#jewish hebrew jew israel education books learn israeli judaism

[hebrewbyinbal]

Honoring International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On a personal note, meet my family.

I never got to meet too many of them, because they were not lucky enough to make it out alive.

At the same time, I am here thanks to and because of the ones that were among the lucky ones. My dear grandmother in this picture with a blue dot next to her. Taking after her, we were both lucky enough to do what we love: Writing, travelling the world, and following our hearts creating our own destiny.

I see in this picture a portrayal of the fragility and triumph of our families, side by side.

For those who were taken and those who carry on #neverforget

#jewish hebrew jew israel education books learn israeli judaism #jewish #hebrew #learnhebrew #hebrewbyinbal #never forget #holocaust #international #remembrance #remember #jewish tumblr #memorial #holocaust memorial

[hello-robin-goodfellow]

DREAM OF A FATHER (TEXT BY MOACYR SCLIAR)

@princesssarisa @dci-softy-edgelord @gravedangerahead

One of these days, I gaved a lecture to the circle of parents and teachers at Colégio Israelita Brasileiro, in Porto Alegre. I was often asked if I would put my son - who will be two years old - at school. I said yes. And then I was asked what I expected from school. I answer now. Perhaps it is better to say, first, what I do not expect from the school, and this can be summed up in one sentence: I do not expect, and do not wish, that a Jewish school turns my son into a ritualist, into a person who fulfills religious precepts without knowing exactly what what you're doing, or why; in a rigid, intolerant person, turned to the past instead of being concerned with the present and the future.

I do not say that the past is not important. I would like my son to know Jewish history and, above all, to understand it as part of the history of humanity. I would like my son to know that everything that happened to the Jews was not the result of chance, nor of a mysterious design; if Jews were often scapegoats, this was because they were caught in the violent clash of contradictory forces and interests: feudalism versus capitalism, capitalism versus socialism and so on. I would like this knowledge of history and the mechanisms that make society give my son wisdom and tranquility; to free him from the ghosts of paranoia, a disease so common among us.

I would like my son to have access to Jewish culture, both because it is Jewish and because it is culture. I would like him to have the same pleasure and emotion that I feel when reading the stories by Scholem Aleichem, Mendele and Peretz; the stories of Isaac Babel and Michael Gold; the books of Below, Malamud, Bashevis Singer and Philip Roth. I would like him to be ecstatic in front of Chagall's paintings, to like Yidish music, Hebrew songs, Israel's dance. I would like, modestly, that he read what I wrote and that he felt Judaism in my own books: I would like this, as a father and as a Jew. I would like my son to have intellectual baggage without being pedantic; to understand that literature, music and painting should make people better - not superior - that feeling is as important as knowing. I would like him to learn to cry as only the Jews know how to cry, and to laugh as we do: that half smile, half bitter, half philosophical.

I would like my son to be in solidarity with Israel. That he understood how much the State meant in terms of elevating the dignity of the Jewish people and the magnificent human experience. I would like my son to have the kibbutznik mentality, even if he lives in Brazil, or maybe for this very reason: I would like my son to have an ideal and to fight for him, not sacrificing himself, however, to neurotic fantasies. I would like my son not to be a sectarian: not to place, in hopelessly opposite poles, Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. To know that in this world there is room for everyone, it is just a matter of adjustment. To know that, every time there is a war, someone profits from it. I don't know if it's asking too much in exchange for tuition. But, after all, education has a dream component grafted into the harsh everyday reality. And dreaming is not forbidden.

Source:

http://www.moacyrscliar.com/textos/sonho-de-pai/

#moacyr scliar #being a child in latin america #what i grew up reading #literature #jewish excellence #race and representation #antifa #representation matters #vive la resistance #viva la resistance

[aboriginalnewswire]

Warning: The following article contains disturbing and graphic language regarding the volatile and often violent nature of religious beliefs. It is meant to illustrate how religion has been used to spread hatred and intolerance of worldwide, in a variety of faiths. This short article is meant for educational purposes only, in the hope that humanity will learn from its past and not repeat it. Please note that it is almost entirely composed of quotes from other publications. Many people believe that religion is a force for good that has brought God into their lives. But, does the record of religious belief reveal it as a force for good or evil? Christianity--The Roots of Anti-Semitism "With the wrath of an Old Testament prophet, historian Dagobert Runes (whose mother was killed by the Nazis) blamed the Christian church for the Holocaust. He wrote: "'Everything Hitler did to the Jews, all the horribly unspeakable misdeeds, had already been done to the smitten people before by the Christian churches.... The isolation of Jews into ghetto camps, the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people--Hitler learned it all from the church. However, the church burned Jewish women and children alive, while Hitler granted them a quicker death, choking them first with gas.' "Dr Runes said Christian priests and ministers still were inculcating hostility to Jews as the Third Reich arrived. "'The clergymen don't tell you whom to kill; they just tell you whom to hate,' he wrote. 'The Christian clergymen start teaching their young at the tenderest age that THE Jews killed the beloved, gentle Son of God; that God Himself, the Father, punished THE Jews by dispension and the burning of their holy city; that God holds THE Jews accursed forever....' "'For all the 2,000 years, there was no act of war against the Jews in which the church didn't play an intrinsic part. And whenever there was a trace of mercy, charity, or tolerance to be found amid the savagery, it came not from the church but from humanitarians in the civil world, as in Napoleonic France or during the American Revolution....' "'Some fancy that these brutal outrages...occurred only in the Dark Ages, as if this were an excuse. Nay, when George Washington was president, Jewish people were burning on the spit in Mexico.... Wherever there are Christian churches there is anti-Semitism.'" Source:Holy Horrors by James Haught. Judaism--4,000 Years of Massacring Neighbors "The massacre at Dueima in 1948 was perpetrated by the official Labor Zionist Israeli army, the Israel Defense Forces (Tzeva Haganah le-Israel or ZA-HAL). The account of the massacre, as described by a soldier who participated in the horror, was published in Davar, the official Hebrew daily newspaper of the Labor-Zionist-run Histadrut General Federation of workers: "'They killed between eighty to one hundred Arab men, women and children. To kill the children they [soldiers] fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one home without corpses. The men and women of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water. Then the saboteurs came to dynamite them. "'One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a building he was about to blow up.... Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered "good guys"...became base murderers, and this is not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer the Arabs who remain, the better.'" Source:The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman. Slavery by the "Good People" "In another area of human rights, many Christian clergymen advocated slavery. Historians Larry Hise notes in his book, Proslavery, that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America.' He listed 275 men of the cloth who use the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals." Source:Holy Horrors God is a Psycho "In December 1984, on Mohammed's birthday, Khomeini told his people: "'War is a blessing for the world and for all nations. It is God who incites men to fight and to kill.The Koran says, "Fight until all corruption and all rebellion have ceased." The wars the Prophet led against the infidels were a blessing for all humanity. Imagine that we soon will win the war. That will not be enough, for corruption and resistance to Islam will still exist. The Koran says, "War, war until victory!..." The mullahs with corrupt hearts who say that all this is contrary to the teachings of the Koran are unworthy of Islam. Thanks to God, our young people are now, to the limits of their means, putting God's commandments into action. They know that to kill the unbelievers is one of man's greatest missions.' "Amid all the killing, Iran also declared war on sexuality. Women were commanded to shroud themselves so completely that no lock of hair showed. Morality patrols in white jeeps cruised streets, arresting women for being 'badly veiled' and sending them to prison camps for three-month rehabilitation courses. Western magazines entering Iran went first to censors who laboriously blacked out every woman's picture except for her eyes." Source:Holy Horrors Religion is Mental Illness "Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: "'Religion is based...mainly upon fear...fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.... My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.'" Source:Holy Horrors NEED WE SAY MORE? RELIGION EQUALS RACISM, SEXISM, SPECIESISM, SELF-HATRED, EXPLOITATION, SLAVERY, WAR. WE THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH ARE ONE. NO RACES, NO RELIGIONS, NO DUALITY, NO WAR. ALL BELIEFS COMPRISE DOUBTS. KNOW THE TRUTH. STOP THE KILLING!! GO BEYOND BELIEF INTO THE KNOWN! BECOME RELIGIOUSNESS. MEDITATE.

[pnwdoodlesreads]

Rabbi works to bring mezuzahs to Jews in Montana

BILLINGS – Rabbi Chaim Bruk stood on the back porch of Ella Lorentz’s Billings home on Wednesday afternoon.

He instructed Lorentz, an Israeli Jew, how to affix a mezuzah to her doorpost, which Jews believe provides both protection and blessing.

“You’re going to put it up there,” he pointed to a spot a little above her head. “You just push down.”

She pressed her fingers against the small, rectangular acrylic-encased parchment scroll, which contains the handwritten Shema, a biblical passage declaring the oneness of God.

Then he told her to repeat a series of Hebrew words after him.

“There’s a traditional blessing we say when we put up a mezuzah,” he explained. “It is blessing God and thanking him for commanding us to put this up.”

“Now give it your fist kiss with your hand,” he said, and Lorentz touched her fingers to her lips and then to the mezuzah.

She already has a mezuzah on her front door.

“I just wanted one for the back door, too, for the blessings and the protection of the house,” she said.

Bruk chatted for a few more minutes with Lorentz and her husband, Matthew. Daughter Zoe, 2, was taking her afternoon nap, so Ella pulled out her cellphone to show the rabbi a picture.

She told him various members of her family are traveling from Israel to Montana for visits in the coming months. Bruk encouraged her to bring them for a visit to his synagogue in Bozeman.

Then he left to deliver a mezuzah to Melinda Maurisac, who lives in another Billings neighborhood.

Bruk moved to Bozeman from Brooklyn, N.Y., with his wife, Chavie, in 2007, to open a Chabad-Lubavitch center. He presides over the only Orthodox Jewish synagogue in the state.

The synagogue doesn’t have a membership, but for special days on the Jewish calendar, it can draw many people. Passover this year drew more than 150, and the summer brings many people from around the U.S. and beyond for the Sabbath.

“The synagogue in Bozeman is growing, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively,” he said. “Families are getting more involved. Some who came once a year are coming seven times, and those who came once in a while now come every week.”

Chabad-Lubavitch educates and provides religious support to isolated Jewish populations. His goal is to reach out to as many Jews as he can in the state, no matter the branch of Judaism they belong to.

The statewide Montana Mezuzah Campaign has been on Bruk’s to-do list for a long time. His mentor, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who died in 1994, taught him the need to reach people where they are.

Whether Jewish families’ homes are fully kosher, whether they fully observe the Sabbath, offering them a mezuzah is an opportunity to help them grow in their faith, Bruk said.

“Putting up a mezuzah on the doorpost of a home or office is not a complicated thing to do, but it’s a very deep thing,” he said. “Not only does it give them the opportunity to fulfill a biblical commandment, but it actually brings a healthy Jewish identity to the home.”

In the book of Deuteronomy, God commands the Jews to put a mezuzah on their doorpost, or, said Bruk, any room where they live for part of the day.

The mezuzah’s protection and blessing extends beyond the home, he added. When they leave home, the divine energy and divine protection goes with them.

“Wherever we go, we should have a reminder of relationship with the Almighty and a reminder of his infinite and eternal protection,” he said.

A kosher mezuzah is handwritten on parchment by a scribe using a special quill pen and a particular kind of ink. The scribe meticulously writes the designated verses on the parchment.

Many people don’t know it must be written on parchment, Bruk said, or if the ink has faded that it is no longer kosher.

“Or they buy an expensive case but it’s missing the scroll,” he said.

In addition to providing free mezuzahs to Jews who request them, Bruk has offered to check mezuzahs to make sure they are kosher.

He has already delivered mezuzahs to people in Kalispell, Missoula, Whitefish, Big Fork, Helena, Livingston, Bozeman and Billings.

“And I’ve actually had some people as far away as Fargo, N.D., and someone in central Washington that gets my email says ‘I don’t have a mezuzah, can you help me?’ ”

The campaign became a reality in the aftermath of his grandmother’s death. Chana Bruk, 90, died in Israel just before Passover, leaving more than 350 living descendents, Bruk said.

“I said I need to do something in her memory, let’s see if we can get the mezuzah campaign going,” he said.

Bruk contacted a relative who agreed to underwrite the project and ordered 200 mezuzahs to get started. They are free to any Jewish family in the state that doesn’t have a kosher mezuzah on their front door.

People have learned about the campaign through Chabad-Lubavitch of Montana’s website, through emails and on Facebook.

Bruk also said he’d be glad to sell mezuzahs to non-Jews at cost, about $35 or $40 each.

“In stories in oral Jewish tradition, traditionally non-Jews in positions of leadership wanted to have mezuzahs, wanted to have protection, and were granted them by Jewish sages of the time,” Bruk said.

[greenandhazy]

YO! I’m back! and I came back to a Hanukkah card, thanks @canadiansuperhero <3

I’m going to post a bunch of pictures tomorrow probably, but some thoughts and memories beneath the cut

(fair warning, this is fcking long)

I LOVED our tour guide. his name was Boaz and he was chill, funny, and super informative. he addressed us collectively as “beautiful people” or “bubbelech” and presented info in a very nuanced way

like he addressed the whole glorification of the suicide at Masada and how that’s a little bit Problematic, and before we talked about Mt. Herzel he led a conversation about narratives--why they’re constructed, how, how they might be biased or helpful--and he was very frank when asked about various Israeli conflicts (Palestine, Arab-Israelis, Orthodox vs non-Orthodox, etc).

he also took us on an optional museum trip on Shabbat just because he loves museums. man after my own heart. (the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is AWESOME, by the way. perhaps a little traditional, but still very well done.)

holy shit the Negev desert. took my breath away. driving through the mountains was incredible, and I’m sad that I really don’t have very many good pictures of it because it was through the bus window, but damn was it something

on a related note, we spent that night in a Bedouin camp and even though it was totally designed for tourists, the head dudes really did treat us like guests and we learned some really cool stuff and ate a lot of delicious food with our hands, so overall a win.

I hate that I’m going to That Person who’s always like “yeah well to get REALLY good hummus and falafel you have to actually go to the Middle East, you just can’t get it in America.” but like. it’s the truth. Hummus Abu-Hassan in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. for reals.

also, I was planning on buying zaatar anyway because it’s mentioned in the Jerusalem cookbook, but then I tried it on a bagel and also in this Yemenite flatbread and it’s SO GOOD, I got a huge bottle of it.

on our first Shabbat we visited Ramat HaNadiv, which is a garden complex in Zikhron Ya’akov, and it was a really beautiful way to spend the day. there was also a garden section specifically designed for blind people that had only plants that had strong fragrances or interesting textures, that was cool.

we had eight Israelis traveling with us for half the time and I made two friends:

Ayelet, who almost immediately taught me a Hebrew pun. “koreha” means “hilarious,” but she insisted that we always pronounce it as “koreHAAAA.”

and Alon, who was quieter but we visited his family’s home as part of the trip, and he played Hallelujah on the piano while his sister sang, so later on we talked about music and swapped recommendations. he was super into the Tracy Chapman I played him

I also made friends with some people I don’t think I ordinarily wouldn’t have talked to, including an 18-year-old guy from NYC who thinks I’m very mature and wise (which was SUPER gratifying bc this was otherwise a mansplaining-heavy trip) and two brothers who taught me a very fun, very evil card game called King Mao.

there was a geopolitical talk session, which overall I think was quite good--the speaker gave a nuanced talk, and my only critique was that it was a little too nuanced for some of the people who came in with very strong pro-Israel (pro-IDF? pro-Bibi? not sure which term is most accurate) views. like, I think those of us who were moderate or left-leaning understood the sympathy for Palestinian civilians in his portrayal, but it went over some people’s heads, which was unfortunate

I did find it hilarious when he played this Hamas song, and four of the Israelis, including our tour guide, started singing along because it’s so catchy that people used to play it in clubs all the time.

Hannah Senezc’s grave is on Mt Herzl--I realized that it would be about five minutes before we came upon it, and that was very meaningful for me. Hannah isn’t my Hebrew name anymore, but she was a not-insignificant part of the reason I chose it in the first place, so I left a stone.

I  had a lot of thoughts at the Western Wall--I might make a whole separate post about that. it moved me, but not in the way I expected.

we visited the Mehane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem on Friday afternoon. it wasn’t my favorite place to shop, but it was a great place to people-watch as people prepared for their Shabbat. I liked that a lot.

the Holocaust History Museum was very moving--I appreciated it as both a visitor and as a public history student. two things I think stuck out for me. the first was Yad VaShem. I was prepared for the wall of names, which I had seen photos of, but I was caught off guard by the huge gaping hole in the mountain below it--“the gap that six million people have left in our community and our history” was how the tour guide put it. and the second was the tour guide, who connected the Holocaust to the violence in Syria (and other modern human rights abuses) several times. she started the tour with the book burnings, and--I remember very clearly--said to us “in 1933, no one could see Auschwitz.” then, as she took us through Hitler’s rise and the development of the reich, she kept asking “do you see Auschwitz yet? do you see us getting closer?” it was incredibly powerful

a couple negatives:

like I said, I don’t think people talked enough about the oppression of Palestinian civilians specifically. the geopolitical talk covered discussions about Gaza, Syria, and Jordan, and it tended to focus on governments; I think the tour guide gave a great discussion about the spectrum of Israeli politics, but the geopolitical speaker discussed Palestinian civilians in relation to Hamas, not in relation to Israel, which was quite a gap.

there were ~28 guys and ~12 women and holy shit men can be the worst. so much casual mansplaining, and I didn’t even REALIZE how much until I found myself being told that ancient Germans and ancient Romans actually spoke different languages, which explains the difference between French and German. then I frigging snapped, and realized how much it had been happening throughout the trip.

(aside from sexism, 18-22 y.o. boys can just be super disrespectful, fyi. it sucks. some of them were late a lot of the time and they drank way too much, even on the nights when we were explicitly told we should not be drinking. it was v uncool.)

twice we had rabbis speak to us, and both times they were Haredi rabbis who... were just slightly too black and white for my tastes. like, I was probably the only religious person in the group, and among the most educated about Judaism, so I understood a lot of their points, but they were often phrased in a way that was very off-putting to the secular Jews in the group (exacerbated by communication issues with one of the rabbis whose English was not quite as strong), which put me in a weird position of wanting to defend Judaism as a whole even while I disagreed with the specificity of the position under discussion.

related: I have developed a specific frustration with secular Jewish men who criticize the separation of men and women in Orthodox Judaism (and pre-denomination Judaism) as sexist without a) recognizing their own sexism and b) acknowledging that, in some cases, women actually derive personal satisfaction from elements of that separation, and that women can have their own distinct spirituality that does not depend on men. (I feel like my status as a traditionally-women’s-college alumna is showing here.)

overall, I’m glad I went. I had hoped to have had more spiritual conversations with my peers, which didn’t really happen, but other than that I think it fulfilled my expectations. I’m more confident explaining where I stand with regards to Israel; I’m more familiar with its flaws as well as its strengths, and in the future I think I will be able to engage in politics surrounding it with more confidence. (That doesn’t mean I’m going to want to discuss it all the time, but I don’t think I will cringe whenever the topic comes up.)

on a religious level, I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad I visited the wall. seeing so many Jews being unapologetic about it has given me more confidence in how I want to express myself, and I am confident in my choice of name: Yocheved. It felt right when I was holding the Torah, it felt right at the Kotel, and it feels right now.

so yeah. good trip.

#jewish tag #b1rthr1ght

[nataliesnews]

From: Natanya Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 3:08 PM To: Natanya <[email protected]> Subject: FW: She has written what is in my heart and I have not known how to say Home   >   Opinion Opinion Israel’s Dark Times Are Already With Us, Mr. President Ilana Hammerman  SendSend me email alerts Feb 21, 2020 11:35 PM  0comments Print    Zen •  275share on facebook Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian cameraman during clashes with Palestinians in the village of Tuqu, West Bank, January 25, 2019.Mussa Issa Qawasma / Reuters Open your eyes and see them, Mr. President – you, Reuven Rivlin, who said the publication of the list of businesses with ties to West Bank settlements was “reminiscent of dark periods in our history.” Those dark periods are here, right here, right now. They’re here in Jerusalem, your city and mine. Go to the Shoafat refugee camp and see the crowded ghetto that has arisen behind the barriers walling in Arab residents of Jerusalem. Go to Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah and see how Arab families are evicted in Jerusalem neighborhoods, their homes becoming Jewish property. Join the Flag March that takes place in the Old City every year and see the masses of Jews parading through the narrow alleys, where all the shops are closed out of fear. Isn’t this what happened to the Jews in the “dark periods”? Continue on to the Jordan Valley and see how Bedouin shepherds are evicted by Jewish settlers, how Jewish vehicles speed into the Bedouin's flocks and soldiers from the Jewish army demolish their tents and tin shacks in the middle of the night. The soldiers leave men, women, children and babies exposed to the bitter cold of the winter nights and the scorching heat of the summer days. If you see this with your own eyes, such a decent man as yourself, your yearning Jewish soul that so reveres the memories of the past would surely cringe. If only I had the talent of spoken word artist Yossi Zabari, I would declare in his rhythmic Hebrew about this dark period of ours: “New in the frozen section you can find high-quality cannon fodder that was lovingly raised on Zionism and the sacredness of the land, with no artificial additives or love of the stranger and respect for the other and the sanctity of life.” And I would ask and respond as he does: To compare or not to compare, that is not the question, that is the duty.” Yes, this is the most important lesson for us Jews in Israel more than 80 years later. Salman Learned German jurists In Germany, tens of thousands of political opponents who were defeated in a democratic election were imprisoned in the concentration camps long before the Jews. The authorities shut down their organizations and publications – they could no longer object without risking their lives. Then the persecution of Jews was honed in an elaborate system of laws whose gradual construction was overseen by learned jurists and whose application was put in the hands of the courts. And the life of “Aryan” Germans went on as usual. Every liberal and humanist (not necessarily “leftist”) Israeli must read a book – translated into English as “Defying Hitler” – by the journalist (and jurist) Sebastian Haffner, who left Germany in 1938, long before the extermination camps were built. The process he went through must be compared to what is happening in Israel now. As Haffner put it, while he was experiencing the events, he couldn’t gauge their significance. He intensely felt the choking, nauseating character of it all but couldn’t grasp the constituent parts and put them together. He wrote that despite his generation’s historical and cultural education, they were completely helpless to deal with something that didn’t feature in anything they had learned. How meaningless were their explanations, how infinitely foolish their attempts at justification, how hopelessly superficial the jerry-rigged constructions with which the intellect tried to cover up the feeling of dread and disgust. Daily life also made it difficult to see the situation clearly. Life went on, though now it had become ghostly and unreal, and was mocked every day by the events going on in the background. The only place he felt sure of himself was at the courts, though for now the courts’ activities seemed to lack meaning. He and his girlfriend kept on going to the cinema, had meals in a small wine bar, drank Chianti and went dancing. He still saw his friends and had discussions with acquaintances. Family birthdays were still celebrated as they had always been. As he put it, it was this automatic continuation of ordinary life that hindered any strong reaction against the horror. A destroyed Jewish-owned store in Magdeburg, Germany, after Kristallnacht, which took place on November 9-10, 1938. German Federal Archives / Wikimedia Commons As Victor Klemperer saw it The horrors at that time were the gradual denial of civil and human rights to the Jews living in Germany. A Romance languages professor, Victor Klemperer, documented this in his journals that provide an incomparable record; they were put in book form and translated into English as “I Will Bear Witness.” A former convert from Judaism and a German patriot who lived to see the Reich defeated, he too described society as the events were occurring, in disbelief that things went so far. In 1936, he wrote that when he saw the mass of people happy and peaceful, he believed less than ever in any change in Germany’s political situation. In 1938 he noted how a gardener and a grocer he knew agreed completely: They said they had no idea what was happening, they didn’t read the newspapers. Klemperer wrote that people were apathetic and indifferent. The grocer told him that it all seemed like cinema to him. People simply regarded it all as a theatrical sham. Klemperer was astonished at the ease with which German society and German citizens accepted the collapse of democracy and the infringement of civil rights and liberties; they even considered this a price worth paying for Hitler’s foreign policy successes. Later he observed, again with some amazement, how the Germans, including the seemingly decent ones, preferred to close their eyes to injustices done to him and all German Jews, based on the law, even if these Jews were friends, neighbors and acquaintances. In 1940, as still in 1942 and 1943, Klemperer mentioned the people who were horrified to learn of the restrictions imposed on him as a Jew. No, they didn’t know, they regretted to hear it. These things must be compared to what his happening here, in Israel, where many people “regret” that their country denies civil and human rights to millions of people who live under its military rule, that it persecutes, humiliates and expels them, steals their property, imprisons them in enclaves and ghettos and is turning this reality into a permanent situation, not just a year or two but half a century already. Yes, they regret it, but they go on with their comfortable lives and do nothing about it. It must be compared, not because no regimes are worse than Israel’s oppressive regime, but because these are exactly the things that were done to us in the dark periods of our history. They happened in a modern society in the heart of supposedly enlightened Europe, whose countries closed themselves off to Jews and where many collaborated with Nazi Germany. This is our Jewish lesson. It’s not: Let the Israeli army win in the Palestinian cities and villages. It’s: Don’t let racism and fascism win in Israel. Ilana Hammerman Haaretz Contributor Send me email alerts Yreferable

From: Natanya Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 3:08 PM To: Natanya <[email protected]> Subject: FW: She has written what is in my heart and I have not known how to say

    Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian cameraman during clashes with Palestinians in the village of Tuqu, West Bank, January 25, 2019.Mussa Issa Qawasma / Reuters

Open your eyes and see them, Mr. President – you, Reuven Rivlin, who said the publication of the list of businesses with ties to West Bank settlements was “reminiscent of dark periods in our history.” Those dark periods are here, right here, right now.

They’re here in Jerusalem, your city and mine. Go to the Shoafat refugee camp and see the crowded ghetto that has arisen behind the barriers walling in Arab residents of Jerusalem.

Go to Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah and see how Arab families are evicted in Jerusalem neighborhoods, their homes becoming Jewish property. Join the Flag March that takes place in the Old City every year and see the masses of Jews parading through the narrow alleys, where all the shops are closed out of fear. Isn’t this what happened to the Jews in the “dark periods”?

Continue on to the Jordan Valley and see how Bedouin shepherds are evicted by Jewish settlers, how Jewish vehicles speed into the Bedouin's flocks and soldiers from the Jewish army demolish their tents and tin shacks in the middle of the night. The soldiers leave men, women, children and babies exposed to the bitter cold of the winter nights and the scorching heat of the summer days.

If you see this with your own eyes, such a decent man as yourself, your yearning Jewish soul that so reveres the memories of the past would surely cringe.

If only I had the talent of spoken word artist Yossi Zabari, I would declare in his rhythmic Hebrew about this dark period of ours: “New in the frozen section you can find high-quality cannon fodder that was lovingly raised on Zionism and the sacredness of the land, with no artificial additives or love of the stranger and respect for the other and the sanctity of life.”

And I would ask and respond as he does: To compare or not to compare, that is not the question, that is the duty.” Yes, this is the most important lesson for us Jews in Israel more than 80 years later.

Salman

Learned German jurists

In Germany, tens of thousands of political opponents who were defeated in a democratic election were imprisoned in the concentration camps long before the Jews. The authorities shut down their organizations and publications – they could no longer object without risking their lives. Then the persecution of Jews was honed in an elaborate system of laws whose gradual construction was overseen by learned jurists and whose application was put in the hands of the courts. And the life of “Aryan” Germans went on as usual.

Every liberal and humanist (not necessarily “leftist”) Israeli must read a book – translated into English as “Defying Hitler” – by the journalist (and jurist) Sebastian Haffner, who left Germany in 1938, long before the extermination camps were built. The process he went through must be compared to what is happening in Israel now.

As Haffner put it, while he was experiencing the events, he couldn’t gauge their significance. He intensely felt the choking, nauseating character of it all but couldn’t grasp the constituent parts and put them together.

He wrote that despite his generation’s historical and cultural education, they were completely helpless to deal with something that didn’t feature in anything they had learned. How meaningless were their explanations, how infinitely foolish their attempts at justification, how hopelessly superficial the jerry-rigged constructions with which the intellect tried to cover up the feeling of dread and disgust.

Daily life also made it difficult to see the situation clearly. Life went on, though now it had become ghostly and unreal, and was mocked every day by the events going on in the background. The only place he felt sure of himself was at the courts, though for now the courts’ activities seemed to lack meaning.

He and his girlfriend kept on going to the cinema, had meals in a small wine bar, drank Chianti and went dancing. He still saw his friends and had discussions with acquaintances. Family birthdays were still celebrated as they had always been.

As he put it, it was this automatic continuation of ordinary life that hindered any strong reaction against the horror.

A destroyed Jewish-owned store in Magdeburg, Germany, after Kristallnacht, which took place on November 9-10, 1938. German Federal Archives / Wikimedia Commons

As Victor Klemperer saw it

The horrors at that time were the gradual denial of civil and human rights to the Jews living in Germany. A Romance languages professor, Victor Klemperer, documented this in his journals that provide an incomparable record; they were put in book form and translated into English as “I Will Bear Witness.” A former convert from Judaism and a German patriot who lived to see the Reich defeated, he too described society as the events were occurring, in disbelief that things went so far.

In 1936, he wrote that when he saw the mass of people happy and peaceful, he believed less than ever in any change in Germany’s political situation. In 1938 he noted how a gardener and a grocer he knew agreed completely: They said they had no idea what was happening, they didn’t read the newspapers.

Klemperer wrote that people were apathetic and indifferent. The grocer told him that it all seemed like cinema to him. People simply regarded it all as a theatrical sham.

Klemperer was astonished at the ease with which German society and German citizens accepted the collapse of democracy and the infringement of civil rights and liberties; they even considered this a price worth paying for Hitler’s foreign policy successes.

Later he observed, again with some amazement, how the Germans, including the seemingly decent ones, preferred to close their eyes to injustices done to him and all German Jews, based on the law, even if these Jews were friends, neighbors and acquaintances. In 1940, as still in 1942 and 1943, Klemperer mentioned the people who were horrified to learn of the restrictions imposed on him as a Jew. No, they didn’t know, they regretted to hear it.

These things must be compared to what his happening here, in Israel, where many people “regret” that their country denies civil and human rights to millions of people who live under its military rule, that it persecutes, humiliates and expels them, steals their property, imprisons them in enclaves and ghettos and is turning this reality into a permanent situation, not just a year or two but half a century already. Yes, they regret it, but they go on with their comfortable lives and do nothing about it.

It must be compared, not because no regimes are worse than Israel’s oppressive regime, but because these are exactly the things that were done to us in the dark periods of our history. They happened in a modern society in the heart of supposedly enlightened Europe, whose countries closed themselves off to Jews and where many collaborated with Nazi Germany.

This is our Jewish lesson. It’s not: Let the Israeli army win in the Palestinian cities and villages. It’s: Don’t let racism and fascism win in Israel.

Ilana Hammerman

Haaretz Contributor

   D

[wanderlustingvegan-blog]

the first one

I was sitting in my Academic Advisor’s office when this whole journey started. We were planning my classes for the fall semester in my second year at Binghamton University when she said, “Wow, you have a lot of credits for a freshman. Have you ever thought about graduating early?” No, the thought never crossed my mind. Although I’ve always loved school and learning new things, I never thought I was the student that could finish college early. But low and behold, the AP classes I took in high school and the summer internship I took in Manhattan paid off with 16 credits toward my degree. I already skipped an entire semester of college. I talked through a plan with my advisor; if I took winter and summer classes for the next two years, I could graduate a year early. College in just three years? I was paying for my education myself, so if I didn’t have to pay another $12k out off pocket, or apply to 10+ scholarships for another year, I was in.

But, what would I do in this extra year that I would’ve spent in school? I could start with getting a job, working for a nonprofit in the city, and make money as soon as I could. Or I could do something more worthwhile… what if I traveled for a year? I’ve always dreamed of traveling since I was younger, I’ve always wanted to hop on a train or a plane and explore. I started doing some research and the trip seemed possible. After going to Israel for Birthright the winter before I started making these plans, I knew I wanted to go back and live there for at least a month. But there were so many more countries that intrigued me; I didn’t know where to start! By the time my third year rolled around, I made more plans, booked some flights, and my trip became real. I was really doing this. I was traveling across the world by myself for 6 months.

I stayed in touch with a few people from my Birthright trip and one of them mentioned a program called Onward Israel to me as we were catching up. She did the 2-month internship program the summer after we did Birthright together and was working as a representative for them now – after I applied, I had my interview with her and was approved immediately! The program required a down payment that went towards living in an apartment for 2 months, along with interning at an Israeli company and getting a stipend for food; it was a great deal for what I paid for. The experience was one I will never forget. Not only was this program how I started off my travels abroad, but it was the longest I would be spending in one place. I planned to stay for 2-4 weeks in my other destinations and was traveling by myself, too. But this experience was unlike anything else I’d encounter in the rest of my journey. A few days before I moved in, I found out my apartment was filled with 9 other girls. As I walked through the door, it looked more like a loft than an apartment. My name was on the dining room table, along with a key, and I put my things in the first room I saw. No one else was home but later, I found out that I shared the room with two other girls, strangely reminding me of my life in the dorms back at college.

The whole program felt very structured at first. We had weekly activities that were either about Israeli history, society, politics, etc. or about us – the interns. As much as these activities were informative, some were meant to have us socialize and get to know each other – forcibly. I did connect with a few people on the program, but that took weeks of me becoming comfortable around them. In the beginning I was just around strangers. I didn’t have anything in common with them except for the program we were all on together. Although I spent a lot of time with them and got to know them, there was still a part of me that felt lonely, that truly became homesick. I missed my friends that I recently graduated with, who were all still in the college-town we made so many memories in. I missed my sister, who started a new job and was making strides in her art career in Manhattan. I was starting to miss a lot of people and wondered if I was cut out for living on the other side of the world for the next several months. Luckily, my loneliness subsided as I befriended a few of the girls I lived with. They were the first to show me how genuine friendships can come out of the most unexpected places.

One moment shifted my views on the program, as I got to know one of my roommates, Mina. We had a lot in common from the moment we met – similar music taste, our views on Judaism, our spiritual beliefs, and the difficulties life threw at us when we were too young to heal ourselves properly. I mentioned that I wanted to go to the Western Wall one morning on Shabbat because I haven’t gone since Birthright and wanted to recognize the holiday in the most holy place on Earth. Shabbat, or the Sabbath, is the day of rest for Jews. From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, Israel has everything closed for 24 hours – grocery stores, shopping centers, most restaurants, etc. – to ensure that everyone is resting, or keeping Shabbos. The people on my program, all being Western 20-somethings, were always looking to make plans and find something to do together on Shabbat, but not a lot of people were religious. Mina and I bonded over the fact that we didn’t think of ourselves as very religious, but we did see ourselves as spiritual Jews. She agreed to come with me to pray at the Western Wall on Saturday morning and the experience was completely different than the last time I was there. We walked from our apartment in Rehavia (a neighborhood in Jerusalem) to the Old City. It wasn’t until we entered through the old Yellowstone arch that we realized we were not going anywhere near the entrance of the Western Wall. Google maps isn’t the best for taking you to the exact location in a place like Jerusalem’s Old City, and instead of trying to find signs to tell us where to go, we were millennials that trusted Google would get us there in no time. Eventually, we put our phones away, trusted our instincts, and wandered around the different quarters of the Old City until we found the signs pointing to the Kotel, or the Wailing Wall in Hebrew. 

We entered through the Jewish quarter and found the entrance for women, since there are sections for men, women, and an egalitarian section which is where I went during Birthright. But being surrounded by other Jewish women of various origins and sects of Judaism was comforting. I felt like I belonged and followed Mina to get a prayer book, find a table to open to Hebrew prayers, and start to pray. It was overwhelming. Anyone who has been to the Kotel knows, the feeling you get when you are in front of a wall that large, with so much history and meaning behind it. It’s a feeling like no other. My heart started to ache and tears were streaming down my face as I spoke to G_d and connected with myself again. I looked over at Mina and she was sitting, eyes watering, deep in thought looking into her prayer book. We made eye contact and went to touch the wall, finish our prayers, and walked backwards to put our prayer books away and head home.

Getting out of the Kotel wasn’t difficult but we realized that we came out of the furthest exit from the direction we needed to go back to Rehavia – 40 minutes of walking in the sunny, 90+ degree weather that Israeli summers are known for. We decided to stop in a park on the way back to lay down, relax, and take off our layers of modest clothing. The stop in the park and walk back to our apartment was when Mina and I truly became friends. We opened up to each other about the most personal subjects, shared childhood stories with each other, and realized that we both needed each other that summer. She helped me remember how incredible my life was when I’d feel lonely or upset about missing home. Although the program we were on was completely different from how I wanted my travels to start off, it still brought me this incredible, strong, compassionate, and loving friend that I never would’ve met otherwise. It was hard saying goodbye knowing that she lives in Indiana, a far trip from New York, but I know our paths will cross again. 

After leaving my life in Jerusalem and starting my journey as a solo traveler, there were moments that I missed my friends I made in Onward Israel. I was only an hour away from my home in Rehavia when I went to my next long-term destination in a city in the West Bank called Ramallah, also known as the capital of Palestine. I spent a month working at a hostel in the center of the city and rarely felt lonely at this point of my trip, mainly because the people that surrounded me were some of the most genuine and kind people I’ve met. Working a hostel was an experience on its own but the fact that I was constantly surrounded by people, whether it was guests or other volunteers, was something I enjoyed getting used to. Like the friends I made during Onward Israel, I found my core group of friends at the Hostel in Ramallah too – Fanny, Caleb, and Carina. We all arrived around the same time, in the beginning of September, and over the weeks we spent cleaning, helping guests, and taking our days off to travel around the West Bank, we grew really close. Although I loved spending time with each and every one of them, I wanted to take a trip to the north of the region and had to do it on my own – I craved alone time towards the end of my 4 weeks of volunteering. Every week I’d get one day off, which I didn’t use until my last week there, so I planned a trip for 4 days to go to 3 cities in the North: Tiberias, Nazareth, and Haifa. 

Unfortunately, the days I chose to leave Ramallah and head into Israel was the same day as Sukkot, one of the many Jewish holidays Israel recognizes and similar to how it handles Shabbat – everything is closed. Since Sukkot lasts 7 days and Israel can’t close everything down for a week, the first day is treated like Shabbat while the remaining 6 days are left to be celebrated after sundown, most places close early and buses run less frequently. My travels became delayed and frustrating at times when I had to take the bus to travel to the different cities, spending at least a couple hours each way. On my way from Tiberias to Nazareth, I needed to transfer buses on the highway and did my long-term traveling at night so I could sleep on the bus and spend the whole day in the city. During this time I didn’t have any data left on my Israeli cell phone plan, so I needed to load directions on my phone while I had Wi-Fi at the hostel in Tiberias. Unfortunately, the first bus I took was running late so by the time I had to transfer to the next bus, I was late for the time Google maps told me. I couldn’t load the schedule to see when the next bus was coming (due to the lack of data) but I knew it would take some time because of Sukkot.

So here I am, me and my backpack, on the shoulder of a highway. At 9:30pm. In northern Israel. I kept looking at the screen above me, waiting for my bus number to pop up and eventually I see it, “431 – 47 mins.” I laughed. How do I keep myself occupied for 47 minutes? I couldn’t read my book, it was too dark to see anything. I was listening to music at the time and no one was around me, so I popped one earbud out of my ear, put on my “Billie Eilish: Complete Collection” playlist on Spotify, and started to sing. I’ve loved to sing since I was a child, I would even get yelled at for humming at the dinner table too much. Music and singing are things I couldn’t live without, and whenever I need to cheer myself up, I start to sing. I sang my heart out as cars zoomed past me in the dead of night. I started with “idontwannabeyouanymore,” then “COPYCAT,” then “party favor,” over and over. I was shameless of the drivers that might’ve seen my body language as I got more intense with my performance. It got to a point when the cars were almost like an audience, their headlights were like stage lights. After going through the playlist a couple times and singing the same songs at the top of my lungs, I checked the sign: “431 – 6 mins.” I’ve been singing for more than a half hour and it felt like nothing! I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to sing completely carefree – no time restrictions, no fear of someone walking in on me, no interference. This unexpected inconvenience was a shift in my solo travels. It made the time by myself go from lonely and boring to refreshing and entertaining. No matter who I took that little trip to the north with, it wouldn’t have been the same if I wasn’t alone.

In October, I got on a flight to Poland and in the following 2 months, there were times I felt lonely – but I could handle it more gracefully than how I would’ve in the middle of June. There were times when I wished for a friend I could explore an unknown part of the city with. After meeting new people day in and out, I started to dismiss the small talk and craved a deep conversation with a friend over dinner. This is when I became grateful for traveling in the 21st century where my closest friends were just a phone call away. If I ever had a day of feeling lonely, I could easily find a place with Wi-Fi and call my sister or my best friend. It’s important to have a few people you can always call while traveling solo. Although the time difference was tricky, it was a constant part of my routine to have people I cared about still be there for me. I knew they couldn’t be there physically, but they kept me company when the loneliness took over my mind.

As much as I am a social person, I appreciated my alone time more and more as I traveled by myself. Growing up, I identified as an extrovert – I was the one who got scolded by the teacher because I was always talking to my classmates. I love talking, I love people, but there’s also a comfort I found with being by myself. Traveling gave me the opportunity to release my inner introvert. When I was going to school, I juggled two jobs, maintained a social life and went to the gym daily, never having time to stop and think about myself. Having all the time in the world to listen to my thoughts and recognize my feelings – that’s where I found bliss. My stress became alleviated when I could wander around cities by myself, walk into shops I found interesting, and sit at the bar of a restaurant to read, or converse with the waiters and other strangers eating by themselves. Meeting other people while traveling was one of my favorite parts of traveling by myself, but it did get exhausting at times. When staying at hostels every week, meeting new people constantly, you hear the same questions with the same basic replies,

“Where are you from?”                          “Wow, New York!”

“What made you want to come here?”              “Oh, I came for vacation”

“How long are you here for?”               “I’m here for x days”

“Did you go to the ‘blah blah blah’ yet?”           “You must try to go! It’s so beautiful!”

But there were times when the conversation would stray from the basics and I made a connection with someone. Whether it was with a fellow traveler or a local, I could spend a whole day with someone instead of being by myself and wandering alone. There were times when I did want to be alone and rejected some dinner invitations because I started to crave my alone time. I never would’ve been able to truly enjoy myself if I was traveling for months with another person, or a group of people. I would probably grow tired of them.

I suppose I like traveling by myself because I have more freedom. I have opportunities to learn more about the culture and the people that are surrounding me in this new place I’m discovering, day by day. I began my journey abroad with a Google document of itineraries for each country I went to. I would add to the lists as my time in the destinations got closer, but as time went on, I used these dense itineraries as lists of goals instead. I became more relaxed with letting my body go where it wanted to go, regardless of the tourist attractions or places other people told me to go to. The list helped me when I was bored of an area or wanted to do something more entertaining, but it didn’t make me feel anxious or rushed that I needed to do anything. Traveling alone was one of the best decisions I made for my journey abroad. Yes, loneliness happens, but it goes away.

Four years ago, I never would’ve expected myself to be where I am today. Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn, reflecting on my travels abroad where I lived out of a backpack for 6 months. Those months were life changing and I’ll never be the same after everything I experienced. I walked through crowded streets of Palestine, roamed around the Old Town of Warsaw, and got lost in a small Spanish village, all on my own. Being alone is so powerful. It forces you to see parts of yourself that only you can bring out. By taking in everything you’ve experienced, incredible things can happen in your mind. You replay the moments and remember the small things that make your heart race again. I’ve learned to be my happiest self without any company. Happiness can come to you in the most unexpected ways, but if there’s anything I learned after my trip is that chasing your dreams is important. Whatever fuels your fire, whatever you feel passionate about, make that your life. You won’t regret it.

#travel #writing #blog #solo trip #backpacking #lonely #you are not alone

[theresgloryforyou]

1. The Law of Return

Jewish women attended the establishment conference from many countries, including Argentina, New Zealand, India, Brazil, Belgium, South Africa, and the United States. Each woman had more right to be there than any Palestinian woman born there, or whose mother was born there, or whose mother's mother was born there. I found this morally unbearable. My own visceral recognition was simple: I don't have a right to this right.

The Law of Return says that any Jew entering the country can immediately become a citizen; no Jew can be turned away. This law is the basis for the Jewish state, its basic principle of identity and purpose. Orthodox religious parties, with a hefty share of the vote in recent elections, wanted the definition of "Jewish" narrowed to exclude converts to Judaism not converted by Orthodox rabbis, according to Orthodox precepts. Women at the establishment conference were mobilized to demonstrate against this change in the Law of Return. The logic used to mobilize the women went as follows: "The Right is doing this. The Right is bad. Anything the Right wants is bad for women. Therefore, we, feminists, must oppose this change in the Law of Return." Fight the Right. In your heart you know the fight is for the sake of women, but don't tell anyone else: not Shamir, not the Orthodox rabbis, not the press; but especially not the American Jewish boys who are sponsoring your conference, who are in Israel right then and there to lobby Shamir and to keep an eye on the girls. Fight the Right. Find an issue important to Jewish men and show up as the women's auxiliary. Make them proud. And don't offend them or upset them by making them stand with you--if they want you there--for the rights of women.

Protesting the change in the Law of Return was presented at the establishment conference as "taking a first step" against the power of the Orthodox rabbis. Because the power of these men over the lives of Jewish women in Israel is already vast and malignant, "taking a first step" against them--without mentioning any of the ways in which they are already tyrants over women-- wasn't just inadequate; it was shameful. We needed to take a real step. In Israel, Jewish women are basically--in reality, in everyday life--governed by Old Testament law. So much for equality of the sexes. The Orthodox rabbis make most of the legal decisions that have a direct impact on the status of women and the quality of women's lives. They have the final say on all issues of "personal status," which feminists will recognize as the famous private sphere in which civilly subordinate women are traditionally imprisoned. The Orthodox rabbis decide questions of marriage, adultery, divorce, birth, death, legitimacy; what rape is; and whether abortion, battery, and rape in marriage are legal or illegal. At the protest, feminists did not mention women.

How did Israel get this way--how did these Orthodox rabbis get the power over women that they have? How do we dislodge them, get them off women? Why isn't there a body of civil law superseding the power of religious law that gives women real, indisputable rights of equality and self-determination in this country that we all helped build? I'm 44; Israel is 42; how the hell did this happen? What are we going to do about it now? How did Jewish feminists manage not to "take a first step" until the end of 1988--and then not mention women? The first step didn't amount to a feminist crawl.

2. The condition of Jewish women in Israel is abject.

Where I live things aren't too good for women. It's not unlike Crystal Night all year long given the rape and battery statistics--which are a pale shadow of the truth--the incest, the pornography, the serial murders, the sheer savagery of the violence against women. But Israel is shattering. Sisters: we have been building a country in which women are dog shit, something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. We, the "Jewish feminists." We who only push as far as the Jewish men here will allow. If feminism is serious, it fights sex hierarchy and male power and men don't get to stand on top of you, singly or in clusters, for forever and a day. And you don't help them build a country in which women's status gets lower and lower as the men get bigger and bigger--the men there and the men here. From what I saw and heard and learned, we have helped to build a living hell for women, a nice Jewish hell. Isn't it the same everywhere? Well, "everywhere" isn't younger than I am; "everywhere" didn't start out with the equality of the sexes as a premise. The low status of women in Israel is not unique but we are uniquely responsible for it. I felt disgraced by the way women are treated in Israel, disgraced and dishonored. I remembered my Hebrew School principal, the Holocaust survivor, who said I had to be a Jew first, an American second, and a citizen of the world, a human being last, or I would have the blood of Jews on my hands. I've kept quiet a long time about Israel so as not to have the blood of Jews on my hands. It turns out that I am a woman first, second, and last--they are the same; and I find I do have the blood of Jews on my hands--the blood of Jewish women in Israel.

Divorce and Battery

In Israel, there are separate religious courts that are Christian, Muslim, Druze, and Jewish. Essentially, women from each group are subject to the authority of the most ancient systems of religious misogyny.

In 1953 a law was passed bringing all Jews under the jurisdiction of the religious courts for everything having to do with "personal status." In the religious courts, women, along with children, the mentally deficient, the insane, and convicted criminals, cannot testify. A woman cannot be a witness or, needless to say, a judge. A woman cannot sign a document. This could be an obstacle to equality.

Under Jewish law, the husband is the master; the woman belongs to him, what with being one of his ribs to begin with; her duty is to have children--preferably with plenty of physical pain; well, you remember the Old Testament. You've read the Book. You've seen the movie. What you haven't done is live it. In Israel, Jewish women do.

The husband has the sole right to grant a divorce; it is an unimpeachable right. A woman has no such right and no recourse. She has to live with an adulterous husband until he throws her out (after which her prospects aren't too good); if she commits adultery, he can just get rid of her (after which her prospects are worse). She has to live with a batterer until he's done with her. If she leaves, she will be homeless, poor, stigmatized, displaced, an outcast, in internal exile in the Promised Land. If she leaves without formal permission from the religious courts, she can be judged a "rebellious wife," an actual legal category of women in Israel without, of course, any male analogue. A "rebellious wife" will lose custody of her children and any rights to financial support. There are an estimated 10,000 agunot--"chained women"--whose husbands will not grant them divorces. Some are prisoners; some are fugitives; none have basic rights of citizenship or personhood.

No one knows the extent of the battery. Sisterhood Is Global says that in 1978 there were approximately 60,000 reported cases of wife-beating; only two men went to prison. In 1981 I talked with Marcia Freedman, a former member of the Israeli parliament and a founder of the first battered-women's shelter in Israel, which I visited in Haifa. At that time, she thought wife-beating in Israel occurred with ten times the statistical frequency we had here. Recent hearings in parliament concluded that 100,000 women were being beaten each year in their own homes.

Marcia Freedman was in Haifa when I was. I saw only some of what she and other feminists had accomplished in Israel and against what odds. There are now five shelters in Israel. The shelter in Haifa is a big building on a city street. It looks like the other buildings. The streets are full of men. The door is locked. Once inside, you climb up several flights of steps to come upon a great iron gate inside the building, a gate you might find in a maximum-security prison for men. It is locked all the time. It is the only real defense against battering men. Once the iron gate is unlocked, you see women and children; big, clean, bare common rooms; small, immaculate rooms in which women and their children live; an office; a lounge; drawings by the children who live there--colorful, often violent; and on the top floor a school, the children Palestinian and Israeli, tiny, young, perfect, beautiful. This shelter is one of the few places in Israel where Arab and Jewish children are educated together. Their mothers live together. Behind the great iron bars, where women are voluntarily locked in to stay alive, there is a living model of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation: behind the iron bars that keep out the violent men--Jewish and Arab. Feminists have managed to get housing subsidies for women who have permission to live outside the marital home, but the process of qualifying can take as long as a year. The women who run the shelter try to relocate women fast--the space is needed for other women--but some women stay as long as a year. At night the women who run the shelter, by now professionals, go home; the battered women stay, the great iron gate their lone protection. I kept asking what if--what if he comes? The women can call the police; the police will come. The cop on the beat is nice. He stops by sometimes. Sometimes they give him a cup of coffee. But outside, not too long ago, a woman was beaten to death by the husband she was escaping. The women inside aren't armed; the shelter isn't armed; this in a country where the men are armed. There isn't any network of safe houses. The locations of the shelters are known. The women have to go out to find jobs and places to live. Well, women get beaten--and beaten to death--here too, don't they? But the husband doesn't get so much active help from the state--not to mention the God of the Jews. And when a Jewish woman is given a divorce, she has to physically back out of her husband's presence in the court. It is an argument for being beaten to death.

A draft of Israel's newly proposed "Fundamental Human Rights Law"--a contemporary equivalent of our Bill of Rights--exempts marriage and divorce from all human-rights guarantees.

Pornography

You have to see it to believe it and even seeing it might not help. I've been sent it over the years by feminists in Israel--I had seen it--I didn't really believe it. Unlike in the United States, pornography is not an industry. You find it in mainstream magazines and advertising. It is mostly about the Holocaust. In it, Jewish women are sexualized as Holocaust victims for Jewish men to masturbate over. Well, would you believe it, even if you saw it?

Israeli women call it "Holocaust pornography." The themes are fire, gas, trains, emaciation, death.

In the fashion layout, three women in swimsuits are posed as if they are looking at and moving away from two men on motorcycles. The motorcycles, black metal, are menacingly in the foreground moving toward the women. The women, fragile and defenseless in their near nudity, are in the background. Then the women, now dressed in scanty underwear, are shown running from the men, with emphasis on thighs, breasts thrust out, hips highlighted. Their faces look frightened and frenzied. The men are physically grabbing them. Then the women, now in new bathing suits, are sprawled on the ground, apparently dead, with parts of their bodies severed from them and scattered around as trains bear down on them. Even as you see a severed arm, a severed leg, the trains coming toward them, the women are posed to accentuate the hips and place of entry into the vaginal area.

Or a man is pouring gasoline into a woman's face. Or she's posed next to a light fixture that looks like a shower head.

Or two women, ribs showing, in scanty underwear, are posed in front of a stone wall, prisonlike, with a fire extinguisher on one side of them and a blazing open oven on the other. Their body postures replicate the body postures of naked concentration camp inmates in documentary photographs.

Of course, there is also sadism without ethnicity, outside the trauma of history--you think Jewish men can't be regular good ol' boys? The cover of the magazine shows a naked woman spread out, legs open, with visual emphasis on her big breasts. Nails are driven through her breasts. Huge pliers are attached to one nipple. She is surrounded by hammers, pliers, saws. She has what passes for an orgasmic expression on her face. The woman is real. The tools are drawn. The caption reads: Sex in the Workshop.

The same magazine published all the visual violence described above. Monitin is a left-liberal slick monthly for the intelligentsia and upper class. It has high productions and aesthetic values. Israel's most distinguished writers and intellectuals publish in it. Judith Antonelli in The Jewish Advocate reported that Monitin "contains the most sexually violent images. Photos abound of women sprawled out upside-down as if they have just been attacked."

Or, in a magazine for women that is not unlike Ladies' Home Journal, there is a photograph of a woman tied to a chair with heavy rope. Her shirt is torn off her shoulders and upper chest but her arms are tied up against her so that only the fleshy part of the upper breasts is exposed. She is wearing pants--they are wet. A man, fully dressed, standing next to her, is throwing beer in her face. In the United States, such photographs of women are found in bondage magazines.

For purists, there is an Israeli pornography magazine. The issue I saw had a front-page headline that read: ORGY AT YAD VASHEM. Yad Vashem is the memorial in Jerusalem to the victims of the Holocaust. Under the headline, there was a photograph of a man sexually entangled with several women.

What does this mean--other than that if you are a Jewish woman you don't run to Israel, you run from it?

I went to the Institute for the Study of Media and Family on Herzelia Street in Haifa: an organization built to fight violence against women. Working with the rape-crisis center (and desperately fund-raising to stay alive), the institute analyzes the content of media violence against women; it exposes and fights the legitimacy pornography gets by being incorporated into the mainstream.

There is outrage on the part of women at the Holocaust pornography--a deep, ongoing shock; but little understanding. For me, too. Having seen it here, having tried to absorb it, then seeing stacks of it at the institute, I felt numb and upset. Here I had slides; in Israel I saw the whole magazines--the context in which the photographs were published. These really were mainstream venues for violent pornography, with a preponderance of Holocaust pornography. That made it worse: more real, more incomprehensible. A week later, I spoke in Tel Aviv about pornography to an audience that was primarily feminist. One feminist suggested I had a double standard: didn't all men do this, not just Israeli men? I said no: in the United States, Jewish men are not the consumers of Holocaust pornography; black men aren't the consumers of plantation pornography. But now I'm not sure. Do I know that or have I just assumed it? Why do Israeli men like this? Why do they do it? They are the ones who do it; women aren't even tokens in the upper echelons of media, advertising, or publishing-- nor are fugitive Nazis with new identities. I think feminists in Israel must make this why an essential question. Either the answer will tell us something new about the sexuality of men everywhere or it will tell us something special about the sexuality of men who go from victim to victimizer. How has the Holocaust been sexualized for Israeli men and what does this have to do with sexualized violence against women in Israel; what does it have to do with this great, dynamic pushing of women lower and lower? Are Jewish women going to be destroyed again by Nazis, this time with Israeli men as their surrogates? Is the sexuality of Israeli men shaped by the Holocaust? Does it make them come?

I don't know if Israeli men are different from other men by virtue of using the Holocaust against Jewish women, for sexual excitement. I do know that the use of Holocaust sex is unbearably traumatic for Jewish women, its place in the Israeli mainstream itself a form of sadism. I also know that as long as the Holocaust pornography exists only male Jews are different from those pitiful creatures on the trains, in the camps. Jewish women are the same. How, then, does Israel save us?

All the Other Good Things

Of course, Israel has all the other good things boys do to girls: rape, incest, prostitution. Sexual harassment in public places, on the streets, is pervasive, aggressive, and sexually explicit. Every woman I talked with who had come to Israel from some other place brought up her rage at being propositioned on the street, at bus stops, in taxis, by men who wanted to fuck and said so. The men were Jewish and Arab. At the same time, in Jerusalem, Orthodox men throw stones at women who don't have their arms covered. Palestinian boys who throw stones at Israeli soldiers are shot with bullets, rubber-coated or not. Stone throwing at women by Orthodox men is considered trivial, not real assault. Somehow, it's their right. Well, what isn't?

In Tel Aviv before my lecture, I talked with an Israeli soldier, maybe 19, part of the occupying army in the West Bank. He was home for Sabbath. His mother, a feminist, generously opened her home to me. The mother and son were observant; the father was a secular liberal. I was with the best friend of the mother, who had organized the lecture. Both women were exceptionally gentle people, soft-spoken and giving. Earlier, I had participated with about four hundred women in a vigil in Jerusalem against the Occupation. For a year, feminists in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv had held a vigil each week called "Women in Black," women in mourning for the duration of the Occupation. The father and son were outraged by the demonstrations. The father argued that the demonstrations had nothing to do with feminism. The son argued that the Occupation had nothing to do with feminism.

I asked the son about something that had been described to me: Israeli soldiers go into Palestinian villages and spread garbage, broken glass, rocks, in the streets and make the women clean up the dangerous rubble bare-handed, without tools. I thought the son would deny it or say such a thing was an aberration. Instead, he argued that it had nothing to do with feminism. In arguing, he revealed that this kind of aggression is common; he had clearly seen it or done it many times. His mother's head sank; she didn't look up again until the end. What it had to do with feminism, I said, was that it happened to women. He said that was only because Arab men were cowards, they ran and hid. The women, he said, were strong; they weren't afraid, they stayed. What it had to do with feminism, I said, was that every woman's life, for a feminist, had the same high value. Feminism meant that the Arab woman's life was worth as much as his mother's. Suppose the soldiers came here now, I said, and made your mother go out on the street, get down on her knees, and clean up broken glass with her bare hands?

I said feminism also had to do with him; what kind of man he was or was becoming, what hurting other people would do to him; how callous or sadistic it would make him. He said, with perfect understanding: you mean, it will be easier to rape?

He said the Arabs deserved being shot; they were throwing stones at Israeli soldiers; I wasn't there, I didn't know, and what did it have to do with feminism anyway? I said that Orthodox men were throwing stones at women in Jerusalem because the women's arms weren't covered down to the wrist. He said it was ridiculous to compare the two. I said the only difference I could see was that the women didn't carry rifles or have any right to shoot the men. He said it wasn't the same. I asked him to tell me what the difference was. Wasn't a stone a stone--for a woman too? Weren't we flesh; didn't we bleed; couldn't we be killed by a stone? Were Israeli soldiers really more fragile than women with bare arms? Okay, he said, you do have a right to shoot them; but then you have to stand trial the same way we do if we kill Arabs. I said they didn't have to stand trial. His mother raised her head to say there were rules, strict rules, for the soldiers, really there were, and she wasn't ashamed of her son. "We are not ashamed," she said, imploring her husband, who said nothing. "We are not ashamed of him."

I remember the heat of the Jerusalem sun. Hundreds of women dressed in black were massed on the sidewalks of a big public square in Jerusalem. "Women in Black" began in Jerusalem at the same time as the Intifada, with seven women who held a silent vigil to show their resistance to the Occupation. Now the hundreds of women who participate each week in three cities are met with sexual derision and sometimes stones. Because the demonstrations are women-only, they are confrontational in two ways: these are Israelis who want peace with Palestinians; these are women who are standing on public ground. Women held signs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English saying: END THE OCCUPATION. An Arab vendor gave some of us, as many as he could reach, gifts of grapes and figs to help us fight the heat. Israeli men went by shouting insults--men called out insults from passing cars--the traffic was bumper to bumper, with the men trying to get home before Sabbath Eve, when Jerusalem shuts down. There were also men with signs who screamed that the women were traitors and whores.

Along with most of the demonstrators, I had come from the postconference organized by the grass-roots, secular feminists. The postconference was chaired by Nabila Espanioli, a Palestinian woman who spoke Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Palestinian women came out of the audience to give first-person testimony about what the Occupation was doing to them. They especially spoke about the brutality of the Israeli soldiers. They talked about being humiliated, being forcibly detained, being trespassed on, being threatened. They spoke about themselves and about women. For Palestinian women, the Occupation is a police state and the Israeli secret police are a constant danger; there is no "safe space." I already knew that I had Palestinian blood on my hands. What I found out in Israel is that it isn't any easier to wash off than Jewish blood--and that it is also female.

I had met Nabila my first night in Israel, in Haifa, at the home of an Israeli woman who gave a wonderful welcoming party. It was a warm, fragrant night. The small, beautiful apartment open to the night air was filled with women from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa--feminists who fight for women, against violence. It was Sabbath Eve and there was a simple feminist ceremony--a breaking of bread, one loaf, everyone together; secular words of peace and hope. And then I found myself talking with this Palestinian woman. She talked a mile a minute about pornography. It was her field of study and she knew it inside out, recognized herself in it, under it, violated by it. She told me it was the focus of her resistance to both rape and sexualized racism. She, too, wanted freedom and it was in her way. I thought: with this between us, who can pull us apart? We see women with the same eyes.

In Israel, there are the occupied and the occupied: Palestinians and women. In the Israel I saw, Palestinians will be freer sooner. I didn't find any of my trees.

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