It is all too familiar. An incident – sometimes initiated by an Israeli action, sometimes not – incites the Palestinian masses. Rioting ensues, followed by the Israeli army\’s attempts to control it, followed by horror and tragedy, shocking pictures in the media.
The pundits declare the peace process dead, and then the diplomats go back to work, first to quell the violence, then to address the underlying problems again.
When word got out last week that Janet Engelhart had been named executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island – making her the only woman professional at the helm of one of the 40 largest federations – she received a flood of phone calls.
Most were colleagues and friends offering congratulations. But more than five – and the ones that Engelhart found most touching – were from young women professionals at Jewish organizations asking her to be their mentor.
On Sunday, as is the custom in my family, I will receive a Yom Kippur blessing from my father. The image of my father gathering me in his tallis, placing his hands on my head and asking God to grant me a good year is one of my fondest childhood memories. My father concludes his blessing with the words a gut yor meyn kind (a good year, my child).
Having grown taller than my father, I now bend my knees so he can place his hands on my head. When I left home to attend yeshiva, I would call home on Erev Yom Kippur to receive his blessing.Even now, when I hear my father\’s voice, the wool of his tallis brushing against my face, I am transformed from an independent adult to meyn tate\’s yingel (my father\’s little boy).
Today you die. No one pronounces that horrible sentence on Yom Kippur, but it is true. Yom Kippur reenacts death. We wear white, like the shrouds we will one day be buried in. We do not eat, wash, procreate; we are as corpses. We recite the \”Unetaneh Tokef,\” filled with graphic, even gruesome images about our death.
On the very cusp of a historic peace agreement, the two nations seem to have flung themselves backward into the blood and strife of the past.
Alsace, a picture-perfect rural region of rich vineyards, farmlands, soft green mountains and rolling valleys, sits on France\’s northeast border, next to Germany. Around every bend along the narrow roads are charming villages with winding cobbled streets and neatly painted black and white timbered houses. In summer, pink and purple and scarlet geraniums blossom in gardens and window boxes. Though the region is only 20 miles wide and 100 miles long, its largest city, Strasbourg, has a population of more than 388,000, with a magnificent cathedral, and is home to the prestigious Council of Europe.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown on Sunday, Oct. 8, during which time a strict fast is observed.
The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) has reestablished its Los Angeles-based regional office with the appointment of a new president and a new executive director.\n
There are two ways of looking at the violence that wracks Israel and the Palestinian autonomous zones. One is that it proves the peace process must stop. The other is that it proves the process must continue.Which conclusion people reach no doubt depends on conclusions they reached long before the rioting that has claimed 53 lives as of Tuesday and left scores wounded. To polemicists and true believers on either side, the street battles are simply more evidence of the justness of their cause.
In less than a week, whatever was left of the mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians appeared to come tumbling down.
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