Living in Israel, it's impossible to ignore the crescendo of passover mania as the holiday grows closer. Each year I am astonished anew at the hysteria over food and cleaning. Two weeks before the holiday I was dismayed to discover that my favorite brand of brown rice was nowhere to be found in the supermarket. "It's because of pessach," the Arab stock boy explained to me, eyeing me incredulously, as if to ask, "what planet do you live on?"
"I guess I missed the boat, huh?"
He shrugged his shoulders and I kicked myself - who knew that brown rice was hametz? I would have stocked up ages ago.
I can live without brown rice for a few weeks but the problem was much more acute in the days when we had a cat. The first year Mashie came to live with us we ran out of Friskies during passover. I was stunned to discover that in the supermarket the cat food was taped up behind cardboard in the untouchable aisle. Who knew that even the cats in Israel keep kosher for passover? In a moment of criminal insanity I stuck my hand behind the barrier and sneaked a box out when no one was looking. Luckily the checkout girl didn't say anything, but it took me years to cleanse the guilt from my soul. (In fact, this is the first time I've confessed in public. Forgive me?)
(P.S. When Mashie scratched my infant daughter right beneath her eye we decided she had to go. She was adopted by Haled, the Palestinian contractor who was doing work on our house at the time. She went to live with his family in Zaatra, near Bethlehem, and never had to worry about keeping kosher again.)
The cleaning madness is a slightly more honorable phenomenon, if you don't mind waiting hours on line at the car wash. Pre-passover cleaning is actually a great time to hunt for abandoned treasures because the garbage dumpsters are full of salvagable junk people have tossed out. A dear friend of ours who shall remain nameless cleans her house once a year on passover - and that's it. The rest of the year her place is a pig sty. As for me, I'm not about to go searching the house for crumbs with a candle, but passover is a great excuse to get my two teenaged daughters off the couch and out of their television stupor. At this very moment they are cleaning the kitchen and internalizing the importance of family cooperation.
Chores and inconveniences notwithstanding, I love the practical applications of the passover story - all the ways we have to make the liberation and redemption of the Jewish people 3200 years ago a first-hand experience for all of us. I love the gathering of the whole family around the seder table and the centrality of the children in the re-telling of the story. I love the way we reconfigure the daily necessity of food to make it part of the experience of remembering. I love the ten drops of wine on the plate during the recounting of the ten plagues that remind us always to be compassionate toward our enemies. And I love the search for new relevance and meaning in this ritual every year. Once we were slaves and now we are free people, so it is our obligation to ensure freedom for all.
In addition to those who live within our midst without freedom, three Israeli families remain imprisoned in fear and anxiety while their sons continue to be held captive by merciless enemies. Indeed, we cannot truly savor our freedom as long as Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have not returned home. Hopefully this spring they will be freed and that beautiful passage from the Song of Songs will ring true: "...the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land."
Monday, April 2, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
What Holocaust?
According to a recent study conducted by Professor Sami Smooha, a well-known Israeli sociologist at Haifa University, "more than a quarter of Israel's Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened...28 percent of local Arabs did not believe the Holocaust happened, and among high school and college graduates the figure was even higher: 33 percent." (Haaretz, March 19, 2007)
Museums of tolerance can be erected around the world, books can be translated into Arabic and we can teach the Holocaust until the cows come home - in the eyes of many Arabs it's all propaganda, an international conspiracy to validate the the existance of Israel and justify the Palestinian Nakba (disaster of 1948). As long as our Arab neighbors are unwilling to learn and understand the implications of the Holocaust for the Jewish people they will remain incapable of comprehending the modern reality of the state of Israel. For those who wish to perpetuate the state of war in which we live it is preferable to treat the Holocaust as a cynical political tool brandished by the Jews at every opportunity. In this case Arab ignorance is bliss, because understanding the Jewish experience of the Holocaust makes the conflict much grayer. It's far easier to stick one's head into the sand and pretend it never happened.
Interestingly, teaching awareness of the Holocaust to Israel's Arabs has become the one-man crusade of Khaled Mahameed, a lawyer who lives in Nazareth. Educated at Hebrew University, he studied the Holocaust and later invested his own money to purchase a photographic exhibit from Yad Vashem and set up a museum on the first floor of his home. He has printed publications about the Holocaust in Arabic, offers stipends to Arab students who wish to study the subject and maintains a website in Arabic (www.alkaritha.org). This is what he said in an interview:
"Understanding this and the fact that personal security is perhaps the major concern of Jews in Israel and elsewhere, as a direct outcome of the Holocaust and the feelings of persecution, is extremely important.
"If we, as Arabs, can dissipate these concerns and show understanding over what happened it will help create the climate for real dialogue in which Israeli Jews and especially decision-makers will be able to have a greater understanding of the suffering of Arab citizens and the Palestinians.
"This, in turn, would hopefully lead towards a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an end to discriminatory policies towards Arab citizens and the acceptance that they deserve equal rights."
If I recognize and address your deepest fears, you will reciprocate - that's what he's saying, in a nutshell. Arab and Jewish acceptance of each other's narratives may very well be the key to resolving the conflict. I believe we are mature enough and wise enough to be truthful about the less honorable aspects of the birth of the State of Israel. But who should go first?
Each of us contributes what we can. My husband Benny works for Israel Television. When he read the article about Smooha's research he decided immediately to translate a program he has on the Nieremberg trials slated for broadcast into Arabic - not subtitles, but a voice-over.
My college roomate Lauren was here this week for a conference of the Reform Movement. As the executive director of the reform synagogue in Munich, Germany, she is helping to rebuild a strong Jewish community there.
The next meeting of our women guides' association will take place of the eve of Holocaust Memorial day and we will be sharing ideas about guiding at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. I'm going to share a story that I heard a few years ago from a Holocaust survivor. He said something like this:
"As a young boy of twelve or thirteen I found myself forced to board a very crowded train with my parents; people were packed in so tightly that we could barely breathe. Everyone was Jewish and although we had no idea where we were going, we knew it couldn't be good. There was a opening in the box car but it was too small for any of the adults to get through. I was the only one thin enough to climb out and my parents decided that I should jump from the train, come what may. When my father said goodbye to me he hugged me and kissed me, and the last thing he said to me was, "Son, be a mensch." I never saw my parents again."
Museums of tolerance can be erected around the world, books can be translated into Arabic and we can teach the Holocaust until the cows come home - in the eyes of many Arabs it's all propaganda, an international conspiracy to validate the the existance of Israel and justify the Palestinian Nakba (disaster of 1948). As long as our Arab neighbors are unwilling to learn and understand the implications of the Holocaust for the Jewish people they will remain incapable of comprehending the modern reality of the state of Israel. For those who wish to perpetuate the state of war in which we live it is preferable to treat the Holocaust as a cynical political tool brandished by the Jews at every opportunity. In this case Arab ignorance is bliss, because understanding the Jewish experience of the Holocaust makes the conflict much grayer. It's far easier to stick one's head into the sand and pretend it never happened.
Interestingly, teaching awareness of the Holocaust to Israel's Arabs has become the one-man crusade of Khaled Mahameed, a lawyer who lives in Nazareth. Educated at Hebrew University, he studied the Holocaust and later invested his own money to purchase a photographic exhibit from Yad Vashem and set up a museum on the first floor of his home. He has printed publications about the Holocaust in Arabic, offers stipends to Arab students who wish to study the subject and maintains a website in Arabic (www.alkaritha.org). This is what he said in an interview:
"Understanding this and the fact that personal security is perhaps the major concern of Jews in Israel and elsewhere, as a direct outcome of the Holocaust and the feelings of persecution, is extremely important.
"If we, as Arabs, can dissipate these concerns and show understanding over what happened it will help create the climate for real dialogue in which Israeli Jews and especially decision-makers will be able to have a greater understanding of the suffering of Arab citizens and the Palestinians.
"This, in turn, would hopefully lead towards a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an end to discriminatory policies towards Arab citizens and the acceptance that they deserve equal rights."
If I recognize and address your deepest fears, you will reciprocate - that's what he's saying, in a nutshell. Arab and Jewish acceptance of each other's narratives may very well be the key to resolving the conflict. I believe we are mature enough and wise enough to be truthful about the less honorable aspects of the birth of the State of Israel. But who should go first?
Each of us contributes what we can. My husband Benny works for Israel Television. When he read the article about Smooha's research he decided immediately to translate a program he has on the Nieremberg trials slated for broadcast into Arabic - not subtitles, but a voice-over.
My college roomate Lauren was here this week for a conference of the Reform Movement. As the executive director of the reform synagogue in Munich, Germany, she is helping to rebuild a strong Jewish community there.
The next meeting of our women guides' association will take place of the eve of Holocaust Memorial day and we will be sharing ideas about guiding at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. I'm going to share a story that I heard a few years ago from a Holocaust survivor. He said something like this:
"As a young boy of twelve or thirteen I found myself forced to board a very crowded train with my parents; people were packed in so tightly that we could barely breathe. Everyone was Jewish and although we had no idea where we were going, we knew it couldn't be good. There was a opening in the box car but it was too small for any of the adults to get through. I was the only one thin enough to climb out and my parents decided that I should jump from the train, come what may. When my father said goodbye to me he hugged me and kissed me, and the last thing he said to me was, "Son, be a mensch." I never saw my parents again."
Monday, March 12, 2007
The Jesus Tomb Brouhaha
For those of us in archaeology-related professions, the talk of the town this past week was the film 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus,' that aired with much ado on the Discovery Channel last Tuesday. The expose was underwritten by the guy who produced 'The Titanic' and presented by a Jewish journalist in a Druze kippa hot on the trail of a good story. They set out to authenticate a late second temple period burial tomb as the final resting place of Jesus and several of his family members, including his mother Mary, his brothers, Mary Magdalene and his son (gulp). In fact, the names in the tomb correspond seamlessly with the Da Vinci Code theory which purports that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a child.
The tomb was discovered accidentally during construction in one of Jerusalem's satellite neighborhoods in 1980. It contained ten ossuaries (bone boxes used for secondary burial), six of which were clearly inscribed with the aforementioned names. One of the stronger arguments against the film's premise is that people from the Judaea region usually inscribed tombs with their first name and their father's name, as in this tomb, whereas Galileans used the first name and the hometown. In addition, Jesus came from a family of modest means; in all likelihood they would not have been able to afford the excavation of a family burial tomb. Even if they had one, Nazareth would seem to be the natural location for it.
Amos Kloner, the head archaeologist of the Jerusalem district when the tomb was revealed, pooh-poohed the suggestion that this was the tomb of Jesus' family, claiming that the names inscribed on the ossuaries were extremely common during Jesus' time and could have been found in that combination in many families, especially in a burial cave where generations of relatives found their final resting place. He subsequently consigned the ossuaries to a shelf in an antiquities storeroom in the Jerusalem hinterlands, where they have been collecting dust until today. (Interestingly, one of the ossuaries was evidently 'lifted' and sold on the antiquites market, where it was purchased by a well-known Israeli collector named Oded Golan. A few years ago he publicized his ossuary as belonging to the brother of Jesus and was subsequently indicted for forgery. Hmmm...)
If you walked down the street in Jerusalem two thousand years ago and called out, "Hey, Jesus!" how many people would have answered? Statistical analysis of the chances of all those names appearing together was done by a Canadian professor, who based his calculations on a book called "The Lexicon of Jewish Names" by a scholar named Tal Ilan, who appeared in the movie. A world-renown expert on second temple period Jewish history who has taught at Harvard and who is a member of the faculty of a German university, I once knew her as Tali, back when she did the tour guides' course in the class parallel to mine in 1985. She was extremely self-confindent, both intellectually and physically; I have a clear memory of her taking her newborn infant along on hikes and nursing him while she walked precariously along the edge of a cliff. Oddly, they didn't mention that in the movie.
Another local celebrity who was interviewed for the film was the eleven year-old boy who actually discovered the tomb, now a 38 year-old Israeli living in Paris, who was flown back to Israel for twenty-four hours just to tell his story to the cameras. A few tidbits that probaby would up on the floor of the editing room made their way to an article on the NRG Maariv internet news site. The kid, Uriel Maoz, claims to have recognized the triangle and the circle over the entrance to the tomb immediately. "The moment I saw the sign I ran home to my mother and cried, "Mom, I found a burial cave from the second temple period!" Was this a sign of yet another great Jewish genius, or just a regular kid who picked up a little archaeology from helping his mother study for her exams to pass the tour guides' course?
Junior and his mother tried to contact an archaeologist, but being Friday afternoon no one answered the phone at the Antiquities Authority. Maoz says, "A few hours later, I saw kids on the lot opposite our house playing with some skulls and bones. I told my father that they had taken them from the cave. My father took a giant garbage bag and we went from house to house, door to door, and we collected everything they found. My Dad explained to them that this was a desecration of the sanctity of the dead and of graves. After we
collected the bones we put the bag in a storage shed under the steps in our garden....If the premise of the movie is correct - and this is really the tomb of Jesus - then Jesus' bones were in my backyard."
His mother is still evidently a bit possesive about the tomb, because Maoz related that one day recently, on her way to the supermarket, Mrs. Maoz walked by the concrete slab the contractors poured over the tomb way back when and noticed all manner of photographers and curious people peering into a hole dug into it. "That's my son's tomb!" she called out to them. "What are you talking about, lady?" they yelled back. "He found it over twenty years ago. What are you all doing here?" Uriel admitted that it would always be his cave, or as they call it in his family, "his grave."
What is the real reason this discovery never made the headlines until now? If you think it's because Christians are afraid of evidence that contradicts the New Testament, think again. In a discussion on the question held at the most recent meeting of my women guides' professional group our conclusion was unanimous: it was the contractors. When the ossuaries were dusted off and those famous names were revealed the builders no doubt began to sweat profusely. If Jesus' tomb was discovered here they could kiss their buildings and their profits goodbye. Jesus, shmesus - call in the concrete pumps and send this tomb back to kingdom come where it belongs, no matter who's buried there. Hey, what a great sales pitch: Hurry! One apartment left with garden over tomb of ancient rabbi - at a bargain price!
The tomb was discovered accidentally during construction in one of Jerusalem's satellite neighborhoods in 1980. It contained ten ossuaries (bone boxes used for secondary burial), six of which were clearly inscribed with the aforementioned names. One of the stronger arguments against the film's premise is that people from the Judaea region usually inscribed tombs with their first name and their father's name, as in this tomb, whereas Galileans used the first name and the hometown. In addition, Jesus came from a family of modest means; in all likelihood they would not have been able to afford the excavation of a family burial tomb. Even if they had one, Nazareth would seem to be the natural location for it.
Amos Kloner, the head archaeologist of the Jerusalem district when the tomb was revealed, pooh-poohed the suggestion that this was the tomb of Jesus' family, claiming that the names inscribed on the ossuaries were extremely common during Jesus' time and could have been found in that combination in many families, especially in a burial cave where generations of relatives found their final resting place. He subsequently consigned the ossuaries to a shelf in an antiquities storeroom in the Jerusalem hinterlands, where they have been collecting dust until today. (Interestingly, one of the ossuaries was evidently 'lifted' and sold on the antiquites market, where it was purchased by a well-known Israeli collector named Oded Golan. A few years ago he publicized his ossuary as belonging to the brother of Jesus and was subsequently indicted for forgery. Hmmm...)
If you walked down the street in Jerusalem two thousand years ago and called out, "Hey, Jesus!" how many people would have answered? Statistical analysis of the chances of all those names appearing together was done by a Canadian professor, who based his calculations on a book called "The Lexicon of Jewish Names" by a scholar named Tal Ilan, who appeared in the movie. A world-renown expert on second temple period Jewish history who has taught at Harvard and who is a member of the faculty of a German university, I once knew her as Tali, back when she did the tour guides' course in the class parallel to mine in 1985. She was extremely self-confindent, both intellectually and physically; I have a clear memory of her taking her newborn infant along on hikes and nursing him while she walked precariously along the edge of a cliff. Oddly, they didn't mention that in the movie.
Another local celebrity who was interviewed for the film was the eleven year-old boy who actually discovered the tomb, now a 38 year-old Israeli living in Paris, who was flown back to Israel for twenty-four hours just to tell his story to the cameras. A few tidbits that probaby would up on the floor of the editing room made their way to an article on the NRG Maariv internet news site. The kid, Uriel Maoz, claims to have recognized the triangle and the circle over the entrance to the tomb immediately. "The moment I saw the sign I ran home to my mother and cried, "Mom, I found a burial cave from the second temple period!" Was this a sign of yet another great Jewish genius, or just a regular kid who picked up a little archaeology from helping his mother study for her exams to pass the tour guides' course?
Junior and his mother tried to contact an archaeologist, but being Friday afternoon no one answered the phone at the Antiquities Authority. Maoz says, "A few hours later, I saw kids on the lot opposite our house playing with some skulls and bones. I told my father that they had taken them from the cave. My father took a giant garbage bag and we went from house to house, door to door, and we collected everything they found. My Dad explained to them that this was a desecration of the sanctity of the dead and of graves. After we
collected the bones we put the bag in a storage shed under the steps in our garden....If the premise of the movie is correct - and this is really the tomb of Jesus - then Jesus' bones were in my backyard."
His mother is still evidently a bit possesive about the tomb, because Maoz related that one day recently, on her way to the supermarket, Mrs. Maoz walked by the concrete slab the contractors poured over the tomb way back when and noticed all manner of photographers and curious people peering into a hole dug into it. "That's my son's tomb!" she called out to them. "What are you talking about, lady?" they yelled back. "He found it over twenty years ago. What are you all doing here?" Uriel admitted that it would always be his cave, or as they call it in his family, "his grave."
What is the real reason this discovery never made the headlines until now? If you think it's because Christians are afraid of evidence that contradicts the New Testament, think again. In a discussion on the question held at the most recent meeting of my women guides' professional group our conclusion was unanimous: it was the contractors. When the ossuaries were dusted off and those famous names were revealed the builders no doubt began to sweat profusely. If Jesus' tomb was discovered here they could kiss their buildings and their profits goodbye. Jesus, shmesus - call in the concrete pumps and send this tomb back to kingdom come where it belongs, no matter who's buried there. Hey, what a great sales pitch: Hurry! One apartment left with garden over tomb of ancient rabbi - at a bargain price!
Monday, March 5, 2007
Buffoonery and Courage
This past week was dotted with news about women, covering the spectrum from inspiring to nauseating. The prize for providing the easiest material for purimspiel goes to Ms. Esterina Tartman, a fairly unknown Knesset member from the right-wing, often racist Yisrael Beiteinu party - until last week. In addition to sporting a name that begs spoofing, the now infamous Tartina (as she is affectionately known by her fellow members of Knesset) stood to be appointed Minister of Tourism after Yizhak Herzog, who previously held the post, was transferred (under duress) to the Ministry of Welfare. As a professional whose livelihood is often directly affected by the policy set by the Tourism Minister, I and many of my colleagues were extremely disappointed to see Herzog's tenure in the position cut short, as he is an energetic, creative and earnest politician who had already managed to initiate significant changes in the ministry. However, I am certain that the poor and downtrodden of Israel represented by the Welfare Ministry are in far more dire need of a good bulldozer, so must of us wish him well there.
Up next for the job, according to the coalition agreement, was a member of Yisrael Beitenu and Tartman was chosen by the head of the party. Esterina fits the mold of a certain kind of Israeli politician that rubs many of us the wrong way: she has a big mouth, generous amounts of self-confidence and she frequently makes provocative (in this case racist) statements in the media to call attention to herself. Often this prototype of public figure is endowed with sophisticated street smarts but is frequently uneducated. In this case Tartman claimed to have a BA from Bar Ilan University in finance and accounting and an MBA, but a check by an Israeli journalist revealed that she had neither. In addition, due to a car accident she suffered ten years ago she was granted disability on the basis of not being able to work more than four hours a day due to her inability to concentrate. Amidst the current witchhunt for corrupt politicians Esterina didn't stand a chance, but instead of disappearing from the scene as quietly as possible she launched a biting attack on the media, accusing them of persecuting her for her political opinions. The position was finally assigned to someone else but she went down kicking and screaming. How distasteful...
In great contrast, last week the papers published the story of the revolt of the Abu Ghanem women of Ramle. Tragically, the phenomenon of family honor killings is alive and well in the Arab community of Israel. This tribal doctrine calls for the murder of a woman who has ostensibly disgraced the good name of her family by her father or brother. (The book 'Forbidden Love' paints a horrific picture of this barbaric custom even though it was publicized as a true story and ultimately revealed to be fiction.) Unbelievably, there are still many Arabs who live alongside us, in a state of law and order in the 21st century, who consider a family's reputation to be more important than the lives of its daughters. Several times a year the news reports of yet another honor killing but these crimes are almost never prosecuted because of the conspiracy of silence in the Arab communities. Not only are Arab women party to the silence, but often they, themselves, see no moral problem in this custom.
Last week the silence was broken by the women of the Abu Ghanem clan, who have lost nine women in family honor killings in the past six years. Talking on the phone, laughing at a man and turning down a match were among the excuses given by their murderers, who are usually their own brothers. Often a woman knows she is to be murdered but no one will help her. Without the cooperation of members of the community the Israeli police are virtually helpless to act - they have no witnesses, no testimony and no suspects.
This time, however, a group of over twenty women turned to the police and offered their cooperation. Arab women in Israel suffer numerous dimensions of discrimination as Arabs, as women and as Arab women; the Israeli police are not necessarily the first body to which they turn when they need assistance. However, their terrible desperation at being trapped in a cycle of cruel violence forced them to make a very dangerous and dramatic move. We can assume that their personal safely will only deteriorate in light of their cooperation with the police; in fact, this is only the first step in a long, uphill battle to eradicate this primitive, misogynistic custom. Our support of these women is often seen as unwelcome interference but we are obligated to do whatever is in our power to come to their assistance.
Up next for the job, according to the coalition agreement, was a member of Yisrael Beitenu and Tartman was chosen by the head of the party. Esterina fits the mold of a certain kind of Israeli politician that rubs many of us the wrong way: she has a big mouth, generous amounts of self-confidence and she frequently makes provocative (in this case racist) statements in the media to call attention to herself. Often this prototype of public figure is endowed with sophisticated street smarts but is frequently uneducated. In this case Tartman claimed to have a BA from Bar Ilan University in finance and accounting and an MBA, but a check by an Israeli journalist revealed that she had neither. In addition, due to a car accident she suffered ten years ago she was granted disability on the basis of not being able to work more than four hours a day due to her inability to concentrate. Amidst the current witchhunt for corrupt politicians Esterina didn't stand a chance, but instead of disappearing from the scene as quietly as possible she launched a biting attack on the media, accusing them of persecuting her for her political opinions. The position was finally assigned to someone else but she went down kicking and screaming. How distasteful...
In great contrast, last week the papers published the story of the revolt of the Abu Ghanem women of Ramle. Tragically, the phenomenon of family honor killings is alive and well in the Arab community of Israel. This tribal doctrine calls for the murder of a woman who has ostensibly disgraced the good name of her family by her father or brother. (The book 'Forbidden Love' paints a horrific picture of this barbaric custom even though it was publicized as a true story and ultimately revealed to be fiction.) Unbelievably, there are still many Arabs who live alongside us, in a state of law and order in the 21st century, who consider a family's reputation to be more important than the lives of its daughters. Several times a year the news reports of yet another honor killing but these crimes are almost never prosecuted because of the conspiracy of silence in the Arab communities. Not only are Arab women party to the silence, but often they, themselves, see no moral problem in this custom.
Last week the silence was broken by the women of the Abu Ghanem clan, who have lost nine women in family honor killings in the past six years. Talking on the phone, laughing at a man and turning down a match were among the excuses given by their murderers, who are usually their own brothers. Often a woman knows she is to be murdered but no one will help her. Without the cooperation of members of the community the Israeli police are virtually helpless to act - they have no witnesses, no testimony and no suspects.
This time, however, a group of over twenty women turned to the police and offered their cooperation. Arab women in Israel suffer numerous dimensions of discrimination as Arabs, as women and as Arab women; the Israeli police are not necessarily the first body to which they turn when they need assistance. However, their terrible desperation at being trapped in a cycle of cruel violence forced them to make a very dangerous and dramatic move. We can assume that their personal safely will only deteriorate in light of their cooperation with the police; in fact, this is only the first step in a long, uphill battle to eradicate this primitive, misogynistic custom. Our support of these women is often seen as unwelcome interference but we are obligated to do whatever is in our power to come to their assistance.
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Lesser-Known Hazards of Living in Israel
So, the news item of the week was the resignation of the national chief of police in the wake of...yes, another corruption scandal. The stories of fallen heroes here are growing tedious, so I thought I would write about something else this week.
Judging from what you see in the media, we in Israel are preoccupied mostly by questions reagarding our personal safety and the future of the Jewish people - which is true. (Other acute local issuess that are, admittedly, less newsworthy concern the decision to eat a cheeseburger on a kosher-for-passover bun at the McDonalds in downtown Jerusalem, whether to upgrade to a cell phone with an MP3 instead of buying an iPod or who to root for in the finals of the reality program 'Born To Dance.')
What the rest of the world doesn't know is that many of us who live here suffer from grave conditions that run right below the surface of our daily existence but are often undiscernable to the average tourist. I myself am deeply afflicted with two syndromes I know many of my compatriots share.
The first is an obsession with the news. Just as substance abusers enjoy a wide array of alternatives from which to infuse, the news junkie can get it from the radio playing constantly in the background, from news services that provide continuous updates via text messages to cell phones or from the endless news and current events programs broadcast 24 hours a day on television. My personal medium of choice is the newspaper, which arrives faithfully on my doorstep before I awake and provides the powerful fix I need to start the day. No one talks to me at the breakfast table because I don't respond, at least until I've read the lead stories and checked the caricature on the op-ed page. At lunch I complete the editorials and beat articles. If I'm working and I don't have time for more than a glance at the headlines, I often feel like I'm about to slide over the brink of a great abyss because I'm not on top of things.
I can't help but wonder what fuels this obsession: is it a deep need to feel educated and informed? Is it the fear that someone will ask me a question about modern Israel that I can't answer (which is my worst professional fear, after oversleeping in the morning and boring people)? In truth, I believe my news jones is fed by an anxiety I developed in camp the summer before twelfth grade. As the oldest kids in camp, we had no curfew and went to sleep whenever we felt like it. Not being much of a night person, I invariably turned in before many of the others, only to awaken the next morning and hear about all the brilliant jokes, stories, songs and soul-to-soul conversations I missed. There is nothing worse than having history pass you by, especially when you live in the midst of the greatest work-in-progress of the Jewish people in the modern age. The thought that something of importance might happen in Israel without me knowing about it is, frankly, terrifying. I can't predict what that great moment is going to be, but I damn well want to be there when it happens.
My other obsession is the neighbors, probably because our conflict with the Palestinians is such a huge obstacle in the path to Israel's future that it's hard to see anywhere beyond the next few weeks. Everywhere I look, I see them - and not just in the newspaper (btw, did anyone catch that shot of Abu Mazen, Haled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh at Mecca in their pjs? Priceless!)
I project them onto whatever I'm reading, whether it's a passage about King Herod's begrudging acceptance of and cooperation with Rome or Toni Morrison's freed slaves' struggle to put their tragic past behind them.
I can't watch a movie without transposing the story into our key. A few weeks ago I saw 'Blood Diamond,' about the terrible violence in many African countries with a wealth of natural resources and weak governments. I was very moved by the story but as I walked out of the theatre I found myself projecting our reality onto the scenario. My first thought was that the West Bank and Gaza look like paradise compared to what was portrayed in Sierra Leone. My second thought was that the neighbors are not that far away from the utter chaos that brings with it the horrifying violence we saw in the movie.
Last week I spent several days at Hadassah hospital with fund raising professionals here to learn about all of the hospital's projects first-hand. We toured the center for emergency medicine, viewed the plans for the new building, heard from doctors about their medical research and spoke with patients whose lives had been saved by the hospital staff. Beyond the immense admiration for the organization behind the hospital, my head was buzzing with ideas for a Palestinian Hadassah. Why can't the Palestinian diaspora raise money to build a similar facility? God knows, they need it - when Arafat was deathly ill he had to go to France for medical care because there isn't a single high-quality hospital in Palestine. All they need is one Henrietta Szold to get the project up and running - just think of how it could help, where it could lead! We can assist with advice, and who knows what else - it could be a bridge to peace!
But then I deflate and return to reality. I, and many other Israelis, would love to fix the Palestinians' problems for them by transforming them into wise, peace-loving neighbors anxious to create a democracy based on western values just like ours. But the truth is that they are who they are and they'll have to solve their own problems without any meddling from me and my ilk. The solutions appear nowhere in sight, but who knows? The Middle East is full of surprises. I might wake up tomorrow and find headlines about a back-channel, secret peace agreement.
So I'll keep reading that newspaper...
Judging from what you see in the media, we in Israel are preoccupied mostly by questions reagarding our personal safety and the future of the Jewish people - which is true. (Other acute local issuess that are, admittedly, less newsworthy concern the decision to eat a cheeseburger on a kosher-for-passover bun at the McDonalds in downtown Jerusalem, whether to upgrade to a cell phone with an MP3 instead of buying an iPod or who to root for in the finals of the reality program 'Born To Dance.')
What the rest of the world doesn't know is that many of us who live here suffer from grave conditions that run right below the surface of our daily existence but are often undiscernable to the average tourist. I myself am deeply afflicted with two syndromes I know many of my compatriots share.
The first is an obsession with the news. Just as substance abusers enjoy a wide array of alternatives from which to infuse, the news junkie can get it from the radio playing constantly in the background, from news services that provide continuous updates via text messages to cell phones or from the endless news and current events programs broadcast 24 hours a day on television. My personal medium of choice is the newspaper, which arrives faithfully on my doorstep before I awake and provides the powerful fix I need to start the day. No one talks to me at the breakfast table because I don't respond, at least until I've read the lead stories and checked the caricature on the op-ed page. At lunch I complete the editorials and beat articles. If I'm working and I don't have time for more than a glance at the headlines, I often feel like I'm about to slide over the brink of a great abyss because I'm not on top of things.
I can't help but wonder what fuels this obsession: is it a deep need to feel educated and informed? Is it the fear that someone will ask me a question about modern Israel that I can't answer (which is my worst professional fear, after oversleeping in the morning and boring people)? In truth, I believe my news jones is fed by an anxiety I developed in camp the summer before twelfth grade. As the oldest kids in camp, we had no curfew and went to sleep whenever we felt like it. Not being much of a night person, I invariably turned in before many of the others, only to awaken the next morning and hear about all the brilliant jokes, stories, songs and soul-to-soul conversations I missed. There is nothing worse than having history pass you by, especially when you live in the midst of the greatest work-in-progress of the Jewish people in the modern age. The thought that something of importance might happen in Israel without me knowing about it is, frankly, terrifying. I can't predict what that great moment is going to be, but I damn well want to be there when it happens.
My other obsession is the neighbors, probably because our conflict with the Palestinians is such a huge obstacle in the path to Israel's future that it's hard to see anywhere beyond the next few weeks. Everywhere I look, I see them - and not just in the newspaper (btw, did anyone catch that shot of Abu Mazen, Haled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh at Mecca in their pjs? Priceless!)
I project them onto whatever I'm reading, whether it's a passage about King Herod's begrudging acceptance of and cooperation with Rome or Toni Morrison's freed slaves' struggle to put their tragic past behind them.
I can't watch a movie without transposing the story into our key. A few weeks ago I saw 'Blood Diamond,' about the terrible violence in many African countries with a wealth of natural resources and weak governments. I was very moved by the story but as I walked out of the theatre I found myself projecting our reality onto the scenario. My first thought was that the West Bank and Gaza look like paradise compared to what was portrayed in Sierra Leone. My second thought was that the neighbors are not that far away from the utter chaos that brings with it the horrifying violence we saw in the movie.
Last week I spent several days at Hadassah hospital with fund raising professionals here to learn about all of the hospital's projects first-hand. We toured the center for emergency medicine, viewed the plans for the new building, heard from doctors about their medical research and spoke with patients whose lives had been saved by the hospital staff. Beyond the immense admiration for the organization behind the hospital, my head was buzzing with ideas for a Palestinian Hadassah. Why can't the Palestinian diaspora raise money to build a similar facility? God knows, they need it - when Arafat was deathly ill he had to go to France for medical care because there isn't a single high-quality hospital in Palestine. All they need is one Henrietta Szold to get the project up and running - just think of how it could help, where it could lead! We can assist with advice, and who knows what else - it could be a bridge to peace!
But then I deflate and return to reality. I, and many other Israelis, would love to fix the Palestinians' problems for them by transforming them into wise, peace-loving neighbors anxious to create a democracy based on western values just like ours. But the truth is that they are who they are and they'll have to solve their own problems without any meddling from me and my ilk. The solutions appear nowhere in sight, but who knows? The Middle East is full of surprises. I might wake up tomorrow and find headlines about a back-channel, secret peace agreement.
So I'll keep reading that newspaper...
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The Hullalabaloo on the Temple Mount
So,what's with the Temple Mount?
Images for which we have no nostalgia have beeen splashed across screens and front pages all over the world depicting violent clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators in Jerusalem. And why? The Moslems are frenzied over what they claim is yet another Israeli conspiracy to undermine the foundations of the Temple Mount.
The hysteria is being generated by the northern branch of the Israeli Islamic organization led by one Raed Salah. In contrast to its relatively moderate southern branch, the northern group tilts very dangerously toward Islamic extremism and harbors little affection for the state whose citizenship its members hold. Raed Salah has made the liberation of El Aktsa (aka the Temple Mount) his flagship cause and consistently casts about for molehills to transform into mountains.
In this case, the excavation work on the bridge leading up to the Mugrabi Gate of the Temple Mount proved to be a choice opportunity to stir up the masses. Although the bridge runs perpendicular to the Temple Mount and is not a supporting structure, Salah wasted no time in declaring yet another Israeli scheme to cause its collapse, conveniently invoking the ire of the entire Moslem world.
In light of some possible confusion here are some facts worth reviewing:
-the Temple Mount is a large, flat platform surrounded by four retaining walls. It was built by King Herod about two thousand years ago.
-The original hilltop was occupied by several different buildings: King Solomon's Temple (approx. 960 BCE); the rebuilt second Temple (517 BCE); Herod's Temple (18 BCE); a pagan platofrm built by the Romans (135 CE) and finally the Dome of the Rock (691 CE) and the El Aktsa Mosque (720 CE), both Moslem buildings which were briefly transformed into churches during the Crusader reign of Jerusalem (1099-1187) and which remain on the platform until today.
-Modern Israel regained control of the Temple Mount during the Six Day War, exactly 1897 years after the Temple was destroyed for the second and final time. Although the Jewish return to the Temple Mount in 1967 was an important milestone in the rebuilding of Jewish spiritual independence, a decision was made immediately after the war to leave the jurisdiction of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Moslems. Practically the Israeli leadership at the time understood the far-reaching implications any changes in the area would have, but equally important in the formulation of Israeli policy was the rabbinic directive for a complete Jewish hands-off. Our tradition, which is not an unifluential element here and is always taken into deep consideration regarding issues of a spiritual nature, says that the Temple will be rebuilt only when the messiah comes. Until that momentous era arrives not so much as a single pebble may be removed from there in preparation. In light of these considerations the jurisdiction over the entire Temple Mount was left in the hands of the Waqf, the Moslem trust, where it remains until this day. The Temple Mount was in our hands, but we gave it back.
Israel has no interest in changing the status quo to the benefit or detriment of either party. Can any rational person suggest what Israel would gain by causing the collapse of the Temple Mount? In fact, I can't think of a bigger headache. We need a collapsed mosque like we need a hole in the head, not to mention World War III, which would no doubt be soon in coming.
What's interesting to note is that in the frenetic negotiations following the collapse of the Camp David Summit in August of 2000 a discussion was held over the division of Jerusalem. Israel was prepared to cede the Temple Mount to the Palestinians, with the Western Wall remaining in Jewish Jerusalem. We asked, however, for a symbolic presence on the Temple Mount to represent the site's sanctity to the Jewish faith, a request which was flatly rejected on the grounds of historical inaccuracy. Raed Salah and various other Islamic leaders have publically proclaimed on numerous occasions that the Dome of the Rock and the El Aktsa mosque predate Jesus, Herod and Solomon. In their revised version of history the Jewish people have been conviently written out of the story and hence have no claim to the hilltop. My inclination has always been to view this laughable attempt to rewrite history as an embarrasment to the Moslem religious establishment, but clearly our Arab neighbors don't share my sense of humor. Rather, they view anything understood by Israel as truth to be a conspiracy of lies, regardless of the science, scholarship and international consensus that stand behind it. This unqualified distrust of Israel by the Arab masses (perhaps understandable to a certain extent) is, however, a powerful tool in the hands of a charismatic leader like Raed Salah and is not to be underestimated. The Arab mob can be mobilized in a very short time simply by rumor and violence often ensues, even if the hoardes aren't exactly sure why they have been called out to the streets. Rarely do those leaders take responsibility for happens next.
So what do we do - stop the bulldozers? Absolutely not. An in-depth examination of the nearly forty years the Temple Mount has been under Israeli sovereignty will show that the sanctity of the Moslem holy sites and the Temple Mount has been consistently respected and preserved . Israel has the legitimate right to make physical changes in the area around the Temple Mount in order to facilitate better access for visitors to both the Mugrabi Gate and the Southern Wall excavations. To stop the digging in order to avoid Moslem violence would be to sell the Jewish hsitoric and religious significance of the Temple Mount very cheaply.
Images for which we have no nostalgia have beeen splashed across screens and front pages all over the world depicting violent clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators in Jerusalem. And why? The Moslems are frenzied over what they claim is yet another Israeli conspiracy to undermine the foundations of the Temple Mount.
The hysteria is being generated by the northern branch of the Israeli Islamic organization led by one Raed Salah. In contrast to its relatively moderate southern branch, the northern group tilts very dangerously toward Islamic extremism and harbors little affection for the state whose citizenship its members hold. Raed Salah has made the liberation of El Aktsa (aka the Temple Mount) his flagship cause and consistently casts about for molehills to transform into mountains.
In this case, the excavation work on the bridge leading up to the Mugrabi Gate of the Temple Mount proved to be a choice opportunity to stir up the masses. Although the bridge runs perpendicular to the Temple Mount and is not a supporting structure, Salah wasted no time in declaring yet another Israeli scheme to cause its collapse, conveniently invoking the ire of the entire Moslem world.
In light of some possible confusion here are some facts worth reviewing:
-the Temple Mount is a large, flat platform surrounded by four retaining walls. It was built by King Herod about two thousand years ago.
-The original hilltop was occupied by several different buildings: King Solomon's Temple (approx. 960 BCE); the rebuilt second Temple (517 BCE); Herod's Temple (18 BCE); a pagan platofrm built by the Romans (135 CE) and finally the Dome of the Rock (691 CE) and the El Aktsa Mosque (720 CE), both Moslem buildings which were briefly transformed into churches during the Crusader reign of Jerusalem (1099-1187) and which remain on the platform until today.
-Modern Israel regained control of the Temple Mount during the Six Day War, exactly 1897 years after the Temple was destroyed for the second and final time. Although the Jewish return to the Temple Mount in 1967 was an important milestone in the rebuilding of Jewish spiritual independence, a decision was made immediately after the war to leave the jurisdiction of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Moslems. Practically the Israeli leadership at the time understood the far-reaching implications any changes in the area would have, but equally important in the formulation of Israeli policy was the rabbinic directive for a complete Jewish hands-off. Our tradition, which is not an unifluential element here and is always taken into deep consideration regarding issues of a spiritual nature, says that the Temple will be rebuilt only when the messiah comes. Until that momentous era arrives not so much as a single pebble may be removed from there in preparation. In light of these considerations the jurisdiction over the entire Temple Mount was left in the hands of the Waqf, the Moslem trust, where it remains until this day. The Temple Mount was in our hands, but we gave it back.
Israel has no interest in changing the status quo to the benefit or detriment of either party. Can any rational person suggest what Israel would gain by causing the collapse of the Temple Mount? In fact, I can't think of a bigger headache. We need a collapsed mosque like we need a hole in the head, not to mention World War III, which would no doubt be soon in coming.
What's interesting to note is that in the frenetic negotiations following the collapse of the Camp David Summit in August of 2000 a discussion was held over the division of Jerusalem. Israel was prepared to cede the Temple Mount to the Palestinians, with the Western Wall remaining in Jewish Jerusalem. We asked, however, for a symbolic presence on the Temple Mount to represent the site's sanctity to the Jewish faith, a request which was flatly rejected on the grounds of historical inaccuracy. Raed Salah and various other Islamic leaders have publically proclaimed on numerous occasions that the Dome of the Rock and the El Aktsa mosque predate Jesus, Herod and Solomon. In their revised version of history the Jewish people have been conviently written out of the story and hence have no claim to the hilltop. My inclination has always been to view this laughable attempt to rewrite history as an embarrasment to the Moslem religious establishment, but clearly our Arab neighbors don't share my sense of humor. Rather, they view anything understood by Israel as truth to be a conspiracy of lies, regardless of the science, scholarship and international consensus that stand behind it. This unqualified distrust of Israel by the Arab masses (perhaps understandable to a certain extent) is, however, a powerful tool in the hands of a charismatic leader like Raed Salah and is not to be underestimated. The Arab mob can be mobilized in a very short time simply by rumor and violence often ensues, even if the hoardes aren't exactly sure why they have been called out to the streets. Rarely do those leaders take responsibility for happens next.
So what do we do - stop the bulldozers? Absolutely not. An in-depth examination of the nearly forty years the Temple Mount has been under Israeli sovereignty will show that the sanctity of the Moslem holy sites and the Temple Mount has been consistently respected and preserved . Israel has the legitimate right to make physical changes in the area around the Temple Mount in order to facilitate better access for visitors to both the Mugrabi Gate and the Southern Wall excavations. To stop the digging in order to avoid Moslem violence would be to sell the Jewish hsitoric and religious significance of the Temple Mount very cheaply.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Political Death By French Kiss
Last week we witnessed the destruction of yet another talented and powerful Israeli male who could not keep his hands to himself. Haim Ramon, a brilliant politician and a man with a long, promising career ahead of him destroyed his reputation and his future in one impulsive moment. What was he thinking when he forced his tongue between the lips of a female soldier working in his office? Was he imagining Theodore Herzl standing on the balcony of the casino in Basel after creating the Jewish state? Was he visualizing the ingathering of the Jewish exiles in Israel? Could he see Ahmadinajad's visage grimacing toward the Holy Land? Evidently, at that same moment the Israeli Minister of Justice was preoccupied with copping a feel from a young woman who asked to be photographed with him. Is a modicum of restrain too much to ask from our leadership?
The courts thought not and convicted Ramon of an indecent sexual act, transmitting, once again, a very strong message to the citizens of Israel regarding the zero tolerance level that a self-respecting society should have towards sexual harrassment and, at the same time, sending Ramon out to pasture. Unlike Moshe Katzav, a serial sex offender and generally unimpressive individual , Ramon elicits far more sympathy from the public, probably because his indiscretion appears to be the result of an instant of extremely poor judgement rather than the symptom of a serious character defect. Most Israelis would agree that Haim Ramon is a good guy who should be reprimanded for his action, but not politically destroyed for it. The courts thought otherwise; he now bears the title of convicted sex offender. Go make a career in politics with a sign like that hanging over your chest.
The consensus amongst the pundits is that Ramon could have made this embarrassing misdeed go away simply by apologizing. If he would have approached the young woman and her lawyers and said, "I'm so sorry about what happened. It was wrong of me to kiss you like that I wish I hadn't behaved inappropriately towards you," chances were excellent that she would have accepted his apology and moved on, without filing a complaint, and that would have been the end of it. Instead, Ramon chose to fight by attempting to cast doubt on the complainant's integrity and by lying. By choosing to attack rather than admit he was at fault Ramon tied the knot of his own noose.
In the current climate of demand for culpability and responsibility following the war in Lebanon last summer, it's interesting to note that we have yet to witness one Israeli leader, political or military, admit publically that he made a mistake. Whether they believe their actions are blameless or their careers will not be served by telling the truth, the norm here is to never, no matter what, acknowledge that you erred. Even though most upstanding citizens would agree that it takes a person of virtue and character to confess a failure, the citizens of Israel expect their leaders to be paragons of perfection.
So where does that leave Haim Ramon - damned if he does, damned if he doesn't? Maybe not. He chose a ride down that old river in Egypt rather than the genuine introspection that would have lead to an apology. We're loathe to tolerate mistakes by our leaders, but if nobody died then forgiveness is always an option for the truly repentant. Consider the great King David, whose unrestrained lust for the beautiful Batsheva forced him to cynically manipulate the murder of her husband, one of his most loyal soldiers, after discovering she was pregnant with his child. Blinded by hubris, when David's despicable behavior was pointed out to him through a parable, the full weight of his ugly deed came crashing down on him. He couldn't deny it because he answered to a higher authority than the Israeli voting public; instead, he expressed his deep regret over what he had done and was ultimately forgiven.
What a shame Haim Ramon chose to be inspired not by the great leaders of Israel, but rather by his lawyers.
The courts thought not and convicted Ramon of an indecent sexual act, transmitting, once again, a very strong message to the citizens of Israel regarding the zero tolerance level that a self-respecting society should have towards sexual harrassment and, at the same time, sending Ramon out to pasture. Unlike Moshe Katzav, a serial sex offender and generally unimpressive individual , Ramon elicits far more sympathy from the public, probably because his indiscretion appears to be the result of an instant of extremely poor judgement rather than the symptom of a serious character defect. Most Israelis would agree that Haim Ramon is a good guy who should be reprimanded for his action, but not politically destroyed for it. The courts thought otherwise; he now bears the title of convicted sex offender. Go make a career in politics with a sign like that hanging over your chest.
The consensus amongst the pundits is that Ramon could have made this embarrassing misdeed go away simply by apologizing. If he would have approached the young woman and her lawyers and said, "I'm so sorry about what happened. It was wrong of me to kiss you like that I wish I hadn't behaved inappropriately towards you," chances were excellent that she would have accepted his apology and moved on, without filing a complaint, and that would have been the end of it. Instead, Ramon chose to fight by attempting to cast doubt on the complainant's integrity and by lying. By choosing to attack rather than admit he was at fault Ramon tied the knot of his own noose.
In the current climate of demand for culpability and responsibility following the war in Lebanon last summer, it's interesting to note that we have yet to witness one Israeli leader, political or military, admit publically that he made a mistake. Whether they believe their actions are blameless or their careers will not be served by telling the truth, the norm here is to never, no matter what, acknowledge that you erred. Even though most upstanding citizens would agree that it takes a person of virtue and character to confess a failure, the citizens of Israel expect their leaders to be paragons of perfection.
So where does that leave Haim Ramon - damned if he does, damned if he doesn't? Maybe not. He chose a ride down that old river in Egypt rather than the genuine introspection that would have lead to an apology. We're loathe to tolerate mistakes by our leaders, but if nobody died then forgiveness is always an option for the truly repentant. Consider the great King David, whose unrestrained lust for the beautiful Batsheva forced him to cynically manipulate the murder of her husband, one of his most loyal soldiers, after discovering she was pregnant with his child. Blinded by hubris, when David's despicable behavior was pointed out to him through a parable, the full weight of his ugly deed came crashing down on him. He couldn't deny it because he answered to a higher authority than the Israeli voting public; instead, he expressed his deep regret over what he had done and was ultimately forgiven.
What a shame Haim Ramon chose to be inspired not by the great leaders of Israel, but rather by his lawyers.
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