#jewish maryland
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utilitycaster · 4 months ago
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Also because I've been soliciting voter stickers in exchange for me telling you your ttrpg PCs are cool, here is mine (early voted) ft my most Maryland magnet
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flagpeace · 2 months ago
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A flag for Jewish Marylanders. It combines the flag of Maryland with the Star of David.
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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 6 months ago
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A sign reading “We Support Israel” outside a synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti this week, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.
“The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is deeply disturbed by the discovery yesterday of antisemitic graffiti on a ‘We Support Israel’ sign outside Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Jewish Federation noted that the incident came just two days after similar antisemitic graffiti was found near Bethesda Elementary School in Maryland this past weekend. “Israel rapes men, women, and children” was spray-painted on a school sign, and “Free Gaza” was reportedly painted onto a nearby crosswalk and sidewalk.
“We call on our community and allies to continue making it clear that antisemitism and hate speech have no place in Greater Washington,” the Jewish Federation said in its statement. “We are in close contact with local law enforcement, and we appreciate their swift responses to these incidents to ensure our community’s safety.”
The Bethesda area has a large Jewish population — about 45 percent of Maryland’s Jewish community lives in Montgomery County.
The latest incidents of vandalism came amid a troubling wave of antisemitic incidents in Maryland.
Baltimore police announced on Saturday that they arrested a man who is suspected of a hate crime for setting a fire outside the Jewish Museum of Maryland earlier this month. The museum is located between two historic synagogues on Baltimore’s Lloyd Street: the Lloyd Street Synagogue and the B’nai Israel Congregation. The fire on Aug. 4 was set outside the museum but also right next to B’nai Israel, which reportedly shares a security gate with it.
Weeks earlier, Baltimore’s mayor and police chief denounced a slew of antisemitic incidents in which the homes of Jewish families in the Glen section of the city were graffitied with swastikas. As many as 10 homes were targeted in the spree of hate, according to a local NBC affiliate, shocking locals who were dismayed that the incidents occurred in their neighborhood.
Such outrages aren’t new. In December, for example, vandals twice slashed a pro-Israel sign displayed on the lawn of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in Pikesville, local media reported. In a later incident in March, a gang of teenagers mugged and assaulted two Jewish men who were walking into their synagogue. The youths reportedly chased one of the men and stole a “large amount of cash” from the other. More recently, an Israeli flag was ripped and stolen from the porch of a doctor’s office earlier this summer.
Across the state of Maryland, which had the seventh most antisemitic incidents in the US in 2023, outrages targeting the Jewish community increased 211 percent compared to the prior year, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest data.
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eretzyisrael · 6 months ago
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by Michael Starr
The University of Maryland reversed its decision to allow an anti-Israel protest on the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, following backlash from local Jewish groups.
UMD Students for Justice in Palestine and UMD Jewish Voice for Peace had been set to hold their October 7 vigil for Gazans killed in the Israel-Hamas war at the campus’s Mckeldin Mall, but the University System of Maryland (USM) said in a statement on Sunday that on the day of the Hamas-led pogrom it would limit campus events requiring permits or approval to those supporting “a university-sponsored Day of Dialogue.”
“From the beginning of the war, we have come together as a University System to urge that we use this moment to encourage conversation, compassion, and civility; to engage with one another across our differences and draw on our shared humanity and our shared values to bridge what divides us,” said USM. “These dialogues aren’t new.
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USM said its intent was not to infringe on the free expression and speech of students, but to be sensitive to the needs of students as October 7 was a “day of enormous suffering and grief for many in our campus communities.”
UMD Jewish Student Union, Maryland Hillel, Terps for Israel, and Israeli American Council Mishelanu at Maryland welcomed the USM decision and thanked UMD leadership in a joint social media statement on Sunday.
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gwydionmisha · 1 year ago
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the-first-man-is-a-cat · 13 days ago
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On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore
Eric L. Goldstein & Deborah R. Weiner
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divinum-pacis · 2 months ago
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Wearing a necklace with her name in Hebrew, Charlotte Gleicher, 7, a first grader at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital, is helped by her teacher, Dafna Kiverstein, to roll out dough for matzah during a “Matzah Factory” field trip at the JCrafts Center for Jewish Life and Tradition in Rockville, Md., Thursday, April 18, 2024, ahead of the Passover holiday. To be kosher for Passover, which begins next Monday evening, the dough has to be prepared and cooked all within 18 minutes and not allowed to rise. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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gaelic-symphony · 2 months ago
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An added bonus of Chanukah (and other Jewish holidays) lasting multiple days is that it makes it so easy to celebrate with multiple different sets of loved ones! My girlfriend and I are both Jewish and both from the same part of Maryland, and her parents are also divorced, so we potentially have THREE “candles and latkes with the parents” evenings this year, but that still leaves us five nights to celebrate with friends or at shul or at home by ourselves. We don’t have to choose to spend our holidays one way. And we get to do the same for first and second night Seders at Pesach, for High Holidays, and for Sukkah parties.
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It shouldn't be a radical take to say that Jews have the right to exist. Yes, all Jews.
The Jewish woman in Maryland who is involved with her reform shul, celebrates all the Jewish holidays, and also celebrates xmas with her goyische husband? Has the right to exist.
The antizionist activist Jew in New York who goes to all the pro-Palestine events and swears she isn't being used as a token? Has the right to exist.
The homophobic rabbi in Jerusalem who advocates for bringing back the death penalty? Has the right to exist.
The secular Jew who was in komsomol back in the USSR and is now a militant atheist in Canada actively preventing his children and grandchildren from reconnecting? Has the right to exist.
The Israeli terf who would personally kill every Palestinian man? Has the right to exist.
The American kahaneist who's been living on the west bank for the past seven years? Has the right to exist.
The transgender reform Jew who writes a blog about disability? Has the right to exist.
The Jew in Iran who is an outspoken antizionist because he's afraid of the consequences if he isn't? Has the right to exist.
The Mexican Catholic who converted to Judaism after discovering crypto-Jewish ancestry and is finding her place in the Jewish world? Has the right to exist.
The non-binary, non-zionist convert who sponsors the weekly kiddush at their Conservative synagogue in Oklahoma? Has the right to exist.
The descendant of Nazis who converted to Judaism and moved to Israel and served in the IDF? Has the right to exist.
The chassid who thinks zionism is heresy? Has the right to exist.
You are going to disagree with some of these people. You are going to find some of them repulsive. You have every right to disagree, to explain why you disagree. That does not mean you can take an individual's right to exist.
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metamatar · 1 year ago
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To counter what they view as a rising tide of prejudice, the HAF and other Hindu American groups have turned to American Jewish organizations, which they have long seen as “the gold standard in terms of political activism,” as Maryland State Delegate Kumar Barve said in 2003. Since the early 2000s, Indian Americans have modeled their congressional activism on that of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and AIPAC; Indian lobbyists have partnered with these groups to achieve shared defense goals, including arms deals between India and Israel and a landmark nuclear agreement between India and the US. Along the way, these Jewish groups have trained a generation of Hindu lobbyists and advocates, offering strategies at joint summits and providing a steady stream of informal advice. “We shared with them the Jewish approach to political activism,” Ann Schaffer, an AJC leader, told the Forward in 2002. “We want to give them the tools to further their political agenda.” Shukla told Jewish Currents that the HAF continues to work closely with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the AJC, whether by “being co-amici curiae on briefs to the US Supreme Court,” or by “lending our support to one another’s letters to Congress.”
[...] Faced with rising scrutiny over India’s worsening human rights record, Hindu groups have used “the same playbook and even sometimes the same terms” as Israel-advocacy groups, “copy-pasted from the Zionist context,” said Nikhil Mandalaparthy of the anti-Hindutva group Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR). Hindu groups have especially taken note of their Jewish counterparts’ recent efforts to codify a definition of antisemitism—the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition—that places much criticism of Israel out-of-bounds, asserting that claims like “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” constitute examples of anti-Jewish bigotry.
[...] In 2003, Gary Ackerman—a Jewish former congressman who was awarded India’s third-highest civilian honor for helping to found the Congressional Caucus on India—told a gathering of AJC and AIPAC representatives and their Indian counterparts that “Israel [is] surrounded by 120 million Muslims,” while “India has 120 million [within].” Tom Lantos, another Jewish member of the caucus, likewise enjoined the two communities to collaborate: “We are drawn together by mindless, vicious, fanatic, Islamic terrorism.”
Driven by that sense of shared purpose, the AJC and AIPAC helped train new Indian American political groups—such as the Indian American Political Action Committee and the United States India Political Action Committee—to achieve their aims in Washington. The AJC hosted seminars on political activism in DC and New York; it also brought several delegations of Indian Americans to Israel to meet with members of the Israeli government and military. “We’re fighting the same extremist enemy,” the AJC’s capital region director Charles Brooks told the Forward in 2002.
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wokealqaeda · 12 days ago
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David Katz (Bread) Interview.
The Jacksonville Landing shooting was a mass shooting that occurred at a video game tournament for the video game Madden NFL 19 in Jacksonville Landing, Jacksonville, Florida, United States, on August 26, 2018, at about 1:30 pm. A lone gunman, David Katz, shot and killed two people and injured ten others before killing himself.
The shooter, David Katz, was a 24-year-old professional Madden player from Baltimore, Maryland, who had been attending the Jacksonville tournament as a participant. His parents were divorced and he was Jewish. Katz had lost a few rounds in the competition, which prevented him from reaching the finals. Fellow competitors reported that he had been "acting weird" and refused to shake hands with them after losing the competition. His pseudonyms included "Bread", "mrslicedbread", "RavensChamp", "ravens2012champ" and "TREXHAVAHARTATAK". He had previously won $10,000 in a 2017 Madden Tournament. Katz had a history of mental illness and was prescribed anti-psychotic medication. He was diagnosed with dysthymia and oppositional disorder not otherwise specified and had been involuntarily committed to mental hospitals on numerous occasions.
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hazbin-but-good · 11 months ago
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another hazbin hotel rewrite/redesign?
yup! and i'm so serious about it that i made a whole blog for it. i'm a white queer ex-cath tran doing this as an art and writing exercise, so feedback from other creatives + jewish and/or racialized folks is especially welcome.
i'm putting this post and only this post in the main tags for visibility. also, not gonna link my main, but i do make my own original stuff, and i encourage fans and haters alike to do the same.
anyway, here's a mostly good-faith 1.7k-word essay on the original. i think it's pretty funny and brings up some less talked-about points. correct me on the facts, disagree with my opinions, and ask clarifying questions, but don't come at me with any piss-poor reading comprehension.
the hellaverse is garbage, and here's why
cw: strong language, stronger opinions, intersectional feminist critical discourse analysis
1. vivienne medrano, the person
medrano was born as a well-off white-passing latina (salvadoran-american) in bougieass frederick, maryland. while attending new york's top art school, she got popular on deviantart-tumblr-twitter by being a prolific multifandom fujoshi furry who's more into ornamental character design than storytelling. upon graduation, she leveraged her fanbase and industry connections to make the hazbin and helluva boss pilots, get helluva made for youtube, and get hazbin made for amazon prime.
like every woman online, she gets harassed for no good reason, and as a certified autist, i will defend her right to be dumb, weird, annoying, and bad with words. however, there are legit reasons to criticize her:
racism, misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, some antisemitism, past transphobia, past ableism
shitty boss, bad friend
cowardly, vindictive, manipulative, thoughtless behavior
skeevy friends
sucks at taking criticism
in short, i think she desperately needs a PR person and someone to clean up her digital footprint.
2. medrano's art
incurious
inauthentic
noncommittal
creatively stagnant
overindulgent, and the indulgence isn't even fun
shallow and childish framed as complex and mature
bland and boring framed as shocking and subversive
to be clear, i'm at peace with the existence of suckass art like this; i just think the money, attention, and praise it gets are unearned and should go to more interesting works, of which there are infinite.
medrano's had the time, money, and social cache to grow as an artist, learn from the best, and take creative risks, but she hasn't. if she truly has nothing more to offer, she should let her collaborators take the wheel, but she doesn't do that either. instead, she keeps getting more and more resources to make the same baby bullshit, and that pisses me off. she could be the nicest person ever, and this fundamental arrogance would still make her art blow.
stop with the pointless guilt: liking medrano's work does not make you stupid or evil. however, if you stay in the kiddie pool of culture, if you refuse to engage with a diversity of art, if the hellaverse is your point of reference for anything media-related, you can't expect to have your opinions on art, media, or culture taken seriously. you have not earned a seat at the table. you gotta hit the books first.
i cannot emphasize enough how much incredible stuff is out there if you're willing to look further than what social media and streaming services put right in front of you. if you come away from this blog having learned about just one new artist or piece of art, i'll be a happy camper.
3. the hellaverse
a. empty and confused
hazbin and helluva's content and marketing has no clear target audience. the subjects are inappropiate for teens, but the execution is too childish for adults, and lemme tell you what i don't mean by that, first.
not inherently inappropriate for teens:
sex and sexuality
violence, including when it intersects with the above
politics and religion
not inherently childish:
animation (any style)
comedy
episodic writing and/or loose continuity
young characters
fun, happiness, optimism, the power of friendship, cuteness, tenderness, sincerity, etc.
what i mean is that these shows are literally about adult characters who fuck, smoke, drink, do drugs, go clubbing, work full-time, manage their own finances, and deal with stuff like bureaucracy, sexual violence, domestic abuse, marriage, divorce, late adoption, and family estrangement.
however, none of these "adult" things are given enough specificity to create drama or comedy. it's all too stock, vague, flat, weirdly sanitized, and thus utterly banal—pure aesthetics on top of bad saturday morning cartoons. it's exactly what i'd expect from a sheltered disney kid who needs to log off and get into their local gay scene ASAP so their only contact with things like poverty, policing, addiction, and sex work stops being facile movies and TV.
if the shows were aware of this and played with it, that could be amazing, but they're not. they give you the mickey mouse version of the world with a straight face and then play looney tunes sound effects to try to make you laugh and sad_violin.mp3 to try to make you cry. now that's funny.
b. old and tired
let's make like americans and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. even within the confines of the USA, home of the hays code, the red scare, and reaganite propaganda, this neopuritan fascist state ruled by 1000 megachurches in a trenchcoat, the indie/underground animation scene has been doing crazier shit for decades. anti-war films in the 60's, bakshi movies in the 70's, the simpsons shorts and r-rated movies in the 80's, adult swim and MTV in the 90's, flash/newgrounds/youtube in the 00's, streaming in the 2010's—so what are we doing in the 2020's with this wet white rice drowned in expired ketchup? i feel crazy making this point because it's obvious if you've watched these things, but if you haven't, you're gonna be like "well, there's gotta be something new here". no! there isn't! in the words of jimmy "the scot" jordan, nothing, nothing, NOTHING!
c. ideological purgatory
actually, there is one thing in these shows i've never seen before: the presbysterianism. shout out some interesting or at least intentional presbysterian art in the comments, because the way these ideas are presented here is not compelling. it just makes the rainbow neoliberalism even more confusing and contradictory.
i guess the big presbysterian things are protestanism, calvinism, and, uh, big church government? presbysterians, get your shit together. get your brand down. catholics have BDSM and vampires, evangelicals have TV and corporatism; what do you have? celtic crosses? no wonder medrano has such uninspired ideas on divinity.
d. queer deficiency
when i look at a piece of art, i ask myself: "what does this give me that i can't get from the hunchback of notre dame (1996)?" if the answer is as limp as "uhh, gay people, i guess", i can probably look for my gay shit elsewhere and rewatch the hunchback of notre dame (1996) in the meantime.
but let's say that you have no standards. you've been waiting for ages for a show about gays by the gays for the gays, and by god you're gonna get it. this is it! here we go! time for some
generic twink obliteration
male sexuality as aggression and dominance displays
WLW (sex and chemistry not included)
a couple straight femdoms
and the stalest sex jokes known to man
...yeah, it's not very queer. and by "queer", i mean "questioning or subverting gender norms (including sexual roles) within a given cultural context regardless of creator identity and intent". i'm not a queer studies scholar so LMK if there's a more specific term for this, but whatever you call it, it's not in the hellaverse much.
there's not even any transness, literal or metaphorical, just ancient drag jokes. i guess the writers thought we would've been too controversial. so much for an indie animation studio that prides itself in the diversity of its staff both above and below the line, bakshi-style. i wonder how medrano, a bisexual woman, would've felt if told that a lesbian main couple in hazbin would be "too controversial".
4. spindlehorse and the vivziepop brand
spindlehorse toons underpays its overworked staff and keeps outsourcing more and more labor to even more overworked freelancers overseas to cut costs. a rainbow sweatshop is still a sweatshop, and just because these practices may be "industry standard" doesn't make them any more ethical.
the studio has also been repeatedly accused by current and former employees and contractors of creating a hostile and abusive workplace. AFAIK, it still has no dedicated HR person, and victims are too afraid of retaliation like blacklisting and online harassment to speak out.
this is exactly the stuff that unions exist to prevent. as i'm writing this, the IATSE (the parent union of TAG, which is the parent union of all US animation unions) is negotiating with entertainment industry executives for better working conditions, and if the execs fuck around like last year, it's strike time again. so watch this space, voice your support, and don't cross any picket lines.
i hope spindlehorse unionizes, but until then and for these reasons, i don't think you should give money to the company.
first of all, all content on amazon-owned platforms is ok to pirate, and all youtube ads are ok to block. everyone involved in making the episodes has (or should have) been paid upfront, so you're not taking the bread out of anyone's mouth.
next, let's look at the succulent offerings of the official vivziepop merch shop:
$10 pins and keychains
$15 sticker packs
$20 mugs and acrylic cutouts
$25 shirts
$30 metal cards (not even tarot)
$40 lounge pants
$50 mini backpacks
random $80 skateboard deck
forgive my latin americanness, but this is all stuff you can get made by a local metalsmith, print/sublimation shop, or just crafty people in your life. it's cheaper, customizable, and better for the environment to skip all the shipping and packaging. also, not painting your own skateboard is poser shit.
the hazbin website also has $15 pins, one $20 keychain, and $6 trading card packs. people are weird about trading cards, so if for some reason you wanna gamble for a mass-produced bit of cardboard, plastic, and tinfoil, at least bulk-order for all the vivziepoppers in your area so it's less of a huge waste. better yet, trace the designs and make infinite bootlegs.
at the end of the day, buying merch is not activism. your bulk order of trading cards will not save any wage slaves from getting evicted from their overpriced studio apartments. however, the shop links you to all the credited artists/designers, and more of your bucks will actually reach them if you buy their designs directly, then turn them into body pillows or life-sized bronze statues or whatever the fuck.
go through the credits of any episode of helluva or hazbin, and you'll find even more creatives you might wanna support. get jinkx monsoon's albums on CD. subscribe to actually good artist, animator, and composer gooseworx. lots of voice actors now have patreon, cameo, or self-hosted pages where you can write better lines for their characters and have them read it. these things may not look as shiny as Official Merch™, but we all need less plastic shit and more culture anyway.
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brightlotusmoon · 9 months ago
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I was just listening to my husband telling our roommate the story of how when he was young in the 80s living in Prince George's County in Maryland, their new black neighbors were getting harassed by Klan members, so his parents - the only Jewish family in the neighborhood - went over with weapons and his mom sat by an upstairs window with a rifle and his dad (who had worked for the government as a man in black) stood like a sentry on the lawn and put out the burning cross and threatened to stab anyone who came at them. Yes, they all moved out. No I don't have more details. But the conversation sprang from how one of our neighbors, an older white guy, was wondering why we weren't ever going to support Trump.
Punch Nazis. Tell others to punch Nazis. Be loud about punching Nazis. Help your neighbor watch Nazis through a rifle lens. Etc.
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mariacallous · 6 days ago
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A grant to study linguistic differences between Hebrew and English was flagged as an example of “woke DEI grants” in a new database released by Sen. Ted Cruz.
The database is part of ongoing Republican efforts to justify significant cuts to federal research funding and diversity programs under President Donald Trump.
The $226,000 grant, given by the National Science Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022, was flagged by the Texas Republican senator’s team as having an inappropriate focus on “gender.” 
But according to the description of the research in Cruz’s own database, the sole mention of gender in the grant’s description is in reference to the fact that the Hebrew language (like many) assigns gender to nouns.
The UMass grant was also one of seven in Cruz’s database of Biden-era grants that stated an intent to promote partnerships between American and Israeli research institutions — something that did not appear to mitigate opposition from Cruz, an avowed supporter of Israel. He said in a statement that the more than 3,400 grants in his database demonstrated that the NSF had funded “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”
A request for comment to Cruz’s office was not returned; nor was an inquiry sent to UMass. Cruz, the chair of the Senate committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, said in a statement that his data “exposes how the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies to push a far-left ideology.” 
He added, “Congress must end the politicization of NSF funding and restore integrity to scientific research.”
The public database of grants compiled by Cruz provides a window into how Trump and his allies are thinking about cuts to research funding. The flagged grants mentioning Israel were made to six universities including Brown, the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. They cover a range of scientific topics, from studying cognition to magnetic technologies to energy storage. 
What they have in common is a stated intent to collaborate with an Israeli university. For example, Michigan’s grant specifically references a partnership with Ben-Gurion University in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, while a second UMass grant mentions partnering with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in the port city of Haifa, as well as “outreach by the Israeli collaborator to local high schools in Haifa.”
The second common thread among the Israel-related grant descriptions is the use of keywords flagged by the database as related to gender or DEI. Cruz’s team sorted the grants based on the presence of keywords related to the categories of “gender,” “status,” “social justice,” “race” and “environmental justice.”
None of the grants to mention Israeli partnerships make such topics the focus of their research, though some state a general commitment to “groups underrepresented in science” or “outreach to women and underrepresented minorities.” UMBC’s grant states that it will allow participation “for local high school students from underrepresented groups on the US side, and from various nationalities on the IL [Israeli] side.”
The UMass grant exploring the Hebrew and English languages makes no such commitment to diversity. Its reference to gender comes as it states that “English and Hebrew differ in how they organize the words within sentences and whether they assign gender to nouns; Hebrew assigns masculine and feminine genders to nouns, similar to languages like Spanish and French but unlike English.” 
The project’s stated focus is to study how such linguistic differences affect “interpretation errors” among people who speak both languages.
Cruz’s dragnet of so-called “woke” research grants also comes as a number of American researchers and campus groups have pushed for boycotts of all Israeli institutions, in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza. 
The database was posted as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has targeted federal research funding on the basis of keywords that, the Trump team claims, reveal evidence of gender- and DEI-driven agendas. On Tuesday a federal judge intervened to block steep cuts to medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health. Another injunction blocked key parts of Musk’s effort to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. 
A report last week in the Washington Post found that NSF staff were also being directed to comb through their research projects in search of dozens of offending keywords, including “women,” “victims,” “trauma” and “ethnicity.” Such efforts are part of a larger slashing of federal spending, including the shuttering of entire departments, that scholars say is unlawful and may be leading to a constitutional crisis.
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eretzyisrael · 2 years ago
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Good News From Israel
In the 16th July 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
Israeli personally tailored therapies can cure infections and infertility.
Israeli surgeons don’t need electricity to save a life in Ethiopia.
Israeli scientists won awards from France and NASA.
A new European fund is to invest a quarter of a billion dollars in Israeli startups.
An Israeli startup will generate electricity from Taiwan’s choppy seas.
The Israel Premier Tech cycling team won the 9th stage of the Tour de France.
An Israeli NGO is saving the bees – one swarm at a time.
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This newsletter edition is entitled "Chai-Tech", merging the term "Hi-Tech" with "Chai" - the Hebrew word for "Living" / "Lives". The reason is that there is so much recent news about Israeli technology to benefit human lives.
Almost all the medical articles involve Israelis using hi-tech to save lives, including breakthroughs in personalized medicine, global vaccines, stroke monitors, digital  insoles, brain disease diagnosis, prescription checkers and the innovations of Sheba Medical Center.
Israeli life-saving climate-tech features high in this newsletter with Israel's plans for a 1,000-strong delegation to COP28, the recent climate-tech delegation to the UK, 15 Israeli Climate Awards candidates, France's award to an Israeli hydrogen scientist, and Taiwan implementing Israel's wave energy solution.  Israeli hi-tech is also benefiting the environment by using seaweed to generate electricity, turning potato waste foliage into a food source, more vegan substitutes for meat, sustainable farming solutions and ultra-efficient space propulsion.
Other hi-tech programs include multi-million investments into Israeli companies developing 3D printed organs, security for schools, digital health, food-tech and agri-tech solutions. No wonder Israeli hi-tech startups are actively being sought by the US States of Virginia and Maryland.
The photo shows the construction of a solar roof over the soccer pitch of our local school in Netanya, providing shade to the young players, and green electricity for the school and the grid. Another "high"-tech solution making life better for the next generation.  Am Yisrael Chai!
Read More: Good News From Israel
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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month ago
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Wajahat Ali and Yusuf Zakir at The Left Hook:
If you listen to Donald Trump, Maga Republicans and lazy comedians, DEI is the modern-day villain. It’s a wicked and terrifying Trojan horse of wokeness that is seeking to “replace” Americans and indoctrinate our children with a subversive agenda. It’s allegedly orchestrated by transgender people, immigrants of color, Muslims, Black people, Jewish people and feminists – anyone that isn’t straight, white and Christian. According to the president-elect, the rest of us are “poisoning the blood of our country” and destroying it.
DEI is an easy, direct and convenient way to package all of these fears. If you fall for this narrative, it can be terrifying and feel unfair. Events such as the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the problems with Boeing aircraft and the destruction of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Maryland were blamed on DEI. This was a con.
Instead of pointing to a corrupt system and deregulation that benefits the wealthy at the expense of many, DEI was seen as the culprit. The bad-faith talking point is that had DEI not existed, these tragedies would not have occurred and real Americans – who are not “woke” – would be safe and economically prosperous. Unfortunately, the deception works as companies such as McDonald’s announced this week that they are renouncing their previous commitment to DEI. It was just revealed that anti-DEI shareholder proposals have tripled since 2020. In reality, DEI refers to three simple but important words: diversity, equity and inclusion.
Diversity is an outcome. Equity is the path to get there. Inclusion ensures we travel that path together. Diversity represents varied identities and differences, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability and veteran status. That means white people, Black people, straight people, gay people, rich people, poor people and more. Equity is the allocation of resources and opportunities and the elimination of barriers to create a path towards equality. The concept of equity acknowledges that there is not a level playing field. Inclusion is creating an environment where everyone is welcome, respected, supported and valued. It is about bringing people together and creating safety and belonging. It is, by definition, the opposite of exclusion.
[...]
Several years later, we see that organizational commitment to DEI has waned. For example, in addition to McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson and Ford recently announced that they will curb some of their DEI efforts. With the continued rightwing political onslaught against DEI and Donald Trump’s election, this could be the moment when many organizations decide to pull the plug entirely. This would be a major mistake.
For organizations considering this decision, we would like to remind you that DEI impacts your talent lifecycle, your culture and your economic success in significant ways. We need to remind US workers about the benefits of DEI as we risk losing them entirely. First, companies have to find and recruit the best talent and as such they will naturally have to cast a very broad net. DEI encourages and helps this outreach. Talent is everywhere, not just among children of politicians, the privileged class or those lucky to attend Ivy League schools and live in wealthy zip codes. DEI encourages us to look beyond traditional (and often archaic) measurements of success, such as SAT scores, and consider the hidden jewels of talent that exist everywhere.
Second, because hiring is so expensive and time-consuming, DEI helps organizations try and retain their valued employees. Equity is a key component that recognizes everyone has different skill sets, talents, strengths and weaknesses. By recognizing this, addressing it and supporting it, DEI helps employees maximize their potential. Studies have repeatedly shown employees are more likely to stay when they feel like they can grow, advance and continue to break through glass ceilings. [...] Costco is an example worth following. Their board unanimously recommended that its shareholders reject a proposal that would require Costco to report on the risks of its diversity and inclusion goals. In making this recommendation, Costco noted that DEI efforts help the company attract and retain employees and improve its products and services. Those who make DEI into a bogeyman paint society as a zero-sum game: a slice for you means no slice for me. But, that is a narrow vision fueled by fear, greed and ignorance. Unlike Trump, DEI views America as generous and limitless. It’s in the best interest of corporations, organizations and US workers to adopt such a vision if we truly want to become great again as a nation.
Love this column in The Left Hook on why DEI makes businesses better, despite what right-wing polemics say otherwise (*cough* Robby Starbuck, Christopher Rufo, Elon Musk *cough*).
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