Orange County Chapter
ZOA
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
Rabbi Dov Fischer
of Young Israel of Orange County
“THE OLIVE TREE INITIATIVE”
AND THE
ORANGE COUNTY JEWISH COMMUNITY
TUESDAY, March 22, 2011
7:00 P.M.
Meeting Room – Irvine Ranch Water District
15600 SAND CANYON AVENUE, IRVINE, CA
The Chapter gives special thanks to the Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism for its assistance in promoting this program and appreciation for the work it does on behalf of the Orange County Jewish Community.
Dear Friend.
As you may recall, I am slated to speak this Tuesday night, March 22, at 7:00 p.m. for the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in Irvine. The speech had been slated to take place in a local Irvine Jewish house of worship on a Thursday night after my weekly 6:30-7:30 p.m. Talmud Class, but the temple canceled it because they oppose the topic, so banned the speech. They are a private venue. It is their right to ban a speech on their premises that they find so odious and hostile to their values that it would have no place in their house of worship. As it happens, I know the rabbi there and sincerely call him a dear personal friend. I never allow politics and personal friendships to interfere (or I would have almost no Jewish friends in Orange County outside my deeply supportive congregation).
ZOA then found another Irvine Jewish house of worship, for another Thursday night, for the speech. They sent out announcements. And then that temple canceled it and banned the speech. They, too, are a private venue. It is their right, too, to ban a speech on their premises that they find so odious and hostile to their values that it would have no place in their house of worship. As it happens, I know the rabbi there, too, and also call him a personal friend. I never allow politics and personal friendships to interfere (or I would have almost no Jewish friends in Orange County outside my shul).
Take out the smelling salts and have a loved one nearby to catch you as you pass out, as I reveal the topic of this odious speech, so outside the pale that even George Soros would stop counting his money. Clearly this is some deeply controversial subject, a subject that makes the Westboro Baptist Church seem like a Girl Scout Cookie Sale. This controversial topic is controversial only in the topsy-turvy ultra-liberal universe of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, the Hillel of Orange County, and an Orange County Jewish organizational infrastructure that defines Judaism according to the liberal principles of the ACLU – with speech protected for Nazis, for the UCI 11 Heckle & Jecklers (and, gosh, aren’t they adorably cute when they put duct tape on their mouths?) but denied only to the ZOA.
(Deep breath, drum roll . . .)
The controversial topic is that Jewish communal charitable funds should not be spent towards paying tuition and airfare for UCI Jewish college students to join with UCI Moslem students on a two-week Mideast trip that splits half its time in “Palestine” (where they are inundated with one speech after another speech by “Palestine” leaders and spokespeople, including terrorist apologists, committed to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish entity) and half the time in Israel, where they hear mostly leftists and a few mainstream (and even two or three “right of center”) speakers. Also, compounding the odium, I propose that it’s not cool to use Jewish community charitable funds to pay for those Jewish students to spend much of Rosh Hashanah attending anti-Israel speeches and propaganda films in “Palestine” and Jordan.
To paraphrase Mark Levin: “There, Mr. Producer, I said it. Yes, I said it!” Jewish money can be spent in much better ways: for even more Birthright trips, for Judaism classes, for Shabbat programming, and of course for the UCI Jewish Hillel’s much-anticipated annual solution to Jew-hatred on the UCI campus and abysmal lack of knowledge about Mideast truths: Hillel’s annual Israel Hookah Lounge at UCI. And for so many other things of greater value to the Jewish student.
Now you can understand why the proposed topic was so hateful and odious that even the Jewish ACLUers, who would fight to the death to defend free speech for Nazis and Islamofascists, felt that this was a topic beyond the pale, unsuited for the temple.
