Barbara: Sunday

KarenFox — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:49:21 +0000

Despite rising early, I barely made the 7:43 train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. No high speed train, this. The ride is notoriously long and winding through the beautiful Judean hills up to the coastal plain. I came prepared with my breakfast, (whole wheat toast, yogurt and a tangerine), two daily papers, a special issue of Newsweek about Barak Obama, a scholarly article written by a woman friend about the late musical Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and even a slim volume by Rabbi Harold S Kushner (of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People fame) on Jewish spirituality. I only got through the breakfast, the newspapers and the magazine before we’d reached Tel Aviv 90 minutes later. Have you ever been to Tel Aviv? It was a sand dune when the first residents picked beach stones to determine which lots would be theirs back in 1909. A hundred years later it’s a glorious city, a bastion of Bauhaus architecture and Sydney-like skyscrapers. One of the world’s great cities. I had several meetings related to a program I’m helping developed to increase women’s employment within the religious establishment. The first meeting was in the Azrielli Tower. The train took me to the door. By the time the meetings were over, the city’s free newspaper was on the stands with more updated news than the morning editions. It featured the insider story of the murder of the Jewish emissaries in the Chabad house in Mumbai. Rivka Holtzberg, the co-director of the Center, was murdered first and her husband Gavriel—the name of an angel–covered her body with his prayer shawl. He was murdered soon after, along with the kosher inspectors, both fathers, and a grandmother tourist who’d come to visit her traveling daughter and grandchildren. Everyone was reading the paper. Of the ten attacks in Mumbai, only the attack on the Chabad house targeted a religious organization. Not that the other sites of attack feel unfamiliar. In our country, too, terrorists have picked out hotels, hospitals, cafes and military installations as targets, too. An old Pete Singer song asks “which side are you on.” Soon we’ll all have to choose in this global conflict. At least, that’s how I feel today.

Barbara: Saturday

KarenFox — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:45:50 +0000

It’s Saturday night in Jerusalem. For 25 hours, from Friday night until Saturday after sunset, I don’t watch TV or turn on a computer, but tonight I’ve already watched the news on three different channels to glean whatever I can about the horrendous act of savagery in Mumbai, particularly at the Chabad House, the Jewish Center. Chabad is an acronym for Wisdom, Understand and Knowledge, the theme of the Lubavitcher Hassidim, Orthodox Jews who provide free hospitality and religious studies to Jews around the world. They live modest, pious lives and embrace all. They bring up fine children without the support of a steady community. Most home school. What do they have to do with the tensions between Pakistan and India? The answer is nothing. They were targeted because they are an outpost of Judaism. Young couples travel to far-flung sites and spend most of their lives ministering to local and visiting Jews. This is a small country. My son-in-law knows the murdered young Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and so does my house guests. On Israel TV, a young man who was in prison in India told how Rabbi Holtzberg visited him and urged him not to lose hope. We will never know how their two-year old son, covered with blood, managed to get away, saved by the righteous Indian woman who rescued him. No apologists, please. This terrorism is pure evil and we must all condemn it.

Sixty Years, Sixty Voices » Terrorism

Barbara: Sunday

Barbara: Saturday