Judaism « Tikkunista!

12. Quote of the Week

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Study is not the goal, doing is.

Do not mistake “talk” for “action”

Pity fills no stomach.

Compassion builds no house.

Understanding is not yet justice

Whoever multiplies words causes confusion.

The truth that can be spoken

is not the Ultimate Truth.

Ultimate Truth is wordless,

the silence within the silence.

More than the absence of speech,

More than the absence of words,

Ultimate Truth is the seamless being-in-place

that comes with attending to Reality.

Shimon ben Gamliel, Pirke Avot, Talmud, I:17 (roughly 30 CE)

10. Easter, Passover, and Holy Week

Apr-13-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Back when I taught World Religions, my students always had one key question: which major religion has the most holidays? But in a week when Passover and Easter were both celebrated (though usually by different people) we offer both some traditional enjoyable photos…after some untraditionally challenging thoughts. The heartwrenching David Sylvester piece is a must read.

* Were Jews ever really slaves in Egypt, or is Passover a myth? Haaretz

We are so quick to point out the obvious lies about Jews and Israel that come out in Egypt – the Sinai Governors claims that the Mossad released a shark into the Red Sea to kill Egyptians, or, as I once read in a newspaper whilst on holiday in Cairo, the tale of the magnetic belt buckles that Jews were selling cheap in Egypt that would sterilize men on contact – yet we so rarely examine our own misconceptions about the nature of our history with the Egyptian nation.

…It is hard to believe that 600,000 families (which would mean about two million people) crossed the entire Sinai without leaving one shard of pottery (the archeologist’s best friend) with Hebrew writing on it. It is remarkable that Egyptian records make no mention of the sudden migration of what would have been nearly a quarter of their population, nor has any evidence been found for any of the expected effects of such an exodus; such as economic downturn or labor shortages. Furthermore, there is no evidence in Israel that shows a sudden influx of people from another culture at that time. No rapid departure from traditional pottery has been seen, no record or story of a surge in population.

*Some Thoughts on Passover 5772 Rabbi Brant Shalom Rav

This Pesach I’m thinking about exceedingly radical message at the heart of the story we’ll retell around the seder table tonight. I’m thinking in particular about what the story tells us about power, about the ways the powerful wield their power against the less powerful, and about the inevitability of corrupt power’s eventual fall. And I’m thinking about what is possibly the most radical message of all: that there is a Power greater, yes even greater than human power.

…There’s no getting around the fact that our seder story is not a neat, tidy or particularly pleasant story. That’s because – as we all know too well – the powerful never give up their power without a fight. No one ever made this point better or more eloquently than Frederick Douglass when he said in 1857….

* No More Cheap and Easy Easters David Sylvester Tikkun Daily Blog

Perhaps you think I exaggerate when I say that we live suspended over this abyss of horror every day of our lives, an abyss that can crack open at any second during the most mundane moments of our lives?

Katleen Ping fell into the abyss last Monday at 10:30 a.m. Was she talking on the telephone, as she worked at the front desk, perhaps tossing a post-it note into the trash by her desk, wondering what the noise was outside her door? Did she experience a moment of peace when she faced her Good Friday? What will Easter mean to her four-year-old son? Or Grace Kim, a 23-year-old nursing student….These are two of the seven people who were murdered this Tuesday at Oikos University in Oakland, the sister campus of a school in Mountain View where I teach English as a second language. Many people at my school knew Katleen and Grace. Two of my former Mountain View students attend Oikos. (One escaped, the other mercifully absent on Monday.)

Suddenly, the tiniest, most anonymous school in the Bay Area was emblazoned across the front pages of newspapers around the world. As you probably know, a former student entered the classroom, ordered his classmates to line up and executed seven and wounded three with a semi-automatic handgun. On Tuesday, the next morning, my students and I passed around the front pages of the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. Students read them over, gazed away, shook their heads and looked up at me, the teacher….

* Easter and Holy Week The Big Picture

* Easter Eggs TotallyCoolPix

Did you know that Easter eggs came in all shapes and sizes? If so, you’re wrong. Easter eggs only come in one shape: ovoid. They do come in all sizes and colours though, and we have the pictures to prove it.

12. Quote of the Week

Apr-13-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: I was asked by a Tikkunista reader where the Talmudic quote at the bottom comes from, and the search led me to the pirke avot, a section of the Talmud (where I learned that Rabbi Tarfon said it, II:20). But it also led to many other lovely discoveries including this, which was too fine to abridge.

“It is not within our grasp to explain

the prosperity of the wicked

or the suffering of the righteous.

All we are called upon to do

is to act justly ourselves.

Reality is more complex than we would like.

If we insist upon it making sense,

we will find ourselves despairing.

Reality cannot be neatly packaged,

bound with the ribbon of morality.

Reality is greater than our ideas of good and evil

Reality is beyond our right and wrong.

Reality is all that is, and this is often at odds

with what we imagine it should be.

Where we can stand up for justice, let us act.

Where we are confounded by Truth,

let us keep silent.”

Rabbi Yannai Pirke Avot, Talmud

7. Kahn and Cohen

Mar-16-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Two superb Jewish musicians have new albums out, and you’re urged to take a listen. Daniel Kahn (and the Painted Bird) is the only musician I know of who has rabbis writing about his lyrics, but “Inner Emigration”, (a term originally used for Germans who opposed Hitler, but stayed in Germany), has the most interesting lyrics of any song I’ve heard this millennium. The Guardian interviews Leonard Cohen about his new album, “Old Ideas”, while in “Old Friends, Old Ideas”, I contrast Cohen’s new work to Paul Simon’s “Afterlife” and recent Bob Dylan.

* March of The Jobless Corps Daniel Kahn and The Painted Bird YouTube

From Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird’s album “Lost Causes”. Original Yiddish song by Mordechai Gebirtig, written ca. 1930 in Krakow.

* (Read Lyrics to) Daniel Kahn On “Inner Emigration” Rabbi Brant Rosen Shalom Rav

I’ve sung the praises of Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird before; my favorite “Punk Cabaret, Radical Yiddish, Gothic, American Folk, Klezmer Danse Macabre” band. Been listening a lot to their latest album, “Lost Causes” – particularly a brilliant ditty called “Inner Emigration.” This song is simultaneously a meditation on identity politics, a treatise on the absurd reality of national borders, but ultimately, I think, a blistering diatribe against the way we all assent to our own inner/outer oppression. It’s also catchy as hell.

* (Hear song halfway down page) Daniel Kahn and the Relevance of Yiddish Protest Songs – The Arty Semite – The Jewish Daily Forward

The sentiments of these Yiddish songs and the intimations of their contemporary relevance come to a crescendo in the album’s centerpiece, “Inner Emigration.” It is Kahn’s own song that tells a tale of withdrawal from surrounding society, tuning out its problems and suppressing their effect on one’s spirit. One verse is about a German Jewish woman who chose to stay in late 1930s Germany because of her cabaret career; another verse is about a Ukrainian Jew who let go of his aspirations in the face of danger: “What’s the bother finding a new nation? A border isn’t art, it’s just a frame / Just make a secret inner emigration. / The holy land and exile are the same.” Yet another verse is about an Israeli woman married to a Palestinian refugee: “She and he comprise a kind of nation, the kind we build inside when we’re alone. / But if they just make Inner Emigrations, / then they’ll only have a home when they’re at home.”

* Leonard Cohen: ‘All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience’ The Guardian

Leonard Cohen: ‘All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience’ Sombre prophet, mordant wisecracker, repentant cad: On Leonard Cohen’s gruelling 1972 world tour, captured in Tony Palmer’s documentary Bird on a Wire, an interviewer asked the singer to define success. Cohen, who at 37 knew a bit about failure and the kind of acclaim that doesn’t pay the bills, frowned at the question and replied: “Success is survival.” By that reckoning, Cohen has been far more of a success than he could have predicted….

These days, Cohen rations his one-on-one interviews with the utmost austerity, hence this press conference to promote his 12th album, Old Ideas, a characteristically intimate reflection on love, death, suffering and forgiveness. After the playback he answers questions. He was always funnier than he was given credit for; now he has honed his deadpan to such perfection that every questioner becomes the straight man in a double act. Claudia from Portugal wants him to explain the humour behind his image as a lady’s man. “Well, for me to be a lady’s man at this point requires a great deal of humour,” he replies.

* Old Ideas, and Old Friends Peter Marmorek

And what of Cohen? He starts with “Going Home” a song from the point of view of God, who is musing about Leonard Cohen. (You can hear it here). God says, “I love to speak with Leonard/ He’s a sportsman and a shepherd/ He’s a lazy bastard/ Living in a suit.” I sympathize with God; I’ve often felt that way about Leonard Cohen. I’ve enjoyed, and sometimes loved, much of his work since discovering his first poetry in the mid sixties. But I’ve been painfully aware of the extent to which almost all his work follows the same structural pattern: an assertion of the magnificence of love or passion of a transcendent nature, followed by an elegant apology for the impossibility of maintaining that stance. It has felt like watching a great actor whose career has been built upon variations of a single character. As opposed to say, Randy Newman, (a sixty-eight year old Jewish singer and songwriter) whose characters are anyone but himself, one always feels that Cohen is singing about being Leonard Cohen, or of wearing the mask of Leonard Cohen.

Perhaps that is what makes “Going Home” so powerful. The chorus, sung by an ethereal choir (Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters) anticipates a time when he can lay that style aside and go home (“Going home/ Without my burden/ Going home / Behind the curtain/ Going home/ Without the costume/ That I wore”). After God saying how much He loves to speak with Cohen, the second song, “Amen” offers us Cohen begging God to speak to him, to tell him he is wanted. It’s a powerful and dramatic confrontation of two songs. (Listen to “Amen” here.) In the song, Cohen itemizes the horrors of the world, begging to hear God’s voice “when I’m clean and I’m sober” to reassure him he is loved.

4. Tolerance in Canada

Mar-02-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: While Tikkunista is often, usually, always critical of the Stephen Harper Reform party that currently forms the Canadian government, we are hugely supportive and admiring of many wonderful things about Canada. Front and centre is our tolerance from others, which this week got proven to be second to none. Two follow up stories of note follow….

* Canada #1: Tolerance Of Minorities Is Highest In Canada Gallup

Canada was the most tolerant country regarding average community acceptance of the minority groups. Australia, New Zealand and the United States tended to be relatively tolerant as well. The Nordic countries were dispersed throughout the top half of the OECD. The less tolerant end was dominated by southern and eastern European countries and the OECD Asian members.

* ‘What if my daughter is afraid of her?’ The Gazette (Thanks, Ronit!)

Not too long ago, if I saw a woman walking down the street with her face covered by a niqab, I would feel it was my duty to glare. As a non-religious feminist, I had decided that a woman who covers her face is oppressed – that she is uneducated, and that her husband is making her cover up because he’s crazy and/or jealous.

OK, I’m exaggerating a little, but you get the point.

And yet until two months ago, I didn’t even really know a single Muslim. I went to high school in an Ottawa suburb, where I was baptized a Catholic so that I could qualify for schooling in the Catholic school system, which was considered better than the more open public system.

We had one year of religious education that gave us a glimpse of world religions. But I’m pretty sure my education about Islam came mainly from CNN, or Fox. I went to university in a small town in Ontario. I didn’t meet any Muslims there, either.

My real education about Islam came very recently, courtesy of a Montreal daycare.

* OUT OF CORDOBA Beit Zeitoun

(612 Markham St., Toronto: 7–9:30 Saturday, 3/3/12)

OUT OF CORDOBA is a documentary film about the legacy of the city of Cordoba in Moorish Spain and its meaning for our times. Directed by Jacob Bender the film explores the dramatic biographies of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) the Muslim, and Rabbi Moses Maimonides (The Rambam) the Jew. The two were the leading personalities of medieval Islamic Spain and its heritage of “convivencia” (religious coexistence).

Filmed in the USA, Spain, Morocco, France, Italy, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, and ten years in the making, the film also explores contemporary relations between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, the battle against religious extremism and xenophobia, and the revolts for democracy and human rights in the Middle East, and for peace and justice in Occupied Palestine.

A discussion with director Jacob Bender will follow the screening.

2. Martin Luther King’s Heritage

Jan-27-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Like all national heroes, a lot of Martin Luther King has been pushed aside, because it might raise questions about the current national policies. We start with some other things MLK said, look at one of the two winners of this year’s Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Day Writing Awards, and link to a powerful 10 minute film about non-violence in the Palestinian fight, and why we never hear about it.

* Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said YouTube (Thanks Kofi!)

* Fighting a Forbidden Battle: How I Stopped Covering Up for a Hidden Wrong. Jesse Lieberfield

“I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world—and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence, and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering….I was forever reminded how intelligent my family was, how important it was to remember where we had come from, and to be proud of all the suffering our people had overcome in order to finally achieve their dream in the perfect society of Israel,”

* Julia Bacha: Pay Attention To Nonviolence 10 minute video on TED.com (Thanks Gabe)

In 2003, the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive groves. Did you hear about it? Didn’t think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict — and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.

6. Outside the Lines

Jan-06-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: After taking Ron Paul seriously, let’s wade further into the swamp of unacceptability to ask a few more uncomfortable questions. Despite at least one unfortunate phrase, Pellissier’s article raises very interesting questions, and the discussion that follows is also fascinating. Like many, I was hugely educated by Peggy McIntosh’s classic article on “White Privilege”, so I’m fascinated at the deconstruction of it in the current CounterPunch. David Lindorff challenges our fear of hitchhiking, and Louis CK challenges the standard way of selling albums, and wins, bigtime.

* Why is the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews so high? Hank Pellissier, Ethical Technology

Ashkenazi Jews, aka Ashkenazim, are the descendants of Jews originally from medieval Germany, and later, from throughout Eastern Europe. Approximately 80% of the Jews in the world today are Ashkenazim…
Their median IQ is calculated at 117 in From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (2000), published by Cambridge University Press. This is 10 points higher than the generally-accepted IQ of their closest rivals—Northeast Asians—and almost 20% higher than the global average. … Here is a brief list of Ashkenazi accomplishments in the last 90 years.

Nobel Prizes: Since 1950, 29% of the awards have gone to Ashkenazim, even though they represent only 0.25% of humanity. Ashkenazi achievement in this arena is 117 times greater than their population.

Hungary in the 1930s: Ashkenazim were 6% of the population, but they comprised 55.7% of physicians, 49.2% of attorneys, 30.4% of engineers, and 59.4% of bank officers; plus, they owned 49.4% of the metallurgy industry, 41.6% of machine manufacturing, 72.8% of clothing manufacturing, and, as housing owners, they received 45.1% of Budapest rental income. Jews were similarly successful in nearby nations, like Poland and Germany.

USA (today): Ashkenazi Jews comprise 2.2% of the USA population, but they represent 30% of faculty at elite colleges, 21% of Ivy League students, 25% of the Turing Award winners, 23% of the wealthiest Americans, and 38% of the Oscar-winning film directors.

The important question is… Why is the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews so high? Is the reason genetic, environmental, cultural, educational? A unique combination of several?

Here are eight theories….

* Complicating “White Privilege” » Paul Gorski Counterpunch

I dove into the white privilege discourse as part of my training as an anti-racism educator in the mid-1990s, just a few years after my white educator peers had started shuffling through their knapsacks. The shuffling often occurred back then, as it does today, in white caucus groups, organized dialogues among white educators. During these dialogues we more or less took turns pouring the contents of our knapsacks onto the floor before encouraging each other to “own” whatever came out, taking responsibility for racism. Rarely did we get around to talking about what it meant to be an anti-racist or for racial justice. Rarely did we use those dialogues to grow ourselves into more powerful change agents. This, I think, persists as a problem in white caucusing and other forms of race dialogues today: too much conversation about how hard it is to be a white person taking responsibility for white privilege; way too much thinking that the dialogue, itself, is the anti-racism rather than what prepares us for the anti-racism.

…Here, then, is the rub: We, in the white privilege brigade, often, and somewhat generically, in my opinion, like to say that racism is about power. That word, power, might be the most often-spoken word in conversations about white privilege. Rarely, though, do we speak to the nature of power beyond the types of privilege so eloquently expounded upon by Peggy. This is where critical race theory, with its frameworks for deconstructing racism, has flown past the white privilege discourse. Critical race theorists centralize the fundamental questions too often left unasked in conversations about white privilege: What, exactly, does power mean in a capitalistic society? Why, in a capitalistic society, do people and institutions exert power and privilege? What are they after?

* America, Land of the Fearful, is No Place to Hitch-Hike Dave Lindorff NationofChange

Yesterday, I hitch-hiked to the gym. If I tell that to any of my friends, they look at me like I’m crazy. Yet if I had said the same thing 40 years ago, it would have been like saying, “I just drove over to the store” or “I just had lunch.” No one would have batted an eye.

….Are things crazier today? No! They are safer. That’s what is so weird about people’s unwillingness to give a hitcher a ride these days. All the crime statistics show that crime is about where it was in the ‘70s (total crime in 2009 was the same as in 1968, with homicides down to the lowest rate since 1964, while violent crime in general has been falling since 1990 and is now at the level it was in 1973). What’s way up is fear. We have a media that live and breathe crime reporting, and always as lurid as possible. The more gruesome the story, the better. And we have a government that is all about generating fear — fear of crime, fear of immigrants, fear of terrorists, fear of poor people, fear of the 99%, fear of hitch-hikers, you name it.

* The Results Of Louis Ck’s Experiment (Who’s Louis CK?)

The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?

It’s been 4 days. A lot of people are asking me how it’s going. I’ve been hesitant to share the actual figures, because there’s power in exclusive ownership of information. What I didn’t expect when I started this was that people would not only take part in this experiment, they would be invested in it and it would be important to them. It’s been amazing to see people in large numbers advocating this idea. So I think it’s only fair that you get to know the results. Also, it’s just really cool and fun and I’m dying to tell everybody. I told my Mom, I told three friends, and that wasn’t nearly enough. So here it is….

…It’s been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Really too much money. I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.

12. Quote of the Week: In Memoriam

Dec-16-2011 | Comments (0)

“I am an anti-Zionist. I’m one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians.” Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)

9. Desert Treats

Sep-30-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: No, not a misspelling: desert. We start with the Tuareg, a desert culture sliced up like dessert, and given to different countries. Then a song by Tinariwen, the world-renowned Taureg musicians (their new album is just out), a photo feature on sand dunes, and your chance to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, up close and personal.

* The Sahara’s Tuareg National Geographic Magazine

* Mataraden Anexan Tinariwen youtube

* The Most Beautiful Sand Dunes on Earth Environmental Graffiti

* Dead Sea Scrolls Online The Presurfer

Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time in a project launched by Israel’s national museum and web giant Google. Images of several Dead Sea Scrolls are now available allowing users to examine and explore these ancient manuscripts at a level of detail never before possible. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment.

3. Turning Away from Israel

Jun-17-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: US support for Israel is dropping, as Sherry Wolf explores in her blog. But Israeli support for Israel is dropping too: emigration numbers from Israel are greater than immigration numbers to it, as Counterpunch explores. And in a wonderfully written, and deeply moving story, Allison Benedikt (the film editor of The Village Voice) tells of her experience growing up Zionist, and becoming non-Zionist. We give the opening, and the closing, but you really need to read the whole story.

* Israel: Losing Hearts and Minds Sherry J. Wolf Sherrytalksback

Opinion polls in the United States regarding Israel-Palestine are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they reflect the dominant narrative in the West that at turns defends and denies Israel’s racist policies toward Palestinians. On the other, they show disgust with the periodic mass killings of the virtually imprisoned Palestinians, punctuated in people’s minds by last year’s massacre of 9 humanitarian aid activists—murdered at sea in cold blood—their only weapons of defense: deck chairs and cucumber knives.

Two years ago, according to Zogby, 71 percent of Americans held a favorable opinion of Israelis; by March 2010, 65 percent did. A plurality, 40 percent versus 34 percent, believe Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories are wrong. Even before the killings on the Mavi Marmara aid flotilla and the recent uprisings across the Middle East that have popularly humanized Arabs as democracy- and freedom-seeking people, 84 percent believed the Palestinians deserved equal rights, 67 percent supported a Palestinian state.

…Even the Zionist J Street poll shows 53 percent of American Jews are not at all bothered by open criticisms of Israel by other Jews.

* Israel’s Changing Demographics Lawrence Davidson counterpunch

If the historical goal of the state of Israel is to provide the world’s Jews a secure national home, a place of refugee in a world of real or potential anti-Semitism, it seems to have failed….Yerida, or emigration out of Israel, has long been running at higher numbers than aliyah, or immigration into the country. “According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2005, 650,000 Israelis have left the country for over one year and not returned.” The great majority of these were Jews. In addition, polls show that at least 60% and as high as 80% of remaining Israeli Jews “sympathize with those who leave the country.”

Among those who stay, there is the conviction that the safe thing is to have a second passport issued by the United States or a European country. As the Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy puts it, “if our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport, there are those among us who are now dreaming of a foreign passport.” At present the United States has issued over half a million passports to Israelis and a quarter million additional applications are pending. Germany runs second with 100,000 passports given to Israeli Jews and 7,000 new ones issued yearly.

There are two prevailing explanations for this phenomenon….

* Life After Zionist Summer Camp Allison Benedikt The Awl

It starts at a very young age. The summer after third grade, my parents sent me to Jewish sleepaway camp. I was deeply homesick at first and cried a lot in my bunk bed, but by the end of the month I didn’t want to leave. So I went back, summer after summer—boarding the plane with a few other Jewish kids from my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, and flying to Appleton, Wisconsin, with a stop-over at O’Hare, where a volunteer from Hadassah would meet us at the gate and try to keep us from the moo shu pork at Wok-N-Roll.

Those summers blur together, but each day begins and ends at the flagpole, where we raise and lower two flags: the American and the Israeli. We make blue and white lanyard bracelets, carve Israel out of ice cream, and sing “Hatikvah.” Because it’s all Jews, I’m considered cute. The second summer, a boy (Avi, short, red-hair) asks me out (“Will you go with me?” “Go where?”) and I get my first kiss. Other kids from home also go to Jewish camp, but mine is different. It is, I learn, part of a Zionist youth movement. I am in a movement! Weird names like Jabotinsky and Herzl float through the air. I don’t have to know particulars to realize that these guys are (a) important, and (b) connected to me, and I to them.

…John and I have two kids of our own and are raising them as Jews. Most of my Jewish friends are disgusted with Israel. It seems my trajectory is not at all unique. My best memories from childhood are from camp, and I will never, ever send my kids there.

Cross-posted on rabble.ca, Canada’s voice from the left

4. Israel and Its Wicked Children

Apr-22-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: On Passover, celebrated earlier this week, there are traditionally four questions, one of which is asked by the “wicked child”, “What is this that you do?” (He’s wicked as he excludes himself from the tradition.) These days, it seems that Israel has a lot more wicked children asking such questions. Two items of note: the second article is by Sam Bronfman, who for years has been a symbol of unquestioning support to Israel. All three articles are from an Israeli newspaper, and I can’t imagine any North American newspaper running any of them. Not yet. Maybe next year, in the New York Times.

* This Passover, We Need The Wicked Child More Than Ever Bradley Burston Haaretz

Every year at this time, we let the meanness in us out at the one we call the Rashah (the wicked child). We argue that this kid’s an apostate, that he’s deserted the community of Israel. But in fact, it’s we who act as though we don’t need this kid. Our sages command us to “blunt down his teeth.” To assault this kid, to clout the Rashah with one of the meanest, most exclusionary sentences in all of Judaism: If you’d been in Egypt, you wouldn’t have been saved.

What did the Rashah do to deserve this? Asked a question. “What is all this drudgery, this workout, this service, this production, what is it to you?” In fact, what the Rashah asks, is the one question that makes all the difference. “What does all this, any of this, have to do with me?”

And why is this year different from all other years?

Because this year in Egypt, the child who was different, the child who thought otherwise, the child who acted up and out, led the community, and, in so doing, was set free.

Because it is the Rashah who sees, when we do not, where the rest of us are going, and where the rest of us are going wrong.

Because it is the Rashah who sees that freedom unshared is freedom denied.

* Supporting Israel Means Questioning Its Policies Sam Bronfman Haaretz

Let me be clear: I do not criticize Israel because I wish to separate myself from it. I speak up because I am a committed Zionist who loves Israel. I want it to be a country which lives up to its greatest potential, and I see its current policies on settlements and Palestinian occupation as a grave error, destructive to the heart and soul of a great Jewish country. To believe that Israel is strong enough, and capable, to be held accountable, and that it is possible for it to become a better place. It is an affirmation of strength and a reminder that Israel must not oppress others as the Egyptians did, but aid them in their emancipation.

… When we cease to question, we cease to hope. Do not surrender your freedom so easily – do not give in to despair. Remind yourself this Pesach that you are free to question, and by doing so you reaffirm possibility.

* Our Brothers, Ourselves Haaretz

“It’s happening more in the liberal community,” Schalit continues, “although even in Orthodox and Conservative circles people are no longer happy to talk about Israel, unless everyone in the room shares exactly the same opinions. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re leftists, but simply that the subject is so sensitive that they prefer not to discuss it. Both on the left and on the right there’s a similar feeling. American Jews are indifferent or angry about Israel today, and many of them have begun to see Israel less as something identified with hope and pride, and more as a problem. That’s a tremendous cultural change, and that’s why it arouses so many emotions.”

“In the past, you could say to liberal friends who criticized Israel ‘What would you do if you were in their place?’” says Alterman. “After all, no country would agree to undertake security risks [like] those that are required from Israel. But in recent years it’s more and more difficult to say it. It’s much more complicated to justify the raid on the Turkish flotilla, or the way Israel handled Gaza, or the attacks on human rights organizations. It looks like we we’re reaching a point where liberal American Jews will be forced to choose between their values and their emotional attachment to Israel. And many, alas, are going to stick with their values. There’s a sense of failure of an idea with regards to Israel. This is something very painful for me to say.”

3. Israel: Going It Alone

Mar-25-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Two weeks ago, we looked at Israel’s increasing isolation. This week we look at the Israeli reaction. When your friends start to desert you there are two things you can do: you can modify your behaviour, or you can withdraw even further. Clearly, the Israeli government has chosen the second path. We have three responses, all from Israeli commentators.

* The New Self-Hating Jew Bradley Burston Haaretz

Welcome to the new Zionism. Welcome to the new self-hating Jew, the corps of professed lovers of Israel who want Zionism only to themselves. And who hate the Jews who want to see Israel change. Which is, at this point, most Jews. The message of the new self-hating Jew is this: You don’t like this the way it is? We don’t need you. We don’t need anybody. We don’t even need Obama, so what makes you think you’ve got any place here at all?

…”Most American Jews want to feel proud of the Jewish State, not frustrated or ashamed,” Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of the New York Jewish Week, wrote in a landmark opinion piece this month.

The essay, titled, “When Israel becomes a source of embarrassment,” is shocking perhaps less for its substance than for its author and its context, the highest-circulation of all North American Jewish newspapers. …Gary Rosenblatt may think he’s a strong supporter of Israel. And he is. But in the eyes of the new self-hating Jew, Gary Rosenblatt is expendable. He has an independent opinion, which may make him disloyal. His moderate voice is that of the majority of North American Jews, which makes him all the more suspect, all the more undesirable.

* Israel Can Say Farewell To Peace Ari Shavit Haaretz

Say farewell to peace with Syria. Those who believe, like the writer of these lines, in the necessity of the Golan-for-peace formula cannot close their eyes to what is happening. With the great Arab revolt threatening his regime, there is no chance that President Bashar Assad will choose the path of peace. With the Syrian masses rebelling against him, there is no chance that Assad will gamble on peace. The Assad of 2011 lacks the legitimacy to negotiate for peace. The Assad of 2011 lacks the minimal maneuvering room needed to make peace. Even if he wanted peace when he was young, it’s too late now. There’s no chance that the Syrian dictator will carry out a Sadat-like peace move in the next year or two.

Say farewell to peace with Palestine. Those who believe, like the writer of these lines, in the necessity of the two-state solution cannot close their eyes to what is happening. With the great Arab revolt sweeping up Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, there is no chance that he will pay the price needed to reach peace. With the Arab masses thronging the streets, Abbas cannot tell three million Palestinian refugees that he has forged a compromise on the right of return. With the Arab nations seething, Abbas cannot tell them he has compromised on Jerusalem.

* The Dwarfs Uri Avnery Gush Shalom

WITH THIS bunch of leaders, it is almost utopian to ask what we could and should do to attune ourselves to the new geopolitical reality.

Assuming that the Arab world, or a large part of it, is on the road to democracy and social progress, how will this affect our future?

Can we build bridges to such progressive, multi-party societies? Can we persuade them to accept us as a legitimate part of the region? Can we participate in the political and economic emergence of a “New Middle East”?

I believe we can. But the absolute, unalterable precondition is that we make peace with the Palestinian people. It is the unshakable – and self-fulfilling – conviction of the entire Israeli establishment that this is impossible. They are quite right – as long as they are in charge, it is indeed impossible. But with another leadership, will things be different?

If both sides – and this depends heavily on Israel, the incomparably stronger side – really want peace, peace is there for the asking.

….It will not happen as long as our political and intellectual life is dominated by Netanyahu, Lieberman, Barak, Eli Yishai, Tzipi Livni, Shimon Peres and their ilk. The stage must be cleared of this whole crop of dwarfs. Can this happen? Will it happen? “Realists” will shake their heads – as they did before the Germans tore down their wall, before Boris Yeltsin climbed on that tank and before the Americans elected an Afro-American president whose middle name is Hussein.

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