Eggplant soup (!) with zaatar yogurt, part of one of the best meals of my life. A creation of Chef Erez Pinhas at Abba in Orleans, Mass.
Other parts of dinner: fresh mussels (harvested earlier in the day) steamed with coconut milk, pineapple, and Thai spices; grilled foie gras with a red wine gastrique; lobster pad thai; reisling from the Golan Heights winery.
A few weeks ago, a NY Times article about the Annapolis conference contained this gem:
The long buildup to Annapolis, together with Ms. Rice's many trips to the region, have given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: ''lecondel,'' meaning, to come and go for meetings that produce few results. The word is based on Ms. Rice's first name.I love Hebrew.
We brought in Chinese food from Panda Express today for lunch.
As I was finishing my meal, I opened my fortune cookie and found the above fortune inside.
Theodor Herzl isn't dead. He's secretly working for Panda Express, writing fortunes for their fortune cookies.
[Cross posted to TAPBB.}
I don't know Rabbi Yosef Kanfesky, the rabbi of B'nai David Judea (just down the street from me), but he's pretty well respected by Jews of all denominations in this town. From what I hear, members of his congregation think he's just the bees knees.
So I was pretty fascinated by his article in this week's Jewish Journal, entitled, "An Orthodox rabbi's plea: consider a divided Jerusalem." He writes:
To be sure, I would be horrified and sick if the worst-case division-of-Jerusalem scenario were to materialize. The possibility that the Kotel, the Jewish Quarter or the Temple Mount would return to their former states of Arab sovereignty is unfathomable to me, and I suspect to nearly everyone inside the Israeli government. At the same time though, to insist that the government not talk about Jerusalem at all (including the possibility, for example, of Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods) is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story -- a story in which our side has made no mistakes and no miscalculations, a story in which there is no moral ambiguity in the way we have chosen to rule the people we conquered, a story in which we don't owe anything to anyone. Cries of protest, in particular from organizations that oppose Israel's relinquishing anything at all between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and which have never offered any alternative solutions to the ones they are protesting against, are rooted in the refusal to read history honestly. And I -- for one -- cannot lend my support to that.Wow.
My favorite podcast is back. Call me a "True Believer."
A lot of people are up-in-arms about a paper recently published by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
Walt, a professor at Harvard, and Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, argue that "a vast network of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq." They explain that
...the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel - are essentially identical.
Since the publication of the paper, it has drawn praise from David Duke and the ire of the pro-Israel lobby, who are understandably defensive in response to an attack on their very existence. Harvard, possibly under pressure from donors, has cautiously backed away from the paper.
Having read the paper, I think their main point isn't totally off-base (I agree that AIPAC is a bit too vocal), but I also think they make some problematic assumptions. Of these, the most bothersome is their continued reference to "the Lobby," a mostly unconnected group of organizations and individuals that work tirelessly to represent Jewish/Israeli causes in American politics and within the American national conscience. Their characterization of this group sounds a lot like a thinly-veiled attack on par with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mearsheimer and Walt address this critique early on:
There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better.
Then they spend the rest of the paper disproving themselves, making vast generalizations about "the Lobby," discussing "the Lobby's" goals and citing unnamed "prominent Lobby figures."
The best response I've read thus far is Christopher Hitchens' piece in Slate, entitled "Overstating Jewish Power."
Hitchens dismantles Mearsheimer and Walt's piece on a number of levels. He points out a number of their false assumptions, takes them to task for ignoring evidence that doesn't support their claims, and explains how many of their conclusions are based on fallacious logic. He doesn't call them anti-Semitic, accuse them of "having an axe to grind," or suggest that their work is on par with that of neo-Nazis. Rather, he takes them on point-by-point and explains why they're wrong. It's an inspired piece of writing.
In the middle of it, Hitchens makes an interesting point. He writes,
Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass. I would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt and pointed up the role of Israel in supporting apartheid in South Africa, in providing arms and training for dictators in Congo and Guatemala, and helping reactionary circles in America do their dirty work—most notably during the Iran-Contra assault on the Constitution and in the emergence of the alliance between Likud and the Christian right. Counterarguments concerning Israel's help in the Cold War and in the region do not really outweigh these points.
Remember, this is Hitchens talking. He's taking Mearsheimer and Walt to task for being unfair and overly critical of Israel and the American pro-Israel lobby.
It's about time for American Jews to remember that reasonable people (who are not anti-Israel) accept as a given that Israel has done some crappy things. To these people -- the very thoughtful types whose opinions matter -- ardent defenses of Israel that paint the country as one that can, and has, done no wrong must sound totally ridiculous. Instead of insisting on Israel's innocence in everything it has ever been accused of, maybe its time to admit, "Hey, Israel has done some things wrong. But it's ready to move forward, and America needs to continue to be at its side."
And that's the real reason AIPAC is so dangerous.
I saw Munich today. A few observations:
In the opening, we see the Black September terrorists breaking into the Olympic Village and attacking the athletes, followed by reaction in Israel (flashes of newscasts, crying widows, etc.), with Hatikvah in the background. It's haunting.
The closing -- which I won't reveal except to say it features of a shot of the World Trade Center -- is gutsy. I'm surprised I haven't read more criticism of it. To me, it was evoking a clear message: simply killing terrorists is "shortsighted tit-for-tat" (as David Edelstein puts it) that does little but breed even worse acts of terrorism. Ultimately, I don't think the movie presents an anti-retaliation message. Rather, it's saying that retaliation is a complex -- and occasionally morally and psychologically problematic -- undertaking.
Harry and Ziva mentioned etrogim in this week's podcast. According to them, the funny yellow citrons are only useful for Sukkot, jam, and magic illness-curing potions.
Of course, many of us (thanks, Daryn) know that etrogim are also useful for making Etrog-flavored vodka. Here's the recipe, courtesy Rabbi Gingi (master of animal husbandry), who let us put it in last year's Year-in-Israel cookbook.
Dick Israel’s z”l Etrog Liquor RecipeIngredients:
Up to 3 etrogs
3 cup vodka
1.5 cup superfine sugarInstructions:
Wash etrogim
Peel only yellow portion
Place peel in 4 cup jar and add 2 cups vodka
Store in a cool, dark place for a minimum of 48 hours
Remove peel and discard (or dry the peels and use in a cake that needs citron)
Add 1.5 cups sugar
Stir until clear
Add one more cup vodka and stir until clear
Close and keep in dark for about 6 weeks
You will have a bright yellow color and sweet flavor with a distinctive strong aroma.
I know I'm late to the game, but the new awesomeness in my life is podcasting, a technology that allows you to listen to "podcasts" (a lot like radio shows, but usually w/o the commercials) on your iPod.
[For those who need more explanation: You tell your computer (specifically, you tell iTunes) which podcasts (shows) you want to listen to. It automatically downloads any new episodes, and then puts them in your iPod. Now you can listen at the gym, in the car, in a house, on a boat, while eating green eggs and ham.]
My favorite podcast is The View from Here, a blog out of Modi'in, Israel. By favorite, I mean pretty-much-the-only-one-I-listen-to-with-any-regularity, by which I mean I downloaded all 20+ episodes and have been listening non-stop.
Each episode of TVH is a 30-40 peek into the lives of Harry and Ziva, a pair of Americans (married to each other) who made aliyah a few years ago. They talk about life in Israel, about things in the news (but rarely politics), about reality TV, about Israeli music, about food... It's basically just a couple talking about their lives. And it's hilarious.
I want to get all my friends listening to the podcast... Mostly because it's awesome, but also because I want to get everyone together to play a game I invented called "The View from Here Drinking Game." To play, start listening to the podcast with a group of friends, pour yourself a tall glass of beer, and make sure you also have a bottle of hard liquor and shot glasses handy. Then...
Drink a sip of beer if...
Drink a shot if...
I guarantee, you'll be plastered in no time.
The best way to listen to the podcast is to open up iTunes, click on Music Store, click on Podcasts (on the far left), then search for "View From Here" and click Subscribe. Then click Podcasts in the far left menu (where your playlists are) to find the downloaded episodes.
I bought a ticket on the British Airways flight. $360 is a lot of money, and I just couldn't justify spending it in order to save myself a seven-hour layover.
Anyway, if you're planning on being in London on July 6, drop me a line.
