Poverty in Jaffa

August 30, 2006 by · 6 Comments
Filed under: Food, Life 

One of the most pernicious stereotypes of Jews is that we are all rich.

Israeli blogger Yudit Ilany bursts that bubble, in response to a new report by Israel’s National Insurance Institute showing that 25 percent of Israelis overall, and 33 percent of children, fall into the category of “poor.”
poverty

The poor don’t need the report, they experience poverty daily. And they also know something else, it’s not going to end soon. Many were children of poor parents, and their children will probably be poor as well. “That’s how it goes”. Or is it? Why?

Israel has 4 (or was it three?) ministers without portfolio, but there is no Minister of Welfare, after all in that particular field all is “well”.

In Jaffa, poverty means no electiricty and water (or illegal connections, circumventing the meters, which is quite dangerous as it goes).
It means not having enough food (i’m not talking about quality, but about quantity).
It means not buying prescription medicine for your child as you cannot afford it, or it would imply not buying bread for all of the family. It means not having schoolbooks. It means not attending schooltrips, because your parents haven’t paid the bills for those for many years now, it means sharing one pair of shoes with another family member, never getting a real present when the holidays arrive, it means never having visited Tel Aviv although you live a 10-minute busride away in a suburb, Jaffa. It means having no glass in your windows, so it gets really cold, drafty and wet inside the house during winter. It means being kicked out of your council housing 3 days after you came home from a cancer operation, stitches still bleeding, sleeping outside, when you come back, sick, from chemotherapyIt means a 18 year old girl leaving school to provide for all her brothers and sisters, as the family has no other income from her underpaid job as a checkout girl, it means a 12 year old child going into prostitution and i can go on and on and on.

ALL details here are based on families i know myself, personally.

Yudit offers her own ideas of how to solve the problem, and people in Israel have much the same arguments over how to eradicate poverty that Americans do. What is obvious is that systemic change is badly needed. The question is, what sort of change? And whose responsibility is it to effect it?

empty fridge

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Life imitating art imitating life

August 30, 2006 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Immigrant Moments 

greys anatomy

I love this. John, an American transplant to Israel, uses an episode of Grey’s Anatomy to help him come to terms with the possibility of suicide bombings in his new hometown. How American is that?

I really like Grey’s Anatomy. It’s been playing on the Yes cable network here in Israel. Thank God for TV distribution.

Last night I watched the latest episode. We’re behind the US – so don’t leave comments giving away details. No spoilers please! :) Anyway, it’s the episode where this guy gets bazooka ammo stuck in his chest and there is a lot of drama around getting it out – he lives, a woman gives birth, people have sex. What more could you want from a hour of TV?!

. . . . Toward the end of the episode, the bomb explodes while a guy from the bomb squat carries it to dispose of it. You see the explosion and at one point his empty bulletproof vest goes flying through the air. Today I went with my friend J to eat a late lunch in downtown Jerusalem. While we were sitting there, I kept thinking back that episode – the horror of the explosion. There have been many homicide bombings in a 2 block radius from where I sat for lunch. I thought about that for a minute and imagined what that must have been like. The visual from Grey’s Anatomy helped me really connect with the power of these explosions.

Thank God that there haven’t been many homicide bombings here lately. (Knock on wood, tfu tfu, tfu, salt over the shoulder, etc.) We’ve been busy dealing with a different type of war and it’s aftermath. I’m still gradually coming to terms with where I live and what that means.

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Freedom of Expression

August 30, 2006 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Israeli blogger Idan Gazit takes a moment to appreciate his freedom to say pretty much whatever he wants on his blog, no matter how negative he is about the Israeli government, as opposed to two of his favorite Egyptian bloggers, who remain anonymous, for obvious reasons:

Today I went back and reread my optimist/pessimist pair of articles, Just after checking in wth BigPharaoh and Sandmonkey’s blogs.

What struck me most is the amazing freedom I have to criticise. I mean, Sandmonkey and BigPharaoh both seem to post anonymously so as to avoid persecution. I realized, in a more concrete fashion than I ever have, that I enjoy a priceless freedom to yap my trap. Amazing.

speak no evil

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Israelity – the slideshow!

August 30, 2006 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

Dave Bender has posted a portfolio of 145 pictures he’s taken in Israel over the last few weeks.

Unfortunately, Flickr is not allowing me to copy any of the images to post here, so you can get a taste. I’ve been fighting with it for half an hour. Just go see it for yourself!

See the slideshow here.

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Secular, and Educated

August 30, 2006 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, Israeliness 

Via Esther, news of a new “Secular Yeshiva” in Tel Aviv.

A “yeshiva” is a study hall/lecture center/ library in which one studies classical Jewish texts such as the Bible, Talmud, Jewish Law, and Jewish Philosophy. It’s not the sort of place that one is typically attracted to unless one believes in Jewish ideology of some kind.

Israel’s newest yeshiva has it all: Hassidism. Kabbalah. Gemara. Halacha. Combining military service and Torah studies. And every two weeks, on-site Shabbat observance. Huh?

If this sounds ideal to you, then consider enrolling in Tel Aviv’s newest yeshiva, along with 150 other non-religious students who have chosen to immerse themselves in a program of religious study that (at least to my Diaspora eye) closely mimics (or perhaps is “divinely inspired by”) the hesder approach to military approach, but with a secular bent.

An initiative of the BINA Center for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture, the secular yeshiva program features one year of study, followed by draft into the IDF “for full military service… interrupted by a one-year yeshiva study break,” according to a Ynet article. The program also contains two days a week of “social activity” in south Tel Aviv. (I assume this means social action activities, rather than sushi with friends or martinis on the tayelet with hotties in handkerchief tops.)

They’re hoping to create a “Tel-Avivi” approach to Jewish study, “like rabbinic study produced the Talmud ‘Bavli and the ‘Yerushalmi’.” But a central goal of this initiative is tikkun olam, and, according to their press release, they also “expect the Secular Yeshiva to will serve as a basis for creating indigenously non- (or Trans) denominational approaches to Jewishness that will be meaningful for Israelis. In addition to creating new forms of community in Israeli society, graduates will connect to existing pluralistic organizations; some may also find their way to the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel.”

With the vast cultural gulf between Israel’s religious and secular populations, many secular Israelis have eschewed the study of Judaism in any way. The problem is, that if one does not study Judaism because one does not wish to associate with religious people, then one is also bound to be ignorant about one’s religious, ideological, and cultural heritage. How can an Israeli understand Israeli literature if one doesn’t know the Bible, even as literature? How can one understand so many aspects of Israeli life if one does not know Jewish Law?

It seems that the founders of this new institution are tapping into an idea that has caught on in the last 20 years or so: that of teaching classical Jewish texts without forcing any sort of practical or ideological interpretation onto it. It’s the approach of “teach the texts, and let each student decide for himself or herself what to make of it — to put it into practice, or forget it, or say ‘that’s nice’ and just think about it every so often.”

So this secular yeshiva, where Jews can gain access to Jewish history and culture, without feeling that they have to toe any religious lines, is a great way to help ALL Jewish Israelis to understand Judaism – whether they decide to practice it, or not.

I do wonder, though, whether Ynet’s phrase “the holy city of Tel Aviv” is meant to be tongue in cheek.

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