Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP) Monthly Sabbath Dinner – Denver

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Sabbath Dinner, Denver. March 23, 2018

Nancy and I went together  this  evening (March 23, 2018). I didn’t do a head count but there were probably 35-40 people in the room. It was a nice mix of people, many young. The key organizers of the event were mostly women. There was sensitivity to gender titles and the food was vegetarian. My old Palestinian friend and companero in many a struggle over the decades, Said Wahdan and his daughter Rima, now a doctor, showed up with a plate as well. Said runs the Jerusalem Restaurant near D.U. and has for forty years now.

The food was excellent, the wine was good, the dessert which, with Nancy’s help, I avoided, though very tempting. They showed a powerful film about a neighborhood in East Jerusalum, Sheik Jara, Palestinian, where the settlers, fanatic religious Zionist types were expelling Palestinians from their homes. One family was featured where the settlers took over half of the house and the Palestinian family they tried to eject struggled to remain in the other half. It was well done, disturbing (of course) but moving. It showed Palestinians and Israeli Jews coming together to try to save an Arab neighborhood from what amounts to ethnic cleansing by religious Zionist fanatics (that is the right word for them). The discussion after the film what thoughtful, about Zionism, white privilege, settler colonialism, and the BDS movement….the whole mispouka of issues as they say in Yiddish.

A fine evening with thoughtful caring Jewish progressive people, trying to find a human, Jewish way in a crazy fucked up world. Enjoyed the evening, would have liked a piece of the cake (but Nancy wouldn’t let me)…and would recommend attending one (or more) of these monthly sabbaths  (United Methodist Church on Evans and Lafayette) and helping JVP in Denver grow.