Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

Gala 20th for the Festiwal Kultury Zydowskiej W Krakowie

Posted on May 10, 2010 | 1 Comment

One of these years I’m going to have to make it to the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow. If there is a larger or more significant Jewish cultural event in the world, I’m not certainly aware of it.

This year the festival will be celebrating its twentieth anniversary and the line-up of international Jewish music, film, workshops and exhibitions is just breathtaking. Even more so when you consider that the overwhelming majority of attendees to the festival are not even Jewish. That’s right: the Krakow festival is one of the most powerful examples of the reinvention of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe – a trend that is being driven largely by non-Jews.

From a 2007 NY Times article:

Sometime in the 1970s, as a generation born under Communism came of age, people began to look back with longing to the days when Poland was less gray, less monocultural. They found inspiration in the period between the world wars, which was the Poland of the Jews.

”You cannot have genocide and then have people live as if everything is normal,” said Konstanty Gebert, founder of a Polish-Jewish monthly, Midrasz. ”It’s like when you lose a limb. Poland is suffering from Jewish phantom pain.”

Interest in Jewish culture became an identifying factor for people unhappy with the status quo and looking for ways to rebel, whether against the government or their parents. ”The word ‘Jew’ still cuts conversation at the dinner table,” Mr. Gebert said. ”People freeze.”

The revival of Jewish culture is, in its way, a progressive counterpoint to a conservative nationalist strain in Polish politics that still espouses anti-Semitic views. Some people see it as a generation’s effort to rise above the country’s dark past in order to convincingly condemn it.

”We’re trying to give muscle to our moral right to judge history,” said Mr. (Janusz) Makuch, the festival organizer.

Roger Bennett, writing in Tablet in two years ago, offered this observation:

The only shame is that the festival is such a well-kept secret in the United States. Young Jews in particular would flock to this creative cacophony if only they knew it existed and there are no doubt thousands obliviously Eurorailing in the vicinity. In their absence, the festival is left to an audience of predominantly young Catholic Poles who lap it up voraciously. The majority were born four decades after the atrocities of the Second World War, coming of age in a post-communist Poland. Faced with myriad identity issues, they appear to be using the festival to work out their questions one song at a time.

When so many in the Jewish world look to Europe and see only incipient anti-Semitism, I’d suggest that this cultural resurgence is just as worthy of our attention. The reasons for the embrace of Jewish culture by non-Jews in Europe are powerful and complex. Ruth Ellen Gruber, in her book “Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe” suggests several possibilities: atonement for the Holocaust, an expression of a multicultural ethic or, as she puts it, a redefinition of “personal identity and national histories.”

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that the Festiwal Kultury Zydowskiej W Krakowie is currently one of the largest Jewish cultural events anywhere in the world. All it needs now is to attract as many Jews as non-Jews and this incredible Jewish cultural rebirth will truly be complete.

Click up top to watch Balkan Beat Box (their new album is just out!) performing in Krakow last year.

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Art, Judaism

The Sick Slandering of NIF

Posted on February 3, 2010 | 10 Comments

In my last post I addressed the sliming of J Street. I’m so sorry to report on yet another slanderous campaign against a respectable Jewish organization.

The New Israel Fund, a institution that has long supported social justice efforts in Israel is now being viciously attacked by a right-wing ultra-nationalist group called Im Tirtzu (a shadow organization that apparently has connections to Christian Zionist leader Pastor John Hagee).

The most sickening aspect of their campaign is a full-page ad run in the Israeli press attacking NIF President Naomi Chazan. (See right: the anti-Semitic overtones of this image are truly astonishing, especially coming from a group that purports to support the State of Israel.)

This issue has been well covered in the Jewish blogosphere. For more info I recommend reports by Noam Sheizaf in Promised Land and Richard Silverstein in Tikun Olam. Click here to read a response by NIF CEO Daniel Sokatch – I also encourage you to click here to support the NIF.

(Yesterday, I received an email from a congregant that read “what the hell is going on in Israel?” I’m asking the very same question…)

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Israel, Palestine, Politics

Miep Gies and the Power of Human Decency

Posted on January 12, 2010 | 4 Comments

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, on last week’s Torah portion:

How moving it is…that the first recorded instance of civil disobedience – predating Thoreau by more than three millennia – is the story of Shifra and Puah, two ordinary women defying Pharaoh in the name of simple humanity. All we know about them is that they “feared G-d and did not do what the Egyptian king had commanded.” In those words, a precedent was set that eventually became the basis of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Shifra and Puah, by refusing to obey an immoral order, redefined the moral imagination of the world.

I’m thinking of these words in particular this morning as I hear the news of the death Miep Gies – an ordinary woman who defied the Nazis in the name of simple humanity.

In his dvar, Sacks’ discusses the age-old debate: were Shifra and Puah “Hebrew midwives” or “midwives to the Hebrews?” His answer – it doesn’t matter:

The Torah’s ambiguity on this point is deliberate. We do not know to which people they belonged because their particular form of moral courage transcends nationality and race. In essence, they were being asked to commit a “crime against humanity, and they refused to do so.”

This is perhaps Gies’ most important legacy to us today. Like her Biblical forebears she reminds us that basic human decency is a universal form of resistance – and still the most powerful.

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Genocide, Great Britain, Holocaust, Human Rights, Religion, Torah Commentary

Playing the Blood Libel Card

Posted on January 5, 2010 | 13 Comments

Ha’aretz:

(An) Italy-based group of researchers studied Israel’s use of ammunition and said the population of the Gaza Strip is “in danger.” It based the claim on soil analysis of four bomb craters. “It is essential to intervene at once to limit the effects of the contamination on people, animals and cultivation,” the researchers stated…

“Our study indicates an anomalous presence of toxic elements in the soil,” (the committee’s spokesperson) stated. This included metals that “can cause tumors and problems with fertility, and they can have serious effects on newborns, like deformities and genetic pathologies.”

The article continues:

Professor Gerald Steinberg, founder of the Jerusalem-based, non-governmental Monitor organization, said the study did not present enough evidence to support its claim… (He) said the committee’s “accusations are designed to stigmatize Israel and erase the context of mass terror.” He said he considers the accusations “a modern form of blood libel.”

Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress had a similar reaction:

“This so-called research is eerily reminiscent of ancient blood libels against the Jewish people, when rumors were spread about Jews poisoning wells” … “Today we are seeing a recurrence of all the worst excesses of anti-Semitism and diatribes that we perhaps naively thought had remained in the Dark Ages.”

I don’t know if the Italian scientists’ research is accurate or not, but I do know this: we Jews are becoming much too fond of shouting “blood libel” for political purposes.

Not long ago, of course, the epithet was directed at Judge Richard Goldstone. I’m also reminded of another recent news story, in which a Swedish newspaper made the ghoulish claim that Israel was killing Palestinians to harvest their organs. Israel’s outrage was inevitably swift:

“This is an anti-Semitic blood libel against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The Swedish government cannot remain apathetic,” said Israel’s Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.

“We know the origins of these claims. In medieval times, there were claims that the Jews use the blood of Christians to bake their Matzas for Passover. The modern version now is that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers use organs of Palestinians to make money.”

When I first heard this news, I was also outraged by the allegations. Then I read last month that a former head of an Israeli forensic institute admitted that forensic pathologists did indeed illegally harvest organs from bodies, including Palestinian bodies, in the 1990s.

According to reports there was no proof that individuals were actually killed for their organs – but as I continue to read up on this incident, I’ve become further mortified to learn that NGOs have long considered Israel to be among the top purveyors of illegal organ-trafficking in the world. Will we take these kinds of reports seriously or will we simply accuse these organizations of blood libel as well?

While there is still no lack of irrational hatred directed at Jews, I believe Israel does the Jewish people no good every time its leaders invoke the spectre of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism. At the end of the day, which is worse: the very real scourge of anti-Jewish prejudice or the cynical accusation of blood libel to cover up potential crimes of our own?

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, War

Pogo Was Right

Posted on December 3, 2009 | 5 Comments

From today’s JTA:

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating whether Israeli organized crime is connected to an attack at a local synagogue.

The department initially listed the Oct. 30 shooting at the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Synagogue in North Hollywood, Calif., as a hate crime, but in recent weeks police been working on the theory that the shooting was to silence someone, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Two people were shot in the legs in the parking lot of the synagogue, located in the San Fernando Valley’s Orthodox community. Police believe one of the men that was shot was the target of the attack, the newspaper reported…

Israeli organized crime has been operating in Los Angeles since the mid-1990s, according to the newspaper.

Postscript: I spoke with a friend who read the local Israeli press in LA immediately after the shooting and said that even then there was serious speculation that Israeli organized crime was behind it.

If it was indeed an “inside job,” it puts a very interesting twist on our thinking about Jewish safety in general. It was notable that the ADL, immediately after the shooting, issued a press release with the predictable language:

Statistics consistently show Jews to be far and away the most frequently targeted religious group, with 74 percent of hate crimes motivated by religion being perpetrated against Jews in Los Angeles County.

I think the issue of Jewish power vs. vulnerability in America and the diaspora at large is an important and complex one. For my part, I believe (ADL’s problematic ”annual audit” notwithstanding) that we Jews have never been more secure in our history than we are in present day America. If for nothing else, this latest incident is newsworthy for adding one more complicated dimension to the issue.

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Posted in American Jewish Community, Anti-Semitism, Current Events, Religion

On Jewish Hearts and Minds: A Response to Daniel Gordis

Posted on October 23, 2009 | 25 Comments

Just read Rabbi Daniel Gordis’ recent op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, one of several articles that have given some free publicity to Ta’anit Tzedek. But it wasn’t Gordis’ offhand slam on TT that really bothered me – it was the decidedly patronizing way he analyzed the gulf between the American Jewish community and Israel – or as he termed it, American Jewry’s “growing abandonment of Israel.”

Gordis’ main premise: American Jewry’s newest generation is essentially self-centered (tainted “with the ‘I’ at the core of American sensibilities”) and simply cannot relate to the national sense of duty embodied by Israel:

In America, the narratives of immigrant groups are eroded, year by year, generation after generation. In America, we are oriented to the future, not to the past, and if we cling to some larger grouping, it is to a human collective whole rather than to some “narrow” ethnic clan…

Similarly, the recreation of the State of Israel is truly powerful only against a backdrop of centuries of Jewish experience, and is spine-tingling only if my sense of self is inseparable from my belonging to a nation with a past and a people with a purpose.

In today’s individualistic America, the drama of the rebirth of the Jewish people creates no goose bumps and evokes no sense of duty or obligation. Add the issue of Palestinian suffering, and Israel seems worse than irrelevant – it’s actually a source of shame.

It’s not clear to me if Gordis is interested in winning over the hearts and minds of young American Jews, but if he is, I’d suggest that talking down to them from an Israeli ivory tower is not the way to do it. I’m afraid that record just doesn’t play any more.

Gordis is correct when he posits that the old narratives simply aren’t working on American Jews the way they used to. But that’s only because a new, more complex narrative is now being written by the current generation. It’s compelling in its own right, though this may be difficult to understand when viewed from the conventional Israeli vantage point.

I work with a great number of American Jews – particularly the 35 and younger demographic that Gordis cites – and from where I sit they look nothing like narcissistic, self-obsessed Americans he describes. On the contrary, most are engaged, seriously seeking Jews. Yes, it’s true, unlike previous generations they don’t necessarily understand their Judaism in traditionally tribal terms anymore. But that doesn’t make them self-centered. Rather, they are increasingly viewing their Jewishness against a larger, more universal global reality. In short, to be a Jew and a global citizen is what gives them “goose bumps.”

If, as Gordis suggests, American Jews are abandoning Israel, I’d suggest it’s not due to the lack of a sense of Jewish “duty or obligation” – I believe it’s because they are left cold by an Israeli national culture that appears to them to be overly tribal and collectively self-centered.

Indeed, while most young people today seem to be interested in breaking down walls between peoples and nations, Israel often appears determined to build higher and higher walls between itself and the outside world. It’s a poignant irony of Jewish history: while Zionism was ostensibly founded to normalize the status of Jewish people in the world, the Jewish state it spawned seems to view itself as all alone, increasingly victimized by the international community.

Gordis himself exemplifies this “it’s us Jews against the rest of the world” ethos in the opening paragraphs of his article:

About one thing, at least, the world seems to be in agreement: Israel is the primary culprit in the Middle East conflict, the cause of relentless Palestinian suffering and the primary obstacle blocking the way to regional peace.

The international chorus of opprobrium is growing by the day…It’s relentless, this ganging up, but it’s also not terribly new. The momentum has been building for years, and though we may not like it, we cannot honestly claim to be surprised.

While I understand the psychology of this world view, I don’t think it helps make Israel’s case for young Jews today – nor do I think it promotes a particularly healthy Jewish identity. It seems to me to be the product of self-pity, more than pride – a victim mentality that’s not likely to get us anywhere with newer generations of Jews who are feeling increasingly comfortable with the “outside world” and who don’t particularly identify with the claim that when push comes to shove, all the world really does just hate the Jews.

I will also predict that Gordis’ two cynical references to “Palestinian suffering” will not resonate for growing numbers of Jews who are legitimately troubled by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. I understand full well that our criticism sounds galling to most Israeli ears. And no, I don’t believe that we American Jews can even begin to understand how Israelis feel – on so many levels.

But whether Israelis like it or not, there is a steadily growing demographic in the American Jewish community: proud, committed Jews who are deeply troubled when Israel acts oppressively, who feel implicated as Americans and as Jews in these actions, and who are galled at being labeled as traitors when they choose to speak out.

At the very least, I hope that Gordis will understand that if American Jews are identifying with organizations that protest Israel’s oppressive policies (organizations, yes, such as Ta’anit Tzedek) their affiliation does not come from a shame-filled desire to “bash” Israel. It comes from a deeper and much more Jewishly authentic place than that.

I realize that all of this may be too much to ask for. It’s long been clear that the American Jewish and Israeli Jewish communities are two very different animals with two decidedly different ways of understanding what it means to be a Jew in a rapidly changing world. (Sociologists Steven Cohen and Charles Liebman pointed this out with great insight in their book “Two Worlds of Judaism” twenty years ago).

But it seems to me if we truly want to facilitate the Jewish future, we’re going to have to do it together. And to do that, we’ll need to meet one another with openness and understanding, not dismissal and judgment.

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Posted in American Jewish Community, Anti-Semitism, Global Activism, Israel, Jewish Fast for Gaza, Judaism, Palestine, Politics, Zionism

Dirty Laundry

Posted on October 13, 2009 | 8 Comments

dirty-laundry I’ve been getting a heap of feedback about my recent Chicago Tribune op-ed, ranging from abject excoriation to deep gratitude and pretty much everything in between. It’s obviously impossible to respond to it all, but I would like to address one consistently recurrent criticism: namely, that a statement so critical of Israel should have been kept within the Jewish community – and that it was wrong of me to publish it in a paper as prominent and public as the Tribune.

A few disconnected thoughts re the “dirty laundry” argument:

- I’m not sure I understand what it means to keep a conversation “within the community” any more. Whether we like it or not, we Jews are now part of an open, pluralistic society. We’ve long since left the ghetto and most of us consider this to be a good thing. And part of that deal is that for better or worse, our community conversations have become transparent and our so-called “internal debates” are now part of the public domain. (I’d say this is all the more so in the post-modern information age – in which no community conversation can truly be considered private or internal anymore.)

- I’ve been blogging for several years now and have written my share of sharp posts on Israel. This one was relatively milder than what I generally post here, yet it really seems to have struck a chord. I’m intrigued that for all of the talk about the death of print media, its reach is still significant – and the traditional op-ed page still seems to have important symbolic significance for folks.

- In this day and age, which do we really think is better for the Jews: a public communal face that demonstrates a monolithic, knee-jerk defense of Israel’s every action – or a Jewish community that is confident and secure enough in itself to model healthy self-reflection? In my experience, non-Jews tend to be much more alienated by the former and appreciative of the latter.

- Many in the Jewish community feel that we should not be contributing to the already significant public criticism of Israel. I am not so naive to say that some of this criticism has fairly dark motivations. But I am also not so cynical to say that the “outside world” cannot tell the difference between abject prejudice and legitimate self-criticism.

- If we do believe that speaking out against oppression is one of our most sacrosanct values, then we are guilty of hypocrisy if we fail to speak out when Israel acts oppressively. For me at least, the value of pursuing justice ultimately trumps the fears that arise when we publicly call our community to account.

I know it is painful and complicated when we do so. I know this first hand. I realize that such a step comes with difficult consequences – but at the very least we should be willing to honestly face the consequences of keeping silent.

I welcome your (respectful) feedback.

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Politics, UN

Israel, the UN and the Perennial Double-Standard

Posted on October 4, 2009 | 5 Comments

icc Tikkun has published an important interview conducted by Rabbis Michael Lerner and Brian Walt with Justice Richard Goldstone that should be read by anyone concerned with the (now ill-fated) Goldstone report. Among other things, it contains a fascinating analysis of the perennial double-standard issue:

Rabbi Michael Lerner: OK. Let me give you one of the frequent criticisms of the Goldstone report that I’ve heard and that I’d like to put to you. Not that it’s inaccurate but that it’s a reflection of a prejudice because of selective prosecution. The UN gives this attention to the sins of little countries or powerless countries, relatively powerless countries, while never daring to do a comparable report on big guys like the human rights violations of the United States in Iraq, of Russia in Chechnya, China in Tibet. The argument goes that when one picks on historically oppressed groups like Jews for their sins while ignoring the far greater sins of the more powerful, the UN participates in a kind of double standard that in other contexts would be seen transparently as racist or illegitimate. So that even though you, Judge Goldstone, were perfectly fine in what you did, the actual investigation itself by virtue of selecting this target by a body that doesn’t target the more powerful is a reflection of prejudice.

Justice Richard Goldstone: Generally I agree with the criticism. I think the powerful are protected because of their power. But it’s not prejudice it’s politics. It’s a political world. There’s no question of not investigating countries because of who they are for religious reasons or cultural reasons, it’s because of their power. They use their power to protect themselves. It doesn’t mean that investigations [in countries] where politically they can be held are in any way necessarily flawed or shouldn’t take place. The same argument was raised by Serbia in particular. They said, “Why was the international criminal tribunal set up for us? It wasn’t set up for Pol Pot, it wasn’t set up for Saddam Hussein, it was set up for Milosevic.” And my response at the time when it was put to me by the Serb minister of justice, as I remember very well, was if this is the first of the lot, then I agree with you, it’s an act of discrimination, but if it’s the first of others to come then you can’t complain, you have no right to complain because you’re the first. And if crimes are being committed then at least, to go after those that one can go after politically is better than doing nothing.

ML: For example, there haven’t been any comparable investigations of human rights violations by Syria, by Saudi Arabia, by Egypt — admittedly these are against their own populations.

RG: I think that what distinguishes this from that is that these war crimes are committed in a situation of international armed conflict. It’s not going to be a civil war situation.

ML: And you don’t think there is something inconsistent or one-sided and prejudicial in investigating this type of crime but not internal crime?

RG: I think it’s a double-standard more than prejudice.

ML: So you would agree that there’s a double-standard.

RG: Absolutely.

ML: And that it should be changed, but that doesn’t invalidate what you do.

RG: This is why. The best way of changing it is for every nation to join the International Criminal Court.

It’s an extremely compelling argument. Is it a double-standard to only investigate the human rights abuses that are politically possible to investigate? Probably. But it doesn’t mean that investigations such as this are not important and it certainly doesn’t mean they are ipso-facto anti-Semitic.

We in the Jewish community are right to shine a light on this kind of hypocrisy, but I sense this accusation only goes so far. Are we willing to admit that after a certain point, the double-standard argument essentially serves as a way of avoiding certain painful truths about Israel’s conduct?

As Justice Goldstone correctly points out, the best way to ensure that the UN and the ICC fulfill their mandates is for all nations – particularly the most powerful – to agree to be held accountable for their actions.

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Politics, UN

Reading Goldstone

Posted on October 1, 2009 | 6 Comments

richard_goldstone

Why should we trust the Goldstone report if it was produced by the UN Human Rights Commission – a body which has a notorious history of focusing overwhelmingly on Israel to the near exclusion of other potential human rights abusers around the world?

I posed this very question to Fred Abrahams, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch’s emergencies division who, together with B’tselem Executive Director Jessica Montell, participated in a remarkable conference call organized by Ta’anit Tzedek yesterday.

Fred, who is currently in Geneva attending the UN discusion of the report, answered that there is ample reason to be concerned about the HRC’s undue attention on Israel, but that this particular mission presented a very real “opportunity” for the council to prove otherwise.

In fact, Justice Richard Goldstone initially refused to chair the mission until it was agreed that Palestinian wartime behavior would be investigated in addition to Israel’s. Indeed, in the end, both sides were taken to task in the report’s final recommendations. It was a shame, Fred said, that Israel’s abject dismissal of Goldstone might actually be thwarting the HRC in its first genuine attempt to realize its true mandate.

For her part, Jessica pointed out that B’tselem did have some concerns about possible bias in the report - a point she also made in a recent Jerusalem Post article. She did add, however, that Goldstone largely confirms the findings of B’tselem’s own investigations, including the huge number of civilian casualties and the targeting of civilian neighborhoods and Gazan infrastructure that had no clear military objective.

I’ve started reading the Goldstone report myself – all 575 pages of it – and encourage you to do the same (but recommend that like me you save some trees by reading it off your computer screen.) My initial impression: this report is an honorable and good faith attempt to elucidate the facts of what occurred. Quite frankly, it makes for compelling and often devastating reading. I am certainly aware that it is not a perfect document, but in the end I cannot accept that it deserves to be dismissed without due consideration (let alone be painted as “blood libel.”)

And I will only add that after reading the report, I consider Richard Goldstone to be a heroic individual who should be lauded for taking on this enormously difficult task with such moral courage.

I was particularly moved by his willingness to address the critical context of this tragic crisis. Witness this excerpt from his opening statement to the UN upon presenting the report:

The Mission decided that in order to understand the effect of the Israeli military operations on the infrastructure and economy of Gaza, and especially its food supplies, it was necessary to have regard to the effects of the blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip for some years and has been tightened since Hamas became the controlling authority of Gaza.

The Mission found that the attack on the only remaining flour producing factory, the destruction of a large part of the Gaza egg production, the bulldozing of huge tracts of agricultural land, and the bombing of some two hundred industrial facilities, could not on any basis be justified on military grounds. Those attacks had nothing whatever to do with the firing of rockets and mortars at Israel.

The Mission looked closely and sets out in the Report statements made by Israeli political and military leaders in which they stated in clear terms that they would hit at the “Hamas infrastructure.”

If “infrastructure” were to be understood in that way and become a justifiable military objective, it would completely subvert the whole purpose of International Human rights Law built up over the last 100 years and more. It would make civilians and civilian buildings justifiable targets.

These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment and constitute war crimes.

The Government of Israel has a duty to protect its citizens. That in no way justifies a policy of collective punishment of a people under effective occupation, destroying their means to live a dignified life and the trauma caused by the kind of military intervention the Israeli Government called Operation Cast Lead. This contributes to a situation where young people grow up in a culture of hatred and violence, with little hope for change in the future.

Finally, the teaching of hate and dehumanization by each side against the other contributes to the destabilization of the whole region.

A transcript of our conference call will be posted on the Ta’anit Tzedek website soon. I’m excited to report that Ta’anit Tzedek is sponsoring a conference call between Justice Goldstone and Jewish clergy on October 18. We have a great deal to learn from him and I look forward to reporting on our conversation.

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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Jewish Fast for Gaza, Palestine, Politics, UN, War