A Harvard Student Breaks Ranks and Falls in Love with Israel

Oliver Marjot came to Israel for ten days to see its arrogance and oppression for himself. It did not turn out quite that way.

Recently, a group of 52 Harvard students - of all backgrounds and faiths - visited Israel for 10 days during the Harvard Israel Trek 2015

Sometimes the impact of such a trip cannot be expressed in prose - but can only be captured in poetry.

What follows is a poem - posted on the Harvard trek blog by Oliver Marjot - a British PhD candidate studying Medieval Latin at Harvard - that reflects his transformative experience.

Oliver expected that the Trek would confirm his reasonable European certainty of Israel’s arrogant oppression.  That’s not quite the way things turned out.

Oliver's Poem eloquently answers those who continue their vicious attempts to denigrate and de-legitimize Israel by exhorting the boycott and isolation of Israel, its people, products, commercial enterprises, medical breakthroughs, academics and artists:

“To my newfound Love,

I came to you, Israel, wanting to hate you. To be confirmed in my reasonable European certainty of your arrogant oppression, lounging along the Mediterranean coast, facing West in your vast carelessness and American wealth. I wanted to appreciate your history, but tut over the arrogant folly of your present. I wanted to cross my arms smugly, and shake my head over you, and then leave you to fight your unjust wars.

I wanted to take from you. To steal away some spiritual satisfaction, and sigh and pray, and shake my head over your spiritual folly as well. To see the sad spectacle of the Western wall, and bitterly laugh at your backward-looking notion that God sits high on Moriah Mount, distant and approachable. I wanted to smirk in my Protestant confidence, knowing that God is with me, even if you refuse to turn to him, standing instead starting blankly at a wall of cold stone, pushing scribbled slips of paper into the Holy mountain, not daring to raise your face, and ask with words.

I wanted to see your sights, to bask in your sun, to tramp my feet over your soil, to swim in your seas, to eat the fruit of your fields. I wanted to be amazed, to be interested, to be engaged. I wanted.

I didn’t realise you were broken as well as wealthy, fragile as well as strong. I didn’t realise that you suffer from a thousand voices clamouring in your head, and that some of those voices care about justice and democracy, and that some of them love their neighbours. I didn’t realise that a thousand enemies press on your borders, hoarding instruments of death, as chaos and darkness and madness consume the world every way you look. I didn’t realise that you care about your past - that some of those voices of yours treasure the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob every bit as much as I do. I didn’t realise. Nobody told me. Or maybe they did, and I refused to listen

I didn’t expect to fall in love with you. Your beauty caught me like a hook. Seeing you, I see what Solomon saw when he wrote about his Beloved. I see that homeland that Jesus loved. The lush green of your Galilee, the stark strength of your desert, the bare whiteness of your Judean hills. I love the Hebrew you speak, the churches your wear like flowers in your hair, the proud golden dome that crowns your head. I love the strength of your soldiers, the warmth of your sun, the joy of your songs, the peace of your kibbutzim.

This cold Boston air is a mockery of your spring warmth, and in this vast sprawl of concrete and red brick it’s no exaggeration to say that I yearn for your troubled horizons, your ancient hills. I’m not ashamed to say it. I love you.

I’m sorry I had to leave you. I know I have no right to love you. What’s ten days compared to a year, a childhood, a lifetime? Or the five-thousand year lifetime of a people? I know that you won’t remember me, that you probably barely even registered my short time with you. I’m sure my love means nothing to you amid the whispers of a million other lovers, and you’re so very far away.

But I will come back to you. I will. I’ll leave these busy, harried, Western shores, and come to you, to the East. I’ll learn your Hebrew, I’ll share your troubles, I’ll breath your air, I’ll walk in your fields again.

I will. I will.

Until then, Israel, mon amour, my love. Until then, shalom.”

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) started in 2005 by “Palestinian Civil Society” falsely claims that Israel is persistently violating international law  – while that Society’s Government  – the Palestine Liberation Organisation – continues to reject substantive segments of international law formulated over the last 95 years legalizing Jewish self-determination, as in this statement:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

The European Union – threatening to join these racist-inspired, Jew-hating BDS campaigners – is being well and truly conned.

Think again Europe. A Harvard student has – so should you.

Michelle Obama to Muslim hijab-clad girls " I see myself. In so many ways your story is my story,”

U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to the United Kingdom today, choosing to give a speech on female empowerment while surrounded by hijab-clad girls in the ethnically “diverse” London borough of Tower Hamlets.

But the Commercial Road in Tower Hamlets, from where Mrs. Obama chose to lecture, isn’t ethnically diverse, and nor is the Mulberry School for Girls that she visited.

Tower Hamlets, which only days ago managed to shake off its Islamist-linked Mayor, boasts a Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani, and otherwise Asian population. At the last census, in 2011, 39 percent of the population self-identified as Christian, while 36 percent identified as Muslim. The Muslim population of the borough is believed to have overtaken the Christian population by some way in the years since, with the next census not due until 2021.

And in Tower Hamlets, nearly 1 in 5 residents did not speak English as their first language, according to the 2011 statistics, opting instead for Bengali.

The Mulberry School for Girls, where Mrs Obama delivered her patronizing ‘Let Girls Learn’ speech, is described in multiple Ofsted school inspection reports as having “nearly all students… of Bangladeshi heritage, with a very small minority from other backgrounds, including White British, Pakistani and African.”

And while the school has been rated as “very good” for a number of years, it has also played host to hard-left conferences sponsored by groups such as ‘War on Want’, which is closely tied to anti-Israel activities in the United Kingdom, the ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ which has its roots in communist sympathizing, and indeed the European Parliament.

The Mulberry Youth Conference boasts amongst its speakers Shami Chakrabarti from left-wing campaign group Liberty, now-deceased Labour MP Tony Benn, ex Labour MP Clare Short, editor of the Guardian newspaper Alan Rusbridger, anti-white racist columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, hard-left activist Owen Jones, and feminist campaigner Lucy-Anne Holmes. 

So why did Michelle Obama choose Tower Hamlets, and the Mulberry School for Girls?

She said she specifically chose the area, and asked the question aloud herself, during her speech: “Why would she choose Tower Hamlets? I’m here because of you,” she told the crowd.

“When I look out at all these young women, I see myself. In so many ways your story is my story,” she told the room full of hijab-wearing girls. “I know I don’t look [older than you all]”, she crowed. 

And then went on to praise the local area, which is known for being a hot bed of Islamist activity and sympathy.

She described Tower Hamlets as a place where “families are tight knit… with strong values”. Perhaps this is true. There has certainly been evidence of a very “tightly knit” cabal attempting to rule Tower Hamlets. And there are certainly strong values too. Almost half of Britain’s 1300 cases of Female Genital Mutilation last year were from London. No prizes for guess which areas these emanate from.

So perhaps Mrs. Obama’s message about “climate change, poverty, extremism” were not best placed in the London borough best known for being a hive of corruption itself. Then again, as she chose to remind us, she is from the mean streets of Chicago. So that rotten stench probably rings quite familiar.

‘Our mandate is to isolate Israel,’ BDS leader tells 'Post'

Kwara ' kockim'un' Kekana, BDS activist

The mandate of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign is “to isolate Israel,” a spokeswoman for the movement told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Interviewed by The Jerusalem Post by phone, Kwara Kekana of BDS South Africa denied accusations leveled by Jewish organizations that her organization is anti-Semitic, a claim heard increasingly as companies such as France’s Orange appear to be buckling under pressure to severe ties with the Jewish state.

The BDS movement’s branch in South Africa has been one of the most vocal worldwide, and has been involved in a series of high profile incidents that have caused vocal outrage among Jewish communal bodies.

In 2013, one of the movement’s leaders justified calls to "shoot the Jew" heard during a protest against a concert by an Israeli musician. During that incident, protesters screamed at concertgoers slogans such as "Israel is apartheid" and "down, down Israel." Some also threw paper at the Jewish attendees.

The call to kill Jews was “just like you would say kill the Boer at [a] funeral during the eighties [and]  it wasn’t about killing white people, it was used as a way of identifying with the apartheid regime,” BDS coordinator Muhammed Desai said at the time.

Asked if the group was hostile to Jews, Prof. Farid Esack, writing on behalf of the board of BDS South Africa, expressed his opposition to "any and all incitement to violence and racism – including anti-Semitism and Zionism.”

More recently the movement hosted convicted Palestinian airline hijacker Leila Khaled on a nationwide speaking tour. In an email to supporters, organizers termed her an icon of the Palestinian struggle, showing an image of the PFLP member clutching an automatic weapon and comparing her to late South African president Nelson Mandela.

“Many Palestinians including Leila Khaled are today considered terrorists like the ANC and Nelson Mandela were once classified as terrorists,” the group declared. “The picture of a young, determined looking woman with a checkered keffiyeh scarf, clutching an AK-47, was as era-defining as that of Che Guevara, Ruth First and other political figures from our recent past.”

At the time, Kekana told the Post that she did not expect the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, which condemned the tour, to understand “the meaning of hosting someone like Nelson Mandela, the South African struggle icon, or Leila Khaled, the Palestinian struggle icon.”

The Jewish communal group, she said, had proudly supported the apartheid regime, just as it supports an Israeli “regime that is killing innocent Palestinians.”

Jewish ire at the group continued to build in April, when a diplomatic spat between Pretoria and Jerusalem prompted the BDS movement and allied organizations to threaten to “take it upon ourselves to be at the Israeli Embassy…to expel the Israeli Ambassador.”

The BDS movement also complained about what it called the “Israel lobby.”

Speaking with the Post on Tuesday, however, Kekana denied accusations of anti-Semitism, explaining that the campaign has Jews among its adherents.

“Oftentimes there is a discussion of BDS being anti-Semitic which is completely false. BDS if anything subscribes to peace. Against all forms of racism, which includes anti-Semitism, xenophobia, you can name it,” she said.

Asked if she believed that Israel has a right to exist or if Zionism is a form of racism, she responded by explaining that “the current form that Zionism as an ideology is being applied today” constitutes a “fundamental problem” for her.

Another such fundamental issue is “the way in which Israel wishes to exist at the expense of an indigenous population,” she said. “It wishes to exist in a state that wishes to exclude another group and also wants to exist at the expense of an indigenous population.”

Her mandate, she said, is to “isolate the apartheid state of Israel until it listens to international law” and gives in to three “non-negotiable” demands: the end of its occupation of lands claimed by the Palestinians, the end of “apartheid” and the acceptance of the Palestinian right of return.

Asked if going outside of the framework of negotiations to pressure Israel would make it less likely that a negotiated solution could be reached, she said that the issue of talks was up to the political leadership of the Palestinians and that her only concern was getting Israel to begin “complying with international law.”

Negotiations, she added, have to be undertaken in good faith and cannot go ahead while Arab “political prisoners” remain in Israeli jails or while there is any building in settlements.

Negotiations under such a state are ridiculous, she said, indicating that she believed that negotiations between the two sides could only commence once Israel has been isolated and made to comply with her movement’s demands.

The general consensus among the international community is that issues such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees must be dealt with in negotiations.

Despite the presence of Arabs in the Knesset and the supreme court, she insisted that Israel meets the definition of an apartheid state under a United Nations definition.

Asked how a right of return might be implemented, especially given the Israeli reluctance to give in on a point which many believe to be demographic suicide for the state’s Jewish majority, she said that she did not know what it would mean at the end of the day.

“What is a right of return. I think that we really need to start having those discussions. The preoccupation right now is not about creating peaceful agreements and I don’t think we are there yet. We are not at a point where we need to be discussing what the right of return itself needs to look like. For one, now Israel does not acknowledge the fact that Palestinians have a right to return to indigenous land,” she said.

The idea that Israel is an apartheid state is not restricted to South Africa. In an interview this week with the Arab website Bokra that was also run by 972 Magazine, Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the international movement, stated that the “Oslo accords disenfranchised Palestinians in the 1948 region, causing a serious rift. On the contrary, the BDS movement insists on the right of all Palestinians to exercise self-determination as a unified people and as such, insists on the rights of all Palestinians, including ‘48 Palestinians.”

“Conflating time-honored, human-rights-based boycotts of Israel’s violations of international law with anti-Jewish racism is not only false, it is a racist attempt to put all Jews into one basket and to implicate them in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians,” he said.

Former Amassador Oren Reveals How Obama Betrayed Israel Alliance

Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren revealed the depths of US President Barack Obama's antagonism to Israel and abandonment of the policies underlying the alliance between the two countries in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Israel may have made "mistakes" according to Oren with questionably timed building announcements for Jewish housing in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samraria, but Obama made mistakes against Israel "deliberately."

"From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran," wrote Oren. "Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental challenge by abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America."

Outlining these two principles, he noted the first was the concept of "no daylight," by which the US and Israel avoided public disagreements so as not to encourage their common enemies to exploit the disharmony.

Back in 2009, Oren recalls how Obama told American Jewish leaders, "when there is no daylight Israel just sits on the sidelines and that erodes our credibility with the Arabs," a comment that ignored the 2005 Disengagement plan from Gaza and Israel's previous two offers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to grant them a state.

Obama also nixed former President George W. Bush's promise to include major "settlement blocs" in Judea and Samaria within Israel's borders according to any peace agreement, instead forcing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to impose total building freezes in those areas.

Oren noted that as a result, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas torpedoed the peace talks by sealing a unity deal with Hamas, "but he never paid a price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part of Israel."

Surprises galore

"The other core principle was 'no surprises,'" details Oren. "President Obama discarded it in his first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, in May 2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and Israeli acceptance of the two-state solution. The following month the president traveled to the Middle East, pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the Muslim world from Cairo."

The former ambassador noted that Israeli leaders in the past were given forewarning about major US policy statements regarding the Middle East, and were able to give their opinions on them.

"But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power, without consulting Israel."

"Similarly, in May 2011, the president altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines with land swaps - formerly the Palestinian position - as the basis for peace-making," continued Oren. "If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to lecture the president the following day, it was because he had been assured by the White House, through me, that no such change would happen."

Yet another "surprise" was when Obama offered to back a UN Security Council investigation of Israel's communities in Judea and Samaria, and likewise offered "to back Egyptian and Turkish efforts to force Israel to reveal its alleged nuclear capabilities."

"The abandonment of the 'no daylight' and 'no surprises' principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program," wrote Oren. "In 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy."

"The past six years have seen successive crises in U.S.-Israeli relations, and there is a need to set the record straight. But the greater need is to ensure a future of minimal mistakes and prevent further erosion of our vital alliance," he concluded.

Chareidi Soldiers Saved By A Miracle As Jeep Turns Over on Terrorist

Chareidi Nachal that participated in military activity yesterday in the Arab village of Malik in the vicinity of Ramallah turned over as a result of obstacles placed by local residents. The jeep rolled over an Arab who tried to attack the soldiers with a Molotov cocktail and killed him.

The four Chareidi soldiers who were in the jeep survived the attack, partially due to the precaution they exercised during the ride. The dead terrorist was previously known by law authorities in Israel.

The soldiers entered the village of Malik for an ordinary activity of summoning a few of the local residents for investigations with the Shin Bet. As the activity began, the soldiers were pelted with stones and were tackled by numerous obstacles positioned in the village roads in order to encumber their exit. As the activity concluded, one of the jeeps tried to bump into the obstacles in order to remove it – an attempt that had to it turning over. The Arab lured the jeep so he would be able to throw a Molotov cocktail once the vehicle approached, but he was eventually squashed under it.

As a result of the incident, protests broke out at dawn in the village, with blocks, stones and Molotov cocktails hurled at the soldiers. The soldiers managed to get out of the village, boruch Hashem. Rabbis at the Nachal Chareidi Foundation escorting the Chareidi soldiers throughout their military service stated that “the Chareidi Nachal soldiers risk their lives on a daily basis in face of the organized and spontaneous terror of the Arabs. We thank G-d that the event ended successfully.”

Assembly Member Ellen C. Jaffee Questions Legitimacy of Orthodox Jewish Voters

What a Chutzpah, from this "Alteh Katchkeh" Ellen Jaffee!

A majority of the 9 Board members of the East Ramapo Central School District in Rockland County, NY, are Orthodox Jewish, and they recently won re-election in a landslide, but sitting NY Assembly Member Ellen C. Jaffee used her time on the floor of the New York State Assembly to  question the legitimacy of the voters who elected the board. 

The shocking claim was made during a debate of Ms. Jaffee’s bill to impose an un-American “monitor” with veto power over East Ramapo. 

Obama and the media... a bunch of lapdogs

Lakewood Children unsupervised throw rocks on passing trains while adults drive around the barrier that stops cars from going on tracks!

The following is a letter to the editor in this week's Yated Ne'eman.

Dear Editor,
I would like to share with you an occurrence I witnessed last week that I feel strongly defies what we represent. What I'm referring to is what goes on during the weekly visit here in Lakewood, NJ, by what is known simply as "The Train."

I was walking down Park Avenue near the intersection of County Line Road, when I heard the horn of the train in the distance.
Suddenly, as if summoned by some hidden force, close to 100 children appeared from all sides.

The first thing I noticed was that there were a whole bunch of kids, some who looked to be as young as 5 years old, running on to or riding their bikes on the tracks right in front of the train, as if to escort it into town. No elaboration is needed to describe the chillul Hashem and of course the danger involved in doing this.

The children actually did this for as far as I was able to see at each intersection as the train proceeded along Park Avenue and continued into town.

The next very disturbing thing I saw was that the children started spreading rocks and stones from the rail bed onto the actual tracks to see them get crushed as the train rode over them. Again, there is no need to elaborate on the chillul Hashem and danger this involves.

The next thing I saw really shocked me. As most have heard or noticed, the intersection of Park Avenue and County Line Road was recently equipped with new gates to block the road as the train passes.

During the short pause (which was definitely lengthened by the procession of children), no fewer than 3 cars driven by Yidden went around the gate and crossed the tracks. The last car almost collided with the train and had to back up after making a shortstop right on the tracks.

I then noticed some children throwing rocks and pieces of wood at the train as it went by.

A short while later, I met up with the engineer and the conductor of the train and was able to hear their perspective on this weekly occurrence.

Unsurprisingly, the engineer had some very strong words to say to us.
He stated as follows:

He has been driving trains for over 25 years and has been doing this run from Sayerville. NJ, to Lakewood for the past couple of years.
He said that what I witnessed happens every Thursday during the summer as he passes through Lakewood. He told me that from all the towns and cities that he passes through, Lakewood is the only one where the children do this and the only town where cars jump the track. He also said that in his entire career, he has never seen cars pass through a closed gate until he saw it this past week in Lakewood. He said that the danger to himself and the children when passing through Lakewood makes him question his job, and he's close to quitting.

He went on to explain that besides the damage to the rail company's property , the stones laid down along the track pose a danger to him and to the children, as there exists the possibility of the train derailing. I do not need to go into detail about what can happen in such a situation.

He continued to say that as the train pulverizes the stones, the fragments of rock that shoot out can be going as fast a bullet and can pierce right through anyone standing close by.

He also said that a train takes a lot longer to stop than a car does, and this poses great danger to children who run and ride in front of him if they were to fall, lo aleinu. He went on to say that he constantly sees adults just standing by and not saying anything as this happens, greatly adding to his frustration.

I'll quote a question he asked me during our conversation.

Do wee need a child to get killed in order for parents to stop them from doing these things?

I am writing this letter to hopefully stop the problem in its tracks, so to say, before that happens, chalilah.

It is not necessary for me to explain how wrong this all is. we must remember our place in golus and be makir tov to the medinah shel chessed that we live in. It is situations like these that, at times, cause us to be looked down upon by our neighbors.

Parents, please tell your children that it is fine to stand by and watch the train pass, but anything that may be a chillul Hashem or a sakana is absolutely off limits. It is your responsibility to teach your children how they must act.

Name Withheld
Lakewood, NJ

Five Charedi Soldiers Do the Right thing beating up a Palestinian Demonstrator but face investigation

Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian protester during clashes following a protest against Jewish settlements, in Jalazoun refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Ramallah June 12, 2015. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

Finally, we get to beat the hell out of a Palestinian who gets in the face of the IDF soldiers and tries to provoke them.
 The IDF is investigating.....
I guess they have to show the world that we don't allow this kind of violence...
Don't they know that the world only cares when an Arab gets beaten, but the fact that one cannot drive safely to Har Hazeisim because the savages keep throwing stones at innocent people, means nothing to the world....
Which country would tolerate this?
Notice the headline from Reuters ...
"Israeli soldiers filmed beating unarmed man!"
Hey Reuters .... fists can kill...

Were Dasan V'aviram Satmar?

Originally, while still in Egypt they were committed Zionists, we know that, because they survived the makkah of Choshech in Mitzrayim. Only those Jews who wanted to remain in Chutz L'aaretz succumbed to the plague of darkness! Even though Dasan V'aviram were rashaim having given over information to Pharoh that Moshe killed the Egyption, Hashem spared them because at that time Dasan V'aviram still looked forward to go to Eretz Yisrael.

In this week's Parshas Korach, we see a sudden turn of events in reference to Dasan V'aviram. When Moshe goes to talk to them, to try to convince them to coax them to separate from the "Gadol Hador" Korach, they utter words right out of the Satmar handbook Al Hagilah V'al Hatmirah ...they say with proudness 
"Lo naaleh, we will not make aliya!"

The Satmar Rebbe R' yoel z"l did not allow any Satmars to make Aliya pre-WW2, even when the cursed Nazis were nipping at the Hungarian/Roumanian borders ...... and get this, even after WW2, having  learned that 6 million Jews were annihilated, he was adamant that they remain in Chutz L'aaretz ,unless they had special permission.

So what actually  happened that turned Dasan V'aviram to become ardent Satmars?

They attached themselves to then "Gadol Hador"....  Korach! 

There were other Gedolim (Moshe and Aaron, Yehoshuah, Kalev)  that advocated going to Eretz Yisroel, and it  mattered not who lived there....even if Eretz Yisroel was surrounded by enemies; Ameleik lived in the Negev, the Chittes, the Yevusites, the Amorites lived on the mountain, the Canaanites lived by the sea and by the banks of Jordan...but all the Gedolim really wanted was the gift that Hashem gave us .... Eretz Yisroel.

but they, Dasan V'aviram listened to their "Gadol" who even though their Gadol made absolutely no sense and spoke and 'ploppeled" naarishkeiten,  they went with their "Daas Torah" and said
 "Lo Naaleh .....Nope ....No  Aliya for us"

We now  know the catastrophic results in both situations!

Hillary, the Millionaire attacks the Rich

Al Sharpton Blames Parents for Calling Out their White daughter that was masquerading as a Black NAACP Official

Ha Ha... how crazy is this..? How low has this black fool sunk?

Al Sharpton yesterday slammed the parents of Spokane NAACP President Rachel Dolezal, saying he has to wonder what their motives were for revealing her to be a white woman, not an African-American, as she claims.

The Meshiginar Rachel Dolezal that is white ans says she's black

“On one level, you’ve got to say to her, you’re misleading us, but on another level, mom and dad, come on,” he told TMZ. “Are we gonna have this dysfunctional family stuff play out and distract us from real key civil rights causes. Be the adults here. You just now noticed she was in the NAACP?”

But still, Sharpton pointed out that the real issue is not race, as there are whites “in all of our organizations,” and who died fighting for civil rights.

“It’s not about whether she is white or black, but are you going to be honest?” he said. “Don’t be misleading… if you’re fighting for the rights of people, don’t deny who you are.”

However, Sharpton wondered why Dolezal’s parents, Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal, waited until Friday to appear on television to discuss her.

Instead, he said, they waited until she became more prominent before making their statements, Sharpton said.

“You’ve got to ask the question, ‘what are Mom and Dad’s motives here… where’ve you been?” he replied.

Her parents, Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal told CNN Friday that their daughter has been claiming to be black for years, but they were never asked about her until recently. The couple has four adopted children, three of whom are African-American and one from Haiti, in addition to Dolezal, who is their biological daughter.

They also shared a photo of her, taken while she was younger and showing her with blonde hair, and a birth certificate that lists themselves as Dolezal’s parents.

Her mother told CNN that Dolezal cut ties with them several years ago, as “she doesn’t want to be seen with us because that ruins her image.”

Howard Stern's Frum Daughter

Emily Stern

From an article in Jewinthecity.com

Like most people on planet earth, I’ve known who Howard Stern is for years, though, I’ve never really listened to his show or watched more than an occasional clip of “America’s Got Talent.” 

Then my friend Mayim Bialik was interviewed on his radio show last year and, of course, I had to hear it. What struck me most about their conversation was Mayim explaining Jewish ideas to Howard – like mikvah and modesty – publicizing these mitzvos to millions of his listeners. 

Howard challenged Mayim, wanting to know why she covers up so much – unlike most actresses in Hollywood – and Mayim explained that her body belongs to her, not Hollywood. Apparently, Howard was so struck by this idea that the next morning when he started his show he referenced it.

Howard Stern didn’t cross my mind again until a couple months ago, when I stumbled upon a poet whose work is featured in the LA Jewish Journal. 

A line in one of her poems jumped out at me “Why in the
 world why in the heavens
 when God says find a mate, 
Adam never stops to say, You, God. Us.
” It was so profound, I wanted to hear more. So I started clicking through to read more of her work and as I read, I got to an article which explained who her dad was. I was fascinated! Howard Stern’s daughter became an Orthodox Jew?! I reached out to her, we had a wonderful coffee meeting and told her I’d love to share her story and her art with the world.

Emily grew up Reform and “really did love it.” She sang in the choir, was close with the cantor, and always felt a connection with Judaism. But the ritual element was always missing. In her search to find a community that resonated with her, she stumbled upon Orthodoxy. She started out in the theater community majoring in theater at NYU, then at the age of 23, she randomly walked into a havdalah ceremony, hosted by the organization Romemu, in a yoga studio one Saturday evening. 

She had never seen a ritual that related to the world in such a grounded way. After that night in the yoga studio she found two ways of expressing her soul in the world authentically: by relating to matter through halacha, and infusing Judaism into her art. 

Inspired by the language of Torah, and wanting her writing to speak the same language, Emily joined an art fellowship at Drisha Institue (a seminary for Jewish education on the Upper West Side) and wrote a play there. While at Drisha she was lead to study at Nishmat, which is a center for advanced Torah study for women, in Israel.

Growing up on Long Island, Emily did not have much of an impression or interaction with Orthodox Jews. She always recognized a special light in the religious Jews she saw from afar. Seeing something as simple as a man wearing tzitzis always seemed holy to her. While becoming more observant, she thankfully was not met with too much pushback from her family and friends and found that most of them appreciated her journey. 

Perhaps the one exception was the first time her mother came to Israel and saw her praying; she expressed a fear about losing her daughter. Other than that, Emily says it was such a visible “emergence of her truth,” that her family could appreciate the changes she was making, which she was careful to make slowly.

Emily is passionate about exploring and publicizing Torah to the world through art. Creating art has always been a spiritual experience for her. It began in her childhood, when she found herself praying to calm her nerves before taking to the stage. Nowadays the spirituality in her art manifests itself in more of a “constant conversation with the world and life itself.” 

Emily said that she’ll open to a piece of Torah at random and find that it fits with an exact character she’s writing or theme of one of her poems. She has produced several different types of art, including an album called “Birth Day,” which she describes as “the nature of divinity and the divinity of nature.” She has also written “Love Psalms” which are short devotional poems to God. 

After finding Torah at Drisha and Nishmat she went on to write a children’s song book based on Perek Shira. The book is called The World is a Song So Come and Play, and in it children discover their song like each of the animals and their unique praises of God in Perek Shira. Her latest venture is a photography project called “The Wells of Miriam.”    

The name of the project comes from the well that accompanied the Israelites in the desert, and provided them with water in Miriam’s merit. 

The project started when Emily first saw a water retention landscape (pictured below)– a sustainable form of water management –in Portugal in 2014. Water retention landscapes are created to “reverse desertification” and “look like paradise.” 

They are ditches dug in intelligent ways to model a pond or lake, and help with altitude and water circulation. They are made entirely of natural materials and when there is rainfall the water fills deeply into the earth and rehydrates the land. New vegetation grows, new animals come and new ecosystems form, in formerly barren wasteland. 

The final (and most fascinating) step is when the ditch is full to capacity…and becomes a mikvah. 

The retention landscapes are mikvaot (!) because they are entirely filled with rainwater. When Emily made this connection, she knew she wanted to explore the topic through photography. How apropos that a renewable, sustainable water source, is also a mikvah, the bastion of monthly renewal for Jewish couples. Just as these new waters renew and replenish an arid desert, so too the mikvah gives us a chance to renew our relationships and renews the possibility to bring new life to the world. Emily ended our interview by explaining one of her favorite parts of the Torah was where Hashem is called “Mikvah Yisrael,” the Hope/Renewer of Israel.”

“Mikvah hatikvah: water retention landscape” from “The Wells of Miriam” by Emily Stern. Portugal 2014.

Read more: http://jewinthecity.com/2015/06/howard-sterns-daughter-became-orthodox-the-wells-of-miriam/#ixzz3cnzCcg8Z

New york Times doesn't want Marco Rubio to be President because he had 3 Speeding Tickets

I'm not kidding! 
This anti-Semitic rag should be driven out of business! 
They hate all republicans but afraid of Marco Rubio, betting that he has a good chance on becoming President, but Rubio doesn't fit their Marxist agenda. 
So they decided to attack him, but couldn't find anything on him except that he had 3 speeding tickets in 17 years...

You are not going to find any speeding tickets on Hillary's file because Hillary hasn't driven a car in 30 years...

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio and his political team are hitting back at The New York Times for what they consider two unfair stories: an article about traffic tickets he and his wife received over 18 years, and a piece about how he and his wife have experienced problems managing their money.

The candidate is leaping on the Times' stories to generate sympathy and argue that the mainstream media, despised by many on the right, are biased against him. He has used the Times donnybrook to raise money, attacking what his spokesman called "elitist liberal media," and this gambit has added $100,000 to his war chest so far, Fox News reported.

Thousands Of Yeshiva Bochrim Gather At Boulder Baseball Park In Pomona For Internet Asifa

I don't get it! Hezballah has 100,000 missiles poised at 6 million Jews and the organizers and askanim  couldn't care less...
Instead the askanim are busy with narishkeiten and got all yeshivas to stop learning Torah and talk about an issue that will stay with us until Moshiach comes.... 
Helllllllllowwwwww! The Internet is here to stay.... 
in a few years you won't be able to bank if you are not on the Internet! Get used to it...

Don't you think that it would have been a huge "KIDDUSH HASHEM" and would have given tremendous chizuk to the ones living in Eretz Yisroel if they would have gathered to say a kapittal tehillim?

And get this....they have the seats set up according to Chassidus? How sick and crazy is this?
Now a  Bobover can't mix with a Viznitzer!
Notice that the bathrooms are behind Viznitz & Krasna.
Was this the set up at Har Sinai?
Girls and women were not invited... because girls presumably can go on the Internet! 
Or maybe they weren't invited because the Askanim will give the boys and men permission to chop the hands off the females if they catch them watching the 3 stooges!

Also they couldn't bring themselves to  even call it by the real name "Boulder Stadium" instead they call it "Provident Bank Park" a name that that no taxi driver ever heard of ...
Good luck....and bring a water bottle! It's very hot out there!