Labels: American Jewish indifference to Israel, American Jewish leadership, American Jewish support for Israel, American Jews, David Friedman, Donald Trump, liberal Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:12 PM
0 comments
In blaming Israeli policy for the fact that on many U.S. campuses, the classmates of Jewish students “shun them for identifying with Israel at all,” perhaps American Jewish leaders are overlooking the failures at home, particularly among liberal progressive diaspora Jewish leaders. Many Jewish students are stuck entirely in an American bubble, with no understanding of the centrality of Jewish self-determination (i.e., Zionism) to our survival as a people. So how can they even begin to understand Israel, let alone give us advice?
For two decades, too many American Jews have ignored or downplayed the gratuitous post-colonial Israel-bashing from the supposedly liberal bastions such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and which are echoed in the mainstream media. When Israeli soldiers are repeatedly and falsely accused of being child murderers and war criminals, where is the outrage from the mainstream American Jewish establishment? A couple of years ago, the federations finally established a fund to fight boycotts, but this group is also largely invisible and very timid.
Instead, fringe Israeli voices that polarize and demonize our society under the façade of human rights, democracy and peace are given legitimacy and resources in America, and the Jewish leadership is silent or in some cases complicit. Much of the BDS war — and make no mistake, the goal is the elimination of Israel — involves bogus peace NGOs that received their initial funds and public relations boost via U.S.-based Jewish groups who thought they knew better than the Israeli public. Such groups include the Coalition of Women for Peace, the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions, Breaking the Silence, Jewish Voice for Peace, and many others.
And now, when the Israeli public finally demands an effective response to the NGOs that lead to this demonization, the American Jewish leadership condemns Israel, repeating liberal pieties about free speech, but without addressing the real issues. In all of the criticisms of the proposed new NGO funding transparency laws, I have yet to see any serious understanding of the threat or alternative strategies. On this, as on so many issues, criticizing Israel from a distance is far too easy.
When crying out for an Israeli peace plan, “any plan,” your interlocutor makes it seem so simple. Like most Israelis, I also hope for a peace plan, but not any plan, and certainly not one that will bring us yet another disaster when it fails. The reality that I see not far from the windows in my Jerusalem home includes Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Assad, Iran and others. Our only “peace partners,” led by Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah group, are corrupt and stuck in the rejectionist dead-end of 1948. So no, “any plan” that helps Israel’s PR among liberal students, but makes our security situation even worse, is not better than the status quo.
On this and many other issues, I understand why American Jewish leaders want us in Israel to take risks, and probably think that this is for our own good. But we do not see many American Jewish leaders taking many risks in terms of criticizing President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry when they put all of the blame and responsibility on Israel, and patronizingly give the Palestinians a free pass. And where are your tough decisions to exclude BDS groups and Israel bashers from the big “Jewish tent?”
So it is not only “that Israel’s leadership is moving in a direction at odds with the next generation of Americans,” but that America’s liberal Jewish leadership is moving in a direction at odds with Israel and our realities.Indeed.
Labels: American Jewish leadership, American Jewish support for Israel, American Jews, Breaking the Silence, Coalition of Women for Peace, Gerald Steinberg, Jewish Voice for Peace, liberal Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:42 AM
2 comments
The White House is targeting Jewish groups in its latest push to blunt congressional criticism of an Iran deal that observers expect to be sealed in the coming days, according to a recording of a strategy conference call obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and experts familiar with the call.
The White House’s liaison to the Jewish community on Monday advised dozens of progressive groups to push a poll commissioned and distributed by the liberal fringe group J Street, which has been defending a deal with Iran.
Matt Nosanchuk, an official in the White House Office of Public Engagement, who also serves as Jewish liaison, cited J Street’s poll and urged liberal activists present on the call to cite its numbers when defending a deal with Iran.
The private strategy call, which included more than 100 participants, was organized by the Ploughshares Fund, a liberal group that has spent millions of dollars to slant Iran-related coverage and protect the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts.
Nosanchuk told participants there is support for the deal “within the Jewish community, where J Street has recently done a poll that shows even in that community when you describe the terms of a deal you have upwards of 78 percent of respondents supporting it.”
Virtually all polling stretching back several months, including polling featured on conservative and progressive outlets, shows that while Americans are divided on the wisdom of negotiations, they believe that a deal would not prevent Iran from constructing a nuclear weapon.
Critics of J Street’s poll have pointed out that it polled respondents on a hypothetical deal that does not actually exist.The Ploughshares Fund's efforts to promote a nuclear Iran are led by Robert Creamer, a convicted felon
[Washington Free Beacon's Adam] Kredo obtained an audio recording of the call. “Progressive leaders on the call told participants to prepare for a ‘real war’ and repeatedly declared that “the other side will go crazy” in the coming days,” he reported.
White House officials stressed “the importance of this to the president,” and Creamer told activists they should be “blitzing the hell out of the Hill,” particularly Democrats. His wife, self-styled “pro-Israel” Rep. Schakowsky, reportedly shouted her encouragement during the call.
Creamer rose to public attention in 2009, when Breitbart News revealed that he had written the political blueprint for passing Obamacare while serving time in federal prison. Anticipating the election of a “progressive” president in 2008, Creamer had advised a campaign for “universal health care” that would serve as the first of several radical policy changes aimed at transforming America and the world. Creamer, a community organizing guru in Chicago, had advised the Obama campaign upon leaving prison.
Writing in Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr notes that Creamer and fellow activists aim to reduce the Iran deal to political terms: “This is to be all about party loyalty, and supporting the president and his agenda, because this is very important to him,” Baehr notes. “In time, after the critics make their case, the deal will likely be sold as a choice between war and peace…”.
Given that the emerging deal favors Iran, Baehr adds, the left-wing activists backed by the White House are effectively lobbying for the regime.This post is being presented in the interest of knowing your enemy.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, J Street, Jan Schakowsky, liberal Jews, P 5+1
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:45 PM
2 comments
Here’s my question. As Obama donned his yarmulke and embraced your community, did you also catch the hint of a warning? If you did, it was because the president was raising, very subtly, the specter of dual loyalty: the hoary allegation that Jews pursue their tribal interests to the detriment of the wider community or nation. Obama was certainly not engaging in anything so crude as that; nor is he an enemy of the Jewish people. But he did imply that many Jews—that is, Jews who support Benjamin Netanyahu—have indeed placed their narrow, ethnic interests above their commitment to universal humanistic values. In his view, they have betrayed those values. And so the warning was faint, but unmistakable: if Jews wish to avoid being branded as bigots, then they—you—must line up with him against Netanyahu.
“But the president is right,” many of you would no doubt reply. “Netanyahu’s values are not my values.” That may well be the case. Yet this is also why it is a trap for you to accept Obama’s claim that his fight with Netanyahu is a struggle over “values.” The struggle is not over values. Rather, at the core of the Netanyahu-Obama grudge match is one issue and one issue only: the president’s long-sought détente with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
To be sure, there are other sources of tension between the two men, both personal and political. Among them is the Israel-Palestinian issue, which the president dwelt upon at length in his remarks to you—but in the service of a goal that has nothing whatsoever to do with Israeli-Palestinian relations. If this sounds too calculating by half, consider three key points.But the real issue, says Doran, is Iran.
The president’s sophistry demonstrates a simple but profound truth: his commitment to the progressive values of tikkun olam is governed by its own “red lines,” and is entirely utilitarian. Which again raises the question: what was his purpose in stressing this shared progressive commitment in his address to you, and what was his purpose in subtly reminding you of the costs of failing to abide by its terms?
The answer, I hope, is obvious. On June 30, Obama will likely conclude a nuclear deal with Iran. This will spark a faceoff with Congress, which has already declared its opposition to the deal. Congress will inevitably pass a vote of disapproval, which Obama will inevitably veto. In order to defend that veto from a congressional override, however, he must line up 34 Senators—all Democrats. This calls in turn for a preemptive ideological campaign to foster liberal solidarity—for which your support is key. If the president can convince the liberal Jewish community, on the basis of “shared values,” to shun any suspicion of alignment with congressional Republicans or Benjamin Netanyahu, he will have an easier time batting down Congress’s opposition to the deal with Iran.
Progressive values have nothing to do with what is truly at stake in this moment of decision. Only one final question really matters: in your considered view, should the Islamic Republic of Iran be the dominant power in the Middle East, and should we be helping it to become that power? If your answer is yes, then, by all means, continue to applaud the president—loudly and enthusiastically—as he purports to repair the world.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, dual loyalty, Iranian nuclear threat, liberal Jews, tikkun olam
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:47 PM
1 comments
Many U.S. Jewish leaders are unnerved both by the new Iran nuclear agreement and the public falling out between President Barack Obama and his Israeli counterpart, developments that are creating a rift in the durable alliance between Jews and the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
Worried that Iran might still develop a nuclear weapon despite the accord announced Thursday, the Jewish leaders say they feel torn between an Obama administration that has pressed hard for a deal and an Israeli government that has repeatedly warned that Iran is a grave threat to the Jewish state and can’t be trusted to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
A group of Jewish Democratic House members met with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough in his office last week and cautioned that for them to help “sell a very unpopular [Iran nuclear] deal to our constituents,” Mr. Obama must “increase his popularity with our constituents,” said a Democratic congressman involved in the meeting.
Republicans have begun making moves to try to capitalize on this unease, hoping to peel away Jewish votes and campaign contributions that have historically skewed Democratic.Sadly, this is likely wishful thinking. Most American Jews couldn't find the Republican lever in a polling booth if it had flashing neon pink lights and punched them in the face.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Democrats, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, liberal Jews, P 5+1
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:25 PM
6 comments
The only meaningful commonality between Islamist and leftist dogma is hatred for Jews with power, first and foremost for Israel. And the singular creation of this alliance is the sides’ joint determination that it isn’t racist to hate the Jewish state, or Jews who refuse to condemn it.Are they capable of making the choice? Let's say I have my doubts.
In this state of affairs, the only outlet that leftists have for their moral outrage is Israel. Because while they fear being called racist, they know that being anti-Semitic will not expose them to charges of racism.
And they know Jews won’t assault them for attacking Israel and its supporters. So they project all the crimes perpetrated by Islamic fanatics on Israel.
For instance, this week Megan Marzec, the president of Ohio University’s Student Senate, posted a video of herself dousing herself in a bucket of “blood.”
Marzec explained, “This bucket of blood symbolizes the thousands of displaced and murdered Palestinians – atrocities which OU is directly complacent in [sic] through cultural and economic ties with the Israeli state.”
In other words, she accused Israel of the crimes Hamas seeks to inflict on Israel, and of the crimes that Islamist forces, such as al-Qaida, Islamic State and Boko Haram, are currently carrying out in their areas of operations.
The growing prevalence of anti-Semitism in leftist circles has placed Jewish leftists in a vulnerable position.
Their ideological movement is denying Jews the right to self-defense and self-determination and siding with Islamists who seek to annihilate them. For a growing number of leftist Jews, their new status as members of a hated group has made them feel it necessary to publicly side with Israel’s enemies against it.
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Lerman quoted an article published a few weeks before his in The New York Review of Books by Jonathan Freedland titled “Liberal Zionism After Gaza.”
Freedland argued that as the two-state solution becomes more and more remote, liberal Zionists “will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist.”
But this is of course absurd. The only way a person can uphold liberal values is by being a Zionist. Israel is the only country in the region that is a human rights-respecting liberal democracy that is governed by the rule of law.
What is becoming more and more difficult is being a Zionist while being a leftist. As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics, anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist dogma. And that anti-Semitism will express itself first and foremost as a virulent rejection of Israel and of Jews who refuse to disavow and condemn the Jewish state.
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Leftist Jews must take a lesson from Sotloff, who was reportedly a product of a Jewish-leftist worldview.
They should understand that the decision they are being required to make is not a choice between liberalism and Zionism, but between liberalism and a reactionary dogma that sits comfortably with genocidal Jew-haters and misogynist oppressors.
Labels: anti-Israel obsession, Leftist Jews, liberal Jews, Red-Green alliance
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:23 PM
0 comments
Peter Beinart, the de facto spokesman for Liberal Zionism, famously called for a boycott of the West Bank in 2012. In the same article, however, he also called for the increasing investment inside the Green Line, in order to distinguish “Zionist BDS” from the predominant BDS movement.
“Boycotting anything inside the green line invites ambiguity about the boycott’s ultimate goal — whether it seeks to end Israel’s occupation or Israel’s existence.”
MJ Rosenberg, a longtime critic of Israel’s West Bank policy, who was spurred by last week’s debate at the University of Michigan, to write a detailed piece about the duplicity of the BDS used the same argument:
The reason why BDS keeps failing despite the almost universal recognition that the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza, are illegal and immoral is that the BDS movement is not targeting the occupation per se. Its goal is the end of the State of Israel itself.
In its view, all of historic Palestine is occupied territory; that means Tel Aviv and Haifa as much as Hebron and Nablus. Obviously, a movement dedicated to eradication of Israel as a country is never going to achieve support other than from a radical fringe.
BDS is an all-or-nothing proposition. You can't support BDS and support a 'two-state solution.' Beinart and Rosenberg apparently see that. Does J Street? Do other 'liberal Zionists'? Hmmm.Rosenberg and other supporters of the two-state solution – including those who support a “limited boycott” of the West Bank for that purpose – are best positioned to see that the BDS movement is not a “peace” movement and does not aim for a Palestinians state alongside a Jewish state.
Labels: BDS, J Street, Leftist Jews, liberal Jews, MJ Rosenberg, Peter Beinart, two-state solution
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:22 PM
1 comments
The Israel-Palestine conflict is urgent for my green-sweatered friend in Ramallah whose house had been destroyed twice. Ambassador Dore Gold and Col. (res) Dr. Eran Lerman spoke to us about security at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. One map after another filled the screen in front of us as our speakers turned geographic boundaries into calculated threats, like the range of rockets, or the time needed to mobilize troops from A to B. For them, Israel’s fight is urgent. The man who spoke to us at Yasser Arafat’s grave emphasized the grave’s temporary location, to be moved to Jerusalem when (not if) Palestine reclaims the city. The conflict, for him, is urgent.Here's the second blog.
The amazing organizers of this trek are all Israelis. Five of them are Jewish and one of the is Arab Israeli. Was it easy for them to see the grave of Arafat, who is responsible of the death of so many Israeli civilians, their beloved ones specifically? But does that dispute the fact that the same person is also the founder of the PLO, hero of so many Palestinians symbolizing their fight for independence?
It is not at all easy to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is exactly why we listened to speeches at Harvard by Ari Shavit, the author of the book ‘The Triumph and Tragedy of My Promised Land’ and Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet, Israeli National Security Agency, who was appointed to the position right after the assassination of the Prime Minister Ytzhak Rabin. Then, during our tour in Israel, we were lucky enough to hear from Jodi Rudoren, the editor in chief of New York Times Jerusalem, Danny Siedemann, an attorney very much involved with the negotiations process, Dore Gold, foreign policy advisor to the Prime Minister Netanyahu, Nadav Tamir, senior policy advisor to the President of Israel Simon Peres, Eran Lerman, Deputy National Security Advisor for Foreign Policy and International Affairs, Dr. Rachel Korazim, a Holocaust educator, a Rabbi from Jewish settlements in West Bank and an Israel Defense Force officer along with those two Palestinian leaders.Actually, out of the named speakers, there are a lot more people of the Left than of the Right. I've added some links that explain why.
Labels: Ami Ayalon, Ari Shavit, Dore Gold, Harvard University, Jewish Federations of North America, Jewish philanthropy, Jodi Rudoren, liberal Jews, Nadav Tamir, Palestinian incitement, Palestinians, Yasser Arafat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:23 PM
0 comments
Imagine if a black leader led a group of students in a trip where they took a picture in front of the grave of a KKK leader who had lynched African-Americans?
Instead, try to imagine that an American Jewish leader (who is paid $482,000 by a Jewish philanthropy) took a pilgrimage to the grave of Baruch Goldstein and explained Goldstein’s “narrative.” When challenged, imagine said leader defended his action.
Do you think in either scenario said leader would remain employed?
Now, stop imagining. Barry Shrage, the president of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies - Greater Boston's Jewish Federation - chose to defend a visit by a group of Harvard students to pay tribute at Palestinian Arab leader Yasser Arafat's grave. Arafat was an arch-terrorist, a mass murderer - of course, much revered by the PA - and despite it, Shrage apparently had no problem with participating in the glorification of his memory, opting instead to attack those who called out the visit. Awful and despicable behavior.
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The extremist is Shrage, whose actions and behavior are well beyond the pale. Even those Jews and Israelis who support the peace process do not believe that Arafat was someone whose grave they can visit, let alone someone to admire.
While students blog on the Harvard College Israel Trek blog that “Our intention was not to honor Arafat, but rather to learn about the Palestinian narrative, of which Arafat is an important part,” donors to the Federation and Hillel are paying for young people to smile in front of the grave of a mass murderer. What, exactly, did they learn? Just what Aunt Annie must have in mind when writing her annual check to the UJA.I'll go a step further. In the aftermath of Oslo, the Israeli government spent a fortune trying to teach Israelis to 'understand the 'Palestinian' viewpoint.' The 'Palestinians' spent zero on trying to teach 'Palestinians' to understand the Israeli viewpoint. Instead, the 'Palestinians' did just the opposite: They incited their population to believe that if they murdered Jews they would reach a paradise.
Labels: Boston, Harvard University, Jewish Federations of North America, Jewish philanthropy, liberal Jews, Palestinian incitement, Palestinians, Yasser Arafat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:25 AM
0 comments
Labels: liberal Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:07 AM
0 comments
Students of a Jewish modern orthodox upscale high school in New York City are demanding that the administration permit its political society to host the noted Palestinian-American academic Professor Rashid Khalidi after the head of the school barred his appearance.
The controversy erupted earlier this week when the anti-Zionist blogger Mondoweiss reported that the Ramaz day school had nixed an appearance by Khalidi, who was invited to the Manhattan campus by the student-run political society.
The move angered some students, who were moved to circulate an online petition that called on the Ramaz headmaster, Paul Shaviv, to reverse his decision.
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In a statement issued to JTA on Friday, Shaviv said he was working with students to “navigate a delicate political situation, respecting their wish for open exchange of ideas, but also being mindful of multiple sensitivities within our varied school constituencies.”
The statement from Ramaz said, “The issue is not whether or not students should hear another view – they should. Our question was: ‘Is this the appropriate program?’”
The school’s administration said it believed the controversy would “massively overshadow any conversation and would make an educational experience impossible,” and that Khalidi was not the right partner for dialogue with high school students. Shaviv said he met with Khalidi and amicably explained the situation to him, and Ramaz’s statement said the school is “working with the politics club to arrange an event that will provide the program content they originally envisaged.”
Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University, was born to a Saudi-Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. According to the Jewish Telgraph Agency, Khalidi was an adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization during the Madrid peace negotiations in the early 1990s. Khalidi has generated controversy in the past for stating that the Palestinians were legally entitled to resist Israel’s occupation by targeting soldiers.
Prior to taking up his current post as the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, Khalidi also taught at the University of Chicago and Georgetown University.Not mentioned: Khalidi is a close friend of President Hussein Obama. When Khalidi left Chicago, there was a going away party at which it was rumored that the future President made anti-Semitic comments. The videotape of that party has never been released.
Labels: American Jews, Barack Hussein Obama, Leftist Jews, liberal Jews, Rashid Khalidi
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:26 PM
2 comments
It is a source of great frustration, even pain, among liberal American Jews that Israel finds such stalwart support among American evangelical Protestants, with whom they share very little. It is, of course, a source of great comfort to Israeli politicians such as Benjamin Netanyahu and to his even more right-wing colleagues, that evangelical support for Israel is so strong. Evangelical support always struck me as a narrow reed on which to rest Israel's fortunes in America, and not only because many evangelicals, in my experience, have no love for Jews as autonomous people, but merely as vehicles for the Christian redemption. I also thought it was odd to build a strategy around evangelicals because evangelicals don't represent a majority of Americans.I have three points to make. First, we (or at least the people with whom I hang in this country) rely only upon God. We don't rely on American Jewry or Bibi or Obama or even on Evangelical Christians.
Labels: American Jewish support for Israel, Evangelical Christians, Jeffrey Goldberg, liberal Jews, New York Times
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:14 AM
1 comments
Last week, the URJ issued a statement condemning Israeli settlement activity, “especially in the E-1 area,” saying it “makes progress toward peace far more challenging, and is difficult to reconcile with the Government of Israel’s stated commitment to a two-state solution.” Now here’s what Livni–long the darling of liberal American Jews for her dovish views, and someone who has consistently blamed the Netanyahu government for the impasse in peace talks–told a gathering of foreign ambassadors today:
“It doesn’t matter what you think about settlements,” Livni said with uncharacteristic bluntness. “We have settlement blocs close to the Green Line and the only way for the conflict with the Palestinians to end is for Israel to keep them. Any pre-agreement by the international community to a withdrawal to 1967 borders before the talks occur, makes it difficult to negotiate. It was clear in the talks I conducted with the Palestinians that there would not be return to 1967 borders.”Given that E-1 is the corridor that links one of those settlement blocs, Ma’aleh Adumim, to Jerusalem, it’s hard to reconcile those two views. After all, if the settlement blocs will be part of Israel under any agreement, then so will E-1–which, as Rick noted yesterday, is precisely why every peace plan every proposed, including former President Bill Clinton’s, in fact assigned E-1 to Israel. Indeed, the annexation documents for E-1 were signed by the patron saint of the peace process himself, Yitzhak Rabin, less than a year after he signed the Oslo Accords. Like everyone else who has seriously studied this issue, Rabin concluded both that it was vital for Israel’s security and–contrary to the widespread misconception today–that it would in no way preclude a viable and contiguous Palestinian state (a point Rich’s post also explains).
So if everyone knows that Israel is going to retain this area anyway, how can advancing construction within it possibly “make progress toward peace far more challenging”? In fact, as Livni noted, the opposite is true: The real impediment to negotiations is the Palestinian belief that the world will back their demand for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines and eventually force Israel to comply. And that’s precisely the belief the URJ reinforced via its condemnation: After all, the Palestinians must be saying, if even American Jews won’t back Israel’s position, it will soon have no choice but to capitulate.But Liberal American Jews just won't get it. They're still living in their fantasyland where Israel consists of a bunch of Kibbutzim and the national consensus calls for taking whatever the world will give us and relying on miracles. We do rely on miracles. But only when we have to.
Labels: E-1, liberal Jews, Tzipi Livni, Union for Reform Judaism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:14 PM
5 comments
I think you have latched on to politics because you are searching for something to build. There is only so much pulling down one can do without feeling utterly destructive.... You are driven. You are passionate. I pray that you channel your drive and direct your passion to something positive, something that will make you a better and more positive person, something that will allow you to touch eternity and truly impact the world forever. I pray that you pursue marriage and, if you are so blessed, raise children.I noted in my earlier post that Silverman's father had written an obscenity laden comment on JewishPress.com, the site that carried the letter. Now, some larger sites have stepped in (Hat Tip: Benny).
Jezebel writer Katie J.M. Baker reacted to the letter today with a scathing response:The Jewish Press' Stephen Leavitt was surprised by the raw nerve Rabbi Rosenblatt's letter touched.
Why is Rabbi Rosenblatt so threatened by Sarah Silverman? Because — make no mistake — that's exactly what he is. He's clearly threatened by the fact that a 42-year-old childless (gasp!), unmarried (double gasp!) woman (TRIPLE GASP!) wields so much power and influence — and that she actually seems fulfilled by her unorthodox life choices.But most importantly, Silverman's dad took to the comments section on Rosenblatt's post and fired off a couple of warning shots:
Hey asshole: Daughter #1 is a rabbi. Not by your standards. She's reform. How dare she, a lowly woman think god wants her to be a rabbi, created from a mere rib. Her hubby, three times nominated for a nobel peace prize was listed by the Jerusalem Post as the 49th most influential jew in the world built the worlds largest solar field in israel. By the way, Sarah was also on the list. I missed your name. Oldest granddaughter is serving in the Israel Defense Forces. I'm sure you also served.Oh I forgot the orthodox don't do that. You don't fuck with my family.
I propose that many of the Jewish-American commenters got so upset because the Rabbi crossed a line. But the line he crossed was not about his views on motherhood, but rather his views on the role of the Rabbi and of Judaism.
Judaism, to some of those commenters, belongs locked in a box in a synagogue, and should never be allowed out to offer any moral observations, opinions or guidelines that disagree with the most permissive of Western cultural values.
As expressed by some of these commenters, Silverman actually represents “Judaism” to them.
Some of them might have a list of humanitarian/liberal values and call them Jewish values, while taking traditional Jewish values like Shabbat and Kashrut (as well as Judaism’s own social values), and relegating them to archaic, comical, even dark places in the culture.
For them, Judaism is Liberalism. A definition and identity where anything is permitted, alongside a strong pride in their cultural/ethnic identity as Jews, regardless of whether that identity actually represent a Jewish value system, or an accident of birth.
The question is certainly open as to whether the Rabbi was right or wrong in his analysis of Silverman, but one thing is clear, Rosenblatt rattled something deep and painful in the psyches of those who define themselves as cultural/ethnic Jews, without any actual Judaism to go with it.I would add that some of those commenters are outraged because of the guilt they feel at having their 'Judaism' thrown in their face in favor of real, authentic Judaism. Maybe they should try learning something about the real thing. They may be surprised.
Labels: Judaism, liberal Jews, Sarah Silverman
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:14 AM
7 comments
The Democratic Party didn’t quite succeed in banning God from its platform, but it did its best to ensure that no-one would listen to him by putting a liberal clergyman who talks about anything except God in front of a deserted stadium. That checked the God box without allowing the Maker of Heaven to get a word in edgewise.It is perhaps indicative of how seriously 'progressive Jews' take their religion that an image search for "Wolpe benediction" in Google turns up more pictures of his most famous congregant - Monica Lewinsky - than of the 'most influential rabbi in America,' Rabbi Wolpe himself. Pretty sad.
Rabbis from the wrongly named Conservative movement are used to preaching to empty rooms, but there was something surreal in the image of the Los Angeles Sinai Temple’s Rabbi David Wolpe blessing a deserted stadium late Wednesday night long after the Democrats had departed. Named by Newsweek the most influential American rabbi, Wolpe beamed empathy and gestured eloquently to the vacant stadium. After the last-minute vote by acclamation to return God to the party platform, Wolpe’s benediction had deep symbolic overtones. Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair, while Wolpe talked to ten thousand empty chairs.
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The whole of the Republican convention delegates remained in place to hear Cardinal Dolan after Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, unlike their Democratic counterparts, who walked out on Rabbi Wolpe. Viewers of CNN, though, did not hear Cardinal Dolan, because Wolf Blitzer was too busy trolling the punditeska for instant comments on the Romney speech to allow Dolan to be heard. Fox News carried the cardinal’s benediction rather than the pundits.
The opening invocation at the Republican convention came from the Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, before whom the whole mass of delegates stood with bowed heads.
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One difference between the two addresses is the fact that the whole Republican convention heard Rabbi Soloveichik, while no-one but the cleaning crew was there for Rabbi Wolpe. There was a also a world of difference in the content. Rabbi Wild and Wonderful preached social work and psychobabble, while Rabbi Soloveitchik linked God’s revelation to Moses and the American founding, much closer in spirit to Cardinal Dolan than to the progressive Rabbi Wolpe.
It’s no surprise that progressive Judaism is imploding. In the past decade, the Reform and (poorly named) Conservative movements have lost 30% to 40% of their members by various estimates. If Judaism boils down to social work, why not do the social work, rather than bother with the laborious practices of an ancient religion? Progressive Jews have the lowest fertility rate of any identifiable (heterosexual) segment of the United States population, and half of their children intermarry. The American Jews will be a smaller, but far more devout, community a generation hence.
Labels: Judaism, liberal Jews, National Democratic Party, Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, Republican party
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:19 AM
4 comments
The Forward reports that not only are many Jewish voters sticking with Obama, but so are the big financial guns. “The enthusiasm factor is down,” acknowledged Betsy Sheerr, a Pennsylvania Obama supporter who expects to be among the conveners of the campaign’s Jewish leadership council in Philadelphia.Read the whole thing. For a supposedly smart people, Jews can be awfully dumb.
But the 2012 list of volunteer bundlers does indicate that Obama has not lost the Jewish Democratic elite who made up a significant proportion of his support in 2008.
Republican-affiliated groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition have worked to drive a wedge between American Jews and Obama over Israel and Iran. Asked about the return of all of Obama’s 2008 top bundlers to his camp, RJC executive director Matthew Brooks said, “These people are the committed of the committed. The question is what success do these people have when they go to their Rolodex and try to get contributions?”
Alan Solow, a former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a major Obama fundraiser, said the would-be donors in his Rolodex are responding just fine. “I’ve made many calls to prior supporters of the president, including members of the Jewish community, and I don’t have any sense of any fall-off in support,” he said.
But Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Council for World Jewry, who hosted a campaign fundraiser attended by the president in November, said, “I think it’s a challenging time to do fundraising. In the Jewish community, it may not only be the fact that many Jews are concerned about the U.S.-Israel relationship, but also the economy. I can’t say that it wasn’t difficult getting people to contribute.”
Though lobbyists who collect donations on behalf of a candidate are required to report their activities to the Federal Elections Commission, non-lobbyist volunteer fundraisers are not. In 2008, campaigns released their own lists of their non-lobbyist volunteer fundraisers. The Obama campaign released lists of its 2012 bundlers, the most recent in early October.
With more than a year to go before the election, most of the $500,000-level bundlers from 2008 have yet to raise an equally large sum for the 2012 campaign. Peter Buttenwieser, a longtime Obama stalwart and prominent Jewish supporter in Pennsylvania, was among the campaign’s top fundraisers in 2008, but had raised under $100,000 by the end of September, when the campaign released its most recent bundling data. DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, on the other hand, had already raised more than half a million dollars for the 2012 campaign.
Missing from the latest 2012 bundler list are top-level 2008 fundraisers Solow, and billionaire DreamWorks founder David Geffen. But Solow told the Forward that he is fundraising for the campaign. A spokesperson for the Obama campaign said that Geffen is also fundraising. Geffen did not respond to a request for comment.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, campaign finance, liberal Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:31 PM
6 comments
The last guy's point is one we need to stress: Don't be led around by the nose by the popular media AND, for now, we still have the secret ballot. So Jews can vote for the (R) ticket to try to stop the slide into stalinism... without having to expose their vote to their communities.I think it's a shame that a Jew voting Republican in the US has to walk around as if he's drinking from a whiskey bottle in a brown paper bag.
Labels: liberal Jews, Republican Jewish Coalition
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:15 AM
3 comments
Alex Joffe explains what so many Leftist Israelis and liberal American Jews have against Glenn Beck. But it is the warning by Rachel Tabachnik in Haaretz that cuts to the heart of the matter. If Israel welcomes Beck, she says, "Israel's relationship with mainstream Jewish-Americans will suffer immense damage." By "mainstream," of course, she means liberal. Indeed, the warnings by all these commentators reveal more about liberal American (and Israeli) Jews than about Israel's general standing in America.Read the whole thing.
They are particularly tied up with attitudes toward Christianity, especially in its more conservative manifestations. To put it in a nutshell, the conservative social agenda strikes many liberal Jews (not to mention liberals in general) as a mortal threat to American society, which is to say the American society they have striven so hard to fashion in their own image. So entrenched in liberal American Jewish discourse are the fear and hatred of conservative and evangelical Christians that many speak as if the "fundamentalists" were Cossacks planning pogroms. In their view, only primitive and uneducated people can hold strong religious beliefs; in Beck's case, the lack of certified educational credentials is another sign of his mental deficiency.
When it comes to Israel, all this expresses itself in outbursts like the ones quoted above, cloaked in a pious concern for the position of Jews in general and indeed for the Jewish state. The fear, as expressed, is that Israel's actions will provoke a fatal alienation or create anti-Semitism in others. The worry, as expressed, is that if Israelis accept support from the "wrong people"—that is, religious and political conservatives—the sky will fall. Put more candidly, the real fear may be that a strong connection between "Beck" and Israel will damage the position of liberal Jews themselves with their own social class.
But that position is already damaged, in the sense that it is badly out of synch both with much of Israel and with much of America. As in many red states, Israelis value big families, vigorous self-defense, and a version of energetic capitalism, even as they ensure the rights of gays and worry over social inequality. Despite external threats and internal convulsions, Israeli unity and national pride remain strong. As it happens, these virtues are also key elements of the broader American ethos, and—not at all coincidentally—of the evangelical support for Israel to which Beck gives voice.
It is not hard to find fault with Glenn Beck, and in particular with his conspiratorial style. But reasoned criticism is one thing, and cries of anathema are something else—howls of a "progressive" class out of step with, and marching far behind, those it would lead into the light.
Labels: Glenn Beck, Israeli Left, liberal Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:44 PM
1 comments
On Monday evening, the Knesset will vote on the second and third readings of a bill that would allow citizens to bring civil lawsuits against people or organizations who call for economic, academic or cultural boycotts against the Jewish state, Israeli institutions or regions under Israeli control (read: Judea, Samaria, 'east' Jerusalem and the Golan Heights). The bill would also prevent the government from doing business with companies who initiate or participate in such a boycott.Several processes are slowly making Israel’s Jewish society more conservative. This is not just a result of demography, which is working in favor of the haredim and traditionalist Jews and against the seculars. We are dealing with a plethora of cultural tendencies that have nothing to do with births.This will also have some impact on our relations with diaspora Jewry, at least in the United States where much of the Jewish community is affiliated with non-Orthodox movements, the Democratic party and liberalism. If anything, the choice between supporting the liberal value of the week and supporting Israel may become even starker than it is today.
The Jewish bookshelf is sweeping many groups and is turning into an element that holds ideological, not only cultural, influence on those joining the trend. The “Jewish new age era,” a sort of counter-reaction to the “candle era” of the peace children, is lifting geographical boundaries.
Samaria is suddenly turning into a site that belongs to “every Jew.” Workshops and trips there constitute the settlers’ “quiet revolution.” Even celebrities who “discovered” the synagogue at the heart of Tel Aviv are starting to arrive.
Meanwhile, the Russian and Ethiopian communities, as well as residents of the periphery, are mostly holding clear hawking views, despairing over the chance to see peace from the Palestinians, and are eager to see us using our power and producing deterrence. Territorial concessions are not perceived as a move that would affect the end of the conflict.
...
Similar phenomena are taking place among some groups within Israel’s leftist camp; the moderate Left, known as “activist” in the past, which lives in “border areas.” The Gaza-region kibbutzim, which in the past granted the leftist Meretz party many Knesset seats, are showing ongoing support for Lieberman’s positions ever since the current government’s establishment. No less surprising: Even among these leftists, a majority characterizes the settlement enterprise as Zionism in every way.
Meanwhile, Meretz and Labor, which produced “Oslo,” are turning into niche parties. Kadima, which is led by people formerly associated with the Right, is the only dovish element with aspirations to take power.
Jewish perception and heritage are penetrating civics studies and the military and national service. The education minister is bringing awareness of Hebron to Tel Aviv. Moreover, members of the religious Zionist community are increasingly active in academia and in the film industry; they produce culture and convey their messages.
Israelis are becoming more spiritual. And no, this is not the spirituality associated with the flower children. It is the kind of spiritually associated with Rabbi Kook. It comes with love for the land and great belief in the ban on renouncing it.
Labels: Conservatives, Judea and Samaria, liberal Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:54 AM
5 comments
I received this by email: “As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall.”Indeed. The picture at the top is Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky.
---Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923
There is an interesting pattern (call it a leitmotif) that typically runs through the writing of Jewish liberals like Jeffrey Goldberg, who today provides us with a prime specimen right here.
Be it the murder of infants in their bed, or Abbas’s fabrication of history in the New York Times on Tuesday, every Arab assault on Israel is just another reason both sides need to try harder to reach an “agreement.” Goldberg adheres closely to this liberal protocol. He begins on a promising note by devoting about the first 65% of his essay gently exposing the “contradictions” in Abbas’s vicious lie. But that formality is just a tease in the run-up to the standard-issue liberal sales pitch, which in Goldberg’s iteration goes something like this:
“There is no particular reason to hope for a successful peace process when the leader of the Palestinians is selling a false history of Israel's independence... Mahmoud Abbas cannot bring himself to note that the Jews accepted the partition plan, while the Arabs rejected it, and went to war to extinguish the new Jewish state in the cradle, and then lost their offensive war.”
Yet:
“Mahmoud Abbas.... could be president of an independent state of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Jerusalem. If only he -- and, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu -- could find a way to avoid rehearsing old grievances and instead work toward a future in which both parties don't get all that they want, but get enough to live.” (Sigh. If only.)
What cloying condescension! - especially to the proud Muslim Arab standing atop 1300 years of real history that commands him to hate and subjugate the Jews.
Sadly, this is the canned sound effect an obsessed (but sincere) Jewish peace processor produces in order to stay on the liberal kibbutz and still sound like a sane man. In the final analysis, though, the only thing separating the liberal Jeffrey Goldberg from the extremist Tony Kushner is the theatrics they employ before the curtain comes down on Israel in the last act.
Maybe that’s why the “peace process” is a perennial crowd pleaser. It’s the triumph of sweet fantasy over bitter experience.
Dan Friedman
NYC
Labels: liberal Jews, Middle East peace process, Zev Jabotinsky
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:44 AM
0 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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