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Hollywood Hype
The Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – The Academy Awards ceremony—with all its traditional Hollywood hype and international attention—is set to take place in Los Angeles on March 2. The Oscars represent the best talent the big screen has to offer, and the annual extravaganza has become a symbol of fashion, glitz and glamor. It offers a global stage for the stars to parade their dazzling designer gowns and over-the-top outfits to their adulating admirers.
Apparently, the famous after-party is where protocol and etiquette are abandoned in a competition of who can be daring enough to show as much flesh without getting arrested for indecent exposure.
I think the Oscars—and Hollywood, in general—have become equally emblematic of talent and trash. We can respect and admire art and talent, and, of course, a good movie with a meaningful message can leave impressions for life on millions of minds and hearts. And at the same time, it is all so superficial, so empty. Are we celebrating art? Perhaps. But so much of the periphery seems to be dominated by an outer beauty and an inner emptiness.
Hollywood is hollow. I see bright lights and blank faces.
How many celebrities can we hold up to our children as role models? This one died of an overdose; that one is in jail for sexual harassment. How many die of old age? How many have good marriages or have celebrated a golden wedding anniversary? (I’ll settle for silver!) The divorces are certainly much more spectacular than the weddings.
None of it seems real. Never mind fake news, it’s a fake world in La-La Land.
Now, let me share a Talmudic story.
Rabbi Gamliel was a first-century sage, and the head of the Yeshivah and the Sanhedrin—the Jewish Supreme Court based in Yavneh after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It happened that the sages felt it necessary to depose Rabbi Gamliel from his position, as they considered him to have been demeaning to his colleague, Rabbi Yehoshua. He was replaced by Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, who appears prominently in the Haggadah on seder eve every Passover.
The Talmud recounts that on the day Rabbi Gamliel was replaced, hundreds more benches were needed in the study hall for all the new students who now flocked to study Torah.
Why? Because the rabbi was very strict in his admissions policy.
He insisted that to be accepted in the yeshivah, a student needed to be tocho k’baro. It means that his inside (his thoughts and feelings) must be like his outside (his conduct). Not only his outer behavior needed to be appropriate but also his inner character. If not, the student wouldn’t be accepted.
When Rabbi Gamliel was replaced by Rabbi Elazar, the admissions policy changed dramatically; anyone who wanted to study Torah could now join.
They dismissed the guard at the door, and permission was granted to the students to enter. On that day, many benches were added to the study hall to accommodate the numerous students. One opinion stated that four hundred benches were added to the study hall. And one said: Seven hundred benches were added to the study hall (Brachot 28a).
I suppose that we can debate which admissions policy is best. The most famous yeshivahs and universities today have stricter admission policies than most. Indeed, their graduates excel. On the other hand, there is a case to be made for an open-door policy that would be inviting for every student to learn and grow in Jewish wisdom and practice.
At any rate, I am sharing this story to give you a taste of the values and standards that our sages wanted their students to aspire to. To appear pious and devout on the outside, and be crude and callous on the inside is dishonest, hypocritical and unbecoming for a student of Torah.
Personally, I would advocate that the broadest admissions policy be welcoming to every Jew, young or old, to get a taste of Torah and allow it to enrich their lives. At the same time, we need to aspire higher and aim to develop students who will embody the lofty ideals of traditional Torah personalities in their chosen lifestyles. We need to be honest, consistent, wholesome and genuine. Creating a religious impression while being a degenerate hedonist is dishonest. Such a life is a lie; it’s not real.
We can find this message in Parshat Terumah this week. Moses is instructed to build the Mishkan—the very first Sanctuary for God—in the wilderness. It would house the sacred vessels that would later be in the Temple in Jerusalem. The holiest of all was the aron, the ark that contained the Tablets of Testimony with the Ten Commandments and was placed in the Holy of Holies.
The ark was to be made of acacia wood, and coated with gold on the inside and outside. How did Betzalel, the young genius who was the architect and designer of the Mishkan, construct the ark? Rashi tells us that he made three arks, one slightly larger than the next. The largest and smallest were made of gold, and the middle one was made of wood. He placed the wooden ark inside the larger golden ark and then the smaller golden ark inside the wooden ark. So, he now had a wooden ark coated with gold on the inside and the outside. Gold, wood, gold—it was brilliant in its simplicity.
The message? We need to be pure gold outside and inside. We should always try to be honest, wholesome and holistic. And we should produce students who are sincere, genuine and real—not plastic, barren or bare. Their outer personalities and their inner characters should be alike, a match, and consistent.
Hollywood produces lots of talent. Yeshivahs produce real people, inside and out.
The post Hollywood Hype first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Defends Plan to Accept $400 Million Jet From Qatar
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump on Monday defended his controversial decision to accept a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar, lauding the overture from Doha as “a great gesture.”
“I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much,” Trump said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was — I thought it was a great gesture.”
The US president argued that the Qatari government gifted him the jet because he has “helped them a lot over the years in terms of security and safety.”
Trump announced on Sunday night that the US Department of Defense would receive a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a “gift, free of charge” from Qatar. According to Trump, the jet will serve as a replacement to “the 40-year-old Air Force One.” The jet will be considered property of the US federal government until the end of Trump’s term in office, after which ownership of the aircraft will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation.
Trump’s decision to accept the gift from Qatar sparked immediate backlash, with critics accusing the president of violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign countries without the consent of Congress, and compromising national security.
The president’s plan to accept the lavish gift from Qatar has raised concern among foreign policy experts who worry that Doha could influence American policy in the Middle East. Qatar, a wealthy Gulf nation with substantial investments in US real estate and infrastructure, maintains a complex relationship with the Trump administration. Last month, Trump struck a deal to build a full 18-hole golf course in Qatar.
Moreover, Qatar maintains extensive financial links with Hamas, the terrorist group that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza after slaughtering 1,200 people in Israel and taking 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023. Qatar has transferred an estimated $1.8 billion to the Hamas terror organization, according to reports. Doha also contributed $30 million per month to Hamas from 2012 to 2023, according to a Qatari official interviewed by Der Spiegel.
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Students for Justice in Palestine Awarded ‘Best’ Campus Group by University of California, Davis Newspaper
University of California, Davis in Davis, California, on May 28, 2024. Photo: Penny Collins/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Davis’s (UC Davis) official campus newspaper has named the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter the “Best Student-Run Organization or Club” for the second consecutive year, despite the group’s history of calling for violence against Jews and Israelis.
The Aggie defended granting SJP one of its highest annual honors, describing it as having “led some of the most prominent political organizing efforts at UC Davis” and fostering students’ interest in “global justice and university accountability.” The paper did not mention SJP’s links to Islamist terrorist organizations or its efforts across the US to advocate for the destruction of both America and Israel.
It continued, “Their advocacy, however, goes far beyond protest. Throughout the year, SSJP hosted film screenings, teach-ins, and information panels aimed at educating students on the historical and ongoing occupation of Palestine. They also continued to call out the University of California system’s financial ties to companies profiting from violence against Palestinians — pressuring administrators to divest and pushing for transparency in how student tuition is spent.”
SJP thanked The Aggie for the award.
“We are honored to receive this acknowledgement and humbled to be held in the high esteem of our peers,” the group said in a statement. “This acknowledgement is not ours alone — it belongs to everyone who continues to show up, speak out, and do the vital work in their communities. It is their dedication that shapes who we are.”
The Aggie has not responded to The Algemeiner‘srequest for comment on this story.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, UC Davis is a hub of anti-Zionist extremism in which faculty and staff regularly call for the destruction of Israel and acts of violence cheered as “resistance.” Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, for example, the university kept on staff a professor who appeared to call for violence against Jewish journalists and their children.
“One group of ppl [sic] we have easy access to in the US is all these Zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation,” American Studies assistant professor Jemma Decristo wrote on the X social media platform. “They have houses [with] addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” The message was followed by images of a knife, an axe, and three blood-drop emojis.
In 2024, UC Davis’s student government (ASUSD) passed legislation adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and falsely accusing Israel of genocide.
“This bill prohibits the purchase of products from corporations identified as profiting from the genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people by the BDS National Committee,” said the measure, titled Senate Bill (SB) #52. “This bill seeks to address the human rights violations of the nation-state and government of Israel and establish a guideline of ethical spending.”
Puma, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Airbnb, Disney, and Sabra are all named on Students for Justice in Palestine’s “BDS List.”
Powers enumerated in the bill included veto power over all vendor contracts, which SJP specifically applied to “purchase orders for custom t-shirts,” a provision that may affect pro-Israel groups on campus. Such policies will be guided by a “BDS List” of targeted companies curated by SJP. The language of the legislation gives ASUCD the right to add more to it.
Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California, Davis is one of many SJP chapters that justified Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks In a chilling statement posted after the world became aware of the terrorist group’s atrocities on that day, which included hundreds of civilian murders and sexual assaults, the group said “the responsibility for the current escalation of violence is entirely on the Israeli occupation.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), SJP chapters — which have said in their communications that Israeli civilians deserve to be murdered for being “settlers” — lead the way in promoting a campus environment hostile to Jewish and pro-Israel voices. Their aim, the civil rights group explained in an open letter published in December 2023, is to “exclude and marginalize Jewish students,” whom they describe as “oppressors,” and encourage “confrontation” with them.
The ADL has urged colleges and universities to protect Jewish students from the group’s behavior, which, in many cases, has allegedly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Communities in France, Germany, UK Form New ‘JE3’ Alliance Amid Surge in Antisemitism
From left to right: President Phil Rosenberg of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Josef Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Yonathan Arfi of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). Photo: Screenshot
The leading representative bodies of Jewish communities in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have formed a new alliance to amplify Jewish perspectives in international debates, amid a troubling rise in antisemitism across all three countries.
On Monday, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), and the Central Council of Jews in Germany announced the formation of the new “JE3” alliance during a conference of the Anti-Defamation League’s J7 Task Force — the largest international initiative against antisemitism — held in Berlin.
This new alliance, inspired by the E3 diplomatic format that unites France, Germany, and the UK to coordinate on key geopolitical issues such as nuclear negotiations with Iran and peace in the Middle East, aims to provide a united Jewish communal voice on these and other pressing international matters.
The newly formed group also seeks to strengthen existing umbrella organizations, such as the World Jewish Congress, the European Jewish Congress, and the J7 initiative — a coalition of Jewish organizations in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the United States.
“It is our hope that the JE3 will become a powerful voice for our communities on issues that we care about together,” Josef Schuster of the Central Council, Phil Rosenberg of the Board of Deputies, and Yonathan Arfi of CRIF said in a joint statement.
“It is particularly significant that we brought together the new grouping in Berlin, 80 years after the end of the Holocaust,” the statement continued. “This is a show of intent by our three flourishing communities that we are committed to boosting Jewish life in our respective countries, cooperating in the fight against antisemitism, and enhancing bilateral and multilateral relations between our countries and Israel.”
Berlin: The largest representative organisations of European Jewish communities in France, Germany, and the UK have today launched a new ‘JE3‘ alliance. @Le_CRIF @ZentralratJuden pic.twitter.com/hXotcz6RDb
— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) May 12, 2025
This new JE3 initiative comes as France, Germany, and the UK, as well as other countries across Europe and around the world, have reported record spikes in antisemitic activity in recent years, largely fueled by a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment following Hamas’s launch of its war against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Last week, the J7 Task Force released its first Annual Report on Antisemitism, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, when Nazi Germany formally surrendered to Allied forces on May 8, marking the end of World War II and the Holocaust.
The report, which echoes findings from recent studies, revealed a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents between 2021 and 2023. These increases include 11 percent in Australia, 23 percent in Argentina, 75 percent in Germany, 82 percent in the UK, 83 percent in Canada, 185 percent in France, and 227 percent in the US. Those numbers continued to spike to record levels in the aftermath of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
Additionally, the data showed a concerning rise on a per-capita basis, with Germany reporting over 38 incidents per 1,000 Jews, and the UK seeing 13 per 1,000.
The seven communities identified several common trends, including a surge in violent incidents, recurring attacks on Jewish institutions, a rise in online hate speech, and growing fear among Jews, which has led many to conceal their Jewish identity.
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