“And Rachel… had hard labor… it came to pass as her soul was departing… Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Efrata (Bethlehem). And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave, the same as is on Rachel’s grave until this day.”

This week, Heshvan 11 (Thursday, Oct. 29) is that day of Mother Rachel’s passing. I just might light a candle. That’s what family does. I’m her kid.

I only wish I could be out there on the West Bank, visiting her today with the hundreds of others, my family. That place where Rachel sleeps, a place I love to go and sit quietly, a place I won’t be able to visit if Obama and J Street have the Jew-free West Bank they’re calling for. According to Obama and J Street, where Rachel is buried is no place for Jews, “illegal,” because Jews were kicked out of there in 1948 and only came back when the IDF crossed the Green Line in the sweetness of June, 1967. I guess they figure that once a Jew is kicked out he upsets the Palestinians too much if that Jew comes back. Telling Jews that they don’t have the right to live in (or around) Bethlehem, let alone the expectation of visiting Rachel safely, well, that hurts. The day may come when Jews will have to leave, as we’ve had to leave other places before, but for Obama and J Street to be so happily and eagerly carrying the Arab hammer makes one wonder.

J Street doesn’t get it. AIPAC does. That’s why AIPAC — and settlers, Evangelicals, Sderot cab drivers, Bibi, and Israelis who ride busses, among others — feel like blood, like family, while J Street feels like a heartless stranger.

Yeah, me and Franky laughin’ and drinkin’
Nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria
As the band played “Night of the Johnstown flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’, like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family, well he just ain’t no good
(Bruce Springsteen, Highway Patrolman)

October 27, 2009

JERUSALEM (JTA) – An Israeli basketball coach apologized for making a scene after being ejected from his team’s exhibition game against the New York Knicks.

Pini Gershon, head coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv, delayed the Oct. 18 game in Madison Square Garden for about 10 minutes when he refused to leave the court after being ejected with two technical fouls.

Gershon issued an apology Monday to NBA Commissioner David Stern and Knicks President Donnie Walsh.

The statement, which was reprinted in The New York Times, said: “Having had time to reflect on my actions while our team was in New York, I would like to apologize to the New York Knicks franchise, the NBA and basketball fans not only at Madison Square Garden but throughout the country. Our trip to the U.S. was for a wonderful cause — the children of Migdal Ohr — and hopefully a few minutes of bad behavior on my behalf won’t detract from all the good that was accomplished by our spirited competition with the Knicks and the Clippers.”

Maccabi team President Shimon Mizrahi also sent a letter of apology.

The Times reported that Stern issued a statement in response: “The apology was unnecessary — and accepted. We have only the highest regard for Maccabi Tel Aviv, their ownership, coaches, players, and our longtime friend Shimon Mizrahi.”

[JM- Things went better, two nights later, in L.A. where Maccabi Tel Aviv lost to the Clippers without incident. Here's our take on the first Knicks-Maccabi game in 2007.]

(Everything below is excerpted from an e-mail sent by Hebron’s David Wilder)

In 1165 Moshe ben Maimon, known as Maimonides or the Rambam, visited Eretz Yisrael. In the preface to his commentary on the Talmudic tractate of Rosh Hashana he writes of his visit to Hebron.

“And on the first day of the week, the ninth day of the month of MarCheshvan, I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the graves of my forefathers in the Cave of Machpela. And on that very day I stood in the Cave and I prayed, praised be G-d for everything. And these two days, the sixth (when he prayed on Temple Mount in Jerusalem) and the ninth of Mar-Cheshvan I vowed to make as a special holiday and in which I will rejoice with prayer, food and drink. May the Lord help me to keep my vows… At the edge of the field is the house of Avraham, And it is forbidden to build a home there, in respect to Avraham.”

A friend of mine told me the following story:

Several years ago a famous rabbi visited Hebron with many of his disciples. Upon arriving, he told his Hebron host, “I almost didn’t come.”

The rabbi explained: “When the famous holy Rabbi Chaim ben Atar (known as the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh) traveled to the city of Meron (in the Galil) to the tomb of Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai) he first imposed upon himself many hardships and suffering, by fasting, by rolling in the snow, and other physical afflictions, in order to purify himself… Then, when he reached Meron, he crawled on his hands and legs to the site itself, out of fear and awe.”

The Rabbi continued: Knowing this, how could I dare allow myself to visit the caves of Machpela, the tomb of our Patriarchs and Matriarchs?!”

His host looked at him and asked, “but you are here – you came anyhow.”

The Rabbi answered, “Yes, I did come. I decided that it is permissible to visit your father and mother, even if your clothes are stained and dirty.”

A poignant story, but with a very profound message. Ma’arat HaMachpela - Hebron, is not only the home the founders of our people, the roots of Judaism and all monotheism, the beginning of modern ‘civilized’ civilization. Hebron is the home of our mothers and fathers, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa – that simple, that deep. Mommy and Daddy will always welcome their children home, notwithstanding anything!

On Nov. 21 the New York-based Hebron Fund will host its annual Dinner. The funds raised at this event allow Hebron’s Jewish community to continue to work on behalf of the Jewish people, keeping Hebron and Ma’arat HaMachpela accessible to anyone and everyone.

J Street, a devious and dangerous neo-Jewish organization, an anti-Israel group with the Orwellian cynicism to call itself “pro-Israel,” is having a major gathering next week. They invited Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren to speak. So far, he’s blown them off. Wisely. (Update: The embassy announced that the Ambassador won’t be going but someone from the embassy will attend simply as an observer. After all, these guys have to be carefully watched.)

Why should the Ambassador of Israel encourage the idea that J Street, which has worked to undermine Israel’s democratically elected leaders, is part of the pro-Israel Zionist community? They’re not. There’s no need to show J Street the same level of respect that the pluralism-happy Jewish community shows to a normative Jewish organization, any more than pluralistic respect should be given to the Neturei Karta guys who visited and gave cover to Ahmadinijad’s anti-Zionist and Holocaust denial conference in Tehran. J Street is shaping up as the far left equivalent of Neturei Karta. If anything, Neturei Karta is more honest. They don’t claim to be “pro-Israel.” A pro-Israel organization wouldn’t keep silent, they’d be outraged, when the Obama administration says that Israeli sovereignty in all post-1967 territory — including Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, including the Kotel — is  illegal. That’s not “pro-Israel.”

Has J Street ever defended Israel without, at the same time, establishing moral equivalency between Israel and her enemies. They didn’t even do that during the Gaza war. when bullets were flying at Jewish soldiers defending Sderot.

But all this is easily explained. J Street isn’t a pro-Israel lobby, it’s a pro-Obama lobby. J Street’s founder even told The New York Times (Sep. 13, 2009), “Our No. 1 agenda is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”

The number one agenda of the teacher’s union is teachers, not helping the mayor. Even during the gun-friendly Republican years, the number one agenda of the National Rife Association was gun-owners, not Bush or Reagan. The number one agenda of absolutely every lobby in Washington is the best interests of what it claims to be a lobby for, not to work “number one” for the most powerful man in the world, not to work for the politician with whom they should be in honest negotiation, the government to whom the lobby must petition for help. That’s true of every lobby but one — J Street. We already have the National Jewish Democratic Council. They do a beautiful job supporting Obama. God bless the NJDC. But a real “pro-Israel” lobby has a different job. The job of a lobby is to be like a lawyer representing a client. That lawyer’s first agenda has to be the client, not the judge.

If you, dear reader, ever found yourself in court, with a lawyer whose first agenda was not you but what was good for the judge, you’d fire that lawyer and fast, no matter how much you liked the judge.

J Street is not a lobby, it’s a fifth column, more an arm of Obama’s White House than the pro-Israel community that looks to support the decisions made by Israeli democracy. This doesn’t mean that many J Street members aren’t sincere, and do think that the White House crude pressure on Israel is good for Israel. So what if some J Streeters are sincere? Many Jewish intellectuals at City College in the 1930s and 1940s were very sincere Communists, but for all their Jewish intellectual sincerity the fact remains that the number one agenda of the American Communist Party in those years was what was good for Stalin’s Kremlin, not what was good for the American worker (let alone for Russian Jews).

At a certain point, at the outer reaches of a frozen frontier, pluralism ends. Pluralism is not a suicide pact. Despite J Street’s misrepresentations, the People of Israel have shown at the ballot box that they strongly support Netanyahu’s government, and polls show that only four percent of Israelis — four percent! — have positive feelings about Obama’s (read: J Street’s) heartless, callous policies toward Jerusalem and Israelis.

A case can be made that J Street is not even a Jewish organization. It may have some Jewish members but it lacks a Jewish heart.  

Are Heksher Tzedek rabbis, are the Uri L’Tzedek ethical preachers, any better than the Rubashkins of Agriprocessors? Not when it come to Sukkot. When it’s Sukkos time, just days after Yom Kippur, ethics be damned.

It’s a funny thing about all those rabbis who talk “social justice” and lame cliches such as Tikkun Olam. When it comes to Agriprocessors or other kosher meat suppliers these rabbis say they care deeply about the workers, their wages, the management’s economic purity, honesty and decency without which, these rabbis insist, kashrut can’t be kosher.

But when it comes to selling esrogim in their own neighborhoods, these same rabbis and preachers turn into uber capitalists. The George Bailey masquerade is over and they turn into Mr. Potter. When it comes to Sukkot, these Pottersville rabbis care about no one but the esrog racketeers, without any concern for the consumer, let alone the foreign workers harvesting the esrog fruits and palm fronds.

For all the concern by Heksher Tzedek rabbis and their fellow-traveling scolds that workers be paid at least 115 percent of the minimum wage, what are to make of the fact that there was not one Heksher Tzedek-type community that I know in which an esrog could have been purchased before Sukkot for less than a several hundred percent mark-up over cost? Where’s the economic decency or ethics in that? When it comes to phony unethical economics, these esrog racketeers have to work their way up to being even half as decent as the Rubashkins. At least the Rubashkins, when they owned Agriprocessors, made kosher meat affordable, which is more than these rabbis do with lulavs and esrogs.

In most of the United States, local esrog sales are tightly controlled by synagogues and their in-house Masters of Ethics, or under the auspices of synagogues, or in places such as Jewish bookstores in which a dubious tax-deductible kick-back is given to synagogues or some other religious address. Therefore, most suburban Jews, or Jews living far from the more economically friendly Orthodox neighborhoods of the inner city,  have no option whatsoever but to pay exorbitant, extortionist prices for a lulav-esrog set that is far beyond the few dollars (less than $10) that a citrus fruit and a palm frond actually cost.

Instead of these rabbis making it easier for Jews in these hard times to celebrate Sukkot, they instead make it easier for a cartel to sell these holy requisites of lulav and esrog for the voodoo prices of $36 or $72 or $180 or $360 (as the base price, there might be some variation by a dollar or two for hondlers). You know this is voodoo economics by the cute pricing according to Chai instead of any realistic gradations.

Why do ethical finger-waggers point to Agriprocessors and other kashrut businesses? Because their synagogues don’t get a kick-back from Iowa meat-packers like they do from the local esrog cartel? Because they take esrog extortion for granted? Where is the ethical component in all this, among the clergy who hold themselves up as the Great Ombudsmen of Torah Ethics? If on Rosh Hashanah, these rabbis arranged for a neighborhood squeeze so that shuls get a shady tax-deductible kick-back from $360 cases of honey and apples, or if pre-Passover they enable extortion and kick-backs from matzoh companies, so a family had to pay $36 or $72 or more for a good box of matzoh, would congregants stand for that?

In fact, these rabbis would get fined by the government, which monitors Passover prices but not Sukkos prices. (Maybe the government, and the IRS, or the RICO investogators should be looking into this, as well). And yet a family needs a lulav and esrog for Sukkos as much as we need matzoh on Pesach. These rabbinic-supervised rip-offs show these Heksher Tzedek-types to be cruel in their deliberate stealing from economically-strapped fellow Jews who trust their local rabbis, cruel in rabbinic-endorsed robbery from the old, the weak, and others whose circumstances don’t allow travel to the few and dwindling places where the prices are slightly more fair.

Where’s the ethics and justice here? Where’s the holiness in highway robbery? Where’s Uri L’Tzedek and Heksher Tzedek and Yeshivat Chovivei Torah and JTS and Hebrew Union and all the rabbinic centers that scold Jewish business owners about ethics but then abandon their own ethics through silence, complicity and conspiracy regarding the shameless gouging of Jews trying to observe Sukkot? If the extortion begins not with the rabbis but with the esrog wholesalers, what have the rabbinic organizations done to break that cartel? Anything? Ever? Or is it too lucrative?

Or is it that Agriprocessors was an opportunity to embarass the black-hat Orthodox — can’t pass that up — with that despicable old cheap shot that Orthodox Jews care only about ritual but WE care about ethics instead. Aint we swell. Or do we only care about ethics for the Orthodox?

These are hard times. Many have lost jobs or have suffered cutbacks in salaries. The season of holy days have passed. But let’s see even one of these self-flattering “ethical” rabbis stands up and says that next Sukkot he or she will be fighting on side of the Jewish consumer, on the side of a simple Jew trying to observe the holy days, rather than being on the side of racketeers. Perhaps low-end esrog prices can begin at $15 — still enabling a healthy profit — instead of low-end prices beginning at least double that, or triple that, in some neighborhoods.

A few weeks ago, there was a inflatable “rat” placed by union workers outside one particular synagogue that wasn’t paying union wages. Next Sukkot there ought to be an inflatable “rat” outside every American sukkah where the rabbi is on the side of the bad guys.

I don’t get it, how did Obama get the peace prize and not Chamberlain? At least Chamberlain came home from Munich with a piece of paper.

And don’t dismiss the prize because Arafat won it. Don’t compare Obama’s accomplishments to Arafat’s. That’s not fair to Arafat. At least Arafat had the Oslo Accords to show for himself.  (That’s pretty grim, when you compare Obama to Arafat and Arafat comes out more worthy of the prize.)

Obama actually has been less flexible than Arafat. Arafat didn’t demand that all settlements be frozen before Arafat got involved with Oslo. By Obama’s opting to negotiate with Israel as if he was some colonial bully, as if he personally inherited the British Mandate, as if he was a history-twisting hardliner negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians — demanding as a prelude to surrender negotiations that the Juden not be allowed even “natural growth” in east Jerusalem, or in settlements such as Maale Adumim and Efrat, places that even Arafat agreed could remain as Israel — what he did was to destroy any chance of Middle East peace for the past nine months. And into the future.

By the way, did the dead and the dying, did the occupied peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq — oppressed by bullets and bombs fired by land and air forces under Commander-In-Chief Bush Obama — get to have a say in Obama’s prize? How can Bush Obama, a president who oversees Guantanamo, that most evil of all prison camps, (surely worse than even Shalit’s prison, wouldn’t most World Progressives say?), be worthy of a peace prize? Guntanamo must be worse than Shalit’s prison because more liberals around the world and on college campuses have demanded that Guantanamo be closed but they don’t demand that the prison holding Shalit be closed. The world must be right, as Obamaphiles keep telling us. The world is always right. America and Israel are always wrong, unless they agree with “the world.”   

Here’s one reason why Obama got the prize. He kept saying “the world” was right about Israel. Encouraged by J Street Jews, Obama tried to throw Israel under the bus, the greatest single thing that anyone can do for peace. All right, so maybe Obama didn’t throw Israel under the bus, but at least he deserves credit for trying, and the Norwegians see that. Obama reconnected America to that world of cynicism.

Instead of comparing the unworthy Obama to the worthy Arafat, and the worthier Chamberlain, better to compare Obama’s prize to Jimmy Carter’s a few years ago. Jimmy Carter, now that’s pretty fast company for Obama, the best president in the history of the United States world. As one Newsweek editor said of Obama, “He’s sort of God,” the way Obama cares about the whole world, not just his own country. There must be dancing in the Street of J.

Here’s why Chamberlain deserved the prize in 1938 far more than Obama does today. Chamberlain got a piece of paper, the kind that J Street would drool over. It’s the exact same piece of paper that Obama wants from Abbas or Hamas. And what’s the one very good thing about Obama getting the prize? Most leaders get into the worst trouble in pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize, not by what they do after they get it. Now that Obama has it, he has one less reason to throw Israel to the wolves. The other good thing about the prize is that it embarasses Obama, it diminishes him, by forcing even his sycophants to recognize that his adulation has far, far outstripped his accomplishments. It diminishes him by illuminating just how ridiculous it looks to treat this Muslimophile-who-isn’t-a Muslim as if he was the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, to treat him as a god, a Huey Long Kingfish, deserving constant adoration instead of an accounting. What we actually have here is a J Streeter who has to work his way up to a Neville Chamberlain wannabe.

Now, J Streeters, let’s take a trip to London, to a rainy September day in the autumn of ‘38. It was one of the happiest days in the history of the peace process. See up there, it’s Neville Chamberlain, and the crowd is singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” One thing you have to give that Chamberlain: He wasn’t intransigent like Netanyahu or that terrible Avigdor Lieberman. He was pro-peace, Chamberlain was. He believed in land for peace, albeit Czechoslovakia’s land. Hey, Obama believes in land for peace, too, like Chamberlain, whatever land the other guy wanted. That’s one thing you had to admit. Chamberlain — like Obama — was a “good fellow.”

From the AP archive: Sept. 30, 1938
Chamberlain Returns With Czechoslovak Peace Pact
LONDON, SEPT. 30 (AP) - Prime Minister Chamberlain flew home today, to vast, cheering throngs, with a peace pact on Czechoslovakia and strong hopes for a broad European settlement as the fruits of his diplomacy.

”Settlement of the Czech problem, which now has been achieved,” Chamberlain said, ”is in my view only a prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.”

Smiling broadly, the prime minister waved his hat with schoolboy enthusiasm at the excited thousands. He held up, for the crowd to see, the joint declaration he and Adolf Hitler signed this morning in a private talk after the Four-Power conference.
Then he said: ”The German chancellor and I regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”

He stepped from his plane at 5:39 p.m. (11:39 a.m. New York time) to mad cheering by excited crowds that had gathered at Heston Airport to give him a triumphant homecoming from this third flight to Germany.

The prime minister was handed a letter from King George as soon as he emerged from the airplane.

One of his first duties was to go to Buckingham Palace and report personally to the King on the achievements of the Four-Power conference at Munich yesterday.

First, however, the prime minister told the crowd there were two things he wanted to say:

”I have received an immense number of letters during all these anxious times. So has my wife - letters of support and approval and gratitude - and I cannot tell you what encouragement that has been to me.

”I want to thank the British people for what they have done, and next, I want to say that settlement of the Czechoslovak problem, which now has been achieved, is in my view only a prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.

”This morning, I had another talk with German Chancellor Herr Hitler and here is the paper which bears his name on it as well as mine.

”Some of you, perhaps, already have heard what it contains, but I would just like to read it to you.”

It was raining, but the crowd stood and listened.

As he finished reading, there were chants of ”For he’s a jolly good fellow.”

Chamberlain then entered his auto and sped directly to Buckingham Palace.

In response to a clamoring crowd in front of the palace, the king and queen ushered the prime minister and Mrs. Chamberlain to a balcony, where they received tremendous cheers.

When he got back to Downing Street, there was another crowd, and Chamberlain spoke from a window.

”It is peace for our time,” he said, declaring that ”for the second time in history, there has come back from Germany peace with honor.” (The other time was at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.)

The crowd sang the national anthem, while anti-aircraft searchlights, put in place a few days ago in preparation for war, moved their beams rapidly across the sky.

”My good friends,” said Chamberlain, ”I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now I recommend that you go home and sleep quietly and peacefully in your beds.”

Hours before Chamberlain’s plane was expected, roads leading to Heston Airport were blocked with automobiles, bicycles and pedestrians.

In the throng was the entire Cabinet, out to greet him on his return from the mission to Germany which he started yesterday with his ministers’ surprise send-off.

In the milling throngs were school children waving Union Jacks.

Lloyds’ rang the famous Lutine Bell in celebration of the peace settlement.

Viscount Halifax, foreign secretary, weary from long hours during the crisis was given rousing cheers by crowds in Downing Street as he left to meet his chief, Sir John Simon, chancellor of the exchequer, similarly was acclaimed.

Boos and cries of ”throw them out!” dinned in the lit street as a deputation representing a national unemployed workers’ movement called at No. 10 to leave a resolution censuring the government for cooperating with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

###

Some think that Israel’s settlements have done nothing for Israel politically. In fact, the settlements have given Israel something to give away. “Land for peace” – in the mouths of most Arabs, the most cynical phrase since Arbeit Macht Frei — requires land. If Israel didn’t have West Bank land, it would be asked to give up other land instead.

In an article last year on the Suez War in Azure, the excellent journal of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, Michael Oren (before becoming Israel’s ambassador to the United States) pointed out that in 1954, when there was no West Bank territory to give back, the “land for peace” plan included large swaths of the Negev as the Israeli land to be sacrificed. In return for the Negev, wrote Oren, Egypt “would grant nonbelligerency—not peace–to Israel. Though Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rejected Alpha [as the plan was called], American and British leaders were prepared to exert immense pressure on him to implement the plan should Cairo accept it. Indeed, the Egyptians had long demanded the Negev as a land bridge between them and the Arab world. In secret meetings with Israeli diplomats after the armistice, Egyptian representatives repeatedly demanded that Israel forfeit all of the Negev — 62% of [Israel’s] territory — as the price of ending the conflict.”

Imagine if there was a J Street back in 1954. J Street – which never accepted the idea that Israel has any rights whatsoever in the disputed territories, only that Jews promptly surrender whatever the Americans and Arabs demand – would surely have embraced the Negev “land for peace” plan. Why wouldn’t they? All white flags look alike.

Check out Chol HaMoed at the Coney Island sideshow.

Today is October 6.

Oct. 6, 1939 was a Friday, Simchas Torah. World War II was just five weeks old. People still built sukkahs and were sitting in them, 70 years ago this week. They said “Farewell To The Sukkah.” — “Just as I have fulfilled [the mitzvah] and dwelled in this sukkah, so may I merit in the coming year to dwell in the sukkah of the Leviathan.” — On Simchas Torah, did children in villages tie an old man’s tzitzis to the bima? Kids gathered under the tallis for the kids’ aliyah. Women lit candles in Warsaw that Friday at 5:39. They still had candles bought in summer. It was Shabbos Bereshis. And there was morning and there was evening.

To the west, all was relatively quiet in Amsterdam, and would remain so until the first Nazi roundup of Jews in early 1941. That summer… Hey, isn’t that Anne Frank looking out of the window?

There are plenty of good men and women on the left who’ve begun speaking out against the liberal elites in Hollywood defending Roman Polanski. Perhaps this shows that there’s a chance that some moral leftists, down the road, will also begin to see and expose the rotten flooring beneath the “preening, fatuous” arguments against Israel, as articulated by that other “liberal cultural elite” on college campuses and in the White House.

Here’s Katha Pollitt in The Nation (Oct. 1): “The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. They may make great movies, write great books, and design beautiful things, they may have lots of noble humanitarian ideas and care, in the abstract, about all the right principles: equality under the law, for example. But in this case, they’re just the white culture-class counterpart of hip-hop fans who stood by R. Kelly and Chris Brown and of sports fans who automatically support their favorite athletes when they’re accused of beating their wives and raping hotel workers. No wonder Middle America hates them.”