Sand cats come back to Israel

A rather sweeter piece of news: In Israeli zoo, newborn kittens bring sand cats back from extinction.

Mazal tov! A breed of cat that was extinct in Israel has found new life at Ramat Gan Safari Park. Rotem, a sand cat from Germany, and Sela, from Poland, are the proud purring parents of four little kittens – two boys and two girls – who were born in Israel earlier this month. 

According to Keren Or, Zoological Information Coordinator at the Ramat Gan Safari Park, the "sand cat is an extinct species in Israel, although in the world it's not extinct, it's nearly threatened." In an interview with Reuters, Or added that "here in Israel, it has been extinct because it was pushed away from the sand by other mammals." 

Sand cats are true desert cats that have a high mortality rate among newborns in captivity, according to Reuters. But these kittens are doing fine so far.

Their ears are so big! In comparison, a photo of my cat Zachary.

The yellow room and the room of death

Peter Ryley of Fat Man on a Keyboard has just written an amazing and moving post that is first of all about thirteen posts written by George Szirtes. (This is the first one: On milieu and refuge - sketch 1).  His posts are meditations on a yellow room painted by Chagall, his mother, Hungary (where his family is from), Jewishness, the Holocaust, Israel, and refuge. They are well worth reading on their own.

Peter writes, "Whenever I read his poetry, I get a feeling that each word is casting a shadow, dappled layers of meaning, which lays bare a moment in time. In the darkest corners of those shadows lurk the ghosts of the worst of the twentieth century. They are not his own experiences; they are a room that he has necessarily passed through."

Peter starts his post by recounting his impression of conversations he has had with younger people about Israel/Palestine:

I sometimes have conversations about Israel/Palestine, both online and face-to face, with younger people and they disturb me. Their support for Palestinian statehood, something I have long shared, can often be scarcely differentiated from an anti-Israel sentiment that simply assumes the inherent wickedness of the state. It isn't hatred; it is disdain. Above all, what worries me is their certainty. Doubt does not trouble them, nor do they think of Israelis as anything other than oppressors. Does it ever cross their mind that they are Jews, or that the history of the conflict is inseparable from Jewish history and experience? I don't think so. As a result, they carelessly leave an intellectual door ajar and sometimes I wonder what it is that seeps in through the crack from the room beyond.

The next part of his post discusses Szirtes' thirteen posts "on milieu and refuge." His last paragraph addresses the young people again. He refers again to the yellow room evoked by George Szirtes - that comfortable, central European, faintly Hapsburg room of the Jewish middle class that was destroyed by the Nazis forever. That room suggests another room to him.

All of which brings me back to these perfectly decent young people and the ideologues who fill them with righteous ardour. It's odd, they never seem to mention the word Jew. Instead they use hopelessly inappropriate analogies – 'colonial settler state', 'apartheid state' and the like. Anything to avoid even thinking that they are talking about Jews and that this noble cause could have anything to do with Jewish people. There is a reason for that of course. We gentiles have a room too. It is part of our history and we don't want to think about it. If we do, it might dilute certainty with ambiguity. The room isn't yellow. Sometimes it is made out of rough planks, sometimes of cement and occasionally it is constructed from neatly dressed stone placed on a picturesque mound in a beautiful northern city. This room is part of our cultural inheritance and it is intrinsically tied up with Jews. It is the room in which we kill them. And so I think I know what bothers me. It is the smell seeping through that half closed door. I can recognise what it is now. 

It's gas.

I read, "This room is part of our cultural inheritance and it is intrinsically tied up with Jews," and then slammed into "It is the room in which we kill them."

It's remarkable to read such a clear-eyed statement of reality, of the truth of all the centuries of history when non-Jews have killed Jews simply because they were Jews. I'm Jewish and I appreciate it when someone who is not Jewish sees this so clearly.

Druze on the Golan are now asking for Israeli citizenship

Some real news, highlighted by Elder of Ziyon - "The protest against Assad: The Druze on the Golan are asking for Israeli citizenship." The story is from Israel's Channel 2 news of June 21, 2012 (for the Hebrew, go to: חדשות 2 - המחאה נגד אסד: הדרוזים בגולן מבקשים אזרחות ישראלית). My translation follows:

The thirty-year old ban that the Druze majority on the Golan imposed on the residents of the villages that agreed to receive Israeli citizenship - has ended. In opposition to Assad's regime, and in order to show that it no longer rules over the villages on the Golan, the leaders of the community lifted the ban imposed on those who accepted Israeli citizenship.

... Thirty years after the Knesset decided to grant Israeli citizenships to the residents of the Golan, the ban has ended which the leaders of the community decreed against the residents who agreed to accept Israeli citizenship.

In contrast with the Druze who live in other parts of Israel, the Druze on the Golan see themselves first of all as citizens who are loyal to Syria. Therefore, the Druze sheikhs decided to place a ban on anyone who accepted Israeli citizenship - their families were shunned, they could not marry their children, and they were not honored at funerals of their loved ones.

Senior officials in Israel tried for years to put pressure on the Druze sheikhs to change their policy without any success. It took events occurring over the border, in Syria, to bring a change. In defiance of Assad's regime, Druze on the Golan are now asking to take advantage of the right that was given to them by the law and to add Israeli citizenship. This step has been taken, among other reasons, to show Assad that he does not rule any longer over the Druze villages on the Golan.

This is really a major step. There remain close ties between the Golan and the Syrian Druze, and the Golan Druze have not wanted to seek Israeli citizenship in order to ensure that those ties continue. They have also done so out of the consciousness that if they accepted Israeli citizenship, and the Golan went back to Syrian rule, they would be regarded as traitors and treated accordingly.

My first thought is - if this is how the Druze on the Golan feel - why should the Golan ever go back to Syria?

הצבע ארגמן - "The Color Purple" in Hebrew translation

By searching around a bit on the internet I discovered that "The Color Purple" has indeed already been published in Hebrew, in 1986. M. A. Orthofer of "The Literary Saloon" posted about the translation and even provides an image of the cover of the book in Hebrew, which I reproduce here.

I just checked on the website of the National Library of Israel to see if the book is found there, and indeed it is, under the catalogue number S 87 A 2447. I've ordered it and hope to look at it today when I'm in the library. It was translated into Hebrew by Shelomit Kedem (שלומית קדם). The publisher was Leduri (לדורי). 

Alice Walker refuses to have "The Color Purple" translated into Hebrew

This is no surprise, but it's still sad. Alice Walker refuses to authorize the publication of a Hebrew translation of her book "The Color Purple" because "Israel is guilty of apartheid." (For more on her views about Israel, Zionism, and Jewish self-determination, see my posts on her - Alice Walker).

Her opposition may not, in fact, prohibit the book from being published in Hebrew. Haaretz reports:

It was not clear when Yediot Books, an imprint of the daily Yediot Achronot newspaper, made the request, or whether Walker could in fact stop translation of the book. At least one version of the book has already appeared in Hebrew translation, in the 1980s.

The letter she wrote to Yediot Books refusing to let her book be published was posted on the PACBI website. Apparently when the book was made into a movie, the question arose as to whether it should be shown in South Africa, during the years of apartheid. She decided that it shouldn't be because "there was a civil society movement of BDS aimed at changing South Africa’s apartheid policies and, in fact, transforming the government." Walker is convinced that Israel is worse than both apartheid-era South Africa and the segregated South in which she grew up, particularly in how Israel treats the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and in how Arab citizens of Israel are treated.

I cannot speak to what it felt like to grow up in the segregated South as an African-American. I am white, and grew up in Massachusetts. My only taste of segregation was when I visited my grandparents in Washington, DC. What disturbed me was not the visible signs of segregation (for example, water fountains marked separately for "white" and "colored"), because I didn't see them, and they might have already been taken down by the time I was visiting. What disturbed me were the casual racist attitudes I encountered. And it's not as if there was no racism in the north - I lived in the Boston area throughout the period when the federal courts decided that the Boston schools should be integrated through busing. The courts did this because the Boston School Committee steadfastly refused to integrate the schools. It had members who engaged in the crudest racist demagoguery.

Despite what Israeli government spokespeople will tell you, the position of Israeli Arab citizens is not equal to that of Jews. As far as I can tell, the situation is quite mixed. Israeli Arab towns and villages suffer from decades of neglect by the government - the infrastructure in most of them is decidedly inferior to that in mostly Jewish cities and towns. Because most Israeli Arabs do not serve in the IDF, they have a great deal of difficulty in finding jobs in areas of the economy where IDF service is required. (Druze and Circassians are drafted into the IDF, and many Bedouin volunteer, but very few other Arab men serve in the IDF).

From what I can tell, the situation is improving slowly - the government is now running a program to encourage Jewish employers to hire Arab university graduates. There have been advertisements on the radio (and television also, I assume) urging Jewish employers to consider Arab applicants, and the government is also given monetary incentives to employers who hire Arab graduates. Arab Israelis go to colleges and universities (for example, the local college in Safed has a majority of Arab students, probably because of the large Arab population in the Galilee, where Safed is located). Hebrew University, which I am most familiar with, has Arab students - I don't know what percentage of the student population they are, but they are certainly visible on campus.

I do not think it is accurate to describe the situation of Arabs within Israel as "apartheid," or even "segregated" - I think it is accurate to say that they suffer from some discriminatory government policies and from widespread suspicion of them by Israeli Jews, which can lead to discrimination in employment or housing. The situation is hardly ideal, but it is not as bad as the segregated South or apartheid South Africa.

As for the description of the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank as "apartheid." I assume that is meant is the existence of separate, government-built infrastructure for Jews, including separate communities and roads. For example, Rte. 443 goes from Jerusalem to Modi'in through the occupied West Bank. There are parts of 443 that Palestinians are not permitted to drive on, for security reasons. (Israeli cars and cars belonging to West Bank Palestinians have different-colored license plates, so it's easy to tell - the Israeli ones are issued by the Israeli government, and I assume the Palestinian ones are issued by the Palestinian Authority). Is this apartheid? It definitely makes me feel uncomfortable, and I try not to drive on 443.

When I was first living in Israel in the late 1980s, as a graduate student, there were a lot fewer Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and there were no separate roads built to get to the settlements. If you wanted to ge to the Gush Etzion settlements, close to Bethlehem, you had to drive on roads that went through Palestinian towns. With the outbreak of the first intifada in December 1987, this became increasingly dangerous. I don't know when exactly the separate roads started to be built - the second intifada, which started in 2000, might have been the real impetus for the construction of separate roads, because it was so much bloodier than the first intifada.

In my opinion, the situation in the West Bank is getting close to apartheid, in the sense of government-imposed separation and favoring of one group (Israeli settlements) over another (Palestinians). This is one of the many reasons that I favor Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty (unlike the partial control given to the Palestinian Authority in certain parts of the West Bank). I think that some of the settlements should become part of sovereign Israel, while others will remain under Palestinian state control - in other words, returning to the borders as of June 4, 1967, "with land swaps," as President Obama put it.

Is any of this relevant to whether Alice Walker's book should be published in Hebrew? I think that she should davka publish it in Hebrew, with a forward explaining her current political views. The book is very powerful, and I think that it could be influential, with sufficient publicity - not only with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to the current disgraceful treatment of African refugees in Israel. If she refuses to publish it in Hebrew, she's taking herself out of any anti-racist and pro-peace movement in Israel, and that seems like a complete waste.

Racism poisons Israeli society

Good article from Shiraz Socialist on how Racism poisons Israeli society.

“Garbage”. “Poison”. “Cancer”. These are some of the words used by Israeli politicians to describe African migrants in the last month, which has seen racist riots, assaults and firebombings in working-class neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv, encouraged and partly orchestrated by the “mainstream” right. 

The real cancer in Israeli society is racism, running riot as Israel entrenches its domination over the Palestinians, Israeli society is further militarised and brutalised, and Israeli politics shifts further and further to the right. 

To give a flavour of the kind of things being said about migrants and refugees, one Knesset member (MK, like MP), Aryeh Eldad has argued that “Anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot— a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel’s border — shot.” He describes people who oppose such a policy as “bleeding hearts”. 

Eldad is a member of a small nationalist party. But politicians from the government party Likud were instrumental in sparking the riots. Meanwhile the government has refused to condemn attacks on Africans and instead used them as an excuse to step up its anti-migrant agenda. This includes 

• a new law allowing refugees to be jailed for three years, and those who help them illegally to be jailed for up to 15 years; • seeking to immediately deport all refugees from South Sudan, with raids across Israel since the start of June, on the spurious pretext that now it has separated from Sudan it is safe (ironically for the Israeli right, this will hardly lessen the number of refugees in Israel, since the vast majority come from Sudan and Eritrea, to which they cannot legally be returned); • building a 150-mile fence along the border with Egypt; • building a giant detention centre, with accommodation made out of cargo crates, in the Negev desert. 

Naturally such measures will — in addition to directly producing a lot of death and suffering — boost racism and lead to further attacks on those who remain in the cities (and probably black Jewish Israelis — this has already happened in at least one case).
There are 60,000 African migrants in Israel, out of a population of almost 8 million. Yet anti-African racism is even more widespread than anti-Arab racism, and seems to be rapidly becoming a new cutting edge for political reaction in Israel. Likud MK Miri Regev described African migrants as “a cancer in our body” — and one poll suggests just over half of Jewish Israelis agree with her. One third sympathise with the recent attacks. Even among Arab Israelis, 23 percent sympathise with the attacks, though “only” 19 percent agree with the “cancer” description. 

Left-leaning and secular Israelis are much less likely to hold anti-African views. But no large political organisation has spoken out in defence of migrants. The Israeli Labor Party is typically speaking out of both sides of its mouth, condemning (in the words of its leader Shelly Yachimovich) “inflammatory and shocking racial incitement against foreigners” but also saying that “the government has failed… and let the slums be flooded by migrant workers and refugees, thereby helping to kindle wild passions” and asserting the need to “protect the country from facing a huge mass of migrant workers”. It has set up a “panel of experts” on the issue, headed by a former head of the Israeli national police’s serious crime department. The Histadrut union federation seems to have remained quiet.....

This is an article cross-posted from the Workers Liberty website.  The Alliance for Workers Liberty is a small far-left wing party in Britain that, unlike the other far-left-wing parties and organizations in Britain, actually supports Israel and a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This article reflects accurately what is happening in Israeli society today.

Yom ha-Atzmaut

Israeli flag hanging from my mirpeset (porch)

On Wednesday night, as I wrote in my last post, I was visiting friends in Tzur Hadassah and spent the end of Yom ha-Zikaron with them.

Yom ha-Atzmaut officially begins with a special national ceremony at 8:00 pm - the lighting of 12 torches at Har Herzl in Jerusalem. I watched part of the ceremony with my friends, something I hadn't done before during my previous visits to Israel. It was interesting. Apparently, every year there is a different theme and the organizers choose people connected to that theme to light the torches. The theme this year was water, so people from organizations that have something to do with water (like Mekorot, the national water carrier) or activists from groups that work for clean water (like the Society for the Protection of Nature) were chosen. Each person was introduced, then stepped forward, said a few words ending with "to the splendor of the state of Israel" (לתפארת מדינת ישראל), and then lit the torch.

After watching the torch-lighting, we went to the center of Tzur Hadassah and encountered the popular celebration of the day - complete with children spraying each other with shaving cream (fortunately not aiming mostly at adults), people wearing blinking glasses, headdresses, and even earrings, and holding enormous plastic hammers. (I remember, many years ago on Yom ha-Atzmaut going out to the center of town in Jerusalem and buying little plastic hammers that made a boink sound when you hit someone with them - they are apparently now passé, I didn't see any in Tzur Hadassah). There was entertainment - music and dance - and lots of people milling around. After a while the dance performances stopped, and there was another torch-lighting ceremony, this time by local people in education. And immediately afterward, fireworks!

 Little birds in the garden of my apartment building.

The next morning I got up relatively late and lazed around and took some photos of my garden.

Some of the beautiful roses in the garden.

Around 11 am I went to see other friends to have brunch with them on their porch. One of the great Israeli traditions on Yom ha-Atzmaut is to go out into the country and have a barbecue (or a mangal), but we didn't do that - we had bagels & lox.

Another traditional activity is a flyby by Israeli Air Force planes - we saw some big helicopters flying over the President's house (where there was a ceremony honoring the 100 best soldiers in the army), a formation of five planes together, and then some time later, a formation of four planes with exhaust trails making big circles in the sky (I didn't get any photos of them).

Three military helicopters flying over the President's Residence at the time of a ceremony honoring outstanding Israeli soldiers.

Five Israeli Air Force planes flying in formation over the skies of Jerusalem.

Then, later in the afternoon, we went out for our own visit to the countryside, for a hike and not a mangal. We went to a place called Hirbet Madras, which has several archaeological sites from the Second Temple period - first century BCE and CE, and into the early 2nd century. Below are photos of this beautiful area of the country and some of the archaeological sites.

Foothills of the Judean Hills, near Givat Yeshayahu, in the Adullam Park.

Looking across the Green Line, towards a large Jewish town/settlement, I don't know which one. The Green Line refers to the border between Israeli-held and Jordanian held areas of Palestine at the end of the 1948 War. Jordan named the area they occupied the West Bank (since Jordan was mostly on the east bank of the Jordan River, this was a way to integrate it into Jordan). In 1967 Israel conquered the West Bank.

Fig tree growing at the bottom of the entrance to caves where Jews hid from the Romans during the Bar Kochba revolt in the second century CE.

"Pyramid" over a Jewish burial cave, probably from the first century BC or CE

Cutting hay in the fields near Tzafririm.

The moshav of Zafririm.

Grasses drying in the late spring heat.

Looking towards fields from the Adullam Park.

Inside Jewish tomb from the end of the first century CE - on the right is an ossuary and its cover. An ossuary is a stone box where the bones were put a year after the burial in the cave, after the flesh had fallen off the bones.

Entrance of the Jewish burial cave - notice the round stone, which was rolled in front of the cave after burial. It was destroyed by vandals 15 years ago and recently restored.

Yom ha-Zikaron - Day of Remembrance

The day before Independence Day is Yom ha-Zikaron (יום הזיכרון) - Israel's day of remembrance for those who died in wars or terrorist attacks. It's a very somber day, in what felt like a more personal way than Yom ha-Shoah, which happened the previous week on Thursday. Beginning a few days beforehand, Israeli radio and television stations started to broadcast stories about fallen soldiers and those who died in terrorist attacks. On the day itself, that is all that was broadcast. I usually listen to Reshet Bet, which is the news station of Israel Radio (something like NPR in the US but more closely tied to the government), and from Tuesday afternoon onwards and throughout Wednesday they broadcast a series of stories about individuals and groups who had died, and interviewed survivors of various battles from the War of Independence onward, as well as families who had a relative who had died in battle or in a terrorist attack, and survivors of terrorist attacks. Sometimes I had to turn off the radio because it was simply too sad.

Yom ha-Zikaron began on Tuesday evening with a siren at 8:00 p.m., lasting for one minute. Immediately afterwards the official remembrance ceremony began at the Kotel (Western Wall). President Peres spoke, and I think Netanyahu did also. The El Malei Rahamim (God, full of compassion) prayer, with its mournful tune, was sung, as it always is during the remembrance of the dead.

The next morning when I got up I listened to more stories and then went out to do some shopping. As I was standing on Emek Refaim St. the morning siren went off at 11:00 a.m. Everything stopped - the cars in the street, pedestrians, people on bicycles. The cars stopped and the drivers got out and stood next to them. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks and from what I could see most people were bowing their heads. Oddly enough, two people continued - one a pedestrian, who was walking on the side of the street opposite from me. Then a motorbike appeared and kept weaving around all of the stopped cars as well as a bus and a big truck, and then disappearing north up the street. It's very unusual for that to happen, as far as I know, at least among most Israeli Jews - Arabs generally don't stop for the siren, nor do anti-Zionist haredi Jews, who don't respect the official celebration or commemorative days of the state, since they don't recognize its legitimacy. Nonetheless, it was very eerie to see all the people just stopped, without the usual traffic sounds, and the loud siren in our ears.

In the afternoon I went with a friend to Tzur Hadassah, which is a small community in the Judean hills not far from Jerusalem. I spent the evening with them, first celebrating their son's sixth birthday, and then going to a special service for the end of Yom ha-Zikaron. It was held at the house of Rabbi Levi Cooper, who is the rabbi of the small Orthodox synagogue Ha-Tzur ve-ha-Tzohar (the link is to an article in Hebrew on Ynet). The service is based on one written for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel for Yom Ha-Atzmaut, but it had definitely had some non-traditional aspects. We began by singing sad songs, which was followed by a brief video interview of the widow of a soldier who had died in the second Lebanon War in 2006 - he threw himself on a grenade to save the lives of his men. The songs then became happier as we approached Yom ha-Atzmaut. This part of the service ended with the recital of several psalms. For the first one, each congregant, first the men and then the women, recited the verses in turn. (Since this is an Orthodox shul, I hadn't expected the women to be asked!). Then the rabbi blew the shofar, and began the evening service (Ma'ariv). Prayers were sung with tunes from celebratory Israeli songs. It was a very moving service. I hadn't known what to expect at all, since I've never been to one of these services.

Israeli Conservative Movement finally approves ordination of gay rabbis

Finally - the Israeli Conservative Movement approves ordination of gay rabbis

Israel's Masorti (Conservative) Movement decided to approve the ordination of homosexual rabbis, in a dramatic vote on Thursday. The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, affiliated with the movement, will admit gay and lesbian students for training as spiritual leaders as of the upcoming school year.

In doing so the Israeli Conservative Movement is joining the American branch of the movement, whose rabbinical seminaries have been admitting gay students for some years.

The question whether or not to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis has been rattling the Conservative Movement in Israel and the U.S. for the past decade. Unlike the Reform movement that took to the question with ease, deciding firmly on the acceptance of gay rabbis. The Conservative Movement, whose rabbis see themselves bound to Jewish law, has been caught up in heated debate over the subject.

Years of discussion led to two contradictory religious rulings in 2006, one requiring the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and another banning any such act. The two rabbinical seminaries affiliated with the movement in the U.S. move the ruling allowing the ordination, while the seminaries in Jerusalem and Buenos Aires adopted the ban on ordination. The issue nearly caused a rift in the movement.

The debate continued to wage at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, with two female rabbis quitting the institute, one in opposition to the ordination of gay rabbis; the other over the hesitation shown by the organization in accepting gay and lesbian students into its ranks.

I don't know who the rabbi was who quit over the hesitation of Schechter to ordain openly gay students, but I think the rabbi who resigned was Einat Ramon, who opposed the ordination of openly gay and lesbian students, and who even thought that there was no place for gay and lesbian Jews in the Masorti movement in Israel.

On Thursday, the institute’s general council held another vote on the subject. Out of the 18 rabbis that attended, all voted to admit homosexual students, with one rabbi abstaining.

Rabbi Mauricio Balter, President of the Israeli Conservative Movement Rabbinical Assembly expressed his support of the move.

“I see it as a very important development in Jewish law,” Rabbi Balter told Haaretz, adding: “It is the right thing to do. We were all made in the image of God, and as such we are all made equal. For me this is a very important value. I always said we should admit gay and lesbians into our ranks.”

“I’m glad we had the vote and that it went the way it did,” Rabbi Balter continued. “The decision to hold a vote was correct as can be seen by the fact that there wasn’t a single dissenting vote,” he said....

People working at the seminary admitted that over the years, members of the American Conservative Movement have been applying pressure to accept gay and lesbian students, as the American seminaries have been doing for some years now.

The institute also stressed that the decision was mostly a formality since it had never checked for the sexual orientation of its applicants.

When Einat Ramon was dean of the rabbinical school, I have my doubts that Schechter didn't check people's sexual orientation. Her opposition to the ordination of gay and lesbian students was loud and clear. When she was dean, in 2007, she wrote in an article in the Washington Jewish Week (April 12, 2007):

As dean of the Schechter (Masorti) Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem, I recently announced my decision to accept only students who believe in the importance of the intimate relationship between a man and a woman in the confines of the Jewish institution of marriage and to serve, to the best of their ability, as role models in that regard.

Ynet also reports about the policy statement she made in March, 2007, forbidding the ordination of openly gay students:

Rabbi Einat Ramon, Dean of the Conservative Movement's Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem, announced that there will be no change in the admissions policy of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in response to a recent decision by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) of the Rabbinical Assembly in New York that would permit the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian rabbis and pave the way for the sanctification of same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The CJLS, the Conservative Movement's North American halachic authority, voted to endorse two proposals on this issue in December 2006: The decision that ordination of practicing gay and lesbian rabbis is not permitted by Jewish Law (Rabbi Joel Roth,), and the decision permitting the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian rabbis (Rabbi Elliot Dorff and two colleagues).

Since Conservative Judaism is a pluralistic movement, when the CJLS votes to approve two conflicting opinions in this way, each local rabbi is authorized to choose which opinion to follow.

Although the Israel branch of the Conservative Movement has long asserted its independence in matters of Jewish Law, Rabbi Ramon felt that in light of the discussions in North America generated by the split CJLS decision, it was important to clarify the policy of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary.

In doing so, she was acting on the authority vested in her by the school's Executive Committee, chaired by Rabbi Hanan Alexander, Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at the University of Haifa. In upholding the status quo, Ramon is in agreement with Rabbi Roth's opinion, which was also endorsed by Rabbi David Golinkin, President and Professor of Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

In a position paper that Rabbi Ramon distributed to the Executive Committee, she called attention to the historic centrality of heterosexual marriage in Jewish life.

“Jewish theology regards the union between a man a woman who are sexually and emotionally different from one another as a complementary covenant of friendship and intimacy, which forms the basis for procreation and childrearing. This is why Jewish law has so fervently opposed sexual relations between members of the same sex”, she explained, “and why the heterosexual family has played such a vital role throughout the ages in the transmission of Jewish values and the survival of the Jewish people.”

"I have great respect for Conservative rabbis who have chosen to follow a different opinion," said Rabbi Ramon, "and for the Reform Movement in Judaism which has long admitted candidates to its rabbinical schools who are practicing gays and lesbians or who favor same-sex commitment ceremonies. However, Jewish Law has traditionally prohibited homosexuality and only sanctifies sexual relations between members of the opposite sex."

I wonder if Rabbi Golinkin (with whom I studied Talmud in the late 1980s at Midreshet Yerushalayim, housed at Schechter) has changed his mind, or if he was the one person who voted to abstain in the vote that just happened this last Thursday.

In an article in the Forward, December 7, 2009, "Uncertain Territory: Conservative Movement's Pioneering Gay Rabbinical Students Tread Carefully in Israel," two students from JTS are quoted about their nervousness at having to go to Schechter for their third year of rabbinical studies.

Chesir-Teran, a former attorney who entered the seminary at the age of 36, recalled one meeting that he, Weininger and Nevins had in New York with Rabbi Einat Ramon, then dean of Machon Schechter’s Rabbinical School. Upon being assured gay students would be treated equally when they came to Schechter, Chesir-Teran said he told Ramon, “I’m assuming that means we’re going to be allowed to lead services and read from the Torah like everyone else,” Her answer, he recalled, was, “I don’t know. I have to get back to you.”

Ramon later confirmed in an email to Nevins that the gay students would, indeed, be allowed to do so. But the equivocation, said Chesir-Teran, was another “red flag” that made him leery about going there.

Ramon’s public pronouncements against gay ordination also stoked the two students’ concerns. In a Washington Jewish Week opinion piece shortly after the committee’s historic vote, Ramon, explaining her opposition to the change, avowed, “Judaism has always been clear and unambivalent toward the centrality of the heterosexual family.” And in a September 2007 policy statement, Ramon wrote, “If we permit [gay marriage and ordination of gay rabbis], we should, in all intellectual fairness, permit also all other forms of prohibited sexual activity and allow the marriage of brothers to their sisters.”

Ramon, who still teaches at Schechter, left her position as dean this past September. And though no one claims the move was connected to her pronouncements on gay ordination, supporters of the historic change say Ramon’s departure has eased the atmosphere for gay and lesbian students at Schechter considerably.

Ramon declined to comment for this article. “I have written and said what I had to say,” she told the Forward.

Nevertheless, during her tenure, the relationship between the two schools was sometimes strained. For example, Schechter put its foot down in March 2008, when several JTS students studying there sought to mark the one-year anniversary of the change in JTS’s admissions policy. The students invited Yonatan Gher, then the incoming director of the gay community center Jerusalem Open House, to speak about his experience as a gay man in the Israeli Conservative movement. But after a dispute with Ramon and others in the administration, the students were forced to hold the event off campus.

Nevins cringed when asked about this event. “That was an incident where no one was at their best,” he acknowledged. “It was a very painful moment.”

Ynet wrote about the March 2008 incident:

A group of 10 visiting American rabbinical students studying at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies (SIJS) in Jerusalem asked to hold a special event marking the one-year anniversary of the groundbreaking decision by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement's flagship rabbinic school in New York, to accept gay and lesbian rabbinical and cantorial students.

Israeli students at the school objected, however, noting that holding such an event would contradict a halachic ruling stipulated by the Conservative movement in Israel. Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon, dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, met with the students and asked that the event also be sensitive to the Israeli Conservative movement’s point of view.

The American students refused, however, and ultimately a decision was reached to hold the event outside the school. Ramon assured the students that no other school activities would take place at the same time.

The anniversary ceremony eventually took place last Wednesday at the Valley of Rehavya in Jerusalem, and included not only the American students but some of their Israeli counterparts as well. Also attending the event were the director-general of the Jerusalem Open House For Pride and Tolerance, and member of Kehillat Tiferet Shalom, affiliated with the Masorti movement, Yonatan Gher, who spoke about the unique problems faced by Conservative gays and lesbians.

Gher viewed the Schechter’s Institute’s insistence in presenting both the viewpoints of the American and Israeli contingents of the conservative movement during the ceremony as utterly preposterous. “`Would one invite the (vehemently anti-Zionist) Satmar Hasidism to a ceremony marking Israel’s 60th anniversary?” he mused.

Some, however, harbor a far more positive view of the compromise offered by the institute.

“The Schechter Institute, its leadership and most of its student body adamantly object, purely from a halachic point of view, to the ordination of gays and lesbians,” said Dubi Hayun, one of the teachers at the school. “The American students' request is thus utterly disrespectful. It is tantamount to coming to a vegetarian’s home and eating a big, fat steak.”

Hayun also stated that he has nothing against gays and lesbians, and objects to their ordination purely from a halachic point of view. “Gays should, and must, receive equal rights from the state, it is wrong not to do so. However, one cannot circumvent halacha, or Jewish law, as painful as that decision may be.”

The SIJS noted put out a press release stating that “the institute decided to grant equal forum to the perspectives prevalent within the Conservative movement in the true spirit of the school, and our Jewish sages who respected each other’s rulings and opinions in spite of conflicts and disagreements.

"The Schechter Institute wants to provide a warm and welcoming environment for all of its students, but also adheres to the moral-halachic principle of 'a person should not deviate from the set ways of a place because of argument' (Mishna Pesachim 4:1). This means that one is obligated to respect the religious customs of a place that hosts him in order to preserve peace and harmony.”

Although Schechter has now voted to ordain gay students, I wonder if there will still be problems with faculty members or fellow students who still oppose it. (Although I suppose the same issue might have arisen at the other rabbinical schools that have begun to admit gay students - JTS and the Ziegler School in Los Angeles).

In any case - Kol ha-Kavod!

More on Günter Grass

The invaluable website Sign and Sight, which is unfortunately closing down, has a very good survey of the various responses to Grass's revelation in 2006 that he had served in the Waffen-SS in 1944-45, when he was 17. One very interesting response is from Rudolf Ungvary in a Hungarian newspaper, who mentions Grass's lack of condemnation of Ahmadinejad's attacks upon Israel at that time:

Hungary - Elet es Irodalom. Rudolf Ungvary is critical of Günter Grass, who blinded out the every day persecution of Jews in the 1940s and refuses to condemn contemporary dictators today. "Before 1945, it was clear to all contemporaries of Grass – and not just the members of the SS – that there were Nuremberg Laws, that many Jews were disappearing. They heard clearly how Hitler hollered out his speeches. They knew that only representatives of one political camp were allowed to express their opinions. Was that not enough to wish for a defeat of fascism (independently of whether one had volunteered to be member of the party or a military organisation)?... Grass condemned America but had nothing to say to the threats of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Prior to 1945, he could know that something terrible was happening to the German Jews. And even now, he must be aware of what the Iranian president is demanding, namely that Israel be erased from the map of the world."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CiF Watch has a good article about Grass, and they put up a incriminating document from 1945 - a registration form as a POW which testifies to his service in the Waffen-SS.

Under "branch of service" it lists W-SS (Waffen-SS), with the date 10-11-1944. Above that, as "unit," it lists SS-Pz-Div. Frundsberg - SS Tank Division Frundsberg.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Segev interviewed Grass and wrote an article about him in Haaretz in 2006 - "The German who needed a fig-leaf." In this interview Grass commits quite a howler:

"Also. But the madness and the crime were not expressed only in the Holocaust and did not stop at the end of the war. Of eight million German soldiers who were captured by the Russians, perhaps two million survived and all the rest were liquidated. There were about 14 million refugees in Germany; half the country went directly from Nazi tyranny to communist tyranny. I am not saying this to diminish the gravity of the crime against the Jews, but the Holocaust was not the only crime. We bear responsibility for the Nazis' crimes. But the crimes inflicted serious disasters on the Germans and thus they became victims."

As has been made clear by many writers, three million German soldiers were taken prisoner by the Russians, and about one million died. The Germans, on the other hand, murdered three million Russian prisoners of war. In this paragraph Grass is doing his best to present the Germans as equal victims with the Jews.

Segev was just interviewed by Der Spiegel, the German magazine, about Grass, and has some interesting things to say about him.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What was your first impression when you read Günter Grass's poem?
 

Segev: That Günter Grass is more concerned about his own silence than, as he claims, the future of humanity. He's acting as if he is saying something that nobody else has said. I find it a little pathetic when he writes "my silence." I believe he is still thinking about his SS silence.

 SPIEGEL ONLINE: You're referring to the fact that Grass first revealed the fact that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS in his 2006 autobiography "Peeling the Onion". But what he means this time is another silence: the silence about Israel's nuclear policy.

Segev: But this silence doesn't exist. The whole world is talking about it -- even in Israel. That's why my second reaction to the poem was that Günter Grass has no clue about Iran, nuclear weapons or strategy. He's acting as if he had a conversation yesterday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu -- or with both.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is being discussed in Israel about the possibility of an attack on Iran?

Segev: Former Mossad director Meir Dagan, for example, shares the same opinion as Günter Grass. He is also opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran. He talks about it almost every day. There is a very lively discussion about this issue in Israel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Grass also names a reason for his silence: the threat of being accused of anti-Semitism.

Segev: Meir Dagan has never been accused by anyone in Israel of being an anti-Semite. And it has been a long time since people in Germany were not able to criticize Israel -- even if some in the Israeli government might regret that fact. Grass's argumentation is very apolitical. If Dagan were to publish a poem, I would find it just as embarrassing as when Grass publishes a nuclear analysis. I don't think one can take it very seriously. I would have preferred it if he had saved his "last ink," as he puts it, for a beautiful novel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Grass writes that the Iranian people are at risk of being annihilated by a nuclear strike.

Segev: I do not understand at all how he came up with this idea. He is placing Israel and Iran on the same level. But the difference is that Israel, in contrast to Iran, has never declared that it wants to wipe some country off the map, whereas Iran promises day in, day out, that it wants to eliminate Israel. So what is this stuff about the annihilation of the Iranian people supposed to mean?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you saying that Grass is twisting the facts?

Segev: So far, the talk has only been of targeted Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities -- not a nuclear attack against the entire country. 

 SPIEGEL ONLINE: It wasn't so long ago that you interviewed Günter Grass for an Israeli newspaper. You later defended him when he was accused of equating the dead German Wehrmacht soldiers with those killed in the Holocaust.

Segev: The whole scandal was based on a misunderstanding. Grass never compared the Nazi crimes to German suffering. He is truly a great writer, but being a great writer doesn't mean that he also understands nuclear strategy. Besides, the problem cannot just be limited to Israel: A nuclear Iran would be dangerous for the entire world. Incidentally, I personally believe that most Israelis would prefer to see the US, rather than Israel, take action against Iran. And it is not as if there is incitement against Iran in Israel. There is even a peace campaign on Facebook. President Shimon Peres even greeted the Iranian people on television on the occasion of the Persian new year. There is in no way enmity towards the Iranian people. Nevertheless, in Israel there is still a kind of fear of (another) Holocaust. That is all much more serious than the question of whether Günter Grass should remain silent or not.

Interview conducted by Sebastian Hammelehle.

Günter Grass's wretched poem

I'm now finally reading Günter Grass's wretched poem itself, in English translation, kindly provided by the Atlantic. This is what the translator wrote about it:

His poem, "What Must Be Said," is overtly and boldly political. It is not exactly the prettiest prose in its original German, and the English doesn't read much better. Translating it below, I've tried to untangle some of the needlessly Teutonic constructions where it doesn't undo the deliberately winding and parenthetical tone too much. Even more concise German can sound circuitous to an English ear, but Grass's writing here is an extreme example. The poem is, from a purely communicative standpoint, a relatively inefficient denunciation - akin to writing up a paragraph of solid reasoning and then cutting it up and sticking little bits in fortune cookies.

Following are my comments on some of the poem:

It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people--
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation--
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.

"The alleged right to first strike" - if Israel does in fact attack Iran (which I very much hope it does not!), it will not be attacking with nuclear weapons (which is what a "first strike" refers to) - it will be attacking the sites in Iran where the uranium is being enriched to weapons level (Natanz, Fordow) and where, according to some intelligence reports, a nuclear trigger was being tested (Parchin). It will not be bombing Iran with atomic bombs. Israel's goal is not to annihilate the Iranian people, it is to stop Iran's nuclear program.

The "loud mouth," I presume, is Ahmedinejad - but he is not the true leader of the country (although he is a loud mouth) - that honor goes to Khamenei, the supreme Ayatollah and heir to Khomeini.

It's true that a bomb is suspected of being built - and most intelligence services (including the US and Israel) don't think the Iranians have yet decided actually to build the bomb.

Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no inspection is available?

Indeed, why is he forbidding himself to name that country? It's common knowledge (according to foreign sources) that Israel has nuclear weapons. Mordechai Vanunu spent eighteen years in prison for revealing secret information and photographs of the program for the Sunday Times newspaper in 1986. He was released from prison in 2004. Several books have been written on the Israeli nuclear program, including two by Avner Cohen - The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (2012) and Israel and the Bomb (1999).

The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force - the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar.

Again, I don't understand why Grass refers to "universal concealment." There is no universal concealment of the existence of an Israeli nuclear program. The Israeli press writes about it, always preceding its reports with the phrase "according to foreign sources," since the Israeli government maintains a policy of "nuclear ambiguity," refusing to confirm that it has a program. There has been a lot of discussion about the existence of the program outside Israel as well, even by the Iranians!

This appears to be part of the false meme that somehow it is forbidden to criticize Israel out of fear of antisemitism, when there is widespread criticism of Israel in many countries from both the left and the right. In the US we find this criticism from people on the paleoconservative right (Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan) and the far left (Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, Alice Walker, etc.), and the criticism is far more extensive in European countries, like Britain and Germany itself.

Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
Its very own crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But as a fear wishes to be conclusive,
I say what must be said.

I don't understand, again, why he is now upset about the fact that Germany is selling submarines to Israel - Israel already owns several of them. The first two were given to Israel by Germany after the Gulf War, the cost of the third one was split between Israel and Germany, two are currently being built, and Germany just agreed to sell Israel another submarine at a discounted price. A Deutsche Welle article of March 20, 2012 says that "Experts say the latest order from Israel is capable of carrying nuclear-capable, mid-range rockets, although this has not been confirmed." An article from the Jerusalem Post of December 19, 2011 reports about the submarines: "Widely believed to be Israel’s second-strike capability with their reported ability to launch cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, the Navy’s submarines are shrouded in an aura of mystery and prestige." If this is true, then nuclear missiles on the submarines are intended not for a first strike, but for a second strike, after Israel has been attacked by nuclear weapons - that is to say, the weapons on the submarines, if indeed they exist, are intended to retaliate against an attack by another country. Their purpose is, therefore, deterrent - to prevent another country from attacking Israel out of the knowledge that it would also suffer terrible losses.

Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I thought my origin,
Afflicted by a stain never to be expunged
Kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound

And wish to stay bound,

From accepting this fact as pronounced truth.

If he means by the "stain never to be expunged" his service in the Waffen-SS, he had the right impulse to keep silent! He's right, in my opinion, that he is the wrong person to hector Israel, in an inaccurate way, against attacking Iran, especially since he implies that an Israeli strike would annihilate Iran. If he had written a reasoned article on the dangers of Israel attacking Iran, the possibility of a terrible war breaking out as a result of the attack, his wish that Germany not supply submarines that might be used for nuclear missiles - then we wouldn't be having this conversation about him.

I'm glad that he feels "bound" to Israel and that he wishes to "stay bound" - and that "binding" certainly doesn't exclude thoughtful, even harsh criticism of Israel and its leadership - but this foolish poem is not that useful criticism.

Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we--as Germans burdened enough--
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.

So what he's worried about is that because Germany is selling this submarine to Israel, that could possibly carry nuclear missiles, which might be used during a second strike by Israel after the country has suffered a nuclear first strike (which would probably kill most Israelis) - that Germany would then be responsible for the deaths of the people who are killed in that second strike. His concern seems to be all for the country that might be hit by that second strike, after it has done its best to destroy Israel!

Why not be concerned for the survival of Israel? It seems to me that if he feels a moral commitment to Israel, which in the previous stanza he asserts that he feels, that commitment should be expressed here. His fear is all for what Israel might do in retaliation, not for what might first be done to Israel. Is he deliberately misunderstanding why Israel would want a second strike capability? In this section of the poem he is taking the side of Iran entirely, without acknowledging the threats emanating from its leaders.

And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
By the governments of both countries.

"The perpetrator of the recognized danger" is apparently Israel - which has not yet done anything except issue verbal threats against Iran's nuclear program, and has possibly killed some Iranian scientists and launched the Stuxnet virus against Iranian computers. Iran, on the other hand, has supported both Hezbollah and Hamas which have already perpetrated attacks against Israelis and Jews in other countries, and Iran on its part threatens to launch hundreds of long-range missiles against Israeli targets in the event of an Israeli attack upon its nuclear program. Why shouldn't Iran "renounce violence" if Israel must do the same?

In this stanza he finally admits the existence of "Iranian nuclear sites" - good for recognizing reality.

Iran doesn't seem particularly interested in having its nuclear sites controlled or inspected by an international agency - it has most recently refused to let the IAEA inspect the Parchin military base, where the work on a nuclear trigger has been suspected to occur.

Again he talks about how his being "silent no longer" is supposed to "free many from silence" - where is this alleged silence occurring? Plenty of people over the years have criticized Israel for its (alleged) possession of nuclear weapons, and have also insisted that Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons. I do not hear this silence that he claims has existed until he decided to write this rather badly-written poem.

Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
And also us, to be helped.

Why does he now mention "Israelis and Palestinians"? I thought this poem was about Iran and Israel! What has the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have to do with the threat of an Israeli attack upon Iran, or the threat of an Iranian development of a nuclear bomb?

I occasionally write poems, and even more occasionally publish them on this blog. Even my poor efforts are better written that this piece of tendentious drivel! This is not a poem, it is a really bad example of agitprop.

Don't keep Günter Grass out of Israel

I'm no fan of Günter Grass, after his recent poem about Iran and Israel and nuclear weapons, but I think this is ridiculous -  Israel Interior Minister Yishai declares Grass persona non grata. For heaven's sake, he wrote a poem, he didn't launch a missile at Israel. I think it would actually be good for him to visit here and talk to some ordinary Israelis about their fears - he might come to have a better understanding of why some support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations.

I do not think that Israel should attack Iran, because of the potentially terrible effects on Israeli and Iranian civilians if a full-scale war breaks out. I believe that there should be secret talks between Israel and Iran to address the threats that each utters towards the other in public, just as there were secret talks between the US and the USSR during the cold war. There should be a secret method of communication to prevent the verbal threats from turning into actual war - something that is not in the interest of either nation.

I'm now actually reading his wretched, ridiculous poem, and my next post will be my attempt at a fisking of it.

The wicked child at the Passover seder

I'm sitting in my sunny Jerusalem apartment on the first day of Pesach. The neighborhood kids are playing soccer in the playground across the street. It's a quiet Shabbat in Katamon.

Last night I had a great seder with a friend of mine, A., and various family members and other friends. It was a lot of work getting ready for it, but it was definitely worth it. We had some really good discussions about deep moral issues - one of which was sparked by a question about the four types of children who are mentioned in the haggadah: the wise one (חכם), the wicked one (רשע), the simple one (תם) and the one who does not know enough to ask (שאינו יודע לשאול).

The question was - with which child do you identify? We began to talk about what is the nature of the רשע (rasha, the wicked child) - is this someone who is really wicked or is called wicked for other reasons? A.'s mother said yes, the rasha really is wicked - he separates himself from the community and scorns its values. This follows what the traditional haggadah text says of the wicked child (my translation):

The wicked child, what does he say? "What does this service mean to you?"

"To you and not to himself," because he has removed himself from the community and denied the essential truth (כָּפַר בְּעִקָּר).

You should set his teeth on edge and say to him: "Because of what YHWH did for me when I went out of Egypt." Me and not him. If he had been there, he would not have been redeemed.

My friend's mother saw the wicked child as the person who has entirely removed him or herself from the community and rebelled against it.

My friend's 14 year old daughter, S., had a different perspective. She asked: Is anybody ever really wicked? What about the circumstances that might have led someone to do something evil? What if that person is poor and deprived of the good things in life? Maybe that's why someone committed a crime.

Another person, T.,  at the seder replied rather sharply to her: What about serial murderers, like the man in Toulouse who just murdered seven people, including three children? Can't you say of a person like that that he really is evil? Some people are just evil.

My friend's daughter, S. replied: But he wasn't born that way. Babies aren't born evil.

T.  said: Right, babies aren't born evil, but after a certain age, people are responsible for their own actions. They can't blame their parents or society any more when they commit wicked acts.

My friend, A., then asked: what if two people committed the identical crime, and one was from a poor family where he was hit every day and always went to bed hungry, and the other was from a well-established family where the child was very loved - should they receive the identical legal judgement?

S. said: Of course they should be treated the same way.


My friend then said: You know that the symbol for justice is a woman who has on a blindfold - so that she can't see who stands before her. The judge isn't supposed to pay attention to whether the defendant is rich or poor - the judgement should be made regardless of the condition of the defendant.

The conversation then became a bit more lighthearted - we went back to the original question of which child we identified with, and it turned out that most people, for various reasons, identified with the wise child.

I thought about this discussion in comparison with other seder discussions I've had, especially with children present (there was also another boy there of about 11, who didn't say much during this part of the discussion but was definitely following what was being said). I've been at other seders where parents of children have changed the subject abruptly because they didn't want their children to be exposed to talk about violence and murder (even though both are part of the biblical Passover story). But at this seder no one shrank from discussing the moral issues raised by violence. I can't help but think that our being in Israel helped to shape this discussion. Here, children are aware of violence from an early age, and the parents I know have not tried to shield their children from knowledge of it. They talk to their children about it and do their best to prevent them from being governed by fear - but they don't try to pretend that it doesn't exist.

 

A nuclear duck!

Hussein Ibish just tweeted:

Hussein Ibish ‏ @Ibishblog

Well, we are well into Saturday afternoon and no one seems to have compared Iran or Israel to a duck yet. What gives?

I tweeted back:

Rebecca Lesses ‏ @argaman

@Ibishblog Did you see the @haaretzonline cartoon for the Friday paper?

He just tweeted back:

Hussein Ibish ‏ @Ibishblog

@argaman @haaretzonline No - URL? Please, please, please tell me it doesn't have a duck in it!!!!!

I tweeted back: 

Rebecca Lesses ‏ @argaman

@Ibishblog @haaretzonline Let me see if I can find it in the online edition. Yes, there was definitely a duck in it! (tongue in cheek).

And then I found the duck!:

In response he wrote these two tweets (quacks?):

Hussein Ibish ‏ @Ibishblog

@argaman OMG! Last straw. But will not run screaming naked down the street like that Koby2012 psycho Jason Russell - http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/21/10794669-kony-2012-filmmaker-jason-russell-diagnosed-with-psychosis-wife-says

Hussein Ibish ‏ @Ibishblog

I stand disgusted & corrected - Friday's Ha'aretz cartoon does indeed feature... A DUCK (kill me now!) - http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/caricatures/1.1670379 via @argaman

I'm not sure what's driving him so nuts about ducks, but he's very funny about it!

Jerusalem Post article on the anti-war protest tonight in Tel Aviv

Around 1,000 march in TA anti-war with Iran rally

Protesters express opposition to strike on Iran, voicing anti-Netanyahu slogans and railing against AIPAC.

By BEN HARTMAN

24/03/2012

Photo by: Ben Hartman

In the first significant anti-war with Iran protest held yet in Israel, around a thousand Israelis marched through central Tel Aviv on Saturday evening to voice their opposition to those calling for a strike on Iran to stop the Islamic Republic’s quest for the nuclear bomb.

Titled “Israelis Against the War”, organizers said on the protest‘s Facebook page that “we will not agree to an irresponsible Israeli attack in Iran, leading to a war with an unknown end-date and casualty count…The billions that this war will cost will be paid by us – in health, education, housing - and in blood.”

One protester, 32-year-old Chen Sharabi-Cohen couched his opposition to the war in terms of how it will disproportionately affect weaker Israelis.

“I live in South Tel Aviv where we don’t have shelters or the protection we need. We have nowhere to go. If they want to attack Iran, they should first worry about preparing the home front.”

Israel’s first large anti-war rally was inspired by a campaign launched last week by an Israeli couple looking to reach out to their Iranian counterparts.

A little over a week ago Ronny Edri, 41, and his partner Michal Tamir, 35, both graduates of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, uploaded pictures of themselves on Facebook which read “Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We love you.”

The anti-war meme quickly went viral, and within days there were dozens of such photos posted online by beaming, non-threatening Israelis. Soon after, the Iranians got into the mix, with several Iranians posting messages of love to Israelis, albeit most with their faces blurred or removed altogether from the posters. Within days the Israel and later the global media took notice, and a graphic artist’s whim became a major news item.

Saturday’s protest was not planned by Edri, but organizers said they saw it as a natural extension of the spirit of Edri’s online campaign.

In many ways the demonstration brought to mind the J14 “social justice” protests held over last Summer. Not only were there many familiar faces from the summer at Saturday’s rally, but the march began at Habima square, the same spot where the J14 protests started. In addition, the organizers of Saturday’s rally were all heavily-involved in the J14 movement, which, like Saturday’s protest, was started inadvertently by a young Tel Aviv woman who launched a Facebook initiative that caught the attention of the media and quickly soared to unforeseen heights.

The protesters also voiced many anti-Netanyahu slogans that were heard from time to time during the summer’s protests, including “Mubarak, Assad, Bibi Netanyahu” and “bring down the government”, among calls for peace and social justice. In addition, there were several placards voicing opposition to the American pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

Overall it appeared to be a quintessentially Tel Aviv crowd, with many from the city’s protesting caste marching, a rather significant number with red flags and Hadash party posters.

Two protesters wearing posters with the slogan “Iranians we love you” from the Facebook campaign, Einav Raz and Shelly Nativ of Tel Aviv, said they were against not only a war with Iran, but also the very existence of nuclear weapons anywhere in the Middle East, including Israel.

“We must disarm all of the Middle East from nuclear weapons, Israel included,” Raz said. When asked how she would stop Iran from developing a nuclear program, she said “I would speak to them, invite them to sit at the table and talk to s. There are peace offers out there, but Israel just wants war.”

By the time the march made its way to Meir Park across from the Likud headquarters, the crowd had largely dwindled from its peak of around 1,000. They continued to chant at the park, with a small crowd moving from Israeli peace songs to the Beatles “all you need is love” and John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance”.

A large counter-protest was expected, but in the end only around a dozen people came to voice their opposition. One of them, Eliyahu Nissim, 24 of Herzliya, carried a sign that read “the left embraces our enemies”.

Nissim said he came Saturday night to say “the Jewish people is eternal and all people who rise up to destroy us are legitimate targets for attack.”

He added “all of the people [of Israel] are with us on this.”

First Israeli demonstration against war with Iran

Tonight in Tel Aviv there is the first demonstration in Israel against an attack on Iran. I had hoped to go but wasn't able to find a ride there (because of Shabbat, there weren't buses leaving for Tel Aviv in time for me to get to the march, but friends of mine went).

This is the report on Ynet: 1,000 march against Iran strike.

Virtual campaign takes to streets as protesters rally against bombing Iran's nuclear facilities
Shahar Chai

"Social justice does not equal war with Iran" and "Bibi and Barak - war is not a game!"

Some 1,000 protesters marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday night in a show of opposition to the possibility of an Israeli strike in Iran. Over 2,300 citizens confirmed their attendance on Facebook. The march, titled "Israelis against a war with Iran," began at Habima Square and was expected to conclude with a rally at Meir Park.

"Together, we will inform Netanyahu and the world that there is no mandate to drive us into war with Iran," a spokesperson for the protest movement said prior to the event.

Some protesters wielded posters bearing the slogan "When the government is against the people, the people are against the government," and called on the country's leaders to resign.

"Talks, not bombs"

"The next war would take a very heavy toll," one protester said. "Thousands of rockets will explode every day, and there are no gas masks."

The global media and social networks have been abuzz in recent days over an Israeli couple's virtual message of peace and love to the Iranian people. The message, penned by graphic designers Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir, was simple: "Iranians, we love you. We will never bomb your country." A poster bearing the slogan was posted on Facebook and quickly went viral, prompting thousands to share it, comment on it and make their own versions.

Officials and pundits have been increasingly speculating in recent months that Israel is preparing to strike Iran's nuclear facilities in order to stunt the Islamic Republic's reported atom weapon development.