עד מתי?!!!

We all have different phobias. Some are afraid of spiders, some of flying, others experience inexplicable tremors when confronted with tea or the color yellow. Now there are a whole slew of people who duck when they see a bulldozer.

Yesterday an Arab Israeli from East Jerusalem drove a bulldozer onto Rechov Yaffo, the busiest road in Jerusalem, and knocked over a bus, rammed into cars, and slugged automobiles with his shovel. Forty people were wounded and three killed, among them a mother driving her baby home from a hospital clinic. After the thing hit her car the first time, killing her, passersby ran for the four-month-old baby on the seat beside her and got him out just before the car was struck again and totally crushed. 

I woke up to the news, though of course the victims' names weren't yet on the news so that the army would have a chance to tell the families first. My sister is in Jerusalem right now, visiting my grandmother. They were supposed to go to Ramat Beit Shemesh Wednesday, a trip that necessitated taking a bus down rechov Yaffo on the way to the bus station. I called them, and my mother, and my father, and left messages on home answering machines, and at offices, and on pagers, and nobody picked up or got back to me for a full two hours after I'd found out about the terrorist murder. Of course that was reassuring, because they would have called if something happened. I tried not to worry that maybe they had simply forgotten to call. Everything was fine. But what would you do if your sister was supposed to be on the same road that a man went insane on with a bulldozer? When my mother called to say that my sister was fine, my grandmother was fine, and thank God my grandfather had been a full two buses behind the one tipped over, so though he'd heard the bulldozer he hadn't seen it, I cried from pure relief.

I cried from relief, then I cried because someone somewhere is sobbing their heart out in grief and anger. The people at my summer job stared at me, confused. I explained, and they said "it's so hard to understand, both sides sound the same in that whole middle east thing."

Both sides sound the same! An insane, evil, sick, twisted creature goes rampant in downtown Jerusalem killing the mother of a newborn baby and two other men, and it's the same thing as the Israeli Defense Force refusing to fire because Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields! I don't understand how anyone can be so evil, I refuse to believe that the thing that got into that bulldozer yesterday was anything near human, but I also don't understand how anyone can equate such murder, targeting civilians, with an army that warns civilians to evacuate the building that's going to be bombed because a terrorist is hiding inside. Go ahead, sing the pain of the residents of Gaza (and it's true, they live under terrible conditions-- that are caused to a great extent by Hamas and the other terrorist factions inside) but dig a hole and cover up the pain of the people that were wounded and killed and whose mother and brother and father were murdered yesterday. We don't want to know about it: they were Israeli, and thus forfeit our sympathy. 

ה' יקום דמם. 

האשה צנועה

Wonderful, amazing, absolutely thrilling news! With not so much connection to Israel, but definitely important on the Jewish feminist front.

First, an explanation of terms:

An agunah (עגונה) is a woman whose husband has run off without giving her a get, a Jewish divorce. Though civically divorced, she cannot remarry by Jewish law, and the civic courts won't interfere because it's a religious issue. In many cases, the man is holding out for lots of money, or sometimes just ruining her life because he can. Fine. 

Though the plight of the agunot has been becoming more and more publicized recently, the rabbis really have not done all that they can to help these women. They announce that he's shunned by the community, and sometimes get him thrown in jail, but more often than not, do nothing. And we all know that where there's a rabbinic will there's a halachic way. I mean, they found a way for elevators to run on shabbat but they can't find a way for these women to reclaim their lives?!!?!?!!

In Straight Talk, a book by Sally Berkovic, I read the most wonderful thing. Just like in Aristophanes' play Lysistrata, where the women all stop sleeping with the men until the men stop fighting, in a community in Canada all the women refused to go to the mikvah until an agunah in the community was given a get. 

Now, in Judaism in order to be allowed to sleep with your husband, you must first wait seven days after your period and then dunk in the mikvah, a ritual bath. When the women in the Canadian community refused to go to the mikvah, they were in effect withholding sex from their husbands until such time as the agunah would be free to continue her life. Instead of one lonely, powerless woman trying to convince the rabbis to exert pressure on her husband, an entire community of horny men applied leverage to the shmuck so that he would give his wife a get. Awesome, aye?

Happy Birthday Israel!

In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles. –Ben-Gurion

Today is Israel’s 60th anniversary of Independence Day. Sixty years ago, Ben-Gurion and a group of pioneers together signed their name to the Declaration of the State of Israel. Among other things, the Declaration states:

“THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Has it kept its promises? Is Israel just and equal to all its inhabitants? What about the arsim, the Ethiopian immigrants who are greatly discriminated against in the school system and professional arena? The Russian immigrants who join gangs and push drugs? Does Israel really give religious freedom to all? Atheists have a hard time practicing in the Holy Land. The Israeli government has definitely not safeguarded the holy places of all religions, though perhaps that’s not its fault: Maarat Hamachpela is divided in half, Arab graves desecrate the side of the Temple Mount, and Har Zeitim is practically under siege. Women are pushed to the backs of government-owned buses in religious neighborhoods, and barred from holding prayer services at the kotel. IDF soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians during terrorist-targeting missions. The gay pride parade was cancelled last year due to fear of violence. Justice was not served when Sharon ran for PM on a basis of not giving away land at any cost and then tossed away Israelis’ homes without the referendum that the country was screaming for. The government members have suffered an embarrassing barrage of personal scandals this past year.

Yet, with all this (u’vchol zot… do you hear me G-d?) Israel is doing wonderfully for a country only sixty years out of the shell. It is a refuge for Jews from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, France, Morocco, etc. It is trying to iron out the kinks of a secular government running a religious country. Women have it better in Israel than anywhere else in the Middle East: they are free to vote, work, and wear what they will, and the speaker of parliament, president of the supreme court, and foreign minister are all female. Israeli soldiers follow a fifteen-step process before even being allowed to load their guns when they are in an area with civilians. Homosexuals from Arab countries and from Nablus and the West Bank flee to Israel for safety. Young Israelis fired with passionate idealism and love for the country are working even now to resurrect integrity in Israeli politics.

Tomorrow in Israel, families will pack the parks and grassy lawns with their mangalim (grills). There will be flag dances and children’s performances, singing and drinking. Like any other country celebrating Independence Day, Israelis will party. Unlike any other country, Israelis will ask themselves whether their State still has the right to exist. For the first time since its creation, Israelis and Jews worldwide are losing their certainty that Israel will be around for the rest of their lifetimes. Like a young teenage girl growing in a world surrounded with sick body images in the media, Israel is being swayed by the constant barrage against it. Yet it must remain confident if it is to continue as a strong nation for the next sixty years.

The Silver Platter

"And his blood was crying out from the ground." -Amir Gilboa

Tonight is Yom Hazikaron. Memorial Day.

One day a year it’s okay to cry for those who gave their lives for Israel. So on Yom Hazikaron we press pieces of tissues to our aching eyes, and dutifully count off the names of friends and relatives, and dream of peace. And the rest of the time, the 364 days that are not Yom Hazikaron, we try not to think of the cost in young lives, the tremendous blood payment that has been made. But then someone mentions how Gal would have loved this, he always loved playing scrabble on shabbos afternoons, and someone else says their fence hasn’t been painted since Ariel… and those pictures of Doron keep cropping up on youtube and one cannot always keep one’s eyes lowered when one passes the piano to skirt the basket of memorial packets put together by friends and family of the loved ones and nobody can hear a bar of Mah Avarech without leaking teardrops a bit and neither can we hear an ambulance siren without flinching or look a hijab in the face without ducking and the pain is constant but in this country it must be pushed aside because who will understand that we all have someone who has died, that we are bound to even the dead we don’t know because they died for us, and after all what is our pain compared to that of the mother who will never hold her boy again? The girlfriend who will never wink at her lover again? The toddler who will grow up with Abba’s picture on the mantelpiece and the knowledge that his father died for his country.

Don’t give me that crap about war being kind. Nor the silver platter nonsense. Dulce et—I don’t believe it. I believe in children growing up, growing old, growing… Do whatever you have to do. Funkthewar, Fuckthewar, just end the war.

דע לפני מי אתה עומד

For the first time ever, the Israeli government is funding the building of a Reform synagogue. It may be a difficult thing for Americans firmly convinced of the sanctity of separation between Church and State to grasp, but this is actually a step towards religious equality.

The Religious Affairs Ministry controls funding for the building of synagogues. In the past, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, an orthodox institution, has not acknowledged the validity of liberal Judaism. Jews in Israel who were not comfortable with orthodoxy generally had nowhere else to go, and drifted away from religion entirely. Though it’s common knowledge that secular Israelis often know Tanach better than dedicated Diasporic Jews.

The current schism between religious and nonreligious Jews has deep roots. Modern Israel was built by secular Zionists who established socialist communities called kibbutzim. At the time of the creation of the State, many religious Jews worldwide protested its creation because they wanted to wait for mashiach (messiah) and thought a secular government had no place in eretz hakadosh. Patriotic secular Israelis hated religious Israelis who refused to do army service and protested that they did their share for Israel by sitting and learning all day. During the hitnatkut, the schism widened as some secular Israelis saw nothing wrong with giving away land (besides the obvious military imbecility of it) and religious Israelis saw their homes destroyed by a secular government. Just recently over Passover, an intense debate raged about whether or not to legally allow the public sale of leavened food during the holiday.

Nowadays there is a mass exodus of secular Israelis from Israel. America is the dreamland that they flee to. In any city in the States one can find a cynical community of expat Israelis living the good life. In Israel, the religious Zionists are putting their all into the country. They compete to get into the most elite units in the army. Religious Zionism holds the future of Israel.

The divide between religious and secular Israelis is more pronounced to a visitor from the United States. Last year, I noticed how towns and neighborhoods were divided by religious observance, effectively segregating the religious and nonreligious. Some Israelis are making efforts to merge the two worlds- programs like Gesher and Tzohar, and individual dati leumi couples who live in secular neighborhoods, attempt to bridge the gap. But it’s difficult when the mindset of one group is to try to become as American as possible, and the other believes “higiya zmah hageeulah” –the time of the redemption is arriving.

The government’s decision to fund a Reform synagogue shows a new willingness to embrace alternative paths of Judaism. Although certain things must remain under the control of the orthodox rabbinate if they are to have any credibility for the orthodox population (eg: marriage), spiritual outlet for secular Jews is an absolute must if Israel is to have any future of reconciliation between chilonim and datiim. We may be as different as apples and oranges, but in the end we’re all juice.