semitism.net

Have you raised an objection, or even just a question, to a heavily-biased event on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and then been castigated by your rabbi, community leaders or friends? Have you felt uncomfortable even going to services or listening to High Holiday sermons anymore because of the "Israel right or wrong" slant? Have you written a letter to the editor - of a newspaper, Jewish paper, magazine, newsletter, etc. — critical of some aspect of Israeli policy in the Palestinian Territories and then been slammed for doing so, making you question whether you would do so again? Have you dropped out and become unaffiliated altogether because of a monolithic tone or tenor in the community, or in the public sphere overall, on Israel that makes you uncomfortable? Then please read this post, and add your voice…

Upon rereading my last post, I suddenly was overtaken with a feeling of dread. Have I become (or maybe I have been for years already) just another embittered guy on the American Jewish left, ranting about the same old things as everyone else, paying no heed to everyone else’s "optimism" on the ground? Wah wah, the big bad "mainstream organizations" won’t play fair and include our voices. Wah wah, the American Jewish community’s public voices stand to the right of Sharon now, adhering to the narrowest notions of "support" for Israel. Wah wah wah.

And then as I reread Andrew’s reports of his trip to Palestine last month, I realized that, although I may be just another bitter guy on the left, us bitter (or not so bitter) folk still have so much work to do.

But we can’t do it alone.

And I don’t think we need another organization either. Or on-line petition drive, or ad in the New York Times, or attempt to shut down AIPAC’s web server.

What we need is simple - for the "silent majority" of American Jews to claim their voices. If what we hear in poll after poll is true, that most American Jews (and Israeli Jews, for that matter) disagree with the hard-line positions attributed to them and taken on their behalf by AIPAC, AJCongress, ADL, etc., then why do they not say so in the open? If the silent majority really does acknowledge Israel’s responsibility for its part in the conflict and believe that Israel must work to create a true 2-state solution, then the leadership of the mainstream needs to know that, in a real sense. But how, short of an organizational structure?

I think this blog could be a start.

What I would like to see is other people add a comment to this post, and tell about moments when they have felt uncomfortable, belittled, voiceless as Jews in their own community. If the silent majority is to become un-silent, perhaps this site can begin to help that happen.

Let me be first in line and give you an example of what I mean, and how I wish this site had existed in 1998. As I wrote in an earlier post, I spent the summer of 1997 living, working and learning as a law student in the West Bank. The experience changed my life in many ways, not the least of which was my desire to reconnect to Judaism.

I was basically unprepared for what I saw in Palestine. Even in those hopeful times of Oslo, the situation was outrageous and inexplicable. I began to question everything I had come to understand about justice, human rights, law, Judaism. In many ways, being the "other" among the Palestinians forced me to understand who I was and what I really believed in a deeper and more profound way than ever before in my life.

As I wrote before, that process began in earnest when I lied about being a Jew to Palestinians in Hebron. Once safely distant from the stones and rubber bullets, I vowed to myself never to deny being Jewish again, and to understand why I should - must — be proud to be a Jew no matter where I stood, even when identifying as a Jew meant potentially being associated with things that I abhorred.

And so rather than run away from Judaism, my experiences pulled me back to it even more, because I saw in Jewish tradition and history the precise ethics, teachings, precepts that I believed were absent from the current situation I saw in Israel/Palestine. I spent time that summer re-reading Jewish texts, and feeling that I could truly understand them for the first time. For by understanding, I could identify where and how I dissented from what was/is passed off as "Jewish."

When I returned home, I started regularly attending synagogue and adult Jewish education classes. But in doing so, I realized that, in many ways, by searching out in Judaism responses to what was happening in Palestine, I was defining my identity as a Jew outside the mainstream community. That is, while beginning to feel more religiously Jewish, I felt less and less comfortable in the Jewish community, because I perceived that much of the community refused to listen to the reality in Israel/Palestine, preferring instead to believe in propaganda, glossy brochures and knee-jerk communalism.

So I decided to write about it. On the advice of a friend, I submitted a piece to Outlook, the magazine of the Women’s League of Conservative Judaism (I was attending a conservative shul at the time). Not exactly Newsweek, but this was my first attempt at writing about my experiences, and I was thrilled to have a Jewish venue of any type for it. In fact, they had initially turned me down, but then decided to include my piece in the "Israel at 50" issue, presumably, I suspect, to round out the other feel-good pieces with a bit of diversity of opinion.

I titled my piece "Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide" and in it, I recounted my experiences during the summer and encouraged readers to go beyond the usual experiences of an American Jew in Israel, to witness what was really happening in Palestine. To not let others decide what they should believe, but to form their own judgments. I explained how my understanding of nearly everything I believed had been challenged by my time in Ramallah, and that I feared we as Jews were slowly forgetting the lesson of the Holocaust, changing it from "Never Again" to "Never Again, to Us?" But in the article, I also focused on how important my Judaism was in informing both what I saw, and what I planned to do in the future.

In the magazine’s next issue, four prominent Conservative rabbis (three from New York and one from LA) protested my article’s appearance and urged the editors, in a full-page statement, to issue a retraction. In the statement, they declared I was a bad example for Jewish youth, and basically had no business saying any of what I had said; in essence, they sought to deny both what I had seen and how I responded. (To its credit, the magazine did not issue a retraction, but rather suggested that, although they did not endorse my views or the program I was on, they did not see a need to stifle discussion).

It took me some time to recover from this rebuke, and it was awhile before I tried to write anything for public consumption. The rabbis’ goal, plain and simple, was to silence me and those who seek to move from the rote repetition of "Israel, Right or Wrong." For these rabbis, it would seem that the Jewish community can tolerate no dissent, or even discussion, else the very existence of the State of Israel and the state of American Jewry be jeopardized.

But who was I? A law student who certainly had no name recognition or position of influence. Were my words, which came from a clear place of love of Judaism, really that much of a threat? How far has our community sunk when rabbis bring to bear this kind of force to respond to articles like mine?

I know I am not alone; if anything, what happened to me likely pales in comparison to what has happened to many others. But the stories we know about are few and far in between. I say it’s time to begin filling in the public record, and speaking out against the silencing.

Perhaps I am being more naïve than ever, but perhaps with this kind of discussion, this American Jews Not Anonymous, we can all feel more empowered to speak out in public, and hold those who speak for us more accountable, and make them truly represent us, rather than their own interests. Who knows - maybe we can even bring about some real change on the ground. American Jewish ground, that is.