by Kung Fu Jew · Friday, December 14th, 2007
A new Israeli TV show could be doing for Israel what “The Cosby Show” did for blacks in America. This from the Kansas City Star:
Amjad is a neurotic Arab-Israeli journalist who desperately wants to fit in.
He teaches his daughter Passover songs and wears a yarmulke when he takes his family to a Jewish Seder. He trades in his beat-up old Subaru for a more expensive “non-Arab†car so that he won’t get stopped at Israeli checkpoints.
But nothing Amjad does seems to exorcise his feelings of alienation as the central character in “Arab Work,†a groundbreaking new Israeli prime-time television sitcom that features an Arab-Israeli family struggling to assimilate in the Jewish nation.
As a sitcom and not a documentary, it thus follows the (new) old pattern of tech-endowed countries’ methods of change: a taboo and controversial topic can be broached if it’s funny. (Take for example “Now I Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.”)
It’s great that this show is doing for Israeli Arabs what Cosby did for blacks in America. Now I just wonder whether they’ll run a show in Israel which will the same for, well, blacks in Israel as hundreds of Ethiopians rallied in Petach Tikva on Tuesday to protest racist policies in the city’s education system and in Israel in general.
Ynet covers with a special investigative story here. Excerpt:
Avi Maspin, a spokesman for IAEJ, said that “racism is a word that I have feared using until now, because I did not believe that it could exist in Israel in 2007, but the time has come to call a spade a spade. Israeli society is profoundly infected by racism and unfortunately there is no suitable punishment for racism in Israel.”
by Mobius · Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
Haaretz reports,
Eighty Ethiopian immigrant children, whose families transferred in recent months from absorption centers to permanent homes in Petah Tikvah, are still looking for schools that will agree to accept them for the upcoming school year.
The immigrants cannot be accepted to state secular schools as they have yet to finish their conversion process. The state-religious schools - where they are supposed to finish the conversion process - are not willing to accept them either, since the local authorities are concerned that they will scare off other students to private religious schools, leaving only the poverty stricken children in the state-religious schools.
Private religious schools in Petah Tikva are also unwilling to receive them.
Full story.
by aaronf · Monday, May 21st, 2007
This week’s parsha, Naso, includes instructions for dedicating oneself to YHWH as a Nazir. And just to show you how good that can look, straight outa Kingston comes Zahra Redwood, the new, dreadlocked, Rastafarian Miss Jamaica! Betcha Haile Selassie is rising in his grave!
by Kitra Cahana · Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
Shabbat is coming, and this week I’ll miss the whispers of my father–the blessing that keeps my time moving holy. Not unlike the only child whose father clutched him the night before, clung to his mother before saying goodbye as they departed into the darkness towards Israel. They are making aliyah to be reunited with family, and yet in the same moment aliyah is tearing their loved ones apart. The mother tells Micah Feldman through tears that she has already lost two children. Out of the darkness they came only to move further into it.
Of course I am looking in from the outside–there is undoubtedly a reason and I’m told the decision to accept only 2/3rds of the family will soon be verified. Perhaps it is a brother and not a father. Other than this wailing family, little emotion is expressed. I spent the day with these 65 individuals as they were given final warnings from Brahane, their teacher about life in Israel. This is a diaper, this is deodorant, this is Saranwrap–don’t let your children eat it. There was shouting and laughing as the whole anticipated the strange new world that they would soon master. But now, only slight nods indicated that they recognized me or even each other. There was no one body, no one whole people that was leaving. Only singles and silence as they departed.
by Kitra Cahana · Monday, June 12th, 2006
How do you translate Israel into meaningful words? I was a liaison between the people and a hidden future today, but a very limited one. “If you are voluntary will you tell about the cities of Israel?†Dange Telahu asked on behalf of his family who will join their grandparents in Israel in July. “Will they take my baby away, will he be safe when I go on the plane?†his mother tenderly clutched her child as he drank from her drained breast. “Is there nature in Israel like in Ethiopia where I can run on a mountain or near a river, not on an asphalt road?†his brother Adesso hopes to train to be a professional runner. “What does sand feel like?†“ How will I know which bus goes where when I get to Israel?†“Will I be able to keep my sherouba, my braids in, or will they make me take them out?â€, “Will a terrorist try to kill me?â€
I was caught on having answers that would numb their doubts and place their nerves behind them. Would a terrorist discriminate against their skin color? Would life in an absorption center differ greatly from normal Israeli living?
I tried to explain what I did know – the imprinted history I had lived only a year before. A lot of us claim to know the back of our hands, but how would we describe them to a blind man? I took his palm in mine and traced lightly, attempting to mimic the emotion of sand - this is like that feeling I said. I pointed to the side of my face yawning, trying to describe what a ‘pop’ in the ear might feel like during take off and landing - they would need to yawn to make it disappear but that that would come naturally from within. What I really wanted to say was that adaptation to change comes from within. Humanity moves through the world like liquid. But unlike liquid that is overpowered by its environment we guide our own moldings through it, we each chisel our own Davids and should not fear that process.
by Kitra Cahana · Saturday, June 3rd, 2006
Poverty swells in the slums of Addis Ababa. Yet none of the tin and mud homes that I have visited lacked in either grace or generosity. The beauty of having time to work on this project allows me to not only spend my moments seeking out the aesthetic, but also using my time tending to a growing trust and sensitivity, ultimately finding the poetic balance that weaves the photojournalist with the humanist. Today I enjoyed listening and not looking as intently.
And as I listened I began to feel the growing strings of sympathy pull me. I came to know the deep crisis that is endured by the Falash Mura, as they wait between three to nine years with the unrelenting expectancy that they will be brought to Israel. Those that have been rejected hardly flinch when they say: Maybe next week I too will join my brethren in the holy land. Listening to each speak his own impoverished share, I began to realize that while all dreams dreamt were about climbing out of poverty and joining immediate loved ones in Beer Sheva, Tzfat and Jerusalem, I was one of the only ones aware that tonight the Jewish holiday of Shavuot begins. All barriers to Jerusalem are crushed as Jerusalem’s gates are unhinged and she embraces all those yearning to congregate within her. How appropriate it felt to be with these people on the eve of this holiday, and how alone I feel in its celebration.
by Kitra Cahana · Thursday, June 1st, 2006
Flying over Ethiopia at night feels like flying over a tucked away fold of the ocean. Black pockets stare at the foreign bird-like creature, a faranji machine as she makes her way, casting no shadow over Ethiopian soil. Pale constellations reveal the skeletal structure of Addis Ababa as the plane humbly descends towards the four million Ethiopians living in the country’s capitol. Doubt looms in my stomach as I look towards Baruch Tegene’s words, the blessing he gave me before departing on this three-month trip for strength.
He spoke of a season of a stork that would sail over Ethiopia and the Beta Israel communities when he was young. Upon being spotted the Jewish people would call out yearningly: “Carry me to Yerushalayim with you. To the holy sites of Abraham and Solomon, our forefathers.†When I first heard, I longed to long so lovingly for a home. His words have always penetrated wholly, for I feel so open to someone I hold to the same respect as my Saba Moshe — heroes of our people. Yet now, flying over the same trees and sand as the winged ones, I do not hear the same plight of Baruch and the Beta Israel as the stork did long ago. But as the birds of Moses and Solomon rerouted their migration to include and respond to the prayers of the Beta Israel in recent decades, I’m eager to learn more about the stork of promise and try to understand whether she will or she should listen to the yearnings of the Falash Mura, the liminal people caught between their Jewish roots, their Christian conversions and their hope to resettle with family in Israel.
Regardless, my photographic vision must hear the plight of humanity.
