Reb Barry's Blog ... neshamah.net

Decide for yourself

Dear reader,

I'm interested in what you think about Caryl Churchill's play "Seven Jewish Children."  Many people have said it's anti-Semitic.  Most of the people who claim it's anti-Semitic have not read the whole play.  They react on the basis of hearsay, or from reading a few lines.  You need to read the whole thing to put it in context.

The play is very short.  You can read the whole thing easily in five minutes.  Click here to read it. Or click here to see it performed by Jennie Stoller.

After reading (or watching) it, come back and comment.  Scroll down to see my comments, but I suggest you read it first and form your own opinion before reading my comments....

Reb Barry

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I found the play very powerful -- and NOT anti-Semitic.  It's strong -- but the things she says that are offensive are things you can read in the paper as quotes from various Israelis.  She's not making stuff up -- sadly we do have people who say things like what you read in the last section.

Clearly she starts out very sympathetic to the Jews as she describes the fears and horrors of pogroms and the Holocaust.  She chronicles how opinions change when you're under attack.  Yes, she makes it a bit of a caricature, but I can tell you having lived in Israel during the start of the Second Intifada that my politics took a definite rightward shift and my heart was somewhat hardened in the wake of the many innocent people killed by terrorists.  It's sad; but it happens.

The play has been attacked on the basis that it is not "balanced."  Or that "not all Israeli are like that."  Well, duh!!  I'm an Israeli and I'm not like that.  But the play is art.  The goal of art is not to be "balanced."  Art does not claim to represent the average -- art shows people who are exceptional.  That's what makes it interesting.  A play that was balanced and presented the exact average would be as boring as watching paint dry.  There is nothing balanced or representative about Hamlet, either.

You can read an interesting blog entry with Churchill's comments here.

The appropriate response if you think the play is not balanced is to write a different play of your own that presents your view.  Deb Margolin has done just that, in a response play called "Seven Palestinian Children."  With the author's permission, the script is posted here.

My wife Lauri and I are thinking of staging a reading of the play -- probably both plays together.

Josh Ford wrote an interesting piece "Why Do a Reading of Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children” at a Jewish Theater?"  Click on the title to read it. 

If you'd be interested in participating in, or seeing, a production of Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza" in Jerusalem, let me know.

Yom Hazikaron -- Israel's Memorial Day

Today at 11am I heard a siren go off.

I hurriedly finished a phone call, opened my window so I could hear the siren better, and stood at silent attention.  From my office window on the 16th floor of the Technology Park in Jerusalem I could see  that traffic on the roads below had come to a complete halt.  People were respectfully standing outside their cars.  Buses were stopped.  There was no sound except the sound of the breeze and siren.  The country paused for two minutes -- two long minutes -- to remember the 22,570 soldiers killed in the line of duty and civilians killed by terrorists.  22,570 lives lost, most of them young lives, lives full of potential, lives yet to be lived.

What do you think of during those two minutes?  As I fought back a tear reflecting on the lives lost, I asked myself, "is it worth the price?"  "It," of course, being a country for the Jews -- Israel.

The answer, both immediate and on reflection, is a strong "yes!"  It's a huge price to pay: if America had a similar loss on a percentage basis, 1.2 million would have died defending the country or to terrorists since 1948.  The reason Yom Hazikaron is such a big deal here is that most people know someone who died, or have a close friend who lost a loved one.  It's not a remote holiday that has lost it's meaning.  The price is high, and for many people here it is personal.

But it is worth it.  As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said "if you've got nothing worth dying for, then you've got nothing worth living for."

In a brilliant reminder of the purpose of all those deaths, we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut, Independence Day, the Israeli 4th of July, on the very next day.  Since with the Jewish calendar the day changes at sunset, later this evening, as the sun sets, we shift gears, we go from remembering our dead to celebrating our country.  We mourn the loss, and then we celebrate what they gave their lives for.

And, just like in America, we celebrate Independence Day by firing up the BBQ!

A Conference for Racists

"Kol hakavod" to the Western diplomats who walked out on Ahmadinejad's hate filled speech at the "Durban II" conference in Geneva.  As reported in Haaretz, dozens of Western diplomats walked out on the Iranian president when he started using the podium to engage in a racist tirade against Israel.

There are those who say what happened was an attempt to stifle any criticism of Israel...see The Traveler Within.  I disagree with my learned friend Mohamed who wrote:

"Durban II was stillborn. Months before, the main topic of discussion wasn't racism, wasn't the worst regimes in the world, wasn't apologies for past slavery or any such thing.

It was Israel, or more precisely, how to make sure that Israel doesn't in the least bit get criticised - regardless of whether they actually are guilty of racism or not. That was completely irrelevant. Occupied Palestinians as well as Israeli Arabs be damned."

The problem is not that the idea was to avoid any criticism of Israel -- the problem is that there is no way the conference should have been ONLY about Israel.  The problem is, as Mohamed describes, that the conference was stillborn -- because the main topic wasn't racism, the worst regimes in the world, etc.

We desperately NEED a conference that will really tackle the problems of racism.  And there are many many places far worse than Israel when it comes to racism.  How about:

• The way China treats Tibetans

• The way Iran treats Bahais--click here for more info

• The way Zimbabwe treats white people

• The way Saudi Arabia treats religious minorities

 

Yes, Israel has a race problem.  But the problem is not how they treat the Palestinians.  The treatment of people in the West Bank is the result of a military occupation, not racism.  The US government setup a lot of checkpoints in Iraq; the inconvenience caused was not "racist."

The race problem in Israel is the way Israel treats her Muslim citizens -- 20% of the population who don't get their fair share of infrastructure, education, health care, etc.  A fifth of the population subject to almost shameless discrimination, like when the Israel Railroads Authority tried to fire a bunch of railroad crossing guards because they weren't IDF veterans.

But those problems are no worse than the racism faced by Muslims in other countries -- like France.

It's not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel.  But it is anti-Semitic to focus on criticizing Israel while conveniently overlooking other countries that are much worse in terms of human rights violations and racism.

The UN conference was supposed to be a conference ON racism.  Sadly it was more of a conference FOR racists.

 

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)

Every time a I write a post that is critical of Israel -- like my most recent one on "Where were the rabbis for human rights in Egypt" -- I have one or two people "unsubscribe" from my mailing list.  As often as I'm critical of Israel, it's a wonder I have any subscribers left! :-)

But those who leave in a huff after I write something critical of Israel I think don't appreciate that any criticism I have of Israel is "criticism of love."

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  I just came back from the synagogue where we recited Megillat HaShoah, which is a very powerful telling of the story of the Holocaust in a religious form.  There is no starker reminder of the need for Israel than Yom HaShoah.  6 million Jews, 1.5 million of them children, killed for no reason other than the fact that they were Jewish.  

The Talmud teaches that someone who kills a person, it is as if he destroyed an entire world -- for he kills not only that person, but whoever would have been descended from that person.  In an article in Haaretz, demographer Sergio Della Pergola estimates that if it weren't for the Holocaust there would 32 million Jews in the world today, instead of 13 million. 

Jews in America rightly feel that America is such a safe and comfortable place for Jews, they don't need to give much thought to Israel.  It seems unbelievable that things could ever get bad for Jews in America.  I'm sure the German WWI veterans who considered themselves more German than Jewish, who were completely secular and part of German society, thought the same thing.  I'm not saying there is much chance that terrible things will happen in America any time soon -- because I don't believe they will -- but I also believe that given the sad history of anti-Semitism, we should never say never.  And Israel is needed not just for the Jews of America, but for the Jews from all the other places in the world. How long until Ahmadinajad makes life really uncomfortable for the 25,000 Jews still living in Iran? Where would they go, if not to Israel?

As I stood in the synagogue tonight with my arm around one of my young daughters, sayng Kaddish for my cousins from Belgium who perished in the Shoah -- I had tears in my eyes as the only possible response to the insanity of a world gone mad, not that long ago, in my parents' lifetime.

I didn't turn my life upside down and move to Israel just to make sure there is an insurance policy for Iranian Jews.  The significance of Israel is much more than that -- it's our opportunity to create the kind of society God commands us to create.  A society with respect, love, honor, peace, all the good values we learn from the Torah.  A society that would make God proud of us.  So if I occasionally criticize Israel, don't misunderstand where it's coming from -- the criticism comes from a place of the deepest love and commitment to this amazing enterprise of Jews having a country of their own after 2,000 years of wandering in the political wilderness.

We appropriately closed our service with "Ani Maamin" -- "I believe, with perfect faith, even though he may tarry, in the coming of the Messiah."  And I also believe we have a lot of work to do to prepare the way for that wonderful period knowns as "yemot hamashiach," the days of the Messiah, when all will live in peace and harmony, and as the prophet Isaiah said, "nation will not lift up sword against nation."

Rav Barry

Where were the rabbis for human rights in Egypt?

If you think about it, Passover is a very difficult holiday from a human rights perspective -- we have collective punishment, as in the plagues that punished every Egyptian, not just hard hearted Pharaoh, and we have what might be considered a "disproportionate response," the total annihilation of Pharaoh's charioteers in the Reed Sea.

Those of us concerned with human rights like to focus on the midrash about God stopping the angels from singing after the parting of the Red Sea, because his Egyptian children were drowning.  Which is a good and powerful message, but still, they were drowning, instead of just stuck in the mud or something.

There are those who say that Israeli human rights groups that are concerned with Palestinian suffering are somehow disloyal to the Israeli cause.  So thinking about that concept and thinking about Passover, got me to thinking: would there have been a "rabbis for human rights" lobbying for the rights of the Egyptians to have a plague free life?  Were there any rabbis who would have been concerned about the bombing of German civilians in World War II?

Just posing the question clearly makes it sound absurd.  And the fact that the question sounds absurd points to the reason we have organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights today (and didn't have them before): being concerned with the human rights of people other than your own is a luxury that you really only have when you are strong and free.  It's hard for people in existential danger to be concerned about anything other than survival.

Thank God Israel is strong and free, and we can now afford to be in the position of worrying about the human rights even of people we are in conflict with.  But this also highlights just how difficult morality is for Israel today.  I've recently been reading some essays by Ahad HaAm, mostly written over 100 years ago.  He talks about how the Jewish people need a place of thier own if they are to flourish and live up to their potential.  And he talks about the Jewish mission of bringing the prophetic message of morality to the world.  I'm sure he'd be delighted that the Jewish people have a homeland now; I'm equally sure he'd be disappointed with what we've done so far in the realm of bringing the prophetic message of morality to the masses.  Israel is plagued by corruption, the ongoing Occupation of the West Bank and battle with the Palestinians saps the national energy and enthusiasm for Zionism, racism is rampant, and signs of progress can be hard to see.

Thank God Israel is strong and free.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of work yet to be done by the prophetic voices!  May the Holy One Blessed be He (aka "God") help us live up to our true potential, and be a beacon of peace and morality in the heart of the Middle East.

What's the meaning of Passover ?

"They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat..."  According to the old joke, that's message of all Jewish holidays. 

There is actually a lot more to Passover, and as part of our preparations for the holiday it is good to give thought to the meaning of the holiday and how it is celebrated.

For me there are two primary messages to Passover:

• Celebrate how precious it is that we have the freedom to serve God

• Remember to be compassionate to the poor and oppressed

Note that I did not say the message is to celebrate "freedom."  As I have described at greater length here Passover is not just about freedom, at least, not if freedom is conceived of the way the typical teenager thinks of freedom -- freedom to sleep late, freedom from school, freedom to abuse your body.  That kind of freedom is the freedom immortalized by Janis Joplin, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."  When I was 16 years old, I was quite the rebel -- hair down to my shoulders, organist in a rock band, high school dropout.  Boy was I celebrating freedom!  But after less than a year, it got pretty old. 

Pesach cleaning...

How long do you spend preparing for Pesach?

See Rav Aviner, who says less than a day.  And his approach generally is what I do follow.  The important point is "dirt is not chametz."  Random crumbs hidden away where they will not get into your food are not a source of great concern.  I taught this lesson to my kids the other day -- by studying the mishnah in Pesachim that tells us we don't have to worry about weasels dragging chametz into your house after you cleaned...because if we worried about that "ain sof l'dvar," there is no end to it.

Some people go completely nuts and spend weeks preparing.  Rav Aviner says the week before Pesach is not the time to go nuts with spring cleaning; better to take the kids on a tiyul and arrive at Pesach in the right spiritual frame of mind.

Rabbi David Hartman said his Pesach preparations take about half an hour, and include have good kavanah at the "bitul chametz," nullification of chametz blessing.  I don't think I'm quite ready to go that far...but one day is certainly sufficient!

Chag kasher v'sameach

PS.  While we are talking about Pesach, another thing that can make Passover much easier is to follow Rav Golinkin's teshuva about eating kitniyot:

See http://www.responsafortoday.com/engsums/3_4.htm  for the English summary.

 And for the full teshuvah in Hebrew:

http://www.responsafortoday.com/vol3/4.pdf

See http://www.forward.com/articles/104483/ for an interesting article about the "chametz wars" in Israel.