This Week In Antisemitism: אף על פי כן / In Spite of It All

As I do periodically, I thought I might share with you my weekly email to my students at Babson College here in MA. Several of them privately shared their fears with me this week, as once again antisemitism made headlines. This time, it surfaced via the unapologetic voices of two the most famous people in the world—with two of the largest online followings in the world. If you read through to the end, please note my postscript that I’m adding for this blog. —Neal

Unfortunately, it was a rough week in the news for Jewish Americans. Because this week, anti-Jewish hatred reared its ugly, snarling head from two directions. 

The most famous entertainer in the world spewed an irrational, hate-filled tirade on a popular podcast and (of course) on Twitter, where he swore to go, um, “Deathcon 3” on “the Jews.” Simultaneously, the former President stoked antisemitism again when he claimed American Jews weren’t “grateful enough” for his past support of Israel and they should “get their act together” “before it’s too late.”  

The fact that both of these statements sound like threats of violence is bad enough for a community on edge. And the fact that both of these individuals have massive numbers of followers, some of whom belong to antisemitic blocs who might take these comments as dog whistles, is even worse.  

After all, the Jewish community has experienced a terrifying rise antisemitic assaults in the past few years—unprecedented in our lifetimes—to know that violent language unchecked inevitably leads to violent actions. Do we have to go over, once again, the list of the Jews who have been killed, the synagogues that have been attacked, and the Jewish institutions that have been vandalized?  

But what feels so awful this week is that the hatred has been so coarse and… old. Here's what I mean. 

Every minority group has a history of being victimized by bigots. And for each group, there is the coarsest, grossest sorts of stereotypes with which they’ve been slandered. Think about it for a minute, and you’ll know what I mean. 

So, the Jew-hatred that we’ve seen this week struck all the most ancient and archaic tropes. Kanye’s hate included: the Jews run Hollywood and the media; insidious Jewish power blocs will shut down anyone they disagree with; Jews are rich and their moneyed interests manipulate the world. These are the most disgusting and, well, clichéd forms of antisemitism, and it’s so sad that there is still a large and eager audience for them. 

What Kanye missed the former President picked up on. That’s the slander of “dual loyalty:” You must not be “real Americans,” because your secret loyalty lies elsewhere—namely, the State of Israel. Haven’t we all had enough of this man’s pathetic charges that if you’re not with him, you’re anti-America?  

Money. The media. The banks. Secret power. Dual loyalty. There’s nothing new here; it’s all the classic forms of anti-Jewish hate. And it was all thrown in our faces this week very publicly by very famous and influential people. 

So where do we go from here? Where do we find hope?  

As for me, I find hope in you. In the Jewish community, there is hope to be found whenever someone asserts their Jewish identity, embraces their heritage, and refuses to be afraid. The Torah emphasizes joy and love, and I’m determined not to let haters steal those things from us.

And outside the Jewish community, there is hope to be found whenever people stand united with each other against hate and say: we refuse to let others’ lies and slanders turn us against each other. Love and decency win out in the long run, even if they seem to get trounced in the short run.  

Earlier this week, an interfaith and multicultural group of students, faculty, and staff gathered beneath the Babson Globe to stand in solidarity and prayer, simply to bear witness to the pain and suffering in the world. It was very powerful, and I left the Peace Circle filled with hope and energy. 

I had the privilege of closing that gathering, and I shared the following words from the 19th century mystical master Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav. (Bratzlav, by the way, is in besieged Ukraine.) These, too, are words of hope: 

וְדַע שֶׁהָאָדָם צָרִיךְ לַעֲבֹר עַל גֶּשֶׁר צַר מְאֹד מְאֹד
וְהַכְּלָל וְהָעִקָּר – שֶׁלֹּא יִתְפַּחֵד כְּלָל 

Know this: That each person must cross a very—very!—narrow bridge.
And the rule, the fundamental thing, is:  Not to be afraid. 

Shabbat Shalom, 

Neal 

That’s what I wrote to my students. Here, I’ll add that two other things happened to me this past week that also gave me hope, along the lines of the themes that I included in my final paragraphs above:

In the spirit of interfaith sharing, I felt lucky to be part of a discussion panel that met at First Parish Church in Weston, MA earlier this week. Each panelist - representing Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Baha’i faiths - spoke on the theme of “Hope in Our Fractured World.” There were about 100 people in attendance. And it was quite lovely; a gathering of people of good faith, seeking a bit of common ground, understanding, and perspective from one another.

Second, there was Simchat Torah. And it occurs to me that in recent years, Simchat Torah could be subtitled, אף על פי כן / “In spite of it all…”. In other words, we know that there’s a lot of pain in the world, as institutions and protections and beliefs we took for granted sway precariously. And in spite of it all: This week, we took the Torah in our arms and danced and sang. At least, that’s what we did at the Walnut Street Minyan in Newton, MA. And it was beautiful and joyous, and filled with hope, as we bid the holiday season farewell, and prepared to face the winter that is coming…

Parashat Shemot: The Big Lie

A thought as Shabbat approaches.

With this week’s sidra, we return to the Book of Exodus. As Exodus opens, the Israelites are well settled in the region of Goshen in the Land of Egypt. Then, of course, a new Pharaoh comes to power—a king who does not know history and the legacy of Joseph. This Pharaoh is a brute and a thug, but also a master manipulator of his citizenry. And he speaks words of incitement:

הָ֥בָה נִֽתְחַכְּמָ֖ה ל֑וֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּ֗ה וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־תִקְרֶ֤אנָה מִלְחָמָה֙ וְנוֹסַ֤ף גַּם־הוּא֙ עַל־שֹׂ֣נְאֵ֔ינוּ וְנִלְחַם־בָּ֖נוּ וְעָלָ֥ה מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.
Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase;
otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies
in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” (Ex. 1:10)

They’re just words, right? The same sorts of words and logic that common gutter racists have used countless times throughout history. But immediately in the next verse, Pharaoh’s audience acts on his words:

וַיָּשִׂ֤ימוּ עָלָיו֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מִסִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן עַנֹּת֖וֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם
So they [they?!] set taskmasters over them to oppress them
with forced labor… (Ex. 1:11a)

That’s how Israel became enslaved. You can imagine their bystander neighbors muttering, “Hey, I’m not racist, but if we don’t do something, there won’t be any real Egyptians left around here anymore…”

Yet lying tyrants are never satisfied. They always have to up their game:

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם לַֽמְיַלְּדֹ֖ת הָֽעִבְרִיֹּ֑ת אֲשֶׁ֨ר שֵׁ֤ם הָֽאַחַת֙ שִׁפְרָ֔ה וְשֵׁ֥ם הַשֵּׁנִ֖ית פּוּעָֽה׃
וַיֹּ֗אמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן֙ אֶת־הָֽעִבְרִיּ֔וֹת וּרְאִיתֶ֖ן עַל־הָאָבְנָ֑יִם אִם־בֵּ֥ן הוּא֙ וַהֲמִתֶּ֣ן אֹת֔וֹ
וְאִם־בַּ֥ת הִ֖יא וָחָֽיָה׃
The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives,
one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool:
if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” (Ex. 1:15-16).

This is the Egyptian version of the Big Lie, a term coined in Mein Kampf. If you repeat Big Lies often enough, and with enough charisma, people who don’t know better will follow, even to the point of dehumanizing others. Even to the point of radical violence.

Here’s what Yale history professor Timothy J. Snyder says about the Big Lie, in his crucial book On Tyranny (New York, Tim Duggan Books, 2017):

As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality…

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist styled depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable.

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction… requiring a blatant abandonment of reason.

The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims… “I alone can do it.” (pp.66-70)

The American version of the Big Lie has been cultivated for a long time, by Donald Trump, his enablers, conservative media, et al. They have told their audiences outright falsehoods for years. They have repeated those mantras constantly (“Socialism!”, “Lock her up!”, “The elections are rigged!”). They love magical thinking (“the pandemic will disappear like a miracle”). And the misplaced faith: scientists, journalists, experts in the field, etc., are all lying; only Trump tells you the truth.

As you know, over sixty court cases verified that Trump decidedly was the loser in the November election. Governors and election officials from both parties around the country confirmed that the election was completely secure and accurate.

And yet the President and his minions repeat their Big Lie, that it was rigged and stolen.

The angel of decency passed over these people.

Now we’ve seen the fulfillment of what the Big Lie has done after all these years. Monsters in Auschwitz shirts and MAGA hats, with their gun in one hand and the flag of Southern treason in the other, storming the United States Capitol.

And when it was over, and the U.S. Congress reconvened to ratify the results of the November election, still eight Republican Senators and one hundred thirty-nine Republican Representatives voted to overturn the democratic election results representing the will of the American people. Learn their names; they are seditious traitors to democracy.

But those ignoble 147 know an open secret: Repeat the Big Lie long enough and the true believers will fall into line. And then G-d have mercy on the nation.

Don’t expect divinely-ordained miracles—a/k/a “Ten Plagues”—to rescue America from the suffering that the Big Lie has created. As Snyder instructs us:

            Post-truth is pre-fascism. (p.71)

But Shabbat is coming, so we have to find solace and comfort somewhere. It’s there in the Torah: While the rest of the Egyptians were following the lies that Pharaoh fed them—“we have to put Egypt First”—there were some heroes. We know their names: Shiphrah and Pu’ah, two midwives, who said that no matter how personally risky it would be for them to defy Pharaoh’s whims, they would not throw babies into the Nile.

We know their names.

The Torah doesn’t tell us the name of this Pharaoh. As far as the text is concerned, he’s just another tyrant of the sort we’ve seen in every generation, as the Haggadah reminds us. But these two Hebrew midwives, people with the strength of character to stand up to tyrants, who do what is right and decent and life-affirming, those are the names that get recorded and celebrated for all posterity.

Each of us is called upon, at this crucial moment, to be a Shiphrah and a Puah. Pharaohs and their enablers inevitably crumble under the weight of their own lies. Their names will, eventually, be buried in the shifting sands. Those who speak the truth, and apply it with decency, compassion, and love, will be the ones whose names endure.

Photo credit: Olam HaTanakh: Shemot, Tel Aviv, 1998

Statement from the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault on America, January 6, 2021

Statement by the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault
on the Nation’s Capital on January 6, 2021

23 Tevet 5781 | January 7, 2021

Like all Americans of good faith, the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis is horrified and appalled by the acts of insurrection in Washington, DC on Wednesday. We urge the members of our rabbinic council, and all the members of our communities, to renew the call for justice and decency in our country in accordance with our Jewish and American values:

1.    The perpetrators of Wednesday’s violence and their enablers are criminals and enemies of American democracy.

As Jews, we cherish dissent, differences of opinion, and the precious freedom to question authority and express unpopular opinions. Wednesday’s events, which included vandalizing the Capitol building, invading the offices of national representatives, and the clear threat of violence, violate each of these principles.

The Mishnah enjoins us: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if it does not inspire respect, people will devour one another” (Pirkei Avot 3:2). Today we pray for those who defend the nation’s laws and maintain order with integrity and evenhandedness, especially those who have been put in harm’s way.

2.    Wednesday’s violence was predictable and, considering the history of incitement,  sadly inevitable. We demand accountability from President Donald Trump and his enablers.

One resounding lesson from Jewish history is that violent words directly lead to violent actions. The President’s winks and nods to alt-right and white supremacist groups—from his refusal to disavow neo-Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017, to his encouragement of the racist Proud Boys to “stand by”, to his feeble and cynical words of “We love you” for Wednesday’s insurrectionists—implicitly endorsed the assault on the Capitol.

We have no doubt that the President’s words incited Wednesday’s violence. Prior to the election, the President refused to indicate if he would support a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. Earlier this week, the President encouraged his followers to go to Washington to protest the election that he lost, insisting that the protest on January 6 would be “wild.” The President’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, likewise encouraged violence when he insisted the demonstrations would be “trial by combat.”

The President’s insistence that November’s election, which he decisively lost, was rigged and invalid has been proven unequivocally to be a lie. Over sixty court cases, and the affirmations of the election results by governors and election officials all over the country, have demonstrated that the elections were valid. The President’s public refusal to accept the results is not only a demonstration of his low character, but it also is an assault on the democratic institutions of our country, which directly led to Wednesday’s violence.


3.    We demand clarity about the clear racial disparity in the use of force by the authorities in responding to the attack on the Capitol.

Why were the responses of the Capitol Police and law enforcement so disproportionately mild compared to similar events of the past year, when Black Lives Matter protesters and other left-leaning protests were met with much more severe displays of force? MBR’s continued commitments to racial justice and our partnerships with our neighbors compel us to call attention, yet again, the unfair and unequal application of the law.

Our Torah insists: You shall have one law for stranger and citizen alike (Leviticus 24:22). We call for official investigations into the disparity of the applications of the force of law, and the apparent lack of security preparations, given the size and toxic incitement of the crowd.

We call upon our Rabbis and other leaders to name the transgressions that led to this moment. Rabbis should not engage in partisan politics from their pulpits, of course, but rabbis often feel constrained in voicing moral truths so as not to upset some members of their communities. But this is not a partisan moment: Democrats and Republicans, left-leaning and right-leaning constituents alike must be able to identify the profound offenses that have taken place in order to move our country forward.

Jewish tradition warns of “righteous people who had the power to protest the actions of others, but did not” (Talmud, Shabbat 55a). American democracy is resilient, and we are confident that the potential for national healing exists. But our shared future is in our own hands; we have much work to do.

This is not a time for  self-righteous pieties or genteel calls for peace. This is a moment to reclaim the integrity of our democratic institutions from those who would pervert them, and to demand accountability, even unto the highest office in the land.

Massachusetts Board of Rabbis Executive Committee
Rabbi Neal Gold, President (ndzahav@gmail.com)

Election 2020 / A Lesson from the Days of Barry Goldwater

On October 21, 1964, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf wrote the following in his monthly synagogue bulletin:

 In every single deviant position, Senator Goldwater has opposed not only the American consensus but also the religious commonality. No religious body in America, no serious church leader, no responsible congregation would today dream of sharing his dangerous nationalism, his economic primitivism, or his incredible appeal for good feeling rather than plain justice between the races. No Protestant, no Catholic, no Jew. Goldwater has placed himself squarely against the whole ecumenical struggle of the American churches to find a better way to live together.

…I believe that religious men and especially Jews, and most especially members of this congregation, of whatever party and whatever conviction, should take it upon themselves to name Goldwater their enemy… He will not be the last threat to our American integrity, but he is the clear and present danger, and we should fight him while we still can.

 May G-d help us to elect Lyndon Johnson president![1]

Rabbi Wolf was one of the great Jewish voices of the 20th century. Much of his career was based in Chicago, first in its northern suburbs (where this was published), then, after an interim at Yale, on the south side of city. He was a profound religious philosopher and a great teacher of halacha and the imperatives that underpin being a religious person in the modern world.

He obviously knew that congregations are not supposed to be politically partisan. The power of this writing is that he was saying: there is a limit; we are at a once-in-a-lifetime moment where our typical behavior must change.[2]

My commentary to the above, in light of where we are right now in America:

In every single deviant position. Goldwater was an extremist and nuclear warmonger. But at least in 1964 they were debating issues! Today that notion seems almost quaint. This election is not about a rational discussion about the issues that challenge our nation. It comes down to this: Does Donald Trump have any middot/virtuous character traits that you would want your child to emulate? 

No religious body in America. I presume Rabbi Wolf was overstating the situation in 1964, just as this would be an exaggeration today. Conservative religious bases are often the last refuge of right-wing extremists, especially since Reagan.

But I understand it this way. People of good faith do not have to agree on policy matters, as long as we agree to a certain common ground, namely: Human beings are endowed with a basic dignity. Hungry people should be fed. Homeless people should be housed. The oppressed should be liberated. Peace is a primary value. So is equitable distribution of justice. The individual’s pursuit of dignity and success and happiness should not be infringed upon—unless that pursuit causes harm to one’s neighbor. And every human being, being made in the image of G-d, is therefore endowed with inalienable rights.

And people of good faith—conservatives and liberals—can rationally disagree on the valid, best paths to take in order to arrive at these shared goals. It seems to me that this is the basis of how to live together respectfully in a community, or family, of people with different opinions.

I see nothing in today’s Trumpian agenda that shares those once-mutual goals. That is why Wolf’s “no religious body…” statement remains valid.

Between the races. 1964! And 2020. The Trumpian embrace of white supremacy is just one of a multitude of reasons why this regime must be vomited out.

No Protestant, no Catholic, no Jew. It was 1964, so this is what was understood to be an ecumenical/interfaith statement. Will Herberg’s famous sociological study of the American mid-20th century melting pot was called Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and surely that is what Wolf is referencing. Of course in 2020 we wouldn’t say it that way; our interfaith tent is much wider, to include many other faiths, especially Muslims (who continue to be cast as a fifth-column by right-wingers), Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Native American traditions. Our pluralistic tent is richer and broader than it was in the Sixties, to the betterment of all.

He will not be the last threat. Yup.

While we still can. The current president’s dictatorial instincts have been made clear in the past few weeks (and in truth, much much longer), and the urgency of this message is that the basic institutions of our democratic society—such as fair and free elections and peaceful transition of power—are gravely at risk.

This is a most perilous moment for everything America represents; like never before has its democracy been ready to unravel. Rabbi Wolf was prescient about the stakes in 1964, a time when it was time to say yesh g’vul, there is a limit to what we, in a free society, may accept.

May G-d help us to elect Joe Biden president!

Photo credit: Doug Mills, New York Times

[1] Congregation Solel (Highland Park, IL) Pathfinder, October 21, 1964; in Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf, Ivan R. Dee: 1998, 187-188.

[2] Sometimes—with great and weighty hesitation—extreme moments call for conventional rules to be broken. In the language of halacha:  It is a time to act for the L-rd, for they have violated Your Torah (Psalm 119:126). The Rabbis read this verse backwards, violate Your Torah, because it is a time to act for the Lord;  and they interpret: Because we are facing the most extreme set of circumstances, the moment calls for extreme measures to be adopted. Rashi: “When the time comes to do something for the sake of the Holy One, and we must violate the Torah.” See the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 69a; Berachot 63a.

Have We Forgotten What Good News Looks Like?

Today there was good news in the world. After months of unremitting bad news, I fear we may have forgotten what good news looks like.

Watching the historic peace treaty signings today between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, I felt detached and dispassionate about the proceedings. I’m usually much more emotional when it comes to these things. I have strong memories of September 13, 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn. I was alone in my apartment in Jersey City, NJ, with tears streaming down my cheeks as Yitzhak Rabin z”l intoned, “Oseh shalom bim’romav…”

And I still have hanging over my desk a large photo of Rabin and King Hussein lighting each other’s cigarettes on the occasion of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in October 1994. It makes me melancholy and wistful when I look at the faces of these leaders from a different era. I take these things personally.

Today: no tears, and no goosebumps. Maybe that’s because Trump and Netanyahu are a different species of leader: unvarnished opportunists with grotesque records when it comes to promoting democracy. Or maybe because the UAE and Bahrain have abysmal human rights records, and it feels a bit like making friends with the nasty kid on the playground—he’s cool as long as he picks on others, not us.

But my own sentimentality doesn’t matter. To tell the truth, I am well aware that this is, in fact, a momentous occasion.

I’ve had conversations with lefty friends in recent days who scorned this turn of events. They’ve said that Trump is a self-serving narcissist, and doesn’t care about peace, and this is all about his reelection. They point to his unabashed statement this summer, when he admitted that the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 was “for the evangelicals”—recalling Secretary of State James Baker’s “F—k the Jews, they didn’t vote for us.” They argue that Bibi, too, is an autocrat who is solely bent on self-preservation.

To all of which I say: Point taken, but so what?  It’s not exactly breaking news to say that politicians act in their own political interests.

But I fear there’s something dangerous in my friends’ opposition to these peace deals. I think that they would unequivocally support the exact same deals if they were marshaled together by an American president whom they respected. I think that some left-leaning, pro-Israel people oppose this deal because Trump himself is so noxious, and they imagine that anything that makes Trump look good—anything that he can put in his “win” column—makes his prospect for reelection go up, G-d forbid.

In other words, they say: if it’s good for Trump, we oppose it.

That’s a pretty disastrous way of thinking. It’s just like hoping that the economy will tank, because presidents tend not to be reelected in a bad economy. Or hoping that there won’t be a coronavirus vaccine until after the election. It’s a manner of thinking that says: Trump is so grotesque that I don’t care how many people suffer in the short term, as long as he is booted out decisively in November.

I, for one, hope that in the short term, bad things won’t happen: that the economy won’t completely implode; that there won’t be more slayings of innocent black people by police; that there won’t be any more school shootings; that the fires ravaging the American West will stop.  (Can you imagine someone saying, “I want the fires keep burning until after the election?” That’s just sick.)

And I can hope for all these good things while campaigning with vigor for Trump to lose. You know what they say about broken clocks… 

In that spirit, I can rejoice that finally Israel is normalizing relationships in its “neighborhood.” This is what we’ve been yearning for since at least the Six Day War, when people prematurely fantasized that, due to Israel’s victories, the Arab nations would accept the fact that Israel was a permanent part of the modern Middle East. To hold otherwise is to play right into the hands of those who believe that what is good for them is what’s good for the world—and vice-versa.

What about the Palestinians? Yes, they are going to be the losers here—because of precisely this same logic. People who say, “You shouldn’t be allowed to engage with Israel until there is progress with the Palestinians” miss the whole point. When the PA and its enablers give up the pipe dream of “from the River to the Sea”, and engage with Israel as a permanent neighbor, there will be progress. I’m not absolving Israel of its responsibilities toward the Palestinians—Israel’s policies of dissembling and humiliation have been disastrous. But, frankly, I think that the deals with the UAE and Bahrain (and others that have been whispered) show that this has nothing to do with the Palestinians. Or, if anything, that the Arab world is nearly as exhausted with Palestinian rejectionism as Israelis are.

And while these protagonists make it impossible to feel unmitigated happiness, we should be able to recognize good news when it comes our way. At the end of a year’s ceaseless flow of bad news, this is indeed good news. Kein Yirbu—may it grow and expand in the New Year ahead.

Broken Clocks (on the U.S. Embassy Opening in Jerusalem)

Gen. Edmond Allenby dismounts from his horse and enters Jerusalem on foot, December, 1917.

I was wrong.

I was wrong in December when I wrote ambivalently about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. At that time, I wrote that while of course Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, “sometimes it is better to be smart than to be right.”  It’s hard to admit being wrong, but I was.

And it’s even harder when the messenger is someone like President Donald Trump, who it seems is determined to wrap even the moments when he’s right with so much narcissism, abuse, and seventh-grade-bully smarminess that you just want to say, “what he’s for, I’m against.”

But you know the saying about broken clocks, and it is foolish to conclude that, just because another’s motives are suspect, they are actually wrong.

I was ambivalent about moving the embassy because I thought it was bad for Israel’s security, because I thought it would launch tirades of anti-Israel violence, and because I thought it would isolate American foreign policy as a broker in the Middle East.

I realize now that each of these premises was faulty. American isolation is following apace due to the Administration’s other “America First” policies and obnoxious diplomacy, not because of the embassy. But regarding Israel, in fact, a trickle of countries are tentatively indicating that they will follow the American lead and move their embassies as well (Guatemala, and possibly Honduras and Romania, although the Czechs seem to have changed their minds). This is a very good thing, and I hope we quickly reach a tipping-point of other countries following suit.

Further, the expected waves of violence in Arab countries did not follow. (The Hamas-inspired violence on Gaza’s border is not because of the embassy move. If anything, it is connected to the 70th anniversary of the Independence/Nakba, and the delusions that terrorism will reset the world’s clocks to a time when there was no Israel.) 

And I argued that moving the embassy was symbolic; no one’s life (except for the ambassador's) would be enhanced by moving it, so the risk of disaster outweighed the benefits of symbolism.

But symbols are important. Our religious and civic lives are full of symbolism. For instance, at the Brandeis graduation yesterday, I was struck again by how full of  “ancient” symbolism our academic exercises are (from caps and gowns—make sure your hood is the right color!—to the regalia that the university president wears, to the solemn intonation of an alma mater). Israelis understandably feel delegitimized by the refusal, even of allies, to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the authentic capital of the State—the place where, de facto, everyone knows the political and legal seats of government are.

The move really has nothing to do with Palestinians, and nothing to do with peace processes, or two states, or even preventing a future Palestinian state from having its capital in East Jerusalem.

So the administration was right—I daresay, even courageous in moving the embassy.

And I was wrong.  I just hope and pray that six months from now, I won’t be writing a blog that says, “I was wrong about being wrong.”

Because these people sure know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of approaching Jerusalem with modesty and humility, as when Gen. Edmond Allenby dismounted his horse and entered the City of Cities on foot in 1917, the embassy opened with triumphalism and backslapping. Instead of celebrating Jerusalem, they celebrate themselves.

“Modesty and humility” are incoherent to these people. (“When President Trump makes a promise, he keeps it,” said son-in-law Jared Kushner, the sort of sycophantic and self-serving comment we’ve come to expect in lieu of what could have been a moment of oratorical inspiration.) The presence of uber-racist pastors, the voices of the evangelical hard right, is obscene. So, too, was the presence of the pro-Israel but anti-Jewish millenialist reactionaries (hello, Michele Bachmann? Are these people really interested in reviving this lunatic’s career?).

Supporters of the Administration love quoting the Bible. Some of them even compare Donald Trump to a modern day Cyrus of Persia! (As if Zionist history never happened! As if we hadn’t already returned to the Land!)

They might consider other parts of the Bible, such as the words of Jeremiah. Over twenty-six hundred years ago, Jeremiah (7:1-15) warned about the hypocrisy of those who spend too much time mouthing praises of Jerusalem (“The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord are these!!”, v.4) while simultaneously promoting injustice, moral perversion, and arrogance. Jerusalem demands morality, both personal and social. To behave otherwise is to mock its religious premise.

Moving the embassy is a very good thing. It should be accompanied by a set of moral values that represent city’s ancient heritage: a place for God to dwell among human beings, a place of seeking moral repair, and a place of yearning for real peace.

Nuclear Dreams

If you can stomach just a few more words about the State of the Union…

I have no intention here of analyzing Donald Trump’s speech—nor the First Lady’s clothes, the opposition’s behavior, or any of that nonsense. States of the Union are usually non-events, and this one was no different.

But there’s one part of his speech that chilled me to the bone, and in the newspapers and websites that I read, I didn’t see any particular mention of it.

He said:

As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.

On the page, those words are grotesque enough. But there was an insidiousness to how he said it—especially that last sentence, which had a sickly, condescending tone. It triggered some old, primal fears.

I was a teenager in the 1980s, at the height of U.S.-Soviet anxieties. I’m sure I’m not the only one of my generation who remembers waking in the middle of the night from nightmares about nuclear war. Our schools and popular culture scared the hell out of us with the prospect of the annihilation of the planet.

My memories of ‘80s pop culture echo the helpless fear that our leaders would be “forced” by our enemies to use nuclear weapons—the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. Like a lot of ‘80s detritus, much of it today seems campy and silly—but we took it very seriously. 

For instance, my favorite movie around the time of my Bar Mitzvah was WarGames, which imagined that two computer nerds (with their crackling antediluvian modems and monochrome computer screens) could inadvertently set off a chain of events that would lead to war. Today, we giggle at some of the dialogue:

 “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?”
“Later. Let’s play global thermonuclear war.”

But back in 1983, it wasn’t so funny. It scared the hell out of us.

Pop music at the time got on the nuclear fear-stoking bandwagon, too. U2—when they were young, vaguely punky, and cutting-edge—recorded War and The Unforgettable Fire, which seemed to nod toward these themes. Pink Floyd released the vinyl quaalude The Final Cut, which droned on about nuclear apocalypse. Even a disposable act like Frankie Goes to Hollywood released a hit single called “Two Tribes” about the dangers of nuclear proliferation—this is what passed as dance music in those days!

In school, they gave us books like Alas, Babylon (a holdover of the previous generation’s atomic terror) which depicted the aftereffects of a nuclear war. But the worst, by far, was The Day After—a televised movie “event” that was considered so important that it was aired without any commercials! It was about the futility of survival after the nukes go off, because of the environmental cataclysm that comes afterwards, making the planet uninhabitable. By the end of the film, the blast’s survivors have succumbed to radiation poisoning, nuclear winter has started to settle in, and the extinction of the human race seemed assured. Everybody watched it; it was one of the highest-rated TV programs of all time.

This is what we were raised on. One night in June 1989 there was an explosion at the Hercules munitions plant in my hometown, shattering windows miles away. I remember falling out of my bed from the blast, but the worst part was the sheer terror that this was it:  it was so loud, surely that it meant that the Soviets had launched their nukes (and we all knew that Picatinny Arsenal, not far away, would be a primary target when doomsday actually came). I don’t think I’ve ever been so metaphysically terrified at any other time in my life.

Even as teens, we knew the numbers: that our nuclear arsenal was so large it could destroy the planet hundreds of times over. We couldn’t comprehend the logic: if we could only completely destroy the entire Soviet Union 178 times, was it really more of a deterrent to be able to wipe them out 212 times? 

Miraculously, the Soviet Union collapsed without any of these horrors coming to be, and the Doomsday Clock slipped backwards a few clicks from midnight. But I presume I’m not the only one who senses that keeping nukes out of the hands of terrorists and lunatics couldn’t be more important. It’s a big part of why I take Israel’s warnings about Iran’s nuclear threat so absolutely seriously: a nuclear weapon in the hands of an apocalyptic regime is the stuff of real nightmares.

So to hear the President speaking of the need to “rebuild” our nuclear arsenal triggers certain long-dormant reflexes in me. Conservatives and progressives alike should be able to find common cause in being able to restrain this insane return of a ghost that should be resting permanently in peace.

Jews, especially, should know that exponential power of nuclear weapons is a moral anathema. A tradition that demands that when you go to war, you must not destroy the fruit trees in enemy territory (Deuteronomy 20:19) should be appalled at the idea of devastating entire ecosystems with weapons of ghastly force.

Moreover, the standard interpretation of an obscure passage in the Talmud (Shevuot 35b) is that a war that would kill a massive number of civilians—a sixth of the population, an atomic proportion—is absolutely prohibited.

Furthermore… my God, do we have to do this? Do we really need religious prooftexts to say that we shouldn’t contemplate wreaking devastation on a planetary scale? Can we just call this one of those things that the Talmud considers סברא הוא, just plain common sense?

As Joshua said back in ’83—and everyone in Eisenhower Middle School in Roxbury, NJ could quote it—it is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Of Course Jerusalem is Israel's Capital...

…but sometimes it’s better to be smart than right.

The Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a cynical political maneuver—but there are plenty of good, historical reasons why Jews may feel torn. Here’s my attempt to sort through the issues and to explain why something that should seem obvious on one hand is so profoundly disturbing on the other.

Plenty of people may find themselves saying, “Isn’t Jerusalem already Israel’s capital?”  And of course it is. All of Israel’s government offices are in Jerusalem, Israel’s largest city. So, too, are the Knesset and the Supreme Court. So is Hebrew University, the national university of Israel, founded in 1918. The office of the Chief Rabbinate, a reprehensible institution but a significant national one nonetheless, is likewise in Jerusalem.

Furthermore, spiritually speaking, there has never been any doubt in the Jewish mind about Jerusalem's status. Since the days of King David some 3,000 years ago, Jerusalem has been the earthly capital of Jewish worship. Of no other city did the Psalmist cry:

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither
Let my tongue cleave to my palate if I cease to think of you,
If I do not keep Jerusalem in mind even at my happiest hour. (Ps. 137:5-6)

For the Jewish soul, Jerusalem is home.

In a perfect world—of course the U.S. embassy should be in Jerusalem, the only capital of Israel.

So what’s the controversy?

When the United Nations in November 1947 voted to partition British Mandate Palestine into two states, a Jewish one and an Arab one, Jerusalem was considered too contested; it was to be internationalized. After the 33-13 U.N. vote passed, the Zionists accepted the plan and the Arab nations rejected it. (There were some enraged voices, especially from far-right nationalist corners of the Zionist movement, to reject the U.N. plan on the grounds that there could be no Jewish state without Jerusalem as its capital. David Ben Gurion sagely chose otherwise.)

When Ben Gurion and the Zionist leaders signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, it was an endorsement of the U.N. plan—the Declaration was signed in Tel Aviv, and the understanding was that Jerusalem would, indeed, be internationalized.

But the U.N.’s proposed boundaries never came to fruition. Within hours of Israel’s independence, she was attacked simultaneously by the surrounding Arab nations. When an armistice was reached the following year, Israel’s precipitous borders were somewhat expanded—and a foothold was established in Jerusalem, a lifeline to the thousands of Jews who lived there (and who were isolated, endangered, and on a few occasions, massacred during the War of Independence). Jerusalem was a divided city: the Old City and eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem were under Jordanian rule; the western part of the city was Israeli. Into those western neighborhoods, the apparatus of the government moved.

After Israel’s stunning victory in the Six Day War in 1967, all of Jerusalem came under Israeli control. While the Muslim holy sites were handed over to the waqf—the Jordanian-controlled Islamic religious authority—both East and West Jerusalem became one Israeli municipality. Everywhere in the Jewish world, souls were stirred. The new anthem of the Jewish people became Naomi Shemer's Yerushalayim shel Zahav / "Jerusalem of Gold." 

But for most of the nations of the world, including the U.S., Jerusalem never gained its status as Israel’s capital, because they continued to cling to the 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 rather than comprehending that the status quo had irrevocably changed. 70 years later, that’s still the case.

The problem is precisely this: everything about Jerusalem causes passions to be inflamed. Even though many Jewish residents of the city have never stepped foot in the Palestinian neighborhoods such as Beit Safafa, Silwan, or Shuafat, there is a strong sense that Jerusalem can “never be divided again.”  And for Palestinians, Jerusalem is the inevitable capital of their state-in-waiting.

So there are threats. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has indicated that if the Trump Administration makes this move, it will pull the plug from the barely-on-life-support peace process. Worse, the implied threat is that the Palestinian street will go ballistic, launching, G-d forbid, a Third Intifada and new wave of violence and terror. That violence could easily spread beyond Israel.

On one hand, some supporters of Israel will understandably say—why should we allow the threat of terror to stop us from pursuing a goal that is ultimately right? Why would we cave in to that sort of blackmail?

But on the other hand—often it is better to be smart than to be right. What, really, is to be gained by this move, besides a sense of historic injustice corrected?

The danger of this spiraling out of control is real. No one’s life would be changed or improved by this symbolic U.S. recognition—but a lot of people’s lives could be devastated by the eruption of tensions. That is why one pro-Israel U.S. administration after another—Republican and Democrat alike—has put off making such a move as this. (I suspect that behind the scenes, the Israelis were nodding in assent. You really don’t hear about the Israelis making a big deal that U.S. embassy is not in Jerusalem—and for good reason.)

As scholar Micah Goodman has written in his important book Catch-67, the United States could be using its power to ease tension between Israelis and Palestinians, taking short-term incremental steps to build trust (rather than trying to force final stages of a peace process at this time). His book—a bestseller in Israel—offers concrete examples steps about how to do just that.

We should question the timing of this move:  Does it have anything to do with distracting attention from Donald Trump’s growing panic over the Justice Department investigation of possible collusion with Russia? Or with the increasing momentum in Israel of corruption charges against Prime Minister Netanyahu? And in a time of great tension between Israel and American Jews, over the Western Wall and pluralism issues in general, doesn’t the timing seem just a little self-serving for these politicians?

Whether or not the announcement is self-serving for the embattled politicos, all of us should pause to think about whether we want to be smart or right at this particular juncture.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 93b) maintains that one aspect of King David’s leadership was that he was mavin davar mitoch davar: that he could anticipate how one thing causally leads to another. Thoughtful leaders should know that their actions have consequences, both intended and unintended.

That is what this moment calls for. Sadly, tragically, we are not currently blessed with leaders who have this sense of foresight.

After Charlottesville

I’ve been reticent to write about the horrors of the past few days. Not because I haven’t been completely obsessed with it all; simply because I didn’t think I had anything new to contribute.

After all, when my family and neighbors and I were at our town’s rally against hate on Sunday night after Charlottesville, I was in kind of snarky mood. (It happens.) My overwhelming sense was: “Really? We still have to do this? We have to protest the KKK and American Nazis? In 2017?” What was running through my head that evening was the voice of John Belushi ז״ל: “I hate Illinois Nazis.”

And of course, I’m appalled by the moral black hole that is the Executive Branch of the government.

So I’ve read the articles (obsessively), and the op-eds, and the letters from rabbis to their communities, and the statements from community organizations—all of whom appropriately have expressed revulsion that Nazi slogans and symbols are resurging and that the White House can only muster half-hearted condemnation (at best; at worst, “they made me do it!”) of the most appalling people in America. The movement to normalize white supremacy in the highest level of governments is terrifying.  This meme by satirist Andy Borowitz kind of summed it up for me: “Man with Jewish Grandchildren Reluctant to Criticize Nazis.”

But it turns out that there are a couple of wrinkles I’d like to see get some more attention, so here goes:

(1)  The Jewish members of Trump’s inner circle—and I mean National Economic Council chairman Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—what are they still doing there? They should follow the lead of the CEOs who resigned from presidential advisory councils and resign their posts. Collaborating with evil is evil; this is no time to say, “Well, maybe I can change things from the inside.” 

Just as it was the moral responsibility of Jewish board members to resign from the Carter Center when it became apparent that former President Jimmy Carter was irredeemably anti-Israel, there are bigger things at stake. You can’t say, “Well, in my little corner of the administration, we had a different agenda.” 

(2)  Domestic terrorism:  You don’t like American Nazis and the KKK? Great—that shouldn’t exactly be controversial.  But legislatively speaking:  Now we must be calling out the administration for its proposing to remove domestic groups from certain anti-terrorist organizations, in order to focus solely on Islamic terror. I don’t think this actually went into effect—this administration is insidiously non-transparent—but it did openly propose the idea. Reject it; make sure that lawmakers keep all these groups on domestic terror watchlists (and having the funding to do something about it).

(3)   Don’t change the subject. I was bemused to watch yesterday’s press conference with the President, where at the beginning, middle, and end of the questions-and-answers it was clear that he wanted to talk about anything other than Charlottesville. “How about a couple of infrastructure questions?” he kept asking to reporters who weren’t interested in discussing infrastructure while the residue of a Nazi march in Virginia lingered.

And kudos to right-wing pundits such as Charles Krauthammer, with whom I agree practically never.  But on Fox, Krauthammer wasn’t standing for any dissembling from Trump apologist Laura Ingraham:

Ms. Ingraham, a Trump supporter who has been courted by the White House, allowed that the president’s remarks might have hurt his agenda [my italics]. But she also offered a partial defense, saying of Mr. Trump, “He made some points that were factually right.”

Mr. Krauthammer retorted, “What Trump did today was a moral disgrace,” and said that the president had broken from his predecessors who recognized the history of civil rights.

“I’m not going to pass moral judgment on whether Donald Trump is morally on the same plane as you are, Charles,” Ms. Ingraham replied.

Don’t let them change the subject. That goes too for the likes of Rabbi Marvin Hier—whose moral blinders let him intone a bathetic prayer at the Inauguration—who this morning on CNN condemned Nazis, but tried as hard as he could to change the subject to Iran’s pursuit of nukes. Iran is a horror—but Hier's desire to talk about anything other than the topic at hand was pretty transparent.

We know what we have to do—stand with those of our neighbors who are most likely to be disenfranchised; have zero-tolerance for leaders’ racist dog whistles; sign petitions, attend rallies, write letters and op-eds. Remain aghast, don’t be silent. But I hope drawing out some of these points above is useful. 

And a reminder:  in this week’s Torah portion we read two seemingly contradictory verses:

אֶ֕פֶס כִּ֛י לֹ֥א יִֽהְיֶה־בְּךָ֖ אֶבְי֑וֹן
There shall be no needy among you (Deut. 15:4)

כִּ֛י לֹא־יֶחְדַּ֥ל אֶבְי֖וֹן מִקֶּ֣רֶב הָאָ֑רֶץ
There will never cease to be needy ones in your land (Deut. 15:11).

Which is it? Will there be people in need in the future or not? 

Bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman addressed this in his Torah commentary: Verse 11 doesn’t mean that there will always be people in desperate straits; the Hebrew word yehdal ("cease") means that it won’t come to a stop on its own. If you want suffering to disappear, you’ve got to do something about it, reaching out to hurting brothers and sisters.

So it is with extreme hate. It isn’t just going to go away—not unless people of good faith come together and clearly articulate our vision of a decent and just society, and demand that elected leaders make it so.

Jerusalem, A Fractured Unity

Yom Yerushalayim 5777

As Jerusalem recovers from President Trump’s whirlwind visit, the city moves on to its next milestone. As evening falls, we celebrate the fiftieth Yom Yerushalayim / Jerusalem Day.

In fact, the Trump team’s quick departure is timely, because its visit inadvertently raised doubts about the very meaning of Yom Yerushalayim. 

In the days leading up to the President’s arrival, controversy was stirred as one of his advisors reportedly told the Israelis, “The Western Wall is not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank.” Subsequently, members of the administration both refuted and tacitly affirmed the remark. And while the President indeed made history by visiting the Kotel, his rebuff of Prime Minister Netanyahu who wanted to join him at the Wall only made his actual position more inscrutable.

Apparently, even though the state is 69 years old and Jerusalem has been united under Israeli sovereignty for 50 years, there remain those who doubt the city’s status as the legitimate capital of Israel.

Under the U.N. partition plan of 1947, Jerusalem was supposed to be an internationalized city. After the War of Independence, the city was bifurcated; Jordan ruled its eastern half and all of the Old City, and the western part of the city was controlled by Israel. The national institutions of Israel—including the Knesset, Supreme Court, and residences of the Prime Minister and President—all became rooted in western Jerusalem. And it has flourished: Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city.

Yom Yerushalayim marks the anniversary of the unexpected and dramatic unification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule in the Six Day War. On the 28th day of Iyar—corresponding to June 7, 1967 and May 24, 2017—Israel pushed back the attacking Jordanian forces and conquered the Old City and East Jerusalem. On that day, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proclaimed:

This morning, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour—and with added emphasis at this hour—our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights. We did not come to Jerusalem for the sake of other peoples' holy places, and not to interfere with the adherents of other faiths, but in order to safeguard its entirety, and to live there together with others, in unity.

But there have always been two Jerusalems. Literally: Hebrew speakers know that the –ayim suffix means “a pair,” so its very name Yerushalayim implies not one but two.

The first appearance of Jerusalem in the Bible is in the Book of Joshua, where Joshua battles an alliance led by King Adoni-zedek of Jerusalem (Joshua 10).  By the end of the saga, most of the land has surrendered—except for Jerusalem, of which it says: “The men of Judah could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the people of Judah dwell with the Jebusites in Jerusalem to this day” (Josh. 15:63).  Already in Joshua’s time, the city was multicultural.

David was the first to “unite” Jerusalem; he made the city his kingdom’s capital. His son Solomon built the Temple there, making Jerusalem the dual religious and political capital of the people of Israel. With palace and temple, Jerusalem came to represent both the body and soul of the Jewish people.

Fractiousness amidst unity has remained part of the city’s identity ever since. In the Talmud (Ta’anit 5a), Rabbi Yitzhak imagines two Jerusalems, a heavenly city above that matches its earthly counterpart below:

Rabbi Yitzhak said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan:  “The Holy One says, ‘I will not come into the Jerusalem that is above until I come into the city of Jerusalem that is below.’”
Is there really a “Jerusalem that is above”?
Yes, for the verse says, “Jerusalem built up, a city with its companion” (Psalm 122:3).

In other words, Rabbi Yitzhak knows Jerusalem as both a spiritual ideal and as an earthly reality. Unifying the ideal with reality remains a messianic aspiration.

Today, we know that Jerusalem still bears these contradictions. On one hand, we have no doubts about Jerusalem’s centrality to modern Israel. We rejoice that for 50 years it has been united under Israeli rule. The streets of the Jewish Quarter—which had been demolished under the Jordanians—are flourishing. An American President just caressed the stones of the Western Wall. And the religious sites of all the city’s religious faiths are protected. Jerusalem is a thriving city of culture, spirit, and politics.

And yet: how unified is Jerusalem really? The Arab and Jewish neighborhoods certainly feel like two different cities. Do Israelis frequent Silwan or Beit Safafa or Shuafat? Even Jewish Jerusalem feels divided. Do secular residents visit haredi outposts like Sanhedriya or Kiryat Tzanz?

The Western Wall itself is a symbol of the schisms among Jews. The dispossession of non-Orthodox Jews at the Kotel is a pungent reminder that Jerusalem undivided is still a heavenly ideal that is far from reality. The Chief Rabbinate and its supporters distribute ugly posters around the city that slander non-Orthodox Jews and spew hatred at the Women of the Wall. President Trump is welcome at the Kotel, but Jewish women in tallit and tefillin, or men and women together in egalitarian prayer, are derided and scorned.

The ideal is that every Jew in the world has a stake in Jerusalem. But the reality is that its internal divisions reflect the discord that exists among our people.

Still, there remains a vision of heavenly Jerusalem floats above it all, reminding us that this is not the way it is meant to be.  Jerusalem also carries a whiff of peace—as ‘ir shalom, the city of wholeness.  The reality may be painful and fractured, but the ideal is that we should learn how to pray and live side by side with one another.

This Yom Yerushalayim and its celebrations should be a reminder of a future unification, when ideals and reality can be brought together. Celebrate it in joy and hope!