Steffi’s very kind and very thought-provoking comments to my last 2 posts reminded me of a post from last year, and I hope readers will indulge my thought that it might be useful to repost it and revisit the premise. You can look at the original here but I thought I would just paste the whole thing back in. And, as I say in the first paragraph below, the point of this is not just to read, but mostly to comment and add your voice, your story. I urge everyone to do so; my recent posts on the need for a change in the American Jewish community’s mainstream leadership can only truly be vindicated by a demonstration that people out there really do want a different voice. If more people have found themselves looking for a new voice, a new perspective in the last month, then perhaps this can be of some use (although I have not edited to add anything about Lebanon specifically).
New post to come tomorrow, but in the meantime, please add your comment.
Join in Building “American Jews NOT Anonymous”
May 4, 2005 on 3:35 pm | In Activism, Jewish Culture, The Jewish Right |
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.
