anti-Semitism, imported
From Ynet, a sad and disturbing story about certain immigrants from the Former Soviet Union — many of whom are not Jews — whose anti-Semitic attitudes find fertile grounds for expression in the Jewish State. Often their bigotry is directed at other Russian immigrants:
Ella Shapira from Tel Aviv is a veteran immigrant who came to Israel in 1976 from Leningrad. In her hometown, she was not able to pursue a career or get accepted to a university because she was a Jew. She personally experienced anti-Semitism and hoped that she could forget this unpleasant experience upon her arrival in Israel.
However she can tell of the many hateful utterances she has heard in the Russian stores, in public parks, or just in the streets. One incident, in 2001, even became physical, when a drunken man attacked her and yelled Russian slurs at her. “I walked in the streets and cried. “To where have we come, if in the Jewish state they humiliate me because I am Jewish”, she says.
Shapira is angered by the comprehensive disregard of the problem. “This is a subject that no one likes or is afraid to speak of. For the workers in the Jewish Agency, bringing new immigrants to Israel is a good business, many people profit from it. But they are bringing people who have no connection to Judaism, and some who have been brought up to hate it. I often encounter these situations. My outer appearance does not reveal my origins. Thus, a few weeks ago I went into a clothing store and the two saleswomen began to talk about me in Russian: ‘Here is a dirty Jew, she is going to touch everything and make it dirty.’ They were shocked when I answered them in Russian and explained to them that it is forbidden to speak that way”.
“I once heard a group of kids next to a school, cursing each other with the words “stinking Jew”. I decided that I had to approach them and find out why they had so much hatred towards Jews. They explained that until they came to Israel, they had no idea that they had any Jewish blood. Their parents and relatives, including those who had come to Israel- hated Jews…the word “Jew” in Russia was considered a bad word. Most of them were embarrassed to be Jews, hated it and learned from the Russians to hate Jews”.
Kinda makes one wonder why people who are inclined to paint swastikas on walls and desecrate mezuzahs would move to Israel to begin with. But the other level at which this story is disturbing is the number of other Israelis who will use it (and do) to make sweeping generalizations about Russian immigrants.
::sigh::
Hair today, gone tomorrow
Mother in Israel explains what finally got her son to go from this:
to this:
There is even a reference to the Palestinian conflict. Check it out.
UNIFIL: Israel was telling the truth
With the foreign media focused on the non-story at Mugrabi gate, Yonatan brings our attention to this tidbit from Haaretz,which probably won’t make it to CNN:
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) accepted on Thursday Israel’s version of the events that concluded in an exchange of fire between the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese Army at the border late Wednesday.
UNIFIL patrolled the area around Israel’s and Lebanon’s shared border, photographed the site, and concluded that IDF troops operated entirely within Israeli territory.
The Lebanese Army on Wednesday fired warning shots at IDF troops, claiming that the troops had entered Lebanese territory.
The incident occurred north of the border fence that Israel erected several dozen meters within Israeli territory, but south of the actual international border between the two countries.
Israeli weddings: Revealed and Untucked
Filed under: History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness
Shmuel writes from the Golan:
I always try to stop and pick up hitchhikers – it is part of Israeli culture – after all, for years I benefited from tons of rides. On the way home, we spoke about when he grew up on the Moshav and as we approached the turn off into the Moshav, he told me to drop him off at the corner.
He needed to continue heading south towards his cousin’s Bat Mitzvah party. I was shocked, because he was dressed in a faded t-shirt and green cargo pants.
Ah, yes, the moment when Westerners in Israel come to realize that dressing up is almost never de rigeur. I wrote about this phenomenon recently for the Catered Events section of the New York Jewish Week. The article, which focuses on weddings, is here.
Exerpt here:
But as much as Israeli brides prefer to “go glam” more than their American counterparts, other members of the wedding party may expect to dress down. While an American groom will wear a suit and tie, or even a tuxedo, Israeli men typically turn up at their own weddings “in a nice shirt,” Summerfield said. Roth added that tucking in said shirt is not a requirement.
How much more so, then, are siblings of the bride and groom free from the American expectation to go shopping for a gown or suit, or have their hair and makeup done. “They wear what they would wear on a date,” Roth observed. “In Israeli society, dressing up doesn’t make you closer to the bride or groom, so why should they? Not wearing a suit or a gown doesn’t take away from their respect.” No surprise, then, that other guests may turn up in jeans and pressed shirts, or in their army uniforms.
“It blows Americans away, that people turn up in jeans and sandals,” Summerfield said. “You can’t stop people, and why should you? Israelis don’t look at it as being disrespectful. In general they don’t dress up so much. It’s very hard to find an evening dress here. You have to go to Tel Aviv, and search for it. There’s no demand for it.”
Roth said that her own wedding invitation specified “evening attire preferred,” but that only “the Anglo crowd” – native English speakers in Israel – attempt to enforce a dress code. “Israelis do not understand it,” she said, “and those that do find it offensive. They wonder ‘are you my mother? Why are you telling me how to dress?’ The Israeli mentality is less concerned with what they are wearing as a representation of how much respect they have for an event. It’s true of how they dress for work, and for synagogue, and for weddings.”
Note that the one person at an Israeli event who “dresses up” is the bride. And how. Except that the “in” wedding dresses these days here are not a matter of elegance, but rather of seeing just how many beads and rhinestones one can fit onto the skimpiest dress possible. On Saturday night I attended a trade show for Events vendors in Jerusalem: musicians, photographers, caterers, etc. It was just as I expected. There were models everywhere wearing incredibly revealing — in my mind, tacky — wedding dresses (the examples included in this post are quite representative and actually have a little more material in them than most of the other dresses that were featured there.)
On the other hand, I found one vendor who specializes in dressing the groom. His whole catalogue was full of photos of men in dress pants and suit jackets, wearing different kinds of nice white shirts. All untucked. No ties. The height, the height I say, of . . . um . . . something . . . .
BananaramaBibi
David Bogner’s latest post is a treatment of his thoughts, both pro and con, about Bibi Netanyahu as a politician and representative of Israel, and also of the question of just how, exactly, do Israelis refer to former prime ministers? The impetus for the post was his participation in a conference call with Bibi, organized by One Jerusalem.
On the one hand, I was pleased to hear Bibi compare the world’s current complacency with Iran to the policy of appeasement Germany enjoyed in the years before WWII. I was also interested to hear him suggest some interesting measures that might be employed against Iran such as economic isolation/sanctions.
However, I was disappointed that nobody thought to test his WWII analogy and suggestion of economic isolation with the obvious complication that it was partly the policy of economic isolation that contributed to, if not Germany’s, then at least Japan’s decision to lash out.
But barring that, I liked that Bibi wasn’t simply tossing around empty rhetoric about how the world should fear a nuclear Iran. He was at least exploring theories of how best to prevent that specter from becoming a reality.
Full post, with a link to the whole conference call, here.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts