Today’s morning session of the conference was something of a revelation.
One of the highlights of this conference was meeting a young woman who is part of the Muslim roof body.
Did you know the Muslim community has been having many similar debates to us regarding roof bodies and representation?
Did you know that they had their own [...]
Dec
17
2009
17
2009
Nov
17
2009
17
2009
Interfaith Conference 2: Answers… Some to Questions I Hadn’t Thought to Ask
Sep
10
2009
10
2009
Aug
30
2009
30
2009
Dvir Abramovich in The Age: No Laughing!
Although Dvir Abramovich’s opinion column in today’s Sunday Age grossly misstates facts and makes various bizarre assertions, I would still like to thank him for the free publicity he has so generously given this blog, through his opinion piece.
Nevertheless, it is only right that [...]
Aug
27
2009
27
2009
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
20
2009
20
2009
In The AJN 1: The Stark Contrast between Albert Dadon and the JCCV
A number of items in this week’s Australian Jewish News deserve a mention.
This post will contrast the highly problematic style of the JCCV with the sophistication and achievement of Albert Dadon.
What is so striking about Dadon’s opinion piece (AJN page 25), is the way it manages to be both humble and without vitriol, while still [...]
Jul
15
2009
15
2009
SJ Signs off – temporarily
Dear Readers,
As you will have noticed, over the past couple of weeks, all posts have been written by contributing writers (Yoram, Malki, Frochel, The Hasid, Malki, and Paroggan).
The same reasons that initially forced me to conceal my identity have forced me to cease writing completely and suddenly. Fortunately, a wonderful group of people enabled the [...]
Jun
15
2009
15
2009
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
28
2009
28
2009
AJN 3: StandWithUs and Interfaith Peace
Two articles caught our attention in this week’s AJN (May 28).
The first article, on page 6 of The AJN, details the virtues of one Michelle Rojas, emissary for StandWithUs, an organisation devoted to the rehabilitation of Israel’s image on campuses throughout the world. These folk are worth googling, because they run a plethora of websites, [...]
May
27
2009
27
2009
Reader Response 8: Canada, Isi Leibler, and Advocacy
This post is another response to some very interesting issues put forward by the reader, Blistering. He/she argues that the Canadian Jewish experiment in restraint regarding public statements about anti-Zionist activity has been an abject failure and that anti-Semitism has risen as a result.
Blistering directs us to an article written by Isi Leibler for the [...]
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 [...]