Jewish Current Issues

Ode to Grandparents and Grandchildren

At Sinai Temple in Los Angeles last Shabbat, it was Grandparents Shabbat. Golda Mendelsohn delivered the following wonderful words:

Have you ever heard the expression "If I knew grandchildren were such fun, I would have had them first"?  Indeed, fun they are, warm, cuddly and adorable. They are the treasures given to us by our children.

We have been transformed by a new presence in our lives and as a result have acquired a "magical" name for just such an occasion.

We become Grandma, Bubbie, Safta, Nana, Maman. No matter which name we prefer, we all have one thing in common -- a passionate love for our Grandchildren!

My Grandchildren are probably just like yours -- the best, the most brilliant, the best looking, and oh so clever! Who amongst us have not appeared at their Grandchildren's programs -- no matter what time of day or evening, driving across the city or into the Valley to attend Pre-school, Hebrew School, or Public School performances, listening proudly as they sing or speak their three minute part -- applauding wildly, seeing only them, for they are the best!!!

Athletics -- What's there to say???? Soccer, Football, Track, and Volleyball played with such energy and competitive spirit. You know every scout in America will be looking to sign them up!!!

A new phenomenon occurred when some of my Grandchildren reached the "mature" age of 16.  I call it "Emancipation/Liberation on Wheels".  With the blessings of the DMV and their grandparents, they took to the road and often appeared at our door -- Shabbat dinner or lunch, conversations in our Succah, or just a drop-in. Now we can make plans without including their folks. We began to learn more about their hopes and dreams and we shared ours with them.

Do I ever give advice? Absolutely!!!

Do they ever ask for advice? Absolutely Not!!!

Do they ever listen to my advice? Absolutely Maybe!!!

The advice I give is what any Bubbie or Grandmother might give --

 1-- When you go to college, look for a Hillel on campus.

 2-- Check and see if there are classes in Hebrew or Judaica.

 3-- Make Jewish friends.

 4-- Think about applying for a passport, so you can travel to Israel on a Birthright program.

As Grandparents, we become the repository of family history -- storytellers of family legends and adventures.  We are out to help build and re-enforce their Jewish memories and solidify their Jewish identities.

Seeing these young people grow has been awesome!!!! 

Our Grandchildren range in age from 12-28. I can begin to see the influences of their Parents and Grandparents -- the values of Jewish living and  identity are being formed.

They bring food to the needy, give Tzedakah, locally and in Israel, celebrate Shabbat with friends at school, seek study opportunities in Israel AND study Hebrew.

The older among them now have passports and have travelled to Israel. Three have already been on the Birthright program, and a fourth will be leaving later this month, while another will be working as a staff person on the program.  We have family in Israel -- Aunts, Uncle, and Cousins who wait with open arms to welcome them. One of our Grandsons now serves in the IDF.

When we get together for Shabbat, both the American side and the Israeli contingent, I look at them and see happy faces, loving to be with one another!!

When we place our arms around each other and sing "Shalom Aleichem", I hear their strong, young voices blending together and I close my eyes and whisper "Thank you G-d for this amazing blessing of being a Grandparent."

כן יהי רצון.                             May It Always Be So 

See Also Ten Attitudes of HIghly Effective Jewish Grandparents... 

A New Book on Maimonides

IN THE MAIL: Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought (Princeton University Press).

Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to his life and work, revealing how his philosophical sensibility and outlook informed his interpretation of Jewish tradition.

Moshe Halbertal vividly describes Maimonides's childhood in Muslim Spain, his family's flight to North Africa to escape persecution, and their eventual resettling in Egypt. He draws on Maimonides's letters and the testimonies of his contemporaries, both Muslims and Jews, to offer new insights into his personality and the circumstances that shaped his thinking.

Halbertal then turns to Maimonides's legal and philosophical work, analyzing his three great books--Commentary on the Mishnah, the Mishneh Torah, and the Guide of the Perplexed. He discusses Maimonides's battle against all attempts to personify God, his conviction that God's presence in the world is mediated through the natural order rather than through miracles, and his locating of philosophy and science at the summit of the religious life of Torah.

Halbertal examines Maimonides's philosophical positions on fundamental questions such as the nature and limits of religious language, creation and nature, prophecy, providence, the problem of evil, and the meaning of the commandments.

A stunning achievement, Maimonides offers an unparalleled look at the life and thought of this important Jewish philosopher, scholar, and theologian.

Moshe Halbertal is the Gruss professor of Law at New York University, professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at the Hebrew University, and professor of law at IDC Herzliya in Israel. How is this for an endorsement of this book:

"In the gorgeous and rugged terrain of Jewish thought, there is no higher mountain to climb than Maimonides, and no more slippery or exhilarating ascent. Halbertal has made it all the way to the top, and his survey of the whole of the Maimonidean landscape is trustworthy and masterful. This is the richest and most intellectually sophisticated book on Maimonides I have ever read."--Leon Wieseltier

Video of the Panel on Iran's March to Nukes

Below is the video of the November 18, 2003 panel sponsored by Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors on "Closing in on Iran's Nuclear Capability."

The introduction is by Doris Wise Montrose, followed by J.E. Dyer, Elan Journo, and me, with a Question and Answer session following that. (Email subscribers can find the video by clicking here).

 

Iran Panel -- November 18

Orit Arfa's Compelling New Novel, "The Settler"

Orit Arfa has written an extraordinary novel, The Settler, a work of modern historical fiction with fictitious characters placed among historical figures, actual places, and recent events. 

The novel opens with Sarah in Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005, as the IDF arrives to expel her family from the place the Israeli government once sent them to live:  

I laugh when the soldiers knock on our front door. The knocks are as gentle as those of the soldiers who came to announce my brother’s death three years ago. I look at his portrait hanging in the dining room, the one with him kneeling on the beach in his beat-up army T-shirt. Aaron’s eyes, hazel like mine, tell me to hold on.  

This will be over soon. We’ll get the ending we’re praying for: a thanksgiving celebration to God for overturning the decree of the Expulsion. My father, mother, brother, sister, and I quickly form a line in our foyer. I imagine Aaron standing with us. I won’t let you down, I tell him silently. I laugh not because I’m optimistic but because this can’t be real.  

The whole operation feels like a cosmic movie, a drama meant to re-create Jewish suffering in real time so that we can relive our tragic history, only this time with a deus ex machina. Our mantra would appear at the end: “Jews Don’t Expel Jews.”  

The foreign press is on hand to capture this Oscar-worthy conflict for all time: soldiers of Tzahal, the Israel Defense Forces, knocking on the doors of Jewish families to expel them from their homes. God couldn’t have chosen a better director, the Prime Minister who once promised never to take us out of here. And what more dramatic timing for our siege days ago than Tisha B’av, the saddest Jewish holiday, when we fast to commemorate the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.  

Only I didn’t feel sad. I sensed the redemption.

The redemption doesn’t happen.  

After she is dragged from her home, completely disillusioned by the Jewish army her brother died serving, disappointed by both God and country, she heads to Tel Aviv, and into an intense romance with Ziv Harel, the charismatic, liberal owner of a nightclub, where she will immerse herself in dance –- and a relationship that will result in both of them confronting their respective values and identities, in a setting as charged as today’s news. 

The novel is beautifully written, worth reading for the story (and the larger story) still playing out eight years after the disengagement from Gaza that was supposed, in the words of Ehud Olmert, to be redemptive. 

Here is a two-minute video of Orit Arfa discussing her novel:

Elisabeth Maxwell, 1921-2013, B"H

Here is the obituary in the New York Times, under the headline "Elisabeth Maxwell, Expert on Holocaust, Dies at 92." This is an amazing story:

Elisabeth Maxwell helped her husband run a multibillion-dollar business and a 53-room manor. Each year she made a scrapbook of press clippings about him; some years it tipped the scales at 60 pounds.       

But when her husband, Robert Maxwell, the British media tycoon whose holdings included The New York Daily News and book publishers, fell or jumped from his yacht off the Canary Islands in 1991, her life was turned upside down.       

She discovered that she was suddenly so poor that she had to live in a borrowed apartment. And she found a larger purpose in life, bringing renewed attention to the Holocaust, which cost her husband so many relatives.       

Dr. Maxwell — as she was known after earning a Ph.D. from Oxford at 60 — died on Wednesday in Dordogne, France, at 92. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell.       

After her husband’s death, Dr. Maxwell learned that he had diverted more than $1 billion from pension funds for his more than 400 corporate entities. Insurance companies refused to pay her because they believed he had committed suicide. Her $485,000 pension was gone, along with that of thousands of employees in Mr. Maxwell’s publishing empire, which included the Mirror Group Newspapers and the Macmillan publishing business.       

Dr. Maxwell got by with help from friends, and three years later wrote a tell-all autobiography, expressly to earn money.       

And she focused her energy on an enterprise she had begun with her husband: helping to remember and honor his many family members killed by the Nazis. (He was Jewish; she was Huguenot Protestant.) Her mission expanded to include the entire Holocaust, on which she became an expert, lecturing around the world.       

In 1987, she started the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The first publisher was Pergamon Press, one of Mr. Maxwell’s companies. It is now published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.       

In 1988, she organized a conference called Remembering for the Future. It was the first of three such conferences, which drew scholars from around the world. Each yielded several books of essays. The English magazine New Statesman called the three volumes from the 2000 meeting “frankly awesome.”       

“The fact is, she gave her heart and soul to that project,” Elie Wiesel, the author and Holocaust survivor, said in an interview.       

In 1995, Dr. Maxwell was named grand marshal of the annual Salute to Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She was the first female vice president of the International Council of Christians and Jews.       

Dr. Maxwell’s passion for Holocaust remembrance and understanding emerged after she earned a doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1981. She entered the university in 1970 to earn the undergraduate degree she abandoned during World War II, and over the next decade completed a Ph.D. Her thesis, “The Art of Letter Writing, 1789-1830,” used her aristocratic French Protestant family as source material.       

That inspired her to prepare her family’s genealogy for her children. She decided to do the same for her husband’s. “I put a little Star of David in front of all the people who had been murdered in the camps,” she said in an interview with the London newspaper The Guardian in 2000. “And when I unfolded it, it was like a shower of yellow stars.”       

“I couldn’t believe that so many people in one family could have been murdered,” she continued. “I just wanted to know why.”       

Mr. Maxwell, who had been so distraught by the loss of so many relatives that he avoided thinking about his Jewish roots, was profoundly glad to reconnect. He called his wife “the keeper of my Jewish soul.” He helped Soviet Jews emigrate to Israel and supported other Jewish causes. He became one of Israel’s biggest foreign investors. Israel gave him a state funeral that was attended by the country’s political elite, and he was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.       

Elisabeth Jenny Jeanne Meynard was born in La Grive, near Saint-Alban-de-Roche, France, on March 11, 1921, into a family whose lineage included kings of France. Her father was the village mayor. She studied law at the Sorbonne, then decided to teach primary school.       

She volunteered to welcome Allied officers to liberated Paris. One was a British intelligence agent who used the alias Ivan du Maurier but had been born Jan Ludwig Hoch in Czechoslovakia. He would later take the name Ian Robert Maxwell.       

“The minute I saw her, I wanted her for my wife,” Mr. Maxwell later wrote.       

She wrote that she was grateful Mr. Maxwell treated her respectfully: “He was the first member of the Allies I met who didn’t try to pounce on me.”       

Mr. Maxwell made three promises in his marriage proposal: He would win a Military Cross for heroism, he would make a fortune, and he would become prime minister of England. Within six weeks he won the Military Cross. He eventually made a fortune. His political career, on the other hand, got no further than six years in Parliament as a member of the Labour Party in the 1960s.       

They were married in 1945. She resolved to recreate the big family her husband lost during World War II, and succeeded.       

Her daughter Karine Maxwell died in 1957, and her son Michael died in 1967. Besides her daughter Ghislaine, she is survived by three other daughters, Anne Maxwell, Christine Malina-Maxwell and Isabel Maxwell; three sons, Philip, Ian and Kevin; and 13 grandchildren.       

Dr. Maxwell’s 1994 autobiography, “A Mind of My Own: My Life With Robert Maxwell,” described her husband as bullying, unfaithful and frequently absent as he amassed his empire — which evaporated in bankruptcy after his death. The book nonetheless insisted that he was “not the degenerate monster” many said he was.       

But Dr. Maxwell, in the book and in interviews, never flatly answered a basic question: did she still love Robert Maxwell?       

Sometimes she said yes; at other times she said she should have left him; and at still others she said the question was simplistic. Dr. Maxwell said her friends, who called her Betty, gave the old scalawag the benefit of the doubt. “He can’t be as dreadful as they say,” they said, according to Dr. Maxwell. “Look at how nice Betty is.”       

The Soft Despotism of the Tutelary State

From the July essay at Mosaic Magazine, “Religion and State in Israel: A Modest Proposal,” by Moshe Koppel:

As communities weaken, citizens’ lives are animated less and less by shared narratives that provide meaning, direction, and motivation for virtuous acts. Meanwhile, the state, unchecked by the mediating influence of these communities, expands its power. The resulting dystopia is characterized by the “soft despotism” of the state captured so perfectly by Tocqueville: “an
immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring [men’s] enjoyment and of watching over their fate [and whose] object [is] to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood” (Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Book 4, Chapter VI). 

Tocqueville was optimistic about the ability of 19^th-century Americans to resist the soft despotism of the state, because he found in them an abiding love of liberty. One might wonder about the disposition of present-day Americans in this regard. But whatever the case may be in the U.S., historically Israel’s situation has been different.

The United States was founded by citizens of European states who sought freedom from those states; Israel was founded by members of a stateless people seeking their own state. And so it is unsurprising that Israel’s founding myths should have been all tied up with statism. As things have played out, today’s descendants of the Zionist group instrumental in founding the state constitute an entrenched elite pursuing a universalist agenda that, under Israel’s geo-political circumstances, imperils both state and society. Their religious counterparts, similarly, have become largely addicted to a statist agenda: religious Zionists out of faith in the state’s redemptive powers, and religious non-Zionists out of dependency on state welfare.

Recent events on the political front, including the repeated failure of diplomatic and other concessions to advance peace, the state’s rejection of the religious-Zionist territorial agenda, and the dramatic weakening of religious parties whose constituents depend in part or in full on state welfare, have precipitated some fresh thoughts on all sides. Nevertheless, the basic lineaments of the statist agenda remain in place, and any real change for the better will be slow and hard-fought.

Israel’s promise is that it will free the Jewish people from dependence on other nations and facilitate the transformation of Judaism from a counter-culture to a national culture; in short, that independence and liberty will allow the Jews to mature as a people. It would be worse than merely ironic if instead the Jewish people were to allow their own state to infantilize them, turning them from a stiff-necked people into, in Tocqueville’s words, “nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” 

Go See "The Attack"

 "The Attack,” directed by Ziad Doueiri and written by him and his wife Joëlle Touma, based on the novel “The Attack” by Yasmina Khadra; released by Cohen Media Group; starring Ali Suliman (Amin) in a captivating performance backed by excellent performances by Reymonde Amsellem (Siham), Evgenia Dodina (Kim), Uri Gavriel (Captain Moshe), Karim Saleh (Adel), Dvir Benedek (Raveed), Ruba Salameh (Faten) and Ramzi Maqdisi (the Priest), opened this week in Los Angeles.

Anthem Magazine’s description of the film and its Lebanese-American director is a succinct summary:

After leaving Lebanon during the Civil War, director Ziad Doueiri graduated with a film degree from San Diego State University. He went onto serve as the camera operator on Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. … Doueiri’s first film, the critically acclaimed Cannes Film Festival selection West Beirut, put him on the map as one of the most talented directors to come out of the Middle East. Over a decade later, he’s shouting from the rooftops again with The Attack, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival.

Adapted from Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra’s eponymous international bestselling novel, which was translated into over 40 languages, The Attack tells the pointed human story of Amin, a Palestinian-Israeli surgeon, who discovers that his wife is a suicide bomber. The film was recently banned by the Lebanese government and the Arab League. So obviously, go watch this.

Here is a portion of the Anthem interview with the director:

This film might come across as pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli depending on the spectator. How did you go about creating the kind of neutrality in order to focus on the characters and the love story at hand?

It was a delicate walk through a minefield. Slogans and old discourse were waiting for us at every turn. We knew we wouldn’t please everyone, but who cares about that? I don’t consider this film “neutral”. Neutrality is boring. The film takes sides with the protagonist’s quest and inner journey.

Have you received any criticism for casting Reymond Amsalem, an Israeli actress? I understand there were several Israeli actors attached to this film.

Yes. Arabic press and also a few people in the Arab and Palestinian film business hit the roof! What did you expect? Of course, when you use Israeli Jews to play Arabs, the Arabs go nuts, but Arabs never seem to mind when they are offered to play Israeli Jewish roles! It’s hypocritical, if you ask me. Don’t let me go off on this one…

The Lebanese government had originally approved The Attack to screen in Lebanon before deciding to reverse that decision. That must have come as quite a blow to you. Did you anticipate that happening at all?

I was first very impressed when the Lebanese government approved it, not a single scene or line of dialogue cut. But then, pressure groups, like the pathetic Israel Boycott Committee, convinced another pathetic organization, the Arab League, to ask 22 Arab countries to ban the film. Nobody does a better job fucking Arabs as Arab regimes do. There are massacres and crimes and rapes going on now in the Arab world, and the Arab League can’t even agree on what to do about it. Yet, they unanimously agreed to boycott a film. Gamal Abdel Nasser couldn’t unite Arabs. I did.

The New York Jewish Week reports that:

“The Attack” provides no easy answers and few clear-cut heroes and villains. Amin’s friends are mostly Israeli Jews, and their reaction to the events runs the gamut.

The Lebanese film academy decided the film was “too Israeli” to be their nominee for the foreign-language Oscar.

The actual shooting was probably the easiest part of the process. The Israeli and Palestinian crew got along fine, as usual. “They deal with each other all the time,” Doueiri shrugs.

The biggest consciousness-raising took place inside the director’s head.

“The whole experience opened my eyes,” he says. “I was a child during the Lebanese civil war and I remember Israeli bombardments. So growing up, my view of Israel was completely negative. I’m not coming from a neutral place, but with time I’ve had to re-examine my thinking. Look, [as we worked on the film] you’re sitting with a guy in front of you, working with you, and he’s a nice guy. And Israel went way out on a limb for this film, and I appreciate that.

“The mystified idea I had of Israel — the demonization of Israel — it just wasn’t true,” Doueiri continues. “When I was filming, I realized that the Israelis I was working with were eager to end this conflict. They’re fully aware of the occupation. They’re also caught in a sensitive situation.”

The result for Doueiri was transformative.

“I was a bit calmer as the shoot went on,” he admits. “I started to actually enjoy this experience.”

The change undoubtedly benefitted the final product, he says.

“People on both sides of the conflict are eager to see something new,” Doueiri says. “On this subject opinion is so polarized. I hadn’t set out to do the same thing. Dramatically it’s much more interesting to be nuanced. It’s a relief not having to be didactic. An audience doesn’t want to see a slogan.”

At Heeb Magazine, Jewdar concludes that:

[T]he movie takes a remarkably even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we see real human beings, with real concerns, on both sides (it is sufficiently even handed that, according to the Beirut-born Doueiri, the Arab League has called for a boycott on the grounds that it insufficiently demonizes Israelis). To a great extent, though, the movie is less about the conflict, than about a web of complex relationships, and one man’s efforts to understand his place in their midst. And if some questions remain unanswered, well, you can’t really blame Doueiri (who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife) for not being able to resolve them any better than the Israelis and Palestinians themselves.

Here is an interesting video interview with the director, worth watching before or after seeing the film:

Anita Shapira's "Israel: A History"

At today’s session of the 29th Annual Association for Israel Studies Conference, held this year at the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA, a panel discussion was held on Anita Shapira’s new book, Israel: A History, with Shapira in attendance.

The book is an extraordinary volume, worth reading both by those unfamiliar and those already familiar with Israel's history.

The panelists today were David Myers, chair of the UCLA History Department; Michael Brenner of the University of Munich; and Pnina Lahav of Boston University. Below are videos of the first five minutes of Professor Myer’s comments, and the first five minutes of Shapira’s response. (JCI email subscribers can find the videos here and here or go to the JCI post and watch there).

 

J.E. Dyer on "The Reagan Strategy" -- June 24 in LA

  J.E. Dyer, former U.S. Naval intelligence officer -- who served around the world, afloat and ashore, from 1983 to 2004, with her last operations in Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in 2003 -- now a noted writer on strategic and intelligence matters, will be appearing for Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors on June 24 at 7:00 p.m. at the Luxe Hotel (11461 Sunset Blvd, LA 90049) to speak about her forthcoming book, “The Reagan Strategy.” This should not be missed.

She writes that “Reagan knew and acted on a small set of core principles which should resonate with us today: for example, that the forces of evil are, indeed, evil, and that we must not make concessions to them on principles -- but beyond that, they are cowardly when confronted. They are destructive, not constructive; they do not hold the upper hand in a battle for the future of men and women. He knew that oppressive ideologies are incapable of organizing societies for a viable future. He understood, on the other hand, that releasing human beings to political and economic freedom is the greatest accelerator of human strength and ingenuity, and is certainly the best method of improving everyone’s lot. Freedom is not a luxury; it is a necessity, if we want a society founded on compassion, generosity, and tolerance. 

"How did Reagan apply these principles to the problems of governing?  On June 24, in light of these principles, we will look at why Reagan’s strategy for rebuilding America and defeating the ideology of communism to win the Cold War has important lessons for the America of today."