Intent on shaking up the ultimate 'sacred cow' for Jews, Israeli director Yoav Shamir embarks on a provocative - and at times irreverent - quest to answer the question, "What is anti-Semitism today?" Does it remain a dangerous and immediate threat? Or is it a scare tactic used by right-wing Zionists to discredit their critics? Speaking with an array of people from across the political spectrum (including the head of the Anti-Defamation League and its fiercest critic, author Norman Finkelstein) and traveling to places like Auschwitz (alongside Israeli school kids) and Brooklyn (to explore reports of violence against Jews), Shamir discovers the realities of anti-Semitism today. His findings are shocking, enlightening and - surprisingly - often wryly funny.

Yoav Shamir tries to take a witty & satirical approach to a deadly serious issue - anti-semitism in today's world. His film & title focus almost exclusively on the unprecedented access he was given to Abe Foxman and the NY-Based Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Shamir tries to document one of the ADL-reported cases of rising anti-semitism, and this leads him to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, where he interviews black youth. He accompanies students on a March of the Living visit to Poland. He is invited to join Foxman on an ADL delegation to Europe, where he discovers that the ADL is closely aligned with the policies of the Israeli government. He then interviews two American academics who have written about this issue (Mearsheimer & Walt) and concludes that Israel's past is preventing it from moving forward. This singular focus on the US-Israeli lobby as a lense with which to view contemporary anti-semitism means that Shamir ignores more sinister forms, such as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Delicious and healthy, Gan Shalom's Purim package is also the ONLY kosher, organic, fair trade, sustainably grown mishloach manot available!

Mishloach Manot – a traditional gift of tasty treats sent to family, friends and acquaintances for Purim – is a mitzvah originating in the Book of Esther.

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It’s not too late to find some great Hanukkah gifts for your friends and family. From MetaMaus, an intimate look inside a modern classic, to a dramatic and revelatory biography of Israel’s founding father and first prime minister penned by Israel’s current president, we’ve got eight great books that we think you’re gonna love!

A 90-minute film, A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, is the first in-depth documentary about a distinctive, traditional Eastern European religious community. In an historic migration after World War II, Hasidism found it most vital center in America. Both challenging and embracing American values, Hasidim seek those things which many Americans find most precious: family, community, and a close relationship to God. Integrating critical and analytical scholarship with a portrait of the daily life, beliefs, and history of contemporary Hasidic Jews in New York City, the film focuses on the conflicts, burdens, and rewards of the Hasidic way of life.

Fazel — or as he would prefer to be known, Fajnzylber — is one of an increasing number of French Jews trying to persuade France's State Council to allow them to return to the family names their parents and grandparents gave up when they arrived here after World War II.

A portion of the French civil code adopted after the war stipulates that family names are "immutable" and must be continued. The civil code allows "foreign sounding" names to be changed to those considered more French-like, but declares the "impossibility" of reverting.

In the 1940s and '50s hundreds of thousands of Jews, many still reeling from the Holocaust, arrived in France. Mainly poor and stateless, and fearful of latent anti-Semitism in a country from which 76,000 Jews were dispatched to concentration camps, most were just grateful to be allowed to stay.

There was no legal obligation for them to drop their family names, but they often were encouraged to do so. Many people agreed to new French-sounding names even when the new names bore little relation to the ones they had passed down through generations: So the Rozenkopfs became the Rosents; the Frankensteins the Franiers; the Wolkowiczs the Volcots.

And Benjamin Fajnzylber became Benjamin Fazel.

RT @phrTweets: JTA: #Jewish groups join call for #torture probe #cia #experimentation #eit #fb

It's good to know that Jewish voters remain a strongly pro-Democratic constituency. Dems would be in big trouble if they began to tilt Republican in this cycle. But what is more interesting about Barone's op-ed is his description of the geographic distribution of Jewish voters in the context of the November elections.

Need an original idea for a speech at a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, wedding or other Simcha? iGematria is the perfect solution! Just enter the Hebrew name of the celebrant, and iGematria will instantly find the Torah verses or words that share the same Hebrew numerical value as the word you entered.

"Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow" stories of Jewish refugee teachers and their black students #black #jewish #relations

Debra Cash

jewish communal responses to ward connerly prop

Jewish and Muslim children from around the world participate in an on-line community and share photos of their religous life.