Public Thoughts To Be Read At The Passover Table

By Talia Carner

This Passover, as we celebrate our ancestors’ freedom from slavery, we reconnect through our most important holiday with our centuries-long traditions. It is incumbent upon us to contemplate the broader concept of freedom and what it means to us as individuals, as members of our immediate communities, and as members of the community of Jews across the globe.

Throughout history, Passover has also been a time of increased blood libels and pogroms against Jews. While Jews celebrated freedom and showed benevolence toward fellow humans, they were reminded how hated they were—hatred so strong that it “justified” killing them by the dozens, thousands, and millions. In these days, as a new wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping over the globe, gathering tsunami-like power, it lands right in Manhattan's UN building. The global Jew-hate fest from Venezuela to Spain—and renewed in Poland—has  metastasized into leading universities, mainstream media, civic organizations, and even Western governments. The tale of the Haggadah we read at the Seder stands to remind us that hate comes knocking on our door first with words, then with economic and academic boycotts, then with biased UN resolutions, and, as in the past, it may end with guns, bombs and incinerators.

Passover also marks spring in our ancient agrarian society, a beginning of a cycle of life, with the blooming of trees and the planting of vegetables and flowers. Spring’s fresh start and the tradition of inviting others to share our bounty at the Passover table reminds us of Israel’s extraordinary achievements in agriculture and science—efficiencies, discoveries and inventions she has shared for decades with over 120 countries to help nourish children, improve global food production, and wipe out starvation.

While these past seventy years Israelis—both civilians and soldiers—have given each Jew everywhere reasons to walk tall and proud, their existential threat from Iran is real.

“Every Jew should consider himself as if he was freed from slavery,” says the Haggadah we read tonight. In today’s climate we should add that “Every Jew should consider himself as if he’s just escaped a terrorist bomb.” There but for the grace of God and twist of history, we would not have been spared the wrath and bombs of Palestinians or extreme Muslim murderers taking shelter in our sacred freedom. Let’s give our prayers and charity to the families who have suffered unimaginable, senseless losses. And as we do, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for them and for the Israeli soldiers who take the first bullet for us.

And while we’re at it, let’s remember our American soldiers on the forefront in the desserts of Iraq and Afghanistan—and the thousands of families who would never get to put their arms around them upon their return.

The tradition of Passover also calls us to invite to the Seder table any Jew who does not have one. Let’s invite—at least in our thoughts—all our Jewish brethren in countries that do not offer the freedom and protection that the USA guarantees us. For them, we can raise our collective voice with indignation and outrage and use our collective power to fight tyranny and fanaticism that calls for our—and their—demise.

Israel’s president Shimon Peres once said that even Ben-Gurion had not dreamed big enough. Let us dream big tonight—stretch our dream to encompass all the vast possibilities, and let us dream tonight of a world of peace.

Let us bless all the good things God has given us so far, and celebrate our resilience and our heritage of strong Jewish values that we have shared with the world over for centuries. And let's allow that dream bring joy to our hearts and to our Passover table.

Amen.

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Author Talia Carner's novels are heart-wrenching suspense dealing with social issues. Please read the first chapter of each on her website at www.TaliaCarner.com .

One People--Passover Surprise Guests

  

            It’s breakfast at Club Med in Mexico. I select a white-chocolate bread, a croissant, and a slice of banana cake for the last time; as of tomorrow, my family and I must stretch my box of matzos for the remaining four days of our stay. Surrounded by a merry crowd in bathing suits and scant coverings—standard daytime apparel here—my heart is heavy. This evening, instead of a Passover Seder at a table laden with fine china, polished silver, and sparkling crystal, I must improvise a Seder on the beach. What kind of message am I giving my children when opting to trump our most important holiday by a resort vacation?

            I approach the Chef-de-Village and ask for a secluded spot where my family and another Jewish couple we’ve met here could conduct a pre-sunset ceremony. He points to a beautiful thatched-roof area over a dance floor, facing the sea. “Anything else I can do?” he asks.

            “A bottle of sweet red wine, please?” Besides the box of matzos and a silver kiddush cup, I packed a dozen Hagadahs and baby-blue yarmulkes stamped with the date of our youngest daughter’s bat-mitzvah. I write down my recipe for charoset, a chopped mix of peeled apples, walnuts, pecans and dates, all flavored with cinnamon, honey and red wine.

            Moments later, I am surprised to hear him over the PA announcing that all who wish to participate in a Seder, should meet at five o’clock at the designated area.

            I cringe and glance around at the crowd, busy picking from mounds of fried bacon and pork sausages. Is someone cracking a comment about the invasion of the Hebs? No one seems to pay attention, and I decide that throughout history, Jews in far more dire conditions managed to celebrate Passover. So will my family, down to the lengthy reading of the Hagadah, the yearly retelling of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.

            At lunch, a sous-chef presents me with an industrial-size baking tray filled with charoset. Imagining that most of this huge quantity will be baked in tomorrow’s pies, I dip a spoon into the mix. The familiar taste of Passover festivity is already inside me. “May I also have a plate with a hard-boiled egg, a lamb bone, horseradish, and sprigs of parsley?” I ask. “And a cup of salt water?”

            The sun is still high when I drag my family off the beach to shower and dress in what passes in Club Med for evening attire—shorts and Polo shirts for men; white slacks or gauzy dresses for women.

            At five o’clock we arrive at the dance platform, carrying my Passover paraphernalia. To my annoyance someone must have double-booked the place, as dozens of his guests, dressed for a pre-dinner party are hanging about. “Now we must go look for another quiet spot,” I mutter, and go search for the sous-chef to locate my tray of charoset and Passover plate.

            In a cluster of people, I spot the couple we have invited and wave.

            As they wave back, some guests turn toward me, smiling. Only then it hits me: All these people are here for my little Seder!

            As my husband counts them—a hundred and forty—more bottles of wine and crates of glassware are brought from the kitchen. We place the Seder plate in the center of a table covered with a white tablecloth and dedicate my kiddush cup for Elijah. We break my matzos into the smallest pieces, and ladle charoset onto serving plates.

            Then we distribute the twelve Hagadahs—the story of Passover told in biblical Hebrew. I watch as Jews from South American countries speaking Spanish and Portuguese, Jews from France and Austria and Israel, speaking French, German and Hebrew, and Jews from North America, Australia and Great Britain speaking English, all squeeze close around their respective single Hagadah. A man from Venezuela assumes the role of the Seder leader—luckily his pronunciation is the Sephardi version, that of spoken Hebrew, not the archaic Ashkenazi version of most USA synagogues—and we begin taking turns reading aloud, with the congregants responding when called to do so. The Sepharadis chant their melodious renditions of some of the hymns, and the Ashkenazis respond with their musical versions. Regardless of our home language, we all utter the same ancient Hebrew words, recite the same sages’ arguments, and sing the same prayers. Together, we retell the narrative of liberation from slavery and urge our children to pass it on to theirs, so they, too, will forever appreciate freedom.

            I examine the men’s heads covered with baseball caps, dinner napkins, and my dozen yarmulkes in baby-blue like the undulating sea beyond. For one hour, strangers to one another, we are connected by one culture and unite through the ancient language of our ancestors in a tradition that transcends all geo-political barriers, that has stood up to centuries of persecutions, pogroms, and repeated attempts at our annihilation. “Next year in Jerusalem,” we chant together, expressing our shared vision of the place that for two-thousand years has anchored Jewish faith. For one hour we reassert to ourselves that we are one people. My people.

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Author Talia Carner’s most recent novel, HOTEL MOSCOW, (HarperCollins 2015,) tells the story of an American daughter of Holocaust survivors who travels to Russia shortly after the fall of communism, encounters anti-Semitism, and must come to terms with her parents’ legacy.

Give Me A Yellow Star

Yellow Jewish star, which all Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis and their allies.

In a departure from using my own words, I am posting a strong letter-to-the-editor written by an Israeli, voicing my outrage over the new wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe and which has long reached USA's academic world.

 DOWN WITH THE YELLOW STAR

By Eitan Chitayat (Edited by Dr. Chaim Bernard)
               

             Give me a yellow star. A dreary, cloth patch sewn in the shape of a Star of David that every Jew was forced to wear in Nazi Germany along with every country the Germans conquered; every country in Europe, some even allied with Germany ; every culture looking to expose the hated Jew.
            A yellow star worn by both my parents, while you, Europe, were standing by. That's what I am to you: The guilty Jew. The filthy Jew. The stealing Jew. The disgusting Jew. The less-than-human Jew. The Jew that can only do wrong – bomb innocent Muslim children - for that is, of course, all we do, all we ever aspired to as a nation, a race.
            The yellow star was forced on us. Rammed down our throats. It stood for dishonor and was associated with anti-Semitism as you probably know. It was to be a badge of shame like Hawthorne’s Scarlet letter. But 6 million times worse.
            Give me a yellow star. I want to wear a yellow star above my left breast where six million of my brothers and sisters were forced to don one. I want to walk around with a yellow star on every solitary piece of clothing I own. On my Armani suit, my Nike sweatshirt, Ralph Lauren sweater, my Champion hoodie, my Diesel jeans, my South Beach biker jacket. I’ll even wear it at the beach on my bare chest if I have to.
            I want to walk down the streets of Paris near Le Marais and be seen by you European anti-Semites. Outside the Great Synagogue of Stockholm, the Torah Center in Brussels, the Anna Frank Memorial in Amsterdam, the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, outside the Sigmund Freud House in London.
            I want all of you to see me with it and hear you say, ‘Hey, here comes the Jew’, he’s not just like the rest of us .
He’s just a dirty Jew.
A mass murderer.
He kills Muslim children and then uses their blood for matzah, just like the rest of the Jews.
They carpet bomb innocent people.
They are useless except for their knowledge, their Nobel prizes, and their success.
They kill children, those Jews.
Don’t you know? It’s the Jews who own Hollywood, the media, the banks.
They’re the scum of the earth.
They steal.
Hitler was right.
Let’s go spray-paint swastikas on his grandparents’ graves.
Let’s go beat him up.
Let’s kill him.
Let’s murder a rabbi in Miami or Brussels.

That'll teach them--to exist.

            I want that yellow star. Europe, to me that yellow star is a symbol of almost everything I stand for. It’s a symbol of surviving evil. It’s heritage and knowledge. Tolerance and optimism. It’s strength and confidence in the face of the weakness and insecurity of those not being taught well enough what their mothers should have taught them.
            That yellow star is education, resilience. It’s right over wrong, and it is life. It is testament to all who tragically died wearing it, so that their future surviving brothers and sisters know to never be afraid of who they are again. To never be silent again, not apologize for surviving. Thanks to them and indeed, for them, this yellow badge ceased being a badge of shame a long time ago. It's my badge of honor. I survived your indifference, your stupidity, your inhumaneness, your hatred, and your ignorance.
            For me, it’s a yellow F**k-You-Europe-Star.
            It’s a star that blinds out any other emblem that preaches hatred. It drowns out the form, shape and color of swastikas, the black flags of ISIS and Al Qaeda, and the green of Hamas or the yellow of Hezbollah.
            Before being herded off to the gas chambers around 70 years ago, Jews wearing their yellow star were hearing ‘Kill the Jews’, ‘Heil Hitler’, ‘The only good Jew is a dead Jew’, ‘Stealing Jew!’ – and all that before being ostracized from their communities, stripped of their belongings, property, identities, humanity and eventually, their lives.
            They were hearing words. It happened in many other countries too. Like my father’s country. A country he was expelled from for being a Jew. For being a dirty Jew. It. Always. Begins. With. Words. The same kind of words we’re hearing now here on your social media. On your streets. At demonstrations. In conversations. Words that have nothing to do with Israel. Palestine. Politics. The Middle East or anything.
            You might not be all too happy with ISIS and Hamas, but if you aren’t trying to expose them for who and what they are, then you’re not part of the solution but part of the problem. You know nothing about your own history, nothing about the Islamic conquest of Europe from the year 626 until this very day – the holy Jihad.
            The world’s abuzz right now with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic words. Anti-Semitic words that Jews like myself are used to. I’m talking to you, Dieudonné. Mel Gibson. Roger Waters. And the rest of you ignorant Jew-haters. And I’m talking to you, Radical Islamic leaders, standing behind your pulpits preaching lies and hate and division in the name of Allah. And to you – innocent bystanders in Europe.
            I’m talking to you, supposedly liberal minded people – friends of mine, even – who spend way too much time talking about Israel fighting for its existence in a defensive war, “disproportionally” ( as if the bombing of Dresden, the killing of Bin Laden, the invasion of Berlin by the Russian Army never happened) but very little talking about hundreds of thousands being murdered in Syria. In Iraq. About people being murdered for being followers of any other religion save Islam. Very little talking about ISIS taking over the middle east and putting heads on spikes, shooting people in ditches by the thousands, beheading a journalist on YouTube. Very little time talking about Syrians being gassed or a semi-literate peasant turned Turkish Prime minister spewing the kind of virulent anti-Semitism which ends with only one thing. And don’t forget 9/11, London’s 7/7, Spain’s Madrid train bombings or the Boston Marathon while you’re at it.
            Take a good hard look at my yellow star. Look at where it came from. Look what was done after we, the Jews, were forced to wear it and then ask yourselves, are we doing the same to others? Us Jews? Us Israelis? Are we Jews hellbent on exterminating people? Is that really what we want? Or are others doing that which you think we’re doing – others you refuse to be vocal about nor condemn with a simple post or click of your Like button.
            Here is what the German cleric Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote: “First they burned their books and their synagogues, and I didn't speak out. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me”. He wrote these lines in 1933 - too late – and he referred to the Nazis. But these words ring equally true in view of over 10% of the Muslim population in France, over 8% in Germany, over 6% in England, the neo-nazis in virtually every European country, or the Nazi Udo Voigt holding a seat in the Civil Rights Commission of the European Parliament.
            I, for one, Europe, am not going anywhere. Never again.Though some might wish it, NEVER AGAIN. For anyone else reading this from afar who might agree with what I’m saying, Jews and non-Jews alike, don’t feel sorry for me, my family, my friends. Don’t feel sorry for us. We’re fine and we’re not afraid, and we're here to stay. Don’t be afraid Europe, because I’m not intending to be a victim. None of us are. And I hope you aren’t either. My yellow star is staring extremism in the face.
           Am I cool with the yellow star? You’re damn right I am, totally.
--Eitan Chitayat

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Also check her website, www.TaliaCarner.com      

           
            

Tunneling Under Jerusalem

Talia in a 1900 kitchen yard (The Old Yeshuv Museum)

(Featured lead article, The Red Room, May 2011)

           
            Thomas Carlyle said, “What is knowledge but recorded experiences?” However, I could find no recorded experiences when I set out on the road to writing a novel inspired by my grandmother’s untapped artistic genius.
            I had a sense of the world she grew up in. She regaled me with stories from her childhood in Jerusalem in the early 1900s—her father’s roll-top desk that served as a bank and how she scraped the inside of a red candy wrapper in order to blush her cheeks. She taught me to sew pouches from old sheets and stuff them with beans and rice for our Shabbat cholent. Once she took me on a long bus trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and we walked in the yard of her English-language all-girls’ school. “Elegant” she called the place that at her time had been attended by only three hundred privileged girls. But these experiences were the outside scaffolding holding up the soul of a woman who, I was certain, had been born in the wrong time and place. What was the inner life of my feisty young protagonist trapped in a religious society and compelled to follow a predetermined path?
            Although my core family was secular, my Tel-Aviv neighborhood was mixed: I played hopscotch with Orthodox girls, and on Shabbat was careful to keep my music down. Throughout my twelve years in secular schools I studied Bible, in which I excelled, in addition to some Talmud. Our Hebrew literature was often steeped with religious overtones.
            Yet, digging into the nuances of the more extreme faction of an Orthodox Jewish woman’s life one hundred years ago in Jerusalem, I hit a wall. Historians, all male, never covered women’s concerns, while ultra-Orthodox Jewish women of that era rarely documented their own daily existence. They believed that suffering in Jerusalem—starvation, shortages, maggot-filled water cisterns, or fifty percent children’s mortality—wasn’t just a fact of life, but helped hasten the messiah’s arrival.
            There were short stories, articles, letters, and journals—and eventually some academic research—about Zionist women who, driven by ideology, immigrated to the Holy Land in the early part of the 20th century to seek equality with men in either the new agricultural communities (Kibbutzim) or whose voice was heard in politics. Israel’s late Prime Minister Golda Meir was the product of such Zionist venture and aspirations.
            But the ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in the Holy City remained invisible.
            At the end of the backward Ottoman rule, Jerusalem was a strategic city that attracted foreign embassies jostling for power by filling the void in governance. As they built hospitals and settled local disputes while their missionaries served hot meals and opened schools, the insular ultra-Orthodox community further closed itself off from their influence.
            A typical neighborhood in Jerusalem featured a large communal space lined by rows of identical one- and two-room houses that clung together, their back walls bordering the thoroughfare to form an impenetrable blockade. Life took place in the central common area, called “hatzer,” courtyard: the residents shared the oven, well, laundry shed, outhouses, yeshiva, mikveh, and synagogue. Even as overcrowding crisscrossed the open space with alleys, that’s where the women worked, cooked, gossiped, and watched over their young children. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women were hidden not only behind the thick stone walls, but also underneath heavy clothing and hair coverings—and behind a fear of “others,” which included less observant Jews. Adherence to a strict modesty precluded speaking to men, beyond the absolute necessary exchanges with merchants who ventured into their courtyard. Furthermore, the women were sheltered by rules, Commandments, dictates, norms and social expectations—as well as by ignorance: while one-hundred per cent of boys studied from dawn to dusk, starting at age three and well into adulthood, most girls were not schooled at all.
            One late fall day I checked into a Jerusalem hotel on the same ancient road leading to Bethlehem that my protagonist took when traveling to visit Rachel’s Tomb. Like a detective returning to the scene of a crime for more clues, I explored anew the city I had known and adored, but whose secrets I sought to expose.
            When I had lived there as a student at The Hebrew University, my fingers had turned blue in the freezing winters in centuries-old rented rooms. On warm summer nights, I had walked in the Old City (it was safe then) to the Arab bakery for pre-dawn freshly baked pitas. I attended a male cousin’s ultra-Orthodox second wedding to a mature woman he had never met, arranged by the rabbi and witnessed by five hundred disciples. I had strolled with a boyfriend on the ramparts of David Citadel, and on blistering hot days, had waded in the cool water of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, hugged by its tight walls and its biblical history.
            Yet, none of this had opened a window into the mystery of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women’s lives in the obscure past. I needed to dig a tunnel into history.
            Yad Ben-Zvi library held several preserved hand-written, personal journals. I also discovered barely legible fourth or fifth copies Ph.D. dissertations typed on manual typewriters decades ago. I spoke with historians, recorded oral histories of old female relatives, and walked the streets of Jerusalem aided by a 1912 map that showed most of the buildings—sometimes whole neighborhoods—unchanged.
            My mind’s eye stripped the streets and buildings of all modern accoutrements, for in the Ottoman era even the thoroughfares remained unpaved as in biblical times. Running water, electricity, and sanitation were only added gradually by the British after taking over the mandate of the Holy Land in 1917. The first car arrived in Jerusalem a decade earlier, during the time my story was set—but the rabbis forbade looking at this abomination. With no news broadcast, no music, and no vehicular traffic, streets and markets sounds were much different. But what was the cadence of life that early-1900s Jerusalem women heard? What were the smells?
            The breakthrough in my research came in The Old Yishuv Court Museum in the Old City of Jerusalem. With donations of old tools, utensils, beddings, furniture, books and mementos, the founder had turned her parents’ old home into a museum that showed life in Jerusalem in the olden days. Here I was able spend time in a replica of the cramped kitchen in which my protagonist and her mother had toiled and, holding the washboard in the adjacent handkerchief-size yard, I bent over a knee-high tub and imagined scrubbing clothes with recycled water.
            I stared at the one tight bedroom with its high vaulted ceiling, where a lace curtain separated the parents’ sleeping nook. The stack of mattresses, I knew, would be spread on the floor at night. I just hadn’t realized how small the mattresses were and how few of them could actually fit in such a tiny space. In the center of the next bedroom, which didn’t exist in the average dwelling of the time, stood a four-poster maternity bed. It moved from home to home when women gave birth, which was often. Unfortunately, I had learned, almost half the birthing mothers eventually died. My own grandmother’s mother had borne fourteen children, eight of whom survived to adulthood—a rare achievement.
            I studied the jobs women kept in order to support their husbands’ studies while bearing and raising all their children—in printing, millinery, bookbinding. Women, the guardians of home, served both as the carriers of the future of Jewish people as well as the prisoners of this aspiration. 
            A friend arranged for a thirty-minute interview with Rivka Weingarten, the founder of the museum, who was old and sickly. We talked for over two hours. She knew my family that lived in Jerusalem for ten-generations and after whose members some streets were named. She described a scene I later used in my novel, in which my protagonist Esther ironed clothes with a heavy press iron, heated by sizzling embers inside. Her sister’s blew through a straw into a hole on the side of the pressing iron, thus raising the heat….
            Emerging outside into the bright Jerusalem sun reflecting back from the cream-colored chiseled stones, I followed my protagonist, a budding artist with passion for painting. Since visual expression was forbidden by the Second Commandment “Thou shall not make any graven images,” where would she quench her thirst for art? It dawned on me that I, a secular Jewish woman, had never set foot in a Jerusalem church. There had been occasions when my job required me to accompany a group of tourists to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I always I hung back just inside the doorway, queasy with a vague sense of my betrayal. How much weightier would my protagonist’s apprehension be? How sinful would she feel, with God crouching in her head and registering everything her eyes saw?
            For the first time in all my years and frequent visits to this holy city, I entered my protagonist’s shoes and, moving inside a bubble of foreboding sense of transgression, I set to explore the city’s churches and their magnificent art.
            After that, when I examined photographs of women shelling broad beans or standing in line at the single street faucet for the scarce water distribution the Turks failed to maintain, I did so with the tension derived from my protagonist’s wish to break away from a life of unceasing labor, squalor, and worries, to let her soul soar as high as the angels floating in a church’s mural. As I peeked in Me’ah She’arim into the still-standing vaulted ceiling, crowded rooms where whole families of ultra-Orthodox Jews still lived in poverty, subsisting on women’s small enterprises and charity while the fathers studied all their days, I knew that—except for the running water and toilet facilities in the yard—I was looking at history.
            Once, on a blistering summer day, waiting at the intersection by Me’ah She’arim for the traffic light to change, I glanced at a fully covered woman standing next to me. She was very young—and pregnant. In the stroller and hanging onto her long, ample skirt were four more children. Although under Israeli law she probably married at seventeen rather than at thirteen, I wondered how much freedom she had had as a teenager to assess her world and her future. Had she dreamed of living in Paris instead?
            My protagonist, Esther, did, and she was determined to follow her heart. And she did. I had no choice but to follow her to Paris….

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Talia Carner’s novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, was published by HarperCollins (2011)
www.TaliaCarner.com

Public Thoughts To be Read At The Rosh Hashanah Table

Rosh Hashanah 2014— Year 5775 of proud Jewish history  

By Talia Carner
            The New Year has always been a time of reflection about life within the broader context of one's relationship with others and one’s relationship with God. For atheists, the latter is an examination the moral values by which each of us lives. This is the time of spiritual reconnection with Jewish traditions and of remembering those who, over generations of persecution, were killed for the single sin of their faith.
            The tradition of eating sweet foods carries with it the optimism of a sweet new year. It is a new beginning, a sweet chance to start over.
            All across the globe, Jews share these moments—and the hope carried in them. This sharing of rituals ties us all together and remind us that no Jew is ever alone.
            Yet, as a community, we are often alone. Friends of the Jews come and go, their loyalty never taken for granted. This year, Rosh Hashanah falls in the midst of rise of anti-Semitism sweeping the through Europe, Africa and Asia, and has landed right in our midst at the Manhattan's UN building. The centrality of Jewish identity—the Jews’ right for self-definition and sovereignty in their own land—has been challenged not only by ignoramus, but by intellectuals in leading universities, mainstream media and civic organizations claiming to be unbiased and inclusive.
            Rosh Hashanah now stands to remind us that hate can come knocking on our door first with words, followed by denying our identity, then erasing the lessons of our history, and continues with biased resolutions and economic boycotts. Before long, it is with , and guns, bombs, and showers of thousands of rockets that no empty promises of “never again” are able to stop.         
            Let the fresh start of Rosh Hashanah therefore remind us how much pride we take in Jewish extraordinary achievements in science and medicine, unsurprisingly reflected in Israel’s miraculous contributions to technology, agriculture and science.

            Israel makes us walk tall. Without her, Jews would have been like the Gypsies and Kurds of the world. Yet, she is now in mortal danger of a war orchestrated by enemies delighted to sacrifice the lives of millions of their people to see the Jews disappear from the Middle East.
            As we move into the New Year, let us bless all the good things the world has given us while we send our prayers for those who have already been taking the first bullet for us--and this year, 67 beautiful souls of Israeli soldiers did just that. Their friends will continue to do so to preserve a home for all Jews persecuted in their countries. And as we do so, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for Israel and its people who need us now more than ever.
            Several years ago, then-Israel’s president Shimon Peres said that even Ben-Gurion had not dreamed big enough. Let us dream big tonight—stretch our dreams to encompass all the vast possibilities of hope, and let us dream tonight of a world of peace.
            Let’s bless all the good things God has given us so far, and celebrate our resilience and our heritage of strong Jewish values that we have shared with the world over for centuries. And let's allow that dream bring joy to our hearts and to our Rosh Hashanah table.
            Amen.
           
Author, speaker and activist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her next novel, Hotel Moscow (HarperCollins, summer 2015) deals with anti-Semitism and Jewish identity.   www.TaliaCarner.com.       
            

Public Thoughts To be Read At The Passover Table

Passover 2013

By Talia Carner            
             

            This Passover, as we celebrate our ancestors’ freedom from slavery, we reconnect through our most important holiday with our centuries-long traditions. It is incumbent upon us to contemplate the broader concept of freedom and what it means to us as individuals, as members of our immediate communities, and as members of the community of Jews across the globe.             
            Throughout history, Passover has also been the time of increased blood libels and pogroms against Jews. While Jews celebrated freedom, they were being reminded that they were hated to the point of being killed by the dozens, thousands, and millions. As a new wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping over the globe, landing right in Manhattan's UN building, its Jew-hate festival has metastasized into leading universities, mainstream media, and civic organizations. The tale of the Haggadah we read at the Seder stands to remind us that hate comes knocking on our door first with words, then with economic and academic boycotts, then with biased UN resolutions, and, as in the past, it may end with guns, bombs and incinerators.            
            Passover also marks the Spring in our ancient agrarian society, a beginning of a cycle of life, with the blooming of trees and the planting of vegetables and flowers. The fresh start of spring also stands to remind us that our friends and fellow Jews are watching with angst the rise in anti-Semitism in countries from Venezuela to Spain. And while these past sixty-five years Israelis—civilians and soldiers—have helped every Jew everywhere walk tall and proud, their existential threat from Iran is real.     
            “Every Jew should consider himself as if he was freed from slavery,” says the Haggadah we’ll read tonight, retelling the story of Exodus. In today’s climate we should add that “Every Jew should consider himself as if he’s just escaped a terrorist bomb.” There but for the grace of God and twist of history, we would not have been spared the wrath and bombs of a Palestinians or extreme Muslim murderers taking shelter in our sacred freedom on these shores. Let’s give our prayers and charity to the over 6,000 injured Israelis forever coping with embedded nails, burned faces, or missing limbs. And as we do that, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for them and for the Israeli soldiers who take the first bullet for us.
            The tradition of Passover also calls us to invite to the Seder table any Jew who does not have one. Let’s invite—at least in our thoughts—all our Jewish brethren in countries that do not offer the freedom and protection that the USA guarantees us. For them, we can raise our collective voice with indignation and outrage and use our collective power to fight tyranny and fanaticism that calls for our—and their—demise.

Therefore, as we move into the Spring, let us bless all the good things the world has given us. This Passover we are not alone at the Seder table. Neither should any Jew be.

Amen.

# # #

 

Novelist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her latest novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN (HarperCollins, 2011) deals with the struggle between freedom and faith. (www.TaliaCarner.com)          

Public Thoughts To be Read At The Rosh Hashanah Table

Rosh Hashanah 2011— Year 5772 of proud Jewish history

By Talia Carner

The New Year has always been a time of reflection about life within the broader context of one's relationship with others and one’s relationship with God—or the moral values by which each of us chooses to live. It has been a time of spiritual reconnection with Jewish traditions and of remembering those who, over generations of persecution, were killed for the single sin of their faith.

The tradition of eating sweet foods carries with it the optimism of a sweet new year. A new beginning, a chance to start over.

All across the globe, Jews share these moments—and the hope carried in them. This sharing of rituals ties us all together and remind us that no Jew is ever alone.

Yet, as a community, we are alone. Friends of the Jews come and go, their loyalty never taken for granted. This year, Rosh Hashanah falls all too close to the Jew hate-fest that has seized the world, with its official governing body controlled by those committed to excising the roots of Jewish history and identity and thus removing them from their land. The new wave of anti-Semitism has already swept through Europe, Africa and Asia, and has landed right in our midst at the Manhattan's UN building, while it has long metastasized into leading universities, mainstream media and civic organizations claiming to be unbiased and inclusive.

Now Rosh Hashanah stands to remind us that hate can come knocking on our door first with words, with erasing of our history, with biased resolutions and economic boycotts, and then with guns, bombs, and showers of thousands of rockets that no empty promises of “never again” may be able to stop.

Let the fresh start of Rosh Hashanah therefore remind us how much pride we take in Israel’s extraordinary achievements in science, agriculture and technology—efficiencies, discoveries and inventions she has shared for decades with over 120 countries to help nourish children, improve global food production, and leap medical practices to better the lives of millions daily.

Israel makes us walk tall. Without her, Jews would have been like the Gypsies and Kurds of the world.

Yet, she is now in mortal danger of a war orchestrated by enemies delighted to sacrifice the lives of millions of their people to see the Jews disappear from the Middle East.

As we move into the New Year, let us bless all the good things the world has given us while we send our prayers for those who have already been taking the first bullet for us, and will continue to do so to preserve a home for all Jews persecuted in their countries. And as we do so, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for Israel and its people who need us now more than ever.

A couple of years ago, Israel’s president Shimon Peres said that even Ben-Gurion had not dreamed big enough. Let us dream big tonight—stretch our dreams to encompass all the vast possibilities of hope, and let us dream tonight of a world of peace.

Let’s bless all the good things God has given us so far, and celebrate our resilience and our heritage of strong Jewish values that we have shared with the world over for centuries. And let's allow that dream bring joy to our hearts and to our Rosh Hashanah table.

Amen.

Author, speaker and activist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her latest novel, Jerusalem Maiden (HarperCollins, June 2011) is set in the early 1900 at the end of the Ottoman Empire rule of the Holy Land (http://www.taliacarner.com/).

Public Thoughts To be Read At The Passover Table

Passover 2011

By Talia Carner

This Passover, as we celebrate our ancestors’ freedom from slavery, we reconnect through our most important holiday with our centuries-long traditions. It is incumbent upon us to contemplate the broader concept of freedom and what it means to us as individuals, as members of our immediate communities, and as members of the community of Jews across the globe.

Throughout history, Passover has also been a time of increased blood libels and pogroms against Jews. While Jews celebrated freedom and showed benevolence toward fellow humans, they were reminded how hated they were—hatred so strong that “justified” killing them by the dozens, thousands, and millions. In these days, as a new wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping over the globe, gathering tsunami-like power, it lands right in Manhattan's UN building. The global Jew-hate fest from Venezuela to Spain has metastasized into leading universities, mainstream media, civic organizations, and even Western governments. The tale of the Haggadah we read at the Seder stands to remind us that hate comes knocking on our door first with words, then with economic and academic boycotts, then with biased UN resolutions, and, as in the past, it may end with guns, bombs and incinerators.

Passover also marks spring in our ancient agrarian society, a beginning of a cycle of life, with the blooming of trees and the planting of vegetables and flowers. Spring’s fresh start and the tradition of inviting strangers to share our bounty at the Passover table reminds us of Israel’s extraordinary achievements in agriculture and science—efficiencies, discoveries and inventions she has sharedfor decades with over 120 countries to help nourish children, improve global food production, and wipe out starvation.

While these past sixty-three years Israelis—both civilians and soldiers—have given each Jew everywhere reason to walk tall and proud, their existential threat from Iran is real.

“Every Jew should consider himself as if he was freed from slavery,” says the Haggadah we read tonight. In today’s climate we should add that “Every Jew should consider himself as if he’s just escaped a terrorist bomb.” There but for the grace of God and twist of history, we would not have been spared the wrath and bombs of Palestinians or extreme Muslim murderers taking shelter in our sacred freedom. Let’s give our prayers and charity to the families who have suffered unimaginable, senseless losses and to the over 6,000 injured Israelis forever coping with imbedded nails, burned faces, or missing limbs. And as we do, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for them and for the Israeli soldiers who take the first bullet for us.

The tradition of Passover also calls us to invite to the Seder table any Jew who does not have one. Let’s invite—at least in our thoughts—all our Jewish brethren in countries that do not offer the freedom and protection that the USA guarantees us. For them, we can raise our collective voice with indignation and outrage and use our collective power to fight tyranny and fanaticism that calls for our—and their—demise.


At a recent interview, Israel’s president Shimon Peres said that even Ben-Gurion had not dreamed big enough. Let us dream big tonight—stretch our dream to encompass all the vast possibilities, and let us dream tonight of a world of peace.

Let us bless all the good things God has given us so far, and celebrate our resilience and our heritage of strong Jewish values that we have shared with the world over for centuries. And let's allow that dream bring joy to our hearts and to our Passover table.

Amen.

Novelist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her next novel, Jerusalem Maiden, will be published in June 2011 by HarperCollins. (www.TaliaCarner.com)