By Ron Kampeas December 22, 2022

(JTA) — More than *430 American rabbis, including some who occupy prominent roles in major cities, are pledging to block members of the Religious Zionist bloc in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government from speaking at their synagogues and will lobby to keep them from speaking in their communities.

An open letter now circulating says they will not invite members of the bloc “to speak at our congregations and organizations. We will speak out against their participation in other fora across our communities. We will encourage the boards of our congregations and organizations to join us in this protest as a demonstration of our commitment to our Jewish and democratic values.”

Netanyahu announced his proposed new government including the Religious Zionists late Wednesday, although its details have yet to be finalized.

Israeli government ministers sometimes speak at American synagogues to drum up support for their initiatives and ideas. It’s not clear if figures who are harshly critical of non-Orthodox Jews, as Religious Zionist leaders have been, would accept invitations from their synagogues even if offered. Nevertheless, the letter’s uncompromising tone and the breadth of the signatories is a signal of a burgeoning crisis in relations between Israel and the U.S. Jewish community triggered by the elevation of the extremists, who won 14 seats in the Nov. 1 election.

Its signatories come from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements. There are no Orthodox signatories.

Among the signatories are current and former members of the boards of rabbis in Chicago and Los Angeles; rabbis who lead the largest Conservative and Reform congregations in the Washington, D.C., area; former leaders of major Reform and Conservative movement bodies; the current leader of the Reconstructionist movement; and the rector of the Conservative movement’s Los Angeles-based American Jewish University. The letter was organized by David Teutsch, a leading Reconstructionist rabbi in Philadelphia, and John Rosove, the rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel in Los Angeles.

The letter outlines five Religious Zionist proposals that it says “will cause irreparable harm to the Israel-Jewish Diaspora relationship”: changing the Law of Return to keep out non-Orthodox converts and their descendants; eroding LGBTQ rights; allowing the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings; annexing the West Bank; and expelling Arab citizens who oppose Israel’s government.

How much of that agenda will make its way into governance remains to be seen. Netanyahu has said he is confident that he will be able to constrain some of the figures he plans to name to lead ministries.

Among these are Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been tapped to control the police and who has been convicted of incitement over his past support of Israeli terrorist groups and inflammatory comments about Israel’s Arab population; Bezalel Smotrich, who has been accused by Israeli security forces in the past of plotting violent attacks against Palestinians, and who will supervise West Bank Jewish settlements; and Avi Maoz, who has described himself as a “proud homophobe” and has called all liberal forms of Judaism a “darkness,” and who will have authority over some aspects of education.

A number of U.S. Jewish groups spoke out against including the extremist faction in the government while Netanyahu was negotiating with the bloc, and more have done so since he announced the government’s formation on Wednesday. They include the Anti-Defamation League, the major non-Orthodox movements, and the liberal Jewish Middle East policy groups Partners for Progressive Israel, J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

Abe Foxman, the retired director of the ADL and a longtime bellwether of establishment Jewish support for Israel, said earlier this month that he is hopeful that Netanyahu can contain the extremists, but that “if Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”

Some organizations that spoke out in 2019 when Netanyahu considered a coalition with extremists were silent even as others sounded the alarm since the election, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. An AIPAC statement after Netanyahu’s announcement this week said, “Once again, the Jewish state has demonstrated that it is a robust democracy with the freedoms that Americans also cherish,” The Conference of Presidents has not issued a statement.

Orthodox groups have yet to pronounce on the new government. The Zionist Organization of America, which backs settlement building, has indicated it will support the new government.

The American Jewish Committee shifted its tone slightly from before the election, when it declined to speak out. In a statement after Netanyahu’s announcement, it sounded a note similar to Foxman’s, saying it would work with Netanyahu “to help ensure that the inflammatory rhetoric that has been employed by some members of the governing coalition — rhetoric unrepresentative of Israel’s democratic values, its role as a homeland for all Jews, and its unwavering quest for peace — will not define the domestic and foreign policies of the new government.”

The Biden administration has said that it will judge Israel’s government by its policies, not the individuals in Netanyahu’s cabinet.

*The number of rabbis that signed this letter since this news item from JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) was first published is more than 430 (as of January 5, 2023) and climbing. This news item was reported in The Washington Post, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The New York Jewish Week, The Daily Forward, The Algameiner, The Cleveland Jewish News, The Northern California Jewish Press, The Los Angeles Jewish Journal, Religion News Service, The New Arab, WAFA Agency (the Palestine News Service), Middle East Eye, and i24 News. It was discussed on the Podcast “For Heaven’s Sake” with Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi.

At the recent J Street National Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., our President and CEO Jeremy Ben Ami addressed the conference and said, among other things:

“… regarding the relationship of Jewish America to an Israel mired in permanent occupation and increasingly undemocratic, J Street will be a home for those who believe that our community – for itself more than even for Israel – must root its identity not in commitment to a flag or a piece of land, but to a set of principles and values. If we do not, we will see large swathes of our community walk away not only from engagement with Israel – which is already happening – but from the Jewish community itself.” (For his complete remarks, see https://jstreet.org/an-indispensable-force-j-street-in-the-2020s/):

Jeremy expressed the shared worry of so many of us that the policies of the incoming and  most extreme right-wing religious and nationalist government in Israel’s history will cause a rupture in the relationship of a large part of American liberal Jews with Israel.

In light of this threat I want to clarify what I believe are the deepest commitments of progressive Zionism of which J Street is a prominent part. It may seem to some that J Street’s emphasis on the liberal Jewish values of Tikun Olam (i.e. social justice) is at odds and in tension with the values of Klal-Yisrael tribalism, but I do not believe that is the case nor that these two commitments of the Jewish people conflict based upon the historic emphasis of Zionism relative to the ethical principles of equality, justice, compassion, and peace towards all peoples.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue in New York recently explained well the relationship between Judaism’s universal humanitarian values and Jewish tribal values on his Podcast “In These Times”:

“At no time in Jewish history was Tikun Olam, the universal demand to do what is just and right, ever ripped from the moorings of Klal Yisrael, the centrality of Jewish peoplehood. It was never one or another. Loyalty to the Jewish people absent concern for all the families of the earth is a distortion of Judaism. Tikun Olam, the repair of the world, divorced from Jewish peoplehood is not Jewish universalism, it’s just universalism.”

Though these two themes in Jewish history today feel strained in light of the extreme ultra-nationalist exclusionary politics of Israel’s right-wing government to-be, as a Progressive Zionist, I know I share with others in the progressive Zionist movement an unconditional love for Israel, and I reserve the right to be critical of policies that are contrary to the liberal American Jewish values upon which I was raised and are the basis of J Street’s political philosophy and principles.

Though we here in the Jewish Diaspora should not tell Israelis what to do, especially on matters of war, security, and peace as Israelis are the ones who must take the decisions they believe necessary and live with the consequences of those decisions. After all, we Diaspora Jews do not vote in Israeli elections, nor do we send our children to the army, nor pay Israeli taxes. Consequently, a certain humility is incumbent upon us. Still, we have the right to share our ideas with the leadership of the State of Israel even as we advocate for those liberal pro-Israel policies in the halls of the American government that we believe in and that we know, according to all polls, are shared by the vast majority of the American Jewish community and by hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Further, we have a right and duty to share our ideas because what Israel does has a direct impact on American Jewish identity, American Jewish pride, and American Jewish security as a minority population in the United States.

The Talmud is clear about the intimate character of our relationship as Jews to each other wherever we live: “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh – All Israel is responsible one for another.” (Sota 37a)

There are many interpretations of Zionism from the far right to the far left that, for better and worse, are part of a large pro-Israel Zionist tent. As the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, Zionism is also a social justice movement. It is both a particular cause and a universal cause. As such, the Jewish people seeks not only our own national liberation, justice, and safety for our own people, but the liberation of and justice and safety for all peoples, including the Palestinians. Zionism’s social justice emphasis is the basis as well for the promotion of a more shared society with equal rights, justice, and privileges for Israeli-Jewish citizens and Israeli-Palestinian Arab citizens alike.

It is false dichotomy to separate Judaism’s universal humanitarian values from Judaism’s tribal values. The former grows from the latter and the latter embraces the former. The ancient prophets of Israel advocated for both just as both are articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. To separate them is a false dichotomy and is dangerous to the well-being and integrity of the State of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora.

Note: J Street is a pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy political organization in Washington, D.C. that advocates for liberal American Jewish values and for Israel’s security and well-being in the nation’s capital.

This blog is posted also at The Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tikun-olam-vs-klal-yisrael-tribalism-a-false-dichotomy/

A number of years ago, I was invited to speak to fifteen soon-to-be-ordained rabbinic students at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. I was joined by two long-time friends and colleagues on a panel and we were asked to share what kept us excited, inspired, passionate, and creative in our work as congregational rabbis.

Someone read this blog from years ago today (as I can see what blogs are read and re-read) and reminded me of it. The question about which I spoke then is still relevant today, and so I updated my response for these times and offer my thoughts again here.

This question is, of course, not only for rabbis. It is for everyone who works hard, takes pride in their work, seeks excellence, wants to make a contribution, and hopes to maintain a healthy balance in their lives. It is a question I have asked myself frequently since I retired in 2019 and throughout this horrid political environment and in the age of Covid that has brought massive death, loss, and long-Covid debilitation for many.

When I first wrote about the question, the Torah portion that week was Parashat Tzav (Leviticus 6:1-8:36). At the beginning of the reading is a relevant verse:

“The burnt offering itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept burning on it.” (6:2)

The English translation that appears in most editions of the Bible, however, is incorrect. Here is the relevant Hebrew of the final phrase of the verse: “V’esh ha-mis’bei-ach tukad bo – The fire of the altar burns in it [It does not read “tukad alav – burns on it”].”

Since the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple by Rome in 70 C.E. when all sacrifices ceased, many Jewish commentators interpreted the sacrifices (korbanot – the root of the verb means “coming close”) as metaphor. The altar can refer to the human heart, and the fire that burnt in the altar can refer to the fires of excitement and inspiration that burn in the heart.

We were asked – What keeps our inner fires burning in service to the Jewish people?

I was moved by the question and took it to my congregants years ago who studied Torah with me on Friday mornings, and to my family and friends at our Passover Seder that year. I asked the question more broadly: “What sustains you in your life and in your work?”

Here are some of their responses:

• Many of the men who learned Torah with me each week said that engaging with the ancient, medieval, and modern texts grounded them in who they are as Jews, as human and spiritual beings, and as inheritors of 3600 years of Jewish engagement with God, ethics, practice, faith, culture, and history;
• My Seder family and friends said that whenever they read fine literature and poetry and then wrote themselves, or when they listened to and played musical instruments, visited museums and galleries and created art, worked in their gardens and cooked creatively, the embers in their hearts were stoked;
• Two people mentioned that the mastery they attained in their work inspired them to learn more, teach others, publish, and carry on the work;
• A recovering alcoholic said that daily prayer and meditation brought him back to his most natural self;
• Many said that helping others and engaging in social justice work connected them to community and to higher ideals that inspired and sustained them;
• Several said that sitting quietly in a favorite place renewed them;
• Many spoke of the love they feel for their spouses, partners, children, grandchildren, parents, brothers, sisters, extended family, and friends who were the embers that fed their inner flames.

The important question again is this – What feeds your inner flames?

I wish for you all, as we approach the Hanukah season beginning next week, that your inner light will be rekindled from that which burns within from your deepest embers.

A pre-Hag Hanukah sameach.

Among the most inspirational hours I have spent of late was in a meeting I had this week with 20 Israelis visiting Los Angeles who are traveling around America meeting Jews. Part of the “Gesher” program of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs of the Israeli Government, they come from all over Israel, mostly Israeli-born. They are television reporters, correspondents with Haaretz and Israel Hayom newspapers, educators, political leaders, civil servants, military commanders, Ultra-Orthodox Haredim, and secular Israelis. I was invited as a representative of J Street, the largest pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy PAC in Washington, D.C. advocating for diplomacy, democracy, and a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I asked their leader how they all get along with each other – knowing of the enmity that can characterize such a diverse group of Israelis. He said that after every meeting with American Jews from across the spectrum, they talk and listen to each other with respect and attention, and have become friends. “If only American Jewry could do the same,” I said.

The group’s mission  is to create a “bridge” – hence the word “gesher” meaning “bridge” between the two largest Jewish communities in the world – Israel with 6.5 million Jews and the United States with 7.5 million Jews.

In my prepared remarks, I told them who I am as a liberal Reform American rabbi and Zionist, and my family roots in Ukraine and Palestine. I told them about my great-grand uncle Avraham Shapira whose family are among the founders of Petach Tikvah from 1880 (half the group knew of him), and about the situation of the American liberal Jewish community in our relationship with the people and State of Israel. I quoted to them the most recent poll numbers about the 550,000 Los Angeles Jewish community – 48,000 from the Former Soviet Union; 46,000 Israelis; 22,500 Iranians; 32,500 Jews of color; 430,000 Ashkenazim; 77,000 Sephardim; and 22,000 Mizrachim.

LA Jewry includes ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and “Just Jewish.” We are Westside Jews, Valley Jews, Hollywood Jews, and secular Jews. Politically, 75% vote with the Democratic Party and 25% vote with the Republican Party. 80% feel that Israel is an important part of their Jewish identity, though increasingly growing numbers of young liberal American Jews under the age of 30 feel alienated from Israel because of the right-wing government and the lack of a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I explained that 40% of America’s 7.5 million Jews have been to Israel at least once. 5-10% speaks Hebrew; 50% reads from the Siddur and understands a few Hebrew words; 40% are members of synagogues or other Jewish communal organizations; 75% support a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in principle, but recognize that given the weakness and corruption of the Palestinian leadership and the new right wing government of Israel, 2 states for 2 peoples is not coming any time soon.

I told them about my worries as a liberal American Zionist, that the recent election of the most extreme nationalistic ultra-Orthodox government in Israel’s history is abhorrent to the Israel most American Jews love, to our liberal Judaism and liberal Zionism, that North American Jewry’s relationship to Israel going forward is fraught with tension and risk, that we are holding our breath about what the new government will do concerning Israel’s High Court, the settlement enterprise, settler violence, the rights of the Palestinian Arabs under military occupation, and the violence that is taking the lives of Palestinians daily and Israelis weekly. I told them of our worry about the cohesiveness of Israeli society (their group notwithstanding), Israel’s relationship with world Jewry (their group is one important effort to help bridge the chasm between our communities), and Israel’s standing in the international community.

I spoke for about 15 minutes and then we talked. They asked me the following:

• How do you define Judaism?
• What are your red lines beyond which you believe someone is anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic?
• Palestinians have missed so many opportunities to make peace. What do you think is going to happen if there is no one to talk to on the other side?
• Do you and American Jews understand the fear we Israelis feel when missiles are fired at our people and we have to run into bomb shelters?
• You say that only 40% of the American Jewish community has ever been to Israel. Why don’t American Jews want to visit us more?
• Do you feel that American Jews should have an equal say about our policies concerning our security?
• What will you do, Rabbi, if American Jews want to take away support from Israel financially, militarily, and diplomatically if Israel’s government becomes more extreme?
• Do you think that Netanyahu doesn’t like the American Jewish community?

Here are my quick replies (in order of the above):

• I define Judaism as a civilization with all the markings of the great civilizations – history, land, government, law, language(s), faith, ethics, customs, religious practice, life cycle celebrations, holidays, culture, and the arts.
• Someone who does not support the right of the Jewish people to define ourselves and to a state of our own is antisemitic. Though there are Jews who do not believe in a state of Israel, such as the Haredim, and it is hard to call them antisemites. Someone who accepts that right but criticizes policies that they believe are not in Israel’s, America’s, or the American Jewish community’s best interests are not antisemites or anti-Israel.
• Yes, Palestinian leaders could have negotiated a 2-state solution after Oslo on at least 4 occasions with 4 Israeli Prime Ministers (Rabin, Barak, Olmert, and Netanyahu). That said, it is not in Israel’s interest if it seeks to remain both democratic and Jewish if there is no resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. So patience is required. Many thousands of Palestinians want peace and a state of their own and accept Israel’s existence. The Palestinians need new leadership just as Israel needs the leadership of someone like Israel’s last Prime Minister Lapid. It is inevitable that a 2 state solution of some kind (Confederation is one viable option) but I may never see it in my life time (I am 73 years old).
• Yes, I know the fear that Israelis feel of Arab terrorism and war. I spent my first year of rabbinic study in Israel during the Yom Kippur War and I have been back 25 times, and so many of those times there was violence in Israel’s streets. In March 2002, I was in Jerusalem and walked by the Moment Café one hour before a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered 75 young Israelis. Bombs were exploding all over Jerusalem that month. It was the only time I was afraid to be in Israel. The second Intifada and the terrorism emanating from the West Bank was the reason PM Sharon ordered the building of the Security Fence. It is a necessary evil because it stopped Palestinian suicide bombers from coming into Israel from the West Bank and killing Jews. One day, in a peace agreement, I hope it will be taken down.
• I believe that many American Jews are afraid to come to Israel (unless they come with their rabbis). They read only the bad news in the headlines and miss the extraordinary society that Israel is, that it is a vital democracy inside the Green Line, that it has more patents per capita than any nation in the world except the United States, that it is a leading nation in hi-tech, bio-technology, cyber, medicine, climate change and ecology, agriculture, the arts and music, and that American Jews need to see it and feel the pride in the miracle that Israel is.
• I explained that only Israelis have the right to take the hard decisions about war and peace and their security. American Jews don’t send their children to the military nor pay taxes. However, we have a right and duty to share our ideas about matters that have an impact on our security as American Jews here, our identity as lovers and supporters of the State of Israel, that 80% of American Jews have said that Israel is important to their Jewish identity, and that we have a right to advocate for our liberal American Jewish Zionist values in the halls of the American government.
• I explained that I fear that Israel’s new extreme right-wing nationalist ultra-Orthodox government will seek to annex the West Bank and foreclose a two-state solution altogether, act to take rights away from non-Orthodox Jews, and create a theocracy. Then I will not know what to do. I’ll still support Israel because Israel represents the hope of the Jewish people and the greatest experiment in Jewish living in the last 2000 years testing our ethical tradition in the context of our having sovereignty and power, and I will fight for justice for the Palestinians even as I advocate for Israel’s security and well-being amongst American Jews and in the halls of American government. I hope that day never comes when extremists in Israel destroy democracy in the State of the Jewish People for Israel’s sake and for ours here in America and around the world.
• Bibi, clearly, does not like the American Liberal Jewish community or the Democratic Party. He prefers to align with 80 million evangelical Christians and the Republican Party. But he is a savvy politician, and he did reserve the right to veto Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s actions in his agreement with their parties should he think those actions will alienate the United States. We will have to wait and see.

There were many more questions we did not have time to discuss. I left feeling exhilarated that Israelis from every demographic group are interested in building bridges with the American Jewish community in all our diversity and talking with us, listening to us, as we listen to them and try and understand their lives and circumstances.

As a parting gift, they gave me a paper cut of Jerusalem with the Hebrew inscription “Kol Yisrael aravim zeh lazah” (All Israel is responsible one for another), and I gave each a copy of my book Why Israel [and its Future] Matters – Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to his Children and the Millennial Generation with an Afterword by my sons, Daniel and David Rosove.

It was an important hour we spent together and I was grateful to meet them all and have the privilege of speaking with them.

This blog was also posted with The Times of Israel –
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-hour-with-a-diverse-group-of-israelis-in-los-angeles/

The first time I ever heard of Donald Trump was when I saw him in the Beverly Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom in 1990. The event was the Scopus Awards Dinner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem honoring Merv Griffin that year. My congregant, Harvey Silbert (z’l), an entertainment attorney, invited me to offer the invocation, so Barbara and I went. It was a most heady night because of those in attendance.

In the Green Room before the dinner began, many of Los Angeles’ and Hollywood’s golden age of celebrities were there, aging but alive and well – Jimmy Stewart, George Burns, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, Vin Skully, and others.

From there at the appointed hour, we were ushered into the hall and took our seats. I was called to offer the invocation and found myself standing next to the recently retired President Ronald and Nancy Reagan. People bowed their heads as I spoke briefly – we Jews don’t usually do that for hamotzi. The evening progressed.

As Griffin was honored after the main course and before dessert, this tall, good-looking trim blond guy (a few years older than me) was not able to contain himself. He stood, walked towards the podium where the honoree was accepting the award, interrupted him and yelled out that he was more wealthy than Griffin. Griffin was a rich and well-loved television talk-show host and celebrity (and donor to the Hebrew University thanks to Harvey Silbert) who became particularly wealthy in real estate (he owned the largest home in LA at the time – 55,000 square feet), and this intruder clearly wanted the attention and had to be seen and heard. I asked someone at Barbara’s and my table – “Who is that guy?” “Oh, that’s Donald Trump from New York. A rich real estate developer who always craves attention.”

Fast forward to this week – In her Newsletter today (December 7), the University of Alabama law school professor and commentator on MSNBC, Joyce Vance, put this moment into perspective:

“A jury in Manhattan gave us something important to celebrate. Accountability has finally come for Trump, or at least to his business, the Trump Organization, in the form of a jury verdict convicting the Organization on multiple counts related to fraud in a criminal case. When a corporation is convicted, no one goes to jail and the fine here is relatively modest. But the bubble of invincibility that has always seemed to protect Trump’s criminality burst today. He’s now a mere mortal, like anyone else in the legal system, and especially so after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals went out of its way to tell him that truth last week.”

At last!

Last night, Reverend Rafael Warnock beat the final Trump anointed very flawed Republican candidate for Senate in these mid-terms, Herschel Walker, thus handing Trump yet another political defeat. He has now achieved something perhaps no other politician in American history has achieved. He has lost the House twice, stopped a red wave that should have happened in the 2022 midterms, lost the Senate twice, and lost the White House while never winning the popular vote in either of his two presidential runs. If that weren’t enough evidence of being a loser (add to that all his business failures and arguably the most corrupt administration in American history), he is facing not only the DOJ and the potential charge of seditious conspiracy against the United States government, but other multiple suits against him in New York, Florida, and Georgia.  

Like a broken chassis of a car from a disastrous accident on the highway that a used car salesman criminally glues together, repaints and tries to sell to unsuspecting customers (Mike Murphy’s metaphor on “Hacks on Tap” – thanks, Mike), Trump’s brand may have become so damaged that only the diehards of his base will support him going forward (maybe even some of them too will say ‘enough!’), not nearly an adequate number of Americans to put him again in the White House.

I slept fairly well last night – I hope many of you did too.

Congressman Jaime Raskin, a key member of the January 6 Committee and one of the chief prosecutors of the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, spoke powerfully and eloquently with a gravitas and passion unlike anything I have watched in recent years concerning the necessity of fighting to protect democratic freedoms at home and abroad. He was the keynote speaker at J Street’s opening session of our national conference in Washington, D.C. last evening, December 2. The link to his 30-minute speech is below, and it is worth watching in its entirety. He spared no punches and, as a constitutional scholar, his words cut to the chase in revealing the principles of American democracy and our constitutional system and thereby articulated the threat that America has been experiencing these past few years.

He said: “Just as there is a furious struggle between democratic nations and tyrannical regimes, there is a profound struggle taking place within each society at the same time,” Raskin said, warning of the danger of a returned Netanyahu administration backed by the far-right in Israel.

“The inclusion of political extremists in the government of a democratic society, as we have seen here in the Trump administration, constitutes a clear and present danger to democratic values, the rule of law and human rights,” Raskin said.

The struggle to defend democratic freedoms and our shared values of equality, justice and peace has become truly global, and American leadership is an indispensable part of the fight.

“From the autocrats in Moscow to the kleptocrats in Mar-a-Lago to the theocrats in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the enemies of democracy are on the march,” he said. “The struggle to defend democracy in America is the struggle to defend democracy and human rights on Earth today.”

Watch Congressman Jamie Raskin’s full address here >>

Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic, answered the question today that I asked my wife Barbara this week as we were reflecting upon the guilty verdict of seditious conspiracy against Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, who led the violent insurrection against the nation’s Capitol building and American democracy on January 6, 2021.

I asked Barbara: “It is so infuriating that these people tried to steal our democracy! Why?” Nichols put it this way: “I found it incredible that we had to interrupt our lives for a movement built on lies and political hallucinations.”

The amount of human energy, media time, and treasure that has engulfed America since the 2020 presidential election is incalculable all because Donald Trump never learned in Kindergarten how to play in the sandbox or how to lose a ball game that I learned in Little League Baseball and on the playground of my elementary school. That so many millions of Americans also seemed never to have learned how to lose fair and square, how to accept reality, and how to appreciate American democracy, utterly confounds me.

Tom Nichols’ piece in The Atlantic is worth reading. The essence of it is this: “It was a rebellion born in affluence and boredom and a desperate search for meaning in otherwise ordinary lives.” The article is short and to the point. I recommend that you google it and read it.

Thanks Tom.

Note: The following by the Times of Israel Editor David Horovitz is a fair, accurate, and stunningly disturbing column describing in detail the government under formation that Prime Minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu has been putting together. I print it in its entirety for those of you who have not been following what is happening in Israel politically since its latest election a few weeks ago in which the Israeli electorate split 50-50 by popular vote between the extremist right wing and the middle-right/middle-left (Netanyahu’s coalition has 64 seats as opposed to 56 seats for the opposition parties). All my Israeli friends and those in the progressive Zionist community in Diaspora communities who are paying attention are deeply worried, disturbed, and frightened by what Netanyahu is doing. The government he is forming is, without question, the greatest threat to Israel’s democracy in its nearly 75-year history. Within days, the “deals” that Netanyahu is making with extremists in the ultra-nationalist and ultra-religious right wing will be complete.

What do we do in the Diaspora about this? We have no authority at all to dissuade Netanyahu from this disastrous collection of deals with anti-democratic politicians. However, we leaders in Diaspora communities worldwide can agree that no leaders of these extremist parties (including Netanyahu most especially) should be welcome in any of our synagogues, Federations, community organizations, and businesses. Also, we can pressure America’s government leaders to boycott the leadership of these extremist right-wing parties. Many of us in the progressive Zionist movement are organizing to promote this position as I write this.

That said, as Zionists who believe in and are deeply proud of all that the democratic Jewish State of Israel has done for its citizens and for the world in so many ways, we cannot and should not turn our backs on the Jewish State or its people or its democratic institutions or on the cause of pursuing justice and peace for all the peoples of the land. Deuteronomy 20:16 reminds us that justice in the Land of Israel is a Biblical pre-condition for the Jewish people settling in the land: “צדק צדק תרדף – Justice, justice shall you pursue, so that you may live and take hold of the land that the Lord your God is about to give you.”

We will be challenged as American and Diaspora Zionists by Netanyahu’s new government in ways we have never been challenged since the establishment of the state in 1948. And we have to remember that Zionism is NOT a dirty word. It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Zionist movement is a big-tent conglomeration of many pro-Israel Jews and groups. We in the progressive Zionist movement (and there are many of us) must remain strong, self-confident, and organized. We have an obligation based on our liberal Jewish and Zionist values to speak out against the extremist anti-democratic parties that are about to take control of the levers of Israel’s government whenever they take decisions that chip away at the democratic foundations and institutions of the State of Israel.

Here is David Horovitz’s Community Letter – November 30, 2022

“Day after day, as he negotiates the staffing and agenda for his incoming coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu is openly preparing to turn Israel from a remarkable democracy, the only one in the region — with all the healthy strains of a powerful political echelon rubbing up against the brakes of a liberal judiciary — into something approaching untrammeled rule by a narrow, relatively homogeneous, hardline majority.

Day after day, he is concertedly awarding ever more power to extreme ideologues who he and we all know will abuse it.

His conduct since his November 1 election victory is shocking, indeed incomprehensible — even taking into account the complications of forging a government among radical, emboldened egotists. And the consequences are potentially devastating. What we are witnessing, in short, is a moment of destiny for Israel, a moment of drastic, fateful, fundamental change.

The three incendiary provocateurs

Netanyahu has agreed to place a reckless, oft-convicted rabble-rouser in charge of Israel’s police force, with the simply unthinkable imminent appointment of Itamar Ben Gvir as the minister of national security.

Less than two years ago, even though he had himself brokered the political merger that would enable Ben Gvir to enter the political mainstream and become a member of Knesset, Netanyahu recognized that the Otzma Yehudit leader was “not fit” for ministerial office. Ben Gvir’s views and activities — as a Kahanist disciple who had spent years urging the expulsion of Arab Israelis; who had kept a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the Hebron mass killer, on his living room wall; who had been excluded from IDF service because of the danger he posed as a young provocateur known for boasting in a TV interview, as he held the Cadillac symbol ripped off Rabin’s car, that he and his circle could “get to” the soon-to-be assassinated prime minister — were simply incompatible with responsible governance, Netanyahu acknowledged.

Now Netanyahu is days away from giving Ben Gvir control over the very police force that arrested him, investigated him and saw him convicted in 2007 of the crimes of support for a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, a force whose commander accused him of fanning the flames of 2021’s deadly Arab-Jewish violence in Israel’s mixed cities and East Jerusalem.

Moreover, the terms of their deal will reportedly see Ben Gvir entrusted with more authority than any previous minister of police, with a capacity to influence policy and priorities, and thus potentially undermine the independence of the force, in breach of existing laws and codes. The Knesset will thus have to pass fresh legislation in order to empower him.

It remains unclear whether this incendiary figure, who urges eased open-fire rules for the security services, has demanded full Jewish prayer rights atop the Temple Mount, and whose party’s last known published manifesto called for annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians voting and other rights, will also be given control over Border Police units that operate in the West Bank, as he has demanded. Already, Ben Gvir is utilizing his ostensible new legitimacy by undermining and challenging Israel’s military establishment, campaigning this week against the IDF’s punishment of a soldier who taunted a left-wing activist in Hebron.

Netanyahu is also negotiating to install Bezalel Smotrich, an arguably still more uncompromising far-right ideologue, as minister of finance, having initially contemplated making him minister of defense. Again, the conferral of such significant responsibility on so dependably incendiary a political activist ought to be beyond contemplation.

Smotrich was held for three weeks by the Shin Bet Security service for an alleged terrorist plot — to target Israeli drivers on the Ayalon Highway — in protest of 2005’s Gaza disengagement. A self-described “proud homophobe” who helped organize a so-called Beast Parade against the Jerusalem pride march, he too wants to annex the biblical Judea and Samaria without anything resembling equality for Palestinians, is hostile and dismissive to non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, and ultimately seeks to turn Israel into a theocracy, its judicial system based on the laws of the Torah. In the run-up to the November 1 elections, he presented a detailed program for judicial reform that would render the High Court of Justice toothless, both by neutering justices’ capacity to protect individual rights from assault by the political majority of the day — with the so-called override clause — and by giving the governing coalition sufficient votes on the selection committee to choose those judges in the first place.

As in the case of Ben Gvir, it remains unclear whether Netanyahu will also grant Smotrich his outrageous demand for the remaking or dismantling of the Civil Administration that oversees the disputed West Bank. The changes that Smotrich seeks, and seeks to oversee, in this context — via the transfer of authority over the Civil Administration from the Defense Ministry to his command — would appear to represent de facto annexation, and would render Israel more vulnerable than ever before to international criticism, censure and potential sanction, to the delight of its enemies and despair of its allies.

Finally, among the anti-democratic ideologues, Netanyahu has negotiated to establish an authority for “Jewish identity,” based in the Prime Minister’s Office, to be headed by Avi Maoz, the sole Knesset member from the tiny Noam faction, who has the support of just a few tens of thousands of Israelis and who only squeezed into parliament thanks to the Netanyahu-brokered alliance on the far-right. Anti-pluralist and anti-Arab, Maoz and Noam are also deeply hostile to non-Orthodox Judaism, making the notion of entitling Maoz as the deputy minister in charge of Jewish identity for the government of Israel particularly alienating for the millions of non-Orthodox Jews around the world, many of whom feel immensely connected to Israel.

Common to all three of these “religious Zionists” is the malignant un-Jewish misconception that being the “chosen people” indicates that we are somehow better than and entitled to oppress inferiors — Judaism as supremacism. But Judaism is not a supremacist religion. Our tradition, rather, is that we have been entrusted with a code of moral behavior that we are obligated to live by and disseminate, at the heart of which, to quote Hillel, is the imperative: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary.” Many of the policies that Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Maoz advocate are a direct negation of that principle, of authentic Judaism. Now, they are aiming to implement them.

Neutered judiciary, empowered ultra-Orthodoxy

There is more, much more, playing out with bewildering speed, and with potentially ruinous consequences for Israel as a democratic state, for Israel as the homeland for all Jews, for Israel as a strong economic force, for Israel as a unified nation, for Israel as a nation capable of defending itself in this hostile region. So rapidly are new arrangements and new demands being unveiled in recent weeks, with such far-reaching impact, indeed, that it has become difficult to even keep track.

In his negotiations with the two ultra-Orthodox parties, for example, Netanyahu has reportedly agreed to cement the exclusion of ultra-Orthodox males from military service, with no requirement for alternative national service either. Long sought by Haredi politicians who evidently want to consign their constituents to lives of hardship and poverty — and to betray the Orthodox Jewish tradition where the community supports the brightest would-be Torah scholars and the rest fulfill the obligation to work for a living and provide for their families — this blanket exclusion has been struck down by the High Court as discriminatory. Once the aforementioned override clause is in place, however, there would be no impediment to the arrangement.

Many non-ultra-Orthodox Israelis have long railed against the inequality — objected that they and their children risk their lives to protect the country in mandatory military service while the ultra-Orthodox do not, and that their taxes are channeled to subsidize a sector of the electorate many of whose males don’t go to work. The entrenchment and full application of that arrangement can only exacerbate the rift between ultra-Orthodox Jews and other Israelis, with perilous implications for internal Israeli unity and resilience, including as regards the near-consensual current readiness among non-Haredi Israelis to perform military service.

Moreover, Netanyahu had promised ultra-Orthodox leaders even before the elections that he would provide government funding for ultra-Orthodox schools that do not teach a core curriculum including math and English — thus denying many young ultra-Orthodox Israelis the skills to find fulfilling employment even if they want it.

The ultra-Orthodox leaders, some leaders on the far-right, and Israel’s two, state-funded chief rabbis, meanwhile, are pushing with increasing fervor to amend Israel’s foundational Law of Return, which grants the automatic right to citizenship to those with at least one Jewish grandparent. The amendment they seek — and which Netanyahu’s Likud is said to be opposing — is to remove this so-called grandchild clause, so that the right to citizenship would be largely limited to those who are halachically Jewish — that is, via matrilineal descent.

Again, forgive the repetition, this should be simply unthinkable, since it constitutes a betrayal of a foundational Israeli purpose — the Jewish state potentially preparing to close its doors to would-be citizens who see themselves as members of the Jewish people, and who are often persecuted as such.

Netanyahu has reportedly already agreed to a demand from his nascent coalition allies to revoke the High Court ruling that recognizes, for the purpose of citizenship, conversions to Judaism in Israel under the aegis of the Reform movement. He is also being asked by them to back legislation enabling gender separation at public events.

Contemplating the looming likely demolition of so many of Israel’s core components by the wrecking ball of the nascent Netanyahu-led coalition, what is so mystifying is that the alarming appointments he is about to make, and the damage he and his ministers are about to inflict, are not being inescapably imposed upon this most canny and skilled of politicians. Instead, he is conceding more prominent positions to the leaders of his allied parties, awarding them more authority, and consenting to more legislative changes, than the political reality necessitates.

This recalls the same kind of baffling weakness that saw him abandon the solemnly negotiated “Western Wall compromise” in 2017, when under resistible ultra-Orthodox political pressure, only now to vastly more drastic effect.

Ben Gvir might not be rushing to join his government at any cost, but he would not have required additional powers as police minister in order to sign on. His dizzying ascent to a ministerial post where he gets to control the force — an outrageous turn of events, and one to which the Netanyahu of less than two years ago would not have consented — would have been more than sufficient.

Smotrich is a resolutely obdurate campaigner — whose refusal to join a coalition that relied on support from the Arab Islamist Ra’am party condemned Netanyahu and his allies to the opposition after the 2021 elections — and would always be a tougher negotiating adversary. But Netanyahu veritably invited Smotrich to maximize his demands, immediately after the elections, by signaling that his previously stated intention to keep the Defense, Treasury and Foreign ministerial portfolios in the hands of the Likud party no longer held. Since those most prominent jobs were now on offer, Smotrich unhesitatingly went for the Defense post, and when this proved unreachable he is now playing hardball for the Treasury job, plus those far-reaching Civil Administration responsibilities.

As for Avi Maoz, who directly represents almost nobody but alienates almost everybody, his single vote is no make-or-break for Netanyahu’s coalition, and he could have been offered almost any take-it-or-leave-it position. Yet it merely required him to publicly complain that Netanyahu had yet to negotiate with him, and hours later he was sitting face-to-face with the presumed incoming prime minister. And rather than fobbing him off with a minor position, Netanyahu chose to confer upon him the “Jewish identity” role — granting a title indicating an oversight role for all Jews in Israel, with implications for all Jews everywhere, to a hitherto marginal figure whose views are anathema to the overwhelming majority of our nation.

Breaking faith with his own personal history

Yes, Netanyahu has become more hawkish over the years, as have many Israelis since the Second Intifada, amid the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas in territories vacated by Israel and in the face of abiding Palestinian rejectionism. And yes, Netanyahu has plainly been marked by his corruption trial, convinced that he has been unjustly indicted for actions he either denies outright or insists do not constitute wrongdoing.

But Netanyahu was always a great Israeli patriot — the scion of a devotedly Zionist family, who lost his heroic, beloved brother in military action at Entebbe, and himself performed courageous, life-threatening military service in the IDF’s most elite unit. And he is not Israel’s longest-serving prime minister by accident; for three years in the 1990s, and for an extraordinary 12 years from 2009 to 2021, he led this country with sufficient skill and popularity as to retain the support of a majority of the electorate, and to remain, in survey after survey after survey, by far the favored choice for prime minister.

He did not shrink from the use of force, but he was no military adventurer. Though advocating at least partial annexation of the West Bank — some 30 percent, including the Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley — he froze that plan when it became clear the Trump administration would not support it, and deep-froze it, albeit with great reluctance, in order to embrace what became the Abraham Accords, Israel’s 2020 normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and (still a work in progress) Sudan.

He also respected the independence of Israel’s judiciary, and pledged to defend that independence, evidently recognizing that in an Israel with no constitution, no bill of rights, a parliament that a homogeneous coalition can utterly dominate, and no term limits on its leaders, a robust, effective judiciary was a vital brake on potential government excess and abuse, an essential element in our democracy’s delicate system of checks and balances.

The coalition whose agreements he is now finalizing, the ministers he is about to elevate to powerful office and the agenda he is setting and enabling, therefore break faith with so many of the principles at the core of his military and political careers.

He is the ex-Sayeret Matkal (IDF special reconnaissance unit) officer preparing to entrust a new, expanded National Security Ministry to a pyromaniacal upstart whose main security and police expertise is as a criminal convict. The commander-in-chief who contemplated giving an expansionist idealogue and terrorism suspect the ultra-sensitive Defense portfolio. The secular Jew sending Israel down the road to theocracy at the urgings of ultra-Orthodox and hardline Religious Zionist proponents. The declared democrat readying to dismantle the pillars of democracy with an override clause that neuters our judiciary — a radical reform he doesn’t even clearly need in order to complete his coalition (the justices are unlikely to intervene if the law is changed to enable Shas’s Aryeh Deri to return as a minister despite his suspended jail term) or to escape his trial (the justices would be unlikely to intervene if, as they intend to, his colleagues abolish the charge of “fraud and breach of trust” at the heart of all three cases against him).

What Netanyahu is concocting is not the “normal” preparation for a new government, with leaders and an agenda at odds with the preceding, defeated coalition. It is, rather, a recipe for an unrecognizable Israel — more internally divided, much less democratic, more religiously intolerant, more male-dominated, its “people’s army” no longer consensual and above politics, self-defeating in its potential policies regarding the Palestinians, and at odds with much of Diaspora Jewry. It is a recipe for a self-defeating Israel which, if carried through to its full potential excesses — and I stress if — risks rendering the country unsustainable as it descends into internal discord, deepening regional friction, fraying international support, and mounting diplomatic, economic and military pressure.

All of this is frankly unfathomable. Yet it is unfolding before our very eyes. Only Netanyahu can prevent it. Yet it is Netanyahu who is choosing to hatch it.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/FMfcgzGrbJBFJTWslnnVSvVrzfBnGXGW

A problematic SNL monologue triggers a panic attack and a plea for mutual understanding

Note: This op-ed in the Jewish Forward today (November 15, 2022) is exactly on point. I am reprinting it here in full not only because I too, like the author, was riled with indignation at Dave Chappelle’s alleged “comedy” stunt on SNL this past weekend about Jews in Hollywood, but also because Sharon Leib Rosen’s great-grandfather, Sol Wurzel, about whom she speaks with justifiable pride, was a founding member of my congregation in 1927, Temple Israel of Hollywood.

It is important to emphasize the historical facts (as Sharon does) that Jews “invented Hollywood” because they were excluded from most businesses in the early 20th century because of antisemitism, and they could operate freely in creating the motion picture business in the far reaches of the west. That would change dramatically by the 1930s and 1940s, however, when antisemitism in America spread like a toxic poison throughout politics, government, religion, and in many communities in so much of the country as Rachel Maddow documents in her important podcast “Ultra” about the 1940 Nazi effort to overthrow the United States government and as Ken Burns showed so powerfully in his documentary about America and the Holocaust.

The ignorance of so many otherwise well-meaning people about the etiology of antisemitism in western civilization, the dramatic rise in antisemitism in the past few years since Charlottesville (“Jews will not replace us” with Nazi salutes, no less), and the pain that we American Jews experience when we see antisemitism going mainstream as it has among some in sports, entertainment, and politics, ought to be a red flag for every decent American.

Dave Chappelle performing earlier this year in Washington, D.C. Photo by Getty Images

By Sharon Rosen Leib – The Forward – November 15, 2022

Dear Dave Chappelle,

Consider me an admirer. I find your comedy wickedly smart, slyly subversive and generally well-intentioned. I also sense your pain. As the descendant of a troubled Hollywood Jewish family, I’ve seen how the business eats sensitive people like you alive.

That’s why, after watching your monologue on SNL, I woke up at 4 a.m. in a panic-attack state. Why did you feel the need to echo Ye’s antisemitic tropes about Jews and Hollywood? Yes, there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood — because discrimination shut them out of other careers in the early 1900s. Pioneer Hollywood Jews like my great-grandfather Sol M. Wurtzel, who produced over 700 films for 20th Century Fox, created a new form of popular entertainment and ran with it. I take pride in the Jewish invention of an industry that gave voice and unprecedented global reach to legions of creative people, including you.

I can say “There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood” without repercussion because my whole being screams Jewish. Unfortunately, in these charged Ye “going Defcon 3 on the Jewish People” times, it didn’t land so well when you said it. Yet, no one should be canceled for speaking the truth. There have been a lot of Jews in Hollywood for over 100 years. Disturbingly, a ton of antisemitism has resurfaced around that truth.

I consider myself a relatively chill Jewish mother. But when anyone says something that could potentially affect my community’s safety or my kids’ pride in their Jewish identities, I go into Defcon 3 Mama Bear mode.

So why exacerbate a charged situation by poking the Jewish bear the way you did? Do you want out of the Hollywood rat race? I totally get why you would. For God’s sake, a crazy guy carrying a knife rushed you at the Hollywood Bowl. You deserve a break.

Reflecting on why your monologue caused a panic attack, I realized it must have been the antisemitic traumas embedded in my psyche from my Eastern European Jewish lineage. That and the fact I watched “The U. S. and the Holocaust” documentary by filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein last month. The six-hour horror show depicts Nazis marching through Eastern European towns, and describes how they threw Jewish babies out of windows, incinerated Jewish villagers in their synagogues and gunned them down in forests along the way.

These Nazi death squads were fueled by crackpot conspiracy theories about greedy, parasitic Jews who controlled international banking, financed wars, and poisoned young minds with their nefarious movies. As Hollywood filmmakers during the rise of Nazism, my American family continued grinding out movies while sanding down their Jewish identities to avoid being targeted by antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Family members who remained in Poland died grisly deaths.

But, Mr. Chappelle, you already know all this. You rightly said Black Americans didn’t cause this reign of terror. And American Jews like me know that inflamed nativist European fascists — not Black Americans — conspired to create the biggest death machine in human history to obliterate European Jewry.

So let’s fast-forward to Trump, who came along and issued a get-out-of-the-sewers-free pass to U.S. neo-Nazis. I imagine these racist antisemites get off on seeing Blacks and Jews devolve into Defcon 3 mode tearing each other apart with accusations of antisemitism and racism, becoming increasingly alienated and estranged from each other along the way.

Your monologue ceased being comedic to me when I heard whispers of crazy-town “Jews own Hollywood” conspiracy theories threaded into its narrative subtext. I want to believe you are a better man than the guy who adds a dash of poison to the boiling cauldron of antisemitic hate bubbling over in this country.

Now that Trump and his acolytes appear to be losing their chokehold on America, why did you use your precious monologue time to rehash and reanimate the antisemitic rants? Isn’t it time for Blacks and Jews to celebrate shaking off the Trumpian nightmare and join forces to consign his neo-Nazi racist acolytes back into the sewers?

Mr. Chappelle, I’m hoping you use your prodigious comedy chops to continue shining a light on prejudice without sending conspiracy theory chills down Jewish spines.

Wishing you all the best,
Sharon Rosen Leib

Sharon Rosen Leib is a former Deputy Attorney General in California’s Department of Justice, an award-winning freelance journalist and contributing writer for the Forward and the San Diego Jewish Journal.

I feel as if I’m in recovery from a major assault on my nerves, emotions, and psyche as an American liberal Jew and Zionist. The build-up leading up to back-to-back elections in Israel and the United States utterly exhausted me.

I’m still left feeling betwixt and between despite the elections now beginning to recede in the rear-view mirror. I’m deeply worried about what is happening to the Israel I love, the middle-left in Israel, my liberal Zionism in America, and what Israel might become with the election of the most right-wing, racist, exclusionary, misogynist, homophobic, and anti-pluralistic government ever to be seated in the Knesset.

Though I’m relieved that the American election has defied historic precedents for mid-term elections in which the party out of power did not make major gains in Congress, I worry still that Trumpism is alive and well in America amongst too many millions of people who have drunk the cool-aid of Trump and his anti-democratic election deniers and insurrectionists.

Here in the United States we have to thank young Americans, women, African-Americans, and Latinos in particular for their massive turn-out to vote in this mid-term election. Decent America spoke more loudly than indecent America this week, and though millions of people voted for toxic unqualified candidates across the country, it ought to be clear that our continued vigilance supporting democracy is going to be necessary and that organizing for the 2024 elections needs to begin immediately, even before the final votes are tabulated in a number of key states and congressional districts.

Regarding Israel – though 54 Knesset seats are now in opposition to Netanyahu’s expected ruling coalition, the threats to Israel’s democracy and independent judiciary, to Palestinian-Israeli citizens, Jews-by-Choice, and religious pluralism in the state is serious and we can expect that the Religious Zionists led by Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-Orthodox Haredi parties, and the settler enterprise will not rest until they have their way. Not only is Israel’s democratic character in their cross-hairs, but a rupture between liberal North American Jewry (especially younger Jews) and Israel will likely occur and therefore require a new kind of partnership between the middle-right, middle-left, and left in Israel with North American liberal Jewry.

The Biden administration and Congress ought to refuse to deal with Ben Gvir and Smotrich. In addition, no American Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, or modern Orthodox synagogue ought to welcome these two men into their communities. Already the leadership of the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements have expressed their outrage and refusal to meet these extremist leaders whose anti-Arab racism and fascist leanings are far from representative of the best values in the Jewish world.

Edmund Burke’s powerful truth has been ringing in my ears throughout this past week: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

This blog also appears at the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-to-make-of-the-week-that-was-in-israel-and-the-united-states/