Haim Watzman

Not Getting Married Today–When Should Young Modern Orthodox Jews Get Hitched?

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Haim Watzman

One of the problems with the liberal Orthodox Jewish Zionism that we live by here on this blog is that it delays young people’s entry into adulthood and marriage. When I graduated from a public high school in the U.S. in the 1970s, the path before me was four years of college and the real world. My son graduated high school, then studied at a yeshiva for a year and a half, and is now performing military service in a unit that will require him to serve at least one year beyond the already long mandatory term of three years. Add the de rigueur year of travel after the army, and he won’t even begin college until he’s 25. If he goes for an advanced degree, he may not reach the real world until he’s well into his thirties.

It would be absurd to pretend that the expectation that our sons and daughters will pursue high-level religious and secular studies, as well as serve extended terms of military or national service, doesn’t clash with the family values we also espouse as religious Jews. Understandably, many young modern Orthodox men and women have chosen to delay marriage and spend extended periods as singles, a phenomenon almost unheard of previously in the religious community and now the subject of a popular new television series, Serugim.

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The Secret of Low Expectations–“Necessary Stories” Column, The Jerusalem Report

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Haim Watzman I remember a high wind and driving rain. Night is darker here, I thought, as the bus’s engine expired in a series of knocks that sounded like the final beats of a broken heart. We pulled our duffel bags and backpacks from the luggage compartment and dragged them in the direction of the … Read more

Zionists of the World Unite! (Around Me)

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Haim Watzman

Beware of Israelis who call for unity. More often than not, what they really mean is “everyone should unite around my political program.”

In yesterday’s Ha’aretz, Moshe Arens calls for unity with an invocation of American revolutionary rhetoric (”Divided We Fall”). Yet his bottom line is that unity means acceding to the agenda of Israel’s right-wing religious extremists.

Arens is a right-winger I like to disagree with. He writes well, argues cogently and logically, and sincerely believes both in Zionism and democracy. Like me, he grew up in the United States and absorbed the principles of liberal democracy. While he’s a territorial maximalist and a hawk to end all hawks, not to mention a talented political maneuverer in his Byzantine Likud party, he has devoted much effort to promoting minority rights in Israel, in particular serving an advocate for the Bedouin.

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Laugh Your Guts Out–Irony on Yom Kippur and Election Day

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Haim Watzman

Penitents are like voters. They face critical choices, ones that will set the course of their lives, and must make them in a situation of uncertainty. Committed voters try to grope through the fog of rhetoric in order to understand the true wills and predilections of the candidates they must choose from; penitents seek to dispel the mystery and ambiguity that cloaks the divine in order to understand what God wants of their lives.

But when I look around me this year, three days before Yom Kippur and a month before the American elections, I have a feeling that a lot of Jewish penitents and American voters are not using an essential tool that they need to make their choices. I mean irony.

Irony? Doesn’t that have something to do with punch lines? Is the choice of the leader of the free world and the acknowledgment and correction of one’s sins a joke?

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Those Filthy, Lying Minorities

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Haim Watzman

    They evinced no concern for the cleanliness of the area they lived in.… [T]he streets [were] filthy and stank to the skies.…They were considered to be swindlers, prone to lying. “An Arab never speaks the truth, except by mistake,” said policemen who served in the area.

That’s a description of London’s Jewish neighborhood, the East End, in 1904. I’ve quoted from Anita Shapira’s Brenner: A Life, her fascinating new biography (in Hebrew) of Zionist literary lion Yosef Haim Brenner—except that I’ve replaced the word “Jew” with “Arab.”

Lack of concern for the cleanliness and esthetics of public spaces and untruthfulness are the most common negative traits attributed by Jews to Arabs in Israel. These stereotypes cross all social and political boundaries—I’ve heard them from working-class Israelis in impoverished neighborhoods and from professors at universities, from religious champions of Greater Israel and from peace activists. When I’ve dared to suggest that these characteristics might not be inherent in the Arab character, I am generally silenced with what they see as the irrefutable argument: “You don’t know the Arabs the way I know the Arabs.”

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Deadly Idealism–The Fast of Gedalya

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Haim Watzman

The ruins of Mitzpa, from Encyclopedia.comJeremiah the prophet, bound in chains in the convoy of Judean exiles the conquering army was taking to Babylonia, is freed by the captain of the guard. Jeremiah goes to Mitzpa, near destroyed Jerusalem, where Gedalya, whom the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had appointed governor over Judea.

Jewish idealists and patriots who opposed the Babylonian occupation viewed Gedalya as a traitor and collaborator. In a sense they were right—Gedalya was working for the enemy. But Gedalya, like Jeremiah, understood that resistance to the conquers was hopeless. Better to accept the autonomy the Babylonians were offering and do what could be done to help the nation recover from the ravages of the war.

“Now it came to pass in the seventh month that Yishma’el the son of Netanya the son of Elishama, of the royal line, and some of the chief officers of the king, and ten men with him, came to Gedalyahu the son of Ahiqam to Mitzpa; and there they ate bread together in Mitzpa. Then Yishma’el the son of Netanya and the ten men that were with him arose and struck Gedalyahu the son of Ahiqam the son of Shafan with the sword and slew him” (Jeremiah 40:1-2).

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Shana Tova!

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South Jerusalem wishes all our readers–those who love us, those who hate us, those who agree with us, those who disagree–a happy Jewish new year. Here in South Jerusalem we’ll be celebrating the two-day holiday with our families and engaging in examining our own faults and forgiving those of others. And we’ll be contemplating how … Read more

The Cistern And The King–An Elul Story

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Haim Watzman

A cool wind blows through the vineyard in Yavneh late in the month of Elul. The sun, obscured by large but unthreatening gray-blue cloud, has passed the sky’s pinnacle. Rabban Yohanan Ben-Zakkai’s students, who until just a few minutes previously had been engaged in a heated debate over whether the shofar could be blown when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. This was formerly allowed only in the Holy Temple, which was destroyed some years before. Could a rule applying just to the sacred precinct now be expanded to include all of Jerusalem, or perhaps Yavneh as well, or even the entire Land of Israel?

“We seem,” says Rabban Yohanan—the Nasi, head of the Sanhedrin, reconstituted here on the southwestern coastal plane of the Holy Land after the Temple’s destruction—“to have lost our train of thought.”

Rabbi Yosi points to the sky. “Since the destruction of the Holy Temple, a cloud often passes between us and divine inspiration.”

“Perhaps,” says Rabban Yohanan, “I should tell a story.

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Science and Religion and the Mufti and Me

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Haim Watzman Readers interested in the science (specifically evolution) and religion debate might be interested in the exchange I’ve been participating in with the Grand Mufti and others over on Jewlicious. The GM defines the problem well, and I’ve tried to help him dispel some misconceptions. The gist is that it’s an error to say … Read more

The People of the Insufficient Library Books

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Haim Watzman

“Israelis buy so many books!” an acquaintance told me in wonder and appreciation during my recent trips to the U.S.

“Yes, but don’t be overly impressed,” I cautioned. “The main reason is that we have a lousy public library system.”

Ironically, the libraries of the country of the People of the Book are small, under-funded, and under-stocked. The Baka neighborhood library is a typical example. It’s got a dedicated and helpful staff and a decent collection of children’s books, but if you’re an adult, the chances of finding what you want in decent condition are pretty small.

In fact, when I stopped by yesterday morning, it was my first visit since my kids outgrew the children’s book section several years ago. I was looking for two new releases-Amir Guttfreund’s new novel Bishvila Giborim Afim and Anita Shapira’s new biography of Zionist literary and spiritual guru Yosef Haim Brenner. The librarian told me that the books I was seeking were on order but hadn’t arrived yet. Best to come in on a Sunday-that’s when the new books come in and get snatched up, she said.

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