Talking to Haredim (badly) about coronavirus

Disgusting... horrifying... sickening...
I’m sure you’ve noticed all the pictures in the media, in Israel and beyond, of haredim ("ultra-orthodox Jews") defying lockdown orders, congregating in public, hanging out in minyans and yeshivas, not wearing masks?

I have.
I've been shocked, horrified, disgusted.

But then I sat down with it for a bit and really thought things through.

One of the things I had to learn during my Master's degree, and for some of my other writing, is seeing the missing pieces of the puzzle.  Who or what aren't you considering in your sweeping generalizations?

This is called academic honesty, and the media could seriously use some of it these days.

Why are we so bad at talking to strangers?

Another thing making me rethink this is Malcolm Gladwell's recent book Talking to Strangers (affiliate link), which is all about how we have trouble communicating with people who are unlike "us" -- however we define "us" at any given moment.  And about how these communication problems lead to bigger problems, possibly even the spread of pandemics.

(My conclusion, not his; his is

Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani shot near Gaza: A Canadian in Israel responds

You know what this blog post was going to be about?  Volunteers.  And about how Israel doesn't appreciate volunteers who come here from places like United States and Canada. 

It’s an important topic, right?  Too bad that’s not what I ended up writing about.

Volunteers are people of all faiths and all ages who don't have to come here, and who work for organizations like Sar-El (which places volunteers on military bases), on farms, in schools, all over the country.  They must contribute millions of dollars to the Israeli economy, which is absolutely fabulous.

I was talking someone a couple of weeks ago who had been here volunteering on farms for two months, and she started telling me about how she and the others were forced to work half a day on Yom HaAtzmaut, while the farm's owner slept in, then lounged around the house with friends and family (later, the volunteers were invited to join the BBQ -- once they were done work).  She noted that the paid migrant workers weren't in the fields... probably because it's illegal to make them work on a national holiday.

Volunteers can work whenever they want, I guess.

That made me mad, and I also, somewhat guiltily, realized that my daughter has had a volunteer from the U.S. teaching English in her school this entire year and I hadn't even met her, let alone thanked her (she's been working one-on-one with some of the native English speakers), until someone invited her to our Lag Ba'omer BBQ.  So I felt bad that she's been in the country so long and probably barely acknowledged by the community, and finally, belatedly, invited her over.

Like I said, that's what this blog post was going to be about. 

Because seriously, with the feeling towards Israel in North America these days, it's not at all obvious that someone would come here to volunteer, paying their own airfare and often also paying to volunteer, just so they can show up and be ignored at best and their goodwill abused at worst.  Israelis probably see volunteers as "freyers," suckers who are easily conned and therefore aren't worth very much.

(All freyers????  L-R: Sar-El volunteers 2012 photo © IDF via Wikimedia; Austrian Kibbutz volunteers 1978 photo © Robert Schediwy via Wikimedia; American volunteers at Masada meeting George W. Bush 2008 © White House via U.S. National Archives; Farm volunteer © WWOOF Israel)

I wanted to write about that because I was mad.  But then…

Then I saw something that made me even madder, and also -- I found out about people who abuse their volunteers even more than Israel does:  Gaza.  Or rather, Hamas, its quasi-elected dictatorship.

Gaza has had a humanitarian crisis over the last few years due to its leadership's terrorist policies.  Hamas is a government that's in power on a one-plank platform: eliminate Israel.  Once elected in 2006, they dismantled electoral operations so nobody could un-elect them and proceeded to take money out of children's and families' pockets and dedicate it to building terror tunnels and rockets with which to bombard nearby Israelis.

Hamas may be many things, but they're not stupid.  So in addition to these operations, they have poured a ton of work into the PR battle for the hearts and minds of the world.  It's a humanitarian crisis, they weep to the world, which is absolutely, 100% true.  And then, they point to Israel.  That's the whole PR thing: point to the crisis, point to Israel.  Repeat until hearts bleed and journalists cry.  It doesn't take much to make journalists cry, especially if there are pictures of children.

But courting NGOs and liberal media outlets is easy, hardly a challenge anymore.  Like I said, they cry easily.

So if I was in charge of the Hamas PR machine, then the thing that I would want most of all, more than anything else in the world, is a Canadian. 

The world loves nobody more than a Canadian.

To the world, Canadians are innocent, naive, the ultimate freyers, really.

Yup, that’s what would head up my wish list: A nice Canadian frayer, a volunteer who could

British media: Covering up murder, as usual

It’s tragic when anyone dies in a terror attack.  But last week’s murder by a Palestinian attacker of a British student in Jerusalem provides an opportunity to view the “local angle” – the British take on what exactly happened.

We all know the truth isn’t pretty – at least, until the British start telling it.  These three media reports are typical in that they sidestep the truth, leaving huge gaps when talking about who exactly committed the murder.

First, we have The Guardian:

Headline:  “Jerusalem stabbing: British student, 20, killed close to Old City”

Paragraph 1:  “British victim of a fatal stabbing”  (who did it?)

Paragraph 2:  “killed on Friday” (by whom?)

Paragraph 3:  “The attack, which police said involved a Palestinian assailant with a history of mental health issues” (involved?  was there anyone ELSE involved?  who exactly did it???)

Later in the article:  “A wave of unrest that erupted in October 2015 has claimed the lives of 260 Palestinians, 41 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese...”  (erupted?)

Blah.

Next up is Sky News:

Headline:  “British student Hannah Bladon's family 'devastated' by her killing in Jerusalem”

Explaining Israel: What the heck is going on here???

Do you know how to explain “the situation” in Israel if you had to?

If so, good for you.  I mean it.  I couldn’t – up until very recently.

Maybe you’re a keen Israel advocate, but I never have been.  I mean, I liked Israel, I thought in some vague and Biblically-informed way that we had a right and indeed a halachic obligation to be here.  But if you’d asked me about specifics, I would have been mighty short on details.

Which was why I was surprised when a friend sent me a link the other day to a typical article, at the BBC website, with the headline, “Israel postpones vote on new Jerusalem settlement homes.”  And she asked for my “take” on the situation.

The surprising part – to me, at least – is that I actually DO have a “take” now.  That’s strange because I’m not a “politics” person.  Never have been.  I avoid news if I can help it at all, and perhaps articles like this, shallow and lazy, are one reason why.  But when I sat down to share my views, I realized I needed to share a whole lot more by way of background. 

So I started to type, and this is what I got…

The Truth About Israel and the Middle East

I actually thought the situation in the Middle East would all become a whole lot clearer “on the ground,” you know; once we lived in Israel it would all make sense. I laugh now at how naïve that belief was.

Still, at least I do know some things, and I do have a “take,” for what it’s worth.

 

First of all…

Nobody wants to build where anyone lives, but it's a small country and we're all very close together. As Harper said when he was here, it is surprising (and probably feels very wrong) that Ramallah, capital of the Palestinian Authority (PA) region, is less than half an hour from Jerusalem. So things get a little squishy sometimes.

 

Second of all…

None of this has anything to do with Arabs who live in the non-disputed borders of Israel, squishy as it is. They are full Israeli citizens and enjoy – on paper and in many cases in reality, though I will admit that the reality isn’t 100% where our dreams are – full rights and privileges of citizenship, including health care and the right to celebrate the end of Ramadan in front of me in line at McDonald’s in our local mall so we have to wander around looking for seats and muttering, “what kind of Jewish country is this…” only because we are so obviously in the minority here in the North.

That’s not what the media mean when they say “Palestinians.” What they mean are the cousins of those Arab Israelis who live under the authority of the PA, formerly known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the terrorist organization.

For a while, they were considered “peace partners”

Things that are weird in Israel #15: Tens (and tens of tens)

Know why I was so excited last week?

My sister sent me tens of packets of Starbucks Instant Coffee. 

It’s true!  Tens of them!

Which of course, is also totally bizarre.

Tens? 

I said something about “tens” of something to Akiva the other day and he said “Tens… of what?”

Because in English, we only say “tens” when we’re about to say “of millions.”  And follow it, usually, with “of dollars.”

Despite ostensibly switching to the metric system tens of years ago, Canada has not officially gone over to a metric mentality. 

A truly metric mindset would have no trouble acknowledging the fact that… dozens do NOT make our life easier.  Dozens make things harder and more complicated.

If you think about it, a “dozen” is just about the most counterintuitive number.   Very few of us have a dozen fingers… though I tried harder than most of my parents, one of my kids having been born with eleven.

Dozens just don’t fit inside our brain neatly, the way tens do.

Twelves don’t make any more sense than any of the numbers that follow.  And they make a good deal LESS sense than tens.

Which is why, here in Israel, when multiples of things happen, they happen not in dozens (unless you’re buying eggs), but in TENS – עשרות (asarot).

Things that are weird in Israel #13: Winter

Welcome to winter in Israel!  I have to start by saying that some places here are warmer than others.  Where we live, we don’t really get “winter” at all.  Other parts, like Yerushalayim, are significantly colder, and may actually get snow. 

I don’t think it’s ever snowed here (but it probably has, in some freakish event before the modern State of Israel).

That said, winter stops Israelis in their tracks like nothing else.  Literally nothing else.  In the face of war and terrorism, Israel is undaunted.  In the face of two inches of snow, nothing gets through.

“Getting ready for snow!!!!” shouted the headline in last Friday’s paper.  Okay, I’ve added the exclamation points.   “This picture, from the blizzard of last winter, may repeat itself around the middle of next week.  Forecasters:  “Expect a meaningful winter system.”  Weekend:  cold and rainy.”

“Is snow on its way to Jerusalem?” the article begins, tantalizingly. 

Trivial pursuit? Humiliating Hebrew fail.

For most people, Shabbos is a time to relax after a crazy week. 

But not for my husband Akiva!  Not since I started challenging myself to read and translate the Hebrew trivia questions at the back of the weekend paper. 

I’m terribly bad at trivia, and Akiva isn’t much better, though he knows almost anything to do with movies.  So naturally, we go at it now every single week. 

I read the questions in Hebrew, translate them the best I can, and he attempts to answer.  Often, the questions are some obscure Israeli thing like “who is Moshav Kipnitzky named after?”  To which he’ll answer “Shmuli Kipnitzky,” which is never the right answer. 

Converting to Judaism! So when’s Gwyneth Paltrow coming to Israel?

According to the latest internet fooferah, Gwyneth Paltrow is totally getting into her Jewish roots.

The headlines border on sickening.  “Welcome home to the Jewish people, Gwyneth Paltrow!” chimes the Jerusalem Post. 

Why didn’t they give such a hearty welcome to the hundreds of non-celebrity baalei teshuvah and geirim over the last few years?  Or the thousands of new olim to Israel?  Oh, right.  We're not famous. 

(Okay, there are skeptics as well, like one headline that pleads, “Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?” and a Reform rabbi who insists that her conversion will confuse people who rely on that movement’s teachings on patrilineal descent.)

In interviews, Gwyneth has said that she wants to raise her children, Apple, 10, and Moses, 8, in a "Jewish environment." She’s also said that she considers herself a "Jewish princess" because of her rabbinical ancestry.

Think all this speculation is trivial? 

I did, when I first saw it. 

I really couldn’t care less about what actors do in their own private spiritual lives… unless it affects me. 

It turns out this does.

Why?

Because just a few years ago, Gwyneth and her husband Chris Martin (of the band Coldplay) were

Know where it’s dangerous?

Outside of Israel, that’s where.

It’s kind of interesting sitting here facing headlines like these.

(click the images to read the stories)

 

LA, Frankfurt, Paris, Mississauga (Ontario, Canada). 

Most of this makes our life here in the Krayot seem calm in comparison. 

Actually, life here in the Krayot IS calm.  There is no “seem” about it.  No sirens here so far, which sets us apart probably from most Israelis at this point, both north and south.

As opposed to France.

These days, if you mention France to any Jew, anywhere, they shake their heads glumly.  “Oh, France,” they say, like it’s obvious that France would turn into the clearly dangerous place that it is for Jews today. 

Big Bad Corporations? Bring it on.

It feels like the sort of thing I should have strong feelings about, like “Get your #$!% hands off my Israel!”  But I don’t.  Somehow, I’m happy as anything that Ikea is here, and would be thrilled to see more big chains like it moving in.

WalMart?  Maybe not.  Not much chance of that happening, but I do wonder where we draw the line.

I’m no economist, but as I understand it, there are a few arguments against big companies coming in and staking a claim here or in any small, threatened economy:

• Destroys local industry.   I hope you’re not talking about furniture manufacturing here.  There IS no furniture manufacturing here, or hardly any.  Nothing to make it out of.(palm trees?)
• Crushes local retailers.  I don’t think that’s a big risk in this country.  It costs a lot of money to bring stuff in, even if you’re Ikea.  I priced out some of the furniture at Ikea before we went… and we bought our shelves and bedroom aronot (closets) at our local HomeCenter instead.
• Disrespects local culture. If you’ve ever been to Kiryat Ata, you’ll know it’s a factory town without much culture to begin with.  I think Ikea probably improves the ambience.  Plus, they sell 5-shekel falafel at the hot dog stand by the exit – something I don’t think they offer at their Canadian, U.S. or Swedish stores.
• Channels money out of the local economy.  True, but if I buy a shirt at an Israeli chain, much of the money for the shirt is probably going to manufacturers in China or abroad anyway. 

True, buying “kacholavan” should be a priority (although do I really want more and more and more plastic products manufactured half an hour away in the Galil where our veggies are grown???).  But it’s not always possible.

Here are my arguments FOR our local Ikea store, in Kiryat Ata:

• It’s an island of sanity for olim.  Seriously, nice to walk around in a store this BIG, with such a huge selection.  The entire selection; everything I could have bought in my Toronto Ikea store is here.  Even after seven months (not a long time!), life in Israel is a nonstop daily assault of foreignness.  A little touch of familiarity… not a problem.
• They’re supporting Torah study.  Really!  I just found this article while looking for pictures I could use with my post.  It says they’re looking to hire guys in kollel to work in their off hours – a win-win (+win for klal Yisrael!).
• Convenience isn’t a sin.  Sure, our puritanical nature tells us that if something is too easy or too fun, it shouldn’t be allowed.  But the truth is that if Israeli stores don’t know how to create a great shopping experience – or don’t care whether they do or not, perhaps they will lose out to the competition.  Thanks, Darwin!

It’s funny.  I’ve received two very similar objections to posts and emails lamenting the incursion of “American” culture into Israel:  once when I ate at McDonald’s (“I’d rather have falafel!”) and once when I shopped at Ikea.

Both were from non-Jewish relatives, one of whom hasn’t even been here, let alone lived here.  They’re entitled to opinions, but you’ve got to weigh that against the feelings of people who live here. 

Judging by the numbers of Israelis in the Ikea store the day we went – many are quite strongly pro-incursion.

Now, you may be wondering… did I buy anything???

Nope. 

Well, hardly anything.

(tee hee)

Two herb plants for 6 shekels each.  Some drinking glasses for Pesach.  A cute toy for Elisheva in the bargain-basement damaged-goods “metzion” section near the exit.

Oh, and we ate in the restaurant!  All-kosher, with two sections, one a dairy espresso bar and one a meat/fish family cafeteria-style restaurant.  Not amazing prices, but very tasty food.

They do serve tasty meatballs, but they don't call them Swedish, and, disappointingly, don’t offer lingonberry jam on the side – even though it is depicted on their website.

Ikea has now become Elisheva's top  "thing to do in Haifa, " displacing the Bahai gardens, which she didn't really like anyway.

Maybe somebody should make a rule that these big conglomerates should ONLY be allowed to expand outside of North America in the future. 

That way, North Americans can be self-righteously rid of them for good… while those of us in the rest of the world can be grateful and thrilled that somebody is paying attention to us, and giving us the chance at a fun shopping trip even if we don’t end up buying a thing.

The new Ikea store (they pronounce it “ee-kay-ah”) in Kiryat Ata is only about 10 minutes away by a very convenient city bus, by the way.  Doesn’t mean I’ll be there all the time, but it feels nice to be at the centre of things for a change. 

Next stop… and no, I’m not joking.  Pizza Hut in the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, tomorrow.  I have to be in the area on an errand – it’s not a special trip, I promise!!!

Maybe someday I’ll get this junk food / junk culture thing out of my system… until then, bring on the Big Bad Corporations!

Okay, I will open it up, since I know mine isn’t the only opinion… What do you think of all these foreign interlopers?  Are they Good for Israel???  Leave a comment and let me know!

And now for some “Anti-Olim”

(full article here)

This family has been holed up in a United Church (of course) in Toronto for the past year, claiming refugee status from… Israel.  Why?  As non-Jews, they believe they were “singled out, insulted or assaulted” (that’s quite a range) for not being Jewish despite a Jewish surname. 

It’s tough to believe.  Assaulted?  There are many non-Jews in Israel – including many Russians with a Jewish background – and while it may not be the same experience as that of a Jewish oleh, and perhaps there is discrimination and even insults, these are not exactly grounds for a refugee claim. 

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, refugees are folks “whose removal from Canada would subject them to a danger of torture, a risk to their life or a risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.”

In any event, the father was only in Israel for 15 years – he left Russia in 1992, presumably because he thought Israel would be a better place to live.  I assume there was some Jewish family background, thus the name and the right to pack up and go live in Israel in the first place.

They’ve been here in Canada since 2007, and the father is now on a hunger strike for the privilege of remaining here, though Canada Border Services has given them until Wednesday to report for deportation.

Apparently, “refugee claim” abuse has become increasingly common in Canada, so much so that in 2010, they passed a law creating a list of Designated Countries of Origin, stating which countries are and are not considered to have “solid democratic and human rights.” 

Israel is a NO on the list (as are all its neighbours), meaning it’s “generally considered safe.”  Interestingly, Russia is a YES… meaning the family would have been better off, refugee-wise, fleeing here from Russia, instead of stopping off in Israel along the way.

They sure do look unhappy in the picture accompanying all the news articles… but it’s hard to believe that Israel is the cause.  To me, they just look ticked off that they’ve finally been caught at their silly little running-away-to-freedom game.