THE ISRAEL ENGAGED CAMPUS a Joint Initiative of the Jewish Agency and Hillel

THE ISRAEL ENGAGED CAMPUS A joint initiative of The Jewish Agency and Hillel

EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

Table of Contents

HaDag Nahash Workshop ...... 5 Bella Bellissima ...... 8 Rak Po – Only Here ...... 13 Here I Come ...... 16 Time to wake up ...... 19 Friday – Yom Shishi ...... 21

Film Series Metallic Blues ...... 25 Waltz With Bashir...... 28 Aviva My Love...... 46 Joy ...... 51

Headlines for Identity ...... 55

Black History Month Black Over White ...... 61 These Are My Names ...... 62 Israel, Jews And Social Justice Work In Africa...... 68

LGBT History Month Ima and Abbaz ...... 77 Gay Days ...... 82

Book Guides The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God And Other Stories ...... 88 My Promised Land ...... 91 Facilitator’s guide ...... 96 Chapter One: At First Sight, 1897 ...... 101 Conversation One | Chapter Two: Into the Valley, 1921 ...... 104 Conversation Two | Chapter Four: Masada, 1942...... 113 Conversation Three | Chapter Five: Lydda 1948...... 119 Conversation Four | Chapter Six: Housing Estate 1957 ...... 126

Conversation Five | Chapter Eight: Settlement 1975 ...... 133 Conversation Six | Chapter Ten: Peace 1993...... 140 Conversation Seven | Chapter Eleven: J’accuse 1999 ...... 146 Conversation Eight | Chapter Thirteen: Up The Galilee 2003...... 153

Introduction

The goal of the Israel Engaged Campus (IEC) is to ensure that Jewish college students develop a vibrant and enduring relationship to Israel and Israelis, and that there is a campus environment that is supportive of Israel.

This sourcebook contains a wide range of educational materials to be used thoughtfully in campus settings. These pieces include an Israeli music workshop that is ready to go, film guides that can be used after large-scale or smaller screenings, a toolkit to raise the bar when it comes addressing news headlines coming out of Israel, materials for two of the campus-wide themed months (including a fundraising campaign), and book guides (both for short stories and a chapter-by-chapter reading of a full length book).

We believe that with the right combination of these resources, you can attract new, different, and larger students to campus dialogue around Israel. We have provided a wide variety of ways in to Israel engagement, and shattered the myth that to be involved, you must be politically aware and engaged. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to Israel, and this collection reflects that approach.

We encourage you to mix and match, to fine-tune and custom tailor these materials to your campus culture.

Good Luck!

The Makom Educational Team

HaDag Nahash Workshop This stand-alone workshop combines Israeli arts with the social-political issues that inspire Hadag Nahash’s work. It can be used independently, or in conjunction with a musical performance by the band. About HaDag Nahash This is taken directly from the band’s website, together with weird translations from the Hebrew!

“Booming out of Jerusalem in 1996 HADAG NAHASH, became the biggest band Israel has to offer. Its music combines fresh Hip Hop, rock, reggae and funk sounds, and serves as a melting pot of tight grooves with Middle Eastern flavor. Their unique sound attracted many dedicated followers, as well as vast media reception. They’ve gained momentum year after year, and today are considered the best selling Hip Hop artist in Israel.

Starting early on in their career, Hadag Nahash managed to walk the fine line between popularity to social agenda. Known for their fevering agenda, they’ve become the critics and social moral of the Israeli society. Their songs promote equality and civil rights, and create a soundtrack to the local struggle against racism and corruption. This unique perspective made them the center of attention, both both internationally and locally. Throughout the years, Hadag Nahash members have volunteered for various social causes around Israel. They are especially known for their activity in “the one shekel festival”, which is an NGO aimed at bridging cultural gaps, that was created by band member Shaanan Streett some nine years ago

15 years after the release of their debut album, their bass vibes still boom the radio stations in Israel. They’ve received recognition over and over, and were rewarded for their work six times, with awards including: best band of the year, album of the year, best video of the year and best lyricists of the year. Almost every album they’ve released attained gold or platinum status. Israeli TV has aired documentary films about the band, its music, and its activities, several times.

Hadag Nahash’s success and agenda has paved their way to sharing stages with American acts such as The Black Eyed Peas and Cypress Hill, and European acts like The Streets and Leroy (Saian Supa Crew). They’ve toured Europe and the USA several times. In 2008 Hadag Nahash contributed their music to Adam Sandler’s movie “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan”, which exposed their unique and creative sound to a vast audience worldwide.

Early 2013 the band released a new single “Complaint About The Political Parties Of Israel” followed by their 6th studio album, the musically versatile “Zman Lehitorer”. The album fused various elements such as contemporary Electronic EDM music, Ethnic Arabic & middle eastern sounds and the band’s trademark Funky Hip-Hop vibe. Lyrically the new album once again displayed Hadag Nahash’s ability to deliver a message of social & political awareness without losing their humor & groove, while still relating to the everyday life of their fans. In this album, Hadag Nahash spoke to them and prove once more their deep connection to the fans.

The Album yielded five chart topping singles that got massive radio airplay & their videos were hugely popular at the various local music TV stations: “Kovlana Al Miflagot Israel” (Complatin About The Political Parties of Israel), “Zman Lehitorer” (Time To Wake Up), “Mabsut” (Happy), “Yom Shishi” (Friday) and “Hakol Yistader” (Everything Will Work Out) featuring the up and coming Israeli rapper Peled) .

The release of the album was also followed by a very successful nationwide tour which saw the band playing to packed venues all through Israel and took them to various tours in Europe, the America’s & Asia.”

Aims This activity aims to:  Expose participants to the range and nature of the music of HaDag Nahash  Introduce participants to social issues in Israel through the music of HaDag Nahash  Bring participants to a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of the songs through translation, discussion and study, that may open their eyes to the riches of Israeli contemporary culture.

Equipment In order for this activity to have any value, you must make sure you have:  Excellent loud speakers that connect to your computer, and the permission to play the music loudly without anyone complaining. Do not make do with “office speakers”. Test the sound in the room beforehand, to make sure it are strong enough to fill the particular room. This is essential!  Computer projector  Screen (not bare wall)  Computer  Excellent connection to internet, and/or downloads of all the video clips (keepvid.com seems to do the job)  Print-outs of all translations

Make it modular This activity is made up of 5 songs. Each is listened to, discussed, and explored. As such, the activity can be taken in pieces, according to your time and goals. The more songs the participants experience, the more they gain an understanding of the breadth of the band’s work and the breadth of Israeli society, but you should allow yourself to judge how many songs are ideal to cover in one session. (You may also decide that – given your participants – you would like to focus a two hour session on only one discussion-provoking song).

The Five Songs Bella Belissima Only Here Here I Come Time to Wake Up Friday

בלה בליסימה Bella Bellissima By HaDag Nahash

זה סיפור איתו ראוי ילדים לחנך This is a story worth educating children with זה סיפור ראוי This is a worthy story

Tuesday, 12th May, 1992 יום שלישי, 12 במאי, A woman steps out of her house in Jerusalem 1992 יוצאת אישה מביתה בירושלים Normal standard day nothing special like any יום רגיל סטנדרטי לא מיוחד כמו כל הימים other day פול ילדים ברחובות היתה שביתת מורים A load of kids in the streets – there was a באותה שעה ממש מחבל נאלח teachers’ strike משליך סכין מטבח איתה דקר שני נערים חפים Same time exactly a revolting terrorist Pulls out a kitchen knife and with it stabs two innocent kids

עוד פיגוע מטורף אכזרי Another mad cruel attack עוד פיגוע לאומני Another nationalist attack

הוא פותח במנוסה כי אחריו דולק המון He sets off running because a mob is in pursuit שתופס אותו כעבור מספר שניות בתוך חניון And catches him after a few seconds in the עשרות אנשים בועטים בו הם רוצים לסגור חשבון carpark tens of people kicking him – they want to close the score

אני לא שופט אותם, זה מקרה בלי הגיון I don’t judge them, it’s an irrational event זה מצב פגום, עגום, ארור, לא ברור It’s a flawed situation, awful, revolting, unclear

But then turns up the woman and alters the end אבל אז מגיעה האישה ומשנה את סוף הסיפור of the story Because she straight off throws herself on the כי על המחבל היא מיד נשכבת ומגוננת בגופה terrorist and על טרוריסט אבל גם אדם שבלי גופה היה גופה protects with her body the terrorist who is also a human though without her body would have ended up a corpse

"אני לא מבין, לא פחדת עם מטורף מתחתייך I don’t understand, weren’t you afraid with that“ וההמון כה קרוב ? ?madman beneath you and the mob so close “Wouldn’t it have been easier to get up and לא היה קל יותר לקום ולעזוב "? ”?leave

ענתה לעיתונאי שלא היה לה זמן לחשוב She replied to the journalist that she didn’t have ענתה לעיתונאי שלא היה לה זמן לחשוב .time to think She replied to the journalist that she didn’t have time to think.

Bella Bellissima… בלה בליסימה בלה בליסימה ... That incident with the woman is engraved in my המקרה של האישה הזאת נחרט לי בראש head

מאיפה הכח לשכב בלי לזוז, בלי לחשוש Where did she get the strength to lie there without moving, without fear

I ask myself what I would have done in her שואל את עצמי מה הייתי עושה במקומה place לו בדיוק באותה שעה הייתי נקלע לסביבה If at the same moment I had been in the area ברור לי שלא הייתי בא ובועט It’s clear to me that I wouldn’t have gone over to אבל אם להיות הגון ולומר את האמת boot him לא נראה לי שהייתי מסוגל לנהוג כמוה But to be fair and to tell the truth הרבה יותר מתאים לי לקום ולברוח I don’t think I would have been capable of אז מקסימום לנסות למצוא שוטר או משהו behaving like her Much more typical for me to get up and run away Or at the most to try to find a policeman or something

אבל היא שכבה שם עד שכוחותיה תשו But she lay there until her strength waned עשרים דקות היא חטפה שם בעיטות minutes she took all those kicks 20 הילדים שלה ראו ולא הפסיקו לבכות . .Her kids watched and didn’t stop crying

Bella Bellissima… בלה בליסימה בלה בליסימה ...

הגברת לסמל לא הפכה This lady did not turn into a symbol ושמה נמחק למעשה מהתודעה . And in effect her name has been erased from אין בול שלה .consciousness אולי כי ישראל עוד בשלה ולא בשלה There is no stamp with her face Perhaps because Israel is not yet ready and is לאמץ לחיקה גיבור not willing To bring to its breast a hero

שגבורתו לא מלחמתית, גיבור whose heroism is not war-like, a hero שגבורתו היא לא צבאית, גיבור whose heroism is not military, a hero שגבורתו רק מוסרית , whose heroism is just moral a hero who is a woman, and a haredit at that. גיבור אישה, ועוד חרדית . Know this, dear woman, that I did not forget דעי לך אישה יקרה שלא שכחתי The story of your heroism I promised to myself את סיפור גבורתך לעצמי הבטחתי That this story is worth educating children with שזה סיפור איתו ראוי ילדים לחנך זה סיפור איתו ראוי ילדים לחנך It’s a story that is worth educating children with זה סיפור איתו ראוי ילדים לחנך It’s a story that is worth educating children with It’s a story that’s worthy זה סיפור ראוי

Bella Bellissima… בלה בליסימה

Instructions 1. Play the song. 2. Gather initial comments, taking care to clarify where the comments are about the music style, and where they are about the content of the lyrics. Where there are questions of clarification (eg “to what does this refer?”), and where questions of interpretation (eg “how should I understand what this means”?) 3. Hand out the lyrics, and play the song again, asking participants to follow.

Information The song tells a true story. The woman’s name is Bella Freund, and she did indeed save the life of a terrorist. Since Shaanan Streett, who wrote the lyrics, did not know how to contact her, he chose not to give her full name in the song. Some time after the song emerged, a TV crew arranged a meeting between the two.

The significance of her being a Haredi woman is that – quite apart assumptions of Haredim being ambivalent about the modern State of Israel – Haredi ultra-Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law would forbid a woman from engaging in any form of physical contact with another man. Freund lay on top of the terrorist for twenty minutes until the police arrived on the scene.

When Shaanan asked her again the question of the “Journalist” – why had she done what she did? She replied to him with one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou Shalt not Kill.” Who was she preventing from doing the killing? After all, the terrorist had already committed his crime. She explained she was preventing the people in the revenge mob from committing such a mortal sin.

This article appeared in 1992 in the Sun Sentinel:

Israeli Woman Protects Arab From Lynching

May 16, 1992|By ABRAHAM RABINOVICH, Special to the Sun-Sentinel

JERUSALEM -- A mother of eight who saved a young Palestinian terrorist from a possible lynching this week by shielding him from an angry crowd and absorbing blows said on Friday that as a daughter of Holocaust survivors, she had felt impelled to prevent violence.

The woman, Bella Freund, was kicked and punched by the crowd when she placed herself in front of a cornered Palestinian, Adnan al-Afandi, 21, who had stabbed two Israeli teen-agers.

Freund, a member of Jerusalem`s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, shielded the Palestinian with her body until police arrived -- defying the angry crowd, some of whom had drawn pistols.

``If he had been killed by the mob, it would have been a national disgrace,`` she said on Friday. ``We are a country of law.``

Freund, 4l, a former special education teacher and mother of eight children ages 7 to 21, was in a downtown shopping center on Tuesday with two of her daughters. She said she saw a crowd of men chasing someone into the building`s parking garage.

``I was swept along by the crowd,`` she said. ``I heard people shouting `terrorist` and some men had drawn guns, but I saw that the Arab was no longer armed. Someone had to take responsibility.

``I decided I would do it. I thought that if I didn`t cover him, they would kill him.``

Angry men kicked her in the ribs and called her a ``leftist bitch.`` Actually, Freund said, she votes for a right-wing party.

The Arab she saved, al-Afandi, a construction worker employed in Jerusalem, is a resident of a refugee camp near Bethlehem.

Shouting in Arabic, ``God is great,`` he attacked a group of high school students who were walking by the building where he was working. Two youths, 13 and 18, suffered superficial knife wounds. Passers-by pursued al-Afandi until Freund intervened.

Since the incident, Freund`s home has been flooded with telephone calls. While most have been supportive, others have criticized her for interfering in what the callers said was natural justice.

Israel`s chief rabbi, Avraham Shapira, supported Freund`s action: ``From the moment a terrorist is apprehended and there is no danger that he can harm anyone, it is forbidden to do anything to hurt him.``

However, Freund, said she was not motivated by religious feeling. ``I`m not ashamed of my deep attachment to religion, but I acted out of humanistic motives,`` she said. ``My parents were Holocaust survivors, and I cannot stand to see violence.``

In 2013 the same terrorist was released from prison in a prisoner exchange deal. Freund expressed her disappointment: "He came to stab Jewish children. I, as a civilian, gathered all my strength and did what the law required of me, and I delivered the terrorist to the authorities. They took him, tried him, and now they're freeing him. It cheapens the rule of law, and makes me feel that the country is betraying its citizens. It sends a very bad message."

Who is a Hero? Perhaps because Israel is not yet ready and is not willing To bring to its breast a hero

whose heroism is not war-like, a hero whose heroism is not military, a hero whose heroism is just moral

a hero who is a woman

 What kind of hero do you believe your country is ready to bring to its breast?  How would you define a hero?

The lyrics are in direct dialog with the eternal question-and-answer sequence of Ethics of the Fathers, which asks:

אֵיזֶהּו גִּבֹור? הַּכֹובֵׁש אֶת יִצְרֹו, ׁשֶ נֶאֱמַר :משלי טז, לב טֹוב אֶרֶ ְך אַ פַיִם מִגִּבֹור ּומׁשֵל ּבְרּוחֹו מִֹּלכֵד עִיר.

Who is a hero? One who conquers their impulse to rage, as it is written, "One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one who rules over their spirit than one who conquers a city" (Proverbs 16:32)

 How does this definition of heroism square with yours? Or that of your society?

Rak Po – Only Here By HaDag Nahash

רואה יפנים קונים בקיוסק ממול I see some Japanese shopping at the kiosk איזה כיף לאנשים שבשבילם פה זה חו"ל across the way על פניו ישראל בסדר בגדול What fun for people that for them, here is ‘overseas’ בניו יורק יש מיליונים שאין להם מה לאכול. Basically, Israel is okay on the face of it אבל מדגדג לי להתרחק In New York there are millions without food מהמקום הזה להתנתק להתנתקות להתעופף But I’ve got this itch to get away from this לפחות לתקופה להתחפף place detach, clean out, space out ולשים סופית מאחורי At least for a while, to hang out את הלבטים הנוגעים לארץ מגורי. And finally put behind me the doubts about my country

כי רק פה Because only here אין משמעות ללא נעים. unpleasant” has no meaning“ רק פה Because only here Power is more important than pleasure שלטון פחות חשוב ממנעמים. Only here רק פה שלושה ראשי ממשלה נחקרים Prime Ministers are under investigation 3 ולא משתפים פעולה. …And aren’t cooperating

רק פה אני מרגיש שייכות (Only here (rak po למרות שאני כועס על השחיתות I feel I belong Although I’m angry about the corruption

"ואם אתה בחו"ל נמצא ועל פיצוץ שומע?" And if you find yourself abroad and hear of“ אז רק לפה פתאום אני מתגעגע. ”?an explosion So I suddenly long to be Only Here

I only get to smoke local stuff here נשאר לי לעשן רק חומר מקומי When in a coffee shop in Amsterdam it’s הקופי שופ באמסטרדם זה בינלאומי international מסתכל מבסוט על השפשוף שבג'ינס Look at my faded jeans with pride מהרהר בבלוז בבר בניו אורלינס And wonder about the blues in a bar in New חושב על הריוויירה כשאני עובר ליד אכזיב Orleans מפליג כמו בוונציה בחורף Think about the Riviera when I go past בדרום תל אביב Achsiv1 Boat like in Venice in the Winter 2 in South Tel Aviv כי רק פה יש שוטף90+ Because only here רק פה The pay comes in 4 months late כולם רוצים להיות כרישים Because only here רק פה Everyone wants to be a shark כשאתה עובר ליד בית עסק Because only here אתה נרגע אם אתה רואה איזה רולה עם נשק. When you pass a place of business you relax when you see a guy with a gun3

רק פה אני מרגיש שייכות Only here (rak po) I feel I belong למרות שאני כועס על השחיתות Although I’m angry about the corruption

“And if you find yourself abroad and hear of "ואם אתה בחו"ל נמצא ועל פיצוץ שומע?" an explosion?” אז רק לפה פתאום אני מתגעגע. So I suddenly long to be Only Here

הכל אצלי עניין של הרגל It’s all a matter of habit with me סך הכול סבבה להתגלגל בישראל. All in all it’s cool to hang out in Israel הכל אצלי עניין של מה בא לי With me it’s all about what I’m into חלק מהכפר או חלק מהגלובלי. To be part of the village or part of the global

כי רק פה כולם מדברים בעברית Because only here ומקללים ברוסית, אנגלית וערבית. We talk in Hebrew רק פה And swear in Russian, Arabic, and English Because only here אנשים הולכים מכות בתור. We queue up to exchange blows רק פה Because only here כולם בצבא ורוצים פטור. Everyone’s in the army and all want exemptions

רק פה אני מרגיש שייכות Only here (rak po) I feel I belong למרות שאני כועס על השחיתות Although I’m angry about the corruption

Only here רק פה בחויבי ובשלילי. The positive with the negative רק פה הכל מוכר מרגיש שלי. Only here everything’s familiar feels like mine רק פה לי נוח זה הסיכום Only here I feel comfortable אז למה לי לברוח לכל מקום ביקום? That’s the conclusion So what’s the point of running away all over the cosmos?

רק פה אני מרגיש שייכות Only here (rak po) I feel I belong למרות שאני כועס על השחיתות Although I’m angry about the corruption

“And if you find yourself abroad and hear of "ואם אתה בחו"ל נמצא ועל פיצוץ שומע?" ”?an explosion אני קולט מאיפה באתי I realize where I came from ומזדעזע. And go into shock…

______1. Achsiv is a beach resort in the North of Israel. 2. During the winter rains there is often flooding in South Tel Aviv, the poorer end of Tel Aviv, where infrastructure is aging. 3. A security guard…

Instructions

1. Play the song. 2. Gather initial comments, taking care to clarify where the comments are about the music style, and where they are about the content of the lyrics. Where there are questions of clarification (eg “to what does this refer?”), and where questions of interpretation (eg “how should I understand what this mean?) 3. Hand out the lyrics, and play the song again, asking participants to follow. Work through the song, clarifying language and understanding. Is there anything that we don't understand? Make use of the footnotes to clarify certain references

Intentions

 Is the singer angry, or laughing, or both? Is the song full of love, or longing, or loathing, or what?  It seems the singer goes through a process during the song. At first he is angry, but finally accepting. Is 'everything is familiar' a good enough reason to live in Israel?  When you hear of a terror explosion – I long for only here' Is this a negative approach to belonging?  Is this a patriotic song? Can you be supportive and critical at the same time?

Personally speaking…

 Where do you feel like you belong?  What are you angry about?  Is anger a mark of belonging? Or must a feeling of belonging always mean that everything is perfect?  Write your own list of 'Only Here'. About your family. About your community. About the US. About Israel.

Here I Come By HaDag Nahash

הנה אני בא ... Here I come

ירושלים, עיר שווה פיצוץ Jerusalem - city that’s worth a bomb הולך במדרחוב מרגיש כמו קיבוץ גלויות Walk down the street feels like the ingathering אלף תרבויות, לכל אחד יש אח ותשע אחיות of the exiles 1000 cultures ערבים בסדר חרדים בחדר Everyone has a brother and 9 sisters וכולם פה קולטים את אלוהים - בתדר (Arabs – okay (beseder Haredim in the Heder (religious studies) And everyone picks up God on the radio

אחרי טדי ירושלים דעכה מהר After Teddy1 Jerusalem declined fast מיום ליום תל אביב נצצה יותר Day by day Tel Aviv shone brighter חברים עזבו או התקרבו לבורא שמיים Friends left or got close to the creator of the אפור, משעמם, אין ים Grey skies Boring No seaside מחשבות על עזיבה Thoughts of leaving שלוש שנים לקח לי לקבל ת'החלטה Took me three years to make the decision אורז ת'חפצים לתוך המזוודה Pack my stuff in the suitcase מהכפר לעיר בכיוון הירידה …From the village to the city Going down

תל אביב - הנה אני בא !Tel Aviv – Here I come! – Hiney Ani Ba אני מגיע - הנה אני בא !I’m on my way – Here I come באתי להזיע - הנה אני בא !I’ve come to sweat – Hiney Ani Ba כי את היחידה אני נשבע Because you’re the only one I swear

יצאתי לכיוון מישור החוף Set off along the coast איזה שוק אני עומד לחטוף What a shock I’m about to get ועכשיו כשאני בתל אביב סוף סוף And now I’m finally in Tel Aviv משתלב עם הנוף, הכל טרי וזה טוב Become part of the scenery ווי, כמה שדיים, נשרפו לי העיניים Everything’s fresh and that’s good Wow! How many breasts! Burnt my eyes

אחרי שנתיים של סדום ועמורה After two years of Sodom and Gemorrah2 לא מזהה את עצמי במראה Don’t recognize myself in the mirror מכיר, מתערב, מתמזג, מסתחבק עם I know mingle blend and hang with the owners כל הבעלים של הדיסקוטקים of all the discos עכשיו כשאני ,IN מבין, זה לא נוצץ Now that I’m ‘in’ realize it’s not all glamor כמה רעש, כמה פיח, תן לי דשא, תן לי עץ So much noise So much soot כל היום מתבזבז על שלום, שלום Give me lawns Give me a tree השכירות הון הלחות ושגעון All day spent on peace, shalom, hello ואז נפל האסימון , The rent, money, the crazy humidity גן עדן היה לי בידיים Then I get it I had paradise in my hands

מחשבות על עזיבה Thoughts of leaving שלוש שנים לקח לי לקבל ת'החלטה Took me three years to make the decision אורז ת'חטאים בתוך המזוודה Pack my sins in the suitcase מהעיר לכפר לכיוון From the city to the village

In the direction of ירושלים - הנה אני בא !Jerusalem – Here I come – Hiney Ani Ba חוזר אליך - הנה אני בא !Return to you – Here I come אל חומותיך - הנה אני בא !To thy walls – Hiney Ani Ba כי את היחידה אני נשבע For you are the only one I swear

חזרתי לירושלים, פה החומוס טוב זה בדוק Returned to Jerusalem תן לי רוגע, תן לי שקט, לא יזיק איזה פיהוק Here the hummous is good for sure מתי פעם אחרונה שמתי איזה פתק בכותל, Give me calm give me quiet A bit of a yawn will do no harm השקעתי באוכל , When was the last time עשיתי חברים חדשים , ?I stuck a note in the Kotel3 Put time into cooking? Made new friends?

העיר הזאת תחזיר לי ת'שליטה בחיים This city will give me back control over my life נתערבב עם עצמי במקום לערבב מים Blend in with myself instead of diluting water ננשום קצת אויר הרים צלול כיין Breathe in mountain air as clear as wine יאללה בית"ר, יאללה חיים בכפר ! !Yalla Betar4! Yalla village life העיקר להיות מאושר The key is to be happy

הנה אני בא ... .…Here I come

______1. Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem from 1965-1993 2. Sodom and Gemorrah, the biblical city of depravity and immorality, in particular violent sexual and homosexual assault. 3. Kotel – Western Wall 4. Yalla Betar – Come on Betar – Jerusalem’s leading soccer club

Instructions

1. Play the song 2. Gather initial comments, taking care to clarify where the comments are about the music style, and where they are about the content of the lyrics. Where there are questions of clarification (eg “to what does this refer?”), and where questions of interpretation (eg “how should I understand what this means?”) 3. Hand out the lyrics, and play the song again, asking participants to follow.

A few facts you may wish to share:

Jerusalem in 2011 had over 800,000 residents. 499,400 Jewish residents, 281,100 Muslim residents, 14,700 Christian residents, 200 Druze and a further 9,000 residents who were not classified by religion in Interior Ministry records. Jerusalem residents make up some 10 percent of Israel’s total population.

Tel Aviv has currently 404,800 residents: 370,600 Jews and 34,200 non-Jews. 75% of the households are connected to the Internet.

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv – what about you?

Ask the participants to share their experiences of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

 Were you to be given a choice to live in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, which might you choose? Why?

Some suggest that the song expresses more than just an issue of accommodation. The song may also be addressing the tendencies of the soul.

 What would you say – according to your experience and your understanding of the song – is the nature of a Jerusalem soul? And a Tel Aviv soul?

Hand out copies of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem route.

 Where would you place your soul on the Tel Aviv Jerusalem route?

Ask participants to mark where they would place themselves on this “soul-route”. (If I’m a “bit of both”, then I’d mark myself half-way along the route. “A bit of Tel Aviv, but mainly Jerusalem” – closer to Jerusalem than to Tel Aviv. Etc)

Time to wake up Lyrics: Shaanan Streett, Guy Mar, and HaDag Nachash

השכמה! !!!WAKE UP CALL

לא מאמין בנשק מאמין בשירה Don’t believe in weapons believe in poetry ותיק מספיק כדי לעשות את הבחירה Old enough to make the choice בכי זה לא רע כשהמצב בכי רע Crying ain’t wrong when the situation’s so bad כל דמעה שמטפטפת מזכירה Every tear that drops reminds בדיוק עד כמה בעלי השררה Exactly how much the rulers ואנחנו לגמרי לא באותה סירה And us are in nowhere near the same boat. כשמישהו על עצמו שופך חומר בעירה When someone sets himself on fire how come we’re 1 איך זה שאנחנו מרגישים עם זה רע ?the only ones to feel bad הם משתמשים בתשקורת כדי לביית ולתכנת They use the media to hunker down להחדיר לנו ת'שקר שנאמין שזה אמת and program אתה קולט- אני מריח זה מסריח מהראש Inject the lie in us so we’ll believe it’s truth אומרים לי תירגע- אז זה הזמן לחשוש Do you get it – I reckon it stinks from the head down When they tell me relax – that’s the time to fear שמה שחשבתי הגיוני- לא הגיוני בהחלט That what I thought was logical זה הספין שמסיט מהאלף אל הבית is not logical at all – It’s a spin that distorts from A to B

זה הזמן להתעורר הבית מתפורר It’s time to wake up נצא מהחורים ביחד די להסתתר The house is falling apart תרימו את היד תפתחו את הפה Let’s come out of our holes together מול כולנו אין סיכוי שהם יחזיקו עוד הרבה Enough of hiding raise your hands זה הזמן להתעורר הבית מתפורר And open your mouth נצא מהחורים ביחד די להסתתר Against all of us there’s no way תרימו את היד תפתחו את הפה They’ll hold on for long מול כולנו אין סיכוי שהם יחזיקו עוד הרבה זה הזמן להתעורר… It’s time to wake up

לחברי המחאה נשחרר מחמאה To the folks of the Protests we give praise כי הם חותרים להקלה לתיקונה של העוולה ,For they aim to lighten the load ממוסר העבדים נמאס to fix the wrong רוצים לחיות בקלאס Enough of the slave ethic אם חשוב לנו עתיד הילדים Want to live in style עכשיו שוברים את הכלים If we care about our kids’ future אז כלים שלי אל תשתופפו Now we throw away the rule book דגלים חדשים עוד יתנוססו So don’t put down my weapons הימים השחורים עוד יתמוססו New flags will yet unfurl ילדים מאושרים עוד יתרוצצו The black days will yet fade למען המחר נצא אל הכיכר Happy children will yet play

נראה לכם בדיוק מי פה נטע זר For the sake of our future we’ll ומי גיבור האוהל עוד יחזור go out into the Square מי פה המשיח ומי פה החמור We’ll show you who’s the foreign implant2 אז אחים שלי אל תשתופפו And who the hero. The tents will yet return החזיקו מעמד אל תתכופפו Who is the messiah and who the mule3 אחים שלי אל תשתופפו So my brothers don’t cower לא כל המוחות שלנו נשטפו Hold strong don’t bend My brothers don’t cower זה הזמן להתעורר הבית מתפורר Not all our brains have been washed נצא מהחורים ביחד די להסתתר תרימו את היד תפתחו את הפה It’s time to wake up מול כולנו אין סיכוי שהם יחזיקו עוד הרבה The house is falling apart זה הזמן להתעורר הבית מתפורר Let’s come out of our holes together נצא מהחורים ביחד די להסתתר Enough of hiding raise your hands תרימו את היד תפתחו את הפה And open your mouth מול כולנו אין סיכוי שהם יחזיקו עוד הרבה Against all of us there’s no way They’ll hold on for long

זה הזמן להתעורר… !It’s time to wake up

______1. On July 14th 2011, a man called Moshe Sillman set himself on fire at one of the demonstrations. He later died of his burns. 2. The protesters were accused of having received funding from non-Israeli sources. 3. The Messiah is expected to arrive on the back of a mule. To be the mule of the messiah has come to be something of an insult in Israeli vernacular: The one who ignorantly does all the dirty work.

Background and Resources This song was written in the wake of the Social Justice Protests of 2011. HaDag Nahash themselves often joined the protesters in the streets, and performed at the culminating demonstration, performing for 300,000 people. You could use this song as the trigger for exploring the nature of the protests and the values driving them.

The protests culminated in the Government of Israel appointing Professor Trachtenburg – a renowned economist – to head up a committee whose job it would be (in Trachtenburg’s words) to “translate the language of the street into the language of policy.” Of his 118 recommendations that were unanimously accepted by the government of the day, 27 have been implemented ( as of 3rd December 2014).

 Wikipedia has a comprehensive summary.  Makom created an educational resource at the time  Some would say that the protests were a late expression of what Israelis have been singing about for decades. Here are the top five Israeli social justice protest songs.  This is a translation of the final speech by Daphne Leef.

Friday – Yom Shishi HaDag Nachash

יום שישי הגיע Friday’s here והוא בא בדיוק בזמן And it made it just in time כמה שחיכיתי כבר בעצם Been so looking forward למשהו מרגיע ואם הוא פה אז זה סימן To something calming and if it’s here then it’s a sign שהלך עוד שבוע בא השקט That another week’s gone by and the quiet’s arrived

שוב שישי תפס אותי עם הלשון בחוץ Again Friday caught me wiped out אחרי עוד שבוע שלחץ אותי לרוץ After another week that pressured me to run עוצר את הכול סטופ! !Cease everything stop וזה בא לי מה זה טוב עכשיו And it caught me just right עוד לא שלוש בצהריים כבר נפתח לי הרעב Not yet three in the afternoon and my hunger takes over נכנסים לאוטו ויאללה בוא ניסע Get into the car and Yalla! Let’s drive עולים לירושלים לראות ת׳משפחה Up to Jerusalem to see the family "שבת שלום!" “Shabbat Shalom!” “We’re here.” "הגענו!"

שיחות סלון שיחות חולין Salon talk small talk everyone’s an expert on everything כולם מומחים בכל התחומים !Got newspapers, cooking how much food oh god עיתונים יש תבשילים כמה אוכל יא אלוהים ?Pop says when you buying a flat אבא אומר מתי תקנה דירה ? ?Mom says is this the time אמא אומרת עכשיו זה הזמן That’s how it is at our place everything’s laid out on the table ככה זה אצלנו הכל על השולחן Yes, all the food and all the balagan כן, גם כל האוכל גם כל הבלגן Compote and sunflower seeds exploding over the sofa קומפוט ופיצוחים על הספה מפוצצים On the news warnings of rising prices again בחדשות שוב מתריעים על עליה במחירים Always about the bank account תמיד בתוך מסגרת עו״ש Just don’t go over your limit just don’t spill over רק לא לחרוג רק לא לגלוש And it’s only the family ורק המשפחה מסדרת לי את הראש that sets my head straight

יום שישי הגיע והוא בא בדיוק בזמן Friday’s here כמה שחיכיתי כבר בעצם And it made it just in time למשהו מרגיע ואם הוא פה אז זה סימן Been so looking forward שהלך עוד שבוע בא השקט To something calming and if it’s here then it’s a sign That another week’s gone by and the quiet’s arrived שתיים שלושים ושתיים שישי בצהריים שיא הקרחנה מחנה יהודה ירושלים Two thirty-two Friday afternoon המחיר מתחיל לצנוח צריך למכור את Height of carnage at Machaneh Yehuda in Jerusalem הסחורה The price starts to plummet got to sell the stuff כי עוד מעט תרד אלינו שבת המלכה Because soon the Sabbath Bride will be upon us

הנה הדוס החתיאר מגן התות Here’s that old religious dude from Strawberry Park בדיוק נועל את החנות Right now locking the store ת'מפתחות מכניס לכיס Slipping the keys into his pocket עד יום ראשון בבוקר יישאר סגור התריס Shutters shut until Sunday morning ישאיר בחוץ את כל המחשבות על תכלס All concrete thoughts will stay outside אופס נקרע לי החוט מה )שופר( ומהשאבעס Oops lost my train of thought what with the (Shofar) and the Shaabbess! לאט לאט מתפשט אצלי חיוך Gradually fill up with a smile שבכל העיר ובכל הארץ מורידים הילוך That across the city across the country we’re shifting טוב לי כל השבוע אבל זה טוב חלקי ואז יום שישי מגיע ומה טוב חלקי down a gear The whole week’s fine but only partly And then Friday comes and my part is goodly…

Instructions 1. Play the song 2. Gather initial comments, taking care to clarify where the comments are about the music style, and where they are about the content of the lyrics. Where there are questions of clarification (eg “to what does this refer?”), and where questions of interpretation (eg “how should I understand what this means?”) 3. Hand out the lyrics, and play the song again, asking participants to follow.

What does Shabbat mean to you and to Israelis?

 Why do you think HaDag Nahash used the word “Friday” – Yom Shishi – and not the word Shabbat? [One valid suggestion might be that in so doing they are able to “secularize” a religious concept. Leading to…]

 Does your life on campus allow you to experience a “non-religious” version of Shabbat? Or is this something that only life in Israel can offer?

 Do you ever notice a day or a time in the year when across the city across the country we’re shifting down a gear?

 This song was a smash-hit, with the entire country singing along. It seems they touched on a personal experience that is terribly common throughout the country: packing up the kids to eat Friday night meal with the family, rushing to get in the weekend shopping, etc. What would you say are the common evocative elements of Shabbat in your city/country?

Film Series

The following are detailed and rich guides to accompany film screenings on campus.

To access the films, we recommend you contact Israel Film Center. http://www.israelfilmcenter.org/

The 4 films offered here are:  Matallic Blues  Waltz with Bashir  Aviva my Love  Joy

Written and directed by Danny Verete. Starring Avi Kushnir and Moshe Ivgy. Won Best Screenplay and Metallic Blues (2004) Best Actor for Ivgy (Jerusalem Film Festival).

Paris, Moscow, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Lisbon, Some Background Before Viewing: Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Francisco Film Festivals. Shmuel Goldberg is a 40-something Israeli, the son of Holocaust survivors, who was raised with an aversion to all things German -- German products, German culture. And of course, he was taught never to visit Germany. But when a man enters his used car lot wanting to sell a collector's-item 1985 metallic blue Lincoln Continental, which would bring in a cool 40,000 Euro profit if Shmuel would only transport the car to Germany for resale to the luxury car dealer Auto Decker, Shmuel smells a "big score"... and can't resist. He convinces his assistant Siso Ben-Hamo, a simple Moroccan father of four, to go in with him on the scheme (which depletes Siso of his life's savings of $3000), and the two head off to Germany to meet the car and close the deal.

The comedy ensues from the responses of these two Israeli fish out of water in Germany. Their edges are rough, their emotions unconcealed, and their English halting (pretty non-existent for Siso), as they enter a land of superhighways, sleek trains, and broad rivers, a culture of calm efficiency and quiet elegance. But the poignancy emerges from the way in which brash and materialistic Shmuel is affected by his encounter with Germany, and how much the two men need each other to get through it.

Shmuel relives Holocaust scenes he never experienced in the first place, but which, apparently, are cemented into his family's - and our people's - collective memory. The pipe at Customs looks like a shower head. The sign by the train tracks looks like a Star of David. The sound of German spoken over a loudspeaker could only be marching orders.

The film is suffused with gentle questions and observations about our relationship to the Holocaust. The line "Memories are memories, home is home" could easily have been delivered by Shmuel, but is spoken, to great effect, by the clerk of a seedy hotel, a German-Jewish survivor who immigrated to Tel Aviv after the war, couldn't get used to life in Israel, and ended up moving back to his German homeland. Siso and Shmuel light makeshift Hanukkah candles in their hotel room and sing Maoz Tzur (in counterpoint to the sound of trains and a loudspeaker outside), but the clerk would not acknowledge Hanukkah, since "there's been no God here for 60 years."

The film reminds us of the trademarks of our 21st century global village: foreign cars, easy air travel, smart business. But when the two Israelis' get-rich-quick scheme springs some leaks, Siso is the first to cling to the personal/local: "I'm going home. I have a family!" he cries out. "Shmuel, keep your dignity."

The film is a collaboration between an Israeli writer-director and a pair of non-Jewish producers - one French-Canadian, one German. The cast is largely German, and the production crew is mixed. The end result rings authentic -- both in terms of its portrait of contemporary Germany and its portrait of a second-generation Israeli's journey into the "verboten" land.

Guiding Questions Person-to-Person 1. On the face of it, Shmuel is looking to make money through a seemingly straightforward car deal. But what other forces do you think are driving Shmuel through his journey in Germany?

2. On the face of it, Siso is also looking to make money on the car deal. But not at any cost. Why do you think Siso is not willing to go to the lengths that Shmuel does? What drives Siso?

3. What would you have wanted to say to Shmuel and Siso before their trip to Germany?

4. Why do you think the Jewish hotel clerk is living in Germany? What do you feel about his choice? [note to facilitator: The fastest growing Jewish community in the world is in Germany]

Going Deeper 1. Have you ever been to Germany? What were your reactions, and did they surprise you? What stories can you tell?

2. It is clear that the Holocaust has had a very significant influence on Shmuel's identity. How do you feel the Holocaust has affected you?

3. Has your being Jewish ever led to your feeling isolated?

4. Do you have any hesitation in buying German products or enjoying German culture? Visiting Germany? Why or why not?

The Israel Connection 1. If Shmuel and Siso were Jewish car dealers born and bred in Brooklyn, rather than Israel, how might this have been a different movie?

2. Have you ever felt like a 'fish out of water' - in Israel?

3. How does Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) affect you? How does Yom Haatzmaut (Israel's Independence Day) affect you? Which would you say is more important, and why?

Opposing Tensions  Past vs present  Past vs future  Individual vs collective  Local vs global  Myth vs reality  Family vs career  Survival vs destruction  Risk vs safety  Resistance vs acceptance  Insider vs outsider

Waltz With Bashir (2006)

Waltz with Bashir is an astonishing work of art that sets fire to the deep human questions emerging from contemporary Israel. In our desire to encourage the Jewish world to engage with Israel through support combined with critique – what we call ‘hugging and wrestling’ – we cannot recommend this movie highly enough. Go see it! And if you’ve already seen it, go see it again!

However beyond experiencing the film, we would like to encourage you to talk and continue to think about it…

To this end we have developed the Makom Film Guide for Waltz with Bashir.

Introduction for Facilitators

“Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.” - W. E. B DuBois

Waltz with Bashir is a great piece of art, and like many pieces of great art, it presents us with a powerful and disturbing emotional experience. Its creativity, honesty, and virtuosity is a reason to be proud of the Israeli film industry and Israeli society in general. At the same time, the film's content leaves us far more ambivalent. The film shows examples of Israeli soldiers' recklessness, callousness, and ineptitude, to say nothing of its portrayal of Israeli involvement in the Phalangist massacre of innocents in Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. At the same time, the individual Israelis in the film are human, vulnerable, confused and damaged young kids. While handling automatic weapons and driving wildly-firing tanks, they are, somehow, innocents.

What are we to make of a film like this?

We at MAKOM would suggest the last thing we should do is diminish the complexity of the experience. The film is neither for nor against Israel. It neither portrays Israelis in a good nor a bad light. The film demands an acknowledgement that life in modern Israel is far, far more complicated than that.

There may be a temptation to treat the film as a commentary on current events in Gaza. We would urge Jewish organizations not to be side-tracked into a political battle that would seek to strip art of its multivalency. We would suggest that we address the film in all its complexity, and take the opportunity it offers for sharing and clarifying the mixed emotions and ideas it sets flying.

What do you have here?

The Handout – for anyone seeing the film This is made up of three sections. 1. The 'program' – a one-pager to read prior to the screening. It acts as an introduction to the film, and presents some brief background information that may aid comprehension. 2. The FAQ and more sources of information – this is a collection of FAQ, links and references for those who wish to study more. 3. The Kahan Report – the Israeli government commissioned an investigation into Sabra and Shatila headed up by Chief Justice Kahan. This is a collection of extracted quotations from the report.

The Discussion Guide – for the facilitator of post-screening discussion A few tips:  Don't jump into a discussion the moment the film ends! If you can, let people breathe, have a coffee (or a whisky!), recover themselves, before expecting them to express themselves intelligibly. If you have less time, then at the very least don't begin until the credits have rolled until the very end. This way you give honor to the creators, and allow the swirling emotions to settle at least slightly.

 Don't expect yourself to know the 'answers', in fact don't expect there to be 'right answers' at all! This activity tries to allow people to begin to face, address, and learn to live with the questions this film sets fire to. As a result, the conversation may at times turn painful, or uncomfortable. That's okay. It's allowed. After all, a true dialogue doesn't demand consensus: true listening may result in understanding but not necessarily agreement.

 If you have access to the room beforehand, you may wish to print out the character/quotes, and stick them on the walls.

For a non-facilitated discussion activity, we also include this guide in the form of a place-mat. You can place these at tables, and allow them to inform the conversations that arise.

The Study Sheets – for further exploration at another date We don't suggest using these sheets on the same night as the screening. These are for digging deeper into issues raised by the film at another time. Both study sheets address the moral questions surrounding the idea of indirect responsibility. The first draws on traditional sources referred to by the Israeli Government Commission on Sabra and Shatila run by Chief Justice Kahan, and the second draws from more contemporary Israeli sources. The sheets are accompanied by a facilitator's guide with some leading questions.

Waltz With Bashir – Handout

"We are invited on a voyage of discovery into Folman’s uncharted subconscious after his late-night mercy dash to a friend plagued by nightmares of being pursued by slathering hounds… The dreams, concludes Folman’s friend, are connected to a time in the early 1980s when both men were teenaged soldiers during an Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon war. It is at this point that Folman realizes that, although he knows he was present during the massacre of Palestinian refugees by a Christian Phalangist militia in August 1982 (Sabra and Shatila), he has little concrete recollection of the events. Folman then sets about gathering testimonials from friends and former colleagues to try and color in the virtually blank sheet of his memory." - The Times, UK

What was Israel doing in Lebanon in the first place?

In June 1982, the Israeli army invaded South Lebanon after Israel’s civilians in northern towns had been bombarded by Palestinians for years from Lebanese territory. The Israeli government’s original plan was to occupy a 25 mile security zone in Lebanon in order to distance the Palestinian missiles from Israel's border. This mission turned into a full scale invasion of Lebanon, and set off a spiraling of events that led to the massacre of Palestinians by a Christian Phalangist militia in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp.

Israeli response to the Sabra and Shatila massacre

When Israel's connection to Sabra and Shatila became known, Israelis took to the streets in protest. Police estimates put attendance at a key demonstration at 400,000 people. This was one ninth of the Jewish population of Israel. Extrapolated out, this would be the equivalent of 34 million people in the US demonstrating their anger. (Imagine the entire population of 20 of USA's largest cities marching on Washington…)

Within two weeks, an official government enquiry was established. The Kahan Commission (named after the Judge at its head) was published just over four months later. It found that Israel had taken no active part in the massacre, but was indirectly responsible for allowing it to happen. Brig. General Yaron was dismissed in disgrace, as was Defense Minister Sharon. Chief of Staff Eitan was severely criticized and retired soon thereafter. Extracts from this report follow.

More than anything else, the First Lebanon War was the first time Israelis wondered whether this was a 'war of no choice'. Up until this point, every war entered into by Israel's Defense Forces had been forced upon them, as a war of 'no choice'. To this day, the significance of this distinction rumbles on…

FAQ + further information sources

When did all this happen? The massacres took place between 16th and 18th September, 1982

How many people died in the massacre? Sources differ. The lowest estimate puts the death toll at 328, most put the toll at 800, and the highest estimate has it at 3,500.

Who killed all those women and children? Lebanese Christian Phalangist militants entered the camps full of Palestinian refugees, and murdered men, women, and children.

Who were the Phalangists? A Lebanese political party and military force. Until his assassination, they were led by Bashir Gemayel.

What is Sabra and Shatila? Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon.

What was the Israeli public's response to this massacre? 400,000 people - one-ninth of the Jewish population of Israel at the time - demonstrated in protest at their own government's actions, calling for an official Governmental enquiry. (This would be the equivalent of the entire population of USA's largest 20 cities marching on Washington…)

What is the Kahan Commission? The official Israeli Government-appointed Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, chaired by the President of the Supreme Court of Israel, Yitzhak Kahan. The commission, which took on the name of its chair, reported back in February 1983.

Did the Kahan Commission's report back up the main facts of the film? Yes, pretty much. But don't take our word for it: take a look at the extracts from the report. You can also read the entire report on the internet.

Who was the Israeli Prime Minister at the time? Menachem Begin

Who was the Defense Minister? Ariel Sharon

Wasn't he the Prime Minister? After the Kahan Commission recommended his dismissal, Ariel ('Arik') Sharon spent many years in the political wilderness. He regained ministerial position in 1996, and became Prime Minister in 2001 – some 18 years after the Kahan Commission's report. As Prime Minister he was responsible for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza ("disengagement"), and for the creation of the Kadima political party. In January 2006 he had a massive stroke, and has been in a permanent vegetative state ever since.

Some Geography

A – Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut Sabra and Shatila in relation to Beirut

Beirut, in relation to Israel's Northern Border Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Cyprus

Links

About the Film

Waltz with Bashir A Film By Ari Folman http://waltzwithbashir.com/film.html

Inside A Veteran’s Nightmare A.O Scott, NYTimes.com 26 December 2008 http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/movies/26bash.html?8dpc

Waltz with Bashir Rolling Stone, 22 January 2009 http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/20532240/

Waltzing With Beirut Michael B. Oren, What Israel--and the rest of the world--can learn from 18 years of war with Lebanon The New Republic 14 July 2008 http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=320e4ee3-e968-42d5-87b9-41cfcf93ff06

About the issues

Conversation: Ethics and Warfare - Aryeh Klapper, Benjamin Ish-Shalom, Michael J. Broyde Meorot 6:1 Shevat 5767 / 2006, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/TOC-final.pdf

Israel's Foreign Relations - Selected Documents -Volume 8: 1982-1984 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1982-1984/

Moral Conflicts: Making and Contesting Interpretations of Sabra and Shatila Karine Hamilton ,Presentation to the Association for Israel Studies, “Israel: The Prospects for Reinvigoration" (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, June 14-16, 2004) http://www.aisisraelstudies.org/2004papers/Hamilton,%20Karine.pdf

The Beirut Massacre: The Four Days Thomas L. Friedman, NYTiems.com 26 September 1982 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E4D81138F935A1575AC0A964948260&sec=health&spon=& pagewanted=4

Off the Shelf

Gilbert, M. Israel: A History. London, Black Swan.

Harkabi, Y. Israel's Fateful Hour. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Herzog, Chaim; Shlomo Gazit. The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East. Vintage.

Laqueur, Walter and Rubin, Barry, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader, A Documentary of the Middle East Conflict, Penguin.

Sachar, Howard M., History of Israel, Vol. H. From the Aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, Oxford.

Schiff, Z. & Ya'ari, E. Israel's Lebanon War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Extracts from the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, chaired by the President of the Supreme Court of Israel, Yitzhak Kahan. Feb. 1983

Extracts from the Kahan Commission, the Israeli Government-appointed investigation into the Sabra and Shatila massacres headed by Judge Kahan

Who were the Phalangists? "The main Christian armed force that took part in the civil war consisted About the mainly of Maronite Christians, though a small number of Shiites joined reputation of them. This force comprised several armed Christian organizations, the largest among them being the organizations under the leadership of the the Phalangists Chamoun family and of the Jemayel family. The head of the Jemayel and their leader family, Mr. Pierre Jemayel, founded the Phalangist organization; and the Bashir leader of this organization in recent years was Pierre's son, Bashir Jemayel Jemayel. In the course of time, the Phalangist organization became the central element in the Christian forces; in 1982, the Phalangists ruled the Christian armed forces…

The Phalangist leaders proposed removing a large portion of the Palestinian refugees from Lebanese soil, whether by methods of persuasion or other means of pressure. They did not conceal their opinion that it would be necessary to resort to acts of violence in order to cause the exodus of many Palestinian refugees from Lebanon.

… In all the testimony we have heard, there has been unanimity

regarding [the fact] that the battle ethics of the Phalangists, from the standpoint of their attitude to non-combatants, differ greatly from those of the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.). It has already been noted that in the course of the civil war in Lebanon, many massacres had been perpetrated by the forces that had taken part in the fighting."

About the way Israel's military links with the Phalangists Israel kept the "At the beginning of the war, the Chief of Staff [Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan] Phalangists out told the Phalangists that they should refrain from all fighting. This order was issued because of the fear that if the Phalangists' force got into of the fighting trouble while fighting, the I.D.F. would be forced to come to its aid, thereby disrupting the I.D.F.'s plan of action…

When I.D.F. forces were fighting in the suburbs of Beirut and along the Beirut-Damascus road, the Phalangists were asked to cooperate with the

I.D.F.'s actions by identifying terrorists, a task at which the Phalangists' expertise was greater than that of the Israeli security forces…

The fighting actions of the Phalangists during that time were few, and in effect the fighting was all done by I.D.F. forces alone. This state of affairs aroused criticism and negative reactions from the Israeli public, and among I.D.F. soldiers as well… The feeling among the Israeli public was that the I.D.F. was "pulling the chestnuts out of the fire" for the Phalangists…"

The Assassination of Bashir Gemayel and the I.D.F.'s entry into West Beirut th "On Tuesday afternoon, 14 September 1982, a large bomb exploded in a building in Ashrafiyeh, Beirut, where Bashir Jemayel was [meeting] with a group of commanders and other Phalangists…Word of Bashir's

death reached Israel at about 11.00 p.m., and it was then that the decision was taken… that the I.D.F. would enter West Beirut. In one of the consultations between the Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff, there was mention of including the Phalangists in the entry into West Beirut. The question of including the Phalangists was not mentioned at that stage in conversations with the Prime Minister."

Sabra and Shatila Firing the flares "On Thursday, 16.9.82, at approximately 18:00 hours, members of the for the Phalangists entered the Shatila camp from the west and south. … their Phalangists in movements within the camps were not visible from the roof of the the camp forward command post or from the observation sites on other roofs. The Divisional Intelligence Officer tried to follow their movements using binoculars which he shifted from place to place, but was unable to see their movements or their actions… G. (his full name appears in the list of names, Section 1, Appendix B) requested the I.D.F. to provide

illumination for the force which was moving in, since its entry was taking place after dark. Initially, the illumination was provided by a mortar company, and subsequently also by aircraft; but because the illumination from the planes interfered with the evacuation of casualties of an I.D.F. unit, this source of illumination was halted; mortar illumination continued intermittently throughout the night."

What did the soldiers on the ground know? Rumors of a massacre "At approximately 7:00 p.m… according to Lt. Elul's testimony… he heard a Phalangist officer from the force that had entered the camps tell Elie

Hobeika (in Arabic) that there were 50 women and children, and what should he do. Elie Hobeika's reply over the radio was: "This is the last

time you're going to ask me a question like that, you know exactly what to do;" and then raucous laughter broke out among the Phalangist personnel on the roof. Lieutenant Elul understood that what was involved was the murder of the women and children. According to his testimony,

Brigadier General Yaron, who was also on the forward command post roof then, asked him what he had overheard on the radio; and after Lieutenant Elul told him the content of the conversation, Brigadier General Yaron went over to Hobeika and spoke with him in English for about five minutes."

Israeli Government response About the only Deputy Prime Minister D. Levy said that… the I.D.F.'s continued stay in Israeli minister Beirut was liable to generate an undesirable situation…: who sniffed "…When I hear that the Phalangists are already entering a certain trouble… neighborhood - and I know what the meaning of revenge is for them, what kind of slaughter… no one will believe we went in to create order there, and we will bear the blame..."

The slaughter reported "It is impossible to determine precisely the number of persons who were slaughtered. The numbers cited in this regard are to a large degree tendentious and are not based on an exact count by persons whose

reliability can be counted on. The low estimate came from sources connected with the Government of Lebanon or with the Lebanese Forces. The letter (exhibit 153) of the head of the Red Cross delegation to the Minister of Defense stated that Red Cross representatives had counted 328 bodies… According to I.D.F. intelligence sources, the number of victims of the massacre is between 700 and 800. This may well be the number most closely corresponding with reality…

According to the testimony we heard, no report of the slaughter in the camps was made to the Prime Minister on Saturday... The Prime Minister heard about the massacre on a B.B.C. radio broadcast towards evening on Saturday. He immediately contacted the Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister, who informed him that the actions had been halted and that the Phalangists had been removed from the camps (p. 771).

When a public furor erupted in Israel and abroad in the wake of the The confused reports about the massacre, and accusations were levelled that the I.D.F. Government and Haddad's men had taken part in the massacre, several communiqués response to the were issued by the I.D.F. and the Foreign Ministry which contained news incorrect and imprecise statements about the events. These communiqués asserted explicitly or implied that the Phalangists' entry into the camps had been carried out without the knowledge of - or coordination with - the I.D.F. The incorrect statements were subsequently amended, and it was stated publicly that the Phalangists'

entry into the camps had been coordinated with the I.D.F. There is no doubt that the publication of incorrect and imprecise reports intensified the suspicions against Israel and caused it harm."

The Direct Responsibility "Contentions and accusations were advanced that even if I.D.F. personnel had not shed the blood of the massacred, the entry of the Israeli forces Phalangists into the camps had been carried out with the prior did not carry knowledge that a massacre would be perpetrated there and with the out the intention that this should indeed take place; and therefore all those who massacre had enabled the entry of the Phalangists into the camps should be regarded as accomplices to the acts of slaughter and sharing in direct responsibility. These accusations too are unfounded. We have no doubt that no conspiracy or plot was entered into between anyone

from the Israeli political echelon or from the military echelon in the I.D.F. and the Phalangists, with the aim of perpetrating atrocities in the camps. The decision to have the Phalangists enter the camps was taken with the aim of preventing further losses in the war in Lebanon; to accede to the pressure of public opinion in Israel, which was angry that the Phalangists, who were reaping the fruits of the war, were taking no part in it; and to take advantage of the Phalangists'

professional service and their skills in identifying terrorists and in discovering arms caches. No intention existed on the part of any Israeli element to harm the non-combatant population in the camps…

No one knew It was alleged that the atrocities being perpetrated in the camps were visible from the roof of the forward command post, that the fact that what was going they were being committed was also discernible from the sounds on until emanating from the camps, and that the senior I.D.F. commanders who afterwards were on the roof of the forward command post for two days certainly saw or heard what was going on in the camps. We have already determined above that events in the camps, in the area where the Phalangists entered, were not visible from the roof of the forward command post. It has also been made clear that no sounds from which it

could be inferred that a massacre was being perpetrated in the camps reached that place. It is true that certain reports did reach officers at the forward command post - and we shall discuss these in another section of this report - but from the roof of the forward command post they neither saw the actions of the Phalangists nor heard any sounds indicating that a massacre was in progress.

Here we must add that when the group of doctors and nurses met I.D.F. officers on Saturday morning, at a time when it was already clear to them that they were out of danger, they made no complaint that a massacre had been perpetrated in the camps. When we asked the witnesses from the group why they had not informed the I. D. F. officers

about the massacre, they replied that they had not known about it. The fact that the doctors and nurses who were in the Gaza Hospital - which is proximate to the site of the event and where persons wounded in combative action and frightened persons from the camps arrived - did

not know about the massacre, but only about isolated instances of injury which they had seen for themselves, also shows that those who were nearby but not actually inside the camps did not form the impression, from what they saw and heard, that a massacre of hundreds of people was taking place. …

Our conclusion is therefore that the direct responsibility for the The Phalangists perpetration of the acts of slaughter rests on the Phalangist carried out the forces. No evidence was brought before us that Phalangist personnel massacre received explicit orders from their command to perpetrate acts of slaughter, but it is evident that the forces who entered the area were steeped in hatred for the Palestinians, in the wake of the atrocities and severe injuries done to the Christians during the civil war in Lebanon by the Palestinians and those who fought alongside them; and these

feelings of hatred were compounded by a longing for revenge in the wake of the assassination of the Phalangists' admired leader Bashir and the killing of several dozen Phalangists two days before their entry into the camps. The execution of acts of slaughter was approved for the Phalangists on the site by the remarks of the two commanders to whom questions were addressed over the radios, as was related above."

The Jewish approach to indirect responsibility Israel should "A basis for such responsibility may be found in the outlook of our address indirect ancestors, which was expressed in things that were said about the moral significance of the biblical portion concerning the "beheaded heifer" (in responsibility the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 21). It is said in Deuteronomy (21:6- because our 7) that the elders of the city who were near the slain victim who has texts teach us been found (and it is not known who struck him down) "will wash their to do so, and… hands over the beheaded heifer in the valley and reply: our hands did not shed this blood and our eyes did not see." Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says of this verse (Talmud, Tractate Sota 38b):

The necessity for the heifer whose neck is to be broken only arises on account of the niggardliness of spirit, as it is said, 'Our hands have not shed this blood.' But can it enter our minds that the elders of a Court of Justice are shedders of blood! The meaning is, [the man found dead] did not come to us for help and we dismissed him, we did not see him and let him go - i.e., he did not come to us for help and we dismissed him without supplying him with food, we did not see him and let him go

without escort." (Rashi explains that escort means a group that would accompany them; Sforno, a commentator from a later period, says in his commentary on Deuteronomy, "that there should not be spectators at

the place, for if there were spectators there, they would protest and speak out.')

When we are dealing with the issue of indirect responsibility, it should …because our also not be forgotten that the Jews in various lands of exile, and also in history as a the Land of Israel when it was under foreign rule, suffered greatly from people pogroms perpetrated by various hooligans; and the danger of demands we do disturbances against Jews in various lands, it seems evident, has not yet so. passed. The Jewish public's stand has always been that the responsibility for such deeds falls not only on those who rioted and committed the atrocities, but also on those who were

responsible for safety and public order, who could have prevented the disturbances and did not fulfill their obligations in this respect. It is true that the regimes of various countries, among them even enlightened countries, have side-stepped such responsibility on more than one occasion and have not established inquiry commissions to investigate the issue of indirect responsibility, such as that about which we are speaking; but the development of ethical norms in the

public world requires that the approach to this issue be universally shared, and that the responsibility be placed not just on the perpetrators, but also on those who could and should have prevented the commission of those deeds which must be condemned. … In our view, everyone who had anything to do with events in Lebanon

should have felt apprehension about a massacre in the camps, if armed

Phalangist forces were to be moved into them without the I.D.F. Everyone exercising concrete and effective supervision and scrutiny of them. All should have those concerned were well aware that combat morality among the known that the various combatant groups in Lebanon differs from the norm in the I.D.F. Phalangists that the combatants in Lebanon belittle the value of human life far were likely to beyond what is necessary and accepted in wars between civilized peoples, and that various atrocities against the non-combatant take a terrible population had been widespread in Lebanon since 1975. It was well revenge. known that the Phalangists harbor deep enmity for the Palestinians, viewing them as the source of all the troubles that afflicted Lebanon during the years of the civil war… To this backdrop of the Phalangists' attitude toward the Palestinians were added the profound shock in the wake of Bashir's death… and the feeling of revenge that event must arouse, even without the identity of the assailant being known. There was no foresight, and To sum up this chapter, we assert that the atrocities in the refugee action was too camps were perpetrated by members of the Phalangists, and that slow once the absolutely no direct responsibility devolves upon Israel or upon those situation was who acted in its behalf. At the same time, it is clear from what we have understood said above that the decision on the entry of the Phalangists into the refugee camps was taken without consideration of the danger - which

the makers and executors of the decision were obligated to foresee as probable - that the Phalangists would commit massacres and pogroms against the inhabitants of the camps, and without an examination of the means for preventing this danger. Similarly, it is clear from the course of

events that when the reports began to arrive about the actions of the Phalangists in the camps, no proper heed was taken of these reports, the correct conclusions were not drawn from them, and no energetic and immediate actions were taken to restrain the Phalangists and put a stop to their actions. This both reflects and exhausts Israel's indirect responsibility for what occurred in the refugee camps."

The Responsibility of the Political Echelon

Prime Minister The Prime Minister, Mr. Menachem Begin …We find no reason to exempt the Prime Minister from responsibility for Begin is not having evinced, during or after the Cabinet session, any interest in severely the Phalangists' actions in the camps… For two days after the Prime reprimanded. Minister heard about the Phalangists' entry, he showed absolutely no interest in their actions in the camps… It may be assumed that a manifestation of interest by him in this matter, after he had learned of the Phalangists' entry, would have increased the alertness of the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff to the need to take appropriate measures

to meet the expected danger.

Defense The Minister of Defense, Mr. Ariel Sharon Minister Sharon It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance reprimanded and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee and dismissed. camps, and having failed to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged.

Discussion Guide

WARM-UP QUESTIONS

Give one word to sum up your feelings after the movie ● Give two sentences – one ending with an exclamation mark, and one ending with a question mark – that you are left with after the film ● How might the film have been changed for you, if the final scene had returned to Ari Folman sitting drinking with Boaz making sense of his dream, rather than the live footage from the massacre?

"You were going to "Maybe I'll win the Nobel

discover things Prize." about myself "At age 20 I that I don't want couldn't be to know?" anything at all…"

Did the film uncover things for you At a conservative estimate, at least that you didn't want to know? one in ten Israeli men of that

generation took part in the Beirut How does the film leave you feeling operation, similar to the characters in about Israel and Israelis? the film.

Is this a film you'd like your Jewish How do you think this complex kind friends to see? of suppressed trauma affects a Is it a film you'd like your non- society? Jewish friends to see?

"Did you fire the

"Can't films be flares?" therapeutic?" "What does it

matter?"

Did you find this film to be Ari Folman's character does not feel

there is a moral difference between therapeutic? sending flares, standing by others

What do you think was the purpose sending flares, or committing the of this film? murders themselves. What is it trying to 'do'? Do you?

Were you left feeling that Folman Do you think there is a moral had forgiven himself by the end? difference between the murderers, and those who inadvertently helped them?

"Massacre is not stored in my system."

Though Ari and his friends return to this comment, it appears that an earlier massacre – the Holocaust – is very much stored in Ari's system.

How does his inherited memory of the Holocaust play out in Ari's struggle with what happened in Lebanon?

Does your knowledge of the Holocaust color your 'reading' of the film?

Would you say that the Holocaust affects your understanding of Israel, Israel's actions, and Israelis in general?

Study Sheet

Aviva My Love (2006) (Hebrew title: Aviva Ahuvati.) Written and directed by Shemi Zarhin. Won best screenplay and best Some Background Before Viewing: actress (Assi Levi) at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, has it made a sound? (In today's PR-crazed world, one wonders.) Or, as Aviva, My Love asks: if someone writes a book, and no one reads it, is she a writer?

Aviva's family certainly thinks she is. Though with the relentless pressures of working-class life in economically-challenged Tiberias (Aviva is a part-time chef in a hotel), it's hard for Aviva, middle-aged mother of three, to see herself as a "real" writer -- despite her obvious talent and passion. Given that her lovable but moody husband Moni has been unemployed for half a year, her mother Violette regularly threatens to jump from her upper-floor apartment just to upset the neighbors, her army-age daughter Oshrat seethes with resentment and her teenage son Alon is depressed and occasionally abusive, and her sister Anita is trying to keep her spirits up despite professional unfulfillment, her inability to get pregnant, and her husband's chronic jealousy, it's a modern miracle that Aviva has any inner strength left for writing.

Ultimately, the inner strength that is put to the test in this film has to do with Aviva's integrity and self- awareness. Anita introduces Aviva to Oded, a Tiberias native who left the shores of the Kinneret and made it as a big-time Tel Aviv writer. As Oded starts editing Aviva's stories, Aviva has to decide what her voice, and her value, is in the world - indeed, what are the trees, and what is the forest.

The backdrop for the story is a Tiberias not usually taken in by tourists - the hotel kitchen rather than its lobby, the worn look of public housing rather than a lakeside vista of the Golan Heights. Director Zarhin - himself a Tiberias native - says that he made sure to film his characters "with their backs to the sea": the inner life of Aviva's family is far too intense, and its force too centripetal, to allow for much gazing beyond the horizon.

The relationship between Aviva and her sister Anita is the most endearing, and most exhausting, of the many relationships explored in the film, and serves as the film's moral and emotional compass. The closeness of the two sisters reminds us, in the end, that family intimacy - for better or for worse - is still as Israeli as a good felafel.

Guiding Questions Person-to-Person 1. The film is called "Aviva, My Love", and it is clear that most characters in the film do love Aviva. But it seems that everyone's love for Aviva is complex.

Pick a character in the film. What would you say is the nature of their love for Aviva? How is it expressed?

2. Besides Aviva, who would you say is the most fascinating character for you? What is fascinating about them? Do you identify with them? Understand them? Dislike them?

3. These days we always feel that to be independent, to be free, is crucial in life. Which character in the film would you say is the most independent? Who is the most free?

What do you think might happen to the family if Aviva were to view herself as 'free' from her commitment to her family?

Going Deeper 1. When Aviva's daughter discovers that her mother's work was published in someone else's name, she accuses Aviva of having "sold her soul".

Do you know anyone you feel has made mistaken compromises? How has this made you feel? Have you ever tried to intervene?

What would you say is the biggest compromise you've ever made in your life? Are you at peace with this compromise? Like Aviva, have you succeeded - or do you think you will ever succeed - in recovering some of what you gave up?

2. Aviva's art was an integral - actually, urgent - part of her life, yet it also gave her perspective on her life, and allowed her to transcend certain elements of her life.

What gives you perspective on your life, or allows you to transcend harder elements of your life

The Israel Connection

1. When you picture a 'typical Israeli', or the kind of Israeli you are familiar with, can you find them in Aviva Ahuvati? What are the similarities and the differences?

2. When you picture a 'typical Israeli view', or an image of Israel you are familiar with, can you find them in the Tiberius of this film?

3. Clothes and scraps of stories are forever being hung up – to dry, or to be fitted back into larger narrative.

If you were to pin up seven 'story-segments' of your connection to Israel, which segments would you choose? And how might you put them together into one coherent story?

What kind of a story would it make? Fairy tale? Fantasy? Gritty realism? Philosophical meanderings?

4. In his book A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz recalls that when evening fell on the Jerusalem of his childhood (1940s), lamps were lit in every home and everyone sat down to write. A city of writers.

In Israel today there is an unusually high percentage of readers of serious fiction and poetry (based on statistics issued by Israeli publishers) and an impressive number of first-rate writers. Why do you think this is so? How does this conform with your image of Israelis?

Opposing Tensions

 Individual vs family  Freedom vs dependency  Passion vs livelihood  Pride vs shame  Power vs helplessness  Naivete vs worldliness  Trust vs cynicism  Big city vs periphery  Insider vs outsider  Integrity vs compromise  Stability vs instability  Submission vs assertion

Joy (2005) (Hebrew title: Muchrachim Lih'yot Same'ach.) Directed by Julie Shles. Winner of five Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Actress (Sigalit Some Background Before Viewing: Fuchs).

What would a "Yom Kippur fairy tale" look like?

Well, let's place it in Israel of the early 21st century, with hi- tech takeovers, Internet deals for European getaways, telemarketing and McDonald's "happy meals", and, of course, reality TV.

Then, let's add characters who are estranged from themselves and each other, in need of the honest (and difficult) self-examination and efforts at reconciliation that Yom Kippur is meant to be about. For good measure, we'll find ourselves some scapegoats, true to the original Yom Kippur saga of Temple days. (In that saga the goat whose lot is "To the wilderness" is led off a cliff's edge in the desert, carrying the people's sins to the bottom.)

Finally, let's assign one person the task of being the agent of change, so that a modicum of "teshuva" - turning or repentance - is at hand.

In Joy Julie Shles (who previously directed Pick a Card in 1998 and Sewing for Bread in 2002) weaves these elements together.

It all begins with an Israeli reality TV show called "Gotta Be Happy", in which a live-action surprise party is captured on film. The show' s post-Yom Kippur episode will focus on the theme of forgiveness, and the promos soothingly announce: "Are you hurting here? Did you hurt someone? Did someone hurt you - a friend, brother, father, neighbor? Yom Kippur is approaching, and our show is about forgiveness." (Only in Israel!)

If there were a family in need of Yom Kippur, it is the Levines. The parents (Yitzhak and Chaya) and son (Gil, whose name means "joy") have petty, joyless marriages, while their zaftig daughter (Simcha, whose name means "joy") has trapped herself in pointless work and an abusive affair with a married man. Everyone closets the truth -- Gil his sudden unemployment (but what a future he had!), Yitzhak his incontinence (and to think he was once such a womanizer!) -- and no one dares speak of the fact that all of Yitzhak and Chaya's friends, their

"club", abandoned them 22 years earlier.

Entirely out of character, Simcha decides to "audition" for the TV show. She describes how her parents' friends rejected them (and why) so many years back, and the show's production assistant goes for it: Simcha's parents will be the "victims" in the post-Yom Kippur show, at a surprise party re-assembling all their old friends.

Easier said than done. And therein lies Shles' narrative powers, in which good-hearted Simcha must first confront her own ghosts before she can make a live-TV "tikkun" (repair) between her parents and their old crowd -- and among her family itself.

Since the film's setting is Tel Aviv, and not Me'ah She'arim, it might be enlightening for some in the audience to see what happens in secular Israel in and around Yom Kippur. Besides the reality TV "Yom Kippur special", there are the empty streets (no one works on Yom Kippur) taken over by kids riding their bicycles. There is the address system at the mall apologizing for closing early on account of Yom Kippur. (We forgive the mall, don't we?) There is Nora begging her husband to take her for a quick junket to Prague, since she hates staying in Israel for Yom Kippur. The traditional "Day of Atonement" provides a fascinating study in the complex character of the Jewish State.

But on this Yom Kippur, or a little after, something magical happens. That magic starts with some good old-fashioned pantomime, and continues in the surreal chlorination of a swimming pool and with a playful joy ride through a darkened mall, and culminates with a deeply inspiring bat mitzvah speech about buses and elephants.

At the end of which, we all want Simcha for prime minister (or at least High Priest).

Guiding Questions Person-to-Person 1. Who did you respect? When and why?

2. What aspects of any of the characters do you feel you share or that are shared by your friends or family?

3. What do you think attracted Simcha to Radi (her short friend) and vice versa? Is there anything inspiring about their relationship? Were there any other relationships that fascinated you?

4. If you could sit down one-to-one with any of the characters, who would you choose? What would you talk about?

Going Deeper 1. The real breakthrough in the film is when Simcha confronts her parents' friends. She accuses them of being unfair, of banishing her parents, and making no attempt to repair what was broken. In the Torah such an honest calling of someone to accounts is called "tochacha". [Leviticus 19:17]

Can you describe a time in your life when you, like Simcha, did "tochacha"? Or when someone came to do tochacha with you?

Or have you ever felt the need to do 'tochacha' but not managed to? What was it that stopped you?

2. In what way would you say that this is a Yom Kippur movie? What is the significance of Yom Kippur for you? How do you observe it? (Or do you?)

3. Simcha and Radi have these magical moments together in the most ordinary of places. Have you ever found an ordinary place transformed by an extraordinary encounter?

The Israel Connection

1. The film bears witness to how quickly and dramatically Israel has modernized in recent years. For some this is "Americanization" which is accompanied by a loss of shared purpose -- something which characterized Israel and Zionism in earlier years. For others it reflects a natural and universal desire to improve one's standard of living.

How do you think the film portrays this?

Were you surprised at the 'modernity' in the film? How do you feel about it?

2. It is not just individuals who need to learn from mistakes and redirect their lives – 'do teshuva', the great lesson of Yom Kippur -- but also countries.

Do you believe that Israel has made mistakes? And if so, what lessons would you like the nation to learn – how should it 'do teshuva'?

3. While many Israelis do not attend synagogue on Yom Kippur, some hang out near a synagogue (an interesting phenomenon), or honor the holiness of the day with quiet and private activity. The vast majority of Israelis – secular and religious – do not drive on Yom Kippur, and most polls show that 70% of Jews in Israel fast on Yom Kippur.

Did you find anything surprising about the way Yom Kippur was marked in the movie?

Opposing Tensions  Inner truth vs public lie  Honesty vs hypocrisy  Reality vs imagination  Loyalty vs betrayal  Individual vs family  Submission vs confrontation  Intimacy vs alienation  Dependence vs independence

Headlines for Identity For the educator: How to work with Israeli current affairs?

Dealing with a screeching headline from Israel is a bit like approaching the tip of an iceberg. Some of us drop all our plans, and swiftly implement a different course, charting our way as far away as possible from the big white beast. We avoid the headline. Some educational captains have developed smiley summer-time routes that never see an iceberg of a headline. Others find themselves enchanted by the headline’s demanding icy beauty, draw close, and then get scuppered in a massive unforeseen argument that splits open the community and drowns everyone in controversy.

We would like to continue this ridiculously over-stretched conceit to offer a different way. A way in which a news headline from Israel can be transformed into an educational opportunity.

There are three aspects to an iceberg. 1. The different angles from which the tip of the iceberg can be seen above the water. 2. The different angles from which the submerged iceberg cannot be seen, but which are equally if not more important than the visible aspect. 3. You and your students. On the ship. Approaching the iceberg.

In order to address Israel headlines as identity-building opportunities, we must address all three of these aspects: the tip of the iceberg, the submerged issue, and you.

1. Multiple perspectives on the presenting issue. A news headline tends to be a summary of one perspective on an issue. Israeli society is so diverse, that it inevitably contains many different, occasionally opposing perspectives on the same issue. In fact, this is what makes Israel so fascinating.

Look for the same news item in several other outlets. Look for alternative perspectives. Haaretz is bound to say something different from Israel Today, for example. (If you can read Hebrew, then visit Makor Rishon daily, too). Arutz 7 is going to offer a different view of a subject than Ynet. Even if you don’t surf the net a great deal, follow strange and opinionated people on facebook that you don’t agree with. Learn to look at the iceberg in 3D. From all sides, not just the one you’re on.

The more practiced you get at this 3D viewing, the easier it is to describe a news event in a non- partisan, open way. We all of us – even educators! –are so used to looking through certain spectacles at the world we forget we wear them at all. But we must at the very least acknowledge that others wear different spectacles from ours. The less the description of an event is embedded in only one way of looking at it, the more the learner can grow into new understandings.

Work at phrasing such as: “Some say.. others say…” “while other voices insist” “at the same time others…”

Avoid the word: “We” – unless you are 100% convinced that everyone agrees with you 100%.

2. What are the underlying issues? We are willing to bet that every here-and-now headline from Israel emerges from a deeper more perennial issue, that is often submerged from view. These perennial issues are wonderful education fodder… This member of Knesset saying that and shouting the other – shocking but ultimately ephemeral. But when we look under the surface and discover that this is only the latest expression of – for example - the age-old debate over a tension between truth and peace – a debate that we live with, that the Sages grappled with, and that is central to so many conflicts in our lives – then we’re on a deep and valuable journey.

How does one develop an eye for the submerged part of the iceberg? We have three suggestions in our tool-box.

A. #4HQ Israel is a living answer to four interlocking questions that emerge from the penultimate line in Hatikvah – To Be | a People | Free | In Our Land. You can use this line as a check- list of four questions that might outline the contours of the submerged issue. To Be – is this an issue of survival? Is this an existential live or die issue? Or is it perhaps about trying to live a normal, calm, chilled-out life in Israel? People – how does this issue meet understandings of Jewish values and principles? Does it raise questions of Jewish global solidarity? Is it an issue that has its roots in our faith? Free – does this issue address issues of democracy? Of human rights? Fundamental freedoms? Creativity? Our Land – is ownership or borders of the land of Israel at stake?

B. Binary Opposites Look for the fundamental clash. Some say that every key question in life is a product of two opposing tensions. If there is a push for limiting entry, then there is always going to be an opposing energy in favor of opening up entry for all. If there is a desire for independence, it presumably is a response to a form of dependence. Look for binary opposites…

C. Jewish texts Stop and think: Is this situation in any way comparable to a situation I learned about in the Bible/Talmud/Sages etc? If you can bring Jewish wisdom and culture to bear on a contemporary Israeli issue, you will have bought your place in the world to come. Or at least will have proved yourself an Israel educator of high caliber…

3. Don’t forget who is on the ship Having found your multiple perspectives on the presenting headline, and having ascertained its deeper submerged features, now is the time to ask yourself who you are aiming to affect. Who are your students, and how do they learn? Are they into text study, or do they just like to talk? Do they need stimuli, songs, games? How old are they? Make sure your pedagogy is aligned such that your students with their idiosyncrasies and personal perspectives are brought into a grappling with the key underlying questions you have identified.

(If you write a blog about Israel current affairs, you could also use this iceberg approach as a way of structuring your blog.)

For updated material on the Headlines, keep checking our web page: http://makomisrael.org/materials-israel-engaged-campus/

Examples Gaza Flotilla June 11, 2010

We at Makom felt we needed to leave 24 hours before responding to the sea-borne events of yesterday. Tough events sometimes lead to tough questions, not always to easy answers.

A few things are clear, and several questions arise.

It is clear that Israelis, irrespective of their politics, were highly distressed by the fact that nine people were killed in the clash with the Israeli navy. This is a human and political disaster.

Beyond this, we are left with three questions: • Is it not possible to embrace loyalty as well as open-mindedness? (Those of us who swiftly shared reports from the Flotilla, that Israeli troops opened fire on sleeping innocents, will have seen some hours later that there was some pretty aggressive sleep- walking going on. Do we have any obligation to wait to hear Israel’s side of the story?) • What does it mean to defend oneself? (Are some instruments – marines, embargos – too blunt?) • What does it mean to have an enemy? (If someone is our enemy, does this always demand introspection and guilt-feelings?) (How do we maintain our own perspective and balance in the face of accusers?)

Housing Law Benefits Some August, 2014

In the summer of 2011, over 400,000 Israelis took to the street to protest the cost of living in Israel. One of the main motivations of the protesters was the cost and shortage of housing.

This past March, a law was proposed to cancel VAT for first time homeowners, while making it difficult for those that did not serve in the army or civil service to access the deduction.

This week, in the Finance committee of the Knesset, an amendment of the bill was proposed to limit the deduction to only those who served in combat units.

Some argue that such a move is playing politics with the middle class’ finances. Other’s claim that combat solders, who put their entire lives on the front lines, should not have their benefits end with their service.

It is also important to remember that Israel is a society that requires army or national service, but also requires a significant part of that service to be non-combat in order to maintain its infrastructure.

• Some of the values that might be relevant to this discussion are fairness, equality, and equity.

This raises some important questions: • Should social benefits be connected to army service? • What are the responsibilities of a society towards those who put their lives on the line to defend it?

Black History Month

For Black History Month on campus, we offer 3 options for integrating Israel into the campus - wide conversation.

1. Black Over White film guide 2. These are my Names film guide 3. Israel, Jews And Social Justice Work In Africa (educational session and fundraising campaign)

Black Over White Directed by Tomer Heyman

Free Idan Raichel explains at the start of the film that his relationship to Ethiopian music is l ike that of the cook cutting up a prize tomato for a side salad.  What would you say are the costs and benefits of such cultural freedom?

“Just because we bring authenticity to the stage, does that mean that we sit all day smoking leaves?”  What authenticity do you think Idan Raichel brings to the stage?  Is there a difference between the authenticity of Cabra, to that of Wogderas?

People “You have to do all that you can to become a part of society”  Would you give similar advice to an immigrant to the USA?  What would you say is the price of “doing all you can”?

Cabra is moved by the Ethiopian children who are the same age as her brother.  Where would you say her fate connects her to and differentiates her from them?

 What would you say are the components that make up Cabra’s identity?  Where is Cabra’s home?  Who are Cabra’s People?

Our Land “He ought to be here! He’s so happy here.” (Idan Raichel, while watching Wogderas perform in a club in Ethiopia)  What do you think this observation reveals about what Raichel is watching, and about Raichel’s understanding of what is Wogderas’ place in Israel?

To be a free People in our Land  What in the film leads you to celebrate being a free People in our Land?  Does anything in the film lead you to believe we are not yet a free People in our Land?  What gives you hope?

For more about the Idan Raichel Project, visit their website here.

Curse words: Please be warned that the people in the film make occasional use of curse words. In Israel, to a Hebrew speaker, Anglo-Saxon curse-words have far less weight and shock-factor when spoken as part of a Hebrew sentence. Their meaning is diluted. Nonetheless, to an English-speaker’s ear, they can offend.

These Are My Names ואלא שמות “They only did it to Ethiopians”

Extracts from “Memories after my Death” by Yair Lapid in the voice of Tommy Lapid

An elderly Jewish Agency clerk, German-speaking, set up a table on the platform and began to register everyone . “Name?” he asked me. “Tomislav Lempel”. He peeked at me in discomfort. “Have you got a Hebrew name”? I remembered that my father once told me that when I was born I was given the name Yosef, in memory of my grandfather. “Yosef,” I said…

Two months after I arrived, we sat in the office [of Azriel Carlebach, the legendary editor of “Maariv”] while he was dictating something and suddenly he looked up. “What’s a Lempel?” he asked. “It’s a lantern in Hungarian,” I answered. “You need to change that name,” he said, “You are a journalist in Hebrew, and you need a Hebrew name”. “I’m the last Lempel,” I said, “My uncles have no sons”. He looked as if he hadn’t heard me. “Lapid,” he said, “You need to change your name to Lapid. It’s close enough in meaning. They won’t be angry with you”.

His influence over me was such that two days later I went to the Ministry of the Interior, stood in line for two hours, and changed my name. Carlebach was correct, because it was a catchy name, but he was mistaken because my uncles were so angry with me that they refused to speak to me for many a month.

Would I do the same today? I suppose so, but I feel a little guilty towards my grandfather, my father and my uncles, that I severed the Lempel line. There was something cruel about the way that in my youth I didn’t even give it a thought. Ever since the 18th Century, when the Jews of the Hapsburg Empire were commanded to take a family name, Lempels had been born and Lempels had been buried. And I impulsively and brutally decided to be the last Lempel.

UNIVERSAL DECREE demanding that, beginning on January 1st 1788, each Jew should have a constant surname Joseph II Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor [1]

§ 1. Jewry in all the provinces should be urged to do the following. Each host of household should adopt a constant surname for his family beginning with January 1st, 1788… Every particular person without exception should adopt a German surname and never change it in his or her lifetime.

§ 2. All surnames that have been used in the Jewish language so far … should be totally abandoned.

“Ilana is just a meaningless name they gave me in

kindergarten”

את מוצא שלשה שמות נקראו לו לאדם: :A person is called by three names אחד מה שקוראים לו אביו ואמו, The one that his parents gave him ואחד מה שקוראין לו בני אדם, The one that other people call him ואחד מה שקונה הוא לעצמו. .And the one that he earns himself טוב מכולן מה שקונה הוא לעצמו. .The greatest of all is that which is earned

מדרש תנחומא ויקהל פרק א Midrash Tanhuma Veyakhel 1

רב הונא אמר בשם בר קפרא בשביל ד 'דברים For four acts were the Israelites… נגאלו ישראל ממצרים שלא שנו את שמם ואת redeemed from Egypt: That they did not לשונם ולא אמרו לשון הרע ולא נמצא ביניהן ,change their names, nor their language אחד מהן פרוץ בערוה לא שנו את שמן ראובן did not engage in slander, and not one of ושמעון נחתין ראובן ושמעון סלקין לא היו קורין …them had committed incest ליהודה רופא ולא לראובן לוליאני ולא ליוסף לסטיס ולא לבנימין אלכסנדרי

ויקרא רבה פרשה לב:ה Vayikra Rabba 32:5

וְאֵלֶה ׁשְ מֹות ּבְנֵי יִשְרָאֵל הַ ּבָאִים מִ צְרָיְמָ ה ,Now these are the names of the sons of Israel אֵת יַעֲקֹב אִיׁש ּובֵיתֹו ּבָאּו: who came into Egypt with Jacob; every man came with his household

ספר שמות א:א Shemot 1:1

בראשית לב Breshit 32

כח וַיֹאמֶר אֵלָיו, מַ ה-שְמֶָך; וַיֹאמֶר, And he said unto him: 'What is thy name?' And 28 יַעֲקֹב. '.he said: 'Jacob

כט וַיֹאמֶר,ֹלא יַעֲקֹב יֵָאמֵר עֹוד And he said: 'Thy name shall be called no more 29 ׁשִמְָך--ּכִי, אִ ם-יִשְרָאֵל: ּכִי-שָרִיתָ Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast striven with God and עִם-אֱֹלהִים וְעִם אֲ -נָׁשִים, וַּתּוכָל. '.with men, and hast prevailed

ל וַיִׁשְַאל יַעֲקֹב, וַיֹאמֶר הַגִידָ ה-נָא And Jacob asked him, and said: 'Tell me, I pray 30 ׁשְמֶָך, וַיֹאמֶר, הלָמָ זֶה ּתִׁשְַאל thee, thy name.' And he said: 'Wherefore is it that לִׁשְמִי;וַיְבָרֶ ְךאֹתֹו, ׁשָ ם. thou dost ask after my name?' And he blessed him there.

לא וַיִקְרָ איַעֲקֹב םׁשֵ הַמָ קֹום, :And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel 31 פְנִיאֵל: ּכִי-רָאִ יתִי אֱֹלהִים פָנִים אֶל- for I have seen God face to face, and my life is' פָנִים, וַּתִ נָצֵל נַפְׁשִי. '.preserved

לב וַּתַ הַרלֵָאה וַּתֵ לֶד ּבֵן, וַּתִ קְרָ א And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she 32 ׁשְ מֹו רְ אּובֵן: ּכִי ָאמְרָ ה, ּכִי-רָ ָאה called his name Reuben; for she said: 'Because the יְהוָה ּבְעָנְיִי- ּכִי- עַּתָ ה, יֶאֱהָ בַנִי אִיׁשִי. LORD hath looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.' לג וַּתַ הַר עֹוד, וַּתֵ לֶד ּבֵן, וַּתֹאמֶר ּכִי- And she conceived again, and bore a son; and 33 ׁשָמַע יְהוָה ּכִי שְ -נּוָאה ָאנֹכִי, וַיִּתֶן-לִי ,said: 'Because the LORD hath heard that I am hated גַם-אֶת זֶה; -וַּתִ קְרָ אׁשְ מֹו, ׁשִמְעֹון. He hath therefore given me this son also.' And she called his name Simeon.

לד וַּתַ הַרעֹוד, וַּתֵ לֶדּבֵן, וַּתֹאמֶר And she conceived again, and bore a son; and 34 עַּתָ ההַ פַעַםיִלָוֶה אִיׁשִי אֵלַי, ּכִי- said: 'Now this time will my husband be joined unto יָלַדְּתִי לֹו ׁשְֹלׁשָ ה בָנִים; עַל-ּכֵן קָרָ א- me, because I have borne him three sons.' Therefore ׁשְ מֹו, לֵוִי. .was his name called Levi

לה וַּתַ הַרעֹוד וַּתֵ לֶדּבֵן, וַּתֹאמֶר And she conceived again, and bore a son; and she 35 הַ פַעַם אֹודֶ ה אֶת-יְהוָה--עַל-ּכֵן said: 'This time will I praise the LORD.' Therefore she קָרְ ָאה ׁשְ , מֹויְהּודָ ה; וַּתַ עֲמֹד, מִלֶדֶת. .called his name Judah; and she left off bearing

Do We Really Mean It? Field Observations from the Ethiopian Israeli Community Allan G. Reitzes, PhD, April 2008 Study funded by and conducted on behalf of the United Jewish Communities (UJC)

The successful integration of Ethiopian Israelis remains in doubt. Two images are projected. One image is of an Israeli-born and/or educated generation which has made significant gains. The other is of an immigrant generation characterized by illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and communal dependency. In truth neither of these views reflects reality.

The images are consistent with conventional wisdom and expectations for immigrant integration. What they do is divert attention from the needs of the Ethiopian Israel community. While the Israeli-born or educated generation is slowly making progress, a great deal of institutional support is still needed. The immigrant generation suffers even more from the stereotype that has led to lower expectations and thus less willingness to support necessary programs.

Accepting conventional wisdom is permitting us to close our eyes to the failure to integrate the immigrant generation. The concomitant loss of the traditional Ethiopian Jewish social-cultural and communal frameworks has been traumatic. Mothers and fathers strive to understand and parent their children. Children struggle in school and with their identity. The community has become dependent.

Save for a minority of Ethiopian Israeli youth who successfully integrate into Israeli society, the failure to integrate the immigrant generation and its consequences weighs heavily on the majority. The well-intended, numerous supplementary programs for Ethiopian Israeli children and youth cannot replace what has been lost. Challenging conventional wisdom will create the opportunity for a positive outcome. Support for traditional customs, practices and social-communal frameworks will facilitate mutual respect and sharing of social-cultural concepts. Investing in their parents will benefit the children as well as the community. Leadership and community development will provide the basis for a sense of confidence and value, to take responsibility. Real collaboration, planning and integration will enable Ethiopian Israelis, families and communities to succeed.

From the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews

A survey among employers reveals discrimination against the Ethiopian, ultraorthodox and Arab sectors in high-prestige professions. Such are the findings of the "2009 Ono Report", published by the Ono Academic College, based on a study conducted among employers and managers in these professions. The report reflects a situation already well known, demonstrating quite clearly the fact that discrimination against Ethiopians in Israel does actually exist.

What’s new is that the above finding is part of an academic study, the first of its kind. The study confirms the discomfiting feeling that in Israel of 2009, Arabs, the ultraorthodox and Ethiopian graduates are not welcome in high-prestige, high-income professions. The fields examined in the report were: finance and banking, publicity and communications, elite law firms, accountancy and the civil service.

The details of the report show that a higher education in the groups studied is not sufficient for integration in these fields. The report also shows that Arab university graduates are subject to the highest level of discrimination, followed by the ultraorthodox and lastly the Ethiopians.

"This latest research reinforces what the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews has been protesting for years and validates the feelings of rejection of many Ethiopian graduates competing for positions for which they are fully qualified. Unfortunately, this feeling of rejection might well influence their younger siblings," says Avi Maspin, vice-president of the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews.

The report describes the unwillingness of employers to hire graduates from these groups. 53% of the employers spoke of unwillingness to hire Ethiopian graduates, 58% hesitated to employ ultra-orthodox graduates, and 83% felt the same about Arab graduates…

Israel, Jews And Social Justice Work In Africa

Part 1: To Whom are We Obligated?

In 1953, psychologists Henry A. Murray and Clyde Kluckhohn, concluded that:

“all men are like all other men…like some other men…and like no other men.”

We can readily acknowledge that this was written in the language of the time and applies equally to both genders.

What might it mean?

“like all other [people]” highlights the fact that, in many ways, all people and cultures are the same. And, compared to animals and inanimate objects, we really are the same!

“like some other [people]” touches on the idea that we belong to groups that divide us from some while bonding us together with others; though unique, we are each also part of our gender, ethnic, religious group or nation.

“like no other [people]” is the empowering notion that every person is a unique individual; she (or he) has her own constellation of attributes and distinct fingerprint on the world.

1. When engaging in social justice work, what motivates you? Do you act in the world as a human being? a Jew? an individual with a strong set of personal moral standards? ? 2. To whom are you obligated – humankind? other Jews? whatever cause your conviction compels you to support?

Text Study

Like all other people: We are all created in God's image, no matter how different we may seem…

בראשית א:כז Bereshit 1:27 וַ ִי ְב ָרא ֱאֹל ִהים ֶאת ָהָא ָדם ְּב ַצ ְלמֹו And God created human in God's ְּב ֶצ ֶלם ֱאֹל ִהים ָּב ָרא א ֹתֹו own image, in the image of God, God זָ ָכר ּונְ ֵק ָבה ָּב ָרא א ֹ ָתם .created him; male and female God created them

Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country (Beacon Press, 1996), p. 133:

“To count people as moral equals is to treat nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, race, and gender as “morally irrelevant” … the accident of being born a Sri Lankan, or a Jew, or a female, or an African-American, or a poor person, is just that – an accident of birth. It is not and should not be taken to be a determinant of moral worth.”

Discussion Questions: • Does our moral obligation to one another stem from the fact that we are all created in God’s image?

• How might this perspective come into tension with the notion that Jews are responsible for each other? ? • Do you agree with Nussbaum in her assertion that particular attachments are “an accident of birth”?

• In light of the above, what are our responsibilities (or even obligations) as fellow-humans to those in need?

Like some other people: Because we too went through a similar experience, it is incumbent upon us to act justly…

דברים כד:יז-יח Devarim 24:17-18 ֹלא ַת ֶטה ִמ ְׁש ַפט ֵגר יָתֹום וְֹלא ַת ֲחב ֹל You shall not subvert the rights of the .17 ּבֶגֶד ַאלְמָ נָה. stranger or the orphan; you shall not take a widow's garment in pawn.

וְזָ ַכ ְר ָּת ִּכי ֶע ֶבד ָהיִי ָת ְּב ִמ ְצ ַריִם וַ ִי ְפ ְדָך Remember that you were a slave in Egypt .18 יְהוָה ֱאֹל ֶהיָך ִמ ָשם ַעל ֵּכן ָאנ ֹ ִכי ְמ ַצּוְָך ;and that your God redeemed you from there ַל ֲעשֹות ֶאת ַה ָד ָבר ַה ֶזה. .therefore I command you to do this thing

Kwame Anthony Appiah, For Love of Country, p. 22:

"The cosmopolitan patriot can entertain the possibility of a world in which everyone is a rooted cosmopolitan, attached to a home of his or her own, with its own cultural particularities, but taking pleasure from the presence of other, different, places that are home to other, different, people."

Hilary Putnam, For Love of Country, p. 97:

"I believe that there is such a thing as reasoning well about moral issues. But…actual reasoning is necessarily always situated within one or another historical tradition."

"We all have to live and judge from within our particular inheritances while remaining open to insights and criticisms from outside. And that is why the best kind of patriotism -- loyalty to what is best in the traditions one has inherited -- is indispensable."

Discussion Questions: • What role does the Jewish narrative play in your decision to engage in social justice work?

? • Do you, like Putnam, make moral decisions about justice in the world “from within your particular inheritance,” i.e., from a Jewish perspective?

• Are you a rooted cosmopolitan? If so, where do your roots lie?

Like no other people: Each one of us is singularly important and brings a unique voice to the table…

סנהדרין ד:ה Mishna Sanhedrin, 4:5

לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי בעולם, Therefore, humans were created singly, to ללמד שכל המאבד נפש אחת, teach you that whoever destroys a soul, it is מעלים עליו כאילו איבד עולם מלא; considered as if s/he destroyed an entire וכל המקיים נפש אחת, מעלים עליו world. And whoever saves a life, it is כאילו קיים עולם מלא... לפיכך כל- considered as if s/he saved an entire world…Therefore every person must say "for אחד ואחד יכול לומר: בשבילי נברא my sake was the world created." העולם.

Discussion Questions: • If each individual is like “an entire world” on his or her own, does it matter whom you choose to help?

? • What challenges arise from helping people who are unique and so different from you? What potentials arise?

• How do you know if someone else needs saving? How do you know that you are needed?

Part 2: Israel’s Responsibility Toward Ethiopian Jews

Michael Sandel, Justice (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009), pp. 227-228.

In the early 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia drove some four hundred thousand refugees into neighboring Sudan, where they languished in refugee camps. In 1984, the Israeli government undertook a covert airlift called Operation Moses to rescue Ethiopian Jews, known as Falashas, and bring them to Israel. Some seven thousand Ethiopian Jews were rescued before the plan was halted, after Arab governments pressured Sudan not to cooperate with Israel in the evacuation. Shimon Peres, the Israeli prime minister at the time, said, ‘We shall not rest until all our brothers and sisters from Ethiopia came safely back home.’ In 1991, when civil war and famine threatened the remaining Ethiopian Jews, Israel carried out even an even bigger airlift, which brought fourteen thousand Falashas to Israel.

Did Israel do the right thing to rescue Ethiopian Jews? It is hard to see the airlift as other than heroic. The Falashas were in desperate circumstances, and they wanted to come home to Israel. And Israel, as a Jewish state founded in the wake of the Holocaust, was created to provide a homeland for Jews. But suppose someone posed the following challenge: Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian refugees were suffering from famine. If, given its limited resources, Israel was able to rescue only a small portion of them, why shouldn’t it have conducted a lottery to determine which seven thousand Ethiopians to save? Why wasn’t the airlift of Ethiopian Jews, rather than Ethiopians generally, an act of unfair discrimination?

If you accept obligations of solidarity and belonging, the answer is obvious: Israel has a special responsibility to rescue Ethiopian Jews that goes beyond its duty (and that of all nations) to help refugees generally. Every nation has a duty to respect human rights, which requires that it provide help, according to its ability, to human beings anywhere who are suffering from famine, persecution, or displacement from their homes. … The question we are trying to decide is whether nations have further, special responsibilities to care for their people. By referring to the Ethiopian Jews as “our brothers and sisters,” the Israeli prime minister invoked a familiar metaphor of solidarity."

Discussion Questions: • Do you agree that Jews are bound to one another by ties of solidarity and commitment? Does solidarity entail special, extra-ordinary obligations to fellow Jews?

• What are the roots of this solidarity? Due to their geographic isolation, the norms of the Jewish world from late antiquity to the modern period did not reach Ethiopia. Their tradition, therefore, was not rooted in Talmudic Judaism and their life and customs differed greatly from ? those practiced in the rest of the Jewish world. What then motivated Israel to act so boldly on their behalf?

• The heroic airlift aside, the absorption of Ethiopian Jewry into Israeli society has not been smooth, and Israel still has a long way to go.

• How do you explain the gap between the motivation behind the airlift and the discrimination faced by some Ethiopian Jews in Israel?

Part 3: American Jews and Israelis engage in Social Justice Work in Africa

Case Study:

In November of 2005, Agahozo-Shalom Founder Anne Heyman and her husband, Seth Merrin, heard a talk about the Rwandan genocide. During dinner following the talk, Seth asked the speaker to identify the biggest problem facing Rwanda. The answer was clear: What can be done for the vast number of orphans, the youngest victims of the genocide?

Immediately, Anne, a South African-born lawyer and mother of three living in New York City, connected the challenge of the Rwandan orphan population to the similar challenge that Israel faced after the Second World War. To accommodate large influx of orphans from the Holocaust, Israel built residential living communities called youth villages. Anne was inspired to bring this model to Rwanda.

Anne began reaching out to people in Israel, Rwanda, and the United States to share her idea and learn how to realize her vision. In April 2006, Anne and her team found a model to emulate in the Yemin Orde Youth Village in Israel. Anne then set about creating a formal structure for the project. In September of 2006, she met with officials at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an international humanitarian organization that agreed to house and offer logistical support for the project.

The village's mission is to enable orphaned and vulnerable youth to realize their maximum potential by providing them with a safe and secure living environment, health care, education and necessary life skills. The hope is to raise and nurture socially responsible citizens for the future of Rwanda.

Currently, Agahozo-Shalom is home to 500 young people ages 14-21. The Village employs approximately 150 educators and professionals to maintain it.

For more information: http://www.asyv.org/

View the following video clips and quotes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NM7YMty59c

"Just like we asked after the Holocaust – ‘where was the whole world?’ and there was no answer, they have gone through something no less difficult, so if I can give of myself for a year or more to such a project, I have done my part." Gilboa Kaminski, Israeli Volunteer/Farm Manager 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHZx2v2wDZI

"You're educated about the Holocaust and it's all about you: the world did this to the Jews and the Jews have the burden to bear, and the Jews are the sufferers of genocide. It was only when I started to work on this project that it began to trickle in that genocide is not about Jews, genocide is about people. And people have done this to people." Anne Heyman, Founder, Agahazo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda

Yisachar Mekonen, Ethiopian Israeli, Yemin Orde Youth Village graduate (1984), on his involvement in ASYV:

"In Rwanda many young people are growing up without their parents. In a way, this is similar to our situation. We too were raised and educated and reached senior positions in society, mainly on our own."

Ethiopian Israeli, on her involvement in ASYV:

"My home is in Israel because I am Jewish, but I cannot forget that I was born in Africa."

"It's about capacity building; it's about teaching kids to do for themselves; it's about giving them the tools to be able to not only be productive members of society, not only to be healed and whole, and get married and have children and have a job, but to understand their obligation to give back to society and to make the world a better place" Anne Heyman, Founder, Agahazo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda

Discussion Questions: • Go back to the three categories we began with: like all other people, like some other people, like no other people. In what ways are these dispositions echoed in the quotes above?

• Do the Israelis and Americans in the clips share similar motivations for their social justice ? work? How about the Ethiopian Israelis?

• Like the important work of Jewish Heart for Africa, Agahozo Shalom too leverages Israeli experience and knowhow to help bring healing and justice to Africa. Both are compelling examples of the power of partnerships between North American Jews and Israelis. Do you agree that Israel can serve as an asset towards forwarding the work of social justice in the world?

Part 4: Philanthropy Challenge – Innovation: Africa

Innovation: Africa is an organization that brings Israeli innovation to African villages.

Founded in 2008, in six years Innovation Africa has provided light, clean water, food and proper medical care to more than 675,000 people in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Uganda, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Its mission is to save African lives with Israeli innovation while supporting Israel’s economy and image abroad.

The Challenge: Organize a campaign this month, in honor of Black History Month, to enable Innovation: Africa to expand its work in African countries. Consider setting concrete project goals, such as raising $10,000 to power a medical clinic or a school.

$10,000 allows them to provide a rural African clinic with light and a solar powered refrigerator. Light allows doctors to perform life-saving surgeries at night, and refrigerators allow proper storage for essential medicines and vaccines.

$10,000 can also provide electricity to a school. With well-lit classrooms, students can do their homework at night, and adults can take continuing education courses. Electricity allows schools to provide access to radios and computers, giving their pupils access to the outside world for the first time.

For more information go to http://www.innoafrica.org/

LGBT History Month

For LGBT History Month on campus, we offer 2 options for integrating Israel into the campus - wide conversation.

1. Ima and Abbaz, TV show guide 2. Gay Days, documentary film guide

Ima and Abbaz (2012) (Mom and Dad’Z) TV Show Guide Some Background Before Viewing This Israeli television series is about a gay couple who decides to bring a child into the world with the help of their best friend. The show gives viewers a fresh new look at the notion of ‘family,’ and explores different kinds of families, including joint parenthood, the new family of the main characters of the show.

Erez is a complicated character -- a gay Woody Allen without the charm. He is the biological father of Hillel, whom he brought into the world with Hillel's mother Talia, a straight single woman who works in the army. Erez' partner of six years – and second father to Hillel - is Sami, a mizrachi gay man far more at peace with his sexuality and his Jewish heritage than Erez. This light-hearted drama was a hit in the winter of 2012/13 on Channel 3, a popular Israeli cable station. In this 4th episode new-born Hillel is due to undergo his circumcision. Will Erez overcome his ambivalence towards such "primitive" rituals? Will Talia cope with her motherly instinct to protect her child from harm? Will Sami's mother attend the ceremony? These questions and more…

A few words about Brit Milah – Jewish circumcision Jewish boys are traditionally circumcised eight days after their birth, unless the baby is ill, in which case the circumcision is postponed until he recovers. The tradition of circumcision began with the patriarch Abraham, and has been maintained from Jewish father to Jewish son for over 3000 years. Even non-observant Jews tend to observe this rite of passage. The mohel, the ritual circumciser, undergoes religious training and qualification, but these days many parents choose to engage a mohel who also has medical qualifications, for safety's sake. In a departure from the Sopranos, a Godfather in Jewish tradition is the one who holds the child on an embroidered cushion when he is being cut. It is traditional for the paternal grandfather to receive this honor.

A Wider Bridge works to bring the LGBTQ communities of Israel and North America closer together. Their programs include educational and cultural activities here in the U.S., including this film series, LGBTQ trips to Israel, and our online magazine www.awiderbridge.org

These materials were made possible by A Wider Bridge, who were consulted fully in their development.

Facilitation Guide

Tech things: Make sure that  the DVD player can play the disc,  that the projector works,  that you have a screen (films never look good simply projected on to a wall),  and that the speakers are powerful enough for everyone to hear (LCDs rarely have strong speakers built in),  and that you have printed out copies of the hand-out for everyone to look at prior to the screening

But before doing anything… Make sure you watch the film yourself, and run through the questions for yourself. This isn't the kind of activity where you need to remain detached and objective. You are allowed and even encouraged to have an opinion – not in order to force it on others, but in order to find your own commitment to the subject. Running through the activity first, will also allow you to make the appropriate decisions for your group about productive avenues of discussion.

Important: At the end of the film, let the credits roll right until the very end, before turning the lights on. There are two good reasons for this. First, it is always valuable to give credit to all the people involved in the creation of a piece of art. But more importantly, the credits allow time for the swirling emotions and opinions to begin to settle. It is good to allow people to sit alone with their responses to a piece of art, before inviting them to share their thoughts with others.

After the screening, lead a group discussion using the guided questions. [Depending on the size of the audience and their familiarity with each other, you might choose to run the discussion with everyone, or split into groups, or even call out the questions and ask people to respond in pairs.]

Discussion Guide

 Which character did you most empathize with? Which character did you least empathize with? How do you understand the relationship these two characters have? [Encourage people not to take the easy way out: we're not counting the secretary or the doctor…]

 Is this an episode that could only work in Israel? [Several Israeli TV shows and films have been remade by American production companies recently. Can you imagine an English language version of this episode reaching a broad audience in the States? Quite apart from the circumcision, is "family" such a big deal in America?]

o What does this tell you about Israel? [If the answer to the previous question is yes, then it's worth thinking what it does to a nation to have its traditions noted in popular culture? Think about the place of Christmas in TV series throughout the US. What is the nature of a modern country that lives "family" so deeply? And if the answer was no, that the episode could play just as easily in the States with no cultural translation, does it follow that American Jews are as comfortable and at home with their culture in the public sphere as are Israeli Jews in Israel?]

Brit Milah/Circumcision…  How do you explain Sami's friends, who on the one hand defy convention to the extent that they speak Hebrew in the feminine, but on the other hand are deeply hurt they were not invited to one of the most conservative patriarchal tradition- bound rituals the Jewish religion has to offer? [Is there an expectation for our behavior to be consistent? If we take radical choices in some areas of our lives, are we expected to be radical in all areas of our lives?]

Complexity o Do you sometimes find yourself surprising others with the seeming- inconsistency of your choices?

 Why do you think that naming his son after his father is dismissed as an empty gesture by Sami's mother ("And if your father had been called Zacharia would you have named the child that?"), while Erez' parents are delighted when Erez reluctantly acquiesces to what he calls the "cruel and primitive" circumcision of his son? [Is the difference in response just due to character and culture, or do you believe there is a value difference between handing on a name, and handing on an embodied ritual?]

The word "Brit" in Hebrew is often translated as a covenant, a binding commitment. Hence circumcising one's son, giving him a Brit, literally means to bind yourself to him and him to you. The symbolism is one of commitment and continuity, a link connecting your son to you and to your near and ancient past. It is this symbolism that the psychologist is keen for Erez to face.

 Is there anything of his near and far past that you believe your father passed on and bound to you?  Is there anything of your near and far past that you would like to pass on and bind to your children when the time comes?

Ima and Abbaz Post-Screening Handout

Which character did you most empathize with?

Which character did you least empathize with?

How do you understand the relationship these two characters have?

Is this an episode that could only work in Israel?

o What does this tell you about Israel?

 How do you explain Sami's friends, who on the one hand defy convention to the extent that they speak Hebrew in the feminine, but on the other hand are deeply hurt they were not invited to one of the most conservative patriarchal tradition-bound rituals the Jewish religion has to offer?

o Do you sometimes find yourself surprising others with the seeming-inconsistency of your choices?

 Is there anything of his near and far past that you believe your father passed on and bound to you?

 Is there anything of your near and far past that you would like to pass on and bind to your children when the time comes?

Gay Days (2009) (Hazman Havarod) Documentary Film

Some Background Before Viewing "Gay Days chronicles the evolution of the GLBT rights movement in Israel, from 1985 until [its breakthrough moment in 1998]. It’s a personal story told through the eyes of the director Yair Qedar, the editor of the GLBT paper, The Pink Times. The film begins in 1985 when there are only a handful of openly gay people within Israeli society. But by 1998 this number has increased to over 3000. Using archive materials from television, film and home videos alongside photographs and extracts from Yair’s own diary, the film tells intimate, moving and humorous stories of the fight for equality through the movement’s key players, shedding light on their personal struggles as well those of the movement in general." - Lucy Kaye & Marc Isaacs

A few historical landmarks  1992, Israel passes a law that protects any LGBT citizen (whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim) from employment discrimination. (The comparable bill in the United States – the Employment Non-Discrimination Act – continues to fail to pass Congress.) The Israeli law is notable in that it includes transgender people.  1993, Israel lifts its ban on LGBT military service – 18 years before the United States repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Since 1997, Israel has recognized same-sex partners as family members of soldiers.  1996-98, Israeli court decisions provide that both government and private sector employers must give full spousal benefits to same-sex couples  2005, Israel registers all same-sex marriages performed abroad as marriage. (In Israel all marriages are conducted by orthodox religious authorities who do not allow for same-sex marriage. There are no civil marriages at all.)  Other matters: Israeli same-sex partners are easily able to adopt their partners’ children. Surgery for transgender sex reassignment is covered by Israeli medical coverage.

These materials were made possible by A Wider Bridge, who were consulted fully in their development.

Some of the heroes

Gal Uchovsky Journalist turned broadcaster, hit the big time as a judge on A Star is Born – the Israeli version of American Idol

Yonatan Danilovich Sued El Al Airlines for not granting his partner equal benefits as heterosexual partners. Each of Danilovich's wins in court were appealed against by El Al, until the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1994. In the meantime the Equal Opportunities Law of 1992 had already specifically forbidden discrimination on grounds of sexuality.

Shimon Shirazi Set-designer and club manager, who established the famed Hanger 17 in Jerusalem

Uzi Even One of Israel's top nuclear scientists, and the first openly gay member of Knesset (1993). He married Amit Kama (pictured) in Canada in 1994, and succeeded in having the marriage recognized in Israel by 1996. In 2012 he and Kama fought the courts again, and succeeded again – this time in having the courts grant them a divorce…

Elliot Rock singer, activist, and sound-track composer (she composed the music for this film).

Amalia Ziv Academic and activist, published widely on Queer and Feminist issues.

Adir Shteiner Sued the army in for the right to be recognized as the widower of his partner of 8 years, and won after a 5 year battle. He then fought and won for the right to be mentioned on his late partner's grave-stone, and in 2004 won the right for his new partner to inherit his apartment as common-law spouse.

Facilitation Guide

Tech things: Make sure that  the DVD player can play the disc,  that the projector works,  that you have a screen (films never look good simply projected on to a wall)  and that the speakers are powerful enough for everyone to hear (LCDs rarely have strong speakers built in)

Discussion Guide

 Having seen the movie, what is your "question mark", and what is your "exclamation mark"? [As in, what question are you left with after the screening, and what leaves you surprised?]

 In what way do you see the issues being dealt in the film as universal issues that the gay community has had to deal with anywhere in the world, and in what way do you see them as specific to Israel? [For example, many, though not all, of the victories described in the film were achieved through the Israeli court system. How does this compare with people's perceptions of the struggle for LGBT rights in the U.S.?]

 Do you see this film as a celebration of Israel's relationship to LGBT issues? [Does the film tell the story of how Israel succeeded in reaching the right decisions, or does it tell the story of an heroic fight against a conservative establishment? Can it be both? How does it feel to be celebrating something to do with Israel? Don't expect yourself to provide any definitive answers to any of these questions. Just work hard to give conversation a home…]

 Had the film been made by a woman, how do you think it might have turned out differently? [To what extent are gay men and lesbians portrayed differently in the film? Are these differences similar to perceived differences between gay men and lesbians in the U.S.?]

"I was in the closet. For many years. Until I realized that I could no longer continue to live like the "Anusim" of Spain."

In his famous speech to the Knesset in 2003, Uzi Even drew a resonant analogy to living in the closet, by referring to the "Anusim" of Spain. In 16th Century Spain, many Jews would practice their religion in secret, for fear of the Inquisition. Generations of "Anusim", sometimes known by the more pejorative "Marranos", continued to practice Judaism in secret, such that many did not know that most Jews do not light Friday night candles inside a darkened cupboard…

Even's deliberate use of an archaic analogy will have struck the historically-aware Knesset members.  Does it strike you, or is it now a reference to a by-gone age that is no longer relevant to Jews?  Have you ever felt "in the closet" as a Jew?  Have you ever felt "in the closet" as to your views about Israel?

Conclusion

Gay Days brings together some of the key heroes in the fight for the quality of gay life in Israel.

 Out of all the characters mentioned or interviewed, which one touched you most?

Why?

 Were you to make a short film about the history of the gay community in your own country, which five people would you insist should be featured?

Israeli Book Guides

Aside from being acclaimed worldwide, Israeli literature is fantastic for providing insight and shedding light into nuances of life in Israel and Israeli society. Reading a book alone may be enriching, but some of the layers may be missed without having the gaps filled in. We have provided here 2 options for book guides to assist and enliven your reading.

Both options allow for scaling: either read the whole book, or read it in pieces:

1. The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God and Other Stories, by By Etgar Keret 2. My Promised Land, by Ari Shavit

The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God and Other Stories By Etgar Keret Translated by Miriam Shlesinger (and others) English translation published by St. Martin's Press, 2001

About the Book: Bestsellers in Israel, Etgar Keret's quirky and provocative short stories deal with jealousy, violence, love, betrayal, and the ambiguities of everyday life situations. In these postmodern stories of parents and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, estranged friends and political enemies, Keret explores the hilarious and the tragic in contemporary Israeli society. These brief vignettes – usually about five pages in length – are infused with irony and empathy, as in the story of the boy who is more devoted to his piggy bank than to the Bart Simpson doll he is supposed to be saving for, or the story of a coldhearted killer's decision not to murder a good man. Keret's stories offer a quick read, though their effect on the mind and the heart is far more lasting.

About the Author: Etgar Keret was born in Tel Aviv in 1967 to Holocaust survivor parents. Keret started writing in 1992; since then, he has published four books of short stories and novellas, two comics books, a children's book, two feature screenplays, and numerous teleplays. Bestsellers in Israel, his story collections have been published in sixteen different languages. His movie, "Queen of Hearts," won the Israeli "Oscar," as well as acclaim at several international film festivals, and his latest movie "Jellyfish" is winning accolades across the world. Keret lectures at Tel Aviv University's School of Film, and presented at MAKOM's Israel Arts Institute.

Questions for Discussion:

1. [The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God] What does it mean to be God, according to this story? What does the bus driver do when he wants to be like God? Can you think of any moments in your life when you acted like God, according to Keret's understanding of what this means?

2. [Goodman] How is the army experience central to all of the characters in this story? What is the overall message that Keret is trying to convey about the influence of compulsive military service on the nature of Israeli life? Can you imagine drawing very different conclusions?

3. [Shoes] Why is the narrator reluctant to wear his new Adidas sneakers? What does this seemingly small detail teach you about the role of the Holocaust in Israeli society?

4. [Rabin's Dead] Do you feel comfortable laughing at this story? Do you think it has an underlying political message? If so, what is it? And if not, what does this tell you about Keret's attitude towards politics?

5. [Siren] What does this story teach you about Israeli kids' experience of Holocaust Remembrance Day? Do you think this story is irreverent, or realistic, or both? What message, if any, do you think Keret is trying to convey when Eli is "saved by the siren"?

6. [Siren] Israelis have been accused of commodifying the Holocaust and using it to further their own agendas. Do you think Keret is guilty of doing so in this story? Why or why not?

7. Keret often treats very serious matters with a flippant, casual tone. Where do you see evidence of this? How does it contribute to the humor or his stories? How has this attitude become a necessary way of life in Israel today?

8. In what ways is Keret an Israeli writer? How is he different from other Israeli writers you have read? How do you account for these differences?

9. Etgar Keret once said in an interview, "I live in a very condensed, emotional society that can be both empathetic and violent, compassionate and hysterical. All this finds its way into my stories." Discuss this quote in light of the stories in this collection. Where do you see Keret's empathy and violence? His compassion and humor?

10. Keret is often described as a representative of Israeli youth culture. How is his youthfulness an inherent part of his appeal? How does his hipness enable him to be harshly critical of the society he is depicting?

Review Quotes: Consider these quotes individually. What does each add to your understanding of Keret and his work? Do you agree with the claims they make?

"In this collection of antic tales, Israeli writer Keret chronicles the bitter ironies that determine his characters' daily lives . . . Keret's brief stories juxtapose a casual realism with regular flashes of unabashed absurdity, portraying characters on the brink of adulthood forced to confront life's chaotic forces death, justice, love, betrayal for the first time. Keret attempts to render often sad or tragic events with a light touch, and his plots lend a fantastical, whimsical air to simple, everyday reality." ─Publishers Weekly

"Israeli writer Keret's stories are brief and powerful linguistic downpours, usually punctuated by uproarious climaxes . . . Keret gives in to stereotypes when he turns his eye toward Americans or Palestinians, but readers will still find those stories, like the others, smart, insightful, and delightfully hip." ─Booklist

"Witty, quirky and off-beat...In a society founded by ideology, Keret takes a satirical swipe at uncompromising ideologues..." ─Chicago Jewish News

"Etgar Keret is often called Israel's hippest young writer. His deadpan descriptions of life among ordinary people -- often young people -- offer a window on a surreal world that is at once funny and sad." ─Neda Ulaby, National Public Radio (USA)

"Rarely extending beyond three or four pages, [Keret's stories] fuse the banal with the surreal, shot through with a dark, tragicomic sensibility and casual, comic-strip violence." ─Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer (London)

Other Books by Etgar Keret Available in English:

 Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories (FSG, 2012)  The Nimrod Flipout (FSG, 2006)  Jetlag: Five Graphic Novellas (Toby Press, 2006)  Gaza Blues: Different Stories (Gardners Books, 2004)

My Promised Land By Ari Shavit

Talking about “My Promised Land” Bettering or Battering?  A recurring theme in Shavit’s narrative is the difference, sometimes chasm, between intentions, actions, and results.  What would you say were Shavit’s intentions in writing this book? Did he succeed?  The Jewish community throughout the world tends to be suspicious of those who criticize Israel and Zionism. This may be because criticism can serve two opposing intentions. Sometimes criticism is a call for destruction, and sometimes criticism is a call for improvement and reconstruction.  How would you classify “My Promised Land” - reconstructive? destructive?  Do you believe Shavit’s intentions were towards construction or destruction?  This book received considerable support from the Natan Fund, a Jewish organization that aims “to catalyze new conversations about Jewish life”.  The book has already catalyzed conversations about Jewish life. Has it catalyzed new conversations for you?  Do you think the Natan Fund was wise in supporting “My Promised Land”?

Triumphs and Tragedy The sub-title of the book is “The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”.  Are you left feeling that the book dealt well with both triumph and tragedy? Did you feel that one outweighed the other?  Do you feel the balance or imbalance between triumph and tragedy in the book was significant?  Most literary definitions of the Tragedy genre would insist on the common element of “inevitability”. A tragic understanding of an event would assume that catastrophe was unavoidable.  Does “My Promised Land” insist upon the inevitability of catastrophe?  Do you find this acceptable?

This book guide was developed with a generous grant from

Zionism Zionism appears throughout the book in many guises. Sometimes Zionism is like a character with whims and will, sometimes faceless sometimes emotional. “My Promised Land” presents Zionism as something dynamic, ever-changing, but with something constant at its heart. We at Makom would say that the heart of Zionism is summed up in the penultimate line of Israel’s national anthem: “To be a free (Jewish) People in our land.”

This line breaks down into four key values that are both simple and complex:

 To be – to survive, and also “to be” in the sense of to relax, “just to be”

 Free – free to take responsibility, free to grant and restrict freedoms, free to create

 (Jewish) People – connected to Jews globally, to Jewish civilization and culture

 In Our Land – the home of this collective enterprise is the “Holy Land”.

Given this understanding of Zionism’s heart, how would you say Shavit leaves you feeling about the Zionist enterprise?

“To be”  To what extent has Zionism been successful in ensuring the survival of the Jewish People?  To what extent has Zionism been successful in enabling the Jewish People to “just be”?  How are you left feeling about Israel’s capability to enable the Jewish People to continue To be?

“Free”  Has Zionism empowered the Jewish People to be able to make their own decisions, and decide their own fate?  To what extent has Zionism been successful in enabling Jewish creativity?  How are you left feeling about Israel’s capability to enable the Jewish People to continue to be free?

“(Jewish) People”  To what extent has Zionism been successful in holding the Jewish People together?  To what extent would you say Zionism has contributed to the language, culture, and values of the Jewish People?  How are you left feeling about Israel’s ongoing connection to Jewish people, civilization, and values?

“In Our Land”  To what extent do you think that Zionism has succeeded in gathering Jews from around the world into a viable homeland?  How do you feel about the way in which Zionism negotiated the claims of another people to the same land?

Throughout the world there is a marked reticence among young Jews to classify themselves as Zionists or to openly identify with the word Zionism. Ari Shavit has no such reticence.  In what way would you say Shavit is a Zionist?  How would you compare your relationship to Zionism with Shavit’s?

Israel vs Diaspora From humble beginnings, Israeli Jews now make up (or will very soon make up) the majority of Jews in the world. This is not only due to Israeli birth-rates, but also due to dropping Jewish birth-rates in the Diaspora. The only Diaspora birth-rates that are rising, are among orthodox and ultra-orthodox. Shavit asserts that Israel is the only chance for the long-term survival of non-orthodox Jewry.

Before jumping off into discussions of the viability of Diaspora Jewry, let’s look at Shavit’s positive assertion:

 Have you ever seen Israel as the long-term solution to the continuity of non-religious Jewry?

 Do you find Shavit’s assertion challenging? Are you able to easily dismiss it?

So... what do you think ?

 Are you pleased to have read the book?

 Are there people you particularly hope will read this book?

 Are there people you particularly hope will not read this book?

 What do you think about the fact that this book has not yet been published in Hebrew?

Facilitator’s guide We have created for you eight individual discussion units based on particular chapters of the book. You can work with these units in a nine-part series of meetings that culminate in the Whole Book Discussion, or you can work with the units as individual stand-alone modules.

What do you need?  You need to have read the book yourself…  You need for everyone attending the discussion to have read the book (or up to the chapter you are discussing, in the 9-part series) – no short cuts!  You need to have worked through the guide, making decisions for yourself.  You are welcome to print out any of the materials you wish. You can also run the entire session carbon-free.  You need a quiet, well-lit room with comfortable seating for the discussion itself.  Set up a flip-chart or white board.

What do we recommend? 1. Make sure everyone introduces themselves if it is a new group. Then throw out a “warm-up question” that everyone in the group should answer, before digging into the written questions. We find that the following opener is generative: “What is your exclamation mark and your question mark after reading the book?” ie what surprised them, and what question do they have? Have everyone in the group answer this briefly.

2. Whether discussing the whole book or a part of it, we recommend building a group “re- cap” on the white board. Either chapter by chapter, or section by section, have everyone contribute to a brief summary of the book’s main topics. This way everyone will be reminded of what they read, and will feel that they are building a shared picture. Don’t take more than 15 minutes for this.

3. Begin the conversation using the questions in the Structured approach, or by going for the Free-range approach.

Structured approach: The advantages of the structured approach is that it enables you to cover wide aspects of the book, and not get stuck into narrow issues into which a free ranging conversation may flow. The structured questions are also there to allow the conversation to take place in the context Shavit intends: what is the meaning and future of Israel to the Jewish People?

Follow the questions. But don’t forget that you are aiming to build a flowing conversation, and not a staccato question/answer session. So feel free to alter the order of the questions, to dwell more on some than others, skip over some, and add your own.

Free-range conversation approach: Depending on the nature of the group and your familiarity with them, you might ask everyone to print out two quotations from the book before they arrive: One quotation that they wholeheartedly agreed with, and one with which they strongly differed. Have them post them up on the walls of the room. Give time for everyone to look at each other’s choices.

An entire session could be given over to giving everyone space to explain their choices. This could be a fascinating and rich exploration of people’s responses to the book, and would allow them to bring their own burning issues to the table.

We would recommend, however, adding in one additional dimension to this free-ranging, individual-led conversation. We recommend introducing these four values of Zionism to the group:

Zionism appears throughout the book in many guises. Sometimes Zionism is like a character with whims and will, sometimes faceless sometimes emotional. “My Promised Land” presents Zionism as something dynamic, ever-changing, but with something constant at its heart. We at Makom would say that the heart of Zionism is summed up in the penultimate line of Israel’s national anthem: “To be a free (Jewish) People in our land.”

This line breaks down into four key values that are both simple and complex:

To be – to survive, and also “to be” in the sense of to relax, “just to be”

Free – free to take responsibility, free to grant and restrict freedoms, free to create

(Jewish) People – connected to Jews globally, to Jewish civilization and culture

In Our Land – the home of this collective enterprise is the “Holy Land”.

Place four signs up around the walls: To Be, Free, Jewish People, and In Our Land. Either at the end of the entire discussion, or after each person has talked about their chosen quotations, ask everyone to post each quotation under the appropriate Zionist value.

At the end of the session the facilitator may draw attention to the various quotations under the four different headings. They will act as a powerful reminder of the values that underlie the Zionist enterprise, and also as a rich embodiment of how argument and multi-vocality enlivens its future.

For a more expansive explanation of the four values of Zionism (what we call The Hatikhvah Vision), you are invited to read this, and/or to watch this…

No matter which approach you use, the book is liable to arouse sharp discussion and possible disagreement. Don’t freak out – it would be amazing if a group of Jews were to read this book and not disagree about it passionately. We would suggest though: Try to insist that comments and opinions are referred back the book itself – “where did you pick that up in the book?” “was that what Shavit actually wrote?”

Finally, feel free to read our “Provocative Facilitation” guide, and contact us for suggestions: [email protected]

Provocative Facilitation Here are some of what we may call the principles of provocative facilitation, in no particular order:  Dialogue is not consensus  Comfort must be hard-won, not worshipped  Learning means going to visit  Push for “authentic speech”  We live with questions that can’t be answered

Dialogue is not consensus In order for us to learn and to grow, we need to meet others. The deeper the nature of these meetings, the greater the potential for us to grow. In recent times, the term “dialogue” and its strange invented verb, “to dialogue,” has come to signify “coming together.” This isn’t entirely mistaken, but the “coming together” that is imagined always seems to be that of long-lost lovers running towards each other for the mythological embrace at the end of the movie, rather than the wary approach of two boxers from their opposite corners. It’s the latter image we should pay more attention to, since the word dialogue comes from the idea of there being different ideas in conversation, not one. Dialogue can involve conflict. This is fine, since dialogue is not consensus. When we are wishing to learn and to grow, dialogue is far more valuable than consensus. (It is true though, that dialogue requires focused and active listening. But like dialogue, “listening” doesn’t have to mean “agreeing”!)

Comfort must be hard-won, not worshipped Sometimes we value comfort over truth. This is totally understandable. Problems only arise when we confuse one for the other. As Al Gore pointed out, some truths are inconvenient. Sometimes, when a group is in disagreement, it feels uncomfortable. In order to escape the discomfort, we rush to skip around the disagreements and forge a shell of comfort. All facilitators will appreciate their own threshold, and we would be the last to suggest that participants’ entire experience of this program should be uncomfortable. We would simply suggest that wherever your threshold is, at whichever point you would choose to jump for comfort out of conflict, just try to raise that threshold a little higher, postpone that jump a little longer. Don’t make the desire for comfort, into the enemy of honest disagreement in the search for truth.

Learning means going to visit others’ opinions Deep engagement with Israel is likely to bring us into contact with opinions that are in conflict with our own. We are under no obligation to change our opinions in order to reach consensus. But we should view ourselves as committed to imagining – even for a second – how the world might look and feel if we did hold these opposing opinions. This has sometimes been described as “going to visit.” Feeling confident that you can “come home” afterwards allows one to safely visit other views. This is different from “assessing” others’ opinions. We tend to assess others’ ideas by working out “why not”. The visiting approach suggests asking “why yes.” The chances are that we’ll emerge from the process still in disagreement, but we’ll have reached disagreement through generosity.

Push for “authentic speech” A common problem with talking about Israel-related issues in the Jewish community is that the discussions tend to be monopolized by those who see themselves as experts. The enemy here is not the amount of knowledge these people have in comparison to others’. The problem is that when we talk about something we know a lot about, we tend to say the same old thing we always say. And when we say the same old thing, it means that we are not even listening to ourselves – so no surprise it’s tough for others to listen, too! Anna Deveare Smith talked about “authentic speech” – the kind of talking that people do when they find themselves expressing something they have never expressed before, or expressing something in a way they have never done before. As facilitator we need to push participants in this direction. One way of helping this happen is by firmly (but charmingly!) making sure the group attends to the programmed questions, and don’t veer off into political generalizations. The more focused the discussion emerges from the art and its issues, then everyone is an equal expert, and the chances for authentic speech are increased.

We live with questions that can’t be answered The most interesting questions in life are the ones that either have no answer, or have several conflicting answers. Don’t feel that every discussion of every question must lead to an agreed answer. Sometimes the most important thing we can do with some questions is to learn to live with them.

In conclusion, we know that the word “facilitator” comes from the Latin meaning “easy”. That doesn’t mean a facilitator has to make everyone’s life easy, and it certainly doesn’t mean that a facilitator’s job is easy! The adventure of our job is often to make it easier for participants to work through that which is difficult.

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Chapter One: At First Sight, 1897

Precis In the first chapter, Shavit introduces us to his great-grandfather, Herbert Bentwich, a wealthy and educated English Jew, won over by Herzl’s “The Jewish State”. Shavit portrays Bentwich at the head of an 1897 Zionist expedition whose brief is to see the Land of Israel for themselves and to prepare a report on the feasibility and advisability of mass Jewish immigration to the old-new land.

Shavit portrays his great-grandfather, and by extension, the group as a whole as acting on behalf of the Jewish People. As successful emancipated Western Jews (the overwhelming majority of the group are that), they believe that they must use their power and influence to help their own brothers and sisters who are undergoing tragic persecution in Eastern Europe. However, in addition, Shavit suggests that Bentwich is also conscious of the problems that Western assimilation and emancipation are presenting to the Jew, moving away from traditional belief and outside the walls of the traditional insular ghetto. He is also conscious, like Herzl, of the fact that the Jews, for all their success and official equality in the emancipated west, are not as welcome there as many would like to believe. All of these things have propelled Bentwich towards the idea of Zionism as a solution to the problems of the Jewish People.

We see the group on their trip from Jaffa to Jerusalem and the Galilee and their almost immediate conversion to the Zionist idea of mass immigration to the Land. What enchants the group members, from Shavit’s perspective, is the combination of the great Biblical past and the chance for a great future for the contemporary Jews. As such, he pictures them as looking at the landscape and not noticing some half a million Arabs and Druze in some twenty towns and hundreds of villages. They see the past of the country and its future, but they are largely blind to the present reality. They see a backward place which can be transformed by European capital, know-how and will power. They are blind to the people living in the land. The one exception, according to Shavit, is the Anglo Jewish writer, Israel Zangwill, who does see the reality and draws his own conclusion about the likelihood of a future struggle between Arab and Jew for control of the land. Zangwill’s 1904 speech on this point earns him unpopularity and notoriety within the Zionist movement.

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Shavit, from a viewpoint over a hundred years later, understands the blindness and also understands his great-grandfather’s ideas and motivation. He sets up the tragedy and the achievements that this book will explore.

HERBERT BENTWICH ISRAEL ZANGWILL

Quotes 1. If it was to survive, the Jewish people had to be transformed from a people of the Diaspora to a people of sovereignty. In this sense the Zionism that emerges in 1897 is a stroke of genius. Its founders, led by Dr. Herzl, are both prophetic and heroic. All in all, the nineteenth century was the golden age of Western Europe's Jewry. Yet the Herzl Zionists see what is coming. True, they do not know that the twentieth century will conjure up such places as Auschwitz and Treblinka. But in their own way they act in the 1890s in order to preempt the 1940s. They realize they are faced with a radical problem: the coming extinction of the Jews. And they realize that a radical problem calls for a radical solution: the transformation of the Jews, a transformation that can take place only in Palestine, the Jews’ ancient homeland.

2. Had I met Herbert Bentwich, I probably wouldn't have liked him. If I were his son, I am sure I would have rebelled against him. His world— royalist, religious, patriarchal, and imperial—is eras away from my world. But as I study him from a distance—more than a century of distance—I cannot deny the similarities between us. I am surprised to find how much I identify with my eccentric great-grandfather.

3. Yet if my great-grandfather does not disembark, chances are that my children will be only half Jewish. Perhaps they will not be Jewish at all. Britain will muffle our Jewish identity. In the green meadows of Old England, and in the thick woods of New England,

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secular Jewish civilization might evaporate. On both coasts of the Atlantic, the non- Orthodox Jewish people might gradually disappear.

4. I observe the blindness of Herbert Bentwich as he surveys the Land…I understand him perfectly. My great-grandfather does not see because he is motivated by the need not to see. He does not see because if he does see, he will have to turn back. But my great- grandfather cannot turn back. So that he can carry on, my great-grandfather chooses not to see.

5. Between the mythological past and the technological future, there is no present for him. Between memory and dream there is no here and now. In my great-grandfather’s consciousness, there is no place for the Land as it is. There is no place for the Palestinian peasants who stand by their olive and fig trees and wave hello to the British gentleman dressed in fine linen who is absorbed by the Biblical landscape he sees through the train windows.

6. I take a close look at them… there is no malice in them. What brought them here is desperation, and desperation breeds resolve. They are unaware of the huge forces coursing through them—imperialism, capitalism, science, technology—that will transform the land. And when imperialism, capitalism, science, and technology breed with their determination, nothing can stand in the way. These forces will flatten mountains and bury villages. They will replace one People with another.

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Conversation One | Chapter Two: Into the Valley, 1921 Precis This chapter focuses specifically on the Harod valley, (the south eastern part of the Yizrael valley), populated by a few poor Arab villages before Zionism arrived there in the Autumn of 1921. For centuries the valley had been sparsely populated and lightly farmed. A place of brackish water and disease. Shavit describes the new situation of Eastern European Jews and of Zionism at the end of the First World War. The crisis of the former had become much more acute and the forces awakening in the Zionist movement had responded with more radical and widespread solutions, including the idea of large scale settlement in the Yizrael (Jezreel) valley, a valley that resonated with Biblical memory.

He describes the secular and socialist fervor – of the first pioneers of the new kibbutz Ein Harod and accompanies the growth of the kibbutz through its early years and the growth of this radical new pioneering force throughout the valley. The chalutzim were a collective force that came to transform objective reality and to seize control, not just of their own fortunes, but of the fate of the Jewish People as a whole. This was a large scale immigration of the new type of Jew, an ideologically driven Jew who revolted against traditional Judaism and against Diaspora Jewish history. The Jews of the “Exile” were seen as passive, weak, cerebral and fate accepting. These Zionist valley Jews were determined to create a new active, strong model of a Jew, reclaiming physicality and the redemptive act of physical labor in the Land of Israel. By “conquering” the valley through their physical labor, they sought to transform themselves and to “conquer” the “exilic” character they had inherited from their parents and which they now rejected.

Shavit concentrates on the secular ”Rebbe” of the valley, Yitzchak Tabenkin, a passionate rebel and anarchist who joined Ein Harod three months after its foundation, at the advanced ago of 34 (most of the settlers were in their late teens or early twenties). Tabenkin, an advocate of an aggressive Zionist activism, symbolizes the determination to end the Exile and to save the

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Jewish People through a Zionism very different from that of both Herzl and Shavit’s great- grandfather, Herbert Bentwich.

As the Zionism of Ein Harod succeeds in transforming the objective reality, some of the Arab inhabitants of the valley move away but others stay and view the new situation with intense resentment even as their own economic fortunes rise with the valley’s development. They themselves are becoming unwilling participants in a movement that they are powerless to stop. Jewish history is being transformed and the Arabs are relegated to being onlookers in a historical process that they can neither control nor understand.

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Quotations and Questions

Herzl's Zionism of 1903 found the use of force unacceptable. But seventeen years later, Zionism was no longer so fastidious. The Great War and the Great Revolution had hardened hearts.

 Why do you think Shavit starts his journey in the valley?  What qualities of the chalutzim and of early Zionism is he trying to introduce us to?  To what extent do they impress you?

The move is not only brilliant, it is brave. The young Labor Brigade comrades settling in the Valley of Harod do not ask themselves how the eighty thousand Jews living in Palestine in 1921 will deal with the seven hundred thousand Arabs. They do not ask themselves how a tiny avant- garde of ten thousand Palestine socialists will lead the fifteen million of the Jewish Diaspora on an audacious historical adventure. Like Herbert Bentwich, the seventy-four are blessed and cursed with convenient blindness. They see the Arabs but they don't. They see the marshes but they ignore them. They know that historic circumstances are unfavorable but they believe they will overcome them.

 “Like Herbert Bentwich, the seventy-four are blessed and cursed with convenient blindness.” In what way are they blind in his opinion?  With his triple paradox - a “convenient” blindness that is both “blessed and cursed”, Shavit begins his book-long search for what we may call “the phraseology of complexity”. Does this embracing of complexity help you understand Israel more, or less?  Have you ever come across activists for any cause that strike you as “blessed and cursed” with a blindness? Has their blindness led them to be more or less effective as activists?

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The seventy-four twenty-year-olds launching Ein Harod rebel against the daunting Jewish past of persecution and wandering. They rebel against the moldering Jewish past of a people living an unproductive life, at the mercy of others. They rebel against Christian Europe. They rebel against the capitalist world order. They rebel against Palestine's marshes and boulders. They rebel against Palestine's indigenous population. The…pioneers rebel against all forces that are jeopardizing Jewish existence in the twentieth century as they pitch their tents by the spring of Harod.  Have you ever imagined Zionism and Zionists in terms of “rebellion”?  As a youth-led passionate rebellion, they were shooting in many different directions. Shavit names six. In how many of these rebellions would you say they were successful?

Step after step, they sow wheat and barley, and when they return to the encampment at the end of the day, everyone gathers around them in glee. After eighteen hundred years, the Jews have returned to sow the valley. In the communal dining hall, they sing joyfully. They dance through the night, into the light of dawn.  What do you think touches Shavit so much in this scene?  Do you find the image as moving as Shavit does?

…they take on the physical labor of tilling the earth, they transform themselves from object to subject, from passive to active, from victims to sovereigns.

 Do you identify with the desire to move from object to subject? From passive to active? From victim to sovereign?  Do you see sovereign as the natural opposite to victim?  In the terms of these opposites, did they succeed in this rebellion of transformation?

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As Jewish Europe has no more hope, Jewish youth is all there is... There is hardly any time left. In only twenty years, European Jewry will be wiped out. That's why the Ein Harod imperative is absolute. There is no compassion in this just-born kibbutz. There is no indulgence, no tolerance, no self-pity.

There is no place for individual rights and individual needs and individual wants. Every single person is on trial. And although remote and desolate, this valley will witness the events that determine whether the Jews can establish a new secular civilization in their ancient homeland. Here it will be revealed whether the ambitious avant-garde is indeed leading its impoverished people to a promised land and a new horizon, or whether this encampment is just another hopeless bridgehead with no masses and no reserves to reinforce it, a bridgehead to yet another valley of death.

 What “valley of death” is Shavit referring to?  We are used to a moral discourse that places individual rights as higher than all other. What is your response to the way in which Shavit describes them as somehow lesser?

I wonder at the incredible feat of Ein Harod. I think of the incredible resilience of the naked as they faced a naked fate in a naked land. I think of the astonishing determination of the orphans to make a motherland for themselves—come hell or high water. I think of that great fire in the belly, a fire without which the valley could not have been cultivated, the land could not have been conquered, the State of the Jews could not have been founded. But I know that the fire will blaze out of control. It will burn the valley's Palestinians and it will consume itself, too. Its smoldering remains will eventually turn Ein Harod's exclamation point into a question mark.

 What question mark is Shavit referring to? What will Ein Harod later ask, that once was a statement?  Shavit is in awe of these young leaders. Can you imagine people you know make similar sacrifices for a cause they believe in? (Remember there were no air conditioners in those days!)  Some wish that Shavit would simply celebrate the resilience of the young chalutzim without having to darken the resonance of their achievements at the end of the chapter. Do you share this critique?

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 Why do you think Shavit focuses in on the Jascha Heifetz concert (pictured above) at the end of the chapter? What does it symbolize for him?  Is this semi-royal visit of a Diasporan artist to the hardy Israeli pioneers a symbol of Diaspora-Israel relations to this day? Should it be?

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Additional Sources Here are three additional sources that you might want to use in your discussion.

The first, by the very important Jewish and Zionist thinker, Ahad Ha’am (1856-1927), writing in 1890, is a very early call for Chalutzim to rise and take responsibility for the future of the Jewish People. This was his call for an order of what he called Cohanim – Priests – a new (for him, secular) group devoted to the needs of the People.

Every new idea, whether religious, moral or social, will not arise, will not exist, without a group of 'Cohanim' [priests] who will devote their lives to it, and will serve it with all their heart and all their soul, who will always be on their guard, to preserve it from all harm, and who, in every place of danger will always be the first to devote their souls to it.

The new idea is a way along which no man has ever passed, and every such way is in constant danger. We can neither demand from the masses, who long for life, that they pave the way by struggle for the idea, and nor can we rely on them. This can only be done by the Cohanim, who alone will have the strength and the moral courage demanded for this - and the people will come afterwards, the way having been prepared for am, 1890׳them. Achad Ha

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The second source is a poetic description of the Chalutz from Moshe Bassok (1907-1966), an Eastern European poet and writer who became a leader of the organization Hechalutz while he was still in Europe and came on Aliyah in 1936, joining one of the new kibbutzim. It portrays the mythical and tans-historical nature of the Chalutz in the eyes of a central figure in the movement.

From the midst of the storm of a crumbling world, and a world in the making, there came to the astonished eyes of the child, the name of strength and courage - the Chalutz.

In the distance, there still echoes the sounds of distant battles, and above his head there is the flowering of the great spring, and his soul is inflamed by the sound of a still unknown voice - the Chalutz. From nearby comes the name, from home, from the mouth of his older brother. The Chalutz. And it comes to him, like a sapling coming to its piece of earth, embedded firmly in the written tradition. The Chalutz goes before the camp. He has come from the distant and barren desert, from those forty years of wandering of the people, in the wilderness of its life between the slavery of the soul, and the yearning for redemption; as a son and a brother of that legendary race of wanderers, he has come to redeem himself from all degradation, a race who conquers both themselves and their land by storm. Moshe Bassok

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The third piece is from A.D. Gordon, (1856-1922), the major thinker of the new Chalutzic labour movement and one of the deepest and most challenging thinkers of the 20th century. As opposed to Tabenkin, who in Shavit’s description, cared only for the collective and for whom the individual was basically expendable (in true Russian socialist/communist fashion), for Gordon there was no contradiction between the individual and the nation. Both would grow together and the individual at his or her peak, would merge mystically with the soul of the collective.

Man, in his striving to live according to the demands of his humanity, to that image of God which is in him, must not cease to live his own life in order to live for others, but the opposite. He needs to let his essence, his individuality deepen and expand into the infinity of the world; until he becomes as one with the universe, until his life unites with the lives of all that lives, his song with the song of all that sings, and until the pain of all that suffers pain, the evil of all that behaves on an evil fashion, and the ugliness of all that is ugly, become his pain, evil, and ugliness )תיקון( .that demand from him their correction

And at this point the yearning to live "for others", "for the people" "for humanity", or "for God" will be nothing other than the yearning to live more, to live one' s real and inner self, more fully and completely, to live within oneself, the lives of others ,the lives of all creation. A.D. Gordon, 1916

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izVWbpZraWU http://www.jta.org/1927/09/23/archive/3500-chalutzim-are-waiting-for-permission-to-proceed-to-palestine

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Conversation Two | Chapter Four: Masada, 1942

Précis Masada in 1942 lies at the center of the chapter symbolically but Shavit’s narrative begins in the violent years of the Arab revolt of 1936 to 1939. These three years of almost unrelenting terror put Jew clearly against Arab and made it impossible for the Jews to maintain any kind of blindness to the Arab question that so many had exhibited up till then. In Shavit’s description, the 1936 campaign brought about a toughening of the Jewish psyche, a final realization that non-violent confrontation would be impossible.

At the same time, Jews in Palestine became aware of the developments in Europe. As the Nazi armies rolled through North Africa, many of the leaders began to fear a full scale attack on the Jews of Palestine. A consciousness begins to develop that there is a need for the new harder Jews of the country to prepare for war both against the Arabs and the Nazi forces.

In that climate, and largely because of the work of one man, Shmaryahu Gutman, Masada developed as a rallying point and a symbol of preparedness for the tough times ahead.

Gutman trained groups of youth movement leaders to scale the mountain and to learn Masada’s story of the last Jewish rebels who had chosen suicide over slavery as a last defiant act thousands of years previously. These youngsters, carrying out dramatic night time ceremonies in which they swore loyalty to the mountain and to their fellow Jews, would be the guardians of the nation, toughened on the events of the 30’s and the early 40’s. It was their task to forge themselves into the human weapon that would ensure that Masada would never fall again.

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Quotations and Questions

The Jewish national liberation movement had to acknowledge that it was facing an Arab liberation movement that wished to disgorge the Jews from the shores they had settled on.

 How would you define a “National Liberation Movement”?  From what are the two movements here aiming to liberate themselves from?

Faced with an Arab threat and a Nazi threat, it is clear that without the use of force, Zionism will not prevail. It will go down in history as yet another movement of false messianism. That is why the youth of Israel must be prepared. Only the sons and daughters of Zion can save Zionism from utter destruction.

 Do you believe there are situations in which force is necessary?  Does the use of force strike you as a Jewish quality?

Gutman is not naive. Having grown up beside the malaria-infested marshes near the Valley of Harod, he has always known that Zionism is a struggle. Living under the hateful gaze of the valley's Arabs, he has always known that at its core Zionism embodies conflict.

 Do you agree with Gutman’s assertion of Zionism’s core?  The Zionism put forward in Shavit’s portrait of Gutman is of an oppositional movement, which seems to be more engaged in survival rather than construction. To what extent does this chime with your understanding of Zionism?

The more I learn about them, the more distant they seem to me. In an era of criticism and cynicism and self-awareness I find it difficult to truly comprehend the cadets' state of mind as they prepare to climb Masada for the very first time. Yet I realize that this paradox is exactly the essence of the Zionist Masada...What Gutman is doing in bringing this young, idealistic group to this desert ruin is using the Hebrew past to give depth to the Hebrew present and enable it to face the Hebrew future. In order to achieve a concrete, realistic, and national goal, Gutman imbues the fortress with a man-made historically based mysticism.

 Do you share Shavit’s difficulty in understanding the cadets’ state of mind?

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 Have you ever found yourself swept up by a charismatic leader, or an inspiring experience?

It is not Ben Yair who defined Masada, it is Gutman. What matters is not the event that did or did not take place on the fringe of history in … 73, but the event that does take place in…1942. For the Masada ethos put forth by Gutman would define the Zionism of the 1940s and would decide the fate of 1948 and would shape the young state of Israel.

 Have you ever visited Masada? If so, what narrative did the tour guide share with you?  Knowing as you do now, that the ancient Masada narrative was promoted with a particular agenda in mind, has your perspective on Masada changed?

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Additional sources Here are three additional sources that you might want to incorporate into the discussion.

The first is from the famous speech of Elazar Ben Yair, the leader of the Zealots of Masada as he calls on the Jews to commit collective suicide rather than fall in slavery to the Romans. It is this speech, taken from the Josephus account of the last episodes of the Jewish war against the Romans after the fall of the second Temple, that became a mythical element in the Zionist self- perception from the mid-1920’s onward.

Brave and loyal followers! Long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone other than God... The time has now come that bids us prove our determination by our deeds. At such a time we must not disgrace ourselves. Hitherto we have never submitted to slavery... We must not choose slavery now... I think it is God who has given us this privilege, that we can die nobly and as free men... In our case it is evident that daybreak will end our resistance, but we are free to choose an honorable death with our loved ones. This our enemies cannot prevent, however earnestly they may pray to take us alive; nor can we defeat them in battle.

Let our wives die unabused, our children without knowledge of slavery. After that let us do each other an ungrudging kindness, preserving our freedom as a glorious winding-sheet. But first, let our possessions and the whole fortress go up in flames. It will be a bitter blow to the Roman, that I know, to find our persons beyond their reach and nothing left for them to loot. One thing only let us spare--our store of food: it will bear witness when we are dead to the fact that we perished, not through want but because...we chose death rather than slavery.... Speech of Elazar ben Yair from Josephus Flavius c 70c.e.

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The second source is taken from the poem “Masada” written by the Ukrainian born Jewish poet, Yitzhak Lamdan (1899-1954), who had come on Aliyah at the beginning of the 1920’s and who wrote his epic poem in 1927, inspired by the terrible Ukrainian pogroms after the First World War. In the poem, Lamdan called for Jewish victims from all over the world to converge on Masada for the last stand of the Jews. The poem began the rise of Masada to its mythic place in the Zionist story.

On Ukrainian paths, dotted with graves, and swollen with pain, My sad-eyed, pure-hearted brother fell dead, to be buried in a heathen grave. Only father remained fast to the doorpost wallowing in the ashes of destruction, And over the profaned name of God, he tearfully murmured a prayer. Whilst I, still fastening my crumbling soul with the last girders of courage, Fled, at midnight to the exile ship, to ascend to Masada.

I was told The final banner of rebellion had been unfurled there and demands from Heaven and Earth, God and Man: ‘Payments’. Stubborn nails grind the gospel of comfort on tablets of rock; Against the hostile Fate of generations, an antagonistic breast is bared with a roar: “Enough! You or I! Here will the battle decide the final judgement!”

Yitzhak Lamdan 1927 from “Isaac Lamdan: A Study in Twentieth Century Hebrew Poetry” by L. Yudkin [Cornell University Press 1971]

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The third piece is a description of a tiyul (trek, hike) to Masada by Meron Benvenisti, Israeli writer and intellectual who describes himself as being, in his youth, one of the “High Priests” of the cult of Masada in the 1950’s. It describes briefly the extreme “ritual” that surrounded the hikes to the mountain fortress.

The tiyul was not just an outing. It was the high ceremony of the cult of "homeland." The preparations took weeks, and involved not only logistics such as transportation and food, but rehearsals of performing troupes and preparations for evening lectures. Sometimes the logistics were quite esoteric. Before one tiyul in the early 50s, we found we would not be able to maintain radio contact, so we got hold of a half- dozen pigeons, carried them on our backs, and released one each evening at sunset with a message attached to its leg. The tiyul itself was a test of endurance. We walked for days in temperatures that sometimes reached 42 degrees centigrade (108 degrees Fahrenheit). Water rationing was a particularly controversial feature of our tiyulim. In actual fact, children got sunstroke and there were even deaths from dehydration One day, on the shores of the Dead Sea, a group leader reported to me that a water container had been stolen from his group that night. I demanded that the culprit identify him or herself, and when nobody owned up, I told the entire group, 800 strong, to empty out its water supplies, leaving only one canteen per 30 people for emergencies. That day we walked 12 hours to Ein Gedi without drinking a single drop of water. Meron Benvenisti 1986 from “Conflicts and Contradictions” [Villard publishers]

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://www.masada.org.il/index.php?q=en http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1040

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Conversation Three | Chapter Five: Lydda 1948

Precis “Lydda 1948” takes us to another valley, the Lydda valley in the centre of the country and tells the story of the Zionist development of the valley from the first initiatives before the First World War through to the deportation of the inhabitants of Arab Lydda in the course of the 1948 war.

The valley yields one great success, the marvelous Ben Shemen youth village founded in the mid-20’s. Under the firm hand of its pioneer visionary founder, Dr. Siegfried Lehmann, this became a model of a successful Zionist community in the most enlightened sense of the term, catering to its own residents and offering medical and human services to the Arabs of Lydda and the surrounding villages.

Yet as the youth village develops in size and scope preserving its original humane Zionist vision, the world around it is changing. Since the Arab revolt of the late 1930’s, both Arab and Jew have grown more openly confrontational and it has become increasingly clear to many on the Zionist side, that the only way towards the needed Jewish state will be armed struggle between Jews and Arabs. Zionist groups are training for armed confrontation believing that the moment for a final reckoning will soon occur. Lehmann’s brand of Zionism is about to vanish.

When the struggle breaks out in December 1947 after the United Nations decision to divide the country into two states, it is raw and brutal. For Shavit, the peak of the whole story comes with the Jewish conquest of Lydda and the subsequent expulsion of its 35,000 Arab inhabitants (including refugees from other towns and villages). For Shavit, this raises questions about the validity of the whole Zionist enterprise. He struggles with living as a Zionist Israeli in the full knowledge of what happened in Lydda.

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Quotations and Questions

Lehmann wanted Zionism to suggest a cure both for the modern Jewish people and for modern man; he wanted it to fulfill an urgent national task in a manner that would benefit all of humanity. He wanted Zionism to be a settlement movement that was not tainted by Lithuanian orphan refugees: the first colonialism, a national movement that inhabitants of Lehmann’s village was not scarred by chauvinism, a progressive movement that was not distorted by urban alienation. He believed that Zionism must not establish a closed-off, condescending colony in Palestine that ignored its surroundings and native neighbors; it must not be an Occidental frontier fortress commanding the Orient. On the contrary, Lehmann believed that Zionism must plant the Jews in their ancient homeland in an organic fashion. It must respect the Orient and become a bridge between East and West.

 We might say that Lehmann’s vision is utopian. Does striving for utopia strike you as admirable, pointless, important?  Do you imagine you would have argued with Lehmann, or supported him, or joined him?

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Lydda suspected nothing. Lydda did not imagine what was about to happen. For forty-four years, it watched Zionism enter the valley…They did not see that whileArab refugees Dr. Lehmann of Lydda preached peace, others taught war. While Dr. Lehmann took his students to the neighboring Palestinian villages, Shmaryahu Gutman took them to Masada. While the youth village taught humanism and brotherhood, the pine forest behind it hosted military courses training Ben Shemen's youth to throw grenades, assemble submachine guns, and fire antitank PIAT shells. The people of Lydda did not see that the Zionism that came into the valley to give hope to a nation of orphans has become a movement of cruel resolve, determined to take the land by force.

 What does Shavit mean by “cruel resolve”?  What does the phrase do to you?  Given the end result, would you say that Lehmann’s utopian vision failed? If so, what – if any - was its flaw?

Lydda is our black box… If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be. If Lydda was to be, Zionism could not be. In retrospect it's all too clear. When Herbert Bentwich saw Lydda from the white tower of Ramleh in April 1897, he should have seen that if a Jewish state was to exist in Palestine, an Arab Lydda could not exist at its center. He should have known that Lydda was an obstacle blocking the road to the Jewish state and that one day Zionism would have to remove it. But Herbert Bentwich did not see, and Zionism chose not to know.

 “In retrospect it’s all too clear.” Do you agree? Is it clear?  Here Shavit seems to refer to “Zionism” as a living entity, with feelings, plans, and capabilities. Is this how you see Zionism?

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We will all be held accountable for this era. We shall face judgment. And I fear that justice will not be on our side. There is an impression that the quick transition to a state, and to a state of Hebrew power, drove people mad. Otherwise it is impossible to explain the behavior, the state of mind, the actions of the Hebrew youth, especially the elite youth. The moral code of the nation, forged during thousands of years of weakness, is rapidly degenerating, deteriorating, disintegrating.

 Do you think it is important that Shavit brings up Lydda in this book?  Why do you imagine the writer talks of “Hebrew power”, “Hebrew youth”. Why not “Jewish”?

I see that the choice is stark: either reject Zionism because of Lydda, or accept Zionism along with Lydda…One thing is clear to me: the brigade commander and the military governor were right to get angry at the bleeding-heart Israeli liberals of later years who condemn what they did in Lydda but enjoy the fruits of their deed. I condemn Bulldozer. I reject the sniper. But I will not damn the brigade commander and the military governor and the training group boys. On the contrary. If need be, I'll stand by the damned. Because I know that if it wasn't for them, the State of Israel would not have been born. If it wasn't for them, I would not have been born. They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to live.

 Shavit seems to contrast the fight for survival, with the quest for justice. He suggests that treating the Arabs of Lydda justly would have led to the end of the Israel. Is this an opposition - survival vs justice - between two morally equal values, or do you think one should take precedence over the other?  There are those who reject Shavit’s account of Lydda, and suspect him to be hostile to the Zionist enterprise. There are those who reject Shavit’s conclusions about Lydda, and do not accept that the “dirty, filthy work” was necessary. Shavit may well respond that both are avoiding a very painful and challenging truth. What do you think?

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Additional Sources: Here are three additional sources that you might want to incorporate into the discussion.

The first is from Professor Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who began to examine the events of 1948 and the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem on the basis of solid well researched archival material. In so doing he developing a complex and multi-layered narrative that challenged the prevailing Zionist versions of history that had been dominant in Israel up to that time (the late 1980’s). The piece brought here is actually drawn from two different sources by him.

While from the mid-thirties most of the Yishuv's leaders, including Ben Gurion… supported a "transfer solution"… the Yishuv did not enter the 1948 war with a master plan for expelling the Arabs, nor did its political and military leaders ever adopt such a master plan. There were Haganah/IDF expulsions of Arab communities, some of them with Haganah/IDF General Staff and/or cabinet-level sanction…such as…in Lydda and Ramle in July… But there was no grand or blanket policy of expulsions…

But from July onwards, there was a growing readiness in the IDF units to expel. This was at least partly due to the political feeling, encouraged by the mass exodus from Jewish held areas to date, that an almost completely Jewish State was a realistic possibility. There were also powerful vengeful urges at play – revenge for Jewish losses and punishment for having forced upon the Yishuv and its able bodied young men the protracted, bitter battle. Generally, all that was needed in each successive newly conquered area, was a little nudging. Benny Morris from “The New Historiography: Israel Confronts its past” [Tikkun Magazine Nov/Dec. 1988]

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The second source is from the writer Aharon Megged. He rejects totally the works of the “New Historians” such as Morris.

The message [of the new critical Israeli historians] is that most of the verities forged in our consciousness and experience are false. You, whose parents immigrated here from Poland and settled in a small, arid moshav, worked hard and produced a small farm by their house—you thought they had come to fulfill the dream of creating a new life…a life of labor and Hebrew culture, free of the fear of pogroms and dependence on the gentiles. But you were mistaken! You were naive! They were "colonialists" whose hidden wish was to exploit the Arabs in the neighboring village...

And when you joined the Haganah [pre-State Defence force] and went out at night on guard duty, when Jews were being slain in ambushes every day and night, and orchards and plantations were destroyed and fields set alight—and you exercised self-restraint to avoid hurting innocent Arabs—you thought you were obeying a moral law you learned at school and in the youth and labor movements. But no; you were just following the path of oppressive, imperialist colonialism. Aharon Megged from “One Way Trip on the Highway to Self-Destruction” [Jerusalem Post, 17/6/1994]

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The third piece is from Professor Anita Shapira, an important professor of Zionism and Zionist history who does not identify herself as one of the new historians but who has related to the debate in an involved but dispassionate manner.

I'm not saying that everything that happened is what had to happen, but …the Arab-Jewish conflict began when the first Zionist set foot on the soil of Eretz Israel. The Jews couldn't give up what they saw as the last hope of the Jewish people, and the inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians, had no reason to give up what they saw as their sole right to the land. From this perspective, the conflict was inevitable, but its results were not guaranteed from the beginning. Anita Shapira 1994. From “No Subject is Taboo for the Historian” [from “Zionism: the Sequel” ed. C. Diament, Hadassah Books 1998]

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/reviews/Morris.html http://electronicintifada.net/content/top-israeli-historian-analyzes-benny-morriss-shocking- interview/4968

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Conversation Four | Chapter Six: Housing Estate 1957

Precis In chapter six, Shavit chronicles a time when the population more than doubled as hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured into the young country. The majority of immigrants came from great trauma, whether the trauma of the Shoah or the trauma of radical and sudden dislocation from Arab lands. Through four personal stories, three from central and eastern Europe and one from Iraq, Shavit leads us into the lives of some of the traumatised Jews who arrived in the country in these years.

Two of the young men Ze’ev Sternhall and Aharon Barak (their new names), were delighted to arrive, feeling tremendous anticipation about the chance to build a new future in a safe haven of which they already felt deeply proud. They rapidly turn themselves into success stories of transformation and progress. The third figure, the writer Aharon Appelfeld, finds adjustment to the new society much more difficult, searching for the old European Jewish society that he had known and loved. He became a chronicler of alienation and most of his writing focusses (not uncritically) on the European world left behind. For Louise Aynachi from Iraq, her day of Aliyah is a day of mourning for the life left behind.

Through these four principal figures (with others in the background) Shavit draws a picture of a traumatized society which refuses to a large extent to recognize or even to legitimize the trauma of the different individuals, so busily is it engaged in the building of state-building in the 1950’s.

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Quotations and Questions

I had been in the country only a week. I didn't speak the language, I didn't know the land. But when I took off my old clothes I shed the past, the Diaspora, the ghetto. And when I stood in the Atta store in a khaki shirt, khaki trousers, and sandals, I was a new person. An Israeli.

In all of these schools Ervin [Aharon Appelfeld] felt totally alone, without family or community. He found no common ground with the arrogant Sabras, the Oriental newcomers, or the ill- mannered Israeli girls… On Saturday nights he… would sit at a seaside cafe watching the people pass by. Some were Holocaust survivors, others were Arab-world survivors, but what Appelfeld saw were human wrecks. He saw the uprooted Jews of the twentieth century, whose lives had been shattered by disaster.

One blow followed another... On top of that was the DDT, the humiliation of life in a tent, the condescending attitude of veteran Israelis, the scornful attitude of the Ashkenazi immigrants. And the fact that in Israel, Jewish Baghdad was not perceived as the cradle of a great civilization but as the unknown territory of barbarians. Within one week they experienced a sudden fall from paradise to humiliation and deprivation. These three stories of immigration ask searching questions about identity.  Do you believe it is possible to shed one’s identity and adopt a new one so swiftly, like the first quotation, or do you believe it is a painful or impossible process like the second two quotations?  Each of these aliya stories are extremes of either overwhelming excitement and adaptation, or dispiriting alienation. Does Shavit’s telling of all these either-or stories in one chapter reinforce an understanding of the binary extremes of aliya, or does the difference in the stories give you a stronger picture of variety and complexity?  The tales are full of extreme highs and extreme lows. Do you believe this is a reflection of the times they were living in, or a reflection of the way our memories have a tendency to over-dramatize?

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Although development was rampant, social gaps were narrow. The government was committed to full employment. There was a genuine effort to provide every person with housing, work, education, and health care. The newborn state was one of the most egalitarian democracies in the world. The Israel of the 1950s was a just social democracy.

 Do you know of any country today whose development is rampant, and is also a just social democracy?

For its outstanding economic, social, and engineering achievements, the new Israel paid a dear moral price. There was no notion of human rights, civil rights, due process, or laissez-faire. There was no equality for the Palestinian minority and no compassion for the Palestinian refugees. There was little respect for the Jewish Diaspora and little empathy for the survivors of the Holocaust. Ben Gurion's statism and monolithic rule compelled the nation forward.

 In the previous quotation Shavit praises Israel’s egalitarianism and social justice. Yet in this quotation he writes passionately of a “moral price”. Do you believe the lack of rights described here cancel out the morality of the egalitarianism describe previously?  What is the emotional effect of learning of egalitarian progress first, and learning of human rights violations second? Why do you think Shavit chose this order?

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But the miracle is based on denial. The nation I am born into has erased Palestine from the face of the earth. Bulldozers razed Palestinian villages, warrants confiscated Palestinian land, laws revoked Palestinians' citizenship and annulled their homeland. By the socialist kibbutz Ein Harod lie the ruins of Qumya. By the orange groves of Rehovot lie the remains of Zarnuga and Qubeibeh. In the middle of Israeli Lydda, the debris of Palestinian Lydda is all too apparent. And yet there seems to be no connection in people's minds between these sites and the people who occupied them only a decade earlier. Ten-year-old Israel has expunged Palestine from its memory and soul. When I am born, my grandparents, my parents, and their friends go about their lives as if the other people have never existed, as if they were never driven out. As if the other people aren't languishing now in the refugee camps of Jericho, Balata, Deheisha, and Jabalia.

 Why do you think Shavit uses the word denial so much in this chapter?  Was denial of the recent past a good or bad thing for Israel in Shavit’s opinion? And yours?  What would you say is currently being denied in your country? To what extent does this denial serve any useful purpose?

The Israeli continuum rejects trauma and defeat and pain and harrowing memories. Furthermore, the Israeli continuum does not have room for the individual. That's also why the Holocaust remains abstract and separate. It's not really about the people living among us. The message is clear: Quiet now, we are building a nation. Don't ask unnecessary questions. Don't indulge in self-pity. Don't doubt, don't lament, don't be soft or sentimental, don't dredge up dangerous ghosts. It's not a time to remember, it is a time to forget. We must gather all our strength now and concentrate on the future.

 It seems like Shavit is attempting to draw the perspective of Israel’s challenges in the 1950’s perspective in order to explain or even justify callousness. Does he succeed, in your opinion?

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Additional Sources: Here are three additional sources that you might want to incorporate into the discussion.

The first comes from Ze’ev Hafetz, (born 1947), writer and journalist, born in America, who came on Aliyah just after the Six Day War. Years later, wrote about his experiences. In this piece he describes his dawning understanding that underneath the celebratory surface of the society, there was a deeper sadness.

Israel meant normality, self-assurance, an end to the sense of being different and vulnerable [which he had felt as a Jew growing up in the U.S.]. That's what I expected to find in Israel, and at first I thought I had. In the weeks after the Six Day War, the country was in a state of euphoria. Jerusalem was overrun with American tourists, the August sun was bright and Israel seemed to be a nation of happy warriors. And then came the holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It was the first time I had ever experienced Jewish holidays in a Jewish setting, and it came as a shock. A wave of melancholy washed over Jerusalem. I went to the Western Wall, where worshipers from a hundred diasporas wailed heartbroken prayers. During the memorial service on Yom Kippur, I saw people tear at their clothing in grief, or pound the massive stones of the Wall in frustrated anguish. I began to realize that Israel, despite its sabra élan and Mediterranean sunshine, is a nation of orphans and refugees, a place where people jostle and bray at each other all day long and then go home to cramped apartments to drink tea alongside gilt-framed photographs of the dead. The horrors of modern Jewish history hadn't been overcome here, and they were no abstraction; Israel, I began to understand, takes Jewish pain personally. Ze’ev Chafets 1986. From “Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men” (William Morrow)

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The second piece is taken from a speech by Ben Gurion (1886-1973) in the very early period of the state, in which he describes his understanding of anti-Semitism. He asserts that the problem that led to the Holocaust was the presence of the Jews in other countries, not the natural response of nations to that presence.

The Jewish people erred when it blamed anti-Semitism for all the suffering and hardship it underwent in the Diaspora. . . . Must the whole world act like angels toward us? Does a people build its existence on the rule of righteousness—in the midst of other nations? Do Jews observe the rule of righteousness among themselves? Is there no jealousy and hatred among us? . . . Do we relate to members of other groups and parties with sufficient understanding? . . . And we who are different from every people expect others to understand us . . . to accept us with love and fraternity, and if they don't we are angry and protest against their wickedness. ... Is it too difficult for us to understand that every nation fashions its own way of life in accordance with its needs and its desires —and the context of its life and its relationships is the product of its historical condition. One cannot imagine that it will seek to adapt itself to the existence and mentality of the universal exception called Judaism: The cause of our troubles and the anti-Semitism of which we complain result from our peculiar status that does not accord with the established framework of the nations of the world. It is not the result of the wickedness or folly of the Gentiles which we call anti-Semitism. David Ben Gurion 1945. Quoted in “Civil Religion in Israel” by C.Liebman and E. Don Yehiya (University of California 1983)

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The third piece is taken from a T.V. interview with Israeli writer Yehudit Hendel, (born 1926), on growing up in Israel in the early state years. It is a revealing piece which needs to be added to Ben Gurion’s piece to add an extra dimension to the phenomena that Shavit is describing in the chapter.

To put it bluntly, there were almost two races in this country. There was one race of people who thought that they were gods. These were the ones who had the honour and the privilege of being born in [the kibbutzim or the old Zionist neighborhoods]. I belonged as it were to those gods. I grew up in a workers’ neighborhood near Haifa. And there was, we can certainly say, an inferior race. People we saw as inferior had some kind of flaw, some kind of hunchback, and these were the people who came after the war. I was taught in school that the ugliest, basest thing is not the Exile but the Jew who came from there.

Yehudit Hendel 1988. Cited in “The Seventh Million” by T. Segev (Hill and Wang 1993)

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/my_homeland/ http://jafi.org/JewishAgency/English/Jewish+Education/Compelling+Content/Eye+on+Israel/S ociety/4)+The+Mass+Migration+of+the+1950s.htm

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Conversation Five | Chapter Eight: Settlement 1975

Precis Shavit opens his chapter on settlement by exploring the effects of the 1967 and the 1973 wars. The Six Day war of 1967 brought Israeli control of the territories and liberated a potential messianic force within the ranks of religious Zionism. The 1973 war was a war of deep trauma for Israel and the eventual victory could not change the deep discontent regarding the war, the government and indeed, the entire leadership. A malaise was revealed and the country went into a kind of spiritual tailspin. Many sought new directions and new certainties. It is in the contrasting but cumulative effects of these two wars that Shavit locates the roots of the whole settlement enterprise.

The majority of the chapter consists of conversations with four figures who represent the leadership of the settlement enterprise. The two central conversations, with Pinchas Wallerstein and Yehuda Etzion, are the real meat of the chapter.

Seeing themselves as the continuation of the old Zionist fervor associated with the early Kibbutzim such as Ein Harod, they shared the new “settler outlook”. They believed in the importance of settlement in the Biblical heartland both in order to do God’s will (as they see it) and to revitalize the Zionist enterprise by adding a spiritual dimension.

Wallerstein is the practical do-er. It is he, more than anyone else, who has been responsible for the rapid accumulation of settlements and the necessary accompanying infrastructure of roads, industry and agriculture throughout the whole of the West Bank. Playing the system with great acumen and smartly exploiting government weakness and the cracks between different government agencies, he has created the basis for the hundreds of thousands of settlers who now inhabit the West Bank.

Etzion formulated a revolutionary plan to supplement the gradualism of his friend’s approach with a visionary ideology which would involve terror activities, primarily the blowing up of the mosques on the Temple Mount. His underground terrorist organization was caught by the security services in 1984 and he was sentenced to a long jail sentence.

Shavit explores the similarities and differences between the two activists in order to try and understand the ideology that underlies their various actions.

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Shavit himself views the whole settlement project with deep antipathy, while finding himself disturbingly connected to it. He suggests that this great conflict between the “Zionism of the plains” and the “Zionism of the mountains”, could threaten the entire Zionist project.

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Quotations and Questions

Secular Zionism never climbed Shomron Mountain. It remained in the plains. The renewal and revival of Zionism after the Yom Kippur War was not just about taking strategic control of the highlands of the West Bank. It was about bringing the people of Israel to the mountain of Israel. We would revive Zionism and save Israel by climbing up the mountain, by realizing that without a spiritual depth the state of Israel cannot hold. We would revive it through the understanding that the Zionism of the plains is doomed. Our way is the way of our fathers; we must go back to the land of our fathers, go back to the mountains we lost. We must bring Zionism back to the mountains and bring the mountains back to Zionism.”

 This is the first time in the book we hear Israeli voices calling for a religious, spiritual interpretation of Zionism.  While rejecting their methods and even their aims, does Shavit disagree with their diagnosis, that “without a spiritual depth the state of Israel cannot hold”?  Do you?

In the simple living room of his modest Ofra home, his [Etzion’s] words touch me. Although I reject his worldview and despise his actions, I am not indifferent to what he says. Surprisingly, I recognize the great forces that pulled him to Ofra. I can understand what he says about the plains and the mountains and the history of Zionism. With horror I realize that the DNA of his Zionism and the DNA of my Zionism share a few genes.

 Do you sense ambivalence in Shavit’s reactions during this chapter? If so, what is the nature of his ambivalence? Do you share similar feelings? When arguing for a pluralistic understanding of Zionism, Amos Oz once said that Zionism should be understood as is a surname, a family name. Within families there can be arguments.  Do you believe that with these kinds of arguments, the family can hold together?

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When I listen to Wallerstein and Etzion, I realize that they did not have a well-defined doctrine regarding the Arabs. When they came to settle in Samaria, they were more ignorant than evil. They saw Israel's 1970s weakness and realized that the Israeli crisis was not only political but spiritual. They felt obliged to deal with the crisis, but the solution they came up with was absurd and completely ignored the demographic reality on the ground. Wallerstein and Etzion did not realize this because they did not think through the consequences of their actions. They were young and rebellious and they were part of a juvenile movement that enjoyed breaking a taboo, crossing a line, and challenging the establishment. But they never knew where they were really headed. They never realized what sort of mess they were about to create. They established Ofra without comprehending its repercussions.

 Shavit seems to argue here that there is a crucial moral difference between intentions, and actions: “They were more ignorant than evil.”  Do you agree with his analysis of Wallerstein and Etzion?  How would you categorize his tone: understanding, forgiveness, condescension? Something else?  Do you agree that ignorance activism is morally different than acting with evil intent?

“There was no real leadership to speak of, and no real state to speak of…”

 Have you ever come across people who think like this about their government?  What kind of actions does this feeling lead them to?

The question is whether Ofra is a benign continuation of Zionism or a malignant mutation of Zionism. The answer, of course, is that it is both.

 Does this kind of conclusion help you reach a clearer appreciation of what is at stake, or would you prefer to read something more unequivocal?  Shavit suggests that the answer to his either-or question is obvious: “of course”. Is it obvious to you?  Some may say that Shavit’s answer is a typically Jewish answer. Does that make it more frustrating, or less?

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Additional Sources: Here are three additional sources that you might want to incorporate into the discussion.

The first is taken from the poem “A Day in the Life of Nablus” by the Palestinian poet, Sharif Elmusa. Elmusa (born 1947) is from a family that became refugees in 1948 and moved to a refugee camp in Jericho. He is currently a professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo.

…The vendor in dishevelled clothes arranges a feast of pears, lifts one with pride as he might his own child. He bellows into the air: Go to sleep with a sweet mouth. He sees the soldiers. He does not brood over power or history.

…In gowns of soft lights the town performs the ritual of sleep. Will the vendor, will the woman who lost her house sleep with a sweet mouth? The settlement, fortress on the mountain -peak, and the jail on the hilltop flood their dreams with yellow lights…

Sharif Elmusa “A Day in the Life of Nablus” from “The Space Between our Footsteps” ed. N.S. Nye (Simon and Shuster 1998)

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The second piece is taken from Emuna Elon (born 1955), columnist and author, a religious woman who is also known as a campaigner for women’s rights. For many years she lived in Beit El, north of Ramallah. This is from her story “The Maidservant’s Son”, which tells the story of a complex relationship between Ronit, a woman who lives on a settlement in the West Bank, and Ibtisam the Palestinian woman who cleans house for her.

On her very first day at work Ibtisam had pulled Ronit over to the window above the Italian marble counter, to point to the camp. "That's Jezoun", she announced. Ronit gazed at the heap of miserable huts dotted her and there by pecan and olive trees and encircled with a stone wall. "Is that your home?" inquired Ronit. The Arab woman chortled. "That's nobody's home", she explained, "Jezoun isn't a village at all, it's just the place where we're waiting until we can go back to our land."

Ronit wondered silently how they intended to return to their land two generations after a kibbutz or a university had been established on it. She regretted that the architect had placed the kitchen window precisely at that spot, facing the road and the camp. "We haven't returned to the land of our forefathers in order to solve the problems of other nations", she told herself, and went to the plant nursery where she bought five cypress saplings in black plastic bags. Haim suggested that they exchange them for fruit trees but Ronit wanted evergreens which would grow quickly, planted closely together in a row opposite her kitchen window to block the embarrassing view…

By the end of three years the five cypresses had reached the height of the window, but they didn't yet conceal the heap of gray shacks from Ronit's view. They also didn't screen the road where our forefathers passed on their way to Shechem or the smoke which rose every day or so from the tires which the refugee children burned on the same road.

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The third piece is from much loved song based on the poem “Hoy Artzi Moladeti” (“Oh my Land, my Homeland”) written in 1933 by Shaul Tchernichovsky (1875-1943). It presents an empty land, waiting to be filled and revived by the early Zionist settlers. It can be likened to the Biblical landscape encountered subjectively by the settlers of the mid 1970’s in the areas of Judea and Samaria.

Oh my country, my homeland Bald craggy mountain Faint herd - ewe and kid, Joyous citrus gold. Cloisters, mound, memorial, Plaster domed dwelling, Unpopulated settlement, Olive trees side by side. …Oh, land of hearts' desire, Waste land of briar and thorn, Plastered pit, forsaken cistern In the sky an eagle. Perfume of spring orchards Ringing song of camels Everything is drowning in a sea of light And sky blue is over all. Saul Tchernichovsky

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Undergroundhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Underg round

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Conversation Six | Chapter Ten: Peace 1993

Précis Similar to the settlement chapter, this chapter is structured around a series of conversations with central figures in the peace movement. At the center stand three leading figures, Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin and Amos Oz with others ranged around them. Shavit, who himself played a central role in that movement, becomes an active participant in the conversations, arguing with them and accusing them of misleading the movement by concentrating on the post-67 territories, and promoting the possibility of gaining peace in exchange for a return of the territories.

Shavit argues that the demand to give back the territories was indeed vital in order to preserve Israel’s moral health. However in no way should it have been linked to an assumption that such a returning of territory was capable of bringing peace. The diagnosis was wrong. The root problem he argues is not 1967 but 1948.

He argues that the leaders of the movement were too desperate to reject Dayan’s vision of Israel as a nation which would always be forced to live by the sword. For a generation looking for a life of normality, it would have been too hard to accept, and therefore, he suggests, an illusion was set before the public.

He finishes the chapter in Hulda, an area where Jews and Arabs lived relatively harmoniously till 1948 when another murderous attack on a Jewish convoy brought the decision to clear the area of Arabs and to destroy their villages. Ultimately, the root of the problem, says Shavit, is not settlements like Ofra in the territories. It is Hulda. Without solving Hulda, there will perhaps never be an end to the conflict. He doubts whether such a solution is possible for either side.

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Quotations and Questions

“I don't love the land as I once did. I don't feel I belong to the nation as I once belonged. In my nightmares I see millions of Palestinians marching to Jerusalem. I see millions of Arabs marching on Israel. I am well over seventy now. I have nothing to lose but the grave I will be buried in. But sometimes, when I look at my grandchildren, my eyes tear up. I am no longer certain that their fate will not be the fate of the children of

Rafalowka [my parents’ Polish town]."

 Have you met someone who shares Sarid’s sharp disappointment with and fear for the Zionist enterprise?  What might you say to them or to Sarid if you had the chance?

I worked out a theory. The theory assumed we lived in a tragedy: an almost eternal struggle between two peoples sharing a homeland and fighting over it. For seventy years we Jews had the stamina needed to withstand this tragedy. We were vital enough to be jolly and optimistic while enduring an ongoing conflict. But as fatigue wore us down, we began to deny the tragedy. We wanted to believe there was no tragic decree at the heart of our existence. We had to pretend that it was not by tragic circumstances that our fate was decided, but by our own deeds. The territories we conquered in 1967 gave us an excellent pretext for this much-needed pretense, as it allowed us to concentrate on an internal conflict of our own making. The Right said, "If we only annex the West Bank, we'll be safe and sound." The Left said, "If we only hand over the West Bank, we'll have peace." The Right said, "Our dead died because of the Left's illusions," while the Left said, "Our dead died be-cause of the Right's fantasies." Rather than face a tragic reality imposed on us from without, we chose to create a simplistic narrative of Right against Left.

 On the one hand Shavit places Israel in the heart of an ongoing unavoidable catastrophe. On the other hand acceptance of this tragedy offers a way out of internal Israeli polarization.  What is your response to this “opsimistic” conclusion?

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 Most literary definitions of the Tragedy genre would insist on the common element of “inevitability”. A tragic understanding of an event would assume that catastrophe was unavoidable. Shavit is insistent that the Israeli-Palestinian is tragic.  In addressing the conflict as tragic, does this mean that no one was at fault? Or everyone?  Do you agree that the conflict is unavoidable?

They saw that for the Palestinians the 1967 occupation was disastrous, but they did not see that for many Palestinians there are other matters that are far more severe and visceral than occupation, like the homes they lost in 1948.

 Taking on board these comments, do you find your attitude to the current Israeli- Palestinian peace talks altered?  Remembering back to the accounts of the immigrant refugees to Israel in chapter six, (why) do you think that lost homes in Europe or Iraq were less significant than lost Palestinian homes?

It's Hulda, stupid. Not Ofra, but Hulda, I tell myself. Ofra was a mistake, an aberration, insanity. But in principle, Ofra may have a solution. Hulda is the crux of the matter. Hulda is what the conflict is really about. And Hulda has no solution. Hulda is our fate.

 Shavit concludes with two challenging but very different comments.  What is the difference between a situation that “has no solution”, and one that is “fate”? Is there a different emotional valence?  Do Shavit’s comments energize you?

“…without the steel helmet and the gun's muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house. Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds of Arabs who live around us. Let us not drop our gaze, lest our arms weaken. That is the fate of our generation. This is our choice—to be ready and armed, tough and hard-—or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.”  Dayan spoke about the fate of his generation. Do you believe this is the fate of all future generations of Israelis?

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Additional Sources: Here are three additional sources that you might want to incorporate into the discussion.

The first is from Yitzchak Epstein (1862-1943), a teacher and writer from Rosh Pinah. Epstein was the first person to try and put the question of the relations between Arabs and Jews on the agenda of the World Zionist Organization. At that time he alone believed that the whole enterprise of Zionism would rise or fall on the relationships created with the Arabs in the Land.

We are making a flagrant error in human understanding toward a great, resolute, and zealous people. While we feel the love of homeland, in all its intensity, toward the land of our fathers, we forget that the people now living there also has a feeling heart and a loving soul. The Arab, like any person, is strongly attached to his homeland.

… When we come to buy lands in Eretz Israel, we must thoroughly check whose land it is, who works it, and what the rights of the latter are, and we must not complete the purchase until we are certain that no one will be worse off. In this way we will have to forswear most cultivated land.

Our approach to land purchase must be a direct expression of our general attitude to the Arab people. The principles that must guide our actions when we settle amidst or near this people are:

A. The Hebrew people, first and foremost among all peoples in the teaching of justice and law, absolute equality, and human brotherhood, respects not only the individual rights of every person, but also the national rights of every people and tribe.

B. The people Israel, as it aspires to rebirth, is a partner in thought and in deed to all the peoples who are stirring to life; it honors and respects their aspirations, and when it comes in contact with them, it cultivates their national recognition. Yitzchak Epstein 1905

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The second is from Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), brilliant orator and Zionist leader. He believed that the Arabs could not be “bought”, and would never make peace until they were thoroughly convinced that they could not contend with Zionist strength and that the Jews would be a permanent fixture in the Land of Israel. This is taken from his famous “Iron Wall” article in which he argued that the Jews would only be able to maintain a state by defending its borders as if it was behind an iron wall.

To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile and has its source in a feeling of contempt which some of our people have for the Arab people. The Arabs, according to these voices are nothing more than a rabble of crass materialists prepared to barter away their patriotism for a developed network of railroads. This view is absolutely groundless… Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.

…Hence those for whom an agreement with the Arabs is a prerequisite for Zionism, can be sure that this condition will never be fulfilled and that they should therefore renounce their Zionism…But the only way leading to such an agreement is by "erecting an iron wall", meaning that in the land of Israel there must be a power that will not under any circumstances yield to Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to achieve an agreement with them in the future is by absolutely avoiding any attempts at agreement with them at present.

I do not mean to assert that no agreement whatever is possible with the Arabs of the land of Israel. But a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world -neither soft words nor alluring promises - can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not rabble but a living people. Ze’ev Jabotinsky 1923

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The third piece comprises the words of a very popular 1994 peace song called “Choref 73” – the Winter of ’73. It describes the feelings of those children born immediately after the 1973 war, and calls on the leadership to fulfill their promises and to do whatever they can in the cause of peace. The words were written by playwright Shmuel Hasfari (born 1954) and it can be heard in full here.

We are the children of winter 1973 You dreamt us first at dawn at the end of the battles You were tired men that thanked their good luck You were worried young women and you wanted so much to love When you conceived us with love in winter 1973 You wanted to fill up with your bodies that what the war finished

And we were born the country was wounded and sad You looked at us you hugged us you were trying to find comfort When we were born the elders blessed with tears in their eyes They said:" we wish those kids will not have to go to the army" And your faces in the old picture prove That you said it from the bottom of your hearts When you promised to do everything for us To make an enemy into a loved one

You promised a dove, an olive tree leaf, you promised peace You promised spring at home and blossoms You promised to fulfill promises, you promised a dove…

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Conversation Seven | Chapter Eleven: J’accuse 1999

Précis This chapter deals with the rise of the Oriental Jews (Mizrachim) in a process that began in the early 1970’s but rose to its zenith in the 90’s and the first years of the new millennium. Most chapters in this book do not have one star figure, but in this chapter, there is no mistaking the star, Aryeh Deri, the founder and old-new leader of the Shas party, the traditional/Charedi Mizrachi political party that first appeared in 1984 winning four seats in the Knesset, a number that had grown to 17 seats (450,000 votes) by 1999.

Shas was the first major Mizrachi political party. It rode on a ticket of ethnic Mizrachi pride and traditional religious observance - everything that pre and early state Zionism was not. Deri, whose meteoric rise to power electrified the society as a whole, was later jailed for corruption. Shavit’s story and interview with Deri tries to understand what that rise and fall represented to the community of non-Ashkenazi Jews in Israel.

Supplemented by an extra narrative from T.V talk host and journalist Gal Gabai, also Mizrachit but more secular and modern than the Shas constituency, Shavit realizes how deep the Deri phenomenon struck into the hearts and souls of this large disenfranchised community. The rise of Shas the party and Deri the individual created a new point of identification and pride for many Mizrachim whose family traditions had been alienated from mainstream Zionism, historically reserved for Ashkenazim.

Gabai felt betrayed by his corruption. She suggests that he was a role model and a point of identification and through his own personal faults he fell and disappointed. In so doing, she suggests, he condemned his whole constituency back to the ranks of the negative stereotypes they had been so keen to break. The breakthrough remained, at least partially, virtual. The revolution had not been completed.

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Quotations and Questions

“Now secular Israelis are afraid that Shas will change the secular character of the state. They call themselves Zionists, but they are not really Zionists. Their movement is a movement of heresy. They see our fathers and mothers as primitives. They want to convert them. They sent them to remote towns and villages where life was hard. They gave their children a good-for-nothing education. Until we came and began taking care of all these people who were suffering in all these remote places. That's why they are afraid of us. That's why they persecute us. And this persecution is both ethnic and religious. But the more they humiliate us, the more we will grow. We shall change the character of the State of Israel.”  Does this sound like Deri is calling for reform or revolution?  Can Deri be heard as constructive or destructive?

“There is one thing that does make me angry: the spiritual aspect of absorption. When it built the immigrant camps, the housing estates and the remote factories, Labor had no malice in its heart. But in spiritual matters it certainly did. The veteran Ashkenazim of Labor thought that most of the people who emigrated from the Arab world were primitive and therefore had to be put through a process of secular European indoctrination. The melting pot was a Western melting pot that was supposed to totally transform us. Those Labor Ashkenazim didn't honor our civilization. They didn't see the beauty of our tradition. That's why they severed us from our roots and our heritage. That was a terrible, vicious mistake. What these people did was to destroy, not build. They took the soul we had and did not give us another in its place. And since they didn't really give us a new culture or identity they left us with nothing. Facing extreme economic and physical hardship, we found ourselves standing in the world spiritually naked.”  Deri’s accusation of spiritual emptiness echoes that of the settlers in chapter eight. In what you have read of Shavit’s account so far, do you believe there is something to this accusation?  Bearing in mind Shavit’s expectation that Zionism will ensure the continuity of non-orthodox Jewry, how do you respond to Deri’s critique

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“Only then, in office, did I truly leave the closed world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and come to know Israeli society. And suddenly I realized that of the hundreds of municipalities I was responsible for, the weak ones were almost all Arabic or Oriental. I suddenly realized that most of the suffering in Israel is Oriental suffering. In every remote development town I visited, I found neglect. In every impoverished neighborhood, I found Oriental Jews who had lost their pride and their identity. I found communities destroyed, families torn apart, their honor and tradition taken away, and the spark in their eyes extinguished. While on the surface Israel was thriving, just below the surface there was an Israel that was fatherless and rabbi-less and hopeless.”

 Mizrachim still make up the lion’s share of Jews in Israel’s jails, and are a tiny minority of Israel’s academia. Is this account of Mizrachi Jews’ experience in Israel new to you?

Israel did a favor to those it extracted from the Orient. The Jews there had no real future… Had they stayed, they would have been annihilated. But forcing them to forgo their identity and culture was foolhardy, callous, and cruel. To this day, many Oriental Israelis are not aware of what Israel saved them from: a life of misery and backwardness in an Arab Middle East that turned ugly. To this day Israel is not aware of the pain it inflicted when it crushed the culture and identity of the Oriental Jews it absorbed. Neither Zionist Israel nor its Oriental population has fully recognized the traumas of the 1950s and 1960s. Neither has yet found a way to honor it and contain it—and make peace with it. This is why the wound lingers on.

 Shavit would seem to be in danger of calling Mizrachim ignorant and ungrateful. Is this a fair assessment of his comments? And if so, does this strike you as a useful tone?  Shavit offers an interesting opposition: “Zionist Israel” as opposed to “its Oriental population”. Where do you think this places Mizrachi Jews in the Zionist narrative?

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"There was a feeling that there was something wrong with us, with Oriental Jews," Gabai says. "That there was something tainted and inferior. That's why we bowed down to the Ashkenazis and abased ourselves before them. There was a subtle, complicated sort of self-loathing, a deep unease with one's self. Until Deri came and proved that we could stand tall and proud—walk among the Ashkenazis as equals. Deri brought North African Jewish tradition to center stage. He said we were just as good, if not better… He let us lift our heads high...He meant we could succeed in the West without betraying the East.”

 Do you recognize any parallels of the Deri story with other stories of minorities in your country?  How do you think that telling the Mizrachi story through the “metaphor” of Deri colors the Mizrachi strand in the Zionist narrative? What might it expose in the way Mizrachim continue to be viewed?

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Additional Sources: The first source is a poem by Israeli poet, Erez Biton, born in Algeria in 1942. Written in the 1970’s, the poem talks of the failed attempt of a Mizrachi man to find acceptance in Israeli society. He opens a shop in the fashionable Dizengoff street, full as it was then of many Tel Aviv society coffee shops, including the Café Roval.

Shopping Poem on Dizengoff

I bought a shop on Dizengoff to strike some roots to buy some roots to find a spot at the Roval but the crowd at the Roval I ask myself who are these folks at the Roval, what's with these people at the Roval, what's going on with the people at the Roval, I don't face the people at the Roval but when the people at the Roval turn to me I unsheathe my tongue with clean words, Yes, sir, please, sir, very-up-to-date Hebrew, and the buildings looming over me here tower over me here, and the openings open here are impenetrable for me here. At dusk I pack my things in the shop on Dizengoff to head back to the outskirts and another Hebrew.

Erez Biton mid-1970’s

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The second piece comes from a speech made by David Ben Gurion (1886-1973) in 1951 about the need to build the nation by replacing the identity of the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants with the new pioneering (Ashkenazi) identity that for him and so many others, marked the desirable identity of the new, secular, Israeli. The speech was aimed at all of the immigrants from post-Holocaust Europe and from the Arab world, but as Gal Gabai suggests in the chapter, in many ways it was easier for the European immigrants to find their way in the new society.

The immigrants must be taught our language and a knowledge of the land... They must conceive what the first settlers did with their bare hands... Being privileged to enter Israel, the newcomers must be told that they too must toil; if perhaps, less than their forerunners...We must melt down this fantastically diversified assembly and make it afresh in the die of a renewed nationhood. We must break down the barriers of geography and culture of society and speech, which keep the different sections apart and endow them with a single language, a single culture, a single citizenship, a single loyalty, with new legislation and new laws. We must give them a new spirit, a culture and literature, science and art. David Ben Gurion 1951

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The third piece is taken from “In the Land of Israel” by Amos Oz (born 1939) on Israeli society in the early 1980’s. Here is a conversation that he reports from an encounter with Mizrahi second generation Israelis in the (then) poor Israeli town of Bet Shemesh.

“Really, think about this. When I was a little kid, my kindergarten teacher was white and her assistant was black. In school, my teacher was Iraqi and the principal was Polish. On the construction site where I worked; my supervisor was some redhead from Solel Boneh [the government building company]! At the clinic the nurse is Egyptian and the doctor Ashkenazi. In the army, we Moroccans are the corporals and the officers are from the kibbutz. All my life I've been on the bottom and you've been on top. I'll tell you what shame is: they gave us houses, they gave us the dirty work: they gave us education, and they took away our self-respect. What did they bring my parents to Israel for? I’ll tell you what for, but you won't write this. You'll think it's just provocation, but wasn't it to do your dirty work? You didn't have Arabs then, so you needed our parents to do your cleaning and be your servants and your laborers. You brought our parents to be your Arabs. You brought a million donkeys here to ride on, but they should live in the stables, far away from your houses. So our stink won’t reach your living room. That's what you did. Sure, you gave us food and a roof over our heads—you do that much for a donkey—but far away from your children." Amos Oz 1982

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://makomisrael.org/blog/mizrachim-in-israel/ http://www.euronews.com/2013/10/07/tributes-paid-to-rabbi-ovadia-yosef-founder-of-israel- s-shas-party-and-leader-of-sephardic-jews/

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Conversation Eight | Chapter Thirteen: Up The Galilee 2003

Précis In this chapter Shavit encounters the voices of the Arabs of the State of Israel. The central speaker here is attorney and activist Mohammad Dahla. Shavit and Dahla co-chaired the Association of Civil Rights in Israel in the mid-1990s. As Dahla shares his outlook in detail through this chapter, the gulf between these two friends on the legitimacy of Zionism and the viability of the continuing Jewish State becomes apparent.

Dahl makes a number of very clear points. He questions – and ultimately denies - any Jewish claims to historic continuity within the land. Zionism is thus reduced to an invading colonial force which has come from the outside and imposed itself on the Arabs of Palestine. As a majority in the land, Zionism has imposed an alien regime. It forgets that it is actually a minority in a larger Arab and Moslem world, a world growing stronger and larger all the time. Ultimately, he says, Zionism will have to change and will have to learn to share the land, relinquishing sole sovereignty for its Jewish inhabitants and working out a genuine power sharing arrangement with the Arab inhabitants.

The end of the chapter, leaves Shavit musing about the chance of a possible future for their children.

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Quotations and Questions

"At the outset, the Jews had no legal, historical, or religious right to the land. The only right they had was the right born of persecution, but that right cannot justify taking 78 percent of a land that is not theirs. It cannot justify the fact that the guests went on to become the masters. At the end of the day, the ones with the superior right to the land are the natives, not the immigrants—the ones who have lived here for hundreds of years and have become part of the land just as the land has become a part of them. We are not like you. We are not strangers or wanderers or emigrants. For centuries we have lived upon this land and we multiplied. No one can uproot us. No one can separate us from the land. Not even you."

 Mohammed suggests that the Jews only had a claim to the land “born of persecution”. To what extent does Shavit’s narrative of Zionism refute this idea?  Do you agree that those with the “superior right to the land are the natives”? How does this play out in other areas of the world?  If one accepts that Jews once lived in the area some two thousand years ago, did their “native” rights fade away in the millennia? How should their rights compare with those who are currently “native” to the land?  Do you believe that any People should have a claim to a particular piece of land?

He tells me that the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 was not exactly like the Holocaust, but that he is not willing to accept the Jewish monopoly on the term ‘Holocaust’. "It's true that here, there were no concentration camps," Dahla says. "But on the other hand, unlike the Holocaust, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 is still going on. And while the Holocaust was the holocaust of man, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 was a holocaust of man and land. The destruction of our people," he says, "was also the destruction of our homeland."

 What comparison is Mohammed making here? What comparison is he not making when he talks about the Shoah in this context?  How do you react to this comment?  Is it reasonable to use the image of the Shoah in this context?

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Tzipori's houses are nice and neat, white-walled and red-roofed. In one of the front yards, a beautiful young mother opens her arms as her one-year-old takes his first steps toward her. But Mohammed says he doesn't know how people can live here. "In theory, the countryside is pastoral and inviting, but in reality it is a graveyard. In theory, you are walking in your garden, but really you are walking on corpses. It's not human," Mohammed says. It's like the movie he saw once about an American suburb built on a Native American cemetery whose ghosts haunted the families who chose to live on top of their graves. "I am not into mysticism," Mohammed says, "but I feel the spirits here, and I know they will not stop haunting you."

 Do you accept the analogy with American suburbia and Native Americans?  To what extent do you believe that the Zionist enterprise was driven by ghosts?

So what are you saying?" I ask Mohammed. "That the injustice done to Palestinians is an injustice not to be forgiven," he answers. "Because at this very moment, as Israelis lay out picnic lunches under the trees of the South Africa Forest, the refugees of the village of Lubia rot in the Yarmuch refugee camp in Syria. And the refugees of Saffuriyya rot in the Ain-al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. So justice demands that we have the right to return. At least those rotting in the refugee camps should be allowed to return. I don't know how many there will be," Mohammed says. "Not millions, but perhaps hundreds of thousands. But I see them returning. Just as my family returned from Lebanon, coming down the slopes of the rocky ridge of Turan with their donkeys and belongings after months of exile, so will the others return. In a long convoy they will all return."

 What do you think that Shavit would say in response to Mohammad’s ongoing narrative?  What would you try and say to Mohammad if you were talking with him?

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Additional Sources: The first source is a poem from Tawfik Ziad (1932-94), an Arab from Nazareth who became a member of Knesset and Communist Mayor of Nazareth.

Here we will stay

…In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee, Here we shall stay Like a brick wall upon your breast, And in your throat Like a splinter of glass, like spiky cactus And in your eyes a chaos of fire.

Here we shall stay Like a wall upon your breast, Washing dishes in idle, buzzing bars, Pouring drinks for our overlords Scrubbing floors in blackened kitchens To snatch a crumb for our children From between your blue fangs…

Here we shall stay… Sing our songs, Sweep the sick streets with our angry dances, Saturate the prisons with dignity and pride…

In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee, Here we shall stay

Tawfik Zayyad from “Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature” ed. by S. K. Jayyusi (Columbia University Press 1992)

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Here instead of a text, we present a cartoon by West Bank settler Shay Charka. It sums up many of the conflicts that are addressed and not addressed over a cup of dark coffee…

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This final piece addresses the thorny nature of the Palestinian refugee. The UN definition of refugee is not applied to Palestinians, who are defined and treated differently from all other refugees in the world. Former MK Einat Wilf has been prominent in pushing the case for reform.

Since the Second World War the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been responsible for the welfare of all refugees in the world and has assisted in their resettlement and relocation – so that nearly all of them are no longer refugees – with one exception: the Arabs from Palestine.

By contrast, UNRWA, the organization created specifically to handle the Arab refugees from Palestine from the 1947-1949 Arab-Israel war, has collaborated with the Arab refusal to resettle the refugees in the areas where they reside, or to relocate them to third countries.

Worse, UNRWA has ensured that the refugee issue only grows larger by automatically registering descendants of the original refugees from the war as refugees themselves in perpetuity.

For Palestinians, uniquely, refugeeness is an hereditary trait.… If the descendants of the Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war were treated like all other refugees, including the Jewish ones, they would not quality for refugee status because almost all of them (upward of 80 per cent) are either citizens of a third country, such as Jordan, or they live in the places where they were born and expect to have a future... No other people in the world are registered as refugees while being citizens of another country or territory.

If you are interested in this chapter you might want to have a look at… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9AKAK4byuU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEp-kWWXat4

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MAKOM: The Israel Education Lab

Makom aims to push the boundaries of what Israel can be for the Jewish People and what the Jewish People can be for Israel.

Every year, through incubating ideas, training leaders, and creating materials, we build the bridge between thinking and doing.

We bring a fresh and innovative voice to the Israel conversation by embracing the achievements and challenges of Israel and the Jewish People, and transform them into innovative, honest and practical education.

Visit makomisrael.org to access our growing bank of hundreds of educational units.

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