One of the resaons I like blogging is because as an Orthodox female, a baalas teshuvh, and one who has an inquiring mind, this is an opportunity for me to hear others and be heard.
Although I am not a feminist of any kind, and I am married to a wonderful man who respects me and values my opinons, I have found that the frum community in general, does not listen to the feminine voice. While we are not treated in a blatantly sexist manner, the frum community does not take the feminine voice seriously enough in my view when women try and speak out on important issues of the day. We are often not given the power to effect important community and educational policies. Perhaps then, we should just take the authority for ourselves?
Could that be why so many women in the frum community limit their topics of conversation to the realms of banality and mundanity? Is that why many women with innnate intelligence seem to repress their minds?
I find the tedious small talk that so many of my sisters in the frum world spend their time on to be trite and superficial.
In the end, will blogging make a difference b'peol mamash? Maybe, maybe not. But at the very least it gives me an opportunity to participate in an intelligent exchange of ideas and opinons, to air my views on controversial issues, and for a thinking idealist like myself, this is a meaningful endeavor
On another topic--just read in the papers that Sharon is now seriously considering not delaying the disengagement but, actually moving it up closer. Why? To show the protesters who is boss.
So, what have these protests in EY actually accomlished? For a few days thouands of Israelis marched, danced, and sang about their love of the land. But right before they got to Gush Katif, their leader, Rabbi Shapira, ordered them to stop, which was the entire objective of the march to begin with. Unbelievable that they went so far, and then just before reaching their objective, they stopped dead in their tracks and never entered Gush Katif as a group! (A few stragglers entered, but they were arreted).
So, Sharon is laughing at their ineffectiveness, And to add salt to their wounds, he is going to make the disengagement happen even sooner.
The Rebbe said marches and demos make matters worse. Is this not an example of the Rebbe's wisdom coming true to life?
As I wrote on this blog earlier--nothing any of us try to do seems to avert this horrible Kitrug (Heavenly Decree) that we call Oslo appeasement. We need to do teshuvah, and daven to Hashem to change this Kitrug for revealed goodness!
Yesterday I was walking with my wife and son on Main Street in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens when a middle-aged woman stuffed a flyer in my hand and told me that she was collecting money for Gush Katif. She started explaining what was being done with the money, but I politely told her that we were in a rush and gave her a dollar.
As I walked away, I looked at the flyer. It was by Chabad, and explicitly equated the unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif with the Holocaust and accused Ariel Sharon of perpetrating another Holocaust. It even responded to critics questioning the comparison to the Holocaust by insisting such analogy is apt.
The irony is that almost all of the residents of the communities slated for destruction are fairly moderate, and have opposed the government's decision without resorting to this sort of lunacy. With a small number of exceptions, the Jewish residents of Gaza are not extremists, but the extremists in the United States who compare the Sharon plan to the Holocaust, and the extremists in Israel who block and place oil and nails on roads, have done much damage to their cause.
posted on 7/11/2005 by Joe Schick , another blogger in the US
There is no question in my mind that Chabad has hurt the case for Gush Katif badly. No normal middle of the road Jew will now get involved in supporting Gush Katif as they are not willing to join with millitant fanatics! This author is just one of 1000's of such people! The Gush Katif issue has been hijacked by radical messianics!
silent majority-you are correct. Not only have the local orange people failed to convince anyone who may have been on the fence to come over to their point of view, but they have created even more polarisation in our community. The Rebbe's derech was never to highlight our differences with others but, to make bridges and to communicate with other non-Chabad Jews by sticking to what we agree about. The fact that there was a counter demonstration points to the polarisation this demo fostered. Now many of the pro-disengagement people may be turned off to Chabad, or learning Torah, G-d forbid, because they will identify Chabad as being not a spiritual group, as it should be, but as a political group. And they will now identify it as being a political group that they do not agree with. From now on these people will more inclined to be biased againts those 'right wing-ultra Orthodox fanatical' Chabadniks.
The Rebbe didn't get involved with any party irrelevant how important or correct their issue was. While Agudat Yisrael, Shas, Mafdal etc. fought against abortion, chillul Shabbat, reform conversions, kashrut etc. the Rebbe would not agree to support them as Chabad was designed to reach out to every jew and not let them feel we are fighting against their interests. Now some Chabad fanatics who only use the Rebbe for their own ends have shown the world that Chabad is no longer the way the Rebbe wanted it to be but now chabad are radical, extremists who are just provoking the general public.
Here is some good news for everyone whom the pre-disengagement events is putting into a bad mood: There is a chance - not a large one - that what is happening now presages the positive process that Israel should undergo and without which it is doubtful that the state will have a normal existence.
This is not about the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Or about the disengagement of the Jewish inhabitants of Gush Katif from the land they are living on. This is about the disengagement of the society and the State in Israel from the bear hug of the settlers in the territories, which has been interfering with their good sense and their ability to conduct themselves properly for more than 30 years.
This is a classical case of a symbiosis that has lasted for many years. Every symbiotic process of this sort begins with the sides getting close to each other and continues with the weakening of both of the sides. Sometimes it is the stronger side, which looks more robust and rooted than the other, that suffers in the end from the worse decline. When a process like this occurs in nature, it is nearly inevitable. This was not the case in the example at hand: Israel had all the means to repulse the takeover of the national agenda by Gush Emunim and the Jewish settlers in the territories, but all of its governments preferred to allow them to cling to its arteries and drink its lifeblood. The two sides are so intertwined that nearly every Israeli who makes money from the settlements is connected to them in one way or another, or at least identifies with the claustrophobic imprint they have left on us. As in every symbiosis, most Israelis, especially those born after 1967, are now having a hard time distinguishing between the state and its history, on the one hand, and the Jewish settlements in the territories that have infiltrated them, on the other.
This happens in every area of life. Most of the public has no idea of the huge economic and social price that it is paying for this symbiosis because every government has helped blur the means whereby it is possible to quantify the cost. Even if we take as an example only the recent weeks: How is it possible, say, to begin to calculate the huge costs of the buses of the local councils, the workdays of all the recipients of government salaries who went to the demonstrations, or the attrition of the police force that is responsible for the safety of the entire public - never mind the huge budgets intended for the future relocation operation?
And this is just the tangible part of the price. The intangible part is in the mind. In recent years a "Jewish," victimized-aggressive style of speech has crept into the Israeli discourse and has even affected the curriculum in the schools. Few students there understand, for instance, the connection between the national movements in Europe and the birth of Zionism, and between these and the secular, nation state-oriented roots of Israel.
What has taken permanent root in the mind is only the connection between the (rabbis') eternal longings for Zion, the Holocaust and the establishment of the state as the beginning of redemption. The settlers have assumed as their exclusive property the basic values of Zionist settlement. When the kibbutz movement collapsed they celebrated arrogantly ("The kibbutzim collapsed because they turned their back on the Jewish people and God," reiterate rabbis and teachers at the yeshivas with fulsome Schadenfreude and sanctimonious clicks of the tongue), and depicted themselves as the true Zionists, the stockade-and-tower people. They just forgot that it was thanks to those whom they erased from consciousness that the state arose, a state in which there is no place for militias and Wild West-style frontier towns.
The discourse and the reality of the settlers have penetrated so deeply into Israeli thinking that young people entering the Israel Defense Forces confuse the concepts of "occupied territories," "border" and "Israeli citizens" with false concepts from the settlers' lexicon. A Jew is entitled to settle anywhere in the land of Israel, Beit El is Afula (fact: terrorists, that is haters of Israel, murder in both places) and a Jewish soldier will not expel Jews.
Now that the discourse has changed, it is easy for the settlers, their rabbis and their leaders to roll their eyes self-righteously to heaven and cry out about a war between brothers, heavens forfend, and a split and - the greatest absurdity of all - the rift that has occurred in the people's army. This rift, which is really occurring, is a direct result of the symbiosis and it is a most dangerous warning sign that arouses deep fear for the tree that is nourishing the parasite.
However, the good news is that the events of recent days have proved that, despite the rift and the huge difficulties, both the army and the police are still acting on behalf of the mainstream of the Israeli public and are not surrendering to the settlers' and the rabbis' extortion. There is a chance, then, that Israel will renew itself as in days of yore. This will not happen tomorrow. Time and effort will be needed. But if you will it, our father yet lives!
Photos like these are stirring and poignant.
ReplyDeleteOne of the resaons I like blogging is because as an Orthodox female, a baalas teshuvh, and one who has an inquiring mind, this is an opportunity for me to hear others and be heard.
Although I am not a feminist of any kind, and I am married to a wonderful man who respects me and values my opinons, I have found that the frum community in general, does not listen to the feminine voice. While we are not treated in a blatantly sexist manner, the frum community does not take the feminine voice seriously enough in my view when women try and speak out on important issues of the day. We are often not given the power to effect important community and educational policies. Perhaps then, we should just take the authority for ourselves?
Could that be why so many women in the frum community limit their topics of conversation to the realms of banality and mundanity? Is that why many women with innnate intelligence seem to repress their minds?
I find the tedious small talk that so many of my sisters in the frum world spend their time on to be trite and superficial.
In the end, will blogging make a difference b'peol mamash? Maybe, maybe not. But at the very least it gives me an opportunity to participate in an intelligent exchange of ideas and opinons, to air my views on controversial issues, and for a thinking idealist like myself, this is a meaningful endeavor
On another topic--just read in the papers that Sharon is now seriously considering not delaying the disengagement but, actually moving it up closer. Why? To show the protesters who is boss.
ReplyDeleteSo, what have these protests in EY actually accomlished? For a few days thouands of Israelis marched, danced, and sang about their love of the land. But right before they got to Gush Katif, their leader, Rabbi Shapira, ordered them to stop, which was the entire objective of the march to begin with. Unbelievable that they went so far, and then just before reaching their objective, they stopped dead in their tracks and never entered Gush Katif as a group! (A few stragglers entered, but they were arreted).
So, Sharon is laughing at their ineffectiveness, And to add salt to their wounds, he is going to make the disengagement happen even sooner.
The Rebbe said marches and demos make matters worse. Is this not an example of the Rebbe's wisdom coming true to life?
As I wrote on this blog earlier--nothing any of us try to do seems to avert this horrible Kitrug (Heavenly Decree) that we call Oslo appeasement. We need to do teshuvah, and daven to Hashem to change this Kitrug for revealed goodness!
Monday, July 11, 2005
ReplyDeleteMain Street Extremists
Yesterday I was walking with my wife and son on Main Street in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens when a middle-aged woman stuffed a flyer in my hand and told me that she was collecting money for Gush Katif. She started explaining what was being done with the money, but I politely told her that we were in a rush and gave her a dollar.
As I walked away, I looked at the flyer. It was by Chabad, and explicitly equated the unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif with the Holocaust and accused Ariel Sharon of perpetrating another Holocaust. It even responded to critics questioning the comparison to the Holocaust by insisting such analogy is apt.
The irony is that almost all of the residents of the communities slated for destruction are fairly moderate, and have opposed the government's decision without resorting to this sort of lunacy. With a small number of exceptions, the Jewish residents of Gaza are not extremists, but the extremists in the United States who compare the Sharon plan to the Holocaust, and the extremists in Israel who block and place oil and nails on roads, have done much damage to their cause.
posted on 7/11/2005 by Joe Schick , another blogger in the US
There is no question in my mind that Chabad has hurt the case for Gush Katif badly. No normal middle of the road Jew will now get involved in supporting Gush Katif as they are not willing to join with millitant fanatics!
ReplyDeleteThis author is just one of 1000's of such people! The Gush Katif issue has been hijacked by radical messianics!
silent majority-you are correct. Not only have the local orange people failed to convince anyone who may have been on the fence to come over to their point of view, but they have created even more polarisation in our community.
ReplyDeleteThe Rebbe's derech was never to highlight our differences with others but, to make bridges and to communicate with other non-Chabad Jews by sticking to what we agree about. The fact that there was a counter demonstration points to the polarisation this demo fostered. Now many of the pro-disengagement people may be turned off to Chabad, or learning Torah, G-d forbid, because they will identify Chabad as being not a spiritual group, as it should be, but as a political group. And they will now identify it as being a political group that they do not agree with. From now on these people will more inclined to be biased againts those 'right wing-ultra Orthodox fanatical' Chabadniks.
The Rebbe didn't get involved with any party irrelevant how important or correct their issue was. While Agudat Yisrael, Shas, Mafdal etc. fought against abortion, chillul Shabbat, reform conversions, kashrut etc. the Rebbe would not agree to support them as Chabad was designed to reach out to every jew and not let them feel we are fighting against their interests. Now some Chabad fanatics who only use the Rebbe for their own ends have shown the world that Chabad is no longer the way the Rebbe wanted it to be but now chabad are radical, extremists who are just provoking the general public.
ReplyDeleteHere is some good news for everyone whom the pre-disengagement events is putting into a bad mood: There is a chance - not a large one - that what is happening now presages the positive process that Israel should undergo and without which it is doubtful that the state will have a normal existence.
ReplyDeleteThis is not about the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Or about the disengagement of the Jewish inhabitants of Gush Katif from the land they are living on. This is about the disengagement of the society and the State in Israel from the bear hug of the settlers in the territories, which has been interfering with their good sense and their ability to conduct themselves properly for more than 30 years.
This is a classical case of a symbiosis that has lasted for many years. Every symbiotic process of this sort begins with the sides getting close to each other and continues with the weakening of both of the sides. Sometimes it is the stronger side, which looks more robust and rooted than the other, that suffers in the end from the worse decline. When a process like this occurs in nature, it is nearly inevitable. This was not the case in the example at hand: Israel had all the means to repulse the takeover of the national agenda by Gush Emunim and the Jewish settlers in the territories, but all of its governments preferred to allow them to cling to its arteries and drink its lifeblood.
The two sides are so intertwined that nearly every Israeli who makes money from the settlements is connected to them in one way or another, or at least identifies with the claustrophobic imprint they have left on us. As in every symbiosis, most Israelis, especially those born after 1967, are now having a hard time distinguishing between the state and its history, on the one hand, and the Jewish settlements in the territories that have infiltrated them, on the other.
This happens in every area of life. Most of the public has no idea of the huge economic and social price that it is paying for this symbiosis because every government has helped blur the means whereby it is possible to quantify the cost. Even if we take as an example only the recent weeks: How is it possible, say, to begin to calculate the huge costs of the buses of the local councils, the workdays of all the recipients of government salaries who went to the demonstrations, or the attrition of the police force that is responsible for the safety of the entire public - never mind the huge budgets intended for the future relocation operation?
And this is just the tangible part of the price. The intangible part is in the mind. In recent years a "Jewish," victimized-aggressive style of speech has crept into the Israeli discourse and has even affected the curriculum in the schools. Few students there understand, for instance, the connection between the national movements in Europe and the birth of Zionism, and between these and the secular, nation state-oriented roots of Israel.
What has taken permanent root in the mind is only the connection between the (rabbis') eternal longings for Zion, the Holocaust and the establishment of the state as the beginning of redemption. The settlers have assumed as their exclusive property the basic values of Zionist settlement. When the kibbutz movement collapsed they celebrated arrogantly ("The kibbutzim collapsed because they turned their back on the Jewish people and God," reiterate rabbis and teachers at the yeshivas with fulsome Schadenfreude and sanctimonious clicks of the tongue), and depicted themselves as the true Zionists, the stockade-and-tower people. They just forgot that it was thanks to those whom they erased from consciousness that the state arose, a state in which there is no place for militias and Wild West-style frontier towns.
The discourse and the reality of the settlers have penetrated so deeply into Israeli thinking that young people entering the Israel Defense Forces confuse the concepts of "occupied territories," "border" and "Israeli citizens" with false concepts from the settlers' lexicon. A Jew is entitled to settle anywhere in the land of Israel, Beit El is Afula (fact: terrorists, that is haters of Israel, murder in both places) and a Jewish soldier will not expel Jews.
Now that the discourse has changed, it is easy for the settlers, their rabbis and their leaders to roll their eyes self-righteously to heaven and cry out about a war between brothers, heavens forfend, and a split and - the greatest absurdity of all - the rift that has occurred in the people's army. This rift, which is really occurring, is a direct result of the symbiosis and it is a most dangerous warning sign that arouses deep fear for the tree that is nourishing the parasite.
However, the good news is that the events of recent days have proved that, despite the rift and the huge difficulties, both the army and the police are still acting on behalf of the mainstream of the Israeli public and are not surrendering to the settlers' and the rabbis' extortion. There is a chance, then, that Israel will renew itself as in days of yore. This will not happen tomorrow. Time and effort will be needed. But if you will it, our father yet lives!