Professor Dumbledore, Will You Please Come Out of the Closet

On behalf of Harry Potter, an orphan who has no parents to speak in his defence, I would like to report his beloved mentor, Professor Albus Dumbledore, for molestation. That's right, now that the esteemed teacher and fighter of evil has been outed, one cannot help but wonder what Harry Potter and he were really doing in all those late night study sessions. For that matter, didn't Professor Snape also spend a lot of one-on-one time with Harry in detention?

Of course, Professor Dumbledore is deceased, and lives only in the portraits on the wall, but dammit, if the various magical persons in all the paintings at Hogworts can interact in real time with students and each other, they can be jailed post mortem.

Why is it that magic must be associated with deviance of a sort? What did JK Rowling gain by declaring that Dumbledore prefers the Wizard over the Witch?

Much like the hullabaloo over the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, literature makes statements and passes along morality on multiple levels. As a Jewish girl reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the Christian references flew way over my head, and I simply enjoyed the series as a tale about adventurous children in a parallel universe who receive the protection of a kindly magical lion. Aslan doesn't even sound like Jesus...

The television show Sesame Street began when I was one year old, and Big Bird's friend Mr. Snuffleuppagus was conceived initially as a real friend of Big Bird's, who just happened to disappear when any human adult showed up on the scene. (Much like Clark Kent and Superman, they are never around at the same time, hmmm...) In time, the show revealed the melancholy Woolly Mammoth to the remaining residents of Sesame Street; they feared that a child who had been abused or bullied would not approach adults for help, because he/she believed that adults are either stupid, or would not believe their story.

This of course did not go far enough for the liberal "gay" 90's, when speculation ran rampant regarding Bert and Ernie's sexual orientation. I would like to point out that they were roommates, sharing a one-bedroom flat in a very expensive New York real estate market, and that they slept in separate beds. Not once in my growing up and watching the show did I consider another more insidious insinuation.

In Israel, they forgo any subtlety, and the two Ernie and Bert-like puppets who appear in the ads for the Electric Company are known to be gay; one is the "female" and the other is the "male." The verbal pun on an electrical socket works better in Hebrew, but you get the idea.

Perhaps, Rowling created a gay character in the importance of Dumbledore to give courage to children reading her books, children who may have questions about their sexuality but may be afraid to announce it or discuss it with adults. In that case, make Neville gay, he emerged heroic at the end of book seven and in fact in the future, teaches at Hogwarts. Hooray for macho gay Neville and kudos to his Alma mater for have a non-discriminatory hiring policy.

This Dumbledore incident raises the same concerns for me as the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. Call me a prude, but I believe that every person is entitled to his and her privacy as regards choices of intimacy. I don't need to see a heterosexual couple having sex in their car or snogging at a street corner, and the same applies for me with homosexuals, bisexuals and the magical folk. (Being politically correct, I must immediately apologize to any other active sexual group for not mentioning you, I actually don't want to watch you in the bedroom either.)

What happens in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom, across the board.

When the gay and lesbian community feels the need to have a parade in Jerusalem, specifically after they have marched in several other cities in Israel, it tells me that they themselves are not comfortable enough in their own skin and their own status. They must be "in the face" of the rest of the presumed intolerant population, in a city that is holy to all religions. Because if there is a parade that divides the city, and starts civil and religious war, people will have to notice them.

As a Jewish woman, I also don't have a great need to attend a synagogue that is egalitarian, simply because it gives women a larger role in the Orthodox ritual. I am content with my personal relationship with G-d, and I don't need the boys' club to let me in to feel better about myself spiritually, or to prove something.

We are all so busy trying to be "tolerant" and "inclusive", that we lose our internal truths. Instead of pulling over a suspicious 25 year old Muslim male in the airport, the 86 year old woman bringing donuts to her grandchildren is stripped-searched, because the cream inside the pastry might be an explosive. International travel may not be any safer, but at lease we did not offend the Arab terrorist.

Harry Potter 7, A New York Story

I myself cannot take credit for this story, which I relate from my friend Ami in New York, I wanted to share it. She writes:

"I was sitting in my Chiropractor's office the other day, in his waiting room, across from an older couple who were reading his and hers HP7. I was about 200-300 pages ahead of them, and got to page 697 (something like that) and started to tear up, to where I was sniffling a little bit. The man next to me and I had had a conversation about how he was waiting for his 13 year old to finish the book, and when he saw me reach for a Kleenex, he moved away. The woman of the couple across from me said, "Oh I can't take this, I'm sorry," got up and moved away from me as well.

I felt like a new breed of speed reading leper."

Meanwhile, here in Israel, my book club spent a solid half hour discussing whether the Potter series deserves all this attention, or whether it is just another reformulation of the classic Science Fiction/Fantasy genre of good vs evil. Needless to say, we had all read it, many of us instead of the assigned book of the month.

Look at the damage JK Rowling has wrought.

Speed Reader

I have been a Speed Reader since the second grade, not to be confused with my childhood literary hero, "Easy Reader", as played by Morgan Freeman on The Electric Company. Dressed in my party outfit and waiting for my parents' guests to arrive, I finished an entire Nancy Drew book in less than a half hour; totally absorbed and scanning the text, I hadn't noticed the adults milling around with their drinks and their appetizers until I had finished the book.

This changed slightly in graduate school, when my mind would get stuck on the more complex and crucial medical terminology, as I forced myself to read more slowly, to make sure not to miss information. I have over time, however, developed another nasty reading habit, which I employ most liberally with murder mysteries and fiction: I read the last chapter before I start the rest of the book. Yikes, you're thinking, doesn't that ruin the suspense? Yes it does, and it is a remnant of my Type A control-freak behaviour, I need to know the ending so I can spot the clues to the resolution in the rest of the text.

Of course you don't need this methodology when reading the works of Charles Dickens, because every ending is the same: "And when the author fulfilled his word requirement, it turned out that the sad waif hungry orphan boy was really the son of the Duke, he married his true love who was able to look past the sad waif hungry circumstances of his life, and they raised proper Victorian children." When I speed read, I must get through the first 50 pages in order to capture my interest; I don't think I have ever gotten past the first 50 pages of any Dickens novel, even when I had to read it in high school.

Today, I stood on line - though not in costume - in anticipation to receive the last book in the Harry Potter series. In my excitement, the pre-order reserve form has been taped to my front door for the last three days. I read the New York Times review, which did not give away any spoilers, those bastards...

I now hold the book in my hand (the British version) and have a most important decision to make: do I read the epilogue first?

Duh, of course I do.

Bread Lines, Child Poverty

As of next week, the price of bread will increase by 10-12% because of an increase in the price of flour. The three major bakeries in the country would like to strike, because while their overhead increases, the government, rather than the direct supplier, will be determining the price of bread and will cut into the bakeries' profit margin, and their right to run their own business.

My favorite religious MK and Minister, Eli Yishai - the Israeli Voldemort to Harry Potter - has demanded that the government increase financial subsidies to the religious poor, who will be able to buy less bread for their perpetually expanding families. These same families who refuse to use birth control, who do not serve in the army and do not pay taxes, are now asking an already tenuous social welfare system to spread itself even thinner. Some of them even actively work against the Israeli government, but when they do not deign to find a job and take an active role in improving the lives of their family, the government they decry is expected to pick up the pieces.

From the threats of bread shortages and strikes, you would think we lived in the USSR , waiting on line for bread; and bringing Israeli children into the world - over a million and a half who live below the poverty line - who do not have enough money in the house to be properly fed and clothed and educated.

I believe that it is irresponsible at the very least, if not amoral to bring children in the world because God said "Be fruitful and multiply," and then expect God (or the government) to provide while those who can work, choose instead to sit on their gluteus maximus. I would like to believe that there is a small percentage of religious men learning in seminaries who have a brilliant mind and who will contribute to the spiritual and social well being of their community, and to the Jewish community at large. Let us reward quality over quantity; David Ben Gurion, a secular Zionist, felt it was important to have a core group of religious Torah students. I doubt that he anticipated his program would become a cancer in Israeli society.

The government should not encourage those who use religion to shirk their responsibility to family and to State.

The State of Israel vs. Harry Potter

As the release date of the final Harry Potter book arrives, the frenzy spills over into every country, into every aspect of life. The Israeli government, apparently resigned to the fact that JK Rowling is promoting witchcraft to children, has a larger issue with the fact that the book will be released on a Saturday, and that bookstores all over the country will violate the Sabbath in order to give Potter fans their fix.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Employment, Eli Yishai, is a religious Sephardic member of the Shas party, and is threatening to impose fines on any local book distributor who puts their customers first. Technically, he has the law on his side, the "Hours of Work and Rest Law," which stipulates that businesses must be closed on the Sabbath; in theory, this country was established based upon Jewish (halachic) law. Yishai claims that by violating the Sabbath in order to fulfill the agreement with the publishers abroad - not to mention us crazed muggles -Israel has lost its religious identity as a "light unto the nations," preferring instead to emulate the other inferior nations, and thus bring us down to their level.

This reminds me of the hullabaloo each year as more and more businesses sell leavened bread during Passover, also a technical violation of the law, but the government becomes more impotent each year in enforcing the letter of the law. Yishai fights a losing battle, as more supermarkets and clubs and malls remain open on the Sabbath; there is clearly a victory of marketing and commercialism over religion.

Israelis do what they want, when they want. Over three years ago, a law was passed that forbade smoking in public areas, big red signs with an "x" through a cigarette popped up in every coffee house. Yet another example of a "law without teeth" (as it is referred to in Hebrew). Go to any restaurant or coffee house or office building, and you will find several Israelis smoking in a cluster, happily sitting under the big red sign. If you politely point out that they are in violation of the law and your personal air space, that they are causing irreparable damage to their body and to those around them due to second hand smoke, they merely shrug their shoulders and continue their break.

Furthermore, the Torah forbids smoking, according to the phrase "And you shall live by them," meaning that any action done by a person that will physically endanger their body and their very existence represents a violation of the precepts of the Torah. Yet, the religious are one of the worst offenders, introducing students even of the age of 13, in every religious institution, to the "benefits" of smoking. You don't see their teachers rallying against smoking or trying to prevent its proliferation, just because G-d said so.

While claiming to fight an objective battle for the law, Minister Yishai is in actuality abusing his power as a minister, a position gained by hypocritical party maneuvering, to try to impose a way of life on those who do not have to accept his view of the world, of G-d and of religious observance.

I find it ironic that on the same day that the religious sector of the State of Israel has declared war on Harry Potter, these same members of the Knesset are purposely delaying a law which would protect minors from sex offenders, and would result in hundreds of people who have sexually assaulted minors in the past to freely walk around the streets of Israel without supervision, eager to strike again at an innocent victim. A nation that claims to aspire to be a "light unto the nations" must first re-align its priorities to its citizens and to the planet it inhabits.