Shiksa in Hollywood
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October 27, 2013
Lou Reed dies at 71
Musician Lou Reed, the frontman for the band Velvet Underground as well as a solo artist, has died.
Reed, who was born to a Jewish family, died Sunday at 71. A cause of death was not made public.
He had a liver transplant last year after years of alcohol and drug abuse.
Reed, born Lewis Allan Reed in Brooklyn, N.Y., became influential in rock by blending art and music in New York in the 1960s through Velvet Underground’s collaboration with pop artist Andy Warhol. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 1996.
Reed quit the band in 1970 and focused on his solo career, which featured the 1972 hit song “Walk on the Wild Side.”
He visited Israel five years ago with his musician wife Laurie Anderson during her world tour.
Reed reportedly was coy about his Jewish roots. He was quoted as saying, “My God is rock ’n’ roll” and “The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.”
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The Path to Perfection is Full of Potholes
In high school I developed a driving need to be perfect. Smart, charitable, cute, fashionable, getting into a top college, and being cool enough to go to house parties was just the beginning of what I worried about everyday. The high achieving culture of my high school helped propel most of us into a deeply unconscious way of being where breaks in between classes and lunch time was spent gossiping about “how skinny Sara/Jenny/Nicole was getting.” And I was no exception to this massive unconsciousness. I developed an eating disorder because it was easier and a lot less scary to find satisfaction in losing weight than taking the time to look inward and discover why I was unique in the “sea of perfection”.
I graduated high school with honors and attended a top college, just like my college prep high school promised. The problem was that no one taught us that once we reached academic success and a job at a tech company, there was no guarantee we would understand ourselves and finally feel at peace. And so, I continued to carry the unattainable idea that I needed to be perfect.
In the young adult world this means, driving the right car, having the right job, going to the right restaurants, knowing the right people, being a part of the “scene,” having a busy schedule, a cute boyfriend, an amazing body, and following the latest health trend.
And so it was. I moved to Los Angeles to continue on my quest to achieve perfection.
At some point on my journey I became more lenient with my calorie intake, resumed a menstrual cycle, and put on weight. I struggled to feel “special” like I had when I was grossly underweight. I continued to get my highs from being part of a very social group and associating myself with exclusivity. By the medical definition I had recovered from anorexia, but I still counted every calorie I ate, beat myself up over eating dessert, thought everyone was watching each bite I ate, and found myself constantly judging others. This definitely did not feel like the perfect life I was seeking.
Slowly my lifestyle, priorities, and perspective started to shift. Through a combination of people, circumstances, mind body practices, yoga, books and alone time, I started to feel lighter, happier, and whole. I felt strong, guided, and watched over. My body and diet were no longer consuming 95% of my thoughts. What had happened was that I started to live my life mindfully. I learned about the power of connecting my mind and body, learned to listen to my inner voice, and as a result, stopped relying on circumstances outside of myself to feel good.
Reflecting on those years of fitting in a size 00, I realize I was starving my spirit even more than my body. I’ve learned that life is best and I feel in the “flow” when I am able to hear my inner wisdom; a voice that was always there but I was yelling over with loud distractions such as calorie counting, over exercising, and social dramas. We all have a tendency to drown out that loving and all knowing voice with anxiety and fear, but it turns out all you have to do is keep coming back to this moment…..back to this moment……back to this moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have days where I hate how my jeans fit, lust for that Chanel handbag I can’t afford, and break into tears over something that hasn’t really happened; the difference is that I am mindful of this behavior and the feelings behind it. I have evidence based tools that medical research has proven to be highly effective in reducing stress to bring me back to the present such as meditation, dancing, and guided imagery that help move the energy through me rather than letting it get stuck and stale to the point where I need to find ways to feel “special” again. And even though I am now a life coach helping people with their own versions of stress, it helps to have my own life coach, because it feels good to be heard.
If you are someone who is ready to stop yelling over your inner guide, as you begin your practice of re-connection with the mind and body expect nothing of yourself. Like diet and exercise, the only way to sustain positive change is to make small, gradual lifestyle alterations. I promise you can do it. But you don’t need me to tell you that.
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Israel’s Center Declining, Partisans on the Rise
We have a simple story for you today – the story told by the recent Israeli polls: The Israeli center is shrinking, losing political power, while the blocs, right, left and even the religious bloc, are making gains and getting stronger (at least in the polls).
To learn more about the details, go to our updated Israel Polls Trends page, where you can see all the recent polls, and read an analysis of the notable trends.
Israel’s Center Declining, Partisans on the Rise Read More »
A Centrist Country? The Polls Paint a Partisan Trend
Updated: 10.27.2013
Up until a few days ago, Israel was busy for a few weeks with the political races of municipal candidates, races from which we can learn about national trends, but only to an extent. Yes, Nir Barkat's victory in Jerusalem did do something to weaken– or at least to weaken the projected power of- Aryeh Deri and Avigdor Lieberman, but other than that the local races were markedly local. In many of the main cities the candidates weren’t even associated with national parties.
The polls we added that were taken in October don’t show much change in the political map. In fact, their importance stems from the fact that they ratify the results of previous polls – proving them not to be a coincidence or a blimp but rather a trend.
They include, first of all, a further weakening of Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid’s party (the big winner of the 2013 election). While it has 19 mandates in the current Knesset, the polls now project that Yesh Atid would decline to around 10 mandates if the elections were held today. From being the second largest party, it is now on the verge of being the fifth largest, following Likud, Labor, Habait Hayehudi and Mertetz. Yesh Atid is running neck to neck with Shas, so in fact it would come out number five or six if elections were held today, shattering Yair Lapid’s dream of becoming the next Israeli Prime Minister. In fact, in the latest Dialogue-Haaretz survey, barely 5% of Israelis said they believe Lapid to be the best candidate for the PM office, and 51% say he is a disappointment (for comparison: 6% say Netanyahu is a disappointment, 4% say Tzipi Livni is a disappointment).
The decline of Yesh Atid is old news, as is the rise of Zionist-Orthodox Habait Hayehudi and leftist Meretz. We are adding Meretz to our table this month as it appears to have become one of Israel’s many midsize parties: five parties with more than 10 but less than 20 mandates. In fact, the political landscape today is shaping in ways that are quite remarkable. Likud is the only large party, and right now it is hard to envision any coalition that could be formed without it. On the other hand, what we see since the election is the relative decline of the Israeli political center. Yesh Atid, Hatnua and Kadima have a cumulative 27 mandates in the current Knesset, with which they can represent the center. They got a cumulative 16, 17 and 17 in the last three polls.
And while the center is shrinking, the “right” and the “left” are getting stronger. From 43 in the current Knesset, the right rises to 48 and 47 in the two polls from October – mainly due to the strengthening of the Jewish Home (Habait Hayehudi). The left bloc, wich has 27 mandates in the Knesset, got 33 and 34 in the October polls. But if you click for the full table you will notice that the surge in left votes began shortly after Election Day and what we see now is merely a more consistent performance by the left-wing parties.
This trend can become even more pronounced and interesting if the Knesset passes, as it plans to do, the law that will raise the electoral threshold for parties, essentially forcing the Arab parties to merge, or Arab voters to consider parties that aren’t markedly “Arab”. While the leaders of Meretz staunchly oppose the raising of the threshold, some political pundits believe that Meretz can actually benefit from such move – by absorbing the more moderate Arab voters that will want to make sure their votes aren’t wasted on parties that can’t pass the threshold.
Of course, polling Israel in October is really not much more than testing the waters before the political season begins. The Labor party will be holding its primaries soon – and we don’t know yet if someone else will emerge as the party’s leader following the vote. We also don’t know about the type of decisions the coalition will have to pass as a result of negotiations with the Palestinians – but we do know that this issue is the most divisive one within the coalition. Recent exchanges of political barbs between Livni’s party and Naftali Bennet’s Habait Hayehudi show that the potential for clashes over Palestinian policies is real, and that by the end of the season, when winter is over, the coalition might look different from how it looks now.
A Centrist Country? The Polls Paint a Partisan Trend Read More »
Why Resettlement of Bedouin Israeli Citizens is a Moral and Democratic Wrong – Israel Journal Part V
I am one of 620 rabbis and cantors who signed a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu (http://bit.y/BedouinRabbis – “Clergy United Against Bedouin Dispossession” organized by T'rua and Rabbis for Human Rights) asking the Israeli government to set aside the Begin-Prawer Bill as unjust.
The bill’s authors say that the bill will settle land ownership disputes between Israel’s Bedouin Negev citizens and the state, compensate the 30,000 to 40,000 Bedouin being moved from their homes to new recognized villages, and ensure their well-being by affording them regular access to water, electricity and other services.
However, there is far more here than meets the eye.
The 190,000 Bedouin Arabs of the Negev, among the poorest in the country (71% live below the poverty line), are full citizens of the State of Israel. 90,000 of these Bedouin live in 45 villages of which 35 have not been recognized by the government and are therefore not provided the most basic services. Only ten of the 45 villages are expected to receive formal government recognition.
The bill will forcibly move these Bedouin from villages in which they have lived for generations because the state does not recognize their property claims. Why?
First, the Bedouin who lived on their land under Ottoman and British Mandate control had “understandings” with the authorities about which lands belonged to them. The formal process of regulating land ownership under the British Mandate (1917-48), however, was never carried out in the Negev, though many landholders elsewhere in the country were officially registered.
Second, the Bedouin had their own traditional system of property acquisition that was acceptable under Ottoman and British rule, and so they were given the impression that registering their land in the government Land Registry was not necessary.
Third, Israel’s War of Independence dislocated thousands of Bedouin. Immediately after the 1948 War, Israel declared the lands temporarily evacuated by Bedouins to be “abandoned land.” The IDF confiscated that land and turned it into military training zones and built yishuvim (Jewish communities) on the land of abandoned villages.
Dr. Dan Gazit, an archaeologist who has spent decades living and working in the Negev, claims that an archive in the Beersheba Municipality that existed during the British mandate era documented all land ownership data for the Bedouins of the province, but was “lost” during its transfer to the State Archive. He has written:
“The State of Israel, which disappeared the Bedouin ownership date of their lands in the Negev, is now expelling them from their land, claiming that they have no official ownership documentation.”
This is a classic “Catch 22!”
“The Begin-Prawer Plan” will force the displacement and eviction of dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Bedouin residents, dispossess them of their ancestral property, and damage the social fabric of their communities thus putting thousands of families at risk of falling further into poverty, unemployment and crime.
What is recommended instead is for the Israeli government to recognize formally the unrecognized 45 villages, all of which have met the same criteria required of new Jewish communities to be registered, and thereby afford them adequate water, electricity, plumbing, health care, education, and employment.
The unfairness of this bill is stunning in another way. There are currently 100 Jewish villages in the Beer Sheva District of the Negev with an average population of only 300, far fewer than the Bedouin villages which have between 400 and 4800 residents. Jewish villages, however, have had no difficulty attaining land and formal recognition thus affording them the necessary infrastructure from the Israeli government including water, electricity, plumbing, health care, education, and employment.
The premise behind the Begin-Prawer Plan is that Bedouin Arabs are usurpers of the land upon which they live because they lack documentation, but that is a problem created by the state of Israel, not the Bedouin themselves who are victims of bureaucratic neglect.
The Prophet Micah (2:2) warns us: “And they covet fields, and seize them; and [they covet houses and] take them away; thus they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.”
What pans out at the end of the day is that this Begin-Prawer bill is a land grab by the state of Israel of property lived on and possessed by Israeli Bedouin Arab citizens.
Jewish tradition teaches that the highest moral duty is to treat strangers and the most vulnerable in our midst with kindness and justice. The irony in the case of the Bedouin is that as citizens of Israel they are NOT strangers at all, but part of the fabric of Israel’s democracy.
If Israel is to embody the best of Jewish ethical tradition (as it does in so many areas) and the highest democratic standards, then the Knesset must defeat this bill.
October 27, 2013
The US
Headline: Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast
To Read: John Kerry's new op-ed decries President Assad's cruelty and stresses the importance of putting pressure on the tyrant before winter exacerbates his country's unbearable humanitarian situation-
Merely expecting a regime like Assad's to live up to the spirit, let alone letter, of the Security Council statement without concerted international pressure is sadly unrealistic. A regime that gassed its own people and systematically denies them food and medicine will bow only to our pressure, not to our hopes. Assad's allies who have influence over his calculations must demand that he and his backers adhere to international standards. With winter approaching quickly, and the rolls of the starving and sick growing daily, we can waste no time. Aid workers must have full access to do their jobs now. The world cannot sit by watching innocents die.
Quote: “We can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is. He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region.” Rice telling her aides about the President's view of the Middle East.
Number: 1000, the Post has found that over 1000 American NGO's have suffered from significant diversions in their accounts, largely due to theft and embezzlement of different sorts.
Israel
Headline: Gov't divided on issue of prisoners' release
To Read: James Loeffler takes a look at Gil Troy's book about Daniel Patrick Moynihan's defense of Israel-
Troy’s careful analysis of Moynihan’s motivations is one of the strengths of this book, if a bit redundant at times. In an era when both critics and advocates of the American-Israeli alliance often blithely assert that domestic politics drive US foreign policy (be it Jewish lobbying or Christian Zionist votes), it is an important lesson to remember that Israel often functions as much as a symbolic proxy for American identity in foreign affairs as a strategic ally or special interest issue. “In defending Zionism,” writes Troy, “Moynihan was combating what he saw as an ideological assault on Western values and American power.”
(take a look at our q&a with Gil Troy right here)
Quote: “It was appalling to listen to Britain's former foreign secretary. His remarks reflect prejudice of the worst kind. We're used to hearing groundless accusations from Palestinian envoys but I thought British diplomats, including former ones, were still capable of a measure of rational thought“, former Israeli MK Einat Wilf responding to some controversial remarks made by Britain's former FM Jack Straw.
Number: 9, nine Israelis and one Palestinian were hurt in an rock attack incident in Hebron
The Middle East
Headline: UAE signs $4.9 billion aid package to Egypt
To Read: Eric Trager takes a look at the rants and conspiracy theories of the Times' new Egyptian columnist, Alaa al Aswany-
“A simple experiment,” he tweeted in July, “Go to the website of any global newspaper and read its coverage of Egypt, and you’ll find that most of the writers that defended Israel are now mostly defending the Brotherhood.” Indeed, in Aswany’s twisted worldview, Washington’s displeasure with the way in which Morsi was ousted and Western reporting of the rising Brotherhood death toll must have Israel in mind first and foremost. And so being pro-Brotherhood—as Aswany defines it—must be a Zionist position.
Quote: “Enrichment to 20 percent is continuing”, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, admitting that Iran's uranium enrichment plan is still on.
Number: 16, the number of Iranians who were reportedly hanged in retaliation for a eadly border attack.
The Jewish World
Headline: Republican Jewish Coalition to Senate: Approve new Iran sanctions bill
To Read: Moshe Halbertal takes a look at Ronald Dworkin's posthumous book, which examines the notion of 'religion without god'-
The notion of “religion without God” is first defined negatively. It stands for a rejection of naturalism, which claims that the world consists exclusively of matter governed by laws of nature that are in principle described by science, and that qualities such as beauty or value are not independent of the mind but are humanly constructed responses to the world. Dworkin’s rejection of naturalism consists of two crucial elements. The first is the affirmation that human life has an objective meaning and importance. Our values and moral convictions are not humanly contrived responses that can be exhaustively explained as an outcome of the evolutionary process. “Cruelty is wrong” is an objective statement that has been discovered by us rather than invented by us, and its objective foundation is, for Dworkin, internal to our experience of the prohibition on cruelty. We encounter it as an absolute. If we examine the set of our convictions concerning the realms that are independent of our mind, we might genuinely entertain a Cartesian doubt as to whether we exist, but we cannot imagine a world in which it would be fine to run over an innocent child with a car because we were late to a party.
Quote: “The success and mission of Limmud FSU is building a family of young Russian-speaking Jews. Look around you: These are the best and brightest of Russian society. They come because this conference gives them a sense of pride and family” Limmud founder, Chaim Chessler discussing the organization's role in revitalizing Russia's Jewish community.
Number: 1000, over one thousand people showed up for a neo-Nazi rally in Athens.