Moment Magazine - May/June 2018

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DEPARTMENTS

4

FROM THE EDITOR

Six Days in Israel by Nadine Epstein

6

THE CONVERSATION

12

WEB HIGHLIGHTS

Charles Freilich on strengthening Israel’s security by Sarah Breger

14

CONTEXT

The complexity behind a Palestinian girl’s words

by Amy E. Schwartz

16

OPINIONS

The dangerous polarization of anti-Semitism by Ira N. Forman Orthodox women in the IDF by Shmuel Rosner Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn problem by Marshall Breger

22

OPINION DEBATE

The United Nations: Israel’s friend or foe?

by Yair Lapid and Gabriela Shalev

24

JEWISH WORD

Is it “West Bank,” “Occupied Territories” or “Judea and Samaria”?

by Nathan Guttman

25

ASK THE RABBIS

Has Israel changed Judaism?

43

POEM

“Of All the Peoples” by Nathan Alterman

68

TALK OF THE TABLE

Seven dishes for seven decades by Vered Guttman

72

BOOKS

Gateway to the Moon review by Marilyn Cooper Harvey Milk review by Jay Michaelson A Rich Brew review by Mark Pendergrast

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VISUAL MOMENT

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Why do so few Israeli women succeed in politics, and what can be done?

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PERSECUTED IN PAKISTAN

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F ROM THE EDITOR | NADIN E E P S T E I N

Six Days in Israel

CAROL GUZY

I

I spent six whirlwind days in Israel a few weeks ago. My trip began with my participation in the 6th Global Forum for Combatting Anti-Semitism, hosted by the Israeli government in Jerusalem. I was the only woman invited to speak on a panel provocatively titled “Anti-Semitism in the Far Left: Intersectionality as a Cover for Hate Speech in Current Progressive Activism.” I decided to attend the conference to ensure that a woman’s voice would be part of a discussion that would include the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter movements in the United States.

I arrived just in time for the opening plenary session with Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of both education and diaspora; World Jewish Congress chair and American philanthropist Ronald Lauder, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

About 1,200 Holocaust and anti-Semitism scholars and experts, as well as diplomats and visitors from 83 countries, were in the audience. Bennett set the tone when he defined his role as diaspora minister as “the minister of the Jews.” At first I thought he was joking, but I realized that he was serious when he explained that Israel would now help Jews facing persecution outside of Israel, just as the diaspora had once helped those within Israel. He then assessed American Jewry as “the weakest link” in the Jewish chain and the group most susceptible to being swayed by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS).

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Bennett also chastised Lauder, whom he was introducing, for writing in a New York Times op-ed published that day that Israel’s policies regarding religious pluralism and its receding interest in pursuing a two-state solution are alienating American Jews, particularly millennials. Bennett, a Religious Zionist, said the problem doesn’t lie with Israel’s policies but with non-Orthodox American Jews, who, he said, are increasingly assimilated and soon will not be Jewish at all.

This is a common refrain in official and non-official circles in Israel these days, and one that always makes me sigh. As editorin-chief of a publication that is “a magazine for American Jews,” I interact with American Jews across the spectrum every day. I see the incredible vitality of JewishAmerican life: Jewish commitment, culture and creativity are flourishing. I couldn’t disagree more with statements such as Bennett’s. At that moment, I realized I was

ON MY WAY TO THE GLEAMING AIRPORT NAMED AFTER HIM, I WONDERED WHAT DAVID BEN-GURION AND HIS FELLOW PIONEERS—ISRAEL’S GREATEST GENERATION— WOULD THINK OF THEIR COUNTRY TODAY. staring directly into the deepening chasm between Israel and many American Jews.

That chasm also separates perspectives on anti-Semitism, the topic we had come together to discuss. In his remarks, Bennett declared Iran to be “at the core of antiSemitism.” This view of Iran is understandable, given Israel’s vulnerable geographic location in a hostile neighborhood, but it is not as relevant to the conversation about anti-Semitism within the United States.

Anti-Semitism is a complicated virus, with many symptoms, and the United States has its own unique strains. Israel is especially

concerned with the anti-Semitism stirred up by BDS and other groups connected to the Palestinians. Although I talked about this left-wing strain during the session I participated in the following day, I also felt obligated to emphasize that gun-carrying neo-Nazis on the far right may currently be a more dangerous threat to American Jews.

It was an intense three days. Participants attended sessions covering anti-Semitism throughout the world, exposing prejudices that most of us had once imagined would never return. Old forms of prejudice had indeed disappeared, only to take new shape. Together we explored how to best measure and confront them. By the end of the conference, I felt weighed down by world problems. I had barely left the conference center the entire time, slipping out only briefly to inhale jasmine-scented air and watch ultra-Orthodox couples strolling through the grounds.

The next day, my head cleared and I headed to Tel Aviv for meetings with friends and colleagues. It was a gorgeous, unseasonably hot spring day. When I found myself at the waterfront, it felt as if centuries had passed since I had lived in Israel, although I had visited many times since. The rundown buildings I remember from the 1970s have been replaced by sleek luxury hotels and condominium towers. The area is now prime real estate, linked by plazas and a miles-long promenade.

Thousands of people were out on the beach. I took off my shoes to join them.

Jews, Muslims and Christians from Israel and abroad—largely in separate clusters—shared sand and waves. I waded into the Mediterranean, settled into a beach chair at a café and ordered French fries and delicious, fresh squeezed orange juice from a friendly waiter with dreadlocks and body piercings.

After sundown, I wandered through the city, now the world’s largest urban concentration of Jews, teeming with creative energy. I followed my phone’s GPS through a maze of bustling streets on a quest for gluten-free falafel, which I found at a restaurant packed with young and old. After my meal, I tapped the screen of my phone for a Gett Taxi (Israel threw out Uber, and its cab companies

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are now connected by the Israeli startup) and was returned to my hotel.

The next morning, I was up at 4 a.m. to rendezvous in Jerusalem with the “Holyland 1000,” for day three of a five-day 1,000-kilometer charity event consisting of 76 antique cars traveling Israel's scenic byways and busy highways. I settled into the passenger seat of a 1958 Jaguar XK150 convertible and watched Israel fly by. We drove through the Old City, then on winding back roads through the picturesque pine forests in the Judean Hills funded by diaspora Jews. Along the way, adults grinned, children waved and everyone took photographs. In Tel Aviv we were welcomed at a rally held by Israel’s antique car owners association. Who knew?

That evening, before Shabbat dinner with friends in Jerusalem, I went for a walk around Abu Tor, which overlooks the Old City. The golden Dome of the Rock was seemingly afire in the sunset. The next afternoon, I met with Mohammed Dajani, a Palestinian professor of political science, who a few years ago was pushed out of his job at al-Quds University for taking a group of young Palestinians to Auschwitz. We wandered through East Jerusalem, buying fresh green almonds from a vendor on bustling Saladin Street and stopping in a spice shop.

We peeked into the Educational Bookshop, its shelves laden with books (such as Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry and Angela Davis’s Freedom Is a Constant Struggle) less likely to be prominently displayed in West Jerusalem stores. We ate fava beans and falafel in Dajani’s favorite Old City hole-in-the-wall and ended up in the old Muslim cemetery that is now a park in West Jerusalem. A few gravestones remain, plus one tomb—Dajani’s grandfather’s—which the family fought for many years to save.

Later that night, on my way to the gleaming airport named after him, I wondered what David Ben-Gurion and his fellow pioneers—Israel’s greatest generation—would think of their country today. On the 70th anniversary of the Jewish State, I imagine they would admire the result of their hard work. They might pause at the way hightech capitalism has replaced agricultural socialism, but would certainly be delighted by Israel’s vitality and high standard of living.

They would be gratified that Israel has become a regional power, but they might also be worried about the unresolved existential questions and gaping fissures that could endanger the fulfillment of their dream.

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THE CONVERSATION

I CAN ONLY HOPE THAT THIS ABILITY TO HEAR AND RESPECT MULTIPLE VIEWPOINTS CAN BE A TEMPLATE FOR HUMAN INTERACTION IN THIS TRYING TIME OF HISTORY.

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF GOD? EXTRAORDINARY DIVERSITY Abundant thanks to Moment for creating and publishing the symposium (“What Is the Meaning of God Today?” March/ April 2018). I read the article the day after a friendly dinner conversation about belief in God, a discussion that became binary in nature and, therefore, vaguely unsatisfying. Reading your symposium—which was like devouring a delicious gourmettasting menu—was uplifting. The extraordinary diversity of the writers in terms of their religious backgrounds, ethnicity and personal choices was a sheer delight and sparked several further intriguing dialogues. I can only hope that this ability to hear and respect multiple viewpoints can be a template for human interaction in this trying time of history.

Nechama Liss-Levinson Great Neck, NY A NEVER-ENDING MYSTERY I don’t consider myself a religious man, yet I found myself unexpectedly and almost spiritually moved while reading “What Is the Meaning of God Today?”

The (mostly) diverse array of voices and perspectives triggered intense feelings of sadness, hope, comfort, anger and much more besides. Why should these perspectives on God’s meaning have pushed me beyond the intellectual and into the emotional realm?

It may have to do with my surprise not only by the ideas themselves but by the interviewees. I wouldn’t have expected a female Orthodox rabbi to talk about new ways of seeing God in the modern world. I was surprised by a philosopher-lawyer discussing divine aspiration and a megachurch pastor arguing for the plurality of religious expression. Surprise has a way of pushing us past the intellectual and into the emotional, or even, as Avivah Zornberg suggests in her interview, into the intimate.

Joseph Gottlieb Boston, MA

HOLLYWOOD & ISRAEL BDS RESPONDS The story “The Epic Battle in Hollywood Over the Holy Land” (March/April 2018) fails to sufficiently define Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), whose leaders are repeatedly quoted opposing the cultural boycott of Israel. Not a nonprofit itself, CCFP is actually a front group for StandWithUs (SWU), a right-wing, proIsraeli settler nonprofit organization with close ties to Israel’s hardline government.

Both CCFP and SWU acknowledge they are alternate names for Israel Emergency Alliance (IEA), a little-known IRS-registered nonprofit. IEA always files its annual tax forms as “Israel Emergency Alliance, doing business as StandWithUs.” Thus IEA, SWU and CCFP are a single nonprofit. CCFP staff works from the LA office of StandWithUs, and SWU manages CCFP’s finances. The facts clearly belie CCFP’s claim that, “StandWithUs has no involvement with our board, mission or day-to-day operations.” The public deserves the truth about groups like CCFP/SWU. Patrick Connors Adalah-NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel New York, NY CCFP RESPONSE CCFP was founded by entertainment industry professionals, and its board is made up entirely of entertainment industry execs and professionals. Our mission statement and day-to-day operations are directed by these entertainment industry professionals and our staff. Further, our funding comes from a variety of sources, but none comes from the Israeli government or StandWithUs. We support co-existence and believe that the power of music and the arts should be used to bring people together rather than to divide. Unfortunately, the Boycott Israel movement does not.

Allison Krumholz, Executive Director Creative Community For Peace Los Angeles, CA

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SHOULD WE ‘SMITE’ OUR ENEMIES? THOUGHTFUL AND HUMANE I’m a secular Jew with a strong Jewish identity. I found this article (“Should Jews at the Seder Ask God to Smite Our Enemies?” March/April 2018) moving because of the thoughtfulness and humanity of these rabbis. None of them interpreted this passage literally, even the Orthodox rabbis, and all of them put it into historical context. The emphasis was on the responsibility of the individual in determining the kind of world we want to live in. This is what Judaism means to me.

Deborah Holzel via Facebook

When your country cherishes life, you’ll do whatever it takes to save one.

A SELF-DEFEATING QUESTION No, we should ask God to invite our enemies over for cocktails and dinner! Only a demoralized people in crisis and destabilization would ask such a self-defeating question. You don’t show your sworn enemies compassion or forgiveness unless they change their ways. Otherwise, doing so is weakness, and it leads to aggression.

Michael Shapiro via Facebook SHOULD ISRAEL DEPORT AFRICAN ASYLUM SEEKERS? SEND THEM HOME Well-written argument (“Should Israel Deport African Asylum Seekers? Yes, It Should,” March/April 2018). Bless Naomi Regan for writing it. The Torah advocates for adherence to law and protecting our borders. These fighting-age men prefer to wash dishes in my country than to fight for their own country. In their own country is the hope for their freedom. In my country they will receive servitude and exploitation.

Aaron Amihud Jerusalem, Israel CRUEL AND BIGOTED Naomi Ragen’s attempt to rationalize the cruel bigotry of this decision fails utterly.

The motivation behind this law is the same bigotry that led the United States to turn away boatloads of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, and the excuses given are identical. The fact that people in Tel Aviv don’t “feel” safe is not evidence that they are not safe. And the crime statistics that Ragen FOR SEVENTY

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cherry-picks cleverly forestall any attempt at a meaningful analysis. The crime rate in refugee neighborhoods could be the result of any number of factors unrelated to skin color or religion.

Perhaps the most offensive part of Ragen’s piece is the distortion of the Talmudic verse, which does not distinguish between people based on national origin, ethnicity, religion or legal status. It says to take care of the “people living in your own city,” meaning that one should not overlook the deprivation under one’s own nose before seeking to do good in the wider world. These refugees are living in Tel Aviv, having been welcomed ten years ago. It is now Israel’s moral and ethical obligation to support their integration into the society.

David Wasser Cranston, RI RASICM IN RELIGION As an Orthodox Jew, I am appalled by the author cloaking a mean-spirited attitude, if not her racism, in religion. The Torah states in Deuteronomy, “You shall not extradite a slave to his master, when the slave escaped to you from his master.” Israel has the resources to handle the refugees. If not, it can appeal to the UN’s refugee agency for funds. Menachem Begin, presiding over a smaller GDP, took in the Vietnamese boat people. Why cannot Benjamin Netanyahu, who boasts of Israel’s prosperity, take in the Africans?

Joshua Zev Rokach Silver Spring, MD Editors’ note: On April 24, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the government would suspend its deportation plans, following revelations that the “third countries” in the plan would not accept any deportees. The government says it continues to seek “additional measures” to solve the problem.

CARLEBACH’S TANGLED LEGACY TURN OFF THE MUSIC I don’t want to perpetuate the music of someone who sexually abused women (“Shlomo Carlebach’s Tangled Legacy,” March/April 2018). There are artists who are awful. I don’t feel obliged to preserve their work. There are other artists who are

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just as creative and who are not abusive. I would much rather support these artists.

Lynn Lichtenstein Chevy Chase, MD DON’T GUILT-TRIP NESHAMA Just as every victim has her story, Neshama’s must certainly be included among them.

She also must not be guilt-tripped into muting her voice nor, in my opinion, changing her words to conform to other people’s expectations of what they need to hear. She’s a singer, not a policymaker. I can’t imagine what she feels, and whatever she chooses to say or withhold on this topic, I feel we owe her the same courtesy as every other victim.

Michael Kates Atlanta, GA

MOMENT NEWS Two Moment articles are finalists for the prestigious 2018 Mirror Awards, which honor excellence in media industry reporting. “Playing to Win” (July/August 2017), by Nadine Epstein and Wesley G. Pippert, explored Sheldon Adelson’s growing influence in Israel and attempts to shape American politics with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which he secretly purchased in 2015. “After the Cyber Storm” (September/October 2017), by Ellen Wexler, examined how the Jews of Whitefish, Montana, became the target of an anti-Semitic harassment campaign.

Moment also won five Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism.

MOMENT IN THE NEWS In his February 22 column, The New York Times’ David Brooks mentioned “The Moment Magazine Great DNA Experiment” (momentmag.com/the-moment-magazinegreat-dna-experiment) in which he participated—and through which he discovered that he and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker are third cousins. Nadine Epstein’s interview with astronomy professor Emily Levesque about A Wrinkle in Time and its influence on young female readers was excerpted on NPR’s All Things Considered on March 6. Simon Schama had kind words for us in the March 26 New York Times book review of Jonathan Weisman’s book, Being Jewish in the Age of Trump.

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM MOMENTMAG .COM

Book Interview: At 70, How Secure Is Israel?

I

n his new book, Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change, Charles Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, presents what he calls the first-ever public proposal for a comprehensive Israeli national security strategy, one that addresses Israel’s challenges through greater emphasis on restraint, defense and diplomacy. Freilich speaks with Moment about the threat of the Iranian-Hezbollah-Syrian axis, whether Israel is too dependent on the United States and why Israel cannot let Iran establish a permanent military presence on its border. —Sarah Breger

How worried should Israel be about Iranian influence in Syria? Very worried.

Iran is in the process of turning Syria into an Iranian-dominated state. In effect, it’s erasing the border between Syria and Lebanon, turning it into one big front against Israel.

The Iranians seem to be trying to establish military bases in Syria: air, naval and ground bases. I’m the guy who’s always writing that Israel should exercise restraint and act defensively, diplomatically, but I think we have to continue air strikes to prevent this. And if this escalates to a war, then so be it, because we can’t allow it to happen.

Could Israel work with Russia for a diplomatic solution? In the short term, Russia is the primary player. Paradoxically, it’s the only stabilizing force in this situation because the U.S. isn’t playing in Syria. I don’t see that changing, the Trump administration’s rhetoric notwithstanding. The Russians really don’t want to see a war in that region, but they’ve got strong interests when it comes to Iran and Syria. I don’t know if they’re really going to be the balancer. So I’m afraid that this is going to lead to a military clash—and maybe in the notso-distant future.

How has Donald Trump’s presidency affected the U.S.-Israel relationship?

Short term, there’s an improvement in the atmosphere. But he’s made a fundamental mistake with the Jerusalem decision—he could have kept that as a major inducement or a carrot for Israel. If there were a deal 12

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with the Palestinians—or even progress toward it—then he could give that to Israel as a present. But he gave it away for free.

Now, the Palestinians are angry. They say they don’t trust the U.S. anymore. They’ll probably get over it because they have no alternative. If they want a state, they’ve got to work through the U.S. Is Israel too dependent on the U.S.?

Israel is extraordinarily dependent on the U.S., and it almost never makes decisions without taking the American interest very strongly into account. One example is the Yom Kippur War. We knew Saturday morning, October 6, at noon, that there was going to be an attack that day, but we didn’t preempt because we were concerned about American policy. That was a very controversial decision at the time. More recently, one of the reasons Israel didn’t attack the Iranian nuclear program is because the U.S. was against it. So we’ve made some really difficult choices because of the U.S. There are outliers, of course—for example, settlement expansion and the Iran nuclear deal.

The part of the Israeli republic that is supportive of settlements has been very organized and has made its opinion known. It’s understandable that the Israeli government takes that into account. As for the Iran nuclear deal, as much as I disagreed with [PM Benjamin] Netanyahu, there is a legitimate school of thought that says the agreement was a bad one, and he thinks it is an existential threat to the State of Israel. From that point of view, he has a right to oppose it.

Financially, could Israel survive without the U.S. aid? Yes, but it would mean a bad hit to the economy and a devastating hit to the current defense budget. But could Israel make up for it? The answer is yes. It’s 1 percent of the GDP. It’s 3 percent of the national budget. Now, to slash 3 percent of a national budget, in any country, is huge.

But it’s not undoable. It means a dramatic change in the standard of living. But that’s one form of dependence. Another form of dependence is American strategic backing.

It’s not just the weapons. It’s global backing.

It’s diplomatic backing. It’s the vetoes at the UN Security Council.

Should Israel be looking elsewhere for allies? Nobody wants to put all their eggs in one basket. The U.S. was at the height of its power in the Middle East in the 1990s and early 2000s, but it’s been deteriorating continually since the last two years of the George W. Bush administration. Are there alternatives to the United States? Who? Russia? China? There are no alternatives. So we had better maintain American support. I think the right in Israel has gotten so self-confident and cocky lately that some people are saying, “Oh, we can do without the U.S.” I don’t think anybody responsible in Israel believes that.

What happens if American support disappears, as some people are predicting?

I think it’s an overstatement to say that it’s going to disappear. It has remained pretty much the same because what Israel has

MAY/JUNE 2018

5/1/18 5:42 PM

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The Orthodox population is the fastestgrowing part of the American Jewish population. And except for the nuts, they’re very pro-Israel. So you could even make the case that a different kind of pro-Israel activism is going to grow.

What about outside the Jewish community? There are tectonic changes underway in the U.S. today in demography.

The two most rapidly growing population groups are the Hispanics and the religiously unidentified, and they have few ties with Israel. So there are changes underway regardless of what’s happening in the Jewish community or what’s happening in Israeli policy.

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C ONTEXT | AM Y E. SCH WART Z

Unravelling the Words of an Unlikely Villain

YOUTUBE

In seeking purity, do we risk missing the bigger picture?

about the wave of Muslim immigration The reporter chatted with Sahwil and her As global movers and shakers go, she was a hitting Europe: Do such refugees bring en- family, took note of the antique map of Palmarkedly unthreatening figure. trenched anti-Semitic attitudes that could estine on the dining room wall (both Sahwil Reem Sahwil, a 14-year-old Palestinian refugee in Germany, seized the global imag- affect mainstream politics? And, if you want and her parents were born in a refugee camp to go bigger: Can people with such attitudes, in Lebanon), described weekly calls to her ination in 2015 when she burst into tears on in Europe or elsewhere, be reached and grandparents still living in that camp, and camera, midway through an encounter with changed? These serious questions should drew a picture of a sheltered teen, managing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as she begged Merkel to spare her family from de- be pursued in all their complexity. But com- her disability in a new land. When he asked plexity, like empathy, is elusive in today’s if she considered Germany her homeland, portation. Merkel, visibly startled, tried to comfort her. Analysts later called that mo- Twitter-driven media universe, where some she responded, “No, Palestine is my home.” of the Israeli and Jewish world press interest What about Israel? he asked, and she anment the catalyst that led Merkel to open her nation’s borders to an eventual 1.3 mil- in the Reem Sahwil story seemed to carry a swered—the quote was translated accurately crude subtext: Scratch a Palestinian, no mat- enough—“My hope is that one day it [Israel] lion refugees, and thus, depending on whom won’t be there anymore, but only Palestine.” you ask, to social instability, new elections, ter how adorable, find a potential terrorist.

In the whirl of today’s journalism, this And then, “My parents tell me that Israel exMerkel’s own political decline, the rise of far-right parties and who knows what else. story has a common plotline: the sympathet- pelled us from Palestine. That’s true, isn’t it?” ic (or, at least, approachable) figure who is In the article, the reporter struggles with In person, though, the “world’s most famous found to have once said something unaccept- what to say. Should he get into the geopolitics refugee girl” was a shy, big-eyed child, with able—be it in an old interview or a social me- of “perhaps the most complicated question in a protective family and a disability that had brought her to seek medical care in Ger- dia post—and is therefore promptly deemed the world” with a 14-year-old, challenging ineligible for mainstream discourse. This the family narrative? He reflects on German many. The contrast with the tough-minded chancellor was journalistically irresistible. dynamic has reached such a fever pitch lately guilt, on “narratives of return” to no-longerGerman reporters sang Sahwil’s praises, fol- that thoughtful figures can be heard putting German places such as East Prussia. “The lowed her, photographed her in her bed- on the brakes. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior thought comes unwillingly. . .when do these fellow at Israel’s Hartman Institute and au- stories end?” He doesn’t answer her question. room surrounded by stuffed animals. thor of the new book Letters to My PalestinYet one more layer of complexity emerged Merkel’s empathy for this child, it ian Neighbor, has engaged in a lot of dialogue about Reem Sahwil. A few of the quotations seemed, had moved mountains; and yet, in today’s information hurricane, no one com- with people whose views alarm him. “People that had outraged the English-language are works in progress,” he says, “not to be press were missing in the German, though mands the world’s empathy for long. Or so I discovered two years later, when, working defined by their worst online moment.” Alas, the headline referred to the child’s “harsh in an environment where people demand pu- views” on Israel. It turned out that when the on a long article on Merkel and refugees, I received a fact-checking note from my edi- rity from their interlocutors, there are always “anti-Israel” quotes began to ricochet, Sahtor: “Should we say more about this Reem “internauts” ready to dive into the archives wil’s parents took the highly Western step of Sahwil? Apparently she called for the de- and prove a would-be participant unaccept- hiring a lawyer, who challenged the quotes’ able, to the point where true disagreement accuracy and threatened action against Die struction of the State of Israel.”

Sure enough, a story in The Times of Is- can be bleached out of the dialogue altogeth- Welt. The newspaper ended up removing rael was headlined “I hope Israel disappears, er. “In an era without gatekeepers,” wrote The some quotations from its online archive.

So it’s hard even to tell what Sahwil resays Palestinian teen Merkel brought to Atlantic commentator Conor Friedersdorf, tears.” It began, “The 14-year-old Palestin- expressing dismay at a very different con- ally said, let alone what she really thinks, troversy that had enveloped a conservative or whether she will mature into a force for ian refugee who hit the headlines...has said writer, “purity-seekers threaten the relevance reconciliation. But if there is reconciliation, she hopes that one day Israel will cease to of journalistic institutions.” it will not be through social media profiles exist.” I followed the trajectory of the short Purity-seekers have no use for complexity. or quoted snippets, but with actual people, article as it ricocheted around the world.

But when I clicked through to the actual in- in all of their complexity. And society—and The Times of Israel quoted Sahwil as saying in a German interview that she hoped one day terview with Reem Sahwil in Die Welt—a rep- journalism—will have to reckon with that utable center-right German paper—it proved complexity somehow. to live in her ancestral homeland and that “the country should not be called Israel, but firmly on the side of complexity: a long and Palestine.” The Jerusalem Post said she had sensitive meditation on what it means to be Amy E. Schwartz is the opinion editor of Moment. “called for Israel’s abolishment.” an adolescent caught up in national fame.

The Context project explores oversimplifications and Viewed one way, this story is a legitimate (Without a reading knowledge of German, distortions arising from today’s media environment. entry in one of the most vexing debates I would have had no way of knowing this.)

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5/1/18 6:42 PM

A shared birthday.

A collective passion.

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OP INION | IRA N. FORM AN

The Danger of Polarizing Anti-Semitism

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

Don’t let this old-new prejudice become a weapon in partisan politics.

Anti-Semitism is back. In the United States crats do not care about hatred toward Jews. alone, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Marks suggested that Democrats opposed study on anti-Semitic incidents in 2017 Marcus because, in weighing in on several showed a 57 percent increase over the 2016 campus debates to denounce calls for divestnumbers. In France in March, an elderly ment from Israel, he had advocated using the Jewish Holocaust survivor was murdered State Department’s definition of when cerand set afire in her own home, apparently tain types of anti-Israel speech can be antiby an acquaintance with anti-Semitic mo- Semitic. Yet as JTA’s Ron Kampeas pointed tives. The issue cannot be ignored, but there out, Democrats cited numerous other reais an added danger that makes dealing with sons for opposing him, and none mentioned it more difficult: Today, politicians and the State Department definition. Leveling ideologues on opposite sides of the political frivolous charges of anti-Semitism against spectrum who might normally come togeth- your opponents can be just as destructive as er to fight anti-Semitism are instead using downplaying the anti-Semitism of your ideothe issue to bash their opponents. Instead logical soul mates.

Why is this trend so toxic? Partly because of denouncing anti-Semitic incidents, too many simply use them to further their agen- what we face today is not your father’s antiSemitism. When American Jews and othdas. This trend is dangerous. It must stop.

Until now, fighting anti-Semitism has ers confronted Soviet anti-Semitism in the been one of those rare issues largely devoid 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the situation was of partisanship and ideological combat. The dire, but at least it could be confronted at Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004 a single address—the Kremlin. Today, antiwas passed with strong bipartisan support. Semitism is a serious problem in dozens of Even today the Congressional Task Force nations; it takes different forms in each nafor Combating Anti-Semitism, co-chaired tion, and there is no one place where we by four Republican and four Democratic can confront it.

To combat the new anti-Semitism, we representatives, operates in a commendably bipartisan manner. But there are signs that must first identify its sources. This means being scrupulously analytical and brutally this island of bipartisanship is threatened.

In a New School panel on anti-Semitism honest about what type of anti-Semitism last November in New York, Jewish Voice we face in a particular situation, and from for Peace activist Lina Morales argued that whom. If it comes from the left and we are the anti-Semitism of Louis Farrakhan is progressives, we must be willing to call it of little consequence to Jews because Far- out even if we shame our erstwhile allies. If rakhan has no power outside the black it comes from the right and we are consercommunity. Recently the “anti-occupation” vatives, we have an obligation to criticize group If Not Now criticized the ADL and those we may have worked with on other other Jewish organizations for focusing on causes. And if anti-Semitic violence comes Farrakhan because “[w]hile Farrakhan’s from a small number of Muslims and we are influence is relatively small, [the] white na- also committed (as we should be) to fighting tionalist movement has the ear of the presi- Islamophobia, we must be willing to identify perpetrators—without demonizing a whole dent of the United States.”

As leftist ideologues claimed that only religious community.

Fighting anti-Semitism in the 21st cenright-wing anti-Semitism is a problem, conservatives used the flimsiest of evidence to tury requires broad coalitions of groups charge Democrats with being “soft” on anti- and interests. This is not a uniquely JewSemitism. In a January 2018 blog post on the ish issue, nor one that Jews can confront Commentary website, Jonathan Marks cited on their own. Overseas, it requires a united Senate Democratic votes against confirming U.S. government—not just the executive Assistant Secretary of Education nominee branch but both parties in the legislative Kenneth Marcus as evidence that Demo- branch. Problematic foreign governments 16

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sometimes try to dodge criticism of their policies by making the criticism a partisan issue. When criticized by Democrats and Republicans together, however, they sit up and pay attention. Moreover, when our government confronts anti-Semitism overseas, we rely on our democratic allies to come together to support us. We can’t just rely on center-left or center-right governments in Europe; we need both sides.

Here at home, we expect our political leadership—from the president down to city council members—to denounce anti-Semitic incidents or speech. However, the real bulwarks against rising bigotry in the United States are the social norms enforced by civil society. When white nationalists (or antiSemites from the left) spout their hate, communities often react by shunning the bigots.

Witness the ostracism that individual white nationalists have experienced in the wake of Charlottesville or the reaction in Whitefish, Montana to neo-Nazi threats. If we allow partisanship to seep into the fight against anti-Semitism, these types of community norms will be more difficult to implement.

It is not easy in today’s political environment to avoid this drive toward partisanship. I myself have not always lived up to this standard: As the past executive of a Democratic Jewish organization, I was much more comfortable excoriating rightwing manifestations of anti-Semitism than I was calling out progressive bigotry. Nevertheless, if I am serious about tackling rising anti-Semitism, I must do both.

Anti-Semitism today in the United States and Europe is not nearly as virulent as it was in the 1930s. Yet social science research indicates that the societal norms that protect us from the abyss of genocide are quite fragile and can be reversed relatively quickly. The warning signs are right before our eyes. History will not judge us kindly if we ignore those signs in favor of advancing our own partisan agendas.

Ira N. Forman served as the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism at the State Department from 2013 to 2017.

MAY/JUNE 2018

5/1/18 5:24 PM

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OP INION | SHM U EL ROSN ER

Rebels in Uniform

CREATIVE COMMONS

Why more young Orthodox women are serving in the IDF.

Ten years ago, fewer than 15 percent of el- rooms to which no male soldier or officer igible women from the observant Ortho- has access. To do this, the IDF consults dox community joined the Israeli military with religious bodies and leaders supportive of the new trend. In a few years, the each year. Most such young women—in Israeli terms, Zionist-Orthodox, or “reli- military expects to draft as many as half of all eligible religious females from Ziongious” but not haredi—took advantage of ist-Orthodox backgrounds, which would the exemption from military service that the government grants all religious youths. put the overall number in the military at around 8,000 at any one time.

Many joined the civil national service and What is the rabbis’ role in all this? The served as teachers or nurses or else moved rabbis go nuts. Some of them, anyway. on to academic studies, marriage or work.

One rabbi argued that these women will One may well object to the religious exemption, and many do, but what’s inter- “destroy the military.” A couple dozen rabbis signed a petition calling on the minister esting is that more and more of the young women eligible for exemption are choos- of education (Zionist-Orthodox himself) to refrain from funding any organization ing the draft instead. They follow in the that promotes the female draft. An Orthofootsteps of non-haredi Orthodox men, of whom the vast majority serve in the military. dox NGO made a short video clip arguing that being both religious and a soldier is From barely 1,000 female religious soldiers in 2011, the number rose to 1,500 in 2012, practically impossible for women: It is impossible to keep their modesty, impossible 1,800 in 2014 and 2,500 in 2016. Today, the to keep their femininity, impossible to total is approaching 3,000—from a total number of about 8,000 young Zionist-Or- observe the full range of commandments, impossible to remain firm in their beliefs thodox females eligible each year. and practices.

To understand this development, one Of course, there is some truth to this. It must follow three different stories: of the is more challenging to be observant in the soldiers themselves, of the Israeli Defense IDF, serving with men and non-religious Forces (IDF) and of the rabbis who are the main opposition to this growing trend. colleagues in a rough environment, than it The female soldiers come from Zionist- would be in a shell. Hence the traditional position of Zionist-Orthodox rabbis has Orthodox, not ultra-Orthodox, families been that women should serve their coun(the ultra-Orthodox still overwhelmingly try as civilians, not in uniform under the use the exemption)—but by joining the command of military men. And although IDF they still defy the ideology of most there were exceptions, the norm in these of the educational institutions from which Zionist-Orthodox circles was clear: for they come, as well as that of most of the men, the IDF, preferably combat units.

Zionist-Orthodox rabbis.

For the IDF, the situation is simple: For women, civil service.

That this norm is crumbling is a result It needs high-quality soldiers, and these women provide a pool of well-educated, of many factors. Female soldiers in general, religious or not, are better protected from idealistic, dedicated, disciplined young people. Once the IDF realized the poten- male harassment than before, and they have better opportunities in many roles tial of this group, it quickly took steps to formerly reserved for men. In fact, one of make joining the IDF a less frightening choice for them. It monitors their envi- the most visible symbols of the religiousfemale revolution in the IDF was an Air ronment more closely so they can serve Force pilot captain, Tamar Ariel, known as without compromising their religious Israel’s “first female Orthodox pilot.” Ariel practices, providing times for prayer and

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was tragically killed on a trek four years ago. A prominent pre-military academy for Orthodox women is named after her.

But the improvement in IDF accommodation is hardly the main story. This spot should be reserved for either the growing voice of Orthodox women or the declining influence of Orthodox rabbis. These women are demanding more: They want a role in the synagogue and in communal life, and they want their input taken into account in decision-making.

The Orthodox world—in Israel and no less in the United States—has been facing this challenge from within for quite some time now. That it now is manifest in young Orthodox females deciding to break yet another outdated taboo dictated by men is a mere detail. The overarching point is that when Orthodox women take matters into their hands, they are likely to make somewhat different choices from the ones preferred by traditional Orthodox men.

The erosion of rabbinical influence is also part of the story, a trend that is having an impact on many corners of Orthodox life. Outsiders don’t often see it. What they see is rabbis raging against female soldiers, rabbis threatening the IDF with retribution, rabbis using foul language and caught on tape doing so, rabbis warning of grave consequences for those who don’t follow the old rules.

Outsiders see these rabbis and assume that this is a show of power, a sign of growing influence. But it is not. It is a sign of frustration and desperation, of helplessness and impotence. Not even their own young women listen to them anymore. Not even their own young women are scared of their grave warnings. Hell, no. They are soldiers now, and, as is well known, Israeli soldiers don’t scare easily.

Shmuel Rosner is a writer, editor and researcher based in Tel Aviv.

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5/1/18 6:31 PM

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5/2/18 3:23 AM

OP INION | MA RSH ALL BREGER

Jeremy Corbyn and the Jewdas Seder

CREATIVE COMMONS

The Labor Party leader continues to disappoint and alienate British Jews.

director of the Board of Deputies, charged the abuse they experienced on social media When the leaders of the British Jewish community sat down for a two-hour meet- that Jewdas was a “source of virulent anti- after they criticized Corbyn for his relucSemitism” and also, perhaps more to the tance to face up to anti-Semitism. ing in late April with Jeremy Corbyn, head So outrage about the seder arises from point, that “they are not all Jewish.” of the opposition Labor party that has British Jewry has a tortured relationship legitimate fears, but at the same time it sugbeen dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism, the event ended badly. Jewish lead- with the Labor party, which was founded gests a certain confusion over both tactics by unions, Marxists and Jewish intellectuals and goals. Perhaps Jewdas meant to mock ers proclaimed disappointment, dismissing in 1900. It was the antifascist party before traditional seders, but why that should make Corbyn’s apologetic words and saying they would prefer actions. It was a moment of World War II, and most Jews continued to it “far, far worse” than the neo-Nazi British support it based on that history up through National Party, as The Daily Mail wrote, is truth for British Jewry in some ways, a the 1980s, though gravitating to its mod- beyond me. Perhaps Corbyn’s visit gave too symptom of a situation that has gotten worse through misplaced outrage and mis- erate wing as they joined the middle class. much publicity to a group pro-Israel orgamatched expectations. And it seems to have When Tony Blair, starting in 1997, pulled nizations have tried to marginalize. Or perthe party away from its doctrinal Marxist haps establishment Jewish leaders were frusexploded because of a seder. roots and made it a centrist social democrat- trated that Corbyn spent an evening with I hardly expect news from Europe these days to be good for the Jews, and—spoiler ic party, the Jewish establishment followed. “radical” Jews instead of issuing the apologies alert!—Britain is still part of Europe until But signing onto George Bush’s Iraq war and expulsions that the establishment had March 2019. But in Italy over Passover, lost Blair his popular support, and the Labor demanded as preconditions for a meeting reading the English newspapers, even I electorate turned to left-wing “crank” Cor- when Corbyn previously offered one.

After the seder, Corbyn reiterated the ofbyn in 2015, swinging the party to the left. was taken aback by the torrent of criticism No one can deny that both Labor and fer to meet with establishment Jewish leadagainst Corbyn for attending a seder—alCorbyn have been insensitive (at best) to ers, and this time they accepted it without beit a wildly unconventional one.

The seder was held by Jewdas, a little- anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks. The preconditions—and with disappointing remany left-wing activists who joined the sults. It reminds me of the mess I witnessed known anti-establishment Jewish group (the party to support Corbyn in recent elections in January 1998 when the Holocaust Musename says it all) that has published spoofs mostly buy into the Palestinian narrative um in Washington invited Yasser Arafat for such as “The Protocols of the Elders of of Israel as a colonialist enterprise. Their a tour, then pulled the invitation in response Hackney.” Officially, it is non-Zionist, with rhetoric unfortunately slips into anti-Israel, to outrage from Jewish leaders, and then, all too many unfortunate rhetorical slips by individual (inebriated?) members into anti- anti-Jewish and, on occasion, anti-Semitic facing further backlash, reluctantly reinterritory. (As in America, the problem is am- vited him—only to be told that his schedule Zionism, as well as comments that evoke the plified by social media and by an increasing would no longer permit him to attend! old stereotypes of Jew-as-capitalist.

Dealing constructively with Corbyn is a push by all kinds of groups to hold politiA constituent invited Corbyn to attend cians accountable for things their supporters real challenge for Britain’s Jews, who have the Jewdas seder and to bring some of the beetroot he grows in his community gar- have said online.) Corbyn himself has been felt buffeted by support for the Palestinunconscionably slow to repudiate or expel ian cause at levels unheard of in America. den for “bitter herbs.” He spent four hours there, reading, at one point, a Jewdas ver- the purveyors of extremist rhetoric, perhaps Plainly, the British Jewish establishment and because they were his comrades in the polit- the pro-Israel community would like the sion of the prayer for Elijah’s cup, in which the coming of the messiah brings revolu- ical wilderness. All this has scared the Jewish political elites to uphold a generally positive stance on Israel, something like the longcommunity and turned many away. tion and socialism. Attendees’ names were For months, Labor took the position standing (though also imperiled) American not to be made public, but in this iPhone that the party did not have a Jewish prob- bipartisan consensus. But the politics of age, someone leaked. lem, just a few bad apples. But this denial Britain are different from ours, and I doubt The British Jewish establishment was outraged, though it wasn’t clear at ex- ended when the Jewish community held an this will be possible. The most that British actly what. One Labor MP charged that “Enough Is Enough” rally before the House Jews can hope for is the enforcement of civil of Commons, and even more so when the discourse on social media by organizations Corbyn was “deliberately baiting the mainstream Jewish community.” The Ho- House held an extraordinary three-hour connected with Labor and Corbyn. And, of locaust Education Trust found attending debate on anti-Semitism in April. The course, an extra guest at the seder. the seder “disrespectful.” Lord Jonathan Tories had called the debate to embarrass Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain, Corbyn, but it quickly electrified all watchMarshall Breger is a law professor at ing when two female Labor MPs, Luciana said he would have refused to sit down the Catholic University of America.

Berger and Ruth Smeeth, rose to speak of with Corbyn. Jonathan Arkush, executive 20

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5/1/18 6:04 PM

ART CREDIT

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D E B AT E T H E U N I T E D N AT I O N S : OPINION: YAIR LAPID ‘Stop supporting this travesty’ Not long ago, I stood in Geneva with hundreds of protesters wrapped in Israeli flags. We stood beneath the Broken Chair Monument opposite the United Nations Human Rights Council. Inside, in the elegant hall, there was a debate—another debate—about Israel.

In the past decade, the council has voted for 67 resolutions condemning Israel and 61 resolutions condemning other human rights abuses around the world. To repeat: The council has condemned Israel, a democratic country that upholds international law, more times than the rest of the world combined. In the same period, more than 400,000 people have been massacred in Syria. There have been wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine.

China and Iran carry out capital punishments almost daily.

But Israel is the only country that warrants its own agenda item in the UN Human Rights Council. Agenda item 7 dictates that every time the council meets, there will be a discussion of the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” This discussion happens regardless of whether there have been reports of human rights violations. It happens without a factual examination of the complaints lodged, usually by allies or members of the various terror organizations that are sworn to destroy Israel.

With me under the Broken Chair stood some of the victims of these terror organizations: an impressive young man whose father, an Israeli peace activist, was murdered by a suicide bomber on a Jerusalem bus; a woman who went for a hike with a friend and her Labrador and was attacked by Palestinian terrorists. They stabbed her friend to death, stabbed her dozens of times and then stabbed her dog as well. “I don’t know why,” she said to me, “but most people are more shocked that they killed the dog than my friend.”

After the demonstration, they went to speak before the council. They received a cold and rude reception. While they bore witness to the loss of their loved ones, the delegates ate, intentionally spoke loudly, and walked in and out.

A few months later, the World Health 22

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Organization (WHO), another organ of the UN, held its annual meeting, the World Health Assembly. As expected, it dealt with life expectancy, spread of disease and the need for vaccines. But the assembly also included one weird exception: a resolution condemning what it termed the “Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights.” Two hundred meters from the Israeli Golan, in Syria, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were being massacred, but that wasn’t mentioned even once. The resolution contained a series of false “facts” based on disgraceful Palestinian propaganda from a report presented to the WHO. For example, the report argued that “Israel injects Palestinians with viruses which cause

PARTS OF THE UN HAVE BECOME COLLABORATORS WITH FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM AND OPERATIVES FOR TERROR ORGANIZATIONS. cancer”—a monstrous accusation that wouldn’t be out of place in Der Sturmer.

If you’re still not convinced that something twisted and irrational is happening at the UN you can visit its headquarters on the banks of the East River in New York. There you will find a permanent exhibition that deals with the Palestinian refugee problem.

If you look carefully at the statistics, you’ll notice something strange. In 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were exiled. In 1950, when UNRWA—the United Nations organization in charge of helping the Palestinian refugees—was founded, it listed 750,000 Palestinian refugees. But as of 2014, UNRWA lists no fewer than five million Palestinian refugees. How did that happen? The answer is that the status of refugee can be passed down the generations.

This is insane. My father was expelled from his home in Novi Sad in Serbia by the Nazis.

He moved to Israel and built his home here.

Does anyone in the world treat me or my children as Serbian refugees?

So, what’s actually happening? The answer

Yair Lapid is Chairman of Israel’s Yesh Atid Party.

This column is excerpted from a speech delivered to the Israel Law Center conference in Jerusalem.

is that the UN has become a hostage to its own structure. Non-democratic countries have a huge majority in the General Assembly and in most of the committees. The exception is the Security Council (where the permanent members have a voting advantage).

These countries have distorted the aims of the UN. Instead of an organization that protects freedom, democracy, liberal values and world peace, parts of the UN have become collaborators with fundamentalist Islam and operatives for terror organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The automatic majority of the nondemocratic countries has become an automatic majority against Israel.

Instead of serious debate about the problems of the world, the UN distributes disgraceful anti-Semitic propaganda.

In this context, the relative silence of the United States and other democracies is distressing. The United States funds 22 percent of the UN budget. In fact, six countries—the United States, Japan, France, Britain, Italy and Germany—fund a big chunk of the budget. These countries could raise their voices and say they are unwilling to allow this to continue. Attacking a democratic country committed to human rights, in the service of murderous terror organizations, is not the UN mandate. There is no reason the United States and other democracies should fund it.

During my last visit to Washington, senators and members of Congress with whom I met, both Democrats and Republicans, all agreed that the situation is intolerable.

When I discussed this with a senior American diplomat at the UN recently, though, he argued that “it’s better to change from within.” That sounds reasonable enough, but we’re too late. Those who hate Israel and hate democracy have beaten us to it.

They’ve changed the UN from within.

The organization that preached justice and equality has been the subject of a hostile takeover. If democratic countries abandon Israel, they’ll be next.

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5/2/18 5:31 AM

A MOMENT

ISRAEL'S FRIEND OR FOE?

D E B AT E

OPIN ION: GABRIELA SHALEV ‘Imperfect, yet indispensable’ Gabriela Shalev served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2008 to 2010. An international authority on contract law, Shalev is a senior faculty member at Ono Academic College in Israel. She was interviewed by Moment opinion editor Amy E. Schwartz.

What are the high and low points in Israel’s history with the United Nations ? I still remember the night my father woke me up at age six in Tel Aviv and we joined the dancing in the streets. The UN had voted to end the British Mandate and partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The UN embraced Israel at that time and cleared the way for its establishment. A year later, Israel became its 59th member. If the Arab or Palestinian side could only have adopted this decision as we did, reluctantly—the Jewish leaders were not very keen on partition, either—we would now be in a completely different situation.

Many years later, when I was ambassador to the UN, I would look back and ask myself, how did the relationship become so spoiled? How did we become the only country in the world everybody is against?

How do you explain it? There are many, many reasons. Even aside from what happened 50 years ago—what people do not like to call the “Occupation”—there are now 193 members of the UN, more than triple the number when we joined, and there is an automatic majority against Israel. Now, there are some voices that say, “Oh, let’s leave the UN” or “Let’s create a UN of only all the democratic countries.” This is not only not going to happen, it should not happen. It’s important to have the UN as the parliament of the world. The world is not perfect, so how can the parliament of the world be perfect? It’s important for Israel to be represented there.

What was your experience? I was appointed “out of nowhere,” neither a politician nor a diplomat, but from aca-

demia, and the first woman after 13 male ambassadors, so I was hoping to bring a different voice and attitude. At first I thought I had succeeded. With [U.S. ambassador to the UN] Susan Rice, who was so much younger and came from a different place, I formed a wonderful relationship, one that was not only helpful for me in dealing with the Security Council but, I think, good for Israel.

Rice said the UN was “imperfect, yet indispensable,” and I agree.

But just two months after my appointment came the Operation Cast Lead Gaza conflict and also the Goldstone Report and Iran. There was almost no time for what I was hoping to accomplish in

WE HAVE TO BE THERE, TO KEEP VOICING OUR BELIEF THAT ISRAEL IS A DEMOCRACY AND THRIVING. human rights, women’s rights, agriculture. I couldn't represent Israel as a light unto the nations; I had to deal with the General Assembly!

popular president ever. Now it’s the other way around. President Trump is so popular in Israel, but at the UN, it’s [U.S. ambassador] Nikki Haley against the world.

Does the UN help uphold the rule of law? The UN is led by interests. Every country has its own. Although the UN uses the language of the law, with protocols and so forth, it really functions according to these interests. It doesn’t have the features we look for when we speak of the rule of law, that is, principles of justice or equality.

Is there good work being done at the UN? Absolutely. There are areas where it’s not helpful. Terrorism, for instance. But on many issues, such as the fight against diseases or its “millennium development goals”— on child mortality, maternal health, HIV/ AIDS, environmental sustainability—the UN is doing great work. Israel has played a role, particularly in disaster relief, where we have been a leader. Even politically, it is helpful as a place where representatives of all nations can meet and talk behind the scenes. You have to remember that there is a huge gap between bilateral and multilateral relations between countries. Huge, important countries like India might have voted against Israel in the General Assembly. But we have good, stable bilateral relations with them.

Were there accomplishments? There were little things, behind the scenes.

When the General Assembly discussed the Goldstone Report—a report that was tainted and one-sided, and even What about groups like the UN HuGoldstone later retracted it—quite a few man Rights Council? In 2009, when the countries voted against it. We also ac- United States rejoined the Human Rights complished some non-political things on Council, Susan Rice called me and said, education, water and sustainable devel- “We decided to clean the tent from the opment. I signed agreements on agricul- inside, not from the outside.” For many ture, gender and women’s empowerment. years, the United States had stayed outThese things are not in the forefront, but side this body, which was always against they’re actually very important to our re- Israel. I thought that was an interesting lationship with the world. move, and it had some influence. I don’t know what Nikki Haley is going to do Have things changed since then? It’s about it. True, it is a place that shows the strange, but when Susan Rice was the U.S. hypocrisy of the UN at work—they never ambassador, and later Samantha Power— talk about human rights anyplace else, it’s both important friends of Israel—the U.S. always Israel. But still, we have to be there, supported Israel at the UN, even though to keep voicing our belief that Israel is a in Israel, President Obama was the least democracy and thriving.

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JEWISH WORD | JUDEA AND SAMARIA, OCCUPIED TERRITORIES 0R...?

What to Call the ‘West Bank’

B

ack in 2014, then-New Jersey Israeli military order to take over the Governor Chris Christie was territory was titled “Occupation of the considered a leading Repub- West Bank.” For everyday use, Israelis lican candidate for president generally deferred to “the territories” or when he flew out to Las Vegas for the so- ha’shtachim, a shorter and more neutralcalled Republican Jewish primary, hosted sounding version of what was then the by gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson. official Occupied Territories. The UnitIn a speech describing his admiration for ed Nations, immediately after the 1967 Israel, Christie mentioned a recent trip he war, adapted this to the Occupied Palhad gone on with his family to the Jewish estinian Territories, a term it still uses. state. “I took a helicopter ride from the The U.S. State Department called the occupied territories across and just felt same area the West Bank, although it personally how extraordinary that was to refers to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and understand the military risk that Israel East Jerusalem together as the Occupied faces every day,” he said. The audience Territories.

But as Israel’s victory in the Six-Day of hundreds of Republican Jewish donors gasped. Christie had used the words War gave way to an extensive settlement “occupied territories,” a term rejected by operation aimed at anchoring Jewish Adelson and other pro-settler Zionists who believe it gives the Palestinian cause validity.

Although Christie quickly apologized to Adelson, the faux pas is considered one of several factors that doomed the governor’s bid for the nomination.

Had Christie done his homework, he would have known that Adelson’s preferred term is Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the region during the Second Temple period (530 BCE–70 CE).

The southern part of the land was Judea, named after the tribe of Judah; the northern part, Samaria, later became a separate kingdom.

But in Christie’s defense, what to call the 2,173 square-mile piece of rugged terrain that came under Israeli control during the Six-Day War is presence beyond Israel’s pre-1967 borconfusing to the average American—Jewish der, right-wing settler leaders in Israel or not—and in the year and a half since the started referring to the area as Judea Trump administration took over, the deci- and Samaria, or Yehuda ve’Shomron in Hebrew. The political subtext was clear: sion has only become more fraught.

The Occupied Territories, the West If the areas have a Jewish historical Bank and Judea and Samaria are the name, they are clearly part of the Jewmost common terms. But like the con- ish homeland, and their future should be flict between Israelis and Palestinians, part of the modern Jewish State of Israel. the history of these terms is compli- “There’s no doubt that the selection of cated. Pre-1967, when the land was geographical terms being used in the Isunder Jordanian rule, it was known as raeli discourse is influenced by political the West Bank, since it was west of the views and is reflective of them,” says Rafi Jordan River. (Even then, a tiny minor- Mann, associate professor at Israel’s Arity of extremist religious Jews referred iel University’s School of Communicato it as Judea and Samaria.) The 1967 tion. The term “West Bank,” he explains,

nd ria a a e a Jud Sam

Occupied Territories

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indicates an acceptance that the area is part of an Arab-dominated entity, with its east bank forming what now is known as the Kingdom of Jordan and its west bank serving as a future Palestinian state.

As the settlers gained political influence and Israel’s right wing established itself as the dominant political power, Judea and Samaria became the preferred term of the country’s leadership. In 2011, to the dismay of the country’s liberals who dislike the term, Israel’s Army Radio ordered its reporters and broadcasters to give preference to the term Judea and Samaria in on-air reports. The Likud government tried to introduce similar guidelines to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Authority, although no formal decision was ever adopted.

Meanwhile, the term “Judea and Samaria” spread to settler supporters in the United States, penetrating conservative, Orthodox and right-of-center circles.

(As pro-Israel Christian evangelicals became more active, the term gained broader usage among them as well.) “Increasingly, we see how American Jews mirror what goes on in Israel,” says Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University.

“As the Israeli right tends to use Judea and Samaria, so does the American Jewish right.”

But the vast majority of American Jews, including moderate Republicans, still regularly say “West Bank” or “Occupied Territories.” “It’s part of the American polarization,” Sarna says. “Just as you have pro-life and pro-choice, you also have Judea and Samaria and the Occupied Territories.” The divide is apparent in official statements, in media reports and even around Jewish dinner tables, where use of one term or the other can lead to a family argument.

Lara Friedman, president of the leftleaning Washington, DC-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, says that the politicization of terminology does not change the facts on the ground. “Under international law, under the Israeli courts, there is occupation. To somehow make it a ‘he said, she said’ thing is wrong,” she

West Bank

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ASK THE RABBIS | ISRAEL

says. But NYU law professor Thane Rosenbaum says the term “occupation” gives an unfair advantage to the Palestinians in the debate over the future of the land. “‘Occupation’ suggests that the occupier has no legal claims to the territory at all; its presence is just a land grab, an act of aggression against another sovereign nation,” Rosenbaum says. “None of that is true in the case of Israel’s historical relationship to the West Bank and Gaza.” He also argues that Palestinians benefit from using the term “occupation” to describe their situation, while other regions under similar circumstances, such as Cyprus, Tibet or Kurdistan, are not described by the international community as occupied.

With the Trump administration in power, the usage of “Occupied Territories” is on the decline in official Republican circles. David Friedman, Trump’s pro-settler ambassador to Israel, has insisted on removing the term from U.S. government documents. (Friedman uses the terms “Judea and Samaria” in his official remarks and statements.) In April, he registered a first success when the State Department issued its 2017 report on human rights across the world. The chapter relating to Israel, once titled “Israel and the Occupied Territories,” was now labeled “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza.” State Department officials explained that the decision was merely an effort to provide a more accurate geographical description of the areas. For now, at least, the U.S. government is not using Judea and Samaria in official documents and statements.

Is there a neutral, widely acceptable term that has less baggage? Some have suggested using “disputed territories” or “administered territories” as a way to avoid judgment on the final outcome of peace negotiations. Palestinians and their supporters reject these terms and offer their own solution: Why not simply call it Palestine, the name of the future state to be established in the area? No one term, however, is likely to bring an end to the debate. The battle over terminology will likely continue, at least as long as the political battle over the future of the land remains.—Nathan Guttman

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Has Israel Changed Judaism?

“

When Jews gathered as religious communities, we didn't have to tolerate significant differences: When we disagreed, we just founded a new synagogue with the like-minded. The political arena demands something different.

”

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK AT MOMENTMAG.COM/RABBIS MAY/JUNE 2018 / MOMENT

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HAS ISRAEL CHANGED JUDAISM?

INDEPENDENT

critical of many Israeli policies. We grieve for these changes and for the direction we see the country moving. Sadly, these changes alienate us and weaken our ties.

Judaism is an alter kocker. It doesn’t change.

It only gets more wrinkles. Rather than changing Judaism, Israel has actually vali- Rabbi Peter H. Schweitzer dated it. It has testified to the truth of our The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism story and to the tenacity of our hope. We New York, NY never forgot Israel, never stopped singing about her, never stopped longing for her. And then, one day, some 70 years ago, when we needed her most, she showed up A Palestinian man from the organization and took us home. In the more eloquent Combatants for Peace recently told me a words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: story. Jailed at age 14 during the first inti“She occupied our hearts, filled our prayers, fada for hanging a flag, he was put in solitary. pervaded our dreams. Continually mourn- He couldn’t fall asleep, not even by crying— ing her loss, our grief was not subdued when until he overheard a soldier whose singing celebrating festivities, when arranging a finally lulled him to sleep. He told me how dinner table, when painting our homes… he still loves that song, how he still cries The two most solemn occasions of the when he hears “Shalom Aleichem.” year, the Seder on Passover, and the Day of Israel can be seen as one of the great triAtonement, found their climax in the proc- umphs of history. Israel gave us an army, a lamation: ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’…When country, an end to a certain kind of fear. For a Jew arrived in the land, he bent and kissed the first time in millennia, we could practice the dust. When he saw the ruins he tore his the Torah’s wisdom to love the land and to garment. When placed in his grave, a hand- love the stranger. These imperatives are in ful of earth taken from the soil of the Holy tension: The more you love the land, the Land was placed under his head.” (Israel: An more likely you may be to resent strangEcho of Eternity, pp. 26-27). ers. So the Torah reminds us (six times): “You were strangers in Egypt.” Even in the Rabbi Gershon Winkler promised land, it says, we remain strangers: Walking Stick Foundation “Gerim v’toshavim atem imadi.” (Lev. 25:23) Cedar Glen, CA Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of Jewish Renewal, taught that every religion is an organ in the body of humanity, Except for adding a new holiday to the cal- with its own wisdom to bless this planet. endar, the effect of Israel on Judaism as a set And yet, if Israel should embody the wisof religious practices for most Jews is negli- dom of loving the land together with the gible. But the effect on Jewish identity and stranger, its current government promotes its antithesis, calling asylum seekers “inthe Jewish people has been enormous.

In the early years of Israel’s founding, filtrators,” the Bedouin “invaders,” Gaza Israel’s survival, twinned with Holocaust protesters “terrorists” and Jews who care remembrance, became our collective rai- “traitors.” When our “Shalom Aleichem” son d’être and the watchword of our phil- welcomes not only the angels but also anthropic campaigns. When attacked, that Palestinian man’s family, when we can we circled the wagons, raised even more weave a whole human tapestry out of our money and felt even more gushing pride desire for the land, then we will know that at Israel’s swift military victories: “Am Yis- we too are home. rael Chai!” I still have an unredeemed Is- Rabbi David Seidenberg Neohasid.org rael bond in a drawer.

But these simple slogans have not met Northampton, MA the test of time. In fact, they have tarnished greatly. Seventy years after Israel’s beginning, most of us in America are not Israelcentric. We do not think of ourselves as Having once shaped Judaism, of course living in the diaspora or infuse our identity Israel has lately changed it. But Jewish phiwith “all things Israel.” losophy separates a thing’s potential (koach) Furthermore, we are no longer euphoric from its actuals-to-date (po’al). Israel might about Israel’s military posture and politics. unite the Jewish people; today it often diTo the contrary, many of us stand highly vides us instead. The renascent State of Is-

RENEWAL

HUMANIST

RECONSTRUCTIONIST

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rael could be a historical or even theological watershed, but so far it isn’t: Most American Jews give Israel lip service only.

For Zion reborn to realize its potential, both right and left must soul-search. The religious and political right must be less exclusivist and cease claiming all of Israel for their narrowly defined “us”—since without democracy, justice and equality for Palestinians and liberal Jews alike, neither the world nor k’lal Yisrael (all of Jewry) can be on board. At the same time, liberal Jews must step up, embracing the near-miraculous Hebrew-Jewish renaissance as their own: Israeli literature and culture, Israel’s people and their struggles and the land itself.

The Zionist ideal aims higher than mere statehood or middling “normalcy.”

We’ve gained independence, ingathered exiles, created high-tech hubs—wonderful.

Now, can Israel truly become a moral and spiritual “light unto the nations”? Then we’ll have a good answer to the still bigger question, “How has Israel/Judaism changed the world?”

Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation Bethesda, MD

REFORM For centuries, the land of Israel has been at the heart of Jewish rituals and prayers. We end our Passover seders by saying, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Daily prayers include petitions for fruitfulness of the land, peace in the land, return to the land. One of the seven traditional wedding blessings acclaims that joy and gladness are heard in the streets of Jerusalem and in the land of Zion.

We have also always understood that we are one people, the people of Israel. In the Talmud we are taught that all of Israel are responsible for one another. This is the impetus for unceasing efforts to save fellow Jews from persecution and help them in times of need.

Now we are witnesses to the modern State of Israel, as Jews of diverse backgrounds and ideologies worked together to create it. Some experience this as the fulfillment of those long-uttered prayers. Others find in it a safe haven from tyranny and oppression. Still others find the modern State of Israel a source of internal conflict over social, economic and political challenges the country faces.

Nevertheless, the language of our rituals and prayers has not changed. Israel–the

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TELL US WHAT YOU THINK AT MOMENTMAG.COM/RABBIS

land, the people and the modern state—are all here to stay. As Jews, we must each know which Israel we connect to and how we actualize its meaning in our own lives.

Rabbi Laura Novak Winer Fresno, CA

CONSERVATIVE In a word: Yes. Nearly half of all the Jews in the world live in Israel, a situation not seen since ancient times. The ingathering of the exiles has been partially achieved. For the first time in 2,000 years, public space is shaped by Jewish culture and tradition.

The Sabbath as an official day of rest is observed on Saturday, and life is punctuated

by Jewish holidays, as well as days to commemorate the Holocaust and celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem. In Israel, “secular” Jews may nonetheless light Shabbat candles, dress up for Purim, build a Sukkah and study Talmud.

Israel has given diaspora Jews many causes for pride: the Six-Day War, technological advances, unbridled creativity applied to the arts and sciences. It has also given diaspora Jews causes for division— politics, poverty rates and government decisions on matters such as the administered territories, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and African refugees. In some ways, this development is the ultimate challenge. My teacher, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, once suggested that when Jews gathered as religious communities, we didn’t have to tolerate significant differences: When we disagreed, we just founded a new synagogue with the likeminded. The political arena demands something different. We must learn to live with competing ideas and strategies for solving major societal issues.

Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz Temple Beth El Springfield, MA

MODERN ORTHODOX Yes. But not enough yet.

The major shift is that a religion that taught the Jews to trust in God patiently and to wait for a divine/messianic redeemer now teaches (except in the views of some haredim) that Zionism is a mitzvah and humans have a responsibility to act. A culture in which the Prague Haggadah could for centuries portray the Wicked Son as a contemporary soldier now inspires Israeli young men to believe that the highest call-

ing is to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces—preferably in the most challenging and risky units—to defend the Jewish people.

However, the dominance of haredi and yeshivish elements in Orthodoxy has held back needed further development. Traditional Jews celebrate the Exodus from Egypt as the core event of the Jewish religion, and on Tisha B’Av they mourn the destruction of the second Temple as the greatest national tragedy. Sadly, some haredi and yeshivish rabbis have resisted religiously observing Yom HaShoah for the Holocaust and celebrating the creation of Israel as the greater Exodus of our time. Similarly, women's equality, minority rights, religious pluralism, respect for moral gay sexuality—achieved and even taken for granted in most of Israeli life—have not yet been integrated into traditional Judaism. The time is coming...

Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg Riverdale, NY

“A CULTURE IN WHICH THE PRAGUE HAGGADAH COULD PORTRAY THE WICKED SON AS A SOLDIER NOW INSPIRES ISRAELI YOUNG MEN TO BELIEVE THAT THE HIGHEST CALLING IS THE IDF.”

ORTHODOX Any change would be in the way we live our Judaism, not in the core principles of Judaism, which are immutable and unchangeable. There’s a classic essay by Rav Joseph Soloveitchik from 1956 that talks about the six “knocks on the door,” actual unveilings of the divine, that the establishment of the state represented for Jews: the political miracle, the military miracle, the refutation of other religions’ theology concerning the Jews, the reversal of assimilation, the end of the idea that Jewish blood was cheap for the taking, and the creation of a secure refuge. But even before the state was established, Rav Abraham Kook wrote that it would mean a return to a sense of nationhood, of peoplehood. For

2,000 years, we were used to the idea of surviving as individuals, families, villages. We lost the sense we were one people, with all our disparity and diversity. When criticized for working with those who were far from religious practice, Rav Kook cautioned that the return to a sense of peoplehood would take longer than other changes, and that people should be patient and take reversals and disappointments in stride. What I’ve witnessed in Israel is an enormous passion and pride in being part of the Jewish nation.

Polls show that a plurality of Israeli Jews identify as Jewish first rather than Israeli first. The country is secondary to the notion that we are a nation and a people. It’s something that many non-Jews are slow to recognize. And it’s something that Israel has done for Jews and Judaism.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein Cross-Currents Los Angeles, CA

CHABAD Israel was designated by G-d as the Jews’ land before the first-born Jew, Isaac, was conceived. Deuteronomy warns us that we are but wayfarers in the land: The land owns us; we do not own the land. It is only when we struggle, as implied in the etymology of the name “Yisrael,” or “Israel,” that we own up to our obligation to the land and the presence of the Shechina (divine presence) that dwells therein. Even if Jews renounce their connection to the land by selling it, it comes back to own them in the Jubilee year.

Thank G-d, the secular democracy in Israel has the tools to protect the residents of the land and fight off the killers of Jews, but we still pray for a time when from Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem. Then the world’s true moral compass will point to Eretz Yisrael as north.

A Hasidic story that resonates with me and informs my work in Denver is of a Hasid who, in his quest for spiritual advancement, asked the third Chabad Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, for a blessing to join the Chabad community in Israel. The Rebbe answered, “Make Israel here!”

Our expulsion from the land and the birth of a diaspora did not end the work of cultivating Eretz Yisrael and revealing the Shechina in all we encounter.

Rabbi Yossi Serebryanski Chabad of Denver Denver, CO MAY/JUNE 2018 / MOMENT

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VISUAL MOMENT | A WHIRLWIND TOUR OF EXHIBITIONS

BY DIANE M. BOLZ

National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA Through September 2, 2018

TOP: LEONARD BERNSTEIN, 1956,THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS; BOTTOM: COMMUNITY COURTYARD KITCHEN AND LAUNDRY, APRIL 1946, PHOTO BY ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN

Leonard Bernstein: The Power of Music More than 100 artifacts elucidate the life, work, Jewish identity development of West Side Story. Also included are archival reand social activism of the charismatic conductor and composer. cordings, documentary footage and such family heirlooms as the The show, which marks the 100th anniversary of Bernstein’s birth, mezuzah that hung in his studio and the Hebrew prayer book he is the first large-scale museum exhibition to cover the life and carried with him when he traveled. The exhibition illustrates how career of the famed artist. Featured items include the maestro’s Bernstein’s approach to music was influenced by the political and piano, conducting suit, easel for studying scores and composing, social issues of his day and highlights what he referred to as his and the annotated copy of Romeo and Juliet that he used in the “search for a solution to the 20th-century crisis of faith.”

Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU Miami Beach, FL Through May 20, 2018

Stranded in Shanghai: Arthur Rothstein’s Photographs of the Hongkew Ghetto, 1946 Some 20,000 European Jews escaped death by seeking refuge during World War II in the Japanese-occupied sector of Shanghai. After the war, Arthur Rothstein became the chief photographer in China for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He had previously worked as a social documentary photographer for the U.S. Farm Security Administration and Look magazine. During April of 1946 28

he photographed the community of European Jewish refugees in the Hongkew district of Shanghai, capturing images that brought into focus issues of class, poverty and discrimination.

The photographs, which are one of the only remaining visual records of this refugee crisis, have resonance today vis-à-vis displacement and illuminate the collective experience and lives of the individuals who found sanctuary in Shanghai.

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Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington, DC Through January 21, 2019

Diane Arbus: A Box of Ten Photographs This is the first exhibition to feature the portfolio that photographer Diane Arbus was working on at the end of her life.

The rare set of ten images, which established the basis for Arbus’s extraordinary posthumous career, is pivotal to the transition she was making away from magazine work and key to the growing recognition of photography as a “serious” art form.

Arbus completed the printing of eight known sets of a planned

edition of 50 by the time of her death in 1971. She sold four of these during her lifetime: Two were purchased by photographer Richard Avedon, another by artist Jasper Johns and a fourth by Bea Feitler, art director at Harper’s Bazaar, for which Arbus added an eleventh image. This fourth set was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1986 and is the focus of the current show.

June 1–October 31, 2018

Christian Boltanski: Lifetime This major retrospective surveys the work of French multidisciplinary artist Christian Boltanski. The exhibition tracks the arc of the artist’s five-decade career, from his earliest work in the 1970s to recent large-scale and installation pieces, including several new site-specific projects created specifically for the exhibition. The sculptor, painter, photographer and filmmaker is best known for his photography installations and

his contemporary “French Conceptual” style. His art examines themes of life and death, loss and redemption, the nature of remembering and the mechanisms of commemoration.

Boltanski was born in Paris in 1944 to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. The experience of the Holocaust underlies his work, but his artistic explorations pose universal questions that transcend time and place.

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TOP: DIANE ARBUS WITH IDENTICAL TWINS, ROSELLE, NJ, 1956, ©STEPHEN A. FRANK; BOTTOM:ARRIVAL (ARRIVÉ), 2015, ©CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

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July 26–November 18, 2018

Lew the Jew and His Circle: Origins of American Tattoo This original show examines the work of New Yorker “Lew the Jew” Alberts, born Albert Morton Kurzman (1880-1954), one of America’s most influential tattoo artists at the beginning of the 20th century. Drawn from the collection of San Francisco artist and tattoo legend Don Ed Hardy, the exhibition includes original tattoo artwork, photographs and correspondence. Alberts was the creator of what is now known as “tattoo flash”—the sample designs used in tattoo shops.

August 30–January 6, 2019

Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress The first comprehensive U.S. exhibition to be drawn from the Israel Museum’s world-renowned collection of costumes, “Veiled Meanings” showcases some 65 articles of clothing from the 19th to 20th centuries. The extraordinary range of apparel and textiles­—from more than 20 countries on four continents—reveals the many facets of Jewish identity and community and illuminates how diverse cultures have interacted and inspired each other over the centuries.

Dangerous Women

Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL Through May 20, 2018 30

The Old and New Testaments are full of courageous heroines and deceptive femmes fatales, from Judith to Esther, Salome to Mary Magdalene, Delilah to Lot’s Daughters. These women, perceived as dangerous to society, are pivotal to the Bible’s stories. A new exhibition explores the changing perceptions of these legendary characters, whose power to topple the strongest of male rulers made them “dangerous,” but whose strength serves as an historical reference for very contemporary issues. While some were portrayed as saviors of their people and exemplars of goodness, others were shown as harlots and hussies, purveyors of sin, temptresses and deadly seductresses. The exhibition features thoughtprovoking Old Master paintings, etchings, prints and drawings from the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art along with modern and contemporary works, including the sensuous Salome (left) from 1909 by Robert Henri.

TOP LEFT: ALBERTS TATTOO ON POP EDDY'S BUSINESS CARD (EARLY 20TH CENTURY), COURTESY OF DON ED HARDY; TOP RIGHT: "GREAT DRESS," FEZ, MOROCCO, (EARLY 20TH CENTURY), ©THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM, BY MAURO MAGLIANI; BOTTOM: SALOME BY ROBERT HENRI (1909), COURTESY OF FROST ART MUSEUM

The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA

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TOP: MARIA AUSTRIA, JEWISH HISTORICAL MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM; BOTTOM LEFT: STILL LIFE WITH RAYFISH (CIRCA 1924), ©ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK; BOTTOM RIGHT: ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD, MARC CHAGALL (1915-19), ©ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS

TOP LEFT: ALBERTS TATTOO ON POP EDDY'S BUSINESS CARD (EARLY 20TH CENTURY), COURTESY OF DON ED HARDY; TOP RIGHT: "GREAT DRESS," FEZ, MOROCCO, (EARLY 20TH CENTURY), ©THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM, BY MAURO MAGLIANI; BOTTOM: SALOME BY ROBERT HENRI (1909), COURTESY OF FROST ART MUSEUM

Maria Austria: Living for Photography Photographer Maria Austria’s best-known images include those of ballerinas, opera singer Maria Callas and smiling portraits of cabaret artists and clowns. Another side of Austria’s work, however, was unknown until recently: images of survivors returning from Westerbork transit camp; photographs of Jewish Romanian war orphans; and pictures of the Secret Annex, Anne Frank’s hiding place behind a moveable bookcase in an Amsterdam canal house (left). Researchers at the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam discovered these images while looking back through Austria’s archives. The resulting exhibit presents the full range of the photographer’s work for the first time. Austria was born Marie Oestreicher in Carlsbad, Austria, in 1915 and fled to the Netherlands in 1937. When the Nazis occupied Holland, she escaped into hiding and worked in the Dutch resistance. After the war she became one of the 20th century’s most respected cultural photographers.

Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, the Netherlands Through September 16, 2018

Jewish Museum, New York City, NY Through September 16, 2018

Chaim Soutine: Flesh Some 30 paintings by Expressionist Chaim Soutine (18931943) highlight the unique visual conceptions and gestural energy the artist brought to the tradition of still-life painting. His works exemplify his fusion of Old Master influences with the tenets of painterly modernism. Virtuoso technique, expressive color and surprising, often disorienting, compositions give the artist’s depictions of fowl, beef carcasses and rayfish (above) a striking visual power.

September 14–January 6, 2019

Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-Garde in Vitebsk The exhibition focuses on the People’s Art School, founded in 1918 by Marc Chagall in his native city of Vitebsk, and features some 120 works that represent the artistic output of three iconic figures—Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. The school became a creative laboratory, developing a “Leftist Art” that reflected the revolutionary emphasis on collectivism, education and innovation.

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THE EQUALITY

MYTH FEW ISRAELI WOMEN

SUCCEED IN POLITICS. WHY AND WHAT CAN BE DONE? B Y E ETTA PRIN CE- G IBSO N

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The story of Israel’s founding usually goes something like this: Sun-kissed male and female pioneers plowed the fields by day, danced the hora by night, did guard duty until dawn and together built an egalitarian utopia.

The equality of men and women, the narrative continues, was enshrined into law upon independence in 1948 when women were given full equal social and political rights. Three years later, gender discrimination was outlawed. Meanwhile, as part of universal conscription, women also fought alongside men. To top the story off, Israel was the third country in the post-World War II world to be led by a female prime minister, following Ceylon and India: Golda Meir was elected Israel’s fourth prime minister in 1969 after long stints as labor minister and foreign minister.

Although some of this is true, Israel is not an egalitarian utopia, least of all in the political field. No woman since Meir has served as the country’s head of state; no woman besides Meir and current Knesset member Tzipi Livni has served as foreign minister, and no woman has ever led the ministries of defense or finance. Only four members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current cabinet are women, and just one, Ayelet Shaked, holds an influential position— minister of justice.

Women are better represented in the Knesset, making up 28 percent of members, the highest proportion ever.

Although this is higher than in the U.S.

Congress, it’s lower than in many European countries, and women head only two of the 12 permanent parliamentary committees—the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality and the State Control Committee.

The worst disparity is in local government, where the political issues are closer to home, which should, at least in theory, make politics more attractive to women candidates. Of Israel’s 50 largest cities, only one has a female mayor, Netanya’s Miriam Feirberg. (In March 2017, the police recommended that Feirberg be indicted for bribery, fraud and breach of trust; the decision is still pending.) Just 17 percent of city council members nationwide are women. And although 65 percent of civil servants are female, only 12 percent hold executive positions, according to WePower, an Israeli group working toward a goal of 50 percent political representation for women in Israel.

There are many reasons for these abysmal numbers. For one, it is not true that women ever were considered political equals in Israel, says Sharon Geva, a lecturer in the History Department at Tel Aviv University specializing in women’s history. “While the early women pioneers did believe in creating a gender revolution, their male compatriots were less excited about that part of the state-building effort,” she says.

Theoretically, day care on the kibbutz freed women up to join men in this work, but in practice, most women were relegated to traditional female roles such as cooking and child care.

And despite the legal rights granted women, issues of personal status such

as marriage and divorce were left under the control of the chief rabbis and the rabbinical courts. In 1947, soon-tobe Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, believing he was paying a comparatively small price for Orthodox support of the state, “sold out women in exchange for political gain,” says Frances Raday, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University, whose work focuses on human rights and gender equality. “The religious institutions are patriarchal,” she says. “When their personal lives are controlled by the male-centric rabbis, women cannot advance.”

Women’s political advancement is also stymied by Israel’s long-standing security situation. “It has always been easy to make women’s or any other particular group’s needs seem so much less important than our very survival,” says Raday.

That women have never really had equal standing in the military, Israel’s most influential and respected institution, is a related problem. Throughout Israel’s history, says Geva, women have been assigned to support jobs such as communications and transportation. And although the military has opened many positions to women, including those in intelligence, most remain in support roles. “Former generals, chiefs of staff and other security experts have ‘old boys’ networks’ and are close to the political establishment,” says Hanna Herzog, co-director of the Center for Women in the Public Sphere at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Plus “they are considered the experts in security.” As a result, Herzog continues, when women try to enter the political arena, “they are often perceived as intruding MAY/JUNE 2018 / MOMENT

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into territory that ‘isn’t theirs,’ because of their presumed nature and their lack of security experience.”

The security situation also reinforces the distinction between the “private sphere,” which is where women are supposed to be, and the “public sphere,” which is where men make decisions, says Herzog. “The feminist movement has struggled to erase this distinction,” she explains, “because it limits women’s political horizons, but in war situations, where men are portrayed as heroes who are willing to sacrifice their lives for ‘their women,’ it is difficult. It is especially difficult in Israel, because both the Jewish and the Arab traditions emphasize the importance of the family.”

Women who do enter politics are often pigeonholed and expected to represent the needs of families and children, not the needs of “the nation.” This, says Herzog, creates a “vicious circle where women are not seen in positions of power and authority, so the public, including women and girls, do not think that they have the ability or the right to be in those positions.”

This phenomenon was evident when former foreign minister Tzipi Livni and her Kadima party won by a slight margin in the 2009 election, providing her with the chance to form a governing coalition and become prime minister.

She was unable to do so, and Livni now believes that her gender was a disadvantage. Even in her own party, she says, it was suggested a woman “would not be able to answer the hotline in the middle of the night” or make military decisions.

Livni recalls being taken aback by this.

“When I initially entered politics, I didn’t relate to ‘the whole thing’ about women,” she says. “I came to politics because of diplomatic issues and knew that women were strong enough, but as I campaigned, I realized how difficult it is to accept strong women.”

Livni has come to believe that excluding women from decisions over security can lead to bad decisions. “The monopoly that men have assumed over security issues does not serve us well,” she says, adding that “men define security in a nar34

row way” by focusing almost exclusively on military issues, while women do a better job of building consensus and finding common ground.

Despite these positives, Ofer Kenig, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), believes that exclusion of women from the political sphere in Israel is in danger of growing. He points to a campaign by rabbis and some military leaders to stop the integration of women into military combat positions because, they claim, it weakens the army and threatens religiously mandated separation of men and women. This is a troubling phenomenon, he says, and not only for security reasons.

“The under-representation of any social group in decision-making bodies fosters sentiments of exclusion, frustration and alienation,” says Kenig. It’s bad for everyone, he adds, since IDI research has found that female members of Knesset (MKs) are more likely to push bills on issues surrounding children and families. “It means that so-called women’s issues—which are actually of importance to all of us as citizens—are not promoted in the public sphere.”

Some female politicians resent being cornered into women’s or social issues. MK Ksenia Svetlova, 40, notes that while she pays attention to women’s issues, “my academic research has dealt with the Middle East, and I am an expert in Arab affairs.” Justice Minister Shaked also says that her “essence as a feminist” means that she does not have to focus on women’s issues. “I am dealing with issues of democracy and the future of the State of Israel, and I am confident that the public realizes that I am just as capable of doing my job as any man,” she says.

As in the United States, the general public’s attitudes toward women in politics are evolving, says MK Orly LevyAbekasis, whose father, David Levy, served as deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Levy-Abekasis recently announced that she intends to start a new political party that will participate in the next elections, which have not yet been scheduled. “There are still

some, both men and women, who believe that ‘a woman’s place is in the home,’ but their numbers are decreasing,” she says.

Her new party, as yet unnamed, will place women high on its slate, “not only out of fairness, but because they realize that this is the right thing to do, and it is what the public expects.”

Even some ultra-Orthodox women are pushing for political office. Esty Shushan and Estee Rieder-Indursky co-direct Nivharot, an NGO dedicated to pressuring the ultra-Orthodox parties to include women on their slates for election to the Knesset, since currently only men are eligible for election in these parties. “Israel is a pluralistic democratic country with progressive legislation, but it has intolerable erasure, silencing and discrimination against women,” says Shushan. “The bylaws of the ultra-Orthodox parties, which include a structural exclusion of women, are in direct violation of democratic principles and the international conventions that Israel has signed.

Only in Israel do large political parties, which form an integral part of the government, get to declare themselves to be closed old boys’ clubs.”

There are signs that Israeli women are now taking gender into consideration.

According to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, there has been a gender gap—a difference in the proportion of women and men voting for the same candidate—in every U.S. presidential election since 1980. Until 2009, most pollsters did not believe that a gender gap would occur in Israel because of security issues. Yet, in the 2009 elections, for the first time, a greater percentage of women voted for women, says Herzog, possibly in response to the chauvinistic attacks on Livni.

As a greater number of women take office, the dynamic will change, says Herzog. “Once more women’s political activity is seen as normal and desirable, it will lead to even more women running for office. And once we reach a critical mass of women who are active in the public sphere, we will be on the road to equality.”

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POWER PROFILES SOME OF THE WOMEN ON THE

FRONT LINE OF ISRAELI POLITICS

BY EETTA PRINCE-GIBSON

AYELET SHAKED

AP IMAGES

TWO YEARS AFTER ARRIVING in the Knesset as a member of the right-of-center Jewish Home party, Ayelet Shaked was appointed justice minister, despite, critics said, her lack of legal credentials. (She studied computer engineering in university.) But Shaked learned quickly. Reserved and self-controlled—and nicknamed “ice maiden” by some of her critics—42-year-old Shaked is widely considered to be Israel’s most successful female politician since Golda Meir.

In media interviews, Shaked has repeatedly stated that while she believes in the rule of law, Israel as a Jewish and democratic state must be first and foremost Jewish. She supports Israel’s right to annex the West Bank without giving full civil rights to the Palestinians living there. As justice minister, she is a vocal and harsh critic of judicial activism, which, she says, is overly liberal and distorts the wishes of a majority of the people. As a member of Knesset, she sponsored a bill requiring nongovernmental agencies that receive the bulk of their funding from foreign governments—most of which are identified with the left—to be labeled accordingly.

Although she is an avowedly secular woman in a right-wing, national-religious party, her views have made her tremendously popular with nonreligious and Orthodox Jews alike. “There are chauvinistic men in every society, and in Israel, too, and sometimes they make things very difficult for me as a woman, as if I were less capable,” she has said. “In fact, in many ways, women are more capable—we are able to cross party lines to support each other and to promote issues of importance to everyone.

Men are less willing to do this.”

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STAV SHAFFIR ELECTED TO OFFICE in 2013 at the age of 27 on the center-left Zionist Union’s slate, Stav Shaffir is the youngest female Knesset member in Israel’s history. Shaffir brings a young, brash (her critics say arrogant) attitude to politics. Focusing on government corruption and social issues, especially the widening gap between the rich and the poor, she created and heads the Knesset Transparency Committee, which oversees governmental budgets and spending. Shaffir supports progressive legislation, although feminist and social issues are not her primary focus. “My generation and I view it as our main mission to return to a politics that is honest, transparent and truly dedicated to the people of Israel, and to encourage my generation to believe in politics as our way of taking responsibility for our communities and our lives,” she says.

Shaffir never thought of entering politics, she says, until 2011, when she was one of the leaders of Israel’s largest-ever, nonpartisan social justice protest, which brought tens of thousands of Israelis to the streets to demand more equal allocations of public funds and a better standard of living for all. Recruited by the Zionist Union, she agreed to run for Knesset “to prove that young people can get stuff done.” Shaffir believes it is a strength that she didn’t come up through the usual political channels. “I can see things clearly, and I am free to criticize corruption wherever I see it,” she says.

ORLY LEVYABEKASIS LEVY-ABEKASIS IS WIDELY recognized as one of the

most effective legislators in the Knesset. She holds a law degree from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya but never practiced law, pursuing instead careers in modeling and television.

Levy is the daughter of veteran Likud politician and former Foreign Minister David Levy and says that although she grew up in a political home, she had never intended to pursue politics until invited to join the Israel Home party by its founder, Avigdor Liberman, in 2009. She quickly shed her “model” image and has gained a reputation as a serious and opinionated lawmaker who prepares more than most for Knesset deliberations.

In 2016, she broke from the party, and she recently announced her intention to start a new party, which will run in the next elections. Levy-Abekasis has repeatedly told Israeli media that she hopes to break free of traditional right-left paradigms and to focus on socioeconomic affairs. With a proven track record for her social agenda, supporters say that she may have the ability to draw in a diverse group of supporters, including women, Mizrachim and voters with strong social concerns. Although her party does not have a platform—or even a name—a recent survey predicts that it could win up to eight of the 120 seats in the Knesset. This would mean that she could play a key role in shaping a future coalition, perhaps even holding the balance of power between the right- and left-wing blocs.

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TZIPI LIVNI TZIPI LIVNI, 59, was first elected to the Knesset in 1999.

Both her parents were officers in the Irgun, the guerrilla group that fought the British in the 1940s, and she was a member of the militant Beitar youth movement. After her army service, she was a Mossad agent in Europe. Livni was a protégé of the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Likud Party but broke with him to support a two-state solution and joined the Kadima party. Under her leadership, Kadima won a plurality of 28 seats—the most of any party—in the 2009 elections, bringing Livni the closest any woman has come to being prime minister since Golda Meir. However, she was unable to form a coalition, in part, she believes, because her detractors focused on her gender.

Livni later formed the Hatnua Party, which, in the 2015 elections, ran with the Labor Party as “the Zionist Union.”

Referring to these changes, her critics claim that she is an opportunist who does not hold clear-cut views; her supporters see these moves as proof of her flexibility and willingness to change her mind. Livni has been a top negotiator in some of Israel’s key negotiations, including those led

by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with the Palestinians in 2014. Other than Meir, Livni is the only woman to have held the position of foreign minister and is considered to be among the most powerful women in Israel. In 2007, Time Magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential men and women in the world.

MIRI REGEV

MAY/JUNE 2018 / MOMENT

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ABOVE: AP IMAGES; ALL OTHERS: CREATIVE COMMONS; KNESSET

TK

CULTURE AND SPORTS MINISTER Miri Regev, 53, is one of the most popular—and most disliked—politicians in Israel. Regev came to the Knesset in 2009 after a 25year career in the IDF, where she rose to the rank of brigadier general and served as the IDF spokeswoman during the Gaza disengagement and the Second Lebanon War. Regev is brash (her critics say vulgar) and boisterous (her critics call her violent). “In the political world they don’t know how to swallow me because I am a colorful person and different. I am unpredictable,” she told Al Monitor in an interview in 2013.

Regev is determined to put an end to what she refers to as a left-wing, Ashkenazi, elitist bias in cultural institutions and to champion the culture of Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and African origin. She has worked to take away state funding for any cultural events that glorify or humanize terrorists or that are overly critical of the government’s policies. All agree that she has amassed a significant power base. In a recent interview with the Israeli media, Regev announced that she hopes to be Israel’s next prime minister.

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TZIPI HOTOVELY A MEMBER OF THE KNESSET from the Likud Party and deputy minister of foreign affairs since 2015, Tzipi Hotovely, 39, is a lawyer and a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University. She holds some of the strongest right-wing views in the Knesset and has been called “the ideological voice of the Likud.” Her political statements are often filled with biblical references, citations from classical Jewish texts and modern legal interpretations to support her positions in favor of Israel’s right to construct settlements in and maintain control over the West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the foreign ministry portfolio, has distanced himself several times from her more extreme comments.

Hotovely has served as chairperson of the Committee on the Status of Women and worked on several gender-related laws, including the extension of maternity leave and a law that prevents photographing victims of sexual assault.

AIDA TOUMASLIMAN AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN, 52, entered the Knesset in the 2015 elections as a member of the Joint (Arab) party. Appointed to head the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, she made history twice: as the first Arab woman to head a permanent Knesset committee and as the first member of Knesset to campaign for election on women’s issues. She came to politics after founding two feminist organizations (Women Against Violence and the International Women’s Commission for a Just PalestinianIsraeli Peace) and serving as editor-in-chief of the Israeli Communist Party’s Arabic newspaper, Al-Ittihad. ToumaSliman has successfully formed ad hoc coalitions across the political spectrum in order to promote her legislative initiatives. “I care about all women,” says Touma-Sliman.

“But Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel face multiple layers of discrimination—as Arabs in Jewish society, as women and as women in our own patriarchal society. I very much hope that there will be more feminist voices in the Knesset and not just a higher number of women.”

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TAMAR ZANDBERG RECENTLY ELECTED chairwoman of the Meretz party, 42-year-old Tamar Zandberg came to national politics from the Tel Aviv Yaffo City Council. She has been in the Knesset since 2013, one of a group of younger women who recently joined its ranks. Zandberg promotes a clearly feminist agenda.

“If there were more women in the Knesset, the decision-making would be totally different,” she says. “There are a whole set of issues men don’t take into consideration.” Still, while holding left-wing views on social and security issues, Zandberg has also made it clear that she believes in realpolitik and is willing to join a coalition that could potentially include right-wing parties. “You can accomplish more from inside,” she says, “as long as you don’t sacrifice your core beliefs.”

ESTY SHUSHAN & ESTEE RIEDERINDURSKY ESTY SHUSHAN (top), 40, and Estee Rieder-Indursky, 45, aren’t members of the Knesset, but they intend to be.

Ultra-Orthodox feminists who are fighting for women’s rights within the conservative ultra-Orthodox community, together, the “Estys,” as they are known, founded Nivharot, Hebrew for “the elected women,” an NGO that demands that ultra-Orthodox parties change their bylaws to allow women to hold a place on the party slate for elections. In 2015, they petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice to instruct the parties to change these bylaws. The parties argued that the justices shouldn’t intervene because it would disrespect a minority’s cultural differences. Given the precedent-setting national importance of the case, the Court referred the petition to a larger panel, which has not yet heard arguments.

During the 2015 elections, Nivharot called on women to refrain from voting until they are represented, plastering broadsheets on billboards in the most religious neighborhoods with the slogan, “If you won’t choose us, we won’t vote for you.”

Rieder-Indursky and Shushan argue that the exclusion of women—from decision-making institutions and, increasingly, from public space—within the ultra-Orthodox community has nothing to do with religious law and everything to do with increasingly misogynist ideologies and practices. No prominent rabbi from the community has denounced them, but none has expressed support, either. They do, however, encounter pushback from within the community, including from women.

“The place of women within Orthodoxy is not only an issue for Orthodox women but for all Israeli women due to the Orthodox monopoly on religious life,” says Rieder-Indursky. “Furthermore, if the state allows the Orthodox parties to exclude women, then there is no guarantee that other parties won’t do so, and that other forms of exclusion won’t occur in the future.”

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MEET SOME OF THE WOMEN WHO LAID THE GROUNDWORK

FOR WOMEN TODAY

BY ELLEN WEXLER

GOLDA MEIR (1898-1978) Meir was born in Kiev and moved with her family to Milwaukee in 1906, where she was exposed to socialism and Zionism.

She persuaded her husband to move to Palestine in 1921, and after a brief stint on a kibbutz, she began her career in Israeli public life. She served as minister of labor and national insurance from 1949 to 1956, minister of foreign affairs from 1956 to 1966 and became the modern world’s third female prime minister in 1969. David Ben-Gurion once called her “the only man in the cabinet.” Popular until the 1973 Yom Kippur War, she resigned her position in 1974.

BEBA IDELSON (1895-1975) Idelson grew up in Ukraine, where she became an activist in the Youth of Zion movement. In 1923, she and her husband were arrested and exiled to Siberia. Deported in 1924, the couple and their daughter arrived in Palestine in 1926, and Idelson served in various political positions. She was a member of the pre-State Provisional Council and a member of the first five Knessets, becoming the first woman to serve as deputy speaker. While she was in office, she laid much of the legal groundwork for women’s rights in Israel, fought the religious monopoly on marriage and divorce and tried to define women’s equality in terms of human rights.

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TOVA SANHADRAYGOLDREICH (1906-1993) Born in eastern Galicia, Sanhadray-Goldreich moved to Palestine alone in 1934. The following year she helped found the women workers’ organization of HaPoel HaMizrachi, a religious socialistZionist organization. Before the 1949 Knesset elections, HaPoel HaMizrachi joined an alliance of four religious parties, which would not allow women on its list. In protest, Sanhadray-Goldreich formed the Religious Women Worker Party, although she did not win a seat until 1959. During her 15 years in office, she pushed for a number of conservative policies, including curtailing abortion rights and the rights of common-law spouses. In 1961, she helped draft legislation supporting equal pay for men and women.

ZVIA VILDSTEIN (1906-2001) Vildstein managed an orphans’ home in Lithuania’s Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust. When the ghetto was liquidated, she, like most of the Jews, was shot, but she survived and lived out the war under a false Polish identity. After the war, she returned to Vilna, where she established a school for orphans. Because of her Zionist activities, she was accused of treason, arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag. She was allowed to immigrate to Israel in 1957 and settled in Givatayim, near Tel Aviv, where she taught in an elementary school. In 1965, she was elected to the Givatayim municipal council.

HAIKA GROSMAN (1919-1996) An active member of the Zionist youth movement HaShomer HaTzair in Bialystok, in what is now Poland, Grosman moved to Vilna when World War II broke out. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Grosman returned to Bialystok, where she lived under a false name and became an underground activist.

Upon arriving in Israel in 1948, she became secretary of Mapam, the Labor Zionist party. She served in the Knesset from 1969 to 1981 and from 1984 to 1993, advocating for legislation serving women, the elderly and the poor.

SHOSHANA ARBELIALMOZLINO (1926-2015) Born in Iraq, Arbeli-Almozlino joined the Zionist underground movement at age 20. After being arrested and interrogated by the Iraqi police, she made aliyah in 1947. In 1949, she cofounded Kibbutz Neve Or and joined the Ahdut HaAvodah party, an early version of the Labor Party. She served in the Knesset between 1965 and 1992, spearheading social legislation ranging from labor law to insurance reform, and was widely regarded as a supporter of the most vulnerable in Israeli society. As minister of health from 1986 to 1988, she pushed through legislation for organ transplants and government coverage of fertility treatments.

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YAEL DAYAN (1939-) Dayan, daughter of politician and military leader Moshe Dayan, the defense minister during the SixDay War, was born in Mandatory Palestine. After serving in the IDF, she spent her early career writing novels and nonfiction, entering public life only after her father’s death in 1981. “I understand that because I went into politics so late in life, I was never able to achieve all that I had hoped,” she told Lilith last year.

“But it never seemed right as long as he was still alive.”

Dayan served in the Knesset from 1992 to 2003, where she founded and chaired the Committee on the Status of Women. In this role, she advocated for stricter sexual harassment legislation, and she championed affirmative action and LGBT rights. She served on Tel Aviv’s city council from 2008 to 2013.

DORIT BEINISCH (1942-) Beinisch spent her early career in the state attorney’s office, becoming the first woman to serve as attorney general in 1989. She was appointed to the Israeli Supreme Court in 1995, and in 2006 she was sworn in as the first woman president in the court’s history, a role she held until her retirement in 2012. She is known for her focus on government corruption, human rights, sexual harassment and the rights of individuals. In 2000, she wrote one of her most well-known and controversial rulings, banning parents from using corporal punishment.

Today there are four women out of 15 justices on the Israeli Supreme Court.

DANIELLA WEISS (1945-) Weiss was an early activist in Gush Emunim, a national religious movement dedicated to establishing settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. In 1975, she helped establish Kedumim, a settlement in the West Bank, and was elected its mayor in 1996 and reelected in 2001. She has been arrested numerous times, for obstruction, for assaulting a police officer, rioting against Palestinians and other similar offenses related to her activities against demolition or evacuation of settlements; in most cases she was given a suspended sentence and/or sentenced to probation and a fine. Eight years ago, she founded Nahala, an organization that helps young people move to unrecognized settlements.

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POEM | NATHA N A LTE R M A N

TRANSL AT ED FROM T HE HEBREW BY DAN BEN- AMOS

OF ALL THE PEOPLES When under the gallows our children cried We did not hear the world’s wrath.

For of all the peoples you selected us For us you loved and sanctified.

For you selected us of all the peoples Those of France, Japan and Norway.

And when our children march to the gallows Smart Jewish kids, they all know That their blood does not count and say Mom, turn your eyes the other way.

The iron devoured day and night And the holy Christian Father in the city of Rome Did not come out with the icons of Christ To stand one day in a pogrom.

To stand one day, one single day Where for years like a lamb A small Unknown Jewish kid Stands alone.

Great is the worry about sculptures and paintings Lest those art treasures are destroyed in a raid But the heads of infants, art treasures they are, Are smashed to the walls, and crushed on the roads.

Their eyes are begging: Mom don’t look and don’t see Us lined lying in long rows on the ground.

We are famous old soldiers Only short in size, aren’t we?

They say with their eyes a few more words “We know, God of our forefathers That you selected us of all the kids in the world That you loved and pampered us more than all others.

That of all the kids in the world us you selected To be killed at the feet of your throne, And our blood in small vases you collected Because no one else would, only you alone.

And you smelled it like flowers And you wiped it with your scarf And for it you will charge both the killers And the silence keepers.”

Nathan Alterman (1910-1970) was one of the leading poets of his generation, whose lyrical poetry and songs were very popular in Mandate Palestine and later in Israel. The Poem “Of All the Peoples” first appeared in print in Haaretz on Novemeber 27, 1942, four days after the Jewish Agency informed the public authoritatively about the mass murder of European Jewry by Nazi Germany.

Dan Ben-Amos is a folklorist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he holds the Graduate Program Chair for the Department of Folklore and Folklife.

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A DANIEL PEARL INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM INITIATIVE STORY Moment’s Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative (DPIJI) was established in memory of the Wall Street Journal reporter slain by terrorists in 2002. DPIJI provides grants to support in-depth stories about anti-Semitism and other prejudices.

PERSECUTED IN PAKISTAN FORBIDDEN FROM CALLING THEMSELVES MUSLIMS, TARGETED BY RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS AND ACCUSED OF BLASPHEMY FOR PRACTICING OR EVEN AFFIRMING THEIR FAITH, AHMADIS STILL CLING TO THE COUNTRY THEY HELPED ESTABLISH.

by Taha Anis For years, Abdul Qayyum ran a small shop selling eyeglasses and books in the sleepy town of Rabwah in eastern Pakistan. For Qayyum, the business, while not booming, was enough to make ends meet, and the 82-year-old had a natural affection for his patrons. “He had this habit of offering tea to all his customers and ensured that no child left his shop without sweets,” his son Farid tells me. “For him, his customers weren’t customers, but guests.”

On December 2, 2015, however, the visitors who arrived were decidedly uninvited: Armed men from the government’s counterterrorism department barged into the store, recalls Marij Fahad, Abdul’s nephew, who was in the shop at the time. “They told me and everyone else to get out of the shop immediately,” he says.

“By the time they let us back in, they had taken Abdul with them.”

One month later, Qayyum was charged with terrorism and sentenced to five years in prison. His crime: selling religious books relating to the Ahmadiyya sect, a group that considers itself Muslim although Pakistani law does not. Qayyum is an Ahmadi, and mainstream Sunni Muslims accuse Ahmadis of regarding their religious leader, the late 19th-century Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a prophet or messiah—a claim that runs contrary to the tenet that Muhammed was the final prophet and on which Ahmadis themselves have differing views. Qayyum also received an additional three-year sentence for a plaque found inside his shop inscribed with the words “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his

The names of some of the Ahmadis interviewed in this story have been changed to protect their identities.

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A mob burning Ahmadi property in the town of Gujranwala in 2014. Three Ahmadis—a grandmother and her two granddaughters—were killed in the attack.

prophet,” the Muslim declaration of faith.

His display of the plaque was viewed as an attempt to pose as a Muslim—an act that is illegal in Pakistan.

These laws are one of the factors that make day-to-day life for the approximately two million Ahmadis living in Pakistan, a Muslim state with a Sunni Muslim majority, rife with risk. They can be prosecuted for everything from calling their houses of worship mosques to saying the religious greeting asalaam alaikum. The widespread belief that Ahmadis are blasphemers has also led to increasing outbreaks of violence: Attacks on Ahmadi mosques and Ahmadi-owned property by suicide bombers and angry crowds have killed or injured hundreds. In 2015, a factory owned by a member of the Ahmadi community was burned down by a mob incited by announcements made from local mosques. A year later, a throng of more than 1,000 people attacked an Ahmadi mosque and set it on fire; government security forces had to intervene to 46

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prevent the incident from turning into a massacre. But the country’s police and security forces are not always on their side, says Saad Gibran, a senior official of the Ahmadi community. “What is worrying is that the state not only doesn’t do anything to protect us but actively encourages this.”

Pakistan has a complex and troubled relationship between religion and state, and all of the country’s minorities, including Hindus, Christians and Shia Muslims, face some level of discrimination and persecution. Non-Muslims, for example, cannot serve in high-level government positions such as president or prime minister. However, Ahmadis are singled out because they consider themselves Muslims. “This fusion of religion and politics has had a grave impact on Pakistan’s minorities, and Ahmadis have suffered the most, at the hands of both state and non-state actors,” says Zohra Yusuf, a former chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Almost every Ahmadi I speak with

has a story of persecution or violence.

“They start punishing us for being Ahmadis from the moment we are born, and it only ends when we die,” says Amir Mahmood, an Ahmadi community spokesperson whom I meet in the city of Rabwah, which despite raids such as the one on Qayyum’s shop is considered one of the safest places for Ahmadis to live in Pakistan. “In fact, in most situations it continues even after we die.” This isn’t an exaggeration. Graves of Ahmadis are often dug up from Muslim cemeteries and their corpses desecrated.

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he story of the Ahmadis begins more than a century ago in the town of Qadian, located in modern-day northern India. Born in 1835 to an affluent Muslim family, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was drawn to religion from a very young age and spent most of his youth inside local mosques or buried in books. He liked to debate Christian missionaries, a

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In Rabwah, a father prays at the grave of his son, a 17-year-old medical student who was murdered in an attack on a mosque in Lahore in 2010.

Rabwah. Sitting in a traditional Pakistani robe called a kurta shalwar with a neatly trimmed beard, Hafeez adds, “You will find that there is little, if any, difference between us and traditional Muslims.”

However, most Sunni scholars disagree. “Of course they aren’t Muslims,” says Mufti Hammadullah, a renowned cleric in Karachi who belongs to one of the country’s prominent religious parties.

“The doors of Islam are open to everyone, and I hope they come to the right path because they certainly aren’t on it right now.” Hammadullah scoffs at Ahmadis’ claims of believing in the same religious texts as other Sunni schools.

“How can they say that when in the hadith the Prophet clearly states that he is the last and final prophet of Islam and believing that is part of the very fundamentals of the religion?” When I begin to tell him that Ahmadis claim that they believe in the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood, but interpret the meaning of that differently, Hammadullah cuts me off:

“They lie.” A small pause follows before he decides a further explanation is required. “The problem with all these sects is that they say they believe in Prophet Muhammad as the final prophet, yet they have their own messiahs added onto their religion,” he says. “That isn’t compatible with Islam at all.”

The question of prophethood is not the only difference—another theological disagreement is over the death of Jesus, who is viewed in Islam as the penultimate prophet. While mainstream Islamic belief holds that Jesus went to heaven and will return from there, Ahmad claimed Jesus survived crucifixion and that, to escape persecution, he journeyed to India, where he died and was buried in Kashmir. “We believe that there will be no second coming of Christ, despite many Muslims of our time believing so,” says Ahmadi scholar Hafeez.

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habit he picked up while working as a cleric. Ahmadi texts say that he first talked to God in 1869, and by 1875 he claimed to be talking with previous prophets of Islam in his dreams. Ahmad began to seclude himself, spending up to 40 days at a time alone meditating and praying. A persuasive orator, he drew followers from the educated and upper classes of India with his use of logic and science to explain religion.

Soon Ahmad was arguing that while the Prophet Muhammad was the last and greatest of the law-bearing prophets, nonlegislative prophets—who could not make laws but could speak to God—could still exist. It is unclear whether Ahmad viewed himself as one of those prophets, and scholars inside and outside the community continue to argue this point, although Ahmadis are adamant that they are part of a movement—not a separate religion.

“We believe in the same books of hadith [teachings and sayings from Muhammad] and we believe in the same Quran,” says Saleem Hafeez, an Ahmadi scholar in

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ed in Pakistan, and there is absolutely no justification for any such attacks,” he says.

The cleric believes the problem doesn’t lie in the hatred incited in seminaries and religious schools against other sects, but rather in the government of Pakistan.

“Different sects of Islam coexist in nearly every Muslim country of the world,” he says. “Yet when you hear about such attacks and violence, almost invariably Pakistan is involved.”

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owhere is the tangled relationship between religion and state in Pakistan as evident as on the government form to apply for a passport. It is a standard bureaucratic document—name, address, a thumbprint— with one exception. The last section requires Muslim applicants to affirm and sign that the applicant believes “in the absolute and unqualified finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him), the last of the prophets” and “consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani to be an imposter” prophet and his followers to be non-Muslim.

“What this means is that not only can we not write our religion as Muslim without officially denouncing our beliefs, but also that no matter what [any citizen’s] opinion is about Ahmadiyya, they have to officially consider us as non-Muslims to even get a Pakistani passport,” says Ahmadi spokesman Mahmood. In order to get a passport, Ahmadis must identify themselves as members of the Ahmadi religion, leaving them open to other forms of discrimination. “I was myself stopped from leaving Pakistan after the immigration officer saw my Ahmadi religion written on my passport,” says Ehsan Rehan, founder and editor of Rabwah Times, a digital media publication with a special focus on minorities in Pakistan. He says that Ahmadis are forced to pay upward of $200 in bribes to government border agents to travel out of Pakistan for work or tourism.

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themselves a religious minority, since they identify as Muslim, but any Pakistani citizen who votes as a Muslim must sign a declaration that he or she is not Ahmadi. Thus, Ahmadis generally don’t vote. Another reason for not voting is safety concerns: Voting lists are public and could be used as a convenient hit list for extremists and anti-Ahmadi groups, says Mahmood. “It is no secret that there are people out there who actively hunt us down,” he says. “Can you imagine the repercussions of a publicly accessible list of all Ahmadis in the country that not only lists their names and their national identity numbers, but also their addresses?”

It wasn’t always like this. Ahmadis have a storied history in Pakistan. In 1947, when India was partitioned, Ahmadis moved their headquarters from Qadian to the new state of Pakistan, envisioned as a home for India’s Muslims. “The Ahmadis were part of the original movement for independence and stood with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, right from the word go. It is part of recorded history that our then caliph lent his full support to Jinnah. There is no arguing that,” Mahmood tells me. Many Ahmadis joined the army and civil service during that period. “The Ahmadis were very involved with the creation of Pakistan,” says Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, former Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ireland and chair of Islamic studies at American University. “Of the seven members of Jinnah’s cabinet, his most important minister, the foreign minister, was an Ahmadi, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, a distinguished legal mind who represented Pakistan in the United Nations and in international forums. And he was very trusted by Mr. Jinnah.”

But after Jinnah’s death in 1948, the new state fell under the sway of religious nationalists who didn’t share his belief in the need to separate religion and state.

In 1949, the government passed the Objectives Resolution, a precursor to the constitution, asserting that Pakistan’s constitution would be based on both democratic representation and Islamic ideals. As religious parties gained more strength, anti-Ahmadi sentiment grew.

Partly this was based on resentment— Ahmadis were viewed as affluent and successful at a time when many people in the newly formed state were struggling to establish themselves. “The Ahmadis were well-placed in bureaucracy and also enjoyed considerably better socioeconomic conditions due to their strong focus on education,” says Akbar. “It’s a prosperous community. It’s centralized, it’s well organized, it emphasizes education and the learning of Islam.” The country’s new religious political parties also perceived Ahmadis as competitors. “They saw the large number of Ahmadis in Pakistan’s civil service as a threat to their future, since they had originally rejected the idea of Pakistan while Ahmadis had supported it,” says Rabwah Times’s Rehan.

In 1952, anti-Ahmadi Islamic purification groups assembled under the banner of Tehrik-i-Khatam-i-Nabuwwat (Movement for the Protection of the Finality of Prophethood) to campaign to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims and to remove them from key civil and military posts. For two decades, anti-Ahmadi sentiment grew and on September 7, 1974, the Pakistani parliament passed the Second Amendment to the Constitution, officially designating Ahmadis non-Muslims. The change occurred while Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of the country’s most liberal leaders, was in office. He needed to appease religious groups inside the country, says former Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Chair Yusuf. More important, she adds, the new amendment came at the behest of Saudi Arabia, which adheres to Wahabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam.

“That was a time when a lot of Pakistanis were getting employment in the Middle East, so the Saudis knew they could dictate terms,” she says.

According to Yusuf, however, it wasn’t until Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq deposed Bhutto that the government began to actively discriminate against Ahmadis. A military dictator and the sixth president of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq was a master at exploiting religion to further his political agenda, says Yusuf. It was he who issued what is called “Ordinance XX” in 1984, in which

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The shop in Rabwah raided by Pakistani government agents where Abdul Qayyum was arrested for selling religious books relating to the Ahmadiyya sect.

er to 10 million. Not all host countries are safe havens. In Sunni-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, Ahmadis face regular outbreaks of violence, and even in Glasgow an Ahmadi shopkeeper was murdered for his beliefs last year. Still, the community says it is growing, fueled by an extensive outreach network of books, newspapers and a TV channel broadcast from England. There are 20,000 Ahmadis in the United States, including immigrants and converts, many of them African American.

The Ahmadis who remain in Pakistan have learned to live within their own small communities, realizing that whatever safety there is for them lies in numbers. Thus thrives the quaint little town of Rabwah.

J Ju

ust a few miles away from the Chenab river, Rabwah is a quiet community whose tranquility, at first glance, belies the troubles that its residents face. A town of narrow streets

and cozy houses, Rabwah seems peaceful.

Temperatures regularly go well over 100 degrees during the summer, and the simmering heat means any sort of outdoor activity in the afternoon becomes almost impossible. Usually, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., the entire town goes to sleep, literally. “We do this every day,” says Mahmood, the Ahmadi spokesperson and resident of Rabwah, with a big grin on his face and an almost proud tone of voice. “We call it calula, and a lot of cities in Punjab observe it. Rabwah is no different.”

What does make Rabwah different, though, is that it is a city built by and for Pakistan’s Ahmadis. “We don’t have an official number, since a population census hasn’t been conducted here for a very long time,” says Mahmood. “Our estimate is that we have 60,000 people in this town, out of which an overwhelmingly large majority is Ahmadi.” The entire town, spread across just over nine square miles, was bought by the Ahmadis from the government for an initial fee of MAY/JUNE 2018 / MOMENT

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non-Muslims were forbidden from passing themselves off as Muslims and from calling themselves Muslims in public or private. Three days after the ordinance was issued, the then-head of the Ahmadi community, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, fled to England, and the movement moved its headquarters from Pakistan to London.

The new headquarters was based in the city’s iconic Fazl Mosque, famous not only for being London’s first mosque built for that purpose but also for being constructed entirely on donations from Ahmadi women in India. Many Ahmadis immigrated to London, while others left Pakistan for Europe and West Africa.

“There they flourished, because, again, they are well organized, they’re centralized, they work hard, they educate themselves,” says Akbar. “And most important, they integrate with the host country.”

Today the Ahmadi community says it has 200 million followers throughout the world, although other estimates are clos-

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Although their international headquarters are in London, the Ahmadis also have offices in Rabwah.

12,000 Pakistani rupees (approximately $103) in 1948. All of Rabwah is owned by Ahmadis, and property in the town cannot be bought by others. “People who are not Ahmadis do live here, but their houses are rented,” says Mahmood. “If we don’t do this, then those who hate us will buy land here and build seminaries from which they will propagate hate against us. This isn’t some made-up situation; one group actually tried to do that, so we have to be careful.”

While there are occasional drive-by shootings by “outsiders”—and government crackdowns as in the case of Abdul Qayyum—Rabwah is a refuge for many. “I used to live in Lahore before, and I have been barred from entering mosques there when people found out that I was an Ahmadi,” a resident tells me as I walk around the town. “I therefore took to praying on a small patch of grass outside the mosque.

To stop me from doing that, they kept the grass wet at all times so that I couldn’t pray there without ruining my clothes.”

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Compared to neighboring towns and cities, Rabwah is unusually clean, and Mahmood says the community employs its own residents to clean the streets. “This town was completely barren when it was [sold] to us,” says Mahmood. “We had to work incredibly hard to make it as green and lush as it is right now.” The Ahmadis practice tithing: “We run a self-sufficient community that runs on donations,” he says, where it is mandatory for 1/16th of an Ahmadi’s income to go to the community, plus 1/10th of their inheritance. “When we want to punish someone, we tell them that they cannot donate money anymore,” says Mahmood. “That is how much everybody wants to serve the community.” This passion to serve extends to more than just money, he says. There are members of the community who dedicate their lives to the cause through volunteerism. Referred to as the devotees, these men and women work in whatever capacity the head of the community sees fit. “A devotee will never say no to whatever job he is assigned,”

says Mahmood. “He could have been a big-shot CEO somewhere, but if he devotes his life and then is assigned to being a janitor, he will do that happily.” One such devotee is Saad Ahmed, head of the multistory Tahir Heart Institute, a cardiac hospital that caters to thousands—residents not only of Rabwah but of adjoining towns as well. Until 2001 he worked in a telecommunications company. “I used to go to work in an air-conditioned car that was driven by a chauffeur and had my own place,” says Ahmed. “Now I cycle to work and live in my mother’s old house.”

Funds pour in from Ahmadis around the world, which is evident in the state-ofthe-art schools and medical facilities that serve the people of the city for almost no fee. “We have a system until college, and are looking to build more schools—and maybe even universities—since a lot of people want their children studying with us, considering our high level of teaching and low fees,” says Haris Amir, head of the city’s education programs. “We not

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From left to right: Historic figures—Ahmadi founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad; Foreign Minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan; Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; and General and President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.

only focus on education but also sports since we believe that is vital for a child’s growth.” Rabwah has an Olympic-size swimming pool and a program that has regularly produced some of the finest swimmers in the country, a sports complex with basketball and squash courts, a tennis court and a gym. And all health, recreational or education facilities are open to those both inside and outside the community. “We are not like them,” says Mahmood nonchalantly, waving his right arm in no particular direction. “We don’t want to promote this feeling of us and them any further than it already has been promoted. So we welcome everybody, even if we aren’t welcome everywhere ourselves.”

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he treatment of the Ahmadis affects everyone in Pakistan, says former Pakistani diplomat Akbar, who recalls that when he grew up in north Pakistan people didn’t care who was an Ahmadi, a Shia or a Sunni. “It’s a slippery slope,” he says, that began with Ahmadis but now infects a broader swath of society.

The same extremist intolerance that fuels anti-Ahmadi violence leads to violence against other religious minorities. The situation, he says, has deteriorated to the point that “someone’s neighbor could say, ‘I want your land. Sell it to me,’ and if you say no he’ll simply say, ‘This guy is a Zion-

ist agent,’ or ‘He’s a Hindu agent.’”

While the Pakistani government’s attempts to combat terrorism have seen some success, it hasn’t been able to eliminate religious violence. In 2016 a church in the southwestern city of Quetta was attacked, leading to at least nine deaths, and in 2017 three blasts rocked the majority-Shia city of Parachinar in northwest Pakistan, killing more than 125 people. In February a suicide bomber killed more than 90 at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan in southern Pakistan.

Threats by Islamic extremists make it hard even for Pakistanis who are not Ahmadis to come to their defense. Last May, Express Tribune journalist Rana Tanveer woke up to find his house in Lahore vandalized and a message left on his door: “Qadiani supporter Rana Tanveer is an unbeliever who deserves to be killed.” Qadiani is a pejorative term for Ahmadi, and Tanveer’s alleged sin was reporting on issues relating to Ahmadis. He regularly received death threats, and his landlord received menacing messages to evict him. Two months after his house was attacked, Tanveer says, a car tried to run him over and broke his leg.

Like many who have tried to document the persecution against the Ahmadis, Tanveer was forced to flee to the U.S. Meanwhile, new generations are learning through public discourse that Ahmadis are sorcerers who indulge in

the dark arts, fifth columnists supported by foreign powers or members of vast Zionist conspiracies. “Over the years, this narrative has been driven into our collective heads again and again so many times that we have come to accept it,” says former Human Rights Commission Chair Yusuf. “Hating Ahmadis isn’t frowned upon by society. So for a child growing up in Pakistan, hating the Ahmadis without ever bothering to know them or learn about them seems normal.

As they say: Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to violence.”

The situation can only be addressed “if the laws are changed or society is made to change its prejudiced attitude,” says Farahnaz Ispahani, author of Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, who served as a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from 2008 to 2012. “The avenues to do this would be removing hate speech against religious minorities in the official textbooks, making the Constitution secular and declaring all citizens equal under it, and using media campaigns against religious hatred and exclusivity,” she says.

“Instead, the government has done the reverse. Many Pakistanis consider religious discrimination normal, which is particularly sad.” Yusuf agrees. “Until that is done, Ahmadis cannot live safely and peacefully in Pakistan.”

Taha Anis is a 27-year-old Karachi-based writer who works at Pakistan’s English daily The Express Tribune.

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SEVE ArtSymposium2.indd 52

1978–1988

1968–1978

1958–1968

1948–1958

DECADES OF

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VEN A MOMENT SYMPOSIUM

ISRAELI ART

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2008–2018

1998–2008

1988–1998

To mark the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, Moment asks curators from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Ben-Gurion University to choose outstanding works of art from each decade.

ART SELECTED BY Emma Gashinsky Dalit Matatyahu Amitai Mendelsohn BY Marilyn Cooper 5/2/18 4:31 AM

1948 Immigrant Transit Camp Ruth Schloss 1953/Oil on Canvas

SCHLOSS: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE MISHKAN LE’OMANUT KUPFERMAN: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE KUPFERMAN COLLECTION

Ruth Schloss (1922–2013) was born in Nuremberg, Germany and made aliyah in 1937. A student of Mordecai Ardon at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, she also studied Cubism in Paris. Her work shows the influence of Social Realism, a school of art focused on depicting the everyday conditions of the working class and poor. Unlike many social realists, however, she was concerned with the vulnerability of individuals, and her subjects were most often marginalized people such as refugees or women and children.

Tent camps like the one represented in this painting were established in Israel to house the thousands of refugees and new immigrants who arrived after World War II. Schloss’s use of soft and warm colors reflects a certain tenderness toward the women and child at the center of the piece, which is painted in a loosely Cubist style.

Painting Moshe Kupferman 1957/Oil on canvas Moshe Kupferman (1926-2003) was born in Jaroslaw, Poland. After surviving the Holocaust, he moved to Israel in 1948 and helped found the Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot, the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz, in the Galilee. He studied with Joseph Zaritsky and Avigdor Stematsky of the Ofakim Hadashim, which means New Horizons, a Modernist Israeli art movement.

This work represents an early phase in Kupferman’s career. Concealment of form and meaning, accomplished by applying layer upon layer of color, is used here as a metaphor for memory and forgetfulness.

Concealment is a central theme in all of Kupferman’s art and relates to his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

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1958 Sheep of the Negev Itzhak Danziger 1955/Bronze Itzhak Danziger (1916-1977) was born in Berlin and came to Palestine as a boy in 1923. Danziger played an important role in the cultural-political movement known as The Canaanites, which advocated for cutting off relations with the diaspora and replacing Jewish religious traditions with a new Hebrew identity based on ancient Middle Eastern culture. Danziger’s affinity for nature and place, developed while he was on reconnaissance missions in the Negev desert, led him to create numerous sculptures and drawings of animals. Sheep, the domesticated animals of desert nomads, made frequent appearances. On the border of “sculpture as object” and “sculpture as environmental work,” this piece embodies the intersection of landscape and local life, with the form of the sheep taking on the shape of nomadic tents.

The Hour of Idra DANZIGER: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM ARDON: ©ARDON ESTATE

Mordecai Ardon 1951/Oil on canvas Mordecai Ardon (1896-1992) was born in Galicia in Austria-Hungary as Max Bronstein and changed his name after arriving in Palestine in 1933. He studied at the Bauhaus school of German art and was particularly influenced by Swiss-German Expressionist Paul Klee, as well as Old Masters such as Rembrandt and El Greco. Ardon’s work is distinguished by his blending of classical painting techniques with abstract and modern styles. This work makes use of kabbalistic symbols and is thought to be inspired by mystic Yeshayahu Tishbi’s book The Doctrine of Evil.

More generally, it shows the influence of the theosophical Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-72). Ardon believed in art for art’s sake and, like many of his pieces, this work is devoid of any larger political or social messages. Rather, the painting is an abstract image of religious ecstasy.

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©IGAEL TUMARKIN, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART

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1968 Agrippas Street Arie Aroch 1964/Oil and crayon on wooden panel Arie Aroch (1908-1974) was born in Kharkov, Russia. After making aliyah in 1924, he studied at the Bezalel School and was influenced by Israeli Abstract Expressionists Raffi Lavie and Aviva Uri. He founded the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) movement, which sought to give Modernism a Zionist flavor. A diplomat, he began this drawing, considered to be his masterpiece, while serving as Israel’s ambassador to Sweden. It brings together a variety of times and places, both personal and historical. The street sign is reminiscent of a shoemaker’s sign from Aroch’s childhood in Kharkov, while Agrippas is both a street in Jerusalem and a reference to the scion of the Hasmonean Dynasty (41-44 AD) who sought to serve the Romans while still protecting the Jews. Aroch intended the historic reference as a commentary on Israel’s contemporary state of affairs.

He Walked in the Fields Igael Tumarkin 1967/Partly painted bronze

©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART

Igael Tumarkin (1937-) was born in Dresden, Germany and moved to Palestine with his family at age two. He is best known for designing the Holocaust memorial in Rabin Square and for his sculptures of fallen soldiers. He worked as a stage designer in East Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris during the 1950s. When he returned to Israel in 1961, he became a driving force behind the break from abstract art, which until then had dominated the Israeli art scene.

This sculpture takes its title from a 1947 novel by Israeli author Moshe Shamir that refers to a Nathan Alterman poem about a dead soldier. Like most of Tumarkin’s works, it deals with death, war and sacrifice. Thought to be a realistic portrayal of the horrors of war, the work created an important precedent for the use of art as a form of political protest in the 1970s.

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1968 Druksland Michael Druks 1973/Lithography on paper

DRUKS: ©MICHAEL DRUKS, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE LEVIN FOUNDATION; NIKEL: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM

Michael Druks (1940-) was born in Jerusalem. He grew up in Tel Aviv but has lived in London since 1972. His work frequently incorporates images from TV, often in a subversive, humorous or politically charged manner. Many of his works include maps. To create this piece, which has attained an iconic status in Israeli culture, Druks scanned his face, mounted a map of Israel on it and then adapted the map to fit his facial structure. The result is a pointed comment on the country’s involvement—both geographic and cultural—in defining the identity of its individual residents.

Painting Lea Nikel 1969/Oil on Canvas Lea Nikel (1918-2005) was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine and immigrated with her family to Palestine in 1920. A longtime resident of Moshav Kidron in central Israel, she was known for a form of expressionistic abstraction sometimes called lyrical abstraction. Unlike the works of other Israeli abstract artists of the 1950s and 1960s, Nikel’s untitled painting is not connected to nature but to the internal balance and tension between color and line.

The result is a work full of energy and life.

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1978 Motti Mizrachi 1973/Installation Motti Mizrachi (1946-) was born in Tel Aviv and studied at the Bezalel Academy.

He is a multimedia artist whose politically engaged works combine sculpture, video, photography, public art and performance.

He contracted malaria as a child, which left him disabled in both legs. This installation is a work of performance art. To create it, the artist carried a portrait of himself down the Via Dolorosa, which is said to be the road Jesus walked down on the way to his crucifixion. The piece is simultaneously an identification with Jesus, in which suffering is a path to enlightenment, and a critique of the use and misuse of iconic portraits in both religious and secular society.

MIZRACHI: ŠMOTTI MIZRACHI, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM; GETTER: ŠTAMAR GETTER, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART

Via Dolorosa

Tel Hai Courtyard and the Ideal City Tamar Getter 1977/Blackboard paint and chalk on canvas Tamar Getter (1953-) was born in Tel Aviv.

She studied in the Hamidrasha Art School in Beit Berl in central Israel with artist and critic Raffi Lavie. She currently teaches at the Bezalel Academy. This piece is part of a series of paintings called the Tel Hai Cycle.

Tel Hai is the name of a former Jewish settlement in northern Galilee that was the site of the first military confrontation, in 1920, between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

It is a collage composed of polyethylene, paint, chalk and photographs.

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1978 Aisha el-Kord, Khan Younis Refugee Camp Micha Kirshner 1988/Photograph

KIRSHNER: ©MICHA KIRSHNER, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM; LAVIE: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE THE IGAL AHOUVI ART COLLECTION

Micha Kirshner (1941-2017) was born in an Italian refugee camp while his parents awaited permission to immigrate to Palestine. Kirshner studied photography in New York in the 1970s and then returned to Israel to educate a generation of Israeli photographers while exhibiting his own, often iconic “opinion portraits” in museums around the world. This photo is a portrait of a Palestinian woman and her child in the Khan Younis Refugee Camp; the woman had been shot in the eye by a rubber bullet. The image drew criticism from both the left and the right. Those on the right felt that Kirshner should have chosen Jewish-Israeli subjects for his work; the left criticized him for making the woman’s pain look beautiful. The photograph evokes both the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Pietà, the Roman Catholic tradition of artwork in which the Virgin Mary holds the dead body of Jesus in her arms.

Untitled Raffi Lavie 1982/Gelatin silver print Raffi Lavie (1937-2007) was born in Palestine. He founded the influential Ten Plus Tel Aviv School of Artists and was one of the most dominant figures in the Israeli art scene during the second half of the 20th century. His work is a cross between graffiti and Abstract Expressionism. This collage is an example of the artist’s recurring theme: the juxtaposition of the rich legacy of Western art—represented by a reproduction of a classic Roman statue—with the more pedestrian history of visual culture in Israel—represented by a photograph of the desert and an advertisement for a contemporary cultural event. In explaining the piece, Lavie asserts that the absence of a strong Israeli visual tradition is the result of the Jewish religious law that forbids the making of images. This tension between the new Israeli culture and the older Western traditions is one of the most prominent themes in Israeli art.

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1988 Menashe Kadishman 1988/Iron Sculptures Menashe Kadishman (1932-2015) was born in Palestine and spent part of his childhood working as a shepherd. He studied art first at the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv and later at schools in London. Kadishman created these sculptures around the time his son was drafted into the Israeli military. They are part of a large series of paintings and sculptures on the theme of the Sacrifice (Binding) of Isaac. In this large-scale, multi-piece sculpture, which is located in the courtyard of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Isaac is represented sprawled on the ground with an enormous ram, reminiscent of a cross, looming over him. The pair of weeping women standing to one side connect the piece to the Crucifixion.

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ŠESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART

Binding of Isaac

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1988 Cactus (Sabra) Assam Abu-Shaqra 1988/Oil on paper

ABU-SHAQRA: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM; REEB: ©DAVID REEB, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE LEVIN FOUNDATION

Assam Abu-Shaqra (1961-1990) is one of the few Palestinian artists accepted into the canon of Israeli art. He was born near Haifa in Umm el-Fahm and came from a family of artists. He studied at the Kalisher Art Academy in Tel Aviv, where he also lived—sleeping on the floor—because he was unable to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv. Throughout his short life (he died of cancer), Abu-Shaqra experienced conflict between his Arab and Israeli identities. This painting depicts the image that is most identified with him—the sabra (cactus) plant. An important Palestinian symbol, the sabra is both desert flora and a term for a person born in Israel. The cactus in this painting is uprooted from its natural desert environment and transplanted as a seedling into a flowerpot, which drains it of color and life.

Green Line in Hebrew Alphabet David Reeb 1989/Oil on Canvas David Reeb (1953-) was born in Rehovot, Israel and graduated from the Bezalel Academy. Reeb is known for a style that mocks convention, and his work is explicitly political, although he sometimes denies that this is the case. He creates paintings in the style of photographs, using images taken from TV or the internet. In this painting, letters of the Hebrew alphabet overlay the outline of the borders of Israel to create a political statement about the fraught relationship between the biblical ideal of the Promised Land and the contemporary fight over the modern borders of the state. In a broader sense, it also explores the complex ties between culture and politics.

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1998 Keffiyeh 43 Tsibi Geva 1992/Acrylic and oil on canvas Tsibi Geva (1951-) was born on Kibbutz Ein Shemer in northern Israel and currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Geva’s work often juxtaposes paintings with sculptural installations and has been exhibited around the world.

This painting is an homage to Palestinian artist Assam Abu-Shaqra (opposite).

Tsibi Geva and Abu-Shaqra taught together at the Kalisher Art Academy in Tel Aviv. The keffiyeh, a scarf emblematic of the Arab, is overlaid with an image of a chain-link fence; Abu-Shaqra’s signature image of a sabra cactus is in the background of the painting. The work is intended to evoke the challenges of the Arab-Israeli experience.

GEVA: ©TSIBI GEVA, IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL MUSEUM IN JERUSALEM; ABSALON: ©ESTATE OF THE ARTIST, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART

Cell # 6 Absalon 1991–1992/Mixed media sculpture Absalon (1964-1993) was born Meir Eshel in Ashdod on the Mediterranean seacoast.

After serving in the Israeli Air Force, he spent much of the 1980s in a wooden cabin he built in the sand dunes south of Ashdod, earning a living as a jewelry maker. In 1987 he moved to France and changed his name to Absalon. The artist planned to live the rest of his life in the six “cells” he designed to resemble his six ideal cities, but he died at age 28 from an illness associated with HIV. Absalon employed arrangements of geometric forms to create his series of habitable enclosures: the six “Cellules.” Conceived as personal living units that would have enabled the artist to live in the six different cities that were important to him, these nomadic structures range in size from four to eight square meters (13 to 26 square feet) and were precisely designed around his own body’s dimensions. Absalon’s work bears witness to the rise of mobility and globalism and questions the permanence of home.

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1998 Golem (cocoon) Sigalit Landau 2001/Sculpture

DeadSee Sigalit Landau 2005/Video

©️SIGALIT LANDAU, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART; ©️SIGALIT LANDAU, IMAGE SIGALIT LANDAU

Sigalit Landau (1969-) was born in Jerusalem and studied at the Bezalel Academy. She uses a diverse range of media, including drawing, sculpture, video and performance art. Her complex works touch on social, political and ecological issues and include topics such as homelessness and victimization. Golems, which in Jewish folklore are humanoids brought to life through kabbalistic magic, are a popular subject in contemporary Israeli art. The sugar and polyester resin sculpture (left) depicts a wounded Israeli soldier as a golem and evokes the living death caused by continuous wars. Landau also creates large-scale, on-site installations using salt, paper and ready-made objects, incorporating her own body as a key motif. She then documents these performance pieces on video. This video (a frame from it is below) records a gradually unraveling spiral of approximately 500 watermelons, floating on the Dead Sea. The connection between the spiral of sweet watermelons—symbolic of a life force that resists the death around it—and the artist’s body creates a complex and, at the same time, plaintive statement relating to vulnerability, place and continuity.

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2008 Untitled photo known as The Last Supper Adi Nes 1999/Photograph Adi Nes (1966-) was born in Kiryat Gat, Israel, to Iranian Jewish parents. He is famous for his masculine and often homoerotic photos of Israeli soldiers. His work borrows from, and makes subversive use of, iconic images from the history of art and philosophy.

The models in his staged photographs often evoke art of the Baroque period. Nes has said that his works are also partly autobiographical and are intended as a reflection of his personal experiences growing up as a gay youth in a small Israeli town. Popularly known as “The Last Supper,” this untitled photograph is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the same name. In the photograph, set in abandoned barracks, the apostles of da Vinci’s work are replaced by relaxing IDF soldiers. The central “Jesus” figure is staring, preoccupied, into the distance. The image conveys a poignant message about commitment, sacrifice and betrayal.

BEN-NER:©️GUY BEN-NER, IMAGE SOMMER CONTEMPORARY GALLERY; NES: ©️ADI NES, IMAGE SOMMER CONTEMPORARY GALLERY

Treehouse Kit Guy Ben-Ner 2005/Installation and video Guy Ben-Ner (1969-) was born in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Ben-Ner studied at Columbia University in New York City with film critic Jerry Saltz. His humorous yet profound video productions usually feature himself and his family as actors.

His stories make pointed references to well-known works of Israeli literature, philosophy, art and cinema. This video installation consists of a prefabricated tree sculpture and an instructional video featuring the artist. In the video, BenNer dismantles the tree and puts it back together in the form of different pieces of furniture. The work is a tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Robinson Crusoe story and is intended as a critique of contemporary “ready-to-assemble” society. It challenges viewers to reconsider our relationship with nature and the impact we are having on the environment.

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2008 Invert Ben Hagari 2010/35mm film

HAGARI: ©BEN HAGARI, IMAGE BENHAGARI.COM; BARTANA: ©YAEL BARTANA, IMAGE YAELBARTANA.COM

Ben Hagari (1981-) is a New York-based artist who was born in Tel Aviv. He describes his films and video installations as “tragicomedies that unfold in absurdist environments.” His work is concerned with the relationship between identity and territory; he frequently depicts domestic spaces that function as both prison and refuge. This 11-minute film portrays a day in an inverted world.

Invert, the figure of the artist, seen here in color, spends the day attempting to teach his silent parrot to speak. The words, all names of objects appearing in the film, are said in Hebrew and spoken backwards. The images, mainly presented in negative colors, are intended to evoke a feeling of being trapped.

And Europe Will Be Stunned Yael Bartana 2012/Film Yael Bartana (1970-) was born in Kfar Yehezkel in northern Israel. After graduating from the Bezalel School, she studied in New York City and Amsterdam. Her works of film, installation and photography investigate the relationship between identity and memory. She divides her time between Berlin, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. This 65-minute film trilogy confronts the traumatic relationship between Poland and Israel and depicts the two countries as still under the shadow of the Holocaust. By blending real historical events with fictionalized ones, Bartana’s work explores issues of collective identity, trauma, displacement and assimilation.

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Dalit Matatyahu is the curator of Israeli Art at t 5/2/18 5:17 AM of Art Matatyahu is a graduate of the Haifa Uni

While Dictators Rage Michal Helfman 2013/Installation Michal Helfman (1973-) was born in Tel Aviv, where she still lives and works. She is a multidisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, architecture, video and drawings. Because of her interest in the relationship between the physical and the artistic, she frequently collaborates with Israeli choreographers, dancers, gymnasts and musicians. This installation is inspired by “Triumph of Death,” a drawing created by German-Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum in 1944 while in hiding in occupied Belgium. In the lower left side of Nussbaum’s drawing are the opening notes of the song “The Lambeth Walk,” from the musical “Me and My Girl,” which the Nazis claimed was emblematic of Jewish deceit and evidence of Europe’s moral decline. By evoking these ideas, Helfman asks: Is popular culture a tool for civilian distraction and passiveness, or is it a vital source of power and hope?

EMMA GASHINSKY is an art historian and a curator in the field of Israeli art and visual culture. She teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Gashinsky is also the curator of the Levin Collection of Israeli Art in Jerusalem. ©MICHAL HELFMAN, IMAGE THE TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART

of Israeli Art at the Tel Aviv Museum ArtSymposium2.indd 67 of the Haifa University Department of

2018

DALIT MATATYAHU is the curator of Israeli Art at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She is a graduate of the Haifa University Department of Fine Arts and was awarded the Young Artist Award in 1997.

Matatyahu has published many essays on Israeli and international art in both journals and catalogues.

AMITAI MENDELSOHN is the senior curator and head of the Israeli Art Department at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. In 2010 he cocurated the permanent exhibition of Israeli art in the renewed Israel Museum with Yigal Zalmona, and in 2015 he curated the museum’s current permanent display of Israeli art.

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Israel’s 70th Anniversary Edition

T

Seven Dishes for Seven Decades

he long tradition of Jewish food, wrote culinary historian Gil Marks, has always been one of “transforming and transferring,” and Israeli food is no exception. On Israel’s 70th anniversary, we look at Israeli history through food: We selected seven dishes, one for each decade. A word of warning: These dishes by no means represent the entire story of Israeli cuisine. But they can provide your taste buds with a reminder of how the country’s culinary traditions evolved—and what they say about Israeli history.—Vered Guttman

1 9 4 8 –1 95 8

ISTOCKPHOTO

Spurred by austerity, Ashkenazi Jews turn eggplant into “chopped liver”

A key challenge facing the struggling newborn nation was feeding the droves of immigrants arriving at its shores. The shortage of supplies and the lack of foreign currency to import food forced leaders to impose food rationing. Each month, every citizen was allocated, for example, unlimited rye bread, half an ounce of rice and legumes a day, one-and-a-half pounds of onions and about two ounces of meat.

Egg powder and fish oil supplemented the nutrient-scarce diet.

Ashkenazi Jews, coming from a cold European climate to the sunny Mediterranean, were confronted with unfamiliar ingredients, among them eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes. With chickens being scarce and expensive, they were forced to reinvent vegetarian “chopped liver” by frying eggplant, which has a malleable flavor, then putting it through a hand-cranked meat grinder and mixing it with chopped eggs. Unable to buy herring, the immigrants also came up with a herringflavored eggplant salad, topped with green onion, dill, mayo and pickles.

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1968–1978 1 95 8 –1 96 8 Sephardi & Mizrachi Jews introduce spicy fish stew & couscous

A sense of prosperity, coupled with nationalistic euphoria following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, brought a wave of restaurants offering local Palestinian-style fare known as Al Ha’Esh—literally “on the fire.” Shish kebab—grilled cubes of lamb, beef or chicken—and Meorav Yerushalmi, innards—including hearts and sweetbreads— took center stage. These dishes joined tables laden with Levantine mezze of hummus, tahini, chopped vegetable and herb salads, eggplant salads and more. (Israelis around this time learned to love hummus, which remains a national obsession to this day.) A meal of all the above, on a plate or stuffed in pita bread that’s about to explode, remains a staple of Israeli dining and is still considered one of the best ways to celebrate Independence Day. MAY/JUNE 2018 / MOMENT

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CREATIVE COMMONS; ISTOCKPHOTO

In Israel’s second decade, interactions among immigrant groups became more common, and Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews began sharing recipes and kitchen secrets. Among them were Moroccan, Tunisian and Libyan dishes of spicy fish served over couscous, as well as Libyan beef-stuffed potato in tomato sauce, a Turkish burek pastry stuffed with feta cheese or spinach, and ghiveci, a Romanian vegetable stew. Families began to serve a mix of Sephardi and Ashkenazi dishes, and East European chicken soup became a staple of all Israeli Shabbat dinners.

Prosperity leads to local dishes such as grilled meats & mezze

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CREATIVE COMMONS; ISTOCKPHOTO

Pashtida, a Sephardi crustless vegetarian pie, makes its debut

As the country continued to prosper, a new generation of hosts developed a taste for throwing over-the-top dinner parties. Sharing the table with 1970s standards such as cheese balls and pigsin-blankets (called Moses in the Basket) was always at least one pashtida, a simple vegetable kugel that became a national favorite.

Popular variations of pashtida included zucchini, eggplant, spinach and mushroom, with or without cheese, all mixed with eggs and flour and baked to golden perfection. Even today, it’s hard to find an Israeli gathering without at least one variety of pashtida.

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Halvah parfait, with Arab & French influences, sparks a trend

In the 1990s, Israeli chefs began struggling to define Israeli cuisine: Was it a melting pot or a chopped salad of different cuisines that had arrived from the Jewish diaspora? What was the role of the Palestinian food tradition? Some chefs responded to the challenge by creating their own unique modern Israeli cuisine.

Tzahi Bukshester came up with the idea of marrying local Arab sesame halvah with a French classic dessert. It was an immediate sensation, written about in newspapers and copied by other chefs.

The halvah parfait set off a race for new dishes as chefs turned for inspiration to their mothers’ and grandmothers’ traditional recipes, then added in elements from Palestinian cuisine, their own travels, diaspora and world culinary trends.

1998–2008

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2008–2018 Back to basics, Israeli-chef style, with new twists on old favorites

Israeli fusion takes off with dishes such as veal brain croissant

With young chefs liberated from old culinary traditions and adopting a fun-with-food approach to their cooking, Israeli cuisine blossomed. Wildly creative dishes such as veal brain croissant with peppery Moroccan harissa, Libyan tbecha sauce, potato salad and soy-ginger dressing became the norm. This creation, dreamt up by chef Meir Adoni (of the celebrated New York City restaurant Nur), combined traditional Levantine ingredients with North African flavors, and also featured touches of French, Russian and Asian cuisines. I call this decade’s unusual concoctions “Chaotic Fusion” or “What Were We Thinking Cuisine.”

Israeli cooking has swung back to simplicity with a new trend born of the realization that the traditional recipes our foremothers brought with them from the diaspora to Israel are delicious, especially with some new flavors added. The trend is epitomized by chef Eyal Shani’s signature grilled chicken livers with tahini and spicy sauce, which he serves up at his fast-casual eatery in New York City. He grills the real chicken livers that Israel’s early Ashkenazi immigrants longed for and stuffs them into a fluffy Israeli-style pita before topping them with Arab tahini sauce and a spicy salsa.

This version of chicken livers may be the most refined expression of the elusive concept of Israeli cuisine, mixing simple tradition with local ingredients and taking them to new heights.

Vered Guttman is a Washington, DC-based food writer and chef.

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BEN YUSTER AND AL HASHULCHAN MAGAZINE; CREATIVE COMMONS

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BOOK REVIEW | MARILYN COOPER

Legacy of the Inquisition GATEWAY TO THE MOON Mary Morris Nan A. Talese 2018, 352 pp, $20.87

NAN A. TALESE

Entrada de la Luna, New Mexico, is a small town with a big mystery. Why do its Spanish Catholic families light candles on Friday night? Why doesn’t anyone eat pork? The answers, it turns out, lie half a millennium ago, in 15th-century Spain. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered all Jews and Muslims to convert or be expelled from Spain. That same year, Christopher Columbus set sail for America, and with him went Luis de Torres, an interpreter and a converso, a man forced by the Inquisition to convert to Catholicism while still secretly practicing the Jewish faith. Over the centuries, his descendants migrated from Spain and Portugal to Mexico and then, after the Inquisition spread there, settled in what became New Mexico. It is there that awardwinning author Mary Morris’s gripping new novel, Gateway to the Moon, begins in 1992 with the story of the fictional de Torres’s descendant, Miguel Torres, an amateur astronomer and juvenile delinquent (the real Luis de Torre died in Cuba).

Entrada de la Luna (in English, “gateway to the moon”) is a dirt-poor town that ambitious teenagers like Miguel long to leave.

Miguel shares a trailer with his mother, a woman exhausted by the weight of her past traumas; and his father is an alcoholic who 72

earns a living by spray-painting pictures on cars. With few prospects at home, when Miguel sees a flyer for a babysitting job in nearby Santa Fe, he seizes the opportunity.

The Rothsteins, a Jewish family newly transplanted from New York, have come to New Mexico for a fresh start. Miguel loves the family but is surprised to find that many of the Rothsteins’ Jewish customs, such as eating chicken soup on Friday night, remind him of the traditions of his Hispanic Catholic family. Why, he wonders, are Jewish traditions so similar to his own?

Stories of Miguel’s converso ancestors are interwoven throughout the present-day narrative. Beginning in 15th-century Spain and continuing through the European discovery of America, adventurous entrepreneurs and courageous women populate this rich saga of the Sephardic diaspora. Their lives alternate between periods of peace and moments of tragedy when the ever-vigilant Inquisition rears its deadly head. These stories of how the conversos lived, loved and sometimes perished—all while hiding their roots—create a compelling narrative of survival.

In the book, many of Luis de Torres’s descendants long to die as Jews, begging to be killed on their deathbeds so the Mourners Kaddish can be said for them before a priest is able to administer last rites. Others, like Sofia Pera, who married Luis’s grandson Frederico, are arrested and imprisoned in Mexico for trivial offenses—in this case, Sofia and Frederico are turned in by their housemaid and charged with 132 counts of heresy, including “sins” such as sleeping late on Christmas morning. Sofia’s long years in prison include some of the most searing images in the book, and the pain of her isolation is palpable.

Reading these tales of suffering, we begin to understand why conversos repressed their religion. Over time, memories of their Jewish identity vanished, but their ritual practices continued, devoid of meaning.

Despite her heavy topic, Morris is a gifted storyteller, and this vivid novel is a real page turner. She deftly glides back and forth between a wide range of time periods and locales. And while a few of the minor characters and subplots feel a bit superfluous, for the most part the complex plot unfolds easily. Morris is a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of novels, short stories and travel memoirs— she could be a poet, her writing is so richly textured and lyrical.

Parts of the novel’s premise may seem far-fetched and, in fact, tales of converso identity in the Southwest have long been a source of great controversy—a remote possibility magnified by the media but heatedly disputed by many scholars. In his book, To the End of the Earth, New Mexico’s state-appointed historian Stanley Hordes describes his discoveries of genealogical links between families in the Southwest with “vestigial Jewish traditions” and victims of the Inquisition in Mexico, Portugal and Spain. Other historians, however, conclude that these traditions were more likely to have come from a separatist sect of Seventh-Day Adventists in the Southwest.

Regardless, stories of Hispanic Catholics who wear yarmulkes and pray three times a day facing east are an accepted part of the region’s folklore.

Morris’s novel was inspired by a babysitter Morris employed in Santa Fe 25 years ago. He believed himself to be a converso and peppered Morris’s family with endless questions about Jews and Jewish ritual.

Similarly, Morris’s book illuminates the ways in which lives of the past echo in the present, whether we are conscious of it or not. At its core, Gateway to the Moon is a story about spiritual memories, connectedness and the basic human desire to understand where we come from. Morris poignantly captures this in the novel’s epitaph when she quotes the French novelist André Malraux: “The great mystery is not that we have been flung at random among the profusion of the earth and the galaxy of the stars, but that in this prison we can fashion images of ourselves sufficiently powerful to deny our nothingness.”

Marilyn Cooper is Moment’s culture editor.

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BOOK REVIEW | JAY MICHAELSON

The Harvey Nobody Knew to San Francisco. Suddenly, he abandoned his establishment-liberal politics and became a rabble-rousing local activist, writing a newspaper column, organizing meetings and, in 1973, running for city supervisor, the equivalent of city council member.

He lost. Then in 1975, he lost again.

In 1976, he lost a race for State Assemers in 1951 (Harvey was a regular at Hillel, bly. Even the gay political establishment pledged a Jewish fraternity and was an early ridiculed him. But Harvey persisted, and Zionist activist), he wandered for years. after San Francisco changed the Board of Following a stint in the Navy, he lived in Supervisors from being elected by the enLos Angeles, in his parents’ house on Long tire city to representing specific districts in Island, in Dallas, New York, Miami, New 1977, Harvey finally won.

The years 1977 and 1978 were pivotal York again, Dallas again, New York a third time, San Francisco, L.A. again, and finally, for gay rights. In Florida, Anita Bryant was successfully rolling back a local gay rights in 1972, settled in San Francisco for good.

All along, Harvey dreamed of a life in ordinance by depicting gays as child molestthe theater. He enjoyed a peripheral career ers and sexual predators. In California, the in it, but it couldn’t sustain him and he re- issue was the Briggs Initiative, which sought turned, again and again, to jobs he didn’t to bar gays and lesbians from teaching in like: teaching, sales, insurance, finance. Fa- public schools. These and other anti-gay isderman makes a convincing case that even sues finally gave Harvey a chance to shine.

Harvey’s political career was a kind of the- He spoke eloquently and dramatically at the Board of Supervisors, on the streets and in ater for him, one at which he excelled.

Harvey had known he was gay since he front of any audience that would have him. was a teenager—he had hooked up with “op- He cannily built coalitions with unions, era queens” for sexual liaisons at the Met— with African American leaders, even with and in the 1960s, while working on Wall Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple. The Briggs Initiative was defeated, making national news. Harvey was, for a brief shining moment, the most famous gay man in America.

The combination of marginality, He was also outspokenly Jewanti-Semitism, the immigrant ish. Not religiously observant, but a cultural Jew through and experience and some notion of through. As Faderman describes, Jewish prophetic values combined the combination of marginality, in Harvey, as in many of his anti-Semitism, the immigrant exgeneration’s peers, to propel perience and some notion of Jewhim along the path of activism. ish prophetic values combined in Harvey, as in many of his generation’s peers, to propel him along the path of activism. He didn’t Street, he lived a partly open gay life with a hesitate to invoke the Holocaust (again and long-term partner. Surprisingly, however, he again and again) as an example of what hapwas barely aware of the 1969 Stonewall riots pens when hatred is allowed to prevail.

And then, in November 1978, he was in New York City, which are widely credited as the beginning of the modern LGBT murdered by a fellow city supervisor, Dan movement. On the contrary, he thought the White. In fact, White’s motive was resentment at having been double-crossed in a poradicals of the period were naïve.

Still, by 1972, swept up in the spirit of the litical deal by Harvey and by Mayor George times, he’d grown long hair and a scraggly Moscone, not homophobia. But for the gay beard, and made his way, like so many others, community, this was martyrdom, plain and HARVEY MILK Lillian Faderman Yale University Press 2018, 296 pp, $25.00

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Last April, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to name the main terminal at San Francisco International Airport after Harvey Milk, the gay rights martyr who was assassinated 40 years ago. The decision further (and literally) cements Milk’s legacy as the best-known LGBT activist in American history.

Yet the new biography of Milk by one of the world’s leading historians of LGBT life, Lillian Faderman, suggests that we don’t know him that well at all.

All heroes have feet of clay, of course, and Harvey (Faderman calls him by his first name, and so will I—it’s almost part of his persona) was no different. It’s no surprise that, as a third-generation American Jew from New York, Harvey was an irascible, temperamental guy who wouldn’t last long in the age of #metoo. And while his series of intergenerational relationships with increasingly needy young men may scandalize some straight readers, that’s also not so surprising (or unusual) in the gay community.

The most interesting section of the book is the first part, which covers the 45 years of Harvey’s life before his brief period of fame in San Francisco. It turns out that he was a lost soul for most of that time. After growing up in Brooklyn and graduating from the New York State College for Teach74

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simple. White, after all, was a conservative and a homophobe. He and Harvey had sparred openly and often. And now Harvey—who had once said, “if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door”—was dead at age 48.

Faderman does a masterful job of narrating Harvey’s last day, slowing down the pace of the book to a minute-by-minute recap of that fateful morning. She also shows how quickly the legend of Harvey Milk (which culminated in the 2008 biopic Milk, nominated for eight Oscars) replaced the reality.

Which, after all, happens to all martyrs— John F. Kennedy, for example, or even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In death, these figures loom even larger than in life.

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BOOK REVIEW | MARK PENDERGRAST

Life Before Starbucks A RICH BREW: HOW CAFÉS CREATED MODERN JEWISH CULTURE Shachar Pinsker NYU Press 2018, 384 pp, $35.00

NYU PRESS

Since their origin in the early 1500s in Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world, coffee houses have provided an important social meeting place for people from all walks of life, especially creative, political and business types. Over cups of coffee, the best minds became brighter and often more satirical, not only in Mecca, where the governor attempted to ban coffee houses in 1511—the customers were writing nasty verses about him—but throughout Europe, the Middle East, Russia and the United States, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Coffee houses quickly became a new space for public discourse and ethnic mingling. Many attracted a particular type of clientele, such as literati or merchants, and some drew certain religions and ethnic groups, such as Jews.

In A Rich Brew, Shachar Pinsker masterfully documents the impact of café life on Jewish culture throughout the civilized world. He focuses on six essential cities—Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, New York and Tel Aviv/Jaffa—creating overlapping storylines that are not always chronological. A professor of Hebrew literature and culture at the University of Michigan, Pinsker has a deep knowledge of modern Jewish literature, which he 76

mines to good effect in this book. For instance, he quotes Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, about the Viennese cafés he frequented. Herzl wrote in 1887 of the young customers at the Café Griensteidl, who “boldly identified themselves with the idea of bringing about a radical change in all social, political, literary, and artistic affairs, gasping for fresh air, for new directions in defiance of the outdated systems and senescent authorities.”

Pinsker describes a kind of “silk road” of Jewish cultural migration between cities and cafés across borders and continents, tracing a “network of mobility, of interconnected urban cafés that were central to modern Jewish creativity and exchange in

Unlike taverns and bars, however, the cafés were particularly attractive to Jews who sought a sense of a safe, non-alcoholic home and place of community not readily available elsewhere.

a time of migration and urbanization.” In the process, he documents the impact of recessions, war, anti-Semitism, sexism, the arts and squabbles among Jewish factions.

Many of these cafés were owned by Jews, although the coffee houses that Pinsker writes about were part of an overall café culture that served other ethnic groups as well. Unlike taverns and bars, however, the cafés were particularly attractive to Jews who sought a sense of a safe, non-alcoholic home and place of commu-

nity not readily available elsewhere. The Jews may have split into cliques that were prejudiced and judgmental to one another, but their common faith and outsider status tended to unite them, especially as they migrated from city to city.

The book opens in the city of Odessa, which was founded in 1794, making it a relatively new city in the European context. It evolved into a cosmopolitan Russian city on the Black Sea, whose cafés attracted the intelligentsia as well as infamous gangsters. By the late 19th century, Odessa had become the center of modern Jewish literature and culture in Russia, drawing writers such as Sholem Aleichem to the Café Fanconi, where customers read newspapers from all over the world and speculated on currencies and stocks.

Simmering anti-Semitism in Odessa erupted in the 1905 pogroms in which 400 Jews were killed. In that same year, another café, Café Libman, was bombed by socialist-anarchists—ironically, many of the anarchists were Jewish, as were the café’s owner and many customers. By 1913, fashionable Odessa cafés such as Robina’s attracted upwardly mobile, aristocratic Jews who could afford the high-priced food and coffee. But after World War I, antiSemitism exploded again, Yiddish and Hebrew were declared “reactionary” and many Jews fled to Berlin, New York and Tel Aviv. By the 1920s, many cafés in Odessa had closed.

Warsaw, where 375,000 Jews made their home, hosted the largest and most diverse Jewish population in Europe (before the 1939 Nazi invasion).

Yiddish novelist and playwright Sholem Asch arrived in Warsaw in 1900 and wrote in—and about—its cafés. During the interwar period in the newly independent Polish state, divisions deepened within Jewish culture there, as acculturated Jews adopted the Polish language, while others chose to write in Yiddish and Hebrew. Isaac Bashevis Singer explored these issues in his writing about the Tomackie 13 Café, which he called the “temple of Yiddish literature.” In

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this literary café, Jews “ate, drank, chatted, played games, and gossiped,” writes Pinsker. At the Café Ziemianska, writers such as Witold Gombrowicz savored a small black coffee. “A café,” he wrote, “can become an addiction...For a real habitué, not to go to the café at the designated time is simply to fall ill.”

Even within the Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews were confined, persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, coffee houses provided a place for satirical performances about ghetto life. As Polish Jewish survivor Michel Mazor attested, the cafés were “the ghetto’s protest, its affirmation of the right to live.”

In Vienna, most Jews were acculturated into the German language and culture by the late 19th century. In 1900, there were a thousand cafés in Vienna. Leon Trotsky, the Russian-Jewish Marxist, regularly drank coffee at the Café Central, which dominated the cultural and literary scene through World War I. Austrian Jewish novelist Stefan Zweig described the Viennese café as “a democratic club to which admission cost the small price of a cup of coffee.” You could also listen to folk bards such as Velvel Zbarazher perform at Café Hackel. In 1896, an antiSemitic incident occurred when a group of “Christian Social Women” protested outside Café Licht, shouting, “Down with the Jews! Invade the café.”

Viennese cafés were male-dominated spheres, as were the coffee houses in other cities, and the few women who sipped coffee were often treated as sexual objects. “For a woman to be a robust presence in a Viennese café, even if she is an artist, writer, or piano player, was perceived as a form of sexual exposure,” Pinsker observes.

Berlin, New York and Tel Aviv/Jaffa also had their own similar yet unique stories and histories—many with the same characters, who migrated from place to place. In 1884, Berlin’s Café Bauer was a cosmopolitan center for “representatives of nearly every nationality on earth,” observed The New York Times, and offered newspapers and journals in 18 languages.

In 1914, at the beginning of the war, philosopher Walter Benjamin drank huge amounts of black coffee, hoping he would be declared unfit for the military.

New York City, with its huge influx of Eastern European Jews around the turn of the 20th century, developed a similarly

robust café society. Political activist Emma Goldman, newly arrived in New York in 1889, visited Sachs’s Café. She wrote: “The place consisted of two rooms and was packed. Everybody talked, gesticulated, and argued, in Yiddish and Russian, each competing with the other.”

Cafés thrived in Berlin during the interwar Weimar period. They were lively, contentious places, as Yiddish educator and journalist Israel Rubin wrote: “At the tables of the Yiddish writers in the Romanisches Café, all possible topics have already been exhausted…Everyone has been denigrated and slandered.”

And in Tel Aviv, Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British author and journalist who had spent time in Viennese and Berlin cafés, found a new home at the Hakumkum, Israel’s first satirical cabaret. After World War II, the already flourishing café scene in Tel Aviv provided an important space for the revival of Jewish life and culture. Holocaust survivors like Zusman Segalovitsch, a Polish Jew, fled to Tel Aviv and reveled in its cafés, “because in Tel Aviv there are Jews from the diaspora, and I yearn for them.”

The world of these dynamic Jewish cafés is now long gone, although vestiges remain. At the end of the book, Pinsker laments that international chains such as Starbucks have homogenized the coffeehouse experience. But exploring the past explains much of how Jewish history and culture evolved over the last two centuries.

I have a few cavils with this intensely researched book. There are so many characters and cafés that the material is too dense to pleasurably read for long. In other words, readers are unlikely to finish the whole book in a rush. Also, Pinsker occasionally lapses into academese, such as a reference to a “thirdspace” that is “the interplay between subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined.” I never figured out exactly what that meant.

But these are minor issues. A Rich Brew is aptly named. Engagingly illustrated with many contemporary photos and cartoons, it offers a deep dive into the café world of six cities that gave birth to modern Jewish thought and culture.

Mark Pendergrast is the author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, and other books.

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