Feb 162012

At a recent event in Los Angeles, the ILC hosted Dennis Prager, host of The Dennis Prager Show and Prager University.  First, a little bio of Dennis Prager:

In 1969, Prager served both the Israeli government and the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry as courier/lecturer for Soviet dissidents. Now, he is a radio talk show host, columnist, author, and public speaker.  He is a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, has taught Jewish and Russian History at Brooklyn College, and was a Fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.

Dennis came to ILC to talk about a popular subject these days – speaking for the state of Israel. Not surprisingly, he was an eloquent and entertaining speaker.  Among the many interesting arguments he made, was that anti-Israel sentiment is ingrained in the media, and that the battle for perception is being lost on college campuses all over the world. A reason for this, he noted, was that “the Left” is always rooting for the underdog and somehow Israel, outgunned and outnumbered 22 arab countries to 1 Jewish state has come to be perceived as the top dog, shifting Leftist allegiance (many Jews included) toward the Palestinian cause.  Shocking as it may seem to some, many of the biggest proponents (propagandists?) of the malicious BDS movement are actually Jewish professors on college campuses.

The entire presentation was interesting, but two things surprised me about Dennis:

  1. He speaks fluent Russian.  In fact, he has lectured on Russian history in Russian.
  2. During the Q&A Dennis cited the Rabbi Mazeh quote that is central to Cycles and Revolutions: “It’s the Trotskys who make the revolutions, and the Bronsteins who pay the price.”

As you might imagine, this instantly sparked feelings of kindred spirits in me.  As soon as the presentation was over, I made my way to the crowd of people around him and waited with all the patience I could muster for my turn among those asking him questions. When that turn came, I handed him my business card and asked him to read the quote on the front:Cycles and Revolutions business cardAfter chuckling and asking what it was all about, Dennis offered himself for an interview — an offer that I will surely be taking him up on in the very near future!

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JGSLA Presentation

Rus-holme Syndrome – An excerpt from Boris Kievsky’s presentation for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles — The Trotskys, the Bronsteins, and the Kievskys — on January 9, 2012 at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.

Dec 202011
Dreidl Time

Happy Hanukkah and a joyous holiday season to all of our supporters!

LimmudLA_APlace-226

On December 13th, I will be speaking on the history of the Russian Jewish Nationality at the “Taste of LimmudLA,” an event put on my LimmudLA and The Workmen’s Circle

Imagining Our Future

On December 4th, I will be speaking at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’s “Imagining Our Future” event as part of a block called “A Future Big Enough for All of Us.” I have been invited to present on the integration of Soviet Jews into the greater American Jewish community. Using information I’ve learned and videos I’ve generated for Cycles and Revolutions, I’ll discuss the specific challenges facing Russian-speaking Jews in the U.S., and how we can better integrate into larger communities without losing our culture and identity.

Zev_Yaroslavsky

Zev Yaroslavsky has never been shy. On a night in 1971, he and his associates rented a motorboat and crossed the LA Harbor, then used toilet plungers to attach their vessel to a Soviet freighter [Full Story]

Dershowitz and the Hryvnia

Alan Dershowitz demonstrates the anti-Semitism inherent to Ukrainian culture for hundreds of years and still represented today — just by pulling Ukrainian currency out of his wallet.
[Full Story]

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