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The last time I was in Israel was in January 2004. I took a day trip to see my mishpacha meametzet—adopted family in a neighborhood that bordered the green line. My adopted family was where I would go when I lived in Israel from 1998 to 1999 to eat good food, take a clean, hot shower, watch television (a Seinfeld marathon one Rosh Hashanah) and make friends with ‘real’ Israelis. To their liking I was a good role model for their children, to their disliking I abused their generosity by calling my exboyfriend in America with whom I was still in love.

This reunion would be all the things that reunions are and I knew that: pleasant, awkward, sincere, insincere. And it was. What I was looking forward most was spending time with my oldest adopted brother, Erez. When I met Erez he was 18, I was 22, and he was this gorgeous teen with spiked hair and glimmering blue-green eyes. Throughout the time I lived in Israel, Erez applied and became accepted to an elite unit in the Israeli Defense Forces. He would come home with no skin on his elbows from the rigorous training exercises. Despite his wounds and my old age, he would take me along with his friends clubbing in Tel Aviv. It was funny to watch him at the clubs holding a beer, but not drinking it and rolling his eyes at his friends who were chain smoking. He didn’t not drink and smoke because of any military ambitions, he just was a person who didn’t drink and smoke.  I was at the Western Wall in Jerusalem when he was sworn in to his unit, or not to his unit to another unit because his unit was secretive. I was so proud of him and developing an intense crush that I didn’t dare act on because of the age difference and my relationship with his siblings and parents. And who knows if he was interested? 

Anyways, more than four years later was this reunion. Erez picked me up from the new train station in Rosh Haayin. We chatted for a bit, small talk. But it was clear he had changed. Who doesn’t change in four years? But he had been hardened. Most of Erez’s military service was during the Second Intifada. I don’t know what he did. I never asked. But whatever it was had taken a toll on him. The four years age difference was gone. In fact, he looked closer to 30 than to 22. We drove back to his house and had dinner with his parents and youngest brother. The two middle ones were in the army. He then asked me if I wanted to go out in his truck to be with him during his duty. His duty involved patrolling the neighborhood to look for, whatever it is you look for in a neighborhood bordering an Arab village. We drove around and stopped at the top of a hill. He pointed to the construction of the wall/fence/barrier below.
“Pretty impressive, no?”
I didn’t answer because now, with him, my opinions, my hopes for peace, were irrelevant. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one.
“You don’t smoke,” I said.
“The Army,” he answered.
“Well you look ridiculous,” I said.
He shrugged and smoked half heartedly.
“So Sharna,” he was one of few Israelis who could pronounce my name without over pronouncing it or just changing it entirely, “You happy?”
And I told him of my unhappiness and he told me about his dreams for the future.  I know it would make this piece more interesting if I told you I took him in my arms and he cried about the people he had or hadn’t killed— that he spoke against the Israeli government’s policies be it on targeted assassinations or the building of new settlements. We didn’t speak politics, we spoke of happiness, of dreams, of love while watching the sun set in front of us and to our side the wall/fence/barrier emerging from the ground
.…..

So I saw Munich today: the controversial Steven Spielberg film that “based on true events” depicts what happened after the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. I work in a Jewish high school and the film has been the talk of the school, students, teacher and parents since its debut in December. From some of the most liberal thinkers at our school to the staunchly right wing pro Israel advocates, the feeling is that Steven Spielberg backstabbed Israel and the Jewish people by directing Munich. I spoke to a woman the other day at school who was in tears talking about it. She said after his work on Schindler’s List and the Shoah Foundation, Spielberg had been her hero. She now feels betrayed and disappointed.

Before seeing the movie I had heard several arguments and read op-eds and even a sermon against the film. I must say that even though I respect the opinions of my colleagues, students, their parents and Rabbis, I completely disagree with their anger towards the film, although I do see some of their points.  Their views are best synthesized by Bret Stephens in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. I will respond to his points:

I agree that choosing Tony Kushner to rewrite the screenplay was a mistake by Spielberg. Because of Kushner’s hostility toward the state of Israel, he lacks considerable credibility, and therefore the film’s message, or lack of one, is muddled by its author’s persona. It would be like Tom Cruise writing the Andrea Yates story. I can picture the scene in the pharmacy now, “Andrea, maybe some vitamins would help you.”

I also found it distasteful the depiction of Israelis shelling out cash to middle men and the running joke that they were keeping tract of receipts. It was annoyingly stereotypical and gave an opportunity for the audience to chuckle at the money grubbing Jews. Perhaps they were using the money as a metaphor for the actual cost: human life and dignity. The link is weak and instead fueled the notion that rich Jews run the world.

The rest of the movie was extremely well done.However, I don’t know if any of it is true. I actually doubt it is. What does it matter? We are beyond the naiveté of the duck and cover generation.  Today absolute truth is dead and unlike our president, Congressional representatives and some Oprah author, Spielberg doesn’t claim the movie is absolute truth but ‘based on actual events.’

A criticism of the movie is that the terrorists were humanized: a father, a sweet old professor, a chummy man in his 40s. So what if they were humanized? Is a Palestinian who wants to kill Israelis a robot? Why is it awful to see that the bad guys sometimes look and act just like us? Usama Bin Laden didn’t grow up in a cave. He was from an upper middle class Saudi family. Just because the old man in the film was carrying groceries doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve to be brought to justice. What that justice should have been is another issue entirely.   

Also some of the fictional quotes have been lambasted as depicting Israelis as ethnocentric. Well, I hate to break it to you, but Israel was and still is Israelcentric. Why is that a problem especially when the movie takes place during the 1970s when Israel had fought four major wars in 25 years? Also, an attitude of just caring about Jewish blood did exist in the context of a world which 20 years earlier had allowed 6 million Jews to perish as well as failed to bring many Nazis to justice and jail the members of Black September living throughout Europe.

Another issue that has been taken with the film is the character Avner’s  “fall” from the brave soldier to disillusioned expatriate. I don’t remember this sort of harsh criticism of any American war movie portraying the same exact ideas: killing takes a toll on soldiers. In 2006, we have American soldiers returning from Iraq with post traumatic stress disorder. They too are questioning our government’s motive for going to war. If Avner and the other operatives hadn’t questioned what they were doing, I would have found them less believable, likeable and admirable. One of the last scenes is controversial for similar reasons: Avner is having sex with his wife. The sex is consensual but violent and during it he pictures the murders of the Israeli Olympians. The sex is in total contrast to the beginning of the movie when we see Avner making love to his pregnant wife. This second to last scene was hated by one of my colleagues and by the authors of editorials I have read. From my point of view it was additional emphasis on how this conflict permeates all aspects of life, even the most sacred. I would argue that Avner had to rid himself of the burden of avenging the athlete’s deaths to move forward to a life of being a husband and father. He had to rid himself of those images. The idea of expelling it in the bedroom might be a bit discomforting, but it was his wife with whom he felt most human. There was some artistic beauty to the scene.

Another accusation against the film is that because it ends with a shot of the World Trade Center, Spielberg was linking Israel to 9-11. I think he was correctly reminding us that we still have not found an adequate solution to fighting terrorists.

I think this film evokes such considerable emotion not because of its content but because of the atrocities of the Munich games. The entire event was appalling from the terrorists who planned it, to the Germans who failed to rescue them, to the Europeans not working harder to arrest the perpetrators, to the Olympic Officials who continued the games despite the murders. The entire event was a travesty. Jews want people to understand the travesty.  Their feeling is that the film distracts from the fact that unarmed Jewish athletes were murdered under the sanctity of the Olympic rings.

I even challenge that notion. My own Jewish students had never heard of the massacres until this film was released. This event will be remembered by many more people because of this movie. The horror of it will be discussed in classrooms and at the workplace. I think that is a good thing for Israel and the Jewish community that the world better understands why barriers are built, Palestinians are assassinated and borders closed, even via a flawed film.

…

Erez drove me to the train in Rosh Haayin. We said our goodbyes and planned to have lunch together at the university later that week. We never did. I haven’t talked to him since. But I remember the grin on his 18-year-old face. And I remember the quiet smile when he saw me four years later. I hope time has healed all of his wounds.

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Links

The Munich Massacre
One Day in September (another film - more accurate)

A good article about the event

Tony Kushner’s response to critics
Spielberg Film angers Israelis
Munich attack mastermind feels no regret
Op-Ed: Munich the Travesty
A Chicago area rabbi’s view on Munich

An article on how to stop terrorism with good background on the PLO and Black September

Last week in Fort Lauderdale three 17 and 18 year olds decided to beat three homeless men with baseball bats, one of them to death. Their motive clearly wasn’t robbery. Perhaps they were drunk. Perhaps they were on cocaine. Still, it would seem that even a drunk or a coke head would have more sense then to victimize society’s victims. But homeless people are not viewed as victims. They are viewed as lazy, crazy, drug addicted and even fodder for television viewers. While racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia are not tolerated by the civilized, the homeless are dehumanized and degraded by even the seemingly liberal.

Look at some of the headlines and clips of articles from an Internet search on January 16, 2006 besides the ones involving the Florida beating:

Police: 2 N.Y. Men Die Outside in Cold

Sarasota, which recently imposed a no-camping ban, is the meanest city in the nation toward the homeless, according to a national advocacy organization.

Memorials begins for homeless who die alone and anonymous 

U.S. hungry, homeless rise slightly in year 

Remember, the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world. Yet, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless: 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children are likely to experience homelessness in a given year.

Also ,violence against the homeless increased by 67 percent from 1999-2004.

Imagine if that same statistic read, “violence against Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, white males increased by 67 percent.” There would be outrage. There would be press conferences. There would be legislation. But the homeless have no ADL and no Rainbow Push Coalition.  They are not only homeless they are voiceless.

There are also videos produced by a company where the producers pay homeless people to beat each other up and do other degrading stunts. Where is the outrage? Where are the boycotts?

For the past three years I have taken the 11th graders at my school to Washington DC where they participate in a program called Panim El Panim, translated as Face to Face. Part of the experience involves hearing homeless people or formerly homeless people tell their stories. This year one man talked about how he went from being gainfully employed to homeless in a period of five years. His vocabulary was much more sophisticated than my own. He was intelligent and read to us his incredible poetry. The next day the students met with homeless people in a park, spoke with them, and gave them socks, toiletries, and other items. It was hard to tell what the men and women we met appreciated more: clothing to keep them warm or the sincere conversation.  Our students learned a simple yet invaluable lesson: men and women without homes are human beings and should be afforded the same respect and dignity that we all expect and deserve.

What can you do? I understand, even if I don’t agree with it, not wanting to give money to homeless people. But you can say hello or good afternoon. Once you are comfortable with that try doing this: for every alcoholic drink you consume on Friday and Saturday, on Sunday offer a pair of socks to a homeless person. Don’t want to buy socks? Fine, look in your closet and grab that shampoo you brought home from the hotel or the deodorant sample you’ll never use. Offer those items to a homeless person.

Also, email your local and national representatives and demand that crimes against the homeless be part of hate crimes legislation. Not into politics? The National Coalition offers many suggestions for ways to fight homelessness.

On the Habitat for Humanity web site there is an unauthored quote that reads, “A society is judged according to the way it treats its neediest citizens.” I’m not sure we as a whole would be judged kindly.

Recently my friend with a Jewish last name who does not practice religion excitedly directed me toward the work of Sam Harris author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Religion has been a source of great and not so great discourse between this friend and me and he gleefully printed out the website of someone who finally would prove my practice of religion both futile and silly.

First let me give you some background. I grew up in South Bend, Indiana. In South Bend people are religious, whatever that means to whomever you are speaking to. Be it Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Muslim or Hindu, on the weekend you spend some amount of time in some religious institution studying some God or scripture. The religious learning was coupled with fairly liberal public schools (minus all of the Jesus music we sang in choir, but OK, it’s fun to know the words at Marshall Fields when the music is playing over the speakers). There were two Catholic high schools, but the people who attended them were just as religious or not religious as everyone else. I had a unique Jewish upbringing. I attended an ultra-Orthodox elementary school, a Conservative Synagogue, and a summer camp that was affiliated with the Reform movement. My youth group of choice was nondenominational. For junior and senior high schools I attended regular, integrated public school.

It wasn’t until I attended Indiana University that I realized that there were Jewish people who never attended synagogue, Catholics who had abandoned Church, and Protestants who had no idea if they were Episcopalian or Lutheran. (Henry VIII would be so annoyed). On the other hand, although I always knew there were ultra Orthodox Jews, I didn’t learn of fundamentalist Christians and Catholics until I went away to school. Now, maybe some of you think I was naive, but I only grew up with people of some faith or another. In fact, I ran into a girl from high school who I hadn’t seen in 11 years this past Saturday night. As luck, fate, God, would have it I ran into her again at a coffee shop the next day. We spoke for a few minutes and she closed her laptop and said, "Actually I’m off to Church." Ha! I thought. Church! I had been in, don’t tell anyone, synagogue two days earlier, my once a month attendance to a service with other people in their 20s and 30s.

Now Sam Harris who preaches religious intolerance would argue that the two of us 20somethings are contributing to the downfall of civilization because as religious moderates our

indulgence of religious faith perpetuates an attachment to religious texts and to religious identities that, in turn, perpetuate human conflict. Religious moderates may ignore or overlook the more barbaric passages in their religious books, but by venerating the books in general, they leave us powerless to really oppose the belief systems of fundamentalists. (Harris)

Harris’ writings are impressive. His points ring true especially to those of us alarmed by the attempt to put creationism in science classrooms or the politicizing of religion which fosters intolerance and violence. Harris argues that religion is screwing up the world. And perhaps it is. But not the way I practice it nor the way Becky probably practices it. (But I don’t know, we mostly talked about old friends before she rushed off to fund the IRA and I the Return to Gaza movement) Back to Mr. Harris:

And because moderates tend to ignore the most lunatic parts of scripture, they lose touch with how dangerous these books are when taken literally. In fact, they have trouble believing that anyone does still take these books literally, and so they tend not to recognize the role that faith plays in inspiring human violence. Religious moderates are blinded by their own moderation. When college-educated jihadists stare into a video camera and declare that "we love death more than the infidels love life," and then blow themselves up along with dozens of innocent bystanders, religious moderates rack their brains wondering what motivated these killers to do what they did. The respect that moderates accord to religious faith has blinded them to the fact that the atrocities of September 11th were a religious exercise. Religious moderates seem incapable of realizing that our problem is not terrorism, but Islam. (Harris)

You can take almost anything that is venerated and bastardize it to morph into your agenda. And remember a little thing in the 1920s called Eugenics? Was that based on religion or science? What about Hitler? Were his ideas based on religious intolerance or on social Darwinism? And let’s not forget the the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Even Catcher in the Rye was used as an excuse to murder. Didn’t someone kill their girlfriend after listening to Eminem? Science, literature, medicine are valuable, and I would argue even more important than religion. But what’s wrong with a little religion?  

So why do I practice Judaism? Well, it’s complicated like the relationship status choice on Friendster. Much of it makes sense to me. Taking a day off makes sense to me, as does enjoying a couple of nice meals with friends and family on that day off. The fact that you need to do nothing for a week after a close relative dies to mourn seems logical. I really like the hospitality part, where it’s important to open your homes and be generous to strangers. My Judaism teaches me to volunteer, give money to the needy, respect my elders. It is through my Jewish upbringing that I value education for myself and the people in my community. As for prayer, I mean I don’t really think God, if she exists, is listening. But I love the beauty of the music on Friday night and the idea that whatever happened during week, here comes the Sabbath bride, and it’s time to let go and relax. I think it’s cool that wherever I go in the world there will be a synagogue where prayers are in a common language. I see the Torah as a treasure that I’ve inherited and its words, no matter how poignant or silly they might be, have been around for more than 3000 years. I value Israel, for all its faults, as a place where Jews have gone to escape historical Anti-Semitism.

Could one experiences these things in Greek Mythology or through secularism? Yeah, sure. I don’t know. This is just how I do it. I just can’t accept a world where we have to choose sides about every single thing. It’s like everyone is turning to President Bush’s rhetoric as a guide for practice, "You’re either with us or against us."

We, the center, must rise up and defeat the forces of extremism. Be it on the right or the far left, we must make our sane, rational voices heard against those who view polarization as the only way to address politics, religion, sex and personal freedoms. Those on the far left and far right accuse the center of pandering to whomever is on the opposite side of their point of view. Any person who shows any semblance of tolerance is weak and contributing to the demise of civilization - however they might define that demise, be it the practice of homosexuality or belief in God. What is scary is that the center seems to be shrinking at an alarming rate causing corners to be staked out and speeches to range from the insensitive and insulting to the radical and frightening.

Becky attends a Catholic church on Belmont which has a Sunday service for homosexuals. I taught Hebrew at a Conservative synagogue to a guy who was converting to Judaism because his gay partner was Jewish. We were both drinking at a bar last Saturday night. What’s the problem?

I know you have something to say. Use the comment function.

Links:

http://www.samharris.org/

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church

Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement

An 1857 view of Social Darwinism

Nazi Medical Experiments

Tuskegee Experiments

Eminem Lyrics

Northern Indiana Center for History

Jewish life in South Bend