Tension with Syria on the Golan

Another not very calming article in Haaretz today. This one is about something that happened on the Israel-Syria border in the Golan last Thursday. 500 Syrian soldiers entered the demilitarized zone between the Israeli and Syrian lines on the Golan. They did this not to attack Israel, but in the course of fighting some of the Syrian rebels.

Syrian army forces crossed the demilitarized zone near the border with Israel in the Golan Heights last week, a highly unusual incident, on what is considered a quiet  border. 

Following the incident, in which 500 soldiers and 50 vehicles crossed into the demilitarized zone, Israel filed a formal complaint to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN's Security Council, warning that the event may have serious ramifications.... 

The Syrian soldiers entered the demilitarized zone last Thursday. The Syrian forces entered the area near the Syrian village of Jubata Al Khashab, a few kilometers east of the Israeli Druze village of Mas'ada in the northern part of the Golan Heights. It seems that the soldiers' entrance to the demilitarized zone was a result of the fighting with the rebel army. 

On the same day, Barak was touring the border with Syria and observed clashes on the other side of the border. Barak, noting that the battle was being conducted at a distance of only "200 meters from UN forces and some 800 meters from the border fence," was not aware at the time that the Syrian soldiers had entered the demilitarized zone. 

Jubata Al Khashab is situated inside the demilitarized zone, between the Israeli lines on the west and the Syrian lines on the east. It is close to Mas'ada inside the Golan Heights. When I visited the Golan last summer with friends, we drove through Mas'ada. This is a photo of some men walking along the road in Mas'ada.

The demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights is defined in the separation of forces agreement signed by Israel and Syria in 1974. The accord defined a 3-6 kilometer zone which would be demilitarized by Israeli and Syrian forces, and would be under the supervision of a UN military force and Syrian civilian authority. The UN peacekeeping force – UNDOF – includes some 1,000 soldiers, sent from Canada, Poland, Finland and Austria, who are monitoring the keeping of the agreement.

When I was visiting Israel in the summer of 2007, I also visited the Golan, and we drove along a road close to the border, and stopped at a lookout point near Quneitra, which is a ruin now in the Syrian controlled part of the Golan. I'm not sure exactly what these are photographs of, whether of Quneitra or other villages.

Life During Wartime

Great article by Janine di Giavanni, Life During Wartime, about how you know when a war is starting in your country - in this case, Syria. Scary to read from Israel, where all the fighting in Syria seems increasingly closer. In an article in Haaretz, Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defense Minister, talks about standing on the Golan Heights close to the Syrian border and seeing and hearing the shooting and bombing. I've been where he was standing, near the ruined city of Quneitra, and you can easily see into Syria and see fields and nearby towns, and normal life proceeding. Not any longer. I love going to the Golan, but now I don't think it would be such a smart idea.

One thing that bothered me about this article and others I've read about Syria is shown in this excerpt:

In a government office near the Mezze Highway, a Christian official with a Muslim name says he grew up in a country that, like Bosnia, was a melting pot for ethnic groups, for refugees from Armenia, for Christians, Shias, Sunnis and Greek Orthodox. He says the uprising will change all of this. “Everyone who believed in the Syrian model is betrayed,” he said.

The one ethnic group that he and others always omit to mention are the Jews of Syria, of whom very few (if any) are left now. There was a strong community in Syria before 1948. Now the Syrian Jews are in Israel, the US (there's a big community in NYC) and other places. Why does no one remember their place in the Syrian melting pot? They were brutally oppressed when Israel became a state, and most left, with the remainder living fearful lives.

I don't want that chaos and death to engulf Israel too, with all my friends and relatives who live here. This is not a safe world.

Mystical interpolations into 2 Enoch

I've just started reading a newly-published book, New Perspectives on 2 Enoch: No Longer Slavonic Only, edited by Andrei Orlov and Gabrielle Boccaccini (Brill, 2012), which is very interesting. The first chapter gives us the first fragments of 2 Enoch in another language than Slavonic, "No Longer 'Slavonic' Only: 2 Enoch Attested in Coptic from Nubia," by Joost L. Hagen. He discovered that previously excavated Coptic fragments from Qasr Ibrim, which now exist only in photographs and in transcriptions by J. M. Plumley, the director of the excavations from 1963 to 1976, are fragments of 2 Enoch 36:3-42:3, including the very interesting Shiur Qomah passage from 39:1, about seeing the face, eyes, and right hand of the Lord. He dates these fragments to between the 8th-10th centuries, which would make them the earliest witness to 2 Enoch. They represent the shorter recension of 2 Enoch. His article obviously raises questions about how 2 Enoch was transmitted from a posited Jewish source all the way to medieval Bulgaria, where the Slavonic translations were first made.

The second article is by Christfried Böttreich, "The 'Book of the Secrets of Enoch' (2 En): Between Jewish Origin and Christian Transmission. An Overview." I'm only going to discuss one issue he raises. He goes through the entire book and notes places where there are some clear Jewish mystical or Christian interpolations (among a lot of other things he discusses). He pinpoints 2 En 20:3, 21:6-22:3, and 39:3-8 as Jewish interpolations. In 2 En. 20:3 the text says: “And on the tenth heaven is God, and it is called in the Hebrew language Aravot.” At 2 En. 21:6, Enoch sees the eighth heaven: “Which is called in the Hebrew language Muzaloth, the changer of the seasons. . . which are above the seventh heaven. And I saw the ninth heaven, which in the Hebrew language is called Kukhavim where the heavenly houses of the 12 zodiacs are.” These two inserts interrupt the existing scheme of seven heavens which 2 Enoch has already described, so they seem like obvious interpolations. I have always wondered whether these interpolations were in fact direct translations from Hebrew to Slavonic, since they give Hebrew names to the 8th, 9th, and 10th heavens.

Böttreich dates the origins of 2 Enoch to first century Alexandria, and in my opinion gives some pretty convincing arguments for this dating, but this dating cannot refer to every word in the Slavonic Enoch, and obviously not the sentences I just quoted. He is puzzled by these passages and how (and by whom) they could have gotten into the Slavonic version of the book. He writes, "I have no idea how to explain this stratum of Jewish mystical interpolations (like 2 En 20:3; 21:6-22:3; 39:3-8) which obviously depends on Hebrew sources by inserting the additions in Greek into a Greek text transmitted by Christian contemporaries." The same questions exist with regard to Ladder of Jacob 2:5-22 (prayer of Jacob) or Apocalypse of Abraham 17:7-21 (prayer of Abraham) - both also preserved in Slavonic translations only. So who could have inserted these passages?

I was just looking at the 2 Enoch passages for the chapter I've just been writing on the Enoch traditions and the tradition that the fallen angels taught sorcery to women (which doesn't exist, by the way, in 2 Enoch), and I started to wonder if the inserts could have been made by Jews who had converted to Christianity - either at some point during the Greek transmission or the Slavonic translations. Whoever inserted them had to know Hebrew - and who better than a learned Jew who had decided to become a Christian? I don't know if anyone else has suggested this for 2 Enoch, but I'd be interested to know if it's possible, historically-speaking.

The story of Moshe Silman, who set himself on fire on Saturday night in Tel Aviv

Source: Rabbis for Human Rights

By: Ori Ben Dov – On Shabat evening, 14.7 during a demonstration on Kaplan St. where Moshe Silman set fire to himself, in protest at the terrible economic situation he was in and at his mistreatment by state and government institutions. The following will try to clarify how Moshe got to this stage. It is recounted by Rabbi Idit Lev, Director of Social Justice at Rabbis for Human Rights, who accompanied Moshe during the last year in his desperate attempts to get what he was due and to prevent him from becoming homeless.

A personal note: Idit is my sister. For many years I have heard from her hardship stories where she has tried to help make state institutions attend to those citizens who are weak and lack basic rights. This evening I was standing very close to Moshe when he set himself alight. The following will try to be as accurate as possible, but it is written in deep shock.

A country which destroys its citizens | Ori Ben Dov
--

Since he went bankrupt ten years’ ago, Silman has lived in poverty, given up on medicine and food, and battled the establishment to get rental assistance and disability benefits.

Moshe Silman was a proud man, had his own business, owned three lorries. Ten years’ ago, Bituach Leumi (the National Insurance Institute) claimed that Moshe owed them a large sum of money and they

expropriated one of his lorries. As a result of this, his business collapsed and he went bankrupt.

The bank foreclosed on his private apartment in Yafo and he moved in to live with his mother. He worked at different jobs, he was a taxi driver, and his debts mounted. He tried to sue Bituach Leumi for the damage caused to him but the fee that the law demands in a suit against the state was too high for him. The court registrar, who has the authority to reduce the fee, refused his request, and so Moshe lost his right to sue the state and to examine the extent of damage he suffered. It is to this court registrar he refers in the letter he wrote before the event.

At a certain stage, Moshe moved to Haifa, to reduce his living expenses. He worked as a taxi driver. About a year and a half ago, he suffered a series of strokes. He suffered from continuous dizziness and could not drive, and stopped working. He received disability benefits from Bituach Leumi, which were so low that he needed to receive an additional income supplement benefit. He became a sick man who could not support himself.

In May, following a new request to Bituach Leumi, he received 100 percent disability, but only 5 percent loss of ability to work, even though he had stopped working. Bituach Leumi allocated him 2300 NIS and this was in fact the whole sum he had to live on. His two sisters helped him with food. He gave up some of his medication as well as medical checkups, in order to try and survive.

In this situation, Moshe came to the Haifa encampment when it was set up last July. Here he found a supportive home and community. During the period of the encampment, one of the activists put him in touch with a man who gave him an apartment for a year. In August 2011, he went to live there.

During all this time, Moshe requested assistance with rent from the Ministry of Housing, but was refused. According to the criteria of the Ministry of Housing, a person who has owned an apartment during the previous five years cannot request this kind of assistance. In spite of the fact that ten years had passed since he owned an apartment – this was one of the reasons for his request being rejected.

Some years ago, Moshe’s mother died. Owing to the fact that she had been a guarantor for some of his debts, her apartment was foreclosed on. Moshe’s sisters appealed to the courts for their share of the apartment and the matter is being looked into but, even though all the money that Moshe would receive from selling the apartment would immediately be confiscated, the Ministry of Housing claims that, as long as there is chance that Moshe might receive some money in the future, he is not entitled to receive any assistance. Moshe issued one appeal on his own and another with the help of “Rabbis for Human Rights.” The appeals were rejected. Getting 100 percent disability should have helped him in his appeal, but every attempt by Moshe and by those who assisted him in this process, to persuade the appeals board to update Moshe’s disability, failed. All the efforts expended on this by many different people, including Member of Knesset Orly Levy Abecassis, just to make the board understand and accept Moshe’s disability – as of today there has been no response.

Last June, Moshe received an answer that his appeal had been rejected. The legal assistance department of the Ministry of Housing (the body which is supposed to help people who lack means to get legal help) refused to help him in his attempt to sue Bituach Leumi.

There is no place for an exception to the rule: From the letter rejecting Moshe Silman’s request for assistance.

A further appeal that was lodged is due to be heard in September. For Moshe that was too late. The owner of the apartment where he was living asked him to start paying rent and, for Moshe, a man of honour, it was clear that he could not stay there. We must remember that we are talking about a sick man, who could not work, who received2300 a month on which to live. There was only one meaning – to go and live on the street.

The social worker dealing with him did not answer his request to receive rent assistance for two months, until the appeal. Simply did not reply. The staff of the department of the homeless in the Haifa municipality told him to turn to them when he was on the street – but Moshe was not ready to become homeless.

On Saturday evening, at the junction of Kaplan st. and Duvnov st. in Tel-Aviv, he set fire to himself.

Yossi Baruch, one of the people from Haifa who knows Moshe personally, emphasizes that the man is sane and that he did what he did out of desperation and as a protest at the complete deafness of every government body that he turned to for help. Moshe said repeatedly that he was not willing to be trampled on. He described the humiliation that someone asking for assistance from the state of Israel has to undergo, and said that even a poor man needs to be treated with respect. Perhaps that is why he set himself alight – to stop being walked over, that he and his needs should be addressed. Every institution that he approached – turned their back on him. Welfare, Housing, Bituach Leumi, the courts – they all showed him the way to the street.

It is important to remember: Moshe is not alone. Tens of thousands are in his situation, deteriorating more and more, fighting bureaucracy and the impermeability of a state which destroys them. Because this is not a mistake – it is policy, and it comes from the top, from the government.

A state where the welfare authorities are collapsing, public housing has dried up, the Housing Ministry does not assist those who need help and the legal system refuses to help those who have no money – this is a state that destroys its citizens.
--
This post was first published on J14 movement main site (in Hebrew - this is the English translation of Rabbis for Human Rights).

Tonight's Jerusalem demonstration.

A photo from the Tzedek Hevrati website of the demonstration in Jerusalem tonight, showing the protestors sitting in the middle of the street at Paris Square.

Demonstrations tonight protesting in solidarity with Moshe Siman, who set himself on fire last night

Demonstrations were held tonight all over Israel in solidarity with Moshe Siman, who set himself on fire at the social justice rally last night in Tel Aviv. These are the reports from all the newspapers. I went to the Jerusalem rally, which was held in front of the Prime Minister's house. This is a photo of one of the Jerusalem protestors:

'Despair burns. Who's next?' Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg
© All Rights Reserved

From the Jerusalem Post:

Thousands of protesters were blocking Yitzhak Sadeh Street in central Tel Aviv on Sunday in a show of solidarity with demonstrator Moshe Siman, who set himself on fire in the name of social justice a day before.

Earlier, protesters held a moment of silence when rumors circulated that Siman had died of wounds he suffered from the immolation.

Protesters began banging on an ATM machine but border policemen gathered around it and protected it from further damage.

"It's going to be a rage demonstration," said Yael Ben Yefet, an organizer and director at the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow. "I think people are on the verge of crying, me also, or want to strike someone or something." She added that if violence erupted, it would not be initiated by protesters, but would be a form of "counter-violence."

"There is violence: by the government. They are the violent ones. And maybe today something will strike back," she said. Demonstrators read aloud the suicide note left behind by Moshe Silman, who accused the government Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of being directly responsible for his financial predicament. Silman, 46 years old, had complained that he received no rent assistance despite suffering a stroke recently and no longer being able to work.....

In Jerusalem, police arrested at least three demonstrators after they tried to block roads at Paris Square. About 80 demonstrators marched from Independence Park to the prime minister's residence chanting: "We are all Moshe Silman!" The protest started peacefully but once the demonstrators attempted to block the road, clashes broke out between the demonstrators and police, though there were no injuries.

From Haaretz:

About a hundred protesters clashed with police near the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, in a rally summoned following the self-immolation of a Haifa resident during a protest marking one year since the onset of social unrest in Israel....
On Sunday, protesters descended on Jerusalem's Gaza Street, not far from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence.

The protest, which joins similar ones in Haifa and Tel Aviv and held under the title "We're all Moshe Silman – The Blood is on The Government's Hands," started off in the capitol's Independence Park and ended near the Prime Minister's Residence.

Along the way, protesters blocked some of the nearby roads, chanting slogans against the government and for public housing, and lifting signs reading "The Poor Won't Have Anything to Eat, and They'll Eat the Rich," and "Desperation Burns – Who's Next?"

From Ynet:

Some 2,000 people demonstrated Sunday night in front of the government offices in Tel Aviv in protest of the public housing situation in Israel. The activists blocked Ayalon Highway and several other streets in Tel Aviv. Earlier, the demonstrators read aloud the letter left behind by Moshe Silman, who set himself on fire during the social justice protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday. They also yelled "Bibi and Steinitz go home."

Silman, who suffered burns on over 90% of his body, is still hospitalized in critical condition at Sheeba Medical Center. His relatives said Sunday night that he suffers from organ failure and doctors said his chances of survival are slim.

"Moshe isn't crazy, he's just like you and me," said social activist Iliya Mershek, adding that he visited Silman in the hospital but was too afraid to enter the room. "He is in critical condition. I couldn't go into the room, I admit I'm a coward. I would never be able to do what he did. His sisters say he did it for all of us. They cried while telling us why he had to be the victim of this struggle."

Protests were also held in Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheba. Five protesters were arrested in Jeruslem, while trying to block King George street.

Jerusalem resident Yael Shelem said she came to the rally "out of solidarity." People who set themselves on fire are not committing suicide, but are shouting out of despair and pain after the government has abandoned them. But even in this protest they won't give us the right to shout," she said adding that the police have been using too much force on the protesters.

"People went out on the street because they are enraged, angry and sad because of what happened yesterday. We are screaming against the government's failure, which we hold responsible to the events that led Moshe Silman to set himself on fire," said activist Michael Solsbery.

"People don’t reach this level of despair over nothing. This despair has an address and it belongs to the government, who failed to provide housing solutions and who abandons people in Silman's condition," he added.

The Devil's Gateway - the evils of makeup!

I'm reading Tertullian's "On the Apparel of Women" for chapter 4 of my book, which is about the forbidden teachings the fallen angels hand on to their human wives. (The book itself will be called Angels' Tongues and Witches' Curses: Jewish Women and Ritual Power in Late Antiquity). Among these forbidden teachings are magic and sorcery, but also all kinds of adornment and makeup. Tertullian, who is a 3rd century CE father of the church, has written the most misogynistic statement I have come across in ancient literature. It appears in chapter 1 of "On the Apparel of Women."

“And do you not know that you (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilty must of necessity live too. Youare the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree; youare the first deserter of the divine law; youare she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.”

He then goes on to argue that on this basis, women should not get dressed in pretty clothes and put on eye makeup, since of course, we should go around miserable and clad in rags, to expiate the sins of our mother Eve. One would think that the sin of bringing death to the world and causing the death of the Son of God would deserve a worse punishment than wearing ugly clothing, but there it is.

While Tertullian blames the sin of Eve on all subsequent generations of women, he also believes that the fallen angels handed down various kinds of knowledge to women.

"For when to an age much more ignorant (than ours) they had disclosed certain well-concealed material substances, and several not well-revealed scientific arts—if it is true that they had laid bare the operations of metallurgy, and had divulged the natural properties of herbs, and had promulgated the powers of enchantments, and had traced out every curious art, even to the interpretation of the stars—they conferred properly and as it were peculiarly upon women that instrumental mean of womanly ostentation, the radiances of jewels wherewith necklaces are variegated, and the circlets of gold wherewith the arms are compressed, and the medicaments of orchil with which wools are coloured, and that black powder itself wherewith the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent.”

The fallen angels revealed metallurgy, the properties of herbs, knowledge of enchantment and the interpretation of the stars - and on top of that how to make necklaces with jewels on them, circlets of gold, orchil for coloring wool, and black eye-makeup (kohl).

Tertullian bases himself on 1 Enoch, which describes just such teachings being passed on to women, but he goes farther - much much farther - on the evils of self-adornment. For just a few examples, randomly chosen:

"For they who rub their skin with medicaments, stain their cheeks with rouge, make their eyes prominent with antimony, sin against HIM."

God, that is. He goes on to argue that putting on makeup is Satanic:

"Whatever is born is the work of God. Whatever, then, is plastered on, is the devil's work. To superinduce on a divine work Satan's ingenuities, how criminal is it!" 

He also thinks that dyeing the hair is evil, especially dyeing it blond! He writes:

"I see some (women) turn (the color of) their hair with saffron. They are ashamed even of their own nation, (ashamed) that their procreation did not assign them to Germany and to Gaul: thus, as it is, they transfer their hair (thither)!"

He also condemns men's self-adornment:

"if this sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its own - (such as) to cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about (the mouth); to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes; to remove all the incipient down all over the body; to fix (each particular hair) in its place with (some) womanly pigment, etc."

So: remember that drab clothing, wild beards, and scraggly hair are all desired by God and lead to salvation!