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Jewish Assembly hears White House call for talks with Palestinians
By Michelle Boorstein
One of the largest Jewish meetings of the year has wrapped up in Washington, with some 3,000 Jewish community activists and leaders hearing in the past few days from the Israeli prime minister and President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and having dozens of meetings about how to fund social service work in a recession.
Reports from the Jewish media - The Forward and the JTA wire service - quoted Emanuel (who stood in for Obama, who had to cancel a Tuesday speech last-minute to go to Fort Hood) as calling for negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians without conditions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lavished praise on the U.S. president (who is extremely popular with American Jews, but not so much with Israelis) but didn't mention the preconditions he supports for talks with the Palestinians.
The "G.A.", which is the annual meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America, is the main gathering event for the people who operate Jewish-American social service and community work. It includes tons of socializing as well as workshops on everything from how to improve fundraising to Jewish identity to Jewish education.
The JTA has great coverage of it, including:
_ the presentation of the first of a half-dozen new, portable Torahs that Jewish military chaplains can take into war zones
_ the presentation of a new big award called "Jewish Community Hero," which was given to a 27-year-old stand-up comedian who runs JCorps, a service that has set up thousands of Jews with community projects around the country
By
Michelle Boorstein
|
November 11, 2009; 8:05 AM ET
| Category:
God in Government
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Posted by: macnietspingal1 | November 12, 2009 11:21 AM
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I have a great idea for helping the Palestinians trust the Israelis. The Golden Age of Islam had its RaMBaM MD (1135-1205). Isn't there a single US medical doctor that has the vast brain of Dr. Moses ben Maimon aka Maimonides about the Quran? Certainly life was much more simple in the 1100's as far as knowledge is concerned and the Quran and the Torah. He could translate in his brain the Quran into Hebrew. I'd only need a paperback bilingual Quran Arabic/Hebrew myself with very poor Siddur Hebrew to catch up. After all, Arabic is written like Gregg Shorthand so all I would have to do is learn the equivalent curves and straight lines and dots for each sound, like I did with Gregg Shorthand. Knowing even the ability to sound out Hebrew words and having a modern Hebrew dictionary is such a wonderful communications tool. Of course for me it has to be all written and takes a long time. RaMBaM could talk to Palestinians in their culture in his head. The wealthy Muslims had implicit faith in him as their physician. Am I really being too simplistic in my imaging? Only since 1948 can we resurrect RaMBaM. Why don't we?