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Israele: Naomi Tsur, l'anima verde di Gerusalemme
Un profilo molto interessante. Una donna ebrea che, a Gerusalemme, si prodiga per rendere la città intera più pulita e verde per tutti i suoi abitanti.
Positivo che una donna sia leader in campo ambientalista in un contesto in cui i vari integralismi religiosi fanno a gara a chi mostra le attitudini più misogine.
She has been working as an activist for 13 years spearheading campaigns to keep Jerusalem of Gold, green, and was recently elected to the new position in politics.
As founder of Sustainable Jerusalem, Tsur has helped organize 75 green groups together under one umbrella. Through it, she's taught other activists how to lobby in the government, and how to hone in on specific issues worth fighting for.
Some of the projects she'll be organizing include establishing an environmental lobby. "There is nothing more universal than local issues,"
"The Jerusalem forest shouldn't be depleted anymore - it's a quarter of its original size. Hopefully we will create a continuous park along the railway line from Emek Refaim to Malha. Residents wanted it, and we have committed to it. It runs through rich, poor, Jewish, Arab neighborhoods and answers a real need for quality open space," she declared.
"We need to think about not only cleanliness, but what happens to our garbage, about recycling. I'm going to see what's been planned, what's being done. I don't see why we shouldn't be recycling much, much more," Tsur maintained.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404730047&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Israele: scoperta archeologica di donna re
Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations have uncovered an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in male dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city. If true, they say, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region.
We may have found the 'Mistress of the Lionesses' who'd been sending letters from Canaan to Egypt.
Tel Aviv University archaeologists say that the new finds might turn the interpretation of pre-biblical history on its head.
Israele: campagna contro l'anoressia
Il fotografo israeliano Adi Barkan e il suo amico Alon Gal sono dei bravi ragazzzi. Due uomini che si sono lanciati a peso morto nella campagna contro l'anoressia in Israele. Da notare che Israele è stata la prima nazione al mondo, ancora prima della Francia e della Spagna, a dotarsi di una legislazione contro lo sfruttamento delle modelle anoressiche.
He has every reason to think he can do it. A 30-year industry veteran, Barkan started his crusade seven years ago, after his experience with model, Hila Elmalich, an anorexic whom he rushed to hospital after she collapsed. She later died.
In 2004, he successfully submitted a bill to the Knesset that requires all Israeli modeling agencies to use Body Mass Index (BMI) as a pre-requisite for employment. Today, the governments of Spain and France have adopted legislation based, in part, on Barkan's efforts, that prevent underweight girls from runway modeling.
Israele: retorica omofoba contro il Gay Pride di Tel Aviv
Israel's interior minister and chief rabbis called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to call off Tel Aviv's annual gay parade to keep the "abomination" away from children's eyes.
"The holding of a parade similar to those held in the past on its current route constitutes a grave insult to the feelings of the public, especially to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim public," the letter said.
Appunto. Il pubblico ebraico, islamico e cristiano. Gli estremismi religiosi su questo fronte, come anche in altri, sono ben uniti
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090610/lf_afp/israelgayreligion_20090610182315
Israele: successo per iniziativa di microcredito per donne beduine
A Bedouin woman who wants to start a sheep dairy has just received the 1,000th small-business loan granted by SAWA, a unique microfinance program in Israel.
Chagit Rubinstein, a native Israeli, created SAWA ("together" in Arabic) modeled on Grameen Bank, which provides collateral-free group loans to rural Bangladeshis.
Given the similarities between the Bedouin communities of Israel's south and the Bangladeshi villages where Grameen operates, she decided to concentrate her efforts on this population.
The program took root slowly. For six months, Rubinstein commuted from her home in the northern port city of Haifa to the communities of the south, seeking connections through organizations and individuals.
She recruited the help of Nuzha el-Huzail, a Bedouin social worker with a PhD from Ben-Gurion University.
"I realized that a Jewish-Israeli coming to a Bedouin village by herself wasn't the right way to do it," she says. "I had my first meetings in Segev Shalom, near Beersheva, only after I hired Nuzha as program manager in March 2006."
"There is no doubt that SAWA is changing attitudes," el-Huzail says.
It is also changing lives. "We see big changes in how [participants] dress, talk, and look," Rubinstein says.
One woman used her SAWA loan to replace her old manual sewing machine with a second-hand electric machine and to purchase an electrical system to power it. After she paid back that loan, she used a second loan to open a store where she sells the clothes she makes.
"Now, three years after she started, she is opening another store in Beersheva that her daughter will run," says Rubinstein.
Rubinstein hopes to expand the project to other disadvantaged populations, including Ethiopian immigrants.
Israele: la futura donna rabbino ortodossa si chiamerà "rabba"
The title chosen by a majority of conference participants is "rabba.
"The women's learning revolution has existed for quite some time," said Rachel Keren, chairwoman of Kolech's Board of Directors, to Ynet. "Women are advancing in Torah study, but there is a glass ceiling hindering their advancement. The glass ceiling was already shattered in the course for female halachic advisors and on the issue of female legal counselors, but still hasn't been shattered in the field of rabbis and religious judges. This issue is of prime importance. "There is a threefold interest that this ceiling is shattered – the interest of the woman who wants to advance and gain recognition, a societal interest, and the interest of the Torah world that there be as many Torah studiers as possible. By choosing a title, we wanted to raise public awareness to this need. We believed that the public discourse (on the subject) would encourage women to continue learning."
Israele: risposte alla violenza omofoba
L'appello per la raccolta di fondi che riporto contiene vari newsclip che riportano i dettaggli della recente violenza omofoba a Tel Aviv.
http://www.jewishmosaic.org/page/load_page/172
Dalla stampa israeliana ci sono questi due articoli interessanti, di cui uno riporta le riflessioni di un rabbino ortodosso.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3757204,00.html
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249275681103&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Come segno di speranza pongo alla vostra attenzione questo video destinato a giovani gay e lesbiche in Israele.
Israele: Suheir Assady prima donna araba a capo di un dipartimento medico
Dr Suheir Assady is the first female Arab physician to head a medical department in Israel
As the first Arab woman in Israel to attain such a position, she is breaking the glass ceiling twice.
Assady comments: "At Rambam we can be very proud that 16 [women] hold very good positions ... a lot of residents and doctors are women - 30% so I am in a good league."
Israele: Ada Yonath vince il Premio Nobel
Ovviamente non intendo dimenticare tutte le altre vincitrici del Premio Nobel e il fatto che quest'anno il numero di donne che hanno ricevuto il premio sia aumentato.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/women-set-nobel-prize-record/article1315834/
Yonath, who is 70, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry for her groundbreaking work in understanding how cells build proteins. She is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel chemistry prize, and the first since 1964, when British woman Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin received the prize.
The professor, who is head researcher in the field of structural biology and biochemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, shares her prize with UK scientist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and American Thomas A. Steitz. The decision was announced today by the Nobel committee in Stockholm.
Yonath is widely considered the pioneer of ribosome crystallography. Her research, carried out over a 25-year period, has revealed the modes of action of over 20 different antibiotics that target bacterial ribosomes.
Through this work she has been able to identify how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, a problem of great concern worldwide as the growth of antibiotic resistant super bugs like MRSA, continues unabated.
"Women make up half the population," she told ISRAEL21c. "I think the population is losing half of the human brain power by not encouraging woman to go into the sciences. Woman can do great things if they are encouraged to do so."http://www.israel21c.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7259:israeli-scientist-ada-yonath-wins-the-nobel-prize&catid=60:people&Itemid=110
Israele: donne ebree ortodosse rompono tabù della sessualità
Lau is the coordinator of an accreditation course for these consultants at Nishmat, an Orthodox seminary for women. It is the only one of its kind in the Orthodox world, and most of its graduates live in Israel.
Lau and the 60 other certified yoatzot, as the consultants are known in Hebrew, have been become accustomed to women stopping them without notice, often with a whispered, urgent question about Jewish law. Whether on their doorstep, in the synagogue or at the supermarket, women have questions for which they ache for answers but are hesitant to ask a male rabbi, especially when it comes to family purity laws -- the laws relating to sex.
The emergence of women scholars serving as authorities in Jewish law marks something of a quiet revolution in an Orthodox world dominated by male authorities, where change has come slowly and incrementally. The emergence of the yoatzot -- 10 years have passed since Nishmat’s program was inaugurated -- also is a reflection of the advancement of women's religious education in the modern Orthodox world.
For the women who turn to them, the yoatzot appear to be fulfilling a deep need.
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/10/29/1008835/female-orthodox-scholars-helping-women-talk-about-sex
Israele: donna arrestata per aver indossato il talit al muro del pianto
Police and Western Wall officials expelled a female prayer group from the Kotel area and arrested one of the women after they attempted Wednesday morning to read from a Torah scroll.
"We debated amongst ourselves whether or not to read from the Torah at the Kotel itself or to take the Torah to the Robinson's Arch," said Nofrat Frenkel, who was arrested and later released by police.
Frenkel said that as the women unrolled the Torah scroll and began to prepare to read, officials from the Kotel Foundation arrived and demanded that they leave the premises.
Frenkel said that the women agreed to roll up the Torah scroll and take it to the Robinson's Arch. But on their way out Frenkel, who was wearing a talit and was carrying the Torah, was seized by police. "I was pushed into a nearby police station and transferred to the main police station at Yaffo Gate," she said. About 40 women who attended the prayer formed a procession and followed the police and Frenkel through the Old City to the Yaffo Gate where they congregated and sang songs until Frenkel was released.
Israele: proteste contro la segregazione tra uomini e donne nei bus richiesta dagli ultraortodossi
The High Court of Justice in Israel is weighing the question of who sits where on public buses.
The dispute centers on routes that run through traditional haredi neighborhoods, where men sit in the front and women in the back.
The court set a Dec. 27 deadline for the Transport Minister Yisrael Katz of the center-right Likud party to present a position on gendersegregated seating.
Last month, the US-based New Israel Fund launched a "Say no to the back of the bus," campaign, urging people to call, fax or email Katz and ask him to reject public buses with segregated seating. Last week a New Israel Fund spokesperson said close to 250 people had told the New Israel Fund that they had contacted Katz.
She added, "I'm sure not going to tell some Israeli what to do about a zoning dispute in Rehovot, but when Orthodox rabbis…attempt to legislate gender segregation, it's something we have to be concerned about."
http://www.nif.org/media-center/nif-in-the-news/protest-targets.html
Ninety percent of the country's Jewish adults, including 81% of the Orthodox, support the elimination or limitation of gender segregated "mehadrin" bus lines, according to a survey conducted by the Smith Research Institute on behalf of Hiddush-For Religious Freedom and Equality.
Furthermore, 71% of the public view the bus lines as degrading to women. The poll was conducted between the 16th and 18th of December among a sample group of 500 respondents. The survey also portrays an increase of some 10% in opposition to such bus lines. A preliminary survey on the matter that was conducted in July, showed that 80% of those polled called for eliminating or limiting the mehadrinbus lines. "If gender segregation isn't stopped on buses, our fear is that it will continue to move further into the public sphere," said Martin Viler, a spokesman for the Yerushalmim movement, which is led by city councilwoman Rachel Azaria. "Our goal today was to call attention to the ongoing segregation of the sexes on the mehadrin bus lines, but also to warn the public that if it continues unabated, we'll soon see it on the streets, and not just in haredi neighborhoods."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364519884&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull
A mock "chastity squad" divided the walking routes leading up the government offices in Jerusalem for men and women on Sunday morning in protest against the segregated bus lines in public transportation in the capital. The protestors, some 20 activists of the Yerushalmim movement handed out fliers outside the Supreme Court building which directed pedestrians to their designated pavement according to their sex.
Israele: il gruppo Women of The Wall sotto attacco
For more than two decades, the group has been organizing regular women’s prayer services at the Western Wall and pressing for expanded worship rights at Judaism's holiest pilgrimage site. Last week its chairwoman, Anat Hoffman, was summoned to a Jerusalem police station for questioning.
Hoffman's questioning comes nearly two months after another Women of the Wall member, Nofrat Frenkel, was arrested after she and other women began reading from a Torah scroll in the course of the group's regular prayer session at the wall, timed to coincide with the start of the new Hebrew month.
Frenkel and Hoffman were informed that they were in violation of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that, citing concerns about public safety, denied women the right to read from the Torah in the regular women's section of the wall. The ruling resulted in the designation of a nearby site, known as Robinson's Arch, as the place for women to pray as a group with a Torah scroll.
http://jta.org/news/article/2010/01/12/1010137/questioning-of-women-of-the-wall-leader-sparks-protestsIsraele: Hanan Gaffaly attivista per la pace araba, musulmana e senza velo
On one hand she identifies herself strongly as an Israeli, but at the same time she has Palestinian relatives with whom she empathizes. They don't understand why she can't do more to alleviate their plight, she tells the group of about 60 people.
she shed her religious head covering. Following her participation in Strive Israel, a government-sponsored course, the high-school graduate entered the workforce as a secretary.
"I have my own journey, and was religious for five years. I was in Mecca. But since my divorce I chose another journey in my life. There was a theme, and it didn't work. When I decided to get a divorce, I decided to work and study," she says. "One of the reasons that I took off the religious clothes was that I needed to work and it wasn't simple. Big changes happened quickly.
"My focus was to believe in myself that I could find work that I can develop in, that I can prove myself,"
"The important thing that I would like to add is how important it is for me as a Palestinian Arab Israeli woman to show the world, and especially to my community, that no matter what our life situation looks like, or what our difficulties are, as long as we believe in ourselves and our capabilities we can go far.
http://www.israel21c.org/people/for-one-israeli-arab-woman-peace-begins-withinIsraele: manifestazione araba contro gli omicidi d'onore
The anti-honor killing demonstration was attended by Israeli MKs (Members of Parliament), the mayor of Nazareth, (a city in northern Israel and protected by Israel), and other prominent figures. Many demonstrators were young, many were not; most wore western clothing, many wore hijab. They carried amazing signs and banners in Arabic: “Your Silence Equals Permission to Kill”; “A Civilized Society Does Not Kill Women”; “The Hands are the Killer’s, but Silence and Understanding are a Society’s Crime”; and signs which bore the name of Palestinian honor murder victims such as Reem Abu Ghanem (murdered in 2006), Halima Ahmed (murdered in 2009), and Abeer Abu Damous (murdered in 2010).
The demonstrators called for an “end to the murder of women who are thought to sully the honor of their families by violating traditional, patriarchal restrictions on relationships between men and women. A young woman who dates a young man without her parents’ consent falls into this category.”
“There is no honor in this crime” declared MK Masoud Ghanayem.
Israele: manifestazione laica contro la segregazione tra uomini e donne nei bus
Plus d'un millier d'Israéliens, hommes et femmes, ont manifesté samedi soir à Jérusalem-ouest contre la séparation des sexes sur certaine lignes d'autobus desservant des quartiers ultra-orthodoxes en Israël
La chef de l'opposition et dirigeante du parti centriste Kadima, Tzipi Livni, a adressé un message de soutien à la manifestation, proclamant "ceux qui relèguent des femmes à l'arrière des bus, les relèguent à l'arrière-ban de la société".
http://www.la-croix.com/afp.static/pages/100313191108.itamnzg1.htm
Israele: prima donna nominata Head Forest Ranger
“When I was young, I would look out my window in Ma’alot and see the beautiful trees,” Era said in an interview with Oded Shalom and Gidon Meron in last week’s Yediot Aharonot. “Who would have thought that the beautiful landscape would become my profession?”
Heitin, 29, was born in Latvia and immigrated to Israel at the age of 12. “For me, personally, the work in the forest gives me the feeling of getting away from the everyday race that everyone is in,” she told Yediot. “And yes, going around the forests, with the sounds and smells of the leaves, does it for me.”
Today, Israel is the only country in the world that has more trees than it did 100 years ago, thanks, in large part, JNF. In that sense, the trees tell a story of optimism and progress. But Era is here to ensure that the story of progress continues, not just with Israel’s forestry and infrastructure, but also with Israeli society in general — especially with the women.
Israele: la prima donna haredim eletta alla Knesset difende la parità
Tzvia Greenfield. Israel's first Haredi female to be elected to the Knesset, she is a fierce critic of her own community's attitudes to the peace process and modernity; describing the Haredi community as being "incapable of compromise." Yet she still lives in it, a resident of the Jerusalem suburb of Har Nof.
The irony is she believes Haredi women - who she says are so "subjugated' but do get at least some educational opportunities- can help bring about change. "The education at my strictly Orthodox Beit Yaakov school in Jerusalem was infinitely better than what my brother received," she says.
"I hope ultra-Orthodox women, who often work to support their husbands in their (Torah) learning will seize their greater opportunities," and presumably carry out a feminist revolution that will help to push the whole Haredi community into modernity.
Not that she can see that just yet: "They still have to take enough courage to make their input into society significant because they are still hushed down and still internalize that as a legitimate position. They are gathering power but they won't put it in front of society what they offer," she says.
"The big issue here is a very delicate one. That is children. Large families thirty years ago was six children; now there's 13 or 14 - from one wife. I believes the glorification of bringing as many children as possible is a definite way of ensuring women can?t bring their advantages into effect - subjugation.
It's inconceivable for a woman to say to her husband, 'I won't have more than three children'- a cause for divorce. Inconceivable and non-existent.'"
Do you think there should be Orthodox female rabbis?
I'm all for it. I think if women want to serve as rabbis in religious function they should be given the right to do so. The issue of depriving women a religious position is part of deprivation of women from positions of power. Women don?t have equal rights in Judaism because they never had them in any field of life- a general result of subjugation.
What do you think about the issue of segregated buses.
Firstly, I personally participated in an initiative in Jerusalem in which women, and some men - about 100 of us - went up onto buses which separate women and men and the women in our group insisted on sitting at the back of the bus. We did it for the whole morning, getting much press. Of course that doesn't lead to the real results but something was done to turn the attention of the public to that.
Second, and it was part of my doctorate published several years ago. The last chapter was an philosophical analysis of the separation of women and men in response to an article written by an expert on jurisprudence in South Africa saying there was no problem in the separation of men and women in buses and it can be totally accepted if the community wants it.
I thought it was a shameful position- typical to a post-modern position which doesn't take into account women in these communities. It?s a reckless position and a big chapter in my doctorate was dedicated to a philosophical analysis of that rationale. We have to fight against segregated buses but we'll lose ground because instead of protesting people cooperate.
Israele: Netzanet Fredeh, di origini etiopi, modello di integrazione razziale e di genere nell'esercito israeliano
Netzanet Fredeh is constantly required by her surroundings to bear the title "an Israeli of Ethiopian origin." But she bears this title with pride. As commander of the Immigration and Integration Branch of the Israel Defense Forces' Education Corps, she works to advance the lot of Ethiopian soldiers - an advancement that she herself epitomizes.
At the age of nine, her mother sent her to Israel with an uncle. There, she enrolled in the Segula girls' religious high school in Kiryat Motzkin. She considers this "one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was there that I was given the confidence to stand on my own."
Israele: quasi scomparsa la mutilazione genitale femminile tra i beduini del Neghev
A follow-up study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beer-Sheva has determined that the once prevalent custom of female genital mutilation (FGM) among Israel's Bedouin population in the Negev has virtually disappeared.
In 1995, Prof. Belmaker studied the Bedouin of Southern Israel, a heterogeneous group of tribes for which FGM was a common practice. At the time, a large number of women said that they planned to continue this custom, which involved a ritual incision but no tissue removal, and would perform it on their daughters. This led the researchers to believe at the time that the process was already undergoing modification.
Bedouins have become more westernized since Israel's independence in 1948. Israel's Bedouin demographic data shows that health care, school attendance, school years completed, and literacy have continued to improve over the last 15 years and may be associated with the long-term decrease in FGM since 1995.
http://www.fgmnetwork.org/gonews.php?subaction=showfull&id=1238516569&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&
Israele: estremista ebreo ultraortodosso attacca una donna "colpevole" di aver indossato il tefilin
Noa Raz was physically assaulted Tuesday morning by a fervently Orthodox man in Beersheba's Central Bus Station, where she was waiting for a bus to her job in Tel Aviv, according to a news release issued Wednesday by the Israel Religious Action Center.
According to the release, the man asked Raz twice if the imprints were from tefillin. When she told him that they were he began to kick and strangle her while screaming “women are an abomination.” Raz reportedly broke free from the man and boarded her bus.
The fact that this man thought it acceptable to attack a woman for performing a religious act in private is an example of the escalation of violence targeted against women and against religious pluralists in Israel."
Israele: successo per il Gay Pride di Tel Aviv
Thousands took part in Tel Aviv's gay pride parade Friday, including several politicians, among them opposition leader and Kadima chairperson Tzipi Livni.
"These days, there is a sense that Israel has become a sealed pressure cooker, that would be easy to be swept away by internal hate toward Arabs and gays," Livni said.
"I have heard people express political fears – as if sexual identity were a political identity, as if new immigrants, religious communities, or any other human society, did not have gays or lesbians aomng them," Livni said.
Livni added: "Because the tendencies of the body and heart are not political, the protection of the [gay] community is not within the realm of any one political group. It is a matter of human beings respecting each others."
The organizers also ascribed what they said were record-breaking numbers of participants - about 100,000 - including a reportedly unprecedented number of tourists, to last year's attack, which also left 11 injured
Weizman said that although most of the politicians at this year's parade were from the left, for the first time the road has been blazed toward the involvement of right-wing politicians. As examples, he cited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the gay youth center in the wake of the deadly attack, and Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar's appearence at an educational conference at the center a month ago
E ora un video con la delegazione israeliana al Gay Pride di New York del 2008. Con l'auspicio che le delegazioni israeiiane, esattamente come quelle di altri paesi, siano ovunque ben accolte. Happy Gay Pride!
Israele: imponente manifestazione razzista degli integralisti ultraortodossi
Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators rallied in Jerusalem and in Bnei Brak Thursday to protest the High Court of Justice's decision to jail haredi parents who refused to adhere by the court's ruling regarding their children's schooling.
By the afternoon, about 100,000 people accompanied the parents to the Jerusalem police station where they were ordered to report to, ahead of their imprisonment. The protestors were waiting at the site without rioting.
At the same time, more than 60,000 protestors flocked to Jerusalem's Yirmiyahu Street along with signs reading, "High Court against the people" and "God will rule for all eternity".
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3906746,00.html
Israele: Anata Hoffman, leader del gruppo Women of the Wall, arrestata perchè "colpevole" di trasportare la Thorà
NO COMMENT!
Jerusalem Police on Monday arrested the leader of the Women of the Wall group for carrying a Torah scroll while praying at the Western Wall, Army Radio reported.
Anat Hoffman, the women’s prayer group leader, was arrested and taken in for questioning after she was caught holding a Torah scroll in violation of a High Court ruling prohibiting women from reading the Torah at the Western Wall.
“This is another example of the ultra-Orthodox establishment imposing its stances on the public,” a spokeswoman for the group said.
http://www.forward.com/articles/129295/Israele: successo per il cantante dichiaratamente gay Ohlala Yehonathan
Allora, vediamo un pò: doppio mento, panza che straborda da tutti i lati, fisico flaccido, tipica bruttezza femnminea. Si, è proprio gay! Ah, l'ironia!
Gay Israeli music star Yehonathan Gatro is starting to make a name for himself on the North American music scene, care of his steamy music videos and danceable tracks, which he now writes in English. As part of his first North American tour this summer, he’s stopping in Ottawa on June 30 to perform at a fundraiser for Capital Pride 2010.
Coming out to his fans by releasing a gay love song in 2006, he has since produced two full-length albums in English — to growing acclaim.
Yehonathan has been part of the Israeli music scene for 10 years now, and he has an interesting performance history. Many of his current North American fans don’t know that he used to be a teen heartthrob in a boy band called Five. As a closeted gay man, misrepresenting who he was for the throngs of adoring young girls eventually got to him. Pretending to be straight for the sake of a mainstream music career lost its appeal when he had to hide his grief over the end of an important relationship. He ran away to LA for a couple years and started on the path of coming out.
“I feel my work is much better now — more free and honest,” he says. “I do what I want to and that, to me, [is] the most important thing. I look at gay artists that are still in the closet, and I feel bad for them…especially because I feel their art is hurt by it.
“[Before I came out], I was so busy acting straight onstage, and that was very limiting for me as a performer. Now, I feel I can act as whatever — macho, feminine, gay, straight, you name it. I'm much more in tune with my personality and body, and I can display my range without worrying, ‘Oops! Was that hand wave too queer?’”
Part of Yehonathan’s growing popularity in North America has been due to his steamy videos, which often feature shirtless men making out, flirting and showing each other desire.But being this out has been quite a process for Yehonathan — part of which was a period of time serving in the Israeli army, strangely enough. He says the experience was life-changing for him.
“It was a deep and character-building experience for me, especially as a gay man enlisting [in] a very elite and demanding military unit like the Parashooters [a counter-terrorism unit modeled on the British SAS]. I had anxieties before being recruited that I [would] not make friends and that I [wouldn’t] measure up to my straight buddies in the unit, but I was very surprised to discover that I had one or two very butch bones in my body. I realized during my military service what a real man I am, regardless [of] being a gay one.”
Israele: Ruth Halperin-Kaddari eletta membro della Commissione Cedaw dell'Onu
Since the late 1990s, the 44-year-old mother of four (who also has the greatest number of children of all committee members) has been working with the UN in the realm of women's rights. She started out reporting on the status of women's rights in Israel for the UN, on behalf of the government. In 2007, she tells ISRAEL21c, her 10-year dream came true, when she was elected a member of the elite, predominantly female UN committee that analyzes reports submitted by the 192 UN member countries.
Recently, at UN headquarters in New York, Halperin-Kaddari was elected for a second term. She didn't expect to win this time around, she explains, because most of the UN's Moslem and Arab states tend to automatically vote against Israeli candidates, regardless of their credentials, and in addition the vote took place shortly after the Turkish flotilla incident which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens and several injured Israeli soldiers, which she anticipated would have an adverse effect on her chances.
But despite the politics and negative press for Israel, Halperin-Kaddari received 103 votes and was elected, beating out contenders from countries such as Chile, Bahrain and the Republic of Cameroon. "Happily, the success in this campaign was a lot of hard work coming together with respect for professionalism," she declares.
Involved in women's rights issues in Israel as well as international women's rights, in the late 1990s, Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, the chancellor of Bar-Ilan who was 90 years old at the time, asked Halperin-Kaddari to help establish a center for women's rights at the university. The result is the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women's Status. While she feels that, "It came at a stage a bit too early in my academic career... it was an opportunity that couldn't be missed," according to the professor. And it was the center that helped to enhance her status at the UN and it is still the base from where she champions women's rights in Israel.
Particular challenges that women in Israel face, she says, are the problems associated with marriage laws, and the fact that they're governed by religion and not the state. This is an ominous situation for both the Muslim and Jewish populations in Israel, she warns, with each religion having its own interests in preserving control over laws pertaining to marriage.
http://www.israel21c.org/201007268159/people/balancing-the-scales-for-women-worldwideIsraele: i gruppi delle donne si mobilitano perchè anche le donne possano diventare Direttori di Corte Rabbinica
Da che parte starà Isreale? Si pronuncerà a favore del concetto basilare di parità tra uomini e donne o invece favorirà i cosidetti diritti religiosi che considerano le donne come cittadini di serie b? Staremo a vedere.
Eleven women’s groups got together last week to challenge gender discrimination that is written into Israeli law. As it stands, the Law for Appointing Judges bans women from applying for the position of Executive Director of the Rabbinical Court. Although such a law would have no doubt have been thrown out long ago from the American legal system, in Israel Version 2010, getting this law revoked is harder, it seems, than bringing the mountain to Moses, so to speak.
Last Wednesday, a group of women’s organizations, including the Israel Women’s Network, the Center for Women’s Justice, Naamat, WIZO, Kolech, ICAR, and several others, appealed to the Supreme Court in a suit against Justice Minister Ya’akov Ne’eman, to repeal the law on the grounds that it violates the basic human rights of women and women’s freedom of employment.
The appeal followed the Rabbinical Court’s job announcement published few days earlier seeking a replacement for the current executive director of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Eli Ben Dehan, who has been in the position for some 20 years.
Two women have already expressed interest in applying for the position: attorney Atara Kingsburg, current director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women, and attorney and religious pleader Lily Horowitz.
http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/129827/
Israele: la polizia libera giovane arabo gay minacciato di morte dalla famiglia
Four men from the Arab village of Tamra were arrested on Tuesday night on suspicion of kidnapping a 19-year-old gay relative because of his sexual orientation.
The kidnap victim left his home and moved to Tel Aviv in an attempt to flee threatening relatives, but police say the family members caught up with him after harassing and threatening him.
Police said the kidnappers armed themselves with pepper spray and waited for their relative outside his south Tel Aviv neighborhood.
After identifying him walking down the street with a friend, the suspects allegedly assaulted the men, sprayed them with pepper spray, and made off with their target. The kidnap victim's friend alerted police.
As police put up road blocks and attempted to intercept the suspects, the car carrying the youth drove northwards, and the kidnap victim was repeatedly beaten, police said. He was held for approximately 12 hours before the kidnappers planned to move him to a hideout. At that stage, police caught up with the suspects, arresting them and freeing the captive.