Salowitz: Need for food assistance in Iowa increasing

 

August 25: Special JCRC lunch. ISRAEL UPDATE with remarks from the Rabbis

--  Please make an effort to attend this important program, open to the community. --

 

Special JCRC Event in light of yesterday's tragic terrorist attack on Israel from the Sinai

              

                 * Thursday, August 25, 2011 *  12:15 pm  at Tifereth Israel Synagogue

 

                                                           ISRAEL UPDATE  from JCRC

 

with remarks by Rabbi Leib Bollel, Rabbi Steven Edelman-Blank, and Rabbi David Kaufman

                                                                 followed by discussion.

 

For your convenience, those wishing to order a parve, dairy, or vegetarian lunch from Palmer's Deli can place their order through jcrc@dmjfed.org

 

Thank you for your interest.  To facilitate set up, RSVP to jcrc@dmjfed.org

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Note: This program replaces the previously scheduled JCRC Current Events lunch on Thursday September 1st.  The topic for September 1st will be re-programmed.

 

 

 

Jewish Federation: Stand with Israel against contractors of terrorism

Statement from The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines      August 18, 2011

 

The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines condemns the multiple cross border attacks by Arab terrorists today on southern Israel from the Sinai.  We join with the people of Israel in mourning those whose lives were taken by the terrorists, including the two children ages 4 and 6.

 

We stand with Israel as it seeks to protect its citizens from further attacks. 

 

 Israel is committed to negotiating peace with the Palestinians.  It is prepared to make hard concessions to provide for a two state resolution, recognizing Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people.

 But to do so, the Palestinian leadership must speak with one voice for peace, for acceptance of Israel as the Jewish homeland and for a permanent end to the conflict.  

 

Make no mistake about it: Such attacks as the ones today are intended to encourage others to weaken and eliminate Israel -- in this case, by establishing a southern front, once secured by the peace treaty with Egypt.  There is already a northern front, threatened by Hizballah.  There is the western front, threatened by Hamas.  And there is an overall threat by both alQaeda and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary regime.  None of the above named bodies -- under any conditions, no matter what conciliatory policy Israel adopts in the West Bank-- accepts the concept of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.   The attacks on Israel, including attacks on its civilians  from Gaza or Sinai are designed to displace Israel, not change its policies.

 

It is important, therefore, that Americans stand with Israel against the contractors of terrorism and that Americans demand that the Palestinian leadership speak with one voice for peace.

 

Mark S. Finkelstein

Director of Community Relations

Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines

33158 Ute Avenue

Waukee, IA  50263

 

Send comments to jcrc@dmjfed.org

 

cc:  Barbara Hirsch-Giller, President

       Elaine Steinger,  Executive Director

       Steven Schoenebaum,  JCRC Chair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Partnership Revolution: new brand, new resources, new people.

A Partnership Revolution: new brand, new resources, new people.

The Jewish Agency for Israel's Partnership Unit officially launched the new ‘Partnership2Gether’ (P2G) brand during the 5th Partnerships Conference in Tel Aviv this summer. The new name replaces Partnership 2000 / Partnership with Israel, which had been in use for the past 15 years in 550 communities and 45 Partnerships.

Along with this new brand, dynamic changes are taking place in our Western Galilee/ US Central Area Consortium Partnership. Our P2G Co-Chairs, Zoe Riekes (returning U.S. Central Area Consortium Chair) and David Laron (Western Galilee Chair), said to ensure a flourishing future we will strive to expand our network, impact, awareness, and support – all of our activities – by 10 times within the next 3 years. For example, if we currently have 500 teenagers engaged in our programs both in the US and the Western Galilee, by 2014 we will strive to multiply that number by 10 to have a total 5,000 teenagers involved. Woah - that’s a big multiplier, right?

Even in the best of times how can we expect that type of growth to happen? How do we achieve this when we are dealing with tightened budgets, leadership changes, and a complex system of connections, programs, and communities? Both Zoe and David agree this will not be an easy task but they know that we have a highly professional staff and lay leaders in place who can initiate a strategic plan to execute our goal. Based on a recent GAP analysis survey of our Partnership, our focus will shift to three critical challenges or ‘gaps’ and in doing so we will be moving ourselves into position to achieve the WG/Central Area Consortium P2G x10 Goal.

Challenge 1: Engage & Utilize Communication Platforms - Inform, Enlighten & Inspire

Partnership is about building people-to-people connections; obviously we should be the best at communication, right? David Laron said, based on our GAP analysis results, we have under-utilized our communication resources. Too many are stuck in old ways of communication; there is a lack of initiative in exploring and using new technologies and online networks. It is critical to our Partnership’s future success that we effectively communicate.

A central communication platform will be launched that will allow our communities to be instantly connected and updated. This new platform will increase productivity, initiate collaboration, build on our connections, increase dialogue, and strengthen our engagement and commitment. In addition, we will actively harness the power of social networks to create a synergy of connection allowing anyone at anytime, no matter where they may be, to tap into the flowing stream of current Partnership information – to be informed, enlightened, to inspire and to be inspired.

Challenge 2: Expansion of Lay Leadership & Volunteers – Involve, Network & Grow

Once the new communication tools are initiated and used, we will have a well-oiled support system in place to expand our people resources. As Zoe states, our Partnership is a model for others, we are considered pioneers of the Partnership organization and should be proud of all we’ve accomplished to this point. To continue the success and momentum of our best practices we need to build upon the passion of our current pool of lay leadership and volunteers and expand our people resources. This will involve creating specific programs that target recruitment initiatives. We will be actively planning and introducing new programs focused on involving and growing our team of talented and passionate people.

Challenge 3: Expansion of Financial Resources & Relationships with Partnering Organizations – Stabilize, Secure, & Strengthen

During the next year we will develop a strategic plan for fundraising in Israel while simultaneously seeking new cooperation with organizations to establish a stronger financial base. This is big news – we are planning to expand upon the current funds that come from our Federations Partnership allocations, and begin to create additional avenues of revenue to support our programs for the future.

Zoe and David spoke for all of us when mentioning the tremendous appreciation we have for our US communities continued support, and they agree that it is time to initiate additional creative approaches to ensure a strong financial platform for a flourishing future. Our Partnership mission is focused on creating and promoting mutually beneficial endeavors - forging relationships through programs that build Jewish identity and strengthen connections. To fully realize our mission we will initiate a balance in our fundraising efforts – we’re in it together, we’re intrinsically connected, and we have the potential to grow exponentially because of it.

Our programs have proven to be successful and are life-changing for our participants. We have touched over 30,000 people’s lives in the past 13 years. Just as we’ve seen other revolutions taking place around the world, we will face our current challenges directly and with a keen focus, knowing that we have great momentum behind us and even more amazing potential for our future. The time is now to start our WG/Central Area Consortium P2G x10 Revolution. Join us, connect and make a difference today.

For more information on Partnership2Gether programs contact your local Jewish Federation and visit: www.westerngalilee.org.il

For young Jewish adults: Birthright Israel Winter trip via the P2G Central Consortium

U Iowa Prelim info

Dear Parent/Guardian:

The below message was just sent to your admitted student, and we also wanted to share this information with you.

Dear 
We look forward to seeing you at Orientation August 15! This e-mail is a reminder to take any required placement tests before the deadlines outlined in this e-mail so your academic advisor can appropriately assist you during Orientation. Your placement test scores help determine the level of course work appropriate to your ability. We require all tests to be completed at least 14 days before your scheduled Orientation.
Our records show you still need to complete the online Mathematics Placement Test (MPT). The deadline to complete this is August 1, based on your August 15 Orientation date. You’ll be given 60 minutes for the test, but plan to allow 90 minutes so you can take the tutorial and practice test beforehand.
Depending on your major, you may also need to complete the Chemistry Diagnotic Test (CDT) if you haven’t already. Whether or not you need to take the World Languages Placement Test (WLPT) depends on your previous study of a world language and your future plans for language study at Iowa. These tests also need to be completed no later than August 1 based on your Orientation date.
You can access all placement tests through the “Your Next Steps” section of your Admissions Profile on ISIS.
Your Admissions Profile on ISIS also explains our measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) immunization requirement and will indicate if we still need additional information from you, such as your official test scores or final official transcript.
If you misplaced your Hawk ID and password or need your password reset, call the Office of Admissions at 1-800-553-4692 or 319-335-3847 between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Also, be sure to bring your Hawk ID and password with you to Orientation as you will need them to register for classes.
Sincerely,
The University of Iowa
Orientation Services
P.S. Now that you're officially a Hawkeye, join the Official Facebook Page for the UI Class of 2015!

Ajami: UN Can't Deliver a Palestinian State

Wall Street Journal – June 1, 2011

The U.N. Can't Deliver a Palestinian State

By Fouad Ajami

 

It had been quite a scramble, the prelude to the vote on Nov. 29, 1947, on the question of the partition of Palestine. The United Nations itself was only two years old and had just 56 member states; the Cold War was gathering force, and no one was exactly sure how the two pre-eminent powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, would vote. The Arab and Muslim states were of course unalterably opposed, for partition was a warrant for a Jewish state.

In the end, the vote broke for partition, the U.S. backed the resolution, and two days later the Soviet Union followed suit. It was a close call: 10 states had abstained, 13 had voted against, 33 were in favor, only two votes over the required two-thirds majority.

Now, some six decades later, the Palestinians are calling for a vote in the next session of the General Assembly, in September, to ratify a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. In part, this is an appropriation by the Palestinians of the narrative of Zionism. The vote in 1947 was viewed as Israel's basic title to independence and statehood. The Palestinians and the Arab powers had rejected partition and chosen the path of war. Their choice was to prove calamitous.

By the time the guns had fallen silent, the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, had held its ground against the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Its forces stood on the shores of the Red Sea in the south, and at the foot of the Golan Heights in the north. Palestinian society had collapsed under the pressure of war. The elites had made their way to neighboring lands. Rural communities had been left atomized and leaderless. The cities had fought, and fallen, alone.

Palestine had become a great Arab shame. Few Arabs were willing to tell the story truthfully, to face its harsh verdict. Henceforth the Palestinians would live on a vague idea of restoration and return. No leader had the courage to tell the refugees who had left Acre and Jaffa and Haifa that they could not recover the homes and orchards of their imagination.

Some had taken the keys to their houses with them to Syria and Lebanon and across the river to Jordan. They were no more likely to find political satisfaction than the Jews who had been banished from Baghdad and Beirut and Cairo, and Casablanca and Fez, but the idea of return, enshrined into a "right of return," would persist. (Wadi Abu Jamil, the Jewish quarter of the Beirut of my boyhood, is now a Hezbollah stronghold, and no narrative exalts or recalls that old presence.)

History hadn't stood still. The world was remade. In 1947-48, when the Zionists had secured their statehood, empires were coming apart, borders were fluid, the international system of states as we know it quite new. India and Pakistan had emerged as independent, hostile states out of the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, and Israel had secured its place in the order of nations a year later. Many of the Arab states were still in their infancy.

But the world is a vastly different place today. The odds might favor the Palestinians in the General Assembly, but any victory would be hollow.

 

The Palestinians have misread what transpired at the General Assembly in 1947. True, the cause of Jewish statehood had been served by the vote on partition, but the Zionist project had already prevailed on the ground. Jewish statehood was a fait accompli perhaps a decade before that vote. All the ingredients had been secured by Labor Zionism. There was a military formation powerful enough to defeat the Arab armies, there were political institutions in place, and there were gifted leaders, David Ben-Gurion pre-eminent among them, who knew what can be had in the world of nations.

The vote at the General Assembly was of immense help, but it wasn't the decisive factor in the founding of the Jewish state. The hard work had been done in the three decades between the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the vote on partition. Realism had guided the Zionist project. We will take a state even if it is the size of a tablecloth, said Chaim Weizmann, one of the founding fathers of the Zionist endeavor.

Sadly, the Palestinian national movement has known a different kind of leadership, unique in its mix of maximalism and sense of entitlement, in its refusal to accept what can and can't be had in the world of nations. Leadership is often about luck, the kind of individuals a people's history brings forth. It was the distinct misfortune of the Palestinians that when it truly mattered, and for nearly four decades, they were led by a juggler, Yasser Arafat, a man fated to waste his people's chances.

Arafat was neither a Ben-Gurion leading his people to statehood, nor an Anwar Sadat accepting the logic of peace and compromise. He had been an enemy of Israel, but Israel had reached an accord with him in 1993, made room for him, and for a regime of his choice in Gaza. He had warred against the United States, but American diplomacy had fallen under his spell, and the years of the Clinton presidency were devoted to the delusion that the man could summon the courage to accept a practical peace.

But Arafat would do nothing of the kind. Until his death in 2004, he refrained from telling the Palestinians the harsh truths they needed to hear about the urgency of practicality and compromise. Instead, he held out the illusion that the Palestinians can have it all, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. His real constituents were in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, and among the Palestinians in Kuwait. So he peddled the dream that history's verdict could be overturned, that the "right of return" was theirs.

There was hope that the Arafat legacy would go with him to the grave. The new Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had been a lieutenant of Arafat's, but there were hints of a break with the Arafat legacy. The alliance between Fatah and Hamas that Mr. Abbas has opted for put these hopes to rest. And the illusion that the U.N. can break the stalemate in the Holy Land is vintage Arafat. […]

The General Assembly may, in September, vote to ratify a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. But true Palestinian statehood requires convincing a decisive Israeli majority that statehood is a herald for normalcy in that contested land, for Arabs and Jews alike.

 

Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is co-chair of the Hoover Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.