This morning, as I do each day, I set out on foot before first light and walk between 5 and 7 miles, listen to podcasts, music, or the sound of birds in a city before traffic noise distorts the ether. As I turned onto one road in my neighborhood, tree-lined covered with a canopy of green 80 year-old maple trees, I cast a very long shadow, as shown in this photo.

The image took me back 50 years this month to the summer of 1973 in Israel.

I arrived in Israel for the first time at the end of June, in the middle of the Watergate hearings, and spent two months studying Hebrew at Ulpan Akiva in Chavatzeret HaSharon, a seaside town just north of Netanya above Tel Aviv, before beginning my first year of rabbinic school in Jerusalem. On the Ulpan (an accelerated Hebrew immersion program) were two other fellow classmates; one was already a cantor and the other, like me, destined for rabbinic ordination years later. We formed a small singing group and entertained the other students and staff of the Ulpan on Erev Shabbat each week. Included among the staff was the Ulpan founder and director, Shulamit Katznelson (1919-1999), the daughter of the legendary Zionist leader Berl Katznelsen (1887-1944).

Shulamit loved our singing so much that, without our knowledge, she contacted the Summer Netanya Festival organizers and suggested that we sing in the central square of Netanya before thousands of Israelis. She informed us of our appearance – our resistance notwithstanding – and we three sat down to decide what to sing before what was expected to be a huge Israeli crowd.

That summer, the most popular song in Israel took the lyrics (Shir baboker baboker) written by the noted Israeli poet Amir Gilboa (1917-1984) that had been set to music by Gidi Koren (b. 1947) and Shlomo Artzi (b. 1949) and sung by Shlomo Artzi (see below link to his original performance of the song). Every young Israeli knew the song’s lyrics by memory by the time we sang it at the festival. We suggested to Shulamit that we sing this song, and she approved it whole-heartedly.

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994) was the headliner of the festival open-air concert. We were his warm-up act. We were introduced, took the stage and began singing Pitom Kam Adam, and within seconds the thousands of Israelis in the square joined us.

It was an uplifting experience, to say the least. When we finished the song, the crowd went wild in its approval. Rabbi Carlebach came forward and said – “Now THAT was a great opening.”

Later on that summer, Shulamit was scheduled to appear on an Israeli Army Radio program modeled after the American popular television show “What’s My Line.” Shulamit and her assistant director, Sarah, invited me to come along. After her segment, the radio show’s host asked her about the Ulpan, what happens there, what they taught, how they taught Hebrew, who were the students (from all over the world), etc. She said, “Ar’eh l’cha. Yochanan, bevakesha, ta’aleh l’bimah (I’ll show you – John – please come up to the stage”). The room was filled with about 500 IDF soldiers. I was sitting with Sarah and she started laughing, at my expense. I said, “I can’t go up there, Sarah.” “Sure you can!” She said. “Go!”

The host said, “Yochanan – bo, bo!” (Come forward). The crowd started chanting the same – “Yochanan, bo – Yochanan bo.” I couldn’t refuse.

I had been a song leader at an American Jewish summer camp (Camp Alonim of the Brandeis Camp Institute), so I knew how to lead singing. But this was a completely new venue for me. Terrified, as I ascended the steps to the central microphone, the radio show’s host handed me a guitar, asked me a few questions (in Hebrew), and presumed that I was planning to make aliyah. I chose not to disavow him of his assumption. The crowd cheered and chanted: “Yochanan – tashir, tashir” (sing, sing).

I led a few songs including as a conclusion Pitom Kam Adam, and the soldiers joined in with full enthusiasm, voice, and spirit. The program was broadcast nationally on Army radio.

Israelis love to sing, and good poetry set to music in Israel is part of the national ethos and character. Nothing brings Israelis together more fully and lovingly than song – across ideological, religious, ethnic, and political lines.

That’s what’s needed now in the Jewish State – more singing, less polarization, more unity of purpose, less divisive politicking, more affirmation of the state’s founding generation’s vision of a Jewish democratic State of Israel, and less right-wing fanatical legislation.

Here is the chorus for Pitom Kam Adam:

פִּתְאֹם קָם אָדָם בַּבֹּקֶר וּמַרְגִּישׁ כִּי הוּא עַם וּמַתְחִיל לָלֶכֶת
וּלְכָל הַנִּפְגָּשׁ בְּדַרְכּוֹ קוֹרֵא הוּא שָׁלוֹם

“Suddenly a man gets up in the morning

And feels that he is a nation and starts to walk,

And to everyone on his way, he says shalom!”

Listen to the song here and enjoy! – https://soundcloud.com/kolramahberkshires/pitom-kam-adam

Ha’aretz Op-Ed – August 27, 2023

Note: David Grossman is an Israeli Prize winner for literature whose books have been translated into 30 languages.

“Netanyahu’s coup has unleashed a fear in Israel not seen since the Yom Kippur War. Like a tightrope walker who suddenly looks at his shoes, and then at the abyss, we are increasingly aware of the fragility of our existence here, but this time our enemies, our destroyers, have come from within.

From its very beginning, Israel has had the character of a startup. Ever since the first command, “Lekh Lekha,” go forth, there has been a drive of innovation, of going toward, of entrepreneurship and invention and creation. Israel has known hard times and existential risks, but the spirit that surged in it was that of a vibrant country, radiating originality, the unexpected, and the capacity to soar to new heights in every field.

And then came the government coup, and Israel began to lose the free and harmonious movement of a healthy body. Everything that was natural and self-evident to most of its citizens – identification with the state, the near-familial sense of belonging – is now hesitant, riddled with doubt and anxiety. While the process predates the coup, it was the coup that caused it to erupt with so much force and entirely change Israel’s reality.

Now a process of destabilization and disintegration is taking place, a shattering of the social contract and the deterioration of the military and the economy. Not only has the progress been halted, but the regression is intensifying: to reactionary attitudes of discrimination and racism; to the exclusion of women and LGBTQ people and Arabs; to ignorance and boorishness as a positive value.

And as often happens in a sick body, more and more injuries demand immediate treatment. Rising to the surface of Israeli awareness are the significance and the implications – and also the unbearable costs – of the disease of the chronic occupation; of the aberrant relations between the secular majority and the Haredi minority, as well as with the national-religious community, which is more dangerous due to the force of its extremist influence; and of the state’s volatile relations with its large Palestinian minority and its catastrophic state, and so on and so forth.

The 64 Knesset members of the governing coalition and most of their voters will disagree with me, but presumably even they, if their minds are not hermetically sealed, will find it hard to deny that Israel’s sense of strength and of almost unlimited power are vulnerable to doubts and fissures and anxieties.

For the first time in years, Israelis have began to feel what weakness means. For the first time, perhaps since the Yom Kippur War, we encountered within ourselves the thin trickle of existential fear. The fear of those whose fate is not entirely in their own hands. The fear of the weak. And even though “the people of eternity are not afraid,” it is nevertheless startling to admit that the current fear is not just a natural reaction to an external threat, and that our enemies, are destroyers, came from within.

It’s interesting: It is exactly those people who represent, in their own eyes, the strong, confident and powerful Israeliness who today evoke in Israelis a sense of fear, weakness and threat associated with the galut, the Diaspora.

Like a tightrope walker who suddenly looks at his shoes, and then at the abyss, we are becoming increasingly aware of the fragility of our existence here; of the sense that the ground is falling out from beneath our feet. Suddenly, nothing can be taken for granted. Not the camaraderie, not the spirit of sacrifice, not the “people’s army,” not the mutual responsibility, nothing. Before our horrified eyes, the one-of-a-kind state that was created here is being emptied of fundamental components of its character, of its specialness, its uniqueness.

Is there a way back from the place we have reached?

Those who despair in the face of the aggression and rapacity of the right must be reminded over and over: The protest movement is the hope, the free motion within the fixation, the creative act, the mutual responsibility, the ideological courage. It is the lifeblood of democracy. It is our and our children’s chance to live a life of liberty here. It must be maintained and fueled and adhered to, and a long-term commitment must be made to restore Israel, to rebuild it from its break, and also from its heartbreak, to get it back on its feet – until we know whether it survived or whether our catastrophe, its disease, has turned malignant.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-08-27/ty-article-opinion/.premium/as-the-judicial-coup-rages-on-israelis-are-becoming-increasingly-aware-of-their-fragility/0000018a-3346-d700-a7ef-fbf7994d0000

A long-time friend and congregant and I shared lunch this week, and as we caught up on each of our lives and families, I asked, “So how is Shanit (his wife) spending her time these days.”

Sam Schwartz proudly told me of Shanit’s one-woman show that was staged in Los Angeles last year and off-Broadway in New York earlier this year.

A long-time New York trained actress originally from Israel’s Yemenite community, Shanit Keter Schwartz is a force of nature, an expressive, brilliant, and beautiful woman whose story merges east and west, old world and new, superstition and modernity, modern Israel and ancient Yemen.

Growing up in Israel in the early 1950s in the Maabarot, tent communities filled by poverty-stricken Jewish immigrants from the Arab world following the establishment of the State of Israel, her family of five children was afflicted with the horrendous scandal of the missing Yemenite children. Two of her siblings were twins, but only the boy was brought home from the hospital. Her father, a mystic rabbinic sage from Yemen, was told that the little baby girl was sick and had to remain in the hospital. When he went to retrieve her a few days later, he was told that she died. Not so. There was no death certificate, no body, and no funeral. The little girl had been torn away from her family and adopted and raised by an Ashkenazi family. Shanit searched high and low for her sister Sarah years later, to no avail – so far. She tells the audience that if there is a woman who looks like her in the foyer, it may be her long-lost sister.

Shanit’s show is wonderful – enriched – and dramatic. The stage includes 3 panels showing photographs and film behind her as she tells her story from the early years of Israeli statehood and about the Israel that she loves. Shanit dances to Yemenite music and chants blessings.

The show is organized around Shanit’s life, but also upon key Jewish and Kabalistic principles and values. She reflects at length about her love for her father and for her powerful superstition-driven mother who called her “Bat Rasha – Daughter of the Wicked.” Shanit tells of her liberation from the old world life in which she was raised into a new life that she found and created for herself in America as an actress. She describes meeting Sam and their love at first sight.

Shanit’s life is multi-layered and she confesses that she is living a life she never dreamed possible.

The show was positively reviewed by New York theater critic Edward A. Kliszus in April of this year –

Review – https://openingnight.online/daughter-of-the-wicked/

You can watch the entirety of the show here (1 hour 20 minutes). I recommend it highly – Daughter of the Wicked – Odyssey Production Full Video Link: https://vimeo.com/706295209

In a recent fundraising letter, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) charged:

“Today, one of the gravest threats to American support for Israel’s security comes from an organization that outrageously calls itself pro-Israel [J Street].” https://pdfhost.io/v/EyIJHICma_AIPAC_Summer_2023_mass_mailer

Jeremy Ben-Ami (J Street’s Founder, CEO and President) and the Honorable Alan Solomont (J Street’s Board Chair and a retired United States Ambassador to Spain) wrote a response in an Op-Ed that appeared in The Forward (August 11, 2023): “AIPAC’s attacks on J Street show how out of touch they are” – https://forward.com/opinion/557325/aipac-attacks-jstreet-on-israel/

I urge you to read both the AIPAC letter that mischaracterized, distorted, and lied about J Street’s policy positions vis a vis Israel and the Ben-Ami and Solomont response. Also in response to the AIPAC fundraising letter, J Street issued a re-statement of its policy positions to “set the record straight” that shows J Street’s long-held pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy positions vis a vis Israel and its security, the Palestinians, the Arab world, and the United States.

According to polls, 70 percent of the American Jewish community agrees with J Street’s positions on the issues. J Street endorses more than 200 Members of Congress and is a trusted advisor to government officials including the Biden Administration on policy matters concerning Israel and the Middle East.

Here is that re-statement of J Street’s policies:

“Does J Street support US aid to Israel?

Yes. Indeed, it’s the first part of our endorsement criteria for all J Street endorsees.

The United States plays an indispensable role in supporting Israel’s future as a safe, secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people.

Throughout our history, we have advocated for robust security assistance packages, including the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated between the Israeli government and the Obama administration, as well as lobbied in support of legislation to authorize and appropriate all of the aid pledged. We believe that Israel should continue to annually receive the full $3.8 billion in aid pledged under the MOU. J Street believes that US security assistance to Israel plays a critical role in maintaining Israel’s security against serious external threats, and helps to advance US national interests.

Does J Street support cutting or conditioning US aid to Israel?

No. J Street believes Israel should continue to receive the current level of US aid, as stated in the 2016 MOU and without cuts. We also think that US foreign assistance to Israel should be dispersed without conditions.

As with all nations that receive US foreign assistance, aid to Israel should have the usual oversight and transparency requirements. This is vital to ensure that US security aid is used to address Israel’s genuine defense needs, and not diverted to implement or sustain illegal, unilateral actions which undermine Israel’s security, trample on Palestinian rights and contravene longstanding US interests and values. We believe that both the White House and Congress should take steps to ensure that US security assistance is not diverted to implement or maintain annexation, aid the expansion of settlements, towards the demolition of Palestinian homes or other moves that further entrench the occupation.

Supporting restrictions is standard practice for US foreign assistance. It is not the same as advocating for security assistance to be “cut” (i.e. ended or reduced outright) or “conditioned” (i.e. withheld until certain conditions are met).

Does J Street support the “McCollum Bill” (H.R. 3103)?

J Street supports H.Res 3103, the “Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act,” which was introduced in the 118th Congress by Rep. Betty McCollum, and was previously introduced by her in similar form in previous sessions.

The bill is an example of an “aid use restriction,” which J Street supports (see above). The bill would ensure that US security aid is used by Israel for genuine defense needs and not diverted by any Israeli government to detain children, seize or destroy Palestinian property or aid in any unilateral annexation in the West Bank.

The bill would not cut aid or impose preconditions on aid to Israel.

Does J Street support Iron Dome?

Yes. J Street strongly supports US security assistance to Israel for Iron Dome and other missile defense systems. Iron Dome is a critically important defense system that consistently saves the lives of Israelis facing indiscriminate rocket attacks.

The US provides $500M annually to Israel specifically to support Iron Dome and other missile defense programs, included in the $3.8 billion annual security aid package. J Street supports and consistently lobbies for all this funding under the terms of the MOU signed by President Obama. It is the first part of our endorsement criteria for political candidates.

All candidates endorsed by J Street voted to support this full assistance package, including support for Iron Dome.

Did J Street support the special September 2021 House vote of an additional $1 billion for Iron Dome?

Yes. The MOU signed in 2016 anticipated there might be extraordinary circumstances to justify provision of additional funds beyond the annual appropriation.

J Street supported the House vote to appropriate a supplementary $1 billion to the Israeli government for the replenishment of Iron Dome.

A handful of J Street-endorsed candidates voted against the additional $1 billion extraordinary appropriation for Iron Dome in September 2021. Why does J Street still endorse those candidates?

J Street recognizes and respects that a number of Members of Congress, including some who voted for the supplementary appropriation and some who did not, had legitimate concerns about the process and rationale behind the request to appropriate a large amount of additional money for Iron Dome at that time, above and beyond the significant funding already provided in the MOU.

We are dismayed that some critics of those Members have unhelpfully framed this as a vote to fund or to defund Iron Dome, when in fact this vote for additional, extraordinary funding was outside the normal appropriations process and on top of the annual funding.

We reject vitriolic attacks that seek to present those Members of Congress who did not vote for this supplementary appropriation as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. These attacks are particularly inappropriate given that all J Street endorsees who voted “no” or “present” on this supplementary appropriation also voted in support of the annual appropriation of $3.8 billion in security aid to Israel, including funding for Iron Dome, in each recent appropriations bill.

At times, candidates endorsed by J Street have taken different public positions than J Street on some bills, resolutions, letters or other topics. Why does J Street still endorse those candidates?

J Street only endorses candidates who share our core values and commitments – to Israel’s safety, Israeli-Palestinian peace, a strong US-Israel relationship, human rights and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians, and effective diplomacy-first American leadership. Our full, core endorsement criteria can be found here.

We do not and will not endorse any lawmaker who voted against Congressional certification of 2020 election results on January 6 or otherwise supported the “Big Lie” which falsely claims that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election.

We are proud that both President Biden and the majority of the Democratic caucus in both the House and the Senate are aligned with these core commitments and endorsed by J Street.

We recognize that Members of Congress make decisions based on a number of concerns and considerations, acting in what they believe to be the best interests of their constituents. J Street’s endorsement does not mean that endorsed Members of Congress will always agree or see 100% eye-to-eye with us on every issue, all of the time.

We believe in advocating to and engaging with both endorsed and non-endorsed Members of Congress. If and when J Street has a strong disagreement with a vote or decision taken by one of our endorsees, we are sure to communicate that clearly with them, and seek out an opportunity to discuss our views and the particulars of the issue.

If it becomes clear that J Street and a particular candidate may no longer be aligned on our core values and commitments, their endorsement will be reviewed.

What is J Street’s position on BDS?

J Street is opposed to the Global BDS Movement. We do not advocate for or support any boycott, divestment or sanctions initiative. The Global BDS Movement does not support the two-state solution, recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state or distinguish between opposition to the existence of Israel itself and opposition to the occupation of the territory beyond the Green Line. Further, some of the Movement’s supporters and leaders have trafficked in unacceptable anti-Semitic rhetoric. The Movement is not a friend to Israel, nor does its agenda, in our opinion, advance the long-term interests of either the Israeli or Palestinian people.

You can find J Street’s full BDS policy here.

What about boycotts or divestment focused just on settlements?

J Street neither supports nor opposes boycott, divestment, or sanctions initiatives that explicitly support a two-state solution, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and focus only on settlements on occupied territory beyond the Green Line.

It is critical to maintain the distinction between the state of Israel and the territory that it controls over the Green Line, and that distinction must be maintained.

We believe that individuals should have as much information and agency as possible when deciding how to contribute money to Israel. Individuals should be able to choose for themselves whether they wish to purchase products made in the occupied territory. Labels that accurately distinguish between products made in the state of Israel and those originating in the territory over the Green Line maintain this important distinction and provide consumers the information they need in making their consumption decisions.

We believe that non-profit organizations and institutions have an obligation to provide the members of their communities with maximum transparency about how, where, and why funds are spent in Israel and in Israeli-controlled territory.

We believe that the actions of the US government should line up with the long-standing bipartisan opposition to settlements, and we advocate for the US to maintain and enforce that policy through its actions. We oppose legislative efforts at the state and federal level which, by blurring the distinction between Israel and the territory it controls over the Green Line, acts to contravene that longstanding policy.

Does J Street support “anti-BDS” legislation?

J Street is opposed to federal and state-level legislation that would criminalize individuals’ and non-governmental organizations’ BDS activities, penalize BDS supporters or impose BDS-related litmus tests on individuals.

This type of misguided legislative overreach is the wrong way to fight BDS. By alienating and angering the progressive audiences that BDS seeks to engage and recruit, it actually empowers the BDS Movement.

This legislation can too easily violate constitutional free speech protections, and is fundamentally inconsistent with our democratic principles as Americans and as Jews. We urge lawmakers and Jewish communal leaders to engage Americans who are sympathetic to BDS in serious and open conversation and debate, rather than seeking to silence them by aggressively penalizing their actions and positions.

Does J Street support normalization efforts between Israel and Arab countries throughout the region?

J Street has supported the Abraham Accords from day one, celebrating Israel’s normalization with Arab states as welcome news for all who wish to see a stable and prosperous Israel living in peace and security alongside all of its regional neighbors. We have also noted the fact — emphasized by the officials of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel themselves — that comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbors in the Arab world will only be achieved through an agreement that resolves the issues at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and leads to the establishment of a viable and independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

J Street devoted our new Policy Center’s first major symposium and report to proposing a strategy for maximizing the full potential of the Abraham Accords to secure peace and prosperity for Israel and its neighbors. As an American pro-Israel organization, we will continue to support a strategy for further normalization agreements and regional integration that best serves US and Israeli interests, and oppose cynical efforts to misuse normalization as a means of bypassing the Palestinians and stoking tensions in the region.”

For those wish more specific details, please see the policy center on the J Street website – https://jstreet.org/policycenter/

Writing a review of the block-buster “Oppenheimer” is no easy task. It’s an extraordinary film about an extraordinary episode in human history that changed the world.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, it stars the gifted Irish actor Cillian Murphy in the title role with Robert Downey Jr. as Oppenheimer’s arch nemesis Joseph Strauss (pronounced “straws”), Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, and Matt Damon as Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. General Groves hired J. (Julius) Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist, to be the director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. The film is based on the history by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin called American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The musical score by Ludwig Goransson assumes a role as a “character” in the film. The direction, acting, music, sound, special effects, set design, editing, and wardrobe are likely, I believe, to be nominated for many Academy Awards, possibly in every category. I have never viewed a film like it.

It need not be said that nuclear bombs are weapons of mass destruction on a terrible scale. Their use twice over Japan in August 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in not weapons of war, but weapons of genocide. In the context of World War II, the movie shows that Oppenheimer personally was not opposed on moral grounds to building an atom bomb. He was fine using the bomb, especially as a Jew, against Nazi Germany and/or Japan. He wanted the bomb to send the greater message that WWII should be the last war ever fought. He was deeply concerned that these weapons were so destructive and devastating that great nations like the United States should not be allowed to produce them unchecked. He believed that the Department of Defense had been infected with madness when he learned that the DOD developed a plan to attack the USSR and China as communist nations even if it meant killing of hundreds of millions of people.

Living in a world of relative morality, President Truman’s decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was taken based on estimates that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would die if the war continued using conventional weaponry, and even far greater numbers of innocent Japanese men, women, and children would die than the estimated 110,000 to 210,000 combined who were killed outright and died later as a consequence of radiation poisoning.

There is a brief scene depicted in the film that occurred on October 25, 1945 in the Oval Office between President Truman (played unconvincingly by Gary Oldman) and Oppenheimer in which the scientist said, “I have blood on my hands,” and Truman angrily retorted that he was the one who made the decision to drop the bombs. It did not go well for Oppenheimer as Truman said he never wanted to see that “cry-baby” again.

The film focuses on the years of development of the atom bomb and begins and ends with the 1954 “Oppenheimer Hearings” in secret 6-week long closed-door sessions in Washington D.C. in which Oppenheimer was tried and convicted of being untrustworthy of having access to the nation’s top secrets. It is initially unclear why Oppenheimer was being targeted by the government as a Soviet spy, except through guilt by association with his brother Frank (played by Dylan Arnold), a former lover Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh), and several others who were members of the American Communist Party. The back-story became clearer later in the film.

When Dwight Eisenhower was elected President and began his term in January 1953, Joseph Strauss rose to become the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss hated Oppenheimer, which is explained in the film. In his new position, Strauss was intent on destroying Oppenheimer’s reputation through connivance and illegal FBI wire-taps that he arranged with J. Edgar Hoover. Strauss effectively and underhandedly persuaded the closed panel, though he was not personally present at the hearings, that Oppenheimer was undermining the arms race with the Soviet Union and was therefore a threat to American security. Both Joseph Strauss and Edward Teller (played by Benny Safdie), a former student of Oppenheimer who headed up the development of the far more destructive hydrogen bomb, felt that Oppenheimer, the most influential American scientist of his era, was standing in the way of their aspirations for the production of unlimited nuclear armaments. There was already suspicion among many in the defense community that someone at Los Alamos was passing American nuclear secrets to the Soviets, confirmed on August 12, 1953 when Russia exploded a hydrogen bomb for the first time. That figure was Klaus Fuchs (played by Christopher Denham). Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist.

William Borden (portrayed by David Dastmalchian) was a lawyer and the Executive Director of the United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy from 1949 to 1953. He became one of the most powerful people advocating for nuclear weapons development in the United States government. Borden outlined a series of charges against Oppenheimer and said at the hearing: “More probably than not, Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.”

As a consequence of the hearing, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance, though there was no credible evidence that linked Oppenheimer to passing any secrets to the Soviets or that he was ever a member of the American Communist Party. To the contrary, Oppenheimer was a loyal American citizen. Oppenheimer, naively, was stunned when he was stripped of his security clearance, and at last came to understand that he had been deliberately targeted by Strauss, Teller, Borden, the FBI, and the United States government to remove him from any role in the government’s nuclear program. It was a humiliating moment for a man who was credited with ending World War II and was known as the “Father of the atom bomb.”

Strauss wanted the US to build more and more nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the Russians, but Oppenheimer advocated for a limited supply of nuclear weapons as part of a larger arsenal of conventional arms. In 1954, America had 300 nuclear weapons. At end of the 20^th century, it had 70,000. The Soviets followed suit.

Oppenheimer was a beaten man after the hearings. However, in 1963 President Lyndon Johnson awarded him the esteemed Enrico Fermi Award that was conferred by the President of the United States upon scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. Granting Oppenheimer this award was regarded as a gesture of political rehabilitation.

Edward Teller was present for the award, and despite his treachery against Oppenheimer in the hearings, he held out his hand to Oppenheimer in a two-faced gesture of respect, and Oppenheimer strangely accepted it. Strauss, on the other hand, was furious that Oppenheimer received this singular honor.

Oppenheimer, a chain smoker throughout much of his life, died on February 18, 1967 from throat cancer at the age of 62. In 2022, the 1954 revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance was vacated by the United States Government.

Barbara and I saw the film twice. The second time we were able to follow more closely the story line, who were the central characters portrayed in nuanced performances of virtually all the actors, and the skilled and creative film-making techniques of Director Christopher Nolan and his staff. Between the two viewings, we read reviews and watched documentary histories of Oppenheimer. I suggest that you do the same.

Growing up in the 1950s, I was well aware of the threats posed by nuclear bombs, but had no idea of their devastating and destructive capacity. On the last Friday of every month at precisely 10 am, sirens sounded over all of Los Angeles. We elementary school kids were taught to “drop and cover,” as ridiculous as that sounds today in light of the now-known effects of radiation poisoning against which dropping and covering has no defense in a nuclear attack. New homes in my neighborhood were being built in the 1950s that included bomb shelters. When President Kennedy spoke to the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 22, 1962, I remember feeling terrified by the thought that we were close to a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

Christopher Nolan has given us an extraordinary film of subtlety and power. One thing worth understanding if you have not yet seen the film. Nolan effectively uses color for parts of the film and black and white for other parts. This is not about morality – good vs evil. Rather, whenever color is used, it portrays the story from the perspective of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Whenever black and white is used, it portrays the story from the perspective of Lewis Strauss.

There are matters not addressed in the film, most especially what testing in New Mexico did to indigenous people living within a few miles of the testing site. Nor does the film address the test of the hydrogen bomb on November 1, 1952 on the small Pacific island of Elugelab at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Joint Chiefs of Staff made the case to Truman that the hydrogen bomb “would improve our defense in its broadest sense, as a potential offensive weapon, a possible deterrent to war, a potential retaliatory weapon, as well as a defensive weapon against enemy forces.” The island “became dust and ash, pulled upward to form a mushroom cloud that rose about twenty-seven miles into the sky.” The outcome of the test was reported to Eisenhower this way: “The island of Elugelab is missing!”

Introductory note: Every so often, I print op-eds from subscription publications that many of you may not read but that I think are so worthwhile that I want to share it with you. Today’s post is such an example.

In the context of today’s Washington, D.C. and especially in light of the crash and burn mean-spirited MAGA Republican Party, its sycophants and moral cowards, I was moved by Matt Bai’s piece extolling the virtues of what once characterized DC politics between both Republicans and Democrats. Do read what follows. Perhaps, once this sorry history of Trumpism vanishes from the political scene and common decency is restored (I am a positive thinker, after all), we’ll see relationships like those that once marked Washington, D.C. discourse again. Joe Biden is a remnant of that era, and his example ought to be the rule, just as the late President Gerald Ford was once emblematic of what political leaders were. Enjoy.

By Matt Bai –  Contributing columnist – Washington Post – August 7, 2023

“Here’s a story that might blow your mind.

In 1973, as the investigations into Watergate were still unfolding, and as the corrupt Spiro Agnew was forced to resign the vice presidency, a group of Democrats in Congress hatched a takeover plan. If they delayed confirming Agnew’s chosen replacement, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, and then forced Richard M. Nixon from office, the presidency would pass by constitutional order to the Democratic speaker, Carl Albert.

It was a clever plan, and it might have worked — except that Albert himself recoiled. To the diminutive Oklahoman, a coup was a coup, constitutional or not. So he refused to seize by parliamentary maneuver what his party had failed to win the previous year. Albert saw to it that Ford was quickly confirmed and that he himself would not inherit the presidency.

This and other stories from what seem like another political planet can be found in “An Ordinary Man,” the recently published Ford biography by Richard Norton Smith, a presidential historian who worked for Ford and later ran his presidential library. If you thought the world didn’t need an 800-page Ford biography, you might have been right — the biographical and legislative detail can be exhausting, and the central premise (“The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford”) feels like a stretch.

But the story is deftly told and flush with humanity — so much so, in fact, that revisiting Ford’s moment left me feeling even more profoundly disturbed by our own, with its daily headlines about the new indictment of former president Donald Trump and the prison sentences slapped on hundreds of his loyalists, all in connection with an attempt to unlawfully seize the presidency.

There are, after all, notable parallels between Ford and President Biden. Both were considered unlikely presidents who assumed office in unconventional ways and in moments of upheaval: Ford by the resignation of his predecessor, Biden by way of the first virtual, quarantine-era campaign. Both were longtime and well-liked creatures of Congress whose only brush with executive power came in the vacuum of the vice presidency.

Fairly or not, both men were considered error-prone and lacking in glamour, and both faced pressure to step aside rather than run for another term.

The political worlds in which each man governed, however, are so different as to be jarring. Where Biden’s eventual biographies will portray a time of unwavering partisanship, contempt for the institutions of government and cold disregard for truth, the pages of Smith’s book are rife with routine moments of principle, compassion and patriotism.

Imagine, for instance, any vice presidential nominee, chosen by a scandalized president, receiving strong support from leaders in the other party, simply because they admired his character. “Decent men, placed in positions of trust, will serve decently” is how Andrew Young (D-Ga.), the civil rights leader turned congressman, explained his vote to confirm Ford. “I believe that Mr. Ford is a decent man.” (Only 35 members of the Democrat-dominated House voted no.)

Or consider that, on the eve of Nixon’s resignation, Ford and his wife, Betty, could be found at a dinner party at the home of a society reporter for the Washington Star. That’s how much trust and common purpose existed in Washington at the time. The man who knew he was about to assume the presidency was more comfortable dining with journalists than with canceling at the last minute.

Or get your head around this: After Ford’s death in 2006, en route to his funeral, 82-year-old Jimmy Carter, the man who had defeated him 30 years earlier, paced the family plane with Ford’s baby granddaughter bouncing in his arms. Once bitter political adversaries, the two men ended up the closest of friends.

Imagine, too, an act of selfless political courage that somehow seemed like business as usual in Ford’s moment, but that today would be viewed as a kind of psychotic break — especially, but not exclusively, for a Republican. I’m talking about Ford loudly standing up for Vietnamese immigrants when leaders in both parties resorted to nativism.

“These refugees chose freedom,” he said. “They do not ask that we be their keepers, but only, for a time, that we be their helpers.”

Imagine a president who would go before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, as Ford did, to make the case that draft-dodgers should be given conditional clemency. (His plea was not well received, nor did he expect it would be.) Try to conjure a Republican leader who would announce his support for the Equal Rights Amendment, just because he believed in it, or who would shrug when his wife declared herself pro-choice.

It can sound naive to extol the virtues of politicians past, when so much has changed. The postwar period was mostly a time of liberal consensus, its political parties made up of regional coalitions. The transition from Ford to Ronald Reagan and his harder-edged conservatives would begin the gradual process of empowering extremists in the Republican Party, and to a lesser extent among Democrats, as well.

Even so, I took away two crucial insights about the present from reading Smith’s timely book.

First, our leaders really are worse, and there really was a time when Washington was better and more ennobling. It’s fashionable now for partisans on either side to say that political nostalgia is bogus, that those of us who idealize the age of civility and moderation are simply wistful for the days of Great Society leftism, or for the age when old White men got to rule everything and mushy centrism prevailed.

But immerse yourself for a bit in Ford’s America, and you will find that welfare programs and mushy centrists are not the only things we’ve left behind. It’s actually true that leaders cared about one another and the country, that many of them had genuine convictions, and that often they were willing to lose an election rather than lose their own integrity.

Ford kept a list of litmus tests for anyone thinking about a life in public service, which he said you shouldn’t pursue if you “expect to make a great deal of money, do not like people and working on their problems, are thinned skinned and can’t take public criticism, if you are only interested in the glamour ofthe title or the responsibility.”

I think we know what Ford would have thought of Trump. I think we can guess at how aghast Republicans of Ford’s era would be at the shocking cravenness of today’s Republican presidential candidates and their bobblehead brethren in Congress, who can barely find it in themselves to utter a half-critical word about an indicted demagogue.

Second, I think Ford and Biden are similar in another respect: It seems to me that Ford, if not the shrewdest or most memorable of our presidents, might well have been the nicest person to ever hold the office, or at least in the 20th century. If Smith’s persuasive portrait is to believed, Ford was unfailingly gracious, self-aware and humane — even more so when no one was watching. One scene involves a tailor, a Holocaust survivor, who came to the White House to measure the president for a suit; Ford told the naturalized citizen that he was “one of the best Americans,” and the tailor leaped up to embrace him.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the presidency these last several years, it’s that niceness matters more than we thought.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/07/gerald-ford-biography-richard-norton-smith-biden-trump-indictment/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions&utm_campaign=wp_opinions

As focused as so many Americans are on the historic 3^rd indictments of the former President of the United States, it is important for the Jewish world not to take our eyes off what is happening in Israel and the historic so-called “Judicial Reforms” that the current extremist right-wing ultra-Orthodox and nationalist government is attempting to do in diminishing Israeli democracy by wiping out Israel’s system of checks and balances by concentrating all power in the executive/legislative branch at the expense of its judicial branch on its way to transforming Israel’s democracy into an autocratic theocracy and its annexation de jure of the entirety of the West Bank thereby destroying all future efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I post two items below worth watching (it will take just a few minutes to watch each):

1. “10 Reasons NOT to invite PM Netanyahu to the White House”

The speaker is Mika Almog, granddaughter of former Israeli President, Prime Minister, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres, and the daughter of Professor Rafi Walden, a member of the Reform movement’s Kedem/Beit Daniel Congregation, a star-ship Reform community in Tel Aviv.

2. Stav Shafrir challenges the lies in a split screen with PM Netanyahu in his interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Stav Shafrir came to national prominence as one of the leaders of the 2011 Israeli social justice protests, focusing on housing, public services, income inequality, and democracy, and later became spokeswoman of the movement. She was subsequently elected to the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party in 2013.  

https://www.facebook.com/shaffirstav/videos/2044633645885546

He was the longest serving Senate Majority Leader in American history (1961-1977) during which time he shepherded President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs through the Senate and oversaw the Vietnam War, the Kennedy and King assassinations, and America’s social and cultural upheavals. For 12 years he served as the United States Ambassador to Japan, among the most important posts in America’s Foreign Service. As a teen he was a juvenile delinquent, but received advice from a teacher one day who told him to turn his life around and make something of himself. He did, magnificently so, becoming one of the most powerful and dignified people ever to serve in the United States Senate.

He once said: “When I’m gone, I want to be forgotten.” When he died at the age of 98 in 2001, he was laid to rest on a green slope in Arlington National Cemetery. This is how his headstone reads: “Michael Joseph Mansfield, PVT, U.S. Marine Corps, March 16, 1903 – October 5, 2001.”

I heard about Senator Mike Mansfield’s headstone epitaph last week (his wife Maurene’s name is chiseled on the other side of the stone). I remember him well during the 1960s and 1970s, and in hearing about what was written on his stone this week I was impressed by his humility in that only his name, birth and death dates, and the lowest rank in which he served in the United States Marine Corp were written.

Thomas Jefferson, not nearly as humble, had the following written on his stone at Monticello, Virginia: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.” Oddly, Jefferson omitted being the 3^rd President of the United States.

Whenever I find myself in a cemetery, I’m intrigued to read what’s inscribed on grave stones, the years of a person’s life and how these people either wished to be remembered or were remembered by their loved ones. The story of Senator Mansfield inspired me into thinking what I might want written on my stone one day – hopefully, long in the future.

Like all of us, I have many identities: husband, father, grandfather, son, brother, friend, Jew, rabbi, Zionist, author, American, and man. There isn’t one word other than my name that says everything about me, though one would have to know me to know who I am. My father’s stone reads simply his name, “Beloved husband and father,” and his far-too-short lifespan – 1905-1959 – his 64^th Yahrzeit is next week). Perhaps that ought to be enough for any one of us. Thoreau famously said: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” As I age, the more his adage makes sense to me.

What is customarily written, at the very least, on Jewish tombstones in the Diaspora is the English and Hebrew name of the deceased (including the first Hebrew names of one’s parents), and the dates of birth and death in English and the Hebrew calendar. At the top is written in Hebrew פה נקבר (פ”נ – here is interred) or the abbreviation ת”נ”צ”ב”ה (תְּהֵא נַפְשׁוֹ/נַפְשָׁהּ צְרוּרָה בִּצְרוֹר הַחַיִּים – “May his/her soul be bound in the bundle of eternal life,” from I Samuel 25:29). Those same words eventually became the final blessing recited in a eulogy (Shabbat 152b).

In short, the traditional Jewish epitaph emphasizes humility, respect for one’s parents, and faith in the eternal character of the soul. Everything else is ancillary.

In a lighter vein, the words inscribed on the famous voice-over artist Mel Blanc’s stone at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery are “That’s all folks” recalling Porky Pig’s farewell following every Looney Toon cartoon. Later, Bugs Bunny said it. Blanc was the voice of both.

So – this is something about which Senator Mike Mansfield’s story inspired me to think this past week. What would I want written one day on my stone? What words sum up a life except one’s name, the names of one’s parents (and if one has children, their names too), and the span of one’s years? What’s the best way to affirm the values of dignity, integrity, generosity, appreciation, and humility that Judaism compels us to embody? Hopefully, a שם טוב – “a good name” – is enough.