Tag Archives: Jewish History

Many Israeli Experts Believe the Iran Deal is a Supportable Deal Despite its Flaws

22 Wednesday Jul 2015

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On July 21 the Los Angeles Jewish Federation Board sent an appeal to our community to urge Congress to oppose the joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s Nuclear Program saying the following:

“The proposed agreement with Iran is not a partisan issue; it impacts the security of the United States, the stability of the Middle East, the future of the State of Israel and the safety of every Jewish family and community around the world. This Iran deal threatens the mission of our Federation as we exist to assure the continuity of the Jewish people. Support a secure State of Israel, care for Jews in need here and abroad and mobilize on issues of concerns.”

The letter calls upon our community members “to raise their voices in opposition to this agreement by contacting their elected representatives to urge them to oppose this deal.”

There is an impression being promoted by many in the organized American Jewish community as well as many in the American and Israeli media that there is unanimity in Israel that this Iran deal fundamentally undermines Israel’s security.

This is not true.

The following are statements from leading Israeli security experts who offer a more nuanced view of the Iran agreement, and while acknowledging that there are imperfections, have come to the conclusion that this Iran deal is an important step forward in enhancing Israel’s security.

Ami Ayalon: Former head of the Shin Bet and former Navy commander-in-chief:

“[The Agreement] is the best possible alternative from Israel’s point of view, given the other available alternatives…In the Middle East, 10 to 15 years is an eternity, and I don’t believe that 10 or 15 years from now the world will stand by and watch Iran acquire nuclear weapons.”

The Peace and Security Association representing hundreds of Israeli security experts, IDF veterans, Mossad, Shin Bet and Police:

“Although the agreement signed in Vienna between the world powers and Iran is not optimal, it should remove the immediate threat of an Iranian breakthrough leading to a nuclear military capability within a few months.”

Efraim Halevy: Former Mossad Director and former Head of the National Security Council:

“Without an agreement, Iran will be free to act as it wishes, whereas the sanctions regime against it will crumble in any case…if the nuclear issue is of cardinal existential importance, what is the point of canceling an agreement that distances Iran from the bomb?”

Chuck Freilich: Former Israeli Deputy National Security Advisor:

“This is the agreement that was reached – and despite its faults, it is not a bad one. Crucially, it will contribute to Israel’s security.”

Yitzhak Ben-Israel: Chair of Israel’s Space Agency and a former IDF general:

“The agreement is not bad at all, it is even good for Israel…It prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for 15 years.”

Uzi Even: Former lead scientist at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor:

“I am sure the deal that was signed is preferable to the current situation because it delays Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb by at least 15 years and in practice ends it nuclear aspirations.”

Eran Etzion: Former Deputy Head of the Israel National Security Council and a former Head of Policy Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

“The agreement prevents Israel from obtaining a nuclear weapon for 10-15 years. Obama says and he is right—this agreement is not about trust, it’s about verification. No agreement can be perfect. We live in the real world and it is the best agreement that they could reach.”

Israel Ziv: Former Israeli Major General:

“This agreement is the best among all other alternatives, and any military strike – as successful as it may be – would not have delayed even 20% of what the agreement will delay.”

Eli Levite: Former Deputy Director General of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission:

“In the next 15 years, if Iran will respect its obligations, Iran’ won’t be a nuclear country. Period. They won’t have the materials. The question is whether they will respect their obligation, and that is the hard question.”

Good and intelligent people will disagree. However, the LA Jewish Federation cannot speak for all Jews and ought to account for other legitimate American Jewish community views on this deal.

As a long-time contributor to the LA Jewish Federation, I take exception to the insinuation that if one really cares about Israeli security then there is only one responsible choice – to oppose this agreement.

As a Zionist and ohev m’dinat Yisrael, I support this agreement, even with its flaws.

Should this deal fail now as a result of a veto-proof congressional vote, not only would sanctions immediately fall apart, but Iran will have nothing to stop its forward march to nuclear capability in short order. Many political and diplomatic experts agree that realistically, no other deal is possible.

Consequently, if the deal fails, the only way to stop Iran’s march to a nuclear bomb would be to bomb all its sites. Should that happen Israel will likely be the recipient of thousands of Hezbollah rockets aimed at Tel Aviv, Haifa and everything in between sparking a regional war the likes of which we may have never witnessed before.

I am disappointed and confused by our Federation Board that claims to represent all the Jews of Los Angeles when it is clearly not so. If you agree with the position articulated by the Israeli experts above, then I suggest that you write to and call your Congressional Representatives today and let them know of your approval of the Iran agreement. Also, I suggest that you express to the Federation Board your dismay with its letter and its presumption that it represents your views.

“Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate” – A Book Review

12 Sunday Jul 2015

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This second moving novel by Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a love story that catches the two protagonists in a clash of cultures and religious identities that reveals how powerfully the past plays upon the present and future.

Cleo is a beautiful African American left-wing feminist talk-show host in New York City and the daughter of a mid-20th century black Baptist preacher who had been mentored and supported by a Jew in the racist south. Upon her father’s untimely death, another kindhearted Jewish family gives Cleo’s mother a desperately needed job and her family a place to live. Cleo consequently has a warm spot in her heart for Jews despite the experiences of many of her African American radio listeners who bear anti-Semitic animus against the Jews they have known as slum-lords.

Zach is a politically liberal Bronx yeshiva-educated atheist child of Holocaust survivors, becomes an ACLU lawyer and does pro-Bono legal work for a nonprofit called “Families of Holocaust Survivors.” Zach’s only sibling was an older brother he never met who, as a toddler, was shot in the head by a Nazi as his parents watched in horror. He feels empathy with the African American situation and is a solid liberal thinker, but he feels duty-bound to honor the promise he made to his dying mother that he would marry a Jew and bring Jewish children into the world not only to assure Jewish continuity but to help replace the 6 million and avenge his brother’s murder.

Cleo and Zach encounter one another in the early 1980s when a Black Preacher and a Rabbi invite them with other New York black and Jewish leaders to restore the Black-Jewish alliance that once existed during the civil rights movement. This occurs as Black-Jewish relations fray in the aftermath of the anti-Semitic rants of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Jessie Jackson’s “Hymietown” remark.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a veteran writer of eleven books. She is a founding editor of Ms. Magazine, a journalist, political activist, wife, mother, grandmother, and a serious Jew who has spent years participating in dialogue groups with African American, Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian women. Feminism, liberalism and positive Jewish identification permeate the novel.

Pogrebin’s prose can be deeply moving, such as the novel’s opening paragraph:

“ZACHARIAH ISAAC LEVY grew up in a family of secrets, of conversations cut short by his entrance into a room, of thick-tongued speech and guttural names and the whisper of weeping. His parents spoke in short, stubby sentences, as if words could be used up, and often in a language they refused to translate. From the grammar of their sighs, he came to understand that Yiddish was reserved for matters unspeakable in English and memories too grim for a child’s ear.”

As I neared the end of the novel, I visited a congregant struggling with metastasized cancer who herself is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a serious Jew, a fluent Hebrew speaker with strong family ties in Israel, who has devoted her life to furthering justice and enriching Jewish community. Her son is in love with a non-Jewish woman and, though the young woman is wonderful, my friend is tortured by the very issues that are at the core of Pogrebin’s novel. I recommended that she read it because Pogrebin’s perspective could well offer my friend a measure of insight and comfort.

This book raises many questions: ‘What is Judaism?’ ‘Who is a Jew?’ ‘What ought a Jew know and do to enrich one’s own Jewish life and to assure that Judaism, Jewish practice, culture, ethics, and faith carry forward into the next generation?’ ‘What are the challenges that intermarriage brings to Jewish families?’

The book addresses as well the situation of children of survivors and, in light of the present, challenges their obligations to deceased parents who suffered the indignities of the Shoah.

Though Pogrebin does not deal with the question of how one justifies faith in the God of Jewish tradition in light of evil and the suffering of the innocent, nor does she offer a way to affirm Jewish faith in a liberal non-Orthodox context after the Holocaust, she does effectively present the tension between prophetic humanism and tribal particularism as it plays out in Zach’s inner conflict.

At the novel’s conclusion, Pogrebin brings everything together in a n’chemta (i.e. a hopeful and comforting series of teachings presented by Zach’s Orthodox childhood rabbi).

Rabbi Eleazar Goldfarb is a wise, loving and visionary mentor who lives comfortably between the two worlds of Jewish tradition and modernity primarily because he knows exactly who he is and what he believes. He deftly brings essential Jewish teachings to a tortured Zach.

This book is a wonderful read and provocatively challenges past Jewish assumptions in light of contemporary circumstances.

Community note: Letty Cottin Pogrebin will be the guest speaker at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles on Friday evening, October 30 during a community Shabbat dinner following Kabbalat Shabbat services. She will discuss the many issues she raises in this novel. The community is invited.

 

I’m Waiting! It’s Time for Bibi and Ruvi to say to Religious Bigotry – Enough! You’re Fired!

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

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It’s enough already. Prime Minister Netanyahu ought to do more than simply condemn the words of the Israeli Minister of the Interior, David Azoulay, who said recently that “there’s a problem” with Reform Jews: “As soon as a Reform Jew stops following the religion of Israel […] I can’t allow myself to say that such a person is a Jew.”

Mr. Azoulay (MK – Shas) is a minister in the government of the state of Israel. The state of Israel, as PM Netanyahu has said clearly is “home to all Jews.” Not only is Bibi right, but 59% of Israel’s Jews agree. They did not intend to elect a religious bigot into the government, and therefore any minister that deliberately does harm to the people of Israel ought not to serve and be dismissed from such service.

I appreciate both PM Netanyahu’s  and President Rivlin’s efforts to affirm the best that is the democratic state of Israel, but neither (in my view) has done enough.

As I indicated in a former blog, Ruvi Rivlin is my 2nd cousin once-removed through his father’s side of the family, the late Yosef Rivlin. He has another cousin who is a Reform Rabbi as well, Rabbi Laura Novak Winer also on his father’s side of the family. But having two Reform Rabbis in the President’s family does not limit this issue to simply being a family affair.

This is a national peoplehood affair, and I would hope that what my cousin President Rivlin has done so wonderfully on behalf of democracy and equal rights for all Arab citizens of Israel, that he will do for the Jewish people as well. We deserve nothing less, and I know that he has the heart and mind to understand and do what is right.

I believe that PM Netanyahu does as well – and so, it is time for him to put the people of Israel first and ahead of the interests of Israel’s right wing ultra-Orthodox movements.

I’m waiting!!!!

See the following two articles in Haaretz and the New York Times on this issue:

1. “Netanyahu rejects minister’s ‘hurtful’ claim Reform Jews can’t be called Jews: Prime Minister summons ultra-Orthodox religious affairs minister following remarks, says they do not reflect position of government and that ‘Israel is home to all Jews.’” By Haaretz | Jul. 7, 2015 | 6:33 PM – http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/1.664876

2. Israeli Minister Says Reform Jews Are Not Really Jewish – By ISABEL KERSHNER JULY 7, 2015 – http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/world/middleeast/israeli-minister-says-reform-jews-are-not-really-jewish.html?_r=0

The Iran Nuclear Negotiations – Why I Am Ambivalent

28 Sunday Jun 2015

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Much is at stake as the June 30 deadline approaches for the P5+1 nations and Iran to conclude nuclear weapons negotiations, and as Tuesday approaches I am uncomfortably ambivalent. Here are my reasons why.

The Iranian leadership, without question, is a tough, stubborn, brutal, dishonest, and ideologically driven group that seeks hegemony over the entirety of the Middle East, the acquisition of a nuclear bomb being but one element important in its strategy of intimidation and domination of the region.

The economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the P5+1 nations to force it to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program have been effective in at least bringing the Iranian leadership to the negotiating table as it seeks relief from the economic stranglehold in which it finds itself.

Both sides have much to lose if an agreement does not emerge from these talks, but I do not believe that time is on the west’s side. If no agreement can be reached, even with an extension of the talks by a few days or weeks, the P5+1 coalition could unravel given Russia’s and China’s fading-away act.

The alternative to an agreement is dire whether it be Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon or a western military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities that sparks a wider war.

Western experts believe that should the US and its coalition partners initiate a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, not only would complete destruction be impossible, but military action won’t make a substantial difference. Iran’s current break-out time to produce a bomb of a few months would be delayed only two to four years, and then we’ll find ourselves back where we are now.

The military option is most probably not a real possibility anyway given the P5+1’s war weariness and reluctance to open another theater of violence in the Middle East.

That being said, let’s imagine for a moment the consequences of a military strike on Iran, should it occur.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas (Iranian proxies) could well join together in a coordinated counter-attack on the Jewish state. It is estimated that there are 100,000 Iranian supplied Hezbollah missiles sitting in launchers on the Lebanese border with far greater navigational accuracy than anything Hamas has had, and they are all pointed at Israel with the capacity to strike Kiryat Shemona, Haifa, Tiberius, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Petach Tikvah, Holon, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ariel and all  the major contested settlements, as well as cities and towns leading up to and including Jerusalem. Though Israel’s Iron Dome would intersect and destroy many incoming missiles, many other missiles will find their mark and kill hundreds or thousands of Israelis. Israel would bomb the daylights out of southern Lebanon with a likely ground invasion, and many innocent Lebanese and Israeli soldiers would be killed.

Hezbollah’s tunnel system in the north is said to be far more extensive than anything Hamas built in the south, and we could expect an invasion into Israel itself with deadly results.

And so, a war involving Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas can be expected to be more destructive and costly than anything Israel has experienced before.

Contemplating a scenario like this with a full Israeli military response is a nightmare of epic proportions. Yet, the bottom line in negotiations has to be that there can be no agreement that directly or indirectly recognizes Iran moving towards nuclear military capability.

One has to consider whether some kind of P5+1 control over Iranian nuclear ambitions is better than no control at all, and that some agreement that achieves many of the goals of the western powers is better than no deal.

All this is why I find myself ambivalent about what is the right course should negotiations fail. On the one hand, it is almost always a mistake to allow our actions to be influenced inordinately by our fears. Yet on the other, our leaders are going to have to choose what the better course is between two bad choices – all-out war or a partial agreement.

In an effort to clarify the important issues involved, a document called “Public Statement on U.S. Policy toward the Iran Nuclear Negotiations” was recently published under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The group assembled to discuss the Iran nuclear issue that produced this document included an impressive non-partisan group of American military, security, diplomatic, nuclear arms, and Middle East experts. The names of participants are listed. The 4-page document is worth reading and can be accessed here:

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/StatementWeb2.pdf

The politics driving the right and the left, unfortunately, have obfuscated many of the most important issues at stake. Most of us cannot claim to understand the physics of nuclear technology and weaponry and so we have to rely on the experts, and some of them disagree with each other.

For now, we will have to wait and see what transpires this week between the two parties and, if there is an extension of the talks, what will be the final outcome?

Iran and the Bomb – Moses and the Rock – Sinai and the Rod

25 Thursday Jun 2015

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This week the Torah recounts Miriam’s death and the people’s complaints of thirst during the period of wandering. God tells Moses to take his rod and order a rock to produce water. Old and weary of the people’s incessant complaining, instead of ordering the rock to produce water Moses strikes it with his rod. Though the people drink their fill, God punishes the prophet for his defiance and bars him from entering the Promised Land (Chukat – Numbers 20:1-13).

Talmudic sages explain the severity of God’s punishment by charging that Moses’ faith wasn’t strong enough, that because he failed to sanctify God before the people the Eternal deemed him unworthy to lead them into Canaan.

Maimonides explains that Moses lacked compassion and that he should have spoken kindly to the people instead of with words of rebuke.

Others say that in losing his temper Moses lost his moral authority to be the leader.

One opines that because Moses claimed credit for the miracle of the water without acknowledging God, the Almighty denied him what he dreamed of most.

There’s yet another explanation. Earlier at Massah and Meribah the people also complained of debilitating thirst, and similar to our portion God told Moses to take his rod and hit the rock instead of speaking to it (Exodus 17).

What’s the difference?

The answer is that Sinai intervened between the two events. God intended the second time to usher in a new way of being in the world for the former slaves, to erase their humiliating experience of suffering from their hearts and souls, to create a new free people worthy of a higher order of being, to yield from force to reason, violence to dialogue, brutish despotism to moral law, might to right, and intolerance to compassion.

God wanted a new age to begin, the ‘messianic age,’ and Moses was to be the Messiah.

However, when Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to it, he showed the people that Sinai had changed nothing at all, that God was merely a more powerful Pharaoh with better magic and greater violence.

Rabbi Marc Gelman writes of what God may have intended for the people (“The Waters of Meribah,” Learn Torah with…Vol. 5, Number 16, January 30, 1999, edited by Joel Lurie Grishaver and Rabbi Stuart Kelman):

“When my people enters the land you shall not enter with them, but neither shall I. I shall only allow a part of my presence to enter the land with them. The abundance of my presence I shall keep outside the land. The exiled part shall be called my Shekhinah and it shall remind the people that I too am in exile. I too am a divided presence in the world, and that I shall only be whole again on that day when the power of the fist vanishes forever from the world. Only on that day will I be one. Only on that day will my name be one. Only on that day Moses, shall we enter the land together. Only on that day Moses, shall the waters of Meribah become the flowing waters of justice and the everlasting stream of righteousness gushing forth from my holy mountain where all people shall come and be free at last.”

Sinai teaches that the restrictive, oppressive and terrifying power of might must give way to a greater vision of Oneness if God’s word is to prevail and draw humankind together in mutual respect and dignity, in security and peace.

The most difficult challenge of our era, indeed of any era, is how we are to attain oneness in our interpersonal relationships, our communities, amongst different peoples, ethnicities, religions, and nations.

In the next week, we will learn whether the P5 + 1 nations and Iran will succeed in negotiating an agreement that brings about a dramatic reduction in Iran’s capacity to develop a nuclear bomb, and whether the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and the peoples of the Middle East will be stilled.

Based on what we have been told is included in this agreement, even as we hear the Ayatollah’s bellicose rhetoric and “red lines” on top of Israeli and Congressional criticism and suspicion of this deal or any deal at all, there is obviously a vast difference of opinion amongst good, concerned and intelligent people about whether a successfully negotiated agreement is possible. If it is, the central questions are two: will the agreement be a harbinger of a more peaceful world, or will it be a subterfuge giving cover to Iran as it continues its march towards nuclear weapons capability.

We can only hope that the P5 + 1 advocates for an agreement are right that the deal will have enough teeth, investigative power and snap-back provisions to assure compliance and eliminate the threat of an Iranian bomb, and whether the principles established at Sinai are within reach in the real world of increasingly sectarian and tribal warfare.

The Reawakening to Love Again – A Memorial to Moshe Tabak

21 Sunday Jun 2015

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Moshe Tabak was 90 years old when he died last week. Originally from Sigid, Czechoslovakia, he was the descendent of a distinguished line of chassidic Dayanim (scholars and judges) and was one of eleven children.

Moshe’s father was a wealthy land-owner in Czechoslovakia before the war, and so when the Nazis took over the country in 1939, he felt resistant to leave despite his wife’s urgent pleas. He reasoned that the bad times would pass and they should wait it out.

Tragically, he and almost all the family were murdered in Auschwitz, except Moshe, one older brother and a younger sister who survived work camps.

After the war at a port in Rumania, Moshe was waiting to board a Haganah boat that would take him and hundreds of refugees to Palestine. He was standing in a bread line when he spotted Miriam, a girl two years younger than him. Charmed, he reached out and offered her chocolate. Miriam remembers that Moshe was wearing a hat, had beautiful blue eyes and curly hair.

Once on board the ship, Moshe became sea-sick, and Miriam nursed him. They fell in love quickly and two years later, in 1947, they married in Palestine.

Theirs was a love-match from the beginning. Jewish legend relates that at creation each soul was split in two into what is called a palga gufa, a half-soul, and then each half moves through time and multiple lives in a sea of souls seeking its other half to become whole again.

Moshe and Miriam believed they had originally been one soul and that each was the other’s beshert, intended one – soul-mate. Their love was so deep and sustaining, they couldn’t imagine it otherwise.

Together Moshe and Miriam parented four children who in turn brought them nine grandchildren and then six great-grandchildren – L’dor vador.

Last summer, Moshe and Miriam, now living in Los Angeles and together for 70 years, aging and frail, moved in with their youngest daughter and son-in law, Debi and Ofer, and their four children Orly, Danielle, Aleeza, and Bradley, members of our congregation for many years. Their youngest two, twins, had been preparing to become bar and bat mitzvah yesterday on Shabbat Parashat Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32).

Sadly, we buried Moshe at 3 PM on Friday just before Shabbat. The family attended Kabbalat Shabbat services to say Kaddish. Tradition discourages public mourning on the Sabbath.

Yesterday morning, despite the family’s loss of its loving and gentle patriarch, convened to celebrate Aleeza’s and Bradley’s b’nai mitzvah.

My teacher and friend, Rabbi Larry Hoffman of HUC-JIR in NY, wrote a moving d’var Torah this week about the juxtaposition of death and life and how that theme played itself out in the rebellion of Korach and the subsequent sprouting of Aaron’s staff:

“Moses placed the staffs before God in the tent of the covenant law. The next day Moses entered the tent and saw that Aaron’s staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds.” (Numbers 17:7-8)

Rabbi Hoffman explained that the great shoot of promise exemplified in the buds, blossoms and almonds of Aaron’s priestly staff, is regenerative and always bends towards the sun. “Judaism elects that image,” Larry wrote as its preferred image, not the image of destruction, bitterness and negativity.

How true this has been in Moshe’s and Miriam’s family experience.

Moshe was a positive thinking man. He mourned the destruction of his family quietly, deeply, with reverence, and dignity, but he looked forward, started his life over (as did so many survivors of the Shoah), sought continually every day to rediscover the good in life and to celebrate it, showing love and being generous in spirit to all, taking sustenance from Jewish tradition and Jewish faith, and delighting in the joy of family.

An unknown poet has written:

“Four things are beautiful beyond belief:
The pleasant weakness that comes after pain,
The radiant greenness that comes after rain,
The deepened faith that follows after grief,
And the re-awakening to love again.”

Zecher tzadik livracha. May the memory of this righteous man, Moshe Tabak, be a blessing.

Does the World Really Hate Israel and the Jews?

14 Sunday Jun 2015

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The rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, the fanatic Muslim extremism of Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, ISIS, and the Wahhabis, the cancerous spread of the International BDS movement, the political manipulation of people’s fears and hatred of the “other,” a double-standard when it comes to criticizing Israel that doesn’t make the same demands of other countries in similar conflicts, all are cited by Jews and Israelis as evidence that the world hates us.

Let’s assume for a moment that they are right. Why would the world hate us?

Perhaps, the resentment comes from the biblical story about which most everyone is familiar and in which the Jewish people is the original recipient of God’s promise.

Or perhaps, the hostility comes from our people’s rejection of the prophecies of the founders of Christianity and Islam whose adherents dominate so much of the planet.

Or perhaps, the story of the birth of Zionism and the state of Israel provokes dissonance in the minds of those who abide the myth that Judaism and the Jewish people ought to hold an inferior place relative to classic Christianity and Christians, Islam and Muslims.

For whatever the reason (and there are many), it’s true that the world pays inordinate attention to us Jews and the state of Israel. There are more foreign correspondents in Israel today than in any other country except the United States.

Why?

Years ago, Tom Friedman wrote:

“Quite simply, the West has a fascination and preoccupation with the story of Israel, a curiosity about it, an attraction and even an aversion to it that is out of all proportion to the nation’s size. And equally, Israel has an uncanny ability to inject itself into the news like no other country of four million people.” (“The Focus of Israel,” NY Times Magazine,  February 1, 1987)

Friedman characterized Israel’s story as “the oldest, most familiar super story of Western civilization” of which “The Bible is the First edition,” and it is that super story, he suggested, that drives people’s attitudes towards Jews and the state of Israel.

Does the world really hate us?

In a recent poll, 71% of Israelis think that the world has a double standard when it comes to criticizing Israel, and 69% of Israelis say that Israel’s current relationship with the world is either “not good” or “not so good.”

It’s true that the world uses a double standard to measure Israel’s behavior and policies; but, this doesn’t mean that the world is against us. Though other countries expect a higher level of behavior of Israel, so do Jews because Israel was created for that purpose of being a moral “light to the nations,” and even with its remarkable accomplishments in every area of human endeavor, we Jews by nature do not settle for what “is”; we are a people seeking redemption for ourselves and for the world.

I do not believe that the world is against us. Nor do I believe that the vast majority of the world’s population cares about Jews or the state of Israel one way or another, because for most countries Israel doesn’t affect their populations who are far more concerned with and worried about other matters.

Of those who do care a great deal about Israel, their main concern is the occupation and the settlements, and about whether Israel and the Palestinians will ever be able to find a secure, just, reasonable, end-of-conflict two-state resolution of their conflict.

The truth is this – never in Jewish history have there been as many powerful leaders of more nations allied with Israel as there are today, even when Israel’s leaders insult them.

Millions of French citizens of every ethnic and religious background marched in the streets of Paris after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket terrorist attacks this past year. Those people were allied with Israel and the West. They were not against us, but we Jews who resonate more to headlines about those who hate us than to headlines about those who love us are quick to ignore statements of support and solidarity.

Yes, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and ISIS are serious threats to the safety and security of the people of Israel. Yes, the international BDS movement and criticism of Israel in the blogosphere that quickly devolves into anti-Semitic ranting and delegitimization of Israel’s existence must be taken seriously and combated. Yes, there will always be anti-Semites. Of course, we have to be diligent in stating the truth and in our self-defense. But diligence in defense of our interests does not mean painting the entire world with the same extremist brush.

Last week’s Torah portion Shlach L’cha told the story of the 12 scouts sent by Moses to spy out the land, and we were reminded that we cannot be led by fear and the mindset of the victim. We are not “grasshoppers.” Israel is by far the strongest and most secure nation in the Middle East. Israel holds most of the cards in the relationships it has with the Palestinians and its neighbors, and despite legitimate threats against her, we foolishly build a fortress around ourselves and let no one in because we think the world hates us. They don’t!

National Poll of American Jews on Iran Negotiations and The Forward’s Response to Adelson’s anti-BDS Campaign

11 Thursday Jun 2015

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Two matters of vital interest to American Jewry and Israel:

1. J Street conducted a national poll of American Jewish support for Iran nuclear negotiations. American Jews are strongly in favor of the current negotiations with Iran and the P5 +2 going forward with proper inspection of all sites (including military sites) and provisions to reinstitute sanctions immediately upon Iranian violations of the agreement. See findings https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.jstreet.org/images/j-street-iran-poll-1-pager.pdf

– See also this Times of Israel article on poll – “Most US Jews support Iran nuclear deal, J Street poll finds”, – http://www.timesofisrael.com/most-us-jews-support-iran-nuclear-deal-j-street-poll-finds/

“Overall, President Obama’s approval rating remains higher among American Jews than among Americans in general. Fifty-six percent approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared to 45% of the general population, according to a calculation published by website Real Clear Politics from the same period.”

2. Wealthy Republican Right-Wing supporter of PM Netanyahu Sheldon Adelson is pouring money into fighting BDS on American college campuses. I am opposed to BDS, but we have to ask ‘Is Adelson’s money and approach good or bad in the fight against the BDS movement on college campuses?’ The Jewish Daily Forward editorial staff says it is not, and I agree with them.

See “The Wrong and Right Way to Beat BDS,” Jewish Forward
http://forward.com/opinion/editorial/309821/how-sheldon-adelson-could-really-fight-bds/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Main

“It’s hard to see what sort of productive role Sheldon Adelson can play in [fighting BDS],” writes the Forward editorial board. “But there is something that he can do. He can call his friend Benjamin Netanyahu and remind the prime minister that it is in his power to resurrect genuine negotiations with the Palestinians, repair his frayed relationship with the Obama administration and rescue Israel from growing international isolation. That might, indeed, save the day.”

From Grandparent to Child – Recording Memories

07 Sunday Jun 2015

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Few of us know anything about our families beyond three or four generations going back. This is a sad deficit, and so in helping to prepare young people to become bar and bat mitzvah, my synagogue schools initiated a family legacy project to help our students and their parents record as much of the history of their families as is possible.

We asked them to search for historic family documents, photographs, family trees, recorded memories, memoirs, and ritual items. We also asked the students to choose an elderly individual to interview.

This is an important and fun task for children who gain a sense of and identity with these members of their families and a greater sense of their family history. There is also great satisfaction that the older members of our families take in relating their stories to future generations.

To aid our students in the interview, I developed a list of questions they could use. Since most grandparents love telling their grandchildren about their lives, all the students need to do is gently prod their elder’s memories and, if they are fortunate, the floodgates open.

Here is the list that I give to our prospective b’nai mitzvah:

1. To begin, please write down the names of everyone in your family: parents, siblings, children, grand-children, your grandparents, and great-grandparents – their names and approximate dates of birth and death, where they were born and where they died.

2. Can you tell me your own earliest memories growing up? How old were you and where were you when you had those memories?

3. Where were you born? Did you have brothers and sisters? How many of them had children and grandchildren? Do you know your Hebrew name?

4. Were you named after a relative? What kind of a person was your namesake?

5. How did you celebrate your birthday when you were growing up?

6. Were you a member of a synagogue when you were young? Where was your synagogue? Do you remember the name of your rabbi and/or cantor/chazzan, and what do you remember about them?

7. What did you do for fun as a child and as a teenager?

8. Who most significantly influenced your life when you were young? Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?

9. Did you feel “different” in your school, and if so how? How did you cope with feeling different?

10. What factors influenced your choice of profession, employment or way of spending your time?

11. How old were the oldest of your relatives that you remember when you were young, and when and where were they born?

12. What can you remember about your parents and grandparents that I might be interested in knowing? What were they like? What did they do for a living? What were their hobbies? Were they athletes, readers, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, business people, laborers, tradesmen, or teachers? What was the most important accomplishment they would say they achieved in their lives?

13. What important hardships and challenges did your grandparents and great-grandparents face?

14. What were they most proud of at the end of their lives?

15. What languages do you speak and what languages did your grandparents and great-grandparents speak?

16. What countries have you and did they live in?

17. Did you or they experience anti-Semitism? Were you or they survivors of the Holocaust? What can you tell me about yours or their experiences?

18. Were your parents and grandparents observant Jews? Do you believe in God, or, are you a skeptic or an atheist? What about your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents?

19. Are there any Jewish ritual items in your family that are very old? Do they have stories attached to them?

20. If one side of your family is of another faith tradition, what is that tradition and how did your grandparents and great-grandparents practice their religion? Were they part of a church community? If so, where and what was the name of the church and their pastor/priest? Are there ritual items that they have and are there stories attached to them?

21. Did you ever visit Israel? What do you feel about Israel as the national home of the Jewish people?

22. Did you travel much in your life? Where have you been? When did you go there?

23. What world events most influenced your life, the lives of your parents and grandparents?

24. How would you want to be remembered by me?

Question for interviewee: What characteristics and virtues of the person you are interviewing do you most admire?

Threats Against the Jewish people in Europe and America

31 Sunday May 2015

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I refer you to three important articles that raise questions and challenges concerning Jewish well-being in Europe and America.

The first is a provocative piece that appeared in The Huffington Post that recalls the classic Jewish fear that we are an “ever-dying people,” yet it shines a light on the specific challenges facing liberal American Jews today on the one hand as well as the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of America on the other.

The second is an investigative report in The Atlantic on the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and what might be the future of Europe’s remaining Jews.

The third is a short op-ed that appeared in New York’s The Jewish Week, concerning the attack on American Progressive Zionists by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). My predecessor at Temple Israel of Hollywood, Rabbi Max Nussbaum (z’l), served in the 1950s as the President of the ZOA. He was a German refugee, a prominent Zionist and social activist, and, as his widow Ruth told me several years ago before she died at the age of 98, her husband Max would have been appalled had he lived to witness the behavior of the current leadership of the ZOA in its brazen slander against progressive American Zionists leaders.

Historically, we Jews often have been contentious with each other, but when threatened, we have usually pulled together as one. Not so today, it seems.

The threats today against the Jewish people, Judaism and the state of Israel are coming from a number of different places, including the international BDS movement, Islamic anti-Semites, classic European anti-Semites, terrorism, and Iran.

Internally we’re threatened by assimilation, Jewish ignorance and passivity, the Israeli settler movement and its supporters in the new Israeli government, and a lack of resolve to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

These articles are likely to disturb, as well they should!

1. Bad for the Jews, Bad for America – Huffington Post – Sandy Goodman (retired producer for the NBC Nightly News), May 26, 2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-goodman/bad-for-the-jews-bad-for-america_b_7425212.html

“The American Jewish community is coming apart at the seams. Its vital center is collapsing, and the entire group is increasingly polarized by runaway growth at both extremes: religious fundamentalism on one end, secular non-belief on the other. The result is not only bad for the Jews, but bad for the rest of America.”

2. Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe? – The Atlantic – Jeffrey Goldberg, April 2015
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/03/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/

“For half a century, memories of the Holocaust limited anti-Semitism on the Continent. That period has ended—the recent fatal attacks in Paris and Copenhagen are merely the latest examples of rising violence against Jews. Renewed vitriol among right-wing fascists and new threats from radicalized Islamists have created a crisis, confronting Jews with an agonizing choice.”

3. ZOA Has Gone Too Far in Criticizing Progressive Zionists – The Jewish Week – Kenneth Bob and Gideon Aronoff – May 22, 2015
http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/zoa-has-gone-too-far-criticizing-progressive-zionists

“The Hatikvah Slate [the Progressive Zionist slate in the World Zionist Congress Elections] – Ameinu, Partners for Progressive Israel (PPI), and the Zionist youth movements Habonim Dror and Hashomer Hatzair – have and will continue to actively oppose the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But we were forced to waste over four months and significant financial and human resources defending ourselves from distortions by ZOA and others aimed to expel progressive Zionists from the Zionist movement and to limit use of the eternal symbols of Zionism, like the name Hatikvah, solely to the Zionist right.

Instead of fair competition for the hearts, minds and votes of Zionists, ZOA acts to defame committed supporters of Israel, and progressive Israelis who are working to defend their country’s future. Ultimately, the ZOA’s hostile and distorted rhetoric and attacks on progressive Zionists, threaten the unity of the Jewish community and its collective effort to support for the State of Israel.  During dangerous and challenging times like today, this is a cost that the Jewish community and Israel simply cannot afford.”