Dear Colleagues,
News reaches us that the clowns of moral dementia on Berkeley and Stanford campuses have taken the knifing-intifada as a reason to run protests against Israel . Their cronies may soon arrive on your campus with similar displays of deformity. This short piece proposes a way of restoring sanity to campus. It is called: “November 29, A Jewish Thanksgiving Day”.
The idea is summarized in the following three articles from the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.
“The Vote”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/israel_and_nov._29
“The Miracles of November”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/judea_pearl/article/the_miracles_of_november_20091125/
“The Forgotten Miracle”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/the_forgotten_miracle_nov_29_1947_20081217/
A 10 min. movie on “The Vote”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrIjzUK0FKg
True, time is short, only 5 weeks remain.
But all it takes is for one energetic Hillel Director (or an enlightened Director of a Center for Jewish Studies) to invite his buddies from a few foreign countries to attend a celebration of the historical UN vote, and let Jewish students and faculty on campus thank them (as representatives of their countries) for voting their conscience when the fate of the Jewish people was in the balance.
The program should not take more than a couple of tables with Baklawa, two guitars, a movie projector, and three readers/actors, one to read the resolution, one to re-enact the vote (from Australia-Yes to Yugoslavia – Abstained,) and one to read Amos Oz description of his street in Jerusalem. Then personal accounts by attendees on what the Vote means to them.
The rest would be recorded in the campus archives as the day that students (Jewish and Gentiles alike) got a genuine glimpse at the history of the Middle East.
I hope it works out for you, and don’t forget to invite Brazilian students for the incredible role that Oswaldo Aranha (the president of the assembly) played on that day.
Judea Pearl is Chancellor’s professor of computer science and statistics at UCLA and President of the Daniel Pearl Foundations.