Emerson training conference Oxnard, CA

We brought about 30 students to one if donors beach houses in Oxnard - a nice beach town 90 mins north west of LA. We stayed in this magnificently modern house directly on the beach facing the Pacific.

After the students left we went to check out the Herzog winery and it's awesome kosher restaurant. Everything was super gourmet, even the burgers and fries.

ISRAEL in FOCUS 2005: Orlando, FL

I managed to convince my organization to run this year's national Israel in Focus advocacy conference in Orlando. We had around 150 students from all over the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. attend the 3 day weekend event.

Before the conference I flew down to Ft. Lauderdale and visited students at FAU (Florida Atlantic University) and met with Hillel professionals from the Ft. Lauderdale and Boca Raton area. We spent Thursday morning driving up to Orlando listening to the Idan Raichel Project.

Thursday night we headed to UCF (University of Central Florida) for an Israel fair and concert featuring Israeli rocker David Broza.

On Friday, I spent hours at the Orlando airport picking up the British students we specially flew in for this conference. I love traveling, but I despise airports. 

The conference itself featured a fun and over the top Shabbat service hosted by Rabbi Yonah from Long Beach, who's awesome, and lectures by Nonie Darwish, Aryeh Green, and Itamar Marcus. 

The hotel we stayed in wasn't the best. They had another convention going on simultaneously, putting a hamper onto our conference. Other issues arose with the kosher food. The caterer was a total idiot. Not a fun experience dealing with him.

Saturday night was by far the best part of the conference. We brought all the students to Universal Students City Walk, filled with clubs, bars, and just awesome nightlife. I chilled with the other SWU staff at the Hard Rock Cafe. 

Overall it was a great conference, glad we had it in sunny Orlando in November. 

Melbourne, Australia

After a long back and forth with my friends Down Under I decided to take the plunge and book myself flights to Australia (using www.studentuniverse.com) for 3 weeks. My friends at AUJS (Australasian Union of Jewish Students - www.aujs.com.au) invited me to stay with them in Melbourne, and speak at their Political Training Seminar (PTS 2005) in Canberra (more on that later).

One of AUJS's leaders, Alon, pushed me to come, and I'm glad I did. I stayed with a family friend of his, the Kraus family. I first flew to L.A. from JFK Airport, spent the day at the StandWithUs office and chilled with Rabbi Yonah from Long Beach. My second leg was a direct flight from LAX to Melbourne, a 16+ hour journey, but somewhat pleasant due to the abundance of open seats on my QANTAS flight.

Arriving early in the morning, one of the Kraus' picked me up and took me out for coffee in the Jewish neighborhood of East St. Kilda, on it's main road Balaclava. The area was quite different from semi-suburban neighborhoods here in the U.S. Fast modern-trolleys zoomed down the streets on tracks, going the opposite way of course.

The Kraus home was so modern and awesome... and just so different from everything back home, I loved it. I stayed with them for about 10 days, during my stay in Melbourne. The weather was consistently overcast and it seemed to always threaten to rain... aahh, an Aussie Winter.

I spent my first day checking out downtown Melbourne which I really liked. I walked onto the University of Melbourne campus, which was oh so nice. There were even Jewish students tabling during midday on the quad. I felt like I was back on the campus scene on the East coast.
I bumped into Zahava, a friend from NYC, and we spent the day checking out Melbs. Later that day we checked out the Melbourne International Film Festival and saw a movie about Russian women who became prostitutes in Israel. Can't remember what it's called.

I spent 2 Shabbats in Melbourne, both attending the Bnei Akiva style shul which very much reminded me of Israel. One Motzei Shabbat I was taken to Melbourne's famous Casino, the Crown. It was a really cool structure, with flame shooting pillars along the river on the outside, and a main highway running through the middle of the building. I played some poker for about 2 hours, and going all-in on my last hand I was able to double up my King-10, raking me in about $80 Australian. Woo hoo! Aren't I adventurous?

While I spent many hours working with AUJS students, meeting with AIJAC (Australia's version of AIPAC), I was able to spend back to back days doing road trips with a touring group. The first day I did a tour of the Grampians National Park, a few hours drive northwest from Melbourne. At the park I got to meet some kangaroos up close, a few small waterfalls, get in some hiking, and take in some spectacular views. The ride back to Melbourne was kinda interesting. I've learned that Aussies love John Mayer. Why? I dont know. They just do.

The next day trip was to Great Ocean Road. G.O.R. is a road that runs along the majority of Southern Australia, along the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. It was unbelievably beautiful and cold. On this trip I got to peek at some shy koala bears hiding up in the trees, hike through a mini-rain forest (which was at least 10 degrees warmer than outside it), and just take nature in.

Toward the end we were introduced to the 12 Apostles, a group of 12 pieces of land freestanding in the ocean, due to erosion. At the time of my visit, there were no longer 12 standing. There were random land-arches, which looked really cool standing in the ocean amidst the waves.

On one of my last few days in Melbourne, and after watching a little Australian telly, I attended a footie game. It's a cross between American football, rugby, and soccer. I picked up the rules really quick, and soon began to root for the home team. I even bought a footie scarf a few days earlier to keep me warm.





Next stop: The capital down under ... Canberra!

Pesach 2005 in Miami

Spent Pesach this year in Miami, like I have so many others in the past. This year we stayed in the Mimosa, next door to the famous Eden Roc hotel. I got to meet new people, chill with some of my yeshiva friends from Israel, and visit the University of Miami Hillel. 

The Mimosa is the premier Hungarian Jewish hotspot for the holidays. My grandparents would've had a ball.

DC Campuses (with Itamar Marcus)

I travelled to Dc with a co-worker from Hasbara Fellowships. We were co-sponsoring events in DC with Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch. There were two events that we hosted, both of which caused a bit of a stir.  

The first one was hosted at American University, a campus which when we walked across it, we saw "Palestinian Solidarity Week" signs, flags, and information plastered across the quad. We knew this event was going to get interesting.

Around the begining of the event, we were asking people to sign in. A group of Muslim students entered the event together, all refusing to sign the registration list. They sat as a group in the middle of the room not saying much. The event eventually started, myself and my corworker introducing ourselves, our respective organizations, and inevidably the speaker. After about 10 minutes into the presentation / lecture, the group of Muslim students started to yell and scream at the speaker, accusing him of being a settler and entirely disrupting the event. After about 5-8 minutes of this, campus police were summoned and after much back and forth, were removed from the event.  

From my observations, American University seems to be an unfriendly campus toward Israel, with a very strong pro-Palestinian presence. 

Our next event was crosstown at Georgetown University. Not the same kind of atmosphere as we had at AU, but rather an intimate classroom setting at the Jesuit campus. 

The event went off without a hitch, but during the Q&A we had an interesting discussion with a Palestinian Georgetown student who agreed that the hate speech presented to the youth throughout the PA TV programming was dispicable. She wasn't entirely switched over to Israel's cause, but I engaged her in a long conversation after the event, and she seemed more open to learn about Israel's side of the story and the problems with the Palestinian Authority's leadership.

Pittsburgh / Cleveland (with Aryeh Green)

During the still frosty part of the Spring semester, I scheduled a campus tour with Aryeh Green, adviser to MK Natan Sharansky, across campuses in the Northeast that typically dont receive Israel related speakers. Ironically, a year earlier I had done an internship for Sharansky's office in Jerusalem, where Aryeh was my main supervisor. Here's a picture to prove it:

I digress...

To kick off Aryeh's multi-campus tour, we headed to Pittsburgh, a town I had little interest in visiting, and I remain somewhat disinterested in returning. With the help of some great student activists, we ran a great event at Carnegie Mellon University, sparking the students to ask questions, many directed at Aryeh, and hopefully many at themselves.

We stayed in Pittsburgh for Shabbat, addressing the Hillels of Pittsburgh on Friday night which included students from both CMU and the Univ. of Pittsburgh. I spent Shabbat at the Chabad rabbi's house near campus, which just so happened to be an hour's walk from the only Orthodox shul in town. Oy. If I recall correctly, lunch didn't start until after 2pm, and it basically finished near the end of Shabbat.

That night I ran to the airport to rent a car. Bright an early the next morning we drove, through the light flurries, and then real snow, to Cleveland. Not fun, at all!


My previous experiences in Cleveland have been mixed: in the summer of 1997, Camp Mesorah took us to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. To us 13 & 14 year-olds, this museum was dull. So my friends and I ran through it and headed to the HMV music store downstairs. When her CD, the cashier told her that the CD, and all the others, was $10. I proceeded to purchase 3 of my own: Sublime, Metallica, and Matchbox 20 (oddly enough, I still love Metallica and MB20). We ran back into the museum letting our friends know of the great $10/CD deal downstairs (something unheard of at the time) . After the HMV became flooded with my fellow campers, we started to notice that some people were being charged $10 per CD, and some were being charged full price (often over $15 an album). After further investigation, I noticed the one "discount" cashier wasnt opening his register. Rather, he was pocketing the cash and only opening the register to give change. Long story short... he was arrested, we apologized, but were allowed to keep our CDs. That made listening to the Black Album's "The Unforgiven" even sweeter. This, however, was the only exciting happening in the Cleveland vicinity.

My other experience in Cleveland is a bit more recent: at last year's GA (General Assembly of the UJC). While I got to participate in a special track called: "Do the Write Thing", the conference wasnt as exciting as I'd had hoped. However, a late night event at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (this time 7 years older and wiser), was a lot more fun and exciting, despite the lack of cheap CDs. At the end of the conference, Cleveland still proved to be a bore.

Now, in my 3rd visit, Aryeh and I headed to the Cleveland Hillel, right off of the Case Western Reserve University (whatever that means!?) campus. We got to have brunch with some students and community members during Aryeh's talk. After the talk we were invited to attend the Cavs game, which normally would not have been exciting, except for the fact that we got to see LeBron James play. Aryeh actually went straight to the airport, whereas I, stayed at the game, only to leave early to head to the airport (long story there as well...).

All in all, neither Cleveland or Pittsburgh proved to be all that exciting (especially not this time around). Maybe they're worth visiting over the summer?

UMASS Amherst with REMEDY

A bunch of us in the pro-Israel advocacy game took a drive up to Amherst, MA in the dead of winter, not exactly the best time to visit. We ran an Israel advoacy conference with the students at UMASS.  

We had a special event in the evening with the Jewish rapper from Staten Island, REMEDY, who is best known for his song "Never Again" about the Holocaust. Definitely an interesting event.