Nov 3 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life Martyrs Memorial Comments

We Are Not Alone

Nov 3 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life Martyrs Memorial Comments

We Are Not Alone

I have, in my possessions, two photographs of my grandmother, Binah. One shows a well-groomed and well coiffed older woman, a look of a peaceful time.

The other is of almost the same period, but here, my grandmother’s hair is tussled, untidied, as if she were just rushing to get out. This picture bears a stamp of the Polish consulate in Vienna, and I realized that it was her photo for a visa or a passport, which she needed immediately in order to get out.

It was 80 years ago, almost to this date, that she had been attacked by frenzied mobs in the wake of Kristallnacht, the night of shattered glass, Nov 9, 1938. She was among the fortunate ones, as she was able, with my grandfather, Shmuel, to get to Switzerland and safety.

Eighty years later , a man filled with hate for Jews, attacked the peaceful worshippers at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Images of Kristallnacht pop into our mind.

Of course, we are deeply, deeply worried. There is the blatant attack, such as transpired last week. We Jews are still the largest target for hate-crimes against any religious group. There is also a subtle anti-Semitism, whereby the New York Times this week admitted that it has intentionally down played attacks on Jews because the attackers didn’t match any one’s preferred profile for hater. 

There is a subtle anti-Semitism when Columbia University sends an email to the students denouncing the attack yet fails to mention that this was specifically an attack on Jews! 

A Louis Farrakhan can bait us with calls of “ termites” and worse,  and  be a guest of honor at Aretha Franklin’s funeral.

However, it is also, also vital to be aware of the differences of then and now.

Then, we had a President who suppressed reports of the mass killings of Jews because he was afraid that the American public would not support the war effort if they thought they were saving Jews.

Today, we have a President, who, no matter our opinion of him, must surely have been thinking of his own Jewish grandchildren when he laid the wreath at the synagogue this week. The killer, after all, had accused the President of being a tool of the Jews.

Then, a Father Coughlin could draw 30 million avid listeners to his radio show, and spew his claim that Jews were behind Communism and its barbarities.

Today, we have a Catholic Church that speaks openly of its “ Jewish heritage” and has declared that  God never gave up on his covenant with the Jews. The same attitude has shaped Protestant Churches, especially in that wing, the Evangelical wing, with which we have so many differences.

So yes, we have friends among the white, Protestant and Catholic public, far more than we have enemies. We have friends , far more , among African-Americans, than we have enemies.We have friends, far more , among Latinos, than we have enemies.

Yes, even among American Muslims, we have many friends, because the Muslim community here is not the community of Malaysia, for example, whose distinguished past president espoused much the same drivel as the Pittsburgh murderer. The America Muslim community is different. We have friends.

 It is vital then, for us, to continue to forge our bonds with our fellow Americans, of all ethnic origins, and all faiths, and of both parties.

It is so significant, therefore, that we have come together, Jews of Ashkenazi and American roots, and Jews who have fled here to escape persecution in Iran, together as Americans, with our friends of all backgrounds who joined with the Jewish  community this weekend. Here, we shall, to borrow Ben Franklin’s words, all hang together, or be hanged separately.

We have sweated blood and tears in this country to get where we have gotten. We will not allow the failures and dregs of society to rob us of our dignity and our pride. We work together with our all Americans for a society that can enable us to fulfill our dreams in amity and fellowship.

Amen.

Are We Still Your People?

Are We Still Your People? Yom Kippur Yizkor 2018

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I am going to dedicate my sermon tonight to a lesson in a Hebrew word, but to get to it, I am going to tell you some curious tales about my previous community, in Whittier, California and the first Jewish settlers in Whittier just after World War II.
Before then, it turns out that the only Jew of note to have set foot in Whittier was Albert Einstein, who had visited Whittier College. Eventually, it became the Jewish Beverly Hills of Eastern LA County  and now, by the way, Whittier is, according to the LA Times, the Hispanic Beverly Hills.
But back to  WWII. Young Jews, fresh from military service began to settle in that region. These young people had very little Jewish background  but they knew they needed to have a community of their own in a Quaker–Anglo town.
Well, how do you find Jews in such a Jewish wilderness? One of the first members was the local bus driver. Whenever someone would get up on the bus, he would begin whistling Hatikvah. If the passenger would look up at him, he would immediately invite him or her to join the new community.
This now takes me closer to my point, about the lesson in Hebrew that I said I was giving tonight.
It is another lesson in how we find each other.
I want to take us to the other side of the world, to Europe, about the same time as my story of Whittier.   Keep in mind that, Europe, in the aftermath of World War II ,was a mess, with some 31 million refugees that had to be resettled.  Jews were prominent among those wandering masses, Jews  wandering, from , country to country, village to village, camp to camp The British, in particular, put up obstacles to block the mass flow of Jewish survivors, lest they slip through the British blockade and get to Palestine.  Remember also that pogroms and murder continued against Jews after the cannons fell silent. Jews had to evade the border guards and also, keep evade the locals who thought they needed to finish what Hitler couldn’t.
Yet they needed to find a way to reveal themselves to one another.
My father told me that there was a code word the survivors used. One would see someone who looked Jewish, and he would whisper "Amcha?” If the other one would respond "Amcha!", then each knew who the other was, and they could let their guard down.
Amcha-- How many know the word?
It is a word for the common man in Hebrew and Yiddish. We distinguish die sheine loit—the beautiful people, high society, from amcha-just plain folk. It's not a matter of money, but of style—the Kennedy family, for example, are sheine loit, for example, but most celebrities, though they may have money, are Amcha-ordinary people. That is the figurative meaning.
The literal meaning though, is Am- Cha-Your people. Am is people, the cha at the end—your. Just who does this Am, this people, belong to? Who is the “ your” referring to?
During this High Holy Day season we have repeated, over and again, the 13 attributes of God. Adonay… el rachum v chanun. , The 13 attributes emphasize God as merciful, and this declaration of God’s attributes, what we may call the only definition of God the Torah gives us, is taken from the story of the Golden Calf.
When the children of Israel make the Golden Calf, God is at first incensed. He calls to Moses: “Your people whom you took out of Egypt.”
Here’s that word, Amcha-Your people.”
Here, Moses responds with great Hutzpah, and turns the tables on God, using God’s very words against him.
“Why are you angry at your people whom you took out of Egypt?"
Here is the point.  Whose people are we--amcha- “Your people”, “Moses’ people” or “your people”, God's people?
The parallel, suggested our Rabbi's is in a tale of a king of who had a vineyard run by his tenant. When ever it would be a good vintage year, the king would boast," My wine is great." When it was a bad vintage year, he complained to the tenant—“Your wine is bad!” To this the tenant retorted," Listen, King--good or bad-- it's still your wine!”
Anyone who has ever been a parent knows this--between a father and mother, when the child is good, the father and mother each say, ‘my child"; when the child is bad, each says "Your child."
Moses was making it very clear," God, you took them out of Egypt-they are your people--Good or bad--they're your people."
That is the essence of this idea of Amcha--we Jews may be good, or, very often, we are not good. But good or bad, we remain God's people, won by freedom from slavery in Egypt, and again, by commitment, at Sinai. Good or bad--we are part of that covenant.
That is Amcha.  Amcha yisrael. Your people, Israel. It is a reminder, that as long as we remain part of the covenant, a part of Klal Yisrael—the entity of Israel, the community of the Jewish people-that there is hope for us.
You know that our worship is all in the plural, the communal “We”. We did, we ask, we seek. It is “Our father, our King,” “Our”, not “my”, and we confess to sins, “We have sinned, we have betrayed”; not “ you have sinned” nor “ I have sinned”.
We drown or float together. That is Amcha.
But are we still “Amcha”?  Do our young Jews in America feel bound and responsible for each other? I bring up this thought of Amcha because we have great questions as to whether we are still this “Amcha”-Your People. Are we still a people, or are we falling apart.
A few years ago, the poll Pew reported that 94% of American Jews were proud to be Jews. Big deal !.
  There are no barriers to our achievements, there are no quotas, no obligation to go to the baptismal font to get ahead, no need for that obsession to get ahead in business or academics, full steam ahead. No longer.
But what does it mean in terms of commitment? Of getting off of one’s duff to do something about it.
We all know that America’s Jews are the most secular population in this country; we have been so for many generations, yet something has still pulled us together. We just don’t know what it is anymore.
  We have a sense of a younger generation that no longer feels it shares in the fate of our fellow Jews. Life is good.
So, we have this scene at the graduation this summer, in which a great writer, Michael Chabon, is invited to Hebrew Union College to be the commencement speaker. We all love great speakers, especially one who makes the New York Times best-seller list. So he speaks to the future leaders of American Jewry, and in essence, tells them that he no longer identifies with the story of the Exodus from Egypt, no longer can sit through a Passover seder, no matter how modernized, and that we should no longer try to be different from anyone else. In short, in order to survive, we should all become his kind of intellectual, and be like everyone else- everyone else in his particular crowd of intellectuals.
It’s not new. Heine, the greatest writer of Germany, a baptized Jew, Heine said of Judaism, in one of his bitter days, “Judaism is not a religion, but a misfortune.” But, at least Heine, the Baptized Jew, went on to defend his Jewish people.
The intellectual father of communism, Karl Marx, went much further. “What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money”, “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”
So, following ancient Heine and Marx, and modern Chabon- after the turmoil of the past two centuries, after pogroms, and the Holocaust-- and after all, Israel is not a perfect State and the Europeans and the BDS ‘ers are angry with us, and the LA Times doesn’t want to consider denying the Jewish people alone a kind of hate-speech, so after all, maybe, maybe we throw in the towel. No longer,”Amcha”, no longer “ Your people”-not God’s people, not my people. Not a people. Period.
[LA Times in September published an official editorial defending the right to pursue BDS against Israel, and against applying anti-Zionism as a form of hate speech on campus. This paper would never have given such consideration to a right to protect old South Africa from accusations of apartheid, for example.]
And then, and then- the ever-dying Jewish people, always written off as a “ Vanishing people”, written off by the Romans, by Christianity, by Islam, by National Socialism, by Marxism, by wealth and prosperity and its temptations, nevertheless, we are still here. Never vanished, never vanquished.
Something pulls at our heart-strings and brings us together at this sacred season, something reminds us that, in some way, as diluted and watered down as it maybe, we are still,” Amcha”, still one people, still God’s people, however, we may choose to enact that idea and express it in ourselves.
I want to go back to the story of the gold Calf, and to the core verse” adonay, adonay, el rachum”  that is repeated so many times this season. Our version of the verse is not the version that Moses heard.
Moses heard. Moses heard a longer version, which continues “nakeh loyenakeh" will not clear the guilty but will visit the sins of the fathers unto the children unto the third and fourth generation.” This version was erased from our prayer books.
Our Rabbis erased God's words. They removed almost all of that sentence and stopped at the word, "Nakeh"--God will acquit. Period. End of statement.

Our Rabbis defined the Torah for us as a book of hope and in the spirit of that understanding they deliberately edited the Torah in the sprit of the Torah. Again, they were speaking to us, to the Amcha, the people. However far we may stray, no matter what may have been done before, no matter what our parents or grandparents may have done, we will find an open door leading back in. Remember then, that our religion is a religion of hope, that it is the hope for an ultimate universal redemption that stands behind the personal redemption we each seek at the this season. We have never lost that hope, that Hatikvah, for ourselves, for our people, for humankind.
There is then this final thought for us tonight, as we remind ourselves that we are Amcha, your people, O God. We haven’t left you; we haven’t left each other; we haven’t left ourselves.
I want to conclude with a prayer and a melody that tie in now to this day. .
In the Nazi ghettoes, as our fellow Jews faced a threat they had never before faced, one ancient prayer gained new relevance
This is the text of the prayer:
שומר ישראל. שמר שארית ישראל. ואל יאבד ישראל. האומרים שמע ישראל:

Guardian of the people Israel, guard the remnant of Israel, and let not Israel perish, those who say, Shma Yisrael.

I am going to chant it, in the chant that was sung by those Jews in the ghettos and camps. If you know it, join with me:

שומר ישראל. שמר שארית ישראל. ואל יאבד ישראל. האומרים שמע ישראל:

Guardian of the people Israel, guard the remnant of Israel, and let not Israel perish, those who say, Shma Yisrael.

May this year, be one in which we take our place among amcha yisrael, your people Israel, wholeheartedly. Dear Guradian of Israel, we are still  you people, Amcha—you watch out for us, and we will watch out for you. Amen

High Holy Rosh Day 1  2018  Rabbi Norbert Weinberg

What do you see?

            If any of you checked our Facebook page or gotten one of our emails, you would have seen an interesting line, “Call in 5779 with History-and Her story.” I will be humble. The credit goes to our Cantor, Stacey Morse, who decided, correctly, that our mothers were players in the big game of Judaism, not just the fathers.

            What may seem as an attempt to show that we are hip and relevant, or flip and irreverent, is actually germane to this season. It is not some attempt to force gender-equality on us from some contemporary ideology de jour. Not man-splaining it. It is integral to this very holiday season.

            We speak in terms of “Yom HaDin”, Day of Judgement, and the image of God as judge, as king, as father, all male, harsh, and cold images. We think of an Abraham, taking his son, unemotionally, up on the altar, the abstract ideologue, so wrapped in his vision, that all else fades away.

            But this is only one half of the story.

            Every element in this season is associated with Atonement, Kippurim, achieving forgiveness, Slichah, and even more so, with a plea for Rachamim. Rachamim, Mercy, or compassionate love, comes from the word, “Rechem”- the womb, the uterus, that part of the woman, as mother, as giver of life, as nurturer.

            Hence, our Torah reading of the first day deals, first, with God remembering Sarah, as he promised. It follows with the tension between two mothers, Sarah and Hagar, as to which son, Isaac or Ishmael, is to be the heir to the message of Abraham. The Haftarah focus on the anguish of Hannah, who is the love object of her husband, yet feels unfulfilled as she is barren, childless. Tomorrow, our Haftarah reading depicts a despondent mother, Rachel, moaning as she sees her children led off to slavery in a distant land. It is the Holy One who now breaks down at Rachel’s tears and declare that the Israel is his own ben yakir li”, my dear son,’yeled sha’shuim”, the child whom he has indulged and spoiled. In the Torah reading of the second Day, too, Sarah is present by her absence. The classical Jewish mother. The Midrash says that as she hears of Abraham hauling Isaac up the mountain, she dies of heartbreak. How do we know? Because in the very next paragraph, Sarah is dead. Father is abstract; mother is all too much there.

            So, this is very much a herstory, not a history.

            At this point, I am going to pivot my focus on to one mother, the one who seems to be neglected, passed over by history, in our version, a least, Hagar. Truth be told, she is central to today’s reading. She is central because in her character, we learn about seeing and sight. We understand that she is blinded by her misery and pain. In story number two, Sarah dies; in this story, Hagar is immobilized and can not see her son’s salvation.

            Sight and its counterpart, blindness, are as much a matter of our insight and outlook as it is a matter of photons striking the rods and cones in our retina.

            Blind people who can see, while sighted people are visionless, is a popular theme for many a writer.

            Many years back, there was a play and a movie; called Butterflies are Free, the story of a young man, blind from birth.

            His mother reminds him of the children's tales she composed of "Little Donny Dark" with his slogan" There are none as blind as those who will not see". While the line may sound trite and commonplace, it rings too true for us all--there are those who have no eyesight, yet know very well where they are going, and others, with 20/20 vision, who are constantly walking in to walls.

            For Rosh Hashanah, for a time in which we are to look inside ourselves, it is appropriate that our Torah reading of both days deals with being able and ready to see. 

            The first days reading deals with mother Hagar, abandoned in the desert, outcast, with her son Ishmael, who is dying of thirst. She has given up all hope, steps back at the distance of a bow’s shot because, “I cannot look at the death of my child.” God hears the child’s cry, an angel asks, typical Jewish fashion, a question, “Mah Lach Hagar?” Literally, “What’s it for you”, a kind ironic surprise, to say,” What are you worried about, what’s the matter.”Then”Al tiri”-Don’t be afraid!

            Just then, our reading says:    

 Vayifkah eyeneha-God opened her eyes and “hiney”-behold there is a well.

            Where did this well come from so mysteriously? Our Rabbis never liked the idea of miraculously appearing wells. “Hiney”-It’s here. !

            Our commentaries suggest that the well had been there all along. In her anguish, Hagar had been blind to the solution, to the well of water next to her. By putting fear aside, she was able to see what was there, all along. Water, life, and a future for her child and his progeny.

            On the second day, we read of Abraham and Isaac. This is a parallel with the Ishmael account, only here, Isaac is in danger. We know nothing of Abraham’s emotions. That is common in Biblical story-telling, and he is, unlike the mother, the macho, the stoic—doesn’t show anything. But here, too, we realize that he is blind, for we are told, with the same word as used in the story of the well, " vayar vehiney ayil aher"-Abraham sees and ,”hinei,behold there is another ram, "a ram to offer instead of his son. Did the ram just mysteriously appear?  Rather, it was there because Abraham was no longer blinded by his zeal, ready to recognize that his loyalty to God did not require the sacrifice of his beloved Isaac. Appropriately, the site is then called: Adonay Yireh"-God sees."

            So, we learn form our mothers, and from our fathers.

            Sight, ordinary eyesight, as we sense it, depends  as much on what our mind creates as what our eyes see. This is one of the classic givens of psychology.

             Sight itself is just a mass of information- light in its different frequencies strikes the retina, hits the rods and cones, and provides stimulation to the optic nerve. It is the mind which comprehends these as light and dark, colors, shapes-- it is our mind which then coordinates and interprets to produce vision.  This is true for physical vision. it also holds true for emotional and spiritual vision.

            In truth, people who are physically blind can often be aware of sights that most, with good eyesight, are blind to.

            "Better blind of eye than blind of heart (Midrash Ahikar 2.48) is how the Midrash phrased it, or" Not the eye but the heart is blind,” in the words of the poet, ibn Gabirol (Mivhar Hapninim).

             Helen Keller, deaf and blind from the age of two, who established so much of the principals used today in making the blind self-sufficient, once claimed:

            "I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in woods, sea or sky, nothing in the city street, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing:

            It were better far to sail forever/

            In the night of blindness/

            With sense and feeling and mind

            Than to be thus content with the mere act of seeing.

They have the sunset, the morning skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this enchanted world with nothing but a barren stare."

                        Hagar, lost in the wilderness, was blind to a simple well; with words of hope, she could see what was there all along. Abraham, a man of vision, could see that his ultimate sacrifice did not include his own beloved son.

             We too, like them, need to open our eyes constantly both to our physical world and to our immediate personal world. We can find a paradise or we can be blinded and find a hell--or worse--- a boredom.

             Being able to see the spiritual, the healing, the noble and the sacred is a special gift in itself. Our very religion is based on the readiness to see what others have missed. It is Moses who goes into the desert to discover the burning bush, and this is how the poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning described the experience:

            Earth's crammed with heaven

            / And every common bush afire with God/

            But only he who sees, takes off his shoes/

             The rest sit around and pluck blackberries."

            This thought was echoed by the quintessential American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who put it this way," If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps."

            Two centuries ago, the English mystic and poet, William Blake warned against a world taken over by the cold force of reason and the wheels of industry--He presaged a world of guillotine, gas chamber and gulag. He called for a return to vision, in his words:

            To see a world in a grain of sand/

And a heaven in a wild flower/

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/

And eternity in an hour.

             The very essence of the Jewish people, our ability to exist for so many centuries, is precisely because we, as a people, as a sacred community, followed in this pattern of being willing to open our eyes to visions of the sacred.

            An ancient Midrash describes Abraham our ancestor having a vision of a castle glowing with shimmering lights. A voice comes from heaven and tells him," Can there be such a glowing, shining castle without the Lord of the castle." Thus, it is said, he saw the sanctity and holiness in the world, and recognized the existence of a divine source of this sanctity.

            There are those of us who go through life seeing the flames of divinity in every wall and corner. There rest of us see and hear nothing, only pitch black.      

           

            On  this Rosh Hashanah day, we need to learn, both from our mothers and our fathers, may we open our eyes like Hagar and see the wells of sustenance, may we open our eyes like Abraham and find our offerings of thanksgiving, may we see infinity and eternity, may we find cheyn vahesed- Grace and favor-- in the eyes of God and our fellow man and woman. Amen.

Israel at 70 from inside

Reporting from Israel- June 2018

I .Welcome to Jerusalem

There is nothing like the Jerusalem skyline, especially form the porch of Margalit Zadok, my 94 year old mother-in-law, who was the prime reason for our visit. From here, you see the Shrine of the Book ( housing Dead Sea and Bar Cochba artifacts), the Israel Museum, the Hebrew University, and in the distance, at the center, the tower of the YMCA and the King David Hotel, where my father-in-law his antiquities and jewelry store (Remember the scene in Exodus, where Paul Newman sits with Jill St. John on the deck of the hotel, overlooking the old city? Prince William and Katherine are there right now on their Royal visit. That's the King David)

At the same time, we celebrated our grandson's Bar Mitzvah at the Kotel- right at the corner of the Western and Southern Wall, the one you don't see in the news, the one that actually faces lower levels of the original wall of Herod.

While there has been much controversy about having a women's full service section at the plaza in front of the Western Wall ( a political football in the midst of Israeli secular- traditional- Orthodox-and ultra-Orthodox entities), the south section of the wall, next to Robinson's arch, one of the ancient gateways into the Temple Mount 2000 years ago, has been in use for some time now. Political football doesn't get played when there are no media cameras around.

II. Korea Loves Israel

On our first night on the town ( Jerusalem that is) we attended a Korean festival celebrating Jerusalem and Israel's 70th Anniversary

A traditional Korean dance, accompanied by the words of the Psalms.

I think we Jews have trouble accepting being loved. We have been beaten around over so many centuries that we don't know how to digest it when someone actually appreciates or admires us. 

It turns out that Koreans love us better than we love ourselves. They also want to know the secrets of our success and a best seller in Korea is known as " the Korean Talmud". Well, it's not really a Talmud, and doesn't present the tools for good pilpul ( hot, peppery arguments),but rather a collection of some Rabbinic discussions. However, you get the gist.

II. Apartheid State?

This is the mural on top of the canopy at the Old Train Station in Jerusalem. It shows a mix of people of different faiths and nations, in a  state of devotion.

It will be hard to find a more diverse society, yet holding together. Besides the expected mix of Ashkenazic and Sefardic Jews, and Arabs, the people mix is now Asian ( heavily from the Philippines and Thailand) as well as African . The Jewish mix is becoming increasingly diverse, so that besides Jews of African origin, I have come across, for example, East Asian Hasidic children with long peyos.

Ramadan just ended, and the restaurants were full of Muslim families celebrating the end of the fast. Religious and secular Jews, religious and secular Muslims ( women with and without hijab ), while the service staff cleaning up after them were white, blond -haired European males. That did not happen in Ol' Miss, nor in Jo'berg,SA, and certainly not in III Reich.

We had a chance to drive through Israeli Arab villages, such as Um al Fahm, filled with new mosques, with high-rising spires. Under historic Islam and Christianity, the respective Mosque or Cathedral had to be higher than the place of worship of the non-believer, and certainly much higher than the synagogue of the lowly Jew. In Israel, where we, as Jews have the run of the roost and are accused of running an apartheid state, our synagogues are still small and lowly. It's OK.

Here is an example of our new ethnic mix- Afro and Euro with tzitis hanging out. There is also a hipster-Orthodox trend ( reminiscent of my Orthodox Hippy friends of yore)-- side-locks down to the chest, fashionable hair trim, trendy clothes, tzitzit with a blue thread .

In this so-called "Apartheid State", traditional Jewish, traditional Muslim, and secular of indeterminate ethnicity mix freely at the popular Malha Mall. How can you tell the Jewish women from the Muslim, especially among the trendy? Both wrap a cloth of some kind around the head; both are signs of personal modesty. The Muslim version, a fashionable scarf, covers all the hair and the neck, leaving only the face visible. The Jewish version, also a fashionable scarf, is wrapped in a high turban ( that's the new look) , covering much, but not all of the hair. On the other hand, one's idea of modesty is a matter of judgement. The Muslim women covers all the hair and neck, the arms and legs, but wears tight-tight fitting designer jeans and blouses. The Jewish woman leaves the hair, neck and arms half-way exposed, but dresses in knee-length dresses, and half-length sleeves. 

III Still People of the Book?

Open air-annual book fair at the Old Train Station in Jerusalem

Israelis are all connected to the web, on the computers, tablets and smart-phones. Despite that, they still buy and read books. Print newspapers, as opposed to on-line news, are still hot, and more papers are published and read per capita in Israel than any where else.

IV. Remember the pictures of the old Kibbutz Pioneers clearing the fields of rocks by hand?

An robotic automated plant potting assembly line

Temperature and humidity controlled hot-houses

Assembly line planting

Tom-Turkeys as big as 60 pounds.

We went to visit our friends , Heyden and Nomi , at Mei-Ami. Mei-Ami was established as a border settlement , separating the Israeli Arab city of Umm al Fahm and Jordan ( Yes, from 1948 till 1967, there was no Palestine, only a Jordan, on the West Bank). What was a barren hilltop has become a very comfortable upscale enclave , while neighboring Umm al Fahm has upscale designer clothing stores, the best doctors and nurses in the area and plenty of mosques!
Agriculture is today a high-tech industry. Each hothouse is computer controlled for temperature and humidity, and each plant is individually water. Not a drop to waste.  Israeli Jews and Arabs work side by side, together with Thai guest workers( signs are in Hebrew and Thai).

V. What's happening on the other side?

On the Syrian-Israeli cease-fire line ( just 300 feet away from me) in the Golan Heights at Kuneitra.

We drove up to the UN observation post at Mt. Bental, which looks directly into Syrian Golan and Syria proper. The UN force is appropriately called UNDOF- UN Disengagement Observation Force ; in simple English, we can look, but we don't want to get involved. For that reason, the UN had abandoned its actual positions in the demilitarized zone between Israeli and Syria; after we were there, Assad's forces went in, the UN could do nothing and Israel will probably have to push them back again).At that moment, the Syrian sides had a momentary respite form bloodshed ( fighting broke out again a few days later), so there was nothing to observe.There were two UN observers, one from Norway and one from Finland,  and since, to borrow the title of a famous World War I book, Im Westen Nichts Neues, or in English , All Quiet in the Western Front,the soldiers were quite at ease till we arrived on the scene. At that point, they made haste to open their laptop and maps, and look busy. Ofra had a very telling conversation with them:

O-Tell me, on this side, it is all green and cultivated. On that side, it is all brown and undeveloped. Why do you think that is so?

UN-Well, on the Israeli side, they have these well organized Kibbutzes, that have developed this area. On that side, those are all family owned lands.

O- But ,just because they are owned by families, don't those families care and tend for their farms just as much. They must not be very smart.

UN- I guess you are right- They are not very smart.

There, you have it from an official source at the UN.

Back in 2005 , Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza strip. They intentionally left behind very valuable, high-production greenhouses.  These residents shortly thereafter destroyed the greenhouses, voted in Hamas, and have been crying ever since. Concrete that was sent to build hospitals was used for offensive tunnels into Israel and even toy kites donated by Japan for the children of Gaza have been turned into weapons of arson to destroy nature reserves in Israel.

A friend of ours posted this picture of a kite-bomb that had landed not far from her brother. Whoever launched it had hoped some child would pick it up out of curiosity and be crippled or killed by it.

They must not be very smart!

VI. Life Goes On

A colorful procession in Moroccan festive clothes for a Bat Mitzvah

The Mahane Yehudah Market by day

Spice shop, with its spectrum of colors, smells and tastes

The same Mahane Yehudah by night, transformed into the hotspot for the young

Shalva Institute, where children with special needs get personal attention to grow and develop

Israel is one of the happiest countries on earth , by the United Nations annual international happiness assessment, #11, ahead of the US at #18. Even the wealthy Emirates, Qataris and Saudis don't have as broad a smile.The neighbors, Lebanon and Jordan, keep a stiff upper lip, the "Occupied "Palestinians are sour but rank happier than "Unoccupied"  the Egyptians, Iraqis, Iranians, or Tunisians , even those Powerhouse Indians. Syrians and Yemenis are in a state of total depression.

Constant attacks, constant threats, missiles poised against them, legal charges against the prime minister, the high cost of defence, and the like. Everyone complains and protests, and then, they are happy. 

How do they do it?

This is what they sang at parties for the past 30 years:

EIZO MEDINAH Eyzo medinah, eyzo medinah Eyzo medinah, meyuchedet beminah What a country, what a country What a country, one of a kind The government presses,  A country under pressure What a country, what a country! It continues as a lament of high prices, high taxes, corrupt officials, and concludes: Despite the mess and the deficiencies You're our country, for all the generations! There is a hora dance set to this song, and everyone is happy as they sing it!

VI.The Changing Role of Women

Meet Naseeba Keesh Smara, a pioneering woman of the Druze in the village of Bukata, Golan Heights.

Naseeba runs a one-woman tourist attraction in the Druze village of Bukata-- home -made traditional Druze food served in her home for tour groups  ( she can now offer vegetarian and kosher options!).

Naseeba grew up in the main Druze city of Majd-el-Shams, which, under the Syrians, had become more-or-less secularized. She moved to the viallge of Bukata, where the residents were much more traditional in their dress and behavior, and where a " liberated" woman was out of place. Naseeba did not let that stop her- she set out to get her own driver's license, get career training, build a business, run an orchard, and get the local men and women to respect her. 

It is one of the signs of shifts occurring in the status of women throughout the Middle-East, whether Jews, Druze, Muslim or Christian.

The food is great!

VII.What makes for authentic culture

The attack against what is called " Cultural Appropriation" is an essential element of Fascism and Racism. Richard Wagner and his contemporaries decried Jewish musicians as incapable of comprehending the true soul of music.  Kipling was famous for his " East is East and West is West and N'er the Twain Shall Meet." Oswald Spengler, the great theoretician adored by Nazism, based his concept of history on the inherent incompatibility of civilizations. It is expressed in the German term, Kulturkampf, the War of Civilizations.

What is it to be a Jew, but to be the greatest appropriators of all cultures of all times, yet fashioning a distinctly Jewish mode. Babylonian-Egyptian-Canaanite-Persian-Greek-Roman-European-Islamic. 

Here it is, in music, for your enjoyment

Traditional Korean melody in honor of Israel 

Traditional Yemenite wedding song, Ayelet Chen, set to contemporary arrangement. The only traditional instrument is the empty oil can at the left. The Muslim rulers there forbade Jews from playing any musical instruments; so much for the vaunted tolerance of Islamic society..

Klezmer music, Jewish Jazz of Eastern Europe, produced styles and rhythms that shaped American music

An Ode to Vodka

A Japanese Choir from Osaka, singing a classic Chasidic melody.

Welcoming the Bat Mitzvah girl, Moroccan style

These girls had all of a half hour to learn the entire routine

Dancing on the street, Ben Yehudah Pedestrian Mall

Today's top-hit group in Israel- Static -playing in front of the Knesset

VIII. Lest We Forget

A Marker at the corner of King George and Jaffa, Jerusalem, marking the murder of civilians by Palestinian terrorists in 2001. That wave of bombings was preceded by a wave of brutal bus bombings in 1996. That was after Israel had signed an accord with the PLO  for the sake of Peace in 1993!  

The settlers of the Land of Israel suffered for many years, warfare and terror, to create a vibrant state, with the death and maiming of soldiers and civilians alike in the thousands.

My grandfather's grandfather was murdered in Safed in 1896, before the " Zionist invasion". There was a pogrom against the Jews of Hebron in 1926, before the struggle for Independence. Terror gangs invaded Israel before 1956 and before 1967, and planted bombs, hijacked buses, planes , and even ocean liners, in the years since.

 If Israelis today are reluctant to open the floodgates of Hamastan-Gaza ( which they don't occupy) and to grant full independence to the PLO-run West Bank-Palestine ( which they also, to the most part, don't 'occupy'), it is no wonder.

Shalom al Yisrael- Peace for Israel

Honoring Our Share in the Defense of Our Liberties -- Memorial Day 2018

Honoring Our Share in the Defense of Our Liberties --Memorial Day 2018  Over a century ago, in  1904, the Kishinev Pogrom shook the world. It shook us as Jews especially and shaped  the image we had of ourselves and the image the world had of us. It was epitomized by the great Hebrew poet, Chaim Nachman Bialik in Ir Ha Haregah-The City of Slaughter, here excerpted in translation:Come, now, and I will bring thee to their lairs  The privies, jakes and pigpens where the heirs  Of Hasmoneans lay, with trembling knees,  Concealed and cowering,—the sons of the Maccabees!  The seed of saints, the scions of the lions!  Who, crammed by scores in all the sanctuaries of their shame,  So sanctified My name!  It was the flight of mice they fled,  The scurrying of roaches was their flight;  They died like dogs, and they were dead!
We Jews died like dogs.This painful jab at our collective ego, together with the myth promulgated forty years later that, during the Shoah, we went as sheep to the slaughter, gave rise, in reaction, to the Shomer, the Haganah and Palmach, Etzl and Stern, and finally, the Israel Defense Forces.(Certainly, with the rise of the State of Israel, no one doubts the courage of the Jews of Israel. On the contrary, in an instance of “ You can’t win”, they are libeled with the accusation of baby killers, on a par with the accusation of “ Christ-killer”. Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate leader of the Palestinian Authority made a point of posing with a cartoon that made just that accusation).What created that image, that attitude, the we Jews, as a people, cowered in the corners?It is true that we Jews have been a generally peaceful, even pacific, as opposed to pacifistic, people. That is, that in the history of the last 1900 or so years, from the time of Bar Kochba, we have generally not focused on defense of our own self-interests through military force, not set out on territorial conquests for ourselves, nor have we adulated military might.However, this fact gave birth to the image, as I have heard it from Jews who have served in the armed forces of the US, that “Jews serve in the PX( the base exchange) ”. Or, as  my ex-Soviet friends told me, in WWII, it was commonly believed that” Jews served in Tashkent ( running away from the front, that is) .“ Considering, that especially in World War II, Jews served in numbers far beyond our share of the general population, this a very debasing attitude.It is true that we did not, as a collective whole, for many centuries, rise in our own defense. However, instead, we rose in defense of whatever country or ruler gave us shelter or protection.When faced with a great rebellion in Judea, the Roman Emperor Vespasian picked the best man qualified to put down the rebellion --an Alexandrian Jew (and nephew of the first great Jewish philosopher, Philo) Tiberius Julius Alexander-- to spearhead the Roman offensive in its effort to thwart the Jewish uprising.  Yes, even in hated Rome, Jews served in major military units and fielded their own Jewish divisions in different parts of the empire, up until after the rise of Christianity. It was only much later that the Emperor Justinian officially closed military service for all Jews in the mid sixth century when he imposed major oppressive laws in general against Jews, laws that continued in effect in Christian Europe till the start of the modern era.The Berbers of North Africa were led by a Queen, Damiya al Kahina, who held off the onslaught of Islam and the Arabs across North Africa. These were Jewish Berbers led by a Jewish queen- that was the claim made by Arab historians of the time.In Moslem Spain, in the 11^th century. the king of Granada made Samuel Hanagid( The Prince) ibn Nagrilah his vizier and general of his armies. That a Jew or dhimmi, could hold such a high public office was rare.
Jewish memory recoils at the accounts of the Chmielnicki uprising of Cossacks against their Polish Overlords, which resulted in the extensive massacre of Jews. What has been forgotten is the account of the Jewish forces  that fought to defend their Polish neighbors at that same time.Indeed, when we speak of Polish Jews, we have the image of the Jew as a poor, pitiable, and hapless “nebich”.What, then, shall we make of Dov Baer (Berek) Joselewicz of Kowno, who initially served in the Polish militia to fight the Russian annexation of Poland and then received permission from the Polish hero of liberty, Kościuszko, to form an all-Jewish unit. (Kościuszko himself was a colonel in America’s Continental Army against the British.)  Five hundred men were eventually accepted and formed  a cavalry regiment and were allowed to keep their religious customs, including eating kosher food, abstaining from combat on Shabbat when possible, and keeping their beards. Joselewicz's unit was popularly known as "the Beardlings.” He was followed in this path for Polish liberty by his son, Josef. He was honored by a postage stamp as a "A Jewish Fighter for Polish Freedom", issued jointly by Polish and Israeli postal services.In the farthest regions of the Arabian peninsula, in Hadramaut ( Death Valley) there was a group of Jews, Habanni,  who went about fully armed and untouched by their Muslim neighbors. This was as different as day and night from the humiliation with which the Jews of Yemen were treated. When King Adbullah , the first King of Jordan, wanted  personal bodyguards, he counted on a family of Habbani Jews, not on  his fellow Hashemite Bedouin, for his personal security.Those of you who have family members who served in WWII in the Soviet armed forces are familiar with the array of medals that are proudly displayed on Victory Day to mark the collapse of Nazi Germany. The numbers of those who served and who were injured or killed far outweighed their proportion of the population .Some 500,000 Jewish soldiers fought in the Red Army during World War II. Some 120,000 were killed in combat and in the line of duty; the Germans murdered 80,000 as prisoners of war. More than 160,000, at all levels of command, earned citations, with over 150 designated as “Heroes of the Soviet Union”,the highest honor awarded to soldiers in the Red Army.
In all, about 1.5 million Jews fought in Allied armies, including 500,000 in the Red Army, 550,000 in the American army, 100,000 in the Polish army and 30,000 in the British army. That amounted to one out of every 10 Jews at that time, or almost the entire population of Jews of fighting age. ( Information culled from multiple sources and  Yad Vashem)Now, for our service to America.In colonial times, the Jewish population numbered some 2,500 and was scattered throughout the country. Yet in the Revolutionary War, many Jews were in General George Washington’s Continental Army.
Lt. Col. Solomon Bush, who was decorated for bravery in battle, was the highest ranking Jewish officer, his brother, Captain Lewis Bush was mortally wounded, and he himself received a near-fatal wound.  Francis Salvador was nicknamed the “Paul Revere of the South” because on July 1, 1776, he mounted his horse and rode 30 miles to warn the settlers that the Cherokee Indians, incited by the British, were attacking the frontier.Mordecai Sheftall acquired the reputation as the “great rebel” in fighting the British in the South.In the War of 1812, Jews were involved on land and sea in fighting the British. Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy served as a sailing master who directed the line of fire during battle. Levy is credited with bringing about the abolition of corporal punishment or flogging in the Navy. During his service in the Navy, he was court-marshaled and found guilty six times by anti-Semitic naval officers and, each time the verdict was overturned. He was finally promoted to the rank of commodore.  During the Civil War, six Jews  were recipients of the prestigious Medal of HonorIn World War I, there were more than 250,000 Jews who answered America’s call to action: over 3,500 were killed; over 12,000 were wounded; and they received over 1,100 decorations for bravery. The finest tribute paid to the Jewish fighting men in World War I was given by General John J. Pershing: “When the time came to serve their country under arms, no class of people served with more patriotism or with higher motives than the young Jews who volunteered or were drafted and went overseas with our other young Americans to fight the enemy.”During World War II, over 550,000 Jewish men and women responded to America’s call.  About 11,000 were killed; over 40,000 were wounded.  (Source: Seymour “Sy” Brody, of Delray Beach, FL,  author of “Jewish Heroes of America” )It continues to this day.Thousands have fought in the 16-year-long war that began with the 9/11 attacks, and currently, there are 15,000 American Jews serving on active duty and an additional 5,000 serving in the Guard and the Reserves. 56 Fallen Jewish heroes gave their lives in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (  as noted in “Yes, American Jews Do Serve” by Anna Selman, November 28, 2017  https://www.momentmag.com/yes-american-jews-serve).I want to conclude with a word from my father, who wrote of Jewish courage in the aftermath of the Holocaust:“We consider a hero not to be the one who defeats the enemy, but the one who defeats himself. (Pirke Avot IV) . . .. We cannot allow ourselves, especially after these years, to define our values by those of the other nations. Nothing is as dangerous to a nation as to have its values dictated by its enemies. ... That which has come to us from Prussian Germany is neither good nor new. It is as ancient as Hellas.“. . .We cannot allow ourselves to adopt this way of thinking. We cannot allow ourselves to be overrun by murderous impulses. When it comes to our rights, our freedom, our life, we can take up arms as cannot other people.  But the anti-militarism is so deeply ingrained in the Jew, that even when he is in uniform, he is civilized, while the German, in uniform, was not civilized. Our inner drive is towards peace, and our dream is a very different dream than that of the Teutonic Knights.The greatest of all is Peace, and the Torah was given in order to promote peace in the world, as it says, “Derachecha darchei noam vchol neitivoteha shalom.” Her paths are pleasant and all her ways, Peace.”( Rabbi Dr William Weinberg, published essay 1947, Austria)We pray that we will see a world in which no one sends his babies and infants into live fire to provide dead bodies for the media, in which no one sacrifices his people’s food and medicine in order to build weapons of mass destruction. We also know that this will not happen by mere platitudes and  songs of ” Give Peace a chance” but only by the courage of the kinds of men and women whose memory we honor this weekend.Amen