The Muqata

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Four Great Posts

Four Great Posts over at JoeSettler which I'm not going to cross-post over here for a change.

When a Leftwing Kibbutz learns it is located on stolen "occupied" land

What farming is like after the Expulsion

Lost somewhere in ~~Israel~~

Something Small for Pesach

Enjoy!

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

-- Advertisement --

TODAY, Sunday, April 13 WebYeshiva is running a series of Web-conference shiurim on Pesach.

All Shiurim are free!

Rabbi Jeffrey Saks - 10:00am Israel time/3:00am NY time
Inclined Toward Freedom: On Leaning at the Seder

Mrs. Ilana Saks - 11:30am Israel time/4:30am NY time
"Because You Were a Slave in the Land of Egypt"

Rabbi Avi Weinstein - 1:00pm Israel time/6:00am NY time
Different Meanings of Freedom and the Festival of Freedom

Rabbi Moshe Morris - 5:00pm Israel time/10:00am NY time
The Halachot of When Erev Pesach Falls on Shabbat

Rabbi Yitzchak Twersky - 8:00pm Israel time/1:00pm NY time
Where Did Moshe Go? A View of the Haggada from the Vantage Point of Tanach

Mrs. Nomi Berman - 9:30pm Israel time/2:30pm NY time
The All-Nighter in B'nei Brak

Rabbi Yitzhak Zuriel - 11:30pm Israel time/4:30pm NY time
The Meaning of Rabbi Yehuda's Ten Plagues Simanim

Rabbi Yehoshua Geller - 1:00am Israel (April 14)/6:00pm NY time
Reading Maggid: Secrets to the Haggada's Midrash Encoding

Rabbi Chaim Brovender: 5:30am Israel time (April 14)/10:30pm NY time
Why is Moshe Rabbeinu Missing from the Haggada?

So go sign up and learn something.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

From Slavery to Freedom.

From this past weekend's Makor Rishon newspaper -- is this marketing genius or male chauvinism?

And now I'm running off to milluim. Joe - don't burn down the blog.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

He Is More Than A Waffle Stalker

My dear friend Yaaqov Ben-Yehudah is more than your ordinary waffle stalker. He is also among the finest hosts of Haveil Havalim.

I strongly urge you to go check out Haveil Havalim #162 - Pesah Edition. You'll be glad that you did.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Ki Matta le-Hatam: Community Rabbis in Israel and the United States – Part I

A Guest Posting by AddeRabbi

[cross posted to The Muqata, AddeRabbi]

In the wake of the 'buzz' generated by the impending aliyah of Rabbi Shalom Rosner (click on the 'breaking news' WebAd link above for the story, or just go here), his family, and several members of his kehilla Jameel asked me to guest post about the differences between community rabbis in Israel and the United States.

First, though, a word about Rabbi Rosner’s aliyah. I know a number of successful pulpit rabbis who made aliyah at the height of their careers, but without the fanfare. What makes this so special?

The answer has to do with one person, not Rabbi Rosner himself. I’m talking, of course, about Shelly Levine, the real estate agent who is selling the Nofei Ha-Shemesh project in Beit Shemesh (I actually bought my own home in Modiin through her). She’s selling the project as an American-style community with an American-style rabbi. Her husband, Charlie, is a PR. They cooked up this plan to market this project, and then went and found the right rabbi. This does not take anything away from the sacrifices that the Rosner family is making in order to come on aliyah. It does, however, explain the inordinate amount of hype surrounding them.

Back to the issues at hand – the difference between American Orthodox community rabbis and their Israeli counterparts. The Israeli community rabbinate is a difficult cohort to wrap one’s brain around, because there are at least three distinct elements of it. There’s the official urban/ regional Rabbanut, which operates everywhere in the country, and whose rabbis are paid by the municipality/ regional council. There are the synagogue rabbis. Finally, there are rabbis of small towns (kibbutzim, yishuvim, moshavot, etc.), who are paid by the ‘local council’, but, ultimately, the locales are so small that they are essentially community-based. I will compare these four elements using the following graph:

	Salary	Hired By	Contract Term
American	Full-time	Community	X years - Lifetime
Rabbanut	Full-time	Politicians	Lifetime
Israel – Shul	Part-time	Community	X Years
Small Yishuv	In between PT and FT	Community	X Years - Lifetime

This is obviously a bit of an oversimplification. There are plenty of part-time shul rabbis in the U.S., especially in shteiblach and the like, and there are plenty of others who need to hustle in order to make a few extra $$ - teaching in schools and what not – because they live in an expensive community or because the community simply cannot afford to pay the rabbi all that much. Nevertheless, the differences are clear, and it is also clear that the yishuv rabbinate is closest to the American rabbinate in terms of job description and expectations.

Readers may wonder why I have chosen to focus primarily on the economics of the rabbinate. A former teacher of mine, Prof. Shaul Stampfer of Hebrew U., opened my eyes to the economic pressures which guide the development of institutions. The economic (as well as political and social) circumstances in the U.S. and Israel dictate the make-up and function of their respective community rabbinates, as I hope to describe in Part II.

Note: Rabbi Avi (Seth) Kadish has an excellent article worth reading as well -- A proposal for creating Modern Orthodox Outreach Communities in the cities and towns of Israel. This essay was published in Makor Rishon (now the leading newspaper in the Religious Zionist world) on Erev Shabbat Hol Ha-Moed Sukkot, 5766.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

The Week Ahead

Jameel's got Milluim and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

There are 3 guest posters this Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday and none are named Jack ( did you catch that hint Jack?). Two of the bloggers were supposed to write last week, but that didn't happen, so they get to take a crack this week instead.

Jameel revised his post about the "Militia Men" something like 10 times, but was unhappy with the results so he decided not to publish it. After all, how many different ways can you say "slanted, yellow journalism"?

If only Yaacov Katz (the JPs military correspondent) had written that article.

Jameel plans to have some good stories when he gets back from kashering IDF kitchens (sorry, couldn't resist).

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Israel Prayer....Too Offensive

Cross posted on my blog

JTA has a story about an egalitarian shul that are having some problems with this prayer for Israel. Apparently, they think it is too militeralistic, "Conflation of religion and politics, its tone of Jewish triumphalism and exclusivity."

Here are some quotes:
Expecting everyone to stand and recite, in unison, something so political clearly sends a message: If you don't identify with the vision of Israel that is expressed in this prayer, then you are wrong,"
What vision bothers this poor soul?
Alpert says the prayer should account for the consequences of Israel's creation for the land's other inhabitants.
I feel such triumphalism in the face of the conflict in Israel and Palestine is irresponsible."
I think this person needs a hug.
Aviva Bock, a member of the Newton Centre Minyan who teaches psychotherapy at Harvard University, says there is something problematic about simply reciting this formula.

"The prayer should be a reflection of our hopes and prayers in the context of today rather than something that feels to me like it was written at a very different moment in time," she said.
Well, what could you expect from a psychotherapist? Sorry
Kalmanofsky himself recommended an alteration of the passage that speaks of Israeli soldiers achieving "victory," substituting instead a verse from Isaiah asking that they return in peace
At Manhattan's Jewish Center, a modern Orthodox shul, the congregation for many years had substituted an alternate version of the Israel prayer due to discomfort over the messianic element in the line characterizing Israel as "the first flowering of the redemption."
I really don't understand people sometimes. First of all, it says this shul (not the OJ one) follows a traditional siddur liturgy. Have they opened up the siddur lately. It's full of stuff about Israels exclusivity. Its full of places where we hope God will deliver us from its enemies. And messianic yearnings??? Ya, I think it mentions it there too. I wonder if this shul has a problem with the Torah's telling the Israelites to destroy the original inhabitants of Canaan. Perhaps we should add prayers for the souls of the Hittites. What about Tanakh?

I don't know. The way people conceive the world boggles my mind. Wanting those that want you destroyed, to be destroyed, is now politically incorrect. Victory is assur. It's offensive to the sensitivies of those that are defeated I guess. And why does it bother them calling Israel the first budding of the redemption? I mean, isn't that what these people are davening for? A redemption? In Judaism IIRC, redemption and a return to the land go hand and hand. So why do they get so offended by it all?

I would love to get a list of all the "offensive" things in the siddur and email this shul and see if they have a problem with it too. Or is just Israel? Anyone up for the challenge?

And then you have types like Gil, that have no problem tinkering with the prayer or ommitting it. Why? Two reasons. One, because it is recent. Well, weren't all prayers recent at some point or another? And the second, which I feel is for more sad is the fact that he says its political. The fact that Gil can say THIS prayer is political bothers me. How can it be political Gil? You are praying for its safety. You are praying for it being victorious. You are praying for its leaders to make right choices. And yes, you are praying that it is the beginning of a redemption. A redemption that you OBVIOUSLY believe is coming. If anything Gil, Israel should be a cause for all us to say thank you to God without you having to catogorize it into some sort of ideology first. I am SURE we can scroll through the siddur and even Talmud and find many "political" references.

Wherever I am, people keep hassling me about waffles. Leave me alone. I hate waffles.

But I really was a Terrorist!

Without a doubt, this is one of the weirder stories on the Jerusalem Post.

The Jerusalem Post wrote an article about Walid Shoebat, who claims he was recruited by a PLO operative to carry out an attack on a branch of Bank Leumi in Bethlehem in the 1970s.

At six in the evening he was supposed to detonate a bomb in the doorway of the bank. But when he saw a group of Arab children playing nearby, he says, his conscience was pricked and he threw the bomb onto the roof of the bank instead, where it exploded causing no fatalities.

The JPost investigation had a hard time with Shoebat's version.

Shoebat's claim to have been a terrorist rests on his account of the purported bombing of Bank Leumi. But after checking its files, the bank said it had no record of an attack on its Bethlehem branch anywhere in the relevant 1977-79 period.

Shoebat told The Jerusalem Post that this could be because the bank building was robustly protected with steel and that the attack may have caused little damage.
Asked whether word of the bombing made the news at the time, he said, "I don't know. I didn't read the papers because I was in hiding for the next three days." (In 2004, he had told Britain's Sunday Telegraph: "I was terribly relieved when I heard on the news later that evening that no one had been hurt or killed by my bomb.")
Shoebat could not immediately recall the year, or even the time of year, of the purported bombing when talking to the Post by phone from the US. After wavering, he finally settled for the summer of 1977.

He's adamant that he tried to blow up the bank, despite the discrepancies in his story.

Shoebat converted from Islam to Christianity in 1993 and now goes on tours around the US and Europe lecturing to the West about the dangers of Islamic extremism.

Shoebat describes his conversion to Christianity as a transformation "from hate to love." He told the Post that he believes "in a Greater Israel that includes Judea and Samaria, and by this I mean a Jewish state."
He argued that Israel should retake the Gaza Strip and rehouse Jews there, regarding Gaza as Jewish by right. "If a Jew has no right to Gaza, then he has no right to Jaffa or Haifa either," he said.
He advocates that the government of Greater Israel introduce a law providing for the exiling of anybody who denies its right to exist, "even if they were born there."
He has little sympathy for the PLO or Hamas. "The Palestinians have not met a single demand from Israel," he said, and added, "Both the PLO and Hamas have not given up the goal of destroying Israel."
"The Jews are not aware of the true threat," Shoebat said. "They are still fighting dead Nazis. It is easy to fight dead people. But they don't have the will to fight the living Nazis, the Islamic radicals."

Shoebat didn't appreciate the Jerusalem Post's critical investigation, and replied with his own article, I was a Terrorist.

FOR MY defense of Israel and my battle against Jew-hatred I have addressed audiences at numerous government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the United States Air Force and many police agencies. They always scrutinize my credentials and background, and they've cleared me each and every time. My advisory board is comprised of generals and other senior officers from the US military.
It is a shame that the Post was somehow duped into running an article against my character and credentials. The question everyone should ask is why is the media so bent in destroying my claims, especially the Israeli media which should in reality help me get my message out.

He's naive. Israel's media is not about pro-Israel messages.

That's why we have blogs -- someone has to be pro-Israel.

Shabbat Shalom,

Jameel.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Out of the Depths, out of the Ashes, Rebuilding Jerusalem

I'll never forget the first time I saw this arch in the Old City of Jerusalem; walking through the Old City on our way to the Kotel, the stark appearance of a single arch reaching towards the sky in the middle of ruins in captivating.

The arch was rebuilt as a tribute to the Churva Shul when Israel liberated the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967. The shul had been destroyed by the Jordanians, as had much of the Jewish Quarter, as had been the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives -- the tombstones from Jewish graves were used to pave roads and build latrines.

The Churva was the most impressive building in the Jewish Quarter once completed and served the Jewish community not only as a shul, but as a communal meeting place as well.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky organized a rally at the Hurva in order to enlist volunteers in the Jewish Brigade. It is also the place where the ceremony to hand over the flag of the Jewish Brigade was held on the day Jerusalem was conquered in 1917. Herzl visited there in 1898. The installation of the Ashkenazi rabbis of Jerusalem and of the Land of Israel took place at the Hurva and from there the call to save European Jewry was sent out during a public fast and day of prayer organized by hundreds of rabbis.

In 1925, when Herbert Samuel ended his term as the British high commissioner in Palestine, he came to the Hurva, was called up to read from the Torah and was honored with the last reading of Parshat Nahamu (the Sabbath immediately after the fast of Tisha B'Av, when the haftorah, the additional reading from Scriptures, begins with the words "Nahamu, nahamu ami" which means "Comfort My people, comfort them"). When Samuel reached the words "and on his throne a foreigner shall not sit" (in the blessing that is recited after the reading of the haftorah), Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook stood up and repeated those words aloud. Haaretz

The Churva was a majestic building with a large dome and large arches on each side of the building. It was impossible to miss among the skyline of the Old City.

And then the war came. Jews were evicted from the Old City...and the Jordanians demolished and desecrated everything Jewish. (To date, almost every Jewish site under Palestinian control has suffered the same fate; from the gravesite of Yosef to that of Yehoshua)

The ElderofZion has a whole description of the history and destruction of the Churva.

However, not to be deterred, we are rebuilding the Churva shul -- and its in the final stages of construction. The familiar lone standing arch is gone; and the shul's rebuilt exterior is almost complete.

Having neighborhood hitchhikers who work in the Old City -- I sent one the other week on a mission to take some pictures for my blog of it's current status. If you want an amazing English speaking tour guide for the Kotel Tunnels, let me know and I'll put you in touch with her...she took the pictures.

Enjoy!