Op-Ed – Page 54

The tent is getting smaller

Amid what had been a steady stream of volunteer commitments I had undertaken in the Jewish community, it seems I now have some more free time. I could be pleased by the fact that I am freed from a major board commitment, but I’m not. Because something’s rotten in the state of Diaspora Jewish communal discourse.

Let’s back up. After seven years of dedicated service on the board of a large Jewish organization here in Ottawa, where I helped initiate policies around ecological sustainability, reform the board’s governance and procedures, work on LGBTQ inclusion, and reformulate our mission statement to better reflect the organization’s values, I found myself having risen through the ranks of the board’s executive to the position of vice-chair. All this along with teaching adult education classes at the institution, creating an innovative women’s athletic program there and being a regular user, along with my family, of a variety of programs and services. Normal board succession procedures imply that I would be next in line for chair – a position I had made plain to those in charge that I was willing to take on.

But rumblings over the past half-year suggested that I was potentially radioactive in the minds of some donors. Why? Because of my writings on the subject of Israel. In short, the board’s selection committee made clear that they’d be better off without me.

Readers of my columns know that while I am frequently critical of Israeli policies around the occupation and other anti-democratic moves afoot in Israel, I am squarely in the camp of liberal Zionism. This means that, in addition to criticizing the occupation and pressing Israel to make the necessary conditions to engage in a meaningful peace process, I oppose full-out boycott of Israel leading to the undermining of its core identity as a Jewish state. I have publicly debated anti-Zionists and non-Zionists – both in person and in print – on these issues, and I regularly tout the importance of Israel engagement and Jewish and Hebrew literacy. These are all ideas that I also put forth both in my columns in local Canadian Jewish papers and in international media, in Haaretz, the Forward and, before that, in Open Zion at the Daily Beast. Still, it seems that when it comes to positions of community leadership, none of this is enough to establish one’s loyalty to a tent that is rapidly shrinking.

We’ve heard this all before, of course. Witness the stonewalling reaction Peter Beinart received by the Toronto-based Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs when his organizers tried to get him an audience with Hillel on campus during his three-city Canadian tour a couple of years ago. And then there’s the canceling of David Harris-Gershon’s talk at the Jewish community centre in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

It’s by now a truism that the breadth of policy debate among Israelis themselves far outsizes what is evidently permitted within the Diaspora Jewish community. But then, neither do Israeli Jews have to actively work to inculcate Jewish identity, as I frequently have in my writings, including promoting Jewish education, pushing for the active use of Hebrew, examining the value of synagogue affiliation, defending Jewish and Zionist summer camping experiences and, yes, insisting on the value of a Diaspora connection to Israel.

So, I’m left to ask this: what is it, ultimately, that we, as Jewish community volunteers and activists, are being asked to be loyal to? Are we being asked to promote Jewish community vitality, wrestle with ideas around Israeli politics and policies, encourage Jewish literacy, and consider realities that preserve Israel’s Jewish and democratic character? Or are we being asked to simply support the endless occupation just as we see Israel’s democratic character crumbling before our very eyes, as the country becomes more and more of a pariah state? I think I know the answer. But how I wish it weren’t so.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com.

The Klinghoffer controversy

Even if you’re not a fan of opera, you may have heard about the worldwide dust-up over the recent staging by the New York Metropolitan Opera of The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams, an eminent American composer. (The opera closed Nov. 15.)

The opera is based on the 1985 hijacking of a Mediterranean cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, by Palestinian terrorists demanding the release of their allies from Israeli jails. Tragically, one of the passengers, a retired Jewish American named Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered and tossed overboard, along with his wheelchair.

Since its debut in 1991, the opera has aroused condemnation by some who claim that the opera merely glorifies antisemitism and Palestinian terrorism. On Oct. 20, a few hundred people protested outside the Met, led by politicians such as Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor. One Jewish leader spoke of protesting “until the set is burned to the ground.” Under censorship pressure, performances of The Death of Klinghoffer have been relatively rare since 1991, and the Met decided to cancel its usual cinecast to movie theatres.

The Klinghoffers’ daughters continue to condemn the opera, as they believe it “rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father…. Terrorism cannot be rationalized. It cannot be understood.”

What’s the cause of the condemnation? The opera begins with a chorus of exiled Palestinians that acknowledges the forcible eviction of Palestinian Arabs in 1948: “Of that house not a wall was left to stand / Israel laid all to waste.” (This is followed, though, by a chorus of exiled Jews, which acknowledges Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, and the great sense of hope accompanying a return to the Holy Land.) Later, one of the hijackers briefly mouths antisemitic comments about Jews getting fat off poor people, and criticizes both British and American society: “America is one big Jew.”

However, Adams’ opera (with a libretto by Alice Goodman, who was raised a Reform Jew) has been widely hailed as a fine work of art. For example, on Oct. 21, Anthony Tommasini, the respected New York Times music reviewer, called Adams’ opera “a searching, spiritual and humane work.”

… those who consider this opera as an opinion-editorial or a speech are missing the point of a work of art that has despair, solitude and love at its core….

I am in sympathy with Tommasini. I’ve carefully watched the London Symphony Orchestra production on DVD, winner of the Prix Italia, and found the opera to be powerful, spiritual, lyric – and not a screed against Jews or Israel. There’s an attempt at balance in recalling the background of the conflict that on the whole succeeds, and a rather profound exploration of the roots of a common sense of exile, despair and misery in the Mideast. Adams himself has noted that the “situation … is much too complex to fall into one easy answer or another.” In any case, those who consider this opera as an opinion-editorial or a speech are missing the point of a work of art that has despair, solitude and love at its core – like most operas, “a song of love and death,” in the words of Peter Conrad, an opera scholar.

It seems to me there are three key points, above and beyond the obvious one that censorship of art is virtually always wrong, and is a familiar tactic of totalitarian states.

First, the opera does not romanticize or legitimize the hijackers. While there are some fleeting complexities attributed to one or two of them, which is to the credit of the work, they are portrayed as brutal, hysterical thugs on the boat – “punks” as Mrs. Klinghoffer calls them. When the ship’s captain suggests to the most articulate hijacker that he speak to his enemies of his misery, the hijacker demurs and posits death as the only outcome. Palestinian activists assault and pour acid on the face of a young Arab woman who is deemed too Western.

Certainly, the boat’s bystanders are not the mortal core. One Swiss grandmother with her grandson in tow comments with satisfaction, “At least we are not Jews.”

Actually, the moral core of the opera – the heroes, if one can use that term – is the Klinghoffers. Leon delivers a brave, outspoken speech against terrorism to one of the hijackers, condemning those who would throw gasoline around a loaded bus and burn it. His wife’s eloquent lament that ends the opera is a tribute to the love and resistance to evil of ordinary people.

Second, as with other art works, the portrayal of a character’s attitudes, declarations or motivations is not an endorsement of these. In Ulysses by James Joyce, for example, a repugnant Irish nationalist is given outrageous lines against Jews, but Joyce obviously meant these words to express his disgust with such bigotry. Joyce’s Jew Leopold Bloom rather abashedly follows with his condemnation of hate and injustice.

Third, the idea that “terrorism … cannot be understood” leaves me uneasy. For example, to analyze and to understand Nazism is not to condone or accept it. Our understanding of bigotry and evil has come a long way since the early 1960s with the thousands of works by scholars on Nazism and the Holocaust. In the words of two Holocaust scholars, “We must look into the abyss to look beyond it” (Robert Lifton); “Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving” (Christopher Browning). If people come away from the opera with insights into what Adams calls the complexities, all the better.

In the end, the opera shows us that in a sense we are all in the same boat, whether it be the Achille Lauro or a larger craft. We share a pervasive sense of isolation, exile and despair that perhaps can be mitigated by the humble love of which Mrs. Klinghoffer sings.

Goodman’s libretto includes the point that “Islamic fundamentalism flourishes in a climate of despair.” She has the captain of the ship observe the “comprehensive solitude” of the characters on the boat. “Evil grows exponentially…. Violence speaks a single long sentence inflicted and endured in hell by those who have despaired.” Given the two solitudes, sadly, there’s more than enough despair to go around among the many peoples of the Middle East.

Gene Homel teaches liberal studies at the B.C. Institute of Technology, including a course on the Holocaust. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, and has published numerous articles on history, politics and culture.

Reasons to protest Klinghoffer

One of the most controversial operas in recent memory, The Death of Klinghoffer, debuted Oct. 20 at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The Met has scheduled seven more performances through November. The first staging did not occur without protest, as about 400 demonstrators – including Jewish communal and nationally recognized leaders – came to Lincoln Centre to denounce the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel opera.

Klinghoffer, the creation of composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, premièred in 1991, with few additional stagings. The opera is based on the 1985 murder of a 69-year-old American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, on an Italian cruise ship. Klinghoffer, confined to a wheelchair, was shot in the head by Palestinian Arab terrorists who had hijacked the ship. They dumped his body into the Mediterranean Sea.

The opera repeatedly defames Jews and Israelis as representatives of religious/ethnic or national groups. Nowhere does it similarly criticize Arabs/Muslims as a group. The Met’s intransigent insistence that Klinghoffer must be staged has become an organizational calamity.

Adams and Goodman make up an aptly matched pair. Their Jewish problem seems to include an obsession with what they imagine to be Jewish guilt. This should not be surprising on the part of Goodman, perhaps, since, during the writing of Klinghoffer, she rejected her American Jewish heritage and joined the Anglican Church. The church’s leadership has been known in recent years for its hostility toward Israel. Goodman is now a parish priest in England.

But is Klinghoffer the only Adams/Goodman opera that contains elements of antiemitism, including the stereotypical notion of Jewish guilt?

Consider the Adams/Goodman opera Nixon in China (world première 1987, Met première 2011). It offered relatively humane depictions of President Richard M. Nixon and Chinese leader Mao Zedong – a mass murderer on the scale of a Hitler or Stalin – but not a similarly sympathetic picture of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a Jew. In a 1988 review of the opera, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page wrote that Kissinger is depicted as “a venal, jabbering, opportunistic buffoon.” Others remarked that Kissinger is portrayed as cruel and cunning.

A bizarre, memorable scene involving Kissinger occurs in the second act. In a propagandistic ballet staged by Madame Mao for the Nixon entourage, First Lady Pat Nixon thinks she sees Kissinger playing an evil landlord savagely whipping a poor village girl. Not seeing Kissinger in the audience or at the Nixon family table, Mrs. Nixon points to the landlord while whispering to her husband, “Doesn’t that look like you-know-who?” Indeed, the singer who plays the role of Kissinger also plays the role of the evil landlord.

Then there is the Adams opera Doctor Atomic (world première 2005, Met première 2008). Its storyline centres on Jewish American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called the “father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. The project developed the nuclear weapons that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 100,000 people and causing Japan to surrender to the United States, thus ending the war earlier than would have otherwise been the case. The earlier end potentially saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other lives on both sides.

Adams and librettists Goodman and Peter Sellars depict Oppenheimer as consumed with guilt and torn with remorse. Did they exaggerate here? According to a 1967 New York Times report, Oppenheimer was “beset by the moral consequences of the bomb, which, he told fellow physicists, had ‘dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war’ … [but] in later years, he seemed to indicate that the ‘sin’ was not to be taken personally. ‘I carry no weight on my conscience,’ he said in 1961 in reference to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Defenders of The Death of Klinghoffer seem either unaware or unconcerned about any of the several instances of the opera’s anti-Jewish and inflammatory lyrics. Some of these were cited by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America in an open letter to Met general manager Peter Gelb on May 29, 2014. The letter helped spark initial protests against staging Klinghoffer and resulted in the cancellation of a Nov. 15 large-screen simulcast of the opera that would have been viewed live by hundreds of thousands of people in theaters in 70 countries.

Klinghoffer defenders treat the libretto – the text sung and spoken in the opera – as proving nothing. Instead, they seem to either misunderstand, or misuse as camouflage, the concept of “artistic freedom.” It is possible to defend Klinghoffer on artistic grounds, but the art involved is the low variety of the propagandist, not the high art of worthwhile opera. The defenders act as if neither the libretto nor the music matters much. In fact, while the lyrics recycle some of the worst antisemitic canards, the music is mediocre and unremarkable except for the propagandistic way it is used by Adams to underscore words of the Palestinian hijackers. This was pointed out by eminent American musicologist Richard Taruskin in a December 2001 New York Times article strongly condemning the Adams opera, headlined “Music’s dangers and the case for control.”

The Death of Klinghoffer is a vehicle for tendentious reiteration of antisemitic and anti-Zionist slurs. But this opera, when considered together with the other two Adams/Goodman opera collaborations mentioned here, represents something more – a prejudicial obsession with Jews.

Myron Kaplan is a senior research analyst for the Boston-based, 65,000-member Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. This article was originally published by jns.org.

“Temporary” occupation

It’s a question that defines the debate over Israel’s policies and the state’s grand strategy: do Israeli human rights organizations monitoring the occupation merely serve as a fig leaf, adding an ethical patina to what is a fundamentally immoral situation?

Four months into his new position as head of B’Tselem, having come from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Hagai El-Ad and I spoke by phone recently about this and other issues. [To read the JI’s interview with El-Ad, click here.]

Given that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was supposed to be “temporary,” El-Ad is well aware that “at some point the term loses its meaning.” So, as he took the helm of B’Tselem last May, the organization issued a position paper provocatively named 47 Years of Temporary Occupation. As El-Ad put it, B’Tselem is shifting its focus from “fighting against human rights violations under occupation to a strategy [emphasizing] that the occupation will forever violate the human rights of Palestinians.” To this end, B’Tselem is now trying to end the occupation – not just help manage it.

It’s a laudable goal. But how achievable is it?

B’Tselem is starting with some concrete steps, however limited. For one, they have recently announced that they will not cooperate with Israel Defence Forces military investigations around Operation Protective Edge. Calling it “theatre of the absurd,” El-Ad believes that the military investigation system is one intended to “always result in impunity.” And this protected military violence is a necessary “lifeline of the occupation.” Hence, the need to squelch it.

As far as the bigger picture goes, El-Ad was cautiously optimistic: probably a necessary blend for anyone in human rights work in the Israel/Palestine morass. He takes comfort from what he sees as B’Tselem’s mission being fundamentally buttressed by the very human rights discourse extant in Israel. That the concept of human rights is a “relevant currency” in Israeli politics gives the organization an important starting point by which to leverage societal consensus. Though without the clout or mandate to engage in electoral lobbying efforts, working to end the occupation must be done very much at arm’s length from the policy sphere. Still, it’s a start.

El-Ad adds that he invites others to see what they can do “in their own communities” to disrupt the idea of the occupation as “business as usual.”

OK, so most of us can agree that the occupation is an undesirable situation, but what about the argument, issued frequently by Israel’s most strident defenders, that the status quo is a security imperative? If Hamas didn’t launch rockets, the thinking goes, the war in Gaza wouldn’t have been necessary. And, if West Bank Palestinians didn’t seek to blow up Israelis, the checkpoints and night raids and (the various) separate roads could be dismantled. And we all know about the apartheid, uh, separation, ahem, security wall.

Trading off between security on one hand, and human rights and ending occupation on the other, is a false dichotomy, El-Ad explained. In Gaza, “we’ve encountered time and again the theory that using more and more force will provide the desired outcome. But that’s not really working.” When it comes to day-to-day military policing in the West Bank to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens, we all know the chicken-egg argument: the internal checkpoints would be unnecessary were there not settlements (illegal under international law) to protect, hence, B’Tselem’s claim, in its 47 Years of Temporary Occupation document, that settlements are “the heart of the matter.”

Now that the fighting in Gaza has died down, B’Tselem is reflecting on its work compiling data on casualties, monitoring international humanitarian law violations – including by Hamas – and collecting first-person testimonies, attempting to put a face to the Palestinians in Gaza. El-Ad is quick to note that the media coverage in Israel tended to be one-sided, with little coverage of the war experience for Gazans. As an antidote, B’Tselem relied heavily on social media and web coverage to get additional information disseminated, despite a hacking attempt that left their website site crippled for a few days.

After talking to El-Ad, I’m left with a strange combination of hope and cynicism. As someone who cares deeply about seeing an end to the occupation, I’m buoyed by the fact that the head of Israel’s most important human rights organization has this broader goal top of mind. At the same time, absent the apparent political will in the top echelons of the Israeli government, I can’t escape the belief that intelligent, passionate and committed Israeli change-makers like El-Ad are too often left clapping with one hand.

Museums must identify assets’ origins

Engaging in issues pertaining to economic aspects of the Holocaust is never an easy task. However, it is morally incumbent upon us as a society, as a people and as a nation to deal with these issues. In addition to the atrocious genocide that it was, the Holocaust also witnessed the largest and most heinous art thefts in history. Alongside building and operating a massacre machine, the Nazis systematically stole property from the Jews, robbed them of their money, stripped them of their wealth and plundered the cultural treasures that they had collected.

In 2006, following a parliamentary inquiry committee chaired by MK Colette Avital, the Israeli Knesset enacted a law regarding Holocaust victims’ assets that were purchased or deposited in Eretz Israel. Hashava, the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets Ltd., was established first and foremost to locate assets purchased by Holocaust victims in Israel. Once these assets become entrusted to Hashava, Hashava works to locate the rightful heirs, who are for the most part completely unaware that their relatives had left behind private property.

As chief executive officer of the company, I am frequently asked about these Holocaust victims who had purchased assets in Israel. Who are they? My answer is as follows. Although it sounds like a cliché today, the common denominator for these individuals was that investing in the Eretz Israel was considered part of a greater vision and dream. The majority of these investors were ardent Zionists responding to the call to purchase real estate and settle the land of Israel by opening bank accounts there, buying stocks and depositing savings. After the war, Israel even saw an influx of cultural treasures such as books and Judaica items, as well as works of art and other objects that had been stolen by the Nazis.

According to estimates by international organizations, close to 600,000 paintings were looted along with hundreds of thousands of other art masterpieces. To our chagrin, while Israel expects European countries – including Germany, Austria and France, as well as countries such as the United States, Russia and Canada – to make a concerted effort to identify stolen cultural items in their national collections, Israel fails to act with this same fervor regarding the assets in her own backyard. The Washington Principles, a set of guidelines that requires museums to research the origins of their pieces in order to identify their original owners prior to the items’ appropriation during the Holocaust, was adopted by 44 countries, including Israel. The principles were adopted, yet the implementation of them has lagged behind.

Artwork, Judaica and books that made their way to Israel after the Holocaust are not just economically and historically valuable cultural assets, they are also a symbol and a testimonial to the people and communities that once were and now no longer exist. They are memorials, albeit anonymously. Unless the museums conduct investigations into the origins of their collections, the owners of these pieces of art will receive no recognition or memorial, since this important provenance research is the only means of identifying the true owners of the artwork and bringing this circle to a close.

Practise what you preach. At the very least, Israel must abide by the standards that it demands from the rest of the world. Israel must assume the same responsibilities as it did for the assets of Zionists who perished in the Holocaust. It is our duty to promote the implementation – via proper legislation – of the obligations held by the museums, libraries and other similar bodies to make an effort toward identifying artwork and objects that were seized by the Nazis and eventually found their way to Israel and into their collections. This applies to artwork that arrived in Israel as a unit, such as the famous JRSO (Jewish Restitution Successor Organization) collection that arrived at Bezalel and was subsequently transferred to the Israel Museum, as well as artwork that trickled into museums during later years by way of donations, gifts or innocent purchases.

These stolen treasures must not remain hidden assets. To this end, Israel must carry on with the important process that it already set in motion, implementing the Washington Principles by way of legislation that would require museums to conduct provenance research about the origins of their pieces. It would be of great respect for the museums in Israel if they allocate resources to locate art and cultural pieces that were stolen during the Holocaust and are currently in their own collections, whether the items are on public display or hidden away in basements.

Dr. Israel Peleg is chief executive officer of Hashava, the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets Ltd. (hashava.info).

Time for dynamic on-campus discourse on Israel/Palestine

With September upon us and the Gaza war behind us, university students may be facing Israel-on-campus discourse this semester with some extra trepidation. I often hear Jewish parents wondering about how we can best prepare our kids to “face” Israel opponents on campus. As a past active Jewish undergraduate student myself and now as a professor who specializes in the topic of Israel/Palestine, here are some of my thoughts about the best way to approach the topic of Israel on campus.

Critical thinking above all else. In today’s political climate, no one is served by advancing talking points rather than asking tough questions and truly listening. Jewish students should not have to see themselves as ambassadors of the Jewish state. Israel has its own cadre of hasbarah professionals. As a place to create intelligent and productive global citizens, the role of university is to help students absorb information and apply conceptual reasoning in a critically engaged way. Jewish students should not have to leave their critical faculties at the door on the subject of Israel, nor should they have to consider the classroom environment – with its natural predilection for analyzing multiple sides of a problem – as hermetically sealed from the rest of the campus, where more informal discussion and occasional activism takes place.

Put aside the labels. Students would be forgiven for believing that they must adopt a label like “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine” either before arriving on campus or while there. But, as I consistently try to show my students, those terms mean little. To some, being pro-Israel means supporting the settler enterprise. To others, it means spurring Israel to make peace with the Palestinian Authority. Similarly, being pro-Palestine may mean supporting Hamas’ war effort, just as it might mean supporting Mahmoud Abbas’ attempt to reach a peace agreement with the Israeli government. By assuming a monolithic stance, students mentally close out possibilities. Students who care about the region must take time to consider what is best for the individuals and nations living there.

Focus on the “why” questions. While the out-of-classroom campus climate can unfortunately tend towards the “blame game,” where activists point fingers at one side or another, students would be best served by focusing on the “why” questions. Analyzing why each set of political actors takes the actions they do is ultimately the best thing students can do to deepen their understanding of the region and perhaps to ultimately be in a position to help bring about desired outcomes. Importantly, addressing the “why” questions is not the same as providing moral justifications. “Why does Hamas shoot rockets?” could be addressed by an array of possible answers, all of which should be put on the table and evaluated using the best knowledge we have, before making gut assumptions. Focusing on these explanatory questions can also help to further dialogue with people whose instinctual political allegiances may be different.

Practice empathy. Moving from the “why” questions to the “what should be” questions is best done through a position of empathy. Understanding the narratives, experiences, and emotional and material reality of each “side” is essential to prescribing political outcomes that will stick. Just as demanding that Israel give up its Jewish identity is going to be a non-starter, so too is not recognizing that no people is going to accept living under occupation in perpetuity.

Start early. Finally, it’s all good and fine to hope that our community’s Jewish students are primed for Israel engagement on campus, but the kind of critical engagement that enables students to deploy all their intellectual and cultural tools must start early. Our community needs to ensure that spoken Hebrew instruction in our day and supplementary schools is a priority, thus paving the way for our students to engage with Israel and Israelis in a more intimate and nuanced way whether via social media or, ideally, in person. Similarly, our elementary and high schools should ensure that wide-ranging discussion on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship is encouraged, and that groupthink is avoided. An informed and critically engaged citizen will be one who can contribute most potently – and that is ultimately good for Jewish continuity, to boot.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. This article was originally published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

Highest level of tzedakah

Ever hear of Heifer International? No? Until recently, I’d never heard of it either. I was talking to my grandsons, ages 7 and 3, via the webcam perched atop my computer screen. The boys were telling me about their Shabbat observances. They wear kippahs, they have a special dinner with challah and wine, Mommy lights candles and Daddy says brachas. And their job is to put money into the tzedakah boxes, the pushkes, they made at Hebrew school. They held the boxes up to the screen so I could see them.

“What do you do with the money when the boxes are filled?” I asked.

“We give it to people who don’t have as much food or money as we have,” the older boy said.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“We send it to this place called Heifer International.”

Intrigued, I looked it up. To my surprise, it’s actually a well-known charity started by a Midwestern farmer named Dan West who was ladling out rations of milk to hungry kids during the Spanish Civil War. He realized that simply doling out food does not solve the problem of hunger.

“These children don’t need a cup; they need a cow,” he said.

He formed Heifers for Relief, dedicated to ending hunger by providing livestock and training, as well. The first shipment of 17 heifers left Pennsylvania for Puerto Rico in 1944. Why heifers? Because they are cows who have not yet given birth. These young cows would supply milk and would also be a continuous source of more cows. Families receiving a heifer agreed to donate female offspring to another family, thus continuing the process.

Today, donors to this organization get to choose which animal they would like to donate: a cow, a goat, chickens, rabbits or geese. In concept, this way of using what my grandmother called “pushke money” is far beyond the pushke concept of her time. The website’s online visual association makes the process more real and less abstract for the kids.

The globalization of the 21st century influences our thinking in many ways, including the choices we can make for charitable contributions. We can think not only of local charities or Israel, but also of the victims of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and wars around the world. We are aware of the needs of children, refugees, the hungry and the sick in every country. This is as it should be.

However, charity is more than just giving a donation to a faceless organization. It really involves the feelings of the recipients, too.

Many years ago, I wrote a children’s story that was published in Young Judean magazine. Two boys, Jason and Marty, liked to go together for ice cream every Sunday until Jason stopped going for lack of money. For a while, Marty treats him, but Jason feels uncomfortable with this on a permanent basis. When Jason stops going for ice cream, Marty’s grandfather refers Marty to Maimonides’ Ladder of Charity in an effort to get Marty to figure out a solution. Marty does. He gets Jason a job walking a dog so that Jason can buy ice cream with his own money, thus allowing him to maintain his dignity.

Here is the Ladder of Charity conceived by Maimonides. The levels are ranked in order of preference, from the lowest to the highest.

1. Giving sadly and begrudgingly.

2. Giving less than is fitting but with good cheer.

3. Giving only after having been asked.

4. Giving before being asked.

5. Giving to a recipient whose identity the giver does not know.

6. Giving so that the recipient of the tzedakah does not know the identity of the giver.

7. Giving so that neither the giver nor the recipient knows the identity of the other.

8. In place of giving money, taking the sort of action that will help people to no longer be poor.

An example of level eight would be helping a poor person find a job, or lending money to finance an education for someone in poverty. For example, friends of mine wanted to help a married child who was in financial trouble. They gave the couple a car instead of cash, thus enabling them to have access to jobs in their rural area that did not have public transportation.

There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” It is interesting to note how close in concept this proverb is to level eight of Maimonides’ ladder. You can see that the highest level of charity helps a person become independent and self-reliant, and human dignity is also taken into full account.

We might all do well to assess what we do with our pushke money and other donations. My little grandsons are already learning that there are those less fortunate than themselves. I am proud of my son and daughter-in-law for teaching this to their children at so young an age. I have faith that these boys will grow up to be caring citizens of the world.

Toby Rosenstrauch is an award-winning columnist and a resident of Florida. Her first novel, Knifepoint, was recently published.

Keys to healthy marriage

Last month marked my 15th wedding anniversary. Every year has felt significant, but 15 has a somewhat mystical overlay. The Hebrew equivalent for 15 would normally contain two of the four letters of the tetragram spelling God’s name (yud and heh), so there is a different customary formulation: “tet vav” or tu, for short. Sprinkle in some multilingual word play, tu being “you” in French, and “to” in English connoting a mutual connection, and 15 is rife with meaning.

This anniversary has also prompted me to consider what goes into a lasting marriage. I began my mental search by polling those of my Facebook friends who’ve surpassed the 15-year mark. Trust. Communication. Acceptance. Humor. Generosity. Patience. Commitment. Common values. Mutual respect for one another’s journey through life. One friend offered the idea of love, as measured by actually enjoying listening to what the other person has to say. Curiously, no one mentioned sex.

There is an inherent catch here, of course. How can we know which of these many laudable qualities are signs of a healthy marriage, and which are prescriptions? In other words, can a troubled marriage be saved by adopting these practices, or do these practices simply flow, automatically, from a solid union?

Some friends did offer some potential advice. Date nights, even if it involves watching a movie on the sofa with take-out after the kids are in bed, one friend said. Another emphasized how important it is not to “keep score.” Where sometimes partners fall into the trap of believing that “reciprocity has to be quantitatively balanced over a short period of time,” she said, it’s better to think of the “partnership as rooted in generosity and mutual caring.” She added that it’s important for the couple to shed external expectations, whether they come from televised images, societal norms or embedded ideals with which one was raised. That imaginary third party’s judgmental voice can intrude on a couple’s relationship in unhealthy ways. At a dinner party I attended, one woman emphasized kindness. Her husband said it’s important to park one’s ego.

And what do the experts say?

A recent article in The Atlantic by Emily Esfahani Smith profiled a team of researchers who study lasting partnerships. Noting how partners engage in moment-to-moment “bids” for attention, the research team – led by John Gottman – stressed that how the partner responds to these bids is key to the marriage’s success. As Smith describes it, “People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t – those who turned away – would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper.”

This “turn toward” philosophy can also fall into the causality trap. Is “turning toward” a function of a healthy marriage, or a prescription for one? The answer is probably both. But that doesn’t mean that a virtual cycle can’t be consciously created. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been practising “turn toward” and discussing it with whoever will listen, my husband included. My husband and I are now in the habit of “turning toward” more than we sometimes have been in the past.

We even joke about it as we’re doing it, a subtle way of reinforcing the mental links between intention and action.

As for our anniversary, we did something we never get to do anymore: catch a film after work. We saw Boyhood, the tour de force of Richard Linklater, who spent 12 years filming using the same actors. Over the course of two and a half hours, we witnessed the on-screen children developing into adults, and parents struggling to find their way. On the subject of marriage, the film was more bitter than sweet, but we enjoyed it, admiring the director’s fortitude and creativity, and privately reflecting. When we returned home, we discussed the film over a glass of wine, and concluded the evening by “turning toward” one another as one shared with the other some newly discovered National Public Radio podcasts, episodes devoted to love, loss and longing.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. This article was originally published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

How to talk about the Middle East peacefully

Some of the violence in the Middle East has inflamed tensions closer to home. Online, there is a recent interview conducted by the University of British Columbia with its resident expert Prof. Robert Daum, who offered his thoughts on navigating these frictions. Daum is a faculty associate with the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, a faculty member of Green College, project lead in UBC Transcultural Leaders, a Reconciliation ambassador for Reconciliation Canada and a dialogue associate at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue.

UBC: How do conflicts afar, like the Israel-Gaza situation, spark local tensions?

RD: Sadly, some conflicts push people into rigid positions rooted in insufficiently rigorous, self-critical and nuanced analysis. Simplistic narratives about historical and contemporary events resulting in loss of life raise tensions. Inadequate media coverage heightens tensions, and people tend to gather in narrowly circumscribed assemblies of like-minded thinkers. Conflicts such as these are teachable moments, but learning and teaching require an attitude of openness to authentic inquiry on the part of everyone.

Imagine what we can do in addressing any number of complex conflicts and challenges if we can cultivate a culture of evidence-based, authentic inquiry and dialogue. I have seen this approach in action in my work with UBC’s Transcultural Leaders 2014 Conversation Series, SFU’s Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation Canada.

UBC: Have you been surprised by the tensions arising locally and across Canada?

RD: No. In the context of genuine human suffering, we encounter hateful slogans, racist images, one-sided narratives, vicious social media comments and self-righteous oversimplifications. This does not honor the dead. Inflammatory rhetoric gets most of the headlines. Research shows that anxiety and clear thinking tend not to be compatible. Our discourse has to be as levelheaded, sober and reasonable as possible. People need to feel that they can learn in an environment of safety, civility and mutual respect. I consider myself to be a principled pragmatist. It is precisely when we feel angriest about world events that we need to take a deep breath. Imagine if the Supreme Court had to reach decisions under fire. If we cannot learn how to share narrative space – that is, how to reconcile competing, deeply held, national narratives, in a way that does not require the annihilation or complete negation of the other’s position – then how can we expect geographical space to be shared at one of the most fraught intersections of regional and global politics?

I have participated in forums on antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, the Indian residential schools and many other issues. Two years ago, I co-sponsored with the Vancity Office of Community Engagement a three-hour public forum downtown on Islamophobia, featuring a critical media analyst, three Muslim speakers from very diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and three equally diverse non-Muslim speakers, including myself. A mixed audience of more than 250 listened to stories of prejudice experienced and prejudice confronted. It was a thoughtful, nuanced and multi-layered conversation over the course of three hours. And we were just getting started.

UBC: What are some healthy ways in which people can deal with tensions that may arise between themselves and others?

RD: Seek to engage in a dialogue, rather than a debate. Ask genuine questions: “What did you mean by that? What are you trying to say? Have you considered different perspectives on this? Have you tried to understand why others hold positions different than yours? On what can we agree? Is there another way to understand the phenomenon, whereby our positions might be reconciled, even partially?” Try building on ideas and making connections between ideas. Don’t reduce multi-faceted conflicts to a single variable such as religion or oil, for example.

Politics, history and ethics are not reducible to simple equations. Complex questions can rarely be reduced to the logic of black and white, right and wrong. I may see the world very differently than you, but that does not necessarily make you (or me) wrong. Of course, moral assessment matters, and I believe that some behaviors, like the intentional murder of civilian non-combatants as prohibited in the Geneva Conventions, are abhorrent. But, as any first-year law student knows, such an assertion is the beginning, not the end of the inquiry. If such matters were simple enough to be reduced to trial by megaphone, we would not need faculties of law or courts, let alone courses in ethics, history, politics, religion, gender, media or much else.

This interview was originally published by UBC News/University of British Columbia. It is reprinted with permission.

Playing to win

I’m home when my phone buzzes with a text from my son. Playing for the school basketball team in a city an hour away, his five words carry disappointment, sadness. “I’m just a benchwarmer, mom.”

I’m not one of those parents who cheers on sports games from the sidelines. Perhaps I’m still scarred from high school athletics, when my best friend and I were consistently the last members picked for any team during PE classes, a painful memory to this day. It sounds callous but, for me, sports has never held even a glimmer of interest, not even when my own children are playing.

But something changed when I learned my son had spent most of that game on the bench, watching instead of playing. What upset me was the injustice of his exclusion. He’d attended practices dutifully and loved being part of the team – until that game. “I’m not a bad player,” he insisted. “I don’t know why they didn’t give me a turn.”

The indignation of having been left out hung around the house like a damp cloud for a few days. I felt hurt on his behalf, compelled to try and make things right. So, I did what most writer-parents would do – I penned a letter to the principal. It wasn’t fair, I declared. I was under the impression that in team sports everyone gets a turn. How could the coach exclude certain players and justify that exclusion by the team’s victory? Wasn’t the victory hollow when only the best players had performed?

We don’t guarantee that every player will get to play, the principal responded. Sure, they can get a place on the team, but it’s the coach’s decision about who plays the games – and we play to win.

A friend explained it in a gentler way to me a few days later. In elementary school, the games are all about playing fair, giving everyone a turn and learning to be a good sport. Not so in high school, where the emphasis shifts to winning. “The weaker players sit on the bench so the team can have its best shot at victory,” she said. “That’s just the way it is, regardless which sport we’re talking about.”

I was astonished, but enlightened, too. As parents, we want desperately to defend our kids from insult, bruised egos and perceived injustice. Their hurt becomes our hurt, and we feel compelled, angered even, to speak out on their behalf.

But sitting on the bench might offer some important life lessons. The humility to admit you’re not the strongest player. The insight that you need to work harder to be chosen for the next game. The understanding that, as unifying as the word “team” appears to be, it’s composed of members who are not equally competent: you either shine, or are outshone.

It’s going to be the same scenario at every job interview a few years down the line. The strongest candidates will be selected while the rest will warm the bench on the sidelines until they improve their game.

So, maybe warming a bench a few times is a crucial part of the game, in that it deftly illustrates the distance between where you are and where you want to be. It’s what you do with that knowledge that makes all the difference, on the basketball court and off.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.