Never Again?

For Yom HaShoah


http://savedarfur.org/

If we don't do something -- anything -- to stop this latest genocide, we're just a bunch of hypocrites.

Nick Kristoff in today's NYT:

Madeleine Albright helped end the horrors of Sierra Leone simply by going there and being photographed with maimed children. Those searing photos put Sierra Leone on the global agenda, and policy makers hammered out solutions. Granted, it's the fault of the "CBS Evening News" that it gave Darfur's genocide only 2 minutes of coverage in all of last year (compared with the 36 minutes that it gave the Michael Jackson trial), but the administration can help when we in the media world drop the ball.

The U.S. could organize a summit meeting in Europe or the Arab world to call attention to Darfur, we could appoint a presidential envoy like Colin Powell, and we could make the issue much more prominent in our relations with countries like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and China.

Americans often ask what they can do about Darfur. These are the kinds of ideas they can urge on the White House and their members of Congress — or on embassies like Egypt's. Many other ideas are at savedarfur.org and at genocideintervention.net.

When Darfur first came to public attention, there were 70,000 dead. Now there are perhaps 300,000, maybe 400,000. Soon there may be 1 million. If we don't act now, when will we?

What Americans Want in a Religion

Fast forward "This American Life" from 4-14-2006 to minute 38 and listen to a piece about what Americans want in a religion.

http://thislife.org/pages/descriptions/06/311.html

Half of all Americans describe themselves as either not religious or "spiritual but not religious". Someone went out and did a focus group on what these people would want out of a religion.

Personally, I think that they have a religion and they don't realize that it is this:
http://jewschool.com/amir4.jpg
(from http://jewschool.com/?p=10405 )

Mo'dim l'simcha. Been to busy to post for almost a month.

Why Wait for a Problem?

I'm trying to recruit volunteers for my shul's minyan. Ideally, we'd take the requirement of daily prayer seriously, and the place would be overflowing every day with people praying and learning.

But meanwhile here on Planet Earth, you don't exactly see that at Modern O shuls in Brookline, let alone Conservative shuls. OK, the O's do get solid turnouts and I respect them greatly for their commitment to study.

Second best to the ideal would be a group of 110 volunteers coming to the non-Shabbat minyanim one service a week.

A significant portion of the time, people say, "oh, I'll come if you have trouble making minyan. Call me.".

Why wait for the call? Come once a week. We'll be all set. You can plan for it and won't have to worry about getting that call at 7:10 PM.

Sigh. People.


Anyway, I'm commited to my Conservative shul. I grew up in the movement. I learned to daven at my shul. So now that I've attained some level of knowledge I should pull the ladder up after me and go to the modern O shul down the street? I'm sorry, I can't do that. I learned and now maybe I can have the priviledge to teach.

No to mention, I believe in treating women equally.

Story from NPR on Glioblastoma Victim

This story was on NPR yesterday about someone who died from Brain cancer. Given that he died within a year of diagnosis, he probably had the same cancer as my father, glioblastoma.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5303770

It was tough listening to it. Even harder was the realization that my dad had the cancer in the speech center of his brain, so he never had a chance like this guy to sort of say goodbye.

I hate planet cancer.

My year of saying kaddish ends on Lag B'Omer.

Pieces of My Childhood

I just got back from a funeral. It was for a man who was a neighbor of mine on the street where I grew up in Sharon.

The Reform thing didn't do it for me, but I have to remember that it is for his family, not me, and I hope that it worked for them. To the extent that any funeral for a parent "works for you", anyway.

The real take away for me is how I realize that my childhood is long over. The man who passed away was a real leader on the street. He organized block parties, beach improvements, all kinds of activities for the kids on the street. He had also been a career Naval officer and then a substitute teacher for the Sharon school system.

A very kind and gentle man with a dry sense of humor.

As unhappy as I was in Sharon, and going to school there really felt like a struggle most of the time, when he was subbing a class it felt good to have a real friend standing in front of the classroom.

Horseshit

The usual anti-Israel/anti-AIPAC arguments recycled with lots of footnotes.

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011

Here were my quick reactions:

Before reading the article:

Bear in mind that after 1967 France stopped supplying Israel with weapons. France was Israel's main arms supplier. The US had an embargo and Britain had close ties to the Arab countries. In 1966 the French war in Algeria ended, and the French didn't have to worry about Pan Arab nationalism anymore.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was giving arms to the Arab states like nobody's business. So, if the US hadn't stepped in, the Arab states would have destroyed Israel. I'm not being alarmist, that's what the goals of Syria and Egypt were at the time.

Then you would have had Nasser free to cause more problems for the Saudis. Nasser had pretty much fought a proxy war against the Saudis in Yemen during this time period.

So a pro Western democracy would have gone under. And there would have been a second genocide against the Jews.

OK, so the USSR is gone. The Arab "confrontation states" are economic basket cases and won't be a serious military threat to Israel for a long time.

So a lot of the aid/assistance is a historic hangover from the Cold War.

Now to take a critical look at the paper:
1. Israel can spend some American aid internally since it was considered that Israeli made weapons subsidized by the US was less politically inflamatory to the Arab world.
2. The Lavi fighter jet program was canceled due to American pressure.
3. Vetoes at the UN since 1982? Gee, the organization that formally equated Zionism with racism? And how many of those vetoes took place before the fall of the Soviet Union?
4. The 1973 cease-fire was not in Israel's interest. Israel had the Egyptian 3rd army surrounded and wanted to destroy it. In order to save the honor of the Egyptian army, the US pushed through a cease-fire. This enabled disengagement agreements and the subsequent Camp David Peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Egypt got back every inch of Sinai and had the first ever formal Israel recognition of Palestinian national aspirations in the treaty. That's American diplomacy working solely in favor of Israel?

Israel had larger armed forces than the invading Arab armies in 1947-9? I'm sorry, but that's laughable. 1% of Israel's population was killed in the fighting in 1947-9. That's like the US losing 2.5 million people in a war today. You call that easy?

Israel's victories in 1947-9, 56, and 67 took place despite material and numerical disadvantages. 1973 was a close thing. I've been to the Bnot Yaakov bridge that marked the high point of the Syrian advance in 1973. If their tank officers hadn't been following Soviet doctrine, the Syrians would have continued marching to the sea and cut Israel in half on the third day of the war. Instead, they achieved their objectives early and stopped to get instructions.

Yes, so now Israel isn't the military underdog today. But that certainly has not been the case in the past.

The authors conveniently ignore historic Arab anti-semitism and the fact that over half of Israel's Jewish population comes from Jewish refugees who were ejected from Arab countries without compensation.

Boy, I'm glad that the authors of the paper deign to admit that blowing up pizzerias and discos inside of Israel is wrong.

European anti-semitism is waning? Horseshit. A French Jew is brutally tortured and killed for being Jewish and the resulting protest means that the French don't have a problem with anti-semitism?

As usual, we get the apologetics over Arafat's "Al Aksa Intifada". If at Camp David the Israel offer doesn't go far enough, the proper reaction from a partner for Peace is to launch a campaign of suicide bombings of civilians?

Shacharit Purim

Purim morning I was determined to celebrate and be happy. It worked out well. We had a good turnout, drank mimosas during the megilah reading, blotted out Haman's name, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

I really liked it.

The Shiva

The whole day of erev Purim -- ta'anit Esther -- was overshadowed by the fact that I was going to be leading services that night for a shiva house. It was the first time I fasted on ta'anit Esther, and I couldn't manage to find any meaning in it.

I broke the fast at shul after mincha. Ma'ariv had started, but since I was going to daven it later, I accompanied my wife and kids at the kids' carnival. OK, one humorous thing happened: I broke the fast with a tofu baloney and cheese sandwich. I was dreading running into someone who would see the sandwich and think I was eating treif in the shul.

Anyway, I ducked out of shul early, doffing my Mickey Mouse ears and Disney Hawaiian shirt. I drove over to the shiva house.

One thing I learned about shiva and comforting mourners -- at least from my own experience -- is the less you say the better. You don't need to try to put the mourner at ease; you can't. You shouldn't try to comfort them because your very presence is all that's required to do that. I just said that I was sorry about their loss. I asked how they wanted me to conduct ma'ariv, just in Hebrew, mixed with English, whatever they wanted I would have done.

Since a lot of the people there, including some family, didn't have a particularly strong background, they wanted some English with lots of page numbers announced.

It was really tough to be at a shiva for a four year old. Looking at the photos, looking at the toys, you know that life turns on a dime and really there's nothing between you and sitting shiva, G-d forbid, for your child.

After I finished I gave them my phone numbers and said they could call me at any time if they needed someone to lead to services. I felt guilty leaving, knowing that I was going home to my family, to hear about how much fun my four year old had at the Purim carnival.

Would I be saying Kaddish if I had made Aliyah?

I'll be writing up my Purim experiences in a bit.

I was looking at some Israeli political ads today.

The one from Chetz reminded me of how angry I was at the "dosim" -- the religious -- when I lived in Israel. I was militantly secular at the time partially in reaction to the attempts to legislate religiousity in Israel by the religious parties.

And I have to wonder. If I had made aliyah, would I be saying kaddish? I honestly don't know.