thisisbabylon.net

I invite everyone who has an interest in unbiased journalism to hear this side of the story:

English-language communiques from the Iraqi Resistance are nothing new. However, if you make note of their tones of voice, they sound like a group of people unlike those that are being portrayed in our media.

Far from mercenaries, these people sound like people driven to the brink by an ever-growing military force that will not leave them alone. Their (increasingly more-beloved) ex-leader was already taken out of office, now they speak of chemical weapons being used in Fallujah -- this was also already reported on on uruknet.info -- and of deformities happening to their children.

While I can't say that I stand by and condone 2,500 Americans being killed -- I can't say that I'm so callous as to patently dismiss the statements of a father lamenting his childrens' disabilities, his wife's death, his own homelessness. While they are still faceless "insurgents" it's easy to dismiss these people. Once the people have names, families, lives, it's a different emotional story.

These people have paid the ultimate sacrifices for our gas mileage.

They didn't do 9/11. They didn't come against us. Yet their lives have been ruined en masse, and the number of Iraqi dead stands in the hundreds of thousands, 2,155 just last month in Baghdad alone. This only represents 85 percent of Iraqis killed that month.

What is our license, our justification for what we continue to do?

Posted by Y-Love at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yediot Aharonot reported today news so appalling, so racist, that I was surprised that 2006 was the dateline on the article.

Meet Rav and Shmuel Street in the ultra-Orthodox town of Kiryat Sefer in central Israel: A corner street, a great view, and lots of children with side curls playing around. But there is something else this street has: It is the only street in Israel where Jews of Middle Eastern descent are not allowed to move to.

The Brachfeld neighborhood's reception committee decided to ban additional Sephardic families from entering streets and buildings in which 35 percent of the tenants are Sephardic....The reception committee recently decided that there are too many residents of Middle Eastern descent in some of Brachfeld's streets and buildings. Therefore, Sephardic Jews wishing to live in the town cannot live on Rav and Shmuel Street and are directed to other streets.

Of course no one's being racist:

"The rate of people becoming newly religious is higher among the Sephardim, and the spiritual risk in letting such families enter the neighborhood is higher," a top go-getter at Kiryat Sefer said. "It's not that we are racist, but we worry for our children's future. This scattering is also in favor of the Sephardim," he added.

It should be mentioned that newly religious Jews of East European or Western origin are considered problematic by the ultra-Orthodox community as they sometimes bring with them behaviors from their secular past, such as watching television. "I am trying to sell my apartment, and if a Sephardic client comes along, I'll have a problem because I'll be surpassing the percentage in my building," one of Brachfeld's residents said.

"It's an economic issue. People don’t want Sephardim to live in the neighborhood, because then Ashkenazim will not buy apartments and the value of the apartments will decrease," the resident added.

No, not racist at all.

This disgusts me, and is not fitting for religious individuals to act like this.

However, the only way to combat ignorance is education.

Loolwa Khazoom, a Persian Jew writing for UCLA's Jewish Student Magazine Ha'Am(The People), says succinctly the core of the proactive process which will help us to rid ourselves of such intra-Jewish tension:

... I have found Jewish community leaders unwilling to make it a priority to fund projects that will educate our community about Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian Jewish heritage before it is too late.

I find it imperative that Jewish organizations acknowledge the responsibility they have in reflecting Jewish diversity and that they give a much higher energetic and financial priority to educating themselves and their constituents about Jewish multiculturalism. Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian individuals should not bear the burden of educating our fellow Jews at our own expense. When we go to Jewish events and prayer services, we have the right to expect to see our Jewish heritage reflected in them.

Just as the community pays to have individuals do Israel education outreach; just as the community pays to have individuals do Holocaust education outreach; so must the community pay to have individuals do Jewish multicultural education outreach.

Until this reality happens, it is clear to me that the Jewish establishment does not hold Mizrahi, Sephardi, or Ethiopian Jewish people or traditions as being as valid and valuable as it holds Ashkenazi people and traditions. Until there is a shift in this paradigm, I anticipate that the Jewish establishment will continue to resist enacting the kind of changes that need to happen in our community, to reflect Jewish multiculturalism.

Harsh words. But necessary. Education is the key to combatting ignorance. Her article is fascinating, it relates that once, upon telling a mainstream Jewish organization of her feelings of exclusion and ways to remedy them, she was told about "great Yemenite food" at this one restaurant in Israel.

I can only imagine how patronized she must have felt. (Actually I kind of know.)

Learn about a Jewish community. It might save yours from getting split apart.

Posted by Y-Love at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Thank you, South Florida Sun-Sentinel for making my Friday brighter.

Number of young Jews who consider themselves Orthodox is growing -- The Associated Press, Posted June 16 2006

NEW YORK · The percentage of young American Jews who consider themselves Orthodox is growing, a trend that will likely reshape the U.S. Jewish community, according to a report by the American Jewish Committee.

The recent study found that 16 percent of Jewish adults ages 18-29 are Orthodox. That's nearly double the percentage of Orthodox among Jews ages 35-39. Orthodox Jews are also more likely to be married by age 30, while more than half of all American Jews under the age of 40 are not married, according to the report.

The trend means a higher percentage of future Jewish leaders will probably be Orthodox, shifting the entire community in a more conservative direction, the AJC said.

"Younger Orthodox adults are likely to play increasingly important roles in organized Jewish life given their commitments, numbers and fertility patterns," said Steven Bayme, the group's director of contemporary Jewish life. The American Jewish population is estimated to be 5.5 million to 6 million people.

One in six of us. (Or at least until I turn 30.)
This is a startling finding. Previous editions of the National Jewish Population Survey noted percentages of traditionally observant Jews hovering around 10-15% for the past 25 years or so. Our generation in itself has surpassed this.

And let's not kid ourselves -- our Orthodoxy is not the Orthodoxy of our parents.

While many of us have shifted to the right, what we see now is a mosaic of Orthodox diversity unparalleled in previous years. Turn on the radio and listen to Chabad reggae. Listen to underground Chassidic hiphop. Go out to a Chassid meets Hipster party in Williamsburg and follow it up on Sunday with a trip to the "Shul of Rock", punctuated by a Carlebach Shabbat with sushi.

It is precisely our true pluralism -- that there really are 70 valid faces to Torah -- that is going to make Orthodoxy increasingly viable for future generations of Jews. We are not a group of gefilte-fish eating sticks-in-the-mud who create detached enclaves, out of sync with humanity. We are not a group of racist, sexist omniphobes.

We are a slice of humanity teeming with as much diversity as any other community. And G-d willing, more people will come to see that. And, conversely, as more people bring their varied cultural backgrounds into the fold of traditional Judaism, it is almost axiomatic that our mosaic will be more vibrant in the future.

We are right there on the cutting-edge of humanity seeing the future as much as our secular counterparts. Rabbi Rabbs, for example, is a charedi Orthodox standup comedian already generating a sizable following on MySpace.com, already having made his prime-time TV debut (ok it was the Japanese-turned-American game show fiasco "Banzai" but pe'os and a beard on TV is always a statement).

And wasn't that one new fashion designer raised frum?

Once Orthodoxy is truly destigmatized -- most of all by our non-Orthodox co-religionists -- once the Orthodox person is truly allowed to be on a "level playing field" with our "progressive" brethren, we will begin to see an outpouring of Torah and Divinity among the youth as never before.

This is beyond Shabbat experiences and Birthrights. An increasingly unstable world, combined with crumbling standards of everything being broadcast through every media outlet, only helps to drive people to think: Where is G-d in all of this?

And increasingly, people are finding the answer in the Holy Scripture and Talmud. Exclusively.

Ken yirbu. May it only increase.

Posted by Y-Love at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)