 | ||
| I was invited to the Sabbath at a Reform shule in Poughkeepsie. It is called Vassar Temple and the invite was from Beth El... the Conservative Temple's Rabbi. And when I arrived there after prayer was a lecture by a man from Dallas (a Reconstructionist Male Rabbi) who said we should make a big tent for J street and then used the Daily Beast as a reference. I walked out and said this was pathetic and it was not Judaism. It isn't... to ask to include haters on the Sabbath is not Kosher. Debate is fine during rest, but the debate that happened at Vassar Shule was intended to humiliate and had no place on Friday nights. I was reminded that I was a guest. (also it is odd, but they have their own lame tunes for common songs that have had great tunes for centuries. I'm talking about basic prayer. and what was with the organ and the female cantor in a performance?) I was bewildered by the situation... and then it seems to be an epidemic:
|
 | ||||
to bring BDS organizers all together at #jstconf in run-up to Israel Apartheid Week. Helpful!
|
Ben Sales went hungry at the J Street Conference.
Why?
No kosher food.
Really:-
Some people say J Street is too far to the left; others complain that it’s too far right. But there’s another, more basic reason for Jews to doubt J Street’s kashrut:
Its food is literally not kosher.
Of course, plenty of Jewish organizations serve non-kosher food at their events, and that’s fine. Given that the vast majority of Jews don’t keep strict, certified kosher, there’s no reason to foot that bill. But almost all Jewish organizations, and certainly all major ones, make the effort to provide kosher options for those Jews who do require a hekhsher. At the very least, they would offer kosher food for purchase.
Not so with J Street.
When I arrived at the conference this morning, before 8 a.m., I asked a staff person if the breakfast would include kosher options. She told me it would. But when the food arrived, there was nothing kosher to be found–not even fruit. I sufficed with coffee and decided to wait for lunch, when–with an hour of free time–I could rush on the metro to a kosher restaurant.
When that time came, I got ready to hurry out of the conference room only to be told by multiple J Street staffers that there were sandwiches for purchase across the building and yes, some of them were kosher.
You can guess what happened next. I arrived at the sandwich cart and requested the kosher option. I got a blank stare in return, and when I asked the manager she told me she had no idea what I was talking about. She hadn’t heard anything about kosher sandwiches. The best they could do, they said, was a regular turkey sandwich with the cheese taken off. No good. I bought a Clif bar, a Nature Valley, a Kit Kat, an apple and a banana. I filled the feast out with some mini Twix I found at a conference table.
Maybe I’m making too much of this, but I think that an intentionally Jewish organization that bases its platform on Jewish values should make more of an effort to respect a basic traditional Jewish practice. This is especially true for J Street, which emphasizes pluralism and acceptance...
My, my. There was this in September 2009:
...The average age of the dozen or so staff members is about 30. Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.” They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.”
I guess they are also baffleds by the concept of "kosher".
But, to be pluralistic, there's this clarification:
The "Buddhist seders" meme comes from NYT article about J Street where Jeremy Ben-Ami is cited as saying "We all hold Buddhist seders" and "We are all intermarried". Ben-Ami is not intermarried. His wife, Sara, is a daughter of a Rabbi and descendant of a family which co-founded Petah Tikva more than 120 years ago. And of course "Buddhist seder" was just a joke.Nevertheless, many people harped on that Buddhist seder bit but I didn't locate any J Street corrections but one J Street sympathizer who was quite pro-Buddha.
pig image via angelahart.org
Alana Goodman reports at contentions that Republicans were a No-Show at the J Street Gala.
J Street doesn’t like to describe itself as a “left-wing” organization, but its gala dinner last night failed to attract a single Republican member of Congress. The only two GOP lawmakers listed as attendees at the gala — Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Rep. Jeffrey Fortenberry — have both clarified today that they didn’t actually go to the event.
The Washington Jewish Week’s Adam Kredo published a list earlier today of 56 members of Congress who attended...-Representative Tammy Baldwin
-Representative Xavier Becerra
-Representative Howard Berman
-Representative Marsha Blackburn
-Representative Bruce Braley
-Senator Sherrod Brown
-Representative Lois Capps
-*Representative Russ Carnahan (Couldn't attend)
-Representative Andre Carson
-Representative Wm. Lacy Clay
-Representative Steve Cohen
-Representative Gerry Connolly
-Representative John Conyers
-Representative Jim Cooper
-Representative Danny Davis
-Representative Susan Davis
-Representative John Dingell
-Representative Lloyd Doggett
-Representative Donna Edwards
-Representative Keith Ellison
-Representative Anna Eshoo
-Representative Sam Farr
-Representative Bob Filner
-Representative Jeff Fortenberry
-Representative Charles Gonzalez
-Representative Raul Grijalva
-Representative Martin Heinrich
-Representative Rush Holt
-Representative Sheila Jackson Lee
-Representative Marcy Kaptur
-Senator Herbert Kohl
-Representative Dennis Kucinich
-Representative Barbara Lee
-Representative David Loebsack
-Representative Betty McCollum
-Representative Jim McDermott
-Representative Gregory Meeks
-*Senator Jeff Merkley (Couldn't attend)
-Representative Brad Miller
-Representative Gwen Moore
-Representative James Moran
-Representative Chris Murphy
-Representative Bill Owens
-Representative Bill Pascrell
-Representative Donald Payne
-Representative Chellie Pingree
-Representative Jared Polis
-Representative David Price
-Representative Nick Rahall
-Representative Jan Schakowsky
-Representative Jackie Speier
-Representative Chris Van Hollen
-Representative Maxine Waters
-Representative Peter Welch
-Representative Lynn Woolsey
-Representative John Yarmuth
-*Senator Maria Cantwell (Didn't RSVP, but attended.)
-*Representative Earl Blumenauer (Didn't RSVP, but attended.)
-*Representative Charlie Rangel (Didn't RSVP, but attended.)
I'll update and amend this list as need be.
It's also worthwhile to note that on Tuesday, more than 700 J Street activists took to Capitol Hill to cap off the four-day conference by lobbying lawmakers on several pro-Israel fronts.
During 240 separate meetings with lawmakers, J Street's citizen lobbyists urged their members of Congress to keep U.S. funding to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority robust.
UPDATE: Soon after posting this list, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry's office called me up to clarify his inclusion. They say he neither RSVP'd for, nor attended J Street's conference.
Amy Spitalnick, J Street's spokesperson, maintains that Fortenberry's office said he'd attend. (There was no e-mail confirmation, as I incorrectly indicated earlier.)
via elderofziyon.blogspot.com
