(NEWS) Kosher Slaughter Ban Could Mean End Of New Zealand Jewish Community

"New Zealand Jewish life is in jeopardy if the community loses its legal battle over the ban on kosher slaughter, Jewish leaders there warned.

An e-mail titled 'Save the Future of Judaism in New Zealand' and circulated Oct. 22 to some 1,000 families warned that if the community loses the case over the new law, it will signal the death knell of the Jewish community, which dates back nearly 200 years.



'It will mean we can’t engage rabbis or youth leaders,' read the e-mail, which was jointly released by Auckland Hebrew Congregation President Garth Cohen and Wellington Jewish Community Center Chair Claire Massey. 'It will mean our religious families will be forced to leave New Zealand. Few Jews will want to migrate here. We will be seen as a country where Jews are not welcome, and where our traditions and beliefs are not respected or valued.'

The e-mail urged each family to donate about $75 to the New Zealand Shechitah Appeal, and to e-mail Agriculture Minister David Carter, who imposed the ban on shechitah in May, and Prime Minister John Key, whose mother was a Jewish refugee who escaped Austria on the eve of the Holocaust.

'We need the support of every Jew in New Zealand,' the e-mail stated. 'Whether you keep kosher, observe Shabbat or not, we must stand together. Your religious, cultural and social future is under threat.'

About 1,000 affiliated Jewish families live in two main centers, Wellington and Auckland, as well as smaller communities in Christchurch and Dunedin on the south island." (source)

(BLOG) Learning First-Hand How Gaza Bombs Shatter Israelis’ Lives

"By Sonya Karchemskiy: When people criticize Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians, they often forget or simply ignore the fact that more than 10,000 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001.

They forget about the people who have to live with this threat every single day of their life, who have only 15 seconds to reach a bomb shelter after the tzeva adom ('color red' alarm) sounds, who know that they might not be able to reach it in time. These are the victims you are not going to see in the action-thirsty media. But their stories must be told.



Over the summer, I traveled to Israel with a group of other teens from the Bay Area, as part of Write On for Israel, a two-year program that trains young people like me to become advocates for Israel through journalism.

The day I will never forget was the day we visited Sderot, a 10-minute drive from Gaza. There we met a man named Yonatan, and he told us about his daughter Ela — she was killed by a Kassam rocket when she was 17. She was walking home from a youth group meeting with her younger brother, Tamir, when suddenly the tzeva adom sounded.

Ela called to her brother, 'Tamir! Tamir!' and she covered him with her arms and body. The rocket exploded right next to them. Ela died a week later in the hospital. Despite shrapnel in his skull, her brother survived.

As Yonatan spoke to us — at a community center named Mishkan Ela in memory of his daughter — I thought how difficult it must be for him to talk about the death of his own child. Many in our Write On group were surprised that he and his family have continued to live in Sderot after Ela was killed. 'Why would you risk your and your family’s lives by staying in such a dangerous place?' we asked him.

His answer: 'The terrorists succeeded in killing Ela. But they will not succeed in making us leave.'

In Sderot, nearly half of the residents know someone who was killed in an attack.

In one article I read, I learned about Sderot resident Osnat Ben Haim, whose house was struck by a Kassam rocket. Her 6-year-old son was eating a sandwich in the kitchen only two minutes before the rocket exploded there. The boy did not die, but was severely traumatized.

'Physical damage you are able to see,' Ben Haim was quoted as saying. 'The scar in the heart — that’s what you cannot see.'

According to the Sderot Media Center, more than 30 percent of the 6,000 children in Sderot suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The anxiety symptoms include nightmares, sleeping difficulties, bed-wetting, sweating, fear of going outside and developmental regressions. Of the children between ages 7 and 12, 74.2 percent suffer from phobias.

In reality, this is not 'post-traumatic.' The rockets continue to fall.

Unfortunately I was unable to visit the media center, but Yonatan did show us a video produced by its staff. It was difficult for me to even watch the utter terror that the bombings create.



When you read an article about a Kassam rocket landing in Israel but not killing anyone, you might think that it’s not a big deal since no one was physically harmed. But when I saw this video, I realized how terrifying this constant threat is. Every time the tzeva adom sounds, some children freeze, while others become hysterical, shouting and crying.

Now, however, the children have learned a way to deal with their fear. Shachar Bar, an art therapist and teacher in Sderot, created a song that has helped make tzeva adom less frightening.

Before the song, 'children experienced real developmental regressions, some began bed-wetting. They were getting hysterical,' Bar was quoted as saying in an article I read. 'Some [were] freezing in place, unable to seek cover. One day I felt like, now is the time, and I took this song I’d made up to a kindergarten class.'

The children sing: 'My heart is pounding, boom, ba-ba, boom, boom, boom. My body is shaking, doom, da-da, doom, doom, doom … Breathe deep, now we can laugh. It all passed and I’m glad it’s over — yes!'

At Kibbutz Alumim, which is located near Sderot and also has been threatened with numerous bombings, we heard a recording of children singing the song. When I heard the happy melody sung in Hebrew, and then read the lyrics in English, I was shocked — how could such words be sung so happily?

But the results are stunningly positive. The song helps the kids understand that it is OK that they are scared; it helps them release their fears.

A teacher in the video said, 'I see the joy on their faces. We overcome, we succeed. Here, we beat those who wanted to defeat us. They didn’t succeed. On the contrary, it strengthened us. We move on with more strength.'

I’m glad the song has helped the children, but what really angers me is that they are even in a situation in which they have to sing such a song.

If you go to a kindergarten or an elementary school in the Bay Area, you might hear kids singing their ABCs or 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.' If you go to a school in Sderot, you will hear children singing about a bomb warning.

Sonya Karchemskiy is a second-year member of Write On for Israel and a student at Jewish Community High School of the Bay. She is 17 and lives in San Francisco." (source)

(NEWS) Jewish Groups Team Up To Fight Anti-Israel Campaigns

"The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs are launching a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.

The JFNA and the rest of the Jewish federation system have agreed to invest $6 million over the next three years in the new initiative, which is being called the Israel Action Network. The federations will be working in conjunction with JCPA, an umbrella organization bringing together local Jewish community relations councils across North America.



In fighting back against anti-Israel forces, the Israel Action Network will seek to capitalize on the reach of North America’s 157 federations, 125 local Jewish community relations councils and nearly 400 communities under the federation system.

Under a plan approved in late September, the JCPA’s senior vice president, Martin Raffel, will oversee the new network. He will be working in concert with the head of the JFNA’s Washington office, William Daroff.

The network will monitor the delegitimization movement worldwide, and will work with local federations and community relations councils to enlist the help of key leaders at churches, labor unions and cultural institutions to fight anti-Israel campaigns.

Organizers of the network are looking at the response to an attempted boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival last year as a model for how the system could potentially work.

When organizers decided to focus the festival on films from Tel Aviv, more than 1,000 prominent actors and filmmakers signed a statement threatening to boycott the event. In response, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles worked together to come up with a counterstatement supporting the festival. The counterstatement won the signatures of even more prominent Hollywood figures, including Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen and Lenny Kravitz.

'It was a great lesson and set a template on how to respond,' said Ted Sokolsky, president of the Toronto federation.



When similar delegitimizing attempts erupt, leaders of the new network plan to respond early, according to Jerry Silverman, JFNA’s president and CEO.

'If the community in Chattanooga all of a sudden is faced with [a boycott of] Israeli products in the mall, they should be able to call the [Israel] Action Network and have response and implementation within 12 hours, and not spend time thinking about how to do it,' he said.

As executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, Rabbi Doug Kahn has been embroiled in the controversy over the S.F. Jewish film festival’s screening of 'Rachel,' anti-Israel activities at U.C. Berkeley and other recent incidents.

Kahn welcomes the support of the Israel Action Network. 'In the Bay Area we are at the epicenter of the BDS movement and are actively engaged in combating divestment and boycott efforts, whether on campuses, in stores or in any other venue,' he said. 'We are on the front lines here, and through the new network [we] look forward to continuing to work closely with our national leadership, impacted communities and the federation, and other organizations in the Bay Area that are fully aware of this dangerous movement to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and are prepared to mount the necessary efforts to effectively counter it.'

Silverman said that he expects the network to be fully staffed and up and running by Jan. 1.

'Israel’s government has been advocating for this,' Silverman said. 'It has been in dialogue within our federation movement for a while, especially following the Toronto incident and the incident in San Francisco with the film festival, and divestment movements in the Protestant and Presbyterian churches … We have to do this quickly, and we have to be armed in our community and be offensive, not defensive.'" (source)