Jewish Events
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October 24, 2008
Nominations for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize close on Friday, and among the entrants is a 98-year-old Briton, Sir Nicholas Winton, who transported 700 Jewish children to the UK before WWII.
The BBC’s Allan Little visited Prague to witness the legacy of a man known as the “British Schindler”.
In a school room in southern Bohemia, a class of teenagers sit mesmerised by a film about a young Englishman who came to their country a long time ago and did something so remarkable – brave as well as honourable – that 70 years later they petitioned the authorities to rename their school.
It is, now, the Sir Nicholas Winton School.
In the spring of 1939, the young Nicholas Winton cancelled a skiing holiday in Switzerland and, at the urging of a friend, went to Prague instead.
The city was full of people who had fled their homes in the wake of the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland.
Nicholas Winton was particularly shocked by the condition of the children: many of them he found living in squalid – and freezing – refugee camps.
He resolved to do something about it.
With a group of others he drew up a list of children whose parents would agree to send them to Britain until the emergency – however long it was to last – was over.
When his list was complete there were 5,000 names on it.
He lobbied the Home Office in London. They said he could bring as many children as he liked, provided he could find foster families for them, and provided they went home when it was safe to do so.
The Winton group then advertised for families. “It wasn’t the ideal way to place children,” he told me, 70 years later.
“But if someone wrote to say they could take, say, a girl aged seven, then we sent some pictures of girls aged seven and said ‘choose one’.
“Not ideal, but it did work and it was quick.”
Father’s tears
He then organised a series of closed trains to take the children from Prague directly to Liverpool Street station in London.
Alicie Klimova was 11 in 1939. She took me back to the platform at Prague’s Masaryk Station, where she last saw her parents two months before the outbreak of war.
“The platform was full of children and parents” she said. “My parents did their best to keep on smiling, telling me it was so exciting that I was going to England.
“But at midnight when the train pulled out, my father couldn’t hold back his tears.
“I said ‘Daddy don’t cry – you’ll disgrace me!’ Of course I had no idea that we would never see each other again”.
When Alicie went back to Prague in 1945 she found that both her parents had died in Auschwitz.
Lost contact
The transports continued through the summer of 1939. The last one was due to leave on 1 September – the day war broke out.
There were 250 children on board, but the train never left the station. Most of them died in the Holocaust.
For 50 years Nicholas Winton, of Maidenhead in Berkshire, lost contact with the 670 children he had brought to Britain – and whose lives he had saved.
When he married he didn’t even tell his wife what he had done.
Then, when he was almost 80, some of his children began to get in touch. He found that the original group had grown to more than 5,000.
“Normally events that happened a long time ago diminish in importance as time goes on,” Sir Nicholas told me.
“This story is the opposite – it keeps on growing, because there are more and more people. They keep breeding, you see!”
September 4, 2008
Soon i will go to the seminar of Judaism and jewish history only for the weekend.
I have been there a couple of years ago to two of these kind of events.
At that time it was one of the few chances to meet with other young jewish people. This made them unique and gave them an ace which made the inconveniences easier to support.
Time has gone, the place where the event will be held has known dramatic changes(for the good), the ways to keep in touch with the other young jews have multiplied by one hand through the increase in the number of programs created for them and by the other hand through the internet, messenger, facebook and so on.
This seminar had as a strong point the concern for knowledge.The biggest part of it was dedicated to the study and discusion of topics related to tradition and history.
It is very interesting to see today how much succes will such a seminar have in the context of a broader line of events, from which the larger part of them being created having fun a the main subject.
Soon we will see.:)
September 4, 2008
Where?
JCC Bucuresti – Centrul Comunitar Evreiesc
str.Popa Soare nr.18 sect 2
Tel: 021-3202608, 021-3213940 (Romtelecom), 031-4056064 (RDS)
Contact: Iustina Grajdinoiu: 0728 45 7777
when?
8-9 september 18.00-22.00
Who?
Moshe Idel, one of the most eminent and influential scholars of Jewish mysticism in the world, will explore Kabbalistic and Hasidic notions.
Idel is the Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has also served as a visiting professor and research scholar at numerous universities and institutions in the United States and Europe. His numerous publications include Kabbalah: New Perspectives; Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah; Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia; Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic; Messianic Mystics; and Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation.
Why?
Just as the decapolar Creator accounts for the cosmos in terms that resonate with “big bang” and atomic theory, by concentrating on the lower sephirotic sphere and its two “sides”, left and right, the Castilian kabbalists also revealed a bipolar, gendered God, consonant with the love that unites man and woman – and the people with their Lord. This is Moshe Idel’s theme in Kabbalah and Eros, but his findings extend beyond the kabbala and touch on the nature of Judaism. Starting with the prayer book’s striking kabbalistic formula that the liturgy is performed “for the sake of the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, with His Divine presence”, Idel analyses the mystic’s concept of love in a fascinating array of sources, and, more widely, its role in daily life: marriage and union are imagined as having “a tremendous impact on the upper worlds”. Hence Idel locates a widespread theurgical note in Jewish lore, albeit perhaps not the “magical” one he claims, but rather a subtle, life-enhancing variety of erotic mysticism, in some ways akin to and, as has recently been claimed, perhaps indebted to Tantrism.
August 20, 2008
Olympics: Shahar Tzuberi brings home bronze in Neil Pryde sailing
Shahar Tzuberi won a bronze medal in the Neil Pryde final race, Wednesday morning.
The 21-year-old by Wednesday morning was Israel’s last hope at the 2008 Olympic Games.
After a disappointing run for Israel in the Beijing Olympics, windsurfer Shahar Tzuberi finally gave Israelis a reason to cheer.
Tzuberi won the bronze medal at Wednesday’s Neil Pryde finals, Israels first medal at the 2008 games, after arriving in second place in the final race.
The 21-year-old finished the 10th and final race of the regular competition in fourth position on Tuesday and entered the decisive contest in fourth place overall.
Julien Bontemps of France led the Neil Pryde event on 45 negative points, with Nick Dempsey and Tom Ashley tied on 46 points right behind him.
On Tuesday, Tzuberi was in second position after the first half of the race, but when the wind picked up in the second half he dropped down two positions, which may be crucial when all is said and done.
“The race was very tough,” Tzuberi said. “The wind was weak, the way I like it, but Bontemps overtook me midway through the race.”
Of his chances to win a medal Tzuberi said: “If I do well in the medal race I could win any one of the three medals. If I finish first and one of my rivals comes in fifth, I will have a medal. Nevertheless, I’m not focusing on the other surfers, but on my own performance.”
The Israeli said the forecast for Wednesday is for weak winds and insisted that the competition is still wide open.
“I managed to close in on first position today and did my upmost,” he said.
Anybody at this level knows what they’re doing and everything will be decided on Wednesday,”
Ma’ayan Davidovich will compete in the women’s windsurfing medal race on Wednesday, but regardless of her result will still finish the competition in 10th place overall.
The 20-year-old ended the final regular race in 10th position and pipped Frenchwoman Faustine Merret by three points to book a place in the medal race.
Davidovich’s gap from ninth-placed Wai Kei Chan is, however, 22 points, and she has no chance of finishing any higher than her current position.
“My goal was to reach the medal race and I’m pleased I managed to do so,” Davidovich said.
July 31, 2008
The Eternal Jew is a 1940 propaganda film. Its title in German is Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the “Wandering Jew” in medieval folklore. At the insistence of Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the film was directed by Fritz Hippler. The film consists of feature and documentary footage combined with materials filmed shortly after the Nazi occupation of Poland. At this time Poland’s Jewish population was about three million, roughly ten percent of the total population.
The movie is done in the style of a documentary, the central thesis being the immutable racial personality traits that, according to Nazi doctrine, characterize the Jew as a wandering cultural parasite. Throughout the film, these supposed traits are contrasted to the Nazi state ideal: while Aryan men are shown to find satisfaction in physical labor and the creation of value, Jews are depicted as finding pleasure in money and a hedonist lifestyle. While members of the Aryan race live healthily, rich Jews are shown as living in bug-infested and dirty homes, even though they could afford better. While Germanic/Nordic man has an appreciation for Northern culture and imagery, Jews are alleged only to find satisfaction in the grotesque and decadent. The film criticizes Jewish religious practices, and criticises kosher slaughtering, (shechita), as inhumane, contrasting it with Nazi laws requiring that animals be anaesthetized prior to butchering.
The film ends with Hitler explaining the problems of the Jewry in Europe and says:
“Should the international finance Jews inside and outside of Europe push people into another world war, the result will not be a victory for Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe.” [applause][1]”
Unser Wille und Weg, a Nazi Party monthly aimed at propagandists provides a rationale for why The Eternal Jew was made. The author of the essay “The Film of a 2000-Year Rat Migration,[2]” who remains anonymous, believes the film shows “a full picture of Jewry,” and provides “the best treatment of this parasitic race.”
An unrepentant Fritz Hippler was interviewed in the Emmy Award winning program “The Propaganda Battle” in the PBS series Walk Through the Twentieth Century. In this interview he explains that he regrets that his name was listed as the director of The Eternal Jew because the Allies interrogated him after the war. He thought this was very unfair because, in his opinion, he had nothing to do with the killing of Jews. In an interview shown in the 2000 German documentary series Holocaust, the 90-year old Hippler described the film as “the most disgraceful example of anti-semitism.”
July 19, 2008
Some time ago were invited in Bucharest to performed during Hanuca Nanci Brandes si Mirel Reznik.
Only now i rediscovered the clips made then in which you can see and hear the music of Mirel Reznic.
The artist was also invited in 2007 in Romania to perform at the Euroiudaica festival in Sibiu.
July 14, 2008
שבת
شبات
Шаббат
These are words written in different ways in different languages but they refer to the same thing: Shabat.
About the history, the tradition and the meaning of Shabat you can read in a lot of places.
About the way is celebrated in the synagogues from Bucharest ( 2 with daily praying services at the moment) you cannot read in a lot of places.
So , i decided to write about this subject which can be opened at the bottom. The post can be accessed with a password , for this you will have to ask it from me by messenger, email or by leaving a comment in which you ask for it.
June 15, 2008
Machol Ungaria, the dance seminary organized in each spring at Szarvas has reached this year its 10th edition. For every participant it is clear that the program will have a very very long life. The skills and talent of the dance teachers, the devotion and the professionalism of the organizers mixed with the enthusiasm and the joy of dancing of the participants are the precise recipe of a long and full of accomplishments life.
Hundreds of dance lovers from the entire Europe have one week in every year dedicated only to the Israeli dances. In that week all the problems step aside and from early in the morning till late in the night culminating with the marathon from the last day in which the sunrise catches the last dances, and so the charm of the dance creates for all the participants talented or not so talented a unique experience which last thought is the same for everyone “i can hardly wait to be hear the next year”.
The final evening was full of events:each country has shown in front of everybody the choreographies learned but also some surprise ones which have obtained the admiration of the entire hall,the beginners have tried to prove that the next year will be a part of the advanced classes, the teachers Oren, Ely, Kobi, Ofer si Carina were part of a surprise which was very well received especially by the feminine public and the organizers received a lot of well deserved aplauses.
Romania was admired by all through the jewish salsa show at the end of which Dana. Gabriela, Arina, Marius Erwin and Balasz from Ungaria have made all the public to applause standing .
The final represented just the beginning of counting the days remained until Machol 2009.
