fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

February 27, 2014

This week in power: Kiev Jews and Israel prize

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

A roundup of the most talked about political and global stories in the Jewish world this week:

Ukraine heats up
“Thanks to extermination and emigration, the Jews of Ukraine, who numbered about 2.7 million at the beginning of the 20th Century, are now down to perhaps 250,000 and falling. But their history is playing an oversized role in the drama of revolution unfolding in Kiev, as both sides exploit them and their memory to gain an upper hand in public opinion,” ” target=”_blank”>added JTA.

So what can they do? “Follow in the footsteps of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews who have already come home to Israel,” ” target=”_blank”>wrote Rabbi Abraham Cooper in the Jewish Journal.

Lichtenstein wins award
Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein will receive the Israel Prize in Jewish religious literature, it was ” target=”_blank”>wrote Dr. Tzvee Zahavy on his blog.

This week in power: Kiev Jews and Israel prize Read More »

The conflict over whether Judaism and science conflict

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Food, Recipes /

From time to time, like when an itch just needs to be scratched or a roiling cauldron must overflow, essays are written and debates ensue over the question of whether there is a conflict between Judaism and science. The direct answer to the question depends to a considerable degree on how one defines Judaism, and to a lesser degree on how one defines science. But discussions about the topic, even from Jewish perspectives, often miss that basic point.

Recently Moment Magazine “>according to George Washington University professor Jeremy Brown, received a mixed response at first from Jews. Those who opposed it did so because the model was contrary to a literal reading of certain Biblical verses, including one in Joshua about the sun standing still. By the eighteenth century, Jews were increasingly accepting the heliocentric model because they were increasingly rejecting a literal reading of the entire biblical text.

Reactions to Charles Darwin’s publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species evolved similarly.  By positing generally that living organisms shared a common ancestry, and specifically that humankind descended from a line of ape-like ancestors that also gave birth to apes, Darwin flatly contradicted a literal readings in Genesis 2:7 and 2:21-22 which talk about the formation of the first man from the dust of the earth and the first human female being fashioned from one of the man’s rib.  As Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz note in Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, among Darwin’s more vocal opponents was Reform leader Rabbi Abraham Geiger. Relatively soon, though, the main principles of evolution were accepted by most, if not all, Jews.

One could conclude, as does Professor Brown, that “Judaism and modern science are quite capable of co-existing. It just sometimes takes a little time.” But, as the various responses to Moment’s question reveal, that co-existence is tenuous and uneven.

For several of the rabbis, there seems to be an easy acceptance of science, even seeing Judaism as “pro-science” and science as an “ally” of Judaism. Significantly, underlying those responses was a general sense that the Torah need not be read literally, that that there were “mythic truths” and “scientific truths,” and that one could and should “separate myth from fact.” 

Neither of the rabbis assigned to the Modern Orthodox and Orthodox categories talked in terms of non-literal readings of Torah or myths. Both, however, did reference the great twelfth century rabbi-philosopher Moshe ben Maimon (“Maimonides” or “Rambam”) in their responses, and both acknowledged that Maimonides was prepared to (re-)interpret Torah, as one said, “even drastically,” to accommodate what science established.

One of the two seemed hesitant, though. While initially rejecting the notion that Judaism and science conflict, and appearing to accept Maimonides’ approach, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach set the scientific bar impossibly high. To accommodate a scientific theory, he reads Maimonides as requiring that the theory be “proven true by some infallible means.”  Rabbi Boteach does not indicate what might constitute such “infallible means,” however, and others in the Orthodox camp think that proof beyond a reasonable doubt — a tough, but achievable standard — would be sufficient. (See, e.g., Angel, Maimonides, Spinoza and Us (Jewish Lights 2009).) That’s good, because science is not and does not claim to be infallible. Indeed, a defining characteristic of the scientific method is continual testing and probing of a proposed hypothesis in order to confirm or disprove it.

What is the reason for Rabbi Boteach’s hesitancy here? Nobody knows for sure the answer to “WWMD?” or “What Would Maimonides Do?” in response to current developments in science. (But see, “>Jerry Coyne to plotz here. (See, e.g., “>Humans share only about 7% of their DNA with bacteria, but about 21% with roundworms, 36% with fruit flies and 79% with zebra fish. By the time that we reach African apes like gorillas and chimpanzees, the similarities in the genomes, by one count, reach “>here.) While there are problems with this approach, Rabbi Wanger advances the discussion by arguing that Judaism and science often have different roles.

Gould’s vision of separate dominions is discussed at greater length by Orthodox Rabbi Avraham Edelstein in an essay published independently of the collection in Moment. In “>here.) Consider just six ranging from the cosmic to the more personal, and then we’ll rest.

(1)  Prior to the origin of our universe in an event called the Big Bang, what, if anything, existed? Quantum chaos? Another universe? Something? Nothing?

(2)  What, if anything, caused the Big Bang? A random event? A purposeful intervention?

(3)  What kind of universe do we live in? The elements with which we are familiar from hydrogen through carbon and on to lead and uranium make up only 5% of the known universe. Stuff called Dark Matter and Dark Energy make up the rest. But what are they exactly? Where did they come from?

(4)  How did life on Earth begin? How did inorganic chemicals combine into self-replicating molecules?

(5)  What, if anything, really distinguishes humankind from all other animals? The human genome is, as we have seen, exceptionally close to that of apes. As University of Chicago anthropology professor (6)  Are there other intelligent life forms in the universe at the present time? There may be untold billions of planets in the known universe, but some are only recently formed and others are associated with dying stars and, in any case, few are in the habitable zone of their host star. We know that intelligent life on Earth took over four billion years to emerge after our planet was formed. How likely is it that there is a planet out there now, old enough, but not too old, and in the right zone to have produced intelligent life?

Judaism and science may have much to share with each other on these and other questions. And the discussion needs to continue. But that discussion, on the Jewish side, is too important to be left just to the rabbis, many of whom are not well versed in the sciences or, worse, know just enough to say something foolish or dangerous. Whoever wants to engage, and also wants to be taken seriously, needs to be careful to define the terms used, make distinctions between value and truth statements and get the science as right as possible. 

 

        A version of this essay was posted previously at www.judaismandscience.com

The conflict over whether Judaism and science conflict Read More »

Orthodox groups mum on Arizona religious exemption bill

Leave a Comment / Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer yesterday vetoed a bill that would have permitted businesses to refuse service to gays if doing so would violate their religious convictions.

The Anti-Defamation League commended her for the veto, and the Jewish Community Relations Council in southern Arizona advocated against the bill. From the JCRC release earlier this week:

While we fully support the constitutionally protected rights of every citizen to adhere to religious beliefs and convictions as they see fit, as Jews, this kind of legislation raises deep and unsettling resonances to our history of persecution. The implicit permission granted by legislation like this, to allow citizens to discriminate against others based on their own religious convictions and beliefs, has historically been the decisive moment which leads to horrifying and destructive outcomes for our People and others.

Absent from the debate over the law, however, were the voices of  leading national Orthodox Jewish groups, which is interesting because they have opposed same-sex marriage and warned that religious freedom faces threats stemming from gay marriage’s advance. More broadly, Orthodox groups have advocated against legislation that would impinge on beliefs they have nothing to do with (the smoking of peyote) and even those that they theologically oppose (denial of contraception coverage).

So what gave in Arizona? Agudah declined to comment to JTA. Contacted by JTA, Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union’s Advocacy Center, said that he had not closely reviewed the Arizona legislation.

But speaking broadly, he noted Orthodox advocacy in the past for the federal Workplace Religious Freedom Act, legislation initiated, incidentally, by John Kerry when he was a Massachusetts senator. That legislation seeks to protect individuals on both sides of a business equation: The client seeking a service and employees who may have a religious objection to providing it.

The act has never passed Congress, although legislation with similar provisions has been adopted in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The federal legislation does not mandate accommodation of a worker’s religious beliefs but requires a balancing test. If, say, an employer needed to staff a business on Christmas Day, he would need to show that he canvassed employees to find out whether there were any who were ready to work on the holiday. If the employer could not identify such an employee, it could require those who objected to work the day.

As an example, Diament mentioned one of the cases cited by Arizona lawmakers who backed the recent bill: A New Mexico photo studio that was sued for not shooting a gay wedding.

“What you would have had was not a situation in which the New Mexico photography company would have gotten to say ‘We won’t provide photographs for your wedding,’ but if there was an individual photographer, he might be able to bow out and a different photographer with the same company would have taken the pictures,” Diament said.

He noted that such accommodations were written into Oregon’s law allowing physician-assisted suicide. “If you are a pharmacist and you object to physician assisted suicide, the pharmacist does not have to dispense those drugs, they pass it off to another pharmacist,” he said.

There were no objections to that proviso, he said, because it was more “politically correct” to oppose euthanasia than same-sex marriage.

“The balancing should be that the people who are entitled to lawful services, whether they are a same-sex couple or a woman seeking contraceptives from a pharmacy, they should receive the services they are legally entitled to, but the person on the other side of the counter who has a conscientious objection should have their concerns accommodated as well,” he said.

“If people are more interested in a practical solution that is respectful of conscience concerns on both sides, a more commendable approach is to have individuals on both sides be accommodated as much as possible.”

Orthodox groups mum on Arizona religious exemption bill Read More »

Palestinian killed in West Bank as report decries excessive force

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

The Israeli military rejected an Amnesty International report accusing its soldiers of using excessive force against Palestinians.

On Thursday, the day the report was released, Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian man suspected of planning to carry out a terror attack in the West Bank.

Amnesty International in its 87-page report concluded that Israeli forces over the past three years have used excessive force against Palestinians in the West Bank, leading to the deaths of dozens of Palestinian citizens.

The report, titled “Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank,” examined what it said were human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank by soldiers acting with “near total impunity.” It called for an independent evaluation of the deaths of 45 Palestinian civilians killed in the West Bank in the past three years.

Many of the killings occurred during Palestinian protests.

“The report presents a body of evidence that shows a harrowing pattern of unlawful killings and unwarranted injuries of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the West Bank,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International. “The frequency and persistence of arbitrary and abusive force against peaceful protesters in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and police officers – and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators – suggests that it is carried out as a matter of policy.”

In rejecting the findings of the report, the Israel Defense Forces said there has been a rise in Palestinian violence in the West Bank in recent years.

“Amnesty International wholly ignores the substantial increase in Palestinian violence initiated over the past year, and shows a complete lack of understanding as to operational challenges the IDF is posed with,” the IDF Spokesman’s office said in a statement.

“The IDF operates in Judea and Samaria in order to contain Palestinian initiated violence. Where feasible the IDF contains this life threatening violence using riot dispersal means, including – loud sirens, water cannons, sound grenades and tear gas. Only once these tools have been exhausted and human life and safety remains under threat, is the use of precision munition authorized,” the statement said.

In the West Bank, the wanted Palestinian, 22, was killed after barricading himself in his home in a town near Ramallah, according to reports. His home was surrounded by Israeli police and soldiers.

Reuters reported that the man was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and had helped plan and carry out several attacks in the West Bank.

“Early today a terrorist resisted arrest in Bir Zeit, forcing IDF soldiers to open fire. Forces found the suspect dead in his home w/ a rifle,” the IDF said in a tweet on Thursday.

Palestinian killed in West Bank as report decries excessive force Read More »

Two Recommendations on Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations – One to Read and one to Watch/Hear

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Israel /

Much is being written and said about Secretary Kerry's diplomatic initiative with Israel and the Palestinians. Here are two of my strong recommendations that help to clarify the complexities involved beyond the headlines.

[1] To Read – “It’s not about Kerry. It’s about us” (Times of Israel) by Rabbi Donniel Hartman

Rabbi Donniel Hartman is a modern Orthodox Rabbi, educator and writer, and serves as President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is among the most intelligent and thoughtful of our people’s contemporary leaders.

In a wake-up call to Israelis, Rabbi Donniel Hartman says, “I have skin in the game… It’s not about Kerry; it’s about us: who we are and who we want to be. We need to reclaim this conversation and reposition it at the center of our national discourse, motivating and guiding our political policies.” http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/its-not-about-kerry-its-about-us/

[2] To Watch/Hear – Jeremy Ben Ami debates with Rabbi Daniel Gordis at Temple Sinai, Atlanta – an in-depth conversation from two articulate leaders on the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in light of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America’s engagement in negotiations.

Jeremy Ben Ami is the President and Founder of J Street, a pro-Israel pro-peace political and education organization in Washington, D.C., that has grown in 5 years to become the largest Jewish PAC in America. J Street is credited with having changed the American Jewish conversation about the meaning of pro-Israel support in the nation’s capital and has not only growing numbers of Jews and non-Jews as members, but increasing influence among members of Congress and in the Administration.

Rabbi Daniel Gordis, PhD, is Senior Vice President and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem, is a regular columnist for the Jerusalem Post, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, in print and on-line.

Though Jeremy and Danny share some common goals, they differ fundamentally about whether there is, indeed, a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They discuss the appropriate role of the American Jewish community vis a vis the American and Israeli governments, how to best engage our college students, how to interact or not interact with the BDS movement, what they consider the existential threats facing the state of Israel, and their understanding of the Israeli and Palestinian logjams on the way to an eventual peace agreement.

Their conversation is intelligent, respectful and civil.  You can skip the first 25 minutes and begin with Jeremy’s initial statement followed by Danny’s, and then listen to the back and forth for the remainder of the 90-minute conversation.

http://www.livestream.com/templesinai/video?clipId=pla_89e743f2-cef2-47ab-8b6b-5b22b0eea84f

Two Recommendations on Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations – One to Read and one to Watch/Hear Read More »

Israeli NGOs bringing their expertise to meet Africa’s needs

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

When they first arrived in northern Kenya in 2011 at the height of a massive drought, the Israeli refugee aid organization IsraAid planned to offer food and other core necessities to the 100,000 residents of the Kakuma refugee camp.

When the drought subsided a year later, IsraAid’s directors saw that this sort of assistance was becoming less crucial. Much larger organizations were providing food, clothing and medicine.

But rather than leave, IsraAid shifted its focus from short-term aid to long-term support through something Israelis do best: post-trauma counseling. Decades of terror attacks have equipped Israeli experts to serve the camp’s residents, many of whom are survivors of hunger, torture or the violent death of relatives. IsraAid has trained 18 camp residents to be social workers; most of them are now helping other camp residents cope with their pain.

“Part of the health of a person is mental health,” said Naama Gorodischer, IsraAid’s Kenya country director. “We can do what we know, and what we do in all our projects is use Israeli knowledge and specialization to perform capacity building.”

IsraAid is one of several Israeli NGOs working to improve the lives of Kenyans by importing Israeli technology and expertise. Their work is enabled by a history of friendly ties between Israel and Kenya and the relative stability of Kenya’s government and economy.

Nairobi, a booming city where new malls and roads intersect with destitute slums and gated communities, has emerged as a center of humanitarian work in East Africa. International organizations from the United Nations to Oxfam have located their regional headquarters there. Even after the terrorist attack on the city’s upscale Westgate mall in September, international aid workers continue to operate in Kenya with little fear.

“Nairobi is an international hub in East Africa for development,” said Gilad Milo, the founder of Israel for Africa, a Kenya-based nonprofit that teaches young people to farm using Israeli technology. “It’s like an entry point, spreading to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi. It’s a good melting pot for ideas.”

Kenya has been a friendly destination for Israelis since it gained independence in 1963. Israeli businesses helped build the country’s infrastructure and boost its agriculture sector, and the two countries coordinate on security issues. Exchange between the two countries has been robust, with Israeli military personnel advising Kenya in the wake of the Westgate attack and Kenyans routinely traveling to Israel for professional training programs. Israeli experts come to Kenya to lead seminars on everything from agricultural technology to Krav Maga, the martial art developed in Israel.

“There’s a strong sense of affinity with Israel as a country struggling for liberation,” Israel’s ambassador to Kenya, Gil Haskel, told JTA. “Kenyans understood that they could benefit from relations with Israel.”

Such close relations have led to a booming industry in Israeli humanitarian assistance. Israel for Africa provides impoverished young Kenyans with farming kits that include the equipment necessary to raise a small plot of crops, from Israeli-made greenhouses to Israeli-designed drip irrigation systems.

Members of one of the youth associations with which Israel for Africa partners, a dance group called Ramsa Africa, begin work at 6 a.m. on rows of tomatoes, peppers, spinach and kale, watering the crops with drip-irrigation hoses and checking each plant for signs of disease. After lunch they have dance rehearsals.

“It doesn’t make any sense that we invented drip irrigation [only] for our little strip of land,” Milo said as he rode a 4-by-4 along the bumpy roads of a Nairobi slum. “There’s got to be a bigger picture.”

A similar mission drives Brit Olam, an Israeli nonprofit running an agriculture development program in the semi-arid northwest region of Turkana. Droughts have made reliance on grazing cattle impossible, so Brit Olam imported Israeli technology for desert farming to give local residents economic independence.

“This is a change in mentality for people who never had to wake up early and go every day to the field to do a routine,” Brit Olam project developer Millet Biberman said. “But until you have water and food, you can’t do anything else.”

The Israeli nonprofit Save A Child’s Heart, which was founded in 2008 and is active in 44 countries, brings underprivileged Kenyan children in need of heart surgery to Israel. Its Kenya branch went on hiatus from 2009 until this year, when founding director Rina Attias returned to the the helm. According to Attias, the waiting list has 250 children.

Attias, who survived the Westgate attack by hiding in a closet, said that experiencing terror in Kenya only made her more dedicated to saving lives there.

“Every place has terror,” she said. “This can happen anywhere. If I was supposed to die, I would have died, but my time apparently has not come yet. So I chose to do more for this community.”

Israeli NGOs bringing their expertise to meet Africa’s needs Read More »

Lies, silence surround flouting of Poland’s kosher slaughter ban

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Mobile, News, Worldwide /

After a Polish court tossed out a government regulation permitting kosher slaughter in 2012, Poland’s $500 million ritual slaughter industry was expected to be brought to its knees.

Evidence shows, however, that not only was kosher slaughter still being performed in Poland as recently as this month, but also that kosher meat producers had help in skirting the law from a high-ranking official in the office of Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich.

JTA has obtained two letters signed by Michael Alper, a top aide to Schudrich, informing Polish officials that several hundred cattle would be slaughtered after being stunned with electric current — a requirement of Polish law that is inconsistent with kosher slaughter, which mandates that animals be killed without prior stunning.

Meat from the slaughterhouse where Alper said stunning would be used was subsequently certified  as kosher by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and several European certifiers before being exported abroad. The European certifiers declined JTA’s request for comment, but several knowledgeable insiders confirmed that the animals were not in fact stunned and that the meat was indeed kosher.

“If there were a kosher concern regarding one of our labels, we would have acted,” Maor Ziv, a spokesman for the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, told JTA.

Under a 2002 amendment to the 1997 law on animal welfare, Poland required that all animals be stunned prior to slaughter. The law appeared to conflict with another measure passed that year guaranteeing religious minorities the right to perform ritual slaughter.

In 2004, the government issued a regulation that aimed to resolve the apparent conflict by exempting Jews and Muslims from the animal welfare law. But in 2012, a constitutional court scrapped the 2004 exemption, effectively banning what had been a $500 million ritual slaughter industry.

Several businesses registered heavy losses and laid off employees as they scrambled to convert their operations or reconfigure themselves as middlemen, purchasing kosher meat produced outside Poland and reselling it for export. But the Alper letters show that some businesses continued to produce kosher meat in Poland and had assistance from inside Schudrich’s office in concealing the operation from authorities.

Schudrich has denied prior knowledge of Alper’s activities and suspended his aide. Alper declined to comment.

In July, Alper sent a letter to a district veterinary inspector requesting permission to slaughter 250 heads of cattle after stunning them with electric current, a formality meant to inform authorities of slaughter activities. A second letter in November requested permission to slaughter an additional 310 cows. The letter is signed “rabbinate coordinator for kosher products in Poland.”

“I am writing to request to carry out the slaughter of 310 heads of cattle on Nov. 24, 2013, with use of electric current to render the animals unconscious,” Alper wrote in the November letter.

The animals mentioned in Alper’s letters were killed at the Biernacki slaughterhouse in Jarocin, 150 miles west of Warsaw. The slaughterhouse, which was one of Poland’s main facilities for kosher meat, included living quarters for the rabbis who performed the actual slaughter cuts.

Several sources who spoke to JTA on condition of anonymity said kosher slaughter was taking place at Biernacki as recently as this month. A spokesman for the slaughterhouse declined to respond to JTA’s inquiries, but emphasized that the facility adheres to Polish and European law.

Only cows are slaughtered at Biernacki, while some labels carrying kosher certification from prominent rabbis are for kosher chicken produced in Poland last year. The labels do not carry the names of the slaughterhouses where the birds were slaughtered, but a well-placed source named two poultry meat producers, Brynek and Grzegorz Tuz, neither of which responded to repeated requests for comment.

Schudrich would not confirm whether commercial kosher slaughter continued in Poland after January 2013, but he called Alper’s letter “a very serious mistake.”

Schudrich also disputed the idea that an actual ban on ritual slaughter is in place, noting that a constitutional court has been reviewing a petition by Jews and Muslims arguing that the two 1997 laws are in conflict.

“The court’s ruling in 2012 is not a ban,” Schudrich said. “It is a case of conflicting legislation that is being reviewed by the Constitutional Tribunal.”

But some fear such nuances will be lost on the general public when Poland’s Channel 1 airs the results of its own investigation next month into the kosher slaughter in Poland. The report will harm efforts to resolve the matter and and become grist for the mill of anti-Semites, according to Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak of Beit Polska, a national umbrella organization for Polish Reform and Progressive congregations.

“Clearly, there has not been a cessation of kosher slaughter,” Beliak told JTA. “Manipulation of the issue of kosher-halal slaughter for political purposes by Polish politicians or Jewish community officials or by various business interests reduces the respect that the practice of keeping kosher deserves. Lying about it erodes the community’s credibility and is quite simply playing with fire.”

Beliak said he fears the report will create the impression that Jews don’t respect Polish law, though he added that kosher slaughter could not have continued without Polish officials looking the other way.

“Ritual slaughter is too big a business for Poland to simply walk away from it,” he said.

Renata Kania, a press officer for Poland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said her office had no immediate comment.

Lies, silence surround flouting of Poland’s kosher slaughter ban Read More »

Notes from San Francisco on the “Acceptable” Discourse on Israel

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel, Worldwide /

A swarm of articles, following several incidents, has once again raised the question to which there is really no good answer: “what constitutes an acceptable discourse on Israel?”, as the Forward’s Hody Nemes puts it. Judith Butler was disinvited to a talk she was supposed to give about Kafka because of her kooky views on Israel. Bad decision. John Judis was invited, disinvited, and re-invited to speak about his misinformed book. Bad decision to invite him, bad decision to disinvite, and the re-invitation is understandable if not totally necessary. (Ron Radosh wrote an apt review of Judis’ book – “not a rant but not exactly history”, as Radosh put it – for the Jewish Review of Books. Before wasting your time on hearing Judis or reading the book  (I read about 50 pages of it) make sure you read the Radosh review and you might end up doing something better than attending an event on an unworthy book.)

“The recent cases” which have re-sparked the debate over speakers about Israel, writes Uriel Heilman, “underscore just how much shifting ground there is on the Israel debate – and how much Jewish institutions are looking over their shoulders”. As I visit the Bay area, speaking to Jews about Israel, I can't help but wonder: what is it that has changed? And why has it changed the “conversation” on Israel? I have several possible answers, a mix of five-cent-pop-psychology and cultural theories (there are probably many more and maybe some that are better):

1. It’s all about capitalism and the growing pressure on Jewish institutions to create the type of controversial events that can draw a crowd. I really think this partially explains the new wave of books questioning Israel, speakers denigrating Israel, and “thought provoking” events on Israel – it’s just a commercial niche, the kind of thing that will get you an hour on the radio and an article or two in the paper. “My usual policy on reviews is that any publicity is good publicity as long as the reviewers spell my name correctly”, Judis wrote as he responded to critics. The more he is attacked, the more he can respond, the more his book, worthy or not, is becoming a topic of conversation (case in point: this article). For the hosting institution it is also a way to get some of the attention that all Jewish institutions badly need. So in essence, we can come up with an almost Marxist type of explanation for the recent brouhahas concerning speakers on Israel. On the one hand, market forces making controversial events alluring to institutions. On the other hand, the money of concerned philanthropists shaping the agenda of the institutions – in most cases in the opposite direction. And there you have it – a clash of financial interests.

2. Routine is boring, controversy is exciting. The American Jewish community has routinely defended Israel for too long, being its faithful husband, or wife, and now it is in need of some romance on the side, flirting with new ideas– no matter how flawed and harmful they are to the future.

3. Israel is becoming too successful for its own good. Really. A couple of days ago, writing about Mark Oppenheimer’s NYT piece on devout Jews who aren't too crazy about Israel, I annoyed some readers (thank you for your emails, most of them polite and inquisitive) by stating my view on the current centrality of Israel for the Jewish world. There is no serious Jewish game to be played, I argued, that doesn’t involve Israel. It is where a majority of Jews will soon reside, where Jewish life thrives more than anywhere else, where the Jewish experience is the most intensive. Surely, Israel isn’t the only place where Jewish life is meaningful – and the many Israelis who have read my book on American Jewry would attest to my strong belief that American Jews have many strengths and advantages over Israelis. Yet it is Israel that is a unifying cause for Jews, it is Israel that is expected to attend to Jews in need, it is Israel where young Jews from all over the world are sent to strengthen their Jewish identity. Israel is Judaism’s big project of the day, and its overwhelming dominance in the Jewish sphere is understandably annoying to some people – every dominant force is somewhat annoying. With the decline or disappearance of most other features of Jewish life against which people can meaningfully rebel – there’s really not much of a point in rebelling against Jewish practice, which has long ago become an every-man-for-himself kind of world – sticking needles into the Israeli balloon is to be expected.

4. Adding to the previous point, let's also remember that a permanent feature of Jewish life is the search for contrarianism. Jews like to think about themselves, and about their culture, as a counter-culture, especially so when they reside as a minority in a place like the United States. So it was easy for them to come around to supporting Zionism when Zionism was young and an emerging force for change, and it now feels natural to many of them to look for the next edgy trend. In other words: kicking Israel makes them feel young, and it makes them feel Jewish.

5. Last but not least – Israel’s own contribution to the trendy dissent against it. Yes, Israel does contribute to it, even though I believe this isn’t the overriding factor governing this trend (this is, I suppose, the point of contention where harsher critics of Israel would want to differ by attributing most of the blame to Israel). It can do better by being more attuned to Jewish sensitivities where possible (can we post such an article without mentioning Women of the Wall at least once?). It can do better by setting a better example for manners and civil debate. It can do better by learning from Jews around the world, and not just trying to teach them. And it can possibly do better – I can also do better – by tolerantly humoring those actively dissenting Jews rather than getting too angry with them.

Notes from San Francisco on the “Acceptable” Discourse on Israel Read More »

Second English Language Social Order Magazine

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Welcome to the Second Edition of Israel Social TV's English Language Social Order Magazine. In this edition, we cover:

1. The controversy surrounding Parliamentary President of the European Union Martin Schulz's visit to Israel and assess the accuracy of his claim that water is unequally distributed to Israelis and Palestinians.

2. Normalization in Ramallah? – Get a view from the street in Ramallah about the receptiveness to peace negotiations, with the chance to hear from those in favor and those against.

3. Authorized Entry Only – A few days ago marked the 20th anniversary of the Baruch Goldstein Massacre. This report provides an in depth look at the situation on the ground in Hebron.

4. A School for Migrant Children Only – The south Tel Aviv Bialik-Rogozin School, the subject of the 2011 Acadamy Award winning film “Strangers No More”, is composed mostly of refugee and migrant worker children. Israel Social TV reports that the Education Ministry is fast tracking transfer requests for Israeli parents to move their children from the school.

5. Military Service as a Springboard for Social Mobility – Does military service provide a stepping stone for social mobility in Israeli society?