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The rabbi’s fridge

Danielle Leshaw, the Hillel rabbi at Ohio University, has an active and entertaining twitter feed. She just tweeted the photo above of her refrigerator, stating:

It’s on the fridge. Next to the other sacred ideas. Tel Aviv. J STREET. Queerness. Art. My daughter. Coffee shops.

The sacred object in question is the “Free Palestine” accessory — yarmulke? — that a friend gave her. Leshaw commented:

Thank you, Keelan (sp?) I knew I’d get one eventually. Now, how do we do it?

Free Palestine accessory, maybe a yarmulke
Free Palestine accessory, maybe a yarmulke

I welcome Leshaw into the movement to free Palestine and suggest the avenue that so many Palestinians urge on us: boycott divestment and sanctions, or BDS. But Leshaw is determined to oppose BDS hammer and tongs. During the Open Hillel conference, she tweeted:

C’mon TELL US WHY BDS DOESN’T WORK ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES. you can do it.

It’s a measure of the rabbi’s largeness of spirit that she tweeted out the Open Hillel conference even as she works for the procrustean atherosclerotic neanderthal Hillel organization that sets limits on free speech. Though I do think it’s a joke to call J Street a “sacred idea.” It’s a Beltway political organization run by a guy in his 50s who has done his utmost not to represent the views of his rank-and-file, to the extent that he has one.

By the way, as for the controversy that catapulted Leshaw into the spotlight, made her the rabbi at the “shitshow,” to use her deathless phrase: that was school senate president Megan Marzec’s “blood bucket” challenge for Gaza that the rabbi found so un-sacred. There are signs of healing on the Athens, Ohio, campus. Marzec was embraced over the weekend by the head of a Jewish fraternity on campus who affirmed that she is not anti-Semitic. As if she required that hecksher. Others continue to push for Marzec’s resignation. And in a piece today in the student paper, there was this disturbing statement.

“What I’m more interested in is the objective reality of ‘are people safe?’ ” [Tyler] Barton [of the Athens Committee for Palestine] said. “For example, what Megan Marzec experienced after the video was published. How many students have ever been called in to Cutler Hall to talk to the police and the Department of Homeland Security? … How many people are concerned about doing this panel or coming to this event because they’re afraid?”

Cutler Hall houses the senior administrative offices, including president and provost. UPDATE: Marzec informs me that she spoke to the police because of the many threats she had gotten.

Megan Marzec
Megan Marzec

 

 

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“As if she required that hecksher.”

Hecksher” A special certification marking that shows which products are certified kosher.

http://www.patheos.com/Library/Glossary/Hecksher.html

J Street as sacred? It isn’t even mediocre.
“Free Palestine” with every settler villa, maybe. Like at McDonalds.

Every drop of water, every fridge-message, wears away the awful stone of Zionism. But bear in mind, Richard Falk at the annual Edward said lecture at Columbia U. the other evening reminded us that even though we maintain hope against great odds, it would be nice to receive (dear God, send us) a miracle.

People are living longer these days, especially wealthy Jews who give money for university medical centers. How long must we wait fro the sclerotic old guard to die off? How long, how long, Oh Lord? (How long? too Long).

On the blue and white card in the centre that says “Tel Aviv” in Hebrew* is another card, also in Hebrew, advertising a café: “Café Almah”, which, according its website website was “founded in 2004 on the ruins of an abandoned bakery in Jaffa”. The site also boasts that the bakery employs “Jewish, Muslim and Christian residents of the Jaffa neighbourhood”.

http://www.pieceofcake.co.il/who.html (Hebrew)

Does “Free Palestine” also include the tens of thousands of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from the thriving Arab city of Jaffa (including the owners of the “abandoned” bakery) and a condemnation of the faux “co-existence” in the ethnically cleansed and rapidly gentrifying (and further Judaising) city of Jaffa?

Jaffa: http://electronicintifada.net/content/jaffa-eminence-ethnic-cleansing/8088

*”Tel Aviv” is printed in biblical font, citing the verse in Ezekiel that inspired the modern name — as a Hebrew rendition of Herzl’s Altneuland and the name of “The First Hebrew City”). The biblical fantasy surrounding Israeli toponyms is part and parcel of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and erasure of Palestinian memory.

” How many students have ever been called in to Cutler Hall to talk to the police and the Department of Homeland Security? … How many people are concerned about doing this panel or coming to this event because they’re afraid?” ->>>

I am not clear on this—-was she called in to talk to H. Sec about the threats against her or was she called in because of her blood bucket protest against Isr occupation?