uneducated in the rules of war. Most of them have never heard of the Geneva Convention, and more than half believe that there are times when it is acceptable to torture an enemy prisoner. 56 percent believe that retaliatory killings of prisoners is acceptable. Even more shocking is...
Posted by Rabbi Arik Ascherman. Categories: East Jerusalem, Events, Israel
on Jun 7th, 2011 | Comments Off
Today is Jerusalem day. I am in the far north, in the closest city in the world to the North Pole. By total coincidence, I have been invited to speak about Jerusalem. My heart is in the East with the Israelis for whom the return to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall symbolizes the fulfillment of thousands of years of prayers and longing, and my heart is with those who lost loved ones in the battle for Jerusalem. But my heart is also with those Palestinian East Jerusalemites and Israeli activists standing with them in solidarity. Etched with horror in my memory are the events of last year’s...
Posted by admin. Categories: Israel
on Jun 3rd, 2011 | 1 comment
In “Israel and the Polarization of American Jews,” (The Jerusalem Report, June 20, 2011), I suggest that the controversy over Tony Kushner’s views on Israel highlight the ways in which the gap between liberal and conservative Jews regarding Israel is becoming an unbridgeable chasm. At the same time, I question the value of defining who is “inside the Jewish communal tent” and who is “outside,” as leaders in the organized Jewish community have suggested, on the basis of whether a person or organization “recognizes Israel as a democratic Jewish state.”
Today, many human rights...
Posted by Rabbi Jill Jacobs. Categories: East Jerusalem, RHR-NA Study Tour 2011, West Bank
on Jun 1st, 2011 | 3 comments
Today many Jews are celebrating Yom Yerushalayim, or Jerusalem Day, which marks the 1967 military victory that led to Israeli control of East Jerusalem.
As I expressed in an op-ed for JTA, especially on this day I grapple with the notion of there being two Jerusalems, a “Yerushalayim shel malah,” a spiritual, heavenly Jerusalem, and a “Yerushalayim shel mata,” an earthly Jerusalem. In Yerushalayim shel malah, God is visible, suffering is absent and there is perfection. In “Yerushalayim shel mata,” real people struggle with deep political, religious and...
Posted by Rabbi Aryeh Cohen. Categories: Human Rights Education, Torture
on Jun 1st, 2011 | Comments Off
There is an old New Yorker cartoon in which Moses comes down from Sinai with the two tablets and he is confronted with the tableau of debauchery which is the worship of the Golden Calf. Speaking to a group of Israelites he adamantly says: “Well, actually, it is written in stone.”
The asseret hadevarim, the ten sayings, which are carved into those stones which Moses brought down from Sinai have gained a great religious and mythical weight. This is an interesting phenomenon since in Judaism, of course, the commandments and prohibitions which are engraved in the two tablets are no more nor less...
Posted by Rabbi Jill Jacobs. Categories: Other
on Jun 1st, 2011 | Comments Off
Joshua Bloom, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America’s Director of Online Communications, married Jodie Gordon, a third year Hebrew Union College rabbinical student, this past weekend at Block and Hexter Vacation Center in Poyntelle, PA. Be sure to check out their wedding announcement from Sunday’s New York Times.
Mazel tov to them both. May they enjoy many years of happiness together!
The couple integrated charitable giving into their simcha. Visit RHR-NA’s website to learn way you can follow their...
