A Barbárie do ISIS e do Hamas

O alarme para acordar tocou para o mundo. Um jornalista americano decapitado na Síria por um jihadista com sotaque britânico é algo surreal que não deveria acontecer no século do esclarecimento e desenvolvimento tecnológico como o nosso. James Foley, de 40 anos, um jornalista especializado em áreas de conflito, não era um defensor do ocidente. Ele era pró-palestino, pró-Hamas, mas ao final, nada disso foi relevante para seus assassinos. Para os radicais islâmicos do ISIS, ele era um americano.

Em seu email final para a família, o grupo pediu nada menos que 100 milhões de euros, uns 132 milhões de dólares de resgate e ainda disse que suas espadas estavam desembainhadas contra a América, Governo e cidadãos e que eles não parariam até que a sede por seu sangue fosse saciada. ISIS avisou que não pouparia os fracos, os velhos, mulheres ou crianças.

O Secretário da Defesa americano Chuck Hagel disse que a ameaça do ISIS é algo nunca visto antes. Um grupo sofisticado em sua barbárie, com muito dinheiro proveniente da venda do petróleo das regiões do Iraque dominadas por eles, além de extorsão, sequestros e venda de escravos.

O avanço do grupo nas áreas curdas do Iraque, a tomada dos poços de petróleo, do reservatório de água do país, a fuga dos cristãos, os massacres dos Yazidis não foram suficientes. Foi preciso que o vídeo sem cortes da decapitação do americano fosse colocado no Youtube para fazer o governo americano e inglês reconsiderar sua estratégia no Oriente Médio.

A administração Obama insiste que não quer se envolver em mais guerras na região. De fato, nem mesmo 10 minutos depois de expressar condolências aos pais de Foley frente à imprensa, Obama prosseguiu com suas férias e foi jogar golfe com seus amigos.

David Cameron, primeiro ministro da Inglaterra, por seu lado, voltou das suas férias para liderar os esforços para identificar o assassino de Foley que falou com sotaque britânico no famigerado vídeo. A preocupação é real, pois mais de 500 ingleses já se juntaram ao ISIS na Síria e no Iraque. A qualquer momento eles podem voltar para casa ou viajar livremente para qualquer outro país europeu e perpetrarem ataques terroristas. Dezenas de americanos, australianos, franceses, italianos, alemães se juntaram ao ISIS e não há como impedi-los de voltar para seus países. Vigiar os movimentos de cada um deles após sua volta seria uma tarefa monumental.

Hoje os serviços de segurança britânicos MI5 e MI6 identificaram o assassino como Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, um aspirante a rapper de 23 anos proveniente da luxuosa região Oeste de Londres, aonde mora numa casa avaliada em $2 milhões de dólares. Seu pai, um egípcio e tenente de Bin Ladin, foi extraditado para os Estados Unidos e está esperando julgamento pelos ataques às embaixadas americanas na África em 1998.

Mesmo depois de 11 de setembro de 2001, muitos preferiram dizer que os ataques haviam sido uma simples vingança pelo imperialismo americano, ou por sua política no Oriente Médio, ou pela presença de suas tropas poluindo o solo sagrado da Arábia Saudita. Mas esta semana o ISIS trouxe a verdadeira natureza do islamismo radical para dentro de nossas casas.

E porque agora? A maioria dos comentaristas estão de acordo que o que deu ímpeto ao ISIS para dominar o Iraque, a Síria e o resto do Levante foi a inação de Obama face ao uso de armas químicas por Bashar Al-Assad. Assim que a linha vermelha imposta por Obama foi cruzada sem qualquer consequência, os islamistas entenderam que tinham carta branca para agir sem medo de uma punição americana. Os aliados da América, como a Arábia Saudita e Israel, por outro lado, entenderam que não poderiam mais confiar em qualquer promessa feita por Obama e deveriam procurar se proteger sem contar com os Estados Unidos.

De fato, nesta semana, a ficha caiu até para o rei da Arábia Saudita que disse que o ódio contra Israel tem que terminar. Ele finalmente deve ter se dado conta que o apoio a radicais se virou contra ele e só Israel poderá ajuda-lo se houver um avanço do ISIS contra seu reino. ISIS precisa dominar Mecca e Medina, os dois lugares mais sagrados do Islão para consolidar seu “Califado”.

E como o ISIS, o mesmo se passa com o Hamas. Neste final de semana, o Hamas executou 22 indivíduos apenas por suspeitar que tenham passado informações para Israel. Dois deles eram mulheres. 11 foram executados sumariamente nas paredes de uma mesquita. Isto além dos 20 que decidiram protestar contra os ataques do Hamas a Israel e foram imediatamente executados na rua para todos verem. Nenhum processo, nenhum julgamento. A diferença é que o Hamas foi suficientemente inteligente para não filmar ou publicar o vídeo no Youtube. Mas a barbárie e a violência são as mesmas.

Não há qualquer diferença entre o ISIS, o Hamas, a Irmandade Muçulmana, Boko Haram, ou a Al-Qaeda. A imprensa ainda está tentando diferenciar entre os “bons” e os “maus” radicais islâmicos. Não existe isso. É só ler a constituição do Hamas. Todos compartilham da mesma ideologia que quer impor sua versão extremista da lei islâmica no mundo. Uma versão que trata as mulheres como propriedade, que condena à morte os homossexuais, ateus e membros de outras religiões, que oprime judeus e cristãos, e aonde “direitos humanos” são completamente inexistentes.

Obama, Cameron e outros líderes ocidentais estão acordando para o fato de que o ISIS não é uma ameaça regional, mas uma ameaça internacional e já estão expressando a necessidade de erradicá-lo completamente. É interessante ouvir isso, pois quando Israel fala de modo similar é severamente castigada.

Mas Netanyahu é responsável por seus cidadãos. Neste final de semana, e após rejeitar onze cessar-fogos, o Hamas lançou dezenas de mísseis contra Israel. Algumas comunidades tiveram mais de 40 alertas vermelhos. Estes ataques implacáveis prontificaram o governo de Israel a declarar que qualquer estrutura usada pelo Hamas para planejar e levar a cabo ataques contra Israel será destruída independentemente se civis moram lá ou não. Infelizmente não há outro jeito.

O jornal inglês “Express” disse na quinta-feira que a “bandeira negra do jihad é a verdadeira ameaça para o mundo”. E este jihad também é conduzido pelo Hamas, pelos Mártires da Brigada de Al-Aksa, pelo Jihad Islâmico e todos os outros grupos que atuam na Faixa de Gaza na Judéia e na Samária.

Há aqueles que ainda acreditam que Israel é a causa dos problemas do mundo ou que ao se defender de extremistas islâmicos, Israel de alguma forma, causa o extremismo islâmico. Nada está mais longe da verdade. A ambição dos jihadistas, da Al-Qaeda ao Hamas, da Hezbollah ao Boko Haram e outros – é o de subjugar o mundo.

Israel não é a causa dos problemas do mundo. Israel está simplesmente na linha de frente porque já acordou para o problema.

Agora só falta o resto do mundo.

<Pletz.com>

Miopia e difamação

A maior parada gay do mundo acontece na cidade israelense de Tel Aviv. Israel tem uma sociedade formada por tecido étnico com origem em 70 países

Nunca imaginei um momento em que o Estado de Israel sofreria um risco à sua segurança e um dano à sua imagem como atualmente. Nasci, há cerca de sete décadas, no abençoado solo brasileiro, mais especificamente no subúrbio de Madureira, onde meus pais e avós residiram como imigrantes vindos da Polônia, na década de 1930, pois judeus poloneses não podiam mais viver livremente em sua terra natal contaminada pelo ódio racial.

Durante minha vida comunitária, quando presidente da comunidade judaica fluminense e também vice-presidente da entidade nacional, procurei enaltecer as qualidades de nosso povo brasileiro e o fraterno relacionamento entre Brasil e Israel. Gratidão e lealdade são qualidades que sempre prezei. Cresci num lar judaico e sionista, sempre imbuído do espirito de shalom, salam, paz!

Meu avô materno era estabelecido na Rua da Alfandega, na região da Saara, onde árabes e judeus, ambos de origem semita, almoçavam na mesma mesa no restaurante Cedro do Líbano.

Nos dias atuais, a mais perfeita e ativa democracia do Oriente Médio vem sendo difamada como se fosse um regime abominável de apartheid. Um país onde os cerca de 20% da população que são árabes votam livremente, elegem 10% do parlamento de deputados árabes e têm direitos à seguridade social e ao trabalho.

O Estado de Israel retirou 80 mil judeus negros da Etiópia para torná-los cidadãos livres na Terra Prometida. Nenhum outro país tem esta qualidade em sua história. Vale lembrar a ajuda humanitária, que tradicionalmente o Estado judaico envia, sempre que ocorrem catástrofes internacionais como no caso do Haiti.

A maior parada gay do mundo acontece na cidade israelense de Tel Aviv. Israel tem uma sociedade formada por tecido étnico com origem em 70 países.

Já na década de 70, com pouco mais de 20 anos de independência, uma mulher assumia o cargo de primeira-ministra, Golda Meir.

O que isto tudo tem a ver com segregação ou discriminação?

Durante toda sua existência, o Estado judeu não teve um momento sequer de reconhecimento existencial pleno por todos os seus vizinhos. Duas exceções são o Egito e a Jordânia, com quem Israel mantém plenas relações diplomáticas há mais de 30 e 20 anos respectivamente.

No conflito atual com o terrorismo do Hamas, a propaganda antissionista vem arrastando grande parte da opinião pública para o lado errado. Deixo claro, e com ênfase, que a dor e o sofrimento dos civis palestinos em Gaza são também a nossa tristeza e dor, sem esquecer as vítimas israelenses da guerra e os civis aterrorizados por milhares de foguetes lançados às cegas contra cidades e civis em Israel.

O povo judeu caracteriza-se desde o patriarca Abraão, há mais de 3.800 anos, como amante da vida e da paz. Temos plena consciência de que libertar o povo de Gaza das garras do terrorismo é tarefa para todos os povos e governos que prezam a vida e as liberdades.

Homens e mulheres inocentes não podem admitir que uma entidade terrorista, assim considerada pelos Estados Unidos e União Europeia, lance 12 mil foguetes, em 12 anos, sobre a população civil de uma nação soberana. Isto é puro terror! E não podem ignorar que os civis de Gaza são reféns deste terror que os tem usado como escudos humanos ao lado de lançadores de foguetes e unidades de ataque, numa flagrante violação aos direitos humanos e ao respeito à população civil palestina.

Brasil e Israel voltarão, em breve, ao normal relacionamento diplomático, fruto de uma tradição que vem desde o chanceler Oswaldo Aranha até nossos dias.

Aos que têm manifestado repúdio unilateral ao Estado Judeu lembro que: 1- o estatuto de fundação do Hamas preconiza a destruição do Estado de Israel; 2- a guerra contra o terror é mundial e Israel representa um farol numa região escura e mergulhada num fanatismo fratricida como na Síria, Iraque etc; 3 - lembrem que a União Europeia, EUA, Inglaterra, Rússia, China e Japão, além da maioria dos países árabes, torcem para que o terror seja derrotado nesta batalha.

O povo de Israel é o extrato mais perfeito do povo judeu e para nós, judeus brasileiros, a vida das crianças e dos civis inocentes de Gaza é tão preciosa como a vida dos israelenses.

Ajudem o Estado de Israel nesta guerra de libertação de Gaza do terror, da opressão e do ódio.

Osias Wurman é cônsul honorário de Israel no Rio de Janeiro

<Rua Judaica>

8 Reasons Luis Suarez Should Convert to Judaism

By Dan Friedman

Luis Suarez, right, has been banned from the World Cup for biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini/Getty Images

In the most dramatic turn of events at the World Cup in Brazil so far, Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez — one of the most talented players of his generation — has been banned from “all football-related activities” for four months for biting the shoulder of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini in Uruguay’s June 24 game against Italy.

That means he’ll miss the entire rest of the World Cup.

Here’s why Suarez should use his enforced absence from the beautiful game to join the Chosen People.

1. Chicken soup tastes better than Chiellini’s shoulder.

Obviously Luis Suarez isn’t satisfied with what he’s eating, as he previously bit Branislav Ivanovic on the arm in 2013 and Ottman Bakkal on the neck in 2010. It’s time for some chewy bagels, some delicious chicken soup or a bowl of cholent.

2. He’s part of a plucky minority already

Uruguay is the smallest nation represented at the World Cup Finals in Brazil. Stuck on the coast of South America wedged in between Argentina and Brazil, scant distance from Buenos Aires, Uruguayans are used to being part of an embattled minority already. So nu, Luis, add another embattled minority to your resume.

3. We can help with the overbite

Surely one of the reasons that Suarez keeps biting people is his massive overbite. Perhaps these four months would be a time to get that dental work done. I’m not saying that one of the many excellent American Jewish orthodontists wouldn’t help a non-Jew, but for a fellow Member of the Tribe, perhaps there’s a good deal.

4. We can help with the psychological issues

Another reason that Suarez keeps biting people is that he has some sort of mental disorder. It’s time to seek further psychological help. Again, it’s not that you need to be Jewish to get psychoanalysed, but perhaps it’s time he took that extra step. So, Luis, get on the couch and tell us about your childhood.

5. We have previous successes turning bites to kisses

When Esau reconciles with Jacob — 20 years after Jacob stole his inheritance — Esau kisses him. Rabbinic commentaries suggest that this kiss was an aborted bite, with “the word ‘kiss’ [vayishakeihu] and the word ‘bite’ [vayishakheihu] differing in only one letter.” What a perfect bar mitzvah portion for young Luis.

6. There’s a home for you in Montevideo

Though Jewish history began as early as 1680 in Uruguay’s Colonia, a fortress outpost where both conversos and Marranos lived, and where a mikveh was discovered, Montevideo’s Jewish community is new-ish and could do with an iconic talisman.

7. The symbolic act

I’ve no idea whether Suarez is already circumcised but, given the number of people wanting to kill him, maybe it would be best to channel that physical violence into a ritual of belonging.

8. It’s not just biting

In 2011 Suarez (who has a black grandfather) was found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United full back Patrice Evra. What better way of understanding the pain that such abuse could cause than joining another ethnic minority? Maybe he already does have Sephardi blood in him from the many conversos who left the Iberian peninsular for South America. As Suarez turns from aggressor to victim, Abe Foxman would surely be happy to stand by his side — yet another reason to convert.

Come on home, Lewis da Costa-Suarez. You know you were standing at Sinai.

With thanks to Eddy Portnoy

<The Forward>

Death of the Jewish Left

There's Reason To Think Liberalism of American Jews Fading Fast

Lost Icon

The enduring picture of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Martin Luther King Jr.

By Jay Michaelson

For as long as contemporary American Jews can remember, our community has voted liberal, marched radical, and, to varying degrees, found ourselves on the left side of the political spectrum. But for those who favor this state of affairs, recent shifts in Jewish culture and identity offer reason to worry.

First, Jewish solidarity with other oppressed groups appears to be on the wane. Two generations ago, Jews, racial minorities, and other disfavored groups were all excluded from the same country clubs, professional associations, and schools. We didn’t have to work very hard to see the links between racism, anti-Semitism, and classism; they were shoved in our faces.

Now, however, Jews have far less “outsider” consciousness than even two decades ago. While anti-Semitism still exists, it is largely on the fringe, even as anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and other biases rise in the mainstream. We can still imagine what it’s like to be on the wrong side of power and privilege — but for more and more of us, it is an imaginative rather than experiential reality.

Still, sociologists have noted, Jewish liberalism seems uniquely untethered to economics. As a group, we vote against our economic interests more than any other slice of the American pie. Some of this is cultural. According to the old joke, our immigrant ancestors knew three worlds: the alte veldt, the neue veldt, and Roosevelt. Politics is social, and these ties are strong.

But they are also frayed. Neo-conservatism — basically, Jewish conservatism — has now existed for half a century. Organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition, Commentary magazine, and the Tikvah Fund have labored to create a Jewish conservative culture, and they have largely succeeded. It no longer feels goyish to vote Republican.

And what about those Jewish values, like tikkun olam and the ethical injunctions of the Torah, including paying fair wages and communal redistribution of wealth? They are too flexible. For every liberal value Bend The Arc might find in Scripture, conservatives can cite texts that emphasize “free enterprise” (anachronistically, but still), not to mention occupation and ethnocentrism. The Passover story may be one of liberation from bondage, but these days, Tea Partiers feel “bound” by the regulatory state.

Anyway, how many Jews even know these texts? As Jewish literacy and identity grow thinner, the resonance of these Jewish values diminishes.

In addition to the decline of these three historic sources of Jewish liberalism — oppression, identity, and values — there are new trends pushing Jews rightward.

First, money. Imagine you’re a Jewish billionaire with money to spend. The more liberal and universalistic you are, the more likely you’ll spread the money wide: some to Jewish causes, perhaps, but some to medicine, art, progressive charities, and so on. The more particularistic you are the more likely you’ll give more to your tribe. Thus without any malice, Jewish philanthropy tends toward the particularistic — and overall, that means right-wing politics in Israel and the United States.

And then there’s the money that’s meant to convert us: magazines, fellowships, academies, and websites funded by neo-conservatives to promote a neo-conservative agenda. Because it’s bad form for one newspaper to call out others, I will refrain from specifics here. Suffice to say the Republican/neo-con kiruv operation is the largest intra-Jewish proselytization this side of Chabad.

Second, Jewish demographics are changing. American Jews are growing more Orthodox, as a matter of percentage, and Orthodox Jews have voted and given conservative for a century now, bucking the wider Jewish trends. Meanwhile, the Jewish Left is rapidly turning into the Jews who left. Progressive Jews are naturally more likely to assimilate: We’re less parochial, less interested in us/them binaries, less ethnocentric. We value diversity and multiculturalism — and so, percentage-wise, we not only marry out but educate out, when it comes to raising our kids.

And finally, there is Israel. Israel used to be a liberal cause, but for 47 years has been denying the most basic of civil rights — citizenship — to millions of people. This is not something liberals can support, even as conservatives insist that the occupation is necessary for security, that there’s no Palestinian peace partner, or whatever. Whatever the details of this or that political moment, Israel has gone from being a liberal cause to being, at best, a mixed one.

Meanwhile, the hard Left has been moving further left, especially on Zionism. As Israeli conservatives redefine Zionism to mean Revisionist Zionism, with its subjugation of non-Jews and emphasis on strength and militarism, it’s become harder and harder for liberals to defend it. Yes, there’s J Street — but even it is demonized by the Right. On the hard Left, anti-Zionism is now the default assumption.

And it’s easy to see why. It’s not because of anti-Semitism; it’s because Israel is an American-supported, nuclear-armed, anti-democratic occupier. Once again, liberals and conservatives may hasten to explain why all this is necessary and not Israel’s fault. But at a certain point, those of a more leftward orientation don’t buy these explanations.

Is there a future for the Jewish Left? There are reasons to be hopeful — but ultimately I’m not persuaded.

To be sure, there are enclaves. Social Justice is a powerful Jewish organizer. The Reform movement, which tends to the liberal, is stronger than it has been in years. And there are exciting Jewish liberal and further-left communities and organizations around the country. The energy in these pockets of Jewish liberalism is infectious and full of hope.

But if we’re data-driven, rather than inspired by anecdotes, these are exceptions, not the rule. Amidst an awesome Jews for Racial & Economic Justice party, or on an AJWS trip, it can sure feel as though the tide is turning. But in the grim office of the statistician, the waves look more like eddies against the current.

I think what might really save the Jewish Left is, in fact, the Jewish Right. Republicans have moved so far rightward in recent years that many of Ronald Reagan’s principles — let alone Eisenhower’s — would be left of the party line today. You can love capitalism and still be way to the left of the American center right now. We live in a new Gilded Age, with a wealth gap to rival Brunei’s, and with corporate power at its zenith. And yet the flood of corporate-sponsored conservative media insists that we’re on the verge of socialism. This doublespeak energizes the resentful Republican base, but it might also drive moderates to the left. Or so a liberal might hope.

And of course, when writing or reading a Jeremiad, it’s important to remember that it’s always been five minutes to midnight. Name your cause, and you’ll find someone saying that it’s doomed. I take more than a grain of salt with any ruminations such as these.

Yet it would be a loss if the Jewish Left were to wither. Judaism and Jewish community provide a significant reservoir of power, ideology, identity, and community. When yoked to a politics of liberation, rather than selfishness, Judaism calls on our better nature, prodding and sometimes compelling us to curb the all-too-human tendencies toward the closing of the heart. Some would say this makes us soft. But thousands of years of history strongly suggest the opposite.

Jay Michaelson is a contributing editor to the Forward.

<The Forward>

The Secret Jewish History of Tupac Shakur

Was Bad Boy Rapper Just a Nice Jewish Son?

Challah Out: The late Tupac Shakur was gunned down in 1996.

By Seth Rogovoy

Tupac Shakur, the notorious rapper whose career was cut short when he died in a hail of bullets at the age of 25 in 1996, may seem an unlikely candidate for memorialization in the form of a Broadway musical. Yet sure enough, “Holler if Ya Hear Me,” an $8 million production “inspired by” the work of the gangsta rapper which includes 21 of his songs, is currently playing the Palace Theatre in New York.

This is not some off-the-wall, crass attempt to cash in on the controversial legend of Shakur. Among the musical’s producers is Afeni Shakur, Tupac Shakur’s mother, a former member of the Black Panthers. Afeni Shakur is nothing if not protective of her son’s creative legacy; his brief but astounding career on the rap charts made him one of the best-selling recording artists of his time. In other words, she’s not doing it for the money.

There’s something else going on here, and it just may be that finally the stars have aligned to present Tupac Shakur — the man whose music former Vice President Dan Quayle said “has no place in our society”; a convicted felon who in a few years was in and out of prison and court for a variety of violent crimes; a man accused of being the perpetrator of several shootings who was himself gunned down in an infamous drive-by that has never been solved — as what he may really have been: a nice Jewish boy who loved his mother.

Tupac Amaru Shakur was born in East Harlem on June 16, 1971, to parents who preached a violent form of black nationalism. Despite chronic poverty, Shakur’s mother made sure he always had access to a well-rounded education, especially in the performing arts.

From a young age, Shakur was drawn to the stage: He performed in a production of “A Raisin in the Sun” by Harlem’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble at the Apollo Theater at age 12. At age 15, his family moved to Baltimore, where he attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, studying acting, poetry, jazz and violin, performing in productions of Shakespeare, and playing the role of the Mouse King in the ballet “The Nutcracker.”

In other words, Quayle’s public enemy number one — the gangster-in-chief who threatened the very foundations of American civilization — got his show business start as a violin-toting, Shakespeare-quoting ballerina.

At age 17, Shakur and his family moved to the Bay Area. Here, Shakur, already an aspiring rapper, met the woman who would prove integral to his career and artistic development. Leila Steinberg was the daughter of a Mexican-Turkish activist mother and a Polish-Jewish criminal defense attorney who ran a spoken-word poetry workshop called the Microphone Sessions in Oakland, California. Steinberg was raised, as she put it, “surrounded by the workings of the justice system and took a front row seat at the personal tragedies and socio-economic pressures that turn so many at-risk youths into hardened felons.” In Shakur, she clearly saw the very embodiment of her life’s work: a real-world blend of urban street life, political activism, cultural literacy, and natural talent, with the charisma of a born star. The two hit it off, and Shakur moved in with Steinberg’s husband and two children, with Steinberg serving as a mentor and manager until the point where his career required more professional oversight. The two remained close friends until the end of Shakur’s short life.

Shakur released his debut album, “2Pacalypse Now,” in late 1991. It remained his most political and socially conscious album — the work of a nascent, would-be prophet — with songs mostly about and addressed to black America, unflinching portrayals of racism, police brutality, poverty and teen pregnancy (as in the infamous “Brenda’s Got a Baby”), but songs that didn’t let his listeners off the hook for their complicity in the dire situations he depicts. The album undoubtedly received its biggest boost when rock-critic-in-chief Quayle condemned it saying, “There’s no reason for a record like this to be released.”

Shakur only recorded four more albums over the next five years, but they were all multi-million sellers that made him the biggest name in hip-hop. He wore the cloak of a gangster or thug, but was really more a pavement prophet, rapping about the prison of ghetto life in “Trapped” and likening that life to one of slow genocide in “Words of Wisdom,” in which he calls on his people to “break the chains” that enslave them. One of his most brutal portrayals of poverty and the cycle of violence it breeds, “Troublesome 96,” even samples the melody of “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, perhaps a subtle call for a kind of urban Zionism to solve the social and political ills of black life in America.

But perhaps the most endearing and enduring moments of Shakur’s career occurred in 1994 when he recorded “Dear Mama,” a soft, sweet soul ballad, over which he intoned a tribute to his mother, Afeni Shakur. The narrator is reflective, looking back on a hardscrabble youth from a position of newfound comfort, and paying tribute to the maternal devotion that got him through the most difficult of times:

“Pour out some liquor and I reminisce, cause through the drama/ I can always depend on my mama… When I was sick as a little kid/ To keep me happy there’s no limit to the things you did/ And all my childhood memories/ Are full of all the sweet things you did for me… You are appreciated/ Dontcha know we love ya?”

The emotion and imagery Shakur uses in “Dear Mama” are resonant of a well-known early 20th-century song in which someone who grew up in poverty and scratched out a life of success looks back over a lifetime and pays tribute to the woman who made it all possible. I speak, of course, of “My Yiddishe Momme”:

“Of things I should be thankful for, I’ve had a goodly share/ And as I sit here in the comfort of a cozy chair/ My fancy takes me to a humble East Side tenement/ Three flights up in the rear,/ To where my childhood days were spent… / It wasn’t much like paradise but amid the dirt and all/ There sat the sweetest angel/ One that I fondly call/ A Yiddishe Momme.”

Widely considered Shakur’s greatest single hit (the song sold seven million copies at the time of release) and one of the greatest hip-hop songs ever, “Dear Mama” was one of 25 songs that in 2010 were added to the National Recording Registry — a list of sound recordings that “are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.” That same year saw the very first Yiddish recording ever inducted into the registry, “Fon der Choope (From the Wedding)” by Abe Elenkrig’s Yidishe Orchestra. Somewhere, Shakur was smiling.

Seth Rogovoy has explored the hidden Jewish stories of the Rolling Stones, the Super Bowl halftime show, Cher, Paul McCartney and David Bowie in the pages of the Forward.

<The Forward>

Time for Jewish Evangelizing

We Should Make the Case for Judaism in a Public Space

By Nigel Savage

If we’re serious about renewing Jewish life in the future, we must confront the challenge of evangelizing for Jewish tradition in public space. One of the reasons that the tension between the tribal and the universal in Jewish life isn’t addressed directly is because most Jews lack confidence in their knowledge of Jewish tradition to talk about it in the public square. But the faith communities that have grown the most rapidly in this country in recent years are those that have the self-confidence to go into public space and proclaim: You should be a Mormon! You should be a Christian! If we learn anything from living in a free-enterprise society, it is that if you have a good product the key to growth is strong marketing.

The word “evangelism” sits uneasily with Jewish people. We have been at the wrong end of it for too many centuries. Too many of our people have died at the hands of those who believed that their god and their religion was the only true way. But we entered the world as a proselytizing religion. Maimonides includes converting people to Judaism as one of the 613 mitzvot. I think that it is time for the Jewish community to start inviting people, publicly, to become Jewish.

This need not mean — and should not mean — evangelizing in inappropriate ways. It doesn’t mean saying, “if you don’t become Jewish, you’re condemned to hell and damnation.” But we should say something like the following: “If you are happy in the religion that you grew up with, we hope that you will grow and flourish in it and be a good Christian, a good Moslem, a good citizen. But if you find that it doesn’t speak to you; if you have always had Jewish friends, or you’ve been interested in Jewish tradition, or if you would simply like to learn more about what it means to be Jewish, then we warmly invite you to start to learn with us. And here’s a website in which you can find rabbis of every Jewish denomination who would be willing to welcome you, learn with and perhaps help you on the first steps of your Jewish journey…”

Doing something like this shouldn’t be owned by a single stream of Jewish life. To be most effective, it needs to be trans-denominational. And there will be one significant side-effect of such a process: In making the case for Jewish tradition in public space — focused on non-Jews — we will also explicate Jewish tradition to the most universal of our own young people, those who are more comfortable in the public spaces of American life than the Jewish spaces . At the root of this drive lies a core tension: Either we believe in Jewish tradition or we do not. For me Jewish tradition is wise, humane, ancient, contemporary, vibrant, ethical, challenging and exciting. The Torah really is a commentary on the world — and the world is a commentary on the Torah. I reject the false distinction between the universal and the particular. I believe that this country would be a better country and the world a better world, if there were more Jews in it.

Standing up for Jewish tradition in public space — actively inviting people to consider becoming Jewish — would be a blessing to the many non-Jews who are interested in becoming Jewish. It would also be the clearest possible signal to our own young people that we are proud of being Jewish. May our ancient tree of life grow and flourish for generations to come.

Nigel Savage is the president of Hazon.

<The Forward>

Shmuley Boteach: Women's Sensuality Guru

By Frimet Goldberger

Women, have your husbands snuffed out your libidos? Do you feel like you no longer need to pursue beauty, wit, insight, creativity and personal sensuality because your lazy-ass husband flips through the TV stations and stumbles into bed after his nightly dose of porn and afternoon office sex with his mistress? Do you feel that the vows you made with HIM to lust for each other in sickness and in health are violated now that you’ve left your parents’ loving home and your beauty isn’t overwhelming anyone?

If you or someone you know is experiencing similar sexual famine, look no further than the self-proclaimed guru of women’s sensuality, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, or as I like to call him, Shmuley Botox. Rabbi Botox is the world-acclaimed author of the New York Times Bestseller “Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy” and has now penned a profound and potentially earth-shattering essay on Huff and Post titled “What Women Really Want: A Rabbinical Guide to What a Woman Needs and Desires.”

“Women are not looking just for love in a marriage,” Botox wrote. “They are primarily looking for lust… This is what a woman thirsts to hear more than anything: ‘I desire you. I want to be physical with you. Your beauty is overwhelming to me. I cannot control myself around you. I find myself thinking about you constantly and I have to have you — I don’t care what the consequences are. I don’t care if we don’t go to sleep tonight and we have to get the kids to school in the morning; there are no physical considerations that can suppress my desire for you.’ That’s what women want and need to hear; that’s what will melt a woman, because it taps into her core desire. A husband who approaches a woman without wooing her is not likely to get much of a response, because he hasn’t addressed her core need.”

Spot on, Rabbi! Women get married because they want their husbands to lose control. Married women desire only men who know how to tap their cores and melt them. Women get married because they hate to sleep and want to be ravaged at every hour, as if by Christian Grey in “Fifty Shades of Baloney.”

American wives, Rabbi Botox Guru continues, are “relegated to the roles of caretaker, wage earner, housekeeper, and waitress… Many husbands subconsciously snuff out their wives’ libidos. They sexually extinguish their women, all but guaranteeing that the men themselves will have to turn to porn, affairs, or fantasy for their own erotic thrills. A man complains that his wife is no longer interested in sex, all the while transforming her from a woman into a maid and from a mistress and lover into the mother of his children.”

A woman’s sexuality doesn’t exist apart for her husband doing his part to awaken it. The proof is in the marital pudding: the day-to-day monotony of caretaking, housekeeping, parenting and wage-earning forces husbands to seek out other erotic thrills to quench their uncontrollable animalistic urges. Let’s be honest: wives who busy themselves with domestic nonsense like cooking and cleaning and tending to their children are less desirable to men, just like men who busy themselves with women’s work are less desirable to women. Which is why so many husbands married to such boring and domesticated wives turn to the computer and Google “MILF,” and why sensually famished wives look in the mirror and repeat – over and over – “where have my single years and sexual libido gone?”

It is heartening to see a rabbi speak for the ladies and dictate what they desire — or should desire.

Women around the world read your viral (not to be confused with vital) piece and exhaled a collective sigh of relief. They dropped their functional and domestic work, quit their jobs, stashed all the children into boxes labeled “functional” and took off to tap into their lost sensuality. One woman even bothered to annotate your essay, Rabbi Botox, before she joined the others in marital fairyland.

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for ending the sexual famine which threatened to kill us all and leave our sorry husbands flipping through the channels and stumbling into bed with the perfectly-nonfunctional Venus.

<Forward>

What Jews Can Learn From Rwandans

A woman consoles a fellow Rwandan at a genocide commemoration ceremony / Getty Images

By Randy Kafka

I am no Shmuley Boteach, God knows. But I have recently learned from the Forward that Boteach and I have one thing in common – we are both rabbis who have visited Rwanda.

This February, on the eve of Rwanda’s commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Tutsi genocide, I joined a 10-day “witnessing” tour hosted by the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding. We heard stories of horror, and stories of heroism, rescue, reconciliation and – unimaginably, miraculously – stories of forgiveness.

While I am delighted to hear that the governments and entrepreneurs of Rwanda and Israel are now interested in one another, I find myself dreaming of a different sort of connection: What if the people of Israel and Palestine could learn from the Rwandan people how to do the difficult and necessary work of trauma healing and reconciliation?

The blossoming of Rwanda today defies facile explanation, just as it defies facile criticism. I went on this journey with the intention of not-knowing, of bearing witness without judgment. Throughout the ten days, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s expression “radical amazement” kept coming to mind – a theologian’s way of saying “mind-blowing.” How to process, for example, the experience of meeting 60+ convicted genocide perpetrators in matching blue outfits, dancing and singing joyfully to welcome you as they take a break from their community service work building homes for survivors?

A few weeks after returning home, an image came to me in a dream of healing a house on the inside and on the outside. This dream image captures the multi-level processes happening in Rwanda. You might say that the all-out, rapid government push to modernize – the spanking clean and high-tech image of the capital city Kigali, for example, with foreign business people staying at posh hotels – is the healing of the house on the outside. But the stories we heard – those are the stories of healing on the inside.

Trauma healing seems to be at the heart of the transformation happening in Rwanda, and it is relatively recent. Our hosts in one village spoke of the dawning realization that is beginning to bring peace to their hearts: that they have all been traumatized, that they have all been suffering. Utilizing decades of research and intervention by American psychologist Ervin Staub and others, the Rwandan people are learning concrete steps to heal their broken hearts and to accept the Other as human. It is a radical notion, and it is spreading.

Of course, reconciliation without justice would be a travesty. Rwanda’s community-based, all-volunteer judicial system, gacaca, did an astounding job of dealing justly with millions of genocidal perpetrators. Yet with a task so daunting, satisfactory closure remains an ongoing challenge.

I recall us sitting on a long wooden bench in a village clearing, listening (with the help of a translator) to six people sitting on the bench across from us. Two are Tutsi survivors, one is a Hutu perpetrator who served time in prison, one is a former member of a Hutu militia group, and two are young people representing the next generation. They are at the heart of a widening circle of “clubs” of reconciliation in their region, trained in trauma counseling and non-violent communication. They say that they now enjoy one another so much, they can’t wait for the weekly gatherings in which they together assist whoever needs help in the village.

One by one the six people on the bench tell us their stories, and then it happens: a gesture so subtle we almost miss it. The older woman survivor leans in to whisper something to the tall male perpetrator sitting next to her, and she drapes her arm over his shoulders. It is a moment of casual affection that speaks louder than all their prepared stories. We are awestruck.

The late philanthropist Anne Heyman successfully exported the “youth village” concept from post-Holocaust Israel to post-genocide Rwanda. Today, the Rwandan people have much to export to Israel/Palestine, and to the world – and I’m not talking about coffee and bananas. On the level of our shared humanity, we have much to learn from the ordinary people of Rwanda. If they can live literally next-door to former enemies, learning to co-exist and cooperate as neighbors – and in some cases even grow to love one another – then other people in less horrific conflict situations ought to be able to do at least as much. If the people of Rwanda can heal their broken hearts and accept the Other as human, so can we.

Randy Kafka serves as rabbi of Temple Kol Tikvah in Sharon, MA.

<Forward>

What Gabriel Garcia Marquez Taught Me

Budding Jewish Novelist Learned of Romance and Term Papers

GETTY IMAGES

The Master: Gabriel Garcia Marquez died at the age of 87.

By Boris Fishman

It is a well-known fact that young men under 18 embrace literature primarily to impress the girls they are trying to seduce. You had to congratulate my ambition: A Soviet-Jewish immigrant kid with funny hair and funnier clothes after an American-born, Catholic, Colombian beauty whom I’ll call C. But I had a secret weapon: the work of her countryman Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died yesterday (on this earth, at least) at 87. That I would try to seduce this ethereal creature was as fantastical a proposition as any of the things that went on in the novels of the great Gabo, where blood ran from a battlefield to the doorstep of the home of the slain, women ate dirt in despair, and lovers reunited after 50 years of forced separation. But a Russian Jew, even at 15, knows how to hustle. A Russian Jew brings friends to a fight.

Gabo — and C — were everything that my life in northern New Jersey was not. I had emigrated at nine from a country of voluble, undiplomatic, and boundary-invading kitchen talk (so unlike the grayness usually associated with the USSR) to a country of greater civility but less self-revelation and candor. My family still talked loudly and over-intimately in America, only now this was severely out of place and looked at askance. But that disposition was native once again between the covers of a Marquez novel. There — and in C’s family kitchen — the blood ran quick in the way that I remembered from home, and as a promise that such a life could be found again. Add to this that, in emigrating, I had suddenly passed from a sheltered childhood to a radically unfamiliar place where I was made responsible for the well-being of adults twice and three times my age because I had learned English the fastest. You could not have met a more stressed, terrified, humorless teenager. You can imagine why I lost hours with Marquez’s books.

Northern New Jersey may have been the least romantic place in the world, but Gabo made it bloom for me and C. We read his books one after the other, each of us underlining what moved us, making comments to each other in the margins. Because of our different religions, our families did not like us together, and because we were kids, that was all the reason we needed to think we should be together forever. Gabo quickened our sense of ourselves as doomed lovers. Let this be the first and last place where I reveal that my ultimate seduction was inspired by a scene in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” (It involved fluttering rose petals and four adults waiting out the night in the parking lot of a Shop Rite. But that’s for another essay.) Also that I wrote C’s senior-year term paper, also about “Solitude.” It was called “Love Among the Ruins.”

There’s a singular bittersweetness to the moment when a hero returns to the role of, simply, someone you read once. For the first time in nearly twenty years, I opened Solitude last year to discover I could not get very far. Enough things had happened in my life – really real things, things that could not be mitigated even by that novel’s magical happenings – that I found its fabulism ungrounded and irritating. As an adult, I wanted something that engaged with the stubbornly real, melancholy timbre of the world I was actually living in. My adoration had passed on to William Styron, Bernard Malamud, J. M. Coetzee.

But even erstwhile heroes leave a lasting mark. In my debut novel, out this June, about a failed young journalist who starts forging Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, the conversation is between the grandchildren and grandparents, the parents hardly making an appearance. After finishing the novel, I realized that it was Marquez, who had been raised by his grandparents and their tall tales, who had led me to this emotional matrix. I had been raised by my parents, but it was the stories of my grandparents, who had lived in a time when life seemed to work entirely differently, that had really impacted me. This is to say nothing of the novel’s obsession with fabulism and invention, relocated to the far less surreal precincts of the American Northeast. At one point, Slava Gelman, the protagonist says, “If you say there are elephants flying outside your window, no one will believe you. But if you say there are six elephants flying outside your window, it’s a different story.” That is taken directly from a Marquez interview with The Paris Review. And while I have never quite found that new home where life answers to the heart instead of other gods like the market, there is only one reason why the personal essay is my favorite form. For me, Gabo lives.

As for C and I, we were together for three years. (If I ever run for office, she can destroy me by publishing some of the Marquez-inspired poetry I wrote her during that time. “The moonlight on your hair…”) Some days, it seemed like Gabo was all that we shared. I wonder if the intensity of our affection and gratitude for his work helped conceal all the ways in which we weren’t happy with each other, made the relationship go on longer than it should have. Perhaps. But I know that the old man would have relished that he had been used to kindle this first love, a love between a Jew and a Catholic from opposite ends of the world meeting in a third place, free but sedate, that they both craved to escape for the unreasonable world of his pages. Was that any less fantastical than what he wrote about? Would that he were still around to take on the idea.

Boris Fishman’s debut novel ‘A Replacement Life’ will be published on June 3 by HarperCollins.

<Forward>

Funcionários do Ministério das Relações Exteriores declaram greve geral, paralisando sistema diplomático de Israel

Greve é o culminar de sanções renovadas, protestando falha do Ministério das Finanças para resolver queixas dos diplomatas

Funcionários do Ministério das Relações Exteriores declararam uma greve geral neste domingo, após duas semanas de paralisações parciais. A greve está prevendo o fechamento das missões estrangeiras do país e a paralisação total do sistema diplomático israelense.

Pela primeira vez desde a criação do Estado de Israel, 103 missões israelenses no Exterior serão fechadas, assim como a sede do Ministério das Relações Exteriores em Jerusalém. Ambas serão completamente fechadas, e por um período indefinido de tempo, para protestar contra as condições de trabalho dos diplomatas israelenses e a decisão do Ministério das Finanças de cortar seus salários durante as paralisações.

O Sindicato dos Trabalhadores do Ministério das Relações Exteriores informou a todos os empregados em Israel e no Exterior, por e-mail e mensagens, de que a greve geral começaria às 03:00 h deste domingo e instruiu-os a deixar seus locais de trabalho imediatamente.

"A Sede do Ministério das Relações Exteriores será fechada para todas as atividades. Todos os trabalhadores, em todas as posições, são ordenados a ficar longe do escritório", disse o comitê num comunicado a todos os trabalhadores. "Missões israelenses no Exterior serão fechadas, a partir de segunda-feira 24 de março. Todos os trabalhadores, em todas as posições, estão ordenados a ficar longe das missões".

Fontes do Ministério das Relações Exteriores disseram que o encerramento das missões no Exterior seria total e que os agentes de segurança haviam sido instruídos a impedir a entrada a todos, incluindo funcionários do Ministério da Defesa, o IDF, Mossad, Shin Bet - Serviço de Segurança e outros ministérios do governo.

A sede em Jerusalém será bloqueada ao longo da greve e a entrada será negada ao ministro das Relações Exteriores Avigdor Lieberman, ao vice-chanceler Ze'ev Elkin e ao Diretor-Geral Nissim Ben-Sheetrit.

O comitê da greve vai lidar com os pedidos de cidadãos israelenses, ou empresas privadas, durante o período da greve, mas apenas nos casos em que haja perigo de vida. O comitê pode ser contatado em unionmfa@israel.org

O primeiro-ministro Benjamin Netanyahu foi forçado, na semana passada, a cancelar 

uma visita "histórica" (?) para a América Latina prevista para abril, depois que seu bureau encontrou muitas dificuldades em fazer os arranjos necessários devido às sanções dos diplomatas, que incluem uma recusa global de ajudar a organizar viagens ao Exterior para qualquer ministro.

Os diplomatas também se recusaram a lidar com a visita do primeiro-ministro britânico David Cameron, na semana passada (embora ele veio de qualquer maneira), e agora estão se recusando a cooperar sobre os preparativos para a visita do Papa a Israel, em maio. Uma delegação do Vaticano, que deveria ter visitado Israel para trabalhar nos arranjos, cancelou sua viagem, e agora é incerto se a visita do Papa acontecerá.

<Rua Judaica>