So, who is this sweet kid in a nice Jewish living room? Is it (a) the newest “Jewish Jordan†(b) the guy my sister went out with last week (c) the man hired to replace Rabbi Herschel Schachter or (d) an international arms trader?
If you guessed (d), you’re right. Efraim Diveroli is the CEO of AEY Inc., the arms company suspended last week for ripping off the Pentagon and endangering Afghani and American soldiers.
Nice to know that our yiddishe kopfs are being put to a good use.
Some stories have been floating around the media with varying levels of accuracy, but Jewschool has obtained the full (or fuller) story from reliable sources. The real story here isn’t about gay and lesbian rabbis in the Conservative movement (that was last year’s story); it’s about the lengths to which people and institutions will go out of fear, demonizing their own students and losing all perspective.
The story begins a year ago this week, when the Jewish Theological Seminary announced that it would begin admitting openly gay and lesbian students to its rabbinical and cantorial schools. (The American Jewish University, formerly the University of Judaism, is now also admitting gay and lesbian students.) One year later, to mark the anniversary, JTS held a program on Wednesday called Hazak Hazak V’nithazek: Celebrating Strength Through Inclusion, a full day of study, conversation, and celebration.
Several JTS students studying this year at Machon Schechter (the Conservative rabbinical school in Jerusalem where American Conservative rabbinical students are required to spend a year) wanted to participate in the celebration going on in New York in some way, and since they couldn’t attend physically, they organized a small parallel event in Israel. According to email invitations sent to the Conservative Yeshiva and other rabbinical students in Jerusalem, the students invited Yonatan Gher, former Director of Communications for the Masorti (Israeli Conservative) movement, incoming director of the Jerusalem Open House, and a member of Masorti congregations his whole life (and recently profiled in the New York Times because he and his partner are having a child via a surrogate mother in India), to speak over lunch about his personal experiences as a member of a GLBT family in the Masorti movement. More »
Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak (ret.), a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, has responded to his critics.
In 1976, then Col. McPeak published an essay in Foreign Affairs entitled “Israel: Borders and Security,” where he argued that it was “territorial return which constitutes Israel’s chief bargaining” power, and that Israel ought to cede much of the territory it won in the 1967 war in exchange for Arab world concessions.
The American Spectator’s Robert Goldberg wrote that the article was in keeping with McPeak’s general ” anti-Israel and anti-Jewish” outlook…
In an brief response just posted on Foreign Affairs’s website, McPeak flatly denies that either he or Obama is “anti-Israel.”
“I am a long-time admirer (and think myself a friend) of Israel. In the early 1970s, I played a key role in getting advanced weaponry released to the Israeli Air Force– capabilities it later put to active use. During that period, I made many official visits to Israel and established close relationships there. These contacts turned out to be useful during Operation Desert Storm, when, as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, I worked with my Israeli counterparts to help defend Israel from Iraqi Scud missile attacks…”
The obvious questions here is: How many Iraqi Scud missiles did Robert Goldberg deflect while he was safely penning away at the American Spectator? My guess, a lot fewer than Gen. McPeak did while teaching Israelis about defense systems and getting them high-tech US weaponry.
All this to say, suggesting granting sovereignty or returning historically Arab lands to Arabs seems a far cry from being anti-Israel. In fact, it strikes me that Goldberg stubborn position seems a lot worse for Israel. If you buy his argument you next have to denounce Rabin as anti-Israel. Go ahead Goldberg. I dare you.
The government of Israel is partnering with Jewish community organizations in Toronto to improve Israel’s image and to get Canadians thinking of the country outside “the narrow prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”Ido Aharoni, founder of the ministry’s Brand Israel concept said the ministry has conducted market research over the past few years that showed “Israel is viewed solely through the narrow prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict… Israel’s personality is 90 per cent dominated by conflict-related images and some religious connotations,” he said. “Those of us who know the brand intimately are disturbed by the divergence of brand and the perception.”
Federation spokesperson Howard English said his organization and other federated communities across the country are committed to supporting the branding initiative and mobilizing the Jewish community behind the effort. [source]
From my temporary station in the US, I heard the same spin coming from an AIPAC sponsored-speaker this weekend. Yes, there’s war, the speaker acknowledged, but why aren’t we praising Israel’s contribution to technology, alternative power sources, and films? (“Such a small fraction of a percentage of the world speaks our language, but yet our films win awards at all of the film festivals! Everyone should be seeing our films!”) Why is this the wrong approach? Why does this idea of rebranding, marketing Israel as “more than violence!” irk me? Because Israel’s military policies and human rights abuses should not be ignored just because some Israelis are also really good at developing computer chips. If anything, as the Jewish nation, Israel should be held to higher standards than secular nations, or nations of other religions.
And what about the other issue: not all Jews share the same views (ideologically, politically, religiously) of Israel. And yet Federations are supposed to (at least in theory), represent and support all Jews. If Canada’s Federations follow suit, as English suggests, won’t we just continue to further alienate those among us who already feel out of place in our communities? Any time a national organisation, or network of organisations, makes a statement saying “All of Us will do X, Y, and Z,” it makes me nervous – and makes me realise just how far removed those organisations are from the communities and people they’re supposed to be serving.
I’m not the most knowledgable about agunot, women seeking divorce by orthodox law and unable to get it, meaning in Israel there are all sorts of civil and legal consequences, but it’s a subject that fascinates me. Haaretz and NYTimes both covered the issue last month.
Attorney Susan Weiss, founder of Yad L’Isha and the Center for Women’s Justice, is speaking in NYC on April 10th, 7:30 pm on the Upper West Side. Fighting for Agunot (“Chained” Women) in Israel’s Religious Courts, RSVP to New Israel Fund for location details.
Please tell me yes! It may well have been true in the past that the Arab nations missed opportunities for peace with Israel, but now the ball is more and more in Israel’s court. How does the oft-parroted line about Israel being the beleaguered peace seeker amidst the Arab warmongers survive since the Arab League in 2002 offered Israel full recognition throughout its 22 member states in exchange for a peace settlement? The offer was renewed yesterday by a re-ratification of the Arab League’s assembly of foreign ministers.
But I shouldn’t be eager to condemn any side for perceived intransigence because Gerson Baskin and Hanna Siniora, co-directors of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information have been traveling the country touting their middleman position in not-so-secret negotiations between Israel and Hamas for the return of Gilad Shalit, for a Hamas-Israel one-year ceasefire, and between Israel and the PLO for a final settlement. Read it in JPost.
What lacks on both sides, the two say, is political chutzpah. And it’s almost certainly true, despite whether they’re really said shuttle pigeons.
Either way, the mantra that the Arabs resist peace at every turn should be shucked by the wayside. It’s just as incumbent on Israel to not blow these opportunities — and on Americans to do our part too.
A few blocks from where I live in Park Slope, a young Chabad Rabbi was surprised to have his kippah swiped:
A New York teenager is being charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime after allegedly stealing a Wellesley rabbi’s yarmulke in a Brooklyn subway station last week. Rabbi Uria Ohana, 25, a rabbinical assistant at the Wellesley-Weston Chabad Center, had just entered a Park Slope subway station at 4th Avenue and 9th street at 6:20 p.m. on March 18 when he felt someone grab his yarmulke.
Turning around, he said, he saw an Arab teenager running down the stairs, and decided to chase him to get his yarmulke back. Running through the station, they passed a group of the boy’s friends who began chasing Ohana and screaming, “Allahu Akhbar!â€
Ohana chased the boy, identified as Ali Hussein, 18, of Queens, outside, where he ran into the street and was hit by a car. Hussein’s friends caught up with Ohana and began shouting, “you see what you do?†punching him in the head, and screaming “Allahu Akhbar. There were numerous witnesses outside the crowded subway station, he said, and many of them pulled out cell phones to call 911. Before police arrived, a black SUV pulled up, and two of Ohana’s attackers jumped in the car and drove away, leaving Hussein at the scene…
I am not blogging this New York Times piece so that you will read the article, although the shortage of Tam Tam crackers is certainly a crisis that will destroy us all. I’m blogging it because the comments are totally hilarious and worthwhile! My personal highlight was posted by one Dan Stackhouse:
Look, if you’re one of the folk who have softened their ideology a bit, putting an orange on the Bima platter and all that, then here’s your solution.
Eat triscuits instead. The new flavors are really quite good, I particularly like the rosemary & oil and roasted garlic flavors.
Yes they’re not kosher, but since YHWH is all-knowing and all-understanding, it will know that tam tams are off the shelves and understand that it’s not really a slap in its face for you to eat triscuits.
You know how we keep hearing that Iran’s drive for nuclear power must mean it wants to build nuclear bombs? Apparently, the U.S. is working with Iranian neighbor Bahrain to support a civilian nuclear program. Double speak or US-support proliferation race? (AbuAardvark)
Will Bush attack Iran before November? Chris Floyd reads the tea leaves and says yes. Arthur Silber, who has been calling for mobilization against war with Iran for over a year, asks whether our silence is Enabling Evil? (Remember: If the bombs start falling on Iran, you can’t say that the American Jewish community hadn’t been working for that goal for years).
Saudis to retrain 40,000 clerics to encourage moderation and tolerance. Yeshiva University’s Richard Joel might want to try a similar program. (BBC)
Finally, from earlier this month: How Bush’s delusional incompetence brought Hamas to power in Gaza (Vanity Fair)
Somebody squealed. The “J Street” project, America’s first progressive Israel PAC, was supposed to be launched next month, but the Jewish Week breaks the story that indeed, forces of the American Jewish community are organizing to kick the right-wing stranglehold on Congress in the knees.
Having been to DC in legislators’ offices for various causes and in particular Israel, it’s disgusting how the Hill functions. Most legislators don’t make decisions on Israel — they defer to the Jewish Congresspeople. Who in turn defer to Jewish money. In exchange, a Jewish legislator votes according to those other reps on their issues. As a result, issues with single-constituent lobbies (i.e. almost nobody lobbies on Israel except the Jews) get their way, which means a donor in New York can easily influence a legislator from Arizona on an issue with little or no Arizonan constituency. Lastly, Bills are rarely written by legislators but by the lobbies, who pitch them to friendly lawmakers, and then whip other legislators into line. Lobbies invent faux grassroots groups and think tanks to support their interests (case in point: CMIP, a publisher of repudiated research on Palestinian textbook hate speech).
And it’s sad that real votes (local constituents calling, phoning and visiting) are only an expression of money, as in how many votes can you organize for your issue with the money you have? For comparison, AIPAC is on the Hill four times a year; ZOA brought 300 people to their last advocacy conference; the JCPA (although far from the worst) represents 125 organizations of the American Jewish community’s old guard yearly. Despite all that, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom was founded in 2002 to put Jewish votes behind pro-peace legislation and has brought to Washington a new knowledge (and a few slim victories) that the Jewish community is diverse — and that the old guard poorly speaks for the average Joseph. BTVS just announced it’s annual leadership conference and advocacy visit to the Hill, June 21-24, which you should join.
But sadly, American democracy is more coin-operated that hand-crank. More »
Apparently, serious Jews are allowed to work at non-explicitly Jewish farms. My friend Shira has started Wild Goose Garden recently and just got featured in the big Philadelphia newspaper.
For an economics major, Shira Kamm is handy with a shovel or a hoe. And she’s cozy behind the wheel of a truck or a tractor.
But she does tire of questions about how she manages that 12-foot truck, assumptions that she must be gay, and unwanted advice from guys.
Such is the lot of the female farmer.
Kamm, 30, just signed on to lease land from a retired couple in Glen Mills to start her own farm: Wild Goose Garden, on four acres near Cheyney University.
And that puts her among a new breed of city slickers – urbanite devotees of the Do-It-Yourself culture, committed to sustainability and ready to put their jeans to good use.
Pixish, this site that does image contests and peer review stuff, is posting a contest for the best representation of a friendly cartoon rabbi. Predictably, the threesubmissions up (at the time of this posting; all by the same guy) are of typical white-haired, bearded males, reinforcing all the stereotypes of Jewish authority as solely in the hands of wizened old men.
Isn’t it time for some new images of rabbis? Why do the creators of cultural output still so often presume that they’re male, or white, or old, or straight or stodgy?
I encourage all of you cartoon-oriented people to have at this contest–and to post your submissions here, too, in the comments. Let’s see what kind of shaking up can be done, hmm?
Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Jewish poet, feminist, has written another book that should sit on all our bookshelves. For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book is Ostriker’s most recent book of essays addressing the and re-interpreting six of our richest biblical texts: Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Jonah and Job. Many of these are wells from which modern midrashists and feminists have drawn much water, but Ostriker is able to revisit many drawing new inspiration and showing how many of our traditional readings of these texts leave out a great deal that lies as subtext, and from which we can draw new strength and meaning.
Some of the readings address battles which have largely been fought, and which younger feminists, even younger Jewish feminists may feel are over. Yet, the truth is we keep revisiting them: in the secular world, when new movements form to try to make contraception illegal once again; in the Jewish world,women are still outnumbered as institutional leaders, presidents, and rabbis, in both worlds, getting paid less and receiving fewer benefits, being penalized for having children, and being constantly bombarded by bad science about how we ought to go back to the home. And of course, the battle is not won: not in Judaism, where there are still branches of Judaism in which women do not count, communities in which women have been so under pressure as those who lead men astray that against their rabbis’ wills, they have taken on wearing clothes that cover them more thoroughly than any Muslim full-body covering, some even covering their eyes and being led about inthe street by children.And of courswe, there is a world full of other traditions, religions and societies in which women remain bound, hand and foot by men to whom they did not wish to wed, where they live only to serve, to husbands (in the sense of that word: one who dominates or cultivates) to whom they remain property.
From her essay on Song of Songs:
“Open to me,” Says the lover, but women understandably hesitate to do so. “I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” Better to stay safely in one’s place, not make waves. For what happens -according to respected Jewish tradition- to a woman who goes public with her spiritual need, whose yearning is larger than a kitchen, who does not hide behind a mehitza? What happens to the learned Beruria…Her devoted husband Rabbi Meir instigates one of his disciples to seduce her in order to prove that women are flighty. When the disciple finally overcomes her resistance, she kills herself for shame, but no one seems to think Rabbi Meir should be ashamed….What happens to women at the Wall? We are not speaking of allegory here, but real life. Women who dare to pray aloud with Torah in hand at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jeruslem, have been spat on, cursed, called whore. They have had chairs thrown at them, they have been beaten up and hospitalize, and they – they, not their assailants- have been arrested. ….As it is uncannily written, “The Keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. More »
In the Times Online, appears a lengthy review by Geoffrey Wheatcroft of no fewer than 6 books on Israeli and her history: Jacqueline Rose’s THE LAST RESISTANCE, Colin Shindler’s THE TRIUMPH OF MILITARY ZIONISM: Nationalism and the origins of the Israeli Right, David Goldberg’s THE DIVIDED SELF: Israel and the Jewish psyche today, Victoria Clark’s ALLIES FOR ARMAGEDDON:The rise of Christian Zionism, Yakov M. Rabkin’s A THREAT FROM WITHIN: A century of Jewish opposition to Zionism, and Jimmy Carter’s PALESTINE: Peace not apartheid
The review is long and rangy, starting and ending with a focus on the complicated and largely unknown major Israeli historical figure Jabotinsky. As he says in the review,
But the conflict in the Holy Land is still more dissonant in this regard. It is the single most bitterly contentious communal struggle on earth today (something which itself casts an ironical light on the aspiration of the first Zionists to “answer the Jewish question†by “normalizing†the Jews and removing them from the pages of history); it must receive more media coverage than India, which has a population a hundred times greater; it inflames acute passions. And yet it sometimes seems that the more strongly people feel, the less they actually know about the story of Zionism. Maybe it should be a requirement for anyone who wishes to hold forth on the subject to write first a few lines each on Ahad Ha’am, Max Nordau, George Antonius – or Vladimir Jabotinsky.
If not many Europeans or Americans know who “Jabo†was, Israelis certainly do. He remains the most charismatic, fascinating and controversial figure in the history of Zionism, and in the state to whose creation he devoted his life, but which he never saw. Born in 1880 in Odessa, he was converted to the Zionist cause as a young man by tsarist persecution, became a tireless publicist and organizer, and helped to create the Jewish Legion which fought with the British against Turkey during the First World War. In the 1920s he broke away to found the uniformed youth group Betar, and then the militantly nationalistic right-wing brand of Zionism he called Revisionism, in opposition to Chaim Weizmann and the general Zionists, and to David Ben Gurion and the Labour Zionists of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
From Betar would grow the Irgun Zvei Leumi, which waged an armed campaign against the British and the Arabs – in British and Arab eyes, a terrorist campaign – in the ten years before Israel was born. When Jabotinsky died in American exile in 1940, he had not seen the murderous horror that engulfed the European Jews, the creation of the Jewish state, or the legacy of his own movement. The Irgun evolved into the right-wing Herut party, which was not merely excluded from office but veritably anathematized in Israel for the first quarter-century the state existed after 1948, but which, now in the guise of Likud, took power at last in 1977 under the old Irgun leader Menachem Begin – and which descends to the present administration.
The Union for Reform Judaism has announced that its daily 10 Minutes of Torah email (with over 20,000 subscribers) is making every Tuesday “Mishnah Day”. This weekly Mishnah study will include Hebrew text, English translation, and commentary, and begins next week at the beginning, with Masechet Berachot.
As a blogger who has been both a frequent defender of Reform Judaism and critic of the Reform movement, I think this is excellent news. This is exactly the direction that the Reform movement should be going in. If done well. “Mishnah Day” will enable people to engage directly with the primary sources that constitute the foundation for all subsequent Jewish tradition (in any denomination) while looking at these texts through a perspective infused with progressive Jewish values, and will give people the tools to make informed decisions about their individual and communal practices.
To subscribe by email or RSS, go to the website and select “Tuesday”. (It still says “Hebrew Connections” right now, but I assume they’ll fix that.)
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