The Sunken Synagogue

When right is left and left is right

2007-02-22T00:48:00.000+02:00

It's Adar again.

Last year around this time I wrote a few satirical pieces in the spirit of Purim. But I feel like doing so now would be almost redundant, because reality in Israel these days is basically a satire already. What else can you call it when the Justice Minister is unjust, the police turn out to be criminals, the head of the Disengagement Authority finds himself Disengaged from his own kibbutz, &tc &tc? Laughter is more fitting than words in such a situation.

And what do people want now to ameliorate our troubles? New elections!

Never mind that new elections are exactly what got us where we are now, and to where we were before that! Hasn't anyone noticed that with every new election things just get worse? What's the use of another round of political musical chairs? Running around in circles will not move us forward; it will just make us more tired. It's not new elections we need, it's new ... brains. Right? Otherwise we'll just choose more bad leaders. I mean, just look at the support for Netanyahu - folks, we already tried that one! Why should Likud, Labor, or Kadima be getting even one seat in any poll? And then there's Gaydamak and his new party. Can someone tell me why exactly we're supposed to vote for him? Is it because material wealth implies good political leadership, or because having no platform is better than having a bad platform?

Anyway ... so this Purim is coming at a strange time. If the world were turned upside down right now, it just might come out right side up.

But I guess that's all the more reason to celebrate.

So stay tuned....

If you didn't like Yonatan Bassi before...

2007-01-08T01:19:00.000+02:00

I've been shaken from my blog-neglecting stupor by an amazing story from YNet.

Yonatan Bassi, who was the head of the Disengagement Authority that coordinated the complete removal of thousands Jews from the Gaza Strip a little over a year ago, has decided to move off of his kibbutz, Sde Eliyahu, for a couple of years. He and his family have been experiencing harrassment from a vocal minority of fellow kibbutzniks who haven't gotten over what he did while in that post.

Many will surely see this as divine punishment, מידה כנגד מידה. He expelled others, and so he has to leave his own home. Fine ... though it doesn't seem to be be exactly measure for measure, since he's only going temporarily, he's not being hoisted out by soldiers, he doesn't have to watch his home being bulldozed and the ruins given to Arabs, and he's not going to be lied to and mistreated by the government. But anyway, he's getting some of the medicine he doled out ... close enough.

We can all look at this and smile and smirk at this pitiful man. But it doesn't really move me. I mean, it's predictable. Of course he was going to get his, later on if not now. What's positively shocking though is what he and his wife wrote in a letter to the director of their kibbutz:

"We love this place, and we love those living in it. We were both born here. The sunrise above the Gilad mountains every morning has accompanied us since the dawn of our childhood. Our entire adult lives have been invested in Sde Eliyahu. And now, on the brink of old age, how can we move to another place?" they wrote.

"A year and a half ago, we bounced back from a difficult period," wrote the Bassis. "It is very difficult. It is difficult for the people of Israel, difficult for Sde Eliyahu, and difficult for us, too. This period has created a crisis in the our relationships with some of our friends...."

That's chutzpah! How can they whine about experiencing the same thing they afflicted others with? Bassi kicked people out of the homes they loved and grew up in, with no respect for age or sentimentality, or the social and economic crises that would result. Does he think the former residents of Gush Katif don't get misty-eyed over their old homes and neighborhoods, the sun and the sand and surf, the gardens? Does he think they — not "the people of Israel," not he and his kibbutz up in the the Galilee, but the people in Gaza he smacked around — haven't been through a difficult period, that the parents among them aren't now going through divorces and the children turning to drugs?

I'm at a loss. This is worse than chutzpah. This is cruel, blind insensitivity. Stupidity. Callousness. He sets the next house on fire and then complains when the flames come back at him? People from Gush Katif are expendable and their well-being can be sacrificed, but if the blade grazes his fingertip all of the sudden there's a problem?

It's too bad, Yonatan Bassi! Eat it! Be thankful you're not moving to a caravilla!

Update:

I spoke too soon.

Anonymous informs me in the comments that Bassi is in fact moving to a caravilla. I don't know if this has been reported in English, but here's the story in Hebrew. It's also claimed there that although the Bassis only requested a two-year leave of absence, they're not likely to return.

Spooky, eh? If it didn't look like middah k'neged middah before, it sure does now. What I'd like to know is: what is Yonatan Bassi thinking now? I suspect that even if he hasn't yet a mind for repentence over his role in the Disengagement, he must have one heck of a grimace on his face.

Thanks, Anonymous.

Technorati tags: Israel / Disengagement

Who Really Won the Holocaust Cartoon Contest?

2006-11-02T21:47:00.000+02:00

Finally, the news we've all been waiting for! The Toronto Star reports:

TEHRAN, Iran — Ignoring widespread condemnation, Iran awarded the top prize in a Holocaust cartoon contest to a Moroccan artist for his depiction of Israel's security wall with a picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp on it.

The organizers of the exhibit — meant as a response to the Danish cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that enraged many Muslims — awarded Abdollah Derkaoui $12,000 (U.S.) Wednesday for his work depicting an Israeli crane piling large cement blocks on Israel's security wall and gradually obscuring Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. A picture of Auschwitz appears on the wall.

I would have written this article a bit differently. That the judges fancied Mr. Derkaoui's cartoonistry above all others' is interesting, but it misses the point. According to one of the contest's co-sponsors, the real goal of the contest was to "to test the West's tolerance for drawings about the Holocaust."

Considering that there has not been one riot, murder, boycott, or retaliatory contest in the wake of this offensive spectacle, I'd say the West has passed the test. Can Muslims say as much for their reaction to the Danish cartoons of Muhammad? Who should really be getting that $12,000?

Of course, Western tolerance is no suprise to anyone. The more instructive part of the article comes later on:

The contest generated little coverage in the Iranian press and many ordinary Iranians expressed little interest, or criticized the exhibit as unnecessarily provocative.

...

The exhibit drew few crowds, apart from students in state-run schools who were brought by their teachers.

Iranian media didn't comment on the competition Thursday apart from reporting its outcome. None reproduced the winning cartoons.

"The exhibition had no remarkable impact on public opinion,'' said Gohar Dashti, a professor at the Soureh Art University in Tehran. "It was neither a concern of students nor of the media.''

Some people on the streets of Tehran voiced skepticism about the contest.

"Drawing cartoons ... isn't a good way to solve real and old problems," said Ahmad Nasiri, a 23-year-old student. "Denying the Holocaust through cartoons doesn't contribute to humanity.''

This goes to show how top-down the anti-Semitism in Iran is. The coverage of reactions may not be exhaustive, but I don't think it's insignificant that the only enthusiastic people quoted in the article are Iran's Minister Of Culture and the cartoon exhibit's own curator. They may not realize it, but those who launched this competition and those who've supported it have achieved nothing more than to show their own intolerance, insensitivity, and desperation for a cause. And in doing so, they've lost their own contest.

Jesus Christ Superstar and Israel's Existential Crisis

2006-10-31T20:56:00.000+02:00

When I look at Israel today, it appears nothing less than vibrant: green trees; flowers; new homes going up; busy, talkative people. I may complain about the lousy architecture and poor urban planning, lack of manners, etc., but I know that's just the result of this country and its culture being put together too fast to attend to all the details. It's easy to overlook the negatives, and just appreciate the beauty, the movement, and the sheer excitement of being in a land reborn.

But it's not my purpose today to write about how great Israel is. I'm writing today about the 1973 film Jesus Christ Superstar.

I recognize that I may be at odds, on the one hand, with most other Jews in the world who have no interest in watching it, and on the other, with the Christians who love it and are moved by it to greater faith; but even as a religious Jew, this film is as near and dear to me as Fiddler On the Roof.

Why? Let me first disclaim that I find no Christian message in the film; on the contrary, it demonstrates just how unqualified Jesus was to be the messiah, and the irrational, vacillating devotion of his followers. At its core, J. C. Superstar is a story about Jews living and dying in Judea in the confused and troubled early decades of the first millenium CE, and about one messianic movement in particular that got out of hand. It's set and filmed in the same Jewish land where I now live, and save for a few Romans, the characters are all Jews, as are many of the actors. And the musical numbers are great.

This is not your average religious film—it's flamboyant, experimental, humorous, and shocking. Despite the time and the place, the cast is White, Black, Asian, and Hawaiian. Gun-toting Roman soldiers wear metal helmets and royal purple tank tops. The Jewish masses are groovin' hippies. Timeless shepherds guide their flocks as modern planes fly overhead.

But, in my view, the most significant cinematic departure is the settings. The characters walk, talk and dance through ruins, surrounded by the awesome Negev desert. [I've tried to upload pictures, but Blogger seems to be malfunctioning. Maybe later.] They inhabit real-world structures that 2000 years ago may have been whole and functional buildings, but we see them as they are today. The characters don't seem to notice that the columns have no heads and support no ceiling, or that the walls, with their upper halves missing, offer little protection. The scenes are deficient from a human standpoint as well. There are nowhere near as many extras as there should be. Simon the Zealot gleefully intones to Jesus, "There must be over fifty thousand!" but there are plainly no more than fifty in the crowd. We watch all this, and wonder, can't they see?

They cannot, for the simple reason that the ruination of their world has not yet occurred. It's still decades before the revolt(s) against Rome and the destruction of the Temple, and all the accompanying violence, starvation, exile, and slavery. Only we, living in the future, can know what misery lies ahead for our hapless, pathetic ancestors, who undulate and scream as if the messiah were on their very doorstep. And only we, with our precious hindsight, can see that the seeds of tragedy are already planted. The population is fragmented, squabbling, desperate and restless under a foreign yoke. How long can such a situation go on before it explodes?

In Fiddler too, the theme of Jewish religious and societal breakdown that shakes the characters later in the film, and reaches devastating proportions only after the film closes, in real-life Europe, America, and Israel, is portended already in Tevye's opening lines. Here's a man who can cover his head and put on a tallis and rail about "tradition," but if you ask him, "How did this tradition get started?" his answer is "I don't know." A society of Tevyes can survive only as long as it remains insulated from other societies, and from questioning. Even when the townsfolk are all smiles and song, there's a great hollowness only waiting to be exposed.

Our problems in modern-day Israel are similar to those in Superstar and Fiddler. Like the Jews in Roman times, we are divided and squabbling, and like Tevye, we no longer know how to justify our enterprise. Our values have been turned upside down and inside out, and those charged with leading us are in a deeper dark than anyone else (cf. MK Yuli Tamir's recent outrageous statement that Rabin Memorial Day is as important as Holocaust Day, and the presumptions that must have informed it). We're surrounded by enemies gearing up for an assault, and we're complacent at best; at worst we actively aid them by gifting them weapons, or bringing in international forces to give them cover from ourselves (UNIFIL in Lebanon). Caroline Glick has a good summary of the current goings-on here.

In such circumstances, how long can Israel last? We didn't win our last war with Lebanon, but we didn't exactly lose completely either. Things may be different next time. For now, our buildings are intact, town squares are filled with noisy crowds, and the countrysides are still mostly full of color. Is it all an elaborate house of cards though? Muslims seem to think so. If my power of vision were more accurate, I wonder, would the buildings be crumbling? Would the crowds be decimated? Would the Galilee be bleak and barren as the Negev?

Technorati tags: Movies / Jesus / Jewish / Judaism / Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict

Rav Ovadia Yosef Opines on the Presidency

2006-10-26T13:07:00.000+02:00

Israel is looking for a new president. A number of possibilities have been put forward, including the enigmatic Shimon Peres, the esteemed Elie Wiesel (who, like Albert Einstein when he was suggested for the role, doesn't actually live in Israel), former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, and former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau.

The latter hasn't been enthusiastic about running to begin with, and the following news isn't going to help any:

Arutz 7 reports:

Rabbi Yosef Opposes Having a Hareidi President

Former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is quoted in the weekly hareidi-Orthodox Mishpacha magazine expressing his opposition to a member of the hareidi community serving as president.

The statement in directed at the candidacy of Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a popular presidential candidate.

Rabbi Yosef, the Shas Party spiritual leader, stated that the presidency is no place for a hareidi Jew, explaining that while “we try to influence the Jewish character of the state,” there is no place at the secular ceremonies and the like.

The statement will make it difficult for any of the hareidi parties to support Rabbi Lau’s bid, including UTJ and Shas.

The political world is a sort of Twilight Zone, where people say the opposite of what they mean, logic is suspended, and the best of men become corrupted. As the Rav says, there are plenty of presidential functions that fall outside the scope of religion, and may even be hostile to it, that a Haredi conscience would feel better avoiding. And imagine the fallout were a Haredi to advance so far, only to become the envy of Putin, like poor Moshe Katsav.

Haredim—and everyone, really—would be wise to be engage in politics as little as possible.

Given the Rav's reasoning, then, I wonder what he thinks of Jerusalem's Mayor Lupolianski, who attends not only secular ceremonies, but Muslim ones as well. My guess is that the offenses here are excusable because the office in question actually offers a fair amount of power, unlike the purely ceremonial presidency. Some might call this hypocrisy, but I think it's a rational calculation of the type that people make all the time. For the mayorship, the pros outweigh the cons; for the presidency they don't. What do you think?

Update:

Cosmic X has a different kasha on this report: Rav Ovadia Yosef himself served as Chief Rabbi, and must have also had to attend secular ceremonies. I can only speculate as to why this was acceptable to him:

Maybe the secular events obligating a chief rabbi are fewer and of a different nature than those a president has to attend.

Maybe a chief rabbi has more leeway in choosing what to attend and what not to.

Maybe he felt that the benefits of the position outweighed the costs. Unlike the presidency, the chief rabbinate actually has some power to affect issues that Haredim care about. He wouldn't want non-Haredim making decisions on conversions and kashrut if he could help it.

Technorati tags: Haredim / Rabbis / Jewish / Judaism / Politics / Israel / Politicians

American, British, and Israeli Cultures In a Nutshell

2006-10-25T11:05:00.000+02:00

You don't need to know Hebrew to understand this.

Technorati tags: Video / Israeli Culture / Culture / Israel / Comedy

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there are high Israeli taxes.

2006-10-23T00:29:00.000+02:00

Compensation to be paid for confiscated land:

$22 million

New roads, passageways, and tunnels to ease the life of affected Arabs:

$540 million

400+ miles of concrete and barbed wire snaking down the Green Line:

$2.1 billion

Knowing that all that money was worth it:

PRICELESS

Palestinian worshippers climb over a section of Israel's separation barrier from the West Bank village of A-Ram to Jerusalem on their way to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, Friday, Oct. 20, 2006. Palestinians trying to enter Jerusalem to attend prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Israeli troops scuffled on Friday at several checkpoints between Jerusalem and the West Bank. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Statistics from here and here.

Technorati tags: Israel / Security Fence / Arab-Israeli Conflict / Parody

Double, double, toil and trouble

2006-10-22T10:47:00.000+02:00

Water boils at 100 °C.

Olive oil boils at 300 °C.

Iron boils at a whopping 2750 °C.

Muslim wrath boils somewhere around the mention of the word "Israel."

A member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards burns an Israeli flag during a demonstration in Tehran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has predicted Israel would collapse and warned that its allies face the "boiling wrath" of the people if they continue to support the Jewish state.(AFP/Behrouz Mehri)

If they're concerned about oppression of their fellow Muslims, why don't they let off some steam over the atrocities going on in their own country?

What is it that gets the Persian people, who have historically have been as well-disposed to the Jews as anyone else, as agitated as water molecules in a teapot, frantic, hysterical, ready to explode? Could it be the Revolutionary Guards, Guarding the Revolution by spreading lies about Israel, turning the people's attention away from the problems at home (ethnic cleansing, repression, bad economy, high rate of traffic accidents, high air pollution), and towards imaginary injustices in far-away lands that have little to do with them? In a way, the current regime may have an interest in Israel's survival despite its daily death threats: if they ever actually destroyed it, they'd have that much less to distract their citizens with.

Technorati tags: Iran / Muslims / Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict

Much Ado In Iran

2006-10-19T20:29:00.000+02:00

Iran, like Israel, is never a dull place (להבדיל). In our survey of the latest news to hit the Persian Republic, we begin with:

The Return Of Prophecy

Though we Jews have been eagerly awaiting prophecy's return ever since Malachi uttered his last thousands of years ago, "surprise" rather than "joy" is probably the word that best characterizes my initial emotions upon hearing that the first of our age to be graced with a divine transmission is a mean Iranian despot. But if that's what Ahmadinejad says....

YNet News reports:

While the West is preparing to impose sanctions on Iran, due to the country's failure to suspend its nuclear activities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still optimistic. "We shall win," he was quoted in the Iranian media as saying Monday, and added: "One day I will be asked whether I have been in touch with someone who told me we would win, and I will respond: 'Yes, I have been in touch with God'."

Do reflect on the extraordinary self-composure and modesty that must have been necessary to reveal such a circumstance in such an off-handed way! Perhaps all the op-eds have been wrong. What can one do now, but admire this man who, by his good deeds and saintly disposition, has clearly earned the favor of the Almighty?

In unrelated news:

Iranian President Ahmadinejad Found Under Desk Sniffing Glue

Oh ... whoops. That one has not been reported just yet.

But more importantly, while Mr. A.'s relationship with the Divine may be deepening, the rest of his citizenry is on another course:

Persia Reemergent

According to (again!) YNet:

In Israel and the west Iran is seen as a religious extremist country controlled by Ayatollahs but it seems reality is different.

Many young Iranians lead secular lives. A young Tehran-based computer technician and DJ told Ynet of parties he organizes in the capital, where young Iranians are drawn to the tunes of western music, drugs and alcohol.

...

The head of Iranian Studies at the Tel Aviv University Prof. David Menashri sketched the changing trends in Iran: "There is life behind the veil. The Iranian youth is more secular than any Muslim country in the Middle East. The regime of the religious led to a rebellion in the direction of secularity and distance from religion. Young people dance at parties, leave for trips outside the capital and climb mountains at the weekend – they ski."

...

"Teenagers have a very critical attitude. This young generation was born after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which expected them to be the most observant, but the education imposed by the regime doesn't necessarily yield loyalty. There is a process whereby people who grew up under an oppressive regime learned to live with it and the more the regime oppresses, the will to look on the other side is stronger. I believe that the Iranian people will start asking questions and the public will be the one to do things itself," he adds.

...

Iranian blogger Mar Bahi, a 28-year-old computer expert from Tehran, wrote about his president: "I am going crazy over what he is doing, from his blog where he wrote only once, passing by denying the Holocaust, his offer to hold a televised debate with Bush, claims that unseen forces are protecting him, to the lies he tells people about the inflation rate, freedom of speech and the people's rights. He is an outcast who likes to show off without thinking whether it is for the better or worse, he doesn't car. How small can people be?"

A poll conducted by the state-run broadcasting authority in Iran showed that 65 percent of Iranians are dissatisfied with their president. A similar poll conducted last year showed that 60 percent of correspondents were satisfied with their president's economic and social policies.

Another blogger, an Iranian youth on exile in Canada, says Ahmadinejad's nickname among Iranian youths is 'I am mad negad'.

Prof. Menashri explains: "Among Iranian teenagers, Ahmadinejad is not very popular. He and Hizbullah are more popular among teenagers in other Middle Eastern countries."

Menashri says Ahmadinejad's rising unpopularity at home is due to his anti-western stance. "He rode a wave of anti-western and anti-Israel attitude, building his career. A populist from the land of the populists. Two years ago no one knew him. For regime leaders he delivers the goods. He turned Iran's nukes into an Iranian national issue."

The moderate stance of much of Iran's population, as opposed to that of its leaders, is not really news. But it does need to be pointed out from time to time, because many people are unaware of it.

Reporter/author Robert D. Kaplan devotes several chapters to Iran in his book The Ends Of the Earth. As he attempts to reconcile the sterility and coldness of the Iranian holy city of Qom with the colorful, sensuous silk carpets woven there for export, he muses, "An austere Islamic exterior concealed a pleasure-loving Persian core—consistent with Islam as an Arab import from the hot deserts of southern Arabia...." These words could apply to the country as a whole. Or, as a young Iranian man explains to him, "Deep down we are a nation of flowers, nightingales, fire, butterflies, and wine—that is the pure essence of Persia."

That instead of merely returning to their native idyllic weltanschauung, the populace has shuttled past it and begun to adopt the most abhorrent of Western vices, including drugs, gold chains, sports jerseys, and even skiing, is cause for concern. In Iran we see how easily one extreme can lead to the other, and I hope the situation can stabilize before things get any worse.

When Kaplan published his book in 1996, he predicted that the Persia's ill-fitting Iranian exterior would soon come undone. Ten years later, it still hasn't, but in a recent interview he affirms that it's only a matter of time. The problem, he says, is that fighting the Iranian power structure is "like fighting a pillow," because it is so extensive, and diffuse, with multiple power centers. The desire exists, but not the means.

The regime can feel the ants in its pants, though, and it's scratching away:

Iran's Internet Slowdown

From CNet News:

Iran's Internet service providers have started reducing the speed of Internet access to homes and cafes based on new government-imposed limits, a move critics said appeared to be part of a clampdown on the media.

An official said last week that ISPs were now "forbidden" by the Telecommunications Ministry from providing Internet connections faster than 128 kilobytes per second (KBps), the Islamic Republic New Agency, Iran's official news outlet, reported. No reason was given for the restriction.

Internet technicians say speeds of 256KBps, 512KBps or higher are increasingly common internationally. Iranian surfers will now find it takes much longer to download music or anything else from the Web. Businesses have not been affected by the move.

Critics said the restriction would hinder the work of students and researchers but said it appeared in line with what they see as a squeeze on the media by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who rails against the West.

"Once more, one of the most important tools for providing information is faced with new government red lines and restrictions," the reform-minded daily Etemad-e Melli declared in an article on the new speed limitation....

Hijinks like this can only anger people more, but the regime is really damned either way. Which is why the rest of the world should worry. Oppressive regimes like Iran and North Korea know that time is against them, and any big offensive plans they might harbor cannot be put on hold indefinitely.

<ominous music>

Technorati tags: Politics / Regime Change / Robert D. Kaplan / Israel / Iran / Ahmadinejad

Sderot Gets Desperate

2006-10-17T12:23:00.000+02:00

Woe is Israel! Look at what our political process has been reduced to:

Arutz Sheva reports: "Red Color" Warning Alarm Direct to MKs' Cell Phones

Following the firing of a Kassam rocket towards Sderot this morning - no casualties, no damage - the residents sent a recording of the Red Color early warning alarm to the MKs' cell phones.

The residents of Sderot have been treated not only to a nearly-daily fare of Kassam rockets, but also to what they see as official disregard of their plight. They therefore plan to "remind" the Knesset Members every time a rocket is fired.

This morning, after a Kassam rocket was fired from northern Gaza towards Sderot - less than two kilometers away as the crow flies - the members of the local grassroots anti-Kassam campaign sent a personal message to the cell phones of most of the Knesset Members. The announcement begins with a wailing Red Color siren, followed by a personal plea to the MKs to act to restore safety and security to the citizens of Sderot.

Alon Davidi, head of the task force, said, "We want the MKs to experience first-hand the intolerable fear and panic that the residents feel day in and day out when the rockets fall, sowing destruction and fear. We will continue to send the messages after every Kassam that lands in the city."

....

If the Knesset were capable of taking an interest, a strategy like this might do the trick. But the problem is not just that the MKs are too detached from events in the wild border regions. They, like the electorate that installed them, just don't know what to do, and have gone numb. To really resolve Israel's problems would take efforts on a grander scale than anyone has the stomach for, and would alienate America besides.

So we hold talks and make threats and generally try to maintain the status quo, and as the status quote slides, so do our expectations. Sderot will just have to suffer.

Technorati tags: Gaza / Sderot / Politics / Politicians / Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Sukkot Aftermath

2006-10-16T16:22:00.000+02:00

Another Sukkot has come and gone. Now's not the time, I think, to finish the Sukkos Fairy Tale I was writing (Parts I and II). It's twelve months away, but I'd rather save the ending for next Sukkot, and instead reflect a little more seriously now on my experiences in the previous days and where we're left now.

I'm happy to have experienced Sukkot in Israel this year.

We saw this past week the first sprinklings of the rainy season, but overall the skies and the air here are much more hospitable to outdoor dwelling than in New York this time of year. Here the weather was a little inconvenient; when I built a sukkah in New York, the storms drenched the schach, melted the decorations, and then squashed it like an insect. There the weather defeated my efforts; here it was just enough to remind me that I was, after all, outside.

The concentration of Jews here doesn't hurt either. In leaving the solid, impersonal walls of our houses and apartments for seven days, we became physically, socially, and spiritually closer to the people that make up our community. My neighbor and I bridged the gap between our porches with a halachic discussion of my sukkah's walls as I was putting them up. Sitting inside, we exchanged greetings with passers-by through cut-out windows. Zemiros-singing and instrument playing that would have been hidden any other week were now exposed for all to hear and appreciate.

Simchat Torah here was special as well. All I needed to do to daven at the Kotel was to take a half hour walk and step through a metal detector. I prayed and danced with a microcosm of our entire people, meters away from the site of the temple—that place where our connection with G-d, and perhaps each other, is strongest.

When the chag came to a close, we davened maariv, and then took a couple of hours to unwind. The relief was necessary but temporary: before long hakafot shniyot had erupted everywhere, as groups large and small took Torahs in their arms and went for another whirl, this time with live music, and the intensity that that brings. It was the loud and colorful culmination of a season of holy days, and the last burst before the post-Tishrei calm would set in.

I had the privilege of attending hakafot shniyot led by one of the few religious singers whose music I find pleasant. I'd heard him over the internet from the States, and now that I was in Israel, it just so happened that he was performing not five minutes from my apartment. This is a small country, I was reminded, and that's how things work here.

The celebration here was of a different order than what I'd seen at the Kotel during the actual holiday. More than at the Kotel, or any other synagogue I've been to, this was a gathering of different kinds of Jews, in roughly equal proportions. The participants were younger and more energetic, and the musicians interacted with them. It seemed to me that this was less a religious event than a popular one: the constituency was not according to sect, but neighborhood, and the energy and purpose seemed to come from the bottom up rather than from the top down. (Would that all popular events would revolve around such elevated themes.) It wasn't hard to get into it. I danced and span till I felt like a Sufi, and went home exhausted halfway through. Two days later, I can still feel some of the ecstasy, and my legs are still sore.

And so the frenzies and physicalities of Tishrei fade and we're left with memories, and hopefully, some growth. My sukkah is coming down, slowly, and the porch underneath looks disturbingly bare, like a winter tree bereft of its leaves. There's some temptation to simply leave the sukkah up for the rest of the year, but then it would lose much of its significance and pull, wouldn't it? Meaning and beauty need limitations to exist; otherwise it's just chaos. And it's quite fitting that the holiday which seeks to impart the message of our own fragility and impermanence in this world should itself be brief. Just as the days of a sukkah are circumscribed, so are our own. For that matter, just as a storm can fell a sukkah before its time, so can we fall, even in the prime of life. Both sukkah and man will rise again though, when the time is right. And even as Sukkot and the Days of Awe come to an end, the cycle of Torah reading begins again, with renewed strength and dedication. Until next Tishrei comes around, we have plenty to keep our sprits occupied.

Technorati tags: Sukkot / Jewish / Judaism / Israel

One of these things is not like the other....

2006-10-12T13:07:00.000+02:00

Whereas some news sources, as well as some blogs, try to make their headlines catchy and enticing, Arutz 7 often uses its headlines to make a point.

Take this one: Synagogue Planned For Temple Mount, Hashemites to Add Minaret.

This casual juxtaposition is a valiant attempt at equating two spectacularly different ideas. Everyone knows that one of these two plans will come to fruition, while the other will not. One will hardly cause a stir, while the other would spark riots. One is put forward by a unified front, while the other is a subject of serious internal dispute. But they shouldn't be so different, A7 is telling us, and we have to strive to make the former as acceptable as the latter.

MK Ariel, the man behind the synagogue proposal, probably knows he's pissing in the wind, but he's trying to make a statement too, and sometimes one has to be willing to engage futility for a while in order to raise awareness. I can't say I support him here though, because even so much as walking onto the temple mount is far from universally sanctioned halachically, let alone building a synagogue there. He can talk about consult leading torah scholars on every step of the process, but this line is also a rhetorical trick, because by pursuing the idea at all, he's already ignoring the large segment of rabbis who oppose it.

Technorati tags: Temple Mount / Jewish / Judaism / Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Three Little Yids: An Instructive Sukkos Fairy TalePart II

2006-10-12T01:02:00.000+02:00

Continued from Part I

The next eldest brother'd erected his booth
Out of old metal car parts he'd slowly amassed.
The walls, too, were made in a manner uncouth,
Out of used plastic sheeting from Shabboses past.

He was smoking and drinking reduced apple juice
When his brother arrived, looking fretful and woe'd.
They brooded, and paced, and did hisbodedus,
Till they thought of a way to maintain their abode.

The two clever Yidden picked up their small hut
And shlepped the thing into an alley post-haste.
In order that every approach should be shut,
In the fore, and behind, flaming dumpsters were placed.

But their sukkah was not to remain undisturbed:
Before long came a klop on their tenuous walls,
And through these authoritous soundwaves reverbed:
"Little Yids, hearken unto my voice as it calls."

"But how did you cross through the fiery waste?"
Gravely questioned the Yids to the posek they faced.
"There's no need now to quaver like dainty young dames;
I simply but carefully walked twixt the flames!

The posek went on, with the grace of the pious,
"So, now, with reshus of the kind baal habayis
I'd much like to enter, and avoid any sins."
Said they, "Not by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins!"

Said the posek, "Don't think that by that you are safe;
For I hereby declare that your sukkah is treif!
There's no barrier can protect insecure walls,*
And your tumadik schach-support truly apalls!**

"Never was worse a heap pitched by a churl,
Horrific enough to make peyos unfurl!
So I'll huff and I'll puff till your sukkah comes down."
And thusly he did, and the brothers fled town.

To be continued....

*Even if the windflow is blocked due to the sukkah's location, its walls still must be able to withstand the normal pressures they would face in the barriers' absence.
**Because metal can become tamei, it should not be used to support the schach.

Technorati tags: Fairy Tales / Jewish / Judaism / Parody / Sukkot

The Three Little Yids: An Instructive Sukkos Fairy TalePart I

2006-10-10T12:00:00.000+02:00

There once was an upright but poor mother Yid,
With fourteen or nineteen dependent young Yidden.
When Sukkos-time came to their town, quite unbid,
She scavenged the gemachim and, too, the town midden.

She threw up a sukkah, but realized, too late,
That her fam'ly would not even fit past the gate.
With a tear in her eye she sent three of her clan,
Saying, "Raise your own sukkos, as fast as you can!'

The three brothers Yidden worked daytime and night
Till they each had a sukkah mehudar and right.
When they'd stood up the walls, and they'd laid down the schach,
They danced in the dark and they sang out "Na Nach..."

The antepenultimate in learning and age
Bought some discounted cloth from a King George boutique.
On red strings he hung up his polka-dot cage,
For a sukkah that was tasteless as well as unique.

His unhappy dwelling caught the eye of a posek
Who knocked and said, "Yid, would you let a guest in?
The poor hapless Yid, now un-anosognosic
Said, "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!"

Said the posek, "Your sukkah is ugly and mimsy
But far worst of all's that your walls are too flimsy!*
I'm afraid I must act; and though it make me frown,
I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your sukkah down!"

So he opened his mouth and he huffed a great puff,
And the sukkah fell down like a leaf in the winter.**
The panicking Yid grabbed his hat and his snuff,
And ran off to join his next kin in the hinter.

Continued in Part II....

* A sukkah's walls must be sturdy enough that a common wind will not move them.
** Though the sukkah was toppled by a man and not a wind, if a man's breath could knock the walls down, all the more so would a wind be able to move them, and the sukkah was thus posul from the beginning.

Technorati tags: Fairy Tales / Jewish / Judaism / Parody / Sukkot

Insane in the Mediterraine*

2006-09-29T03:54:00.000+03:00

So I've been on a bit of a hiatus since I last posted three months ago. No, I didn't get sucked into a blackhole or fall into a time warp; I've only moved to Israel and been stranded for a while without many a modern convenience, virtually unable to communicate with the outside world.

Anyway, it's great to be here. When not strolling through Jerusalem's empty lots wondering why there are no available apartments, or getting smoke blown in my face by beggars trying to win my sponsorship, I've basked in the glow of Hizbullah's "thank-you-for-giving-us-some-space" sound and light show, and experienced the singular pleasure of being reprimanded at the shuk for looking at the merchandise.

Seriously, people here are crazy. Call it Jerusalem Syndrome or Levantine Lunacy, there's something in the air, or the water, or the genes (and if so it's dominant), that makes a lot of my fellow Israelis act in ways diametrically opposed to their goals.

Luckily for the level-headed among us, many of the worst cases have been plucked from society and gathered into one place, the National Insane Asylum. But unfortunately, the need is far greater than has ever been accommodated.

So, you can understand my delight when I read on Arutz Sheva that efforts are underway to increase the number of patients at this vital and historic institution, known in Hebrew as the Knesset, from 120 to 180:

Kadima MK Prof. Menachem Ben-Sasson, who chairs the Knesset Law Committee, supports increasing the Knesset from its current 120 MKs to 180.

Ben-Sasson explains that in previous governments, about one-third of the MKs have served as cabinet ministers or deputy ministers, leaving regular parliamentary work in the hands of only 80 lawmakers. On an average, an MK serves on six different committees, Ben-Sasson explains, making their effectiveness on any one committee somewhat limited.

Adding 60 MKs, Ben-Sasson feels, would result in MKs serving on an average of two committees, permitting them to focus their energies on those committees. Ben-Sasson believes expanding the number of MKs would be a positive step towards revamping the political system.

...

Among the outspoken opponents of the plan is Prof. Shevach Weiss, a former Knesset Speaker. Weiss stated that at present, the Knesset is not overwhelmingly popular and a call to increase its size by 1/3 would be met with angry public accusations of wasting additional taxpayer funds. Weiss stated that if the Knesset enjoyed widespread public support, such a move might be feasible....

It'll cost money, but if it'll keep these guys off the streets, I'm for it!

*No, unfortunately, there's no good way to spell that.

Technorati tags: Israel / Aliyah / Jewish / Knesset / Politics

The Aliyah Blues* **

2006-06-12T08:29:00.000+03:00

♫ Got the aliyah blues, yeah, got the aliyah blues
Up all night and wailin' from those blues
Oh I'm leaving in a week and I don't even have a pair o' shoes

Well I saw my passport leavin' on a Monday
Well I saw my passport leave me, yes it's true
Oh I put her in the mailbox, but will my visa make it through?

My suitcase' still unpacked, my bags is empty
Said my suitcase is unpacked, exceptin' sugar cane and brew
Oh my hard drive's crashed again and I'm sweeping pieces with a broom

The place that I'll be sleepin', I don't know it
Oh that place I'll be sleeping', I don't know it from a field o' rye
The one thing that I know, I've got a free cab ride to the sky

They tell me ulpan's open for some learnin'
Oh they tell me ulpan's open but it's closed in July
If I'm learnin' any words you know it's Romanian or Thai

In the morning, check the banks and all the health funds
In the evening, checkin' banks and health funds too
Don't you know they all just make me blue

Oh my guìtar's off a sailin' the Atlantic
Said she's sailin' on the ocean, where the water's blue, blue, blue, blue
And if my guitar's still ridin' high, I'll just have to play on this here oud ♫

* All true except for the shoes, sugar cane, brew, and broom. Oh, and my shipment isn't in the Atlantic yet, it's still in storage

** Written while listening alternately to the Beatles' "For You Blue" and "Yer Blues," the words generally fit better the melody and phrasing of the former, but I prefer the angst and metrical irregularity of the latter.

Technorati tags: Blues / Music / Jewish / Judaism / Aliyah / Israel

Beneath the Planet of the Iranians

2006-05-31T07:32:00.000+03:00

Dancers perform as they hold capsules of uranium hexaflouride, or UF6 gas during a ceremony in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest city.

In many respects, Iran is a great place. Really. It has beautiful landscapes, incredible architecture, ancient monuments and desert cities built with ingenious cooling systems and water carriers, a refined cuisine that's simultaneously earthy and ethereal, languages that are aesthetically pleasing and linguistically intriguing.

And then there are things like the nuclear bomb cult, evidenced in the photograph above from the Jerusalem Post. Iran is not the first country to pursue The Bomb, nor will it be the last. But the glorification, feverish dictatorial rhetoric, religious associations, and utter confusion of good and evil (note the backdrop of doves) surely put this nation in a class by itself. Or maybe not?

This picture is from the visionary film Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the first and the worst of four bad sequels to Planet of the Apes. In it, a man on a rescue mission arrives on the earth two thousand years in the future, and finds a mutant race of deformed humans, survivors of a nuclear war, living underground where New York City once lay. And what do these people do when not abusing our protagonists and warring with talking apes? They sing to and worship ... a nuclear bomb. You can guess what happens by the end of the movie. Now look at the picture up top again.

I don't see much difference. Do you?

Technorati tags: Iran / Nuclear Bomb / Planet of the Apes

Dressing Iran up and down

2006-05-22T17:02:00.000+03:00

The supposed new Iranian dress code was a good story while it lasted. Yellow stripes for Jews, red ones for Christians, and blue for Zoroastrians, all with the noble goal of helping Muslims to avoid touching the Other and thereby ~~getting cooties~~ becoming unclean. While the obvious intellectual question of how distinguishing between different types of infidels was relevant for that end was raised by no one, anyone with a moral filling in their bottom-left bicuspid had a golden chance to show it off, and so a wave of furious denunciations swept across the net, complete with ominous images of pre-Holocaust "Jude" badges for comparison.

Anyone who's reading this has probably heard by now that the truth was not quite so spectacular (unless we're being played with again, of course). With hat tips to Mystical Paths and Kamangir, here's a translation from Zharf of what the legislation is really about:

1) Encouraging fabric designers and producers in using Iranian and Islamic patterns and styles in producing fabric and dress.
2) Respecting the traditional patterns and lively symbols of Iranian ethnic groups and paying attention to proper body coverage based on Islamic Sharia.
3) Taking advantage of research in obtaining original(to Iran) fabric patterns.
4) Encouraging the public in using the Iranian styles.
5) Supporting local producers of traditional clothes with loans and providing them exposure in clothes fairs and festivals.
6) Helping the public access to traditional clothes by establishing permanent dress fairs on local and regional bases.
7) Organizing regional (international) dress fair for exchanging experiences with other Muslim countries.
8) Inspecting and Controlling the imports of fabric and clothes to prevent the import of clothes incompatible with cultural, Islamic and national values.
9) This draft is written with coordination with the managing body in charge of clothing and dress.
10) Financial support for NGOs, unions, and non-governmental institutions in providing national clothing.
11) Media, in special the national TV, must help in establishing the usage of national clothing and they have to avoid advertising styles inconsistent with our culture.

Funny thing is, if it were a little less totalitarian, I'd say it was almost admirable. Sticking to one's own traditions instead of blindly emulating the practices of other societies is a value that Judaism espouses too ... sort of ... I mean ... except when it comes to clothes, music, food, language ... and I'd better stop before this list gets too long. Well, there are a few people at Beged Ivri who have tried to (re-)create some real Jewish clothing, but ~~if someone caught you wearing one of their tunics or tallithoth you'd probably be arrested~~ it hasn't quite caught on yet. We still see haredim dressing like antiquated Europeans, modern orthodox like respectable Americans, and settlers like ~~unrespectable Americans~~ hippies. Looking on the bright side though, we have succeeded at implementing our own minority dress codes, even without government intervention! If the Iranians could hold off from scorching us, perhaps we could teach them a thing or two.

Technorati tags: Jewish / Judaism / Israel / Iran

Olmert? We don't want any....

2006-05-22T06:35:00.000+03:00

That's it. I'm just taking advantage of the fact that I'm still in America and I can still say this. Take your slimy ethnic cleansing plans and multi-billion-dollar grant requests and get out of my country!

Arutz Sheva posted the following:

Olmert Lands in Washington on His First Visit
05:43 May 22, '06 / 24 Iyar 5766

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during the night landed in Washington, D.C. for his first official visit to the United States since entering office.

During the visit, Olmert is expected to meet with President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. He is also expected to address both Houses of Congress.

Technorati tags: Ehud Olmert / Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict / Politicians

The blog must go on ... but not really

2006-05-05T04:20:00.000+03:00

Wow! I haven't posted in more than a week and I'm still getting hits! I even got more today than the day before. I guess that means I've made it. Thanks to everyone who's linked or visited this site, even those who got here on google searches for "straightjacket and gagged" and the like. I hope you found something stimulating here even if it wasn't quite what you were looking for.

Why haven't I posted? I just wasn't in the mood I guess. When I started this thing I had no idea if it would last more than a day or two. I'm really not a writer, and I didn't think I'd have much to write about. There are enough other people who are more creative, observant (in the non-religious sense of the word), perceptive, insightful, witty, expressive, intelligent, and informed than I to render me beyond redundant (in the American sense of the word). But I went ahead and created this blog anyway, because I found that sometimes I did have things to say that I didn't see anyone else saying, and because I figured that if I'm a decent human being, I really should have at least one interesting thought (even if not original) every day or few worth sharing - no?!

Things went better than I thought they would. Once I had the forum, the material came more easily, and I found my writing was a little better than it had been back when I'd be throwing together papers weeks late under the schoolmaster's switch. But still, I'm a very moody person. My writing and my opinions can be very uneven, and what interests me one day bores me the next. I'm very indecisive, and critical of myself (and others), and I usually write slowly. A lot has happened in these last days, but nothing moved me enough or in quite the right way to put anything up here.

There was Holocaust Day. I thought of writing a post called "Hypocrisy Day" in response, because it's particularly on this day of pompous speech and ceremony that the chasm between what people say and what they do seems to widen so much that it looks like they're actually going to drop down into it and never be seen again. You have Ehud Olmert mouthing off like nobody's uncle about the perils of appeasement—even as he lays the groundwork for a massive withdrawal that can only whet his enemy's appetite. You have Tomy Lapid sneering at the nations like a rebellious teenager, saying that Israel will rely on no one except itself—even as it begs them for love and acceptance, even as it bows to foreign-imposed "peace" plans like the "Road Map" with its backing "quartet" (a name at which musicians everywhere should take offense), even as it takes gazillions of dollars in aid from America (which can't come free), and even as it concedes its security to wild Arabian marauders. I may have had legitimate complaints, but it didn't seem appropriate to voice them on a day that's been set aside for remembrance of the dead. Maybe Olmert and Lapid couldn't keep their mouths shut, but that didn't mean I had to start spouting off.

Yom Hazikaron doesn't register with me too much, but there's always Yom Ha'atzma'ut. I used to get fairly jolly when this time of year came around, but now I've been overcome by cynicism. I've come to see the State of Israel as a worthwhile enterprise only insofar as it helps Jews, i.e., enhances their religious observance or offers them protection from enemies. My support is thus conditional; the State is not an end in itself. I know that the religious Zionist opinion is that the State is actually an end in itself, but since spending time at a haredi yeshiva I've learned that there are other opinions, and in the end we just don't know who's right and what the role of the State really is. So we're left discussing particular merits and drawbacks. Overall, I think it still does more good than bad: as far as I can tell, more Jews have survived because of the State than perished because of it, it's enabled much of the ingathering that we've been waiting for for millennia, and though it led to a decrease in the religious observance of many, it has also facilitated preservation and outreach among others. It's really a mixed bag, and my feelings towards it are likewise mixed. If I never knew any soldiers to mourn on Yom Hazikaron, I do have something to mourn on Israeli "Independence" Day: the deterioration of the State and People of Israel, and the shattering of my youthful illusions about it.

The meaning of aliyah is also not what it once was. G-d willing, a month and a half from now, I'll be getting on a plane and leaving for Eretz Yisrael. I'm thrilled about being in the land, and among so many other Jews, but as for becoming an Israeli and getting a T'udat z'hut, I sort of feel like I'm hiring a really good bodyguard who happens to beat up my sister from time to time.

Add to all this the stress of worrying about how to ship the greatest amount of my belongings for the least money, whether I'll ever find a job that can keep me afloat, and where I'll be sleeping, and maybe you can see why I've been a little subdued.

By titling this post as I did, I mean to say that the blog is still here and I don't intend to close up shop, but I recognize that what I'm doing here is trivial. I do it because I want to inform and I want to be heard, but ... sometimes I don't. This blog will rear its head and dip back into the water as I do, and I can't guarantee that it won't ever go under for good. That said, part of the reason why I'm bothering to post is because I felt bad that some people were visiting here multiple times only to find the site neglected. I don't have very many readers, certainly not enough to justify the ads I have at the top of the page (but they make the site look professional, don't they, and the title of the blog appropriately sinks beneath them), but I feel a surprising level of camaraderie and responsibility. So, this one's for you, and maybe next time I'll have a better post.

Technorati tags: Jewish / Judaism / Israel / Aliyah

You could be a minister too

2006-04-25T21:26:00.000+03:00

Netanyahu's government had 18 ministers. Sharon's began with 25 and waxed on to 28. Ehud Olmert's administration is set to kick off the new season with a record 27-29 posts. Many people seem bothered by this, but I say, the more the merrier. There's plenty of important work to be done in this country, and why should any elected official be left feeling inconsequential? I would suggest increasing the number of ministers as much as possible. There's no reason why every member of the Knesset can't have his very own portfolio and a volvo to go with it.

I hereby present my own proposals for some new positions:

Minister of Deception and Policy Reversal: to aid the other MKs in increasing the distance between words and action, and remove the death-grip of accountability that binds our hapless public servants. Sharon's metamorphosis from a stark supporter of settlements to their uncompromising uprooter was a step in the right direction, but there is much more to be done.

Minister of Miseducation: because the minister of Education can only do so much on his own. We need more textbooks that divorce children from their roots, lesson plans that enable a greater sympathy with our enemies, and a firmer laxness in our disciplinary attitudes.

Minister of Unaesthetics, Unfunctionality, and Homogenization: It's not enough that 80% of the apartment complexes and public buildings in this country look like giant concrete dumpsters; I'm sure if the members of this ministry put their heads together we can achieve 100%. We also need more buildings like the main Haifa University building, 40 stories high and pencil-thin, in order to give our citizens greater exposure to the character-building world of elevator interiors. Finally, we should ensure that all private homes and villas remain faithful to our own homegrown Spanish-knockoff architectural idiom of cookie-cutter white blocks and plastic-red roofs.

Minister of Societal Breakdown: to facilitate our decline in cultural standards and civil order. This ministry will not rest until every child over the age of five spends his nights in a warm nightclub improving his mind, mini holographic television screens are attached to the inside of our eyelids, and gang violence can finally break through the bourgeois barriers that have impeded its spread to all our streets.

Minister of Party Proliferation: With only twelve parties in the current Knesset, the vast majority of citizens have no representative who can express all the nuances of their hopes, dreams, and grudges. This ministry will hold frequent party creation drives, and strive to lower the threshold for entrance to the Knesset from 2% to -%120, so that we can truly have a government capable of translating the will of the people into reality.

Minister of Media Bias: to disabuse the masses of the confusing, chaotic diversity of Israeli media by placing all newspapers, radio stations, and television stations under the direct control of the government.

Minister of the Euthanization of the Dead Sea: this famous and historic body of water has been in a transitory state for far too long. As its vital waters slowly evaporate and agonizing sinkholes form about its shores, none of its would-be saviors have been able to move past their own petty desires and divisive arguing. This ministry will see to it that the Dead Sea is buried as quickly as possible, and that an expensive museum dedicated to its memory is established in a prominent and relevant location in the center of the country.

Minister of Corruption: to assist the MKs to make the most of their high position and influence. Shady business deals and illegal rendering of free services will encourage political participation and stimulate the economy as the benefits of the elite trickle down to the common worker.

Technorati tags: Israel / Politics

Top Israeli celebrity trap nabs another victim

2006-04-24T21:58:00.000+03:00

Perhaps the most notable of the great celebrity traps in the Holy Land are the Kabbalah Center, the Peres Center for Peace, and the Yitzhak Rabin Center. Much like the Borg, the members of this unholy triconsortium regularly snag celebrities and assimilate them into their collective blind worship of former prime ministers, appeasement, or little red strings. Now, they've got Will Smith (and his wife):

The couple visited the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv, and watched a movie depicting Rabin's life and leadership. Both Jada and Will were moved by the film, which even caused Jada to shed a tear.

At the end of the screening, Smith stated: "I am inspired beyond my ability to articulate... and now I know what and who I want to be... a soldier for peace." Dalia Rabin granted the couple two copies of the Noble Peace Prize medal that was awarded to Yitzhak Rabin.

Smith, on his part, expressed interest in attending the event to mark the opening of the Center's museum later this year, and pledged to make a donation to the institute.

No, dear Jada Pinkett, I shed a tear, for this once-great man, who as recently as 1996 saved the world from hordes of ugly octopine aliens, but has now been reduced to an inarticulate, whining, lily-livered sap.

One of the things I find most offensive is when people talk to me in slogans. I'll cut Mr. Smith a little slack, because whether you take him at his word that he was overwhelmed with emotion after seeing a film about the legacy of Rabin (thousands upon thousands dead or wounded), or you think maybe Dalia done drugged him up good (note the vacant, unfocused eyes in his picture above), he clearly could not have been capable of any original or refined expression at the time he was quoted. But let's look at the phrase he chose: soldier for peace.

Huh? What is a soldier for peace?

After getting past the initial oxymoronic shock, I'd think it refers to someone who fights in dangerous battles, in the air, land, or sea, with guns, bombs, nifty camouflage, and expensive vehicles, in order to defeat violent aggressors and thereby achieve a state of tranquility. But Smith isn't enlisting in the IDF; he's going to attend a museum opening and throw cash at an organization that supports known genocidal maniacs. Where's the soldier, and where's the peace?

Come on Will, pull out those guns and blast 'em like you used to! Or donate your money to physical therapy programs for the victims of Rabin, or to a voluntary Arab-relocation program, or even to one of those little old ladies with the magic red strings. Otherwise, please just stay in Hollywood and pretend to save the world from afar, where you can't hurt us.

Technorati tags: Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict / Will Smith

From Persia's Foaming Mouth To Israel's Plugged Ears

2006-04-18T14:48:00.000+03:00

Sometimes the only ones willing to proclaim the truth are the ones who by all other counts should be put in a straitjacket and gagged. Consider the Madman of Iran, President Ahmadinejad—already a frequent subject of this blog. Amidst the foul, black bile that arose from his throat the other day, there were several shining pearls that we ought to pluck from the refuse and examine before we flush it all down the toilet of our memory. Here are some of them:

The existence of the Zionist regime is a threat to the dignity of the Muslim ummah, the believers and the faithful. In accordance with the noble verse from the Holy Koran, the domination of such a regime over the Muslim ummah that reside in the occupied territories and the region is contrary to the consent of the Almighty.

The mere existence of Israel is first and foremost an affront to Muslim dignity. The main motivators of anti-Israel Muslims are none other than the dubious emotions of pride and shame. Of course, I'd be humiliated too if a few scraggly Holocaust survivors managed to swipe back something I had taken from them and kept for centuries, and I couldn't get it back with all the soldiers and weapons in the world. And it's quite normal and understandable to make decisions based on pride; we'll tell jokes, dress smartly, choose or reject careers, buy cars, and write blogs in order (at least partly) to maintain or enlarge our own egos. We usually don't reflect on all the real reasons why we act as we do, but they ought to be recalled and put in their place when millions of lives stand to be snuffed out so that some Muslims can feel better about themselves.

It pains me to say this, but even many Zionists largely base their support for the state of Israel on pride (negatively referred to as גאוה/ga'ava in Hebrew ). Yes, it's nice to have your language be the official one, your religious holidays as national days off, your religious institutions supported by the state, a national anthem that reflects your own history and dreams, and an army you can call your own—whether you're Jewish, Kurdish, Basque, or Arab. But are any of these justification for independence and the painful processes that are necessary to bring it about? I don't think so. There are certainly other reasons for Israel, as well as many other nations, to be independent, but let's be careful to be honest about our motivations and try to keep them pure.

By its unending killings, destruction of homes and farms, encroaching upon sacred places, mosques and churches, unrelenting assaults on residential and non-residential places and targeted assassinations, this regime not only humiliates and disgraces Palestinian people, but also tramples upon the pride and dignity of all Muslims and freedom-loving people of the world.

Whatever justifications might lay behind these actions, the two can always be separated for propaganda purposes. There are people dying and buildings being destroyed, and it's only too easy to display the images and make up your own stories to go with them. Israel's going to look bad no matter what it does, so it might as do what it needs to and worry less about what people will think of it.

... there must be an opportunity for all genuine Palestinians; be they Muslims, Christians, or Jews, residing in Palestine or in Diaspora, to participate in a referendum to decide the political system of their choice and elect their leaders.

It's interesting that he admits here that there are Jews who can be considered as Palestinian as any Arab in Ramallah, but the more important point is that there is a serious problem in denying one segment of a population the right to vote. This injustice has largely been overcome now with the autonomous government that the Arabs in Yesha have. Israel does retain a certain control even over these areas though, to which the Arabs there have no input. Any viable solution will have to grant them full citizenship to some country, somewhere, and it must be done soon.

The young tree of resistance in Palestine is blooming and blooms of faith and desire for freedom are flowering.

The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm.

Yishai Fleisher mentioned the line about Zionism crumbling on Arutz Sheva Radio yesterday, and objected to Ahmadinejad's chutzpah. As rude as it is though, it's a valid point. The old ideals of Jewish unity and love of the land have been replaced in these modern times with hedonistic individualism and love of America (and India). How many Israelis these days are willing to be pioneers and go settle in the Negev or Golan, let alone Judea and Samaria? How many support the Jewish (-only) labor of former days? How many have a strong desire to hold on to any land outside the main population centers? How many can refrain from giving away land even as the negative effects daily explode in their faces? Crime is up, and schools are failing. Children don't respect their elders, and the elders elect a party that will win them money at the expense of their children's security. Religion is donned and shed at convenience by prime minister and peasant alike, and half the children haven't visited Jerusalem. The country has been de-Judaized with Christian immigrants from Russia, foreign workers, and reunified Arab families. The supreme court believes that the highest principle of morality is to go against tradition, and it legislates away distinctions between Jews and Arabs when it will bring the Arabs up, but discriminates against Jews when it will bring the Jews down.

Zionism is a shell of what it once was and of what it could be. Outside of the national-religious sector, it's supported only insofar as it overlaps with one's perceived immediate personal security and aesthetic needs. Muslim anti-Zionism, however, is fueled by a desire to recover from embarrassment, hunger for land and power, religious doctrine, and the confidence that comes from seeing repeated successes in the field. Ahmadinejad was only voicing the obvious disparity. Instead of rejecting his unfriendly words outright, we ought to glean what truth we can from them and take the steps necessary to improve our situation.

Technorati tags: Jewish / Judaism / Zionism / Israel / Iran / Ahmadinejad

It's Not Easy Being Mean

2006-04-10T01:07:00.000+03:00

With Iran growing more isolated by the day, and the threats against it increasing, I thought it would be appropriate to say a few words in support of its much-maligned president, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Because, behind the venom and the arrogance, I mean way behind, I think there's a good-hearted little boy, who only wants to be loved and understood. And how awful can a guy who walks around with a green aura over his head really be? He may not be nice; he may even be downright mean, but if he were a little less shy, I'm sure he'd tell us ...

♫ It's not that easy being mean;
Snarling at Jews, and bagging hostages at US embassies.
When I think I'd rather be eloquent, or tactful,
or improve the cinema of my country.

It's not easy being mean,
Just another youthful spokesman for a senile oligarchy.
And people tend to want to bomb you
Cause you're not making sunny speeches, or locking lips
With the right guys.

But mean's the pathway to peace!
And mean can be brotherly, and Mohammed-like.
And mean can be big like an H-bomb,
Or important like a hidden imam,
Or tall like a hanging tree!

When mean is all there is to be
It could make you pause to reconsider
If you want Bush to eat you for dinner,
But, I am mean and it'll do fine, it's Revolutionary!
And it's better than being Isra-e-li. ♫

In case you don't remember how the original goes, here it is:

It's not that easy being green;
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold...
or something much more colorful like that.

It's not easy being green.
It seems you blend in with so many other ord'nary things.
And people tend to pass you over
Cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky.

But green's the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean,
Or important like a mountain,
Or tall like a tree.

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!
And I think it's what I want to be.

Technorati tags: Ahmadinejad / Iran / Muppets

Arutz Sheva and The Great Hebraic Hoax

2006-04-07T08:44:00.000+03:00

Now, I love Arutz Sheva Radio as much as the next hot-headed right-wing extremist settler wannabe, but some of the guests they invite on, well, make my orange ribbons pale.

The perpetrator of the hour is one Jim Long, who came on the Tamar Yonah show as a representative of Isaac Mozeson, author of the new book The Origin of Speeches: Intelligent Design in Language, and an older one, The Word: The Dictionary That Reveals The Hebrew Source of English. Listen to the interview (ASX / MP3 / main audio page) [no longer available], if you want to be taken for fool. Otherwise, don't listen, unless you're definitely going to read the rest of this post. If you've already had the misfortune of hearing it, please read on.

Before I comment, I'll briefly disclaim: I have not read the new book, or even glanced at it. But I did hear the interview, and I did once or twice have the displeasure of perusing The Word, and I heard nothing in the interview that was qualitatively different from what I read there. And, for my own credibility, I'll mention here that I have a degree in linguistics.

Here is the essential background information you need to know:

Languages are constantly changing. Everyone learns a language and uses it in a way that's slightly different from the way the older generation spoke it, and the way his peers speak it. This happens naturally, even in the absence of conscious innovations or outside influences.

When speakers are split up geographically or even sociologically, their modes of speech will begin to diverge to a greater degree, because there's not enough communication to keep them in sync.

Once these varieties are different enough, we deem them separate languages and give them distinct names. We refer to the newer varieties as sisters of each other, and descendants or daughters of the earlier form.

Mozeson has set out to prove that all languages are descended from Hebrew, and so he points out one pair after another of Hebrew and English words (and occasionally words from other languages) that are similar in form and in meaning. Like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, he produces Hebrew ארץ/eretz and English earth, שקל/shekel and scale, הר/har and hill. He's got tons of these, and we're supposed to gasp at the obvious correspondences, still intact after 6000 years.

If you talk to a linguist though, you'll get a very different picture. Hebrew is a member of the Semitic family, and by extension the larger Afroasiatic family. It's related as a sister or a cousin to languages like Aramaic, Arabic, and Amharic. Hebrew shares with these a common ancestor, and there's no other language that's said to be a descendant of Hebrew in the sense I described above (Yiddish, Ladino, etc. merely have loanwords from Hebrew). Then there are numerous other families of languages, with no known relationship to Semitic. English is part of Germanic, which itself belongs to a larger family called Indo-European.

What's going on here? Is the academic world set to be turned on its head? Has Mozeson discovered in his straightforward pairings something that generations of trained linguists, who spend sleepless nights absorbed in works with titles like Graded Effects of Verb Subcategory Preferences on Parsing: Support for Constraint-satisfaction Models and Excrescent schwa and vowel laxing: Cross-linguistic responses to conflicting articulatory targets, have somehow overlooked?

Why the answer is no is largely explained in the classic article How likely are chance resemblances between languages? by Mark Rosenfelder. Chance resemblances between languages are very likely, and so Mozeson-type similarities don't really tell us anything. Read the article. Even if your eyes glaze over at some of the linguistic terminology as mine do at some of the math, he's a good writer and you'll get the point, and you'll learn a lesson in caution that can apply to many areas in life.

Exactly how likely chance resemblances are depends not only on the languages being compared, but also on how careful or lax the investigator is. And Mozeson takes all the shortcuts he can find:

Ignore vowels. Of course it's much easier to make a match when you only look at half of each word.

If a consonant gets in the way, drop that too!

Be flexible with the meanings of words. If hand doesn't sound right, try arm, finger, grip, give, etc. [NB: there are real cognates whose meanings have diverged much more than this, but they are bonuses to be claimed after the relationship is already established through firmer evidence.]

Pick English as one of your languages. It's got the largest vocabulary in the world, and so you don't even have to be so flexible with the meaning; you've probably already got 50 very close synonyms for whichever word you need. At least one of them will probably sound right.

Count loanwords, even though they show nothing about the origin of the language you're looking at.

Anyone one of these methods is liable to lead one's research astray. Employing all of them together, indiscriminately, is a surefire way to get a false positive.

But the carelessness and confusion run much deeper: not only is Mozeson too forgiving with his evidence, he is looking for the wrong kind of evidence, and in all the wrong places.

When sounds in a language change, they change systematically (most of the time). For example, every [h] sound in Latin disappeared along the road to becoming Spanish (that it's still written is irrelevant); today in many varieties of Spanish [s] is turning into [h] whenever it occurs at the end of a syllable, but not at the beginning. If you find that a [g] sound in Language A corresponds randomly to a [k], [h], or [g] in Language B, you haven't proven anything. But if [g] corresponds to [k] at the end of a word, [h] before a vowel, and [g] elsewhere, then it's systematic and you may be on the way to establishing a relationship. From correspondences like that you can posit rules to describe the changes that likely took place between the source language and the daughters, e.g., "[g] becomes [k] at the end of a word."

Of course, the longer the time gap you're looking at, the more opportunity the languages have to change, and change again, until they look extremely different. Even the correspondences are obscured eventually, because the conditions that are necessary to accurately describe them (such as [g] corresponding to [h] only before a vowel) may themselves change or disappear (say, if some vowels are later dropped).

A couple of examples should suffice to illustrate this: Spanish hoja and French feuille ('leaf, sheet') have not one sound in common, but both come to us from the same Latin folium. Similarly, we have Spanish hecho and Romanian fapt ('done'), both from Latin factum. These forms can be derived through regular, language-wide changes, and though they're very different, this is just what we'd expect after two thousand years.

Finally, one mustn't forget that as sound changes are taking place, words are constantly being coined, borrowed, abandoned, and can easily change their meaning beyond recognition; thus the pool of words that we can use to prove relationships grows ever shallower. For all these reasons, historical linguists focus on the oldest varieties of language available, those least altered from the source in question.

Contrast them to Mozeson, who doesn't even deign to use Old English for his comparisons, let alone Greek, Latin, or Hittite, but chooses English as it is currently spoken. By comparing two languages so far apart in time, one of which is known to be singularly infested with loanwords and recent sound changes, Mozeson is setting himself up for failure.

Mozeson never posits any sound laws with which one could derive English from Hebrew, nor do his examples differ to the degree we'd expect after so many millennia. Neither do his linkages imply any sort of directionality; even if they were completely valid, they don't favor English as a descendant of Hebrew, or Hebrew as a descendant of English, or both as descendants of a common source. We can at least rule out the second option because we happen to know that English did not exist in anything like its current form until recent times, but he'd have no such luxury if he'd chosen an older tongue.

What Mozeson has done, then, is no more and no less than to tell us that 1 plus 1 equals 11. To the untrained eye it's compelling, but it's true only in the most cosmetic and uninteresting sense. Using the same methods he could have shown German to be descended from Hawaiian, Russian from Klingon, or Hebrew from !Kung. And it should surprise no one that claims like these are regularly made for many a language, by many a well-intentioned naif.

The reason I felt the need to write this post is that unlike math, science, music, or politics, very few people study even the most basic principles of linguistics. People are often not even aware that linguistics exists as a discipline distinct from language learning, or else fail to grasp the depth of it. Many will spin off pseudo-linguistic theories as a child would paint a scene, unaware of the importance of perspective or subtlety, and many others will swallow whatever linguistic tomfoolery they are told to, with neither question nor dissent.

It both offends and saddens me particularly when I see such erroneous thinking in a Jewish context, because my own and many other people's religiosity is the result of a long and taxing search for the truth, and so much of Judaism is the very process of rational thought and debate. Yet, theories like Mozeson's have few challengers within Judaism, not only because people are ignorant but because everyone wants them to be true, and when I see how easily and willingly people are misled it makes wonder how exceptional this really is.

Before I close, I want to make clear that I have no personal resentment towards Arutz Sheva, Tamar Yonah, Jim Long, or even Isaac Mozeson. I'm sure the latter has no intent to mislead or deceive, and he probably even thinks he's doing a great mitzvah. I believe, though, that he is unwittingly doing Jews a great disservice by enticing them to greater faith through falsehood, and it's that falsehood that I am opposing here, despite the repeated mentions of his name above.

For more on this topic, have a look at Maven Yavin: Edenics--was Hebrew the original language?, and the negative reviews for The Word on Amazon.

Technorati tags: Hebrew / Linguistics / Jewish / Judaism

Pipes vs. Burston - Part One

2006-04-04T19:02:00.000+03:00

In his article Israel Shuns Victory, Daniel Pipes makes a claim that is practically a tautology:

Wars are won, the historical record shows, when one side feels compelled to give up on its goals. This is only logical, for so long as both sides hope to achieve their war ambitions, fighting either continues or potentially can resume.

He gives several examples to show that war is not necessarily won through a simple military defeat—in particular, the Arab-Israeli conflict persists even after a number of Israeli war successes. He says that most of the other strategies Israel has come up with, from retreat to transfer, are also bound to fail, because they do not address the root of the conflict: Arab rejection of Israel.

And how does one solve that problem? Pipes doesn't spell anything out himself, but we can find Solution A in a Q&A feature with Uzi Landau that he links to. Landau advocates a combination of military defeat, democratization and reeducation of the Arabs, and finally some good old mutual concessions.

Bradley Burston responds to Pipes in Haaretz, and draws out a Solution B from a speech Pipes gave in 2003:

Arabs will not truly accept Israel's existence until Israel "punishes violence so hard that its enemies will eventually feel so deep a sense of futility that they will despair of further conflict."

While that may not be the only way, and it's not what Pipes is advocating in his current article, the idea is nothing to sneeze at. Germany and Japan have certainly kept quiet since getting beaten into a stupor in WWII. But Burston protests, convinced that this solution has already been attempted:

[Pipes] notes, by way of inference, that the wars in 1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982 failed to persuade them. I guess we didn't fight hard enough, or well enough.

The truth is, the IDF never did fight hard enough or well enough to bring the Arab world to the brink of utter ruin and despair. It wasn't trying to either; it only meant to repel immediate threats, and that's all it accomplished. Solution B has not been tested yet, so Burston's criticism is baseless. (There are other possibilities for criticism though, such as rejection of Israel being too rooted in Islam to ever permit widespread acceptance [at least without more extensive secularization of Muslims], and the Arab world being too large to damage it adequately.)

Another point is that, despite Burston's assumptions, "punishing violence" does not have to take the form of more violence. Sanctions, restrictions on personal liberties, psychological warfare, expulsions, etc. can all be devastating.

Burston's next question is this:

Does Dr. Pipes really believe that people who crave a violent, Jew-murdering death are really going to accept Israel if only enough military force is applied?

Is Dr. Pipes telling us that people who celebrate the sacrament of suicide are going to think differently of us if we send in more tanks, bigger bombs, more F-16s, more Apaches, more infantry brigades, more commandos, demolish more homes, demolish more olive trees, demolish what little is left of the Palestinian Authority?

What Burston surely knows but doesn't acknowledge here is that the goal of a suicide bomber is not merely to kill Jews (or himself), but to pressure the remaining Jews into giving up their land. And all the military pressure Israel could put on the Arabs is worthless as long as it's handing out property deeds at the same time. Clearly, many Arabs are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if it means that their larger goal will materialize.

But imagine for a moment, if your mind can stretch so far, that Israel were to steadfastly refuse to make any withdrawals (and maybe even annex land after each attack), thereby neutralizing this motivation. Now imagine further, and I'm speaking purely theoretically, that the IDF had a policy of leveling an Arab town for every act of Arab aggression against Jews. Such a tradeoff would hardly be worthwhile, and I think most Arabs would agree.

Burston must have felt that his other arguments were sorely lacking, because not once, but twice, he pulls out the nuclear bomb of Israeli debate, capable of reducing any enemy to a puddle of radioactive goo: the Israeli identity card. Unfortunately, Pipes doesn't have one. And what can an American really say about Israel, from his armchair 6000 miles away? Funny though, that Burston can judge Pipes from 6000 miles away. Maybe he stole his driver's license?

If you're going to criticize someone for being too distant from a situation to properly understand it, then for your own credibility, you have to back it up by pointing out some bit of information that the commentator is lacking. Burston makes no attempt to do that, because he wasn't being serious in the first place and his comment was empty of content; he was only engaging in the adult equivalent of calling someone a poopy-head. In fact, many who do live in Israel agree with Pipes. And many Americans agree with Burston. The facts are not in question here, only how to logically put them together, and reason has no borders. Writers who appeal to this fallacy (is there a name for it?) should not even be dignified with publication in major newspapers like Haaretz. Then again, it is Haaretz ... never mind.

Burston may be completely wrong, but Pipes is not completely correct either, and I'll talk about that be"H in Part Two.

Technorati tags: Daniel Pipes / Israel / Arab-Israeli Conflict

Kadima, Kadima - it is a little more complicated

2006-04-04T15:37:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I wrote about how Labor might steal the rug from under Kadima and form a coalition itself. But today is a new day, and it looks once again like it's Kadima that's going places. Shas and UTJ, by order of their respective rabbinical leaders, have come out in support of Olmert (why? I haven't seen any explanation), as have the Pensioners and Meretz. Peretz is being criticized from within his own party, for being egotistical and going against the will of his own voters, who never could have meant for him to give a platform to the likes of Shas, UTJ, NU-NRP, and Likud.

(Check out J Post's Analysis: Peretz's day-after syndrome for more.)

I wouldn't bury the thought of a Labor-led government just yet, though. Should Olmert's coalition begin to falter at some point—and that's not unlikely—the Knesset may have to give Peretz another chance, if it wants to save itself from new elections. I just hope that happens before Olmert's planned expulsion and not after.

קדימה, אחורה / Kadima, Achora /Forwards, Backwards / A Lua e a Mulata*

2006-04-03T08:50:00.000+03:00

שקדין–דין, קדימה
שקדין–דין, אחורה
זה קצת דומה להורה
אבל קצת יותר מסובך

Shkedin-din, forwards
Shkedin-din, backwards
It's a little like a hora,
But a little more complicated

Not only is this a great song (number 13), but it may soon be reality.

I first read about this possibility on JoeSettler (here and here). And now we're seeing news reports on it (A7, J Post). Could the Kadima party (meaning forward in Hebrew) actually be heading backwards? Backwards, off a steep cliff?

As the articles and posts explain, if no party in the Knesset emerges from elections with a 61-seat majority, the president chooses a party to form a coalition with other parties. Kadima may have more seats than anyone else, but it's still only got 29. Labor is next with 19 (down from 20).

So how does the president decide which party to pick? After meeting with each, he picks the one that looks like it can form the most stable coalition. Historically, this has always been the largest party—but it doesn't have to be. Why should things be any different now? Because what Labor lacks in seats, it may be able to make for in tolerability as compared to Kadima. Let's look at what's going on in some of the collective party minds right now:

Labor (19 seats): Steal from the rich and give to the poor!
Pensioners (7): אל תשליכני לעת זקנה / Don't cast me off in old age!
Shas (12): Fund the yeshivas!
UTJ (6): Fund our yeshivas too!
Likud (12): Will anyone even remember us by the next elections?
Yisrael Beitenu (11): Coa-what? We've still got the celebratory vodka to finish, and then there's the post-celebratory vodka....
NU-NRP (9): Save the settlements, save the settlements, save the settlements....
Meretz (5): Peretz is cool, but why do those stinking settlers and haredim have to get in the way?
Kadima (29): Hmm, maybe this isn't as easy as we thought it would be.

Clearly, the first four parties have a certain commonality of purpose. Likud will not join with Kadima out of principle, but might go with Labor to prevent another unilateral explusion, to salvage some measure of power, and to spite Kadima, even if Peretz will undo Netanyahu's economic reforms. YB has already said it will go with either Kadima or Labor. NU-NRP may disagree with Labor on which way the earth turns and who's buried in Hertzl's tomb, but they're still better than Kadima. Meretz has a conflict of interests and will probably recommend Kadima, just to avoid sitting in a coalition with the right-wing.

I don't know if it will happen, and I'm not a big fan of Labor, but it would be a beautiful thing to see Kadima tumble from the sparkling throne it built for itself. Who woulda thunk it—invite all the most overconfident, opportunistic, corrupt, morally- and ideologically-bankrupt scum to a big bloated pool party, and then pull the plug. Voters may have supported Kadima more than they did the other parties, but the other parties can't possibly have any affection for Kadima. At best they're jealous of its success, at worst they feel betrayed by their own members who ditched them for it.

Read the Arutz Sheva article if you haven't already. It points out a lot of good things about Labor—at least relatively good things. Well ... we're at the point now where we have to take what we can get. Like how people say that even if Peretz is a ~~reincarnation of Stalin~~ naive socialist who can't speak English, at least he's honest. That counts for something, right? And I have to say, not that it matters, but if this goes through, it will not only be the first time the second-largest party was asked to form a coalition, but also the first time Israel had a Sefardi prime minister.

Interesting days ahead!

*This is the original Portuguese title of the song. I felt I had to be complete.

ISRAELI EXIT POLLS: HAMAS 29-32; ISLAMIC JIHAD 20-22; PFLP 11-12

2006-03-29T02:16:00.000+02:00

I've only written satirical pieces on this blog so far, and I wish this were another one, but it's not.

If the exit polls are correct - and they are probably pretty close - the Israeli public today has democratically elected to destroy itself. The parties they've chosen have Hebrew names and Jews running them, but the policies they espouse belong to another people (actually, a לא עם, a non-people, in the words of the Torah).

The Arabs who call themselves Palestinians have made it clear that they want the State of Israel to disappear, and that they mean to accomplish this in stages if not all at once, and by any means necessary. The principle means have been:

1) A massive disinformation campaign in which they have portrayed themselves as a distinct nation whose land was stolen, and whose people have been systematically abused and murdered by Jews. This has been wildly successful, turning not only the world against Israel, but Israel against itself.

2) Violence against Israelis, carried out on a scale large enough to get under every Israeli's skin, but small enough to preclude effective retaliation.

So Israel began to acquiesce to the Arab demands, giving them land, money, and weapons galore. This was once referred to as land for peace, though today I don't hear that phrase often. In fact this policy has mainly brought more violence, and though it has not yet been completed and technically could still bring peace by the end, logically it's near impossible. When dealing with an enemy who refuses to compromise, as long as you're giving in, he sees his tactics working and has every reason to continue them. I think Israelis are actually realizing now that land for peace is at best land for nothing but they just do the same thing anyway because they're convinced that there's no other option!

All of the larger parties and most of the smaller parties in Israel are committed to creating a Palestinian state on a portion of Israel's current territory. But this will not end the conflict. Whether it's bilateral or unilateral, it can serve only to achieve some of the Arabs' territorial goals, give them confidence that they can achieve more, weaken Israel physically and spiritually, and send more Jews to their graves, whereupon the process will repeat itself. That is exactly what Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, et al. want. Kadima, Labor, and Likud (or Israel Beiteinu) may have gotten the most votes, but it's the Arabs who have won this election, and their desires will continue to dictate Israeli policy for the foreseeable future. مبروك / Congratulations!

NEWSFLASH: ISRAEL RESPONDS TO HOLOCAUST CARTOON CONTEST

2006-03-17T14:54:00.000+02:00

Olmert sings the opening bars of his own entry

Israel is to hold a contest of its own in response to Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proclaimed today. The Iranian contest was itself a reaction to the Danish cartoons of Muhammad published this past September, and pundits around the world have been anxious to see how Israel would retaliate to its own cartoon calamity. Olmert explained:

"The Iranian call for cartoons poking fun at and denying our greatest national tragedy—until the time when I caught my reflection in a puddle and realized that my combover couldn't fool a blind man in a dark alley—hurt us in our deepest place. Yet, I can see the logic in Mr. Ahmadinejad's decision. One strikes his enemy by striking at that which the latter holds most dear. The Jews and Europe have always had a special relationship, filled with love and understanding. Europe feels our pain like no one else and there is no surer way to get to her heart then to cook a Jew alive. So there's no question that Iran did the most appropriate thing in attacking Denmark through us; it is as natural and unimpeachable as the sun setting over the Moab Mountains, or an incumbent prime minister launching a siege of a Jericho jail two weeks before elections. No, we cannot object to Iran's course of action in the slightest, but we can fight back, and hit Iran where it hurts them the most. Therefore I have decided that Israel will hold a contest for five-act tragic operas on the subject of Tibetan floor tiles. In this way we hope not only to scathe the Iranian psyche, but also to test their tolerance for fine art, which they claim to support so wholeheartedly. Jejune cartoons they can take, but will their resolve melt when the fat yaks begin to sing? We shall soon find out! Take that, Ahmejumbyjebab!"

[Yes, this is another satirical post. Purim may be over, but Adar it remains.]

NEWSFLASH: ISRAEL'S SUNFLOWER SEED SUPPLY DEPLETED

2006-03-12T21:19:00.000+02:00

What all Israelis have been fearing for fifty-seven years has finally come to pass: the country has run out of sunflower seeds. President Moshe Katsav announced the bitter news in a live television interview this evening.

"We urge everyone to remain calm and not to panic," the president said. "All governmental bodies are working as I speak to find an alternate supply, but it may be some time before their efforts come to fruition."

The president did not explicitly mention any causes for this catastrophe, but analysts have put forth a number of educated guesses:

1) Global warming may have weakened this year's sunflower crop;
2) In such a weakened state, the plants may have contracted bird flu;
3) A vast worldwide Arab conspiracy may have stolen sunflower seeds in order to frame the Jews;
4) A vast worldwide Leftist conspiracy may have stolen sunflower seeds in order to frame the settlers;
5) The settlers did it.

Whatever the cause, Israeli residents have had difficulty coping with the new situation they find themselves in, even as they try to heed the president's advice. Angry torch- and pitchfork-wielding mobs are massing outside the acting prime minister's office. Several planes have already been hijacked, and the Ecuadorian embassy has been burnt down. The discovery of a small cache of 47 seeds in a Holon warehouse led to a mortar and rocket fight, and many have injured themselves trying to climb the security fence in a vain attempt to find more seeds in the Palestinian territories.

Residents have, in desperation, begun to chew on other items, including erasers, bubble gum wrappers, and cats. Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco told us, in between spitting small clumps of orange fur from his mouth, "We don't expect the cat supply to go down for a long time, so we might as well adapt."

NEWSFLASH: LIKUD HQ TO BE DEMOLISHED

2006-03-12T08:32:00.000+02:00

Olmert describing his vision for the new Likud HQ

In a surprise announcement today at a press conference in Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert declared that the Likud National Headquarters in Tel Aviv would be demolished later in the week.

The acting prime minister explained, "I was browsing through the National Archives yesterday, when I came upon the original building permit for the Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv, and saw out of the corner of my eye that permission was given to begin construction on the 18th of June, 1973. I was as shocked as anyone would be when I happened upon a convicted drug dealer about to be sentenced who happened to have been at the scene on the very day when the HQ's construction began, and according to his reliable testimony that we received in return for a significant sentence reduction, that date was the 17th of June. Ladies and gentlemen - that is an entire week ahead of schedule! Now, through all my years of service to the Israeli people, I have always promoted and defended, both in word and in deed, the rule of our democratic law as created and interpreted by the Supreme Court. This violation, committed by the foreman hired by the Likud's former secretary's temporary assistant's cousin, is a grave offense and a blot not only on the Likud, but on the entire nation, and it must be rectified. Therefore, I have ordered the building to be deconstructed in the coming days."

A reporter from Haaretz asked the acting prime minister who would be carrying out the demolition, and if they would enter on horseback, as in another recent building code enforcement at the Amona outpost. "I'll answer your second question first," replied Olmert. "Elephants, I think, covered in pink and purple sequins. We'll have a light force of 20,000 policemen, 40,000 soldiers, and 105,000 drooling Egyptian mercenaries." He checked his notes and added, "The Israeli forces will vest themselves in black Darth Vader cloaks and masks, and the Egyptians will naturally be styled as Amir Peretz, down to the last man. With these gentle, non-threatening appearances, we hope to allay any fears felt by Likud members in the final hours as they huddle in the darkened corners of their doomed edifice."

Another reporter queried as to whether arrangements had been made for a replacement headquarters. "We've certainly thought of that," the acting prime minister assured the press. "In fact, we've been involved in negotiations for the past two months with the current mayor of Jerusalem to build a replacement right here in the capital, a perfect replica of the original, but with carved Italian marble walls, cathedral ceilings, French doors with diamond- and emerald-studded knobs, and a white dome worthy of the Taj Mahal, but we're having trouble understanding the mayor's Yiddish, and you know how hard it is to find quality craftsmen these days. So in the meantime, the chief of Easter Island has generously offered, in return for IDF protection from the numerous enemies massing on his borders, an alternate location, complete with prefabricated bungalows and a functioning well not ten minutes' walk away. I saw the location myself in a photograph and it's really some choice real estate. The whole thing should be ready in five to ten years maximum, but I'd advise the Likud members to start moving in ASAP."

The press was silent for several moments, until a correspondent from the Israeli Society for the Protection of Civil Liberties spoke up. "Is there any possibility," he asked, "that you may have cooked up this entire story in order to insult the dignity and electoral chances of Amir Peretz by comparing his personal grooming habits to those of his former countrymen and our current neighbors, the Egyptians?"

The acting prime minister replied, "Amir who?"

"Song of coast artillery women" and other Korean zemiros

2006-03-10T05:16:00.000+02:00

Are the Koreans into Purim spielen too, or is this serious?

"North Korea Sings The Praises Of Its Women"

NEWSFLASH: EUROPE DIAGNOSED

2006-03-10T00:22:00.000+02:00

The continent of Europe, long thought to be merely fatigued, is actually in a "persistent vegetative state," according to an international team of top physicians. They made the announcement earlier this morning from the Hôpital Avoir-la-Pêche in Paris.

According to the team head, Dr. Jambi Bindapuri, "A persistent vegetative state is one in which the patient is awake but completely unaware of his or her surroundings. He or she is unable to speak coherently, comprehend the words of others, or put together a consistent foreign policy. The patient can do little more than appreciate art, smile, grind the teeth, grunt and moan, and scream like a spoilt small child who expects the younger generation of overburdened taxpayers, I mean his or her parents, to provide for every need."

Reactions from world leaders came quickly.

US President George Bush said in a telephone interview from his vacation home in Fiji, "This is a happy day for Europe, a happy day for the world. We've always looked up to our European brothers and sisters for their strength, moral dedication, and unwillingness to compromise. Now we welcome the new state of Persisenant Vegetational with open arms and look forward to its entry into the United Nations of America. I mean the United Nations."

"When life gives you a vegetable," offered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, "make vegetable soup."

According to Russian premier Vladimir Putin, "It happened because they drank too much. I met with fourteen prime Italian prime ministers in three years, and tried to warn them. But you know those sissy Latin types, they don't know how to be sober like a real man. Jacques Chirac would down bottle after bottle of Pinot Noir as he whined to me under the moonlight."

North Korea's Kim Jong II would only say "Roses are red, viorets are brue, I bomb you."

Neither King Mohammed VI of Morocco, nor President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia could be reached, nor could any other residents of any North African country, as they were all away on cross-Mediterranean cruises this morning.

Except Muammar al-Qaddaf, who was tied up at his hair stylist's.

בראשית / In the beginning

2006-03-07T05:42:00.000+02:00

Beginnings are tough. The white space ahead stretches to the horizon. So many possibilities. So few restrictions. (So many clichés.) I could write anything right now, really, because there's no one here yet to read it.

I could begin my blogging career with thievery, and quote the opening of a book, a song or a movie. Or all three.

"I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."

That's wonderful, Dostoevsky.

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

Whoops, that's not right. Let's try again:

"aqua. esh. amulai. ah, haya mulai! sukwanatarrakwasikator! asukwata. eh. wek! A ma ma ma, ma ma ma..."

Much better. That's Shlomo Bar of Habreira Hativ'it babbling at the beginning of an album. Or is he just speaking Arabic? Looks sort of Indo-European actually. Anyway, it's a good beginning. It combines the mystical/oriental with the happy/playful, and puts the listener in a cheery but curious mood. We start with the lone voice, and our interest grows as the instruments slowly come in, the voice grows more melodic, and free improvisation gives way to shape, rhythm, and complementarity. A good beginning does not have to be profound or even well-defined.

And to round things out:

"Thanks, old pal."

The very frum first words of that classic flick, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Because it's always good to begin with some gratitude.

***

OR, I could force myself to write some haikus. That always gets my mind going.

pers'nally he said
i've no need to sell or rent
money's good as spent

towards the bright'ning shore
sailing through the open sea
he lingers

my favorite persian
said today he likes his eggs
well done and glowing

city in slumber
children comb her matted hair
with the sun she wakes

sometimes in the night
trees will turn from daily light
to the silv'ry moon

camels cross the bay
every lovely month of may
pashas drug behind

prostrate or supine
no time to be saturnine
adar, month of joy!

And now that my creative juices have been stirred, I'm going to go to bed. Well, it's late.

But stay tuned for Purim parodies!

B'ezrat Hashem.