In praise of latkes

Potato latkes are for me intrinsic to Hanukkah, yet here in Israel does one see latkes? No! Just doughnuts, doughnuts, doughnuts.

This is just a small example of the stylization and standardization of Jewish observance that Israel has engendered in so many areas. The delicious, savoury, once-loved latke has been ousted in favour of the far less healthy doughnut, that apparently appeals more to the notoriously sweet Israeli tooth. (Did you know that the Coca-Cola Company make a sweeter Coke in Israel?)

"Why has this been allowed to happen?", asks Barry Newman in his Jerusalem Post article, here.

Could it have originated, as he suggests, in a bolshevik conspiracy to keep women out of their kitchens and in the fields - dependent on bakeries (and the workers) for their household treats?

A sobering thought.

For whom the bell tolls...

The family of an 84-year-old Orthodox Jew who is on life support says his condition has improved substantially after hospital doctors unsuccessfully tried to pull the plug on him over two months ago on the basis that there was no hope for recovery.

Miriam Geller says that her father, Sam Golubchuck - who is unwittingly at the center of a precedent-setting court case - is now "being weaned off life-support," and "is awake and holding our hands."

I first saw the story a month ago in a Jerusalem Post article. Today in an article in Haaretz we learn that, though he may not be out of the woods yet, he has further recovered:

Golubchuck is alive today only because his family was successful in getting an emergency ex parte injunction (without notifying the hospital) from Justice Perry Schulman that prevented the doctors from removing him from life support, a move that would have violated the family's wishes and religious beliefs.

May the Almighty grant him a complete recovery.

"No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's
or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee."

John Donne

Jewish breakdancing

This could only be a Chabad simcha. Wish I could have been there!

Haaretz editor begs for Israel to be raped

On the eve of the Bush-Rice visit to Israel the editor-in-chief of Haaretz has admitted to telling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel "wants to be raped" into a settlement.

The totally inappropiate remark was made at a dinner at the home of US Ambassador Richard Jones, where Rice met with an assemblage of Israels famous, self-appointed "elites." According to The Jewish Week, Ha'aretz's David Landau implored Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted 'to be raped.' He later added that the opportunity to tell her this was for him a 'wet dream come true'.

Unfortunately, as Caroline Glick has observed in The Jerusalem Post, the rape of Israel is in fact happening, egged on by the likes of Landau and the current corrupt leadership of the state of Israel. (An interesting blog comment can be seen here.)

With his totally inappropriate and unacceptable metaphor, Landau essentially admitted that the majority of citizens in Israel will never agree to concessions and withdrawals of the kind he fantasizes about. He is therefore desperate for the United States to impose them by force.

In other words, he is not saying "rape me", but rather "rape them".