Adloyada

Probably more than you wanted to know

Desert Island Discs is one of my favourite BBC Radio 4 programmes. Like an awful lot of the Radio 4 schedule, it's been there for ever. Like over sixty years. There's a story that Herbert Morrison,  1940s Labour cabinet minister and leader of the old London County Council so longed to be chosen to appear on it that he used to carry around a list of the eight records he'd selected, just in case he got the call. He never did.

Well, yes, I'd love to be on Desert Island Discs, and I think I could put together an interesting eight track playlist. But I haven't got a pre-selected list I carry around with me. If I wanted to, I could do a Desert Island Discs blog post anyway. It would mean that I'd never get invited, but that's the way it is, anyway. With an iphone with over 900 tracks on it, the whole concept looks a bit absurd.

Then of course, the real reason is the vanity one, the lure of being selected.

So I'll readily own up to my own vanity and say how pleased and flattered I am to have been asked by Norm to be the subject of a normblog profile. Blogging royalty. In a pantheon which includes international star bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, Omar of Iraq the Model and Michele Malkin. And a great many of my own favourites. The thing is, Norm's now up to number 252 . OK, he doesn't do them in rank order, as far as I know, but maybe he's down to scraping the barrel? 

So Norm sends me this proforma to fill in for the profile. Consternation. There are fifty questions to answer, and I have to choose just thirty. As you'll see from my archive, I tend never to use one sentence where fourteen will do, so how am I going to work out which ones I can bear to leave out?

Would I prefer to tell the world which political or philosphical thesis I think it more important to promote, or would it be better to reveal what I'd do with a huge amount of money if it came my way? Believe me, the choices weren't easy.

And then, I really like putting links into my posts. It's a sort of extreme pedantry. There are no links in normblog profiles, yet here I was going to identify so many ideas and references to things I'd really like to share with people. I emailed Norm. Could I just put links in? No. But if I supplied the links separately from the draft, he'd try put them in for me. When I sent him my draft, there was a list of about fifty links. Norm's tone was slightly pained, but tolerant. There were an awful lot of links; normblog profiles don't usually have links, and would I mind if he made decisions about which if any to put in? No, of course I'd be happy to leave it to him.

So that's what he's done, being a very excellent mensch, as well as an ace blogger.

Thanks, Norm. And thanks for unwittingly giving me the idea of doing a post in which I include the answers to the rest of the fifty questions that didn't go into the profile, updating it to add a few at a time over the course of the day.

Which is almost certainly more than you want to know. But here's the information if you care to read it.

What has been your worst blogging experience?

Being threatened with being sued by a writer who didn't like what I'd written in relation to a comment she wrote on my blog, and then deluged with emails from her friends and allies who piled on the pressure and some of whom organized various forms of ostracism. I didn't back down, she didn't sue and the whole thing petered out but left me feeling resentful and indignant.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate?

 The idea that groups of ordinary people can organize and achieve enormously beneficial changes, even if they don't belong to a political party. The history of zionism, of the Soviet Jewry campaign, and the various movements that led to the downfall of Soviet Communism are cases that come to mind.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? 

The best is definitely yet to come. That's Jewish optimism for you. I think the problems of global warming will be solved, and the forms of terrorism that blight our world today will be eliminated by changes in technology. I realise this is very much a minority opinion.

I'm still thinking about who might be cultural heroes for me. And then I've run out of time for the moment. I'll be back to do some more later today.

 At 12:27:

Who are your cultural heroes?

Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elvis Presley, Superman, Lord Snooty, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, Sunny (my aerobics trainer at LA Fitness--she has a huge following), Princess Diana.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? 

Mmmm. I'm prejudiced against pretty much any variant of English blokeishness, especially the shouty outdoor drinking, upperclass braying and football fan types, but ditto for macho cultural wannabees of every nation.

So I'm now thinking about:

If you could choose anyone, from any walk of life, to be Prime Minister (President etc), who would you choose? 

Given the present incumbent, tempting to say almost anyone, but it's not quite true. The obvious choice is Tony Blair. I liked Lord Desai's comment that Gordon Brown was put on earth to show how good Tony Blair really was.

What is your favourite proverb?

Many waters cannot quench love

What, if anything, do you worry about?

Like Imshin said, if you're a Jewish mother, you worry about just about everything. On a personal basis, how to provide for an old age which could well include years of dementia; on my daughter and son in law's behalf, what will they live on, and how will they be able to afford a house; in the wider world, how will we be able to keep the rogue states and terrorist groups from blighting our lives and theirs before we find the technologies that will totter them. 

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently? 

 I can think of some people I should have walked right by.

What would you call your autobiography? 

 Getting the Lightbulb to Want to Change

Who would play you in the movie about your life? 

 Imshin wrote after she met me that I reminded her of Judy Davis. I don't look like her, but I'm flattered by the comparison, so I'll opt for her.

What is your most treasured possession? 

My grandmother's brass candlesticks and my grandmother's silver betrothal spoon, both of which came from Galicia in Poland

What talent would you most like to have? 

I'd love to be a brilliant street dancer

Which English Premiership football (soccer) team do you support (or which baseball and/or basketball team)? 

See my comments above on commonly enjoyed activities which I regard as a waste of time.

If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? 

 To be able to give up paid working and devote my energies to all the other things I don't get enough time for

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? 

Firstly, set up a charitable fund of ten percent of it, and devote a part of my life to using the income anonymously to help individuals and causes I like. Secondly, buy my daughter and son in law a fabulous home and everything needed to make it into whatever kind of place they dream of. Thirdly, use the opportunities to travel to spend time with family and friends across the world, plus attend some fancy workshops run by top people in their trade--like Linda Weinman's Photoshop and Susie Fishbein's cookery workshop. Fourthly, sponsor groups of young Jewish families to get housing near synagogues so they could become long term communities. Finally I think I'd get plastic surgery to do some pin and tuck work on the saggy bits that you get when you're my age.

What animal would you most like to be? 

 A much loved and indulged Abyssinian cat.

UCU's anti-Israel motion: not a boycott, but something much worse

As long time readers of Adloyada will know, this blog was started back in 2005 largely to campaign against the then proposed merger of AUT, the union representing the prestigious universities, and NATFHE, the much larger union representing the community colleges and the second rank universities.

I'd been a member of both unions in my time, and could recall with horror the malign and deadend way in which NATFHE was dominated and manipulated by an inbuilt caucus of Trotskyist, Communist and other hard left hacks, whose rule ensured that it was also hopelessly ineffective in its core role of negotiating the pay of its members. A sample of the typical ravings of its former General Secretary, Paul Mackney, the architect of the merger, can be enjoyed in the clip above.

To this day, the pay of community college lecturers remains the lowest of the full time state teaching unions, below that of primary school teachers.

It had a time honoured tradition of passing motions supporting Cuba, China and whatever far left dictatorship its committee apparatchiks wanted to cosy up to (to say nothing of "fraternal visits".

So I knew that if a merger went through, not only would the new union be signed up to supporting the Stop the War Campaign (which NATFHE housed, provided financial support for, and allowed its General Secretary to campaign for), but similar hard left positions-- including a boycott of Israeli academics, which an array of fringe radical academics from some prestigious universities had failed to get approved within AUT in 2005. I played a part in that one; I was a member of the special delegates' conference that threw out the motion.

However, I never managed to get a broader campaign going; the organized Jewish community outsourced its efforts to getting the Engage group leading a campaign which centred round opposing the AUT boycott while leaving the merger to go ahead. Engage, being itself a soft Trotskyist controlled group, in fact supported the merger, even though the most simple arithmetic and a cursory reading of the constitution of the merged union made it clear that NATFHE majorities and NATFHE style caucusing and manipulation were inevitably going to ensure that a boycott type motion would be agreed.

And now, UCU has passed a motion which is widely being called a boycott by the Israeli press, the Jewish Chronicle and blogs like Harry's Place.

I don’t think the motion is in fact a boycott, and i think it’s a political mistake to call it one.

Neither is it McCarthyism--calling it that is part of the mindset of reluctance to ascribe its true origins to the history of the totalitarian left.

What it represents is something much worse–mandatory thought policing and requirements for ritual denunciations and chantings of required political mantras on pain of exclusion.

This is of course the method used by left totalitarian regimes from which UCU, dominated as it is by apparatchiks of the SWP, draws its methods.

It is also seriously misleading to label it simply anti-semitic. There are plenty of loyal Israelis who are not Jews, but who would be outraged by the requirement to denounce their government and agree with UCU’s ritual mantras. There are also some British non-Jewish members of UCU who are made to feel profoundly alienated and threatened by this and other displays of UCU’s intimidationism.

Apart from possible legal action– which may or may not come to pass– one of the most interesting political answers may be to campaign for the adoption of legislation to force unions to ballot members on political actions like these, including a requirement that a majority of the registered membership (not just a majority of those who actually vote in a ballot) must have voted for it.
It would stop union gesture politics like this (including UCU’s financial and logistical support of the Stop the War campaign) in their tracks.

Of course, a requirement like that could only be seen to be legitimate if there were also a requirement on all of us to vote in national and local elections. I’ve been thinking about that as an issue for some time. This denouement with UCU (which was absolutely inevitable once AUT and NATFHE merged) has made me feel that the requirement to vote should be seen as one of the requirements of our democracy. After all, the overwhelming majority of people in this country accept that there may be times when we are required to enlist and fight for our country when it is under attack. A requirement to vote is of the same order, and of course it still offers the possibility of spoiling your ballot paper if you don’t like any of the choices on offer.

But opting out of either taking part in choosing the government and policies of your local area and your country, or your union, if you choose to belong to one, shouldn’t be an option.

Another view, which involves abandoning UCU to the Trotskyists of SWP, and then contemplating even abandoning UK academia altogether, is taken by Shalom Lappin in a beautifully argued post here.

My view, though, goes back to the very first post I put up on the subject. It's all about democracy.

BBC musters Lord Pot-Kettle-Black and Gitmo Graduate on faith school quotas

Since the story came out of the BBC's "impartiality summit" at which some of its poster boys and girls owned up to their institution's inbuilt bias, quite a few commentators have followed up with astringent critiques.

The BBC's coverage of the government's last minute U-turn away from forcing new faith schools to take 25% of their pupils either from other faiths or none was another example of its bias in action. It was clear enough from news programme after news programme what the inbuilt line was. There were questions like,"Do you really believe faith schools aren't a threat to community cohesion?"

One of the shout lines on today's BBC News website reads:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has insisted faith schools are not harmful to the cohesion of society

As far as I'm aware, there's never been any empirical evidence of any kind that faith schools in England are in any way harmful to social cohesion.

Which brings me to the BBC's role in promoting the idea that they are.

Revisiting the exhibition

I've had a very hectic week, with very little time to post.

Quite a lot of that was taken up with family business. Like going with my mother to have her heart scanned (I might write a post about the traumas of encountering our glorious National Health Service when the patient is your 89 year old disabled mother who has advanced dementia). Most of the rest has involved me being in touch with various art colleges to set up interviews for my daughter, who's here from Jerusalem for ten days.

So Sunday's treat was to go to the Tate Modern so she could see Embankment, the Rachel Whiteread installation in the turbine hall, which I was revisiting.

An agreement that can't be enforced?

It's being widely reported that all faith schools in England are to be required to teach pupils about other faiths than their own.

FAITH schools are to be instructed to teach pupils about other religions besides their own.

Leaders from the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist faiths have signed a joint statement backing the teaching of an awareness of the “tenets” of other faiths in schools.

The declaration, made jointly with the Department for Education and Skills, says that religious education enables pupils to “combat prejudice” and helps them to develop respect and sensitivity to others.

The agreement commits faith schools to using the National Framework for Religious Education, drawn up in 2004, which encourages the teaching of the tenets of the five major religions but which is non-statutory.

This agreement may well commit Church of England and Roman Catholic schools, who in any case already teach about other faiths through their exisiting religious education syllabuses.

But in the case of Jewish schools, the signatory was Jon Benjamin, the Director General of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Jon is a tireless and very able chief executive, who has a great deal of experience of working with some of the major Jewish charities, including the British division of ORT, which is active in promoting technology education in Jewish and non-Jewish schools. However, he is not a faith leader. He has no authority of any sort over Jewish schools, because their religious education syllabuses are determined by whichever religious authority is responsible for them. The Board of Deputies is a communal representative organization, akin to a parliament or a regional consultative council, which does not exercise any religious or other authority over Jewish schools.

And I cannot imagine any circumstances in which the dozens of strictly orthodox schools, including the three or four which are state funded would agree to teach other faiths to their pupils.

Gets right up your nose

Sometimes people can make the most inspired language mistakes.

This was sprayed outside one of the best known vegetarian restaurants in Jerusalem.

Of course,  one can never be sure what exactly was in the mind of the graffiti writer in the first place.

There is a very active Israeli Society for the Protection of Nature. So maybe there really are some people whose idea of fun is sticking herons up their noses.

The rest of us can just have a little fun looking at the spray job.

The third day of Chanukah

When I woke up this morning, there were dire forecasts of heavy snow.

There must have been some round here, but by the time I surfaced, there were just dustings of white on the lawn.

But it was the stories of the queues of thousands of motorists lining up to crowd into the shopping malls at Brent Cross, Bluewater and just about everywhere else for the sales that made me decide to stay home instead of going out to do the shopping I should have done.

And from the third night of Chanukah in Jerusalem last year, there's this...

and this.....

and this....

and this......

all taken by my daughter.

The second day of Chanukah

I'm always happy when my Chanukia, my Chanukah lights display box, is up outside my front door and doing its job of displaying each night's Chanukah lights to the world at large.

I think it's the only one of its kind in Finchley.

Most Jews in England, and in most diaspora countries observe Chanukah by burning candles in Chanukah menorahs like these, which were burning at the home of my friends A & S when I visited them last night.

Chanukah is the Jewish festival most advocates of multiculturalism feel at home with. Children in English schools often know of Chanukah when they know nothing else about Judaism, or other,much more important, Jewish festivals. That's because there's a dominant trend in religious education in England to teach about other religions through what I see as a rather limited comparative religion approach. So children are taught that Chanukah is a festival of light, just as Diwali is taught as the Hindu festival of light and Christmas, with its Christmas candles, is the Christian festival of light.

The great irony of all this is that one of the main themes of Chanukah is that it commemorates resistance to multi-culturalism and assimilation. For it commemorates the success of the Maccabean uprising against colonization by the culture as well as the armies of ancient Greece. Greek culture saw itself as universal. The more gods the better. Just add your tribute to the local gods, in exchange for them giving their tribute to yours.

Modern multi-culturalism still incorporates something like that way of thinking. We'll hold an assembly about your festival. But then of course we expect you to join in the dozens of assemblies, the hymn singing, the prayers, the carol service and the harvest festival of ours.

It had immense appeal to a huge section of the Jews of ancient Israel. They thought hanging out at the local baths and ampitheatres the Greek conquerors built was great stuff. They adopted Greek names, like Jason. Some of the men went as far as to have operations which were supposed to reverse their circumcision, so they wouldn't show out amongst the genuine Greek hunks hanging out at the baths. Makes initimate body hair waxing seem wimpish. Sound familiar?

The Maccabees scored a stunning victory. A poorly armed guerilla group defeated the then mightiest, most technologically advanced army in the world. And in modern secular Israel, this military victory theme emerged as something that become a major reason for celebrating Chanukah. Israeli secular politics being what they are, it's still being used as a lever to argue for this, that or the completely opposite political position. But most Israelis these days are much more interested in the pleasures of Chanukah as a festival when you enjoy eating traditional oil based foods, and which are the best latkes, and which are the best doughnuts?

The orthodox Jewish religious position does actually focus on light. But not as a generic "festival of light". It is about a specific victory of faith, when the Jews who rededicated the Temple, after they'd removed the idols and the paraphernalia of Greek worship, set the Temple menorah lamp burning. They knew they didn't have enough consecrated oil to fulfill the Torah requirement to keep the light burning until they could make the batch of oil they needed. Yet they lit it. And, miraculously, the oil lasted eight days till they did.

So having oil lights rather than candles is a bit of a marker of religiosity. But my Chanukia is much more than that. It's ten years this Chanukah since I first revisited Israel after a thirty three year absence. I had never previously spent Chanukah in Israel. And I had never seen the old city of Jerusalem.

When I was there in 1962, there was just a huge black wall that divided the modern Jerusalem from the old city with its walls and the site of the Temple. No-one on the Israeli side could visit the Western Wall, which in Hebrew is called the Kotel. It's the remnant of Herod's Temple, the holiest site for Jews. Jews had traditionally gone to pray there right from the time of the Roman dispersal, down to 1948. Then the Jordanian Army, commanded by British officers, and helped along by the British Army, captured the old Jewish quarter, expelled its Jewish residents and barred Jews from entering.

On the first night of Chanukah that December in 1995, it was Erev Shabbos too. I walked with my daughter, on her first visit to Israel, down from the ancient walls and the Zion Gate towards the Kotel. Hundreds of people were hurrying down there alongside us. But we slowed down as we went, for we saw something we'd never seen before. It was the sight of dozens of Chanukiot just like mine, hanging on the outside of the houses of the Jewish quarter, with their lights burning so beautifully.

In diaspora households, Jewish observance has always been much more discreet. It goes on behind the curtains. Maybe if you're that bold, you might open your curtains. But putting your Chanukah lamps on the outside of your house (as the tradition says you should)-- well, no.

One of a series of photos my daughter took throughout Chanukah in Jerusalem last year.

And I was enchanted by the hand-crafted style of these lamp boxes. I immediately wanted to get one and bring it home to England. They didn't seem to be in any shops, only rather repulsive machine made versions.

A few days later, we visited the heart of Mea Shearim, the most traditional and super-observant quarter of Israel. There was a stall that was selling the lamp boxes. It was clear they were hand made by a Mea Shearim craftsman. And I bought one. So then we were faced with the problem carrying it around for the rest of our stay in Israel, including visits to Eilat, Rehovot and Tel Aviv. My daughter valiantly took on the role of guardian of the lamp box and she lugged it along with us through all our travels and onto the plane and home.

We later saw that they had the identical box, obviously by the same craftsman, on display in the Israel Museum, as part of its glorious display of Chanukah lamps from all the ages and subcultures of Jewish history.

So my Chanukah lamp box has quite a history. And I'm so proud of it.

Guest post from my daughter 5: changing the scene

The best Friday night I have ever spent was on a Tall Ship, strapped to the main mast during a force 11 gale in the pitch black, with lightning and crashing thunder which was drowned out by the waves washing over me and threatening to wash me off deck.

That was not last Friday night.

Last shabbat was therefore my second one on a boat.

Yes, I do still live in the Old City of Jerusalem, and no, the sem have not taken us out exploring the land for a little while.  Where on earth did all this boat rubbish come from then?

One of the girls who came this year has grandparents who, several years ago, traded in living in a house for living on a boat, and ever since they've been sailing around  the world, staying for weeks in the Bahamas, going round the Mediterranean, and so eventually coming round to Israel to come and visit their granddaughter.

I'm friends with this girl, she's very nice and I met her last year when she was thinking of coming here, so when she wanted to invite people to spend shabbat on her grandparents' boat I was one of the lucky few.  There were 10 of us.  Personally I was still getting over the 'Your grandparents have a boat?! And it can fit 12 people?!' bit.  I'm really not used to this kind of thing.

The only problem was that the kitchen on the boat wasn't kosher.  This meant that we couldn't eat any of their food, or use any of their utensils, so we had to bring everything ourselves.  We were going to just buy pre-cooked food and double wrap it to put in the oven, but it felt a bit sad to just have prepared food, so I offered my services.

So, that Friday I made my way down to catch the shared taxi carrying an enormous wok, noodles, shitaki mushrooms, soy sauce, beansprouts and cabbage and a box of chicken quietly marinating in my backpack.  A lot of the girls offered to carry the wok, not because I was ridiculously overloaded and looked like a tortoise but mainly because it looked cool and slightly dangerous.  I felt much safer than usual walking through the streets wielding a wok.

The boat itself was docked in Hertzelia, not far from Tel Aviv.  It's very touristy, and the marina was awash with people from all over the place.  The guy in the boat just across the way from us was from Turkey.  When I asked him if he was going to go back for the eclipse in March, he said he'd probably have to be on duty because around the time of the eclipses there are usually more storms, and he does search and rescue.

The grandparents are American, and as we came up to their boat, there was a little American flag flying proudly off the back in amongst potted geraniums and petunias.  I knew they'd been docked for several months, but I couldn't help wondering what happened to the plants when there was a storm.  "We bring the plants in when the weather gets bad," the grandmother said without my having to ask, "They don't really like the saltwater very much anyway."

There was hardly any time to explore before we had to prepare everything and get ready for shabbat.  The boat was large, maybe 30-35 foot long, and so I dropped off my stuff in the lounge room upstairs and went down into the little galley kitchen.  It was very nice, and it would have been nicer had we been able to use the stuff, but instead I got out the wok and began to chop up the garlic and onions and cabbage using the knife that we'd bought and dipped into the ocean a few minutes before.

I'd already cut the chicken the night before.  To be honest, I was a little nervous of it.  Being a vegetarian for 19 years, I'd never cooked the stuff before and its malleable, slightly translucent appearance did nothing to reassure me.  Covered in sauce, I threw them into the hot oil with the garlic and onions and saw them turn a satisfying brown colour, using the knife to stir with.  Sadly, my first thought was "Hey, cool, that's the protein in the meat denaturing due to the heat breaking down the structure of the protein molecule!" Oh dear...

I was one of the people sleeping in the lounge.  The boat itself was very beautiful, compact and neat and lined with wood.  All of us sat in the lounge and had the Friday night meal after we'd prayed on the deck. 

The neighbors opened their windows so that they could hear us singing, and we sang late into the night.  For some reason, a few of the girls fought over who was going to sit next to me at dinner: "I want to sit next to Tilla!" "Fine, but I get to sleep in the room with her then!".  I have no idea why, I mean, I'm not that exciting...Finally, we cleared up and folded away the table, then we slept on the couches while the other girls went down to the beds.

When I woke up again, it was Wednesday.

Ok, maybe it wasn't but that was a convenient way of not telling the rest of the story. Basically we hung out on the boat, it was very cool, it rocked from side to side which made everyone except me feel a little sick, and then when it was dark we went out for dinner, then back home in the shared taxi (with the wok). The end.

On Wednesday however, all us second years had a little shared evening. 

We occasionally go to various of our Rabbis' houses in the evening, learn stuff, chat, discuss issues and generally schmooze.  On Wednesday evening we went to Rav L's house, one of my favourite rabbis.  He takes the Saul and David class I like, he does our touring class of various parts of Jerusalem, and last year I took his 'tannaitic personalities' class which is brilliant in and of itself, but is also fun because at the end he gets out his guitar and we all sing. 

Yes, yes, I know it sounds very cutesy and stupid and brainwashed, but he has a wonderful voice and it isn't at all happy clappy, it's just beautiful and relaxing.

The funny thing was, once we got there and sat down, we mainly ended up talking about drug use amongst American high-schoolers and why we thought it was so prevalent, because his wife is taking a sabbatical year and is writing a paper on such things. Bizarre.

Thursday, and it was Thanksgiving.  Or wasn't.  I have never celebrated Thanksgiving in my life, for the very good reason that I'm English (for all intents and purposes) and so have little to do with Pilgrim Fathers, Turkeys or even with reservations.  For the 90 or so Americans in sem though, it was a blow.  They wanted to celebrate it, but were specifically forbidden to do so by Rav M because they're not in America anymore, and so there's no reason to be celebrating it in Israel.

I got to celebrate it though, in a roundabout way....

For those of you who manage to wade through my previous posts, you may recall that I'd joined the SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism, or the mediaeval re-enactment society, with my friend Bracha.  Well, on Thursday they held a party in the Old City.   It was the 'Shire Birthday', but basically it was an excuse to have a party on Thanksgiving in a country that doesn't celebrate it. I was excited though, because I'd never been to something like that before, or even anything as openly geeky.

One of the problems was that I didn't have any mediaeval clothes.

I considered briefly trying to go to a museum and surreptitiously walking out dressed in one of the costumes, but then decided that rather defeated the whole 'surreptitious' part.  We soon found out however, that we could rent garb there, so we didn't need to worry.  Also, as we were students AND we'd be missing large chunks of the evening to go back to sem and study, we only needed to pay half price. 

Another interesting point was that even though it was in the Old City we had no idea where it was actually being held.  As the time got closer and we got more detailed instructions, we knew the street name but had no idea where that meant...street names tend to get lost amongst all the tiny alleyways, and you just know everything as 'that one there, just past <insert landmark here>'.  It eventually turned out that it was somewhere in the Arab quarter.

Come Thursday, just returned from the archaeological dig and still muddy, we set off for where we presumed it was.  Twisting and turning, we finally got to the road, but they'd just said to call them, then they'd escort us the rest of the way.  We tried to call, but none of them had any reception...we wandered back the way we came.  Suddenly I spotted two guys sitting down, obviously looking like they were waiting for something.

"Bracha, do you think those guys...?"

"I dunno, they looked pretty ordinary to me when we first passed them."

We got closer, and I waved.  The first one got up.  He was wearing a blue tunic with puffed sleeves, culottes, and interesting boots.  He also had long hair that he'd tied back into a ponytail.

"Ordinary, huh?  I think our 'ordinary threshold' is a bit skewed."

They got up and introduced themselves, and then we made our way back down the way we'd come.  We were still in modern clothes, but coming up to meet us we saw a group of about five people all in full garb.  It felt SO STRANGE! 

Our mediaeval 'escort' took us all the way down and through twisting alleys until we reached a set of doors that led into a small stone hall.  We got in and were greeted by the guy who'd organised the whole thing and his wife, then her two kids ran up to us, greeted us enthusiastically and then ran off, headdresses flowing in the wind.

Disoriented, I set down my bag with my camera in it and asked if we could try to find things that would make us fit in better.

"Ah, garb, yes, just rummage through the pile on that table there. Here, I'll help you..."

Searching through all the various items of clothing, "No,that'll be too big for you...that's reserved for someone...that's for men, and it wouldn't fit you anyway...ah, this'll probably do the job," he says, pulling out a bodice.  Ok.  I start to put it on over my shirt, and the two kids run up, one gets out a length of ribbon, and they start to lace me up.  An argument breaks out amongst all the guys on how to lace a bodice correctly, meanwhile I'm standing there feeling slightly exposed while the girls do and redo the lacing, thinking "Ok, fine, argue, just don't touch me!".  Finally, the girls finish.  There's a silence.  Everyone's just staring at me.

"Uh, whoa....that really suits you....it fits really well..."

"Um, thanks," I say blushing, then run away to make myself look very busy doing something else.

By the time we were fully kitted up and things were getting going, it was time for us to go back to sem for night seder.  One girl had brought her harp, and there were people who played the guitar and the flute. 

Reluctantly, we went back to sem (with our escorts) and got some very funny looks.  Once in though, the reactions were mixed. 

I am known for being a bit...eccentric, so while some people asked me where I'd gone or why I looked mediaeval, one of my rabbi's responses, when asked by one of my excited friends "Have you seen Tilla?!" was "Yes, but I didn't want to say anything. I mean, it's Tilla, I thought it might just be normal." 

Two hours later and we were back again in the hall.  There was a talk about the hall itself, but we hung out round the back by the tables and got to know people.  The end of the evening came, and everyone changed out of their garb into normal clothes, suddenly re-emerging as part of the 21st century as trainers came back on, t-shirts and jackets, looking now just like ordinary people holding funny hats.

Save me a hat guys, I think I want to come back!

Right, that's quite long enough. 

I'll just mention that I didn't previously mention the caves that we went to.

The huge impressive ones that looked like a spectacular cathedral carved from limestone.

Caves full of pigeonholes.

And crawling through the caves left behind from the times of the Bar Kochba rebellions against the Romans. 

I also didn't mention the Tribe Shabbaton, in which nearly all the English kids out here in Israel got together to try and solve all the problems that Anglo-Jewry faces today.  Ironic, seeing as we've all run away for a year (or more)!

Ignoring the threats to academic freedom in Gaza's university

Over the last two weeks I posted twice on reports by Palestinians of the outbreaks of anarchy and thuggery in Gaza which have followed the Israeli withdrawal from its former settlements in the Gaza strip.

One  of these reports was on the intimidation of the administration of Gaza's Al Azhar University. It included gunmen storming the office of the university president, assaulting him and driving him out. This resulted in the university suspending its study programmes. There had been other and earlier attacks and threats to the university president. According to the Palestinian reporter, Khaled Abu Toameh, the assailants came from Fatah, the political movement of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Both reports also stated that members of the PA security forces were involved in some of the assaults.

Yesterday, Khaled Abu Toameh reported a demonstration by Palestinian academics against the continuing intimidation by students who are members of the Palestinian security forces and the Fatah movement. They marched on the offices of Mahmoud Abbas and his PA Interior Minister colleague and demanded action, including depriving the perpetrators of graduation certificates.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights which is notable for its ferocious criticisms of the former Israeli occupation of Gaza now protests the attack by Palestinian secuity officers as an attack on academic freedom:

"PCHR strongly condemns this attack, and views it as an unprecedented incident, which is part of a chain of crises and problems engulfing Al-Azhar University," said a statement issued by the center. "It is part of the overall deterioration in the Gaza Strip highlighted by the increased attacks on the rule of law."

The center pointed out "with great concern" the continuing interference of security branches in the university's work, "which undermines its status and work as an academic institution. The Center calls upon these security branches to lift their guardianship over the University."

In my previous posts, I pointed out that there were no protests I was aware of by AUT, NATFHE or any of the other UK education unions with policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there continues to be silence in the mainstream media. I can't help thinking that if Israeli forces had been involved in roughing up the president of Al Azhar university, there would have been an international outcry, and renewed calls to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Why is this continuing threat to academic freedom so widely ignored?

Could this be out of a mistaken belief that it would somehow undermine the Palestinians' claims for statehood if the existence of thuggery by PA security forces was publicized?

Or is it that the western media are only interested in Palestinian suffering if the perpetrators can be shown to be Israelis?