The Canadian Jewish News, Friday, April 9, 1976 - Page 5 ,
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By SHELDON mSHNER CJN Staff Reporter
Widespread rioting on the West Bank, the worst in the nine^year history of the Israeli occupation, enhanced the political credibility of the PLO, strained relations between Washington and Jerusalem and ultimately exacerbated tensions in the .Arab community of Israel.
The current troubles on the West Bank started more than one month ago as a protest against a ruling by an Israeli lower court judge permitting Jews to worship at the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusa-
lem. The Temple Mount is revered by Jews as the site of King Solomori's temple, and by Arabs as the location of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque — two of the holiest places in the Islamic world.
Right-wing Israelis who prayed at the Temple Mount were probably motivated more by politics than religion. They were attempting to assert Israel's control over all of Jerusalem. The violent Arab reaction, which seemed inevitablej was in essence a loud protest against the continued Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan. .
Premier Rabini aware that any Jewish presence at the Teniple Mount would inflame Arabs, was obviously not very happy about the magistrate's ruling, though Defence Minister Shimon Peres thought otherwise. And Teddy Koliek, the m^yor of Jerusalem, appeared to speak for much of officialdom vvhen he went out of his way to denounce the judge and described her opinion as a "silly" and damaging one.
In the uproar, everyone momentarily forgot that rabbinical law forbids Jews from setting foot on the sacred soil where Solomon's temple once stood. But a judgment by the Chief Rabbinate Council in Jerusalem reininded everyone where the Orthodox establishment stood. The Council decided that Jews cannot visit and pray at the Temple Mount, and defeated a move
by Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Goren who wanted the Council to allo\y-Jews to pray on the hallowed site.
No amount of explanations and apologies by government officials, rabbinical judgments, or even a dramatic Supreme Court" reversal df the opinion/could stem the tide of bitter resentment and rebellion in the West Bank, which until quite recently was a tranquil, relatively trouble-free area.
And Israel was acutely embarrassed by the resignation of several West Bank mayors because it came on the eve of important municipal elections. The Apiril 12 balloting in 24 towns and villages, the second such election since 1%7, is regarded by Jerusalem as a vita! demonstration of both the political allegiance of the 640,000 Palestinian residents, some of whom are passionate PLO supporters, and the stability of the Israeli administration in the area. The likelihood is that the populace will oust the conservative leadership, which has eo-bperated with Israel, and replace them with radicar or Communist mayors. .
The unrest on the West Bank claimed three Arab lives and, as far as the Arabs are concerned, revealed the true repressive nature of the Israeli occupation. Israel has always prided herself on the benevolence ' of her rule.
As a direct result of the West Bank dis-
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By J.B. SALSBERG
Whether Israel is. caii, or should become the only spiritual Jewish centre in the world seems to occupy miich excessive attention of some of our people in the United States and also in Israel. In my view this is, at best, only an academic question at this time.
We can well afford to wait for the final verdict of the prophet Isaiah's promise that "the law will cothe forth (coxa Zion" and "the word of the Lord fixim Jerusalem." At the moment there would seein to be more immediate and more pressing questions to pay attention to. For the present, the securing of conditions that will assure Israel's peaceful existence is enough to absorb all our capabilities. Without thit pre-condition all talk of "one" or "more
than one" Jewish l^piritual or cultural centres appears to me to be a time-wasting and totally unrealistic, polemical exercise.
But having said that, some clearly discernible trends must not be overlooked. It is, for instanccr already crystaf clear that ''little Israel" despite its brief existence and despite its conrinUous pre-occupation with defence, absorption, etc. has, nevertheless, already become the major repository of our cultural treasures. There is abundant evidence to substantiate this claini.
Another, and very important, indicator of Israel's attraction is the numerical increase in the number of Jewish students, fix)m Canada and around the world, who come to Israel annually tb' spend some time in study, in "learning-"
I refer not alone to those who come.to the higher schools of learning but I include those of our young pebple who come to an Israeli campi for the summer and those who come to a kibbutz to work and learn for the summer or for a year. All of them — the more mature scholars as well as the younger students ^ all of them undergo a profound experience in learning and in spiritual growth. For all of them our historic past assumes a new, palpable dimension and ail of therh acquire a more realistic, but also a more meaningful relationship with modeim Israel.
No such national, cultural or religious
Columnist J.B. Salsberg pauses in front of the new campus of Yeshivat Hakotel with ~^its director, Yossi Glatt. in background is Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Caiiadian students! welcome their visitor from back home. Frpm left are David Jav-asky, Gershon Green, Yitzhak Greenberg, Eli Shumacher, pavid Koschitsky, Yossi Glatt, Salsberg, Haim Beck, Yaacov Moscovitz and Eli Magder. (Yeshivat Hakotel)
convergencies of our Jewish youth can conceivably be expected in New York or Cincinnati, in Montreal or Toronto, in London or Paris. ,
' As for the more mature young Jewish men and women who go to Israel for higher ediication, they represent the entire spectrum of Jewish life. Many come to Israeli universities for a year or more for ongoing studies in their special fields of academic pursuits.cThe rabbinical schools of the U.S. Reform movement for instance, now insist that their students spend bne year of their studies in Israel. The Conservative synagogue movement, I'm advised, foj-lows a generally similar policy. But it is the Orthodox wing of wprid Jewry that ' seems to excel in directing their young scholars to the Israeli yeshivot (academies).
The yeshivot are, of course, divided and subdivided into a variety of types that reflect the special orientations of Orthodox Jewry today as well as the traditions of certain leading yeshivot of Eastern Europe of a century ago.
There are yeshivot of the extremists whose students refuse army service of any kind because they reject the "man made" Jewish state. There are yeshivot whose students do recognize the state of Israel but who argue that continued study of the Torah is as important "if not more important" for Israel's cause than shouldering a gun.
. Then there is a yeshiva like the Yeshivat Hakotel. part of the Bnei-Aki-va schools, that express the general outlook of the Mizrachi political movement, that proudly proclaims its faith in "the book" (Tbrah) and "the sword." ff you saw those pictures of Israeli sbldiers in prayer shawls beside a t?mk on the Golan or Sinai fronts then those soldiers may very well have been students from the Yeshivat Hakotel. Indeed, five of them fell in the Yom Kippur War and their memory is sacredly guarded in the yeshiva.
There are 10 Toronto students in that institution at present and Joseph Glatt. a former Torontonian. is its executive director. Those were the reasbns for my visit to the historic Old. City portion of ancient Jerusalem during my recent visit to Israel. And it was an unusual experience. I assure you.
The Old City (destroyed in part, terribly damaged -in part and generally neglected during the Jordanian occupation, between the War of Liberation and the Six-Day War) is rising from its ruins in a frenzy of construction, reconstruction, renovation and modernization. It is an amazing and symbolic sight.
The Yeshivat Hakotel with its 200 students is occupying a labyrinth of temporary buildings in the picturesque Old City. Alongside its present quarters the $10 million construction program is in full swing. How miich space and what kind of new buildings the project will provide is important. For me, however, the fact that almost every new building of the yeshiva. facing the Kotel Square, willrest on strong, granite foundations of ancient synagogues and houses, going back centuries and, perhaps. mi|lenia was suggestive of all.sorts of symbolic meanings. It is not merely a case of foundation upon foundation but. as "Yossi" (Joseph) Glatt pointed out to me, a portion of a half-buried ancient synagogue wall is actually forming part .of the new wall of the yeshiva. How much niore continuity could there possibly be?
How did 1 find our Toronto boys in the yeshiva? To the parients, faihilies and friends of the Talmidim I want to say -r-as my mother would say — kein ayin hore nisht," which means; no evil eye befall them... And this is only said about those who look exceptionally well...
turbances. Benin, Guyana, Panaima, Pakistan and Tanzania sponsored a UN resolution condemning Israel's retention of the occupied territories. Prior to the debate, the White House leanedon Israel and Jerusalem had to abandon a prime tenet of her policy toward her arch enemy, the PLO: by dint of pressure. Israeli delegate Chaim Herzog had to sit in the same conferenct room as the PLO representative. Zehdi Labib Terzi. In January of this year, Israel refused to take part in ai UN debate on Palestine because the PLO was present.
The verbal theatrics produced nothing new. Terzi accused Israel, of "Hitlerite atrocities" and compared the unrest on the West Bank to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Herzog, a hateful gleam in his eyes, dismissed the charges as lies and slander. But the upshot of the slinging match was that the PLO gained in respectability because it marked the first time Israel and the PLO had sat together.
The most significant aspect of the Secq-rity Council debate was William Scranton*s amazingly frank speech. The new American ambassador, who is known for his "even-handedness". put U.S. policy into its proper perspective by delivering a harsh attack against Israeli settlements in the occupied lands. He said the settlements were illegal and contrary to international law.
The Scranton address, which shocked Jerusalem and created yet another crisis of confidence between the two nations, underlined the unvarnished fact that American policy is reverting to the Rogers Plan, which called for an Israeli withdrawal from most occupied areas.
Scranton's performance coincided with a timely article in Foreign Policy, .which quoted Henry Kissinger as saying that "1 don't see these installations. They are transparent. I look right through them. When the time comes for me tb open the dossier on the Golan Heights and the \yest Bank I won't let them (the settlements) impede a settlement. When the time comes, the President will prevail upon them to withdraw." Kissinger's words should be taken with the utmost seriousness.
Scranton vetoed the Security Council resolution deploring Israeli action in Jeru-: salem and the occupied areas (Britain. Italy and Panama did not), but Israelis were
A wounded soldier, his face streaked with blood, is helped towards a first aid station by a policeman and a fellow officer after he was injured in Sakhnin, Israel, during one of the riots that erupted in more than a dozen villages. Violent clashes took place last week in which six Arabs lost their lives. (Religious News Service photograph)
hardly grateful or impressed. Scranton had made his point, and it was a devastating one.
If the West bank rioting, together with Scranton's speech, shook the Israelis, tl unprecedented turmoil in the Galilee — in the heart of the Jewish state — traumatized them.
Never before had Israeli Arabs, quiet and docile, so openly and unequivocably defied the government and expressed their sympathy for the PLO- Six Arabs were kill-
ed, and the deeply emotional issues which sparked the problem — planned Israeli expropriation of Arab land and the feeling on the part of the Arabs that they are second-class citizens — still smouldered.
By week's end. Israel was reeling. Not only did she face an external threat in the guise of West Bank rioting and eroding American support. She faced the ugly prospect that several hundred thousand of her own citizens might be potential fifth coluninists.
'A Jew has to make a matzah out of himself —and should not try to puff himself up with pride\
the torah
By RABBI MEIR GOTTESMAN
Parshat MHzorah/ Shabiiat Ha'Gadol/ Pe8adi5736
V'haishlv lev aivot el banlm... And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to. the fathers...
A few old matzah crumbs that fell out of the desk drawer...
* - ■      . ^* ,       * .. •;*.,■■
A Jew has to think about his own knaid-lech last an^ other's first. Rabbi Samuel Mohlivef raised money from his community each year to buy Passover food for Jewish soldiers in the Russian army. One year, the leaders of the congregation complained that prices were sky high and they couldn't afford to help. "In that case." the rabbi announced. "It's like a famine year, and we'll have to permit — Utnlyos — beans." The leaders sighed in relief. "Rabbi, you don't know what a mitzvah you had. It'll be so much easier for us to supply beans to the ^soldiers." "You don't understand." the rabbi interrupted them, "the soldiers are to get their Passover food as usual. It's we who are going to have to eat the beans..."
• • * ♦ ■ .
The Ribono shel Olam is riot in the matzah business, A Jew has to make a matzah out of himself — not puff himself up with pride. Imagine...the letters of the word.
matxah — mem (40), tzadlk (90), hay (5)
— equal 135, but
cfaanetz — ches (8). mem (40), tzadlk (90) — equals 138.
Why should chametz, which we have to throw out of our house'on Passover, have, the three extra numbers? But didn't our Rabbis teach — * 'Unah, ta'avoh v^kavod.. . jealousy, lust and pursuit of honors destroy a person..." When a Jew throws out his spaghetti, he should also get rid of the three bad traits — and he himself will wind-up a shnrarm matzah... (Chasam Sofer)
' * -. ■■
But the worst sin is to give up. Even if a Jew hasn't opened a siddur or put on tefil-len for a half-century, if he wants to return to Yiddishkeit — the door is open. Consider... "maikbln yetzlat mitzndm balaOos
— we should remember the exodus from Egyptat night..." Why night? Why not the afternoon, or after breakfast, or the six o'clock news? Why just night?
Ah, but it teaches... Sometimes a Jew can turn on all the lights in his house, but still feel^he's-^groping in darkness. He knows he has a n^shama that has to stand in judgthent someday before the Almighty, but he feels. "I've committed so many transgressions, how can I ever make up?"
When a Jew feels it's night for him, let him remember the Exodus. The Jews in Egypt fell as far you could fall, but still, presto, G^-d raised them to the skies... A Moses revolution is better than a Mao revolution;.." (Mavonah shel Torah)
... * * * ' • *
A man walked into shul on Choi Hamoed Pesach and saw some people putting on tefilleri and others not. He asked the rabbi why. "Just the Chassidim don't put on tefillen on Passover, "the rabbi explained, "but the rest do." The man broke into a big smile. "My father must have been a really great Chassid." he said, "he didn't put.on tefillen the whole year..." * * ■ * *
When will the Messiah conie? When Jews finally sign a peace agreement — not to fight among ourselves. Consider..."mah nishtanah halailofa hazeh mikol halailos —-why is this night different from all other nights? What's so different, just because Heshy's gefiite fish is on the table?
But we wonder...why is it that every 6ther"night" of exile and suffering ended so quickly, but this exile has no end? The Jews .were slaves in Egypt, but fr—d saved us after 190 years. They were exiled to. Babylonia — but they rebuilt the Holy
Temple in 70 years. But why is this night so long our enemies surround us like hungry lions, no peace in sight? "Halalloh hazeh kolo matzah — because this night is only matzah... Matzah in Hebrew means, arguments, fights, matzah o'merivah... If we would work together, not Orthodox. Conservative or Reform Jew — -but Jew, period—the Messiah would be on Bath-urst Street by Thursday morning — if not eariier... (Olelot Efraim)
: But the Mashlach will come... At the seder, we break part of the middle matzah and hide itiaway for later... Why? But it's a mystical hint...the final completion of the" Exodus from Egypt has been hidden aiway, hiding, hiding, until that Day of Redemption when we will see miracles and witness sights that will make the old Exodus seem bush league..; (Sefat Emes)
Pleasenote.Chometz should not be eaten later than 9.40 a.m.. Wednesday, April 14.
P\eax note our Sparks from the Toirali TV schedule: Metro Cable, Mondays at 9; IVednes^ days at 6; York Cable. Tuesdays at 8.: Willow Downs Cable. Tuesdays at 8:30: Keeble Cable. Thursdays at 8.
COMMENT
women
louder voice in all affairs
By A.J. ARNOLD
WINNIPEG —
The Winnipeg Jewish Community Council is alive and well and pursuing an expanded program of activities with considerable vigor — to judge from the reports presented at the recent semi-annual rrieeting of the Delegate Assembly. One might also get the impression however that allmatters being dealt with by the Council may be regarded as "motherhood'-' issues — a term used in the "popujar" press to describe matters that are beyond question or criticism.
In the light of a question that did arise at the meeting it is necessary to realize that motherhood itself Is today riot above controversy as more and more women are asking questions and making demands concerning their role and status in society. . One of the items on the agenda was the election of Community Council representatives to the Combined Jewish Appeal policy committee. It would have been pretty cut-and-dried if Frceda Fineman. a long-time community stalwart, had not asked why, after all these years, only one woman was named to the CJA policy committee, and that was the chair — of the Women's Division, LilMozersky, who got on automatically, by virtue of her position.
President Morlcy Glbberman conceded that Mrs. Fineman had a valid point.
though he asserted that more women were being named to Council positions of responsibility. After that, there were a coUpie of complimentary nods in the direction of the women, which may, or may not, have been part of the scheduled remarks.
Later however, when the execiitive director, IzzyPeltz, reviewed the activities of the Council since the last Delegate Assembly meeting in November, l\e neglected to comment on one important item —-the annuaL,women's community conference, which thus far has been the only public event in Winnipeg where an attempt was made to deal with the infamous UN ariti- ' Zionist resolution in a realistic irianner.
It is always possible to plead "accidental oversight." But I, for one,-do not believe very much in fortuitous occurrences, incidents that come about completely by accident. If often happens that people do not act from conscioiis motives which they are prepared to acknowledge.
This is just one reason why I believe that those women who are becoming involved in seeking equal status and opportunities in every area of society are fully jastified in . their efforts. These concerns have led many community institutions and organizations, in addition to government bodies, to establish committees on the status of women. Perhaps the tiriie has come for the • Jewish community to have its own committee on the status of women.