JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Roving Rabbis get wired

By Ben Harris · August 18, 2008

Roving Rabbis, a 65-year-old Chabad summer program that sends rabbinical students out to service remote Jewish communities, has joined the Internet age. This summer, readers can offer the 400 rabbis tips about where to find Jews in the far-flung spots they'll be visiting. You can also follow their exploits on their blog, which keeps the public appraised of every hung mezuzah, kashered kitchen, and wrapped tefillin. Some of the entries are pretty wild, like visiting a Jewish inmate in a maximum security mental hospital in Connecticut, or finding a Yiddish speaker in Cartagena.

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What about Helen Thomas is too racy for HBO?

By Ami Eden · August 18, 2008

HBO's short bio on longtime UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas – "Thank You, Mr. President" – premiers Monday night at 9 p.m. Tom Shales, the Washington Post's TV critic, seems happy enough with the flick, except for its failure to tackle her harsh criticisms of Israel:

What's disappointing about Thomas, and troubling about the film, is her stridency in criticizing Israel and defending its enemies. Other than a passing reference to Thomas's parents as having been Syrian immigrants, the film never hints at Thomas's anti-Israeli rhetoric. In her writings, she's already dismissed both John McCain and Barack Obama as being friendly to Israel and hostile to the Palestinians, "so the Israelis have no worries about the November election."

Especially during the current administration, her "questions" at press briefings have been more like tirades, on one occasion prompting Tony Snow, the late journalist who was then press secretary, to respond, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view." This would have been a pertinent and amusing clip to include in the film. Not for nothing was Thomas recently hailed as "the epitome of journalistic integrity for over 57 years" – by the Arab American News.

When controversies are a large part of a person's career, it's reasonable to expect even an adulatory documentary at least to mention them. "Thank You, Mr. President" could easily have included both sides – Thomas attacked and Thomas defended. Even attacking the attackers would have been more honest than ignoring the matter altogether.

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The N.Y. Times’ call to action—for everyone but the Palestinians

By Uriel Heilman · August 18, 2008

The lead editorial in today's New York Times calls on Ehud Olmert to freeze all Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and ease Palestinian movement obstructed by Israeli roadblocks.

It also calls on the Israeli prime minister's likely successors to "behave responsibly" and negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians. And it says "A way must be found to help turn Hamas into a legitimate and acceptable negotiating partner."

Israeli politicians must work with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to strengthen his hand vis-a-vis Hamas and other extremists, Arab countries must press Hamas to be more responsible, and President Bush must press Israel and the Palestinian Authority to do what's necessary to secure a peace deal, the editorial says.

Why do the N.Y. Times editorialists put the onus for action on all parties except for the Palestinians?

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No math, no science, no English for Israel’s haredim

By Uriel Heilman · August 18, 2008

Why should yeshiva boys need to know the multiplication tables or that the Earth revolves around the sun?

In an 11th-hour measure, the Knesset passed a law last month preserving public funding for haredi schools whose students study nothing other than Jewish studies. No math, no science, no English. The L.A. Times has a decent backgrounder on the debate over state funding of yeshivas.

This reminds me of two revealing conversations I had with Israeli haredim in recent years that evinced their lack of basic knowledge of how the world works. In one, a haredi was surprised to learn that the sun was a star. In the other, a haredi man patiently explained to me that after the sun sets, it warms the waters of the earth because it heats them from below-ground upward.

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Israeli Olympians visit Beijing school

By Alison Klayman · August 18, 2008

Four Israeli Olympic swimmers (Itai Chammah, Guy Barnea, Tom Beera and Gal Nevo), the Israeli Ambassador to China, the President of Israel's National Swimming Association and a slew of Chinese and Israeli reporters visited the Shi Jia Primary School on Monday, Aug. 18. This school was assigned Israel as part of a Beijing-wide program of partnerships between schools and Olympic countries. The Shi Jia school put on events over the last two years to teach the students about Israel, how to say "Shalom," even had its students Skype with a school in Jerusalem. Of course, the school was following the progress of Israeli athletes along with China's.

Hidden inside a neighborhood maze of alleyways, this 2000-student school is anything but small. The school was founded in 1939, but this site (which used to be a single-story temple style house) was newly constructed in 2004 and only serves the third through sixth grade.

And what service indeed. There was a room filled with rows of electric pianos, next to the hallway of individual music practice rooms that were nicer than the ones at my university. Of course, these were all on the bottom floor right next to the underground parking lot entrance, which reminded me of a United States mall. We also saw a beautiful theater with a superior tech booth, a whole science area that looked more like a kid's playtime museum exhibit, plus a row of small table-saws that looked rusty and dangerous in comparison, for over 20 students at a time to make wood carvings.

The highlight of the tour for the Israeli Olympians was clearly the visit to the school's unbelievable sports facilities. An outdoor track was surrounded by green landscaping, windmills and a dormitory with solar panels on the roof. Descending into the gymnasium, which had more equipment than a Bally's Fitness Club, the fencing lesson seemed to be teaching the well-outfitted youngsters as much about shouting as technique.

Finally, the Israeli men were in their element at the pool, which was pumping various Beijing Olympic theme songs over the loudspeaker. An assorted crowd of boys and girls shivered outside the pool for the athletes' millionth photo-op of the day, underneath towering photos with the Speedo logo printed on them of swimmers like Michael Phelps.

The kids looked a little lackluster as they posed in their swimsuits, but two of them perked up when someone told them the Chinese names of the Israeli athletes that were standing by their side. The kids' faces lit up- "We heard of them!" they cried.

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