DANIEL SIERADSKI

occupyjudaism:

Protesters at Occupy Seattle lock arms to defend a sukkah from destruction by the Seattle Police.

This weekend, police in NYC and Seattle forced Jewish protesters to take down temporary shelters used to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot – the Feast of Tabernacles – an annual week-long harvest festival, which also commemorates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. 

Van Jones, seen here with me and my colleague Charles, popped by Occupy Yom Kippur to express his gratitude for our efforts and to wish us all a meaningful fast and a beautiful holiday. An unexpected and welcome surprise!

Stay up-to-date about radical Jewish happenings at occupations in your local community. Follow @occupyjudaism or like us on Facebook.

Last week two assholes were caught on video at Occupy Wall Street saying profoundly awful, stupid things about Jews, one of whom was consistently heckled and challenged by those around him.

On Friday night, around one thousand — not two, one thousand — Jews assembled for Yom Kippur services in the very same place to express solidarity with the demonstrators’ shared ideal of repairing the world. 

Which do you think the media is giving more attention to and is using to describe the character of the Wall Street demonstrations?

I’ll give you a hint: It’s not the perfectly normal people having what many called the most meaningful Jewish experience of their lives — one which has inspired thousands around the country and around the world.

You see: If you tell that story, then the 99% might win. And you know we can’t have that.

After all, look at these vicious antisemites!

Stay up-to-date about radical Jewish happenings at occupations in your local community. Follow @occupyjudaism or like us on Facebook.

“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”

—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

This Friday night begins Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. On this day, Jews around the world refrain from all physical pleasures (eating, bathing and screwing, to name a few), and devote themselves to prayer and supplication, begging the Lord forgiveness of their sins so that they may be written into the Book of Life.

But is fasting and beating our chests really the best we can do to redeem ourselves?

As lower Manhattan erupts with thousands of protesters taking a stand against economic injustice, the words of the prophet Isaiah resonate more truthfully and appropriately than ever:

Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the fetters of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward.

Thus rather than spending the holiday safe and warm in our cozy synagogues thinking abstractly about human suffering, perhaps we should truly afflict ourselves and undertake the fast of Isaiah, by joining the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park, and holding our Yom Kippur services there amongst the oppressed, hungry, poor and naked.

Not to be cliché, but as Rabbi Hillel the Elder said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?”

Join us for Kol Nidrei at Occupy Wall Street

Friday night, Oct 7 @7PM
By the red cube in front of Brown Brothers Harriman
140 Broadway at Liberty Plaza
Directly across from Zuccotti Park 
Look for signs

RSVP on Facebook

Please read the following notes in full so that you can have the most enjoyable and meaningful experience possible.

TIME AND LOCATION

The service will begin at 7PM sharp. 

It will be held directly across from Zuccotti Park in the plaza in front of Brown Brothers Harriman at 140 Broadway in Manhattan, near the red cube. We will have signs posted and you can ask someone at an information table where the Yom Kippur service is being held.

ABOUT THE SERVICE 

It will be a traditional egalitarian service: Hebrew language with some English readings and a gender neutral space.

Our wonderful volunteer leaders are Avi Fox Rosen (Storahtelling), Sarah Wolf (JTS), and Getzel Davis (Hebrew College), who are being assisted in preparations by Yosef Goldman (JTS) and Rabbi Ezra Weinberg (RRC). Affiliation is for identification purposes only.

PRAYERBOOKS

If possible, please bring your own Yom Kippur machzor. If you do not have a machzor, we will have ~100, graciously loaned to us by The Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism. If you prefer, you can download and print this PDF version to bring with you: http://is.gd/AM22Xa. There is also a supplement we request that you print out and bring with you: http://is.gd/idv5aY.

SOUND, PHOTOGRAPHY & LIGHTING

There will be no musical instruments or amplification. The lack of amplification may make it difficult for the hard of hearing. We will do our best to accommodate. 

We also request that you please refrain from taking video or photographs, as more observant participants may feel uncomfortable. If you are being photographed, please do not engage in an altercation with the photographer. Turn away or wave your hand “no” to communicate your desire to not be photographed.

We cannot, as of yet, guarantee a well-lit space. If you are comfortable using electricity on yom tov, we recommend bringing a small flashlight or headlamp to read with.

SEATING

Seating will not be provided. Feel free to bring your own portable chairs or to sit on the ground.

A WORD OF CAUTION

Please also be advised that as the occupation is both a decentralized action and an act of civil disobedience, there may be disruptions and/or the possibility of police interference. Though it is highly unlikely, participants nonetheless risk the possibility of arrest. Please be prepared for that possibility. The National Lawyers Guild and ACLU have legal observers on-site who can provide legal aid in the event of a police confrontation. Regardless, we request that you be respectful towards the police at all times.

KAPPAROT

If you are interested, come early and bring money for kapparot to donate as tzedakah to the Occupy Wall Street movement. We will do the kapparot ritual at 6PM.

SEUDAH MAFSEKET

No suedah mafseket (pre-fast meal) is officially planned, but feel free to coordinate with others in the comments on the Facebook event page. 

SATURDAY SERVICES

No Saturday services are planned. If you will be in the area of Lower Manhattan, you are welcome to attend services at Battery Park Synagogue or Chabad of Wall Street. Otherwise, CBST has welcomed all participants to join them for services at the Javits Convention Center. There are also free services with Ohel Ayalah throughout the city.

G’mar chatimah tova!

This event has been endorsed by Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) and the Shalom Center.

If you haven’t been down to Zuccotti Park, rather than rehashing it myself, I recommend reading Richard Kim’s love letter in The Nation to the human microphone – the means of sound amplification currently employed by the unpermitted occupiers of Wall Street.

The need for human amplification became apparent early on with the protests as the NYPD started seizing megaphone wielding demonstrators off the street, as depicted in this widely circulated video:

While the human microphone has its merits and is remarkable for many positive reasons (as Jeff Sharlet tweeted, for example: “Interesting thing about human mike @ #occupywallstreet is that u repeat things you may not agree with. Which can change thinking.”), the truth is, it’s fairly impractical and at times simply infuriating to listen to – at least from my perspective – as it breaks up the natural flow of speech, and thus the natural process of listening.

Pondering this conundrum, it occurred to me that there is, perhaps, a way around the sound permit issue that would allow everyone to hear a speaker clearly without the need for unpermitted amplification equipment, or for the big game of telephone.

In an interview with The Forward newspaper the other day, my friend Ronen – who helped to organize this summer’s economic protests in Israel – asked “Why not buy a few hundred megaphones and dare them to arrest everyone?” It’s a clever thought, though megaphones could be prohibitively expensive, and if the Brooklyn Bridge arrests are any indication, the cops are not afraid to lock up several hundred people at once.

But what if you told everyone to bring a Walkman? Or a battery-powered AM/FM radio they could listen to quietly? The Coby CX73 retails at just $4.

Low-power radio broadcasting equipment is relatively inexpensive and readily available. Truth be told, you could even hack an iTrip and extend its broadcast range upwards of 100 feet. Under the FCC’s Part 15 regulations, an individual can operate a radio station without a license so long as they do not interfere with licensed operators’ broadcasts and their broadcast range is limited to ~200 feet. Setting up a local radio station in Zuccotti Park is thus both affordable and legal.

Luckily, according to John Anderson of DIYMedia.net, the folks at Global Revolution (who are also responsible for the Occupy Wall Street Livestream) already thought of that and setup a microradio station at 107.1FM that is currently broadcasting within the park! But is anyone listening? And is there a concurrent Internet audio stream?

What if that station were to broadcast speakers during the General Assembly, the People’s Soapbox and other speaking events? And what if, instead of handing them a microphone, enabling the police to easily identify and target the source of the broadcast by tracing back the microphone cable, the station operator setup a Skype dial-in number that would rebroadcast over the airwaves? A speaker would simply need to pick up their phone, dial a number, and instantly be speaking directly into the Walkmen, boomboxes, and smartphone radio streaming apps of their fellow demonstrators.

As long as your radio isn’t blaring and “disturbing the peace,” the police would have absolutely no recourse and no justification to arrest anyone. They can’t arrest one person for talking on their cellphone and hundreds, if not thousands of others, for listening to their headphones.

It may be the simplest way of evading the need for a permit and pissing off neighborhood residents, and would allow for the General Assembly and other speaking events to carry far into the night.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 30, 8PM | ZUCCOTTI PARK, NYC (Meet at steps on Broadway side)

Shabbat is a rejection of commerce, capitalism & exploitation: A day free from work, from business transactions, from handling money. As the Old Testament says, “And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Therefore the Eternal your God commanded to keep the Sabbath day.” Whether or not one is religious, this statement reverberates with profound meaning for those who recognize the need for working class people to have a reprieve from their labors – but more so, from their exploitation at the hands of others.

As an expression of solidarity with those protesting on Wall Street against the excesses and corruption of the financial elite and against the slavery the upper classes have foisted upon working and unemployed people alike, members of the Jewish community are banding together to hold a Shabbat potluck dinner at Zuccotti Park this Friday night.

Everyone is welcome. You don’t have to be Jewish to participate. But please try to keep the food vegetarian or kosher-by-ingredient (no pork, shellfish or milk & meat together). Please let us know what you’re planning to bring by Thursday night.

Sign up to bring food and supplies here!

While dropping in on the #OccupyWallStreet protests a couple of times in the last week, it became clear to me that this movement could benefit strongly from a greater awareness of direct action in theory and practice. What follows is a short collection of texts that will give the reader a thorough grounding in the use of direct action as a means for affecting radical social transformation. This is merely what I could remember off the top of my head. I will add more as more titles occur to me.

Theory

• From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation – The manual employed by the Tahrir Square protest organizers in toppling the Mubarak regime
• Direct Action: An Ethnography – A complete study of the history of direct action
• Anarchy Alive: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory – A study of contemporary anarchist organizing theory
• Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement – A look at how the police understand direct action
• The Advent of Netwar – A Rand Corporation (military contractor) handbook on the tactics of decentralized activist networks 
• Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs – A treatise on horizontal, decentralized, affinity structures as an alternative to mass movement mobilizations

Practice

• Act Up Civil Disobedience Training – A guide to direct action from the notorious AIDS awareness org
• Ruckus Society Action Planning Manual –ָ A primer from the Ruckus Society in planning direct actions
• Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook – A handbook for direct action and DIY living from Crimethinc
• Bodyhammer: Tactics & Self-Defense for the Modern Protester – A guide to the creation of shields, body armor and other apparatus for defending protesters from police violence
• Locking Down With Lock Boxes – Instructions for creating lock boxes excerpted from “Recipes for Disaster”
• Creative Direct Action Visuals – A guide to creating posters, puppets, t-shirts and other communications assets

Here’s the Alan Watts snippet I read last night at Jay Michaelson and Paul Dakin’s sheva brochas:

The world is like a game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.” God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.

Here’s the original source.

Brooklyn residents alongside the Gowanus Canal were staying put this Saturday despite an evacuation order from the City of New York. The Gowanus Canal is a federally registered Superfund cleanup site, considered lethally toxic to humans.

As New York Magazine reported earlier today: 

When Hurricane Irene hits the New York area on Sunday, the neighborhoods surrounding the Gowanus Canal are in for a literal shitstorm — and that may be the least of their problems.

The latest projections anticipate a storm surge of 7 to 15 feet in New York Harbor on Sunday. A dome of water would travel from Upper New York Bay, through Gowanus Harbor, and into the 1.5 mile-long Gowanus Canal near Smith and 9th St. Once in the canal, it could stir up a heady mix of pollutants — essentially oil, heavy metals, and human excrement — and distribute it throughout the slowly gentrifying area that sits among some of Brownstone Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhoods.

At this time no precautions seem to have been taken to ensure the safety of local residents.

This afternoon I posted a photoset showing the Union Street Bridge was still open to traffic, that minimal preparations had been made against flooding, and that residents weren’t going anywhere. In particular, I expressed concerned for the residents of the Gowanus Houses – a NYCHA housing project one block west of the canal – who were not evacuated. 

Though Mayor Mike Bloomberg explained in a press conference this afternoon that the city would be shutting off power and water to NYCHA properties in Zone A, and providing bus service to residents to help them relocate to shelters, no such buses were seen and residents seemed unaware as to any evacuation order or that their electricity and water was to be shut off. 

At my Twitter behest, the NY Times’s Michael Barbaro kindly asked Bloomberg about Gowanus in what became the last question of this evening’s mayoral press conference. Bloomberg wasn’t sure whether Gowanus was under evacuation order but said it was “hard to believe” and “unfair” to say that no one told residents of effected areas to evacuate.

By email NYC Councilmember Steve Levin, in whose district the Gowanus Canal resides, said, “Although they are on the border of the zones, the Gowanus Houses are in Zone B and were not under the mandatory evacuation order.” 

The Gowanus Houses are nevertheless directly across the street from Zone A, and again, only one block west of the canal.

Far left, the Gowanus Houses. Far right, at end of street, the Gowanus Canal. Picture via Google Street View.

“My office has been in contact with residents there and have impressed upon them that they should take all precautions necessary,” Levin said.

Levin’s remarks don’t account for the lack of a police presence in the area, alerting and assisting Zone A residents to evacuate, as was seen in more well-to-do areas, such as Battery Park City. There police used bullhorns to warn residents to leave and had MTA buses available to aid in evacuation. 

With the known presence of toxic waste in the water, Gowanus’ neglect is all the more troubling. One resident, squarely within Zone A, told me he “hadn’t heard a thing” about evacuation. “I’ve lived here since 1938,” he said, the year the New England hurricane caused New York’s last great flood. “I’ve seen it all. I’m not going anywhere.”

“My biggest concern with this storm is that we’ll have flooding problems around the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek — also a Superfund site,” said Levin. “I have reached out to DEP, OEM and the Mayor’s Office to express my concerns about flooding around both Superfund sites.”

We’ll find out tomorrow if the city’s taking those concerns seriously.

By now you’re likely to have heard the tale of JVP/Code Pink activist Rae Abileah’s alleged assault following her disruption of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. 

I’m in the midst of writing a piece on the subject, but in order to do so, I first need your help to identify the Jewish communal leaders whom ripped from her hands the banner she held, and whom she claims strangled and beat her.

Who are these two men with the blue ties on the far left of these photographs?

And who is the blonde woman here who appears to be pushing Ms. Abileah into Ralph Reed possibly?

And who is the man in the black suit here with his arm up? I spy Malcolm Hoenline, Abe Foxman, maybe Alan Solow and Shmuley Boteach, who blogged about the incident.

If you can identify any of these individuals, please email me at ds at danielsieradski dot com.

The Valerie Plame Scandal

• RJC board member Ari Fleischer identified himself as being the party responsible for the Valerie Plame leak, for which he was shielded from prosecution by an immunity deal. 
• The RJC’s board members dominate the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection to the Plame investigation.

Graft & Corruption

• RJC board member and former RNC finance chair Elliott Broidy was found guilty of attempting to bribe NY State officials.
• The IRS recently warned RJC board member Norm Coleman’s non-profit American Action Network about violating its tax-exempt status by fundraising for Republican candidates after a complaint was filed by Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington. AAN, which spent more on political ads than any other group ($26.1m) except for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 2010 cycle, wrote on its IRS filing that its political activities would be “minor.” The group is accused of using its 501(c)(4) status to shield its donors identities.
• Coleman’s travel expenses were frequently covered by the RJC while he was still in office.
• The RJC-hatched Freedom’s Watch engaged in illegal campaign finance activities and other criminality and deception.
• As chairman of the RNC, RJC board member Ken Mehlman oversaw the expansion of the GOP’s anti-gay agenda while he was himself a closeted homosexual.
• RJC board member Mel Sembler had his drug treatment facility’s license revoked in 1993 following multiple allegations of abuse, including physical abuse, sexual assault and torture.
• In 1999, Michigan State House Speaker Jeff Perricone was found to have improperly and illegally used state resources to set up a meeting for Weiser who was then Michigan finance chairman of George W. Bush’s campaign.
• RJC board member Sheldon Kamins referred to chairing Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC as “a badge of honor” after Gingrich was fined $300,000 for violating House campaign finance rules and reprimanded for misleading the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

Buying Influence & Power

• Top RJC supporter and board member Sheldon Adelson outspends even George Soros in campaign contributions and abuses his undue influence to drive policy in both the U.S. and Israel.
• RJC chairman Sam Fox funded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which promulgated false and defamatory statements about Senator John Kerry’s military service record during his 2004 Presidential campaign, and was rewarded by George W. Bush with a highly contested ambassadorship to Belgium appointed during a one-day congressional break. At the time, Senator Chris Dodd said that what the President had done was “deceptive at best and illegal at worst.”
• Former RJC chairwoman Cheryl Halpern was appointed chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after making significant contributions to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign as well as two Republican Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee members who oversaw the confirmation process.
• RJC board member Earle I. Mack was appointed Ambassador to Finland by George W. Bush after donating $20,000 to the RNC in 2004.
• RJC board member Ned L. Siegel was appointed Ambassador to the Bahamas by George W. Bush after donating $50,000 to the RNC in 2004.
• RJC board member Mel Sembler was appointed ambassador to Italy by George W. Bush after making significant contributions to the RNC.
• RJC board member and RNC finance chairman Ronald Weiser was appointed Ambassador to Slovakia by George W. Bush after donating $265,000 to Republicans in 2000.
• RJC board member and Bush fundraiser Fred Zeidman’s son Jay was appointed the Jewish community liaison to the White House in 2006. Though the elder Zeidman acknowledges introducing his son to White House officials, both insist that his hiring was not an act of nepotism.

Promoting Extremism

• The RJC, which denies promulgating “birther myths,” has played host to Michele Bachmann and Orly Taitz, as well as Conservative muckraker Andrew Breitbart, all of whom have repeatedly cast doubt on the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
• The RJC also distributed the anti-Muslim propaganda film “Obsession” during 2008 election cycle, during which time RJC ally and regular guest speaker Frank Gaffney was actively spreading the myth that Barack Obama is a Muslim.
• RJC board member Larry Mizel is chairman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an institution that is presently building a “Museum of Tolerance” atop a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem and which also opposed the construction of the Park 51 Muslim community center in lower Manhattan.
• RJC board member and IDT CEO Howard Jonas funds the Central Fund for Israel, which in turn funds a radical West Bank yeshiva responsible for multiple mosque arsons and publishing literature inciting the murder of non-Jews.
• RJC board member J. Philip Rosen is an unabashed financial supporter of West Bank settlements, in violation of long-standing U.S. foreign policy which views such activities as an impediment to the Middle East peace process.
• Several RJC board members also serve on the boards of the Jewish Policy Council, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Hudson Institute, three neoconservative think-tanks that were instrumental in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq which has to date cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $800 billion dollars, took the lives of 4,500 U.S. soldiers and led to the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

March 29, 1988

Despite previous statements saying they would monitor but not remove the controversial Facebook group calling for the liberation of Russian Jewry, Facebook administrators shut down the group early Tuesday morning in response to enormous pressure from pro-Russian activists. All links to the group now go to users personal Facebook profile.

The group had been calling for a march on the Russian embassy in Washington to “liberate” Russian Jewry beginning on May 15. It remains to be seen how Facebook will respond if similar groups emerge with similar message of Jewish liberation.

New media expert Ober Reactink, one of the first to discover the group was down, told DishonestReporting that Facebook made the correct decision shutting down the group.  “It’s about time,” he said. “Facebook needs to learn to distinguish between the right to ‘attack’ conceptual ideas, and the ‘wrong’ of attacking people be it because of their race, religion, nationality or political view. When they start to understand that, perhaps they will stop making so many mistakes.”

/satire

Derived from the original with apologies to my friend Alex.

In case you think I’m comparing apples and oranges, meet the Jewish terrorists. It’s of course unfair to contend that the JDL defined the struggle for Soviet Jewry. But just as the majority of Jews involved in the movement were nonviolent, the majority of Palestinians participating in the Intifada are engaged in nonviolence — protests, labor strikes, boycotts, propaganda, lobbying — that dwarf in scope, if not media representation, the acts of terrorism that define for Jews and Israelis the word “intifada” itself.

Unless the page admins themselves made or condoned others’ explicit calls for violence — which I have not seen, but which does not mean it did not happen — then Facebook had no basis to intervene. Market pressure should not determine whose revolutions Facebook regards as legitimate or illegitimate, as no minority could ever gain its rights under such a system.

That said, I can’t understand how Israel’s supporters would regard this as a constructive use of social capital. All you do when you try to censor your opposition is lend credibility to their voice by creating the impression that they have something to say so threatening to the existence of the Jewish state that you must silence them lest the truth get out. I cannot possibly see how affirming people’s worst impressions advances Israel’s cause.

Update: Cnet offers a statement from Facebook which indicates that the admins did ultimately participate in making calls to violence, thereby justifying Facebook’s takedown of the page in accordance with their Terms of Service. Still, there’s currently a dozen or so pages on Facebook created by supporters of Israel calling for the bombing of Iran, just as an example. Why is that not regarded as incitement to violence worthy of petitioning Facebook? Could it be because we’re hypocrites?

Ever since I moved to the Gowanus/Boerum Hill area this past June, every day on my way to and from work, I feel as though I am walking through a trash dump. The west-side stretch of 4th Ave. between Atlantic Ave. and Warren St., which resides in Councilman Stephen Levin’s 33rd District, is abysmally filthy, with trash strewn everywhere, and it seems to never get cleaned either by sanitation workers or shop owners, who themselves I’ve witnessed littering the sidewalk. If I were calculating Community Board No. 6’s Acceptably Clean Sidewalks rating, they’d get a big fat 0% from me, because the condition of 4th Ave. is completely unacceptable. 

At the corner of 4th and Pacific, newspaper vendors abandon entire stacks of papers to rot in the rain and snow, trash receptacles overflow and are knocked over into the street, and even an abandoned, smacked-up motorcycle adorns the entrance to the Pacific St. subway station.

It’s the motorcycle which pisses me off the most. It was only last spring that the NYPD clipped the locks off and seized hundreds of bicycles lining the route of President Obama’s motorcade, fearing that they could be concealing pipe bombs. I am also often greeted on my way into the subway station by the Department of Homeland Security which is doing bag checks along with throngs of police officers who are, more often than not, standing around socializing. All the while, an abandoned motor vehicle – a perfect hiding spot for an explosive device – has remained untouched at the entrance of the largest subway terminal in Brooklyn. Yet no one has bothered hauling it away. This just feeds the public perception that all of these purported security precautions are pure theatre and that our local authorities are still completely incompetent and unprepared for a real attack.

Back to the trash: You have to wonder if Stephen Levin ever bothers walking around the neighborhood he serves, because there’s no way anyone with genuine civic pride could walk up 4th Ave. without their stomach turning. You’d also think that someone who sits on the City Council’s Environmental Committee would wish to address the problem of litter washing into our city’s storm drains and flowing back out into our waterways, polluting our rivers, oceans and beaches.

I would appreciate knowing what, if anything, the Councilman intends to do to improve the current situation, because maintaining the status quo only ensures that while 5th, 6th and 7th Aves. thrive economically, 4th Ave. remains a slum. I’d much rather see my neighborhood continue on the trajectory of growth that Brooklyn’s been enjoying in recent years, rather than remaining stagnant, or worse yet, sliding back into the abyss that made the borough synonymous with “scary” less than 20 years ago.

The Z-baggers are at it again, going out of their way to misrepresent and defame J Street, manufacturing controversy where none exists. The latest brouhaha centers around a blog post by doctoral student Omri Ceren, which seeks to uphold the alleged pernicious anti-Zionism of J Street U Jerusalem’s new campus organizer, Drew Cohen, as further evidence of J Street’s perfidy. Ceren’s post got picked up yesterday by Shmuel Rosner at the Jerusalem Post, setting off yet another anti-J Street hissy-fit across the right-wing Zionist blogosphere.

Whether authored by left-wing anti-Zionists alleging Mossad conspiracies or right-wing Zionists alleging anti-Israel conspiracies, every time I read a post like this, I’m reminded of that scene in A Beautiful Mind where Russell Crowe’s wife goes out to the shed only to discover that her husband is a delusional maniac who spends his time fabricating conspiracies out of whole cloth by drawing connections between dots where no such connections exist. As a blogger who himself has been prone to such rants, I’m sympathetic but increasingly wary.

As former publisher of Jewschool, from where the overwhelming majority of Ceren’s citations come, and as a friend of Drew’s of several years, I would say that if you cherry-pick his posts and present them out-of-context of the fact that he’s a religiously observant yeshiva student who has been living in Israel for several years, volunteering with Israeli NGOs, and who is uninhibited in the expression of his commitment to the existence of a just, progressive Israel, then perhaps yes, to your average winger that doesn’t read past others’ mischaracterizations, Drew looks like your typical anti-Zionist stooge.

I’m sure if I were to trawl through everything Ceren has ever written, I could also cherry-pick the posts that would discredit him as an anti-Arab/anti-Muslim bigot. It would be an ugly picture to paint, for sure, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a fair one. But for Ceren and the like, whose modus operandi is character assassination rather than reasoned discourse, this is the point. The goal is to create effective propaganda that diminishes the hand of one’s political opponent—not to pursue either truth or justice.

The plain fact is that if you look back at Frank Luntz’s reports, “Israel in the Age of Eminem” and “America 2020,” Drew’s positions are not at all radical, but actually increasingly reflective of the views of American Jewish youth who have been alienated from Israel by Israeli and American Jewish communal policy (also per Beinart). The difference is that instead of tuning out and disengaging from Israel as most do, Drew actually moved there and every day puts his money where his mouth is, standing up for the Israel he believes in. Which is what Israelis always say they want: “Don’t criticize us from afar. If you care so much, move here and fix things.” Well Drew did, and still, he’s the enemy because he’s publicly struggling with his relationship to Israel instead of touting the official propaganda line that Israel is forever perfect.

Yet because Drew’s perspective is so exemplary of where so many Jewish youth are coming from, there are actually few people in a better position to run a campus organization for young Jews who wish to pursue Middle East peace. Because so often our Jewish communal professionals don’t ask questions, don’t make room for challenging the status quo, don’t tackle the issues head-on, and instead berate students with right-wing talking points and propaganda when they ask questions, we find our Hillel directors incapable of connecting with young people and furthermore incapable of steering those young people’s energy towards positive engagement with Israel. That’s what has made so many students turn their backs on Hillel, making J Street U even viable on campus.

Ceren may believe Drew’s writings exhibit antipathy for the Jewish state, but in my estimation it’s just the opposite: By working to help Israel become a nation in which we can all take pride, and by empowering young Jewish people to take part in that process, he shows precisely the love and concern for Israel’s future our leaders and institutions spend millions annually trying to invigorate. By denouncing Drew and those like him, disenfranchising them from the pro-Israel community for opposing the occupation and Israel’s human and civil rights infractions as part of their expression of loving Israel, all Ceren and his ilk are doing is ensuring that in ensuing generations, there are fewer and fewer American Jews remaining under the pro-Israel tent. 

Ultimately, the Israeli electorate will have to decide which is more worthwhile: Continuing the occupation or preserving the support of the American Jewish community.

Sadly, if yesterday is any indication of tomorrow, I’d say it was nice knowing you, but…

The Huffington Post last night published part one of a five part series called “The Jewish Problem with Obama,” authored by Ed Klein and Rick Chesnoff, and it is a ginormous piece of unfactual shit that seeks to portray Jews as single issue voters who will go turncoat at the slightest offense to Israel.

I didn’t take that tone in my rather mundane comments, which were nonetheless inexplicably censored by the Huffington Post’s moderators. Rather, all I said was that upholding statements from four of the most racist, right-wing Zionist blowhards in the Jewish community as representative of the leanings of the wider Jewish community was a disservice to American Jews.

The Conference of Presidents’ Malcolm Hoenlein, for example, vocally opposed Obama’s Presidential candidacy from the outset and has made various controversial statements in opposition to Obama’s Mid East policies, even against the will of the Conference’s member organizations.

The New Republic’s Marty Peretz — a neoconservative shill of the highest order — recently caused a stir when he wrote with regards to the Park 51 controversy, “I wonder whether I need honor [Muslim Americans] and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment.” 

Ed Koch has been on a tear against Obama ever since Biden was greeted on his first Vice Presidential visit to Israel with an announcement of new settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem. For daring take umbrage with this blatant effort to scuttle the talks for which Biden had arrived, Koch made the bombastic claim that Obama “wants to make Israel a pariah state.” As if they needed any help!

Haim Saban, beyond reinforcing age old antisemitic stereotypes by announcing his intent to the New Yorker to “control the media” in order to favor Israel, has made various controversial remarks asserting his right-wing bona fides, including: “When there is a terrorist attack, I am [Avigdor] Lieberman.” Lieberman, of course, is Israel’s proto-fascist Foreign Minister who advocates ethnically cleansing Israel of its Arab citizenry by means of unilateral population transfer.

These radical, incendiary voices reflect the attitudes of mainstream Jewish Democratic voters? I think not, lest every Jew is the Incredible Hulk.

I also expressed displeasure, in my comments, with the authors’ characterization of “the president’s roughhouse treatment of Israel.” If receiving a 10-year $30 billion aid commitment during an economic catastrophe is Klein and Chesnoff’s idea of “roughhousing,” I’d gladly be “roughhoused” by the Obama administration any day. Frankly, enforcing long-standing U.S. policy against settlements is not “roughhousing.” Obama has made no statements nor taken any actions that could be construed as any more radical than those of Bush administration, which itself deemed settlements “an impediment to peace.” And American Jewish voters, polled time and time again, come down far more harshly against the settlements than Obama ever has.

In that regard, Obama has likely far more to fear from the Jewish progressives he has alienated by being self-defeatingly bi-partisan than he does from the right-wing Zionist demagogues misleadingly portrayed in this article as voices of the Jewish liberal mainstream. Sure, his approval ratings have slipped to 61% among Jewish voters. But none of those polls seem to ask why. It could just as easily be that they’re pissed off about Bam’s failure to close Gitmo, withdraw from Iraq, end DADT, or pass a health care bill that was worth a shit, than it was his failure to make Israel’s hardline right-wing Prime Minister feel all gooey inside.

Therefore, while Klein and Chesnoff make much ballyhoo about Jewish Democratic donors sitting out this election, it’s no surprise that the Dems still raked in a record $16 million last month alone from online donors. More than a fair share of that money is sure to have come from Jewish Democrats. Perhaps just not the racist millionaires.

Yet somehow, for crying bullshit — without so much as invoking an expletive — my comments were deleted from Huffington Post for alleged violations of their terms of service. I still do not fully understand why. Apparently, it’s okay to slander the entire Jewish community as Israel-firsters who turn their backs on their party and their country at the drop of a hat. If you take a stand and say, “Well, actually, no, that’s a false and even antisemitic narrative,” according to HuffPo’s moderators, you’re the one in the wrong.

Today Abe Foxman, National Director of the ADL, published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, “ADL and the Ground Zero Mosque,” in which he defends his decision last month to join in the chorus of bigots maligning the proposed downtown Manhattan Islamic cultural center, Park 51, deeming its establishment an act of insensitivity to the victims of 9/11 (despite the fact that 35 victims of 9/11 were themselves Muslim).

Without the faintest hint of self-awareness, Foxman writes:

It was only after a few days of misguided attacks on us that thoughtful individuals across the ideological spectrum, from the left and the right, began to articulate a better understanding of what we had said and why we were in the right. In “The Mosque Is Not About the First Amendment,” Martin Peretz, publisher of the New Republic, wrote that “the Anti- Defamation League, which fights anti- Semitism and other forms of religious bigotry, produced an admirably balanced response to the controversy, one that respected both the constitutional and historical aspects of it. While defending Muslim religious freedom unreservedly, the ADL warned that building the mosque at Ground Zero ‘will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.’ In other words, if the consortium wants to build it, it can build it. But it would be a very bad idea.

In “Ground Zero Mosque Protected by First Amendment – but it’s still salt in the wound,” on the Newsweek/Washington Post blog “On Faith,” Susan Jacoby condemned The New York Times for its allegation that ADL had joined in the “rationalization of bigotry.”

Referring to ADL’s position, Jacoby said: “To be classified as bigoted for objecting to the location of this project – without denying the First Amendment right to build – is completely unjust.” It was refreshing to receive support from two serious analysts who are staunch believers in the First Amendment. It was equally refreshing that they cared about what we actually had said.

Problem #1: Peretz was citing an article by Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times and therefore the quote Foxman attributes to Peretz is not, in fact, his.

Problem #2: Nary a month after penning “The Mosque Is Not About the First Amendment,” Peretz authored another piece that concluded with the line:

I wonder whether I need honor these people [Muslims] and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

How five days after this egregious statement of intolerance and bigotry, which prompted broad condemnation throughout the Jewish community (which in turn elicited a half-hearted apology from Peretz), Foxman can call Peretz “a staunch believer in the First Amendment” is beyond me, but with Foxman’s increasingly compromised ethics and self-serving logic it seems to be par for the course.

Problem #3: Foxman concludes his editorial by stating that, “It is more and more difficult to take non-partisan, nuanced positions in our politicized world.” This is of course ironic for someone who insists on referring to the Park 51 project with the incendiary pejorative, “the Ground Zero Mosque.” Talk about a lack of nuance…

Despite coupling his opposition to Park 51 with a denunciation of anti-Muslim bigotry, there is nothing non-partisan, apolitical or unbiased about lending the weight of the ADL’s voice to a manufactured controversy instigated by a Birther allied with European neo-Nazis. You would think that a 45-year veteran of anti-racist activism would have more seichel, but alas — you would be wrong.

All of this serves to illustrate, once again, that Abe Foxman is woefully out-of-touch and that the ADL, under his leadership, has become the laughing stock of the civil rights community. How long he can go on embarrassing himself and the Jewish community before he loses his job or his stature stands to be seen.  At the going rate, we have years more hypocrisy, hilarity and humiliation to look forward to.

This post is part of Jewels of Elul, which celebrates the Jewish tradition to dedicate the 29 days of the month of Elul to growth and discovery in preparation for the coming high holy days. This year the program is benefiting Beit T’shuvah, a residential addiction treatment center in Los Angeles. You can subscribe on Jewels of Elul to receive inspirational reflections from public figures each day of the month. You don’t have to be on the blog tour to write a blog post on “The Art of Beginning… Again”. We invite everyone to post this month (August 11th - September 8th) with Jewels of Elul to grow and learn.

Ain Sof

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

You know how they say the human body regenerates itself, replacing each of its own cells, every seven years? Well, it’s not precisely true. But it’s interesting to ponder nonetheless the capacity of the human being to regenerate at least parts of itself — indeed for all of nature to essentially will itself into being, and to recreate and reiterate itself against the onslaught of one’s perpetual demise.

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

It is professed in the Jewish tradition that in each moment the Universe wills itself into being through a conscious act of creation. Each form that the Universe takes, from the tiniest atom to the densest star, from the most insignificant microbe to the most terrifyingly mammoth giant squid, from the simple perfection of the DNA strand to the chaotic complexity of the human imagination: all of this and everything else is an intentional act of the Creator.

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

About that human imagination, about how we imagine ourselves: As we are made in the image of the Creator, so too we are the Creator of ourselves. Just as the Universe wills itself into being in every moment, so too we will ourselves into being in every moment and at every moment we are choosing who and how we wish to be.

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

Therefore in every moment, at all times ad infinitum, we are in control of (at least part of) our destinies and capable of manifesting our little portion of the Universe in accordance with our own will.

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

Which is great news, in fact. Because that means every human being has the potential to be the best they imagine themselves to be — to defy expectations and to rise to exceptionality and spectacularity. It is our choice in every moment, just as the Creator is faced with a choice in every moment: “Do I wish to manifest myself into [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]?” — your choice is, “Do I wish to manifest myself into this version of [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]?”

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

The merit of our human existence is what we choose to do with the choices we are given. We most honor the Creator who chooses to give us life and Choice, by choosing to be the best possible versions of ourselves. Because the Truth is, we’re not merely made in the image of the Creator, we’re made of the Creator. And how we treat ourselves, each other, the planet, and everything in the Universe is really all about how we treat our Self, because we’re all the One. Seen?

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

So honor the Creator, and others, and yourself, ie., You — honor Yourself — by being the best You that You can be. Because You are the Creator and you need to stop hitting Yourself. Why are you hitting Yourself? God, please stop hitting Yourself.

In every moment you are a blank canvas.

Ignore every fatal instinct. What you’ve got to work with is completely irrelevant.  It’s all about what you do with it.

You are the Creator. Your moment is now. Go do You.

Be who You are. That Which Will Be.

In every moment you are a blank canvas.