Friday, May 29, 2009

BOOK REVIEW

I was walking down the street when I heard loud noises as if a thousand students were engaged in a heated argument about how many angels were on the head of a pin. I looked up and saw this building, "The Rabbi KOOK Universal Yeshiva." What more can I say!


Ultra-orthodox Women: When an Ultra woman gets married she puts on a head covering, either a wig or a scarf. I have just learned to my dismay that I (actually, no man) is allowed to touch this woman (except her husband). That includes no handshakes, however a Heimlich maneuver would come under the "life or death" exception. Some women extend this prohibition to hugging their own sons. Before marriage an Ultra can grow and groom her hair presumably so she can attract a husband. I asked my female, secular haircutter the reason for the rule and she got really embarrassed and said, "you don't want to know." Which, of course, made me want to know more. Then she said, "the hair on a woman's head is the same as the hair (and then she pointed to below her waist)" She turned beet red, I hesitated, not quite getting it, and then we both broke out into laughter. As she explained a bit further, if a man sees the hair on a woman's head, it is the same as if he had seen her naked. I guess this is why one needs a Rabbi Kook to have all of this explained.


Great Book: I just finished reading The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes by Avraham Burg who is a prominent Israeli politician and former head of the Labor Party. It was a fantastically insightful book and here is a short review of the highlights.

1. The expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries (after 1948) was a very significant and traumatic experience, where many of those families had roots and traditions going back hundreds of years, more than most Israelis. This experience is trivialized by the European Jews who claim it was insignificant compared to their REAL and only Shoah.

2. Arab Jews who came to Israel missed a great opportunity to bond with the Arab Palestinians who they shared a language and at some points a common culture. They could have been the bridge between the European Jews and the Palestinians.

3. When Burg travels abroad he adopts a cooperative style of discourse; he negotiates in good-faith and looks for win/win outcomes to negotiations. When in Israel, he is much more competitive, he fights for win/lose outcomes. He realized that he felt more comfortable with his “abroad” personality than his Israeli one.

4. Before the Holocaust Israelis had a positive, can do attitude. They believed in themselves and the ideals of a nation. After the Holocaust, the country became filled with Holocaust survivors who were “damaged” in many ways. There was a feeling of “victimhood” and every political crisis became a matter of life or death containing the claim of another Holocaust, i.e. the Iranian crisis is a good example.

5. The Israelis forgave the Germans too fast. Within a short period of time, (by 1950) the Germans expressed regret; there were reparations and soon normalized trade relations. Underneath, however there was still much Survivor hatred and that was directed in exaggerated force against the Arabs whose crimes (if any) were hardly as significant as the Nazis.

6. The Eichmann trial could have been a universal message to the world that Jews oppose genocide and totalitarianism everywhere for everyone. Instead, the Israelis turned the Eichmann trial into something that was just personal to Jews; condemned exclusively was the Nazis' actions against European Jews, not the inhumanity of people to people

7. This process not only raised the European Holocaust in importance above all other genocides, but other similar crimes against humanity in Armenia, Africa, Cambodia and Serbia were either trivialized, ignored or even found Israelis on the side of the perpetrators



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