Matisyahu the Maccabee, From the Belly of the Babylonian Beast

So I caught Matisyahu and the Wailers on the second night of Chanukah. Read about it here - check out the videos.

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Yemenite Aliyah? Nice.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left, greets immigrants prior to a conference in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007.(AP Photo/Jack Guez, pool)

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Mazal Tovs All Around

In reverse chronological order:
To Yishai and Malkah Fleisher on the birth of a baby girl this morning

To Yechiel Stein on his engagement to Leah Barth

To Shulamis on her marriage to Naftali Tyberg

May you all be blessed with repeated and ever-increasing Aliyot, in familial love, clarity and closeness to your Creator, your people and your land.

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Revenge of the Oleh

Revenge of the Oleh.

Share your stories of oleh justice in the comments section.

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Avoda Ivrit Roundup

* Haaretz reports that the Supreme Court is actually making Avoda Ivrit more desirable by closing the loopholes allowing Jews in Judea and Samaria to exploit their Hamas-voting neighbors, outsourcing their tax evasion and taking advantage of their proximity to a mafia-run third world empire (my words, not theirs).

* Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, who reportedly did not stop at telling his students they did not HAVE to refuse orders, but told them they HAVE to obey, says Avoda Ivrit is Nazism. Brought to you by Jpost and the racists at RamFM, the clueless, yet entertaining South African-run station broadcasting in English out of Ramallah.

* There is once again an Avoda Ivrit web site! The New Israel Fund, through its proxy, Mossawa closed down the old Israel-based Avoda Ivrit directory, with its webmaster replacing the site with an apology. The new site could use some reader participation.

* Hey, even professional settler-hater Jeffrey Goldberg says he once dabbled in Avoda Ivrit (not in 'Nam, of course): "In the late nineteen-eighties, I worked for a time on a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, southeast of Haifa. I was a great believer in the philosophy known as avoda ivrit—the idea that Jews will redeem their land and themselves by hard physical labor."

* AvodaIvrit.co.il - an art studio in Tel Aviv. Nice.

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JOBOPP: Jerusalem of Chocolate

From the Efrat list:

"worker required for centrally located jerusalem chocolatier - cafe.

twentyish, diligent, to operate coffee machine, make sandwiches, serve, wash
dishes. afternoons (4-10 p.m.) and fridays.

call etty 054-8081001"

Mmmmm. Chocolate in Jerusalem.

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A 'Fringe' Response to Anonymous

Anonymous comments on this post:

"The Kumah mascots and the Kumatrix disagree. "What Kumah won't do to make their brand of fringe politics hip."..."Got home?"

It's just that some of you guys spew so much vitriol. And at the same time you do the things you criticize. I think it's important for someone to show you your hypocrisy. And I don't even get into the depths of it- the superficial is revealing enough.

There is good in these pages- the shmittah discussion, for example. And the basic aliyah message. But that's gotten lost in your larger fringe ideology. To really get into this website you have to believe that Jews and only Jews belong in Israel and the territories. You demonize the "enemy"- be it Palestinians, Olmert, Livni, the US, conservative Judaism.... This polarization is isolating- you can't have a real dialogue with anyone because we are all the enemy. So what do you accomplish? You become more and more convinced of your own agenda and more removed from the mainstream. And I don't care what you do in a vacuum, but your words and work have impact. I think it's important that someone point out your hypocrisies and let visitors to this site know that your views are far from universal.

My response after the jump


Dear Anon,

While I don't really understand the repeated allegation of hypocrisy, the decision to widen the scope of Kumah's Neo-Zionist message beyond promoting mass Aliyah was not taken lightly. I certainly understand the danger of all the strongly-held positions and sniping providing ear-plug fodder for anyone who is looking for it. But the point of the blog is to provide an honest, authentic voice of a real movement that can't be made to disappear by repeating "fringe" as a mantra.

In this day of media saturation, the only blogs I find worth reading are those with passionate arguments based on strongly held values. There is a huge swamp of timid journalism and self-congratulatory moderate extremists (extreme in their belief in the merit of an idea purely based on its being devoid of ideological bone structure).

I truly believe that there a Neo-Zionists on the left and would be completely open to having them join the blog as readers, commenters and bloggers - but I do not regret widening the scope of the blog's message to include politics though I myself am also sometimes annoyed by individual bloggers' posts picking fights with entire denominations over little things dug up by the amateurs at Ynet (i.e. The Great Mezuza Controversy). Not because these aren't discussions that should be had, but because the Ynet-based route to dialog is paved with ill intentions.

Lastly, your point about the lack of real dialog when opponents are considered the enemy is a blogosphere-wide issue. When someone who is but a bunch of pixels to you attacks your entire worldview, it takes a very secure an confident individual to respond in a loving, yet honest way. Sometimes a good thrashing is truly in order. Often it is not and reflects poorly on a blogger or the blog he/she writes for.

Post-lastly; you wrote: "I think it's important that someone point out your hypocrisies and let visitors to this site know that your views are far from universal."

I do not state or believe that our views are universal. I believe it rubs you the wrong way to see Jews, with and without kippot, unapologetically saying the things we say. That alone threatens your thought-stopping mechanism of being able to label something "fringe" and dismiss it without letting it roam free in your consciousness alongside other ideas, allowing for the survival of the fittest.

Thank you for reading. Please keep it up. You are welcome to choose a moniker that gives you just as much anonymity as "anonymous" but allows us to know it is you when you comment and respond. The Kumah community is universal in its openness to dialog - and I bless our bloggers on this eve of Rosh HaShanah to always type with love and think twice before ripping entire communities of Jews or gerei toshav.

Shana Tova,
Ezra HaLevi
Neo-Zionist Blogmaster

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Fatah Gets Hip

What Abu Mazen won't do to make his brand of Jew-killing-while-receiving-training-from-the-Americans-and-money-from-Israel hip.

(Photos: AP's Jihadist stringers)

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Great Blogging Material and a Video of Spoiled Westerners in Shechem

*My photo feature from Homesh. A trip.

*This video probably deserves its own post. Rich kids from America and Europe play cops and robbers with an IDF they know is castrated in the middle of Shechem. You can hear shouts of Allahu Akbar and see martyr posters as the Canadian-sounding girl says: "You're not gonna shoot us man!" and "Six internationals run over by an army jeep will look really bad in the papers!"

*Yuli Tamir, the Education Minister, responds to Sderot parents' decision to protest government's failure to crush Gazan terrorism by keeping their ids home from schools: "Homes are less safe than the schools."

*Avoda Ivrit at the Knesset (Hebrew)

*British paper compares Marva program with Hamas day camps

*Mmmmm. Sacrelicious.

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KuLinks

(stay tuned for comment on picture at end of post)
Some links and brief comments:

Chana at Blogs of Zion wishes CNN stuck to talking about how rotten the settlers are. She is upset that they extrapolated outward to how bad all the Jews are. I suspect for some, this thing made them hate settlers with a new urgency ('They are making the gentiles hate us").

The GM at Jewlicious posted one of my A7 pieces on the latest wave of refusals. The conversation in the comments section is worth continuing. Refusal is totally and completely what is expected of a Jewish army when faced with the moral challenges of our time. The attempt to paint the soldiers as mindless hesder guys listening to their rabbis robs them of the admiration they deserve, even from their political opponents, for being willing to go to jail for what they believe to be an illegal order.

Shoshi Greenfeld knows where it is at.

It's official: Everyone is making Aliyah

Someone please let the Jewish Exponent know that there is a singular version of the word "olim."

9-11 is coming. Heres a photo of those who were killed.

And finally, the picture: The US and Israel should be ashamed of themselves for arming Fatah terrorists without the slightest safeguards in place making certain that children handling the guns are given at least rudimentary gun-safety training. I mean, the girl's finger is clearly on the trigger!

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Kumah Resurrection Threat?

Kumah has never received a death threat before, let alone a resurrection-then-death-again threat. We certainly have never been threatened with being "Palestinian Farmers Fertilizer." Guess we are stepping on some pretty nutty toes over here. Enjoy:

From sbughrara@yahoo.co.uk:

How are you palestinian farmers fertilizer?
I will have you slaughtered over and over again, i will torture you over and over again.
God will never forget and forgive the pain you have bestowed on the people of this world.
Every time they kill you I will make you live again so they can kill you again.
Did you enjoy killing cristians?
Did you enjoy killing Muslims?
Did you enjoy killing Princess diana?
Did you enjoy stealing and suffocating workers all over the world?
The time has come to slaughter you, I will make all the people you killed live again and they will tell the world who did it.
It was YOU.
May the slaughter begin, stupid f***ing Jew.

Sister Main Gauche of Compassion

Get your Jihad name from:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/jihad

For the record, we didn't enjoy killing Princess Di - we were just following orders.

You think this letter was automated in addition to the Jihad name? And don't those Jihad names sound awful Christian?

In other news: Hebrew Yishai! (Check out the talkbacks. Never seen such lengthy, thought-out talkbacks in all my days)

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Neo-Zionist Vidyas - Anarchists, Confirmed Kills and London, Oh My!

Three things for Kumite viewing:






(And you have to click "Full Post n' Comments" to see the third - way better than our old "continue" - Thanks Pinchas!)



Click here for an added bonus!

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AFP Covers Aharit HaYamim

The AFP infiltrates Aharit HaYamim's festival. Not as nasty coverage as I would expect. Good even...

West Bank: Torah, reggae and marijuana at Jewish 'Woodstock'

by Michael Blum Wed Jul 4, 6:02 PM ET

BAT AYIN SETTLEMENT, West Bank (AFP) - A group rocks to reggae in front of a large star of David while a Jewish rabbi urges a return to the faith amid a cloud of smoke: welcome to a religious Woodstock on the West Bank.

At least 1,000 people, from Orthodox youths wearing kippas to hippies sporting multi-coloured ponchos, gathered on a summer night for the 8th edition of the "Festival of the End of Time." The setting is a pine forest in the Gush Etzion bloc of Jewish settlements.

"This festival gives me spiritual power," gushes Elisheva, a 16-year-old girl from Jerusalem. "There are sparks of holiness in the air." Close to her, teenagers smoking nargilas sit on carpets, swaying to the music.

A curtain is supposed to separate females and males during dancing but in the darkness the religious interdicts are quickly forgotten and everyone mixes freely.

The festival is billed as a "unique spiritual gathering." It aims to be a meeting place for radical settlers in illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank and non-religious Jews, many recently returned from spiritual journeys to India after their military service.

"Thank God all day long," chants singer Yehuda Leuchter, whose family created the festival of Jewish music in memory of their father, an American-born musician who died in 1994.

But the rabbis too have their say.

Michi Yossefi, the guru of young settlers, seizes the microphone and begins to preach the need to respect Jewish religious values to the assembled youths, who drink in his words.

He is not put off by the earrings worn by the males and the short skirts of the females -- his aim is to win back the lost sheep to the faith.

On sale at the stands erected in the forest are Indian fabrics, jewellery and CDs of the latest bands. Nearby, a couple bake bread in a rudimentary oven and offer salads and cheese to festival-goers at a modest price.

"Our message is that unity between the various strands of the Jewish people can hasten our redemption," says 25-year-old Raphael Barkatz, a Parisian saxophonist.

Moshe Karo, a 57-year-old immigrant from the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, takes the stage to sing a little known song by French artist Serge Gainsbourg, "Sand and the soldiers," the rights of which were offered to Israel in 1967.

"Yes, I will defend the sand of Israel, the soil of Israel, the children of Israel, even if it means dying for the sand of Israel," he sings in French before translating into Hebrew. "The music is a form of prayer to God," says the singer.

As the night wears on, and the families and the few adults leave, the smell of marijuana fills the air.

For Yocheved, 25, who arrived with a group of friends from Jerusalem, the evening is an occasion to relax and meet new people.

"There is a friendly atmosphere, the music is good, there is happiness," she says before taking up a tambourine which she beats in time to the musicians on the stage.

The dawn begins to break. The musicians arrange their instruments and start the morning prayers while the faraway hills glow with the rising of the sun.

OK, well I don't know about the Guru Yosefi part, but kol hakavod Michael Blum for disappointing your editor, who was probably hoping for something with a bit more blood of Christian children in it.

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Literally Everybody is Making Aliyah. (Google's AliyRSS-Feed)

As an Aliyah enthusiast I have devised a Google RSS feed that links me, up to the second, to any Aliyah (or Aliya) news (in addition to any articles written by or about anyone named 'Aliyah' - a much more popular name than I ever knew, as can be attested to by this I-Phone story by Aliyah Shahid). Copy and paste this link into your RSS reader to share the excitement.

The excitement? Yeah, lately I would call it that. On a daily basis local papers around the US are publishing human interest stories about the local Jews coming home. Here are a selection:
* Danbury, CT's NewsTimesLive.com:

American-born Giliah Ruth Librach, who was conceived in Israel and grew up always feeling it was her home, is pulling up her roots this month and going there for good.

The Feed also brought to my attention to this story, though I have reserve duty with her daughter (a mashakit chilutz) in the near future:
* JPost: Woman rabbi flies to US to preach aliya [Jpost hates capitalization -ed.]:

Shiryon's trip to the US to encourage Reform Jews to perform the ultimate Zionist act and make aliya marks a break with the official Reform stance, which could be best described as "lukewarm." Now the Reform Movement is actively encouraging its members to consider immigration to Israel.

"It has nothing to do with fears of intermarriage," said Shiryon. "The Reform Movement is very open to welcoming mixed couples. It has to do with living a full Jewish life."

* The Toledo Blade: Rabbi Heading For His Spiritual Home: Israel:

Looking back at his three years at B'nai Israel, a Conservative congregation in Sylvania, he said the life cycle numbers are not very positive.

"I've officiated at 51 funerals, 27 b'nei mitzvah, and only two weddings, and one of those weddings was for an out-of-town member," he said.

"It reflects the demographic changes in the community. The congregation is shrinking," Rabbi Leff said.
[...]
"The state of Israel is the most exciting thing to happen to the Jewish people in 2,000 years," Rabbi Leff said. "The fact that we can live in a Jewish country is truly miraculous."

* Haaretz has even took a break from getting anonymous Jewish Agency sourpusses to badmouth Nefesh b'Nefesh to note the 33-year record Aliyah from North America.

* And in case you doubt the value of an Aliyah/Aliya RSS feed, you now know that the President of Kazakhstan named his daughter Aliyah.

There really is an Aliyah revolution afoot.

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Forward Admits Reporter Orly Halpern Made Stuff Up

Forward retracts (following the scathing mighty pens of these Olot). Click here for some good background and emails back n' forth. The article itself has been completely yanked and is now a dead link.

"In response to several complaints about our June 8 story “Suburbia Sells Settlers on the West Bank,” we have checked further into the accuracy of our reporting for that article.

Contrary to what we initially reported, the Kwalbrun home does not have “a Jacuzzi, a fireplace and a manicured lawn.” The sale price of Marc Gottlieb’s house in Cedarhurst was also incorrectly reported. Both Dr. Lara Kwalbrun and Marc Gottlieb report that they were misquoted.

The Forward retracts the article and we offer our apologies to the Kwalbrun and Gottlieb families for the article’s errors, and for the distress that these errors may have caused."

Orly Halpern talked her way out of Iraqi captivity, apparently. Wonder if she can talk her way out of this one (or if that Iraq story is Kwalbrun-Jacuzzi material). Click here for her claim on CNN following Hamas's victory that the Islamist party would have preferred to remain in the opposition.

Sheesh! As though leftist editors handpicking photos and slanting the facts doesn't do enough damage without creative-non-fiction interpretation of reality on the ground. I applaud the Forward's retraction and would advise other publications to fact-check past articles by Ms. Halpern.

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Kill Me? You've Hardly Cured Me

"He talked to me about how they were going to destroy British and Americans. He told me that the plans were already made and they would soon be destroying the British. He said the people who cure you would kill you."

Read what an Iraqi Jihadi told a British Anglican.

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Gaza Caliphate Established Thanks to Jewish Nihilists

Hamas fighters kiss the ground before entering the Preventative Security headquarters in Gaza City in this image taken from TV Thursday June 14, 2007. The Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement's most important security installations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. (AP Photo/Al Aqsa TV Via AP Television)

You, the believers in the end of Abrahamic religion, really thought you could spread your shallow bagels-and-Khanafe religion to the proud Muslim descendants of Abraham's first-born living in the Land of Israel?

You really though that you could create Palestinian Kapos, bribed and blackmailed to perpetrate your fraud that their justice ends at the Green Line? Jews who have traded their birthright long ago for red lentils are flabbergasted that their Muslim cousins are not taking the same bait.

"Don't you see - forget about your foolish Koranic halacha that says we can't even live as non-dhimmi sovereigns here and we will make you prosperous beyond your wildest dreams."

The most bizarre part of this whole situation lately is that Al-Aksa Brigades, fully controlled and run by Fatah, has been carrying out attacks on Jews regularly, with the trickled down funding and weapons supplied by Israel and the US. "Well, they have to maintain their street cred," says some senior government strategist with no relatives in Sderot.

Though b'nai Yishmael are currently at war with us and currently our grave enemies, it is a good day when our murderers execute each other in the streets.

It is interesting that the day Shimon Peres finally rises to power is the day the Islamic Caliphate of Gaza is founded, armed with the arms he handed over, dancing on the smoldering coals of the Jewish towns he torched.

Welcome to the New Middle East. Buckle your phylacteries, it's gonna be a wild ride.

See you in Homesh within the month. Stay tuned.

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Olah Olot Strike Back at Der Forvard ('The Forward' - so this will be Googlable)

A new immigrant resident of Neve Daniel figured, hey, this nice girl from Der Forvard wants to come do a story on Aliyah - let me welcome her into my home. Foward's Orly Hapern, bothered by the specter of settlers taking a little bit of Teaneck with them, writes this article (a fun read - possibly even recruiting some olim from Teaneck - but not very nice to her host family and an obvious case of creative quote-bending).

Olah Lara Kwalbrun strikes back:

Dear editors and writers of The Forward,

My name is Lara Kwalbrun and I am a resident of Neve Daniel who was interviewed by Orly Halpern for her June 6th article. I am writing to say that I am both insulted and disgusted by Ms. Halpern's opportunistic use of my hospitality as a means to misquote me and misrepresent the lifestyle my family and I live in Yesha.

To start, our home does NOT "boast" a jacuzzi, fireplace, or a manicured lawn. Neither is it "surrounded by Arab villages" but overlooks the city of Beitar Illit on one side and Efrat (with over 8,000 Jewish residents) on the other. Ms. Halpern asked me if this life isn't better than what we left behind in New Jersey and I told her that we had a nicer and easier lifestyle in America but believe strongly in yishuv haaretz.

In addition, what Ms. Halpern pens as a direct quote is nothing short of a fabrication. She writes, "'Before we found Neve Daniel, my husband told me, 'I love you and I want to live in Israel, but I'm very materialistic and if I don't have a nice house, we're not moving.'" Actually we moved to a rental in Alon Shevut in August of 2005 with no plans to buy for a while. We only purchased the house after realizing that there was very little real estate in the area that we had grown to love that was available. Our moving to Israel had absolutely nothing to do with buying a house; rather, when my husband got a job in Israel we felt that we had no good reason to stay in America regardless of the good lifestyle. We left our jobs, home, families, friends, and native country to move to Israel and Yesha where we felt that our presence makes a difference in what is the ancient heartland of Eretz Yisrael; my family and I resent what we consider to be a libelous and fictitious representation of our goals and the words I used to define them. In addition the openness with which we greeted Ms. Halpern was returned with an attempt on her part to trivialize and reduce the American-Jewish struggle to leave what is easy and safe and re-cast themselves as immigrants in a land that is both strange and wonderful.

My family and I expect that The Forward will take some sort of action to rectify the egregious errors and misrepresentations that make up Ms. Halpern's article. At the very least she should apologize to my husband whose decision to move here was out of love and responsibility despite the fact that he speaks no Hebrew and cannot yet practice medicine in this country.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Dr. Lara Kwalbrun

Her neighbor, Laura Ben-David, wrote:

I was excited to read the article "Suburbia Sells Settlers on the West Bank" by Orly Halpern (June 6) as it is about Neve Daniel, the place that I've called home for the past five years. I'm sorry to say that I was utterly disappointed. We, too, moved from a lovely home, ours in beautiful Boca Raton, Florida. Your article suggests that we are a bunch of rich snobs looking for a great real estate deal. Nothing could be further from the truth. We left Boca Raton and its green, manicured, country club-like atmosphere for something real. We left what was physical and material for something genuine and spiritual. We left what had merely been our home to create a new life in our homeland. A wonderful, meaningful, and truly enjoyable life. One that is not bound by the trappings of "keeping up with the Joneses"; A burden that we were only too happy to be rid of.

Once we chose to make the big move to Israel, choosing where to live was huge. We made several pre-Aliyah trips, and did a lot of research. In the end we chose Gush Etzion for one main reason - neither materialistic nor political in nature. We chose the Gush for its excellent education. Yes, education. Having brought four kids with us, from 7th grade down to kindergarten, we wanted to make sure to meet their needs. So we chose Gush Etzion. As for Neve Daniel, we chose it for the weather, the amazing people and the truly unbelievable 360 degree views.

Our life is nothing like it was in Boca. Like many of our friends who made Aliyah, we sacrificed lots of things like a second car and a swimming pool. Plus, we need to watch our budget much more carefully than we did in America. Is it worth it? And how! We are no longer in the "rat race". Our lives are so much richer than ever before; our happiness is deeper; I can honestly say that we are content. My "take home message" is that Israel is not about a standard of living - it is about living to a higher standard.

Laura Ben-David
Neve Daniel, Israel

Author of "MOVING UP: An Aliyah Journal"

My take? It is a blessing that comfortable communities like Neve Daniel exist. Folks like Ms. Halpern are always looking for different ways to mock or mourn the return of Jews to Judea. The moral of the story (for those who didn't know already): The Forward operates under the same ethical assumptions and directives as Haaretz - it ain't your grand-daddy's yiddish paper no more.

There is a tendency among Israel news readers to sometimes be dismissive of Arutz-7, due to what is seen as its obvious 'bias'. The truth is that there exists no Israeli news site without a bias - the problem is dishonesty and lying about the facts. A news agency's responsibility is to be honest about its underlying assumptions: whether they be that UN resolutions and a leftist interpretation of international law are Divine, or whether the Jewish people's right to the Land of Israel is both historically and Biblically mandated; Arutz-7 operates under the latter assumption. The other news agencies operating in Israel are not honest about their underlying assumptions, but far worse, have no compunctions about playing with facts, quotes and statistics to bolster the editorial line. I am not saying A7 never makes mistakes, but I truly believe it is as close as you can get at this point in time to honest journalism in Israel (this is without even going into the corporate ownership and state-control of Israeli media and the Federation and Big-Leftist-Jewish money bolstering papers like the Forward).

Update: Laura Ben-David's letter is due to be printed in The F, albeit they changed her home country from Israel to the narrow strip of land holding the west side of the puny Jordan River from spilling over (hat tip: NG, who would never miss and opportunity to accost such offenders)

Another letter sent to the Forward (and then to me):

To the Editor,
It is too bad Orly Halperin was so focused on the materialistic aspect of the high standard of living found in Yesha communities in Israel. This fact is not really "news", as all over the world communities outside of major cities are more affordable and more spacious. Suburbs in America are always about a better materialistic standard of living. Although I would not exagerrate to the extent that Ms. Halpern has, making Neve Daniel sound like the "Bel Air" of the settlements, when in most cases families still sacrifice much to come here, such as a second car, or a pool, and lets not forget that "jacuzzi and fireplace" which is not standard equipment in homes even in Neve Daniel; it is still true that it is an easier transition for Jews from U.S. suburbs to move to places like Gush Etzion. However, a much more important story would be to focus on the clear improvement in the more spritual aspects of living in a community. No matter how wonderful the Jewish communities of Cedarhurst, Teaneck or in my case Los Angeles, it is another world here in our "gated communities" more aptly described as "yishuv kehillati", or "Congregational Community". On a yishuv, such as Neve Daniel, or Alon Shvut where I am from, there is a spirit and social cohesion which is impossible to create in an American suburb. This is the true reason many American Jews seem to be coming to the 'burbs here in Israel. This enormous improvement in the spiritual quality of life which is attained by coming to yishuvim is the real story and is worthy of an article in the Forward, and not the trivializing of the true nature of "yishuv ha' aretz" (settling the Land) which Ms Halperin's article so deftly does. I invite Ms. Halpern to come visit Gush Etzion again, for any holiday of her choosing, or Shabbat, as my guest, and I and my family and my community will show her the true appeal of Yesha and Israel.

Donna Zeff
Alon Shvut
Gush Etzion
Israel

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Confessions of a Shavuot Hater - by Benyamin

The following is an essay called "Confessions of a Shavuot Hater" by Benyamin, the same mysterious semi-anonymous contributor who won Kumah a silver metal for Best Humor Post for his "Becoming a Real Israeli" confessional.

Thoughts on Shavuot
by Baruch Ben-Galut
My earliest memories of Shavuot are of my Consecration ceremony. Although I was very young, I was nevertheless aware that Consecration was not cool. No matter how satisfying or memorable your synagogue experience was, you can probably find something disturbing. My large suburban conservative American synagogue had many. Although I appreciate the religious basis I received, there was a healthy dose of synagogue experiences that turned me off to being Jewish as well. One of these was Consecration.

Somehow I knew even back then that this was some kind of a set-up. Some kind of trick to get me to go to Sunday School or Hebrew School or both every week so I could get a quality Jewish education. Not too Jewish, because, heaven forbid, I could end up making aliyah and then I would not grow up to be a dues-paying synagogue member with a doctorate and 2.5 kids.

Consecration involved the graduating class of 1st grade Sunday School marching around the synagogue with little miniature Torah's. The thought alone of standing in front of that many people was traumatic. On top of this terror, I was convinced there was something worse.

The word Consecration did not sit well with me. It sounded way too much like the word circumcision and I was still trying to figure out what that one meant and if it made me any less of a man then my classmates in public school. Further more, the word Consecration sounded suspiciously Christian to me. It definitely didn't sound Hebrew. And I wasn't going to be tricked into being Christian. I heard some of the students in public school talking about some kind of consecration at their church. I didn't know much about being Jewish, but I knew that we Jewish folks didn't go to church and that we had some kind of unspoken obligation to think of church with aversion.

My Jewish consciousness was strong at a young age. That is until I ruined it by abandoning my people by moving to a strange Middle Eastern country on the shores of the Mediterranean where they barely had any conservative or reform synagogues let alone a Sunday School.

Being Jewish to me meant being a Grinch. I was compelled to flip the TV channel whenever a Christmas movie came on. We received presents on Hanukah, not that other holiday. That's what made me special. But the word 'special' doesn't always have positive connotations.

This brings us up to the holiday of Shavuot, the most forgotten holiday of them all and yet perhaps one of the most important. I get presents on Hanukah. I eat apples and honey on Rusha Shonah. On Passover my whole family comes over and I get to eat a big meal. On Yom Kipper, I don't eat anything, that is, if I�m hardcore enough and punk rock enough to go through with fasting an entire day.

Every holiday seems to have something. Shavuot has nothing. Nothing that is, except Consecration. I eventually went through with the ceremony but it was but a precursor to my Bar Mitzvah. I failed in finding a good way out of that as well. I also failed in my elaborately planned protest against the degradation of Hebrew School Graduation. But I tricked them all by moving to Israel and thus sparing my children from the same experiences.

Shavuot. The day we received the Torah. One of the three pilgrimage festivals. This is a big one. Surely there should be some kind of ritual to celebrate it. But there isn't. Maybe that's the point. The concepts expressed on Shavuot should be taken on their own merit without any extras.

Eventually I discovered that there more to being Jewish then the fact that I get presents on a different day then the people on TV do. I also found that my Jewishness does not end at my bar mitzvah in a 13 year old mentality. That doesn't mean that my thoughts at age 13 are not legitimate. They are. But I'm not 13 any more and my Jewishness has to grow along with me. Because you can't be proud of who you are if you're walking around apologizing for what you are.

My synagogue experience didn't make me feel particular proud of my roots, but I discovered something that did. It had something to do about fighting for a cause and protesting against injustice. I learned all about a movement to create an independent nation in the face of great adversity. It went by a name that begins with the letter Z but I also learned that we're not supposed to use that word anymore. In college it had negative connotations.

By the time I got to college I felt strongly enough that I refused to go to school on Shavuot. Instead I went to shul. Finals happened to be on the same day as Shavuot, the second day, that is. I asked the professor if I could take the test a day later. A fellow Jewish student overheard the conversation. "That's right! Shavuot IS next week, isn't it." He too asked the professor if he could take finals a day later. The professor, smiling, refused on the grounds that he knew I would go to synagogue while my classmate just wanted an extra day to study. The student admitted the professor was right. I took the test a day later and passed.

It wasn't always that easy. Once in high school, I got in trouble and had to get a note from the principal's office. The next day was Shavuot. I thought I could get away with not bothering to go to the principal's office at all. But I didn't get away that easy. At home it was insisted upon that I get the note either before or after synagogue.

And thus came the great dilemma. What would the others students say when they saw me waltzing into school with a button-down white shirt and black slacks? Should I wear the clothes I usually wore to school? But then what would the rabbi in synagogue say? Should I leave my kippah on or not? What would the other students say when they saw me in a kippah? Would I get a nasty comment? Did it make any sense for me to walk in school with a button-down white shirt and black slacks and no kippah? Would that be even more awkward?

That day, I cut school, went to shul, then went to school, got the note and then went home. The next day in school the only comments were the fact that I had cut school. In my school, it was just as likely that I was dressed up because I had to appear in court. Most of my friends just assumed that I cut for fun. My Jewishness wasn't questioned in the least. By the next school year I was wearing a kippah every day, both in school and in the street.

Although my non-Jewish acquaintances were understanding, the yom tov dilemma always cropped up. I dreaded holidays because it meant asking off from work and explaining why I couldn't use electricity. But worse then that was trying to explain why the holiday was celebrated two days in America when it seemed to be that technically it was really only one day. Shavuot was the worst, since, as discussed earlier, it is the least known and least celebrated of the holidays. Even Jewish people didn't exactly understand. In Conservative and Reform Judaism, of course Shavuot is only one day.

Two-day yomtovs are great when it means Passover with two seders and all my favorite foods two days in a row. But on a holiday like Shavuot, especially when it comes on a Shabbos, it means up to three days without showering. It was a happy occasion if The Jewish Press arrived before sunset so I could devour the screaming blue headlines that predicted utter catastrophe for Israel at any minute. And I dreamed of that far off country with blue skies and palm trees where I could fight for the struggle and watch TV on the second day of yomtov.

But those concerns are now worlds away. This year, Shavuot will take on a new meaning. We learned in Sunday School that Shavuot was a day when the entire Jewish people made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Then we were taught of the importance of not chewing gum during synagogue services. I doubt any of the students in 1st grade Sunday School believed that Jewish people in modern times actually make pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Shavuot. Growing up, travelling to Shavuot services required either the Volvo or the Honda. Today I can walk to the site of the Holy Temple where Shavuot has been celebrated for generations.

In Israel, I've barely thought for a second what the reaction would be if I wore a kippah in public or how I'm going to explain to my boss why I need off for yet another Jewish holiday. I'm still afraid, however, to use the Z word in certain circles, let alone neo-Z.

Moving to Israel did not magically transform my life for the better. It's a challenge which I've taken up. The new challenges that are far preferable to the once I grew up with. My identity issues have been transformed for the better.

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