03 fbs reader ch3

c h a p t e r 3

See ISrael Through The eyeS of a young orThodox ImmIgranT From Los Angeles Who Moved to Jerusalem

the israelithe israeli

“You may well be president of 200 million

people; I am Prime Minister of 460,000 Prime Ministers.”

—DaviD Ben-Gurion to Harry truman

See ISrael’S democracy

In Action Page 42

anoTher JewISh hero

Learn More Page 49

Chapter 3: The Israeli 35

the many faces book Search

aaron Katz

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Studied at Aish HaTorah L.A. Studied at Ohr Samayach Lives in Jerusalem, Israel From Tarzana, CA

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36 Chapter 3: The Israeli

The Romans officially took over control of Israel, then called Judea, in the be-ginning of the Common Era. Roman rule continued for several centuries,

until 636 CE. During the Roman occupation, a Jewish teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, preached Jew-ish religious and ethical laws. This preaching was threatening to those in power, and he was execut-ed by the Romans. Jesus’ followers continued his teachings, and the Christian faith was born. Even-tually, Christianity was spread throughout the known world. It became one of the world’s great religions based on the belief that Jesus was sent by God to save mankind through Christian faith.

The Roman occupation was a destructive force. From 66 to 74 CE, the Jews revolted. In response,

the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. All Jews were expelled from Jeru-salem, which the Romans renamed Aelia Capitoli-na in an attempt to discourage Jewish attachment to the city. Following the second revolt (132–135 CE) the Jewish population in Israel was exiled from the land. The Romans renamed the area Palestine, after the Philistines, an ancient tribe that had once inhabited a coastal strip near the modern city of Ashkelon. This was the Romans’ attempt to remove from the Jews any national feel-ing for the Land of Israel. However, Jews did not accept their dispossession from their land and re-tained the named Eretz Yisrael—the Land of Israel.

The Beginnings of Christianity and the Rule of the Romans


aaron Katz I live in Jerusalem with 750,000 of my holiest friends—and I, too, can’t imagine living anywhere else! Where is my favorite place—where else? The Kotel.

robbie green Great pic. I know that’s the Western Wall, but what’s the Kotel?

aaron Katz Ha! Same thing. Kotel means “Wall,” referencing the Western retaining wall of the ancient beloved Temple of the Jewish people.

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Solomon Barihun I love it at the Kotel on Friday, just before sundown. The world stops and the Sabbath—Shabbat in Hebrew—begins 25 hours of a complete break from the working world.

aaron Katz When I go with the boys from the Yeshiva, we begin dancing in a snake path down from the upper city.

robbie green Whoa. Who knew?

Tali levy This is where I was sworn into the IDF—Israel Defense Forces.

aaron Katz That’s right, those guys and girls down there know that our tiny country has four borders with other countries. Two of those borders are with nations still officially at war with us, at war with the very idea of our existence.

omri hazan Nachon. Right. The job for us soldiers is simple: Defend our borders so our family and friends at home can live as a free people.


aaron Katz I know this is a heavy subject, but this is Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a museum of education and remembrance for the 6 million Jews that were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

omri hazan May God bless their memories.

robbie green I could barely keep it together when I went through the Children’s Memorial and the 1.5 million names were coming at me from the darkness.

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aaron Katz Such a grim time period in Jewish history is understood to be the culmination of centuries of anti-Semitic violence against the Jewish people.

Tali levy Yad Vashem ensures that no one forgets the plight of the Jewish people and why we need our own homeland to guarantee nothing like it ever happens again.

aaron Katz robbie, you really should read about the dreyfus affair to understand a little bit about how this all came about.


Alfred Dreyfus, an obscure captain in the French army, came from a Jewish family. In 1894, secret French Army in-formation was passed to the German

army. Dreyfus came under suspicion, probably because he was a Jew. Despite his protests of in-nocence, he was found guilty of treason in a se-cret military court-martial, during which he was denied the right to examine the evidence against him. The army stripped him of his rank in a hu-miliating ceremony and shipped him off to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a penal colony located off the coast of South America.

Dreyfus seemed destined to die in disgrace. He had few defenders, and anti-Semitism was rampant in the French army. Time after time, evidence was shown that, in fact, the guilty party was a soldier named Walter Esterhazy, but Dreyfus’ appeals went nowhere, and he languished in prison.

“The Affair” might have ended then but for the de-termined intervention of the novelist Émile Zola, who published his denunciation (“J’accuse!”) of the army cover-up in a daily newspaper. In Sep-tember 1899, the president of France pardoned Dreyfus, thereby making it possible for him to re-turn to Paris, but he had to wait until 1906—12 years after the case had begun—to be exonerated of the charges, after which he was restored to his former military rank.

An Austrian Jewish journalist covering the trial was shocked by the rabid anti-Semitism in the tri-al and in the crowds outside. He was so shocked that he decided to give up journalism and his first love, the theatre, to give himself over com-pletely to the dream of a Jewish national home-land. That man’s name was Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism.

Dreyfus Affair

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council made historic changes to church policies and the-ology. Among them was Nostra Aetate, Latin for “In Our Time,” a document that revolu-

tionized the Catholic Church’s approach to Jews and Judaism after nearly 2,000 years of pain and sorrow.

Section four of Nostra Aetate repudiates the centu-ries-old “deicide” charge (leveled against Jews by Christians for having killed Jesus of Nazareth), stresses the religious bond shared by Jews and

Catholics, and reaffirms the eternal covenant be-tween God and the People of Israel.

For the first time in history, Nostra Aetate called for Catholics and Jews to engage in friendly dialogue and biblical and theological discussions to better understand each other’s faith. In 1979, a new pon-tiff was appointed to lead the Church. Pope John Paul II was a native of Poland whose best friend in childhood was Jewish, leading this Pope to de-clare, “Anti-Semitism is a sin.”

Did You Know?Nostra Aetate


aaron Katz Believe it or not, behind this craziness is our parliamentary building, the Knesset. People describe Israel’s political democracy as “vibrant”—but that’s putting it mildly!

Tali levy Ha, for sure. In the last elections, we could choose from over 20 political parties with serious platforms on religion, the economy, peace, welfare, etc.

aaron Katz We even have the Meditation Party (“Ten minutes of meditation will bring peace to the Middle East!”), Balad (an Arab party that opposes Zionism), and The Green Party (their one platform is trying to legalize marijuana).

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robbie green Wow. We can barely figure it out with 2 parties in the States!

omri hazan And if you want to see arguing, you came to the right place

Solomon Barihun Everyone knows our Knesset members debate each other so passionately, they’ll take off a shoe and bang it on the table to get your attention.

Tali levy Ladies and gentlemen, Israel’s national legislature!

robbie green I didn’t see this commotion when we were there. What’s going on?

aaron Katz That’s what is even more amazing. On the same street, you’ll see passionate political rallies any time of the week, like today. The Israeli Prime Minister’s residence is in the middle of a residential neighborhood. You can sit at the corner café and watch them roll out to the Knesset in the morning.


The Israeli Knesset


Tali levy Hey aaron, you don’t exactly fit in with the look of our founding fathers who were in that room declaring our independence to the world all those years ago.

aaron Katz Well, having been born in the USA—the origin of modern democracy—it’s amazing to me how similar Israel is to America.

robbie green Really? How so?

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aaron Katz Just take the 2 declarations of Independence. You see the same basic principle in each. Can you figure it out?


4check in,

check it

out

American Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events it becomes nec-essary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to as-sume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Na-ture’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opin-ions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are institut-ed among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and according-ly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Ob-ject evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the ne-cessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the pres-ent King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object

Israel Declaration of Independence

The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish peo-ple. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and cre-ated a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.

Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.

Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain their statehood. In recent decades they returned in masses. They reclaimed the wilderness, revived their language, built cities and vil-lages and established a vigorous and ever-growing community with its own economic and cultural life. They sought peace yet were ever prepared to defend themselves. They brought the blessing of progress to all inhabitants of the country.

In the year 1897 the First Zionist Congress, inspired by Theodor Herzl’s vision of the Jewish State, proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national revival in their own country.

This right was acknowledged by the Balfour Decla-ration of November 2, 1917, and re-affirmed by the Mandate of the League of Nations, which gave explicit international recognition to the historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and their right to re-constitute their National Home.

The Nazi Holocaust, which engulfed millions of Jews in Europe, proved anew the urgency of the re-estab-lishment of the Jewish state, which would solve the problem of Jewish homelessness by opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the Jewish people to equality in the family of nations.

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the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most whole-some and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of im-mediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommo-dation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formida-ble to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Rep-resentative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Natu-ralization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to en-courage their migrations hither, and raising the condi-tions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refus-ing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and pay-ment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to ha-rass our people and eat out their substance.

American Declaration of Independence, cont.

The survivors of the European catastrophe, as well as Jews from other lands, proclaiming their right to a life of dignity, freedom and labor, and undeterred by haz-ards, hardships and obstacles, have tried unceasingly to enter Palestine.

In the Second World War the Jewish people in Pales-tine made a full contribution in the struggle of the freedom-loving nations against the Nazi evil. The sac-rifices of their soldiers and the efforts of their workers gained them title to rank with the peoples who found-ed the United Nations.

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a Resolution for the estab-lishment of an independent Jewish State in Palestine, and called upon the inhabitants of the country to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put the plan into effect.

This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their independent State may not be revoked. It is, moreover, the self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY, WE, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world, met together in sol-emn assembly today, the day of the termination of the British mandate for Palestine, by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish and of the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations,

HEREBY PROCLAIM the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called ISRAEL.

WE HEREBY DECLARE that as from the termination of the Mandate at midnight, this night of the 14th and 15th May, 1948, and until the setting up of the duly elected bodies of the State in accordance with a Constitution, to be drawn up by a Constituent Assem-bly not later than the first day of October, 1948, the present National Council shall act as the provisional administration, shall constitute the Provisional Gov-ernment of the State of Israel.

Israel Declaration of Independence, cont.

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He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a juris-diction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowl-edged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punish-ment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pre-tended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neigh-bouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary gov-ernment, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation,


THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigra-tion of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the bene-fit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Proph-ets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all reli-gions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be ready to cooperate with the organs and representatives of the United Na-tions in the implementation of the Resolution of the Assembly of November 29, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the Economic Union over the whole of Palestine.

We appeal to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building of its State and to admit Israel into the family of nations.

In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, with full and equal citizenship and due rep-resentation in its bodies and institutions - provisional or permanent.

We offer peace and unity to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.

Our call goes out the Jewish people all over the world to rally to our side in the task of immigration and de-velopment and to stand by us in the great struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations - the re-demption of Israel.

With trust in Almighty God, we set our hand to this Declaration, at this Session of the Provisional State Council, in the city of Tel Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, the fifth of Iyar, 5708, the fourteenth day of May, 1948.

Israel Declaration of Independence, cont.



and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of at-tempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the cir-cumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity,

and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would in-evitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Pow-er to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, es-tablish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.—And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.



Natan Sharansky

natan Sharansky

Works at chair of the executive, The Jewish agency for Israel Studied at moscow Physical Technical Institute Lives in Jerusalem, Israel From donetsk, ukraine Relationship status married

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Natan likes the books A Case for Democracy

and Defending Identity by Natan Sharansky.

Natan likes 2005 TIME magazine’s 100

most influential people in the “Scientists

and Thinkers” category (Natan is #11).

Natan, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush

are now friends.

Natan shared an album: From a Soviet Prison,

to Israel, and Back to Moscow (as a Diplomat).

natan Sharansky Received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush7 years ago

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natan Sharansky Elected to Israeli Knesset 16 years ago

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natan Sharansky Released from jail, immigrates to Israel23 years ago

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natan Sharansky Sentenced to prison for treason in the USSR for trying to rescue Jews and transport them to Israel. 35 years ago

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the many faces book Search


--

Natan Sharansky was born on January 20, 1948, in Donetsk, Ukraine, where his father was a journalist for a Communist Party newspa-

per. A good student, he was admitted to the Mos-cow Physical Technical Institute, where he studied mathematics and computer science. Upon gradua-tion in 1972 he took a position as a computer sci-entist at the Oil and Gas Research Institute. Shortly afterward, he and his future wife, Natalia Stieglitz (Avital), decided to emigrate to Israel and requested exit visas.

Avital’s request was approved, but Sharansky was de-nied permission to leave because of his professional training and position, and possibly because of his activism in support of the right of Jews to emigrate. Like other refuseniks (those refused permission to leave), Sharansky was a frequent participant in dem-onstrations around the Moscow synagogue in 1973 and early 1974.

Helped Organize Helsinki Watch Group in MoscowSoon after his election, U.S. President Jimmy Carter made the abuse of human rights a priority issue in his relations with the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities were angered by this ap-proach and felt they had to send a clear signal of their displeasure. In July 1977, the 30-year-old Sharansky went on trial for high trea-son, accused of passing

information to an unnamed Western intelligence agency.

The four-day trial captured the at-tention of the Western press, for both personal and political reasons. Sharansky refused to accept his KGB-appointed lawyer and, even though he risked the death penalty, defended himself. He was refused the right to

call witnesses or to cross-examine his accusers. At the same time, the desperate un-happiness of his mother, Ida Mil-grom, who kept a lonely vigil out-side the closed Moscow courtroom,

Natan Sharansky Profile of an Israeli Pioneer


raised the sympathies of millions of Ameri-cans. In the end, Sharansky was sentenced to 13 years in jail.

Soviets Agree to Sharansky’s Release as Part of an Exchange of AgentsIn late 1985, after the historic first meeting between Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan in Geneva, the new Soviet leader decided to make a gesture in the direction of improved relations. The Soviets agreed to Sharansky’s release as part of an exchange of convicted espionage agents on both sides. He was released early on the morning of February 11, 1986, at the border separat-ing East and West Berlin.

When he arrived in Israel, his political activism began. He formed a party called “Israel on the Rise” and sought to represent the needs and interests of Jews from the former Soviet Union.

In 1989, he was nominat-ed as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. In January 1997, as the Israeli Cabinet Minister of Indus-try and Trade, Sharansky returned to Moscow to sign an economic coopera-tion agreement with Mos-cow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov

Natan Sharansky, continued

to boost trade between Israel and the city. According to Sharansky, the cer-emony took place in a sparkling hall, next door to the building where he was

arrested 20 years earlier—the last time he saw any-thing of Moscow other than Lefortovo Prison.

“It was very funny,” Sharansky said. “Here I was arrested, and 20 years later I’m received with state honors in the very next building!”

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir welcome Refusenik Natan Sharansky, together with his wife, Avital, to Israel on February 11, 1986.


THE ISRAELI

1. List the different “identities” that make up who Aaron Katz is. What might this tell you about Israel or the Israeli people?

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2. Without looking back in the chapter, at this point in your reading which Israeli character do you connect with the most, and why?

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3. Turn back to page 43. Name one advantage and one disadvantage to having that many political parties.

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