Praying for Peace Under Exploding Missiles
Ayala Emmett

Two Lemons and an Orange
On Thursday July 10, I skype with my brother in Israel and he tells me about his day. In the morning he went to the produce store where he has been buying fruit and vegetables. The owner was not there but his son, a young man in his late teens, was in charge. The radio was blaring the latest news, “President Barak Obama is calling on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians, to show restraint.”

From thousands of miles away, in Kiryat Motzkin a town 15 kilometers from Haifa, the young man was raising a fist at the American president. Ignoring the customers, he started yelling and blasting President Obama. read more

David Ben-Gurion on Herzl, Zionism and Zion

Matia Kam

“News swept through the town: Messiah has arrived”

David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) did not meet, nor did he get to see Benjamin Ze’ev Theodore Herzl (1860-1904). But that image of Herzl as the messiah, was etched in Ben-Gurion’s memory. It was Herzl who brought to the town of Plonsk, where Ben Gurion grew up, the Zionist message. Eight years later, Herzl died unexpectedly and Ben-Gurion wrote of the shock at his untimely death, which dashed so many Jewish hopes. “In the summer of 1904 our town was stunned by the news: Herzl was dead. It is hard to describe what a blow it was for all of us, young and old. I was profoundly depressed—darkness filled my world, the light was gone from my life.” read more

The Futility of Revenge: Thoughts on the Crisis in Israel
Peter Eisenstadt

A few words on the horrible events in Israel this week. The discovery of the bodies of the three murdered yeshiva students, followed by the immolation of a Muslim teenager as a revenge murder; and the cynical manipulation of the frenzy by the Netanyahu government, which tried to use to its own political advantage, breaking up the Fatah-Hamas alliance by rousing the rabble, and many other horrible events.

The big word of the week was “revenge,” which many in Israel called for in the most terrible fashion until it spiraled out of control and led to the murder of the Palestinian climate, and with Palestinians seething in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel proper, the region seemed on the brink of a new intifada. This is probably not wanted by anyone, or by very few–Palestinians have too many nightmares about the 2nd intifada to want a repeat of any sort, and Netanyahu, despite considerable opposition from his own cabinet, doesn’t want the headache of another war. read more

Reb Zalmen and Howard Thurman
Peter Eisenstadt

My dear friend, the late Aaron Braveman, who spent over half a century in Jewish education, used to complain to me, “nowadays, the only thing people want from Judaism is spirituality, spirituality, and spirituality.” Aaron was a fervent believer in Judaism, but like so many in his generation, it did not involve personal encounters with God. If Judaism has changed in this regard, it is due in large measure to the influence of Zalmen Schachter-Shalomi, or Reb Zalmen, who combined Hasidic piety with an exuberant counter-cultural sensibility that knew few bounds. After a long, remarkable, and sometimes messy life, Reb Zalmen passed away this week at age 89. read more

Zionism Unsettled Creates Zionist Demons
Michael Aronson

The central fault of Zionism Unsettled, the Presbyterian Church’s recently published teaching and discussion tool on the Israeli-Palestinian occupation, is the lofty goal it sets for itself. In trying to answer the question, what are the problems of Zionism, it finds itself trying to answer another, fiercely difficult question, what is Zionism, in absolute terms in order to back up its claims. The problems are conflated with the phenomenon such that the phenomenon becomes the problem. read more