Jewish Current Issues

Dermer at the Second Annual LGBT Pride Reception

This week, Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer held the second annual Pride reception at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., welcoming guests to what he said “can now definitely be called our annual Pride event.”

The guests included the Congressional LGBT caucus and the Wider Bridges, an organization that seeks to strengthen ties between the LGBT communities in North America and Israel.

In his speech, Dermer said:

For 40 years, LGBT organizations have been operating openly in Israel.

For 20 years, Tel Aviv has hosted one of the largest pride parades in the world.

In Israel, there are laws dating back a quarter-century that prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and there are courts that protect the legal rights and privileges of same sex couples.

Members of Israel’s LGBT community … have long served openly in our armed services and have been leaders in politics and diplomacy, science and technology, art and entertainment and every other sphere of Israeli life.

Dermer said that in thinking about the horrific attack on the LGBT community in Orlando last year, and the discrimination and violence that community still faces, “it occurred to me that it is not Jews alone who serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine”:

Just as the noxious fumes of antisemitism ultimately poison all of society, so too hatred towards the LGBT community threatens all of us.

That is why we must stand together to fight that hatred and to defend open societies, tolerance, and equality and dignity for all.

Today, I believe that this solidarity is more important than ever – for both of us.

For if the forces of progressive values do not stand together and strengthen one another, they will only become weaker and more endangered.

And make no mistake about it. Israel is a force for progressive values in the Middle East. In fact, Israel is the only force for progressive values in the Middle East.

You see those values in Israel’s courts when our Chief Justice dons her robes and you see it when an Arab judge sentences a former Israeli President to prison.

You see it in Israel’s Parliament ever day when over a dozen Arab members of the Knesset are free both to criticize the government from the Knesset podium and to pray in the Knesset Mosque.

And you see it in Israel’s society when a Muslim can proudly give her valedictorian address at one of Israel’s finest university and when a pride parade marches 200,000 strong.

Dermer remarked on how absurd is the progressive case against Israel:

After all, we live in a region where women are routinely treated like chattel, where gays are hanged in town squares and where communities of Copts, Yazidis and other minorities are being decimated.

Now imagine a Middle East with three Israels. Imagine what that would do for the rights and values that progressives are supposed to champion.

Imagine a Middle East where it is as easy for the LGBT community to march in Tehran as it is in Tel Aviv.

Rest assured, Israel will continue to stand with you.

Not once a year. Not only after a horrific attack.

But each and every day, Israel will stand with you.

Israel will stand with you to warn the world about those noxious fumes that threaten both of us.And Israel will stand with you against those who seek a world in which there is no place for either of us.

We will stand with you for our sake, for your sake and for humanity’s sake.

Read it all.

Ambassador Ron Dermer's Yeshiva Commencement Address

From Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer's Commencement Address to Yeshiva University this week (the video is here):

In so many ways, you are the most blessed generation of Jews in over 2,000 years. I know that’s hard to accept because we Jews tend to see the glass as 1/16th empty. But it is true. 

You are blessed to live in a country like the United States. … The blessing of America for the Jews can be summed up in less than a word, less than a sentence, less than a letter. It’s a hyphen. The hyphen between Jewish and American. The hyphen that allows you to be both fully American and true to your faith. … But your generation is doubly blessed. For you live at a time when you are a witness to the miracle called Israel. Jewish sovereignty has been restored. Exiles have returned. Jerusalem has been reunited, never to be divided again. Collectively, Israel has provided the Jewish people with a voice, with a refuge and most importantly, with the power to defend themselves.

 

Individually, Israel has made things possible that would have been unimaginable to your ancestors. If you want to pray at the Kotel, you only need to board a plane. If you want to spend a year studying in Israel, you only need to convince your parents to foot the bill. ...

 

… [I]n the years ahead, always remember that your grandparents and their grandparents going back over 20 centuries would have given anything to trade their problems with yours. 100 generations of Jews dreamed of living at a time when there would be a sovereign Jewish state. You have the privilege of living that dream.

 

But with that privilege comes an awesome responsibility to secure that dream for generations to come. And that responsibility falls on each and every one of you. Because I am not the only Ambassador here today. You are all Ambassadors. For the rest of your lives, you will be Ambassadors of Yeshiva University and the values it stands for -- the values of the Jewish people.

 

 

Read or watch it all. Shabbat Shalom.

 

Podhoretz and Podhoretz on "Making It"

Last month, New York Review Books issued a 50^th anniversary edition of Norman Podhoretz’s Making It, a book Lee Smith has called a “masterpiece of American autobiography” that changed what it meant to be a public intellectual. “Nearly 50 years on,” Smith wrote, "it’s clear that, to paraphrase Dostoevsky on Gogol, we all come out from Podhoretz’s overcoat.”

The Tikvah Institute has described the book as “an intellectual earthquake.” It is by turns eloquent, perceptive, funny, and extraordinarily honest and well-written. And it is clear -- from the conversation that Norman Podhoretz had with his son John Podhoretz last month at Tikvah -- that its aftershocks continue. Fifty years after being written, it is still a book for our time.

This weekend, C-SPAN’s Book TV broadcast the conversation, with Eric Cohen, the Executive Director of the Tikvah Fund giving the program a brilliant introduction. It is worth watching in its entirety.

Terry Teachout’s Introduction to the re-issued book, and an excerpt from the first chapter, is here.

(Norman Podhoretz, right, in 1966 with Commentary editors Theodore Solataroff and Marion Magid)

Photo credit: New York Times, Gert Berliner

Ezekiel's Valley of the Dry Bones

This was the drash at Sinai Temple at the Men's Club Shabbat on April 15, 2017, on Ezekiel 37:1-14:

The haftarah this morning is one of the most well-known passages in all of our sacred literature: Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones.

Ezekiel recounts a vision in which the Lord put him in a valley full of dry bones, and tells him to “say to these bones … [that God] will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live again.” Ezekiel did that, and the bones reconstituted themselves and came to life, representing the House of Israel restored, with the Lord promising to bring them back to the land of Israel.

Ezekiel’s prophecy echoes throughout the history of the Jewish people. It was written in the sixth century BCE, during the Babylonian Exile, after the destruction of the First Temple. The Jews eventually returned to Jerusalem, and rebuilt the Temple -- which 500 years later the Romans destroyed – and in the twentieth century, the Jews reconstituted Israel yet again. Today God’s words -- the final verse of today’s haftarah -- are engraved on the columns outside the Yad Vashem Museum: “I will put My breath into you, and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own land.”  

Ezekiel also echoes in the Amidah, the prayer in which we praise God for sustaining the living, through kindness and love, and for giving life to the dead. There is a connection, I think, between those two concepts: We know that our acts of kindness and love live on after us; that they not only sustain others but redeem ourselves; and in that way allows us to live beyond our own mortality.

Which brings me to the Burning Bush dinner held earlier this month by the Men’s Club – whose motto is “Where Jewish Values Come to Life.” Under the leadership of our extraordinary president, Mark Haloossim, it was the most successful dinner in the Club’s 50-year history, with fire trucks donated by Mrs. Orden and Mrs. Nasche to save lives in Israel, and the proceeds of the dinner devoted to fund a new Millennial Project championed by our honorees, Tom and Judy Flesh. It is a program that seeks to pass on to the younger generation the gifts we received from the generations that preceded us, and thus make them immortal.

It is the effort by the Men’s Club to do our part, to do what we can, to further the spirit of Ezekiel, whose words we will now all read together.

                                                                                                                                                                            -- Rick Richman

New Biography of Yitzhak Rabin

Itamar Rabinovich's biography, Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman, is being published today by Yale University Press, the latest offering in its prestigious "Jewish Lives" series.

The publisher describes the book as a "revealing account of [Rabin's] life, character, and contributions [that] draws not only on original research but also on the author's recollections as one of Rabin's closest aides."

One of the interesting facts in the book is Rabinovich's account of the trouble Rabin got into during his service as Israel's ambassador to the United States, when he took a public position in support of President Nixon's re-election against Senator George McGovern.

Rabinovich writes that Rabin "saw Nixon as a genuine friend of Israel, felt beholden to him, and was concerned with McGovern's liberalism." He quotes Rabin's June 1972 interview on Israeli radio: "While we appreciate the support in the form of words we are getting from one camp, we must prefer support in the form of deeds we are getting from the other camp." Rabin's remark produced a strongly adverse reaction in both the U.S. and Israel, with the Washington Post criticizing him in an editorial titled "Israel's Undiplomatic Diplomat."

Rabinovich's book makes it clear he believes that Rabin was one of Israel's most effective ambassadors, developing a close personal relationship with both Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, at a very critical time. 

Today, just outside the Washington office of Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, there is a large picture of a young-looking Rabin, walking at the White House with Nixon. Among a long line of influential Israeli ambassadors, including the first one, Abba Eban, Rabin was one of the most important, before going on to become prime minister. Rabinovich's book is a useful portrait that goes beyond the well-known facts of Rabin's later career to provide context, including some that may be useful in considering the issue of Israel in current American politics. 

Leonard Cohen -- "If It Be Your Will"

 

 

If it be your will

That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before

I will speak no more

I shall abide until

I am spoken for

If it be your will.

 

If it be your will

That a voice be true

From this broken hill

I will sing to you

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing.

 

The full lyrics to the song are here. More on Leonard Cohen at my COMMENTARY post today: "The Blessed Memory of Leonard Cohen."

 

 

The $1.7 Billion Obama Paid Iran

I have an article at MOSAIC Magazine on President Obama's payment to Iran on January 17, 2016 of $1.7 billion, consisting of $400 million in Iran's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) account with the Pentagon, plus $1.3 billion in interest.

Under legislation enacted in 2000, signed by President Clinton, Iran's FMS account was frozen unless and until Iran resolved court judgments against it for state-sponsored terrorism. One of the cases was Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran, summarized as follows in the article:

In April 1995,Alisa Flatow, a twenty-year-old Brandeis University honors student spending her junior year abroad in Israel, boarded a bus in Jerusalem bound for a popular resort area in Gaza. It was the height of the “peace process,” celebrated the year before with Nobel Peace prizes. As the bus entered Gaza, a van filled with explosives slammed into it. Eight people, including Alisa, were killed, and more than 40 others were injured. The attack was carried out by a faction of Islamic Jihad controlled, financed, and directed by the highest levels of Iran’s government.

Alisa’s father, Stephen M. Flatow, filed suit in U.S. federal court against Iran, pursuant to legislation Congress had enacted permitting such suits against state sponsors of terrorist attacks on American citizens. A federal district court issued a 35-page opinion, Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998), awarding a total of $20 million in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages, with both types of damages specifically authorized by the U.S. Congress. The court noted that expert testimony had “detailed an annual expenditure [by Iran] of approximately $75 million for terrorist activities” and that Iran “is so brazen in its sponsorship of terrorist activities that it carries a line item in its national budget for this purpose.” Accordingly, the court awarded punitive damages of $225 million—three times Iran’s publicly-disclosed annual terrorist budget. It was the minimum amount the expert had testified was necessary to have a significant deterrent effect, which was what Congress had intended to achieve in its authorizing legislation.

Iran ended up not paying a cent of the judgment, but got its $400 million plus interest anyway on January 17, 2016. More here.

Makers of Jewish Modernity

An extraordinary collection of 43 portraits of leading Jewish scholars artists, writers, historical figures and public intellectuals is being published today: Makers of Jewish Modernity: Thinkers, Artists, Leaders, and the World They Made, published by Princeton University Press. The essays are remarkable pieces of original scholarship, worth reading and reflecting upon, even though some of them are (in my view) not entirely right. Overall this is a volume that belongs in every library.

Here is the publisher's summary of the volume:

This superb collection presents more than forty incisive portraits of leading Jewish thinkers, artists, scientists, and other public figures of the last hundred years who, in their own unique ways, engaged with and helped shape the modern world. 

Makers of Jewish Modernity features entries on political figures such as Walther Rathenau, Rosa Luxemburg, and David Ben-Gurion; philosophers and critics such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler; and artists such as Mark Rothko. The book provides fresh insights into the lives and careers of novelists like Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth; the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen; social scientists such as Sigmund Freud; religious leaders and thinkers such as Avraham Kook and Martin Buber; and many others. Written by a diverse group of leading contemporary scholars from around the world, these vibrant and frequently surprising portraits offer a global perspective that highlights the multiplicity of Jewish experience and thought. 

A reference book like no other, Makers of Jewish Modernity includes an informative general introduction that situates its subjects within the broader context of Jewish modernity as well as a rich selection of photos.

 

 

 

"What America Owes the Jews, What Jews Owe America"

Mosaic Books has just published a compilation of new essays on American Zionism. Set forth below is the release for the book: 

 

What America Owes the Jews, What Jews Owe America

Dara Horn, Norman Podhoretz, Rick Richman, Jonathan Sarna and Meir Soloveichik

• To what extent was the American Revolution an achievement of Judaism?
• How did Zionism win over American Jews?
• Is there an American Jewish equivalent to Yiddish?
• Why did Abraham Lincoln feel such a close connection to the Jews?
• Why are many American Jews so often reluctant to admit what they owe to America?

These are but some of the questions asked—and answered—in this new collection of never-before-published essays from five of Jewish America’s leading thinkers. Out in time for the Fourth of July, What America Owes the Jews, What Jews Owe America is an essential text for lovers and observers of American and Jewish life.

About the Authors 

Dara Horn is the author of four novels, of which the most recent is A Guide for the Perplexed (2013), and is at work on her fifth. 

Norman Podhoretz served as editor-in-chief of Commentary from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. He is the author of twelve books, including My Love Affair with America (2000) and Why Jews are Liberals (2009). In 2004 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Rick Richman, founder of the blog Jewish Current Issues, writes for Commentary, the American Thinker, the Jewish Journal, the Tower, and other publications. His current project is a book about the trips to America of Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion during the opening months of World War II. 

Jonathan Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun professsor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. He has written, edited, or co-edited more than 30 books. The most recent, co-authored with Benjamin Shapell, is Lincoln and the Jews: a History. 

Meir Soloveichik is the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.

The book is $5.99 at Amazon.

This Thursday at Sinai Temple