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November 17, 2010

I wish settlements were the issue

Leave a Comment / Dennis Prager, Opinion /

According to every liberal editorial page in America (and virtually every editorial page abroad), according to President Obama, the United Nations and every other liberal institution, and according to Jews on the left, the major impediment to peace in the Middle East is Israel’s continuing construction of settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

You have to say at least one thing on behalf of those on the left: They are consistent. In conflicts between a decent society and an indecent society, you can almost always count on the left to blame the decent society. The U.S. was wrong in overthrowing the mass murderer Saddam Hussein. The U.S. was wrong in fighting North Vietnam’s Stalinist tyrant, Ho Chi Minh.  The U.S. was wrong in backing the Nicaraguan opposition to the Communist Sandinistas. Israel was wrong in its war against the murderous, Israel-denying, Jew-hating, Islamist totalitarian Hamas. And Israel is wrong today in its conflict with the Palestinians.

Actually, you can say one more thing: The left regularly confuses wishful thinking with reality. You see, I, too, wish that Israeli settlement construction — usually no more than apartment construction within existing Jewish communities within or right outside of Jerusalem — were the obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But not being on the left, I am cursed with not assuming that what I would like to believe is reality.

If only these apartments were the problem. What a great day it would be for all of us who yearn to see the Jewish state accepted by its Palestinian and other Arab neighbors.

But, alas, this is make-believe. As Charles Krauthammer asked in a column he wrote a year ago, “Is the peace process moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren?”

Not quite. As Krauthammer noted, “Blaming Israel and picking a fight over ‘natural growth’ may curry favor with the Muslim ‘street.’ But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, one of Israel’s most right-wing politicians, lives in a settlement. He has said that, to achieve peace he and his family would abandon their home. And for real peace, if necessary, Israel would force religious and secular settlers to abandon their homes as well.

If the conflict isn’t due to settlement buildings, then, why is there no peace between Israel and the Palestinians?

For the same reason the Jewish state was invaded by six Arab armies when it was born.

For the same reason Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, declared his intention to destroy Israel and, in partnership with Syria and Jordan, tried to do so in May-June 1967.

For the same reason that, in September 1967, the Arab nations gathered in Khartoum, Sudan, and declared their “Three No’s”: no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel.

For the same reason the Palestinians sent human bombs into Israeli schools, weddings, pizza parlors and buses to maim and murder as many Jews as possible.

For the same reason Yasser Arafat unleashed more terror on Israelis in 2001 right after he rejected the offer of a Palestinian state made by Israel’s left-wing Prime Minister Ehud Barak and by President Bill Clinton.

For the same reason Iran’s dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel’s annihilation.

For the same reason Egyptian, Palestinian, Syrian and other Arab and Muslim countries’ media regularly broadcast the most anti-Semitic propaganda since the Nazis.

And that reason is that most Palestinians and most other Muslims in the Middle East, and many Muslims elsewhere, do not believe that a Jewish state should be allowed to exist, period, in an area once dominated by Islam. That — not Israeli apartment-building — is the problem.

Postscript: I just released the latest video course in my Internet project known as Prager University: prageru.com. It is, like the other courses, five minutes long. With the aid of maps and other illustrations, it explains what I have written here: The Middle East issue revolves around Arab/Muslim rejection of a Jewish state. According to YouTube, it has been viewed by 300,000 visitors in its first two weeks. I note this, first, to inform readers of this column about the video; second, to note how hungry people are for a clear explanation of the real reason for the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians; and third, because I have been moved by how many Israelis have written to me to thank me for the video. With nearly all the world — including many Jews — blaming Israel, they had forgotten why they don’t deserve to be.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host, columnist, author and public speaker. He can be heard in Los Angeles on KRLA (AM 870) weekdays 9 a.m. to noon. His Web site is dennisprager.com.

I wish settlements were the issue Read More »

Inhaling Ari Hest

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

First, let me get one thing out of the way. Ari Hest is one amazing singer-songwriter. I saw him perform the other night on a tiny stage at the Room 5 Lounge on La Brea Avenue, and for 90 minutes or so, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. On top of his talents, he’s also really good-looking — he has the kind of face that can look good after three days of partying and no sleep.

His show is gimmick-free. He gets up on stage with his jeans and guitar, makes a few witty comments and then, with his gritty voice, sings poignant songs on the same themes we have heard for generations: love, loss, pain and conflict.

In “Just as Well,” he begins: “The pen tip is dry/’cause she never puts the cap back on/expecting that it won’t be too long/before he comes back/she feels alone/and though she knows she’s not the only one/she never thought the day would come/when she’d give in.”

This is from “Leaving Her Alone”: “Stay/I could’ve chosen to stay/at least the world wouldn’t look so gray/here, here is an empty room/filled with an empty man/who dreams of her/whether or not I want to.”

It all felt so familiar. There were hints of Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens or any of the classic troubadours of the past. How could something so familiar feel so fresh and riveting?

After his final encore, I decided I just had to meet this guy. So I asked my friend Monica, who looks a lot better than I do, to approach him and see if she could arrange an interview. Seeing some reticence on her part, I didn’t waste a minute and just pushed forward and stood near him, waiting for him to finish indulging two adoring female fans.

When he finally turned toward me, I took no chances: “Hi, I’m with The Jewish Journal and I’d like to talk to you about your new album.” (One thing I know about musicians: They’re always working on a new album.)

It worked. He introduced me to his agent, who gave me a time and place when Hest would be available. I grabbed it. Who cares if I had to squeeze him in the next morning between an MK from Shas (Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, the “Charedi rebel” making waves in Israel because of his tolerance) and picking up Yossi Klein Halevi at LAX. Because of the tight timing, I knew I couldn’t waste too much time with shmooze and small talk, my specialty. So on my way to Groundwork Coffee Co. in Hollywood, I tried to think of something deep I could ask him.

I was also feeling somewhat guilty that there would be no Jewish content at all to this column, save for Hest’s Jewish-sounding name.

So I thought of something. At his show the previous night, he introduced a song by saying, “I’m not the religious type, but this next song is about spirituality.” Bingo! Here was something deep and, possibly, even Jewish. I could work with that.

My comment to Hest, though, when we sat down for coffee, was that I didn’t really see any spirituality in the song, which was titled, “A Good Look Around.” So, what did he mean by spirituality?

The song, he told me, was from a rough time in his life, something he didn’t really want to get into. He did say that the spiritual part came when his dark moment was “interrupted” by the spectacular beauty of nature while on a hike in Colorado. This compelled him to “thank God for that beauty” and write a song about gratitude.

“Thank God”? Talk about a Jewish opening.

Well, as you might imagine, I couldn’t resist bringing up the overwhelmingly predictable question of whether he felt any connection to his Jewish roots and to the Jewish tradition. Hest is so polite and sensitive that I had to ferret out his answer: He’s not comfortable with the notion of “belonging” to any one group because it suggests he doesn’t belong to other groups, and as far as walking into a synagogue and praying, he’s not comfortable with the idea of reading “the same book that everyone else reads.”

His answers fascinated me because they seemed to embrace two extremes: universality and uniqueness. He belongs to the whole world, but his art — his “book” — belongs uniquely to him. He doesn’t mind expressing his unique difference through his art, but the idea of expressing his difference through ethnicity or religion was not an attractive proposition to him. He didn’t say this, but it was as if he felt he had to “earn” that difference.

What a thought. Earning one’s difference.

None of this stops Hest from having his “spiritual moments.” He prays often, he says, in his own way — and guess what: His mother is a cantor in a synagogue in Great Neck, N.Y., and he occasionally accompanies her.

Maybe the most Jewish thing about Ari Hest is simply when he says, “If there’s no drama and conflict in my life, I can’t write good songs.”

Oh, and before I forget, his new album, which he previewed at the show and which will come out in a few months, is full of good songs.

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine and OLAM.org. You can read his daily blog at suissablog.com and e-mail him at {encode=”suissa@olam.org” title=”suissa@olam.org”}.

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Israeli, Orthodox, and Gay – A Recap

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Secular. Reform. Conservative. Orthodox. Straight. Gay. American. Israeli.

On November 3rd, 2010, a diverse audience packed into a conference room to welcome a panel of LGBTQ-oriented Israeli leaders to ” title=”A Wider Bridge” target=”_blank”>A Wider Bridge.

The success of this first stop came in many forms.  Anyone who looked at the program alone would notice solidarity, as the event was co-sponsored by Los Angeles-based synagogues Temple Beth Am and ” title=”Beth Chayim Chadashim "BCC"” target=”_blank”>Beth Chayim Chadashim “BCC” and ” title=”(HUC-JIR)” target=”_blank”>(HUC-JIR), and ” title=”BCC – Clergy and Staff Page” target=”_blank”>whom is the first German-trained cantor since World War II and whom opened the forum with a wonderful song that encouraged all of the attendees to join in, let go and open their hearts. Thereafter we were introduced to the guest speakers.  Though each only had about ten minutes to tell their stories, we were able to learn more about the heartbeat of Israel as it pertains to the queer community, and especially how it pertains to the Orthodox LGBTQ community.  I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Bat Kol activist and member, ” title=”Jewlicious festival” target=”_blank”>Jewlicious festival, so I was most-eager to hear Zehorit Sorek’s story when I first heard about this event.  Sorek was the panelist who was representing ” title=”Janelle Eagle – Jewish Journal Oy Gay Blog Entry” target=”_blank”>Janelle Eagle commented, “It was incredibly empowering to hear them say ‘I can’t NOT be Orthodox’ and how strongly that seemed to reinforce all of us who say ‘I Can’t NOT be gay’.  They embodied so fully the parts of [themselves] that they recognize were how G-d made them”.  I mean, sure many of us can find new ways to approach our spiritualness as it coincides with Queerness; but it is to be brought to light that some people may just have to take a step back from religious practices, short-term or otherwise, because of their spiritual-minded nature and their sincerity to be respectful of the religious practice(s) that may have reared them in the first place.  Call it the opposite of “biting the hand that feeds you”.

In a time when ” title=”Snippet, ABC Nightline, Nov 8, 2010″ target=”_blank”>Snippet, ABC Nightline, Nov 8, 2010), it is critical for Forums like these to exist so that our community continues to tell and hear of our stories and learn about each other and about our ever changing face of inclusive and progressive Judaism, regardless – and especially if – life “happens” (as it continually will) and people evolve into different aspects of themselves during the process of their growth and/or learning. As Jewish Journal’s Staff Writer, David Suissa, related in his article “Man in the Middle” (Jewish Journal, October 22-28, 2010), it is even more important to have these Forums, discussions and dialogue, so that we don’t perpetuate hate, but instead foster “respect for the fellow Jew” (which Suissa retold from an article by Gary Rosenblatt; “Turning Hatred Into Love”, Jewish Week, 1993).  I can’t help but insert the fact that the value of these forums is even more important for the youth, even if many forums of this nature are not usually attended by anyone under their 20s (at least this was the case at our forum on November 3rd).  Because I missed seeing some younger faces in the crowd on Nov. 3rd, I asked JQ International executive, Asher Gellis, to help me get a clearer picture of A Wider Bridge‘s youth involvement and more specifically, within Los Angeles:

How do you feel about the tour being more geared for the east coast as far as involving our youth? It seemed like [the panelists/moderator] mentioned ” title=”A Wider Bridge – website” target=”_blank”>From their webpage, A Wider Bridge is “a new organization, working to create more opportunities for LGBTQ Jews in the U.S. and around the world, along with friends and allies, to engage and connect with Israel”; and on November 3, 2010, we did indeed, engage and connect with Israel by way of this wonderful forum.

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A Thanksgiving epiphany and the Jewish obsession with food

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

“Etes-vous des consommateurs ou bien des participants?”
(Are you consumers or participants?)
Graffiti on the walls in Paris, May 1968

Google “food” and “Jewish culture” and you will get about 2.4 million results — we are a food-obsessed people. Our holidays give full vent to that obsession, but so do many non-Jewish holidays, such as Thanksgiving.

Now, there are emerging efforts in the Jewish community to turn that obsession into social action — to establish a food justice agenda that can change how food is grown, produced, sold and consumed; to make it healthier, cleaner and more accessible to all. 

To understand the forces helping to turn the Jewish obsession with food into a Jewish call to what is popularly called food justice, it helps to delve into another culture in which food has also been an obsession —  Italian — and look at where and how that obsession has also been turned into a call for action. In Italy, the home-grown slow-food movement and its founder and grand ideologue, Carlo Petrini, made that transition to action.

That moment of transition happened in part due to an epiphany about food and justice. It took place in February 1989, a few years after Petrini founded the Slow Food movement, which up to then was more focused on the pleasure of food and the obsessions around it than an action agenda.

When Petrini arrived in Caracas, Venezuela, on that February day for a meeting of like-minded slow-food advocates, he wasn’t quite prepared for the scene he experienced when his plane touched down. Venezuela was in the midst of a social upheaval. The country had fallen into a severe economic depression, with hundreds of thousands of people out of work and going hungry.

Petrini arrived at his destination to break bread and meet with several of Venezuela’s slow-food sympathizers. But in witnessing the scenes after he arrived in the country, Petrini recognized that while he was “socializing with the well-to-do, the only ones who could afford those meals, the general population was starving.” Instead of extolling the gourmet meals associated with the slow-food concept, Petrini realized that his gathering “would have been better off discussing pobillion, the national dish of meat and beans.” “Fortunately,” Petrini recounted, “we were able to get back to Italy, but only just before they closed the airport. The whole experience exposed an immense contradiction: eco-gastronomy [the conceptual underpinnings of the emerging Slow Food movement] had acquired an elitist dimension, in some places representing no more than a haute bourgeois amusement.”

There was some irony regarding Petrini’s concerns. One of the origins of the slow-food idea could be traced to the December 1986 publication of “Gambero Rosso” (or “Red Shrimp”), a new monthly insert in the Italian left-wing daily paper, Il Manifesto.  But despite its origins, slow food, for some, came to be associated with the pleasure of eating, divorced from its social context. Petrini, himself a one-time union organizer from the Piedmont region, had come to realize that the Slow Food concept of “the right to pleasure” in eating needed to address who did or did not have the right to that pleasure. This concern about equity and class bias led him and others to include the term “Fair” to the Slow Food slogans of “Good” (more pleasure in the eating, connection to nature and local food) and “Clean” (food grown sustainably).

This shift can be extended to other core elements of an alternative approach to food that emphasizes food as healthy and as local or community-based. It involves the justice-related issues of how we produce the food and the role of the producers: the farmers, farm laborers, food processing and manufacturing workers, and all those who toil at the markets, restaurants and other places where food is produced and sold. It involves the health of our eaters and producers. And it also represents, as many food justice advocates argue, the deep connections between food as culture and food as justice.

So what happens when this Slow Food ethic merges with the Jewish obsession with food? It’s not only an epiphany that needs to happen when the holidays are before us, but a recognition that the eater, as Petrini likes to say, is also a political actor. And if there is a Jewish desire for social justice, then involvement in the myriad of food justice organizing can also become the basis for that transition from obsession to action.

Such involvement could include participating in helping transform the school food environment by facilitating farm-to-school programs or school gardens. It could involve increasing access to healthy, fresh and local food for low-income residents through programs and policy. And it could include helping initiate change even among preschoolers — whose weight gain and obesity levels have begun to skyrocket — by working with new farm-to-preschool and other healthy food initiatives at preschools and child-care centers.

The possibilities are there to reorient the Jewish food obsession into a platform for change.

Robert Gottlieb is the co-author with Anupama Joshi of “Food Justice” (MIT Press; foodjusticebook.org). He is Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College.  Gottlieb will be speaking about his new book, “Food Justice,” at a talk co-sponsored by Progressive Jewish Alliance and Beth Shir Shalom, in Santa Monica on Nov. 21 at 3 p.m. For details and to RSVP, visit pjalliance.org.

A Thanksgiving epiphany and the Jewish obsession with food Read More »

Beyond Glenn Beck

Leave a Comment / Glenn Beck, Opinion, Rob Eshman /

If only Glenn Beck were the real problem.

Beck’s rant last week on his Fox News program painting billionaire currency trader George Soros as a “puppet master” of international finance was the verbal equivalent of a Der Sturmer cartoon.

I could spend the rest of this column pointing out how foolish Beck is — and how, in a simple Google search, you can find his accusations against Soros echoed on the most virulent white supremacist and Islamist radical Web sites.

Beck, it occurred to me, is the right-wing mirror image of the left-wing anti-Zionists. While they claim to love Jews and only hate specific Israeli policies, Beck claims to love Israel and only hate specific Jews. I don’t find either distinction very comforting.

But Beck is not the real problem.

In every generation, a Beck appears — Father Charles Coughlin, Louis Farrakhan, Pat Buchanan (who looks positively rabbinic beside his anti-intellectual successor). Anti-Semites streak through American history like comets, offering a lot of heat with some regularity, but no staying power.

The deeper problem is the platform Beck speaks from, what passes for television news in America. We have gone from being a nation tuned in to Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid to becoming opposing armies cheering for Glenn Beck or their liberal counterparts.

Of course, Jon Stewart made this observation the centerpiece of his Rally to Restore Sanity. Defending his position earlier this week on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Stewart explained: “Both sides have their way of shutting down debate, and the news networks have allowed these two sides to become the fight in the country. … My problem is, it’s become tribal. [The news network’s] job is to highlight the conflict between two sides, where I don’t think that’s the conflict in the country.”

A damning opinion piece in The Washington Post by Ted Koppel circulated on the Web this week, reminding us of what we lose when we gain Glenn Beck.

“Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it,” Koppel wrote. “They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.”

The networks, Koppel pointed out, were willing accomplices in their own demise. Once network execs began to run news divisions solely as profit centers rather than as public trusts and began systematically cutting back on extravagances like foreign bureaus and seasoned reporters in order to boost the bottom line, it was a race to the bottom.

“Broadcast news has been outflanked and will soon be overtaken by scores of other media options,” Koppel concluded. “The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we’re now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.”

The implications of all this go way beyond the occasional rise of a Beck, who is simply the blowhard du jour. As Koppel correctly pointed out, the appetite for news won’t diminish, nor will the need — just the quality. The networks and cable channels are in this for the money, and they believe there’s more dollars in pumping out Britney, Beck and Bush-bashing than in a 12-minute, deeply reported backgrounder on the complicated housing battles in Jerusalem, which, you know, could only erupt into Armageddon.

They may be right. But if good journalism doesn’t step in to fill that void, bad, agenda-driven reporting will. Lately I’ve been entranced by Press TV, a full-scale broadcast and Web news site that offers Associated Press-style breaking news, focused mostly on the Middle East. The articles are fairly standard, even reliable, except when it comes to Israel. “Barak says U.S. offered Israel more bribes,” reads one headline. “Israel, no peace partner: Damascus” reads another. It turns out the government of Iran created Press TV, and it is impressive in the way it hides an overt, anti-Israel agenda under the cover of responsible journalism. According to The Israel Project, 67 percent of Americans and 90 percent of Arabs get their Mideast information from broadcast TV. For $25 million a year, Iran has created a free satellite and Web news channel available worldwide, more professional than all the Jewish TV channels ever created, more understandable than the Israeli ones (the English is better) and certainly more effective than all the pro-Israel Web sites out there.

And they say Jews control the media.

What can we do? Support great broadcast journalism — duh. To my mind, the simple but by no means inexpensive solution is to create a broadcast and Web video version of “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” These National Public Radio (NPR) programs have 27 million weekly listeners, 36 foreign bureaus and are more or less in the center of the political spectrum. Their correspondents are already established brands, and they seem to have a sustainable not-for-profit model. NPR is not perfect — witness the Juan Williams firing debacle — but as television, Web, print and radio converge, NPR is well positioned to produce America’s best, non-crazy, mass-market TV news.

It won’t shut Beck up, but it will balance him out.

Beyond Glenn Beck Read More »