ENOUGH ALREADY!
In most cultures in the world, grown children are expected to feed, clothe, and house their elders and in many cases it’s the mother-in-law who runs the family. What an excellent idea! In our society, however, parenting seems to have become a lifetime job.
After you’ve raised the kid and survived the childhood injuries, the teenage psychoses, and the near-bankruptcy of tuition costs, you get all teary at a college graduation ceremony and congratulate yourself on a job well done. The offspring is launched, your life is your own again, and you think about turning the kid’s room into a ceramics studio. Think again.
Young adults face a brutal reality shock when they leave the warm cocoon of home and school. Finding a job and a place to live are tough challenges, especially in our difficult economy. Nowadays, a lot of college grads are boomeranging right back to mama’s house.
If – God forbid – I had a twenty or thirty-something living with me, I would at least expect some help with the chores. My friend Nancy is a college professor whose son and daughter-in-law live with her. The daughter-in-law loves to cook, bake, and garden: that sounds like a pretty fair exchange to me. On the other hand, I know a woman who prepares her slacker son’s lunch before she leaves for work, and does his laundry on weekends. This mother is a psychologist. I think she could use some therapy.
Three of the terrorists in last week’s coordinated attacks near Eilat were Egyptian members of an extremist Islamic group, an Egyptian newspaper reported.
The Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Masry Al Yaoum reported that one of the terrorists had escaped from an Egyptian prison during the recent spring revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak. The identities of the terrorists were discovered during an investigation into the incident by the Egyptian security forces, according to the newspaper. The three terrorists were killed in firefights with Israeli troops.
The Egyptian investigation also reportedly found that Israeli troops entered the Sinai Peninsula in pursuit of the terrorists, and that the troops exchanged fire with Egyptian forces. Five Egyptian policemen and soldiers were killed in the fighting.
Meanwhile, protesters demonstrating in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo are calling for a million-man protest demanding the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador to Israel, Al Masry Al Yaoum reported. Protesters also marched in front of the home of the Israeli ambassador.
The newspaper also reported that Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Yasser Reda declined an iftar dinner invitation by Israeli President Shimon Peres and sent his deputy instead, a move perceived as a sign of disapproval.
An Egyptian woman was injured when rockets from Gaza struck the border town of Rafah, and an Israeli airstrike killed a terrorist operative as cross-border fire interrupted a fragile cease-fire.
Israel’s Air Force targeted the car of a local Islamic Jihad leader in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The early Wednesday morning strike came after the Air Force struck Gaza terrorists preparing to fire rockets into Israel’s south. The dead terrorist leader reportedly was responsible for funding last week’s coordinated attacks on Israeli civilian vehicles.
Later Wednesday, at least two rockets fired from Gaza struck southern Israel.
A cease-fire reportedly negotiated by Egypt with Hamas and the smaller terrorist groups has been mostly holding despite the small breaches.
Also Wednesday, an Egyptian woman was lightly injured when a rocket fired from Gaza landed in the Egyptian town of Rafah, striking a residential area, and not the desert, as has been the case in the past.
A bill that would prevent local communities in California from banning male circumcision was unanimously approved by the state senate’s judiciary committee.
The committee approved the bill, proposed by two Democratic lawmakers, on Tuesday. It will head to the Senate floor as early as next week.
If approved by the California State Legislature, the bill would prevent future attempts to place measures banning circumcision in front of the voters.
The bill comes on the heels of two attempts in California communities to place circumcision bans on the November ballot.
A state Superior Court judge in California ruled in July that an anti-circumcision measure in San Francisco be stuck from the ballot. Activists in Santa Monica then withdrew an identical proposal. The initiative would have made the practice of circumcision a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail, and offered no exemption for religious ritual.
It would have been the first time that such a measure appeared on a ballot in a U.S. city, according to the Anti Defamation League.
Supporters of the San Francisco measure told the Associated Press that they would decide by Friday whether to appeal the judge’s ruling.
The Jewish Museum of New York has named Claudia Gould as its new director.
Gould, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will succeed Joan Rosenbaum, who has served in the position for the last 30 years.
The 107-year-old museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is dedicated to “the artistic and cultural heritage of the Jewish people,” according to its mission statement.
A university student in Scotland was found guilty of racism after insulting a fellow student’s Israeli flag, and he was expelled from St. Andrews University.
The student, Paul Donnachie, 19, reportedly called an exchange student from Yeshiva University in New York a terrorist and said Israel was a terrorist state and the flag was a terrorist symbol. He then put his hands down his pants and then rubbed them on the small flag hanging on the wall, the BBC reported.
The flag had been a gift to the Jewish student, Chanan Reitblat, from his brother, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, according to the report.
Donnachie, a member of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said he would appeal Tuesday’s ruling.
“This is a ridiculous conviction,” he said, according to the BBC. “I’m a member of anti-racism campaigns, and I am devastated that as someone who was fought against racism I have been tarnished in this way.”
A second student, Samuel Colchester, 20, was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. He was suspended from the university for one year.
Delta Airlines announced that it will not ask its customers to disclose their religious affiliation, despite partnering with Saudi Arabian Airlines.
The announcement followed a controversy two months ago when a Delta spokesperson suggested that, because Saudi Arabian Airlines was joining the SkyTeam Alliance, Delta might have to refuse boarding to passengers with Israel stamps on their passports. The Saudi government requires that travelers disclose their religion, and American Jews and others with Israeli stamps in their passports have been refused visas to the country.
At the time, the Delta spokesperson said that the airline “must comply with all applicable laws in every country it serves” because it would face fines if a passenger arrives at a destination without proper documents.
In a letter sent last week to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Delta Senior Vice President Andrea Fischer Newman wrote: “Delta employees do not currently and will not in the future, request that customers declare their religious affiliation. We would also not seek such information on behalf of any SkyTeam partner or any airline.”
Delta officials met with the Wiesenthal Center’s Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper at the center’s headquarters in Los Angeles to clarify the airline’s policy.
“Delta has now done the right thing, sending a signal to the Saudis that it will not cooperate with Riyadh’s policy of religious apartheid,” Cooper said in a statement. “We hope that all other U.S.-based airlines around the world will declare and follow a similar policy. We also urge the Obama administration to lead the way in demanding that the Saudis drop their overt policy of religious discrimination.”
One way to describe Israeli pop star Harel Skaat to American pop aficionados is to call him the Israeli “Clay Aiken”—a comparison Skaat might not like, considering he shies away from comparisons lest they smear his individuality.
But like the 2003 “American Idol” runner-up, Aiken, Skaat reached the finale of the second season of his national singing contest, “Kochav Nolad,” only to emerge more famous than the winner. To be fair, Skaat has probably enjoyed more radio hits in his home country, and he’s way more handsome than Aiken; yet their lean frames, thick, spiky hair and happy go-lucky styles have made both teenage heartthrobs. They may have broken their share of ‘tween hearts when they made headlines announcing they were gay.
Six years after winning “Kochav Nolad” in 2004, Skaat felt it was time to come out. He had developed a fan base that appreciated him first and foremost as an artist.
“I was not ashamed of anything and really proud of myself and my choices, and I was proud of how God created me, so it wasn’t difficult, but to expose yourself is always kind of annoying,” Skaat said in a phone interview from Tel Aviv, speaking in English, a skill he’s fine-tuning for an upcoming English album. “I don’t think it changed anything; actually, the opposite. I feel when I go out on the streets people respect me for sharing my life with them, and the fact that they heard me talking about myself like a human being and not a singer or a celebrity, it really affected them.”
He also says Israel has a relatively open attitude to gay entertainers. Pop rock singer-songwriter, Ivri Lider, is another example who enjoys wide commercial success in Israel.
“It’s crazy because Israel’s supposed to be more traditional, and it’s not like that in the real world,” Skaat said. “I’m very happy for that because people are very open-minded here, maybe not all the people in Israel, but most of them, and I see that now.”
His main goal as an artist is to touch people through his soulful pop, no matter if songs are sung in Hebrew, Spanish, or English or if love ballads are directed to men or women. The power of music comes through its emotive storytelling.
“Everyone understands the worldwide language,” he said. “I think I have the opportunity to sing in other languages, even in Hebrew, and touch people by it, even if they don’t understand a word.”
That’s what he felt he proudly accomplished when he took 14th place for Israel and a slew of awards at the 2010 Eurovision Singing Contest. It’s what he plans to do at the Ford Amphitheatre on Aug. 28, when he performs alongside Macy Gray, R&B singer Abraham McDonald, and rapper MC Lyte at Keshet Chaim Dance Ensemble’s “Rhythm & Roots” multi-cultural extravaganza benefiting Children Uniting Nations, which also features Los Angeles’ African American Lula Washington Dance Theater and multi-ethnic, interfaith Agape International Choir.
Skaat grew-up in a traditional Jewish Yemenite and Iraqi home in Kfar Saba. He recalls sitting on his cantor grandfather’s lap in synagogue listening to him wail the Hebrew hymns.
“It was a vocal lesson for me,” Skaat said. “I learned how to pronounce the words right, and one of the most important things in music is to pronounce the words right.”
Skaat’s voice has a spiritual quality—it’s smooth and clear, with an angelic yearning and guttural power characteristic among singers of Yemenite origin (Ofra Haza, for one). His first eponymous album went platinum, while his second, Dmuyot (Figures), took gold (20,000 copies sold in Israel). When pressed for his musical inspirations, he lists Stevie Wonder, Barbara Streisand, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, James Blunt, Justin Timberlake, and Beyonce.
“You can see I really admire singers.”
Lately, Skaat has moved beyond the stage and studio to activism. Several months ago, he penned an article in Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Aharonot, urging Israelis to take to the streets and protest social injustices they experience. With such protests now sweeping Israel, he likes to think his words were prophetic.
“I think we are making history now in Israel because we finally went out of our living rooms and out of our conversations with friends about living in Israel and life in Israel and the financial issues, and we went out to the streets.”
He recently performed at a protest rally in Jerusalem, feeling one with the average Israeli, and while he uses his influence as a well-known figure to promote causes that are important to him, he thinks that, ultimately, Israeli pop stars aren’t “idols,” but one of the people.
“People in Israel are the same. You don’t have stars you can’t touch.”
American Jews are known for the emphasis they place on academic success.
Jewish professors populate America’s universities, and, respectively, Jewish doctors, lawyers and politicians help fill the nation’s hospitals, law firms and legislatures. At the core of this success are generations of American Jewish parents who have encouraged their children to focus, work hard and succeed from kindergarten through college and graduate school.
College in particular is a formative time for students’ Jewish identities.
In a widely publicized essay written in 1968 for the journal Judaism, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg wrote, “By and large, college is a disaster area for Judaism, Jewish loyalty, and Jewish identity.”
More recently, in a 2006 study for the Avi Chai Foundation, Brandeis University researchers found that, “In the soup of the college experience, Jewish students are making religious choices, and these are often decisions to do less, not more.”
Similar sentiments can be expressed about college students’ connections to Israel, though that is another matter.
No magic bullet exists to quickly and cheaply reverse this phenomenon. But parents can play a vital role in helping students—their children—maintain a connection to Judaism by setting an example of Jewish involvement and by partnering with the agencies that bring Jewish life directly to young people.
A Jewish parent’s relationship with a child is so sacred that it is codified in the Ten Commandments, requiring children to respect their mothers and fathers. But just as it is the children’s duty to respect their parents, so, too, is it the parents’ responsibility to raise their children.
Jewish education works best when it reinforces deep, rooted values established by parents.
Ideally, parents should begin educating their children at birth; however, they can begin at any age, and even after the children are off at college. In today’s hyperconnected world, students studying at schools across the country are just a phone call or a video chat away. Using technology, parents can model Jewish living from home while still allowing their children the space to grow up.
Before children head off to college, parents often engage their children in various coming-of-age discussions. Parents must have a similar conversation about Jewish values and observances—a discussion in which they articulate expectations and hopes that too often are left unsaid. Of course, such a conversation carries more weight when parents “walk the walk” by serving as role models of Jewish living.
Parents can also support their college students by sending them care packages associated with Jewish holidays and themes. Some synagogues already do this, but when these gifts come from home, they carry that much more intergenerational meaning and educational value.
Universities have evolved to become more inclusive in the services they offer to students—whether from a psychological or career counselor, a resident adviser or even a campus rabbi. Instead of only supervising a university’s kosher food or facilitating prayer services, campus Jewish groups have broadened their reach to serve as much of the Jewish student community as possible. Far from being a place of refuge for a few committed Jewish students, these organizations have developed programs to reach out to all those seeking meaning in their Judaism.
The challenge is to reach all Jewish students—not just those who are already inclined to participate. The goal must be to show Jews of all stripes and backgrounds that within Judaism’s incredible depth and breadth is something –more than just something, even—that could interest them.
If parents want their children to have a close connection with Jewish life on campus, they should connect with the campus Jewish mentors who are there 24/7 for students. Just as parents support their children’s secular education, it is imperative that parents also support their children’s Jewish education at college by providing financial support to Jewish organizations there. This will also help to create a culture of Jewish involvement from the home to the campus.
These ideas, when delivered to young people with a bit of space and a lot of love, can resonate during college and long after.
(Rabbi Hershey Novack is the director of the Chabad on Campus – Rohr Center for Jewish Life at Washington University in St. Louis.)
