WEB EXCLUSIVE: Tweeting For Shalit

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In the next 24 hours, pro-Israel Tweeters are expected to come out in thousands for the Tweet4Shalit campaign, showing their support for kidnapped Israeli Defense Force Cpl. Gilad Shalit, in honor of his upcoming 23rd birthday.

 Shalit, who was captured by Hamas in the summer of 2006, will spend his birthday with the terrorist group for the fourth year, and supporters across the world continue to advocate for his release. Standing in solidarity with Shalit, Twitter users will add the hashtag “#GiladShalit” to their 140-character messages on Aug. 26, in an effort organized by the Jewish Internet Defense Force, an activist group that cracks down on anti-Semitic online content.

“Thousands of supporters are signing onto Twitter to tweet the hashtag ‘#GiladShalit’ with the goal of making Gilad a top 10 Twitter ‘Trending Topic’ and thus, we hope to raise awareness of Gilad Shalit’s situation,” said David Appletree, the founder of the group, which calls itself the JIDF. “We want the world to act and we want Gilad Shalit to be free.”

The event will span Aug. 26 in its entirety, no matter what time zone, and he encourages users to keep tweeting the hashtag all day. Appletree is confident that the campaign will reach an audience far wider than the Jewish community, including many Christians, Hindus and others who continually support the JIDF’s efforts, he said.

“Over the past year, the JIDF has built up a reach of over 100,000 savvy Internet users, so we anticipate that our supporters will create a strong foundation for this campaign, as they do for others,” Appletree added.

As the event kicks off hour by hour around the world, experts are excited to see how events will unfold and are hopeful about the turnout.

“It’s a great initiative the whole the community can easily support and organization as far apart as New York, London, Melbourne and Jerusalem are working together,” said Andre Oboler, new media scholar and founder of the Zionism On The Web site. “This is a viral campaign waiting to happen. … It’s going to be huge!”

“That said,” he continued, “I’m off to Tweet that we spoke about it and see who replies.”   Read original version…

Lubavitch Laptops

Rabbi Avi Shlomo talks with a local Jew on the Greek island of Rhodes.

by Sharon Udasin

They may be in Thessaloniki or in the foothills of the Himalayas, but emissaries-to-be in the Rebbe’s Army — as befits the high tech-savvy Chabad movement — are online all the while.

This summer in Chabad’s long-running “Roving Rabbis” program, in which rabbis-in-training are dispatched to far-flung locales to help out local emissaries, they are also assigned to blog about their experiences of the movement’s flagship site, chabad.org.

The posts tell riveting stories of survival during the Holocaust and simple ones of Jews living life far off the beaten path.

This year, in the program’s 64th summer of operation, 400 rabbis and students visited 34 countries worldwide, as well as regions of America. Their goals? Cater to the specific needs of local Jewish communities, no matter how small or how secular.

“The impact these visits have had upon the lives of hundreds of thousands worldwide are legend,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, chairman of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. “The yeshiva students are full of youthful vigor and enthusiasm, a deeply ingrained sense of mission and lots of love for fellow man.”

Walking through the ancient streets of Ioannina, a city in northwest Greece, Rabbi Laima Barber, 24, suddenly felt the piercing stare of an elderly woman, who began pointing at him and yelling desperately, “Israel, Israel?”  Continue reading…

Kissing The Swine Flu Goodbye

In Israel, suggested protective measures against swine flu include a ban on shared Kiddush cups and kissing of mezuzahs.

by Sharon Udasin

Rabbis in Israel are taking a stab at the swine flu with a brand-new proposal — no kissing. A mezuzah, that is.

In a collision of ancient Jewish tradition and modern disease control, Israeli spiritual leaders are offering multiple solutions to curb the disease’s spread, whether or not a vaccine becomes available.

In a joint statement issued last week, Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi, Shlomo Amar, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the Shas Party, declared that Wednesday, Aug. 19 would be a nationwide fast day in an attempt to combat the swine flu. (Meanwhile, they allegedly blamed the endemic on public sinning; Rabbi Yosef had blamed Hurricane Katrina on the fact that American blacks didn’t study the Torah.)

Aside from the fast, both rabbis and doctors are taking measures to decrease disease spread through precautionary hygienic practices. Thus far, the Centers for Disease Control has documented more than 7,500 cases and 477 deaths in the U.S. About 2,000 cases have been reported in Israel, with at least five fatalities, according to Israel’s Ministry of Health. Continue reading…

From Birthright To The Fringe Festival

Playwright Jason Mitchell Kahn: Sexuality and spirituality.

by Sharon Udasin

At this year’s New York International Fringe Film Festival, step into the Hell’s Kitchen apartment of three gay roommates — Seth, Ashley and Josh, a young Jewish writer. “The Boys Upstairs,” by Jewish playwright Jason Mitchell Kahn, explores the love lives, thrills and disappointments of the close-knit trio. Kahn adds a personal touch to the show, rooting Josh’s story in his own personal experiences as a gay Jewish writer in New York.

Kahn gained attention for his 2006 play “The Red Box,” which portrays the horrific yet largely unknown stories of homosexuals in the Holocaust. Split apart from his partner, the Jewish protagonist must wear both a yellow star and a pink triangle, alienating him from both the Jewish and gay communities at the concentration camp. 

In between his work on the two plays, Kahn attended multiple trips to Auschwitz and took a Birthright Israel NEXT Mini Master’s course here in New York.

“My sexuality led me to my spirituality,” he said, explaining that only after writing “The Red Box” did he become fascinated with his Jewish identity. “The trips came after,” Kahn said. “I felt so much more a part of the Jewish’s community and attached.”

“The Boys Upstairs” has its final Fringe Festival performances on Thursday, Aug. 27, at 5 p.m., or Friday, Aug. 28, at 7 p.m., at the Soho Playhouse on 15 Vandam St. Tickets are $15. For more information, visit www.theboysupstairs.info. Read the original article here.

‘Sex And The City,’ Beijing Style

Often wearing her “gefilte fish” t-shirt and sipping He’brew beer, Anna Sophie Lowenberg turns her encounters with Beijing men into 10-minute webisodes.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In a bright pink button-up dress, white knee-highs and dangly earrings, a daringly confident Su Fei saunters into a swanky Beijing boutique hotel for an evening of speed-dating, where she’ll sit down with 21 eligible bachelors — like Hai, Wukejia and Richard.

But for Su Fei, a curly-haired Carrie Bradshaw look-alike whose real name is Anna Sophie Loewenberg, finding a boyfriend in Beijing isn’t easy.

“If you had kids with a Jewish girl, they’d be Jewish,” she tells Richard. “Would you be okay with that?” Because, well, whether he likes it or not, “they just are.”

Loewenberg, 35, is the producer, writer and star of the online television show “Sexy Beijing,” which chronicles the wanderings of a Jewish American journalist looking for love in China’s capital city. Roaming the streets of Beijing, the Los Angeles native interviews university students, hardhat workers and elderly couples about their love lives — asking very personal questions and usually getting answers. The 10-minute episodes range from a foray in traditional Chinese matchmaking, to a study of Valentine’s Day, to a visit with the local Chabad Lubavitch community. Meanwhile, Loewenberg goes by the more pronounceable Chinese name of “Su Fei,” despite its double meaning as a brand of Chinese maxi-pads. Her shtick — with nearly 3.6 million YouTube hits — has landed her in English-language Chinese papers, on the Today Show and even in a Q&A on The New Yorker’s Web site.

“I think of Su Fei as an alter ego, but I think there’s a kernel of truth in everything — there’s nothing that I would say about a relationship or I’d say about my experiences that doesn’t have some truth in it,” she told The Jewish Week in a phone interview. “As we’ve been doing the show over the years, I’ve given myself more and more space to create the character of Su Fei and make it less about my own life.” Continue reading…