JTA has an article American donors to Israeli parties
draw back with Sharon out of picture. They seem to point out that foreign funding of elections is down because of what happened to Sharon's son. So perhaps the anti corruption campaign is working...
A note on the Israeli national elections taking place today: What Does it Say About American vs. Israeli Politics that in presidential elections here in America we need thousands of lawyers to watch the poles to help prevent fraud while in Israel no such protection is needed. Now you might argue that Israel has its own fraud problems, they are just different. (e.g. Sharons son who was convicted of election fraud, illegal donations from abroad, etc.) but still every Israeli gets to vote: if they want to. Something to think about.
| Hillel names new president (from the JTA web site www.jta.org) |
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| Wayne Firestone was named the next president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. Firestone, 42, a former attorney, academic and longtime Jewish professional who has been serving as the organization’s executive vice president since September 2005, will take over from Avraham Infeld on Sept. 1. He was named Friday morning by the nominating committee of Hillel’s board of directors. The appointment will become official after the board meets to vote on the endorsement in two weeks. Firestone joined Hillel in 2002 as executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition. He also has been serving as staff director of Hillel’s Strategic Planning Committee, which has developed a five-year plan that seeks to double the number of students the organization reaches and create a $100-million endowment, among other goals. |
The New York Times published an article "Why do so few women reach the top of big law firms?
Given the number of Jewish Lawyers it raises some intriguing and powerful questions:
How does this issue play out among Jewish men and women Lawyers? Are we worse? Better? Different or the same? Do values on having a family make a difference vis a vis the number of women that drop out or slow down to have families vs. the number of men?
If women (Jewish and otherwise) lose oportunities by not being sports minded do they make up for this by forming their own linkages? If so how?
If you have any inputs on this let me know...
For at least some being an outwardly Jewish lawyer means being able to be in the thick of it:
Consider this excerpt about Allan Dershowitz in the Harvard Crimson on the recent resignation of Harvard's Jewish president Lawrence H. Summers :
Three and a half years after his “in effect, if not in intent” remarks, Summers has resigned. Some—most notably Peretz Professor of Yiddish Ruth R. Wisse—have suggested that Summers’ unapologetic faith and his fall from power might be connected.
In an interview with The Crimson last week, Wisse stated that she did think anti-Semitism figured in the opposition to Summers.
“Of course, the divestment petition was anti-Semitic,” says Wisse. “Is it one of the factors at play? Yes. Is it the factor at play? No.”
Wisse’s comments are blunt, but critics allege that other supporters are being ambiguous.
“Along with [Frankfurter Professor of Law] Alan Dershowitz, [Glimp Professor of Economics Edward L.] Glaeser now becomes the second Harvard professor strongly suggesting that Summers’ critics are anti-Semitic,” blogger Richard Bradley writes. “Neither man has come out and said so explicitly, but they’re inching up to it...If Dershowitz and Glaeser believe [this], then they have an obligation to make their case explicitly, with all the seriousness it merits. Otherwise, they should stop hinting.”
On February 27, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam pondered the role of anti-Semitism in Summers’ resignation in a piece titled “Summers, Harvard, and Israel.” He asked if “support for or opposition to Israel [was] the new fault line dividing the Harvard faculty.”
Alan Dershowitz took exception to Bradley’s characterization of him.
“I do not believe it was anti-Semitic and indeed a lot of the strongest opponents of Summers are Jewish,” Dershowitz said last week. “I want to categorically deny any link between anti-Semitism and the ouster of Summers.”
“Anti-Semitism is a matter of intention,” Dershowitz says. “I don’t like that formulation—‘anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent’—I would not make that argument at all. I would say that his ouster had to with hard-left opposition, some of it anti--American, some of it anti-patriotic, some of it having to do with the military. In other words, I think it was political, not religious. [There] is a very sharp distinction.”
The Forward in its Arts and Culture section commented on the representation of Jews on HBO. In the show the Wire on the criminal justice system in Baltimore the comments happen to be about a Jewish lawyer. He is the defense lawyer par excellance '...often exasperated, but never conflicted." You can read more about it here.
What is also interesting is the person who wrote it:
Jay Michaelson holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Yale Law School and a Master of Arts from Hebrew University. He is currently at work on a book titled "Lawyers, Jews, and the Secret History of the Soul."
It seems I am not the only one interested in this area of knowledge.
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