Living spiritually, parenting proactively, cooking kosher
Several readers have expressed interest in pesticide-free etrogs for cooking.
Today, I spoke with a friend of ours, who grows etrogs up in the Galilee. He told me that they stop applying pesticides after picking the fruit for Sukkot, so etrogs that will ripen in the winter (around November – December) will grow without being sprayed.
If you are interested, drop me a line (my email appears in the About section) and I’ll give you his phone number.
Yesterday, we took advantage of the holidays to visit friends in Elon Moreh. I haven’t been into the Shomron for about 10 years, so this was an excellent opportunity to get a fresh look at the area.
We usually take advantage of family trips to anchor our children’s knowledge of various subjects to the site of actual places and things. As we drove past Shilo, we reminded them of the story of Elkana, Chana, and Shmuel (1 Samuel 1). On top of Mount Kabir, we pointed out Joshua’s altar (Joshua 8:30), Shechem, Mounts Eval and Gerizim, and Tevetz from the story of Avimelech (Judges 9:50). (The names of Biblical sites all over Israel have been preserved in the names of adjacent Arab villages. You can read more about this here.)
What I did not expect was the effect that the trip had on me. When I first came to Israel, I was constantly aware of the Biblical sites around me. It took a while until the amazement and the feeling of privilege at being able to walk on the same hills as David, Shmuel, and Yermiyahu wore off. Since I am neither an archeologist nor a tour guide, after living in the midst of the Biblical heartland for some 15 years, it’s not something I think about on the day-to-day basis.
Yesterday’s one hour drive and the accompanying discussion with the children reawakened this dormant awareness. During the two-thousand-year-long exile , the Jewish people maintained a connection with this land to the point that centuries after the exile, Biblical commentators could draw on their knowledge of Israel’s geography and topography to explain difficult passages in the Torah (Rashi on Genesis 37:14 is just one such example). We didn’t give up on this land while separated from it and we certainly have no plans of giving up on it now that we live, raise children, and plant trees on its soil.
Today we plan to visit Beth El and Jerusalem is on the itinerary for later this week. I’ am going to think of ideas from keeping familiarity blindness from taking over again.
Recently, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the Chief Rabbi of Tzfat (Safed), revealed that many growers of insect-free greens (the so-called Gush Katif vegetables) use extreme amounts of pesticides instead of employing the more intricate greenhouse methods originally developed in Gush Katif. the Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Shlomo Amar confirmed that there is evidence to support these allegations and disclosed that an investigation is underway.
Ironically, while excessive amounts of pesticides are detrimental to human health, they have only a limited effect on bugs.
As much as I would love to switch to organic vegetables, when it comes to greens it’s just not an option. Whenever we visit my parents in the US, I find myself squinting over cilantro and lettuce trying to discern whether there is a bug stuck somewhere on the leaves. However, I have decided to switch over to the Hasalat brand by Alei Katif (the original Gush Katif company). Though slightly more expensive, Hasalat greens are laboratory inspected for pesticide use (as evidenced by the lab label on their packaging).
The laboratory’s site www.lab-path.co.il lists the date of the latest inspection at the premises of each one of the growers. While it’s impossible to ascertain what really goes on in the field, for me this represents an effort at transparency.
The appraisals of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UN range from an exercise in futility to an address worthy of the new leader of the free world (especially against the backdrop of Obama’s tepid remarks).
Whatever one may think of the UN speech, I have found Netanyahu’s address before the Jewish American leaders at the 92nd Street Y to be very poignant. In it Netanyahu cited the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the driving force behind his 25-year-long career as Israel’s leading advocate abroad and the inspiration for the latest appearance before the UN.
Netanyahu revealed that he had met the Rebbe in 1984, while serving as Israel’s ambassador to the UN, and was instructed to light a candle of truth in the pitch darkness reigning inside the house of lies (Rebbe’s assessment of the UN). In his interview to the Israeli TV, Netanyahu said this message has been guiding him ever since.
Giving credit where credit is due is always admirable.
You can view Netanyahu’s entire speech at the 92 street Y here:
While reading Betty Mahmoody’s For the Love of a Child (the sequel to Not Without My Daughter), I got an insight into the folly known as the Goldstone Report. What’s the connection, you may ask? Read on.
As a mother, I wholeheartedly understand Betty Mahmoody’s motivation for fleeing Iran to bring up her daughter in a democratic Western society. But if we put aside our cultural biases, is there really a difference between Betty’s abduction of her daughter to the US (following which, the girl was forever separated from her father) and the husband’s original insistence on moving the family to Iran, even at the expense of separating the child from the mother? Each one of the parents wanted to bring up the child in his or her native culture, and, unable to reach an agreement, acted unilaterally on this desire. (I am aware of Betty’s claims of abuse, but I am setting this issue aside for the sake of the argument).
Likewise, though I wholeheartedly support the efforts of Yad Leachim to bring Jewish women married to Arab men (as well as the children of these marriages) back to the fold, I understand that my outlook is colored by my Jewish faith. The mechanism by which a Jewish woman takes her children unilaterally from Ramallah to Jerusalem to bring them up as Jews is the same as the one employed by her husband to take them back and raise them as Muslims.
So long as humanity is not united by a single ethical belief, the moral high ground often depends entirely on the subjective position of the observer. The same goes for Israel’s attempts to defend itself from its neighbors’ attacks. As long as the observers (be it the UN or the self-appointed European freedom fighters) have undertaken the Palestinian cause, no amount of ethical safety measures will absolve Israel from accusations of human rights violations.
To the contrary, the higher the hyper-ethical standard Israel attempts to maintain, the louder the accusations. I will never forget the terrifying hours during which we frantically tried to contact my brother-in-law stationed in Jenin, after hearing rumours of heavy casualties in the city during Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002. Though he emerged from combat unscathed, 13 of his comrades paid with their lives for Israel’s insistence on sending in ground troops in an effort to preserve civilian Palestinian lives. The “reward” for these efforts were movies the likes of Jenin Jenin and a worldwide outcry against Israel’s humanitarian violations.
In a similar vein, though IDF is the only army in the world to go through the pains of telephoning enemy civilians to warn them of planned air raids, as was done during the 2008 incursion into Gaza, Judge Goldstone and his ilk have no qualms lambasting Israel as a perpetrator of genocide.
Judaism’s dedication to the values of human life and compassion is unmatched by any religion. From ancient Jewish kings known throughout the world as “the kings of mercy” (1 Kings 20:31) to outstanding levels of voluntarism in modern Israel, Jews in general and Israelis in particular have no need for anyone’s ethical preaching. All efforts to live up to a superlative level of morality, not practiced anywhere else in the world, has so far backfired on Israel’s defensive efforts to defend itself.
The time has come for Israel to redefine its military ethic to conform to the Talmudic teaching of “if someone comes to kill you, arise and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a) and dispense with the attempts to save face while doing so. Though there’ll be little change in Israel’s public image, its defensive abilities will improve tremendously.
Recent reports of Israeli organ harvesting by the Swedish Aftonbladet reminded me of my childhood in Soviet Russia. As a kid growing up in Moscow, Palestinian refugees were perceived as the epitome of human despair. The Soviet TV would present daily reports of humanitarian crimes perpetrated by the Israeli aggressors against powerless Palestinian civilians. Although I was only six at the time, I distinctly remember the gruesome reports from Sabra and Shatila that were broadcast on the evening news day in and day out. Whenever anyone in the house would wrap a blanket around himself to keep out the chills, my staunchly Zionist mother would tell him to stop walking around like a Palestinian refugee and go get a sweater.
Today, some 25 years later, I find disconcerting resemblance between Western – especially European – reporting of events in Israel and the best traditions of Pravda’s virulent anti-Semitism. By detaching the Palestinians’ plight from its overall historical context and inflating incidents out of proportion, the media has succeeded in vilifying Israel and creating an unprecedented wave of ill feeling towards a nation that has had to defend its right to exist since day one.
The truth is the Palestinians have remained refugees for 60 years not only because the Arab states have used every trick up their sleeve to keep them this way, but also because they are better off as refugees eating off Israel’s prosperity than as citizens in just about any Arab country. In a recent article in Asia Times, Spengler presents novel analysis of the Palestinians’ “plight” based on indisputable facts.
Palestinians enjoy higher GDP, life expectancy, and literacy rates than almost any Arab nation. Truth is Palestinian refugees are far better off economically and socially than the citizens of Egypt, Syria, or Jordan. A friend of mine, a bookkeeper at a Jerusalem nursing home, recently related her surprise when two new employees, both residing at the Shuafat refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem, produced gold Visa cards as means of identification. (Gold Visas are not issued routinely in Israel, unlike in the US.)
Palestinians do suffer from high incidence of violent crime, internal fighting, and confrontations with the Israeli army. But they have written that script themselves. After two intifadas and thousands of casualties on both sides, some Palestinians now find themselves longing for the “the Israeli hell.”
Unfortunately, the new brand of European freedom fighters is keeping all that off its radar. As Thomas Friedman observed in his classic From Beirut to Jerusalem
I often wonder what it will take for our neighbours from across the Mediterranean to get over their prejudices and begin viewing Israel in a more objective light. Then again, may be we should stop being surprised. After all, history usually repeats itself.