KUMMUNIQUE

Shalom! We are proud to present another issue of Kummunique.
This issue is filled with Aliyah and Eretz Yisrael inspiration - so enjoy!

In this issue you will find:

1. "Pesach Sheini" by Malkah Fleisher
2. "The New Book of Exodus" by Jenna Portnoy
3. "Better Than We Thought" by Yair Lapid
4. "Alienated Jews" by Amiram Barkat

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1. "Pesach Sheini" by Malkah Fleisher

If Jewish holidays existed on a map of Jewish recognition, excitement, and participation, Pesach might be Jerusalem, Sukkot might be Beer Sheva, Hanukkah might be Tzfat. Pesach Sheini, however, would probably land somewhere around Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Even amongst the super-pious, Jewishly enthusiastic, Pesach Sheini usually slides by without so much as a thought, and nary a nibble of matzah.

However, the Torah gives us big clues into our relationship with G-d through the provision of this modest, unsung holiday.

In discussing the Passover festival and when to bring it, the Jews hit a snag:
There were, however, certain persons who had become ritually impure through contact with a dead body and therefore could not prepare the Passover offering on that day... and they said: "...Why should we be deprived, and not be able to present G-ds offering in its time, amongst the children of Israel?"… And G-d spoke to Moses, saying: "… Any person who is contaminated by death, or is on a distant road, whether among you now or in future generations, shall prepare a Passover offering to G-d. They shall prepare it on the afternoon of the fourteenth day of the second month, and shall eat it with matzahs and bitter herbs...." (Numbers 9:1-12)

Shavuot and Succot are also "inconveniences" for the Jews (G-d forbid!) – everyone has to drop what they're doing to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Why does Pesach get a special redo?

Perhaps it's because Pesach requires extra focus – not only do we remove all of our leavening and conduct a seder, but we make special efforts to reduce our egos into humbler sizes.

Instead of imposing harsher judgement on the Jews a month after this process ("Hey – you guys should be humbler by now? What gives?"), he exercises extra patience with us ("Listen, I know it's tough, and you didn't QUITE make it to the levels of humility and subservience to Me that I was hoping for, so here's another chance").

What do we learn from this characteristic? G-d will bend over backwards to forgive the Jews, both nationally and individually. He's aching to forgive us, looking for any excuse, any loophole to allow us to create merit for ourselves.

In times like these, we should take solace in this idea. In situations in which we feel disempowered to affect the national situation, we should do some inner housecleaning, yet again. In fact, we should do it again, and again, and again. G-d wants us to succeed. Let's start with ourselves, and work outward.

This Pesach Sheini, I will be sitting down to a delicious matzah-based meal, and reapplying myself to the values of Pesach. In turn, I believe G-d will remember His belief in second chances, and His desire to redeem his beloved nation.

Malkah's Matzah Lasagna

Four pieces of machine matzah
1 medium container tomato paste
2 zucchini, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1-2 large onions, chopped and
Thyme, oregano, basil
1 package of Tnuva, unsalted farmer's cheese (comes in clear wrapper)
1 small container of white "Israeli" spreading cheese
1 and a half cups of shredded mozzarella

Fry the garlic, zucchini, and onions until the onions are just golden.
Mix the tomato paste, 3/4 cup of water, thyme, oregano, and basil to taste. Add garlic, zucchi, and onions, and stir.
In a separate bowl, mix the white cheese and farmer's cheese.

In square casserole dish, place a sheet of matzah, spread with layer of cheese mixture, cover with tomato sauce mixture. Repeat until the last piece of matzah lies on top. Cover this last piece with tomato sauce, and sprinkle with the shredded cheese. Bake at 350 until the cheese is golden brown.

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[The following is a small part of a huge article on American Aliyah. Follow the link for the full story- ed.]

2. "The New Book of Exodus" by Jenna Portnoy
From Philadelphia City Paper

Despite the danger, more Philadelphia Jews are making a one-way trip to Israel.

Are you Jewish?" the man asked. He had called to clear me for an interview with the consul general of Israel in Philadelphia. I assumed security might need my driver's license or want to perform a criminal background check. But not this. "Have you ever been to Israel?"

What could these questions possibly have to do with the story?

The next day, I arrived at a nondescript office building in the heart of Center City and someone buzzed me up. The elevator doors opened into a small, bomb-safe chamber with a metal detector, stool and bullet-proof glass window. From beyond the window, a male voice instructed me to empty the contents of my purse, take my shoes off and step through the metal detector.

Within seconds, a door leading to another small, sterile chamber opened revealing a stern-faced woman wearing latex gloves.

A muscle-bound man mumbled something and unfurled a curtain.

The woman passed a wand over my body and thoroughly patted me down. She even made me lift up my shirt. As the woman flattened my hair in search of explosives and examined my stocking feet, she traded a few terse words with the man in Hebrew. I picked up beseder, meaning "good," and let out a breath.

Satisfied I was not there to blow up the consulate, the man gave me back my stuff—minus an ID and cell phone—and led me to a waiting area.

"The consul general will be right with you," he said, finally cracking a smile. "Would you like something to drink?"

I shook my head.

In America, even where high-profile public officials are concerned, media security checks rarely include invasive searches or personal questions. Details about the reporter are irrelevant and should be. But Israel is different. Yes, it's a democracy, but Israelis don't mess around when it comes to security. They can't afford to. Anyone could be a terrorist. Even a reporter.

Israel has, of course, learned this lesson the hard way.

While Israeli civilian deaths from suicide attacks have steadily declined in recent years, a Passover bombing at a food stand in Tel Aviv killed nine and wounded more than 60. The April 17 attack was the first suicide bombing in the Jewish state since the radical Islamic movement, Hamas, took over the Palestinian Authority three weeks earlier, and the most deadly since August 2004. Hamas has called the bombing a "legitimate response to Israeli aggression."

The prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict has also been exacerbated by the war in Iraq and tensions with Iran. An Iranian senior commander recently told reporters Israel would be Iran's first target in response to any "evil" acts by the United States.

But despite the dangerous, volatile state of affairs in Israel, thousands of Americans and Canadians, and an increasing number of Philadelphians, willingly move there every year. Many feel it is their responsibility to strengthen the Jewish state, which was founded 58 years ago this month on the concept that Israel would be a home for Jews scattered throughout the world.

The process of immigrating to Israel is called aliyah (ah-lee-yah), which means "ascent" in Hebrew. Those who make aliyah are called olim (ol-eem). Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has shown no sign of emerging from a coma doctors induced after he suffered massive stroke on Jan. 4, has said, "Aliyah is the central goal of the State of Israel."

Founded in 1948 with about 600,000 Jews, Israel's population has swelled to 7 million people. Last year, Israel surpassed the United States as the country with the largest Jewish population. (About 206,000 Jewish people live in the greater Philadelphia area, according to a 1997 Jewish Federation-sponsored study.)

Unlike Jewish refugees who enter Israel to escape persecution or anti-Semitism, North American Jews typically make aliyah for religious, cultural and political reasons. Nearly 3,000 made aliyah in 2005—the biggest number in 23 years and double the number of olim in 2001, according to the Israel Aliyah Center (www.aliyah.org), an organization that helps people join the Jewish state.

This year, 60 Philadelphians are expected to make aliyah. That's three times as many as two years ago.

The majority of olim are Orthodox—a denomination of Judaism characterized by strict interpretation of Jewish law—but the rate of olim who identify with other religious movements, such as Conservatism, is growing.

Israel offers olim a cash payment of $3,300, a free one-way plane ticket, Hebrew lessons called ulpan, tax exceptions and academic scholarships. A family of four or five could be entitled to $15,000 to $30,000 through various programs, according to the IAC, which has stepped up education and marketing campaigns.

Nefesh B'Nefesh (nbn.org.il), an agency whose name means "Jewish souls united," also helps olim navigate Israel's bureaucracy and get jobs. On the condition that they stay in Israel for three years, olim may receive NBN grants averaging $5,000 each.

In addition to these incentives, in the global economy, it is easier than ever to live and work abroad. And after Sept. 11, American Jews who were hesitant to move to Israel because of terrorism suddenly realized no country is completely safe. Still, for most olim these factors do not play a significant part in their desire to make aliyah. The seeds are usually planted with a trip to Israel.

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3. "Better Than We Thought" by Yair Lapid
From YNET

There are many options open to you average Israeli. The fact that most of us choose to live here says a lot about this country

Here's a trivia question: What is the second largest Greek city in the world?

Don't run to the atlas. The second largest Greek city in the world is Melbourne, Australia. Only Athens has a larger Greek population. The reason that so many Greeks migrated to Australia is because they were unhappy in Greece and looked for a different place to call "home."

The second largest Israeli city is Tel Aviv; followed by Haifa, Beer Sheva, Holon, etc. New York would be somewhere on the list, but pretty far down. In the final analysis, the majority of Israelis prefer to live in Israel.

It's not that there are no alternatives. The average Israeli speaks better English than most Greeks. He has more years of schooling, uses the Internet more often and frequently flies abroad (Everybody knows we hold all the worlds' records for international travel.) and has at his disposal – one way or another – a fabulous network of Jewish communities. There is a synagogue in every major city; a Jewish community center, a B'nai Brith chapter or at the very least, Chabad. If they arrive with the children and a container, chances are there'll be someone there to meet them at the airport.

But most of us don't leave and that's not something to sniff at. In the not-so-roaring eighties it seemed that our numbers were shrinking. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin slammed Israelis who left the country as "wusses" and it did not come out of a vacuum.

Ultimate test

In 1987, when I worked in Los Angeles as a reporter, I was sent on assignment to a small street in the San Fernando Valley. Half of the residents of the street were from Kibbutz Beit Alfa. There was a neat row of houses, backyard swimming pool included, a nice home renovations business, three cars in the driveway. It seemed like they were waiting for the rest of the kibbutz to take up residence on the other half of the street. It did not happen.

Twenty years later, you can go to www.beit-alfa.com and reserve a charming cabin at the foot of the Gilboa Mountains, air conditioning and breakfast included. It's supposed to be charming.

As Israel begins its 59th year of independence the country passes the ultimate test of any nation, with flying colors: Israelis love to complain but wouldn't live anywhere else. They make due with the high taxes, the security problems, the widening social gap, and the country's embarrassing body politic. They are even willing to gamble on the country: Close to 75 percent of the apartments in Israel are owned by the people who live in them. This is a higher percentage than in England, Canada, the US, Japan, Germany and Holland. The big question is why? What is this country giving them that does not show up in the statistics?

There are several standard answers: the Holocaust is one, fear of anti-Semitism, a Jewish identity, Friday afternoon reading the newspaper and eating sunflower seeds. Each of these answers is correct but none of them is enough. I have another explanation:

Perceptive economics

The Hebrew translation of the best-selling book "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner came out this month. It's one of the most perceptive studies of economics I have ever encountered. It talks about – amongst other things - something that was tried here in Israel: A Haifa child-care center was having trouble with parents arriving on time to pick up their children. To combat the phenomenon, management imposed a 10 shekel (two dollars) fine on parents who were late in picking up their kids.

After several months of this policy a clear trend became evident. What do you think happened?

The number of late parents tripled.

How do you explain it? Before the policy was introduced, parents were embarrassed to arrive late to pick up their children. Everyone is familiar with the feeling - you are stuck in traffic, sweating, imagining your child is the last one left behind, crying, feeling abandoned. You are the worst parent in the world.

As soon as there was a tax for lateness, parents did the math. Better to leave in the middle of a meeting where your promotion is being discussed or pay the ten shekels? The answer is clear.

Levitt's example (Dubner just helped with the writing) proves, and not for the first time, that people will do a little more in order to feel they are good people. Other incentives – money, promotion, comfort – are less powerful.

Needing people

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to take part in a number of televised charity drives benefiting various causes – children at risk, education, meals for the needy – but the campaign strategy was always the same: people sitting at home are asked to pick up the phone and make a donation.

Socially, they have no incentive to give: their names aren't mentioned, no one outside of the members of their families knew they were making a contribution. There was no immediate gratification or glory. And despite this, each charity drive raised more money than the organizers anticipated.

This is because people know how to appreciate the fact they are needed. It doesn't always need to be as dramatic as Churchill's "I have nothing to give you but blood, sweat and tears" or Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Earning vitality

But we have lived in this country for 58 years. We know it. We love it. We are ready to do almost anything for it.

The prime minister is wasting his time and ours when he promises us that in another four years this will be a wonderful place to live. We have chosen this place. We have chosen 30 days (at least) of IDF reserve duty a year, income tax, religious - secular tensions, the Palestinian threat. We have chosen and we continue to choose every day. This makes us better people because we matter and that allows us to feel that between our birth and our death, something vital and real is happening to us.

There aren't many countries that give their citizens that kind of feeling.

This year, Israel's Independence Day coincided with the forming of a new government. A lot of empty promises were scattered along the way. Empty and unnecessary. If instead of those promises, someone tells us what he wants us to do as a nation, then we will do the best that we can.

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4. "Alienated Jews" by Amiram Barkat
From Haaretz

Members of the American Jewish Committee, who identify with Israel and care about its welfare, were astounded and offended to the depths of their souls this week when they heard author A.B. Yehoshua say he feels no sense of identification with them and their fate. Yehoshua's "I have no brother" speech is doubtless harsh-sounding and infuriating to anyone for whom belonging to the Jewish collective means something. But rather than attack Yehoshua, those "good Jews" should direct complaints at themselves, for having done almost nothing to find out how they are perceived by their brethren in Israel.

Had the American Jewish Committee people displayed an interest in the intellectual discourse that has been taking place in Israel for some time, they would have known that Yehoshua's words express a widespread and accepted way of thinking. They would have learned that prominent intellectuals in Israel view relations with them as a harmful anachronism that undermines the efforts of Israeli society to grant its non-Jewish citizens a sense of belonging. They would have discovered that the philosopher Menachem Brinker, for example, thinks the Arabs of Umm al-Fahm and Lod are part of his nation much more so than the Jews of Manhattan or Chicago - the connection with whom, in his eyes, is a thing of the past. They would perhaps have been surprised to know that journalist Yaron London views foreign workers who wish to settle in Israel more worthy than themselves to be considered members of his people, since those migrants, contrary to them, speak his language and share in his destiny.

Israel fulfills a central role, for good or bad, in the Jewish identity of Jews in the United States. Because of this, many of the Jews there mistakenly think the attitude is mutual and that Israelis, too, are interested in them and anxious for their future. According to the report in Haaretz, the commonplace response to Yehoshua's words was to ask, "Does everyone in Israel think this way?" But while the Jewish establishment in the U.S. constantly checks the strength of American Jews' emotional ties to Israel, the ties going the other way have never been seriously checked.

There seems to be no need for an empirical foundation to answer the AJC people's question. Indifference, ignorance and alienation characterize the attitude of the Jewish public in Israel toward the Jews of the U.S. The indifference is reflected, for example, in the minuscule number of Knesset members who bother to participate in the many forums dealing with Diaspora-Israel relations: Yossi Beilin, Natan Sharansky, Colette Avital and Rabbi Michael Melchior.

The ignorance is shown by the fact that pupils in Israeli schools do not learn anything about the existence of Jews in the world today. The country that had no trouble absorbing billions of dollars from Diaspora Jews does not see fit to devote even a single hour of class time to teach its citizens about the existence of those Jews and the problems troubling them. A lone study program, which was initiated by the AJC, aims to change that situation.

As for the alienation, American Jews need not go as far as Israel to grasp the degree of detachment Israelis feel toward them. It is enough for them to ask themselves why the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in the U.S. do not participate in the life of the Jewish community, do not attend its institutions and do not contribute a thing to its existence.

Zionism and Orthodox Judaism alike instilled in the Israeli public ignorance of and alienation from the Jews of the Diaspora, in no small part because of anxiety about the wealthy and attractive alternatives to Jewish existence on offer in foreign fields. On the Israeli left, hostility to Diaspora Jews is growing in tandem with the belief in a state of all its citizens and the more the country's Jewishness is perceived as political incorrectness.

Israelis are not solely to blame for this detachment, but also U.S. Jews themselves. The heads of the American Jewish organizations do almost nothing to alter the perceptions common in the Israeli public. Their leaders who come here several times a year return to their country brimming with delight having heard the prime minister, foreign minister and chair of the Jewish Agency pay lip service in speaking about Israel's obligation to the Jewish people and its future.

The Jews in the U.S. who are worried about the future of ties to Israel should ask themselves what is done with the funds they transfer every year to the Jewish Agency and other bodies in Israel. Why does only a tiny percentage of these find its way into programs that deal with studying the Diaspora or conducting a genuine dialog between Israelis and Jews living overseas. The detachment and alienation between the world's two largest concentrations of Jews may be a fact, but certainly not an inexorable fate.