I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day. It's always a nice holiday when you see couples pronounce their love, even if the rest of us are left out in the cold. V-Day is not a holiday here, as it is a Christian celebration of the martyrdom of an undocumented, unknown, and probably arbitrarily fictionalized Saint Valentine. Still, some people like to call the 14th Yom Ahava, or Love Day. Our neighbors to the East, however, aren't so keen on the idea.

I'm sure you probably read or saw this brief on the news, but I figured it was worth a few pot-shots. Apparently, Valentine's Day is banned in Saudi Arabia, and some other Muslim states are pushing for similar laws. Saudi Arabia has a legal and police system that carries out sharia, or Muslim law. This is generally the equivalent of Jewish law, Halacha - only scarier. The force that carries out sharia in Saudi Arabia is called the Muttawa.

The group is called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a rather pleasant sounding name. A week ago they started making their rounds, visiting gift shops, jewelers, candy stores, and the most publicized of all, florists, all in a very successful effort to literally ban Valentine's Day. They also ban the color red during this period, at least de facto. So, stores will be fined or even closed down, with staff potentially getting arrested, if they don't clear out red roses, red gift boxes, candies in heart or otherwise identifiably Valentiny packaging, and so on. And, they are very serious about all of this. The country's religious leader declared a Fatwa on Valentine's Day, seven years ago, thus religiously demonizing Valentine's Day.

A member of the Gestapo -- err, the religious police -- had this to say, according to the AFP: "The West exports to us habits and feasts which contradict sharia and wants us to imitate them. We want to make sure that sharia is implemented. We punish anyone who commits or abets a violation." Valentine's Day is sinful, bringing out improper relations between man and woman, creating an atmosphere of shameful sexuality.

I would be lying if I said that Jewish law says otherwise. In fact, where do you think sharia came from? The difference is that Israel is a democracy, and though some want Halacha to be similarly enforced, we continue on with our freedom to sin. After all, I didn't not give anyone a red rose because I wasn't allowed to. I didn't give a red rose to a sweetheart simply because I have no sweetheart.

Chalk this one up to "Our Silly Neighbors!" (Top pic from cbc.ca)

Mean Israelis! HMPH!

As I was walking down the street the other day, the morning after the first suicide terror attack on Israel in just over a year, I saw something that caught my eye. There was an Arab man standing by a cop car, looking like he wasn't sure what to do with himself as he played on his cellphone, and the female police officer was calling in his paperwork. If you stand at the intersection of Jaffa Street and King Solomon Street, the intersection between the Old City and the New City of Jerusalem, you are almost guaranteed half the time to see cops checking I.D.'s. My picture happens to be from a different area of the city, a rich area, thus a decent amount of construction (needing cheap labor - Arabs).

I'm not 100% sure on how it works, as I've seen dozens checked and generally all let through to the New City, but basically the cop checks the Arab person's ID, smiles, and off they go. Not quite sure what they're looking for, at least in terms of what may or may not be printed on the ID. If anyone knows, inform me.

Anyway, in this particular case the Israeli officer was calling in the man's papers, probably some working papers, as he stood on. I felt like I was breaking the law by just taking a picture from the other side of the street! But seriously, it caught my eye in a few ways.

1) It was pretty innocuous. There wasn't any abuse, the woman didn't call in multiple cars for backup, as undoubtedly they would do in America. Heck, I was pulled over once in Williamsburg for suspected drunk driving - supposedly I pulled out of a turn too quickly, and it was 2 AM - and within 3 minutes there were 3 cop cars, all lights ablaze. Even after I blew a 0.00 BAC, and reiterated that I had nothing to drink, I still felt guilty! So, I was a little proud of the female police officer here for not calling in backup. You go girl! Oh, yeah, the point: She just checked his papers, no abuse like anti-Israel voices would have you believe.

2) Do you blame us? The morning after a suicide bombing, after we have had a year of freedom from bombings (not counting the daily rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip, of course) it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that we're going to check a few ID's. You kill us, we'll check your ID. Not a bad tradeoff.

3) This reminded me of a pretty good, though maybe a little left-wing for me, Israeli movie that I saw last year. It is called Karov L'Bayit, or Close to Home. Essentially, it is the story of two very different girls that find themselves as partners during their army service. As you may know, army service is compulsory in the Holy Land. So, these two 18 year old girls have the terribly difficult duty of checking non-Israelis' IDs, on the street, and writing down their information. Targeted profiling, if you will. We speak of these things in America as potentiality. We live it every single day here. These girls have a very important, though taxing job. The story really reveals what Israelis have to go through, and from the attitude of the soldiers you see that it isn't at all what we want. What 18 year old would want to spend 2 years checking the ID's of generally innocent people - people just trying to work whatever job they can get?

So, what should you take from this? Remember: Israel does what it has to do to try to curb illegal entry into the state, and keep harmful elements from our populace, but we do it with humanity. This picture is proof that Israel is indeed humane towards the Arabs. Some commentators will even say that Israel has the most humane army on earth. I don't want to get into a political discussion, but I will profess to anyone that Israel does go out of its way to guard the "innocent until proven guilty" ideal of Democracy, even towards our non-citizen residents and workers.

This picture is huge, so you can download that and zoom in and all of it. Sorry it's not better. I wasn't trying to get arrested!

It's a Jewish State

You hear all about Israel wanting to remain a "Jewish State." Or, the media refers to Israel as a "Jewish State." What does that mean for a democracy? What does that mean for minorities? What is a "Jewish State," after all.

What it means is that the population is Jewish, and the population identifies itself as Jewish. A Jewish State is a cultural term, meaning that these people walk, talk, think, act, and speak like Jews. Well, the natural question is, what does that mean?

It can be a religious thing, that we as Jews see ourselves as Jews, that we are the people that G-d chose to live in this land, to keep his Torah and laws, to be the 'light to the nations.' It can also be a nationalist identification. That we see ourselves as Jews, in the sense that we are an ethnicity. Just like a Japanese person would say, "I am Japenese, and my people are ethnically Japanese, based on our language, food, shared history, religion, and cultural cues," a Jew in Israel would say "Our food, our language, our religion, our history, our culture, our nation..."

So, when I walk around, with these types of things on my mind, the types of things that really brought me to Israel -- the beauty of transitioning from an embarrassed Jew to a proud one, the natural feeling of being a Jew in his land, the knowledge that we belong here, and belong to each other -- I walk around and have these things on my mind, and instead of them slowly slipping away as mere idealism, as idealism seems to do, they are reinforced in my daily life. That's because this isn't just a Jewish place due to everyone being Jewish. It's Jewish because we embrace it. If I could have frozen time, I would have taken pictures of all the 13 year old, secular, teenage punk girls and boys, all wearing Stars of David.

Just riding on a regular old city bus, on any old day, what do I see? Grafitti. Typical. But, not your normal grafitti, or at least not normal anywhere outside of this country. In this country, this is pretty much everywhere. If you're a Jew, you'll know what it feels like to see this randomly penned in America (and anywhere else, as far as I assume). To see this in this country, with all that young idealism in your head... Just a tiny little star on the sill of a bus window, a German bus, nonetheless, and your difficulties just seem to melt away with the ethereal sun.

Just #247 of the reasons I love this country.

I walked into my ulpan class today, at the end of a 20 minute break, to find my fellow Hebrew-butcherers in a political discussion. I asked if they were indeed discussing politics, which they said yes, and I told them I would come back when they were finished. You see, I majored in politics, I worked in a political think-tank, I was involved in this stuff. And, I find it to be some of the most offensive, troublesome, and dreary business known to man. I enjoy international law and conflict analysis, I really do, but when it comes to the nitty gritty of people discussing this and that -- count me out. They convinced me to stay, however.

Basic stuff, you know. I helped explain to the non-Americans what was happening with these crazy primaries. Talked about the candidates, what they were saying, what everything meant, the schedule for the election, etc etc. Nothing crazy.

The whole time, however, the Italian girl that I talked about in previous posts (the, um, sensitive one), she looked like she had something to say, to me. Let me just air some grievances. First of all, she's one of those people that knows everything. Not literally that she knows everything, but she thinks she does...literally. She argues with our teacher, a native Israeli, over Hebrew. Come on. That's like Hiro from Heroes, the TV show, telling me about English verb structure.

Anyway, she goes on this rant about how America's "democracy" is such a joke. The meat of the story, what she was saying, was that politicians in America don't really represent the people, the people have no voice, that money is the only important factor in politics -- but only in America. Naturally, I said, "Oh, right, and the Italian government is a real democracy, right?"

"Yes, it is! It's funny that the whole world looks to America and talks about their 'democracy,' I mean, money is the only thing that matters in American politics!"
"Right. First of all, Italy is a democracy? Could have fooled me. Berlusconi owns all the media, owns the government, he was as corrupt as Arafat, and he's coming back!"
"Well, Berlusconi is different."
"And yet you are reelecting him."
"Well..."
"OK, and what about Italy having 61 governments in the 62 years since World War Two? How can the Italian government represent the people if it isn't even in office long enough to represent itself?"

Naturally, on her side, there was no return. That's because, my friends, America is a real democracy, and Italy is on the lower end of what anyone should consider a democracy! I mean, their most dominant political leader controls all the state media, which is oh so open, right? And, he really does use that control to censor what is said about him. That is a true blow to freedom of speech. Imagine if our president was the owner of Fox, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and whatever other media outlet you could think of. You think you would ever hear about his failures, his blunders, his mistakes? I say that sounds a little bit like Iran. Or, Italy.

So, yes, America is a terrific democracy! Case in point: The intense fighting over the chance to be the Republican, or Democratic, candidate for president. Look at how big of a deal Super Tuesday was, and that's just to decide who gets to run for office, not who gets into office! Sure, money is important, but it really isn't everything. The McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act has done more than you could imagine to curb campaign finance questions, and though some shady deals do go down, the majority of funding only demonstrates how much constituent support a candidate has. And besides, all the candidates have millions and millions. In college I remember reading this study, for a class, about the relationship between campaign success and money. It hits a ceiling of effectiveness, just like everything does in this world. So, you can have billions, but it won't influence the outcome versus a few hundred million.

The point is, I'm getting really tired of this America bashing I hear from non-Americans! The way I see it is, we don't talk about your politics, so don't talk about ours!

Or, maybe I'm just sick of this silly Italian girl. I'll have to write another post about how she "gave me a talking to" after class. Check in for that on Friday, or Saturday. That cartoon at the top is a perfect political cartoon. It really hits the bulls-eye on the media in Italy before and after Berlusconi came to office. Check out the poll in the upper right corner. Give it a vote!

Wednesday may have been a joke when it comes to snow, but Thursday was actually fairly nice! There was some snow, and it was falling like snow should fall, until 9 or 10am. The rain came, rather quickly, and destroyed it...but there was a nice layer for a few hours. Here's a few pictures of my street and mail box, covered in the good white stuff. I wish I could have made it to the Old City -- I'm sure it was quite majestic while covered with manna.