\”Divine Intervention\” has been embraced by European and most American critics as a brilliant absurdist comedy, recalling the style of French director Jacques Tati, and the silent movie performances of Buster Keaton and the early Charlie Chaplin.
When people hear about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, they assume that Israelis are white, European oppressors and that Palestinians are indigenous people of color being taken over and kicked out of their native home.
On a single day during Passover 1986, most of Israel\’s major dailies ran oddly identical front-page stories describing a secret negotiation, recently collapsed, between Israel and Iraq. Iraq, it was said, had approached Israeli representatives in New York, asking that Jerusalem switch its covert support from Iran to Iraq in the war between them. In return, Iraq would exchange ambassadors with Israel after it won the war. Israel reportedly demanded recognition now, not later, and then ended the contacts abruptly after Washington caught wind of them.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was asked: \”What is the right spiritual path, that of sorrow or that of joy?\”
He replied: \”There are two kinds of sorrow and two kinds of joy. When a man broods over the misfortunes that have come upon him, that is a bad kind of sorrow. But the grief that comes when a man knows what he has lost is honest and good. The same is true of joy. One who chases empty pleasures is a fool. But one who is truly joyful is like a man who is rebuilding his house after a fire. He feels his need deep in his soul, and with each stone that is laid, his heart rejoices.\”
As we enter the year 5763, the mood of the Jewish people is justifiably dark indeed.
It has been a year of increasing violence in the Middle East, growing anti-Semitism in Europe, hostility toward Israel, and a general air of crisis and ominous headlines — a shared misery of collective despair.
Launched in the shadow of Sept. 11, the Jewish year 5762 was marked for Israel by two developments directly related to those terrorist attacks: a tightening of ties between Israel and the United States and a growing American disaffection with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
On the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 4, American swimmer Mark Spitz won his seventh gold medal at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and set his seventh consecutive world record. It was a feat unprecedented in Olympic history, and the handsome 22-year-old Californian became an instant international media celebrity, nowhere more so than in the Jewish press.
The big wheels of the American PR industry are finally spinning on behalf of Israel.
The last time you bit into a falafel sandwich you were probably thinking about nothing more than the warm spice and crunch of the chickpea fritters and the way they played against the soft bread, crisp vegetables and nutty tahini sauce.
If Israel\’s friends and diplomats have a harder time this week convincing the world that Israel is not a racist state, they have only their own government to blame.
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