Mishegaas and passing thoughts on the Middle East
- Action alert by Brit Tzedek v’Shalom calls on Bush to get off his ass. BTVS takes it to Congress’ doorstep on June 21-24, register here.
- Yediot Achronot covers Israeli Fred Schlomka’s alternative tours through Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank in “Alternative Tourism Comes of Age in Israel.” Tours are even designed to be legal for Israelis who otherwise are restricted to Area C of the territories.
- Day schools grapple with teaching Israel — how much do we decide to brainwash our kids? To be fair, both right and left-leaning communities get their way on how to teach about Palestinians, the Israeli national myths, and the balance of blame in the peace process. Which means that the politics of the next generation of Jews will be even more divided between Jews taught to think critically and openly, and those openly brainwashed…
- Listen to J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami at their press conference, courtesy of JTA.
- In this ten minutes on TV, Obama says Hillary sounds like McCain on Iran. And head of Joint Cheifs says third-front war on Iran a bad idea.
- Right-wing smear-machine CAMERA launches Wikipedia-editing campaign — gaaaaa. I am infuriated of course, but when I thought about it, sure, let ’em waste their time on Wikipedia. I’m working on prying their like out of Congress.
- Did you know the majority of American Jews aren’t Zionist? It shouldn’t be surprising, but if 35% of American Jews don’t identify as “Zionist” but 90% identify as “pro-Israel,” I think we’ve got to rethink our labels. The same labels for young Jews drop to 24% and 70% respectively. Check the facts.
- Yad LeAhim, an Israeli anti-Christian group (though they call themselves anti-missionary), despite losing in court for persecution rights (denial of citizenship) against Messianic Jews making aliyah, are now picking on a 13-year-old world Bible quiz contestant. Warned Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a leader of the national religious movement, “Once they used to wage crusades in order to bring us closer to Christianity. Now they work by other means.” At first I was going to appeal for perspective until I realized, yes, I might consider a Crusade over embarassing reality TV any day.
- …Which transitions perfectly into the reason some Jews won’t boycott China. I couldn’t help but notice who is and isn’t supporting the boycotts: Do boycott: JCPA, Reform movement, American Jewish Congress, a dozen leaders of the Conservative movement and liberal Orthodoxy, American Jewish World Service. Don’t boycott: Agudath Israel of America, Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel, ADL, American Jewish Committee. This list has a few surprises, but I think it says a lot.
Israel events in NYC: Shabbat dinner with Sayed Kashua, Bernard Avishai and Bennie Morris at CBE, Pints for Peace, and Israel lobby expert Dr. David Albert.
While I believe the Chidon haTanach should be open to all contestants, I don’t see why Messianic Jews are persecuted by denying them official claim to the title Jew. All major Jewish movements and a fair number of Christian groups have repeated pointed out that “Messianic Judaism” is mostly Over-Simplified Evangelical Christianity With Hebrew Jargon.
The Messianic Jewish faith-group was started within the last generation, funded by folks like the Southern Baptist Convention, for the express purpose of tricking Jews into converting to Christianity. In fact, in most of the US, any self-identified Messianic Jew you meet is 90% of the time a run-of-the-mill Christian Judaizer who decided to adopt more Old-Testament practices.
Actually, it’s 60% — Jews for Jesus’ membership specifically is 60% Christians who are “returning to their roots” and adopting a closer reading of Old Testament law and scripture in their practice of Christianity. But all that says nothing about people’s identities as Jews. Who is to say that anybody in the Jewish world can and cannot say who is and is not Jewish? It’s bullshit any way you slice it, even in this case.
Additionally, if we’re going to allow people to be citizens of Israel based on a “if it was good enough for Hitler” approach, then these folks of Jewish blood should also be allowed in, period.
I’m not so sure on those statistics.
Additionally, if we’re going to allow people to be citizens of Israel based on a “if it was good enough for Hitler†approach, then these folks of Jewish blood should also be allowed in, period.
Firstly, Israel grants citizenship to foreigners in the same normal way any other country does. We’re talking here about a special fast-track to citizenship as a Jew making aliyah.
The Israeli Supreme Court decided back in 1962 that a Jew becomes ineligible for Aliyah status when they convert to a non-Jewish religion. See the Brother Daniel case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Rufeisen
Who is to say that anybody in the Jewish world can and cannot say who is and is not Jewish? It’s bullshit any way you slice it, even in this case.
I think that in many cases we certainly can do that, *especially* if we’re talking “Jewish” as “a believer in Judaism”. I think most people would agree that Judaism isn’t anything you want it to be. Like all religions, it has ideological boundaries. These boundaries become especially important where the separate between Judaism and the imperialistic religions, such as Christianity & Islam, which actively seek to convert Jews (and others). When in the service of evangelism a Christian tries to muddy the waters as to what is defined as “Judaism”, that’s exactly the right time in my opninion to put your foot down and redraw the line and little clearer.
It makes sense that the OU doesn’t want to boycott China. They do a lot of business hechshering Chinese producers of food.
Israel grants citizenship to foreigners in the same normal way any other country does.
That simply isn’t true. There is no standard naturalization process, and its all decided on the whim of the Minister of the Interior.
Hey Amit!
While sleuthing online for more information to clarify what the rules are for non-Jewish immigrants to Israel, I came across an interesting paper..
http://www.ccis-ucsd.org/PUBLICATIONS/wrkg45.PDF
Ethnic-Priority Immigration in Israel and Germany:
Resilience Versus Demise
The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
University of California, San Diego
By Christian Joppke – European University Institute, Florence
Zeev Roshenhek – Hebrew University, Jerusalm