ELKAN’S VIEW 11^th March 2015

“See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, and the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” Song of Songs 2:11&12, read on Pesach.

One of the delights of living in Israel is the way that familiar verses from the Bible suddenly come to have a new and powerful meaning, and particularly at the moment the famous verses from the Song of Songs. Winter in Israel is often unpredictable but usually miserable. Israeli buildings are not made for the cold – who wants insulation to keep the heat in during the summer? – and the result is that they are difficult to warm and even more difficult to keep warm. The usual way of heating Israeli houses is by hot air pumped through the air-conditioning system, and at the best this is not terribly efficient, and usually sliding windows don’t fit properly. In the spring summer and autumn, none of this matters but in the winter you know about it.

Some of the winter this year was horrendous, although I was delighted to have missed it. For several days a heavy dust storm lay over Tel Aviv and obscured the sun and its heat; then wind and gales of unusual ferocity, and less than three weeks ago the Judaean hills were subject to an unusually heavy blizzard and snowstorm. When I went to Jerusalem and Efrat recently the snow still lay on the ground, although the temperature had lifted somewhat. Three days later Tel Aviv, Netanya and the coastal plain suddenly had two days when the temperatures reached 26°!

All of this has had the unusual effect of Israelis talking about the weather as if they were British! But things do seem to have changed, weather-wise and the Bible’s view of springtime seems to have unusual force.

And at least it makes a change from talking about the elections!

ELKAN’S VIEW 4^th March 2015

It’s Purim this week, and the chaos that descends on communities outside Israel is written large on the whole country.

You expect to see people in the oddest clothes at the oddest times. All the schools are closed for three days this week, but that itself does not mean that the celebration of Purim hasn’t already invaded everything. All the schools with which my grandchildren are associated have at least one day when everybody, teachers and pupils alike, turns up in pyjamas. My granddaughter was on traffic duty outside her school, and controlled the cars in Tel Aviv clad in winceyette!

Fancy dress is very much the fashion this week, and at least one school day will be devoted to the pupils coming appropriately clad. Sometimes themes get mixed up; one little boy appeared yesterday half as Superman, and half as a Red Indian. Star Wars is very popular and much of the youthful population seems to be walking around as either Darth Vader or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The centres of the big cities are closed on Purim day The main streets in Tel Aviv are totally given over to pedestrians, and people of all ages wear fancy dress, including the police. The mood generally is happy and good humoured.

This year however there are clear political overtones. The whole Purim story took place in the area that these days we call Iran, and the plot to destroy the Jews in those days resonates with worries about the Ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions. Ahasuerus’ reluctance to clearly understand Haman’s motives suggests the behaviour of the American administration. Does that therefore cast Bibi Netanyahu’s speech in Washington as Mordechai’s warning to the King? Only time will tell!

ELKAN’S VIEW 25^th February 2015

Israel is building itself up for the elections on 17 March, and like the electoral perspective in the UK, the situation in Israel gives no clear indication of what might happen.

There is undoubtedly a strong feeling against Netanyahu. He is perceived to have been in office for too long, possibly to have damaged relations between Israel and America, and a fresh mind is needed at the top.

As in England, politicians make mistakes especially approaching an election, but the behaviour of the Israeli police is curious. One might almost imagine that there is a department which stores up political peccadilloes for release as soon as an election is called.

But who to vote for? Israel has had a number of Prime Ministers (such as the very successful Menachem Begin) who have come into office without previous experience, but it could be dangerous at the present time.

The main opposition to Bibi (as he is universally known) is Buji – Israeli politicians acquire strange sounding nicknames! Buji, or Isaac Hertzog to give him his real name, has a superb pedigree (his father was President, his Grandfather was Chief Rabbi of Ireland and Israel) but no track record whatsoever and lacks charisma. Another uncertainty will be the 12 seats that the united Arab parties are expected to hold; 10% of an elected legislature in a so-called apartheid state! This Arab bloc might be the key to a coalition, also including one or more of the religious parties – very strange bedfellows!

But will anything change? Israelis are worried about Iran and the bomb, coupled with the inability of most Western governments (and especially the American disaster) to face up to what is really going on. The two state solution is not an issue, because the status quo is bearable, the Palestinians who live in the West Bank by and large do not want an independent state (conditions in Israel are much better than anything that Abbas has been able to produce) and realistically there is no Arab leader who can sign a peace agreement on behalf of the Palestinians and make it stick.

And you think politics in Britain are complicated at the moment!

ELKAN’S VIEW 18^th February 2015

I am writing this after two amazing weeks in Hong Kong and Thailand. I had never been East of Israel and the interaction with other cultures has been quite fascinating.

Hong Kong has some very interesting Jewish features. The community developed in mid Victorian times when Great Britain took over the territory from China, and Jews mainly of Indian or Baghdadi origin settled there. The very beautiful Ohel Leah synagogue was built by the Sassoon family and opened in 1901.

The development of Hong Kong as a whole progressed greatly when Sir Matthew Nathan was appointed Governor in 1904. He was an identified Jew, a member of the New West End Synagogue who had been trained as an engineer in the British Army and employed his training in a number of postings. He held four foreign governorships during his career and was in charge of Ireland at the time of the Easter Rebellion in 1916.

Nathan was keen to develop Kowloon, just across Victoria Harbour from Hong Kong Island. He was interested in town planning and was also responsible for the development of the Kowloon-Canton railway into China itself. When Kowloon was laid out the main thoroughfare naturally bore the name of the Governor. Nathan Road, today often nicknamed “The Golden Mile”, an amazing experience of neon lighting and shops selling anything and everything, is named after Sir Matthew. Nathan died in 1939 and together with his brothers Sir Frederick and Sir Nathaniel is buried in Willesden Cemetery.

I had the unusual experience of going to shul up the public escalator to the Mid-Levels area where the Ohel Leah synagogue is situated. Because the Shul is surrounded by skyscrapers, and for a vast figure sold off some of its spare land for development, it has an almost mythical reputation among Jewish communities. Among its recent rabbis have been both Rabbi Jackson and Rabbi Van den Bergh (both of whom will be known to many of my readers), and Chief Rabbi Sacks visited there every year. After the service the whole community is invited to a sit down Kiddush which is really a sumptuous two course meal.

Bangkok was not so fascinating from a Jewish point of view, although I am interested in the relationship between Judaism and the gentleness of Buddhism. Chabad has a presence in Thailand and helps many of the Israelis for whom a backpacking visit to the Far East is a rite of passage after finishing their army service.

But the most amusing memory that I bring back is of two little boys wearing Kippot playing in the Ohel Leah Synagogue, and talking to each other in Chinese!

ELKAN’S VIEW 11^th February 2015

Returning to last week’s topic; one of the problems as Melanie Phillips saw it, and I believe she is absolutely right, is the breakdown of respect for religion, especially in the United Kingdom. In former times the Church of England, broad and tolerant though it be, and possible to be almost all things to all men, was the glue that held the fabric of society together. The influence of the church has waned, especially in the second half of the 20^th century, and the net result has been a vacuum which has been filled by a secularism which has no particular moral compass.

The church appears to have been affected by the same deep fear of Muslim extremism as the rest of society. Christians in Islamic countries are being persecuted on a level that has never happened before. In Nigeria and other African countries, in the Moslem countries of the Middle East, Christians live in fear of their lives. Churches have been burnt down with their congregations inside them. Fear stalks their congregations. The silence of the church is both amazing and disgraceful.

The reluctance to criticise the Muslim world, and to stand up for their Christian brethren, is a dishonour upon the behaviour of the church. What is it of which they are afraid?

There is a way of resisting Muslim extremism, and that is by force. Expensive though it may be, it is still cheaper in terms of human freedom than sleepwalking into allowing the creation of Muslim republics throughout Europe. Standing up to Islam is regarded as strength; silence is interpreted as weakness.

The recent statements by leading politicians in both Britain and France, attempting to reassure the Jewish communities of their safety and of their place in the society of the host countries, may be too late. Are we, as Sharansky said recently, witnessing the beginning of the end of European Jewry?