Archive for the 'The Jewish Right' Category

“Join in Building ‘American Jews NOT Anonymous’” Revisited

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
August 16, 2006 in Personal Reflections, Activism, The Jewish Right and All Posts. 0 Comments

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.

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Israel! Israel! Praise the Lord!

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
August 12, 2006 in Personal Reflections, The Jewish Right, Zionism, Jewish Politics, Judaism and All Posts. 5 Comments

If you are an American Jew who has unambiguously supported the nature and extent of Israel’s military response in Lebanon (it remains to be seen what those will be after today’s UN vote), who is proud to be a part of the “zero dissent” community, who is contributing to emergency funds of American Jewish organizations without a second thought about how or where your money will be spent, I have only one request. The next time you are flipping channels and come upon a Christian televangelist, especially one who is healing the faithful, then I ask you to just stop and watch for awhile. Try not to shake your head or mock, but rather pay close attention.

Because that is now who you are.

Several years ago, I went through an obsession with Christian evangelists and revivalists, both of modern times and of the early 20th century. Growing up as a middle class, educated American Jew in suburban Philadelphia, the obsession began in my early 20s from plain curiosity: I simply could not understand the kind of faith, the nature of theology that could lead people to follow these preachers, to believe so wholly and completely in their every word, in the brand of Jesus they taught. Watching the healings on television became a near ritual for me; I was captivated by the people dropping to the floor and writhing, muttering in tongues, claiming to see from eyes long blind, all from the mere touch of the hand of their preacher.

Shaking my head in disbelief, sometimes mocking as if this was the professional wrestling version of religion, I was always somewhat jealous. My Jewish (such as it was) and secular educational experiences had always taught me to question, to be skeptical of such beliefs, to reject “just swallow this” messages, to shun movements like these, which so clearly fly in the face of modern reality, of Jewish teaching. But, “wow,” I thought, how amazing it must be to really believe like this, to throw modernity away and dive in to a revival. To swallow it all and believe you really do feel better and are saved.

As I listened to the news of the Israeli cabinet’s decision to expand the ground war, for some reason, I thought back to those preachers. And then to the “Stand with Israel” rally I attended in DC a few weeks back and wrote about previously. To the “support Israel” emails I get non-stop, most of which also ask for my money. To the chorus of “don’t question their decisions” that continues a month in to the action that was first going to last 2 weeks, then 10-14 more days, and now, if the ground war expands, at least 30 more days.

The leadership of the American Jewish community — and, for the first time, with the help of those same evangelical Christians — are leading us in an old-fashioned, big tent revival combined with a modern, Oral Roberts-style tearful plea. And I think I am missing out on what may be my one Jewish chance to be healed and saved; that is, no matter which way I head these days in the pro-Israel world — Jewish or Christian right — it looks like I am going to Hell.

Think about it. Christian evangelists (or, frankly, evangelists of any religion, but Christians have been the most prevalent in America) are most successful when they preach three things: there is grave and imminent mortal danger; we have a choice in how to deal with the danger; there is salvation for those who choose the right (i.e., our) way, damnation for those who don’t. And imbuing all of it is a plea for money to support both the way and the message.

Let’s see, in painful (and lengthy) detail, how our American Jewish evangelists on Israel work within this paradigm.

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The Trouble with Moral Clarity…and Cartoons

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
August 8, 2006 in Personal Reflections, The Jewish Right and All Posts. 1 Comment

Today, this old cartoon hit my Inbox. The caption on the left reads “Soldier of Palestine” (a curious term in and of itself, almost certainly not the appropriate one, but since it’s what they use, I will stick with it) and shows the soldier pointing his gun while kneeling behind a baby carriage. The caption on the right reads “Soldier of Israel” and shows the soldier pointing his gun while kneeling in front of a baby carriage. The difference today was that the cartoon came along with a message that said “If you are unable to distinguish a moral difference between the two images below, then you have something obscuring your vision. Ideology perhaps?”

As I said in my reply to the email I got, I think this is a disturbing, but very fascinating, even very important cartoon, made even moreso by the new quote. And it is even more interesting that it should resurface now, as many in the pro-war camp seem eager to conflate Lebanon and Palestine, at least vis-a-vis Hamas and Hizballah.

The first, most obvious, most important point to me is that the only thing in our vision in this cartoon should be that babies are growing up in a warzone, and our only moral response, our only ideology, should be to do what we must to make that stop.

But moving beyond that, my real question about this cartoon is another side of the “morality” question, and it’s the one that I have been troubled by since I first saw this, as I don’t think it meets the “ideology” of the artist. And that is, if you look at the images together rather than separately, then what you see is that the Israeli soldier is pointing his gun, most immediately, at the Palestinian baby carriage. And how we deal with that is a question we cannot leave unanswered.

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Rogers May Lose Javits Center Contract Because of Ties to “Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine”

Published by
Andrew Schamess
March 8, 2006 in The Jewish Right. 1 Comment

Readers over sixty may recall the moment when Mississippi Senator James Eastland, a notorious racist and an ally of anti-Communist witch-hunter Joseph McCarthy, declared to Jacob Javits, “I don’t like your kind.” Javits was a liberal Republican, a civil rights supporter, a McCarthy opponent, and the only Jew in the Senate.

Now, ironically, some Jewish groups are resorting to outright McCarthyist tactics against a critic of Israel’s settlement policy - and claiming they are doing it in Javits’ name. The Conference of Presidents, the American Jewish Committee and other groups are pressuring the Empire State Development Corporation to reject a plan for the 1.7 billion dollar redesign of the Javits Center because the architect has ties to a group critical of the separation wall… |inline

Hillary Clinton and the Jewish Right

Published by
Andrew Schamess
December 28, 2005 in U.S. Politics and The Jewish Right. 2 Comments

I posted a few weeks ago on Hillary Clinton’s trip to Israel. She was too busy to meet with any Palestinians, but she did broadcast her committment to Israel’s security and her support for the separation barrier. On her return to New York, she was toasted by the most right-wing of the Jewish pro-Israel activists - many of whom are big political donors and made it clear that the trip had won their support for her re-election campaign (”I was quite critical when she ran last time,” disengagement opponent Mandy Ganchrow declared. “Since that time … she has become a leader who understands the nuances.”).

Today, the New York Times ran an article on how Senator Clinton has angered the left with her support for the Iraq war. It’s a reminder of the political realities that shape candidates’ positions in the Democratic party. |inline

Blog Roundup: Good Posts on Israel and Palestine

Published by
Andrew Schamess
December 23, 2005 in Israeli Politics, Conditions of the Occupation, The Jewish Right and Politics. 0 Comments

I’m afraid I’ve been too busy to write much - and I still need to get the site spiffed up again. Luckily, there are a lot of terrific blogs out there, and other interesting sources of information. So if you’re looking for an Israel-Palestine news fix, here are a few things to check out…
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Rethinking Things Together, with Some Help from the Shofar

Published by
Andrew Schamess
October 2, 2005 in Personal Reflections, The Jewish Right and Judaism. 0 Comments

Calendars can be funny things.  Otherwise bland and seemingly objectively simple, the calendar sometimes creates clashes of emotions and ideas that we would not otherwise face were it not for the pure accident of timing.  And with the Jewish calendar’s mix of solar and lunar systems, we have the amazing opportunity to always experience our holidays in new ways.  Rosh Hashanah falling in early September, like last year, feels much different, to me anyway, than when it falls in early October.  And this year, with disengagement just completed, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a key figure in the AIPAC scandal pleading guilty and Iraqi elections around the corner (I’ll leave aside baseball playoffs for now), the calendar presents us with a lot to consider this year.  But while the dates and issues may change, the questions that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ask are unwavering: what have you done these – and many other – issues in the past, and what will you do in the future? 

 

One of the rituals most closely associated with the High Holidays, other than the Yom Kippur fast, is the blowing of the shofar.  After all, it is hard not to focus on someone blowing 100 notes per day from a ram’s horn (and wondering how long they will be able to hold that last note – more on the notes in a minute) .  But there is perhaps an even more obvious, yet largely unrecognized as such, High Holiday ritual that truly underlies these “Days of Awe,” as they are often called.  Community gathering.  Though it is our individual lives that God considers on Rosh Hashanah and then seals in the Book of Life on Yom Kippur, these are days that we face together. 

 
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