Busy, Busy, Busy, Conference... and a Little Fun

Happy (belated) Hanukkah, everybody!

Israeli dreidel, it has a "peh"
for "poh" meaning "here".
On the dreidel is "Nes gadol
haya poh" meaning "a great
miracle happened here"

I don't have time to do ANYTHING anymore... projects, papers, and exams are taking over my life. So December 21st began with the HRM and Staffing Orgs presentations. The HRM presentation went smoothly but Staffing, not as much. I don't remember what happened later that day but I remember it turned out to be okay.  December 22nd was busy; Hilary and I met with our boss at a local restaurant called Jeremiah, great place to get food (I got a salad and grilled cheese sandwich). I then had a project meeting, then everyone in the Master's program went to a program Hanukkah party. We had so much fun just telling stories, eating sufganiyot (jelly donuts), lighting candles, singing songs. The next number of days were mainly spent working on projects for this class and that class. I have written page after page, edited piece after piece, and worked on more projects. I'm ready to pull my hair out right now. December 24th was filled with work then going out with my friend Dan to hang with some new friends of his. I spent all of Christmas just working and trying to recover from a hangover. December 26th consisted of presenting the small group project in Organization Theory and Design, but we have to wait to present the big project for tomorrow.

Now December 27th was interesting. The Master's program went to an International Conference on Anti-Semitism, sponsored by the World Zionist Organization, at Bar Ilan University in nearby Ramat Gan. I ended up taking a lot of notes. We sat in on a few lectures and seminars all day. The first lecture brought up questions like, "Is the Shoah (the Holocaust) the mirror of the Jews or is it just explaining the persecution?" and mentioned that Jews are the "Other". When speaking of Modernity, topics of Aryan race being a "clean and healthy society", "The Bloodlands" being when Stalin committed mass murders all over Eastern Europe, exorcising the Jewish spirit being the reason for studying the Holocaust nowadays.

The second lecture was by Robert Wistrich, a professor at the Hebrew University. He discussed Communism in the 1920s wanting to start a Red Jihad, spreading a revolution all over the world. He also discussed the Muslim Brotherhood. He that their cries against anti-Semitism undermine the foundations of Islam, Hamas is a branch of the European Brotherhood, and Iran believed that Jews were perceived as being a central part of a global conspiracy to exploit and suppress Islam. Wistrich also mentioned that there's rhetoric against the Jews about conspiracies of them planning to take over the world, such as Protocols of the Elders of Zion (just like Pinky and the Brain). Also, anti-Semitism is supposedly more of a Muslim than a Christian phenomenon, more left wing than right wing, and more Middle East than West.

Panel at the International Conference

We then took a workshop called "Drawing the Line: The Difference Between anti-Semitism and anti-Israel Sentiments". We learned that 13% of Americans hold anti-Semitic views and the three aspects of anti-Semitism include religion, politics, and race. There is a grey area on the line in which certain animals have represented Jews in cartoons and such, terminology including "Palestinian Holocaust", "Israel = 4th Reich", etc., and the "Israeli Apartheid" is the worst type of racism -- Israel Apartheid Week was created by college students because they believed that Israel has apartheid between Israelis and Arabs (WHICH IS NOT TRUE!!!), so they believe Israel has no right to exist because apartheid is a crime against humanity.

The next workshop was called "Countering anti-Semitism in the New Media". I actually had already learned just about everything this guy talked about. He brought up the video about Muhamed al-Dura and his son being shot and killed in the line of fire, supposedly by Israelis (but did they really die?). What is said on Wikipedia pages differs from language to language. If you type the word "Jew" into Google, the first search result is the Wikipedia page on Jew. The second result is JewWatch.com (DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK IF YOU WILL BE EASILY OFFENDED, or possibly offended at all), the most anti-Semitic and disgusting website on the web. The question is, should Google keep JewWatch up on their results when it's very offensive but FREEDOM OF SPEECH comes into question. Also, the State of Israel is not allowed to have a Facebook page, and Facebook limits pages on Israel. I didn't really like the guy giving this talk, and some things were not very accurate.

We then went to a panel on anti-Semitism as our last stop. There are claims against Israel include: the exclusion of women, intermarriage laws, diplomacy on campus, and the Holocaust. Regarding the Holocaust, it's difficult for teachers to teach about it in the classroom. It's a very emotional subject and someone can easily get offended, but it's a subject everyone should learn about. It's also possible with hard disputes to discuss the whole Gilad Shalit issue, whether he should have been traded for 1,000 prisoners and him being considered a hostage vs. a terrorist. A question was brought up about whether the Israeli education system can teach about anti-Semitism and anti-Israel and how to combat it. The panel said, "To all educational system: you must know what you're fighting against and what you're fighting for". Jews are also very heterogeneous today, both inside and outside Israel; a girl on Birthright was quoted as saying that she didn't see the reason in marrying Jewish. The answer came to be that it's her right to not want to marry Jewish, but it's important to have Jewish babies. So the conversation moved to, "What is the meaning of being Jewish?". The problem is that many young Jews don't study about their heritage and religion, and the Israeli education system should help Israeli Jews define themselves in terms of religion and culture. The last thing covered was Xenophobia; teaching of the Holocaust requires three pieces: education, teacher training, and research. Yet, teachers bring their own stereotypes into the classroom regardless, and every cultural context has their own explicit language.

Ilana and me

December 28th involved finishing learning anything there was to learn for my first semester in grad school in HRM and Staffing, then we prepared for the exams. Unfortunately, our exams are structured as 20 or so multiple choice questions and a few short answer questions... there is very little room for error! At night, Alex, Adam, and I went to a bar for some fun and we got to a packed place. The only interesting thing that happened on December 29th was that at night, I met up with my friend, Ilana, from the L.A. Hillel community service trip in March. She's on Birthright and having the time of her life. We chilled for an hour, it was so nice seeing her again! :)

Part of East Jerusalem

On December 30th, Anna, Shoshana, Simon, and I went on our Israel Diplomacy class trip to Jerusalem. We visited the City of David, where we watched a video of the history, toured a bit to see King David's castle (inside and outside), then met a guy who lives in East Jerusalem. This guy lives in a small neighborhood  filled with 85 Jews. He talked about his Arab neighbors and how he's not afraid to be friends with them, or get into fights with the ones who are not so fond of him. He has a great view of the Old City from his apartment; he can see both the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall. I took some pictures, too!

Lastly, New Year's Eve was awesome! Adam and I weren't aware that our friend Cody had organized for everyone to pay earlier in the week to go to a local underground club and get on the list. So I went to the club early and got four tickets (2 for me and Adam and 2 for our "dates" Anna and Elena). The four of us joined in on the festivities and had a very fun night!

Here's a beautiful picture of sundown outside my
apartment to (hopefully) leave you with a nice feeling

Happy New Year 2012! Can't wait to see what this year brings... obviously, everything in Israel! See ya later.