Watch the Exchange Between Yoffie and Ben-Ami
By Gabrielle Birkner
In case you missed the exchange between J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami and Union for Reform Judaism president Eric Yoffie — moderated by Forward editor Jane Eisner — at the recently wrapped J Street conference, you can watch it in its entirety here:
Other videos of conference sessions can be viewed here.
October 26, 2009, 6:18pm
At J Street, Yoffie Garners Boos, Applause
By Nathan Guttman
It is not every day that Rabbi Eric Yoffie gets booed by a lefty crowd. But that is one of the risks when standing up as a keynote speaker at the J Street conference.
Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a leading dovish vote in American Jewry, was one of the earliest critics of J Street. He came out, in an article published in the Forward against J Street’s opposition to the Israeli military operation in Gaza last December.
On Monday, Yoffie stepped into the lion’s den, sharing the stage with J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami for a town hall-style discussion moderated by the Forward’s editor Jane Eisner.
The boos had nothing to do with Yoffie’s disagreement with J Street over the Gaza war. They came after he condemned South African jurist Richard Goldstone for his report accusing Israel of war crimes during the Gaza war. “Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself,” Yoffie said. The audience didn’t like the harsh tone, although J Street as a group also expressed reservations about the Gaza report.
October 26, 2009, 3:49pm
Dispatches From J Street: Where Are All the Israeli Officials?
By Nathan Guttman
A Tight Squeeze
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. When planning an event, always make sure the room is just big enough or, even better, a little too small for the number of people you are expecting. That way, the room will always be full and you can avoid any embarrassing bald spots in the crowd.
But that was not the case this morning as J Street began its inaugural national conference at a downtown Washington hotel. The rooms were way too crowded to suspect any deliberate underestimation.
Organizers were expecting a little more than thousand participants. They were even very proud of this number. But as the doors opened, the numbers grew. Three hundred walk-ins checked in during the first hours of the day and others showed up the night before. That brought the number of conference participants to 1,500. It was a huge success for J Street, and a big problem for those who actually tried to make it into the breakout sessions that were packed way beyond capacity.
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