• Bar Rafaeli, the Israeli model and Leonardo DiCaprio flame, joins fight against Israeli draft dodging.
• Amy Winehouse turns down James Bond.
• Scarlett Johansson is getting married.
• The New Jersey Jewish News takes on Ben Stein for drawing a line between Darwinism and Nazism. On the other side of the coin, Shmuley Boteach cries foul after being compared to Hitler by scientist Richard Dawkins (just the sort of anti-religious academic that Stein is complaining about in his film).
• The London Jewish Chronicle: “Prince Charles was so taken by his involvement in creating a new Polish Jewish community centre, which he opened in Krakow [last week], that he now intends to become involved in another Jewish project in Eastern Europe.”
• 60 bloggers in 60 days blogging about Israel’s 60th birthday (now say that 10 times real fast).

Earlier this week I attended the Righteous Indignation Conference, a three-day forum and workshop which provided a forum for progressive Jewish activists to share best practices, discuss current strategies and build community among each other. The event, which took place at Hebrew College in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, brought together over 100 Jewish activists from around the U.S., representing dozens of social action organizations, from the American Jewish World Service to J Street.

Among the various panel discussions and workshops which took place during the course of the conference, the two sessions which caused the greatest stir were the keynote panel, “Building a Progressive Jewish Movement,” and the Israel panel, “Talking About Israel.”

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The puppets from Hamas television reflect on Israel’s 60th birthday:

The Rabbinical Council of America has taken heat over a recent deal on conversions that critics describe as a complete capitulation to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Well, in the latest conversion-related controversy, the RCA is speaking out against Israeli religious authorities:

Rabbinical Council of America Reacts to Ruling of Israeli Rabbinical Appeals Court regarding Past Conversions by the Israeli Conversion Authority

Leviticus 19:33: “You (plural) shall not oppress the convert in your land.”

Commentary of the Netziv: “The plural form of the verse teaches us that a third party who sees the oppression of a convert and does not protest is also guilty of oppression.”

The Rabbinical Council of America, having taken note of the recent ruling of the Bet Din Elyon (Rabbinic Court of Appeals) of Israel, nullifying certain conversions performed by the State Conversion Authority led by Rabbi Chaim Druckman, has today issued the following statement:

Having reviewed the ruling of the Bet Din Elyon in detail, and being fully mindful of the respect due the rulings of duly constituted rabbinical courts in their respective jurisdictions, the RCA finds it necessary to state for the record that in our view the ruling itself, as well as the language and tone thereof, are entirely beyond the pale of acceptable halachic practice, violate numerous Torah laws regarding converts and their families, create a massive desecration of God’s name, insult outstanding rabbinic leaders and halachic scholars in Israel, and are a reprehensible cause of widespread conflict and animosity within the Jewish people in Israel and beyond. The RCA is appalled that such a ruling has been issued by that court.

We have been assured by Israel’s Chief Rabbi Rav Shlomo Moshe Amar, who is also the President of the Rabbinical Courts System of Israel, that in releasing this ruling the court in question directly countermanded his instructions and policies. He has confirmed that the ruling has no legal standing at this time. We commend Rav Amar for his positive role in this matter since its very inception in the Ashdod regional court.

We add our rabbinic voice to those of others who have called for a thorough review and repudiation of the actions of a select few of the Bet Din Elyon, who in this ruling as in other previous instances, have sought to undermine the Conversion Authority.

For this reason, and others, it is more important than ever that the Conversion Authority be strengthened in its important work in bringing about halachicly proper conversions to our faith and to the Jewish people.

Given the very public nature of the challenge posed by the ruling in question, we call on the Chief Rabbis of Israel to reaffirm their support of the Conversion Authority and its leadership in clear and unambiguous terms at the earliest possible time. Until that will happen, each passing day will cause reprehensible anguish to halachic converts, irreparable harm to the fabric of the Jewish people, and a considerable debasement of the good name of Torah, halachah, and tradition.

One of the most captivating New York premieres at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, which ended yesterday, was Strangers, a powerful film about a chance romance between an Israeli man and a Palestinian woman who meet on a subway in Berlin. Their relationship is rocked not only by their jarring cultural differences, but by the disturbing events of the 2006 war in Lebanon, scenes of which are incorporated into the film.

Despite the fact that New York, like Los Angeles and Miami, has an entire festival devoted to films from Israel, Tribeca has been a major showcase for such Israeli films as The Bubble, Encounter Point, Yossi & Jagger and Ushpizin. Also screened at Tribeca this year was a short film called Roads, about the relationship between a traumatized Israeli ex-soldier and a 13-year-old Palestinian boy who works for a drug dealer.

After Sunday Levo spoke to the enthusiastic audience about how the film, which was nominated for best world drama at the Sundance Film Festival in January, came together and was put together. He said he was asked if he would be interested in the role just two weeks before filming began. Very few of the lines were scripted, and filming of scenes in the Berlin and Paris subways, and at the World Cup finals, was done surreptitiously, without going through official channels.

Levo said the movie, which was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival and arrives at theaters in Israel on May 29, will apparently be shown this summer at the Ramallah Film Festival, in the West Bank. It will be interesting to see if it is as popular there as it was here.

Looks like we could have a replay of the whether-to-call-it-a-genocide debate.

Yesterday we had a brief about a statement from 185 rabbis and other communal figures calling on Jewish tourists to skip the Beijing Olympics. Well, today the ADL is out with a statement coming out against a Jewish boycott. It appears to be meant as a rebuttal.

Read the ADL statement here.

Below is the full statement calling for a tourist boycott, along with the list of signatories.

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• A blogger at the Guardian argues that the Holocaust and continuing examples of “muderous anti-Semitism” justifies Israel’s existence.
• A survivor of Buchenwald writes in the Jerusalem Post that the hatred of Jews knows no bounds and the way to respond is with strength.
• In Ha’aretz: “How a non-Jew living in Israel came to understand the Holocaust.”
• BBC has a slide show focusing on the observance of the day in Israel.

Palestinian Media Watch has posted this clip on YouTube showing a segment from Hamas-run television asserting that the Holocaust was a plot cooked up by Israeli leaders to win international sympathy for their cause:

Quick, convene a conference, someone is falling down on the job: “Israeli Teens Don’t Fear Another Holocaust.”

Oh, false alarm. According to the new ADL survey in question, a majority of Israeli teens do think their country is under “serious threat” of destruction.

Here’s the full press release: Read the rest of this entry »

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner makes the case for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire:

There are reasons for Israel not to want a cease-fire with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. For one, the terrorist groups will take it as a victory; it will be a great morale booster for them. For another, it will undercut Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian moderates; the message they’ll take from it is that their way, the way of negotiation, didn’t work, while the Hamas/Islamic Jihad way, the way of terror, worked. And this conclusion will be drawn not only by Palestinians, but by much of the Muslim world, including Iran.

Not good.

Nevertheless, I am in favor of Israel accepting a cease-fire with Hamas. How the Palestinians and other Muslims interpret such a cease-fire would be one thing; the true import of it would be something very different - which the Palestinians and other Muslims would see soon enough.

If a cease-fire worked, it would bring peace and quiet on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, while the downside for Israel wouldn’t be any steeper than it’s already been for several years. By agreeing to a cease-fire we don’t have anything to lose, and a lot to gain. If Hamas offers, we should accept.

I KNOW some of you have questions. Such as: What if it doesn’t work? What if Hamas keeps firing Kassams? Or what if Hamas upholds the cease-fire but Islamic Jihad doesn’t?

The answer is: Then the cease-fire is over and Israel goes back to war in Gaza like we’ve been doing for the last seven years. Nothing gained, but nothing lost, either. …