Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Across enemy lines, wounded Syrians receive medical treatment in Israel

Across enemy lines, wounded Syrians receive medical treatment in Israel


What started this year as a trickle is now a steady flow of Syrians, scores of civilians and fighters wounded in the civil war and being discreetly brought across the Golan frontline into Israel.
By Reuters

Not a hundred miles from Damascus, a Syrian rebel lies in a hospital bed, an Israeli sentry at the door. Nearby a Syrian mother sits next to her daughter, shot in the back by a sniper.

What started this year as a trickle is now a steady flow of Syrians, scores of civilians and fighters wounded in the civil war and being discreetly brought across the Golan frontline into Israel - a country with which Syria is formally still at war.

For all the advantages it brings of excellent medical care, it is a journey fraught with risk for those who fear the wrath of President Bashar Assad's government.

"There was one man, where I am from, who was treated in Israel. The regime forces killed his three brothers," the teenage girl's mother said. "They will kill my sons and my husband if they ever find out we were here."

For fear of retribution back home, Syrians in Israeli clinics who spoke to Reuters asked not to be named.

The woman's 16-year-old daughter, whose wounds have left her paralyzed in both legs, lies stone-faced as an Israeli hospital clown juggles and dances, trying in vain to raise a smile.

For the past month, she has been at the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya, on Israel's Mediterranean coast, about 80 km (50 miles) west of the UN-monitored ceasefire line in the Golan Heights that has kept Israeli and Syrian forces apart since they fought in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

A few weeks ago, a battle was raging in her home village between Assad's forces and rebel fighters. There was a lull, her mother said, and the girl opened the front door to see if it was safe out. Her aunt told her to shut it again because there was a sniper in the house opposite. As she did so, he shot her.

"I saw her falling to the floor, in all the blood," her mother recounted. "I was terrified I was going to lose her. I said 'Please, I don't want to bury my children one by one'."

The girl was rushed to a rebel field hospital, where Syrian medics removed a bullet lodged in a lung. But they could not provide the further care she needed. The girl, they said, should be taken across the border, to Jordan or to Israel.

"We would get Israeli television channels in my village. I knew that medicine here is advanced," the mother said. "In Jordan I would have to pay for it and we do not have enough money. Here it is free."

The woman declined to say exactly how she and her daughter reached the Israeli lines in the Golan so that soldiers could transport them to hospital. She did say that Syrian rebel fighters helped them reach the area of the Israel-Syria front.

BORDERS

More than 100,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war which began in 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 2 million refugees have fled the country, most to neighboring Jordan and Turkey. Of the population of about 20 million, one third is displaced, either inside or outside Syria.

Israel refuses to accept refugees from a country with which it is still technically at war. But it does provide medical care and, always concerned to counter the negative image it has in most of the Arab world, it has made no secret of doing so.

The Nahariya hospital has treated more than 80 Syrian patients since March, around the time the Israeli military began taking in wounded Syrians who reach its lines seeking help.

The army does not reveal how the Syrians are brought over, nor whether it coordinates with rebels or others who deliver them into Israeli hands. "This is a very sensitive issue and people's lives are at stake," a military spokeswoman said.

UN military observers based along the 75-km (45-mile) ceasefire line did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six Day War of 1967 and much of its population, many of them from the Druze sect, resettled beyond the ceasefire line in Syria. A small Arab Druze community remained under Israeli occupation and has kept in contact with relatives inside Syria.

The Israeli army has set up a field hospital on a mountain ridge that overlooks a cluster of Syrian villages on the plain.

Gunfire and explosions from battles there often sound across the frontline fence. Some wounded Syrians who have reached the boundary have been treated at the Israeli field hospital and then sent back. Others are transported to hospitals in Israel.

"We don't know how they come in," said Shukri Kassis, a doctor at the Ziv Medical Center in the northern Israeli town of Safed, 40 km (25 miles) from the Syrian frontline. "We just get notified by the army doctors that they are bringing them here."

Kassis said his clinic had taken in more than 90 Syrians since February. The Israel government declines to give a total figure for how many have been treated in its hospitals.

Execution

Staff at Nahariya said one man they treated had survived his own execution. He was shot at close range in the back of the head. Another young woman was shot in the head by a sniper.

Both are now back in Syria, their fate unknown. "It is very hard for us, after they go back, not knowing what happens to them after they return," said Naama Shachar, head nurse at the children's intensive care unit in Nahariya.

In another ward, a man in his 20s sat up in bed staring down at his thigh, his lower leg now gone. He said he was a fighter in the Free Syrian Army. He was shot in a battle with Assad's forces a few weeks ago. He did not say where.

He recalled medics at a rebel field hospital trying to save his left leg but had no memory of how he got to Israel, a journey long enough for gangrene to turn his flesh black.

"I remember waking up in the emergency room," he said. "The doctor said that to save my life they must amputate my leg and he asked me to sign the consent."

The International Red Cross visits patients and offers assistance in contacting families. Some patients say they have sent word back home. Others fear that any message revealing their whereabouts would endanger their relatives.

The 16-year-old's mother has had no contact with her six other children left behind. "I worry about them all the time, if they are safe or not. There is no phone, only God to pray to," she said, pointing upwards as her eyes welled up with tears.

Friend or foe

Israel has not taken sides in the Syrian war. Assad, allied with Israel's arch-enemy Iran, is also helped by fighters from Lebanese militia Hezbollah, another long-time foe. But those they combat worry Israel too. Among the rebels are al Qaeda-linked Islamists, also no friends of the Jewish state.

At the hospitals, the army stations military police outside the rooms of most male patients. Many of these, staff said, have come in with wounds most likely sustained in combat. At Ziv, doctors checking one fighter's pockets found a hand grenade.

"They could be al Qaeda. We just don't know," one staff member said, adding that the men were being guarded for their own safety too - in case of disputes among patients.

With many Israeli medical staff being native Arabic speakers, communication with Syrian patients presents little problem. And many of the wounded and relatives have responded to a welcoming environment by modifying hostile views of Israel.

"For us, Israel was always the enemy," one Syrian woman from the southern city of Deraa said at Ziv, where she and her eight-year-old daughter were being treated after being caught in an explosion. "Thank God, I am happy here. I am well treated."

The Free Syrian Army fighter said word of Israeli treatment was spreading back home: "I was happy when I found I was here," he said. "Most fighters know they will get good care in Israel."

Medical staff say they make no distinctions among those they treat and some have formed close bonds with Syrian patients:

"In medicine there are no borders, no color, no nationality," said Oscar Embon, director general of the Ziv Medical Center in Safed. "You treat each and every person and I am proud that we are able to do this."

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Women of the Wall’s Anat Hoffman is Haaretz’s Person of the Year

 Women of the Wall’s Anat Hoffman is Haaretz’s Person of the Year

Buttressed by an organized voting drive waged by her many supporters, Hoffman garnered close to 70 percent of the vote.

Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, is the clear winner of Haaretz’s Person of the Year poll conducted over the past week on Haaretz’s Facebook page in English.

Hoffman, buttressed by an organized voting drive waged by her many supporters, garnered the largest portion of the vote. Following far behind in second place were the founders of Waze, the Israeli navigation app recently acquired by Google, and in third place, Israel’s chief peace negotiator, Tzipi Livni.

Our three other candidates – Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Gatekeepers director Dror Moreh and American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson – failed to pick up significant support among the thousands of Facebook followers of Haaretz in English who participated in the poll.

Although Hoffman would arguably not have been chosen by Hebrew speaking Israelis as their Person of the Year, her selection fully reflects the prominence that she has achieved across the Jewish world over the past 12 months.

Besides her role at the helm of Women of the Wall, Hoffman is the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the Reform movement in Israel. Previously she served for 14 years as a member of Jerusalem’s City Council, making a name for herself as a critic of Orthodox hegemony and defender of religious pluralism in Israel’s capital.

As head of Women of the Wall, Hoffman’s efforts over the past year to secure equal praying rights for women at the Kotel, Jerusalem’s Western Wall, were at the focal point of media attention and public debate in both the Jewish Diaspora and Israel itself. Her outspoken championing of religious pluralism and gender equality – including several arrests by the Israel police - have galvanized American liberal Jews, for whom Hoffman has become a celebrated Jewish heroine.

No less significantly, the success of Hoffman’s tactics has also captured the attention of many Israelis, highlighting the ongoing struggle for religious pluralism and gender equality in Israeli life.

"The people who voted for me voted for the idea of religious freedom and equality -- an idea whose time has come," said Hoffman upon learning that she was voted Haaretz's Person of the Year. She said she owed the honor to "all my board members, all our founders who are in United States, all the hundreds of women who pray with us every month, all the thousands who show solidarity with us abroad, and of course, all the men who have supported us for 25 years."

Hoffman said she was thrilled though surprised by the outcome of the vote. "I was sure Waze would win," she said. She said she was also happy that two of the top three vote-getters were women.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Archaeologists discover: God's wife?

Archaeologists discover: God's wife?

Israel is touted as the birthplace of monotheism, but mounting evidence suggests that the Israelites, and later the Judahites - like their neighbors - worshiped a pantheon.
By Julia Fridman

“You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God that you shall make.” Deuteronomy 16:21.

The Old Testament is rife with the admonishment of errant kings and queens worshiping ‘false gods’, with the much of the blame falling on the Kingdom of Israel and that of Ahab and his infamous queen Jezebel.

In recent years there have been a significant number of discoveries of cult stands and shrine caches throughout Israel. They were found either buried in favissae (underground cellars) or buried in caches, such as at Hazevah and Yavneh, or found in various other settings, like at Tel Rehov’s honey production site and at Tel Halif’s industrial textile area. The most recent findings were at Motza, just north of Jerusalem, where a cache of apparently cultic items were found in an ancient temple.

Israel is often touted as the birthplace of monotheism. But the Motza artifacts, so similar to those of distant Hazeva and Qitmit, taken in conjunction with the previously discovered stands, shrines and altars from Megiddo, Taanach and Beit Sh'ean, paint a significantly richer picture of the religious life of this ancient land. Add the various figurines found strewn about the land of Israel of females in various poses and states of dress and undress as well as dogs, horses, and bulls: The iconography points to a pantheon of deities, as some scholars believe, or to two main deities, something of a duality.

These practices of worshipping a pantheon or diumvirate godhead appears to have lasted throughout the Late Iron Age of the Land of Israel (10th–6th centuries BCE), and ended only with the Babylonian conquest of Judah and apparent expulsion of its residents. The ancient practices were gone for good, not returning with the exiles from Persia and Babylon, several generations after the exile, who upon their return derided the Samaritans for pagan beliefs.

Items that speak of gods other than YHWH or "the One" span from standing pillars ("masseboth"), decorated shrine boxes, horned altars, cult stands, miniature icons, Judiahite Pillar Figurines - known in archaeological speak as JPFs - in varying poses: holding a drum or a disk in one hand, cupping their breasts, nude, pregnant, dressed, and so on. Added to this are ceramic and metal animal figurines, as well as male figurines, some with horns.

Interestingly, there are vastly more female figurines and representations found on shrines than there are male ones.

And now add to this the ground-breaking finds at Khirbet el Qom and Kuntillet Ajrud.

Who's that girl?

Going by what the Bible tells us, there were two major reforms against these apparent pagan practices, one by Elijah and the other by Josiah. And while there was much denouncement of them, the practices persisted, as can be seen in the endless complaints of the Biblical writers and in the archaeological evidence.

The evidence points to the worship of at least two deities.

This is a good point to wonder what these deities' names were. In fact we know, from several inscriptions.

Image on pottery found at Kuntillet Ajrud. Inscriptions include Wikimedia Commons
The first is an inscription that was found in an 8th century tomb at the site of Khirbet el Qom, in the heart of Judah, in a tomb. The inscription is a prayer, and contains the names of YHWH and that of Ashera, the latter is invoked three times. On one side of the inscription a crude tree appears to have been incised as well.
Another famous inscription was found at the site of Kuntillet Ajrud, on the border of Judah. It also dates to approximately the same time period as the Khirbet el Qom findings.

The site is scattered with dedicatory inscriptions to “YHWH and his ASHERA”. One stands out in particular: “To YHWH of SHOMRON and his ASHERA” (Meshel 2012: 86–101).

Shomron or Samaria was the capitol of Israel, very far from this peripheral border of Judah. Along with the inscription, the drawings found with the inscriptions match the iconography found on the shrines, for instance the Tree of Life, with volutes and lotus blossoms for branches, feeding caprids, and a lion standing underneath this tree of life.

So, Iron Age Israelites were not monotheists after all? Or, what do these cultic finds around Israel and Judah mean?

It is a common joke in archaeological circles that if you don’t know what something is, then it must be 'cultic.'

“Many classes of objects such as figurines are – contrary to what many of us think – not inherently 'cultic' at all," says Michael Press, an expert in Philistine culture and religion. "They could have been used in a variety of contexts and have a variety of functions. Some of these might be only religious in a broad sense, for instance, providing protection from evil." They might not have been religious at all, he adds – for instance, some might have been teaching tools.

How then can one tell the difference? “We have to carefully look at the types of buildings we find these items in, what other objects are associated with them,” Press explains.

A coastal tradition of cults

He also points out that the cultic finds aren't confined to Israel and Judah. "The 9th century BCE Yavneh shrines – the most spectacular find of the last 15 years or so – are from a site within Philistia. They seem to represent a coastal Philistine tradition rather than an inland Judahite one.”

Similar imagery is seen on the shrines is found throughout Israel and Judah as well and in the surrounding near eastern lands.

The broad, and very important, implication of the finds is that different political and ethnic groups used broadly similar classes of objects, though there was regional variation, says Press. Recent finds at Motza, of an apparent temple with figurines that differ from the typical Judahite pillar figurines and horse and riders are the first clear example of a public cultic place in Judah, says Press. They also bear a remarkable resemblance to supposed “Edomite” examples from the Negev (from Horvat Qitmit and En Hatzeva in Judah).

“At the same time, we have to be cautious about trying to draw too much information about something like 'religion' from material culture," says Press. "Archaeologists have a very difficult job in reconstructing the world of ideas, how people thought, from material remains. There is a gigantic interpretive leap from concrete remains to abstract theory. And at best we only get glimpses of that sort of world of ideas and imagination.”

But was polytheistic worship of female figurines an "official state religion"? That is hard to prove, says Erin Darby, professor of religious studies at University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an expert on Judahite pillar figurines. She adds that it depends on what one means by "state religion." In her view, "state religion" refers to a religious activity performed by many of the people who lived within a national boundary. It is something sponsored or encouraged by the upper echelon, she elaborates.

"The Judahite pillar figurines certainly tell us that many of the people who lived in Judah - Israel is a slightly different story - used small terracotta females in rituals that I strongly believe relate to protection and healing, most frequently taking place in homes and neighborhoods. This is especially true in Jerusalem, which is the corpus I know the best,” Darby says. She does not believe however that there is the textual or archaeological evidence that connects these particular terracottas to Asherah, the female deity.

The fact is that Judahite pillar figurines were found in two Jerusalem areas - Shiloh's Area G and Ramat Rahel. That, says Darby, "indicates that people who were probably affiliated with either palace or temple used figurines."

Use of figurines continued in Jerusalem throughout the Late Iron Age. "At the same time, in our petrographic study, David ben Shlomo and I found no evidence to support centralized manufacture by the state," Darby says. "The data seem to suggest the possibility of multiple local manufacturers in Jerusalem. Figurines were probably produced by the same folks who made pottery vessels.”

In other words, daily practices in ancient Israel were more complex than the term "monotheism" suggests, Darby sums up. "I think you have tons of evidence to back this up, especially in Jerusalem and outlying areas like Motza. Not even the Bible claims that most ancient Judeans were strict monotheists," she says, though it is always disputable whether shrine boxes or figurines attest to Asherah specifically.

At a minimum, these objects suggest ancient religious life was just as complex as anything in the modern world, Darby says.

Ancient pantheons, not only the famous Greek or Roman ones, had multiple members including semi-divine lower level deities. "The typical version of monotheism associated with ancient Judah is the result of modern people choosing a few texts in the Bible to then reconstruct their ideal picture of what ancient Judeans did,” she sums up. But it clearly wasn't how people lived their lives.

Another famous inscription was found at the site of Kuntillet Ajrud, on the border of Judah. It also dates to approximately the same time period as the Khirbet el Qom findings.

The site is scattered with dedicatory inscriptions to “YHWH and his ASHERA”. One stands out in particular: “To YHWH of SHOMRON and his ASHERA” (Meshel 2012: 86–101).

Shomron or Samaria was the capitol of Israel, very far from this peripheral border of Judah. Along with the inscription, the drawings found with the inscriptions match the iconography found on the shrines, for instance the Tree of Life, with volutes and lotus blossoms for branches, feeding caprids, and a lion standing underneath this tree of life.

So, Iron Age Israelites were not monotheists after all? Or, what do these cultic finds around Israel and Judah mean?

It is a common joke in archaeological circles that if you don’t know what something is, then it must be 'cultic.'

“Many classes of objects such as figurines are – contrary to what many of us think – not inherently 'cultic' at all," says Michael Press, an expert in Philistine culture and religion. "They could have been used in a variety of contexts and have a variety of functions. Some of these might be only religious in a broad sense, for instance, providing protection from evil." They might not have been religious at all, he adds – for instance, some might have been teaching tools.

How then can one tell the difference? “We have to carefully look at the types of buildings we find these items in, what other objects are associated with them,” Press explains.

A coastal tradition of cults

He also points out that the cultic finds aren't confined to Israel and Judah. "The 9th century BCE Yavneh shrines – the most spectacular find of the last 15 years or so – are from a site within Philistia. They seem to represent a coastal Philistine tradition rather than an inland Judahite one.”

Similar imagery is seen on the shrines is found throughout Israel and Judah as well and in the surrounding near eastern lands.

The broad, and very important, implication of the finds is that different political and ethnic groups used broadly similar classes of objects, though there was regional variation, says Press. Recent finds at Motza, of an apparent temple with figurines that differ from the typical Judahite pillar figurines and horse and riders are the first clear example of a public cultic place in Judah, says Press. They also bear a remarkable resemblance to supposed “Edomite” examples from the Negev (from Horvat Qitmit and En Hatzeva in Judah).

“At the same time, we have to be cautious about trying to draw too much information about something like 'religion' from material culture," says Press. "Archaeologists have a very difficult job in reconstructing the world of ideas, how people thought, from material remains. There is a gigantic interpretive leap from concrete remains to abstract theory. And at best we only get glimpses of that sort of world of ideas and imagination.”

But was polytheistic worship of female figurines an "official state religion"? That is hard to prove, says Erin Darby, professor of religious studies at University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an expert on Judahite pillar figurines. She adds that it depends on what one means by "state religion." In her view, "state religion" refers to a religious activity performed by many of the people who lived within a national boundary. It is something sponsored or encouraged by the upper echelon, she elaborates.

"The Judahite pillar figurines certainly tell us that many of the people who lived in Judah - Israel is a slightly different story - used small terracotta females in rituals that I strongly believe relate to protection and healing, most frequently taking place in homes and neighborhoods. This is especially true in Jerusalem, which is the corpus I know the best,” Darby says. She does not believe however that there is the textual or archaeological evidence that connects these particular terracottas to Asherah, the female deity.

The fact is that Judahite pillar figurines were found in two Jerusalem areas - Shiloh's Area G and Ramat Rahel. That, says Darby, "indicates that people who were probably affiliated with either palace or temple used figurines."

Use of figurines continued in Jerusalem throughout the Late Iron Age. "At the same time, in our petrographic study, David ben Shlomo and I found no evidence to support centralized manufacture by the state," Darby says. "The data seem to suggest the possibility of multiple local manufacturers in Jerusalem. Figurines were probably produced by the same folks who made pottery vessels.”

In other words, daily practices in ancient Israel were more complex than the term "monotheism" suggests, Darby sums up. "I think you have tons of evidence to back this up, especially in Jerusalem and outlying areas like Motza. Not even the Bible claims that most ancient Judeans were strict monotheists," she says, though it is always disputable whether shrine boxes or figurines attest to Asherah specifically.

At a minimum, these objects suggest ancient religious life was just as complex as anything in the modern world, Darby says.

Ancient pantheons, not only the famous Greek or Roman ones, had multiple members including semi-divine lower level deities. "The typical version of monotheism associated with ancient Judah is the result of modern people choosing a few texts in the Bible to then reconstruct their ideal picture of what ancient Judeans did,” she sums up. But it clearly wasn't how people lived their lives.

Should Israel get oil out of Vinegar, for an energy revolution?


Should Israel get oil out of Vinegar, for an energy revolution?

The Holy Land sits on the world’s second-largest deposits of oil shale. Advocates say its extraction will be safe and could transform the economy. Opponents say the environmental fallout could be disastrous
By DAVID HOROVITZ




Far below the surface of the promised land, a hidden treasure lies. If it can be carefully liberated from the geological layer in which it is caught, it promises nothing less than to transform Israel’s economy. It is called oil shale. And, along with Jordan, Israel just so happens to sit upon the world’s second largest deposits of the stuff, after the United States.

Oil shale deposits are overwhelmingly located outside conventional oil-rich areas such as the Middle East and North Africa. So if safe, economic processes for extracting this alternative oil resource can be put into effect, dependence on the energy-exporting Middle East could gradually decline, in a dramatic transformation of the global economy, with Israel as a prime beneficiary.

If.

Advocates say oil shale is an Israeli resource whose time has come, and are adamant that it can be realized without negative environmental consequences. But critics cite fears of underground fires, contaminants seeping into air and water, even seismic rifts.

With a few exceptions, the battle over oil shale is being fought away from the headlines. It will come to a head in the Jerusalem Regional Planning Authority, a body headed by an Interior Ministry bureaucrat, which in the next few months will decide whether to authorize a pilot project to extract shale oil in the Elah Valley, south of Beit Shemesh.

The stakes in the standoff — between those who believe that oil shale is a remarkable asset that has become technologically, commercially and environmentally viable, and those who argue that seeking to extract it could be catastrophic — are enormous. Tens of billions of dollars are involved. And at the heart of the struggle, with investors facing off against environmentalists, and government ministries facing off against each other, stands an alternative oil man with an unforgettable name: Harold Vinegar.

***

Until five years ago, Harold Vinegar was living a thoroughly good life in Houston, Texas, as a chief scientist at Shell Oil. The Brooklyn-born physicist with the Harvard PhD had followed his uncle into the oil industry, and become an expert in developing the world’s unconventional oil resources — oil that won’t flow when you first drill for it, but has to be extracted, one way or another, by heating the rock in which it is trapped. He enjoyed his work. He was convinced that the human race would increasingly need the resources he was skilled at obtaining. He was professionally fulfilled and well paid.

Harold Vinegar (photo: Courtesy Harold Vinegar, IEI)

And then, one fateful evening, he invited a senior official from Israel’s Petroleum Authority to dinner.

This official had come to Houston to try to persuade Shell to set up operations in Israel — to explore the possibility of extracting shale oil from the rocky depths of the hitherto unpromising Promised Land.

The official’s mission was, of course, a lost cause. Not because the oil isn’t there. It is. In frankly sensational quantities. But because Shell was not going to come near it.

Shell is not an anti-Semitic company. It was started in London, as a transport firm, by Marcus Samuel and his brother Samuel (that’s right: Samuel Samuel), merging in 1907 with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company to become Royal Dutch Shell. Its US operation was established by their nephew. In 1976, when Vinegar came to the lab in Houston where Shell made many of its major oil innovations and inventions — not to mention the high-octane aviation fuel that helped the US fly rings around the Japanese in World War II — he found a large number of Jewish scientists and engineers there.

But three-quarters of the world’s known conventional oil reserves are located in the Middle East and North Africa. Concluding oil shale exploration deals with the world’s only Jewish state, it could be reliably assumed, would not be helpful to the rest of Shell’s business.

He was on a mission impossible, but the Petroleum Authority official was not easily deterred. Again and again over dinner with Vinegar and wife Robin, the Israeli visitor pressed: “Are you sure you can’t get Shell to come to Israel?’” Again and again, Vinegar gave his reluctant but insistent, “I’m sure this won’t happen.”

So the Israeli emissary changed tack. “You come!” he urged Vinegar. “Start a company. Put in an application for oil shale exploration rights.’”

Vinegar had been to Israel… once. Briefly. In 1972. He had no family here. Life was good in Texas. He sat on prestigious bodies like the US National Research Council’s Committee on Earth Resources. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the American Physical Society.

But this Israeli visitor just wouldn’t take no for an answer. “He stayed late into the night,” Vinegar recalls. “Talks about a pipeline here, infrastructure there, this is how long it will take. I tell him I’ve never formed a company before. He says, ‘You just come. The money will find you.’ And so, I promised that I’d see.

“Finally he leaves,” Vinegar continues, “and I say to my wife Robin, ‘Have you ever heard anything so crazy?’

“She says, ‘I can be packed by tomorrow morning.’”

And so it was that on October 31, 2008, after 32 happy years, Harold Vinegar retired from his job as chief scientist at Shell Oil. And barely five weeks later, on December 7, 2008, along with wife Robin and his son, a cartographer in the same business, he made aliya.

Why? “Because I thought we could do something very good for Israel.”

****

A world authority on extracting shale oil, Vinegar has been active in the field since 1980, improving the technology, pioneering conversion and extraction processes for shale.

And this tiny country, dwarfed physically in the region, and dwarfed economically down the decades by Arab oil, is a potential oil shale superpower.

Vinegar is a friendly, garrulous 64-year-old with graying hair, a very loud, pealing laugh, and an impressive capacity to explain his specialized work to the layman. He elaborates that 23 countries worldwide have oil shale. The US is at the head of the list, boasting considerable resources in Colorado. And then come Israel and Jordan.

Oil shale, he explains, is “a source rock containing solid organic matter trapped in the rock. If it was buried deep enough, then over geological time the organic matter would generate oil and gas. This is what happened to make conventional oil. But oil shale is too young, buried too shallow, so it hasn’t generated oil yet.” The in situ thermal process for its extraction, Vinegar says, “accelerates the maturation of the oil shale, so that it occurs in a period of a few years instead of millions of years.”

“For most of my career, a barrel of oil cost about $20 in inflation-adjusted terms,” notes Vinegar, speaking to The Times of Israel at the Jerusalem offices of his firm, Israel Energy Initiatives, “but today demand is soaring from China and the developing countries, and the price of oil is over $100 a barrel. There are 7 billion people on Earth today, and by 2050, there are projected to be 9 billion. Those extra two billion people will be mainly in the developing countries — where energy use per capita is very low today, but is sure to increase many times. So I believe the price of oil is going to stay high.”

Current estimates of conventional world oil reserves are about 1 trillion barrels. At the present rate of use, unless major new discoveries are found, the importance of unconventional oil seems likely to rise, with immense economic and geopolitical consequences.

Shell may not have been prepared to get involved in Israel, but it is emphatically involved across the border in Jordan. Unencumbered by the constraints of democracy, King Abdullah in 2009 granted Royal Dutch Shell exploration rights over a staggering 22,500 sq. km. of Jordanian territory — “that’s a quarter of the country,” Vinegar notes, “larger than Israel” — under the Yarmouk in the north, and running down the center of the country. Shell-registered JOSCO, the Jordan Oil Shale Co. with headquarters in Amman, has drilled hundreds of exploration wells, and is preparing a Jordanian pilot. Vinegar says that the Jordanian and Israeli oil shales are “sister deposits, very similar high quality oil shale.”

Vinegar has been here for four and a half years now. He has heavyweight backing: Investors in IEI parent Genie Energy, which is chaired by Howard Jonas, reportedly include former US vice president Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Rupert Murdoch.

So how are things going in Israel? How much progress has he made? “Well,” he offers after a pregnant pause, “I’m disappointed it hasn’t gone faster.”

Potentially, he says, using a small tract of land (1,000 dunams), Israel could be producing 50,000 barrels of oil a day for more than 25 years — that’s $5.5 million-worth per day at today’s imported prices – from its shale deposits. And it could step up the pace from there.

Potentially.

***

Israel’s oil shale deposits lie on the coastal plain. They were formed as a result of shifting geological plates along the lines of the Dead Sea Fault 70 million years ago. The best oil shale deposits are usually on the coast, and the Shfela lowlands are no exception — rich in oil shale, concentrated in a layer 300-500 meters down.

The IEI exploration area

How rich? IEI was granted an exploration license for 238 square kilometers in the Shfela, which IEI chief geologist Yuval Bartov estimates hold 40–60 billion barrels. “His estimate is that Israel as a whole has at least 250 billion barrels of high quality shale oil,” says Vinegar. (IEI’s exploration area extends 
northward
 to 
the 
Elah
 River,
 down 
to 
the 
Adurayim River 
in 
the 
south, 
in the area of Route 
6 
in the west,
 and out 
to the 
Aderet 
settlement 
in 
the east, according to a Keren Kayemet LeYisrael-Jewish National Fund report.)

The best area to have a scientific controlled pilot is in the Elah valley, south of Beit Shemesh, IEI says, but it says the commercial project will be located further south, near Tarqumiyah.

To help with the visualization, Vinegar says that each ton of rock — about a cubic meter — yields about 30 gallons of shale oil.

So how do you get them out?

Vinegar talks through the process he has been central to improving, “In Situ Thermal Recovery.” This involves drilling heater wells down to the oil shale layer, turning the wells horizontal and extending far into the rock, inserting heaters into the wells, and gradually heating up the rock. It’s a process that over a few years duplicates the natural maturation of the oil shale over geological time, he says.

As the temperature rises in the oil shale, the solid organic matter converts into oil and gas, but at the temperatures and low pressures in the subsurface, it moves predominantly as a gas. “The gas flows to the production wells, and when it is produced to the surface, you condense it. You end up with about two-thirds oil and one-third natural gas. The in situ process leaves the coke behind, as it distills only light products from the oil shale.”

This is not “the black stuff that one historically thought of as oil from shale,” he says. Vinegar hands over a vial of clear, light-golden oil — product of Israel.

Vinegar says the process is energy-efficient: Although heat is supplied to the rock in order to mature the oil shale, the energy contained in the produced oil and gas is many times the input thermal energy.

Israel is usually handicapped by its tiny size, but in this endeavor, he says, small is beautiful. IEI’s license area is just 30 kilometers from where Israel’s current energy windfall, natural gas from the Tamar field, is coming ashore. Vinegar envisages using the Tamar gas to start the heating process, “but pretty soon you’ll be producing your own gas. It’s self-sustaining.”

Once the shale oil is produced, the refineries at Ashdod and Haifa come into play. Israel has pipeline infrastructure, two excellent refineries, and abundant natural gas, he notes.

“We’ve completed the exploration phase,” he says. “We drilled six appraisal wells and we’ve taken 1,500 meters of continuous core. It’s very homogeneous rock.” He passes over a foot-long tube of unremarkable-looking material. “The richness of the resource and the quality of the oil produced from it in the laboratory has exceeded our expectations.”

***

Vinegar is adamant that he and his colleagues can extract Israel’s oil shale without harming the environment. The in situ thermal process, he insists, is “environmentally sound.”

The oil shale is confined by very thick (approximately 200 meters) impermeable layers both above and below, Vinegar says. Also, since the process is operated at pressures below hydrostatic pressure, any flow will be inwards into the heated zone, not outwards.

Meanwhile, on the surface, there is only a small footprint from the well heads. “We would use less than a square kilometer over 30 years of production. Using horizontal wells results in a very small surface footprint.”

Overall, says Vinegar, “I’m sure we’ll have a very small impact on air and no effect on water. But,” he stresses, “the pilot has to show it.”

A long Haaretz article in April painted a very different picture. It alleged that key Israeli government officials were being pressured to approve the project and that dissenters were being silenced and marginalized. “If the authorities don’t pull themselves together, and if the public doesn’t wake up and take action,” the article warned, “the Elah Valley will be turned into a great big oil shale production site… Its vistas will likely be ruined, its soil and groundwater polluted by heavy metals, and its clean air will become a distant memory. Its 7,000 residents will lose their slice of heaven on earth. And a few tycoons in Israel and the United States will get even richer.”

Orr Karassin may not speak in quite those apocalyptic tones, but she is extremely concerned that Vinegar’s assurances may be mistaken, and is intent on ensuring that Vinegar and IEI do not win the Jerusalem Regional Planning Authority’s approval for their proposed pilot.

Karassin is an environmental policy expert who heads the Sustainable Development Committee of the board of directors at Keren Kayemet LeYisrael (Jewish National Fund), and represents the Green Zionist Alliance on the board. Karassin headed a committee that authored a report for KKL two years ago that emphatically opposes movement toward oil shale production unless or until a wide range of concerns are successfully addressed. Three months ago, the board of KKL formally decided to oppose the IEI’s pilot application.

The project was liable to damage the local landscape, KKL chairman Efi Stenzler was quoted as saying, and the board would continue to oppose oil shale extraction until “the uncertainty over the many risks inherent in the venture has been significantly reduced.” KKL will make its representations to the Jerusalem Regional Planning Authority. Says Karassin: “I hope its view will be a factor” in the committee’s decision.

It was noted in some Hebrew media reports that KKL controls some of the terrain in which IEI was granted exploration rights. That constitutes a fairly spectacular understatement. As Karassin’s 2011 report highlights, IEI’s exploration license area “includes
 Britannia 
Park, 
Masua
 forest
 and all
 of 
Adullam
 Park,
 which was 
bestowed upon 
the
 state
 by KKL‐JNF” to mark Israel’s 60th anniversary of independence. “The areas
 of 
forest, 
park 
and nature 
reserves, 
which 
are 
under
 statutory 
protection, 
constitute 
55% 
of 
the 
license
 area.” Moreover, the 
proposed 
site 
for 
the IEI pilot 
is 
located
 at 
the 
foot 
of Tel 
Azekah, 
part 
of 
Britannia Park… 
and 
as 
such 
determined 
to 
be 
an 
integrated 
conservation
 area in 
the 
National
 Outline
 Plan.”

Orr Karassin (photo credit: Courtesy)

In a telephone interview, Karassin reiterates that KKL does not support the pilot “because there are too many questions of uncertainty regarding the environmental consequences.”

On a broad level, she says, “Oil shale does not synchronize well with the current Israeli policy on alternatives to oil, and on clean and sustainable energy. If Israel wants to be a leader in clean and sustainable energy, then oil shale is not the way to go.”

Her 2011 report noted, among other objections, that “
investing 
in 
the development
 of
 a
 limited
 resource
 like 
oil 
shale” could lead to a 
decrease in 
”investment 
in 
renewable energy
 sources
 that
 are 
not 
dependent 
on 
limited 
resources.” This, it warned “
will halt 
the progression 
of 
an 
energy
 industry 
independent 
from
 fossil 
fuel
 energy.” The report also cited an expected increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

IEI operations at the Zoharim drilling site in the Shfela, as part of the appraisal process, seen from a viewpoint to the north (photo credit: Yoray Liberman, IEI)

The report highlighted a list of concerns about the particular area earmarked for the project, describing it as “
one 
of 
the 
only 
stretches 
of open 
spaces 
that 
remain 
in
 central
 Israel,” with irrefutable 
ecological 
significance, whose character would “completely change” if the project went ahead at the commercial level.

In the interview, on the specific level, Karassin expresses concern about different contaminants moving from the oil shale to the air or ground water. Her report cited fears that some toxic gases could leak into the air, and that the heating process could render the layers separating the soil from the aquifer permeable, with heavy metals and other pollutants infiltrating the water.

She worries about underground fires, on a far greater and more devastating scale than the one in Mishor Rotem in 2010 caused by open crater mining at a phosphate mine that runs on oil shale. And she refers to the dangers of seismic rifts, citing new research in the US, amid the boom in fracking, that shows “very substantial indications of seismic activity, to the point of earthquakes.”

The proposed technology for the IEI project may not be directly comparable to the techniques used in fracking, but Karassin’s point is that too many aspects of what IEI is planning are insufficiently familiar, and insufficiently tested, and therefore “the precautionary principle has to be influential.” (This approach holds that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing extreme and irreparable harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an act.)

The bottom line, says Karassin, who was the first executive director of Life and Environment, the umbrella group for Israeli environmental organizations, and was appointed by the Israeli government to serve as a charter member of the National Committee for Environmental Quality, is that “we need a broader discussion of the risks — what we know and what we don’t know about the risks. This is a tiny country. We’re not much larger than New Jersey,” she points out. “If a major region in the country becomes an oil production zone, it becomes a major issue for all of central Israel.”

She says that both the Agriculture Ministry and the Environment Ministry currently favor deferring the pilot, but is fearful that most government ministries — especially the Ministry of Energy and Water — don’t have a clear enough view of broader policy and of whether the risks are worth taking.

***

Vinegar says the pilot is critical for IEI’s engineering design, but also for tangible scientific proof that the process works in Israeli oil shale. Seven pilots have been done successfully in Colorado oil shale, but “we have to prove there won’t be environmental damage here in Israel.”

How will the pilot work? “The Shfela pilot will involve a number of wells heating a 30-meter thick zone for about a year. We’ll produce about 500 barrels of oil, which will be refined to transportation fuels. Together with the ministries, we will carefully monitor the air and the water all around the pilot. We will check for unknown factors. Only if all is clear,” he says, “will we move on to a demonstration phase.”

Vinegar believes it is very clear that a pilot should be done. “We have 250 billion barrels in the ground! Israel has to know if it can be produced in a way that is economically viable and environmentally acceptable. The opposition says ‘No, it will not work.’ OK, let’s see, because if it does work, and I am sure it will, Israel will have a very bright energy future, and then the country can decide, based on facts, what will be the scale of commercial activity.”

But Karassin argues that the battle over the pilot is the key phase of the struggle over the project as a whole, because she says it would be “very difficult if not impossible” under Israeli law to stop “commercial planning and execution” were the pilot stage to be cleared. And yet, she claims, “the pilot submitted and the real project are technologically different. And the monitoring (envisaged in the pilot) will not be a very good indication of the final manufacturing reality.” Put simply: “The pilot is not necessarily sufficiently reliable,” she says.

Elaborating on this claim, Karassin’s 2011 report cited a petition by environmental group Adam Teva V’Din (Israel Union for Environmental Defense), which argued that the pilot would not offer adequate insights because planned commercial production was envisaged in a location 20 kilometers from the pilot area, and because “the 
pilot 
drilling 
method 
will
 be 
vertical 
only, 
and 
not 
vertical 
split 
into 
horizontal,
 as expected 
in 
the 
commercial
 production.” This petition was rejected by the Supreme Court last December.


IEI operations at the Zoharim drilling site in the Shfela, removing shale rock from a depth of 350 meters, as part of the appraisal program (photo: Yoray Liberman, IEI)

Asked whether she would always oppose the project, no matter how it might be improved, Karassin divides her answer into two. On the micro-perspective, “there’s a huge question mark.” The pilot “must be defined to the point where the impact of the technology is clear, and the repercussions on both the broader and the micro scale are much better known.” It’s a case of “mind the gap!, be careful,” she says. But from a broad policy perspective, she says, yes, her opposition to extracting Israel’s oil shale is unstinting and unchangeable.

“Yes, this is a mega-gigantic project,” says Karassin, with many times the economic potential of Israel’s offshore natural gas finds. She cites talk of 300 million barrels — although she says that’s a gross figure, before the energy input is subtracted. “Well, at 100 euros a barrel, that’s 3 trillion euros, so there are huge economic interests involved,” she says. And the shareholders are placing “lots of pressure” on the government to give it the go-ahead. Concludes Karassin: “Israel’s wider interests must take precedence. And those require that the oil shale stays where it is.”

Says Vinegar: “I see what this can mean for Israel.” He continues, “It means energy security for Israel, almost forever. It means an enormous continuing source of income. It means so many jobs — in both primary and related industries.”

Vinegar adds, “The natural gas in the Mediterranean will have a very favorable impact on the economy; but this will have a greater effect than that of the natural gas. And remember, gas is ideal for electricity generation, but oil is required for true energy security because it provides the fuel for cars, trucks and jet planes.”

***

It was in the Elah Valley, where IEI wants to carry out its pilot, that the Bible tells us David defeated Goliath.

For IEI’s environmental opponents, the association is highly appropriate; they see theirs as a modern version of that against-the-odds struggle by the little man against the giant.

But for Harold Vinegar and his supporters, too, the David and Goliath story resonates, for theirs, they believe, is a project that will safely strengthen tiny Israel — literally empower it — against its vast array of enemies.

It might take the wisdom of David’s son, Solomon, to determine whose argument should triumph. We have the Jerusalem Regional Planning Authority.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

9/11 in the mayor’s office

9/11 in the mayor’s office

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013


Rachael Risby-Raz served as Diaspora Affairs Advisor 
to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

It had been a fairly quiet day in the Jerusalem Mayor’s Office when a Gur Hassid, grasping his black kippah, sidelocks flying out of the side of his head, came running in to the sixth floor of Safra Square, shouting, “Turn on the television, a plane just crashed into a building in New York.” We ran into the conference room and switched on CNN in time to see the second plane hit.

More and more people rushed in and stared at the small screen in shock. Within minutes the silence turned in to a loud discussion about what was going on and by the time Shula Zaken, the Chief of Staff, arrived to chastise us for making so much noise, we were all of one mind: New York was under a terror attack.

Zaken, who was always calm under pressure, turned to me and said calmly, but forcefully, “Where is the Mayor?” It took me a second to digest her question. At the time I was serving as the Foreign Relations Coordinator in Ehud Olmert’s office, and his Chief of Staff was pale: the Mayor was on a trip to New York.

I scooted to my desk and with shaking hands, pulled out his travel itinerary. No, he was on a plane out of New York. Oh my goodness, a plane, New York! I quickly calculated time and distance: No, he should be well over the ocean by now, he should be safe. I stood relieved for a few seconds and then remembered, the Mayor’s eldest son. He was in New York.

We all returned to the conference room, listening intently to every word of the news, flicking channels, trying to understand what was going on.

“Rachael, your phone is ringing,” one of the secretaries called me out of my fixation and I rushed to answer it. “Rachael, it’s Ehud.” The Mayor’s strong voice could be heard on the other end of the line. “Where are you? Aren’t you on a plane?” How are you calling me? There is a huge terror attack in New York, what about your son?” The words came tumbling out. “I know, the pilots updated me. I am calling from the plane. I have spoken to my son, he is ok but some of his friends still haven’t made contact. I will be home soon. What are they saying on the news?”

I told him what we knew, relieved that my Mayor and his son were safe. My thoughts turned to another Mayor, Rudy Giuliani of New York. Jerusalem and New York are sister cities and their Mayors at the time shared a close, personal relationship. I thought of his staff and where they could be at that moment, if they were safe.

The phone rang again. This time it was the Mayor’s son on the phone. “Thank God you are safe. I spoke to your Dad already. What’s going on?” “I can’t talk long, the lines are failing all the time,” he said hurriedly, “Write done this number. Call these people and tell them that their son is safe. He is with me. We can’t get through.” The phone cut out.

Again my hands shook as I dialed the number. “Hello, I am calling from the Mayor’s Office” “Which Mayor’s Office? In New York?” the lady’s voice on the other end of the line asked, my non-native accent confusing her, “No, in Jerusalem. I just got a call from our Mayor’s son, who is in New York. He is a friend of your son and they are together. He is alive. He is safe. He will try and call you soon. That is all I know.” She thanked me profusely for the information and I barely managed to replace the phone before I burst into tears.

The Mayor arrived back in Jerusalem and it was decided that in a show of solidarity with the people of New York, we would temporarily rename Jerusalem’s main thoroughfare, Jaffa Road, New York Street. A ceremony was quickly arranged and the Mayor wanted to do a live conversation with Rudy Giuliani. I had been less than a month on the job and now I had to do the impossible, get the Mayor of New York on the phone in the days after 911.

I had been in contact with Katy Anson, the Mayor of New York’s legendary assistant. She had described the chaos of the day and the efforts to restore calm, saying that they had been inspired by us here in Jerusalem, that we always tried to get back to normal as soon as was possible, that we did not let terror overcome us. I encouraged her as much as I could, assuring her that New Yorkers were just as strong as Jerusalemites.

The ceremony was drawing to a close and no sign of how we could get Giuliani on the line. Then I had an idea. In Israel, you can always get ministers and senior officials through their bodyguards. The Mayor of New York was protected by the NYPD. I asked Katy who was with him that day. “Please give me their number, “I begged, “I will do the rest.”

And thus on that chilly Jerusalem afternoon, the clear voice of Rudy Giuliani echoed across the courtyard of City Hall facing Jaffa Gate, under the pockmarked walls that told stories of other wars. Mayor Giuliani spoke of his solidarity visit to Jerusalem in 1996 and how he rode the No. 18 bus down that very road following the two bus bombings there. “I remember being amazed at the time at the spirit of the people of Israel and their determination and courage to go on, and I’m sensing that very same feeling right now here in New York,” he said.

The ceremony finished and I called Katy Anson back to thank her and let her know how special the ceremony was. “Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked. She replied, “Beth’s husband is still missing, can you pray that they will find him?” Beth Petrone-Hatton was the Mayor’s long-time executive assistant. Her husband, Terence Hatton, was the fire captain of Rescue Company 1 in Manhattan and on that fateful day, he had led his men into the north tower.

Tears welled in my eyes. “Katy, I am a few hundred meters from the holiest place for the Jewish people, the Western Wall. I am going to go there right now and pray that they will find Terry.” I promised her. I told the Chief of Staff that I had to go and I went straight to the Kotel, put my hand on its grand stones and prayed with all my heart that they would find Terry and that Beth would be comforted.

Sadly, Captain Terence Hatton did not survive. But his body was found and they were able to honor him with a hero’s burial. A few weeks after 911, Beth discovered that she was pregnant and she gave birth to a healthy baby girl whom she named Terri, after her father. She still works with Rudy Giuliani.

For years, whenever there was a terror attack in Jerusalem, Katy Anson was always one of the first to call to see if we were all OK. We remain in contact until this day.

Jerusalem and New York are two of the world’s great cities, beacons of light to the entire world. They now not only also share a terrible history of terror, but an honorable and inspiring history of populations who stand up after tragedy, resilient, strong and proud.

Monday, September 9, 2013

A Time to Remember and a Time to Forget

A Time to Remember and a Time to Forget

by Donniel Hartman

Memory is a primary motivator for teshuvah, but all too often unfortunately it is the memory of God which plays the dominant role. God as the being with an infinite and infallible memory, remembers and recounts all of our actions. God is the Judge in front of whom nothing is hidden or forgotten. Such a God instills fear that on the Day of Judgment, the Judge of the whole Earth will find us guilty. Rosh Hashanah, our annual day of judgment on which we are brought one-by-one in front of God to give an account for our actions, instills in us the fear which in turn motivates us to repent.

In an interesting twist on the theme of memory, the Rosh Hashana liturgy plays out the idea of God’s infinite memory and reminds God to not only remember every one of our failings but also the fact that God owes us as the descendants of Abraham, at the very least a little compassion, as a repayment for Abraham’s willingness to offer God his son, Isaac, at God’s request. Here, memory is central, not in order to catalyze human beings to repent but to catalyze God to grant us atonement. In both scenarios, Rosh Hashana lives up to its traditional nomenclature as Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance and is the foundation for Yom Kippur which follows it as either the culmination of the process of teshuvah or the culmination of the process of judgment which hopefully ends in atonement.

The teshuvah depicted above is a teshuvah out of fear and in a deep sense unworthy of us and our High Holiday season. Teshuvah ought to transcend the motivation of fear and instead be motivated by an inner vision of oneself and who one believes one ought to be. This is the idea of teshuvah out of love. In this teshuvah, memory still plays an essential role but it is no longer the memory of God but rather the memory of a human being. Rosh Hashana as Yom Hazikaron is not the day in which God remembers but the day in which we are challenged to remember.

One cannot embark upon a process of change without a full and honest recounting of one’s actions and of one’s life. This is the core meaning of the idea of vidui (confession), which as Maimonides states in Hilchot Teshuvah, is the essential commandment associated with the act of teshuvah. Personal transformation begins at the moment that an individual is willing to stand up and declare, “I have sinned. I have done such-and-such. I am ashamed of my actions and promise never to repeat them again.”

It is not merely that he who fails to learn from the past is doomed to repeat it, but that one who does not remember is paradoxically enslaved by the past. Who one is, remains frozen and determined by who one was. Memory can facilitate and allow for an honest recounting of what one has created in one’s life, a recounting which can marshal the will, energy and experience necessary to chart a different path, to see who one was and to decide to move in a different direction.

The problem is, however, that memory an also enslave one in the past. The ability to change is often conditional on a leap of faith, a faith in oneself, that one can begin anew, that who one was need not determine who one will be. In a deep sense, one also needs to free oneself from one’s past, to delete it, so that a new story, a new journey and a new person can emerge. To learn from the past often entails getting stuck there. A healthy revolution needs to be gradual but it also needs a moment of radical departure, a break, and teshuvah is nothing less than a personal revolution.

Rosh Hashana as the day of memory can be both a catalyst for teshuvah and a catalyst for making it impossible. To forget, we don’t need Rosh Hashana as the Day of Remembrance, but rather Rosh Hashana as the first day of the new year, a year whose story has yet to be written and who invites us to begin anew, unencumbered by the failures of the prior year.
In a trivial sense it is obvious that we need both, both a time to remember and a time to forget, and that a worthy life is one that finds the appropriate balance. I worry, however, that the idea of an “appropriate balance” itself often serves as a foundation for mediocrity, as in the balance, each undermines the other. It is true, we need both, but it is not a balance between the two we need but rather the ability to decide which we need and when, which we allow to dominate at any given moment.

There is indeed a time to remember, a time to give a deep and significant accounting for one’s actions, to come to terms with what one has done and become. To look oneself honestly in the mirror and to confront all of one’s flaws – not others’ flaws but one’s own flaws – in order to distance oneself from who one no longer wants to be.

But within this process there must be a moment when one lets go, when one knows that one has failed and stops berating oneself for that. When one looks to the future and is motivated by the unlimited potential which it promises. In order to live in this future as a new self we must also allow ourselves to forget.

And so we go, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, not in search of balance, but making sure that we never get stuck in one modality. A time to remember and a time to forget.

Shana tovah.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Ahead of New Year, Israel’s population tops 8 million



On eve of Rosh Hashanah 5774, three quarters of Israelis are Jewish; 163,000 babies were born in the last year

By GAVRIEL FISKE September 2, 2013, 2:23 pm 35



Throngs at a Tel Aviv beach, June 7, 2013. (photo credit: Lucie March/Flash90)


Israel’s population stands at more than 8 million, and three quarters of them are Jewish, according to statistics released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year, which begins on Wednesday evening — the state’s population numbers 8,081,000 citizens, a growth of some 142,000 since the previous Rosh Hashanah, representing a normal population growth of 1.8 percent.

Of Israel’s total population, 6,066,000 are Jewish, a full 75.1 percent. Israeli Arab citizens, Muslim, Christian, Druze and Bedouin alike, number 1,670,000, or 20.7% of the population. There are a further 345,000 citizens (4.2% of the population) who are Christians but not Arabs, belong to other religions or declined to state their religion to the Interior Ministry.

The report noted that the results do not include some 202,000 non-citizens who are registered to live in Israel.

During the year, approximately 163,000 new babies were born, around 40,000 deaths were recorded, and around 19,000 people immigrated to the country, although according to statistics released by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, only 16,500 new immigrants were absorbed in 5773.

About 65,000 marriages were recorded over the last year, according to the Interior Ministry, and 15,000 couples registered for divorce.

Israeli citizens registered almost 4.5 million departures from the country, and more than 5 million foreign nationals visited Israel over the last year, according to the Population, Immigration and Border Authority.
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Monday, September 2, 2013

Criticize Me as a Friend, Not as Roger Waters

By Marcie Lenk
Last week we heard that Roger Waters, the legendary bassist of Pink Floyd, wrote an open letter to musicians calling for a cultural boycott of Israel. The letter led to the expected reactions on all sides. BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) supporters consider Waters a hero, while supporters of Israel have responded defensively. And of course, there has been no shortage of name-calling on both sides. Is Roger Waters simply an anti-Semite whose criticism is easily dismissed? Is there any truth to his criticisms?

The shouting match is so intense that decent people reasonably wonder what to do. The leaders of the BDS movement have noted that they are calling for non-violent protest. Why do Israelis and Jews generally react so defensively against BDS? Here's why: calls for boycott will not solve the problems between Jews and Palestinians. Simply calling for boycotts and making blanket accusations not only will fail to solve the deep issues separating the groups, but will also hinder the dialogue and understanding needed to address them.

Despite accusations to the contrary, Israel is not an apartheid state. Israel's Declaration of Independence promises that the State "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective or religion, race or sex." Israel's Supreme Court, particularly, has protected the rights of the country’s minorities for decades.

However, despite even the Court’s efforts, the reality is that many Muslim and Christian Palestinians do not experience equality in Israel. There are historical and practical explanations for the differences in treatment, and there are many Arab-Israeli Palestinians who have benefited from Israeli citizenship. Still, Israelis know that there is a long road ahead before achieving both justice and peace.

So what is wrong with calls for boycott? The problem is that many of those calling for boycott appear to be more interested in condemning the entire State of Israel rather than addressing specific cases or policies. They are not friends of Israel. Jews and Israelis understandably hear these calls as having an agenda that extends beyond honest criticism.

For many outside Israel, there is generally a sense that one must choose sides in arguments about the conflict: I must unconditionally support my friend, and corresponding to this, I am expected to condemn the other side. This model is severely flawed. It only increases the number of enemies in the world; it does nothing to further peace and understanding.

Jewish tradition has a model of friendship that goes deeper than a simple, “you’re with me or against me” approach. The Mishnah teaches that one should "Make for yourself a teacher; acquire/buy for yourself a friend." (Mishnah Avot 1:7) Maimonides, like many readers of the Mishnah, wondered why the imperative to find a friend is so much stronger than the need to find a teacher. Even in the 12th century, Maimonides knew that true friends could not be bought. Why then does the Mishnah use the term kene (acquire/buy)? According to Maimonides, we have many kinds of friends. Some provide a service we need. Some make us feel good about ourselves. We trust these friends with all of our secrets, knowing that they will never betray us. A third category of friend is so important that s/he should be acquired by all means. This is the friend with whom we share the idea of "the good," who can criticize us and make us better versions of ourselves. We trust that this friend cares first and foremost about our well-being. For this reason we are willing to risk some vulnerability, believing that we will become better and stronger in the process.

If a person who is critical truly wants to help me change, s/he must care about my well-being. If I trust that is so, then I will be able hear and accept the criticism. Self-examination by the critic is important here. What is motivating the criticism? In the case of Israel, is the criticism about a particular policy or about something broader? Is the goal of the criticism (for example, making life better for Palestinians) best accomplished through such statements? Is the policy in question unique to Israel? Do I challenge problems such as racism elsewhere? Do I speak out against attacks on Christians in Syria and Egypt, for example?

The rabbis in the Talmud recognized that criticism is a tricky business. Rabbi Tarfon wondered if there was anyone in his generation who knew how to accept criticism, and Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah retorted that he wondered if there was anyone who knew how to (properly) criticize (BT Arakhin 16b). Almost two millennia later, we are all still challenged to accept criticism, but also to give criticism in a way that can actually effect change.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with their season of repentance are part of our yearly cycle. We repent every year, because we are all flawed. While attacks by Roger Waters and others are not innocent or righteous, let us move beyond the automatic reaction of defensiveness. Let us resolve to recognize the inequities in Israeli society and policy and to make life in this land a fulfillment of the promises in our Declaration of Independence.

Dr. Marcie Lenk is a member of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s iEngage Project and co-Director of New Paths: Christians Engaging Israel.