Ramen Latkes with Sriracha Mayo

By Whitney Fisch in The Nosher for MyJewishLearning.com

Living in LA is like a foodie Wonderland. On almost every corner in almost every neighborhood, there is something delicious to eat.

And the foodies here in LA do a lot of things right, but by far the top three are tacos, sushi, and ramen. In fact, ramen is so good here it inspired me to make my own just recently. Being the typical Jewish mother that I am I made far too many noodles. The next morning it occurred to me, “why not fry up some leftover ramen noodles,  slap some sriracha mayo on top and have ourselves a nice ramen-inspired latke?!”

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Compromise for Now, the End of Israel for Later

David Pollock for Mosaic

That’s what Palestinians say they want. What does this bifurcated attitude mean for policymakers?

Against the bloody background of stabbings and other deadly violence in Israel and the West Bank, Daniel Polisar’s thorough analysis of Palestinian polling data, “What Do Palestinians Want?,” makes essential reading for anyone interested in more than just the grim daily headlines. His central point—that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have long supported “armed struggle” against Israelis—is not only accurate but a fact regularly distorted by media focus on the seemingly “individual” nature of today’s terrorist incidents. Polisar’s conclusions, moreover, are well grounded in exhaustive research into the mounds of survey data that have piled up ever since the first Oslo accords of 1993—which is when I myself started to work with Palestinian colleagues in launching the first scientific polls of the Palestinian population.

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The Bataclan Was Named For This Jewish Operetta

By Ilana Sichel for Jewniverse

Haaretz writer Vivian Eden just unearthed an amazing historical factoid: the Bataclan, the stately Paris theater that is now synonymous with bloodshed and horror, takes its name from an operetta written and composed by two 19th-century Jews.

Composer Jacques Offenbach was born to a German cantor, and came to Paris to study music. The libretto he set to music, “Ba-Ta-Clan,” was written by Ludovic Halévy, the son of a Parisian Jew who converted to Christianity for marriage. (Though with a name like Halévy we can’t imagine he made a very convincing Christian.)

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Thousands of Holocaust papers found in Budapest apartment

Documents cataloging residents of Hungarian capital in 1944, just before Jews were packed into a ghetto and shipped to death camps, found inside wall

By Times of Israel Staff

Renovations at an apartment in Budapest uncovered thousands of documents from 1944 cataloging the Jewish population of the Hungarian capital, according to a recent report in the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung.

The 6,300 documents were found in a wall of an apartment in Budapest that had recently cracked. When the landlord started fixing the wall, the bundles of paper were found stashed inside.

The papers date from just before the confinement of Hungarian Jews to the Budapest ghetto in 1944. In May of that year, city officials drafted a list of the city’s population, differentiating between Christians and Jews, detailing addresses, identities and cost of rent. The newfound documents detail residents from just four of the city’s districts.

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Sigd / סיגד

From HebCal.com

Sigd begins at sundown on Tue, 10 November 2015 (29th of Cheshvan, 5776)

Sigd is an Amharic word meaning "prostration" or "worship" and is the commonly used name for a holiday celebrated by the Ethiopian Jewish community on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. This date is exactly 50 days after Yom Kippur, usually falling out in late October or November, and according to Ethiopian Jewish tradition is also the date that G-d first revealed himself to Moses.

Read more about it at The Times of Israel

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Helen Mirren and Dumbledore say don't boycott Israel

In a matter of days, both famous British women have come out strongly against the boycott movement.

Rowling cites Dumbledor in arguing against Israel boycott, see the article in The Times of Israel.

J. K.  Rowling defended her opposition to a cultural boycott of Israel with an analogy from her “Harry Potter” book series.

The author has faced backlash since joining 150 prominent British figures in signing an open letter, published in The Guardian last week, that endorsed cultural engagement with Israel rather than a cultural boycott, as a way to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Helen Mirren on Israel boycott: ‘It’s the craziest idea’ as told to Raoul Wootliff for The Times of Israel

British actress Helen Mirren spoke out against the cultural boycott of Israel on Wednesday upon being honored at the 29th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, California.
Talking to press before the ceremony, the Academy Award winner described the campaign to boycott Israeli through cutting off cultural ties as “a really bad idea.”



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If you love Israel, don’t boycott it

By Elliott Abrams, Opinion, for the Washington Post

We love Israel. We love it more than we love other nations. That’s why we must do all we can to destroy its economy.

That is the message of the bizarre Oct. 25 Sunday Opinion column by professors Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl. Their argument is simple: Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza is now “permanent,” unless sufficient economic damage is done to force Israel to change course.

What’s missing here? Two things: history and Palestinians.

History reveals two recent attempts by Israeli leaders to negotiate a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians — by prime ministers Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 — which were rejected by Palestine Liberation Organization leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Of this, Levitsky and Weyl say nothing. They also do not mention Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, seeming to regard it as “occupied” even though not a single Israeli soldier or civilian lives there.

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