What the Israeli Left Can Teach the American Left

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

“The American left is quite different from the Israeli left,” said American-born Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi during a talk last week in New York City. “There is a sobriety, a maturity, to the mainstream Israeli left that you often don’t find here.”

Right on cue, a few days later, Women’s March organizers Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory were back in the news, this time over derogatory statements about the Anti-Defamation League’s involvement with anti-bias education at Starbucks; and Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman, the 2018 Genesis Prize winner, decided to boost her American-leftist status by announcing she would boycott the award ceremony in Israel.

All of which will no doubt give Halevi, who moved to Israel in 1982, more to talk about as he embarks on a tour for his new book, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor,” out in May.

While the American left celebrates victimhood, Halevi said, “Zionism is a profound rejection of victimhood.” Even the Israeli left finds victimhood “incomprehensible.”

“There’s no nobility to being a victim,” said Halevi, who as a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute has been active in coexistence efforts with American Muslims. Indeed, there isn’t. But somehow, following lockstep with Palestinian propaganda of the past 50 years, leftist (i.e., illiberal) propaganda has ennobled certain victims (notably not all victims) to the point of sainthood.

The maturing of the American left would entail an understanding that it’s been played.

As Portman, whose family moved to the U.S. when she was 3, essentially took the Hamas/BDS line in citing “recent events” when detailing her decision not to attend the prize ceremony, Halevi talked about how in Israel “the Jewish army is treated like a Jewish life force: our soldiers are our children and our security.” Meanwhile, members of the far-left group Breaking the Silence, which aims to monitor the Israel Defense Forces, are considered “pariahs in Israel — no one takes them seriously.” Perhaps most notably, “there’s never been a serious draft resistance in Israel. Our army is us.”

How does Halevi recommend maturing the diasporic left, especially young Americans? “We need to tell our truths, our story — who we are, what our experiences have been,” he said. And we need to do it in the “traditional form of one generation passing on our stories to another. We need to stop worrying about whether millennials will ‘get it.’ We need to stop indulging millennials.”

Indeed. What has this indulgence led to? Two-thirds of American millennials surveyed in a recent poll could not identify what Auschwitz was, and 22 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust.

At the same time, millennials — and much of the left in general — believe that every aspect of our existence must be politicized. They have been taught that there is no separation between life and politics.

As Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer and speaker, put it in an open letter to Portman in The Jerusalem Post: “It’s not about criticism, which we welcome here, it is about the way you do it, at this moment in time. I know you are used to a different type of political debate in the U.S., but we don’t need you to bring it here.”

The truth is, the American left — in its current descent into illiberalism — can learn a lot from the Israeli left.

“Palestinians threaten with their powerlessness,” Halevi said. It is the same powerlessness or victimhood that promotes anti-Semitic propagandists like Sarsour and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to positions of influence on the U.S. left. It is the same victimhood that enables Muslim migrants in Europe to kill or maim Jews on a routine basis.

The maturing of the American left would entail an understanding that it’s been played. That ideas like “intersectionality” and “identity politics” have been manipulated for nefarious propagandistic purposes by individuals and groups whose sole mission is to single out and malign the Jewish state.

Ironically, just as Israel and Arab countries are becoming allied in a fight against Iran, the American left puts Sarsour on a panel about anti-Semitism; and Palestinian professors and activists rewrite Jewish history on a daily basis at American universities.

Creating an atmosphere where Israeli-born Americans like Portman feel a need to regurgitate the Hamas/BDS line in order to retain status on the left is as evil as it is brilliant. Can real liberals like Halevi and Mazzig help put the American left on a corrective course? Let’s hope so.

---

Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

What the Israeli Left Can Teach the American Left : https://ift.tt/2HDtDld

Letters to the Editor: Honoring Jews, Laying Out the Parameters of Liberalism and the U.N.

Honoring Jews, Not Those Who Would Kill Them

Last week, while the rest of Jewish Los Angeles was memorializing the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, a group of Jews held a memorial in front of the Jewish Federation building to honor the memory of those with the stated goal of murdering the 6 million Jews of Israel — the Palestinians killed in the recent Gaza protests while trying to break down Israel’s security wall to accomplish their goal.

Thank you, David Suissa, for your column “When Truth Comes Marching In” (April 13) and clearly showing the truth — that contrary to what the Palestinians are promoting, the Gaza protests had the sole purpose of breaking down the border wall, murdering Jews and conquering Israel.

Let us never forget the 6 million, and also that, sadly, there are Jews who see nothing wrong with honoring those who try to wipe Israel’s Jews off the earth.

Jason Kay via email

Bravo, kol ha kvod, David Suissa, for “When Truth Comes Marching In.”

However, most of us, whoever we are, don’t listen to facts. We react to myths and media. We only pay heed to facts when pain hits us in the gut — and even then we don’t believe it. Corruption does that to anyone.

Look at your prime example, Gaza.

Linda Hepner via email

David Suissa is right that Israel’s “better” than her Muslim neighbors (“A ‘Better’ Word for Israel,” April 20). Rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, surrounded by enemies, constantly terrorized and fighting for her life, bullied by the U.N., yet still absorbing millions of desperate European and Ethiopian Jewish refugees, and on top of all that, emerging in just 70 years as a cutting-edge, hydro-agricultural, high-tech wunderkind with 12 Nobel Prizes and a super-hip tourist scene to boot — Israel is an unbelievable miracle. And the icing on the cake is that it drives anti-Semites nuts.

Rueben Gordon, Encino

---

Laying Out Parameters of Liberalism

I was happy and delighted to read Karen Lehrman Bloch’s column (“I Am a Liberal. Are You?” April 20). It boosts my faith in the integrity and honesty of the Journal.

The only thing I would add to it is the following statement:

You are not a liberal

If you reflexively accuse anyone who dares to disagree with you of being a fascist, a racist and an anti-Semite.

I have witnessed some otherwise very intelligent people making these accusations against people whom they know little or nothing about. This kind of behavior is polarizing and degrades our democracy.

Jeffrey P. Lieb, Cheviot Hills

I have always enjoyed reading Karen Lehrman Bloch’s columns, but “I Am a Liberal. Are You?” really blew me away. It was so spot on and expressed so elegantly what so many of us feel but can’t put into words as succinctly. Thank you.

Also, mazel tov to David Suissa for turning the Journal into a top-tier newspaper that Los Angeles can be proud of.

Miriam Fisher via email

---

Yom HaAzmaut Coverage in the Journal

Israel’s Independence Day (Yom HaAtzmaut) should have been on your cover, not on page 19 (“Carry a Torch,” April 20)! This was a major failure. Maybe it happened because the editor was in Israel that week. As your columnist Shmuel Rosner put it, “The fifth day of the month of Iyar is your Independence Day. Yes — yours! And by this I mean you, Los Angeles Jews; you, New York Jews; you, Chicago Jews, Sydney Jews, London Jews, Paris Jews.

“Next Year in Jerusalem.”

Bob Kirk, Santa Barbara

Editor’s note: Because HaAzmaut fell on the day the paper came out, April 19, we chose to do a Yom HaAzmaut cover story the week before.

---

Speaking Truth to U.N.’s Mission

Aaron Bandler’s column is right on target (“We Need a New U.N.,” April 20). He expresses so well what I have thought for many years. And, I am sure, millions of others agree — i.e., the United Nations makes a false pretense to serve the mission for which it was founded.

The U.N. charter called for a commitment to uphold human rights of citizens and outlines a broad set of principles relating to achieving worldwide peace and security. It calls for “higher standards of living,” dealing with “economic, social, health, and related problems,” and calling for “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.

Wonderful! But that was in 1945 when it was created with 51 members. Currently, it has 193 member states.

In this regard, what good has the U.N. accomplished?

By way of example, CNN’s Jake Tapper’s analysis of the pertinent data vividly shows that, from 2012-15, the U.N. General Assembly rebuked and condemned the State of Israel almost 86 percent of the time — compared with all other nations combined. Incredible — considering the turmoil and government-controlled killings all over the world. As far as Israel is concerned: The U.N. is guilty of blatant discrimination. As it is today, it unashamedly violates its own charter and raison d’etre.

Should our country be donating annually almost $8 billion of taxpayers’ money to such an organization? (We could easily solve the homelessness problem and affordable housing crisis with that kind of money.)

The headline for Bandler’s column says it so well: “We Need a New U.N.”

George Epstein via email

---

Mitzi Shore Will Be Missed

Thank you for the wonderful obituary and tribute regarding Mitzi Shore.
The Comedy Store continues to be a platform for fledgling and professional comedians. I know, because my son is one of them. This is an iconic place that supports and encourages the art of stand-up. It deserves the support of the entertainment community.

Although I never met Shore, one night when my son Josh was performing, the staff let me sit in Mitzi’s booth. It was an honor.

I hope The Comedy Store continues for many years as a legacy to Shore and all the performers past, present and future.

Linda Meyrowitz via email

---

AND FROM FACEBOOK:

Here in Finland and in Sweden, the newspapers cry over how it could go this wrong — “peaceful” Palestinian demonstrators against “cruel” Israeli soldiers. They love to misunderstand what Palestinians really want, which is to take over the Jewish state. They even pretend not to understand what the “Great March of Return” means.

Carita Fogde, Helsinki

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Letters to the Editor: Honoring Jews, Laying Out the Parameters of Liberalism and the U.N. : https://ift.tt/2HsxplD

What Israel Can Teach Us

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

“The American left is quite different from the Israeli left,” said American-born Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi during a talk last week in New York City. “There is a sobriety, a maturity, to the mainstream Israeli left that you often don’t find here.”

Right on cue, a few days later, Women’s March organizers Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory were back in the news, this time over derogatory statements about the Anti-Defamation League’s involvement with anti-bias education at Starbucks; and Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman, the 2018 Genesis Prize winner, decided to boost her American-leftist status by announcing she would boycott the award ceremony in Israel.

All of which will no doubt give Halevi, who moved to Israel in 1982, more to talk about as he embarks on a tour for his new book, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor,” out in May.

While the American left celebrates victimhood, Halevi said, “Zionism is a profound rejection of victimhood.” Even the Israeli left finds victimhood “incomprehensible.”

“There’s no nobility to being a victim,” said Halevi, who as a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute has been active in coexistence efforts with American Muslims. Indeed, there isn’t. But somehow, following lockstep with Palestinian propaganda of the past 50 years, leftist (i.e., illiberal) propaganda has ennobled certain victims (notably not all victims) to the point of sainthood.

The maturing of the American left would entail an understanding that it’s been played.

As Portman, whose family moved to the U.S. when she was 3, essentially took the Hamas/BDS line in citing “recent events” when detailing her decision not to attend the prize ceremony, Halevi talked about how in Israel “the Jewish army is treated like a Jewish life force: our soldiers are our children and our security.” Meanwhile, members of the far-left group Breaking the Silence, which aims to monitor the Israel Defense Forces, are considered “pariahs in Israel — no one takes them seriously.” Perhaps most notably, “there’s never been a serious draft resistance in Israel. Our army is us.”

How does Halevi recommend maturing the diasporic left, especially young Americans? “We need to tell our truths, our story — who we are, what our experiences have been,” he said. And we need to do it in the “traditional form of one generation passing on our stories to another. We need to stop worrying about whether millennials will ‘get it.’ We need to stop indulging millennials.”

Indeed. What has this indulgence led to? Two-thirds of American millennials surveyed in a recent poll could not identify what Auschwitz was, and 22 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust.

At the same time, millennials — and much of the left in general — believe that every aspect of our existence must be politicized. They have been taught that there is no separation between life and politics.

As Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer and speaker, put it in an open letter to Portman in The Jerusalem Post: “It’s not about criticism, which we welcome here, it is about the way you do it, at this moment in time. I know you are used to a different type of political debate in the U.S., but we don’t need you to bring it here.”

The truth is, the American left — in its current descent into illiberalism — can learn a lot from the Israeli left.

“Palestinians threaten with their powerlessness,” Halevi said. It is the same powerlessness or victimhood that promotes anti-Semitic propagandists like Sarsour and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to positions of influence on the U.S. left. It is the same victimhood that enables Muslim migrants in Europe to kill or maim Jews on a routine basis.

The maturing of the American left would entail an understanding that it’s been played. That ideas like “intersectionality” and “identity politics” have been manipulated for nefarious propagandistic purposes by individuals and groups whose sole mission is to single out and malign the Jewish state.

Ironically, just as Israel and Arab countries are becoming allied in a fight against Iran, the American left puts Sarsour on a panel about anti-Semitism; and Palestinian professors and activists rewrite Jewish history on a daily basis at American universities.

Creating an atmosphere where Israeli-born Americans like Portman feel a need to regurgitate the Hamas/BDS line in order to retain status on the left is as evil as it is brilliant. Can real liberals like Halevi and Mazzig help put the American left on a corrective course? Let’s hope so.

---

Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

What Israel Can Teach Us : https://ift.tt/2JrSskS

Working the Path

Photo from GoodFreePhotos.

Most good people want to become better people. The slightly less good people just want other people to become better people. Few people actually have a plan, for themselves or others. The Jewish tradition offers many such plans — systems for moral and spiritual improvement.

I don’t think most people suffer unnecessarily because they had less-than-optimal parents. That widespread misfortune might be a factor, but people suffer unnecessarily primarily because they don’t think clearly and they don’t manage their feelings well. For example, many people think (perhaps unconsciously) that the best way to improve a spouse or a child is to criticize them. A bit of rational reflection can correct that misguided approach fairly quickly. There are spiritual practices that can reduce the feelings of anger and frustration that usually prompt the criticism.

Reduced anger and frustration? There’s a better person already.

Other people not only want to become better in the moral sense, they also want to grow spiritually. That word, “spirituality,” connotes many things: Centeredness. Courageousness. Kindness. Reflectiveness. A sense of the transcendent. The word is a constellation of many related ideas.

Inner-life work in the Jewish tradition, and in all traditions, holds that there are better and worse ways to think, feel, speak and behave. If we gain some mastery over the inner life, we not only will act righteously, but we also will be on a path toward spiritual well-being.

There are many terms in the Jewish tradition referring to moral and spiritual growth. I like the words “work” and “path” to describe this striving. Inner-life work is the path, and the path requires inner-life work. (Hence, “working the path.”) If you work the path, everything gets better. Maybe it won’t get better in the way you imagined it, but still, it will be better.

Maybe it won’t get better in the way you imagined it, but still, it will be better.

The inner-life side of the Jewish tradition is ancient, rich and varied. As this tradition is carried through time, new interpretations are added, and every now and then new teachings are formed. This spiritual side of our traditions might not be a walk on the wild side, but it can come close to that. As you walk on that side — the inside — you might come across some insight or teaching that both destabilizes your ego self and adds lucidity to your soul.

Think of the confessional on Yom Kippur. You’d never come up with that by yourself, reading a litany of confessions, most of which have nothing to do with you personally. Until a wise guy utters the confession of mocking, and suddenly sees something about himself that he does not want to see.

OK, I was that wise guy. I grew up in a Conservative synagogue. On the High Holy Days, we teenagers were assigned to sit in the social hall. At some particularly long, tiresome point in the service, we ducked out and went to the local supermarket to buy munchies. One of the old-timers saw us as we tried to get back in through the parking lot. He saw our spoils and said to us that we should not be spending money on Rosh Hashanah. “It’s OK,” I said triumphantly, “we stole it.” My remark got a great laugh from my friends, and I was immensely pleased with myself — until Yom Kippur, that is, when I came across that “mocking parents and teachers” line. I thought something like, “So this prayer-book is actually looking right up, at and through me.”

Busted. Our tradition caught me.

It still catches me.

The time we are in now, the seven-week “counting of the Omer,” has that quality of “looking at you and through you” as well. The seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot are devoted to contemplating one kabbalistic quality per week. These qualities (such as love, justice, truth, beauty, etc.) name contours of our souls that produce the greatest meaning and some of the greatest pain in our lives.

For example, in that first-week contemplation of Hesed (roughly: lovingkindness), I recalled a truth learned long ago: Some of the greatest pain we suffer and cause in life is from not acting lovingly when we should have.

How can we love better and defend our hearts when other don’t? Stay tuned.

---

Rabbi Mordecai Finley is the spiritual leader of Ohr HaTorah and professor of Jewish Thought at the Academy of Jewish Religion, California.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Working the Path : https://ift.tt/2KgsLoE

Portman’s the Messenger, Not the Problem

FILE PHOTO: Cast member Natalie Portman poses at the premiere for "Annihilation" in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo

When the Genesis Prize Foundation announced last November that the Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman would be the recipient of this year’s prize — often described as the “Jewish Nobel” — it offered Portman the highest praise:

“Without a doubt, she is a role model for millions of young Jews around the world.”

That compliment now seems both prescient and alarming.

Since Portman has decided to reject the prize and boycott the ceremony in protest of Israel government policies and practices — saying she did not wish to attend an event at which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be present — what must those millions of young Jews think now? And what does it mean that the most high-profile cultural censure of Israel to date has not come from the invidious Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but from one of our own?

It is worse than a pity that Portman chose to rebuke Israel with her boycott. As Jane Eisner wrote in The Forward, couldn’t she have gone to the ceremony and given a killer human rights speech in Netanyahu’s face? If she wishes to protest Israeli policies, I wish she would say which ones. Or does she want us and the world to think the entire Israeli government, despite a robust democratic opposition, is a total disgrace?

But OK, I get it. Portman didn’t want her acceptance of the prize or her presence at the event to be seen as an endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. As a citizen of Israel, she’s entitled to her dissent. That’s what Israeli democracy is about. We can be proud that one of Israel’s democratic strengths is that it can tolerate criticism.

That problem is the collapse of peace talks and the idea and promise of a two-state solution.

At this point, I’m far less interested in whether Portman’s decision to refuse the Genesis Prize makes her a hero or a traitor. Scores of outspoken Jews in the opposing camps have issued their views over the past week, exacerbating an already painful situation. I don’t really care what your personal politics are, when an Israeli Jew rejects an Israeli honor, it should hurt. It signifies that the Jewish world has a big problem on its hands, far more disruptive than Jewish disunity. Portman isn’t the problem, she is a reflection of that problem and a harbinger of how much worse it could get.

That problem is the collapse of peace talks and the idea and promise of a two-state solution.

Yes, the two-state solution. Remember that old thing? You should, because it’s the only thing that could end the terrible occupation that has been a stain on Israeli and Jewish consciences for more than five decades. And, because the alternative to a two-state solution spells political and moral catastrophe for the Israel we love.

Maintaining the status quo — the current one-state solution — means more and more boycotts. It means international isolation. It means more and more Jews turning away from the Jewish homeland because they can’t conscience a triumphalist Israel over a virtuous one. The alternative to a two-state solution is personified by Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement and an enemy to the idea of a Jewish state, who said: “I can sense our South Africa moment coming closer.”

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that South African apartheid didn’t end with a two-state solution. (Never mind that the comparison between Israel and South Africa is intellectually unsound; most people aren’t educated enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to know the difference, and as we all know, even fake news gets traction.)

Portman may not be the tipping point, but the tipping point may come if “millions of young Jews around the world” choose to follow in her footsteps and alienate the Jewish state when there are millions of reasons to love it. The tipping point is coming when the actions of those young Jews will be hard to distinguish from the actions of the BDS movement. Be angry about that outcome, but don’t dismiss it.

Whatever one feels about Portman’s decision or the “liberal American Jews” who might disappear in a generation, we should care about the reasons why they would want to distance themselves from Israel in the first place.

We should also want to find a way to get them back.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Portman’s the Messenger, Not the Problem : https://ift.tt/2Fgbate

Passover: The Sequel?!

Screenshot from YouTube.

Just when you think Passover 5778 was behind us, just when the haggadot have been shoved into the cabinet marked “Don’t Touch Till April,” just when the last box of “Pesadik Brownie Mix” has been incinerated, unopened — comes news that there is a second Passover.

Called Pesach Sheni, it comes exactly one month after the first night of Passover, or Iyar 14, and it comes out of a story from the Book of Numbers:

“There were, however, certain persons who had become ritually impure through contact with a dead body, and could not, therefore, prepare the Passover offering on that day. They approached Moses and Aaron … and they said, ‘Why should we be deprived, and not be able to present God’s offering in its time, among the children of Israel?’” (Numbers 9:6-7).

And equally unexpectedly, God not only hears the appeal but rules favorably on it. From that point on, Iyar 14 — well past the threshold for disqualifying impurities — was established as Pesach Sheni. Although no one brings sacrifices these days, there are many who do in fact hold a third Seder on the second Pesach. Some even brave the picked-over kosher aisles for one last box of shmura matzo to eat during it.

Living in a town notorious for its unwarranted, and sometimes unwatchable, sequels, I’m skeptical. Wasn’t eight days of “Dulce de Leche” macaroons enough (I ask the people who came up with an entire song called “Dayenu”)? Was the weeklong, full-scale transformation of our eating — and to some extent, living — spaces insufficiently transformative? After the multisensory “You were there” experience of two seders, isn’t “Pesach 2” bound to be anticlimactic?

But what I’ve realized is that Pesach Sheni contains a few intriguing ideas that apply to even us post-Temple folk:

Inclusivity

After acres of ink devoted to festivals, observances and Temple-building schematics that the generic “everyone” is instructed to follow, comes this inconvenient outlier group. “What about us?” they ask. “We who suffered the loss of a loved one or some other circumstance outside our control that separated us from ‘the gang.’ How can we not take part in the seminal story of our people?”

Literally the dirtiest among us are still demanding a seat at the table. And God demands that we make room for them.

After the multisensory “You were there” experience of two seders, isn’t “Pesach 2” bound to be anticlimactic?

Accessibility

Throughout the Torah, Moses and Aaron are challenged more often than retired gunfighters in the Old West. Often this leads to outbursts of frustration, reversals of history and plagues. But why is this kvetch different from all other kvetches? Maybe because they’re not complaining about the lack of something (looking at you, water and meat), but rather a missing opportunity to bring something good to the community.

And the good news is, God responds affirmatively — improvising on the spot a special law just for these people. It’s enough to make Washington lobbyists jealous.

Second chances

Most of all, the idea of a second Passover springing up out of nowhere one month after the original has something to offer all of us — pure and impure alike.

Our rabbis teach that Hoshana Rabba, the seventh day of Sukkot, can be regarded as a Yom Kippur “extension,” the last day on which we can turn in our belated atonement. This forces us to try to bring the lofty rhetoric and pure spirituality of Yom Kippur into the all-too-earthy world of the sukkah.

Likewise, perhaps Pesach Sheni comes along to remind us of all those amazing and powerful things we said, sang and pledged around our seder tables not so many weeks ago. “You may be once again drowning happily in pizza and brioche,” it tells us, “but don’t forget how hard you just worked to liberate yourselves.”

So when you spot Pesach Sheni on your iCal or HebCal, take a moment to remember the actual lonely orphans who want nothing more than to be a part of it all.

This is their holiday, and God is willing to interrupt even his own Torah to make sure it’s ours too.

---

Rob Kutner is a writer for “Conan” and the author of the comic book “Shrinkage.”

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Passover: The Sequel?! : https://ift.tt/2Hut11o

Portman’s Blunder? She Said Yes.

Natalie Portman must be a conflicted soul. In 2015, she told the Hollywood Reporter she was “very upset and disappointed” by the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was very much “against” him, but that she didn’t want her criticisms to be “used by adversaries of Israel.”

Two years later, in November 2017, Portman was selected by the Genesis Prize Foundation to be its fifth laureate, receiving a grant of $1 million to donate to charitable causes.

As part of the vetting and selection process, Portman was made aware that the prime minister’s office and The Jewish Agency for Israel were partners in the project. She was told the prime minister (whom she disliked so much) would attend the ceremony. His participation was apparent in numerous pictures from previous galas.

Nevertheless, when she received the award, she released this statement:

“I am deeply touched and humbled by this honor. I am proud of my Israeli roots and Jewish heritage; they are crucial parts of who I am. It is such a privilege to be counted among the outstanding Laureates whom I admire so much.”

Last week, five months after making that statement, Portman changed her mind and decided she wouldn’t attend the ceremony in Israel.

A representative said that “recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel” and that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony.”

What happened in five months to cause her to change her mind and publicly shame Israel? Well, we know what didn’t happen — Bibi and Israel did not change their stripes overnight.

After a public outcry, caused in part by the vagueness of the statement, she released a second statement via Instagram, saying that she “chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony.”

The focus on Netanyahu created another public relations problem for Portman: She always knew Bibi would be part of the ceremony. She knew this was a prime minister event as much as a Jewish Agency event as much as a Genesis event.

So, what happened in five months to cause her to change her mind and publicly shame Israel? Well, we know what didn’t happen — Bibi and Israel did not change their stripes overnight. It’s still the same Bibi she dislikes and the same Israel of her “roots” and “heritage.”

In other words, there is no good, rational explanation for her global ambush of Israel. Portman knows the power of fame. She knows that Genesis picks famous people precisely because of their outsized influence to bring positive change to the world. She knows that Israel is already one of the most maligned countries on earth, and that her criticisms, as she once said, can “be used by adversaries of Israel.”

She knows all that, and she still chose to use her fame to nourish Israel’s enemies. This may be why Portman has received so little support for her decision, even among many Bibi critics. She allowed her disdain for one man to cloud her judgment about a whole country.

If Portman was so concerned about appearing to endorse Netanyahu, she had no business saying yes in the first place. But once she said yes, if she didn’t want to appear to insult a country she claims to love, she had no business saying no.

This is not about criticism of Israel. Portman has every right to criticize Israel — everyone does. There’s probably more public self-criticism going on in one day in Israel than in the whole Middle East.

But Portman didn’t criticize Israel — she boycotted the country. Her action communicated to the world that she’s so turned off by Israel right now that she can’t even live up to her commitment to attend a ceremony in the country. By shutting out Israel, she also shut out nuance and complexity, advancing the one-sided, tired narrative that puts all the blame on Israel for whatever goes wrong.

If Portman was so concerned about appearing to endorse Netanyahu, she had no business saying yes in the first place. But once she said yes, if she didn’t want to appear to insult a country she claims to love, she had no business saying no.

I can think of one silver lining in this debacle. All the attention on the Genesis Prize means that more attention will be given to the real purpose of the initiative — how to use the prize money to make the world a better place.

Contrary to what many people think, it is Genesis that has the final say on how the prize money is allocated. The laureate only chooses the category, which this year is advancing women’s rights and equality.

In the summer, Genesis will announce grantees in Israel. In the fall, it will announce grantees in North America. With the help of matching funds, the Genesis Prize Foundation hopes to grant up to $3 million this year to help empower women’s causes.

How ironic. The country Portman insulted will follow through on its commitment to help some of her favorite causes. Maybe by Rosh Hashana she’ll release a third statement saying “I’m sorry” and “Thank you.”

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Portman’s Blunder? She Said Yes. : https://ift.tt/2HqOJDn

Before Insulting Israel, Natalie Portman Should Have Done Her Homework

Last November, when Hollywood actress Natalie Portman was awarded the $1 million Genesis prize– given annually to “individuals who serve as an inspiration to the next generation of Jews”– she accepted and said she is “proud of my Israeli roots and Jewish heritage.”

What a difference a few months make.

Yesterday, Portman rescinded her acceptance, with her representative notifying Genesis that “[r]ecent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel” and that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony.”

Obviously, these “recent events” mean the Palestinian “Great March of Return” protests at the Gaza border with Israel, which left dozens of Palestinians dead in the resulting clashes with Israeli forces.

Let’s leave aside the fact that Israel did not instigate these riots, and that the goal of the riots was not to protest the Israeli “occupation” but to breach the border fence and invade Israel. Of course, Israel has an obligation to protect its borders the best way it can; every country does.

Let’s just focus on the violence that occurred. Portman is evidently following the usual anti-Israel party line at the UN, Europe and “human rights” circles, which accused Israel of using disproportionate, indiscriminate force, and shooting “unarmed civilian demonstrators.”

But had Portman done just a little bit of homework, she would have learned that Israel took great pains to target terrorists, not civilians. All she had to do was read the favorite medium of Israeli leftists, Haaretz, as quoted by Evelyn Gordon this week:

“In a column published in Haaretz last week, Gaza native Muhammad Shehada defended the demonstrations as a necessary response to Israel’s partial blockade, on which he blamed all of Gaza’s woes. His younger brother, he said, has participated in them almost daily. He himself is currently studying in Sweden but formerly worked for an anti-Israel ‘human rights’ organization in Gaza. In short, he’s hardly an Israeli shill. Nevertheless, he noted that even Hamas believes Israel’s fire has been far from indiscriminate.”

As Gordon reports:

“Despite the seemingly arbitrary live-fire and tear gas raining down on the protestors … Hamas believes the victims are carefully selected. ‘Israel knows who to wound, maim or kill,’ a Hamas leader told me by phone. At least 10 young men, affiliated with Hamas and its Qassam brigades, have been shot while maintaining order at the protest.

“Hamas believes Israel is deploying facial recognition technologies besides the numerous war-drones that obliterate the sky above. The movement warned its members to keep their faces covered, and leave their phones at home.”

So, these “recent events” that Natalie Portman found “extremely distressing” turn out to be about Israel’s extreme efforts to target terrorists rather then civilians.

Portman’s pride in her “Israeli roots” was not enough for her to do some homework before publicly shaming the country of her roots.

Maybe she will redeem herself over the next year by challenging the anti-Israel bias around the world and defending her beloved Israel against discriminatory and unfair attacks. Then she’d really earn the award.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Before Insulting Israel, Natalie Portman Should Have Done Her Homework : https://ift.tt/2HfdYMY

Why I Owe David Levy an Apology

Screenshot from Twitter.

I used to make jokes about David Levy.

I was a kid in Maryland when Levy (who, it was announced recently, will be awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement) was elevated from a back-bench Knesset member to Minister of Absorption and then Housing Minister. Eventually, he became Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

I knew little about Israeli politics, but somehow, I absorbed that Levy was a figure to be mocked. Somewhere, I learned “David Levy jokes,” a popular genre making light of Levy’s dim intelligence and poor English. No one told me that behind the ridicule was contempt for Levy’s Moroccan childhood, guttural accent, and failure to display European charm or gruff Tzabar authenticity. Still, somehow I knew.

Years passed before I found out that Levy moved at 20 from Rabat to the hardscrabble town of Beit Sha’an, took a construction job, soon becoming a union leader who persuaded other exploited immigrants from Morocco that they could fight for more money and respect, and win; and that as housing minister he pushed through policies offering government assistance to working class folks seeking to buy an apartment (which assistance allowed my wife and me to buy our first apartment in Tel Aviv); and that as foreign minister he exhausted decades of political capital trying to get his fellow Likud politicians to negotiate in earnest with Palestinians at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.

Years passed before I learned that Levy was a politician of exquisite skill who did more than any anyone to bring Mizrahi voices into Israel’s public square, where for generations they had been ignored.

Levy also did much I disagreed with then and lament now. As Housing Minister from 1979 to 1990, he expanded the policy of building in the settlements in the occupied territories that the Labor Party had established, turning small West Bank and Gaza settlements into implacable towns.

But that is not why I made those jokes back then. I told those jokes because I had it within me dismiss Levy for working his way into politics from a construction site, instead of a graduate seminar room. I had it within me to write off Levy because his fluent second and third languages were Arabic and French, and not English.

I was not alone. From the beginning of Zionism, in the late 19th century, to the first generations after Israel was established, Jews who came from Europe, and their children, often viewed with condescension Jews who came from the Middle East and North Africa.  Zionists whose roots reached back to Russia, as mine do, saw themselves as a proper model of how Jews in a Jewish homeland should speak, think and behave.

When great waves of Sefardi immigrants came, soon after Israel was established, they were often welcomed with the arrogant notion that they must shed their culture, language, traditions, accents and more.  But David Levy never fully ceased to be a Moroccan Jew, and he refused to be ashamed of this fact.  As his accomplishments multiplied and his talents became ever-more manifest, he became an affront to our easy assumption of superiority. That is why we mocked him for being pompous. And that is why we told diminishing jokes.

Israel is a better place now than when I was a kid. Time has worn away much of the old Ashkenazi arrogance.  The head of the Labor Party, once the voice of an Ashkenazi elite, is the son of immigrants from Casablanca. One of the two leading candidates to head the liberal Left Meretz Party, also once an Ashkenazi stronghold, is also the son of Moroccans. Levi’s daughter, Orly Levy-Abekasis has been a member of Knesset for nine years, and has just created a new party that polls have winning five seats in the next Knesset; his son Jackie is a Likud MK.  They grew up in a world with greater possibilities than their father did; it was a world that their father, more than anyone else, created.

As for me: I am grateful to the Israel Prize Committee, for its too-small, too-late acknowledgment of how wrong I was back then. And I am grateful to David Levy, for all that he did and the dignity with which he did it, working tirelessly for decades, as if people like me didn’t exist.  My children, like his, are the beneficiaries of his efforts.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Why I Owe David Levy an Apology : https://ift.tt/2JYyJtU

Before Insulting Israel, Natalie Portman Should Have Done Her Homework

Last November, when Hollywood actress Natalie Portman was awarded the $1 million Genesis prize– given annually to “individuals who serve as an inspiration to the next generation of Jews”– she accepted and said she is “proud of my Israeli roots and Jewish heritage.”

What a difference a few months make.

Yesterday, Portman rescinded her acceptance, with her representative notifying Genesis that “[r]ecent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel” and that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony.”

Obviously, these “recent events” mean the Palestinian “Great March of Return” protests at the Gaza border with Israel, which left dozens of Palestinians dead in the resulting clashes with Israeli forces.

Let’s leave aside the fact that Israel did not instigate these riots, and that the goal of the riots was not to protest the Israeli “occupation” but to breach the border fence and invade Israel. Of course, Israel has an obligation to protect its borders the best way it can; every country does.

Let’s just focus on the violence that occurred. Portman is evidently following the usual anti-Israel party line at the UN, Europe and “human rights” circles, which accused Israel of using disproportionate, indiscriminate force, and shooting “unarmed civilian demonstrators.”

But had Portman done just a little bit of homework, she would have learned that Israel took great pains to target terrorists, not civilians. All she had to do was read the favorite medium of Israeli leftists, Haaretz, as quoted by Evelyn Gordon this week:

“In a column published in Haaretz last week, Gaza native Muhammad Shehada defended the demonstrations as a necessary response to Israel’s partial blockade, on which he blamed all of Gaza’s woes. His younger brother, he said, has participated in them almost daily. He himself is currently studying in Sweden but formerly worked for an anti-Israel ‘human rights’ organization in Gaza. In short, he’s hardly an Israeli shill. Nevertheless, he noted that even Hamas believes Israel’s fire has been far from indiscriminate.”

As Gordon reports:

“Despite the seemingly arbitrary live-fire and tear gas raining down on the protestors … Hamas believes the victims are carefully selected. ‘Israel knows who to wound, maim or kill,’ a Hamas leader told me by phone. At least 10 young men, affiliated with Hamas and its Qassam brigades, have been shot while maintaining order at the protest.

“Hamas believes Israel is deploying facial recognition technologies besides the numerous war-drones that obliterate the sky above. The movement warned its members to keep their faces covered, and leave their phones at home.”

So, these “recent events” that Natalie Portman found “extremely distressing” turn out to be about Israel’s extreme efforts to target terrorists rather then civilians.

Portman’s pride in her “Israeli roots” was not enough for her to do some homework before publicly shaming the country of her roots.

Maybe she will redeem herself over the next year by challenging the anti-Israel bias around the world and defending her beloved Israel against discriminatory and unfair attacks. Then she’d really earn the award.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Before Insulting Israel, Natalie Portman Should Have Done Her Homework : https://ift.tt/2Hg2Rnb

Letters to the Editor: Poland Holocaust Law, Gaza Border, and Israelis in the Diaspora

Poland Holocaust Law

The letter to the editor about Poland’s recently passed Holocaust law could not have been written by a grown-up (Letters to the Editor, April 13).

It had to have been written by a child who was raised on lies and wrong information.

Claiming that the Polish underground was the largest anti-Nazi underground army in Europe is laughable.

There are still a few of us around, so you can’t make up history to suit you.

You need to be honest and speak the truth or don’t speak at all.

Ella Mandel, Polish Holocaust survivor, Los Angeles

---

Gaza Border Unrest

Kudos to David Suissa for exposing the hypocrisy of the Gaza “protests” (“When Truth Comes Marching In,” April 13). His most powerful point was quoting Ben-Dror Yemini’s observation that the Palestinian marchers chanted “Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud.”  This war cry relates not to the current State of Israel but to the seventh-century ethnic cleansing of the two Jewish tribes in Medina by Mohammad’s army. Those slaughtered Jews were not living in current-day Israel but in ancient Saudi Arabia — thus exposing the virulent anti-Jewish hatred from Islam’s earliest history. This same “Khaybar” chant was sung eight years ago in the Turkish flotilla as it approached Gaza.

Hamas made a fatal miscalculation more than a decade ago. Despite being offshoots of the Sunni/Wahabi, Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida and ISIS axis, Hamas switched allegiance to Shiite Iran, prompting Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states to abandon them. Recently Israel, with the assistance of its former enemy Egypt, destroyed much of Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure, leading inevitably to the violent protests we are witnessing today.

Richard Friedman, Culver City

---

Israelis in the Diaspora

This is another in a long line of letters disputing wild, unsourced journalistic estimates of Israelis living in the Diaspora, which Danielle Berrin has repeated as “more than 1 million” (“Wandering Israelis,” April 13).

The most trusted demographic estimate done by Pew Research in 2010 was 230,000 Jewish emigrants from Israel living in other countries, with the most, 110,000 in the U.S. This aligns with my 1982 published estimates for Israeli emigrants in the U.S. and about my estimate of 25,000 living in and around Los Angeles.

Fun fact: Using Berrin’s source data from the Israel Bureau of Central Statistics about 2.2 million flying abroad in a six-month period, and the U.S. nonimmigrant Israeli entry estimates for roughly the same period, fewer than 1 in 10 Israeli tourist flyers eventually landed in the U.S. As we are all learning, visiting or immigrating to the U.S. is a pain.

While the Los Angeles Israeli community has become much more organized, now raising tens of millions of dollars yearly through the Israeli-American Council (IAC), in the 36 years since a realistic estimate of numbers has been published, I have not found any evidence that the number of Israelis has changed substantially from being about 1/20th of the Los Angeles Jewish community.

Pini Herman, Beverly Grove

---

Israeli Salad Gets Thumbs Up

Loved the article about Israeli salad by Yamit Behar Wood (“Why I Will Eat an Israeli Salad on Yom HaAtzmaut,” April 13).

I love serving it at every Jewish affair. It just speaks to me and tells me to celebrate and be grateful to be able to celebrate and be grateful to be alive.

Phyllis Steinberg via email

What a delightful, wonderful essay. You took your readers right along on part of the wonderful ride your life has been (so far), and we enjoyed both cultures as you described them and their impact on your growing years.

Miriam Fishman via email

---

New, Improved Journal

First, allow me to add my praise to those of other readers who commend the Journal for avoiding the need to turn pages to continue reading your columns. It is a great convenience — and much appreciated. As we age (I am 91), our fingers become less dexterous and it is harder to turn the pages to continue reading a particular article.
More important, your articles are of much greater interest to me and, I am sure, other readers. This includes articles of a broad range of interests, such as (in the April 13  issue):

1) “Adam Milstein: Promoter of Israeliness.” I wept as I read it. He is a brilliant and great leader.

2) “Israeli Taekwondo Program Has Local Source.” As a result, I am going to ask the director of the JFS Freda Mohr Multipurpose Senior Center to provide our community with a special event to meet and talk to Lois and Richard Gunther, in honor of whom the new JFS three-story building will be named.

3) “How to Tie Shoelaces Into a Star of David.” I followed the steps on paper, and will now try it for real.

George Epstein via email

---

Memories of the Holocaust

Writer Thane Rosenbaum appears to hedge on the ultimate reason for remembering the Holocaust (“What’s Left to Say?” April 6). Is the continuing scourge of anti-Semitism or the “moral mystery” of the Holocaust the principal cause of its refusal to stop haunting our minds and hearts? A bit of both? If anti-Semitism disappeared forever, instead of just moving from dormancy to flare-up, the Holocaust would weigh even more heavily on the memory and conscience of mankind.

The Shoah was a catastrophe for the Jewish people, a cataclysm from which recovery is gradual at best. There are only 2 million more Jews in the world than existed in 1939, and this is despite the miraculous growth of Israel and the impressive birth rate of Orthodox Jewry in the United States.

The life force is with us, but the Holocaust is in our genes.

And as for the non-Jewish world, the eradication of anti-Semitism and the marginalization of the Jews would make the Holocaust such an embarrassment to the modern world’s sense of its humanity that all of its accomplishments in science, technology and medical cures would seem incidental to a fundamental flaw in its moral compass.

Peter Brier, Altadena

An essential part of what should be commemorated on Yom HaShoah is the extraordinary courage and dignity shown by Jews living in hopeless conditions in terrifying times. “Zog Nit Keinmol” (Song of the Partisans) should be part of any commemorative program, along with a few words about poet Hirsh Glick.

While imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto, Glick was inspired to write these strong, deeply moving lyrics when he heard about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Glick escaped the Vilna ghetto when it was liquidated in October 1943, but was recaptured and sent to a concentration camp in Estonia, from which he escaped in 1944. He was 22 years old and was never heard from again.

Here are the words of the young poet’s masterpiece (unknown translator):

Never say that there is only death for you,
Though leaden skies may be concealing days of
blue.

Because the hour we have hungered for is near,
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: we
are here!

From lands so green with palms to lands all
white with snow.

We shall be coming with our anguish and our
woe,
And where a spurt of our blood fell on the earth,
There our courage and our spirit have rebirth!

The early morning sun will brighten our day,
And yesterday with our foe will fade away,
But if the sun delays and in the east remains,
This song as motto generations must remain.

This song was written with our blood and not
with lead,
It’s not a little tune that birds sing overhead,
This song a people sang amid collapsing walls,
With pistols in hand they heeded to the call.

So never say that there is only death for you,
Though leaden skies may be concealing days of
blue.
Because the hour we have hungered for is near,
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: we
are here!

Julia Lutch via email

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Letters to the Editor: Poland Holocaust Law, Gaza Border, and Israelis in the Diaspora : https://ift.tt/2HOkbN6

Mandate an End to Holocaust Ignorance

Photo from the National Museum of the USAF.

A recent Claims Conference study that showed Americans’ knowledge of the Holocaust was unexpectedly low, particularly among millennials, drew national attention but should come as no surprise.

The survey revealed that 66 percent of millennials could not identify what “Auschwitz” was, and 41 percent thought that 2 million or fewer Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

Although the figures are startling, the detail of history becomes less relevant to subsequent generations as events recede into the past. It is not young people’s fault they don’t know these facts; the fault primarily lies with the people who decide what is important to teach them. The survey is not an indictment of a lazy millennial generation, but of an uneven educational environment.

The problem is not new. A survey conducted by Peter Shulman in 1992 showed similar patterns of ignorance. At the time, 38 percent of respondents could not identify Auschwitz, compared with the 41 percent in this most recent survey. A quarter of a century on and we are worse off.

Students will not spontaneously start reading about Auschwitz — they need structure.

There is no lack of organizations and teaching resources that can provide young people with the knowledge they need about the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a national remit funded by the federal government. There are scores of Holocaust centers and online resources such as “Echoes and Reflections,” a curriculum supported by the Anti-Defamation League, Yad Vashem and the USC Shoah Foundation (which I run). There are enough teaching resources for every child to know precisely what Auschwitz was, how many Jews were murdered during the Holocaust and much more.

So, how do we close the gap between the obvious need for students to learn and the provision of educational support and resources to meet that need? We need to come up with a national plan. More states must mandate teaching about the Holocaust, more school district supervisors must ensure compliance of such mandates, and more principals need to understand that teaching about the Holocaust is an opportunity to educate and engage students with much more than knowledge alone.

A well-organized, well-funded lobby is needed to achieve this goal.

Ivy Schamis, who teaches a semester of Holocaust studies at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was in class, using the USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness platform the day Nikolas Cruz shot and killed two of her students.  The students in her class talk about the meaning of Auschwitz in the contemporary world. Schamis told me the Holocaust class was introduced because of a state mandate, and the school’s principal also was intent on ensuring the school’s curriculum made the most of the opportunity to expose students to complex world issues.

Almost all of the students who have gained national prominence for their involvement in responding to the shooting took the Holocaust class. Cruz did not.

Of course, it is not only important what students learn, but what they do with what they learn. I accompanied Schamis to the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., where one of her students told me: “We were in her class learning about hate, and then seconds later we experienced it first-hand.” The Parkland students had already thought through what it meant to counter hate. He told me the classroom they were in had a “Never Forget” poster. It’s no coincidence they chose the hashtag #neveragain for their campaign. They had lived the idea of “Never again” in Schamis’ class.

We have two options. Either we shake our heads at the latest survey results and decry the ignorance of the younger generation, or we begin a serious and concerted effort to ensure that there is a plan for states to implement mandates as well as online Holocaust training for teachers.

Students will not spontaneously start reading about Auschwitz — they need structure. And educators need a plan for implementing that structure. Either that, or 25 years from now we will be seeing the same survey results all over again — only worse.

---

Stephen D. Smith is the Finci Viterbi executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Mandate an End to Holocaust Ignorance : https://ift.tt/2qH66c0

The Wrong Kind of Jew

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Last week, I was kicked out of a Jewish museum in Granada, Spain.

I wish I were being funny or ironic, but this unfortunate event actually happened. It was my first Jewish stop on a trip tracing the roots of Sephardic Jewry throughout southern Spain, when a friend and I visited a small family-run museum that fills the bottom floor of the family’s home.

In accordance with the diminished Jewish presence that is a fact of modern Spain, Granada’s Jewish museum is small and modest. There are a handful of rooms cluttered with Jewish symbols and memorabilia, clearly curated out of love but not, evidently, with much scholarship.

My friend, a rabbi and published author, quickly noticed a significant error in the museum literature: It claimed that Yehuda Ibn Tibbon, one of Granada’s most famous former residents (a monument of him appears in a public square) had translated Maimonides’ “Guide for the Perplexed,” when in fact it was his son, Samuel Ibn Tibbon, who translated the work from Judeo-Arabic to Hebrew. My friend asked to speak to the museum owners and offered to help correct the error.

It certainly wasn’t the first time Jews have been at odds with one another.

Soon, a middle-aged woman and an older man descended the stairs and introduced themselves. Things went south quickly.

“You no respect museum. You get out of my house!” the woman yelled.

We tried to explain that we were deeply appreciative of the museum, but we simply wanted to help correct the error. But they wouldn’t hear it. None of us could really understand one another — I speak broken Spanish; the museum owners spoke broken English — and I’m sure the language barrier was responsible for the miscommunication that ensued.

But a language barrier does not explain what came out of the woman’s mouth next, which was very clear:

“You’re liberal,” she sneered at my friend, a Conservative rabbi who was wearing a kippah and tried to speak to her in Hebrew. “You’re Reform.”

I was raised in a Reform community, so I had never heard the word Reform uttered with such disdain.

“I’m Orthodox,” the woman said, stomping her foot.

Then she turned toward me, standing stunned and silent in gray jeans and a wool coat.

“Look how she’s dressed,” she sniped. “You’re liberal! You’re Reform!”

That’s when we headed for the exit.

Afterward, I wondered how the museum lady could possess such hostility toward liberal Jews when she devotes an entire wall to Jews like Sigmund Freud and Karl “Max” who I’m pretty sure were not as observant as she is.

A week later, I still can’t get this episode out of my mind. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been made to feel inferior for my status as a non-halachic liberal Jew, and it certainly wasn’t the first time Jews have been at odds with one another. The rabbis tell us that sinat hinam — “baseless hatred” among the Israelites — was the reason the Second Temple was destroyed. And although Maimonides commands tremendous reverence today, there were rabbis so disapproving of his “Guide for the Perplexed” when it was first published that the book was burned in Montpellier and Paris.

What I encountered last week wasn’t unprecedented, but it does reflect the dangerous and growing divide among Jews that is driven by political and ideological difference, and which has intensified during the Donald Trump era. Today, Jews of different persuasions are more likely to meet at the combustible intersection of religion and politics than around the Shabbat table. The idea of “am Yisra’el” seems almost quaint. And I fear we’re reaching an inflection point in the disruptive and demeaning way we relate to one another.

In Israel, the ongoing battle over who has the right to pray at the Kotel has driven a wedge between liberal American Jews and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Also, enduring tensions exist between secular Israelis and the Orthodox power structure.

More than any time in recent memory, our community seems perilously close to the atmosphere of sinat hinam that once wrought destruction and tragedy. On April 25 in Los Angeles, I’m moderating a panel for the Shalom Hartman Institute at a conference titled “Israel and Diaspora: Peoplehood in Crisis?”

I have a terrible feeling I know the answer.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

The Wrong Kind of Jew : https://ift.tt/2J8UAOh

I Am a Liberal. Are You?

Photo from The Blue Diamond Gallery.

I am a liberal

And I’m here to take back the word from those who have hijacked it for their illiberal agendas.

I am a liberal

Which means I believe unconditionally in the Enlightenment principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, democracy and civil rights.

I am a liberal

Which means I understand that different policy stances can emanate from these principles, that an orthodoxy of opinion is the opposite of liberalism.

I am a liberal

Which means I understand that unbiased reporting is part of the responsibility of a free press.

I am a liberal

Which means I understand that unbiased teaching is a prerequisite for civil society.

I am a liberal

Which means I understand that shutting down dissent, especially at universities, is an act of fascism.

I am a liberal

Which means I understand that boycotting a group or country based on race or religion is also an act of fascism.

I am a liberal

Which means I understand that individuality — not group identity or conformity — is the foundation of liberal ideology.

I am a liberal

Which means I am obliged to speak out against injustice and tyranny wherever it arises.

You are not a liberal

If you attempt to shut down speech just because you disagree with it.

You are not a liberal — if you attempt to shut down speech just because you disagree with it.

You are not a liberal

If you engage in biased journalism.

You are not a liberal If you teach your students your opinions rather than the truth.

You are not a liberal

If you judge people by the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character.

You are not a liberal

If you engage in moral or cultural relativism; if you don’t apply the same standards to everyone.

You are not a liberal

If you call yourself a feminist but never call out the very real oppression of women in countries like Iran or Pakistan.

You are not a liberal

If you oppose Zionism, the self-determination of the Jewish people, the return to our ancestral homeland.

You are not a liberal

If you don’t understand that, as long as force is not involved, sexuality is private; my life doesn’t revolve around your sexuality.

You are not a liberal

If you think maintaining your status is more important than telling the truth.

I am a liberal.

Are you?

Let's block ads! (Why?)

I Am a Liberal. Are You? : https://ift.tt/2J5pXsP

A ‘Better’ Word for Israel

There’s something inexplicable about Israel. On the surface, we know it’s one of the most maligned countries on earth. If I told you that the U.N. General Assembly adopted 97 resolutions that singled out a specific country for condemnation from 2012 to 2015, and that 83 of those were against Israel, you might yawn, right? So what else is new?

As the Journal’s Aaron Bandler mentions in a column this week, CNN’s Jake Tapper wasn’t too jaded to tell his viewers:

“Considering the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the lack of basic human rights in North Korea, the children starving in the streets of Venezuela, the citizens of Syria targeted for murder by their own leader using the most grotesque and painful weapons, you have to ask, is Israel deserving of 86 percent of the world’s condemnation?”

Of course not, but we already knew that. In any case, the extreme bashing of Israel is not the point of this column — which I happen to be writing from Israel this week. My point is to understand what makes Israel tick, in particular: How does a country function when it’s so hated?

The first thing that comes to mind is “busyness.” Everyone in Israel seems superbusy, whether they’re working, playing,  praying or arguing. It’s like when people go through a difficult time — a divorce, a job loss, etc. — and friends tell them, “It’s important to always stay busy,” because the more one wallows in angst, the worse things get.

I’ve been walking around the streets of Tel Aviv for the past couple of days — the kind of thing I’ve done hundreds of times over the years, in areas throughout the country — and I’ve been struck again by this Israeli busyness. They might have read this morning that some famous singer has canceled a performance under pressure from BDS, but they’re too busy to let it affect their reality. There’s a family to feed, a party to plan, a cause to advance, a film to complete, an argument to win, a country to protect.

I’m sure it annoys many Israelis to live in the most condemned country on earth, but since this is not a problem they can solve, they just move on to other concerns, like their daily lives.

I’m sure it annoys many Israelis to live in the most condemned nation on earth, but since this is not a problem they can solve, they just move on to other concerns, like their daily lives.

But there’s something else. Israelis are busy because they have the freedom to live as they wish. This freedom is a rare commodity in their neighborhood. On the  Freedom House website, a chart from 2013 shows 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Twelve are listed as “not free,” five are listed as “partially free,” and one is listed as “free.” Can you guess which country is free?

Here’s how Freedom House summarized the state of the region:

“The Middle East and North Africa holds some of the worst records of freedom of expression in the world. Many countries in the region lack legal protection for human rights and the rule of law is undermined by a lack of independent judiciaries.

“The 2011 Arab Spring popular protests brought hope for improvements but devastating wars, foreign intervention and instability have since made it an extremely dangerous environment for journalists, civil society and human rights defenders, forcing millions to leave in search of safety.”

Note the absurdity: The one country out of 18 deemed “free” gets 86 percent of the U.N.’s condemnations. Israelis must feel this absurdity. They know they live in a messy, flawed country that is full of problems, but they also know they’re free to express themselves any way they like. Arab Israelis, for example, are free to publicly mourn Israel’s most joyous day of the year, its Day of Independence, as their official Nakba, or catastrophe.

Notwithstanding that freedom, my guess is that most of those Arab Israelis would not want to leave this “catastrophe” for one of those “partially free” or “not free” Arab countries. In fact, in a poll conducted last year by the Israel Democracy Institute, 66 percent of Arab Israelis said they see Israel’s situation as “good” or “very good,” while 57 percent said their personal situation was “good” or “very good.”

Which brings me to the “B” word: Better.

A society that allows you the freedom to express yourself is better than one that doesn’t. On that level, yes, Israel is better.

“Better” is one of those politically incorrect words you never want to say in polite company. Different, yes, but not better. If you claim, for example, that Country A is better than Country B, someone might get offended and say, “Who gives you the right to judge?”

Well, in the case of Israel, the world does. If groups like the U.N. have enough chutzpah to treat one country, Israel, worse than all others, then Israel can certainly push back with this simple truth: A society that allows you the freedom to express yourself is better than one that doesn’t. On that level, yes, Israel is better.

It’s a tragic irony that this “better” country of the Middle East is also the most reviled. But Israelis are not agonizing over this state of affairs. They’re too busy expressing themselves.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

A ‘Better’ Word for Israel : https://ift.tt/2vxY6jp

Letters to the Editor: Holocaust, Media Bias and Progressives Being Good Parents

Why the Holocaust Still Resonates

I would try to briefly reflect on Thane Rosenbaum’s question: “Is there anything left to say about the Holocaust?” (“What’s Left to Say?” April 6). David Irving and his ilk would show up with technical drawings of concentration camps to argue that the crematoriums were not really used for what all the survivors say they were used for. Or, one of the effects of the fading memories and political manipulations is the emerging concept that the Holocaust was a terrible thing, but it was not just about Jews; these revisionist “historians” would say that gypsies, homosexuals and communists also were unfortunate victims, and numerous soldiers and civilians died as a result of the war. At least Hungary, which certainly has its share of revisionists, is not confused about the word. The equivalent, Hungarian word for “Holocaust” is “vészkorszak” (the age of danger,) and it is used only in the Jewish persecution’s context and does not cover any other death, including the fallen soldiers of the Hungarian 2nd Army or other, non-Jewish civilians.

What we must repeat is that not long ago, 6 million people’s genocide took place on racial/religious grounds. It could happen again if we are not on guard.

Peter Hantos, Los Angeles

It is with concern that I read your article on the Holocaust. More and more young people regard the Holocaust as distant as Hannibal and the Alps. There’s plenty left to say, i.e., Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was so large that it required traffic lights! The camps were nearly as numerous as post offices.  Camp personnel, including guards and administration, were kept drugged on crystal meth. Back then it was known as Pervitin. This was done so they could perform their tasks without giving it thought and in dealing with the large numbers of inmates.

Daniel Kirwan via email

---

Poland’s Holocaust Law

Regarding your article “The Polish Jewish Story” (March 23), may I bring up a couple of rarely mentioned facts: During their occupation of Europe, only in Poland did the Germans punish those who helped Jews by death, and the punishment included the helper’s closest family (in other countries the penalties varied from dismissal from work to jail time).

On the other hand, the Polish underground, the largest anti-Nazi underground army in Europe, punished by death those Poles who snitched on their Jewish neighbors.

Also, with all due respect to the author of the article, the new Polish law, although imperfect and perhaps in need of correction, does not criminalize “any mention of Poles” being complicit in the Nazi crimes. Rather, it prohibits accusing “the Polish nation or the Polish state” as a whole, of being complicit in the Nazi German crimes.

Jozef Malocha, Chrzanow, Poland

---

Media Bias Against Israel 

“(((Semitism)))” author Jonathan Weisman commendably assails surging right-wing anti-Semitism, including social-media trolls and Nazis marching through Charlottesville, Va. (“A Call to Action in the Age of Trump,” March 16). However, anti-Semitism takes many forms, including media bias against Israel, which Weisman seems to ignore. His own newspaper, The New York Times, is a leading offender.

Consider the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. On May 14, 1948, Israel legally declared its independence, consistent with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181. The next day, five Arab armies invaded the Jewish state, determined to annihilate it.

The New York Times never reports these facts. Instead, it describes the conflict as “the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation” (March 8) or “the 1948 war that broke out over Israel’s creation” (March 31). The Times’ Orwellian descriptions whitewash the Arab states’ genocidal intent continues to this day, obscuring the fact that Israel was attacked and implicitly blame Israel.

Rewriting history to vilify Israel is also anti-Semitism.

Stephen A. Silver, San Francisco

---

Hold on: Progressives Are Good Parents, Too

Here you go again, Karen Lehrman Bloch. In your constant search for negative comments about anything that contradicts conservative dogma, you find the other side guilty of supporting terrorism and raising kids who are insensitive bullies (“Progressive Bullies,” April 6).

As a lifelong progressive, I abhor terrorists and so do all of my progressive friends. I don’t propose that we or Israel give terrorists a pass because they had a rough childhood. Despite blame and fault, Israel is in the dominant position and must treat the general Palestinian population with as much dignity and respect that security allows, and punish terrorists as they deserve.

Regarding child rearing, our two daughters were raised in a progressive home and have become progressive adults who care about their fellow human beings in both their personal and professional lives. They are also raising children to follow our humanistic ideals.

If the proof is in the pudding, we don’t need to look further then at our conservative administration. Bullying, dishonesty, lying and lack of concern are its hallmarks.

Michael Telerant, Los Angeles

---

Response to Letter Writers 

In his April 6 letter, Martin J. Weisman blames President Donald Trump for the rise in global anti-Semitism (“Trump and Anti-Semitism,” April 6). Respectfully, far-right Trump support explains the emergence of “old-school” American Jew-hatred, but the explosion of Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party and on American campuses is the fault of former President Barack Obama, with his anti-Israel bias and promotion of Muslim groups in government and academia.

Moreover, Trump has nothing to do with the rebirth of European anti-Semitism, which is mainly caused by the immigration of millions of Muslims, and the rise of right-wing parties protesting them. In fact, some of those parties, like France’s National Front and the Dutch Freedom Party, are wooing Jewish support to fight Muslim misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism and even Christian-bashing.

Irrational Trump-hatred closes the minds of otherwise intelligent, inquisitive folks. Jewish Democrats who refuse to face this provide cover for the anti-Semites, Louis Farrakhan supporters and Israel-bashers in their party.

Rueben Gordon via email

Marc Yablonka besmirches the name of David Harris in his letter to the editor (“He Doesn’t Miss the ’60s,” April 6) when he falsely calls him a “draft evader … who persuaded others to go to federal prisons for five years for burning their draft cards,” and wrongly claims Harris “chewed up and spit out those of us who were naive enough to ride along so [he] could further [his] own egotistical adventures. … [He] didn’t give a hoot about the rest of us.”

Factually wrong on every count. Harris was the very model of patriotic objection to a governmental policy.

First, he advised his draft board in writing that he would not cooperate with any of its requirements. Second, he publicized his non-cooperation in his advocacy against the war, ensuring that he would become the focus of federal enforcement. Only then did he publicly and repeatedly urge other young men to do the same.

I should know. Harris — a former Stanford student body president — was in prison when I arrived there to begin my freshman year in September 1969.

I turned 18 that November. Federal law required I register with my draft board. I went to Palo Alto Resistance headquarters, which Harris helped establish, for counseling. The draft counselor’s kindness and respect for my struggles and questions as to what to do, even though he was to begin his own prison term for resistance the very next day, moved me to my core. It still does.

These brave men and the equally brave women who supported them will soon get their due when the documentary “Boys Who Said No!: Draft Resistance and the Vietnam War” is released.

David I. Schulman, Los Angeles

---

and FROM FACEBOOK:

“Why Is This Sport Different?” April 6:

I love it. Baseball is timeless. There is no clock to run out. What a great metaphor for redemption.

Cyndi Buckey

“Between the Shoah and Mimouna,” April 6:

The beauty and light and optimism of Mimouna is tempered, as a sword blade is tempered in the blacksmiths forge and under his hammer, by the awful evil that was the Shoah. It is built into the very fabric of our divinely created world that the forces of destruction and savagery will never have a final conquest. … Not as long as the Chosen People can find the will to resist.

Ernest Sewell

Thank you for writing of the concerns I share about current events.

Marilyn Danko

Beautiful words.

Tamara Anzivino

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Letters to the Editor: Holocaust, Media Bias and Progressives Being Good Parents : https://ift.tt/2GVfaoI

‘Toolkit’ Touts Hiring Actors With Disabilities

Screenshot from Facebook.

Question: Which group of people is the largest minority (roughly 20 percent) in the United States but usually is left out of current discussions about diversity and inclusion in the entertainment industry?

Answer: Children, teens and adults with disabilities.

According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), less than 2 percent of scripted television characters in 2017 were portrayed as people with disabilities, and actors without disabilities played more than 95 percent of them — a trend called “ableism,” meaning discrimination in favor of people without disabilities.

RespectAbility, a national disability advocacy nonprofit based in Maryland, is working to change that storyline with its new “Hollywood Disability Toolkit: The RespectAbility Guide to Inclusion in the Entertainment Industry,” funded by a grant from the California Endowment.

The toolkit is designed to help entertainment professionals do a better job in disability inclusion across all platforms to “ensure more accurate, positive portrayals of people with disabilities in film and television,” said RespectAbility’s president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. “When it comes to disability inclusion, people often simply don’t know that they don’t know. As a result, they are afraid they will make a mistake. … By creating this guide, we hope to take away the fear factor from disability inclusion. We want to make it easy.”

“When it comes to disability inclusion, people often simply don’t know that they don’t know.” — Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi

At the Toolkit launch event, held at the offices of Bunim-Murray, reality TV pioneer Jonathan Murray, a RespectAbility board member, said: “Opening the inclusion umbrella for America’s largest minority — the 1 in 5 Americans with a disability — is the right thing to do as well as the economically smart thing, given that the disability market is valued at more than $1 trillion.”

The free, 47-page toolkit, which is available online, covers such areas as “Best Practices,” highlighting the ABC family sitcom “Speechless,” which has the role of J.J., the son with cerebral palsy, played by Micah Fowler, who has cerebral palsy. Another section, “Etiquette: Interacting With People With Disabilities,” informs readers that a mobility device such as a wheelchair is part of a person’s personal space and shouldn’t be moved without permission. It  also encourages people to treat adults with disabilities as adults, and not use baby talk in conversation with them.

A section about the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) provides definitions and guidance in following the law, and a reminder that in the ADA “disability is a legal term rather than a medical one.” Practical accessibility tips are included, such as keeping floors free of potential tripping hazards so individuals with visual disabilities and those using walkers or wheelchairs can move around more easily and find a place to sit.

The bulk of the toolkit consists of specific disabilities FAQs, lists of national organizations and examples of actors and artists with those disabilities. The guide covers 13 categories of disabilities such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), blindness-vision loss, Down syndrome and little people/dwarfism.

In the section about “Mobility Impairments Requiring the Use of a Wheelchair,” violinist Itzhak Perlman, who has polio, states: “I always say separate your abilities from your disabilities. You know, if I could play the violin, I don’t have to play it standing up. I can play it sitting down.”

Elaine Hall, founder and executive director of The Miracle Project, said she recently coached eight teenagers and young adults with autism on the set of the Netflix comedy series “Atypical,” whose main character is a high school student with autism. The eight are current participants or alumni of her theater program for children and teens of all abilities. “They were able to be on that set for eight to 10 hours, taking direction and being flexible with last-minute script changes. The crew was in tears, seeing what was possible.”

The toolkit is online at www.respectability.org/hollywood-inclusion.

---

Michelle K. Wolf is a special needs parent activist and nonprofit professional. She is the founding executive director of the Jewish Los Angeles Special Needs Trust. Visit her Jews and Special Needs blog at jewishjournal.com/jews_and_special_needs.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

‘Toolkit’ Touts Hiring Actors With Disabilities : https://ift.tt/2v4r3TN

Wandering Israelis

If you had asked me as a child what I’d always remember from Jewish Day School, I doubt I would have counted Larry Milder’s song “Wherever You Go” among the minutiae I’d retain.

But the combination of really corny lyrics (no offense, Mr. Milder) and corresponding hand gestures really stitched them into my memory bank:

“Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish  / You’re never alone ’cause God made you a Jew / So when you’re not home, and you’re somewhere kind of new-ish / The odds are, don’t look far — ’cause they’re Jewish, too.”

Not exactly a cultural highpoint of Judaism, and yet, I confess, I find myself singing this song all the time. Partly because the melody is one of those super-catchy, can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head melodies, but also because of something deeper: Whenever I travel, I always run into Jews. And I know they’re Jews not because of beards and payot, but because they’re speaking Hebrew — meaning, they’re Israelis. And they’re everywhere.

The Israeli presence abroad is, for me, a source of never-ending delight. There is something profound and poetic about Jews returning to places where Jewish life has been destroyed, dulled or lost. But I’ve come to recognize many reasons behind the Israeli impulse to explore the Diaspora — and what it reveals about the Jewish psyche.

The Israeli presence abroad is, for me, a source of never-ending delight.

I first noticed the phenomenon of Israelis abroad when backpacking in Southeast Asia during Passover. I signed up with Chabad for what I assumed would be a modest seder in Phuket, Thailand, and was stunned when I entered a huge banquet hall with some 500 Israelis. I found them again in Inle Lake, Myanmar, where hotels were full of discarded guidebooks in Hebrew. Or in the Yangon airport, where hearing the sound of “Yalla, kadima!” turned into a daylong caravan with Israelis around the sites of the city.

I found them again in Budapest. And in Paris. And in Spain. When I told a friend I was interested in the “El Camino de Santiago” pilgrimage, he got me a book written by an Israeli about foraging for food along the way.

The Israeli draw to the world is deep and strong, propelled in part by the archetypal Jewish condition of wandering, which characterized Jewish life for thousands of years. But it’s also motivated by varying degrees of restlessness and dissatisfaction with the status quo that has inspired Jewish innovation and philosophy throughout the ages.

After completing their army service, the Israeli Student Travel Association estimates that from 30,000 and 40,000 young Israelis go backpacking every year. It’s their way of escaping the chaos and life in a war zone and reclaiming individual freedom. And they’re not alone: Last year, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics announced that more than 2.2 million Israelis had flown abroad in just a six-month period, leading one travel agent to declare, “The people of Israel are simply going on vacation at a rate not seen anywhere else in the world.”

Into the cities where synagogues and Jewish quarters are today exoskeletons of a vibrant past, come the vivacious, boisterous, beautiful citizens of Israel, each bearing the gifts of Jewish statehood. From the sonorous sounds of the Hebrew language to the country’s economic successes that made leisure travel possible, Israelis are the roving satellite sparks of a reinvigorated Jewish nation.

We are both rooted and worldly. From the Jews who built the shtetl to those who ushered the Spanish Golden Age, Jewishness has existed and flourished on almost every continent throughout time. Note that the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, does not celebrate the birthday of the Jews but the birthday of the world. We are tribal, but we have also always been universal.

Beyond Israeli tourism abroad, it is estimated that more than 1 million Israelis now live in the Diaspora — most of them in the United States. While it has undoubtedly expanded the reach and impact of Israeli culture, and been a significant political asset, it also may be compromising Israeli innovation, contributing to a so-called “brain drain,” and diminishing the Israeli census.

From 2012 and 2015, Israel lost more people to the United States (18,000) than it gained through American aliyah (13,000), according to the Department of Homeland Security. This prompted Israel’s Immigrant Absorption Ministry to launch the campaign “Returning at 70,” to draw Israeli expats back home. Their presence is needed.

But, of course, it’s the security of having a homeland that allows Israelis to wander and still feel safe.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Wandering Israelis : https://ift.tt/2IM2vki

Max’s Very Special Bar Mitzvah

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Like many Jewish mothers, Jody Barrens Moran knew she wanted to do something extra special for her son Max’s bar mitzvah, but she wasn’t trying to come up with a crazy theme or have a horse gallop into the ceremony with the bar mitzvah boy in the saddle. She was just trying to figure out how to have a meaningful ceremony at Temple Emanuel, a Reform synagogue in Beverly Hills, for her 13-year-old son, who is nonverbal and can’t walk without assistance. As Barrens Moran says, she lives her life according to her favorite quote from actress Audrey Hepburn: “Nothing is impossible — the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!’ ”

Max has significant developmental delays in all areas, but doctors haven’t been able to diagnose him. He communicates with family members and those who know him by his expressive eyes, attends a special education program and participates in intensive physical and occupational therapy.

Rabbi Jonathan Aaron and Cantor Lizzie Weiss at Temple Emanuel embraced the idea of planning a joyful, nontraditional bar mitzvah, and created a unique prayer experience that would put Max in the center of all the activities, even though he wouldn’t be able to assume the traditional roles of leading the congregation in prayer or read Hebrew from the Torah scroll. So on Feb. 24, Jody Barrens Moran read from the Torah instead of Max, and a cousin Max’s age held the Torah on his behalf during the l’dor v’dor ritual, when a Torah is passed from grandparents to parents, and then to the youngest generation. Weiss wrote a custom tallit blessing that was titled, “We Wrap You in Love” and included these lines: “With each glance into your eyes we see your soul /And we see our Blessing.”

Max was beaming throughout the service that was attended by 150 family members and friends, recognizing and soaking up all the love in the room that was focused on him. “I really feel that my son knew what was going on and that everyone was there for him,” Barrens Moran said.

Instead of the usual bar mitzvah gifts or checks going directly to Max, Barrens Moran asked that guests make donations to Max’s third-party special needs trust, to enable the family to legally supplement vital government benefits such as Medi-Cal and SSI with private funds that can go toward ensuring Max with a high quality of life.

Barrens Moran encourages other parents of children with special needs not to let their kids’ disabilities stop them from having a full life. “Having a bar mitzvah for Max was part of my dream and it became a reality when I finally said I’m going to do it.”

Barrens Moran’s other dream is to create a home “for Max and for other children like Max [where they can] live in a loving environment. There will be about four or five kids at a time, and I’ll hire all the staff and the therapists,” she said.

The common thread that runs through all of these b’nai mitzvahs, however, is a powerful sense of holiness and love that permeates the sanctuary.

As Barrens Moran and Maxine, Max’s grandmother, described to me the beauty and moving nature of Max’s bar mitzvah, it reminded me of our son’s bar mitzvah, held almost a decade ago in Beth Am during Rosh Chodesh Hanukkah, which was also a unique, tailored service for his own set of special needs. We have also been guests at Valley Beth Shalom for so many of our friends who have children with special needs and also attended many wonderful special needs b’nai mitzvah through the Vista del Mar program called Nes Gadol, led by Rabbi Jackie Redner.

Abilities vary widely among teens with special needs, from those who can chant their haftarah flawlessly from memory, to some who use a voice-assisted communication device to speak, to others for whom dressing the Torah is a huge milestone. The common thread that runs through all of these b’nai mitzvahs, however, is a powerful sense of holiness and love that permeates the sanctuary as a group of people come together to honor the dignity and uniqueness of an integral member of the congregation.

---

Michelle K. Wolf is a special needs parent activist and nonprofit professional.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Max’s Very Special Bar Mitzvah : https://ift.tt/2GTXdmr