Displaying posts tagged with

“anti-Semitic”

Dec
17
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 34 comments

Winning Friends and Influencing People 3: Anti-Semitism, The Hiatus, and Secret GLBT Business.

I’ve written before about the story of my paternal grandmother’s Holocaust survival. In short, her father, a religious Jew, made friends with the local priest long before the catastrophic events that wiped out Polish Jewry.
As Jews from my family’s village were packed off to the concentration camps, this priest managed to forge papers for my [...]

Aug
27
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 51 comments

In The AJN – The Community Survey; a Question; and Coming Next

Community Survey
Headed by Andrew Markus, the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash has recently completed a 45 page study on patterns in Australia’s Jewish community.
This week, The AJN published some of the results, and this post will examine some of the more interesting findings:
1) Religious affiliation – As expected, Orthodox Jews are in the [...]

Aug
21
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 4 comments

In the AJN 2 – Congratulations and Caveats: AIJAC

On opposite ends of the political spectrum, this week, there have been signs of Jews behaving sensibly – together.
The AJN (page 6) reported on the AIJAC sponsored Inter-religious Coordinating Council of Israel’s members’, Rula Shubeita, Issa Jaber, and Dr Debbie Weissman, visit to Australia.
After overcoming the cognitive dissonance, there are many elements of this initiative [...]

Jun
25
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 16 comments

Loewenstein: Why Bother?

Antony Loewenstein has provided fodder for this blog on a number of occasions. Some of our readers have asked whether writing about Loewenstein serves any function, or indeed, whether such posts provide him with oxygen or legitimacy.
Let me state for the record: I have no personal beef with Mr Loewenstein. I met him once, quite [...]

Jun
2
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 22 comments

Zionism on Campus: a New Approach

There is no more fertile ground than the Western campus for all manner of anti-Zionist activity. How such activity can be countered is an important question, not only because Israel and Zionists are misrepresented, but because often, people come to university without eve having known or cared about Israel or Jews, and their formative experiences [...]

May
31
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 14 comments

An urgent request to Our Leadership for the Jewish reponse to anti-Indian violence

How is it that the only Jewish person to appear in the mainstream media condemning the recent violence against Indian students is David Vorchheimer? His letter to the editor, appearing in Saturday’s Age was a triumph of understatement, reason, and should be a template for the language with which our community’s leadership responds to this [...]

May
22
2009
Current Events By Alex Fein | 21 comments

AJN 2: Colin Rubinstein vs David Langsam

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series In the Australian Jewish News

Dr. Rubenstin, after years of faithful service at AIJAC, claims that his organisation was somehow bamboozled into making utterly self-defeating and inflammatory comments to the Australian media that transformed a silly 8 minute play into national news and enabled a partisan beat-up over a ridiculous Kennett painting.

May
21
2009
Current Events By Alex Fein | 18 comments

AJN 1: Peaceful Protests

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series In the Australian Jewish News

In this week’s Australian Jewish News, the protests at the 8 minute play were, of course covered. This gave the head of AUJS (Australian Union of Jewish Students), Stefan Oberman an opportunity to explain why exactly he thought yelling, placards, and raised fists were the answer.

While the article mentioned signs with admirable sentiments, such as, “Peace, salaam, shalom,” being waved, it neglected to mention other Jewish placards referencing dead Jewish children.

May
21
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 7 comments

Reader Response 4: Coups, Town Halls, and the Reluctance to Comment

It would seem prudent to gather some momentum, and to get a feel for the common ground shared by all Jewish moderates before storming Beit Weizman.

While the last sentence is somewhat tongue in cheek, it does allude to an idea that emerged at The Sensible Jew: what do people think of an open meeting, to which all Melbourne Jews are welcome, in which we could ask the leaders of the ZFA, ECAJ, AIJAC, and other bodies some questions regarding their recent media performance, and their claims to legitimate representation?

Would such a meeting do any good? Is it at all worthwhile? Are our institutions so rotten that attempting to graft democratic elements onto them would be futile? If so, by what mechanisms could an alternative leadership be established?

May
20
2009
Opinion By Alex Fein | 6 comments

Reader Response 3: Media and Anti-Semitism

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series reader response

Firstly, the observation has been made on more than one occasion that there are genuine anti-Semites (some of whom are Jewish) active in the media. The Sensible Jew believes that this point is moot. Apart from the impossibility of determining exactly which journalists and editors are indeed anti-Semitic, we must acknowledge that certain people with various ideological agendas will always abuse their positions in the media. Such people cannot be “rooted out.”

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