Rabbi Landsberg's Blog

Late one night ...

Late at night by the side of my computer I am sitting with my daughter Noa - she is very awake.  On the screen courtesy of You-Tube a speech by Barack Obama was playing that I hadn't seen. Noa turns to me and says "That is Barack Obama !" with the special emphasis an endorsement from a three your child brings.  It is a spine tingling moment when your children join you for the grand unfolding story "out there".

Without wishing to reveal my sympathies too clearly please enjoy this video.

"driven down Broadway by a Maccabee"

The chagim are over, and I return to occasional blogging.  Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker attended the preview screening of a  movie based on the extraordinary story of the Jewish partisans  - the Bielski partisans who fought the Nazis from the Belorussian woods. The scale of the valour shown is hard to  imagine.  Gopnik does well when he explains that the director:

"originally considered starting the film...with a scene of a customer finding himself in the back seat of a taxi and realizing that he was being driven by a Bielski, as one might be driven down Broadway by a Maccabee"

Read the rest of the piece here.   The trailer for the movie can be seen here.

Rosh Hashana

Rosh Hashana, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Shana Tova to you and your families..

My congregation teaches me...

One of the many rewards of congregational life at Temple Emanu-El is the collective learning of my ever-probing congregation.  An example:  here is a link to an article on the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict that was recently forwarded to me.  Probably on my own I would not have come across it.

The piece  is by Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Foreign Minister in the Ehud Barak government.  It is a review (in the magazine Foreign Affairs) of the new Benny Morris  book about the 1948 War of Independence.  Ben-Ami outlines in his review, what was achieved, but also the grisly and ongoing cost of Israeli independence for both Jews and Palestinians. 

Looking clearly at events shrouded in national myth is hard but vitally necessary.  To engage young Jews who are skeptical of any national narrative in today's less credulous age, I must be prepared to talk tachlis, as it were.  The facts of Israel's founding do not undermine my love of Israel nor my Zionism, but they do impact how I speak; my Zionism is grounded in a harder, more nuanced world of power and painful compromise than the softer and simpler world of myth.  Instead of myth, I offer young Emanu-Elniks (together with us older ones) a relationship with Israel unafraid of fact and grounded in a Zionist commitment, that can love the Jewish nation in Israel and beyond "warts and all" .  

So, for your copy of Foreign Affairs left in outside my study door:  thanks, Phil!

Catching up on the Times and tales of Savta

I have been so engrossed in the US election and the preparation for the chagim, that I confess I have not been as diligent as I should be in following events in the wider Jewish world.  Now as I play catch up on the events of the last few weeks, I am stumbling on pieces that I want to share.

Here is an article from the New York Times magazine from a couple weeks ago entitled Evening in Jerusalem. It is a bittersweet recollection of a grandson (now living in Los Angeles) of an Iraqi Jewish  woman in Jerusalem.  Savta (the Hebrew for "grandmother") is from a world away, both metaphorically and literally.

According to my husband, his savta was not dissimilar in circumstance and manner from the  savta described here. She came from Basra Iraq and moved to Abadan Iran as a small child (from where later on she would make aliya on the creation of Israel). She died some months before I met Adam, but I like to imagine we would have enjoyed sharing some Nana tea as we spoke  in broken Hebrew.

the income of Episcopalians and the voting habits of Puerto Ricans ....

For any Jew raised in the U.S., this phrase needs no explanation.  For all others: it refers to the voting habits of US Jews, who refute class based explanations of voting patterns (i.e.,  with above average incomes but wedded to the Democratic party).  Now as the U.S. November elections approach, my attention has returned to developments south of the border.  There have been a spate of articles about how Jews will vote this cycle.  For one example, read this piece about the Democratic primary in Florida: "As Obama Heads to Florida, Many of Its Jews Have doubts"

I have always fought the easy syllogism that says: Jews tend to be politically progressive, therefore Judaism is progressivism.  There is much wrong with that position, not least that it is increasingly untrue for a vocal section of the U.S. [and Canadian] Jewish community.  More importantly, however, the civilization of the Jews is something so expansive it can respectably support almost any political stance.  To reduce the Covenant to politics is a transgression.

That said, I still read about the likely voting intentions of US Jews this November.   M J Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum writes:

"American Jews are, for the most part, well-off. But they vote as if they still were poor ghetto dwellers, somehow understanding that their fate is connected to the fate of those who have little or nothing."

For more read here.

Kosher Talk...

Kosher mobile phone, originally uploaded by Gideon Lichfield.

This phone is stamped with the seal of approval of "the rabbinical committee for communication affairs". It has internet access and is possibly text messaging disabled.

The photo is from Gideon Lichfield, the departing Israel and Palestine correspondent for The Economist. Apart from Mr Lichfield's incisive coverage and reportage he is also an exquisite photographer. To continue the photographic theme started Wednesday, explore his photos here on Flickr.

You can read more of Gideon Litchfield here where he brings us up to speed on the latest developments of Israel's haute bourgeois  in his blog Fugitive Peace .  

We women and our daughters

Michelle and Hillary (and yes, I am watching the Democratic National Convention all too intensely and yes--though it is rather late at night--we have been allowing the children to watch with us).  Admittedly, the link below has nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs. Obama or Sentor Clinton, but I first wanted to acknowledge them as my inspiration for this post today.

Rachel Papo, a U.S. born Israeli photographer, has a compelling series of photos of young women in the IDF, entitled "Serial No. 3817131"  In her description of the photos, she speaks of her her motivation behind this project:

Almost fifteen years after my mandatory military duty ended, I went back...Serial No. 3817131 represents my effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier from the perspective of an adult. My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all. Through the camera’s lens, I tried to reconstruct facets of my military life, hopeful to reconcile matters that had been left unresolved.

I find the photos challenging--mostly for their true otherness of experience.  As a Jewish woman in North America, I have not faced military service nor had to look ahead to it for my daughter from her first moment of life.   The chasm between my life as a Jew here rather than in Israel is real.  It makes me need to eschew any notion of using "we" when speaking about Jews here and Jews in Israel. 

Yes, "we" do claim each other--we claim history and relationship. But "we"--when speaking about Israel and its citizen soldiers--is claiming something too easily.  Until my daughter's life is on the line, I will talk of "here" and "there".  I will talk of "Jews" only when I do mean Jews everywhere and reserve  "Israelis" for those bearing the peculiar burdens of citizenship there.   And I will identify for Noa, my daugther, Israeli women who should inspire her, and there are many...and the American Jewish Woman that I am will hope that she remembers the first time she saw Michelle and Hillary.

From Youngstown to Warsaw: Two Tributes

Each time I try to write this post, my right pinkie gives out from spending so much time hovering over the backspace key.   I cannot easily find the words--even weeks now since his passing--to give voice to the profound esteem and deepest affection I have for Rabbi Dreyfus, alav hashalom, or to express the wave of sorrow I have felt since he died.  I had the blessing of studying with Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus every Friday morning during most of my years at rabbinic school.  He is given the most lovely of tributes by my friend Rabbi Andy Bachman here.  I hope that Andy's words suffice, especially for those of you who remember Dr. Dreyfus' erudition and dignified presence at my installation at Emanu-El in 2001.

With Dr. Dreyfus' passing colouring my mood, I read about the recent death of the Polish intellectual and politician Bronislaw Geremek [nee Lewertow], who had escaped from the Warsaw ghetto as a child.  Though Geremek gained fame on the world stage as a humanist and as the preeminent intellectual of the Polish Solidarity trade union, his remarkable story is also part of the tumult of the Jewish twentieth century and merits a remembrance amongst Jews.  Reading about his life and his choices coupled with his deep fortitude, I cannot help but wonder about all of the ways that the happenstances of history shield or challenge us.   Geremek's friend Adam Michnik, the Polish Jewish intellectual and Solidarity legend, pays him tribute here. 

Despite the bittersweetness of this post, I wish you only a sweet Shabbat.

More than just a stopover between Toronto and Tel Aviv

I don't really have thoughts to share about this thread.  I simply think it is worth opening a nice pinot noir and reading--the wine is good for the heart; the rest a good reminder of the issues of Jewish identity and life outside of the axes of North America and Israel:

Paris Journal (NYT)
Aux Barricades!� France and the Jews
British Perspective--reportage from The Guardian UK
Phoebe on Roger