Drawn together by hopes for peace

By Jacob Greene, Special to the Jewish Sound

For several months this year, I lived in Israel. The majority of my time I spent studying with Alexander Muss High School in Israel, along with 29 American and Canadian teenagers, with support from an Israel scholarship from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. While we spent Sunday through Friday morning in school, Saturday was generally our day off or “Open Shabbat,” and an opportunity to go off campus to visit friends and relatives around the country.

Luckily for me, I had many friends in Israel, all of whom I met through Ultimate Peace (UP), an organization that brings together Israeli Jewish, Arab Israeli, and Palestinian youth through the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. At the end of my study abroad program, I would be staying on in Israel to participate in UP as a coach in training for a second summer. Needless to say, I was excited to see my friends and visit them in their cities and villages.

It is not uncommon for teenagers to travel around Israel on their own or in groups, as the country is so small. With detailed directions from my friends, I took local transportation and visited Noa in Binyamina, Yabi in Raanana, and Hassan in Kabul. Each visit was unique and a chance to experience a different way of life.

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Living with my French cousin exposed me to the fears of Jews living in France.

Anti-Semitism Is A Real-life Drama

by: Sarah Nahmias in FreshInkforTeens

In September I went with my school to protest the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” at Lincoln Center in New York City. A woman approached me and asked what Klinghoffer had to do with the Met and what our protest was about. I explained to her that in 1985 terrorists hijacked an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, and shot and killed the wheelchair-bound passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The Met’s fall schedule included an opera that the protestors believed romanticized his murder and glorified terrorism.

Opera is one of the most highly praised, expressive and influential forms of art, and the people who attend are sometimes ones who shape our society and influence public perceptions. Here is a renowned opera company in New York City portraying an incident that says, “Terrorists? They’re not so bad.” Yet, the woman I was talking with didn’t seem bothered. She said we shouldn’t be making such a big deal about the opera because there isn’t any anti-Semitism in America to be worried about. I said that her claim may pertain to Jews in America, but not Jews throughout the rest of the world.

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Sticking by Shabbat Was Real Story at USY

By Dan Dorsch The Jewish Daily Forward

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency wire service ran an article about the United Synagogue Youth’s annual international convention, under the headline “USY drops ban on interdating.”

Unfortunately, this headline, which was widely circulated among Jewish news outlets, failed to capture the real issue that emerged from the confab. A more apt headline would have been “Jewish teens in 21st century Diaspora cast vote in favor of Shabbat observance.”

The Conservative youth movement’s teenage board members, who convened in Atlanta, Georgia, last week, used positive language to reframe the traditional requirements for those elected to the board.
They spoke about creating a welcoming and inclusive environment, and fostering healthy attitudes toward Jewish dating. They eliminated the harshly worded “lo taaseh” (“thou shalt not”) ban on interdating, replacing it with a call to “model healthy Jewish dating choices.”

However, if we in the Jewish community spend our time focusing on interdating reform, then we have missed the real issue in this story: the youth leaders’ decision to uphold the requirement that they observe Shabbat.

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