Jewish Current Issues

THE JEWISH HISTORY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN

MONDAY, July 27th, 2020

12:00 PM PACIFIC TIME

           REGISTER HERE (Zoom presentation online, no cost)

Part of a special series leading up to Tisha B'Av: Jewish history could have been different.

At the beginning of World War II, the leaders of the left, right and center of Zionism -- David Ben-Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann -- traveled to America, a country paralyzed by isolationism, seeking support for a Jewish army to fight Hitler.

It is a little-known story of Jewish heroism and tragedy, unity and disunity -- with lessons for today, presented by AJU Resident Scholar Rick Richman. Professor Michael Berenbaum joins the discussion of the Jewish response at the start of the darkest chapter in Jewish history – and its current relevance.

Rick Richman is the author of Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler. He graduated with honors from Harvard College and NYU Law School. He has written for Commentary, The Jewish Journal, The Jewish Review of Books, Mosaic Magazine, The New York Post, The New York Sun and Is the author of the chapter on American Zionism in What America Owes the Jews, What Jews Owe America. 

Michael Berenbaum is a Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University. He is a writer, a scholar and a creator of Museums. His work has been recognized by the Emmys and Academy Awards. He is the editor of Not Your Father's Antisemitism: Hatred of the Jews in the 21st Century.

Jewish Leadership Conference: Opening Address

Here are the opening words from the opening address at the 2019 Jewish Leadership Conference (JLC) on November 10, 2019 in New York, by Eric Cohen, Executive Director of The Tikvah Fund and JLC co-chair, as published by the Jewish News Syndicate:

Jews like to worry, and the past year has surely given the Jewish people many causes for concern—and even alarm.

Around the world—from the Poway synagogue shooting, to the Holocaust-haunted streets of Berlin, to the Orthodox neighborhoods of Borough Park—the number of physical assaults on Jews, simply for being Jews, is on the rise. To the mad white supremacist, the Jew is vermin. To the radical woke activist, the Jew is a fascist. And to the Islamic fundamentalist, the Jew is a heretic.

Yet stand up to them all we will.

Around the world—even in America—the extreme left treats Israel and the Jewish people as villains and thieves: occupying land that is not ours, manipulating world affairs with our wealth, targeting and attacking Palestinian children. These anti-Semitic attacks are of course offensive and absurd—and even more ridiculous when one considers the amoral ruthlessness and Judenrein policies that stain so much of the Middle East. But somehow it has become a badge of progressive honor to call for boycotts on Israeli companies and war crimes tribunals for Israeli leaders.

Yet stand up to the progressive squad we will.

Around the world—even in America—Jewish students are being mistreated on college campuses: Jew-haters are provided student activity funding and special safeguards, while Zionist clubs are banished from campus. Jewish students are afraid to speak their minds in the classroom, while the crazy carnival of “intersectional” activists—with no Jews allowed—are provided safe spaces.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the corruption of the modern academy is the story of Oberlin College, which over the past few years has appeased anti-Semites and dehumanized a local bake-shop, all in the name of radical politics. Oberlin is what happens when truth itself is abandoned: bakers and Jews alike become collateral damage—or deliberate targets—in the unjust crusade for social justice.

Yet stand up for truth and civility we will.

Around the world—even in America—a campaign has begun to treat the rituals, rites and beliefs of traditional Jews as backward and bigoted. Bans on Kosher food. Bans on circumcision. Efforts to shut down Jewish schools for focusing too much on the transmission of Jewish identity. Efforts to ostracize traditional Jews who do not acquiesce to progressive dogmas about gender and marriage.

Yet stand up for religious freedom we will.

The balance of Cohen’s address is here.

Tikvah's Jewish Leadership Conference

Roger Hertog, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, Ruthie Blum at the Jewish Leadership Conference of The Tikvah Fund in New York, Nov. 10, 2019 (photo by Rick Richman).

At the conference, Norman Podhoretz received Tikvah's Herzl Award, and Roger Hertog held a one-hour conversation with Henry Kissinger. His opening question asked Kissinger to reflect on his negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and Kissinger began by saying, "Let me say two things before answering this question":

The first is, I am here because Roger asked me [audience applause]. And Roger has been a mentor and an inspiration for all the decades I’ve been here in New York.

Second, I want to congratulate this organization for giving an award, the Herzl Award, to Norman Podhoretz. Nobody has tormented me more [audience laughter], from so many directions, than Norman, through many years of my public life. But nobody has been a better friend -- and more importantly, nobody I respect more, whether we agree or not, for his courage, for his inspiration, for what he has done for the American and the Jewish people, so [audience applause].

Videos from many of the presentations at the Conference will be available shortly at its website.

Eric Weinstein on Shabbat

Eric Weinstein holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D in Mathematics from Harvard. He received a fellowship at the Racah Institute of Physics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a National Science Foundation fellowship at MIT.

In 2019, he began hosting a podcast called The Portal. The fifth episode, earlier this month, is a fascinating, nearly two-hour discussion with Rabbi David Wolpe, in which Weinstein explored his own views as a Jewish atheist with the rabbi. Worth listening to in its entirety.

The following is an excerpt from the July 3, 2019 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, viewed by more than 3 million, in which the subject of Shabbat came up (beginning at 7:12):

WEINSTEIN: In terms of this weird thing about islands of time, one of the things that we do is we have Shabbat dinner every Friday. No matter how atheist and militant people are against any kind of organized religion, they will leave us alone if we say we're going into Shabbat. … like people will pester me in all sorts of situations, but if I invoke something that is vaguely religious, even Sam Harris probably wouldn't call me during that period of time. I find that very interesting – like, could you create a religion that was simply there to make sure that you had some time offline.

ROGAN: Yeah, I know if I text Ben Shapiro, I'm not getting a text back on Saturday until it’s dark. But when it's dark, he texts you back.

WEINSTEIN: As soon as there are 3 stars in the sky! There's Ben on Twitter -- “What’d I miss?”

ROGAN: ... I think it's probably a really good idea to just take a break from all that electronic shit and just connect with humans in a very old school type of way. I think it's probably very good for it to connect with yourself.

WEINSTEIN: I had this experience: I actually lived in Jerusalem for two years, and we landed in this Orthodox-run hotel. And on Friday night everything shut down, you know, like the textbook. And I then moved into an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood right on the boundary of the place where the secular and the Orthodox met. And what was really fascinating to me was I started telling people “you would never think that it's great not to be able to find a restaurant or a nightclub, but it's amazing that this is enforced downtime.” And about a month in, somebody said “Oh you're in the wrong place -- of course you can go out on Friday night, you just go to the Russian compound and everything is hopping, and you can go dancing and drinking and all these things.” After I knew that, I went dancing and drinking, and I was much less happy than believing that somehow Israel actually shut down on Friday night. And so very weirdly, I appreciated the constraint. As soon as I knew you could break the constraint, I was less happy, and I would never actually obey it anymore.

ROGAN: Yeah, I think having a rigid rule, even though it seems like counter-intuitive, in that it would provide you some freedom by having restrictions, but it does. It gives you some freedom, like OK like now we don't have to think about all these other things. So now we have the freedom to just be alone. Now we have the freedom to be relaxed. Now we have the freedom to just talk to human beings. You know I think, constraints … discipline equals freedom.

WEINSTEIN: Discipline equals freedom.

 

Mother's Day 2019

Rabbi David Wolpe's Mother's Day sermon, Motherhood's Gift.

Sinai Temple President Angela Maddahi's Comments:

It was lovely that we celebrated our mothers today. Thank you, Rabbi Wolpe, for setting the tone and to Craig and Co. for the beautiful music. Personally, though, I think it's not enough to celebrate them only one day a year. Both fathers and mothers should be openly cherished as often as possible. No one is perfect but I know that we all have best intentions for our families and it is our love that binds us together. So, the more love you show your parents, the better life will be for you.

A part of my own Mom's story, in A Short Trip, A Long Journey. (https://jpundit.typepad.com/jci/2010/03/draft-begats.html)

And the poem she left me, written in my Sixth Grade autograph book:

This world that we're a-livin' in

Is mighty hard to beat.

You get a thorn with every rose,

But ain't the roses sweet.

This Ancient, Revolutionary Religion

At Sinai Temple in Los Angeles recently, Elie Alyeshmerni, Ritual Vice President, gave a D'var Torah on "this ancient, revolutionary religion," recounting the revolutionary changes in an ancient time that became part and parcel of the modern world. The following is an edited excerpt of his listing:

1. Sanctity of time. Places were holy, but no other culture of that period considered time -- Shabbat.
2. The concept of the Sabbath as a day of rest. … There is nothing in nature that points to a week. We can identify easily days, months, seasons, and years, but not the week.  
3. Sanctity of Life. Unlike extant cultures we were bidden not to sacrifice humans.  The binding of Isaac is not an exception, but the proof of this.
4. Dignity for all humans. In a society where slavery was common, we were bidden to release slaves after six years of work. Six year maximum is revolutionary when you consider even our founding fathers had slaves.
5. Unity of God. Pantheons and idols were common. ….
6. Partnership of God and man. We are Yisrael. One who struggles with God. Jacob fought the angel. Abraham negotiated with God to save Sodom. Moses dialogued with God not to destroy the Jewish people.
7. Equal and fair Treatment. In the code of Hammurabi, you were treated differently if you stole the sheep of a neighbor or that of the king. You would die for the second. In Judaism the judges are bidden not to favor the poor for being poor nor favor the rich for being rich.
8. Measure for measure. The punishment suits the crime. Do not cut off a hand that stole a loaf of bread. ... 
9. Leaders can be flawed and the flawed can be leaders. Many of our leaders were flawed. The greatest leader Moses, the stutterer, was not deemed worthy to reach the Promised land. King David was not allowed to build the Temple.
10. You serve God when you serve people. Following the momentous revelation of the ten commandments, the first laws were not about how one should worship God, but how to treat other human beings. That is the way to serve God.

Yasher koach, Elie,

Nikki Haley at the UN

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered powerful remarks on July 24 at a UN Security Council Debate on the Middle East. She began by addressing the continuing attacks on Israel from Gaza:

In the last three months, the terrorist flaming swastika kites that have crossed over from Gaza into Israel have damaged or destroyed 7,500 acres of land.

Now Israel is a small country. The equivalent proportion of land in the United States would be the size of the entire state of Connecticut. In France, the equivalent would be 10 times the entire land area of the city of Paris.

This is no small thing. If it was happening to any of our countries there would be quite a lot of discussion on it.

While the international media pays very careful attention to every step Israel takes in self-defense, we must not lose sight of the very real damage that is being done to Israel from terrorist attacks coming from Gaza.

She then turned to “the main purpose of my remarks today,” which was “to shed light on another important and frequently overlooked item when it comes to the Palestinian community.”

Here at the UN … there is no end to the speeches on their behalf. Country after country claims solidarity with the Palestinian people. …  Talk is cheap. …

Last year, Iran’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Algeria’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Tunisia’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Other countries did provide some funding. Pakistan gave 20,000. Egypt gave 20,000. Oman gave 668,000. … Other countries talk a big game about the Palestinian cause. In 2017, China provided 350,000 to UNRWA. Russia provided two million dollars to UNWRA.

Moving up the list, Turkey gave 6.7 million. Kuwait gave nine million dollars. United Arab Emirates gave 12.8 million dollars. …

Last year … the United States gave 364 million dollars. That’s ten times the combined amounts from every country I just named. And that’s on top of what the American people give annually to the Palestinians in bilateral assistance. That is another 300 million dollars just last year, and it averages to more than a quarter of a billion dollars every year since 1993.

Since that year, the United States has provided over six billion – with a B – dollars in bilateral assistance to Palestinians. How much have the Arab countries – some of whom are wealthy countries – how much have they given to the Palestinians? It does not come anywhere close to what the United States has done. …

Judging by the vitriol that is directed toward the United States from the Palestinian representatives, including the one here today, and from some of their allies, one might fairly conclude that our support is unappreciated or unwelcomed.

Americans are very generous people. We are humanitarian oriented people. And we continue to seek out ways to help the Palestinian people, whose plight is of genuine concern to us. But we are not fools. If we extend a hand in friendship and generosity, we do not expect our hand to be bitten. …

Importantly, this is not an issue of funding alone. … Where are the Arab countries when it comes to denouncing Hamas terrorism? Where are the Arab countries when it comes to supporting compromises that are necessary for peace? Too often, the Arab countries give just enough money and mouth just enough uncompromising words to stay out of the crosshairs of Palestinian representatives.

But if they really cared about the Palestinian people, they would not do that. Instead, they would condemn extremism and they would put forth serious ideas for compromises that could end this struggle and lead to a better life for the Palestinian people. They would tell the Palestinian leadership how foolish they look for condemning a peace proposal they haven’t even seen yet.

The Palestinian leadership has been allowed to live a false reality for too long because Arab leaders are afraid to tell them the truth. The United States is telling the truth because we do care about the Palestinian people. …

So the next time we have a meeting like this in the Security Council or in the General Assembly, and we hear speech after speech about the plight of the Palestinian people, I would ask those who are making the speeches to examine what your country is doing to help – other than speechmaking.

The 242nd Year of Independence

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara attended an event in honor of American Independence Day hosted by US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, yesterday evening. From the Prime Minister’s remarks about the American-Israeli alliance:

What makes this alliance so powerful? So enduring? What makes it so? Well, one thing – common values. We have common values that are clear – it's freedom, liberty, democracy. These aren't hollow slogans. They are the bedrock of Western civilization. They're the secret of America's success and of Israel's success. . . . . We have tremendous respect for American ingenuity, for American creativity, for American mobility, for American capacities in every field.  And we know where that comes from. It comes from a free society, from free discussion. We argue about everything. Believe me, I know. We have a free press. Believe me, I know. We have free speech. We have freedom of religion. Freedom, liberty, democracy. Real values. Here's what the Liberty Bell says, inscribed on it: 'Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all of its Inhabitants'.  We know that phrase. It comes from the Bible. It comes from Leviticus. So much of America's heritage is rooted in the Hebrew Bible.

 This would be a good day to read Ron Dermer's remarkable essay, "Proud to Have Been an American," written at the time he gave up his American citizenship to become Israel's ambassador to the United States:

The United States insists that foreign diplomats working on its soil not hold American citizenship. The reasonableness of this demand makes my decision to relinquish my citizenship no less difficult. I have always been proud to be an American, and I will always be proud to have been an American.

For 33 years I have felt America's warm embrace, and I am eternally grateful for it. I was born in America, raised in America, and formed in America. I have been educated by the wisdom of its founders, inspired by the words of its leaders, and protected by the sacrifices of its soldiers.

When I think of freedom, I think of Lincoln. When I think of courage, I think of Normandy. When I think of justice, I think of Martin Luther King Jr.

America has convinced me that to achieve greatness, a nation must reconcile faith and freedom. It has taught me that the most vital asset a nation possesses is its own sense of justice. It has shown me the power of freedom to change the lives of individuals, of nations, and of the world.

America has inspired hundreds of millions around the globe who hoped to import its ideals, and it continues to do so today. But the true greatness of America lies not only in its creed but also in the people who share it. Americans are a people whose moral sense remains strong and who have been inoculated against the corrosive cynicism that infects so many who live in freedom elsewhere. As long as Americans reject cynicism, America will thrive. As long as Americans continue to be inspired, America will continue to inspire the world.

There are those who leave America because they no longer feel at home there. But I have always felt completely at home in America. I left America because I wanted to help another nation I love defend the freedoms that Americans have long taken for granted. I left America to help another people I love fight not merely for their survival but also for their right to survive.

Thousands of miles from the torch of freedom that has welcomed so many to America's shores, Israel carries the torch of freedom in the Middle East. Manning the frontlines in a war against tyranny and terror is a formidable task. But the Jewish state must also defend freedom in the face of a world that is largely shorn of a moral compass, in which a nation's self-defense is called aggression and in which terrorists and their victims are deemed equally entitled to sympathy.

It is fitting that America chose the eagle as its national symbol. The Bible says that God bore the children of Israel from slavery on the wings of eagles. Soaring higher than any other bird, the eagle carries its young on its back to protect them from the dangers below. America has soared higher than any other nation in the history of the world and protects its sons and daughters from peril. Now, with great sadness, I will leave that protection and face those perils with my new nation.

I am confident that America has armed me well for the difficult struggles ahead. It has convinced me that good can triumph over evil and that a free people, united in a common purpose, will never be defeated by tyrants and slaves.

In order to serve my new country, I have decided to renounce my American citizenship. But I will never renounce America or its people. As a faithful son of America, I will never betray its ideals. In serving the State of Israel and in working to secure our common future, I will champion those ideals all of my life.

May God forever bless America.

 

 

Philip Roth and Memorial Day

COMMENTARY played a significant role in Philip Roth’s career. In early 1957, the 27-year old assistant editor of COMMENTARY, Norman Podhoretz, was perusing the magazine’s “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts and found a piece titled “You Can’t Tell a Man by the Song He Sings,” submitted by a little-known 24-year old named Philip Roth. Podhoretz convinced his senior editors to publish it, and it appeared in the November 1957 issue of COMMENTARY. It became part of Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, which won the National Book Award, and the rest is literary history. In the following decades, Norman Podhoretz's reviews of Roth and his books at COMMENTARY (such as this and this) comprised some of the most trenchant literary criticism written in those years.

This past week, as readers mourned Roth’s passing, there has been a mini-debate about which of his books was his best. Most of the short lists included The Plot Against America, Roth’s novel imagining what might have happened had Charles Lindbergh run for president in 1940, won election as an anti-Semitic isolationist, negotiated an “understanding” with Hitler, and brought fascism to America. Several pages into the novel, which is structured as a memoir, the narrator recalls his false sense of security as a Jewish youngster growing up in America:

Israel didn’t yet exist, six million European Jews hadn’t yet ceased to exist, and the local relevance of distant Palestine (under British mandate since the 1918 dissolution by the victorious Allies of the last far-flung provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire) was a mystery to me. When a stranger who did wear a beard and who was never once seen hatless appeared every few months after dark to ask in broken English for a contribution toward the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, I, who wasn’t an ignorant child, didn’t quite know what he was doing on our landing. My parents would give me or Sandy a couple of coins to drop into his collection box, largess, I always thought, dispensed out of kindness so as not to hurt the feelings of a poor old man who, from one year to the next, seemed unable to get it through his head that we’d already had a homeland for three generations. I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly observed its national holidays, and without giving a second thought to my affinity for the Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header.

“Decoration Day” was what Memorial Day was generally called before World War II, celebrated every May 30 until Congress moved it to the last Monday in May, to create a three-day holiday.

Making Memorial Day part of a long weekend has had the unfortunate effect of in many cases relegating it to a vacation rather than focusing on it as a day of memory. As Meir Soloveichik notes in the June issue of Commentary, it is “observed by many (though not all) Americans as escapes from work, and too few ponder the link between the sacrifice of American dead and the freedom that we, the living, enjoy.”

Roth’s novel showed how (in Sinclair Lewis’s phrase) it might have “happened here.” But the book was fiction, and the historical fact is it didn’t happen here. Eventually more than 400,000 Americans died in World War II to make sure it didn't, and to secure our extraordinary freedoms. The list of American casualties in various other wars is also stunning. In its legislation, Congress designated the minute beginning at 3:00 p.m. (local time) on Memorial Day each year as the “National Moment of Remembrance”. We owe all of those who died in our defense much more than that.

A Benediction for the Ages in Jerusalem Today

We have been following Pastor John Hagee at Jewish Current Issues for more than 10 years.

In 2006, he established the “Nights to Honor Israel” that have raised millions of dollars for Israel, and commenced the annual Washington, D.C. Summit of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that brings thousands of Christians every year to Washington to study issues relating to Israel and then spend a day lobbying Congress on those issues. Back in 2006, he described what he had decided to do:

And I said we will do a Night to Honor Israel in every major city in America . . . and they all of them stayed, and that’s how I knew God was in the house.  And I said we’re going to go to once a year to Washington and take as many of our leaders as we can.  We’re not going to stand out on the grass and sing “Amazing Grace,” because Congress could care less about “Amazing Grace.” 

They only care when you go in their offices, look them in the eye and say “I’m a Christian and I support Israel” and you give them a list of talking points for every one of them, and every senator and every congressmen hears the same message from Americans from Maine to California on one day. . . .

He has held hundreds of "Nights to Honor Israel" since then, and CUFI has held its Washington summit every year. The next one is July 23-24. CUFI now has more than 4 million members, dwarfing the membership of AIPAC.

Today, more than a decade he established CUFI, Pastor Hagee stood in Jerusalem and gave a benediction for the ages. Here is the transcript (the video is here):

“Our most gracious Heavenly Father, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who calls the stars by name, and measures space with the span of his hand, the God who is the King of the Universe, we gather here today to thank you for the joy of living and seeing this glorious and historic day.

 

“We thank you for the State of Israel, the lone torch of freedom in the Middle East, who lives and prospers because of your everlasting love for the Jewish people.

 

“It was you, O Lord, who gathered the exiles from the nations and brought them home again. It was you who made statehood possible. It was you that gave a miraculous victory in 1967 when Jerusalem was re-opened to worshippers of all faith.

 

“Jerusalem is the city of God. Jerusalem is the heartbeat of Israel. Jerusalem is where Abraham placed his son on the altar on the Temple Mount and became the father of many nations. 

 

“Jerusalem is where Jeremiah and Isaiah penned principles of righteousness that became the moral foundations of Western Civilization. Jerusalem is where Messiah will come and establish a kingdom that will never end. 

 

“We thank you, O Lord, for President Donald Trump's courage in acknowledging to the world a truth established 3000 years ago that Jerusalem is and always shall be the eternal capital of the Jewish people. 

 

“And because of that courage of our president, we gather here today to consecrate the ground upon which the United States Embassy will stand reminding the dictators of the world that America and Israel are forever united. We thank you for our Ambassador David Friedman, and pray your anointing upon him as he opens the doors of the US Embassy to receive the nations of the world.

 

“Let the word go forth from Jerusalem today that Israel lives! 

 

“Shout it from the housetops that Israel lives!

 

“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message—Israel lives!

 

“Let it be heard in the halls of the United Nations—Israel lives!

 

“Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran—Israel lives! 

 

“Let it be known to all men, that Israel lives because, ‘He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.’

 

“As King David prayed 3000 years ago, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all its inhabitants.

 

“Let the name of the Lord be glorified today for the defender of Israel today, tomorrow and forever is here! Can we all shout hallelujah! Amen!”

 

-- Rick Richman, author of The Race Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler.