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This Israeli village on the Lebanon border was isolated for decades. Now it’s a tourist hotspot.
GHAJAR, Israel (JTA) – A group of 40 tourists filed into Khateb Sweets on a recent Sunday afternoon, bringing chatter — and their cash and credit cards — to what had been a quiet cafe in this equally sedate village in the Golan Heights.
They left after consuming pastries and hot tea spiced with ginger, anise and cinnamon, whereupon an Israeli Jewish couple came in, then an Israeli Arab family and three Canadians.
The steady foot traffic typifies the wave of tourists that since last fall has hit this community of 2,900 people, nearly all Alawites, an Islamic sect.
Ghajar (pronounced RA-zhar) had for decades been unusually cut off from the rest of Israel. Residents could come and go, but outsiders could visit only through prior arrangement with the Israel Defense Forces, which considered the village within a closed military area where Lebanon and Israel’s Galilee and Golan Heights regions intersect.
The IDF’s lifting of the restriction without explanation on Sept. 8 led to an immediate rush of visitors eager to explore Ghajar.
How immediate? Ahmad Khateb, a pastry chef who owns the eponymous cafe, was working that day at his consultancy job at a hotel in the Galilee town of Tzfat, when his employee called to report an unusual stream of tourists entering the shop. The following morning, Khateb resigned to work at his café full time.
People enjoy a food truck in a plaza in Ghajar, Oct. 14, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
Approximately 4,000 people visited Ghajar the day the town opened, he said. Another 6,000 visited the following day — briefly tripling the number of people in town. For day three, a Saturday, Ghajar turned a soccer field into a parking lot.
“It’s like a gift that fell from the sky,” Khateb said of the village’s opening and his subsequent increase in sales. He’s now considering expansion to other locations.
Ghajar possesses a Forbidden City-like attraction for Israelis, who travel extensively inside their own country because it requires a flight to visit others.
“You know why we came here? Because there aren’t a lot of places [in Israel] we haven’t been,” said Shmuel Browns, a Jerusalem-based tour guide accompanying his brother and sister-in-law visiting from his native Toronto. “We wanted to get a sense of what makes this village unique.”
It is also notable as the only Israeli community of Alawites, a Syria-based ethnic minority best known as the group that the country’s dictatorial rulers for the past 52 years — current president Bashar al-Assad and his late father, Hafez — are descended from. Bilal Khatib, who is Ghajar’s accountant and spokesman, said Alawites tend to be secular people who value a person’s character and are respectful of other Muslim sects and different religions. Ghajar contains no mosques, since, except on holy days, people pray individually at home.
People gather in front of a shop in Ghajar, Oct. 14, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
“It’s a way of life,” Khatib said. “We respect people as people. Our religion is to be a good person, love everyone and hold no hatred against anyone, be they Druze, Jew, Christian or Circassian.”
But most unusual is Ghajar’s provenance, on which outsiders tend to stumble. “Ghajar was part of Lebanon, right?” the Israeli couple at the cafe asked Khateb.
No, he responded.
So began a short primer that residents are wont to recite to visitors — a timeline of a village of just one-fifth of a square mile. (The fields on Ghajar’s outskirts constitute an additional five square miles, on which the village plans to expand.)
Israel captured the Golan Heights, including Ghajar, from Syria during 1967’s Six-Day War and officially annexed it in 1981. After Israel ended its 18-year war in Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations certified the IDF’s withdrawal and established the two countries’ border going through, rather than around, Ghajar. Israel later announced plans to withdraw below the U.N. line. That would have split the village into northern and southern sections. Residents protested, preferring to remain under Israeli sovereignty rather than be divided. Ultimately, Israel didn’t erect a barrier inside the village.
A man drives a golf kart in Ghajar, Sept. 7, 2022. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s a headache,” Jamal Khatib, a physical education teacher at the village’s lone high school, said of the chronology.
Orna Mizrahi, an analyst at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, agrees with that characterization. As a member of the National Security Council, she briefed then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Ghajar at what proved to be his last Cabinet meeting hours before he suffered a debilitating and ultimately fatal stroke in 2006.
As to why the IDF recently opened the town, Mizrahi cited the completion of a security fence around Ghajar, along with the lessened threat of cross-border attacks by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, due in large part to the recent maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon that incentivizes the government in Beirut to restrain Hezbollah.
“The security considerations are different. The situation in Lebanon is different,” she said.
Exactly why the United Nations associated the town with Lebanon, even though most of its residents are from a Syrian sect, is a point of confusion for many who visit. A 1965 Syrian map that Bilal Khatib printed offers an explanation: It shows Ghajar as an enclave completely inside Lebanon except for a narrow sliver connecting it to Syria proper.
Bilal Khatib (he, Jamal Khatib and Ahmad Khateb are unrelated) lives in the northern section and said he would not want his sister, who lives south of the U.N.’s 2000 demarcation, to be inaccessible.
The U.N.’s dividing point, known as the Blue Line, would be “splitting families,” he said. “We have to be united.” In practice, this line exists only on maps and has no impact on the life of Ghajar residents, who are fully under Israeli rule.
Ghajar residents tend to see themselves as Syrians holding Israeli citizenship. It’s a high-achieving population: According to Jamal Khatib, 400 Ghajar residents hold a college degree, making the town far more educated, on average, than Israeli Arabs overall. He said there are 50 physicians, 30 lawyers, 27 dentists and two professors, most commuting to jobs in the Galilee. Until Syria’s civil war began in 2011, Ghajar residents legally crossed at nearby Kuneitra to attend Syrian universities, he said.
An Israeli soldier secures a checkpoint at the entrance of Ghajar, Sept. 7, 2022. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
“There’s no profession in Israel that’s not represented here,” he said.
Politically, Ghajar stands out for supporting mostly Jewish-majority parties. In the recent election, Benny Gantz’s centrist party got 24% of the 555 citizens who went to the polls in the village. The Arab party Raam got only 14% of the votes and the rest went to other Jewish lists, including the haredi Orthodox Shas party.
Ghajar puts a premium on livability. Fountains, parks and outdoor sculptures abound, landscaping and building façades are colorful and nary a speck of litter is evident. Homes are large and well-kept, on par with other upscale areas in Israel. Motorcycles and the honking of vehicles’ horns are prohibited. Visitors may not enter between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., Jamal Khatib said, adding that Ghajar has long banned hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns and does not plan to change the rules in response to the flood of visitors.
Some visitors have littered and urinated in public, even entered residents’ homes without knocking, he said.
“A year ago, you wouldn’t have seen that,” said his son, Ryad, who works as Ghajar’s coordinator of volunteers, including handling traffic control on days when tourists abound.
Unlike many small towns in Israel, Ghajar operates its own sanitation service rather than linking up with other municipalities through a regional council. Doing so is an unusual expenditure, but it’s one that means visitors to the town may see Ghajar’s name on a garbage truck — a potentially powerful symbol.
Tourists explore the streets of Ghajar, Oct. 14, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
“We’re doing it not for you, but for ourselves,” Jamal Khatib said of the village’s quality-of-life values. “I like that people come, but they should respect the rules, respect our privacy.”
For its part, Ghajar projects respect for the wider society. Street signs and storefronts appear in Hebrew and Arabic. The Park of Peace includes a statue of the Virgin Mary, a sculpture of an open Koran, an Alawite sword symbol and a menorah.
“You and I believe in one God,” Jamal Khatib said. “Your deeds speak as to who you are.”
From his back porch a few moments later, a donkey’s braying could be clearly heard, hundreds of sheep observed and calls to prayer drifted over from a mosque – all in Aarab el Louaizeh, a village in Lebanon perhaps 100 yards away.
In a ravine below, soldiers of the United Nations and the Lebanese army in their separate posts walked outside. The U.N. soldiers entered two vehicles and began their twice-daily patrol of the border. Alongside the border road is the Hatzbani River, where Khatib fished as a young man. At his property line, a separate fence on Ghajar’s northern perimeter is nearly complete.
But the fence wasn’t erected to divide people or demarcate boundaries: It’s to keep boars, jackals and porcupines from scaling the slope and entering the village, Khatib said. He soon received an alert on his phone.
“The notification says there are cows on the road,” he explained. “It’s dark. Be careful.”
—
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A Yiddish lecture in Munich by literature scholar Nathan Cohen
דעם 17טן יוני וועט נתן כּהן, אַן אָנגעזעענער פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור בײַם בר־אילן אוניווערסיטעט, האַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש בײַם אוניווערסיטעט אויפֿן נאָמען פֿון לודוויג מאַקסימיליאַן אין מינכן, דײַטשלאַנד.
כּהן וועט רעדן וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור און די וועגן און אָפּוועגן פֿון איר אַנטוויקלונג אויף די זײַטן פֿון דער ייִדישער פּרעסע, ווי אויך וועגן דעם פֿענאָמען פֿון דער שונד־ליטעראַטור.
די „שלום־עליכם לעקציע“, ווי מע רופֿט אָט די אונטערנעמונג, איז אַ יערלעכער רעפֿערעט אויף ייִדיש אין אָנדענק פֿון עוויטאַ וויעצקי, ז״ל, וואָס האָט די ערשטע געהאַט דעם שיינעם אײַנפֿאַל מיט 15 יאָר צוריק. „זי האָט אַרויסגעפֿירט ייִדיש פֿון די קליינע דײַטשישע אוניווערסיטעט־קלאַסן און פֿאַרבעטן אַ ברייטן עולם צו הערן אַ ייִדיש וואָרט – און דווקא אין אַקאַדעמישן פֿאָרמאַט,“ האָט דערקלערט דאַשע וואַכרושאָווע, אַ ייִדיש־פֿאָרשערין בײַם אוניווערסיטעט.
יעדעס יאָר האַלט אַ היסטאָריקער, שפּראַך־וויסנשאַפֿטלער, ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשער אָדער שרײַבער אַ רעפֿעראַט פֿאַרן ברייטן מינכנער עולם אין גאַנצן אויף ייִדיש. „אין עולם זיצן אי ייִדיש־קענער אי אַזעלכע וואָס ווייסן גאָר ווייניק וועגן דער שפּראַך, אָבער האָבן דעם מוט זיך אײַנצוהערן און זיך לאָזן טראָגן פֿונעם ייִדישן וואָרט, וויסנדיק אַז זיי ריזיקירן ניט צו פֿאַרשטיין דעם מיין אָדער צו פֿאַרשטיין אים פֿאַלש,“ האָט וואַכרושאָווע געזאָגט.
פֿאַראינטערעסירטע קענען בײַזײַן די לעקציע אָדער אויפֿן אָרט אין מינכן, אָדער דורך דער אינטערנעץ. כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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Hundreds of Jewish leaders call on Israeli ambassador to apologize for attack on J Street
(JTA) — More than 500 rabbis, cantors and Jewish communal leaders have signed onto a letter calling on Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, to rescind and apologize for remarks describing J Street as a “cancer within the Jewish community.”
The letter, which J Street shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday, accused Leiter, a Netanyahu appointee and former settler leader, of using language that “dehumanizes fellow Jews” during his remarks in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
J Street is the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby, and has increasingly staked out positions that have departed from other mainstream pro-Israel groups. Last month, the group announced its opposition to continued U.S. military aid to Israel, which Leiter decried in his remarks.
The signatories wrote that while Judaism embraces vigorous debate, disagreements must be conducted with “humanity, humility and respect for the dignity of every Jew.”
“At this painful and polarized moment in Jewish life, leaders on both sides of the ocean bear a heightened responsibility to lower the flames rather than fan them further,” the letter read. “We therefore call on you to retract your remarks and issue a public apology to the many American Jews, rabbis, cantors and communal leaders who have been hurt by them.”
Among the signatories were New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Daniel Kurtzer and Tom Nides, National Council of Jewish Women CEO Jody Rabhan, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and Rabbi David Saperstein, the director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami told JTA that his initial reaction to Leiter’s comments was “simply dismay on behalf of Israel and on behalf of the Jewish community.”
“It’s a shame, because Israel, right now, needs all the friends it can get, and it really needs diplomats who seek to open doors and not slam them in people’s faces,” Ben-Ami said.
The Israeli Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JTA.
The comments from Leiter follow a long history of criticism of the lobby from pro-Israel officials. In 2017, former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman called the group “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews who aided the Nazis during WWII.
While Ben-Ami said that the latest attack was “not new,” he felt spurred to craft a communal rebuke of Leiter’s rhetoric because he felt it was “breaking” not just the US-Israel relationship, but the relationship between the “American Jewish community and the Israeli Jewish community.”
“Within 24 hours we had hundreds and hundreds of people, and I think it just shows what a raw nerve Ambassador Leiter has touched here, and just what a big mistake it is for the Israeli government to write off the majority of Jewish Americans who are deeply critical of the government but supportive of the state and the people,” Ben-Ami said of the number of signatories.
While Ben-Ami said that J Street had long been invited to meet with former Israeli ambassadors, he claimed that since Leiter arrived, the group had been “blacklisted by the Embassy, and there’s been no engagement whatsoever.”
The letter comes as J Street has also faced scrutiny from across the political aisle, with the Zionist Organization of America calling for Hillels, Jewish Community Relations Councils and federations to cease relations with the group, while the student government of Sarah Lawrence College rejected an application to form a chapter of the group on its campus.
“There’s going to be people to our left who are intolerant and you know engage in similar tactics to folks on the right who are intolerant and try to shut out those they disagree with, and that is just as disturbing,” Ben-Ami said.
Looking ahead, Ben-Ami said that he hoped the letter would serve as a reminder that Jewish leaders need to make room for ideological differences rather than treat dissent as disloyalty.
“The message more broadly here is, we need to embrace the diversity of opinion,” Ben-Ami said. “We need to embrace our disagreements and recognize that that is indeed part of Jewish tradition.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hundreds of Jewish leaders call on Israeli ambassador to apologize for attack on J Street appeared first on The Forward.
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Despite what (Ashkenazi) tradition says, not everyone eats dairy on Shavuot
This week, synagogues and community centers around the country will abound with opportunities for a festive scoop of ice cream. To heck with the lactose intolerant among us; it’s Shavuot, a festival that for many is as synonymous with all things dairy as Passover is with all things matzot. In my childhood Ashkenazi home, Shavuot meant my bubbe’s cheese blintzes freshly pan fried and golden brown on the kitchen table, ready for me to drench in syrup. Each year, the holiday, with its invitation to indulge in specially prepared creamy desserts, won me back to my Jewish culinary birthright after I spent Passover explaining my unleavened lunches to narrow-minded classmates. This year, however, I’ve been the one getting the education.
“Not all Jewish communities explicitly connect Shavuot with dairy foods,” Leah Koenig, whose cookbooks include the encyclopedic The Jewish Cookbook and the forthcoming The Dessert Table: 100 Joyful Jewish Sweets, told me. “It is a reminder that Jewish cuisine is anything but a monolith.”
Indeed, at Shavuot tables across the diaspora, you’ll find a parade of sweet, milky delicacies, and sometimes none at all, revealing a diversity ripe for this season when we recite the story of Ruth.
Born in Europe, Shavuot foods grew up around the world
Torah scholars and rabbis tend to agree that eating dairy on Shavuot first emerged as a tradition (minhag) during the High Middle Ages, at first among Ashkenazi Jews in France and Germany. Agreement ends there. A 2009 study offered nearly 150 reasons for the tradition. Lesser known theories posit that dairy pays homage to our nomadic ancestors. Teachings that endure today evoke the Torah and Israel’s symbolic associations with milk and honey.
Since its first appearance in Western Europe, dairy at Shavuot tables has gone global. “Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Mizrahim celebrate Shavuot eating dairy foods,” said Hélène Jawhara Piñer, author of Food, Jews, and Spain, which studies medieval Spanish Jews through their cuisine. During the Middle Ages, she noted, a culinary dialogue ran between Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities. “Rabbis, merchants, physicians, refugees and manuscripts circulated between Iberia, Provence, Italy, North Africa, France, and the German lands,” she said. In her latest cookbook, Matzah and Flour, she offers a Shavuot recipe for a sweet version of barkoukch, a Moroccan milk-and-semolina soup she calls one of the oldest Sephardi Shavuot foods still eaten today. It shares a heritage with other Sephardi and Mizrahi desserts like arroz con leche, a cinnamon-scented rice pudding, and its rose-flavored cousin, shir berenj.
For the modern-day Bene Israel, a small community of Indian Jews whose roots in the coastal region south of Mumbai date back to 175 BCE, it took 1,500 years and the arrival of Sephardic Jews before they associated eating dairy treats with Shavuot, according to Zilka Joseph, an Ann Arbor-based poet and editor who explores her Bene Israel heritage through her writing. Isolated from the diaspora, the Bene Israel sustained a handful of rituals (Shabbat, reciting the Shema). When Sephardic families arrived in present-day Kerala after their expulsion from Spain, these practices helped them identify the Bene Israel as Jewish. They went on to introduce the Bene Israel to a host of other traditions, which could have included dairy on Shavuot, Joseph told me.
Today, most of the Bene Israel live in Israel, but even the roughly 5,000 who remain in India celebrate Shavuot with dairy specialties, according to Nissim Pingle, program director at the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in India. These include custards and mousses — like basundi, a creamy slowly simmered milk dessert bursting with cardamom seasoning and chopped nuts, and shrikhand, a tangy strained yogurt often infused with fresh fruit like in-season mango — that are also common at birthdays and other special family occasions.
“When people ask about Bene Israel food, and they say, ‘So, is it really Maharashtrian food?’” said Joseph, referring to the Indian state where the Bene Israel’s ancestral home is located today. “It is,” she said, “but we adapted it to our kosher laws.”
The Bene Israel are not alone. Jews around the world ate the foods influenced by the places they settled and adapted them to dietary law.
“Food culture was shaped at least as much by geography, commerce and shared local taste as by rabbinic prescription,” said Jawhara Piñer.
“The cheesecake Ashkenazi Jews eat on Shavuot is a descendant of the curd cheese-based cakes that Jews and their neighbors ate in Germany,” Koenig told me.
Trading dairy for ancient harvest customs in the Horn of Africa
For communities from the Horn of Africa, near historical Judea, it’s no wonder that their Shavuot menu — which does not always contain dairy — hews closer to the foodways of our biblical ancestors, for whom the holiday was in part an agricultural festival.
To escape persecution in Ethiopia in the early 1980s, Beejhy Barhany, Ethiopian-born founder and executive chef of the Harlem cultural hub and event-space Tsion Café, immigrated to a kibbutz in Israel, where she immersed herself in the tradition of bikkurim, or festival of the first fruits.
“It was lovely to learn about other traditions and customs,” Barhany said, “but we always have to make sure that we know our traditions and teach others that there are different forms to celebrate the holidays.”
Since Ethiopian first fruits often meant wheat, barley or millet, Barhany told me that Ethiopian Jews like her (also known as Beta Israel) would make baked bread for Shavuot, such as a barley, honey-infused version of the celebratory dabo. But in Ethiopia barley wouldn’t stop there: brewing beer can help celebrate the harvest, as can roasting and consuming coffee, a ceremony called buna, an appropriate conclusion for Ethiopian spiritual occasions. (On Shavuot, coffee might be extra important, given its suspected role in popularizing the holiday’s tradition of all-night Torah study.)
Likewise, Yemenite Jews take pride in never having lost touch with their ancient traditions. They still recite prayers in Hebrew and Aramaic, as instructed by the Mishnah. Since the Mishnah doesn’t dictate eating milky foods for Shavuot, they stick to savory, classical regional holiday fare. This can include traditional Shabbat breads (thin jachnun, flaky malawach, and yeasty, pull-apart kubaneh), according to Dr. Ephraim Isaac, a Harvard scholar and former president of the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America. The Brooklyn-based Association of Jewish Yemenites told me that Shavuot celebrations would include zalabyeh, a fried pita.
Eating diversely while embracing the meaning of Ruth
No matter which foods they’re eating for Shavuot this year, everyone I spoke to said they would be reading the Book of Ruth, the story traditionally recited for the holiday. Ruth is from the Moab people, considered bitter enemies of the Israelites. Nevertheless, she stays loyal to her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi after her husband’s death. She follows Naomi to Bethlehem and gleans the fields at harvest to feed them. Rabbis note this as an instructive story to tell on Shavuot as a complement to our focus on receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. Ruth, who wasn’t born a Jew, helps Naomi out of pure lovingkindness (hesed), not legal obligation, and Boaz marries and has a child with her that starts the lineage of Kings David and Solomon. Lovingkindness, not law alone, is what made us a people; and why we should keep widening our table. So, this Shavuot, go ahead and eat a blintz, barkoukch, loaf of dabo or cool, creamy basundi. Or grab a beer. It’s all in the family.
Nay Kedam Dabo / Meswait, or Pot-Baked Shabbat Bread*
*Holiday Festival Variant
From Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond by Beejhy Barhany
Makes 1 large loaf (serves 10 to 12)
INGREDIENTS
2 pounds (907 grams) spelt flour*
*For the holiday, Barhany encourages substituting some barley flour in place of spelt (around 450 grams barley flour, with 457 grams spelt)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar or brown sugar*
*For the holiday, Barhany encourages substituting honey
2¼ teaspoons (1 envelope) instant yeast
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
½ teaspoon ground fenugreek
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
2½ cups (600 grams) warm water, plus more if necessary
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for drizzling
INSTRUCTIONS
In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, yeast, salt, fenugreek, coriander, and cardamom. Add the warm water, ½ cup at a time, working the water into the flour until a dough forms. Knead the oil into the dough until it is wet and elastic. If it seems too dry, add more water, a tablespoon at a time.
Cover with a damp towel and place in a warm place until doubled in size and light and bubbly on top, 1 to 2 hours.
Line a medium cast-iron pot or Dutch oven with two layers of parchment paper and drizzle the paper with oil. Transfer the dough to the pot and use wet hands to spread it into an even layer and smooth out the surface. Cover with the lid and let rise for about 15 minutes. With the pot still covered, set it over low heat and cook for 25 minutes.
Use the top layer of parchment paper to lift the bread out of the pot. Place on a plate. Drizzle the uncooked top with oil, then return the bread oiled-side down to the pot on top of the second layer of parchment paper, and drizzle the other (cooked) side with oil.
Cook until the bread is golden brown and puffed and the center reaches about 190°F on an instant-read thermometer, about 25 minutes.
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