As annual Jerusalem Day festivities got underway in the capital city and some good news hit the stands—that the 7 Gazans who had lost their Fulbrights would get them reinstated—I hopped three buses to the parallel universe of Tel Aviv.
Walking through the thick morning heat on the green campus of Tel Aviv University, searching for the building in which a small conference called “Yiddish: Between Languages and Theories” was tucked away, I thought of the language wars that roiled through Jewish communities in Europe and Palestine for the first half of the twentieth century. Ashkenazi Jews worldwide had been split between those devoted to the hybrid language of their ancestors, those hostile to the diasporic ennui seen to be epitomized by Yiddish and inclined more toward the dominant languages of their countries, and those passionate about the spiritual and national renewal animated by Hebrew.
In Europe, Jewish newspapers, culture clubs, and youth groups were the de facto front lines of the ideological war, and the stakes were high. Whether or not a paper was printed in Hebrew or Yiddish was a decision that tapped the existential angst of European Jewry: Could the Jewish people survive whatever the winds of time would blow their way? Would European nationalism include the Jews? Or would they set up a separatist nation? And would such a nation be Yiddish-speaking in Siberia or Hebrew-speaking in Palestine? German-speaking in Palestine? Or polyglossic in Uganda?
In the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine during the...

Israel's version of democracy is notably different than that we are familiar with in the United States. In the U.S., democracy is popularly summed up with a few principles at its core: "one person, one vote"; freedom of speech; freedom of religion; equal access to primary education. Israeli democracy is something different.

Israeli democracy is an ethnic democracy; the country is democratic for its Jewish citizens, and is not quite there for many of its Arabs, even its citizens who can vote in Parliamentary elections. Voter turnout in national elections among the Arab sector is dwindling, though, perhaps as as a silent (and ineffective) protest against their marginalization from the Israeli mainstream, and inadequate city services and educational budgets. Palestinian residents on the other side of the green line, however, are restricted from voting in Knesset elections and can instead vote only for the Municipality. Even those elections have an almost negligible turnout, given widespread resistance to voting in an election of a ruling power deemed illegitimate by the Palestinian populace.

Despite the deep socioeconomic and racial divides that course through the country, American tend to see democracy as an absolute, and as a statement of values and intentions. The view from Israel, however, implores us to view democracy as a continuum. Strictly speaking, and barring the flaws in the party system, the Israeli government is elected democratically by the voting populace. The facts of a 41-year long occupation on the one hand and systemic economic and racial discrimination faced...

There’s a certain style of conversation that is characterized by talking about a given subject without managing to really talk about it. This style threatened to characterize the first event of the first full day of the First Biennial Jerusalem International Writers Festival, a new biannual event hosted by Mishkenot Shaananim, Jerusalem’s prestigious literary and cultural center. The event was billed as a conversation about translation, and featured South African novelist Nadine Gordimer who was just last week considering the politics of literature and literary culture in deciding how to respond to pro-Palestine activists' demands that she withdraw from the festival, and her Hebrew translator, Cilla Elazar, whose translations include selected works of Gordimer as well as A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.
Mishkenot Shaananim, the conference venue, was one of the first neighborhoods of Jewish settlement outside of the Old City in the 19th Century. Overlooking the walls of the city, the site is a testament to the evolution of the city, and easily sparks contemplations of its infinitely textured past, and the relationship between the worlds within and beyond its walls. The setting seems prime for a conversation with a political writer with as fine-tuned an ear for the nuances of human existence as Gordimer.
One question that was raised during the talk--whose various interruptions provided telling glimpses into Israel's not-always-polite society--was about the relationship between the writer and translator, a relationship that seldom exists. Elazar opened by...

Plans are underway to approve the construction of a synagogue and residential and educational complex in the heart of Silwan, just outside the Old City walls, in one of the most sensitive areas of East Jerusalem. An article published today in Haaretz exposes an official process underway between the right-wing El-Ad/City of David archeological and settler association and the Jerusalem Municipality to condone and financially support construction that would continue to threaten whatever tenuous threads of cooperation still exist between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.

Attorney Danny Seideman submitted a letter to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on behalf of Ir Amim pointing out the ideological and on-the-ground ramifications of the plans, which would drive a wedge in the middle of the prized Palestinian area. Seideman describes the proposal as aiming to fortify and expand "an independent Elad kingdom [which] has been created, in which hegemony, above and below the ground, has been given to a body with a clear ideological bent." Elad itself has encountered legal challenges beginning in 1992, when it was convicted of misusing absentee property law, illegally transferring tens of millions of shekels, and, in 2005, of not reporting contributions of over seven million dollars.

As illustrated by Seideman's letter, demographic concentrations and settlement in Israel/Palestine have little parallel in the US, where ethnic and socioeconomic mixing is generally valued, even when gentrification is criticized. The significance of building a government-approved synagogue in an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem sends a message that threatens the feeling of security...

In an op-ed published a couple weeks ago on Ynet, Ir Amim www.ir-amim.org.il/eng director Amos Gil detailed the myriad ways in which Jerusalem is and should rightfully remain a divided city. Since the Annapolis Conference during which Olmert promised the cessation of further construction in East Jerusalem, tenders for 9617 new, Jewish, residential units have entered into various phases of approval, and Israeli unilateral steps have accumulated to the point where the public has already forgotten the centrality of a negotiated settlement to a genuine peace. The highly disputed E-1 region of East Jerusalem has lately played host to two infrastructural projects with deep geopolitical ramifications.
The most recent is an ostensibly positive development: turning a Jerusalem-area garbage dump into a methane-producing factory as an alternative energy source for thousands of customers. The troubles hinges on the fact of the Jerusalem “area:” the dump is, in fact, beyond both the green line and Jerusalem municipality boundaries. Lying square between Abu Dis to the west and the residential area of the Maaleh Adumim settlement bloc to the east, the dump is within Maaleh Adumim boundaries and its profits go to the Adumim Industrial Park. This new initiative is being heralded as a green victory, and is indeed a step in the right direction for urban environmentalism and sustainable energy. What the Ynet article, which is filed under the heading of “Activism,” failes to mention, are the strategic and ethical losses associated with this environmentalist gain.
The main problem...