I have been compiling biographies of important personalities and authors for one of our exciting projects here at Torah Lab. One of these is Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, the author of Michtav M’Eliyahu, published in English as Strive for Truth. In an article I found on Rabbi Dessler, there was the following entry:
Respect for One’s Fellow Men
One of the nights that I was in his house there was knocking at the door. I opened it to a woman who wanted to speak to the Mashgiach about her son, who was learning in the yeshiva. I explained to her that in the yeshiva it wasn’t usual for a mother to come and discuss her son with the Mashgiach but she was adamant. While we were talking, the Mashgiach came over and asked what the matter was. His reaction was, “The mother of a yeshiva bochur wants to talk to me? . . . Please come inside . . .a yeshiva bochur’s mother . . . “
The woman related all her concerns about her son’s future, particularly with regard to shidduchim that appealed to her and that did not appeal to her . . .the Mashgiach listened and vindicated her wishes . . . I followed the conversation carefully, amazed at how, just a moment earlier he had been occupied with lofty and sublime matters and had now descended to the delicate emotions of a concerned mother.
What point is the author trying to make? That mothers should not address their sons’ main educators, who are partners in the child’s upbringing--because it constitutes a lack of modesty? Let’s put that aside for a moment. The part that really bothered me was the idea that Rabbi Dessler had ”descended to the delicate emotions of a concerned mother”. If the person who witnessed this sublime act of human kindness still came away with the notion that Rabbi Dessler had lowered himself in order to listen to and respectfully counsel his student’s mother, that person has completely missed the point. Our Torah overflows with teachings, advice, and admonitions concerning the feelings of our fellow human beings--even comparing the act of embarrassing another to murder. The greatest stories of tzaddikim and geniuses usually involve their incredible kindness and chessed towards others. The “delicate feelings of a concerned mother"--a Jewish woman, who valiantly brought this student into the world and raised him--should be treated with as much honor and care as a Torah scroll!
This is the price we pay for a distorted view of religion, where we elevate ritual and scholarship over interpersonal ethics--even though the latter has higher stakes. Yom Kippur removes sins between man and G-d, if there has been sincere regret and confession, but it does not atone for a person when he has offended someone else and has not obtained forgiveness. That should give some indication about how important it is to value the interpersonal sphere. Your very Olam HaBa depends on it!
Well, I have to apologize for my cynical skepticism regarding the rebuilding of the Hurva Synagogue!
Yesterday, I went with my daughter to the Old City to give her a junior archeology tour of some of the Old City’s features: the Ottoman walls surrounding the city, the bullet holes over the Jaffa Gate, the ramparts, the various architectural styles, the Cardo, the Ramban Synagogue, etc.
After we came up from the Kotel, we sat in the square of the Jewish Quarter eating popsicles, an important part of a summer day in Israel. I raised my eyes in the direction of the Hurva, and realized that the its ersatz arch was not in my field of vision as it had always been when I sat in that place. Instead, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, was a dark gray, concrete structure that looked like the old Hurva!
Apparently, after all the dispute over what the rebuilt Hurva should look like, when the Israeli government allocated 6.2 million dollars for its reconstruction, it announced that the new Hurva would be a “version of Assad Effendi’s 19th-century design”. The question that comes to mind is, what does “a version” mean? Will it look like the Hurva? If its design is modified, why? Bearing in mind that the Hurva was one of the tallest structures in the Old City, and by extension, in Jerusalem, will it re-assume its proportions again, or will the new Hurva be a miniature version of the old one? Will the Muslims protest its height, feeling that the Al-Aksa Mosque must rise above it? Will the Israeli government give in to their demands pre-emptively or after negotiations?
The architect for the project is Jerusalem’s own Nahum Meltzer. I like his perspective. Meltzer said that he feels, “both out of respect for the historical memory of the Jewish people and out of respect for the built-up area of the Old City, it is fitting for us to restore the lost glory and rebuild the Hurva Synagogue the way it was.” Unbelievable!
The rebuilding of the Hurva is an event that has been celebrated by veteran Yerushalmis who remember the synagogue’s former glory, such as Rabbi Menachem Porush, who said at a commemorative ceremony that he was “overjoyed at the realization of a dream he never forgot--to see the Hurva rebuilt”.
At the ceremony, the gedolei Yisrael, including Rav Eliyashiv, appointed Rabbi Simcha HaKohen Kook, rabbi of Rehovot, as the official rabbi of the Hurva Synagogue.
A few posts ago, I mentioned the Beit HaKerem neighborhood in Jerusalem, whose original charter included a prohibition against the establishment of any religious institutions in its area. Ah, Zionism…
When I was a student at Yeshivat Darche Noam over 12 years ago, I often wondered why it was that the yeshiva did not advertise itself on the outside as a yeshiva, preferring a small sign that said, “David Shapell College of Jewish Studies”. I might add that the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ had fallen off the sign, rendering it as, “David Shapell College of Jewish Studs”. No wonder there were so many shidduchim made that year…
I also wondered why, on Yom Kippur eve, seemingly the entire population of Beit HaKerem’s youth was gathered in Kikar Denya (Denmark Square) by the Co-Op Supermarket, many of them completely drunk on cheap vodka and hanging all over each other--like, co-ed.
I also wondered why, every year, on the day before Lag B’Omer, when the bachurim were gathering wood for the bonfire, that lady in the building next door would preemptively perch herself at her windowsill, ready to inform us that we had better not do anything, otherwise she would call the fire department.
Then, somebody told me about the heritage of Beit HaKerem as an ardently secular neighborhood, and about its founding charter’s anti-religious clauses.
Well, recently something happened that is, as far as I can imagine, revolutionary. I had noticed that the building on the corner of Hertzl Boulevard and Beit HaKerem Street was under renovation for quite a while. Nice, new windows were put in. The Jerusalem stone facing was sandblasted and cleaned up. Attractive cast iron window bars were installed.
What was happening?
Well, apparently that building is now the headquarters of the Shas Party. Now, see if you can appreciate this. Shas is the nickname for the Worldwide Sephardic Association of Shomrei Torah, which was founded in 1984 and is under the spiritual direction of former Chief Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, today one of the leaders of the Torah world.
A real trend within secular, Zionist Israel has been discrimination against Sephardic Jews. The country since its inception has been governed by a secular, Ashkenazi elite class. It still is, to a great extent. There are many reasons for this. One may the fact that, while the Return to Zion was as much of an ideal for Sephardim as it was for Ashkenazim, the Eastern European, secular, and hard-nosed Israeli culture that was created by the State’s founders was rather antithetical to that ideal as they saw it. There never was a haskalah in the Sephardic world; Sephardic Jewry did not have a large segment of its population that left religion or the traditions of its ancestors. If there are secular Sephardim in Israel, it is due to the pressure their parents and grandparents faced from the ruling class here to assimilate into its new world order. For reasons of outlook, the Sephardim have always been a type of fifth column in Israeli society. But let’s not disregard the fact that prejudice against Sephardim was and is essentially a racist phenomenon--of white Europeans who look down on their swarthy, Middle Eastern brethren, and Sephardim have suffered and continue to suffer the adverse effects of prejudice.
View the Shinui Party’s campaign ad, and get a glimpse of the Sephardic Jew through their rather distorted lens:
Note the image of the Israeli ubermensch being clutched by haredi, Sephardic leeches. Also, note that their campaign slogan was “With Shinui (Change), there is no Shas in the Government.” If you think that this is an old attitude, be advised that the campaign was in 2006. Since then, the Shinui Party has completely--and mysteriously--evaporated, much like the objects of their hatred portrayed in the ad.
I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine that Beit HaKerem was probably a stronghold for the Shinui Party, which represented the interests of the secular, wealthy Ashkenazi elite in Israel (precisely the composition of Beit HaKerem, which may be the 90210 of Jerusalem; it is a gorgeous neighborhood). And the fact is, despite the party’s leader’s racist and misogynist attitudes, his previous campaign strategy of tapping into the national hatred of haredim--another fifth column--was what gained Shinui so many seats in the previous Knesset. It was thought that the revolution had arrived, and Israel would be freed from the religious coercion and draft-dodging of the despised haredi. But that party bit off more than it could chew, mishandled itself in Sharon’s government and was booted from the coalition. Then it was forced to sit amongst the opposition parties like Agudat Yisrael, Degel HaTorah and Shas.
Shinui has disappeared. Now Shas, which many regard as the flagship of Sephardic success, sits guarding the entrance to Beit HaKerem. I think this marks the beginning of the end of Beit HaKerem as we knew it. But I also think that there is a lesson to be learned: you can’t make a career--or a heritage--out of disparaging the Torah and hurting your fellow Jew without self-destructing.
It’s here. American baseball is here. They’re calling it “Opening Day” just like in the States, but the games are set to take place this evening. I guess Jewish Standard Time is like gravity.
The Modi’in Miracle versus the Petah Tikva Pioneers. The Bet Shemesh Blue Sox versus the Ra’anana Express. The Netanya Tigers versus the Tel Aviv Lightning. How many of the players are actually Jewish or even Israeli, I’m not sure. We may have to continue to scratch our heads when we try to come up with that list of the Great Jews in Sports, arriving inevitably at Sandy Koufax, who hasn’t played since 1966. But, no matter; Israel has real baseball now.
Well, almost.
There will only be seven innings, instead of the good ol’ nine. I don’t know if the reduction is a concession to the national lack of patience--what I call the “nu?” factor--or an attempt to get Sabras slowly used to the wholesome but foreign American sport. A tie score at the bottom of the seventh will result in a home run derby to break the tie. And all of those expatriate National League fans will have to adjust to the fact that the IBL will be using designated hitters, just like in the American League. You see, the paradigm of a true Jew is an ex-Brooklyn Dodger fan, and what self-respecting Brooklyn Dodger fan would root for an American League team, when the closest local team is the New York Yankees? But that’s just galuti; Israel is all about subverting Diaspora Jewish paradigms. Hence, the acceptance of American League rules. Hello, I’m making a joke…
A quick perusal of articles and opinion pieces related to the advent of baseball here revealed a certain discomfort that American immigrants to Israel feel with the return of this phenomenon to their lives. Writing in the Jerusalem Post (6/14/07), Brian Freeman stated, “I did not make aliyah to promote American culture in Israel or to live in an American ghetto, but to become part of the Israeli landscape. In the ensuing decades living here I have found new interests, including in other sports, that connect me to this place, such as rooting for our national soccer team, cheering on Maccabi Tel Aviv in the European basketball championships or in general backing one of “our guys” as he/she performs on the world stage. Baseball is no longer on the list.”
What is ironic about Brian’s internal conflict is that Israel has, in so many ways, openly embraced American culture, like so many other countries in the world. American culture is like a juggernaut that consumes everything in its path. There is not a proper city in the world that does not boast the entire continuum of American output, from low- to haute-couture. McDonald’s restaurants dot the Earth’s landscape from Jacksonville to Jedda; even the most top-tier Al-Qaeda operative has probably eaten a Big Mac. Movies. Swing, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll--these call out from every radio on the planet. Books, trends, everything. There is nowhere to run.
If you think that Israel has not already co-opted American culture, you should know that the Israeli Mickey D’s offers “McShwarma”. Check out this ad, which is a couple of years old already:
As an American immigrant, I watch with fascination how different people react to things American. Most seem to harbor a love-hate relationship with it, disparaging it and holding it at bay, while buying it wholesale. I’ll never forget my year as a student abroad at Hebrew University, when I came to this country assuming everyone on my program and in Israel would embrace each other as long lost brethren, the exiled remnants of Israel. Boy, was I mistaken. My Canadian counterparts feverishly sewed small Canadian flags on their backpacks so that nobody would mistake them for Americans. The Jews from Europe and from Latin America seemed to detest Americans, even Jewish Americans, viewing them as spoiled, presumptuous and superficial colonialists, as if we were an army of swashbuckling Stuckey’s Pecan Log Rolls. There was even a non-Jewish German student who had the hubris to sling insults at my national origin. Everything bothered him from our superficiality and politeness to the fact that we seem to like ketchup on everything. At a certain point, I pointed out that, as much ketchup as we might eat, we never systematically murdered 10 million people in the span of a few short years. He shut up.
I have to admit that I watch with a certain twisted glee when I see the familiar icons of my native country roll out to the farthest reaches of the planet, because I know that most of the world takes itself way too seriously, and if there is anything Americans are good at, it’s having fun. Here in Israel you can get a kosher Happy Meal, or a KFC bucket with a hekhsher, and although I am a religious Jew with the same ideals as my co-religionists, I know the value of downtime as a recharge, and much of this world does not.
You know how the saying goes: when a Jew moves to Texas, he becomes more Texan than the Texans. Actually, that is not a saying; I just made that up. But there is a similar saying. A lot of Jews, American ones included, who move to Israel--a very idealistic act--feel obligated to be very rigid in their idealism. They want to shed all of their particularisms in order to become the “typical Israeli”. They don’t want any foreign influences polluting the perfect laboratory conditions of the Israeli Experiment. What they may not realize is that this country has been, from its inception, an amalgam of many cultures; even the revered Modern Hebrew language may only be a Jewish version of Esperanto, a Semitic veneer with a deep structure that is essentially Indo-European--utilized as a unifying force to enable the vast diversity of peoples here to communicate.
Guess what? That’s what American culture is.
So kick back and enjoy the Cracker Jack and hot dogs tonight, dude. It’s all over. Draining swamps is, like, soo 1885.
Violins and Velvet Elvises: The Challenges of Modern Hebrew
In the previous blog, we began to discuss the ideological (and sometimes agenda-driven) roots of Modern Hebrew.
I have always marveled at the fact that the Hebrew language was actually revived and implemented, to the extent that it is the official language of a country, used in all of its governmental and public institutions, and spoken by nearly every one of its citizens, who number over 7 million. At the same time, I have always wondered what price was paid by the decision to use a language that, given the vast change in reality that had occurred since its usage, would have to be constructed, almost entirely. Why did the Hebrew Revivalists win out, as opposed to people like Theodor Herzl, who felt that Jews should continue to speak and be educated in their native languages? Granted, Herzl was generally flexible about the realization of the idea of the Jewish State, as evidenced by his willingness to consider alternate locations such as Uganda. But at the drawing board, all ideas are legitimate. Why Hebrew?
Maybe that sounds like an absurd question. Indeed, I know a lot of people who would be really offended by it. One may argue--primarily from an ideological aesthetic--what do you mean? Hebrew is the native language of the Jewish people! But during Ben Yehuda’s time that was completely untrue, and it had been untrue since the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 138 CE. Actually, it is more likely that Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the Jewish language as early as the second century BCE. There had not been a national language of the Jewish people since the defeat of Bar Kokhba and the onset of the Diaspora, although there have been many Jewish languages. Most of these languages possess far more heritage than Modern Hebrew, which at this point is only around 120 years old. Consider Yiddish, for example, which split off from German roughly at the same time as Dutch. For over a thousand years, the Yiddish language bound together the entirety of Ashkenazi Jewry worldwide, with the exception of Western European Ashkenazim, and “Oberlandische” Hungarian Jews. It is a language which is still used, and continues to evolve. Although its primary speakers in this day and age are Chassidic and Yerushalmi Jews (the fastest-growing segment of world Jewry, BTW), at one point virtually all Ashkenazim spoke Yiddish.
Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, was in use by Sephardim from the time of the Middle Ages and is still somewhat in use today, albeit to a much smaller extent than Hebrew. Many of the Ladino-speaking communities were eradicated during the Holocaust, and there was little transmission of the language to the post-Holocaust generation. Those who emigrated to Israel largely adopted Modern Hebrew and have not continued to use Ladino.
And in the land of Israel itself, the Jews have spoken Aramaic, Greek, Arabic and a host of other languages since the Bar Kokhba revolt--but almost never Hebrew.
Israeli expatriate academicians Azzan Yadin and Gilh’ad Zuckermann co-authored an article entitled, “Blorít – Pagans’ Mohawk or Sabras’ Forelock?:Ideologically Manipulative Secularization of Hebrew Terms in Socialist Zionist Israeli”, which is extremely eye-opening. The title is somewhat confusing to the uninitiated. Permit me to explain. The term blorit refers to a Mohawk-like hairstyle worn by idol worshipers in the past. When the prohibition against imitating idol-worshipers is discussed in Jewish legal texts, the blorit is given as an example of what not to do. However, in Modern Hebrew, the term blorit simply means “forelock”, a shock of hair in the front worn stylishly long, something you might find in a model fashion magazine. The point of the article is to demonstrate how, like the term blorit, much of the Modern Hebrew language is comprised of terms derived from the lexicons of Biblical, Mishnaic, Midieval, Rabbinic and Maskillic Hebrew, sterilized of their original, often sacred meanings and re-used as mundane--and occasionally, even vulgar--words or expressions in Modern Hebrew.
If I understand Yadin and Zuckermann’s thesis correctly, this “secularization” of the language has produced a language that Zuckermann believes should be called “Israeli"--not Hebrew--and its emergence parallels the emergence of a Jewish society that has been equally secularized, one where the State has replaced G-d as the central figure of the collective Jewish consciousness. Bear in mind that these are not just unschooled expatriates who have an axe to grind against their native country; Yadin is a professor of Rabbinic Literature at Rutgers University and, in his own academic way, heavily involved in the study of Jewish texts. Zuckermann is an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Queensland, Australia.
The pair make a fairly scathing assessment of the relationship between Israelis and the Hebrew language, namely that Israelis, having inherited the ideologically-manipulated “Israeli” language, are less connected to actual Hebrew than they realize. One ramification of this is that, contrary to the popular notion that Israelis have an easier time going through Biblical literature because they speak Hebrew natively, Yadin and Zuckermann assert that Israelis experience a misunderstanding of both the language and mood of textual Hebrew, a disconnect that was built into the Israeli language by its secular architects. Their final point is that the language seems to be the only uniting factor between the secular and the religious in Israeli society because of common usage, but also parallels the kulturkampf.
If they are correct, then every native “Israeli” speaker, religious or not, is subject to the same disconnect because of the nature of Modern Hebrew as an ideological construct. I found that to be a harrowing idea. Could it be true? Then I thought about the violin.
What violin?
To explain that, I have to explain something else. We all know how, when it comes to art, there are pieces that are inspired and executed by gifted visionaries, and then there is dreck that reminds you of the velvet Elvis paintings you used to be able to get at gas stations.
Frum art is, unfortunately, not immune to this phenomenon, and, if you’re a snob like I am, I am sure that you have experienced the existential disillusionment that results from walking into someone’s home and confronting that picture of an enormous pair of dripping Shabbos candles standing next to the Western Wall. Uch! Well, another fairly ubiquitous masterpiece of banality is that picture of the Sefer Tehillim (Psalms) with a violin next to it. I have often wondered, what is that Stradivarius doing there?
The answer is, King David, who composed the Tehillim, played an instrument called a kinor, which was a type of lyre, the predecessor of the modern harp. King David’s had ten strings and a soundbox of some kind. The Sea of Galilee is known in Hebrew as the Yam Kinneret (Numbers 34:11; Joshua 13:27), because of its harp- or lyre-like shape. However, the word kinor is used in Modern Hebrew to mean “violin”. Now, the violin is of Mongolian origin, and seems to have entered the European sphere in the 16th century, becoming a popular instrument whose form was modified somewhat two centuries later. That’s what is sitting next to the Sefer Tehillim in those pictures, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with King David.
“Gay? Yes, I’m Very Happy!” (chortle, chortle, yuk, yuk)
Perhaps the most interesting element of the Gay Pride Parade, both the one that already happened, and the one planned for June 21st, is that it is billed as the mitza’ad haga’avah, a rough, Modern Hebrew translation of “pride parade”. Although it was much more in keeping with Zionist ideology to make sure that all words entering the Israeli lexicon received a Modern Hebrew equivalent, over the last few years I have noticed that, increasingly, it has become trendy to just use the English term. I have heard commercials on the radio for all-purpose cleaner where that seemingly omnipresent Israeli radio voice--which itself sounds like a pack of cigarettes--announces the virtues of the product: “???? ?? ???--magically!” (it cleans everything--magically!"). The Sabra telephone monolith Bezek, now has as its official logo an enormous letter ‘B’; while you are waiting for the operator, you can hear the chorus sing, “B-Bezek”. There are brand names like Super Class, Pelephone, Orange; supermarkets are called “super”. I once went into a pharmacy in search of a humidifier. I didn’t know the word, and I tried to explain it to the salesman as a machshir lechut l’avir, “a machine that produces moisture in the air”. The salesman nodded and said, “humidifier”. It brings to mind America during the 1970s, when it was cool to pepper French and Italian words into the commercial marketplace, i.e. “LeCar”, “Ciao”, the band Chic, etc.
Pizza Hut here features ?’?? ?????--"cheesy crust”.
Along these lines, it seems that the Gay Pride Parade should have been called mitza’ad hapride, using the English word “pride”, which would have accomplished its purpose better by associating the Jerusalem march with similar events worldwide. Given that the parade is a near-perfect symbol of the secular/religious divide in Israel, I want to suggest that this is borne out by the very linguistics of it. Historically, the word ga’avah, in the lexicon of Judaism (as opposed to Modern Hebrew), is a poisonous word that means “haughtiness”, a trait that has been singled out by nearly all Jewish ethicists as a completely abominable trait when possessed by human beings. The Psalmist says (Psalms 93:1) “God will reign; He will don ge’us (grandeur)”. It is only God alone, Who may have ga’avah. Maimonides (Yad, Hilchos De’os) writes that ga’avah is one of two character traits about which a person has to go to the utmost extreme to avoid and/or suppress.
On the other hand, the word ga’avah in Modern Hebrew simply means “pride” in the sense of “self-esteem”, hardly a pejorative term. It is but one of many examples where a word in Biblical, Mishnaic, or Medieval Hebrew was essentially stripped of its original meaning when the architects of the Modern Hebrew language were in the process of “reviving” Hebrew as a spoken language. The process is called transvaluation, where the meaning of a word changes over time, sometimes going from pejorative to positive and vice-versa. It happens in all languages. An English queen once said to a church architect that his building was “awful and artificial”, which at the time meant “awe-inspiring and artistic”.
The difference is that, when the Modern Hebrew language was “under construction”, its builders subjected the Holy Tongue to a lot of secularization, both ideologically neutral, and ideologically manipulative. The Hebrew revivalists were themselves ideologues, wanting to do away with Diasporism (which included religion), and therefore words that originally carried one connotation were reconditioned to have another in their new world. Words like tarbut, “bad rearing”, and letz, “wicked, insolent person”, are today innocuous if not positive words such as “culture” and “clown”, respectively. The word list of virtually the entire array of utensils used in the Holy Temple is, today, used to denote a regular table setting. Since we are no longer at the drawing board, the ideological motive is no longer detectable in Modern Hebrew, and its speakers do not have any agenda-driven intentions when they choose words. Those who gave the Gay Pride Parade its title did so innocently, whereas if Eliezer ben Yehuda had been one of its chief organizers…
I don’t know about you, but I hate when they launch into “Yidden” at a wedding, and everybody gets up and becomes a Lithuanian, clubfooted version of the Temptations. I will admit that part of my gripe has to do with the fact that I become totally uncoordinated when I try to do line dances, and the traditional hora helps to obscure this fact. Then again, I’ve always felt there was something unauthentic about that tune.
Well, apparently, I was right. Recently, I received an e-mail with a link to a video on youtube.com proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that “Yidden” is not a tradition received from our ancestors.
Now Dschinghis Khan was the winner of the 1979 Eurovision contest, and their self-titled song was an enormous smash hit everywhere in the world except the United States, so American Jews dancing to “Yidden” are understandably in the dark as to its origins. What about Jews in other places? Our frum world, although few people would like to admit it, tends to have an only semi-permeable membrane surrounding it, so the tune got in, but no one seems to know or care where it came from. Not long ago, I heard the inter-class bell emanating from one of the local schools; it was a section of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.
But it doesn’t end there. The Piamentas’ “Asher Bara” is really Men at Work’s 1982 hit “Down Under”. Mazel tov to Josh and Julie on their wedding; you don’t have to watch the whole thing)
...and Men at Work’s classic “Down Under”:
There is another “Asher Bara” out there that is a heimische version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Down on the Corner”, as well.
“Ani Ma’amin” is really “The Winner Takes it All” by Abba. Lipa Schmeltzer’s “Abi M’leibt” is the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. There are countless others. I’m not talking about songs by Shlock Rock or Gershon Veroba, the “Weird Al” Yankovics of Jewish music, who deliberately adapt popular music to Jewish themes in order to convey Jewish messages. I’m talking about the first twenty-five minutes at a chasuna you spend listening to “Jewish music” before you hear anything that can be legitimately called Jewish music. I’m talking about those moments where you’re enjoying the delectable salmon fillet and pasta while the bride and groom are in the yichud room and you are treated to wordless, Muzak versions of Billy Ocean’s “Suddenly”, Phil Collins’s “Against All Odds”, and “Theme Song from ‘Arthur’” by Christopher Cross. And then, just as the bride and groom emerge from their first few moments alone together, and they are about to enter the ballroom as man and wife, the band invariably breaks into Europe’s “The Final Countdown” or Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”.
He offered to fortify the buildings of the besieged city of Sderot, which has been under Qassam missile fire emanating from Gaza for the past two years. His offer was rebuffed by the defense establishment, which had thus far done nothing adequate to protect Sderot’s residents. It should have been obvious to everyone that the umbrage taken by the Israeli government was due to the fact that this guy was just putting his money where his mouth is--something that rarely happens in the Knesset.
Who is he? A rich guy named Arkady Gaydamak. Gaydamak was born in the Ukraine in 1952, and moved, with his family, to Moscow four years later. His family emigrated to Israel fairly early for Soviet Jews--in 1971. He enlisted in the Israeli Army the following year, and by the following year had already left Israel for France. Although he started out doing menial labor, he eventually founded Gaydamak Translations, which facilitated commercial contacts between Russian and French corporations; the venture was successful, and he opened up a branch in Canada. Key to his success has been the business contacts that have accrued over time, people with whom he has been able to create a network of import/export companies throughout Europe. His combination of businesses have earned him billions of dollars. Did I mention that he owns several sports teams including Betar Jerusalem and a bunch of newspapers like the Moscow News, as well?
He returned to Israel at the age of 48 (although he still maintains a permanent residence in Moscow; I can’t keep track of it all), which was, well, only seven years ago. Why? Well, for one thing he became a wanted man in France; the French government still has an active request for his extradition. He was allegedly involved in arms dealing while trying to further his oil interests in Angola. Angola was in desperate need of weapons to suppress a rebellion, and Gaydamak was able to facilitate a deal between the Angolan government and a Russian arms manufacturer via a Slovakian company called ZTS-OSOS. The payment to ZTS-OSOS was in oil, the value of which was deposited in the company’s French bank account, controlled by Gaydamak and his associate, Pierre Falcone. According to Gaydamak, their profit was simply the difference between the buy and sell prices of the oil. But the enormity of the profit led to a whole money-laundering investigation, allegations of fraud, etc. etc. The scandal affected the upper echelons of the French government. Never mind.
While he’s been in Israel, he has provided help to thousands of people from Nitzanim and Sderot, constructing tent cities for them. He’s thrown big parties on Chol HaMoed for the religious public. And the latest and greatest is, Gaydamak just purchased the Tiv Taam supermarket chain.
Tiv Taam is significant as being Israel’s largest provider of non-kosher meats in the Israeli marketplace, having purchased Kibbutz Mizra’s processing plant some years ago. Mizra, founded 84 years ago in the Jezreel Valley, was the Factory of Treife in Israel until the waves of immigration from the former Soviet Union created competition in the industry. At some point, Tiv Taam bought Mizra’s plant and the supermarket chain itself became the Porkapallooza of Palestine. Now Gaydamak just bought it for 80% more than its market value. For a shrewd businessman, that seems a bit dissonant. What was his motivation?
“In my view, as a Jew and as a public figure in Jewish society, the promotion, distribution and sale of pork products in Israel offends the Jewish tradition. Therefore, my first order of business will be to ban the distribution and sale of pork products,” Gaydamak explained to Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot in an interview. “I believe that in a Jewish state, in which there is a large Muslim minority, selling pork is a provocation,” the Russian-Israeli billionaire told Army Radio.
In addition to banning Tiv Taam’s sale of treife, Gaydamak is restructuring the company’s schedule. The supermarkets will now be closed on the Sabbath and holidays, as compared to its historical one-day-per-year closure on Yom Kippur. Never mind the fact that this move is likely to reflect Gaydamak’s political ambitions; this change is a major upset for a longstanding cultural icon in secular Israel. The thing is, it is also an example of a less familiar trend in Israel, with its odd, socialist/non-profit and idealistic hobby horse: the idea that--no matter where you stand--money talks and suckers walk.
In the previous post, we began to explore the origins of Zionism, both religious and secular. We identified that the primary clash in Israeli society--and between Jews in the world in general--essentially is the clash between religion and secularism.
Just as Yiddish was viewed as a figment of the Old World--and the Old Jew--so was the entire structure and form of the traditional society of religious Jewry. The poet Shaul Tschernikhovsky (1875-1943) voiced this idea in his poem, “Facing the Statue of Apollo”:
I come to you, forgotten god of the ages,
god of ancient times and other days
ruling the tempests of vigorous men,
the breakers of their strength in youth’s plenty!
I come to you – do you know me still?
I am the Jew: your adversary of old!
I bow to all precious things – robbed now
by human corpses and the rotten seed of man,
who rebel against the life bestowed by God, the Almighty
the God of mysterious wildernesses,
the God of the conquerors of Canaan in a whirlwind –
who then bound Him with the straps of tefillin.
The “god” referred to in the first stanza quoted is the Greek mythological deity Apollo, who represented both physical beauty, as well as reason, order and harmony. These attributes were at the core of the Enlightenment ideal, and several secular Jewish writers have made reference to him in their works. This poem, written in 1899, expressed Tchernikhovsky’s disenchanted perception that the religious Jewish world--the “human corpses and the rotten seed of man"--had rebelled by turning its back on true spirituality (mysterious wildernesses), binding G-d “with the straps of tefillin”. The image of the unmoving statue is also intended to convey the idea that the Jewish world had somehow ground to a halt. The message is clear: Tchernikhovsky as well as his contemporaries yearned to create the Jewish Apollo, unbound by his tefillin, who could encounter “all precious things” without interference by tradition or religion.
The secular Jew, by the end of the 19th century, was a weary traveler, saved from oblivion by the new drive for settlement in Palestine, having been rejected by European society and denied equality. His forebear, the maskil of the 18th century, had failed in his attempt to assimilate against the juggernaut of anti-Jewish hatred. But with the rise of Jewish nationalism, the dream of being a member of an enlightened, secular nation was revived. However, the vision shared by secular Zionists, although it referenced the Biblical connection of the Jews to the land of Israel, did not include a resurgence of Torah, or, necessarily, Torah-observant Jews in the land of Israel.
Nor, to be fair, did religious Zionists--until Rav Kook--anticipate the Redemption being preceded by the governance of secular Jews. Nor did those Jews of the Old Yishuv, i.e. who had been in the land of Israel since the end of the 18th century, look with favor upon their irreligious counterparts or their efforts to create an ardently secular nation on holy soil.
Today, I attended an end-of-year banquet for the Netsach Program, where I function as therapeutic director. The banquet was held in the Reich Hotel in the Beit HaKerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. Beit HaKerem was founded by Jews in 1922 under the British Mandate; its original neighborhood charter prohibited the establishment of any religious institutions. The hotel had a Jerusalem restaurant guide. As I thumbed through it, I was surprised--perhaps naively so--to see how many restaurants were unkosher and “open 7 days a week”. But then I realized that the restaurants’ proprietors probably had no context in which to make the decision for their restaurants to be kosher. More than that; in 2007, treife food and the absence of Shabbos is somewhat of a heritage for secular Israelis whose great-grandparents threw off the yoke of Judaism. Why should the restaurant be kosher? And yet, 98 per cent of doorways in this country have mezuzos, the buses in Jerusalem do not run on Shabbos, and certain areas require that building be constructed with Sukkah porches.
To be sure, it was the secular Jews who ultimately managed to organize the requisite details into the Jewish State, and the State reflects that fact. And then, there is another world in Israel, heirs to the pioneering spirit of those religious Jews who have braved the impossible to set foot in the land of Israel, to glimpse the Western Wall, to retrace the footsteps of the forefathers and foremothers--and to carry their mission forward. And while it is a minority, it is not a small minority. According to a study by the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Research, published in 1993 the religiously-observant population in Israel is probably 30 per cent of the population, with another 55 per cent who cover the entire range of Jewish practices called “traditional”. That leaves 20 per cent of Israeli Jews as secular, and, according to the study, only 5 per cent who are “die hard” secularists. Other statistics, such as those from the Central Bureau of Statistics, contradict these findings, but not by much. What is interesting is that, no matter which of these spheres one lives in, when he or she observes the other one, he or she wonders how or why it exists and if it can coexist with his or her own. We barely recognize each other any more.
Protests are being held these days to prevent the Gay Pride parade from happening on June 21st in Jerusalem; I imagine that the participants of both must look at each other like aliens from distant planets. This is the ultimate secular/religious issue. It’s so obvious to a religious Jew why you can’t have a Gay Pride parade here; Jerusalem is a holy place, and homosexual behavior is outlawed by the Torah. On the other hand, for those who identify as gay--or their supporters--it is so clear why the parade must take place; democracy and free expression must be protected. As you can see, the point of contention makes the proposal of a Jewish state not a simple one
I posited in the previous post, that the essential argument over the character of the Jewish State relates to the secular/religious divide.
One could ask, what difference does it make? You need theologians to inspire, and you need worldly people who are going to get the job done. You have text study and mysticism, but you also need organizations, a standing army, a system of justice, etc.
The critical difference--and I believe that it is the difference that creates the tension in our society--depends on the answer to the following question: which ideal gets pride of place, which is a handmaiden to the other?
Before the Return to Zion became a political issue, the plans of its religious proponents (there were no known secular proponents of Jewish nationalism before the 1860s) were generally threefold: purchase land in Palestine, train Jewish people to become self-sufficient agriculturalists, and educate these Jews in self-defense, that they may be able to protect themselves in the land of Israel. What was the “chapter heading”, the ultimate goal to which these plans alluded? The Ingathering of the Exiles as a catalyst for the Redemption. Being in Israel would be an opportunity to live Judaism in the perfect context for Judaism--the land of Israel.
Once Zionism (phrase coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum, who eventually left the movement) emerged, the modus operandi did not change: purchase land in Palestine, train Jewish people to become self-sufficient agriculturalists, and educate these Jews in self-defense, that they may be able to protect themselves in the land of Israel--and hopefully, in time, the Jewish State would be built atop these foundational elements. The ultimate goal of the secularists, however, was entirely different: a new type of Jewish society, populated by a new type of Jew.
First, this society would right the “inverted pyramid”, as Zionist thinker Ber Borochov stated, and create a situation where Jews would enter the agrarian and workingman professions they had been closed out of in Europe. A society of Jewish peasants would finally exist--this was actually a virtue extolled by writer A.D. Gordon. Second, a modern, proprietary Hebrew culture would be created, and the Hebrew language revived after nearly 2000 years of disuse. The Jewish State would be the avant-garde of socialism in the world. It was land for land’s sake, agriculture for agriculture’s sake, and self-defense for the sake of self-defense. The Redemption, in the eyes of the secularists, had a modern application: an escape from anti-Semitic violence.
More significantly, the secular Zionists, due to their secular orientation, became the ideological heirs to the maskilim of the 18th century, those Jews of the Haskalah ("Enlightenment"), who advocated for the total secularization and assimilation of the Jewish population of Europe. While the aims of the maskilim, could not be fully realized in anti-Semitic Europe, secular Zionists envisioned that they could be in a Jewish homeland. Thus, Jews would be able to be normal people and pursue their aspirations in a manner that was impossible for them in the Gentile societies in which they lived.
But as we see throughout history, the desire of a collective to attain acceptance by others goes hand-in-hand with a certain self-hatred and disenfranchisement. African Americans, as they made their way out of their roles as slaves in 19th century America, still had racism to contend with, and therefore did as much as possible to blend with and access the white society that had kept them down. In the process, many developed a type of distaste for their fellow persons of color. I remember seeing, during a history course in university, an article on a club run by blacks where one of the entry requirements was that the applicant had to be able to pass a comb through his hair.
The creation of the Modern Hebrew language was one of the most astounding accomplishments of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and its proliferation to the point of being the spoken first language of an entire nation--when it had not been used for 2000 years--was miraculous. The Hebrew language was and is one of the crowning achievements of the Zionist movement (although Herzl wanted German to be the language of the State). But for many maskilim, who plunged themselves into the study of Hebrew as a secular discipline, love of the Hebrew language was accompanied by hatred of the Yiddish language, an international Jewish language which had been in use for a thousand years. Yiddish represented the shtetl and was therefore an object of derision. For people seeking entry into the larger society, Yiddish was a roadblock. To the Zionist, Yiddish was equally repulsive because it represented the Diaspora Jew with all of his vulnerability and antiquated ways.
Thus, the most ardent anti-Zionists in Israel even today speak no Hebrew, only Yiddish, whereas for their secular, Zionist counterparts, Yiddish is a museum exhibition piece just like its speakers.
The Jewish character of the State of Israel has been and continues to be an issue of contention. Along the continuum of opinion as to how Jewish the State should be are two poles. At one end, there is the idea that the State should be a nation like any other, secular and democratic in character, and without the particularisms of either a Jewish or Arab state. On the other end, there is the idea that the secular Zionist movement is merely a transitional stage for the practical Ingathering of the Exiles, which will end before the ultimate Redemption, at which point the Land of Israel will return to its intended theocratic nature. The odd man out is the vocal minority of anti-Zionists; the religious Jews who consider the establishment of a Jewish state before the Messiah as an expression of heresy, and the non-religious Jews who see the Jewish State as an organ for the oppression of the Palestinians. Like the adage goes, “if there are two Jews, there are three opinions”.
Practically speaking, it almost doesn’t matter anymore what your attitude is towards the State; it’s here, in the form that it is. What is interesting to note is that where a person finds him or herself on this continuum is often determined by their orientation towards Jewish identity in general. One of the reasons for the cultural divide in Israel itself is due to the ideological foundation of the state. The point that I would like to make is that the essential kulturkampf in Israel is the secular/religious divide--not, as it may have been thought, right- versus left-wing politics.
Religious Zionism, in its 19th century form, was lead by people who themselves were towering figures of Torah leadership. Rabbis such as Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, Eliyahu Guttmacher, and Yehuda Alkalai were simply trying to realize practically the age-old Jewish yearning and desire for a Return to Zion. Their innovation was the concept that a wholesale Jewish return to the land of Israel would be a catalyst for Redemption; this is the conceptual base for what we refer to as Religious Zionism. Other universally-recognized Torah leaders such as the Vilna Gaon and the Chasam Sofer exhorted their followers with the same message. It is not a message that has been accepted in all segments of the observant Jewish world; but it is based on a positive ideal of Jewish identity and destiny.
By contrast, secular Zionism did not become successful until the end of the 19th century, when it was finally clear to its leaders that the phenomenon of anti-Jewish hatred would mitigate against the possibility of the Jews receiving full equality and safety within their host cultures. Theodor Herzl believed that mass baptism was the answer to the “Jewish Question” before he covered the Dreyfus Trial in 1894. Leon Pinsker had to undergo the experience of being closed out of the legal profession in Odessa, as well as witness the pogroms of 1881-1884 before his faith in assimilation was shaken. The architects of the Jewish State were predominantly secular Jews who were inspired more by 19th century nationalism and romanticism than by Judaism, and, without anti-Semitism, may never have experienced the desire for a Jewish State at all.
The Hurva Synagogue was named for the incident in 1721, when Turkish overloads tore down an unfinished synagogue building on that site because its members could not pay their taxes. It was rebuilt in 1862 and stood for 140 years as the most magnificent synagogue in Jerusalem. In 1948, Jordan’s Arab Legion blew it up during the War of Independence. The Jewish community of the Old City scattered to different neighborhoods such as Meah Shearim and Katamon.
The Jewish history of Jerusalem dates back to the arrival of Abraham in Jerusalem’s former manifestation--the city of Shalem (Salem), nearly 4000 years ago. And while it is true that the Jews have been thrown out of Jerusalem several times throughout the centuries by oppressive regimes, there was an uninterrupted Jewish community there since 1267, when the Ramban (Nachmanides) came to settle there. In 1948, it came to a brief end--until the Six Day War in 1967, when the State of Israel regained control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City.
What the Arab Legion attempted to do when its soldiers detonated the Hurva, and thereby brought the Old City under their control, was to sever the Jewish connection to the Old City and delete, as it were, the history of the Jewish community in the Old City. The unit commander sent back to his superiors, after the Hurva was destroyed, “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
In 1967, the Israeli government granted total authority over the Temple Mount to the Wakf, an Islamic body. This was to forestall international rage over the Jews’ possession of the Temple Mount, which happens to be considered the third holiest site in Islam. Never mind the fact that the Temple Mount is called “the Temple Mount” because the 1st and 2nd Temples--Jewish temples--stood there.
Unfortunately, the Wakf has abused its authority and has dug deep into the Temple Mount. They claim that the purpose of their digging is to fortify the structures of the existing mosque sites there. Worse, since the second intifada, the Wakf has forbidden any supervision by the Israeli Antiquities Authority on the Temple Mount. The Wakf’s henchmen have indiscriminately destroyed thousands of years of key archaeological items that chronicle the story of the Temple Mount, including its Jewish and Christian histories. The sheer volume of artifacts and structures lost in the Wakf’s desecration is enough to make the skin of any archaeologist crawl--which is why in 2001 an organization called the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities was formed to document the Wakf’s archaeological crimes and report them to the government. I use words like “desecration” and “crimes” because the destruction is in fact not indiscriminate, but is intended to revise the history of the Temple Mount--this time with no evidence of Jewish--or Christian--history there.
What that means is that the modus operandi of the Arab Legion in 1948, and the Wakf today, is the same. The legitimacy of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel can only be undermined if you physically erase the overwhelming evidence of our history here. And while the very idea of that is harrowing even to the most secular, left-wing archaeologist, in the Wakf’s eyes, it is the most efficient means of clearing the Mount for Muslim dominance, which takes precedence over reality.
Abdel Husseini, who is the director of the Wakf, once said in an interview, “it is G-d’s will that this place is a mosque, and this declaration of G-d is more important than the declaration of Jews or Christians. G-d’s declaration says this is an Islamic place called the Al-Aksa mosque. What others like to claim from there and there, we have nothing to do with.”
There you have it.
Gabriel Barkay, who is an archaeologist at Bar Ilan University, protested during an interview with the Jewish United Fund, “The Temple Mount was never touched archeologically. Would anyone in the civilized world agree if some bulldozers were working on the Acropolis in Athens or the Pantheon in Rome, particularly without any type of archeological supervision. Why does the world cry out when the Taliban destroy Buddhas but not when Palestinians are destroying thousands of years of cultural heritage on the Temple Mount?”
I can’t explain the behavior or the decisions of the Israeli government with regard to the violations that take place right under its nose, but what I can say is that this second-tier archaeological war has done is it has underscored the importance of rebuilding places like the Hurva.
In the next blog, we’ll talk about the fact that the Hurva’s arch, the most recognizable item in the Old City skyline, is not actually the arch of the Hurva.
Rabbi Tanchum Shlomo Burton hails from Brooklyn, New York, where he was a graduate of the Rabbi Isaac Elchonon Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University; he also studied in Gruss Kollel under Rabbi Dovid Miller, shlit"a. A teacher, writer and practicing psychotherapist, Rabbi Burton holds a Master's Degree in Social Work from Yeshiva University. Besides for his work at Torahlab, he teaches in numerous yeshivot and seminaries in Jerusalem and considers it his greatest privilege to do so. He and his wife and family reside in Har Nof, Jerusalem.
Work on the Land of Judaism project has enabled Rabbi Burton to apply his skills as an historian, which he picked up while earning a Bachelor's Degree in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. You can read, discuss, and comment on his historical perspectives on his blog, Simple, True and Absolute.
The Sea of Galilee is known in Hebrew as the Yam Kinneret (Numbers 34:11; Joshua 13:27), because of its harp- or lyre-like shape. However, the word kinor is used in Modern Hebrew to mean “violin”. Now, the violin is of Mongolian origin, and seems to have entered the European sphere in the 16th century, becoming a popular instrument whose form was modified somewhat two centuries later. That’s what is sitting next to the Sefer Tehillim in those pictures, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with King David.
While he’s been in Israel, he has provided help to thousands of people from Nitzanim and Sderot, constructing tent cities for them. He’s thrown big parties on Chol HaMoed for the religious public. And the latest and greatest is, Gaydamak just purchased the Tiv Taam supermarket chain.
Rabbi Tanchum Shlomo Burton hails from Brooklyn, New York, where he was a graduate of the Rabbi Isaac Elchonon Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University; he also studied in Gruss Kollel under Rabbi Dovid Miller, shlit"a. A teacher, writer and practicing psychotherapist, Rabbi Burton holds a Master's Degree in Social Work from Yeshiva University. Besides for his work at Torahlab, he teaches in numerous yeshivot and seminaries in Jerusalem and considers it his greatest privilege to do so. He and his wife and family reside in Har Nof, Jerusalem.
