Kesher Talk

John Kerry on Israel:

In an October speech to the Arab American Institute in Michigan, Mr. Kerry depicted the barrier as an impediment to peace. "I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the decision to build the barrier off the Green Line — cutting deep into Palestinian areas," the Massachusetts Democrat declared. "We don't need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israelis' security over the long term, increase the hardships to the Palestinian people, and make the process of negotiating an eventual settlement that much harder."

After supporters of Israel objected that Mr. Kerry had given Israel's legitimate security concerns short shrift, the senator's spin team went into action. Sources inside the Kerry campaign told the Jerusalem Post last week that Mr. Kerry's real objection was to the route of the fence. According to the Kerry spokesmen, he only objected to the fact that the barrier deviates from the Green Line —Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank.

In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a more disingenuous explanation. There is nothing sacred about the Green Line — the Armistice Line created following the 1948-49 war, in which the new state of Israel was attacked by five of its Arab neighbors. Were Israel to have put the fence right on the Green Line, as Mr. Kerry suggests, it would have represented a capitulation to one of the minimum demands of the terrorists who have been attacking Israel since the current war began on Sept. 29, 2000: a return to the virtually indefensible pre-1967 lines.

Ever since the October speech, Mr. Kerry has gone to great lengths to show that he isn't really dismissive of Israel's legitimate security concerns. He now describes the barrier as a "legitimate act of self defense." On Sunday, Mr. Kerry brought the new, pro-Israel spin to a group of Jewish leaders in New York. Some bought it, but others sound decidedly wary. Mr. Kerry's politics of spin may finally be catching up with him. ("Kerry on Israel," The Washington Times

posted by William @ 3/05/2004 12:04:36 PM  

Jews in odd places: Iraq: Iraq used to be home to tons of Jews, but not anymore. In January, "Nightline" profiled the 20-odd remaining Jews in Baghdad.

However, nowadays you can find tons of Iraqi Jews on another continent, seeking sanctuary in New York's Congregation Bene Naharayim.

posted by William @ 3/05/2004 08:42:24 AM  

For Jewish geeks who blog. BloggerCon II has been set for April 17 in Cambridge, MA. The con is free; bloggers (or people interested in talking about blogging) need only register.

As the friendly folks at Protocols noted last week, of course, April 17 falls on Shabbat. (Personally, I'm not sure what the con organizers should have done; Sunday is Sabbath for Christians, and weekdays would mean those of us with day jobs couldn't attend. Can't please everybody.)

But buried in the comments to the Protocols post is a link I remember finding a few years ago, and had lost in the interim, so I present it here in case anyone else finds it interesting or useful: con-going for frummies.

I'll be at Bloggercon, definitely at the Women & Blogging session and probably roaming the others, too. If any Kesher Talk readers or co-collaborators wind up there, come and find me!

posted by Rachel @ 3/04/2004 09:25:03 PM  

AWOL. Blogging from me will be light this week. I'm apartment hunting in Manhattan, which is more than a full-time job.

But I want to mention that Purim starts Saturday night, and there will be some righteous partying among the Yidden. My current plan is to hear the megillah with Hadar and then head over to the Jdub party with Hassidic reggae master Matisyahu. The Workman's Circle party sounds good too.

UPDATE: Megillat Esther has been rendered into a graphic novel with footnotes of rabbinic commentary. Check it out.

posted by Judith @ 3/04/2004 10:03:34 AM  

Israel still struggling to figure out "who is a Jew?":

About 300,000 of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union were described in the 2002 annual statistical report as "lacking religious classification," which does not qualify them to be married through the Orthodox rabbinate. Some of them would not want it, anyway, for reasons of conscience. In Israel, the religious law is also the state law. According to this law, you can be married or divorced in Israel only in accordance with religious law, which is given to the judgment of the Orthodox rabbinical courts. As such, the state denies Israelis who want to get married in accordance with their own wishes the opportunity to do so on Israeli soil, within the framework of its laws and institutions. The right to be married is a humanitarian right recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but not in the State of Israel, which has committed to uphold this declaration. ("The Judaism of Silence in Israel." Ha'aretz. Feb. 4)

posted by William @ 3/04/2004 08:46:50 AM  

Jews in odd places: Europe The growing number of Jewish communities throughout Europe will require young rabbis to be increasingly mobile and to tend to more than one community at one time, based on statements made at a recent rabbinical conference in Vienna.

posted by William @ 3/03/2004 08:59:57 AM  

Separated at birth? The movie Starsky and Hutch, being released Friday, stars Ben Stiller as Starsky and Owen Wilson as Hutch. Based on the trailer it seems to have more in common with Sabotage, the brilliant parody of 70's cop shows by the Beastie Boys, than the television series which inspired it.

posted by Tamara @ 3/02/2004 09:16:44 PM  

Jews in odd places: Germany:

Tzvi Sinensky, a young American Jew, thought he wouldn’t buy any German goods during his first visit to Germany last month. He did.

Phillip Vedol thought the Germans he would meet there would be cold, formal. They weren’t.

Zvi Schindel thought he would never understand how Jews, barely a half-century after the end of the Holocaust, could still live in Germany. He does now.

For the three rabbinical students from Yeshiva University, and eight other future spiritual leaders who joined them on a government-sponsored visit to Germany, 10 days of meetings with German leaders and members of the country’s growing Jewish community were an opinion-changing, if not life-changing, experience.

The delegation — accompanied by Rabbi Levi Mostofsky of the school’s Communal Service division, and Hedy Shulman of the communications department — was brought to Germany by Bridge of Understanding: The Jewish Experience of Modern Germany, a 10-year-old program that introduces young American Jews to a new, united Germany. ("Changing Views Of Germany", The Jewish Week, Feb. 6)

posted by William @ 3/02/2004 08:42:46 AM  

Renovations and invitations. I've been in lots of small minyanim and havurot which don't have their own buildings and often end up meeting in churches, of which there are many more than synagogues. In fact, one of Manhattan's largest Jewish congregations holds their regular Shabbat morning service in a church 2 blocks from their sanctuary which is simply not large enough (they cover the large cross behind the pulpit with an even larger banner). So it's nice to have an opportunity to return the favor. (via Gil)

posted by Judith @ 3/01/2004 05:19:16 PM  

Jews in odd places: Persia: Not the Iran of today, but the ancien regime of Persia in the 5th century, according to David Bernstein over at the Volokh Conspiracy. According to his examples, Israel was not the first sovereign Jewish entity after the fall of Judea in 135...

posted by William @ 3/01/2004 08:34:46 AM  

Y'varekh'kha Adonai v'yishm'rekha. As shaliach tzibbur, I chanted these words (in Hebrew) on Shabbat a week ago (during the repetition of the shacharit amidah, and the week before that (during the repetition of the musaf amidah) (Unusually, I happened to be leading different parts of the davening at two different minyans two weeks in a row.):

May the Lord bless you and safeguard you.
May the Lord illuminate his countenance for you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord turn his countenance to you and establish peace for you.

This passage is known as the Blessing of the Cohanim - the Priests - and is a part of every amidah - the central prayer of every Jewish service - that is chanted out loud.

This passage is inscribed in two tiny scrolls, found in a tomb from the 7th century BCE, just outside Jerusalem. (This would be during the rise of the Assyrian Empire and its conquest of the Northern Kingdom.)

The larger plaque contains 18 lines of writing, mostly legible. Both plaques contain benediction formulas in paleo-Hebrew script, almost identical to the biblical Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26.

This biblical text, dated to the 7th century BCE, is the oldest known to date and pre-dates the texts found in the Dead Sea area by about 500 years. The word yhwh (the name of the Lord in Hebrew) appears in writing for the first time ever. The benediction quoted from the Book of Numbers was recited by the Temple priests when blessing the congregation; here it is found in writing and for individual use. [emphasis mine - JSW]

So I was chanting words that have been part of my people's liturgy for over 27 centuries, words which bridged the gap between the Temple sacrificial service and the rabbinically defined synagogue service. A liturgy which originated in Israel almost three millenia ago, and has been recited since then by Jews of all stripes - Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrachi, Romaniote, and other - in congregations all over the world.

Another find from the same period:

Jerusalem's King Hezekiah built the meandering Siloam Tunnel beneath the city around 700 B.C. to discourage the Assyrian Empire from laying siege. The tunnel runs 1,749 feet southwest from Gihon Spring to the Siloam Pool beneath the ancient section of Jerusalem known as the City of David. . . . The new research confirmed what a majority of scholars had long believed -- that the tunnel was built about 700 B.C. and is almost certainly Hezekiah's "conduit," mentioned in II Kings 20:20 and further described in II Chronicles 32:3-4. "So there was gathered much people together, whom stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?"

"It is the first well-known biblical structure to be radiographically dated," Frumkin said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. And together with a 100-word inscription that describes the construction and appears to come from Hezekiah's time, Frumkin said the weight of evidence should now effectively put an end to a small school of thought that held that the tunnel was built 500 years later.

Maybe you can tell I've been reading more denials of Jewish history lately. The ill-meaning ones say that Ashkenazim aren't "real" Jews, and the well-meaning ones say that Israel derives its legitimacy from our victimization during the Holocaust. To the extent that such rationalizations ignore the kind of continuity I just described, they amount to the same thing.

(via Paleojudaica)

posted by Judith @ 2/29/2004 08:33:46 PM