14 Monday Nov 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life, Israel/Zionism
This may be nothing more than speculation, but this piece from Aryeh Sullivan of Media Line is worth reading. Aryeh is a veteran newsman with particular expertise on the Middle East who I met last year in Israel. He escorted my Temple Leadership Mission to Bethlehem to meet with the head of Ma’an, the Palestine News Agency.
WEST, NOT ISRAEL, LIKELY TO STRIKE AT IRAN
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=33697
13 Sunday Nov 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life, Ethics
Dani Klein Modisett is a friend and a congregant. Professionally, she is a writer, actress and stand-up-comic. She is also a loving wife and mother. Dani gave me permission to post her article (link is below) on my blog.
Dani was a child molestation victim at the age of 8. Now 47, she reflects in The Huffington Post on the Penn State University scandal involving the molestation of at least 40 children by the former Assistant Football Coach Jerry Sandusky between 1994 and 2008.
As the ongoing investigation has now revealed, Head Coach Joe Paterno, the beloved University personality and Penn State icon who made “Success with Honor” the University’s mantra, knew (along with others) about Sandusky’s predatory behavior, but neither he nor anyone reported it to the police or took action of any kind against Sandusky on behalf of the children he abused or the University that employed him.
Edmund Burke’s warning bears repeating: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dani-klein-modisett/joe-paterno_b_1087477.html
11 Friday Nov 2011
Posted in Art
In the last year our Executive Director, Bill Shpall, with the help of our archivist Enid Sperber and our appraiser Jack Roth, have led the way in cataloging all the fine art that Temple Israel of Hollywood has collected over the last 85 years since its founding in 1926. It is an extraordinary collection of fine Judaica, manuscripts, paintings, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, photographs, sculpture, ancient pottery and glass, silver and gold ceremonial art, bronze, marble, calligraphy, books, and textiles.
Here are a few of many gems – 8 Seriographs by Ben Shahn of the infamous Dreyfus Affair of 1894; a first edition of Der Judenstaadt (The Jewish State) by Theodor Herzl, 1896; an original oil painting and 4 lithographs by one of Israel’s great artists, Reuven Rubin; original lithographs signed by Marc Chagall, and Israeli pioneer artists Jacob Steinhardt and Moshe Castel; a signed letter of Henrietta Szold (1916); a remnant of the Cairo Genizah; a Prayer Book published in Livorno dated 1801 with a letter in the hand of Sir Moses Montefiore; many antiquities of Holy Land glass, bronze and pottery dating from 1600 B.C.E. to 700 C.E.; an embroidered velvet Readers Desk Cover from the now destroyed synagogue of Alzenau, Germany, 1827; a Polish copper tz’dakah box circa 1900, an exquisite silver Torah Crown from Amsterdam, late 19th century; 2 silver and gold Torah breast plates from the famed Lazarus Posen silversmiths of Frankfurt and Berlin, mid-19th century; 2 wooden Torah cases covered in silver and red velvet from Syria and Iraq, 19th century; several exquisite silver Megilah holders with illuminated manuscripts from Germany and Iran, 19th and 20th centuries; signed photographs by Israeli photo-journalist Micha Bar-Am; hand-woven linen tapestries featuring the tallit and a redesigned interior of our Sanctuary Ark with Torah mantles by American artist, Laurie Gross; a bronze cast Menorah by Salvadore Dali; and a bronze cast wall hanging of Moses Descending Sinai by Mary Ann Devine (a 2nd cast is at Hillside Memorial Park).
All this and much more are shown in a beautiful catalog and is a precious legacy of our community.
John Updike once wrote that “The artist brings something into the world that did not exist before, and he/she does it without destroying something else.” So true, and thank God for the artists among us!
10 Thursday Nov 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life
David Sauvage is a young man (pushing 30) who I’ve known since he was a kid and I consider a friend. He is smart and principled, is a play-write and a documentary film-maker (like his Dad, award winning Pierre Sauvage). David appeared in the last couple of days on MSNBC and talked about the Wall Street Protests and his 30-second Wall Street ad that has gone viral. I am proud of David and recommend your watching. http://ow.ly/7mbGV
10 Thursday Nov 2011
In our post-World War II world there is no aspect of the story of the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac) that is not jarring and disturbing. We ask, how could any father agree to slay his own son on God’s command and claim this as essential to faith?
This Torah portion (Vayera) confronts our relationship with God as none other in our tradition. In this age of skepticism, doubt and tentative belief we ask what kind of a human being was Abraham who was prepared to kill his son? Did Abraham “hear” God correctly, and if so, could any of us have said “Hineni” (Here I am) as Abraham did when God called him to demonstrate how far his faith would take him?
The mystics tell us that Abraham’s willingness to do God’s will reflects an ideal man of faith, that there are times when (per Kierkegaard) we have to suspend the ethical and nullify completely the individual ego, even if it means destroying everything we love and our future. The 20th century Israeli scholar and thinker Yeshayahu Liebowitz has written that we are not supposed to extract an ethical message from Abraham’s behavior. In effect, he says, human beings are not commanded by the Torah to be ethical; they are commanded to serve God!
I wonder. My understanding of the Torah and prophetic traditions is that a covenant of justice and compassion is what God requires of us, not heartless self-destruction.
The key Hebrew command relative to Abraham’s near slaughter of his son reads: Kach na et bin’cha, et y’chid’cha, asher a-hav’ta et Yitzchak v’lech l’cha el eretz ha-Moriah v’ha-a-le-hu sham l’olah al echad he-harim asher omar elecha (“God said, ‘Take your son, your only one, the one you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt-offering, on one of the mountains that I will show you.” (Genesis 22:2).
One midrash says that Abraham’s understanding of the event was wrong from the start and based on a mistaken perception of the original order. Abraham should have tried to find out, the midrash argues, what God wanted of him and not do anything until he was certain about what he was being asked to do.
Rashi explained that Abraham did not, in fact, understand God’s words and command. God didn’t say “slaughter your son – v’tish’chat et bin’cha.” He said, “Lift up your son to the service of God – v’ha-a-le-hu sham l’olah.”
Yes, the word “olah” can be rendered as a burnt offering; but it literally means “that which is lifted up.”
Recall Kunte Kinte from the 1977 TV Mini-Series “Roots” as he, following his tribal custom, took his son to the top of a mountain and lifted him in thanksgiving and dedication to the spirit world. Recall, as well, “The Lion King” doing the same by presenting his son and future King to his spiritual relatives among the stars.
In the Genesis story, just as Abraham lifted the knife to slay his son God sent the angel rather than speak directly to Abraham to stay his hand. God never spoke to Abraham again. Was God devastated by Abraham’s mishearing of his call to dedicate his son? Did Abraham fail that tenth and most crucial final test of faith? Did Abraham really understand the meaning of the Divine-human partnership?
The end of the story is clear. God did not want human sacrifice and we do not have to give up our humanity to serve God. What Abraham did earlier at Sodom and Gomorrah and what Moses did at the sin of the Golden Calf – namely, challenge God to live up to God’s own standards of justice and compassion – that is the lesson of the Biblical tradition. That is our Jewish legacy!
Shabbat shalom.
09 Wednesday Nov 2011
Posted in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism
Last week I wrote about two photographs I have in my drawer – one with former President George W. Bush who I met in 2000 in the run-up to the Presidential “selection” and the other with jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti who I met in Ramallah in 1998. I will never hang my photo with Bush on my wall as the blood on his hands in Iraq to me is a source of profound shame to the United States. The one with Mr. Barghouti, also with blood on his hands from his leadership in the 2nd Intifada, I may hang one day – and hopefully will be able to do so if his release from prison eventually leads to a two-states for two-peoples final resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with him as President of Palestine. Here is an excellent piece published yesterday on Mr. Barghouti in the International Herald Tribune.
When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently called on Israel to release more Palestinian prisoners in advance of any possible negotiations, he was setting a condition that he probably knew Israel would balk at. One of the prisoners on his list, Ahmed Saadat, is accused of killing an Israeli minister. More significantly, another one, if released, would most likely soon take Abbas’s place.
That has not escaped Israeli leaders. In fact, freeing Marwan Barghouti, who is regarded as the sole Palestinian leader who enjoys the full trust of Fatah and the Palestinian public, is said to have figured prominently in high-level Israeli consultations as a means of retaliating against Abbas for his bid for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, and as a way of ushering in a new and less corrupt generation of Palestinian leaders.
The Israeli peace camp has often called for the release of Barghouti, but the security establishment has strongly opposed it. The 52-year-old, life-long activist is held responsible by Israel for directing many attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, and he was sentenced in 2004 to five life sentences.
But in his earlier years as a Palestinian student leader and then member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, he also opened channels not only with the Israeli left, but also with the Israeli center-right, because he believed that an agreement could not be achieved with only the “peaceniks.”
I knew him well in those years, before he turned militant. He speaks Hebrew, and never denied the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish state. And while he always made clear to his counterparts that a Palestinian state would have an Islamic character, and was proud of being a Muslim, he also expressed contempt for Islamic fundamentalists.
Above all, he has never been associated with the corruption of the Palestinian establishment that formed around Yasser Arafat. While a student at Ramallah’s Birzeit University, his main efforts were invested in the refugee camps: social work, aid to the ill and the poor, cleaning the streets.
In 1987 he was deported by the late Yitzhak Rabin, then minister of defense, because of his role in preparing the first, less violent, intifada. Barghouti spent seven years in exile, keeping his distance from Arafat’s corrupted entourage in Tunis. He was allowed back in 1994, under the Oslo Accords signed by the same Rabin, and in 1996 elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council, where he was a strong critic of the corruption in Fatah. In 1995 he was among the founders of Tanzim, an armed, grassroots offshoot which played a significant role in the second intifada, far more violent than the first.
So why would Israelis, including some from the intelligence community, seriously consider releasing Barghouti?
For one thing, he and Tanzim represent the next generation of secular Palestinian leaders. One of the biggest mistakes of the Israeli establishment and American envoys over the past two years has been their failure to open back channels to Tanzim, a group also ignored by Abbas and his officials.
Barghouti would also form a powerful leadership team with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Like Barghouti, Fayyad is regarded as being above any dirty dealings. He has structured an impressively efficient bureaucracy. He is rightly courted by the Obama administration and many Israelis. It is well known that there is no love lost between him and Abbas, but the Palestinian president needs Fayyad to ensure a flow of funds from the West.
The trouble is that Fayyad is regarded by the Palestinians as a professional, as the C.E.O. of the Palestinian Authority, but not as its leader. Many experts believe that Israeli and Western negotiators should encourage cooperation between Fayyad and Barghouti. The endorsement of Tanzim would bring Fayyad and his reforms critical support from the Palestinians.
This may be why some in the Israeli leadership, those who are interested in achieving a two-state solution to the conflict, see Barghouti as a possible partner, even if his sins are not forgiven. At least he is honest, and has the trust of the Palestinian people. Abbas, after all, is Arafat’s former deputy, and hardly a saint in Jewish eyes, and at 76 he appears largely concerned now with his legacy.
To hold the peace process hostage to Barghouti’s release raises an impossible hurdle for any Israeli politician. Abbas and his associates understand this well. But even if the Israelis cannot release him now, at least they should immediately initiate a back channel to Tanzim, and allow its representatives unencumbered communication with the jailed Barghouti.
The world should understand that there is a new Israeli phenomenon: most Israelis have moved to the left when it comes to the peace process and are ready for compromise even if, for tactical reasons, they vote for the right. A majority of Israelis would support a two-state deal if it included a Palestinian state that recognized Israel as what it is, a Jewish state, and the Palestinian right of return was limited to the new Palestine, while the Jewish right of return was limited to Israel proper. They do not believe that Abbas is ready at this point to accept this.
If such an understanding could be reached with Tanzim and Fayyad, then Barghouti could be released to take his place in the landscape of Palestinian leadership.
Avinoam Bar-Yosef is the president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute and a former chief diplomatic correspondent for the daily Maariv.
To see the article on line: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/opinion/release-marwan-barghouti.html
07 Monday Nov 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Stories
Once the Baal Shem Tov (or, the Besht) summoned Sammael, the lord of demons, because of some important matter that he wished to command Sammael to do. Sammael roared at the Besht – “How dare you summon me! Up until now this has happened to me only three times; in the hour when the Tree of Knowledge was violated, the hour when the Israelites created the golden calf, and the hour when Jerusalem was destroyed.”
The Besht bade his disciples to bare their foreheads to Sammael, and on every forehead, the lord of demons saw inscribed the sign of the image in which God creates the human being.
Upon that, Sammael did as the Besht requested, but before leaving on his mission, he said humbly and beseechingly: “Oh Sons of the living God: permit me to stay here just a little longer and gaze upon your foreheads.” (Tales of the Hasidim, by Martin Buber – p. 77)
Imagine the world if every human being were aware every time he/she looked upon another human being of what is inscribed on our foreheads – B’tzelem Elohim – that each of us, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, race, religion, ethnicity or nationality is created in God’s image! There would be no “other!”
My friend Alex Grossman applied this principle of sameness to his post concerning the social media and the growing tendency to self-censor because of the fear of personal attack. It is worth reading as well as his first response to a reader.
http://mediatapper.com/are-there-taboo-subjects-in-social-media/
06 Sunday Nov 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life, Israel/Zionism
IAEA Expected to Detail Iranian Nuclear Efforts
“The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to release its most explicit charges to date that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Diplomats who have seen the report, which will be released this week, said that among the most incriminating facts are that Iran developed computer models for a nuclear warhead and that it constructed a large steel container to carry out tests with high explosives that could be used in nuclear weapons. Western powers have long suspected that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, but Tehran has insisted its program is peaceful and the IAEA has until now has held by back from making any definitive conclusions. The diplomats argue that the new IAEA study offers no other explanation for Iran’s efforts other than that it is developing a nuclear weapon. The U.S. will likely use the report to lobby the international community to impose new sanctions against Iran. Meanwhile, Israeli President Shimon Peres warned on Saturday night that an attack on Iran is “more and more likely.” (Media Line News Services – http://www.themedialine.org/elite/registration.asp – I recommend your subscription – JLR)
The above report of the IAEA confirms what Israel has known for a number of years. Yet, the questions remain – what is to be done about it and who is to do it?
When Israel’s leaders rattle their sabers as Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak did publicly this past week calling upon Israel to be ready to strike Iranian missile silos and weapons installations, we have to ask how serious Israel really is given the catastrophic implications that such actions would unleash.
In response to Bibi’s and Barak’s statements, Hezbollah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah warned that if Israel attacks Iran, Hezbollah (Iran’s proxy in Lebanon) will launch 20,000 missiles at Tel Aviv, and though Hamas has not also made such a statement, we cannot eliminate the possibility that Iran’s proxy in Gaza will not also launch missiles at Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Ashkelon.
Bibi’s and Barak’s speeches may have been merely political rhetoric to shore up their get-tough bonafides following the Gilad Shalit deal with Hamas, an exchange which emboldened Arab and Muslim extremists, enhanced popular support to the increasingly unpopular Hamas, and softened Israel’s deterrent presence in the Middle East.
It is noteworthy (and comforting to me, at least) that all the heads of Israel’s intelligence services have strongly advised against Israel attacking Iran, not only because Israel likely would not succeed in its mission in destroying all Iran’s missile silos and nuclear production facilities (some are deep underground and others are presumed to be hidden), but an attack could instigate a wider war including other Arab nations against Israel as well as increased threats of terrorist attacks against American, Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide.
The peace activist Shlomo Avineri wrote this past week that he is certain that Israel will NOT attack Iran on the basis of the above and on the principle that if one is going to launch a surprise attack one doesn’t talk about it in advance. And so, if Israeli leaders are sane and calculating, which I believe (or want to believe) they are, then all this talk is nothing more than talk.
That being said – Iran indeed poses a real threat to the State of Israel and moderate forces in the Middle East, and because of this the United States and the Quartet should be the ones on the front lines confronting that threat, not Israel.
Shaalu shalom Yerushalayim – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
04 Friday Nov 2011
Posted in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism
04 Friday Nov 2011
Go forth from your land, my Lord, / Go forth, come to me, / travel my skin with your lips. / Come dark, come night, / touch all of me, touch, / leave no soundness. / Rise in omens within me, grant / on everlasting inheritance, a multitude / of seed, my Lord, / because I grant it to you / I will increase your hire.
Go forth from your body, my Lord, / go forth, come to me, / wound my heart, smooth of teeth. / Touch my face, touch my eyes, / truly kill, leave nothing. / Rise within me to the fingers of tears, rise / to the man, until before you / I / shall end.
Go forth from yourself, my Lord, / go forth, come to me, / travel my length, my width, / travel my horizon / I / will burn before you, not consumed. / See my spirit / but some face to your void, see / here I am / no more.
(Translated from the Hebrew by the author. From “Modern Poems on the Bible: An Anthology” – edited with an Introduction by David Curzon, publ. JPS, 1994)
Amir Or was born in Tel Aviv in 1956. He is an editor, translator and poet whose works have been published in more than 30 languages. Or is the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Prize for poetry.
