November 2, 2012 - The Jewish Transcript

4 JtNews . www.JtNews.Net . friday, November 2, 2012
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are made possible through
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Coming up
■ Torathon 6: Jewish Wisdom Symposium
Wednesdays November 7 and 14, 7–9:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 11, 9–12:15 p.m.
The annual celebration of Jewish study continues this year with two
dozen local rabbis, educators and community leaders from all backgrounds
teaching topics from Spinoza to the spirituality of parenting.
Classes include “The Siddur as Time Machine,” “B’Tzelem Elohim
and Yoga,” and “How Judaism Creates Global Impact” in addition to
text study, philosophy, and personal growth sessions. This year’s event
features classes directed toward teens and parents on Sunday.
At Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, 3700 E
Mercer Way, Mercer Island. Tickets are $15 per day or $36 for
all three days. Free for college students and teens. Register at hnt.
wufoo.com/forms/torahthon-6. Contact Rebecca Levy at 206-
232-8555, ext. 207 or Rebecca@h-nt.org. For more information,
including the brochure, visit www.h-nt.org/our-congregation/
learning/torahthon.
“The help from JFS was a life saver in an ocean of despair.”
For more information, please
visit www.jfsseattle.org
lEttErS to tHE EdItor
Bad medicine for israel
Israelis today face growing threats from
all sides, with a remilitarized Sinai, Islamists
on the rise and the Iranians inching closer to
nuclear capability. Rabbi Daniel Weiner (“Lit
by the nations?” Rabbi’s Turn, Oct. 26) points
to some extremists who have responded to
the rising tensions with inappropriate and
inexcusable actions, condemned by the
majority of Israelis. He uses the phrase,
“beleaguered people,” describing not Israeli
Jews but Palestinian Arabs, whose main
problem seems to be that their war of extermination
against Israel, as promised in the
charters of both Hamas and Fatah, has not
been going as smoothly as they would like.
He bemoans the departure from “the regard
for the other by this young nation only a few
generations removed from its roots as a refuge
for the stateless.” He seems uncomfortable
with the fact that this nation was set up as a
refuge for stateless Jews. Not a newly invented
people called Palestinians, not for the deserving
masses of Africa, fleeing from their Muslim
brothers; Jews.
If he sees that as “nativism,” perhaps it is
because Jews are in fact the natives of that
land, from the sea to the Jordan River, as
brought down not only in the Torah, but by the
unanimous declaration of the League of Nations
in 1922, in recognition of the 3,000 years of
Jewish attachment to the land. Expressions
of xenophobia become more understandable
when the outsiders pose an existential threat
to Israel’s survival as a Jewish nation.
To remedy this situation Weiner sets out
to save Israel’s “soul.” As any Native American
can tell you, the soul of a people resides
not only in its members, but in the land that
has been its sacred ancestral home. Jewish
history was not written in Tel Aviv or Eilat, but
in the land known for millennia as Judea and
Samaria, cleverly renamed the West Bank by
King Hussein in 1948 to erase the name of the
Jew from the map of the Middle East. Weiner
would save Israel’s soul by “excising” the
Jewish heartland like a cancerous tumor, relegating
the Zionist dream to an indefensible
strip along the Philistine Coast.
When the world finally lives up to its promises
to the Jews, and when we Jews proudly
stand up for what is rightfully ours, only then
will we be the “light unto the nations” spoken
of by Isaiah, who never heard of Green Lines,
two-state solutions or Arab East Jerusalem.
When Jews can finally live in peace and security
in our promised land, the shameful incidents
Rabbi Weiner decries will become a thing
of the past.
robert Kaufman
seattle
– Emergency Services Client, Jewish Family Service