I Love You J-Street

Of all of the J-Street endorsed candidates, my favorite is Rabbi Dr. Dennis Shulman. He's running for congress in New Jersey's 5th district (the northern border) and he's up against a tough conservative. He's an amazing fellow: blind since childhood, Reform rabbi, clinical psychologist, graduate of Brandeis, and originally from Worcester, MA (represent!). Could he get any cooler?
He also has amazing views on Israel as well as Iran that are about tough diplomacy and peace resolutions.
J-Street just did a fabulous interview with him and it got me really pumped up. Here it is:





Now he would be the right person to SCHLEP down to Florida and convince all the bubbes and zaydies to vote for the shvartze

Ahmadinejad on the Jews

Don't get me wrong, this guy is a very dangerous man and I worry for the lives of Israelis with him in power. But it seems like he isn't the lunatic everyone thinks he is. He's making some good points and while some of them I strongly disagree with, others make sense.

As Rabbi Lerner puts it beautifully in Healing Israel/Palestine, the creation of the State of Israel in response to the Holocaust was like Jews jumping out of a burning building and landing in another building that already had occupants. Of course the first reaction of both parties would be to play the "I'm the victim!" game (and we all know how good Jews are at that).

Ahmadinejad has the standard Arab view of Zionism: that it is incompatible with Arab countries, but that doesn't mean that he hates Jews. Unfortunately the two often go hand in hand, but it seems that Ahmadinejad can make that distinction and I respect him at least for that.