December 2011
1 post
Upcoming Talks on Occupy Judaism
I have a variety of public speaking engagements re: Occupy Judaism upcoming in the next couple of months. Here’s the info. Possibly more to come.
12/1/11 · Thursday Night Chulent [Link]
12/5/11 · Kolot Chayeinu Living Room Discussion [Link]
12/9/11 · Rodeph Shalom Youth Program Shabbat Dinner [Link]
1/14/12 · Limmud NY [Link]
November 2011
4 posts
My last word on Israel/Palestine at OWS
A lot of hay has been made of, well, me, over the last week due to my inquiry into the origins of the OWS Freedom Waves tweet and its subsequent deletion by the OWS media team.
I would first like to reiterate that I did not request the tweet’s deletion. As Will from the OWS PR working group told Mondoweiss, “The tweet was erased because there was discussion about how it was not...
Mondoweiss: Occupy Wall Street and the struggle... →
I was interviewed by Mondoweiss about the tweet announcing solidarity with Freedom Waves, the latest attempt by Palestinian solidarity activists to break the Gaza blockade, that was posted and then subsequently deleted from the @OccupyWallSt Twitter account.
Zionism: Where I'm holding
Excerpts of a blog post I wrote a number of years ago are presently being circulated by Jewish conservatives in an effort to discredit me and the work I’ve done with Occupy Judaism and more broadly in the Jewish community. Unfortunately, the decontextualized text presents me as a shrill religious anti-Zionist. As such, I have penned the following response, which provides an explanation for...
When bigots cry "Anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism"
A note to those preaching antisemitism while calling themselves anti-Zionists:
Anti-Zionism is rejecting the idea of Jewish nationalism and statehood as a resolution to the problem of Jewish persecution. It is not speculating conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the banks, the government or the world.
If you say, “I oppose the existence of the state of Israel because it does not...
October 2011
9 posts
How to Occupy Shabbat in your community →
occupyjudaism:
Photo of the first Shabbat potluck at Occupy Wall Street
Want to Occupy Shabbat in your community? Here’s how to get started!
Read more
4 tags
Help #OWS survive the winter
Occupy Wall Street needs your help to survive through the cold weather. If you’re in the area, please bring these items by the Comfort area. If you’re not and would still like to help, you can ship items to:
Occupy Wall Street 118A Fulton St. Box 205 New York, NY 10038
Occupy Wall Street Winter needs
insulated gloves, wool hats, scarves
long underwear / smart wool thermal socks
hand...
5 tags
Lies, damned lies & antisemitism at Occupy Wall...
The conservative media, now relying on the new anti-Occupy Wall Street smear campaign created by William Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel, keeps pointing to this bigoted asshole with his “Zionists control Wall St.” sign as evidence that OWS is a purely antisemitic movement.
Yet they’re conveniently editing out the people standing around him at all times with signs...
Occupy Judaism: Sukkahs are the new front in the... →
occupyjudaism:
Protesters at Occupy Seattle lock arms to defend a sukkah from destruction by the Seattle Police.
This weekend, police in NYC and Seattle forced Jewish protesters to take down temporary shelters used to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot – the Feast of Tabernacles – an annual week-long harvest festival, which also commemorates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.
Antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street: Image vs....
Last week two assholes were caught on video at Occupy Wall Street saying profoundly awful, stupid things about Jews, one of whom was consistently heckled and challenged by those around him.
On Friday night, around one thousand — not two, one thousand — Jews assembled for Yom Kippur services in the very same place to express solidarity with the demonstrators’ shared ideal of repairing the...
4 tags
Kol Nidre Minyan at #OccupyWallStreet
“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”
—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
This Friday night begins Yom Kippur, the Day of...
6 tags
“Put your hand on your heart and ask yourself internally what kind of world do I...”
– Deepak Chopra, addressing the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly 10/3/11
2 tags
Radio #OccupyWallStreet: A potential end-run...
If you haven’t been down to Zuccotti Park, rather than rehashing it myself, I recommend reading Richard Kim’s love letter in The Nation to the human microphone – the means of sound amplification currently employed by the unpermitted occupiers of Wall Street.
The need for human amplification became apparent early on with the protests as the NYPD started seizing megaphone wielding...
September 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Shabbat Solidarity Potluck Dinner at...
FRIDAY, SEPT. 30, 8PM | ZUCCOTTI PARK, NYC (Meet at steps on Broadway side)
Shabbat is a rejection of commerce, capitalism & exploitation: A day free from work, from business transactions, from handling money. As the Old Testament says, “And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Therefore the Eternal your God commanded to keep the Sabbath day.” Whether or not one is...
2 tags
Direct Action Theory & Practice for...
While dropping in on the #OccupyWallStreet protests a couple of times in the last week, it became clear to me that this movement could benefit strongly from a greater awareness of direct action in theory and practice. What follows is a short collection of texts that will give the reader a thorough grounding in the use of direct action as a means for affecting radical social transformation. This is...
When We Wake Up
Here’s the Alan Watts snippet I read last night at Jay Michaelson and Paul Dakin’s sheva brochas:
The world is like a game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.” God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to...
August 2011
1 post
Gowanus Superfund site residents stay put despite...
Brooklyn residents alongside the Gowanus Canal were staying put this Saturday despite an evacuation order from the City of New York. The Gowanus Canal is a federally registered Superfund cleanup site, considered lethally toxic to humans.
As New York Magazine reported earlier today:
When Hurricane Irene hits the New York area on Sunday, the neighborhoods surrounding the Gowanus Canal are...
May 2011
1 post
Help identify Rae Abileah's attackers
By now you’re likely to have heard the tale of JVP/Code Pink activist Rae Abileah’s alleged assault following her disruption of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
I’m in the midst of writing a piece on the subject, but in order to do so, I first need your help to identify the Jewish communal leaders whom ripped from her hands the banner she held, and whom she...
April 2011
1 post
The Republican Jewish Coalition's Greatest Hits
The Valerie Plame Scandal
RJC board member Ari Fleischer identified himself as being the party responsible for the Valerie Plame leak, for which he was shielded from prosecution by an immunity deal.
The RJC’s board members dominate the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection to the Plame investigation.
Graft &...
March 2011
1 post
Facebook Shuts Down Refusenik Group
March 29, 1988
Despite previous statements saying they would monitor but not remove the controversial Facebook group calling for the liberation of Russian Jewry, Facebook administrators shut down the group early Tuesday morning in response to enormous pressure from pro-Russian activists. All links to the group now go to users personal Facebook profile.
The group had been calling for a...
February 2011
2 posts
Watch
November 2010
1 post
Israel's Choice: The Occupation or American Jewry
The Z-baggers are at it again, going out of their way to misrepresent and defame J Street, manufacturing controversy where none exists. The latest brouhaha centers around a blog post by doctoral student Omri Ceren, which seeks to uphold the alleged pernicious anti-Zionism of J Street U Jerusalem’s new campus organizer, Drew Cohen, as further evidence of J Street’s perfidy....
October 2010
1 post
10 tags
HuffPo: Jews Are Single Issue Voters
The Huffington Post last night published part one of a five part series called “The Jewish Problem with Obama,” authored by Ed Klein and Rick Chesnoff, and it is a ginormous piece of unfactual shit that seeks to portray Jews as single issue voters who will go turncoat at the slightest offense to Israel. I didn’t take that tone in my rather mundane comments, which were...
September 2010
2 posts
Foxman: I ♥ Marty Peretz
Today Abe Foxman, National Director of the ADL, published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, “ADL and the Ground Zero Mosque,” in which he defends his decision last month to join in the chorus of bigots maligning the proposed downtown Manhattan Islamic cultural center, Park 51, deeming its establishment an act of insensitivity to the victims of 9/11 (despite the fact that 35 victims of...
Jewels of Elul: Ain Sof
This post is part of Jewels of Elul, which celebrates the Jewish tradition to dedicate the 29 days of the month of Elul to growth and discovery in preparation for the coming high holy days. This year the program is benefiting Beit T’shuvah, a residential addiction treatment center in Los Angeles. You can subscribe on Jewels of Elul to receive inspirational reflections from public figures...
August 2010
1 post
Opposition mounts against lower Manhattan JCC
New York—Stop the Zionization of America, a grassroots organization representing hundreds of citizens concerned with the encroachment of Zionist ideology and Talmudic law on American life, is calling on its supporters to oppose the establishment of a new Jewish community center (JCC) in lower Manhattan. The JCC would be located only two blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, widely seen as...
June 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Falsified report of weapons aboard Mavi Marmara...
My mother forwarded the following email to me this morning, from author Naomi Ragen:
—Original Message— From: Naomi Ragen <redacted> Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:57:10 To: <redacted> Subject: Heavy weapons found in cargo of Mavi Marmara
Friends: I cannot understand why no news station is broadcasting this information!!! Has everyone gone mad? Naomi
HEAVY WEAPONS FOUND IN...