´No Room for Small Dreams´

 ´In Israel, in order to be a realist, you should believe in miracles´.

No Room for Small Dreams - that I´ve had access to in audio format, read by the actor Mark Bramhall - is the book published in Peres last year of life. Half-memoir, half-inspirational book, this is just another testimony of a brave man who loved the people of Israel. A man who, together with other founding fathers like Ben Gurion, had the chutzpa to believe in their dream and set out of nothing a country. And not any country, but the country of the Jews.

A warrior, Peres also believed that peace is inevitable, and he personally worked toward it while concluding the agreement between the state of Israel and Egypt on one had, and Jordan, on the other hand. In his optimistic vein, he declares that peace is inevitable, and the current shift taking place within the Middle East is a proof that, again, he was right. 

People like Peres, or Rabin, or Ben Gurion, did have a humble dedication to the public office that unfortunatelly seems to be vanishing nowadays. Being part of the state project is a duty and they are grateful for the chance given to build The Dream. Which does not coincide with their and their family dreams of acquiring personal wealth and priviledges. Their families felt compelled to help them, from the shadows, without any expectation of public acknowledgement. They lived their religious upbringing through actions and good deeds, not by dangerously playing the card of the public piety for the sake of the cameras. Those were the days...

Peres prediction is that the future of Zionism is a two state solution, otherwise a one-state solution without Jews might happen. In an Israeli democracy, Jews and non-Jews should be equal, with the right to be different as a legacy of our own past of persecutions. Bridges would be made only through direct contact and dialogue, and this was the objective Peres had in mind when he created in 1996 Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. 

Shimon Peres had the moral courage to change from a hawk to a ´vocal dove´ ´on behalf of the Jewish people´. From the Hagana to the ´start-up nation´ and the creation of the nuclear resource facility in Dimona he had both the chutzpah and the vision. I am sure many of those reading him will see the difference and, as this writer, will be reminded that, indeed, miracles are such a reality of the Jewish life that one must work hard to achieve. 

Mutual Responsibility

Some days ago, on the second day of Rosh Hashana, happened to be with my family at a religious gathering. There were plenty of people on two sides of the mechiza but except us, there were hardly more than 10 people wearing masks. 

I felt the urgency to leave and forget about the mitzvah of hearing the shofar because my precious life was at stake. 

I am working hard to keep my heart far away from evil thoughts but once I was listening some drasha about how important is positive thinking to keep you safe and healthy, I just wanted to stay away of all this. Just a couple of months ago happened to be myself in a hospital surrounded by people - me included - that I bet they were not willing to die, but just sickness happened, no matter what was in their thoughts. 

What really annoyed me was the lack of responsibility and inappropriate leadership. Many, old and young, do consider their rabbis as persons with authority, whose example is worth following. When they don´t wear of mask assuming some special divine protection they risk their lives. There are old people and young people, sick people and people with a problematic health history. All those deserve to live and they deserve to be told how risky is to avoid wearing masks and social distance. No matter what other mitzvah you want to perform, saving lives is the most important one. Where is the wisdom of the leadership when they continue to encourage dissent and disregard basic medical knowledge? How they can go to sleep at night after they heard that someone who attended the mask-free religious gatherings died and spread the virus to their family members too?

Where is the mutual responsibility?

PS: A couple of days ago, I´ve watched some videos featuring the aggressive Police intervention against the religious anti-mask dissenters in Jerusalem. What´s wrong with humans lately? 

Normalization

It´s almost a month since the Abraham Accords were signed in the US, allowing the normalization of relations between UAE and Bahrain, on one side, and the State of Israel, on the other side, and so many things are in the making. At least, this may be the only best news in this strange year and, seriously, what a great normal news it is. 

On one hand, the Accords are the recognition of a reality in the making long before the Trump administration, who was offered, though, an elegant opportunity to show off. The trust of intelligences cannot be build in four years only, and the fact that for over five years discrete bar/bat mitzvah were celebrated in a private location in Dubai, tells a lot about how far everything started. 

On the other hand, it´s clear for everyone that four decades of hate and distasteful brainwashing and propaganda haven´t helped the so-called ´Palestinian´ cause. And it will never help. By creating communication chains and personal contacts there will be more likely a chance to have an answer to a painful situation. But well, do you know under what conditions the Palestinians in Lebanon are living - no citizenship, no rights...Or in other countries from the region that keep to condemn Israel when they are going through crisis of legitimacy, even no one serious in his/her mind do really believe this circus. Hopefully voices like that of Faeze Hashemi (hopefully she is wiser than her late father) who recently recommended a recognition towards Israel as a way to defend the Palestinians are not singular, although one may only dream and dream until things will really be able to move in a different direction between Jerusalem and Tehran. 

In the last weeks, there were a couple of moves of soft power diplomacy that took place either in the UAE or Israel, not all of them equal in weight, but nothwistanding news-worthy given the many decades of dissent and the religious propaganda in the Gulf: an Arab-Israeli soccer player who plays for the Israeli national team, Diaa Saba,  signed with Dubai Al-Nasr; there were some photo joint photoshooting for undergarments with the participation of Israeli and Dubai-based models, musical collaborations between artists from the two countries (Waleed al-Jasim and Elkana Marziano, de gustibus but still something). The Harvard graduate Nuseir Yassin, known as Nas Daily, started a tour in the region which angered the BDS movement supporters - because they will feel that soon they are becoming completely redundant...

The most important of all these, though, is the meeting hosted by the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, between the top diplomats from Israel and UAE, Gabi Askenazi and Abdullah bin Zayed. The two officials who inaugurated the first ever meeting at this level in the history of the region, visited the Memorial of the Murdered Jews, near the iconic Brandenburg Gate. 

There is such a huge window of opportunities right now in the region which is stronger than a political representative or another. It has to do with the everyday life of humans who deserve better and the hopes of a generation that hate should be left way behind in the history books.

What a Loveless World...

After reading a book like Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa you got the feeling that in fact, no matter what there should not be peace in the Middle East. It´s a deep feeling of despair that do not gives any chance for a future for young Palestinians other than got beaten by the ´colonizers´ and blow themselves up. It is a narrative embraced by some academics too, just another proof that sometimes academic research is not only ideologically biased and hate-fuelled but equally inadequate. But when it is ideologically biased it is clear that searching for truth it´s the last concern of the research. Instead it serves a narrative enslaved to various political plots.

Those who put their pen and intelligence - the writing of Susan Abulhawa who also wrote Mornings in Jenin is so good sometimes until you are brought back to the ideological message when one of the (Palestinian) characters is from the buttom of her heart ´destroy the Jews´ -  enjoy their victim status. And they got their credentials from insisting that the people they supposedly represent - the Palestinians - should continue to maintain this status because otherwise they will not win any popular contest of world victimization any more. It sounds so fancy to keep telling that there is the world - including the Muslim world - against the Palestinians. There should be no way out and the Palestinians themselves are against themselves as they suspect the traitors and the informers - the ´birds´ - among themselves.

The narrative of ´resistance´ carries the self-fulfilled profecy of a land where only one people live. The others, the ´colonizers´ should probably go to those countries who tried to destroy them. No answer to the question from where, historically, those Jews came from? Therefore, it is justiciable to poison the water in a settlement, and to kill other humans by individuals whose only vital energy is given by the pathetic frustration of not considering themselves worth of a better life. 

This is the message of the story of Nahr - river in Arabic - born in Kuwait, in a Palestinian family displaced from Haifa - after the European Jews stole everything, including their books...From Kuwait, where she also worked as a sex worker to support his brother´s medical dreams she lands in Amman, following the Emirate´s offensive against the Palestinians accused of collaboration with Saddam´s Iraq during the invasion of the country. As she decided to get divorced by a husband that actually was gay and in love with an Israeli soldier, she meets her brother-in-law who will lately marry her and introduce her to the ´resistance´. She ends up in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison - The Cube - but will be freed after a couple of years in a prisoners´ exchange.  

The book is indeed heavy of symbolisms and carrying an ideological message that outlines several times that there is no way out of this. But this is what a discourse of hate wants you to hear. It wants you to hate everyone because the whole world doesn´t care about you, as an individual whose destiny can develop outside the political and ideological patterns. And what a loveless world it is... 

Jewish Movie Review: Fill the Void

With what excitement I was waiting for years to watch Fill the Void, directed by the Israeli-based Orthodox film director Rama Burshtein. The movie, set in the Orthodox community of the un-orthodox city of Tel Aviv, won several Israeli Academy Awards and the main actress, Hadas Yaron, who also played in Shtisel, among other roles, won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

Personally, I am very cross about this movie. 

First and foremost, there are so many aspects I´ve loved about the movie. The game of the actors is natural, non-affected, their scripts are simple yet tensed by the weight of the choices they have to make and the responsibilities they have. There is not a ´we´ - the religious - against ´them´ - the non-religious - narrative although at least in one moment, during the Purim festival, when the old rabbi wants to learn Torah while the outside world is loudly celebrating, he requested with a mild irritated voice to close the windows. But it is a normal behavior and the decision is made without further discussion about who´s the best. 

I also deeply loved the artistic effects, with the long focus of the camera on the light and shadows reflected on the tensed faces of the actors. The silence while the camera stays focused tells more than the whole script sometimes. Especially for the case of people belonging to the religious realm, it reflects the unique interior life and the conflicts that often arise between what you want and you can´t say for reasons that pertain to religious obligations. The eyes and the more or less open exchange of sights - in line with the modesty requirements - are a world in themselves with their own grammar and expressivity rules.

On the other side, there are those things that I was not so happy about. Which is, the story itself: after her sister died during the later stages of pregnancy, Shira the youngest daughter of a respectable religious family, is tormented by the difficult choice she is faced with: marrying the husband of her late sister and thus the little baby born will not leave or follow her shidduchim plans. The movie starts with Shira and her mother, bursting out of innocent joy, spying on a funny bochur in a supermarket, that she would fancy to date. This, before the family is struck by misfortune. What can one do against misfortune? Especially if you are a religious person? Will Shira marry her brother-in-law?

There is not the ending I wanted, but it has to do with my own rebelious/selfish nature of rather doing what I think it is good for myself, instead of thinking at a macro-, larger level, which involves obligations and less feelings and emotions. 

The movie is relatiely short - 1h27 - and although I did not enjoy the story, I appreciated the play of the actors and the artistic effects. And this was a big won of my last movie evening.

Changing the Narrative: ´Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran´

In an effort to challenge the usual historiographical narrative about the Jewish diaspora, Lior B. Sternfeld researched alternative histories based on the experience of Iranian Jews. Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran helps better understand the complexities of the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel. 

´The intense relationships between Iran and Israel since 1979 have given proeminence to the false dichotomies and wrong assumptions that dominate the discourse instead of facts´. Indeed, at the level of the everyday political and international fight, it looks like Iran and Israel and the Jews in general are separate and antagonistic topics. The histories - I love so much this plural of honesty because it modestly outlines and acknowledges the epistemological limits of history - told by Sternfeld are being told in a larger context of Iranian communities part of the Iranian society. Which means that there are Jews living in Iran as part of the society, bearing Muslim-sounding names, marrying non-Jews, taking part to events such as the Islamic Revolution or the Iran-Iraq war.

His main challenger is the usual Zionist-oriented historiography, which denies to the Jews the possibility of living anywhere else but in Israel, therefore their diaspora histories must be affected by benign anti-Semitism. Which anti-Semitism actually exists, including in Iran, but Sternfeld is looking for different kind of stories - although it is a bit of denial to not introduce the murdering of Habib Elghanian a proeminent leader of the Tehrani Jews condemned to death by a revolutionary tribunal. Which challenges the narrative that mostly the poor Iranian Jews were actually affected by anti-Semitism and made aliyah - although many of them were deeply disappointed by the unfriendly political attitudes towards non-European Jews and left for America or even returned to Iran. But this is rather a political than an academic debate and what the reader is left with are a couple of good histories not told too often about the complex community which can trace its genealogy from the Babylonian Exile.  

Complex and preferably unbiased approached is the main approach that needs to be used when trying to understand the life of Jewish communities. Having in mind all those aspects is essential for a further acknowledgment of the diverse communities living in Israel, especially those originally from the Middle East. When the assumptions are eliminated from the historical research there are interesting realities revealing.

In the case of the Iranian Jews analysed in the book, it is worth mentioning the intellectual contributions of their representatives to the ideological construction of the Tudeh Party - which further developed as well individual contacts with members of the MAPAM, the Israeli United Workers´ Party active in Iran - as well as to the journalistic landscape during the Shah. Another historical chapter is represented by the support that members of the Jewish community offered to the prime-minister Mosaddeq, despite his partnership with the arguably anti-Semitic Ayatollah Kashani and his decision to severe ties with Israel. It would be interesting to read more (preferably) ideology-free contributions of the relationship between Iran and Israel - described off the record by the Shah himself as an ´extramarital affair´ - as well as of anti-Semitism during the Shah years. Another less known fact involves the Jewish presence during the protests that helped to install the Islamic Revolution, such as the fact that the Sapir Jewish Hospital in Tehran was used to treat wounded protesters protecting them from the long arm of SAVAK - the Shah´s internal security services with a reputation of no-mercy attitude towards political dissent. And there is even more: late in 1978, a delegation of the Jewish community visited to Paris the Ayatollah Khomeini himself in order to ensure that ´Jews would not be regarded as enemies of the revolution but rather as its supporters´. 

The distinction between Jews and Zionists or rather between religious and political Zionism persists today and permeates the public discourse and personal attitudes in Iran. The role of micro-histories is to take the wise distance from the political and ideological stamps and look into the personal testimonies and human contacts. One day, those contacts will be more than mediated by words, but hopefully by the strength of human intellect and direct contacts between humans who can communicate beyond the brainswashing language of ideology. It´s worth waiting for those times.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: An Unorthodox Match by Naomi Ragen

 

For me, Naomi Ragen is one of the Jewish authors writing Jewish stories that I can hardly put down. What I love about her books is how she is creating stories that sound so close from home, populated with authentic characters with deep and complex psychologies.

An Unorthodox Match - which I had in audiobook format - contrary to the literary and movie trends, is about a young woman, Lola/Leah, who decides to become religious and move to Borough Park and live, work and marry within a religious community. There is drama, but not that kind of drama the fans of Unorthodox - the book and the Netflix movie - are expecting. Of course, when you leave your secular life, everyone - especially your parents - are in shock. Of course that on the other side, the grass is not green and in addition to being suspicious, there is always the risk of being considered a second class Jew - even this is so anti-halachic and contrary to the very basis of our religion (what about Avraham avinu who was himself a idol worshipper, or Ruth the Moabite the great-greatmother of King David from whose lineage Mashiah will descend. A baal teshuva - BT - needs help and support and have to be half-deaf to not hear all the lashon hara that is said on his or her back.

Lola/Leah is going through her personal Gehenom as she is set on dates with people with serious mental disabilities or with other physical and personal issues. A kind woman with a golden heart she is helping in the house of Yaakov, a widower with five children who is pushed to have a new start by his energetic mother-in-law. His intention to marry Lola/Leah are welcomed with shock by the community and Yaakov´s own daughter, who is afraid that such an alliance will damage her chances of finding a good Torah scholar.

As in other book by Naomi Ragen I had the chance to read, the characters are going through complex personal transformations and choices. They unfairness of the shidduchim process and its incumbent crisis, the unfairness of the judgmental attitudes of the community, the pressure for role conformity and the unwelcoming attitude towards difference and deviants, as well as the terrific stigma of mental health are topics the people in the book - that can be easily identified with real people in any small or big Orthodox Jewish community - are reflexive about. 

Without taking stances, the book shows the complexity of people and issues affecting religious Jews, but also the need to search for a meaning, no matter your religious orientation, but a meaning which does not exclude the other and especially those who are not following your own interpretation of things.

A lot to think about for this Shabbes or for the rest of the holy month of Ellul. The King is in the fields and the yom ha´din of Yom Kippur is coming soon...

Rating: 4 stars