Post to Maskil_Activity 11/28/2009

• The World Union for Progressive Judaism (Our Newsletter)

  "MARMUR DEFINES WORLD UNION’S VERY ESSENCE AT BIENNIAL"
  

  tags: Reform Judaism

  • MARMUR DEFINES WORLD UNION’S VERY ESSENCE AT BIENNIAL
    
    In a speech at the recent Union of Reform Judaism biennial in Toronto, Rabbi Dow Marmur, a former World Union executive director and rabbi emeritus of the city’s Holy Blossom Temple, called the World Union and its work “a vindication of faith and an endorsement of our way of expressing it.”
    
    “It’s reasonable to assume that Reform Jews in North America don’t need the World Union,” he said in insightful and inspiring remarks delivered at the organization’s Celebratory Luncheon on Thursday at the biennial. “Nevertheless, their involvement in it, and support for it, are crucial. Thanks to that support, Jews in remote places in the world can identify as Jews.”
    
    “Without the World Union, with the exception of Britain and perhaps France, there would be no Progressive, Liberal, Reform… Judaism in Europe today,” he continued, adding that in the former Soviet Union, “much of the revival of Jewish life is due to the spectacular achievements of our movement.” Turning to Israel, he said that Reform Judaism had become” something of a model of how to be Jewish in the Jewish state…. We must not let them down and thus let ourselves down by jeopardizing the Jewishness of Israel. The World Union, through its affiliate, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, is our vehicle.”
    
    To read the full text of Marmur’s speech, click here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 11/27/2009

• Using Windows Live Writer to post to Posterous (with pictures) (Scoobaa Scoobaa [josh's blog])

  tags: Posterous, WLW

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Blogger: I'm not a spammer, please unlock my blogs!

After years of having done nothing regarding the use of Blogger/Blogspot as the vehicle for spam blogs or splogs (see this post on the subject: J-Blogosphere: The Blogspot namespace and splogs), Google finally decided to tackle the problem.  This has resulted in lots of collateral damage ("false positives"), which now includes two of my blogs:

• Maskil_Sidewiki
• Israel High-Tech Newsletter

A couple of things really grate:

• I've been on Blogger since mid-2007.  Surely after more than two years of good behaviour, I'm not suddenly going to become King Spammer.
• In the past, Blogger would apparently send a notice via e-mail before starting the process.  Not in this case;  I only discovered they'd been locked when I went into the dashboard.
• During their 2008 purge, they apparently assured users that successfully reviewed blogs would be unlocked within 2 days.  My Sidewiki blog has been locked for a week now (since the 19th)!
• In the case of TechIsrael, I was actually busy editing the blog layout when it was locked.  How does that fit the profile of some automated bot posting spam links, or whatever?

Strangely enough, the blog I set up to replace Maskil_Sidewiki has not been touched, although all posting is automated through Diigo and Google Sidewiki.  The only diference I can think of is that one of my earliest posts was submitted manually through the post editor on the dashboard, announcing that it's not a splog!

Maskil_Activity: This is not a spam blog!

It's at times like this that one starts to understand the wisdom of self-hosting!

Technorati Tags: Blogger, Spam Blog

Post to Maskil_Activity 11/25/2009

• New Statesman - The New Israel Fund

  tags: Social Justice

  • Since 1979, NIF has fought for social justice and equality for all Israelis. We believe that Israel can live up to its founders' vision of a state that ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, without regard to religion, race or gender.

    Widely credited with building Israel's progressive civil society from scratch, we have provided more than $200 million to more than 800 cutting-edge organizations since our inception. What's more, through our action arm, SHATIL, we mentor, train and lead Israeli civil society in an ongoing struggle to empower the underprivileged.

    We fight inequality, injustice and extremism because we understand that justice is the precondition for a successful democracy - and the only lasting road to peace.

    The Fund, which says powerfully that "the only secure Israel is a just Israel", prioritises social justice and civil rights.

• Climate Cover-Up (The Crusade to Deny Global Warming)

  tags: Global Warming

  • Starting in the early 1990s, three large American industry groups set to work on strategies to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Even though the oil industry’s own scientists had declared, as early as 1995, that human-induced climate change was undeniable, the American Petroleum Institute, the Western Fuels Association (a coal-fired electrical industry consortium) and a Philip Morris-sponsored anti-science group called TASSC all drafted and promoted campaigns of climate change disinformation.

    
    

    The success of those plans is self-evident. A Yale/George Mason University poll taken late in 2008 showed that — 20 years after President George H.W. Bush promised to beat the greenhouse effect with the “White House effect” — a clear majority of Americans still say they either doubt the science of climate change or they just don’t know. Climate Cover-Up explains why they don’t know. Tracking the global warming denial movement from its inception, public relations advisor James Hoggan (working with journalist Richard Littlemore), reveals the details of those early plans and then tracks their execution, naming names and exposing tactics in what has become a full-blown attack on the integrity of the public conversation.

• Changes in American Jewish Identities Since 1948: From Norms to Aesthetics (eJewish Philanthropy: The Jewish Philanthropy Blog)

  tags: no_tag

• The future of Israeli high-tech: Jewish brains aren't enough (Haaretz Israel News)

  tags: High-tech

  • But more than anything, Israel has been devoid of a clear foreign policy. This creates a persistent sense of insecurity about the future. Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for years that Israel's economic growth is no longer affected by the general political situation; that Israel can continue on its current path for a long time without paying an economic price. This is a highly questionable assumption. Foreign investors may indeed think that the political situation does not constitute a risk factor when it comes to R&D on a small scale: knowledge generated by small companies can be moved very quickly from one country to the next.
    
    
    
    The same doesn't hold true for production facilities and large companies; they require huge investment, and they cannot be moved quickly in case of emergency. The option of a third intifada or the resumption of hostilities in some other form looms large because of the political stalemate. This situation is certainly not conducive to a state of mind that leads to development of companies for the long haul.
    
    
    
    Israel's lack of a political horizon and long-term planning are the main reasons why our high-tech industry is oriented towards short-term gains. If Israel's citizens are sometimes accused of just living for the day, we cannot blame them anymore than we should accuse the high-tech sector of short sightedness. High-tech entrepreneurs and investors cannot plan further ahead than the infrastructure of the state allows.
    
    

• Click: 17th October (BBC NEWS Programmes Click)

  Tags for:
  Click: 17th October
  Portus Project
  Ground penetrating radar
  Polynomial texture mapping
  Archaeological Computing Research Group
  Autodesk 3ds Max
  View extreme software?
  Mire software?
  

  tags: Antiquities

• Israel Water Technologies Can Boost Himachal’s Farm Productivity (Dhumal My Himachal)

  tags: Water

  • Shimla: To boost productivity in agriculture and horticulture crops as well as have technical collaboration on renewal energy, the Himachal government would try and enter into a memorandum of understanding with Israel with approval from the central government, chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal disclosed here today.

    
    

    Speaking to the media after returning from the a three day visit to Israel where the chief minister participated in WATEC – Israel 2009, an international exhibition cum conference on water related technologies held in Tel Aviv, he said, “the Israeli government was keen to enter into an early MoU with Himachal and we have asked our diplomatic office in Tel Aviv to prepare a document that could be agreeable to their as well as our union governments.”

    
    

    Other than the feasibility of technology transfer especially in water management, waste management, opportunities in tourism would be explored as over 50,000 Israeli tourists visit Himachal annually, he said.

    
    

    The country had emerged a leader in drip and sprinkler irrigation system and by being able to recycle about 75 percent sewage water for irrigation, the small country with a population of 70 lakh people had been able to achieve very high productivity levels in all crops grown including apples, said Dhumal.

    
    

• Badal seeks technology from Israel Water Management firms to tackle Industrial pollution in Punjab (PunjabNewsline.com)

  tags: Water

  • TEL AVIV(ISRAEL): Leading players in cutting edge solar energy technology, agriculture, water management fighting the problem of water salination, environmental and water pollution are likely to visit Punjab in the coming days as a follow up to the joint developmental thrust proposed between Israel and Punjab.

    
    
    

    The government of India has been approach to facilitate the process.

    Earlier, the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal  called on the Minister of Industry, Trade and Labour of Israel Binyamin Ben-Eliezer last evening to explore the possibility of joint collaboration between Israel and Punjab in several developmental areas.

    Giving the details Chief Minister's Media Adviser Harcharan Bains said that during the meeting with the captains of Industry and Experts, Badal laid special stress on efficient and cost effective treatment of water for domestic as well as agriculture purposes. 

• Israel water tech thrives in weakened economy (Green Business Reuters)

  tags: Water

  • TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel's water technology sector has prospered despite the global financial crisis, largely due to global stimulus packages and penetration in developing countries, officials said on Wednesday.

    
    
    
    

    Though affected by a slowdown in spending in the country and throughout the world, Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade said there is an "opposite and strong trend" in the demand for water technologies that will generate growth in companies.

    
    
    
    

    At least half of Israel's water industry leaders will present sales growth in 2009 despite the global crisis, the ministry projected at its annual WATEC conference in Tel Aviv.

    
    
    
    

• Israel Signs New Agricultural Agreement with the EU (NEW EUROPE The European News Source)

  tags: Agriculture

  • On Wednesday, November 4, a new agricultural agreement was signed in Brussels between Israel and the European Union, which improves access to both markets.
    
    The new agreement, which updates the original agricultural agreement signed in the 1970's, is the result of lengthy negotiations led by Israel's Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. Since the original signing, the agreement has been updated several times in order to reflect the significant changes in the needs of both parties.
    
    Access to the markets of both sides has been greatly improved. In the processed agricultural products sector, over 95% of the products will be exempt from all taxes or levies. Considerable liberalization was undertaken in regards to all areas of fresh products and approximately 80% will be exempt from all customs restrictions.
    
    Each year, around one billion euros of Israeli agricultural and processed food products are exported to the EU.
    
    Europe is Israel's most important trading partner in the agricultural field. More than 25% of Israel's agricultural products and more than 75% of its total fresh agricultural products are exported to European countries.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 11/24/2009

• State Comptroller slams Palmahim beach project

  tags: Conservation

  • The State Comptroller’s Office has published a severe report on the holiday village project planned for Palmahim beach south of Tel Aviv. The report says the investigation of the project “found severe deficiencies both in the actions of the Israel Lands Administration and in the planning procedures in which the land was zoned for a holiday village.” The State Comptroller points out that the plan related to one of the most beautiful stretches of undeveloped coast left in Israel. “The authorities are obliged to preserve natural and scenic places on the coastline for the benefit of the public as a whole.”

• The right way to run a prison (Haaretz Israel News)

  tags: Privatisation

  • The fight against moves that have harmed the nature of the welfare state or have transferred public assets to tycoons and real estate sharks - sometimes for half their real value - must be waged on the political level, without turning the Supreme Court into the economy's CEO. On the other hand, attention should be paid to other areas in which the use of force has been handed over to the private sector. They may not be as blatant as prison privatization, but they are no less significant.
    
    
    
    The Shin Bet security service, which protects - some say exaggeratedly - the country's leadership, has transferred some of its functions to private security companies. Although their employees may not have the right to arrest or detain citizens, they bar citizens and their cars from entering certain locations. This borders on a significant infringement of civil rights; it could perhaps be acceptable if done by police officers or soldiers, but not by employees of private companies.
    
    

• Op-Ed: Freedom of religion: At the bottom of the list (New Israel Fund)

  tags: Pluralism

  • The fact that a significant movement that promotes religious pluralism is evolving in the civilian society here is challenging the recurring attempts to further anchor the hegemony of the old religious establishment.  Furthermore, that movement offers a vision of hope and a different kind of relations between the various religious and secular groups in the Israeli society.  That pluralist, civilian movement shows its power by continuously creating various alternatives for weddings, other rituals, and Jewish identity as a whole.  Expanding further, these alternatives will eventually shed a ridiculous light on the current uniform religious hegemony.  Only then will Israel be taken off the list of countries where freedom of religion and conscience is restricted.

• Opinion: Goldstone Notwithstanding, IDF Obligated to Investigate Conduct (The Israel Democracy Institute)

  tags: Goldstone Report

  • In any case, whether the legal thesis presented here on the extent of Israel’s obligation to conduct an investigation based on international law is accepted or not, the Goldstone Report significantly increases the chances in practice that foreign courts will attempt to claim jurisdiction over Israeli figures, based on the report’s conclusions regarding both crimes allegedly perpetrated in Gaza and the inadequacy of the proceedings conducted in Israel. The head-in-the-sand policy that the Israeli government is currently adhering to is unsuited to the very real legal danger created by the report. Therefore, purely utilitarian arguments support initiating a stronger legal investigation (e.g. setting up an investigation committee), which would enable Israel to extend broader legal protection to Israeli figures that would prevent them from being prosecuted abroad, or would at least considerably reduce the chances of that occurrence. International law places the obligation to investigate not only on the State, but also on ranking officers in the military chain of command, and according to the principle of “the commanders’ responsibility” in international law, ranking commanders and government officials who were aware of a criminal action – or should have been aware of it – and failed to prevent it or take punitive measures can be held criminally liable. The State’s current policy of resigning itself to the fact that the existing investigative proceedings do not meet, or are perceived as not meeting international demands, leaves ranking IDF and government officials vulnerable to being tried abroad for their actions and failures. As such this policy is illegal and unwise.

• Criticism following Goldstone Report has nothing to do with law, says Ambassador Shalev (The Israel Democracy Institute)

  tags: Goldstone Report

  • Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog said Israel had made mistakes all along the line in its handling of the situation that developed after Operation Cast Lead.

    
    

    First of all, he said, Israel should have agreed to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission and should not have treated Goldstone himself as a persona non grata. The government not only refused to cooperate with the commission, but also prohibited it from entering Israel to visit Sderot and the Gaza periphery or entering the West Bank via Israel.

    
    

    Herzog added that the government should have challenged the appointments of the other three members of the commission and perhaps tried to cancel some of them. All three appointments were problematic, said Herzog, since one of them, Professor Christine Chinkin, had already accused Israel of committing war crimes while fighting was still going on in Gaza, another, Hina Jilani, was Pakistani and the third, Colonel Desmond Travers, lacked battleground experience.

    
    

    Herzog also blamed Israeli leaders for making irresponsible and bombastic statements which had no operative significance but were used by the Goldstone Commission to "prove" that Israel's aim in the fighting was to punish the Palestinian civilian population for Hamas's military actions.

  • But Kremnitzer added that Israel did not act wisely by angering Goldstone during the investigation. "The courtroom rule is that you don't make the judge angry," said Kremnitzer. "But that is exactly what Israel did in systematically refusing requests by Goldstone throughout the investigation."

    
    

    In the long run, he added, the only way Israel stood a chance of putting an end to the harsh international criticism against it was by reaching a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So long as the conflict was unresolved, no amount of Israeli propaganda or information would help, he said.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 11/21/2009

• State's defense needs - Reader comments for Jewish Policy Center

  tags: Haredim

  • Submitted by Maskil, Nov 19, 2009 12:25

    
    

    
    

    He noted that despite the financial success of Israel's military industries, much money will be needed over the next decade to meet the state's defense needs. These funds can only be secured by faster growth, which in turn can only be achieved by cutting taxes, he argued.

    
    

    
    

    Many would argue that these funds can only be secured by ending the state subsidisation of the voluntarily indigent (mainly the Haredim) and putting them to work.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

AOL’s AIM and ICQ

One has to wonder why AOL never attempted or managed to integrate the two instant-messaging (IM) properties, i.e. AIM and ICQ. Was it technically too difficult, or did they just never manage to “digest” their acquisition?

It’s also a lost opportunity in another respect: they could have used the integration process to find a way to let all IM clients/platforms/standards communicate seamlessly with one another, in the same way that even proprietary e-mail systems such as Exchange/Outlook can communicate with all other e-mail clients/back-ends.

I predict that this failure to communicate will eventually result in all the “traditional” IM systems/vendors becoming extinct.

in reference to:

"ICQ, which was once of the most explosive online communications tools, has lagged since AOL bought its popular software for $287 million in 1998, with another $125 million in earnouts for the team then. It was part of an Tel Aviv, Israel, start-up called Mirabilis. While ICQ has about 40 million to 50 million unique monthly visitors and is the No. 1 messaging service in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and other small countries, its has less traction in the U.S. than bigger rival services from Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG). In addition, Facebook and Twitter have also become major players in the status-update space. AOL’s AIM service, in contrast, is quite strong, typically clocking as one of the top instant-messaging properties."
- AOL to Sell ICQ Instant-Messaging Service | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD (view on Google Sidewiki)

This is not a spam blog!

Dear Google,

Please note that this is not a “spam blog”.  This is a legitimate blog which I’m using to host automated posts from my activity stream (currently diigo and Sidewiki).

You have already locked the blog I originally set up for this purposes (Maskil_Sidewiki).  PLEASE don’t mess this one up as well.

If a human at Google happens to read this, please could you attend to my request to unblock Maskil_Sidewiki?  I logged the request on 19 Nov.

Blogger in draft: Maskil_Sidewiki :: Blog Locked

Yours faithfully,

Maskil

Palestinian Rocket Report or Israel Rocket Report?

Shouldn't the Palestinian Rocket Report change its name and focus to the Israel Rocket Report? The rocket threat doesn't just come from Gaza; before that was the threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon (with Syria now also ramping up its capabilities), as well as the overall strategic ballistic missile threat from Iran.

in reference to: Palestinian Rocket Report - Jewish Policy Center (view on Google Sidewiki)

Post to Maskil_Activity 11/20/2009

• IMPJ response to the arrest of "Nashot HaCotel" member at the wailing wall this morning (WED) (Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism | About | What’s New?)

  tags: Pluralism

  • Rabbi Gilad Kariv, leader of the Progressive Judaism movement said in response, "Millions of women in the Jewish world enjoy the privilege of donning a prayer shawl and taking an equal part in public prayer. "It is in the Jewish State and the holiest site for the Jewish people of all places that police forces are sent to arrest a woman who seeks to pray according to her conscience and conviction. It is a great shame to the Israel Police and the State"
    
    Israel Religious Action Center director  and  "Women of the Wall"  chairwoman Anat Hoffman: "This is the first time in 21 years that one of us has been arrested. The woman is a young med student who left Beersheba at 4:30 am in order to pray with us and now cannot stop crying." 
    
    "It is unthinkable that a citizen of the State of Israel is arrested for donning a prayer shawl and holding a scroll. There were hundreds of people on the other side of the screen who did the same and nothing happened to them."

• twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter

  tags: no_tag

  • 
    • - post by maskil

• Contact Us | Diigo - Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • 
    • - post by maskil

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Is-Rail

I've always thought that Israel Railways should be branded Is-Rail (or IsRail, etc.). You know, like Eurail (EuroRailways)? :-)

in reference to: Israel Railways Home Page (view on Google Sidewiki)

Geddes Plan?

I assume this is a reference to the 1925 master plan for Tel-Aviv, drawn up by biologist and town planner Patrick Geddes (not Gaddis!).

in reference to:

"Goldman's proposal would institutionalize a phenomenon that was defined in the 1920s by the Gaddis plan and tends to happen spontaneously."
- Surroundings / A lot of possibilities - Haaretz - Israel News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Deny others what you take for granted

#1, @judith. Yours must be the most ignorant, obnoxious and hypocritical responses on this issue I have ever read. You live in NY and enjoy all the benefits of an open society, where there is a clear separation between religion and state, where religious coercion is all but impossible. You are quite content, however, for your brethren in Israel to live in a society where there is in effect no freedom of (or freedom from) religion. You obviously do not understand (still less deserve) the precious freedoms that previous generations of Americans fought for. Don’t deny others the rights and freedoms you take so for granted. The “Jewish country” (as you put it) does not need to be less just or free than any other; it should be more so. And, by the way, not everyone is fortunate enough to simply up stakes and leave a country because they disagree with some of its policies, nor should they be obliged to do (certainly not for the sake of being able to marry their partner).

in reference to:

"1.   They can leave if they don`t like it <a href="/hasen/objects/pages/ResponseDetails.jhtml?resNo=5447750&itemno=1128149&cont=2">They can leave if they don`t like it </a> 01:41  |  judith 15/11/09"
- State may pay Israelis forced by religious restrictions to wed abroad - Haaretz - Israel News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Post Diigo to Blogger (weekly)

• Save to delicious - Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • 
    • - post by maskil
    • - post by maskil

• Remembering the soldiers who built American Jewish life (Haaretz Israel News)

  "During World War II, more than a half-million Jews served in the American military. Almost every Jewish family had a brother, son, husband, uncle or cousin in uniform. Entering the armed forces, often as teenagers, these Jewish servicemen sometimes left home with little more than a nominal sense of what it meant to be Jewish. Their experiences in the armed forces taught them not only how to handle a weapon and to fight, but also how to be American Jews.
  Many non-Jewish soldiers and sailors met their first Jew in the military. Stereotypes abounded. Some Jewish soldiers reported being asked about their "horns" by their fellow servicemen."

  tags: Veterans

• U.S. State Department: Israel is not a tolerant society (Haaretz Israel News)

  tags: Tolerant, Pluralistic, Society

  • Despite boasting religious freedom and protection of all holy sites, Israel falls short in tolerance toward minorities, equal treatment of ethnic groups, openness toward various streams within society, and respect for holy and other sites.

• The settlers camp remains pure (Haaretz Israel News)

  tags: Settlements

  • The State of Israel will not live or die over such an assassin, or a dozen more like him. The country is engaged in a national struggle with the settler state. If there is a strategic threat to Israel's continued survival, it sits on the hills of Hebron and Samaria. If there is one force that can bring down the continuation of the peace process, it is continued building in the settlements. If the U.S. ultimately chooses to cut Israel off, it will be because of the settlements.
    
    
    
    Across the Green Line are two states, Palestinian and Jewish, which do not see eye to eye with the State of Israel. While the Palestinian state has a chance of reaching peace with Israel, the settler state sees Israel as a strategic threat and its leadership as a gang of ditherers, a state threatening to undermine the power of the settler state. In their eyes Israel is the real exile, dancing to the tune of a corrupt overlord.
    
    
    
    The roles have reversed. No longer are settlers seeking to settle the hearts of Israelis; they are putting forth an unequivocal demand that Israelis inhabit the settlers' hearts - or else.

• When there was a leader here (Haaretz Israel News)

  The task of our generation is to complete the job of establishing the state that David Ben-Gurion began at 4 P.M. on a Friday. Yitzhak Rabin advanced the process at Oslo, and Sharon almost completed it. The three of them understood that Israel within the borders of the British Mandate had to be partitioned, if possible with the consent of the Palestinians and if not then with the consent of the world.
  And when we carry out the partition, will there still be Qassam rockets? It is reasonable to assume that there will be - and from Lebanon as well, from where Katyushas are fired from time to time. But Israel will be saved as a Jewish and democratic state for generations to come and the Israeli army will deal with the rockets from our recognized borders. The world will no longer be dealing with the Palestinian issue and we will be freed to deal with education and with personal security and with saving the Negev and the Galilee, and to address the problems of the towns in the periphery and with establishing an exemplary society.
  

  tags: no_tag

• Who is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question

  In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”
  
  The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.
  
  “The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”
  

  tags: no_tag

• Who are Diaspora Jews to tell us Israelis who is Jewish? (Haviv Rettig Gur)

  American Orthodox rabbis, the Interior Ministry feels, can’t be trusted to decide who is in and who is out of the Jewish people.
  It is the feeling of a handful of ignorant bureaucrats – ignorant of Judaism and Jewish identity, and ignorant of Israeli law – that decides the day.
  Why? Because the Diaspora is silent and respectful. Instead of demanding respect for their support and love, the Diaspora assumes Israelis are either their betters or their “ethnic” cousins. Either way, you can’t demand too much.
  So Ilana falls through the cracks.
  

  tags: no_tag

• The New Jewish Convert (November/December 2009)

  Back in the days of Ruth, Judaism’s most famous early convert, it wasn’t difficult to become a Jew. Despite being born a Moabite—a tribe with which the Torah forbade marriage—she became the great-grandmother of King David. Judaism then not only embraced converts but sought them: The Israelites grew from about 150,000 in 586 BCE to eight million in the first century CE largely by absorbing men willing to be circumcised and women marrying Jewish men.
  
  Indeed, becoming a Jew was so popular that the word proselytize comes from the Greek word proselytos, which means to convert to Judaism. Non-Jews converted in Egypt, Syria and Rome, establishing Jewish communities. According to the historian Josephus, people followed Jewish customs in every known nation, including all Barbarian and Greek cities. In the land of Israel, he notes, conversion was not always a matter of choice: Under the Hasmonean kings, particularly Johann Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE), the Idumeans were forced to be circumcised and live like Judeans or leave the country.
  

  tags: no_tag

• End Hereditary Religion (About)

  For centuries organized religions built their followers by imposing their dogma and superstition on non-consenting children too helplessly naive and powerless to reject what they are commanded to believe. Much of what is so maladaptive and destructive about organized religion will be discarded if religious institutions have to create their theology to pass the scrutiny and questioning of mature minds that value free inquiry and demand sensible answers to their questions. If several generations can be raised free of hereditary religion, totally new and reformed religions will have an opportunity to form. As things stand now, humanity is stuck in the iron age.
  

  tags: no_tag

• Shulamit Aloni - Shas 'racial purity' policy toward migrant kids is a disgrace (Haaretz Israel News)

  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fallen in love with the Judaism of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and other holy men around him, and despises the principles embodied in the founding document of the state - the "declaration of independence" that ensures the country will be developed "for the benefit of all its residents," that there will be "complete equality of rights for all citizens regardless of origin, race, religion or gender," as well as "freedom of religion and conscience." It seems our premier is convinced that democracy means elections when they need to be held and the existence of competing parties. As everyone knows, this is what they have in Iran, too.
  

  tags: no_tag

• Mofaz in the footsteps of Sharon (Haaretz Israel News)

  Ariel Sharon was not an ideologue, but he left a legacy behind him: the division of the Land of Israel. Sharon did not believe in peace. He realized how deep the dispute really is, he did not trust the Arabs, and he remembered 1948. But as time went by, Sharon also lost faith in the occupation. Very belatedly, he realized that the status quo endangers the very existence of the Jewish state. Thus, he began looking for a third way when he was in his in his 70s. A way that would grant the Palestinians a state and grant Israel defensible borders without necessarily bringing the conflict to an end.
  

  tags: Peace Process

• The unenlightened ones? (Haaretz Israel News)

  tags: Tolerant, Pluralistic, Society

• Synablog » Blog Archive » Beyond Spiritual Consumerism. . . Or Not

  tags: Jewish Renewal

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twitter Digest

This application would be a whole lot more useful if we could choose the Twitter usernames from a list of our existing Twitter Followers/ed.

in reference to:

"To get started, enter one of more Twitter usernames below (one username per line) and use the links that will appear at the bottom."
- Twitter Digest (view on Google Sidewiki)

Affordy’s Titan LEV (Linux Extended Version)

>> Affordy’s Titan LEV (Linux Extended Version) looks and feels a lot like Windows XP, runs Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and many other Windows programs you’re familiar with, and can even run MS Office – but it’s not Windows. It’s a souped-up version of Ubuntu Linux, built specifically to make Linux palatable for Windows users.

Interesting. Linux on the desktop has somehow never managed to gain traction on the user’s desktop (or laptop/netbook). Perhaps Affordy’s Titan LEV (Linux Extended Version) can finally make that breakthrough? It will need to take ground quickly, though, to pre-empt Google’s planned Chrome O/S.

in reference to:

"Affordy’s Titan LEV (Linux Extended Version) looks and feels a lot like Windows XP, runs Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and many other Windows programs you’re familiar with, and can even run MS Office – but it’s not Windows. It’s a souped-up version of Ubuntu Linux, built specifically to make Linux palatable for Windows users. The difference between “real” XP and Affordy XP is that the Affordy people will be maintaining their OS, issuing upgrades and integrating programs into the OS, making it a “living thing,” unlike the case with Microsoft’s now-defunct OS."
- The Afford(y)able Windows Operating System | israeltech blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Israel’s OECD membership

Great! The more international organisations of this nature Israel is able to join, the better. Not just for the obvious benefits to Israel (and other members, of course), but because it helps to hold a mirror up to aspects of Israeli society and policy that are outside the norm. That unwelcome attention will hopefully lead to Israel cleaning up its act in order to gain membership. I’m thinking here of ongoing efforts to settle the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, inequitable affirmative action favouring the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) minority, and the unequal treatment of religions and religious denominations due to Israel’s domination by the religiously Orthodox. Even if Israel tries and fails to achieve membership of supra-national organisations such as the EU and NATO, the effort to meet membership criteria could totally transform the Israeli political and social landscape in a positive way.

in reference to: Steinitz: Most OECD countries support Israel's membership - Israel Business, Ynetnews (view on Google Sidewiki)