Facebook Embed Plug Script

Helen Mirren & Aaron Sorkin: Don't boycott, but engage Israeli media-creators;' Essential details on Israel Film Fest / American Film Market

Aaron Sorkin and Dame Helen Mirren accept honors at Israel Film Festival
The 29th Israel Film Festival honored actress, Dame Helen Mirren, ("Woman of Gold") and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin ("Steve Jobs") at its premiere held Wednesday night at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills. 

David Caspi writes, in "Helen Mirren, Aaron Sorkin Honored at L.A.'s Israel Film Festival" in the Hollywood Reporter:
Aaron Sorkin said, "My friends who are screenwriters tell me that successfully pitching a movie that takes place in the Middle East is somewhere between very difficult and impossible. The reaction from the studios usually is 'that's a good story but who right now wants to see a movie set in that part of the world?' - I do. I want to see a lot of them". 
Helen Mirren, Festival Director Meir Fenigstein, and Diane Lane (Mirren's co-star in "Trumbo") presented her award

Ms. Mirren recounted that starred in the remake of the great Israeli film "The Debt" adding "I'm so impressed by the incredible Israeli film industry and very excited to see the films that are showing here. I love Israel; I think it's a great country. I think that through all the difficulties and all the pain that Israel has suffered in the past and will in the future, the great thing that Israel has is Israelis and they will guide it through."  

Earlier this year, the actress starred in The Weinstein Company’s "Woman in Gold" as Maria Altmann, the Austrian-American Jewish woman who successfully reclaimed artist Gustav Klimt’s art owned by her family and confiscated during the Nazi occupation of Austria in WWII. 
Randol Schoenberg (2nd from left) won "Woman of Gold" for Maria Altmann; Israeli Consul Gen. David Siegel (far-right)
E. Randol Schoenberg, the film's depicted attorney told JewTube, "Woman of Gold is being shown at the Israel Festival. I'll be at one showing. It already opened in April and it's the most successful independent film of the year, so far. They wanted to include it in the Festival and I'm very happy. We have Helen Mirren here today, so it's a real celebration of the movie, I think."

The Times of Israel's Raoul Wootliff says th
e Academy Award winner described the campaign to boycott Israel through cutting off cultural ties as “a really bad idea.”
“The people who are the most inspiring in Israel tend to be from the cultural community. The writers, the directors, the poets, the musicians, they are truly extraordinary people doing amazing work, peace-giving work, working towards peace all the time,” she said. “To cut them off is the craziest idea, I don’t agree with it at all.”

Ms. Mirren said she agreed with prominent British figures who signed an open letter, published in The Guardian last week, that endorsed cultural engagement with Israel rather than a cultural boycott, as a way to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

David Caspi continues:

Wednesday’s event capped off with the U.S. premiere
Yuval Delshad, Persian-Israeli Director of "Baba Joon"
of director Yuval Delshad’s Baba Joon, Israel’s official Oscar submission for the Best Foreign-Language Film category this year. Other notable films set to be screened during the festival include Academy Award nominated live-action short Aya and Israeli TV powerhouse Keshet Broadcasting’s docu-drama Sabena Hijacking – My Version
'Baba Joon' co-stars Viss Elliot Safavi and David Diaan

Several cast-members of the Israeli Ophir (Oscar) Award-winner, Baba Joon, joined director, Yuval Delshad on the red carpet for the Saban premiere on Wednesday.
In her article,"Israel Film Festival brings award winners 'Baba Joon,' 'Censored Voices' to L.A.," Susan King of the L.A. Times elaborates: 
More than 80% of the programming is either Ophir nominees — the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars — or winners such as "Censored Voices," which took the top documentary prize.

"It's a little bit controversial but powerful," said Fenigsten. "It's about the Six-Day War — things nobody knows happened."  
Other highlights of the festival include: 
Amir Wolf's "Fire Birds," a drama about a police detective who is assigned a case of a murdered Holocaust survivor.

Oded Raz's "Galis: The Journey to Astra," a sci-fi adventure based on a popular Israel miniseries.

Elad Keidan's "Afterthought," an existential comedy that earned the top prize at the Haifa Film Festival. "Fauda," a popular 2015 TV series that examines both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 
Many of the directors, including Yuval Delshad, Wolf and Keidan, as well as producers and actors, will also be on hand after the screenings to participate in Q&A's.
The Israel Film Festival will run its first week at the new Ahrya Fine Arts Cinema off La Cienega Blvd on Wilshire; through Thurs, 5 Nov (see parking info below). 

The Festival then moves to West L.A.'s Laemmle Royal Cinema from Thurs 5 Nov through Thurs 12 Nov. 

On the 12th, the Festival will move to the San Fernando Valley at the Laemmle Town Center in Encino. 

It also will simultaneously run in North Hollywood at Laemmle NoHo Cinema from Saturday 14 through Thurs 19 November. See Israel Film Festival website for times and tickets.

Also, The Israel Film Festival will sponsor a booth at the American Film Market in cooperation with the various Israel Film Funds, and will host exclusive industry events. This is a new initiative to position the Israel Film community as part of the world-wide market place, a move that will allow maximum exposure, networking and business & investment opportunities between buyers and sellers from the Israeli and International Film & Television industries. 


Exhibition Space at the AFM is located on: 5th Floor Atrium, Code 5L Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel 1700 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica 

Please note, both of the parking lots for the Beverly Hills Ahrya Fine Arts Cinema are located near Gregory Way, a walk of approximately 1/4 mile from the theater, so please allow yourself 10-15 minutes extra walking time after you park.
Lot A)  321 S. La Cienega Blvd. 
310-285-2467
First 2 hours FREE, then $1 per 1/2 hour. Gate closes at 11pm.

Lot B)  La Cienega Tennis Center

325 S. La Cienega Blvd.  (Between Gregory and Olympic Blvd) 310-652-7555
First 2 hours FREE, then $3 per hour,

There is only limited street parking around the theater. Limited-mobility attendees might consider getting dropped-off adjacent to the Cinema at Ruby's Restaurant, enabling the driver then drive down towards Gregory Way and walk back. 

Where does G-d bequeath the Land of Israel to the Jewish People- and who shall dwell there? Rabbi Moshe Parry at UCLA

In this shiur to UCLA club, Torah Jews for Israel, Rabbi Moshe Parry references Jewish scripture in which the Almighty bequeathed the Land of Israel unto the Jewish Nation.

(Playlist menu drops down from upper-left. Playlist can advance via buttons on lower left).
Rabbi Moshe Parry teaches UCLA's Torah Jews for Israel club at Hillel
What's more, Rabbi Parry addresses Maimonides' opinions on Jews' converting to avoid death - and which people are and are not permitted to live in Israel. He also reminds us that Jewish people are obligated to live in Eretz Yisrael and observe Torah mitzvahs. Recorded by JewTube at UCLA Hillel Oct 26, 2015. 

Do Jewish Lives Matter? Old City Jerusalem Rabbi Ben Packer addresses renewed Arab intifada and accomplice libels in the press

Rabbi Ben Packer of Jerusalem Heritage House in the Old City addresses L.A.
Rabbi Ben Packer of the Jerusalem Heritage House in the Old City addresses the issue of the renewed intifada from Abbas-incited Muslim youth resulting from libels about Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount/ Al-Aqsa Mosque.



Appearance at the Jewish Activity Center of L.A. (formerly Social Dashboard, led by Aryeh Rifkin). October 25, 2015 in Los Angeles.


How US administration's pro-Islamist and anti-Israeli policies endanger world - Michele Bachmann, Ben Shapiro, & Larry Elder at PolitiCon

Rep. Michele Bachmann slams Obama's pro-Islamism against Israel
Larry Marino, morning news anchor,
KRLA 870 LA

"Culture & Politics" panelists Larry Elder, Barak Lurie, and Ben Shapiro

Liberal Israeli-American, Yosi Sergant and Zionistic Hispanic, Anna Veneto
continue their argument after PolitCon concludes down into the parking lot

Scholars contend Columbus a Marrano Jew who discovered Americas on Zionist-funded, rescue-mission. 9 US cities replace Columbus Day with "Indigenous Peoples' Day"

Cristobal Colon bids son farewell to embark on 1492 journey
For too long, scholars have ignored Columbus' grand passion: the quest to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim occupation and return religiously-oppressed Jews to their homeland.

In Was Columbus secretly a Jew? by Charles Garcia, (CNN, May 24, 2012), Charles Garcia presents the case argued by a number of Spanish scholars that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing. 

Charles Garcia: During Columbus' lifetime, Jews became the target of religious persecution

Columbus was actually a Marrano, or a Jew who only feigned to be a Catholic.

Columbus' voyage was motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for Jews

In Columbus' day, Jews widely believed that Jerusalem had to be liberated and the Temple rebuilt for the Messiah to come.

The day he set forth was the very day that Jews were, by law, given the choice of converting, leaving Spain, or being killed.
Tens of thousands of Marranos were tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. They were pressured to offer names of friends and family members, who were ultimately paraded in front of crowds, tied to stakes and burned alive. Their land and personal possessions were then divied up by the church and crown.
In Simon Weisenthal's book, "Sails of Hope," he argues that Columbus' voyage was motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for the Jews in light of their expulsion from Spain. 
Likewise, Carol Delaney, a cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, concludes that Columbus was a deeply religious man whose purpose was to sail to Asia to obtain gold in order to finance a crusade to take back Jerusalem and rebuild the Jews' holy Temple. 
Columbus' voyage was not, as is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos and another prominent Jew. Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez advanced an interest free loan of 17,000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage, as did Don Isaac Abrabanel, rabbi and Jewish statesman.  Indeed, the first two letters Columbus sent back from his journey were not to Ferdinand and Isabella, but to Santangel and Sanchez, thanking them for their support and telling them what he had found.  
Read more:

(Video: Columbus and The Jews" Spielberg Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Might this recognition be one reason why "9 cities abolish Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day?" From RT (Russia Today) 10 Oct 2015
Nine cities in states across the US have pressed for resolutions to recognize October 12 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day rather than Columbus Day. Eight of those cities passed resolutions in the last two months and three adopted a resolution just this week.  
In New York this past weekend, the Redhawk Native American Arts Council brought together over 500 indigenous American artists, educators, singers and dancers from 75 different nations on Randall’s Island in New York for a Native American Festival and pow-wow. It is the first pow-wow to be held in Manhattan.

Celebrating with prayer, timbrel, lyre, and dance. Happy Minyan services for Sukkot, Hoshana Rabah, Simchat Torah

Happy Minyan L.A.'s cantor Yehuda Solomon leads Sukkot Hoshana Rabah service
 

Jonathan Honig leads davening  at the special, community service at B'nai David Judea in Pico-Robertson

"Return Again"
 
Removing the Torah from the Ark 

Torah parade & scrolling at Happy Minyan's Hoshana Rabah, Sukkot prayer service 



Sukkot torah completion Happy Minyan, Yehuda Solomon, Rabbi Larry Nesis. Returning the torah to the ark.
 

Celebrating completing Torah cycle on Simchat Torah. 

'Fall holidays extend your window to atone and improve your fate for the year'- Rabbi Parry teaches


How these concluding holidays offer opportunity for our atonement and improving our fates in this new Hebrew year. From the B'nai David Judea Sukkah with the Happy Minyan's Rabbi Moshe Parry explaining today's holidays:

Posted by JooTube on Sunday, October 4, 2015

Hot-hut holiday: From their desert tabernacles, Jews celebrate Sukkot with Las Vegas Kollel Family Fest

John Castro of Planet Hollywood performs magic tricks with the kids at the Kollel Sukkot party in Summerlin

What's Sukkot in Las Vegas like? Summerlin Orthodox community Rabbi Nachum Meth

What is the Las Vegas Kollel? Kids' Rabbi Dani Locker

Succos Freilech in Summerlin "Hashem Melech" Las Vegas Kollel

Rabbi Ariel Goldman welcomes L.A. Jews to the Kollel community