Rambam Rallies Against Fulani
Fulani has been accused of saying "that Jews function as mass murderers of people of color.'' She has been given many opportunities to retract these and other statements but has refused saying “it’s impossible to have a serious dialogue and discourse in the city at this time on those issues." Three days after the rally, on Sunday, September 18th, 74 percent of the Independence Party's state committee members voted to remove her and five of her suppers from the the organization's 25-member executive committee. “I’m very excited to see that she’s gone”,
said Rambam senior Zoli Honig, “because, an ‘anti-Semite’ like
that has no Defending herself to Independence Party members during the debate, Fulani said "I am not an anti-Semite. Anti-Semites hate Jews. I've spent the last 25 years working closely with Jewish colleagues and friends." Our students have a long-standing history of activism for Jewish and American social justice. Their voices have been heard at rallies against Saudi support of terror and in support of US troops, against Nazi War criminals living in the United States, as well as Democratic Congressman’s Moran anti-Semitic remarks. |
Hundreds
of Rambam students rallied outside of the headquarters of the New
York State Independence party on Thursday, September 15, 2005 urging
party members to oust Lenora Fulani from its Executive
Committee over anti-semitic comments attributed to her.
place
in the executive ranks of a major political party in America. I’m
sure the rally influenced the vote. When you see 200 Yeshiva kids
on a Thursday afternoon rallying and chanting in front of your headquarters,
it gets your attention.” |
Rambam Mesivta to Protest Jewish Museum Nazi Exhibition One of the few surviving subjects of Mengele's gruesome experiments on twins will join and speak at the rally. Lawrence, New York. March 3, 2002. The Rambam Mesivta, a yeshiva high school for boys located in Lawrence, Long Island, announced today its plan to hold a protest rally this Thursday, March 7, 2002, against the proposed showing of an exhibition by the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. The rally will take place at 12:30 in front of the Museum located at 1109 5th Ave (corner of 92nd St.). The exhibition, entitled "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art", is scheduled to open on March 17th, and attempts to put the evil of Nazism in "meaningful contemporary terms". Part of the protest against the Jewish Museum will focus on the bust of Mengele, the infamous angel of death, which the museum has proudly advertised in their catalog of the exhibition.
The students of the Rambam Mesivta are noted for their activism on behalf of Jewish and social causes. Among other things, the students have orchestrated a program to expose and press for the deportation of former Nazis living in the United States, including Michael Gruber, a former member of the Waffen SS, and the Australian government's arrest of Konrad Kalejs, a former commander of the Latvian Arajs Kommando, for deportation to Latvia. The students actively campaigned and rallied against Jonas Stelmolkas, a member of the Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft (Protective Detachment) Battalion, and Aleksander Leleikas, a former member of the Waffen SS, who fled the U.S. to Lithuania. "The Holocaust should teach us a number of important lessons," says Rabbi Friedman. "One of them, which we try to emphasize to our students, is the need to take action when they see a wrong being perpetrated. That is unfortunately our view of what the Jewish Museum is proposing to do. It's wrong, and we will not sit by silently and allow it to happen. Our plan is to commence a very public program to force the Museum to withdraw this deeply offensive and insensitive exhibition. If necessary, we will demonstrate against it. And we also intend to reach out to the Museum's supporters, and call upon their sense of decency and ask that they join us. And, I'm sure, that when they've considered the merits of the two opposing sides - the Museum's director and curator on one side and the Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors on the other - which really are two opposing views of what is decent, tasteful behavior - they'll come over to the sides of the victim-those who suffered so much in the holocaust'." The 2 million Jews who met their deaths at Auschwitz were sent to the gas Mengele, who selected who would live and who would die. Mengele was also infamous for performing experiments on twins, oftentimes castrating them and injecting them with lethal substances. In conjunction with this, Rambam has been able to find one of the few remaining Mengele twins alive in the Metropolitan area. Our speaker, (name being withheld to prevent harassing phone calls), who is wheelchair bound, was the subject of Mengele's brutal experiments from December 1943 to January 27th, 1945. She will recount her experiences and share her feelings about the proposed exhibit. To help illustrate the insensitivity of the museum, Izzy Weinstein, 14, a freshman at Rambam Mesivta, used some images of the "Mirroring Evil" exhibit and applied them to the recent tragic bombing at the World Trade Center. (See attached photos) He said, "If one claims he can depict the horrors of the holocaust through contemporary art form, than one can use the same tools to interpret terrorism. Both are repugnant." "Our opposition to this proposed exhibit is not about freedom of speech or artistic freedom," says Rabbi Friedman. "It is about sensitivity and human dignity, which are important ethical and societal values. Freedom of speech is a wonderful value as long as it is tempered by the recognition that not everything which is permitted to be said should be said."
For more information, please contact: Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman Related Links | Take Action | Contacts | Email | Home |
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The show also includes "LEGO
Concentration Camp Set" featuring a LEGO concentration camp
construction kit by a Polish artist, "Giftgas Gifset"
featuring a set of "designer gift" poison gas canisters
by an American artist and a cutesy, toylike Hitler cat by a French
artist.
The exhibition has
generated a storm of protests from Eli Wiesel, Jewish leaders
and local politicians. The display of certain exhibits was actually
banned by European art shows. Dov Hikind, the New York State
assemblyman, Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, the Dean of the Rambam
Mesivta, and a group of Holocaust survivors recently met with
the Museum's director and the exhibition's curator to call for
the exhibition to be withdrawn. "There are no words which
can adequately describe the pain which this exhibition will cause
- indeed, has already caused - to Holocaust survivors and their
families," says Rabbi Friedman. "I am prepared to accept
the fact that Museum's organizers may not have appreciated the
depth of feelings that would be aroused when they were organizing
the exhibition. But now they know, and my question to them therefore
is - how can you even consider allowing it to continue?"
