The State of the Jews

I’m back to blogging after a hectic couple of months that included reserve duty and getting back into my studies. Here are some recent issues that came up that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

When Sheldon Adelson was feted like a head of state at 2008’s lavish star-studded President’s Conference – because he had paid for it – popular Yediot Ahronot columnist Nahum Barnea said (I’m paraphrasing), “someone bought my country’s birthday for $3 million.”

Now, Israel is accepting money from the Rothschild Foundation to conduct “emergency repairs” at the President’s House – the official residence of our head of state.

There’s something disturbing in this trend of allowing others, even well-meaning Jews, to finance Israel’s basic symbols of sovereignty.

It’s not as though we are a frugal nation. Millions of shekels are spent each year on unnecessary ministries (not satisfied with several ministers-without-portfolio, this government actually has a deputy minister-without-portfolio), hundreds of millions of shekels on one ugly bridge in Jerusalem and redundant, politically-inspired “projects” that eat up huge chunks of the budget of the Education Ministry.

If we can’t pony up $500,000 for “emergency repairs” at the President’s House or $3,000,000 for the national birthday party, then we don’t actually care about either.

Try to imagine the White House holding off on urgent repairs until they got matching funds from the Ford Foundation.

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

Israel’s Cabinet is expected to approve today acceptance of a $500,000 grant from the Rothschild Foundation to carry our emergency repairs at Beit Ha’Nassi, the official residence of Israel’s President. This will cover approximately half the cost of needed structural repairs caused by years of neglect at the complex. The Ministry of Finance has issued the necessary sign-offs.

Completed in 1971, with no infrastructure updates since, the complex suffers from – among other things – faulty wiring, serious mold issues, and a lack of adequate facilities for official receptions and press coverage. Last year, Peres was able to secure government approval for a $3 million grounds overhaul paid for by the Jewish National Fund prior to the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.

Assuming approval, work is planned to begin immediately.

Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress, continues his effort to punish and pressure Israel into more concessions toward the Palestinians. Writing in The Nation, he warns:

Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that “achievement,” one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.

Don’t believe it. Siegman’s vision suffers from a disparity between the real Israel and the Israel he believes he knows.

For example, he argues that “it is now widely recognized in most Israeli circles–although denied by Israel’s government–that the settlements have become so widespread and so deeply implanted in the West Bank as to rule out the possibility of their removal (except for a few isolated and sparsely populated ones) by this or any future Israeli government unless compelled to do so by international intervention, an eventuality until now considered entirely unlikely.”

Really? When over 80% of settlers live on 5% of the West Bank, most of it adjacent to the Green Line, when the popular reaction to the Disengagement from Gaza was an overwhelming yawn – no Galilee bed-and-breakfast and no Tel Aviv beach was empty during those two ostensibly traumatic weeks in August 2005.

The settlements can be removed, and the vast centrist Israeli mainstream that has so far escaped the notice of an ignorant world media will implement this removal. But only when it knows that the Palestinians won’t use the withdrawal from the West Bank the way they used the one from Gaza.

In short, Siegman is not a serious observer of Israel.

In 2008, he wrote another piece in the Nation seeking to prove Israel’s dishonesty in peacemaking. His sole proof: the settlements. Always the settlements.

It would be one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a Palestinian state until certain security concerns had been dealt with. But no government serious about a two-state solution to the conflict would have pursued, without letup, the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands, which even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.

I’m a big fan of American Jews taking Israel to the cleaners. I am genuinely mystified at their failure to protest the corrupt Israeli rabbinate’s efforts to define who is Jewish, or the complete absence of education about the Diaspora in all 12 years of an Israeli’s schooling, or the lack of Israeli support for Diaspora education while Israel joyfully drinks up American Jewish love and money with barely an acknowledging nod.

But the criticism on the peace process is not serious, and is repeatedly disproven by events. To insist on punishing Israel at this stage, Siegman must ignore the simple glaring fact that the Palestinians are refusing to prove the Israelis’ intransigence through, um, negotiating.

Yes, there are settlements. And yes, the settlement movement is a serious constituency with a resonant narrative. So it would be excruciatingly difficult for Netanyahu to take on the entire far-right unless he can show the mainstream that there is a reason to do so.

But it is also true that the settlers have lost every time they were challenged – in Sinai, Gaza and the current extra-Jerusalemite freeze. The broader culture war within Israel over the past two decades has left them marginalized politically. It is only Palestinian brutality that has left the majority of the settlements intact.

To seriously suggest further punishment of Israel without giving even casual consideration to the simple fact that the Palestinians have yet to concede anything in 17 years of negotiations – not even simple rhetorical gestures such as recognition of the Jews’ right to self-determination – is either stupid or willfully disingenuous.

You don’t trust Netanyahu? Fine. But right now, it isn’t Netanyahu that has to prove his good faith and capacity for peacemaking.

Pressure Israel all you want. As Obama has discovered in recent months, the Palestinians will only up their demands and push off the inevitable compromise.

Last week, I argued that Taglit-birthright israel is an astonishing, unexpected success, but that the communities that send their young people to it have failed them by neglecting any follow-up programming. Thus, the experience doesn’t get a chance to transform into a long-term identity-building relationship with the Jewish world.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner, who directs one of the largest post-birthright programs in North America, begs to differ.

The JPost published a short letter from him. I’m publishing the full text (which he emailed me).

Post-birthright programs, he says, are “invisible” beside the thousands of birthright buses crisscrossing Israel. But they’re there, and they’re huge.

Birthright Israel’s Post-Trip Doubling Effect

Rabbi Daniel S Brenner

In his opinion piece on December 30th, 2009 Haviv Rettig Gur writes regarding Taglit- Birthright Israel “these connections are wasted if they are not directed at new Jewish experiences back home.” He ends the piece with a short question: “Where’s the follow-up?”

The work of “follow-up” is not as apparent to the public eye as the sight of hundreds of Taglit- banner buses on Israel’s roads. But since I have the pleasure of working with a young staff who have succeeded in providing new Jewish experiences to over fifty thousand Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni in North America during the past year, I have the opportunity to see the follow-up every day. Here is one example:

In 2009, the total number of Taglit-Birthright Israel North American trip participants for 2009 was just shy of 19,000. In the last few months, we have worked with volunteer leaders from those buses to host over 12,200 young adults for home-hospitality Shabbat meals in North America. 93% of our NEXT Shabbat meals involved some or all of the core ritual elements of Shabbat. More importantly, we found that nearly every volunteer felt that this was a positive Jewish communal experience and wanted to host again and get more involved in their local community. By the end of 2010, volunteers from this group of 19,000 trip participants will have hosted over 30,000 young adults for a NEXT Shabbat event.

This particular program is one of four areas of focus for Birthright Israel NEXT that begin on the trip and flow naturally into involvement post-trip (the others being Hebrew language learning, deepening the Israel connection and encouraging community involvement). In addition to the Shabbat program, Birthright Israel NEXT runs ulpanim for young adults in ten North American cities, works with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through local consulates in select cities to deepen ties to Israel, and has involved thousands of post-college young Jewish adults by partnering with local Jewish and Israel-focused organizations (we linked up with thirty-two such organizations in the last year). It is through these four areas (and through many partners) that we are on track to involve 100,000 young Jewish adults in our programming in 2010.

These figures do not count the “ramping up” of programs from our on campus partner Hillel and from our colleagues at MASA, two organizations who have certainly devoted significant energy to “Birthright follow-up” in the last two years. Nor do they include the work of forward-thinking Federations, like the CJP in Boston, that have adopted new models on campus that are delivering follow-up success.

Gur asks the right questions, but I would like to offer a counter-analysis. Those young adults who go on Taglit-Birthright Israel trips and then get involved in Birthright Israel NEXT or with campus-based partners are actually doubling and in many cases quadrupling the overall impact of the trip. In our programs, we see young Jewish women and men come off of their Israel trips with a spark of energy that causes them to reach out to their friends (most of whom have not gone to Israel) and involve them in Jewish life. As a result they are transforming their social circles and injecting Jewish content and Jewish experiences in ways that they never did before. Our job at NEXT is to work within these social circles and to provide critical initial steps that will help grow sparks into new commitments. Those commitments, however, ultimately require the active engagement of young adults by the entire Jewish community. We hope to partner with many more community-based organizations, both established and emerging, as we continue to grow.

Although it is often unseen, Taglit-Birthright Israel participants are quietly transforming their generation in North America and every Jewish organization has the potential to benefit from their renewed passion for Israel and for Jewish life.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner
Executive Director
Birthright Israel NEXT

UPDATE: Dan Ben-David rejects the Ha’aretz headline, which he says was a misinterpretation that stretched his original words to places he did not intend. If anything, he notes, folks such as the immigrant volunteer soldiers from Western lands are keeping Israel afloat despite its deep structural problems.

Regardless of the mistakes in this article or the debate raging at JPost about aliya, I urge you to delve into Ben-David’s research and advocacy, a good sample of which was published this Friday in Ha’aretz.

I leave the post up only because I’m loathe to change (too much) the original record. But Ben-David says he emphatically does not mean to discourage aliya, and that his words were misunderstood and taken out of context.

ORIGINAL: First, the JPost claimed aliya from America won’t come. Now Ha’aretz is reporting that even if it does, Israel is doomed.

Here, Ha’aretz reports on a lecture by Prof. Dan Ben-David about how Anglo aliya won’t reverse the destructive social trends that everyone seems to be ignoring.

The boost in Anglo immigration in 2009 will not help ensure Israel’s survival as a Western and Jewish democracy over the next two decades, a leading economist told an astonished crowd of lone immigrant soldiers on Wednesday. “It feels strange to say this to people who chose Israel, but our current trend means fewer people will come here and more will leave as our position deteriorates.”

He told the crowd that Israeli society’s situation is “unsustainable” because of a “growing group which does not work, does not study and does not produce.”

This group, of course, are large swaths of the Arab and Ultra-Orthodox minorities.

If you don’t know Ben-David’s research, you’re seriously behind the curve. Forget the peace process – this stuff is what will make or break Israel’s future.

Unbelievable. A once-in-a-decade event. Enjoy it while it lasts. YNet, the largest Israeli news site (in Hebrew, at least) is leading with a story about the next Jewish decade.

Of course, the story is negative, predicting a shrinking Diaspora and a demographic crisis in Israel. But at least we’ve discovered how to punch through Israeli media’s deep disdain for Jewish issues: wait a decade, make it grim.

Here it is, preserved as evidence of this rare event:

Anshel Pfeffer, my colleague at Ha’aretz, reports from the frontlines of the ongoing intra-haredi culture war in Israel:

Two Charedi news websites closed down this week and a wave of resignations has hit other sites following the strictest rabbinical ruling against the internet to date.

A letter signed two weeks ago by some of the most senior rabbis of the Charedi community in Israel, including Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Aharon Leib Steinman and the leaders of the main Chasidic sects, reiterates a “severe prohibition of private usage of internet in every home”.

But it particularly singled out the ostensibly Charedi websites which have flourished in recent years, supplying insider news and gossip to tens of thousands of eager readers.

These sites, according to the letter, disseminate “lies and terrible impurity”, besmirch the community and cause many to “use the filthy internet which has caused many to commit many serious sins of the Torah of a nature that should not be mentioned”.

The result so far is that two websites, which had invested large sums in design and a team of reporters and editors, have already closed down. Other sites which are trying to hold out have suffered a rash of resignations by editors and writers who are afraid of the consequences of defying their rabbis.

Hat tip: Religion and State in Israel