“The art world likes to see itself as avant-guard, the most open-minded enclave of society,” remarks Israeli art critic Ktzia Alon. “But Shula Keshet has put a mirror in front of those who share this view. They have discovered that they are a closed, elitist, hermetic group.” Keshet is a revolutionary, according to Alon, and it is just a matter of time before key museums and art magazines throughout Israel follow her lead.

“I am not the kind of artist who sits in a studio, disconnected from the world, thinking that what I am doing is more important than what is happening in society,” Keshet says of herself. “On the contrary, the core of my artwork is my connection with people and their struggles for justice.”

This sense of connection has led Keshet to launch an ongoing series of exhibitions, where her own installation art fuses with the work of individuals from Mizrahi (Middle Eastern/North African Jewish), Ethiopian, and Arab communities in Israel. “I want to break the standard relationship between artist and subject, where the artist is the one looking and the one producing art. My art bears the imprint of many different people, all speaking for themselves.”

Keshet challenges the Israeli idea of art itself: “There is a separation between ‘high’ art and ‘low’ art,” she asserts. “So-called ‘high’ art is Western-influenced. Mizrahi, Ethiopian, and Arab art is not perceived as ‘high’ or ‘true’ art, but rather as handicraft. It is my goal to elevate people’s conceptualization of these art forms, to bring other narratives into the Israeli art world.”

Shlomo Akale, director of Bahalachin Center for Ethiopian Culture, welcomes such a change. “There is a lot of hierarchy in the Israeli art world,” he concurs. He explains that common measures of artistic worth – such as graduation from a prestigious art academy – are irrelevant in an Ethiopian context. “In Ethiopia, everyone did something connected to art – weaving, pottery, carpentry, embroidery. We didn’t have schools for art. Art was life. In Europe, people had to go to schools, study for a period of several years, and receive certificates. In Ethiopia, however, boys learned art from their fathers, and girls learned art from their mothers.”

Keeping to the mother-daughter artistic tradition, Mira Tezasu and Tasamach Mengestu both displayed their artwork as part of Keshet’s installation on Ethiopian art, Halom Yerushalmi Mehabash, at the Einstein Contemporary Art Gallery in Tel Aviv in 1998. Tezasu displayed poetry and paintings. Her mother, Mengestu, displayed pottery. “Ethiopian art such as baskets, pottery, and embroidery serve people in their everyday lives,” Keshet says. “I was making a statement by including daily art alongside the paintings and drawings, because art should not just be something you look at. It should be something you use. It should not just be something the elite sell, without touching it.”

Tezasu feels Keshet was successful in making her statement. “The exhibition helped show that art like my mother’s is real art. Finally people valued her work and recognized how beautiful it is. Suddenly my mother had exposure and began receiving invitations to display and discuss her art.” Tezasu explains how her mother gained prestige that elders of the Ethiopian Jewish community lost after arriving in Israel. “The exhibition really empowered my mother,” she explains. “Elders in the Ethiopian community are often ignored here. But through this exhibition, my mother got the honor she deserves.”

Tova Mered, director of the Ethiopian Art Center, elaborates on the phenomenon of losing status: “Every Ethiopian child in kindergarten thinks she is wiser and more important than her parents and grandparents, because she knows how to write her name in Hebrew.” Mered works to turn the tables by providing a center where elder women of the community teach Ethiopian art to Israelis of all backgrounds and ages.

Ilana Shamai, program director of Inbal – a center for Mizrahi cultural advancement – looks forward to the day that this expression will be standard. For now, she asserts, “Mizrahi artists who do not completely erase their Mizrahi identity are automatically cast aside on the peripheries of the art world.”

Keshet, however, demands the room to express herself as a Mizrahi while receiving full-blown recognition in the mainstream. Indeed, she seems to be getting her way. Her exhibitions have been well-attended and reviewed in key Israeli periodicals including Ha’aretz, Studio, HaIr, Yediot Ahronot, and Ma’ariv.

Keshet’s next installation will focus on the theme of common identity between Jews, Muslims, and Christians throughout the Middle East and North Africa. “This installation will emphasize the connection between Mizrahim and Arabs, Mizrahim and Palestinians,” she says. The theme of a Mizrahi-Arab connection is nothing new for Keshet, who created a series of self-portraits fusing images of herself and Islamic art.

Keshet’s self-identification and forthcoming exhibition may be shocking to some. Then again, Shula Keshet does not pull punches. She is an artist on a mission.

Loolwa Khazzoom has published widely in such periodicals as The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, Yoga Journal, and Elle Girl. She is the editor ofThe Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage (Seal Press), and she is an Israel correspondent for Jewish Telegraphic Agency. More about the author at: (http://www.loolwa.com/ articles.html)

TEL AVIV, Sep. 29 (JTA) –

“When I shower, it usually takes me seven minutes,” says Hayim Foxman, a volunteer with Zaka, the fervently Orthodox rescue and cleanup organization that collects victims’ body parts after terrorist attacks. “But after I return home from a terrorist attack, it takes me an hour and 20 minutes.”

Foxman pauses. “And I don’t know if I am soaked from the water or my tears,” he says.

Married and a father of four, Foxman says his work can be emotionally draining for his entire family.

“When I return home after a terrorist attack, one of my children comes and says, ‘Daddy, look what I did in kindergarten today!’ And I respond, ‘Say thank God you are living. What do I care what you did in kindergarten? Say you are happy you’re alive.’ My kids look at me like, ‘What happened to you?’ ”

Today, three years after the Palestinians launched their intifada against Israel, Foxman — like most Israelis has acclimated somewhat to life under the strain of terrorism.

Foxman and his wife have a system for dealing with the intense emotions that follow terrorist attacks.

“I have come to understand that when I come back from an attack, I am extremely agitated for a few days,” Foxman explains. “My wife knows that when I come back from an attack, it’s better to speak with me about what happened, so that I will free myself. It’s very hard for her to hear these things, but she knows that listening makes it much easier for me.”

The Foxmans’ experience is typical of that of Zaka volunteer families.

According to Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who founded the organization in 1989, volunteers — there are currently 900 — and their families commonly suffer from post-traumatic stress.

“You’re talking about humans, not angels,” Meshi-Zahav says. “There are people who saw one awful image and became traumatized for the rest of their lives.”

In addition to doing rescue and cleanup after terrorist attacks, Zaka volunteers work at the scene of car crashes and building collapses around the country.

The organization’s Hesed Shel Emet division — which translates as “true righteousness” — deals with the fatalities from these incidents. Volunteers gather the remains of bodies, identify as many parts as they can and bury as much of a victim’s body as possible — including blood — in one grave.

The Hatzalah Mehira — or “rapid response” — division is an emergency response squad of volunteers on motorcycles who arrive at the scene of incidents to administer first aid until ambulances can arrive. Usually, they’re at the scene within four minutes of the incident.

The Itur Vehilutz — or “search and rescue” — division specializes in the rescue of people trapped in cars and buildings.

All volunteers in the Hesed Shel Emet division are fervently Orthodox men. The other divisions include women and non-Orthodox Jews.

Zaka volunteers say their faith in Judaism gives them the strength to keep going — and is their reason for volunteering in the first place.

The commandment to bury the dead is one of the most central in Jewish law, explains Meshi-Zahav. Even a kohen, a member of the priestly cast forbidden to touch dead flesh, is allowed to bury a body if it is otherwise left unattended.

“When the Jews left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, the Jews began to sing because Egyptians were drowning,” Meshi-Zahav explains. For decades, Egyptians “killed Jews, made them suffer. But God said, ‘Don’t sing, even though they caused you grief. You can’t sing, you must give respect.’ ”

A dignified end to life is a universal right, Meshi-Zahav says.

Bringing this dignity to victims often triggers intense feelings of grief among those collecting body parts, but it also has had a positive impact on volunteers’ lives.

“I value life more,” Foxman says. “I know that when a person comes home from work, we need to thank God that we returned.”

Another Zaka volunteer agreed: “You have to make use of every moment that you get.”

When Zaka first started, volunteers’ wives had a difficult time coping, and many of those married to Hesed Shel Emet volunteers asked their husbands to give up the work.

“They complained their husbands were becoming apathetic or agitated,” Meshi-Zahav says.

Zaka developed a psychology program for volunteers. But nobody sought counseling in the program — apparently for fear of seeming weak-kneed — and the problems persisted.

Zaka then adapted its psychological counseling program to 20-person workshops. In groups, the volunteers “can see that everyone has the same problems, and they can open up,” Meshi-Zahav says.

In addition to psychological counseling for Zaka volunteers, there also is a support group for volunteers’ wives.

The women’s support group holds a national conference every Chanukah, as well as smaller regional gatherings throughout the year, according to its founder, Yehudit Weingarten.

Zaka also holds two annual family days, where volunteers and their families come to relax and have fun. Zaka volunteers say they find the programs helpful.

“In the beginning, it was extremely difficult,” says Shimmy Grossman, who describes one particularly gruesome experience.

“I was at my sister’s house and we heard an explosion on the street right under her house. I went downstairs and began taking care of matters. Suddenly, I saw the head of a baby. It made me crazy. For a full week, I was delirious and hallucinating.”

After psychological counseling, Grossman got past his symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

To deal with what they’ve seen, one husband-and-wife team of Zaka volunteers uses gallows humor.

“We try not to repeat it outside the house,” laughs the wife, who asked not to be named. She says her teenage children also have developed this bizarre sense of humor.

“It’s a family thing,” she says.

TEL AVIV, Oct. 1 (JTA) –

When Amiad Horowitz, 18, first came to Israel for Young Judaea’s Hamagshimim program, he was shocked to discover unorthodox views on Judaism and Israel among his non-Orthodox peers.

Raised in an Orthodox home in Philadelphia and New Jersey, Horowitz was spending his first significant chunk of time away from home and — for the first time — was finding some of his core beliefs challenged.

“My first response was to be very angry,” Horowitz recalls of one of an early incident when he locked ideological horns with his peers. “But in the end, nobody was changing his mind, so we just agreed not to talk about it anymore.”

Hamagshimim offers post-high school students the opportunity to study, work on a kibbutz and volunteer in programs throughout Israel before beginning college in the United States. Bringing together Conservative, Orthodox, Reform and secular Jewish youngsters, the program is based in Jerusalem, where participants live together for three months before beginning projects elsewhere in Israel.

Eventually he realized the program was an opportunity to become more worldly, Horowitz says.

“The year course unshelters you, makes you more prepared for diversity, for what you see out there, for how things really work,” he says.

More than anything else, perhaps, the Hamagshimim program is an opportunity for different kinds of young Jews to learn how to get along.

Keith Berman, director of the year course and founder of Hamagshimim, which is sponsored by Hadassah, says uncomfortable encounters between youths is a key part of the program.

“There are definitely tensions,” he says. “It’s not like everyone gets here and it’s a lovefest.”

Learning how to live together is one of the program’s biggest challenges — and one of its points of pride.

Young Judaea’s mission, Berman says, is to transform enmity between religious and secular Jews by encouraging program participants “to contribute their vision to Israel, instead of hating what is here.”

Hamagshimim can drain the ideological swamps of secular-religious enmity in Israel the way Zionist pioneers drained the physical swamps of pre-state Palestine, he says.

And Israelis are feeling Hamagshimim’s impact.

“We are teaching Israelis what non-Orthodox Judaism is,” Berman says.

Sharon Schoenfeld, director of Hamagshimim-Hadassah in Israel, agrees with Berman.

“We are showing the Israeli community that something like this is possible,” she says.

Schoenfeld is responsible for Hamagshimim’s aliyah support branch, which runs a private absorption center for English-speaking immigrants aged 20-35. Its Jerusalem headquarters is a mix of a Jewish community center and a home, providing living quarters for 30 residents and community activities for 2,000 members.

While participants in the year program must abide by public Orthodox strictures — such as refraining from TV viewing in the public room on Shabbat — residents of the aliyah center have more latitude.

“If a woman chooses to wear a bikini on our front lawn,” Schoenfeld offers as an example of something Orthodox rules of modesty might prohibit, “people need to accept it.”

Yet both Hamagshimim projects share the same goals.

Both provide the opportunity for people to learn about others and figure out how to live with different types of Jews — something that Israelis often have a difficult time doing in a country that increasingly seems fragmented into religious and secular enclaves.

The only significant differences in approach between the two programs are that the aliyah center is geared toward adults and the year course is for teenagers.

“I like learning about different Jewish expression,” says Becky Korman, 18, a Reconstructionist Jew from Montreal. “The part that has affected me the most has been my discussions with other students in the program who are modern Orthodox, and comparing the ways we have grown up.”

Korman says she doesn’t mind adhering to certain Orthodox practices in the year course in order to make others feel comfortable.

“I respect the fact that people have their traditions and need to practice Judaism as they see fit, so I’m not going to butt heads with someone who practices differently,” she says.

Instead, she sees those differences as learning opportunities.

For example, Korman says, “It’s so foreign to me that a woman couldn’t read from the Torah or lead a service,” in Orthodox practice. “I want to understand why modern Orthodox women practice this way.”

The point, organizers say, is to foster a new kind of community, one marked by tolerance.

Hamagshimim’s year course is “not liberal,” Berman says. It “is not ‘everyone does whatever they want,’ because we’re a community. If I’m keeping Shabbat, I don’t want to hear music or see a TV on Shabbat.”

Before Rosh Hashanah this year, participants studied the meaning of the holiday and learned about diverse holiday traditions, including Sephardi ones.

For Yom Kippur, program participants will be encouraged to “shul crawl,” visiting different area synagogues to get a broad view of how Judaism is practiced in Israel.

“This is a great learning experience,” says Andrew Fretwell, 18, a secular Jew from New Jersey. “You get to see things from more than one perspective.”

TEL AVIV, Jan. 14 (JTA) –

Sabra, an asthmatic from Tel Aviv, was at a nightclub enjoying live music when the man seated next to her lit up a cigarette.

Unable to breathe and unable to speak over the loud music, Sabra gestured to the man to let him know that the smoke was bothering her. The man responded by turning toward Sabra and blowing smoke directly in her face.

That’s when Sabra punched him.

Sabra, who asked that her last name not be used, is one of countless Israelis convinced that Israel is a staunchly pro-smoking society and that asking law-enforcement authorities to enforce anti-smoking laws is an exercise in futility.

In shopping malls, banks and airports, many complain, even law-enforcement officials flaunt clearly posted no- smoking rules.

Jerusalemite Charlotte Herman recalls talking to a guard at the Interior Ministry who was smoking directly beneath a no-smoking sign.

“When I showed him the sign, he claimed it referred to the 1-inch space beneath it,” Herman says. “He said that where he was standing, 2 inches away, smoking was allowed.”

The battle between smokers and non-smokers has become so heated in Israel that fisticuffs sometimes occur.

Dov Rabinowitz, director of the national committee against public smoking, Ma’avak B’Tabak — “Struggle Against Tobacco” — recalls an incident where a doctor was attacked after asking a hospital visitor not to smoke.

According to Israel’s Health Ministry, almost 30 percent of Israelis are smokers; in development towns, which typically are poorer, the number is closer to 50 percent. Between 8,000 and 11,000 Israelis die each year from causes directly related to smoking, and about 1,000 to 1,500 are killed by second-hand smoke.

Officially, Israeli law mandates that all places of employment — including stores, movie theaters and cafes — must post signs informing customers that smoking is not allowed. Business owners may create designated smoking areas that take up no more than one-quarter of the business area. Businesses and customers flaunting the rules may be fined.

Smokers insist that anti-smoking laws are enforced every day all around them.

“This law has turned smokers into a persecuted minority,” cries Angela Ben Tsvi, waving her cigarette as she speaks. “It violates my personal rights. It violates my right to free expression. I feel like a criminal when I smoke in a cafe. I always have to look around me to see if I can light up. It’s very unpleasant.”

Ruth Ben David agrees.

“I enjoy holding a cigarette in my hand,” she says, smoking outdoors at Tel Aviv’s Espresso Bar. “I enjoy the nicotine and I enjoy the inhalation. If I pay $20 for lunch, I want to enjoy it. I want to be able to smoke my cigarette and finish it. I shouldn’t be denied that right.”

Ben David complains that she is forced outside during hot summers and cold winters if she wants to light up.

Rinat Laufmann, another smoker at Espresso Bar, says businesses should choose whether to allow smoking or whether to be entirely smoke-free, allowing smokers to choose which establishments to patronize.

Mati Gudiner, one of many smokers enjoying a cigarette at a cafe at Dizengoff Center, a popular Tel Aviv mall, asked the waitress if smoking was permitted before she lit up at a table in the mall’s walkway.

“I guess they just don’t really care” about irritating nonsmokers, Gudiner says, gesturing around her. “Case in point: ashtrays on all the tables.”

Though she is a smoker, Gudiner says the government needs to insist on enforcing the anti-smoking law.

“I think it’s just an issue of getting used to it, as with every new thing,” she says. “It’s difficult to introduce this law after people were allowed to smoke for so long. It was the same in New York and in Sydney. It was hard; people were used to smoking. But as soon as they made it a law, there was nothing to do about it.”

In Israel, however, where authorities are lax about enforcing the law, no-smoking rules have taken longer to catch on. The lack of social pressure in Israel against smoking has helped keep alive a culture of tolerance toward smokers.

Cafe, restaurant and bar owners say it’s impossible to get Israelis to stop smoking, regardless of the law.

Anti-smoking crusader Rabinowitz disagrees: Citing the effective campaign that banned smoking on buses, he says it’s a matter of resources.

“Many bus drivers were under the impression that they would be fined if they allowed smoking on buses. Whether or not that was the case, that was what they believed. Within two months, there was no more smoking on buses,” he says.

Urban legend has it that when one bus driver encountered a rider who refused to put out a cigarette, the driver drove the bus straight to the nearest police station.

The problem is that business owners, by contrast, have no incentive to risk customers’ ire and demand that they refrain from smoking, since the government does little to enforce smoking penalties in places of business, Rabinowitz says.

In Israel’s capital city, city inspectors are responsible for issuing tickets for no-smoking violations, Rabinowitz says he was informed by a spokesman for the Jerusalem municipality, Ayal Chaimovsky.

Chaimovsky told Rabinowitz that, due to budget cuts, inspectors don’t go out on patrols but act only when complaints are registered.

After meeting with Chaimovsky, Rabinowitz decided to test the system. He went to a nearby shopping mall, called the municipality to report that numerous people were smoking next to no-smoking signs and was met with befuddlement.

“The person who answered didn’t even know what law I was talking about,” Rabinowitz says. “She said, ‘We don’t respond to call-in complaints, only written complaints.’ I said, ‘I just came from a meeting with your boss, who said you only respond to call-in complaints.’ ”

Gidi Shmerling, a spokesman for the municipality, said, “The Jerusalem municipality does enforce the no-smoking laws. For example, smoking is prohibited in the municipality building, there are specially designated smoking areas and tickets are issued to smokers who are not in permitted areas, or are in public areas where it is prohibited.”

Rabinowitz says a male inspector arrived at the mall about 20 minutes after his phone call, flirted with a group of female smokers and then asked them to put out their cigarettes. The inspector didn’t dispense any tickets.

Rabinowitz repeated the test several times at other locations, and when he did not invoke his professional capacity in phone calls, no inspectors showed up.

For the past few months, Ma’avak B’Tabak has tried a new tactic to encourage Jerusalem to enforce the smoking laws.

“We have a private donor ready to fund these inspectors that the municipality supposedly has no budget for,” Rabinowitz says. “We also have volunteers ready to send in reports, to be the eyes and ears.”

Government officials tell him that there are legal complications involved in taking a private donation, he says.

Shmerling said there are legal restrictions involved with accepting donations to enforce specific laws.

However, he said, “If a donation comes in at a specific amount, and the goals the donor seeks are set down, the municipality’s legal counsel is prepared to examine the opportunities to use this donation proactively regarding the subject of enforcing the smoking laws in the city.”

Until the issue is resolved, it seems the only clear thing is that the City of Gold will remain the city of smoke.

TEL AVIV, Jun. 9 (JTA) –

Eitan Salman is at the far end of his store, leaning against a shelf lined with the new CD by Sarit Hadad, one of Israel’s more popular Mizrahi, or Eastern, singers. Business at Salman’s music store has fallen 80 percent over the last decade, but it’s not altogether a bad thing: Mizrahi music has grown so popular in Israel that it no longer is the exclusive domain of mom-and-pop shops like Salman’s but is sold even at Israel’s Tower Records outlets.

“Mizrahi music is now available across the country, in all the stores,” laments Salman, whose shop is located across the street from where Tel Aviv’s old central bus station used to stand.

Indeed, with the superstar status of singers like Hadad, Zahava Ben and Moshik Afia, Mizrahi music now tops the charts in Israel and its popularity crosses ethnic lines.

Salman and neighboring store owners remember the “cassette music” heyday, a time when Mizrahi music was the exclusive domain ! of Mizrahi-run stores like Salman’s, near bus stations and in souks.

“In the 1980s, Mizrahi music was not sold in record stores,” explains Barak Itzkovitz, musical editor of Galgalatz, Israel’s popular army music radio station. “Today, there is a lot of consciousness about this music, and it’s one of the most popular musical genres.”

The roots of Mizrahi music in Israel date back to the 1950s and the mass influx of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Every community arrived with its distinct religious music, commonly known as piyutim, as well as its favorite Arabic music.

As Iraqis, Moroccans, Egyptians and Persians mixed, they exchanged musical sounds as well.

“They found out they had commonalities in their music,” said Shoshana Gabay, co-creator of “Yam Shel Dmaot,” or “Sea of Tears,” a 1998 documentary on the development of Mizrahi music in Israel.

Children born in Israel in the 1950s grew up with other influences as well: American rock m! usic, Indian movie music, French and Italian pop music and Russian-ins pired Israeli music. The result was fusion music far ahead of its time.

“Years later there was this world music combination in other countries,” Gabay said. “But in Israel it started very early, with the Oriental Jews.”

By the 1960s, Tel Aviv’s Yemenite quarter was home to a brand new sound.

“They had all these parties, and at those parties they took what they had learned in school — Russian-inspired Israeli songs, some Chasidic songs — and made them Oriental sounding,” Gabay said. “They blended these songs with popular Arabic songs and traditional Yemenite songs and made a mix out of them. They were making an interpretation, their own interpretation.”

Musicians blended not only musical styles but instruments: electric guitar and oud, synthesizer and kanoun — a classical string instrument from the Middle East and North Africa — drum kits and darbuka, a Middle Eastern and North African hand drum.

Despite the ingenuity of this new groove, Israeli fusion! music stayed in Mizrahi neighborhoods until the invention of the cassette recorder, when recording suddenly became economically viable to a community with meager financial resources.

The first Mizrahi music became available on cassette in 1974, and the hit bands Lahakat Haoud and Lahakat Tslelei Hakerem couldn’t produce recordings fast enough. Tapes flew off the shelves and into the hands of Mizrahi Israelis hungry for more.

But mainstream Israeli radio stations played few Mizrahi songs.

“The people in radio were mostly from Europe,” said Yoni Rohe, author of the newly-published “Silsul Yisrael,” which documents the development of Mizrahi music in Israel over the past 50 years. “They didn’t like the Mizrahi sound. It was not easy for them to relate to.”

“The popularity of Mizrahi music was a process that happened over 15 years,” Itzkovitz said. “Like hip-hop in the United States, it came from the hood, from the bottom up. It just couldn’t be stopped.”

Fol! lowing the success of the first recorded Mizrahi music bands, Mizrahi pop stars suddenly began to appear around the country: Avner Gadasi of Tel Aviv’s Hatikvah neighborhood, Shimmy Tavori from Rishon Le-Zion, Nissim Sarousi from Ramle.

Despite the dearth of Mizrahi music on mainstream radio stations, the Mizrahi music industry blossomed. Mom-and-pop stores like Salman’s could not keep up with fans’ demands.

Zohar Argov, the poster boy for Mizrahi music, came onto the scene in 1978. Argov created Israeli country music, Ron Cahlili, film director of “Yam Shel Dmaot,” told the Jerusalem Post in 1998.

“His subjects were the pain of love, betrayal, loss and sorrow,” Cahlili said. “Argov was hard core, unafraid to sing about his reality and his life as he saw it.”

At times compared to Elvis Presley, Argov lived on the edge: He died at 33 from a drug overdose. His albums continue to be best-sellers, however.

“Nancy Brandes did production for Zohar Argov,” Rohe recounts. “Brandes came from Romania, and his connection with Zohar Argo! v made a new blend of music, a blend of big band and Mizrahi. This was a historical turning point. From there, in the 1980s, Mediterranean Israeli music went professional.”

Meanwhile, other Mizrahi musicians developed new fusion sounds.

Ahouva Ozeri, a Yemenite-Ethiopian Israeli singer who became popular in the 1970s, mastered an Indian string instrument called bulbul tarang and gained a reputation as a world beat musician. She also helped pave the way for women in Mizrahi music.

Machismo was not the only obstacle to female Mizrahi musicians: In traditional Mizrahi households, a music career was equated with prostitution, and many families forbade their daughters from performing.

Sarit Hadad’s defiance of her parents is legendary in Israel. As a girl, she would climb out of her window at night to perform at local clubs. Her father, who died in 1997, refused to attend even a single concert of his superstar daughter.

Gabay and Rohe say the turning point for ! Mizrahi music was the development of commercial television and radio i n the 1990s, which opened up new avenues for national broadcast of Mizrahi music, as well as other alternative sounds.

Today, Itzkovitz says, Hadad is hands-down the most popular Mizrahi musician in Israel. Afia and Itzik Kala are runners-up, and each puts out at least one platinum album per year.

“Mizrahi music is very, very popular on Israeli radio today,” Itzkovitz says. “On major stations like Galgalatz, we pick only the songs that sell the best, the most popular ones that people love. Today, about 40 percent of what we play is straight-up Mizrahi music.”

In addition, Itzkovitz notes, Mizrahi music has influenced musicians closely associated with the Ashkenazi kibbutznik movement. Among them is David Broza, who combines his style with the Mizrahi genre, and bands like Ethnix and Tea Packs, which combine rock and Mizrahi music.

Today’s hottest new sound is the fusion of Mizrahi music and hip-hop, Itzkovitz says. Indeed, Mizrahi musicians have blazed the tra! il for Israeli hip-hop, and children of immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen are at the cutting edge of Israeli music today.

Somehow, it seems, the music of the streets has became the music of choice.

“In the last years,” Rohe says, “this mix of the new generations, the blend of music that came from Ashkenazi and Mizrahi homes, has brought a new sound to the ear that is as Israeli as you can get.”

TEL AVIV, Jul. 5 (JTA) –

For months, Palestinians have blasted Israel’s West Bank security barrier as an “apartheid wall” that will extinguish Palestinian national goals. But an Israeli ecologist says the fence’s potential impact on plant and animal life has been completely overlooked.

Noa Olchovsky, campaign coordinator on the fence for Green Action, an Israeli environmental group that advocates “socio-ecological change,” said the proposed border zone threatens Israel’s ecological system.

“What will tear the ecological system is the separation fence itself,” she said. “Animals won’t be able to get from the places they sleep to the places they drink water. Trees and plants won’t be able to reproduce themselves properly, because their seeds won’t be carried by the wind more than 8 meters in one direction. In a few years, certain species of animals and plants in the region will be extinct.”

The environmental claims come as the fence has been heavily cri! ticized by pro-Palestinian activists around the world, who see land the Palestinians desire for a future state being lost on the Israeli side of the fence. Palestinians also fret that the barrier will close off their most effective weapon against Israel — suicide terrorism.

Now some Israelis are raising the specter of environmental damage as well.

Already, Olchovsky says, Israel has uprooted hundreds of trees and bulldozed Palestinian farmland to build the fence and a patrol road alongside it.

Yehoshua Shkedi, landscape ecologist for Israel’s Nature Reserve Authority, the governmental body in charge of natural conservation, says the problem with the fence is two-fold: “It will destroy everything within its range,” he says, and will impact ecological corridors.

“It blocks movement of animals and impedes the growth of plants that are dispersed on the fur of animals,” he says.

An Israeli army spokesman, Capt. Ya’acov Dallal, rejected the criticism.

“If an an! imal were to walk by, the animal wouldn’t be harmed by the fence,” he said. “It’s a fence.”

And supporters note that the fence protects the most important species — human beings. With the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks down precipitously in areas where the barrier already is in place, supporters say potential damage to animal and plant life really is beside the point.

“While they listed the complaints of the birds and the animals, they neglected to mention that the reason the fence is being built is to save people,” Dallal said. “The fence is saving lives. We have to start from that premise.”

In addition, he said, the fence “can also be moved if the security situation changes, if there’s an agreement with the Palestinians. It’s not a final border, so it’s not something that necessarily is permanent.”

But ecologist Ron Frumkin says that even if the fence comes down in a few years, “the scar on the land will stay for up to thousands of years.”

Dallal disagrees.

“The fence is not an obtrusive obstacle to such a degr! ee that it causes irreparable damage,” he said.

For most of its planned 450-mile route, the barrier is a sophisticated network of wire-mesh fences built with electronic sensors, patrol roads, ditches, cameras and watchtowers. In some short spans, the barrier is a concrete wall.

Dallal said a variety of factors determined the route of the fence, which runs roughly along the Green Line, the boundary between Israel and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank prior to the 1967 Six-Day War.

“We’re using the Green Line as some sort of a contour,” he said. “We want to have as many Israelis on the one side, as many Palestinians on the other, so that Israelis can go on with their lives and Palestinians can go on with theirs. Wherever you draw a line, it’s difficult.”

Frumkin said ecologists want to talk not about whether Israel needs the fence, but “where to put it, how to put it, so that the damage will be minimal, both to ecology and people.”

Frumkin says he and his! wife, Tamar Ahiron-Frumkin, sat down recently with geologists and sec urity consultants from the Council for Peace and Security, a left-leaning think tank, to prepare a report on an alternative fence route.

“It’s possible to do the fence in a different way,” Frumkin said, “so that it’s good for security, for ecology, and for the aesthetic view.”

For example, Frumkin said, building on flat land instead of slopes, and building on the northern side of hills, where there is more rain and less direct sun, would help the land recover faster if the fence one day comes down.

He also said that setting the fence along a straight route rather than a circuitous one would cut its length by half and thus affect less land.

In Jerusalem, where there is a fence winding around the city, Shkedi said, “it’s a pocket closed from three sides. The effect of the fence there is very bad.”

So far, Frumkin said, Israel has not given serious consideration to ecologically preferable alternatives for the route.

“If it was done, it wasn’t done properly, ! with professional people to look at the possible alternatives,” he said. The government “only looked at security.”

Dallal rejected that assertion.

“There is a whole host of considerations that must be taken into account,” he said, including security, operational, environmental and social concerns.

“It’s also a question of priorities,” Dallal said. “Foremost among them is saving Israeli lives.”

BERKELEY, Nov. 17 (JTA) –

“I can’t believe we’re here!” Sha’anan Streett exclaimed, standing before a screaming, sold-out crowd in a large hall at George Washington University. “More importantly, I can’t believe you’re here!” Streett — lead rapper for Hadag Nahash, a popular Israeli hip-hop group — and his band-mates were making their first appearance in the United States in mid-October.

“They were floored by the energy of the concert,” recalled Simon Amiel, executive director of George Washington’s Hillel.

“We barely did any publicity for this,” he said. “Tickets sold right away, by word of mouth. Selling out close to 600 tickets by word of mouth for an Israeli event is really incredible.”

The GWU crowd included both Jews and non-Jews. Hadag Nahash continued to draw diverse audiences throughout a tour across the United States.

For Claudia Santangelo, 21, the Hadag Nahash concert wasn’t just a rocking good time — though she did dance enthusiastically throughout the group’s third U.S. performance, at a San Francisco night club. It also was a learning experience.

“I hadn’t read widely enough about the issue between Israel and Palestine,” she said. “It was important for me to come, because these guys are a voice that is pro-Israel.”

The nexus between quality hip-hop and Jewish identity, community leaders across the country agree, has two main benefits: It reaches out to Jewish students who otherwise might not be interested in Israel, and it provides a bridge-building opportunity between Jewish youth and youth of other ethnic backgrounds.

After opening for Hadag Nahash at GWU, Juan Calvin Turner, a senior at Howard University and a hip-hop artist, stuck around for the Israelis’ show.

“Hadag Nahash was really hot,” he said. “I was impressed with them. Being a Jewish band, I didn’t know what to expect.

“I was surprised. They really opened my eyes to Israeli hip hop.” Jason Benkendorf, officer for public and academic affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, one of the many co-sponsors of Hadag Nahash’s tour, said the embassy had reached out to Howard because “we thought this was an appropriate opportunity to build bridges with a traditionally black university in Washington.”

“There is not usually a lot of interaction between Jewish students” at GWU “and students at other campuses. We are looking for these opportunities,” he said.

Hadag Nahash’s tour, Benkendorf adds, also has provided “a great opportunity to reach Jewish students who are uninterested in the political side of what’s going on in Israel, or are interested but it’s come to the point that enough is enough.”

“Some of them,” he added, “are hip hop fans, which has brought together their Jewish identity with their interest in music — which they have never really perceived as being connected to their Jewish identity.”

Chris Delamadrid, 21, who saw the band in Berkeley, Calif. — where the Wheeler Auditorium’s 750 tickets sold out, leaving about 200 disappointed fans standing outside — was impressed by the band’s vibe.

“The music felt positive,” he said. “The fact that they had a live band made the music itself seem more alive, as opposed to drum machine beats or what-have-you. Also, they had smiles on their faces, seemed upbeat.”

During another sold-out show — at the Knitting Factory in New York — a long line extended down the block even after the nightclub was packed.

“I wasn’t that surprised by the turnout,” said Yossi Fein, the band’s producer, who opened the evening with an electric bass solo. “They had such a good buzz that not only Israelis came to see it.”

Numerous Israeli-Americans were in the New York audience, singing along with the band at full volume.

“The whole show was one big sing-along,” Fein said.

Almost every American show reached fever pitch, with audience members climbing on shoulders, vigorously jumping up and down during fast-paced songs and waving cigarette lighters and glowing cell phones for slower numbers.

“I didn’t realize there was this kind of pop culture in Israel, and that it would translate here so well,” Joshua Concepcion, 22, said after the show in Berkeley.

“A lot of people here are obviously into them,” he added. “If this was on a scale of 20,000 people, it would be pretty wild. These fans are really passionate, more so than I’ve seen at regular” American concerts.

The music translated well for Santangelo, who saw the San Francisco show, despite the fact that she didn’t understand one word of their lyrics.

“I could feel the power behind the words,” she explained.

“It was a great fusion of ska, reggae, hip hop and jazz, and they were all really good musicians,” she said. “Usually with a band, it helps if you have prior knowledge of the music, but this band just flowed. It was fantastic!”

Yaya Cohen Harounoff, bassist for the seven-member band, said the band’s reception had been surprising.

“It’s like that a lot of the time in Israel, but here they didn’t even know the language, yet they had such great energy,” Cohen Harounoff said.

According to Hillel’s Amiel, “This isn’t some sort of cheesy shtick band, but they take their hip hop and funk seriously.”

“If you listen to their CDs, they’re really good,” he said.

Gabriel Salgado, youth director at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, Calif., incorporated Hadag Nahash’s music into his curriculum for a similar reason.

“My goal is to teach about Israeli reality — politics, culture, society — in a way that students will connect to and feel personal identification with,” he explained. “Young Jews need to understand that Israel is theirs, and that they have a crucial stake and role in its fate. What better way than through top-quality Israeli music that articulates this reality?”

Seventh-grader Allison Blumenfeld was one of numerous children who responded as Salgado had hoped. Learning about the band, she said, was “a lot more fun because I really like music,” adding that “I think it gave me insight into Israel.”

“One of the songs says, ‘Israel is the only place where I feel safe when someone is standing outside with a gun.’ It made me realize how different Israel is from America, that there has to be a guard with a gun outside a café,” she said.

In addition to reflecting the reality of Israeli life, Hadag Nahash reflects the diversity of Israeli society.

Four band members are the sons of Jewish refugees from Morocco, Yemen, and Iran; two trace their families back 500 years in Jerusalem, where their ancestors fled after the Inquisition and expulsion of Jews from Spain; and three have at least one parent from Eastern Europe.

Beyond educating crowds, however, Hadag Nahash’s 11-city tour, initiated by the Israel Center of San Francisco, showed Americans a good time, leaving them hungry for more.

“Go Hadag Nahash!” cried Gavriel Matt, 15, a student at the Jewish Community High School in San Francisco. “I hope more Israeli hip hop is coming!”

BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 13 (JTA) –

As Jewish children around the world prepare to celebrate Tu B’Shevat by eating fruit and planting trees, students at the Jewish Community High School of San Francisco will take the holiday one step further. They’ll spend the holiday, Jan. 25, at a science symposium called “The Green World,” where they’ll work on projects that explore the impact of plant life on the earth’s ecosystems.

This unusual holiday celebration reflects the school’s mission to combine academia with Jewish and ecological values. The mission also is reflected in the school’s eco-kosher lunch service, which offers an organic, vegetarian kosher meal every school day.

“We wanted to offer quality, healthy food, particularly in light of studies on teenage obesity,”says the school’s head, Rabbi Edward Harwitz. “As Jews, we have to think about the educational component of everything we do. Eating is a primary activity of our lives; we do it at least three times a day. In our school, we didn’t want our lunch service to just be a food vending program, or for students and faculty just to get something to eat. We wanted them to understand this is not merely an opportunity for us to stuff our faces.”

He continues,”It’s a principle as old as the Mishna: When three people sit together, there must be a spirit of Torah. A wonderful context for that is breaking bread together.”

At a school assembly when the new lunch program began, students learned about the importance of eating healthy food and of recycling. The lunch program, students were told, would have a no-waste policy: Everything from plates to cups to utensils would be 100 percent biodegradable.

There would be no need for trash cans in the lunch room, which instead would be furnished with bins for recycling and compost.

It’s a Maimonidean approach, Harwitz says, bringing Torah values into daily life.

“Utilizing the composting facility properly is not hard, but it does raise consciousness,” he said. “A week ago a student asked if we could think about using recycled paper, recycled paper towels. Students and I are now doing research on the cost effectiveness, and presenting our findings to the director of finance and operations.”

According to Noam Dolgin, associate director of the New York-based Teva Learning Center — one of several national programs spearheading the Jewish ecological movement — the JCHS lunch program is on the cutting edge of growing environmental activism in Jewish day schools.

“No other school has anything as extensive,” he says.

Through its Bring It Back to Our Schools program, Teva helps students and teachers across the country develop ways to be more environmentally conscious, both at school and at home.

“Each student, each school, each class makes a commitment to make changes in their personal lives or in their school — to turn off lights when they leave a room, to turn off water when they brush their teeth, to bike instead of drive,” Dolgin said. “They sit down with us and figure out what they can do to make their school a greener place — composting projects, getting rid of Styrofoam, using washable mugs instead of disposable cups, recycling paper, planting gardens.”

There are other Jewish days schools that are ecologically aware, according to Dolgin. He points to the Gesher Community Day School in Fairfax, Va., as one that is exceptionally committed to ecological issues.

The school is getting a new facility and the landscaping, which will include a number of gardens, will be ecologically sound.

The school also will include an “edible classroom,” where teachers will integrate gardening projects into science and home economics curricula.

“Environmental values care for creation, stewardship of the planet and ethical treatment of animals,” Dolgin says. “All of that is intrinsic to the Bible and writings of the rabbis and Jewish philosophers throughout the centuries.”

Jewish educators must use apply these values to the 21st century, he says.

According to Jesse Alper, director of food services at JCHS, diet is a key element of an environmental ethic.

“Throughout the course of human history, all food was grown organically, regardless of culture or locale,” he says. “It wasn’t until the rise of the chemical industry in the 1950s that the introduction of synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides changed agriculture as we know it. What’s even worse than that is the corporate takeover of our food system. What that means is that we have highly processed, chemically produced food of little or negative nutritional value.”

The result, he says, is especially destructive to youth.

“Over half of American youth are now categorized by the government as being clinically obese,” Alper says. “It’s an epidemic that no culture in world history has ever known. Childhood diabetes in the past 10 years has gone off the charts. We are the richest nation in the world and our children are malnourished. They are not getting the building blocks they need to be healthy and defend themselves from sickness and disease.”

Alpai Michaels, 14, a JCHS student, used to have the eating habits of a typical American teenager — burgers, fries, candy and soda. When JCHS introduced its eco-kosher lunch program, Alpai began to eat differently.

“What I eat here makes me think a little more about what I eat,” Alpai says. “I still like to eat junk food, but I don’t eat it as much after school, mostly because my parents are trying to live up to the salad bar.”

The school’s salad bar offers everything from organic salad mix to organic tangerines, from organic tofu to organic eggs, from Israeli feta cheese to gourmet garlic croutons.

The school’s environmental activists seem especially excited by the ecological aspects of the lunch program — aspects they helped develop.

“A few of my friends and I have been trying to green up the school, make it more environmentally conscious,” says Josh Meltzer, 16. “It’s an ideal I have. I would like us to live in a more sustainable society.”

Alyssa Olenberg, 17, is working with others to get the school to run on solar energy. She is especially happy about the composting bin.

“I personally use the compost bins even when it’s not from the salad bar,” she says. “When I have a banana peel or something, I can just come downstairs and put it in the compost bin.”

Most students, however, seem more concerned about the taste and variety of the food than its ecological sustainability.

“I think it’s nice that the school is being environmental and organic, yet offering good food at the same time,” says Eliana Greenberg, 14. “I relate to it more as tasty and healthy food.”

“It’s more of a mystery, more of a surprise,” agrees Daniel Porton, 16. “We don’t know what” Alper “is going to bring out.

“Every day he has a different food thing. One day we have sushi, sometimes we have burritos, Spanish- style food. Other times we have salads and sandwiches, falafel,” Daniel says. “Every time it’s just different, and we don’t know what to expect. That’s the joy of it.”

NEW YORK, Mar. 20 (JTA) –

Pele Browner, a 19-year-old Jew of African-American and Native-American heritage, was playing basketball at his local Jewish community center in West Bloomfield, Mich, when one of the other kids on the court asked him if he was Jewish. “Yes,” he said.

“How does that work out?” they asked.

Adam McKinney, 28, a Jew of African-American, Ashkenazi and Sephardi ancestry, often has fielded similar questions.

People say, “How are you Jewish?” he said. “I say, ‘I’m fine Jewish. How are you Jewish?’ ”

Since their modest beginnings in the Fertile Crescent thousands of years ago, the Jewish people has added ethnic groups from around the world. Today, Jews come in all shades and colors, spanning the range from black skin and nappy hair to blond hair and blue eyes.

Nonetheless, say many Jews of color, white Ashkenazim often have a set idea of what “Jewish” looks like and where “Jewish” comes from, leaving many unable to make sense of a Jew who does not physically resemble and practice Judaism like those from Central and Eastern Europe.

Ayecha, an organization that supports Jews of color, and the Jewish Multicultural Coalition held a conference, called Jewish Leaders of Color, at New York University’s Bronfman Student Center in late February. Browner and McKinney, who were there, were relieved that for once they did not have to defend their Jewishness.

“It was important for me not only to see in person so many Jews of color — because I always knew they existed — but to actually be in a place where the fact of my being Jewish would never be called into question,” said Wilbur Bryant II, 35, an African-American Jew who was part of the planning committee.

Since he moved to New Jersey from Philadelphia, where he had attended a welcoming Reconstructionist synagogue, Bryant — who was wearing a knit yarmulke and a Star of David earring — has avoided going to Shabbat or holiday services.

“I think there are white Jews who haven’t dealt with their own racism, so I’m very wary of going to synagogues that are strange to me,” he said. “I find generally that people look at me with that ‘What is he doing here?’ look.”

Linda Jum, a Chinese-American Jewish educator, fully understands Bryant’s reluctance. “I feel like a big wind follows me whenever I walk into a sanctuary because the heads all turn,” she said. “I know where all the restrooms are in every synagogue, because I’m always directed to them, with the comment, ‘The room you’re looking for is that way.’ ”

In response to these kinds of experiences, Jum has served on the boards of many Jewish community institutions. “That’s given me a forum to put a different face — this face — in many Jewish spaces, broadening the very narrow American definition of what Jewish is,” she said.

Nadav Davis, 30 , an African-American and Cuban Sephardi Jew, also uses activist tactics. Sometimes they’re literally in-your-face. “I’ve poked my black face in a whole lot of shuls,” he said. “I’ve allowed them to see me. The issue is getting your face out there, for them to recognize the differences.”

Davis and Jum say that as Jews of color, they constantly have to play teacher — whether they like it or not. “At times, I’d like to be the Jew in the pew and be left alone,” said Jum, as those around her nod and smile in agreement.

Yavilah McCoy, an African-American Jew and Ayecha’s executive director, said that’s why she thought of creating this conference. “I was watching a process of Jewish leaders of color getting burnt out around doing this work in the last four years or so since I’ve been working on it myself,” she said.

So she organized an ongoing conference call with Jewish leaders of color across the country, exploring what issues were most pressing in doing Jewish diversity work. The conference developed from the discussion. Participants included Rabbi Alysa Stanton, the first African American to graduate rabbinical school; Davi Cheng, the first Asian-American president of the first gay and lesbian synagogue; and Beejhy Barhani, executive director of Beta Israel North America, an advocacy group run by and for Ethiopian Jews.

A primary concern the leaders shared, McCoy said, was that they “didn’t have faith in a process of working within the Jewish community, because ideas of inclusion and challenging racism were not welcome there.”

To help them cope with the feeling that they constantly were banging their heads against a wall, organizers structured the gathering around themes of self-care, rejuvenation and alliance-building.

A theme that ran throughout the conference was exploring how to feel compassion and love for white Ashkenazi Jews, through understanding the factors contributing to ignorance of and resistance to Jewish diversity.

In her workshop on Jewish multiculturalism, McCoy asked participants what happens to a group that experiences persecution. Answering her own question, she bowed her head and hid behind her arms. “How are you going to get me to put down my defenses?” she asked, peeking out. The answers ranged from “Have patience” to “Judge favorably.”

“I’m focusing on coming from a place of love internally,” McCoy said in a later interview. “That itself is more nurturing to the person doing the work, because a person carrying anger with confrontation is breaking themselves down. Anger is not a regenerative state. It diminishes energy.”

Reflecting that belief, the atmosphere of the conference was intentionally upbeat. “I learned a lot of positive things,” said Tedros Bicha. One of the two Ethiopian Jews at the conference, Bicha is a member of Shmella, a new organization run by and for Ethiopian Jews living in New York.

The conference drew about 100 participants, but a relatively small number were of Ethiopian, Mizrachi or Sephardi descent. McCoy said that there are significant differences in identity between those groups and Jews by choice and mixed-faith/mixed-race Jews.

The difference, she said, is “the journey of people who have immigrated and of those who have grown up as Jews in America.”

McCoy tells a personal story to illustrate her point: “I have an Indian Jewish friend who is the same color as I am, literally, but doesn’t consider herself to be a person of color,” she said.

“When she walks out in the street, people might treat her with the same racism that they treat other people with brown skin. But that’s not how she perceives herself.”

Similarly, McCoy said, Mizrachim and Sephardim “identify in various ways — as Arab, as Israeli, as Iraqi — by country. They don’t necessarily identify by color. When they are forced to make the decision to be black or white, a lot of them would chose white.”

White Ashkenazi Jews are taught to see the Jewish world as divided between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, but the Jewish world in truth is far more diverse and that, says McCoy, is one of the issues that Jewish multicultural leaders must explore and discuss with each other.

TEL AVIV, Apr. 19 (JTA) –

Tradition teaches that on Passover, all Jews must embody the experience of Exodus, feeling as if we ourselves have gone through it. For the Karaite Jews from Egypt — a community that rejected rabbinic law from the start — no imagination is required. “Every year at Passover,” says Sara Moussa, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, home to the largest Karaite community in the United States, “we tell the guests at our table that our ancestors were kicked out of Egypt thousands of years ago, then we were kicked out one more time just a few decades ago. We never forget that.”

The Karaites observe a form of Judaism that its adherents claim is based entirely on the Bible. The group, which traces its origins to the eighth century, considers the Talmud and other oral law, upon which much of rabbinic Judaism is based, to have no authority.

The largest Karaite community is in Israel, with about 25,000 members. There are about 1,200 Karaites in the United States and 3,000 in Poland and the former Soviet Union; the rest are scattered in small communities around the world.

Moussa left Egypt in 1966, when she was 16. Like Remy Pessah — who also lives in the Bay area — she recalls the anti-Semitic taunts, intimidation and violence from her Egyptian neighbors that prompted her family to flee.

But for Moussa, Pessah and other Karaite Jews, Passover is not just a painful trip down memory lane; it’s also a time of celebration.

Unlike at a rabbinic celebration, however, the Karaite seder does not include four cups of wine — or any alcoholic beverage, for that matter.

“We don’t allow anything that has fermented,” explains Neria Haroeh, grandson of one of chief hakhamim, or spiritual leaders, of the Karaite community in Israel.

“How do you make wine? You take grapes and let them ferment. The process is forbidden on Pesach,” he says.

While wine is out of the question, says Hakham David Elisha, one of the community’s spiritual leaders in Israel, Karaites do drink grape or raisin juice — the latter because in Egypt fresh grapes were hard to come by during Passover season.

Only one cup of this juice is sipped, during the ritual blessing before the meal.

Karaites do not have a seder plate, an afikomen or charoset. They do have maror made of lemon peel, bitter lettuce and an assortment of other bitter herbs, which together look like a salad.

While the rabbinic Haggadah starts with the story of Exodus, the Karaite Haggadah opens with something older still.

“It begins with the prophecy of Abraham: ‘Your children will be slaves in Egypt for 400 years,’ ” Haroeh says. “Then it tells the story of what happened in Egypt, all the things the Pharaoh did, how the Jews suffered, and finally, how the Jews left.”

Like other Jewish communities, Karaites enjoy many dishes prepared specially for Passover — such as grape leaves stuffed with meat and rice, egg and potato salad, peanut cookies and many kinds of sweet jam, including one made from carrots and another from roses.

“We celebrate Pesach in the most natural way possible, like the nation of Israel celebrated it during ancient times,” says Yosef Davir, official spokesman for the Karaite community in Israel. “It’s the holiday of spring and renewal. Nature renews itself now too, so we use food that is from nature — fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, juice.”

Everything is prepared at home.

“We couldn’t buy anything outside the house,” Moussa says, recalling her childhood in Egypt. “We had to roast the nuts, even the coffee beans, to make sure they were kosher for Passover, that no bread was next to them.”

The most significant dish prepared at home was barbecued meat, seasoned with salt, pepper and lots of onions.

Around the world, Elisha says, Karaites still eat this dish at the conclusion of the seder, in honor of the pascal sacrifice.

“In the Torah it says there is a sacrificial animal that every family has to slaughter,” he says. “We no longer have the Temple, but we have continued to preserve this tradition. In Egypt we would raise our own goats, then have the community shochet slaughter them. Every year, since I am a shochet, I still buy a sheep and slaughter it myself.”

Most Karaites don’t bother buying sheep or goats to slaughter, but they do preserve other important Passover traditions, such as throwing or giving away all chametz.

“The Torah says we can’t sell chametz and leave it in our homes,” Davir says. “We get rid of absolutely everything.

“God gave us a brain to prepare things,” he continues. “The holiday doesn’t arrive out of the sky in one day; we know that it’s coming in another two months or three. So we won’t go and buy a bunch of pita or macaroni.”

The Karaite Passover also involves bringing food and clothing to those less fortunate.

“Usually at Passover we invited people who didn’t have the means of celebrating the holiday,” Moussa recalls of her years in Egypt. “It was very common throughout the community. And even if they wouldn’t come to your house, you would bring food to them.”

Those with the means enjoyed not only giving but receiving.

“On Passover we always had brand new clothes,” Moussa says. “Shoes, socks, underwear, from top to bottom it had to be new. We’d have special summer dresses, and the whole house would be clean from floor to ceiling — scrubbed and even painted. In Egypt, you really would feel there is a holiday coming.”

But for Karaite Jews old enough to remember their own personal exodus from Egypt, nothing beats the feeling of freedom.

“I am very blessed in the United States,” concludes Pessah, “not only to celebrate Pesach, but to live as a Jew without being persecuted.”