The Double-Edged Sword of Precipitation

Today we had a so-called “yom kef” at work. That’s a “fun day”, designed to boost morale and foster team-spirit at work — basically a field-trip for adults. We were supposed to enjoy a guided tour through the picturesque German Colony in Jerusalem, but for meteorological reasons we had to reshuffle our plans and went to the Bible Lands Museum instead. We had a lovely guided tour of their small but artfully displayed collection of artifacts as the winter rains poured down over the Holy City.

It was less lovely to move about in the city before and after the tour, since it was raining cats and dogs the whole day, and everything and everyone was soaked through and through, and even less cheerful than on a regular Wednesday when you have to work even though the rest of the world is off. Unfortunately, one isn’t allowed to complain about rain fall in this part of the world. We’ve hardly had any rain this winter, and they’re coming up with new red lines for how low the Kinneret can be drained almost on a daily basis. Besides, devout Jews pray for it three times aday during the winter, so bitching about it when it actually falls from time to time might be perceived as slightly ungrateful.

And in these days, one has to be grateful that the only thing that rains down from the sky is water. Unfortunately, it can’t be taken for granted anymore.

The French Connection

Over the last years, those of us who are fortunate enough to dwell on the western side of the Ayalon Highway have noticed the steady influx of French elements in Tel Aviv. This rise in immigration of French Jews is probably one of the least expected results of the Second Intifada, and even though we should be very happy about kibbutz galuyiot and all that, there are a few aspects of this trend that can be somewhat irksome.

First of all, the cost of living in Tel Aviv has sky-rocketed. In Jerusalem, they’ve known this phenomenon for quite some time already. But the American immigrants who can pay for their apartments in the Holy City with dollars, are not particularly interested in moving down from the mountains. The French, on the other hand, are more mundane and want the good life, and consequently they choose to live along the coast, in Netanya, Herzliya or Tel Aviv. Being used to the real estate prices in Paris, Marseille or Lyon, they don’t bat an eye lash when asked to pay sums that Israelis can only dream about for a place to stay.

It’s not hard to imagine that those very same Israelis who are forced to move into small, dingy ground level studio apartments, or down south of Allenby, or even — heaven forfend — Givatayim, are less enthusiastic about the ingathering of the Francophone exiles. And it doesn’t get much better when they try to escape their small but affordable apartments and seek refuge on the beach, since the beaches all the way from the marina to Yaffo are filled with French-speaking, or rather French-shouting hordes.

But I must say, that the French invasion has brought with it at least one positive thing for the White City: a wide range of high quality kosher cafés. For too long Tel Avivians who kept kosher were reduced to frequent Roladin, Yehudit’s and even Alter Nativ — an establishment where no self-respecting secular inhabitant would be seen dead. But in these days, there are many high quality cafés for all shomrey kashrut in the city.

Here’s a list of my favorite ones, in no particular order:

1) Ginzburg, Ahad Haam. A classic.

2) Mazzarine. It’s actually a chain. The branch on Gordon is very good, but a breakfast at the veranda at the branch on Montefiore on a Friday morning in spring is a highly recommended experience.

3) Shirale, Yedidia Frenkel. Smaller, cozier. A little off the beaten path — i.e. not exactly convenient walking distance from Rothschild, but still ok.

Taking this this boom of kosher cafés into account, one can’t deny the French immigration is ultimately a good thing. And come to think about it: what culinary heritage has the Swedish immigration brought the Holy Land? Wasa bread? Gingerbread cookies? Lutfisk? The restaurant at IKEA?

Political Prose against Peyes

On the surface, The Search Committee: A Novel by Rabbi Marc Angel is a book about something as trivial as the work to find a new head for an important yeshivah in the US. The committee has two candidates to choose from: one is the son of the former rosh yeshivah, the learned and respected Rabbi Grossman. Against him stands the young and dynamic Rabbi Mercado. 

This is Marc Angel’s first work of fiction, but he’s far from an unknown debutant. Angel has been the rabbi of the congregation Shearith Israel in New York, the president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and he also founded the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Then why does he opt to write a novel? Is he trying out a new career? Hardly. The subtitle to Angel’s book might be “a novel”, but one only has to scratch a little on the fictional surface to find that it really is a political manifesto.

To write political manifestos in the form of novels isn’t exactly a groundbreaking move. The most famous Jewish example in this genre is probably Theodore Herzl’s Old-New Land, where the father of political Zionism painted a rather idyllic and unbearably naive image of what life would be like in a future Jewish state. 

Much like Herzl, Rabbi Angel has a rather ambitious goal. He wants nothing less than to reform Orthodox Judaism, and he highlights a number of fields where immediate action is needed. Angel attacks a dated approach to women, where signs of modesty and subjugation to men are all important, and where educated women with a will of their own are seen as a threat rather than as a resource. Blind faith in authority within the yeshivah world and rejection of critical text studies are also criticized, as is the contempt for work outside the protective walls of the yeshivah. 

Angel lets the two candidates represent two different streams of Orthodoxy, and a story from the Talmud is central in illustrating the difference between the two. Talmud tells the story of Rabbi Yosei ben Kisma, who was offered a large sum of money to leave his home town – full of learned and pious Torah scholars – in order to move to another town and teach its inhabitants. Rabbi ben Kisma refused, since he did not want to leave his frum home town. 

The Haredi Rabbi Grossman points to ben Kisma as an ideal. One should devote oneself completely to the study of the Torah, and avoid the surrounding world with its low spiritual level. In Grossman’s eyes, modern society is merely a destructive threat, and the task of the yeshivah is to isolate and protect the students from external impressions and alien influences. 

Rabbi Mercado on his part is not afraid of the world. On the contrary. He has studied at the university, and knows that there are many good things to learn from modern society. Mercado quotes the story of ben Kisma disapprovingly, and criticizes a rabbi who closes himself up in a little bubble of his own, and leaves the world to its fate. Rabbi ben Kisma was only interested in his own spiritual development, and thereby he betrayed his calling and failed the Jewish people.

The Search Committee is a fascinating contribution to one of the most important discussions in the Orthodox world today: should it open up and try to adapt to modern life, and thereby run the risk of Orthodox Jews falling for the temptations of the secular surroundings? Or should it isolate itself in its own world, focus on deepening its own piety, and treat the rest of the world as definitely lost?

According to Rabbi Angel, the development has taken the wrong direction, and his novel is in many ways an eloquent J’accuse against those who he thinks lead Orthodox Jewry into a self-destructive cul-de-sac of ever-increasing stricture and inhuman social relations. 

But even though I do agree with the overarching argument, there still is something about The Search Committee that bothers me. 

In Angel’s depiction, conservatism becomes a sign of bad character, and Rabbi Grossman and his entourage are depicted as bad through and through. Grossman himself is arrogant and hungers for power, his wife is a malicious gossip, and his biggest donor is a hypocrite who does not shy away from blackmail. Against this collection of dysfunctional caricatures, Angel places Rabbi Mercado and his supporters, who all are polite, altruistic and enlightened people. Black stands against white, evil against good, the past against the future.

These one-dimensional characters, shallower than a puddle, leave me with a vague feeling of discomfort – and it’s not merely a question of literary quality. Was it really necessary to go ad hominem? Would Angel not have been able to make his point about the need for reform, and still concede the point that rabbis with peyes and big full beards can be just as good people as their more progressive, and clean-shaven, colleagues? 

I’m convinced that a more nuanced set of characters would not only have made the reading more enjoyable, but it would also have made Angel’s underlying point even more convincing.

Another Groundbreaking Publication…

Today it arrived. It’s the latest publication in the Changing Jewish Communities series. This time, it’s a groundbreaking study of Jewish-Muslim relations in Sweden. 

For another recent publication by the same groundbreaking author, see for instance this article. 

Holidays in Cyberspace

The Internet has not only revolutionized the way we communicate, but also the way we think about music and politics.

On this, the third day of Chanukkah 5769, it’s about time to look at what the Internet has done to religion, and especially the holidays. At this time of the year, one is inundated with electronic greeting cards and invitations to partake of latkes and sufganiot in the light of the chanukkiah, but there’s also a rising tide of Chanukkah songs filling one’s inbox. I’ll just give two examples. The first one is this cute, albeit extremely annoying, singing chanukkiah. The second one is Adam Sandler’s classical Chanukkah song from Saturday Night Live, a veritable who’s-who of American Jewry.

This is obviously not a phenomenon that’s isolated to Chanukkah. There are plenty of songs going around the internet related to other holidays. This cover of a popular rap tune, for instance, asks a highly relevant question related to Passover. Rosh Ha-Shanah is the time for sweet and sentimental New Year’s greetings, but also for more innovative takes on well-wishing. One good example is this clip. Admittedly, it’s been doing the rounds on the net for a few years already, but its wishes for booze, easy money and even easier women instead of the standard health, happiness and bliss is always refreshing.

But one shouldn’t be too self-centered. After all, today is also Christmas Eve, so in the spirit of the brotherhood of Man, let’s end with two gems of inter-faith dialogue in the form of cyber music. Chag Urim Sameach, and Merry Christmas.

A Blog of Two Cities?

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times — at least to start a blog. On the one hand I really have very little time as it is to write anything of substance, especially considering how much time I spend every day perusing blogs. But on the other hand, very few bloggers seem to be overly concerned by the fact that they don’t write anything of substance – and what makes me any better than them? The simple truth of the matter is that I want to blog, so who is there to stop me? (No, that was neither a challenge nor an invitation to try to block my attempts at virtual self-expression.)

So, about what two cities am I to blog? Needless to say it’s not about London and Paris, since I know little of either and haven’t even set foot in the latter. Neither are we talking about Luleå, Lund or any other Swedish city, town or hamlet of which I might claim to actually know something.

Obviously, the two cities are Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They are  the two opposites in Israeli societal, cultural, economical and political life, but also – and in this context even more importantly – the two poles of my day-to-day life in so many ways.