GARY SAMOWITZ

LAST week, prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson called on Australia’s Aboriginal community to draw on the experience of Jewish people in never forgetting their history, while striving to overcome injustice and racism.

Pearson asserted that the Jewish community provides an example of how to “maintain a community and a sense of peoplehood, religion, tradition, culture, history over millennia and yet, at the same time, engage at the cutting edge of whatever the world has to offer”.
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JULIE SZEGO

THE day after the launch of the federal government’s My School website, which enables parents to compare the performance of similar schools, I met up with a friend who had just visited a Caulfield hairdresser. She said the site was the topic of conversation at the salon – mothers, armed with data, were dissecting the meaning of it all amid the tinting and blow-waving.

This anecdote didn’t surprise me. Even parents who claimed to put little store in the information – which rates school performance on the results of national literacy and numeracy tests at years 3, 5, 7 and 9 – couldn’t resist checking out the website at the first opportunity. Read the full story

SAM LIPSKI

“I stand here before you, as the President of the State of Israel, the home of the Jewish people.”

THIS is how Shimon Peres began his speech in Hebrew to the German Bundestag on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2010. This simple declarative sentence made Jewish history.

We live in an age marked by the loss of historical memory. One result is that the word “historic” has lost virtually all meaning. Television newsreaders tell their viewers who can’t remember last night’s news – let alone last week’s – of “historic” and “unprecedented” happenings that will be forgotten by the next bulletin.
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GERALD STEINBERG

The weekend edition of Ma’ariv, one of Israel’s mass-circulation daily newspapers, featured a scathing condemnation of the New Israel Fund for leading the political war to demonize Israel.

Journalist Ben Caspit is a political centrist whose tolerance snapped when he realized that the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by the NIF were responsible for most of the “war crimes” allegations in the UN’s Goldstone report on the Gaza war.
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NATHAN CHERNY

FROM here in Israel I am disturbed and distressed by Zionist Council of Victoria president Dr Danny Lamm’s criticism of the New Israel Fund (NIF).

Based in Washington and Jerusalem, the New Israel Fund has a 30-year record of supporting non-profit organizations committed to building a more just and democratic Israeli society, the kind of Jewish society that I want for my children.
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YOSSI ARON

SPEAKING in shul last week regarding Tu b’Shevat, I mentioned that recent times have seen an environmental emphasis added to the halachic significance of the date.

This attitude has received added impetus as a result of the expansion of Jewish National Fund activity beyond tree-planting and water conservation to broader environmental issues, which are also of concern outside of Israel’s borders.
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HAVIV RETTIG GUR

SHACHAR Zahavi is quiet and mild mannered, not at all what you would expect from someone who dreams of building one of the world’s great aid organisations in little Israel.

In recent years, the 34-year-old has become a known figure in the Israeli and non-governmental organisations (NGO) world. He is the chairman of IsraAID, a coalition of 16 aid organisations, whose latest efforts took teams of Israeli medical and aid experts to the devastated Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
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SIDRA KRANZ MOSHINSKY

THE sites were awesome in the true -– rather than teenage -– sense of the word, the food delicious and the atmosphere intoxicating, but the highlight of my recent travels in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia were the conversations with our local guides, which provided a real insight into both the recent history and day-to-day life.

In commenting on the commendable English-speaking skills of Thuy, our guide in Hanoi, Vietnam, I asked (completely ignorantly) “Did you learn it at school?” “Oh no,” she politely replied. “We learnt Russian at school.”
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YOSSI ARON

TU b’Shevat (Shevat 15), this Shabbat, reminds us that there is more than one new year in the Jewish calendar. In our day, Tu b’Shevat is a minor holiday, marked primarily by eating varieties of fruit associated with the Land of Israel. But for the agricultural-based society of old, it was a very significant new year.

Of course, we all experienced Rosh Hashanah 5770 four months ago, but that was not an absolute break between years. From the halachic perspective of the many agricultural Torah laws, all produce – such as tree fruit – that grew between then and now belonged to the previous year.
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DVIR ABRAMOVICH

THE report that Nofrat Frenkel, chairperson of the feminist Jewish worship group Women of the Wall, was arrested and may be imprisoned for wearing a tallit and carrying a Sefer Torah in the Western Wall plaza caused me to reflect on the state of Jewish feminism.

Jewish feminism has been one of the greatest changes in Jewish life, creating one of the most dramatic and monumental shifts in centuries of history. Feminism has impacted upon Jewish women, whether religiously observant or not, permeating all aspects of Judaism and creating a more fulfilling lifestyle in the process that should make everyone cheer. And they’re doing it on their own terms.
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