History and Fiction

by Mordechai Nisan

I remember seeing Yehuda in the library at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. We would exchange greetings, and he would plunge into his reading.  I didn’t know that he was working on a labor of love – a book about Herod.

The story of Herod and the era associated with him is cut from the historical cloth of three primary dates: in 167 BCE the Hasmoneans [Maccabees] fought their way to Jewish independence from under Greek Hellenic rule and the Jewish state arose again; in 63 BCE the Roman Empire quashed Jewish independence; in 47 BCE Herod of Idumean and Nabatean parentage became the governor of the Galilee and then King of Judea in 37 BCE until his death in the year 4.

Herod, as Yehuda’s book grippingly describes, “had to be king.” He was driven by a passion for power and used any and all methods deemed necessary in his view – murdering his own sons, causing the death of his wife, killing rabbis of the Sanhedrin, slaughtering Jews – in order to rule Judea even under Roman authority. His regime was based on terror and cruelty, intrigue and plunder, while yet adorning the country with the rudiments of Greek culture and Roman construction. He built – rather enlarged – the Temple in Jerusalem, the port of Caesarea, roads and theatres, gymnasia and fortresses. One of them, Herodion where he is buried, bears his name until today.

Beyond Politics: Inspirational People of Israel

by Yocheved Golani

Title: Beyond Politics: Inspirational People of Israel
Author: Ronda Robinson
Publisher: Mazo Publishers

Beyond Politics: Inspirational People of Israel is a compact introduction to decency. Its eighteen personal profiles illustrate how Israelis from all walks of society improve the Holy Land’s quality of life, and then some. Author Ronda Robertson is a freelance journalist who decided to offset mainstream media’s negative stereotyping of today’s Israelis with a book. She did an outstanding job of presenting the goodness of Israel to the world at large in a mere 144-page paperback.

Unlike formulaic biographies from popular publishing houses in the Orthodox Jewish world, Beyond Politics is not predictable. The vignettes of individual men and women who trekked through Ethiopia and Sudan, flew in from Austria, India and Algeria, or were born on Israeli soil are gritty, adventurous and heartwarming.

Robinson lets her readers see, hear and taste the efforts that her subjects made to become part of Israel. Shlomo Malla rose from being an illiterate desert dweller who walked 485 dangerous miles to become an Israeli and later a highly educated politician; former Algerian Sara Lanesman made aliyah to unify Israel’s deaf citizens with a sign language they can share, ending the confusion of multiple signing dialects in one tiny country; Dr. Lior Sasson leads the way in healing indigent children around the world of heart defects – at no cost to their families; terror attack survivor Liora Tedgi saves psychological lives with her Terror Victims Support Center. Each of them explains the gut-wrenching moments that changed their lives forever, and how they chose to help others to cope with fear, social alienation, life-endangering illness and grief. Other people lift just as vividly off the page to inspire you and the information-challenged critics of Israel’s Jewish population.

Prayer for the Jewish Soldier

by Nathan Lopes Cardozo

 

Lord of the Universe:

We, the soldiers of the people of Israel

Come to You in humility

And pray for your help.

 

Once more we are asked to defend our

People and

The Holy Land against our enemies.

 

We ask You to have mercy on us and

Help us watch over our people

With clean hands

And with a heart filled with mercy.

 

Let our people have the strength to

Stay in good spirits

And live in unity and

Walk in Your ways,

The ways of justice and truth.

 

Let us not make mistakes

And hurt those who are not guilty,

Who do not understand

And have no part in this conflict.

 

Please,

Let our bullets not hurt those children of our enemies

Whose parents place them deliberately in dangerous spots,

Fire on us

And then shield themselves

Behind their own offspring against

Our forces so as to fault us when their children

Are wounded or even killed.

 

Remove the evil spirit of these parents

And make them realize the wickedness of their actions.

 

Stop their teachers from manipulating their students

With hate for us in their schoolbooks

On the radio, television and

The Internet.

 

O God,

You know what one of our prime ministers once said:

“We may forgive our enemies one day

For hurting and killing our children

But

We cannot forgive them for having made our children

Into those who needed to kill.”

We beg You, do not let our Jewish souls have to undergo

 

This ordeal that we cannot bear.

We are the children of Avraham, your servant, who

Prayed for the evil people of Sedom in the hope that

They would repent and live decent lives.

 

So, we beg you:

Make our enemies repent.

Make them understand that

We are good people

Who wish to live in peace with

All our neighbors.

 

O Lord,

Remove from their thoughts atrocities such as those

In which they dip their hands

In our blood.

As Jews, we

Cannot fathom

Doing this to even our worst enemies.

 

You commanded us to live in a country that

Is little more

Than a tiny island.

Our population is smaller than that of

Many single cities.

 

You asked us to live there so as to send

Your holy Word to all the corners of the world.

But

We are surrounded by many nations who

Contain more than a hundred million people.

They inhabit one of the largest regions of the world

But deny us the right to live in even the smallest corner of the world.

They do not want to listen

And only wish our death.

 

Give the Arab nations

Leaders

Who pursue justice and who really

Care for their people

And do not wish to bring their own brothers to despair

And unbearable pain

With the intention

Of accusing us

Of grave injustice.

 

Now,

After thousands of years of our dwelling

In this world and after many exiles, tortures, pogroms,

Expulsions and Holocausts

We finally found our way back to our

Small homeland

That You promised to our ancestors.

 

Yet once more our dreams of peace

Have gone up in smoke

While we try, at the risk of our own lives,

To find a way to

Allow our Palestinian neighbors to

Live their own lives.

 

While we were prepared to make sacrifices

For the welfare of these people

As no other people ever did

While we offered them land, peace, finances

And even firearms so as to defend themselves,

We once more pay the price for being a people

Who believe in the honesty of another nation and its leaders

And once more we feel misled.

 

Oh Lord, remove the evil intentions of the

Security Council, which distorts the truth.

Remove the deliberate lies

From the hearts of those who head the

Media.

Why do they want to portray us

As an evil people?

They do so

To deny Your existence and Your moral

Demands.

They hide behind their own wickedness

And cover up their own and their ancestors’

Immoral acts that they committed against us

And our ancestors for thousands

Of years.

 

O God, You know

That

No army in world history has used as much restraint

As ours.

No army is so careful not to hurt or kill

As ours.

But what shall we do when they are not even prepared

To give us the option

To prove this to the world?

 

Please, God,

Bring peace into the hearts and minds

Of our enemies.

Let them be uplifted with a spirit of righteousness.

Stop them from hating us because we are Your people.

Let us sanctify Your name as this is our

Mission and our dream.

Give us the possibility once more to teach

Your ways to the peoples

Of the world

And make them hear and

Understand.

 

We hate war as nobody else does.

We abhor the need to wear weapons.

We cannot stand the sound of our own artillery

And our tanks.

 

We are the people of the Book,

The Book that demands holiness,

Kindness

And integrity.

Our heroes are not the generals or the marshals

But our prophets and our sages,

Righteous people.

So deliver us from this anguish.

Bring peace to the nations.

Let us not be forced to use our strength against them

For they will have no escape.

But

Let the blessing that you gave to Avraham come true –

“Through you all the families of the earth will be blessed” –

For this is our hope.

 

–Chapter 34 from Cardozo’s For the Love of Israel and the Jewish People: Essays and Studies on Israel, Jews and Judaism.

Bus-stop books – Israel’s newest public library

by Karin Kloosterman

Imagine a library where there are no due dates and no librarians telling you to be quiet. Israeli artists have developed a new model for the urban library: a free bus-stop library for commuters and travelers of all ages.

Daniel Shoshan, an installation artist and lecturer at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, along with Technion graduate Amit Matalon, started this new public library concept figuring that people sometimes have long wait times for buses.

Their motto: You may take, you may return, you may add.

The duo built a series of bookshelves at bus stops throughout Israeli cities. The idea is that anyone may take a book from the shelf, read it at the station or take it on the bus and return it when done.

No due dates, no late fees, no rules.

At first they did an experiment to see if the dynamics would work. Would the shelves refill? Would people participate?

Book Review: Life’s Journey: Exploring Relationships, Resolving Conflicts

by Geulah Grossman, M.Sc.

Life’s Journey: Exploring Relationships, Resolving Conflicts is a book to help you journey through life; “Inscribe us in the Book of Life.”

Reading Dr. Batya Ludman’s wonderfully wise Life’s Journey: Exploring Relationships, Resolving Conflicts (Devora Publishing, 2011) sparked some memories.

In 1970, when I had my first child, two best-sellers sat on my night-table: the umpteenth edition of Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care and the just-published Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler.

Spock’s message to parents was “Be confident — you know more than you think you do – and the rest is clearly explained here.” Even in 1946, when the book was first published (it’s still going strong, having sold more than 50 million copies in 42 languages), many young parents needed both the encouragement and a friendly knowledge-source, because – like today’s olim — they were living far from their extended families.

Toffler defined future shock as perception of too much change in too short a period of time”. Although Toffler wrote before anyone could even imagine specific changes like computers in every home (or room) and cell phones  in every pocket, he was spot-on in predicting that masses of unexpected or unfamiliar information would weaken one’s sense that “I know how to get along in this world”.

In 1975, when I came on aliya, the only useful book was The WonderPot Cookbook. It taught me about unfamiliar ingredients and non-oven ways to prepare them, but any other info I needed for navigating into Israeli society, and for raising my children within it – was totally unavailable. Knowing Hebrew gave me the illusion that I understood what was going around me. In reality, it’s the culture, not the language that takes time, patience, and human guidance to understand.

Although future shock now engulfs everyone in “western” society, groups enduring extra-large doses are new parents, parents of teen-agers, and new olim, each making their first entries into unfamiliar worlds. Many people belong simultaneously to two or all of these groups. Oh for a map, and a helping hand!

In her book, Dr. Ludman, a licensed clinical psychologist and a familiar name to Anglo olim, who is also a family therapist and trauma specialist and who writes a column for the weekend edition of the JPost, provides cogent descriptions of life’s challenges, mental exercises that lead to personal insights, and practical advice for dealing effectively and meaningfully with people and events throughout the life-cycle.

Among the topics: stress and its antidotes, effective communication, marriage, child-rearing, technology and its challenges to family life, the senior years, bereavement, and much more.

One chapter, “Take Your Foot Off the Gas”, should be translated into Hebrew and read together by all Mediterranean parents and their new-driver teenagers.

In addition to the high quality and scope of its advice, what makes the book unique is its chapters on life in Israel – the initial aliya adjustments, the difficulties of living far from loved ones, dealing with children’s teachers, coping with terror and the threat of terror, worries about our soldier-children, the roles of religion and culture in our lives, and all these combined.

Here’s one of my favorite paragraphs (it was hard to choose…):

“Pretend for a moment that you are from another planet. Remember, life is not what you knew back home. Appreciate all the things your new life has to offer and enjoy your adopted country’s strengths…..Where else do you see pink and red flowers growing on the same tree?….. You have to be moved when the bus driver, the woman at the checkout and the gym instructor all say Shabbat Shalom.”

Life’s Journey is an excellent gift for anyone at any stage of life’s journey – especially (but not only) if that journey includes aliya.

Online post may be found here.

Top Ten PR Books for Israeli and Jewish Leaders

For the Love of Israel and the Jewish People

by Ronn Torossian

The next few weeks will be tough for Israel as the upcoming UN sessions loom. Therefore, I composed a list of must-read public relations books, concerned with Israel’s case in the media:

I.            The Torah: The Jewish Bible is the bedrock of the entirety of Judaism’s legal and ethical tests. The Torah encompasses the Five Books of Moses and is the Jewish mandate for the State of Israel and the Jewish people’s reason for being.  It’s a must- read for anyone doing public relations/marketing for Israel and the Jews – to know the foundation of Jewish faith and law and the essence of Judaism.

II.             The Case for Israel, by Alan Dershowitz: The famed Harvard law professor offers “a proactive defense of Israel,” and presents a passionate insight into unfair attacks on the only democracy in the Middle East. Each of the chapters begins with an accusation against Israel, followed by “The Reality” as Dershowitz sees it, and “The Proof.” Its rationale is based on excellent logical explanations, which can help reasoning in arguments, debates and media situations.

III.             The War Against the Jews, by Lucy Dawidowicz:  The definitive history of the Holocaust, which clearly chronicles the magnitude of its atrocities. It’s necessary for all to remember that not so long ago when many tried to destroy the Jewish people, the rest of the world stood by.  Read it and remember it as today, too, there are many who strive to destroy the Jews. It’s necessary to know and be very aware of when dealing with media.

IV.            The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, by Yehuda Avner: This book by a former senior government official details at great length and with fascinating insider’s  experiences working side-by-side with five Israeli prime ministers and countless senior players in government. The book provides insight into the intricate inner workings and details of politics; it names  governments and people worldwide that pressure the Jewish State. This book enables one a view of  the pressures on Israeli government officials – and a mirror into what pressures to expect.

V.            How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie: This book has been called the “public relations bible.” After its initial publication in 1937, the book sold over 15 million copies. Carnegie states, “Success is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to “the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people.” Israel often assumes that being right is enough;-that’s not the case. Those speaking out for Israel need to know and understand that in today’s world being right isn’t enough; selling it will change the dynamic.

“I have a Dream”

For the Love of Israel and the Jewish People

Machon Ohr Aaron & Betsy Spijer
Thoughts to Ponder – 277
The Next Mass Demonstration
Wanted: Rabbis with Knives between Their Teeth
by Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Things are going well in Israel. Mass demonstrations for social justice, housing, proper hospitalization, and adequate wages for physicians, teachers and the underprivileged are finally underway. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have gone to the streets to convince the government that things need to change drastically. This could be a turning point in Israel’s future with dramatic consequences for the better.

I have a dream! I see a huge demonstration for the soul of Judaism. An uprising in which hundreds of thousands of secular Israelis demand an honest and genuine Judaism with no political parties, no embarrassing financial deals, and no religious coercion. A Judaism that will inspire them, lift their spirits, and make them burst with pride to be Jewish.

I have a dream! I imagine a spiritual revolution by secular Israelis who are fed up with the religious establishment and instead demand rabbinical leadership that will hear their longing for a Judaism that speaks to them. A leadership that will admit it has played its cards wrong for years and has continually misread the minds and hearts of these secular Israelis.

I have a dream! I envision Chief Rabbis who dare to take a stand; who stop looking over their shoulders and start thinking out of the box; who show courage and do not act out of fear; who stop worrying about the influences of other denominations of Judaism and instead are prepared to have an honest dialogue with them. A rabbinate that introduces prophetic Halacha, which uses not only the rulings of the Shulchan Aruch but also the vital teachings of our prophets and great thinkers – Jewish and non-Jewish – so as to find new spiritual solutions that will convince all of us how much more Judaism has to offer than we ever imagined.

I await the moment when young secular Israelis will

Mordechai Weiss goes from Chabad rabbi to Israel tour guide

by Abigail Klein Leichman

In July 2003, Rabbi Mordechai Weiss arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv with his pregnant wife, Ellie, nine of their 10 children (another was already married and living in Israel), and 40 pieces of luggage. Two vans transported them to their new house in Mitzpeh Yericho in the Judean Desert.

“As we alighted from the vans in front of our still-under-construction new home, all we could see was sand, sun, and sky,” he writes in his recently released book, “You Come for One Reason but Stay for Another” (Devora Publishing, $18.95). “It was like entering the Twilight Zone. Goodbye civilization (Teaneck, New Jersey), hello Mitzpeh.”

For more than two decades, Weiss was part of the Jewish landscape of North Jersey, as rabbi of Teaneck’s Chabad House, director of the Friends of Lubavitch of Bergen County, and chaplain of the Teaneck Volunteer Ambulance Corps. His wife taught at the Yeshiva of North Jersey and welcomed untold numbers of visitors to the Weiss home. Yet the pull of their ancestral homeland brought the large family to a unanimous decision to leave all that and resettle in a 300-family desert community.

In the book, which presents five years’ worth of e-mail updates to friends and family, Weiss provides a frank look at why the family moved; the challenges, triumphs, and tragedies of the first years in Israel; and above all, the reasons most of the family chose to stay.

Now working as a licensed tour guide, Weiss told The Jewish Standard that the notion for the book came from several people on his distribution list. He envisioned his readers as falling into two distinct groups: those familiar with the concept of aliyah, and those “who might be interested in a true and honest family experience, a personal story to be enjoyed.”

In describing his children’s adjustment, Weiss often writes about the role of sports in their lives, particularly for Mendel, who was a third-grader when they arrived.

“Because baseball was an important part of Mendel’s upbringing, it was extremely important for him to be connected to baseball here in Israel,” said Weiss, “despite the difficulties of schlepping him to Jerusalem, Petach Tikvah, and Kibbutz Gezer on a weekly basis. Baseball was important for his self-image, particularly as school was difficult, with the new language having him at a disadvantage. Baseball gave him a way to excel; he was good at it in Teaneck and he was really good at it here!”

Though Mendel made the Israeli Little League national team and played successfully in a championship game in Prague, he gradually gravitated to

You Come for One Reason But Stay for Another: Making the Odyssey to Israel could be subtitled “It takes an Optimist”

by Aviva Yoselis

Before opening Rabbi Mordechai Weiss’s new book about making aliyah, You Come for One Reason But Stay for Another: Making the Odyssey to Israel (Devora Publishing), I was a bit wary. The cover looked boring. More importantly, I, like Rabbi Weiss, the former executive director of Friends of Lubavitch of Bergen County, had already trekked the path of new immigrant to Israel. Although he, unlike me, came with five teenagers in tow, I couldn’t help wondering what he could possibly tell me that I did not already know.

Three pages into the book, I was already laughing out loud.  Indeed, I had shared many of the same experiences as Rabbi Weiss, but his wit and candor kept me chuckling throughout most of the book.

Based on his e-mail correspondence with members of his former Teaneck-and-Miami tribe, You Come for One Reason is the story of Rabbi Weiss’s journey, a Teaneck Chabad rabbi for 21 years who decided to lead his family of ten children to the Land of Milk and Honey, in the middle of the Judean desert.

Unlike Rabbi Weiss, I made aliyah before the advent of Nefesh B’Nefesh.  Those were the days of disgruntled Misrad Hapanim (Ministry of the Interior) workers, of obnoxious clerks and employees who grew impatient with your limited Hebrew despite the fact that their parents had also emigrated with newcomers’ limited Hebrew, never mind that their parents had also been immigrants with little of no Hebrew to speak of.

In his book, Rabbi Weiss recalls an early encounter with the Ministry of Education in Israel, diplomas must be “certified” before they can be accepted by the country’s universities or other academic programs. After a lengthy process, he finally managed to procure his high school transcript but the Israeli clerk took one look at his diploma and declared it unacceptable. “Your name is handwritten, not typed,” she told him.

Posturing versus real criticism

by Dow Marmur

Two weeks ago, I heard Marina Nemat speak at the Jerusalem International Book Fair. She and her family came to Canada some 20 years ago and settled in the GTA. In the hell that is her native Iran, she was imprisoned as a 16 year old for having an independent mind and held for two years in the notorious Evin jail. She has written two books about her life that have been translated into many languages, including Hebrew. She was in Jerusalem as the guest of her Israeli publishers.

When it became known that she planned to come to Israel, “all her broke lose on the Internet,” she said, because “North Americans urged me to boycott the event.” She refused. As a victim of oppression and a survivor of unspeakable suffering, she has a lot in common with many Israelis and Palestinians. She came as a witness.

Nemat was in good company. The star of the book fair was the British novelist Ian McEwan, the recipient of the 2011 prestigious Jerusalem Prize for Literature awarded every two years to a foreign author with an international reputation.

The pressure on McEwan from British intellectuals to boycott the event was enormous. He, too, resisted and told his Jerusalem audience that he was happy and honoured to be there. He refused to yield not because he agrees with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza but because he respects its democracy. Similarly, the Italian author Umberto Eco had to resist much pressure but, like many other eminent authors, chose to come.

McEwan spoke with admiration about three of Israel’s most distinguished writers — Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman — “who love their country, and made sacrifices for it and have been troubled by the directions it has taken.” A couple of days earlier, McEwan accompanied Grossman to the weekly demonstration in East Jerusalem to protest provocative efforts by Jewish extremists to displace Palestinian residents.

As a tangible expression of solidarity and commitment, McEwan donated the $10,000 prize to