Ben Harris reported earlier this week on Hillel’s upcoming conference and the related debate over how to deal with anti-Israel activities on campus. In a related exchange…

The ZOA’s president, Morton Klein, has posted an opinion piece criticizing the Harvard Hillel for hosting an exhibition of photographs and testimony by Israeli soldiers who served in the Palestinian territories:

If an exhibit about Babe Ruth’s baseball career showed only his 100 worst games, one would be led to believe – erroneously – that Ruth was an awful player. The same is true with Harvard Hillel’s exhibit, showcasing a fraction of Israelis’ conduct not remotely reflecting their typical behavior.

Indeed, the exhibit promotes an anti-Israel lie. Human rights activist Natan Sharansky praised “Israel’s willingness to endanger the lives of its own soldiers in order to save the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian civilians.” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz proclaimed, “No country in history ever complied with a higher standard of human rights.”

There is nothing about the Harvard Hillel exhibit that would bring Jewish students closer to their heritage or cultivate their love and advocacy for Israel – goals that Hillel says it is dedicated to achieving. The exhibit could cause students to disassociate from their heritage, and feel shame or disgust about Israel, which is unwarranted and disastrous for our Jewish future.

The president of Harvard Hillel issued an open letter in response:

I write to clarify our situation because your press release and letters of condemnation do not in any way reflect the reality of Harvard Hillel or the Harvard campus. In fact, what you have said and not said is confusing and damaging. For instance, much of your condemnation confuses International Hillel and Harvard Hillel. International Hillel is not responsible for programming at Harvard Hillel. Why do you attack them page after page? And why do your attributions of blame to them apply to us in this situation?

Truth from a skyscraper in New York City looks different than on the ground of a campus in Cambridge. Every campus and every Hillel has its own unique culture. …

Harvard Hillel neither sponsors nor supports “Breaking the Silence”. We have indeed provided a venue for the exhibit. We have provided space in response to the request of two important student groups. Both groups are explicitly Zionist, although each group has a different function and self-understanding. The Harvard Students for Israel, our Israel advocacy group, one of the largest in the country, requested after consulting with the Progressive Jewish Alliance, a sponsor of the exhibit, to move “Breaking the Silence” from a prominent location on campus into the Hillel building. Their concerns were serious. First, they felt that the exhibit needed to be housed where it could be thoroughly and responsibly contextualized – not open to an ongoing heavy flow of traffic with little written or oral explanation. Second, they wanted to ensure that the exhibit not function as a discrete free-standing program but be a component of a larger educational program that could provide alternative perspectives, including a critique of the exhibit. Third, they wanted to avoid ugly, divisive, public displays that, while a delight to the media and outsiders, would be destructive to the Harvard Jewish community and to the reputation of Israel.

If Juno were Jewno …

(Jewschool has more on the story behind the video)

Britney removes her Kabbalah tattoo and … does lunch with Mel Gibson. On Shabbos!!!

Before the deadly construction accident last weekend, a Jewish octogenarian and retired contractor tried to warn New York officials that a crane on E. 51 St. wasn’t properly braced.

(With help from JTA digital master Daniel Sieradski)

The Forward’s Rebecca Spence writes about Hollywood’s growing interest in Israeli television shows:

As Hollywood executives roll out the red carpet for television shows imported from overseas, Israel is emerging as an unlikely new starlet.

In the wake of this season’s new HBO drama, “In Treatment” — the Israeli television hit remade for an American audience — a spate of fresh shows from the Jewish state is now making its way across the Atlantic.

“There is a land rush on Israeli properties right now,” said independent producer David Himmelfarb, who has an exclusive deal with ABC Studios, the television production arm of The Walt Disney Company. “It’s almost like a farm team for Hollywood, is what it’s becoming,” he said, referring to the Israeli television industry.

Rami Kashou, the Ramallah-born fashion designer who finished a close second on Season 4 of Bravo’s Project Runway, plays the checkpoint card in a Q & A with Jewcy.

What about [opening a studio] in your home country?

I’d love to open up in more than one country, but with checkpoints in the Middle East, it could be hard. But it would be nice to have my work in different countries, to make it more accessible.

Here’s a Project Runway montage of Kashou…

The Forward has hooked up with The Jewish Channel to produce three shows: a round table featuring the paper’s staffers, an interview show with J.J. Goldberg and a movie-themed program with arts & culture editor Alana Newhouse.

In one recent segment on Newhouse’s show, she and the TJC crew looked at the Jewish-Rastafarian documentary Awake Zion.

tjctv.com/blogs/are-dreadlocks-the-new-peyos/

MTV has produced two Holocaust awareness ads as part of its “Think” initiative.

THE FAMILY ROOM

THE SUBWAY

At the closing session of the of London Jewish Book Week, outgoing Ha’aretz editor David Landau suggested that instead of spending so much energy criticizing the media, pro-Israel activists should be asking if the press has a point when it puts forward comparisons to apartheid.

Listen to the audio clip or read an account of the talk (which also involved Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger).

Landau has generated plenty of controversy this year, by reportedly telling the U.S. secretary of state that Israel wants to be “raped” and boasting at a conference in Russia that his newspaper had “wittingly soft-pedaled” alleged corruption by Israeli political leaders who were pushing the peace process.

With baseball writers buzzing this week about comedian Billy Crystal’s short stint with the New York Yankees, Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt picked a good time for a column on his own stab at spring training glory:

As spring training moves toward Opening Day, rekindling in baseball fans everywhere the flickering and foolish hope that this could be the year for their team, I share with you my own story of child-like dreams rubbing up against reality. It’s a saga I like to think of as My (Almost) Magical Inning.

In this case it was the Baltimore Orioles (who went on to win the World Series that fall). And while it’s true that it was a spring training exhibition game, not a “real” game, and

it took place in a rundown ballpark in Miami, not Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, and it was to be in a “B” squad game, not an “A” squad game, and it was only for a fraction of the game, not the whole game, still — to play on the field with your heroes, in uniform, who wouldn’t jump at this chance of a lifetime?

So when a well-placed friend arranged for this to happen (long before Baseball Fantasy Camps became a booming business for affluent, grown-up kids), I flew down to Miami from Baltimore, excited and nervous, and clutching my weather-beaten fielders glove. …

The Connecticut Jewish Ledger has an article taking a look at how Irish Jews around the world mark St. Patrick’s Day.

The Lower East Side

The Loyal Yiddish Sons of Erin were a group of Irish-Jewish immigrants in New York City who, at least through the 1960s, would celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with green matzo balls. The Sons were actually Irish-born descendants of Polish and Lithuanian Jews who had stopped off in Ireland for a brief period on their migratory path to the U.S.

Ireland

David Briscoe experienced the day differently while growing up Jewish in Dublin as son of Lord Mayor Ben Briscoe and grandson of the city’s first Jewish Lord Mayor, Robert Briscoe.

“Irish Jews enjoy the day like everyone else and ensure it is a day to join in the celebration of Irish unity and culture,” says the associate professor of medicine at Harvard. “On a personal note, I plan to arrange a day of Irish music and dance for several of my colleagues to celebrate Irish culture.”

Israel

David Briscoe experienced the day differently while growing up Jewish in Dublin as son of Lord Mayor Ben Briscoe and grandson of the city’s first Jewish Lord Mayor, Robert Briscoe.

“Irish Jews enjoy the day like everyone else and ensure it is a day to join in the celebration of Irish unity and culture,” says the associate professor of medicine at Harvard. “On a personal note, I plan to arrange a day of Irish music and dance for several of my colleagues to celebrate Irish culture.”

Plus a list of prominent Irish Jews.

During her acceptance speech at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, Madonna reflects on writing her first song in an abandoned synagogue in Queens (4:45) and quotes some Talmud (6:15).