When Name Calling Is a Good Thing

As the cashier at the grocery store began to ring up my purchases, she glanced at me and asked, “Did you find everything you were looking for today, ma’am?”

I expected the question — it was company protocol to ask. Even on occasions when I hadn’t found quite everything I had looked for, I’d still answer blandly, “Yes, thank you.”

That day, I decided not to answer by rote. I read her name tag and said, “Yes, thank you, Toni.”

She looked back at me for a just a second and visibly brightened. “Glad to hear it!” she answered with a smile.

With only one word, I was able to infuse a predictable and commonplace interaction with a small spark of personal connection. She was not just a cashier ringing up groceries during a long shift. She was a woman named Toni.

Happy with these results, I have made it a regular habit to call sales clerks or service reps by name. I do it in person and even in online chats. In person, I always am rewarded with a smile, a straightening of the shoulders, an appreciative look. I’d like to think that I would have thought of doing this on my own, but I was prompted to do it because it’s a mitzvah to greet people with a pleasant demeanor. It’s also a mitzvah to be the first to greet another person. What was I waiting for?

You never know where a kind greeting can lead. My friend Barry not only chatted with the manager of a local mailbox store, calling her by name, he asked her out on a date. They were married within the year.

The simple practice of greeting others with a kind expression isn’t such a small thing after all.

Addressing people by their name in a caring way leaves deep impressions. Recently, I attended a memorial tribute for an elderly friend named Maurice. Now, Maurice was a big man with a big personality, brash and bluntly opinionated. We had belonged to Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, the “Shul on the Beach,” for many years. A strong baritone, Maurice had seized the opportunity to begin prayers and hymns with his melodies of choice. His commanding voice and musical selections helped define the spiritual atmosphere of the synagogue for nearly 40 years.

Maurice was a colorful character, yet as people reminisced and eulogized him, it was clear that he had touched people by always remembering shul members’ full names, bellowing out his greetings: “Jacob Israel!” Or, “Leah Emunah!” His loud acknowledgement became one of his trademarks, but it didn’t end there.

He also remembered the names of shul members’ extended family members, and he also remembered what troubles or issues they were dealing with.

As I sat listening to the tributes, I nodded in recognition. Long ago, I told Maurice that my sister was about to undergo another spinal surgery, and for years afterward, he’d regularly ask me, his brow furrowed with concern, “How’s your sister Sharon doing?”

One speaker said half-jokingly, “I thought Maurice only remembered the names of my parents and siblings. Now that I know he did that for everyone, I’m feeling a little less special.”

The youngest speaker at the event, a young mother in her 20s, recalled that even though the synagogue was overflowing with children, Maurice knew all their names. “We all understood that in a small congregation, we were each important. Only later did I realize that a big part of this feeling came from Maurice always addressing us by name.”

In today’s society, too many people feel invisible and lonely. Increasingly, even when we’d like to smile or nod or make small talk with another person in public, we can’t. Too often, they are in the addictive clutch of their phones, an impenetrable barrier. These small losses add up to a much larger fracturing of the social compact.

I discovered through my little experiment, and Maurice proved, that the simple, old-fashioned practice of greeting others with a kind expression and acknowledging their names when we can isn’t such a small thing after all.

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Judy Gruen’s latest book is “The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love With Faith” (She Writes Press, 2017).

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Tradition, Tikkun Olam Are Not an Either/Or

As a Conservative Jew, I suppose it was not surprising that I found myself agreeing in part with both Gil Troy in his July 20 Jewish Journal cover story about the book by Jonathan Neumann that he approvingly cites, and with Jonathan Klein. After all, the very essence of the ideal Conservative Jew, as defined by “Emet Ve-Emunah,” the only official statement of the philosophy of Conservative Judaism, is “Nothing human or Jewish is alien to me.”

I thus wrote this in the preface of my 2005 book, “The Way Into Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World)”:

“Surveys show that even Jews who doubt the existence or significance of God, who are not involved much in Judaism’s prayers, rituals, or holiday celebrations, who violate Judaism’s restrictions on diet and work on holy days, and/or who do not know much about their heritage or devote any time as adults to studying it nevertheless feel in their bones that they have a duty as Jews to make this a better world, that this is the essence of what it means to be a Jew. As a religious Jew, I would say that it is sad that so many people, by their own description, are “not very religious,” for such people are missing out on a virtual treasure trove of meaning, joy, intellectual ferment, and communal connections that the Jewish tradition offers us in all these other expressions of the Jewish tradition. Still, such Jews are not wrong in identifying “social action” as a key component of what it means to be Jewish, for much of the tradition is devoted to it.”

So, on one hand, Gil Troy and Jonathan Neumann are correct, in my view, that transforming Judaism into universal humanism seriously truncates its scope and message. Seeing tikkun olam as the sum total of Judaism also leads to the view that specific Jewish identity is not necessary. Therefore, all of the following fall by the wayside: marrying another Jew; continuing your learning about Judaism throughout your adult life; raising your children to become serious Jews; joining a synagogue and becoming involved in its worship and activities; supporting other Jewish communal institutions; and advocating for the State of Israel. Those are very serious losses for the Jewish tradition and the Jewish community, and it is anything but clear that either can survive on the basis of tikkun olam alone. They are also serious losses for individual Jews, for seeing tikkun olam as the sum and substance of being Jewish robs them of a whole treasure house of meaning and growth that a more serious and widespread involvement in our heritage and community would give them.

On the other hand, Jonathan Klein is clearly right when he points out that taking care of the poor, the sick and the needy in other ways is fundamental to the Jewish tradition.

On the other hand, Jonathan Klein is clearly right when he points out that taking care of the poor, the sick and the needy in other ways is fundamental to the Jewish tradition. Contrary to Neumann, this part of Judaism is not tangential or based on misreading of a few texts. Rabbi Klein cites just a few of the many texts that depict God as sustaining the needs of the destitute, and that demand of us as a matter of law that we do so likewise. As I point out in my book, tikkun olam also requires that we be there for our family and friends when they need us, that we fulfill very specific responsibilities to them. Any form of Judaism that ignores this, that focuses exclusively on Jewish rituals and prayer, is also a severely truncated form of Judaism, robbing its followers of much of its message and meaning.

Thus, the Jewish tradition itself includes demands that we engage in acts of tikkun olam for our fellow Jews, for people of other faiths, and for our environment — and if that is liberalism, so be it — but it also requires us to study and practice the tradition and to support synagogues and other Jewish institutions as well as the State of Israel. It is that kind of demanding but rich, textured and meaningful Judaism to which Gil Troy calls us, and with which Conservative Judaism has gifted me.

I hope that all of us can find our way into a Judaism that is not either/or but both … and … and … and …

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Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff is a rector and distinguished professor of philosophy at American Jewish University.

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Rabbi Aaron Lerner: How Bad Is It for Pro-Israel Students at UCLA?

Rabbi Aaron Lerner: How bad is it for pro-Israel students at UCLA?

Instead of Hysterics, Can We Talk?

Two weeks ago, I was having lunch with a prominent Hollywood writer in Santa Monica (to be more accurate, I was having a glass of water and he was having lunch). Politics came up; he happens to be a Trump supporter. We discussed the various permutations of the policies pursued by President Donald Trump, as well as Trump’s unfortunate lack of character. The sun was shining cheerily through the windows; the atmosphere was light and airy. All around us, wealthy people deliberately dressed down in California casual sipped their $40 glasses of chardonnay while playing with their $300 sunglasses and tapping their $400 loafers and $700 high heels.

Which is when it occurred to me that if we had taken a poll of the room, we’d surely have found that nearly everyone there thinks that we’re living in the middle of an existential crisis in the United States. This, of course, was Santa Monica, which means that virtually everyone in the room voted for Hillary Clinton; most of those people probably feel that Trump colluded with Russia to undermine our democracy. Most of them probably also believe that we are living on the verge of a fascist dictatorship, and that only wearing pussy hats and shouting about #Resistance will prevent the emergence of this fascist dictatorship.

Yet everyone was spending the afternoon supping on the finest America has to offer, while complaining that the sparkling water was just a tad flat.

All of which isn’t unique to Americans on the left. When Barack Obama was president, the economy was pretty good, even though I disagreed with his policies; his foreign policy, I thought, was far more disastrous, but America wasn’t involved in any earth-shattering wars. Yes, I thought Obamacare was awful, invasive policy, but I still had my insurance through my employer. Overall, American lives didn’t change all that much under Obama. Nor did they under Bush. Or Clinton. Or Bush I. 

We’re so convinced that crisis will be immediate and triggered by circumstance that we refuse to talk about serious issues with those on the other side. 

Politics, in fact, infuses us with a sense of urgency that is sometimes useful. Those who are obsessed with politics worry deeply — and correctly — about preventing black swan incidents, outstanding episodes with world-changing impact. We can’t predict them, which is why so many people are worried about them — and they do, in fact, occur. We have to guess what actions reduce the probability of serious black swans. Is it minimization of conflict with foreign actors, or a policy of peace through strength? Is it less government regulation or more?

But sometimes our worries about the future prevent us from recognizing that everything doesn’t actually seem to exist on a knife’s edge — that perhaps the black swan is further away than we think. Perhaps our worries ought to be not about the latest headline, but about deeper systemic change. And examining what systemic change is necessary isn’t a question of daily controversies, but of deep ideas that require deep examination. Trump’s latest tweet might bring about the apocalypse, but it’s almost certain it won’t. But deeper crises of character and direction could.

Those conversations, however, are foreclosed by the crisis nature of our politics. We’re so convinced that crisis will be immediate and triggered by circumstance that we refuse to talk about serious issues with those on the other side. That means that the chances of a black swan event are actually heightened, not reduced, by a mentality of panic. The longer we focus on the supposedly urgent (which won’t turn out to be urgent) at the expense of the important, the greater the chances we screw up the important.

So, no, we’re not facing a crisis. Which is why we should stop with the crisis talk and start actually talking with one another. If we don’t, we’re closer to the apocalypse than we think.

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Ben Shapiro is an author, podcast host and editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire. 

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We, the Israelites

Growing up, I never fully understood the idea of whiteness. My family is olive-skinned and hazel-eyed; the summer sun would awaken our souls and deeply brown our skin. I always felt far closer to Egyptian princesses than European royals, but it was not something I ever really questioned until I came to New York City after college. Here, every cabdriver thinks I am from wherever he is from. “You’re Turkish, right?” “Persian?” “From Syria?” 

No, I’m from Philadelphia. Pause. “That’s it?” Well, my family is from Russia. “No, no, no …. ” Um, I’m Jewish? “Ah, that’s it!”

What the cabdrivers have known instinctively has taken years for the Ashkenazi community to even begin to discuss. But the discussion finally has begun, and the data are fairly conclusive: Like our Sephardic, Mizrahi and African brethren, we, too, are not “white.” We hail from the Middle East, the Levant, the Kingdom of Israel. We are Jewish by religion but Israelite — Judean — by ethnicity. The Romans and other assorted colonizers kicked many of us out of our homeland, but they couldn’t change our DNA, which shows our lineage as distinctly as the latest archeological find. 

I expected pushback to the idea that Jews aren’t white. Jews of a certain age feel an understandable insecurity in giving up this notion in a country that has only recently fully accepted us. While Jews here have been legally “free,” discrimination in terms of quotas, housing, jobs and clubs persisted well into the 1970s.

But the loudest pushback I’m seeing is coming from a place I would least expect: the left. You would think leftists would be saying things like: “See, the Palestinians are our genetic brothers!” (Which is actually only marginally true.) Instead, they are so caught up with the words “power” and “privilege,” that they are demanding that Jews stay in their place: at the top of the privilege hierarchy and the bottom of the victim hierarchy.  

Leftist Jews argue that they don’t want to belittle “real racism.” But the ferociousness with which they cling to their whiteness belies an inconvenient truth: leftist Jews seem to like their “white privilege” as much as they like to decry it. They have become invested in being colonized.

Whiteness, of course, is a cultural construct. It has little to do with skin color — fair-skinned Jews (who became fair-skinned because of years of exile in Europe) have the same genetic makeup as those with darker skin. But whiteness is also not based on “privilege.” In pretending that all descendants of Europeans are “privileged,” leftist ideology erases entire swaths of humanity. I can hear Irish and Polish immigrants say, “If only.”

Jews have a special relationship with whiteness. After centuries of persecution culminating in genocide, all based on our “otherness,” we now get to be told by leftists that, for the sake of kowtowing to “real victims,” we again need to be demonized — but this time as white.

Like our Sephardic, Mizrahi and African brethren, we, too, are not “white.”

Meanwhile, in a historic ruling, a federal judge has found that Jews are finally entitled to protection from race-based discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ruling is based on a Louisiana College president’s refusal to hire a young football coach because he had “Jewish blood.” Will leftist Jews fight the ruling, insisting that Jews are white and anti-Semitism is not “systemic”?

I think it’s well past time to embrace our ethnicity — as descendants of the Tribes of Israel. And to counter centuries of being told how we fit (or don’t) into artificial Western categories, we should re-appropriate the term Israelite. We are Jews yes, but we are also Israelites, a distinct identity with a distinct heritage and culture. This would nicely follow the new Israeli law declaring Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Those of us who don’t live in Israel are not Israelis, but we are still Israelites.

Imagine the bridges of light we could build if we fully embraced our distinct identities. We, the Israelites, could offer a more nuanced view of immigration. We, the Israelites, could help other minorities with their unique struggles to thrive. We, the Israelites, can do tikkun olam without erasing either our religion or ethnicity.

We, the Israelites, can be that light unto the nations.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic living in New York.

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Two Words Democrats May Regret

If you vote Democratic, this is the commercial you don’t want to see:

“In 2017, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency stopped 7,000 pounds of heroin from entering America, as well as 2,300 pounds of fentanyl, a drug so deadly just a few grams can be lethal.

“To dismantle criminal gangs and keep America safe, ICE agents made more than 143,000 arrests, and 92 percent of those taken into custody were aliens with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, or were immigration fugitives or illegal re-entrants.

“The agency also stopped 2,000 human traffickers from entering our borders, rescuing more than 900 abused children who were forced into virtual slavery.

“Now, one party in Congress is turning its back on this agency.

“In a recent vote, 9 out of 10 Democrats refused to support a simple measure in the House of Representatives that defends this crucial arm of law enforcement and admonishes efforts to abolish ICE.

“So, when you vote on Nov. 6, just ask yourself: Which party is more committed to keeping America safe?”

For voters who are neither hard-core Democratic nor Republican and therefore can be swayed, you can see how such a message can be lethal to Democratic hopes of regaining the House.

And yet, a growing movement is afoot among progressives to “Abolish ICE.” This movement has become so noisy it is spooking Democratic politicians who should know better. That may explain why on July 17, only 18 House Democrats voted to support ICE and admonish efforts to abolish the agency. Evidently, they didn’t want to alienate angry activists.

This movement has become so noisy it is spooking Democratic politicians who should know better.

In an analysis in The New York Times, Alexander Burns writes that this new faction is “increasingly rattling primary elections around the country, and they promise to grow as a disruptive force in national elections as younger voters reject the traditional boundary lines of Democratic politics.”

These voters, he adds, are also “seeking to remake their own party as a ferocious — and ferociously liberal — opposition force. And many appear as focused on forcing progressive policies into the midterm debate as they are on defeating Republicans.”

Abolishing ICE is not the only policy they’re forcing into the midterm debate (there are others, such as single-payer health care), but it is clearly their most emotional and visible cause. The images of migrant children being separated from parents as part of President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy were traumatizing. An angry response was to be expected, and ICE was an easy target.

This lashing out at ICE, however, is political suicide.

“Democrats are making a massive political mistake by calling for the end of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” Princeton Professor Julian Zelizer writes on the CNN website. Why is it a blunder? Because “the strategy shifts attention away from Trump and his hardline policies and toward the issue of government reorganization.”

In other words, the “Abolish ICE” movement lets Trump off the hook. Instead of focusing on his radical and extreme ways, it allows Republicans to focus their message on law enforcement. Every “Abolish ICE” demonstration becomes a de facto commercial in favor of Republicans who value public safety.

The irony is that my biggest beef with the anti-Trump movement has been that it doesn’t offer ideas or solutions — it just bashes Trump. Finally, when it decides to champion a solution, it picks the one most likely to backfire. It sticks its neck out in front of a guillotine.

This blunder is more about strategy than policy. It may well be that abolishing ICE can be justified as part of comprehensive and reasonable immigration reform. But it is anger and extremism, not reason and compromise, that come across in the “Abolish ICE” movement. And the rhetoric is only getting worse: Just last week, in her new Netflix show, comedian Michelle Wolf compared ICE to ISIS.

The “Abolish ICE” movement lets Trump off the hook. Instead of focusing on his radical and extreme ways, it allows Republicans to focus their message on law enforcement.

Such merchants of hysteria, who seem to be feasting on all the media attention, are forgetting that their goal should be to win back the House, not turn off swing voters. It’s a sign of how these activists are losing their heads that, given the juicy target of Trump and his zero-tolerance policy, they picked ICE instead.

As Zelizer writes: “In 2018, Democrats who are angry about the ongoing attacks on undocumented immigrants, as well as legal immigration, don’t really need anything more to rally around. They already have Trump and his blistering rhetoric, and they have the extraordinarily harsh policy of separating children from their families — which, though the President has ended, still remains an issue since more than 2,000 immigrant kids remain in limbo.”

This is the problem with losing your head. You tend to lose voters and you tend to write great commercials — for the other side.

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Follow David Suissa on Twitter: @suissatweets

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Levi Brous-Light: His ‘Unidos’ Dolls Help Separated Children

On the “assembly line,” the workers sometimes refer to him as “The General.” But when he’s not overseeing production, he’s just 9-year-old Levi Brous-Light, the youngest child of IKAR Rabbi Sharon Brous and writer David Light.

In the last few weeks, Levi has been producing little dolls called “Unidos” (“united” in Spanish), with the help of family and friends. He and his parents set up a table near the Larchmont farmers market on July 19 to sell 200 of the “creatures,” as Brous calls them. Proceeds from the sales go to the nonprofit legal-aid organization Bet Tzedek, to fund legal defense for children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. With the help of his salesforce — sisters Eva and Sami and other family members — Levi raised more than $2,100.

In a Facebook post about the project’s origin, Brous said Levi had been inspired while visiting Nachalat Binyamin — the famous Tel Aviv street where local artists display and sell their creations — during IKAR’s recent community Israel trip.

I heard about the kids being separated from their parents, and I thought, like, why should I make [these toys] just for myself if I can make a difference and, hopefully, get these kids back to their families?

Levi took time out from selling his wares to discuss his project — with a little help from his parents — at a Larchmont coffee shop.

Levi Brous-Light: “There were, like, really cool artists like everywhere [in Tel Aviv]. We came to this little tent and they were selling these little creatures. They were really cool. I liked that they were all made out of recycled materials. And they were really cute. I got excited because I thought, ‘If I make my own, it’ll be fun and bring me closer to anyone who helps.’ Then I heard about the kids being separated from their parents, and I thought, like, ‘Why should I make them just for myself if I can make a difference and, hopefully, get these kids back to their families?’ And so I did.”

Jewish Journal: Levi wanted to make 3,000 creatures made from a tennis ball, binder clips, marbles and spray paint …
Sharon Brous on Facebook: [As] a kind of artistic protest to the forced separations, then sell them to raise funds to pay for the lawyers who were working to reunite the kids and their parents.

JJ: But producing one or two a day meant the project would take about 9 1/2 years. So they scaled down the production goal while drafting the rest of the family to join the “assembly line.” The Los Angeles Tennis Club donated old tennis balls, Bibi’s Bakery owner Dan Messinger provided boxes for storage and display, and graphic designer Christina Saucedo created the labeling.
At the farmers market, one woman bought a creature and came back a while later. She had spied a father with a little boy and offered Levi’s creation to the boy, telling the two about the cause the project was benefiting. The father burst into tears. After 20 years living in the U.S., his wife was being deported. The customer came back to the table to share the story, then she and Brous went to find the man, talked to him and connected him with Bet Tzedek.
SB: Hopefully, the lawyers there will be able to help him with his particular case.
JJ: Who was the best worker on the project?
LB-L: My dad.

JJ: What did your mom contribute?
LB-L: She’s going to the stores to get extra supplies and posts [on social media] about it. And she found the fund we’re giving to.

JJ: What was the hardest part of production?
LB-L: We had to, like, stab them [the tennis balls] and shove clips into them, so it was really hard. Halfway through, we got a solder [iron] and started soldering through them. That made the process much faster. Instead of making 20 a day we made, like, 60.”
David Light: He’s a force of nature, this little one.

JJ: You said you had injuries from using the hot-glue gun?
LB-L: I burned myself and I’m covered in paint everywhere.

JJ: Before he left for camp this week, Levi went back into “the factory” to make more, riding the fundraising momentum and also because he wants his own Unidos.
LB-L: I think I’m going to buy some from myself. I have to negotiate with myself. (The dolls are available for a minimum donation of $10.)
DL: Hopefully, you’ll give yourself a good deal.

JJ: You can get your own Unidos creature by messaging David Light on Facebook. The creatures’ wide eyes seem the perfect reminder to remain vigilant in the current moment.
SB on Facebook: Here’s the thing: This isn’t everything, but it’s something. And these days, with the winds of despair blowing hard, doing something seems like an important act of spiritual resistance.

JJ: “It’s the eyes that get you,” the proud rabbi/mother wrote, talking about the little creatures, but possibly also about the vision of the boy who created them.

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Tisha b’Av and Tu b’Av: From Death to Love

Should you find yourself in Jerusalem as the fast of Tisha b’ Av sets in, you will experience a veritable ghost town, a city enwrapped in Jews’ ancient, timeless melancholy and grueling lamentations, and darkened by mourning and bereavement.

But five nights later, everything changes. It’s now Tu b’Av, the holiday of love — the Jewish tradition’s alternative to Valentine’s Day. In days of old on Tu b’Av, the daughters of Jerusalem would dress in white and dance in the fields in search of a suitable spouse.

Why is it that Tisha b’Av takes such a prominent place in our spiritual consciousness, but Tu b’Av has been marginalized to what our sages call, in rabbinic Hebrew, “keren zavit” (the obscure corner)?

Much of the dichotomy has to do with the Halachic codes and the aftermath of the Holocaust. But is it not time to re-energize what kabbalist Isaac Luria called a “vacant space” for the Jewish holiday of love?

Love as a verb is the opening word of the primary paragraph of the Shema, and Abraham is embraced by God as “the one who loves Me.”

In Hebrew, the word for love, ahavah, carries the same gematria (value in rabbinic numerology) as the words echad (one, or unity) and da’aga (heartfelt concern for another person).

In Tractate Yoma, the Talmud reminds us that spiritual transformation experienced through true love is the most sublime existential state attainable for we mortals.

Erich Fromm — one of the greatest psychoanalytic minds of the 20th century, a Holocaust survivor, and a towering Talmudist in his youth —  examined love’s presence in humanity in his irreplaceable book, “The Art of Loving.”  Although exposed to more than his fair share of death and acts of genocide, Fromm observed that mankind steadfastly covets life. He concluded that our capacity for love was the force behind this strong yearning for life.

The first psalm Jews read during weekday morning services is Psalm 30. We thank the Almighty for having “turned our eulogy into a dance.” This is what our people achieved when, some 800 days after the ovens in Auschwitz were shut down, the United Nations voted to establish the Jewish state in Israel.

We are all called upon to make this transition from death to life and love, despite the interminable material and psychological challenges of life. The transition from Tisha b’Av to Tu b’Av, from death to love, is indeed the transition from a eulogy into a dance of Psalm 30.

It is time for us to reassert Tu b’Av’s worthy place in Jewish life. In an age of unprecedented political polarization and religious schism, all of humanity thirsts for this glorious, imperative transition from death to love.

Love empowers humanity to rise above the weariness of our tragic collective history and the challenges of our increasingly volatile present.

Honor both Tisha b’Av and Tu b’Av and embark on the epic journey from death to love to infinity.

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Rabbi Tal Sessler is senior rabbi of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel. He is the author of several books dealing with philosophy and contemporary Jewish identity.

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Housing Law Is Counter to Israel’s Spirit

REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

As of the Journal’s press time, the Knesset had not voted on the “Nationality Law.” Please see jewishjournal.com for updates.

UPDATE: On July 18, the Knesset passed the Basic Law.

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Fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was enacted. Commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, it prohibited various forms of discrimination “in the sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Since then, HUD has been monitoring trends in racial and ethnic discrimination in rental and sales markets. According to the most recent survey, conducted in 2013, while housing discrimination is illegal, in practice, it unfortunately exists: “(w)hite homeseekers are more likely to be favored than minorities. Most important, minority homeseekers are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than whites.”

A case in point happened in 1973, when the Justice Department sued a management corporation and its president, Donald Trump, for alleged racial discrimination against Blacks who wished to rent apartments in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. When Trump started making noises about a potential presidential run in 2012, rapper Snoop Dogg quipped: “Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time he pushed a Black family out of their home.”

In Israel, housing discrimination might not only become a practice, but officially allowed by law.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu designated the Basic Law: Israel as the state of the Jewish people, as one of his priorities. (In 1950, the Harari Decision established that in lieu of a constitution, Basic Laws would serve as Israel’s foundational legal principles.) That Israel doesn’t need such law is beside the point. The main problem with this law is that it shatters the already fragile Israeli democracy.

At the crux of this controversial bill lies article 7b., which says “the state can allow a community composed of people of the same faith or nationality to maintain an exclusive community.” That this idea has already been dismissed by the Israeli Supreme Court two decades ago didn’t deter the initiators of this bill. In 2000, Chief Justice Aharon Barak ruled on the case of the Ka’adans, an Israeli-Arab couple who had been refused permission to buy a plot or home in Katzir, a Jewish cooperative settlement in northern Israel. “We do not accept the conception that the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish state justify discrimination by the state between citizens on the basis of religion or nationality,” wrote Barak in his landmark ruling.

If the Supreme Court insists on holding such discrimination illegal and unconstitutional? No worries: Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is already advancing the “overriding clause,” which will enable the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions.

In Israel, housing discrimination might officially be allowed by law.

On July 10, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin implored members of the Knesset (MKs) to re-examine the repercussions of the specific article: “I also ask for us to look inward, into the depths of the Israeli society: are we willing in the name of the Zionist vision to lend a hand to discrimination and exclusion of a man or a woman based on their origin?”

Rivlin, who always knew how to reconcile his ardent Zionism with his liberal view, went on to warn the MKs that discrimination will not be limited to Arabs: “The bill before you allows any group, in the broadest of terms and without any monitoring, to establish a community with no Mizrahi Jews, Haredim, Druze and members of the LGBT community.”

The fact that following Rivlin’s appeal, the bill has been softened to “only” encourage Jewish settlement doesn’t change the fact that it stands against the equality promised to the Israeli Arabs in the Declaration of Independence.

What Israel needs in order to strengthen its Jewish character is more Jews who would seek to make the Jewish state their home. The way to accomplish that is by aspiring to become what the prophet Isaiah called “light unto the nations,” not by passing discriminating laws, which only undermine Israel’s democracy and tarnish its name.

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Uri Dromi is the director general of the Jerusalem Press Club. From 1992-96, he was a spokesman for the Israeli government.

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Rob Long: Hollywood writer talks Trump

A ‘Touching’ Moment

After I spoke on a panel, the panel’s moderator stood behind me, reiterating the point I’d just made, while resting his palm on the top of my shoulder, his fingers extending to my clavicle. It was public. It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t malevolent. It wasn’t a grope, assault or abuse. And it certainly wasn’t rape. God forbid that it is any of those things for me or anyone, ever. But it was utterly unnecessary. And it made me uncomfortable. 

Instead of owning my discomfort, I made excuses. This was no big deal. He held no power, no ability to inflict physical or professional harm. It was generational: The intent was avuncular or paternal, even if it felt patronizing and invasive. It was vestigial discomfort from messages I received about touch in Orthodox Jewish schools. It was my inner New Yorker, dormant after a decade of California grooviness, awakening to someone touching me unexpectedly from behind. So if it wasn’t “wrong,” then why did it feel that way? 

Talking with friends about sexual harassment, the imbalance of power and lack of gender equity in the Jewish community is a regular conversation for me. Whether it’s equal pay or equal representation, these discussions are multinational and local, playing out against the greater conversations around #MeToo, chronicling sexual harassment and assault, and Time’s Up, a call to expand opportunities for women, to “join the resistance” and “smash the patriarchy.” 

From rabbinic times to present day, men have owned most Jewish leadership positions. And even in a moment that’s tuned in to the conversation on gender equality, the Forward’s 2017 salary survey of Jewish communal organizations’ leadership shows only eight women listed in the top 56. As “Yael,” a former Jewish nonprofit professional, told me, women in Jewish organizations “know we’re there to service these men, stroke their egos, be the good girls and make sure they get what they need.” This expectation validates the status quo: men lead, women support. 

Talking with friends about sexual harassment, the imbalance of power and lack of gender equity in the Jewish community is a regular conversation for me.

With this hierarchy so systemic, power is consequently at an imbalance. Yael was in her 20s when her supervisor, 25 years her senior, would comment on her body, make her uncomfortable by touching her arm, and “go up to the line but didn’t really cross it.” She struggled with infertility; her boss suggested it was because the sex wasn’t good. But he was also a father figure who “made me feel cared for as a person and as a professional. … If I could shunt off the creepy stuff, it would be great. In the Jewish community, boundaries are down and everyone acts like they’re related, anyway. He took advantage of that intimacy and lack of boundaries.” 

If Jewish organizations and institutions operate on the perception that we’re all family, why shouldn’t we all be able to show blunt appreciation and affection that sometimes feels smothering or oppressive? Because, family often comes with complicated emotions attached, but that’s not something everyone wants in their workplace.

Think about the role of touch in your professional environment: showing closeness, expressing support or bridging a conflict. “Job well done!” — handshake, high-five or fist bump. “So great seeing you again!” — hug, back slap, European air kiss. “I’m so sorry for your loss” — handshake, embrace, hand on shoulder to impart strength.

Touch asserts dominance; a person with more status can touch one with less. The #MeToo label includes stories of assault but also of lack of respect and abuse of power in the workplace. 

Touch is valuable and powerful, but how that physical contact is received is situational. A hug from your sibling isn’t the same as a hug from a colleague. When my mother died, some embraces healed, others hurt; on Sept. 11, 2001, I accepted contact from just about anyone. And with shomer negiah (abstaining from touching the opposite sex) a value for some in our community, we should think twice before reaching out to touch someone.

The complication around touch predates any hashtag; in the time of #MeToo and Time’s Up, being in the Jewish communal workspace adds a layer to an already complicated conversational space. In this reactive world, it’s worth taking a beat before we reach out and touch someone, not because we’re afraid of litigation but because touch is too powerful to be used irresponsibly.

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Trump’s Disgraceful Moment

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

On July 16, President Donald Trump gave a deeply disgraceful press conference with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The presser began with Trump announcing that although the Russia-United States relationship has “never been worse than it is now,” all of that “changed as of about four hours ago.” It was downhill from there. Trump proceeded to state that he held “both countries responsible” for the deterioration of the relationship, then supported Putin’s argument that Russia hadn’t interfered in the 2016 American election in any way: “I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. … I have confidence in both parties.”

Both parties. One party being a murderous dictator, and the other the intelligence community that works for him.

All of which is disgusting, of course.

That doesn’t mean, as Democrats have suggested, that Trump is in bed with the Russians. Far more likely, it means that Trump’s ego is one giant gaping wound, constantly draining rage over the suggestion that his election victory was somehow ill-won. To the refusal of former FBI Director James Comey to publicly clear him in the collusion investigation, Trump responded by firing Comey; now he’s responded to the Robert Mueller investigation’s indictment of 12 Russian government hackers by proclaiming that Putin might be innocent after all. This isn’t about some nefarious plot. It’s about Trump’s ridiculous ego problem.

None of that acts as justification for Trump’s behavior, of course.

But it does explain why when Trump says stuff, it often doesn’t matter.

More than a year ago, I wrote that Americans were beginning to tune out Trump. “Many Americans have been treating Trump as a guy to ignore except when he bothers them, an approach that seems pretty reasonable at this point,” I suggested. But could Trump’s rhetoric make a difference with regard to foreign policy? Over at The New Republic, Jeet Heer criticized the idea that it couldn’t, stating that “the very nature of our modern world, and the United States’ supremacy, makes it impossible to dismiss an American president’s word.”

The rest of the world has already dismissed Trump’s verbiage on various occasions. 

But that’s obviously untrue. The rest of the world has already dismissed Trump’s verbiage on various occasions. For example, according to The Wall Street Journal, he told NATO members that he would “do my own thing” if their countries didn’t increase their military spending. What was the upshot? Nothing. NATO leaders quickly closed ranks and stated that NATO was as strong as ever, ignoring Trump’s pyrotechnics. They figured, correctly, that Trump’s national security establishment  would not facilitate a pullout from NATO; and that if they gave him some sort of rhetorical victory, he’d go back to watching “Shark Week.”

When it comes to trade, however, Trump’s words matter — because they’re backed by policy. Trump’s tantrum at the G-7 had real ramifications for American policy because he immediately used his executive power to launch tariffs at a bevy of American allies.

So, is Trump’s Russia policy more like NATO or more like the G-7? Putin probably figures it’s more like NATO: If he were to suddenly invade Lithuania, Trump couldn’t be trusted to stand down. And were Putin to escalate his election intervention, even those working within Trump’s defense establishment couldn’t be trusted to stand idly by — after all, Trump is bashing his own Justice Department, which is ably prosecuting Russian agents.

The Trump administration’s Kremlinology, in other words, isn’t the same as the Obama administration’s Kremlinology. Republicans were constantly enraged by Obama’s words because his softness was constantly backed by policy — the Obama administration and Obama weren’t two separate entities. The same simply isn’t true of Trump, whose administration operates independently of the president at a variety of levels.

Again, that’s not a defense of Trump. But it is an argument that the panic induced by his verbiage should be tempered with the knowledge that he says a lot of stuff, and that members of his own administration ignore most of it when it comes time to implement policy. They know it, Putin knows it and the press knows it. Only Trump seems blissfully unaware of the disconnect between the nonsense he spews and the policy his administration promulgates. In this case, we’re better off for that disconnect.

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Ben Shapiro is editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire.” A version of this article first appeared in National Review Online.

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It’s Time to Take Back the Kippah

The same day that The Jerusalem Post published a game-changing op-ed by Israeli writer Hen Mazzig under the headline “Reclaiming the Kippah,” news reports circulated of a young man in Bonn, Germany, assaulting a 50-year-old Johns Hopkins University professor in a park, shouting: “No Jews in Germany!” Police respondng to the scene then mistook the professor as the assailant, tackling him and punching him  before putting him in handcuffs.

How did the young man, later identified by police as having “Palestinian roots,” know the professor was Jewish? Because the professor was wearing a kippah.The incident could not have underlined Mazzig’s point more sharply: The kippah — signifying our identity as Jews — has been taken away from us. It’s well past time to take it back. 

“To wear a kippah is to publicly declare yourself as a member of a hated minority,” Mazzig wrote. “Our people were always told to be ashamed of something: who we are, our religion, our attire, even the fact that we have national aspirations. … For centuries, [the kippah] distinguished Jews from non-Jews, and at various points in history became one of the strongest symbols of Jewish courage and pride.”

Mazzig is calling for that moment again, not as a provocation but rather as self-identification, when our identity again is being used against us.

Mazzig is not religious. He doesn’t keep Shabbat, and he eats non-kosher food. “But I most certainly am a Jew; I am proud to be a Jew and I am proud to identify as a Jew.”

At a time of in-your-face identity politics, the kippah is subtle, quiet and dignified. The kippah whispers. It has no need to be brash or seek outside validation. And yet its capacity to stir the soul is profound.

Mazzig wants to reclaim the kippah not just from anti-Semites, but also from strict Orthodox Jews, who equate it with following all 613 mitzvot. “Wearing a kippah should not be a symbol of allegiance to a particular sect of Judaism,” Mazzig wrote, “but a symbol of solidarity with one of the most historically oppressed people on earth.”

The kippah has no need to be brash or seek outside validation.

I understand that observant Jews may not embrace Mazzig’s mission as easily as I have. But we are at a particular moment, with anti-Semitism spiking and young Jews in the Diaspora disconnecting. This is a moment to look at the larger picture, and I think Mazzig is onto something.

As a gay Jew who travels the world to speak about Israel, Mazzig believes that wearing a kippah can help teach tolerance and acceptance. “We can be ambassadors for our people, in everything we do, by identifying as proud Jews,” Mazzig wrote.

Mazzig acknowledges that wearing a kippah can be dangerous. “While I do not plan to walk down the streets of France with a kippah, I do want to be visible. I often speak about how we should be proud to be Jews, but it is easy to say that when I look Arab,” wrote Mazzig, whose mother is from Iraq and whose father is a Berber from Tunisia. “With a kippah, I am truly practicing what I preach.”  

The kippah as ethnic symbol is a subtle, dignified way for us to reclaim our identity while many are intent on erasing it. I’ve worn my grandmother’s delicate Star of David around my neck for years. When I lived in Washington, D.C., I felt a strong need to wear it on the outside of my shirt, to be seen and accepted as a Jew in a very un-Jewish city.

In New York, I typically keep it hidden. In the past, I did that because New York is so Jewish, I felt no need to show it. But I will be honest: I now don’t feel entirely safe showing it. I’ve bought Israel Defense Forces shirts for my son but let him wear them only inside our apartment. Would I love for him to wear a kippah? Absolutely. Would I be nervous? Absolutely.

But this is where Mazzig’s mission comes in. What if all of the Jewish men in New York wore kippahs? What a beautiful unity — a sacred bond — that would create.

Throughout our history, Jews have been told who we are, leading to every possible tragedy. Enough. We are indigenous to the land of Israel, and we are no longer going to be used as scapegoats, even by our own people. 

The small, elegant kippah can play the role it was perhaps meant to play: keeping us connected, both to God and one another, when every attempt is being made to tear us apart.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic.

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Thinking About Thinking

I have these awkward moments in my office when someone will walk in and see me doing absolutely nothing. I’m not looking at a computer screen or texting or reading a paper or making deals on the phone. I’m just sitting there — thinking.

I think all the time. The world is so chaotic, our community is so diverse and complicated, I can’t imagine how I would do my job without these bouts of deep reflection.

The problem is, thinking is getting harder and harder to do. My Twitter feed, for example, keeps getting in the way. If it’s on, I’m constantly distracted. If it’s off, I’m stressed that I’ll be missing something.

Even worse, I’m now expected to contribute to this digital flow of interruptions. I’m expected to send out tweets all day long.

This doesn’t come naturally to me. I guess you pick up certain habits when you write a weekly column for 12 years. I use the week to think about the column, consider different ideas, research, craft, edit, publish and then start over again for the next week. This is a far cry from blasting a tweet on a minute’s notice.

If the soul of the Twitter world is reaction, the soul of a weekly paper is reflection. In a sense, the paper is a reminder of the value of thinking.

Thinking is an art, and it’s worth thinking about it. Our thoughts shape our actions. Our thoughts have the power to temper our most destructive emotions. When we just react, we forego the power of thought.

We live in a world that wants us to react, rather than think. This is a form of mind control. Advertisers have always understood this.  

We live in a world that wants us to react, rather than think. This is a form of mind control. Advertisers have always understood this. The seducer doesn’t want you to think, evaluate, reflect. He wants to trigger a reaction, an impulse. First an impulse to like and then an impulse to buy.

The social media revolution has turned everyone into an advertiser. Every tweet, every image, every post is an attempt to trigger a reaction. This is the ideal environment to obliterate deep thought.

My favorite speakers are those who make me think and make me ask questions. The problem is there’s no money in questions. The money is in the answers. All those sharp pundits on CNN, MSNBC and Fox would never be there if they weren’t bursting with answers. Producers don’t look for reflective thinkers; they look for clever speakers with quick answers.

If you’re looking for deep thought on television, you’ll have to watch old episodes of “Firing Line” with William F. Buckley Jr. I’m addicted to these shows. Because when intelligent opinions clash, the viewer is forced to think through the issues. It’s a mental exercise. It asks us to slow down and think.

Is there anything in today’s world that asks us to slow down and think?

In the Jewish tradition, of course, there is Shabbat, which Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls “a cathedral in time.”

“He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil,” Heschel writes in “The Sabbath.” “He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.”

When we find the space to think, we can reflect on what kind of thoughts will enrich our lives.

Shabbat symbolizes the creation of the space we need to slow down and reflect. If we don’t go out of our way to create that space, the fury of the digital world will take over. Our impulses will guide us.

When we find the space to think, we can reflect on what kind of thoughts will enrich our lives. We will be mindful of what thoughts bring us down and what thoughts uplift us; what thoughts paralyze us and what thoughts move us forward. We will be more likely to think through the consequences of our words and actions.

Creating “Shabbat moments” of quiet reflection during our hectic days can help keep us balanced. These little timeouts for deep thought can nourish our souls. 

And yet, we seem to be intimidated by silence. We walk the streets wearing our earphones, listening to music; we drive around listening to podcasts; we live our lives glued to noisy screens.

Silence is one of the ingredients for deep thought, but it’s not the only one. I do some of my best thinking walking around the Jewish Journal’s noisy and fascinating neighborhood of Koreatown. I’m not sure why that helps me think.

But now that I think of it, maybe it’s because I’m looking at humanity rather than just sitting in my office.

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Follow David Suissa on Twitter: @suissatweets

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Housing Law Is Counter to Israel’s Spirit

REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was enacted. Commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, it prohibited various forms of discrimination “in the sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Since then, HUD has been monitoring trends in racial and ethnic discrimination in rental and sales markets. According to the most recent survey, conducted in 2013, while housing discrimination is illegal, in practice, it unfortunately exists: “(w)hite homeseekers are more likely to be favored than minorities. Most important, minority homeseekers are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than whites.”

A case in point happened in 1973, when the Justice Department sued a management corporation and its president, Donald Trump, for alleged racial discrimination against Blacks who wished to rent apartments in the New York city boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. When Trump started making noises about a potential presidential run in 2012, rapper Snoop Dogg quipped: “Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time he pushed a Black family out of their home.”

Seriously, in the United States housing discrimination is prohibited by law and generally condemned by public opinion. In Israel, on the other hand, housing discrimination might not only become a practice, but officially allowed by law.

If all goes well for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then next week the Knesset will pass the Basic Law: Israel as the state of the Jewish people, which he had designated as one of his priorities. That Israel doesn’t need such law is besides the point. The world knows that Israel is a Jewish state, and whoever doesn’t recognize it will not be impressed by this law or another. The main problem with this law is that it shatters the already fragile Israeli democracy.

At the crux of this controversial bill lies article 7b., which says “the state can allow a community composed of people of the same faith or nationality to maintain an exclusive community.” That this idea has already been dismissed by the Israeli Supreme Court two decades ago didn’t deter the initiators of this bill. In 2000, Chief Justice Aharon Barak ruled on the case of the Ka’adans, an Israeli-Arab couple who had been refused permission to buy a plot or home in Katzir, a Jewish cooperative settlement in northern Israel. “We do not accept the conception that the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish state justify discrimination by the state between citizens on the basis of religion or nationality,” wrote Barak in his landmark ruling.

Likkud Minister Yariv Levin called the Ka’dan ruling a “disgrace” and “the destruction of Zionism.” Now, as one of the initiators of the new Nation-State Law, he serves his revenge. And if the Supreme Court insists on holding such discrimination illegal and unconstitutional? No worries, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is already advancing the “overriding clause,” which will enable the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions.

As always, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin stepped forward to save Israel’s soul. In an impassioned letter he sent on July 10 to the joint Knesset and Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, he implored members of the Knesset (MKs) to re-examine the repercussions of the specific article: “I also ask for us to look inward, into the depths of the Israeli society: are we willing in the name of the Zionist vision to lend a hand to discrimination and exclusion of a man or a woman based on their origin?”

President Rivlin, who always knew how to reconcile his ardent Zionism with his liberal view, went on to warn the MKs that discrimination will not be limited to Arabs: “The bill before you allows any group, in the broadest of terms and without any monitoring, to establish a community with no Mizrahi Jews, Haredim, Druze and members of the LGBT community.”

What Israel needs in order to strengthen its Jewish character is more Jews who would seek to make the Jewish state their home. The way to accomplish that is by aspiring to become what the prophet Isaiah called “light unto the nations,” not by passing discriminating laws, which only undermine Israel’s democracy and tarnish its name.

Uri Dromi is the director general of the Jerusalem Press Club. From 1992-96, he was a spokesman for the Israeli government.

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No Rabbi – It’s Not Jewish Love for Our ‘Historical, Religious Narrative’ That Prevents Peace

Photo from Pixabay.

On the 10th of Tammuz (in the Hebrew calendar) the last king of Israel, King Zedekiah, was captured by the Babylonians, who had conquered Jerusalem the day before. Zedekiah was captured after he fled Jerusalem through a subterranean tunnel to Jericho. Exactly 2,606 years later, an article was published in the Forward by American Rabbi Phillip Graubart titled “‘Letters To My Palestinian Neighbor’ Is Not The Book We Need Right Now.”

I have to admit, when I first saw the title, I thought the article would be about how even though most “moderate” elements of Palestinian leadership: (a) engage in blatant Holocaust denial; (b) promote vicious anti-Semitic canards, such as Jews poison water wells; and (c) deny any Jewish historical connection to the land of Israel — all while promoting and rewarding the murder of Jews (such as through the Palestinian Authority’s “Pay to Slay” program), that this article would argue that we need to wait for a massive sea change in Palestinian Arab culture and leadership before Yossi Klein Halevi’s “Letter to My Palestinian Neighbor” could make a credible difference and help advance the peace process.

Instead, this article took the opposite approach and actually accused Halevi of being too jingoistic, too stuck in the Jewish “narrative.”

Imagining a “Palestinian moderate,” who has never assumed leadership among the various Arab groups representing the Palestinians, Graubart posits that after reading Halevi’s book, this imaginary Palestinian Arab moderate might say to Halevi “why waste time with you? … we already agree on the basics.”

Reading such a statement raises the question, what “basics” does Rabbi Graubart think Palestinian Arab “moderates” agree on with Halevi? As should be clear from Halevi’s scholarship, he believes Jews have a deep historical, religious and national connection to the land of Israel. As should be also clear to anyone paying attention, the “moderate leaders” among the Palestinians who run the Palestinian Authority (who are also sadly the least rabidly Jew-hating and extremist among the various Palestinian Arabs factions who have any chance of ruling any Palestinian state in the near future), do not believe the Jewish people are even a people, let alone a people who have a deep 3,300 year old love affair with the land of Israel.

As recently as January 15, 2018 Mahmoud Abbas, the “President for Life” of the Palestinian Authority, gave a speech where he said: “Israel is a colonial project that has nothing to do with Jews.” This same “moderate” leader not only wrote a thesis back in 1982 at the Russian Academy of Sciences, which denies and trivializes the Holocaust, and is a featured part of the current curriculum in Palestinian Authority schools; he also, on April 30, 2018, gave a speech where he once again trivialized the Holocaust and said that to the extent the Nazis murdered Jews, their murder was not caused by anti-Semitism, but by … “Jewish financial behavior.”

So again, what “basics” does Graubart think the “moderate Palestinian” and Halevi agree on?

Then apparently ignoring the last 100 years of history (at least), Graubart claims that the main problem with Halevi’s book is that it makes claims – mostly about Halevi’s “loving embrace of religious biblical narrative” – that “no Palestinian could accept” and that the “biblical impulse to build settlements in the West Bank [Judea and  Samaria] is precisely what’s sabotaged an agreement.”

So the “moderate” Palestinian Arab leadership turn down offers in 1937, 1948, 1967, 2000, 2001, and 2008 to have the first-ever independent Arab state west of the Jordan River, and it is the desire of Jews to establish and live in Jewish communities in their biblical homeland that “sabotaged” a peace agreement? It wasn’t Arafat’s rejection in 2000 of an offer to have an independent Palestinian Arab state in all of Gaza and over 90% of Judea & Samaria, and his decision to instead launch the Second Intifada, which led to the murder of more than 1,000 Jews? It wasn’t Mahmoud Abbas’s rejection – without a counteroffer – of an even better offer from Israel in 2008? It wasn’t the decision to turn land Israel fully relinquished (the Gaza strip in 2005) into a terror state run by a genocidal organization whose very Charter calls for the murder of every Jew on the planet, including Graubart?

No. According to Graubart, it isn’t Palestinian anti-Semitism, the Palestinian dismissal of any Jewish connection to the land of Israel or even the Palestinian rejection (in favor of violence) of offer after offer to have an independent Arab state in a land where there has never been one before in history that is to blame for the absence of a peace agreement. It is the Jews’ “biblical impulse” to live in Judea that is the problem.

Graubart even disparages the “impulse” of Jews to live in Hebron, one of the most holy and historically important cities for the Jewish people. Hebron, a city where Jews have lived for centuries and where our ancestors in 1929 were literally massacred, ethnically cleansed from and prevented from returning to (by the Jordanian Army after it illegally conquered and controlled all of Judea and & Samaria in 1949). Per Graubart, however, it is the “religious longing” of Jews to live in places like Hebron that is the obstacle to peace, all while 1.5 million Arabs can live among more than 6 million Jews in Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv Yafo, etc. without their presence “sabotaging” peace.

There is so much that is problematic with this perspective it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps the most obvious problem is that, just like most arguments of the “blame Israel” camp, Graubart’s open letter to Halevi implies the Palestinian Arabs have no agency or responsibility for their actions, and that peace (or the lack thereof) is solely a function of what we Jews choose to do (or not do). The other problem is that this article completely whitewashes nearly 100 years of Arab rejection of peace in favor of violence and more than 1,400 years of Arab persecution of Jews throughout the Middle East, as well as the widely held belief among far too many Arabs that Jews can only be second class (dhimmi) in Arab conquered land, never sovereign and independent.

What Graubart’s piece (albeit likely unwittingly) does a great job of capturing, is the growing divide between many secular Jews in the United States  and the overwhelming majority of Jews in Israel. Jews, like Yossi Klein Halevi, who are in Israel considered quite moderate or even left-leaning.

This divide is represented most strikingly in Graubart’s article where he writes the following illuminating and astonishing paragraph directed at Halevi:

“In fact, if your book taught me anything, it’s that we must begin the admittedly difficult process of privileging basic values over national, religious narratives. In discussing Arab rejectionism after the Six-Day War, you write, ‘What people, in our place, would have resisted reclaiming land it regarded as its own for thousands of years?’ But the answer to this question is obvious: a people who valued peace and democracy and human rights over historical/religious narrative. People who weren’t willing to sabotage future peace negotiations by giving in to religious longings, no matter how deeply felt. People who loved peace more than they loved the ancient stories of their people. In other words, people like you and me and many Jews, in Israel and out. But not, sadly, enough.”

Wow. I agree with Graubart on one thing for certain. This is “sad.” It is sad that it is becoming more and more evident that many Jews living in relative safety in the United States  have not internalized the lessons most Jews in Israel have learned from the history of the last 100 years. It also becoming more and more evident that many of today’s secular leaning Jews in America are not very different from the many Jews in America who before 1940 rejected the very idea of Jews seeking sovereignty and independence in our indigenous homeland.

After all, if we just “privileged basic values” (depending – of course – on whose “basic values” we are talking about) “over national, religious narratives,” then why drain swamps, irrigate deserts, establish fence and stockade kibbutzim all over the land of Israel (where you were certain to be plagued by malaria and were almost always immediately attacked by your Arab neighbors)? Why revive Hebrew from being not only our religious tongue but our national language? Why even fight for our freedom and independence against five Arab armies and nearly a half-dozen Arab militias sworn to snuff out our independence before it even happened?

After all, if we value “peace” above everything else, then we could all just give up on our indigenous faith, stop being “stiff-necked” Jews, and convert to either Christianity or Islam or perhaps to the new pseudo-religion of “secular-humanism.” If only, our forefathers had thought of this solution … Plainly, that would have made the Jew-haters much happier and much more “peaceful” toward us.

Thankfully, most of our forefathers didn’t think abdicating our religious values and our “religious longings” to live in Zion was the way to go, as not only would there be no modern state of Israel today, but Graubart would also have needed to find a very different job; as by now the world would have been Jew-free and Judaism would be like the ancient faiths of Minoanism, Mithraism, and Ashurism After all, if we valued “peace” above everything else, including the justice of Jews being able to live anywhere in the land of Israel, then is there anything worth fighting for?

Of course, by Graubart’s definition, the Maccabees would also be disparaged as people who were “willing to sabotage future peace negotiations by giving in to religious longings.” A people unwilling to “love peace more than they loved the ancient stories of their people.” After all, the Hellenists “just” wanted us to accept their “narrative” and to stop insisting on our sovereignty and freedom in our religious, historical and indigenous homeland; just like so many Hellenized or Islamized people do today.

Today, most Palestinian Arabs reject the idea that there were ever Maccabees who fought to liberate the land of Israel and Jerusalem from the yoke of the Hellenists. And this is where Graubart is the most mistaken in his rejection of Halevi’s book. Graubart assumes it is the Jewish respect and love of our “historical/religious narrative” that is somehow the obstacle to peace. The reality is that it is, and has always been, the Arab rejection of Jewish history and our deep connection to the land of Israel that is the obstacle to peace. The Arab rejection of the fact (not “narrative”) that 2,606 years before Graubart published his article that there was a Jewish king named Zedekiah fleeing the Babylonians and their destruction of the first Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

And that is the ultimate message of Halevi’s book. In order for there to be peace, the Palestinian Arabs are going to have to meet us halfway and stop asking us to accept that their relatively new Palestinian identity deserves two independent Arab states in the former British Mandate for Palestine (as Jordan is the first); all while they reject more than 3,000 years of Jewish history and Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the land of Israel.

As should be painfully apparent, there are many other things wrong with this open letter to Halevi, but the most glaring problem is the willingness to disparage the “historical, religious narrative” of our people, which is at the core for why we finally have an independent and sovereign state in our indigenous homeland after 2,000 years of recurring persecution, oppression and mass murder of Jews in the Diaspora.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us, T.E.A.M. and the FIDF. He is also a frequent guest on the One America News Network, including shows like The Tipping Point and The Daily Ledger where he is called on to discuss matters related to Israel and the Middle East.

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Farrakhan’s Bigotry Finds Traction Across the Political Spectrum

Louis Farrakhan, octogenarian leader of the un-Islamic, anti-white Nation of Islam, has been active ever since the 1960s, sowing the seeds of racism, anti-Semitism and hate for our blessed American nation. So why worry about an aging bigot today? Suddenly, Louis Farrakhan’s life’s work is paying off, winning accolades from the far right to the progressive left. 

Hatred is seeping into the mainstream of our political culture, not hidden in smoky backrooms or behind anonymous social media postings, but proudly touted on the internet and in interviews — a guaranteed path to gain name recognition, recruit voters and grab media attention.

Here are examples from the Republican side of the aisle:

In California, John Fitzgerald, a proud Holocaust denier, captured 23 percent of the vote in the “open primary” in a California congressional district northeast of San Francisco. This made him the official GOP candidate and, initially, won him the automatic endorsement of the state Republican Party, which inexplicably waited two months before it rescinded the endorsement. Among Fitzgerald’s eye-popping platform planks was an endorsement of the Farrakhan’s scurrilous pseudo-history “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” falsely alleging that the tiny number of colonial Jewish merchants “dominated” the massive slave trade between Africa and the Americas.

In Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, Arthur Jones, who boasts that he was once head of the American Nazi Party, ran unopposed and won a GOP congressional primary in a district that includes parts of the city of Chicago, defending this position: “To me, the Holocaust is what I said it is — it’s an international extortion racket.” Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner hesitated before declaring that the GOP faithful should vote for anybody, even a Democrat, other than the neo-Nazi Jones.

In Wisconsin, in retiring U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s district, Holocaust denier Paul Nehlen vaulted to the front of would-be successors. Before Twitter suspended his account, Nehlen photoshopped an image of Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s biracial, American bride, with the face of Cheddar Man, the dark-skinned man supposed to be the first modern Briton.

Lest Democrats be complacent, Rep. Danny Davis not long ago said, “I personally know [Farrakhan], I’ve been to his home, done meetings, participated in events with him. I don’t regard Louis Farrakhan as an aberration or anything. I regard him as an outstanding human being.” Asked specifically about Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitic statements, Davis was dismissive and said that many people in politics have a history of inflammatory comments. But then Davis backtracked — or sidestepped — from those remarks, stating that he would like to know what Farrakhan has said about Jews “recently.” Only belatedly did Davis criticize Farrakhan.

Hatred is seeping into the mainstream of our political culture, not hidden in smoky backrooms or behind anonymous social media postings, but proudly touted on the internet and in interviews.

Davis is an old inner-city politician from Chicago. Even more disturbing was Farrakhan’s intergenerational political romance with Tamika Mallory, co-chair of January 2017’s Women’s March. Mallory, an avowed Farrakhan admirer, showed up at his recent annual Saviour’s Day Address and had her photo taken with him. Far from apologizing, she doubled down, proudly sharing her attendance on Instagram. She even likened Farrakhan to the crucified Jesus: “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader! Study the Bible and u will find the similarities. Ostracizing, ridicule and rejection is a painful part of the process … but faith is the substance of things!”

In California, Maria Estrada, the Democratic candidate for State Assembly from Los Angeles, had this to say last year on Facebook: “Democrats turn a blind eye to the genocide against Palestinians and justify it by bringing up the Holocaust. As if what happened 70 years ago justifies it. Anyone who believes they are one of ‘God’s chosen people’ automatically feels superior and justified in all they do. Religious fanaticism is used to justify apartheid and crimes against Palestinians and no one should be okay with it. #FreePalestine. … It is extremely problematic when delegates are being flown to Tel Aviv by AIPAC, and even more problematic when Palestinian children are being arrested, taunted and murdered in the name of Zionism, … The complete denial and/or justification of what is occurring in Gaza in the name Zionism is hypocritical and inexcusable.” Estrada who absolved Hamas of any responsibility, tweeted “I, for one, enjoy listening to Farrakhan’s sermons.”

Like Louis Farrakhan and other anti-Semites before him, Estrada has taken a page from Farrakhan’s anti-Jewish playbook and invoked “God’s chosen people” to justify her vilification of Jews, not just Zionists. She apparently took no notice that Farrakhan’s hateful dog whistle also transcends the racial chasm between Black nationalists and white racist anti-Semites who marched in Charlottesville last August. Alt-right Charlottesville guru Richard Spencer wants to meet with Farrakhan, to work together toward “the sort of self-determination we and the broader alt-right support.”

Fifty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired young people of all races to dream of a colorblind America. Today, we are witness to bigots from the far left and the far right who praise Farrakhan, energized by his divisive demagoguery. These extremists are hard at work wending their way into the mainstream of our society.

Younger generations of Americans — Democrats, Republicans and everyone else in between — better wake up and decide whose vision will guide our nation in the 21st century.

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Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Global Social Action Director. Harold Brackman is a long-time consultant for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, and co-author of “From Abraham to Obama: A History of Africans, African Americans, and Jews.” 

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Hysteria Over Judicial Nominee Is Unfounded

/reuters

President Donald Trump has made his Supreme Court pick: Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

This pick has led Democrats to bouts of near-apoplexy. According to Democrats, Kavanaugh represents a harbinger of death and destruction. Of course, Democrats would have said the same about any candidate nominated by Trump. The Democrats’ official Twitter account issued a dire warning: “A vote for Kavanaugh would be a vote to rip health care from American families and deny women their right to make their own health care choices.” The Women’s March issued a statement “in response to Donald Trump’s nomination of XX.” Naturally, that statement suggested that XX’s nomination would represent a “death sentence for thousands of women in the United States.” Protesters at the Supreme Court began chanting against an unnamed nominee before Trump even picked Kavanaugh publicly.

Here’s the truth: Kavanaugh is a textualist judge who will adhere to the Constitution. But he’s also a gradualist. The chances of Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts voting to overturn Roe v. Wade are slim to none. It’s far more likely that the two of them form a new minimalist center to the court, gradually paring back overreaching Supreme Court decisions rather than destroying them wholesale. After all, Kavanaugh is the same judge who crafted the original logic stating that Obamacare was a tax rather than a fine — the same logic Roberts would use to uphold Obamacare against constitutional challenge.

But the left’s hysteria over Kavanaugh’s selection tells us a lot about what it expects from the Supreme Court: complete adherence to a Democratic political platform. For decades, we’ve heard that Republicans ought not use litmus tests to determine judges; for decades, we’ve heard that Democrats ought to apply open litmus tests to judges. In the view of the left, the Supreme Court isn’t the “least dangerous branch,” as in Alexander Hamilton’s memorable Federalist No. 78 phrase — it’s the most powerful moral oligarchy, establishing favored rights from a marble-gilded building in Washington,  D.C., with the power of lifetime appointment to back its decisions. 

America was not built on the backs of unelected people in black robes.

Undergirding the left’s fear of a Supreme Court that abides by constitutional text is a deep dislike of the Constitution itself, combined with a fear of Americans voting on crucial issues. The Constitution is, by its very nature, a conservative document: It enumerates only limited powers of the government and enshrines rights that cannot be breached by legislatures. The left would prefer a nearly unlimited government, with only a few rights protected from legislative overreach — and those rights it does wish to see protected aren’t articulated in the Constitution. Thus, conservatives view the Second Amendment as a fundamental right spelled out in the Constitution but search in vain for a Constitutional right to abortion; leftists prefer to relegate the Second Amendment into the ashbin of history but cherish the unstated and groundless right to abortion.

But leftist logic makes a mockery of the role of the judiciary itself. Nobody would want a judge to rewrite a contract in order to reach the judge’s favored conclusion — judges are there to judge. Yet the left wants judges to rewrite the Constitution regularly and to trump popular legislation in the process. Roe v. Wade must be protected under the “emanations and penumbras” of the Constitution, but a religious baker must be forced by the government to bake that cake in violation of First Amendment protections of freedom of religion.

The founders conceived of the judicial branch as a mere shield against violations of the Constitution, not as a sword on behalf of political outcomes. Hamilton wrote: “The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.” Indeed, Hamilton continued, should the Supreme Court become a super-legislature, it should be dissolved.

America was not built on the backs of unelected people in black robes. Those people were granted a specific task. And a return to their delegated power would be a welcome relief for a country that too often looks to its supposed moral superiors for guidance on issues best left to the American people.

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Ben Shapiro is a best-selling author and editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire.

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An Ode to the Moon

While waiting for my 6-year-old daughter’s annual checkup at the pediatrician’s office, as she happily twirled on the red and blue spinning chairs in the children’s area, I picked up a copy of National Geographic magazine from the bin beside my seat, and read: 

“Everything we are and everything in the universe and on Earth originated from stardust, and it continually floats through us even today. It directly connects us to the universe, rebuilding our bodies over and again over our lifetimes.”

This quote struck me for its beauty and because I’ve recently been thinking about celestial time. In this sped-up, hyped-up news cycle, the world growing smaller and time moving faster, I find it calming to think about other ways of measuring time and space. 

Humans used to mark time by observing celestial bodies, but now we live by clocks and calendars. I am thankful for electricity, but our devotion to light at all hours comes at a cost: How many of us can see the stars? And without the stars, we lose something else — the sense of celestial time and space, not on the scale of a wristwatch with ticking seconds, but rather, the scale of planets and stars and galaxies. 

As a girl, I was captivated by the moon, as my daughter is now. Growing up in a secular Jewish family, I would have been shocked to hear that this celestial body is an integral part of Judaism. I associated our ancestral religion not with stars, sky and interstellar distances, but with the uncomfortable pews of the synagogue we attended a few times each year on the other side of town. 

Although I did not know it, the moon was inextricably linked to these few holidays my family practiced, their dates determined by the lunar months of our tribal calendar. 

I love to think back on those holidays that secretly bound our family to the
lunar cycles, even in a mid-Atlantic suburb in the 1980s: Passover on the 15th of Nisan, the full moon round above our quiet streets. Hanukkah on the 25th of Kislev, our small, rainbow candles sustaining the gibbous moon as she waned.
Rosh Hashanah, on the first day of Tishrei, the sky dark as we heard the ancient shofar blast.   

It makes sense that the ancient Israelites would marry their rituals to the cycles of the moon. 

Not only was it their calendar, but it has a poetic logic, as well. 

Growing up in a secular Jewish family, I would have been shocked to hear that this celestial body is an integral part of Judaism.

Ritual has much in common with the moon. Both are free, beautiful and available to all. And no matter how far we stray from home, both accompany us on our journey. 

Both help us understand the cyclical nature of being, giving us the power to say goodbye to our past selves. And both help us link our baffling transitions —  birth, puberty, love, death — into a greater rhythm. This rhythm extends beyond the human; it is part of life itself. This summer, an urban coyote has taken up residence in our neighbor’s yard, and when the moon is full, we hear it howling from 20 yards away.  

Sometimes I wonder if our ancestors could have imagined that all these years later, with our vastly different lives, our miraculous technology, we would still gather to celebrate these holidays they celebrated at the precise moment in the lunar cycle at which they celebrated. 

I wonder if they would have been surprised to learn that our bodies and the earth are made of stardust, or if
they would say, yes, that’s what it says in the creation story. God made the sun to rule over daytime and the moon to rule over the night. And whatever the earth is made of, of course humans are made of that, too. 

It’s so easy to be worn down by the work of getting through the day. But if we remember to look up in the evening, the moon’s simple, elegant orbit reminds us that we are part of a system that is greater than any of us can comprehend. How brief our time here is, and how precious. 

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Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician and Torah teacher who lives in Portland, Ore.

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What Would My Grandparents Think?

I’m looking at a torn photo of my mother as a toddler, being held by her father. On the back, someone had scrawled 1938. I keep staring at the photo because it is unusually somber, poignantly capturing the mood of the era.

One should be careful, of course, not to read too much into old photos, especially when the year is associated with both economic destitution and the nightmare of Kristallnacht. But I was looking through some old photos to get a sense of the lives of my four Russian grandparents, and though this one stands out, it, too, tells part of the story.

For the most part, the photos reflect what I remember as a child. They emit what could be called “working-class grateful.” My maternal grandfather started at Ford as a mechanic and ended up with his own gas station, Aba’s Garage in Woodbine, N.J. In most photos, he’s covered in grease but with a smile that always seemed to light up the world.

My Uncle Moe drove a kosher meat truck; I still have the bell that he would ring in front of each house. My paternal grandfather worked in a factory in Philadelphia until he was able to start his own ironing board company. A natural, dignified work ethic permeated their lives; complaints fell into the realm of comedy.

Living in New York City, one comes into contact with innumerable cultures on an hourly basis. Not coincidentally, the same natural work ethic and pride prevail. And it is precisely this fusion of cultures and achievement that gives the city its unique creative energy. 

Today’s national conversation about immigration is, in a word, revolting. One side seems to have forgotten that immigrants built this country. The other side seems oblivious to the depths of their own hypocrisy: They shout “privilege” with soulless abandon while offering up a laundry list of entitlements. 

It is in fact this sense of entitlement that I find most annoying about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old who just won the Democratic primary to represent a chunk of the Bronx and Queens. And for a socialist millennial who calls Hamas terrorists “civil rights activists,” there are many annoyances to choose from. The government, Ocasio-Cortez demands, must do x, y and z for her community.

Today’s national conversation about immigration is, in a word, revolting.

I wonder what my grandparents would think of the identity politics game that Ocasio-Cortez manipulates so well. They often “passed” as white, yes, but apparently not a week would go by when someone wouldn’t remind them that they were in fact not white. Given the pogroms and the Holocaust, this was, as my dad used to say, small potatoes.

It is precisely this perspective that is so sorely lacking from this new face of the Democratic Party: Generation Entitlement. Real racism, of course, still exists. But where it doesn’t exist, the left’s answer is: Make it up! Often at the expense of people whose families were slaughtered for being Jewish less than 75 years ago.

My grandparents never took their freedom for granted.  And in exchange for that freedom, they wanted to give back to this country in any way they could. It was anti-entitlement, the embodiment of John F. Kennedy’s words: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Much of this came from a well-tended Jewish soul, but it also came from a vision of what it meant to be an American. I find it hard to believe that the hard-working residents of the Bronx and Queens fully understand the game Ocasio-Cortez is playing — and would be horrified if they did.

Maybe, as intersectional leftists now say, I should “stay in my lane” — talk only about my own peeps. OK. Then I would like to ask Ocasio-Cortez to do the same. The next time she tweets kisses to Hamas — showing that her knowledge of foreign affairs is even less informed than her knowledge of economics — she should be told to stick to her specialty: identity politics.

My grandparents came here with nothing, fleeing persecution, and made this country a better place. They weren’t white and they weren’t privileged — except in one respect: They understood how lucky they were to be on land that honored freedom. Not for one day did they take that freedom for granted; that is the only sense of entitlement that I will pass on to my son.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic living in New York.

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