San Diego Jewish World, May 31, 2007

Arts, Entertainment & Dining

JFS Project SARAH sponsors hopeful drama on dealing with domestic abuse

SAN DIEGO (Press Release)—Project SARAH of Jewish Family Service in San Diego is teaming up with the 14^th Annual Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival to bring the performance of Flowers Aren’t Enough, written and performed by Israeli actress and writer Naomi Ackerman.

Flowers Aren’t Enough is a monologue that tells the story of Michal, a young woman from an upper-middle-class family who finds herself in an abusive relationship. Michal describes how her partner gradually narrows her world, isolating her from her surroundings. Her denial, guilt and the negative effects of social conditioning become apparent. Michal sinks into darkness before taking charge of her life and rediscovering herself. The monologue is woven from true stories and scenarios of women willing to talk about their all-too-common experiences. Since its debut almost nine years ago, Flowers Aren’t Enough has been performed over 600 times for audiences and organizations all over the world.

The performance will take place on Monday, June 25 from 7 to 9pm at the San Diego REPertory Theater at the Lyceum at 79 Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego. Tickets for the performance are $18 and tickets including a dessert reception with Naomi Ackerman are $36. Tickets can be purchased at the San Diego REPertory Theatre’s box office by calling (619) 544-1000, or online at www.sandiegorep.com.

Ackerman is an American-born Israeli with a BA from Hebrew University and teaching credentials from David Yellin Teachers Seminar in Israel. Her acting credits include theatre, musicals, film and television. She writes, directs and performs many of her own plays, including films promoting tolerance and dialogue between diverse cultures and plays based on lives of at-risk children. She is also a well-known mediator and conflict resolution specialist and works with various organizations adapting and creating drama techniques to deal with social, gender and educational issues.

This performance is sponsored by Project SARAH (Stop Abusive Relationships At Home), a program of Jewish Family Service, which provides a safe and confidential setting for individuals who are experiencing abuse to explore resources and options and assists them in making critical life decisions. Project SARAH offers many services including counseling, crisis intervention, case management, educational outreach, support groups and referrals. Learn more at www.jfssd.org

If your partner has pushed or shoved you, kept you from using the phone or visiting friends or relatives, insulted or humiliated you in private or public, destroyed your property, withheld your access to joint finances, or caused you to feel fearful in any way, you may be experiencing domestic violence. For more information or to receive confidential assistance, please contact Project SARAH at (858) 637-3238. There is never an excuse for abuse.

The foregoing story was provided by Jewish Family Service.

Book Review
Jewish expat takes humorous look at Hong Kong

By Danny Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan—Longtime Jewish-American expat in Hong Kong, Larry Feign, has produced a new
humor book about his adopted city, titled Hongkongitis. For those who have ever lived there or visited on overseas business trips, the book's a hoot.

According to Feign, a popular cartoonist and humorist, Hong Kong is actually
located in France, Chinese food will save the ozone layer, Hong Kong taxi fares are based on the Quantum Theory, and like Taipei-itis, there is apparently no cure for Hongkongitis. He says all this tongue firmly in cheek, of course.

In the new book, Feign shares his latest thoughts, discoveries and un-scientific theories about Hong Kong, including The
Larry Feign

Unified Wah Theory, the Chinese Garbage Principle, proposals to make Chinglish the official language of the United Nations, among other things.

Filled with 27 humorous essays and a few of Feign's signature cartoons, the paperback book is available via online ordering sites on the Internet.

Story Continuations

Boycott...
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SPME therefore urges its network professor colleagues and their colleagues write to UCU head Sally Hunt at shunt@ucu.org,uk , Prof. Hunt has publicly opposed the boycott-enabling motions. Express your support for her argument that the boycott motion may not be implemented until it has been presented to, discussed by, and passed by a vote of the full membership, analogous to motions for strikes. Please be sure to send blind copies of your letters to SPME at spme@spme.net and the Fair Play Campaign Group at ucu@fairplaycg.org.uk

In addition, SPME urges academic colleagues to write to any professional or scholarly organizations with which they are affiliated. Urge or petition the leadership of your organization to issue a statement opposing academic boycotts in general and the UCU's boycott motion in particular.

As a result of this boycott action, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is forming an International Task Force on Countering Academic and Professional Boycotts. Its charge will be to promote academic freedom and to wage anti-boycott campaigns in professional and academic organizations, societies and associations and in colleges and universities by working within these institutions as members of the academic community. The full Task Force has not yet been appointed but will include:

Edward S. Beck, Ed.D., Walden University, President Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
John R. Cohn, M.D.Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Stanley Dubinsky, Ph.D., Associate Dean, University of South Carolina, SPME Board of Directors
Lizbeth Fried, Ph.D., University of Michigan
Richard Lubman, M.D.University of Southern California School of Medicine, SPME-USC Chapter Co-Chair
Ed Morgan, JD Ph.D. University of Toronto School of Law
Edgar Pick, M.D. Ph.D., Sacker School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University
Elihu Richter, M.D. Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center
Harvey Risch, M.D, Yale University School of Medicine

SPME is recruiting interested contributing members to this important international task force. To join, you must be a contributing network member. To join, click here . To apply to join this task force, click here .

Edward Beck, Walden University and President of SPME, commented: "In calling for a boycott of Israel academics, the British have separated themselves, not the Israelis, from the global academic community which firmly condemns academic boycotts for moral, ethical and intellectual reasons, frequently acknowledging that academics are active in trying to solve problems and not create additional ones."

"I am sorry that one of the first acts of the newly formed University and College Union has been to jettison the principle of the Universality of Science and Learning, which has been at the heart of academic activity for so long This decision brings discredit on the Union." laments Oxford University scientist, Michael Yudkin.

Ashey Grossman, William Harvey Research Institute, Barts and the London School of Medicine, Queen Mary University of London points out, "...I have yet to meet any member of an Israeli University who believes that there should be other than an establishment of a Palestinian state on equal terms with Israel: would that were true of all Palestinian opinion. The organisers of the boycott may state otherwise, but this one is another example of creeping salon anti-semitism that we are now become accustomed to in the UK."

Hebrew University Vidal Sasson Center for Research on Anti-Semitism Research Associate and SPME Board Member from Germany, Matthias Kuentzel remarks. "Hostilities against Israel appear today in the form of a pincer movement: On one side, we have anti-Semites such as Ahmadinejad or Hamas who draw their “knowledge” about Jews from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On the other side we have non-Jewish and Jewish “fellow travelers of anti-Semitism” in progressive Western movements and governments who take up and proliferate, albeit in muted form, Iran’s attempts to delegitimize Israel."

Associate Dean Stanley Dubinsky of the University of South Carolina, also a member of the SPME Board of Directors urges his colleagues to consider these thoughts. "The passage of an academic boycott motion by the University and College Union (UCU) confirms for the rest of the academic world, more than anything else, what American Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg calls a 'widespread anti-Israel and anti-semitic current in British opinion.' The British anti-semites of Brighton (UB) and East London (UEL) have come skittering out from under the woodwork to make their loathing of Israel a matter of public record. In their ardor for their cause, they appear to have ignored the fact that their motion places their faculty union and all of its members squarely at odds with the most basic principles of academic freedom. By the promotion of academic boycotts and political censure, UCU will become actively engaged (in its inaugural year) in the undermining of open and free exchange of ideas and will place itself firmly in opposition to the advancement of human knowledge. In response to this and other previous boycott attempts, I have secured honorary affiliations with Bar Ilan University and Haifa University. In this manner, I declare myself to be a member of that class to which the UCU boycott pertains (for the purposes of making it clear that I fit into the boycotted category, the UCU membership should attribute to me any and all opinions which would place me in the class of individuals to be boycotted). I, for my part, will not boycott anyone for their beliefs in my various editorial and academic roles, but I will be certain to
advise all my British correspondents and colleagues of the dilemma that a UCU boycott may place them in, whenever appropriate. I would urge all academics of moral courage and ethical decency to do likewise, and secure for themselves the yellow star of Israeli affiliation, and so help the British unionists to more quickly realize what fools they have made of themselves and their colleagues. "

Donna Robinson Divine, Morningstar Professor of Government, Smith College observes, " The UCU call for a boycott reveals not only profound ignorance of the Middle East conflict but also deep illiteracy about the academic mission. Academicians should be able to think without resort to slogans and mantras."

Law Professor Ed Morgan of the University of Toronto suggests, "...The important link between a boycott of Israel - be it commercial or academic - and the impact on the Jewish community was succinctly stated by President Jimmy Carter who, in signing the EAA amendments into force on June 22, 1977, declared that, 'The bill seeks…to end the divisive effects on American life of foreign boycotts aimed at Jewish members of our society.' It may seem ironic today, but it was President Carter who identified those who would boycott Israel as practicing a special form of apartheid. Carter stated, 'If we allow such a precedent to become established, we open the door to similar action against any ethnic, religious, or racial group in America.'

University of Buffalo SPME Chapter Chair Prof. Ernest Sternberg, comments, "Today, leaders of the British academic labor union have approved a boycott of Jewish academics, in Israel, the country in which Jews have built as a democratic, tolerant home in the wake of worldwide discrimination, pogroms, and genocide. At a time when Israel is subjected to threats and active attempts at annihilation from Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, and Islamist extremists, the UCU has sought once again to target the victim. While hundreds of thousands are murdered in Darfur, repressive occupation continues in Tibet, ethnic cleansing takes place West Irian, and suicide-terrorism causes mass murder in around the world, UCU targets Israel. Through ignorance or malice, UCU leaders have, though this scapegoating of Israel, become complicit with bigotry, racism, and the yearning for genocide.”