By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 7-2-09

This July 4, we remember the shared interests, values, ideals, experiences and enemies uniting Israel and the US. These bonds are particularly important as a new American administration picks on Israel while wooing America’s foes. President Barack Obama himself has deemed the American-Israeli friendship “unbreakable.” Yet his zeal for criticizing Israel, and his initial hesitation even to criticize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, has unnerved Israelis. Celebrating national holidays and learning national histories help nations understand themselves better, clarifying values and priorities, sifting friend from foe. America and Israel could each learn from the other how to “do” holidays and history better.

The Statue of Liberty holds a tablet inscribed with the date of United States independence. Americans can teach Israelis about celebrating historical anniversaries – and appreciating history more generally.
Photo: Bloomberg

As an American Jew born in New York and bred in a Zionist family, my most exhilarating Fourth of July was in 1976. For months we had been building toward celebrating America’s 200th birthday, especially with Bicentennial Minutes. Every night on CBS television, a celebrity – Ed Asner or Lucille Ball, Walter Cronkite or Betty Ford, Nelson Rockefeller or Gerald Ford – described a moment from the American Revolution. That summer I went to Young Judaea’s Camp Tel Yehudah ambivalently, not wanting to miss the tall ships from around the world that would sail around the Statue of Liberty on July 4.

All doubts disappeared in camp as history-in-the-making overrode history to commemorate. Terrorists hijacked Air France Flight 139 and held all the Jews (and the brave flight crew) hostage at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. After havdala on July 3, when we heard that Israeli commandos had rescued the hostages, we all went crazy – singing and dancing and high-fiving. Pride in Israel and pride in America reinforced one another that day: The Bicentennial healed an America reeling from Watergate and Vietnam as Entebbe healed an Israel still reeling from the Yom Kippur War.

WHEN IT comes to celebrating national holidays, Americans could learn from Israelis. Israel’s national calendar revolves around the traditional Jewish calendar. The major Jewish holidays unite so-called “secular” and religious Israeli Jews in a delightful symphony, mixing the old with the new. Silly shticks like cheesecake on Shavuot and masks on Purim emphasize sacred values like the joys of learning and the joys of giving.

Nationally, the most powerful holidays are Remembrance Day and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s memorial day followed immediately by Independence Day. The doleful siren’s wail that stops traffic as the nation mourns its fallen soldiers and terror victims reinforces the glee that sweeps the country the day after. The historical experiences of founding the state – as well as the repeated sacrifices imposed on thousands to preserve it – remain immediate, vivid, emotionally raw.

By contrast, the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, like most American holidays, are too frequently divorced from any meaningful rituals or deeper meanings. Some families mourn on Memorial Day, and some communities celebrate July 4 with reverence and appreciation. Alas, for most Americans, these holidays are more days off – or sale days – than days of reflection.

YET AMERICANS can teach Israelis about celebrating historical anniversaries – and appreciating history more generally. Israelis should seek out more “teachable moments,” fostering historical awareness and national pride. This spring, Americans could not avoid Lincoln’s 200th birthday celebrations – will Israelis even notice Herzl’s 150th birthday next May 2, or his 105th yahrzeit today? Recently, the World Zionist Organization helped pass a law in the Knesset launching Herzl Memorial Day, first held in 2005. We need more such initiatives.

Too many Israelis are losing touch with the heroic history that explains what the country is all about. I recently entered my local bookstore on Rehov Emek Refaim in Jerusalem, seeking basic Hebrew texts about Israeli history for school-age kids. There were slim pickings. I asked the sales clerk why there were so few choices, saying that American bookstores feature shelves filled with creative history books for kids. “We are not patriots here,” she shrugged in reply.

Those Bicentennial Minutes, the 60-second snippets celebrating 1776 in 1976, boosted national pride when Americans were demoralized. The CRB (Charles R. Bronfman) Foundation in Canada funds the Heritage Project and Historica “to raise greater interest and awareness of Canada’s past” by “linking what children see at home, on television and on computer screens to their studies at school.” CRB developed the Bicentennial Minute Canadian style, telling stories of Canada’s past while developing various curricula and popular materials.

In Israel, the schools in general need fixing, the history curriculum in particular needs modernizing. Creative initiatives, like “Toldot Yisrael” started by Aryeh Halivni, need funding and support. Halivni wants to record the testimonies of 5,000 people from the founding generation recalling the struggle to establish the state. We need more books, movies, documentaries and computer games explaining the Zionist idea and Israel’s historical fulfillment of it.

Nationalism, patriotism, history itself are not the exclusive preserve of the Right. Since the 1960s, too many conservatives have sought to dominate their national narratives, and too many leftists have ceded the field to them, in both Israel and America. Barack Obama, among others, has spoken eloquently about the need for a bipartisan patriotism that is not the preserve of the Right or the Left.

All democracies, but particularly America and Israel, need a strong civic sensibility, rooted in history. Americans need it because of their diversity; Israelis need it because of the continuing adversity this unique country endures.

In movies, when someone gets knocked on the head and loses his memory, his first question when he wakes up is “Who am I?” Without memory we have no identity; without history we do not know who we are or who we should become. History helps provide the glue that keeps nations together – and fosters the idealism necessary for nations to survive and thrive, especially amid today’s challenges.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. He splits his time between Jerusalem and Montreal.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post as:

Radicals Aren’t Necessarily More Authentic

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 6-28-09

Once again haredim held massive, violent demonstrations over the opening of a parking lot on Shabbat near the Old City. Somehow, some bizarre rabbinic dispensation allows haredi radicals to launch their own unholy war on Shabbat, desecrating it by rioting. Other controversies regarding conversion and appointing Zionist chief rabbis for Jerusalem feed perceptions of a “religious-secular” divide.

Parking lot riots. Taliban Judaism does not work in the

modern world. PHOTO: Ariel Jerozolimski

Actually, the push for a Zionist chief rabbi proves this is not a religious-secular issue but a clash pitting violent haredi radicals against patriotic Zionists. In this struggle, Orthodox Jews from around the world and Religious Zionists in Israel must stand strong. Those two (overlapping) communities must send a clear message to the haredi radicals, saying “back off.” The message must be reinforced by religious Zionists fighting for quality of life in the State of Israel as ardently as many fight for every inch of the Land of Israel and by Orthodox Jews threatening to cut off donations to all haredi institutions if haredi violence persists.

It is difficult to quantify how much money flows from Orthodox Jews abroad to haredi institutions here, but anecdotal evidence suggests it is considerable. Imagine if those legendary Orthodox Jewish visitors who love to visit yeshivot in Mea She’arim and ask how much it costs to feed the kids lunch, then donate a week of lunches, changed their tunes. What if they said, “We would love to donate, but first reassure us that your community had nothing to do with the recent violence.”

What if others specifically targeted those rabbis and yeshivot who have been acting like hooligans and cut off the money spigot from Brooklyn and the Five Towns, from Paris and London, from Melbourne and Cape Town? This money message should accompany a moral message from rabbis and leading authorities throughout the Diaspora and Israel. Rabbinic authorities with impeccable religious pedigrees must denounce haredi extremists.

LEAVING THE FIGHT to so-called “secular” Israelis exacerbates tensions. Alternatively, if religious and non-religious Jews stood together in this struggle, even while agreeing to disagree on other issues, it would reduce Israel’s growing polarization, wherein a Right-Left divide on security increasingly parallels a religious-secular divide regarding lifestyle, philosophy, pluralism and tolerance.

Orthodox and religious Zionist rabbis who are so pure of heart they dismiss all this as “politics” and beneath them ignore the conflict’s religious dimensions. Anyone who prays for the State of Israel, says Hallel, the prayer of thanksgiving, on its birthday, or speaks about it as a “redemption” or “salvation” cannot stand idly by while hooligans threaten “to set the whole country… on fire.”

Moreover, for decades now religious Zionists and Orthodox Jews have been in denial about how much harm religious extremists do to those of us laboring to bring the masses of alienated Jews back to Judaism.

Taliban Judaism does not work in the modern world. The all-or-nothing, command-and-control approach of the haredim and (I am sorry to say) of much of the Israeli rabbinate alienates millions. Awash in freedom, most Jews today have to embrace Judaism voluntarily. This is not an argument for watering down Judaism. Rather, it is an argument for focusing on its essential positive messages, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe taught, and avoiding desecrations through violence or political coercion.

UNFORTUNATELY, TOO many Orthodox Jews and religious Zionists are not just bystanders to haredi and rabbinic extremism but enablers. Too many fear the extremists. This cowardice comes from a brand of religious one-upsmanship extremists the world over have mastered. People from the center, no matter how passionate or pure, end up having their credentials questioned by the ayatollahs in religion and the commissars in politics. Too many modern Orthodox Jews and religious Zionists act insecure when amid their more radical brethren.

Radicals are more radical, not necessarily more authentic. Nevertheless, modern Orthodox families in North America send their kids (as well as their cash) to “learn” in yeshivot that are far to their Right. We also see Diaspora communities held hostage on matters of kashrut certification by the most extreme forces. In Israel, the mainstream religious voices refuse to take on the violent haredim.

Fortunately, some heroes have emerged. In Jerusalem, Rachel Azaria of Hitorerut-Yerushalmim (the Wake-up Jerusalemites party) has been an important force for change. A religious Zionist activist, Azaria led an insurgent grassroots campaign and ended up on the city council. She and her party have organized demonstrations demanding a Zionist chief rabbi for Jerusalem. They support Mayor Nir Barkat’s attempts to find a compromise on the Shabbat parking lot issue that will serve non-religious Jews seeking to visit the capital on Israel’s one full weekly day off.

Others, like the Tzohar rabbis, have sought to be, as their slogan celebrates, a bridge between the two worlds, giving non-religious Israelis more user-friendly rabbis when marrying, divorcing and celebrating a circumcision or bar mitzva. In North America, Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future has run programs training Israeli rabbis in the kind of pastoral duties too many neglect because they are deployed by the Chief Rabbinate and not beholden to congregants.

Still, in the face of haredi violence, the religious story has been much more one of the “silence of the (kosher) lambs.” Orthodox and religious Zionist cowardice does tremendous harm. We need mainstream religious rabbinic authorities in Israel and the Diaspora to confront the haredi bullies and repudiate violence, especially on Shabbat, with words and deeds.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. He splits his time between Jerusalem and Montreal.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 6-21-09

As summer begins, many of Jerusalem’s temporary residents are returning to their apartments. On King David Street, progress continues on three huge luxury developments, as if billions of dollars in wealth had not recently vanished.

If the past is a reliable guide, throughout the summer, various Israeli papers will publish stories about the missing residents in Jerusalem’s various “ghost towns.” Inevitably, the editors will run a picture of an empty street in the swanky David’s Village project. And all will tut-tut about the damage these absentee homeowners cause, with their empty apartments, abandoned neighborhoods and inflated property prices. Perhaps some politician will float another harebrained scheme to penalize these owners with burdensome nonresidents’ taxes.

This whole approach is wrong. Jerusalemites shouldn’t be afraid of ghosts. Instead, these owners should be welcomed, celebrated – and challenged to improve the city.

Let’s be honest, most people buying property in Jerusalem do not get much bang for their (very big) bucks. In the city’s real estate market, you spend a lot more than in most places, and get a lot less. People looking for nice vacation homes are better off buying in Florida or Provence. Most of the much-demonized ghosts of Jerusalem are crazy about the city. They buy in Jerusalem because they love it and want to participate in this old-new adventure regularly.

RATHER THAN picking on them or ignoring them, Jerusalemites – and the city’s leadership – should embrace them. Rather than imposing a nonresidents’ tax, foreign homeowners should be encouraged to pay a voluntary additional arnona (municipal tax). Whereas in the US and Canada, property taxes are assessed based on a home’s estimated value, here they are assessed per square meter.

Here is the one bargain in the Jerusalem real estate game. For example, a $1 million apartment in Manhattan would be assessed more than $12,000 in taxes. A $1 million home in Miami could owe more than $20,000 in property taxes. But a 200-square-meter, $1 million-plus apartment in Jerusalem could cost less than $4,000.

The Jerusalem Foundation or some other reputable charity – able to issue tax deductible receipts in most of centers of Diaspora life – should establish a Voluntary Tax Jerusalem Quality of Life Fund. Nonresidents should be invited to make an additional annual contribution, beyond the arnona, based on their home’s value. This fund should subsidize young married couples from Jerusalem purchasing new apartments in the city. The money should also pay to pick up litter and improve schools in the particular areas the nonresidents live. The mayor and a team of trustworthy residents and nonresidents should administer the fund, ensuring transparency, accountability and much publicity.

To make this work, participating nonresidents should get something in return. Most people who buy in Jerusalem seek a deeper tie to the place and its residents – why not provide that? Currently, you need an Israeli ID card to get a municipality discount card. Why not make these patriotic nonresidents, honorary citizens, with their own special discount card? And why not, once or twice a year, host an evening in the Old City welcoming these honorary Jerusalemites?

IF JERUSALEM’S residents knew their nonresident neighbors were making extra contributions to clean their streets, improve their schools and subsidize their children’s first homes, they might stop fearing ghosts. If Jerusalem’s nonresidents felt more welcome, the chances of contributing to the city, or making a more permanent move, would also increase. If nonresidents felt more a part of the city, other ideas, such as encouraging them to use responsible students as house-sitters for a minimal rent when they are gone, would gain traction too.

More is more. More exposure and goodwill lead to more engagement. Buying a home, even a second home, is a profound sentimental decision. I know of young people currently serving in the army, using their parents’ apartments as temporary bases when they have leaves. I know of families that made aliya after they bought their homes, as the decision to purchase a “second home” in Jerusalem catapulted them toward making it their primary residence.

And the contributions that some generous and visionary temporary residents, notably Charles Bronfman and his late wife Andrea Bronfman, have made to the city are incalculable, both by funding projects and by generating a sense of fun in the city. Welcoming these lovers of Zion, is the right way to go. Encouraging more people to become intoxicated by the spirit of Jerusalem – and engaged with the many necessary efforts to make it thrive – is the best strategy.

Whenever I pass Trump Tower on New York’s Fifth Avenue, I wonder which Saudi princes, British aristocrats, Italian playboys, Russian oligarchs or Hong Kong billionaires can afford to live there. I assume most of the owners are absentee. No one in New York seems to care. True, Jerusalem is smaller and more vulnerable to the estimated 20 percent nonresident owners in its center. But a confident city, like a confident person, embraces rather than chases, encourages rather than compels. Instead of grumbling about greedy, ghostly outsiders, better to brainstorm about how much the estimated 9,200 foreign apartment owners in the city center can give to the city – and get from it.

In Florida, year-round residents call the outsiders who flock south during the winter “snowbirds.” Jerusalemites should start appreciating their non-full-time neighbors as homing pigeons, who, we learn from Wikipedia, “find [their] way home over extremely long distances.” Homing pigeons are also carrier pigeons. In these difficult times, we can use more homing pigeons, drawn to the Jewish people’s eternal capital, to serve as carrier pigeons, spreading the message of Jerusalem’s joys for tourists, regular visitors, nonresident owners and full-time residents alike.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. His splits his time between Montreal and Jerusalem.

Center Field: Happy 100th Young Judaea

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 6-9-09

One hundred years ago today, 50 activists meeting in New York established Young Judaea, which became America’s largest Zionist youth movement. The movement’s centennial occurs in rough times. Hadassah, its generous sponsor since 1967, is cutting back. Membership is down. Many consider youth movements outmoded in the Internet era, and Zionism itself passé.

Nevertheless, Young Judaea’s glorious history illustrates why the movement must not die. We need Young Judaea to thrive as an altruism incubator, a community builder, an identity enhancer, providing an inspiring model of 24-7 Judaism while molding a Zionist response to today’s challenges.

I first entered the “Z-House,” Zionist House, Young Judaea’s Queens regional headquarters in 1975. I was a very serious, very square 14-year-old, sporting Poindexter glasses, dragging a big black briefcase as a schoolbag. Young Judaea liberated me from being so conventional and conformist. Unlike many movement friends, I liked my parents, my synagogue, my Jewish day school education. Still, the movement added edge, zest, passion, wrapped up with many of the best friendships I would ever make – and still enjoy.

AS REGIONAL LEADERS and through the movement’s senior camp, Tel Yehudah, my friends and I joined a nationwide network of people who cared about Israel, Judaism, and the world. We believed ideas counted. We believed Arik Einstein’s song “you and I will change the world.” We debated issues constantly, from the morality of playing American rock music or using blow dryers in a Zionist camp to the compatibility of a Jewish state with universal values.

We were blessed with extraordinary madrihim, leaders, who took our ideas seriously while making education and activism fun. To single out some risks slighting many. Still, I appreciate how my witty, wry, delightfully-tortured, super-smart club leader Greg Musnikow; my reedy, exuberant, deeply intellectual and compellingly spiritual camp unit head, Steve Copeland; and the gruff, charismatic, hard-hitting, fast-talking, substantive but endlessly entertaining pied piper of Tel Yehudah, Mel Reisfield, each shaped me as a thinker, an educator, a Jew, a Zionist, an historian, a human being, a friend, even a parent decades before I married.

The movement gave us a community, what we call today a platform, for learning, leadership, identity-building, social-activism, maturing experiences and fun. I still quote insights I learned at camp about the clash between tradition and modernity in the 1800s that created Zionism and shaped today’s world. I remember the first time I took 40 campers hiking, suddenly realizing I was in charge and personally responsible for their safety.

AS JUDAEANS, we translated our formal and informal Jewish learning into vital modes of Jewish living, rooted in our history and traditions, influenced by Western values and sensibilities, enlivened by song and dance, perpetual laughter and occasional tears. We fought to free Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, to defend Israel and save the environment, to help kids with special needs and remember the needy, all through the movement. Amid this serious work, we bonded. We questioned and quarreled, paired off and broke up, giggled and pranked. We lived large.

These experiences taught us that Zionism was more than pro-Israelism, that Zionism was not just the Jewish national liberation movement reestablishing our homeland but was a vehicle of individual liberation fulfilling big dreams, personally and collectively, Jewishly and universally. Our Zionism was subversive. It began by critiquing American Jewry and modernity, repudiating the materialism, vulgarity, emptiness and ignorance warping so many Jewish – and American – institutions. We examined the Jewish community, American life, Israel itself, as they were – and said, “We expect more, we demand more”: more justice, more ethics, more intimacy, more safety, more dynamism.

As general, nonpartisan, pluralistic Zionists, we valued klal Yisrael, the unity of the Jewish people, over the partisan rivalries plaguing the Jewish world and Israel. Most Judaeans were liberal and nonobservant. Nevertheless, we observed Shabbat publicly, served kosher food exclusively and prayed daily. This openness enabled religious and nonreligious Jews, liberals and conservatives, to talk together and, of course, argue together.

ALTHOUGH THE MOVEMENT did not save the world (yet), it produced extraordinary alumni. So many movement graduates went into helping-professions, communal leadership, intellectual pursuits, that if ex-Judaeans established a church, it would be called “Our Lady of the Social Workers and the Educators, the Community Leaders and Philanthropists.”

I could boast about my superstar friends in America and Israel, describing their impact on campus and in communities, in the music business and the coffee business, in virtually creating the Israeli environmental movement while keeping the Zionist flame burning in both countries. I could boast about how the movement kibbutz, Ketura, unites religious and secular Israelis, keeping kibbutz ideals alive today, thriving as a community based on altruism not selfishness.

But my Judaean friends’ greatest collective accomplishment is the honorable, ethical lives they lead, their rich Jewish family lives, the noble values they fulfill daily. A recent Hadassah survey showed – surprise, surprise – that movement alumni were much more likely to marry Jewish, light Shabbat candles, contribute to community, move to Israel. I can add that my Judaean friends are much less likely than others to divorce, neglect their children, indulge in pathological drug and alcohol use, forget their obligations to others, even as many personally prosper.

With Israel established and thriving, Soviet and Ethiopian Jews freed, American Jews feeling thoroughly at home, many pronounce Zionism irrelevant. But Israel still needs defending and perfecting, and American Jews desperately need education and inspiration. Young Judaea’s constructively communal countercultural sensibility, its vision of Zionism as a moral system and source of hope, is needed now. The Birthright Israel identity-building revolution through Israel experiences of the last decade reflects a Judaean sensibility applied on a mass scale. Young Judaea never was and never will be a mass movement. But the movement could nurture a committed cadre of this next generation’s Zionist dreamers and doers – as it has been doing for the last hundred years.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University and the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. He divides his time between Montreal and Jerusalem.

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 6-10-09

In July, 2007, amid much fanfare, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Board of Jewish Education became the Centre for Enhancement of Jewish Education, widely called the Mercaz – Hebrew for “centre.”“The name says what the priorities are,” the Mercaz chair Lou Greenbaum exulted. This spring, less than two years later and amid much less fanfare, the Mercaz was abruptly downsized and thus marginalized, shedding at least 10 full-time jobs.

What happened in Toronto is happening throughout the Jewish world. The last two decades’ gains in Jewish education and identity-building are disappearing as quickly as people’s net worths have plummeted. The legendary Boston Board of Jewish Education recently lost 80 per cent of its funding and will likely close. Birthright Israel, perhaps the most successful Jewish program of the 21st century, has turned away thousands of applicants this year because of limited funds.

These cutbacks are dangerous. Capitalism is cyclical – economic busts are usually followed by economic booms – but education and identity-building are more linear. Opportunities missed are rarely recovered. Children uneducated frequently remain ignorant. Young people turned off are rarely turned back on. Jewish leaders in Toronto and elsewhere can’t afford to be shortsighted. We must continue investing in education and outreach programs that foster Jewish pride and knowledge.

During the last two decades, Jewish education and identity-building boomed. Philanthropic visionaries such as Charles Bronfman, Michael Steinhardt and Lynn Schusterman made funding Israel trips, initiating teen programs, and even building Jewish day schools sexy.

They understood – as did many other generous donors and passionate professionals – that anti-Semitism doesn’t pose the greatest threat to this generation of thoroughly North Americanized Jews that it did to the immigrant generation. In fact, Jews today risked being loved to death by intermarriage, especially after having been bored to tears by so many initial encounters in synagogues, Jewish schools, and youth groups. The writer Leon Wieseltier adds that this generation’s great crime is not intermarriage but ignorance – most are extremely educated in secular subjects and appallingly uninformed Jewishly.

These insights – backed by sobering demographic studies – galvanized the community. Birthright Israel, which has brought more than 120,000 18-to-26-year-olds on free 10-day trips to Israel, has been the flagship program, generating the most buzz. But Birthright’s success reflected a broader reorientation toward education and identity building, accompanied by massive investments in teachers, teacher training, curricula, programs, infrastructure and central educational agencies such as the Mercaz.

I recall that in Montreal, as we planned our own massive, ambitious “Gen J” program to invest in our kids’ future, Toronto’s 2007 launch of the Mercaz inspired us – and made us feel a tad inadequate. We wondered whether our community could mobilize similar support for Jewish education. At the risk of feeding the Toronto-Montreal rivalry – although all of us should compete regarding who cares most about Jewish education and identity – so far Montreal has kept Jewish education front and centre, despite the economic downturn.

In fairness, Toronto continues to lead North America in providing tuition assistance, fostering quality Jewish day schools, and identity building. Still, shrinking the Mercaz is a big blow. Boards of Jewish education such as the Mercaz serve essential roles in professionalizing teachers, coaching administrators, providing quality control, nurturing reforms and upholding city-wide standards.

“I have always felt that the Mercaz did very important work and made significant contributions to Jewish education in Toronto,” Prof. Martin Lockshin of York University told me via e-mail. “They were, for example, indispensable for us at York in making our Jewish teacher education program work. They also provided indispensible services to many day schools and many teachers, particularly new teachers. I am very worried about how this gap will be filled. From conversations that I have had, I sense that my concerns are shared by many respected educators here in Toronto.”

The financial crisis is forcing Jewish communities worldwide to clarify their priorities, abandon unnecessary projects and focus on initiatives that work. Such retrenchment, while always painful and involuntary, can be constructive, resulting in more focused and effective communities. But hasty and thoughtless cutbacks can be particularly destructive, dooming this generation to ignorance and apathy.

Center Field: My Jerusalem jogging track

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 5-26-09

Almost every morning, I walk my children to school in Baka, in south-central Jerusalem, then jog toward the Old City. I jog 35 to 45 minutes. But I journey through thousands of years, celebrating Jerusalem, the Jewish people’s eternal capital and the spiritual focal point for billions. Doctors debate if jogging is good for your body; my Jerusalem jogging track uplifts my soul.

In Baka, I enjoy the jumble of houses and the mix of people. The Anglo and French immigrants-by-choice often live in the renovated houses. Many older neighbors arrived after Arab countries expelled them in the 1950s. Today, they are citizens, not perpetual refugees. I appreciate the flat, lush terrain amid the hills of the Judean Desert, especially in the stately German Colony.

Already, five minutes into my jog, I have traversed Jewish history. Many Baka street names are biblical. I jog along Jacob’s sons: Judah, Zebulun, Levi. My German Colony route honors non-Jews who helped Jews: Emile Zola, the French novelist whose “J’Accuse” defended Alfred Dreyfus against anti-Semitism; Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister when Lord Balfour recognized Jews’ right to a homeland. Setting out along Derech Beit Lehem, the road to Bethlehem, I pass three institutions symbolizing modern Jerusalem’s cultural vitality. The Khan Theater, built where a Crusader inn once stood, is one of two excellent theaters in walking distance from our house.

The Menachem Begin Heritage Center’s fabulous interactive museum commemorates one of Israel’s founders, while hosting weekly Torah portion discussions, historical conferences, a mock Knesset for students. Behind Begin, archeologists found a First-Temple-era priestly burial site, discovering an engraving of the Torah’s Priestly Blessing, with which we bless our children every Friday night. Further down, the cutting-edge Cinematheque hovers over the Hinnom Valley, known in the Hebrew Bible as Gei (the valley of) Ben Hinnom. Because ancient pagans sacrificed children to Moloch there, “Gehenna” now means hell. This is sobering stuff for a morning jog – but one of many reminders how Judaism civilized the region.

CROSSING HELL, I ascend to the Old City. Mount Zion’s green, sculpted slope reflects the remarkable efforts of so many worldwide to beautify Jerusalem, especially through the Jerusalem Foundation, in this case working with JNF Canada. One friend calls Jerusalem every Jew’s synagogue; all want to make their lasting contribution. To my left into the valley is the no-man’s-land that divided the city for 19 years when the Jordanians occupied east Jerusalem. I often enter the Old City imagining some historical figure resting on my shoulder.

One day King David or King Solomon might be admiring what of his handiwork survived. Another day it might be a medieval rabbi, a Holocaust victim or my own paternal grandfather, who all longed to visit the magical city I enter easily. Coming through Zion Gate, the Jewish Quarter’s lifeline blocked in 1948 which IDF soldiers freed in 1967, I enter the Armenian Quarter. Occasionally, I notice a “map of the Armenian genocide.” Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge its crimes against the Armenians depresses me, as does the world’s indifference to Rwanda’s Tutsis in the 1990s and Sudan’s Darfuris today.

IN THE JEWISH Quarter, I vary my route. Sometimes, I pass the Broad Wall, a 23-foot-wide outer wall from the First Temple period, probably destroyed in 586 BCE. Sometimes, I glimpse the Western Wall, which survived the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 CE. Sometimes, I climb the stairs at the end of Rehov Chabad to appreciate the Old City’s skyline with curved rooftops, modern satellite dishes, hanging laundry and sacred Christian, Muslim, Jewish sites jutting into the air. Sometimes, I pass the majestic Hurva Synagogue, its new dome now dominating the Jewish Quarter skyline. Arab rioters destroyed the Hurva, meaning ruin, in 1720, long before Zionism began. Rebuilt in 1864, Jordanian troops ruined it again in 1948. After 1967, Jews rebuilt only one large arch suggesting the dome’s grand height. Recently, this homage to McDonald’s became one of four arches supporting the new dome. The rebuilt synagogue opens soon. The Jewish Quarter tends the past while growing in the present, preserving history without being mummified. Children rush to school above Roman streets. Men wrapped in tallit and tefillin roam. Women scurry in the direction of the Temple Mount or the new city. All reflect the 42-year renaissance since Jews returned to the quarter the Jordanians desecrated.

Leaving the Jewish Quarter, I wander the Arab market, the shouk. Sometimes I jog through the Muslim shouk, smelling the spices, hearing the birds chirp, staring at the butchers’ carcasses hanging for all to see (and breathe on). Sometimes I jog through the Christian Quarter, with its wide streets. Usually I jog up David Street watching merchants arrange their touristy trinkets, exit Jaffa Gate back toward the new city, cross Yemin Moshe, the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the Old City, pass its famous windmill from 1857, then return home. I move seamlessly between the quarters. In years of jogging through Jerusalem, during calm times and after terror attacks, I have never felt fearful. I have never witnessed Arabs and Jews quarreling – or any arguments in the Old City (except when people bargain). I am not naïve. I know the tensions, frustrations, angers. I pass markers commemorating terrorist stabbings and the 14A bus bombing. But I experience the Jerusalem most Jerusalemites experience daily, a city of normal hustle and bustle amid powerful historical and spiritual currents, a city once violently divided now blessedly united. A city that works and prays, learns and plays.

A city that for the overwhelming majority of its residents, an overwhelming majority of the time, lives up to its name, Jerusalem, the city of peace. A city heroes liberated in 1967, 42 years ago yesterday, tended for decades by visionaries like mayor Teddy Kollek, which deserves to be celebrated today and everyday. Happy Yom Yerushalayim.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book, Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents, was recently published by Basic Books. He divides his time between Montreal and Jerusalem.

Canadians uphold a proud human rights legacy

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 5-21-09

Canada stood tall – dare we say, glorious and free? – during the recent Durban Review debacle in Geneva, thanks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pre-emptive strike in boycotting the so-called UN anti-racism conference long before anyone else did.
Canada is now spearheading the push to reform the United Nations, while challenging liberal and autocratic hypocrisy worldwide. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bigotry at an anti-racism conference defined Durban II as yet another festival of despots bashing the West and Israel. But more significant was the alliance forged beyond the conference halls between pro-Israel and human rights activists frustrated that the UN’s Israel obsession hurts human rights.

Canadians such as MP and former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler and the executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, were essential marriage brokers in building this friendship, demanding the UN live up to its ideals and condemn the world’s true human rights abusers.

During the first World Conference Against Racism, held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the streets filled with anti-Zionists shouting vitriolic anti-Semitic slogans that Adolf Hitler didn’t finish the job. Some human rights groups and pro-Israel groups began working to reform the UN human rights mechanisms.

Not surprisingly, Canadians such as Cotler and Neuer were crucial in launching this initiative. Many Canadians maintain great faith in the UN’s founding ideals and are proud that John Peters Humphrey, a longtime McGill University law professor, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Cotler, on leave as a law professor from McGill, is a world-renowned human rights crusader who has spent decades cris-crossing the globe defending the oppressed, including Nelson Mandela and Natan Sharansky. Neuer was Cotler’s student at McGill, continuing this McGill – and Canadian – tradition.

When the UN started preparations to host a review conference in Durban, Neuer was particularly well-placed to head off another hatefest. Based in Geneva as the executive director of UN Watch, he has frequently highlighted the UN’s anti-Israel obsession and its hypocrisy in letting dictatorships dominate the Human Rights Council. Working with various organizations in shifting coalitions – including its parent organization the American Jewish Committee, as well as NGO Monitor and B’nai Brith International, Freedom House and Freedom Now – UN Watch helped redirect the process.

Effective lobbying of the Ford Foundation and others cut off funds that NGOs would have used to replicate the Durban I sideshow. The UN, embarrassed by Durban I, agreed to shift the venue of this year’s conference to Geneva, where the UN and Swiss police could better control events. Western diplomats worked to moderate the Durban Review declaration. In this environment, Canada’s bold decision to boycott galvanized the forces trying to right Durban’s wrongs.

As a result, in Geneva, there were no angry mass rallies against Israel. UN Watch and dozens of other groups hosted conferences and side meetings, giving dissidents and victims from Iran, Egypt, Cuba, Burma, Rwanda and Darfur opportunities to tell their tales. The participants denounced the United Nations for allowing oppressors such as Libya to chair the Human Rights Council, and for ignoring real abuses in their zeal to demonize Israel.

The largest demonstration appears to have been a festive gathering of 2,000 to 3,000 Israel supporters on the conference’s third day. Joining one American, one Italian, one Israeli, and one French politician on the podium were two of us from McGill, Cotler and I, as well as Harper’s parliamentary secretary – and personal representative to the side conferences – MP Pierre Poilievre. The MC, David Harris, of the American Jewish committee, joked that at these events, Canadians rarely outnumber Americans. May we always compete to lead the way on these issues.

“Please use your liberty to promote ours,” Soe Aung, a Burmese dissident, begged at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, which celebrated 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. While the first Durban sideshow embodied the UN at its worst, the second Durban side conferences tried to meet Aung’s challenge.

If the UN starts to reform, history will honour the Conservative Harper – with his Liberal colleague Cotler – for not only saving the United Nations, but also for helping to save many liberal activists from their own moral myopia.

Center Field: A living advertisement for Zionism’s redemptive power

By GIL TROY, Jerusalem Post, 5-18-09

I applaud American reformers’ push to improve the Jewish Agency’s governance and purge politics from the selection of its chairman. But today’s political appointee is the right man for the job. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s nomination of the legendary human rights activist Natan Sharansky to be the Jewish Agency’s chairman is a gift to the agency and the Jewish people. After a lifetime of serving not just the Jewish people but humanity, Sharansky should not have to ask anyone for votes. Those of us who care about Israel, Zionism and the Jewish future should beg him to serve.

The Jewish Agency is at an awkward moment in its proud history. It was established on August 11, 1929, fulfilling the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine proposing a “Jewish agency” representing world Jewry to help establish “the Jewish National Home… in Palestine.” In 1948, the actual state superseded this proto-state. Today, with that historic mission accomplished, the agency promotes aliya, Jewish-Zionist education and Israel-Diaspora partnerships.

Most Jewish Agency employees I meet are extraordinary. Be they working for Partnership 2000 to partner 250 Diaspora communities with 50 Israeli regions, serving in the World Zionist Organization or developing MASA to bring young Jews for sustained periods of work or study in Israel, they are idealistic, passionate, visionary. Unfortunately, they work for a bureaucracy with a terrible reputation.

I have met the occasional Jewish Agency hack who sends a staffer ahead to check that he has a microphone to address two dozen people. Then, having wasted staff resources, this apparatchik – with a rumored penchant for expensive travel – alienates all the young, enthusiastic Zionists he addresses with his dismissive arrogance. As a result, when many people pass Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem they imagine hearing the ticktock, ticktock of bureaucrats marking time and the clink, clink, whirl, whirl of good money flushing down the drain.

To me, the building pulsates with the energy of the Zionist mission. It is rooted in Jewish history, throbbing with idealists, and like Israel itself, a key to our salvation as Jews and human beings. Just as Israel’s occasional mistakes should not define Zionism, the occasional pen pusher should not tarnish the agency’s reputation.

DURING THESE difficult times, with the Jewish Agency seeking more of two key “M”s – money and a focused mission – Natan Sharansky can save it, while using this platform to revitalize Zionism. Just because Sharansky’s story is familiar, we should never take for granted the miracle he not only lived through but shaped. When I visited the Soviet Union in 1985, Sharansky had been imprisoned since his March 1977 arrest on trumped-up charges. Few of us imagined that within a year he would be free and that within a few years, the Soviet Union would implode.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 5-11-09

Barack Obama has just completed his first hundred days as president, an artificial benchmark rooted in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. John Kennedy proved more successful than his first hundred days suggested, marred as they were by the aborted Bay of Pigs attack against Cuba. George W. Bush’s presidency ended less successfully than it began. Still, a presidential character starts forming during this honeymoon, while story lines emerge that determine a president’s destiny.

Obama’s greatest challenge has been saving America’s economy, but he cannot ignore foreign policy. Domestically, Obama wants to match Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, presidents who restored hope, revived the economy, and redefined Americans’ relationship with government - in this case correcting Reagan’s anti-government drift. Regarding foreign policy, Obama appears to follow Theodore Roosevelt with a twist. TR advised: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” So far - and the presidency remains young - Obama is speaking softly to enemies, treating friends coolly and carrying a medium-sized stick.

OBAMA’S FOREIGN AFFAIRS messaging has positioned him as the “unBush,” apologizing for American “arrogance” in Europe, smiling with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and denouncing torture. He has offended many British and Canadian citizens while signaling he is ready to rumble with Israel. But Obama has not acted like the pushover he sometimes appears to be. He is keeping troops in Iraq. He has intensified combat in Afghanistan. And he gave the shoot to kill order when Somali pirates held an American hostage.

Obama has suggested it does not cost anything to be friendly, to engage, to consider negotiating. He enjoys tweaking conservatives. He knows that when they criticize his chatting with Venezuela?s dictator or his sweeping bow to Saudi Arabia’s king, it helps the world consider him reasonable.

Such kowtowing to dictators and Europeans can backfire, especially when Obama slights America’s closest friends. British newspapers attacked Obama for not scheduling a podiumto-podium press conference when Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Washington, and for giving Brown a pedestrian gift of 25 DVDs with classic American movies. Among other gifts, Brown presented Obama with a pen holder crafted from the timber of a 19th-century British warship that fought slave traders.

Some Canadians resent Obama’s initial green light to congressional protectionists, fearing a trade war which could make this traumatic recession another Great Depression. Others were insulted when Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano foolishly equated Canada’s peaceful if congested border with Mexico’s violent, porous one.

President Barack Obama arrives for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, Saturday, May 9, 2009 PHOTO: AP

Moreover, while avoiding confronting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama has retreated from Bush’s pro-Israel embrace. The first foreign leader Obama called was Mahmoud Abbas, clearly saluting the Palestinians and implicitly criticizing Israel’s Gaza operation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has forgotten her enthusiastic support for Israel as a senator and a presidential candidate. Treating a nuclear Iran as Israel’s problem not America’s and the world’s, she said Israel would have to make concessions to the Palestinians to ensure American pressure against Iran. Most ominously, Obama seems ready to fund a Palestinian unity government. This move would end the sensible boycott against Hamas, without first demanding Hamas change its genocidal charter or terrorist ways.

DEMOCRATS USED to be America’s foreign policy idealists. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy spoke eloquently and acted righteously. They defended the world against German aggression, Nazism and Soviet communism while establishing noble but effective multilateral institutions. The Vietnam War and, now, the Iraq war, soured many Democrats on high-flying ideals. Obama seems to govern in that spirit.

Obama will eventually have to start distinguishing America’s friends and enemies. Obama happily dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to AIPAC with a “tough love” greeting, but will he confront America’s critics or fairweather friends with a “you’re not going to like my saying this” message too? Rather than simply apologizing for Bush’s War on Terror, Obama will have to remind Muslims how many Americans died trying to protect Muslims in Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. His administration will have to find its moral center, rather than disappointing dissidents worldwide when Clinton says human rights issues will not divide the US and China. And Obama needs to learn what it took Bill Clinton years to learn - that Palestinian rejection of Israel’s very existence and Palestinians’ addiction to terror pose the major obstacles to Middle East peace not Israeli settlements or sentiments.

MEANWHILE, OBAMA’S cool temperament moderates his actions, making his policies less radical than his gestures. His tough-minded approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan suggests he understands the threat al-Qaida and the Taliban pose. His gradual troop reduction in Iraq reflects a similar sobriety and maturity, letting the realities of governance eclipse the rhetoric of campaigning.

Obama’s actions regarding the Durban anti-racism review conference exemplified his strategy at his best, as he played good cop, then bad cop. By sending diplomats to preliminary meetings, Obama showed he would engage the world, unlike Bush. By nevertheless boycotting because too many Muslim and authoritarian delegates pushed their anti-Israel, anti-Western and anti-free speech lines, Obama acted properly, but with greater credibility.

Yet Obama has opened a dangerous Pandora’s box by exposing so many of the CIA’s torture tactics. He seems to want to root his moral center in the traditional American disgust for torture and America’s repudiation of the Bush administration. He is a brilliant communicator and strategist, beloved by the media, who outmaneuvered experienced opponents like Hillary Clinton and John McCain to become president. Obama is betting he can woo back America’s wavering allies and outfox America’s enemies. He trusts that America’s staunchest allies, including Great Britain, Canada and Israel, will persevere, judging him by his actions not his gestures.

Still, another terrorist attack on American soil, an aggressive nuclear-armed Iran, the Taliban overrunning Pakistan, a defiant, dictatorial Russia or some unexpected disaster could feed a media spin that Obama’s concessions emboldened America’s enemies a la Jimmy Carter and derail his administration. Obama is emerging as a leader ready to make big changes and take big chances. Succeeding will require great skill, clear values, incredible good fortune - and America’s true friends working alongside it.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents, was recently published by Basic Books.

Center Field: Israeli 6th graders learn hope, not hate

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 4-30-09

On Monday, just before Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Remembrance Day, and shortly after I returned from the Durban Review Conference in Geneva, I was invited to talk about Durban to my son’s 6th grade class in Jerusalem. He attends a Dati-Mamlachti, religious public school, Efrata, in Baka. I have spoken to elementary school classes at various Jewish day schools in Montreal over the years, so I have some sense of what kids this age know and don’t know about current events, and about Israel. What shocked me - and then in many ways impressed me - (beyond their excellent, polite behavior throughout the class) was how shocked so many of the sixth graders in Jerusalem were by the depth of anti-Israel hatred on display at the Durban II conference.

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I began simply by playing a four-minute clip from the Israeli news show “Mabat” on Monday April 20, the day Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened the Durban Review Conference in Geneva. The kids were understandably confused by the spectacle: someone treated with great honor saying hateful things about their own state; students dressed in multicolored clown wigs throwing red noses at the speaker; dark-suited European diplomats walking out en masse.

After the clip I explained to the students that I showed the clip with no explanation and no context, because that is what happens when we watch the news daily. We get plunged into these events as veritable eyewitnesses, often lacking a bigger picture understanding. I then started unraveling the spool, using slides to tell the story of the anti-racist conference headlined by a racist, the UN conference against discrimination that has become a symbol of discrimination against Jews.

“I don’t understand, what do they mean Zionism is Nazism?” one girl asked when I showed a Durban I poster from 2001 equating the Jewish star with the Swastika attacking “Nazionism.” “Why are they applauding Ahmadinejad?” another wondered.

This, to me, was the morning’s big revelation. Many of the students could not fathom that anyone could link anything Jewish or Israeli with anything Nazi. Probing further, it was clear that most of the students were less aware of the world’s enmity than their peers were in Montreal. I realized the blessed insulation of living in a Jewish state means that they do not see the barrage of anti-Israel criticism on television and in the newspapers Jewish kids experience in the Diaspora.

Moreover, it was clear that these kids were not being taught to hate. And note they study in the National Religious system often caricatured by critics as fomenting intolerance. By not being aware of Palestinians’ demonization of Israel, they were far less likely to demonize Palestinians.

The Yom Hazikaron Remembrance Day ceremonies at school on Tuesday reinforced this impression. The commemoration was sad but focused on the murdered not the murderers. In the spirit of the day, which precedes Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day, the principal ended the ceremony by talking about hopes, dreams, pride in Israel’s accomplishments and the happiness that follows the sadness. Again, not a word of hatred, demonization, or even anger, the logical emotion when contemplating so many young deaths. I only wish Palestinian parents could report that their children were not being raised on vitriol.

As my slide show continued, the questions increased.

“Why did the UN honor Ahmadinejad as the first speaker at the conference?” the teacher asked - the question I have been asked most frequently since my return, and the question Elie Wiesel asked on Yom HaShoah, on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Geneva. I explained that Ahmadinejad exploited UN protocol. The embarrassed Europeans downgraded the conference because of the controversies and most countries sent junior ministers to Geneva. Ahmadinejad was the only head of state to attend, thus earning the first speaker’s slot. I noted that the embarrassment was good. It showed that Durban I’s critics had made an impact and some countries still had a sense of shame.

“Why does the Swiss President look so happy meeting Ahmadinejad?” a student asked when I showed the picture of a beaming Hans-Rudolf Merz greeting Ahmadinejad. This absurdity required an explanation of the passive complicity of the enabler rather than the active crimes of the deviant. I said the Swiss President could have snubbed Ahmadinejad as America’s president does when unsavory characters visit the UN. He also could have greeted Ahmadinejad coldly. The effusive welcome reflected the weakness of the diplomat, the cowardice of too many Europeans, who let evil flourish by being polite and doing nothing.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, gestures as he talks with Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, left, shortly after arriving in Geneva, Switzerland, Sunday, April 19, 2009 PHOTO: AP

“Why did the students dress up like clowns and throw red noses?” another student asked. I repeated the French students’ explanation, that Ahmadinejad and the anti-Zionists’ racism had turned the anti-racist conference into a circus, so they might as well dress appropriately. The students appreciated that logic - although I challenged them to consult with each other and their teachers, rabbis, and parents about what is the appropriate behavior when faced with evil and the politeness that enables it. I noted I was proud that none of the Jewish students behaved violently or aggressively. They were disciplined, clever, strategic and quite limited in their actions.

A demonstrator dressed as a clown gestures from the media tribune against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his speech during the opening of the Durban Review Conference (UN’s Conference against Racism) at the European headquarters of the United Nations, UN, in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, April 20, 2009 PHOTO: AP

“How come only Jewish students are standing with the Darfuri refugees?” some asked when I showed a picture of Darfuris and Jewish students in front of the UN, protesting the UN’s silence about Sudan’s genocide. “Why doesn’t the UN help?” others asked when I told them about the many human rights activists and victims from Darfur, Iran, Egypt, Libya, and Rwanda frustrated that the UN’s anti-Zionist obsession derailed attempts to stop human rights abuses. To these pertinent, depressing questions, I had no adequate answers.