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An Invitation From a Zionist to Non- or Anti-Zionists: Talk to Me

For the non-Zionists or anti-Zionist in my circle, a sincere set of questions from a Zionist.

I’m actually looking to understand where you are coming from, so these aren’t gotcha questions. I’ve been working on this for a week or more, but held off posting so as not to intrude on people’s marking Yom Hazikkaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut, or Nakba Day. This all came to me after I posted a comment to someone else's Facebook post, and that back-and-forth got me thinking.

I’m not looking for comments here from Zionists (other than myself). I will delete comments that are Zionists’ critiques of anti-Zionism (other than my own), and please don’t take that as a judgment of whether I agree or disagree. I am experimenting in a particular kind of exploration here – a Zionist convening a conversation with non- and anti-Zionists. I am trying to use those labels neutrally and you can tell me which one you prefer, or something else. I think this will be helpful (at least for me and maybe for some who “listen in”), among other things to get a clearer view of the the anti-Zionism-and-anti-Semitism issue.

I worried briefly that by writing these things down I might be giving air to “dangerous” ideas or commitments. But I realized first that I don’t have that kind of power. Everything I am writing is already out there, there is not an original idea here, and it’s better to be in a discussion about them even if I’m not going to change my mind today and neither are you. One of the problems with some of the campus protests is the notion that by even letting someone speak an opposing idea you are normalizing it. It’s all normalized already.

I am also not trying to use a conceptual discussion to divert myself from war, suffering, and moral accountability for myself or anyone else. I hope this might serve in a small way to advance peace.

So first, to check if I understand the bottom line:

An anti-Zionist holds that the entire area in dispute should be governed by either one state based on Palestinian nationality, or by one neutral state based on equal rights for everyone who lives there. (Obviously both those formulations beg a bunch of questions too.) Israel should ideally be replaced by one of those two things immediately or soon or eventually.

I am using the term “state” to refer to a sovereign governmental entity, and “nation” to refer to a specific group that has a common background and is tied to a territory.

Have I got it right so far?

If so, it seems to me there are various arguments one could make for why one or both of these non-Zionist scenarios is superior to the existence of Israel even as one of two states. Which one or ones of these below are your position? Am I missing anything or any nuance or variation? Here’s what I’ve got so far, in no particular order:

#1 Jews are not allowed by God to establish a sovereign state until the Mashiach (Messiah) comes. Unlike Israel, that state will be led by a descendent of King David.

#2 Zionism is bad for Judaism. Whether Judaism is a religion or a culture or whatever it is, as soon as it is wrapped up with nationalism it becomes corrupted and unable to sustain the Jewish people in our ethical, spiritual, or cultural quests and obligations.

#3 Nationalism is inherently problematic for anyone anywhere. It either is or tends toward racism or some form of supremacy. No state should be defined on the basis of any primary nationality.

#3a Zionism/Jewish nationalism is the paradigm case of racist nationalism.

#3a.1 Zionism is both the paradigm of and the prime feeder for racism and racist nationalism in other places.

#4 Unlike #3, a nation is a correct basis of a state (maybe: a nation is the best basis of a state). However, Jews are not the kind of group we mean when we use the term nation.

#4a Some Jews in Israel-Palestine could be defined as a national group, but the Jews who came after some point, maybe 1917 (Britain’s Balfour Declaration during World War I), never had the right to be there and are not part of a legitimate nation. They are or are descended from settler-colonialists.

#4b Jews are and continue to be a national group, but their claim to nationality is not as strong as the claim of Palestinians.

#5 The nation-state paradigm is particularly bad for territories with multiple national groups where one is not the clear majority and/or where there is a history of conflict between two or more groups. The paradigm of a majority with rights for the minority doesn’t work well enough in most such places, nor do arrangements that divide up and assign powers at the wholesale level between specific groups. Therefore no nationality should be the basis for sovereignty in any part of this particular land.

#6 A nation-state can be legitimate at one point but forfeit its legitimacy. Zionism was at some point no better or worse than any other nationalism, but Jews have forfeited the right to a nation-state based on their actions since then. (This might be the same as #3a above.)

#6a Zionism is the paradigm of a nation-state that has forfeited its right to statehood.

So again to pause and check, have I got all the varieties of anti-Zionism? If not, in the comments add a #7 or a variation of one of the others. I’m trying hard to be calm as I write these things down.

What’s next are my follow-up thoughts and questions on each of the above. Again, looking for someone who holds any of these positions to respond and make the case for any of those statements and against my critiques where I have them below. I’m a Zionist and you writing back are not, and we are not going to persuade each other today. If you don’t want to see my critiques or questions, but just respond to my formulations so far, that’s fine and thanks for reading up to here! If it’s more comfortable to message me privately that’s good also.

Probably you’ll have to scroll back and forth to follow my thoughts. I’ll give a capsule of each argument as I go but they are better explained above.

#1 (no Jewish state except by divine intervention) is the forceful position of religious Jewish groups such as Neturei Karta. I think there is a version of this among charedi (“ultraorthodox”) Jews who treat Israel as the regime that they live under and whose laws they follow, but who do not regard the state itself as having Jewish significance.

#2 (Zionism is bad for Judaism) is an argument that in my view only Jews can make. It’s for Jews to decide what the role of Zionism is or should be for us.

Now immediately I ask myself: Am I consistent here with relation to the Christian nationalism that affects me in the United States? As a Jew I guess I can’t argue that a Christian isn’t being true to their Christianity when they say that the U.S. is a Christian nation. That’s an argument Christians can have among themselves. I can argue against that as a statement about the U.S. but not as a statement about Christianity.

Back to the Zionism part of this, I will note that the past few years have been the first time I have spent significant time talking with Jews who hold this #2 position about Judaism and Zionism.

#3 (nation-states are inherently bad) is a principle I understand based on a lot of examples. Already in the 18^th century, this question was very hot in political theory, both within the classical liberal and utilitarian tradition and in the Schmidtian critique of that tradition.

This #3 is something I find hard to apply consistently in the world of today. Even though I live in the U.S., which is not a nationality-based state, very many of the countries in the world are. (Side issue – some on both the anti-racist left and the blood-and-soil or Christian nationalist right argue that the U.S. is or functions as a nation- or faith-based state, and that’s a terrible thing or a great thing. I disagree with both versions of the premise.)

I tend toward what I think I’ve heard Michael Walzer argue, which is that the nation-state is in most but not all places today the best imperfect way to secure human life and prosperity, and in many places human rights as well. The nation-state is certainly not universally just, so this is a sociological question worth asking here and anywhere. To me it’s a pragmatic question, not one of universal principle.

#3a (Zionism is the paradigm of racist nationalism) is the position that has been widely identified with anti-Zionism in the world since the 1960s. It is the version of anti-Zionism that I think people have foremost in mind when labeling anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic. If this is your position, say more, because I can’t understand it as an objective comparison of nations and nationalisms. There are so many nation-states (and other states) which are violent or biased against some group within them or some outside group, with consequences at least as bad as in Israel-Palestine.

I would also note that the mirror version of #3a is what some Jews have said about Palestinian nationalism – that it has been uniquely violent in its actions and rhetoric, in both its nationalist and Islamist forms. I have worked hard to overcome this in myself as a characterization of Palestinian nationalism and nationality. The equation of Arab and/or Muslim with “terrorist” in American culture and politics is horrendous. Using “Zionist” as a slur is the same thing and it’s an anti-Semitic slur.

#4 (Jews aren’t really a nation) is a cousin of #2. To me it is also one of those things non-Jews can’t say. National groups are the ones who attest to their own experience of the things that define nations – common land, language, culture, history, etc. This is the very mistake that many Jews have made toward Palestinians when we have claimed that there is no such thing as Palestinian nationhood or that Palestinian nationhood was invented only recently. I can’t make that argument vis-à-vis Palestine, and others can’t tell Jews that they/we/some of us don’t have the right to define ourselves as a nation.

#4a (Israelis are settler-colonialists) -- a few types of thoughts, and maybe too much to put on this theme in this post, but I will anyway.

One is that groups are more than their individuals, and Jews have had a presence in the land continuously for more than three thousand years, and a consciousness of that presence and a longing for the land even when the numbers of Jews there has been small. If a people have roots in a land, they have roots in a land. To deny a universal Jewish connection to the Land of Israel would be anti-Semitic.

Second, Jews are not in Israel primarily as a Western project. Yes, there are Western Christians who have come to believe there is a role for the Jewish return in their Christian story. Yes, some Western powers have at different times supported Zionism, though not all of them and not all the time. Every single Middle Eastern group has had an imperial or imperial-style power allied with it or against it in the past two centuries.

But Zionism is a Jewish project. Jews drove the migrations to Israel on our own, because of our own ideas and situations. Jews were rejected in Europe as un-European, un-white, un-Christian, etc. They were not organized by the European authorities, but often in spite of them. British policy during the Mandate supported the Jews’ immigration for maybe half the years of their administration, and then turned against the Jews.

The other empirical thing, which I think goes here but I’m not sure, is that the flow of people and groups in and out of the land in question is something that has happened throughout its history since biblical times. Groups have gotten bigger and smaller and bigger again. Significant numbers of Arabs from elsewhere immigrated into Mandate Palestine between the wars, and became Palestinian at that point. Not as many as Jews from elsewhere, but somewhere from 100,000-200,000 Arabs. That doesn’t make them non-Palestinian. I think this kind of argument about who came when works better as a rationale for reuniting Palestinians in Palestine than for removing Jews from Israel or cutting some of them off from Israel.

And in the particular case of Israel-Palestine, coming up with objective indices of indigeneity is even harder. One study found that DNA found by archaeologists from biblical Canaanites correlates more of less the same to Arabs in and around Palestine and to Jews including Ashkenazi Jews (Jews who lived for centuries in part of Europe). Take that for whatever it’s worth ethically or scientifically.

I will say that the rhetoric of expelling Jews from Palestine is not generally what I have heard from the pro-Palestinian activists in my local community. More so in the campus protests. I’d like to know how this point plays in your own non-/anti-Zionist thinking or circle.

#4b I am not sure if I’ve heard this argument articulated much. If it’s your position I’d love to hear more.

I will say that there is a mirror of this argument made by some Jews about Palestinians, and it’s wrong in that direction just as much. When people say that the Arabs have all these countries and why do they need one more, or that Jordan is already the Palestinian state because of its large Palestinian population -- that’s a way of saying the Palestinians aren’t enough a nation to warrant their national rights. The argument doesn’t work for either Jews or Palestinians.

#5 This is a position like #3 (not #3a) that I take more seriously.

It’s one of the reasons I actually am for the two-state principle, with rights for the minorities who remain in the territory for either state. Two states are an attempt to make sure each nation is in a state where they are the vast majority, in order to reduce though not eliminate the tensions between groups. That was a rationale of the 1947 UN partition plan.

You could say #5 is also a critique of two states, linked to argument #3. That neither state will work with any minority within it, given the history and that a completely neutral state is best.

I would also say that if #5 is an argument against Zionism, it could equally be applied to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and possibly Jordan. Each has a different constitutional arrangement and some are not functioning well at all. I wonder if those who hold #5 as the main anti-Zionist rationale have thoughts about those other countries or are as upset by the carnage and death in those places in recent years.

Lebanon is a state that for a long time has tried to assign specific powers to each of its major subgroups, and it has not worked to generate a unified or functioning state. I don’t think any of us, Zionist or not, recommend it as a model for other places.

#5 can be a serious sociological and political science argument and I don’t see anything anti-Semitic about raising its questions. To push that only Israel among the nation-states of the world should give itself up unilaterally as a real-world test of this kind of argument, that’s one of the things one could argue is anti-Semitic or at least unfair.

#6 (Israel has forfeited its prior legitimacy as a nation-state) seems to me like one of the main arguments fueling the intensity of anti-Zionism right now. But tell me if I’m wrong.

If #6 is a good argument, then other states like Germany or Turkey would have long ago forfeited their right to exist and would have been replaced. That is not how the world ever saw it, though it’s true that Germany had a probationary period before essentially getting its independence back. But in fact Israel itself beginning in the 1950s established a relationship with the Federal Republic of Germany, so close to the end of the Shoah (Holocaust). One of the things that gives me hope about Israel-Palestine is the ongoing and uniquely positive relationship that Israel and Germany have.

So one critique of this argument, from the anti-Semitism angle: Since this has never been applied, even in the worst cases, why is it applicable only to the Jews?

#6a The labeling of Israel as a genocidal state across the generations is a way of saying this is the most evil, worst form of nationalism imaginable. This justifies on its terms singling out Israel as the one state on the planet that should not be a state.

I do not regard Israel’s actions as genocide. If you do, I don’t expect me to persuade you otherwise in a paragraph. I do understand why Palestinians are worried about their continued existence as a people and I don’t question the urgency with which this is raised and pressed. When I say it’s not genocide, I mean that I do not see Israel trying to annihilate all Palestinians, eliminate the Palestinians from the land, or remove all traces of their culture. To be clear, I do think Israel is guilty of very serious wrongs against individual Palestinians and the collective. It is also clear that there are powerful Jewish figures who dehumanize Arabs and do in fact want to remove Palestinians from part or all of the land. From within my own Zionism and Judaism, I have to work against those things.

Terms like “genocide” and “anti-Semitic” are meant to be descriptive, or at least to sound descriptive. They aren’t always. They can be ways to justify shutting down conversation, or delegitimizing or radically othering. So I’m in the position of both acknowledging why people raise the issue of genocide, and why it’s a conversation I have to be willing to have with people -- and also wanting others to see why calling Israel a genocidal state lands as an anti-Semitic move to single out Zionists/Jews in a threatening and dangerous way.

And again, I am noticing the ways many Jews single out Palestinian nationalism as having a uniquely cruel and violent history of terrorism that justifies turning away from all Palestinian national claims. If I turned around what I wrote in the previous paragraph, I would say both that Palestinians have what to answer for morally and politically, and also that other groups in the world who have fought for self-determination have engaged in horrible violence and yet their opponents have acknowledged them and made agreements with them, and coexistence has been possible despite the violent history (e.g. Northern Ireland).

So, there you have it. That’s my attempt as a Zionist to understand the arguments against Zionism, and some of my commentary on anti-Zionism. Your turn now, anti-Zionists and non-Zionists, speak to me if you like. Whether you are Palestinians or linked most directly to Palestinians, whether you are Jewish, or however you’ve come to that position in a way that is urgent for you. Thank you for listening so far, and reply to me or engage with me if you wish.

Five Spiritual Imperatives on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11

These were my words at services on Shabbat morning.

I may have been the last adult in New York City to be aware that the attack on the World Trade Center towers had occurred. Laurie went to work in midtown, and I was home with two-and-a-half-year-old Alex getting ready for an upcoming trip to my parents, both to celebrate my father’s 65^th birthday and to lead Rosh Hashanah services at our family’s small congregation. Alex and I were sitting in his room going through his long sleeve shirts from the previous winter to find something warm enough to take. At some point we were going to go out to Forest Hills High School and vote in the primary for Mayor Giuliani’s successor. The phone rang a few times in the other room, more than usual for a morning, but we were busy and I ignored it.

Around 11 the phone rang again and so I picked it up. It was Laurie, calling from her office in Midtown, and she said something like, “Did you hear what happened? It’s the biggest terrorist attack ever.” I assumed she meant some horrible thing happened in Israel; that’s what terrorism meant to me. But she told me the World Trade Center towers were gone.

With the two-year-old I didn’t want to be watching this on TV, so I waited for a minute when Alex was out of the den so I could turn it on.  There was a view from a camera on top of the one of the TV stations, showing the smoke. Alex came into the room and said, “Helicopter” – and immediately I turned it off. My sister Ellen was also working in Manhattan, and after another call or two I knew they’d just have to walk home to Queens, for Laurie an eight-mile walk. I reached as much of our family as I could to tell them we were safe, and at some point it was hard to get a cell signal; the frequencies were taken over for security needs. Alex and I walked through the neighborhood to pass the time. It was a beautiful day, with F-16s flying across the sky.

A few days later we decided to fly to Minnesota – making the decision it was safe, very aware we were making a life-and-death decision for our toddler. At La Guardia, one of the military people at the security scanners confiscated the tiny nail clipper from our carry-on. We all knew the hijackers had gotten unlikely sharp weapons onto the plane and I felt a bit embarrassed for bringing one and tying up the soldier. Leaving New York seemed so strange – going away from what seemed like the only place anything was happening in the world, where God’s eyes even seemed to be riveted. It felt too like breaking faith. It was so quiet in St. Paul on a weekday afternoon. One of the first things I did when I got settled at my parents was to call the local mosque even though I didn’t know anyone there, to leave them a message of friendship on behalf of the Jewish community.

There are so many spiritual imperatives every 9/11 and especially on an anniversary of significance like this one twenty years later. First and foremost is to remember and honor those who were murdered.

The second to last name alphabetically on the 9/11 memorial is Andrew Steven Zucker. I didn’t realize I knew anyone in the towers until at some point the New York Times published their exhaustive list with photos. I saw his name and a familiar face. For one year Andrew was “Coach Zuck” at the Solomon Schechter school where I worked. He was in his late 20s, and he was the first young, big coach-y looking coach we had. Other than passing hellos, I think I only really talked to him when I had to tell him that one of my Jewish programs would be interfering with one of his practices. I learned since that he was a law associate at Harris Beach, on the 85^th floor of the South Tower, and that seven people said he helped them escape down the stairs and saved their lives. He davened every morning before work there. A Torah scroll was written in his memory at the Riverdale Jewish Center, and it was read for the first time on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at Monday morning minyan. May Andrew’s memory, and the memory of all who were murdered that day or who died as a result of the day be a blessing.

The second spiritual imperative is to call this what it was: a mass murder and an act of pure evil. Evilhas to be part of our vocabulary. Enemies has to be part of our vocabulary. We have prayed this morning already that we overcome evil -- our own for sure, and that evil in the world be destroyed beyond even our own ability to destroy it. We pray for safety from our enemies. We don’t like to apply words like evil and enemy too specifically; we distance ourselves from these words even as we say them in Hebrew. Yet the terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers and crashed into the Pentagon and who tried to fly Flight 93 into Washington were enemies of America, enemies of Jews, enemies of freedom and universal human dignity. Enemies of equality for women. They attacked and murdered innocent people, deliberately and with forethought and with satisfaction.

We should not be distracted from this by any reflection or regret we properly have over what followed, the wrongs of our own decisions and our own wars that went wrong and took many innocent lives.

The attackers chose deliberately not only to kill indiscriminately, but to attack centers of government, military, and finance. They attacked the things many Americans had come to lack confidence in, to make it harder for us to stand up for ourselves and see ourselves clearly. They dared us to look in the mirror. But our freedom, our strength, and our prosperity are so much more than any flaws in them. They are worth defending and strengthening and perfecting. They are a tremendous gift in the history of the world.

We have to look straight into the reality that small, disciplined groups can magnify evil and harm and death. There are parts of the human world beyond bargaining and incentives and change. We cannot strengthen what is good without acknowledging this.

The third spiritual imperative is awe at the goodness that sprang into action immediately. The Andrew Zuckers. The first responders who went back into buildings to look for more people to save, knowing very well they might not survive, as many did not. The people who retook Flight 93 and saved so many lives at the cost of their own. I remember the evening of 9/11 how the site of the Twin Towers had become a well-organized place for rescue and cleanup. In the face of the unthinkable, people did not miss a beat around their responsibilities, even as they improvised. There could have been chaos and pandemonium, or at the very least paralysis. Instead there was determined work to seek anyone who might still be alive.

We came to know stories like Gander, Newfoundland, where international flights back to the U.S. were diverted and a small town took care of strangers even in their homes – it’s the subject of the amazing musical “Come From Away.” President Bush came to the side of Muslims in our country to warn us against blaming the wrong people.

I had always been a reluctant New Yorker, living there because of rabbinical school and staying because of Laurie’s work and my own opportunities. The last five years we lived there, the rough city seemed transformed, toward a graciousness and helpfulness that hadn’t been there in the same measure. At least that was my experience.

We have to view this part of the story and the evil together, and think very hard about what it means. Margaret Mead said famously, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Nineteen hijackers committed mass murder. Twice a minyan, not even, that’s all. It is easier to destroy than to build. How many multiples of nineteen are there committed to good on an equal scale, on a lifesaving scale, a Gander, Newfoundland scale?

So the fourth spiritual imperative is to take responsibility for how we have responded as a nation and as Jews over the twenty years since. The instincts to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East were good, even though motives are always mixed. We shouldn’t be hard on ourselves for not looking down on people in a part of the world so unfamiliar to most of us, to the vast majority of Americans and Jews. We believed and still should believe that people in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East deserve democracy and are capable of freedom and prosperity. I supported both wars when they started, in Afghanistan and even Iraq. Yet it was clear even to me from very early on that we were not willing to be accountable. For caring about the people in those countries, for bothering to learn about them or build connections with them commensurate with our interference in their world. Some people have done incredible work – some of our military, some of our NGOs -- and they have brought education and health and fierce friendship. As we go forward, leaving behind what we have left behind, we need to consider who is left whom we still owe.

And we still have an obligation to learn more about the Muslim world and about Islam itself. I said this ten years ago on this anniversary, and while I have learned more, it’s certainly not ten years worth of more. We all, myself surely included, let our leaders and elected representatives let themselves off the hook in terms of oversight and engagement. But at least we can learn and connect here in our local community. In fits and starts, some of us have tried to connect to the local mosque from the shul and through the Interfaith Council. Yesterday, Jeff (our Board president) and I sent a message of friendship to the Islamic Society of Greater Nashua, for day when surely it is more difficult than usual to be a Muslim in America.

We have drawn some wrong lessons from the aftermath of the two wars, and the collateral effects in Syria and other places. It’s becoming easier in the past twenty years to give up on the societies of the Middle East and to see the Palestinians in particular as fundamentally interwoven with terror. Yes, American power cannot do everything, and the destiny of faraway lands is not up to us primarily. But we have many powers and things to offer. And again our conviction that all people deserve freedom, that women’s rights and girls’ education are not only for some in this world -- those convictions are still right and we cannot run away from them.

There are people standing up to the Taliban, and people still learning how to do good work in Afghanistan. We owe them. I think the people who were architects of our bad decisions and those who supported them like me have a special obligation. I read the reflections of nearly twenty key American government and military leaders from the post-9/11 period in Politico the other day on what we did wrong, and truthfully what sickened me more than the mistakes they acknowledged was how many of them are now making their living as lobbyists and in the 1% sector, and how few are in public service and academia. They have run away from debts they still owe.

And my fifth spiritual imperative is for any of us who identify as religious people of any faith, to be a Kiddush Hashem, to do honor publicly to the Divine Name in what we do and what we say. Rabbi Aryeh Klapper wrote about this in the days following 9/11. The hijackers are in a long line of mass murderers claiming divine sanction. They weaken the ability of any faith to be seen as a positive force and not a divisive one. To be religious and to identify publicly as religious after 9/11, we have to be far from even the first cousins, even the second cousins of the attackers and their ideology, in our own faiths. We need to publicly repudiate our own Kahanists – our Muslim-haters, our Arab-haters, our Ben Gvirs and Smotrichs.

So a lot of spiritual imperatives, not just one or two, on this anniversary. I remember that first Rosh Hashanah trying to find words in my small pulpit, thinking what a burden President Bush had taken on by declaring war on evil itself. How fortunate we were to have a place and a haven of time a week after the attacks -- to gather together, to take time out to think about good and evil, to humble ourselves about what we can do and briefly trust the work of fighting all evil back to God. Just for a couple days. So it’s fitting that we are remembering and reflecting now during the ten days of teshuvah. What will we learn, how will we change, how will we honor those who died on 9/11 and in everything that flowed from that day? The answers are not easy, but they will flow as everything does from love. Love of those whose memory is precious; love of the American ideals that made the attacks hurt even more; love of each other in this gathering today and in this country; love of those who responses over the past twenty years have uplifted and inspired us. May we find our way in teshuvah, through all of that love.

This Week's Catastrophe in Afghanistan

I have specific memories from the newspapers of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and of exactly where I was when the U.S. campaign against the Taliban began after 9/11, parking my car after dropping off the rest of the family as we met some friends for an outdoor festival in New York as things were just seeming to get back to a routine. I have less specific but still vivid recollection of the Today show too from farther back as the Vietnam War came to an end; I was 8 then.

 

Back in the early 2000s I was a supporter of the Afghan war and, I’m sure you’ll be surprised about this, the Iraq invasion as well, and I wasn’t quiet about it. I can’t imagine I thought that the U.S. would have any success in stabilizing these countries as democracies. We all knew we lacked the skill or frankly the respect for others to pull that off. My position was that the self-defense and humanitarian rationales for dramatic, extended but not time-unlimited interventions were solid, even knowing that the local democratic and civil society allies we wanted to help gain ground were weak. It wouldn’t be worse than not acting. That was my position, not identical for the two interventions but based on similar principles. I stuck to it even as the early attempts to constitute an Afghan regime after the Taliban’s defeat were not going great.

 

My touchstone on these issues since the mid-1980s has been Michael Walzer’s book Just and Unjust Wars, along with his subsequent published articles since 2001. His analyses are how I have framed the questions, and it’s worth Googling Walzer and Afghanistan together for articles other than this one (which is somewhat but not entirely moot today). I’m not saying he’s right on every point but he’s always worth engaging with.

 

One of the things that he writes about in the book, with reference to Vietnam, is democratic accountability, at least morally speaking even if none of us citizens will be held personally responsible anywhere for the death and suffering of people in the far-away places we sent our forces. For someone like me who does not reject American power overseas, the onus was on me and people like me not to let our elected representatives cede all decisions to the executive branch on this one. Looking back, the best you could say is, well we bought 20 years of extra breathing room in Afghanistan for women and girls, for the people whom Taliban rule will harm the most, and that counts for something even with the upcoming catastrophe. That seems like the best case I can think of for continuing to invest in a war that was clearly going to lead to what happened this week. There wasn’t any doubt that once we left the Taliban would take over again. We should have made our representatives better supervisors. We should have asked what it means to our soldiers and prospective soldiers to be sent to a war where they could lose life, limb, or wellbeing in service of at best a holding action, and what would we owe those who survived or who went again and again or the families of those who died or who lived. We should have asked long ago how we would make good on our obligations to those whose lives would be worse when we would leave, who didn’t have a say in our timing or our strategy.

 

So there’s more mulling to do – for me it’s knowing that our Jewish high holy days and season of reflection come around the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Would welcome thoughtful thoughts. There are concentric circles of people in Afghanistan we are still responsible for even as we are leaving.

Why I Am Voting for Sen. Klobuchar This Tuesday

#thinkinparagraphs

For my NH undecided friends, and for people out there in states voting soon who haven’t picked a candidate:

I’m not registered as a member of a political party, but on Tuesday I am going to take a Democratic ballot and vote for Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

I didn’t decide finally until about a week ago. I’ve been thinking about a small number of candidates, some of whom aren’t in the race anymore and some of whom are. I just posted about how it is that I go about choosing whom to vote for in general, and hopefully this post will look like an application of what I wrote there.

I have heard Senator Klobuchar speak twice now in person. Apart from the policy proposals, which she shares with some of the other candidates, Sen. Klobuchar has a combination of intelligence, forcefulness joined to openness, and humor. She has a record of accomplishment on matters large and small, first in her (my!) home state of Minnesota and then as a Senator in Washington in the most challenging legislative environment in recent memory. She feels a connection to people whose lives are affected by what public policy has and has not done, and that connection seems rooted in her biography and the story of her family. She has a record of building coalitions beyond the Democratic Party. She projects in her words and her public manner the qualities of decency, dignity, and empathy that belong in the Oval Office.

One of the hardest things in the campaign is going to be battling with President Trump and talking about divisive issues and where division is coming from, while also staying connected to as many Americans as possible. Even without President Trump, the political environment would be polarized. Solutions in Congress to complex problems like health care and immigration reform have been elusive. I am looking for someone whose whole package of leadership skills and experience under fire gives her a fighting chance to detoxify our politics and also make an impact. Of the candidates remaining, Sen. Klobuchar strikes me as the one with the best chance to do all of that.

It also means something to me that she has the support of people in my community whose wisdom and fundamental values I know and trust such as Joe Foster, Helen Honorow, Bill Barry, and Rep. Latha Mangipudi.

For people in the Jewish community who wonder about issues of special concern to us, Senator Klobuchar has a record of supporting Israeli security as an American national interest, and being part of what has been and should be a bipartisan consensus on Israel’s right to self-defense and the desire for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has spoken out against anti-Semitism in our society.

I like to think I am not voting for Sen. Klobuchar just because of the Minnesota connection (though it doesn't hurt!)

I have thought about Mayor Buttigieg, whom I admire particularly for his reflectiveness and his willingness to talk about faith and about moral dilemmas in leadership. I think it says a lot about him that after Harvard and other experiences he chose to go back and try to make a difference where he came from even though it’s a small city, not the center of the world. Executive governmental experience is very important to the job of president. I think Senator Klobuchar has more experience and mettle for the job at hand in all its dimensions today.

I admire Sen. Warren particularly for her work on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was one of the most important actions with teeth that was created after the financial crisis. Exploitation in finance isn’t as easy to talk about as health care or education. The lessons Sen. Warren draws from her personal history are also compelling. What has put me off have been some of her attacks on people or groups who disagree with her. There is a way to disagree and to work strongly from one’s principles without mocking people or painting all opponents on an issue with the same brush, whether it’s a social issue or an economic one. Right now, we need a leader who is especially good at both winning and not-demonizing.

There is a lot of good in Vice President Biden’s record and his long experience, and also some bad policy judgment in that record. I admire the clarity of Sen. Sanders, and have been thinking more and more about his take on wealth and inequality and poverty than I have in a long time. I have in the past had less of a black-and-white approach about wealth (see my previous post, referring to philosopher John Rawls), but even if I agreed with Sen. Sanders, this is a moment when a politics that rebuilds the center is also necessary if we are really going to make headway on issues related to inequality (also see my previous post). Because of that, I haven’t done a lot of looking into his record or story.

If you’ve read some of my previous posts or blogs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it won’t surprise you that I have issues with recent statements from both Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren.

I thought briefly about taking the Republican ballot and voting for Governor Weld to make a statement about the president. But as I wrote in the other post, I do not vote for symbolism but to make an impact.

So I have made my choice. I will be voting for Senator Amy Klobuchar this Tuesday, after being undecided for longer than I can ever remember being. Good luck making your choice well, and see you at the polls.

How I Decide Who to Vote For

This is an attempt to write down something I’ve never written out before: how I decide whom to vote for in elections for national office. This is how I understand what I am doing. There’s plenty here to discuss or argue about.

Voting is in one way the most morally consequential thing we do. The outcome of a vote, especially for national office, has far more of an impact that the generous or committed acts of most individuals (myself, at least) or the money we give to nonprofits.

It’s worth approaching the vote in the spirit of Rabbi Moses Maimonides’ teaching that we should always regard the world as in a perfect balance between merit and guilt, such that our next act will decide whether we will earn a judgment of merit or a judgment of destruction. While most elections are not decided by our single vote, we know well that they can be. It’s important to vote with the thought that your vote could be the one that decides about budgets and military actions and how laws are implemented and enforced. Who will eat and who will go hungry, whose illnesses will be researched and treated, whose lives will be risked in battle, who will live or die in another land because America does or does not act in those places.

I am writing this as an American patriot, a lover of my country, who is also a Jew trying to follow the spiritual and ethical teachings of my Torah and aware of my place in the long history of the Jews. I have for a decade not been registered with a political party. Political acts and decisions are religious acts for me; the parties are practical instruments.

If I had to put this into a flow chart, this is how I break it down. I’m going to do all of this in theory, conceptually.

At the root for me is an idea that the political philosopher Michael Walzer puts this way: “[T]hink of the welfare of the most vulnerable people in the country. And then vote, gladly, for the candidate who minimizes their vulnerability.”

There is a lot here. Walzer (who is worth knowing a lot about, and I should write about him separately sometime) says right before this quote that it’s not about whether you like or inspired by a candidate, or whether you judge the candidate to be a good person in some fundamental way (more on this below). It’s about what that person can deliver in terms of the most vulnerable.

I think this would be an ethical imperative for me regardless of my Jewish principles. For me it’s a fundamental part of Torah. I generally apply this in the spirit of the political theorist John Rawls. Rawls argued that inequality, or something that increases inequality, can be justified morally so long as it also benefits the most vulnerable in society.

And Walzer argues that today, the first part of that is to minimize vulnerability. There is also a step beyond that, which is transforming the conditions that allow anyone to be vulnerable – but first, who minimizes their vulnerability.

The vulnerability I have always thought about first is economic vulnerability – whether it’s not being able to afford adequate shelter or food, or not being able to afford adequate medical care. With that, I have thought about economic vulnerability that comes from discrimination, on the basis of color and other bases, and the discrimination itself. More lately, I have come to think much more about the vulnerability of refugees.

1. So first I want to know – does the candidate even care? And not just about certain vulnerable groups, but about all of them. Everyone has blind spots, and many have come up through the ranks on the basis of work on behalf of a particular group. But caring only about vulnerable whites or vulnerable people of color, to the exclusion of other vulnerable people, isn’t enough.

This isn’t only about policies. I think certain policy approaches show more caring about vulnerability. But I’m always open to the candidate who argues for why another approach is also caring and is effective. Anyone who is sincere makes my first cut. Even if the policies being offered have been associated in the past, or are associated today, with people or groups who clearly don’t care about the most vulnerable.

2. Walzer argues specifically about our era that ‘[w]hat the most vulnerable people need right now is the protection afforded by a strong constitutionalism. The defense of civil liberties and civil rights… -- this is a centrist politics.” I would add another element to this “centrism”, which is a defense of the idea of America as a whole, made up of different groups with different origins and with different philosophies.

Some of this is about policies and the ways laws are enforced. It’s also about a political culture – the responsibility not to divide. I look for a candidate who speaks about America expansively and inclusively in her or his rhetoric, and who can disagree with passion without demonizing.

3. There are two things I think about next: Are the candidate’s policies reasonable approaches to minimizing vulnerability? Is the candidate someone who could actually accomplish something that minimizes vulnerability?

While these two don’t come in a particular order, I have been thinking more and more about the second question, the leadership dimension. One candidate might have a better set of policy ideas, but be a terrible leader – ineffective, bad at mobilizing people, wilting under pressure, and/or polarizing. Having that person in office hardly minimizes the vulnerability of the vulnerable.

The “How To Be President” initiative I helped found is about aspects of leadership beyond policy choices. I am looking for a leader who is clear-eyed about things like failure and compromise; who has forcefully, driven-ness and humility; who knows that not all your allies are good people and not all your opponents are evil; who has a way of thinking about how decisions at the top affect everyone; who has a way of knowing how to ache when policies fail or ignore some Americans, and when to push through in the face of that pain.

4. There are also Jewish issues, meaning issues of the interests of the Jewish community. A lot of Jewish issues are covered already in the earlier passes -- particularly with regard to hate, bias, discrimination, religious freedom for minorities. But other things being relatively equal, the candidate who has a blind spot about anti-Semitism will fall back in my line.

Then when it comes to Israel, I am looking for the candidate who believes Israel is a fundamentally democratic country; who understands the dangers Israelis live with in their region; who supports justice for both Jews and Arabs in Israel-Palestine and does not place the responsibility for the conflict solely on Israelis; who knows that most Jewish-American supporters of Israel have no truck with Muslim-haters, racists and the religiously intolerant just because those people might also support Israel.

5. Usually, these cover everything for me in the decision tree. Sometimes, in a given election, there is a specific issue of the moment. I reserve the right to figure out where it should fit in my general scheme.

I never get someone who is perfect on all these criteria. Elections are always choices between two or more actual candidates. Each time, I try to assess who is best overall on these criteria, and I figure out how I am going to weigh each consideration as I go. If the choices each have serious flaws, I don’t know how I am going to “dock” for them until I do it.

I don’t vote to feel good about what I believe or to have the satisfaction of “being right.” Lives are on the line. As long I keep my eye on why I am voting, whose lives depend on my vote, I believe I am doing the best I can.

My Letter After Poway

This is the letter I wrote our congregation today.

Dear Friends:

Once again we are mourning and raging after an anti-Semitic attack on a synagogue over the weekend. Lori Gilbert Kaye was a dedicated member of Chabad of Poway, and she was killed as she tried to protect Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was injured. Almog Peretz and his 8-year-old niece Noya Dahan were also wounded. We pray for their healing, and for consolation for the Kaye family.

I have been and remain determined not to give any anti-Semite the victory they want in any way. They want to push us out of this society. They want us to be too afraid to gather in our places, or to live our lives as Jews out in the open. They want us to feel that we do not belong.

But it is they who do not belong. It is they who are being overwhelmed. Our mitzvot – the deeds that we do, our whole reason for being as the Jewish people – our mitzvot are simply and inevitably more powerful than their violence.

Our place in America is part of what America is all about. Every time an anti-Semite shows his or her face, ten or a hundred or a thousand of our friends and allies come to our side. Within hours after news of the shooting, our synagogue received messages from Christian pastors in our Greater Nashua community, and from the Islamic Center, which offered us any help we might need and sent a note to their entire congregation.

Tomorrow, Tuesday at 7:00 p.m., we gather at Rivier University as we do each year, to commemorate the Shoah (Holocaust) and learn something new about what happened, how people responded at the time, and how people have lived with purpose and hope after the Shoah. That will be our opportunity to be together after the Poway shooting. I urge you to come – with your pain and with your resolve, to comfort each other. To declare our unity and resilience as a Jewish community and a wider community in the face of anti-Semitism and hate. To honor the Shoah’s victims and survivors, and to keep learning its lessons for us today. Please invite people you know outside the Jewish community to come tomorrow as well.

We have spoken with officials at Rivier to go over security for the event, and there will be an extra security detail. Our own Security Committee has been working continually and is in the process of preparing an update for the congregation.

I have reached out with calls and messages of support on our behalf to Chabad of Poway and the other two synagogues in that community, as well as to the Krinsky family, who lead our own Chabad in Manchester.

We will not stop being who we are, even during a week like this. We are the people of the House of Avraham and Sarah who spread Torah and goodness into the world.

L’shalom,
Rabbi Jon

AIPAC and Democrats This Week

Writing about AIPAC, on a day when seven Israelis were hurt by a missile shot indiscriminately toward Israeli cities by Hamas. Outraged, and praying for their healing.

This week’s AIPAC Policy Conference is a gathering of about 18,000 people in Washington, DC. Many of the candidates for president on the Democratic side made a public show of staying away, and MoveOn.org called on all of them to do so, stating that AIPAC is nowhere that a progressive should be. (Sen. Cory Booker was there; I'll update this post if I hear of others.)

To me this is both a slander, and as far as leading Democratic candidates are concerned, a political blunder.

I have a few things to fill in about AIPAC, as someone who has been and is involved in the group. I am not registered with either political party in the U.S., and I do align in Israeli society with groups working on coexistence and peace, particularly within a Jewish religious framework. I wanted to add some data to the picture, particular for those more on the left, and to explain my more-than-frustration with the posture of the Democratic presidential candidates.

AIPAC is not a “PAC”, a political campaign fundraising organization. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is a grassroots lobbying organization. It was founded long before political action committees (“PACs”) became a big thing. The idea that AIPAC could be targeting officeholders and candidates is an absolute lie.

The influence AIPAC members have comes far more through citizen activism than paid lobbying activities. Obviously there is a synergy between the two – but other major lobbies, such as AARP and the NRA, rely to a much greater extent on paid staff than AIPAC does and have much larger budgets. People who support other big lobbies give more and maybe much more to campaigns than people who support AIPAC, from figures I have been able to find.

The basic premise of AIPAC is “to strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel.”

AIPAC is a coalition. The group has hewn to a strategy of bipartisanship, working with administrations of both parties and trying to build equal support in both parties for congressional policymaking and resolutions. If you look at the U.S. senators and representatives who are speaking this week at AIPAC, a bit more than half are Democrats. Maybe this is meant to balance out the presence of members of the administration. The leaders of both parties in the House and the Senate are on the program.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was slated, before he had to return to Israel. And today his main opponent in next month’s Israeli election, Benny Gantz, spoke, and didn't hold back from distingushing himself from the prime minister.

It’s a coalition in terms of AIPAC members’ outlook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You wouldn’t know from the news, but “Two states for two people” is the first “talking point” on AIPAC’s web page about the peace process. I don’t know exactly how many AIPAC members or conference participants want a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians ardently, passively, or not at all. I think all three groups are substantial.

This week’s conference includes programs featuring thought leaders and activists working on all the challenges of Israeli society. There are so many of Israel’s leading idealists, for whom Israel is a lab for Jewish values in action.

The wide spectrum of Israeli perspectives at AIPAC, on the official program, isn’t window dressing. Like Rabbi Susan Silverman, who advocates dramatically as an Israeli for African asylum seekers and the rights of non-Orthodox Jews. And Yehuda Kurtzer, from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a think-tank doing incredible work on social thought, ethics, and Muslim-Jewish relations.

I am not saying of course that AIPAC itself is a progressive or a Democratic group. There are plenty of people aligned with the Israeli right and center-right who are speaking at AIPAC and who are there. What I’m saying is that if you are running for president, you shouldn’t buy into lazy thinking about any group in our society. That’s what it is to write off AIPAC members as a partisan interest group. Obviously, you should not buy into worse, into anti-Semitic stereotypes.

This is exactly a group of people that Democratic candidates for president ought to want to engage. Boycotting the conference is a blunder, and one that’s not going to fade away.

For one thing, there are tons of Democrats within AIPAC who are active on all kinds of issues. They are waiting to pick a campaign to get involved in -- and weighing whether to stay on the sidelines.

For another, if the candidates are serious about a foreign policy in the Middle East based on measurable achievements in human rights, there are many people within AIPAC who want to hear what they have to say, in depth. If Palestinian lives are a core issue, then surely a candidate for office knows they will never improve without the partnership of the governments of both Israel and the United States. What are the elements of a progressive and effective approach for American leadership, a strategy for one of the world’s most difficult regions?

I would think that skilled candidate could have mingled, attended the breakouts, networked, held their side gatherings, found ways to communicate about their perspectives in the framework of peace and security for all..

I am looking to see if the Democrats vying to be leaders are going to re-engage – for their own political self-interest, for the security interests of America, and for the good of Israelis and of Palestinians.

The Megillah, Rep. Omar, and Where We Go From Here

This post is based on the D'var Torah I gave at services on Saturday, March 9, 2019. I also plan another post with some thoughtful articles on the topic from other sources.

I always set out extra books for services in addition to the Siddurim (prayerbooks), on the cart outside the Sanctuary and in the small Chapel too. They are not just for you; when I am not leading a service, I use them too! On Thursday evening in the Chapel, I took a Tanakh (Bible) instead of a Siddur and read from the Megillah, the story of Esther. We are in the month leading up to Purim in less than two weeks.

For most of us, the Bible that’s most familiar is a kind of Sunday School Bible. The Book of Esther that we have learned that way is a hilarious story. Even in the parts related to Haman’s plot to get rid of all the Jews, the story is funny and over the top. The Megillah is like that all the way through Haman’s being finally exposed and then executed by the king.

In the real, complete Tanakh, that’s not the whole story. There’s a lot more text, and it is not at all funny.

On Thursday night, what I did was to read the Megillah to myself, but starting at chapter 8. That chapter follows immediately the demise of Haman. Mordechai is installed in power by King Achashverosh in Haman’s place. But when Queen Esther asks the king to revoke his original edict against the Jews, the king says he is powerless to do that. All he can do is to authorize them to fight back legally, with another royal edict. Chapters 8-9 tell about the many people Jews kill all over the empire as they defend themselves, and they tell the fear that the Jews elicit because of their fierce response. Here is a verse you most certainly did not learn in Hebrew School:
וְרַבִּים מֵעַמֵּי הָאָרֶץ מִתְיַהֲדִים כִּי־נָפַל פַּחַד־הַיְּהוּדִים עֲלֵיהֶם: …V’rabim me-amay ha-aretz mityahadim ki nafal pachad hayehudim alayhem -- "many among the peoples of the land passed themselves off as Jewish, because fear of the Jews had fallen over them” (Esther 8:17).

Achashverosh, the king, comes across in the last three chapters as someone who loves his Jewish wife Esther, who appreciates or at least respects his new Jewish vizier Mordechai. And as someone who possibly feels intimidated by them, doing what he needs to do in the moment to restore peace and to stay in power.

Once the fighting dies down, Esther and Mordechai institute the annual festival of Purim. It’s a celebration of the reversal of fortunes for the Jews, and includes also mishloach manot and matanot la’evyonim -- bringing gifts to each other and helping those in need.

Chapters 8-10 of the Megillah are about Jewish power established in the immediate wake of vulnerability. They are about having powerful allies and knowing that alliance comes from both love of us and fear of us. They are about figuring out what to do with Jewish power and the power of our allies. And they are about what it’s like to remember a recent threat, to remember fear, from the vantage point of more recently achieved power. They are about figuring out what to do with this power going forward -- when to unleash it and when to worry about what it does to us.

I selected this part of the Megillah to read and meditate on Thursday evening, because it was a spot-on text for this past week. Reading it felt unsettling and reassuring at the same time. Which is exactly how I have felt all week as the controversy surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar from my great home state of Minnesota continued to unfold. The words of hers were straight out of the Megillah -- fear of the power of the Jews. I had all these kinds of reflections during the week: It was good to see the power we have as American Jews at work against repeated slanders rooted in anti-Semitic stereotypes. It felt strange and weird to be the center of attention once again, so soon after Pittsburgh, which I have certainly not yet gotten over. I wondered whether I am living up to the responsibility that comes with so many people paying attention to anti-Semitism -- whether I have been a person who fights against hate directed at others as fully as I expect others to fight against hate directed at us.

It is important, it is spiritually critical, to have a swirl of these kinds of reactions, and not to let ourselves settle on only one. If we are only thinking one thing right now -- if we are not acknowledging the many such reactions within our own community -- we are lying to ourselves, and hiding from ourselves and from each other -- and from our responsibilities.

I want to fill in some information, and then propose a way of thinking about our responsibilities. What’s the mitzvah here always has to be the grounding Jewish question.

Part of what I say I hope has merit for you because I personally hear Rep. Omar and am horrified out of my own religious, leftish Zionism. I have said from the bimah (pulpit) in the past that the eventual freedom of Palestinians as a nation will become part of our own Jewish story of being agents of freedom in the world. I have been involved for a long time in AIPAC, where my view about the Palestinians is widely and openly shared, though probably not by the majority. If your perspective in anywhere near that, or anywhere to the right of it, I think you’ll be able to hear me.

Part of what I can tell you is because I’m a Minnesotan, and I know rabbis who live and work in the Minnesota 5th, Rep. Omar’s congressional district -- particularly rabbis involved in progressive circles. They have been right in the middle of trying to fix things; they are the people most frustrated by Rep. Omar's repeated slanders. The district includes the city of Minneapolis and many of its first-ring suburbs, including St. Louis Park, which is the Brookline-Newton of Minneapolis. Some of the Jews you may know of who grew up there: former Sen. Al Franken, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, Columbia University development economist Jeffrey Sacks, the Coen Brothers. When I was young, that’s where you would go for kosher meat and Jewish books. There are today about as many Jews in the Minnesota 5th as in the state of New Hampshire.

When the district elected Rep. Omar, an immigrant from Somalia and a Muslim and a woman, a lot of us native Minnesotans were very proud. The story of Somali immigration in Minnesota has at times been very difficult, and Jews have been active in fighting the anti-Muslim and anti-African bigotry surrounding the integration of Somalis. And that’s what has made the congresswoman’s recent statements particularly painful, for the rabbis and progressive Jews in the district.

Beyond what you’ve read in every article, Rep. Omar said a couple of other things at the DC bookstore where she spoke at length about a week and a half ago. She said that the Jewish constituents who have met with her to speak about her AIPAC comments talk about Jews in Israel as their family, but don’t seem to have actual family in Israel. She also said that the Jewish activists who have come never talk about the Palestinians and their suffering.

Rep. Omar is not telling the truth about the Jewish people she has been in touch with about all of this. I know who they are, and I can tell you that they include both moderates and progressives, including people from an organization called Jewish Community Action, a social justice group that my parents are often involved in. JCA members are people who have stood up previously to vouch for Rep. Omar publicly even when other Jewish groups haven’t, and who have been in vocal and active solidarity with Palestinians, even when that puts them at odds with others in the Jewish community. So Rep. Omar is either misrepresenting them, or somehow unable to hear them.

My friends who are in the thick of this in Minneapolis are befuddled and confused and angry. They don’t understand why Rep. Omar is invested in misrepresenting their views, and putting them as Jews in boxes where they are so clearly not. They do not feel that things are in a good place right now, despite a lot of dialogue. They who are up close are also committed to trying and trying again with her, and remaining in solidarity with the Muslim community in the district. As one of them put it a couple days ago: we are doing the best we can, and we are exhausted.

This is part of a larger story of Jews not being seen or acknowledged or even allowed in certain places on the activist left, unless they leave behind nuance about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and agree not to say that there are Palestinian leaders who are also responsible for the fact that it continues.

Even on Thursday, the day of the House resolution against anti-Semitism and other hatreds, a fundraising letter went out from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez that said: “It’s official -- AIPAC is coming after Alexandria, Ilhan, and Rashida”, the three recently elected representatives from New York, Minnesota, and Michigan. Which is completely false. And the letter is easy to read as: the rich, bad Jews are going after us, and dividing us from the good Jews who support equality and would want to be with us.

And all of this is a form of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism does not have to come in the form of a white supremacist attacking a synagogue to deserve our attention, or to be a palpable threat to us. It is not all right ever for any political leader or any political movement, even while promoting other good things, to tell lies about Jews. It is not all right to say things that can easily be taken to justify terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

So what do the final chapters of the Megillah tell us, about our power in this kind of situation and the mitzvot we ought to be doing?

One mitzvah: We need to build alliances with the Achashverosh-es, to use our power so that people in positions of power want, and think it’s in their interests, to stand up for us or to stand behind us as we stand up.

One person I have been reaching out to is my own congresswoman, Rep. Annie Kuster. I wrote her a few weeks ago when this began to heat up, asking for her support on this question of “dual allegiance”, and more than that, asking her to reach out personally to Rep. Omar. Because both of them represent areas with small but politically active Jewish communities of the roughly same magnitude, and Rep. Kuster has such good relationships with me and many Jewish leaders and Jews who are prominent in New Hampshire Democratic politics. Annie has offered more than once to come to Beth Abraham and speak about her own experience visiting Israel and her views about the situation. She supports two states and has voted for Israeli military aid, and she is very well-informed. I suggested that she could talk with Rep. Omar about how she does this. I am pleased to tell you that I got not a standard note back, but a phone call from her office affirming her support for Israel. It's a conversation I intend to continue when I am in DC this coming week.

Another mitzvah from the end of the Megillah: We need to get and build our power so that we have the confidence to go to difficult places without fear for our safety. We, or at least some of us, need to be willing to go into difficult places where the anti-Semitic canards are incubating, and engage there. Those of us on or closer to the left need to take responsibility for talking with people on the left -- just as those on or near the right need to do it there.

So another thing I am doing: Last week at the monthly meeting of the Nashua Area Interfaith Council, I said that I know people are talking about Rep. Omar, and announced that I will have coffee with anyone who wants to talk about it. Many of the people in that group come from denominations or organizations that have supported boycotts of some sort against Israel. Before I left and in e-mails starting that day, people jumped up to tell me they want to talk. In response to one Facebook post, from an activist I know and respect, I held back the comment I was going to write but probably wouldn’t have been heard.  Instead I wrote my e-mail address in the comments with invitation to anyone on the thread to talk. And I separately reached out to the person who posted to get together, and we’re going to do that.

There is trust that I have built painstakingly with many people in the interfaith council, and I know we can talk. I am going to offer a class this fall, I decided this week in the fall in the RISE and OLLI programs -- about the Israel-Palestine conflict, from the Zionist viewpoint that I have described to you. I am a popular teacher there, and I know people will sign up.

We are fortunate in Greater Nashua that we have not been driven apart from other people whose causes we share because of Israel. There is no coalition here that I can’t be a part of so far because of my Zionism. I am much more interested in cultivating these local relationships and talking to people, really getting into questions and sharing information, about all the factors from Arabs and Israelis that have kept the conflict in place -- that is much more important for me to do than responding with a written public statement to everything that national actors say or do.

And a final set of mitzvot from the end of the Megillah. The practices that Esther and Mordechai instituted begin but do not end with retelling the dynamics of a past threat and how we fought it. On Purim, we read the Megillah twice, evening and morning. Twice we marinate in the story of the plot against our lives, rooted in statements about our disloyalty. But Esther and Mordechai wanted to make sure that the lesson of Purim was not just about remembering that, and not just about building ourselves up in anticipation of the next such battle. So they instructed us to do at least three acts on the day of Purim from an open heart and an outstretched arm. To send food to at least one friend, and to give to at least two people in need.

So a rule of thumb for today -- a 3:2 match. For every two acts of fighting anti-Semitism, three acts of compassion. One act to build up our own Jewish community in a joyful way. One act of being there when someone in our Jewish community needs comforting or needs help. And one act of standing up for a person or group outside of us who is the target of hate.

I have been trying to take this as well to heart. Because I've said these kinds of things out loud or published them, I was invited to give a blessing at the local African-American MLK event in January. There I heard a speech from a senior at Nashua North named Jamila-Ashanti Scales about all the racism that has been directed at her from grade school through high school. I offered to her that morning to be an ally if she ever needed one. Sure enough, two days later in the local paper, she was dragged into a conflict within the Board of Education, on the day of her final exams no less. I reached out to her family, who I know and some in our shul know, and asked what I could do. As a result, I published something supportive of her in the Telegraph, and I spent an hour with the school board members who were involved, cajoling them to make it right until they agreed to a step I suggested.

The last chapters of the Megillah are not easy ones, and the work we have in front of us right now is not easy. Why should it be. I don’t know, and my colleagues in Minnesota don’t claim to know, whether we’ll reach a good outcome with any specific leader we are at odds with. But I do believe that we can succeed and build here, where we actually have the power to influence people. We will not make everyone into lovers of Israel; that’s not the measure. But with hard and long work, we have it in our power to make the anti-Semitic into true fringes on the left and the right, and to help make all forms of bigotry a fringe within our own souls and our community.

And who knows, as the Megillah also says in a more familiar part, whether it was for a time like this that we have been given so much power.

Shabbat Shalom.

Letter to the Telegraph on Pat Buchanan and Immigration

My letter in today's Nashua Telegraph, in response to the most recent column on immigration by Pat Buchanan. 

To the Editors:

Is Pat Buchanan the best the Telegraph can do for analysis that contributes to our thinking about immigration?

Buchanan’s fixed point, in column after column that you publish, is the idea that there is a white, Christian core of America, and that America will fail if enough people come here who aren’t already like “us.” In his most recent piece, Buchanan points out the long American history of discriminating against immigrants by religion, skin color, and nation of origin. That’s all true. What’s incredible is that Buchanan defends this as part of the core essence and meaning of America!

That’s not a writer who can help Greater Nashua think through the concrete challenges of immigration in our time. Every time I read him, I experience it as an attack on me. My family was part of a mass immigration of millions like them, and they certainly would never have been let in by the Buchanan test. Our religion, ethnicity, poverty, and supposed communism were all held against our group by many in the Congresses of that time. But here we are. We have served in the armed forces, started businesses, taught American history and citizenship, inspired others to believe in American values. Yet somehow, it’s Pat Buchanan who gets column inches in my town to attack us and other people who have arrived in similar patterns from other lands, in the name of America’s “national unity and national character.”

As I’ve written to the paper before, Buchanan’s divisive words overpower what in other hands would be reasonable questions. When does immigration lead to integration, and when does it fail to do so? When is a society’s “unity and character” enriched by immigrants, and when is it overwhelmed? Buchanan’s presence in the Telegraph does not help us think about these issues. “Arabs, Africans, and Turks” do not assimilate, period, Buchanan says. This isn’t analysis; it’s just lazy thinking. And that’s my neighbors and colleagues who love America that you’re letting him talk about in this way.

Buchanan’s ideology is actually a denial of many tenets of American greatness. Buchanan doesn’t believe in the power of capitalism. He doesn’t accept the power of free markets and commerce – the way the invisible hand causes people to accommodate to each other, the way that immigrants become part of our society through enterprises they create and new wants that businesses can serve, thus generating more wealth in society.

Buchanan doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism. He denies that we have unique institutions and a culture that together increase our capacity to avoid the troubles caused by the mass movement of people in other parts of the world.

And of course Buchanan’s perspective on biblical religion ignores the core. Whether it was the Israelites of the Exodus or the family of Jesus, the Bible starts with God’s choice of “undesirables” as servants to bring divinity into a corrupt world.

Surely there are columnists out there who believe in America, who specialize in the experience of small cities, who write up close about the processes of immigration and integration led by civic leaders, businesspeople, new and veteran immigrants, city governments. Give Pat Buchanan’s space to one of them.

Sincerely,
Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett

Jerusalem and the U.S. Embassy

Here are some thoughts in response to President Trump's announcement yesterday about recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and initiating the transfer of the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. I'm thinking about this spiritually and emotionally as a Jew, as well as politically as an American and as a person tied to Israel.

All day yesterday, I felt like I was thinking about the Jerusalem announcement through clenched teeth. This felt wrong; we are taught to “lift Jerusalem above my highest joy.” Then in the evening two people asked me what I was thinking, right before the daily minyan (service). That helped me find my starting point. I thought about the first words of the opening psalm, Ashrei yoshvay vaytecha – “Happy are those who live in Your house.” One of the meanings of that house is the House of God, the Beit Hamikdash in ancient Jerusalem.

The meaning of that House in Jerusalem for me is in the second chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, which is almost the same in the fourth chapter of Micah:

“It shall be, at the end of days, that the mountain of the House of Adonai will be established as the highest of the mountains, and will be lifted up over hills, and all the nations will flow toward it in joy. Many peoples will come, and they will say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Adonai, to the House of the God of Jacob, that God may teach us of God's ways and we may walk in God's paths.” For out of Zion shall come forth Torah (teaching), and the word of Adonai from Jerusalem. God will judge among nations, and set right many nations, so they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their swords into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and they will not experience war any more.”

That is what Jerusalem and the holy mountain are all about. This vision, and many others related, are why Jerusalem is a holy city and such an important symbolic place in our world. Lose the vision, and there is no point in quarreling about the city.

Here is something that seems too obvious to have to say: Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

“Jerusalem” could mean two things. There is the core of Jerusalem – the Temple Mount and nearby, the oldest parts of the city where the holy sites of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are. Then there is the modern city of Jerusalem, almost all of which is less than 150 years old. By now the modern city is on all sides of the Old City, not just east and west. Both “West Jerusalem” and most of “East Jerusalem” are that modern city. (See my column here for more detail.) The importance of those modern areas derives from being attached to the core. They aren't particularly holy in and of themselves. What exactly did President Trump recognize yesterday?

No one who accepts that there is an Israel denies that at least some part of this modern Jerusalem is part of Israel and always will be. It's in that modern Jerusalem that President Trump wants to put the embassy.

Everyone knows I am no fan of President Trump. But really, his statement and decision don't decide anything about the core of Jerusalem. He did not say, for instance, that all of ancient and modern Jerusalem should be under exclusive Israeli sovereignty. He left in place everything that has been standard peace-process policy. To be determined in negotiations: what exactly are the official boundaries of Jerusalem, what would the arrangements be in Jerusalem in the future if there were two states.

But he said the obvious and indisputable, that the capital of Israel is in Jerusalem.

People other than Israelis, and Jews generally, have strong ties and claims in Jerusalem. It is a holy space for them. It is a politically significant space for the Palestinians in particular. My own view is that there is room for both Israeli sovereignty and other sovereignty. It's not zero-sum, and recognizing Palestinian political claims in Jerusalem does not mean surrendering Israeli sovereignty by the Temple Mount. In fact, the current arrangement on the Temple Mount is built on Israeli sovereignty with Muslim/Jordanian administration from day to day. This is already a creative solution, which has held up for the past fifty years even during times of tension, and it has never been the obvious one. Israel rarely gets credit for this. Other creative solutions, for a time when the Palestinians have full sovereignty, are certainly possible.

No solution is ruled out by moving the American embassy somewhere in the area of pre-1967 Israeli Jerusalem.

I have to say that I was astounded, though not surprised, to see how much coverage was devoted yesterday evening on National Public Radio to the matter. So out of proportion. There are so many things going on in the country and the world that have more practical effect on people, in the short and long term, that never get this much attention.

There is a sneaky imbalance, especially in the media and in Europe and on some parts of the American left. Israel is not allowed to say that any part of Jerusalem is its capital. But the Palestinians are entitled to say as a starting point of all negotiations that the oldest parts of Jerusalem are their capital.

When Israel or any country moves to formalize the reality of Israeli sovereignty in the “undisputed” part of Jerusalem, “West Jerusalem” – it turns out that it's disputed after all. Today Hanan Ashrawi, a PLO leader, pulls that move in the New York Times today: “Since Israel was established in 1948, the United Nations and the United States, like most countries, have refused to recognize any country’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, a city holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians.” That's smoke and mirrors, meant to confuse people who don't know their history. There is no peace plan of any sort that has not envisioned Israel sovereignty in some of Jerusalem. Even the Saudi peace plan talked about the pre-1967 borders, where some of Jerusalem is part of Israel. And yet, anyone who says even this much is considered to be violating Palestinian national rights.

An imaginative Palestinian leader could have seized the high ground yesterday. She or he could have taken what the president actually said, and responded: “We welcome President Trump's recognition of our rights and role in Jerusalem, and his invitation to begin negotiations about Jerusalem and our statehood. Peace with Israel means sharing Jerusalem with the Israelis. Peace with Israel means sharing the intertwined holy sector. We reach out our hand to the Israelis, to negotiate an arrangement that recognizes the complexity of Jerusalem. When that is achieved, this is how Palestine will show its commitment to the peace and holiness that al-Quds represents: the very first foreign embassy we open as a sovereign state will be our embassy to Israel in its capital in Jerusalem.”

Instead, as one of my thoughtful colleagues pointed out yesterday, it is assumed ahead of time that Arabs react with violence, and violence is therefore not their responsibility in any way.

Now I absolutely believe that President Trump cares very little about Israelis and Palestinians, and was motivated by nothing other than his own political needs at the moment. The careless rollout of this policy puts American in danger, as our own State Department says, and this was a reckless way to do it that will cost lives.

I believe that Palestinians are justified in their fear that Prime Minister Netanyahu has no intention of making a shared Jerusalem possible. He is proposing expanding the definition of “Jerusalem” as a way of taking certain territory off the table for negotiations. The prime minister too could have seized the moral high ground, and made the kind of statement I imagined for a Palestinian leader: “We thank President Trump for acknowledging our eternal capital in Jerusalem. From that city, we as Israelis will show our commitment to all that Jerusalem, the City of Peace, represents. Our capital is already unlike any other capital in the world. We reach out our hand to the Palestinians to negotiate an arrangment that recognizes the complexity of Jerusalem. Together, we can fulfill the vision of Isaiah: 'My House will be a house of prayer for all peoples.'”

Next week is Channukah. The story begins with corruption and desecration in Jerusalem, and it ends with rededication, with miracle, with hope. All of it on the very ground we are talking about this week. We will retell that transformation for eight nights, and it should center us as we think about the conflict of our day. For Jews, Jerusalem is a site of holiness and awe and aspiration. That is why we claim it still, as a capital and more.