Kesher Talk

How to meet your Jewish soul mate: I met mine at a hockey game, but I don't think that would work out for most people. Doron Kornbluth of Jewishdating.com has 7 tips on how to make it happen:

1. Move to a Jewish neighborhood
2. Join a Torah class
3. Make Jewish friends
4. Get set up
5. Go to singles' events
6. Go where Jews go
7. Use the net

posted by William @ 3/19/2004 08:55:07 AM  

Jews of odd backgrounds: Hindu-Jews: Some call them "HinJews." Others say they're "Om-Shalomers." But whatever they're called, young Jews of Hindu and Jewish parentage are coming of age, marking the emergence of a new cultural subset in an increasingly diverse American Jewish population.

In the wake of the Hart-Cellar Act, which liberalized U.S. immigration policy in 1967, a wave of mostly male Indian graduate students moved to the United States to study engineering. Many of them married Jewish-American women. Of these couples, many have raised their kids as Jews while also introducing them to secular Indian cultural values. Like "JewBu kids" — born of Jews married to Buddhists — these children have grown up surrounded by a unique blend of values and traditions.

"Despite the obvious religious differences, there are clear parallels between Jewish and Hindu traditions," said Nathan Katz, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University and the editor of The Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies. "They share an emphasis on home-centered religious practices, family values, dietary codes and other rather striking similarities."

posted by William @ 3/18/2004 08:55:31 AM  

Jews in odd places. Hag Sameach! It's St. Patrick's Day.

Jews in Ireland don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but in their diaspora from the Emerald Isle, many Irish Jews feel a twinge in their hearts come March 17. "The Jewish sons of Ireland celebrate [St. Patrick's Day] much more in America," said Reuben's mother Ray Rivlin, author of the new book Shalom Ireland: A Social History of the Jews in Modern Ireland (Gill & Macmillan).

Shalom Ireland is the latest history of an organized, observant Jewish community that - some would argue - is breathing its last sigh. Jews have been in Ireland since the Anglo-Norman invasions of the 13th century, but it wasn't until the late 19th century that large numbers fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe began settling in earnest.

In her book, Rivlin discusses the Dublin Jewish Board of Guardians that brought relief to Jewish immigrants. She talks about Jews who opened up businesses in Cork, Limerick and Belfast. She mentions Jews who entered politics and fought alongside their countrymen in the Easter Uprising of 1916. (Robert Driscoe, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, fought with the independence movement leader Eamon de Valera and ran guns into Ireland from Germany.) Rivlin recreates Clanbrassil Street, once a thriving Jewish enclave of kosher butchers, fishmongers and merchants that James Joyce chose to make the birthplace of his Irish Jewish hero, Leopold Bloom. A century ago, during Clanbrassil Street's heyday, Jews from all over Dublin went to the haberdasher, the drapery store and the baker there, and Yiddish - inflected with an Irish brogue - was chattered in the street.

And let's not forget the most famous Irish Jew of all.

posted by Judith @ 3/17/2004 03:26:38 PM  

"A Spanish Surrender?"

The Wall Street Journal
A Spanish Surrender?
By CHRISTOPHER COX
March 16, 2004

Have terrorists succeeded in changing the course of Spanish democracy?

The revelation that al Qaeda was likely behind the Madrid slaughter of hundreds, just prior to Sunday's elections, is widely viewed as the reason for the Socialists' upset victory. The result, it is said, reflects voter backlash against Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's strong support for the global war on terror.

If so, it also reflects terrorist backlash against Mr. Aznar's staunch support for American efforts to destroy al Qaeda. "This is an answer to your cooperation with the Bush criminals and their allies," was the message on the purported al Qaeda video that blew open the Spanish elections. "This is an answer to crimes that you committed in the world, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Socialists' 11th-hour campaign theme, and the terrorists' rationale for their bloody retribution, thus coincide. It was the Spanish government's willingness to stand with America in taking the fight to the terrorists -- notably, according to the tape, in Afghanistan as well as Iraq -- that both the Socialists and the terrorists claim made Prime Minister Aznar himself culpable for the deaths of 200 of his countrymen.

On election day in Madrid, thousands of demonstrators yelled, "Aznar -- your war, our dead." Pre-March 11 polls had favored his ruling Popular Party to win handily. But voter sentiment was heavily swayed in the final hours by a widespread sense that Mr. Aznar had needlessly dragged Spain into America's fights, earning Spaniards the bloody retribution of al Qaeda.

Indeed, the explicit claim of the Socialists over the weekend was that if al Qaeda were to be proven responsible for the railway bombings, Mr. Aznar would bear responsibility for having provoked them. The Socialists' alternative policy would be dealing with terrorists through "all available means" -- including dialogue and negotiations.

Certainly, this represents a stark difference. Prime Minister Aznar never saw it as an option for Spain to sit out the post-9/11 war on terror. Spain's history of terror at the hands of ETA, the violent Basque separatists, had made him keenly aware that civilization must be on offense against terrorism. He also knew that Spain needed international cooperation in its fight against ETA. When 3,000 innocent civilians were murdered in New York, Washington and Shanksville, he knew instinctively that his nation and America faced a common challenge.

By Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Aznar had already resolved the dilemma of whether to fight or flee in the face of terrorism. But much of America, and most of Spain, had not.

In the days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon air strikes, millions of Americans were in anguish over whether the grisly deaths of so many must inevitably be followed by more violence. On Sept. 29, just two weeks after 9/11, thousands rallied in Washington, San Francisco and Barcelona to discourage armed retaliation. If George W. Bush had not broken decisively with such sentiment by taking the war to Kabul, the irresolution might have lasted much longer.

It is of course a natural response to such horrific violence that -- if at all possible -- we bring it to an end. Mightn't we, for example, take no aggressive action and hope the terrorists don't strike again? Why risk further provoking them? Besides, many rationalized in the wake of 9/11, it's really a Mideast problem. If only we stop supporting Israel, then they'll leave us alone.

Such desperate rationalization is now under way throughout Spain, but as in America, it will likely give way to a harder-nosed realism. It has doubtless been a comfort to those grieving the loss of loved ones to imagine that, by sheer act of national will, further violence might be stopped. The same fond hopes that tempted many Americans after 9/11 undoubtedly underlie the sudden rush of support for the Socialists' policy of withdrawal from Spain's unstinting alliance with the aggressive anti-terror policies of America.

There is, however, a significant difference between the 9/11 bombings in America and the 3/11 bombings in Spain. Unlike the al Qaeda attacks in America, last Thursday's terror attacks in Madrid occurred three days before the nation's elections. The effect was profound. The apparently successful use of terror to alter the course of the Spanish election -- achieving precisely the hoped-for result announced in the terrorists' own video, the rejection of the pro-America policy of Prime Minister Aznar's party -- teaches a dangerous lesson. The terrorists will be convinced that their violence worked.

The lesson, once learned, can hardly be limited to Spain. Now terrorists need not limit themselves to intimidating individual politicians or judges with violence. In the minds of al Qaeda's adherents, the population of entire nations, if subjected to suitably horrific carnage just prior to an election, might now be manipulated into voting for governments that disavow armed opposition to terrorism. As a result of the Spanish experience, America's own elections must now be considered targets.

The Spanish electorate -- and even more pointedly, their new Socialist government -- now faces a long national reconciliation with the new reality they have unintentionally helped create. Spain's new prime minister, Jose Rodriguez Zapatero, will have to decide whether "dialogue" in the war on terror is really possible. More fundamentally, does he really believe that his predecessor needlessly dragged Spain into a fight it could have avoided?

Spain's rank-and-file Socialists may not wish to acknowledge the depth of their nation's infection with al Qaeda. Mohamed Atta held top-level meetings in Madrid to plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Several al Qaeda cells have been discovered in Spain; more than 30 al Qaeda operatives have been arrested there. It is against this backdrop that last week's train bombings, apparently the work of a multinational cell of al Qaeda loyalists, must be understood.

For years, many European nations have honored a silent pact with Islamic militants, allowing them to move safely so long as those nations were not themselves attacked. This might now become Spain's new policy. If, as Edmund Burke famously said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, then Spain's Socialists surely will have the opportunity to hand al Qaeda a victory with enormous implications for America and our allies.

But there are also early signs that Mr. Zapatero understands the implications of the extraordinary events that have so improbably catapulted him into the center of the world's attention. On the night of his election, he announced that his government's "immediate priority" will be "to beat all forms of terrorism." If, against election-eve expectations, he determines that Spain must continue to be a stalwart in the global war on terror, then the terrorists will have failed -- both in changing the course of Spanish democracy, and in their ultimate aim to force the world's democracies to capitulate to their cruel and indiscriminate violence.

Mr. Cox, a Republican congressman from California, is chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

posted by William @ 3/17/2004 09:00:36 AM  

Jews in sports: Football: Robert Kraft, ownder of the New England Patriots, some time ago combined "his love of Israel with his passion for football by sinking $250,000 into the Kraft Family Stadium. Located at the north end of Sachar Park near the entrance to Jerusalem, the stadium has served for four years as a center for sports in the Israeli capital, hosting youth soccer and softball groups, little league baseball and a hugely successful men's flag football league.

Now the stadium is also home to something new: Israel's only women's football team."

posted by William @ 3/16/2004 08:39:33 AM  

Jews in odd places: Serbia: Serbian Jewish theater director Stefan Sablic has another hit on his hands, a deeply disturbing play set in the 1930s about a German Jewish immigrant in America and his former best friend, who becomes a Nazi.

Sablic’s adaptation of “Address Unknown,” by Katherine Kressman Taylor, opened recently in Belgrade to enthusiastic audiences and extensive media exposure.

Powerfully performed by two of Serbia’s leading actors — both of whom, coincidentally, are Jewish — the play is a harrowing chronicle of love, betrayal and vengeance presented in the form of letters between the two one-time friends.

posted by William @ 3/15/2004 08:59:10 AM