Jewish Current Issues

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

"Frontline" Gets It Backward on Netanyahu

  

Tuesday night, PBS broadcast a “Frontline” documentary on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career, entitled “Netanyahu at War.” Writing in Forward, J. J. Goldberg described the film as featuring “the fairly transparent liberal leanings of the filmmakers and most of their on-screen interviewees,” where “any doubts about where the filmmakers are coming from are dispelled within the first half-minute,” as a solemn voice narrates “over a grim-faced close-up of Netanyahu.” Coming from Goldberg -- a liberal writing in a liberal journal -– it is a fairly damning description.

Goldberg nevertheless describes the film as “balanced,” because it was “hard to say who comes off worse from the telling –- Netanyahu with his stubborn pessimism or Obama and his sometimes shocking naivete.” The difference is that the film stacks the deck against Netanyahu, while Obama -- even with a sympathetic dealer often palming him a few cards -- loses the game. Obama will leave office having lost the confidence not only of Israel but the Palestinians, and all of America’s Arab allies as well. Netanyahu's pessimism about both the Palestinians and the Iran deal has been born out over time.

The final segment of the film is devoted to Netanyahu’s March 2015 address to Congress, which Goldberg describes as “an almost Shakespearean tragedy.” The conventional wisdom is that Netanyahu crossed a line in giving the speech -– a reaction that was overblown at the time and that in retrospect is even less valid. It is worth re-reading the speech one year later, in light of what has happened over the past year. The speech was even more Churchillian than Congress realized at the time, as Belladonna Rogers described in her erudite article, “Echoes of Churchill Pervade Netanyahu Speech”:

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounded Churchillian in his speech to the Congress on Tuesday, one reason is that he echoed several of the most memorable phrases in Winston Churchill’s 1941 address to the Canadian House of Commons, a speech still celebrated by Canadians as rallying their nation at a crucial moment in World War II. 

Those phrases deserve attention because of the message they convey to the United States in 2015. Alas, most members of Congress are insufficiently aware of one of the greatest speeches of the 20^th century to have taken notice. A line that should have had them on their feet left them in their seats. …

Churchill only had to rally his listeners; Netanyahu had to educate his. The address to the Canadian Parliament was one of the greatest in the history of western civilization, and one of the most consequential in World War II. … In his subtle but unmistakable reference to Churchill’s “Chicken Speech,” the Israeli prime minister sought to persuade the United States to stand with its allies in the Middle East … Churchill’s address to the Canadian Parliament was a crucial part of the message he so urgently conveyed.

Read the entire Rogers article here.

Dennis Ross's Book on U.S.-Israeli Relations

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/present-for-the-duration/

My review of Dennis Ross's new book on U.S.-Israel relations, Doomed to Succeed, is in the January issue of COMMENTARY. Here is the first paragraph of the review:

Having served in five administrations over the course of four decades and having worked with six Israeli prime ministers, Dennis Ross has unparalleled experience and a unique vantage point with respect to the U.S.–Israel relationship. His history of the 12 presidencies since 1948 is an important one for policymakers, politicians, scholars, and students. It deserves a wide readership, even though—or even because—the history he recounts does not support the title of the book.

Continue reading here.

51st Annual Celebrate Israel Parade in NYC

40,000 marchers, 200 organizations, 25 floats, 15 bands, all up Fifth Avenue today in a three-hour long parade.

The weather forecast was cloudy, but by parade time it was a bright and beautiful day. Five minutes after the parade ended, there were thunderstorms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iran's Third Path to a Bomb -- COMMENTARY

From my post at COMMENTARY today:

The emerging agreement with Iran that President Obama sees as his legacy will give Iran three paths to a bomb: it can break out, wait out, or sneak out of the agreement. Iran will pocket its huge signing bonus; take reversible steps toward “compliance”; then either break out (perhaps after a dispute about implementation, or while the U.S. is involved in some other crisis), or wait out (after which, President Obama concedes, Iran will face no further barrier to a bomb), or sneak out (using secret sites and undetectable methods). In an important new paper entitled “Deterring an Iranian Nuclear Breakout,” Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Military and Security Studies Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, writes that “the most likely scenario” is “an Iranian breakout using undeclared facilities” (emphasis in original). Congress should read the paper carefully before it signs onto ObamaPeace in our time.

Read more here.

 

 

 

 

The End Run Around Congress (and Us)

From my Friday post at COMMENTARY:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to President Obama yesterday, citing reports that the administration plans to take its nuclear agreement with Iran to the UN Security Council for a vote, and would veto any legislation allowing Congress to vote on it first. Corker asked the president to “advise us as to whether you are considering going to the [UN] Security Council without coming to Congress.” As it happens, Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, answered Sen. Corker’s question in his response to the “open letter” to Iran by 47 senators.

Zarif informed the senators that “if the current negotiation with the P5+1 results in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with … all permanent members of the Security Council [the P5], and will be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” [Emphasis added.]

So the plan is to transform existing UN resolutions, which ban Iran’s enrichment and related nuclear activities, into a brand-new resolution that allows them. The foreign minister added that he hoped his comments would “enrich” the senators’ knowledge of international law: he took it upon himself to instruct the senators that the U.S. will be bound by the new UN resolution.

The administration’s plan is apparently, as Jonathan Tobin wrote earlier, to assert that the Iranian deal is not legally binding–and thus is not a “treaty” requiring a vote by the Senate–and then present it to the UN for incorporation into a “binding” UN resolution. At yesterday’s State Department press conference, spokesperson Jen Psaki was, understandably, having trouble explaining the administration’s strategy:

Continue reading here.

Presidential Commitments and Consistency

From my post at COMMENTARY on the reliability of presidential commitments:

The White House “outrage” at the “open letter” to Iran signed by 47 senators, led by Sen. Tom Cotton, was reinforced by Vice President Biden’s formal statement, which intoned that “America’s influence depends on its ability to honor its commitments,” including those made by a president without a vote of Congress.

Perhaps we should welcome Biden’s belated insight. As Jonathan Tobin notes, on taking office in 2009, President Obama refused to be bound by the 2004 Gaza disengagement deal in the letters exchanged between President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, announced that such commitments were “unenforceable” –- not binding on the new administration. In 2009, Obama disregarded previous commitments not only to Israel but to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Georgia; he “fundamentally transformed” America’s previous commitments ...

The Gaza disengagement deal was (1) approved by Congress; (2) included in the Gaza disengagement plan presented to the Israeli Knesset, and (3) relied on by Israel in withdrawing from Gaza later in 2005. The history of the deal (which the current secretary of state endorsed at the time as a U.S. “commitment”) is set forth here, and the reason Obama sought to undo it is discussed here. In 2009, the Obama administration refused at least 22 times to answer whether it considered itself bound by the deal, and in 2011 it reneged on key aspects of it.

READ THE REST OF THE POST HERE.

The Hidden Message in Netanyahu's Speech

Prime Minister Netanyahu received a bust of Churchill from Speaker of the House Boehner on the occasion of Netanyahu’s third address to Congress on March 3. Netanyahu’s speech contained an unspoken message, hidden in a subtle but unmistakable allusion to Churchill’s 1941 address to the Canadian Parliament popularly known as the “Chicken Speech.”

See my COMMENTARY post entitled “The Hidden Message in Netanyahu’s Speech.”