Monthly Archives: September 2011

The Ambassador’s residence and the refugee camp

24 Saturday Sep 2011

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U.S. Ambassador's yard (Credit: US Embassy Tel Aviv)

Aida refugee camp stage

Two events I attended this week had some similarities. Both were musical performances held outside on beautiful Mediterranean evenings, both began with brief talks by the host, both included musical performances by an oud player, both audiences were international, and both were quite fun. Both, however, left me somewhat uncomfortable.

There were some differences as well. The first was at the United States’ Ambassador’s residence, with a lovely reception on the lawn and praise for the music-for-peace group that had been touring Israel. The second was in a small cement amphitheater in the Aida Refugee camp, just on the far side of the separation wall, and featured both music and some awesome dancing from a traditional Palestinian dance troupe.

The first event made me uncomfortable because I would like the United States position to have remained more critical of Israel’s ongoing settlement building far from the green line. The U.S. is not helping itself or Israel by not telling the truth, firmly and repeatedly, about the religious-national settlements deep in the West Bank. The second event made me uncomfortable because of the rhetoric around the Palestinian right of return. The huge key above the camp entrance can be interpreted as a “never forget” kind of symbol, a mourning for what has been lost. But there was a beautiful new poster with an eye whose iris was the Palestinian flag, bearing the phrase in English “We will return…” The main speaker also spoke about how the right of return was central to any peace deal.

A deal that gets Israelis out of an expensive and morally degrading occupation is going to have to involve evacuating those settlements. A deal that gets Palestinians a state of their own and looking to the future is going to have to involve giving up the right to return to places that have been in Israeli control since 1948. I would have liked the Ambassador and the head of Aida camp’s cultural group to have been able to say those things clearly. It wouldn’t solve everything – East Jerusalem would still be a big sticking point, for example. Without the Palestinian refugees letting go of that sixty-three year-old loss, and without the Israeli settlers letting go of their vision of a Greater Israel, however, I don’t see how the impasse will be broken.

Both oud players were terrific to hear, by the way.

Teaching Bible in the religious schools

22 Thursday Sep 2011

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Doing Tanakh homework (photo credit: Flickr David55king)

Today I spoke with a woman who now works for a non-profit and who was a Bible teacher in a religious school. I so appreciated the time she took away from her work for our conversation. I’m lucky to have had the chance to meet her; in the course of our normal lives I suspect we would not have encountered each other. She lives in a small Jewish settlement far into the West Bank, and her husband runs a mechina (yearlong program between high school and the army) there to get students ready for the army. I would have loved to have asked her many things about her decision to be a settler. We did not talk politics, however – we talked religion!

What brought you into teaching?

Well, my father thought teaching good job for a woman. Also, I thought would be interesting. I wanted to work with people – that’s why I became both a school counselor and teacher. The teacher’s college was near my home. So it was natural.

I really wanted to teach but keeping discipline in the classroom became too much. Sometimes here we have 39 kids in a class. I wanted to talk about the Tanakh, what the students thought it meant. Especially in religious school,it’s not the first time the children have seen these stories. They’ve known them since gan, since kindergarten. So I wanted to talk about it with them. But there is not enough time with all of them. I tried to do some of that, but with the exams coming up I had to write it all on the board and have them copy it down. Tanakh should not be just knowledge, not just something to know. It is part of their lives. Now I feel like I do that work with my own children.

Why did you choose to teach Tanakh?

I knew it so well from the time I was a girl. Though I learned so much more about it when I became a teacher. 

What are some of the differences between religious school and secular school?

I don’t know so much about what is happening in the secular schools. They teach Tanakh, but just enough to know it, to pass the exam. In religious schools it is much much more. The exams are completely different. We use Rashi and Rambam and the Talmud. It is very complex, very rich and deep.

In religious schools, the students are living in the modern world and also living religious, just as my family and I are. So that brings up a lot of questions. It (studying Tanakh) is not just for school. It is about your life. You use, for example, the Psalms when thinking about the day.

What kind of a range is there in how religious the families are in the religious schools? Were there families who had debated between religious and secular schools?

It depends on where you are. In our school there were religious families, and there were also non-religious families who wanted their children to go to religious schools. There were the families who just go to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah – the ones who are more lightly religious.

Were there any who debated between Haredi (ultra-orthodox) and Dati (religious) schools?

Very few – very few. The Haredi system is much more closed. If you were to go to a Haredi school, they would want to know who your family was, that you were Haredi.

Do the religious schools teach about other religious traditions?

That is a good question! All throughout my schooling, never. Where I got my BA, we had a library, a library with two large floors. On the first floor were the Holy Books – and it was full. On the second floor were all the other books – psychology, sociology, etc. I went looking for the Christian Bible and the Qur’an. I found them – they had them – on the second floor, way in the corner out of the way.

Would they have come up in history?

Maybe, maybe one sentence in history, but not as religion.  

When we finished she offered to speak with me more, so I look forward to more conversations with her.

Missing the biggest problems with minority education?

22 Thursday Sep 2011

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A huge qualifier to the following: I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic and have not yet been inside an Israeli high school. I’m reacting to this expert’s paper based on what he himself says and two other pieces I’ve read. So, with that said…

In his paper “The State Approach to Jewish and non-Jewish Education in Israel,” Yaakov Katz argues, unpersuasively from my perspective, that the mandatory curriculum for Israeli schools will respond to significant problems with minority education. He hopes that “the values-based mandatory curriculum will enhance increased communal and collective understanding within Israeli society while at the same time allowing different social groups to realize their own particular individualized social goals.” He does not address, however, what appear to me even in his own account to be the most serious barriers to a successful educational system.

The aspect of Israeli education that Katz identifies (to my eye, correctly) as most in need of improvement is that of the Arab system. Interestingly, unlike the testimony of almost everyone with whom I have spoken that Israeli education is a mess, Katz argues for the generally high quality of Jewish education (meaning the education of the Jewish population).

 The Jewish educational system in Israel is highly developed and enjoys a large budget which allows for dynamic development of facilities, school-based technology, advanced teaching and learning methodologies, and varied extra-curricular programmes for students at all levels in the school system (Gaziel 1999). The level of teachers is good with almost all teachers in the educational system in possession of a college degree and a teaching diploma. School facilities, such as classrooms, libraries, laboratories, computer rooms, and sports facilities are well developed; achievement of Jewish students in matriculation examinations is on a par with achievement in the average western country; the drop-out rate of students is fairly low and, in general, Jewish parents are involved in their children’s education…All educational sectors of the Jewish population in Israel can be described as generally satisfied with the educational outputs of the schools that cater for their children.

Perhaps Katz’s relatively upbeat tone about the education of the Israeli Jewish students comes from his implicit comparison, which becomes explicit in his next section: the educational outcomes of the Israeli Arab students. He notes that both their quality of education and their outcomes are poor. “Arab schools are typified by a significant lack of physical facilities, such as classrooms, libraries, laboratories; a significant lack of qualified teachers; a significantly high student drop-out rate; a remarkably low rate of success in the Israeli matriculation examinations which serve as a major criterion for entry into education at the tertiary level; an almost total lack of extra-curricular activities offered to students by school authorities; and an almost total lack of parental interest in their children’s educational future.”

Katz is not, however, clear on why the Arab educational sector is so weak. “Despite the fact that Arab education is budgeted according to the same parameters that dictate the budget for Jewish education, benign neglect over the years by successive Israeli governments has led to a situation of inequality between Jewish and Arab schools…According to Glaubman and Katz (1998) the limitations that typify the Arab educational systems are perceived by the Arab population as part of a planned governmental policy of neglect and are viewed as an extension of grievances held against the Israeli government.” These statements are puzzling. What does “benign neglect” look like in practice? If the funding is the same, but the schools are physically in bad shape, where does the money go? To what extent does he agree with the “perception” of Arab Israelis that the government has consciously underserved Arab Israeli students?

In addition to not addressing this crucial question of funding and support for Arab-Israeli schools, Katz’s description of the mandatory curriculum fails to discuss the most potentially alienating aspects of the current and future curriculum for Arab-Israeli students. He simply lists “civics,” without discussing the question of how one should critically teach civics when you have different national identities in your system. He lists “Hebrew/Arabic,” despite the fact that Hebrew is compulsory for Arab students while Arabic is elective for Jewish students.

Katz wants to respond to a challenge that is to be taken seriously – the increasing dividedness of Israeli society. He refers to a helpful distinction: traditional societies strive “for maximum cohesion and homogeneity” while postmodern and modern societies seek “the tolerance of heterogeneity.” That phrasing makes the modern society sound more appealing, but he also uses another phrasing. “Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Israeli society has radically moved from one in which social solidarity and concern for the welfare of the collective was of utmost importance to a post-modern, individualized society in which collective values have all but disappeared.” In this formulation, one can hear the frequent yearning among Israelis of a certain age for a more public-spirited youth. He then lays out a clear set of divisions with which I have become familiar: the religious (secular – religious), political (right – left), ethnic (Ashkenazi – Sephardic), national (Jewish – Arab), and cultural (complex, but essentially Ashkenazi – all others not from European cultures).

Of all these divisions Katz identifies the Arab-Israeli vs. Jewish-Israeli gap in educational outcomes as the largest.  He describes an Arab-Israeli student learning in a dilapidated school from poorly prepared teachers. Professor Abu-Saad has written that the student is reading civics that sound like political propaganda and is not being invited into a critical dialogue. It is hard to imagine that without addressing these pieces a curricular reform could encourage Arab-Israel parents to support the school’s mission and inspire the student to strive for excellence.

Asking Senator Coons to support continued aid to the Palestinian people

20 Tuesday Sep 2011

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The Honorable Christopher A. Coons
127A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0801

Dear Senator Coons,

I write you today to encourage you to fight for retaining aid to the Palestinian people, should a proposal to cut such aid arise. Thank you for all your hard work representing the people of Delaware. I am myself an Amherst and divinity school graduate and a balding family man in my forties, so I feel particularly well represented in the United States Senate at the moment. I enjoyed meeting you at Santosh Viswanathan’s house during your campaign and again when you visited St. Andrew’s School, where I teach religion. I currently am on sabbatical in Jerusalem, having been given a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching to study how the Israeli and Palestinian school systems teach about religion.

I can see you care a great deal about the disadvantaged, from your experiences in Kenya and your work at Amherst and Yale Divinity through your work leading New Castle County to your efforts in the Senate. You also support Israel, as you have said in your statement to AIPAC and your letter encouraging the administration to protect Egypt’s peace with Israel. When you visited students from Congregation Beth Emeth and others on their confirmation (St. Andrew’s School takes our students to visit Beth Emeth every year), you spoke about your freshman year roommate expressing his willingness to die for Israel, and how it revealed to you the importance of Israel to many Americans. Continuing to help the moderate Palestinian cause upholds all of these commitments. It is in the security interest of the Palestinians, the Israelis and the United States.

Cutting United States aid for the Palestinians would harm the security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. I have visited Ramallah and Bethlehem in the past several weeks, and the presence of well-uniformed and friendly Palestinian police representing the moderate Palestinian Authority is clearly reassuring to Palestinians and visitors alike. While I hope for even greater mobility for the Palestinian people, the cooperation between the PA police and the IDF makes everyday life and economic circumstances for the Palestinians much better than they were in the early 2000s. Consider also the effect of Palestinians getting health care at a clinic renovated by USAID, with its motto “From the American People” clearly present, or the recent educational conference, also sponsored by USAID, encouraging the teaching of critical thinking skills. A healthy, critically minded and secure Palestinian population aware of friendly U.S. intentions – now that is clearly something that is both a humanitarian good and in our best national interest.

For these reasons I request that you support continued aid to the Palestinian people, whatever might take place at the United Nations in the coming weeks. Again, thank you for representing me, Middletown and Delaware in the United States Senate.

Sincerely,

Terence Gilheany

Israeli-Palestinian teen listening circle

19 Monday Sep 2011

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Around the firepit at Neve Shalom, the peace village where we met

Last night West Bank Palestinian teens and Israeli teens, as well as members of a peace group called Sulha, gathered for listening circles, and I was lucky enough to attend. First we heard two speakers – an Israeli who regretted things he had done in the army, and a Palestinian who regretted things he had done as a fighter. Then we broke up into groups of approximately eight. We were given two prompts. The first ask, “Who are you, where do you come from, and what do you hope from tonight?” Each person in the circle answered these questions. Then people could respond as they wished to the second prompt: “What are your hopes and fears for September?” (“September” appears to be the shorthand people are using for whatever proposal the Palestinian Authority will set before the UN.)

In my group, each of the three Palestinian students spoke. Two of them spoke about traumatizing events in their lives: being woken from their beds by soldiers during the second intifada, having their dad’s taken away at night and not knowing why, being afraid to go to school after knowing acquaintances who had been killed. The two Israeli students did not choose to speak during the voluntary speaking time. One elderly Jewish Israeli woman spoke of having had her mother killed in the 1948 war and her nephew killed in the 1973 war, but not being afraid of September and believing that only through listening and understanding can we transcend fear. Our facilitator, an Israeli woman about my age, said her husband had been wounded in Lebanon and had a soldier under his command killed. Her mother-in-law had been known to say “the only good Arab is a dead Arab,” and though her husband did not say this, he did not understand why she went to events like Sulha.

Sulha banner

I was fascinated both by the Israeli and the Palestinian teens. The Palestinian network of students seemed more informal – “a friend told me to come so I could see how the Israelis can go wherever they want whenever they want” one said. The Israelis were all from one “mechina” (a year long program after high school and before the army.) One in my circle described the purpose of a mechina as “to prepare us for the army and to serve our country.” This mechina was sponsored by the Reform movement, so the students were probably on the liberal side. Still, I overheard some talking in English afterward (turns out some were new olim from the U.S.) and one at least sounded quite defensive. I believe she was saying something like “They make it sound like everything we do is bad and they don’t do anything back to us.”

Fred Johnson leading us in singing and drumming

There was also singing and chanting led by a “peace singer” from the U.S., Fred Johnson. There were some invented rituals, like one of the leaders walking among us with incense, and the lighting of a tribal fire. These sorts of things I find to be very flaky, but the students and other adults did not seem to be put off. At one point, as a coordinator was speaking to the entire group about his hopes for mutual understanding, three Israeli helicopters came overhead. Everyone laughed as the unintended symbolism interfered with the generated symbolism.

I’ve been reflecting on the failure of so many people-to-people initiatives at the beginning of the second intifada about which Ron Kronish and I spoke a few weeks ago. I suppose to make a serious impact on the conflict overall, the number of people who would have these experiences would have to be huge, and they would have to have them enough times so they could not just write them off with some form of defensive justification. For example, it took full integration in the schools and the workplace for to make a major dent in most white Americans’ racism. It was, nonetheless, interesting to see the kids get more of a sense of the humanity of the other.

Thanks so much to David Gerwin for inviting me.

Paper summary: “De-educating indigenous Palestinians”

19 Monday Sep 2011

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In a previous post I wrote about Dr. Ismael Abu-Saad’s 2006 paper on the Arab schools in Israel. I have just read a 2008 paper of his revisiting some of the same ground, but with more specific examples: Present Absentees: The Arab School Curriculum in Israel as a Tool for De-Educating Indigenous Palestinians. For one of two central examples, he takes a chapter from a 6th grade geography textbook about the coastal plain around Tel Aviv – Jaffa. If this chapter is representative, it is stunning. It’s title is “The Big Change” and its narrative is how the early 20th century Zionist immigrants through swamp drainage, etc. allowed the area to hold many more people. They call the area “largely abandoned” and never refer to Jaffa or Ishdud, or to the citrus production happening throughout the area. Abu-Saad gives a series of statistics to back up the fact that real production and population are being left out of the narrative. I wish I could read Arabic (or Hebrew, since the book was originally written in Hebrew), because the fact that we are hearing a summary of just one chapter makes me wonder if some of the “absent” material was covered in previous chapters. If not, these omissions and their political and identity implications are significant.

Jaffa 1862

Abu-Saad gives a series of statistics to back up the fact that real production and population are being left out of the narrative. I wish I could read Arabic (or Hebrew, since the book was originally written in Hebrew), because the fact that we are hearing a summary of just one chapter makes me wonder if some of the “absent” material was covered in previous chapters. If not, these omissions and their political and identity implications are significant.

Another example, to which Abu-Saad referred in his 2006 paper but which he lays out in a helpful table in this paper, are the “100 Basic Concepts” curriculum unit introduced in the 2004-2005 school year. I am not particularly taken aback by the comparison between the “heritage concepts” of Arabs and Jews. Abu-Saad finds some of the points Orientalizing and condescending; perhaps. But I notice near the “tent” entry for the Arabs (one of his examples of romanticizing the oriental) there is the Jewish marriage “chuppah.” Sooo… The “Zionist concepts,” however, are a whole other story. The list reads to me as the outcome of a “my kids aren’t as Zionist as I am, and they need to be” lobby. The struggle is only humanized on one side – there are no Arab names in the Zionist list for Jews, and only a few tacked on for the Arab students. Would Jewish Israeli children really lose their Zionism if presented with a multi-faceted story of the emergence of the state? Would Arab students really be “incited” by the same? I would expect the opposite: both groups would more greatly respect an entity able to openly discuss and debate their heritage and historical actions.

Abu-Saad also notes that a group of Arab educators wrote an alternative concept list. It read to me as giving a pro-Palestinian perspective – for example, 1948 was only referred to as the Nakba. While it was not as empty of Zionism as the Zionist list was empty of Arab concepts, neither was it what I would want my children reading to get an understanding of the viewpoints of different players in the conflict and in the history of the area more generally.

Depoliticized architecture?

15 Thursday Sep 2011

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Incredible - the scale model of Jerusalem

Thank you so much to Sally Young for introducing Hilary and me to Ofer Manor, Chief Architect of the City of Jerusalem. Ofer was generous enough to meet with us for an hour. As someone who had been a Loeb Fellow at Harvard for a year, he knows what it is like to have the incredible privilege and also the challenge of living abroad for a year. He shared his insights into how best to make a home in Jerusalem as an expat, and he also allowed us a peak into his work life.

We were sitting at the Apple and Pear Café in Safra Square, and when I asked Ofer what is currently on his work agenda, he gestured to the light rail going by. “You are looking at it!” he said. He spoke about the difficulties of getting all the pieces in place – the traffic flow, the curbs and stones, the utilities. As a huge fan of public transport and of great urban design generally, I loved hearing his description of these decisions.

Since I had just the day before been sitting in a dilapidated courtyard in Silwan looking at a plan that showed many Palestinian houses razed for various park and archeological projects, I did ask Ofer about Silwan. He got a concerned look on his face and said regretfully, “Silwan is very political. Perhaps the most political area in all of Jerusalem.” He said he told people that he tries not to let politics get in the way of helping improve the day-to-day lives of people in the city. “I know people will say everything is political, but if you let the politics stop you, nothing will happen.”

To some extent I agree with Ofer – one does need to find opportunities and move forward where one can. I also have no real understanding of the scope and limits of Ofer’s authority. For example, the plan that has many houses demolished for the park for tourists in Silwan, but according to our presenter from Silwan does not have schools, hospitals or parking for Silwan’s residents – whose plan is that? It is “the municipality’s” – but who in this case is the municipality? Does Ofer have a voice in those decisions, and if so, what does he try to do?

Ofer not only took the time to meet with us, but went a step further and invited us to see the model of Jerusalem his office has put together. It is a marvel. A large room, representing only 15% of Jerusalem and yet showing a complex cityscape in remarkable detail. We could see the Old City, of course, and much of West Jerusalem, all the way from the Jerusalem Chords Bridge. We could have seen our house, but alas a column currently takes up the spot San Simon would occupy!

Fairness – a productive place to begin

15 Thursday Sep 2011

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The shared citizenship model of Merchavim

Mike Prashker founded and runs an organization dedicated to “the advancement of shared citizenship in Israel.” Called Merchavim, it uses as its core value the concept of fairness. In our conversation, Mike was eloquent about why fairness should be the core value. He noted that beginning where many people often do when considering the idea of citizenship in Israel, with a discussion of whether Israel can be both a Jewish state and democratic, creates an adversarial framework at the outset. He had a great line: “Israelis are often afraid of each other, but none consider themselves scary.” In conversations with Israelis of all backgrounds, Merchavim found that most if not all could agree to begin with an acceptance of fairness as a goal for which to strive, and build from there. Mr. Prashker recently had an editorial in Haaretz discussing fairness, the importance of which, he notes, “every kindergartener intuitively knows.”

Merchavim teaches teachers how to engage more fairly with the diverse populations of students in their classrooms. Mr. Prashker’s examples address gender, race, national origin, ability, religion, and class, among others. He does a wonderful job avoiding, as he himself warns against, binary oppositions. He is also explicit that Merchavim is not a protest organization. It works with the Ministry of Education to provide useful, pragmatic solutions to the real problems students and teachers from diverse backgrounds face. He gave the example of a recent critique he wrote of the emphasis some politicians are currently placing on singing HaTikva, the explicitly Jewish national anthem with a male tense, a secular outlook and a European musical setting. He said that he meant his critique to be constructive, and felt it would be unhelpful (and untrue) to call those focusing on the anthem “nationalist nutters.” Instead, he hopes to raise ideas they can consider seriously within their existing loyalties.

Mike Prashker is enthusiastic, charismatic and funny, with a terrific British accent and a knack for putting one at one’s ease. I look forward to more conversations with him about the shared citizenship model for Israel.

A secular history teacher’s perspective

15 Thursday Sep 2011

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A sculpture in Ramla represents peace among the three Abrahamic faiths

I spoke today to a man who used to be a history teacher in two secular Israeli public schools. He left because he felt that between the bureaucracy and the discipline issues, there was very little time left for teaching. He noted the class size of 35 – something I have heard referred to frequently as a concern. When I asked him about teaching about religion in history class, he said that “well, to teach about history and religion are the same thing in Israel. It is not like in the United States with the separation of church and state.” He gave the example that in history they would teach that the Israeli right to the land comes from their presence here in Biblical times. He noted that the Israeli Declaration of Independence is based on this claim. His tone implied he thought that using the Biblical history as part of the state’s identity was reasonable, though he did regret that “no-one talks about the common links between the religions.” This discussion led him to making a distinction between two kinds of what he called “rights” in Israel. “Individual rights, every person has those – the right to vote, the right to health care, etc. But group rights it is different. You go to an Arab village, the infrastructure is bad, while a Jewish town looks very nice.”

This former teacher also argued that non-religious Israelis have ceded the Bible class (which he did not teach) to “the religious people.” “It is too bad, really, because there are a lot of good stories for your life in that book.” In a dismissive tone of voice he said the Bible teaching was “all compare this book to that book,” by which I believe he meant it was a limited form of textual criticism. “The students just get ready for the final exam, that is all.” He qualified himself, saying this was true in the secular schools; “in the religious schools I don’t know, you would have to ask one of them.” He noted that the final exam requirements in both history and bible were very different for the secular schools, the religious schools, the Arab schools and the “very Orthodox” schools.

I was most interested in his claim that secular Israelis don’t try to influence the character of religious education, even in the secular schools – that they basically just deal with it and move on. To the extent that is true, it is both a lost opportunity for dialogue and potentially a waste of students’ time.

Tanakh, Talmud, army service, and carrying a gun

13 Tuesday Sep 2011

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Civilian with rifle in San Simon Park, wheeling an elder. Why exactly is he armed?

Speaking to an Israeli today about her experiences as a student in religion class, she noted, “We studied Tanakh every year. I remember having to memorize chapters and chapters. I still remember it to this day.” She could not remember how many years they studied Talmud: “Maybe it was just one year in high school.” She spoke passionately about how difficult it was, though. “It was so hard for me, like mathematics. You know, like making a proof.” This is the first time I have heard about the challenge of the class, at least for this woman when she was in school. A very secular woman, she sounded nonetheless pleased and proud of the requirement. When the conversation turned to religious schools, however, her attitude changed. She described one school as “religious, but good.” When I said of course the students in religious schools studied more Tanakh, she said, “Much much more. Some don’t study anything else.” She spoke about her concerns about the “very very religious” people. She noted the separatism, her perception of gender inequality, the drain they put on the society by not working and by having many children. She saved her intensity, however, for their lack of service in the army. “The religious people with the knitted kippas – they are totally a part of us. They all serve in the army, a lot in the really good units, the fighting units.” She noted that those with black kippas usually served, but not always in combat units. When she said “They are loyal” there was a lilt in her voice indicating “so that’s enough, I guess.” The implication for those who “wear the hats, or even the black coats” was clear, though she did say that only the “really extreme don’t even believe in Israel.”

She was the second Israeli I have spoken with to indicate that she thought service in the combat units was the most admirable. Another said about her son, “He grew up playing guns – we knew we were raising a soldier. When he hurt his back and could not serve in a combat unit, he was so upset. He did important, secret work in intelligence – but when his friends went to Lebanon, he insisted on going even though the doctors said that one injury could land him in a wheelchair.” While she, as a mother, thought this was too much, it was clear that in the absence of an injury she would have approved and perhaps even expected him to join a combat unit. An Israeli bumper sticker echoes this sentiment: “Battle-ready is the best, brother.”

Speaking of weapons, today I walked into a bank in a wealthy part of the city of Ra’anana. The guard stopped me and asked me something in Hebrew, and I began to open my bag for inspection – common upon entering the University, high-profile tourist areas, very big stores, and other gathering places. Instead, he shifted to English and asked “Do you have a gun?” I’m curious about the phenomenon of seeming civilians carrying pistols or semi-automatic weapons – I’ll need to read more about this.