Here is a calendar of upcoming events, up and down the country. Some are organized by us, others by like-minded organizations and groups.
It’s that time of the year again folks.
Please submit nominations for Committee members and President one week beforehand, being 5pm Sunday 14 August.
After the formalities are over, we will be showing the movie “The Concert.”
“The Concert” is a 2009 French comedy-drama film by Radu Mihăileanu, starring Aleksei Guskov, Mélanie Laurent and Miou-Miou.
It is about the redemption of a former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra, known as “The Maestro,” Andrey Simonovich Filipov, who had had his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for defending Jewish musicians and is reduced to working as a mere janitor in the theatre where he once conducted, becoming an alcoholic in the process.
It won the Best Original Score and Best Sound awards at César Awards 2010. It was also nominated for two Magritte Awards in the category of Best Film in Coproduction and Best Editing for Ludo Troch in 2011, and Best Foreign Film at the 68th Golden Globe Awards.
Please bring a plate of finger food. We’d be grateful if you avoided pork or seafood products.
CANTERBURY UNIVERSITY: RAPHAEL WEIN AND NAFTALI GROSS
Tuesday October 25, 12 noon
THE NZ INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS INVITES YOU TO WHAT PROMISES TO BE AN ENGAGING AND FASCINATING ADDRESS
Ethical Dilemmas of Serving in the Israeli Defense Forces: Israel’s war against terrorism.
About the Speakers:
Raphael is a Business Administration and Political Science Student at Ariel University and is a reservist in the IDF. Naftali is a medical student at the Hebrew University and a volunteer paramedic for Magen David (the equivalent of St John’s Ambulance Service in NZ) and is also a reservist in the IDF. Both were combatants in the 2014 Gaza War.
Venue: Logie 104, University of Canterbury, Ilam, Christchurch.
A map showing the location of the venue may be obtained by clicking this link.
Admission is free
Feel free to pass this notice on to anyone else you feel may be interested.
CANCELLED: Folks, unfortunately recently implemented visa requirements have meant that Stan does not have the necessary visas required to enter Australia. This has meant that the NZ leg of his speaking tour has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
The Coming of the Kingdom of Heaven: How God used the ANZAC nations to help prepare the way for the King.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Stan has lived in Israel for half of his life even though he was born to a Gentile couple serving on the mission field in the small kingdom of Swaziland. Following three years volunteering on Israeli collective farms in the 1980s, he worked as a political reporter for the South African newspaper, The Daily Dispatch – where his pen had its training during apartheid’s waning years. He has traveled to various nations, speaking to Christians about developments in Israel. In 2011 he was accredited by the Israel Ministry of Tourism as a tour guide, and takes individuals, small groups, families, busloads and helicopter-loads of Christians around God’s Land. Stan has lived in Israel for half of his life even though he was born to a Gentile couple serving on the mission field in the small kingdom of Swaziland. Following three years volunteering on Israeli collective farms in the 1980s, he worked as a political reporter for the South African newspaper, The Daily Dispatch – where his pen had its training during apartheid’s waning years. He has traveled to various nations, speaking to Christians about developments in Israel. In 2011 he was accredited by the Israel Ministry of Tourism as a tour guide, and takes individuals, small groups, families, busloads and helicopter-loads of Christians around God’s Land.
An unsettling vision of military service pervading everyday Israeli life, Samuel Maoz’s (Lebanon) visceral and startlingly unpredictable film centres on a Tel Aviv couple coping with the death of their son, a soldier stationed in the middle of nowhere.
“Maazo’s marvelous, harrowing drama about death and life in Israel marches boldly through the no-man’s-land between realism and surrealism. It’s prize collection of paradoxes, combining an intimate, eviscerating depiction of parental grief ove ra serviceman’s death with an empathic, absurdist rendering of young Israeli Defence Force soldiers manning a remote and otherworldly roadblock…
Foxtrot carries the excitement and punch of a fearless writer-director tackling contemporary material with a bracing cocktail of potent traditional drama, wild black comedy, and serrated style. [It all] comes together as a complex plea for honesty, openness, frankness, and forgiveness. The movie is also, incidentally, a spectacularly effective antiwar film, focusing on the randomness and cruelty of life lived on military roads… Its final image resters like a blow to the chest. It’s a shot that should be seen around the world.” — Michael Sragow, Film Comment
“[Foxtrot] contains some of themost striking, memorable imagery of the year… It’s a film designed tomove you with its depiction of senseless tragedy but also to spark that part of your thinking process that only moviemaking can tap… This multitalented filmmaker has taken that darkness and turned it into something unforgettable for everyone who sees it.” — Brian Tallerico, RobertEbert.com
Awards: Grand Jury Price, Venice Film Festival 2017
Hebrew, Arabic and German, with English subtitles; 113 minutes.
An unsettling vision of military service pervading everyday Israeli life, Samuel Maoz’s (Lebanon) visceral and startlingly unpredictable film centres on a Tel Aviv couple coping with the death of their son, a soldier stationed in the middle of nowhere.
“Maazo’s marvelous, harrowing drama about death and life in Israel marches boldly through the no-man’s-land between realism and surrealism. It’s prize collection of paradoxes, combining an intimate, eviscerating depiction of parental grief ove ra serviceman’s death with an empathic, absurdist rendering of young Israeli Defence Force soldiers manning a remote and otherworldly roadblock…
Foxtrot carries the excitement and punch of a fearless writer-director tackling contemporary material with a bracing cocktail of potent traditional drama, wild black comedy, and serrated style. [It all] comes together as a complex plea for honesty, openness, frankness, and forgiveness. The movie is also, incidentally, a spectacularly effective antiwar film, focusing on the randomness and cruelty of life lived on military roads… Its final image resters like a blow to the chest. It’s a shot that should be seen around the world.” — Michael Sragow, Film Comment
“[Foxtrot] contains some of themost striking, memorable imagery of the year… It’s a film designed tomove you with its depiction of senseless tragedy but also to spark that part of your thinking process that only moviemaking can tap… This multitalented filmmaker has taken that darkness and turned it into something unforgettable for everyone who sees it.” — Brian Tallerico, RobertEbert.com
Awards: Grand Jury Price, Venice Film Festival 2017
Hebrew, Arabic and German, with English subtitles; 113 minutes.
A young girl is taken to an aid station in Alleppo
The Failure of the
UN and International Law in Syria:
A Classical Realist Perspective
Speaker: Jeremy Moses
Date: Monday 13 August 2018
Time: 5pm for 5:30pm
Venue: South Arts Lecture Theatre A4
CHRISTCHURCH:
“ASK ME ANYTHING” (AMA) SESSION
WITH
RABBI ARIEL TAL
RABBI OF THE WELLINGTON JEWISH COMMUNITY
19 SEPTEMBER 2019
Following the massacres, it’s clear that there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of minorities in our community. With that lack comes uncertainty, anxiety and even fear. Unfortunately we humans often respond with prejudice and intolerance. One of those minorities is the Jewish community and those who adhere to Judaism.
We are honoured to host Rabbi Ariel Tal to join us for an “Ask Me Anything” session where he will take questions from the floor.
Rabbi Ariel Tal is an experienced educator, Rabbi and marketing expert, serving in positions in both North America and Israel. Rabbi Tal has a education degree from Ohalo College in the Golan Heights, Israel, Rabbinical Semicha from Israel Chief Rabbinate, and is a Personal Coach through Da’at U’Tevuna School in Rechovot, Israel. He has taught at the Netivot HaTorah Day School in Toronto, Kibbutz Lavi Primary School and the educational organisation Livnot U’Lehibanot.
With such wide experiences, Ariel is well able to answer questions on Judaism, Jewish life in Israel, the Diaspora and New Zealand.
Ever wondered what Judaism stood for? What it says about the meaning of life? What Judaism says about how the world ends?
A Jewish perspective on the Middle East Conflict and Palestinian Arab relations? What Jews outside of Israel think of the Middle Eastern situation?
What impression New Zealanders have made on Ariel and his family? His thoughts on New Zealand culture and what its like to live in Wellington?
That’s just a few questions you could ask him.
A rare opportunity to publicly quiz a Jewish Rabbi in person.
Where: Sumner Community Centre, 14-16 Wakefield Avenue, Sumner, Christchurch.
When: 7.30pm, Thursday, September 19.
Admission: A plate of finger food. Please avoid pork and seafood products. A collection will be taken to help defray expenses.
A kite with an incendiary device is readied for its launch
Folks
The NZ Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) has invited us to their event:
Title: Who lives behind the Gaza blockade, and what can Aotearoa NZ (and we) do?
Speaker: Marilyn Garson
Date: Tuesday, Feb 25
Time: 5.30p-6.30p
Venue: South Arts Lecture Theatre A6, University of Canterbury Campus
Abstract: Marilyn Garson worked for 18 years with excluded communities affected by war. She has established locally owned social enterprises with Cambodians with disabilities, Afghan women and others.
In 2011, she was invited to move to the Gaza Strip. As the economic director of a large NGO programme, she led an ambitious Gazan team. In 2013, she became a consultant to the office of UNRWA’s then-Gaza director. They set about launching the GGateway enterprise to create technology-related jobs behind the Gaza blockade. Marilyn volunteered to stay in Gaza as part of the UN emergency response team that prepared to shelter 35,000 displaced Gazans – but 293,000 people needed shelter through 50 days of bombardment.
Marilyn recently published Still Lives – a memoir of Gaza, chronicling four years of work (2011 – 2015), and the lives being lived behind the Gaza blockade.
As a Jew, Marilyn has skin on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. She discusses the conflict, and NZ’s aid policy, in the unifying language of law and human rights.
She asks, who really lives behind the Gaza blockade, and what can we do about it?
Shalom
NZ Friends of Israel Assoc Inc
Box 37 363
Halswell
Christchurch
New Zealand 8245
+64 (27) 433 9745
contact@nzfoi.org
www.nzfoi.org