12 Friday Aug 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life
It does not get any clearer or passionate than this. See this video of MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan having a meltdown over the meltdown —
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/video-msnbc-dylan-ratigan-meltdown-over-meltdown-031046281.html
Forward this to anyone who wants clarity on the problems the United States is facing!
12 Friday Aug 2011
Posted in Israel/Zionism
Israel, like America, is convulsing. 300,000 Israelis of all political stripes have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest economic conditions and call for greater “social justice” and equality within Israeli society. Working middle-class Israelis cannot pay their rent and salaries are not keeping pace with inflation, despite Israel’s national economic health and global leadership in start-up companies in bio and communications technologies.
How has it come to this? Here are some of the reasons.
More than a dozen years ago economic reforms put in place by then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reduced government regulation and thereby encouraged start-up companies and the emergence of an entrepreneurial class. The government also eliminated subsidies of basic goods such as cottage cheese and bread. At the same time billions of dollars were spent (and continue to be spent) by successive governments building up West Bank settlements which Amos Oz, in Haaretz recently, characterized as “the greatest mistake in the state’s history as well as its greatest injustice.” For years Israel has also poured mammoth sums of money into the ultra-Orthodox yeshivas where “generations of ignorant bums grow, filled with contempt toward the state, its people and the 21st century reality.” (These words are not mine, but I wish they were. They belong to Leonard Fine.)
What is going to happen? That is anyone’s guess. Politically, my cousin, Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin of the Likud Party, was quoted this week saying that Israel might never reach the November 2013 scheduled elections. This government could fall at any time and new elections would be held.
Yes, by the way, my Israeli family are right-wingers and always have been going back to my Great-Great Uncle Avram Shapira, known as the Shomer (i.e. policeman) of Petach Tikva. Uncle Avram helped settle the town with his family and four other families beginning in 1880. They had come from Russia in 1878, lived in the Old City of Jerusalem for 2 years before moving to this town, now a suburb of Tel Aviv. I met Uncle Avram at the age of 7 when he visited us in LA in the winter of 1956, but that’s another story.]
And then there is looming on the horizon September 20 when the Palestinian Authority has called for massive non-violent demonstrations. The following day, September 21, the PA intends to bring to the United Nations General Assembly (not the Security Council because it knows that the US will veto it) a resolution for Palestinian statehood.
Indeed, Israel has a few challenges on its plate.
Months ago, one of the best articles I have seen on what is happening in Israel, who is running the government and why this government is the most right-wing government in the history of the State, appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times written by Yossi Alpher, the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. I recommend your reading, saving and distributing it. It is prescient!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23iht-edalpher.html
11 Thursday Aug 2011
Posted in Quote of the Day
“Whether a person really loves God can be determined by the love he/she bears towards one’s fellows.” (Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev – 1740-1810)
09 Tuesday Aug 2011
Posted in American Jewish Life, Book Recommendations
This wonderful memoir is so beautifully written, heart-breaking and honest that I cursed my exhaustion when sleep interrupted my reading. The author’s mother, Rita (Ruchel) Lurie at the age of 5 years with 14 members of her family were forced to flee their homes in Poland and were taken in by righteous rescuers who risked their own lives to hide this family in a dark attic for two years between the summers of 1942 and 1944 while Nazis frequented the farm and wandered menacingly around outside.
Rita witnessed the death of her baby brother Nahum and then her mother Leah two weeks later (from a broken heart?) in that attic. Rita and the remnants of her family (her father Isaac and sister Sara, soon to be renamed Sandra) wandered around Europe for 5 years until the United States took them in. The damage, of course, was done, and this was only the beginning of Rita’s life-long challenges to cope with the wounds she suffered with the loss of her mother and brother, her father’s marriage to a woman possessed with her own demons as a survivor of Auschwitz, and a father who loved her dearly but was limited emotionally and unable to give Rita what she really needed and wanted.
Yet, this beautiful little girl grew into a beautiful woman, married a prince of a man whom she loved and who loved her, and mothered three exceptional children of her own, all of whom have spent their lives in one way or another trying to make right for their mom what was beyond their capacity to do.
Rita’s oldest daughter Leslie, in elegant prose and with keen insight into her mother and herself, tells their story following nearly a decade of writing, researching, returning to Poland, and seeking out both the rescuers, neighbors and relatives who lived in the attic.
Rita’s and Leslie’s candor is ever-present and exceptionally self-revealing. They share some of their deepest secrets, fears, passions, and drives, and their courage in doing so speaks to their strength as individuals and to the power of their family “enmeshment” and loving bond. Leslie’s daughter Mikaela, now a teenager two generations removed from the Shoah, carries the DNA of her grandmother’s and mother’s experience into the next generation. The cover photo of the book shows the three of them walking away down a country road towards the sun.
There are many Holocaust memoirs, and they all break-the heart. This one does that but it also uplifts, and I recommend it highly.
For more information, see Leslie’s blog and an overview of the book at http://www.bendingtowardthesun.com/bending_toward_sun.php
09 Tuesday Aug 2011
Posted in Quote of the Day
“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
by Wendell Berry
07 Sunday Aug 2011
Posted in Israel/Zionism
There is a clear linkage between the huge unprecedented protests (300,000 last night) now building weekly in Israeli cities, the Israeli government’s obsessive efforts to expand settlements in the West Bank, the government’s historic funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the ultra-Orthodox religious community, and the right-wing extremist assault on democratic freedoms of speech, political organizing and religion in the State of Israel.
The account below from “Media Line” (a superb independent American based media service – I recommend your subscription – medialine@list.themedialine.org) overviews the economic crisis in Israel which is a consequence of deregulation and de-funding of many essential industries in the 1990s and the unwise funding of West Bank settlements and the ultra-Orthodox.
It should be noted, however, that the deregulation and elimination of government subsidies in the 1990s under then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also had the effect of creating an entrepreneurial class of Israelis that has enabled Israel to rank second in the world after the United States in start-up companies in bio-technology and communications technology.
The current protests are now stimulating a debate that perhaps Israel needs to return to a more socialist oriented economy not only to enable middle class Israelis to survive, but also to bring greater equality to the citizenry as it was in its initial period of Israel’s history.
The Israeli government today has two major challenges – the economy and the scheduled Palestinian statehood UN vote in September. In thinking about how monumental each issue is for Israel’s future I am reminded of the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times!”
The following is the post this morning from Media Line:
Israel Takes to the Streets: More than 300,000 Nationwide Protest
By some estimates it was the nation’s largest-ever outpouring of citizens demonstrating for a cause with as many as 300,000 Israelis turning out on Saturday night as economic protests continue to build. The demonstration in Tel Aviv alone reportedly drew 250,000 while 30,000 others crammed into streets near the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem. The cost of living and lack of spending power provided the impetus for rallies that many noted had crossed the political divide – a rarity in protests here. On Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will name a panel combining experts with politicians to make economic recommendations the government hopes will stem the national angst. Netanyahu’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, is reported to be his choice to head the committee even though demands for Steinitz’s firing are among the most frequently heard demands. Three weeks in to the mass demonstrations, there appears to be no end in sight. The target is the massive gap between the “haves and have-nots”; the high cost of living and low spending power compared to other nations. Israelis find it impossible to make ends meet after paying high rents, costs of goods and services that are considerably more than comparable countries and taxes that rank among the world’s highest. The economic revolt is the first serious challenge to the Netanyahu government since it took office 27 months ago.
07 Sunday Aug 2011
One of the least commemorated holydays in the Jewish calendar cycle comes this Monday evening and Tuesday, Tisha B’Av, the day marking the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem (586 BCE and 70 CE). Each was a horrendous and traumatic event in the ancient Jewish world. Historical documents record that blood flowed like a river through the streets of Jerusalem, that all was destroyed, that the survivors, such as there were, became slaves to the Babylonian and Roman conquerors respectively, and that God was driven into exile with the people.
Beyond the geo-politics of those events, sages of later generations linked the two destructions to the people’s behavior. Following the first destruction they explained mip’nei chataeinu gilinu m’artzeinu (“because of our sins we were exiled from our land”). The sins included the perversion of justice, disregard for the needs of the widow, orphan and stranger, and worship of the false gods of profit and materialism. Following the second destruction, our sages said mipnei sinat chinam gilinu m’artzeinu (“Because of gratuitous hatred [of one Jew for another] we were exiled from our land”).
Over the centuries Tisha B’Av became a day of national mourning. For modern Jews focusing on the sins of the people as the first cause of the destruction raises difficult theological and moral problems especially after the Holocaust. Yet, even if we believe we are individually and collectively innocent of the oppressive and hard-hearted conditions that characterize our era, Rabbi Heschel reminds us that “some are [indeed] guilty, but all are responsible.”
Towards the end of the day, during Minchah, the mood of Tisha B’Av abruptly changes. At that hour, tradition teaches, the Messiah will be born. Thus, our mourning is transformed suddenly into celebration and our dejection is converted into anticipation of reunification with God.
Though national in character, Tisha B’Av has personal parallels. This past Friday evening during Shabbat services I witnessed the devastation that death brings in its wake and that Tisha B’Av commemorates for us as a people.
A dear long-time member of our community who had raised both her daughter and son at Temple Israel had just returned from New York where she buried her 60 year-old daughter. Her younger son had died at the age of 51 five years ago. She had come to say Kaddish.
A parent’s absolute worst nightmare had been visited upon her twice. As I prepared to say Kaddish with her I recalled Rose Kennedy’s loss of four children in her life-time and the words she taught her children when they were young as recalled by Ted Kennedy in his memoir True Compass:
“The birds will sing when the storm is over; The rose must know the thorn; The valley makes the mountain tall.”
May Tisha B’Av be a day when as we recall our national and personal traumas we also remember that as long as we have life there will come a new day if we are patient enough.
05 Friday Aug 2011
Posted in Quote of the Day
“Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” Mark Twain
03 Wednesday Aug 2011
Posted in Divrei Torah
The reading of Parashat D’varim (the first Torah portion in the 5th book of the 5 Books of Moses – Deuteronomy) always precedes Tisha B’av (lit. 9th of Av), the Holyday commemorating the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem (587 BCE and 70 CE). Why, and what might this juxtaposition of holiday and parashah mean for us?
The Hebrew word d’varim (singular davar) means “word(s).” The Hebrew root daled, bet, resh also takes the form d’vir (“oracle”). In 1 Kings 8:6, the earliest occurrence of this verbal form in the Hebrew Bible, we read, “The priests brought the Ark of the God’s Covenant to a place underneath the wings of the cherubim, in the Shrine [D’vir] of the house in the Holy of Holies.”
Here, d’vir appears in one verse in parallel with m’komo (his Place – the rabbis always interpreted “Place” as the equivalent of God) and with Kodesh ha-Kodashim (Holy of Holies), the shrine from which God spoke. Much later the Talmud invested the d’vir with new meaning and connected it with the holy word itself, or The “Book.”
This development from shrine to word is not an accident. The Talmud asserts that despite the destruction of the two Jerusalem Temples, the embodiment of holiness (formerly found in the sacred precinct – i.e. the Holy of Holies) and God’s presence amidst the people in that shrine did not disappear from the Jewish people upon the Temples’ destruction and the people’s exile.
Evoking the essence of what the Jewish people’s sacred duties are, Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel asked, “Why and for what purpose was Abraham chosen to become a great and mighty nation, and to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth? Not because he knew how to build pyramids, altars, and temples, but ‘in order that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of God by doing righteousness and justice’ (Genesis 18:18-19).”
Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, put it this way, “Judaism survived because it replaced its cult with a canon. A portable and imperishable book that could transcend the traumas of history provided the bridge to eternity once ensured by a sacred space. Wherever the Jewish people might go, God went with them. The Torah became the inexhaustible wellspring for law and life, for piety and polity, the most treasured object of a religious culture that privileged literacy and learning. In the synagogue, the ark that houses it came to replicate the Temple’s inner shrine…book and shrine serve to perpetuate the experience of revelation, the verbal distillation of ‘that still, small voice’ that joins soul to Soul and mind to Mind.”
The rabbis believed that the first Temple was destroyed because the people had veered far from Torah and that they had forsaken the fundamental principle of tzedek, justice (“Tzedek tzedek tirdof – Justice, justice shall you pursue!” Deuteronomy 16:20). They believed, as well, that the second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred between one Jew and another.
Theirs is not an ancient message for an ancient time. The message of justice, compassion, love, and faith is ever relevant today in our Jewish community, in this country, in Israel, and throughout the world.
Tisha B’av is commemorated Monday evening and Tuesday, August 8-9.
02 Tuesday Aug 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life
So said Mohammad Fadel, an associate professor specializing in Islamic law at the University of Toronto (“Behind an Anti-Shariah Push”, Sunday’s NY Times, July 31, p. 16).
The front page Sunday Times article (above the fold) reviews well the nativist, paranoid and right-wing effort to create a straw dog of American Muslims and then attack them. This campaign (to my great shame and embarrassment as a Jew) is being led by an American Orthodox Jewish lawyer, David Yerushalmi.
Given that there is no organized push by Muslims to impose Shariah law anywhere in the country, Yerushalmi himself says that this is a prophylactic measure so that “if” Muslims try to take over the legal system of the United States (as he says they are doing in Europe), a law will be in place to prevent it, as if the US Constitution and our democratic system of checks and balances wouldn’t be enough by themselves!
This organized grass roots effort to demonize the American Muslim community as the perpetual outsider, interloper and enemy, and to attack Islam as a religion is based on motivations that are contrary to facts and reason.
The paranoia of the right-wing and their historic search for a scapegoat (Communists, homosexuals, African Americans, Latinos, liberals, and now Muslims) says far more about them than the object of their obsessive fears and hatred.
Facts, of course, are irrelevant when confronting masses of people who are convinced of their “truth.” Here is a relevant fact – The American Muslim population (Pew Research Center, 2009) was 2.5 million, a mere .86% of the American population.
The article is worth reading and I recommend it if you have not already done so.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/man-behind-anti-sharia-state-law-push-130845197.html).
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