Fur flies over threat to Hasidic headwear

Tip of the shtreimel to photographer Gali Tibbon for this hairy tale about a possible ban on animal pelts from Asia, and how it could impact the ultra-Orthodox community inside Israel. Note that there also are fake fur hats for the rain - a better look perhaps than an elasticated shower cap fastened on for protection

For Jason Koutsoukis' original article,filed from Jerusalem, click here

At dusk on the Sabbath, few things are more spectacular in Jerusalem than the passing parade of fur hats moving inexorably towards the Western Wall.
There are great furry crowns of all shades of brown, lined with velvet and leather. Some are so wide and flat they look like a sombrero made of sable; others so high you might think they were top hats made of mink.
Advertisement: Story continues below
They are shtreimels, the traditional headwear of some Hasidic Jews worn on the Sabbath and on holidays, but not to be confused with spodiks or kolpiks, other varieties of hairy hat reserved for more revered rabbinical sages.
Once symbols of persecution, they were first imposed by 18th-century Polish kings who decreed that Jews must wear the tail of an animal on the Sabbath to show they were not working.
The tradition spread through eastern Europe, with each Jewish sect adapting the shtreimel to its own taste, and instead of being a mark of persecution it became a symbol of pride.
Standing at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem's Old City before sunset on Friday, watching the stream of shtreimels make their way to the holiest site in Judaism, the practised eye can tell a lot about each person just from the cut of their hat — the name of the sect each Hasid comes from, and which part of Europe their ancestors hailed from.
The shtreimel is also a dead giveaway for things such as the income of the wearer, what religious texts and customs they adhere to, and even whether or not they are Zionists.
Sitting in his office at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, dressed in a black tailcoat, black vest and white shirt, Rabbi Moses had just returned from heated debate in the Knesset chamber.
"People want to ban furs imported from Asia because of the way the animal is killed there," he says. "But what does this mean for the shtreimel?"
With the proposed law carrying a punishment of a year in prison, Rabbi Moses asks who will pay for the prisons to house all the law-breaking Jews who import the wrong kind of fur.
"Today, as I told the history of the shtreimel, what it means to Jewish history and custom, I left them all wide-eyed in the Knesset. Jaws open," he said.
Rabbi Moses said that the opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, was among those who approached him after his speech, offering her congratulations. End result? The bill has been deferred to committee.
To make one shtreimel can take up to 400 tails of various breeds of mink, sable and fox — the scrap of the fur industry.
Customers are fussy... The hardest part is measuring their heads to get an exact size.
With only 10,000 shtreimels produced around the world each year, it's definitely what you would call a niche market. But at a cost of up to $4000 each, it can be a profitable one.

Tel Aviv Good Times - is it escapism?

Tel Aviv is one of the world's unabashed gay capitals, according to Matthew Teller's report in the British Independent, which examines a shooting incident in a gay teen club last August. Teller questions whether hate crimes can be looked at outside of a political context in today's Middle East, especially considering the sharp divisions between the secular and the religious components of society.:

Tales abound of gay Palestinians being blackmailed into collaborating with the Israeli security services, or even into spying for one Palestinian faction against another, often with fatal consequences.

Nitzan Horowitz, the only gay Knesset member, is blunt. "People in Tel Aviv think the struggle is over – not at all!" he says. "More than 50 per cent of kids in first and second grade are in ultra-orthodox or Arab schools, where LGBT rights are not addressed. In 10 years' time those people will vote. I don't see this liberal paradise."

Every Saturday night, there's a party atmosphere-- singles, couples and groups, gay and straight, mixing in pursuit of a good time. Going out is an obsession. It lends a unique vibrancy – but one person described it to me as national escapism. To journalist Lisa Goldman, her home city is starting to feel like Weimar Berlin. "I'm worried," she says. "This exuberance is inarticulate. We've become used to hopelessness."

Uzi Even's observation about a common enemy conceals the possibility that the greatest threat to Jewish Israeli society may lie within. In Chen Langer's words: "We want others to acknowledge Israel as the home of the Jewish people, but we ourselves cannot define what 'Jewish' is."

For many secular Jews – both within and beyond the Tel Aviv bubble – Israel's religious right has corrupted society and continues to hold the country back. For many religious Jews, secure with the occupation, contemporary secularism – exemplified by advances in gay rights – represents the gravest threat to the nation's well-being.

The shooting at the Aguda – apparently a one-off atrocity, possibly committed with inside knowledge – should be a wake-up call. It has exposed fault-lines running right through Jewish-Israeli society. If unbridged, they could pull the country apart.

Yoram Kaniuk remembers the Nakba

How powerful is a word?
The word Nakba is officially verboten. Referring to the recreation of Israel in 1948 as the 'Catastrophe' is being banned from Arabic schoolbooks following the reversal of a court decision.
The distinguished Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk, who was there to witness Israel's birth pangs and whose opinion carries alot of weight, had his say about the Nakba, thereby provoking some controversy in the Yediot Ahronot, the most popular Hebrew daily paper. He argues 'Our defeated enemy is not a geometrical unknown; it’s a people that still exists'

I remember the Nakba

This week I visited the Knesset for the third time in my life. The first time was during the War of Independence, when the site was not yet under Israel’s control.

Today, it’s an immense building. If Netanyahu’s policy of going to war against the Americans will be implemented, even the US Army won’t be able to take over the Knesset building. Israel’s parliament looks like the formidable fortress of a strong nation. Barbed wire, thick walls, police officers, and checkpoints. An ugly citadel surrounded by even uglier buildings.

I haven’t seen a more fortified fortress in any other capital. And so, even if the planned war takes place, the Knesset will survive. This is what we call a secure democracy.

In the fortified building that is Israel’s Knesset, officials are redrafting history, as well as the future. The future we looked forward to once upon a time, when the hill was still empty. Via the Nakba Law and the education minister’s plan to remove the term from the curriculum, it appears that the future will be all about erasing everything that exists.

I remember the Nakba. I saw it to a much greater extent than the education minister, who apparently only heard about it. It was a harsh, merciless campaign of young soldiers who spilled their blood while fighting a determined enemy that was eventually defeated. Yet the enemy that was defeated is not a geometrical unknown, but rather, a people that still exists. Its parents and grandparents fought well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have suffered so many casualties.

I was wounded in battle, but I believe that the education minister must educate our young people to be heroes by teaching them that this war had losers too, and that they too have a narrative. They don’t have the country that was theirs but they have a history, and no education minister can erase the defeated people from its powerful memory. The Nakba fighters fought heroically, but we fought better.

The fact that the State of Israel exists today is the victory, rather than the erasing of the circumstances of its establishment from the losing side. The Germans tried to teach German history without the Holocaust. It didn’t work. The Holocaust is a powerful element in Germany today, because it was a powerful event. The same is true for all sorts of hasty laws by ministers who wish to correct history.

Our education minister did not invent this idea. Stalin made sure to write a new Russian history, yet the past reclaimed it. A narrative that turns into a myth constitutes more history than any education minister can create; even if Arab children here learn Bialik’s songs and are forced to hoist Israel’s flag over their homes every morning and sing our national anthem every evening, at night, in hiding, they will read Arabic poetry. Because Arabic poetry is them. There’s nothing we can do about it.

While inside the Knesset fortress I thought that maybe it is still possible, before my death, to turn this state into a Jewish State – not one populated by zealous masses called Jews, but rather, Jews like we used to be; a state where we respect those who fought against us and were defeated. When that will happen, we will see the establishment of an Arab state alongside us, and the city of Jerusalem, also known as al-Quds, will become the capital of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. And then peace will come to Israel. Amen.

Meanwhile, the signs on the streets are being switched, and only Hebrew placenames will be in use if the transport ministry gets its way.
:

The Israeli transport ministry will soon get rid of Arabic and English names for cities and towns on road signs, keeping only the Hebrew terms.

"Minister Yisrael Katz took this decision that will be progressively applied," a ministry spokeswoman told Agence France Press.

Currently Israeli road signs are written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, with the city names in each language. So Jerusalem is identified as Yerushalaim in Hebrew, Jerusalem in English and Al-Quds in Arabic (along with Yerushalaim written in Arabic script).
Under the new policy the Holy City will only be identified as Yerushalaim in all three languages. Nazareth (Al-Nasra in Arabic) will be identified as Natzrat and Jaffa (Jaffa in Arabic) will only be written as Yafo.

WHen signs went up labelling my neighborhood, not as Abu Tor, but as Givat Hananiya, the residents got confused. Visitors drove right by. Mail deliveries went astray. Now there's a movement protesting the deletion of Arabic and English names from our cities and streets. Those who rewrite history may be doomed to repeat it.

Hat tip to Irris for the Kaniuk piece!

Livni gets fed up with factions' demands, prepares for elections

Hopes for any peace settlement this year were scrapped when Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni informed President Shimon Peres that she has given up trying to form a coalition that would enable her to become Israel’s next prime minister. As a result, Israel likely will hold general elections in February to determine its next leader.

An ex-Mossad agent and mother of two, Ms Livni had been striving for five weeks to form a coalition government. But after negotiations stalled, she conceded that there was no possibility of doing so. Now Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish former prime minister from the Likud party, is tipped to become the next leader. Livni's political stature is diminished after her failed attempts to reach across the aisle. Israelis spurn any sign of weakness.

Livni had been counting on the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which holds 12 seats in the Knesset, to join her but she balked at the party’s demands not to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority over the status of Jerusalem.

"I'm not willing to be blackmailed, either diplomatically or in terms of the budget, and therefore, I will go to elections," Livni said. "We'll see all these heroes in 90 days."

Shas’ non-negotiable stance puts the future of a two-state solution at risk and jeopardizes future negotiations. Shas also insisted on a 1.5 billion shekel ($394 million) increase for child allowances but Livni was willing to offer only 400 million shekel ($105 million), saying, “There are some things the State cannot be sold for.” Shas’ voter constituency includes big families and religious seminary students who depend on the government for significant financial subsidies for school and living expenses.

As Kadima’s newly elected chairwoman, Livni had 42 days to form a coalition and technically, she still has until Nov. 3 to do so. But without the support of Shas and United Torah Judaism, another religious party which currently holds six seats, she cannot amass enough seats in the Knesset for a coalition that comprises centrist and left-of-center parties.

Peres now has until Tuesday night to review the situation and inform the Knesset speaker of Livni’s inability to form a government, after which any of the 120 members of the Knesset will have three weeks to try to form a coalition. Israeli law requires a minimum of 61 members to form a coalition.

If a government is not formed within three weeks after Livni announces that she was unable to form a coalition, Peres will call for general elections, which are expected take place Feb. 17. The Current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will remain in office until a new coalition is formed following the new 2009 parliamentary elections. This is an unexpected breather for him, but his reputation is unlikely to be salvaged.

Olmert resigned his post Sept. 21 because of corruption investigations into his activities when he held ministerial positions in previous Israeli governments.

The US Veepstakes viewed from Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, political wonks are not yet fully glued to the American vice presidential race, and some are more gripped by the upcoming city elections here, which will be a power struggle between the ultra-religious and the secular candidates. But considering there are 100,000 or so American absentee voters living in Israel, many as dual-citizens, the Jewish take on the 2008 election is worth considering. The common wisdom is that McCain is more trusted by Jews--but this has been turned on its head.

Biden misquotes broadcast on Army Radio and apocalyptic church Sermons that got Amens from Palin already are raising alarms for many Israelis, according to the latest on the Huffington Post.

While the American media obsess about whether Alaska Governor and aerial wolf-sniper Sarah Palin is ready for prime time and national office, many Israeli political buffs have been scrutinizing the 2008 vice presidential candidates in light of foreign policy issues.



Today, Sen. Joe Biden's photo was splashed on the front page of the conservative Jerusalem Post, which showed no pictures of the Barracuda from Wasilla or her photogenic family.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Israeli reporters in a phone interview yesterday that Israel doesn't need any green light from the United States in order to attack Iran over its nuclear program.

A broadcast on the official Army Radio station last week claimed that unnamed Israeli officials were preoccupied about the prospect of Biden as number two in the White House because they said he had ruled out an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and cautioned them that the region would eventually have to learn to live with A-bombs in Tehran.

Concerns were heightened in Jerusalem after Iranian officials boasted that 4000 atomic centrifuges were already enriching uranium for their nuclear energy program, with an additional 3000 ready for installation. Biden has warned that Israel is less secure now than before the Bush administration's ill-considered Middle East policies shifted the strategic balance in the region.

On Monday, the Obama-Biden campaign had "scathingly rejected" the unsourced broadcast as a partisan lie. "We will not tolerate anyone questioning Senator Biden's 35-year record of standing up for the security of Israel," Biden's press secretary, David Wade, said in a statement.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

"Joe Biden's first trip as a senator was to Israel. He has worked with every Israeli leader from Golda Meir to Prime Minister Olmert, and he takes a back seat to no one when it comes to protecting the relationship between Israel and the US," Wade added. "Senator Biden has consistently stated - publicly and privately - that a nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat to Israel and the United States and that we must prevent a nuclear Iran."


Wade noted that only two months ago, in a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations committee - which Biden heads - the senator reiterated his long-held view on this subject by stating: "Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon would dramatically destabilize an already unstable region and probably fuel a nuclear arms race in the region. It is profoundly in our interest to prevent that from happening."

The Army Radio report asserted that Biden had expressed doubt over the effectiveness of economic sanctions imposed on Iran. The report also said Biden was against the opening of an additional military and diplomatic front, saying that the U.S. had more pressing problems, such as North Korea and Iraq.

Biden has a solid 36-year Senate record of pro-Israel leadership. He has called Israel "the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East" and declared himself a Zionist in an interview with a U.S. Jewish television channel last year, saying that "you don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."

The controversial Army radio report was issued after a newspaper story quoted intelligence sources from the Netherlands who predicted an American strike on Iran's nuclear program within the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, local business reporters crowed that $35 million worth of security systems for Iran will soon be supplied through--get this-- an Israeli company. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly ordered over 70,000 units from Sonar Company via one of their branches in China. The company's owner, Yaakov Salman, said that it was "impossible" that the Iranians were unaware that the cutting edge system, which identifies hostile elements through radio waves, was developed by scientists in Israel.

Hostilities of the political sort certainly were evident on the convention room floor in Minnesota as Palin delivered her hard-hitting acceptance speech to adoring Republicans. Even though Palin had been sequestered most of the day for last-minute grooming, she interrupted her prep sessions to speak with members of the "frozen Chosen," Minnesota's Jewish community, and met with powerful Jewish lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to reassure them of her full commitment to Israel.

Much has been made of the miniature flag of Israel pinned to Palin's office drapes in the backdrop of widely circulated video.

Most pundits view its display as a sign of Palin's Christian Zionism, and note that the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus actively reaches out for funding and support from the estimated flock of 400,000 Evangelicals in America. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel has become a reliable touchstone for conservative grassroots campaigns for years.

More troubling videos have emerged showing evangelical sermons, attended by Palin and her large family, which blame the Jewish people's rejection of the Christian messiah for the violence visited upon them in Jerusalem for the past 60 years.

David Brickner, of Jews for Jesus, pointed out last month at Wasilla Bible Church how: "a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment--you can't miss it."

Even though Palin was quick to say she does not share these radical views-- in an instant replay of Obama stepping back from Reverend Jeremiah Wright's notorious remarks-- her born-again embrace of End Times prophecies does not play so well in a country which anticipates apocalypse coming from Tehran in the form of nuclear-tipped missiles.

Still Biden his time??

Israeli Defence Chief Barak denies sleaze

It's not only that stateside Barack who's in the news with his lovely wife. Israeli's Barak has been getting coverage too, but not quite as adulatory. (The Baraks' back-story is quite unusual: they wed 40 years after they first met, and ditched their respective spouses to do so. The couple is pictured on their wedding day last summer, above.) The Independent's Matthew Bell recaps the latest twist in the tawdry tale:

Poll ratings for Israel's Labour Party are in freefall following a sleaze scandal involving cash-for-access, Nili Priel, the wife of Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, is alleged to have offered to set up meetings between decision-makers and foreign investors in exchange for cash.

The claim was made by the TV news station Channel 10, which showed a document issued by Mrs Priel's consultancy company, promoting her networking skills. It said: "There are 800-900 senior decision-makers in Israel. Mrs Priel knows most of them personally." The business was shut down immediately after the broadcast, but not before her husband suffered a significant slide in his ratings. According to one poll, if elections were held now, Labour would win only 12 seats in the Knesset. It currently has 20.

Mr Barak has denied the allegations , and claimed his wife's decision to close her company was "to prevent attempts, no matter how groundless, to delegitimise me." As Labour Party leader, he should be a contender to take over from Ehud Olmert, when he steps down as Prime Minister next month, after charges of corruption.

Zionism up against the Wall: the NYer interviews Avraham Burg

The Israeli government has to confront its own crazies and create a national consensus on democratic ideals, enact a secular constitution, and really confront the settlers. So far, the government is only willing to say that it is making ‘painful’ moves. We are told that we have to grieve with the settlers, think about making deals, but quietly let on that we actually think these are the real Israeli pioneers. Bullshit

Thus concludes "The Apostate", David Remnick's rumination on the state of Zionism in the current New Yorker magazine. After the aggressive and moralistic interviewer, Ari Shavit, took on Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset and author of "Defeating Hitler" in the liberal Haaretz newspaper, Israelis were appalled by the vitriol. 450 comments were posted on the paper's website. When Burg described Israel as a perpetually “frightened society,” things grew tense:

SHAVIT: You are patronizing and supercilious, Avrum. You have no empathy for Israelis. You treat the Israeli Jew as a paranoid. But, as the cliché goes, some paranoids really are persecuted. On the day we are speaking, Ahmadinejad is saying that our days are numbered. He promises to eradicate us. No, he is not Hitler. But he is also not a mirage. He is a true threat. He is the real world—a world you ignore.

BURG: I say that as of this moment Israel is a state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions. And it’s not just a theoretical question. Would our ability to cope with Iran not be much better if we renewed in Israel the ability to trust the world? Would it not be more right if we didn’t deal with the problem on our own but, rather, as part of a world alignment beginning with the Christian churches, going on to the governments and finally the armies? Instead, we say we do not trust the world, they will abandon us, and here’s Chamberlain returning from Munich with the black umbrella and we will bomb them alone.

Now that Israel will receive a $30m weapons package from America, Burg seems rather out of touch with reality when he says Israel would be better off to spurn financial aid from the United States: “I don’t like it. A state like mine should live on its own means,” he told Remnick. What Israel does need from its superpower ally is the impetus to move forward on peace negotiations.

Bible Belters repent at Knesset

Surreal deal. A whole passle of Christian Zionists are in town to mark the 40th anniversary of Jerusalem's unification (when Israel reconquered the walled city where the Second Temple once stood, during the Six-day war). About 200 of them showed up at the Knesset to read a belated letter of repentance, an abject apology for two millenia's worth of Christian atrocities against the Jewish people. Coincidentally, this is an act many of them reckon will hasten the "End Days" before the Second Coming of Christ. The bloodbath of Middle Eastern current events leads some to believe that the prophesized "Time of Tribulations" is already underway in the Promised Land. The unusual prayer service was sponsored by the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus. The mixed Israeli and Evangelical audience belted out Israel's national anthem with vigor, as if it were a martial Zionist hymn.

After the tearful apology came the love fest. Seymour Kook-- a pastor from South Carolina with a name right out of a Bart Simpson cartoon-- read aloud a touching collection of love letters from born-again Christians to the "God of Israel." These expressed gratitude "for the root of God's olive tree (and) for every Jewish father of the faith... we stand in faith in our branch, without arrogance, with humility toward your God and the fathers of Israel, who took us in when we could not deserve him and could not find him."

"May Jacob be blessed by us, not scattered to the nations, but brought back on eagles wings, not inheriting his land divided, but yours, returned to you to steward until the messiah comes, and then forever and ever and ever." The room erupted in applause. Prayers were addressed to the "mighty God of Israel as your holy people, Jews and gentiles, one people as you would want us to be." (No mention of the Jews needing to worship the Messiah, post-Rapture, or else being condemned to hellfire. A minor oversight?)

Meanwhile, as Christian Zionists communed with the Chosen People, the Israeli foreign ministry skipped a long-planned meeting with the Vatican, which would have touched on their strained relations and touchy subjects like taxes on the Catholic Church's Jerusalem properties. This last-minute snub understandably left the diplomats from Holy See quite cross, and they issued a press release to this effect. The High Church in Jerusalem attracts mainly Arab Israelis or Palestinians, both in the priesthood and among the local congregation. Some of their leaders had lashed out at Christian Zionists last summer for misuse of the Book of Revelation as a latter-day Gospel scare tactics. This Knesset prayer session may have been a tatty diplomatic tit-for-tat for the Christian Zionists to relish. Or just a scheduling conflict, as the government asserted. Condi Rice's flit-through was another excuse not to meet Pope Benedict XVI's posse. The German Pope says he will be happy to come visiting once there is peace in the Middle East. Yeah, right. He also says Hell "exists and is eternal," and did not specify when it might freeze over.

Texas twangs and soft Nigerian accents were much in evidence at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum before the Knesset meeting, and bus loads of evangelical tourists had rumbled up to Yardinit, the latter-day mass baptism spot on the Jordan River which the Kibbutzniks of Kinneret have set up next to their gargantuan souvenir stall. (The actual site of Jesus' baptism is located inconveniently in the West Bank near Jericho. That did not prevent baptisms and re-baptisms of many soggy and joyous bus riders.)

Even though Christian missionaries officially are persona non grata in Israel, and Messianic Jews, who accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah, must be stealthy about spreading their conversion doctrine, the Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus has official approval. Its appeals to evangelical Christians in the US and elsewhere yield large donations , along with prayers of solidarity and political opposition to a two-state solution with Palestine. The government tourist board, wounded by scary media coverage of the Intifadas and conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, is ecstatic over the popular Evangelical tourist circuit emerging in the Holy Land. Prayer is all the protection these true believers think they need from Qassam rockets or potential suicide bombers, and they continue to arrive in droves. An amusement park, with televangelist Pat Robertson's inimitable input, and a plush Robert Trent Jones-designed golf courses near the Mt of Beatitudes are being developed expressly for Evangelical Christians who seek holy sites beyond Jerusalem. For Chrissakes, what next? One purported attraction is a plexi-glass platform just inches under the surface so visitors can take snapshots of each other walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee.



painting at top by Salvador Dali, 1951: Christ of St John of the Crucifix
cartoons courtesy of preterist archive

Driver's instructions: destination unknown

Paranoid fantasies often become reality in today’s hair-trigger Middle East, where security is a priority. But Izzy cannot imagine the scenario the Knesset had in mind when it upped the budget for protecting Israel’s former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who has been in a deep coma for more than a year.

Though his doctors say Sharon--hardly a moving target-- is unlikely ever to recover, a million and a half shekels has been newly allotted to the old general’s security, which includes salary for a personal chauffeur.

Not much mileage in that job. The klutziest driver in Israel, one who does not mind being parked 24/7 or honking with no response, should apply. Presumably because an ambulance already is included in Sharon's medical provision, and because after a year in sickbed the once-stout politician must be unrecognizable by enemies, critics across the political spectrum were scathing about the extra spending.
Maybe the car and driver are a birthday gift from the state: Ariel Sharon turned 79 yesterday in his sleep. Click here to read what might transpire if the erstwhile PM were to beat the medical odds and wake up.
Anyone care to update this drumroll with the latest government shenanigans?