Purim story resources

Here is a great link to a collection of artwork portraying different scenes from the Purim story.

Here is a link to an article about Rembrandt and the Purim story, including examples of his paintings.

A Few Thoughts Before We Move On...

The events in Egypt over the past few weeks will be ones studied by historians and students long into the future.   Think about it: major change and revolution caused by masses of people without a clear leader and without violence.   Click here to read the New York Times "Topics" section on Egypt - it is regularly updated and gives a clear overview of everything that has happened.

And what are the implications of it for our topic and focus of the past few months, Israel?  Although nobody knows for certain, of course, here is a link to one story from the New York Times, another one from the Washington Post, and one from a blog on Israel's Ha'aretz.

What do you think?

Conclusions - Here's What We Are Thinking Now

Over the past few months, we've been studying the history and following the current events related to Israel and the ongoing Palestinian conflict.  We watched videos and read documents related to the founding of the State of Israel, learned about its wars and military accomplishments, and heard a range of contemporary voices with ideas about how to solve the issues at hand.  We discussed several visions of the future for the relationship between the United States and Israel.

Here are some organizations and their statements about their views of the US-Israel relationship:
AIPAC
Jstreet
ARZA
and many more can be found here under "organizations."

Last week you started to bring your thoughts together in a series of brief answers and opinions.  We will start with a discussion of those today, then its up to you to use the next hour to bring it all together.  You will use a laptop to browse through the blog, re-watching videos, re-listening to songs, and re-reading documents and articles as needed.  You will write out a conclusion to our Israel unit by answering these questions in a series of paragraph-long responses.

1. Which event or document we studied was the most powerful / meaningful for you in shaping your thinking about the modern State of Israel?  Why?  (Look back through all of the posts to guide your response)

2. Which personal opinions, from any of the people we studied, were the most powerful / meaningful for you in shaping your thinking about the modern State of Israel?  Why?  (Look back through all of the posts to guide your response.  This includes comments from individual people and song lyrics)

3. Which one of your responses from the opinionnaire you completed last week (see below) raised the strongest feelings from you?  Why?


4.  What is your vision of a US/Israel relationship?  What actions can we take to impact the relationship as we envision it?


Be sure to save your work as you write.  You will have one hour to write your responses.  We will then post them to the blog and invite the community to read and respond to your comments.

How do I feel about Israel politically?

1. When the Israeli government pursues a policy that I do not agree with, it adversely effects my feelings towards Israel

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

2. When the American government and Israeli government disagree, my natural tendency is to side with the American position

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

3. Since I don’t live in Israel, I don’t have the right to question Israeli government policy

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

4. I am convinced that American support for Israel is deeply rooted in America’s national interest and therefore I am not worried that it will weaken.

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

5. America supports Israel mainly because of the deep solidarity of American Jews with Israel and their support for Israel’s policies.

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

6. Israel should do what it thinks is right to enhance its security and national interest, regardless of what America thinks

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

7. American support should be the most important policy objective for Israel; the Israeli government should never do anything to put that in jeopardy.

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

8. I believe that the current administration will bring more Americans to believe in Israel and the possibility for both peace and a Jewish State

Disagree            1            2            3            4            5            Agree

Circle the question that you find most interesting or raises the strongest feeling in you

So - Where are we now?

Recent events in Egypt have the world's attention, especially Israelis who want to know what the future of their neighbor and ally might be.

Read this op-ed piece from Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president, from August of 2010.

 Until the recent events in Egypt have threatened the stability of the country.  What might that mean for Israel?  Here's an article from today's Ha'aretz exploring it.

What is Israel doing about the situation?  Nothing yet - only this airlift of its embassy workers.

President Obama had a brief YouTube interview about it.

Back in terms of Israel, where are the negotiations now?  This article from December 2010 gives some perspective.  And this commentary from Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish adds a lot.

Where does President Obama stand in relation to Israel?  This brief interview with CNN gives an overview.

Voices of Now - Hip-Hop and keeping it real

Some of the videos we will watch today, after finishing the ones from the end of last session (Prager introduction, 2 versions of Israeli song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIo6lyP9tTE (DAM - "Born Here")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnXtJT2MiEM&feature=fvw (DAM - Tamer Nafar documentary)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SDcAe9rI2k (Subliminal - "I Live from Day to Day")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRAdM3VWQko&feature=related (Subliminal - "Perfect Place")

Here are some different points of view to consider, from both Israeli and Palestinian Youth

The Entebbe Hostage Rescue and thoughts about Israel

Today we will recap our look at the State of Israel up to this point then focus on the 1976 Entebbe Hostage rescue.

We will watch parts of the documentary, Operation Thunderbolt. 

Following that, we will watch a brief overview of the Israeli-Palsteinian conflict by Dennis Prager. 

After some conversation, we will watch two versions of a song.
The first is from 1979 by Uzi Hitman.
The second is an updated version of it from 2005 by Hadag Nachash. 

If we have some time, we may also check out this story. 

Week 5 - Question

This week we watched a video about the 1948 War for Independence and its aftermath.

Next, as you can see in the post below, we started our look at the 1967 Six-Day War with this famous photograph.  We then talked about the reasons for Israel's pre-emptive attacks and watched a video about the war itself.

At the end of the post there is a link to some current questions being raised about the war - what was the cost of the victory?  What current issues are connected back to it?

In your response to this and the previous post, share some of your thoughts about what we saw today.  What does this war mean to Israelis?  To Palestinians?  To you and your thinking about this ongoing conflict?