Mesirah (informing) is a rabbinical prohibition that many of us in our daily lives probably never use. Mesirah prohibits a Jew from reporting another Jew to a non-Jewish authority or government, even if the offender is violating Jewish or secular law.

The reasoning behind this prohibition harks back to the days when governments were often virulently anti-Semitic, when turning in a fellow Jew to the authorities resulted in the offender losing his livelihood, being beaten or tortured, or even killed. In countries run by abusive governments, the punishment, especially for Jews, often exceeded the crime. Therefore, it was deemed safer to deal with Jewish offenders internally, rather than bring the wrath of the government on the Jewish community.

Most rabbinical authorities agree that this prohibition does not apply in America. The United States, with its just legal system and due process, is not an “evil” or “abusive” government, and many concur that if you know someone is breaking the law, it is permissible to turn them into the authorities. There are some rabbis who disagree, and say that the concept of “mesirah” still applies, even in the United States.

However, even those who say mesirah still applies agree on one thing—if the offender is hurting people, if someone is physically or sexually abusive, there is no question he or she must be turned in. Our number one priority as a Jewish community is to protect each other from harm. Therefore, victims of abuse (or anyone who is aware that someone is a molester) are obligated to call the police and have the criminal arrested.

Unfortunately, this exception to mesirah—that violent criminals should and must be reported—is ignored in some ultra-Orthodox communities. Rabbis of these communities have viciously twisted mesirah, a law which sought to protect Jews from unnecessary harm, using it to protect those doing the harming. They strongly discourage their members from turning in known molesters to the secular authorities, threatening the would-be “informers” with loss of livelihood and even physical violence.

I read with revulsion a recent article in the New York Times describing this painful situation. Powerful rabbis, even in the face of evidence, instruct their followers not to report known molesters. People who have reported these criminals find themselves at the receiving end of threats and are often ostracized from the community.

In many cases, the victims are not only shunned, but made to feel as if they are the ones who did something wrong. One young man, who had been molested as a child, later sought a private audience with the rebbe of the community. The rebbe was outraged—but at the young man, for saying such slander about a member of the community. The young man was hustled out of the room.

And unfortunately, the rabbinical authorities, who claim to be handling the matter internally, most often do very little, if anything, to protect the victims. Molesters who work with young children—as bar mitzvah tutors, teachers, or in camps and schools—may receive a slap on the wrist, but are frequently allowed to keep their jobs, allowing them unlimited contact with potential victims.

There is absolutely no basis for protecting molesters while leaving helpless victims alone, shunned and unprotected. While there are some members of the ultra-Orthodox community who are attempting to fight from within, encouraging victims of abuse to report their molesters and even offering to help contact the authorities, there are sadly not enough.

We need to put pressure on our elected officials to encourage reporting and protect the victims and their families. We need our rabbis to take a strong stand against cover-ups and the protect-the-abuser mentality. We need to be vocal in our support for those ultra-Orthodox rabbis who are taking a stand, helping victims and reporting molesters, often doing so at considerable risk to themselves.

If you live in the New York area, you can take a stand this coming Sunday, May 20, at Citi Field. The ultra-Orthodox community has planned a massive rally to protest that evilest of scourges, the…Internet. However, thousands of Jews are planning a counter-rally, right outside Citi Field, called “The Internet is NOT the Problem.” Because the harmful evil facing the ultra-Orthodox community is not the Internet, it’s the lack of safety for our children, specifically when it comes to sexual abuse and protecting the molesters.

The rally is open to men, women and children from all stripes of Judaism. As the organizers are careful to point out, this is not an “anti-Orthodox” rally. Rather, it is a pro-children rally. We need to take a united stand to protect our children.

For more information, visit the rally’s Facebook page.

Other resources:

Ad Kan (“Enough”), a forum for victims of sexual abuse in the Jewish community.

RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network

The National Center for Victims of Crime

 

 

 

What do bonfires, bows and arrows, haircuts and the number 33 have in common?

They are all connected to the upcoming holiday of Lag B’omer, the 33rd day of the omer, which this year will be celebrated on Wednesday night and Thursday, May 9—10.

Lag B’omer may be one of the least celebrated and least understood holiday of the Jewish calendar. It’s got connections to Jewish mysticism, the ill-fated Bar Kochba rebellion, and some of Jewish history’s greatest sages.

So let’s begin.

What is “lag?”

“Lag” is the Hebrew letters “lamed” and “gimmel,” which equal the number 33.

What is “B’omer?”

We are currently in the midst of the “omer” period. We count the omer starting on the second night of Pesach; the omer ends the night before Shavuot, lasting a total of 49 days.

Why are we counting?

We are counting because it says in Leviticus that we should count seven weeks from when we bring the omer, the barley harvest, until we can bring the wheat harvest, on Shavuot. We are also counting down from when we were freed from Egypt (on Pesach), until we receive the Torah on Mt. Sinai (on Shavuot).

Are there special mitzvot on Lag B’omer?

The only mitzvah on Lag B’omer is to count the omer, which we’ve been doing since Pesach. After nightfall, we say a special blessing and the new number. The formula is, “Today is the X day of the omer, which is (number of) weeks and (number of) days of the omer.” Otherwise, Lag B’omer has no special mitzvot.

Lag B’omer and Haircuts

The period of the omer between Pesach and Lag B’omer is considered a mourning period. (Though the mourning rituals only start after Pesach has ended). According to the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Akiva, one of our greatest sages, lost thousands of his students during this time. 24,000 students were felled by a plague that was sent, according to the Talmud, because they did not show each other proper respect. During this period, we observe mourning rituals—we don’t get haircuts (many men don’t shave, either), listen to live music or have weddings. On Lag B’omer, the plague ceased, so our mourning period ends as well.

Lag B’omer, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and More Haircuts

One of Rabbi Akiva’s post-plague students was the renowned Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who is the author of the Zohar, a seminal work of Jewish mysticism. We are told that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai spent many years in a cave, hiding from the Romans, and during this time composed the Zohar. Lag B’omer is traditionally considered his yahrtzeit, or the anniversary of his death. It’s also known as Yom Hillula, a day of celebration; Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai himself requested that the day of his death be celebrated, not mourned. His burial site, on Mt. Meron in northern Israel, is a popular destination on Lag B’omer.

It’s especially popular to have an “upsherin” at the gravesite. An upsherin is a festive haircut celebration, for Jewish parents who hold off giving their sons haircuts until the age of three.

Lag B’omer, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Bonfires

The most well-known and beloved custom of Lag B’omer is lighting a medurah, or bonfire. This is especially prevalent at Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s gravesite, though it occurs throughout Israel and beyond.

The bonfire is supposed to represent the light that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai brought to the world, during his life and in his death. The Zohar, his work, means “bright” in Hebrew.

Others say that the bonfire represents the fires that bar Kochba lit to send messages to fellow rebels. More on that soon.

Lag B’omer, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Bows and Arrows

According to the midrash, during the life of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, there was never a rainbow in the sky. (The rainbow is God’s sign that He will not destroy us; because of the holiness of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, God didn’t need to send us that sign. His righteousness was our protection.) To commemorate his greatness, children traditionally play with bows and arrows. Admittedly (and perhaps, thankfully), this tradition has fallen out of popularity in recent years.

Lag B’omer and Bar Kochba: The (almost) Messiah

Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and the city was razed to the ground. However, the Jewish people were not gone for good. A small rebellion arose, led by a man named Simon bar Kosiba. He was later renamed bar Kochba, because of a verse in Deuteronomy that says “darach kochav may’Yaakov,” (a star will come forth from Jacob, generally assumed to be speaking about the Messiah.)

Bar Kochba was successful at first, gathering thousands of followers and fighting back against the Romans, seeking to drive them from Israel. Rabbi Akiva (he of the 24,000 stricken students and teacher of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai) was convinced that bar Kochba was the Jewish people’s hope, that he could succeed in driving out the Romans and usher in the messianic era. Rabbi Akiva had considerable weight to throw round, so his support of bar Kochba was a pretty big endorsement. Thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students joined the fight. However, though bar Kochba racked up many early wins and seemed poised for victory, he and his followers were ultimately defeated during a bloody battle at Beitar. According to the story, Jewish infighting cost bar Kochba his edge and led to the Romans’ victory. The rebellion and hopes for a messianic era were crushed.

Some say the “plague” that wiped out the students of Rabbi Akiva was not a plague at all, but the Talmud’s veiled reference to the students that died during the battles. (The “lack of respect” mentioned alludes to the infighting during the final days of the rebellion). Hence, the omer period is not only mourning their deaths, but in fact mourning the failure of the entire rebellion.

So…now what?

For a minor holiday, Lag B’omer carries a hefty amount of Jewish history and ritual on its back. Perhaps we can use Lag B’omer as an opportunity to brush up on post-Second Temple Jewish history, learn more about Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, or enjoy the great outdoors. So this Lag B’omer, learn, celebrate, get a haircut, build a bonfire, have a picnic, or do all of the above!

(Just don’t forget to count the omer!)

Making aliyah and raising children in Israel brings with it a large, colorful bag of experiences. Several bags, in fact.

The differences between my childhood and that of my children’s often hit me square in the face. When I realized their unaccented English may be the only American thing about them. Or that my grandkids may speak only Hebrew. Or that the important job of teaching them the timeless Pesach classic “The Frog Song” falls solely on me. (Same goes for “I Had a Little Dreidel.”)

I may be Israeli now, but the first thirty years of my life were spent in America. And no amount of drinking chocolate milk from a little bag and trying to roll my “r’s” can erase that. You can take the girl out of America, but…

And no time is this friction greater, this being of two worlds, than during the week of Yom Hazikaron (memorial day for Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror) and Yom Haatzmaut (Israel’s independence day). There’s always a certain amount of guilt I feel. After all, I personally didn’t do much to protect Israel. I didn’t serve in the army or do a year of “sherut leumi” (national service) after high school. Neither did my husband. We grew up in the sheltered world of a country with a volunteer army. War was a far-off thing, fought by other people.

So Yom Hazikaron, for me, lacks an immediacy and intimacy. The people who fought and died for Israel are my brothers and sisters in the all-of-Israel-are-brethren sort of way, but not my actual brothers and sisters. When I look around at the ceremony which bridges the sadness of Yom Hazikaron with the celebration of Yom Haatzmaut, I realize that for all of our Israeli friends, this is immediate, this is intimate. They served (and many continue to serve, as reservists), they fought, they lost loved ones. It’s a gap I will never be able to cross.

Then, while I’m feeling this guilt, this otherness, I look down beside me at my own kids. I am filled with pride and fear because one day, they will serve their country. And when that happens, Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut will suddenly take on new meaning for all of us.

So yes, I will always be an immigrant, always be in between. But I am here now. And I—along with my immigrant husband and our Israeli children—will mourn our fallen soldiers and celebrate our country’s independence with all of our hearts.

Last night, right after Pesach ended, I attended my first Mimouna celebration. Mimouna is a holiday celebrated by North African Jews, held the night and day immediately following Pesach. It’s a celebration of spring, of eating foods that were prohibited over Pesach, of friends and community. I had never heard of it when I lived in America, but, like many ethnic traditions, it’s been adopted by the masses here in Israel.

During Mimouna, Jews of North African descent open their doors to friends and neighbors, laying out decadent tables of sweets and pastries, including traditional pancakes called “mufleta”; picnics and barbeques are popular as well, especially during the day.

Since I have a Moroccan-by-marriage friend, I scored an invite to my first Mimouna, and I can say with certainty that it was a very different way to celebrate the end of Pesach.

Usually, my “celebration” includes frantically re-boxing the Pesach dishes and unboxing the chametz (or, as we call them, ROY—rest of year—dishes), shaking off vacation mode and gearing up for the week ahead. This year was particularly frantic because in Israel, everyone went back to school and work on Sunday, without a day in between to chill out or stock up on bread and pasta. Combining post-Pesach with back-to-school meant digging up lunchboxes and water bottles and preparing everyone a delicious lunch of matzah with chocolate spread.

Observing my ransacked apartment filled with post-Pesach cleanup and  changeover, combined with the usual post-Shabbat/holiday cleanup of crumbs, spills and dishes, I started to despair, unsure if I would be able to attend Mimouna. But I was determined (and lucky; the kids were asleep and the husband more than willing to tackle the re-boxing on his own.)

So off I went to my friend’s house. Her table was filled with nuts, dates, cookies and little mint candies, which are probably not traditional but delicious anyway. She prepared a little date “sandwich” for me, filled with nuts and raisins, which she said was a family custom. There were plenty of drinks—hot, cold, and alcoholic. A few friends showed up and we sat around the table, noshing and chatting.

I didn’t stay long—remember the crumbs?—but I left feeling energized. I appreciated the ability to sit and relax, especially after such a hectic few weeks. I don’t think anyone would argue that Pesach wins, hands-down, the Most Challenging Holiday award. The sheer amount of preparing, organizing, shopping, cleaning and cooking—which starts weeks before the holiday and continues straight through—is overwhelming. It is also, perhaps paradoxically, my favorite holiday, but still, “relaxing” is not a word one associates with Pesach.

How pleasant, then, to end the holiday not with the aforementioned franticness, but with pleasant conversation, friends and good food. Even though sweeping and floor washing awaited me when I got home, I was able to end my week on a high note. I am already excited about attending Mimouna celebrations next year. And maybe I’ll even provide the mufleta.

One of the obligations of the Pesach seder is to see ourselves as if we personally were freed from Egypt. We’re supposed to go beyond just telling tales of long ago and actually experience that same feeling of freedom and redemption.

The emotions and lessons from the first Pesach need to feel as relevant to us as they did to our ancestors. Thinking about the Pesach story, I realized in addition to feeling freedom, there are other lessons that are applicable to our lives today. What can our generation learn from the Pesach story?

1. Believe in yourself. Before Moshe stood commandingly in front the Red Sea, splitting that thing right down the middle, he was an Egyptian fugitive, hiding out in Midyan tending sheep. An inauspicious beginning for our most fabled leader. In fact, when the whole burning bush incident happened, and God told him he needed to go down to Egypt land, Moshe’s reaction was “Who me? You MUST be joking.” He never thought that he was leadership material. But with God’s prodding (and yes, it is always easier to have self-confidence when God Himself is whispering “You can do it!”), Moshe accepted his daunting mission to free the Jewish people. The lesson? The key element of success is not where you come from or how impressive you look on paper. To succeed, you need to believe in yourself, to believe with conviction that you can do [insert seemingly daunting task here]. And actually, knowing that God only give us what we can handle, well, that’s kind of like Him whispering, “You can do it!”, right?

Still, belief in yourself doesn’t mean that you can’t…

2. Ask for help when you need it. Moshe did accept his mission, but on one condition—that his brother Aaron would come and do the talking. Moshe knew he would be a more powerful advocate for his people if he brought his eloquent brother along for the ride. And God agreed. Because believing in yourself doesn’t mean you need to go it alone. Knowing when to reach out to others makes you stronger, not weaker.

Of course, even with self-confidence and a helping hand, things might not always go as planned, but remember…

3. If at first you don’t succeed… you know the rest. Nothing says “failure” like approaching Pharaoh over and over (and over) only to be told “NO!” again and again (and again). Even worse, Moshe’s in-your-face attitude just made Pharaoh meaner, causing the Jewish people even more backbreaking labor and hardships. And worse than that? The Jewish people, the very people Moshe needed to save, turned their backs on him, resentful and angry at his involvement. But did Moshe give up and run back to Midyan! NO! He was steadfast and true to his mission, till the very end.

When you’ve done all you possibly can, pushed yourself hard and think you just can’t go any further, you might need to…

4. Take a leap of faith. Egyptians behind you. Churning waters in front of you. God says, “Into the waters you go!” And you think, “For real???” But sometimes, sometimes, after weighing all the options (Fight the Egyptians? Start swimming?) and deliberating and debating, there still isn’t a clear-cut solution. And you just need to start doing, having faith that whatever path you choose, you’ll be able to handle it.

Because no matter what, whether you feel you succeeded or not, remember that…

5. God has a plan. Before the generation that experienced the Exodus, there were countless generations before them that were born into slavery and died as slaves. They knew only hard work and oppression. But I have to believe that those hard-pressed generations had faith that God would save them, one day. And even if it wouldn’t be in their lifetime, they trusted that ultimately, God would redeem His people in a blaze of glory. We, too, experience dark days—or months, or perhaps years—but even (or especially) when things look bad, we have to trust that God always has our backs. In the end, somehow, it will all be okay.

Wishing all of the JVO-niverse a happy and meaningful holiday!

It’s a special kind of hatred. The kind that motivates a killer to murder children. A real-life monster that pulls up to a school and opens fire, repeatedly, knowingly, purposefully, gleefully, murdering a father and three small children.

There are, unfortunately, no end to the ways someone can perpetrate evil. But targeting children, specifically, seems beyond comprehension. It’s hard to even read about Mohammed Merah, the killer who murdered four people outside a school in Toulouse, France, first gunning down a rabbi and his two small sons, then chasing after an eight-year-old girl, grabbing her by the hair and shooting her in the head. It’s harder to imagine how someone could hate so, so deeply.

The victims: Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, 30. Aryeh Sandler, 6. Gavriel Sandler, 3. Miriam Monsonego, 8.

Leaving behind bereaved families; parents who lost their little girl, a pregnant wife who lost her husband and two sons, brothers and sisters who will never play with their siblings again.

This is anti-Semitism as its purest and most unadulterated. A killer targeted the small and innocent just because they were Jewish. It is, unfortunately, a frightening reminder of how we can never really stop looking over our shoulder. As Yonatan Sandler’s father hauntingly said at the funerals, after telling about a cousin that died in the Holocaust, “I thought that children would never be murdered again in France or the entire world.”

How can we even begin to move on from such a tragedy? Ironically, an answer comes from none other than Eva Sandler, wife of Yonatan and mother of Aryeh and Gavriel. Her reaction to the violent deaths of her husband and sons was not a call for vengeance or a cry of grief. In an article she wrote for the Chabad website, Eva implores her fellow Jews to increase their Torah study and good deeds as a way to remember her slain husband and sons. Kiss your children, learn more Torah, light candles on Shabbat, invite others to your Pesach seder.

It is hard to wrap my mind around a world that can encompass both a Mohammed Merah, the very personification of baseless, deep, visceral hatred, alongside an Eva Sandler, the embodiment of purity and chessed. Literally, chessed means “good deeds,” but the Hebrew word invokes more than that. “Chessed” is a desire to improve the world, to better the lives of those around you; a desire that emanates from your very soul.

I thank Eva Sandler for giving us something to hold onto. In the midst of terrible, wrenching grief, she has given us a small glimmer of hope. I will try to take her words to heart. I will light candles this Shabbat and throughout Pesach a few minutes earlier as she suggests, to “add holiness to our world.” I will think about the Sandler and Monsonego families and pray for the recovery of the boy critically injured in the attack.

And I will remember what Eva Sandler so movingly reminded us—our Jewish faith offers us a way to cope. By holding on to Torah study, to mitzvot, to chessed, we can begin to rise up from unbearable tragedy.

John Demjanjuk, convicted of being a Nazi death camp guard, died of natural causes at 91. He had been living in a retirement home in southern Germany. Demjanjuk was originally sentenced to death for being “Ivan the Terrible,” a notorious camp guard at Treblinka. That ruling was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court when new evidence came to light; however, just last year, a German court found him guilty of being a low-ranking guard who aided the murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor, a Nazi extermination camp. Because of his advanced age and frail health, he was released, pending an appeal.

His family fought to clear his name, but the fight did not end before he died, so he went to his grave a convicted man. Whether he was “Ivan the Terrible” or “Ivan the Less Terrible,” only he can know.

With Demjanjuk’s death, another chapter closes on the Holocaust. The generation that was eyewitness to the Holocaust, whether survivors or “lehavdil!” (loosely translated, “there is no comparison!”),war criminals, is dying.

I think about my generation, children born in the 1970s and 1980s, and the tension we (or at least I) feel about the Holocaust, a tragedy that occurred years before we were even the proverbial twinkle. For the most part, we are not the children of survivors. We are the children of the children of survivors. One step removed. My own grandparents managed to make it out of Europe before the war; still, I grew up hearing stories about great-aunts, seeing numbers, steeped in Holocaust tales and literature. I read “Mila 18,” “The Diary of Anne Frank,” Elie Wiesel’s “Night”; I learned about Simon Wiesenthal and Raoul Wallenberg and Schindler’s list and the Warsaw ghetto. But my childhood was, for the most part, cheerfully outside the shadow of the Shoah.

And this has followed me into adulthood. Whereas my parents’ generation would never buy German-made anything, I’ve bought items manufactured in Germany without a second thought. My husband traveled to Berlin on business and came back with nothing but praise for the hospitality and friendliness of the people, extolling the beauty of the sights he visited. Statements that, made a few years ago, would be cringe-worthy.

But the Nazis are our Amalekites. And just like we are entreated to do in Parshat Zachor, I will remember and never forget. I will tell my children about the near-extermination of our people. I will make sure they know about sacrifice, about dying “al kiddush Hashem,” about the evil wrought by hatred. And about the miracles, both large and small, that have allowed the Jewish people to be here today, despite some serious odds.

And therein lies the tension. To move on, but look back. To teach our children, many of whom never even met their great-grandparents, about what that generation experienced. To live outside the Shoah, but to keep it ever in our minds.

A challenge, certainly. But then, struggling with past horrors while looking optimistically to the future is not something new for the Jewish people. I hope I’m able to navigate the path successfully.

As a Jewish/Israeli blogger, I feel compelled to add my voice to the frantic pleas of the Jewish blogosphere:

Don’t listen to them! Here’s what’s really going on!

By “them,” I am referring to the media, everyone from mainstream CNN and New York Times to pro-Palestinian tweeters.

By “what’s going on,” I am referring to the news that Israel is once again under rocket attack from Palestinians in Gaza. More than 200 have been fired since Saturday, striking southern Israel, including the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot and reaching as far as Gedera and Beer Sheva.

Families are running for cover in their sealed rooms, sometimes with only a few seconds warning. Schools in the region are closed, so kids are home all day, and that means literally home. No parent is taking their kid to the park or running errands when rockets are exploding overhead.

Yet, wearingly, the media outside of Israel continues to document Israel’s “aggression” while dutifully ignoring the provocation. Headlines announcing Israel’s airstrikes into Gaza, the number of “militants” (terrorists, but you know, tomato, tomahto) killed and pictures of funerals in Gaza scream at us from newspapers and websites, while there is little or no mention of the unending rocket barrage slamming Israel. (And there is certainly no mention of how the Israeli airstrikes are carefully targeted to hit known rocket launching sites, sparing civilian areas, while the Gaza rockets are targeted to simply maim, kill or destroy whatever they can.)

And as if shady semantics weren’t bad enough, some creative tweeters posted outright lies. A picture of a little Palestinian girl covered in blood, with the caption lamenting her death at the hands of the Israeli Air Force, went viral.

Then the truth came out. Okay, it is, sadly, a picture of a fatally injured girl. But her death was not due to an Israeli airstrike. It happened (a few years ago) when she fell off a swing (and no, she was not being pushed off the swing by an Israeli soldier, either).

Of course, while the sensationalistic picture sped through the blogosphere at the speed of a click, becoming the top tweet for #Gaza, the truth was shared at a more sluggish pace. The Israel Defense Force blog posted the true story, and Reuters even published an apology for the mistaken caption. But how many people will seek the truth? Or care, if they find it?

Unfortunately, the supersonic speed at which bald-faced lies can be disseminated is frightening. When what matters is not fact-checking but how quickly can you post, share and tweet, things like “truth” don’t just get lost in the shuffle, they are downright trampled.

But the good men and women of the Jewish and Israeli blogosphere are out there in full force, publishing the truth, explaining that the “Israeli aggression” is not unprovoked hostility, but a besieged country protecting its people at all costs.

So I am here, trying to do my part. If your main news source is coming from CNN: “Israeli Airstrikes Hits Gaza for the Fourth Day” or the New York Times: “Israeli Airstrikes Kill Militants in Gaza” or the BBC: “New Israeli Airstrikes Leave 4 Dead” (Bad Israelis! Bad! Bad!), then you need to get some new news sources.

Here’s just a small list of English websites that carry straight news from inside Israel—read them and share them with friends, families, coworkers. We can’t fight rocket fire (that’s the job of the Iron Dome) but we can fight blatantly biased, slanted, one-sided news coverage
by shouting the truth from the Twittertops.

Israel Defense Force blog

Ynet

Times of Israel

At the beginning of last week, the Robert M. Beren Academy basketball players were probably imagining themselves in the local papers after winning the state championship, played this past weekend.

The Houston school ultimately lost the championship in the final game, but their initial refusal to play at all hurled them well past local news outlets and into the national (and international) spotlight. The semifinal game was scheduled for Friday night, conflicting with Shabbat; if they won that, the finals were scheduled for Saturday afternoon, well before sunset.

Beren Academy, an Orthodox day school in Houston, is part of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (Tapps), which organizes the basketball tournaments. They were warned when they joined Tapps that the post-season games, played almost exclusively on Fridays and Saturdays, might pose a problem for the Sabbath-observant team.

So after Beren’s victory last week catapulted them into the final two games, the players and their coach knew their stellar season might end with a forced forfeit. While other games throughout the season and playoffs were rescheduled when they conflicted with Shabbat, this wasn’t up to an individual team or coach. This was the decision of Tapps.

Beren filed an appeal with Tapps anyway, which Tapps unanimously struck down. Tapps offered the classic teacher line: If I make changes for you, I have to make changes for everyone. They claimed that the two-day championship schedule, with many teams needing the court, was too tight. This was despite Beren’s opposing team agreeing to switch to earlier in the day, despite at least three other schools agreeing to change their play time, despite Beren offering to foot the bill for any financial cost stemming from the time change.

Beren filed another last-minute appeal, and were again denied. The mayor of Houston and prominent athletes appealed to Tapps on behalf of Beren. Hearteningly, almost every blogger and op-ed writer sided with Beren and implored Tapps to do the right thing for the kids.

However, Tapps remained immovable. The players were rightfully disappointed, but to their credit, remained levelheaded throughout their ordeal. Violating the Shabbat, they said over and over, was simply not an option.

Then, at the last-last minute, parents of some of the players hired an attorney and filed a restraining order against Tapps.

The courts ruled in Beren’s favor, stating that Tapps was engaging in religious discrimination, as they defer to the Christian Sabbath (they never play games on Sundays) but not the Jewish one. They forced Tapps to reschedule the games to accommodate Beren.

Tapps begrudgingly followed suit, the head of the association announcing, somewhat spitefully, “Unlike some others, Tapps does follow the law, and we will comply.”

The Beren boys won the rescheduled semifinal on Friday afternoon, rested on the seventh day, and ran out quickly Saturday night to play the championship game. They lost the final game, upsetting, to be sure, but so much less upsetting than not being able to play at all.

The big “win” for the Beren players and their parents, however, did not occur when the courts ruled in their favor. It did not occur during the semifinal game Friday afternoon. It occurred much earlier in the week, and in fact, they’ve been practicing for it all their lives.

The shining moment occurred when these kids, raised with firm Jewish values and unshakeable faith, saw their season nearly come to an abrupt and unfair end, and yet they were able to look crushing disappointment in the face and say with conviction:

“We are disappointed. But our lives are filled with much Bigger Things than basketball. And because of that, we will be fine.”