Chicago Students Push to Reverse 26-0 Loyola Israel Divestment Vote

Hope To Convince President To Veto Measure

By JTA

Students at Loyola University are mobilizing to convince the president of the student government to veto a resolution calling on the university to divest from companies that do business in Israel.

The Loyola United Student Government Association voted March 18 to call on the university to remove its holdings from eight companies that provide equipment to Israel for use in the West Bank. The vote on a measure proposed by the Loyola chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine passed 26-0 with two abstentions.

The efforts to overturn the vote are being undertaken with the support of the Jewish United Fund’s Israel Education Center and Metro Chicago Hillel, according to a statement issued by the two organizations.

Pedro Guerrero, the president of the United Student Government Association, or USGA, met with representatives of the university’s pro-Israel community and JUF’s Israel Education Center director on March 19, the day after the vote. Guerrero has 13 days from the approval of the proposal to veto the resolution.

Guerrero invited the pro-Israel students to present their position at the next meeting on March 25. He will then decide whether to uphold or veto the resolution.

The university has issued a statement saying the resolution passed by the student government is not the position of the university.

“The resolution calling for the University to withdraw or refrain from investing in certain companies providing products and services in Israel is a proposal being discussed by student government. It is not the position of Loyola University Chicago and we have not adopted this proposal,” said the statement. “As a university, we welcome open dialogue and debate on differing points of view. Proposals like this one benefit from broader campus discussion.”

If the proposal is vetoed, the student Senate can override the veto with a two-thirds majority vote. If approved, the resolution becomes the official position of the student body and is presented to the administration.

BDS bullies at Galway University

Alan Johnson for TimesofIsrael.com

A veteran left-wing former Member of Knesset sent me an email today. “This is really shocking. Beyond belief. We shall overcome” he wrote. He was reacting to this video (explicit language from the start), filmed on 5 March at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG): - Note, the video has been removed from YouTube due to content violations but can be viewed on vimeo.
It has been viewed 27,000 times in three days on YouTube. It shows what happened when I tried to speak on the campus against a ‘Boycott Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) push at the University. The BDS supporters shouted vile abuse, threatened the students who disagreed with them, and tried to break up the meeting. “You Zionist pr**ks, f*** off our campus, now!” they screamed.

In a welcome move the University has released a statement calling the behaviour “unacceptable” and promising an immediate investigation.

That’s good. But what explains the hatred and intimidation spreading on some European campuses?

First, anti-Semitism. The activist who tried to break up the meeting - he failed — is Joseph Loughnane, a leader of the NUIG Palestine Solidarity Society. He is on record in 2008 as having said that “the Jews run the American media and push their agenda.” If you launch a campaign to exclude Israeli Jews, but nobody else, from the global academic, cultural, sporting and economic community, then it’s inevitable that your campaign will act as a lightning rod for rising European anti-Semitism. And so it is proving.

Second, ideology. If you really do believe that ‘Zionism is racism’, that the evil Jews ‘ethnically cleansed’ the Palestinians in 1948, have built an ‘Apartheid State’ and are now committing a slow genocide in Gaza — all of which nonsense is the staple diet of progressive intellectual opinion in Europe — then your duty is to deny me a platform on your campus and to attack ‘the Zionists’. The behaviour of the mob at Galway makes a kind of sense.

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Suing Parents

Children went from being our employees to our bosses, replacing responsibility with entitlement.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech for aish.com

Parenting isn’t what it used to be.

In a fascinating new book by Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, the author tells us that the concept of family life as we now know it didn’t really begin until after World War II when the idea of childhood, as we now know it, first made its appearance.

Throughout most of our country’s history children understood that their role took for granted the notion of reciprocity. In the earliest days, they worked in the fields while at the same time helping to care of their siblings. With industrialization, their contribution to the family’s income came, at a very young age, from jobs in factories, in mines and in mills, in street trades and the very popular task of delivering newspapers to neighbors. All in all, everyone understood that the relationship between parents and children was asymmetrical. All were partners in the difficult task of assuring the needs necessary for their mutual survival.

Better times produced not only an economic but a psychological transformation as well. Children were no longer expected to contribute anything. They went from being helpers to total dependents who had to be spared any of life’s hardships. The way social historians describe this transformation, they went from “useful” to “protected.”

Jennifer Senior sums it up this way: “Children stopped working, and parents work twice as hard. Children went from being our employees to our bosses.”

Yet even this short summary doesn’t do justice to the sea change of the parent-child relationship that had its most shocking illustration last week in the judicial system of the state of New Jersey.

Rachel Canning is an 18-year-old who is suing her parents. She brought a lawsuit to force her parents to pay for her private school education and her personal expenses.

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Esther, How Could She Do It?

Greg Elderberg for Jewishmag.com

The Esther who saved the Jews by pleading with King Achasverous has become a stereotype for Jewish heroines. This is especially apparent on Purim when most young Jewish girls who dress up in costumes choose by a large majority to be "Queen Esther".

But in reality there is much to be considered when we recall the story of Esther. Especially in regards to the Talmud in the Tractate of the Megillah, page 13a, where the famous Rabbi Meir explains that Esther was in reality the wife of Mordecai.

Rabbi Meir was one of the greatest of the Rabbis from the Talmud. We can not ignore his remarks. There are implications to what he says that we must deal with as we will shortly relate.


The story of Esther tells us that after King Achasverous had Queen Vashti killed, his advisors made a competition between the young unmarried women to find the most beautiful and desirous person to become his queen. Although the contest was originally intended to include only unmarried women, Achasverous was not particular if the woman was married; to him her attractiveness was the most important factor. If the women had a husband, he would be gotten rid of easily. It was for this fear, that Esther did not declare to the authorities that she was married to Mordecai.

Esther was taken into the competition. Unlike the other girls who busied themselves with pretentious clothing and cosmetics to appeal to the eye of the king, Esther asked for nothing and went in to the king as she was - a beautiful soul. The king fell in love with Esther and immediately declared that only Esther was worthy of becoming his queen.

Esther refused to tell the king of her heritage or that she was married.


At this point we must ask the question that bothered the rabbis in the Talmud. If Esther was married to Mordecai, then sexual relations between a man and a married woman are forbidden. How could Esther who was considered a great Jewish personality live with Achasverous if she was married to Mordecai?

There are three cardinal sins: Promiscuity, Idolatry, and Murder. It is forbidden to commit one of these three cardinal sins even at the expense of one's own life. If a person is put into a position in which he is forced to commit one of these three cardinal sins, then he must sacrifice his life rather than trespass.

As an example, if a group of thugs come to a man and tell him they will kill him unless he has sexual relations with this specific married woman; he is not allowed to have sex with her. He must let himself be killed rather than sin.

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30 Most Annoying Questions To Ask A Jew

by Michael Peckerar for RantLifeStyle.com

Being Jewish is a tough gig. Not from antisemitism -- which is still totally a thing -- but from the Grand Canyon of a cultural chasm between Jews and the majority.

I am Jewish and have been my whole life. I was born Jewish to two Jewish parents with a Jewish brother and a family dog that answered commands in Yiddish. I classify myself as being a 'Jew- BAE' -- Bar Mitzvah and everything. No matter where Jewish people live, in a place with lots of Jews or a place with none -- and I've lived in both -- there is a litany of questions that we constantly find ourselves answering.

Sure a lot of people are "just curious" and "want to learn about your faith", but is the checkout line at Target really the best place for a theological conversation?

These are just some of the questions Jews are asked repeatedly that will make us roll our eyes. Some of them because they're super patronizing and make us feel like animals in a zoo; some of them because they're spectacularly not-well-thought out. Still others are annoying because we hear them so much. In no particular order, these are 30 completely annoying questions we are tired of answering.


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