David Ben-Gurion: Abraham the Father of the Hebrew Nation
Matia Kam

The topic of David Ben-Gurion’s lecture at the 10th TANACH Conference was Abraham, the father of the nation, the father of the faithful, and the one who loved God. In his lecture Ben-Gurion emphasized that, “it was natural in an independent Israel that young Jews would feel closer to the time of TANACH than to a shtetel in the diaspora.” Ben-Gurion explored the relationship between the state and the diaspora in terms of a relationship to TANACH, more meaningful in life on the land, and more specifically a strong connection to the life of Abraham, the father of the nation. read more

Banning “Bossy” and Banishing Women’s Clinics
Between Privileged and Low-income Women
Ayala Emmett

Privileged and low-income women have reasons to confront discrimination. While privileged women want to ban the word “Bossy” as detrimental to female leadership, governors like Rick Perry of Texas, banish Whole Woman’s Health clinics that provide services and abortion to low-income women in underserved rural communities.

Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleezza Rice and Anna Maria Chávez want to ban “Bossy,” as a word used to mock women. “Bossy,” they argue, is demeaning, meant to cast women as out of the bounds of femininity, and unseemly aggressive. The three successful women, Sandberg, Rice, and Chavez claim that ‘Bossy’ deters girls from striving to become leaders. To open the gate of success for girls they are launching a project “Ban ‘BOSSY.’ read more

“12 Years a Slave” Meets Pesach
By Rabbi Sarah Freidson-King

The movie “12 Years a Slave” took home three Academy Awards on March 2 nd , including “Best Picture.” The film tells the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in Upstate New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. He remained a slave for twelve years, enduring back-breaking labor and horrific abuse. The film captures the atrocities of slavery: harsh labor, physical pain, merciless beatings, sexual abuse, and extreme degradation. read more

Jews and Orchestras
Peter Eisenstadt

My friend Doug Gallant has posted on The Jewish Pluralist an interesting d’var torah on Parasha Vayakhel. It says many instructive things, but I want to

focus on one sentence, “Today we [the Jewish people] compose an orchestra with no redundant parts, no instrument more vital than another. A healthy Jewish people is one big caring family where each individual is as concerned for the other as for own self.” Doug uses this as a metaphor for the necessary unity of the Jewish People, the need to avoid divisions, factions, and strife, to learn how to play together from the same score. read more

Purim 1994 + 20: The Goldstein Massacre
Why is God’s Name Absent from the Scroll of Esther?
Rabbi Arthur Waskow*

[On Purim morning in 1994, “Baruch” [“Blessed”] Goldstein, an American-born Israeli Jew who lived in an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian city of Hebron — part of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian lands on the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem — took a machine gun into the mosque at the Tomb of Abraham. He murdered 29 Muslims prostrate in prayer in the place revered by both Jews and Muslims as the burial-site of the forefather of both Judaism and Islam, Jews and Arabs. read more

International Women’s Day : The World is Busy Right Now
Ayala Emmett

These are busy days for international politics. Putin’s move in Crimea and Ukraine and the European and American responses take up all of the media’s attention. Tomorrow, Saturday March 8 is International Women’s Day. But this is not a good week to promote women’s rights and safety.

It is not exactly surprising that there has been little attention to International Women’s day. There is a history of silencing or ignoring women’s rights or ignoring women who took active part in revolutions and wars and expected to be included. During times of social upheaval women have been told that their equal rights would have to wait for the revolution to be over, or for the war to come to an end. The promise to remember women’s participation in the public sphere (the economy, politics, military) did not materialize. When wars and revolutions were over, women who had been fully engaged were promptly reassigned to traditional domestic roles in places like the Soviet Union, China, and Algeria; in the United States women like Rosie the Riveter were sent home when the men came back from the war. read more

Hey, Zhonkoye (Thoughts about Crimea)
Peter Eisenstadt

What is my favorite Jewish Crimean song?  What is the only Jewish Crimean song I know? Its “Zhonkoye,” a little Soviet agit-prop ditty my ex-Communist parents used to sing when they wanted make fun of their former beliefs. Written sometime in the 1930s, in Yiddish, about a Jewish collective farm in the Crimea, it was Englished and recorded by Pete Seeger in the late 1940s, and it is his version that became well-known Here are the lyrics:

Zhonkoye read more

Putin Overshadows Netanyahu’s Meeting with Obama
Ayala Emmett

For those who would like to see a peace and two-states solution and for those who would like to see it derailed, the meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama got lost in Putin’s military move into Crimea and the crisis in Ukraine. The media was busy figuring out Putin’s

military moves, and Obama’s and European leaders’ responses; here at home criticism by Republicans of the president’s leadership drew much more attention than yesterday’s meeting at the read more

Beliefs and Disagreements
Matia Kam

David Ben-Gurion: on diverse views and beliefs in the state of Israel and on the Haredim, the Ultra-Orthodox and N’turei Karta who separate themselves from the state of Israel, a distancing that at times takes a hostile, anti-Israel turn. 1

“One can regret that such disagreements exist, but they need to be acknowledged, and those who […] genuinely believe in human freedom and the freedom of consciousness must treat with respect even beliefs that they regard as wrong or tasteless or false; no one has the right to suppress them, not to use the power of the government, including power that is based on a majority, to oppress heart-felt beliefs […] . We must give full range freedom to all views and beliefs […] read more

Ukraine and My Jewish Problem (and Ours)
Peter Eisenstadt

Two-thirds of a lifetime ago, in the summer of  1975, I visited Ukraine, or, as it was then called, the Ukraine, when it was a Soviet Socialist Republic.   (Why Ukraine lost its article upon independence has never been clear to me.) I was part of a Soviet Intourist tour. We spent several days in Kiev, and a day in Kharkov and Poltava.   What do I remember of Ukraine?  Kiev had wide and majestic streets, with very few cars.  It was raining cats and dogs in Kharkov. In Poltava we saw monuments to the battle of  Poltava, which, as you remember, saw the ambitions of Charles XII of Sweden come a cropper at the hands of the forces of Peter the Great back in 1709.   Everywhere we saw monuments  to the Great Patriotic War (that is, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union) and statues of Taras Svenchenko, the great 19^th century Ukrainian writer than no one outside of Ukraine has ever heard of. (The greatest 19^th century Ukrainian writer, Nikolai Gogol, had the misfortune to write in Russian.) read more