Thursday, August 30, 2018
The Complexity of Israeli Reality
Photo from Wikipedia.
I’ve never met Rabbi Sharon Brous. The spiritual leader of Los Angeles’ IKAR community thinks she knows me, though.
I am the “other side,” Rabbi Brous. Nice to meet you.
In a recent column in the Los Angeles Times, Brous writes about a trip she took with members of her family to the Jewish settlement of Hebron, a tiny, heavily fortified enclave abutting a large Palestinian city. Jewish tradition sees it as a holy city, where our Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried. In 1929, 67 unarmed Jews, including women and children, were butchered by rioting Arabs. Today it is the epicenter of what most Americans associate with the most extreme West Bank settlers.
“Trust me, Ima,” her daughter told her. “I love Israel. I need to see the other side with my own eyes.”
What she saw included the hardships that many Palestinians face there, as well as the frankly extremist views of some Jewish residents. One of them expressed support for the notorious murderer Baruch Goldstein, the physician and Hebron resident who, in February 1994, opened fire on a hall full of Muslim worshipers, killing 29. The resident called Goldstein’s victims “animals.”
Brous then goes on to extrapolate from Hebron to everything that bothers her about the Israeli government—the oversimplifications of pro-Israel messaging, the alienation of American Jews from Israel, and so on. When you see the most extreme counter-reality, she seems to be saying, you know that the government is encouraging a line that no American Jew with a conscience can abide.
It is a moving piece, in part because she prefaces it with the genuine love she shows for Israel—a love that includes not just reading the news, but taking her kids to Israel and making sure they’re in constant touch with family in Tel Aviv.
The visit to Hebron, she writes, was meant to teach them the “complexities” of Israel.
Here’s the thing. I’m a well-read, socially liberal, fairly secular, free-market, geopolitical hawk. I opposed the surrogacy law and support the Nation-State Law. I oppose Occupation, but am realistic about the impediments to a deal right now and the risks of unilateralism, and the need to learn lessons from the Oslo disaster. I’m likely to vote center-right, but I’m in nobody’s pocket.
I’m representative, in other words, of the actual Israeli “other side,” the kind of Israeli that Likud, Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Kadima, Israel Beiteinu and Jewish Home are dying to reach. We are the silent majority of Israel, the answer to liberal American Jews’ endless bafflement at why Bibi keeps winning elections when everybody they know hates him.
Israel’s “other side” has virtually nothing to do with the people in Hebron—or at least, nothing that can be learned from a brief tour of it. If I want to show my kids the “other side” of America, I’m not taking them to a KKK rally.
And I sure wouldn’t have taken them to Hebron with Breaking the Silence—an organization whose credibility has been repeatedly called into question, and whose spokesperson, Dean Issacharoff, was caught fabricating his own purported beating of a Palestinian prisoner.
If you want your kids to understand the complexity of Israeli reality, challenge them for real.
Why do Israelis consistently vote for right-wing parties, when they clearly don’t share the views of the settlers of Hebron? Because the Left, very simply, failed them. Golda Meir failed them in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and in the disastrous economic policies of the 1970s. Rabin and Peres failed them in the calamitous Oslo accords in 1993, which led to none of the peace they promised and a lot of dead Israeli friends. Ehud Barak, Labor’s last Prime Minister, failed them with his flailing impotence to stop the Second Intifada.
Nothing like losing a loved one in a terror attack or a war to focus the mind on the consequences of your vote on election day.
Like it or not, the leadership of the Right has led to a prolonged period of relative economic and physical security. Israelis—both Jews and Arabs alike—feel safer, and have an easier time paying their bills, than ever before. They do not have the luxury of risking that in exchange for leaders who sound nice, who say the things Jews in America want to hear.
Brous is obviously right when she says that “to love a place… does not necessarily mean to love its government.” There’s plenty to love in Israel’s diverse, eclectic and resilient society. But real love is not an abstract thing. It’s about listening to the other—really listening. Hearing uncomfortable opinions, serious opinions, presented as compellingly as possible.
With the new generation of American Jews, it means challenging them to think. It means exposing them to Israel’s many flaws and mistakes, yes, but also to the most reasonable version of opinions and views they disagree with. It means exposing them to the full complexity of Israel’s reality.
I don’t know you, Rabbi Brous, and I do not question your love for Israel. But if you want to hear more about the real Israeli “other side,” call me on your next trip.
David Hazony is an author and Executive Director of The Israel Innovation Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting Israeli culture in the world.
The Complexity of Israeli Reality : https://ift.tt/2LJAM4KSeeing Hebron Beyond the Headlines and Caricatures
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
Less than a year ago I decided it was high time for me to visit Hebron. After all, Hebron is the world’s oldest Jewish city, is frequently at the center of controversy, and I had never been there.
I went to Jewish day school as a child. In my studies I learned that Hebron, which is mentioned 87 times in the Torah, was the place where Abraham bought land to bury his beloved wife Sarah, and where he was also eventually buried. According to Genesis and traditional Jewish understanding, Isaac and Jacob are also buried there, along with Rebekah and Leah. Many believe that Adam and Eve are buried there, as well. The real estate arrangement between Abraham and the Hittites of Hebron, wherein Abraham paid 400 shekels of silver for the property, is recorded in one of oldest documents available, the Torah (Gen. 23:16). Scholars believe the Old Testament was written over 2,500 years ago.
Hebron is also important in Islam because it shares a legacy with Judaism going back to Abraham. I was very much looking forward to seeing and experiencing Hebron, while at the same time, my group felt a sense of anxiety from the beginning of our trip until the end. We rented a bullet proof bus and had two armed guards with us for the day.
On the way to Hebron I was thinking about all kinds of tragic things. I thought about the massacre of the Hebron Jewish community in 1929 because of the incitement to murder Jews at the time, led by Haj Amin Al Husseini who later collaborated with Hitler. I thought about how Jordan and other rulers of the past had denied Jews the right to pray in the Tomb of the Patriarchs. I thought of Baruch Goldstein’s horrific massacre of 29 Muslims who were praying there, amidst a series of attacks by extremists from both sides in the 1990s. I remembered Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month-old baby who was murdered in her stroller by a Palestinian sniper in Hebron in 2001. The murder of Shalhevet was part of the reason a few lay leaders, including my husband, Jerry Rothstein, Esther Renzer and I, were compelled to begin StandWithUs three months after this tragedy. And I recalled the murder of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel, barbarically stabbed while she was sleeping in her bed in June of 2016, less than two years ago.
Today there are approximately 900 Jews living in Hebron, along with a nearby community of 7,000 Jews in Kiryat Arba. The Palestinian population in the city has grown to more than 200,000.
The Jews who live there have made it their mission to maintain a Jewish presence in Hebron, which houses the tombs of the matriarchs and patriarchs of the Jewish people. They believe they are the living defenders of the tombs and of the city itself. I imagine they feel that they are hated by their Palestinian neighbors and fear them, due to all the murders and attempted attacks they have faced. Fear and hate go together, and are tragically a constant presence in this holy city.
Hebron, the oldest Jewish city in the world, is also one of the most tense places in the world. You can feel it in the air. The IDF is there all the time, tasked with preventing violence between two communities in conflict and keeping visitors safe. The military’s presence in the city has been a source of tension and controversy in the region and elsewhere, but continues because no one has found a better way to ensure freedom of worship for both Muslims and Jews there. Indeed, a few days after our trip to Hebron, the army prevented a stabbing against tourists who were coming off a bus just like ours.
Bringing peace to Hebron will require wrestling with and unwinding all of this history, religious connection and general complexity. That is why I was disappointed to read an article by Rabbi Sharon Brous which featured a deeply one-sided portrayal of the situation there.
The article includes an ugly example of Jewish extremism in Hebron, but omits the fact that the city is known as a stronghold of support for Hamas. It speaks of the hardships Palestinians face due to Israeli restrictions, without mentioning the horrific violence that led to those restrictions in the first place. It does not acknowledge that Jews still have real reasons to fear for their lives and fight for their right to pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
I agree with Rabbi Brous about inspiring young Jews to fall in love with Israel, while also teaching them about the harsh realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I just wish she had presented a fuller picture.
Roz Rothstein is the CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs.
Seeing Hebron Beyond the Headlines and Caricatures : https://ift.tt/2NxF94LWednesday, August 29, 2018
Complexity is Good. Reality is Better.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve never met Sharon Brous. The spiritual leader of Los Angeles’ trendy Ikar synagogue thinks she knows me, though.
I am the “other side,” Rabbi Brous. Nice to meet you.
In a new column in the Los Angeles Times, Brous tells about a trip she took with her kids to the Jewish settlement of Hebron, a tiny, heavily fortified enclave abutting a large Palestinian city. Jewish tradition sees it as a holy city, where our Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried. In 1929, 67 unarmed Jews, including women and children, were butchered by rioting Arabs. Today it is the epicenter of what most Americans associate with the most extreme West Bank settlers.
“Trust me, Ima,” her daughter told her. “I love Israel. I need to see the other side with my own eyes.”
What she saw included the hardships that many Palestinians face there, as well as the frankly extremist views of some Jewish residents. One of them expressed support for the notorious murderer Baruch Goldstein, the physician and Hebron resident who, in February 1994, opened fire on a hall full of Muslim worshipers, killing 29. The resident called Goldstein’s victims “animals.”
Brous then goes on to extrapolate from Hebron to everything that bothers her about the Israeli government—the oversimplifications of pro-Israel messaging, the alienation of American Jews from Israel, and so on. When you see the most extreme counter-reality, she seems to be saying, you know that the government is encouraging a line that no American Jew with a conscience can abide.
It is a moving piece, in part because she prefaces it with the genuine love she shows for Israel—a love that includes not just reading the news, but taking her kids to Israel often and making sure they’re in constant touch with family in Tel Aviv.
The visit to Hebron, she writes, was meant to teach them the “complexities” of Israel.
Here’s the thing. I’m a well-read, socially liberal, fairly secular, free-market, geopolitical hawk. I opposed the surrogacy law and support the Nation-State Law. I oppose “occupation,” but am realistic about the impediments to a deal right now and the risks of unilateralism, and the need to learn lessons from the Oslo disaster. I’m likely to vote center-right, but I’m in nobody’s pocket.
I’m representative, in other words, of the actual Israeli “other side,” the kind of Israeli that Likud, Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Kadima, Israel Beiteinu and Jewish Home are dying to reach. We are the silent majority of Israel, the answer to liberal American Jews’ endless bafflement at why Bibi keeps winning elections when everybody they know hates him.
Israel’s “other side” has literally nothing to do with the people in Hebron—or at least, nothing that can be learned from a brief tour of it. If I want to show my kids the “other side” of America, I’m not taking them them to a KKK rally. It’s a foolish caricature, engineered to make sure their kids don’t, God forbid, actually get tempted to change their minds.
And I sure wouldn’t have taken them to Hebron with Breaking the Silence—an organization whose credibility has been repeatedly called into question, and whose spokesperson, Dean Issacharoff, was caught fabricating his own purported beating of a Palestinian prisoner.
If you want your kids to understand not just complexity but also reality, challenge them for real.
Otherwise you’re not seeing the other side at all, just reinforcing your own views.
Why do Israelis consistently vote for right-wing parties, when they clearly don’t share the views of the settlers of Hebron? Because the Left, very simply, failed them. Golda Meir failed them in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and in the disastrous economic policies of the 1970s. Rabin and Peres failed them in the calamitous Oslo accords in 1993, which led to none of the peace they promised and a lot of dead Israeli friends. Ehud Barak, Labor’s last Prime Minister, failed them not just because of his flailing impotence to stop the Second Intifada.
Nothing like losing a loved one in a terror attack or a war to focus the mind on the consequences of your vote on election day.
Like it or not, the leadership of the Right has led to a prolonged period of relative economic and physical security. Israelis—both Jews and Arabs alike—feel safer, and have an easier time paying their bills, than ever before. They do not have the luxury of risking that in exchange for leaders who sound nice, who say the things Jews in Los Angeles want to hear.
Brous is completely right when she says that “to love a place… does not necessarily mean to love its government.” Israel is a whole country of amazing people. But real love isn’t just taking what you enjoy, and orchestrating experiences in which you hear what you want to hear. It’s about listening to the other—really listening. Hearing uncomfortable opinions, serious opinions, presented as compellingly as possible.
With kids, it means challenging them to think. Exposing them to the most reasonable version of opinions they disagree with, not puppet theater.
I don’t know you, Rabbi Brous, and I do not question your love for Israel. But if you ever want to hear the real Israeli “other side,” text me and we’ll set something up.
David Hazony is an author and Executive Director of The Israel Innovation Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting Israeli culture in the world.
Complexity is Good. Reality is Better. : https://ift.tt/2LChCOrWhen an Olive Branch Gets Rejected
If you want to better understand why peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a hopeless illusion, read Raja Shehadeh’s response in the Aug. 26 New York Times to Yossi Klein Halevi’s soulful and conciliatory book “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.”
Instead of responding in kind, Shehadeh falls back on the tired trope of chronic victimhood that has served only to perpetuate Palestinian misery. In this narrow view, every Palestinian woe is Israel’s fault, and Palestinians are a weak people with no agency just waiting for big, bad Israel to “withdraw from the territories it has occupied and leave us to go on with our lives.”
Shehadeh, who’s an author and an intellectual, knows better than to simplify such a bedeviling conflict whose complexity Halevi tried to honor. He knows, for example, that after the Israel Defense Forces would abandon the territories, terror groups like Hamas and ISIS would love nothing more than to fill the vacuum and massacre Palestinians, just as Hamas did in Gaza.
But such complexity plays no role in Shehadeh’s takedown of Halevi’s good faith offer to embark “on a journey of listening to each other.” When all you can see is your own victimhood, there’s no need to listen, even as a gesture of reciprocation.
Shehadeh admits that Halevi recognizes the importance of a Palestinian “counterstory,” one of “invasion, occupation and expulsion,” a history of “dislocation” and “humiliating defeats.” But how does he respond to such humility and contrition? By blasting Halevi for being “condescending” and for focusing so much of his book on trying to help Palestinians understand the Zionist story that is ingrained in Halevi’s soul, which was the very purpose of the book.
Shehadeh also knows better than to casually dismiss Israeli peace offers that were rejected by Palestinians as “old and discredited narratives.” He can’t even bring himself to acknowledge that Palestinians are partly responsible for the absence of peace. The furthest he will go is to say, “I was involved in the Oslo negotiations and I can tell you that Israel shares plenty of responsibility for their failure.”
Everything else in his piece is a hodgepodge of polite aggression disguised as sophisticated lamentations. He claims, “To make peace possible the Palestinians are not required to become Zionists,” as if Halevi ever asked for that. Betraying his intent to undermine Halevi’s book, he twists a plea to “understand us” into a demand to “become Zionist.”
Perhaps the deepest sign of his cynicism and distancing is when he confesses to having zero interest in Israelis understanding his narrative. “Unlike you,” he writes triumphantly, “I will not demand that you see the Nakba, the catastrophe that Israel’s founding caused for my people, in the same way as I see it.”
Why? Because “You couldn’t,” he tells Halevi. Shehadeh is so drenched in smug victimhood that he can’t possibly imagine a Jewish neighbor being able to understand his narrative — not even a neighbor who has already made a genuine effort to do precisely that.
Responding to Shehadeh on Facebook, Halevi continued to show his good faith, writing, “I choose to take your response as a potential opening” and “I am prepared to stand with you, Raja, on any platform, before any audience, and affirm the basic principles of mutual respect and recognition that would lead to an end to the occupation and the acceptance of Israel.”
Will Shehadeh take him up on the offer? We’ll see.
In the meantime, Shehadeh wants Israel to recognize its responsibility and “put a recognition of that culpability on the agenda for negotiations when the time comes for arriving at a settlement between us.”
When the time comes? That time will never come if the Shehadehs of the Palestinian and humanitarian world continue to treat Palestinians as hopeless victims who are too weak to ever understand the authentic and eternal longings of their Jewish neighbors.
When an Olive Branch Gets Rejected : https://ift.tt/2MBudXwFriday, August 24, 2018
New York Times Publishes a Rejection of Yossi Klein Halevi’s Plea for Reconciliation
If you want to better understand why peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a hopeless illusion, read Raja Shehadeh’s response in The New York Times this week to Yossi Klein Halevi’s soulful and conciliatory “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.”
Instead of responding in kind, Shehadeh falls back on the tired trope of chronic victimhood that has served only to perpetuate Palestinian misery. In this narrow view, every Palestinian woe is Israel’s fault; and Palestinians are a weak people with no agency just waiting for big, bad Israel to “withdraw from the territories it has occupied and leave us to go on with our lives.”
Shehadeh, who’s an author and an intellectual, knows better than to simplify such a bedeviling conflict whose complexity Halevi tried to honor. He knows, for example, that on the very day Israel would abandon the territories, terror groups like Hamas and ISIS would jump to fill the vacuum and massacre Palestinians, just like Hamas did in Gaza.
But such complexity plays no role in Shehadeh’s takedown of Halevi’s offer to embark “on a journey of listening to each other.”
Shehadeh acknowledges that Halevi recognizes the importance of a Palestinian “counterstory,” one of “invasion, occupation and expulsion,” a history of “dislocation” and “humiliating defeats.” But how does he respond to such humility and contrition? By blasting Halevi for being “condescending” and for focusing so much of his book on trying to help Palestinians understand the Zionist story that is engrained in Halevi’s soul.
Shehadeh also knows better than to casually dismiss Israeli offers of peace that Palestinians rejected as “old and discredited narratives.” He can’t even bring himself to admit that Palestinians are partly responsible for the absence of peace. The furthest he will go is to say, “I was involved in the Oslo negotiations and I can tell you that Israel shares plenty of responsibility for their failure.”
Everything else in his piece is a hodgepodge of polite aggression disguised as sophisticated lamentations. He claims that, “To make peace possible the Palestinians are not required to become Zionists,” as if Halevi ever asked for that. Betraying his intent to take down Halevi’s book, he twists a plea to “understand us” with a demand to “become Zionist.”
Perhaps the biggest sign of his bad faith is when he claims to have zero interest in Israelis understanding his narrative: “Unlike you,” he writes triumphantly, “I will not demand that you see the Nakba, the catastrophe that Israel’s founding caused for my people, in the same way as I see it.”
Why? Because “You couldn’t.” Shehadeh is so drenched in smug victimhood that he can’t even imagine a Jewish neighbor being able to understand his narrative—not even a neighbor who has already made a genuine effort to do precisely that.
What he wants is that Israel recognizes its responsibility and “put a recognition of that culpability on the agenda for negotiations when the time comes for arriving at a settlement between us.”
But that time will never come if the Shehadehs of the Palestinian world continue to treat Palestinians as hopeless victims who are too weak to ever understand the authentic longings of their Jewish neighbors.
New York Times Publishes a Rejection of Yossi Klein Halevi’s Plea for Reconciliation : https://ift.tt/2P40svcWednesday, August 22, 2018
Israel Is a Country, Not a Cause
If you’re like a lot of American Jews, you’ve gotten pretty worked up lately about the Nation- State Law, the questioning of Peter Beinart at Ben Gurion Airport or the LGBT protests about surrogacy. Before that, there was the Kotel controversy, and the Jerusalem embassy, and before that the Iran deal—and so on.
There is no country on earth whose domestic and foreign policy grips American Jewish attention like Israel. Because it’s the “Jewish state,” and American Jews care.
But there’s something wrong with all this caring.
In America, where many Jews don’t know Hebrew, arguments about Israel tend to be shallow and shrill mirrors of debates in Israel—after all, what do people use to interpret the news other than what Israeli right-wingers and left-wingers are telling them?
This kind of second-level arguing, however, is usually a waste of breath.
Why? In part, because it’s stripped of context. Israelis shout when they argue, even when they write. A writer from Haaretz can declare the rise of Israeli fascism, and another one from Israel Hayom can scream about treason against the nation, yet it’s a small Middle-Eastern country—when they’re done shouting, they still go to the same bars, the same family meals, listen to the same radio news, or run into each other at the gym or the boardroom.
A columnist for Haaretz once told me: “Of course I overstate the threats to Israeli democracy. If I don’t scream, nobody will hear me.”
Another reason American Jews are so breathless is that they feel powerless to affect the country they care about. They don’t vote in Israel, they don’t participate in the Hebrew-language policy debates, and no matter how much they feel Israeli decisions might affect them, they really don’t, at least not in the way they affect Israeli voters and taxpayers.
In fact, the disconnect between American-Jewish adrenaline about Israel and the actual, objective success and stability of the country is so enormous that it forces us to ask: What are you really worried about, American Jews?
The short answer, the only one that makes any sense, is this: It’s about you.
American Jews want desperately to care about something Jewish, but don’t really want to face the fact that their kids aren’t continuing the identity, that they have lost a sense of belonging, that their synagogue-based communities are dissolving into infinite WhatsApp groups and Facebook groups and political action committees, that their kids are, in some cases, getting blamed on campus for things that Israel is accused of doing.
Meanwhile, over here in Israel, something totally different is happening. Under the radar, Israel has turned itself from a cultural backwater into something vibrant, edgy, and increasingly influential. Remember Start-Up Nation? Now it’s happening with culture: Israelis are changing the face not just of hi-tech but of music, architecture, film and TV, of design and art and dance.
When will American Jews notice? When will they tell their kids: Go to Israel because something amazing is happening there. Forget Left and Right—it’s not important. Forget BDS—it doesn’t matter. A nation’s creative spirit, its deep Jewish soul, its language and culture—all these are much bigger and more important for you than anything you read in the news.
This is not about Whataboutism or going “Beyond the Conflict.” Israelis don’t live in the conflict and don’t need to go beyond it. Israeli reality is mainly about what everybody else’s reality is about: Work, family, vacation, entertainment. In short, life.
But it’s also a different reality—an incredible life, full of creative energy, new thoughts, big gambles and brass tacks. This can be a lot more interesting to young American Jews looking for something to anchor their identity in than all the endless political sword-fighting.
The point is: A government is not its people. For Americans to get worked up about Israel based on who is in power makes no more sense than for Israelis to decide whether to visit or do business with the United States based on the latest tweets coming out of the White House.
Instead of showing your caring by reacting to headlines, there’s a different way to care—a much healthier way, one that will take you farther and bring your kids closer: Find the Israel that adds value to your life.
Visit. Learn the language. Meet the people. Listen to the music. Drink the wine. Enjoy the country. Treat it like an exotic foreign land, not a rotting shack in your backyard that used to be pretty but now is full of dung. Israel is not rotting, it has only gotten more beautiful, and it’s frankly not your backyard.
In an important essay last year, David Hazony made this point about “Israeliness” as a key to the Jewish future in America. He ended by saying that the path to Israel means rediscovering Israel as a country, not just a cause, and yourself as someone searching rather than acting out of certainty… to see the Israeli other not as a threat but as a resource for your own journey.
Bring to Israel your sense of exploration and wonder rather than anxiety and anger, and you’ll be shocked how much more it has to offer. Your kids will be grateful, too.
Adam Bellos is the founder of The Israel Innovation Fund, whose goal is to create culturally relevant initiatives that showcase Israel’s diverse culture. Its flagship program, Wine on the Vine, enables people to support Israel’s wine industry by planting grapevines and supporting charities.
Israel Is a Country, Not a Cause : https://ift.tt/2Lk7IRdWhere ‘Social Justice’ and #MeToo Fall Short
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
We live in an era of “social justice.”
By “social justice,” people typically mean a panoply of left-leaning policy priorities. But the phrase itself is pernicious and anti-morality — justice requires no modifier. Justice is by nature individual — we punish those who are guilty, not those who are innocent; we don’t punish children for the sins of their parents. But social justice suggests that we should allow societal context to inform whether a result is just. Thus, a guilty man from a historically victimized group ought to be let off the hook; an innocent from a historically powerful group ought to be punished in order to provide restitution for historical injustices.
Judaism fundamentally rejects this notion. In Leviticus, the Torah states, “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” We naturally assume that the rich are more likely to get away with perverting justice, but the Torah reminds us that our natural sympathies may be just as likely to pervert justice on behalf of someone unfortunate. As the old legal aphorism goes, hard cases make bad law — if we follow our hearts, we almost invariably pursue injustice.
All of this comes up this week thanks to the controversy surrounding Asia Argento, one of the leading #MeToo icons. Argento publicly accused megaproducer Harvey Weinstein of rape just a few months ago; now it turns out that Argento, who touted “women everywhere” having the “courage to share their most painful private traumas in public,” allegedly sexually assaulted a 17-year-old boy back in 2013. According to The New York Times, former child actor Jimmy Bennett alleges that Argento invited him to a hotel room and sexually assaulted him when he was 17 and she was 37. The age of consent in California is 18. The documents reviewed by the Times included a selfie of the two in bed together dated May 9, 2013.
Argento’s alleged gross misconduct doesn’t undermine her claims against Weinstein, of course. As it turns out in Hollywood, more than one person can be disgusting at one time. But it’s the reaction that’s been telling. Rose McGowan, another face of the #MeToo movement, tweeted, “None of us know the truth of the situation and I’m sure more will be revealed. Be gentle.” All of which would be fine, except that McGowan, along with many others in the #MeToo movement, have suggested that an allegation is tantamount to a conviction. Back in January, she tweeted, “Believe women,” and in November, she tweeted, “It’s quite simple, all who have worked with known predators should do 3 simple things. 1) Believe survivors 2) Apologize for putting your careers and wallets before what was right. 3) Grab a spine and denounce. If you do not do these things you are still moral cowards. #ROSEARMY.”
We all tend to lend credibility to those we like and to disparage the credibility of those we don’t. In reality, we ought to hold the same standards for everyone.
Now, this is a problem. There must be one standard by which we can adjudicate public accusations of sexual abuse. That standard should require some evidence, regardless of the alleged victim; it should at least require a careful weighing of the allegations themselves. Instead, we’ve been told for nearly a year that we must believe all allegations at face value, mainly because so many women have been wrongly ignored in the past. But past sins do not excuse current ones, nor do current virtues absolve past sins. McGowan should be holding Argento to the same standard she’d hold others, whether or not Argento is a woman or a #MeToo icon.
Unfortunately, we tend not to do this. We all tend to lend credibility to those we like and to disparage the credibility of those we don’t. If we’re Donald Trump fans, we defend him against allegations of abuse of women; if we’re Democrats, we defend Keith Ellison against the same. In reality, we ought to hold the same standards for everyone. That’s what morality demands. And it’s what justice demands, even if social justice suggests otherwise.
Ben Shapiro is editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire, host of the podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show” and author of The New York Times best-seller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear Silences Americans.”
Where ‘Social Justice’ and #MeToo Fall Short : https://ift.tt/2w64I67Between My Self and My Group
My synagogue seems to be making a bigger deal about Elul this year. The rabbis are sending out daily emails reminding us that during this month of introspection, we’re supposed to delve deeply into our individual souls and, well, fix them.
“We all have a ‘best self’ who has become unfamiliar to us in the year gone by,” writes Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue. “These holy days call on us to identify that person whom we seek to be but are not, and then close the gap.”
Maybe I’m just noticing the Elul attention more this year because the underlying assumption — that we are unique individuals who can remake ourselves — is now nearly entirely lost from the prevailing culture. Indeed, the subtext of identity politics is: Individuals have no power. Groups have all the power. We are nothing compared with the group. We must submit to the will of the group.
By contrast, Judaism, as my Journal colleague Rabbi Eli Fink puts it, offers a healthy balance between individuality and group identity: “Judaism balances individualism and group identity so that they are both prominent. When balanced, they are beneficial; when one dominates, it can be detrimental.”
Although our identity as Jews is profoundly significant, our primary relationship is still our relationship with God, as individuals. We pray as a community; we speak to God directly from our hearts.
The delicate balance between individuality and group identity can, of course, be found throughout nature. Like the leaves on a tree, we are part of the larger species of humanity and also part of the smaller groups that have become so hyper-magnified today: race, ethnicity, gender. But if you remove every leaf from a tree, you will find that no leaf is the same: from far away, they look like leaves; up close, you can see every unique idiosyncrasy.
The loss of individuality from our culture is ironically counterproductive to both the advancement of the various groups and the betterment of humanity as a whole. In most cases, the personal is not political. The personal is personal. And what we can’t change about ourselves, we have to learn to accept. We are not perfect; we are human.
And when we accept that we are not perfect, we can accept that others are not perfect, either. Acceptance breeds compassion, tolerance … and bravery.
Why should we ever be told not to think for ourselves?
“I believe I can fly … I believe I can touch the sky,” my 9-year-old son sings offhandedly. I have always felt that the three greatest lessons I can teach him are: 1) We are the artists of our lives. We are unique and can shape our individual destinies. 2) Resist conformity of all kinds. Look deep inside: Find your soul and never let it go. 3) Seek truth and beauty, not what’s popular.
But there is a fourth lesson that follows the others more than I’ve realized. Find your inner, unique strength to be brave. As Professor Dumbledore puts it in Harry Potter: “We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”
It is a gift to us, as Jews, that our religion, our ethnicity, represents this exquisite balance between individualism and group identity. In the Talmud it is written that all of Israel is responsible for one another, but however important that responsibility is, it in no way undermines our individuality.
In this time of great disunity in the Diaspora, perhaps we should use this month of Elul to reflect on both this shared responsibility and this shared freedom to be ourselves. Perhaps we need to relearn to respect and tolerate our differences; to show more compassion for our imperfections. The truth is, we’ve always argued. But we did so respectfully.
We are Jews, yes. But it is our Judaism that teaches us never to prioritize groupthink over individuality. Why should we ever be confined by any other group’s orthodoxy? Why should we ever be told not to think for ourselves?
The irony is that to become our best selves, we must marry that self to the soul of our people. Elul is as good a time as any to work on that marriage.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic living in New York.
Between My Self and My Group : https://ift.tt/2OVOyTSSunday, August 19, 2018
Did Ronald Lauder Help or Hurt Israel?
I don’t know Ronald Lauder, one of the most powerful Jews in the world, but I’m guessing he was satisfied with himself after writing a heartfelt critique of Israel in The New York Times last week. In a piece titled, “This Is Not Who We Are,” the president of the World Jewish Congress came across as a lover betrayed.
“When Israel’s government appears to be tarnishing the sacred value of equality,” he wrote, “many supporters feel it is turning its back on Jewish heritage, the Zionist ethos and the Israeli spirit.”
Going through a litany of well-known complaints against Israel— the new nation-state law prominent among them– Lauder concluded that “This is not who we are, and this is not who we wish to be. This is not the face we want to show our children, grandchildren and the family of nations.”
The irony, of course, is that by writing in the world’s newspaper of record that “this is not the face we want to show,” Lauder was doing precisely that. He was showing a face of Israel he didn’t want to show; a face much of the world already sees as mean and oppressive.
Given that Lauder is a longtime supporter of Israel and that he was writing to a global audience, it’s worth asking: Why did he think his opinion piece would be helpful to Israel? It’s not as if the world needs another op-ed criticizing Israel; God knows there are more than enough of those.
But if piling on is not the way to go, then what is? Could Lauder have written something more useful to the community conversation and to Israel?
I think so. While not ignoring Israel’s problems, Lauder could have introduced something that rarely gets mentioned in the daily avalanche of Israel bashing: The enormous corrective mechanism inherent in Israel civil society. In other words, he could have highlighted the thousands of social activists and non-profit groups who have the freedom to fight daily to make Israel a better place.
While acknowledging the injustices in Israel, he could have mentioned, for instance, the New Israel Fund, which has provided over $300 million to more than 900 justice-fighting organizations in Israel since its inception in 1979.
For every problem Lauder spotlighted, he could have added context and perspective. A Conservative rabbi who got arrested for officiating at a marriage? Horrible. But authorities had so much egg on their face the rabbi gave a Torah class at the President’s house the following day.
The nation-state law? Knowing that Israel’s enemies are using the law to falsely malign Israel as an apartheid state, instead of just piling on, Lauder could have added some crucial balance to tone down the hysterics. He could have quoted Bret Stephens, for example, who wrote in the Times:
“What the bill is not is the death of Israel’s democracy— it was enacted democratically and can be overturned the same way. It is not the death of Israeli civil liberties — still guaranteed under the 1992 Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty and visibly reaffirmed by the large public protests following the bill’s enactment. And it is not apartheid— a cheap slur from people whose grasp of the sinister mechanics of apartheid is as thin as their understanding of the complexities of Israeli politics.”
Lauder waxed nostalgic about the founding ideals of Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948, which he wrote guarantees “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” But what he failed to mention is that up until 1966, Israeli Arabs lived under the thumb of the military and had virtually none of the freedoms and rights they enjoy today. How did this progress come about? Maybe it’s that corrective mechanism Lauder chose to downplay.
In sum, overwhelmed by his disappointment in Israel, Lauder overlooked the complexity of Israeli society. He applauds Israel for being a “miracle,” but one of the key reasons Israel is a miracle is that Israelis—Jews and non-Jews alike– are not a passive bunch who quietly accept their fate. They’re not intimidated by authority. They protest, they argue, they fight.
They know their country is far from perfect; they know Haredim have too much power; they know their government makes plenty of blunders. While living in a state of virtual siege surrounded by Jew-hating armies who’d love nothing better than to wipe them out, Israelis struggle to balance the imperative of survival with the ideal of justice for all.
That noble struggle is also the face of Israel, and as a global champion of Israel, Lauder should feel no shame in showing it.
Did Ronald Lauder Help or Hurt Israel? : https://ift.tt/2OJeNg8Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Dear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Mazel tov! You have become quite the media sensation since your unexpected New York primary win in June. Of course, instant celebrity does come with a price — hyperscrutiny, as you saw last week.
My Jewish Journal colleague Ben Shapiro, noting that you have been called “the future of the Democratic Party” and that you have repeatedly stated that Republicans are afraid to debate you, offered to donate $10,000 to your campaign if you would come on his daily podcast and discuss issues for an hour.
You responded with a now notorious tweet: “Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions. And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one.”
Shapiro then tweeted: “Discussion and debate are not ‘bad intentions.’ Slandering someone as a sexist catcaller without reason or evidence does demonstrate cowardice and bad intent, however.” Shapiro also pointed out that, as an Orthodox Jew, he’s never made a catcall in his entire life.
Thus ensued an epic Twitterfest that was often not very nice to you. Perhaps the funniest came from the parody Mossad account: “Well that was confusing. We just offered the Palestinian Authority $1,000,000 to sit down and negotiate with us and then they accused us of catcalling.”
Though I disagree with nearly everything you have said, and perhaps more important, how you’ve said it, I do feel bad that you’ve been taught that playing the victim card is the best way to win — and that your progressive acolytes have indeed responded as though it was.
But guess what? It’s only a win for anti-feminists. Real feminists don’t play the victim card, especially since this was hardly victimization. How is an invitation to debate or a donation to your campaign sexist?
See, this is the problem, Alexandria: You and your millennial cohort were never taught real feminism. You were taught platitudes about “the patriarchy” that aren’t even true. You were taught to see anything you don’t like as sexist.
When I was your age, 28, I was a writer and editor at The New Republic. There were a couple of men there who didn’t think women were up for writing about politics. My female colleagues and I spent every day there proving them wrong. And it is because we did prove them wrong that young women like you are able to win congressional districts today.
But here’s the thing: We worked extremely hard to make that happen. And if we were asked questions that we didn’t know the answers to, we didn’t giggle and flip our hair back or arrogantly spew out assertions that have no basis in reality. We did this thing called research.
I know that research wasn’t prioritized when you were in college. Theory was. But you’re now out in the real world, and post-modern theory just doesn’t cut it out here. You can’t reduce everything to sexism (ironically while running around getting your picture taken everywhere).
By falsely making yourself into a victim, you not only demeaned real victims of sexual assault, but all female candidates who actually know the issues. My generation of women worked hard to show our equality. Your answer seems to be: Why work hard when I can just play the victim card?
Can you imagine Nikki Haley ever doing this? Or more to the point, Hillary Clinton?
Is this how you’re planning to handle yourself in Congress? If a Republican asks for more information on a bill you’re sponsoring, will you respond, “Stop catcalling me!”
I don’t want to be harsh. You probably regret your tweet. But I must still ask you, as a woman, as a feminist, as a human interested in bettering humanity: Stop undoing everything we did for your generation.
While you run around campaigning for others, find time to do in-depth research on issues, both domestic and foreign. Your assertions have ranged from nonsensical to unrealistic. Even The Washington Post has marked each of your “eye-raising claims” as false or misleading.
You’re now in a somewhat difficult situation. Overnight, you’ve become politically prominent, with reporters (justly) expecting you to be familiar with lots of complicated issues. It’s OK to slow down and catch up.
Then, when a conservative pundit invites you to debate, you can say, “No, I’m too busy,” or even better, “Absolutely.”
Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic living in New York.
Dear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez : https://ift.tt/2Mv6zLlNot All Protests Created Equal
America was born and raised in protest. From the colonies that rebelled against the British monarchy in the 1770s to the fight for civil rights in the 1960s to the Women’s Marches of today, protest is a cherished American tradition. We have the freedom to speak out against injustice, and we like to use it.
But not all protests are created equal.
Take the ongoing controversy with the protesting athletes of the National Football League. It started in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, made media headlines by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest police violence. Now, it’s become all the rage among a multitude of players, and the league has no clue how to handle it.
I’m really torn on this issue. On the one hand, what I love about sports is that it gives me a refuge from the seriousness of politics. It’s my getaway. After long days of worrying about peace in the Middle East and the effects of tax cuts, I can chill out and worry about how LeBron James will mesh with the young core of the Lakers or whether the Patriots’ Tom Brady can still be an MVP at 41.
At the same time, how can I not have empathy for athletes who want to effect change in society? How can I not respect their right to protest injustice?
What complicates the picture is impact: Does any of this work? How useful are gestures of protest during the playing of the national anthem? If anything, it seems to have triggered a backlash among fans who oppose the gestures, leading to a decline in attendance and television ratings. Protest, evidently, works both ways.
If you want a sports gesture with impact, look at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. America at the time was embroiled in the epic struggle for black civil rights. Heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. led freedom marches. Six months after King’s assassination, two African-American track-and-field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were on the Olympic podium to accept their medals. While the U.S. anthem played and with the eyes on the world on them, they each raised a fist in a black glove in solidarity with their oppressed brethren. It became an iconic image — an emblem of a troubled era.
At the same time, how can I not have empathy for athletes who want to effect change in society? How can I not respect their right to protest injustice?
This singular impact is missing with the NFL protests. What the protests have done, more than anything, is divide the country. Instead of drawing attention to an injustice, they have drawn attention to a gesture. The fact that NFL games will be played every week for the next five months only ensures that the gesture itself will remain the center of attention.
What will people talk about? They’ll talk about what the league should do, what the players should do, what the owners should do, what the fans should do, what the sponsors should do, what the union should do, etc. In other words, they’ll talk about anything except what America should do to correct injustice.
We can expect plenty of stories about which player made which gesture at which game, but not as many stories about which players initiated efforts to build bridges between local law enforcement and troubled neighborhoods.
Maybe one of the issues is that our era simply lacks the urgency and blatant injustice of the 1960s, when Jim Crow laws in the South prevented blacks from using the same public facilities as whites, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools; when interracial marriage was illegal and many blacks couldn’t vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.
It also doesn’t help when you use a weekly sporting event as an instrument of protest. Eventually, the gestures get stale. People forget what you’re protesting. You lose the cause; you lose the juice.
In any case, injustices in America clearly persist and protesters must find creative ways to make an impact.
Last Sunday, I spoke with my friend Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld as he was preparing to go to the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Washington, D.C. Not satisfied with just marching and protesting, he told me he would blow the shofar as hard as he could to “drown out the evil shrieks of the Nazis.”
What complicates the picture is impact: Does any of this work? How useful are gestures of protest during the playing of the national anthem?
I was so moved by his idea that we decided to post the story on the Journal website and disseminate it on social media. Just like the raised fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos 50 years earlier, the rabbi had found a singular gesture to accentuate his message.
That is my wish for NFL players: Find a way to make a statement that will rally more people to your cause and put the focus on your mission. Just as watching football is a great American tradition, so is effecting real change.
Not All Protests Created Equal : https://ift.tt/2OFxKRbTuesday, August 14, 2018
Thursday, August 9, 2018
No One Should Get a Pass on Racism
via The Verge
So, can nonwhite Americans be racist?
This question reared its ugly head this week after revelations about The New York Times’ latest editorial board hire, Sarah Jeong.
Jeong, a technology writer for The Verge, has long decried white people as a group. Her Twitter is filled with unflattering characterizations and racist remarks: “white men are bulls***”; “#cancelwhitepeople”; “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.”; “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
Jeong, predictably enough, wasn’t fired by the Times — nor should she have been. The Times knew what they were getting when they hired her, and they should feel the brunt of the backlash from their readers and subscribers. But the double standard is evident: a few months before Jeong’s hiring, the Times hired another tech columnist named Quinn Norton, who, it turns out, had sarcastically tweeted out the n-word in order to mock racists; the Times tossed her. Why? Presumably because Norton is white, and because she was once friendly online with Andrew Auernheimer, who would go on to work at the Nazi Daily Stormer website.
The double standard with regard to racism is, it turns out, not a coincidence. Many on the left are now arguing that people who are not white cannot be racist. Professor Nolan Cabrera of the University of Arizona told The Washington Post regarding Jeong, “It was easy to drum up anger and say it looks like she hates white people. That only makes sense if you are willfully ignorant of 400 to 500 years’ history and contemporary social context and also the context from which the tweets were sent.”
The argument seems to be that racism is the exclusive preserve of the powerful. “Her tweets weren’t even intended to cut down white people themselves,” explained Jessica Prois of HuffPost. “[T]hey were lampooning the fact that there is actually nothing she could say that could threaten white institutional power.” Racism is merely a tool used by the powerful; thus, nonpowerful people cannot be racist. The execrable Zack Beauchamp of Vox.com explained, “A lot of people on the internet today are confusing the expressive way anti-racists and minorities talk about ‘white people’ with actual race-based hatred, for some unfathomable reason.”
Yes, racism combined with athan racism alone. But racism alone is still racist.
But this is ridiculous. Racist sentiments are racist regardless of the supposed societal victim status of the offenders’ social group. Yes, racism combined with power is worse than racism alone. But racism alone is still racist. Sarah Jeong is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. She’s spent her career writing about technology. She’s not a victim of a brutal American society by any logical standard. Hilariously, the same advocates for anti-white racism who support Jeong thanks to her alleged victimhood would have been happy to see her excluded from Harvard on account of her Asian background, given the fact that Asian Americans rank low on the intersectional hierarchy.
Jews, in particular, should be wary of the attempt to link racism with institutional power. In fact, this argument has been used against Jews time and time again. As Batya Ungar-Sargon writes in The Forward, “Anti-Jewish racism is always based on the belief that Jews have power, and are therefore deserving of hate.” We’re watching this perspective play out in real time as European leftists claim that anti-Semitism is fully justified thanks to power imbalances between Israel and its enemies. Jews are targeted when they’re powerful, as they are in the Israeli government; they’re targeted when they’re weak, as they were in the ghettos of Europe. They were the victims of anti-Semitism both times.
To remove responsibility for racism thanks to membership in a supposed victim group only excuses racism. Leftists seem to understand this when it comes to white racism — no amount of perceived victimization excuses such racism. But the same must hold true for everyone. Racism starts with individuals — and that’s how it ends, too.
Ben Shapiro is a best-selling author, editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire and host of the conservative podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show.”
No One Should Get a Pass on Racism : https://ift.tt/2vxWHGTWednesday, August 8, 2018
Faculty Initiatives on Israel Help to Shift the Campus Climate
On-campus BDS campaigns in 2017-18 were notable for their extremist rhetoric and isolating actions. Everything from a coalition of pro-boycott groups refusing to collaborate with Jewish and pro-Israel organizations at NYU, to a demand from pro-BDS students at SUNY Stony Brook that the campus Hillel be removed and replaced by a “proper Jewish organization…that doesn’t support Israel,” to a mob of pro-BDS protesters shutting down a student government meeting at UCSB. There is little indication that this upcoming year will see any downturn in this poisonous discourse – indeed, a Stanford University student recently stepped down as a resident assistant after threatening to “physically fight [Z]ionists” on campus.
Organizations combating BDS have a difficult road ahead in responding to these campaigns. “Fighting fire with fire” is often a divisive, exhausting and even traumatic process for many students, and might also lead to the perception among the vast majority of students who are indifferent to these issues on campus that the pro-Israel side is morally equivalent to its opponents. On the other hand, allowing campaigns filled with ugly rhetoric, double standards, and unsubstantiated claims about Israel to go unanswered would be to give pro-BDS activists an undeserved victory.
One way of transcending this dilemma is to leverage the role of supportive faculty. Unlike undergraduate students, who generally experience campus life for only four or five years, faculty have institutional knowledge, ties to administrators and other stakeholders, and, in many cases, academic expertise in relevant fields. Faculty can mentor pro-Israel students, advise on strategy and tactics and develop innovative educational programming. They can help students become more effective advocates, and shift perceptions of Israel through education, research, and dialogue. The knowledge, experience, and general role of faculty give them the unique ability to positively impact the campus climate in the longer term, beyond the momentary drama created by a divestment vote in student government or a hostile speaker invited by a pro-BDS group.
Indeed, faculty members affiliated with the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) have been doing exactly this for the last few years. With the assistance of AEN’s resources, they developed coursework on various aspects of Israeli history, politics, and society. They hosted speakers on topics ranging from the history of the BDS movement to contemporary Israeli film, leading to increased engagement and interest among students and faculty. They wrote op-eds in response to student BDS campaigns, highlighting the factual inaccuracies in the claims made by BDS supporters and emphasizing the pernicious impact of BDS on the campus climate.
They are also using the occasion of Israel’s 70th year of statehood to develop innovative programs showcasing Israel’s achievements, diversity, and complexity. In Spring 2018, AEN members hosted a talk on Israeli politics and the U.S.-Israel relationship by a former editor of AIPAC’s Near East Report at Ball State University; a lecture on national identity in Israeli art from the pre-Statehood period at USC by Dalia Manor, director and chief curator of the Negev Museum of Art and Museum of Islamic and Near Eastern Cultures; and a dialogue between two thought leaders, liberal and conservative, on current events in Israel at Ursinus College. More ambitious events are planned for the upcoming academic year, including a convening of over 30 Israel Studies scholars in a two-day-long program on modern Israel at Michigan State University, an exhibit featuring original historical artifacts from the era of the founding of Israel at UCLA, and a one-day symposium on Israel-India relations at Northeastern Illinois University.
All of these programs give students, faculty, and the broader community the opportunity to engage with Israel in innovative and academically rigorous ways. Particularly in a time of ugly, polarized discourse, there could be no greater rebuke to the BDS movement and its goals.
Raeefa Shams is Senior Communications Associate at the Academic Engagement Network, an organization of over 600 faculty members who oppose the BDS movement, support freedom of speech, and promote robust discussion of Israel on campus. She is based in Washington, DC.
Faculty Initiatives on Israel Help to Shift the Campus Climate : https://ift.tt/2vqY3mCTuesday, August 7, 2018
Is There a Right to Not Be Offended?
WHY WOULD A LIBERAL MAGAZINE like The Nation apologize for publishing a poem that tries to capture the desperation of a homeless Black woman? What kind of offensive language would make them regret “the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem”?
The Nation’s letter of apology was actually longer than the poem itself, which was written by Anders Carlson-Wee. Here’s the complete poem:
“How-To”
If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,
say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower
themselves to listen for the kick. People
passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee
funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely
to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know
you is. What they don’t know is what opens
a wallet, what stops em from counting
what they drop. If you’re young say younger.
Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t
flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough
Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,
say you sin. It’s about who they believe
they is. You hardly even there.
Evidently, what triggered the avalanche of protests on social media was the brazen use of Black vernacular by a white poet. Faced with the backlash, the editors caved, saying they made a “serious mistake.” Even the poet apologized.
To her credit, Katha Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation, called the magazine’s apology “craven,” saying it “looks like a letter from re-education camp.” The proper thing to do, she added, would have been to reprint the poem together with readers’ opinions.
Also to her credit, Grace Schulman, who was poetry editor at The Nation from 1971 to 2006, wrote in The New York Times that she was “deeply disturbed by this episode, which touches on a value that is precious to me and to a free society: the freedom to write and to publish views that may be offensive to some readers.”
Separate from the issue of free speech, however, is the issue of how offensive was the poet’s use of Black vernacular? Should white artists now stay in their lanes for fear of offending minorities?
The irony is that the language used by Carlson-Wee came from an honest place. This wasn’t a case of sensationalist art meant only to provoke. This was an artist trying to bring to life a voice of pain, a voice of despair.
If editors must stand up for free speech, they must especially stand up for the kind of artistic speech that brings us face to face with human desolation.
“We often say that we want whites to understand black pain, the black experience, black difference. We want them to empathize,” African-American author and academic John McWhorter writes in The Atlantic. “But upon achieving this understanding, white artists, as artists, will naturally seek to express it through their creations. Are we to decree that they must not?”
We have become so sensitive to hurting people’s feelings that we won’t allow a white artist to convey the authentic rhythms of the street if that means “appropriating” another race’s vernacular.
As McWhorter writes: “Carlson-Wee, as a young white man dedicating a poem to a homeless black person’s suffering and trying to get inside her head, would seem to be displaying exactly the kind of empathy that we seek. ‘Feel it but don’t show it,’ we tell him, instead. ‘Empathize, but block that empathy from your creative impulses, on the pain of hurting us by imitating us without our consent.’ ”
Even if we grant that many people were genuinely offended by the poem, should that guide editorial decisions about art? Which civil right is more essential to the American spirit: the right to offend or the right to not be offended? The question itself is absurd, because in a free and open society, the freedom to offend is the very freedom to speak.
We have become so sensitive to hurting people’s feelings that we won’t allow a white artist to convey the authentic rhythms of the street if that means “appropriating” another race’s vernacular.
When editors start to tell poets to watch their speech, they create the worst possible atmosphere for creativity: fear. As much as I feel for those who were offended by the poem, I feel more deeply for the poet who tried to capture the pain of a woman but instead got hijacked by the ever-intolerant armies of social media.
If editors must stand up for free speech, they must especially stand up for the kind of artistic speech that brings us face-to-face with human desolation, with homeless souls on our sidewalks who are so desperate to get our attention — because “you hardly even there.”
Is There a Right to Not Be Offended? : https://ift.tt/2nj2CezInstead of Banning Infowars, Facebook and Google Should Focus on Cracking Down on Islamist Propaganda
Photo from PxHere.
The Internet went aplomb on August 6 when Facebook, Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Pinterest decided to crack down on Infowars, the conspiracy-theory laden site led by the manic Alex Jones.
Like clockwork, people swarmed to their respective sides. Some think that it’s best for these platforms to crack down on “hate speech,” others think that social media platforms shouldn’t engage in censorship no matter how vile the speech is, even if they have a First Amendment right to ban people from their platforms.
But what many people are overlooking is that if these various social media platforms are truly committed to improving civil discourse on their sites, they should put more of an emphasis that actually puts us all at risk: Islamic terrorism.
ISIS has become a bit of an afterthought in a news cycle dominated by Russia, Iran, North Korea and the latest tweets from President Trump. The barbaric terror group’s caliphate has been immensely diminished under the Trump administration, but don’t be fooled – the threat ISIS poses is still very real.
As former CIA military analyst and Counter Extremism Project senior policy adviser Tara Maller told the UK Independent, “The depletion of ISIS on the battlefield has not yet translated into the degradation of ISIS in the online space. What we see is a continuing effort to engage online and an increased effort to inspire people to carry out lone-wolf attacks.”
In other words, ISIS is turning to social media as a tool to radicalize people and incite them into acts of terror.
Facebook, Google and YouTube have all undertaken efforts to weed out ISIS’ propaganda, focusing on algorithms to automatically delete jihadist propaganda when it pops up on their platforms. But issues remain.
As a Wired article from May points out, researchers from the Digital Citizens Alliance – a nonprofit organization focused on Internet safety – and the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center (GIPEC) noticed that while specific terror-inciting posts were taken down from Facebook, users that put up those posts remained on the platform, thus allowing them to post radicalizing content that Facebook has been unable to track down. For instance, one user wrote “kill the unbelievers” in Bangla; others have posted pictures of ISIS terrorists with black ISIS flags. Similar problems have plagued YouTube.
Additionally, Facebook’s algorithms have inadvertently connected jihadists with each other through the “suggested friends” feature.
Remember Google Plus? It’s become a largely forgotten platform given the dominance of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al. But ISIS and their ilk have taken advantage of Google Plus’ dormancy to explicitly spread their propaganda unabated, such as one post that read, “A message to Muslims sitting in the West. Trust Allah, that each drop of bloodshed there relieves pressure on us here.”
Posts like that have been frequently ignored by Google; it was only after The Hill called them out on it when Google began taking down jihadist propaganda from Google Plus. Eric Feinberg, founder of GIPEC, told The Hill that Google acknowledged that they don’t really have a team to combat jihadist propaganda on Google Plus; Google denied this to The Hill, but admitted they could do a better job policing such propaganda on the platform.
It cannot be understated how serious this is –– all it took was one individual to be radicalized by ISIS propaganda to murder eight people with a truck in New York City. And yet, Facebook and Google seem more intent on cracking down on Infowars.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no sympathy for Infowars. Jones’ raging screeds about the 9/11 terror attacks being an inside job, the government attempting to turn the frogs gay and how Obamacare is a product of the “Jewish mafia” are poison to our civil discourse. But Facebook and Google should be placing a higher priority on better policing jihadist propaganda rather than cracking down on the ramblings of a madman.
Instead of Banning Infowars, Facebook and Google Should Focus on Cracking Down on Islamist Propaganda : https://ift.tt/2nl3Q9eMonday, August 6, 2018
Kudos to Netflix For Dropping Farrakhan ‘Documentary’
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
Those who create the magic that is Hollywood are currently confronting a multitude of challenges, from new technologies to mega-mergers to working with partners from cultures far different than our own. Another challenge facing studios, content creators and social media companies is how to navigate the sometimes thin line between freedom of speech and dangerous hate that should not be tolerated. For that reason, some were concerned this week by Netflix’s eleventh-hour decision not to stream a 2013 film about Louis Farrakhan that was produced by his son. That wasn’t the case, however, for us at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
We are convinced that Netflix did the right thing, and we thank them for doing it. Here’s why.
In 1997, Simon Wiesenthal, the late heroic Nazi hunter, agreed to bestow his name on our new institution with one caveat: You must fight the new haters with the same vigor that I pursue the old ones. For 40 years, we have strived to live up to our end of the deal, as haters have come in and out of the picture. There were aging Nazi criminals and, since the 1978 Skokie March, young (neo) Nazis. There was state-sponsored anti-Semitism from the now-defunct Soviet Union, and genocidal anti-Semitism from today’s Ayatollahs in Iran. And, in the 1980s, bigots spread their message by putting flyers under windshield wipers, while bigots today do so via social media.
Over the years, one man, the “honorable” Rev. Farrakhan, has never deviated from his hate. In 1985, his full-blown demagogic attack at the Forum, before a roaring crowd of 14,000, led Hollywood icon and founding Simon Wiesenthal Center Board member, Frank Sinatra, to express his concerns to us about Farrakhan’s bigotry and urge us to “keep fighting!”
Throughout the decades, the Center protested Farrakhan’s attacks against Jews, Judaism, gays and immigrants. We also placed him on our Top 10 Anti-Semites List and released a study that debunked his Big-Lie that Jews played a central role in slave trade in the 19th century. But Rev. Farrakhan’s charisma and message of Black empowerment has caused some to overlook his decades-long anti-Semitic and homophobic demagoguery.
Here, in his own words from 1984 to 2018, is the real Louis Farrakhan.
In 1984, Farrakhan labeled Judaism a “gutter religion,” later insisting that he meant to say “dirty religion.” That same year, Farrakhan repeatedly called Hitler “a great man”: “[T]he Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He wasn’t a great man for me as a black person, but he was a great German. Now, I’m not proud of Hitler’s evils against Jewish people, but that’s a matter of record. He raised Germany up from nothing. Well, in a sense you could say there’s a similarity in that we are raising our people up from nothing.” (Source: Southern Poverty Law Center)
In 1985, before a crowd of 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden, Farrakhan threatened Jews, stating that if any harm befell him, “All of you will be killed outright!,” and adding, “You cannot say ‘Never again’ to God because when he puts you in the oven, never again don’t mean a damn thing.’’
That same year, while speaking at the Los Angeles Forum before 14,000 people, Farrakhan denounced Israel as a “wicked hypocrisy” and then taunted, “Don’t push your six million down our throats when we lost 100 million (to slavery).” In his divisive speech, he also mocked and derided Los Angeles’ first African American mayor, Tom Bradley, a moderate political leader and a symbol of tolerance and inclusion.
In 1996, in a Saviours’ Day speech in Chicago, Farrakhan addressed Jews: “You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.”
A decade later, at the same gathering, he said: “These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength. … It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews, that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It’s the wicked Jews, false Jews, that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!”
And six years later, once again in Chicago on Saviours’ Day, he asserted: “In 100 years, they control movies, television, recording, publishing, commerce, radio, they own it all. Magazines. Why do you want all, everything?”
That same year, as part of his Holy Day of Atonement Keynote Address in Chicago, he spewed, “Now, you know I’m going to be lambasted and called anti-Semitic… They’ll say Farrakhan was up to his old canards; he said Jews control Hollywood. Well, they said it themselves! Jews control the media. They said it themselves! Jews and some gentiles control the banking industry, international banks. They do! In Washington, right next to the Holocaust Museum, is the Federal Reserve, where they print the money. Is that an accident?”
A year later, he was at it again, stating, as part of his lecture series The Time and What Must Be Done, Part 20: Making Satan Known, “The Jewish media has normalized sexual degeneracy, profanity and all kinds of sin.”
This year, Twitter temporarily removed Farrakhan from its platform after a speech in which he claimed, the Jerusalem Post reported, that Hollywood’s Jews have forced aspiring actors into anal sex to get parts, and that former president Barack Obama was under “under Jewish influence” when he advocated for same-sex marriage, something which he deemed “Satanic.” The 85-year-old asked a cheering audience, “I wonder, will you recognize Satan? I wonder if you will see the satanic Jew and the synagogue of Satan… because Satan has deceived the whole world.”
Also this year, he launched a new anti-Semitic attack in Chicago: “Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men… White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled a cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”
Anti-Semitism and bigotry are more widespread today than they have been at any time since the Holocaust some 75 years ago. This is in large part thanks to demagogues like Louis Farrakhan. Netflix should be applauded for not availing its immense platform to America’s foremost merchant of hate.
Rabbi Marvin Hier is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a two-time Academy Award winner and the only Rabbi who is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Kudos to Netflix For Dropping Farrakhan ‘Documentary’ : https://ift.tt/2MkHkIbFriday, August 3, 2018
Letters to the Editor: Week of August 3, 2018
Sabbaths in Jerusalem
I found Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s beautifully and movingly written account of her deeply felt experiences, as she bravely journeyed into the thicket of the three Jerusalems, as validating universal truths.
Living in harmony and acceptance in a multicultural, ethnically and religiously diverse society is a difficult dream to attain. People the world over have tried for millennia to find systems of governance that would achieve such a desirable outcome. Yet, it’s a fact that humans are inherently tribal beings. They thrive in their own communities of shared values, beliefs and common aspirations. Even as time and circumstances have evolved, the ideas of the necessity of coexistence, it’s a constant struggle.
David Lenga
Woodland Hills
Baron Cohen Sinks to New Depths
Journal writer Eli Fink claims that comedian Sasha Baron Cohen has exposed “the fringe elements in our society” in his new series, “Who Is America?”
Uh, no.
Cohen has exposed what he really is: an arrogant, unfunny elitist desperate to shore up his diminishing media market presence.
It isn’t funny to skewer innocent people, regardless of their political views. Cohen is not a comic but a boorish bully.
Arthur Christopher Schaper
Torrance
Tikkun Olam and Judaism
Gil Troy, in his review of Jonathan Neumann’s book “To Heal the World?” points to the author’s concern that tikkun olam “can lure Jews away from a rich, authentic Judaism.” Rich, authentic Jewish teaching abounds in the imperative to help those in need. As Troy himself observes, “tikkun olam is one of a series of Jewish values, visions and virtues.”
Since 2006, BJE Impact: Center for Jewish Service Learning has, in partnership with the Jewish Federation, helped schools, youth groups and camps connect tikkun olam action with Jewish learning and values through consultation and coaching. BJE also runs multiple, weeklong summer day camp sessions, BJE Teen Service Corps, enabling middle school and high school teens to engage in tikkun olam activities combined with Jewish learning and reflection.
Gil Graff
Executive Director
Builders of Jewish Education
Kudos for Gil Troy’s piece on Jonathan Newmann’s “To Heal the World?”
At times, it does take an outsider to make the cogent point that leftism has invaded the Reform, Conservative, and now even the Orthodox factions of American Jewry. This brings home Dennis Prager’s point that leftism is the fastest growing religion in the world.
Question: What do we do about it?
Enriqué Gascon
Westside Village
The wise and venerable Rabbi Irving Greenberg once taught us that our current pluralistic environment offered an opportunity for each stream of Judaism to expand its bandwidth:
Orthodoxy could benefit from a dose of liberal tikkun olam and liberal Judaism could deepen its commitment to Talmud Torah (Torah learning) and shmirat mitzvot (mitzvah observance).
The present struggle between Jewish universalists and particularists exemplified by the counterpoints that appeared in the Journal make Greenberg’s longstanding observation all the more poignant and timely.
And I can vouch for the fact that, to paraphrase Paul Simon, the “words of the prophets (the urgent call to act justly) rarely appeared on the walls of the beit midrash.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller
Director Emeritus, UCLA Hillel
Think, Don’t Tweet
I completely agree with David Suissa’s column about thinking (“Thinking About Thinking,” July 20). But why are you “expected to contribute” to Twitter “all day long”? No doubt tweeting less would be good for all of us.
Susan Rosenthal
Sherman Oaks
ICE and the Democrats
David Suissa is concerned by the self-destructive power of the two words uttered by the radical left — “abolish ICE” — and its potentially disastrous implications for the future of the Democratic Party (“Two Words Democrats May Regret,” July 27). However, there are many more two-word labels that portend bad omens: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young, Marxist anti-Israel representative in New York comes to mind, among many other factors.
Richard Friedman
Culver City
Identifying as Jews
Excellent column by Karen Lehman Bloch (“We, the Israelites,” July 27). I could not agree more with her point of view. Racism has a strong social class-conflict background. I live in Argentina, a country that has very few African-looking citizens but very strong racist traditions. The “Blacks” are always the “others,” regardless of who looks darker. In the case of Jews, we used to be the Blacks of Eastern Europe but, all of a sudden, when we got to America, we magically became white.
Was that because we became somehow “richer,” like they say in Brazil? Because we moved up in the social ladder? Magic works! My zayde (zichrono livracha) used to be called “Moishe der Paraguaye” when he came from Russia to Buenos Aires because he was very dark, and two generations later, I believe myself to be blond haired (I don’t have too much hair left) but my daughters agree that I have dark hair (I still don’t agree).
We have a very deep trauma with skin color. We have been killed by the millions for not matching the race standards of old Europe (or for not matching the social class position they wanted us to belong to) and we desperately fight against our self-hate trying to show empathy or not when others are discriminated against as we used to be. I believe that rescuing the concept of an “Israelite Nation” will help us to heal some of these wounds in our soul.
Daniel Liberman
via Facebook
Thank you, Karen, a wonderfully written column. May your assertions come to be seen as a blessing to all the family of Israel.
Roslyn Anderson
via Facebook
Facebook on Holocaust Denial
On the one hand, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that people should be allowed to “express themselves even if they get things wrong.” Meanwhile, he stresses that he does not want Facebook to serve as a platform for harming others (“Jewish Groups Slam Zuckerberg for Refusing to Take Down Holocaust Denial Content From Facebook,” posted online July 18).
On the other hand, Anti-Defamation League National Director Jonathan Greenblatt believes that Facebook should take a harder line on Holocaust denial, labelling it “a willful, deliberate and longstanding deception tactic by anti-Semites.”
Recognizing the power of the press, I would liken the Holocaust denials published in Facebook and other social networks as examples of shouting, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. No good can come of it. Most likely, it will harm the pursuit of peace in our world by inspiring deadly terrorism against Israel and Jews throughout the world.
George Epstein
via email
Is Inflexibility the Death of Judaism?
Throughout the Tanakh, God models extraordinary behavior and spotlights key virtues for the benefit of humankind, simultaneously sparing us pain and setting an example worth following. In fact, from the very first interaction with man, God establishes a precedent for acting and reacting with patience and compassion and emphasizes the importance of living a life that is not bound by rigidness.
After creating Adam, God imbued him with great powers, granted him dominion over all other creatures and even fashioned a mate for him out of his own flesh and blood. The pair were then given free rein in the Garden of Eden, with one small limitation: They could not eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
When they inevitably eat from the forbidden tree, God does not choose to abandon his humanity project. Instead, Adam and Eve are banned from the garden, God creates human awareness to subtly illustrate his disappointment, and the new laws and limitations of their new world are made known. God’s punishment is harsh but fair and fits the crime. Most importantly, God’s actions highlight the need for flexibility in even the direst of circumstances.
Several generations later, when humanity proves to be truly corrupt, God recognizes the need to hit the reset button but refuses to wipe the slate clean entirely. Noah is chosen as humanity’s steward, and God lays the groundwork for a second chance of global proportions, once again showing the Divine attribute of flexibility.
And when the Jewish nation tests God’s patience repeatedly over the course of their 40-year journey in the wilderness, God forgives their insolence and indulges their insubordination just to keep them on track, literally and spiritually. In response, they grow bolder and increasingly rigid, unable to emulate the godly trait that ensures their very survival generation after generation.
Indeed, even a cursory reading of the Tanakh makes it abundantly clear that inflexibility is a man-made foible.
At several points in our history, Jews were able to see the shades of gray that colored the world and acted in kind, walking along Ruth’s path of acceptance. The story goes that Jewish communities in Eastern Europe simplified and expedited the conversion process for non-Jews who had fallen in love with young Jews to avoid assimilation and strengthen Jewish adhesion and identity. They found a way to include rather than shun, to make it work rather than making it more complicated. Practically, this makes perfect sense, as all the Torah’s laws and guidelines are intended to be “ways of pleasantness” (Proverbs 3:17), and we are meant to mirror this paradigm through our own behavior.
By disallowing adaptation with the passage of time, we have put Judaism as we know it in jeopardy.
But somewhere along the line, we lost the ability to act and react with patience and compassion, and knowingly chose to live our lives bound by the letter, rather than the spirit, of the law. In doing so, we distanced ourselves from the Torah’s “paths of peace” and created spiritual barriers to keep others out at times when we should have been drawing them in. By disallowing adaptation with the passage of time, denying the clarity presented by technological advancements and disregarding societal need, we have put Judaism as we know it in jeopardy.
Thankfully, it’s not too late to course correct — assuming we understand where we went wrong in the first place.
I believe it stems from a fear of corrupting or diluting our heritage by utilizing modern information and contemporary commentary to update our understanding of our core texts. In an effort to maintain the strength and centrality of these Masoretic texts, we shunned original thinking and rejected textual analysis based on scientific findings and historical evidence, even when the suggested explanations provide brilliant new insights and strong answers to issues that have been troubling scholars for generations.
For example, in Tractate Sanhedrin (47 a-b), when discussing burial procedures and the period of mourning, the medieval commentaries argue about the definition of the phrase setimat ha-golel – “when the golel is sealed.” Rashi believes that the golel is the cover to a casket, while the Tosafists suggest that the item in question is actually a rounded stone that was used to seal a burial cave. Over the last century, several such stones have been found near ancient burial caves in Israel, thereby proving the Tosafists interpretation to be more factually accurate.
So, was Rashi wrong? No, he simply was limited by time and place, and he provided the most lucid commentary possible using the information available to him. Having never actually been to Israel and having witnessed only traditional interment, Rashi could only speak about that which he knew to be true. While the explanations provided by both Rashi and the Tosafists are integral to our study of the Talmud, modern findings have helped us clarify the original intent.
Our problems began when a vocal minority insisted that Rashi and other classic commentators are always right, no matter how many times they were presented with undeniable scientific, archaeological or historical evidence to the contrary. This rigidness and inability to accept new ideas trickles down from factual analysis to the interpretation of Jewish law, where it is most dangerous and divisive.
The painful irony is that Rashi’s own grandsons had opinions that often contradicted his own, yet he still loved and respected them tremendously. Rashi knew that debate, analysis and innovation have kept us alive — physically and spiritually — and brought us together through good times and bad. He understood that Jews need to ask questions in order to grow as individuals and thrive as a nation.
That’s why it is so troubling that, in many circles, stringency is observed for the sake of stringency alone. This practice is lazy and closed-minded and threatens the very foundations of Judaism. If the answer is always no, nothing will ever be accessible. When we close all the gates in fear of intrusive ideas, we create an irreparable divide, locking some in and others out and never allowing all members of the Tribe to converse, connect and create together, as is the Jewish ideal.
My father, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, has always dared to be flexible, experimenting with numerous ways to make our core texts more accessible. He altered the layout of one version of the Babylonian Talmud, allowing the novice and casual reader to engage with the text like never before. He drew on science, archaeology, history and modern insights to answer age-old questions and make the subject matter more relatable to contemporary students and scholars. And he uncensored talmudic text that had been hidden from the masses due to archaic sensibilities to reintroduce the entirety of our core knowledge for maximum engagement.
Though the backlash for his creativity was intense, my father charged forward knowing that introducing flexibility back into Torah study was essential, as it would breathe new life into our core texts and bring Jews from all walks of life together to learn, debate and build a bright new Jewish future. The realization of this vision was on full display recently at the Steinsaltz Center’s Gala Dinner in Jerusalem, a celebration of my father’s unparalleled pedagogical accomplishments and a testament to his global impact. The sellout crowd was a cross-section of world Jewry, people of all ages from diverse educational backgrounds who had reshaped and rekindled their relationship with Jewish learning and practice thanks to the tools created and example set by my father. In their unique ways, each guest at the dinner approached my father to thank him for exposing the originality that exists within our Jewish tradition, for highlighting the truth behind the talmudic claim that there are, indeed, “70 faces to the Torah.”
The fear that has sapped our creativity and originality for generations, and continues to drive us apart, is rooted in a belief that it is impossible to find new clarity and meaning in our core texts without risking their alteration or abstraction. But, as God illustrated throughout the Tanakh, flexibility doesn’t mean wiping the slate clean. It entails rethinking, reworking and retooling without ever actually changing the core components. It’s about drawing out the light from a closed system so that it no longer feels closed and making foundational concepts the beginning of a vibrant conversation rather than the last word on the matter.
It is time that we relearn the ability to act and react with patience and compassion and lead lives that are not bound by rigidness, so that we not only can emulate the Divine but strengthen our faith, deepen our understanding and unlock the beautiful originality of Jewish tradition.
Meni Even-Israel is the executive director of the Steinsaltz Center, a pedagogical accelerator that develops tools and programming that encourage creative engagement with Jewish texts in order to make the world of Jewish knowledge accessible to all.
Is Inflexibility the Death of Judaism? : https://ift.tt/2LZM1u4Postingan Populer
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