June 10, 2006 –Sivan 14, 5766

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, Temple Beth El, Stamford, Connecticut

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Contents of the Shabbat O Gram:

(Click to scroll down)

Just the Facts (service schedule)

The Rabid Rabbi

Mitzvah/Tzedakkah Opportunities

Ask the Rabbi

Spiritual Journey on the Web

Required Reading and Action Items (links to key articles on Israel and Jewish life)

Announcements (goings on in and around TBE)

Joke for the Week

Quote for the Week

“With respect to America's global war on terror, the assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Thursday is even more significant than the assassination of Osama bin Laden would be. Zarqawi is the terrorist responsible for the greatest number of casualties in recent years, and therefore, his liquidation has operational significance. Bin Laden's liquidation would have only moral significance.”

-Yossi Melman (Ha’aretz)

JUST THE FACTS

Friday Evening

Candle lighting: 8:07pm on Friday, 09 June 2006,- Havdalah is at 9:11pm on Saturday evening. For candle lighting times, other Jewish calendar information, and to download a Jewish calendar to your PDA, click on http://www.hebcal.com/. To see the festivals of other faiths as well, go to http://www.interfaithcalendar.org/

7^th grade Shabbat dinner - 5:45 PM

7^th graders will take class photos before the service (it won’t be dark yet) so families are invited to bring cameras.

Kabbalat Shabbat: 7:30 PM – in the sanctuary – Aliyah service for the 7^th grade (Hay class). Mazal tov to them!!!

For those who can’t get enough of Tot Shabbat, Nurit conducts Tot Shabbat Morning at 10:30 am every Saturday morning. All are welcome to attend.

Shabbat Morning: 9:30 AM – Mazal tov to Samantha Karp who will become Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat morning.

Children’s services: 10:30

Torah Portion: Naso Numbers 4:21 - 7:89

1: 5:11-15
2: 5:16-26
3: 5:27-6:4
4: 6:5-8
5: 6:9-15
6: 6:16-21
7: 6:22-27
maf: 6:22-27

Haftarah Judges 13:2 - 13:25

See a weekly commentary from the UJC Rabbinic Cabinet, at www.ujc.org/mekorchaim. Read the Masorti commentary at http://www.masorti.org/mason/torah/index.asp. University of Judaism, JTS commentary is at: http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/parashah/. USCJ Torah Sparks can be found at http://uscj.org/item20_467.html. UAHC Shabbat Table Talk discussions are at http://uahc.org/torah/exodus.shtml. Other divrei Torah via the Torahnet home page: http://uahcweb.org/torahnet/. Test your Parasha I.Q.: http://www.ou.org/jewishiq/parsha/default.htm. CLAL’s Torah commentary archive: http://click.topica.com/maaaiRtaaRvQhbV2AtLb/. World Zionist Organization Education page, including Nehama Liebowitz archives of parsha commentaries: http://www.moreshet.net/web/index.asp?f=1 For a more Kabbalistic/Zionist/Orthodox perspective from Rav Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel, go to http://www.geocities.com/m_yericho/ravkook/index.html. For some probing questions and meditations on key verses of the portion, with a liberal kabbalistic bent, go to http://www.jewishealing.com/learning.html or, for Kabbalistic commentaries from the Zohar itself, go to http://www.kabbalah.com/k/index.php/p=zohar/weekly/intro. To see the weekly commentary from Hillel, geared to college students and others, go to http://www.hillel.org/hillel/NewHille.nsf/FCB8259CA861AE57852567D30043BA26/DF7D129F15B3DF0885256AB80058E9C3?OpenDocument. For a Jewish Renewal and feminist approach go to http://rabbishefagold.hypermart.net/Torah1.html . For a comprehensive Orthodox viewpoint from the Israeli rabbi, Yaakov Fogelman, go to the Torah Outreach Program at http://israelvisit.co.il/top/previous.shtml. Guided meditations for each portion by Judith Abrams at http://www.maqom.com/kavannah.pdf

For online Parsha quizzes from Pardes in Israel, go to http://www.pardes.org.il/online_learning/parsha_quizzes/ Torah for Kids: http://www.torah4kids.net/ Weekly Lesson of Popular Israeli Rabbi Mordechai Elon: http://www.elon.org/archives/archives.htm - and his parsha sheets: http://www.mibereshit.org/special/download_eng_pdf.htm From Bar Ilan University: http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/; http://www.torahproductions.com/weekly_article.jsp

Monday Morning –Guaranteed Minyan Request – please sign up at www.tbe.org

Rosner Minyan Maker

THE ENTIRE HEBREW BIBLE (AS WELL AS OTHER JEWISH SOURCES) CAN BE FOUND WITH SIDE-BY-SIDE TRANSLATION AT

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/

Morning Minyan: Weekdays at 7:30, Sundays at 9:30 AM

TO ENSURE A “GUARANTEED MINYAN” FOR THE DAY OF YOUR YAHRZEIT – GO TO THE ROSNER MINYAN MAKER AT WWW.TBE.ORG AND ALSO CONTACT ME AT RABBI@TBE.ORG.

We’ve had several people coming lately who are saying kaddish following recent deaths in the family. We want to make sure we have a minyan each day. Your presence any morning is greatly appreciated!

(Some of you might recall some of the letters from camp that I read last Rosh Hashanah. Here’s my column from last week’s “Jewish Week”)

Letters From Camp

http://www.thejewishweek.com/top/editletcontent.php3?artid=5083

In just a few weeks, one of the most important annual rituals of the Jewish calendar will take place: an entire generation will be shipped off to summer camp. In a flash, they’ll all be gone, banished to a world of enormous mosquitoes, clammy bunk beds and off-key renditions of Kumbaya.

Why do Jews, especially, shell out thousands of dollars to subject our kids to this?

I was rummaging through some old stuff recently and came across postcards I sent home from my first summer at overnight camp, when I was 10. It made me appreciate just how well-adjusted my own children are.

“Dear Folks,

I went to the infirmary today. I didn’t feel good. I’m taking pills and I can’t go swimming. Everyone is reading my comics. Not only does my throat hurt, but I’m getting dizzy spells. Please send safety pins. Love, Josh.”

“Dear Folks,

“I’m still coughing a lot. I’m homesick. I’m crying a lot. I don’t feel good. I don’t sleep so good. I’m not eating good. I’m taking pills. I wish you could send a bagel. I’m learning to speak fast Hebrew. Love, Josh.”

“Dear Folks,

I REALLY am sad now. I need more food because I haven’t had anything to eat. My swimming teacher is making me jump into the water but I don’t want to. I’m scared of putting my clothes into the laundry because I’ll lose them and they’ll come back different colors. Send ear plugs.”

What’s funny is that I actually loved camp—even that first year—because I discovered there what children have been discovering about summer camp for decades, and what Jews have known for millennia: When you leave home, you can reinvent yourself. As Eric Simonoff writes in his recent book about the American summer camp experience, “Sleepaway,” camp was the place, “where I knew I wouldn’t be that weird, bookish kid who always had his hand up in class—where, instead, I would be the popular kid, the lifelong camper who knew all the counselors, all the camp songs.”

Ever since the Garden of Eden, abrupt displacement has been a prerequisite for growth. Dorothy, Toto, Ulysses and the Psalmist would agree.

Thousands of years ago, the Jewish exiles from Jerusalem sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept for the home that was no more. They wrote a letter from camp that came to be better known as Psalm 137. Ancient Babylon, with its hanging gardens and spectacular ziggurats, was a metropolitan marvel.

But for the Jews, brought there after the destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE, this was their first Exile. King Nebuchadnezzar’s Army Corps of Engineers had constructed a massive network of canals and aqueducts feeding from the Euphrates. These were the “Rivers of Babylon,” where the Jews sat and wept for Zion. This system of canals, ironically, proved the city’s undoing when the army of the Persian King Cyrus was able to conquer Babylon 50 years later by wading through the waist-deep waters of the drained rivers.

The Psalmist probably knew that when Psalm 137 was written; for this Psalm takes the Jews on a journey from Exile to restoration, from powerlessness to the promise of return. It begins by those rivers, where the tormentors forced the Jews to sing songs of their home; but singing those songs was just what they needed. For in doing so, they learned how to sing the songs of God on alien soil. They set up entirely new institutions so that they would not forget Jerusalem; they called them synagogues. They set up Hebrew schools. They wrote down from memory all the stories and laws that had sustained them back home, all those things they took for granted all those centuries. They painted verbal pictures of what life was like back there in Jerusalem, so their children would not forget.

They collected all these stories and laws into a single scroll, which they called the Torah. And these people came to be known by an entirely new name. They were called Jews.

All this happened by the rivers of Babylon. In the face of utter homelessness, they faced Jerusalem and held it up above their greatest joy. Disregarding their sorry lot and defying their tormentors, they forged a new destiny. Psalm 137 marks the moment when the home team learned how to win on the road.

It is a triumph we have repeated time and time again, and through the experience of homelessness, Judaism has become a stronger and more dynamic faith. The Torah was a product of exile, so was the Babylonian Talmud and later, the Kabbalah. It’s been like this from the very start, from Abraham and Sarah, who were known as Ivri’im, Hebrews, from the word meaning “to cross over.” They crossed over those same rivers, leaving behind the very Mesopotamian soil where their descendants would later weep, choosing homelessness in order to found a new faith.

When Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua bemoaned the uselessness of the Diaspora in an American Jewish Committee forum last month, creating a major stir, he was forgetting the centrality of portability and displacement to the Jewish psyche. The Torah, whether given at Mount Sinai or redacted in Babylonia, did not originate back in Zion. It originated, rather, out of the yearning for Home. The Torah, essentially, is God’s letter from camp.

We send our kids in droves to Jewish camps where they’ll weep by bodies of water with names like Gitchee Gumee, but in essence, they’ll be sitting by the Euphrates, reenacting Psalm 137. And even when they sing Kumbaya, they’ll be able to intuit the Hebrew translation of that title, “Arise, God, and come forth.”

"Like a multi-screen theater,

Synaplex™ offers a variety of Shabbat experiences

for our diverse Jewish community."

-- starsynagogue.org

COMING THIS FALL!!

“Shabbat Re-imagined”

Save the date for our Grand Opening:

Oct 27-28

Come to an informational meeting this Tues., June 13 at 7:30

to see how you can become a part of the excitement!!!

And save the following dates as well…

SYNAPLEX at TBE 5767

Friday and Sat., October 27-28 GRAND OPENING Synaplex Shabbat (including Shabbat Unplugged on Friday night)

Friday, December 8 - Synaplex Shabbat (theme of diversity)

Friday and Sat. January 19 – MLK weekend -Synaplex Shabbat/Shabbat Unplugged – social action theme

Sat. February 10 - Synaplex Shabbat – Havdalah Unplugged

Friday March 9 - Synaplex Shabbat, Shabbat Unplugged,

Shabbat, April 7 -Synaplex Shabbat

Friday and Sat. May 4 and 5 - Synaplex Shabbat/Shabbat Across America, Scholar in residence

Shabbat, June 23 - Synaplex Shabbat, adult b’not mitzvah

For more information, go to www.starsynagogue.org

If you are interested in participating in our steering committee or would like an info packet, contact me at rabbi@tbe.org

http://www.forward.com/articles/7784

Mitzvah/Tzedakkah Opportunties

 
Beth El Cares
Cathy Satz (968-9191; csscounsel@yahoo.com)
Cheryl Wolff (968-6361; cwolff@optonline.net)
BETH EL CARES co-chairs
 
 
HELP ME HELP OTHERS WITHIN OUR COMMUNITY WHO NEED OUR ASSISTANCE BY DONATING TO PERSON TO PERSON.
 
Person to Person located in Darien, Connecticut is an organization that collects new or worn items
such as clothing for babies, kids and adults.
They are looking for donations for only Spring and Summer items.
Needy families in emergency situations will go to Person to Person for assistance.
Person to Person services the Stamford, Norwalk and Darien areas.
 
You may donate clothing, food (canned items) and only brand new unopened toys.
 
We will be bringing a large donation of items on the first of every month.
Please help me with any donations that you would like to make.
I would greatly appreciate it.
I am hoping you can help me with this for my Mitzvah Project
because it is important for us to help others who may need it.
 
This is how you can help:
Please bring your donation to my house, 116 Wedgemere Road,
or e-mail coopbry@aol.com to make arrangements for us to pick it up.
We will do this during June, July and August.
 
Thank you so much for helping the needy. Eric Cooper 968-9591
 

BABYSITTER AVAILABLE

My name is Shira Burstein. I’m twenty one years old, and will be a Senior at Clark University this fall. I’m majoring in Psychology, and have worked with children for a few years now. I babysat at school, have worked with children as a counselor at a sleep away camp as well life guarded. I have my own car, and am available on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays during the week, as well as the weekend. You can reach me any time on my cell phone: (203) 979- 5112

The Annulli family will be staying at an ulpan in Netanya for a few weeks this summer

and would like someone to house and dog sit from July 22 through August 24 or 25.

Please call Richard or Melanie at

203-569-7562 or email mrdrannulli2@yahoo.com.

Is Shakira an anti-Semite?

The answer is, not to my knowledge, but the real question should be: Are public figures fair game for inflammatory gossip? To that the answer is an emphatic “no.”

Last Sunday, a rumor came flying through our Hebrew School that the music star Shakira said that she would “rather sing in front of 1000 pigs than 1 Jew.” Students prepared protest flyers and circulated them, proposing a boycott of her music. Had she actually said that terrible thing, a boycott would definitely be in order (and I’m sure she would feel great pain from such a move by Temple Beth El!). I always encourage our students to become socially aware and to act when they see injustice occurring.

The problem is that, while, hips may not lie, somewhere in this real and cyber universe, whoever started that rumor did. When some of our students approached me with a “Boycott Shakira” flyer, I suggested that they check out the rumor before spreading it. One very responsibly young lady, who has asked to remain anonymous, followed that advice and did the appropriate research. Sure enough, not only is the story unsubstantiated – it’s dead wrong. That student knows how proud I am of her going the extra mile in search of the truth. Here are two important links: http://www.adl.org/rumors/shakira.asp and http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blshakira.htm

Here’s what the Urban Legends site said:

Comments:  Here we are asked to believe not only that a fast-rising pop star appearing on TV to promote her new CD uttered an outrageous slur against an entire people, but that the network aired it intact, without reservation or comment.

Poppycock. It's an obvious, slanderous hoax. For the benefit of those who lack the common sense to recognize it as such, I contacted an MTV spokesman who told me without equivocation that the story is false. This incident never happened.

Though her nationality is Colombian, Shakira's father was a Lebanese immigrant and her name is Arabic (meaning "woman full of grace") — a fact the author of this hoax clearly found ripe for exploitation in a climate of heightened tension between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. But there is no record of Shakira making anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli remarks prior to this, nor any evidence that she has ever held such views.

As the student’s mom always says, quoting the Hebrew word for “silence,” “Check it or Sheket”!

The Awareness Cycle of Shabbat Morning:

Explorations with Rabbi Goldie Milgram

http://www.rebgoldie.com/daven.htm

If prayer services strike you as meaningless collections of Hebrew words and archaic English translations . . . or if you've wondered whether there is a deep structure to the service that might serve your spiritual needs, try the following map. One day it was revealed to me, making my relationship to services before the map similar to what practicing medicine must have felt like before x-rays revealed the human structure.

The Awareness Cycle of Shabbat Morning: A Map of the Psycho-Spiritual Stages of the Prayer Service by Rabbi Goldie Milgram
One:	Awaking to a new Day	Modah Ani
Two:	Gratitude for your body	Asher Yatzar
Three:	Immersing in words of Torah (engaging your mind)	La-asoke
Three:	Awareness of your pure soul	Elohai Neshama
Four:	This morning's blessings	Birkot HaShakhar
Five:	Raising energy/Cultivating feelings	Psalms
Six:	Awareness of Divine Presence	Barkhu
Seven:	Giving and Receiving Love	Shema & Her Blessings
Eight:	Liberation from our Concern with History	G'ulah
Nine:	Expressing the Prayer of Your Heart	Amidah
Ten:	Receiving Guidance and Healing	Kriyat HaTorah
Eleven:	Committing to Engaged Living	Aleynu
Twelve:	Fulfilling the Mitzvah of Remembrance	Kaddish
Thirteen:	Emerging Spiritually Revitalized	Adon Olam

An Inconvenient Truth

The film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH has opened in select theaters around the country (and in Stamford at the Avon). It offers a passionate and inspirational look at former Vice President Al Gore's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it.  This film ultimately brings home Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilization. Go to climatecrisis.org for screening dates and locations and to learn more about the film.

For more information, from the Coalition on the Environment in Jewish Life (COEJL):

COEJL's Inconvenient Truth Study Guide

COEJL's Global Climate Change Resources

Purchase "God's Creation and Global Warming" video. [pdf]
A 15 minute video on climate change and why it is an issue of faith. "God's Creation and Global Warming" Study Guide. [pdf]

Global Climate Change Resources from the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism.

Let’s begin with GOOD NEWS from Israel 21c and other sources

Israeli researchers discover eight new species in ancient ecosystem
In a discovery that could have important ramifications for taxonomy - the science of classifying animals and plants - Israeli researchers have uncovered an ancient ecosystem that contains eight previously unknown species. Completely sheltered from the outside world for millions of years, the eight invertebrate animals are only the beginning of what Hebrew University scientists promise to be "a fantastic biodiversity," which will help scientists better understand the origins of life forms. More...

Health | Azilect - the one-a-day Parkinson's pill
To some of the more than million Americans who suffer from Parkinson's disease, the FDA approval of the drug Azilect could mean an end to the need for frequent medication to suppress its many symptoms. A collaboration between two Israeli scientific giants - Teva Pharmaceuticals and the Technion - Azilect is the first Parkinson's medication with once-daily dosage. And according to its developer - Professor Moussa Youdim - increased convenience is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the benefits that Azilect will be able to bring to Parkinson's patients. More...

Profiles | Israel's Galilee cleans up in harmony
Protecting the beautiful forests and streams of Israel's Galilee region that they share would appear to be an area of mutual interest for Arabs and Jews. But in reality, environmental cooperation does not always come naturally. That's when LINK, a non-profit environmental protection group, gives the process an encouraging nudge in the right direction. Director Badria Biromi-Kadalft, an energetic Israeli Arab urban planner, has successfully initiated a series of projects that brings together residents of the region to clean up and safeguard the landscape they enjoy. More...

now for the rest

IAF strike on Gaza training camp kills top militant

Deconstructing The Gafni Case - Gary Rosenblatt - Editor and Publisher, the Jewish Week
I was not surprised when I learned a few weeks ago of the public downfall of Mordechai Gafni, the charismatic figure who had transformed himself from an Orthodox rabbi in America to a New Age spiritual guru based in Israel, with a loyal following in the U.S. Complete column

Calling Iran's Bluff - Editorial
Last Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accepted Washington's offer to talk about Tehran's nuclear program - with one condition. There could be no conditions. Iran would not freeze its enrichment of uranium, which the Bush administration had demanded in exchange for bringing the U.S. to the table for negotiations. Cutting through the diplomatic verbiage, what Iran's really telling the world is: Get lost. We'll keep enriching uranium and we dare you to stop us. (Chicago Tribune)
See also Iran Won't Budge - Hillel Fradkin
The Bush administration has offered to join the negotiations with Iran on one condition: Iran must suspend all enrichment activities in a verifiable manner. Will Iran agree to our condition and enter direct talks? Not likely. The most important reason is the great value Iran, and in particular Ahmadinejad, sees in the pursuit of nuclear enrichment and weaponry. Possession of nuclear weapons would aid in the survival of the clerical regime - as the North Korean case made clear. The writer is director of the Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World at the Hudson Institute. (Weekly Standard)

Syria's Dictatorship Survives to Fight Another Day - David Schenker
When Hafez al-Assad was president-for-life of Syria, Washington overlooked the misdeeds of his Baathist dictatorship because it always seemed the brass ring of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace deal was just around the corner. Now that Assad is dead and his son Bashar nears the six-year mark of his own rule, Washington is again in effect tolerating the Baathist dictatorship. This time, the explanation is that not peace, but war is just around the corner - in Iraq. With so much on the administration's Middle East agenda, Syria seems poised once more to escape penalty from Washington. The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 2002 to 2006 he was the Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestinian affairs adviser in the office of the Secretary of Defense. (Weekly Standard)
See also The Syria Accountability Act: Two Years On - David Schenker
The litany of Syrian misdeeds includes support for terrorism, undermining stability in Iraq, continued meddling in Lebanon, and ongoing development of WMD and ballistic missile programs. The prospect of implementation of additional SAA sanctions appears to be spooking Western investors. Last month, Houston-based Marathon Oil indicated it would divest from its Syrian holdings, including contracts worth $127M. Another positive development has been the emergence of an active and courageous Syrian reform movement. (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

Israel Eyes Caspian Oil - Leah Krauss (UPI)
    Israel's Minister of Infrastructure Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, visiting Azerbaijan for the Caspian Oil and Gas Conference, said oil from the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline could reach customers in Asia via Israel's Ashkelon-Eilat pipeline, rather than being transported through the small and expensive Suez Canal or around Africa.

Sweden Labels Israeli Wine "Made in Occupied Syrian Territory" - Itamar Eichner (Ynet News)
    Sweden's state alcohol retail monopoly Systembolaget has recently decided to label wines produced in Israel's Golan Heights as made in "occupied Syrian territory" instead of as coming from Israel.

Inside a Gaza Rocket Factory - Ben Wedeman (CNN)
    At a rocket workshop run by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the TNT for the warheads comes through the tunnels dug under the border between Gaza and Egypt.
Ahmed showed us packets of iron shards they pack into rocket warheads for extra lethal effect.
One of these missiles recently slammed into a school classroom in the Israeli town of Sderot. Ahmed was proud that his missile had hit the school.
    Since September 2000, Palestinians have fired more than 5,000 rockets into Israel, or into Gaza settlements before the Jews left, killing 13 civilians and two soldiers.

Before Our "Luck" Runs Out - Editorial (Jerusalem Post)

• On Tuesday morning, a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza plunged into a home in Sderot, landing on the bed of a boy who had just left for school. Two other rockets hit the center of Sderot near a school, wounding one woman. Three other rockets landed in or near the town.
• Is it moral or wise to wait until civilians are killed before taking further action to stop these terrorist attacks?
• What most nations would do when attacked by another country is to hold that country accountable, both directly and through international action.
• While there is no state of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority likes to pretend there is one, and the UN goes along, treating "Palestine" as the equivalent of a member state for most purposes.
• Last summer Israel even destroyed the three northern Gaza settlements that could have been kept without harming Palestinian contiguity in any way - all so that it could hold the PA responsible for the territory it unambiguously controls.
• Whether this or that part of the PA is incapable or unwilling to stop attacks from the territory it controls should not be relevant to Israel or the international community: the PA as a whole must be held responsible.

A History of Doubt (Speaking of Faith)
Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht has published a sweeping, lyrical history of the world's great doubters. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shaped the world's great religious and secular belief systems.

Schorsch, In Parting Shot, Rips Students, Movement
Outgoing JTS chancellor levels wholesale attack; ‘spiritual soil is gone’ from Conservative branch.
Stewart Ain -Staff Writer “The Jewish Week”

In his farewell address, the outgoing chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary delivered a scathing attack on his students for craving “instant gratification” rather than “dense and demanding discourse,” and on his own Conservative movement for too easily permitting “ fundamental changes.” Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who is retiring as chancellor June ...
more...

MASORTI UPDATE

The Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel is dedicated to spreading the message of pluralism and inclusive and traditional Judaism to Israeli society. The following are some of the issues the Movement is currently involved with:

Access to the Kotel

Following a series of violent attacks several years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jews on Masorti worshippers at the Western Wall, the Israeli government gave permission to the Masorti Movement to hold religious services at an area known as Robinson's Arch, at the southern end of the Western Wall, separate from the traditional prayer site and the large plaza behind it.

Although the Masorti Movement has never changed its belief that all Jews should be able to daven at the Kotel, the Robinson’s Arch arrangement has been an acceptable one. Recently, however, individuals have been forced to pay an entrance fee for any minyan starting after 8:00 a.m. on non-holiday weekdays. This became a significant problem as more of our congregations in North America asked to schedule services there during trips to Israel, including bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies. As a result, more than one minyan was required on many mornings.

After efforts to negotiate a compromise failed, the Masorti Movement in Israel recently filed suit in the Supreme Court against the Government of Israel, citing discrimination and violation of freedom of worship at the Western Wall. The Masorti Movement intends to show that the present restrictions and cost constitute infringement of religious freedom and that the government’s current policy prohibits Masorti Jews from having egalitarian services.

The Battle for Equal Access to Mikvaot

The Masorti and Reform Movements in Israel have demanded that the State of Israel allow Conservative and Reform rabbis to use public mikvaot (ritual baths) for conversion purposes.

Recently, with the Masorti Movement as the lead plaintiff, the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) filed a petition with the Supreme Court in Israel demanding the Israeli government permit Masorti and Reform rabbis to use public mikvaot to help conversion candidates complete their course with a ritual immersion. The brief was filed by IRAC lawyers to ensure equal religious services for non-Orthodox Jews.

Each year the Masorti and Reform Movements convert hundreds of people who require ritual immersion in a mikva before rabbis who serve as witnesses. Attempts by rabbis of the two Movements to use public mikvaot have been blocked and scheduling appointments for mikvaot in advance were not successful. As a consequence, litigation was deemed to be necessary.

If you are interested in learning more about the Masorti Movement, please contact:

Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 832
New York, NY 10115-0068
1.212.870.2216
1.877.287.7414 toll-free
www.masorti.org
info@masorti.org

Israel: Myths and Facts

MYTH #222

"Arab leaders never encouraged the Palestinians to flee."

FACT

A plethora of evidence exists demonstrating that Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies.

The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948 : “Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit....It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.”

Time ’s report of the battle for Haifa (May 3, 1948) was similar: “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city....By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa .”

Benny Morris, the historian who documented instances where Palestinians were expelled, also found that Arab leaders encouraged their brethren to leave. Starting in December 1947, he said, “Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.” He concluded, “There can be no exaggerating the importance of these arly Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations” (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 590.)

The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem , following the March 8, 1948 , instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes: “Any opposition to this order...is an obstacle to the holy war...and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.” The Arab Higher Committee also ordered the evacuation of “several dozen villages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more” in April-July 1948. “The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way” (Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986; See also Morris, pp. 263 & 590-592).

Morris also said that in early May units of the Arab Legion ordered the evacuation of all women and children from the town of Beisan . The Arab Liberation Army was also reported to have ordered the evacuation of another village south of Haifa . The departure of the women and children, Morris says, “tended to sap the morale of the menfolk who were left behind to guard the homes and fields, contributing ultimately to the final evacuation of villages. Such two-tier evacuation — women and children first, the men following weeks later — occurred in Qumiya in the Jezreel Valley, among the Awarna bedouin in Haifa Bay and in various other places.”

In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:

“Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return” (The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, Beirut, 1973, Part 1, pp. 386-387).

Who gave such orders? Leaders like such as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who declared: “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down” (Myron Kaufman, The Coming Destruction of Israel, NY: The American Library Inc., 1970, pp. 26-27).

The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: “This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to reenter and retake possession of their country” (Edward Atiyah, The Arabs, London: Penguin Books, 1955, p. 183).

“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two,” Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948). “Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ’Zionist gangs’ very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.”

On April 3, 1949 , the Near East Broadcasting Station ( Cyprus ) said: “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa , Haifa and Jerusalem ” (Samuel Katz, Battleground-Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, NY: Bantam Books, 1985, p. 15).

“The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies,” according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin, (February 19, 1949).

One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”

“The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade,” said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). “He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean....Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”

The Arabs’ fear was naturally exacerbated by stories of real and imagined Jewish atrocities following the attack on Deir Yassin. The native population lacked leaders who could calm them; their spokesmen, such as the Arab Higher Committee, were operating from the safety of neighboring states and did more to arouse their fears than to pacify them. Local military leaders were of little or no comfort. In one instance the commander of Arab troops in Safed went to Damascus . The following day, his troops withdrew from the town. When the residents realized they were defenseless, they fled in panic. “As Palestinian military power was swiftly and dramatically crushed, and the Haganah demonstrated almost unchallenged superiority in successive battles,” Benny Morris noted, “Arab morale cracked, giving way to general, blind, panic, or a ‘psychosis of flight,’ as one IDF intelligence report put it” (King Abdallah, My Memoirs Completed, (London: Longman Group, Ltd., 1978), p. xvi; Morris, p. 591).

According to Dr. Walid al-Qamhawi, a former member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, “it was collective fear, moral disintegration and chaos in every field that exiled the Arabs of Tiberias, Haifa and dozens of towns and villages” (Joseph Schechtman, The Refugee in the World, NY: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1963, p. 186).

As panic spread throughout Palestine , the early trickle of refugees became a flood, numbering more than 200,000 by the time the provisional government declared the independence of the State of Israel.

Even Jordan ’s King Abdullah, writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem:

The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue (Yehoshofat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes To Israel, Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972, p. 364).

“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”

— Palestinian Authority (then) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) (Falastin a-Thaura, (March 1976)

This article can be found at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths2/Refugees.html#m6

Source: REVISED Myths & Facts Online -- A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard.

Announcements

Find out more about our plans for Synaplex at a public forum on Tues. June 13 at 7:30.

We will be looking for lots of volunteers to own a little piece of this big project…

Let’s bring lots of positive energy to TBE!

Thinking of making a Job Change

or looking for a new Job? 

These two workshops will get you thinking about how to make your next move. 

6/14 & 6/28 - 7.30-9.30pm, TBE, Library (entrance on the Office level) 

6/14:  How to develop momentum in your job search~ Job Searching the Five O'clock Club Way.  

6/28 :   Beat the odds: How to make the Internet Job Search work for you 

Please confirm with Donna Sweidan if you are interested. She will be making handouts and will need to know how many to prepare. 

Donna@careerfolk.com or 203.613 1049

 Donna Sweidan, a career coach and counselor in Stamford and TBE member, has facilitated numerous “Job Search Strategy groups” in her work as a career counselor. Before starting her own business, Careerfolk, she was the Founding Director of Career Services at The New School in New York. Her clients have ranged from 17 to 71 years of age and their interests have varied just as much.

She is graciously offering these valuable workshops to her TBE family free of charge.

Sisterhood Cookbook

First Ever!

Available September 2006. 

Delicious Recipes! Kosher! Family Favorites!

Order your copies in advance ($18 per book) 

Call Beth Silver 967-8852

beth@silverconsulting.net

Registration materials are now available for the 2006-2007 TBE Religious School

If you are interested in registering your child (children), please respond to Caroline at education@tbe.org and include your address so she can mail you the forms!

7^th Grade Aliyah Service – June 9 at 7:30

Plans are coming together for our exciting Aliyah (Graduation) dinner and service on June 9. All students will be participating in the service, leading some prayers, singing a special song and reading short essays that they have written in class. These essays, on the theme of "What Being Jewish Means to Me," will also be compiled into a program that will be distributed that night. Many of these essays correspond to the students' individual panels on the beautiful wall mural that the class has painted, thanks to the dedicated guidance of art teacher Karen Tobias. On that night, we will all be able to view this permanent gift that the class is creating for the temple.

UJF and JCC Continues the Exciting New Initiative in

Adult Jewish Education:

The Florence Melton Adult Mini-School

The United Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Center are starting a list for new classes in the fall of 2006.

The Florence Melton Adult Mini-School

• is an internationally recognized program of adult Jewish study developed by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• is designed for adults interested in serious study without enrolling in an academy of higher learning
• engages students in two years of study; 30 two-hour weekly sessions per year (knowledge of Hebrew is not required)
• topics include key ideas in Jewish theology, ethics and the history of Jewish life

For more information about class registration, please contact Ilana De Laney at (203) 321-1373, ext. 114 or email her at ilana@ujf.org. or Jonathan Fass at (203) 487-0958 or email him at jfass@stamfordjcc.org.

JOKE FOR THE WEEK

Synagogue Signs (from Sue Plutzer)

1. Under same management for over 5766 years.

2. Don't give up. Moses was once a basket case.

3. What part of "Thou shalt not" don't you understand?

Previous Shabbat-O-Grams can be accessed directly from our web site (www.tbe.org)

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