Another BT story goes wrong

Just another BT story who goes wrong. From a very intricate juridical story, that is the most entertaining and suspense part of the book, my selective attention focused on the ways in which two people apparently in love fell apart due to misunderstandings around religion.

After her husband dies, Isabelle decides to make aliya after a short visit to Eilat. A couple of months after, she moves first to Ra'ana and after to Tel Aviv, while facing the local bureaucracy and trying to get used with the daily life. 

Complaining about the 'bureaucratic otherness' of Israel is a common complain in many books and statements of people moving to Israel from US or Western Europe. It may look at a completely different reality, but looking a bit into the history and recent social issues facing a relatively young country, there is obviously an explanation for the gap. Israel is not a perfect country and part of moving from a country to another is facing a different culture and reality.

After a while, Isabelle is getting married with a handsome man who's becoming more and more religious. She is not and never intended to be one and this decision, that seems unilateral according to the book, but adopted without too much discussions, it seems, will set them apart. This is the part which interests me a lot. Obviously, during the BT process, there are always problems, especially if starting from a completely secular background. The first temptation is to start being 'frum' in only a couple of hours or days, as there is a miraculous pill that will delete from your mind and behavior the whole years of non-religious life. But hopefully, there is not and the 'return' takes many years and even many more mistakes. The husband, who's somehow 'famous' in Tel Aviv for being the roller skating bearded man, started the teshuva process with Chabad - not the right moment to express now what I think about it, involving his wife through various programs for women. 

After receiving the get - she is introducing the procedure in the book, but omit to mention that compared with other countries, in Israel is easier to get it compared to, for instance, America - afraid that her soon will be forced to follow a religious education, she kidnaps the kid and pays a significant amount of money for getting the boy out of Israel. 

Five years after intensive trials, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg decides that she can keep the kid. At least for now, there is the end of the story. She cannot go back to Israel unless she will face 20 years of prison, he cannot see the boy. The boys grows up in Switzerland. 

I am not sure if I understood properly that the father doesn't contribute at all financially to the education of the kid. He also had apparently some violence outbursts and was shortly married once again, before getting married a third time. 

There are a lot of gaps in the story and many questions regarding the ways in which the religious change took place. Some big or small failures on the way may explain the dramatic outcome. 

Movie review: Bethlehem

After lots of mental struggles and hesitations and cons, many cons, I finally watched 'Behlehem' today. And although I think that it was my right to refuse to watch it, despite the fact that I did not read any reviews or interviews and listen to opinions of friends, I think it was worth doing it.

Let's finish first with the superficial bad impression. I was afraid, but so afraid, that it is just another pathetic movie when we need to cry on the poor Palestinian's shoulders and introduce 2-3 angry leftist activists longing for peace. 

But movies, like people, should not be judged before getting to know them. 

Bethlehem explores the complicated relationship between Razi, an Israeli secret agent, and one of his Palestinian informant, Sanfur. One is looking for information that may prevent to save the life of innocent people, the other is interested in money and probably a little bit of adolescent adventures. Sanfur was recruited when he was 15, as a guarantee for his father's freedom. The conversation switches from Arabic - when it is about creating a special communication - to Hebrew, for the important, professional communication. 

But despite the working relationship, Razi is taking care of the boy, finding him a treatment place after he was shot in a bullet proof jacket part of a children's game. But blood connections are stronger and the talented Israeli operative miss an important detail about his protege: that he is bringing Hamas' money to his brother who planned an murderous attack in Jerusalem. And when he finds it out, Razi sends him to Hebron instead of using him to catch the brother.What, the Israeli secret agents do have a heart? He is even more than that, losing his life by the hands of Sanfur whom he is meeting alone, after weeks of silence following the death of his brother and his contacts with various groups, all equally dangerous and toxic. 

The documentary part of the movie, showing the dissent between various Palestinian groups is accurate and reflects a state of mind in Bethlehem and other places of people using the conflict as a way of getting rich, and avoiding to take adult's responsibilities. Confused children are driven into the example of lazy warriors cleaning their guns and playing cards before the next suicide attack. 

A strong movie for perverse times.

Book review: Cut me Loose, by Leah Vincent

Oh, I had so many second thoughts telling me NOT to read this book, from a previous mediocre experience with a memoir written by someone in a similar situation to the precaution of not hurrying up to read a book everyone is excessively talking about in the media. But one single second was enough to start reading it and to continue doing so till the last page.

And what a good decision to spend some late hours in the night it was. The book is beautifully written, with open heart and honesty. An emotional and sensitive person, Leah is looking for her own sense of self. Being one of the 11 children of a Yeshivish family she looks for affection, attention and sense in a world of rules and 'fabricated mask superimposed'. On a side note, I saw recently some mentions regarding the 'Yeshivish sect', which is a misunderstanding. Maybe people are too much used with the exotic Satmer stories and cannot go out of this mind frame.

Honest reporting

She doesn't want revenge or to expose people, and is delicate enough to alter details about her family. She is writing about herself, a young Jewish girl that wants to find her own way. It is not easy to continue living within the limits of your small world nowadays without having even a limited contact with the big world and through those interactions arise the tension and the need of sense and stronger identity. Sometimes, you return to your world as long as you can understand or you are explained. If not, the temptation is to keep going and break the chains of family and obedience.

The first reason of conflict is her natural desire to go to college. But she needs to get married and take care of the family and with a good yichus - her father a rabbi and her mother a descendant of the Vilna Gaon, she had a fair amount of chances to get a good match. 

I'd heard myself more than once that a girl should not be so 'klug' if is looking to marry well. And that Torah learning is only for men. But times changed and her family belongs to the mind set of the second WWII generation trying to cope with more observance and limitation from the overall world. The main line against is: College boys and girls mixed and spent their time studying wasteful and immoral ideas'.

Women, including from good yeshivish and hasidic background are learning as much as men and sometimes even earning more than them. There are some limits of professional achievements and the success doesn't go smoothly. 

Too late

'If they would have negotiated with me, I would have been satisfied. Perhaps I never would have left my faith', she says. This long relationship with loneliness that Leah's choices will bring is the result of the lack of compromise. She wanted to be saved from her rebellion, but with love and affection and a little bit of direction. She did not receive it because the parents were either too busy or simply unable to understand what she was looking for. And why. Her father accused her often she is looking for attention, but it is nothing wrong with it. Wrong was her perfect loneliness: without friends, relatives to take care of her and financial support, she is left with her own choices and she is struggling looking for affection, herself and a new sense in life. 

Despite the nightmare of being raped and neglected and abused, and being hunted by suicidal tendencies she made it to Harvard. The tone of her writing is sincere, far from being pathetic and sweetly ironic: 'A Yeshivish girl who could fall for a Rastafarian drug dealer should be bold enough to go to college'. Once accepted to Harvard, she was finally able to tell to herself: 'nobody can tell me I am worthless'. Of course one can live well without Harvard but for her, it was the final societal confirmation that she is good, and smart and can have her own life. Her bet was successful, but she is among the lucky gifted few who did it. 

Loneliness

And again, there is the loneliness one can hardly cope with, religious or not. Most part of the time she was left alone, with her choices and desperation and lack of alternatives because beyond her capacity of imagination. She doesn't know the language and is unable to find friends. She take a small sign of attention a manifestation of love. And when the 'love' is over, she is again left alone.

'The relief I found in cutting my skin helped me cope as I lived my split life of religion and college, modesty and loneliness, hope and memory'. She never keeps learning though and think back about her experiences, she is making new friends and succeed to marry and have a child. Plus, she finished Harvard and creates good writing. There are not bad children, only inexperienced parents and being able to recognize the mistakes and look for permanent improvement is part of the Yiddishkeit. Those who decided to went frei are not worse than the rest, but individuals looking as much as the rest of us for sense and sensibility. Loneliness is horrible and no one has the right to condemn someone to went through it, as Leah did. Helping when needed is a huge responsibility and burden and no one should be left alone.

I strongly recommend the book to anyone, regardless of the degree of observance; there is a lesson to be learned from everything and this honest story has a lot to teach us all. 

In the camp

Felix Nussbaum, In the Camp, exhibited at the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

On 27 January 1945, the dead camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated, too late after 6 million innocent people were already killed. For many of those killed, it was not the end of the pain and humiliations. Those returning in Poland, for instance, were faced with the cruelty of their neighbours. And not all those looking to go to the eretz Yisroel, were allowed to finally have their home and were sent in (other) internment camps in Cyprus or Atlit where they waited for years. Some died because of the poor conditions in those places.

The Allies were too late, and the free world should never forget that when many of those killed in Auschwitz and the other killing camps erected in the middle of the cultured Europe tried to get a free entrance in America or UK and were refused. The historical and diplomatic evidences from the last years proved that the big powers were aware of what was going on in the camps.

One of those tragic destinies was the family of the painter Felix Nussbaum, entirely killed during Shoah. Originally from the German city of Osnabrueck, his father was a veteran of the World War I and a German patriot. Philipp and Rahel Nussbaum were able to escape to Switzerland but were homesick and returned to Germany where they were shortly sent to death.

Felix Nussbaum studied in Hamburg and was influenced by the works of Van Gogh, Henri Rousseau and Giorgio Chirico. Escaping Germany, he was sent to a camp in St. Cyprien, due to his German citizenship. His painting, In the Camp, is a testimony of those times, but can easily reflect the overall situation of the life in the camps. After the German invaded Belgium, he and his wife were living illegally for a while, before being caught and sent to Auschwitz where he was killed. The same destiny was shared by his niece, brother and sister-in-law.

Every victim has its own tragic story. They also give us, to the lucky ones to be born in a time when we do have a country to defend us, a lesson: that we should not give up and always keep believing. We might not understand the secret design, but we might be aware that every problem and tragedy have hidden the grains of redemption.

May the memory of the victims will be remembered and that of the murderers for ever erased.

What is a 'slumlord'?

Friday, shortly before Shabbos I saw on social media an information about a Jewish businessman in Brooklyn being kidnapped. Not the usual kind of news that one may expect, but with so many preparations to do and very sick people to daven for, I did not think too much about the case, kept the name in mind for my tehillim and promise to check if hopefully everything was sorted out motzei Shabbos. 

Two hours after Shabbos ended, I checked the news and started to understand what happened. For a long time, I am very selective when it comes to using various sources, including blogs, for Jewish related topics. Thank G-d we have nowadays a lot of sources that can compete with the 'official' media versions. What surprised me in the case of Menchem Stark was the lack of journalistic information about the situation. Instead, I did find the 'New York Post', a yellow publication in the case of which I can't give any single argument why someone should spend any $ for buying it, a big picture of the Stark, in Hasidic garb, under a title according to which he was a 'slumlord' whose dead was wished by many. Just to recap: a human being, US citizen, father of 8, is kidnapped from his office, tortured and burned, whose corpse is thrown in a dumpster. And this is all that NYPost has to say?

There are thousand of people with serious legal issues in NYC, but I don't remember to see too often a newspaper openly stating that there were anyway, many people that wanted a certain individual dead. Plus, I also don't remember to see that person pictures in his best church clothes or wearing a significant religious sign that might recognize him as a member of a certain religious community. I bet the owner of the NY Post has a lot of enemies too, nu?

Anti-semitism in the US media differs significantly from its European variant, but still is a common features of many media reports, especially when it has to deal with the Hasidic community. There are enough stories about the rapid assimilation of the European Jews that went to the 'goldene medina' at the beginning of the 20th century. If they wanted to stop being peddlers for generations, many needed to change their names, clothes and eventually to marry outside the tribe in order to outperform. 

Whatever illusions we may nurture, we are never safe in diaspora and our strength is the kidush Hashem and good deeds. But this is a completely different story, our story. What happened in the case of NYPost, and other American media, was to focus rather on condemning the deceased instead of feeling outraged by what happened. If he was so guilty, he needed to pay according to the legal previsions. Otherwise, NYPost and the company are no more than encouraging the mafia methods and crimes against fellow citizens. 

There are many lessons learned, but on the media side, I hope that more and more people will admonish openly the journalists making a shame of such a beautiful profession. 

Learning Torah

How much I envy the men sometimes, that can put aside their time for Torah and organize their entire daily schedule around the real priorities in life. A man may need to work a lot to bring money home and when possible, to take a break when learning with a chevruta and davening.

As a woman, there are always priorities that need to be fixed, children getting sick over night, unexpected guests for Shabbos, shopping and domestic chores. Maybe your chavruta is going through the some problems and at the end of the week, you might discover that besides the name of the parasha - that is written in the calendar anyway - and some vague memories from the old school time, you don't know too much and you skipped again the proper learning. 

I am trying to constantly learn more or less regularly for years. I am also working, but from home and taking care of a complex household and even dare sometimes to have a limited social life. Recently, I decided to offer help to my shul, because I felt compelled to help people that did so much for me and my family in the last years and especially months. A couple of weeks ago I realized how my Torah learning is decreasing and started to feel not only embarrassed, but equally scared that my already superficial knowledge will soon dissipate without constant new fresh learning.

On fasting days, the lack of water makes me suffer physically. Torah is considered our spiritual water.

While struggling with my lack of strength to continue with at least one serious hour of learning per day, I realized how different is this learning from all the others. In the case of history, or literature or even for a foreign language, there will always be a limit beyond which one can consider him or herself an 'expert', after spending a considerable amount of time immersed in study. In the case of Torah, there is a permanent duty to keep ourself busy with its learning because the immensity of knowledge is infinite for the human mind and the lack of continuity leads to a considerable diminishing of the learning itself. 

And G-d knows how much I need this water!

Something to think about NYE's concert in Vienna

Back home after a couple of days of travel, I check my Facebook and see many of my people deeply enthusted about the gorgeous music of the classical New Year's Eve concert in Vienna. The concert consists of a first musical part continued by a dancing second part, when couples join and dance the classical Viennaise waltz. 

This year, the big Barenboim - a great musician, but as in the case of many intellectuals, with a problematic political involvement - conducted, another reason for even more people to appreciate this concert. The encores were accepted only since 1945.

As a kid growing up in a communist country, I remember how this concert used to be the main event of the year, with families setting up social gatherings around the time of the broadcast in order to enjoy some glamour in a very grey world. 

Nowadays, it is broadcast in more than 70 countries, with an audience of over 50 million.

For the sake of history, there are a 'couple of dark' episodes of this prestigious moment, that are not always mentioned and probably many more not yet known. 

The first concert took place on 31 December 1939 - the first time when it was not held on the traditional 1st of January as nowadays - in the Large Saal and was conducted by Clemens Krauss. It was approved directly by the propagandist of the IIIrd Reich, Joseph Goebbels (yimakh shemo), as part of the official policy of 'propaganda through entertainment'. The first program played exclusively Johann Strauss, who was accepted despite his Jewish family history (his grandfather was Jew from birth). As in many other cases, they realized that without Jews, there is quite difficult to have a great culture - see also Heine who authorshiped many of the German 'patriotic' poetry, or the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy who put Leipzig on the European musical maps, among others - and the program was accepted. The profits were donated for the war campaign of Germany, through the Kriegsunterhelfwerk. 

The part of the Philharmonie in the events during WWII were hidden for a long time, as the archives were closed to the public till beginning of 2000s. Even after that moment, many historians complain about the restrictive access and the problems in covering the truth of those terrible years. However, based on the available information, historians were able to establish that the Vienna Orchester gave a concert in an SS barrack and that around 47% of its members were members of the Nazi Parti. A number of 13 Jewish players were fired, out of them 7 were murdered at the orders of the attendees of the first Vienna concert. 

As for me, I never thought that this Vienna concert is really such a great cultural event. Johann Strauss and the likes are part of a middle class cultural bibliography that I would rather skip. The fact that a tradition inaugurated in those dark times is praised doesn't surprise me, as European countries are maintaining - more or less aware of the past - not a few customs and traditions with a controversial anti-Jewish history. Should we ignore this and enjoy the music. I really don't think this is the answer, especially when still there is so much hidden behind the gates of this respected Austrian institution.