The Telegraph | JTA - Jewish & Israel News

The Telegraph

The great Tam Tam shortage

By Ami Eden · March 3, 2008

The New Jersey Jewish News breaks the story on the delays at Manischewitz' new state-of-the-art facility in Newark – and what is shaping up to be the great Tam Tam shortage of 2008.

"It's been a hiccup," said David Rossi, vice president of marketing for the company.

The company closed its Jersey City facility after Passover 2007 and built a $15 million facility in Newark. "We have a brand-new, state-of-the-art, computer-controlled production line [or oven]; but as you know if you've ever done any construction, there can be delays, and we had delays," said Rossi.

Manischewitz will also be offering less variety in its matza selection. It will produce unsalted, whole wheat, and egg matzot; but it will not be producing its less popular ones: Passover Thin Tea Matzo, Yolk Free Egg Matzo, White Grape Matzo, Concord Grape Matzo, Thin Unsalted Matzo, Shmura Matzo, and Spelt Matzo.

Prices will not be affected either by the delays or by rising wheat prices, said Rossi, at least for this Passover. As the company renegotiates wheat contracts for after the Passover season, however, the company expects to be affected by rising market prices.

4 Comments | Share This | Kashrut, Passover |

Yossi Klein Halevi: No more feeling guilty

By Ami Eden · March 3, 2008

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Yossi Klein Halevi tells how continuing Palestinian violence has cured him of being a "guilty Israeli."

In the early 1990s, while serving as a reservist soldier in Gaza, I became a guilty Israeli. By day, my unit patrolled the refugee camps where sewage flowed in rivulets and old men stared with hatred and children with despair. By night, we entered bedrooms and retrieved suspects whose offenses ranged from membership in terror organizations to failure to pay a water bill. More policemen than soldiers, we found ourselves enforcing an occupation whose threat to Israel's Jewish and democratic values had become unbearable.

According to Halevi, it's not just him, thanks to a series of diplomatic betrayals and violent attacks.

The result of all this is that today the guilty Israeli has become nearly extinct. Just as we came to realize during the first intifada that the occupation was untenable, so we have now come to realize that peace is impossible with Palestinian leaders for whom reconciliation is a one-way process.

Now, he says, the true test will be what happens in Gaza.

So long as Gaza refuses to heal itself, Israelis will rightly suspect that the Palestinian goal remains Israel's destruction. Not even a full withdrawal from the West Bank, they fear, will end the war, any more than the pullout from Gaza stopped the rockets. Israel's crime isn't occupying but existing.

And so we move toward the next terrible round of conflict. This time, though, for all our anguish, we will feel a lot less remorse. Because even guilty Israelis realize that, until our neighbors care more about building their state than undermining ours, the misery of Gaza will persist.

1 Comment | Share This | Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |

On the eve of U.S. Secretary of Condoleezza Rice's upcoming trip to the Middle East, Glenn Kessler reports in the Washington Post that the prospects for peace have "shifted dramatically" since President Bush held the Annapolis peace conference three months ago. And, now, the White House's influence on the players in the region appears to be waning.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration. "The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in," he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. "Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians," he added.

The signs of American irrelevance are apparent throughout the region. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed as a potential peacemaker by the Bush administration, mused last week to the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour that in the future it might be necessary to return to armed struggle against Israel. And Syria, which received an unexpected invitation to Annapolis, believes that the peace summit was "an exercise in public relations" and that Bush has no interest in peace, as Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha put it last week.

The stalled process has added to skepticism in Israel, according to Kessler.

A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week showed that 69 percent of Israelis surveyed believed the talks would not bring peace, while 78 percent believed the talks were being held only for political reasons.

During a recent visit to Washington, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad charged that Israel has "not done a thing materially on the ground to help my government." Israeli officials counter that Israel has taken steps to bolster the Abbas government, but that some efforts – such as new restrictions on settlement growth – cannot be publicized because of the tenuous political situation in Israel."

1 Comment | Share This | Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |

So you say you’re a Jew … Prove it!

By Ami Eden · March 3, 2008

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Gershom Gorenberg reports on the struggles of American Jews forced to deal with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. The problem, Gorenberg asserts, is that proving you are Jewish to the Israeli religious establishment has become increasingly difficult – "especially if you came to Israel from the United States."

In recent years, the state's Chief Rabbinate and its branches in each Israeli city have adopted an institutional attitude of skepticism toward the Jewish identity of those who enter its doors. And the type of proof that the rabbinate prefers is peculiarly unsuited to Jewish life in the United States. The Israeli government seeks the political and financial support of American Jewry. It welcomes American Jewish immigrants. Yet the rabbinate, one arm of the state, increasingly treats American Jews as doubtful cases: not Jewish until proved so.

More than any other issue, the question of Who is a Jew? has repeatedly roiled relations between Israel and American Jewry. Psychologically, it is an argument over who belongs to the family. In the past, the casus belli was conversion: Would the Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew coming to Israel, apply to those converted to Judaism by non-Orthodox rabbis? Now ... the status of Jews by birth is in question. Equally important, the dividing line is no longer between Orthodox and non-Orthodox. The rabbinate's handling of the issue has placed it on one side of an ideological fissure within Orthodox Judaism itself, between those concerned with making sure no stranger enters the gates and those who fear leaving sisters and brothers outside.

According to Seth Farber, an American-born Orthodox rabbi who helps Israelis navigate the rabbinic bureaucracy, the Chief Rabbinate's have become so strict that "80 percent of federation leaders probably wouldn't be able to reach the bar."