Ross Singer Israel Tour Guide

05/11/2024

An Anti-Anti-Israel Story: The Jews of Urfa

The Amazing Story of the Jews of Urfa and their place in Israel's story. For a virtual tour of Abraham's cave in Urfa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vz5RGw9H_I For the full interview of Harun Bozo from Centropa's Library of Rescued memories: https://www.centropa.org/en/biography/harun-bozo

22/10/2024

A look at one of the Succot liturgy's prayers and its longing for restoration and redemption of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple.

07/10/2024

One year later, thoughts from an Israeli Jew

09/09/2024

Some intuitions about Israel that I think a very large majority of Jews both here in Israel and in the diaspora hold and that are the anchor that grounds the state of Israel to the earth:

1. Given the history of religious persecution of Jews at the hands of Christians and Moslems over the centuries and the severe rounds of organized violence that Jews sustained in European countries since the 1880’s and since World War I in the Middle East and North Africa, it seems like a really good idea for Jews to have a plot of land, somewhere on this globe, to serve as a haven and from which to organize self-defense, and to take responsibility for our fate.

2. If we are going to do that anywhere, the land of Israel seems to be a logical choice. We mention returning there at the end of every Seder and at the end of our holiest day of the year – Yom Kippur. Those of us a bit more religiously affiliated sing about restoring our sovereignty on Friday nights in Kabbalat Shabbat with the words of the poem Lecha Dodi written in the 16th century in the Galilee by scholars who were obsessed with redemption here in the land and who worked on creating institutions that might herald in just such a restoration. For those even more religiously meticulous among us, we mention this every time we break bread and three times a day at least in the liturgy. The holy books we chant from at our Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s were written largely in or about this land and call upon us to create a great society here. At every wedding, we mention Jerusalem and break a glass to mourn the exile. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how embedded this land and the aspiration for Jewish sovereignty is in our practice and in our spirit.

3. We know that over the centuries of our diaspora, despite the fact that we never gave up on our dream, other people(s) moved into the land. We know that before our mass return over the last hundred years, we were a minority in the land. Because of this and for other reasons, a large majority of us would be open to territorial compromise as a way to mitigate conflicting claims. However, our experience is that our would-be partners in sharing the land, frequently reject our project of national restoration in our ancestral homeland outright. Violence has been a major venue for expressing that rejection and so we are very very wary of acting in practice upon what in theory we are open to. Maybe we are overly cautious. Its hard to judge from the inside but it really really seems to us that if we risk naivety we might also risk our survival. That said, grand overtures like Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem touch us deeply and alleviate many of our concerns.

4. We know that Israel is not perfect. We know that criticism of Israel can be legitimate. But the vehemence and demonization with which so much of that criticism is so often couched makes us skeptical and reticent to accept it from the those who seem to wish us so much ill. Largely, we feel we have enough criticism to spare from our raucous internal debates where those of us who have a stake in the future are the interlocutors (see #5 about our freedom of expression).

5. Despite the fact that we are aware that we have a checkered past, we are proud of what we have created here. We are proud of our internationally recognized contributions to science and technology. We are proud of the strong economy that we have created. We are proud of the rich literature that we produce. We are proud of the steps that have been taken to integrate non-Jewish minorities like the Druze (as just one example) into our society while recognizing that much more work needs to be done. We are proud of our freedom of expression. We are proud of our social welfare system while also expecting more from it. We love the tapestry of Jews from all over the world that the ingathering of our exiles has created. We love the land itself and we tour and trek and hike and drive and walk its breadth and its length. We love the land’s produce and our farms and our dairies and we love our delicious culturally eclectic hybrid cuisine and our fusion pop-music music that integrates Biblical Hebrew lyrics with electronic instrumentation and that oscillates between eastern and western modes. And there is a lot more than this that we love about what we have here.
6. We are sure that if the apparatus of our state falls apart, we will not fair well. We can see this by looking around at the minorities who live in our region. We also know that it is unrealistic to move en masse anywhere else. No one is going to accept 7 million Jews. But besides that, we don’t want to go anywhere for all the reasons mentioned in #4.

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I peek, more often than is healthy for me at the Anti-Israel cyberverse and the ideological Israel of colonialism and Jewish supremacy and racism etc. etc. that I find there strikes me as a phantom. It might be relevant for understanding some members of Knesset but I am fairly certain that most Israel sympathetic Jews of the diaspora and certainly most Israeli Jews are not committed to the state of Israel because of ideology that can be articulated through academic jargon. They are supportive or they are here because of deep intuitions born of experience, historical awareness, loyalty to their people and heritage, religious tenets and commitments and a desire to survive and thrive in a world that can be unfriendly to us.

To the anti-Israel crowd: If I am wrong, and everything I wrote is just a cover for economic superficial, colonial, western interests, then maybe you will succeed in sending us packing like the French left Algeria.

But if I am right, then your sustained global campaign of resistance won’t achieve its goals so easily. I am afraid that things will get awful on levels that will make what is happening now pale in comparison. This is not intended as some sort of threat.. I mean that things will become awful for all of us, including me and my people. On the off chance that I am right and that the project of a Jewish state cannot be captured in the common ideological paradigms in which it is so often framed, I hope you will think about what I wrote here carefully. So much human suffering is at risk. I pray you will consider long and hard. If you conclude that there is something organic and appropriate and reasonable about Jewish sovereignty in at least part of the land of Israel (or Palestine if you prefer), then I invite you to join me in a discourse of mutual understanding in place of heated demonization.

(No doubt that lots of this is inspired by my encounter with the work of Yossi Klein Halevy and Haviv Rettig Gur but I think there is no small piece of me here too. It is so hard to find the precise formula to articulate what I am feeling and thinking… I think this is a decent go at it. Feel free to take me to task)

29/08/2024

As long as Alex Stein keeps writing super important articles about our conflict, I am going to keep sharing. This one is about the Jews of Arab lands and the factors behind their exodus to Israel.

Here is his latest:

How the departure of Jews from Islamic lands has been misunderstood

19/08/2024

The neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah has become a symbol of territorial strife between Jews and Palestinians -- strife that has led to belligerence and violence.
As strange as it may sound, once upon a time, Jewish dreams for liberation of this piece of real estate led to an outpouring of interfaith prayer and a sense of shared concern that crossed ethnic, cultural, and national boundaries.

One evening in late nineteenth century Jerusalem, Chaim and Chava Hirshensohn were speaking of “the need of a land movement” and of an expedition “to explore the possibility of land-buying on the road to Shekhem.”

Little did they know that their young daughter had heard their conversation from her bed and had picked out in her mind the perfect plot of land for her parents’ endeavor. Little Nechamah (later Nima Adlerblum) was transfixed and smitten by her family’s visits to the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik in the area known by Arabs as Sheikh Jarrah.

The next afternoon, after lunch at her cousin’s home, Nechamah returned to an empty house. She assumed that her parents had gone off on their expedition to find appropriate real estate to purchase on the road to Shekhem and she was terribly concerned that they might not purchase her dream plot. Flustered, the little girl ran off to try and catch up to them to share her plan with them.

She got as far as Shimon HaTzadik but couldn’t find them anywhere. It was getting dark, and she began to get scared. She knocked on the door of a hut and introduced herself as the granddaughter of the famous Sara Bayla. The homeowner of course knew of Sara Bayla and her courtyard and proceeded to accompany the girl back home.

In the meanwhile, Nechamah’s family and a large cross-section of Jerusalem had become overcome with worry for the lost girl. As Nechamah later recalled years later:
“My disappearance from the home naturally caused consternation. A thorough search was made through town, particularly at places where I was apt to wander. The house of Reb Shemuel Salant was animated. I would sometimes crawl under the table and silently listen to the bearded men of the Bet Din… The large house of the Brisker Rov Disken also attracted me… The house of my uncle, the pharmacist, was another place where they looked for me… My uncle suggested that since his house was on the way to the Kotel Ma’aravi, I might have gone there in spite of the dark alley that leads to it. It was not easy to tear me away from the Wall whenever I was taken there.

“Our devoted Arab friend Leah suggested that I might have gone to the Mosque of Omar to figure out how to replace it with the Temple of Solomon. She insisted that her father look for me there… Our friend Abdallah urged his grandfather, the Pasha, to send out gendarmes on horses, which he did… People were running from one corner to another, and no supper was eaten anywhere.

“When the search began to look futile, Reb Shemuel Salant ordered the beadle to knock at every door and gather the people to the Hurvah and other nearby synagogues. Hakham Bashi Elyashar and the Hassidic rabbis issued a similar call. The Hassidim of our courtyard joined our porushic Bet ha-Midrash so that all prayers should reach Heaven jointly… The sheiks in their turbans and imposing costumes ascended the circular stairs to the minarets of their mosques… The Arabs aware of what had happened, gathered in their mosques for prayers. Sweet Leah was divided between joining the prayers at our courtyard or going to the nearby mosque…

“Approaching the courtyard… I was bewildered to see from afar so many people coming and going. A Hassid who espied us pushed himself through the crowd, ran in front, snatched me and put me on his shoulders. Out of excitement he tossed me into Avi’s (my father’s) arms. ‘Have you already bought the land?’ ‘What land?’ asked Avi, unaware that I had overheard their planning. I heaved a sigh of relief when he said that they had not yet come to a decision. ‘Since you want to organize a new settlement on the road to Shekhem, the first one ought to be adjoining Shimeon ha-Tzakkid’s grave. It will be a kind of reward to him. Should the people feel lonesome far away from town, they will draw strength and courage from his being among them.’ The children, still in the dark of what it was all about, but confident that it was a worthy cause, echoed in unison. ‘Yes, yes, buy the land there.’ Eventually a lot was bought in the vicinity of Shimeon ha-Tzaddik, but restrictions on immigration issued by the Sultan, diverted the building project.”

Coming across this passage in the midst of this war, whose previous round was tied by Hamas to the controversy in Sheikh Jarrakh, was strange, and sad, and hopeful. In a bizarre, ironic way, a symbol of what tears us apart now, then, brought us together for a beautiful moment. Today, Jewish dreams of reclamation of this plot are associated with war, but somehow, in the not-so-distant past, the same dream of reclamation (albeit unintentionally) was intertwined with a moment of unity, coexistence, humanity, and brotherhood.

May we merit to live in a world where national parochial aspirations and concern for all those created in the image of God intermingle and reinforce one another.

15/08/2024

Looking for a host from the Otef Gaza Kibbutzim Community to host an American Reform Rabbi making a personal solidarity visit.

I am guiding him in the Otef next week. It is only appropriate to visit the kibbutzim with a local host. I am looking for just such a host. Please let me know if you think you can assist me in arranging this.

09/08/2024

The Temple is rebuilt but Jews are still fasting? What for? How is it relevent to present day political polemics?

Looking at Palestine from Zion

07/08/2024

Some thoughts on the Fast days and Jewish Nationalism

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/EDNV4HtySLb

14/06/2024

I would never have thought that appreciating the make up of the Mikraot Gedolot, the Beit Yosef's methodology or the printing of the Shulchan Aruch are important for responding to anti-Israel polemics. There is deep ignorance of Am Yisrael and Torat Yisrael among many of Israel's detractors. This is another one of my attempts to undo that.

Critics of Israel are claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are illegitimate and therefore Israel is illegitimate too. But Sefardi Jewish Scholars don't see it that way.

22/05/2024

He said, she said revisited.

About 15 years ago plus minus, I co-taught a weekday morning adult education class at Beth Tfiloh congregation with a catholic scholar of theology named Rosann Catalano. In the class, we took a dozen or so foundational texts and taught Jewish and Christian interpretations of them. The class was called "He said, she said."

That experience came rushing back to me this morning as I was thinking about how our conflict has been tied into the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa for a hundred years (explicitly and latently for even more). Hamas’ name for this latest round – Al Aqsa flood – is the latest poignant example of this. Jews having any say over the compound, even if that say is to hand over the administration of it to the Waqf, seems to be an unforgivable insult and provocation. Jews calmly walking to visit our most holy site is described as “storming.” I have had more than one conversation with an Arab cab driver who told me in no uncertain terms that Jews don’t belong there in any way what so ever -- that the entire Jewish connection is a fabrication etc. etc.

It is hard not to see this as an outgrowth of a 1500 year old disappointment that turned into fury when Jews didn’t accept Mohamad’s claim that his revelation was the authentic rectification and only fully legitimate expression of the message of the Hebrew prophets.

How does this tie into my class with Rosann Catalano? Well, we had many conversations and friendly arguments, especially outside of the classroom. I was much more square than Rosann and my hermeneutics were more original intent oriented and I was expecting to uncover “the true meaning” of the texts we were studying. I dredged up polemics and challenged her that Christianity is a misread of Judaism.

I won’t forget one of Rosann’s answers to me and the significance of it came rushing over me this morning. She said, what if Judaism is the Torah’s message for Jews and Christianity is an attempt to translate that message for gentiles. Only in the wake of the onslaught of Oct. 7 am I fully appreciating the theological significance of what Rosann said. She was articulating out loud that Christianity cannot and should not tell Jews how to interpret Judaism for themselves. At the same time, she refused to allow me a monopoly on the wisdom of Torah. Torah has a message for her and its message for her is not bound buy what Jews have said it means for Jews in the past.

I am not saying that I fully embraced what Rosann was saying to me then and even until today I have some reservations, but its powerful and profound respect for Judaism is incredibly striking.

This morning, I am imagining what a Muslim version of Rosann would say to me about Zionism and the Temple Mount etc… She might say, of course your story about yourself as a nation and your connection to your historical holy sites is valid, legitimate, and authentic for you, and I need to respect that. But also, the teachings of Mohamed are a valid and a legitimate expression of many of those same teachings for a non-Jewish audience. We need to find a way to respect both.

Is that possible within Islam. I have heard some say its impossible and then I have heard Moslem clergy say something very close to that. I am not in a position to judge Islam. What I am in a position to see is that as long as Hamas and those who share that ideology refuse to let the Jewish people express and articulate who we are for ourselves, we are probably bound to keep fighting for many years.

To push this idea even further, I think that something akin to this might apply to the secular world. I believe that the infinite value of the individual life traces its origin to the Torah’s teaching and if its not the originator then it was its greatest proponent in the ancient world. Today’s secular ethos has taken that notion and demanded that Jews adopt its western secular iteration where Jews as a collective have no legitimacy outside of religious expression (as many have noted, Jewish civilization is much more than what the term religion implies). In fact Torah’s take on the individual vs. the collective is a dialectic or a synthesis or a balance or something that refuses to allow the value of one to erase the other. We Jews in Israel at least (at least the majority of us), put the individual on a pedestal (just look at what we do to get back hostages) and yet embrace our collective identity passionately.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, some more of you out there should consider Rosann’s approach – Jews don’t get to have the last word on the meaning of Torah for non-Jews, but they do get the last word on what it means to them.

I know that these thoughts are not fully developed but I wanted to get them in print to be able to revisit them and meditate on them before I forgot them.

09/05/2024

Very impressive statement from Jewish Columbia students about the situation on campus, the protesters, anti-semitism, zionism and more:

Over the past six months, many have spoken in our name. Some are well-meaning alumni or non-affiliates who show up to wave the Israeli flag outside Columbia’s gates. Some are politicians looking to use our experiences to foment America’s culture war. Most notably, some are our Jewish peers who t...

09/04/2024

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/reflections-on-sami-michaels-trumpet-in-the-wadi/

In the wake of the passing of Sami Michael last week, with trepidation, I share these thoughts about his novel A Trumpet in the Wadi.

Spoiler Alert – I give away the ending.

Sami Michael was born in Bagdad in 1926. Already as a teenager Michael became a communist. His politics put him at odds with the government and he fled Iraq eventually landing in Israel. Here, he experienced discrimination at the hands of the Ashkenazi elite. Michael became an anti-establishment and controversial critic of Zionism and Israel. He did not define himself as a Zionist. His work shined a light on what he perceived to be Israel’s injustices and its oppression of its non-Ashkenazi Jewish and Arab population. Michael served for years as the only Jewish editor of two communist Arab language newspapers. He collaborated on more than one occasion with the Palestinian author Emile Habibi. After leaving the communist party, he continued to consider himself a Marxist. Michael left behind an extensive literary legacy. Having only read his A Trumpet in the Wadi, I can’t speak about his overall contribution. I am no literary expert. But reading this novel made a strong impression on me and what I took away from it seems to me to be as important as ever.

In my experience, criticisms of Israel and Zionism coming from figures as radical as Michael frequently tend towards one-sided, simplistic, partisan presentations that lack the complexity and nuance necessary to capture what is going on here. A Trumpet in the Wadi is a powerful exception to this rule.

The book is beautifully written and there is so much to say about it, but I will limit myself to sharing just what is most significant to me. The novel tells the love story of the unlikely couple Huda and Alex. Huda, our narrator, is an Arab Christian living in Haifa with her family. Alex moves into the building and the two fall in love.

As one would expect from Michael, the book is laced with an often ironic critique of Israeli society.

There are Jewish characters whose casual remarks reveal racist sentiments. The Arab characters are victims of prejudice and marginalization.

Alex is a Jewish Russian new immigrant who knows next to nothing about being Jewish, who did not really want to move to Israel, and who speaks a butchered Hebrew. One might wonder, to what extent does Alex belong in Israel especially when compared to Huda? Huda speaks beautiful Hebrew and is an avid reader of Yehudah Amichai’s poetry which is one of her rare pleasures. Much of Huda’s mother’s family was expelled from the land during Israel’s war of independence (which they surely call the Nakba). The contrast between Alex who is reluctantly forced into the land (his family being persecuted in the USSR) and doesn’t speak its language(s), and Huda, who is fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew, whose extended family have been forced out, is poignant. Yet Huda is constantly made to feel an outsider.

No doubt that the narrative that says that Zionism is merely a European colonial settler project is a perversion, but this plausible story shows that from a certain limited, yet real angle there are elements of our return that are discomfiting.

While the book’s critique of Jewish Israel is real and sharp, that is only one of its layers. The fact that Huda’s beloved grandfather fled Egypt for Palestine just two generations ago counters the dichotomy of seeing the Palestinian as indigenous and Alex the European Jew as “the alien.” In Huda’s Arab society she encounters patriarchal misogyny and criminal extortion. Huda can’t find happiness there. In fact, outside of her positive relationships with her grandfather and sister, her pleasures come largely from Jewish Israel. She is smitten by the beauty of Yehudah Amichai’s poetry. Her friends are her Jewish co-workers. For all of Huda’s negative experience in Jewish Israel, there are large doses of beauty and generosity that she finds there. Atop it all is her relationship with Alex which promises her redemption.

Tragically, that was not to be. The first Lebanon War breaks out. Alex is called up into the reserves and is killed in the war. Huda had pondered the possibility that one of her refugee relatives might take Alex’s life in battle (she also contemplated the possibility that he might kill one of her relatives). The irony that it is violence at the hands of Arabs that brings about Huda’s tragedy is profoundly poignant. And yet in another twist, the widowed Huda is pregnant and distraught over the dilemma of how to raise her child – as a Jew or an Arab – each option presenting agonizing consequences for her.

In A Trumpet in the Wadi, Israel is deeply flawed but it is not a villain persecuting a blameless victim. Palestinian and Arab society share the blame for Huda’s unhappiness, and Jewish Israeli society, despite its faults is a source of beauty and goodness for her.

I share this read of A Trumpet in the Wadi with misgivings and ambivalence. Especially at this vulnerable moment, I am very protective of the country that I love. Moreover, for all of my sense of the nuance and complexity of our conflict, much of this moment is clear and unambiguous for me. Finally, I do not share Michael’s political positions and I am uneasy about his tone.

Nevertheless, because of the extreme harm that I fear critics from without and from within are causing with unthoughtful lazy clichés, dogmatic misplaced ideology and counterproductive name calling, I felt moved to highlight this alternative.

Alongside my read of A Trumpet in the Wadi, there is another piece of Sami Michael’s work that I think bears reflection at this moment – his reception within Israel. Michael was awarded honorary doctorates by, Ben Gurion University, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Haifa. He received many awards and prizes from Israeli establishment and governmental bodies including the President’s prize for Hebrew Literature. This says much about Israel’s capacity to tolerate and even embrace soul searching introspection and alternative voices. Israel cannot be summed up in a caricature, even a book as provocative as A Trumpet in the Wadi demonstrates that as does Michael’s place in Israeli literary history.

At the 1931 World Zionist congress, Chaim Weizmann quipped at his bellicose vociferous opponents that while the walls Jericho had fallen at the blowing of trumpets, he never heard of walls having been erected by such means. It seems to me that the sounds of A Trumpet in the Wadi, have the potential to both tear down walls and construct something positive in their place.

From the blog of Ross Singer at The Times of Israel

13/02/2024

An Arab Moslem Israeli take on the conflict in general and post Oct. 7 in particular. Resonates very deeply with me and if you don't know who Lucy Aharish is, I highly highly recommend taking the time to watch this:

Lucy Aharish is one of the most prominent television broadcasters in Israel—and the very first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language Israe...

13/11/2023

John Oliver just did a piece on the Israel-Hamas war. Here is my response:

From the blog of Ross Singer at The Times of Israel

16/10/2023

https://twitter.com/OneWorldCNN/status/1712911106258202946

"As a Muslim, this is not Islam — what Hamas is doing in the name of religion — they’re not Muslims. They’re monsters." Arab-Israeli TV anchor joins us for a very emotional interview as Israelis of all backgrounds reel from Saturday’s attacks.

15/10/2023

New episode of my podcast:

An exploration of the discussion of the practice of tearing (קריעה) upon seeing the cities of Judah in their destruction as a contra to the common anti-Zionist claim that Jewish communal identity was solely religious before the end of 19th century. In fact we can see longing for Jewish sovereig...