Mahzor

New York Public Library

Churches

Sarajevo Haggadah

Mah Nishtanah

Sarajevo haggadah

Antaea Darom

Israeli women's art

Action

Torah as music

Ben Heine

Action

ceramic bowl

Mohammad Said Kalash, "Offering Reconciliation" exhibit (photo: Ilan Amihai)

Action

Punch and Judy/Pinchas and Jamila

Avi Katz

Action

David Grossman

Ben Heine

Action

Eldrige Street shul

Lower East Side

Action

Dove

Ben Heine

Action

Two birds

Hoda Jamal

Action

Israeli and Palestinian boys

from documentary, Promises

Action

Cat in the Hat

Yiddish version

Action

Daylight through the Wall

Banksy: graffiti art on Separation Wall

Action

Maurice Sendak's Brundibar set

New Victory Theater (photo: Nan Melville/NYT)

Action

Daniel Barenboim, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Palestinian-Israeli musical ensemble (photo: Kerstin Joensson/AP)

Action

Great Day on Eldrige Street

N.Y.'s klezmer greats celebrate shul rededication (photo: Leo Sorel)

Action

Joint Appeal for Peace

(Avi Katz)

Joint Appeal for Peace

Ketubah, Ancona, Italy (1772)

(Jewish Theological Seminary library)

Ancona ketubah

Posts Tagged ‘east-jerusalem’

Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva Students Sport Sweatshirts Calling for Destruction of Dome of Rock

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
ateret cohanim sweatshirt--destroy dome of rock

Ateret Cohanim sweatshirt calling for destruction of Dome of Rock: 'Sometimes you have to take off the kippah.'

Apparently, one of the hot fashion items this season in the far-right Israeli yeshiva culture is a sweatshirt sold by students at the Ateret Cohamin yeshiva which calls for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock.  The sweatshirt, a picture of which is displayed here, says in literal Hebrew:

Sometimes you have to take off the kippah.

Kippah can mean either yarmulke or “dome,” hence the double meaning.  This “wit” passes for political commentary in the Jewish terror crowd.  Ateret Cohanim is the settler extremist group which is fraudulently “buying” East Jerusalem Palestinian property, evicting residents, and installing kosher Jewish settlers in their place as part of the orchestrated campaign to rid the city of Arabs.  It also is training potential High Priests who can resume the sacrificial ritual of the Holy Temple once it is rebuilt, and presumably the Dome of the Rock destroyed.  The sweats have been sold since at least 2007 according to messages posted at far-right message boards.

Imagine if Fatah youth sported sweatshirts calling for blowing up the Western Wall.  How would that be received?  I haven’t heard a peep from Itamar Marcus and his boys at Palestine Media Watch about this latest form of religious incitement against Palestinian holy places.  I wonder why?

Former JDL leader and current New York Democratic powerhouse Dov Hikind is closely identified with Ateret Cohanim, as his wife is the paid fundraiser for the American affiliate.  Last year, they brought former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to endorse their efforts, where he also joined Irving Moskowitz at the recently stolen Shepherd Hotel property.

Sheikh Jarrah Settlers Let Attack Dogs Loose Against Protesters

Monday, January 2nd, 2012
Yaakov Fauci sets attack dog against sheikh jarrah protesters

Settler Yaakov Fauci lets attack loose against Sheikh Jarrah protesters (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP-Getty)

Sports Illustrated has its bikini issues featuring the hottest bods of 2011.  We have our own feature: the Settlers of Sheikh Jarrah.  This may become a regular feature if my friends in Solidarity can produce figures as colorful as today’s subject, Yaakov Fauci aka Yaakov Ish Tam and the Kalashnikover Rebbe.

In a scene reminiscent of other times of historic Jewish tragedy in the last century, at last Friday’s weekly Sheikh Jarrah protest against Palestinian home theft, one of the most radical of the settlers,  the Israeli-American Fauci, let loose a vicious attack dog (rather humorously named, if you’re a settler, Shiksa) against the Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators at the scene (be sure to check out the Jerusalem Post video featuring Fauci training the dog to attack the Muslim enemy).  They were protesting Fauci’s occupation (cf. theft) of the Al-Kurd home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood.

Fauci’s Yaakov Ish Tam moniker is a diminutive meaning “simple man.”  But tam can also mean a simpleton, which seems more apt.

Later during the protest, media photographers snapped shots of a wounded Fauci and there was a claim that the demonstrators did this to him.  One who was there saw no rock throwing, but said there was a rumor that a Palestinian youth threw a rock at him.  Of course the bloodied Fauci will be used for settler propaganda for months, if not years.  But no one will remember the picture I feature here of Fauci reminding us of the way our ancestors were treated in 1930s Germany.

Fauci has an interesting extremist “rap sheet.”  He’s lived in the far-right settlement of Tapuach, once the home as well to Israeli mass murder, Eden Natan Zada.  Fauci is a member of the farthest right-wing settler extremist group, Revava, which also boasted Zada as a member.  The Sheikh Jarrah thief was arrested in 2005 for posting flyers praising Eden Zada’s killing spree.  He also was delighted at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a fellow Jewish terrorist (though Fauci’s more of a wannabe).  The only thing Fauci regrets is that he can only sic a dog on the demonstrators.  No doubt he’d prefer a Kalashnikov if he could get away with it.

East Jerusalem Palestinians Must Vote, If Not in PA Elections Then in Israeli Ones

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Avi Issacharoff has penned another one of his stenographic reports that could’ve been dictated (and very well might’ve been) by the right wing political or military leadership.  In it, he claims that Hamas and the PA will demand that in the coming Palestinian elections Hamas be allowed to run in East Jerusalem as it did in the last 2006 elections.  They will do so, the reporter claims, in order to embarrass the Israeli government since they “know” the far-right Israeli government is unlikely to permit Hamas to run.  In the eyes of Issacharoff and his sources, it’s the obligation of the Palestinians to accommodate the political interests of Israeli nationalists.  Since East Jerusalem Palestinians live in territory annexed by Israel if the latter allowed Hamas to run for office there it would give the Islamist group a foot in the door to gain legitimacy both among Palestinians and within Israeli-controlled territory.

East Jerusalem Palestinians must be allowed to vote for elected PA representatives.  They must have the same choices other Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza have.  If they don’t, then they are not fully enfranchised.  If that is so, then Israel must allow them to vote in Israeli elections and preferably make them Israeli citizens.  If neither of these alternatives happen, then Israel is an apartheid racist state which offers Jews a superior level of citizenship, Israeli Palestinians a middling level of citizenship, and East Jerusalemites almost no rights at all.

Israel has to decide which option to follow.  Refusing to allow East Jerusalemites to vote is impermissible and should be sanctioned by international bodies if it happens.

Meir Rotter, Radical Rightist Settler, Police Officer, Suppresses Israeli Palestinian Speech

Thursday, October 27th, 2011
meir rotter bullies azzam maraka

Israeli police officer and radical setter, Meir Rotter, bullies Azzam Maraka. Note tough-guy shades and knitted skullcap, among trademarks of radical settlers (Mondoweiss)

I’ve written here before about the extremist pro-settler views of Israeli police officer, Meir Rotter, who has often been known to provoke fights with Sheikh Jarrah protesters.  He is the son of Rabbi Rotter, who runs one of Israel’s most popular internet news portals, somewhat akin to the Drudge Report, if you can imagine Matt Drudge wearing a talit katan and knitted settler-style yarmulke.

Rotter, under a poorly concealed pseudonym, voiced anti-democratic, anti-State political views on the Rotter forum, and then denied that he was the one who wrote them though I proved he had.  Among other things, he incited violence against the Sheikh Jarrah protesters calling for them to be harmed.  File a complaint?  Fuhgedaboudit.  This is Israel.  No one cares.

Today, thanks to Mondoweiss, we catch up with Rotter in his new role as anti-Palestinian thought police.  He and his police colleagues have been doing their damndest to maintain the peace in Sheikh Jarrah by suppressing the worst, most violent impulses of the Palestinian natives.  Take for example, Azzam Maraka, a shopkeeper in the neighborhood who’s clearly trying to incite pogroms by hanging a picture of Recep Tayyip  Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister in his shop window.  Maraka admires Erdogan because of Turkey’s participation in the 2010 Gaza flotilla and because he’s stood up for Gaza on the world stage.

Personally, I can’t think of anything more likely to destroy the State of Israel than subversive acts like this.  I’m glad Rotter agrees, as he and his colleagues have fined Maraka five times and a total of $650 (up till now, more likely to follow).

Just in case any of you were wondering on what grounds the Israeli Palestinian has been fined: supposedly shops are not allowed to hang signs in their windows on the street.  Er, actually, the “law” appears to apply only to Maraka as other businesses on the street displaying signs of the same size have not been targeted.  ’Democracy,’ Israel-style.  Free speech?  Never heard of it.

Imagine the level and quality of Israeli policing

IDF: Palestinian Kindergarten ‘Terror Center’

Thursday, September 8th, 2011
abu tor school closed by idf

Budding Hamas terrorists learning terror at young age (Emil Salman)

A year ago or so the IDF shuttered a West Bank charity for orphaned children because it was supposedly funded by Hamas.  Today, the IDF has once again done itself proud by punishing children for the alleged sins of their elders:

Sixty-four kindergarten children in the Abu Tor neighborhood of Jerusalem are sitting at home though their classes were due to begin Sunday. The police commissioner sealed their building for security reasons.

The building had previously been rented by the Jerusalem municipality for the Ahmed Samech school, which was moved elsewhere, and the Najat kindergarten classes, which had operated elsewhere, were slated to open in the building instead.

But at the end of last week, the hinges on the building’s door were welded shut, and a closure order posted.

“After I became convinced that the building in Abu Tor was destined to be used for Hamas activities, I am ordering it shut until October 4, 2011,” read the order, signed by Insp. Gen. Yohanan Danino.

They’ve decided that an East Jerusalem kindergarten run by a Palestinian NGO, which is duly, legally registered with the Interior Ministry, is a terror front for Hamas.  Which leaves 65 children without a school.  That’s not unusual for East Jerusalem since the municipality provides almost no services for its Palestinians residents, which includes almost no public schools.  That’s why this news hits especially hard.

The Jerusalem Police have resorted to the usual suspects, “confidential sources,” to decide that the NGO running the school is a Hamas front:

The Jerusalem Police, citing classified intelligence, said that “the site was meant to serve as a place of terror activity. The Najat movement is headed by known Hamas operatives, and the police commissioner ordered the location closed.”

One wonders what the nature of the classified material was?  Perhaps a child’s drawing of an F-16 dropping a bomb on Gaza?  Or a child singing about his love for Palestine?  Or perhaps the poor children were caught being trained to produce suicide vests for their elders?

After all, the IDF is only acting on the divine teachings of Torat Hamelech, which tells us that it is permissible to kill Palestinian children because they will grow up to become terrorists who kill Jews.  In that spirit, closing down the kindergarten seems only fitting, as it will without doubt become a breeding ground for terror.

East Jerusalem’s Armenian Ceramic Art

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
olive tree of jerusalem

The Olive Tree of Jerusalem (Armenian Ceramics, East Jerusalem)

Tonight, I’m repaying a debt that is long overdue.  A few years ago when I was installing the slideshow you see in my banner above, I discovered a beautiful mural on a website called Tikkun Tree.  There they displayed a work of art which I discovered had been created in a style called Balian Armenian ceramics created solely by the company, Armenian Ceramics, East Jerusalem.  Anyone haunting the Old City shuk will know Armenian ceramics, as they’re all over the place.  But the only ones that are original works of art are those produced in the studios of Armenian Ceramics.  The work was featured in an exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC in 1992.  The owner, Neshan Balian, graciously granted me permission to use the Jerusalem Olive Tree mural image in my slideshow, which is the first image you see when you open a page at my website.

I feature the image here for your enjoyment.  The company’s website is full of gorgeous works of art suitable for all manner of residential installations as you can see by visiting the site.  Please use my name and mention Tikun Olam if you do contact them.

Thanks to reader Maria for admiring their work and reminding me of my obligation.

Jewish Summer Camps: Nostalgia for Bygone Liberal Zionist Past

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

I am a product of the Jewish summer camp movement.  I attended Camp Ramahs in New England (Palmer, MA), American Seminar (Nyack, NY) and Glen Spey, NY between 1967 and 1970.  They played a formative role in the development of my Jewish, spiritual and intellectual identity.  My teachers and counselors taught me to think, they taught me to pray, they taught me to make friends, they taught me to develop myself creatively.  To this day names like Louis Hartman, Stuart Kelman, Alan Mintz, Joseph Lukinsky, Robert Cover, Neal Kaunfer, Joseph Riemer, Jonathan Fenster, Daniel Matt, Raphael Artz and many others are etched fondly in my mind (and a few tyrants like David Mogilner and Seymour Fox, not so fondly).

They taught me to inquire about the world.  Not just to ask probing questions, but to expose uncomfortable truths, to resist injustice wherever we found it, to questions our elders and the religious tradition.  They taught us to be brave in this pursuit and to let the chips fall where they may.  All of this left an indelible impression and created the adult I am.  It is truly an amazing legacy.

Under Joe Lukinsky’s tutelage I rebelled against the course offerings at the Nyack Ramah and he helped me develop an independent study course in which I read some of the major tracts of Zionist thought and history, at the end of which I wrote a paper, some of whose ideas you’ll find in this blog.  Rabbi Lukinsky encouraged me to send the paper to Prof. Ernst Simon, one of the co-founders of Brit Shalom, who actually wrote me a lovely reply on receiving it!  Joe took a defiant, confused, and perhaps angry boy and turned him into a disciplined thinking Jew.  For that I am eternally grateful.  And without this Tikun Olam would not exist.

Fortunately for me, I attended these campus during the apogee of the student anti-war movement of the late 1960s, when provocative intellectual questioning was de rigeur.  At no other time in the history of Camp Ramah would it allow a staging of Hair! (in English, no less!).  Unfortunately, that production caused such a severe backlash among parents and perhaps the Jewish Theological Seminary staff who sponsored the camp, that they stopped sending their children and it closed down for a few years after that.

When the camp reopened it was shorn of the bold experimentation that characterized the Palmer Ramah of the past.  Instead, it became a place devoted to rigorous adherence to Conservative theological Orthodoxy and sexual decorum.

I now have young children of my own, and naturally I think about what types of Jewish and camp experiences I’d like them to have.  In fact, my oldest son last summer attended Camp Solomon Schechter here in the Northwest.  But he surprised me this year when he said he didn’t want to go.  He wasn’t able to articulate why and I didn’t probe, so I don’t want to assume on his behalf the reasons why he declined.  But this camp, as good and earnest as it might be, is inculcating in children not just the good values we want them to have as educated American Jews, but also the impoverished consensus values of liberal Zionism so characteristic of the organized Jewish community.

This is what Allison Benedikt railed against in her essay, Life After Zionist Summer Camp, and what Mira Sucharov crowed about in her bit of toxic nostalgia, In Defense of Zionist Summer Camp, in Haaretz.  I actually come down somewhere in between the two of them (though I’m more sympathetic to Benedikt) because unlike Benedikt, I think Camp Ramah did lay the groundwork for the bold, questioning Jew I am today.  But unlike Sucharov I don’t believe the Zionist summer camps teach diversity or probing ideas as they might’ve in the 1960s.  And if Sucharov’s essay is any indication, she’s still stuck in a time warp that prevents her from fully recognizing the dolorousness of so much of contemporary Zionist thought.

This summer my son will attend a local Mideast Peace Camp where he will hear different messages and learn a different value system than he would at a traditional Jewish summer camp.  I will not encourage him to attend a Camp Ramah, though if he wanted to I would be willing to send him.  I do not want to put him in a situation in which his political views would be in the minority and he might be pressured or ostracized to adapt to the majority.

I want my son to think for himself.  I want to introduce him to as many different ways of looking at the Jewish world as possible.  That’s why he attended Solomon Schechter and why he continues to attend Hebrew school.  That’s why I expect he will pursue Jewish studies courses in college.  But I will not allow my son to fall prey to the nostalgia for a liberal Zionist past that exists only in the minds of people like Sucharov and Gershom Gorenberg.  Unfortunately, there is too much rote thought and acceptance of stale consensus views in the mainstream Jewish community when it comes to Israel.  I want my children to go beyond this and see more of the world than the little window offered by today’s Camp Ramah.  I want them to know Arab-Americans and Palestinians.  Of course, I also want them to know their fellow Jews.  But their relationships must not stop there as they so often do in the Jewish summer camp movement.

Milad Ayyash, 17, Killed by Settler Guard’s Bullet

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

milad ayyash posterThe current round of Nakba Day bloodshed was “kicked off” a few days ago by a demonstration outside an illegal settler home in the Beit Yonatan neighborhood of East Jerusalem.  It was just an ordinary day in which Silwan residents were protesting yet another eviction and displacement by the radical settlers attempting to Judaize that part of the city.  Suddenly a window flung open from the settler lair and shots rang out.  One of the notorious private security guards employed to protect the settlers had killed again.

Milad Ayyash, a 17 year old boy, was shot in the chest and died.  Israeli authorities “are investigating,” which is code for we’ll do as little as we can and then when things have quieted down we’ll close the case.

Thanks to the original graphic art from Lahav Halevy.  He included the wonderful quotation from Psalm 37 sung during the Shabbat birkat ha-mazon:

I was young once but now I am old…

Halevy poignantly changed the words in the second half of the phrase to:

…and will never grow old

Michael Levin and I worked on this English version.  Please circulate it as widely as you can on blogs, social networking sites, etc.

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