Tzedek Chicago: A New Congregation Puts Justice on the Agenda!
Posted: July 5, 2015 Filed under: American Jewish Community, Israel, Jewish Community, Judaism, Nonviolence, Palestine, Peace, Politics, Religion, Tzedek Chicago, Zionism 20 Comments
With Steering Committee co-chairs Mark Miller (left) and Susan Klonsky (right) at the Tzedek Chicago launch event, June 28, 2015 (photo: Lisa Kosowski)
I’m honored and very, very excited to announce the creation of a new Jewish congregation: Tzedek Chicago. We recently held our launch program in our new home at Luther Memorial Church in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago – and I’m sure all who were present would agree there was a joyous excitement in the room as we shared our vision for our new congregation.
We’ll continue to reach out to potential members during the course of the summer and will officially kick off our religious programmatic calendar with High Holiday services this fall. I will be serving as the spiritual leader of Tzedek Chicago on a part time basis while continuing in my full time position as the Midwest Regional Director for the American Friends Service Committee. I feel blessed indeed to be returning to congregational life in addition to my important work at AFSC, which has itself become a meaningful professional, spiritual and political home for me in so many ways.
How to describe our new congregation? Let me begin by sharing our core values with you:
We value…
…a Judaism beyond borders:
We celebrate with a Judaism that builds more bridges, not higher walls. Our community promotes a universalist Jewish identity – one that seeks a greater engagement in the world around us. Within our congregation, we view our diversity as our strength. Membership is not restricted to Jews or those who are partnered with Jews; our community welcomes all who share our values.
We advocate for a world beyond borders and reject the view that any one people, ethnic group or nation is entitled to any part of our world more than any other. Guided by the values in Jewish tradition that bids us to care for the earth that we share with all peoples and all life, we promote personal behaviors and public policies that will ensure preservation of our planet’s natural resources and its survival for future generations.
…a Judaism of solidarity:
We are inspired by prophetic Judaism: our tradition’s sacred imperative to take a stand against the corrupt use of power. We also understand that the Jewish historical legacy as a persecuted people bequeaths to us a responsibility to reject the ways of oppression and stand with the most vulnerable members of our society. We emphasize the Torah’s repeated teachings to stand with the oppressed and to call out the oppressor.
We actively pursue partnerships with local and national organizations and coalitions that combat institutional racism and pursue justice and equity for all. We promote a Judaism rooted in anti-racist values and understand that anti-Semitism is not separate from the systems that perpetuate prejudice and discrimination. As members of a Jewish community, we stand together with all peoples throughout the world who are targeted as “other.”
…a Judaism of nonviolence:
We honor those aspects of our tradition that promote peace and reject the pursuit of war as a solution to our conflicts. We openly disavow those aspects of our religion – and all religions – that promote violence, intolerance and xenophobia.
Our activism is based upon a vision of shared security for the world; we support the practices of nonviolence, civil resistance, diplomacy and human engagement. We take a stand against militarism and colonialism, particularly when it is waged in our name as Jews and Americans.
We oppose all forms of communal, family and interpersonal violence and support organizations working to strengthen community health, and peaceful, supportive coexistence. In all aspects of our communal life, we expect our members to treat each other with respect, engagement, and openness to the differences among us.
…a Judaism of spiritual freedom:
We promote spiritual exploration and encourage our members’ diverse beliefs. Some of our members adhere to more traditional views of the divine while others view God as a human expression of our highest, most transcendent aspirations. Others do not define themselves as religious, but identify with the humanist and cultural aspects of Jewish tradition.
We honor the inherent integrity of all faith traditions and reject all forms of religious exceptionalism. We actively partner with other faith communities in ways that celebrate our shared values and common humanity. In our activism, we actively work for religious freedom in our country and throughout the world.
…a Judaism of equity
In accordance with Torah’s imperative that there should be no needy among us, we work in solidarity with those who assert that poverty has no place in a civilized and moral society – and that all people have the right to safe food and water, safe living spaces, health care and education.
We are committed to transparent and egalitarian governance and decision-making in our congregational life. We value the contributions of all members equally, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, wealth or social standing.
…a Judaism beyond nationalism
While we appreciate the important role of the land of Israel in Jewish tradition, liturgy and identity, we do not celebrate the fusing of Judaism with political nationalism. We are non-Zionist, openly acknowledging that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against its indigenous people – an injustice that continues to this day.
We reject any ideology that insists upon exclusive Jewish entitlement to the land, recognizing that it has historically been considered sacred by many faiths and home to a variety of peoples, ethnicities and cultures. We oppose Israel’s ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people and seek a future that includes full civil and human rights for all who live in the land – Jews and non-Jews alike.
I’m leading with this list because Tzedek Chicago is first and foremost a values-based community. What we do will be deeply informed by the values that drive us. By establishing this new congregation, we are very consciously attempting to create a Jewish spiritual home for the growing numbers of American Jews who cherish these values and seek a spiritual community in which to express them.
I’ve served as a congregational rabbi in liberal Jewish congregations for most of my adult life. And while I have found this work to be professionally meaningful and spiritually nourishing in its own right, I am now eager to explore a fundamentally different approach to Jewish congregational life. In particular, I’m interested in building an intentional Jewish community that views the pursuit of social justice as its central driving force.
I realize of course, that by espousing values such as these, our new congregation crosses any number of the contemporary Jewish community’s red lines. I certainly have no illusions how a Jewish congregation describing itself as “non-Zionist” and openly protests “Israel’s ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people” will be received by the Jewish establishment. Given centrality of Zionism and Israel advocacy in Jewish communal life, it would be fair to say that Tzedek Chicago is very much a dissident congregation in the Jewish world.
I do believe, however, that we must make room in our community for Jews whose values dissent from what the communal establishment deems “mainstream.” It bears noting that dissent has historically occupied a venerable and even sacred place in Jewish life. Our congregation consciously and proudly seeks to lift up this dissident legacy – one which has long been indigenous to Jewish tradition itself in so many critical ways.
Indeed, the values I’ve listed above reflect a distinct liberatory narrative that runs through the heart of Judaism and Jewish history. It is a narrative rooted in the Exodus story that tells of a God who stands by the oppressed and demands that we do the same. It resonates through the words of Biblical prophets who spoke dangerous truths to power. It can be found in the courageous example of ancient rabbis who responded to the trauma of exile at the hands of the world’s mightiest empire by creating a religion with a universal message of healing and hope.
Among other things, the founding of Tzedek Chicago is an attempt to reclaim this Jewish narrative of liberation. As such, it reflects our desire to stand down a decidedly different Jewish narrative that has taken hold of the Jewish community since the end of the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel – one that teaches that traumas of the past will inevitably become our future unless the Jewish people embraces the ways of empire, nationalism, physical might and militarism.
There is clearly much more to say about this phenomenon (and those who have followed this blog surely know that I’ve had a great deal to say about it over the years.) For now I’ll only add this: there are increasing numbers who believe this new Jewish narrative represents a betrayal of our most sacred legacy – and who seek to place solidarity, liberation and justice back on the Jewish agenda.
A few more specifics about our new congregation:
– In addition to major holidays, we will be holding two Shabbat programs per month – one on Friday evening and one on Saturday morning.
– We have intentionally kept our annual dues affordable – at $150.00 per member – so that the baseline expectation for full membership can be accessible to as many as possible.
– We will provide children’s programming during the course of the year. We will not be establishing a formal religious school at the outset because we believe it should emerge organically out of the community we create (and not vice versa).
– Rather than engage in social justice activism, our community will focus on organizing to help build movements for social change. To this end, we will participate actively in the growing grassroots solidarity movement that is organizing for a just peace in Israel/Palestine. We will also participate in Chicago’s rich and venerable organizing tradition by partnering with local community groups working for justice.
Needless to say, I will be posting about the work of our new community over the coming months and years. If our values and vision resonate with you please join us. You can visit our website here and our Facebook page here. If you have questions, feel free to email us at tzedekchicago@gmail.com
Finally, as I am filled with awe and gratitude to have reached this moment, I can only conclude with:
Source of all that lives and all that is:
We are so very grateful that you have given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this very sacred new beginning.
Confronting the “New Campus Anti-Semitism”
Posted: April 20, 2015 Filed under: American Jewish Community, Anti-Semitism, BDS, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism 7 Comments
Throughout the organized Jewish community, the mainstream media and academia, we’re hearing increasing talk of a sharp increase in anti-Semitism on American college campuses. In response to recent incidents at UCLA and elsewhere, one congregational rabbi from LA has warned of “something deeper, more troubling, insidious, and pervasive…on college campuses nationwide.” Another rabbi has declared ominously, “This is a war — a war for the heart, mind, and soul of the American university.” Barry Kosmin of Trinity College, who co-authored a recent study alleging rising antisemitism on campus, has opined that the “the events in California” were not “isolated incidents” and that this “type of hatred, stereotyping and bias is a worrying new development that suggests a generational problem.”
To judge from these comments, it would appear that colleges and universities have become virtual petri dishes of Jew-hatred. Have our campuses indeed become overrun by anti-Semitism?
I would argue that something very different is going on. As the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel grows and student divestment campaigns increasingly find traction throughout the United States, we’re witnessing a new kind of tension forming between Palestinian solidarity activists and Israel advocates on college campuses. And while it doesn’t surprise me that some Jewish community leaders are raising the all too familiar cry of anti-Semitism, I believe it’s critical to carefully examine the context that lies beyond the hysteria.
Some background: the UCLA incident occurred last February, when a student candidate for the Judicial board of the Undergraduate Students Association was asked by a student member how, given that she was Jewish and affiliated with Jewish campus organizations, would she “see (herself) being able to maintain an unbiased view?” After a subsequent discussion, the council first voted to reject her nomination – but after a faculty adviser pointed out that it was not appropriate to view a student’s affiliation with Jewish organizations as a conflict of interest, the students voted again and unanimously approved of her nomination.
This incident, which was captured on video and posted on YouTube, led to a an intense and at time painful reckoning throughout the UCLA campus community. The four students who initially opposed the student’s nomination wrote a public apology in the campus newspaper, stating that their “intentions were never to attack, insult or delegitimize the identity of an individual or people” and that they were “truly sorry for any words used during this meeting that suggested otherwise.” UCLA’s chancellor, referred to the incident as a “teaching moment.” Later, the student council unanimously passed a sweeping resolution condemning anti-Semitism.
Many observers have referred to the board members’ line of questioning as “anti-Semitic,” claiming that their questions raised the infamous anti-Jewish tropes of dual loyalties. But whether their comments were anti-Semitic, obnoxious, or merely naive, it is important to note that in the charged world of campus divestment politics, attitudes toward Jewish students – particularly those who serve on student boards – do not exist in a vacuum.
To begin with, any serious analysis of this issue must factor in the heavy-handed interventions of off-campus advocates of Israel into student politics. Perhaps the most infamous example is Adam Milstein, a businessman and convicted felon who is connected to right-wing Zionist groups and has reportedly funneled money through UCLA Hillel to influence student elections and oppose divestment campaigns.
Blogger Richard Silverstein has written extensively on the controversies surrounding Milstein’s activities at UCLA:
For at least the past three years, Milstein has donated funds via UCLA Hillel (another comprehensive review of the entire scandal is here) to support the pro-Israel student government slate Bruins United, an affiliate of Bruins for Israel. Though we know that Milstein personally donated $1,000 to the slate (e-mails confirming this are published here), he also solicited funding from other pro-Israel donors. Both he, Hillel, and the slate have refused to reveal how much external funding was given. Milstein was much more than a mere donor. He held strategy sessions with the executive candidates. He held a gala fundraising event at his home attended by Hillel staff, prospective donors, and UCLA faculty and staff. The purpose was to encourage donors to participate in the project to benefit both Hillel and Bruins United and to oppose BDS.
In addition to individual actors such as Milstein, there are many Jewish institutional initiatives (such as AIPAC Campus Initiatives, Hasbara Fellows, the JNF Campus Fellowship Program) that receive direct support from the State of Israel to train students to advocate for Israel and combat divestment initiatives. Last year, in fact, the Judicial board of the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association heard a complaint that two student government members had taken trips to Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee prior to voting on a student divestment resolution.
Although this context has not been widely reported, it is crucial to our understanding of the most recent incident involving the questioning of the student Judicial board candidate. Given the high profile of professional Israel advocates in student affairs, it is fair to assume that these interventions might well affect attitudes and assumptions about the loyalties of Jewish students at UCLA.
Having said this, it would be a mistake to characterize these campus tensions in simple binary terms as a conflict between Jewish students and Palestinian solidarity activists. In truth, there is a significant and growing percentage of Jewish students actively participating in campus divestment campaigns through Students for Justice in Palestine and student chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace. I know first hand that many of them are motivated to their activism by their deeply held Jewish values of justice and the dignity of all. I took it as something of a sign of the times when just a few months ago, I was contacted by a undergraduate at Northwestern University who grew up in my congregation. This young man, whom I had not seen since his Bar Mitzvah, told me he was involved in the student divestment campaign and invited me to speak in support of it on campus.
By the same token, it would be mistaken to assume that all campus Israel advocates are necessarily Jewish. There are for instance numerous Christian Zionist campus groups that work alongside Jewish Israel advocates, the most prominent of which is CUFI on Campus – the student affiliate of Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel.
On their website, CUFI on Campus notes:
As anti-Semitic activity on American college campuses has steadily increased, CUFI recognizes that Christian students have a responsibility to speak up on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.Field Organizers travel the country actively developing student leaders. Our Field Organizers travel the country actively developing student leaders to ensure they have the skills, resources, and guidance they need to do this successfully on their campuses.
Anyone familiar with the right wing Evangelical theology of Christians United for Israel might well find it puzzling that CUFI on Campus is concerned with rising anti-Semitism on college campuses, particularly when you consider that CUFI Pastor John Hagee has long preached that the Holocaust was God’s will, that the Jewish people need to accept Jesus to avoid going to hell, and that the contemporary Zionist settlement of Israel is a necessary precursor to Armageddon.
Despite these its embrace of these wildly anti-Semitic beliefs, Jewish Federations and Zionist organizations have had no qualms about partnering with CUFI when it comes political Israel advocacy. The same can be said for student groups. Earlier this month, for instance, CUFI on Campus co-sponsored a program with Rutgers Hillel which focused, ironically enough, on “how to combat anti-Semitism.”
Given these realities, I would suggest we avoid simplistic narratives that blame Palestinian solidarity activists for creating an “unsafe environment” for Jewish students. The truth is that there are Jewish students and non- Jewish students on both sides of this issue.
We should also think seriously about what we mean by the term “unsafe” – an oft-heard complaint of Jewish Israel advocates on campus. I have no doubt that some Jewish students are uncomfortable with divestment resolutions and other actions employed by Palestinian solidarity activists. I also have no doubt that on occasion such actions might spill over into the inappropriate or offensive. But as a rabbi who has worked together with activists from SJP and JVP on several campuses over the years, I can personally attest that I have found these student leaders to be smart, passionate organizers who are motivated by deeply held anti-racist values – and who understand full well the difference between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
And if, on occasion, the line between the two sometimes get blurred, we might well ask ourselves: is this due to the abject Jew-hatred on the part of Palestinian solidarity activists or a contemporary Jewish communal mentality that has placed support for the State of Israel at the center of Jewish identity?
In fact, for all of the hue and cry about the rise of campus anti-Semitism, statistics show otherwise. In fact, a recent Forward editorial entitled “The Anti-Semitism Surge that Isn’t” dismissed the Trinity College report as flawed, citing studies by the Anti-Defamation League that show campus anti-Semitism is in fact at “the lowest it’s been since the ADL started keeping track in 1999:”
In its audit of 2014, set to be released April 1 and shared with the Forward, the ADL said there were 47 incidents of anti-Semitism on campuses nationwide, where hundreds of thousands of Jews study. The number organically fluctuates year to year … but this is one trend that’s unmistakeable. Overall, anti-Semitic incidents are at the lowest point in 15 years.
47 incidents of anti-Semitism on campuses nationwide. Now compare that to the institutional repression faced by Palestinian campus activists during the same year. According to Liz Jackson, a staff attorney with Palestinian Solidarity Legal Support:
The reality is that, for every real incident of anti-Semitism on campus, Palestine Solidarity Legal Support has documented many more false accusations aimed solely at thwarting serious discussions about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In 2014 alone, we documented over 240 incidents of repression and requests for legal advice, nearly 75% on campuses. These ranged from disciplinary actions against students for peaceful speech activities, to attempts to cancel events, to smear campaigns against groups, students and professors, to death threats and anti-Arab and Islamophobic slurs and assaults against activists because they voiced their views. Virtually all of these cases resulted from unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism and unrelenting pressure from Israel advocacy groups to censor and punish those organizing and engaging in speech activities advocating for Palestinian rights. So far this year, we have already documented over 80 such cases, 40 of which occurred in California.
In the end, I would suggest this concern over the “new campus anti-semitism” is really a red herring. Anti-semitism, like all forms of racism should certainly be condemned and stood down in no uncertain terms. But for all the concern over anti-Jewish attitudes, it is worth noting that Jewish students and Israel advocates face absolutely no institutional restrictions to their cause or to their freedom of speech on campus.
It is far from clear that the same could be said for students who advocate on behalf of Palestinian rights.
Standing Down Legal Segregation on Yom Hashoah
Posted: April 16, 2015 Filed under: Civil Rights, Gaza, Genocide, Holocaust, Human Rights, Israel, Judaism, Nonviolence, Palestine, Yom Hashoah 16 Comments
Today marks Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – and as it turns out, this year it falls on a serendipitous milestone: namely the 52nd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Although MLK wrote his letter to respond to the reality of Jim Crow in the American South, I do believe his words have much to offer us as we remember those who perished at the hands of the Nazis during World War II – in particular, King’s insistence on the moral imperative to break unjust laws and the inherent immorality of legal segregation:
(There) are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws…
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.
In light of King’s words, it is worth noting that the rise of Nazism in Germany was facilitated by largely “legal” means – through a myriad of laws and regulations that successfully segregated them from the rest of German society. King himself pointed this out in his letter when he wrote:
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal…” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
In this regard, Dr. King’s insight might well inspire us to commemorate this sacred day by redoubling our resolve to eradicate laws that segregate peoples on the basis of their national, ethnic or religious identities.
Segregated Shuhada street in Hebron, February 2012 (photo: Hithabrut-Tarabut)
While it pains me to say it, I cannot help but note that the very country that first established Holocaust Remembrance Day itself enforces its own form of legal segregation between Jews and non-Jews. As one Israeli observer wrote in Ha’aretz five years ago, “Segregation of Jews and Arabs in Israel…is almost absolute.” In the West Bank, Jews and non-Jews are segregated by separate legal systems, separate roads, separate transportation systems, and in some cases, separate sidewalks. And in Gaza, Palestinians are segregated from the outside world entirely.
I have no doubt that there will be those who consider it unseemly of me – or worse – to point this out on Yom Hashoah of all days. To this inevitable criticism, I can only respond, how can we purport to take the lessons of the Shoah to heart while ignoring realities such as these? How long will we, as Jews, look way from these unjust laws in Israel that “distort the soul and damage the personality?” On this, of all days, shouldn’t we, as King suggested in his letter, “bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive?”
May the memory of the fallen be for a blessing.
Expanding the Telling: A New Passover Seder Supplement
Posted: March 31, 2015 Filed under: Israel, Judaism, Nakba, Palestine, Pesach, Refugees 6 Comments
I’ve just written a new Pesach seder supplement that encourages us to take our cue from the Haggadah and “expand upon the telling” of the Exodus story. You can download a pdf here:
Or you can click below to read it in its entirety.
While I’m at it, here is the link to my 2010 supplement, “Four More Questions for Pesach” and here is my 2013 supplement, “A Meditation on the Four Children.”
And finally, click here to download the #BlackLivesMatter Haggadah Supplement, an incredibly powerful new seder resource just published by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
Sending blessings for a warm and liberating Pesach…
Debating Israel/Palestine on Chicago Tonight
Posted: March 25, 2015 Filed under: American Jewish Community, Anti-Semitism, Human Rights, Israel, Jewish Community, Judaism, Palestine, Peace, Politics, Zionism 9 Comments
Last night I appeared on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight” with my friend and colleague Rabbi Andrea London to discuss the issue of Israel/Palestine in the wake of Netanyahu’s re-election. Andrea spoke to the J Street position while I represented the Jewish Voice for Peace point of view. Although the station tried repeatedly to find a local rabbi to represent the AIPAC line, none were willing to participate. I’m sad to report that several of the rabbis contacted cited my presence on the panel as the reason for their refusal.
On the other hand, I was so heartened that Andrea and I were able to model a principled and respectful Jewish communal debate on this issue and I was so grateful for her willingness to engage. Click here to watch.
Building a Jewish Community of Justice: My Remarks from the 2015 JVP National Members Meeting
Posted: March 18, 2015 Filed under: American Jewish Community, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Jewish Community, Jewish Voice for Peace, Judaism, Palestine, Peace, Religion, War, Zionism 6 Comments
I’d like to begin my remarks this morning with a verse from the Torah – it’s one of the central lessons at the heart of the Exodus story. It comes from the Burning Bush episode, when God reveals God’s self to Moses and tells him, “Now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians are oppressing them.” (Exodus 3:9)
Now regardless of your theology – or even if you have a theology at all – I think there is a very profound lesson being taught to us by this verse. In a way, it provides us with a kind of physics approach to understanding liberation. Throughout human history, we have seen these moments – the moments when the experience of a community’s oppression reaches a tipping point. They invariably come when a community’s oppression becomes impossible to ignore, when the cry and the outrage becomes too great; when it becomes impossible to look away. It is at these critical moments in which the process of liberation inevitably begins.
I think of this lesson often when I think about the growth of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian solidarity movement over the past few years. It is sobering to contemplate, but it’s true: most of the significant periods of growth of our organization have occurred as responses to devastating human tragedy. We all know how JVP has grown so dramatically in the wake of the tragedy of this past summer. I myself became actively involved in JVP following Israel’s military assault on Gaza in 2009-09. In truth, the growth of our movement has been exponentially linked to the cries of the oppressed. Perhaps it has ever been thus.
During my remarks to you this morning, I’d like to offer a few brief meditations on how we at JVP might take advantage of this moment – this time which is clearly so critical in the movement for justice in Israel/Palestine. Specifically speaking, I want to take my cue from JVP’s recent strategic plan, in which our leadership set our organizational goals for the next 3 to 5 years. I’d like to use two of these formal goals in particular as a frame; and use them to offer you a few thoughts on this critical time for our organization and our movement – and where the journey might lead form here.
I’ll start with Goal #4: “Shifting Culture and Public Discourse:”
Changing the public discourse and shifting cultural understandings of what is happening in Israel/Palestine is a prerequisite for changing policy.
In short, we are attempting to change the narrative on Israel/Palestine. I think we all know how central narrative change is to the process of political transformation. Speaking personally, I know how transformative it was for me to embrace a new narrative on Israel/Palestine – and how absolutely key it was to my participation in this movement. It represented a fundamental shift – it meant abandoning, painfully, the liberal Zionist narrative that had been at the center of my Jewish identity for my entire life.
I’d like to read to you now from a blog post that I wrote on December 28, 2009 – exactly one year after the onset of Israel’s so-called “Operation Cast Lead.” Though I don’t know that I fully appreciated it at the time, this post was ultimately about the transformative power of narrative change:
As I read this post one year later, I remember well the emotions I felt as I wrote it. I also realize what a critical turning point that moment represented for me.
As a Jew, I’ve identified deeply with Israel for my entire life. I first visited the country as a young child and since then I’ve been there more times that I can count. Family members and some of my dearest friends in the world live in Israel.
Ideologically speaking, I’ve regarded Zionism with great pride as the “national liberation movement of the Jewish people.” Of course I didn’t deny that this rebirth had come at the expense of another. Of course I recognized that Israel’s creation was bound up with the suffering of the Palestinian people. The situation was, well, it was “complicated.”
Last year, however, I reacted differently. I read of Apache helicopters dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on 1.5 million people crowded into a 140 square mile patch of land with nowhere to run. In the coming days, I would read about the bombing of schools, whole families being blown to bits, children literally burned to the bone with white phosphorous. Somehow, it didn’t seem so complicated at all any more. At long last, it felt as if I was viewing the conflict with something approaching clarity.
Of course I think we’d all agree that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is technically complicated. But at the same time I think we all know that at the end of the day, there is nothing complicated about persecution. The political situation in Darfur, for instance, is enormously complicated – but these complications certainly haven’t stopped scores of Jews across North America from protesting the human rights injustices being committed there. We do so because we know that underneath all of the geopolitical complexities, oppression is oppression. And as Jews, we know instinctively that our sacred tradition and own tragic history require us to speak out against all oppression committed in our midst.
I’d suggest that if there is anything complicated for us here, it is in possibility that we might in fact have become oppressors ourselves. That is painfully complicated. After all, our Jewish identity has been bound up with the memory of our own persecution for centuries. How on earth can we respond – let alone comprehend – the suggestion that we’ve become our own worst nightmare?
More than anything else, this is was what I was trying to say in that anguished, emotional blog post one year ago: is this what it has come to? Have we come to the point in which Israel can wipe out hundreds of people, whole families, whole neighborhoods and our response as Jews will be to simply rationalize it away? At the very least will we able to stop and question what has brought us to this terrifying point? Have we become unable to recognize persecution for what it really and truly is?
Those who know me (or read my blog) surely know that it has been a painfully challenging year for me. My own relationship to Israel is changing in ways I never could have predicted. Since I started raising questions like those above, I’ve lost some friends and, yes, my congregation has lost some members. If Zionism is the unofficial religion of the contemporary Jewish community then I’m sure there are many who consider me something of an apostate.
But at the same time, I’ve been surprised and encouraged by the large number of people I’ve met who’ve been able to engage with these questions openly and honestly, even if they don’t always agree with me. I suppose this is what I decided to do one year ago: to put my faith in our ability to stand down the paralyzing “complexities,” no matter how painful the prospect.
One year later, I still hold tight to this faith.
When I wrote back then that my relationship to Israel had changed in ways I could never have predicted, I was openly acknowledging that my accepted narrative had shifted – and it led to life changes that are still ongoing for me. It certainly transformed the way I saw myself as a Jew and how I would do my work as a congregational rabbi.
But on a deeper sense, I think this narrative change transformed me on what I can only call a spiritually cellular level. It challenged me to reckon with the meaning of solidarity in its truest, most universal form. It reaffirmed that lesson that comes straight from the heart of the Exodus story; the story that teaches God hearkens to the cries of the oppressed and demands that we do the same. And it empowered me to speak my truth in unprecedented ways – as I put it in that blog post, “to stand down the paralyzing ‘complexities,’ now matter how painful the prospect.
I’ve also come to believe that narrative change is not only true on the personal, but on the political level as well. We know from experience that narratives which were formerly unthinkable can eventually become all too politically real. A big part of the challenge is learning how best to articulate our discourse; understanding when, where and in what ways it can be most effective.
The most challenging place to do this narrative changing work, I think we all agree, is within the mainstream Jewish community. And that brings me to Goal #1: “Challenging institutional Jewish communities.” Again I’ll quote:
We are challenging institutional Jewish communities to act on values of justice, and we are paving the path toward justice-centered Jewish communities.
Having made a home in the institutional Jewish community for my entire adult life, I will say that I do believe there is important work to be done in engaging the Jewish establishment on this issue. When I started doing Palestinian solidarity work openly and unabashedly, I had been working in my congregation in Evanston for 10 years. And I take great heart in the fact that for the next 10 years, I was supported by my congregational leadership and by the majority of my congregants, even when many didn’t agree with me.
So yes, I believe there are indeed signs that we are seeing a nascent paradigm shift beginning in the Jewish community on this issue. Open Hillel is providing us with an inspiring important model of how to fight for a wide Jewish communal tent. This past summer, “If Not Now, When” showed us magnificently what principled Jewish communal dissent might look like. I don’t think it is a coincidence that both of these initiatives have been organized and led by young people – and this should give us very real hope for the future of this discourse in the American Jewish community.
At the same time, however, I don’t have any illusions about the ability of the Jewish establishment to be pushed to act on values of justice when it comes to Israel/Palestine. I have many rabbinical and Jewish professional colleagues who must remain in the closet about their work with JVP – because to make their affiliation would constitute a very real professional risk. There are actually JVP members at this very gathering who have to wear stickers on their name plates that say “no photos please” for fear that they might endanger or lose their jobs – a reality that should rightly appall each and every one of us.
So at the end of the day, I think we need to be realistic about the challenge before us when we talk about engaging the mainstream Jewish community on the issue of Israel/Palestine. It is and will continue to be a daunting and perilous task. And frankly: on a strategic level we need to be honest about how much time, energy and resources we need to spend trying to engage the Jewish institutional community on this issue.
Actually, when it comes right down to it, I’m much more excited by the second half of this Goal #1: we are paving the path toward justice-centered Jewish communities.
In this regard, I was so pleased and excited to hear Rebecca Vilkomerson talk during the opening plenum – and Cecile Surasky last night – about the ways JVP is creating a new and unprecedented form of Jewish community. For the remainder of my remarks, then, I’d like to explore what a justice-centered Jewish community might actually look like. I’d like to suggest a vision that is fundamentally, perhaps radically different than our customary notions of Jewish community.
I’d like to read an excerpt to you now from a Rosh Hashanah sermon I gave three years ago entitled, “Judaism With Tribalism.” Although I did not specifically intend it so at the time, I believe it promotes a vision I believe is deeply relevant to the kind of community we are trying to create here at JVP:
I know personally how hard it is for many of us to challenge our tribal Jewish legacy. But as for me, I believe to my very core that whether we like it or not, our collective future will depend upon building more bridges, and not more walls, between peoples and nations. I believe the most effective way for us to survive – the only way we will bequeath our traditions to the next generation – is to affirm a Judaism that finds sacred meaning in our connection to kol yoshvei tevel – all who dwell on earth.
I also believe this because I know that while Judaism certainly contains tribal and parochial teachings, it also has also a strong tradition of religious humanism – mitzvot that demand we love all our neighbors as ourselves. After all, one of the first – and most powerful – teachings in the Torah is that human beings are created B’tzelem Elohim – in the image of God. From the outset we learn that all human beings are equally worthy of respect, dignity and love – and, I would add, equally worthy of one another’s allegiance and loyalty. Moreover, a key rabbinic concept, Kavod HaBriyot, demands that we ensure all people are treated with honor and dignity. In a famous verse from the classic rabbinic text Pirke Avot, Rabbi Ben Zoma teaches: “Who is honored? The one who honors all human beings.”
All are created in God’s image. Honor comes to the one who honors all people. To my mind, these are the strands of Judaism we must seek out and affirm in no uncertain terms. In this day and age, when the fates of all peoples are becoming so very deeply intertwined, I believe we must consider values such as B’tzelem Elohim and Kevod HaBriyot to be among the most sacred of our tradition.
Perhaps we can also take our cue from these values in order to affirm a new kind of tribalism. To forge “tribal” connections with others not simply because they happen to be Jews, but because they share our values of justice and equity. In other words, I believe our ultimate loyalties should lay with the powerless, the vulnerable, the marginalized – and all who fight on their behalf. Whether they happen to be Jewish or not – why shouldn’t we consider these to be the members of our most cherished tribe?
Here’s a personal example. As a rabbi, I do a great deal of work with clergy, both inside and outside the Jewish community. And over the years I’ve come to notice that the most meaningful and important community work I do is not necessarily exclusively with other rabbis. When it comes to the values I hold most sacred, values of social justice, human rights, community service, I find myself working and finding common cause with clergy of many different faiths. Some may be Jewish, some not, but it in the end it doesn’t really matter. These are the ones I consider to be my primary faith colleagues – my primary clergy community.
In one sense, then, perhaps our most sacred religious values actually compel us to look past the feelings of tribal loyalty. Needless to say, if we are going to do this on a communal scale, it’s going to take a radical shift in consciousness. We’re going to have to step out from behind the walls we’ve built and understand many of our real sisters and brothers have been there all along. And we will have to recognize that in the end, their hopes, their dreams and their suffering are irrevocably connected to ours.
I have no illusions that it would be a simple matter for the Jewish community to heed such a call. Having only recently emerged from the ghetto, still living with a collective memory of antisemitism, still reeling from the trauma of the Holocaust, it is no small matter to go beyond our own fears and feel the pain of the other as our pain as well.
To do this, I believe, we’ll have to construct a distinctly 21st century Torah – one that reflects a world in which the Jewish community has become inter-dependent with other peoples in profound and unprecedented ways. One that lets go of old tribal assumptions and widens the boundaries of our tent in new and creative ways.
Perhaps we can start here: with a reconsideration of the Jewish value Ahavat Yisrael – Love of the Jewish People. What do we really mean when we use this term? Certainly it might mean an abstract sense of connection and kinship with other Jews throughout history and around the world. And it’s true – we do feel a special connection to Jews we meet in unlikely places throughout the world. It is also quite powerful to know that the words we pray and study are the same words have Jews prayed and studied for centuries. But beyond this, what do we mean by Ahavat Yisrael? What does it mean to love a culturally constructed community that includes people with whom we may or may not share basic, fundamental values?
In truth, the definition of who is a Jew has always been disputed – and what we call “the Jewish community” is more diverse and dynamic today than ever before. It is also being increasingly enriched by the participation of many non-Jews who are marrying into the community. So what do we mean when we talk about “Love of the Jewish People” when the very truth of our “peoplehood” is so complex and ever–changing?
I’d like to suggest that a deeper understanding of this value shouldn’t stop at love for just fellow Jews. After all, while the word “Yisrael” does refer to the Jewish People, it also literally means “Wrestles With God.” Seen thus, we might render “Ahavat Yisrael” as “Love for All Who Struggle.” To love all who fight, as we have, for freedom and justice and tolerance in the world. To stand in solidarity with those who struggle against tyranny and are beaten, imprisoned, tortured or killed for doing so. To throw our allegiance to those who wrestle deeply for meaning in their lives; who seek to tear down the limits of religious dogma or ideological coercion. These are the members of our tribe – perhaps our most sacred tribe. And whenever we reach out to them and celebrate our inherent connection with one another here, around the world, or throughout history – that is truly when we fulfill the mitzvah of Ahavat Yisrael.
I realize that this new understanding might seem like radical change to many. But in truth, the Jewish world is changing, as it has from time immemorial. The only question before us is: will we have the courage to recognize these changes – and to see in them as a precious opportunity rather than as a threat to be fought at all costs.
Since I am no longer working a congregational rabbi, I am more mindful than ever that JVP is now my primary Jewish community. It is, truly, an unprecedented form of Jewish community: one that is based on the universal ethics of justice and liberation for all, not on the tired tribal boundaries of the past. If we are members of any tribe, it is the one that extends to include those who seek a better and more just world and are willing to work together to make it a reality.
This past summer, like so many of you, I was in deep anguish over the carnage Israel was inflicting on the people of Gaza. My anguish was all the deeper as I realized I was self-censoring my public voice due to the turmoil in my congregation. But if there was one redemptive Jewish moment for me last summer, it was thanks to JVP, when I participated in a Chicago chapter action that disrupted a Jewish Federation fundraiser in support of Israel’s war effort. Similar JVP actions were occurring around the country: which for so many represented critical Jewish voices of conscience during that dark, dark time.
While I did not participate in the actual disruptions, I was present in the hotel ballroom to give my fellow protesters support, to film the action taking place and tweet pictures of the disruptions as they unfolded. I will say that attending this event was beyond painful – to witness firsthand an organization that purported to represent my community cheering on Israel’s sickening violence as it was still ongoing. But when my friends finally stood up, pointed their fingers at Rahm Emanuel and Michael Oren and shouted, “We are Jews – Shame on You!” – at those moments, I truly felt that my Jewish soul had been given back to me.
I submit it is moments like these – and so many more – that demonstrate why we are all so proud to be part of this movement. I am so very proud to be standing here with you all. Now let us go together from strength to strength.
JVP Statement: UCLA Resolution on Anti-Semitism Creates Dangerous Precedent
Posted: March 11, 2015 Filed under: American Jewish Community, Anti-Semitism, Israel, Jewish Community, Palestine, Politics, Racism 11 Comments
Please read this important statement just released by Jewish Voice for Peace. I strongly second its conclusion that “addressing anti-Semitism must go hand in hand with addressing all forms of racism.”
Jewish Voice for Peace welcomes the commitment of the UCLA Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC) to addressing issues of anti-Semitism on campus. We recognize that a recent series of troubling incidents, including anti-Semitic graffiti and inappropriate questioning of a Jewish student, have raised concerns about rising anti-Semitism on campus, which we condemn in the strongest terms. However, we are also deeply concerned that the resolution passed by the USAC on March 10, 2015 further enshrines long-standing political efforts to silence legitimate criticism of the state of Israel by codifying its inclusion in the definition of anti-Semitism.
The resolution draws on the “State Department Definition of Anti-Semitism,” (sometimes referred to as the “3 D’s”). However, this definition has no legal standing in the US and was actually removed as a working definition by the European body where it originated. The ‘3Ds’ included in this definition (“demonization, delegitimization and applying a double-standard” to the state of Israel) are so vague that they could be, and have been, construed to silence any criticism of Israeli policies. This ‘working definition’ is in fact the product of long-term lobbying efforts by Israel advocacy groups who seek to codify criticism of the State of Israel as anti-Semitic. This is a deeply dangerous assertion that conflates Israel with Jewish people around the world.
“Classifying criticism of the state of Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’ curtails freedom of speech and dilutes the power of the term, which should be reserved for hatred, violence, intimidation or discrimination targeting Jews because of their ethnic and religious identity,” stated Rabbi Alissa Wise, Director of Organizing, Jewish Voice for Peace. “This resolution therefore dangerously silences legitimate criticism of Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law that urgently need to be addressed and remedied.” The United States Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights has emphatically affirmed that criticism of the state of Israel is protected speech on campus.
“The enforcement of this definition of anti-Semitism is part of long-term efforts on the part of Israel advocates to silence and intimidate supporters of Palestinian human rights,” stated Jacob Manheim, JVP-UCLA organizer. “The resolution, which states that only the self-appointed “organized Jewish community’ can define anti-Semitism, marginalizes the growing number of Jews like me who support nonviolent efforts to hold Israel accountable for human rights violations. We are frequently excluded from Jewish institutions, including UCLA Hillel, who barred our chapter from inclusion as a Hillel organization last spring.”
Efforts by Israel lobby groups to expand the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israeli policies have had the adverse impact of weakening the meaning of the term when actual cases of anti-Jewish hate are reported. For example, the much-cited recent Brandeis Center survey on the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses was methodologically flawed in that it left the definition of anti-Semitism to the respondents. Simultaneously, while there has been a media attention given to reports of a rise in anti-Semitism, there has been nearly no attention given to rising Islamophobia on campuses. For example, in recent weeks there was an Islamophobic smear campaign against Palestinian rights activists at UCLA and prominent US campuses promoted by the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Addressing anti-Semitism must go hand in hand with addressing all forms of racism. We at Jewish Voice for Peace are committed to addressing anti-Semitism in the context of other systems of oppression, including, for example, racism and Islamophobia.
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