Update: videos are now embedded in the post. Enjoy!
As I mentioned in my brief first-day J Street conference round up post, I secured interviews with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative (best known for the Ground Zero Mosque, which is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque), and Mona Eltahawy, the Egyptian journalist and activist who rocked the socks off the J Street conference. Those videos are now online; the YouTube playlist is here. There are three videos – Mona Eltahawy on social media in the Jasmine Revolution and its potential in the future of the Arab and Muslim world, my question for Imam Rauf on the religious justification for his work, and footage of a few other press-folk asking him questions. Check them out!
Mona did a superb job of addressing the straw man argument made by most of the prominent critics of the social-media-as-organizing-tool theory (Malcolm Gladwell, Evgeny Morozov, etc.). That is, she made a strong case for how Twitter and Facebook were essential in helping garner support for a mass meeting and demonstration of a kind that was quite rare under Mubarak. Notably, she doesn’t claim that it was Twitter or Facebook that toppled the regime. No, that distinction belongs to the brave Egyptians who risked their lives to claim their basic human rights of freedom of speech and assembly. But if you look closely, most of us arguing for social media’s importance in democratic movements aren’t saying that it’s the Internet itself that overthrows regimes, just that it’s a tool for those who desire to do so. The key to any organized resistance movement, especially one that aspires to nonviolence, is organization. Today, the Internet is often one of the last places where free exchange of ideas can take place. Its fast pace and adaptability mean that dedicated users can often stay one step ahead of those trying to shut down the flow of information. This is what makes it important and in some ways game-changing.
Imam Rauf, who’s been one of my personal heroes for a long time, spoke beautifully about the religious underpinnings of his peace work. I hadn’t planned to ask him about this – the question came about as a result of a topic of discussion on the panel on Jewish-Muslim community relations on which he’d just spoken. One Jewish community leader explained a program called “Iftar in the Sukkah,” in which local Muslims and Jews gathered at an Orthodox shul to share the evening break-fast meal during Ramadan, which for the past few years has overlapped with Sukkot. The image of Muslims and Jews taking part in this ritual together was, for me, amazing, and reminded me of the phrase “ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha” – “spread over us your sukkah of peace.” This is pretty much one of my favorite liturgical lines ever, and I felt that I just had to ask Imam Rauf about it. So I mentioned that connection, and asked him what scriptural or Islamic theological justification he found for his work. His answer, that it’s rooted in the very word “Islam,” coming from “Salaam,” was completely in line with his messages of peace and mutual understanding.
I continue to be inspired by the work that both of these courageous activists do every day. Mona Eltahawy speaks truth to power, and Imam Rauf (and the Park 51 project overall) has handled himself with incredible grace in the face of one of the worst smear campaigns I’ve ever seen, and more generally in a climate of increasing American Islamophobia. May they both continue their work and dedication, and may their efforts be rewarded.
When I heard that Debbie Friedman had passed away, I was sitting in a conference room at the San Francisco Federation, participating in a board meeting for Keshet, a nonprofit organization working for the full inclusion of GLBT Jews in Jewish Life. I learned of Debbie’s passing via a message posted on Twitter by a lesbian Jewish educator with whom I used to work. The news hit our meeting hard. We stopped for a moment of silence. After all, she was one of us.
Sadly, Debbie Friedman was not a member of the Keshet board of directors. She was, however, a lesbian Jew. But reading the press asking for healing prayers during her recent illness, or the overwhelming displays of grief and affection in both the Jewish and mainstream press since her passing, you’d never know it.
I didn’t know Debbie personally. But like most liberal Jews my age who have been even the slightest bit involved with organized Judaism, I’ve been touched by her melodies. Most of those songs came to me second- or third-hand, learned at summer camp and USY events from song-leaders and enthusiastic youth leaders who taught their friends to sing “Not By Might” or her havdalah niggun as though they were as old and as central to Judaism as the Torah itself. Although I eventually became familiar with Debbie Friedman’s name, I still prefer to hear her songs shouted by enthusiastic teenagers over her considerably more polished renditions. And it wasn’t until I reached graduate school that I learned that the havdalah melody I had been singing since the fifth grade came from her wellspring of melody.
I didn’t know Debbie personally. But as someone who’s been a leader in the Jewish GLBT world for a number of years, I’ve heard persistent stories about her life as a lesbian. It seems that Debbie’s sexuality was an open secret; everybody knew about it, but no one spoke of it. This made me angry. Was she ashamed? Did she fear for her career? From all accounts, Debbie was incredibly humble – is it possible that she didn’t realize how central and beloved she was to not only her Reform Movement, but to contemporary American Judaism as a whole? I can’t imagine a single synagogue refusing to sing her prayer for healing because the love of her life was a woman, but maybe Debbie could.
I don’t bear any ill-will towards Debbie for staying in the closet. But her life in the closet was double-barreled tragedy: how sad that Debbie could not live her life with wholeness, and how sad that so many queer kids were deprived such an important role model. How ironic that the tyranny of the closet overpowered the woman whose songs let us let go for a moment of what the world might think of us, just long enough to shout “Nutter butter peanut butter” or sway with our arms around our friends and not worry if we looked gay.
My friends who knew Debbie tell me that she had a life-partner. I don’t know her partner’s name, because all the press around Debbie’s illness and passing only asked for prayers and comfort on behalf of Debbie’s sister, family and friends. I hope this did not add to the unbearable pain and loss her partner must be experiencing now, but how could it not?
My friends who knew Debbie tell me that she struggled against the closet, that as recently as this year she expressed a desire to come out and a loss as to how to do so. It saddens me to think of her life ending, prematurely, with this business left unfinished. I hope whoever becomes the guardian of her legacy will follow through on this wish of Debbie’s, so that her life can be a blessing to future generations of GLBT Jews, and to all Jews.
Debbie Friedman‘s memory is a blessing. Beyond the hundreds of songs she composed, she was a pioneer of an entire genre of Jewish religious music (sometimes known as “American nusach”) that has revolutionized American Jewish prayer. My memories of Debbie are too numerous to put in a comment, so I’m putting some of them in a new post.
Everything I know about songleading I learned from Debbie Friedman. She could lead a group in song (whether she was performing a concert or leading a service) with her little finger. I had the opportunity to study songleading with her at Hava Nashira for four years. At my first Hava Nashira in 1997, in Debbie’s songleading workshop, it was my turn to get up and teach a song to the group, and then be critiqued by the group. After I finished, the first thing Debbie said was “You need to take off your clothes. Get naked.” After I got over the shock, it became clear that she was speaking figuratively; she meant that when we lead a group in song or prayer, we need to shed our inhibitions. And she was right; I have taken her advice to heart ever since then (as well as laughed many times about the time Debbie Friedman told me to take off my clothes).
In some ways she was a larger-than-life figure. She composed hundreds of songs without knowing how to read music; if you asked her for the chords to a song, she would say that she didn’t know the names of the chords, but she would play it so you could watch and write them down (“…and then it’s this one with the two fingers over here…”). There was the time at NFTY Convention 1997 when she broke a string during “Miriam’s Song”, and the backup musicians kept on going while she removed the broken string, put on a new one, wound it, tuned it, and came back in for a triumphant final chorus. And then there was the time at Hava Nashira when the power was out on Shabbat morning. Before services began, Debbie taught her new melody for Yotzeir Or (“creator of light”). When we got to that point in the service, we sang Debbie’s Yotzeir Or… and all the lights went back on!
Yet despite her larger-than-life celebrity, Debbie Friedman never sought out the spotlight. Her goal was always (as she wrote in the liner notes to Sing Unto God back in 1972) “the importance of community involvement in worship”. Debbie was at Limmud NY in 2006, where I was leading the Shabbat team. We had asked Debbie to lead havdalah for the conference. Then, on Shabbat afternoon, she told me that she was having second thoughts, and didn’t think it would be appropriate for her to do it. She felt that she was already famous, and that Limmud should be an opportunity for a new generation to take the reins, and that it would be a step backwards for her to lead it. My thought as a program organizer was that this would have been a good conversation to have several weeks before, but now that it was a few hours before havdalah, it was too late to rethink the plan for an 800-person program. But Debbie persisted, and tried to encourage me, of all people, to do it. To be clear, she was Debbie Friedman, and I was (and still am) a nobody, but I was one of her students and she was encouraging me to take off my clothes. In the end, Debbie led havdalah after all, and it was amazing of course, but what made it amazing was the way she brought the whole room together in song.
So Debbie Friedman has passed away. JTA has an article and the URJ has issued a statement. Her passing has been really sad for me and thousands of others. I will write a longer post in the coming days but I thought I would invite those of you who were touched by her music and dedication to the Jewish people share your Remembering Debbie stories in the comments here as well as on Twitter with the Hash Tag #rememberingdebbie.
Here is mine: Once in the late 1990s Debbie preformed at House of the Book at the then Brandeis-Bardin Institute and she told us that Jews can’t clap on 2 and 4 and proceed to prove it to us. It was funny. It was sad. It was classic Debbie Friedman.
Please take a moment and sing her songs, think of her contribution to modern Jewish life and how we all would not be here talking on this blog and fighting about important progressive issues if it weren’t for people liker her throughout history.
She now needs us to provide her the healing and support she has always provided us.
Thank you.
Update: There will be a healing service for Debbie Friedman at the JCC of Manhattan and it will be streamed online so people unable to attend in person can watch online.
(Full disclosure – I’m currently a student in a joint Pardes/Hebrew College MA program)
So, R’ Daniel Landes, Pardes Rosh Yeshiva, published this review of R’ Art Green’s new book, Radical Judaism. I’m not going to excerpt it, because you should just go read the whole thing.
Here’s a leaked response from R’ Green:
To the editor:
Rabbi Daniel Landes’ da’ mah she-tashiv (“Know what to answer the heretic”) approach to my Radical Judaism, protecting innocents from “the dangers lurking in the rhetoric that Green and like-minded thinkers employ,” represents a theological bankruptcy lurking in traditional Jewish circles. The forces of religion fought two great battles in the twentieth century, one against evolution and the other, taken more seriously by Jews, against Biblical criticism. It lost them both, quite decisively. These defeats, plus the Holocaust, are real parts of the baggage that any intellectually honest Jewish theology must confront. My book is an attempt to create a viable Judaism in the face of those realities. Landes may choose to live in a closed circle that pretends these uncomfortable facts do not exist, continuing to play by the old theological rules. For Jews living outside those circles, such an approach does not work. He should know; many of his students are among them. More »
Jack Wertheimer and his team of sociologists and researchers have just released an incredibly informative report (PDF) examining the demographics, experiences, and work of young Jewish leaders, stemming from hundreds of interviews and thousands of survey responses. Notably, it avoids characterizing all activities undertaken by such people as necessarily “anti-establishment,” while delving far more deeply into the actual views they hold than any such study or article I’ve seen before. It covers just about every aspect of Jewish life, sorting Jewish organizational endeavors into three categories: protective, progressive, and expressive. The report files most older established organizations (AIPAC, AJC, ADL, etc.) under the “protective” category: they exist to protect some component of Jewishness (or Israel). Progressive organizations are those focused on causes such as environmentalism or social service, and expressive organizations are those specifically oriented toward new methods of Jewish expression.
It’s also notable that the report spends a fair amount of time analyzing how “establishment” organizations have been extremely important in actually creating these leaders: many have gone to day school and Jewish camps, and newer cutting-edge Jewish organizations are to a great extend funded and supported by older ones.
This dynamic receives less attention within the Jewish community than it should, in my view with important consequences. New organizations are often responses to perceived deficiencies in the existing system, not necessarily attempts to reject it out of hand. So even while older Jews and establishment organizations fund the newer ones, Jews at large often perceive the two as diametrically opposed. This isn’t to say “there’s more unity in the Jewish community than you think” (I hate the “we actually all agree” argument – it’s stupid to try to sugarcoat internal divisions), just that young Jews get a bad rap as being uninterested in anything establishment. The flip side, which the report also covers, is that young Jews need to be less reactionary in distancing themselves from the establishment.
Check out the full report for more in-depth analysis of current trends in Jewish organizations and communities.
P.S. I used the word “establishment” six times in this post. Actually, now it’s seven. Anyone have an idea for a better word? I’m a bit tired of it.
L’kovod the aseres yamey tshuva, I present two interesting writers who converted from Judaism to Christianity. Let’s put it this way: They had to worry about a whole different kind of Tshuva:
Jacobo Fijman (1898-1970)
Poet and Madman. Born in Bessarabia, Fijman lived and died in Argentina. Spent much of his life in a state mental asylum. Surrealist poet, gnostic and anarchist. A taste:
Demencia:
el camino más alto y más desierto.
Oficio de las máscaras absurdas; pero tan humanas.
Roncan los extravíos;
tosen las muecas
y descargan sus golpes
afónicas lamentaciones.
Semblantes inflamados;
dilatación vidriosa de los ojos
en el camino más alto y más desierto.
Se erizan los cabellos del espanto.
La mucha luz alaba su inocencia…
Nicolae Steinhardt (1912–1989). Theologian and Memoirist. Underground Favorite. Revered in Romania for his Jurnalul fericirii (The Diary of Happiness; 1991), an account of his journey to orthodox Christianity during the years he spent in Communist prisons. A Taste:
Outside a bakery, an old beggar, small, discreet. I give him 3 or 4 lei. He takes off his hat, respectfully, and thanks me for a long while. Why, I don’t know – the memory of my father, the physical resemblance (small and stooping) – his gesture – so polite, the shame of being saluted by an old man for a few lei, the onslaught of images of prison in my memory, revelatory of the human condition’s wretchedness – but I burst out crying in the middle of the street, like a madman.
My rabbi made a bold move during his d’var Torah on the first day of Rosh Hashanah services this year. After a brief word on Park 51 earlier in the service, in which he condemned the bigoted opposition in the strongest terms I could have imagined, I wasn’t expecting too much more fire and brimstone, especially on Israel-Palestine. And he looked sort of nervous to me – who wouldn’t, facing such a large crowd (this is Rosh Hashanah, mind you, so we’re talking every Jew in town) that was by and large far more conservative than you. Yet he called for an end to the Gaza blockade and asked congregants to write a letter to Netanyahu’s office urging him to fully engage in the peace talks and bring home results. Strong stuff.
Nine years after the attacks of 9/11, I want to stop and think about framing. How we frame conflicts, both in our mind and externally, has a lot to do with more concrete things like foreign policy, or the nature of the domestic discourse on an issue. 9/11 was an attack on the core of Americanism, and not only because of the physical spectacle of the WTC being leveled by a bunch of reclusive angry dudes. It represents the clash of two worldviews – an American constitutionalist perspective in which personal freedom is of the highest importance, and a religious fundamentalist one (which religion it is is completely irrelevant) in which those who think wrong, believe wrong, act wrong, are to be punished by those who know better. It’s disgusting no matter who it comes from.
In that bin Laden most likely knew what the U.S.’ response to 9/11 would be (“We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy’s intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran,” says Ted Koppel), he made a masterful calculation in goading us into it. But I can’t help but think that he also gave us the greatest opportunity ever to definitively rise above the war-on-terror paradigm. It’s not too late to change course and stop trampling on the mangled remains of the constitutional freedoms (see above links, courtesy of Koppel) bin Laden sought to demonstrate the inferiority of, an effort for which we’ve done far more than he ever could have. This would take a reframing at the national level, something Obama did a bit of in his Cairo speech, but, more importantly, it would also take people of conscience standing up to bigotry at every level. Park 51 is the starkest example we’ve seen so far that this society has yet to move past the paralyzing ethos of American vs. un-American. Or, in simpler terms, a lot of people in this country are still racist.
And so, G()d’s children are still drowning. And until we end the war on terror abroad and the war on Islam at home, and until we, as my rabbi urged, truly walk in the other’s shoes and know their pain as we do our own, the water rises higher. May the memories of the 3000 innocents who died on 9/11, and the thousands more who have died since in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and more, not be forgotten.
With one month to go until Yom Kippur, The Shalom Center and Jewish Currents have teamed up to create a video celebrating 10 contemporary martyrs who were killed in the past 50 years “because they were affirming profound Jewish values of peace, justice, truth, and healing of the Earth.”
I’m always afraid of saying anything about women on the internet because obviously I’m a moron with the wrong junk between my legs. But I gravitate toward saying things about rabbis. Especially lists of them. So here we go.
The results got us thinking about all the female rabbis whose influence cannot necessarily be measured by their national/international profile, their media presence or the size of their constituencies — some of the criteria on which Newsweek bases its rankings — but who, nonetheless, are playing important roles in shaping the Jewish story.
When my mom was a kid, she invented the children’s caucus of the Texas feminist something or other (she’ll correct me in the comments, I’m sure), so I grew up with feminism. I like it. I even like saying I’m a feminist myself. So the idea of The Sisterhood 50 appeals to me. Yet, in practice, a lot of it looks like wishful thinking that only serves to prove one point: There just aren’t that many women in influential rabbinic roles.More »
“We are extending our hand in peace,” said Ghawi. “We have lost hope that the Israeli establishment is able to make decisions, so we wish to talk directly to the Israeli public. Also, we are here to say that the prisoners are our sons and we favor their release. It is impossible to talk only about one side of the equation – the release of Shalit also means the release of Palestinian prisoners.”
Neither my wife nor I were able to make it to the rally last night. Before reading this story, it didn’t even occur to us to go. But we discussed standing in solidarity with Nasser – as Bassam Aramin, one of the founders of Combatants for Peace, said to me recently, “they’re all our children.”
I woke up this morning to discover that Nasser, his son, and one of the Jewish Israeli activists who was with him were stopped for questioning on their way to the protest last night. They were detained, searched, and humiliated by the police, for no reason other than being a Palestinian and a leftist walking together in Jerusalem.
“They told us it was their right to search, take our cell phones and interrogate us. I asked them ‘Why are you arresting me,’ and they replied ‘because we hate Arabs, but we hate people like you even more’.”
Yotam Wolf, the Israeli activist who was with Nasser last night, tells his version of the story here in Hebrew.
It seemed to me a profound act, for Nasser to stand in solidarity with the Shalit family – to say that their child, as well as the many Palestinian children currently (and in many cases illegally) held in prison, deserve to be able to go home to their parents. I thought back to the night of the flotilla, when two women who were sitting in the Shalit protest tent outside the prime minister’s house, came to shout at those of us protesting nearby – a protest organized, at least in part, by the Sheikh Jarrah activists. How wonderful would it have been to have been able to say to them that our Palestinian friends protested in favor of Shalit’s release as well – that we want freedom and security for everyone’s children.
But alas, the forces that be seem not to be interested in that kind of solidarity. Ynet reports that Nasser will try again to visit the protest tent in the coming days. I hope the next visit is less eventful.
In my last post, I expressed strong dismay at specific actions of the Freedom Flotilla organizers:
When the Gaza Freedom Flotilla refused Noam Shalit’s offer to advocate for them with the Israeli government if they’d deliver items to his son, they demonstrated a motive in their analysis of the conflict.
Two commenters, kyleb and Jew Geuvara, quickly pointed out a factual error on my part which I feel deserves its own post not merely as a retraction and acknowledgement of insufficient research on my part, but because it significantly changes my perception of the situation. kyleb’s comment linked to this article which contains the following statement:
Israel claims that we refused to deliver a letter and package from POW Gilad Shalit’s father. This is a blatant lie.
Read the rest of the article for the full story, but it appears that the flotilla’s purported refusal to deliver said letter and package was concocted entirely to smear the flotilla, whose organizers had in fact agreed to Noam Shalit’s request. Not only does this damage the image of Noam Shalit as a peace activist, but it absolves the flotilla of a great deal of blame in the situation. While I’m still furious at whoever thought it was good idea to fight back at the commandoes boarding the Mavi Marmara, I no longer view the two parties (Israel and the flotilla organizers) as equally culpable. While I reject the characterization of Israel as brutal, bloodthirsty, and having planned a “massacre” (a term which I find inaccurate and non-constructive), I believe they deserve the lion’s share of the blame for what went wrong.
The blockade of Gaza is one of the most egregious components of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It imposes tremendous suffering and has not provided Israel with any significant tactical advantage. Yet Jewish leaders continually voice support for it.
“There are 1.5 million people living in Gaza and only one of them really needs humanitarian aid,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said to the Knesset on Monday. “Only one of them is locked in a tiny room and never sees the light of day, only one of them is not allowed visits and is in uncertain health – his name is Gilad Shalit, and this month four years will have passed since he was kidnapped.”
“In fact, there is no humanitarian crisis.” – ADL Director Abe Foxman
If your analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from a desire to rationalize Israeli policies no matter what, you end up making completely asinine statements like those above.
Shalit is often invoked as a method of ignoring or excusing the suffering of Gazans, which is a shame, because his captivity is horrible, inhumane, and criminal. The difficulty for someone like me who unequivocally opposes both the blockade and his captivity is in not coming off as belittling the former. So Barak’s quote hits me especially hard – denying the extent of the externally-imposed suffering, economic isolation, and restriction of natural development that the blockade causes, in order to shift the conversation to a single captive soldier of your army is just dishonest. This isn’t even a matter of comparing suffering (see this New Voices post for my thoughts on why that’s unproductive anyway) – using Shalit as a tool to shift the conversation away from the real-life effects of the blockade does a disservice both to Gazans and Shalit.
And it goes both ways. When the Gaza Freedom Flotilla refused Noam Shalit’s offer to advocate for them with the Israeli government if they’d deliver items to his son, they demonstrated a motive in their analysis of the conflict. Rather than accepting his offer of peace (which would have provided them with a tactical advantage as well), they chose to do exactly what Ehud Barak did, only in reverse. There’s very little excuse for not engaging in a humanitarian mission (and “because it doesn’t fit our opinion of the situation” is particularly weak). Had the Freedom Flotilla carried Noam Shalit’s package and letter to his son, they would have become a powerful metaphor for the peace activists’ ability and willingness to reach across to the Other and understand their pain. Instead, they demonstrated that there was no room for an Israeli’s suffering in their precooked narrative.
In the same way, Israel must immediately lift the blockade, and until they do, Jewish American leaders must stop excusing it. Having an honest debate about its merits and effects is legitimate, but Barak and Foxman take it too far. Changing the terms of the conversation in the manner they do is plain old dishonest.
I am antagonistic towards the Jewish establishment. Reiterating my evaluation of their leadership in my prior post, they offer no compelling vision beyond raising money to feed a bloated infrastructure dedicated to fighting yesterday’s battles.
Which is why attending tonight’s benefit for Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps was so important for refreshing my faith in Jewry. Tonight several hundred Jews of all ages honored not just a special leader, their founder Rabbi David Rosenn, but a burgeoning community that is fun, deep, and committed to values I powerfully share. Rosenn has moved on after 13 years to become COO for the New Israel Fund, and the bittersweet appreciation for and from him was tear jerking.
In his remarks, Rosenn touched on the strains of thought at war in the American Jewish psyche: It is an interesting time in our community, he said, where old institutions are giving way; what will emerge in their place is uncertain. People don’t just wind up with good values, they are taught them, and not just in the classroom — they learn when their community lives out those values. Ultimately, justice is not only important for the continuity of Judaism but for democratic societies as a whole.
Noting the passion present, I could only echo the sentiments of Avodah alum Cara Herbitter upon introducing Rosenn, “I wish the establishment would adopt the values of Avodah.”
I spent plenty time lampooning and harpooning the organized Jewish community. I lambast because I care. I care that Jews and Judaism stand for something, that we represent something to the world other than our own existence. I hunger for leaders who see the same visions for a Jewish role in creating right relationships globally. If that room is any indication of where the Jewish community is headed, then we are redeemed of all our predecessors’ selfish failures.
In the room I saw Jewish continuity of a wholly healthier paradigm. Attendees discussed the obvious lesson of a pillar of the social justice world taking his credibility to a begging frontier: social justice in Israel. And in the territories. Same-sex couples lauded their acceptance here. A speaker of intermarried background made us all laugh by integrating Irish influence into her Yiddish vocabulary. The values here were far more than just direct service or structural justice.
The event took the occasion to announce the launch of Pursue, the renamed AJWS-Avodah Partnership, taglined “Action for a just world.” Already the central address for Jewish change-makers in New York City, San Francisco and DC, the community it represents also holds keys to a leadership with a modern vision. Interim director Ilanit Gerblich Kalir concluded this evening by saying, “We work for the day when every Jew can turn to another and ask, ‘Where did you do your service?’” In order for that day to come, we must first have a day when Jewish leaders can role model the answer. This is a start. We need more, the world needs more. But this is a beautiful start.
Mazal tov to Jewschool’s own ZT, on the occasion of his marriage today to BR! ZT has blogged extensively about the elements that make Jewish wedding celebrations so joyous, from sheva berachot to shtick, based on experiences with many different semachot, and so we wish BR and ZT the joy of all those celebrations combined.
MJ Rosenberg, over at MediaMatters, has a great piece on the Millenial-American relationship to Israel, which is, as he says, typified by the worldview of the host of The Daily Show.
And what is the worldview Stewart conveys? It is skepticism about any and all ideology, a belief that racial and ethnic boundaries between people are just plain dumb, and, above all, that true believers in anything are downright funny.
Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart is Jewish and assertively so. Being a Jew is part of his shtick. But he’s clearly neither religious nor an ethnic chauvinist. As for his politics on Israel, I’d classify him as J Street. And that makes him typical of both the late boomers and their kids.
That is why all the free Birthright trips to Israel aren’t changing anything. And it’s why those cheering young AIPAC-ers do not represent anything.
The generation coming up now tries to think for themselves. And, although no smart kid would ever turn down a free trip to Washington, DC or to any foreign country with a beach, they take the propaganda with a grain of salt. It does not matter that they are told that the Palestinians are responsible for their own problems, these kids don’t buy it.
I feel like it’s a pretty decent description of my generation. When my brother was going on birthright, I sent him a copy of Joe Sacco’s Palestine for another perspective (Rosenberg’s grain ofsalt). My own politics aren’t J Street’s, but I appreciate the work they are doing to widen the acceptable conversation within the US Jewish Community – despite the recent witch-hunting in SF and Boston (I thought those were liberal cities!).
Last week, Warren Goldstein, the chief rabbi of South Africa and a persistent critic of the report, wrote in the newspaper Business Day that the judge should be allowed to attend the bar mitzvah because every synagogue “should welcome in a tolerant and nonjudgmental way all who seek to enter and join in our service and pray to God.”
Glad these guys realized the error of their ways.
But Rabbi Goldstein also renewed his criticism of the judge, saying his report “has unfairly done enormous damage to the reputation and safety of the State of Israel and her citizens.”
Oh wait, that’s right. Never mind.
He [Goldstone] added that Rabbi Goldstein’s “rhetoric” about tolerance “simply does not coincide with how my family and I have been treated.”
That just about covers it. It takes a pretty despicable lowlife to uninvite someone from their grandson’s Bar Mitzvah because of political differences. Rabbi Goldstein does not deserve to be a community leader.
One more thing. They didn’t just invite him back. They effectively “reached an agreement.”
A day earlier, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, which represents most of the country’s synagogues, issued a statement that outlined something like a quid pro quo: a promise of no protests on the bar mitzvah boy’s big day, in exchange for a meeting between the judge and leaders of the South African Zionist Federation and other Jewish organizations.
Disgusting. They actually felt the need to make political deals to preserve their image. Couldn’t have their constituents believing they were bighearted people willing to put aside political differences to celebrate together, or anything radical like that.
Last note: I can’t wait to see what comes out of that meeting. If Goldstone’s past encounters with his detractors are any measure, the SA Zionist Federation is going to be subject to a pretty thorough in-person fisking.
Jacobo Fijman (1898-1970)
Nicolae Steinhardt (1912–1989). Theologian and Memoirist. Underground Favorite. Revered in Romania for his Jurnalul fericirii (The Diary of Happiness; 1991), an account of his journey to orthodox Christianity during the years he spent in Communist prisons. A Taste:
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