Maroon 5-- Won't Go Home Without You

Tina Dico-- Nobody's Man

Ennio Morricone-- Cinema Paradisio

Silent Rapes--from Zionism of Israel site

If you are looking for an adventure of a new and different kind, then you should probably head for the Palestinian territories, where you can do a real service to the oppressed Palestinians and at the same time get first hand experience of solidarity and intimate dialog with Palestinian Arabs, who, it seems, rape American and European female activists.

The stories of rape and sexual molestation of foreign peace activists by Palestinians first appeared in the dovish Haaretz several months ago. Back in July, Avi Isacharoff asked, Are the Palestinians silencing the attempted rape of U.S. peace activist? and then he reported: PA, protest leaders hushed up attempted rape of U.S. activist. That was back in July. Incredibly, nobody noticed these ‘juicy’ stories. ...

It was not the only incident. An undated article in Hebrew, by Roni Aloni Sedovnik reported on Betrayal by the left of female peace activists who were sexually assaulted. Aloni-Sedovnik reported an additional case, the ‘severe sexual assault’ of an Israeli peace activist at Sheikh Jarrah. The victim tried to complain, but this time it was Israeli peace activists who shut her up:

“However, after heavy and unfair pressure from the organizers of the Sheikh Jarrah protest, she withdrew her complaint.
“As if that is not enough to make one appalled at the hypocritical morality and loss of direction, the situation became more serious recently, when the activists organizing the the demonstrations in Bil’in and Sheikh Jarah asked female demonstrators to wear ‘modest dress’ according to the code accepted in Arab villages: Hijab, Burqa or other head covering…
“How did we not hear about this? After all, the phenomenon is known in a broad group of peace activists, so what can we learn from the hushing up of this topic by the media?…
‘Peace’ groups such as Ir Amim that are demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrah and Bilin get U.S. tax deductible donations through the NIF, which supposedly advances ‘women’s rights’ and ‘democracy.’
The two cases are apparently only the tip of the iceberg.Yehudah Belo wrote, under the dramatic headline, Female leftist activists are raped day after day, night after night about the alleged rape of Scandinavian girls:

“I know of such rape cases from women who are not Jewish: a female European leftist activist, a female Red Cross volunteer and a young Arab woman from Yafo. I met the three of them during reserve service. I met with each of them afterwards… they told me what happens there, in the Palestinian villages, far from any observing eye.”
“It is not a matter of rape to satisfy lust. They are done systematically in order to impregnate the girl, and then to marry her, after she converts to Islam. Of course, we know about this method from girls who underwent a similar process inside Israel and escaped to Europe, but it is hard to escape from the [Palestinian] territories. Sometimes these women, some of whom are already older women, are not allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied, in order to prevent their escape. If someone doubts my words…please, check the statistics for entries and departures, and you will discover that a large portion of female leftist activists did not leave the country. Everyone knows about it, but nobody dares to talk about it…
“I ran into a few Norwegian girls married to Palestinians. They are not happy. Their lives were destroyed. Their families have broken off contact with them. They have no place to return to. They are deep in the raising of children and wish to die. I assume there are women in that situation in their own countries and in Israel too. Not everyone is happy, but one might think that a person who grew up in Oslo will have trouble adjusting to life in the refugee camps. She is no longer allowed to be free, to fly about the world as she wishes, or even to be a leftist activist.

Belo pleaded with Israeli womens’ and leftist organizations to help, but so far, none has done so.

The cause was also taken up by Israeli blogger Nimrod Avissar, in a Hebrew article called Thunderous Silence.

These Israeli reporters and bloggers do not all fit the stereotype of right wing settler supporters. Haaretz generally is sympathetic to Palestinians and so is their reporter and analyst Avi Issacharoff. Nimrod Avissar lives in Ramat Gan, not in a settlement. The reports cannot be dismissed. When rumors about Israeli ‘war crimes’ and illegal organ transplants surfaced, they were plastered all over respected journals such as the New York Times and Time magazine, as well as Scandinavian journals, though there was probably not a word of truth to them. Judge Richard Goldstone wrote thousands of pages and made the gravest accusations based on flimsier evidence, causing an upheaval in international justice as well as media coverage. But almost nothing at all has been published in international media about these rapes. No activists took up the cause of these poor women. There were two articles about the rape issue in a respectable journal, but they were ignored. Additional material accumulated, but that too was ignored. ...

Over the years, I have heard plenty of stories, not just about Israeli or European women being raped, but about Arab Christian girls being raped, sometimes with the cooperation of, or on the initiative of, the Fatah Police. I have also seen those earnest Scandinavian Lutheran girls, recruited for the causes of ‘peace’ and dialog,’ standing in a room full of Palestinian young men. What could they have in common?? Why were there no Scandinavian young men? Draw your own conclusions. If it was ‘dialog’ and ‘solidarity’ that they sought, they came to the right place, it seems. I have also seen ominous warnings about ‘modest dress.’
Don’t the charges at least merit further investigation and publicity? After all, if the same charges were leveled at Israelis, there would be a barrage of publicity, regardless of whether they had any truth to them or not. There are numerous specious allegations that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians. There was even a ‘study’ that ‘proved’ that Israeli soldiers (including the non-Jewish ones) do not rape Palestinians because IDF soldiers are racists.

Surely it is time to break the silence? Won’t Women in Black or Code Pink or perhaps Gila Svirsky’s group (CWP – Coalition of women for Peace) organize a tumultuous demonstration demanding an international investigation?? It is understandable if they keep mum about these stories. But where is the army of Zionist bloggers and journalists who are supposed to publicize these issues? Where are the organizations who take money to supposedly defend Israel? Why is everyone silent??

At least there should be an investigation. Surely, all progressive people will welcome an investigation into the status of women in the West Bank, which is no doubt commendable in every way.

Won’t someone publicize this cause? Won’t someone speak out about this injustice? Won’t someone tour campuses in the United States and Scandinavia to warn the innocents before it is too late?? Won’t someone come forward and break the silence??

John Lennon-- Happiness Is...

Jews for Hypocrisy

Northern Cyprus vs. Israel
Emanuele Ottolenghi - 09.26.2010 - 9:58 AM

A boat full of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and other such organizations is setting sail today for Gaza from Northern Cyprus, as reported here. The pious group, no doubt, thinks they are fighting occupation through acts of kindness.

There is, nevertheless, a certain irony in the fact that they use Northern Cyprus as a staging ground for their activities — like the Mavi Marmara-led Flotilla did last May. Here’s the irony — Northern Cyprus is an illegally occupied territory that belongs to the EU as part of its member state, Cyprus; it was seized by force in 1974 by the Turkish army; its legal status as a fictionally independent state is only recognized by Turkey (the occupying power); Turkey forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks from that territory and settled its own population to permanently alter the ethnic balance of the area – and, in the process, encouraged the building of what one could characterize as settlements.

Now doesn’t this sound awfully familiar — the kind of accusations that organizations such as the JFJFP would routinely level at Israel’s presence in the West Bank and, until 2005, in Gaza? These are the kind of things that get such enlightened Jews agitated enough that they need to spring into action — if the alleged perpetrator is Israel. If it is a country that bombs neighbors with impunity, uses heavy-handed tactics to fight what it brands as terrorists, while denying basic cultural rights to the ethnic minority that constitutes 20 percent of its population while it practices state-sanctioned genocide denial, well then, its government is Islamist and its actively helps Hamas, so there’s no problem relying on their services and glossing on their blatant and continuing violations of international law to bash Israel.

How do you say coherence in Turkish?

The Walkmen-- Another One Goes By

Pete Yorn-- Lose You

The Band-- Crippled Creek

The New Face of the Settlements

September 21, 2010

With wineries and tourism, settlers try to rebrand settlements for Israeli public

by Dina Kraft, JTA

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Inside the cool of a cavernous wine cellar stacked high with oak barrels of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, the tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem to fade away even at this Jewish settlement in the heart of the West Bank.
This is precisely the message a stop at the Psagot Boutique Winery is meant to convey.
It’s part of a new strategy by settler leaders to “rebrand” settlements, offering tours of settlement communities in a bid to win over an Israeli public they fear may have abandoned them either through apathy or outright hostility.
“We have been feeling that enough is enough. Stop making us look like monsters,” said Yigal Dilmoni, who directs the newly created information office for the Yesha Council, the settlers’ umbrella organization, which is organizing the tours.
“Most people don’t realize how regular our lives here are. People wake up in the morning, go to work and are not engaged in the world of politics,” Dilmoni said.
The tours are meant to strike a stark contrast to what Dilmoni described as the common media image of settlers as violent radicals on the prowl for brawls with neighboring Palestinians.
For the Yesha Council, the significance of not having the Israeli public behind the settlement project hit home in wake of the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, when some 8,000 Jewish settlers were evacuated, some forcibly. It was a traumatic episode for the settler movement—not only because of the evacuation, but also because there was no broad Israeli uproar against it.
It was a lesson, too, in the important role played by opinion makers—journalists, media personalities and business leaders—in shaping Israeli society’s views, settler leaders said. This is why the Yesha Council has decided to start bringing such opinion makers to settlements as the first phase of their attempt to improve their public standing.
Avri Gilad, a well-known Israel media personality, told listeners on a radio show the day after he returned from such a tour that it dramatically changed his view of the settlements.
“I went on a tour that revolutionized my awareness of settlements in Samaria,” he said on the show. “I visited places I was raised to detest. I returned in a state of confusion: confusion about the injustice done to citizens who were called on by the state to settle, given building permits and then frozen out. I was surprised to meet people with whom I had a lot to talk about, with great warmth and intimacy.”
An earlier public relations strategy, an ambitious project of billboards and advertisements briefly launched in 2008 under the slogan “Judea and Samaria, The Story of Every Jew,” proved successful but too expensive to maintain over the long term, Dilmoni said.
Dilmoni, 40, an earnest and energetic geographer and urban planner by training, believes that no one comes away unmoved from seeing the settler enterprise up close, even if their political opinions remain unchanged.
About 320,000 Israeli Jews live in the West Bank. They believe the land is their biblical birthright, and successive Israeli governments have supported that notion. But the land also is territory that Palestinians claim as their future state.
The settlements, viewed as illegal by much of the international community and a threat to the country’s long-term survival by critics inside Israel, have become one of the major issues of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They also threaten to derail the recently relaunched direct peace talks between the two sides. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has declared that he’d pull out of the talks if Israel did not extend a 10-month freeze on construction in settlements that is set to expire Sept. 26.
The message of the tours, Dilmoni said while driving visitors along a stretch of highway that cut through a valley surrounded by ancient terraced hilltops, is “Come here and see what has been built here and then decide what to think.”
The settlement tours constitute a packed day. They begin early in the morning, end at sunset, and include stops and conversations at a range of settlements—large and more urban ones like Ariel, and smaller ones like Kida, which have sweeping views of the desert unfolding into Jordan. They end with a return to the Israeli side of the Green Line—the pre-1967 border between Israel and Jordan that demarcates the West Bank.
In the past, when settlers gave tours of Judea and Samaria—the biblical name for the West Bank—the focus was on security and the role of their homes as strategic buffers because they sit on the mountain range overlooking the Mediterranean coastal strip to the west and Jordan to the east.
Now a “softer,” more human-interest spotlight has been purposefully chosen, one in which visitors can do a wine tasting at the winery in Psagot, part of a new multimillion-dollar visitors’ center for the Binyamin region that is set to open over the Sukkot holiday.
During a visit there last week, workers were rushing to finish building a room that will house more than a dozen touch-screen computer terminals offering information about the area. The center is a sleek new complex that also boasts event space and a small movie theater with plush orange seats that will show a short feature film about a young man who, on the verge of leaving the country for a job in London, “returns to his roots” to tend land on a settlement.
The itinerary for the settlement tours also includes home visits. At the edge of the settlement of Eli, home to 700 families, a woman named Eliana Passentin, 36, stands in her backyard overlooking an expanse of sloping terraced hillsides and speaks of her passion for living alongside the history of the Bible.
Explaining the view, she points out an Arab village whose name in mentioned in the Bible for producing especially fine wine. She also points to the ancient site of Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was once housed, providing the central site for Israelite worship for 400 years.
Passentin describes how her home, located in a neighborhood the Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled was built illegally and has ordered to be razed, was built with the area’s history in mind.
“The dining room windows look out onto Shiloh,” she said, “and from the living room we can see the site of Judah Macabee’s first and then final battle.”

Madeleine Peyroux-- You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

A Flotilla for Gilad Shalit

My column this week in Jewish Journal and Huffington Post:

Some Jews just don’t follow rules. Rosh Hashanah is a time for self-reflection and deep humility —a time when we are supposed to look at what we did wrong, not what others did wrong — but on the first Day of Judgment, my lunchtime crowd followed another script.

I was sitting with a group of friends at the home of Ariel and Sarah Wiendling, fellow members of Young Israel of Century City, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, a day so steeped in Divine judgment that tradition says we shouldn’t sleep on that day, lest we get “caught napping.”

Personally, I was on my “aim higher” kick, trying not to let the hoopla of the holidays interfere with the spiritual imperative of looking inward. On top of that, the previous day I had read an article by a rabbi about how this is a good time of the year for Jews to apologize to the world for our collective sins of the past year.

So when my friend Ariel asked me about my trip to Israel, my response gravitated to anything having to do with looking inward and self-criticism. In particular, I spoke about my visit with the father of Gilad Shalit, who has been sitting vigil in a protest tent across from the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem.

What a dramatic example of self-criticism, I said. A terrorist enemy kidnaps an Israeli soldier, refuses to release him in exchange for over 1,000 prisoners, and Jews protest against their own prime minister.

After someone lamented the inability of the IDF to rescue Shalit (à la Entebbe), the conversation took a theological turn — someone making the point that “if God is behind everything,” then maybe there’s a redeeming feature to this tragedy that we are not seeing. Someone else took umbrage at this idea: How dare we look for redeeming features to such a deep personal tragedy? While we have the luxury of debating Gilad Shalit’s situation over a delicious meal, where is he right now? What meal is he having?

Obviously, I hadn’t picked the best example to honor the Jewish instinct for self-criticism. Of all the things Jews have to apologize for to the world, Gilad Shalit is surely not one of them.

But that’s when the conversation got interesting: If it’s wrong to beat ourselves up over Gilad Shalit, and if it’s not enough to say that “God is behind this,” then what?

Then let’s have a marketing meeting.

By the time dessert was served, we had reached a consensus: Jewish groups should organize an international flotilla for Gilad Shalit that should land in Gaza and ask for a Red Cross visit for the Jewish prisoner. The flotilla should consist of one main ship — with the flags of Israel and the Red Cross — and small boats to represent each day that Shalit has been imprisoned.

Everyone at the table loved the idea so much that they said, “I’m in.”

In fact, this is what I’m hearing every time I bring it up: people saying, “I’m in.” And many are adding to the idea: Have Shalit’s father lead the flotilla; do it around Passover and bring him a care package that will include matzahs; seek the support of Jewish organizations from across the spectrum, from J Street to ZOA, each representing a different boat; enlist human rights organizations who are usually Israel’s worst critics; go right to the top, getting the endorsements of President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, and so on.

Someone made the comment that a group tried to do something similar earlier this year, but that it wasn’t a hit because the “flotilla” was just in the New York harbor. Someone else said that because of Israel’s official naval blockade to Gaza, organizers will need to get Israel to make an exception for Shalit’s flotilla, which would be worth it if only for the PR value.

I’m sure anyone who tries to pull this off will encounter a million obstacles, but I’d love to see someone give it a shot — and at least make a lot of noise trying.

The request is so modest and reasonable — a Red Cross visit with a prisoner — that it makes it difficult for anyone to be against it, and it gives supporters of Israel from the left to the right a concrete cause they can all get behind. And by making such a modest request, and staying away from the messy politics of prisoner exchanges, we can turn Gilad Shalit into a household name on the lips of the world’s most influential leaders.

It’s true that this doesn’t fit the Rosh Hashanah themes of humility and personal self-reflection, and it certainly doesn’t follow the rabbi’s message of making a collective Jewish apology to the world.

What it might represent, however, is a collective Jewish apology to Gilad Shalit for not having done more to free him, and maybe a way of including him in our process of becoming better Jews for the coming year.

La Rage-- Keny Arkana

Led Zeppelin-- D'yer Mak'er

Divine Comedy-- Tonight We Fly

Uh Huh Her-- Not A Love Song

When Peace Means War by Evelyn Gordon (Commentary)

How Misreading Hamas’s Motive Undermines Prospects for Peace
Evelyn Gordon

Israel has suffered almost daily rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-run Gaza this week after 19 months of quiet. Yesterday, for the first time, Gazans launched phosphorus shells at the Negev. And Hamas has twice attacked Israelis in the West Bank this month, again following a long hiatus.

The response from American, European, and Israeli officials has been predictable: Hamas is escalating the terror to foil Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But this conventional wisdom is false. And this falsehood has been undermining prospects for peace for the last 17 years.

Hamas does oppose a peace deal. But because almost nobody in either Israel or the Palestinian Authority thinks the current talks will produce one, the idea that Hamas leaders are driven by fear of the talks’ success is risible. Hamas knows quite well that the talks will fail even without its help.

Moreover, Hamas has often escalated attacks even when no negotiations were in sight. Between Israel’s August 2005 pullout from Gaza and the Annapolis summit in November 2007, for instance, Hamas fired thousands of rockets and mortars at Israel, a volume that dwarfs the current level. Yet during most of that time, not only were there no peace talks, there wasn’t even any effort to launch them.

So what really motivates Hamas? It’s no secret; Hamas officials proclaim it repeatedly: their goal is Israel’s eradication, and their method is armed struggle. Therefore, they will attack whenever and wherever it’s feasible.

Viewed through this prism, the pattern of Hamas’s terror activity is easily explained: terror escalates whenever Hamas officials think they can get away with it and de-escalates when the danger of a devastating Israeli response becomes too great.

Thus, for instance, terror soared following the 1993 Oslo Accord because Hamas realized it was safe. The Rabin-Peres government, having promised that Oslo would bring peace, couldn’t politically admit it had brought war instead, so it had to downplay the attacks rather than responding. But when Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996 on a platform of fighting terror, Hamas feared he might be less restrained and de-escalated. Thus the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terror plummeted 70 percent from 1993-96 to 1996-99.

Similarly, after the 2005 disengagement, Hamas knew the Kadima-led government couldn’t politically admit its flagship initiative had brought war rather than peace. Thus Hamas could safely triple the volume of rocket fire, knowing Israel’s government would downplay it rather than responding.

Today, thanks to the peace talks, escalation is once again safe — because Hamas knows that if Israel responds forcefully, the PA will quit the talks, and the world will blame Israel. Thus, Israel is compelled to avoid responding.

In short, it’s not the peace talks that cause terror to escalate but the world’s insistence that Israel refrain from responding so as not to “disrupt” them. And by taking this attitude, the world has effectively made “peace” synonymous with stepped-up terror.

So if Time magazine really wants to know “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace,” it’s quite simple: as long as “peace” means absorbing ever-increasing casualties without responding, most Israelis would rather do without it.

Arcade Fire-- Suburbs

Chet Baker-- Almost Blue

Sugarcube-- Yo La Tengo

Nissan Leaf Commercial

The Afters-- Falling Into Place

Will they end up changing Israel's name to Falastin?

Next time you hear that our "moderate" Palestinian peace "partners" are adamant about not recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, consider this thought experiment by prominent leftist Shlomo Avineri in Haaretz:
 
It won't happen. But if it does happen, it will probably happen like this.

One day, after many years of arguments and discussions, the Knesset, out of consideration for Israel's Arab citizens and a desire to promote full and equal citizenship, decided to omit any reference to Israel's Jewish identity. "We're all Israelis, equal citizens in our common homeland," declared the Knesset speaker. "Just as in France there are only Frenchmen, from now on in Israel there are only Israelis. Each community will of course be able to develop a separate identity for itself, but that will be a private matter without public standing." It was decided that the listing for "nationality" on our ID cards would be "Israeli" only.

At the first Knesset session after the festive decision was made, an Arab MK demanded that Theodor Herzl's picture be taken down from the wall of the chamber. He announced that if his proposal were not accepted he would turn to the High Court of Justice, "because the picture of the founder of Zionism in the legislature shared by us all hurts the feelings of the Arab citizens and perpetuates the discrimination against them. There is no place in the Knesset for this Austro-Hungarian journalist who never lived in the country."

At the same time, another Arab MK proposed a bill to change the state's symbol, flag and anthem. "These are outright Jewish and Zionist symbols, and they no longer have a place in the country. The seven-branched candelabra, which did or did not stand in the Jewish Temple that did or did not exist, cannot express the equal citizenship of us all." There was also a proposal to change the name of the Knesset, because of its origin in the term beit knesset (synagogue ) and Knesset Hagdola (the Great Assembly ), but it was rejected for the time being.

In advance of the Hebrew month of Tishri, the Israel Broadcasting Authority aired several reports about preparations for the holidays, and as usual pointed out that "the multitudes of Am Yisrael [the People of Israel] are preparing for the holiday" and that "masses of Beit Yisrael [the House of Israel] will flood the beaches of Turkey on the Sukkot holiday." An Arab human rights organization petitioned the High Court demanding that it order the IBA not to use the expression Am Yisrael in this connection. "The expression Am Yisrael may not refer in a public broadcast to the holidays of one religious group or another. There is only one Am Yisrael and it includes us all - Jews, Muslims, Christians and people of no religion. Any other use of the term is racist and discriminatory." A panel of seven justices was appointed to hear the case.

A group from the northern branch of the Islamic Movement petitioned the High Court demanding that it abolish the name of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. "It may be the chief rabbinate of the Jews, but not of Israel." There was also talk of abolishing the Keren Kayameth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund and transferring it to the Finance Ministry.

Arab spokesmen proposed in the media, and were joined by several Jews from the radical left as well as a veteran of the Canaanite Movement, that to avoid hurting the feelings of Arab citizens, the concept "the God of Israel" (Elohei Yisrael ) should no longer be mentioned in Jewish prayers. "In no way do we intend to limit the freedom of worship of the members of the Jewish religious community, but it's clear that the use of 'the God of Israel' in connection with a specific Jewish prayer contravenes the spirit of the laws passed recently." Use of the concept "the Land of Israel" (Eretz Yisrael ) referring to the Jewish history of the country was also criticized.

A radical Jewish leftist who supported the steps that led to the legislation turned to a head of an Arab organization and asked: "We did what you wanted, and you still aren't satisfied. What should we call the country so you'll really feel equal?" With a broad smile the head of the Arab association replied: "What's the problem? The real name was and always will be: Falastin."

Dark Ages

According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5771.
According to the Chinese calendar, the year is 4707.
This means that the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,064 years.
This period was known as the Dark Ages.
新年快樂

PJ Harvey-- Rid of Me

9/11 Memorial-- Jerusalem

Kristin Hersh-- Your Ghost

Talking Heads-- Heaven

Aiming Higher

My column this week in Jewish Journal:

Here in Pico-Robertson, many of us approach the month of Tishrei with a certain amount of ambivalence, if not culinary dread. Especially this year, when the holiday meals are back to back with Shabbat, we are bracing ourselves for 30 days with — I’m not kidding — at least 20 Thanksgiving-level meals, if you include the High Holy Days, the first and second holidays of Sukkot (eight meals right there) and the weekly Shabbat feasts.
That’s a lot of guest coordination, shmoozing and baba ganoush.
Meanwhile, the rabbis will be imploring us to embark on a deep and personal spiritual trek that would lead to things like personal transformation, clinging closer to God and returning to our better selves. The bigger question they might ask is: How will the ingestion of 50,000 calories a week amid a freight train of festive meals contribute to this spiritual journey?
I don’t have an answer, but I have an idea: maybe we ought to find a two- or three-word mantra that summarizes what these High Holy Days mean to us and use this mantra as a handy guide to help us navigate the many distractions we are sure to encounter.
I wrote my own mantra after hearing from three rabbis over the past week: Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem; Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller of UCLA Hillel; and Rabbi Kalman Topp of Beth Jacob Congregation.
So what’s my mantra for this holiday season? Aim higher.
“Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not primarily about atonement, about being forgiven for our sins and indiscretions,” Rabbi Hartman wrote. “While originally in the Bible this was the primary intent, the revolution of the rabbinic tradition was to shift the focus from attaining atonement from God to the human responsibility to repent and change our behavior. It is not about God’s love and acceptance of the sinner, but rather God’s expectation that humankind overcome sin and live up to our tradition’s expectation.”
Hartman goes on: “To assume one’s righteousness and concentrate one’s efforts on pointing out the failures of others is again to ignore the principle of teshuvah and its spirit on which our tradition is founded.”
In other words, it’s easy to be humble and ask God for forgiveness, or to focus on criticizing others, but it’s a lot harder to ask yourself how you will change your behavior and become a better person. You have to handle the blows to your ego of admitting how often you messed up during the past year, and then you have to commit to the hard work of actually becoming a better person.
But what kind of better person?
“Avoiding transgressions is not enough,” Rabbi Seidler-Feller said in his holiday message. Quoting Maimonides, he spoke about the importance of going beyond “simply avoiding sins like sexual transgressions and stealing.”
It’s all about character, the rabbi says. Controlling one’s anger. Never humiliating others. Avoiding the pursuit of honor. Not coveting the success of others. Those are all issues of character, and they’re much tougher to work on than the avoidance of basic sins. Rosh Hashanah is a holiday that reminds us that the act of refining one’s character is never complete, that it represents “the very act of living.”
And where do we find the strength to aim so high, to do such difficult work?
According to Rabbi Topp, Rosh Hashanah also reminds us that because we are created in the image of God, we already have this strength inside of us — we just have to tap into it. That was his message last Sunday morning at a pre-Rosh Hashanah breakfast at Beth Jacob.
The rabbi took us through the four key insertions to the Amidah prayer during the High Holy Days and showed us how with each insertion, we keep asking God for more. It’s not a coincidence that at each level our identity gets stronger and stronger: We start by being anonymous, then we are “God’s creatures,” then we are “members of the covenant at Sinai,” and, finally, we are the “Nation of Israel,” with all the privileges and duties that go with it.
It’s at that final level that Rabbi Topp spoke about our “built-in specialness,” the idea that whatever personal improvement we are seeking, God has already given us the strength to “return” to it — to return to our better selves.
(On that note, one of the most effective ways I have found to rebuke my kids when they do something wrong is simply to say to them, “You’re better than that,” even when I’m not sure I mean it.)
So that will be my mantra during these High Holy Days — aim higher. As I go through the Days of Judgment, the Days of Awe, the Days of Harvest and the Days of Too Many Stuffed Zucchinis, I will try to keep my eye on the spiritual ball: Don’t focus on just seeking forgiveness or not criticizing others; don’t settle for just avoiding sins; do the hard work of refining my character and remember that God is there to give me strength on my journey.
And if I fail to reach that high, and the baba ganoush and single malts get the better of me, well, at least I will have had a really good time.

Shame on Israelis for Enjoying Life!

My column today on JewishJournal.com:

The world will not leave Israel alone.

The usual beef against Israel is that, in its zeal to defend itself, it overplays its hand: An ugly separation fence; too many roadblocks; an unfair blockade; brutal retaliation against terrorist attacks; oppression of Palestinian Arabs, and so on. Recently, another beef against Israel has been that it’s losing its liberal soul, as pundits like Peter Beinart have so aggressively been trying to tell us.

Now, it looks as if the world is going after Israel because… it’s having too much fun.

Or making too much money.

In a cover story that is spreading like wildfire on the Internet, Time magazine comes down from the mountaintop to eagerly explain to the world, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” Evidently, instead of “caring about peace,” Israel cares more about things like buying nice real estate, making money and having a really good time.

The nerve on these Israelis.

Now, before you rush to defend the magazine by telling me that the “story inside” is more nuanced than the provocative headline on the cover, let’s not forget a rule that all smart editors understand: People remember headlines, not “the story inside.”

And what an incendiary idea it is that people will take away: Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.

Time could easily have said on its cover: Why Israel Has Forgotten About Peace, or Why Israel Has Stopped Believing in Peace, or even, Why Israel Has Chosen Life Over Peace, or even still, Why Israel Cares About Peace (But Not the Peace Process). Any of those would have done justice to a new reality of Israeli society that the story was trying to tap into.

This is the reality: Most Israelis have been so burned by previous attempts at peace—from a terror war that killed 1,000 Israelis after Israel’s peace offer at Camp David in 2000; to the terror wars that followed the evacuations of Lebanon and Gaza; to the PA’s refusal to even make a counter offer to Ehud Olmert’s generous offer two years ago—that they’ve tuned out to the “peace process” and have decided, instead, to live their lives.

And yes, I can tell you, after spending a month there this summer, Israelis know how to live their lives. They fill the cafes and restaurants late into the night. On a hot summer night in Tel Aviv, I saw hundreds of people having barbeques on the beach. Everywhere I went, I saw people living life with a vengeance.

Does this mean these people “don’t care about peace”? Of course not. What it means is that Israelis would rather worry about real life than fake peace. After 20 years of seeing their hopes for peace lead to one disappointment after another, why waste their time worrying about something they don’t think they can get?

Israelis remember well the trauma of the second intifada and the hundreds of suicide bombings that befell them. Without a peace process, like Time magazine reported, Israelis are now “observing 2 ½ years without a single suicide bombing on their territory,” and yes, they’re taking full advantage of this quiet to savor every moment of life.

Who can blame them? Who can begrudge them this human reaction?

And seriously, what new information has arisen in the past few years to give Israelis more reason to care about peace? The rise of a Hamas terrorist state in Gaza? A terrorist state that is viciously at odds with Israel’s official “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority? Even a liberal peacenik like Peter Beinart is a major skeptic, as he writes in The Daily Beast:

“Given his lack of democratic legitimacy, it is delusional to imagine that Abbas can carry out the brutally painful concessions a final peace deal would require. And it is delusional to imagine that Hamas will permit the success of a peace process meant to further marginalize it; indeed, it has already greeted the start of direct talks with terrorist attacks.”

It is the peace process that Israelis don’t care much about, not peace itself.

Time magazine missed that key difference, but it did establish one crucial fact: Israelis love life. And in doing so, the magazine hoisted itself on its own petard, because it is undeniable that if you love life, you must love peace.

The fact that Israelis are not talking about peace at the moment means they don’t see it as attainable, so they’re focusing on things they can attain, like building a life and a country.

As far as peace itself goes, their message to Time magazine and the peace processors of the world is this: Give us something real—something more than another tease—and we’ll start paying attention.

But what a dull headline that would have been.

Happy Labor Day

Robert Plant-- Big Log

Richard Swift-- Kisses for the Misses

Damien Jurado-- What Were The Chances

Lupe Fiasco-- Dumb It Down

Tausug/Sama-- Love Song