EZ Reads 4/11/11

I will be at the OU's offices tomorrow for all those who work there - email me and I'll try to stop by to say hi.

Some more general stuff for today...

• Yad Vashem has posted the videos from Eichmann's trial on YouTube on the 50th anniversary of them.
• The New York Times on anorexia in the Orthodox Jewish community (HT: iPay). I have not read the book, but Naomi Feigenbaum's memoir "One Life" mentioned in the article is supposed to be quite good. (I grew up a few houses down from Naomi's family and used to play basketball on their hoop every day.)
• ProfK questions why the Star-K charges specifically for the Kosher for Pesach medications list.
• Nice piece in Smithsonian magazine on Cleveland's reinventing itself. (HT: Rebbetzin Rocks)
• RafiG with a hilarious video called "killing bureaucracy".
• Doghouse with a funny truism on how people view their own voices.

Porcelain Unicorn

Hat tip: Aunt Anne/Serach.

Ridley Scott announced Porcelain Unicorn from American director Keegan Wilcox as the winning short film in Philips’ Tell It Your Way film-making contest.

The contest, which received over 600 entries from around the world, invited aspiring filmmakers to create an original short film using the same six-line dialogue as the Cannes Lions award-winning Parallel Lines short films directed by RSA talents Carl Erik Rinsch, Greg Fay, Johnny Hardstaff, Jake Scott and Hi-Sim.

Commenting on his choice of winner, Sir Ridley Scott said: “I chose Porcelain Unicorn to be the winning film as it had a very strong narrative; a very complete story that was well told and executed.”

Arc of Justice

via RafiG, this speech by Senator Bob Menendez on Israel, directed toward President Obama, is fantastic. It's one of the clearest short descriptions of Israeli and Jewish history and Jewish rights I've seen given, and is a great clip to use to help educate people.

Yom HaShoah

This video encapsulates beautifully how we, as Jews, respond to tragedy and adversity. The IDF posted this in honor of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which starts tonight in Israel.

Wacko Prof, Justice Win

I actually like this story:

DENVER — A jury ruled Thursday that the University of Colorado wrongly fired the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.

Ward Churchill, who was a tenured professor of ethnic studies, was fired on charges of research misconduct, but he maintained he was dismissed in retaliation for his comments about Sept. 11 victims.

Jurors agreed, saying Churchill never would have been fired if he hadn't written an essay in which he called the World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi leader who orchestrated the Holocaust.

Not having seen the evidence, I'll trust that the jury was correct in its judgment of the issue at hand, which is whether he was fired as a retaliatory measure. I'm happy that despite the guy being a complete moron, the law held up as it should. I'm even happier, though, that while upholding the law, the jury also found the wisdom to award him in the following manner:

The jury awarded Churchill only $1 in damages

Awesome.

Make Up Post...

Update here

...for what I could not get to last week due to my restrictive status. So while usually the weekend is reserved for actual worthwhile pursuits...

Please read the article below and,if you wish, place in the comments whether you are buying what the piece is selling.

-You believe all of it
-You believe none of it
-You believe parts of it (if so, which parts)
For those of you really looking for a distraction...add the all important WHY? to your choice.

The following comes from an unknown hebrew language paper, the original can be found here

An Orthodox Jew from New Jersey was involved in a car accident and
accidentally killed an old non-Jewish man. Although the courts found
the Jewish man not guilty, he could not carry the pains of the guilt
that he killed an old man. It gave him no peace and it caused him to
lose his appetite and was unable to sleep for weeks.

He decided to seek counsel from the revered sage, Rabbi Chaim
Kanievsky Shlita of Bnei Brak, and wrote him a letter asking the Rav
what tikun can he do because he accidently killed a non-Jew.

The Rav wrote him an answer that included one word, "Amalek".

The Jew did not understand this answer and continued suffering with
sleepless nights. At some point he decided to move away from his town
to begin a new life. He began searching for a new house and found a
house that appealed to him. The owners of the apartment told him that
they are eager to get rid of this house because they inherited from
their dead father that was killed in a car accident.

After short investigation, turns out the apartment belonged to the
non-Jew who was accidentally killed by the Jew. In the basement of
the house, the Orthodox Jew found materials belonging to the old
non-Jew man. He was shocked to find a picture of the old man during
his youth proudly wearing an SS uniform, standing next to Hitler,
yimach shemo.

It turned out that this old man was an SS officer in the Nazi army
and after the war, he came to the United States and hid his past. The
SS Nazi Officer also hid other documents, including all the names of
the Jews he personally murdered.

When he read the names of the Jewish people that were murdered, he
found both of his parent's name on this list.

HaShem avenged their blood.

It was then that he understood Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky Shlita's answer
that contained one word, "AMALEK".

Dropping Holocaust Education

Mevaseretzion has an important post here.

I found this article last week and was totally horrified. At first, I thought it was another story about the left not wanting to hurt anyones feelings, but I think it is much more deeper and serious than that. I hope to give my own two-cents about it. Till then, enjoy the linked post.

Poland honors woman who saved 2,500 Jews

Great Story

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory,

Jeez, posts have been light as of recent huh? Oh well, you gotta take that up with management. I am nothing more than a humble squatter here at serandez.

Has anyone else seen this?

My dad emailed me this story back in late July, and since Ezzie has been hounding me to post things, I was just curious if anyone else in the J-blog world has seen this:

The following is the English translation of this, that was published in a Spanish on-line journal Gentinuo in 2004:

All European Life Died in Auschwitz

By Sebastián Vivar Rodríguez

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims.

In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world. The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.