Updated Peace Negotiation Entry

After further reflection and research, I have changed my position on the peace negotiation process and have updated this journal to reflect these changes. These changes are located at the end in the recommendation section.

This assignment immediately brought to my awareness, the feeling that I needed to more deeply and thoroughly understand proposals for peace made previously and those currently being debated. So, rather than designing a proposal from my current level of understanding I elected to research the Arab Peace Initiative and the Geneva Initiative and to reflect upon my own perspective in relationship to these proposals. So, I didn’t start from fresh. My plan in what follows is to briefly outline these proposals and in conclusion to outline my own perspective in relation to the ideas contained there within.

The Geneva Initiative

-Two state agreement

-Israeli and beyond the 1967 border would be annexed to the Palestinians at a 1:1 ratio.

-Jerusalem: East Jerusalem would be the Palestinian capital. West Jerusalem would be the Israeli capital. There would be free and unimpeded movement/access to the Old City.

-Palestinian Jerusalemites who are permanent residents of Israel would lose this status upon the transfer of authority to Palestine of those areas in which they reside.

-An Implementation and Verification Group (IVG) would monitor and resolve disputes and implementation of the agreement.

-Refugees would be entitled to compensation for their refugee status and for loss of property and would have the right to return to the State of Palestine. Refugees could elect to remain in current host countries or relocate to third countries including Israel at the discretion of the third countries.

-Palestine would be a non-militarized state.

Arab Peace Initiative

-Full withdrawal of Israel from all territories occupied since 1967.

-Palestinian right to return to the homes from which they left or were expelled.

-Recognition of Palestine as a state including the West Bank and Gaza strip with East Jerusalem as the capital.

-Arab countries would provide security for all the states of the region.

-Arab countries would establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

-Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.

In reflecting upon these two initiatives I agreed with the idea of a two state solution and with returning to the 1967 border. I can see advantages and disadvantages to both a divided Jerusalem and an open Jerusalem, but symbolically prefer the idea of a shared Jerusalem. I agreed more with the compensation of refugees and the opportunity to remain in third host countries including Israel according to the discretion of third countries than an open right to return policy. This is the most complicated issue for me as I consider the layers of a peace agreement.

Current Position: One State Solution with full right to return of refugees. Democratic Government with full representation of the diversity of religions and cultures of the people.

Contemporary Birthright Israel Posters

One thing that came to mind when reading Nassar's account of the constructed nature of photographs of Jerusalem is the ways in which contemporary photographic and textual constructs of Birthright Israel posters strategically construct a particular vision of Jerusalem and Israel. When I look at these posters and read the text, I see no hint of the political circumstances in Israel. More than anything, they send a message that Israel is a place to have fun and make new friends. There are very few markers even of religious identity. 

Jewish convert--married to agnostic, Dutch-Californian and mother of Chinese-American Jew

This is the mezuzah case and mezuzah at our back door. Inside this metal case is a small scroll in Hebrew that contains the text of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21It is a commandment to place a mezuzah on the doorframes of your home. Some Jewish families place a mezuzah at every doorway except bathrooms and closets. We have a mezuzah only at our front and back doors. Upon entering and leaving the home the mezuzah is acknowledged with a touch or by kissing your hand and touching the mezuzah case. The mezuzah is considered to be protective.

This is our front door mezuzah intended to welcome visitors.

Every Friday is Erev Shabbat dinner and service.  This is a very special time for our family. I spend a lot of time preparing what will be cooked, cleaning the house, etc. Special linens are placed on the table. Flowers are purchased every Friday. So, there are always fresh flowers in our house. Traditionally, the man buys the flowers for the wife, but in our family I select and buy the flowers because my husband isn't Jewish.

This is my daughter's small Torah scroll from Jerusalem that she received for Chanukah this year. She created her own ark, mimicking what she sees at Temple, and placed both her Torah side by side in this nook between the book cases. It is in a plastic protective case because it is for kids, so it is kind of shiny in this picture.

This is a picture of my family when my daughter had been with us only a few weeks following her adoption from China. We were at a Chinese New Year celebration. We also celebrate some Chinese holidays in our home. However, at this point, my daughter is more interested in embracing her American and Jewish identities than a traditional Chinese identity in part because she has unresolved anger regarding China and the circumstances surrounding her adoption.

Another example of Chinese-American artwork in our dining room.

Among the Asian influences in our home are a collection of Buddhas. He sits next to a meditation bell in this picture. I studied Buddhism for years and while I am not a Buddhist, I have an appreciation for the religion and the artwork. This appreciation is apparent in our home.

This is my havdalah set that my non-Jewish husband bought all by himself for Chanukah for me. Havdalah marks the end of Shabbat and ushers in the start of the new week. There are a series of prayers and rituals involving kosher wine/grape juice, spices, and a candle.

Our house is full of books. They are everywhere. They have actually taken over. This is one of the more organized shelves worthy of public view. It is also the case that holds most of my Jewish Studies related books and Jewish liturgical texts. You can also see my daughter's "ark" in this picture. Study is very important to Jewish people, which is why I continue to take classes even after being established in my career. I took this class at OSU this Spring and take classes at my temple. Next Year I will be taking graduate level courses in Jewish Studies at Gratz College and a course at the Jewish Community Center.

I found this piece of wood when I was fishing with my dad when I was a kid. It has been moved from apartment to apartment and house to house and still endures. 

This is an example of how my cupboard doors are labeled so that I and others know what kind of dishes are located where. In kashrut (kosher), things are labeled according to being dairy, meat, and paerve. So, this cabinet holds only dairy bowls, cups, plates etc. According to kosher laws, dairy and meat cannot be consumed from the same plates and utensils, be eaten together or be eaten close together. So, keeping things very separate is important and tricky in this tiny kitchen of ours.

Everyday meat silverware.

The Jewish calendar is evident in our home year round. Things are not all put away in boxes when a holiday is over. This is a tree that was put on the wall for Tu B'Shvat, New year of the trees.

My daughter continues to celebrate Chanukah in her room! This I would like to put away actually:)

The menorah is still visible, just not the center of the action now that Chanukah is over.

These are my tichel and scarves from when I covered my hair as part of my observance of tzniut every day. I no longer cover my hair every day.

Where did my Catholic items go from when I was a kid?

This was my first rosary that I received at my first communion. 

Thinking more about Zionism

I was particularly interested in Armstrong’s discussion of Zionism in chapter 16, “Revival”, which mainly focused on Hess, Graetz, and Herzl. Given my own position as a post-Zionist Jew, I was somewhat disappointed with the limited account of Zionism provided in that it does little to really represent the diversity of ideas within Zionism as well as the challenges that existed to Zionism within the Jewish community at the same time as the forms of Zionism she presents. It seems like there is a tendency to assume that all Jews are Zionists and a particular kind of Zionist on top of that. I don’t think this reading did much to challenge this issue.

Within Zionism, there are multiple types of Zionism including liberal Zionism, labor Zionism, nationalist Zionism, green Zionism, and religious Zionism and more. In addition, there are neo-Zionists and post-Zionists.

The reading mentions that Graetz did not advocate migration to Palestine, but makes this sound mostly like it was an issue of the city being “backward-looking.” There were a number of other Zionists who were not interested in migration to Palestine as a way to “negate the Diaspora” including Simon Rawidowicz.

A point that seems to be often overlooked is that not all Jews were Zionists or are Zionists today. For example, many Haredi Orthodox organizations are not Zionists in part because they see Zionism as secular, not religious. At the conference of rabbis at Frankfurt am Main, July 15-28, 1845, Reformed Jews deleted from the siddur all prayers for a return to Zion and a restoration of a Jewish state. The same was done at the Philadelphia conference in 1869. “The Pittsburgh conference, 1885, reiterated this Messianic idea of reformed Judaism, expressing in a resolution that ‘we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning a Jewish state’” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism).

Hertzberg, A. (1959). The Zionist Idea. Garden City: New York.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

Pianko, N. (2010). Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz: Kaplan, Kohn, Bloomington: Indiana.

Feb 4th response

I found the discussion of how Muhammad's ideas and Islam relate to Islam and Christianity interesting. Along these same lines, Armstrong discusses how Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in Jerusalem together for the first time in chapter 12. I appreciated the discussion of how the the Jewish and Muslim people collaborated on building projects. I found the more collaborative nature of the times discussed in chapter 12 refreshing. But then came the chapter on the Crusades, which returns Jerusalem to being the location of gruesome conflict and upheaval. If anything, I wished Armstrong had gone a little deeper in her discussion about what characteristics led to times of collaboration versus times of conflict.

Final Project: Contemporary Israeli Women Artists'...

Contemporary Israeli Women Artists’ Critical Exploration of Border Constructs and Identities

“In the ceremonial declaration of the state of Israel, taking place in Tel Aviv in 1948, only men sat at the declaration table. Despite the heroic Zionist tale of equality between men and women, the real plot of Zionism is told by men, the male body leading and characterizing it. The new country asked for men: they died for it and toiled in ploughing its soil. Men had established an army for the new country and designed, to minute detail, the culture of power” (Tamir, 2006, p. 134). The masculine Zionist construct of power is evident in art, as well, with art before the 1960s being composed largely of lyrical abstract landscapes that depicted “an optimistic picture of the country being built. Pessimistic or critical statements were covered up or censored, and generally hardly created at all” (p. 134).

It is in this way, that Zionism not only constructed masculine power structures, but also created an artistic environment in which art was to be created not for the purposes of raising critical questions or representing subjective experience, but for the purposes of supporting a particular vision of Israel. After the 1960s, more critical work emerged and eventually more recently more contemporary work by Israeli women artists. Contemporary art by female Israeli artists in the last decade looks into “other options of identity and activity wishing to expand, confound and shift the local option’s range of thought towards new realms” (p. 136).

This paper/video aims to explore the work of female Israeli artists working in the last decade who raise challenging questions in their work about border constructs/identities and the “perception of femininity and masculinity in the local ethos” (p. 136). What issues can be raised by Israeli women about border identities working through artistic means that are perhaps not readily heard in more typical policy writing and political debates? Artists that I am currently researching include: Ariella Azoulay, Keren Assaf, Yael Bartana, Varda Getzow, Andi Arnovitz, Raya Brukental, Orit Freilich, Nechama Golan, Chana Goldberg, Hadassah Goldvicht, Hila Karabelnikov-Paz, Ruth Kestenbaum Ben Dov, Chagit Molgan, Rivka Potchebutzky, Ruth Schreiber, Studio Armadillo (Anat Stein, Hadas Kruk), Dafna Shalom, Keinan Sigalit Landau, Rona Yefman. Is there something about artmaking that offers an opportunity for critical dialogue that is different then other means?

The paper and presentation will first follow a more traditional format and apply the broad question of how these artists explore questions of border identities and constructs in their work as a starting point through which to narrow the scope and focus into more refined paths of investigation. The presentation will share key concepts from the work, a comparative analysis of the works, and images of the works with the class in a PowerPoint.

The video will be my own artistic response to the issues raised by the artists in regard to border identities focusing particularly on my own relationship as a non-Zionist Jew to Jerusalem and Israel more generally. Questions of what constitutes “home” and hybrid identity will be explored.

(2006) Inside-Out: Contemporary Artists from Israel, MARCO: Barcelona, Spain.

Azoulay, A. (2001). Death’s showcase: The power of image in contemporary democracy. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

Azoulay, A. (2012). Civil imagination: A political ontology of photography. New York: Verso.

Azoulay, A. (2010). Getting rid of the distinction between the aesthetic and the political. Theory, Culture, and Society, 27(7-8), pp. 239-262.

Dekel, T. (2011). From first-wave to third-wave feminist art in Israel: A Quantum leap. Israel Studies, 16(1), pp. 149-178.

Hornstein, S., Levitt, L., and Silberstein, L. (2003). Impossible images: Contemporary art after the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press.

Sperder, D. (2012). Feminist art in traditional and religious Judaism. Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture.

Misra, K. and Rich, M. (2003). Jewish feminism in Israel: Some contemporary perspectives. Hanover, NH: Brandeis 

Mikdash m'at and early Rabbinic Judaism

Chapter 8 describes a shift toward the development of rabbinic Judaism that happens after the fall of the Temple. The characteristics of rabbinic Judaism are much more familiar to me and relatable to my own experiences than the practices of animal sacrifices in the time of the Temple. In particular, the reading highlights a shift in recognizing God’s presence being found whenever a group of Jews studied Torah together or prayed.

The reading also discusses the practicing of mitzvoth (good deeds, charity, compassion, loving kindness) rather than animal sacrifice, which I relate much more to Jewish practice today.

 I especially appreciated the section on page 166 that discussed how the home (mikdash m’at, small sanctuary) came to replace the Temple. Home ritual is such an important part of my practice of Judaism, which includes our weekly Shabbat meal. For example, Shabbat meal is a series of blessings, hand washing, candle lighting and a special meal. It is much more elaborate than just having a nice meal together. It takes me awhile to get everything planned and prepared. Shabbat observance is a day of rest and to study the Torah, this was also discussed in the reading. Therefore, the home is a very important place, not only the synagogue, in contemporary Judaism. It was interesting for me to read about the early emergence of rabbinic Judaism in chapter 8 for these reasons.

In the other two chapters, the history on Christian history was also familiar. I was deeply saddened by the section that described Constantius II’s anti-Semitic legislation that forbade Christians to convert to Judaism and that described Jews as “savage,” “abominable,” and “blasphemous.” The section that described the 66,555 Christians that died when the Persian army attacked Jerusalem also saddened me.