Haveil Havalim #208 Is Up
The current edition of Haveil Havalim is up at Just Call Me Chaviva. Thank you, Chaviva!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A Bit of Tail for Purim
You were expecting something else, maybe? Hey, this is still a family-friendly blog!
More photos below the fold....
Missy whaps me with her tail to keep me in line:
Missy at the gate...
... and in the garden:
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A Little-Known Story for Purim
I’ll bet that most of my readers have no idea that according to a little-known Hasidic rebbe, a popular American folk song is nothing less than an allegory of Jewish history.
It seems that during the mid-nineteenth century, an American musician of Jewish background who had traveled to the Ottoman Empire for a series of performances found himself stranded when a major gig fell through and his impresario went bankrupt. During his efforts to play and sing his way back to the United States, he passed through the Land of Israel, which was then under Turkish rule. There he met the fervently Zionist Ailurolover Rebbe, who had made aliya from Eastern Europe some years before together with his wife and children, a small circle of devoted followers, and his beloved cat, Geula.
On a bright, brisk day in March, the musician visited the Ailurolover Rebbe at his home and found him sharing a meal with his family and students. On hearing that it was the holiday of Purim and that the Ailurolover Rebbe loved animals, particularly cats, the musician offered to sing an American folk song that was popular at the time, a lighthearted tune appropriate to the day. He was totally unprepared for the Rebbe’s reaction.
It is said that on hearing the song “The Cat Came Back” (or, perhaps more accurately, its impromptu translation into Yiddish), the Ailurolover Rebbe was at first stunned into silence and then burst into tears.
“But of course!” he cried. “This holy niggun, this sacred melody, contains nothing less than the story of the Jewish people, rendered into a simple folk song so that it might be more easily transmitted to the next generation safe from the ears of those who would harm us. Listen!” And he asked the musician to sing the first several lines of the song for him once more.
Now old Mister Johnson had troubles of his own:
He had a little yellow cat who wouldn’t leave his home.
He tried and tried and tried and tried to give the cat away....
“Don’t you see?” the Ailurolover said, an unearthly light breaking over his face. “Mister Johnson, the cat’s master, is the Master of the Universe. The little cat is—who else?—the Jewish people. And why is the little cat yellow? It is a tikkun—a rectification—of the sin of the Golden Calf. You will remember that when Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the Law from God, the Israelite men, thinking that he had abandoned them and disappeared, gave their gold jewelry to Aaron, telling him to make an idol out of it. But the faithful women refused to surrender their gold for such a base purpose, choosing to donate it instead for the construction of God’s Tabernacle later on. So the little cat in the song is yellow in order to remind us that God has given us the ability to choose whether we will use our gold—that is, our resources, our skills and abilities—for good or for evil. As it says in our sacred writings: ‘All is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given.’
“Now, what is happening in this little song? The master is trying to give his cat away. This is the Master of the Universe sending his beloved children, the Nation of Israel, into exile. Why? Because we sinned, we turned away from Him, and we deserved to be punished. Ah, so sad to send us away! So sad to send away the poor yellow cat!”
It is said that at this point the Ailurolover, overcome with emotion, paused to sip some water. As he did so, his cat, Geula (whom all the surviving writings about the Ailurolover describe as a male gray tabby shorthair), jumped onto his lap and lay down, purring loudly. As he always did when Geula jumped onto his lap during such gatherings, the Ailurolover began singing his Geula Niggun, his unique Melody of Redemption—which, unfortunately, has since been lost—with his students and companions. After its last notes had faded, he continued:
“And now listen to the secret of this sacred song from America. What does its refrain tell us, over and over? What is its message? The cat came back the very next day! No matter what happens to the little yellow cat, no matter what all the wicked people in the song try to do to it, it never dies! It always returns! And so it is with our people. We are the cat, my children, we are the cat! No matter what suffering may have been decreed for us, no matter how many Hamans rise up to destroy us, we never die! We always come back the very next day!”
And, gently swaying, the Ailurolover Rebbe concluded:
“And who gives us this wonderful ability to come back, my children? Who gives us the strength to survive the wicked boy in the boat—that is, the Egyptians—and the train that went off the track—that is, the Romans? Our Father, our Master! Though He banished us, He never abandoned us. He who sent us away will one day bring us back! Does it not say in our holy writings: ‘Though I turned away from you in a moment of anger, I will have mercy upon you with everlasting love’?”
It is said that at this point, the musician—who had been following the Rebbe’s discourse with the help of one of his students, who provided an ongoing translation into English—asked:
“But Rebbe, if the song is really a retelling of Jewish history, and if the Jewish nation always survives the attempts of all who would destroy it, then why doesn’t the song tell us at the end that the cat found a home where it was safe from danger?”
“Ah, my son, have we yet found a home?” the Rebbe answered sadly. “You ask about a great and secret thing: the final Redemption, for which we all wait and yearn, for which we pray every single day. And it will come, though we cannot know when.” As his students looked on in astonishment, the Rebbe poured a small amount of wine from his glass into the musician’s cup and signaled for him to drink. “My dear child, that verse shall yet be written in the Messianic Era. And who knows? Maybe you will be the one to write it.”
It is said that from that moment, the musician became a follower of the Ailurolover Rebbe and remained in the Land of Israel for the rest of his life, writing songs of such beauty that the birds would stop their singing in order to listen... when they were not busy being chased by Geula and his many descendants.
Here is the version of “The Cat Came Back” that our stranded musician probably played for the Ailurolover Rebbe that long-ago Purim. It’s not the same tune we know today.
Happy Purim!Friday, March 06, 2009
Missy among the Tulips
For your delectation: Missy among the tulips.
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
Monday, March 02, 2009
The JPIX Carnival Is Up
The Spring in Israel edition of the JPIX Carnival is up at Here in HP. Thanks to Leora for a great roundup!
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
After Twenty Years, They Still Don’t Get Us
When my friend called to tell me that there was an article about Women of the Wall's Rosh Hodesh service last Wednesday morning on Ynet, she may have been a bit surprised by my reaction. Instead of being excited, I let out a sigh.
In all my years as a member of Women of the Wall—and, these days, its prayer leader much of the time—I have seen only very few articles in the media that seemed to capture who we were, or that were written out of an honest desire to do so. Over the years, most of them, including those that appear in the Israeli media, have done any one or any combination of the following: made wild accusations against us (such as that we are trying to destroy Judaism—by praying, of all things! Go figure); dismissed us as a bunch of crazy foreigners, emphasized the aspect of conflict between ourselves and our detractors, or completely ignored what I see as the core aspect of our identity: a women's prayer group run according to Halakha (Jewish law) that welcomes all Jewish women regardless of affiliation or level of observance.
(Since the 1970s, dozens of such Jewish women’s prayer groups, known informally as women's tefilla groups, or WTGs, have been established throughout the world, some with the active support of the local rabbinic authority. Although they are still controversial in some communities, today, as far as I know, they are much more mainstream.)
As anyone who has been in this country for any length of time knows, the Israeli media is fond of kassah—conflict, the louder the better. Just look at our political talk shows, in which everyone screams at everyone else and no one can get a word in edgewise. It’s not about the justice of one’s cause or the facts that one cites to support it. It's about the number of decibels that one can blast into a studio microphone.
What took place at the Western Wall on the second day of Rosh Hodesh Adar was a prayer service, plain and simple. It was beautiful, heartfelt, vital and harmonious. While there was, unfortunately, some shouting, there was no violence whatsoever. I was honored to lead our guests, a group of approximately one hundred women rabbis of the Reform Movement who have come here for an important conference, in prayer at Judaism’s holiest accessible site. We prayed. End of story.
But to my regret, rather than focusing on our prayer, the article (and other similar ones; see below for links) chose to concentrate on a brief and insignificant incident that was much more sound than substance. I suppose this is because most prayer services don’t make the news, which is as it should be. But kassah makes the news because kassah sells—even when it is exaggerated and embellished.
After twenty years, they still don’t get us. It doesn’t surprise me, but it does make me sad.
A final note: in most of the press articles about us, Rabbi Rabinovitch, the administrative director of the Western Wall (and I stress that he is a government employee who is in charge of the Wall’s administration, not the rabbi of the Wall as some mistakenly believe—there is no such position) was quoted as saying that we usually pray at the archaeological area at Robinson’s Arch. He is only partially correct. On Rosh Hodesh Adar, we began our prayer service—as we do every month, and as we have done every month since our group was established—in the ever-shrinking women’s section of the Western Wall, and moved to the archaeological area only later. The fact that Rabbi Rabinovitch evidently doesn’t know that we pray in the women’s section of the Western Wall every month would seem to be further proof of how quiet and unobtrusive our prayer services are.
(For reference, here are links to the articles in question: Ynet in English, Ynet in Hebrew, Haaretz in English, and the JTA).
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Because I Had To
This was filmed locally by someone whose YouTube handle is “MinisterOfCats.” Gotta love that.
Jerusalem’s Coolest Kitties, with an excellent soundtrack (explanation included on the YouTube page):
(The vocalist is the late folk singer Cisco Houston. Read about him here. Thanks to blues and folk music maven Eli Marcus for the info.)
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
It’s a Translator’s Life
My friend Sharon Neeman tells us what it’s like to be a freelance translator: 5000 Words.
If you are, or have ever been, a freelance translator, you’ll understand exactly what Sharon’s talking about.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Haveil Havalim Is Up
The current edition of Haveil Havalim comes to us all the way from Australia, at Sarah’s View. The miracle of the Internet!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Excuse Me, What Country Is This Again? (Or How Old Is This Globe?)
When I was at the International Book Fair last week, I saw this poster at the entrance:
It looked nice enough... until I got closer and looked for Israel, which is so tiny that its name doesn’t even fit within its borders on the globe.
This is what I found:
Palestine? Say what?
Ummm... when exactly is this globe from? Before 1948, surely... but then, it doesn’t look old enough to be a collector’s item. Or was the advertising agency privy to some momentous news from the UN that, for some incredible reason, never reached the rest of the world?
When I called it to the attention of the company’s staff at the book fair, they dismissed my concerns politely, saying that they were not responsible. Of course they weren’t, but that wasn’t the point. Also, here in Israel, I have noticed that Hebrew-speakers sometimes don’t consider accuracy and availability in English all that important. Websites are a case in point: all too often, the Hebrew version is as complete as can be while the English one is barely functional.
But getting back to the matter at hand: I seem to remember a controversy several years ago over a globe-manufacturing company that refused (for completely innocent reasons, I’m sure) to include the name of Israel among the countries it depicted. Too bad that this bookseller’s marketing people didn’t look more closely at the ad before they approved it.
And since the book fair is over, what a shame that it’s too late to follow the excellent example of Treppenwitz and give them a call.
Encyclopedia of Jewish Women about to Go Online
An important resource—and, for the sake of fair disclosure, a project on which I worked for several years—is about to go online:
The Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) announces the launch of the first comprehensive online source for the history of Jewish women. On March 1, 2009, Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia—which includes over 1,700 biographies, 300 thematic essays, and 1,400 photographs and illustrations—goes live on JWA’s website, jwa.org.
“Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia represents a huge advance for the fields of history and women’s studies,” said Gail Reimer, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Jewish Women's Archive. The Encyclopedia was previously available only on CD-ROM. Reimer notes, “In its CD-ROM form, the Encyclopedia was expensive and not widely accessible, so we are delighted to make this important resource available online and usable at no cost. We’ve taken history out of the locked vaults of physical repositories and put it into the hands of Internet users all over the world.”
Those who are interested in previewing and testing the Encyclopedia can do so here.
And as of March 1, the entire Encyclopedia will be available, for free, here.
(Hat-tip to my dear friend, Aliza Berger-Cooper, for drawing my attention to this.)
Friday, February 20, 2009
Black and White in the Light
With thunderstorms in the forecast for tomorrow (thank goodness!), I give you a photo of Missy taking a bath in the sun:
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
Context Is All
My friend Katie Green, an independent film director, on why Ari Folman’s film should not win an Academy Award: Please, No Oscar for “Waltz With Bashir.”
The film is by any standards a magnificent piece of art. If Ari Folman had climbed into a time machine, gone back 20 years, and taken a professional cameraman with him into the Lebanon war, he could not have come back with more emotive and meaningful material than what he has recalled from memory and projected onto the screen. And his film is a work of great emotional depth and sensitivity. For the purposes of internal national debate, this is a film that every Israeli should see.
However, a glaring omission is immediately apparent at the film's beginning, which intensifies as it progresses: no reason, rhyme or context is given for the war. No enemy is depicted to speak of. Although the faces of Israeli friends, soldiers, therapists and politicians are lovingly illustrated in close-up all the way through the film, the enemy being engaged has no name and no face. Only once in the film is a teenage boy with an RPG on his back, brought into focus, and it is not clear who he belongs to, or what he is fighting for.
The eerie backdrop against which the film plays out is that the enemy hardly exists at all, or that he is a figment of the Israeli imagination. Soldiers are cut to pieces by sniper fire, but who are the snipers? Gunmen shoot down from balconies and roofs, but which army or political faction do they represent? Palestinian terrorists are sought in streets, orchards and refugee camps but why are they relevant to Israel, if they are operating in Lebanon? A viewer who knows nothing of the background to this conflict could be forgiven for believing that thousands of Israeli soldiers simply woke up one morning and decided to go to Lebanon to kill people.
Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
From the Sublime to the... Oh, You Decide
Seen at the International Book Fair in Jerusalem:
A volume of the Jewish National Fund’s Golden Book. Dating back to the early twentieth century—the era of Theodor Herzl—it is more than a century old. The twenty-six volumes of the Golden Book contain the names of every single person who has ever donated to the JNF. All the names are now stored electronically.
And now for the second photo: a pen that advertises a particular drug (whose name I prefer not to type here so as not to attract a certain type of visitor whom we all prefer to avoid, I’m sure):
Only here’s the kicker: the pen doesn’t write. How’s that for effective advertising?
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Lots of Pictures
Here are some of the pictures I took recently. First, the sky at sunset over the Malha Technological Park:
A fiery sunset there, just a few moments later:
Some tree bark, in what looks like different stages of formation:
In Bitan Aharon, a small rural community in the north, is a lane of banyan trees. Just across the street is a wedding hall that borders on a walking trail that looks out onto the entire Sharon region. Here is the lane of banyan trees with a couple that has come to be photographed there. The photographer who is working with them can also be seen:
Here is the view of the Sharon region:
Here is an old wooden railway car, just next to the wedding hall. You can still see the rooms and closets inside. My friend and I saw several couples and two bat-mitzva girls take pictures there:
In Bitan Aharon is a sanctuary for donkeys and horses. Here is a donkey—a burro, perhaps?
Closer to home, here is a row of tulips interspersed with cyclamens:
Finally, the inside of a tulip. Looks a bit like neon to me:
(This post has been submitted to the JPix carnival, which will be up at Here in HP on March 2.)
Big Cats, Little Cats and a Memorial to a Dear Friend
This past Thursday, we gathered at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in order to dedicate the new lab named for my dear friend Bev and see the equipment that had been donated in her name. (Take a look over here for some of the pictures I took at the memorial. Here is one, below:)
After the outdoor ceremony, with its moving speeches by Bev’s friends and colleagues, followed by songs she loved, we went inside the animal hospital building to see the new equipment. On a door facing the large memorial plaque that had been mounted on the wall was the following sign:
“Tiger free inside. Open the door carefully!”
Indeed, inside was a ravenous Sumatran tiger by the name of Sylvester. Here is the fearsome creature, chowing down:
I got to pet him. I got to pet a tiger! (It only made me miss Bev all the more, though, since I remembered how she let me pet Roo, the Persian leopard cub that she hand-raised, when he was very little.)
(Check out some information on the Sumatran tiger here.)
When I first met Bev, she had four or five cats whom she cared for with her love and boundless knowledge of animals. All of them lived well into old age. When I was helping to care for the Lady in Red, Bev was one of the people who held my hand and recommended the veterinarian who saved her life, enabling her to live out her last year and a half in comfort and good health. So here, in Bev’s honor, are photos of two cats of the smaller kind. First, Her Ladyship among the tulips:
Next, here is the torbie who is being cared for by people in the next building:
Quite a few close friends of mine have died over the past several years. Each of those losses has been difficult, but Bev’s death hit me the hardest. Even now, I feel her loss as sharply as I did the moment that I first found out about it, and I know that other friends of hers feel the same. I suppose that is a testimony to just how special Bev was.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
This Week’s Cat Photos
First, a twofer. Her Ladyship and Missy are telling my friend, their human companion, that they are far more worthy of attention than the newspapers that she is sorting:
A local cat lounges on a bed of sorrel:
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
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