August 28, 2011 | 12:46 am

“The People Seek Social Justice”

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

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As governments are being overturned by massive protests across the Arab world, another kind of movement is being shaped elsewhere—by members of the middle class.  In India, frustrated by politicians who seem out of touch and arrogant and corrupt, they’re taking to the streets and calling for economic reform.  A well-respected 74-year-old political leader named Anna Hazare has been fasting for more than 11 days and has become the focal point of the campaign against pervasive government corruption.  Meanwhile, in Brazil, the middle class has mobilized because “prices of meat and petrol have doubled, highway tolls have risen, and eating out or buying property have become prohibitively expensive”.

Counterintuitively, the declining standard of living for some of the Brazilian middle class is a side-effect of the growing literacy and financial success of a population segment that used to be poor.  The middle-class’s cause may well deserve sympathy since their financial challenges are all too real, but it isn’t exactly a question of social justice as we usually think of it.  Their situation is a side effect of a greater equalization of opportunity, not from corruption or a declining economy.

Here in Israel there are protests too, of course, and not just the ones involving tents along city streets.  Facebook says that 4,499 people are “attending” a week-long boycott of the Shufersal (also called SuperSol) Supermarkets starting tomorrow. It’s called שבוע ללא שופרסל, A Week Without SuperSol.  The argument is that SuperSol has a 37% market share and they set their prices a lot higher than those at other supermarkets.  Those dry statistics are colored by recent accusations that SuperSol unfairly pressured its suppliers for preferential treatment over their competitors.  Many consumers also resent the fact that SuperSol’s profits enrich billionaire Nochi Dankner, whose IDB Holdings is the largest shareholder in SuperSol.  The bottom line is that the protesters want lower prices.

Over the past month hundreds of thousands of protesters in Israel have rallied under the banner The People Seek Social Justice!, inspiring hopes that Israeli idealism has finally reawakened in the tent cities across the country.  At the same time, Haaretz columnist Aviad Kissos waggishly wrote last week that he would glad support “the protest of the people whose therapists go on vacation at really bad times” and “the protest of the people whose friends are going to Greece next week while they have to stay here and work.”  Are the tent-city protesters selflessly seeking social change?  Or are they looking for a conveniently located apartment at a lower rent?  As in any popular movement, motives are mingled. 

UPDATE:  Anna Hazare has now ended his fast.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, lives in Jerusalem.

August 6, 2011 | 1:24 pm

Facts and Truths

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

In Friday’s English-language edition of Haaretz Op-Ed columnist Nehemia Shtrasler takes Amos Oz to task for his recollections of Israel’s first thirty years.  “I didn’t know that Israel was once a paradise,” he writes, and offers facts and figures to prove it:

  * In order to work during those happy years, you had to have a red membership book from the Histadrut labor federation.And Oz’s egalitarian society distributed beautiful apartments at half price only to “those who are close to us” while in the low-income neighborhoods people wallowed in terrible conditions.

  * 250,000 people did not have health insurance because they did not pay dues to the Histadrut.

But Amos Oz is a novelist, not an economist.  He was talking about values rather than statistics, about the consequences of shifting from a tightly knit, mutually supportive society to one that favors individual initiative.  His book Scenes from Village Life, just out in the UK in English and due for publication in America in October, evokes those changes with extraordinary emotional power.

In one story a former Knesset member named Pesach Kedem at first seems bitter, but he is a romantic when he recalls the old days.  (His name is an explicit reference to the liturgical phrase חדש ימנו כקדם–Chadesh yameinu k’kedem, “Renew our days as of old.”)  Reflecting on his past and his old enemies in internecine left-wing political battles, he tells his daughter, in Nicholas de Lange’s superb translation,  “We dreamed of improving ourselves, the whole world.  We loved the hills and valleys.  How did we get here?  A long time ago some people liked each other a bit. Now all the hearts are dead.”

Another story in the book makes a similar point through music.  A group of villagers meets for a community sing-along and begin with pioneer tunes and songs from the Palmach and the War of Independence like “The Song of Friendship.”  By evening’s end they are singing “Why did you lie to me, faraway lights,” and “Can you hear my voice, distant one?”  The sense of solidarity, friendship, and shared destiny has been replaced by a distancing individualism.

Shtrasler is of course right in saying that the standard of living in Israel is far better for most people now than it was thirty years ago, but he is wrong when he says Oz has made a “mistake.”  Amos Oz sees the improvements but mourns what has been lost in getting them.  The great writer is less interested in material gains than in the price paid by the soul.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also reviews books for Jewish Book World, published by the Jewish Book Council.

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August 2, 2011 | 10:19 am

Arts in the Spotlight: JCC Maccabi ArtsFest in Israel

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Five years ago the JCCs of North America, the umbrella organization for Jewish Community Centers, added a new component to its summertime athletic competition, the JCC Maccabi Games.  Called ArtsFest, it provides a way for artistically talented teens to have shared experiences like the ones enjoyed by their sports-minded friends.  This year the Games took place in Israel for the first time since their founding in 1982, and ArtsFest was more prominent than ever.

For its participants it was not only a chance to create and collaborate, it was a true encounter with Israel.  ArtsFest seamlessly integrated Israeli themes, music, and cuisine into its workshops.  The Artists-in-Residence—the teachers—were Israeli.  And it all took place amid the beautiful landscape of the Upper Galilee region.

From the beginning ArtsFest has held to a very high standard.  Participants are selected through competitive auditions, and they work with a cadre of top-notch teachers.  Whether in rock bands or a cappella singing, dance or acting, photography or visual arts, cooking or journalism, they not only learn—they create something together.  ArtsFest’s closing ceremony Sunday night in Jerusalem showcased some of their work.  Here’s a short highlights video:

Remarkably, the ArtsFest kids weren’t cast in the shadow of the more numerous athletes.  All the teenagers ate their meals together, relaxed with one another between events, and were equally recognized for their achievements.  In fact the central location for the participants in both the Games and ArtsFest, a high school in the north of Israel called Har v’Gay (Mountain and Valley), was chosen because it specializes in the arts.  It’s a reflection of the importance of the arts component in the Maccabi events.

Local Jewish Community Centers have played a big role in sustaining Jewish culture in the US and Canada for decades.  Now, thanks to JCCs of North America and their commitment to ArtsFest, another generation is discovering how the arts can help them learn more about being Jewish, and about themselves.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

 

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July 22, 2011 | 7:56 am

Putting Israel on Trial

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

The philosopher Bertrand Russell made a public appeal in 1966 for an International War Crimes Tribunal to conduct a trial of the United States for its actions in Vietnam.  Russell, an antiwar protester since World War I, accused the U.S. and its allies of imperialism and violations of international law in his book War Crimes in Vietnam.  Over the course of two sessions in 1967, one in Stockholm and the other in Roskilde, Denmark, the tribunal heard “testimony” from dozens of speakers and then found unanimously that the United States was guilty of genocide and aggression.

Now the Bertrand Russell Foundation is convening a new tribunal “to examine the violations of international law, of which the Palestinians are victims, and that prevent the Palestinian People from exercising its rights to a sovereign State.”  This November its jury will gather in Cape Town, symbolically meeting in a district of the city where the homes of blacks were demolished en masse in the 1970s.  Alice Walker, a vocal supporter of the flotilla to Gaza, will be one of the jurors.  The tribunal’s self-appointed task is to judge “whether the policies and practises of the State of Israel fit the international legal descriptions of the crime of apartheid.”  The trial will conclude in New York in 2012.

The members of the tribunal’s Support Committee include prominent journalists, political figures, artists, and of course activists.  The names include the Guardian‘s Tariq Ali, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, American novelist Russell Banks, South African novelist Breyten Breytenbach, gender theorist Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky (a veteran of the 1967 proceedings), filmmaker Costa Gavras, writer Naomi Klein, British film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, and Israeli academic Ilan Pappe.  These celebrities should help attract attention to what is little more than a staged media event.

It’s doubtful that anything said at the tribunal will change anyone’s mind.  In fact, very little of what’s said is likely to be new or surprising in any way.  It is purely a symbolic event, like the flotilla.  And like the flotilla it presents a dilemma to the media (though the flotilla actually has greater visual interest).  Will they treat it as a bona fide news story that deserves coverage?  Even if it’s not news, will they feel they can’t ignore it for fear of accusations of bias?

Friends of Israel may well wonder, is there any way to respond without legitimizing the proceedings?  In the Forward today, Gal Beckerman writes about a related issue:

Stooping to meet the activists of the BDS movement at their level is the very definition of counterproductive.  Rather than defuse this enemy, they elevate and inflate the threat by engaging it.  What might a better strategy be for dealing with the BDS movement?  How about just ignoring it.

Whether that’s a realistic choice for dealing with the tribunal is the big question for November.

 

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July 4, 2011 | 1:56 am

A Drama about Father and Son and Academe: “Footnote”

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

There’s a scene in Joseph Cedar’s new film, Footnote, that may bring a smile to Americans of a certain bent.  At a ceremonial event for Israeli academics there’s an emotional discussion in the lobby about Daniel Boyarin, the Berkeley-based scholar, and his ideas about gender in Jewish history.  The reference may be a bit dated, since the film is set in 2010 and the book they’re discussing, Unheroic Conduct, was published in 1997.  But the scene captures both the passion and insularity of academic disagreements, which is one of the subjects of the film.

In this new work by the director of Beaufort, a father and son are professors of Talmud at the Hebrew University with different methods and very different careers.  The father is a master of the details of philology while the son is a widely known lecturer who writes books with popular themes, and these differences are reflected in their personalities.  The younger man, played by the now-veteran Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi, is a sought-after public speaker and internationally recognized for his work.  The elder professor has no talent for social interaction, is most at home in his subterranean office, and has become embittered because his son receives the kind of recognition he believes he deserves himself. Here’s one trailer:

A clerical error with enormous consequences sets in motion a series of events that bring old resentments to the surface, not only between father and son but between each of them and the academic establishment.  That premise might have devolved into a melodrama with simple heroes and villains. (The potted summaries of Cedar’s movie describe it as if it were.)  The film makes no such facile judgments, and instead shows what can happen when flawed people each hold to their firm beliefs in what is right.  This story’s power comes from its ambiguities and its recognition that good intentions do not guarantee good consequences.

This trailer looks at the film from the father’s point of view:

 

Shlomo Bar-Aba, playing a man of few words, forcefully shows the father’s inner disappointments and frustration through his posture and facial expressions.  Ashkenazi convincingly depicts his character’s unexpected complexity.  The Shostakovich-like score by Amit Poznansky captures the sometimes sardonic, sometimes comic, and mostly sober character of the story.  Cedar’s script won this year’s Screenplay Award at Cannes.

Footnote has not yet been released in the United States.  Be on the lookout for it.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

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July 1, 2011 | 1:36 am

Seeking Meaningful Prayer in Tel Aviv

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Last month a group of young professionals in Tel Aviv organized a watershed event at a historic synagogue that they have adopted as their own.  With the donation of a Torah scroll from a celebrity member they began a new era in what they describe as not only a synagogue, but also a community center.

Ynet, the English-language website of Israel’s best-selling Hebrew newspaper, has a video report on the community, which is made up of local and international Jews alike.  Natan Bashevkin, a star of the Israeli version of the “Survivor” reality series and a member of the shul, vowed that if he was the show’s winner he would give a sefer Torah to the synagogue.  That scroll was dedicated in a gala celebration a month ago.

In the U.S., the independent minyanim movement has provided an outlet for well-educated Jews who care about Judaism and have empowered themselves to create new communities for meaningful prayer.  They avoid sectarianism in favor of flexibility and openness.  The Ynet video suggests similar impulses among these olim and native Israelis, with the difference that their outlet is in a traditional synagogue on Ben Yehuda Street near Ben Gurion Avenue.  (Of course there are independent minyanim in Tel Aviv too.)

Given the aging of the membership at so many synagogues in America, maybe this model could work there too.  Jay M. Shultz of the Tel Aviv group explains that “the older generation really handed us the keys; without them we wouldn’t be here.”  Some American shuls might consider following their example.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

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June 30, 2011 | 1:00 am

Jewish Identity Here and There

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Today’s Jerusalem Post reports these observations by Knesset member Nachman Shai (Kadima), head of the legislature’s Conversion Caucus:

“There are over 300,000 Israelis [mostly from the former Soviet Union] here who are Jewish in heart, in feeling and by their presence here, and we must take note of this.  These immigrants are Israelis, but not Jews, and we need to find solutions to let them live here equally with others. They are entitled to die for the State of Israel, but not to be buried here,” he said in reference to non-Jewish soldiers, who couldn’t be buried in Jewish cemeteries.

“Children are born, and most of the aliya from the FSU is currently non-Jewish. We are facing the creation of another community here of Israelis who are neither Muslims nor Christians, but who aren’t Jewish, either.”

In terms of Israeli law, Jewishness is a religious identity.  The only available way to recognize these immigrants’ Jewish identity officially is through conversion, specifically Orthodox conversion.  As MK Shai adds, “I don’t just side with the Orthodox attitude.  But I think we have a certain framework, and we need from within it to seek other mechanisms, other rabbis, who can spread the system all around the country, enabling more people to convert.”

In America, without such a central framework, Jewish identity can be defined in a lot of ways, including what people do and how they think of themselves.  Along those lines, the Jewish volunteer and service organization Repair the World issued a report last week on how young Jewish adults connect community service to being Jewish.  Among its findings:

● Only a small portion of Jewish young adults, 10%, indicated that their primary volunteer commitment was organized by Jewish organizations.
● Only 18% said that they prefer to volunteer with Jewish organizations or synagogues over other non-profit organizations.
● The vast majority, 78%, said it doesn’t matter if the organization with which they are engaged in service is Jewish or non-Jewish.
● Only 27% of respondents agreed that they consider their volunteer actions to be based on Jewish values and only 10% strongly endorsed this statement.
● Jewish young adults with the highest levels of Jewish religious involvement, including but not restricted to Orthodox young adults, are the most likely to engage in volunteering, to do so regularly, and to volunteer under Jewish auspices.

Volunteering apparently is not an effective way of reinforcing Jewish identity, since the great majority do not see it as based on Jewish values.  Yet the Jews who are likeliest to volunteer are those who are involved with religion, suggesting that the strongest impulse to enact Jewish values comes from a religious framework. 

Americans and Israelis might learn from each other about what it can mean to be Jewish.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

 

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June 28, 2011 | 1:15 am

Gay Marriage in Israel?  Two Developments

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Following the legalization of gay marriage in New York State, Maariv columnist Shmuel Rosner reflected yesterday on the prospects for such a thing in Israel.  He refers (in Hebrew) to a seemingly obscure ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court two weeks ago that directed the Interior Ministry to recognize a proxy marriage considered valid in El Salvador.  As Rosner sees it, this may open the door to the legal validity in Israel for thousands of marriages performed outside the authority of the Rabbinate.  He thinks a secular coalition in the Knesset, bolstered by a shift in public opinion, could extend this to gay couples in a few years.

Today comes a report in Haaretz that suggests it may not be so easy.  The non-Jewish partner in gay couple from Baltimore was denied immigrant rights despite their Canadian marriage.  Some details:

The Law of Return stipulates: “A Jew’s rights and an immigrant’s rights ... are also imparted to the child, grandchild and partner of a Jew, except in the case of a Jew who willingly converted to another religion.”  Attorney Nicky Maor, director of the Legal Aid Center for Olim, says if the couple were a man and woman, there is no doubt they would both have received Israeli citizenship. “The only reason the Interior Ministry doesn’t know how to handle it is that they’re gay,” Maor said. “The Law of Return says ‘partner,’ not husband and wife. There is no definition preventing recognition of same-sex partners.”

Attorney Dan Yakir, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, believes the High Court will grant Alvarez citizenship if asked to rule on the issue.  “It’s a question the courts haven’t dealt with yet,” he says, “whether ‘partner’ in the Law of Return also applies to a same-sex partner. In view of the court rulings that have equalized the rights of same-sex couples and in view of the constitutional right for equality, it is obvious that the Law of Return must be interpreted as applying to same-sex couples, and that means an immigrant’s partner must be given citizenship.”

Given the impenetrable administration of Israel’s Interior Ministry, this flap may say more about bureaucratic caution than about Israeli policy towards gays.  Time will tell.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

 

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