Opinion: Editorial
A matter of convenience
Notice how all eyes are turned toward Israel in the aftermath of the flotilla incident.
How convenient. It diverts attention from more serious issues and allows countries with questionable human rights records to masquerade as humanitarians.
Take Turkey, for example, a country that certainly protests too much about perceived Israeli misbehavior. This is the same country that during the years 1915 to 1923 annihilated some one and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — and denied doing it.
Funny — but still frightening
Terrified of terrorists? Two writers in the current Atlantic make “the case for calling them nitwits” — not to make us relax our vigilance but to reduce our anxiety by getting a bead on who they actually are. The “twin ideas” that “[t]hey’re fanatical and highly organized … keep us fearful and help them attract new members,” write Daniel Byman and Christine Fair. (Byman is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy and director of Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, where Fair is an assistant professor.)
And her little dog, too
Like the Wicked Witch of the West — whom, we must say, she greatly resembles (apologies to Margaret Hamilton) — Helen Thomas has melted. All it took to take the longtime White House correspondent down was a dash of cold water, in the form of a widely circulated videotape of her astonishingly ignorant and bigoted remarks about Jews and Israel. Indeed, you could say she splashed it on herself.
Those remarks have drawn a lot of attention (see page 30). One of the best responses we’ve seen was by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post on Monday. He called the Thomas diatribe that Jews should “go home” “a teachable moment,” and proceeded to remind the world that “after World War II many Jews did attempt to ‘go home’ to Poland. This resulted in the murder of about 1,500 of them — killed not by Nazis but by Poles, either out of sheer ethnic hatred or fear they would lose their (stolen) homes.
“The mini-Holocaust that followed the Holocaust … played an outsize role in the establishment of the State of Israel,” he noted. “It was the plight of Jews consigned to Displaced Persons camps in Europe that both moved and outraged President Harry Truman, who supported Jewish immigration to Palestine and, when the time came, the new state itself. Something had to be done for the Jews of Europe. They were still being murdered….
“For the surviving Jews of Eastern Europe, there was no going home — and no staying, either.”
Thomas also needs to be taught about the Jews who had a centuries-long history in Arab lands — and who were expelled from them.
Shulamit Kustanowitz, a former managing editor of The Jewish Standard, cites Jews’ long history in eretz Yisrael itself.
“My grandmother (Esther Shtampfer Englander),” the Fair Lawn resident writes in an e-mail, was the seventh generation in her family to be born in Jerusalem.
“So, figuring she was born in about 1885, and allowing 20 years per generation, I can claim Jerusalem as the place of birth of our family in particular going back to 1745.
“Of course,” Kustanowitz continues, “the Torah records that our ancestors were there at least 3,500 years ago.
“Therefore,” she artfully suggests, “I think we should do what Helen Thomas originally suggested and go back home where we came from. She just had the country of our roots wrong.”
Take that, Helen Thomas.
RKB
It’s how you say it that matters
Even before the Mavi Marmara fiasco, the question was being bandied about the length and breadth of the Jewish world: Is there a proper way to criticize Israel without being called a self-hating Jew (or worse)?
The simple answer to that question is no. Either you support Israel unconditionally or you do not support it at all. When Jews criticize Israel, they play into the hands of Israel’s enemies and that is nothing short of treason.
That, at least, is what one hears after saying or writing something critical of Israel. Yet nothing is as simple as that.
What we can learn from anti-Israel activism
The bottom-line marketing success: Israel is now perceived as the pariah nation and the Palestinians and its supporters are the cause of good.
This enormous, growing international accomplishment is a marketing professional’s dream. As one of those professionals, I want to know everything I can. I want to duplicate it for my clients. I want to hire its strategists. I want to be invited to breakfast meetings with its creative thinkers. I want to pick their brains, acquire their talents, meet their teachers, sit in their concept meetings, and work with their suppliers. I want to know how they evaluate their successes and failures, what they learn from them, and how they apply those lessons to the next bigger and even better job.
More than anything, I want to know how their big brilliant ideas evolve and understand the insights and capabilities of their implementation teams.
Questions column
The Jewish Standard serves an important role in catering to a broad spectrum of the Jewish Community. As such, it is appropriate that the column written by Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer is labeled as representing “One religious perspective.” Those of your readers who identify with the traditional beliefs of Jews throughout the millennia, that both the written and oral components of the Torah were divinely transmitted at Sinai, will not take seriously the manner in which Rabbi Engelmayer makes use of numerous citations of biblical, Talmudic, and medieval sources. However, his May 28 column oversteps the bounds of intellectual honesty by misusing some of his cited sources.
After writing that, “bluntly stated, there does not exist an unequivocal … halachic objection … of women sitting with men during prayer services and Torah study,” he quotes the Mordechai, a 13th-century scholar, to support his assertion: “On the Sabbath, we may erect the curtain between men and women during the time of the sermon.” He then, incredulously and scandalously, infers that in contrast to “the time of the sermon,” during prayer there is no such need for separation between the women and the men.
The Sabbath “sermon” in talmudic times did not take place in the synagogue and not necessarily during the morning hours, i.e., not in the place of prayer and not during the time of prayer, and did not relate at all to prayer (BT Shabbat 116 A). Furthermore, the context of the citation from the Mordechai (Shabbat 311) does not relate to the laws of separating women and men, but rather to the prohibition of construction on the Sabbath. It is permissible to erect a curtain during the sermon since it is done only for purposes of modesty (but may not be otherwise required). The correct inference and understanding of this statement is that not only at prayer is a separation required but even at the time and place of the sermon.
Finally and bluntly, the Mishna in Middot (2,5; see also Succah 5,2) describing the Beit Hamikdash, The Temple, which is the paradigm for our prayer in the synagogue, states: “The women view from above (balcony) and the men from below so that they do not mix together.”
Israel Polak
Teaneck
Rabbi Engelmayer responds:
Let me begin by noting that the column in question was not advocating that women should get aliyot, or should don tefillin, or should wear tzitzit. There are differences of opinion on these and similar matters, and each opinion is valid for those holding it.
My column was about the increasing violence aimed at women who believe that the sources give them such rights.
How sad it is, then, that Israel Polak prefers to pick non-existent nits while ignoring the true subject of the column. I have to wonder whether he considers these attacks to be justified halachically in some way.
In accusing me of intellectual dishonesty, Polak engages in it himself. There are 424 words separating the “bluntly stated” paragraph (which he conveniently truncates) and the reference to Rabbi Mordechai ben Hillel. In those 424 words, there are talmudic and biblical citations that are unequivocal in their plain meaning, such as that “the words of the Torah are not susceptible to uncleanness,” or that a woman is entitled to an aliyah but nevertheless should be denied that right, or that “200 singing men and singing women” were employed in the Temple service (which could be seen as a clear challenge to the notion of kol ishah). We may disagree about whether the plain meaning represents the actual meaning, but we cannot simply ignore that these words were spoken and recorded.
Polak also ignores other citations in the column that just as unambiguously seem to claim that women may don tefillin and are required to wear tzitzit. Again, we can argue about whether what seems to be actually is, or why what actually is should be ignored, but we cannot argue that the words are not there to begin with.
As for the responsum in question, I did not say that the sermon was given during services. Indeed, Rashi in BT Kiddushin 81a (sv gulfei) suggests that the traditonal d’rash was given separate from services. However, Polak ignores the point of the citation: Why would anyone have erected a mechitzah at any time on Shabbat if a mechitzah was already in place? Indeed, why would it not have been put up in advance of Shabbat if the use of a mechitzah was standard at any time during the day?
Judge not…
The government of Turkey has been shouting to whoever will listen for two weeks now about how its aid flotilla to Gaza was a humanitarian mission to an occupied people. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears quite concerned for the people of Gaza who are, he claims, suffering under occupation.
Indeed, we have been touched by Erdogan’s concern for people in occupied land, which is why we fully support the creation of a massive aid flotilla to a people who have lived under occupation for almost 40 years by a country that claims half of the indigenous people’s land as its own. We speak, of course, of the citizens of Cyprus, who have lived under Turkish occupation since 1974.
Only Turkey recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, created after that country invaded the Greek island and deposed its ruler, President and Archbishop Makarios III, and divided the Greek isle. The events that led to the invasion are, of course, more complicated than can be elaborated on here, but the short take is that Turkish forces declared themselves the independent rulers of part of the island.
Then there is the matter of Turkey’s bloody past: the Armenian genocide, long a taboo topic in American and Israeli political circles because of the delicate relationship with Turkey. Now that Turkey appears to have realigned itself with Iran — seemingly leaving the derech of westernization and its quest for membership in the European Union — we have seen American and Israeli leaders begin calling Turkey on its past crimes.
We want to see more.
In April of 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested more than 250 Armenians and then initiated a series of deportations, death marches, and massacres that resulted in the deaths of at least 500,000 Armenians.
Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, denies that the word genocide is appropriate to describe these events.
We urge the United States, Israel, and the international community to call Turkey to task for its crimes past and present. For Israel to be judged by countries with such horrific human rights records — need we even begin the list of Iran’s crimes? — is laughable at best and perverse at worst.
J.L.
Says Israel must not stand alone
Scott Lippe’s prescription would be a disaster for the State of Israel (Letters, June 4).
First, whether Dr. Lippe likes it or not, the blockade of Gaza depends on the cooperation of Egypt and other Arab countries.
Should Egypt decide to open up its border with Gaza for full trade (cutting a deal with Hamas), the blockade would quickly become an exercise in futility. Any imports, including weaponry, could be smuggled through Egyptian ports and there would be nothing that the Israeli navy could do about it. The aftereffect of the IDF commandos boarding the vessel of the flotilla may unfortunately make this a reality.
Secondly, the only opportunity to stop Iran from making nuclear weapons may depend upon the formation of a broad coalition — as broad as possible. Such a coalition may include some European countries and some Arab countries. Such a coalition may also be necessary to permit the United States to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan without having these states lost to monstrous regimes. It is not in anyone’s interest to have Israel proceed on the theory that it stands alone.
Alan Levin
Fair Lawn
