JVOICES.COM

Sarah Lyhall of the New York Times reports that Britain’s Supreme Court ruled against a Jewish high school in London that had rejected an applicant because his mother wasn’t Jewish enough – and so, by extension, neither was he. Yep, she had chosen Judaism years ago and gone through a conversion process, but
By all outward [...]

Adam Serwer over at The Root has a great new post called “The Self-Hate Hustle.”
Serwer draws a parallel between divisions in Jewish communities over Israel and divisions in (U.S.) Black communities “about loyalty and authenticity.” Describing Netanyahu’s characterization of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel as “self-hating Jews” based on their support of a settlement freeze, [...]

Check out Michelle Goldberg’s new web-only piece, “Same As It Ever Was?” up at The American Prospect. Her tagline, or more likely her editor’s tagline, for the article wonders if the “pro-Israel lobby, long seen as an immutable part of American politics, may be headed toward obsolescence.” I’m not sure if I buy that, since [...]

this is basically a note to send you to a piece i’ve written for the latest issue of the Monthly Review on the origins of the current rise to visibility of jewish opposition to zionism. i hope you’ll read and enjoy – and if you disagree with me, argue here.
the piece is online, at [...]

Come and join us for our 6th Annual Sheba Film Festival.
Pearls of Africa – The Abayudaya Jews of Uganda
Wednesday, May 6th 2009 7:30 pm
The Abayudaya are a unique community of 600 Black Ugandans in Eastern Uganda, who chose to adopt the Jewish faith about 90 years ago.
Q&A with Y’sudah Yehudah Cultural Anthropologist
For More Info and [...]

I am a trained ethnomusicologist, and began to go to Belmonte to investigate the role of music in their lives. I continue to go, partly because I rarely consider any project “finished”, and also because there are many people I have come to love dearly, especially the family I always stay with when there. I [...]

Editor’s Note: We received feedback about an earlier post (“Freund’s Business of Farming Jews,” March 23) from Michael Freund, who was a subject of the piece. We asked the author, David Ramírez to read and respond to Freund. We are publishing both of their responses below.
Can David Ramírez Let Go of his Hate?
By Michael Freund
In [...]

is there a jewish newspaper in the u.s. that would even consider printing a piece like the one i’ve copied in below, which ran in ha-aretz on february 13, 2009? if one did, would it ever run another one? how many institutional advertisers would it lose? how many major u.s. jewish [...]

all of the journalistic words have been, are being, said already.

[...]

to me, there’s only one thing worth saying on the journalistic side:
24 israelis have been killed by rocket or mortar attacks from gaza, ever.
more than 300 palestinians have been killed by the israeli blitzkrieg in gaza in the past 2 days.
more than 3,300 palestinians have been killed by the israeli military in gaza since 2000.
and it needs to be said over and over and over again.

beyond the journalistic. words aren’t worth much, or are everything.

[...]

On November 23, 2008, we held the first International Conference of Black Jews. We invited Jews of Nigerian, North American, Congolese and Israeli origin to compare our different ways of living our Judaism.
With this event, we wanted to illustrate the diversity present in Judaism, and to show that biological criteria are never involved in defining [...]