U.S-Israel rift may cool over Passover holiday

Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM–It’s too early to panic, I hope.

President Obama returned to his sweeping demand that Israel stop construction in post-1967 neighborhoods of Jerusalem, extend the construction freeze in settlements outside of Jerusalem beyond the ten months agreed, and take other steps to bring the Palestinians to negotiations.

Comments at a high tone have come from all over the political spectrum, with the Prime Minister aligning himself with his government, but away from its most extreme voices. He is affirming the ’policy of building throughout Jerusalem, but distancing himself from colleagues who are attacking the motives of President Obama and the implications of what he is demanding from Israel.

President Peres has urged the prime minister to stop building for Jews in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

The op-ed page of Ha’aretz calls for a shake up in the government to move it closer to the center, claims that Netanyahu is endangering Israel’s security, and that Israel should thank President Obama for acting like a friend.

Palestinian officials and the Arab League are thanking President Obama, asking him to continue the pressure on Israel as a way of gaining  support throughout the Middle East, and inciting Muslims to protect al-Aqsa from a Jewish invasion..

On the side of normalcy, Israel will be buying several new military transport planes from an American supplier, the United States has voted against condemnations of Israel by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and General Petraeus denies saying that Israeli actions are threatening the lives of American troops in Muslim countries of Asia.

Indications are that the Israeli government will not be making an official response to the White House until after the Passover holiday. Tempers may cool, and individuals working on language may find a way to satisfy both governments. Other crises may distract one or both parties. There can be an undefined, mutual agreement to pretend that all is well. Or there will be more problems with the government that describes itself as our unflagging ally.

Jewish families and others will celebrate a Passover Seder, including a group in the White House with the President at the head of the table. There is no telling how many interpretations of the ceremony will be heard: freedom from slavery; freedom from other or all oppressions; national self-determination; an experience that is uniquely Jewish or broadly human, and perhaps anti-Zionist.

It has become conventional in liberal Jewish circles to use texts for the ceremony (Haggadot) that do not include one passage in the traditional ritual. It comes toward the end of the Seder along with the fourth cup of wine. For multiculturists, it is not politically correct.

Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that do not acknowledge You, and upon the kingdoms that do not call upon Your Name. For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. Pour out Your indignation upon them, and let the wrath of Your anger overtake them. Pursue them with anger, and destroy them from beneath the heavens of the Lord.

Will we hear that participants in the White House Seder read the paragraph? Or that in a number of homes the first words
(שפך חמתך אל הגוים)
came with elevated voices and banging on the table?

However you do it, enjoy the food, wine, feelings, questions, and arguments.

**
Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University

Watching Israeli reactions to Obama-Netanyahu rift

Rabbi Dow Marmur

JERUSALEM–Now when he’s about to get a Jewish son-in-law, Bill Clinton moves to Israel, converts to Judaism, forms a political party and is elected Prime Minister with acclamation. I cannot have the same fantasy about Barack Obama whose popularity in Israel is now in single digits. But unlike Clinton, Obama may want to be involved in internal Israeli politics to reshape Israel in his preparation for the struggle against Iran.

The speculations here about what’s likely to happen next in Israel’s relations with the United States, now when Prime Minister Netanyahu has returned from Washington with his tail between his legs, include the possibility – fear for some, hope for others – that, when he puts Obama’s demands before his ministers, the majority will say No.

The exception would be Labor which, in the face of the intransigence of the other parties, may now have no choice but to leave the government and thus deprive it of its Knesset majority. It has so far justified its membership of the Netanyahu government by saying that it has prevented a collision with the Americans and harsher treatment of Palestinians, thus promoting the prospect of peace. It won’t be able to do that now.

Breaking up the coalition and forcing an election may gain Labor a few more Knesset seats but not enough to form a government. Neither will Kadima be able to govern without Likud and Labor. Whatever dissent there currently exists in Kadima would dissipate with the prospect of joining, even if not forming, the next government.

Obama’s alleged purpose in all this is to shift Israel’s government from far right to the center, i.e., without Yishai and Lieberman but with Barak and Livni. Netanyahu would probably remain Prime Minister but now leading an improved team.

Likud strategists and those to the right of them may know all this and, in order literally to save their seats, may swallow hard and agree to the undertakings that Obama is said to demand. On the other hand, they may go for broke. The noises that are being made by government people unfortunately point to this second option.

Much of it has to be done in haste because Obama is said to have demanded forthwith clear Israeli answers in writing in the hope that this will give the Arab League meeting in Libya enough of a victory to allow Abu Mazen, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, to go ahead at least with proximity talks.

 It’s difficult to imagine how Israel can withstand this kind of pressure, especially now when several other countries seem to be ganging up against it in response to the Dubai passport fiasco. Unless Netanyahu, contrary to what he says, is so much under the spell of Lieberman and the other hawks, he seems to have little choice.

The hawks may wish to cast Obama in the role of the Pharaoh of the Exodus story as we’ll retell it on Pesach, but that kind of rhetoric won’t do any good. The song at the Seder about evil men in every generation wanting to do away with us “but the Holy One Blessed Be He saves us from them,” may be a persuasive theological reflection on Jewish history but it’s not a pragmatic political analysis of the present situation.

The best case scenario for the Israeli right has been the status quo: continue to talk about talks and continue to build in Jerusalem and the West Bank while trying to make sure that Israel is protected from terrorists and infiltrators. President Obama has shattered that picture and nobody quite knows what’ll replace it.

*

Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto.  He now divides his time between Canada and Israel.

Book places Halevi and his poetry in context

Yehuda Halevi by Hillel Halkin, Nextbook/Schocken, New York;  ISBN 978-0-8052-4206-5, ©2010, $25.00, p. 353.

Fred Reiss, Ed.D

By Fred Reiss, Ed.D

WINCHESTER, California– Give me the names of three medieval Jewish poets …  Okay, I’ll take just two … Can you name just one? If you’re like most people, all you heard was the sound of silence. Our children learn to write Haiku in elementary school and to rhyme in iambic pentameter in high school. Where are we taught about the Spanish meter, adopted by the Hispano-Jewish poets, called marnin? Or, the shirey yedidut (friendship poems) and the muwashach (girdle or necklace song), poetic styles?

Hillel Halkin’s latest book, a biography of Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141), supplies us with the answers.

Jews settled in Spain by the beginning of the fourth century, where they lived through sometimes hospitable, often tenuous lives under the Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, Christians, and Muslims, until their expulsion in August 1492.

Halkin opens his book at the end of the eleventh century. Halevi is a young man, an aspiring poet in Spain’s Hebrew Golden Age of Poetry. It is a time in which renowned poets such as Samuel Hanagid and Moses Ibn Ezra flourished. Spanish Jews lived under the umbrella of convivencia—a time of relative harmony—between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Big cities partitioned themselves into de facto neighborhoods and occasionally the convivencia gave way to fanaticism, leading to pogrom-like massacres of Jews. All in all, Jews and Judaism flourished during the life time of Yehuda Halevi.

Halkin follows Halevi’s career with wonderful translations of his poetry, which Halevi wrote in both Arabic and Hebrew. Halkin often places the poetry into historical context and the psychological perspective of the poet. Halevi’s monumental work, Hakuzari, is an imaginative dialogue among the spiritual leaders of the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions with the King of the Kazars, who later converted his nation to Judaism.

Through Hakuzari, Halkin provides his readers with an understanding of Halevi’s demons, as Halevi struggles with the decision to visit Jerusalem, and make aliya—permanent settlement—in what was called at that time Palestine. Halkin believes Halevi to be a proto-Zionist and the spiritual father of the Zionist movement. Halkin concludes with an extensive discussion of the theories of Halevi’s travels in Palestine, which remain shrouded in mystery. Some even say he never arrives in the Holy Land.

Hillel Halkin’s Yehuda Halevi is a thoughtful addition to our understanding of Halevi and his poetry, as well as medieval Spanish Jewry in general. Indeed, this reviewer is moved to conclude by emulating one of Halevi’s poetic styles:

Reading this book is quite sublime

You’ll find that it’s no waste of time.

The prose is beyond the routine.

And you won’t even need the caffeine.

Whatever your pleasure

It’s a book that you’ll treasure.

Forget to mow or shovel the snow

The words come like lava flow.

No matter your hue, or the location of your pew

Learn to do something new.

Perhaps reading a scroll, or a book, or a tome

No need to wander from home.

Put in the labor

This is no time to waiver.

This sefer goes far beyond rhyme

Now go and expand your mind!

**
Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of  Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and Reclaiming the Messiah.