Gil Peled: knows how to get resultsOne thing Israelis aren't short on: Talk.  So it’s a reassuring sign of the times that whether it’s climate change, the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea, or the way urban pollution effects everyday quality of life, the environment—HaSviva—is becoming a much more common topic of conversation.

It hasn't always been that way. Gil Peled, an Israeli architect and green building consultant, explains, “Now everyone is aware of environmental problems, but when we had suicide bombers up the road it was the last thing on people’s minds."

Fortunately, converting talk into action is precisely what Peled’s Eco-Housing Pilot Project has been doing. Like so many people in the country, Peled lives in a stone-brick apartment block erected two generations ago when the national priority was ‘building the land’ rather than ‘saving the planet’. But what sets Peled’s building in central Jerusalem apart from the others nearby is that the residents have reduced their ecological footprint by over 30% since the project began in 2002.

The trademark stone floors and thin walls work well in the summer, letting heat escape, but that same lack of insulation becomes a burden during the icy Jerusalem winter. I’m not alone in huddling around an electricity-hungry portable heater from December to February. Not exactly what the Jewish Agency promised… And when it comes to recycling, if there’s a deposit box for newspapers or plastic bottles at the end of the street then you’re one of the lucky ones.

Jerusalem's Eco-Housing Pilot Project: shows that it's possible to turn talk into actionNu, so how is it possible to ‘green’ a 50 year-old building, not to mention stubborn stuck-in-their-ways Israelis? For Peled, the most important thing was to green people’s attitudes. “It’s easy to jump on technological solutions, but it’s really a matter of changing people’s behavior,” he says.

Now, with the full participation of the ten apartments in the building, they have succeeded in reducing their resource consumption via simple changes like recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, and harvesting rainwater from the roof to feed plants in the garden—itself a reclaimed patch of wasteland. “The place was very neglected and in disrepair and we’ve taken responsibility of our environment,” says Peled.

The Eco-Housing Project is the first—and remains the only—green apartment building in Israel. Peled notes that it’s much easier to design green housing when building from scratch, pointing to a number of independent projects in the Negev and Galilee doing just that. However, he argues that “detached housing is, by definition, un-ecological” because of the roads and infrastructure needed, not to mention the extra space required in a land-scare country.

The building, which over 20 people currently call home, has seen tenants come and go, but their enthusiasm hasn’t waned. “They didn’t come here because they were ‘green’, but when they arrived they understood that there is something special here,“ explains Peled with satisfaction.

Whether you're contemplating your first or fifteenth trip to Israel, the following destinations are unique, hidden gems that won’t be crawling with tour groups.  Birthright, Ulpan, and Federation trip alums can rest assured that these won't be repeats.

Care For Some: Biblical grass?1. Stroll in Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve
You may have already visited the amazing Biblical Zoo, but how about a botanical gardens that shows you all of the plants and flowers mentioned in the Bible? It’s gorgeous, fun, and educational in the marginal ‘not-too-boring’ kind of way.

2. Check Out the Rockefeller Museum of Archaeology
It’s easy to skip most of East Jerusalem on your first few trips because there’s so much going on in West Jerusalem, but the Rockefeller Museum is definitely worth a trip. They have some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, displayed differently than the big exhibit in the Israel Museum, and all kinds of cool things that have been dug up in Israel from the Iron Age to the Byzantine Empire.

Shen Ramon: mean's 'Roman's Tooth'3. Hike to Shen Ramon in Mitzpe Ramon
Mitzpe Ramon is a huge crater in the middle of the Negev (or maybe it’s an erosion cirque—I can never tell the difference). There’s a fairly standard hike that takes you past waterfalls and up ladders (assuming you go during the rainy season), but if you have it in you to try hiking to the craters inside Shen Ramon, the highest peak inside the crater, you’re rewarded with unbelievably beautiful views, and maybe a peak at an ibex or two.


4. Find the Last Supper
There are two places in Jerusalem that claim to be the site of the Last Supper. They’re both almost certainly wrong, but fun to visit anyway. First, head to the Assyrian Church of the East in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City. I can’t find a link for it (that’s how hidden it really is), but to find it enter the Old City at the Jaffa Gate, make a right, walk past the church with the red British post box outside. Take the second left and wind around a few little alleyways. There’s a small sign, but probably best to ask someone… At the church they pray in Aramaic, and they’ve got a room in the basement where they claim Jesus had his final piece of matzo.

Coenaculum: pretty space for a simcha? Or you could head to The Last Supper Room, also called the Coenaculum in the Old City, directly above the Tomb of David. This room can’t possibly be the room where Jesus had his last supper, since it was built in the 12th century, but it could possibly be built on top of the site where Jesus and the disciples chowed down. Anyway, it’s pretty and kind of a fun thing to visit. Last time I was there I kept thinking how funny it would be to have a Jewish wedding in that room.

5. Help Out at Urban Kibbutzim
There’s a new trend of young Jewish collectives in urban areas, instead of way out in agricultural spaces. Urban kibbutzim, as they’re called, can be found in Jerusalem, Sderot and Beit Shemesh, and have been meeting with great success in the past few years. In Jerusalem, Kibbutz Reshit has converted the Ir Ganim neighborhood into a safe and beautiful place after years of it being a crime-ridden area with trash on the streets and drugs for sale on the corner. Stop by to see how young Israelis are reinventing the kibbutz movement. (And there are even urban kibbutzim specifically for English-speakers!)

Elijah's Cave: say Ommmm6. Meditate in Elijah’s Cave
If you’re up north in Haifa and want something different to do, visit Elijah’s Cave at the bottom of Cape Carmel. Tradition holds that this is where Elijah came to pray before he called down holy fire to defeat the followers of Baal on nearby Mount Carmel. He also hid in the cave after a nasty run in with Ahab and Jezebel. Since Elijah is holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims you’ll find all kinds of groups visiting the cave to pray and meditate. It’s beautiful inside, and a nice place to sit quietly with your thoughts.

7. Make A Speech on the Mount of Beatitudes
I’ve never been particularly interested in the Sermon on the Mount, being a Jew and all, but it’s certainly a nice homily, and if you’re feeling profound take a trip up to the Galilee, where you can visit a church that claims to be on the site where Jesus gave his famous sermon. It’s a gorgeous area, regardless of the history, and the church grounds are peaceful and nicely kept. Plus, it’s free.

A Symbol: of Peace8. Explore Kibbutz Ramat Rahel
You can stay at the kibbutz hotel, or attend a wedding on kibbutz grounds without ever noticing all of the cool things to see at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. The kibbutz has a crazy history because for many years it was right on the border with Jordan, and has been destroyed and rebuilt three times. Way before that, though, Jezebel had her lair (a huge palace) on the site where the kibbutz is now. Seriously. Most of the archeological ruins have been taken to the Israel Museum, but there’s still stuff to see. Plus, if you hike out into the kibbutz fields you may run into actual shepherds herding their flocks, and you can see a fantastic sculpture—three huge columns with an olive tree planted on top of them, more than twenty feel in the air. There’s a bucket on a pulley so you can water the tree. It’s a gorgeous and easy hike, and the sculpture will take your breath away.

Happy Israeli Independence Day!

Qassam rockets rain down on Negev towns; suicide bombings have reappeared; Israel is maintaining a blockade on the Gaza Strip with periodic invasions that are growing in severity; Hezbollah is re-arming itself in a chaotic Lebanon; and the fear of a nuclear Iran remains. It seems an odd time to say that Israel is now in the best position it has ever been to normalize its existence.

But that is precisely the case, and Israel's sixtieth birthday is the perfect opportunity to see this.

Israel has been at the center of global intrigue for so long, it's hard now to recall the idealism in which it was born. But sixty years ago, the first citizens of Israel dreamt of a country that was both Jewish and democratic, and that was welcomed fully into the family of nations and at peace with its neighbors.

Today, the view of Israel around the world is at its lowest point ever. Yet it has also been offered full recognition and normal relations by the entire Arab world, and all the negative press it has received has not eroded the general support in the West for its continued existence as a Jewish state.

Had this Arab offer been proposed even twenty years ago, most Israelis would have wept in joy at the prospect and leapt at it. But today, Israel is hesitant to extend its hand to that offer, even while it has acknowledged it as a positive step. What's changed, and how can we change it back?

Living By The Sword

Beginning with the very birth of the country in 1948, Israelis have lived each day with the sense that their neighbors want to destroy them. One can debate whether Arab determination toward that goal has waned, but that doesn't change the very real feelings Israelis have or their historical basis.

Modern historical research has shown that the Arab effort in 1948 to eliminate Israel in its infancy was half-hearted, but the war still cost Israel one percent of its population. Even if the facts on the ground were not in line with the mythos of the Israeli David triumphing over the Arab Goliath, it was still a stunning triumph, and one which cemented the central place the Israeli military holds in Israeli hearts and minds.

Technically, that war never ended. An armistice was reached, but a state of war remained with Egypt until 1979, with Jordan until 1994, and is still in place with Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

War flared again in 1956, 1967 and 1973. Israel learned to live by the sword, and this was only reinforced as it moved away from fighting other countries back toward fighting the Palestinians.

The 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to Israel's eighteen year occupation of southern Lebanon, an era many compared to America's Vietnam quagmire, was followed five years later by the first Intifada. Even the Oslo years were marked, in the mid-1990s, by an upsurge in terrorist attacks and, until early 2000, by the ongoing violence in southern Lebanon.

In the twenty-first century, Israel has seen the worst violence with the Palestinians since the 1948 war. In 2006, it also experienced its first significant cross-border conflict since 1973, as war broke out with Hezbollah.

That's a lot of fighting, and it's meant that Israel, which from its birth has focused on its military abilities, has become even more mistrustful of diplomatic initiatives. This feeling has been reinforced in recent years by the Israeli government's embrace of George W. Bush's style of international relations. That style is best described as "shoot first and ask questions if it happens to be convenient later."

The Right Flowers and the Jewish Mainstream Wilts

It isn't hard to see that with all that militarism in the mix, and the very real threats Israel has faced, an aggressive, right-wing element has moved consistently closer to the forefront, in both Israeli politics and among Israel's supporters throughout the Jewish world.

Continue reading...

Israel's Yellow Vented Bulbul: one of ten in the running for national birdIt has recently become a bit of an issue here in Israel that there is no national bird, and so sixty years on, we're finally adopting a bird to symbolize the country. Britain is proud of its little Robin with its red breast, America boasts of its bald Eagle, and Japan celebrates its own aesthetic in the shape of the elegant Crane—now Israel will join the flock.

The scheme to match Israel with her bird representative is the brainchild of Dr. Yossi Leshem, pioneering Israeli ornithologist, senior researcher in the Zoology Department at Tel Aviv University, and Director of the International Centre for the study of Bird Migration in Israel. Leshem is justly proud of the scheme, and explains that “Birds are an essential part of the future of Israel’s landscape and environment. Public awareness will be drawn to Israel’s natural ecosystem and the bird’s habitat.”

Leshem and his co-initiator Dan Alon of the Israel Ornithology Centre, based near the Knesset in Jerusalem, have designed an educational project that gives both schoolchildren in Israel's 4,000 schools (and 9500 nursery schools), and soldiers across all the IDF’s regiments, the chance to acquaint themselves with the birds that have been chosen for the contest. 13 fighter planes from the IAF have been named after birds, and the military is taking an active interest in the project.

In my garden in Jerusalem I am oft woken early to a wonderful trilling that I swear sounds like, “Here’s Gabriel." On Shabbat, it becomes “Swing Gabriel swing,” but none of the experts has as of yet identified it. A blackbird recently built her nest close by, and I often hear her young feeding. It's always a good reminder that we share this environment with such a rich plethora of bird life, all trying to adapt to sharing space with humans.

This past December, over 1000 bird lovers—fondly known in the trade as ‘twitchers’—were offered the chance to draw up a list of 10 species who might fit the bill as Israel's National Bird. Criteria for these 10 include the number of times they are referenced in biblical sources, the color, and the sound of the feathered friend.

Here are the 10 most favored.  To study their glorious plumage in technicolor, check out our photo gallery.

1. The Hoopoe (Duchifat, Heb.)
2. Yellow Tufted Sunbird – (Tsufit). This bird is also known as the Palestine Sunbird, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t become the feathered face of Israel on a stamp…
3. Barn Owl (Tinshemet)
   
4. Lesser Kestrel (Buz Adom)
   
5. Yellow Vented Bulbul (Bulbul)
   
6. Griffin Vulture (Nesher)
   
7. European Goldfinch (Chochit)
   
8. Spur-Winged Plover (Siksak)
   
9. Graceful Warbler (Pashosh)
   
10. White Breasted Kingfisher (Lavan Hazeh)
    

Whether this will just mean another icon for the stamps, or whether the contest and accompanying educational campaigns will result in real environmental and ornithological awareness remains to be seen. Voting ends tomorrow, May 8, and President Peres will announce which of these birds the nation has chosen on May 29th, at a special ceremony in Jerusalem. Israel-focussed environmental website Green Prophet, where I also blog regularly, is running a special online poll here. So if you know your Hoopoe from your Plover, or your Warbler from your Bulbul, get involved and add your vote.

View the gallery of contenders.

Who Should Win Israel's National Bible Quiz: the person with the right answers, or the person with the "right" beliefs?An international youth Bible quiz is held annually in Israel, and the competition is fierce. (I went to a high school with several competitors, and they spent months studying the minutia of Tanach only to make it through the first round of testing.) This year, one of the contestants, an Israeli who won the Jerusalem district quiz in Israel, is a Messianic Jew. Bat El Levy is a world class Old Testament scholar, but she also brings some knowledge of the New Testament to the table, and that’s making a handful of Israeli rabbis, well--a bit testy.

Some rabbis are concerned that if Levy competes and win, her success might encourage Jews to convert to Christianity. Another worry they're harboring: That Levy could make the Jewish competitors who have only mastered Tanach--and not the gospels--look bad.

Levy’s Jewishness is being called into question, but so far the Education Ministry has no plans to bar her from the competition.

Messianic Jews have always been a hot button issue in the Jewish community, and it’s hardly a surprise that groups like Yad LeAhim and Jews for Judaism would take issue with a family like Levy’s. But those groups are meant to combat active evangelism and proselytizing, and there’s no proof, or even allegations, that Levy or any member of her family has done anything of the sort. If the winner of the quiz was a secular Jew who just happened to enjoy learning Tanach, no doubt the rabbis would be irritated, but they’d have no grounds to call the win into question.

If Levy breaks the rules of the quiz or Israeli law, she should be disqualified. But there’s no reason to exclude her from the competition now. If anything, we could benefit from more widespread familiarity with the intricacies of the Old Testament, instead of windbags who claim to love the Bible but can’t name the Ten Commandments.

Dear Israel,

Your son, the poet Yehuda Amichai, once described you as a land divided into two districts: memory and hope. The residents of each district mingle with each other; they are, Amichai tells us, either returning from a funeral or a wedding.

Contemplating you at sixty I find myself planting my feet in both of your districts of memory and hope --- a man simultaneously returning from a funeral and a wedding.

At sixty, you are a wedding of land and idea, a fantastical union over two thousandYehuda Amichai years in the making. It is no wonder that it took the imagination of a playwright to father your present incarnation into concrete existence. People doubted you all along. They said of your parents (who are also your children) that they are dreamers; that they have no right; and that they are going against the hand of God. But your fathers and mothers replied, "If you will it, it is no dream!" That “history gives us a right.” And that sometimes “miracles need help to materialize.”

Having had you as a constant during all of our lives, it is hard for us to really appreciate how implausible your existence really is. How implausible of you to have maintained an identity throughout your long and deracinating winter of exile. How implausible of you, after two millennia, to have found your way back home. How implausible of you after just a few decades to revive a civilization and create one of the most scientifically, artistically, and intellectually able countries in the world. I look at this giant mountain of implausibility, and I see you in your true glory.

Indeed, you have taught us the virtue of patience, tenacity, and optimism. You have, once again, given us a home. A home that in the coarse voice and words of my grandmother, a woman who survived that terrible night under the European skies, is the only place in the world where the words "dirty Jew" mean a Jew who has not taken a shower. At sixty years young, you are an amazing success story and we are your grateful children.

But grateful does not mean blind. When you shine a light on an object, you are also bound to get its shadow. And there is no escaping the fact that your shadow is Palestine.

Today, dear Israel, you are standing on the back of another people. A people who have become a broken mirror image of yourself. They dream your dream, fear your fears, and suffer your pains. Just like you they drink from the wellspring of their grandmother's tears and they nourish their souls on their grandfather's scars. Just like you, they are rooted in holy soil, and they too are inheritors of an unholy land.

It is true that you vowed to "never again" let your children experience homelessness and hell. It is also true that many times you were provoked. But you have wielded your power at great costs. Time and again, your insistence on "just being" has blinded you to your divine and historical purpose: To be a light onto the nations. To carry forward the great wisdom, ethical, and spiritual teachings of your ancestors.

The funeral that your son Amichai spoke of is not just for your fallen sons and daughters. It also for your fallen ideals and morality. No, dear Israel, I do not want you to be a handicapped civilization. Like everyone else you have a right to defend yourself. But today, your feet are planted on someone else’s districts of hope and memory. Could there be a more profoundly un-Jewish place in which to stand?

Your history has taught us that as long as you do not leave Palestine, she will never leave you. The truth of the matter is that the greatest gift that you can give for your birthday is to lend a hand in creating a birthday for the Palestinian state. Don't settle for just removing yourself, help construct a positive future for your sister nation. I know these are difficult words to comprehend and accept. But with sixty years comes experience and wisdom. I have faith in you. After all, you have overcome more implausible challenges.

With Love,

Roi

Don't say a prayer for me now: Save it 'til the morning after What kind of prayer suits the relationship that American Jews have with Israel, a country they don't live in, but that many feel an affinity toward? What kind of prayer is appropriate where national politics, ideological differences, and theological concerns all vie for the attention and intention of the person praying?

Mishna (Avot 3:2) tells Jews to pray for their government regardless of who is in charge, and Jews have been doing so for hundreds of years—but we do not live in Israel. Why a prayer for a state and a government which is not the place where we live?

When the Prayer for the State of Israel was published in Israel in 1949, not everyone was immediately on board. The prayer was omitted from the 1951 Conservative High Holiday prayer book, and it does not appear as a formal element in Conservative worship until the 1957 edition of the Conservative Prayer book. In its 1975 prayer book, Gates of Prayer, the Reform Movement included a paragraph, in English, under the heading “For Our People and Our Nation,” praying for Israel’s peace and protection. The first stand-alone Prayer for Israel in American Reform liturgy doesn’t appear until 1978, when the High Holiday Prayer book, Gates of Repentance, includes it.

Even Orthodox Jews, who are the most inclined to closely follow the liturgy, exhibit some hesitation around the prayer’s inclusion in worship. The ArtScroll Siddur, one of the most popular prayerbooks among the Modern Orthodox set, comes out in two versions: One that contains the prayer, and one that does not.

As you might expect, the contents of the prayer differ from prayerbook to prayerbook. Each of the four major American denominations has its own version of the prayer, and organizations and publications like Rabbis for Human Rights and Tikkun magazine have penned and published their own versions of the prayer to suit each of their respective relationships with Israel. Some might be considered revisions; others are totally new creations.

Can You Hear Me Now? What can we learn from the history of this prayer that might help us make sense of why we—who live at a distance and who feel ambivalent at best about Israel’s political leadership and policies—might want to offer a prayer at all. And what, finally, should American Jews pray for when they pray for Israel? I’m reminded of that joke from early on in Fiddler on the Roof:

Jew: Rabbi, what kind of prayer should one say for the Czar?
Rabbi: May the Lord Bless him and keep him…. Far away from us!

Essentially, the original version of the prayer beseeches God to bless and protect the State of Israel, guide and counsel its leaders, strengthen its defenders, and so on and so forth. Pretty typical of prayers for one’s country, written by inhabitants of that country. In fact, it resembles (in sentiment) other traditional prayers for one’s Jewish and broader communities. This semblance is reinforced by its placement within the structure of a worship service, where it appears alongside prayers for the Jewish community, the community of worshippers, and for the government of one’s home country.

There is however, one striking difference: It does not stop with supplications for the land itself, its leadership and governance, but adds a paragraph for Jews in the Diaspora and for the hope that they will “return” to the land.

When the Conservative Movement issued its new prayer book in 1985, it decided to omit the prayer’s lengthy paragraph about “speeding the return” of Jews to Zion, focusing instead on Israel’s well-being, peace, and strength. Oddly, however, the Conservative Movement retained a phrase that has recently raised questions and eyebrows about whether or not it belongs in American Jewish prayer. The phrase refers to Israel as “reshit tzmikhat ge’ulateynu,” or “the dawn of our redemption,” which sounds a little too messianic for many American Jews. Moreover, and maybe more troubling: Why would our spiritual redemption be connected to the State of Israel?

Is the State of Israel—this State of Israel—really a sign of the dawn of the messianic age? What does that mean for the majority of American Jews, for whom Israel is more a vacation destination or an ideology than a sign of the messianic age? Is there a more suitable metaphor for the State of Israel, whose imagery and echo might resonate more deeply with Jews in the diaspora?

May the Lord Bless him and keep him: Far away from us! To be sure, this is not exactly a crisis for American Jews. Traditional worship is full of strange phrasings and theological assertions that I would venture most of them do not exactly believe (the issue of God’s “chosen people,” to name just one). So why does the phrase “the dawn of our redemption," with its eschatological overtones, appear so troubling that it's become the subject of debate at this moment?

Israel holds a unique place in the minds and hearts of Jews. Even amidst reports that illustrate a declining attachment among younger Jews to Israel, such a finding is “news” only because certain segments of American Jewish life are worried about this changing attitude. Since the early 20th century, American Jews have invested a lot of time, money, and energy in Israel. Buying trees, donating to UJA, sending teenagers to visit, volunteering on kibbutz, eating falafel, and learning Hebrew all illustrated American Jews’ commitment to Israel. So what now, that American Jews’ relationships to Israel are in the midst of a moment of significant change and interrogation?

Many American Jews’ attitudes about Israel are best characterized as ambivalent or contradictory. The “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” rhetoric that organizations like AIPAC and others like to throw around don’t serve us particularly well when trying to describe the complicated feelings that many American Jews hold toward Israel. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here, but most American Jews—even those most critical of Israeli politics—are not “anti-Israel” any more than they might be “anti-China” for its violations of human rights.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the mish-mash of feelings goes something like this: I like the idea of a Jewish home, but I’m pretty uncomfortable with the policies of the State, particularly as they pertain to the treatment of Palestinians. It’s a beautiful place, but so is Paris. It’s an historical place, of particular importance to “my people,” but most of my immediate family has never spent a whole lot of time there. The historical importance of the place is ancient, which makes it important, but I can probably name more famous Greeks than I can Ancient Israelites who lived in Canaan, back in the day.

Israel At 60: A Prayer From Afar To be sure, ambivalence is not new for American Jews—nor is it only directed toward feelings and attitudes about Israel. The majority of American Jews have felt and acted on a commitment to Israel since the establishment of the State in 1948, but most American Jews never planned on moving there. So much so, that in 1950, American Jewish Committee President Jacob Blaustein had to tell Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to stop hawking the idea of aliya (migration to Israel), or he would alienate too many American Jews and sabotage his own fund raising efforts.

Israel, in the minds, hearts, and actions of American Jews, has best been observed at a distance.

Which brings us back to the central question of what, precisely, American Jews ought to be praying for when they pray for Israel on her 60th anniversary, and into the future. Maybe the new versions of the Prayer reflect and give voice to the conflicting emotions American Jews hold toward Israel. And maybe that fictitious rabbi from Fiddler (itself a modern American re-visioning of a place and a past) revealed more than a quick wit and a sense of humor.

Maybe it’s the things that we find most challenging that are most in need of our prayer.

Zeek Contributing Editor (and Velveteen Rabbi) Rachel Barenblat asked Rabbis Camille Angel (Reform), Lynn Gottlieb (Renewal), Fred Guttman (Reform), and Meyer Schiller (Orthodox/Hasidic) to discuss the impact of the Israeli state and its politics on their rabbinate.

Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with?

Schiller: I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general.

The right of Orthodoxy and the Modern Orthodox share a certain fear and demonization of the Other. It's difficult to offer a different perspective than that of the comunities in which I live. I try, but by the time I come in contact with students, attitudes are already set. It's very difficult to move people from a sense of victimhood, from a sense that there's one side to the conflict and the failure of the world to recognize that is an indication of the world's persistent antisemitism.

Zeek: Do you think there's a sense in which your own background, coming originally from a secular family and choosing Orthodoxy as a pre-teen, has an impact on how you approach this?

Schiller: Absolutely. Because I went to public school; my parents shared a sense that the non-Jews amongst whom we lived were people like ourselves in many ways! It's always been difficult for me to make my peace with those who don't view the world that way.

There are inklings of an alternative perspective within Orthodoxy. I think the German Orthodox experience of the nineteenth century was different. There are individuals in Israel like Eliyahu MacLean who are active in reconciliation efforts. There are echoes within Orthodoxy, but it is lonely.

Gottlieb: Camille [Rabbi Angel] and I were both laughing, not because this is funny but because this is so difficult; we share with Rabbi Schiller across the spectrum how difficult it is to help people overcome their fear of Palestinians. Which of course is necessary for us to build the kind of peace we hope for.

Angel: My experience is in some ways similar to Rabbi Schiller's, although from the other side. I'm in the Bay Area in San Francisco; this is the first time in my life I've been surrounded by so many Jews who developed a Jewish identity post-'67. By and large they're from secular backgrounds; they've felt marginalized by the mainstream for all sorts of reasons, and are deeply suspicious of mainstream ideas--and being pro-Israel is largely a mainstream idea.

When I went to Israel as a high school student, I believed -- hook, line, and sinker! -- that Israel was defending itself appropriately in every way. I have a cousin by marriage who told me that Israel committed human rights atrocities, and I thought she was from Mars!

Over the years I've been here, I've worked to bring people to Israel in order to begin to get a clearer idea of what Israel is. In turn, our visits have involved me going on trips into the occupied territories, being with Israelis and Palestinians who can help me to see how deeply complicated and pained both sides are.

Guttman: I'm pretty much a centrist on Israel and Israeli politics, and my community for the most part shares my perspectives. I do try to help our congregation learn to love Israel; the land, the people and the country. Naturally there are those to the right and left of me.

I also try to help our congregation understand the existential difference between being here and being there. I may have feelings about what the government of Israel should do on a particular issue, but the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of those policies will fall upon the people of Israel and not their supporters in the United States. Having served extensively in the IDF and in the West Bank when I lived in Israel, I can fully appreciate the difference between living here and living there.

Zeek: Rabbi Guttman, you've used the phrase "administered territories." Say more about that?

Guttman: That's the nom de jure that the Israeli government uses, that these are "administered" territories. This has been the term used since shortly following the Six Day War. "Liberated" would have implied no intention to ever give these territories back. "Occupied" might imply the intention to give all of the territories back. However, the interpretation of Resolution 242 by the governments of the United States and Israel for the past forty years has been that in return for peace and security, Israel will return territories occupied in 1967.

The feeling then, and now, as reflected in the Geneva Accords, is that there will need to be some sort of territorial adjustments made to the 1967 borders. The word "administered" implies that Israel is controlling these territories until an agreement for peace (God willing!) can be reached. The recent events in Gaza sadly seem to make such an agreement more unlikely in the near future.

Angel: "Occupied Territories" is a term I use now that I wouldn't have used before. I also use "Disputed Territories." It depends on the audience. I want my congregation to try and understand multiple perspectives, just as they have helped me to broaden mine.

Gottlieb: I want to offer some strategies for coping with this. I've been involved in Palestinian-Jewish reconciliation since 1966, when I met Atallah Mansour, the first Palestinian journalist for Ha'aretz. He told me the story of the Naqba, their term for their experience of 1948, and I realized there were at least two competing narratives. And how tragic the situation was and is.

Guttman: But the conflict didn't commence in 1948 with what the Palestinians call the Naqba. Jews were already being murdered in Palestine half a century earlier. Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians have the right to an independent state of their own. Unfortunately, that view is not shared mutually by the Palestinians, who have yet to recognize our legitimate rights (remember, I hold dual citizenship!)

The Jewish belief that the land was given to us by God from the Nile to the Euphrates is not mainstream. But it is mainstream in the Arab world to believe that Jews have no right to their own state in the Middle East. The Palestinians have been offered a partition of the land so many times and have always turned it down. Understanding the Palestinian narrative requires us to recognize that there is, among many in the Arab and the Palestinian world, no room for Israel on the world map.

Gottlieb: My strategy has been to be in partnership with Palestinians, so we have a mutual opportunity to meet. And of course I've worked with those who, like me, are interested in peaceful resolutions. Lately I've tried to focus attention on those who, like Yehuda Stolov of Interfaith Encounter, are working with Palestinians in partnership and mutuality to build institutions in civil society. We need to figure out how to... nurture young men and women to form the connections that are needed to move toward the future.

Whether it's "administrative oversight" or "occupation," anyone who's... watched olive trees by the thousands be pulled up from the earth, sat for hours at a checkpoint, or seen tanks in the streets -- you realize that no matter what you call it, Palestinians are feeling very helpless as they witness the loss of land and livelihood. As of 2007, 50% of the West Bank was off limits to Palestinians. This is part of the reality of life on the ground that is necessary for people to understand.

Zeek: It's interesting to me that you mention nurturing young men and women to form the connections that are needed to move forward, especially given what Rabbi Schiller was saying about working with teenaged boys at YUHS. Do you have thoughts on how to bring this to American teens in a way that they'll be able to hear?

Schiller: My experience has been that if you focus on conflict elsewhere, Northern Ireland or the Balkans, and you present the histories of the rival peoples there, it's a good starting point. They don't have as much at stake; they can see that there are places in the world where territory is disputed, similar to Israel and Palestine.

I like to start from a perspective of: one's heart has to become a different kind of heart. It has to be a heart in which love and charity are essential ingredients of one's whole human and religious perspective. Going from there: okay, now we know this is how God wants us to be. Fair, compassionate and just. Now what do we do when we move that into the reality of the situation?

Gottlieb: I like to work with theatre games. When you bring people into a theatrical conflict, you can then apply that to different situations. You get a more firsthand experience, you see what works and what doesn't work in conflict transformation.

For me, building understanding in the American Jewish Community has set me on the road to the Muslim community. I've been involved in the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk, which I co-created with Abdul Rauf Campos Marquetti. It's based on a model of bringing people together in pilgrimage to each others' holy sites. We nurture relationships around which people can build coalitions of shared concerns, which inevitably involve the safety of their youth and the health of their communities.

Zeek: I'm going to pull us in a different direction for a moment. How do you navigate the need to direct time and energy toward Israel, with the need to direct time and energy toward what's happening in our Diaspora communities? Is that a tension any of you want to speak to?

Guttman: It's not necessarily an "either/or" type of situation. I view Israel as an incredible educational resource for adults and teens. In our congregation, we make a concerted effort to raise the necessary funds to help our teens go to Israel. The percentage of our students who have visited Israel before high school graduation has been as high as 70%. This is very important to us because recent studies of college-age youth show a marked decrease in their feelings of connection to Israel.

But our Jewish communal leadership hasn't come to terms fully with two basic facts. The first is that Israel is no longer a third world country and therefore less of our philanthropic dollars need to go there. More of these dollars should go to the JDC and should stay here in the United States. Second, our Jewish communal leadership has yet to fully comprehend how underfunded Jewish education in the United States is and how devastating the consequences for such underfunding can be in the next twenty years for the American Jewish community and for the support of Israel from the United States.

Zeek: Has support for Israel always been a strong part of your congregation, or is that something you've stewarded during your time there?

Guttman: Support for Israel has always been there, but has increased during my time. This is especially true of teen trips to Israel, which were kind of non existent prior to my arrival thirteen years ago. But, these trips could not have been done without the support of lay leadership, generous donors and the Greensboro Jewish Federation.

Angel: When I first came to my congregation there was a veil of silence that the leadership and the congregation had consciously and unconsciously colluded in establishing, so that Israel was just not talked-about. The Israeli flag had been taken out of the sanctuary, Hatikva had been taken out of the siddur. There was no reference to Israel in the curriculum for our school; no one talked about Israel from the bimah in divrei Torah.

Part of my work has been to find organic ways to bring Israel back into the full life of everything we do. In the same way that we work to make sure God and Torah are part of the life of the congregation, we're trying to strengthen the pillar of Israel in various dimensions.

Zeek: Has your community been receptive to that?

Angel: Yes, mostly! Now it seems hard to believe there was a time when it was such a lightning rod. Now we're trying to make annual congregational pilgrimages to Israel. We have Israel in the curriculum. We have a whole continuum of dialogue in the life of the congregation. That's healthy.

Of course there was an Exodus of people who wrote in that they were quitting the synagogue because of our Israel politics--on one side or the other. We're too this, or we're too that. Even though now what we aim to be is dynamic.

Gottlieb: I can relate. On both sides. How painful it is to be the messenger of difficult news. I've led delegations to Israel and Palestine and when I've come back people wanted me to speak from the pulpit, and it's a very painful reality to convey.

People are looking for a ready-made solution. As Jews we're used to thinking in long periods of time, but nonetheless there's so much anxiety about the ambiguous and unresolved nature of the situation, especially on the heels of such terrible trauma and tragedy (the Shoah is still very much with us.)

Zeek: You mentioned working with Palestinians who are working toward peace. How has your community responded to that? Have you and your community always been aligned on the need to "live in the ambiguities," or has that posed a challenge? And on a related note, (how) do you think your geographic location shapes your community's response to these issues?

Gottlieb: My community is committed, but it's a burden to bear in relationship to the rest of the Jewish community. Since I've left my congregation, the desire to connect with the rest of the Jewish community has dampened their willingness to reach out to Palestinians who are critical of Israel's policies related to occupation. Geography can impact this situation; communities in more isolated areas feel vulnerable to lack of connection with the rest of the Jewish community.

Every year or so in my community we have what we call Council; we pass the proverbial talking stick or shofar around, and each person speaks about how they're feeling about Israel. We have different feelings, different experiences; we can cultivate this talmudic idea that "these and those are the words of the living God." If we can't do that in our own communities, how are we going to find common ground with the Palestinians?

Zeek: I'm delighted that you mention the talmudic idea that we're a multi-perspective people; that enshrined in our texts is a sense that disagreement can be productive. I'd love to look at how our relationship with our texts shapes this whole set of questions for us.

Schiller: The solution to part of the struggle, the political part, is ultimately in God's hands. As it says in Avos [Pirke Avot], "lo alecha hamlecha ligmor," the work is not upon us to conclude. We have to bear witness, we have to create acts of kindness on the ground. How the political struggle will play itself out, from this vantage point is difficult to see. But it's not just about the political solution; it's about the 101 day-to-day acts of conversation and kindness, which in a mystical sense are adding to the spiritual balance of existence.

In hockey when two players fight, the officials let them fight until they're exhausted and then separate them. It's possible that we are, tragically, not yet at the point in history when these two peoples are exhausted. But if other models are being created through acts of kindness, by moral spiritual warfare, then at the point when the combatants are exhausted there will be an alternative model on the ground. The things we do in relation to Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our own spiritual development can't be divided.

Gottlieb: How we respond to the Palestinians is core to our spiritual development as a people. What we're watching happen to the Palestinian people is partly in our hands because of the balance of power in that relationship. We're called to rise to the occasion. And in order to do that, we have to address healing from cultural trauma and then understand what that means for the Palestinians as well.

Angel: There's a certain willingness, in a large part of my community, to only be learning about the Palestinians' cultural experience. We need to start with an appreciation for Jewish history and the miracle that Israel is. I want us to form an attachment to our Jewish homeland, our Jewish family and origins before working on behalf of the family of humanity.

Gottlieb: I'm into that. In the non-Orthodox world we're often challenged to carve out a space for Jewish cultural identity. I teach in a program called Interfaith Inventions, which brings Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Native American kids together. They explain their traditions to each other, and we've found that both their self-pride and their self-knowledge increased, as well as their respect for others.

Schiller: Amongst the Orthodox I find a tremendous need to teach that there is a version of Zionism that is not a rightist type of Zionism. I speak to them about the original Brit Shalom, the Ichud movement, Ernst Simon who was an Orthodox Jew in the 1930s and 40s. There is an opportunity to be a Zionist with a humanistic strain. I trace that history for my students, because I'm always afraid they think they're going to forfeit their Zionist credentials if they appear even-handed.

In the Haredi world, it's very important to show sources in Talmud and Shulchan Aruch that embrace a humanistic vision of Judaism. And to deal with sources that seem antithetical to that, which also certainly exist. One must dialogue with those sources, and cite alternate sources, amongst the Orthodox. There's a lot of work to be done within the Torah experience itself, to show people they need not embrace the endless dialectic of victimhood and hate.

Gottlieb: I remember sitting in Kiryat Arba in the home of a man who had settled there with his wife. And I asked, can you show me where it's a mitzvah to live in the Land? He pulled a text out and started quoting from Ramban instead of Rambam. At that moment he realized that, in fact, there were alternative perspectives -- it was like Coyote had entered the room and made him point to the wrong text! By the end of our conversation, talking about the idea that we as children of Abraham should be known for our compassion was a source of opening for him.

If you have an angry heart, you'll end up with an angry Torah. A fearful heart, you'll end up with a fearful Torah. A compassionate heart will lead you to a compassionate Torah.

RB: Maybe that's a good place for us to end. Thank you all.

Rabbi Camille Angel was ordained through the Reform movement in 1995. "One of the most primary influences in my life was my father, who was ordained Reform in 1934 and whose letters I found this year from his travels through Palestine. Unlike many classmates in '34, he was very much a Zionist.

Today I serve Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco, primarily a congregation that serves GLBT Jews -- though we have an increasing population of straight folks, and a religious school of 160 kids."

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is a sixth generation American Jew of German Jewish descent. "My grandfather, Morritz Gottlieb, founded the National Jewish Welfare Board. He was active during the Second World War, and after, in supporting the birth of the state of Israel. My family has pictures of him with Ben Gurion and Aba Eben.

My first year with Temple Beth Or of the Deaf, also kind of an unusual pulpit to begin with, was 1973. I had the unfortunate task of announcing the beginning of the Yom Kippur war in sign language to my congregation. I have a long history with Israel; I was an exchange student there, went to college there, and have gone back numerous times, most lately leading delegations for the Fellowship of Reconciliation."

Rabbi Fred Guttman lived in Israel from 1979–1991. "I served in the Israeli Army as a reserve soldier in a combat artillery brigade and served extensively in the administered territories from 1984–1990. Since 1995 I've served as the senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, North Carolina.

I'm an AIPAC activist and I've lobbied extensively in Congress on issues affecting Israel. I've been a member of the UJA/UJC Rabbinic Cabinet since 1993, and I serve on the Commission of Social Action of Reform Judaism, where for two years I was chair of the Israel/Foreign Affairs Task Force. I've also been very involved with the March of the Living."

Rabbi Meyer Schiller teaches Talmud at Yeshiva University High School for boys in Manhattan. "I've been teaching Talmud to Modern Orthodox high school youth for thirty-one years. I've written several books and articles on political and religious matters. I was raised in a secular or perhaps one might say Reform-oriented home in the 1950s, and opted for Orthodoxy in seventh grade.

My ties are in the Hasidic community though I teach in the Modern Orthodox community. I'm very much taken by notions of seeking to create a broad-based humanistic vision for Orthodoxy which would embrace the sufferings of all of mankind and the narratives and experiences of all peoples."

Memory: across the generations"Why are Holocaust survivors obsessed with future generations remembering? Why do they command us all to Zachor, to remember? What is it they want us to remember?" That is the challenge every post-Holocaust generation will continue to face, just as all Jews at the Passover Seder are asked to think of themselves as slaves freed from Ancient Egypt. The significance of re-thinking the past and what it means in the present is best explained by Leon Wieseltier, social critic, literary editor of the New Republic and a 2G—second generation descendant of a survivor—who writes, “A tradition that is transmitted more or less as it is received will not live long.”

Survivors wonder if the 3Gs—third generation descendants—will continue to tell of the destruction of European Jewry, or if the story will die with them. It took two generations—40 years—for the silence to be broken, for psychological denial to erode, and for survivors to have an audience that did not silence them the moment they attempted to share the stories of their horrific experiences. Parenthetically, it took 40 years after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain before the liturgical poems to commemorate the loss of that era were written. And after slavery in Egypt, according to tradition, God waited 40 years before deciding that the Israelites were ready to the enter the Promised Land.

Sixty-three years after the liberation, is there an identifiable group of Third Generation descendants of Holocaust survivors? Second Generation became a visible group in America in the mid-1970s, when a large cadre of survivors’ sons and daughters in their 20s searched for their own identities—along with others in the “roots” generation.

The Second Generation was transformed from invisible to visible with the publication of Helen Epstein’s watershed New York Times Magazine article, “Heirs of the Holocaust,” on June 19, 1977. It was read by more than 2,000,000 people nationwide. The article described awareness groups for children of Holocaust survivors that Bella Savran and I led in Boston, inspiring others to begin similar groups elsewhere. Grassroots activities were reinforced by the publication of Epstein’s book Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors, followed several months later by the First Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors in November of that year.

The conference brought approximately 600 participants to New York City from all over the United States. In June 1981, many of these same young adults accompanied their survivor parents to the World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem and formed the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. The political, educational, and commemorative activities of this international organization, along with local groups, gave the Second Generation a voice of moral authority.

Claude Lanzmann: renowned for his unprecedented "cinematic history of the Holocaust," the 9 ½ hour documentary film SHOAH The Third Generation coalesced as a group in Israel—not in the United States. During the Demjanuk war crimes trial in 1985, Israeli teenagers flocked to the court house, lining up at dawn to try to get seats inside. At the same time, Claude Lanzmann’s marathon movie, Shoah, was screened. Many youngsters saw survivors being interviewed on-screen about their lives in concentration camps, in ghettos and in hiding. In hearing of their escapes and of masquerading as non-Jews, the Third Generation was learning its grandparents’ history, imbibing the language they would need in order to communicate with them.

Many of these high-school students found their own parents to be virtually useless when it came to answering questions about family history. And yet, without hesitation, they approached their grandparents and simply asked them for their stories. This phenomenal intergenerational dialogue became a national sensation recorded in documentary films and television programs.

Nava Semel: author of The Rat Laughs Nava Semel’s novel, The Rat Laughs, begins with a granddaughter wanting to know what happened to her grandmother, the Holocaust survivor, and what would happen to her memories in 100 years. The Rat Laughs was adapted as an opera and regularly performed at the Cameri Theater in Tel-Aviv.

Psychologist Dan Bar-On, and his students (like Julia Chaitin at Beer-Sheva University) researched this phenomenon in Fear and Hope and Children in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Julia Chaitin and Zahava Solomon, in Hebrew). They found that survivors found it much easier to communicate with their grandchildren than with their own children. The 3Gs normalized the process of dialogue. Bar-On and his team developed a paradigm for working through the Holocaust through knowledge, understanding, emotions, attitude, and behavior. They discovered that for 3Gs, the Holocaust either has no relevance—“under generalization”—or it has so much relevance, everything is seen through its prism—“over generalization.” A normal reaction to a Shoah family background is “partial relevance”: A moderate and more balanced perspective.

When Julia Chaitin interviewed survivors—2Gs and 3Gs in 20 Israeli families—she discovered a fourth reaction, one of “paradoxical relevance.” She posits that “under generalization” does not work in Israel because the Shoah keeps popping up, and some 3Gs cannot understand it at all. Others react with emotion but have no detailed knowledge of their grandparents’ survival. On the other hand, they may have an abundance of information and no emotion. These individuals know where their grandparents came from, what they suffered, but personally feel distant from the events. Then there are those who are haunted by their grandparents’ Shoah past, but do not know the significance of their family history.

Compared to the 2Gs, the 3Gs have a more balanced view. They did not grow up with the concept of “Jews who went like sheep to the slaughter.” The 2Gs heard this many times from the non-survivors around them. Many had parents who were ostracized and shunned as victims. The 3Gs also lack deep-seated fears of antisemitism, fears that are generally more pervasive in the lives of Holocaust survivors and 2Gs.

March of the Living: offers a collective experience and voice The 3Gs in America only recently became visible group, but with less intensity than the 2Gs. Demographically they range in age from newborns to 40-year-olds. 3Gs in their 20s and 30s are grappling with identity formation, with establishing intimate relations, and with having children. The 3Gs have no collective voice that distinguishes them from others in their generation, with the exception of those who participate in the March of the Living pilgrimages to Poland, where they light memorial candles, share their family narrative, or say Kaddish for those who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

In the United States, intergenerational communication is similar to what is found in Israel—specifically that it was easier for survivors to share their stories with their grandchildren. Psychologist Bonnie Bienstock also found that survivors have a warmer relationship with their grandchildren than do American Jewish grandparents.

The flood of psychological research on the impact of the Holocaust on 3Gs follows a parallel pattern, similar to research on the 2Gs. Articles in psychological journals on the subject started with a case study of an emotionally-disabled grandchild of survivors in treatment, and concluded with generalization to the group as a whole.

A note of caution is necessary to readers of professional and popular publications: The reader must be aware of the sample being presented. In most cases it is challenging to get a representative sample of this population in order to generalize findings. Also, most studies are based on very limited or skewed samples (e.g. hospitalized grandchildren of survivors or those in psychological treatment).

There is also a phrase that repeatedly crops up when 2Gs and 3Gs are discussed: “intergenerational transmission of trauma.” It is a phrase with negative connotations, and an a priori assumption that all effects are emotionally debilitating. The phrase has been misused since 9-11. According to Freud, trauma is an overwhelming experience that emotionally shatters the person who is going through it so that s/he cannot cope. Trauma cannot be transmitted to others. 3Gs are not experiencing Nazi racism or genocide. What is transmitted to 3Gs are values, worldview, family interaction and love—not trauma. It is time for this hackneyed phrase to be retired. 3Gs are not suffering from “silent scars.”

Being a 3G is not a personality syndrome. Grandchildren of survivors do not exhibit more depression, more anxiety, more psychosis, borderline-narcissistic symptoms, or any other diagnosis than do comparable groups. A Montreal survey by John Sigal and Morton Weinfeld found that 3Gs function better than similar groups whose grandparents came to Montreal before World War II. 3Gs tend to be more affectionate, happy, friendly, self-confident, peaceful, and easy going.

From the psychological research the only significant finding is that grandchildren of survivors as a group are higher achievers than their peers. In 2002 Ellisa Ganz found that 3Gs, like 2Gs, are twice as likely to choose an occupation in the helping professions. Ganz also found, however, that those 3Gs who are in therapy are in treatment for longer periods than comparative groups.

Flora Hogman conducted a case study of 2Gs and 3Gs, and noticed that in her sample of the grandchildren, there is sense of pride in—and awe of—the survivors. This awareness of the suffering that grandparents endured is part of the fabric of their lives, but it is channeled into empathy, political activism, greater consciousness of others’ suffering, and a reluctance to intermarry.

The above findings are further elaborated in Mark Yoslow’s recent doctoral dissertation The Pride and Price of Remembrance: An Empirical View of Transgenerational Post-Holocaust Trauma and Associated Transpersonal Elements in the Third Generation. He acknowledges “the Third Generation takes great pride in being the scion for the family that survived the Holocaust.” Feelings of anger and PTSD symptoms decrease if one is not driven by apocalypse and by an archetype of Nazi Germany.

He goes on to explain a presence of a “culture complex,” which shows that when individuals can experience “dispositional forgiveness”—the ability to forgive trauma within oneself rather than forgive the Germans—they are able to escape post-Holocaust trauma. Yoslow observed that the 3Gs have a deep affection for humanity, which is a transformation of the post-Holocaust trauma. This process is the ability to transform the emotional effects of the Holocaust by letting go, and thus increases the quest for meaning in ones life and concern for social issues.

I interviewed grandchildren of survivors for whom the Holocaust is a central part of their identities and found that they had a close intimate relationship with one or more grandparents. This relationship increases the propensity to embrace a commitment to remember the destruction of European Jewry. A second factor that enhances the propensity towards Holocaust remembrance is a strong Jewish education that combined the Shoah with other relevant historical understanding of Jewish peoplehood.

Today, 3Gs whose professional lives have been shaped by their grandparent’s ordeals are found in the creative arts, in helping professions, human rights work, and in Jewish studies and communal work. The 3Gs are no different from those 2Gs who gravitated towards the creative arts in order to remember the barbarity committed against the Jews living in German-occupied countries and the Jewish life that was destroyed.

Dan Sieradski: orthodox anarchist 3Gs like Dan Sieradski, now in his late 20s, have created Jewish communities both online and off, in Israel and the U.S., that are life-confirming and committed to exploring Jewish tradition. Aaron Biterman created a Facebook for 3Gs that now numbers more than 500 participants. They raise consciousness about present-day racism, human-rights violations, and genocides. Everyday one hears of new projects—a musical to commemorate the courageous deeds of Raoul Wallenberg and a film on the American eugenics movement and how it influenced Hitler’s Final Solution.

Much attention was paid to Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2002 novel, Everything is Illuminated, in which a 3G goes out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He tells a tragic story with wit, truth, and humanity. Poet Sabrina Mark’s imagination published in her book Babies is eerie. “…..It is lonely in a place that can burn so fast.”

Miri Ben Ari: hip-hop violinist This is a trans-national phenomenon. In Israel, for example, Miri Ben Ari is a Hip-Hop violinist who won the Grammy and the Israeli Martin Luther King Jr. Award for her song and video “Symphony of Brotherhood,” a unique attempt to reach African-American youth through culture.

Some 3Gs are gravitating towards interacting with others from similar backgrounds. Daniel Brooks attended a 2G meeting and felt that he did not belong, and so he founded the “3GNY” group. Today, hundreds of young adults are meeting on a monthly basis to share a common family history, to socialize, and to educate themselves about common political concerns, such as Israel, Rwanda, and Darfur.

Daniel Gillman, a sophomore at Brandeis University, is always on the lookout for Holocaust-related programs. In the spring of 2008, Gillman drove all night to meet diplomatic rescuers at Ellis Island’s Visas for Life opening program for the exhibit. He is Charlotte Gillman’s grandson, and she is one of three hundred children saved by Père Benedictine monks in Bruges, Belgium. When he was 12, Charlotte took him to Belgium, and he has since eagerly listened to her stories and to his aunt, Flora Singer, who wrote I Was But a Child. This summer he will be an intern at the Office of Special Investigations at the Justice Department and will assist with Nazi War Crimes cases.

There has been a paradigm shift between 2Gs and 3Gs. As the world has validated the suffering and resilience of the Holocaust survivors, the central dynamic has shifted from shame to pride. With 3Gs like Jody Rosensaft, Jessica Meed, Elana Berkowitz, Daniel Brooks, Daniel Gillman, Danielle Tamir, Neil Katz, Dan Sieradski, and Leora Klein, the Holocaust survivors can rest assured that the Third Generation will not forget their great grandparents—or their experiences. The Holocaust will never be forgotten.

Nava Semel's IsraIsland imagines in one of its three sections what would have happened had the historical figure of Major Mordecai Manuel Noah, the most important American Jew in the first half of the nineteenth century, succeeded in creating his planned "city of refuge for the Jews"-- Ararat--on Grand Island, today a suburb of Buffalo. Her ingenious vision of Jewish autonomy on American soil offers an Israeli perspective on the alternate history genre employed most recently by Michael Chabon in his best-selling The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Semel's novel takes as its point of departure the success, rather than the failure, of Noah's Ararat. In this excerpt, Simon, a paparazzi, is assigned to dig up dirt on the Jewish female presidential candidate, a descendant of Major Noah. At the same time, Simon tries to uncover the secret to his lover's ambivalence about the Jewish island state. To learn more about Nava Semel and her work, please read the interview which serves as a companion piece to this excerpt. -- Adam Rovner, Zeek translations editor

"The Future Is Already Here": an excerpt from IsraIsland

By Nava Semel. Translated by Anthony Berris

Everyone says it's an unusual place. The only state in the U.S. I've never visited.

So that's it, partner, I'm taking the first flight to IsraIsland.

Don't change the apartment locks yet. I haven't left a note or a message on the answering machine because I was sure you'd try and dissuade me from going. Not because you see this kind of assignment as despicable, and not even because you could care less if I screw up the presidential candidate's meteoric career, but simply because I'm going to set foot on that there place which for you symbolizes everything you've turned your back on. Don't worry, Jake, I don't intend to be tempted. I'm immune to the spell the island of the Jews casts on its inhabitants. There's absolutely no chance of me wearing a Star of David with elm leaves like the candidate.

I just about manage to type a couple of words when the flight attendant rushes over and asks me to switch off the laptop because it interferes with the navigation equipment.

I'm dying to take a leak but the seatbelt sign is on and the captain is rambling on about altitude and the outside temperature. We have a headwind so we'll be slightly late landing, but there'll be nobody waiting for me down there except for your troubling scraps of memories. How can anybody despise his birthplace so much? Most people sink under waves of nostalgia about what they call "their homeland."

I know I promised you I'd stop raising ghosts and nosing around in your past. As far as you're concerned the IsraIsland chapter is closed. God, how much energy you expend on vanquishing that hackneyed term "homeland". Why don't you treat it with indifference like the rest of us? Something that doesn't really matter. And tell yourself once and for all: Okay, it's the place where I came into the world -- so fucking what?

Take me. What have I got to do with Africa? Am I beset by yearning for a place I've never known, despite its being etched on the consciousness of my ancestors ever since they were kidnapped in chains and sold into slavery in America? I don't even ask myself what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had been born before his time and abolished slavery a century earlier.

Think about it, Jake. A guy gets stuck in a certain position along the axis of time and it's in his power to reverse the entire course of events. But I don't argue with history because what's the point in playing make-believe? Would a different shuffle of the deck of history have saved the suffering of millions? Not necessarily, because one way or another, sorrow will surely come.

The cloud cover breaks and I bring the lens to the plane's dirty window. The captain announces: We'll be landing at Ararat Airport in three minutes.

I can already make out "The Trio" piercing the clouds and I photograph them for you: Mordecai, Manuel and Noah. Each tower a hundred stories high. It's amazing to think that they were built so many years ago, shortly after the Empire State Building, but people haven't jumped to their death from their windows like they did in the Wall Street crash in the last century. Jumping from Niagara Falls was always a more tempting alternative.

From my angle the square Noah hides the cylindrical Manuel, and Mordecai, the triangular tower, commands them both. A gleaming cluster sending out innumerable flashes, which an eye observing from on high might interpret as distress signals.

So what isn't IsraIsland?

Continue reading...

Journalist and playwright Mordecai Manuel Noah's proto-Zionist scheme to settle a Jewish colony on Grand Island in New York met with resistance from both Jewish and Christian leaders when it was proposed in 1825. Though it sounds preposterous today, historians of the era suggest that Noah in fact had every reason to suspect that a territorial solution to Jewish economic misery and religious persecution would succeed in America. But though Noah willed it, it remained a dream. No one filed on to his ark.

Today, the one remaining reminder of Noah's dream is a carved cornerstone for the unrealized Jewish micronation of "Ararat." The stone still exists today behind protective glass in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. Semel recently discussed with me her fascination with Noah and his impact on her alternate history novel, IsraIsland, excerpted in this issue .

This month, as we celebrate Israel's sixtieth anniversary, Semel's novel can serve as a provocative reflection on the hopes that have been met, and the promises that remain unfulfilled, by a country whose modern prophet was another journalist and playwright, Theodor Herzl. -- Adam Rovner, Zeek translations editor

Q: As an Israeli, how did you become interested in Noah's project?

What caught my attention from the beginning was the date of the founding of Ararat, September 15, 1825. That's my birthday.

Continue reading...

In her tryptich of videos called CycleSpun, currently up at MoMA, Israeli artist Sigalit Landau employs water, landscapes, and the body to explore the cyclical nature of life and religion. All three videos -- Day Done, DeadSee and Barbed Hula -- are set in Israel, and provide the viewer with scenes that are at once engrossing, disturbing and beautiful. Here are some stills from the videos, and an image from the instillation, which is lit by Dead Sea salt-encrusted chandeliers.

Last week: Psychedelic Hebrew

Israel's beauty shines brightest in its diversity. The country possesses one of the most culturally and physically diverse societies on the planet. No matter the kind of Jew, from Yemenite to Ethiopian to Polish, from Orthodox to Reform to secular, there is a place for you under the Mediterranean sun. Yet there is at least one group of Jews who is excluded from the Zionist mosaic. They are the Messianic Jews --- a religious community that follows a Torah inspired life-style while believing in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

The Messianics view themselves as returning to the roots of early Christianity as aMessianic Jews Rally For Israel: Israel doesn't return the favor Jewish sect. According to Paul Liberman, author of The Fig Tree Blossoms, a messianic Jew is "a person who was born Jewish or converted to Judaism, who is a 'genuine believer' in Yeshua [Jesus], and who acknowledges his Jewishness." Practicing bi-spiritually, as it were, the Messianics stand outside the theological and historic spheres of normative Judaism and Christianity. Yet according to their own beliefs, they are engaged in an authentic expression of Judaism. In fact, they consider themselves "complete Jews."

Around the world the Messianic Jewish community number roughly 350,000. In Israel they stand at 15,000 and have over 120 different congregations. Not surprisingly, from their inception the Messianics have managed to rouse the ire of the ultra-Orthodox and (to a lesser extent) secular communities in Israel. That anger has frequently turned into aggressive physical and verbal confrontations precipitated by religious radicals (Jews and Arabs) who oppose the presence of what in their view are dangerous missionizing Christians (in contrast to the fact that not a single Messianic Jew has ever stood trial for illegal missionary activity --- e.g. forced conversion, or conversion of minors). Most recently, in the settlement of Ariel, a bomb planted under a Purim gift-basket left a 15 year-old boy belonging to a prominent family of Messianic Jews in critical condition.

In addition to being targets of persecution at the hand of religious radicals, theIsraeli Messianic Jews Dedicate A Cemetary Messianics have also faced state-sanctioned discrimination. The Ministry of the Interior, with the backing of the Supreme Court, has rejected the appeals of Messianics for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. The argument being that since Messianics believe in Jesus, they either belong to another faith, or in the case of Jewish-born Messianics, have willingly converted into another faith, and therefore have forfeited their right to make Aliyah as Jews. In addition, the government has also discriminated against Messianic Jews who have migrated to Israel by refusing to renew their passports, register their newborns, firing them from government posts, and in some cases revoking their citizenship.

While historically some Messianics have been gentile "philo-Semites" who have used the cover of Judaism as a Trojan horse to enter Israel with the purpose of turning it into a Christian nation, for the most part the Messianic community in Israel is made of upstanding citizens (most of whom were born Jewish) who go into the army (unlike most of their haredi antagonists), pay their taxes, vote, are peaceful, and lead a quite Jewish lifestyle. Their situation forces us to ask the uncomfortable question: Should people who have chosen to practice and interpret their Judaism differently from the majority (which itself was never hegemonic or monolithic), live in a (Jewish) state of fear and persecution?

It seems that the unholy alliance between state and the ultra-Orthodox establishmentIsrael Defense Forces: Messianic Jews serve in the IDF, but do not have the same rights as Haredim who do not has created the absurd reality of inverse crypto-Judaism: Where in the medieval era Jews who had converted to Christianity kept their Judaism in secret, today many Messianics feel compelled to hide their beliefs from the rest of Israeli society. The price of disclosure may not be a visit to the Israeli equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, yet social ostracism, harassment, bullying, and state-sanctioned discrimination is enough to keep many (though not all) living secret lives.

From its beginnings the twin purpose of Zionism has been the creation of a safe haven for Jewish people(s) and culture(s). Likewise, the Declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel promises to "open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew," and guarantees freedom of religion to all. Yet when organs of the state and its citizens discriminate against certain Jews for their beliefs, they are betraying the very core of the ground on which they stand on.

Take for example Law of Return as it applies to Jewish-born Messianics. The notion that a Jew who accepts Jesus as the Jewish Messiah loses his/her right to make Aliyah is in complete contradiction with the purpose and logic of the law. It is bad enough to deny citizenship to a Jew who willfully converts to another religion (as the 1970 amendment to the law stipulates). It is something else all together to deny it to a Jew whose self-identity remains Jewish. Surely, antisemites do not care wither or not a Jew believes Jesus was the Messiah, or whether he/she is a Jew who converted to another faith. And from the perspective of the Law of Return, shouldn't the ubiquitous gaze of the antisemite be the deciding factor of whether or not someone is Jewish?

Of course Israel can define for itself who counts as a Jew, but it should be consistent. Yes, the Messianics stand in two worlds. But so do many Israeli Jews. If you can be a Jew and an atheist, a Jew and a Buddhist - why can't you also be you a Jew who believes that Jesus was the Jewish messiah? If we are going to accept Jews whose self-identity does not snugly fit into one mold, then we need to make room for the Messianics as well. If we are going to say that Hitler and not Halacha determines who is a Jew, then we need to make room for Jews who also believe in Jesus --- as Hitler would have done.

In the end, the existence of Messianic Jews is good for Israel. It forces us to stretch the boundaries and re-think the definition of an Israeli Jew. The sad truth is that anyone who has a bone to pick with the Orthodox/state monopoly (the list is long) does not want to make cause with the Messianics. To align with them is to commit political suicide. But make no mistake: today it is the Messianics, and tomorrow it will be you.

Grannies On Patrol: unafraid of hot sun, long lines, or jaded soldiersAny effective Israeli checkpoint guard must have the following defining characteristics:

• Fearlessness
  
• Stubbornness
  
• Nosiness
  
• Chutzpa

Sound like your Jewish grandmother? Well, that’s what the ladies over at Machsom Watch thought too. Upset about the current state and management of Israeli checkpoints, they formed an organization of female Israeli peace activists to offer civilian supervision. Too many times, they say, lengthy holdups at checkpoints have caused students to miss exams, women in labor to give birth before they reach the hospital, and degrading incidents. They especially lament the treatment of Palestinians at these checkpoints, who are often not permitted to travel freely even within their own townships. They decided that checkpoints would benefit from neutral civilian supervision. But who would they send to do the job? The solution: Jewish grandmas.

Take Rahel Weinberg and Julia West, for example. Armed with sunhats, clipboards, and water bottles, they brave the heat on a daily basis in order to monitor the behavior of the Israeli checkpoint soldiers. What do they have that the soldiers do not? It's more about what they don't have: A lack of military training and an absence of M16’s on their shoulders. Like any good grandma, these two also have heart and compassion. They are willing to stand in the sun all day just so they can help speed up the checkpoint crossing process for those in need, and they understand the difficulty of the checkpoint soldier’s occupation.