The Last Challenger

In honor of Guitel's one year yahrzeit, a memory:

Setting: Camp Ramah, New England. The last Shabbas afternoon in Tent City, i.e. the Nivonim Kfar. The sun is shining on this late August afternoon, and I am in my standard attire (slippers and shorts with a jersey strewn on a nearby bench should I actually have to don clothing for a modest-- or more likely boss-like, passerby). My boys Alowe, Rhoda ben David Grill-Abramowitz, and I are in the mood for one of our favorite Palmer Pastimes, Wiffleball. We put out the challenge, and mow down all opponents in two straight six inning games. You gotta understand, I kind of dominate Wiffleball.

With the afternoon sun glaring on, our third and final challenging squad, led by Niv08's finest, Josh Guitelman, strolled up to the playing field (comprising of the Kfar Moadon's see-through top down tarp wall as the all encompassing backstop and a Tcan on top of a crate as a strike zone). I honestly don't remember the other two people on his team, because this quickly became a duel between Guitel and me. I call myself a pitcher and a hitter. Never until that game had someone matched me pitch for pitch, strike out for strike out. And lemme tell you, each of us was striking out everybody, including each other. Usually, other teammates take a turn hurling their best stuff (as we all know sharing is caring). I was not giving the ball to anyone but me, and neither was he. The innings passed, still no score. A stray ground ball single here, a bloop dropped double there. I think I flied out to the edge of the warning track (identified by the lady tents) once in the 10thish inning.

Every time I stepped to the plate to face him, I felt like I had a shot to win the game with one swing of the bat. And literally 95% of those at bats, he struck me out. This was intriguing to me. Guitel had this one pitch that was simply unhittable that day. I had killllled Guitel's stuff before, but he was coming at me with some seriously pro-grade shit. On the one hand, I wanted to win, and I wanted to win now. But the grimace and scowl combo I kept giving him belied the honest excitement and pride I had in the lil guy. Well, at the time the most frustrating part of that game was the fact that it had to be interrupted for the afternoon Mincha prayers. Naturally, we promised we would finish the game right after we got back from the grove. But of course, this was not to happen...some of us made it back after Mincha, others didn't. It was after all the last day of camp and campers had things to do, people to see. Our edah as a group had an agenda, each tent had their own last night programs, there was the B-side dance to prepare for, and as you know very well, the rest is history.

Fatefully, that game never did finish. But perhaps it wasn't supposed to be. I have never played such a legitimate competitor since that last Shabbas afternoon of Niv08. Indeed, Guitel was the last challenger.

As I gear up for the Columbia Intramural Wiffleball tournament coming up in a couple of weeks and as your one year anniversary has just passed over so many of us on this rainy Passover day, your spirit, your nasty wiffle pitch, and really you, Josh, are missed.

With love,
Jonah

Hey, what's the chemical called...

לא יודע איך נקרא הכימי בראש,
הכימי שגורם לי להתגעגע לארץ, לאהוב בחורות, ולרצות לחגוג באותו רגע,
אבל נראה לי שמתאים לכימי הזה את השם "אהוד בנאי"
11.2.09

Sabbath Musings/הרהורי שבת

אני יושב פה בספריה בליל שבת: קורא וחוקר מאמרים, מקליד במחשב, ובקיצור לפי החוק מחלל את השבת.
בכל אופן, אני הייתי בבית כנסת, התפללתי (עם כוונה, דווקה!) את קבלת שבת ומעריב, השתתפתי בקידוש, הבדלתי בין חול לקודש ושאבתי הנאה מהשבת עצמה. אז גם הגשמתי את מצוות השבת. למרות שכתיבה וקלידה הם "דברים אסורים", אני מתלבט אם להתווכח סיכסוכי הארץ גם בראש וגם בכתיב באמת יעצבנו את אלוהים. אני ממש עירני על הפרושים, אבל פשוט לא חושב שהם חילולים

for the economist

a haiku:

Her gain is mine, too
This makes our slope positive.
Giffen's Paradox?

Iran is Testing (missiles and mindsets)

Iran is not going away anytime soon.
Right after reading this article from professor and former Condoleeza Rice cabinet member (not to mention member of my mishpacha) on the Wall Street Journal website I saw this picture on the NYtimes.com:

Oh boy is right. The caption under the picture said, and I quote, "Iran showed new defiance Sunday by test-firing three short-range missiles near the city of Qum." Iran's case of classic showboating comes just after the U.S.-British-French joint statement announcing the location of the site. Meant perhaps to show that 'we know what you're up to and you won't get away with it,' Iran's response is a clear indication that is does not care what the West thinks. In fact, it has and will continue to ignore international pleas for talks and negotiations, will continue to train fighters for proxy terrorist wars abroad, and will continue to suppress its myriad oppositional dissidents at home. President Obama continue to push for economic sanctions that will force Iran back to the nuclear negotiation table. While some countries (a la France and England) have vocally supported the president, noticeable others (China and Russia who not surprisingly has vested economic interests with Iran) have not. Sanctions are useless unless everyone is on board.

Iran tested three missiles on Sunday and plans on testing out some longer range ones on Monday--not coincidentally on the Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur. Testing mid range missiles on the most important Jewish day of the year (a day in which Israel has already been surprise attacked in the past, lest we forget) is sure to goad the already fragile mindset of the Israeli people and government. This is exactly what Ahmadinejad and company want: a provocation that would not be large enough to be considered an outright act of war, but would prompt Israel to preemptively strike Iran. It is assumed that any Israeli military strike would provoke a larger, Middle East war--something that would be very costly and probably no Israeli wants.

Iran pushed dangerous buttons today, and barely anyone even blinked. It will do the same tomorrow, and will continue to do so on until it is stopped. Whether it is through sanctions that actually 'cripple the economy' or through a decisive military strike, who is going to step up and do something?

Keys to Israeli-Syrian Success

It is easy to forget that even when governments are officially not talking to each other, they still really probably are. In today's online edition of the Jerusalem Post, I spotted an article announcing that over 550 Druze religious leaders and elders living in northern Israel just began a five day trip into Syria to see religious holy sites and reunite with family members who live in across the border. The Druze are a religious minority group in Israel. They split from Islam in the 11th century and its people are spread mainly throughout Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, although they also have diaspora communities throughout the world.

Over the past couple of months, the Obama administration has asked neighboring Arab states to grant confidence building measures to Israel (like opening cultural attache offices in various Middle Eastern cities and granting Israel flyover airspace en route to other destinations). These requests were made so that Israel might back any concessions it makes to its hesitant constituency (specifically regarding the halt of settlement activity in the West Bank). The Arab states however have overwhelmingly rejected this notion and refused to cooperate with President Obama. It is noteworthy, then, to discuss why this specific measure--taken on jointly both by Israelis and Syrians, is not receiving greater publicity. Although the two governments aren't officially talking with each other, and the article does stress that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been shuttling back and forth figuring out the minutiae, surely there must be significant cooperation between the two governments (i.e. within their defense and interior ministries) to successfully pull off a stunt of this size. We're not talking about an individual family crossing the border and receiving special immunity, we're talking about hundreds of people with Israeli citizenship and full right, many of whom have served in the Israeli military, being bussed around for almost a week in what is officially enemy territory. Remember, Syria remains in a perpetual declared "state of war" with Israel. According to Post article, the Druze Member of Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Ayoub Kara helped orchestrate this diplomatic opening. In fact, it is part of his greater platform to organize border openings of these sorts once a month. If he were to succeed at opening the borders even bi-monthly, surely many would consider that a significant confidence building measure from which to build on.

For any sort of progress to be made, these sorts of steps must always be taken when made available: small tokens of cooperation now open up larger options down the road. In the case of Syrian-Israeli relations, this type of measure might eventually lead to bi or trilateral negotiations for peace. Israel conquered the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and Syria refuses to negotiate unless Israel completely evacuates the Golan and returns it to Syria. However, Israelis fear that giving back the region where much of Israel's natural, flowing water resources begin would be suicidal: not only would Syria be able to block the already scarce water sources from entering Israel, it could poison them, use them for sewage diversion etc. But, if you build trust through cooperative gestures, you get to negotiate on a serious level. If you solve the water disputes, you solve the Golan Heights (to grossly simplify this complicated topic, many, including me, believe that there is a way for Israel to give back almost all of the Golan to Syria and still leave its water security completely in tact). If you solve the Golan Heights, you get peace with Syria.

In a scene where prospects for peace are bleak, one has to believe that big things can happen when small steps are taken. A signal of cooperation between Israel and Syria is always a sign for optimism, but only if the two nations capitalize on the little thing to further the greater, underlying peace process will such signals have any meaning.

An edited version of this article can also be found on the online edition of the Columbia Spectator Newspaper here.
The Jerusalem Post article can be found here.

Part of the Problem...

...is that this whole settlement thing is easier to push for religious Zionists.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804571116&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
MK Shalom is looking (per usual) to the religious Zionist leaders to help settle the periphery and Druckman, one such leader, laments (per usual) that a larger, religious U.S. aliyah never occurred to settle the north and south. While pledging to back job fairs, tax and housing incentives, and revamping of absorption centers are all important general steps, the bigger problem is finding work for everyone. People won't stay if there are no jobs. Thus, funds would probably be most well spent in areas surrounding job creation. That is to say, serious research analyzing what the demands are of the periphery environments needs to be done. This should be followed by developing ways to build up a market for skilled, young workers to come in, build new homes, and supply the workforce for the needed industries and firms. Finally, this all should go in conjunction with bolstering the nascent groups already in existence--both secular (a la the well-known-to-you-by-now NGO I was a part of this past semester, Ayalim) and religious (a la Or, see website: http://eng.or1.org.il/HTMLs/Home.aspx?BSS53=14379).