גדעון לוי על המצוינות החולנית של הנוער שלנו

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1106441.html

שיר הלל לחקלאות בישראל

ישראלית עאלק... כמעט כולם שם תאילנדים

CyberTorah: Remembering Who We are

My Rabbi, David Booth, sent us this wonderful weekly column:


I was struck during Pesach by how much we talk about our stories and our experience. We as a Jewish people experienced oppression and poverty and we rejoice in having found freedom. So we tell of the plagues and we sing dayenu and remind ourselves of our stories.


The Hagaddah loves our stories of oppression and redemption. We go right from the four questions, when we expect to hear of the Exodus from Egypt, and start hearing about Lavan’s oppression of Jacob. Louis Ginzberg argued that this odd passage is really code and that the Rabbis are telling of their own experience under Roman persecution.


Later in the Seder the door is opened and in traditional Hagaddot we ask God to “pour out Your wrath.” This passage, written immediately following the Crusades, puts yet another moment of Jewish darkness into the narrative of the Hagaddah. As an aside, every year I invite one guest to tell us how to treat this somewhat disturbing passage. So some years we have read it as is with explanation about context. Other years we have omitted it and focused only on hope. And in still other years we have read other texts, including the medieval revision titled “Pour out Your love.”


In all these places, we tell our own stories of darkness embedded in the hopeful quality of the Seder. Just as God once brought us through the darkness of midnight to the dawn of redemption, so also in each of our stories of darkness there is the possibility of light. And for this we pray.


Yet the Seder, for all its hopefulness, is inwardly focused. Only on the margins do we recall the stories of others, or see ways in which the narrative expands. Many of us have the custom of removing a drop of wine for each plague to recall the suffering of the Egyptians. Many of us recall hunger and poverty more generally when reading of the bread of affliction. But overall, the Hagaddah focuses us on the particular rather than the universal.


There is a strength to this inward focus. The Seder focuses on Israel to remind me that Israel ought to hold a special place in my heart. Suffering and darkness are found elsewhere, but I take as my special responsibility the challenges facing Israel. That inward focus also reminds me that my own problems and challenges matter and that the light of a new dawn waits for me too. Trivial as my issues may feel at particular moments, they matter and are part of this narrative.


Yet the Seder, by telling these stories, by reminding us that there is a new dawn yet to come, invites us to see anew the sufferings and difficulties of others. It is from the particular that we learn the universal. We tell our own story of oppression and loss of freedom and that inspires in us a concern for those oppressed or suffering from poverty around the world. We have the courage to tell even of our own anger and so remember how oppression and destruction can lead to anger and away from peace. And the dawn promised by the Seder provides a new light that gives us the strength to see the sufferings of others and to strive to help.


I intend to use the occasion of this Passover now past to bring the other narratives that hover in the margins of the Hagaddah more front and center in my own life. I want to do more especially at this time of economic hardship to feed those still eating of the bread of poverty. I want to do more to bring an end to oppression, terror, and violence throughout the world. And I want to look at my own closed off places, the places where I bring darkness into the lives of others, and find a new light of renewal for me that engenders greater compassion in me.


Shabbat Shalom & Happy Hametz


Rabbi David Booth

Israeli Elections 2009

...A reflection

and a prediction at the end

So, another elections campaign is over, the 18^th in 61 years, which will determine the 32^nd Government of Israel. Sounds wired to Western ears, doesn’t it? Maybe not if you are an Italian. But in most other democratic countries, it is pretty odd, that there would be so frequent political changes. (Is Israel a democratic country?... well, that’s a whole separate topic, I don’t know if I want to go there right now. But in short, my answer is Yes, partially).

Yeah, especially when you are an American, it must be extremely strange to hear that the elections in Israel do not take place on a regular basis. I mean, in the US, elections happen on the first Tuesday of November, exactly every 4 years. In 233 years, four presidents have died while in office, another four have been assassinated, and one resigned. Nonetheless, all were succeeded by their vice presidents, but elections were never pulled in.

But maybe the hardest thing to comprehend, for a non-Israeli, is the fact that the winning party, Kadima, which won the most number of votes and parliament seats once again, will not form the next government.

Strange, ha?

Well, this is the way the Israeli system works. The Prime Minister has to win the support of the Parliament on every major item on the agenda, such as the Budget; so He (or, if Kadima really won, it would be She) must form a Coalition of parties which would constitute an absolute majority among the 120 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Kadima, with its 28 seats, just can’t do that, while all the rest of the “Left” parties combined have only 27 seats. When counting the 27 seats, I even included Shas, which is a sectarian, ultra-orthodox, kind of Right-Center party, and which will be in any coalition, Right or Left. However I did not include the Arab parties, because nobody takes them into account for a government – not even the Arab-Jewish party Hadash.

Following the elections, everybody loves to hate Evet (Avigdor) Lieberman. Well, maybe except for the 13% who voted for his party, “Israel is Our Home”⁽¹⁾. The Left is mad at him – because Lieberman, whom they see as a Right-wing, hard-liner racist, is the big winner of the elections in which everybody else lost, especially the Leftist flagship, Meretz ⁽²⁾. The Likud ⁽³⁾ feels uncomfortable with him, because the last thing that the Likud wants is to establish a conservative narrow coalition, which will have to carry out its ambitious lunatic ideology, with nobody else to “soften” its agenda.

Personally, I think that there is more than a bit of hypocrisy here. After all, as brutal and frightening Mr. Lieberman might seem, all he wants to do is what the Likud, Kadima and the Labor parties have actually been carrying out all along – to alienate and oppress the Palestinian inhabitants of this land, both citizens and occupied, to the point where they would just want to leave or give up their Israeli citizenship. The difference is that those more “moderate” parties never declared it as their policy. But that’s where the hypocrisy is.

Lieberman, formerly Netanyahu’s cabinet general manager, formerly a member of the “Transfer Party” ⁽⁴⁾, and further formerly, a Kahana ⁽⁵⁾ member, this time ran on a ticket that calls for revoking the citizenship of Palestinians who wont adhere to the notion that Israel is the State of the Jews; and for “exchanging land” with the future Palestinian state, in such a way that thousands of Palestinians would have to give up their Israeli citizenship.

Let’s take a look at the actual policy of former governments, regarding the Palestinians.

The Oslo Accord was signed in 1993, by the Yitzhak Rabin government. It was an attempt to establish a permanent solution to the conflict. But alas, since then, under the governments of Netanyahu (Likud), Barak (Labor) Sharon and Olmert (Kadima), the population of the settlers in the Occupied Territories has more than doubled (from 110,000 – to 219,000 in 2001, that’s even before the Sharon government!). In 2003, the Or Inquiry Commission, an official government-appointed commission that followed the violent incidents of October 2000, stated that the Arab citizens of Israel have been discriminated against constantly by all governments.

Therefore, I think that for most people in Israel, Lieberman serves as a scapegoat, or a Kaparot rooster; just like the custom in Yom Kippur (“Day of Atonement”), which is being practiced to this day: to take a live chicken and fly it over the head, and then send it for slaughter. This way, just like with the rooster, we project all of our sins upon Lieberman, and then we can feel clean and purified.

So, what happens next? Let me put my reputation at stake, and make a prediction: Netanyahu is the next Prime Minister of Israel. His party (27 seats) will form a coalition with Lieberman, Shas, “Judaism of Torah”, “the Jewish Home” and maybe “the National Unity”. That’s a total of 65 seats, enough to have a majority of votes in the Knesset. But past experience shows, that any government which is based on less than 70 Parliament members tends to by unstable. This is because at times of crises, sometimes small parties will quit, hoping to get better deals from the other major party, after the following elections. In addition, as I said before, a narrow right-wing coalition is Netanyahu’s nightmare. So, he is eager to have either Kadima or Labor join as well, to form what is known as a Unity Government (and usually turns out to be a Paralyzing Government). Well, the current Labor people have no ideological problem sitting with any of the Right-wingers, even the most extremists. But it seems that this time, they are afraid to completely loose face in the eyes of their voters.

Kadima, on the other hand, is not a real party. It was formed by former Prime Minister Sharon, for one purpose only – to carry out his “Disengagement” plan (= the pulling out of Gaza strip). Most of its members are just opportunists who will join whoever gives them a position in government. To be perfectly honest, I thought that Kadima would cease to exist after the Disengagement was over (in 2005), but Kadima, headed by Olmert, won the 2006 elections on a similar ticket – the “Convergence” plan, which was the plan Olmert devised to pull out of parts of the West Bank as well (needless to say, that never happened). As such, Kadima cannot stay in Opposition to the government; this takes some ideological tradition, and some partisan backbone, which even the Likud has, but not Kadima. True, Kadima has some dignified people (that’s in Politics standards), such as its leader, Tzipi Livni. But it consists of too many Likud and Labor deserters who have no problem crossing the lines again in any directions (whatever “lines” there are left between those three parties). Therefore, my wild prediction is that this party will break apart. Those of Kadima who must be in the government, headed by the party’s no. 2, General (Ret.) Mofaz, who took a quick “time out” from politics after losing the leadership to Livni (but he never meant to take the full, 1-minute time out, but rather the shorter 20-second one), will join the Netanyahu coalition. The former Prime Minister will thus get back in office for a while. In that short period (one to two years maybe), he will surrender to growing pressure from the Obama administration to make “concessions”, after which ideologues such as Benny Begin ⁽⁶⁾ will quit, for the second time. But Dr. Begin has nothing to worry about, as the next government wont lead the country towards any real peace solution. As weak as Netanyahu is personally, he will pretend to make compromises, just to stay in power for a few months more; however he will not go as far as needed to establish a real peace agreement. So he will just expose the simple fact, that the Right really does not have a real option to both keep the state of Israel democratic, and to maintain the occupation. So there is some good in all that evil after all.

And after that what? A total war? A nuclear war? A civil war? That I don’t know. What am I, a prophet?...

____________________________________________________________

(1) A secular, radically Right-wing party, mainly based on immigrants from former Soviet Union; got 13% of the votes, up from 9%.

(2) Won 3 seats, down from 5 in previous elections, and down from 12 in the past.

(3) The Right-wing leading party, headed by former Prime Minister Netanyahu.

(4) “National Unity”, a radical Right-wing party which at that time included Moledet, which advocated the Transfer of Palestinians to Jordan.

(5) “Kach”, the party of Rav Meir Kahana, a party so extremely to the Right that it was banned from participating in the elections.

(6) Dr. Benny Begin, an honest man (a species almost extinct from politics), the son of the late Menachem Bagin who was the first Prime Minister from the Likud.

What American Jews don't want to know

I was invited to speak with some of my friends at the annual "Feast of Jewish Learning/A Night of Jewish Unity", in Congregation Etz Chayim, California.

http://www.bjesf.org/adults_feast.htm

For a moment, we thought that this was a good opportunity to share our thoughts about the Middle-Eastern situation, to a big audience of Jews who rarely hear these kinds of views.


Then, we received this from the Feast moderator:

Dear Sarah Anne, Avner, Joel, Neil, and Beverly,

I am very sorry at this late date to say that as the chair of The Feast of Jewish Learning/A Night of Jewish Unity, I have canceled your class.
I have done so because it has become obvious that the passions on this issue are such that there are plans to attend by hotheads on all sides of the issue,
and that is the antithesis of what it is that we have worked so hard to create these past ten years, which is, A Night of Jewish Unity.

Also, we have a theme: Lost and Found, that the other classes have, in some respect, adhered to, while your session is less in that mold.

Again, I am very sorry to cancel something you have worked on. I apologize for the late notice, and for the disappointment you must feel.

If you wish to call me, you may do so, but I am between being with a dying member of my congregation and getting ready for Shabbat, which comes around five thirty tonight.
Please use this number: 650-813-9011 (home study phone and fax)

I am emailing you all because I don’t know which one of you to call, and I hope I will reach at least one of you more quickly this way.

Ari Cartun
--
Rabbi Ari Cartun
Congregation Etz Chayim

Thoughts from the “Holy” Land

On the 3rd week of “operation Cast-Lead"

I am writing from Jerusalem now. All three major TV channels are broadcasting news casts almost constantly. The IDF decided not to “embed” journalists within the military forces, so most of the footage is from the towns which are occasionally hit by Hamas rockets; and tons of commentary. I will tell you about one “rare footage” shot from an Israeli Tank, in a moment.
As expected, most of the “reporters” are busy delivering the official or consensual version of this war, which is: they are the bad guys, they just hate us because they are Arabs and we just want to live in peace. This is what you will hear if you conduct a random survey on any city in Israel these days. The reporters usually read from edited versions of briefing papers they received from the military spokesman, although they make an effort to make it look more professional. There is a lot of critical commentary too, and also some pieces quoted from Arab reports about the casualties on the Palestinian side. But honestly, I don’t know which way this affects the Israeli public, because for some people it is certainly a reassurance for their self-righteous feelings. They can say to themselves, that overall we are “OK” if we are so nicely considering the suffering of the other side; and besides, which other country would show such images of the enemy being so terribly hurt by us, in a time of war?
The state of Israel is free and democratic, at least for Jews (sigh). As such, the media is open to different opinions, controversy and debate. But mostly, all this is done within pretty narrow boundaries. The real radical opinions, such as mine, are poorly represented by just a handful of publicists, such as Gideon Levy:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054578.html

One pathetic example of bad journalism appeared tonight on Channel 1:
http://www.flix.co.il/tapuz/showVideo.asp?m=3033341
A reporter was sitting inside a Tank, shooting a video of another Tank firing at a Hamas combat team. Now, I don’t want to undervalue the skills and courage of Israeli troops. I was a platoon commander in the Israeli armor corps, so I have an idea how a battle looks like from a Tank. It doesn’t take too much skill and courage to sit inside the most advanced Merkava Mark IV Tank, all doors closed, and to fire from machine guns and a 120 mm cannon on a bunch of unlucky Hamas militants. The reporter was fair enough to mention, that the mortar the Hamas guys were operating couldn’t do any harm to the heavy Tank. I can’t help it from appreciating the enormous courage shown by the “Hamasniks” for even trying to confront this platoon of Tanks. For me, to think that the IDF used to fight “Fully Exposed in the Turret” against real armies, and to see my people playing the role of Goliath rather than David – was very sad and disturbing. I felt sorry for the reporter for trying to elevate the morale of the Israeli public with such a lame story. By the way, this was the same reporter who covered the race where Israel won its one and only Olympic medal five months ago – I watched it live! Such a surreal situation.

Even some commentators whom I normally appreciate, tend to be more “patriotic” in times of war, for a number of reasons. For one, so far this operation is going pretty well, from the Israeli viewpoint (and I already mentioned what it does to Barak’s approval rating...). The arrogant declarations from the 2006 campaign in Lebanon, the lack of training due to long terms as occupying forces – are all gone. The military is fulfilling its tasks step-by-step, trying to avoid casualties as much as possible, and truth has to be said – that pertains to civilian casualties as well. The main problem is that as a campaign conducted in heavily populated areas, avoiding civilian casualties is impossible. This is where the debate begins – whether a warfare against a semi-militia, which engages its fighting from residential areas, is moral at all – or whether this by itself is characteristic to an occupying regime.
Another reason is that nobody wants to be portrayed as a “traitor”, even when he or she has reservations or criticism on the way the campaign is carried out, or even on its mere taking place. Who knows, maybe the goal of stopping the firing of rockets, or at least a big damage to Hamas capability of doing so – will be achieved eventually?... nobody wants to be the town’s fool.
But the main cause, in my view, to the fact that criticism of this war is so scarce, is this: in the eyes of each side, the “other” side is always inhuman, blinded by hatred, cruel and evil by nature; while “we” are the “nice guys” whose sole intention is to live in peace – and we completely disregard the terrible similarities between ours and their wrongdoing, bad reasoning and justifications. It’s easy to think of ourselves as victims of 8 years of shooting on peaceful towns – even when we are the most powerful country in the region, militarily, technologically and economically. But it’s very difficult to portray ourselves, as we are in the eyes of our enemies, as heartless aggressors. As unbelievable as it may sound, we are cruel beasts in their eyes, just like they are in ours!
The speakers in the Israeli media tend to be more “responsible”, “balanced” – this has much to do with the past failures of the military, especially in the Lebanon campaign two and a half years ago. But if you listen carefully, you will find our share of pathetic and “hot-aired” statements. Whenever I hear Hamas speakers say “we will fight to the end, we will meet you in Jerusalem!”, I can’t help of thinking how similar this is to the “we will bring the firing of the rockets to a complete stop, and all weapon smuggling will cease, and Hamas will be brought down.” I think that everyone who hasn’t lost his senses yet knows that this is impossible. I’m curious and troubled to know, how many more people will die or be injured before we realize that there are limits to the power of even the most powerful military force. From watching TV in Israel for the last five days, I am not very optimistic about that.

Why Israel wont win this war, too

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1052754.html

English:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052619.html