Israeli Tennis Players in Dubai

 

Hard to Believe

I am still reeling from the news about the alleged sexual misconduct of R. Motti Elon. The news broke last night and there are still more questions than answers.

R. Elon denies the charges. But a list of ten prominent rabbis put their name to the warning; surely they made 100% sure this is true before publishing such claims about someone like R. Elon?

On the other hand, if they knew about this four years ago and were convinced the story was true, why didn’t they publish this earlier?

They claim they posed limitations on R. Elon and only after he didn’t adhere to these limitations they decided to go public. But such allegations surely need to be handled by the authorities, not by some self-appointed council of rabbis?

I don’t know R. Elon personally. But like many Israelis I know of him and his reputation. This is so hard to believe.

If it does turn out to be true this will be a double blow. Firstly, because of who R. Elon is. But mostly because of how this leading group of rabbis seem to have preferred to deal with this case internally, apparently from fear of washing dirty laundry in public.

Mishpatim - Justice or Compromise?

ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים לפניהם

(שמות כא, א)

A few years ago, while building our new house, we had a disagreement with one of the contractors. We were not fully satisfied with the his work and asked him to compensate us. The argument dragged on for a while but he did not budge. So we sued him at the Small Claims Court and after a few months we were invited for the hearing. I remember walking into the tiny courtroom with some trepidation; after all, this was my first ever appearance before a judge. The judge entered, sat down, looked at us both and said: “I can either delve into the matter before me deeply, appoint experts and start a lengthy process of investigation. Or, I propose that you both settle now” and he proposed an amount of money. After a short discussion with my wife, we accepted, and so did the contractor. The whole thing took less than two minutes.

Why do I tell this story?

This week’s parasha, Mishpatim, deals with a multitude of intricate tort and property laws. The Ramban (Nachmanides) says that the entire parasha is a continuation of the previous one, Yitro, where we read the Ten Commandments. More specifically, it elaborates the rules governing the last commandment about coveting. A person needs to know what belongs to him and what does not, what he can rightly covet and what he must not think about possessing. For this, he needs the detailed laws in Mishpatim.

So it would seem a judge needs to “do justice”. Indeed R. Shmuel bar Nachmani says in Sanhedrin: a judge who judges truth makes the Shechinah (God’s presence) rest in Israel, and a judge who does the contrary makes the Shechinah leave. A tall order for a judge, who has to make 100% sure he find out the absolute truth and passes correct judgement. But also in Sanhedrin we find an interesting discussion that reflects differing opinions on how a judge should go about his job.

R. Eliezer ben Yossef HaGelili says that a judge must not settle for a compromise, and one who does so is committing a sin. Instead,  judge should decide either way and give a verdict. However, R. Yehoshua ben Korcha says that not only is a judge allowed to find a compromise, it is a mitzvah for him to do so! He learns this from verses in the Prophets that show that justice and peace can live together, and this is possible only if the sides reach a compromise.

So we are left with the question: what is a judge to do? Fortunately for us, there is a third opinion in the Talmud that merges the two opinions. R. Shimon ben Menassia says that a judge is allowed to offer the sides a settlement before he listens to their arguments (or even after he listens to them, provided he doesn’t know what to rule). But if he has heard the sides and reached a decision on who’s right and who’s wrong, he is not allowed to offer a compromise and must make a definitive ruling. In other words, the judge has two roles: that of judge (like Moses in last week’s parasha) and that of mediator (like Aharon, who always sought to bring peace between parties).

It turns out that this is also reflected in the secular laws of the State of Israel. In the 1980 law governing the court system, there is a stipulation that if a court does not know what the verdict is, the court should appeal to “the principles of freedom, justice, righteousness and peace of Israel’s heritage”. Mencham Elon, a former judge in the Supreme Court, wrote that he researched many judicial systems and did not find one where “peace” was up there with values like freedom and justice.

R. Ya’akov Ba’al HaTurim sums it up nicely by using the first two words our parasha as acronyms:

ואלה – וחייב אדם לחקור הדין (A man must investigate and get to justice)

המשפטים – הדיין מצווה שיעשה פשרה טרם שיעשה משפט (The judge has a mitzvah to offer a compromise before making jugdement)

A Two-Pronged Threat

The ultra-orthodox religious Jews in Israel are posing a serious demographic challenge to Israeli society. In my Israeli Society in 2030 blog post, I pointed out the troubling statistics of children starting school this year, and the possible effects on life in Israel in a couple of decades.

The trouble does not end with the proclivity of religious Jews to “go forth and multiply”. The ultra-orthodox religious establishment, mainly the Chief Rabbinate and the Rabbinical Courts, is also fighting a bitter war against conversions to Judaism (giyur). By adopting the most extreme interpretation of the conditions necessary to bring a non-Jew into the fold, they set the bar impossibly high. They insist that committing to maintain a religious way of life after the conversion – something that the vast majority of Jews do not do themselves – is a pre-requisite for the conversion process to start.

The most evident win of the ultra-orthodox in this war is the repudiation of the state-sponsored giyurim granted by Rabbi Chaim Druckman. This led to the resignation/firing of R. Druckman and to sharp drop in the number of conversions. Data published today shows that in 2009 there was a 12% drop in giyurim, after a 27% drop in 2008. Only 4,206 people converted to Judaism in Israel in 2009, and of these less than 1,000 belonged the group labelled as “religion-less”. This group, mostly composed of ex-Soviet Union emigres, is estimated at 300,000 people (some put the number much higher). The rate of conversion is but a drop in the ocean.

By blocking the way for Israeli citizens to convert to Judaism, the ultra-orthodox are exacerbating the demographic threat. Most of the potential converts are secular people, so by keeping them out of “the tribe”, the relative number of ultra-religious Jews is higher. Faced with the specter of a society composed of 30-40% ultra-orthodox Jews, most of which currently do not serve in the military and are not legally part of the workforce, it is no wonder that Lieberman, and now Netanyahu, are promoting crazy ideas like allowing Israelis abroad to vote in parliamentary elections.

As I wrote previously, this two-pronged threat is the single biggest challenge facing Israel’s future.

Meryl Weep

I’ve written before about how Meryl Streep is quite possibly the most overrated actress on the planet. So you can imagine the pleasure with which I read this piece on Spiked about Meryl Weep.

Here’s to another oscar-less year!

The Green Future

It’s funny now, but there is truth behind every joke. Thirty years ago people made fun of the restrictions placed on smokers; now, smokers are shunned pretty much everywhere. This is a glimpse into our “green future”.

הרמב”ם, משה הלברטל

You know the famous hypothetical question: “if you could meet 3 people from history, who would they be”? Well, in my case – when the question is posed specifically about figures from Jewish history – my reply is: “Moses, Maimonides and I haven’t decided about the third”. I guess there is no need to explain Moshe, the greatest Jewish leader of all time and the only person who has spoken with God “face to face”.

As for the other Moshe - R. Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam, Maimonides - he is not only by far the most prominent Jewish thinker and Torah scholar of all time. He also stands out for his rational approach to Jewish law and his unbelievable capacity for writing outstanding scholarly works on subjects ranging from law to medicine to philosophy. All this against a background of a harsh life that saw his family fleeing from Spain to find refuge in Morocco and in Eretz Israel before settling in Egypt, the loss of a brother who supported him financially, a demanding and time-consuming job as the Sultan’s doctor and attacks on his writings and thoughts from Jewish leaders worldwide. To have accomplished what Rambam accomplished in his 68 years is unfathomable to mere mortals like us. It is no wonder the epitaph on his tombstone reads: “from Moses (the prophet) to Moses (Rambam) there were none like Moses”.

The writings of Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz first introduced me to the world of the Rambam more than two decades ago. I have studied, and am continuously studying, the Rambam’s Halachic works, most notably his codification of Jewish Law, the Mishne Torah. I have also read (and only partly understood) his great philosophical work The Guide for the Perplexed. I read the various letters (Igrot) he wrote to Jewish individuals and communities who sought his opinion. I have also read a couple of biographies and many academic books and treatises on his works and his philosophy.

So when I picked up Prof. Halbertal’s book about the Rambam I didn’t have great expectations. Halbertal is indeed a renowned Rambam scholar, but the book is part of a series published by the Zalman Shazar Institute in Jerusalem about prominent Jewish thinkers in history. I found most of the books in the series tend to be somewhat confused in their approach, probably a result of trying to blend an academic work with the need to satisfy the wide audience the books aim to address.

But Halbertal surprised me. He managed to write 300 brilliant pages encompassing almost every facet of the Rambam. He covers his life in the first chapter and then goes on to describe every major body of work and philosophy of the Rambam, from his early work on the Mishnah, through his colossal Mishne Torah and ending with The Guide to the Perplexed. Throughout, Halbertal classifies and explains the thoughts behind what Rambam wrote, and highlights the different approaches to his philosophy. This is all done in clear and concise prose, never lapsing into convoluted academic text nor into over-simplifications. One is left with a good, solid understanding of what a revolution the multi-faceted. multi-disciplinary Rambam brought about in Jewish thought.

I cannot say whether this is a book that a person who knows nothing about the Rambam will enjoy. But to someone who has studied or read some of Rambam’s works, Halbertal’s book is a must. It will bring order from chaos, summarise many of the ideas succinctly and elucidate some of the finer points of Rambam’s philosophy. It is a book I highly recommend (currently available only in Hebrew, I believe).

The Fall (cont.)

A year and a half ago I wrote about the fall of miss USA in a beauty pageant as symbolising the decline of the United States.

This post came back to my mind this morning, as I read about the victory of Li Na over Venus Williams in the Australia Open. Another small metaphor of the decline of the US, befittingly this time in the hands of a rival from China.

Israel and the Haiti Earthquake

Like most Israelis (OK, perhaps a little more than most) I am critical of Israel and I have a tendency to point out the bad things and ignore the good things. It’s mostly a criticism born out of love, just as a father is more upset with the wrongdoings of his own children than with those of other people’s.

So when Israel does something right, I am only to happy to point it out. Israel’s response to the disaster in Haiti has been fast, effective and disproportionate (in the positive sense of the word). Within 48 hours, two 747 aircraft with 220 military medical personnel and a fully operational field hospital were on their way to Haiti. The Israeli rescue delegation set up and started saving lives almost immediately. This CNN report is worth watching.

On a side note: Many countries sent aid to Haiti – some more, some less. I’m still waiting to hear about a Muslim country sending aid: food, clothes, supplies, medicines. Anything really. I know Abu Dhabi or Saudi Arabia are very poor countries compared with Israel, but surely they can pinch something together for Haiti. After all, isn’t Islam a charitable religion?

What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell

Every time I visit the US, I pick up a copy of the New Yorker. I love reading the long, well thought out and superbly written, essays. “What the Dog Saw” is a collection of 19 essays written by Malcom Gladwell and published in the New Yorker over the past decade or so. The essays touch on various subjects but they all have that “Gladwell touch”: a seemingly mundane and boring topic is turned into a fascinating narrative with thoughtful insights.

The book is organised into three categories. In the first - “Minor Geniuses - Gladwell explores people who have made a significant impact in their field of expertise. I truly loved the first essay in the book, about Ron Popeil, who single-handedly invented the direct marketing of kitchen appliances, first by selling on street corners and later on late-night TV. The story is fascinating from both a business and a personal perspective. The third essay in the book is about an equally captivating character, Nassim Taleb, who devised an investment strategy based on the “inevitability of disaster”, that is betting that the most unlikely event (like 9/11) will happen. I found other essays in this category less captivating, such as the one about John Rock, the inventor of the birth control pill. I didn’t agree with the conclusions Gladwell drew from Rock’s decisions regarding the Catholic church’s approach to the pill.

Essays in the second category deals with “theories, predictions and diagnoses”. There is an essay about Enron and how how all the information was there for everyone to see. Another, related, story deals with a subject that was at one time close to my heart: the impossible job of military intelligence assessments. In these two stories Gladwell makes a brilliant distinction between puzzle and mystery. A puzzle is a problem which has a definitive answer and finding that answer depends on finding all the relevant pieces of information. A mystery, on the other hand, is a problem with no definitive answer, because it requires judgement and assessment and cannot be solved by gathering more information. Many of the intelligence assessments are mysteries and that is why intelligence organisations have failure built into their very nature.

The last category of essays is about “personality, character and intelligence”. Gladwell makes minced mint out of the “profile builders” of the FBI, those psycho-experts that can tell you who the criminal is (almost) by analysing the crimes he committed. In another essay he asks the question “are smart people overrated?”, and in a third he asks whether it is possible to hire people based on interviews. I found some of the essays in this category to be less engaging and less convincing, as they touched on topics that appeared in Gladwell’s previous book “Outliers”, which I didn’t like.

All in all, this is a delightful collection of long-winded essays but easy-to-read essays. Vintage Gladweel, vintage New Yorker.

PS – This was my first ever audiobook. I never thought I could concentrate on a book by listening to it, but I found out that while driving or jogging, listening to a book is a great way to pass the time. I’m now trying to listen to a novel and see if it works just as well.

State, Army and Religion

The past few weeks have seen the age-old discussion about the relationship between state and religion in Israel make the front pages again. The current debate was prompted by Defense Minister Barak’s decision to kick out the Har Beracha Yeshiva from the “Hesder”, literally “arrangement”, by which religious boys can do a shortened army service (about half, 1.5 years) and spend the rest of the time continuing their studies. This arrangement has been around for decades and the army tolerates it because most of the religious soldiers join elite combat units, meaning they will spend considerable time each year doing meaningful reserve duty.

Barak’s decision came after the head of the Har Beracha Yeshiva, R. Eliezer Melamed, vociferously backed a handful of Hesder soldiers that wrote banners proclaiming their right-wing political views, specifically that they would refuse to obey an order to evacuate Jewish settlements. He stated that the soldiers should follow the rabbis’ rulings and where there is a conflict with a military order, they should prefer the rabbi’s directive. Obviously, from the army’s point of view, this is an unacceptable stance. Both R. Melamed and Barak climbed very tall trees and it seems hard for them to find a ladder to climb down. The debate escalated after some of R. Melamed’s colleagues backed him, while other Hesder rabbis sought to calm things down.

The truth of the matter is that once this debate turns to the question of whose authority the religious soldiers should listen to above all else – the army’s or the rabbis’ – there is no way out. No religious person can accept a statement that there is a higher authority than God. And no army will accept a statement that a soldier can decide whether to carry out an order based on his religious belief. (I’m assuming, for the sake of the discussion only, that the rabbis’ right-wing stance faithfully represents God’s will; in my opinion, it doesn’t). So trying to bring the discussion to a head on this point is useless. It will cause more harm than good.

To me, what needs to be done is very clear: a separation of state and religion. Israel is a secular country that has an army to protect it. The army is an organization that has no religious significance, just as the government has no religious significance. A decision by the government to build settlements or to evacuate them is a legitimate democratic decision that has no religious bearing. Speaking of the State of Israel, its government or its army as having any kind of religious meaning is not only ridiculous from the secular state’s point of view. It is also ridiculous from the religion’s point of view! It belittles the Jewish religion and relegates it to a position of subservience to a civilian organization, instead of allowing it to be independent of any authority. Israel is not governed by the laws of the Torah and by associating themselves with it from a religious standpoint, the various religions institutions are, pardon the expression, prostituting themselves and the religion they purport to represent.

Compare it if you will to religion and science, or religion and academia in general. There are many religious scientists and professors in Israel. Some of them are prominent figures in their field of expertise. Some of them deal with issues that are clearly in contrast with their religious views, like the age of the universe, or contraception and abortion, or the study of the New Testament. Yet they continue their work and excel in their fields precisely because there is a clear separation between science and religion. They do not go and ask their rabbi whether to believe the universe is 4 billion years or a mere 6,000 years old. They do not ask for permission to read Luke or Matthew. They understand there are areas of life that Halacha does not cover.

In short, there are two, and only two, decisions a religious person can make regarding the secular State of Israel (and its army). He can either decide, like the extreme ultra-orthodox among us, that until a Jewish religious state, i.e. one that is governed by Halacha, can be established, one cannot recognise the State of Israel or benefit from it. Or he can decide that he has a religious duty (a kind of dina demalchuta) to be a fully loyal citizen of the secular State of Israel, just as he would be a fully loyal citizen of France or India if he were living there as a Jew. All other “in between” combinations are nothing but compromises that do more damage to the religion and to religious people.

Brave rabbis (sounds like an oxymoron in our day and age) should tell their students very clearly that the Jewish religion has nothing to do with a government decision to evacuate settlements. Just as religion has nothing to do with government decisions to provide healthcare or build roads or tax income. Only a clear separation between the domains can solve the non-existent dilemma these rabbis have plunged their students and followers into.

הכלב היהודי, אשר קרביץ

I picked this book up on a whim, during one of the end-of-year bookstore deals. For decades, Israel had only one major bookstore chain – Steimatzky – and all the rest were small mom & pop shops. Then, about a decade ago, Tsomet Sefarim grew as a competitor to Steimatzky and forced it to start reducing prices and offering special deals. Some pundits think the current situation, where the two chains compete fiercely against each other, although beneficial to customers, has hurt writers and devalued books in general. People buy because it’s on sale, not because it’s a book they really want to read. I confess this is how I picked this book. It simply sat on the shelf where I could get 2 for 1, or perhaps was it 1 plus 2 or 2 plus 2. Who remembers? (Which reminds me of this – sorry, Hebrew only).

Yet sometimes a book you never heard about and you read just because you happen to have it, turns out to be a gem. This is the case with “The Jewish Dog”, by Asher Kravitz. Or perhaps I should call it “Der Yiddisher Hund”, which is the Yiddish subtitle of the book.

The Jewish dog is the life story of Koresh, a dog born in 1935 to a Jewish family in Germany. Koresh’s life parallels the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe – from the rise of Hitler and the deportation and extermination of the Jews – and ends with the hope of rebirth of the Jewish State in Israel (it dies in Israel in 1947, right after the UN decision to grant Jews a homeland). The dog, an intelligent, observing animal, goes through various phases and owners in life, and even gets different names. It is through its life experiences that it imparts the reader with insights and understandings about the world and human nature, with a cunning that would dwarf many humans I know.

It is not possible to write about the plot of this short book without ruining it for those who have not read it. In fact, the little blurb on the inside flap of the book has the word “spoiler” written on the top as a warning (even though it doesn’t reveal too much). So I will only point out that Kravitz’s style is simple yet thoughtful, peppered with verses from the Bible and with subtle hints about the “big picture”, which is not how one would normally see the world through a dog’s eyes. He manages to deal with the most horrific period in history – the Holocaust – in a manner that is light and occasionally even comic, yet it does not belittle the enormity of the period it describes. I highly recommend this book.

The Enemy Within

Israelis are used to fretting about the threats from without: Syria and Egypt in the past, Iran in the present, a possible Palestinian state in the future. But Israelis tend to suppress their fears from the real threat to the country’s existence, the threat from within: the so-called “Arab-Israelis”. (Arabs who were here when Israel achieved independence in 1948 and were granted Israeli citizenship). Mostly this burying-one’s-head-in-the-sand attitude comes from wishful thinking (“they prefer to live with us so they’ll behave”) or political correctness (“they are Israeli citizens, like you and me”).

Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. The allegiance of many Arab-Israelis to the State of Israel is an impossibility. Israel Jews cannot ask Israeli Arabs to declare full and unconditional loyalty, simply because such loyalty is not something they can give. Would you ask an American Jew to declare full and unconditional loyalty to the US if the US were an enemy of the Jewish State? Those politicians asking Arab-Israelis to declare unconditional allegiance do so because they want to promote their own agenda, possibly legitimising a future deportation or a “population swap” deal.

So what we are left with is an intractable problem: a huge minority (around one fifth) that cannot be integrated fully. So long as they are a minority, the problem is more or less manageable. But demographics being what they are, the problem will not go away; it will become only bigger. And Israel will find itself managing an apartheid regime to contain the problem, pretty much like it’s been doing with the Palestinians in the occupied territories for the past four decades.

A recent loud and clear reminder to this problem was the “interview” of MK Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of parliament, to one of the TV shows earlier this week. Putting aside, with sadness, the lack of any vestige of civilised debate, the views expressed by Zahalka are such that will exasperate almost any Israeli Jew. Like calling the Defence Minister a murderer of children who then listens to classical music (the not-so-subtle reference to Nazi commanders of death camps is clear). Or labelling Ramat Aviv (a suburb of Tel Aviv) Sheikh Munis, the name of the Arab village that was there before 1948. Or asking Israelis to listen to what Haniyeh (head of Hamas in Gaza, an advocate of the destruction of Israel) has to say. Instead of helping Israeli Jews understand the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, these declarations achieve exactly the opposite: they raise an impenetrable barrier between Jews and Arabs and preclude any reasonable debate.

By the way, I’d love to see Zahalka express similar views against Arab political leaders on Arab television networks, or even on Palestinian television. Arab-Israelis take the freedom of speech granted to all Israeli citizens as granted (and so they should) but all too often they forget there are 21 Arab countries, and not one of them is a democracy.

I’m sure most Arab-Israelis are honest, hard-working citizens who care much about the same things I care about. But they are stuck impossibly between a rock and a hard place and a future of living peacefully together currently looks like an impossible dream.

The Snow Cow, by Martin Kochanski

I am not a skier. Never have been. Most likely never will be. So when I started reading a book subtitled “Ghost Stories for Skiers”, I was afraid my non-existing knowledge of skiing would hamper my understanding or my reading pleasure. Fortunately, my fears turned out to be mostly baseless; or, at least, so I believe, as one cannot really know if one misses out on some subtleties due to one's ignorance, right?

This book contains thirteen (most probably an intentional number) short stories, all set in a skiing setting, usually in some upscale resort in Switzerland. The stories, as the name of the book suggests, all revolve around mysterious things happening to people who are in the ski resort – the holiday goers, the chalet owners, the local help, etc. Some of the protagonists are either dead of alive; others are plotting unspeakable crimes; others still are innocent bystanders who get drawn into a situation they cannot escape. The eponymous cow is the main character in the first story, as the drawing on the book cover suggests, this is not a mild-tempered, grass-chewing, cow.

The back cover of the book says that these are “stories to be shared in the firelight after a long day’s skiing”. Maybe this is part of some ski lore that I’m unaware of, but I found some of the stories disturbing enough even when read in the comfort of my bed. The thing about short stories, especially ones that deal with ghosts, is that you can read a couple just before falling asleep and the images from the story will most likely accompany you in your dreams. At least on one occasion, that was not a pleasant experience. So perhaps the firelight in the ski resort is indeed a better place for reading this book.

But it was not the stories which  enjoyed most about this book. Some were good, some were less good. What I enjoyed most was Kochanski’s habit of inserting a sentence, or a short paragraph, that didn’t really contribute much to the story line, but were wonderfully cynical or funny. Most of them made me do a double take, just to make sure I got the meaning correctly, and quite often they made me laugh. I may be wrong, but it seemed to me almost as if Kochanski were using the story only as an excuse to get a sentence he had been thinking about for a long time into the book. Here are a couple of examples (hopefully they’ll be appreciated even out of context):

Jägermeister is a worthy product of the land that gave us weltschmetz, schadenfreude, and angst. It tastes so vile that you have to down it in one. Like some Wagnerian magic weapon, it will heal any wounds except the ones it has caused itself… (from “The Long Man”, p. 59)

Now the man at the ski shop was from New Zealand, and when someone from Nizullund talks about sex, he calls it `six`. They guy in the shop didn’t talk about sex at all, but it being snowboards, he had to talk about decks rather a lot. (from “Downhill”, p. 86)

Kochanski is clearly a very erudite person. And his writing is mostly flowing and intelligent. I hope to see a novel from him in the future.

VaYechi – The Foreign Grandsons

ויברכם ביום ההוא לאמור: בך יברך ישראל לאמר, ישימך אלהים כאפרים וכמנשה. וישם את אפרים לפני מנשה.

(בראשית, מח, כ)

The blessing that Ya’akov gives his grandsons, Efraim and Menashe, on his deathbed, has become the traditional blessing of parents to their sons. On Friday evenings and on the eve of Yom Kippur, parents will put their hands on the heads of their children and bless them using the same words Ya’akov used:

And he blessed them that day, saying: 'By thee shall Israel bless, saying: God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh.' And he set Ephraim before Manasseh. (Bereshit, 48, 12).

But a closer look at the verses of this week’s parasha reveals a little drama before Ya’akov gives this blessing to his grandsons.

Yossef’s family grew up in Egypt. He married Asnat, the daughter of a local high priest, and his sons were born and raised in the royal court. Yossef names the eldest Menashe “for God has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house” (41, 51). He names his second son Efraim “for God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (41, 52). Thus Yossef, through the names of his sons, marks the break from his past and the connection with his new home, Egypt. The two sons grow up in the house of the high priest of Egypt, not in the house of their Jewish grandfather, Ya’akov.

Even when Ya’akov and his family move to Egypt and settle in Goshen, away from the centre of power and disconnected from Egyptian culture, Yossef and his family remain where they are. His sons continue to grow up in an Egyptian environment. In fact, when Yossef is called to his father’s deathbed, the Torah tells us “he took with him his two sons” (48, 1). One can imagine the trepidation with which Yossef enters his father’s house, fearing whether his father will accept his sons, who have grown up away from him in a completely foreign culture.

Ya’akov starts blessing his son Yossef by telling him how God appeared to him to promise him and his seed the Land of Israel. But then he takes a pause from blessing Yossef and says:

And now your two sons, who were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh, even as Reuben and Simeon, shall be mine. (48, 5)

The two grandsons are accepted in full by their grandfather and are each given land in Israel, as if they were sons and not grandsons. Yossef thus receives a “double portion” in the Land of Israel. It seems as if Ya’akov accepts Efraim and Menashe fully. But here comes the surprising part. After Ya’akov finishes his blessing to Yossef, the Torah says: “Israel beheld Yossef’s sons and said: Who are these?”.

What is going on here? A minute ago, Ya’akov divided his estate in Israel further to include portions for Efraim and Menashe, and now he asks his son “Who are these?”. He sees these two young men, dressed in the royal Egyptian garb and looking totally foreign to him, and wonders who they are and how they grew up. Are they truly deserving of the land he just promised them in Israel? Shouldn’t he have checked who his grandsons are before imparting such generous gifts unto them?

To understand this seemingly out-of-place question, one needs to remember another place in Bereshit where the words “Who are these?” (מי אלה) is uttered. When Essav meets his brother Ya’akov after the long years of separation and sees his big family, he asks “Who are these?” (33, 5). Ya’akov replies to his brother: “The children whom God has graciously given your servant”.

Yossef’s reply to Ya’akov question is strikingly similar: “They are my sons, whom God has given me here”. This reply reminds Ya’akov of the words he himself uttered in response to Essav’s question, and this memory gives him the understanding that although his grandsons may look foreign, they are his seed and the gift of God. The sons of Ya’akov come in many different shapes and forms, but they are all descendents of the great patriarch, all sons of God, and are therefore worthy of a place in the family.

With this understanding, Ya’akov then proceeds to bless Efraim and Menashe with the blessing that has become the prototype for all future blessings of Jewish parents.

The idea for this week’s Parasha Thought is from R. Binyamin Lau.

American Optimism and Foreignness in Japan

The traditional year-end double issue of The Economist is always a source of immense reading pleasure. This year’s issue is no different. I’m still half-way through the issue, but a couple of items seem worth mentioning – one is about American optimism, the other about being a foreigner in Japan.

Lexington, the columnist for the United States section, reviews two books that “lament the American tendency towards mindless optimism”. One book is by Barbara Ehrenreich, who is angry about the overly positive attitude that permeates American society and encourages people to deny reality. People with cancer speaking about it as a “gift” that helped them find their purpose in life. Or people who believe that food won’t make you fat unless you think it will. The second book is by John Derbyshire, who quips that hardly anyone in Obama’s cabinet has ever created a dime of wealth, yet most Americans expects them to fix the economy. He has nothing but contempt for those who say that “given the opportunity, most people could do most anything”, pointing out that, mathematically, half of the people are below average.

What a refreshing breath of air! Finally someone who dares tear the cover off the nauseating “think positive” attitude that invades every corner of American culture, most recently epitomised by the mindboggling drivel in the best-selling, self-help book “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne.

Elsewhere, the topic of “being an outsider” is examined, and the different ways in which it has become both easier and more difficult to be a foreigner in another country are discussed. The following passage made me smile, bringing back pleasant memories:

The most generally satisfying experience of foreignness—complete bafflement, but with no sense of rejection—probably comes still from time spent in Japan. To the foreigner Japan appears as a Disneyland-like nation in which everyone has a well-defined role to play, including the foreigner, whose job it is to be foreign. Everything works to facilitate this role-playing, including a towering language barrier. The Japanese believe their language to be so difficult that it counts as something of an impertinence for a foreigner to speak it.

I’m sure my wife, who has mastered Japanese, will enjoy reading this last sentence. It is so true.

It’s All in the Eyes

Molitan is a factory that produces sewing threads. It is located in the northern city of Nahariya, Israel, and employs about 80 people.

The employees have not received their salaries for two months now, and the main creditor bank refuses to loan the factory 1.5 million Shekels (about $400,000) to pay these salaries. Many of the employees are single mothers or above fifty, and if the factory closes down (which currently looks likely) they will have a very hard time finding a job. Unemployment in northern Israel is about 9%, compared with only 6% in the Tel Aviv area.

This really isn’t news. Stories like these are a dime a dozen in these harsh economic times. What prompted me to write about it was this picture, taken by Yaron Kaminsky and published in Haaretz. It’s all in the eyes: the fear, the helplessness, the desperation.

Crocodile Tears

A week ago the Israeli government buckled under US pressure and declared a 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank, in the hope this will revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Almost nobody here believes that this “confidence building” step will amount to much, but the West Bank settlers have nevertheless come out in full force against the implementation of the government decision. Several of them clashed with police yesterday, and their leaders have announced they will continue to oppose the decision. I heard an interview on the radio yesterday with a woman settler that was almost in tears describing the effects of this ban and how her children have no school to go to because one cannot be constructed, or how newly-wed couples have nowhere to live.

I think that giving in to US pressure at this point was wrong, as there is clearly nobody on the other side with which serious peace discussions can take place. Currently, the Palestinians carry a heavier burden of proof than the Israelis about their intention to reach an agreement. I’m not surprised about the decision though; Netanyahu has proven, time and again, that he succumbs to pressure alarmingly quickly, with little or no thought about his “ideology” or the consequences.

But despite being against this decision, I admit to feeling some satisfaction watching the settlers squirm and cry foul. Their very presence is rooted in decades-long illegality. It was one of the factors that prevented the possibility of an agreement with the Palestinians when one was within reach. Worst of all, it is the single biggest threat to Israel’s long-term existence as Jewish country, by forcing a single state reality with an Arab majority. I am no fan of the Palestinians and the manner in which they are conducting their so-called “struggle for independence”, but I know Israel needs them to have their own state if it wants to survive. The settlements are a clear obstacle to this strategic goal.

As for the tears of the woman on the radio: they are nothing but crocodile tears. After 42 years of holding the vast majority of Israelis hostage to their delusional ideology, it is time for the settlers to face reality and come back home to Israel. Or, better yet, remain where they are and become citizens of a Jewish minority in the future Palestine.

The Holes in Switzerland

Yesterday, with almost 58% of the vote, 22 out of 24 cantons in Switzerland voted to ban the building of minarets in the country. The party that put the motion forward claimed minarets are a “sign of Islamisation”. The Swiss government was quick to reassure the 400,000 Swiss Muslims that this decision was not to be interpreted as a rejection of the Muslim community.

I guess most people would shrug at this piece of news and point to Switzerland’s world-famous “neutrality”. Switzerland has notoriously distanced itself from world political alliances, wars, international organisations, etc., maintaining a neutral stance towards issues that most other countries grapple with on a daily basis. So no wonder it would seem to some that keeping the “status quo” by not allowing the building of minarets would be in line with Switzerland’s policies. But nothing can be further from the truth.

As Assaf Sagiv eloquently explained in the last issue of Azure (Hebrew/English), Switzerland’s neutrality comes at a very high price, as it ignores “many of the basic values that any enlightened nation is duty-bound to uphold”. Here are some facts from this article:

• Last April Switzerland hosted the UN Conference Against Racism, a.k.a Durban II, during which Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a typical Israel-bashing speech. Many European delegates walked out, but the Swiss didn’t.
• A delegation from Hamas – considered by the European Union as a terrorist organisation - was warmly received in Switzerland a couple of months later, where the foreign minister labelled the organisation as a “major player” in the Middle East.
• Last year, Hannibal Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator, and his wife were arrested in Geneva and later released in bail after beating their domestic staff. Libya withdrew $5 billion in protest from Swiss banks, hitting the Swiss where it hurts most and prompting the President to apologise publicly for the arrest.
• During World War II, Europe’s most testing hour in history, when good fought against evil for the future of civilisation, Switzerland did business with the Nazis. Hundreds of millions of dollars in gold, most of it looted from Jewish victims of the Holocaust, were exchanged into hard currency by Swiss banks, oiling the German military machine.
• Switzerland deported more than 30,000 Jewish refugees, most of whom were later murdered by the Nazis.
• As every Israeli knows, Switzerland dragged its feet for decades, refusing to grant Holocaust survivors and their families the right to reclaim capital they deposited in Swiss banks before and during the war.

These and other examples might help shed some light on Switzerland’s supposed “neutrality” and how it is used by the Swiss to further their interests (mostly economic ones) while claiming innocence. “Live and let live” is not an option in world where civilisations clash and where a stand must be taken. It is despicable that the Swiss would defend a blatantly racist policy of banning the building of minarets. By passing this vote, the Swiss have not only shown they are not neutral; they have aligned themselves with the worst of nations. Imagine how the world would have reacted if Israel had a law banning the building of minarets.

Drive-Thru Extreme

Remember that opening scene from the 1980s movie “The Gods Must be Crazy”, where the narrator speaks of the differences between life in the West (specifically the US) and life in the Kalahari desert in Africa? To illustrate life in the US, a woman is shown getting into her car, backing off from her driveway into the street, driving a few yards down the road to drop an envelope into a postbox, only to drive the few yards back to her house.

I was reminded of this scene (and this hilarious movie) when I saw this picture of Americans in California getting vaccinated for the H1N1 virus. What’s next? Having your appendix removed without getting out of your car?