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Fighting society’s disintegration is a group effort. Just ask Moses.
This story was originally published on My Jewish Learning.
(JTA) — This summer, in the middle of a 15-hour drive from Michigan to New Jersey, I stopped to buy two old wooden doors from a salvage shop in Cleveland. I found the seller, a kind, middle-aged dad whom I’ll call Jim, on Facebook. Jim renovates properties and has amassed a collection of old doors rescued from various job sites. His “shop” was a covered section of his suburban yard.
Jim had exactly what I was looking for: two matching solid-wood five panels, unpainted, 24 inches wide. When we pulled them out into the sunlight to look them over, Jim struck up a conversation.
“So, what do you guys do?”
“My wife and I are clergy,” I told him. “She works at a congregation and I work in education.”
“Oh nice,” Jim said. “What kind of congregation?”
“Well, a synagogue. We’re both rabbis.”
I shot my kids a look to see if they were monitoring the conversation.
“Oh, you’re Jewish. My favorite person is Jewish!”
“Really?” I said, with false curiosity and a hunch about what was coming next.
“Yeah, Jesus Christ! You know, there’s a Jewish cemetery across the way from our house. Sometimes I do some tree work over there. I tell my friends that Jewish cemetery is proof the Bible is true.”
He paused for a second to make sure I was listening. I nodded for him to continue.
“You see, the Bible says that if God’s chosen people don’t follow God’s ways, they would be kicked out of their land and scattered all over the earth,” Jim said. “The fact that there are Jews buried in a cemetery in Cleveland, so far away from their homeland, means that the Jews weren’t following God’s ways.”
At this point, I was strapping the doors to the rack on my car and all I could manage in response was, “That’s one way to look at it.”
The theology Jim espoused isn’t only, or even primarily, a Christian belief. Jews throughout history have believed that being scattered around the world was punishment from God for not following in God’s ways. We say it in the liturgy, and it appears in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo: “If you fail to observe faithfully all the terms of this teaching in this book … the Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other.”
When I was a young rabbi, I completely dismissed the idea that Jews would be punished because of our lackluster compliance with Jewish tradition. But the more I thought about this idea — or more accurately, this threat — that bad things will happen if we don’t behave properly, the more empathy I felt for what Moses and God were trying to teach. Moses and God were concerned about what would happen to the Israelites if they behaved poorly as a collective. If enough people engage in selfish behavior, society will disintegrate. To avoid this, Moses and God browbeat the people with two long lists: threats if they don’t behave, and blessings if they do.
Today, we face the same problem Moses faced — how to shape the collective behavior of a society — only the stakes are much higher. Put simply, there are many more humans using many more technologies that have much greater impact. Our collective behavior is having enormous consequences for the planet, leading geologists to label our era the anthropocene, the human epoch.
And yet, despite the incredible human accomplishments over the last two millennia, we don’t have many more tools than Moses had to shape collective behavior. We have democratic governance, but the track record of democracies is lackluster in this regard, with some so-called eco-authoritarians now arguing that democracy ought to be set aside to address climate change. We have mass social movements, but anyone who has spent time working within them (I count myself in this category) knows how difficult it is to actually galvanize a collective movement that shapes behavior at the societal level.
My father used to say, “People will never change their behavior unless they are forced to.” By people, he meant society. And by forced to, he meant that the negative consequences are so drastic there is no choice but to change. Was he right? Is humanity incapable of anticipating a societal-level threat and changing our behavior to avoid the abyss?
This is a great spiritual challenge of our generation. We live in an era in which we are likely, just by going about our lives, to cause planetary damage. Will we develop new ways to shape collective behavior for the better before it is too late?
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The post Fighting society’s disintegration is a group effort. Just ask Moses. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pro-Hamas Demonstration at NYU Draws Police Response
New York City Police Department officers escorting a detained pro-Hamas protester from the grounds of New York University on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers have arrested pro-Hamas protesters who staged an illegal demonstration on the grounds of New York University in Manhattan on Thursday, according to reports.
Members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — as well as professor faculty aligned with the SJP-affiliate Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) — amassed outside the Bobst Library, as described by NYU student Bella Ingber on X/Twitter. Their action limited entry to the building to one entrance, Ingber added, an immense inconvenience to the thousands of students preparing for final exams and completing other large end-of-term assignments. Despite this, NYU reportedly failed to request a clearing of the protesters for as many as two hours.
According to the campus’ official school newspaper the Washington Square News, law enforcement later arrived and arrested at least two professors and roughly half a dozen others who, the university said in a statement shared by the paper, “repeatedly refused to stop blocking the entrances and walkway” of the building. The paper added that the protesters were restrained and located to police vehicles. Students were reportedly not included among the detained.
“For a short period, we restricted access to the library,” the university said in an update quoted by the Washington Square News. “We worked with students who have examinations or classes in the library to ensure they could enter. Library operations have resumed.”
The protest appears to be an escalation of activities from the previous day, when the protesters “occupied” the top floor of the library and vandalized it. They reportedly demanded that the university “disclose its investments in companies with ties to Israel.”
Obstructing university functions by commandeering school property is a signature strategy of pro-Hamas activists. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel in 2023, Harvard University students held a “die-in” outside the Business School, at which they encircled a Jewish student and screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” in his ears while tried to break free of them.
More recently, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities occupied and prevented entry into and exit from the Morrill Hall administrative building, an incident which resulted in nearly a dozen arrests and severe disciplinary sanctions for the students who orchestrated it.
“Study-ins,” in which pro-Hamas students and sometimes faculty occupy a school library and make focusing on work exceedingly difficult, are a component of this style of protest.
One student who participated in such a demonstration at Tulane University in October told The Tulane Hullabaloo: “It is a very silent but studious way of promoting awareness about what is going on in the Middle East, in Gaza and Lebanon specifically, and hoping that Tulane, because of this, feels it necessary to no longer invest financially so heavily into companies that benefit from the war.”
Harvard University’s Widener Library saw a similar demonstration days earlier that was led primarily by faculty. One of them, African American Studies professor Walter Johnson, told The Boston Globe: “I don’t think that just because there are rules means that those rules are right,” noting that he elected to join the protest because the university had earlier punished students for “studying-in.”
New York University’s alleged failure to deal with similar, and worse, disruptions has already once prompted civil litigation and an expensive monetary settlement. In July, it agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to resolve a lawsuit brought by three students who sued the school for responding, allegedly, to antisemitic discrimination “with deliberate indifference.”
The suit alleged that NYU officials received but declined to address numerous reports that — according to the court documents filed in November — NYU students and faculty “repeatedly abuse, malign, vilify, and threaten Jewish students with impunity” and that “death to k—es” and “gas the Jews” were chanted by pro-Hamas supporters during protests at the school.
After the settlement was reached the university updated its Non-Discrimination and Harassment Policy (NDAH), including in it language which identified “Zionist” as a racial dog whistle that sometimes conceals the antisemitic intent of speech and other conduct that denigrates and excludes Jews. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the policy acknowledges the “coded” subtleties of antisemitic speech and its use in discriminatory conduct that targets Jewish students and faculty.
NYU went further, recognizing that Zionism is central to the identities of the world’s 15.7 million Jews, an overwhelming majority of whom believe the Jewish people were destined to return to their ancient homeland in the land of Israel after centuries of exile.
“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists,” the university said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Hamas Demonstration at NYU Draws Police Response first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Applauds Ireland’s Decision to Join South Africa Genocide Case Against Israel
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin speaks to members of the media during the 78th United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 19, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has welcomed Ireland’s decision to formally join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), calling on other states to follow Dublin’s lead.
“We urge all countries to intensify any pressure against the Israeli enemy to stop its brutal attacks on the Palestinian people,” Hamas said in a statement to Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV, according to Iranian state-run media.
The expression of support came after Irish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday that he had received the government’s approval to intervene in the case against Israel.
“By legally intervening in South Africa’s case, Ireland will be asking the ICJ to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a state,” Ireland’s Foreign Affairs Department said in a statement. “We are concerned that a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimized.”
The statement claimed that there has been “a collective punishment of the Palestinian people through the intent and impact of military actions of Israel,” adding, “Ireland’s view of the [Genocide Convention] is broader and prioritizes the protection of civilian life.”
Martin said last month that the government intended to join South Africa’s case at the ICJ before the end of the year. His comment came on the same day that the Irish parliament passed a non-binding motion saying that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.”
Since December, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
In January, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide. However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations — which Israel and its allies have described as baseless and may take years to get through the judicial process. Israeli officials have strongly condemned the ICJ proceedings, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.
Pro-Israel advocates welcomed the ICJ ruling because it did not impose a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza and called for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas last Oct. 7. Rather than declare that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and order the Jewish state to stop its military campaign in the Palestinian enclave, the court issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide.
In late October, South Africa filed the bulk of the relevant material to support its allegations.
Ireland has been among Europe’s fiercest critics of Israel since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza. The terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted over 250 hostages in their rampage, the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling the terrorist group’s military and governing capabilities.
Last month, Ireland accepted the appointment of a full Palestinian ambassador for the first time, confirming that Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid would step up from her current position as Palestinian head of mission to Ireland.
In May, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.” According to The Irish Times, Ireland is due to have its presence in Ramallah in the West Bank upgraded from a representative office to a full embassy.
Israel’s Ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich said at the time of Ireland’s recognition of “Palestine” that Ireland was “not an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
More recently, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris in October called on the European Union to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed legislation banning the activities in the country of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, because of its ties to Hamas.
Recent anti-Israel actions in Ireland came shortly after the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli education watchdog group, released a new report revealing Irish school textbooks have been filled with negative stereotypes and distortions of Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history.
Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, according to Alan Shatter, a former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014 as Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense.
Shatter told The Algemeiner in an interview earlier this year that Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”
Two months ago, an Irish official, Dublin City Councilor Punam Rane, claimed during a council meeting that Jews and Israel control the US economy, arguing that is why Washington, DC does not oppose Israel’s war against Hamas.
The post Hamas Applauds Ireland’s Decision to Join South Africa Genocide Case Against Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Paraguay’s President Visits Western Wall Same Day as Embassy Reopens in Jerusalem
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Thursday morning along with his family and a delegation of Paraguayan politicians during his trip to the Jewish state to celebrate the opening of the new Paraguayan embassy in Israel’s capital.
Peña silently prayed at the religious site, placed a personal note between the stones of the Western Wall, signed the guest book, and ended his visit with a tour of the Western Wall Tunnels.
“I am here today to thank God because, three years ago, I came here to pray that I would be granted the position of president and the opportunity to serve my country,” Peña said. “It is an honor for me to say thank you here and to renew my commitment to do good for Paraguay, for Israel, and for the Jewish people.”
The president was accompanied by a delegation that included Paraguay’s president of Parliament, ministers, and additional parliament members. The group was welcomed by Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites Shmuel Rabinowitz and Western Wall Heritage Foundation Director Mordechai (“Suli”) Eliav, both of whom expressed gratitude for Paraguay’s steadfast support for Israel.
Peña and his wife Leticia Ocampos also attended on Thursday the opening ceremony for the new Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem, an event that featured the affixing of a mezuzah at the embassy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the dedication as well as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, and Paraguayan Ambassador to Israel Alejandro Rubin.
Paraguay first moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, but months later, under a new government, the embassy was moved back to Tel Aviv. Peña blamed the move on “internal revenge” and expressed joy about now returning the Paraguayan Embassy to Jerusalem at the opening ceremony on Thursday.
“I was very happy to see that during the time that I was minister of finance, the government of Paraguay took a very bold decision, a very ambitious decision to open the Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem,” said Peña. “I was very sad a couple months later when a new administration, driven mostly by revenge, an internal revenge, nothing to do with the people of Israel, decided to move it back. I am very happy that this is taking place in this very moment that the world is living, where a lot of people talk but not many people act. For us, not only saying but doing is very important.”
Peña then told Netanyahu: “On behalf of all the Paraguayan people, we were with you, we are with you, we will stay with the people of Israel forever.”
Netanyahu spoke at the opening ceremony about the bilateral ties between Paraguay and Israel.
“There is a basic sympathy between our people and the people of Paraguay,” he said. “Because you too are a small people. You too are beset by great powers. You too suffered the specter of annihilation. We underwent the Holocaust, you underwent a massive massacre. But you didn’t lose faith, you didn’t disappear and you maintained yourself.”
“This desire, both to seize the future, to create this progress, to create the benefits for humanity, which is what you see in this building, is coupled with the understanding that we have a heritage and a commitment to our past and to our future that transcends time,” he added.
“Because if the Jewish people were able to not merely survive but to ford the torrential river between annihilation and salvation, to reconstitute our life here, to rebuild our capital, to be a thriving power and a thriving innovator for humanity. This means that there is hope for all nations of the world. And the one nation that we seize with great friendship and great sympathy and great love is Paraguay. Thank you for coming here. Thank you for opening the embassy.”
Netanyahu and Peña had a private meeting in the prime minister’s office after the embassy opening ceremony, and during their talk, the president invited the Israeli premier to visit Paraguay. The two world leaders then attended a reception at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where several memorandum of understandings (MOUs) and bilateral agreements were signed.
The post Paraguay’s President Visits Western Wall Same Day as Embassy Reopens in Jerusalem first appeared on Algemeiner.com.