Salon's Broadsheet tipped me off to this great website Women on Web. It acts as a referral service online for women who need an abortion in countries with restrictive access. There is an extensive list of questions the answers to which are forwarded to doctors, who offer an online consultation.
It's an amazing way to save lives. There's also a link to one of the "I had an Abortion" projects, which is an incredibly brave thing for women to do. As we all know, the information that a woman has had an abortion -even in fairly liberal communities- can risk her job or family - and that's not even getting into the risk to one's life thereis in putting up one's face online for the loonies to track down. Hameivin yavin.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Holey Cow!
Failed Messiah and Gawker report on the latest (what? Not over yet?) scandal in the kashrut world. After the last round of scandals, Agriprocessors hired a PR firm - because as we all know, Public Relations is far preferable to tshuvah when a corporation sins- to restore its image. The firm, 5WPR, who has also represented the charming so-called "pro-Israel" pastor, John Hagee, (who hates homosexuals and Muslims and has had to apologize for sliming Catholics, oh, yeah and also blamed Jews for the death of Jesus, called liberal Jews "poisoned" and "spiritually blind," and been relatively unconcerned that he hopes for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran even though he believes it will lead to the deaths of most Jews in Israel) apparently has engaged in some antics of its own.
It seems that 5WPR has left multiple comments on several blogs, including JTA and Failed Messiah's, under a variety of aliases, and also posing as Rabbi Morris Allen of the Hekhsher Tzedek, as well as JVNA officer John Diamond and another frequent FailedMessiah commenter (all, as FM points out, federal crimes). The comments were designed to support Agri, bolster one another and discredit Hekhsher Tzedek, the Conservative Movement and Rabbi Allen. Failed Messiah posts screen shots of the comments - well worth looking at, if only for their utter ridiculousness.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity
Technically safe for work, however, the mental images invoked.. ew. Not so pretty.
The New Club Drug: Preparation H
ht: Boing Boing
The New Club Drug: Preparation H
ht: Boing Boing
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Another Reason to Vote Obama: Fiscal Responsibility
I know, I know, pushing fiscal responsibility as a selling point for Democrats ... seems weird (it isn't really, but everyone thinks it is). But look here: Jon Taplin writes on his blog that McCain in his latest Senate Financial Disclosure Form
and don't miss the comments, such as, "Oh, and funny how “elitist” is an arrow in the quiver of the right against Obama. Dude, he’s barely out of the middle class by today’s standards."
ht BoingBoing
look like he was either running his campaign off the American Express Platinum Card his wife gave him, or they have one hell of a high living lifestyle.
The bulk of the McCains’ obligations stemmed from a pair of American Express credit cards that are held in Cindy McCain’s name. According to the disclosure reports, which present information on debts in a range rather than providing a precise figure, Mrs. McCain owed $100,000 to $250,000 on each card.
I know what American Express charges for interest on a Platinum Card. A fiscally responsible household should probably sell some of the million of Anheuser-Busch stock they own and stop paying that 17% ARP on $500,000 worth of Amex charges. There are some other stark contrasts between the McCains and the Obamas. The McCains have a net worth around $40 million, almost all of it from Cindy’s holdings. The Obama’s net worth is closer to $4 million, most of it earned from Barack’s two recent books. Instead of going into debt they have managed to put $250,000 in a college savings account for their two daughters.
and don't miss the comments, such as, "Oh, and funny how “elitist” is an arrow in the quiver of the right against Obama. Dude, he’s barely out of the middle class by today’s standards."
ht BoingBoing
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Palestinians "Shooting Back"
Yes, those scare quotes are there for a reason.
B'tselem has begun a program called "Shooting Back" in which they given out about 100 video cameras to Palestinians over the past year so that when settlers attack them, they can show footage of the attack, instead of just giving a statement to the Israeli police or army.
According to the BBC news,
"The difference is amazing," says Oren Yakobovich, who leads the Shooting Back project.
"When they have the camera, they have proof that something happened. They now have something they can work with, to use as a weapon."
We asked a spokesman from the Susia settlement for a comment on Sunday's incident. He declined.
This video below is being claimed by the BBC to be footage from an elderly shepherd and his wife of four masked men who are beating them for grazing their animals near a settlement (Susia).
I hope that this tool will offer a non-violent way for what's going on to be brought out into the open and taken seriously. Of course, I know that naysayers will claim that it's staged, or payback, or heaven knows what, but there's enough evidence out there that hopefully, we will start to see the necessity to stop denying the truth: that the violence of the settlers is a problem unchecked and vile.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
recent round-up
The closing of the Clinton campaign is approaching. I can't say that I love Clinton, but truthfully I don't really love Obama either. I know that all groovy people are supposed to love Obama, but as I've blogged previously, I just think that Edwards would have been a better president than either of the two current possibilities had not the media condemned him to invisibility (except when making him look stupid). Obama just still seems very vague to me. I don't care what color my president is, although I'll be happy if Obama wins that finally a person of color made it. And I also don't care if the president is a woman, although had it been Clinton, I would have been happy that a woman finally made it, although I think it was clear from the beginning that that could never have happened, because let's face it, sexism is still perfectly okay in our society. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist - far from it, but it's been forced underground. Now that may make it more clever, but at least its presence when undiluted is considered a sign of real stupidity and low-class-ness, even among those to whom the subterranean version is acceptable. This is not really true of sexism.
Marie Cocco of the Washington Post got it down right:
And truthfully, she doesn't cover the half of it.
She couldn't of course, because Rebecca Traister of the Nation also points out how - like me- many young women aren't swayed by the "a woman in the white house at all costs" of the 2nd feminist wave, but we are nevertheless dismayed by those progressive male friends of ours whose discomfort with Clinton as a woman is hardly disguised, and can't see why it might be offensive to say that they're not voting for her because she's a bitch.
Let me just say, any woman who is progressive, after this election should stop fooling herself that feminism is finished. It's about as completed as a Jew for Jesus, which is to say, they can use the nonsensical language of calling themselves "completed Jews" all they like, but I'm still waiting on all the things that are supposed to happen when the messiah comes, because they surely haven't happened yet, and I don't see them approaching near.
Believe me, when the messiah comes, we'll know it, and it ain't here yet.
Now, on the side of good news, another interesting WaPo article on the economic recovery of Rwanda. It seems that because of the demographics of the tragedy of that country, women have been given an unusual amount of opportunity in the rebuilding of the country, and you know what? -it turns out to be an unbelievable success (Well, hell, it doesn't surprise me). Women, not traditionally part of the business, landowning and farming of the country, were therefore quicker to try new techniques. For example in the coffee farming village of Maraba, even though they number about half of all farmers in the coffee cooperative, they are producing 90 percent of its finest quality beans for export. Across the nation, officials say that women "invest profits in the family, renovate homes, improve nutrition, increase savings rates and spend on children's education," more than men.Moreover, although women make up the majority of borrowers, 4 of 5 defaulters on loans are men.
In Rwanda, the genocide left the population heavily female (60/40) Together with those jailed for war crimes that meant that women had to take on tasks that they never had before.
The article follows that with "At the same time, Rwanda has engineered a surprisingly fast economic recovery," which seems to note a parallel ut unrelated event. I think that's underestimating the women. It seems reasonable from the article to -if not conclude, at least to wonder if- the opportunities offered to people who have never had them to take before have opened up new ways of being that have enabled that recovery. I don't necessarily think that it's just because they are women, but I do think it's because women aren't any different than men in this respect, when you deprive smart and competent people of the ability to use their skills, you drag everyone down. and when you give those people an opportunity to jump in and try, you get a fresh vision, and success.
And they are using their success to change their lives:
Marie Cocco of the Washington Post got it down right:
I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet...
won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.
I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.
Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette. ...
Most of all, I will not miss the silence.
I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.
Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?
There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.
And truthfully, she doesn't cover the half of it.
She couldn't of course, because Rebecca Traister of the Nation also points out how - like me- many young women aren't swayed by the "a woman in the white house at all costs" of the 2nd feminist wave, but we are nevertheless dismayed by those progressive male friends of ours whose discomfort with Clinton as a woman is hardly disguised, and can't see why it might be offensive to say that they're not voting for her because she's a bitch.
Let me just say, any woman who is progressive, after this election should stop fooling herself that feminism is finished. It's about as completed as a Jew for Jesus, which is to say, they can use the nonsensical language of calling themselves "completed Jews" all they like, but I'm still waiting on all the things that are supposed to happen when the messiah comes, because they surely haven't happened yet, and I don't see them approaching near.
Believe me, when the messiah comes, we'll know it, and it ain't here yet.
Now, on the side of good news, another interesting WaPo article on the economic recovery of Rwanda. It seems that because of the demographics of the tragedy of that country, women have been given an unusual amount of opportunity in the rebuilding of the country, and you know what? -it turns out to be an unbelievable success (Well, hell, it doesn't surprise me). Women, not traditionally part of the business, landowning and farming of the country, were therefore quicker to try new techniques. For example in the coffee farming village of Maraba, even though they number about half of all farmers in the coffee cooperative, they are producing 90 percent of its finest quality beans for export. Across the nation, officials say that women "invest profits in the family, renovate homes, improve nutrition, increase savings rates and spend on children's education," more than men.Moreover, although women make up the majority of borrowers, 4 of 5 defaulters on loans are men.
The evidence has been building for years. In 1990, a major study on poverty in Brazil published in the Journal of Human Resources showed that the effect of money managed by women in poor households was 20 times more likely to be spent on improving conditions in the home than money managed by men.
In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank founded by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has focused its poverty-busting microloans on women, with success rates far higher for female than for male borrowers. Microloan programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America have shown similar results.
In India's great economic transformation of the past 15 years, states that have the highest percentage of women in the labor force have grown the fastest as well as had the largest reductions in poverty, according to the World Bank.
"We have overwhelming evidence from almost all the developing regions of the world that [investment in] women make better economics," said Winnie Byanyima, director of the United Nations Development Program's gender team.
In Rwanda, the genocide left the population heavily female (60/40) Together with those jailed for war crimes that meant that women had to take on tasks that they never had before.
women, at first by default, took on roles in business and politics. Although women had long enjoyed a relatively higher social status in Rwanda than in some other African nations, women here still had weak property rights, and female entrepreneurs were rare.
That would change rapidly -- particularly in agriculture, where many women were forced to take over farms. They found an ally in the barrage of foreign organizations that rushed into Rwanda following the genocide, with much of their focus aimed at training women.
As important was an acceptance at the highest levels of government that women would need new legal status to help rebuild the nation. By 1999, reforms were passed enabling women to inherit property -- something that would prove vitally important to female farmers. At the same time, woman began rising to higher ranks of political power. Today women hold about 48 percent of the seats in Rwanda's parliament, the highest percentage in the world. They also account for 36 percent of President Paul Kagame's cabinet, holding the top jobs in the ministries of commerce, agriculture, infrastructure, foreign affairs and information.
Success in economics mirrored the rise of women in politics. Today, 41 percent of Rwandan businesses are owned by women -- compared for instance with 18 percent in Congo. Rwanda has the second-highest ratio of female entrepreneurs in Africa, behind Ghana with 44 percent, according to the World Bank.
The article follows that with "At the same time, Rwanda has engineered a surprisingly fast economic recovery," which seems to note a parallel ut unrelated event. I think that's underestimating the women. It seems reasonable from the article to -if not conclude, at least to wonder if- the opportunities offered to people who have never had them to take before have opened up new ways of being that have enabled that recovery. I don't necessarily think that it's just because they are women, but I do think it's because women aren't any different than men in this respect, when you deprive smart and competent people of the ability to use their skills, you drag everyone down. and when you give those people an opportunity to jump in and try, you get a fresh vision, and success.
And they are using their success to change their lives:
Perhaps more important for Nyirabaganwa, a woman who was only educated through primary school, is that Donatelia Mukampe Ta, 18 and her oldest female charge, is set to graduate from high school this year. Nyirabaganwa has promised to pay for her higher education in the capital, Kigali, where Ta hopes to become an accountant.
By Western standards, women still have a long way to go in Rwanda. Many of the women in Maraba who have husbands are culturally expected to ask their permission before engaging in any form of business. But some of these women who have inherited land from genocide victims have been able to use income from farming or renting that land to gain a measure of financial independence.
When Gemina Mukashyaka, 30, who cleans the coffee-tasting laboratory in Maraba, insisted that she pay for the schooling of her younger sister after their parents were killed in the genocide, her husband balked. She ignored his protests, paying with money she gained from leasing the land she inherited from her parents.
"My husband is not happy about my paying for my sister, but it is my money," she said. "The law in Rwanda now says that woman have that right. I will not let him stop me."
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Remarkably, still blogging the Omer
More than halfway through, and I'm still doing a daily blog (except Shabbat, of course, I double up afterwards) on the Omer count of the day. Over at Jewschool
Salon on "Faded Glory"
Andrew Leonard comments on Mallwart's line of jeans and shoes: "Faded Glory"
I think Mallwart is evil. They're not the most evil corporation around, but they certainly rank. Between their exploitation of workers, and their subversion of taxes to subsidize cheap, shoddily made goods; their sexism, their greed and their deliberate destruction of family enterprise... well, there's just nothing good to say about them. "faded Glory" let's hope it's a prescription for the company in general.
But changing circumstances have a way of twisting the irony knife. There's always been some bitterness to be mined in the marketing paradox that clothing designed to trade off of images of Americana is overwhelmingly manufactured in places like Bangladesh and China. But that's old-school irony. I don't know what the original brand name was supposed to signify -- perhaps that iconic era where faded jeans epitomized the hardworking cowboy, herding cattle from Texas to the Chicago stockyards. But in 2008, when America's global reputation is at possibly its lowest ebb ever, and large swaths of American citizens feel left behind by the global economy and their own elected representatives, Faded Glory clothes -- cheaply made, so shoddy as to be practicably disposable, and yet commodified into the very spirit of how Americans currently live -- well, who says there ain't no truth in advertising?
I think Mallwart is evil. They're not the most evil corporation around, but they certainly rank. Between their exploitation of workers, and their subversion of taxes to subsidize cheap, shoddily made goods; their sexism, their greed and their deliberate destruction of family enterprise... well, there's just nothing good to say about them. "faded Glory" let's hope it's a prescription for the company in general.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Blogging the Omer
For those who are interested (probably not many, since I haven't been regular to blog here in a while) I've been blogging the Omer over at Jewschool. I haven't missed any days so far (Shabbat gets blogged afterwards, of course), and I've been trying to blog on things that are at least somewhat related to the day's sfirotic theme.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Today is the most important holiday of the year!!!!
Well, next to talk like a pirate day, anyhow.
What, you didn't know it was Cheese Weasel day?
By the way, he's wrong abut the CheeseWeasel's choice cheese being craft: my cheese weasel brings only 5 Spokes Creamery Cheddar and Colby cheeses (kosher AND tasty! MMMM)
Hattip to Glenn for the traditional song for this date - I've been celebrating for years, but didn't know that there was one! (Check out Glenn's post for an assortment of excellent Cheeseweasel day links)
Who Brings the Cheese on April 3rd?
It's the Cheese Weasel!
He's not a silly bunny or a reindeer or a bird
He's the Cheese Weasel!
He's got a funny little tail and funny buck teeth
And he doesn't bring fish and he doesn't bring beef
So you'd better be good if you want to get some cheese
From the Cheese Weasel!!!!!"
and lots of love to my very own Cheeseweasel!
What, you didn't know it was Cheese Weasel day?
By the way, he's wrong abut the CheeseWeasel's choice cheese being craft: my cheese weasel brings only 5 Spokes Creamery Cheddar and Colby cheeses (kosher AND tasty! MMMM)
Hattip to Glenn for the traditional song for this date - I've been celebrating for years, but didn't know that there was one! (Check out Glenn's post for an assortment of excellent Cheeseweasel day links)
Who Brings the Cheese on April 3rd?
It's the Cheese Weasel!
He's not a silly bunny or a reindeer or a bird
He's the Cheese Weasel!
He's got a funny little tail and funny buck teeth
And he doesn't bring fish and he doesn't bring beef
So you'd better be good if you want to get some cheese
From the Cheese Weasel!!!!!"
and lots of love to my very own Cheeseweasel!
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Literary Roundup: Two poets
Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Jewish poet, feminist, has written another book that should sit on all our bookshelves. For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book is Ostriker's most recent book of essays addressing the and re-interpreting six of our richest biblical texts: Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Jonah and Job. Many of these are wells from which modern midrashists and feminists have drawn much water, but Ostriker is able to revisit many drawing new inspiration and showing how many of our traditional readings of these texts leave out a great deal that lies as subtext, and from which we can draw new strength and meaning.
Some of the readings address battles which have largely been fought, and which younger feminists, even younger Jewish feminists may feel are over. Yet, the truth is we keep revisiting them: in the secular world, when new movements form to try to make contraception illegal once again; in the Jewish world,women are still outnumbered as institutional leaders, presidents, and rabbis, in both worlds, getting paid less and receiving fewer benefits, being penalized for having children, and being constantly bombarded by bad science about how we ought to go back to the home. And of course, the battle is not won: not in Judaism, where there are still branches of Judaism in which women do not count, communities in which women have been so under pressure as those who lead men astray that against their rabbis' wills, they have taken on wearing clothes that cover them more thoroughly than any Muslim full-body covering, some even covering their eyes and being led about inthe street by children.And of courswe, there is a world full of other traditions, religions and societies in which women remain bound, hand and foot by men to whom they did not wish to wed, where they live only to serve, to husbands (in the sense of that word: one who dominates or cultivates) to whom they remain property.
From her essay on Song of Songs:
Some of the readings address battles which have largely been fought, and which younger feminists, even younger Jewish feminists may feel are over. Yet, the truth is we keep revisiting them: in the secular world, when new movements form to try to make contraception illegal once again; in the Jewish world,women are still outnumbered as institutional leaders, presidents, and rabbis, in both worlds, getting paid less and receiving fewer benefits, being penalized for having children, and being constantly bombarded by bad science about how we ought to go back to the home. And of course, the battle is not won: not in Judaism, where there are still branches of Judaism in which women do not count, communities in which women have been so under pressure as those who lead men astray that against their rabbis' wills, they have taken on wearing clothes that cover them more thoroughly than any Muslim full-body covering, some even covering their eyes and being led about inthe street by children.And of courswe, there is a world full of other traditions, religions and societies in which women remain bound, hand and foot by men to whom they did not wish to wed, where they live only to serve, to husbands (in the sense of that word: one who dominates or cultivates) to whom they remain property.
From her essay on Song of Songs:
"Open to me," Says the lover, but women understandably hesitate to do so. "I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?" Better to stay safely in one's place, not make waves. For what happens -according to respected Jewish tradition- to a woman who goes public with her spiritual need, whose yearning is larger than a kitchen, who does not hide behind a mehitza? What happens to the learned Beruria...Her devoted husband Rabbi Meir instigates one of his disciples to seduce her in order to prove that women are flighty. When the disciple finally overcomes her resistance, she kills herself for shame, but no one seems to think Rabbi Meir should be ashamed....What happens to women at the Wall? We are not speaking of allegory here, but real life. Women who dare to pray aloud with Torah in hand at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jeruslem, have been spat on, cursed, called whore. They have had chairs thrown at them, they have been beaten up and hospitalize, and they - they, not their assailants- have been arrested. ....As it is uncannily written, "The Keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
Literature Roundup: Jabotinsky
In the Times Online, appears a lengthy review by Geoffrey Wheatcroft of no fewer than 6 books on Israeli and her history: Jacqueline Rose's THE LAST RESISTANCE, Colin Shindler's THE TRIUMPH OF MILITARY ZIONISM: Nationalism and the origins of the Israeli Right, David Goldberg's THE DIVIDED SELF: Israel and the Jewish psyche today, Victoria Clark's ALLIES FOR ARMAGEDDON:The rise of Christian Zionism, Yakov M. Rabkin's A THREAT FROM WITHIN: A century of Jewish opposition to Zionism, and Jimmy Carter's PALESTINE: Peace not apartheid
The review is long and rangy, starting and ending with a focus on the complicated and largely unknown major Israeli historical figure Jabotinsky. As he says in the review,
But the conflict in the Holy Land is still more dissonant in this regard. It is the single most bitterly contentious communal struggle on earth today (something which itself casts an ironical light on the aspiration of the first Zionists to “answer the Jewish question” by “normalizing” the Jews and removing them from the pages of history); it must receive more media coverage than India, which has a population a hundred times greater; it inflames acute passions. And yet it sometimes seems that the more strongly people feel, the less they actually know about the story of Zionism. Maybe it should be a requirement for anyone who wishes to hold forth on the subject to write first a few lines each on Ahad Ha’am, Max Nordau, George Antonius – or Vladimir Jabotinsky.
If not many Europeans or Americans know who “Jabo” was, Israelis certainly do. He remains the most charismatic, fascinating and controversial figure in the history of Zionism, and in the state to whose creation he devoted his life, but which he never saw. Born in 1880 in Odessa, he was converted to the Zionist cause as a young man by tsarist persecution, became a tireless publicist and organizer, and helped to create the Jewish Legion which fought with the British against Turkey during the First World War. In the 1920s he broke away to found the uniformed youth group Betar, and then the militantly nationalistic right-wing brand of Zionism he called Revisionism, in opposition to Chaim Weizmann and the general Zionists, and to David Ben Gurion and the Labour Zionists of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
From Betar would grow the Irgun Zvei Leumi, which waged an armed campaign against the British and the Arabs – in British and Arab eyes, a terrorist campaign – in the ten years before Israel was born. When Jabotinsky died in American exile in 1940, he had not seen the murderous horror that engulfed the European Jews, the creation of the Jewish state, or the legacy of his own movement. The Irgun evolved into the right-wing Herut party, which was not merely excluded from office but veritably anathematized in Israel for the first quarter-century the state existed after 1948, but which, now in the guise of Likud, took power at last in 1977 under the old Irgun leader Menachem Begin – and which descends to the present administration.
His reviews cover books that are not only historical, but which also, importantly link that history and Israel's roots in Jabotinsky's vision, to the domination of today's Israeli politics by the heirs of Jabotinsky -literal heirs.
"Almost unremarked in the West, Israel today has the purest Jabotinskian government yet seen."
Generously, he points out the complexities of Jabotinsky's character, acknowledginfg his increible talents as a writer: "From Theodor Herzl – whose gifts as a writer were grudgingly acknowledged by Karl Kraus in Eine Krone für Zion, his 1898 anti-Zionist philippic, and who amplified his political tract Der Judenstaat in a didactic novel, Altneuland – Zionism was always a very literary movement. It has produced no greater writer than Jabotinsky, whose translations as well as his own work helped to create modern Hebrew literature," and seems to consider Jabotinsky more generous and truthful toward the Arabs than many of those who followed. Wheatcroft certainly sees Jabotinsky as more honest with himself. He also, with a few brief quotes shows how peculiar are the modern claims that Israel's origins were not colonialist.
...the only real difference between Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion may have been that the former expressed himself in public with greater bluntness. The record confirms that. Jabotinsky insisted that there could be no foreseeable compromise with the Palestinian Arabs: “The native population, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, and it made no difference whether the colonists behave decently or not”.
One of the odder claims made today by some Zionists, more likely American than Israeli, is that Zionism was an “anti-colonial” movement. Jabotinsky never pretended anything of the kind, as he made clear with his gift for vivid phrase-making, “The Iron Wall” being one case in point. When a colleague in the Legion had wondered whether, as Jews, they should be fighting the Muslims, their “uncle Ishmael”, Jabotinsky briskly replied that “Ishmael is not an uncle. We belong, thank God, to Europe and for two thousand years have helped to create the culture of the West”. And he rubbed it in harder still with the words, “The Jews came to the land of Israel to push the moral frontiers of Europe to the Euphrates”.
Indeed, as Jacqueline Rose is astute enough to notice and generous enough to acknowledge, Jabotinsky was in some ways less racist than other Zionists, in his insistence that “the entire country is full of Arab memories” and that the Palestinians naturally believed that it was their land too. We don’t know what he would have said and done in the circumstances of 1948, but ten years earlier he had explicitly repudiated the very idea of transfer: “It must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens”.
The review is worth reading, and in particular, it is interesting to see him simultaneously dismiss as "pious, plodding and platitudinous, its awestruck accounts of meetings with the mighty padded out with what-I-did-in-my-holidays jottings" Carter's book, and also see it as a benchmark of those who criticized it in such shrill tones, similar to that heard over Walt and Mearsheimer's work. He begins with Jabotinsky and ends with him: the figure whose politics and passion runs through Israeli life today in a largely unseen way.
xp Jewschool
Friday, March 07, 2008
A monster!
Apparently, a foreign policy adviser to Obama's presidential campaign
Samantha Power, claimed that Clinton would stoop to anything and called her "a monster."
She was, of course, required to retract:
"It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms," she said in the statement. "I apologize to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics."
But, man, if I were Clinton, I'd grab that monster and run with it:
"Yes! I am a monster! I am a monster of growth, I am a juggernaut! I am monstrously talented, monstrously strong..." You know, that kind of thing.
Well, let's see what happens. At this point, it's all good theatre.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Who are we? Redux
Because I am personally opposed to ever agreeing with anyone, I find myself, often, embroiled in interesting discussions with all sorts of folks. Over at JCarrot, I am having an interesting comments thread with Ben Murane (our own KFJ) about (I think) the difference between who is Jewish, and what is Jewish. The difficult part of this, of course, is that it's not a completely separate question.
Who one is affects what one does, and the reverse, as well.
I recall a famous quote by (the eminently quotable) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr:
"To be is to do"--Socrates.
"To do is to be"--Jean-Paul Sartre.
"Do be do be do"--Frank Sinatra.
Er, I'm getting off-topic here. Anyhow, so Over at the NYT , there is what is apparently another discussion of the ongoing rift caused by the stringent versus loose approach to answering the question of "who is a Jew."
The question for me is pretty fraught: I do believe that being this exclusive is ultimately untenable -but at the same time, there does need to be a certain level of internal definition of who gets to be considered "in."
The question remaining, of course, as to who is in enough, or how in they have to be, in order to make such determinations.
That's why I'm less interested in talking about who is Jewish, than what is Jewish. If one can agree on the latter, at least in broad terms, than the former can be fixed in almost any case.
Professionally, of course, I have dedicated myself to a particular kind of Judaism, and I do think that meaning inheres in Judaism in particular acts, practices and disciplines, and that there is a teleological reason for doing these practices. This doesn't invalidate other kinds of doing, but it does mean that not all doing can be accepted as within the boundaries of Judaism. And in truth, I can't really believe that anyone truly believes that anything goes. No matter how loose your boundaries are, there must be some, otherwise names become meaningless. If everything is "within" then one simply ceases to be - in simply a logical sense.
Anyhow, I invite others to pop in on the conversation, here or there.
xp to Jewschool comments turned off here to consolidate there.
Who one is affects what one does, and the reverse, as well.
I recall a famous quote by (the eminently quotable) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr:
"To be is to do"--Socrates.
"To do is to be"--Jean-Paul Sartre.
"Do be do be do"--Frank Sinatra.
Er, I'm getting off-topic here. Anyhow, so Over at the NYT , there is what is apparently another discussion of the ongoing rift caused by the stringent versus loose approach to answering the question of "who is a Jew."
The question for me is pretty fraught: I do believe that being this exclusive is ultimately untenable -but at the same time, there does need to be a certain level of internal definition of who gets to be considered "in."
The question remaining, of course, as to who is in enough, or how in they have to be, in order to make such determinations.
That's why I'm less interested in talking about who is Jewish, than what is Jewish. If one can agree on the latter, at least in broad terms, than the former can be fixed in almost any case.
Professionally, of course, I have dedicated myself to a particular kind of Judaism, and I do think that meaning inheres in Judaism in particular acts, practices and disciplines, and that there is a teleological reason for doing these practices. This doesn't invalidate other kinds of doing, but it does mean that not all doing can be accepted as within the boundaries of Judaism. And in truth, I can't really believe that anyone truly believes that anything goes. No matter how loose your boundaries are, there must be some, otherwise names become meaningless. If everything is "within" then one simply ceases to be - in simply a logical sense.
Anyhow, I invite others to pop in on the conversation, here or there.
xp to Jewschool comments turned off here to consolidate there.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
oh, YEAH!
Tiny Fey, "Bitches get things done!" Yes it is.
Hey, does this mean that SNL is going to be funny again now that they've got Tiny Fey back?
Hey, does this mean that SNL is going to be funny again now that they've got Tiny Fey back?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
A few thoughts on Ki Tisa
In reading over Ki Tisa, I feel drawn to a piece of commentary that, it seems to me, every year, I come back to again.
In the episode of the golden calf, in Shmot 32:1 it says:
“Arise and make for us elohim that they will go before us, since this man Moshe who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
The Chasidic commentator R. Meir Simcha says that Israel didn’t really want to make an idol. Rather, Israel thought that Moshe was so far above them that when he disappeared, they thought God would no longer come to dwell among them. As Hirsch also comments, the people didn’t believe that God came to them, but that Moshe brought God to them.
The Torah tells us that Israel said that Moshe was “the man who brought us out of Egypt.” That means that Israel did know that it was God who brought them out. Israel didn’t confuse Moshe and God – they knew that Moshe was doing God’s work, and they heard and saw all the miracles that God did for them.
– So, after Israel made the calf, they said (32:5)
“Tomorrow shall be a festival for God!” and in 32:4, just the verse before, they announced, “This is your God, Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.”
They didn’t think that the calf was a god, they were trying to make a place for God to dwell, or perhaps a footstool, a statue of precious metals that would be sort of like the cherubim that were on the ark, which was “God’s footstool,” so that God would dwell there. Israel had the idea that Moshe was the path to God. You see, with Moshe gone, they just knew that no mortal person was good enough for the shechinah to hover over. God was not with them, God was brought by Moshe.
This should give us pause. It is so very close to the idea of God requiring a mediator in Christianity (or even multiple mediators, first, their Xristos, and secondly in some sects, the priests) – or closer to home, the idea that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah, who will be revived from the dead. Perhaps it is a natural human feeling to want a person who is better than us to serve as a channel to the divine, perhaps it is natural to feel that we are not good enough to bring God amongst ourselves. But this is contrary to what Judaism tells us. We do not know the place of Moshe’s burial because God was concerned about this sort of idolatry.
And make no mistake: it was not the calf which was the idolatry. We don’t have to worship something as God or as a god for it to become idolatrous. It is the act of removing responsibility from ourselves to connect with God that is the essential act of idolatry. Believing that only Moshe can bring God to us, that’s idolatry, because God is not at the beck and call of a person. Any person. Our connection to God is part of an ongoing relationship that we have to build both as individuals and also as a people.
Shmot Rabbah 44:1 says:
Another explanation of ’Thou didst pluck up a vine out of Egypt’. …Thou wilt also verify the explanation: ‘Just as the living vine is supported by dead stalks, so Israel, alive and eternal, lean upon their patriarchs who are dead.’ You will thus find that Elijah offered up many supplications on Mount Carmel for the fire to descend, as it says, Hear me, O Lord, hear me (I Kings 18:37), but the Lord did not hearken unto him. As soon, however, as he mentioned the dead, and said: O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel (ib. 36), he was immediately answered; ... Moses, likewise, after Israel had committed that act [the Calf], stood for forty days and nights pleading n their behalf, but he was not answered; but as soon as he made mention of the dead he was immediately answered, as it says, REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL, THY SERVANTS. What follows?--AND THE LORD REPENTED OF THE EVIL WHICH HE SAID HE WOULD DO UNTO HIS PEOPLE. A proof that just as the vine that lives receives its support from dead stalks, so do living Israel find support in their patriarchs long dead;- hence REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL.
Israel does honor those who came before, and we depend upon the merit of our ancestors. But this is a world away from considering them the saints through whom God comes to us. The reason that the image is of a vine is that the vine appears dead, but it lives, and that is why the vine can continue to be fruitful. But that doesn’t mean that our ancestors are literally alive, nor chas v’shalom, that we should expect their resurrection to bring moshiach. To the contrary, it is because the vine that is green is part of the vine, just as the part that appears dead is part of the vine. It is only that the core of the vine is alive throughout the vine. Without that green sap and core, none of the vine will exist or bear: and what is that vine? It is God and Torah within all of us. When we depend upon the merit of our ancestors, it means that we recognize the Torah within them, and let it flow through us as well. But what happens if you think that the older part of the vine will be revived, and the green, new parts doesn’t have to bear new fruit? Well, nothing. That part of the vine is no longer the part that bears.
The problem is when we become emotionally attached to the fallacies of the idolatry. When there is comfort in an imagined past in which everyone knew their place and were rewarded for it, in which we view with sentimentality the way people lived, and disregard that which is before our eyes as sin and wrong, we are already setting ourselves up for failure. There is no one who should come between us and God. God does not require a footstool, Moshe is a leader, not a channeler, and certainly not a magician making the spirits do his will. To excuse oneself from the duty of bringing moshiach because someone else is there to do it, or be it, that's idolatry.
In the episode of the golden calf, in Shmot 32:1 it says:
“Arise and make for us elohim that they will go before us, since this man Moshe who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
The Chasidic commentator R. Meir Simcha says that Israel didn’t really want to make an idol. Rather, Israel thought that Moshe was so far above them that when he disappeared, they thought God would no longer come to dwell among them. As Hirsch also comments, the people didn’t believe that God came to them, but that Moshe brought God to them.
The Torah tells us that Israel said that Moshe was “the man who brought us out of Egypt.” That means that Israel did know that it was God who brought them out. Israel didn’t confuse Moshe and God – they knew that Moshe was doing God’s work, and they heard and saw all the miracles that God did for them.
– So, after Israel made the calf, they said (32:5)
“Tomorrow shall be a festival for God!” and in 32:4, just the verse before, they announced, “This is your God, Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.”
They didn’t think that the calf was a god, they were trying to make a place for God to dwell, or perhaps a footstool, a statue of precious metals that would be sort of like the cherubim that were on the ark, which was “God’s footstool,” so that God would dwell there. Israel had the idea that Moshe was the path to God. You see, with Moshe gone, they just knew that no mortal person was good enough for the shechinah to hover over. God was not with them, God was brought by Moshe.
This should give us pause. It is so very close to the idea of God requiring a mediator in Christianity (or even multiple mediators, first, their Xristos, and secondly in some sects, the priests) – or closer to home, the idea that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah, who will be revived from the dead. Perhaps it is a natural human feeling to want a person who is better than us to serve as a channel to the divine, perhaps it is natural to feel that we are not good enough to bring God amongst ourselves. But this is contrary to what Judaism tells us. We do not know the place of Moshe’s burial because God was concerned about this sort of idolatry.
And make no mistake: it was not the calf which was the idolatry. We don’t have to worship something as God or as a god for it to become idolatrous. It is the act of removing responsibility from ourselves to connect with God that is the essential act of idolatry. Believing that only Moshe can bring God to us, that’s idolatry, because God is not at the beck and call of a person. Any person. Our connection to God is part of an ongoing relationship that we have to build both as individuals and also as a people.
Shmot Rabbah 44:1 says:
Another explanation of ’Thou didst pluck up a vine out of Egypt’. …Thou wilt also verify the explanation: ‘Just as the living vine is supported by dead stalks, so Israel, alive and eternal, lean upon their patriarchs who are dead.’ You will thus find that Elijah offered up many supplications on Mount Carmel for the fire to descend, as it says, Hear me, O Lord, hear me (I Kings 18:37), but the Lord did not hearken unto him. As soon, however, as he mentioned the dead, and said: O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel (ib. 36), he was immediately answered; ... Moses, likewise, after Israel had committed that act [the Calf], stood for forty days and nights pleading n their behalf, but he was not answered; but as soon as he made mention of the dead he was immediately answered, as it says, REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL, THY SERVANTS. What follows?--AND THE LORD REPENTED OF THE EVIL WHICH HE SAID HE WOULD DO UNTO HIS PEOPLE. A proof that just as the vine that lives receives its support from dead stalks, so do living Israel find support in their patriarchs long dead;- hence REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL.
Israel does honor those who came before, and we depend upon the merit of our ancestors. But this is a world away from considering them the saints through whom God comes to us. The reason that the image is of a vine is that the vine appears dead, but it lives, and that is why the vine can continue to be fruitful. But that doesn’t mean that our ancestors are literally alive, nor chas v’shalom, that we should expect their resurrection to bring moshiach. To the contrary, it is because the vine that is green is part of the vine, just as the part that appears dead is part of the vine. It is only that the core of the vine is alive throughout the vine. Without that green sap and core, none of the vine will exist or bear: and what is that vine? It is God and Torah within all of us. When we depend upon the merit of our ancestors, it means that we recognize the Torah within them, and let it flow through us as well. But what happens if you think that the older part of the vine will be revived, and the green, new parts doesn’t have to bear new fruit? Well, nothing. That part of the vine is no longer the part that bears.
The problem is when we become emotionally attached to the fallacies of the idolatry. When there is comfort in an imagined past in which everyone knew their place and were rewarded for it, in which we view with sentimentality the way people lived, and disregard that which is before our eyes as sin and wrong, we are already setting ourselves up for failure. There is no one who should come between us and God. God does not require a footstool, Moshe is a leader, not a channeler, and certainly not a magician making the spirits do his will. To excuse oneself from the duty of bringing moshiach because someone else is there to do it, or be it, that's idolatry.
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