I just watched a History Channel documentary on the night — 11 November 1989 — that the Berlin Wall fell. I was nine at the time. Here is a real-politik reflection on the event by Stratfor Global Analysis.
I was too young to understand the significance at the time, but I will always remember the event in hindsight as the start of millions of people gaining their freedom over the next several years, concluding with the fall of the Soviet Union. I would have given anything to be, like Tom Brokaw, a reporter at the scene. The closest I have ever been to a historically-significant event — regardless of how one feels about it personally — was when I covered the first same-sex marriage in Massachusetts when I was editor-in-chief of Spare Change News.
I will always prefer to associate 9/11 with the fall of the Berlin Wall — when written with European dating — rather than with the terrorist attacks in New York, which happened during my last semester of college. The most important historical event to occur in one’s lifetime should be something positive.
The New York Times columnist writes something I never thought he would say: The United States should, at least for now, give up on trying to create peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
I will be leaving for St. Louis and Chicago in the United States on Saturday night, and I will come back to Israel two weeks later. I’ll be moving back to Jerusalem in early December, so there will be more blogging from there when I return.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — Red Band is a hilarious, Israeli comedy about an aging, hippie, drugged-out, American rock band that comes back to Israel after a tour in the late sixties. But here’s the catch: The band is played by puppets! The band meets famous Israeli musicians, makes fun of them, and then ends each show performing a song with them. The above clip is a medley of American rock songs performed with the Nehama Girls. Here is the lead singer smashing the guitar of Shalom Hanoch. Here is a Doors cover with Aviv Geffin. Here is the first part of the first episode of the series. The show is half in English and half in Hebrew, so people on both sides of the pond can appreciate it.
Note: There is profanity, drug references, and puppets making sexual jokes.
In a prior post, I addressed the cultural nihilism in the United Kingdom that might be a result of the disappearance of a “British” identity (as opposed to “English,” “Welsh,” or “Scottish”). Now, after decades of immigration, the French government has unveiled a controversial “What is French?” website. I expect more of this to occur in the future.
Pirkei Avot is the section of the Mishnah that deals primarily with Jewish philosophy and ethical living. Here is the first part, with my literal translation from the Hebrew to accompany my following commentary.
Moses received Torah* from Sinai** and handed down*** to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders [of the tribes of Israel]; the Elders to the Prophets; the Prophets handed down to the men of the Great Assembly. They**** said three things: Be cautious in judgement***, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around Torah.** (Chapter 1, Mishnah 1)
* Many English translations incorrectly translate this as “the Torah.” The Hebrew word תורה (Torah) does not have the ה in front that would make it “the Torah.” But why did the original author not write “the Torah”? The inclusion of the definite article would make it sound like the Law has a finite existence, a beginning and an end. Torah is infinite. Like God, Torah itself is אין סוף (without end).
** Why does the Mishnah not say “from God” or “at Sinai” rather than “from Sinai“? This is to remind Jews that the giving of Torah occurred at a specific place and a specific time in history. It was a REAL event. It is not an oral tradition or a myth — it was an actual event at an actual place. All Jews, present and future, were there.
*** The Hebrew neither repeats the word “Torah” nor uses the pronoun את זה (it) when referring to the handing down of Torah through the ages. The use of the pronoun would give a sense of limit to Torah just like the article ה (the) would have done. See my first footnote.
**** The pronoun “they” refers specifically to the men of the Great Assembly and not collectively to Moses, Joshua, the Elders, and the Prophets as well. The Great Assembly was the first to make rulings and issue precepts based on Torah since knowledge had become diffused by that time.
*** Courts of law are to resemble God. Courts should be neither too strict nor too lenient; they should be fair. This resembles two aspects of God as described in the mystical tradition — דין (Judgement) and חסד (Mercy) — that are balanced by תפארת (Compassion).
** Jews are supposed to guard against even approaching the breaking of Torah. For example, it is forbidden in the Bible Talmud to eat beef and dairy products in the same meal. The Oral Law — the Talmudic tradition that accompanies the Written Law in the Bible — also expanded this prohibition to include chicken so Jews are one step removed from even coming close to violating the precept. (Fish is allowed.)
Note: Most of the commentary comes from tradition sources, but a few ideas are mine. Then again, there is nothing new under the sun.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — This is in honor of the first significant rain I have seen in months. We just entered the winter half of the year, also known as the “wet season.”
Imagine that you are 18 years old. You have just completed high school and in a few months you will enter the army. In the meantime, you spend your time going out with friends and working to save some money – like any other typical teenager in Israel.
One afternoon, you come home exhausted from work and collapse into bed for a nap. Suddenly, in the middle of your nap you find yourself waking up to the sound of glass shattering – all over your back.
It takes you a moment to realize that the window above your bed has exploded and that shards of glass lie everywhere. Your dad comes racing in, picks you up and carries you outside to safety.
The Sderot Media Center Community Treatment Theater performed Children of Qassam Avenue in Jerusalem this week, and I would have gone if I had known about the play. As the above YouTube clips shows, the performance is a group of teenage girls showing what life is like under a constant rain of rocket fire from Hamas in the Gaza Strip. As the new school year has begun, principals have been repairing and upgrading their bomb shelters and related buildings.
Even though the number of deaths and injuries have been low, a generation of children is growing up with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — While discussing the new book “Start-Up Nation,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach addresses why Israel is more economically viable in the long-term than oil-rich Arab countries:
Sidestepping the usual discussion of Israel as an embattled nation, [the book] focuses instead on the invincible ingenuity of the Israeli people, and their vast technological contribution to the global economy…
…as Start-Up Nation makes clear, Israel today is one of the most highly educated and technologically advanced nations on Earth, with one of the planet’s fastest-growing economies.
The time has come for world Jewry to see Israel as the place where the limitless potential of the Jewish people is finally being made manifest. All we needed was for people to get out of our way, and just look at how we thrive. And we prosper not as a self-absorbed nation but as a people who make vast contributions to all of mankind…
Many a Jew has wondered aloud why the Arabs got all the oil and Israel got none. What could God have been thinking in making despots and dictators like the Saudis and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi so insanely rich, while Israel has to struggle for every shekel it earns?
Only now to do we see the truth. Oil is the greatest curse ever to befall the Arabs.
By simply digging a hole and having money flow from the ground, the Arab states had little incentive to build universities or a hi-tech industry. And when the day comes – and it will – when the world finally finds an alternative energy source, these despotic regimes will collapse, returning to the sand from which they arose.
This isn’t rocket science. All of us know at least one rich friend whose kids don’t have to work, and who consequently became indolent. Israel has had to struggle for everything it has. No country has ever been more unjustly reviled or more continuously attacked.
Conversely, no country better inspires the world to ponder the infinite capacity of humans to rise from the ashes of despair and build a shining state on a hill.
While Rabbi Boteach is correct on a macroeconomic level, the high-tech industry on a societal level here is more complicated than he knows. There are indeed positive aspects, but there are also negative ones.
In the twentieth century, the American economy generally had stable, long-term growth because of the existence of large, national, and global companies whose purpose was to generate long-term profits and jobs by providing new products and services over time. But, as I have noticed in the several Israeli companies where I have worked, the nature of start-ups is inherently different.
When I was working as a marketing manager, I overheard a conversation between a new hire and the chairman of the board. The chairman told the coworker that the exit strategy was to sell the company’s innovation to Google as soon as possible. The coworker rightly asked, “So, what will happen to me? Will I be out of a job?” The board chairman laughed, gave a dismissive answer, and changed the subject. (By the way, our contracts specifically stated that employees would receive no money from any sale of the company.)
As Shlomo Maital, a business columnist for The Jerusalem Report, asks in a recent interview with several Israeli business analysts (the article is not available online):
Israel’s business model was based on selling its brains, as start-ups, at inflated prices. These baby companies were “adopted” and their knowhow shipped overseas, before they could mature and create well-paying jobs and incomes for middle-class Israelis. Why has Israel failed to grow global companies in the past 10-15 years?
The interviewees responded by saying that the government needs to invest more in areas including alternative energy. But the major problem is that Israelis are a people with no patience for anything — including work life. The idea behind start-ups is not to build companies that will exist for the long-term but for the owners to get rich as quickly as possible. A classmate from my M.B.A. program once told me a story: A start-up CEO was told by a venture capitalist that the company could get $100 million if it offered an IPO the following month but that the firm could get $500 million if it waited for one year. The CEO, of course, chose the first option.
Another company for whom I worked would routinely fire employees just before three months or one year had elapsed to avoid salary increases or severance pay as mandated by our contracts and Israeli law. The stated reason for each firing, of course, was something false related to work performance. Start-ups frequently have little cash, and their existence depends on receiving future investment. So, in response, they must watch every single cost.
Smaller companies have many advantages over large ones including the ability to be quick and nimble rather than slow and bureaucratic, but they are generally more chaotic. Positions, job descriptions, and even the number of employees can change on a day-to-day basis. A long-term, stable career does not exist in this environment, especially when the owners and upper management have no patience and constantly worry about costs.
Israel has the fourth-highest level of income disparity — also known as the gap between the rich and the poor — in the world. It is not hard to understand the cause. Israel’s high-tech culture creates a few multi-millionaires whose only resulting contribution to the local economy is their increased consumer spending. Their companies and technologies are sold to Western countries, who then receive the later economic benefits. Lower-level employees move from start-up to start-up when one is either sold or bankrupt, rarely moving into upper management and receiving high salaries because the owners typically hold those positions on a day-to-day basis as well. Most other Israelis — those who are less educated or members of minority communities like Israeli Arabs — work in low-paying jobs in the blue-collar, service, or tourism industries.
Rabbi Boteach correctly notes that Israeli start-ups do benefit the world and provide the country with good branding, but Israeli society in general does not always see the benefits.
Nearly every image of women that people see in advertisements, movies, and photography — and sometimes even television shows and broadcast news — is distorted. This short video shows how.
Rabban Gamaliel the son of R. Judah the Prince said, Excellent is the study of the Law in combination with some worldly pursuit, for the exertion entailed by them both makes thoughts of sin to be forgotten. All study of the Law without toil must eventually prove futile and bring iniquity in its train.* (Pirkei Avot, Chapter 2, Mishnah 2)
* Poverty leads to sin (editor’s footnote to the text).
Note: I wonder how those haredim — also known as ultra-Orthodox Jews — in Israel who choose to study all day, not work, and live on government subsidies would interpret this text.
[R. Hillel] used to say, The more flesh, the more worms; the more possessions, the more anxiety; the more wives, the more witchery; the more maidservants, the more lasciviousness; the more menservents, the more robbery; the more [study of] the Law, the more life; the more schooling, the more wisdom; the more counsel, the more understanding; the more charity, the more peace. He that has gained a good name has acquired [a gain] for himself; one who has acquired for himself words of the Law has gained for himself life in the world to come. (Pirkei Avot, Chapter 2, Mishnah 7)
Note: The first directive warns against gluttony; the third, against polygamy; the fourth, against temptations of sexual immorality; the fifth, against being a victim of theft. The last line can also be interpreted as “fame lasts forever.”
RISHON LEZION, Israel — A group of Lebanese chefs turned an attempt to break a worldwide record in hummus production into a diatribe against Israel. Here is the amusing story. In the Middle East, everything is controversial — even food.
In the meantime, here is a recipe for hummus that I found online. I wish I could remember exactly were.
1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
DIRECTIONS
Combine the garbanzo beans, yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil,
water, salt, pepper, and cumin in a blender or food processor, blend
until smooth.
JERUSALEM — I have started studying part-time at the Machon Meir yeshiva here. Since religion and theology are two of the many topics that I discuss on this blog, I will share any interesting insights that I discover.
LONDON and JERUSALEM — The Daily Mail reports on efforts to change British drinking habits (and includes, of course, several tabloid-worthy pictures):
Such scenes are not uncommon, which is why Cardiff – one of the country’s worst cities for binge drinking – has just banned boozing on the streets.
The crackdown is aimed at late night revellers, targeting rowdy hen and stag parties and generally trying to make the streets safer after dark.
Police can use the new powers to confiscate alcohol or arrest anyone who defies them.
The ban has been a success in trials in small areas but will spread across the entire city in time for Christmas and the New Year.
Yesterday it was hailed as a big step towards ‘reclaiming the streets’ from drunken yobs.
Cardiff Central MP Jenny Willott said: ‘Late night alcohol-fuelled crime and anti-social behaviour is a huge problem on the streets.
‘People deserve to have a night out without the fear of intimidation or facing violence as a result of excessive alcohol consumption.
‘This ban should help the law-abiding and responsible majority to reclaim the streets.’
When I lived in London in 2001 and worked as a bartender at the Zetland Arms, I observed that British people drink a lot — a lot more than your average American. But it was still within reasonable limits. Every night, the regulars — a friendly-but-sad bunch — would arrive after work and drink pint after pint while watching sports. Then they would leave for home late at night and return the next evening.
Later in the evening, the young people would arrive. Since pubs had to close at 12:30 a.m., they would drink a lot and then move to a club or hang out on the streets. (It is legal to drink outside in counties including Britain and Israel.) But I rarely saw any problems. The closest I ever got was when I took the drink out of the hand of a drunken Scotsman because I was angry and he refused to leave at closing time. Luckily, the manager came over and calmed him down. (One lesson of bartending in London: If you want to befriend a Scotsman, mention the film “Braveheart” in a positive way.)
…the proportion of women who binge-drink almost doubled between 1998 and 2006 and is now at 15% (men who binge-drink increased by 1% to 23%). However, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-old men binge-drinking decreased by 9% since 2000. Researchers also found that whilstfewer children are drinking, those that do drink are drinking much more than they did in the past.
Violent crime by youths is also an increasing problem. If the reports are credible (I have not been to Britain since 2001), then English cities are dealing with mobs of drunken, violent youths every night.
If you want to see the future of a country, look at its young people. Great Britain, once known as the economic, cultural, and fashion capital of the world, seems to be crumbling. I first realized this when former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started giving speeches several years ago defending the very idea of the country itself.
The still-unanswered question facing Blair in the 1990s was: What does it mean to be “British” as opposed to “English,” “Welsh,” or “Scottish”? The United Kingdom is a political entity created through conquest that has rarely, if ever, had a collective sense of identity. Blair tried, unsuccessfully, to brand the country as “Cool Britannia.”
The British Empire collapsed after World War II, and the British people never quite recovered subconsciously as the United States, a former colony, became the new leader of the free world. Decades leader, the British people viewed Blair as George W. Bush’s lap dog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. (In geopolitical terms, Blair could do little else.) It was a confirmation of the global humiliation that the British people have been feeling after centuries of power and influence had disappeared.
In recent years, Scotland and Wales formed their regional parliaments and became more autonomous. The current prime minister, Gordon Brown, is a Scot and now deeply unpopular. It is indeed possible that Great Britain will cease to exist in the coming years. As the country devolves, it might also lose sovereignty to the European Union and the euro.
Cultural divisions and economic conditions are also tearing the country apart. Decades of mass immigration have caused many Brits to feel that their country is no longer “British.” The most-popular, national food is now seen as chicken tikka masala rather than fish ‘n’ chips. (One former coworker here in Israel moved here even though he is not a Jew because he said that his country no longer exists.) Radical Muslims in Britain condemn democracy, want to impose Shari’a law, and have plotted terrorist attacks. Anti-Semitism is skyrocketing (see here and here). Young men are becoming more apathetic and willing to live with their parents as well as on the dole.
The most significant example of the negative feelings held by Britons was the recent inclusion of Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party, on the political, panel-discussion show “Question Time.” Both journalism and the free-market are perfect bellwethers of cultural trends. Companies, even media ones, must tailor their products, services, and marketing pitches to pre-existing trends in society. Journalists, who ideally have their fingers on the pulses of people, decide which views are relevant to a the discussion of a given topic. When the BBC, the standard-bearer of British journalism, decides that a person like Griffin is suited to a serious political discussion, that is a clear indicator of what a significant segment of society is feeling.
In the theory of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Great Britain may be nearing towards the end of the life-cycle of all nations and empires as a result of all of these trends and feelings. With all of these cultural, political, and social problems in the subconscious minds of young people, is it any wonder that they seem to have lost hope in the future? Without any optimism, they turn to alcohol and violence out of nihilistic despair.
One of my favorite 1970s-era bands is the Moody Blues, and I think their following pop-rock song from 2000 is an apt description of British malaise:
We’re on a runaway train, rolling down the track / And where it’s take us to, who knows where it’s at / But if we hold together, we can make it back / For an English sunset
And I’ve decided I can live with humility / And the sad decay / ‘Cause that’s the English way
We keep the faith alive in every thing we do / And at the end of the line, we still keep coming through / And though it’s sad and sorry, what else can we do / It’s an English sunset
And I’ve decided they can wait for the requiem / And take it day by day / ‘Cause that’s the English way
As someone who has loved British culture since he was a child, I write this post with extreme sadness. Still, I fear that the same attitudes are affecting behavior in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem. As Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz notes:
Anyone with more than passing knowledge of the atmosphere in central Jerusalem will be aware that the heart of our capital city is rapidly becoming a late night no-go zone.
Clusters of violent youth rule and roam the streets, armed with knives and with the beer and vodka bottles they’ve emptied, picking fights with unsuspecting victims.
Of course, the police are not solely to blame for the deepening climate of intimidation and violence. As [Public Security Minister Yitzhak] Aharonovitch and Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Dudi Cohen have frequently observed, ours is becoming an increasingly violent society, more and more kids are now carrying knives, and the response needs to be found, at least in part, in better parenting and better educational values.
I travel to Jerusalem several times a week, and I will likely be returning to live there soon. I was walking on the way to a pub with my girlfriend, a born-and-raised Jerusalemite, and we were speaking in English. A man on the street walked up and tried to convince us to come to his bar. (There are dozens of such people in the city center’s streets who try to get English-speaking tourists to visit their restaurant or bar.)
I waved him away and said, “We don’t need [your flier]” in Hebrew. His response? “Your accent sucks!” he yelled in English. I was about to walk over and return the favor when my girlfriend stopped me and said, “Do NOT talk like that here!” Unfortunately, people have been assaulted there for less.
As I have written in my Letters from Israel series, the Jewish state is rife with political, religious, and social divisions that many fear will tear the country apart. This has led to increased anti-social behavior and the possible destruction of the civil society that had developed since the refounding of Israel in 1948. Perhaps young Israelis have developed the same pessimism regarding the future that British youths now have.
As a result of the geographic isolation of the United States — it is separated from the world by two, gigantic oceans — the country is usually the last to receive cultural trends from Europe (as well as technological innovations from eastern Asia). Since young people there are increasing angry and frustrated over their economic and social conditions, I wonder whether the same anti-social behavior will occur in America soon.
Newsweek, taking stock of the explosion of on-screen romances between older women and younger men, declared 2009 “the year of the cougar,” but then concluded in the June article that “by this time next year, the cougar will be extinct.”
Maybe so — if you’re talking about television or the box office. But behind the unleashing of cougars in pop culture is what a growing number of sociologists say is a real demographic shift, driven by new choices that women over 40 are making as they redefine the concept of a suitable mate.
The loosening of relationship conventions, which is not limited to age but also includes race, religion and economic status, appears to be particularly evident among female baby boomers, sociologists say, who are faced with the tightest “marriage squeeze” — the smallest pool of compatible men as conventionally defined, those two to three years older, of similar background and higher levels of education and income. The reason is that as women have delayed marriage, men still have a tendency to date and marry younger women.
I read this with equal parts amusement and understanding. Read this quote from the Times article by Christie Nightingale, the founder of Premier Match dating service: “There are younger men who are sick and tired of women their age — they want a woman who is more grounded and more mature.”
From the age of high school through most of their twenties, women are generally insane. They try to navigate the conflicting messages, hormones, and desires that come from their brains, their bodies, and feminist indoctrination. As I wrote in a lengthy essay, the modern dating world for young people in the West is increasingly complicated as a result of the unintended consequences of feminism over the past several decades. It is perfectly natural for men, as a result, to want to date older women, who generally create much less drama. Men are simple creatures. (I write this as someone who dated a 30-year-old in Boston when I was twenty-three.)
However, the natural reality is that older-woman-younger-man relationships do not generally last (a few celebrity couples notwithstanding). My 30-year-old girlfriend broke up with me because I was too immature and did not want to get married. The laws of evolutionary psychology cannot usually be broken. As the Times article itself notes, these pairings are still rare despite a small uptick in the numbers.
Cougars who date younger men are setting themselves up for disappointment and unhappiness. As a study referenced in the Times article notes, “men were more strongly drawn to the relationships at the start because of physical attraction.” In less-polite terms, younger men fancy these older women because it is kinky and exciting. It is not a stable foundation for a relationship.
Moreover, older women in this context — especially the generation of the Baby Boomers — are typically acting in a selfish manner. As Dr. Louann Brizendine notes in her groundbreaking book “The Female Brain,” most divorces in middle age are initiated by women rather than men. Middle-aged women are much more likely to focus on themselves and their needs by starting anew through divorce after years spent sacrificing their needs for those of their families. Hence the reason that more older women can be seen — as I did in Boston — in bars and clubs drinking and hooking-up with the boy-toy of the night.
The sad reality is that many of these women likely dumped their marriages and husbands — or they intentionally delayed marriage and serious relationships for too much time to get a husband — for the illusion of being a care-free twentysomething. From younger men who want to brag to their friends about nailing a cougar to older women who cannot let go of their youth, it is clear that this trend will quickly die. And that will be healthier for society.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — I recently came across some pointers written by Intel for its American employees who work in Israel:
Present ideas clearly and concisely, getting right to the point and using clear logic. Expect to be cut off regularly during a presentation. Israelis prefer to ask questions and discuss issues immediately rather than wait until the end of a presentation, and it is best to pause and respond to them. Be prepared with plenty of supporting facts to support your position. Keep presentations shorter than what you may normally give to allow for questioning and side discussions.
Israelis are generally fond of debate and will typically discuss any topic very passionately, and visitors are often taken back by the tone or loudness of the discussion. In most cases, this passionate expression should not be mistaken for anger, but viewed rather as a culturally appropriate form of expression.
It is best not to bring up politics in Israel, but if the topic arises, listen, be respectful, and avoid antagonistic responses. Be sensitive to the fact that most people have experienced some tragedy related to the political conflict in Israel. Safer topics of conversation are travel and popular sports such as swimming, soccer (which is called football) and basketball. It is appropriate to discuss your personal life in conversation but try to limit the details to general information. Polite inquiry about the family of your Israeli counterpart, however, shows an interest and is generally welcomed.
For more insights into the Israeli workplace, read this interesting — and insightful — post by Israel Weisser. From my experience, I have noticed that Israelis can also be irrational and disorganized to a point that frustates Americans and Europeans, who usually think in a linear, logical fashion.
RISHON LEZION, Israel — While discussing the new book “
Since my two favorite teams are the Boston Red Sox and Whoever is Playing the Yankees, I must say: 
While the U.S. dollar has been declining, the Economist 
