JustASC

What do we teach when we teach about Israel? My column this week, prompted by my kids’ currrent and upcoming trips to Israel:

And as my teenagers head to Israel, I have two conflicting worries: The first, that they’ll absorb an idealized version of Israel that will either harden their politics or eventually lead to disillusionment; the second, that they’ve already absorbed the world’s jaundiced view of the Jewish state, and grown a cynical shell that no teacher or tour guide can crack.

So how do you cultivate a young person’s engagement with Israel so that he is neither naive to the point of gullibility, or knowing to the point of disdain?

What is the New York Sun getting at in its editorial on the NJ spy scandal? It lurches from trying to trivialize the charges, to justifying spying on America in service of Israel, to a disingenuous call for enforcing “America’s espionage laws.” It’s a neocon version of Freud’s kettle defense. (”I never borrowed that pot, it was broken when you lent it to me, and, anyways, I’ve already returned it.”)

New York Sun Editorial
April 23, 2008

It  sounds like the plot of a Zev Chafets novel, or a Purim spoof: An 84-year-old New Jersey man active in the Jewish War Veterans and the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County is accused of being an atomic spy for Israel, run out of an Israeli consulate in New York that is better known for the hummus served at its annual Israel Independence Day party.

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JTA provides the Jewish numbers on the Penn. primary:

Exit polling found that Jews comprised 7 percent of the electorate, and went 57 percent to 43 percent for Clinton.

More analysis after the jump.

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This week inthe NJJN:

Full coverage of Ben-Ami Kadish, the NJ retiree accused of spying for Israel.

Immigration woes for a Venezuelan doctor, who fears a return to his “anti-Semitic” native land.

We cover the pope’s visit (our guy was the one without the yarmulke).

Take a knee, fellas: A coach’s prayer case splits Jewish experts:

Marc Stern, of the American Jewish Congress, said he was troubled by a “very narrow reading” of legal precedents.

According to Stern, the ruling suggests that a coach without Borden’s long history of leading or encouraging students to pray would be allowed to join them, “and that’s a big problem.”

“The judges were obviously bending over backwards to create teachers’ rights to engage in religion with their students, but there is no such right,” Stern said. “No court has recognized a free speech right or an academic freedom right to engage in religious activity with one’s students. This court does that. It is problematic.”

NJJN Middlesex bureau chief Debra Rubin interviews Ben-Ami Kadish’s cantor and friends:

Cantor Eli Perlman, religious leader of the Jewish Congregation of Concordia, said he did not know congregant Ben-Ami Kadish well, but was concerned about his age and health.

“I’ve only been in meetings with him, but I don’t think he’s in any shape to sit through a trial,” he said of the 84-year-old Kadish. “He doesn’t look like somebody who gets around easily.”

Perlman questioned why the government was bringing charges against Kadish decades after the alleged incidents.

“It sounds like a red herring-there’s something else going on,” he added. “It doesn’t make sense after all these years. Why has this all of a sudden come to the front?”

Charles and Fran Koppelman, who live in Concordia– another of Monroe’s adult communities — have known both Doris and Ben-Ami Kadish for several years.

“He’s outstanding as far as I’m concerned; very patriotic and caring,” said Charles Koppelman. “I know him as an outstanding individual as is his wife. I don’t know what he’s done before because I can’t see into the past. But, I can only praise him.”

Fran Koppelman, who described both Doris and Ben-Ami as “such nice people,” said she sees them around town.

“We just wish everything turns out well,” she said. “At his age he could drop dead from the humiliation.”

From David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008:

In an ad as polarizing and jarring as the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times branding the hero “General Betray Us” – a word play first used by MSNBC “journalist” Keith Olbermann.

David Horowitz, Newsmax.com, Oct. 1, 2007: 

Did I perhaps come up with the pun “Less Petraeus, more Betray Us” as a not-so-clever way to tarnish an American hero? No, as a matter of fact, Keith Olbermann did that. 
 

Fundraising letter for Frontpagemag.com from David Horowitz, Tuesday, April 22, 2008:

America’s most staunch ally in the war on terror is in great danger. Our ally is Israel, and it has been in great danger since it was founded sixty years ago. But now it’s in danger of being betrayed by our own government….  I’m writing to you today to ask your help in fighting back against this betrayal.

Do you find this headline from the Times as alarming as I did?

Praying Passenger Ejected From Jet for Failing to Return to His Seat

Turns out a “bearded Orthodox Jewish man”  in the back of a San Francisco-bound plane sitting on the tarmac at JFK was removed after he ignored flight attendants’ orders to return to his seat.

According to the Times, the man explained that once the prayer (probably the morning Amidah, fellow passengers surmised) is started, it must be finished without interruption. He returned to his seat after about two and a half minutes — too late for airline authorities.

A spokeswoman for United Airlines said that the man was put on another flight Thursday morning.  “It’s important that the customers listen to the flight crew’s instructions, especially safety instructions,” she said.

From NJJN: MetroWest, NJ federation leader urges readers to sound off to WQXR about rejecting the American Jewish Committee ad: 

WQXR’s dissonant sound

A colleague, David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, has brought to our attention the fact that WQXR, the New York Times’ classical music radio station, refuses to air an American Jewish Committee paid advertisement on Sderot.

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The Wall Street Journal reports on “the second kosher crisis this Passover season” (after our Tam Tam scoop, of course): a shortage of kosher-for-Passover stick margarine.

Longtime factories find the manufacturing process burdensome and expensive, and ethanol production is driving up the price of cottonseed oil, it’s key ingredient (so you can blame Al Gore).  

The only U.S. factory making Passover margarine is Kearny, N.J.-based MidAtlantic Vegetable Shortening Co. And they only turn out tubs and one-pound blocks or bricks, not the sticks that cooks and bakers covet.

One interviewee finds a nice drash in the midst of the shortage:

Charlotte Price in Cleveland panicked when she couldn’t get the margarine for her traditional squash casserole, glazed chicken and cinnamon chocolate cake. She finally found two one-pound blocks, but the experience left her thinking.

“Passover food evolved over the years to some kind of contest to see who can manufacture the most things resembling the other 51 weeks of the year,” she says. But “I think the idea that you can eliminate any Passover sacrifices is a mixed blessing.”

I usually don’t respond to the letters and comments that greet my column in the Jerusalem Post, but I found the following, in response to last week’s article about my day school ambivalence, interesting:

 Sir, – I read “The heart, and head, of the matter” (April 16) with increasing surprise. Surely it’s the heart that would say (loudly) to parents that they want a Jewish education for their children, rather than such an important decision being dictated by the head?

Andrew Silow-Carroll gave as his main reason for Jewish education “the fluency in Jewish learning‚” and “Jewish literacy.” These are important aspects, but not nearly as important as Jewish identity and knowledge of the history of the Jewish people and its Jewish practices, which have led to our position as Jews in today’s world.

If Mr. Silow-Carroll had reversed his head and heart, this column might have come nearer to many other Jews’ philosophy.

LYNNE SHAFFER
Jerusalem

Why would anyone presume to argue with what’s in MY head and heart, or presume to say what should be? In my “heart” I have a strong Jewish identity, which was forged in my mother’s kitchen, in the embrace of a circle of Jewish (public school) friends, in my extracurricular reading of history and literature, in a life-changing trip to Israel in 1983, and in my decision to combine my spiritual and professional lives. Day school had nothing to do with it.

But I made the rational decision – or, at least, arrived rationally at the irrationally expensive decision — that my path was serendipitous, and that if I wanted Jewish grandchildren, I needed to “fortify” my kids with a more intensely Jewish upbringing and education than I had. Strong Jewish identities do not depend on day school or yeshiva,  but I did a cost-benefit analysis, and decided that we had a better chance in this age if our kids went the day-school route. That’s using my head.

I also don’t know what it could possibly mean to “come nearer to many other Jews’ philosophy.” Pick a Jewish philosophy, any Jewish philosophy – and I’ll find you a thriving Jewish community that disagrees with it.