February 2007

Nope, not kidding. It’s right after the sacrifice of the goat.

During the ceremony, participants sacrificed a young goat that was donated by a resident of Tekoa. The participants also built a special two-meter tall oven, in accordance with halakha (Jewish law).

The Passover sacrifice is considered a simple ceremony, relative to other works performed in the Temple. On Wednesday, the Sanhedrin will hold its main conference, entitled “Existential threats and ways to correct them.” Rabbi Menachem Froman, far-right activist Moshe Feiglin, and Nativ editor Arieh Stav will participate in the conference. The guest of honor will be Makor Rishon publisher Shlomo Ben-Zvi.

Check it out in Haaretz. They apparently even have a website. Ritual goat sacrifices notwithstanding, that’s progress.

[Hat Tip: EH]

Mayanot Birthright Israel recently mailed me and a bunch of my non-birthright eligible friends very entertaining Borat-themed postcards telling us to go to Israel. Like we didn’t want to already. Overlooking the fact that they are utilizing an antisemitic caricature to advertise a program meant to increase Jewish identity and self-identification, I find the tagline interesting: “Cultural learnings of Judaism for make benefit of glorious nation of Israel.”

I’ve never been eligible for Birthright myself, having gone to Israel on a peer trip in high school. Still, I’ve met up with many friends on Birthright and heard all about their experiences, and I seriously need to ask: Do people on Birthright really experience “cultural learnings of Judaism”? Perhaps a more likely candidate would be cultural learnings of Arak. The issue of the definition of “Judaism” is one which I think about a lot, but I won’t go into it now.

Perhaps a more important question to pose in response to this postcard would be, for whom does Birthright really “make benefit”? I think that if you were to ask Israelis and Americans, they would give you strikingly different answers. I often feel that the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora communities is mutually parasitic. They both want to help each other, but with the ultimate goal of helping themselves. Israel helps the Diaspora because of a feeling that if the diaspora goes away, they will not only have lost a source of political capital (in the case of American Jewry) and philanthropy, but also potential olim. American Jews want to help Israel because it helps bolster the identity of lapsed Jews, especially through programs such as Birthright.

In some ways this works out pretty decently for us. American Jews get to chase after good-looking Israeli soldiers, and Israelis still have the diaspora network that has helped Jews throughout history. Still, I feel that something is missing.

What is the Israel-Diaspora relation not? It is not a relationship in which each side helps the other in a selfless sense, for the sake of the other and not for themselves. Americans should realize that they should work towards the good for Israel, in the ways in which they can, for the good of Israel herself because that is ultimately good for American Jewry. I think that many times Americans want to use Israel for their own purposes, and to change her without getting personally involved. Israelis should likewise work towards the improvement of the Diaspora, and better understanding in the Diaspora of what Judaism and Zionism mean in Israel so that we do not reach a point where we have such a great misunderstanding and miscommunication on the future of the Jewish People that we ultimately have a schism between Israelis and Diasporans. While ideally all Jews should move to Israel, a flowering diaspora is definitely better than a wilting one. Only by thinking in terms of a covenantal relationship between all Jews can we create a unified Jewish people with our capital in Israel, truly making ourselves a “glorious nation”.

In today’s online edition of TNR, Professor Alvin Rosenfeld responds to the harsh criticism after issuing a paper for the AJC that I recently blogged about, “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism.” In his response, titled “Critical Distance”, Rosenfeld reacts to his critics for placing him in the “secular version of cherem,” and accusing him of turning Jews against liberalism, the Democratic Party, and opponents of Bush’s “dubious adventure in Iraq”.

Rosenfeld unleashes his arsenal when he writes,

 It goes something like this: (1) Spot an Israeli action that can serve as the ground of “criticism of     Israel” (e.g., Israel’s military incursion into the area near Jenin in April 2002 in response to Palestinian terrorist massacres); (2) Then “dissent” in the strongest possible terms, for instance by likening the “razing of Jenin” to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, while anticipating that “powerful” and “repressive” Jewish institutions will try to “silence” the critics by calling them anti-Semites; (3) When taken to task by more sober-minded critics who find that, contrary to your charge, there was no such thing as “the razing of Jenin” and that the IDF has nothing in common with the SS, cry “foul” and claim their censure perfectly illustrates the point that there really is a Jewish organizational conspiracy to silence “criticism of Israel” by branding the authors of such criticism “anti-Semites.”

A sure oversimplification, but an indication of how the tensions are running high in this debate.

A few people responded to me after yesterday’s post with alot of concern: how can Israel make it long term in a region that has so few prospects, but so many serious weapons? What is the strategy that holds out some hope for success?

One strategy with potential is energy independence, a serious reduction in world reliance on oil. Such a move will force states across the middle east to see to their internal issues rather than fund a never ending and politically expedient war against Israel. Check out this piece by Gal Luft from a new pro-Israel DC think tank called EMET where Luft shows how very vulnerable we are to any flux in the oil markets. Energy independence is a strategic necessity, and it may be the one thing that can have a long term net positive effect over here.

Another IDF friend told me today that all the buzz inside is that this summer there will be another war–likely with Syria. Whether this is true or not, it certainly seems that now would be a good time to get the ship in shape. So I don’t know whether to feel relieved or disgusted when I read that the new IDF Chief of Staff is doing away with most of Halutz’s changes to the army.

Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi is planning to do away with a significant portion of the extensive reorganization programs that the Israel Defense Forces carried out during 2005.

When he was Defense Ministry director general, Ashkenazi did not support the reorganization program and his view on the matter was only reinforced following the second Lebanon war.

A report prepared by Major General (res.) Herzl Sapir on the reorganization plans and their negative effect on the conduct of the war is highly critical of the process. The Sapir committee was appointed under the previous chief of staff, Dan Halutz.

I guess I’m disgusted and relieved all at once. Let’s hope the inconsistency and lack of focus that defined last summer’s war doesn’t show up in the next, and that Ashkenazi’s moves help the army defend the state. More than that, let’s pray the war itself never shows up at all.

Check out this event today, sponsored by Zeek:

Babel to Bamba: New Words From, About, and Wrestling with Israel

Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture presents poets, writers,
performers, and artists shouting, jamming, and reciting their work
about the Promised Land.  Featuring both American and Israeli voices
(and Israeli-American ones), we’ll move beyond the cliches to engage
with the social, political, and religious realities of Israel and
diaspora, as reflected in the literary mind.  Co-presented with Corner
Prophets.

Sunday, February 25, 2007
5-6:30pm
JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave @ 76th St

Presented as part of Israel Non-Stop

Introducing our Defense Minister… 

Check out the thread between Chanan and Mas in response to my liveblog post from JOFA, Why are the Modern Orthodox Losing? Mas has pointed out that there have, indeed, been efforts and successes in the MO community in the area of Agunah (such as the RCA prenup) and that the opposition from Hareidi quarters to dealing creatively with this issue is less influential than I claimed. Chanan notes those successes but sees the balance of the issue on the other side, and agrees progress has been slow and less than impactful.

I fully agree with Mas that the RCA’s efforts have been significant, and are significant even moreso now that it is membership policy for RCA rabbis to use the prenup, rather than strong suggestion (I used it at my wedding before it was universally enforced). And I know that Rabbi Reiss and his colleagues at the RCA have done an excellent job at moving as far as they think they can to attack the issue, and most likely they have some more ideas up their sleeves (we can hope!).

The problem though, lies in the fact that partial measures on this issue, while encouraging, are not sufficient. Agunah is a watershed issue for Judaism today, and the way we deal with it in its totality is a critical test, in the eyes of so many of us, for the halachik leadership of Modern Orthodoxy today.

I say the halachik leadership, and not halacha. As we learned at the JOFA conference and as some MO leader’s emphasize in talks and conversations, halachik solutions are ready and doable (though admittedly not easy). The problem is largely political and stems in not a small part to pressure on MO leaders from the right, and from the inside.

What is needed here are not partial solutions but an emergence of a unified, concerted, MO effort to move the whole halachik community on this issue. Our leadership must be both humble, so that they can defuse the resistance of Hareidi leaders, but also unrelenting, because failure is not an option. Because after all, Hareidi Agunot are as much a part of our family as are those lucky enough to have come under the RCA prenup. Here is a chance for the MO halachik leadership to do something for the whole Jewish People, to show some real leadership. And I have no doubt that our leaders are sophisticated enough to pull it off, if only there was a unified effort behind the whole enterprise. After all, as Mas suggests in his comments, there may indeed be a halachik imperative to do exactly this.

Didn’t realize it? Check out the latest Azure for Michael Oren’s analysis of the importance of 1956’s Operation Kadesh, and his succinct takedown of the reigning interpretation.

Counterintuitive as it might seem, is the public eruption of so many corruption scandals and the subsequent prosecutions, sanctions, and resignations mean we’re turning a corner in Israel’s political culture? Yossi Klein Halevi suggested that this may be the case, and I know we’d all like to believe it.

There was another announcement today of an ex-MK going to jail. At the same time, Karadi and the police leadership is under fire, the Gigi brothers will be prosecuted, Halutz is gone and the army is finally responding to the nation’s critique, Katzav and Ramon are on their way out, the tax authority is being turned over, and so on and so forth. While a “glass is wholly empty” approach would be understandable here, this gigantic convulsion all over the Israeli political and economic leadership may also be the beginning of the beginning of cleaner government and of a political culture that is concerned lest one be nailed for corruption and scandal. And that’s the direction we need to move.

Maybe we’ll know we’re getting there if the buck finally stops on the PM’s doorstep(s).

— Next Page »