Out of the Ashes, Onto the Runway
Holocaust Survivors Take the Runway
via Holocaust Survivors’ Pageant Taps Into a Conflict in Israel – NYTimes.com.
A beauty pageant in Haifa, Israel, for holocaust survivors. It’s perfect. Poetry. Just what the world needs. A light unto the nations. I can see it. A trend. Next year, perhaps a Miss Darfur, or Little Ms. Rwanda. Competitors matching stories of rape, beatings, witnessed horrors, as well as tales of survival and the transcendent success that culminates in their very presence at the marvelous pageant. And poise. Let’s not forget poise. Poise counts.
This will make great TV. The next step in reality programming: Hard reality. There’s a world of possibilities. Perhaps a Devastated and Deracinated Olympics. Remnants of native populations vying for belt or crown in Indian Arm Wrestling, backgammon, and aboriginal dreaming. Maybe “Survivors Got Talent.” Skeletal folk dancers of all stripes. I can see it. Dance-beat didgeridoo solos and sex-trafficked beauty queens in bathing suits. Who wouldn’t tune in for that? Triumphs of the spirit, don’t you know? Extravaganzas!
Think of the revenue.
High Fashion Does Not Mean High-Minded
Chef Sephardic rabbi Shlomo Amar calls progressive Jews ” the uprooters and destroyers of Judaism who have already wrought horrible destruction upon the People of Israel in the Diaspora…” Nice. Personally, I don’t think progressive Jews should get a dime. But neither should this clown or his cronies. There is a serious disintegration of Klal Yisroel taking place, and people like Amar are a cause of it. The government of Israel would be better off keeping its paws off of religion. Maybe if the chief rabbis were given their walking papers, and the religious parties could finally be dumped because their existence violates a democratic, secular constitution that adequately guarantees the rights of all citizens, including minorities, Israel could really become what it was intended to be: a light of liberty and peace. Oops, excuse me. Israel has no such constitution. This is a problem, don’t you think? For its relationship with Diaspora Jews? For Israeli Arabs and other minorities? For the occupied Palestinian population?
Still, and not excusing anything about Shlomo Amar, I like his clothes. Snappy.
Photo by Shlomo Amar
