Gershom Gorenberg

Synagogue and State: A Divorce Made in Heaven

by

I’ll be participating today in al New Israel Fund webcast:

Religion and State: Fundamentalism or Freedom?

Along with Naomi Chazan, Frances Raday, and Jafar Farah.

8 pm Israel time, 1pm EST, 10am PST www.nif.org/webcast

I don’t know how the discussion will develop, but I can describe my starting point: The best way for Jews in Israel to freely debate what it means to live in an independent country where they constitute the majority, and the best way for Judaism to develop and flourish here, is to disconnect the state and religion.

That is, the old secularists and religious camps in Israeli politics are both mistaken. The secularists assume that secularizing the state will complete the secularization of society. The Orthodox political establishment – religious Zionist and ultra-Orthodox – has always agreed with that proposition, and therefore opposed disestablishment. It has been sure that the way to protect Judaism is to link it to the state.

Read more

On Voting Across the Sea

by

Since Haim quoted me on the subject of voting in America – and since his father disagreed with me – I’ll explain how my view developed.

In my Jewish home, growing up, I learned that voting was a primary mitzvah, the mark of a responsible human being. In 1980, the first US election after I came to Israel, I tried voting. I wasn’t a citizen here yet. My absentee ballot arrived from California two days before the election, with a punchcard and a little curlycue of a wire to punch the chads out. Mail was taking about two weeks to get from Jerusalem to Los Angeles in those days. There was no way I could get the ballot back in time. For a while, I used the curlycue to clean my garlic press.

After that I didn’t try again for years. Experience showed that I probably wouldn’t succeed. Besides, like Haim, I felt that my life was here. I voted and protested here and wrote about Israeli politics, and called my wife every two hours when I had reserve duty in the ninth month of her pregnancy. In the ancient days of the 1980s and early 90s, I got my news of America from the foreign page of Ha’aretz, in Hebrew, in small doses. Why should I vote over there?

In 2004, I changed my mind.

Read more

Update: Bush and Lebanon; Obama, Israel and Islam

by
  • As I mentioned earlier , the Bush administration’s obstruction of peace talks between Israel and Syria has helped Hezbollah and Iran push for control of Lebanon. My new piece on the subject is now up at the American Prospect :

    The time, according to Hilal Khashan, was ten minutes past the ceasefire. That was another way of saying ten minutes after another Hezbollah victory, Khashan explained. I phoned Khashan — head of the political science department at Beirut’s American University — several days into Lebanon’s latest armed upheaval. He spoke in a strangely dispassionate tone I’ve heard before in Jerusalem and Ramallah, the voice of a man taking refuge from chaos in careful analysis.

    So far, Khashan said on Sunday night, the crisis that erupted last week has yielded “a major achievement” for Hezbollah. Iran, Hezbollah’s patron, has extended its influence in Lebanon. The obvious loser is the pro-Western government of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. From Beirut, U.S. support appears to be a phantom; Bush unwilling or incapable of supporting its Lebanese allies.

    From the slightly greater distance of Jerusalem, I’d add,

    Read more

Obama. What’s Complicated Here?

by

Gershom Gorenberg

Dan Kurtzer, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and an Orthodox Jew, is in Jerusalem for the 60th anniversary celebrations. This morning my wife heard him being interviewed on Israeli Radio, in Hebrew, about the U.S. election. Kurtzer explained that he’s backing Barack Obama.

This was not exactly a revelation. Kurtzer has explained his reasons for backing Obama at length . Here’s some key snippets:

…we have had eight years of disaster with respect to our foreign policy, and I have to share with you as an analyst, we have had eight years that have [compromised] the security of the state of Israel.
An administration that has ignored the search for peace in the Middle East to a point where you have chaos in the Palestinian Authority, and you have a sham process called the Annapolis process, in which our Secretary of State, whom I admire personally, travels to region and announces when she gets there that she is bringing no new ideas.
You have an administration that hasn’t engaged in the peace process, and so inherited a bad situation in 2001 and is leaving it in a worse situation in 2008. And you have an administration that has gotten us engaged in a war in Iraq that has not only cost American lives… but it’s now being called the $3 trillion war…And I would share with you that the cost to the security of Israel is incalculable.

Read more

This Country Is Unconstitutional (Perhaps for the Best)

by

Gershom Gorenberg

Prof. Yedidia Stern came to my shul yesterday to give a lecture in honor of Independence Day on creating a constitution for Israel. Stern teaches law at Bar-Ilan University and is a fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a think-tank that has been assiduously pushing the idea that Israel needs a written constitution. Stern is brilliant,articulate and – at a congregation made up largely of American immigrants – should have been preaching to the choir. As often happens to me, I found myself listening to the sermon agnostically.

Years ago, another brilliant law prof, David Kretzmer, punched a large hole in my American 5th-grade-civics-lesson faith in written constitution. A constitution is worth no more than the judges interpreting it, he said. The Soviet constitution looked gorgeous, but was irrelevant to how the Soviet Union was governed. Bolivia has had more constitutions than anyone seems able to count.

Read more

Department of Hope: Celebrating Israel’s 80th

by

What could Israel look like in 20 years, if we do things right? My article looking forward is now online at the National Post in Canada:

In Israel, 2028, Ibrahim Abdullah Hapalit is the reigning literary star. His first novel, Sinai, is based on his childhood escape from Darfur, across Egypt and the Sinai desert to the promised land. The last chapter, "Light," describes his parents’ ambivalence when he asked to light a Hanukkah menorah so he could be like the other children in his school. Critics rave over Hapalit’s Hebrew, built out of Biblical language and the Chinese-West African slang of south Tel Aviv’s immigrant alleys.

In Israel in the summer of 2028, no visitor to Jerusalem would skip outdoor Friday night services on the promenade overlooking the Old City from the south. Dozens of congregations meet there, a grand bazaar of Jewish religious styles. Rabbi Sarit Avihai,

Read more

Sorry to Disappoint You. We Are Not Facing Destruction

by

My cover story for Foreign Policy magazine, on seven myths about Israel and why they’re misleading, is still available only to paying customers at FP’s own site. But it’s been reprinted by a Texas paper that was kind enough to put it online .
Update: The article is no longer on the newspaper’s site, but at least for now can be read via Google cache here.

Here’s myth #4:

“Israel’s existence is in danger.”

Read more

Cause of Death: Capitalist Health Care

by

The best country in the world for a mother is Sweden. The 27th best country in the world for a mother is the United States, according to Save the Children’s “State of the World’s Mothers” report, just released.

Among the factors figured into the ratings are risk of maternal mortality, female life expectancy, and under-5 mortality rate. Norway and Iceland are in second and third place.

Why are those Scandanavian countries so high, and the U.S. – which spends wildly on health care – so low? The statistics reflect why Americans are being encouraged to explore life insurance policies with a greater sense of urgency. The answer to the above question could be because the Scandanavian countries have a long tradition of social democracy, and the United States has a market-driven health care system. There are some things that socialism does much better than capitalism. Health care is among them. Let’s be clear: More mothers die in childbirth, more infants and toddlers die in the United States because the U.S. does not have universal, government-backed health care. If we look at the patient experience, one would notice the growing displeasure in the healthcare system. You could see this blog to know more about this.

It means more people are calling out for law firms to help them get justice for these deaths and injures that were at the hands of trusted professions. You can find more here if you think this applies to you. It’s a sad but very real statistic that has to be focused on as a very real problem.

As Ezra Klein just wrote , the standard claim for American health care – no waiting for care – is nonsense. Some waits are hidden by poor reporting. More importantly, many people don’t wait for care – they don’t get it all.

The Save the Children report anachronistically lists Israel in Tier II, Less Developed Countries, so it doesn’t directly compare us to Sweden and the United States. In Tier II, Israel is the best place for mothers. Women’s life expectancy is higher than that in the U.S. (83 years in Israel, 81 in the U.S.). In Israel, 5 children out of 1,000 die under the age of 5. In the United States, 8 do.

Why is it healthier to live in Israel than in the United States? Uh, it’s not because life is less tense here, or because people drive better.

Read more

Make Films, Not War

by

Three days left to apply .

Reena Lazar of Peace It Together tells me that her organization is accepting applications until May 10 for this summer’s peace camp: A small group of Israeli, Palestinian and Canadian teens will spend three weeks together on an island near Vancouver learning leadership and communication skills and making films together. The follow-up program lasts for the full year afterwards.

I kid you not: You (or your 16-18-year-old kid) have been sitting around thinking about how adults have messed up the world,

Read more

Update: Pipes harms cranks’ image

by

At the Wonk Room , Matt Duss discusses attempts by the National Review to prove that Barack Obama might actually be a closet Muslim who (gasp!) studied Quran as a child in Indonesia. And here I thought the unhinged right was busy sliming Obama for his connections to his pastor.  What an interesting man that Obama is, what a religious innovator: A Muslim, a follower of a controversial black pastor, and a Marxist too. A one-man repertory theater, as talented as the Jews who were once accused of being bankers, communists, zionists and cosmopolitans all at once.

As prooftext for the Obama-is-Muslim attack, NR’s writer brings articles by none other than Pipes. "We don’t know if he is [Muslim], but we know Daniel Pipes is no crank," says NR’s Lisa Schiffren.

Matt agrees: Labeling Pipes a crank would libel all those harmless folks

Read more

Capitalism, shopkeepers and the myth of the socialist clerk

by

A couple hundred meters from your house, Haim, there’s a bakery, a capitalist enterprise to the best of my knowledge. For a couple of years, I went there every Friday after morning services and bought the big flat pitot that my kids love for Shabbat dinner. The first time that the owner, or manager, or staff thug – I didn’t check his precise title – shouted at me for daring to stop to talk to a friend in his store, I ignored him. The second time, I put down my pitot on the counter and left. My friend came out and told me that the reason he does the Friday morning bakery run is that his wife refuses to enter the place, after she was target of a similar tantrum.

I feel a bit uncomfortable telling this story, because I generally enjoy life in South Jerusalem, and I’ve found another bakery where the pitot are great and the guy at the register is generally polite. But if you ask me :

Remember standing in line endlessly at the bank only to finally reach a surly teller? Remember sales clerks who thought they were doing you a favor by deigning to speak to you?

– well, yes, I do remember. And I don’t have to stretch terribly far back into my memory

Read more