I didn’t celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut yesterday. I don’t think I can celebrate this holiday any more.
That doesn’t mean I’m not acknowledging the anniversary of Israel’s independence – only that I can no longer view this milestone as a day for celebration. I’ve come to believe that for Jews, Yom Ha’atzmaut is more appropriately observed as an occasion for reckoning and honest soul searching.
As a Jew, as someone who has identified with Israel for his entire life, it is profoundly painful to me to admit the honest truth of this day: that Israel’s founding is inextricably bound up with its dispossession of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. In the end, Yom Ha’atzmaut and what the Palestinian people refer to as the Nakhba are two inseparable sides of the same coin. And I simply cannot separate these two realities any more.
I wonder: if we Jews are ready to honestly face down this “dual reality” how can we possibly view this day as a day of unmitigated celebration? But we do – and not only in Israel. Indeed, there is no greater civil Jewish holiday in the American Jewish community than Yom Ha’atzmaut. It has become the day we pull out all the stops – the go-to day upon which Jewish Federations throughout the country hold their major communal Jewish parades, celebrations and gatherings. I wonder: how must it feel to be a Palestinian watching the Jewish community celebrate this day year after year on the anniversary that is the living embodiment of their collective tragedy?
I can’t yet say what specific form my new observance of Yom Ha’atzmaut will take. I only know that it can’t be divorced from the Palestinian reality – or from the Palestinian people themselves. Many of us in the co-existence community speak of “dual narratives” – and how critical it is for each side to be open to hearing the other’s “story.” I think this pedagogy is important as far as it goes, but I now believe that it’s not nearly enough. It’s not enough for us to be open to the narrative of the Nakhba and all it represents for Palestinians. In the end, we must also be willing to own our role in this narrative. Until we do this, it seems to me, the very concept of coexistence will be nothing but a hollow cliche.
Toward a new understanding of Yom Ha’atzmaut, I commend to you this article by Amaya Galili which was published yesterday in Yediot Achronot. Galili is affiliated with Zochrot – the courageous Israeli org that works tirelessly to raise their fellow citizens’ awareness about the Nakhba.
An excerpt:
The Israeli collective memory emphasizes the Jewish-national history of the country, and mostly denies its Palestinian past. We, as a society and as individuals, are unwilling to accept responsibility for the injustice done to the Palestinians, which allows us to continue living here. But who decided that’s the only way we can live here? The society we’re creating is saturated with violence and racism. Is this the society in which we want to live? What good does it do to avoid responsibility? What does that prevent us from doing?
Learning about the nakba gives me back a central part of my being, one that has been erased from Israeli identity, from our surroundings, from Israeli education and memory. Learning about the nakba allows me to live here with open eyes, and develop a different set of future relationships in the country, a future of mutual recognition and reconciliation between all those connected to this place.
Accepting responsibility for the nakba and its ongoing consequences obligates me to ask hard questions about the establishment of Israeli society, particularly about how we live today. I want to accept responsibility, to correct this reality, to change it. Not say, “There’s no choice. This is how we’ve survived for 61 years, and that’s how we’ll keep surviving.” It’s not enough for me just to “survive.” I want to live in a society that is aware of its past, and uses it to build a future that can include all the inhabitants of the country and all its refugees.
Click here to read the article in the original Hebrew. Click below to read the entire English version. (H/T to my friend Mark Braverman for sending it along.)
Naomi Chazan is a firecracker. She’s a leading professor of political science in Israel — probably because she was Deputy Speaker of Knesset and a 10-year Meretz party veteran, board president of the largest funder of Israeli civil society, and founder of numerous civil and women’s rights organizations.
Tonight she spoke at Town & Village Synagogue in Manhattan and whipped the audience into considering their own moral blindspots:
On Gaza: “When you have no direction or vision, fear drives politics.”
On Durban II: “On one hand we have Ahmadinejad spouting vileness, on the other Jews who support Israel no matter what it does. I can’t stand either.”
On the occupation: “Israel’s existence is totally dependent on Israel’s soul. An end to the discomfort.”
On Bibi’s two-state reluctance: “The alternative to a two state solution is not a one state solution, it’s more of what we have now, wars on the backs of civilians.”
On progressive American Jews: “Maybe it is time there is are new Jewish voices that stand for the values of dignity, justice, and peace.”
On the next generation: “Too many young Jews don’t want to hear the word Israel. Israel is not doing good for American Jewry.”
On American Jewry: “It’s as if there’s a total disconnect between the liberal values of American Jews and their attitude to Israel.”
Wow. Tell it to ‘em straight, Madam Speaker. She’s speaking again to a young activist crowd at NYU’s Bronfman Center this Saturday, 7 pm (RSVP).
Today’s Washington Post has a story on independent minyanim, with a focus on communities in DC. There’s no breaking news for those who are familiar with this scene; like the New York Times piece in November 2007, it primarily introduces the phenomenon to a general audience. But this may be the first mainstream (non-Jewish) media source to report on the USCJ grants for minyanim. (This grant program was pooh-poohed to some degree here on Jewschool, but anecdotal reports suggest that it seems to be taking off. Is there any data on how many minyanim are participating so far? What’s the breakdown between previously existing minyanim and new ones?)
Gathering in group homes and college dormitories, in rural woods and apartment buildings, a growing number of young Jews are spurning traditional synagogues and forming worship communities that blend ancient traditions with modern values in ways that religion scholars say could redefine American Judaism.
The young people represent some of the most devout of their generation and, worried that they are being lost, rabbis and other Jewish leaders in the Washington region and elsewhere are working hard to bring them back into the fold, including offering financial grants to independent groups who are willing to create partnerships with traditional worship communities.
This article shares many strengths and weaknesses with the NYT article. The tone is generally positive, stressing that independent minyan participants are committed to Judaism. For the most part, this article addresses independent minyanim on their own terms, and is less caught up in Jewish institutional baggage than are similar treatments in the Jewish press (though somewhat more so than the NYT article).
Two different, wonderful organizations are looking for people, Jews United for Justice are looking for a program director, and Rabbis for Human Rights- North America is looking for an Executive Director. Wish I was currently on the market. Scroll down for more info on each:
The first is Jews United for Justice in Washington D.C. JUFJ Program Director
Job Description
Jews United for Justice (JUFJ) is a dynamic and growing organization whose mission is to lead Washington-area Jews to act on our shared Jewish values by pursuing justice and equality in our local community. We connect Jews and Jewish institutions with the tools and opportunities to make a difference and mobilize the Jewish community to act in solidarity with local social justice campaigns.
JUFJ works on a variety of local justice issues including affordable housing, worker and immigrants’ rights, and socially-conscious consumption.
The role of the Program Director is to manage all of Jews United for Justice’s programmatic work, including advocacy campaigns, community and holiday events, and educational programs, working in conjunction with volunteers, interns, and other staff to ensure its success. The full-time position reports to the Executive Director.
Major Responsibilities:
* Develop and implement organization’s overall programmatic & organizing strategy
* Organize, support, and empower volunteer leaders to plan and implement JUFJ’s programmatic work
* Manage relationships with JUFJ’s varied community allies, including labor, immigrants’ rights, community-based, and faith-based organizations.
* Partner with Jewish groups and institutions, including synagogues, to deepen JUFJ’s impact within the DC-area Jewish community.
* Provide logistical, administrative, and organizational support as needed
Requirements:
* 3-5 years of experience in community organizing or progressive political advocacy
* Strong interpersonal skills; ability to relate to people of all ages
* Excellent planning and organizational skills with exceptional attention to detail
* Excellent time management skills, with an ability to prioritize, work well under pressure and meet tight deadlines
* Self-starter who can work independently and able to collaborate with others.
Additional Qualifications:
* Familiarity with the Washington area Jewish community
* Experience with social justice work in Jewish context
* Spanish language proficiency
* Jewish textual knowledge
Salary is commensurate with experience, excellent benefits. Please send a cover letter, resume, salary requirements, and three professional references to jobs@jufj.org .
Jews United for Justice is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applications will be accepted until position is filled.
RHR-NA is seeking an Executive Director. Please download RHR-NA_Exec_Dir_Job_Posting here, which includes a brief job description, required qualifications, compensation and directions for applying.
The New Israel Fund wishes you a happy Yom Haatzmaut via Eliezer Yaari, Israeli director, and celebrates also their 30th anniversary of the Diaspora-Israel partnership that has put $200 million into more than 800 grassroots nonprofits improving civil and human rights, social and economic justice, religious pluralism and tolerance, and the environment for Israeli Arabs, Ethiopian immigrants, Thai foreign workers, Orthodox women seeking divorces, Russian youth at risk, Palestinian civilians, and everyone else. May Jewish civil society protect all those whose rights and well-being are less than what Israel promised in its Declaration of Independence:
THE STATE OF ISRAEL … will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
May the journey to a better Jewish state be quick, meaningful, and revolutionary — happy Yom Haatzmaut.
With Arlen Specter (RD-PA)’s switch to the Democratic Party, there are now no Jewish Republicans left in the United States Senate! (The other Jewish Republican senator, Norm Coleman (R-MN), lost his seat in the 2008 election, and so far has spent his retirement obstructing the seating of his successor. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has never adopted the Republican label, and continues to caucus with the Democrats.)
This is the first time that there have been no Jewish Republican senators since Jacob Javits (R-NY) entered the Senate in 1957, representing a very different Republican party. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives.
Today is day two of URJ’s three-day “round table” on Jewish teen education. I’m here along with about 70 other Jewish educators (and a handful of lay leaders) to consider what we’re doing right and what we can do better in the realm of Jewish living opportunities for teenagers. The vast majority of participants are Reform synagogue educators, so I’ve got something of an outsider’s view as a community educator with a Conservative background and no current movement affiliation. Also, as Jewschool readers might guess, I have some strong opinions about what we’re doing right and wrong… and I suspect who I include in “we” might be different than many of the other participants.
As far as I can tell, two of us are Tweeting from the conference. (Gah, I feel like a tool for even typing that sentence.) But to the extent that discussions here provoke thoughts more complex than 140 characters, I’ll be posting here.
Right now David Bryfman (newly minted as a PhD – mazel tov, David!) is presenting his research on where our teenagers are at right now. I’ll give you this – the man makes a mean Powerpoint. He began by acknowledging that this piece of the presentation is largely information that many people in this room already know (either intuitively or academically), although I wonder how many of the older people in this room have ever seen G-dcast before… or Gossip Girl, for that matter. Regardless, I’m looking forward to the next step of “so what,” i.e. translating this knowledge into action.
The quote above comes from a fantastic sugya in the Gemara on prayer (Berakhot 32b). Praying is one of those things that defies reason. In my opinion, there is no way to justify prayer in a rational world and yet it is something that people throughout the entire globe, irrespective of economic background, religious affiliation or ethnic heritage, participate in. I recently heard a story from dear friends which made me stop and consider the utter power of prayer.
The story came via a very interesting organization which some out there may have heard of, Western Wall Prayers. This service and business was founded by Gershon and Batya Burd, an executive director of a yeshiva and a former lawyer respectively, who live in the Old City of Jerusalem. The concept is this… More »
“We will call it Mexico flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, a black-garbed Orthodox Jew, told a news conference Monday, assuring the Israeli public that authorities were prepared to handle any cases.
Under Jewish dietary laws, pigs are considered unclean and pork is forbidden food — although the non-kosher meat is available in some stores in Israel.
This is completely ridiculous. If the logic is “swines aren’t kosher, treyf is bad,” wouldn’t a “bad” connotation be fitting for a deadly flu virus? Oh, Israel…
AJWS is pleased to announce that we are accepting applications for the Dvar Tzedek Lisa Goldberg Memorial Writers’ Fellowship for 5770 / 2009-2010. AJWS Dvar Tzedek Fellows receive a modest stipend and write weekly Torah commentaries relating to the Jewish imperative for social justice. The Dvar Tzedek currently reaches over 4,000 people a week over e-mail.
To see examples of the work of this year’s Dvar Tzedek commentaries, and to download the application for the fellowship, please visit www.ajws.org/parshah.
We invite you to apply for the fellowship and to circulate information about the fellowship to anyone else you think would be interested. For more information, please contact Lisa Exler at lexler@ajws.org.
Five Border Policemen were wounded on Thursday in a clash with hundreds of residents of the Israeli Arab town of Kafr Qasem.
The violence broke out when security forces arrived to demolish a concrete surface upon which a hothouse was due to be built illegally. They were met at the scene by about 400 Kfar Kassem residents who had turned out to protest the move.
I suppose its just a minor news story in the scheme of things – still, it did remind me that the media’s impact is often less powerful for what it says than for what it leaves out. In this case, that would be the fact that almost all new building in Israeli Arab villages is technically “illegal” since Israel has made it virtually impossible for its Arab citizens to receive building permits.
There is a lack of planning for Arab neighborhoods and towns that has led to ongoing difficulties in obtaining building permits, and as a result, the demolishing of illegal buildings in the Arab sector. Since 1948, almost no Arab neighborhood or town has legally been permitted to expand.
Also left out of the article is any mention of this particular village’s tragic history – and why a demolished hothouse is really just the latest chapter for the citizens of Kafr Kassem. Click here to learn more.
Vayikra tells of the oscillating flow between tameh and tahor, pure and tainted. Actions and events, some controlled by people, others in God’s hands cast the verdict of tuma’a upon the ancient Israelites. Turned away from public gatherings and from the communal feasts, the impure have time and opportunity to pursue their own interests. Without demands, they can meditate, think, and explore the world. The impure can grow, but it is difficult for them to contribute. Society has its own rules and it does not pause as the hermits reflect.
Time passes, wounds heal, and the erstwhile loners seek the company of peers. The prophets return from wandering in the desert and come to Jerusalem to preach their wisdom. Nursing mothers, after months of loving intimacy, want to shape a world where all can care as they did. God welcomes them all back. God calls them all to come to the Temple, to stand proudly at the gates and declaim their commitment to creating community.
A motley array of the sick, the proud, the outcasts, and the monks, all wait in line to perform their final task – a sacrifice. Before the speeches, balls, and performances the debutantes are commanded to reflect for one last moment, and to feel pain. They must give something away, destroy something alive and beautiful, and know that even at this moment there is death.
In every transition, something must be given up. Old opportunities are sacrificed to create room for new ones. Even when we laud a world of togetherness and purity – the value of solitude and quiet is not impeached. The Torah knows that perfection is impossible, and it does not demand it. It only wants us to pause, at the moment of success, and recognize what we have lost.
Being an Everett was an amazing experience: I made fantastic friends, had great learning opportunities, got into great conversations with people of all ages and varied backgrounds, was able to explore different davening options… And I’ve gone back each year since.
If you are 22-32 years old, you can apply to be an Everett Fellow, to come to the National Havurah Committee Summer Insitute for $120 (instead of $800) and have an AMAZING week in New Hampshire this August.
You know, I grew up Modern Orthodox. I’ve been rooting for Yeshivat Chovevei Torah since even before I had friends and family there. And though my religious identity has grown inordinately more complicated as time goes on, there’s something homey and admirable to me about the Orthodox fringe — the love of tradition and ease with it, the love of God’s world and elevation of secular knowledge to religious obligation, the willingness to swim against the current in the frum world, and especially the demand that a static Torah and a fluid human culture meet each other, crosspollinate, and grow – but retain their integrity — over and over and over again.
So why was I nodding inside, feeling chills and cheers in equal measure, when I read this rant by Jonathan Mark, in which he thrashes the liberal Orthodox for doing what it is they do: ’expanding the palace of Torah,’ with nuance and caution?
Hop on over to his blog. See him assert how…
+ Rav Avi Weiss plays politics to the detriment of his values.
+ Nobody really cares what YCT does anyway.
+ Chabad is *the* model for success as a Jewish movement.
+ The liberal Orthodox community lacks the depth it should have.
+ The liberal Orthodox community lacks the strength of its convictions.
+ Blu Greenberg is the mashiach.
I sorta think he has a point. (Especially about Blu Greenberg.) Check it out and tell us what you think.
Presented by New Voices Magazine and the Jewish Student Press Service and hosted by Avanim, the literary journal of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the conference features workshops and panels on Jewish campus publications, writing on Israel, getting published and more.
New Voices Magazine, the only independent, national magazine written by and for Jewish college students, is published by the 35-year-strong Jewish Student Press Service. JSPS publishes articles about Jewish community issues, politics, and cultural affairs.
This is no joke. Watch the video here. Capitalizing on the style of Disney, the Holy Land Experience is an Orlando theme park. The theme is 1st century Jerusalem, where you can see Jesus crucified on stage twice daily and shop. And visit the Temple.
I’m pretty sure there’s some money-changing going on around this Temple.
This came up in a course I’m taking right now, Pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca. The professor brought this site and this video to our attention while discussing the state of pilgrimage in modernity.
This incident struck me deep in my heart, as “Zio-Nazi” was the same slur my ‘friends’ donned upon me during the second Intifada. At the time I was a proud pro-peace Zionist, but simply advocating the existence of a Jewish state was too much for my ‘friends’ to handle once the intifada began. That incident caused me to re-evaluate the political relationship between Jews and the far left, between Israel as a political entity and Israel as a “state for the Jews” and the conflation that happens, in our mind and in the mind of our detractors (both anti-Semites and valid critics of Israel) between Jews in the diaspora and Israel. I think we need to work hard to make a separation between the two. If we can make that constructive separation, maybe we can begin to listen before we react. For example, Ahmadinejad has never once threatened world Jewry, to the contrary has voiced his support for the Jewish religion while making loud, public threats against political Zionism. Is that inherently anti-Semitic? I don’t believe so. Many call me naive, but I don’t see a risk of a second Shoah coming from this ego-maniacal little tyrant. I believe Israel’s insistence that Iran not achieve nuclear capability has more to do with power brokering than it does with any existential threat. If Iran’s supposed main concern is the Palestinians, no nuclear weapons are heading Israel’s way. There’s no way to send a nuclear missile to Israel and not kill most of the Palestinians too, not to mention some of Islam’s holiest sites.
Now, in my personal opinion, and I know many will disagree, I did not find Ahmadinejad’s speech anti-Semitic or racist. Intolerant, ignorant and arrogant, for sure, but not racist or anti-Semitic. This video, on the other hand, I know no other way to interpret. If these people were shouting such slurs and the Israeli head of state, FM or DM I would no condone it or agree with it, but I could understand it. But what does Elie Wiesel have to do with the occupation of Palestine? Here is a Nobel laureate who has traveled the world advocating peace and an end to genocide. He does not live in Israel, nor to my knowledge does he regularly make public and contentious political comments about Israel. Is there any way to interpret this other than anti-Semitism, racial hatred and intolerance?
No, really: what are you waiting for?
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