Identifying Israeli political parties’ supporters

Recent election ties, the likelihood of another one in two weeks, and the prospects of a fourth election raise the issue of who are we, and why do we cluster as we do. We can begin with several, more or less fixed, clusters of Israelis: *Ultra-Orthodox, Ashkenazim, very likely to vote United Torah Judaism *Perhaps a bit less fixed ultra-Orthodox Sephardim, likely to vote SHAS *Israeli Arabs, most of whom vote for the United Arab List *West Bank settlers, many of them Orthodox Jews, who vote for one of the right of center parties *Jews of Middle Eastern origin, traditional in their religious practices, who tend to vote Likud, especially, perhaps, those with lower education and income levels *Russians, a large and complex group, many of whom form the basic support of Avigdor Lieberman and go along with his right of center opposition to allying with Arabs or perhaps left wing Jews [Ira Sharkansky, Ph.D.]

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East

Good vs evil in a chessboard, parallel universe

Siblings Aaron and Stella eat some magic sushi and they find themselves in the parallel universe of Mushi,The Land of the Mind, somewhat similar in concept  on an updated, higher tech scale to what Alice found in Wonderland. In this parallel universe, many things are the same, but other things are quite different. Like a chess game, the world is divided into black and white spheres of influence, each presided over by a queen. Instead of knights, bishops, rooks, and pawns (and no king), the queens are aided in the Land of the Mind by various Lords and Ladies. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Swept up in ‘Hurricane Diane’

Rami Margron enters in purple robes and a golden garland. Dionysus has been reborn as Diane, who prefers the personal pronouns “they, them, and theirs.”  Diane is a landscape artist with the chutzpah to ‘follow their own vision, not their clients’. With a crocodile haircut, workboots and guns most men would envy, Margron gives Diane a brash, butch androgyny that makes them compelling. Diane’s vision is to “re-wild” the suburbs with permaculture, taking it from manicured lawns and rose bushes to producing food, herbs and medicine “off the grid.” But Carol (Liz Wisan) is not having it. A chatty suburbanite who clips pictures from HGTV Magazine, she cares too much about resale value, “curb-appeal” and what “the girls” will think. [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Haifa, San Diego scientists to probe Israeli coastal waters

Before long the historic port city of Akko, Israel, will become headquarters for a search for sunken treasures of the academic kind in a project that brings together scientists from UC San Diego and the University of Haifa.

“Along the coast of Israel, submerged settlements, ancient harbors and sunken ships tell a unique story of 11,000 years of human resilience and adaptation,” explains Assaf Yasur-Landau, director of the Leon Racanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa.  “I am very excited for this tremendous opportunity in which both partners – the University of Haifa and UC San Diego – join forces to create pathbreaking underwater and coastal research as well as a joint training program on the Carmel Coast.” [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Middle East, Obituaries & memorials, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Lawfare Project threatens to sue UC Berkeley to ensure safety of Jewish students

Following a set of distressing events at the University of California, Berkeley, The Lawfare Project has sent a letter to Chancellor Carol Christ calling on the university to act to ensure Jewish students feel safe and welcome on campus. [Press release from the Lawfare Project]

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Book tells of kibbutz movement’s rise and fall

A kibbutz, an Israeli collective settlement, originally agricultural, operates on the principles of shared ownership, equality among the sexes, and collaboration. In Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi, Mapam, and the Demise of the Israel Labor Movement, Tal Elmaliach, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, tells the history of the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late twentieth century and the concomitant death of the kibbutz movement (Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi) and Mapam, its political arm. He tells how the collapse of Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi accompanied the downfall of Histadrut, Israel’s federation of labor movements, which included both kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) and industry, and Mapai, its political wing, whose power lay in the institutions it created through Marxist socialism. [Fred Riess, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Business & Finance, Fred Reiss, EdD, Middle East

Jewish trivia quiz: Kirk Douglas, z”l

Kirk Douglas died recently at the age of 103. Douglas, whose real name was Issur Danielovitch, made his film debut in 1946, and went on to perform and star in dozens of movies, in addition to writing, directing, and producing. He was nominated for and received numerous awards, including Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, Kennedy Center Honors, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award. After Douglas’s bar mitzvah, his synagogue offered to sponsor him to become a rabbi, but he declined, already knowing that he wanted to be an actor. Judaism was only a minimal part of his adult life until he was in a near-fatal helicopter crash, about which he later said “I came to believe that I was spared because I had never come to grips with what it means to be Jewish.” He did, however, make one reference to his religious observance during his acting career. What did he say?[Mark D. Zimmerman]

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Mark D. Zimmerman, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Moses did not write the entire Torah

The rational Spanish sage Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1164), whose views are included in most rabbinical Bibles with commentaries, stated that Moses did not write the entire Torah. Realizing that Moses was on top of the mountain alone where he died and did not descend to report what happened there even before he died, Abraham ibn Ezra states that Moses did not write all twelve passages in this chapter. He suggests that the chapter was written by Joshua who knew what occurred through prophecy. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion

Queen Esther’s queenly wave

Some little-known but fascinating facts about Queen Esther have come to light in time for this year’s celebration of Purim.. Documents spanning centuries, just released by SHLEP (the Shushan Historical and Literary Esther Project), highlight such revelations as the Jewish heroine’s role in the queenly wave … the discovery of a widely popular synthetic fabric… sure-fire advice for older women seeking marriage, and much more. [Joel H. Cohen]

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Joel H. Cohen, Trivia, Humor & Satire

How to talk to your children about climate change

There’s so much dreary and depressing news in the papers and on TV these days about the so-called ”climate emergency” and the ”climate crisis.” Article after article, op-ed after op-ed, it’s a never-ending drumbeat of dystopian news and I’m tired of it. Sure, I’m one of the people who coined and promoted the cli-fi genre of novels and movies over the past 10 years, but at the same time, I’m not in the pessimist camp. I’m a born optimist. [Dan Bloom]

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International, The World We Share

Wrap group learns at Tifereth Israel

The national Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs (FJMC) has a tradition called “World Wide Wrap,” in which Jews around the world are taught traditional ways of wrapping tefillin (phylacteries) on their arms and placing a prayer box on their heads. Rabbi Joshua Dorsch, instructing a learning session sponsored by the Tifereth Israel Synagogue Men’s Club, an FJMC affiliate, on Sunday, explained that the custom derives from a literal interpretation of the v’ahavta prayer (Deuteronomy 6:5-9), … [Donald H. Harrison}

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education

Siba top dog by human, not canine, standards

While New Hampshire was voting in the presidential primary held this past Tuesday, the judges for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show were selecting the winner of the Best in Show Award.   They chose a standard poodle named Siba.  Now I have nothing against poodles per se.  Indeed, they are highly intelligent, but in dog shows, superficial beauty is valued more than smartness.  That is why Siba received  the Westminster pewter trophy and hand-engraved Steuben crystal bowl as her rewards.  By the way, I find it obvious that these prizes are intended for Siba’s owners and not Siba whom I’m sure would prefer a year’s supply of filet mignon fed to her in the bowl and trophy which I surmise will end up in some display case. [Elona Baron as told the Laurie Baron]

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Lawrence Baron, The World We Share, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Lindbergh biography details his anti-Semitism

Aviator Charles A. Lindbergh was the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, New York to Paris, landing at Le Bourget Aerodrome on May 20, 1927.  Ever since then, San Diego has been bedazzled by the daring pilot, naming after him its airport on San Diego Bay, a park near Balboa Avenue west of the 8095, a school in Clairemont Mesa (also named for humanitarian Albert E. Schweitzer),  and a street near Otay Valley Regional Park. A new book by Candace Fleming, intended for Young Adults, is The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh.  Besides recounting the famous flight that made him a cultural icon, and the horrific kidnapping of the first child born to him and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the book tells how Lindbergh became an acolyte of Nobel Prize winning surgeon Dr. Alexis Carrel, with whom he worked on experiments designed to provide human beings with immortality.  Together, Carrel and Lindbergh dreamed of creating a panel of immortals who could devote themselves to eugenics, a field once popular in the United States that held that the human race could be improved through selective breeding of superior people and the sterilization of interior people.  It was a “science” that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis turned into their ideology. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, USA

Dita Kraus’ memoir tells of Shoah, early Israel

Antonio Iturbe, a Spanish author, wrote a fictional account of Dita (Polachova) Kraus’s life titled The Librarian of Auschwitz, in which Dita was cast as a heroine who risked her life to expose children at the notorious Nazi death camp to a few books on diverse subjects.  The point of the story, for many, was that in spite of the inhumanity all around them, there were people for whom kindness, literature, learning, and knowledge remained paramount objectives. Now comes Kraus’s own memoir of her remarkable life, which gives us a fuller picture of who she is, and the experiences she had pre- and post-Auschwitz. [Donald H. Harison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East