devarim

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It seems that, for his next project, Steven Spielberg is tackling the murder of eleven Israeli atheletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics and the subsequent retaliation by Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence agency. There are plenty of complicating political issues surrounding this film, and (as reported by the New York Times article), according to associates:

Mr. Spielberg has sought counsel from advisers ranging from his own rabbi to the former American diplomat Dennis Ross, who in turn has alerted Israeli government officials to the film's thrust. Mr. Spielberg has also shown the script to Mr. Ross's old boss, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton's aides said Mr. Spielberg reached out to him first more than a year ago and again as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Spielberg is also being advised by Mike McCurry, Mr. Clinton's White House spokesman, and Allan Mayer, a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis communications.

The article goes on to discuss Spielberg's motivations:

In the statement, Mr. Spielberg called the Munich attack - which was carried out by Black September, an arm of the P.L.O.'s Fatah organization - and the Israeli response "a defining moment in the modern history of the Middle East."

Mr. Spielberg's interest in the question of a civilized nation's proper response to terrorism deepened, aides said, after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans were grappling for the first time with similar issues - for instance, in each new lethal strike on a suspected terrorist leader by a C.I.A. Predator drone aircraft. In Mr. Kushner's script, people who have read it say, the Israeli assassins find themselves struggling to understand how their targets were chosen, whether they belonged on the hit list and, eventually, what, if anything, their killing would accomplish.

* * *

Mr. Spielberg's statement indicated that, despite the implications for other conflicts, his movie - to be shot in Malta, Budapest and New York - was aimed squarely at the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

* * *

Mr. Spielberg's advisers say he is studiously avoiding the most glaring potential trap: drawing a moral equivalency between the Palestinian attack and the Israeli retaliation.

I can't decide what will be worse: humanizing the Mossad agents too much (leading audiences to wonder what kind of sick people could have so many doubts and still go through with the assassinations) or not making them human enough (leading audiences to believe that the IDF is made up of a bunch of heartless killing machines). Of course I'll wait to pass judgment until I see the film (which hasn't even been made yet), but in the meantime I'm more than a little worried about the fallout of any Spielberg film on this topic.

Today, Julian and I (and several other people - not all linked-to here) participated in a great Boston July Fourth tradition. No, we didn't go down to the Charles to hear the Pops play a patriotic medly followed by the coordinated booming and roaring and banging and popping of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture paired with cannon blasts and fireworks. (Duh, check the timestamp.) Rather, this morning we decided to head on down to the Old State House to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence. I've been told that this pubic reading has taken place every July Fourth since 1777 (there was a bit of a time lag in 1776, and the document didn't make it up here and get approved for public reading until the 18th).

It was kind of nifty, seeing the fife-and-drums parade and listening to the awe-inspiring Preamble and Declaration (and the somewhat ranty list of grievances - a prelude to Festivus, perhaps?). After the crowd dispersed, Julian and I wandered around a bit. We spotted more than a few red-white-and-blue outfits (I was among the guilty, with my jeans, red polo shirt, and white beret) - and one girl, probably about 15 or 16, with a particularly interesting take on patriotism. She folded a flag approximately in half to create a triangle, and then tied it around her waist so it draped over her butt. Um...last I checked, that's not appropriate treatment of our flag:

(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free.

I resisted the urge to speak up (I wasn't in the mood for a shouting match or a fistfight), but I'm rather disappointed that basic rules of flag etiquette aren't more well know. Granted, our flag code is stricter than that of many other countries (which allow their flags to be worn, draped, gathered into bunting, and otherwise used for decorative purposes). But is it too much to ask that, in your endeavor to celebrate our nation and our flag, you at least double-check that your actions are celebratory rather than demeaning?

I am overjoyed to announce the engagement of David Levine and Tamar Katz!

(not their real names)

...though if you get the joke, you should be able to figure out who really got engaged.

My wake-up this morning? Hearing on the radio about "explosions" in London. You know, kind of like when I woke up to the radio news on September 11, 2001, and a panicked woman stading on a rooftop in downtown Manhattan was describing how a plane (only one, then) had just flown into one of the Twin Towers. Before any commentators that morning breathed the word "terrorism," my father was on the phone insisting that it was an attack.

This morning, I didn't need him to plant the idea in my head. Before I even heard about the bus bombs - when all I knew about was "an explosion in the London Underground" - I of course "knew" what had happened. The only thing left to do was to send my thoughts to the victims.

And to start speculating, of course, because that's what we do. Was it because of the Olympics? Nah, too hard to have planned five possible attacks and then execute one with only a day's notice. G8? More likely. Or was it the start of a worldwide coordinated attack? Would D.C., New York, Boston be hit a few hours later? By the time we were in the car on our way to work, Governor Romney had raised our threat level and there was talk of heightened security on the MBTA. Which is rather dumb, if you ask me...they're not going to pull the same type of attack that many hours later; it's going to be something unexpected.

Like the bus bombs an hour after the Underground explosions. Just when everyone had been evacuated. Just when everyone was finding alternate means of transportation (like, y'know, the bus). Just when they were starting to think it was all over.

As you may or may not have noticed, I've added some new links to the "Other People" section of my sidebar. Check them out!

Does anyone out there know how to fix a pudding that did not sufficiently puddingify (er...set) in the refrigerator overnight? It's already been spooned into serving glasses and it's supposed to be for dinner (er...dessert) tonight. Stupid me for trying too many new recipes in one day, including a recipe involving carmelizing sugar, which I almost always mess up.

It's Tammuz. Not our best month, as naomi chana points out. Still, peninah, every rosh chodesh is a mini-holiday.

Score another one for drug-free childbirth:*

Man faints, dies after seeing epidural

Actually, it's quite tragic. I can't imagine going through labor after that (though I hope that she continued thinking only that he'd passed out, not knowing how baadly injured he was). And what in the world do you tell your child about how his father died?

* I can't believe I even have to put in this footnote, but I'm going to anyway. *deep breath* I am not actually presenting this as a reason to avoid an epidural during labor.

I can't believe I just did this, but I put an ICE number into my cell phone. The listing says "ICE - Julian (husband)" and it defaults to his cell phone, though I will be adding his work number and our home number. Of course, my next thought was "what if, when the emergency workers are trying to call him, emergency workers somewhere else are using his phone to try to call me?"

Ah, RenReb is right. And wrong, too, because the world wasn't perfect on September 10, 2001, not even just our little sliver of it. There were emergencies then, too. It's just nicer to look fondly on the past in the face of a dismal future.

This was such a good day. This moring, Julian and I closed on a beautiful three-bedroom condo (don't worry, still in Brookline). We're going to start renovations very soon, and hopefully we'll be in there by the end of the summer. I couldn't wait to get back froom work this evening, pick up some shawarma from Rami's, and eat dinner on our new balcony.

Then I got to work and read about the bombing in Netanya just over an hour ago. Why, why, why?

(My father and sister are okay, by the way. I spoke with them about twenty minutes after the bombing, but before I even knew it had happened. My grandmother is another story, but that's unrelated to the attack.)

My savta (grandmother) passed away some time in the past several hours. My little sister (who has been in Israel, along with my father, for about a week) called to tell me. The phone rang first around 2:00. Julian picked up; apparently there was no one on the line and so he hung up again, but I knew. When the phone didn't ring again within a couple of minutes, I allowed myself to slip back into sleep, but twenty minutes later I was wide awake again and had my hand out waiting when Julian gave me the phone.

I was a lousy granddaughter. We had no languages in common (she spoke Farsi and Hebrew, I speak only English because I'm a selfish dumb American) and so had difficulty communicating. Add to that my aversion to telephones and my penchant for never ever writing a letter (I have a stack of ununsed SASEs from my other grandmother, who died about two years ago - no joke) and you have a formula for one distant grandchild.

She had so many great stories to tell. I remember the last time I was in Israel, I sat next to her bed with one of my aunts (her daughter-in-law, also Persian) who translated stories and questions back and forth for us. There was a beautiful kind of awkwardness to the whole situation, as Savta spoke in a mix of Hebrew and Farsi, my aunt translated into broken English interspersed with Hebrew, and I sat there taking it all in and asking questions in English due to my gross inability to construct any sentence over three words in any other language.

I learned about her arranged betrothal at age twelve, and how she threw the ring into the garden and ran upstairs to do her schoolwork, and then poured ink on her face hoping it would make her new fiance find her too ugly to marry. I heard about her wedding seven years later (same guy), and how her family poured honey on her hand and placed a lump of sugar in the other hand and set her on a horse to ride to the ceremony. I discovered that my father was actually her third child; the second (a girl) died at a very young age from some childhood illness. She told me things about my father's childhood, about her childhood - stories that I never bothered to write down and now, like so many others, will be lost.

There are tangerines growing in her backyard - tangerines and lemons, those beautiful big sweet Persian lemons that you can eat fresh. I wish I could hold one in my hands now.

So, according to Bloghead, who go it from The Jewish Week, the Conservative movement has ruled that women are now permitted to breastfeed in the sanctuary portion of their synagogues. Now, I am a huge fan of breastfeeding, on demand, without shame, but this is a step too far even for me (and Miriam, it seems, read the Bloghead post).

I try not to talk during services, I dress appropriately, and I generally strive to conduct myself in a respectful manner. Don't get me wrong; breastfeeding is not a disrespectful act, and there is nothing shameful about a woman's breast or a baby latched onto one, but there is a limit to everything. I wouldn't eat in shul during services, and I would try to teach my young children not to do so either (enjoy your lollipops in the lobby, please!). If my infant were bottle-fed (expressed breast milk or formula, for whatever reason) I would consider it in appropriate to give hir a bottle in the sanctuary during shul. It's a makom kodesh (holy or sanctified location) and the people around me (or my husband, int he case of bottle-feeding) are (or should be) trying to maintain the proper kavana for prayer and following the service. Who is my child - who am I - to distract them?

I am a little disturbed by this quote from that article:

“I understand halacha to permit public breast-feeding, including in a beit midrash or synagogue sanctuary during a worship service, so long as it is done in a modest, subtle and dignified fashion,” according to the paper written by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson.

That sounds like a recipe for codified restrictions and judgment-passing on breastfeeding mothers everywhere, not just in sanctuaries. One of the most important things we can do to encourage breastfeeding is to make a breastfeeding mother feel comfortable wherever and whenever her child needs to eat. If she is more comfortable tossing a blanket over the baby and her shoulder, great; but if she finds that hot and itchy, or she wants to keep an eye on the child's latch, or they prefer to maintain visual contact throughout feeding, you're not dong the mother any favors by insisting that she cover up or try to hide that she's feeding her child.

Rabbi Artson goes on to defend his wposition with regard to permitting nursing in sanctuaries:

[D]iscouraging nursing in the sanctuary is “a mistaken idea of what kavod hatzibur [honoring the synagogue’s dignity] is.”

“There is no greater image of the love of God for humanity than a nursing mother, and no greater image for the way the Torah is lovingly transmitted from one generation to another than a nursing mother,” said Rabbi Artson....

Actually, another common image of the love between God and the Jewish people is that of marriage, with God as the adoring suitor and Israel as the romanced bride. Have you ever read Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon>? That's some racy writing. It is said that the Shekhina (Divine Presence, one "facet" of God) rests on a married couple when they make love, but I don't see any rabbis approving of couples gettin' busy in the aisle, or even engaging in some serious kissing during services.

Of course, I was none too thrilled with the quote from Rabbi Basil Herring, executive director of the Rabbinical Council of America (an Orthodox organization):

The issue hasn’t come up....In the Orthodox world there would be a general understanding that it would be best for the mother and baby to be following the traditional role of staying home. If she does come to synagogue, it would not be in the pews where she would be breast-feeding.

I'm fuming. Really. (There were stronger words there before, but this is a family-friendly blog.) I don't even know where to begin - with the "traditional role," the "understanding" of what "would be best for the mother and baby," the "if"-ness of her coming to synagogue?

Please, can we start a letter campaign to this guy?

As a follow-up to my reaction to Rabbi Basil Herring's comments about Orthodox mothers, nursing, and shul, please see some private communication from R' Herring posted at OrthoMom.

Yesterday's Boston Globe contained an op-ed column entitled, "Poland's New Fascination With Jews." The article began with quotes from Cynthia Ozick's 1973 essay imagining the world's reverence of the Jews, if we had all vanished long ago:

''How -- if there were no Jews -- the world would be enraptured!" she wrote. ''The people that stood at Sinai to receive a desert vision of purity, the people of scholarly shepherds, humane prophetic geniuses, dreams of justice and mercy" -- how admired they would be. In a world without Jews, the memory of Jewish civilization would be endlessly fascinating. ''Christian ladies," Ozick imagined, would ''study 'The Priceless Culture of the Jews' at Chautauqua in the summertime" or create Jewish prayer shawls at ''a workshop on tallith making."

And while there are still Jews in the world, apparently there aren't very many left in Poland. About 200, at last count, in Krakow, a city of 1.5 million people. Perhaps you can attribute a tiny sliver of that reduction to my in-laws' emigration (to New York and Israel) in the 1960s, but I seem to recall a little skirmish with the Germans wherein the Poles were all too happy to hand over their neighbors for enslavement and extermination. What was that called again?

Right. So maybe you'll understand my cynicism, the lack of warm-fuzzies, when I read that Krakow holds an annual Jewish Culture Festival, "a nine-day extravaganza of concerts, lectures, films, and exhibitions" with the goal of "'presenting Jewish culture in all its abundance.'" Included in the activity catalog are:

lectures on ''Talmudic thought" and ''Jewish medical ethics," forums on European anti-Semitism and the Hebrew poetry of Haim Nahman Bialik, concerts of klezmer music, liturgical music, and ''Songs of the Ghettos and Jewish Resistance," workshops on Jewish cooking, Hasidic wedding dances, and celebrating Hanukkah with children.

The Festival's closing concert, on "an outdoor stage dominated by a large electric menorah," lasted seven hours and drew an audience of 10,000 people (not to mention its television broadcast). Whence the crowd? Several people int he crowd told The Globe's Jeff Jacoby that "they had come because the concert is such a popular scene." Others came out of a particular attraction to Jewish culture, but I was less than satisfied with the reasoning:

''I can't imagine Krakow without Jewish culture," she told me. But when I [the reporter] gently pressed her to say what ''Jewish culture" means -- how, for example, would she explain it to her daughters? -- she replied, vaguely, ''It's more about feeling than knowing. 'Jewish' to me means a warm feeling."

That's just great. A three-thousand-year-old religion (with some developments along the way, of course) has been reduced to "a warm feeling." Kugel and candles. Perhaps next we can reduce Catholicism to Christmas trees and nuns. Oh, excuse me, I have to go retrieve my eyeballs...they just rolled right out of my head.

I was less put off by Tomasz Sierkierski, who was honored at the Festival for coordinating the retoration of a "forgotten" Jewish cemetery in Skarszewy. When asked why he did it, he told the reporter that "[h]e knows that nothing will bring back the rich Jewish culture that was so much a part of Polish life. But he wants at least to keep it from being forgotten." (I'm pretty sure it wasn't forgotten by those who have relatives buried in that cemetery, or who lived in the town. At least, it wouldn't have been if you didn't go and kill most of them and then drive the rest out of the country.)

There are non-cynical bones in my body, somewhere. I'm just having some trouble finding them today.

Oh dear. I think fruit is going to be on its way out entirely. According to the New York Times, the next big thing is going to be tattooed fruit:

A new technology being used by produce distributors employs lasers to tattoo fruits and vegetables with their names, identifying numbers, countries of origin and other information that helps speed distribution. The marks are burned onto the outer layer of the skin and are visible to discerning consumers and befuddled cashiers alike.

...They are also visible to shomer Shabbat Jews, who may be wary of violating the melacha (prohibited work-like activity) of "erasing" on Shabbat by biting into or peeling such produce. As I recall, on Shabbat one may bite into a piece of cake that has writing on it, but one may not actually cut through the letters on the cake. This situation seems similar enough.

Not to give the rabbis any crazy ideas, but I can see easily some kind of ban being place on consuming these fruits and vegetables on Shabbat and yom tovim (festival days). And I'm not so sure I'd disagree with them, at least as much as it applies to cutting and peeling.

What a pain in the butt.

Cross-posted at KosherBlog.

(Belated acknowledgement to DovBear, who also found the article. I read it and wrote my post before seeing his, but who am I to be stingy with my links?)

Massachusetts has planned a tax-free shopping holiday for Saturday, August 13. In the past, I've been moderately put-out that such days are always on Saturdays, when we (and other shomer Shabbat Jews) cannot shop and therefore cannot participate. So, when I first heard that the Legislature is considering extending the tax breaks for the entire weekend for the explicit purpose of including observant Jews, I was delighted. Until I checked my calendar again and realized that Sunday, August 14, is Tisha B'Av, a day of fasting and mourning, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. Shopping is generally a no-no on that day.

I really, really appreciate the intention here. If it were just about any other weekend, I would be delighted, and we would certainly make a point of doing our part to stimulate the economy. But I fear that, with this set-up, the Legislature will move to accommodate us, see little effect, and refuse to do it in the future.

Go read this excellent review by ADDeRabbi on the new Artscroll "women's siddur."

Google is hiring for their newest research facility. Be sure you read all six pages of the job description. Then check your calendar.

Although, this makes me wonder:

Obviously, a new set of tools for computing in the unforgiving conditions of deep space is needed. This month, Google will release version 10.0 of an operating system that has been optimized for the demands of extra-terrestrial computation. Known as "Luna/X," the new command architecture is impervious to radiation, low gravity, absolute zero temperatures and airless environments. Even the most intricate scripts coded in Luna/X can withstand the harsh conditions of lunar operation for months, if not years.

...is Google really developing a new OS?

Update - even if they aren't, they've added a new region to Google Maps.

Well, the bill to extend the tax-free shopping weekend (to rather inconveniently include Tisha B'Av) has been passed. The vote was 145-7, too. I just hope those 145 legislators feel the same way the next time around, given that this won't be doing us much good next month.

Boston Globe article link

I'll be guest-blogging at DovBear for the week. Most stuff (like the rest of this post, actually), will be cross-posted.

Things I have Learned Today:

1. DovBear does not hate me;
2. DovBear does not think I'm a bad writer;
3. DovBear thinks my blog has fallen into the dumps;
4. DovBear doesn't know that we've just had our bathroom retiled and therefore could not shower at home all last week;
5. I bug DovBear enough to make sure he has my email address;
6. DovBear has pulled my FBI file;
7. my fellow guest-bloggers did not speak with my elementary school classmates;
8. I'm totally getting shafted the next time around;
9. I totally should have won that spelling bee in eighth grade (P-H-A-R-Y-N-X); and
10. DovBear knows I'm a self-promoting sucker.

Cross-posted to DovBear.

So if orange is the color of the anti-disengagement camp, and blue is the color of the anti-anti-disengagement camp (because I don't think "pro-disengagement" is the right term)...then what does that mean for Mets fans?

I understand the meaning behind the orange-and-blue ribbon that DovBear (our BlogHost) has on his sidebar, but I'm not sure I can get behind it. Just saying "I want all of Israel to be united" won't make it so. Having sympathy for the settlers while still asking them to leave won't give them their homes back. Blending the colors implies that blue-without-orange is "missing" something, that within the government there is no sympathy for the settlers.

Blue is "our color," or at least it was before it become the un-orange. Blue is cheesy Chanukah decorations in December. Blue is techelet. Blue is Israel. In choosing orange, the anti-disengagement camp set themselves against the blue. They chose agression instead of cooperation, separation instead of unity. "Jews dont expel Jews" has a much stronger message when we're all wearing the same color.

It's time to reclaim the blue.

(With credit to my husband for sparking this train of thought.)

Cross-posted at DovBear.

This morning we settled on paint colors for our new home. Allow me to present them in a story about our new friend Benjamin Moore:

They met in a field of "flowering herbs," her hair golden in the "filtered sunlight." It was not long before he was overcome by "dark gypsy love." She brought him into her boudoir, so different from his "shabby chic" hovel. The sky turned a "starry night blue" as their legs intertwined on the bed of "white satin." He left with the dawn, thinking they would never meet again. Yet, a few weeks later she tracked him down...asking for "vanilla ice cream" and a "dill pickle."

To be fair, there is no color called "dark gypsy love." The color we are actually using is called "pottery red," but the color one shade lighter on the card is named "gypsy love" and so I feel justified in the name-tweaking here.

Gold star to the first commenter (besides my co-workers, who already know the answers) who can properly match up each paint color with its respective surface. I'll even make it easy for you by listing the options: entryway; hallway; living room; dining area; kitchen; master bedroom; master bedroom walk-in closet; second bedroom (guest room/desk space); third bedroom (TV room); trim (crown moulding, windowsills, doors). Yes, there are more surfaces than colors listed. Some colors will be used on more than one of the listed surfaces. It's a challenge, live with it.

Earlier MomOf4 wrote about Gaza settlers writing their national identification numbers on their arms as a way of comparing themselves to Holocaust victims. Today, she revisited the topic to point out that some settlers intend to wear concentration camp uniforms as they are being evacuated.

I don't care how beautiful your home is, how sad you are to be leaving your community, how distasteful you find it to be escorted out by fellow Jews, or how difficult it will be to rebuild your life. This comparison is sickening, and the leaders who allow it to continue should be condemned.

Cross-posted at DovBear.

My fear has become a reality:

CINCINNATI --Federated Department Stores Inc. said Thursday that some 330 stores being acquired in its pending takeover of May Department Stores Co. will be converted to Macy's stores, including stores that now carry the Filene's name, a Boston institution.

*sob*

More details:

However, the fate of the landmark store in Boston's Downtown Crossing has not yet been decided, according to Jim Sluzewski, spokesman for Federated which owns Macy's and is in the process of merging with May Department Stores which owns Filene's.

"This is still under study," Sluzewski said, regarding the Downtown Crossing location where both Macy's and Filene's are anchor stores. "We have many options."

One of those options announced this morning on a local radio station had Macy's moving into the Filene's location. But Sluzewski insisted that decision has not been made. Other options include having a Bloomingdale's -- which is also owned by Federated -- move into one of the two anchor stores or abandoning one of the stores so that a Target department store could move in.

It seems like none of those options involves leaving even the one token downtown Filene's in place. So, "The Basement" will no longer actually be in the basement of Finlene's.

again: *sob*

It's less than halfway over, but if business school grads felt the same way about The Apprentice as I feel about The Law Firm, there must be a lot of TV out there with rotten tomatoes on them. Seriously, I took one semester of trial advocacy in law school and I did a better job during our "final exam" (a mock trial) than these people are doing....

OK...so the closing arguments weren't all bad.

And what is up with this concept where you can get booted even if your team won the case?

It was a "brilliant move" to bring the dog in without telling the other side? Um....maybe, but also contrary to the rules of procedure!

(...and then I got a phone call. And missed the end. Why am I upset?)