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Book bans, Ukraine and the end of Roe: The year 2022 in Jewish ideas
(JTA) — Jewish eras can be defined by events (the fall of the Second Temple, the Inquisition, the founding of Israel) and by ideas (the rabbinic era, emancipation, post-denominationalism). A community reveals itself in the things it argues about most passionately.
It’s too early to tell what ideas will define this era, although a look back at the big debates of 2022 suggests Jews in North America will be discussing a few issues for a long time: the resurgence of antisemitism, the boundaries of free speech, the red/blue culture wars.
Below are eight of some of the key debates of the past year as (mostly) reflected in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s opinion section (which I have a hand in editing). They suggest, above all, a community anxious about its standing in the American body politic despite its strength and self-confidence.
Antisemitism and the Black-Jewish alliance
The rapper Kanye West spread canards about Jews and power. Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving shared an antisemitic film on Twitter. And comedian Dave Chappelle made light of both incidents on “Saturday Night Live,” suggesting comics like him had more to fear from cancellation than Jews did from rising antisemitism. The central roles played in these controversies by three African-American celebrities revived longstanding tensions between two communities who haven’t been able to count on their historic ties since the end of the civil rights era. The war of words was particularly vexing for Jews of color, like the rabbi known as MaNishtana and Rabbi Kendell Pinkney — who wondered whether “my mixed Jewish child will grow up in an America where she feels compelled to closet aspects of her identity because society cannot hold the wonder of her complexity.”
Jewish attitudes toward Ukraine
Russia’s war on Ukraine stirred up complex feelings among Jews. It led to an outpouring of support for the innocents caught up in or sent fleeing by Russia’s invasion, and the Jewish president who became their symbol of defiance. It reinvigorated a Jewish rescue apparatus that seemed to have been in hibernation for years. And it probed Jews’ memories of their own historic suffering in Ukraine, often at the hands of the ancestors of those now under attack.
Jews and the end of Roe v. Wade
In June the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade. It was an unthinkable outcome for liberal Jewish activists, women especially, who for 50 years and more had regarded the right to an abortion as integral to their Jewish identity and political worldview. Before the decision came down, Jewish studies scholar Michael Raucher questioned long-held Jewish organizational views that justified abortion only on the narrowest of religious grounds without acknowledging that women “have the bodily autonomy to make that decision on their own.” Conversely, Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel of America welcomed the end of Roe on behalf of his haredi Orthodox organization, writing that the rabbis “who guide us indisputably hold that, absent extraordinary circumstances, terminating a pregnancy is a grave sin.” Responding to Shafran, Daphne Lazar Price, an Orthodox Jewish feminist, argued that even in her stringently religious community, getting an abortion is a “conscious choice by women to follow their religious convictions and maintain their human dignity.”
Colleyville and synagogue safety
A police chaplain walks near the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas Jan. 15, 2022. (Andy Jacobsohn/AFP via Getty Images)
After a gunman held a rabbi and three congregants hostage at a Colleyville, Texas synagogue in January, Jewish institutions called for even tighter security at buildings that had already been hardened after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018. And yet for some, the sight of armed guards and locked doors undermines the spirit of a house of worship. Raphael Magarik of the University of Illinois Chicago argued that the Colleyville incident shouldn’t lead to an overreaction, especially when congregations are struggling to come back together after the pandemic. Rabbi Joshua Ladon warned about the “impulse to allow fear to define our actions.” Meanwhile, Jews of color said armed guards and police patrols can make them feel unsafe. In a powerful response, Mijal Bitton and Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein of the Shalom Hartman Center wrote that Jewish institutions must think in “expansive and creative ways about how to fight for our combined safety in a way that takes into account the rich ethnic and racial diversity of our communities.”
Anti-Zionism, antisemitism and “Jew-free zones”
When nine student groups at UC Berkeley’s law school adopted by-laws saying that they will not invite speakers who support Zionism, the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles ran an op-ed with the provocative headline, “Berkeley Develops Jewish Free Zones.” In the essay, Kenneth L. Marcus, who heads the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, argued that “Zionism is an integral aspect of the identity of many Jews,” and that the bylaws act as “racially restrictive covenants,” precluding Jewish participation. Defenders of the pro-Palestinian students countered that groups often invite only like-minded speakers, and that while being Jewish is an identity, Zionism is a political viewpoint. Faculty, politicians and activists weighed in on both sides of what has become a central debate on campuses and beyond: When does anti-Zionism become antisemitism, and how do you balance free speech rights against the claims by some students that their personal safety hangs in the balance?
“Maus” and school book bans
A Tennessee school board voted to remove “Maus” — Art Speigelman’s epic cartoon memoir about the Holocaust — from middle-school classrooms. (JTA photo)
Caught up in an epidemic of book-banning were Jewish books for children and young adults, a list that includes “The Purim Superhero,” “Family Fletcher” and “Chik Chak Shabbat.” A Texas school board removed a 2018 graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. But perhaps the highest profile case of a Jewish-interest book being banned came when a Tennessee school board voted to remove “Maus” — Art Speigelman’s epic cartoon memoir about the Holocaust — from middle-school classrooms, citing its use of profanity, nudity and depictions of “killing kids.” Coverage of the ban misleadingly depicted “Maus” as an introduction to the Shoah for young adults, while Speigelman recently noted that he had become a reluctant “metonym” for the book-banning issue. Jennifer Caplan explained why the book is indispensable: “‘Maus’ forces the reader to bear witness in a way no written account can, and the [illustrations] are especially good at forcing the eye to see what the mind prefers to glide past.”
Artificial intelligence and real-life dilemmas
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become a fact of corporate life, with computing advances that power robotic automation, computer vision and natural-language text generation. But what captured the public imagination — and dread — this year were sites like Dall-E, which threatened the livelihood of graphic designers by generating original, credible illustrations with no more than a simple prompt, and ChatGPT, which is able to expound cogently and humanly on practically any topic. Beyond everyday ethical dilemmas (“Can I write my book report using ChatGPT?”) AI raised profound questions about what it means to be human. “Rabbis have historically been very open to the idea of nonhuman sentience and have tended to see parallels between humans and nonhumans as an excuse to treat nonhumans better,” wrote David Zvi Kalman in an essay on the prospect of creating artificial life. Similarly, Mois Navon suggested in JTA that “if a machine is sentient, it is no longer an inanimate object with no moral status or ‘rights’ … but rather an animate being with the status of a ‘moral patient’ to whom we owe consideration.
A Pulitzer for “The Netanyahus”
Author Joshua Cohen won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel “The Netanyahus.” (Roberto Serra—Iguana Press/Getty Images)
Joshua Cohen was the somewhat surprising winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel “The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.” Or maybe not so surprising: The book is a fictionalized treatment of a real-life visit in the late 1950s by the Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu for a job interview at a university very much like Cornell. With Benzion’s son Benjamin angling for an ultimately successful return to office in real life, a satire about Jewish power, right-wing Zionism and Israeli self-regard might have seemed to the judges very much of the moment. As critic Adam Kirsch wrote in a JTA essay, Cohen concludes that both American and Israeli Jewish identities “are absurd, crying out for the kind of satire that can only come from intimate knowledge.” Others weren’t amused. Jewish Currents criticized the novel for being derivative of both Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, and the Jewish Review of Books said that the novel includes “a capsule history of Zionism that is so blatant a distortion that I just gave up.”
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Republican Mike Rogers is the Senate candidate Democrats need to save their party
Many progressive Michiganders – especially in the Jewish community – will hold their nose and vote for Democratic Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed despite his association, friendship and political partnership with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.
Many will hold their nose because El-Sayed has called Israel a “rogue” state, refusing to recognize the Jewish State of Israel as legitimate.
They will hold their nose and vote for El-Sayed because they are more scared of the Republicans’ hold on the Senate than a tainted Democrat.
However, as a social progressive who almost always votes Democrat, I want to push back against this logic and urge my fellow Michigan Democrats and progressives to vote for Republican candidate Mike Rogers for the sake of progressive, democratic values.
For me, the disdain that El-Sayed has shown for the Jewish community, especially in his continuing refusal to disavow his relationship with Piker, puts him in the same category as candidates who are openly racist and homophobic. Even the most loyal progressive would reject a racist, even if that meant risking a Republican Senate.
To show the Democrats that such candidates should never be nominated, we must show them that such candidates can never win. Such a candidate winning would be a disaster for the most fundamental requirements we have for any candidate of any party.
Instead, those who really want to focus on turning the Senate Democratic should slip across Michigan’s border to Ohio to knock on doors for Sherrod Brown or donate to help James Talarico in Texas. Those efforts would be a real show of Democratic and progressive solidarity – much more than a vote for El-Sayed.
Donald Trump and the Republican party would like nothing more than to see Abdul El-Sayed in the Senate – an easy target to paint all progressives, liberals and loyal Democrats with the brush of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
The anti-Israel and antisemitic words of El-Sayed and other extremists in the party are a poison that has the potential to severely damage the party long term and make it unviable both for Jews and all those with traditional liberal values. Only a decisive win for Rogers will send a clear message to the Democrats that a return to a stance that is both pro-Israel and pro Palestinian, respecting the Jewish community, is the only way for a strong party to stand up to the Republicans in national elections to defend our progressive values.
This election is not just about the safety and future of Jews in the Democratic party. It is also about returning America to a place where we do not tolerate the harassment of people with whom we politically disagree. The harassment and intimidation of any candidate considered pro-Israel at the Michigan Democratic convention in April traumatized many Jewish participants. Michigan’s Jewish Attorney General Dana Nessel skipped the convention on Saturday out of fear for her safety.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed has said nothing to apologize for his supporters who carried out this gross infraction of the democratic process. Imagine what the National Democratic Convention will look like in less than two years if this model of behavior is not denounced now. Jews with traditional pro-Israel values will see they have no place in the Democratic party.The only way to stop this behavior is to show that it leads to Democrats losing elections.
In recent days, El-Sayed reportedly apologized for remarks he made in March after a truck loaded with explosives rammed into Temple Israel in suburban Detroit with a driver intent on shooting whomever he didn’t blow up. There were more than 100 children inside.
Jews were shocked when El-Sayed seemed to justify the near murder with the words “hurt people hurt people.” His recent non-apology apology if anyone was hurt by his words made it worse.
He doubled down on recognizing the “context” for the attempted massacre: Israel’s actions in Lebanon fighting Hezbollah – the terror group in which the Michigan terrorist’s brother was a member when he died.
In other words, according to El-Sayed, if children are blown up in Michigan, you can blame Israel.
Moreover, he continues to blame Israel for Michigan not having enough funds for its public schools and other needs, a classic antisemitic deflection. His antisemitic blood libel continued after his primary victory when he accused Israel – not just its government – of being “bloodthirsty” – in its defensive war against Hamas.
El-Sayed’s friend and campaign partner Hasan Piker has shared the same sentiment ,warning pro-Israel American Jews that if they continue to defend Israel, they will be targeted because of that stance.
I urge my fellow progressives to examine Piker’s comments insulting Poles and Poland, blaming the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his disdain for Black chatterers on his show – with the vilest of expressions. How can they vote for a candidate who befriends such a man and repeatedly invites him to campaign events?
Yes, Mike Rogers is an old-fashioned conservative who has had to cede some ground to Donald Trump’s conspiratorial views of the 2020 election. But I would argue that worse for our democracy is to normalize the cesspool of disgusting swearing and demonization that Piker champions.
Progressive Democrats must never give up the fight for our causes. However, in the long run, we must right the sinking ship of the Democratic party, a party which is our only hope for winning the war for our progressive values. The path to making this necessary correction is turning our energies to making sure that Mike Rogers defeats Abdul El-Sayed. That is why Rogers, a Republican, has my vote and my voice.
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Randy Fine denounces ‘rise of Islam in America’ in address to Republican Jewish confab
(JTA) — LAS VEGAS — Jewish far-right firebrand Randy Fine attacked Muslim politicians in the Democratic party as he addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit on Sunday night.
There were many denouncements of democratic socialist politicians at the gathering’s gala dinner, but the Florida congressman’s criticism was the most pointed as he addressed, what he said was “the elephant in the room: the rise of Islam in America.”
“We are constantly told that the problem is not mainstream Islam, but radical Islamism. But where are the so-called moderate Muslims in our political system?” Fine said to applause.
Fine, who won his recent Florida primary with endorsements from the RJC, President Donald Trump and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, has prompted considerable ire on Capitol Hill for comments denigrating Muslims — including comparing them to dogs — and saying that Gazans should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages were released.
Fine was one of a few speakers who blasted progressive figures such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed and the streamer Hasan Piker, as they spoke to an audience of mostly RJC members and students, who were seated in a ballroom inside Las Vegas’ Venetian Resort.
Most speakers criticized socialists who they say are taking over the Democratic Party, and emphasized the need for Republicans to maintain control of the House and Senate in November. Fine said he was intentionally pointing to a list of Muslim figures.
“The fact that not all Muslims are bad does not mean that no Muslims are bad,” Fine told reporters after the program on Sunday. “People are unwilling to have that discussion, and if we don’t have it we’re going to have real problems in this country.”
The other speaker on Sunday who seemed willing to have the discussion was Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who said Islam is “fundamentally incompatible with our way of life” and decried the “Islamization of Texas.”
“If we want to fight antisemitism, we need to start with our immigration policy,” said Gill. He added that “importing people whose values are incompatible with our own” would make the U.S. weaker.
Fine commended Gill after the event for his comments about Islam while others were “afraid to talk about it.”
“I give him credit,” Fine said.
Fine’s comments came just weeks after an ugly primary battle against anti-Israel influencer and former celebrity poker player Dan Bilzerian, who has said he wants to “kill Israelis” and believes the Holocaust death toll was exaggerated. Fine made headlines with inflammatory comments about Armenians (Bilzerian is Armenian-American) in addition to his rhetoric on Muslims.
About an hour before he spoke, Fine tweeted a recent video of Gov. Kathy Hochul wearing a hijab while visiting a mosque, adding the caption, “This is what surrendering to Mainstream Islam looks like.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Randy Fine denounces ‘rise of Islam in America’ in address to Republican Jewish confab appeared first on The Forward.
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‘All of us have to bring down violence wherever we see it,’ El-Sayed says following address to Jewish Democrats
(JTA) — BIRMINGHAM – Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said he wished he could retract his past comments regarding a synagogue attack, speaking with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency minutes after he issued his second apology in as many days to the Jewish community in the Wolverine State.
“If I had the opportunity to take it back, I would take it all the way back,” he said.
“There is never a justification for a terrorist act, period,” El-Sayed added. “What I was trying to say is that there is a broader question of the responsibility I think all of us have to bring down violence wherever we see it and however we see it.”
He added, “I understand and heard that people felt like it was justifying the attack, and I didn’t intend to justify it.”
El-Sayed addressed around 300 Michigan Jewish Democrats at the caucus’s annual “Summer Simcha” fundraiser in suburban Detroit on Sunday, one day after he spoke to the caucus at the state Democratic nominating convention. At both events, he sought forgiveness for his earlier comments that had linked the March attack at Temple Israel, in West Bloomfield Township, to Israel’s war in Lebanon.
In his Sunday speech he referenced the Jewish “value of tikkun olam, to repair the world,” and he affirmed the synagogue preschool had been “attacked by a terrorist.” To the gathered Jewish Democrats, the candidate added he hoped to “earn your trust.”
His outreach to Jewish voters will soon become even more pronounced. The campaign intends to hire a Jewish liaison and is in the midst of an interview process for the role, which includes talking with Jewish community leaders, a person familiar with the campaign told JTA.
With El-Sayed’s narrow primary victory, and Michigan’s increasing centrality in the fight for control of the Senate, the state’s approximately 100,000 Jewish voters — the majority of whom have historically voted Democrat — find themselves under the microscope as they weigh voting for a candidate who supports zeroing out all aid to Israel. Following his Summer Simcha speech, El-Sayed stayed to speak with a long line of Jews who came up to share their concerns.
Asked later what he’s heard from the Jews who speak to him, he told JTA, “I hear a lot about safety, and folks want to know that they’re going to be safe.”
He added, “The prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me, and I just want to make that very, very clear.”
The event, at which JTA was the only media outlet given permission to attend, underscored the tension that has become increasingly difficult for Jewish Democrats, in Michigan and beyond, to reconcile: whether party candidates have earned the vote of their Jewish constituents when those candidates won’t commit to supporting Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, or haven’t taken what community members feel is a strong enough stance against antisemitism.
El-Sayed’s Jewish liaison will likely have their work cut out for them. In both of his spoken apologies this weekend, the candidate had insisted the main problem was with the timing of his attempt to apply “context” to the situation, not with the substance of what he said. Yet many Jews then and now objected to the idea that bringing up Israel’s war in Lebanon was appropriate context when discussing a synagogue attack.
Rabbi Paul Yedwab, a member of Temple Israel’s clergy who was not in attendance at the event, declined to comment to JTA on El-Sayed’s apologies, citing the synagogue board’s recent reaffirmation of a federal law prohibiting houses of worship from commenting on electoral politics.
Asked about which “context” he had been referring to in his apologies, El-Sayed told JTA he meant “violence in all of its forms, in all circumstances.”
El-Sayed shared the room with some party figures who have sharply opposed him, and who the state’s Jewish Democrats hold in high esteem. The caucus event honored state Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish and who has had public disagreements with El-Sayed over his handling of Jewish communal issues.
In her own speech, Nessel acknowledged that Jews were being forced into a “stark choice” thanks to “members of our own party who seek the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and place the Jewish diaspora in jeopardy.”
Yet the attorney general stressed that the election was bigger than Israel, and, invoking Purim’s Queen Esther, urged Jewish voters to put their own feelings of personal safety aside.
“We have a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival,” she told the crowd.
Nessel said that other societal concerns – climate change, artificial intelligence, the threat of nuclear warfare – loom larger than support for Israel alone and would worsen under continued GOP rule. “What is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist, if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?” she asked.
“I think it’s so easy for people to lash out at what they perceive are direct attacks on their faith, on their cultural beliefs, on their historical ancestry,” Nessel told JTA following her speech. “It’s very easy for people to be mad and to say, ‘I reject that.’ I just hope that people will consider that there are many other factors at play.”
Even among caucus leadership, though, there were deep divisions over the right Jewish approach to take in the election.
“I’m a Mike Rogers supporter,” Troy Zukowski-Serlin, a Kalamazoo-based member of the Michigan Jewish Democrats board, told JTA on Sunday before El-Sayed’s speech. Despite his board position, Zukowski-Serlin said nothing would change his mind about voting for the Republican candidate: “It’s signed, sealed and delivered with me.”
His wife Michelle, who attended the event wearing a dress with an Israeli flag imprint, said she would be writing in Nessel, “my hero,” on the ballot.
Jewish Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is running for Congress in a heavily Jewish suburban Detroit district and whose own disagreements with El-Sayed have spilled into public view, told JTA that the event was “a step in the right direction” for the candidate.
“It has lingered in the Jewish community for the last six months,” Moss said, of El-Sayed’s initial comments about the Temple Israel attack in his district. “And I appreciate that this is something that he recognized there needed to be a reckoning with, and amends toward.”
Some Jewish communal leaders in attendance, though, said he wasn’t there yet.
“He is moving, and I’m hopeful about that. And it’s making me feel more secure in his leadership,” Rabbi Josh Whinston of Temple Beth Emeth, a Reform synagogue in Ann Arbor, told JTA. “There’s still work to do.”
Whinston said he would also like to see El-Sayed address other comments he has made, including having referred to the Israeli government as “bloodthirsty.” Such language, the rabbi said, “puts us in harm’s way.”
The event’s organizers were also skeptical that El-Sayed had changed many minds.
“I think that people are pretty well set in what they want to do,” Joan Lowenstein, another caucus board member, told JTA. “But I think they still want to hear words that make them feel that someone else is thinking about what they’re concerned about.”
Liz Fried, of Ann Arbor, was one of the attendees who went up to speak to El-Sayed afterwards. She told him that her children were soon to fly to Israel, and asked if he would support funding for the Iron Dome defensive system.
He wouldn’t, she recalled to JTA — a position he has held in public.
“I was upset,” Fried said. “He doesn’t care about the safety of my children.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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