The Jewish Chronicle Blog

Shachar Peer does Israel proud

Great tennis from Shachar Peer in the quarter finals of the Australian Open tonight! Although she lost to Serena Williams (6:3, 2:6, 6:8), she gave the former champion a real run for her money and was, at one stage, just two points away from a win (almost becoming the first Israeli to reach the semi-final of a grand-slam). She showed great fighting spirit and in true Israeli style, her 5-odd supporters in the stadium managed to sound louder than the rest of the crowd combined.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Transsexual -- and Orthodox

Interesting set of articles in JTA about an Orthodox man in Toronto who decided, this last year, to change his gender -- while remaining in his community and remaining Orthodox:

Mordechai used to be known in his Toronto Orthodox community as Nord, short for Nord the Barbarian, which referred to his girth and hairiness. He now wishes to be called Nicole, and has chosen Neshama, or Soul, as a Hebrew name. Nicole would like to remain part of the community.

“My earliest memory is crying myself to sleep, wishing and hoping and praying to God that I would wake up a girl,” she said. “But I thought all boys must feel like that.”

Growing up and attending boys yeshivas, however, that hope “couldn’t exist, so it got buried” — until right after her honeymoon three years ago.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it went from 3 or 5 to 1,000,” Nicole said of her gender dysphoria. “I couldn’t function or focus on anything else. It became a very real threat to my life. When I got enough of a handle on it to tell [my wife] a few months later, we cried for hours. We cried a lot for two-and-a-half years.”

They searched for alternatives, including reorientation therapy with a psychiatrist affiliated with a group called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality.

Last fall, however, Nicole began a trial on hormone therapy. In June, when it became clear that transition was inevitable — and the results of the hormones were becoming apparent — Mordechai gave his wife a get, or Jewish divorce, and started to live life as Nicole.

What has rocked the Toronto community, and is being followed closely in the transsexual community, is that rather than simply disappearing, Nicole has been open about her condition and is the first person to transition “in place” within an Orthodox community.

“Gender dysphoria is not something I chose, and for me transition is about survival, not comfort or happiness,” Nicole said. “I believe that survival is a moral and halachic imperative, and I hoped my family and friends would want the opportunity to be here for me. I know it will take time. And I know some people won’t want to deal with it. But I wasn’t willing to write everybody else off.”

Nicole has a pretty open and honest blog, discussing the transition. An excerpt:

The reason that my transition was and is necessary is because it maintains my ability to keep breathing, not because it would make my life easy or happy. And it has done just that: allowed me to keep breathing, and at the same time it has made my life exceptionally complicated and enormously difficult. And as a result, most if not all of the things that made me happy in the past have been taken from my life. And as I have expressed before, knowing and understanding the confusion, sadness, and pain that has been experienced by many of the people that I love and care about has removed any and all trace of the joy and satisfaction that I wish I could feel about finally experiencing some relief from the pain of my condition...

The differences in people’s reactions have been remarkably individual and have not been based on factors that might have been thought of as being determinative. Ie. Some very religious people have been supportive, while others have been the opposite. Some more secular people have been negative while others have been the opposite. Some people see me as a person, others see me as a blight on decent society and as an unpleasantness, some see me as a tragic figure, while some see me as an inspiration. Some know me as the same person, the same friend, dealing with an uncommon and difficult challenge and transition process, and some question whether they ever really knew me at all and feel a sense of betrayal (although not many of the latter group has spent much time trying to find out if they're right). Some people directly affected by the realities of my transition have been negative and others have been positive, although certainly everyone that has been directly affected has found it challenging, and difficult to satisfy what may seem to be competing priorities, loyalties, etc. So it seems that predicting people’s reactions is a bit of a crapshoot.

More here.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Christmas eve -- the Jewish take

Why is Christmas eve -- also known in the Jewish world as "Nitl Nacht" -- different from all other nights? Tonight is the one night of the year on which chassidim have a custom not to learn Torah.

What's this all about?

1. The origin of the custom: Two main theories:

• In Eastern Europe, most people were too poor to own sefarim, or Jewish books, so they needed to do their learning at the Beit Midrash, or study hall. On Christmas eve, it was just too dangerous for people to walk around (i.e., to and from the Beit Midrash), and so the custom arose of not learning on that night.
• Spiritual/mystical/Kabbalistic - When a Jew learns Torah, it brings about an improvement in the world. We don't want to bring about such improvements at a time when the Christian majority is devoutly steeped in their prayers, lest outsiders believe the improvement came from the Christian worship / lest any of the spiritual energy created by Jewish Torah learning to be diverted to Jesus's credit.
• Another possibility is that the original practice was to go to sleep early and when the midnight masses would begin Jews would gather in synagogues and learn all night. All that remains of this custom is not to learn on the eve of December 25th. Seemingly connected is the explanation brought by the Hatam Sofer (Likutei Shut Hatam Sofer no. 20) that ideally, Jews should be learning then to counteract the effects of the Christian prayer during midnight mass. But our leaders did not want to require a special seder (learning session) on that night, lest they appear to be reflecting the practice of non-Jews. Hence, they prohibited learning before midnight, knowing that dedicated students of Torah would rise after midnight to make up the study they had missed.
  
  2. Origins of the phrase, 'Nitl Nacht': Possibilities include:
• Derives from the Hebrew word "nitleh" ("hanged"), describing Jesus's end (although Christmas of course celebrates his birth...)
• The term "nittel" comes from the Latin, either dies natalis (day of birth) or Natalis Domini (birth of our Lord).
• Some say it alludes to negativity - "nit"
• Nitl is defined as a yiddish acronom for "nisht tor lernen"/"nisht yidden terren lernen'-- ie "not allowed to learn."

Extensive correspondence on the topic (including several paragraphs which I've shamelessly plagiarised above) here, here and here. First posted here.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Definition of a truce

Radio 4 is apparently not the only part of the BBC which doesn't understand the definition of a ceasefire. A headline on the BBC website today reads: "Gaza truce holds despite violence." To help out, here's the dictionary definition of 'truce':

1. a suspension of hostilities for a specified period of time by mutual agreement of the warring parties; cease-fire; armistice.
2. an agreement or treaty establishing this.
3. a temporary respite, as from trouble or pain.

In other words, no violence. Why is this so hard to understand?

UPDATE: Someone else noticed.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Putting our spin on the dreidl

Dictionary.com has a list of words connected to Channukah, and their origins. Did you know, for example, that 'latke' comes from the Russian l'tka, or "pastry" (which is strange, because a latke, at least as I know it, isn't a pastry at all...), and wasn't recorded in the English language until 1927? Me neither. Or that dreidl is actually a Yiddish word coming from German drehen, "to turn"?

Actually, I knew that one. I wrote about the real origins of the dreidl on my old blog last year. Worth recycling:

It doesn't take a great genius to realize that the dreidl probably did not originate, per the myth, with Jewish children in Hasmonean times trying to disguise the fact that they were learning Torah. But where does it actually come from? I'd previously never really thought about it, but learned today that it was in fact a popular game in Europe, and especially Germany, in the 16th century -- particularly around Christmas time (aha!).

As this site explains, the word 'dreidl' itself is derived from the German word drehen, which means to spin... So far, so unsurprising. I was intrigued to discover, however, that not only is the game itself Germanic in origin, but that the letters on the dreidl come directly from the German as well:    

The letters on the faces of the gambling toy, which were mnemonic for the rules of the game, varied in each nation. The letters on the English spinning top were: T for Take, H for Half, P for Put, N for None. In the German game, the letters were: N for Nichts (nothing), G for Ganz (all), H for Halb (half), S for Stell (put). The Hebrew letters on the dreidel seem to have come directly from the German gambling toy: Nun for Nichts (nothing), Gimel for Ganz (all), Hay for Halb (half), Shin for Stell (put). In an effort to link the game to the celebration of Hanukkah, the Hebrew letters nun, gimel, hay and shin were said to stand for the phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham, which means "a great miracle happened there."

Also interesting because I had always assumed that 'nun-gimmel-hay-pay' was the real thing and that our diaspora 'nun-gimmel-hay-shin' was the poor cousin....

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

CNN vs. David Duke

I recommend watching this clip from CNN last week, in which former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke -- in Tehran for the Holocaust conference -- gives interviewer Wolf Blitzer, the son of Holocaust survivors, a run for his money.  Too often, there's a tendency to dismiss Holocaust deniers as kooks -- "who's going to listen to them anyway?" The Blitzer-Duke interview is a demonstration of just how highly intelligent and articulate -- and therefore dangerous -- such people can be. An important reminder on the day that David Irving is released from prison in Austria.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Web winners

Congratulations to Treppenwitz, a blog written by American-born Israeli David Bogner, which has come second in the prestigious Weblog Awards (2006) in the "Best Middle East or Africa blog" category.  Treppenwitz gives a great picture of what life is really like for an Anglo living in Israel and is always well worth a visit.

In first place: Rantings of a Sandmonkey, written by a "an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled" Egyptian. One of the pleasures of the blogosphere is the opportunity to get a perspective you would never otherwise hear. As Treppenwitz writes about Sandmonkey:

It is, admittedly, a bit humbling to see someone from outside the country routinely demonstrate a better grasp of local events than we Israelis...

Does this mean I always agree with the Sandmonkey?  Of course not!

But there is something refreshing about reading someone who isn't personally invested in either the Palestinian or Israeli myths/legends that always seem to crop up whenever the ongoing conflict is discussed.  It is also instructive to have an Arab writer (albeit one who was educated in the west) taking Israeli and Palestinian extremist to task with equal fervor... and humor.

A good place to start is one of Sandmonkey's recent posts, "Are Israeli nukes a threat to Egypt?"

I also highly recommend some of the other Arab blogs which made it to the finals, Saudi Jeans and Secret Dubai Diary in particular, for a look into societies most of us talk about in strategic terms, but actually don't know very well.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Thank you, Mr Adelson

There's been relatively little attention paid across the J-blogosphere to the announcement last week that America's third richest man, Sheldon Adelson, is setting up a foundation that will donate more than $200 million a year to Jewish causes, and it's a shame. With this mega-pledge he has single-handedly changed the face of Jewish philanthropy -- significantly raising the bar for other donors, putting Jewish causes back on the map at a time when many Jewish philanthropists prefer to put their money elsewhere, and potentially having a huge impact on the Jewish people as a whole.

An interesting point is raised in Ha'aretz:

"Many donors face the challenge when deciding to give away large sums of money of finding appropriate institutions to use that money effectively and efficiently. The higher the target goal for giving money away, the harder it becomes to find places to give it to," notes Jewish philanthropy expert Gary Tobin, President of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco.

We should all have such problems! In any case, according to Yediot Achronot, "half of the sum will be allocated to purchasing medications and providing medical assistance to the needy and to Jewish patients across the world. The second half will apparently be earmarked for preserving the Jewish heritage."  These are both relatively 'unsexy' causes -- compared to the question, for example, of how to engage our young people -- but, each in their own way, could not be more important.

Thank you, Mr Adelson.

UPDATE: He is also donating $5m to birthright.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Rabbis and rebbetzins, uncensored

Reflections of a Rabbi's Wife is one of the more interesting blogs I've come across lately. Written by an "Observant Reform" rabbi's wife in the States, it reminds me of Renegade Rebbetzin (Orthodox) in its early days, before the RR seemed to be in perpetual nervous breakdown mode. It's well-written, humourous, and revolves around the incredible (incredibly bad, that is) behaviour of the congregants.

A good starting point is this post, in which an obnoxious synagogue member complains to the rabbi about the quality of his high holiday sermons -- while they are both stark naked in the communal shower at the gym. This isn't the first time I've heard this kind of story: a friend of mine once turned to greet a well-known rabbi's wife in the changing rooms at Hampstead pond just as the rebbetzin was undressing. Needless to say, both were somewhat embarrased. I am, however, only half sympathetic to the clergy in question: if you were a community rabbi or rebbetzin, wouldn't you make sure you found a private cubicle -- or changed and showered at home?

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv

Definition of a ceasefire

Charles Moore, in The Spectator, encapsulates perfectly why so many people think the BBC is biased against Israel:

The BBC's Radio Four on Monday morning: 'The ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza appears to be holding even after militants fired rockets into Israeli territory.' So the BBC's definition of a ceasefire that holds is one in which Israel does not fire, but Palestinians do.

This post was written by Miriam Shaviv