Mondoweiss

It's hard to campaign against intermarriage when you're voting for Obama

In the Forward, Isaac Luria, 26, of J Street goes after Foxman, David Harris and Malcolm Hoenlein, saying that the old guard don't get it, and young Jews are making a new identity. "Continuity" in this excerpt is the concern with Jewish survival, which usually translates to the organizational efforts to stop intermarriage (which grew out of the Jewish survey in 1990 indicating that over half of young Jews were marrying out).

Many of these new communities and organizations are more committed to making Judaism personally meaningful than to simply pursuing Jewish continuity, and aren’t necessarily housed inside traditional Jewish institutions (though they may be funded by forward-thinking Jewish philanthropies). Many of us who are active in these new endeavors are connected to and care about Israel. We hope for a lasting peace, and believe that both sides must play a role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For many young Jews, Obama embodies our values. He leads an interconnected world, dealing with myriad and difficult problems pragmatically and honestly. As a symbol of a new era of racial relations, he is uniquely positioned to help peacefully resolve ethnic strife and conflict abroad.

Are Jews the new WASPs? Mebbe so

The Senate Judiciary Committee is charged with the serious ruling-class responsibility -- or masquerade as it turns out-- of vetting Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Given the supremacy of the Democratic Party these days, there are 12 Democrats and only 7 Republicans on the committee; and I count seven of my people among the Democrats: Kohl, Feinstein, Feingold, Cardin, Franken, Schumer and Specter. (Yes I misidentified Specter as a Republican the other day). An eighth senator, Kaufman, has Jewish heritage.

Whatever the standing of the Christian right in the Republican Party (and Frank Rich and I say it has sat down), there are as many Jews on this committee as there are Republicans; and many of these Jews have expressed an identification with Israel. Franken, locked in an election dispute last January, defended Israel's savage actions in Gaza (as did his opponent, Norm Coleman, a former Senator, also Jewish). The fact that non-Jewish politicians express the same sentiments has a lot to do with Jewish power in the Establishment, in political giving, in the media, in thinktanks, in lobbies--and in turn with Jewish identity, which has been constructed in the last 50 years to entail what Dershowitz calls the "secular religion" of supporting a militarist state that treats its minority as second-class citizens and worse. 

Back to sociology. These numbers should prompt Jews to reflect: How much power do we have in American society? Is it appropriate to think of ourselves as outsiders, or "a minority"? How significant is anti-Semitism (the basis of the Zionist idea) in America? Do those of us in the media who write about sociological issues have a responsibility to address these issues? (And yes I mean David Brooks, socio-trend-tracker par excellence, who has been to Israel 12 times out of "gooey-eyed" identification, and who can spot a WASP at 1000 meters and write about his drinking habits and other mannerisms.) 

And what if those seven Jewish senators all said to their children, in line with Jewish organizational edicts, I don't want you to marry non-Jews? I wonder what Sonia Sotomayor would make of that.

(Notice I haven't said a word about wealth, another important indicator of power in a capitalist society, and of marital attraction, too... some other time.)

Seham: What Palestinians say is meaningless unless a Jew of conscience signs off on it first (ugh)

Seham responds to my post about the question of whether Jews agonizing over their Jewish identity is a sideshow to real engagement on Israel/Palestine:

When Jews agonize about their identity and Israel, is that an elitist tea party?

Last night we had a blowout discussion of Gaza at the Brecht Forum in New York. At the end of the night Mahmoud Bitar, a Palestinian-American, rose and in a passionate tone said "what I'm experiencing now is excitement, I actually feel optimism today," and that the meeting was historic. I don’t know that I would go that far but it was certainly a packed house, over 250 people, and an unusual combination of leftwingers, progressives, Jews and Arabs. Gaza has lit a fuse and the politics are exploding before us.

It's time for Yivo to host a debate with Walt and Mearsheimer

There's a new director at Yivo Institute for Jewish Research. A guy from the Yale Press, Jonathan Brent.

On a few occasions on this site I have challenged Yivo, which conducted a smearfest of Walt and Mearsheimer in 2007, during which they were repeatedly denounced as the second coming of Father Coughlin, to invite these non-Jewish scholars of Jewish history to the Yivo stage to defend their position. Now that David Harris of the American Jewish Committee has baited Mearsheimer to debate, then run from the debate, it ups the ante for Yivo to do the right thing.

There is other pressure on Yivo. A year ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the participants in the Yivo monsters' ball, all but recanted his position, blaming the Israel lobby for the settlements program. Other events have underlined the truth of Walt and Mearsheimer's position: the rise of J Street, as an alternative, inside the Jewish community; and Obama's repeated efforts to trianguate Jewish leadership with a push on the two-state-solution. Not an Arab or Palestinian in sight. No power.

If Jonathan Brent is at all alive to this Jewish moment (in a word, power), he will invite Walt and Mearsheimer to New York.

Can we start a brushfire re Ruth Bader Ginsburg's weird statement about abortion/eugenics?

Max Blumenthal: Feeling the hate in Tel Aviv (Huffington Post pulls the plug, again)

Update: Max Blumenthal crossed posted this video and story on The Huffington Post. Even though HuffPo promoted it this morning over their Twitter feed, it has been taken down without explanation. We'll post more as we get the details.

Max Blumenthal writes:

    On May 27, journalist Jesse Rosenfeld and I set out on the streets of Tel Aviv to probe the political opinions of young local residents. We started the day filming at Tel Aviv University, where a group of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli students gathered to protest a proposed law that would criminalize public observance of the Nakba, or the mass expulsion and killing of Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948. There, we interviewed Palestinian Israeli students about the rising climate of repression, then spoke to another group of students who gathered nearby to heckle their Arab classmates and demand their deportation. A few hundred meters away, two genial business students expressed support for the so-called Nakba law, remarking to us, “If you want to keep democracy, you can’t let people protest against the independence of the country.”

    That evening, Jesse and I took our camera to central Tel Aviv, where thousands were taking part in the annual all-night festival known as White Night. Some revelers took an intermission from the partying to express to us their hatred for the Iranian people. And a group of teenagers launched into a virtually unprompted diatribe against Barack Obama, referring to him as a Nazi, a Muslim, and a “Cushi,” which is Hebrew slang for “nigger.” When questioned about the source of his opinions, one teenager proudly declared himself a “gezan,” or a racist.

'Birthright' trip provider: Iraq war was 'great for Israel'

Excellent reporting in the New York Jewish Week on a "divorce" in the birthright program that provides free trips to Israel for American Jews, 26 and under. Gone is Shlomo "Momo" Lifshitz, the largest Israeli provider of the trips, through his organization, Oranim Birthright, who promoted the marital and rightwing political aspects of the trip too hard:

 “Oranim’s  ‘honeymoon package’ and emphasis on ‘making Jewish babies’ commit a cultural faux pas that carries the potential to damage Birthright’s image in the U.S.,” said Ruth Stein, who attended an Oranim trip in June 2007. “Such ‘religious’ choices are regarded as private matters that are none of anybody’s business.

“Momo’s lectures on the unsurpassed beauty of Jewish women, among other topics,” continued Stein, “are especially risky given the trip’s reputation as a secular option for non-religious Jews.”...
“The right-wing perspectives presented were rather unsettling, and the indoctrination was unappealing,” said a 23-year-old 2005 Oranim trip participant, who requested to remain anonymous due to his work at an American Jewish organization. “[Momo] spoke to our group, saying, ‘Some people say the Iraq war was good for Israel. Wrong. The Iraq war was great for Israel,’ representing a rather astonishingly narrow viewpoint.”

Bay area Jews say they've experienced professional and personal 'sanctions' for expressing pro-Palestinian views at gay pride parade

From the progressive site, JVoices, a report on pro-Palestinian queers' marching in the gay pride parade in San Francisco, partly to counter the message brought by the Israeli consulate:

Playwright David Zellnik on that 'huge figure,' Theodor Herzl

I've been reading Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) because he's the most important political Jew of the last century or so, giving his short life to a heroic, "tragic" cause (his word) that he never saw come to life, a cause I likely would have joined were I a European of the early 1900s. Herzl is also an amazing character: grandiose and literary, with a desolate personal life, he reinvented himself from being a newspaper feature writer to become the king of the Jews in the space of a couple of years, alienating his professional community and beginning a hellbent and unending tour of European and Asian courts, using baksheesh and journalistic connections to try and win anti-Semitic princes to Zionism.

My interest in this character is shared by playwright David Zellnik. Herzl animates Zellnik's (magnificent) play Ariel Sharon Hovers Between Life and Death and Dreams about Theodor Herzl, which I saw in workshop a couple of years back and keep waiting to see performed. I sent Zellnik an email about Herzl to begin a dialogue. He wrote:

Yes, Herzl is a huge figure, one of the most relevant to understanding the current Middle East. I don’t know why his story is so under-known, under-dramatized. There is a lot to wrestle with and a lot to admire - I have great respect for anyone trying to save lives, which he surely tried to do and surely did. And whatever his flaws, you have to give it to him: he saw very clearly that Europe’s Jews were in grave danger. 

My play is, on the whole, sympathetic to him… although the other major character in it is Ariel Sharon, and the play acts as a dialogue between the two – exploring their great differences but also their connection at opposite ends of the Zionist trajectory. And in doing so perhaps confuses some of the audience’s sympathy for Herzl (more on this later).

Herzl is commonly thought of a self-hating Jew/successful journalist who transformed himself into a Zionist prophet – who in the final 9 years of his life created a movement that would lead to the founding of Israel. My play respects this but does 2 things: it shows him as he often thought of himself – as an overlooked playwright – and also argues that his youthful self-hatred was never abandoned, merely reframed.

Herzl the Dramatist
OK, he was a lousy playwright. But the supreme irony is that while his actual plays tended to be shallow bedroom farces, he understood deeply the theatrical nature of politics. For instance, the First Zionist Congress: he made sure the Delegates wore black-tie formal wear, he “set-dressed” the casino it was held in for better press photos… and he dressed himself to look like a major leader. He knew he was operating without any firm support and so aimed to create an illusion of momentum in order to secure a state.

On a deep level he had a playwright’s desire to recast Jews from supporting players into the leads. Look at this quote from the Zionist journal: