MediaWatch: Our World
from the Canadian Jewish News:
eJP note: I have a pretty good idea, this is the next step forward from the MFA presentation many of us viewed at June’s JAFI Board Meeting.
The Israeli consulate in Toronto is gearing up for 10-month branding campaign and its consul general, Amir Gissin, couldn’t be more pleased.
The lessons learned from Toronto will inform the worldwide launch of Brand Israel in the coming years.
from Wired, with a hat tip to Jewlicious; image source Jewlicious
Driven: Shai Agassi’s Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road
Shai Agassi looks up and down the massive rectangular table in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom and begins to worry. He knows he’s out of his league here. For the last day and a half, he’s been listening to an elite corps of Israeli and US politicians, businesspeople, and intellectuals debate the state of the world. Agassi is just one of 60 sequestered in a Washington, DC, hotel for a conference run by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Among the participants: Bill Clinton, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, and two past directors of the CIA.
from the Jerusalem Post:
eJP note: a particularly insightful report from Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig on last week’s CAJE Conference; for those of you following the proposed new outreach initiative by Israel to the Diaspora, see what Haviv has to say about Israel’s lack of engagement in Vermont. The quoted government official must not know how to use the Internet!
Dispatch from the trenches of Jewish continuity
It is hard to imagine a Jewish gathering more unassuming and humble, yet more strategically critical for Jewish communal life, than the Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education that took place last week in rainy Vermont…
Without pompous politicians, unobsessed with donor recognition, housed on a spartan university campus and serving the same vegetarian meals day after day, CAJE is a remarkable achievement. It is where one comes face-to-face with the dedication of those who serve in the trenches of Jewish continuity. The fact that 1,500 educators went to Vermont last week, at the cost of vacation time and a hard-earned $2,000 (a rough estimate including airfare) simply to learn how to become better educators, speaks to the commitment of this group.
