Heard of Havel Hevalim?

Seems there's a weekly round-up of the best (well, almost the best) postings of representative Jewish blogging.

If you go here, you'll fine the latest collection.

Maybe you or your favorite bloggers are there.

Oh, So That's What You Call Them

Al-Jazeera, the Arab news service growing by leaps and bounds worldwide and spreading its reach into the western world, has a new name for suicide bombings –"Paradise Operations."

Just so you know.

Getting It Backwards

"Suddenly, the city was reversed somehow."

That's Valentine Vester talking. The owner of the American Colony in Jerusalem was relating the history of the area and her reaction to the fact that in 1967 the Israelis took East Jerusalem and reunited the city, annexing it and placing the hotel under Israeli control was "Suddenly, the city was reversed somehow."

Well, that one way of looking at the fact that the Jewish people's supreme national-political entity, the state of Israel, reentered its 3,000 year old capital, the city where its Temples stood, where its kings ruled, its prophets spoke and where the future redemption will assume it's most physical characteristics.

Hear the Iranian Threat

Here's the recording of the Iranian president's threat to wipe Israel of the face of the map, via MEMRI.

Why Blame the Kid?

CAMERA is proud that it succeeded in having a campus newspaper apologize for pubishing an article that blamed Jews themselves for anti-semitism.

It seems that on Oct. 18, Portland State University’s student newspaper, the Daily Vanguard published a column by staff member Caelan MacTavish. The opinion piece, entitled "Religious disputes over Jerusalem require diplomacy," blamed the Jews themselves for anti-Semitism, disparaged the Jewish people, and included a number of absurd factual errors about Judaism and Israel.

That same day, CAMERA contacted the Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper to point out the problems and errors in MacTavish's column and to express grave concern with the piece. We also urged the newspaper to publish an apology for running the column. Portland State students, faculty and others also protested the newspaper's decision to publish the hateful column.

To his credit, the editor listened to our concerns, and readily agreed to consider our points and discuss the matter with his colleagues. This week, the crude and bigoted column was pulled from the Daily Vanguard Web site.

But why blame the kid?

AB Yehoshua, world-famous Israeli author, thinks the same way.

In this report
we learn that, according to Yehoshua

"The Gentiles feel threatened by Jews, because they have a double identity. The Gentile does not grasp that concept and so he might, under some conditions, react to it with violence."

According to Yehoshua, every Jew around the world recognizes himself as such before he assumes any other identity.

Not only do Jews possess a dual identity, but they constantly change from one identity to another. This "chameleon characteristic" as he dubs it, is difficult to accomodate and also makes Gentiles uncomfortable.

"I think a 'defined identity' has more responsibility; it has limits, it is responsible for what it does. Amorphousness is a way to get away from responsibility," he says, adding, "I describe the facts. The Jew changes all the time. He can be assimilated without any visual indications of his identity, or he can distinguish himself, as does an Orthodox Jew. At the same time, he assumes the identity of whichever nation he occupies."

And there's more here.

It's Holy Jerusalem, Not 'Holy Toledo'!

The campaign to prevent the handover of Jewish property and institutions, including a yeshiva and a synagogue, to the Vatican has begun.

Go here for a start.

Updates are being written and formulated.

No Comment Needed (at least, I hope Not)

Although Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel were extreme, many diplomats point out that they reflected longstanding Iranian policy. "He said it more loudly, more directly, more forcefully and more offensively than anyone has said for a long time," said one Western diplomat. "But he is essentially stating what is known to be Iranian policy."

Here.

P.S. What comments?

These:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said:

''Israel must be wiped off the map.''

More?

October 27, 2005
Iran's New President Says Israel 'Must Be Wiped Off the Map'
By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, Oct. 26 - Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a group of students at an anti-Israel event on Wednesday that Israel "must be wiped off the map" and that attacks by Palestinians would destroy it, the ISNA news agency reported.

He was speaking to about 4,000 students at a program called "The World Without Zionism," in preparation for an annual anti-Israel demonstration held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.

His tone was reminiscent of that of the early days of Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. Iran and Israel have been bitter enemies since then, and anti-Israel slogans have been common at rallies.

Senior officials had avoided provocative language in the last decade, but Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to be taking a more confrontational tone than have recent Iranian leaders.

He said on Wednesday that the issue of a Palestinian state would be resolved only when Palestinians took control of all their lands.

"The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the news agency reported him as saying. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land."

Referring to comments by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, "As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

More on the Satmar Contretemps

Seems they did this Simchat Torah thing before.

About That Arab American Museum

In a previous post I faulted the NYTimes for not clarifying that when it reported that Jews lived in Arab lands "until the 1940s", that that was a euphemism for the establishment of the state of Israel.

I think I should have emphasized that the NYT itself, in one of the references I noted, had this headline in its May 16, 1948 edition:

"Jews in Grave Danger in all Muslim Lands: Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia face wrath of their foes".

You'd think that the reporter could have checked his own paper to get his background right.

A Reminder of the Problem

The recent flurry of articles and interviews relating to the Temple Mount and the right of the Jews to enter and worship is not new.

In 1930, an international committee was appointed by the League of Nations following the 1929 riots to ascertain exactly that question. Its findings were published in December that year. Consisting of Eliel Lofgren, formerly Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Chairman, Charles Barde, Vice-President of the Court of Justice at Geneva, and C.J. Van Kempen, a Dutchman, formerly Governor of the East Coast of Sumatra, the committee concluded that as the Temple Mount is indeed Waqf property. Moreover, it follows from this that "to the Moslems belong the sole ownership of, and the sole proprietary right to, the Western Wall, seeing that it forms an integral part of the Haram-esh-Sherif area". The British prohibition on the blowing of the shofar at the Western Wall stemmed from this conclusion based, in part, upon a 1193 Waqf dedication by Afdal, the son of Saladin.

Yasser Arafat and other PA spokesmen have reiterated this assertion time and again, especially at the 2000 Camp David gathering.

That while we Jews know the absurdity of this claim, it has gained an element of that mythic status of "internationally recognized" hogwash.

We need to do something a little bit more than what Israel's government's have done (or actually, have not done).

Bar Mitzvah Album Book

The New York Times carries this story about a new book to be published November 2, a collection from albums of Bar/Bat Miztvot.

Seems it started with a web site (and they have a Catskills site too. I'm going to look for some of my old photos for that as I missed the Bar Mitzva one).

The stories seem to resonate, if in different measures (my BM was in June 1960) so, obviously, elephants were not yet in style then.

I Could But Won't

Barefoot Jewess posted her experiences with a traffic accident and subsequent benching ha-gomel.

Of course, being that the accident was on the Shabbat and the saying of the gomel blessing was done when she received an aliyah at a mixed minyan, I could say something, but I won't.

Pikuach nefesh docheh.

Irresistible

I found this line irresistible and think it most appropriate to many of Israel's diplomatic woes:

With many customers, fawning is key. What a stripper sells is not her ability to dance or take off her clothes, but her ability to suspend the customer's disbelief.

Israeli politicians seem to me to be those customers in the glittery shows of international diplomacy, wanting to be with the big boys. And they move into disbelief-land with such ease.

Oh, and the line was written by a former strip club worker by the name of Elisabeth Eaves. You can find it here.

The Police are Mistaken

On Friday, Maariv newspaper, relating to the error in Justice Cheshin's decision, reported that a police spokesperson said that they knew it was a mistake because since 1967 no Jew has ever prayed on the Temple Mount nor ever will.

Well, in 1978, 11 Jews assembled in front of the El Aksa Mosque and prayed mincha. In the picture posted here, you can see 9, while the tenth is off to the side and the 11th is taking the picture.

Their identifications:
(left to right)
Shabbtei Zechariah
Danny Har-Habayit (Tzvi Shohami-Finkelstein) z"l
Yoel Kimchi z"l
HaRav Moshe Tzvi Segel zt"l
Shimon Barmatz
Gershon Solomon
Yehoshua Dueive
Yisrael Medad [yours truly]
Zev Bar-Tov
Yosef Elbaum [out of frame]


It also appears in Rav Segel's autobiography "Dor Dorshav" which was published by the Defence Ministry.

How Many Licks?

There's a new Arab-American heritage museum in Dearborn, Michigan called the Arab-American National Museum.

According the the NYT report,

Four Arab-Americans claimed to have invented the ice cream cone

And how many created the falafel?

But, to be fair, here's what one source claims:

The first true edible conical shaped cone for serving ice cream was created at the St. Louis Worlds Fair by Ernest Hamwi in 1904. His waffle booth was next to an ice cream vendor who ran short of dishes. Hamwi rolled a waffle to contain ice cream and the cone was born. Hamwi was of Syrian descent and holds Patent 1,342,045 issued June 1, 1920.

But this site gives a more in-depth historical over-view which points to Italian and English origins even if the four Arabs seem to have the modern patent claim, er, wrapped up.

And as for falafel, see this (no link)
Falafel: A National Icon
Yael Raviv
Gastronomica, Summer 2003, Vol. 3, No. 3, Pages 20-25

and this:

origin is uncertain, it is believed that it originally came from India, where it was made with spiced soured bread. The word "falafel" comes from the Arabic word فلفل (filfil), meaning pepper, and probably ultimately from Sanskrit pippalī. Falafel (at least the Middle Eastern style) is made from field beans, chick peas or any combination of the two. The Egyptian variation exclusively uses fava beans, while other variations may exclusively use chick peas. What makes falafel different from many other bean patties is the beans are not cooked prior to use. Instead they are soaked, possibly skinned, then ground with other ingredients and deep fried.

P.S.

My friend Ilana Brown pointed out to me this sentence in the article on the museum:

"There have been significant populations of Arab Jews in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Egypt and Morocco," the museum notes. That ancient world (which until the 1940's included more than 900,000 Jews) is represented by a photograph of a Tunisian synagogue - the same one, the exhibit fails to mention, that was bombed by Al Qaeda operatives in 2002.

And what the NYT fails to mention is that the date "the 1940's" is a euphemism for the establishment of the state of Israel which led to a policy of forced emmigration from those countries.

A story which is told here and here

Ellen Horowitz's Vatican't

Ellen's article on the Vatican swap is here.

And thanks for the thanks.

Gangs?

President George W. Bush had this to say, or rather not to say, about Arab terror directed against innocent Jewish civilians:-

"The way forward must begin by confronting the threat that armed gangs pose to a genuinely democratic Palestine. And those armed gangs must confront the threat that armed gangs pose to lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

Okay, so his syntax isn't the best. But the selection of armed gangs is a wimp-out of Presidential authority and responsibility.

Israel is being sold out.

Jewish blood is cheap.

Let My Palm Fronds (that's Lulavim) Go

Did you know the U.S. Congress got involved with the shortage of lulavim this year.

Here's the story.

And here's the quotation of the chag:-

"I said, 'Let my palm fronds go,' " Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) recounted lightheartedly. "We've been using reason and logic and cajoling and friendly persuasion to get them to agree to this. . . . We're trying to avoid the Egyptians from looking like the grinch that stole Sukkot."

And While We're On the Subject of Gollus...

The Washington Post brings us the story of the U.S. Naval Academy's new Jewish house of worship, or, the chapel. Or a mini-gothic cathedral?

Read on:-

"You just can't compete with all of that, and today you couldn't afford the stone," says architect Joseph A. Boggs, whose Annapolis firm designed the new structure. Thus the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel, its precast concrete surfaces scored to emulate the rustication of Bancroft Hall's mighty granite blocks, takes a modest place in Flagg's monumental scheme.

There is, however, nothing modest about the chapel interior. It definitely is a look-at-me space. You walk into the building, glance to your right, and there it is -- irresistible.

The biggest surprise, I suppose, is simply how tall the chapel is. From the outside, the horizontal building looks as if it would house nothing more exciting than three floors of offices and maybe a couple of conference rooms. But the chapel, taking up one half of the front portion of the symmetrically divided structure, is all about verticality. Long and rather narrow in basic shape, the room rises 47 feet from Jerusalem stone floor to aluminum-leaf ceiling, and, because of the ways Boggs manipulated the space, it looks and feels a lot taller.

In a sense, it is like a miniature Gothic cathedral -- all light and uplift.

And don't forget the Jerusalem stone.

Oops, on a second reading, I missed this I think you should know:

Interestingly, before setting out to design a synagogue, Boggs, who is not Jewish, decided not to learn much about the history of synagogue architecture. "The traditions are so deep and go back so many millennia, once you start pulling back the layers you just can't get to the center, so I decided not to know anything. I just wanted to make the purest space possible, just kind of use my intuition to create a space for Jews to worship in."

Oy Gollus

A new report to be published has some interesting Gollus demographics.

According to the newspaper linked above,

But the most startling evidence of Palm Beach County's transformation into one of the world's leading centers of Jewish life will come next month, when the county's two Jewish federations — one based in Boca, the other in West Palm — reveal the results of a population study.

It's expected to show that there are 254,300 Jews in the county, representing more than 20 percent of the overall population of about 1.2 million.

That means one out of every five local residents is Jewish.

And that means Palm Beach County tops every metropolitan area in the country by a wide margin. Even the closest rival, metropolitan New York City, has a Jewish population that represents only 9.7 percent of the overall population.

"To find a more densely populated Jewish community, you'd have to go to Israel," says Richard Jacobs, vice president of community planning for the Boca-based Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County.

Yes, you'd have to go to Israel. But what did this Jew do?

Yet the frenetic growth of the Jewish population means the county is a place where newcomers, observant or not, can readily establish themselves. Rather than being deeply entrenched, the county's Jewish community is very much about the here and now.

This appeal helped lure Jonathan Marriott, an Orthodox Jew from London, to Boca Raton.

Marriott, his wife and two children moved to Boca a year-and-a-half ago, and in that short time, he has landed on the board of his temple — the Boca Raton Synagogue — and his wife has become PTA president of the Jewish school their children attend.

"You try and do that somewhere else, it would take generations," he says.

Read the entire report (here, click on this to avoid going back to the top. why work?).

Oy, gollus.

P.S. And did you read about Kemp Hill near Washington, DC?