Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Living in a Jewish country has its attractions. One of them is that you can enjoy being a Jew without being religious. Living in a Jewish country also has its problems. One of them is that you cannot avoid Judaism. Even outspoken Jewish atheists are surrounded by stimuli associated with the faith they deny. Virtually every item on the daily news touches the subject. Either Jews are quarreling about an issue with religious implications—and almost all of the local topics have such implications, such as comments about environmental protection o...
The privacy bugaboo has struck twice at the summit of Israel’s government. Two nominees for the important post of Governor of the Bank of Israel have had to withdraw their candidacy after embarrassing details began circulating in the media. One had been caught leaving a Duty Free shop in the Hong Kong airport without paying for a garment bag. He held on for a couple of weeks, saying it was all a misunderstanding, but was tripped by a sloppy cover-up. The story he told was plundered by journalists who found more holes than substance. It might h...
By Ira Sharkansky Chaos in Syria and now in Egypt, with instability in Lebanon increasing as Hezbollah is deeply involved in Syria. Hamas in Gaza is most likely planning its response to the problems of its patron in Egypt. Jordan’s king may be even more worried than usual about threats to his regime, and who knows what is going through the minds of the Palestinians in the West Bank who are close to their government or waiting for an opportunity to take over their government. Is all this good for the Jews? In the short run, we don’t have to wor...
By Ira Sharkansky Among the unpleasantness that Israeli Jews experience is the awareness that Jews along with Arabs and others are demonstrating against Israel. Noam Chomsky’s involvement in persuading Stephen Hawking to cancel his appearance at an Israeli conference was a prominent example, consistent with Chomsky’s record and perhaps reinforced by his own denial of entry to the country as an undesirable person. There are Israeli Jews who have joined the Palestinians’ campaign of BDS (boycott, disvestment, sanctions). They fit the image of ma...
Things have never been better for many of us. Europeans are quarreling rather than killing one another. Jews are capable of reaching the top of virtually all professions, with decent housing and no worry about gentlemen’s agreements or restrictive covenants, and safe from plunder and pogroms. Life expectancy and other good stuff are at historic heights in much of the world. No longer do we tell our children and grandchildren to clean their plates because Chinese or Indian children are starving There are problems. South Koreans—at levels of deve...
Newspaper estimates of the numbers taking part in recent demonstrations tell us something about the ranking of items on the agendas of various sectors. What is impressive is not the precision of such numbers, but great differences in their magnitude. On Thursday evening of last week, it was estimated that 30,000 haredim massed outside the Jerusalem recruitment office, with some of them expressing the low level of violence likely to occur when riled by their rabbis. Several protesters and police were injured, eight haredim were taken into...
By Ira Sharkansky The latest numbers about the 2-year-old Syrian civil war are 80,000 deaths, one million refugees over the borders in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and a total of four million displaced Syrians either over the borders or away from their homes in Syria. As always, we must be suspicious about round numbers published by organizations with an interest in portraying the carnage. Nonetheless, by all the indications, the death, dislocation and destruction have been great. Perhaps greater than Afghanistan, and more than in every other...
By Ira Sharkansky Barack Obama has said that Syrian use of chemical weapons is a “game changer.” According to the lead paragraphs in a New York Times article, the President said “…he would respond ‘prudently’ and ‘deliberately’ to evidence that Syria had used chemical weapons, tamping down any expectations that he would take swift action after an American intelligence assessment that the Syrian government had used the chemical agent sarin on a small scale in the nation’s civil war... He was seeking further proof of culpability for c...
A hundred meters from these fingers is a border between civilizations. To the east of that border is the “village,” “suburb,” or “neighborhood” of Isaweea. With more than 20,000 residents, the label “village” is misleading, but that’s the term many use. “Suburb” suggests something outside of Jerusalem, but it is formally within the city as defined by Israel in 1967. There is no wall between us and Isaweea, but it is “outside” insofar as few Jews risk themselves by entering it. “Neighborhood” is problematic, insofar as the frequent mobil...
The news reminds me of a Kingston Trio ballad that begins with They’re rioting in Africa, They’re starving in Spain. There’s hurricanes in Florida, And Texas needs rain The whole world is festering With unhappy souls. Take your pick for what is most festering this week: The North Korean threat to bombard the United States, and maybe South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons. Pundits are doubting the reality, but worrying about a repeat of what Barbara Tuchman described in The Guns of August, i.e., a move toward catastrophe that none of the p...
We did not intend to flee Jerusalem when the great man arrived, but we saw no reason to change our plans when we heard about his trip. On the basis of previous presidential visits, we knew that the city would be dysfunctional. Our visit to Greece provided insights into the functioning of empires, even if it kept us away from the flood of interpretations about what Obama said and did not say None the less, it is possible to conclude from a number of sources about as much as it is possible to know at this point. At least to some extent, the...
Politics does not operate like a Swiss watch. The image is outdated but remains useful. The overwhelming majority of watches are electronic, run by batteries and tiny programs rather than by springs and cog wheels made and assembled by skilled craftsmen in Swiss villages. Word is that more and more people are doing without watches as well as cameras, and relying on telephones that do those jobs and many others. However, the image of something that ticks along in orderly fashion and does its job with modest efficiency is useful in order to...
Nervous Jews are worrying if Barack Obama is intent on forcing Israel into a peace process. Leaving aside the issue that being nervous is a chronic condition of being Jewish, an appropriate response to Obama and all the others who think that Israel is not doing enough to make peace with the Palestinians is that peace is already upon us. It is a Jewish peace, to be sure, but peace none the less. Peace is, after all, more a semantic issue, or a matter of comparison, than anything absolute. No one in the world lives in absolute peace. Americans le...
In all the blather from politicians and media personalities following Israel’s indecisive election, it is possible to see two ideas that might provide a map to the country’s future. One is the equalizing of the burdens between the haredim and the rest of us. Prominent in the explanation of Yair Lapid’s 19 Knesset seat victory are the mass demonstrations that occurred during the summer of 2011. That was hardly a united movement. Chants and signs demanded too great a variety of injustices to be corrected. What was clear, however, was that there w...
