Last Thursday, Ta’anit Tzedek hosted a fascinating, stimulating conference call with Palestinian-American journalist Ahmed Moor. Moor, who was born in Gaza, has reported from Lebanon and Egypt and is currently a graduate student in public policy at Harvard.  He has been an outspoken advocate of a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine – and during our conversation he elaborated extensively on a subject not commonly countenanced in the American Jewish community.

We recorded the call and will be posting it on our website soon. In the meantime, I’ve transcribed portions of our conversation and have posted them below. Personally speaking, I find Moor’s way of thinking to be fresh and important and I believe these kinds of ideas deserve a fair hearing in our community.

On the notion that Israel must exist in order to safeguard Jewish culture:

First I want to address this idea that a Jewish state has a right to exist because Jewish culture is valuable.  Jewish culture is valuable. Hebrew culture is valuable. It is intrinsic – that’s true whether or not Newt Gingrich thinks it’s invented. But the question of whether culture needs to be mapped on a geographical space in a state environment, I think, is one that is open to discussion.

And so when we think about Jewish life here in America, I don’t know that many people would disagree with me when I say that some of the most vibrant examples of Jewish life are here in America, in the diaspora, amongst non-Jewish people. So right-wing Israelis like to make the argument that where Hitler failed, assimilation is going to succeed. Intermarriage is the biggest threat to the Jewish people, not Iran.

Well, if you believe that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people and that it’s the only state guarding Jewish culture, well then you are in a sense aligning yourself with those arguments.  It’s illiberal, fundamentally illiberal.  We know from American experience that a multiplicity of cultures can exist alongside one another and engage with one another and strengthen one another and maybe, even yes, impact one another in positive ways.

And when it comes to Palestine and Israel, American Jews say, “Well this is kind of the homeland of the Jewish people, it’s going to preserve Jewish culture for us,” but it’s almost a relationship apt to an amusement park. “I don’t want to live there – I want to experience it for two weeks. I want to take some of the symbols home with me, but I don’t really want to engage with it in the way that I do at home.”

Well, that’s unfair. No matter how much you value Jewish culture, and no matter how much you believe Israel needs to exist for the preservation of Jewish culture, if it’s a museum, which I don’t think it is, you’ve got to realize that your cultural progress is coming at the expense of somebody else’s freedom. And I think that there’s an asymmetry there in what matters.

On the notion that Israel should exist in case another Holocaust should occur – and Israelis’ fears that a one-state solution is just a pretext for “throwing them into the sea:”

I think that first we’ve got to look at the reality today. The status quo is about expelling Palestinians from Jerusalem, their land in the West Bank, and disenfranchising them in greater ways in Israel proper…So the reality is exactly the opposite. The status quo, the two-state solution process, is about pushing the Palestinians not into the sea, but in the other direction.

First I want to address Jewish American fear, and I hear this from a lot of Jewish Americans of a certain age, when they talk about the Holocaust, which is obviously an evil, genocidal but I want to emphasize, a historical act. I had the benefit of speaking with (New York Times columnist) Roger Cohen recently, and we talked about American Jewish life and I asked him whether he feels unsafe in America. And he was unequivocal: “Absolutely not, America is safe for the Jewish people, we’re welcome here, we’re part of the people, we’re part of the cultural fabric. We are America. America is us.”

Do you ever believe as American people that there’s ever going to be something like Kristallnacht or a pogrom targeting the Jewish people in America?  If the answer is yes, well then perhaps it’s time to move to Israel – and that’s what most right-wing Israelis say. If the answer is no, well then you’ve got to realize that you are opting for the preservation of an insurance policy, but the price of that insurance policy is being borne by another people. The Palestinians are paying the cost of a Jewish American insurance policy. There’s that asymmetry again. That doesn’t work. That’s not a moral position to take and it’s unsustainable.

As for Israelis’ fear about whether we seek to ethnically cleanse them, I think there’s again a gap in perceptions of realities. The Israelis are the ones with the guns. The Israelis are the ones with the American support. When the one-state solution is actualized, it’s going to be necessarily through Israeli consent. The idea that the Middle East or Palestine has to be in any way ethnically cleansed of Jewish people is a European action transplanted onto Palestine.

On Israeli historian Gershon Gorenberg’s recent claim that a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine would create civil war à la Lebanon:

Gershon’s fear is related directly to governmental structures – the way in which you structure multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies, or sectarian societies. In Lebanon I think it was structured exactly the wrong way. In Lebanon, whether you’re liberal or you’re somebody who’s more conservative, whether you believe in one policy versus another, the state almost compels you to vote along sectarian lines.

In Lebanon the Speaker of the Parliament has to be a Shia Muslim, the Prime Minister is a Sunni and the President has to be a Maronite Christian. That’s constitutionally true – that’s mandated. And so what that means is that you end up voting – where your vote is impactful and meaningful – is in your sectarian group. The Lebanese demography there is so sensitive – they haven’t had a national census since 1932 or 33, I think.

You have the American case, on the other hand – the structure of this country is along a federal basis. Federalism enabled this country to recover from the wounds of the Civil War and to persist for another 150 – 160 years since the Civil War ended.

It’s important that we think about questions like the ones Gershon is raising, but I don’t think that those questions necessarily stand in the way of a one-state solution. So there are good federal structures, confederal structures even, for dealing with ethnic or religious strife in democracy.

What I’m thinking of specifically is a state with four federal units: the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem is its own district, sort of like Washington DC, central Israel and the Negev and finally the West Bank and the Mediterranean corridor so now you’ve got four districts and Jerusalem. And each of those federal units would be defined geographically and every one of them, with the exception of the Strip, would be made up of minorities either of Jewish people or Palestinian people.

And so in the West Bank federal state you’d have an expression mostly of Palestinian culture. Why? Because 5 out of every 6 people on the West Bank are Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip you could have an expression of Palestinian culture. In the northwestern state there’s a big minority of Palestinian Israelis, but it’s primarily Jewish. I mean we’re talking about the Tel Aviv – Haifa corridor and that would be a majority Hebrew culture state. Same with the Negev.

So you have parity amongst the states because the states are defined geographically and you enable people over time to move for personal preference reasons. Over time your could get a drift across these federal lines, kind of like what happened in the States. You used to define yourself as an American 100 years ago as a South Carolinian or a New Yorker, but today your primary locus of identity is as an American when you deal with the rest of the world. This was the failure of Lebanon – instead of geographically defining the states, the individual community boundaries within Lebanon don’t allow for that drift, so what they’ve ended up with is kind of ossified sectarian structure.

So I don’t think it will be perfect, I don’t it will be easy, but the idea is that you grant people equal rights and give them the freedom to move back and forth across borders. They won’t initially, but they will eventually. That’s been the American experience.

On the political future of the one-state solution:

I heard an Israeli speak recently, an older guy, an activist, and he mentioned the one-state solution is about where he remembers the two-state solution was in the seventies. And so it’s really about changing discourse, changing people’s thought patterns. Lots of people will come into the one-state conversation because they’ve realized the two-state solution is unworkable and that apartheid is just not something they are capable of supporting.  We’ll achieve a critical mass. It’s impossible to predict how or when, but two states isn’t going to work and apartheid isn’t going to work. And so you can arrive at this position by default even if you don’t actually believe it’s the best thing anyway.

On cultural autonomy in one democratic state:

People talk about a unitarian model where it would be just one man/one vote and I think that’s a great model to think about. My biggest concern there would be preservation of cultural autonomy, which I think many people at this stage really, really value in that part of the world. Palestinians don’t want to give up what it means to be a Palestinian and I think Jewish Israelis have developed a Jewish kind of culture. I don’t know whether its an Ashkenazic culture or a Sephardic culture, I don’t know. It’s not for me to decide. But there is an Israeli culture and I think those people want to preserve it. And when American Jewish people talk about Jewish culture in Israel, that’s something they’d like to be capable of accessing. And so I’m concerned that the unitary system may not permit the kind of cultural autonomy that many people would like.

But we’re still in the early stages of imagining what it could look like and the question of how to get there really does hinge on people of good will standing up and saying no to apartheid.

On the Palestinian right of return:

The right of return today for the Palestinians is actually about the right to be able to go back and live in Palestine. Lots of people still remember native villages which no longer exist, so the practicalities of it are difficult to map out.

The right of return for the diaspora is more about, I think, official recognition of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and in the period leading up to May 15 1948. It’s an official apology, reparations where appropriate and possible and just recognition. And I think the Jewish people probably understand this better than anybody. Once a historical injustice has been done to you as a people, recognition matters. Apologies matter. Reparations matter. Even symbolic measures matter a great deal.

When it comes to the practical implementation of the right of return, (Palestinian researcher) Salman Abu-Sitta has done really great work on identifying where refugees could return to.  Eitan Bronstein of Zochrot, an Israeli organization, has also done a lot of great work on the right of return…

Who do I believe will return to Palestine? I think most of us will not. The Palestinians in the diaspora have done pretty well for themselves. Palestinians in Jordan have done pretty well, the ones in Western Europe, in Latin America, in Northern America are doing pretty well. I think you could draw a direct analogy to the Jewish American diaspora. You want to go you want to visit, you want to go and hang out on the beach and go home to where you’re from.

The only missing group of Palestinian refugees who will actually return to Palestine if they have the opportunity are the 300,000 or 400,000 Palestinian refugees who live in Lebanon. Their lot really is very, very poor and the Lebanese state is racist in many ways in the way they interact with Palestinians there – it’s inexcusable, but that’s also the reality. And given the opportunity I think many of them will leave their squalid and impoverished camps and return to Palestine. But everywhere else, I think you’ll get kind of a vibrant interaction with a diaspora community and the country itself, which I think mirrors, in many ways, the Jewish experience.

I’ve sung the praises of Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird before; my favorite “Punk Cabaret, Radical Yiddish, Gothic, American Folk, Klezmer Danse Macabre” band. Been listening a lot to their latest album, “Lost Causes” – particularly a brilliant ditty called “Inner Emigration.” This song is simultaneously a meditation on identity politics, a treatise on the absurd reality of national borders, but ultimately, I think, a blistering diatribe against the way we all assent to our own inner/outer oppression. It’s also catchy as hell.

Click above for a clip of Kahn performing the song solo in Tel Aviv. Click below for the lyrics. (The song is truly a text study in itself…)

“Inner Emigration”
by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird

Prepare yourself to swallow all your diamonds and your rings.
And all your ‘tiquey, shiny, windy things.
Don’t scare yourself, the photos in the newspapers are blurred,
the radio is broadcasting a word.
Beware yourself, the neighbors aren’t neighbors anymore.
They’re leaning with a glass against your door.
Take care of yourself and hoist into the air your disbelief.
Just go ahead and give yourself relief.

Get ready for your inner emigration, get ready to be alien inside.
Consider all your social obligations, the borders of your foreign order bride.
You won’t ever have to leave your nation.
You won’t have to even try.
Just make a secret emigration and you won’t ever have to say goodbye.

Now Hanna was at home in the Berlin cabarets of ’32.
But in ’33 the weather turned and the brownshirts all turned loose.
The rumors they were bad, her sozie lover Alex was getting scared.
He heard his name was on a list for having red friends and brown hair.
He wanted to get out and Hanna could have gone with him to his family in Ukraine.
But instead she took a walk out in the rain through her Berlin
and thought about how this weather, it would pass
and how things had always worked out in the past.

She made a kind of inner emigration.
She started to feel alien inside.
With all the social marginalizations her sense of place was starting to be tried.
But she couldn’t bear abandoning her nation.
She didn’t want it all to pass her by.
So people make their inner emigrations,
till one by one they have to say goodbye.

Well Sasha had heard about the emigratzia,
and the talk wasn’t just in the family anymore.
But in the Kharkov streets there was a kind of thaw.
“We’re going home!” said old Saminsky,
when he filed his application to leave
and Anya already had family in Tel Aviv.

But Sasha didn’t know:
two hundred years among Slavs being called “Hebrews,”
he knew they’d only be called “Russians” by the Jews.
And then on the Prospekt Lenina ovtobus
He heard the Saminskys lost their apartment and denied their pass.
The weather seemed like it was never going to pass.

He chose to make an inner emigration.
He chose to keep his alien inside.
And all the bureaucratic frustrations
he chose to keep his status bona fide.
And what’s the bother of finding a new nation?
A border isn’t art, it’s just a frame.
Just make a secret inner emigration,
the holy land and exile are the same.

Anat was a Sabra,
the daughter of a Sephardic Kibbutznik nurse
and a Yekke lawyer from Bonn.
She fell in love with Khais,
born in a PLO refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
They married in Cyprus.
He almost got arrested living with her family in Ramat Gan,
so she tried wrapping her hair and serving coffee with his family in Hebron
but that didn’t work either.

Then they thought about leaving to live with her cousin David in Brooklyn
but he and his boyfriend Patrick wanted to get married
and were moving to Berlin.
So she went to the Jaffa beach and stared at the sea
and thought about how someday all of this would pass,
if only she could find someone to help Khais pass.

Should she make an inner emigration?
Tell me what you think she should decide.
Considering the couple’s situation
she’d be better off as someone else’s bride.
She and he comprise a kind of nation,
the kind we build inside when we’re alone.
But if they just make inner emigrations,
then they’ll only have a home when they’re at home.

Compare yourself.
What does this all have to do with you?
How does your experience ring true?
You’re where, yourself?
You aren’t suffering anyone’s regime.
You’re free to follow every little dream.
Be fair to yourself. You needn’t be oppressed to feel alone.
You don’t have to be driven from your home
to spare yourself from feeling like a part of the control
with an internal diplomatic role.

Make a kind of inner emigration.
It’s a kind of shift accomplished easily.
We all have made our disassociations,
whether on the job or in our family.
What could be more irrelevant than nations,
when everywhere you go it’s buy or sell?
But if we make only inner emigrations,
then everything will only go to hell.

I’ve always believed that in the wake of the Holocaust, the popular Jewish imperative “Never Again” shouldn’t just apply exclusively to Jews, but to all peoples everywhere.  While it might come out of our particular experience, it must be considered a universal imperative. Since we Jews know first hand about such things, never again can we remain silent when any people’s existence is threatened by murderous regimes.

To be completely fair, however, it’s easy enough to determine to not stand idly by in the face of government-sponsored brutality – but it’s quite another to determine what in fact should be done.  Our current military operations in Libya provide the perfect case in point.

Among the many pieces I’ve read on these horrible developments, I was interested to learn that Ban Ki-Moon had in fact invoked “Never Again” while discussing Libya during a recent tour of the US Holocaust Museum. And it was extremely significant to me to learn that National Security Advisor Samantha Powers – an eloquent voice of conscience on the subject of genocide – was among those who urged Obama to support military action against the Kadaffi regime.

However, while I do indeed believe in “Never Again,” and while it has been increasingly agonizing to read the tragic reports coming out of Libya, I must reluctantly admit I do not support our military operations there.

First, and probably foremost, whatever is happening in Libya, it is not close to the scale of a genocide. If that sounds overly crass, it is worth asking why we are eager to engage militarily with Libya yet have chosen not to act on behalf of Cote D’Ivoire, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or any number of other countries whose governments are committing atrocities that are no less brutal than Kadaffi’s (and in some cases more so.)

On this point, Israeli journalist Yael Lavie comes to a fairly blunt conclusion:

Call me a cynic, call me a product of the Middle East or better yet a citizen of this region who witnessed the outcome of western intervention over the course of the last 20 years – but the war that has just begun is not just. It is not being waged to stop the Libyan people from being killed. If that were the case we can name many ongoing genocides around the world, such as the decade long holocaust in the Sudan, where no western UN resolution motivated military action has ever been taken and ask why now?

As it stands right now we may be facing another attempt by the west for enforcing regime change in the Middle East with the usual western personal agenda – the agenda of oil. There is one thing recent history has proven to us time and time again – Where there is no oil, there is no intervention.

Even if one doesn’t share Lavie’s level of cynicism, we’d do well to ask whether or not it’s our place to engage militarily with every oppressive regime around the world.  Especially given our recent history of military regime change with Muslim nations, our operations in Libya might at least give us cause for concern.

As for me, I believe it is profoundly ill-advised for our country to pursue yet another war against an Arab country. While it is true that the Arab League voted to back a no-fly zone, that support is already waning now that air strikes are killing Libyan civilians.  Make no mistake: we are now waging war in Libya.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, as usual, hit this point right on the head on the eve of the UN Security Council vote:

While the action is billed as protecting the civilians of Libya, a no-fly-zone begins with an attack on the air defenses of Libya and Qaddafi forces. It is an act of war. The president made statements which attempt to minimize U.S. action, but U.S. planes may drop U.S. bombs and U.S. missiles may be involved in striking another sovereign nation. War from the air is still war…

The last thing we need is to be embroiled in yet another intervention in another Muslim country. The American people have had enough. First it was Afghanistan, then Iraq. Then bombs began to fall in Pakistan, then Yemen, and soon it seems bombs could be falling in Libya. Our nation simply cannot afford another war, economically, diplomatically or spiritually.

None of this is meant to diminish the sacrosanct imperative of “Never Again.” But beyond the moral absolutes there are difficult and painful questions we must face when confronted with human rights abusing nations: when should we deem it necessary to authorize the use of military force? Why are we compelled to act in some cases but not others? To what extent are our decisions motivated less by need than by national self-interest?

I’ll give the final word to a recent Nation editorial:

(There) is a worrying dimension to this intervention, in that it reflects a mindset that associates US foreign policy, whether alone or as part of an allied force, with heroic crusades to bring down the bad guys. But it is exactly that mindset that has done so much damage in the Middle East over the years and that has saddled us with the costly burdens of two ongoing wars in Muslim lands. And Washington’s support for military action in Libya, on avowedly humanitarian grounds, should call into question ever more sharply the cynical American acquiescence in brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain.

The democratic awakening in the Arab world presents the United States with an opportunity to put that past behind us. It offers us a chance to align our interests with democratic change and economic progress. It would be a tragedy if we allowed the intervention in Libya to distract us from these difficult and important challenges. We need to deal with longstanding allies like Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia—which continue to resist democratic reforms—and to help the Egyptian people consolidate democracy and create jobs and economic opportunity. The most productive role for America in the Middle East today is diplomatic and economic, not military.

Here’s the IHC’s description of the program from their website:

We found pairs of people who know each other but who disagree on an issue and asked if we could record their conversation on the issue – but with a bit of a twist. We told our pairs they couldn’t debate, argue or challenge a point. They could only take turns asking each other questions, and listening to the answers. The goal would be, not to make a point or counterpoint, but to better understand why the other person thinks the way they do. What personal experiences shaped their opinion on this issue? Did they always have this opinion and if not, what changed their mind on the issue? Where do they get information that guides their opinion on the issue?

Perhaps you too have grown weary of the shouting matches, rancor and recriminations that characterize much of the public debate on contemporary issues. While we aren’t claiming to single-handedly remedy that, we’re hoping that Ask Me Why can serve as a reminder that thoughtful deliberation and disagreement involves not just making your point, but listening to and understanding those with whom you disagree.

The latest “Ask Me Why” interview” features a conversation between me and Boris Furman, a longtime friend and a congregant at JRC. Boris and I agreed to take on the rather charged question: is a Jewish state essential to the future security and well being of the Jewish people?

The final five minute program is only a tiny fraction of our hour-long conversation. Although our actual interview was quite wide-ranging, producer Robin Amer really did a nice job of paring the conversation down to its essence. The final version highlights the more personal moments in which we share a bit about our own Jewish identities and what we believe it means to be a Jew in a post-Holocaust world.

Click here to give a listen. It’s obviously only a small taste of a much longer conversation, but I hope at least it might help to provide a model of civil, respectful Jewish discourse on a profoundly painful issue.

For matter how painful the prospect, I don’t think we can afford to dodge this question. If we agree that the inequitable distribution of power and privilege is a critical problem for us and for our world, then there will inevitably be times in which we are faced with an intensely difficult question: does tribal loyalty trump solidarity with the oppressed?

Actually, I’m coming to believe that this is not the best way to frame the question. I don’t really think it’s all that helpful to view this issue as some kind of zero-sum game; to see it as a question of tribal allegiance; to insist that I either stand with my own people or I don’t. I prefer to say it this way: that it is in my self interest as a Jew to stand in solidarity with the oppressed because I believe that Jews cannot be fully human while they benefit from a system that denies others their own humanity. For those with power and privilege, the struggle against racism and oppression is fought knowing that our own liberation is also at stake.

Click below to read the entire sermon:

What’s the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? There are many different ways to answer that question. Some see the Jewish New Year as a celebration of rebirth – and Yom Kippur as the day we do the work that helps us enter the new year reborn anew. Others hear the shofar of Rosh Hashanah as a spiritual wake up call and Yom Kippur as a time to arise from our slumber and return to the path from which we’ve strayed.

I’ve been increasingly coming to understand these two festivals in a different way: Rosh Hashanah is that day we focus on Malchuyot – God’s sovereignty. On Rosh Hashanah we acknowledge a Power greater than own and honestly face the limits of our own power. On Yom Kippur, we look seriously at how we use our power. We ask ourselves: in what ways has our power corrupted us? In what ways have we wielded our power destructively? And most important: what can we do – what must we do – to transform our power from a corrupting force into power that might transform our world?

In thinking about this particular theme this Yom Kippur, I’ve find myself getting drawn back to a deeper and more inexorable issue – that is, namely the ways in which we are all part of a system of power and privilege. And I’m increasingly coming to realize that we can’t really analyze our own power without recognizing the underlying structures of power imbalance that are so indelibly imprinted in our world.

We all naturally want power to be used for the good and the benefit for all. We all believe racism and sexism and homophobia to be oppressive. These aren’t particularly controversial claims. But beyond our good intentions and our well-intentioned actions, I can’t help but ponder how so many of us take our own power and privilege for granted. How we use and abuse power in ways we can’t even begin to grasp.

So if Yom Kippur is indeed the time for us to think honestly about the ways we wield our power, I’d like to take a little bit of time today to explore this issue more deeply. I’d like to examine how structures of power affects each and every one of us; how they influence our thoughts and how they determine our actions. I’d like to unpack how privilege affects our lives in so many fundamental ways. And in particular, I’d like to look carefully at how these complex inform and define us as Jews.

When defining the meaning of privilege, the first thing we need to consider is that it is always found in relationship with another. When I use the word “privilege” in this way, I refer to the benefits one party gains at the expense of another. Moreover, many of these benefits are by definition unearned.

Let’s us me as an example, I am white, male, heterosexual and born into an upper middle-class family. Every one of these factors afford me a myriad of unearned benefits that are simply unavailable to others in my community with whom I am in relationship either directly or indirectly.

The other important thing about privilege is that it is almost always invisible and unseen to the privileged party. I would daresay even those of us among the privileged who consider ourselves to be generally sensitive, enlightened and progressive people have no clue about the ways we take our privilege for granted.

To use but one example, here are some of the benefits that automatically accrue to me for the simple fact of my being a heterosexual:

The state automatically gives me the right to get married, along with the tangible benefits and protections that come with it. As a straight person, I will never experience prejudice directed toward me due to my sexual orientation; I don’t have to fear being estranged from my family because of my heterosexuality; I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my sexual orientation won’t work against me; I can be open about my heterosexuality without worrying about my job; I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people stare or possibly harass me.

Even though I intellectually understand these privileges, I must confess they are largely invisible to me on a day to day basis. That’s why in the end, the idea of privilege is bigger than just a list of unearned benefits. It’s critically important for us to grasp how these privileges affect our daily lives, our careers, our education. In what ways do we benefit from a myriad of unearned privileges without ever even realizing it?

All made more complicated because we are all essentially made up of multiple identities. Since our identities intersect, there is not necessarily always a one to one correspondence between advantage and disadvantage. For example, if someone is poor but is also white they may not have class privilege, but as a white person, it is likely that this person will have an easier time of it than a person of color with the same income level. To one extent or another, we are all advantaged and disadvantaged at the same time. Having said this, however, it cannot be denied that there are those, in sum total, who enjoy significant unearned advantage over others.

For Jews as a group it is even more complicated. I would suggest that overall, our identity is predicated on disadvantage and the experience of oppression. After all, our most central sacred narratives occur in the context of powerlessness. “Avadim hayinu – we were slaves.” We were exiled from our land following quintessential tragedy of our people: the churban – the destruction of the Temple. These are more than just stories: they go to the heart of our collective self image. These narratives form the very DNA of our sacred traditions and rituals.

Moreover, the resonance of our historical experience – the tragic legacy of anti-semitism that culminated in the Holocaust– affects us no less deeply. I once said in a sermon several years ago that to be Jewish post-Holocaust means to live with collective PTSD – and indeed, it’s a condition that affects our identity and our relation to the world in so many profound ways.

At the same time, however, I believe this legacy of powerlessness is largely at odds with our contemporary reality. Quite frankly, the truth is that right now it’s actually a pretty good time to be Jewish. Although we’re often loathe to admit it, collectively speaking we currently enjoy a level of security, power and privilege at levels almost unprecedented in Jewish history.

Here in America, we’ve succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. We constitute one of the most educated, economically secure and politically organized minorities in the country. Given the relatively small percentage of Jews in the US, we’re inordinately well represented in the corporate, academic, political and professional worlds. Anti-semitism has long ceased to be a meaningful impediment to Jewish advancement. It is difficult, if not impossible, to claim that being Jewish is in any significant way a liability in the United States of America today.

Now I’m sure many might argue that our empowerment in this country is not completely unearned, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. Like many other ethnic minorities that immigrated to the US, much of what the Jewish community has accomplished has been the result of hard work and very real sacrifice. But at the same time, we cannot deny that by and large, those who have since been born into the Jewish community are firmly a part of this country’s power structure – and as such we enjoy many of the benefits and privileges that come with that power. And at the very least we should serious thought to what this privilege is doing to our communal priorities and our relationship to other communities around us.

I’ve sometimes joke semi-facetiously that one of the cardinal sins of being Jewish is to admit that we actually have power. After all, for so long our very identity has been rooted in our powerlessness. Take that away from us and what are we left with? And further: if we’re now part of the majority power structure, could that possibly mean that we have now become our own worst nightmare – namely, God forbid, that we are now on the side of the oppressor?

Here’s a telling historical anecdote: back in the late 1960s there was growing tension in Black-Jewish relations. As Jews joined the white flight from urban centers to the suburbs and the Black Power movement began to grow, the coalition that had been built and nurtured in the Civil Rights movement was rapidly breaking down. Many Jews felt betrayed by what they experienced as anti-semitism from former allies. And many blacks felt that Jews had now become a part of the a racist white power structure that was at the root of their oppression.

It was around this time that James Baldwin wrote a famous essay entitled “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They Are Anti-White.” When I first read this essay many years ago it had a powerful effect upon me – and over the years I’ve found myself returning to his challenging words again and again.

This is what he wrote:

In the American context, the most ironical thing about Negro anti-semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man – for having become, in effect, a Christian. The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro’s understanding. It increases the Negro’s rage.

For it is not here, and not now, that the Jew is being slaughtered, and he is never despised here, as the Negro is, because he is an American. The Jewish travail occurred across the sea and America rescued him from the house of bondage. But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no country can rescue him. What happens to the Negro here happens to him because he is an American.

This is what I take from these words: in many ways, to be a Jew today means to live with a kind of bifurcated identity. We continue to be shaped by our memories of past powerlessness, but as Baldwin correctly pointed out, in America we benefit in so many ways from the privileges that come with power. For my part, I’ve come to believe that it is politically and morally disingenuous of us to keep playing both sides of that card. As Jews, we would do well to ask: can we, should we honestly have it both ways?

In my opinion, this cognitive dissonance represents a critical challenge for the Jewish community in the 21^st century America. We currently enjoy unprecedented Jewish power and privilege. How will we choose to wield it?

Speaking for myself I’m increasingly coming to believe that it’s my obligation to recognize our power and privilege for what it truly is. To identify the ways that Jewish power privileges us in this country. I also believe that if we do this with frankness and honesty, then it becomes our responsibility to use our privilege to shift power in a more just and equitable direction.

How do we do this? For me, the answer is relatively straightforward: to stand in solidarity, as Jews, with all who are oppressed.

Now I realize this answer is not necessarily as straightforward as it sounds. In the first place, when the privileged and powerful decide to stand in solidarity with those with less power we make choices that are counter intuitive – choices that might not be of direct benefit to our own self-interest.

Here is one example. Many of you know, I’m sure, that I’ve become increasingly involved in the issue of immigrant justice. One day, about two years ago in which I was asked to offer a blessing at an interfaith vigil in solidarity with undocumented immigrants slated for deportation. As I stood waiting to speak, I was chatting with a priest who served a predominantly Latino parish. At one point he said something to the effect of, “What are you doing here?”

Or at least that was how I remember hearing his comment. I know he meant it as a compliment – but I also experienced his remark as a way of pointing out that unlike the Latino community, the Jewish community is not directly affected by this issue. I admit that when he said that comment, there was part of me that asked myself, “well, why am I here?” Is it out of middle class liberal guilt? Is it out of nostalgia? Is it because as a Jew, I’m seeking props from other ethnic communities?

But in the end, I reminded myself that no, I’m here because as a Jewish American, I’m the grandson of immigrants myself. I’m here because as a Jew, the struggle for immigrant justice benefited my own family and my own people at not long ago and that “there but for the grace of God.” And that while I might be tempted to say, “well this is not really my issue any more,” now that I have power and privilege in this country, I have an obligation to use it justly. And the primary way I can do this is to stand unabashedly in solidarity with those who do not share my privilege.

There can be no doubt that for Jews, I there will be times in which the prospect of solidarity work challenges us to our very core. Times which may force us to wrestle with own sense of tribal loyalty and allegiance. These are the times, indeed, in which we might have to consider whether or not we have actually, God forbid, become oppressors ourselves.

Still, I’m finding that solidarity work is becoming more and more important to my own spiritual vision as a Jew and as as a rabbi. It has come to inform much of the work I do in the greater community, from immigrant justice to worker justice to standing in solidarity with Palestinians. I know this latter issue in particular is enormously challenging for many – and in truth, it is for me as well. I’m well aware that the prospect of Palestinian solidarity work presents a profound challenge to the Jewish community. Nevertheless I will continue to try, in some small way, to put the difficult issues of Israeli power and privilege onto the Jewish radar screen. I also hope at least it might challenge us to have honest conversations about these issues as painful as they are.

For matter how painful the prospect, I don’t think we can afford to dodge this question. If we agree that the inequitable distribution of power and privilege is a critical problem for us and for our world, then there will inevitably be times in which we are faced with an intensely difficult question: does tribal loyalty trump solidarity with the oppressed?

Actually, I’m coming to believe that this is not the best way to frame the question. I don’t really think it’s all that helpful to view this issue as some kind of zero-sum game; to see it as a question of tribal allegiance; to insist that I either stand with my own people or I don’t. I prefer to say it this way: that it is in my self interest as a Jew to stand in solidarity with the oppressed because I believe that Jews cannot be fully human while they benefit from a system that denies others their own humanity. For those with power and privilege, the struggle against racism and oppression is fought knowing that our own liberation is also at stake.

Although these are indeed complex issues, I’ll return to what I said earlier: in another sense it is ultimately quite straightforward. After all, what is the lesson of our most central and oft-repeated Jewish narrative? God freed us from Egyptian bondage in order to show us, to show the Egyptians and to show the world that there is a power, yes, even greater than our own human power.

God then brought us into the wilderness and invited us to construct a new form of community – a society that would be, in a sense, the polar opposite of Egypt. A community where power was wielded with justice and compassion, where the well-being of its most powerless members – the stranger, the widow and the orphan – were ensured.

If we do indeed believe these to be among the most sacred teachings of our tradition, then our community is facing a challenge of truly daunting proportions. If this is our mission, then we owe it to ourselves to face up to the choices no matter how difficult or painful. It is certainly natural to seek the path of least resistance, the way of lesser tension. But as we know from our own lives and from our history, this is not the way to true transformation. In the end, power does not give an inch without a struggle.

This Yom Kippur, let us face up to the struggle together.

Amen.

And as I think about it, perhaps this is why we read a Martyrology on Yom Kippur. As we remember our martyrs, we search our own souls and ask ourselves honestly: what have we done in the past year to prove ourselves worthy of these profound sacrifices? What have we done to affirm that these people did not die in vain? Did we indeed honor their memories by transforming loss into justice and hope for our world?

Click below to read the entire sermon:

A JRC member recently asked why we never do the Martyrology service on Yom Kippur. I wrote back to the congregant – and I’ll confess to you now: I’ve never been a huge fan of this particular liturgy.

The Martyrology, known as “Eleh Ezkarah” in Hebrew, is traditionally recited during the Yom Kippur afternoon service. The traditional version is a liturgical poem that graphically describes the execution of ten rabbis, among whom were the famous Rabbis Akiba, Ishmael and Shimon ben Gamliel. All of them were sentenced to death for their support of Bar Kochba’s failed revolt against Rome in the year 132.

The Martyrology highlights the profoundly spiritual heroism of the rabbis with the often unbearably graphic details of their executions. We read how Rabbi Akiba managed to proclaim the Shema even as his flesh was being gouged out with iron combs; Rabbi Henania ben Teradion was wrapped in a Torah scroll together with damp wool to ensure he would die a slow and painful death by burning. As the flames consumed him, he cried out to his students that he could see the letters of Torah ascending up to heaven.

Perhaps the most disturbing description comes with the execution of Rabbi Ishmael. As Ishmael wept over the dismembered head of Rabbi ben Gamliel, the emperor Hadrian’s daughter admired his beauty and asked that his life be spared. The emperor then ordered that the Ishmael’s skin be flayed from his face and preserved for posterity.

I think by now you can understand my aversion to the traditional Martyrology. But beyond the graphic imagery, I think I’m even more troubled by the theological reason for it’s inclusion in the Yom Kippur service: namely, the concept of “blood atonement.” According to this theology, we offer the lives of our martyrs in the hopes that their deaths may atone for our misdeeds. Since the destruction of the Temple, we can no longer offer animal sacrifice. But even if we aren’t worthy of God’s mercy, we pray that we may be forgiven on account of their sacrifice. According to this view, you might say, the Ten Rabbis “died for our sins.”

If this sounds familiar to you, it should. Many scholars agree that the original source for this liturgy, Midrash Eleh Ezkerah, comes from the same period and literary tradition as early Christian martyrological literature. But it’s not the Christian associations per se that trouble me – it’s the implications of the theology itself. It’s the suggestion that bloodshed atones. And in particular, it’s the idea that I can somehow be let off the hook because of the tragic death of another person.

Of course it cannot be denied that the literal act of animal sacrifice was the way Israelites originally atoned for their sins. In tomorrow’s Torah portion, we will read how Aaron the High Priest sprinkles the blood of a goat and the blood of an ox over the altar, thus making atonement for all the sins of Israel. It is indeed a powerful image and metaphor indeed, but surely we’ve long given up on the idea that God literally requires blood as a path to forgiveness. And I’m sure that the notion that God might require the bloodshed of human martyrs as an atonement offering would strike many of us as borderline sacreligious.

In more recent years, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist High Holiday liturgies have added other Jewish litanies of persecution to the Martyrology, including the horrors of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms of Eastern Europe and the Holocaust itself. But to my mind, contemporary updating only deepens the essential problem. Do we really want to mythologize these tragic events and understand them as sacred offerings? Do we actually mean to view the death of the six million as a kind of sacrifice to God for our sins? Again, I believe most of us would find such a theology to be profoundly offensive.

So while I do believe we most certainly need to remember and honor our collective Jewish losses, I’ll admit that I’ve long struggled with the concept of martyrdom. And in particular, I’ve struggled to understand how a Martyrology might fit into our Day of Atonement – a day we devote to teshuvah, to repentance, to spiritual repair for the New Year ahead.

Since I received that member’s e-mail, however, I’ve been thinking more about this issue. In many ways, I think, martyrdom it’s is a fairly loaded term. After all, every religious tradition and every community has its martyrs – the figures who are exalted for having made the ultimate sacrifice. But I’m fascinated that the term is often used today colloquially in something of a pejorative context. We’ll use the term “martyr” for someone who relishes playing the role of sufferer, usually as a form of emotional manipulation.

Even so, and even if many of us today have difficulty with the traditional religious conception of martyrdom, I wonder now if American Jews might be able to reconstruct this idea for a post-modern age. And further: I’m wondering if we might possibly find a way to create a Martyrology service that truly be appropriate and meaningful to us on this Day of Atonement.

You might be surprised to learn that martyrdom is actually promoted in certain cases by traditional Jewish law. According to halacha, it is considered preferable to sacrifice one’s life rather than publicly transgress the prohibitions against idolatry, sexual immorality or murder. For centuries, this form of martyrdom has been considered the ultimate way to honor the traditional Jewish concept of Kiddush Hashem (or “the sanctification of God’s name.”)

And clearly there are no shortage of Jewish martyrs throughout Jewish history. There are the men and women of Masada who took their own lives rather than be captured and enslaved by the Romans. In the Second Book of Maccabees we read of Hannah and her sons, who were tortured and killed by Antiochus Epiphanes when they refused to publicly eat pork. During the Inquisition, the Jews of Spain and Portugal were executed or exiled if they refused to renounce their Jewish faith.

Of course when Jews contemplate martyrdom today we cannot avoid those who perished during the Holocaust. But indeed, viewing the victims of the Shoah as martyrs presents a myriad of new complications for us. In the first place, the six million are not mythic martyrs from the distant past – they are very real individuals. They are, quite literally, our fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. Unlike the Maccabees or the Jews of the Inquisition, many of us are still personally grieving for these individuals. It isn’t such a simple matter for us to understand their deaths in the context of martyrdom and many of us wouldn’t even begin to try.

Moreover, the Holocaust marks the first time in history that Jews weren’t only killed for religious reasons – for their beliefs or their practices. They were killed because of who they were. Their martyrdom (if that is what we choose to call it) was completely and utterly involuntary. Unlike the deaths of Rabbi Akiba or Hannah, these deaths were not a result of personal action or conscience – or even of their own volition. Those who perished in the Shoah had no intention and certainly no desire to become martyrs.

The Holocaust was certainly one of the most notorious mass murders in modern history. But was it a mass martyrdom? Should we even refer to it in such a way? In thinking through these questions, I recently found turned to a teaching that some might consider to be an unlikely source – namely, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m sure all of you are familiar with an infamous event that transpired in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. It was the occasion of an involuntary martyrdom – one that has since become very important in American history . This was the day that a bomb planted by members of the KKK went off in 16^th St. Baptist Church, killing four little girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley – and injuring 22 others.

And at the funeral for three of the girls, King gave a famous address that has since been known as “Eulogy for the Martyred Children.” He said as follows:

So they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city. The holy scripture says, “A little child shall lead them.” The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man’s inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilt blood of these innocent girls may cause the while citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past in to the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed, this tragic event many cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.

Then King turned to the families of the little girls and said this:

At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

Amongst the many religious texts I’ve read on the meaning of martyrdom, I personally find King’s words to be among the most meaningful and profound. I am particularly moved by his hope, by his realism, but most of all, by his refusal to surrender to the despair that these little girls died for nothing. As daunting as it was, he was determined to find a spark of spiritual meaning in this tragic loss.

Yes, he used the imagery of blood as redemptive – but he did so in a way that affirmed goodness and justice in the face of an evil, unjust act. As horribly tragic as their deaths were, King could not but affirm that their deaths would, as he put it, “serve as a redemptive force” that would eventually bring new light during those very dark times.

However: while King did believe that the loss of these innocents would ultimately bring freedom that much closer, he did not for a second suggest that God somehow required their blood to bring justice to the world. Ever the consummate pastor, King turned to the families of the little girls. Even after affirming their deaths would contribute to the cause of justice, he acknowledged the injustice of their families’ pain. After all, while these four girls had become martyrs to the world, to their loved ones they were daughter, sisters, granddaughters and friends. They were, very simply, Denise, Addie Mae, Carole, and Cynthia.

So yes, King said, “life can be hard, as hard as crucible steel.” Life can be tragic; life can be filled sorrow that feels sometimes feels utterly unbearable. But where is God in the midst of this families’ sorrow? God certainly didn’t receive their deaths as a kind of “sacrificial offering.” Rather, King said, “God walks with us.” God is the Spirit of compassion and strength that lifts us from “fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope,” that transforms “dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.”

As I read these words, I can think of no better way to remember all whom we consider to be martyrs. We begin affirming meaning in the face of tragedy and loss. We affirm justice even amidst the pain of the injustice. We mourn our loss, and finally, we do what we must to bring some kind of meaning to our loss – to ensure that these deaths were not in vain.

And as I think about it, perhaps this is why we read a Martyrology on Yom Kippur. As we remember our martyrs, we search our own souls and ask ourselves honestly: what have we done in the past year to prove ourselves worthy of these profound sacrifices? What have we done to affirm that these people did not die in vain? Did we indeed honor their memories by transforming loss into justice and hope for our world?

To put it more specifically: as we recall our Jewish ancestors who died for practicing their faith, we must ask: have we done what we can to ensure that Judaism – this exquisite spiritual tradition of ours – will be passed on to future generations? When we tell of those who died in pursuit of political freedom, we must admit openly: how we have failed to ensure that these freedoms are extended to all in our nation and our world? And as we mourn the lives of six million lost, we must ask ourselves honestly: how can it be that more than sixty years after the Shoah, sixty years after this most radical form of inhumanity, sixty years of saying “Never Again,” we still continue to remain silent in the face of genocide?

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve begun to envision a new kind of Martyrology service: one that honors our dead but also one that challenges and awakens us to action. And since we are not only Jews, but also Americans and citizens of the world, I believe it would be critical to include non-Jewish martyrs as well: American figures such as, yes, the four young girls from Birmingham or, sadly, Dr. Martin Luther King himself. Or courageous figures from around the world, people such as Stephen Biko, whose death became a rallying cry against South African apartheid. Such a service might also provide us with the opportunity to learn more about international human rights heroes in our own day and consider how we might honor their memories.

Clearly, the individuals we choose to include would reflect our own values – and I’d welcome the opportunity to explore together what a JRC Martyrology service might eventually look like. In the meantime, we have added a section to tomorrow afternoon’s Yizkor service that will give us the opportunity to honor the memory of the six million. Among other things, it includes these powerful words of the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, who survived World World II in Vilna and died only this past January at the age of 96:

Survivors! Inherit, with your happiness,

The tears of each of us, flickering in that vise

Remember: Inhale our dying.

Never forget: Be martyrs to life.

I invite you now to think for yourselves: Who are the courageous individuals whose sacrifices inspire you be “martyrs to life?” How will you honor their memory? What will you do in the coming year to bring meaning to their sacrifice?

When we honor our martyrs on Yom Kippur we stand up against hopelessness and fear. Yes, it is natural to be fearful in a world that sometimes feels as hard as crucible steel. But as long as there are survivors who will bear witness to the sacrifices of those who have gone before us, it seems to me, we do our part to keep their dreams of peace and justice alive.

I’d like to close now with a quote from a another contemporary martyr: El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered in 1980 for courageously promoting freedom and justice in his country. In the coming year and the years beyond, may we all prove ourselves worthy of his words:

Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.

And to that let us all say,

Amen.

Really interesting article from the Travel Section of last Sunday’s NY Times on the rebirth of the historic city of Wroclaw, Poland, which is described as “one of Eastern Europe’s emerging hot spots, primed for cafe culture and a vibrant night-life scene.”

I was particularly interested to read about Wroclaw’s recently gentrified Jewish quarter:

In recent years, Wroclaw’s formerly neglected Old Jewish Quarter, with Wlodkowica street as its anchor, has become one of the city’s hippest neighborhoods, thanks largely to the work of Bente Kahan, a Jewish-Norwegian singer who serves as founding artistic director of the Jewish Cultural and Education center of the White Stork, the city’s only remaining synagogue.

The 19th-century White Stork was once the center of one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany. Since 2005, when Ms. Kahan assumed directorship and started a private foundation to finance community efforts, the White Stork has seen extensive renovations. On May 6 the synagogue will officially reopen to the public at a ceremony unveiling a permanent installation about the history of Jewish life in Wroclaw.

BTW: The White Stork Synagogue was the focus of a fascinating 2001 documentary, “From Kristallnacht to Crystal Day: A Synagogue in Wroclaw Glows Again.”  The film documents “the re-emergence of Jewish life in today’s post-communist Wroclaw, making the synagogue not only an historical monument but also a center and springboard for the continuity of the community.”

Check out The  White Stork pre-restoration, above.  Below you’ll find a more recent pic of The Stork decked out in all her post-restoration glory.

An excerpt:

It is interesting to note how two very different sets of “responses” to the Shoah are heard frequently amongst Jews here in Israel and around the world. These two different responses reflect a shared sense of urgent necessity in responding here today because of what happened there then. At the same time they demonstrate almost opposite worldviews and understandings of Israel’s purpose, and lead toward totally inverse political perspectives and often contradictory activist involvements.

One response is that, essentially, Israel must do anything it wants or needs to do in order to defend itself from hateful enemies set on perpetrating a second holocaust by destroying both the Jewish State and the Jewish People along with it.

The other response is that precisely because of our experience as Jews in the Holocaust and through our history littered with injustice and tragedy, we ourselves must make sure that Israel of all places is a nation that stringently safeguards human rights even in the most difficult of circumstances and establishes, in the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, a nation that “foster[s] the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; [a nation] based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

Indeed, both the physical and spiritual security of the Jewish People and the State of Israel is best guaranteed by the strength of Israel’s democracy and the rule of just law, its commitment to human rights, and – ultimately – to the achievement of peace.

On this day in which we recall the Jewish people’s loss of human rights, let us ensure that the Jewish state embodies these rights on behalf of all its citizens.

On this day in which we remember the tragedy of our people, may we redouble our efforts on behalf of all people who dwell on earth…

Last week, as Wiesel unveiled an anti-Ahmadinejad ad with other Nobel Prize laureates, he blasted the Goldstone report, calling it “a crime against the Jewish people.”  Leaving aside the issue that he took this opportunity once again to speak on behalf of the entire Jewish people, I’m still somewhat staggered that Wiesel, of all people, would use such charged Holocaust rhetoric in such a patently political manner. (I think Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam hit it right on the head when he asked, “What was the last event in world history you can recall being a ‘crime against the Jewish people?’”)

If this wasn’t enough, now I read on Max Blumenthal’s blog that Wiesel’s foundation received $500,000.00 for one speech he delivered at the church of fundamentalist Christian Zionist John Hagee (whom he referred to as “my dear pastor.”) Yes, this is the same John Hagee who publicly sermonized that Hitler was sent by God to create the Holocaust so that Jews would emigrate to Israel.  It’s simply astonishing to me that so many Jewish leaders are perfectly willing to cozy up to the likes of Hagee even after it has become so patently clear that his views are way off the rails. (That’s Wiesel, above, with Hagee, right, and Israeli minister Uzi Landau, left).

As far as I’m concerned, Justice Richard Goldstone is precisely the kind of courageous Jewish moral hero that Wiesel himself purports to be: someone committed to advocating for universal human rights even when doing so might mean holding our own community painfully to account.  As for Wiesel, I’m finding his words and actions increasingly craven. No one begrudges him his opinions – but it’s time he dropped the pretense that he’s somehow beyond the political fray.

I’ve been reading and listening to Howard Zinn’s work since learning of his death last week – and I’m become increasingly saddened at just what we’ve lost in his passing.  Here are just a few pieces that have moved me tremendously:

- Click above to see a clip in which Zinn  shares his thoughts on human nature and aggression.

- My friend Mark Braverman has posted a powerful and important piece by Zinn on the legacy of the Holocaust. An exerpt:

I would never have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to go into the past and never emerge, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in my time. If the Holocaust was to have any meaning, I thought, we must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time. We must atone for our allowing the Jewish Holocaust to happen by refusing to allow similar atrocities to take place now—yes, to use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.

- One of his many columns for The Progressive, this one published four days after 9/11:

We need to imagine that the awful scenes of death and suffering we are now witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies. We need to understand how some of those people will go beyond quiet anger to acts of terrorism.

We need new ways of thinking. A $300 billion dollar military budget has not given us security. Military bases all over the world, our warships on every ocean, have not given us security. Land mines and a “missile defense shield” will not give us security. We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people or their own people. We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians of the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

Our security can only come by using our national wealth, not for guns, planes, bombs, but for the health and welfare of our people – for free medical care for everyone, education and housing guaranteed decent wages and a clean environment for all. We can not be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding them.

We should take our example not from our military and political leaders shouting “retaliate” and “war” but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, not vengeance but compassion.

Zichrono Livracha – may the memory of this righteous man be for a blessing.  And may we continue his work of bearing witness through our words and deeds…