Today we went to the Israel Museum in the morning on Tiyul with our Jewish History Class. We got to see a scale model of what Jerusalem looked like around the first century CE, which included the second temple. After seeing this, we went downstairs to see the original Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest known texts of what we know as the Tanakh. They have been dated to as far as back 200 CE. To me, it was really fascinating to see these because it really put it in perspective how old our religion is. I have always known Judaism is thousands of years old, but I never really thought about what that meant until today. I was standing in front of scrolls that say the same things that the Tanakh I bring to Jewish History class says, which means I'm studying the same words Jews have been reading since those shriveled  pieces of parchment were written. Furhermore, Judaism is thought to possibly be as old as 4000 years, and the scrolls are only 2000 years old. While I know the Tanakh is not that old, it's still wild to think that the religion I practice, though radically different, has been being practiced for that long. I know this thought is not original at all, but the scope of that never really made sense to me until I saw the scrolls today, and I was able to see how ancient they looked. They are magnificently preserved scrolls, but even so they don't look like something anybody could easily read.

This week I read an article written by an ultra Orthodox rabbi about the vandalism of a reform synagogue in Ra'nana. On the Beit Knesset directs one to a verse in the book of Psalms which states that heretics and deniers of the Torah have no place in the world. The writer of this article makes the argument that the vandalizes are wrong to have written this, because reform Jews are not apostates, as described by Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz. He said that an apostate is a either a person who rejects Judaism for an easier life, or one who rejects Judaism out of a desire to attack Jewish tradition.
The tone of this article was very interesting to me to read, because it showed me a different perspective that the Orthodox have of Reform Jews that I did not know existed. It seemed to me that the writer's attitude towards Reform was one of disagreement, but respect. I always just assumed that Orthodox Jews think of the Reform movement as a shameful rejection of tradition. However, some apparently hold an opinion that the Reform Jews want to make Judaism more modern, and though they disagree with the movement's principles, they accept this. Sometimes I feel like I have an unfair, incorrect view of the Orthodox community, but when I see things like this, it reminds me that while they might not agree with Reform views, they respect Reform Jews as people just trying to make Judaism more relevant today.

Every Friday morning, we do a Tzedakah project as a group. Tzedakah by the way is pronounced very differently here from how it is in America. This week, we went to help out at a home in Jerusalem for people with special needs. The people who live there work in a factory building things. So most of the group went to the factory to help them with their projects, but a small group of people went to the actual home to sing Jewish songs with the residents. I went to the home to play songs, as one of seven people who brought a guitar. We didn't prepare much, so I didn't really know the songs we were playing, but I did my best to follow along, and everybody seemed to be enjoying it a lot. It was really wonderful to see their faces light up when we started to play a song they liked, and how much fun they were having singing along. We ran out of songs that we all knew how to play pretty quickly, and then we all tried to follow whoever knew which particular song we were playing. To the people living at the home it didn't seem to matter that we were playing the wrong chords and slurring the Hebrew words, because they were just happy to have us there singing with them. It was a really great experience overall.

The article I read this week is about BDS, and can be found here. http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/115428/a-synthetic-emergency-israel-divided-over-boycott-threat’

BDS, or Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, is defined by wikipedia as a global campaign which uses economic and political pressure on Israel to comply with the stated goals of the movement: The end of Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees. These goals are very ambitious, and attaining all three would be a big win for the Arab-Palestinian population. This particular movement has a method of working towards them which targets the Israeli economy. By boycotting Israeli companies, divestment, essentially keeping universities from funding corporations that violate Palestinians' rights, and implementing sanctions against Israel, supporters of the BDS movement hope to damage the Israeli economy to the point that the Israelis will give in, and give the Palestinians everything they want. 

     This article in particular, found on The Jewish Chronicle, asks the question of whether the BDS movement is as much of a threat as some are making it out to be. The Israeli Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister is calling for a budget of 100 million NIS in order to combat the effects of BDS, but the Foreign Ministry, members of which are known to be more anti-Israel, are questioning whether this is really necessary. They argue that the damage done by the movement, which has been active since 2005, is minimal at this point. Tensions are rising as various developments in talks between Israel and others emerge, and some say Israel should not focus on something as minor as BDS. In my opinion, Israel should not devote too many resources to fighting this movement unless it is really doing considerable harm. However, Israeli exports are currently up, and the economy is doing well overall. I think Israel should keep an eye on those in support of BDS, but in the mean time focus on more important things. 

Maybe I shouldn't recycle topics, but this is too interesting for me to not write more about. I just commented on Gertz's blog, talking about something that just happened. Yesterday in Jewish History class, we talked about the idea that none of our Jewish biblical heroes are perfect, yet many figures in other religions are. So last night I commented on Gertz's blog talking about this idea, and that I thought it suggests an element of realism found in Judaism not found in other faiths. Then, a few minutes ago I was sitting in my room with Jacob, doing my math homework, and not really paying attention to the music playing in the background. It was an album I recently got, so I wasn't familiar with it. Suddenly I heard something about someone named Joseph. The last few days in class we were talking about Joseph, so I listened to hear what they were saying. It ended up the artist was talking about the father of Jesus, not the same Joseph, but what they said next amazed me. First, I didn't believe what I had heard, so I had to rewind it and hear it again. This is what I heard:

"and I've been thinking awkwardly
about the things that are holy
like Jesus, Joseph, and Mary
and Mary Magdalene
and even theoretically
I don't think I could ever see
the perfect human being
Jesus lived without sin"

The writer is questioning whether he believes that anybody, even Jesus, could live a perfect, sinless life.  It absolutely blows my mind that somehow I happened to hear the one verse out of this entire album that happens to be talking about exactly what we had discussed the day before. What's more is that that was the first time that idea had been introduced to me. Had I heard that verse a few weeks ago, it would have little meaning to me, but the timing of it was perfect. Strange coincidences seem to happen to me a lot, but this one seemed special to me. It made me think about coincidences, so I decided to find out what the Jewish perspective on coincidences was. I found this article, called "Who says there are no coincidences?"
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/6078/features/who-says-there-are-no-coincidences/
 I don't exactly have time to comment on it now, but it brings up some interesting point, and I'd recommend reading it.

This week we've been assigned to discuss articles on our blogs. The article I chose is titled "What Drives Success?" by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld for The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/what-drives-success.html?emc=eta1&_r=1

The article discusses why certain ethnic and religious groups living in America have much higher household incomes than the average American. These groups include Indian-, Lebanese-, Chinese-, Iranian-Americans, and of course, Jews. Jewish people are widely known to be highly successful and to often hold important positions in our society despite only making up two percent of the population. What all the successful groups share are three traits: a superiority complex, insecurity, in the form of the desire to always do better, and the third is impulse control. 

I realized that these traits sound very familiar, that many Jewish kids I know possess them exactly. Jews, like many other groups are told they are chosen and expected to be successful, giving rise to the superiority complex. Impulse control, or the ability to resist temptation, is something I also see among my peers. It seems to me that Jewish students are much more likely to avoid harmful substances, like alcohol and drugs, for fear that it will affect their future. But students who are not members of one of these groups often don't think about this, perfectly exemplified by a popular phrase used by tons of high schoolers: YOLO, standing for "you only live once." People use this as a reason to live it up, and disregard the consequences. Perhaps the most prevalent of these three traits in Jewish youth that I see, is insecurity. Not that Jewish people are doubtful of themselves, but that it seems to me lots of Jewish students always expect the most of themselves, and no matter how well they do on things like tests and grades, they desire better. 

It makes perfect sense to me that Jewish people are often successful if these three characteristics are in fact what contribute to prosperity.