Opinion – Page 91

Call to genocide (yawn)

Sheik Omar Abu Sara gave a rousing call to genocide on Nov. 28, during a sermon at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. “I say to the Jews loud and clear: The time for your slaughter has come. The time to fight you has come. The time to kill you has come…. Please do not leave in our hearts a single grain of mercy towards you, oh Jews, because when the day of your slaughter arrives, we shall slaughter you without mercy.” His audience is heard responding with amens.

At the same spot a few days earlier, another speaker called for the elimination of “the Jews, the most vile of creatures.”

The Abu Sara video was translated and made available by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organization that works to bring to light many of the worst things being said about Jews and Israel in the region – including, in this case, in the heart of Jerusalem. The people at MEMRI must wonder sometimes what the point is, though, for all the work they do in shining a torch into these moral recesses, most of the world responds with a yawn. Reactions to this sort of rhetoric among many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, however, are founded on the knowledge of where this sort of talk can lead, a cultural and historical reality that is dismissed as just more of the persecution complex for which we are stereotyped.

Still, the fact that this sort of exhortation even makes the news is news of a sort. Warnings of an impending mass murder of Jews are so common on the internet, in certain sectors of Arab societies, among extremist Islamists and even among “mainstream” leaders of Palestinian society that it has become just a sort of white noise.

But there are plenty of people who are very capable of following through. This sort of rhetoric undoubtedly motivates people like those who have used vehicles, screwdrivers and knives to attack and kill civilians in Israel recently and, earlier this month, at the Chabad headquarters in New York.

Leaders of the anti-Israel movement might be expected to tsk-tsk these words, if only to preserve some political legitimacy for their BDS campaign. But they can’t even be depended on to do that. While some in that movement might draw the line at calling Jews “the most vile of creatures,” that is precisely the message they direct toward Israelis.

Those who strive for any sort of mainstream political relevance are careful to distinguish between Israelis and Jews. In most of the world, such niceties are quaintly unnecessary. While rose-tinted observers like to imagine the undeniable growth of antisemitism simply as a temporary, possibly unfortunate mutation of anti-Zionism, the reality in most of the world – where the language is most violent and the violence is most real – is exactly the opposite.

Seven sins of weight loss

Hands up if you like to eat!

Now hands up if the fact that you like to eat has made you want to throw the other half of the apple pie you just ingested across the room because IT WON’T LET YOU LOSE THE WEIGHT YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO LOSE!

Recently, as part of the Jewish Book Festival at the JCC, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, known (maybe only by me) as Dr. Diet, presented about his new book The Diet Fix. The book details why more than 90% of diets fail, leaving people with frustration and/or apple pie all over their living room. (For a review of the book, see jewishindependent.ca/jewish-book-fest-in-a-week)

As someone who personally struggled with excess weight for most of his adult life – likely as a result of too much McDonald’s for most of his teenage life – before managing to kick it back to the drive-through a few years ago, I was intrigued to listen to and meet Dr. Diet to see what new concepts he could teach me. I wanted to see what he could tell me that, quite frankly, I hadn’t already learned from my dear friend Google.

While he didn’t get into the meat and potatoes (or cake and cookies) of dieting tricks, strategies and science, he did talk a lot about the psychology of dieting and how our society responds to it. More of a what-NOT-to-do presentation.

The good doctor presented what he called the seven deadly sins of dieting. Essentially, this is a list if misunderstandings or misdirections society has placed on the path to eating healthy and losing weight.

In no particular order (except for the one he presented them in), here they are for your consumption.

1. If you’re not hungry, you’re not losing weight. WRONG!
Starving yourself isn’t the key to weight loss, Freedhoff explained. As a matter of fact, he suggested that waiting until starvation kicks in before feeding yourself will more likely make bad cookies…I mean, choices (darn auto-correct!).

2. You must make sacrifices to lose weight. WRONG!
If you are constantly making sacrifices you aren’t likely to make this work on any long-term basis. It should be a choice of preference, not a sacrifice.

3. You need willpower to succeed. WRONG!
The reality is that we only have a limited supply of willpower. So if we are depending on that for success we are likely to fail at some point. Try having a long, hard, stressful day at work, then coming home looking for willpower in the crunchy, salty snack cupboard.

4. You should accept blind restrictions. DON’T DO IT!
A lot of people follow fad diets. They read that this new Garcinia Cambogiolawala plant can help you lose weight if you eat only that and a pickle for five days straight.

Despite my undying faith in pickles, if you don’t know why or how a diet will work, don’t do it!

5. You need to sweat it out. SO WRONG!
Reality weight loss shows like Biggest Loser preach that if you’re not pushing your self to barf-inducing levels you won’t succeed. On the contrary, Dr. Freedhoff said, if it’s not enjoyable, much like point #2 and #3, it’s not likely to last long.

As a point of perspective, he added that it takes running a full marathon to burn 1 pound of fat. Yet it takes only one hour sitting on your tuchus at the neighborhood pub to put it back on. The line, “You can’t outrun your fork” is one I will use again and again from now on.

6. You need perfection to succeed. WRONG AGAIN!
According to Dr. Freedhoff, people accept doing their best in just about every facet of their life except dieting. When someone is on a diet they believe they must be perfect in order to succeed. Obsession leads to unrealistic expectations. Once again, it won’t last. And you don’t need to call them cheat days. Maybe just try “living life days!”

7. We must calmly remain in denial. DENIED!
We avoid dealing with our true feelings about how we are struggling with our weight or eating habits. If we fool ourselves about what we really want to do or can do we are just denying ourselves the chance to find confidence in our abilities to succeed. The consequences of struggling are guilt, shame and despair. Which often leads to? Binging!

Bottom line: It seams that what the Diet Doctor is saying is that it’s more important to tackle our weight issues with our heads than it is with a program or a set of diet rules.

Set clear goals that you know you can work with long term and take them on one step at a time. Otherwise, well, we’ll see you again at the next diet meeting!

Out-of-bounds tactic stinks

Anti-Israel groups have used dubious tactics over the years, but they stooped to unprecedented depravity recently when someone Photoshopped a photo of emaciated Holocaust survivors.

A Facebook page with 91,000 followers (at press time) posted a picture of survivors, presumably taken at the time of a camp liberation, manipulated to appear to be holding signs with terms like “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza,” “Israel Assassins” and “Stop US aid to Israel.” At the bottom, a caption reads, “Whatever happened to ‘Never again?’” The image received hundreds of likes and many shares, including from organizations that have until now posed as legitimate voices for Palestinians.

The picture is instantly offensive for obvious reasons. But it is additionally repugnant on a number of grounds, beyond the explicit desecration of historical memory.

Anyone who can equate the Israeli-Arab conflict with the Holocaust – and, further, depict the Jews of Israel as the instigators and perpetrators – holds a view of contemporary and historical events so removed from fact that their opinions should be discarded from the discourse. The problem is, they’re not.

In fact, the meme of Israel perpetrating a holocaust against Palestinians is rampant. On social media, in the comments sections of mainstream media, in conversations with moderately informed neighbors and friends, the concept is almost inevitable.

You may have heard of Godwin’s Law, the theory that, the longer a political discussion (on any topic) continues, the greater the likelihood someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazis. A parallel – call it Godwin’s Corollary – could almost be written in stone: Whenever two or more people engage in discussion of Israel’s actions, someone will inevitably accuse the Jewish state of having learned from the masters, or of doing unto others what was done unto them in Europe.

The concept is appalling and, yet, it seems to be irresistible. It has been said that Jews are like everyone else only more so. Throughout the history of Jews as scapegoats, others (as well as some Jews in the past and today) project onto the Jewish people the sins of humanity and then proceed toward the inevitable end that scapegoating demands. How perfect for our cynical time that we should have a modern fable that so succinctly and conveniently proves our assumption that even the victims of the most venal atrocities can – and would – in a generation or two turn around and perpetrate the same on others.

This ahistoric fable implies that, because Jews are Nazis, they deserved the Holocaust and whatever other retribution is seen fit to dispense. And, if Israel is the “reward” for the Holocaust, then it can be taken away as appropriate punishment, as well. That the “facts” do not in any way approach reality is irrelevant. It is a fable intended to teach a moral lesson, and truthiness is beside the point.

There is another fault almost as grievous. Anti-Israel groups often employ the Jewish historical experience against the Jewish state – routinely employing Holocaust and Nazi imagery, along with other culturally appropriated concepts like apartheid. To a fair observer, these thefts of the experiences of others would be an admission that the bare facts of the Palestinian experience are not enough to convince and so they must be dressed up in masquerades of the historical traumas of others. But fair observers are not driving this discussion. The more ghastly the accusations that can be thrown at Israel, the more voraciously they are adopted by the haters.

At the very same time, these voices do everything in their power to negate the Jewish historical experience as a justification for Jewish self-determination and Zionism. Any reference to the Holocaust that might aid Israel’s case is hollered down as exploitative, as bringing a knife to a fist fight, as too weighty an historical weapon to introduce to the contemporary context. The Holocaust, in today’s environment, can be used against the Jewish people, but to raise it in a way that could justify Jewish strength or self-defence is ruled out of bounds.

Miracle of language’s birth

Hebrew is an ancient language still spoken in Israel and by Israelis worldwide. We all know that. This is history. Hebrew was revived about 130 years ago by Zionist Jews coming to Palestine, and those of us who speak Hebrew know that we speak a Semitic language that evolved from biblical and mishnaic Hebrew. However, when thoroughly researching the structure of Israeli Hebrew, things appear differently.

In Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-based Survey (Walter de Gruyter & Co., 2014), I show that spoken Israeli Hebrew is different from ancient forms of Hebrew. Different in almost every linguistic aspect. Different to the level of defining two separate languages; one is ancient, the other is new. The ancient one has a set of Semitic rules; the new one has a new set of rules that are sometimes Semitic and sometimes not. The vocabularies of the two languages are similar, but not identical. And, linguistically, it is very difficult to define them as if one evolved from the other. Despite their similar vocabularies, they differ in too many linguistic characteristics to be considered one language.

Language is commonly considered a set of words, but languages are much more complicated systems than just a random collection of words. Language is a human system of communication. It contains a set of signs, common to all speakers of the same language. These signs represent notions in the real world. Grammatical rules govern the way these signs are formed, pronounced and ordered. These grammatical rules define the relations between the elements in the language, which form the final contents we transfer to others. These rules are common to all speakers of the same language.

Languages have native speakers – those who acquired it during childhood, and use it natively to communicate with others. Language acquisition is a biological process that all of us, humans, undergo. We are all born with a linguistic system that allows us to acquire a language, our language. The process of language acquisition takes about 10 to 12 years. Then, the system with the linguistic properties of our native language is permanently stored in our brains. This system contains all the information about our native language that we need for communication. It is an unconscious system, not an organized set of rules like the ones taught in schools. All native speakers of the same language share the same set of linguistic rules. Otherwise, they would be unable to communicate with one another, i.e., produce coherent speech and comprehend others’ speech, using the same set of signs and rules.

Vocabulary vs. grammar

Vocabulary is the easiest part to transfer from one language to another. Words are borrowed from one language to another all the time. Only phonological adjustments are sometimes needed to turn a foreign word into a word in one’s native language. But borrowing other elements is much more complicated, and much less common. Languages have different structures and different linguistic preferences; what is “friendly” in one language can be very complicated in another. Many words were borrowed from biblical and mishnaic Hebrew into Israeli Hebrew over the years; some have gained additional or alternative meanings. At the same time, very few rules could be transferred in their original form from these sources into Israeli Hebrew. This is because of an interference of the revivers’ native languages, which were very different in their linguistic structures from the Hebrew sources.

When learning Hebrew grammar, we have been frequently taught that we speak Hebrew with mistakes. However, we still produce coherent speech in Israeli Hebrew, and we still comprehend other people’s speech. This means that we all share the same system of linguistic rules. True, these are not the rules “desired” by our teachers. These are other, unconscious, rules that are situated in our minds, but they are our native rules, which we master and use all the time. If we have passed the age of 12, our language system has been completed, and we have a grammar of our native language in our minds. And it is the same grammar to all speakers. Native speakers cannot make mistakes in their own language. Furthermore, what seem like “mistakes” are usually identical among all native speakers. This is an indicator that they are not mistakes, but rather rules. Only no grammarian has officially defined them yet, and they are different from the “desired” rules. Israelis, thus, do not speak Hebrew with mistakes, but rather speak a new language. This language has a set of rules different from that of biblical and mishnaic Hebrew – a new set of rules based on various origins, many of which are European languages, as elaborated herein.

Phonological characteristics

Phonology deals with everything that has to do with the sounds, syllables and intonation of a language. The typical sounds of Israeli Hebrew are very similar to the ones found in European languages. Also, all the typical sounds that are dominantly detectable in many Semitic languages are absent. These are, for example, pharyngeal, glottal and emphatic consonants. They are never noticed in Israeli Hebrew speech.

Syllables in Israeli Hebrew can contain double and triple consonant clusters. These clusters are absent from ancient forms of Hebrew. Such sequences are “forbidden” in traditional Hebrew. On the other hand, syllables having double and triple consonant clusters are typical in European languages. Such clusters were very common in Yiddish, which is the source of many characteristics of Israeli Hebrew.

Short and long vowels in spoken Israeli Hebrew can distinguish between the meanings of words, whereas in traditional Hebrew this is impossible. Thus, a difference in meaning is enabled between the words ze (this) and ze: (identical) in Israeli Hebrew speech. This difference is entailed by the short versus long vowels of the same quality. Traditional Hebrew never allows long vowels in syllable nuclei. Historically, the long vowels are explained as a result of a falling weak consonant between two short vowels. Synchronically, it is evident that vowel length makes a semantic difference between words.

Languages have “music,” that is an extra-linguistic feature of speech. This “music” varies between languages, and contains several features, one of which is intonation. Israeli Hebrew intonation is very similar to that of Yiddish, and very different from that of Semitic languages.

Morphological characteristics

Morphology deals with the way words are derived, and what is the nature of their components. The basic morphological unit in a language is called a morpheme; it is the smallest grammatical unit that represents a meaning. In English, -ness is a morpheme representing a state, as in happiness. A morpheme is not an independent component; it is always attached to another element.

Semitic languages employ a unique strategy of word formation that is based on roots and patterns. Roots and patterns are abstract morphemes, which cannot be attached one to the other. Instead, they are integrated into one another to form new words. The root contains a sequence of consonants, usually three or four, carrying a general meaning; the pattern is a linguistic structure, also carrying a general meaning. The pattern would usually contain vowels, and also reserved locations for the root consonants in between these vowels. Roots and patterns cannot be pronounced independently; their pronunciation is enabled only when being integrated into one another.

Words in Semitic languages, including traditional Hebrew words, are primarily formed by a combination of a root and a pattern. Yet, words in Israeli Hebrew are derived in many other ways, too. Indeed, there are words in Israeli Hebrew that are formed by a root-pattern derivation, such as many verbal forms. However, Israeli Hebrew speakers clearly prefer a more European-like formation of words. European-like word formation employs various concatenation processes of elements. Concatenation is typically being attached in a chain. There is a higher priority among Israelis to form new words in their language this way. By adding a suffix to a stem, or by blending two words into one, they keep the meaning of the new word more transparent. The new words represent one concept while, at the same time, they reflect the original components. Therefore, this kind of derivation has gained priority over the root-pattern strategy.

The verbal system

When looking thoroughly into the verbal system of spoken Israeli Hebrew, many questions arise. Traditional Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, has a rich verbal system based on roots and patterns. There are seven verbal patterns in traditional Hebrew, standing for role-taking and tenses. Two of them represent passive meanings, yet Israeli Hebrew employs only five verbal patterns, and no passives. Passive forms in Israeli Hebrew are very rare, uncommon and unnatural. Native speakers of the language would comprehend passive forms, but never produce them naturally.

The verbal patterns of traditional Hebrew represent tenses: past, present and future. They also include unique imperatives, one for each non-passive pattern. However, the five verbal patterns of Israeli Hebrew do not stand for tenses. They rather reflect aspects and moods, similarly to Slavic languages. Also, they have no unique imperative forms; the latter are derived from prefixed forms that represent mood. The Israeli Hebrew verbal system, in its overall structure, is not similar to any Semitic verbal system. Conversely, it is identical to the structure of the Russian verbal system; the same aspectual forms stand for the same times in the two systems.

Basic verbal stems in Israeli Hebrew are mostly created in the “Semitic” way, by the combination of roots and patterns. However, newer processes of verb formation employ the combinations of stems and affixes, as well as nouns and affixes, on the account of the traditional root-pattern formation. The use of nominals to form verbs is typical to European languages, where a noun or an adjective can easily function as a verb, with or without an affix.

The formation of a verb in Israeli Hebrew is a complicated process, which involves several semantic and morphological processes. Initially, a stem is formed, either by a root-pattern combination, or otherwise. Then, additional suffixes and/or prefixes are attached to it to denote person, gender and number. Many verbal stems are created from foreign words. These stems are governed by the foreign word’s original phonological structure. This means that the sequence of consonants and vowels in the foreign word would govern the choice of the pattern in which the final verb is created. Stems can sometimes be created from whole words, in particular nouns.

The Israeli Hebrew verbal system also contains many concatenated verbs. Concatenated verbs are combinations of at least two consequent inflected verbal elements, each is inflected separately. And no separators are allowed between the two elements; they must be consequently ordered. Concatenated verbs are not observed in other Semitic languages, nor in traditional Hebrew. They express a wide variety of more specific aspects and moods than the basic aspectual and modal notions of the single verbal forms. Concatenation processes, therefore, are a characteristic of Israeli Hebrew, in both the verbal and the nominal systems. It is a linguistic process that is uncommon in Semitic languages, and is more typical to European languages.

Language syntax

Syntax deals with the composition of phrases and clauses from single elements, and the relations between these elements within the phrase or clause. The syntactic features of Israeli Hebrew reflect almost exclusively European languages, whereas Semitic features can be hardly detected.

Each human language has a typical word order of elements in the clause. The elements in the clause are commonly represented by the letters S, V and O, standing for subject, verb and object, respectively. Semitic languages are characterized by a word order of VSO, which means that the verb is typically the first element in the clause, followed by the subject. Israeli Hebrew, however, is characterized by a word order of SVO, in which the subject precedes the verb. This word order is the default order in European languages. This is how the elements in the clause are ordered in Germanic, Roman and Slavic languages. On the other hand, nominal clauses with no verbs are allowed in Israeli Hebrew, which is a Semitic characteristic, and does not exist in European languages. This is one of very few Semitic features in Israeli Hebrew syntax.

Noun compounds in Israeli Hebrew are combinations of two consequent nominals that form a phrase having one meaning. The components of a noun compound in Israeli Hebrew can be either a sequence of two nouns, or a sequence of a noun and an adjective. Definiteness of these compounds is similar to European languages: noun compounds in Israeli Hebrew take a definite article at the beginning of the phrase, on the first component, referring to the whole phrase as one unit of meaning. This is parallel to making, for example, the English term “go-between” definite by adding the definite article before the first component, as in “the go-between.” Semitic languages, including normative Hebrew, typically take the definite article on the second component of the term.

Nouns and adjectives in Semitic languages have gender. During speech, Semitic languages require a gender and number agreement between elements in the speech sequence. Israeli Hebrew has gender distinction in nouns and adjectives. However, gender and number agreement in Israeli Hebrew speech works only one way: backwards. It exists only when referring to a previously mentioned element. When an element is expected to agree in gender and/or number with a following element, it never does. It appears in its unmarked form, usually the masculine singular. This one-way agreement rule is apparent in all the language systems – verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. Standing out are the numerals that in Semitic languages have two forms: masculine and feminine. Israeli Hebrew, apart from the numeral one, employs only one form for both genders. The use of neutral numbers and the distinction in the numeral one is also employed in Roman languages.

Summary

Israeli Hebrew has not evolved directly from earlier Hebrew forms. It was created artificially, employing, although unconsciously, mixed rules from many languages, including earlier forms of Hebrew. This way, some of the original Hebrew characteristics, which are Semitic, could be preserved, whereas at least as many were “imported” from other, European, languages. (See G. Zuckermann, “A New Vision for ‘Israeli Hebrew’: Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analyzing Israel’s Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5, no. 1 (2006): 57-71.)

So, has the revival of Hebrew ever occurred?

We are nearing Chanukah, and Chanukah is about miracles. Perhaps the miracle of Hebrew revival never happened, but another miracle has certainly taken place: the emergence of a new language. A language whose number of speakers has been increasing, and which is alive and evolving. It has a short history of 130 years – it does not go back thousands of years – but its emergence is at least as miraculous as the revival of a language, and as impressive.

Nurit Dekel is principal linguist at NSC-Natural Speech Communication, an academic researcher of Colloquial Israeli Hebrew teaching at the Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv, and the author of Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-based Survey (Walter de Gruyter & Co., 2014). She thanks David J. Swykert (magicmasterminds.com/djswykert) for reviewing this essay and providing very insightful comments.

Time to put the Hebrew back

With the school year in full swing, and with Chanukah just beginning, I’d like to take the opportunity to offer a single wish for Jewish community life in Canada. It’s quite specific and straightforward but, I believe, far-reaching.

I hope and wish that our community’s supplementary and day school teachers would speak Hebrew to their students. In other words, I’d like to see us put the Hebrew back in Hebrew school.

Having experienced more than one supplementary school via my own kids, this column is not meant to impugn any particular school, but rather is meant to capture a troubling dynamic I’ve witnessed in more than one place, and with more than one teacher.

For example, seldom have I heard the teachers say the simplest of Hebrew phrases – such as boker tov (good morning) – to the kids when greeting them. As I picked up my kids recently, I puzzled over why the teacher was asking the students to put the chairs on the tables in English when Hebrew would work beautifully for a simple command involving two common nouns.

Some months ago, I approached one school director about my concern, citing Ottawa’s very successful French immersion program as a model. (Recall that, until recently in Ottawa, where I live, kindergarten classes were only a couple of hours per day, showing that even direct application of spoken French in a limited time can have profound results.) The director’s response was that, for French immersion schools, French is akin to a religion. Here, on the other hand, the director explained, “We are in the business of teaching kids how to be Jews.”

I’ve been mulling over the distinction since then. Is Hebrew language acquisition conceptually distinct from “teaching kids to be Jews”?

Now, admittedly, I’m one of the more passionate Hebrew-philes there is, having elected to speak only Hebrew to my kids since they were infants. I realize not everyone shares my obsession for Hebrew and Israeli sitcoms, music and news.

I decided to tackle that director’s implication. I started by thinking about the one Hebrew word that virtually everyone living in a North American city knows. By dint of the craze around Christmas, probably the first Hebrew word children learn – even before shalom, ima or Shabbat – is Chanukah.

Now, most everyone knows that Chanukah is the name of the Jewish holiday commemorating the Maccabees’ victory over the Assyrian-Greeks. But, how many of us actually know the literal meaning of the word? Here’s a further challenge: I would wager that knowing the literal meaning of the word Chanukah provides key links to three seemingly unrelated things: a) better recall of the meaning of the holiday, b) an understanding of the causes of the First Intifada, and c) a deeper conceptualization of the entire relationship between Jewish identity and education.

So, here goes. Chanukah is the Hebrew word for dedication or inauguration. Knowing this would help kids remember that central to the holiday was the rededication of the Second Temple, and would render intelligible the chanukat ha’mizbayach phrase in the popular holiday song whose Hebrew words often register in kids’ minds as gibberish, unless they are schooled in the language.

Chanukat ha’bayit is also the Hebrew phrase for housewarming. A bit of modern Israeli political history reveals that Ariel Sharon’s provocative Muslim Quarter housewarming party in December 1987, during Chanukah, is understood by many political observers to have helped fuel the first Palestinian intifada. (Perhaps his housewarming party was meant to be a word play on the Festival of Lights, falling as it was at the same time. Perhaps not, but it also serves as a useful memory mnemonic for students of Israeli politics.)

Finally, all Hebrew words derive from a three-letter root. The root of Chanukah is the same as the root for chinuch (education) and for chanich (camper, initiate). In other words, in a beautiful piece of poetic connection, understanding Hebrew can be seen to be an early step of being initiated into the Jewish people in a meaningful way. In any event, the idea of education in Jewish life – whether formal, through school, or informal, through camps and youth groups – is meant to remind kids they are joining something much larger than themselves. And that can only be helped by being regularly exposed to the rich and eternally clever language of our people.

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.

Does God love dogs and cats?

As a boy growing up in the foothills of Berkeley, my parents encouraged me to have pets. From guinea pigs to parakeets to even a pet chicken named Fwedwika, my home was full of little critters throughout most of my childhood. By encouraging me to be a caretaker for my pets, my parents taught me the meaning of responsibility, consistency and perhaps even love. So, I’ve often wondered if the Jewish religious scriptures supports animal activism and what exactly God would say if I posed the question, “Do You love dogs?”

Dogs are the only animals in the Torah that receive a reward for their actions. When the Jewish slaves flee Egypt, it states, “not one dog barked.” (Exodus 11:7) As a reward for that refrain, God said, “… and flesh torn in the field you shall not eat; you shall throw it to the dog[s].” (Exodus 22:30; Mechilta) However, God’s affection for animals doesn’t end with affable companions such as dogs. This affection even extends to insects. King David had to learn this lesson when he questioned the purpose of such “vile creatures” as spiders. Subsequently, God created an event whereupon a spider’s web saved his life, thereby impressing upon Judaism’s mightiest king that every creature has purpose (Midrash Alpha Beta Acheres d’Ben Sira 9).

The Talmud teaches that the reason the Almighty created animals before humans on the sixth day of creation was to teach humans humility, so much that “even a lowly gnat” may be more deserving of life (Sanhedrin 38a).

So, one may infer from here that God does indeed love dogs … and all the rest of His creatures, too. But does this manifest itself into practical animal activism or does it remain a more generalized and undefined value in Judaism?

Jewish law is replete with requirements for the caring of animals. Examples include laws prohibiting inflicting pain on animals (Kesef Mishneh, Hilkhot Rotzeah 13:9), requiring one to feed animals in a loving manner (Igg’rot Moshe, Even haEzer 4:92) and protecting animals from being overworked (Hoshen Mishpat 307:13). We see from these and more, the extensive lengths to which the Torah goes in order to ensure the proper care of animals. Even when one must slaughter an animal to feed one’s family, there are numerous Jewish laws set in place to guarantee that the animal’s death is quick and painless (Guide to the Perplexed III:48).

One insight we can glean from the Torah about why God may have made animals is that they were created to express the “glory of the Creator.” (Pirkei Avos 6:11) The sheer diversity and beauty of animals leads one to appreciate the Creator even more, thereby leading one to proclaim, “How great is Your work, O Lord.” (Psalm 92:5) One might also say that the Creator has placed us, the descendants of Adam and Eve, in His beautiful garden to be the “caretaker” of “God’s garden” and all the animals therein (Genesis 2:19-20).

Mankind is created last in the days of Creation because humans are the pinnacle of Creation; we are the beings created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). When we use our free will responsibly, acting with compassion and sensitivity, we become like God, as it says, “Just as He is compassionate, so should you be compassionate. Just as He is righteous, so should you be righteous.” (Midrash Sifre Deuteronomy 49) When we develop ourselves to be spiritually refined, we fully realize the title of “caretakers of the world,” of God’s beautiful world and all the animals in it.

Imagine what message it sends a child when parents teach that God wants all our animals to be fed before we feed ourselves (Talmud, Brachot 40a). Imagine what message it sends our child when parents teach that God watches us to see if we are being compassionate to the animals in our midst (Talmud, Bava Metzia 85a). And imagine what message we bequeath to our children when we say that to become truly righteous and spiritually fulfilled, we must cultivate a sensitivity towards animals, as it says “A righteous person knows the needs of the animal.” (Proverbs 12:10)

Perhaps this is why God specifically made Noah build an ark to save all the animals during the Flood. After all, God could have easily made a miracle where the animals were saved without Noah needing to slave away for 40 days and nights meticulously tending to the care of each animal in the ark and even sharing his own table with them (Malbim, Genesis 6:21). One could answer that this was precisely to highlight that the concept of being the “caretakers of the garden” didn’t end with Adam and Eve but is an essential responsibility of mankind for all time.

Additionally, one can also say that the way we treat animals is a reflection of the way we treat people. In the Torah, we observe the repeating story of how a loving shepherd is chosen by God to lead the spiritual flock of the Jewish people after previously demonstrating his dedication to a flock of sheep (Midrash, Shemot Rabah 2:2). A barometer for one’s sensitivity towards other people can be seen in how we treat the animals in our midst. This emphasis on caring for animals can be a way to further those feelings of sensitivity that may eventually lead to goodwill for all mankind.

There is a final fascinating perspective that the Torah is teaching us. Animals can serve as our teachers. There are God-given qualities inherent in the instinctual habits and mannerisms of the animals around us that can serve to inspire humans to achieve greater heights of spiritual fulfilment. For example, the very first law in the Code of Jewish Laws is, “Rabbi Yehuda ben Taima said, ‘Be as bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and strong as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven.’” (Avot 5:20) Poignantly, this is placed as the first law in a book of Jewish legalities. This idea is most evident in the statement of Rabbi Yochanan: “If the Torah had not been given, we could have learned modesty from the cat, honesty from the ant, chastity from the dove and good manners from the rooster.” (Talmud, Eiruvin 100b) Perhaps we could also learn from a dog the power of devotion, loyalty and even having a positive attitude.

I will conclude with a teaching about man’s best friend, the dog. The notable 16th-century Jewish leader, the Maharsha, says that a dog is a creature of love. Hence, the Hebrew name for a dog is kelev, which is etymologically derived from the words kulo lev, or all heart (Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, Chidushei Aggadot, Sanhedrin 97a). Remember that Adam and Eve were instructed by God to give all the animals of the world their Hebrew names (Genesis 2:19-20). When they made this personal connection with the beasts of the world, the names they chose were prophetically accurate so as to encapsulate the essence of each animal into a name that truly revealed its soul (Bereishit Rabbah 17:4). Thus, one may extrapolate from this that the Hebrew name for a dog was precisely chosen to be indicative of the loving soul of this marvelous creature.

So, yes, God loves dogs. And we should, too.

Rabbi Levi Welton is a writer and educator raised in Berkeley, Calif. A member of the Rabbinical Council of America, he graduated from the Machon Ariel Rabbinical Institute in 2005 and from Bellevue University in 2008 with an MA in education. Having served Jewish communities in San Francisco, Sydney and Montreal, he currently resides in New York and specializes in working with youth and young adults. This article was originally published by Aish Hatorah Resources and is distributed by Kaddish Connection Network.

Our diasporic connections

Consider an unbearable rift forced between a human being and his/her native place; between the self and the true home. Its essential sadness can never be surmounted.

If you were born in this country, you are not an exile – all the rest of us not born in Canada are, in one way or another. Whether we were exiled or left of our own volition, we are all diasporic, we all live in galut, we all know the strings, the tugs, the connections with our past: parents, forebears, birth place, culture, that which is so much, or was, part of every fibre of our being.

Think of when you are traveling and you bump into someone from Canada, Vancouver, Montreal, Scotland, India, anywhere, and immediately you discover what we call in Hindi a jhath bhai, someone who knows what you are talking about, with whom less explanation is necessary, and who could probably finish your sentences for you. A lantsman maybe?

Moonbeams are not tangible; you cannot stretch out your hand and touch them. These moonbeams, however, are human connections, family, culture, food, little idiosyncrasies and expressions we understand without further explanation on our part. And we miss these tremendously, in our inner core.

I meet taxi drivers, HandyDART drivers, people born and raised in India, and soon we are off and running in so many directions after discovering we come from the same country. On a scholarship in Montreal some 30 years ago, I was hitchhiking a ride one evening up University Avenue back to residence. A taxi driver stopped to pick me up – I kid you not! Before we reached the top of the hill, he had told me his name (which is also my maiden name in Arabic), that he was from Iran (where my father’s parents came from) and, in no time, we had shared so much and made so many connections.

My connections are varied and many, for which I feel truly blessed: Jewish (whether Ashkanazi or Sephardi), Indian, Israeli, Middle Eastern, British (well, I say, sod the lot of you chaps!).

And so it goes. In this manner, we also feel rich in connections. Imagine strings being tied from you to others with whom you have longtime and deep connections, not because you know them personally but because your well of memories might be the same. It is from these wells that you draw the richness of commonality, that make you feel you are part of such treasures, a history of which you can now share – even if only for a few minutes as you stand in line waiting to pay for your bag of bananas.

And why are these connections more real than moonbeams?

Seemah C. Berson, author of I Have a Story to Tell You (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2010), is a freelance writer and occasional dabbler in art, children’s poems and stories.

Nature knows no borders

Traveled thousands of miles

Inching my way

Between mothers, children, prayer books

Vying for space, so that I may touch

Your precious stones

Stones that have heard millions of tears

Stones that hold hope and anguish

Weeping and praying surround me

And I cannot hear my own sigh as I ask

Will you negotiate?

I plead

as I fold my scrap of paper

Tiptoeing upwards

to search for

a vacant space I ask

like so many before me

Can you make a miracle?

– Jerusalem 2013

Dawn has just broken. I’m walking along the beach, inhaling whiffs of sea spray. White Rock’s lights are fading in the distance, and ocean and skies are turning blue together against the backdrop of a glowing sunrise.

The hotel manager told me that if I rose early I would catch all of nature’s beauties. I’m not disappointed. Harbor seals are out fishing, birds of all shapes and sizes have begun their morning songs and skim the ocean for breakfast. A mother porpoise and her baby are playing, and fishing boats are gliding smoothly over the waves.

The only sounds are the whistling of crickets, high-pitched cries of seagulls and the rhythmic hiss of the surf. Once in a while, my laptop informs me of a new message but, fortunately, nature wins. I have the discipline to ignore it; nature wins.

This little corner of the world spells P-E-A-C-E.

The hotel has changed hands many times in the 30 years I’ve been coming here. Every visit has been different, with a purposeful or personal story.

Nature, though, is always consistent. Out in the natural world, I receive solace and my writer’s block dissolves, at least 99 percent of the time. This year, writing about peace feels like the one percent block. And an impossible task begs a purposeful visit.

The scenery is breathtaking, except for the tall unsightly steel object placed in the middle of water, a physical manifestation of the boundary between countries. I note that the boats are sailing to either side of the eyesore.

In the natural world, the skies and seas are open for birds and other creatures. No passports or border patrols needed. I am reminded of a 2012 BBC travel article, titled “Where birds know no borders.”

“Unrestricted movement between Israel and the Palestinian territories is not always possible for those on two feet,” the article reads. “But if you shift your gaze upwards, something entirely different comes into focus.”

A migration of a billion birds belonging to more than 540 species traverses through the skies each autumn and spring. Both governments have set up centres for avid birders who come from all over the world to see this spectacular sight.

Could this be a miracle, like the one I asked for last year at the Wall?

As I move my gaze away from the metal border structure and back to reality, I wonder if nature, prayer, music and dance can help us engage and connect with the world.

Can we create more connected global communities? Can we uncover commonalities that reduce conflicts? Can we build more peaceful nations? Miracles happen daily in nature. Look no further than the dove.

– Blaine, Wash., 2014

Jenny Wright is a writer, music therapist, children’s musician and recording artist.

Model response to injustice

Seventy-two years ago yesterday, two Polish women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Filipowicz, founded the Council for the Assistance of the Jews. By 1942, awareness of the intent of the Final Solution was becoming widespread. By creating an underground movement to assist and shelter Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, these women and all who assisted them put their own lives at immense risk.

Throughout the Second World War, countless individuals, at great risk to themselves and their families, undertook to assist their Jewish neighbors. These included Christians in every part of Europe and also Muslims, notably in Albania.

There are, of course, plenty of stories of collusion, betrayal and collaboration. There are, we remind our children, good and bad behaviors among any group of people, but the redemptive stories of people doing the right thing help restore humanity to our collective self-understanding.

Today, Jewish people still face challenges in various parts of the world. By sheer numbers, however, the vast majority of Jews live in Israel and North America, where life is free of the systemic bigotry Jewish people experienced in much of the world through much of history. Especially now, from our place of relative security and privilege, we should be turning our attention to the atrocities playing out against other minorities around the world.

In the world today, Christians are being persecuted and murdered in Africa and Asia. In North Korea, an estimated 50,000-70,000 Christians are held in the country’s notorious labor camps. In Nigeria last year, more than 300 churches were destroyed and more than 600 Christians killed; and mosques are being targeted with deadly attacks against clerics who speak out against the Islamist group Boko Haram, as happened – again, tragically – earlier this week. In Yemen and elsewhere in the Muslim world, those who convert to Christianity face the death penalty. In China, government forces oppress Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country. In Cambodia, members of the Buddhist majority have been attacking the Muslim minority. And, in India, systematic violence against Muslims is widespread. The list goes on and on – and this list only includes instances of persecution against Muslims and Christians; there are many other populations around the world under threat of discrimination, persecution and brutality.

The Jewish value of adam yachid, a single human being, means that humankind descended from one individual so that no one can say, “My father is greater than your father.” As Jews, but more especially as people who enjoy the freedom to express ourselves without fear of retribution from government or mob, we have an obligation to speak out on behalf of those who cannot. This is something we should do not because others did it when we were oppressed, but because their actions are the model of the human(e) response to injustice.

What can we do? In small and large ways, we can inform ourselves and our circles of influence about the issues facing minority communities worldwide. There are plenty of organizations working quietly on these topics. Consider supporting one. Inform yourself on events in other parts of the world that affect specific populations. When elected officials – and those who hope to become elected officials – knock on our doors in the federal election next year, we should let them know that the issues that are important to us go beyond those that impact our immediate lives.

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.