Raising a Palestinian flag is not the best welcome sign

It’s a mark of how argumentative Jews can be that we can even argue the merits of raising a Jew-hating flag in a Jewish summer camp.

The side that thinks it’s a good idea appeals to our sense of welcoming strangers and making them feel at home. The importance of being kind to the stranger is a major Jewish value.

So, when Palestinian kids showed up at a Jewish summer camp in Washington state a few weeks ago, under an initiative from the Israeli NGO Kids4Peace, they were greeted with their own flag. The leaders at Camp Solomon Schechter felt it would be a warm gesture of hospitality to greet them with something familiar.

The side that thinks it’s a bad idea complained vehemently, and the camp eventually took down the flag and apologized.

I’m in the camp that thought it was a bad idea. I’m not against being welcoming to strangers, I’m just against using a Jew-hating symbol to provide that welcome.

Few things are more divisive in the Middle East than power symbols. Palestinian society is littered with them— the ubiquitous maps of Palestine that eliminate Israel, the posters of martyrs who murder Jews, the cartoons that demonize Jews, the schoolbooks that teach Jew-hatred, the public squares that honor terrorists, and so on. In all of those places, the Palestinian flag is right there.

When Palestinian preachers deny any Jewish connection to Jerusalem, the Palestinian flag is there. When Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says our Jewish “filthy feet” desecrate the holiest site in Judaism, the Palestinian flag is next to him. When Palestinian leaders inaugurate a stadium named after a terrorist who murdered Jews, hundreds of Palestinian flags fly proudly.

So yes, the flag that was raised at the Jewish summer camp is associated with Jew-hatred and violence against Jews.

But there’s a more relevant and simpler point to be made: Why do we even need a flag to make people feel welcome?

If I ever visited a Palestinian summer camp, I wouldn’t expect to be greeted by an Israeli flag that I know would rub them the wrong way. Their hospitality would impress me, not their forced use of a divisive symbol.

If you want to make Palestinian kids feel at home, you can have Jewish kids greet them by singing a song in Arabic, or serve them food from their tradition, or have a Sephardic cantor sing Jewish liturgies that sound just like the melodies in a mosque.

The point is, you make people feel welcome not with symbols but with real stuff– with great food, great music, great bonding activities and plenty of love. If I ever visited a Palestinian summer camp, I wouldn’t expect to be greeted by an Israeli flag that I know would rub them the wrong way. Their hospitality would impress me, not their forced use of a divisive symbol.

Did the Jewish camp leaders show daring when they first raised that Palestinian flag? Was it courageous of them to challenge the status quo? Of course. In the Jewish tradition, challenging the status quo has a long and noble pedigree. The rebels are the heroes.

But being courageous doesn’t mean you’re right. Elevating a symbol of division and hate, even with the best of intentions, does not mitigate that hate. There is no need to patronize Palestinians and pretend that we can honor a flag that has been so drenched with Jewish blood and Jew-hatred. To honor such an icon so we can feel courageous and hospitable is to invert morality for the sake of self.

More importantly, it’s not necessary. There are plenty of decent ways a Jewish camp can welcome Palestinian kids without having to resort to a radioactive symbol.

And if you ask me, that’s a fact, not an argument.

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David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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I’ve seen this woman before

Gina Nahai

The boys had dominion over the yard, using it for soccer games at every recess and lunch break and after school during pickup time, so the girls were confined to the periphery of the asphalt field and to the hallways and stairs.

We sat in groups outside and talked while we watched the games, or we walked around the borders of the yard, our shoulders grazing the wall or the fence. The headmaster, a princess of the Qajar dynasty, strode around in stilettos and pencil skirts, impeccably made up and pleasantly fragrant and forever brandishing a bullwhip. She was one of the more beautiful women of her era, independently wealthy and French educated, indignant of religion, superstition and a great many social conventions. While she kept most of us on a tight leash, she seemed to favor three of the older girls — two seniors, one junior — who stood out because of their good looks, their audacity with the teachers, their defiance of societal protocol.

Tall, lean, long legs and dark, undulating hair that fell, unrestrained, down their backs. That terrifying confidence of young, beautiful women who do not know, or believe, that they will, one day, be neither beautiful nor young. They mixed mostly with one another, wore their grey uniform skirts perilously short, pranced in Doc Martins purchased on monthslong summer trips to the United States. We knew, though we had never seen evidence of it, that they smoked cigarettes, met boys alone in trendy cafes on Pahlavi Avenue, and had the means or the temerity not to bother with what was deemed appropriate for the rest of the girls their age.

We knew, because that’s what our headmaster modeled, that they had a thousand khastegars — suitors — each, all of them descended from or belonging to royalty; that they, like our headmaster, would be too strong to be someone’s wife, too interested in changing the world to sit at home and raise children. We knew, because the alternative was inconceivable, that they would look dashing, wear their hair long and loose, and defy authority till the end of time.

The end of time arrived a few weeks ago, in the produce aisle of Glatt Mart in Pico-Robertson, on a busy, noisy, teeming-with-shoppers-anxious-to-get-home-in-time Friday morning. I don’t keep kosher and don’t observe Shabbat. I shop at this market because the customers and staff tend to be, on the whole, much less combative than at other Persian markets near me. They also tend to be mostly Orthodox, of various nationalities and usually surrounded by a few small children each.

So I didn’t think twice that day about the woman a few feet away, modestly dressed, in a short, copper-colored wig, who spoke English with her children in what sounded like a Hebrew accent. Probably French, I thought, or Russian. A little besieged, like all mothers of young children, by the demands of domestic life. Truly observant, since there was no trace of vanity in her appearance or mannerisms. I moved on until she called out.

“Gina!” she almost yelled. “You don’t remember me? Shame on you.”

You know where this story is going.

I looked and looked and looked at her. I tried to take a wild guess. The woman was handsome, genial, exceedingly likable, charmingly humble. Her children were cereal box gorgeous. I would have remembered her if we’d ever met.

To say that I was stunned, totally stupefied when she told me her name is an understatement. For a very long minute, I just glared at the two of them — the girl in the Tehran schoolyard and the woman in this Los Angeles store — and tried to find a similarity. Finally, stupidly, I heard myself say, “What happened?”

Asinine, I know. And possibly insulting, though it wasn’t meant that way. Thank God she realized this. She shrugged and let out a delightful laugh.

“You were the most …” What was the word? Glamorous? Bold? Not observant?

We didn’t have yearbooks in Iran, but if we had, she and her two friends would have been voted “least likely to be domesticated.”

She laughed again.

“Remember that?” she said.

What’s “happy”? Relative to what? Or, as the old folks wisely said in Iran, usually in relation to duty, obligation and responsibility, “Happiness has nothing to do with it.”

Her children were pulling at her skirt and sleeve. She tried to explain to them I was someone she had once gone to school with, but they wouldn’t have it. They wanted kosher cereal and kosher sushi.

“So …” I couldn’t let go. “What did happen?”

She paused for a moment.

“I changed,” she said.

No kidding. But that wasn’t enough of an explanation. She could see I was waiting.

“Things changed.”

Still not enough.

I honestly can’t believe I had the chutzpah to ask this next question.

“Are you happy?”

Now, she looked stumped.

I know. I know. What’s “happy”? Relative to what? Or, as the old folks wisely said in Iran, usually in relation to duty, obligation and responsibility, “Happiness has nothing to do with it.”

Or, as our teachers reminded us almost daily, “Who says you have to be happy, anyway?”

Still, it makes you wonder — when the warriors lay down their arms, the rebels bow. 

“My children are my whole world now,” she said.

I could see this.

And what of it — becoming Orthodox — anyway? So what if that boldness, that sense of invincibility my friends and I probably projected onto that girl was replaced by this woman’s tamer, perhaps more rewarding connection to motherhood and religion? What if that wide-open, endless road I had imagined ahead of that girl — what if it had led here?

“I realize this is emet,” she said, using the Hebrew word for truth. Which explained everything, and nothing.

Are we here to change the world, or to make a safe and joyful nest within it?

Does the gained wisdom of age make us realize what’s truly significant, or does it claw away at our ambition and strength?

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GINA NAHAI’s most recent novel is “The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.”

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Letters to the Editor: Worshipping in Budapest, Trump and Israel and the Mill Building

Worshipping in Budapest

Did Danielle Berrin really see worshipers at the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest  on Shabbat morning “wrapped in tallitot and tefillin” (“Escaping the Shadow,” July 21)? Tefillin are not worn on Shabbat.

Ralph Kostant, Valley Village

Editor’s note: The article mistakenly referred to the wearing of tefillin.

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Thank you for your cover story on Hungary. It is a balanced and fairly well-written story. However, I strongly disagree with the words “Rising anti-Semitism” on the front page.

I was born in Hungary. Both of my parents were Holocaust survivors (Auschwitz and Dachau) and I came to the United States as a Hungarian refugee fleeing Communism and religious persecution.

As the story states, unfortunately, anti-Semitism is a problem in Hungary, as it is all over Europe. But there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that there is any rising anti-Semitism in Hungary. As a matter of fact, as the statistics show, anti-Semitic incidents are lower in Hungary than almost anywhere in Europe.

I met with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and I am positive that he does not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. Yes, he is right of center and a nationalist, something like President Donald Trump (think: “Hungary first”). In his spacious office in the parliament building, Orbán pointed out that it is safer to walk while wearing a kippah in Budapest than in most other European cities. He further pointed out, and correctly so, that his immigration policy, whether or not you approve of it, clearly benefits the Hungarian-Jewish community. It is a fact that additional Muslims who have been taught in their native countries to hate Jews would increase anti-Semitism if allowed into Hungary.

I have been visiting Hungary on a regular basis since 1956. I actually see that Hungarian Jewry is flourishing. As stated by Hungarian Chief Rabbi Robert Frolich, Jewish life is strong. The synagogues, schools and restaurants are attended and supported regularly. There are Jewish newspapers, theaters and cultural events. The 2019 European Maccabi Games will be held in Budapest at a soccer stadium commonly known as the “Jewish stadium,” and the Jewish street fair celebrating its l0th anniversary recently concluded, attracting more than 10,000 Jews for a weekend of cultural and educational programs.

Andrew Friedman via email

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Double Standard in Judging Trump

Why not use the double standard to our advantage? (“The Double Standard,” July 28) Let’s give President Barack Obama an ovation for a 14 percent rise in all pensions, 401(k)s, IRAs and stock accounts. Forget the Donald Trump effect. Many Jews on every political spectrum have 14 percent more funds to donate to the Jewish Journal and other pro-tolerance groups, scholarships, etc. It’s a win-win for a continued Jewish golden age in the United States and the Jewish state with all this extra income.

Oh, by the way, I’m one of the 35 percent of Jews in the U.S. who are conservative, but I can agree to disagree. I wish most of our landsmen will remain tolerant even with No. 45, Donald Trump, who lacks a filter.

Dick Bernstein, Los Angeles

Shalom, Rob. Thank you for your column, which was a painful but much-needed reality check for me.

Peter H. Pflaum via email

Thank you, Rob, for this column. I totally agree and must add: Me thinks that the real “double standard” is Black vs. white. Sadly.

Aviyah Farkas, Los Angeles

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Free Speech on Campuses

Ben Shapiro’s arguments of a lack of free speech on college campuses today are compelling but, at the same time, just a little too tidy for this reader (“Truly Free Speech Absent at Colleges,” July 28). Would he be as strong an advocate for his position if the head of the Ku Klux Klan and thousands of his followers marched on a campus cloaked in hoods in order to “speak”?  Or how about if a group of Nazi leaders and their followers came to address the student body regarding their point of view?

Free speech, as with most everything else, does not exist in a vacuum, and although there certainly are excesses on the left regarding this issue, it sure would be refreshing to hear from the right that when potential speech has a decent probability of leading to widespread injury and violence due to its content, that maybe that speech should be considered just talk and not rise to the level of protected speech.

Elliot Semmelman, Huntington Beach

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Wisdom vs. Compassion

With regard to Dennis Prager’s recent “contest” between wisdom and compassion, it seems that if I were to agree with him, we would both be wrong (“Wisdom vs. Compassion,” July 21).
Recently, we were reminded of the tragedy of the MS St. Louis. Certainly, compassion could have and should have saved the lives of those poor souls. Was it wisdom that sent the vast majority of them to their deaths?

As one who worked in the community for decades, I have witnessed well-placed compassion based on wisdom produce quite wonderful results. However, as he often does, Prager uses the terms and their meanings to consign wisdom to the political right and compassion to those on the left, that being his launching pad for those he disagrees with, even to the point that wisdom has replaced religion. To simply say he is wrong is not enough, as using these terms to frame left and right politics is perverse in its inaccuracy.

Irving Cramer, Venice

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History of Mill Building

Thank you for the story on Capitol Milling Co. (“Will Capitol Milling Become Grist for Downtown Redevelopment?” July 28). My great-grandfather was Jacob Loew, my grandfather was Stephen Newmark Loew  and my father was Stephen Newmark Loew Jr. He died in 1996. I am sorry that the property did not become a historic landmark but there were many factors that prevented this from happening. Any degree of acknowledgement of the mill’s history would be appreciated not only by me and my family but by the Los Angeles Jewish community. 

Susan Loew Greenberg, Los Angeles

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Food, money and Jews

The issue of all issues in the non-profit world must surely be how to attract donors to your cause. Every day, thousands of good causes vie for the attention of those with big hearts and the capacity to give.

There are countless ways of getting funding—foundation grants, federations, private donors, personal connections, revenue-driving events, fundraising galas, crowdfunding, and, of course, a rich uncle. It’s not an exact science. Raising money in the Jewish world can be one big wonderful mess.

Into this mess have jumped Gila and Adam Milstein with a dose of Israeliness.

Adam is co-founder and National Chairman of the fast-growing Israeli-American Council (IAC); Gila is President of Stand By Me, an organization that supports Israeli-American cancer patients and their families in Los Angeles. They are co-founders of the Milstein Family Foundation, which supports a wide range of pro-Israel organizations.

The Milsteins live and breathe the non-profit world, so they should know what’s missing. A year ago, they saw something missing, so they started The Donor Forum, a private, flexible and efficient model to connect pro-Israel donors with pro-Israel causes.

About once a month, a group of donors get together over lunch and get pitched by select causes. It’s great if you have a short attention span—the pitches last less than 15 minutes. There’s no direct solicitation at the lunches. The idea is to make the connections between the parties for any future follow-ups.

Forum members commit to giving a minimum of $10,000 annually to the organizations featured. A steering committee helps select the causes and recommend new members to the Forum.

Why do I say this funding model is like a dose of Israeliness? It’s not just because my friend Adam and I frequently use that term when talking about what the IAC has brought to the Jewish community. Adam didn’t specifically refer to “Israeliness” when he brought up the Forum, but he didn’t have to. It clearly applies.

One reason is the speed and simplicity—it’s tchik tchak, you’re in and out. There’s no year-long process of cultivating donors and building relationships so you can eventually make an ask. Here, the connection gets made instantly. It’s all about the quality of the idea and the people making the pitch, and you see it all in one shot, face to face.

The other sign of Israeliness is the kind of causes they pick— feisty with significant potential. Some of the groups that already have pitched include JLens, Reservists on Duty, The Lawfare Project, Heroes to Heroes and My Truth.

At their most recent luncheon a few weeks ago in Westwood, I saw two pitches— from the Haym Salomon Center (HSC), a news and public policy group, and Students Supporting Israel (SSI), a pro-Israel grassroots movement on college campuses and high schools.

Here, the connection gets made instantly. It’s all about the quality of the idea and the people making the pitch, and you see it all in one shot, face to face.

HSC is like guerilla media. It creates all kinds of original content—news stories, commentary, analysis, opinion— and disseminates it throughout the mainstream media so that it will benefit Israel and the Jewish community. At the luncheon, the presenter showed his hand right away—we must transform the culture, he said, if we want to influence the views on Israel, and the best and quickest way to do that is through the mainstream media.

He showed examples of how media stories can be biased against Israel while being completely accurate. He also showed how a headline slanted against Israel can easily be fixed. Then he rattled off the obligatory metrics— over 1200 articles and media mentions published online and in print, bylines in prestigious publications, and so on— and where new money would go to help them grow.

After 10 minutes or so, donors had the key information they needed.

SSI was definitely feisty. The two presenters who run the organization were all about “boots on the ground.” They showed how they have mobilized students on over 40 campuses to open SSI chapters and how they advocate for Israel using creative techniques built on unabashed Zionist pride. Of the examples they showed, I think my favorite was a huge blowup doll of Pinnochio right next to an Israel Apartheid Wall.

They also rattled off metrics, which include victories against BDS initiatives as well as the passing of pro-Israel resolutions. They showed their budget and how much money they were looking for to accelerate their growth. Every funding item was broken down.

After the lunch, donors got to ask questions and schmooze with the presenters. I think everyone was grateful that the whole process took so little time and was so focused.

The only things missing, perhaps, were the Turkish coffee and a little yelling.

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David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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Being a Jew is a bargain

If you want to be Jewish, money is no object. In fact, it’s a bargain.

It used to be pricey, say, 25 years ago when the postwar heyday of the suburban synagogue coincided with the busing-fueled exodus into private Jewish schools, a family could spend tens of thousands on temple dues, day school tuition and summer camps. Add in the cost of a keeping-up-with-the-Schwartzes bar mitzvah, maybe a trip to Israel, and the surcharge on kosher food and, yes, Jewish life was a financial slog.

But the Lord heard of the cry of Her People, and things changed.

Actually, the credit goes elsewhere: to Jewish institutions themselves, which found ways to make it easier for Jews to afford practicing Judaism; to Jewish groups and individuals who pioneered more accessible avenues into Jewish life; and to the internet, which lowered costs and increased competition, as it has done for everything else.

The result is that if you are an American Jew who wants to participate in Jewish communal life, you have options, lots of them. They may not be free or even cheap, but it is no longer one-high-price-fits-all.

The subject came up after the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed on July 30 titled, “It’s too expensive to be Jewish.” The piece by Leslee Komaiko generated a lot of clicks, controversy and comments. It popped up on numerous Facebook feeds. Alas, it was misleading. 

Based on the author’s personal experience, it failed to take into account what a simple Google search could tell you: If you want to participate meaningfully in Jewish communal life, there now are many low-cost, and in some cases no-cost, ways to do so.

Let’s start with Birthright, the program that offers every Jewish young adult the opportunity to go on a 10-day trip to Israel — for about $250. 

But wait, as the infomercial would say, there’s more. Jewish newspapers online? Free. (And so is the Jewish Journal in print.) High-quality online Jewish education from YIVO? $99. Classic and contemporary Jewish texts online? Free. The internet will continue to open up opportunities for less expensive Jewish learning, digital meetups, even virtual synagogue services.

As for real-world synagogues, there are numerous options ranging from free to low-cost to high-end. 

There are newer congregations with progressive cost models like IKAR, Open Temple, Valley Torah Outreach and Nashuva, and there is Chabad. But also many mainstream synagogues have developed membership models that work for lower income brackets. The Jewish Journal publishes a directory of free High Holy Days services, a list that grows every year. Beyond Los Angeles, any city with a good-size Jewish community has similar programs going on. 

Want summer camp? Scholarships are widely available. Each year, for instance, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles holds a Tour de Summer Camp bicycle event (this year it’s on Oct. 29) that helps send over 1,500 kids a year to Jewish summer camp.

A lot of these programs developed in the aftermath of the continuity crisis, when surveys showed a declining Jewish population and participation in Jewish life. Organized Jewry reacted in the way it knows best — full-fledged panic — but out of that came an array of low- or no-cost initiatives to lure people into Jewish life. Still more initiatives came into being after the recession ripped a hole in the cost model of Jewish institutional life — a hole that may never be fully repaired.

The L.A. Times piece focused on the writer’s attempt to arrange for her 12-year-old son’s bar mitzvah lessons. (To the commenters who shamed her for “waiting so long”: Nice going; nothing like derision to draw people into the fold.) Lessons, she said, can cost $80 to $140 per hour.

I don’t think $80 per hour to learn and train for a meaningful rite of passage is outrageous, but it’s possible to spend even less. Some families I know get together and meet on Friday afternoon in one another’s homes, splitting the cost of a freelance rabbi or Jewish educator to teach their children. At nightfall, everyone celebrates Shabbat together. There’s also the “Craigslist” route, with many low-cost tutors online.

Most of the complaints I hear about the high cost of Jewish life revolve around day school. I know, because I used to complain about it, too. Annual tuition at a Jewish day school can top $40,000 for high school. It’s expensive — but so is non-Jewish private school.   

Even so, 50 percent of the students in Jewish day schools in Los Angeles are on some form of financial aid. There are scholarships to make it as affordable as possible — but Jewish day school always will be the top-shelf liquor of Jewish involvement. For Orthodox parents who have larger families and see day school as a necessity, this is a special burden. But for the vast majority of those seeking to engage in Jewish life, it will always be a voluntary sacrifice of some sort.

And that’s the larger point. Things we value — cars, sports camps, pasta at Felix — cost money. At some point, Jewish involvement does require a choice — you’ll need to pay something, which means foregoing something else. But in exchange, you get a sense of meaning, community, comfort, tradition, belonging, intellectual stimulation and good jokes.

Like I said, it’s a bargain.

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ROB ESHMAN is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email
him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism
and @RobEshman.

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Faux apologies don’t make amends for big lies from the Davis Imam and Islamic Center

Readers of Jewish newspapers and also conservative media outlets—though not the mainstream national press with the belated exception of the Washington Post— have learned something about deplorable story of anti-Semitism by Muslim preachers in the university towns of UC Davis and UC Riverside.

In the pages of the Jewish Journal, Wiesenthal Center Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein have urged the Department of Homeland Security to act against the perpetrators of genocidal libels. At Islamic Center in Davis this July, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered two sermons, one of which (translated into English by the Middle East Research Institute MEMRI) reads: “Oh, Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews. . . . Oh, Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. . . . Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds.”

For a week, we witnessed stonewalling, doubling down, slander of MEMRI as “an extremist driven organization,” hemming and hawing, apologetics, and obfuscation from Imam Shahin and the Davis Islamic Center about whether one Arabic word should be translated as “destroy” rather than “annihilate,” and another Arabic phrase as “defilement of the Jews” rather than “filth of the Jews.”

Syrian-born Sheikh Mahmoud Harmoush of the Riverside Islamic Center remains defiant and unrepentant for propagating the libels that world Jewry is plotting to take over Mecca and Medina and that “a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims.” But after a week came an apology of sorts from Imam Shahin (who still hasn’t been fired) and the Davis’ Islamic Center.” It’s very sad to hear that people are taking your words and they are twisting it around, but I know there are people who are out there just waiting for that to make the news. . . . I do understand how my words were hurtful, and I am sorry. . . . I understand that speech like this can encourage others to do hateful and violent acts, for this, I truly apologize,” stated the 31 year-old Egyptian-born, partly American-educated Ammar Shahin who added that “as a young religious leader, this has humbled me.”

Ammar Shahin was born in Cairo, and educated at theAl-Forqan Institute. He came to the U.S.  where he received a B.S. in Computer Engineering before returning to Egypt for advanced study at  Al-Azhar University. Then he began his permanent career at mosques near American college campuses.

Should we take Imam Shahin’s apology and that from the Davis Islamic Center as “case closed” and politely move on? Credulous souls among pro-BDS Jewish activists at UC Davis may accept at face value Imam Shahin apology and decry that “the edited publication of Imam Shahin’s sermon was done with islamophobic intent.” I disagree.

From The Sayings of the Fathers as well as the sayings of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., we are told that “justice delayed is justice denied.” I would say the same of apologies, reluctantly and ungraciously given. We can learn a lot more by unpacking this faux apology emanating from Davis’ influential Muslim voices.

Another venerable Jewish parable—about how hard it is retract malicious gossip—relates how a rabbi tells the repentant gossiper to take a pillow, cut it open, disperse the feathers from a rooftop into the wind, and then try to collect every feather in order to repair the damage. This parable (popularized in a Hollywood film) may have originated as a cautionary tale about neighborhood gossip, but lying—especially theologically-freighted, politically-fraught publically-disseminated lying—is much more pernicious and prolific than feathers of malice spread from a rooftop.

Here is what Imam Shahin claimed, and the Davis’ Islamic Center embraced before disavowing, in polar opposition to tolerance and truth:

• Imam Shahin and the Davis Center ignored the murder of two Jewish policemen on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount that ignited the current crisis.
• Imam Shahin not only called for the annihilation or destruction of Israelis allegedly responsible the Temple Mount crisis, but invoked a genocidal hadith or “Saying of the Prophet” which reads in part: “The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah’ . . . The Prophet Muhammad says that their time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews.” This same hadith was quoted as gospel in Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda distributed throughout the Muslim world during World War II by Hitler ally, Jerusalem Grand Mufti (and Yasser Arafat cousin) Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. It also forms a central plank of Hamas’ Founding 1988 Charter.
• The Davis’ Islamic Center initially issued a highly tendentious statement offering a bowdlerized translation of Imam Shahin’s inflammatory statements. It also misleadingly explaining away Muhammed’s hadith as if it related, not to Jews, but to the final apocalyptic battle of Jesus (Isa in Arabic) against the forces of the Antichrist (Dajjal in Arabic). Conveniently elided over in this apologetic version is the truth that, in anti-Semitic Muslim apocalyptic theology (both Sunni and Shia) the Antichrist-Dajjal leads an army of 70,000 Jews!

In addition to falsely accusing MEMRI of mistranslating Imam Shahin’s sermons, the Davis’ Islamic Center faulted MEMRI for failing to “contextualize” them. Context does indeed matter, but it is precisely the alarming context that the Islamic Center left out. Imam Shahin’s genocidal sermons—far from being isolated aberrations or impromptu emotional outbursts—are entirely consistent with incendiary incitement by Muslim preachers across North America:

• With a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and the head of the Fatwa (Islamic opinion) Unit of IslamOnline.net (English website) and the Shari’ah (Islamic Law) consultant of the Shari’ah department of Onislam.net., Dr. Wael Shihab, of the mosque Masjid Toronto declared on YouTube in June, 2016: “O Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare not one of them.”
• In Montreal in 2016, Jordanian Sheikh Muhammad bin Musa Al-Nasr was served with an arrest warrant for willfully promoting the murder of Jews. The Canadian authorities deemed Al-Nasr’s threats “imminent” enough to warrant immediate action.
• As far back as the 1990s, Fawaz Damra, former Imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland (in 2007 he was deported to the West Bank) posed as a promoter of interfaith dialogue even after evidence that he participated in fundraising events for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a videotape surfacing of the Imam telling Muslims that they should aim “a rifle at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation, and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews.”

These North American rhetorical hate bombs parallel the murderous prayer delivered in 2007 by Acting Speaker of the Palestinian Authority’s Legislative Council Ahmed Bahr, in a packed Palestinian Authority mosque and broadcast on an official PA-controlled television station. Bahr called Jews “the cancerous lump . . .in the heart of the Arab nation,” and predicted that “America is on its way to disappear. America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan. America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated, in Lebanon and Palestine.” Adopting the open-palmed gesture of Islamic prayer, as did his audience, the PA official intoned: “Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies…. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.” The popular prayer, from Riverside and Davis to Montreal and Toronto to Palestine, that Allah “count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one” derives from a popular du’a or supplementary Muslim prayer of supplication.

At American university campuses like UC Riverside and UC Davis, there is a troubling nexus between what adjacent though unaffiliated Islamic Centers preach and teach and the often intimidating anti-Israel activism of Muslim students.

This past March, the UC Davis Middle East/South Asian Studies and Jewish Studies programs co-hosted a student panel titled “Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: The Anatomy of Twin Hatreds” in the Student Community Center Multi-Purpose Room. What an admirable event. Unfortunately, just a few months later Imam Shahin delivered his anti-Semitic diatribes next door to the University campus.

We should all join the Los Angeles Times in condemning the woman, caught on CCTV, draping strips of bacon were draped over the Davis’ mosque’s door handles and smashing six windows. But much less attention has been paid to the recent experience of Rabbi Shmary Cohen and his wife, Mendy Cohen, of Chabad in Sacramento who have been subjected to “cars driving by screaming ‘eff you!’.” Rabbi Cohen laments: “This is what we suffered throughout the years. We’re not going to let Davis become like the neighborhoods in Paris where police can’t go.”

In 2014 at UC Davis, a student who expressed concern about the anti-Semitic banners displayed at a pro-BDS rally was assaulted by a protestor who screamed in his face, “You are racist and you should die in hell.” In 2015, a resolution was sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which seeks to blackball Jewish students who visit Israel from participating in campus politics, called for the University of California at Davis to divest from “corporations that aid in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in Palestinian territories, violating both international humanitarian law and international human rights.” The resolution was passed by the Student Senate by a vote of 8-2-2. Protesting that the divestment resolution and how it was ramrodded through was “toxic” and “damaged lives,” Jewish students and their allies staged a walkout. Muslim students shouted “Allahu Akbar” at Jewish students holding Israeli flags and leaving the meeting. The walkout received less attention than UC Davis student senate, Azka Fayyaz, exulting with a Facebook that “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis.” At UC Davis, swastikas were found painted on the walls of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house.

In 2016, The University of California Board of Regents unanimously approved a report condemning anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism, making UC the first public university system to condemn anti-Semitism since the emergence of the boycott, divest and sanction movement on college campuses. UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi and other administrators have condemned BDS resolutions as well as denounced Imam Shahin’s hate-filled sermons. Yet not enough progress has been made on UC campuses and elsewhere curbing what was becoming a tsunami of campus anti-Semitism.

Genocidal incitement by Muslim preachers at Islamic Centers adjoining UC Riverside and UC Davis are not only dangerous in themselves, but feed a toxic campus nexus promoting anti-Semitism usually in the guise of “anti-Zionism.”

Pro forma apologies are not enough. Responsible Muslim leaders, on and off campus, must do more to repudiate those who seek to incite religious war between two of the world’s great faiths. I vote with Congressman Brad Sherman who is demanding that Imam Shahin’s employment be terminated, and that UC Davis bar him and any representative of the Islamic Center of Davis from its campus.

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Historian Harold Brackman is a Consultant for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance.

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Pirkei Avot, the GOP and health care

Moses received Torah at Sinai. He transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said: raise up many disciples, be deliberate in judgment, and build a fence around the Torah.

— Mishnah Avot 1:1

It is procedure that marks much of the difference between rule by law and rule by fiat.

— Wisconsin v. Constantineau (1971)

Process is boring, but it also is crucial, as the Supreme Court observed. And it is particularly crucial for Jews as we consider the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare.

This is a live issue. Despite July’s failure of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plans, Republicans have made clear that they will continue to pursue repeal. And both his and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s abuse of Congressional process show that they are adept at rule by fiat.

To be clear: I believe the repeal plans are a moral abomination. But apart from substance, let’s look at the procedure. The GOP’s Obamacare repeal process mocks democracy. Health care approaches one-fifth of the entire U.S. economy, yet the process was conducted in near total secrecy. On the House side, the bill was written behind closed doors without any input from the Democrats. Ryan rushed it to the floor before the Congressional Budget Office could even determine what its effects would be. If enacted, the American Health Care Act would strip 23 million people of coverage, but the process was designed precisely so that Congressmembers would be kept in the dark.

McConnell’s process was even more secretive; the Senate bill was cooked up in his office with no input from patients, health experts, advocacy groups — or even most of the Republican caucus. The March of Dimes paid for McConnell’s polio treatment as a child; he refused even to meet with the organization. His last-ditch attempt — the so-called “skinny” repeal — was introduced five hours before it was supposed to be voted on, with no hearings or public input whatsoever. GOP senators have announced yet another plan to rush through a health package with the same high-handed secrecy.

All legislation resembles sausage-making, but this was fetid even for a slaughterhouse. Julie Rovner, who has covered this issue since the 1980s wrote, “The extreme secrecy is a situation without precedent. … I have been here for 30 years and never seen anything like this.” Journalist Ezra Klein noted that “Republicans are making life-or-death policy for millions of Americans with less care, consideration and planning than most households put into purchasing a dishwasher.” John Podhoretz, no liberal, tweeted, “I have never seen such unanimity in the horror everyone on all sides is expressing toward the Senate process on this health care bill.” (Spare me references to the creation of Obamacare, which took 14 months, included literally hundreds of GOP amendments, dozens of hearings and extended bipartisan negotiations.)

But why is it a Jewish issue? Let’s consider the epigraph from Pirkei Avot. This Mishnah is perhaps Judaism’s most foundational text, and it links the chain of rabbinic authority to three central moral injunctions, particularly “be deliberate in judgment.”

Most classical commentaries, from Rambam to the Chasidic masters, do little with this passage. They gloss it as simply “do not move too fast” or “be careful.” This might be useful, but it really misses the point. Telling us to “be deliberate in judgment” requires us to consider the deeper question of how we do that: What conditions will make us deliberate? Unsurprisingly, much of Avot concerns the proper behavior of public decision-makers: It warns how the wielders of state power betray those who trust them (Avot 2:3).

Being serious about deliberation in judgment means we must establish institutional practices that make us deliberate. Both character and structure matter. This reflects virtually all Jewish spirituality: Our tradition creates practices to bring the soul closer to God. Commanding us to remember God is not good enough. We do it by practices such as uttering blessings, wrapping tefillin, observing Shabbat, etc.

In other words, Avot 1:1 is the “Jewish Due Process” clause. It holds that if anyone makes crucial decisions about people, they must follow proper procedure. Only then can they truly be “deliberate in judgment.” Like long-settled judicial principles of “due process,” “deliberation in judgment” requires that those affected by state power have a right to be heard, to contest those whose interests are adverse, to have transparent and open government, to have decisions made on the basis of evidence and rational judgment rather than arbitrary caprice. If leaders make decisions without hearing from those affected and subjecting their own thoughts to scrutiny, they are not really deliberating at all. Such “process” is not judgment. At best, it is no more than a series of irritable mental gestures; at worst, tyranny with window dressing.

When Congress holds literally tens of millions of lives in its hands, to refuse to listen to those who will suffer mocks the Torah’s requirement of deliberation in judgment. McConnell and Ryan do not care. Do we?

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JONATHAN ZASLOFF is professor of law at UCLA, where he teaches, among other things, property, international law and Pirkei Avot. He also is a rabbinical ordination candidate at the Alliance for Jewish Renewal.

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