Over breakfast one morning the spousal unit said "Here's something that might interest you – a walking tour with Sayed Kashua." We both enjoy reading the Israeli-Arab's columns in Haaretz every weekend (in English translation from the original Hebrew), and she knows I've read one of his books (in the original Hebrew). "Great idea." I figured maybe our 16 year old daughter would like to come. She said sure. I sent a link to the Wikipedia entry for Sayed Kashua so she'd know who it was we were going to follow around Jerusalem. I watched an episode of the TV series he created, "Avodah Aravit," Arab Labor, to get in the mood. Here's the description of the tour from the Jerusalem Writer's Festival website:

Literary Tour: Sayed Kashua Walks around Jerusalem

A tour along the seam of Jerusalem neighborhoods – invisible but constantly present, in the path of Sayed Kashua's columns and stories. We will look at the nooks and crannies of the city from a fresh perspective; contemporary and complex, through Kashua's penetrating stare and his characteristic and quiet cynicism.

We arrived at the appointed time and place for the start of the tour – in front of the Jerusalem YMCA. There was a young lady with a clipboard standing amidst a group of about a dozen people. Must be our group. No sign of the famous author, but I figured the girl with the clipboard was some sort of assistant checking people in, etc., and the author would be there momentarily.

About two minutes later, a bunch of yelling broke out. One of the other people on the tour was waving the program guide around and yelling (in Hebrew) "what do you mean he's not coming? It says "im Sayed Kashua," "with Sayed Kashua." She kept ranting in American accented Hebrew, as another guy with American accented Hebrew tried to shut her down by repeating over and over "hu lo po v'hu lo yagiah." "He's not here, and he's not coming." Shut up and deal, in other words. A couple of people told the complainer that it's a two minute walk to the cashier, go over there and ask for a refund, but stop arguing already, the rest of us want to get going on the tour.

While all this was going on, it struck me that this could be a scene from one of Sayed Kashua's columns, which are often filled with misunderstandings that come about as a result of incorrect expectations. Too bad he wasn't tagging along behind to write about it! J

Showing that she must be more real Israeli than American import, within five minutes the woman who had been complaining so loudly was walking along next to the tour guide, Meirav, chatting away amiably. Go figure.

I was also more than a little disappointed. But since we were there, we decided to go along on the tour anyway. So we walked along with this young woman – better looking than Sayed Kashua, if you go by the pictures, but I admit to being biased in favor of girls – as she read excerpts from some of his books and columns as we strolled past the places mentioned. For example, we paused in Mamilla Mall as she read the following excerpt (in the original Hebrew) from one of his columns:

I hate the Mamilla Mall. I never go there, and walking through it toward the Old City has always rubbed me the wrong way. You have all these fancy-shmancy stores ruining the view of the Old City walls. When it comes to building preservation, Jerusalem must be one of the lamest cities in the world. Here they're always searching for things under the earth and meanwhile, what's above it is often trampled and hidden for the sake of more and more apartment buildings and stores. But I had no choice. For the sake of my wife's birthday, I had to sacrifice a few values and go to the Mamilla Mall.

Pity it wasn't the author himself leading us. Having read about his fondness for drinking, I'm sure we could have stopped into "Jerusalem's most tolerant pub" for a glass of whiskey. It was a hot day, I'm sure we could have used it, especially the ice.

Maybe his publicist will pick up this blog piece on the Google alert he no doubt has for his client, he'll forward it to the famous author himself, who'll email me and invite me to meet him at that pub for a drink to make up for the grave disappointment we suffered from not having him lead our tour.

Otherwise I'll have to catch him in LA or Amsterdam or somewhere, as he seems to spend more time outside Israel than in it these days. But who can blame him?

 Today, May 15, is the day that Palestinians commemorate as "Nakba Day," "Catastrophe Day," a day to mark the expulsion from homes in Israel during the 1948 war.

Nakba Day provides a great example of how much lack of understanding there is in this part of the world.

On the one hand, there are Jews who will deny that there was any expulsion of Arabs, who try to claim they all left willingly.  Never mind that they owned homes they weren't allowed to come back to.  In an article that was published a few years ago on the Huffington Post, Alan Dershowitz wrote "The Germans don't celebrate the catastrophe resulting from their invasion of Poland. Japanese do not celebrate their catastrophe resulting from the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Why do Palestinians celebrate their catastrophe resulting from the Arab attack against Israel?"

Dershowitz misses several important points, that are pointed out in an article by Aziz Abu Sarah that was published on +972.  First of all the Palestinians don't "celebrate" Nakba Day any more than Jews "celebrate" Tisha b'Av, the holiday that marks many disasters that have befallen the Jewish people over the course of history.  They "commemorate" the day.  And Nakba Day is just as much about the injustices of the ongoing Occupation of the West Bank as it is about what happened in 1948.

On the other hand, what's missing from Abu Sarah's blog post -- and from most of the Palestinian narrative -- is the role that they (or their ancestors) had in the disaster.  As Dershowitz points out, the precipitating event was largely a "self-inflicted wound."  The Arabs rejected the UN's partition plan.  They didn't want to share with the Jews, they wanted it all.  And they ended up with much less.

Of course, maybe that's understandable.  After all, some of the biggest disasters that we commemorate on Tisha b'Av -- the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70, and the crushing of the Bar Kochba revolt a little over 60 years later -- were also "self-inflicted wounds."  Our pipsqueak little country thought they could take on Rome.  Get serious.  But when we mourn on Tisha b'Av we only take responsibility in a very abstract way -- the story of Kamza and Bar Kamza -- we don't talk about the geopolitical lessons we should have learned.  Like don't mess with Empires that are a hundred times more powerful than you are.

The way I look at Nakba Day is as follows:

It was, indeed, a catastrophe for the Palestinians.  Hundreds of thousands of people were dispossessed of their homes in 1948.  The human and financial toll was tremendous.

And yes, it was to a large degree "self-inflicted," in that the Arabs refused to accept the idea of any Jewish state at all, and chose to go to war instead.  But that does not reduce the suffering, and that does not justify the injustices that were done by the fledgling Jewish state.  

Furthermore, the ongoing Israeli military occupation of the West Bank continues to exact a major toll on the lives of the Palestinians.  The status quo is hugely unjust.  Yes, the Arabs made a major mistake in 1948, but that does not mean that their children and grandchildren should be punished forever.  It is well past time for the Palestinian and Israeli leadership, both, to get their act together and put together a just and lasting peace.

I blame both sides for the current lack of progress.  Netanyahu is wrong for continuing to build settlements and confiscate more land in the West Bank, and Abbas is wrong for setting pre-conditions before negotiating.  Both sides are screwed up.

But what else is new in this part of the world...

 "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land" …Leviticus 25:10

"Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall you buy, and of their families that are with you, which they fathered in your land; and they shall be your possession. And you shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your slaves for ever." …Leviticus 25:45-46

Neither the Torah nor the founding fathers of America seemed particularly concerned with inherent contradiction in "proclaiming liberty throughout the land" while still condoning slavery. In the Torah "liberty" was really something for Jewish males above the age of majority. The famous verse from this week's Torah portion, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land" is inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. In 18^th century America, liberty was for white males over 21, and even then especially for landowners. Historically "liberty" all too often meant liberty for people who are the dominant group, and not for anyone else.

The world has become remarkably more diverse and pluralistic. Discrimination on the basis of race and gender has been banned throughout the civilized world. Even though the traditional Jewish marriage contract still uses the language of "kinyan," acquiring a bride, no one, except perhaps a few extremists, still view marriage as the man acquiring the wife in the way he would acquire some other possession. In America, President Barack Obama just took a stand on the last civil rights battle in that country, the right of homosexuals to marry each other.

Our "moral intuition" nowadays tells us that slavery in any form is wrong. It doesn't matter if the slave is a Jew or a Gentile, white or black, one human being cannot ever own another human being. We can find plenty of support for such a view in the Torah and the Jewish tradition.

What is it that make humans unique compared to other animals? We are created b'tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. How can one person possibly "own" another person that is created in the divine image?

The Jewish tradition forbids both tattoos and suicide for a similar foundational reason: your body is NOT yours to do what you want with. Your body belongs to God who created you. Tattoos would be permanently marring something that doesn't belong to you; just as we used to joke when I was in the US Army that if you got a sunburn you could be subject to punishment for damaging government property. Suicide is forbidden for the same reason: it's not your body and your life to do whatever you want with, it is God's, so suicide is seen as the ultimate act of revolt against God. Just an aside: nowadays we understand that no one commits suicide with a clear and rational mind – suicide is the result of depression which is disease, so we are no longer prejudiced against people who committed suicide.

In any case, if your own body is not your own, al achat cama v'cama, all the more so, someone else's body cannot belong to you.

Is it possible that our "moral intuition" should over rule the Torah? Isn't the Torah eternal? How can we change what it says in the Torah?

The truth is that an evolving moral intuition has always informed the way we read the Torah. The rabbis of the Mishnaic era were troubled by the laws in the Torah regarding the ben sorer u'moreh, the stubborn and rebellious son, they were troubled by capital punishment, so they effectively legislated those things out of existence. The rabbis could have looked for ways to allow animal sacrifice at a place other than the Temple, as was the early Jewish practice. They never even tried.

It's not new to have compassion for people who are slaves. In the Talmud Rabban Gamliel mourned for his slave Tabi as if he was a member of his family. When some of his students protested "we don't mourn for slaves," Rabban Gamliel's response was "Tabi was a good man."

A thousand years ago Rambam said "It is permitted to work an eved K'nani with rigor. Though such is the law, it is the quality of piety and the way of wisdom that a man be merciful and pursue justice and not make his yoke heavy upon his slave or distress him, but give him to eat and to drink of all foods and drinks."

But more than simply being compassionate to slaves, it is in fact possible to change halacha as our moral awareness evolves. In his Guide to the Perplexed, Rambam explains it as follows. He describes how people go from being very soft, and being totally dependent, and being fed milk, to becoming stronger and more self-sufficient in a gradual process. He then says "Many precepts in our Law are the result of a similar course adopted by the same Supreme Being. It is, namely, impossible to go suddenly from one extreme to the other: it is therefore according to the nature of man impossible for him suddenly to discontinue everything to which he has been accustomed."

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, applied this principle to the question of slavery. He looked at the laws for the treatment of the slave that are found in this week's parsha and says "These laws do not abolish slavery, but they do create the conditions under which people will eventually learn to abolish it."

Because most people do not own slaves, many people give no thought to the subject. We don't have slaves, so what's the problem?

Slavery is, unfortunately, still very much a problem. By some estimates there are more people living as slaves today than ever before in history: 27 million people worldwide.

Instead of rich people having household slaves – although some of that still exists, especially in India and the Gulf countries – slavery has a different form today. Young (and not so young) girls and boys are sold into the sex trade. Agricultural and other foreign workers are exploited and held in primitive conditions against their will, their passports taken away from them. Workers in some electronics plants in Asia toil in slave-like conditions.

Here in Israel yesterday's newspapers reported on the 18 year sentence handed down to the ringleader of the largest sex slavery ring in the country's history. He coerced hundreds of women from Russia, Ukraine, and other FSU nations to Israel with promises of jobs as waitresses and sold them to escort services after smuggling them into the country.

Our "moral intuition" would also tell us that it is clearly wrong to hire a prostitute who is working against her will, even if you believe it is OK to hire prostitutes in general. But how far does our moral responsibility go?

Is it OK to buy tomatoes that have been picked by someone who is kept as a virtual prisoner by his employer?

Is it OK to buy electronic devices that have been manufactured in factories where employees are forced to work 16 hour days in dangerous conditions?

There are no clear answers as to how far we are obligated to go in making sure the products we buy are not produced by slaves. But unless we speak up – as citizens and consumers – such exploitation will continue.

The Talmud teaches that "Jews are compassionate children of compassionate parents, and one who shows no pity for fellow creatures is assuredly not of the seed of Abraham, our father." Our compassion – and our humanity – demand that we do not allow any human being to be sold to another.

Rav Barry

For the last several days, the talk in Israel was about early elections -- supposedly planned for September 4.  Some pundits saw the timing as an indicator Israel was going to bomb Iran between September and November (when the US elections could make Obama a much stronger power to deal with).

And then -- early this morning, at 1:30am -- Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and opposition leader, retired general Shaul Mofaz of Kadima dropped a bomb of their own.  Guess what?  No early elections.  Instead we'll have a "unity government" with 96 out of 120 seats in the Knesset in the government.

For those interested in more details, Haaretz and the NY Times both have good coverage.

Not surprisingly those left out of the new unity government -- Labor, Meretz, and Knesset "wannabe" Yair Lapid -- are screaming bloody murder about what a travesty this is, how evil and self-serving those conspirators are, etc.  

So unlike a lot of my "lefty" friends, I'm going to go out on a limb -- and be an optimist.  This could actually be good news for those of us who care about things like a more democratic Israel and peace with the Palestinians.

If early elections were to happen in September, the likeliest result would be that Likud would come out on top, Kadima would join the government, and we'd end up with a similar constellation anyway -- except that Kadima would be a lot weaker. They will no doubt shrink greatly from their current 28 seats in the Knesset.

Kadima joining the government now means that Netanyahu has an incredibly solid government.  He no longer has to pander to the extreme right, either inside or outside his party.  It's one of the reasons why not only did the left protest the unity government, but Danny Danon, representing the right flank of Likud protested, saying that "Likud voters have been betrayed."

Netanyahu no longer has to worry about the far right causing a coalition crisis over evacuating settlements, or passing a law that will force more haredi citizens to serve in the IDF.  

Part of the deal is that they will make changes in the election law -- no doubt making it tougher for small fringe parties -- and that Mofaz is going to be in charge of reviving the peace process with the Palestinians.  Both of those things are good news.

I believe Mofaz DOES want to push peace forward.  And I think Netanyahu wouldn't mind having peace with the Palestinians, he just didn't want his government to collapse over the issue.  So we might see some good things come out of this.

We can always hope, can't we??

Reb Barry

Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel's Independence Day starts tonight, Wednesday April 25, 2012. Just like in America, Independence Day is patriotic holiday, filled with fireworks, crowded highways, Air Force flyovers, and, of course, barbeques and self-congratulatory speeches from politicians.

Israel has a lot to proud of. We are the cradle of monotheism, the place where the religious beliefs of half the people in the world got their start. We have a rock solid economy, relatively low unemployment, a much better social safety net than America, the most dynamic high-tech community in the world outside of Silicon Valley. We keep inventing cool new stuff that works its way into everything from smart phones to pills you swallow that broadcast pictures of your insides as they pass through you. We are truly an "in-gathering of the exiles" with about half of the world's Jews living in this one small country – which is probably a higher percentage of the world's Jews that have lived here since the FIRST temple days. And those Jews come in all colors and ethnicities from the white Europeans of Poland and Russia to the Arabs of Iraq and Morocco to the blacks of Ethiopia, with een a few random Americans thrown in!

We have a robust press which freely criticizes the government. During the last 64 years we have gone from being a backwards country relying on handouts from overseas to get by to being the only true democracy in the Middle East. Well, the only true democracy if you live within the pre-67 borders, and we're missing a few things like freedom of religion.

I'm really confused about how I should feel today. Israel really, truly, is an amazing country. I love living here. I love the history, I love being part of history in the making, I love living in the only country in the world where I'm part of the majority culture. I love the food, I love the amazing people I meet.

Yet I also can't help but be very conscious of all the ways in which this country is screwed up. Which kind of makes me feel like Scrooge or something. And anyone who knows me knows that I'm really generally a pretty cheerful optimistic person. But…

The day before Independence Day is Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day, the day when we remember the 22,993 Israeli soldiers who have died defending Israel. At last night's ceremony in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka several of the people giving speeches talked about how on this one day we are all unified…well, only if you don't count the haredi (ultra-Orthdox) and Arabs, about 30% of the population. So I guess what they mean is all the "normal Jews," religious or not, are united, which is true.

We made aliyah almost five years ago. What breaks my heart as we celebrate Israel's 64^th birthday is that as a country we don't seem to have made much progress. Peace is as elusive as ever, if anything the prospects for peace seem more remote now than they did five years ago. The government keeps trying to pass very anti-democratic bills. Racism seems even more prevalent than it was, with rabbis feeling free to say things like it is forbidden to rent apartments to Arabs. The ultra-Orthodox monopoly on religion, which prevents me and any other Conservative rabbi from being able to function as a rabbi (we can't officiate at legally recognized weddings in Israel) is a strong as ever.

I really HATE this conflicted feeling I have. I really want to be able to just feel whole-heartedly patriotic. Like I did on the Fourth of July in America. Oh well. Maybe next year. "Even though he may tarry I believe wholeheartedly in the coming of the Messiah…"

Maybe the barbecue will help me get over my attitude! J

Chag sameach,

Reb Barry

It's not often that you get the opportunity to participate in a "historic moment," even if it's historic in a relatively small way. Last night – April 19, 2012 – I had the opportunity to participate in such a moment, at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem.

Schechter is the institution that trains rabbis for the Conservative (Masorti) movement in Israel. I serve on the Board of Trustees of said institution, the newest member of the board. Last night we voted to accept gays and lesbians as students in our ordination program. It was an honor to be a part of that vote. Click here to read the article about it in Haaretz.

The initial reaction of many people is "what took you guys so long?" After all, two other Conservative rabbinical schools – the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and the Ziegler Rabbinical School in Los Angeles – have accepted gay and lesbian students for several years already. The halachic (Jewish legal) decision for the movement was decided by the movement's law committee a few years ago. The Rabbinical Assembly (the Conservative rabbi's association) has been accepting openly gay rabbis for quite some time already.

I don't want to talk about the organizational politics that are a reason for the delay; truth is I don't know the whole story. But I can say this: in many ways it's a much bigger deal in Israel than it was in the US.

It was, in fact, a courageous decision. The Conservative Movement (called "Masorti" in Israel, which means "traditional" in Hebrew) has been struggling to be accepted as a mainstream organization in Israel. Has been struggling to be accepted by the "average Israeli" as a valid expression of Judaism. Unlike the US – where Conservative and Reform are both much larger than Orthodox – in Israel Orthodox is far and away the dominant strain of Judaism. Even though 80% of Israeli Jews do NOT describe themselves as "religious" – and the way most of those 80% actually express their Judaism is pretty much the same way most non-Orthodox American Jews express their Judaism – Reform and Conservative are pretty small here. Many Israelis who do not describe themselves as "religious" still celebrate the holidays, have bar mitzvahs for their sons, etc. – but at Orthodox synagogues. Former head of the Masorti Movement, Rabbi Ehud Bandel, once said "most Israelis are Conservative, they just don't know it." And he's right.

Which is what makes Schechter's decision last night courageous: gays and lesbians are NOT as widely accepted in Israel as in the US. In the US, most Conservative congregations were ready to accept gay and lesbian clergy, and gay and lesbian marriage, long before the movement officially took that stand. In Israel, the situation is different. Our "target audience" – Israelis who are "traditional" but don't live an Orthodox lifestyle, who believe in secular learning and secular accomplishments, etc., -- mostly are not so welcoming to gays and lesbians. So from a marketing standpoint, what we did last night did not help the movement. But from a moral standpoint, we did the right thing, and that's more important than marketing.

Since some of the professors at Schechter are not comfortable with ordaining gays and lesbians from a halachic standpoint, we came up with a solution that preserves the principle of "halachic pluralism," meaning different halachic points of view are recognized as valid. I commend the board and staff members who worked this out, I was not part of that process.

No rabbi will be required to be part of the beit din (rabbinic court) that ordains any particular individual. Candidates for ordination will be able to choose their beit din from rabbis serving on a new "rabbinic council" that Schechter will form. Thus, if a particular rabbi does not believe it is halachically proper to ordain gays and lesbians he or she will not be required to be a part of a beit din for such rabbis.

I'm sure there are those people who will be critical of this approach. There are those who will claim that Schechter simply dodged the question by deciding not to ordain rabbis any more at all – after all, the ordination now does not come from the institution, but from an independent beit din, rabbis who may or may not be employees of Schechter. There are those who might say that by allowing rabbis to choose whether or not they want to ordain someone who is gay or lesbian we are providing some sort of institutional permission for prejudice.

I believe those criticisms are ill-founded. First of all, institutions never grant ordination: by Jewish tradition, that is always done from rabbi to rabbi, not by an institution. All the institutions do is prepare people for ordination. And as to allowing rabbis not to serve on batei din they are not comfortable serving on, I believe this is a good compromise. There are many rabbis who are opposed to ordaining gays and lesbians not because of any prejudice whatsoever, but simply because they believe as a matter of halacha it can't be permitted. There is no need to drive rabbis who hold those opinions out of our movement.

Besides, it's only a temporary issue anyway. The next generation will likely wonder why there was any controversy about the matter at all. This morning as we were driving my ten-year-old daughter, Devorah, to school we were discussing last night's vote. I told her we made an important decision, to let gays and lesbians become rabbis. She sounded a little confused as she asked "Why would that be a problem?" Out of the mouths of babes…

And she added, "It's good that gays and lesbians can become rabbis. They have a different perspective than other people, and it's good to have more perspectives on the Torah."

That it is.