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Jewish Journal

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June 27, 2014

Uncomfortable truths from the Gush Etzion kidnappings

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Opinion /

On Thursday Israel released the photographs of two Hamas operatives, Amer Abu Aysha and Marwan Kawasme, identified by the IDF as the ones who grabbed three of our Jewish children two weeks ago. All we have to know about the values of these two men can be summarized by the comment of Abu Aysha’s mother – that if her son did take part in the kidnapping, she was proud of him and hoped he would continue to evade capture.

[UPDATE: Israel finds bodies of three missing teens]

In truth we already knew the faces of the kidnappers: First and foremost – Khaled Mashaal, Hamas political chief, who weeks after calling for such action, openly blessed the abductors of the three “soldier settlers,” as he referred to the teens, Gilad Shaar, 16, Naftali Frenkel, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19.

But there are others who deserve to have faces on Wanted Posters: All of the political, media, educational and religious functionaries of the Palestinian Authority who daily inculcate into the minds of children as young as three, that their Jewish neighbors are aliens; that there is no truth to Jewish claims to a 3,500 year-link to The Holy Land; that Israeli soldier “occupiers” should be viewed and treated like Polish patriots viewed and treated occupying Nazi soldiers during World War II.

So what is Israel to do?

During these horrific two weeks, Israeli forces have pulled out all stops to identify the kidnappers and to bring the boys home. But they also had another goal: To signal to Mashaal and other professional thugs masquerading as “political leaders” that there will be no more Gilad Shalit scenarios. Quite the contrary. Since the abductions, over 50 of those released for Gilad are back in Israeli jails and Hamas’ West Bank infrastructure has been significantly degraded. Mashaal and company know that Israel has other means at its disposal.

And what about us?

Jews around the world, whatever their political affiliations should continue to back Israel’s right to do whatever it takes to find our boys. That includes rejecting the cacophony of lectures in morality from self-appointed secular priests led by NGOs like Human Rights Watch who even after the kidnappings have the chutzpah to warn Israel about it can and cannot do to defend herself from such barbarism.

We should take note of who stands in solidarity with us in this time of distress and who couldn’t care less. As Israelis stand in prayerful vigil for their loved ones, European countries offer little by way of solidarity with the families but continue to rail over those “illegal” settlements. While many of our Christian neighbors have joined us in prayer, Presbyterians at the PCUSA convention voted overwhelming last week to “review” the “Two State Solution”, positioning themselves as frontline actors in the next international drama calling for the end of the Jewish State altogether.

Meanwhile, as Jewish groups from ZOA to J Street rage at one another over the future of the Jewish State, we should all reflect on this point:

These kids all live in Gush Etzion. The world long ago forgot and we must always remember that Jews legally bought the plots of land that today constitute Gush Etzion before there ever was a State of Israel. Those pioneers from Europe and a few from America displaced boulders and a few stray goats — not Arabs — when they built their communities. The slaughter of those Jewish pioneers after they had surrendered to the Arabs who overran Etzion during the War of Independence raised as much of a fuss in Europe back in 1948 as the kidnapping of three kids from the Gush has generated today.

Israelis living today in the Gush are no more “occupiers” that Israelis living in North Tel Aviv.

It is not their presence in Gush Etzion that is a barrier to peace, but the praise of Abu Aysha’s mother for her son’s brutal abductions.

There remains one thing all Jews can do—continue to show solidarity with our missing kids. In the last 10 days, I chanted Tehillim in Johannesburg, Capetown, Durban, Chicago, and Los Angeles. May the spiritual solidarity that binds us together as one family, unleash a miracle from the Merciful One and may it send a powerful message of Jewish solidarity to a largely uncaring world.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Uncomfortable truths from the Gush Etzion kidnappings Read More »

Shabbat and Shabbox, Persian Style

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About one month ago, over twenty Iranian-American Jews gathered together for Shabbat dinner.

I’ll admit that there’s nothing extraordinary about this statement. Iranian Jews in America are richly traditional and families enjoy Shabbat dinner together almost every Friday.

This group, however, was different.

They were not family members, they chose to be together for dinner, and they were all students and young professionals. No mothers were there to cook, no fathers were there to recite the blessings over wine and bread. There was no need for the TV to be on, and guests weren’t moved to looked thru their phones out of boredom or force of habit.

And there was one non-Iranian Jew in attendance.

The twenty or so guests were stellar participants of The Maher Fellowship, the first-of-its-kind young leadership training program for Iranian-American Jews in Los Angeles, founded by 30 YEARS AFTER, a unique civic action organization–unique because it too was founded and is run by a group of passionate young Persian Jews.

These fantastic individuals were selected for the fellowship because they represented the best and brightest of our community, and over the past six months, were trained in everything from history to public speaking to Israel advocacy. They had all become colleagues and close friends.

Towards the end of the fellowship, we decided to bring everyone together for a different kind of session–a Shabbat dinner that aimed to show young Persian Jewish leaders a different side of Shabbat–a Shabbat that they could OWN–because much like the fellowship itself, the dinner was designed FOR young Persian Jews, BY young Persian Jews.

The lone non-Iranian, or more accurately, the honorary Iranian, was a gracious and engaging guest by the name of Adam Pollack, the Western Regional Director of NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation.

NEXT’s concept is simple, but powerful. If you are a Birthright alumnus (or former staffer), they will help you host a Shabbat meal (dinner or lunch). They send you a Shabbox that includes a Kiddush cup, a challah cover, candles, Shabbat blessings, and much more.  You can host one meal each month, and they will help cover the costs of food.

Why should Persian Jews in America care about a service that actually helps you host a Shabbat meal?

Because Persian Jews are some of this country’s consummate and constant Shabbat hosts.

On any given Friday night, you can usually find a young Iranian-American Jew in Los Angeles seated around a family Shabbat dinner table, connecting with the two most important staples of our culture–loved ones and food.

In many cases, the rich aroma of delicacies (as well as a not-so-gentle motherly reminder) brings young Persian Jews to Shabbat dinner, where we find that that everything–from the guests to the food–has somehow magically appeared before us at the table.

Were we involved in the planning? Probably not.

Do we know the stories behind the recipes that may reveal something we never knew about a grandmother or a far-away city or a safely-guarded tradition? Not very likely.

Can we see the extraordinary thread of 2,700 years of Iranian-Jewish history in the words, prayers, and tastes that are before us? Not always.

The Shabbat meal of NEXT was made for Persian Jews in America.

Or if I may reiterate, it was made for young Persian Jews, not their mothers.

What if once a month, WE hosted a Shabbat dinner or lunch at our parents’ homes and invited our own friends–whether Iranian or not-Iranian, to join us around the table?

What if once a month, we asked our mothers to tell us something that we didn’t know about the way that they cook their Shabbat delicacies–Who taught them? What is that spice? What does this dish remind them of?

And what if once a month, we made a conscious decision to invite a few friends–a few new voices to add to the chorus of brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, grandparents, and others? And what if these friends were not Persian, but would love the chance to partake in a Persian Shabbat meal?

At this particular dinner back in May, the guests were also the hosts, in that they owned the dinner experience. With no parents or elders in sight, something amazing happened: THEY dominated the conversation, with discussions ranging from the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the Persian Jewish community to a beautifully articulate, if not heated, debate about fate, spirituality, and even the meaning of life. As far as we knew, the Lakers lost, law school was grueling, and traffic was bad–those topics lasted all but five minutes, because surrounded by only one another–these young guests had bigger things to discuss.

After dinner, we all sat around and Adam facilitated an eye-opening discussion. Young, intelligent, successful Iranian-American Jews were asked why Shabbat itself was even important, about what made Shabbat Shabbat for them, about their relationship with Shabbat and how it was different from their parents’ relationship with this day of the week. It was a beautiful thing.

I’m not a fan of the “there’s no reason why” rationale to arguing my case, but in this case, there really is no reason why thousands of young Persian Jews in America that have been on Birthright do NOT host a few Shabbat meals themselves throughout the year–either at their parents’ home, their home, or even out somewhere.

You feel a little giddy when you find that free Shabbox package in your mailbox, and remove the casing from the silver wine cup and realize that it, along with the Shabbat you’re about to host, is yours.

It’s not just about religion, and it’s not even about food, hard as that is for me to admit.

It’s about connection and ownership.

Did you visit Israel with Birthright? Then you can host a meal and NEXT will help you.

Are you eligible for Birthright but still haven’t taken advantage of this amazing gift? Then register, enjoy the trip, and come back and host your friends at home.

Embrace a Shabbat meal as a way of connecting with the people that make up your life.

Own a Shabbat meal as a way of connecting with yourself.

I challenge you to host just two Shabbat meals this year, registered easily with NEXT. You don’t even have to cook anything, as long as somebody eats something.

Tell NEXT that it will be held at your parents’ house.

Tell your parents that you want to invite your non-Persian friends.

And tell yourself that you should have started doing this a long time ago.

Something happens when the meal is long over and you miss the experience already.  You realize that you would have hosted those awesome people for an Shabbat awesome meal even if you had never been reimbursed for it.

And then you begin thinking about what comes next.

Tabby Davoodi is the Executive Director of 30 YEARS AFTER, a non-profit 501(c)(3) civic action organization that promotes the participation and leadership of Iranian-American Jews in American civic, political, and Jewish life. Applications for the 2015 class of The Maher Fellowship will be open in November 2014. For more information, please visit www.30yearsafter.org

Shabbat and Shabbox, Persian Style Read More »

eBay rejects auction of Nazi chief’s car

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Auction website eBay has refused to list a World War II-era Mercedes Benz once owned Hermann Goering, a Nazi leader who commanded the German air force, citing a policy prohibiting the sale of offensive items.

The 1941 Mercedes Benz 540 K Cabriolet B, custom built by Daimler-Benz for Adolf Hitler's close confidant, is currently in pieces in a high-end south Florida automobile shop, where owners said they plan to spend about $750,000 to restore it to working condition.

“We've located all the replacement parts and we can make parts,” said High Velocity Classics co-owner David Rathbun.

eBay, however, asked the owners to take down the auction after learning it would go live in early July.

“eBay has policies in place that prohibit the sale of offensive materials and content, which includes listings that promote or glorify hatred, violence or racial, sexual or religious intolerance,” spokesman Ryan Moore wrote in an email.

According to Rathbun, the car was seized by the U.S. Army's 7th Infantry Division in Berchtesgaden, a town in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler built a sprawling residence.

After the war it became army surplus and was eventually sold by the head of a psychology institution in Heilbronn to Master Sergeant Sam Hosier, who drove it in occupied Germany. Hosier brought it to the United States and in 1955 sold it to a North Carolina man, who owned it until this year.

The owners would not say how much they paid for the car, only that they hope it will sell for $5 million to $7 million.

Another of Goering's cars, a convertible Mercedes 540 K nicknamed the Blue Goose, was auctioned in 2011 in Italy by Ontario, Canada-based RM Auctions for about $2 million.

The owners lamented having to turn to traditional high-end auto sales auctions to sell the stretch coupe once work is finished.

“eBay is all over the world, it has hundreds of millions of users, and it was the biggest venue anyone could find,” Rathbun said.

Editing by David Adams and Jim Loney

eBay rejects auction of Nazi chief’s car Read More »

ISIS propaganda campaign threatens U.S.

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This story originally appeared on ADL.org.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) announced a new social media cam­paign this week designed to threaten the U.S. and warn it against send­ing mil­i­tary assis­tance to Iraq.

The cam­paign, “Warn­ing to the Amer­i­can Peo­ple,” is being orga­nized on social media around the hash­tag #Calami­ty­Will­Be­fal­lUS and is being directed through one of the many Twit­ter han­dles pur­port­edly belong­ing to ISIS. Par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to tweet using that hash­tag in Eng­lish or Ara­bic, although “tweet­ing in Eng­lish is pre­ferred.” Par­tic­i­pants are also encour­aged to repost offi­cially sanc­tioned tweets that appear on the ISIS “union page” and use “pho­tos of signs or designs with warn­ing to Amer­i­cans” when possible.

A num­ber of images and slo­gans were pre-released begin­ning on June 24. These include images of the falling World Trade Cen­ter, quotes by the Amer­i­can Al-Qaeda pro­pa­gan­dist Anwar al-Awlaki, and pic­tures of advanc­ing ISIS fighters.

The offi­cial slo­gans fea­ture threats against Amer­i­can inva­sion and a range of par­tic­u­larly inflam­ma­tory mes­sages, including:

  • “If the United States bombs Iraq, every cit­i­zen is a legit­i­mate tar­get for us.”
  • “This is a mes­sage for every Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. You are the tar­get of every Mus­lim in the world wher­ever you are.”
  • “For every drop of blood shed of the Iraqis, Amer­i­cans will shed a river of blood.”
  • “Every Amer­i­can doc­tor work­ing in any coun­try will be slaugh­tered if Amer­ica attacks Iraq.”
  • “Don’t come to Iraq unless you want another 11th Sep­tem­ber to happen.”

ISIS is par­tic­u­larly adept at har­ness­ing the power of social media. The orga­ni­za­tion main­tains a vari­ety of Twit­ter accounts in mul­ti­ple lan­guages and sev­eral ISIS regional groups main­tain Twit­ter feeds as well. ISIS also runs an app that auto­mat­i­cally directs its pro­pa­ganda onto sup­port­ers’ accounts, sig­nif­i­cantly aug­ment­ing its mes­sage and reach.Terrorist exploita­tion of online forums has become an increas­ingly impor­tant ele­ment of the rad­i­cal­iza­tion process in recent years.

In addi­tion, ISIS reg­u­larly takes advan­tage of hash­tags that enable ISIS’s mes­sage to trend on Twit­ter. It also main­tains a Twit­ter feed ded­i­cated to inform­ing sup­port­ers of trend­ing hash­tags. Sup­port­ers can then tweet ISIS mes­sages that will be viewed by any­one look­ing at a trend­ing topic (for exam­ple: an ISIS user might post a pro-ISIS mes­sage along with the hash­tag “#world­cup” as demon­strated by the image at right).

The cur­rent cam­paign marks a depar­ture from stan­dard ISIS pro­pa­ganda. The major­ity of ISIS’s past atten­tion has been geared to bol­ster­ing its image and recruit­ing fight­ers; sur­pris­ingly lit­tle has been directed against the U.S. But ISIS has nonethe­less always expressed anger and sus­pi­cion about U.S. pol­icy. An April 2014 speech by the group’s main spokesman, for exam­ple, con­flated the U.S. with Satan, say­ing, “Yes, ver­ily the plot of Shay­tan [Satan] is weak. Amer­ica came to Iraq lead­ing a fren­zied crusade….The Cru­saders thought that no one would be able to over­come them; how­ever Allah the Mighty and Majes­tic dis­graced them and showed us the weak­ness of their plot.” In the same speech, he claimed that ISIS “is America’s tough­est enemy.”

In addi­tion to Twit­ter, the “Warn­ing to the Amer­i­can Peo­ple” cam­paign is being posted on Face­book, in YouTube videos, and on var­i­ous extrem­ist forums.

ISIS propaganda campaign threatens U.S. Read More »

In Poland, a renewal of memory — from Belzec to Rychwal

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Two very different events I attended this week, hundreds of miles apart, demonstrated the wide range of ways in which the memory of Jews and the Holocaust are commemorated in Poland.

One was a simple grass-roots ceremony to dedicate a monument at the site of the destroyed Jewish cemetery in a small town called Rychwal, in central Poland.

The other was a high-level, international event marking the tenth anniversary of the dedication of the vast memorial at the site of the Nazi death camp at Belzec, on the Ukrainian border in southeast Poland, where about 500,000 Jews were murdered.

On June 23 in Rychwal, Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich and another Warsaw rabbi joined local officials, including a priest, in cutting the ribbon on a big boulder set up as a memorial at the long-forgotten site of the cemetery, now an open field.

In addition, new signage recounting the history of Jewish in the town has been set up, and the perimeter of the cemetery has been marked with stones.

No Jews live in Rychwal today, but local activists had worked for years with town officials on the project.

“It’s very reassuring that these steps were taken by a community that is not the Jewish community, and they even did it from their own funds,” Rabbi Stanislaw Wojciechowicz told the Polish news agency PAP.

“It is something that we had to do,” activist Pawel Mazur told me. “It was the right thing to do, the moral thing to do.”

Two days later, and 300 miles across the country, Schudrich joined the U.S. and Israeli ambassadors, Polish officials including a representative of the Culture Ministry, a Catholic bishop and a senior American Jewish Committee delegation to mark the 10th anniversary of the Belzec memorial.

Participants in the ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the memorial at the Belzec death camp walk through the field of slag toward the memorial wall. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

Dedicated in 2004, the Belzec memorial was a joint project of the AJC and the Polish government and is one of the most powerful and devastating Holocaust commemorative sites.

The Nazis had obliterated all traces of the death camp, so Polish artists Andrzej Solyga, Zdzislaw Pidek and Marcin Roszcyk turned the entire area into a giant memorial sculpture.

The whole site is covered in slag, to resemble ashes, and a deep pathway cuts down to a memorial wall bearing the first names of Jews. Around the perimeter are twisted lengths of iron and the names of the scores of towns, mostly in southeast Poland and western Ukraine, whose Jews were killed there.

After the official ceremony, participants made their way down the path to light candles at the memorial wall.

“There are two things going on in Poland,” Schudrich, who chanted El Male Rachamim at both ceremonies, explained. “Some Poles are discovering that they have Jewish roots. But also Poles are rediscovering a Jewish presence and patrimony, both at the grassroots level and at the highest level of government.

“It’s happening again and again. The country is becoming a model of how to deal with lost memory, and to get it right.”

In Poland, a renewal of memory — from Belzec to Rychwal Read More »

This week in Jewish farming: The deer threat and an electric solution

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Countless anxieties attended the planning for my first season farming. Losing my entire crop to deer was not among them.

Neither of the Northeastern farms where I had worked previously worried much about these herbivores. One farm was large and could keep losses from deer to a minimum with a shotgun. The other was on a main street in a semi-suburban environment where the deer pressure was fairly low. In both cases, a sort of Cold War stalemate prevailed. There were occasional border skirmishes and the requisite resort to arms. Losses were incurred on both sides, but never at catastrophic levels. The balance of power always prevailed.

But from the moment I began working our fields, I’ve gotten hints that we shouldn’t be nearly so casual. Connecticut is deer country. One of our towns gave its name to a disease borne by deer ticks. Neighbors would shoot me dubious looks when I shrugged in response to questions about my deer control strategy. Nonspecific references were made to a lost pumpkin crop a few years back.

One farmer a few towns over advised me in May to stop my planting and focus all my energies on protecting what I already had. If I had to do it all over again, he told me, I would invest in some serious fencing. I ignored him.

Even the deer tracks I’d notice each morning in our freshly plowed beds weren’t enough to light a fire. The tracks would pass by beautiful, tender green leaves that were left entirely unmolested. They were toying with me, I would say, waiting for the moment of perfect delectability before they decimated the whole crop. I didn’t really believe it was so, but somewhere in back of my mind I feared it might be.

The turning point came when my Hare Krishna farmhand, Fred, went to pick up some composted manure at a nearby supply house. After making a few trips, the woman at the store asked what we were up to. When Fred explained we were growing vegetables, the woman leaned in conspiratorially. “Did they tell you about the deer?” she asked.

That was enough to scare me straight. A few weeks later, a truck pulled up to the farm and unloaded $2,000 worth of electrified fencing. Held aloft on fiberglass rods, three strands of tape now circle the field. At night, after closing the gate and arming the solar battery, 9,000 volts of electricity pulse through them every two seconds or so.

But here’s the crazy thing — deer can easily jump six feet or more. Our top strand of electrified tape is only five feet high. The system works by baiting the deer to approach the fence and then shocking them so badly they think better of getting too close. It sounded a little crazy when the salesman explained it to me, but so far it’s working. And I’m sleeping a lot easier just knowing it’s there.

As a small farm with barely an acre currently under cultivation, a serious deer infestation could be devastating. And having committed to supplying vegetables to CSA members for another 21 weeks (two down!), I can ill afford the kind of losses even a small herd of deer could inflict. The rabbits and worms and beetles are taking enough as it is.

Growing organically means achieving a sustainable detente with the various forms of life on the farm. It’s tempting to aim for total victory. What could be more desirable than a farm entirely free of predacious animals and weeds? A lot, actually. The fact that all this wildlife wants a piece of the action is clear evidence that the food we’re growing is worth eating.

As I tell my shareholders, if those kale leaves were entirely devoid of little holes from flea beetles, that would be worrisome. Our farm teems with manifold forms of life and it would be incredibly short-sighted to try to change that. Coexistence is key — both sides give a little and get to live a lot.

 

This week in Jewish farming: The deer threat and an electric solution Read More »

Israeli airstrike kills two Palestinians

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

An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians in Gaza whom Israel accused of involvement in terrorism.

The car the two men were riding in was struck by two missiles, according to the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

The two men were identified by as Muhammad al-Fasih and Usama al-Hassumi, who were reportedly affiliated with the Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees.

Israel’s defense minister, Moshe http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4535299,00.html, said that one of the men was responsible for recent rocket attacks on Israel and was planning future attacks.

“We don’t intend to ignore any fire at Israel or any attempt to hurt our citizens and the IDF’s soldiers. We will chase after, and strike with a heavy hand, anyone who hurts or plans to hurt us, as we have done today,” Ya’alon said.

Israel’s airstrike came after an explosive was detonated near a security fence on the Gaza border earlier Friday morning. No Israelis were hurt, though six Palestinians were injured in the ensuing gunfire.

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The Presbyterians’ Judaism problem

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

The Jewish world has been shaken by the decision of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from three companies that it claims “further the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

The denomination has placed itself squarely on the side of the divestment movement that seeks to hold Israel solely to blame for the plight of the Palestinian people. It did so, furthermore, over the opposition of many Presbyterian pastors and lay leaders.

Despite protests to the contrary by the denomination’s leaders, the church’s embrace of divestment is an affront to the Jewish community.

The insult is made worse by the release earlier this year by the church’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network of a vehemently anti-Zionist congregational study guide, “Zionism Unsettled.” This ahistorical and wildly biased broadside impugned the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and the very legitimacy of this core element of Jewish identity. While the church’s recent General Assembly did pass a resolution stating that “Zionism Unsettled” does not represent the denomination’s views, the study guide remains for sale on the church’s website.

The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released a study guide titled “Zionism Unsettled” with a companion DVD.

Regrettably, the church — which often has been a partner of the Jewish community on critical social justice issues — has been on a 10-year road to this moment. At the Presbyterians’ 2004 General Assembly, the church’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee called for a “phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” Since then, within the church, Israel has often been compared to South Africa’s nefarious apartheid regime.

Even worse, these ostensibly political actions are part of a warped theological framework that delegitimizes any Jewish attachment to the land of Israel. This theological structure represents a wholesale denial of Jewish history, Jewish experience and Jewish religious strivings to live in covenant with God.

Irrespective of repeated statements by the denomination’s leaders that the church loves its Jewish friends, the real problem is what the church thinks about Judaism. The truth is that the denomination is theologically unreconciled with the Jewish community.

Whereas many other Christian denominations have grappled seriously with anti-Jewish theological traditions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has failed to do so.

In the late 1950’s, Pope John XXIII contemplated how the Catholic Church might have contributed to an atmosphere that produced the Holocaust. He reevaluated the history of church-based anti-Judaism: the historical Christian belief that the Jewish covenant with God had been broken by perfidy, and that God had chosen a new covenantal partner, the church.

The process initiated by John XXIII led to the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate, which made four remarkable claims: 1) that Jews are not now –and never were – collectively responsible for the death of Jesus, 2) that God’s covenant with the Jews is eternally valid, (3) that Jews should never be treated as if God had abandoned or cursed them, and (4) that anti-Semitism has no place whatsoever in Christianity.

Today, Jews and Catholics continue to work at deepening understanding and cooperation. Even when Jews have had political differences with the church, these were discussed with an attitude of respect for the fundamentals of Jewish identity — a level playing field for dialogue.

Many Protestant denominations took up the same process of theological soul-searching. The Episcopal Church dealt with the issue of with the issue of supersessionism and the validity of the Jewish covenant in a resolution in 1988; the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in 1994; the United Methodist Church in 1996. These other mainline Protestant denominations have wrestled with their theological relationship to Judaism. They have developed a language of understanding and respect upon which to respectfully engage with Jews on political questions.

The Presbyterians have not done this.

True, a white paper on these questions has been circulating around the Presbyterian church since the mid-1980s, but it was never acted upon. The Presbyterian church has not resolved the question of supersessionism. It has not resolved how it teaches about the Jewish covenantal relationship with God and the biblical roots of the Jewish people’s attachment to the land of our heritage. And by denying our essential identity, the Presbyterians have now ceased to understand us as we know ourselves.

All of this became very clear when the Presbyterians’ 2014 General Assembly debated whether the church should emend those prayers and hymns that refer to Israel, or at least to footnote that the Israel of the hymn does not refer to the modern land of Israel and that Zion only refers to the “City of God,” not a physical place. True, this resolution was rejected, but an atmosphere of anti-Judaism created the opportunity for it to be debated seriously.

The Presbyterian church’s actions have not only called into question its relationship with Jews. They have highlighted a glaring issue: the church’s relationship to Judaism. Until the official church body is willing to wrestle with this theological question, we can only expect expanded efforts within the church targeting Israel and a further tearing asunder of a Jewish-Presbyterian relationship that was built upon a shared vision for a just society.

Much work lies ahead if the Presbyterians wish to repair this breach. Jews are an eternally hopeful people, and we stand ready to work with them. But to mend ties, the church must affirm our identity as a people still in covenant with God and with a legitimate attachment to both our history and our ancestral homeland.

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One Israeli creation for the weekend

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Asaf Avidan is an Israeli singer- songwriter, one of the few Israeli musicians to succeed abroad.


Avidan (born 1980) is the front man of Asaf Avidan & the Mojos, an Israeli folk rock band that he established in 2006 in Jerusalem. The band released three albums, The Reckoning in 2008, Poor Boy / Lucky Man in 2009 and Through the Gale in 2010. In 2012, the band took a break so that Avidan could concentrate on a solo career. That same year he released Avidan in a Box, an acoustic live album which covers older songs by him. In 2013, he launched his solo studio album Different Pulses.

Avidan performs in English, and his unique voice and musical style made him a successful international artist.

Here are some of his songs. Enjoy and feel free to tell me what you think by commenting below!

One day / Reckoning Song

 

Performing The House of the Rising Sun

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