Hannukah

I seem to have caused some confusion with the timing of last week’s post (The wolf pack.) If you missed it, you can read it by accessing my blog:

https://benisisraelinewsletter.blogspot.com/

I will try to get back to the regular Thursday routine this week.

 

My kibbutz, very much like many kibbutzim, functions as a self-contained community.

For almost a hundred years our internal news and general information has been disseminated in print form. The “Diary” evolved from a simple stencilled newssheet to a proper news and opinion bulletin. In the digital era the “Diary” complements an internal online application called “Community-Net.” The application operates 24/7 and provides a continuous stream of internal and regional information. It also serves as an opinion forum.

Understandably, many of our old-timers are not smartphone savvy, so they rely more on the “Diary” for information. In addition, the kibbutz archives management prefers the printed “Diary” to the nebulous “Community-Net.”

This lengthy and convoluted preamble serves to explain that news of our Hannukah celebrations were conveyed via the two news and information channels mentioned above and a notice-board in the kibbutz dining room.

The opening Hannukah celebration was held in the square by Beit Lavi on Sunday evening. Beit Lavi is the hall mentioned two weeks ago in the “White Elephants” post. Throughout the eight days of Hannukah other festive events will be held in and around the kibbutz.

On Sunday the programme included original content and a good admixture of the traditional Hannukah texts and songs about the wars, victories and miracles.

There were no war correspondents following Yehuda Maccabi and his brothers into battle. So, there are no live-time accounts, only later references.

Well, there are the four Books of the Maccabees, but only the first two books contain relevant references.

“The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus.” Rubens

ncidentally, none of the Books of Maccabees are included in the Hebrew canon, because it was finalised about a generation before the Maccabean revolt.

However, I’m told that the revolt  appears in some manuscripts of the Septuagint (the earliest extant Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew) The first two books only are part of canonical scripture in the Septuagint and the Vulgate (a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.)The Vulgate became the Catholic Church's officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible. So they  are canonical to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and are included in he Protestant Apocrypha.

Most of us will need to read the last paragraph a few times in order to comprehend it fully.

Ironically the Books of Maccabees were preserved only by the Christian church and were belatedly resurrected by Jewish scholars. The “Church Fathers” treasured the books on account of a particular attribute.

It’s recorded that St. Augustine wrote in “The City of God” that they were preserved for their accounts of the martyrs. This suggests that in antiquity, IV Maccabees, dealing almost exclusively with martyrdom, may have been the most highly regarded of the four books.

 

Hannukah is also known as the festival of lights, a title derived from the lighting of the Temple lamp after the rededication of the Temple.

However, the earliest mention of the miraculous cruse of oil is in a Baraita (an external addendum to the Babylonian Talmud), recorded hundreds of years after the Maccabean revolt. The same source omits the battle narrative completely. One explanation for the omission is that the devastation wreaked by the Romans in Judea following the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), a tragic event that was still fresh in the historical memory of the authors of the Baraita.

A number of historians stress the internecine feuding between the Maccabees and Hellenized sector of the population that aggravated an already chaotic situation prior to the Maccabean revolt.   

 

Realising that I will be accused of being a joy-killing iconoclast if I doubt the miracle of the cruse of oil, this Hannukah too I’ll eat my latkes, sufganiyot and other gastronomical delights without protest and without giving a thought to the fact that

Hannukah’s gastronomical delights are also a weightwatcher’s nightmare.

 

I think it’s apt here to include a margin note about miracles:

"A miracle is an event described by those to whom it was told by people who did not see it." Wrote Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Hubbard and his wife were in dire need of a miracle to save them. They died aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915.

 

We aren’t the only people that has a festival of lights.

Diwali the festival of lights, is one of the major holidays of Hinduism and is also celebrated in Jainism and Sikhism. The five-day festival marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year and occurs during the final three days of the “dark half” of the lunar month Ashvina and the first two days of the “light half” of the month of Karttika in the Vikrama calendar (one of the liturgical lunisolar calendars used in Hinduism); it occurs in late October or November of the Gregorian calendar. A row of lamps is lit to request Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune, to come to earth and bring auspicious blessings for the coming year. 

There are of course other “light festivals” most are unrelated to any religious event.

In normal times “The Jerusalem Festival of Light” is held annually in June. It lasts a week and displays the work of leading international artists who use light as their creative medium.

In 2011, the festival, located in and around Jerusalem's Old City drew over 200,000 visitors. In 2012 the show was extended into other neighbourhoods of the Old City.

Oil wasn’t only the fuel for the Temple lamp that evolved to become the traditional Hannukiah. It gave rise to the many oil-based Hannukah gastronomical delights.

Undoubtedly one of Israel’s most popular bakeries, Café Kadosh in Jerusalem comes out with unique new varieties of a beloved Hanukkah treat each year: the sufganiyah. A round donut/doughnut that is typically filled with jam, pastry cream or custard.

For Jewish communities around the world, the tradition of eating fried foods during the Festival of Lights means holiday tables can feature fried meat, sweet and savoury fritters and any kind of doughnut/donut iteration imaginable. Keftes de Prasa (leek fritters) are a Sephardic holiday staple They originated in the Iberian Peninsula but can also be found in Turkish, Greek and Middle Eastern cuisine.

Buñuelos, also known as bimuelos or bumuelos in Ladino, originated in Spain and Portugal and have become popular desserts in Latin American countries. You can find them served at Colombian or Mexican restaurants. They are commonly eaten by Sephardic Jews during Hannukah because, you guessed it, they are fried in oil.

As you have probably surmised, I am quoting authoritative sources. I can hardly boil an egg without professional help.

 

Happy Hanukkah and take care.

 

Beni,                                                               2^nd of December, 2021

 

 The Wolf Pack

I’m back and recuperating after a brief hospitalisation with a new lease on life. I spent a few days in the Herzliya Medical Centre for the purpose of repairing a malfunctioning aortic heart valve. The procedure employed is referred to as TAVI-Transcatheter Aortic Valve implantation. This ingenious method implants a made-to-measure valve guided through one of the femoral arteries to its exact location. The hour and a half procedure was carried out by a team led by Dr. Rafi Wolff and Professor Amit Segev, two of the leading cardiologists specialising in the TAVI procedure.

At this juncture I want to mention Ein Harod’s local doctor Dr. Dganit Wolfe. Her surname was acquired through marriage. That being so, and despite the different spelling, the coincidence is interesting. Maybe not, because there are dozens of general practitioners and specialists in Israel named Wolf, Wolff and Wolfe.

Dganit referred me to a general cardiologist who in turn arranged for me to speak with Dr Rafi Wolff, just a few weeks before the TAVI.

During the brief stay at the Herzliya Medical Centre it occurred to me that there was another Dr. Wolff that neither Dganit nor Rafi had heard of. Namely, Dr. Wilhelm Wolff, better known later as Nathan Wolff. I’ve mentioned him before in a different context, so the repetition is sufferable.

I hasten to add that wolves are often perceived as vicious predators.

All the Drs. Wolf, Wolff and Wolfe I know and I know of, are very positive, pleasant people. Just the same, the title I selected for this piece- “The wolf pack” was chosen in order to group them together.

Now back to the narrative:

Wilhelm Wolff was the son of middleclass German Jewish parents who volunteered to serve in the German army during WW1. He was a first-year medical student when he was sent to the western front in Belgium where he was wounded and released from further service. After recuperating he volunteered again and was sent to the eastern front and then to Palestine. He was stationed at the German air force base adjacent to the Turkish railway line and closer still to the Merhavia cooperative. * Today when we drive to Afula, we pass the site where Wilhelm Wolff was stationed. It was here that he discovered his Jewish roots through association with the young pioneers. He wrote home to his parents asking them to send him more films for his camera so that he could document his new friends.

In his letters home, he raved about the "new true and wonderful Jews" he met.  

He didn’t stay long at Merhavia. Allenby’s forces had crossed Sinai and had advanced northward fighting battles at Gaza, Nablus, Jenin and Megiddo before taking the air force base. The German personnel made a hasty retreat and headed north on a gruelling   200km march. When they finally reached Turkish held territory, they were interned because the fickle Turks had changed sides.

After the war Wilhelm Wolff completed his medical studies, married and with his wife Dr. Malka Leshem settled in Palestine.

Later he went to Germany for post graduate studies, but returned to Palestine in 1933.

Wilhelm Wolff, (Nathan Wolff) together with other doctors, including his wife Malka, were actively involved in setting up a nationwide blood bank for Magen David Adom (MDA). The problem of preserving blood and plasma was solved innovatively. They used small steralised glass bottles from a British ketchup company and an Israeli vegetable oil company.

After Malka died Wolff spent the last years of his life at Kibbutz Cabri where his daughter Margalit Rossolio lived with her family. Dr. Nathan Wolff died in 1978 and was buried in the kibbutz cemetery.

I want make a sharp change to another topic that has far-reaching consequences for both Israel and its neighbours.

It’s an excerpt from a report published by The Washington Institute for near East Studies.

 

Ministers from Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates met to sign a landmark energy-for-water deal in Dubai today. Under the terms of the agreement, a solar power plant will be built in Jordan to provide electricity for an Israeli desalination plant, which will in turn send water to Jordan

The agreement will help address Jordan’s pressing need for water while sending more electricity to Israel in a manner consistent with regional climate change concerns. Full details about the project are not yet available, though published reports do raise practical questions. Beyond the practical, however, the deal can facilitate important diplomatic goals and serve as a model for integrating the first generation of Arab peacemakers—Jordan and Egypt—with countries that have joined the Abraham Accords.

Although security relations between Jordan and Israel grew strong following their 1994 peace treaty, relations in the civilian sphere—whether government to government or people to people—remained cold. Economic relations resulted in some bilateral deals, such as the agreement under which Jordan buys Israeli natural gas from the Leviathan offshore field. Yet such deals have typically faced significant political opposition in the kingdom.

Currently, relations are recovering well from their low point under former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Yet even at their best during the 1990s, they remained limited. As a result, the peace treaty has failed to address many common challenges such as climate change, water shortages, and electricity demands. This “cold peace” dynamic is similar to the pattern established after Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty.

By contrast, when the UAE spearheaded the Abraham Accords last year, it seemed to usher in a new approach to Arab-Israel peace agreements. Unencumbered by the history of direct conflict that constrained Jordan and Egypt’s ties with Israel, civilian relations between the UAE and Israel have made great progress in a short period of time, building on their existing record of discreet ties. In 2009, for example, the UAE won the role of hosting the new International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) on condition that it allowed member-state Israel to establish a representative office in the Emirates—this despite the fact that the two countries had not yet formally recognise each other. Today, they have signed agreements in the commercial, tourism, medical, cultural, and other fields.

When last year’s UAE-Israel peace initiative first came to light, it directly affected an issue of broad regional concern: namely, heading off Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Afterward, however, their bilateral initiatives focused largely on bilateral issues. Despite bringing a few other parties into the Abraham Accords, UAE-Israel normalisation did not have much impact on Israel’s relations with its immediate Arab neighbours. The new deal with Jordan may represent a step toward changing that pattern.

In recent years, climate change and a large Syrian refugee population have worsened Jordan’s chronic water shortages. This year alone, six of the country’s fourteen dam reservoirs have dried up as rainfall dropped to 60 percent of its annual average. Israel transfers 50 million cubic metres of water to the kingdom each year pursuant to their peace treaty, and occasionally sells additional amounts as needed (e.g., an extra 50 million cubic metres this year).

The new solar-for-water announcement comes at a time when several other energy-related initiatives are underway in the Middle East. On November 11, Syria signed an agreement with Emirati companies to build a solar power station near Damascus. In October, Jordan agreed to provide electricity to Lebanon via Syria. Similarly, Egypt announced in September that it would provide natural gas to Lebanon via Jordan and Syria. These arrangements have more political, economic, and technical complications than the Israel-Jordan-UAE deal and will be more difficult to implement.

According to an unofficial report cited by an Israeli news outlet the deal calls for the Jordanian solar farm to be operational by 2026 and produce 2 percent of Israel’s energy by 2030, suggesting a capacity of 460 megawatts.

Admittedly, that’s not much, but it’s a start and could be increased later.

Israel will apparently pay $180 million per year, to be divided between Jordan and the UAE. It is unclear what Israel will be paid for building the extra desalination plant and sending more water to Jordan. No details are available regarding supply routes for the electricity or water, but in all likelihood, they will be fully integrated into Israel’s existing grids.

The new deal furthers two U.S. foreign policy objectives: addressing climate change and strengthening the Abraham Accords. Although the agreement was driven by the parties concerned, U.S. officials played an important role in facilitating its conclusion.

Once implemented, the deal could bolster Jordan’s stability by addressing its severe water shortage and providing help to the cash-strapped government. Israel, the UAE, and the United States all see the kingdom as an ally and are invested in its stability.

The deal also demonstrates additional ways to build on the Abraham Accords. So far, most of the diplomatic activity surrounding the accords has focused on adding new countries or deepening bilateral relations between Israel and its new partners. These efforts should be continued, but the solar/water deal shows how the accords can simultaneously deepen Israel’s relations with the first generation of Arab peacemakers.

With the trilateral deal, the UAE will not only provide all-important financial resources, but also help create a context in which Jordan-Israel relations can proceed in a less-charged political environment. Criticism of Israel is common in the Jordanian media, but commentators tend to be more cautious when discussing a friendly Arab country such as the UAE, arguably Amman’s closest Gulf ally. Abu Dhabi’s role may have a similar effect on the Israeli domestic scene. Although Israel has traditionally been keener than Jordan to develop bilateral civilian ties, signs of politicization have emerged there as well. For example, Netanyahu recently criticized the current government’s decision to sell more water to Amman. Framing the bilateral relationship within the Abraham Accords—which are immensely popular in Israel—can blunt some of that politicization.

Depending on its final details, the new trilateral agreement may highlight how Arab parties to the Abraham Accords can facilitate numerous areas of cooperation in Israeli-Jordanian (and Israeli-Egyptian) relations. Amman, Cairo, and Jerusalem seem ready for such progress, and the Abraham Accords countries are poised to assist in this regard. This dynamic also creates an opportunity for U.S. diplomacy to advance a more cooperative Middle East.

 

Take care

 

Beni,                                                                           21^st of November, 2021.

 

 

*Footnote: The Merhavia Cooperative that Wilhelm (Nathan) Wolff mentioned in his letters home was a one-of-a-kind cooperative farm. It was founded in 1911 by Jewish immigrants to Ottoman Palestine using a plan for agricultural cooperation written by Dr. Franz Oppenheimer. The project eventually failed and Merhavia became a moshav in 1922.

 White Elephants

My kibbutz has a number of “white elephants”, not the South-East Asian sacred animal, just a number of outmoded structures, monuments we can’t dismantle or modify for other purposes. There’s a Ferris wheel in the children’s playground built by an enterprising member. It rotated slowly a few times a year during festivals carrying a parent with a child or two. A few years ago, it was declared unsafe by the Standards Institution of Israel (SII). Eventually it will be sold for scrap metal.

The same tireless Ferris wheel constructor somehow managed to bring a retired Kfir jet fighter to Ein Harod. Now we have a flying white elephant, a “gift” from the Israeli air force museum at Hatzerim Airbase in the Negev. I’m waiting to see how much it cost us to transport and mount the plane on its stand. Another thought crossed my mind – Eventually the Kfir will also “go the way of all metal.”

 

 

Our largest “white elephant” is a multi-purpose cultural events hall built in 1965 and named “Beit Lavi” in memory of one Ein Harod’s founding fathers. It was built with a small budget, too small to fulfil its many purposes. It now houses two local engineering and design offices that occupy only a small part of the building.

Our Pesach Seder was held in the hall. Members, family and friends filled the hall to maximum capacity with over a thousand people participating in the Seder.

Now and again, there were affordable theatrical performances and films were screened on the backdrop of the stage.

Renowned flautist Jan-Pierre Rampal, violinist Isaac Stern and many other classical musicians performed here to packed audiences. All that was before the advent of TV in Israel (1967) that brought about the gradual demise of Beit Lavi’s

functioning life.

However, there’s one redeeming factor, the hall’s large roof has been covered with solar panels, so it will stay with us for a while.

Other large kibbutzim with more or less cash to spare, also built grandiose halls. Today they too are used for limited purposes, or stand lonely and neglected. They all have herds of “white elephants”, some converted to storerooms etc., or waiting to be demolished.

The “white elephant” phenomenon is certainly not unique to kibbutzim. All over the world cinemas, concert halls and other once essential buildings have been demolished or converted. There are ancient precedents, notably during the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine eras when the rise of Christianity closed the symbols of the pagan past.

Let’s warp back to the present day to witness an ironic twist. “The Carmelite nuns in Blackrock, County Dublin, are to close their 174-year-old monastery due to falling numbers and a shortage of vocations. There are 11 Carmelite monasteries in Ireland, with some 150 contemplative female Carmelites and 300 male Carmelites. 

In Quebec, since the Quiet Revolution, over 500 churches (20% of the total) have been closed or converted for non-worship-based uses. In the 1950s, 95% of Quebec's population went to Mass; in the present day, that number is closer to 5%.

In 2018, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that churches in Minnesota were being closed due to dwindling attendance. Mainline protestant churches in Minnesota have seen the sharpest declines in their congregations. The Catholic Church has closed 81 churches between 2000 and 2017; the Archdiocese of Minneapolis closed 21 churches in 2010 and has had to merge dozens more. In roughly the same time frame, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Minnesota has lost 200,000 members and closed 150 churches. The United Methodist Church, which is Minnesota's second-largest Protestant denomination, has closed 65 of its churches. In the early 1990s, the Archdiocese of Chicago closed almost 40 Catholic churches and schools. In 2016, increasing costs and priest shortages fuelled plans to close or consolidate up to 100 Chicago Catholic churches and schools in the next 15 years. The Archdiocese of New York announced in 2014 that nearly 1/3 of their churches were merging and closing. The Archdiocese of Boston closed more than 70 churches between 2004 and 2019. Nationally, Catholic school enrolment has declined by more than 430,000 students since 2008.

Moderate and liberal denominations in the United States have been closing down churches at a rate three or four times greater than the number of new churches being consecrated.

it has been reported that fewer than half of Britons are expected to identify as Christian in the 2021 census. Nevertheless, in other places Catholicism has fared better.  According to the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research, 60.2% of Spaniards self-identified as Catholic in 2020. According to a 2014 Pew Research Centre study, 83.3% of Italy's residents are Christians.

Let’s move on to the Jewish diaspora.

According to a recent Pew Research Centre survey the American Jewish population, like other religious groups, is in constant flux. Some people who were raised as Jews have left the religion, while some who were raised outside the faith now identify with it. Many others have switched denominations within Judaism – a trend that has seen the Reform movement grow modestly and Conservative Judaism experience a net loss. Overall, nearly nine-in-ten U.S. adults who were raised Jewish (88%) are still Jewish today. This includes 70% who identify with the Jewish religion and 18% who don’t identify with any religion but who consider themselves Jewish in some other way, such as culturally, ethnically or by family background.

At this juncture I want to digress briefly in order to include a rather aggressive Islamic trend.

The particular controversy flared up in Germany about Muslim communities buying churches to convert them into mosques. It revealed the communities’ lack of understanding of the turbulent situation of European society and the rise of Islamophobia.

A Christian association called Friends of the Protestant Church in Berlin published a report on the conversion of ten churches into mosques, in Germany this year. It said the phenomenon was not new, but it was repeated and deliberate.

At the end of 2018, the Nur Mosque was inaugurated in Hamburg after a Muslim investor bought a church and donated it to the Islamic centre of the city. Similar actions were carried out in the Netherlands, Britain and France. The most prominent examples of the actions were the openings of Al Fateh Mosque in Amsterdam, the Sultan Ayoub Mosque and the Osman Ghazi Mosque in the Netherlands. In France, the Dominican Church in Lille and the Saint Joseph Church in Paris have been turned into mosques.

The association said: “What the Muslims are doing is not wise behaviour.”

This controversy serves to highlight the great crisis experienced by Muslim communities in Europe as they were joined by recent waves of immigrants. More and more, the communities are coming under the fire of angry populist right-wing politicians in Europe.

Another time warp to the time of the British Mandate in Palestine in order to include more music.

In the early 1930’s violinist Bronislaw Huberman, played to an audience comprised of pioneers from Ein Harod and Tel Yosef. The concert was held in a make-do open-air theatre in the quarry at the foot at Mount Gilboa.  Much later, after the kibbutz was relocated to its present site Leonard Bernstein conducted on at least two occasions on the stage of an open-air theatre known simply as “The Stage.”

Today “The Stage” serves as a storeroom.

I hasten to add that I have never played a musical instrument, I sing off key, but despite these impediments I love music, especially classical music.

Having said that, I want to include a very controversial debate concerning two world renowned Jewish musicians.

Considered by many to be one of the most remarkable prodigies since Mozart

Yehudi Menuhin’s record on Judaism and Israel is decidedly complex and controversial. At a time when virtually all Jewish musicians and many others refused to perform with Wilhelm Furtwangler, the despised “Nazi Conductor” – including violinist Bronislaw Huberman, whom Menuhin greatly admired. Menuhin broke with crowd and became the first post-Holocaust Jew to perform under Furtwangler’s baton, a decision for which he was bitterly criticised.

He also made a point of giving benefit concerts in support of “displaced Palestinian refugees.” He remained president of UNESCO’s international Music Council even after the UN adopted the “Zionism is Racism” resolution (1974) – a decision for which he was again severely criticised – and even went so far as to publicly rebuke Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, and other Jewish musicians who signed a statement renouncing UNESCO for its anti-Israel resolutions.

In his speech before the Knesset upon accepting Israel’s prestigious Wolf Prize (1991), Menuhin bitterly criticised Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank, characterising it as “contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people.”

Undoubtedly reflecting the views of his father, who had written that “Jews should be Jews; not Nazis,” Menuhin compared Israel to Nazi Germany (1998): “Israel’s mission is no longer that of a Promised Land for a persecuted people… What’s extraordinary is that some things never die completely, even the illness which prevailed yesterday in Nazi Germany and is today progressing in that land [Israel].” He went on to challenge Israel’s right to Jerusalem, characterising exclusive Jewish control of the city as “unthinkable.”

Pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim is today almost a persona non grata in Israel. Barenboim defined his relations with Israel as follows:

“Since 1952 I have owned an Israeli passport. Since I was fifteen years old, I have travelled the world as a musician. I have lived in London and in Paris and I commuted for years between Chicago and Berlin. Before I had an Israeli passport, I had an Argentinean one; later I acquired a Spanish one. And in 2007, I became the only Israeli in the world who can also show a Palestinian passport at an Israeli border crossing. I am, so to speak, living evidence of the fact that only a pragmatic two-state solution (or better yet, absurd as it sounds, a federation of three states: Israel, Palestine and Jordan) can bring peace to the region. My answer to those who say I am naïve, only an artist? That I am not a political person, even if I shook the hands of Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres as a child: not politics, but humanity has always concerned me. In that sense I feel able and, as an artist, especially qualified to analyse the situation.”

I admire Daniel Barenboim the musician, not his naïveté.

I want to conclude with a brief reference to the Israeli sculptor Yigael Tumarkin. One of his sculptures stands in front  of our largest white elephant.

 

Beit Lavi November 2021 with one of Yigael Tumarkin’s stainless steel sculptures in the foreground.

 

Maybe it’s just an urban legend, a spurious baseless story, but according to one account, Tumarkin commissioned a number of stainless-steel sculptures to be crafted by Palbam Advanced Metal Works, Ein Harod Ihud. On completion of the contract Tumarkin  was slightly cash-strapped and in lieu of the full payment he chose to leave us the phallic symbol seen in the image above.

 Next week I won’t be able to send my usual post. I will be undergoing a medical procedure (not an operation).

Hopefully I will be back the week after I return home.

Well, that should arouse some comment!

 

Take care

Beni,                                                                           11^th of November, 2021.