Metal Jew

Yidcore

Oz Jew-punks Yidcore have a fun new single out - a cover of 'The Wing Beneath My Wings'.

Link: YIDCORE.com.

Against the boycott

I've largely been avoiding blogging against the boycott as it's not the primary purpose of this blog.  However,a new blog called  ENGAGE , run by David Birsch of Goldsmiths College, seems to be doing a pretty good job against the boycott.  Enagage is against the occupation (but not anti-Zionist) and against the boycott.  I'm a tad more radical in some respects but the blog contains some of the sanest writing I've seen on the topic. Below is the Q and A for the Engage:

Download QA.doc

Tel Aviv suicide bombing

I heard late last night  that there had been a suicde bombing ouutside Tel Aviv's The Stage nightclub, killing 4. Some brief thoughts:

1) Oh no not again.
2) I pray that the Israeli government won't let the extremists have a veto on the peace process (such as it is) once again.
3) It always freaks me out when the bombers strike at the iconic heartlands of secular Israelis - nightclubs in tel Aviv, coffee bars in Jerusalem - as it suggests they have a much better understanding of Israeli culture than sometimes appears. As well as (presumably) seeing them as decadent, they want to push the buttons of those who are the most liberal in order to drive  them into the arms of the Jewish right.
4) In April, we are staying in Tel Aviv near the seafront 
5) Nothing more profound to add.  I have plenty of thoughts but I promised myself that this blog would not be  an excuse to swim in the river of me. That way madness lies.  Stick to the facts...

A Bissel Rap

All is Vanity Blog  alerted me to a Joel Moss's A Bissel Rap  - a new Jewish rap posted at www.supermasterpiece.com.

A brief google of the song shows that it appears to have had awesomely bad reviews.  Full marks then to supermasterpiece.com for promoting it with the following banner:

Israeli music conquers the world!

Hot on the heals of HaDag Nahash's US tour, 2 more Israeli artists have announced US dates:  Rapper  Subliminal  and Metal Gods  Orphaned Land . The latter are playing the Prog Power USA festival.

Events coming up from YadArts

Sunday 10^th April 7pm – 11pm

David Baddiel, Catherine Yass, Jonathan Freedland, Natasha Walter, Henry Goodman, Oi Va Voi, Oliver Heath and more….

SPIEL @ the ICA

Institute of Contemporary Art, London
 

The launch of a new series of lounge shows with performance and banter, along the lines of The Word and Newsnight Review. At SPIEL, four guests will chew the fat over contemporary cultural events with Jewish content, surrounded by sneak live previews of new albums, plays, performance and books by visiting bands, actors and contemporary dancers.

www.ica.org.uk & www.jewishcommunitycentre.org.uk

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | G2: Leo Benedictus profiles the immigrant communities of London

Link: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | G2: Leo Benedictus profiles the immigrant communities of London.

But where are the Jews? Or the Israelis?  I wrote  the following letter of complaint but they didn't publish it (maybe it was too self-righteous):

Dear Sir

As a Jew and lifelong Guardian reader who has to continually defend the paper against accusations of anti-semitism by fellow Jews, I was dismayed to note the Jewish community's virtual invisibility in the special G2 section celebrating London's extraordinary cosmpopolitanism.
The decision to class Jews as simply a religion left one of London's oldest and most distinctive communities quite literally off the map (with the bizarre exception of South African Jews). Yet Judaism, like Islam, is in fact a complex mixture of ethnicity, religion and nationhood.
You also missed London's substantial Israeli population - parts of Golders Green today are a mini Tel Aviv. Perhaps you are ambivalent about Israel, but you can't deny the significance of the Israeli diaspora.
Do you understand how treating Jews as simply a subset of  the 'white' population denies our distinctiveness and exacerbates our already strained relations with other communities?
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a leftist Jew who celebrates diversity and cosmopolitanism these days? Your thoughtlessness has only made things harder.