Moushumi Khan recently posted an article on Slate which picks up where Irshad Manji’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece left off:

"The Muslim communities of North America and Europe are often compared, with the conclusion that American Muslims are better integrated, less likely to be radicalized than their European counterparts. But as the war on terror proceeds, racial profiling, the lack of direct communication between Muslims and the government, and the use of paid confidential informants to monitor the Muslim community are all causing an increasing rift between American society and Muslims."

Ms. Khan worries, as I do, that the successful integration of Muslims in America may not continue as it has historically:

"While there might not be actual radicalization in the American Muslim community, there is a danger of increasing frustration leading to alienation. … While the vast majority of Muslim youth are wondering how they can be civically minded Muslim Americans, the government seems to be stuck on the theme of the radicalization of Muslim American youth. … European Muslims and American Muslims have not had much in common until now, but if we unreflectively adopt the European view of Muslims as the perpetual "other," we risk making this true. "Equality not integration" is the rallying cry of European Muslims. Ours is "due process." Some of our worst laws were passed and later regretted at times of reaction against ethnic communities, from the Palmer Raids of 1919 to today’s Patriot Act. In a land founded by immigrants and the rule of law, our nation’s strength lies in its resilience; our way of life depends on equal opportunity. Europe and European Muslims are suffering from the inability to bring Muslims into the economic and political mainstream. Will America turn its back on its rich heritage of celebrating diversity? Will we start to see Muslims as a "law and order" problem as Europe does, rather than as the next wave of dream-seekers?"

These are profound, important thoughts about the social context in which Muslim Americans may come to see "due process" stood on its head.  Going forward, America runs the risk of hiding behind anachronistic notions of protectionism and isolationism in the midst of knee-jerk reactions to stop the inexorable trend of globalization.  The social side effects of these hiccups on the road to the future may lead to unfortunate laws that alienate Muslim Americans and push them closer to the European reality in our own country.  We can avoid this by asking  tough questions of ourselves now– and answering them with the type of tolerance and the spirit of religious pluralism that has made America strong– before it is too late. 

I recently received a progress update from the Hand in Hand bilingual Jewish-Arab schools in Israel. The schools’ current total enrollment is approaching 800 children, and there is more growth ahead:

* The Hand in Hand Galilee School , which had been in temporary quarters for several years, recently moved into its new campus in Ashbal. Co-founder Amin Khalaf comments: "We have been waiting for years for this to happen and it was a real celebration yesterday with the children, staff and parents as they began their first day in the new school building. We are planning to organize a grand opening in the fall."

* The Max Rayne Hand in Hand Bilingual School in Jerusalem is being completed and there will be an opening celebration on Oct. 21,2007 organized by the Jerusalem Foundation.

* Hand in Hand is moving ahead with a local parents group in Beer Sheva to open a fourth school with pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes. Funding for this project has come from USAID’s second grant to Hand in Hand.

* Hand in Hand has printed the curriculum for the programs that they have developed on bilingualism, land use, religion, identity, history and bilingual education in early childhood. Amin comments– "I believe this will contribute greatly to a more unified school approach in these areas and will also reach others."

* Hand in Hand has been awarded the 2006 Lombardia Region Peace Award ( Italy) which the organization will receive in June.

* The third annual Victor J. Goldberg IIE Prize for Peace in the Middle East has been awarded to Hand ni Hand co-founders Amin Khalaf and Lee Gordon for their work in building Hand in Hand.

* Hand in Hand co-founder Amin Khalaf has received the 2007 Martha Lobe Prize for Democracy, Dialogue and Tolerance from the Jerusalem Foundation in recognition of his work in promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence and mutual respect in Jerusalem through bilingual, integrated childhood education.

Greg Myre of The New York Times published an important story about the demographics of Jerusalem today.

The article analyzes some of the implications of the statistics illustrated in the graph at left:

"In a 1967 census taken shortly after the war, the population of Jerusalem was 74 percent Jewish and 26 percent Arab. Today, the city is 66 percent Jewish and 34 percent Arab, with the gap narrowing by about 1 percentage point a year, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Jerusalem’s profound religious and historical significance makes its status perhaps the single most explosive issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. And that status clearly would become even more contentious were the balance of the population to tip toward the Arabs. This is a specter that worries Israelis, even as the 40th anniversary of their victory in the June 1967 war approaches."

The article goes on to describe the well-known fact that Jerusalem remains highly segregated, in fact, it remains two separate cities– West Jerusalem, which is largely Jewish, and East Jerusalem, which is largely Arab.  While the author mentions the city’s weak economy, he does not state clearly that Jerusalem is, in fact, the poorest city in all of Israel.

The article also notes that the large majority of Israelis treasure Jerusalem but would not want to live there:

"A poll released last week captured the Israeli ambivalence over Jerusalem. More than 60 percent of Israelis said they would not want to give up Israeli control of the city’s holy sites, even as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Yet 78 percent of Israelis said they would not consider living in Jerusalem or would prefer to live elsewhere in Israel."

One anecdote from a Jewish woman who decided to leave Jerusalem after being harassed by an ultra-orthodox woman who disapproved of her attire captures some of the angst that people feel about living in Jerusalem, but, in my view, this brief story only scratches the surface of the intolerance that ultra-Orthodox Jews, the haredim, have toward other Jews, not to mention anyone else of a different persuasion or ethnicity.

In my own experiences visiting Jerusalem on eleven occasions, I have felt unwelcome at the Kotel (this is the general description of the site of the Western Wall) almost every time that I go to pray at the Western Wall.  I’ve been harassed by the ultra-orthodox on multiple occasions.  Unlike many non-Orthodox Jews who now avoid going to the Wall to avoid being harassed, I’ve developed my own way of dealing with it:  I make sure to go to the Western Wall as many times as possible in order to assert the fact that the Holiest place in Judaism is not the exclusive territory of the haredim.

According to the article, Jews are leaving Jerusalem because a minority of Jewish fundamentalists are, in effect, chasing them away.  Unfortunately, this trend will only have the residual effect among Jews of leaving more polarized and intolerant people in Jerusalem.

The haredim are not likely to change their ways anytime soon.  If the Israeli government would officially recognize the legitimacy of Conservative and Reform Judaism and take concrete steps to officially allow greater religious pluralism among Jews in Israel, perhaps more Jews in Israel would want to live in Jerusalem and this would not be the poorest city in the State of Israel.  Such contructive change might have a positive ripple effect across a wide range of the socio-economic issues that plague Jerusalem.  Well, I can at least dream…   

I’ve written about the Domari, the gypsies of East Jerusalem, on numerous occasions in this blog.  The Dom are gypsies of North Indian origin who have lived in East Jerusalem for approximately 800 years.  They currently number about 3,000 people, and a courageous woman, Amoun Sleem, leads a group of the Dom who want to break the shackles of illiteracy and subsistence living through efforts at building a community, keeping alive their ancestral shared language, and teaching adults and children computer literacy and basic self-help business skills. 

I’ve visited Amoun on numerous occasions over the past five years and met her extended family.  I celebrated my most recent birthday in Jerusalem with Amoun and Anat Hoffman of the Israel Religious Action Center. Anat and her colleagues at the IRAC have actively helped the Dom for years and originally introduced me to Amoun.

Amoun and her clan have impressed me as honest, resilient people who would like to be self reliant but have fallen through the cracks of the Israeli social system.  Rejected and ignored by Israelis and Palestinians alike, most of the Dom are beggars.

I’ve attached their most recent newsletter Download domari_newlsetter_4_07.pdf which describes their current situation and how you can help.  The newsletter notes that a $10,000 matching challenge grant to help the Domari is waiting for anyone to make a tax deductible gift to help them….

The Domari are at the absolute bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Israel and they could use a helping hand.  Please join me in helping them to stand on their own. 

To find out more about how to make a tax deductible gift, you can contact drc@domresearchcenter.com or Rachel Canar at the Israel Religious Action Center at rachel@irac.org .

Rabbi Michael Melchior recently participated in the fourth Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.  Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, founder of the Islamic movement in Israel, made a very important speech in which he condemend Holocaust deniers.  I have excerpted a portion of the article covering the event, which was publsihed in Haaretz (click here for full article):

February 13, 2007

The founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel condemned Holocaust denial in the Muslim world on Sunday, rejecting statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Also, Darwish accused his audience of not understanding Muslims or their concerns, and he protested Israel’s refusal to support the recent Saudi Arabian peace initiative involving Hamas and Fatah. "Why are you trying to distance yourselves from Muslims as if they were the devil?" he said. …

In many conversations that I have had with experts on Islam about the absence of outrage against Muslim extremism by the so-called "Silent Majority" of Muslims, we invariably get caught up debating the question of the persistence of this deafening silence from moderate Muslims.

When a constructive Muslim voice is expressed in a public forum, we should all take note and remember the importance of the event and the  courageousness of such people.  The fact is that Islamic pluralists who speak out against hate invite threats and death edicts (fatwa) from fundamentalist extremists who actively promote anarchy and the cult of death through martyrdom thoughout the Middle East.

I don’t agree with everything that the Sheikh had to say, but I am willing to give him the room to be constructive and to ask for more Muslims to join him in bringin more voices to light from the Silent Majority.

The latest newsletter from the Domari Gypsies of Jerusalem is a testament to the leadership of Amoun Sleem and to the resilience of the Domari, whom I have gotten to know over the past four years.  On my most recent visit to Jerusalem I had the chance to share a special dinner with Amoun and my friends from the Israel Religious Action Center.  At the dinner, I met a new Domari volunteer, Eli Rosenblatt, an American Jew who came to Jerusalem from Serbia last September in order to help the Domari.  Eli had been helping the Roma Gypsies in Serbia and learned about the Domari through an Internet search which also led him to this blog.  This is the kind of Internet matchmaking story that brings me great personal gratification.

Take a moment to read the Domari newsletter and consider that this group of scarcely 3,000 people of North-Indian ancestry has been living at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Jerusalem, which is Israel’s poorest city, for over 800 years.

Amoun Sleem’s dream is to start a Domari-owned and operated bakery business in Jerusalem.  If you would like to learn more about this project and would like to help turn this dream into an entrepreneurial reality, please contact Rachel Canar of the Israel Religious Action Center at rachel@irac.org.

Download domari_newsletter_1_07.pdf

Moni Mordechai, who served as public relations advisor for the Tzohar forum of rabbis and for Rabbi Michael Melchior when he served in ministerial posts, has written an important opinion piece in YNet News.com titled "Unworthy Rabbis". 

This article is a concise critique of the negative social and political impact which the ultra-orthodox haredim are having on Israeli society.  In my view, it exposes a root cause of much of the internal conflict and contradiction which plagues Israel’s policymakers and ripples through the country’s socio-political infrastructure.

I quote a section of the article below:

"As a Jew who belongs to the broad branch of Judaism and refuses to view religious practice as the only important thing, and as someone who views Judaism as an important cultural source, and who defines himself as a secular traditionalist, the word "rabbi" is a romantic one, possessing charm and power.

However, to my regret, today it is empty of meaning. I met very few truly relevant rabbis, who were leaders. In my mind rabbis are more closely associated with shady deals, religious enforcement, efforts to convince Jews to become religious, and racism.

An example of this can be found in news reports from recent weeks: Rabbis in Bnei Brak ruled that apartments must not be rented out to Arabs and foreign workers. At this time, ultra-Orthodox rabbis are trying to overpower El Al because it was forced to fly on the Shabbat and were able to defeat bus companies Dad and Egged, who ran an advertising campaign that included a bare male chest.

Leading religious-Zionist rabbis decided that in order to address the rift between religious Zionism and the rest of the people, all of us should be made to become religious.

Those are not my rabbis. In fact, no kippah-wearing rabbi can be referred to as my rabbi, not because the term is simply irrelevant for modern life, but rather, because most of those people hold on to a conservative, anti-democratic worldview that is sometimes racist and anti-humanitarian, all under the guide of kindness."

Forced ritual in religious practice, racism, discrimination… and these are rabbis? 

When we consider the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian question, when we consider the foreign policy challenges that Israel faces at multiple levels, let’s not forget that a minority of politically empowered fundamentalists in Israel effectively deny the right to worship to the vast majority of Jews in Israel, that they do not recognize the legitimacy of Reform or Conservative Judaism in Israel or in America, and that they do not tolerate diversity.

It is hard for me to see how Israel can resolve conflicts with others when it cannot resolve fundamental conflicts of Jewish identity in the State of Israel in order to embrace the 13.3 million Jews that are all that remain of global Jewry.  I hope that will see more progress in the direction of religious pluralism in Israel in 2007.

The Sunday New York Times ran a story on November 5 about how it is now socially acceptable among Spaniards to uncover the Jewish heritage that Spain forcibly purged and took great pains to eradicate for 500 years.

"Now it’s trendy to have Jewish roots," according to Javier Castano, who is an expert on Spain’s Jewish history at the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Madrid.  The full article is worth reading (click here).

I enjoyed my own experience traveling in Spain and exploring its Jewish and Muslim past in the summer of 2005 with my family.

It is unfortunate that today deep anti-Semitism continues to scar Spain. The New York Times reporter, Renwick McLean, also makes this point in quoting Jacobo Israel Garzon, president of the Federation of Jewish communities in Spain:

"A contradictory element in all this is that a new anti-Semitism is also developing in Spain.  It uses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as its source, but it passes very quickly from anti-Israelism to anti-Semitism."

The expulsion of the Muslims and Jews from Spain in 1492 effectively gutted the country of its intelligentsia and economic engine, a socio-economic trauma from which Spain has, in effect, never emerged.

A demographic footnote: the article tallies the Jewish population in Spain at 40,000 – 50,000, which overstates the most recent demographic source data that I have published elsewhere in this blog.  According to the Jewish Agency for Israel, the most recent census data available on their site is from 2002, which estimates the total Jewish population in Spain at 12,000. I doubt it has increased materially since that time, unless, of course, this trendiness is leading to a wave of Jews declaring a new Spanish aliyah.

My friend and college classmate Mark Gluck continues to lead the fight against the academic boycott of Israel by sponsoring a second medical science conference in Israel that is a cooperative effort with Al Quds University and Hebrew University.

Mark writes to me about his latest inititative–

Rutgers-Newark is taking a leadership role in fighting the anti-Israel boycotts that are growing in Europe, which seek to isolate Israeli scientists and doctors from their international colleagues. Following our very successful 2005 meeting on Parkinson’s disease in Jerusalem (which resulted in front page coverage in The Star Ledger and The New Jersey Jewish News, and a story on NPR radio), we are moving now to organize a second meeting in Jerusalem in 2008 on Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease. This meeting will be a joint US-Israeli-Palestinian meeting, co-organized by Rutgers University-Newark, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Al Quds Palestinian Medical School in the West Bank. The speakers will include prominent doctors and scientists from the US, Europe, and the Middle East, students and postdoctoral fellows from the US and Europe, and Israeli and Palestinian medical and PhD students from Hebrew University and Al Quds Palestinian Medical School. Half the meeting will take place at Hebrew University and the other half will take place at the Al Quds Palestinian Medical School in the Wet Bank.

Mark is half-way toward his goal of raising $60,000 to make this conference happen.  Funds raised will support the speakers’ travel, pay for local housing, room, and other costs, advertise the meeting throughout world, as well as support students and postdoctoral fellows from the US and Europe to attend the meeting, seeding future US/Europe-Israel-Palestinian collaborations and relationships.

Anyone who would like to help support this effort should contact Professor Mark Gluck at gluck@pavlov.rutgers.edu .

For more information on the anti-Israel boycott in science and academia, see an article by Manfred Gerstenfeld of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the World Jewish Congress entitled "The Academic Boycott Against Israel and How to Fight It", which appears at: http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-12.htm .

I’ve been reading Vali Nasr’s outstanding book, The Shia Revival, and was struck by a comment he makes in the introduction that ties directly into Nick Kristof’s opinion piece in today’s New York Times, "Looking for Islam’s Luthers".

The Shia Revival is required reading for anyone who wants to understood the roots of the centuries-old blood feud between Sunnis and Shiites.  It is particularly relevant in providing historical context for the current power struggle between these Arab ethnic groups inside Iraq.  Nasr writes eloquently and develops an insightful thesis into the motivation and tactics driving the Iranian theocracy’s strategic manipulation of the Iraqi, Syrian, and Lebanese players in the region (not to mention the U.S.) in the region.

In the introduction, page 23, Nasr makes a very important statement that may be lost to rationalists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins:

"Religion is not just about God and salvation; it decides the boundaries of communities. Different readings of history, theology, and religious law perform the same role as language or race in defining what makes each identity unique in saying who belongs to it and who does not."

Kristof’s column today makes a very important point in relating the ascendancy of religion in our time to social alienation:

"Islam is on the rise for many of the same reasons evangelical Christianity is surging: they provide a firm moral code, spiritual reassurance and orderliness to people vexed by chaos and immorality aorund them, and they offer dignity to the poor."

I would add to this that social fragmentation has been accelerated by the rapid pace of technological change since the beginning of the Internet age ten years ago. In the globalized Internet era, which is the breeding ground for the alienated, super-empowered individual, this quest for order and meaning becomes more and more urgent.  Anger and frustration can play out through nihilism, or they can lead to reform.

Kristof’s column focuses on Islamic feminism as a harbinger of reformist thinking in this religion. He concludes on an optimistic note:

"All this underscores that Islam is much more complex than the headlines might suggest.  The violence and fundamentalism gets the attention– and should be more loudly condemned by ordinary Muslims– but we would be close-minded ourselves if we ignored the more hopeful rumblings that are also taking place within the vast Islamic world. . . including, perhaps, steps toward a Muslim Reformation."

Like Nick Kristof, I am anxious to hear moderate voices reclaiming control of the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish faiths.