Displaying posts tagged with

“apathy”

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 [...]

Jun
15
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 49 comments

Talking Tachles 2: In Defence of the Right to Responsive Representation and Transparency

In the first post in this series, we asked a number of questions regarding representation, legitimacy and transparency. Some of the responses  touched on themes such as apathy and whether there is indeed any “right” to representation at all.
Firstly, a  straw man has been created in the suggestion that we are somehow disciples of Joseph [...]

May
26
2009
Life By Alex Fein | 5 comments

Reader Response 5: Israel, Kangaroo Courts, Unity, Speaking Out, and Subheadings

Today, we’ve not only experienced a major spike in readership, we have also seen a plethora of comments, some of which we’ll answer in this post.
Firstly, Israel is clearly integral to a Jew’s identity – whether said Jew is pro- or anti-Zionist. We find it hard to imagine a Jew without an opinion either way. [...]

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.”

May
19
2009
Opinion By Alex Fein | 2 comments

So What Do We Do? Jews and the Media

It often seems that we’re in an impossible bind. As commenters, Blistering, Paroggan, and Frochel have asked, how does our community deal with a media that is (The Australian excluded) either hostile or indifferent to us? How do we best approach matters such as the 8 minute play, and other issues rife with propagandising on both sides? We’ll begin with some of our ideas for change, but this is by no means an exhaustive list and we ask our readers to contribute their ideas.

May
19
2009
Opinion By Alex Fein | 23 comments

Michael Fagenblat’s Presentation at the Seven Jewish Children Reading

Seven Jewish Children is not an anti-Semitic play. On the contrary, its challenging message deserves to be heard, especially by Jews, Israelis and Zionists. However in the context of a Nakba commemoration for Australian Friends of Palestine, the play risks degenerating from being challenging and useful to useless self-validation. Here, then, are seven responses to Seven Jewish Children in the context of a commemoration marking what Palestinians call the Nakba–the Catastrophe–of 1948.

May
19
2009
Opinion By Alex Fein | 22 comments

What Were They Thinking? And Danny Lamm is Their Messenger!

Tomorrow – or perhaps the next day, those who enjoy seeing the Jews look stupid in the media are going to have a real mechiah! Tonight, there was a reading in Melbourne of that silly little 8 minute play, by and for people, some of whose best friends are Jews. You know the types. One or two have some media training, but they’re generally content to sit around agreeing with each other that Israel is the problem behind everything from climate change to the NRL footy group sex scandal. Raise your fist in solidarity, man. In other words, these types are pretty boring and we could so easily deprive them of oxygen if we just let them get on with their performance art, face painting, or whatever the hell it is that floats their boat.

But some genius decided that our best course of action was to mount a protest! Yes! With placards! And raised fists! And slogans! Seriously! Please imagine the undecided Aussie sitting at home watching Lateline (tonight on ABC), and seeing these angry Jews shrieking and looking like they were having a go at trying to hinder free expression. Reckon our Aussie mate was convinced? Any first year communications student can tell you that before mounting any sort of public campaign, you need to think about your audience.

May
18
2009
Opinion By Alex Fein | 8 comments

Reader Response 2: Incompetence, Negligence, and Legitimacy

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

One needn’t be planning the overthrow of ECAJ. Or the abolition of AIJAC as self appointed spokespeople for our community. We only seek to make public what has traditionally been private: disquiet with the direction our community’s leadership, and our interaction with the wider public. If this should inspire concrete change for the better, that would be wonderful, but that is not our job, nor has it ever been the brief of this site.