Study night near Gaza

One of the many blessings of living in Israel is that text can interact with context in remarkable ways. For one thing, of course, you can actually walk the Bible and the literature of the Rabbis, stumbling upon sites and sights recorded in the Jewish classics. There is a special resonance to following the exploits of kings and prophets, or to counting the steps leading up to the Temple entrance and comparing the number of verses in a Psalm designed to be read while ascending. Sometimes, if you sit up on the roof of our spectacular campus in the heart of Jerusalem and read of David and Bathsheba, you can almost catch a glimpse of them (which should encourage our neighbors to keep their curtains drawn).

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (143)

Shas - all shook up

Members of the Shas Party have contributed much to understanding and tolerance over the last few weeks in Israel. Two weeks ago it was Nissim Ze'ev, who likened the prevalence of homosexuality in Israel to the phenomenon of Avian Flu, and suggested that only radical action similar to the mass culling of chickens could help root out this abomination.

Last week it was Shlomo Benizri, who has suggested that the most efficient way for the government to protect against the threat of earthquakes would be to abolish homosexual practices, since it is a well-known scientific fact that homosexuality causes earthquakes.

Now there is an important difference between these two learned contributions to the public debate on sexual orientation and public health. The reference to bird flu is certainly an original insight of MK Zeev, who certainly deserves all the credit for this breakthrough in immunology. This is not the case with regards to MK Benizri, who has not been slow to point out that he has done nothing more than quote our sacred sources.

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (104)

Impressionists and Realists

Earlier last week history was made in Jerusalem. In a city in which history has been a cottage industry for three millennia, this is in itself not too much of a surprise. But the kind of history I am referring to is worthy of note in any case.

The first ever serious academic conference on Reform Judaism in Israel took place. The Van Leer Institute, a highly prestigious center of research and public debate, initiated and hosted the conference, which attracted leading scholars from around the world - or at least from Israel and from the United States (the next conference of this kind will need to spend more time on the local varieties of this species to be found in South America, South Africa, Australasia, and Europe. And by the end of the century, we will no doubt be holding interplanetary seminars).

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (228)

Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness

The recently-issued Annual Report by the Association of Civil Rights makes grim reading. In the section on racism in Israeli society, it notes that there has been a steep rise in expressions of hatred by Jewish Israelis towards Arabs. 2006 saw a 26% increase in the number of racial incidents directed against Arabs; the intensity of feelings of hatred towards Arabs has almost doubled. Over half of the Jewish Israelis polled said they would not live in the same building with Arabs, that they opposed the inclusion of Arab parties in the government, that they approve of plans to encourage Arab emigration, and so on. The report also talks about the systematic degradation of Israeli Arab citizens when they want to get on an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport. Most of those interviewed thought that Arabs smell, and are unclean.

In Israel, this report has been met by what might be described as a 3-D response. I don't mean to suggest by this that we have all decided to engage in a three-dimensional soul-searching treatment of the weighty and distressing evidence before us. Rather, the three Ds we prefer to employ are Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness. We deny the veracity of the evidence, suggesting that whoever could claim that such views abound in Israeli society must be a self-hating traitor. We dismiss the data – clearly those interviewed were not representative of most people, or they were joking when they answered the questions. That so-called increase in incidents, we say, it is just our Arab neighbors being over-sensitive over nothing.

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (13)

My Hanukka, Your Hanukka

Mai Hanukka? What is Hanukka? These words are to be found in the classic discussion of the festival in Tractate Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud. The question is not without reason: in Talmudic times it was a relatively new celebration, and there was no telling it was going to catch on any more successfully than some which didn't stand the test of time ? just think, if things had worked out differently we might have been shopping for gifts for Nicanor Day.

What is Hanukka? How are we to understand its significance? In an excellent article published this week in a major Israeli daily, my colleague Rabbi Gilad Kariv, a brilliant young Israeli Reform rabbi, offers a compelling and relevant reading. Gilad, like others who espouse a liberal philosophy of Judaism, is not threatened by the notion that there is historical change within Judaism, or that our culture is constantly soaking in influences from outside. On the contrary: far from being threatened by this fact, he is emboldened and inspired by it.