Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 21, 2021

Two coins minted about 70 years apart by Jewish rebels during two separate revolts against the Roman Empire have been discovered in the West Bank.

The coins may offer insight to what happened during the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans, researchers say.

One of the coins, minted in A.D. 67-68, depicts a vine leaf and a Hebrew inscription that translates to "the freedom of Zion" on one side, while the other side shows an amphora with two handles and a Hebrew inscription that translates to "year 2," said Dvir Raviv, a senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, who led an archaeological survey in 2020 that uncovered the coins about 19 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Jerusalem.

Related: Photos: 2,000-year-old Roman road and coins discovered in Israel

At the time this coin was minted, Jewish rebels had defeated Roman forces in the region and had taken over a sizable section of Israel, including Jerusalem, forming a short-lived government that minted its own coins. In A.D. 70, a Roman counterattack would result in the Romans taking back Jerusalem and destroying most of the Temple Mount, the most holy place in Jerusalem.

The archaeological survey also uncovered the other coin less than a mile (1 km) away from the first in a small cave that appears to have been looted in recent times, Raviv said. It was minted in A.D. 134-135, during the so-called Bar Kochba rebellion, which lasted from 132 to 136. One side has a Hebrew inscription that translates to "for the freedom of Jerusalem," along with a palm branch inside a wreath; the other side of the coin is decorated with an image of a lyre and a Hebrew inscription that translates to "Shimon," which was the name of rebel leader "Shimon Ben Kosva, or Bar-Kochba.

At the time that coin was minted, Jewish rebels had launched another rebellion against the Roman Empire, also taking over a good chunk of Israel and forming another short-lived government that minted its own coins. The Romans crushed this rebellion in A.D. 136, with the ancient Roman historian Cassius Dio (who lived decades later, from about 155 to 235) claiming that over 500,000 Jewish men were killed.

"Symbols and slogans on Jewish coins during the two Roman wars declared the rebels' goals: political freedom, the liberation of Jerusalem from the Roman conqueror and the renewal of worship in the Temple," the researchers said in a statement.

The coins may provide clues to the revolts, if only because archaeologists know exactly where they were found. Most coins dating to the revolts were found by looters and emerged on the antiquities market, meaning that archaeologists don't know where they originated, wrote Raviv in an article set to be published in December in the journal Israel Numismatic Research.

For instance, the fact that archaeologists know that these coins were found just 1 km (0.62 miles) apart means that theoretically the same person may have owned both coins, Raviv told Live Science.

The coins were found in the Acrabatta region, which was the northernmost region of Judea at the time of Roman rule, Raviv said. Until recently, no coins from the revolt led by Bar-Kochba had been found in this area.

"The Bar-Kokhba coin from Wadi er-Rashash indicates the presence of a Jewish population in the region up to [A.D.] 134/5, in contrast to a previous claim that Jewish settlement in the highlands north of Jerusalem was destroyed during the Great Revolt [that ended in A.D. 73] and not inhabited afterwards," Raviv said in the statement. "This coin is also the first evidence that the Acrabatta region, the northernmost of the districts of Judea during the Roman period, was controlled by the Bar-Kochba administration," Raviv said.

In addition to finding the coins, archaeologists surveying the area also discovered the remains of ceramics, glass items and iron artifacts, including two Roman knives.

Originally published on Live Science.

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'Freedom of Zion' coins dating to famous Jewish revolt found in the West Bank - Livescience.com

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

Like many offspring of statesmen, politicians and diplomats, Erez Navon has not followed in the footsteps of his father, Yitzhak Navon, who was all of the above and more, and served as the countrys fifth president. But he does work assiduously to preserve and disseminate his fathers legacy.

In a sense he started doing this long before his father died in November, 2015.

Erez was 19 when his mother, Ofira, succumbed to cancer in August 1993. It was then that Erez realized that so much had been left unasked and unsaid, and that he could no longer dwell on his mothers wisdom and experience. This realization drew him much closer to his father, forming a relationship in which his father was not only his mentor and role model, but also his friend.

Their common ritual was going out for dinner together every Thursday night to discuss every possible subject that came to mind.

April of this year marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yitzhak Navon. There was no fanfare, and if there were any state ceremonies, they were so low key that hardly anyone knew about them.

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Not really.

He wants his father to be remembered for his teachings and the example that he set, and not necessarily because of the date of his birth or through monuments or streets that may bear his name in perpetuity.

Although the relatively new Jerusalem Railway Station at the entrance to the capital has been named the Yitzhak Navon station, Erez is much prouder of the fact that more than 30 schools have been named for his father.

Surprisingly, his father was already well past middle age when he discovered the Gregorian calendar date of his birth.

A regular at the once iconic, now-defunct Shemesh restaurant in Jerusalems Ben-Yehuda Mall, Navon when dining there one day was recognized by one of the other patrons, who happened to be an astrologer. The man asked Navon when he was born, and Navon replied April 19. The astrologer charted his horoscope, but somehow it did not jive with Navons character, his history, or what was happening in his life. Always curious, Navon wondered how the man had been so off course, and it occurred to him that perhaps he had not been born on April 19.

In his family they lived by the Hebrew calendar. He knew that he had been born on Rosh Hodesh (the first of the month of) Nissan and that it had been a Shabbat. Checking out the corresponding Gregorian calendar date, he discovered that it was April 9 and not April 19. He went back to the astrologer and apologized for inadvertently misleading him. Ah, said the astrologer, that explains everything.

This is one of the anecdotes that Erez Navon likes to tell about his father. Many others are contained in A Life in Stories, an anthology Erez Navon published a year after his fathers death.

Some of these stories were initially immortalized in Navons ever-popular stage musical Bustan Sephardi (Spanish Orchard), which has been playing on and off for more than 30 years at Habima Theater, with a new production currently underway. The dialogue is in Ladino and through story and song tells the tale of the vibrant Sephardi community of Jerusalems Ohel Moshe neighborhood in the second quarter of the 20th century. It is based on Navons personal memories. According to Erez, his father wrote it because he thought that Sephardi culture was being ignored. In the 1960s and the 1970s, this was more relevant than it is today, says Erez. In our house, it was never relevant.

Whether relevant or not, it continues to attract both Sephardi and Ashkenazi audiences. Over the years there have been more than 3,000 performances attended by more than two million people, says Erez.

He explains that its ongoing popularity is due to the fact that it reflects what we were, what we would like to become and what we forgot.

The vibrancy of this small neighborhood derived from the diversity of its population: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Arabs, Orthodox, secular what we were and what we should be shevet achim (a tribe of brothers).

Yitzhak Navon was known as the peoples president. During his five years in office, he received more than 300,000 visitors at the Presidents Residence, made more than 300 trips across the length and breadth of the country, meeting with hundreds of thousands of citizens of all ages, bringing them moral support, encouraging them to study, assuring them that regardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds, each in his or her own way was making a contribution to the country, and perhaps most of all treating them as equals.

He was a great advocate for people learning the culture of the other, which he perceived not only as an enhancement of knowledge and a bridge to a career, but also as a tool for understanding and acceptance and bringing people of diverse backgrounds and heritage closer together.

Erez Navon cites as an example what his father did before undertaking his historic visit to Egypt in 1980; He abstained from regular presidential duties for a whole month, brought in academics, and Israeli citizens who grew up in Egypt, and learned everything he could about Egyptian culture and traditions. It helped that he was fluent in Arabic, and when he got to Egypt, and displayed so much familiarity with all that was Egyptian, and spoke to people in Arabic that the Egyptian people simply took him to their hearts.

Erez Navon will be participating in a panel discussion dedicated to his father at the annual Lo Bashamayim (Not in Heaven) Multi-Disciplined Culture and Music Festival taking place in the Upper Galilee on July 20-22. The panel discussion will be on July 22, at which time he will also mention the Navon Heritage Center, which the Navon Association hopes to build in the Neot Kedumim Biblical Nature Reserve near Modiin.

When Navon was working as political secretary for founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who though irreligious was a biblical scholar, the two realized the significance of Neot Kedumim in drawing both secular and religious Jews to the land and to its biblical history and heritage.

The actual building housing the Navon Heritage Center will be relatively small and modest, and will be used to promote national unity, encourage people to think differently, be curious and to learn about and accept social responsibility, including living together and building confidence and trust.

But there will be no politics, said Erez.

He and his sister, Naama, have the distinction of having been the only children who were actually living full-time in the Presidents Residence. But their parents made sure to instill in them the knowledge that they were not special. They were simply there because their parents were on a five-year mission, which when it ended, they would resume living like the rest of the population.

Although his father was pure Sephardi, whose ancestors on both sides lived for generations in Jerusalem, Erezs mother was a first-generation Ashkenazi Israeli, who descended from Russian stock. So how does Erez view himself? Is he more Sephardi than Ashkenazi, or more Ashkenazi than Sephardi?

I see myself as a Jew and as an Israeli citizen nothing more, he replies. He acknowledges that from the perspective of acquiring knowledge and different experiences, its a good thing to have more than one cultural background.

Through people that he meets, he is constantly discovering new things about his father.

The more I learn about his legacy, the more I realize that what Im doing is not for him, but for us as a nation.

For tickets or inquiries about Lo Bashamayim call 04-6816640 or 02-358500.

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Erez Navon: 'What Im doing for his legacy is for us as a nation - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

The last 16 months have felt like an apocalypse movie at many points a global pandemic, the attack on the Capitol, a massive drought and widespread forest fires in the Western U.S., even those murder hornets that briefly made headlines.

Yet to artist and architect Daniel Toretsky, the catastrophes felt familiar; Jews have faced devastation throughout history and have adapted, creating and preserving identity through centuries of diaspora. These themes guided his installation, Tower of the Sacred & Ordinary, at FENSTER, an innovative exhibition space in a storefront window in Toronto devoted to showcasing art connected to the Jewish experience.

By Morris Lum

Tower of the Sacred and Ordinary installed in FENSTER.

Standing in FENSTERs window until September is Toretskys wheeled tower, several feet tall, which he conceptualizes as a model for a real tower rising several floors. Each story of the building features a scene of Jewish life that Toretsky sourced from various Jewish artists and then combined into 3D drawings; Toretsky imagines our descendants climbing into the structure each Saturday night to reenact the memories.

The illustrations combine joyful memories with darker, if still whimsical, ideas. One shows people gratefully leaping into a body of water at the end of a hot day working on a Jewish farm. But under the water, there is a traditional Ashkenazi wedding floating through a flooded New Orleans, an image from klezmer musician Mark Rubin. Seven, count em, seven storms last season, he wrote. This recognition imbues every practice, Jewish or not, with a deeper context than is obvious to the observer.

By Morris Lum

A detail from Toretskys tower, showing happy swimmers floating over an underwater wedding.

The shape of the tower is inspired by castle-shaped besamim boxes traditionally used to hold spices for havdalah, the ritual performed at the end of Shabbat. Toretsky combined the silhouettes of several spice boxes for his tower, and the sides are covered in a metallic lattice, reminiscent of the openings in the besamim boxes where the scent can waft through.

Toretsky conceived and created the project with Evelyn Tauben, the curator of FENSTER.

Because of COVID, Toretsky, who lives in New York City, couldnt go to Canada, so he designed pieces with tabs that would allow it to slot together inspired by Taubens sons model train set and had a local Toronto manufacturer lasercut the shapes. Then Tauben, the curator, and Jean-Christophe Foolchand, an artist who had worked with FENSTER previously, assembled everything.

It took us 15 hours to finish assembling the piece, Tauben wrote in an email. Thankfully it was a beautiful day and we were able to work outdoors!

The resulting piece is multilayered and richly imagined. Toretsky spoke to the Forward about his inspirations, his Jewish identity and the creative process.

So how did you meet Evelyn, and come to create this piece?

By Morris Lum

Toretskys Tower, fully assembled.

Evelyn and I both frequent a culture festival outside of Montreal called KlezKanada. It mainly focuses on klezmer, but really touches on many elements of Yiddish culture and Jewish music, and Ive been going since I was a freshman in high school.

One aspect of it are these lectures and classes throughout the day. I went to one of them that Evelyn was doing, and afterward, I went up to her and said Id really like to get involved. I think that was three years ago it really took a while to come to fruition.

We had a different concept last spring, but the pandemic screwed everything up and it just became too complicated. Then this last winter, we doubled down and made it happen. But the concept changed a lot in the process it was much more about shtetls before.

How would you describe what its about now?

Especially around early November of 2020, we didnt know who was going to win the election, the pandemic was raging and we were headed right for that huge spike in the winter, there were all the wildfires and everything going on with climate change. So it really came from this place of anxiety about total collapse.

I was thinking about how people living 200 years from now might look back on our world now as almost like a utopia, kind of like how we look back on shtetls. They obviously had their issues in a big way, but weve romanticized them because they seem understandable and less complicated than our world now.

By Morris Lum

More details from the piece, including a raucous Shabbat dinner, an overgrown graveyard and a snowy Sukkot with attendees bundled in hats and scarves.

Similarly, various immigrant neighborhoods in North America that Jews famously moved to in the early 20th century, like the Lower East Side or Kensington Market in Toronto, have become flattened and romanticized over time, but that also serves the purpose of preserving identity.

So I was imagining that people in our future would look back on our world now and what stories they would tell about this world that were living in now.

This piece is deeply connected to havdalah and the besamim vessels. How does that connect to these themes of anxiety?

I arrived at this idea of havdalah by researching these portable homes that we find throughout Judaism. Theres many examples. Think of sukkahs, chuppahs, the besamim, the little castles on top of the Torah, wedding rings that are traditionally in the shape of a house. Theres all of these ways that Jews take their homes with them they can be kind of erected anywhere because of this diasporic notion of moving all the time.

Courtesy of Creative Commons

Besamim tower from Berlin, 1790-1810, today in the Jewish Museum of Switzerlands collection.

One of the things thats particularly cool about the spice boxes is that its a device for triggering memories. I was reading a scholar named Miriam Lipis, and she was talking about how the architecture of the spice boxes is kind of mysterious, but the theory is that these things are made in the style of the parts of the diaspora that they come from. So in Germany, for example, youd have Bavarian forms of architecture that become spice boxes and then travel to other parts of the diaspora and give this continuity between places.

Smell is also a really important trigger for memory. Spices for havdalah are supposed to remind you of the sweetness of Shabbat throughout the week, But I think it is also supposed to remind you of a particular time in history, a sweet past, and the possibility of a sweet future.

Can you tell me more about your own relationship to Jewish identity and practice?

I grew up Reconstructionist, and I think the idea that really hit home for me is that Jewish practice is malleable, if you do your research. By understanding tradition and heritage, and then thinking through it with community the act of researching and adapting is a really powerful way to build community and keep ritual relevant.

By Morris Lum

A detail from the tower, showing a personified Shabbat queen engulfed by fire.

The other facet is being in the klezmer world, which emphasizes diaspora. A lot of Jewish culture in the diaspora takes whatever is happening in Israel and says, This is Jewish culture now. I think theres this beautiful alternative, which is embracing your roots within diaspora. For me, that was the klezmer world and Yiddish culture, and that continues to be a really vibrant and politically charged community for me today.

For me, this project has a very strong affirmation of celebrating diaspora and the kinds of adaptations that Jews have made on the road in order to preserve identity and make community.

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Jews have survived a lot and this artist is preparing us for the apocalypse - Forward

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France & SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:

Verimatrix, (Paris:VMX), the leader in powering the modern connected world with people-centered security, today announced that Renmore Partners, which was granted a license to offer an alternative, scalable set top box technology solution for the Nigerian digital switchover project, selected Verimatrixs conditional access technology to offer Nigerians cost-effective at-home entertainment.

The digital switchover project aims to shift viewers from analog to digital technology. To date, the digital signal has been switched on in seven of the countrys states. Verimatrix technology has been successfully deployed and tested within set top boxes in numerous Nigerian cities, including the countrys capitol, Abuja, as well as Lagos and Jos.

Verimatrixs unmatched expertise in scalability and security serves as a powerful enabler for regions looking to make their long-awaited digital switchovers truly possible for the masses, said Asaf Ashkenazi, Chief Operating Officer at Verimatrix. Were pleased to work with leading technology integrators such as Renmore Partners to impact the lives of so many.

The content protection technology that Verimatrix provides is a key component that makes this switchover from analog to digital TV possible, said Zahid Mirza, the Group Chairman of Renmore Partners. With deployments and tests that now successfully play all free TV channels in Nigeria, this switchover project greatly benefits from Verimatrixs ability to make set top boxes and their integrated security technologies affordably priced. This success has potentially created more opportunities for Renmore Partners to work with Verimatrix in other regions of Africa and elsewhere.

About VerimatrixVerimatrix (Euronext Paris: VMX) helps power the modern connected world with security made for people. We protect digital content, applications, and devices with intuitive, people-centered and frictionless security. Leading brands turn to Verimatrix to secure everything from premium movies and live streaming sports, to sensitive financial and healthcare data, to mission-critical mobile applications. We enable the trusted connections our customers depend on to deliver compelling content and experiences to millions of consumers around the world. Verimatrix helps partners get to market faster, scale easily, protect valuable revenue streams, and win new business. Visit http://www.verimatrix.com.

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Verimatrix Offers Much-Needed Scalability and Affordability for Digital TV Switchover Initiative in Nigeria - Business Wire

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

This article originally appeared on The Nosher.

Health salads sweet and tangy slaw-like, cabbage-based salads that often include carrots, bell peppers and cucumbers are a fixture of New York Jewish delis. Theyresold by the pound in the deli case or sometimes generously arrive alongside your complimentary plate of pickles. While the dressing is typically sweetened with sugar, the purported health is derived from the volume of raw vegetables and the notable absence of mayonnaise.

If youre from New Jersey, you may also know this dish as Claremont salad. In the 1950s, the Bauman brothers operated the beloved Claremont Diner in Verona. The North Jersey eatery was famous for its cheesecake, but was known as well for its courtesy cabbage salad that came with every meal. Morris and Leo Bauman never claimed to have invented the salad, but it became so popular that local supermarkets started offering Claremont salad in their own deli cases.

East Coast Jewish delis arent the only places you can get this addictive salad. Across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, youll find salat vitiminniy or vitamin salad. Like health salads, the base is typically made of cabbage and carrot, and may also include cucumber, pepper, tomato, onion and other seasonal summer vegetables. Again, the salad gets its healthy-sounding name because of its contrast to the many richer salads that make up Soviet cuisine, which tend to be made with lots of mayonnaise or sour cream. Vitamin salad dressings are also acidic but tend to include less sugar than health salads. Instead they may include raisins or apples for sweetness.

While the exact origin of health and vitamin salads is unknown, they have been popular among Ashkenazi Jews for decades. In the Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook by Fania Lewando, published in 1938, there are four separate vitamin salad recipes. (Lewando, the first woman to publish a Yiddish vegetarian cookbook in Europe, died in the Holocaust while trying to flee the Vilna ghetto.) Each features a different combination of seasonal raw vegetables, shredded or chopped, and dressed with oil and lemon juice.

(Sonya Sanford)

Whatever you call this salad, and however you make it, the idea is the same: Combine lots of hearty, raw vegetables in a salty, acidic, sweetened dressing. The salad will taste great right away and, like everything in the pickle family, it will taste even better as it continues to marinate in the fridge. This salad is refreshing, light and particularly satisfying when served ice cold on a hot summer day.

Ingredients

Directions

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Why Russian Jews are obsessed with this salad - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

KEY POINTS

Google Cloud fired its developer relations vice president after he published a manifesto on LinkedIn about his anti-Semitic past and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"I wanted to share that today is Amr Awadallahs last day at Google," Eyal Manor, Google Cloud vice president of engineering and product, said to employees in an internal mail, CNBC reported.

The announcement comes a month after Awadallahpublished his 10,000-wordmanifesto that kicked up a storm. Awadallah, who co-founded Cloudera before joining Google in 2019, wrote:"I hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people! and emphasis here is on the past tense."

An employee told CNBC that frustration with Awadallah's leadership style had already been building and coupled with the post, it became harder for employees to perform effective developer relations. Awadallah was confronted by some of his colleagues at an all-hands meeting that preceded his termination, reported The Verge.

This has made my job as one of your colleagues much harder. The previous situation has made being a Jewish leader at Google tough. This has made it almost untenable,a senior colleague commented on Awadallah's LinkedIn post, withoutexplaining what the"previous situation" was.

I'm unsure why you would write this under your title and company affiliation and it frustrates me. You could simply have done this as a private person, he added.

Awadallah, an Egyptian-American technology professional well known in the cloud industry, said he belonged to the Jewish ethnic group,citing a 23andMe DNA analysis that he had 0.1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Employees told CNBC that he had previously cited the DNA analysis report to justify his opinions.

"I admire many Jewish people as I shared earlier, but I will also tell you this with unwavering conviction: TheJewish people arent any more special than the Christian, Black, Hispanic, White, Muslim, Asian, Arab peoples or any other group of people for that matter," wrote Awadallah in his manifesto."We are all special, and we need to see all others as special, because, scientifically speaking, we are 99.9% genetically the same, and if we come from the same land within the last 1000 years,we are more like 99.999% the same."

Earlier last month, Google removed Kamau Bobb from his role of diversity head after a blog post from 2007 with anti-Semitic language resurfaced, reportedQuartz.

Awadallah took to Twitter to write, "I am still in complete shock. I admire every single person I worked with at Google & truly believed in their mission 'universal information access shall set all of our brains free.'"

Representational Image Photo: AFP / Tobias SCHWARZ

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Google Fires Senior Executive After He Acknowledged And Renounced His Antisemitism In Online Manifesto - International Business Times

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

In Googles second antisemitism-related incident in less than two months, a senior executive in its cloud computing division left the company last week following the publication of a lengthyLinkedIn post describing his views on Jews, Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In his manifesto, which is just over 10,000 words long, Amr Awadallah, Google Clouds vice president for developer relations, recalled growing up in Egypt convinced by those around him that the Jewish people are here to kill all of us, Arabs, and build their greater state of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Emphasizing that he had hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people, he described himself as having been anti-Semitic, even though I am a Semite, as this term broadly refers to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, among others.

Pigging out in Jerusalem: Did ancient Israelites really eat pork?

According to Awadallah, who stated that he recently learned from a home DNA test that he is 0.1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish, the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the establishment of a United States of Jerusalem comprised of not just two states, but multiple states, some Israeli Jewish, some Palestinian, some hybrid, some atheist/agnostic or polyamory LGBTQ+, with local jurisdictional differences.

In the meantime, Palestinians should refrain from violence and Diaspora Jews should "butt out, because they are making things worse, he wrote, pledging to not invest or buy productsfrom corporations trying to benefit from this conflict, and including a link to the website of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

In a letter to employees published in part by CNBC, Google vice president of engineering and product,Eyal Manor, who is originally from Israel,wrote that last Thursday was Amr Awadallahs last day at Google, adding that working at the company had been particularly challenging with a number of organizational changes and leadership transitions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the news network, employees at the tech giant had expressed dissatisfaction with Awadallah for some time and were put off by his recent comments.

Addressing Awadallah and his post, one Jewish Google employee, Daniel Golding, the companys network infrastructure and tech site director, responded that it made my job as one of your colleagues much harder.

The previous situation has made beinga Jewish leader at Google tough. This has made it almost untenable. I'm unsure why you would write this under your title and company affiliation and it frustrates me. You could simply have done this as a private person, Golding wrote, accusing Awadallah of hypocrisy.

First, you decry the erasure of Palestinians, but you bend over backwards to erase Jews by claiming that everyone is a Jew. But Amr, everyone is not. And you don't get to decide. Second, you are instructing American Jews to butt out, but as someone with even less stake in the conflict, you have decided to sound off about it loudly. You have no right to either define who is Jewish, while claiming to be, nor to tell me to stay out while you give your opinion at very great length. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

The reference to the previous situation is apparently last months removal by Google of its corporate diversity chief from his position after derogatory comments that he made about Jews came to light, sparking demands by Jewish groups for his resignation.

In a 2007 post on his personal blog entitled If I Were a Jew,thediversity chief, Kamau Bobb, wrote that if he were Jewish, he would be concerned about his insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. At the time, Bobb was a research associate in technology at Georgia Tech.

Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering[of]others. My greatest torment would be that Ive misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity, he asserted.

Bobb further claimed that if he were a Jew today, his sensibilities would be tormented by the difficulty of reconciling his peoples long history of oppression with Israels insatiable appetite for vengeful violence.

For his part, Awadallah expressed similar feelings in his post, condemning Zionists who wanted to survive at the cost of their own humanity. Just as many Arabs were raised to think that Israelis wanted to kill them, Israelis, too, heard stories that the Palestinians want them all dead and proceeded to paint the other camp as evil to justify all the violence that they plan to inflict upon them, he wrote, calling both sides two faces of the exact same coin!

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Google exec let go over 10,000 word manifesto on Israel, Jews and antisemitism - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

Sanaa Lathan in Netflix series Hit in Run

*Sanaa Lathan is the girl, turned woman next door that every body knows and loves. By now youve learned to pronounce her name, and if not check below cause we got you. But this isnt about names. Its about something more thrilling; a rush. Something to widen the eyes and spike the adrenaline. Mystery, murder, suspense, its about action too. This is about the upcoming Netflix series Hit & Run, and Lathan is (can we say?) all up in it.

Urban Hollywood first tipped us off that Sanaa Lathan co-leads in the nine-episode series.

We think its exciting because, well, its Sanaa Lathan. But also Lathan plays an investigative reporter and ex-lover to actor Lior Raz who plays a grief-stricken husband Segev Azulai. Lathan is the supportive and top-skilled journalist he runs to, as he is desperate to solve perhaps the greatest equation of his life. And because Lior Raz is handsome and masculine this foretells of powerful, grief-driven love scenes. Hmmm (smiley face). So were guessing this should be fun.

Hit & Run is set in Tel Aviv, Israel and in New York; Azulai flees Tel Aviv and contacts Lathan in the Big Apple and together they embark on a thrilling and action filled mission for answers.

MORE ON EURWEB:Larrys Interesting Musical Tidbits: When Motown B-Sides were Household A-Sides

Did Segev Azulai really know his wife? Was her hit and run murder an accident or was it more sinister? Were her killers on a vendetta against Azulai?

Its time we start investigating your wife, Lathan says in the Hit & Run trailer out now.

The Hit & Run cast includes supporting actors: Kaelen Ohm, Moran Rosenblatt, Gal Toren, Lior Ashkenazi and Gregg Henry. Hit & Run co-creators and executive producers include Raz, Avi Issacharoff, Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin.

Hit & Run (from the makers The Killing and Fauda) premieres August 6.

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Sanaa Lathan is Investigative Reporter / Ex-Lover in Thriller Hit and Run | Watch Trailer - eurweb.com

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's said it will stop sales of its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Toby Talbot/AP hide caption

Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's said it will stop sales of its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Ben & Jerry's said it will stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, calling it "inconsistent with our values." The company did not say when it would halt sales, but its sole local Israeli manufacturer vowed to continue selling as usual until its license expires at the end of 2022.

The Vermont-based ice cream maker said it would continue sales inside Israel but would not renew its license with the Israeli manufacturer that has produced the company's legendary flavors locally for more than three decades.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called the decision "antisemitic," and called on U.S. states with laws against Israel boycotts to sanction Ben & Jerry's. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the move "morally wrong" and vowed to fight it.

"Ben & Jerry's has decided to brand itself as the anti-Israel ice cream," Bennett said in a statement.

The decision, announced Monday, follows a campaign by pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. to boycott the confectioner for allowing ice cream sales in Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians seek that territory for a future independent state.

The BDS movement, which calls for boycotts of Israel and which Israeli leaders label discriminatory, said Ben & Jerry's "is finally bringing its policy on Israel's regime of oppression against Palestinians in line with its progressive positions on Black Lives Matter and other justice struggles."

In a similar move in 2018, the Airbnb property rental company announced it would forbid listings in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Five months later, it reversed that decision and said it would continue to list settlement properties but donate profits from all West Bank listings to organizations supplying humanitarian aid around the world.

It's unclear if Ben & Jerry's, owned by Unilever, is just targeting Israeli settlement sales, or if it also intends to end sales of its ice cream in Palestinian-owned stores in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A Ben & Jerry's spokesperson declined to elaborate. Two stores that sell Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the Palestinian city of Ramallah declined comment.

The company said it would "stay in Israel through a different arrangement" and would provide details on a later date. It is unclear how the company intends to continue sales in Israel while preventing sales in Israeli settlements. Israel outlaws boycotts of its settlements in the West Bank.

Unilever, which acquired Ben & Jerry's in 2000, said "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very complex and sensitive situation" and that "we have always recognized the right of the brand and its independent Board to take decisions about its social mission. We also welcome the fact that Ben & Jerry's will stay in Israel."

Avi Zinger, owner of Ben & Jerry's local Israeli manufacturer in southern Israel, told Ynet News that the company refused to renew his license after it expires in late 2022 because he declined to stop sales in the West Bank.

"I answered, 'I am Israeli and I cannot limit my sales there and also the law requires me to sell in all of Israel,' Zinger told YNet News. "I cannot go against my country."

In an Instagram video, Zinger called on Israelis to stand by the local Ben & Jerry's manufacturer and "help us fight, because our war is everyone's war."

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Ben & Jerry's Says It Will Stop Ice Cream Sales In Occupied Territories - NPR

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2021

Less than two weeks after 55th Paratroopers Brigade commander Lt. Gen. Mordechai (Motta) Gur announced that the Temple Mount is in our hands at the culmination of 1967s Six Day War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan determined that actually, in terms of religious authority, it wasnt.

At a meeting with Muslim religious leaders atop the Mount on June 17 that year, agreement was reached on a so-called reformulated status quo under which the Jordanian Muslim Waqf would continue to hold religious responsibility for the compound under overall Israeli supervision; prayer on the Mount would be reserved for Muslims only; Jews would be allowed to visit but not to pray there.

This constituted a strikingly radical decision. Having finally regained sovereignty in a bitter defensive war over the holiest place in Judaism, the site of the two biblical Temples, here was the defense minister of the revived Jewish state promptly relinquishing the Jews right to practice their religion there.

Dayan was, pragmatically, seeking to tamp down the post-war frictions with the Muslim world, for which the Al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Haram al-Sharif is the third-most holy shrine. And he was utilizing the halachic ban on Jews so much as setting foot on the Temple Mount for fear that they might inadvertently desecrate the area where the Temples Holy of Holies, its inner sanctuary, had stood. The Temple Mount was in Israels hands, but the Jews holiest place for prayer would remain the Western Wall, the retaining wall of the compound, beneath it.

Mordechai Gur (seated, with black curly hair) and his troops survey the Old City before launching their attack in the 1967 Six Day War (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA/Mazel123)

Over the decades, Israels pragmatic forbearance has often been turned against it. The fact that the Jewish state did not insist on asserting the fullest sovereignty over the Temple Mount, emphatically including religious rights, has been seized upon by its demonizers to argue that self-evidently the area is not of paramount importance to the Jews, and by extension that the Jews are not genuinely connected to this land at all. Whereas a century ago, the historicity of the biblical Temples was axiomatic in Islam the mosques atop the mount were built precisely to demonstrate Islams ostensible preeminence over Judaism now it is increasingly denied, even ridiculed, including notably by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who has declared that the entire Zionist project is a colonial enterprise unrelated to Judaism.

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Many in Israel have bristled with increasing frustration against the ban on Jewish prayer at the Mount in recent years. Rabbinical opposition has been gradually fragmenting and Orthodox nationalist activists have pushed against the restriction. The bitterness has been exacerbated by episodes of archaeological desecration on the part of the Waqf.

But Israeli governments, of all political hues, have nonetheless declared their commitment to the status quo, concluding that the fragile balance of forces in this region requires its maintenance. Notably, in 2015, amid one of the innumerable flare-ups of tension surrounding the site, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically assured Jordan the nation from which Israel had captured the Old City in 1967, and now the peace partner with which Israel shares its longest border that Israel would not allow Jewish prayer on the Mount. Israel will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount, Netanyahu promised.

Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, as reported by Channel 12 news, July 17, 2021. (Channel 12 screenshot)

In recent months, however, the Israeli authorities have presided over a quiet revolution, unfolding under the radar, under which Jewish prayer on the Mount is sometimes tolerated, a Channel 12 TV report showed on Saturday night. Whereas in the past, Jewish visitors would be removed from the compound for merely muttering a few worshipful words, and tour guides could be asked to leave for quoting Jewish liturgy in the course of their explanations, a minyan (10-strong prayer quorum) has for months been holding morning prayers atop the Mount, not far from the golden Dome of the Rock, under the tolerant gaze of Israeli police, the TV report revealed, and lengthy Jewish study classes have also been permitted.

On Sunday, Tisha BAv, the fast day that marks the destruction of both Temples and a succession of other black moments in Jewish history, some 1,700 Jewish visitors were allowed onto the mount, in a typically tense atmosphere that saw minor early-morning clashes between Palestinian protesters at Al-Aqsa and police, and subsequent denunciations of any and all Jewish visits to the site by Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and the Israeli governments own Arab coalition member, the Raam party.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Monday, July 19, 2021. (Pool Photo via AP)

Pleased that the days high-tension visits had passed off with relatively little trouble, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday afternoon issued a statement, in Hebrew and in English, thanking the security authorities for managing the events on the Temple Mount with responsibility and consideration, while maintaining freedom of worship for Jews on the Mount [italics added]. Prime Minister Bennett emphasized that freedom of worship on the Temple Mount will be fully preserved for Muslims as well, who will soon be marking the fast of the Day of Arafah and the Eid al-Adha.

But of course, under the status quo, there is no freedom of worship for Jews on the Mount.

The Times of Israel immediately sought clarification from the Prime Ministers Office. Coming a day after the Channel 12 footage of Jewish prayer on the Mount tolerated by the police, was Bennett, who heads the Orthodox-nationalist Yamina party, indicating that the arrangement put in place by Moshe Dayan in 1967 was now at an end?

The Temple Mount is arguably the worlds most combustible piece of real estate. To give just two recent examples, Palestinian terrorists unleashed the Second Intifada in 2000 using the pretext of opposition leader Ariel Sharons visit to the compound; the latest Israel-Gaza conflict, in May, was launched by Hamas capitalizing in part on tensions relating to the Mount. Given the extreme sensitivities, one might have expected a rapid clarification from the Prime Ministers Office on Sunday: Yes, the new Israeli government is changing its policy. Or, no, the statement was incorrectly worded and will be amended and reissued.

Neither of those things happened. Asked what was going on, Israels minister of public security, Labors Omer Barlev, appeared on television on Sunday evening to declare that the status quo has not changed, that Jewish prayer at the site remains illegal, and that Bennetts office had apparently misworded its statement. The PMO had meant to say freedom of movement for Jews on the Temple Mount, Barlev suggested, not freedom of worship.

From the Prime Ministers Office itself, however, there was silence.

On Monday morning, Army Radio quoted unnamed sources in the prime ministers circle declaring that the statement had been incorrectly formulated. Contradictorily, however, the same Hebrew report said Bennett had backtracked from his declaration of freedom of worship for Jews on the Temple Mount in the wake of criticism from within the coalition.

And, officially, from the Prime Ministers Office, as of this writing hours before Jordans King Abdullah, incidentally, is due at the White House for talks with US President Joe Biden still nothing. No corrected statement has been issued. The original statement, highlighting freedom of worship for Jews on the Mount, remains unamended on the prime ministers official Hebrew and English social media accounts.

Moshe Dayan at the Temple Mount, June 7, 1967 (Ilan Bruner / GPO)

The decision Moshe Dayan made on June 17, 1967, can of course be legitimately examined and debated by the Israeli government. But any shift in policy would have far-reaching implications. Changing the status quo at the Temple Mount is not a move to be considered lightly.

Turning an official blind eye to Jewish prayer at the site, then issuing statements appearing to endorse it, then anonymously backtracking while leaving the formal statements unamended, is a case of playing with fire at a uniquely incendiary flashpoint. Bennett needs to clarify his position rapidly and responsibly.

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Israels PM is playing with fire on the Temple Mount - The Times of Israel

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