Summer camping fun

This morning I loaded my 7-year old son onto his very first camp bus for his very first trip to a Jewish overnight camp. It's the same Canadian Young Judaean camp I've been associated with for most of my life. Once there, he'll learn to enjoy being Jewish along with playing baseball, acting in plays, practicing archery, swimming, canoeing, etc.

On the other side of the world, as reported by jpost.com, Palestinian children just like him are also going to camp. They're playing with toy guns and having fun reenacting the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. One day, when my 7-year old is older, he's going to meet Palestinian children. He's going to want to play sports with them, or maybe act or go swimming with them. When they meet him, they're going to want to kidnap him and kill him.

Land for peace?

Land doesn't bring peace. Nor does it bring conflict. Ideas do.

I don't think there will be peace in our generation.

It's Maccabiah!

I've decided to give the political stuff a rest for now. It's Maccabiah season in Israel, and this article from Haaretz links nicely with the material I'm learning in my Israel graduate course. It turns out that a Cuban Jewish teen who recently immigrated to Israel was told one week before the start of Maccabiah that he's too old to play for the junior softball team -- this after having been cleared to play for said team by a Maccabiah staffer three months ago. Apparently, he's just a couple of months shy of the cut-off date. The teen, Yoandry Gil-Levy, was crushed. To put this into some perspective, this is more than just a clerical error. I've been to Cuba and I can personally vouch for the fact that baseball is practically a national religion there. I can't imagine how awful Yoandry must have felt.

What caught my eye about this story is the discussion in my course last week about the IDF's army service and the fact that Haredim are exempt. The army is the great equalizer where people from all sorts of backgrounds learn to work together and rely on one another. It's a bond that holds society together. But isn't this the spirit with which Maccabiah was created? To bring Jews together from all over the world in friendly competition -- to create a bond that will hold global Jewry together? I agree with the writer of this article: the Maccabiah people definitely dropped the ball on this one.

Dead Sea Scrolls in Jpost

I was browsing through the Jerusalem Post online (see link) and was pleasantly surprised to find an article about Jews in Canada. It was, unfortunately, published for a sad reason. Israelis are now fully aware that there exists a small but vocal group within the Toronto Jewish community that denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. They call themselves "Not In Our Name". They can be found picketing every pro-Israel community event standing arm-in-arm with their Palestinian comrades.

And now, thanks to Jpost, Israelis know all about them.

And so they should. My greatest fear is that "Not In Our Name" will grow from being on the fringe of our community to representing a sizable chunk of it. I'm afraid to speculate what that could mean for our relationship to our homeland.

I see unfortunate signs. The Reconstructionist movement within which I work is slowly drifting in that direction — there are some congregations in the movement that refuse to recognize Israel's legitimacy.

Palestinian / Arab revisionism I can handle; it's Jewish anti-Zionism that's hard to combat. We need to educate our children and our communities against this before it gets out of hand.

We spend 2000 years praying for a return to our homeland, and when we finally get it back there are those of us who can't wait to get rid of it. Do other ethnic groups go through this kind of self-flagellation or is it something peculiar to Jews?

No Turkey for Israelis!

I read with interest in my daily news update today that Israelis are starting to shun Turkey, which used to be their #1 vacation spot. This decline coincides with Turkey's anti-Israel stance regarding the recent operation in Gaza. It's certainly gratifying to see so many Israelis responding with their feet and going elsewhere for their vacations. It would be interesting to see what percentage of Turkey's tourism income is generated by Israel, and whether this decline will be enough to signal a change in Turkey's attitude. The last thing Israel needs is another detractor in the region.

Away from politics for a bit...

Hello...

I'm in the process right now of researching new reading material for my Hebrew School library. I'm trying to get away from the dry prayer-based readers in favour of something more engaging. So what have I discovered? An Israeli book publisher has started to translate English leveled readers for primary grades. These are the same readers that are currently being used in the public school system here in Toronto. So far, series for Disney, Franklin and Arthur characters have been translated. These readers are engaging and colourful, and when I tested a sample on my Grade 4's before the end of school I got all thumbs up. While these won't replace the weekly siddur practice I send home with my students, they will form the core of a lending library that I hope will beef up literacy skills in a supplementary program where most kids only come for three hours a week.

Poverty in the West Bank...?

Avi Issacharoff, writing in Ha-Aretz, had something rather interesting to write about this week. Apparently, a new luxury shopping outlet just opened in Jenin, offering consumers high end electronics and other home luxuries. Plans are underway to open four more locations elsewhere in the West Bank. While poverty is certainly a major problem in the Territories, clearly there's enough disposable income -- and enough people who possess such income -- for a Western lifestyle. This to me is welcome news and a sign that Benjamin Netanyahu is correct when he notes that polotical peace must go hand-in-hand with economic development. I hope that this new outlet in Jenin is a sign of the rule in the West Bank rather than the exception. A shape of things to come, I hope!

O-ba-ma!

The Canadian Jewish News this week published a large excerpt of President Obama's speech in Cairo. Like many a good politician, he promises everything to everyone. I have not yet managed to sit through his full speech (I'm working my way through it slowly), but in the end words don't matter. When he says that Israel must halt settlement activity, does no really mean no? To previous presidents, a public no often meant a private yes.

More critically, what will Netanyahu do? The op-ed piece from Ha-Aretz that the CJN published opposite the Obama excerpt wasn't optimistic. According to the writer, Bibi wants to continue the "natural growth" of existing settlements; Bibi is further away from Mahmoud Abbas than Olmert or Livni; and Bibi shows no real interest in a settlement with Syria. It's hard to know how accurate these assertions are. I look forward to browsing jpost online for another view.