Uncategorized
Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying
(JTA) — I started reporting on North American Jews and Israel in the last century, and for years covered the debate over whether Jews in the Diaspora had a right to criticize the Israeli government in public. The debate sort of petered out in the early-1990s, when Israel itself began talking about a Palestinian state, and when right-wing groups then decided criticizing Israel was a mitzvah.
Nevertheless, while left-wing groups like J Street and T’ruah have long been comfortable criticizing the Israeli government or defending Palestinian rights, many in the centrist “mainstream” — pulpit clergy, leaders of federations and Hillels, average Jews nervous about spoiling a family get-together — have preferred to keep their concerns to themselves. Partly this is tactical: Few rabbis want to alienate any of their members over so divisive a topic, and in the face of an aggressive left, organizational leaders did not want to give fuel to Israel’s ideological enemies. (The glaring exception has been about Israeli policy toward non-Orthodox Judaism, which is seen as very much the Disapora’s business.)
In recent weeks, there has been an emerging literature of what I have come to think of as “reluctant dissent.” What these essays and sermons have in common, despite the different political persuasions of the authors, is a deep concern over Israel’s “democratic character.” They cite judicial reforms that would weaken checks and balances at the top, expansion of Jewish settlements that would make it impossible to separate from the Palestinians, and the Orthodox parties that want to strengthen their hold on religious affairs. As Abe Foxman, who as former director of the Anti-Defamation League rarely criticized Israel, told an interviewer, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”
I read through the various ways Jewish leaders and writers here and in Israel are not just justifying Diaspora Jews who are protesting what is happening in Israel, but providing public permission for others to do the same. Here is what a few of them are saying (with a word from a defender of the government):
‘I didn’t sleep much last night’
Yehuda Kurtzer: Facebook, Feb. 8
Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, the New York-based branch of the Israeli think tank that promotes a diverse, engaged relationship with Israel. In a recent blog post, he neatly describes the dilemma of Diaspora Zionists who aren’t sure what to do with their deep concerns about the direction of the Israel government, especially the concentration of power in a far-right legislative branch.
Centrist American Jews who care about Israel are caught between “those to our right who would see any expression of even uncertainty about Israel’s democratic character as disloyalty, [and] those on the other side who think that a conversation about Israeli democracy is already past its prime,” he writes. He is also concerned about the “widespread disengagement that we can expect among American Jews, what I fear will become the absent majority — those who decide that however the current crisis is resolved, all of this is just ‘not for them.’”
Kurtzer likens Israel to a palace, and Diaspora Jews as “passersby” who live beyond its walls. Nonetheless, he feels responsible for what happens there. “The palace is burning and the best we can do is to tell you,” he writes. “It is also how we will show you we love you, and how much we cherish the palace.”
An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis: Times of Israel, Feb. 7
Three high-profile writers who moved to Israel from North America and who often defend Israel against its critics in the United States — Gordis, for one, has written a book arguing that American Jewish liberalism is incompatible with Israel’s “ethnic democracy” — now urge Diaspora Jews to speak out against the current Israeli government. They don’t mention the territories or religious pluralism. Instead, their trigger is the proposed effort to reform the Supreme Court, which they say will “eviscerate the independence of our judiciary and remake the country’s democratic identity.” Such a move will “threaten Israeli-American relations, and it will do grave damage to our relations with you, our sisters and brothers in the Diaspora,” concluding, “We need your voice to help us preserve Israel as a state both Jewish and democratic.”
All Israel Is Responsible for Each Other
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: Sermon, Jan. 27
Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of New York City’s Reform Central Synagogue, isn’t looking to Israeli writers for permission to weigh in on Israel’s political scene. In a sermon that takes its name from a rabbinic statement of Jewish interdependence, she asserts without question that Jews everywhere have a stake in the future of Israel and have a right to speak up for “civil society and democracy and religious pluralism and human rights” there. She focuses on the religious parties who are convinced that “Reform Jews are ruining Israel,” as you might expect, but ends the sermon with a call to recognize the rights of all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, “and also those living under Israel’s military control.” Of those Palestinians, she says, “We can’t feel comfortable sitting in the light of sovereignty next to a community living in darkness and expect to have peace.”
And like Kurtzer, she worries that concerned American Jews will simply turn away from Israel in despair or embarrassment, and urges congregants to support the Israeli and American organizations that share their pluralistic vision for Israel.
On That Distant Day
Hillel Halkin: Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2023
In his 1977 book “Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic,” the translator and author Hillel Halkin made a distinction similar to Kurtzer’s image of Israel as a palace and the Diaspora as passersby: Jews who don’t emigrate to Israel are dooming themselves to irrelevance, while immigrants like him are living on the stage where the Jewish future would play out. His mournful essay doesn’t address the Diaspora, per se, although it creates a permission structure for Zionists abroad to criticize the government. Halkin sees the new government as a coalition of two types of religious zealots: the haredi Orthodox who want to consolidate their control of religious life (and funding) in Israel, and a “knit-skullcap electorate [that] is hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist in its attitude toward Arabs.” (A knit skullcap is a symbol for what an American might call the “Modern Orthodox.”) Together, these growing and powerful constituents represent “the end of an Israeli consensus about what is and is not permissible in a democracy — and once the rules are no longer agreed on, political chaos is not far away. Israel has never been in such a place before.”
Halkin does talk about Israeli expansion in the West Bank, saying he long favored Jewish settlement in the territories, while believing that the “only feasible solution” would be a two-state solution with Arabs living in the Jewish state and Jews living in the Arab one. Instead, Israel has reached a point where there is “too much recrimination, too much distrust, too much hatred, too much blind conviction, too much disdain for the notion of a shared humanity, for such a solution to be possible… We’re over the cliff and falling, and no one knows how far down the ground is.”
Method to Our Madness: A Response to Hillel Halkin
Ze’ev Maghen: Jewish Review of Books, Jan. 10, 2023
Ze’ev Maghen, chair of the department of Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, is hardly a dissenter; instead, his response to Halkin helpfully represents the views of those who voted for the current government. Maghen says the new coalition represents a more honest expression of Zionism than those who support a “liberal, democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, individualist, environmentally conscious, economically prosperous, globally connected, etc., etc., society.” The new government he writes, will defend Israel’s “Jewish nationalist raison d’être, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms.” As for the Palestinian issue, he writes, “I’d rather have a fierce, hawkish Zionist in the cockpit than a progressive, Westernized wimp for whom this land, and the people who have returned to it after two millennia of incomparable suffering, don’t mean all that much.”
The Tears of Zion
Rabbi Sharon Brous: Sermon, Feb. 4, 2023
Brous, rabbi of the liberal Ikar community in Los Angeles, doesn’t just defend the right of Diaspora Jews to speak out in defense of Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights, but castigates Jewish leaders and communities who have been reluctant to criticize Israel in the past. “No, this government is not an electoral accident, and it is not an anomaly,” she says. “This moment of extremism has been a long time in the making and our silence has made us complicit.”
—
The post Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Shower, shelter, swipe: Israel’s ‘startup nation’ meets Iran war with a wave of apps
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Smartphones have become as essential as shelters for Israelis riding out Iran’s missile attacks, with internet traffic up 25% since the war began on Saturday. From the screaming alerts of the military’s official app that, as one comedian put it, sound like a “baby dragon giving birth,” to bomb-shelter Tinder to multiple apps that tell you when it’s safe to shower, the startup nation is trying to digitize the panic into something more manageable.
At the serious end of the wartime app stack is Home Front Command, the Israeli army’s app available in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English. It uses GPS to figure out where you are and only pings you when your area is at risk, with separate alerts for rockets, missiles and terror incidents. In this war, Iran’s long-range fire has come with an extra layer of notice, a warning-before-the-warning that can buy people a few more minutes. The shorter-range threats from Hezbollah, which joined the fray on Tuesday, do not come with that same courtesy.
Bomb Shelter Locator turns shelter-seeking into a map exercise, listing around 20,000 official sites, offering offline city maps and walking routes, and estimating the time it will take to reach the nearest protected space.
For anyone who cannot sprint, Purple Vest tries to close the gap. People with disabilities or older residents can register in advance and request help during alerts, with volunteers using the app to locate them and assist with shelter access or urgent supplies.
For others, shelters are turning into accidental social spaces where people can meet-cute on a mattress. The Hooked app, originally built for speed-dating at events, now doubles as a bomb-shelter icebreaker. Shelter-goers post a QR code at the entrance, and singles who scan it can see who else in the same bunker has the same relationship status. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee — who has not been single since high school — shared it on X alongside the caption: “Someday they will tell their kids ‘we met on a dating app in a shelter while dodging ballastic [sic] missiles.’”
But for some, even showering has become its own risk calculation. Martine Berkowitz was one of many who vented after her attempts to scrub up were interrupted by missiles no less than five times on the second day of the war.
For software developer Ben Greenberg, a father of teenagers, Berkowitz’s complaint was familiar, so he built an app called Best Shower Time that spits out a percentage risk score on whether a shower is likely to be interrupted by an alert.
Posts about it spread on social media and what began as a tool for his family is now drawing about 5,000 visitors a day. Greenberg, a California native who immigrated to Israel from New York in 2018, insists it’s “not a joke app.”
“Sirens are just the ultimate example of lack of control in one’s life,” he said, describing the app as a way to “restore some level of control and predictability … in a time when that feels most vulnerable and most taken away from us.”
The app uses real-time alert data from the Home Front Command, and the score is based on four inputs: how long it has been since the last alert, the average gap between alerts over a six-hour window, whether the frequency is trending up or down, and the total alert count over the past 24 hours. Those are weighted into a single score that appears when you open the app.
Users can then set their own parameters, including how long a shower typically takes and how much buffer time they want afterward to dry off and reach shelter.
And for those who have a penchant for extended bathroom breaks, Greenberg added a separate option that relies on the same logic.
It’s not the only app homing on issues of basic cleanliness to emerge this week. Another app, Can I Shower Now?, has developed a following of its own.
Berkowitz said she was “grateful” for apps to help her navigate the question of whether to jump in the shower. After checking and seeing a 13% chance of a missile alert on Wednesday afternoon, she decided to risk it.
“I took a full 20-minute hot shower and washed my hair. It was lovely. And the next warning only came when I was finished and getting dressed,” she said.
Greenberg is piloting a new app, called Best Walking Time, based on the same principle and prompted by his wife, who regularly walks around the neighborhood during work calls but has been afraid to stray from home lest a missile head their way.
The post Shower, shelter, swipe: Israel’s ‘startup nation’ meets Iran war with a wave of apps appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Gavin Newsom says some ‘appropriately’ call Israel an ‘apartheid state’ while questioning US military aid
(JTA) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom provided sharp criticism of the Israeli government during an interview this week, suggesting that he agreed with claims that it is an “apartheid state” and questioning U.S. military aid to the country.
Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, offered his rebuke of the Israeli government during an event on Tuesday with the hosts of “Pod Save America,” a political podcast, while promoting his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”
During the conversation, while suggesting that Israel’s alleged influence over the United State’s strikes in Iran was “pretty damn self-evident,” Newsom took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting because he’s got his own domestic issues. He’s trying to stay out of jail, he’s got an election coming up, he’s potentially on the ropes, he’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West Bank,” said Newsom, adding that “others are talking about it appropriately as sort of an apartheid state.”
When a host of the podcast asked Newsom whether he believed the United States should consider “rethinking our military support for Israel,” the California governor replied, “It breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice.”
Newsom’s comments come shortly after the politician vowed he would “never” accept AIPAC funding, a stance that has increasingly become a litmus test for Democratic candidates amid record low support for Israel among its base.
While Newsom has been vocal in his critiques of Netanyahu in the past, saying earlier this year that he is “crystal clear in my love for Israel — and my condemnation of Bibi,” his latest comments signal a notable shift in tone as he adopts a more openly critical stance on Israel amid growing pressure from the Democratic party.
“I didn’t expect to be in that place, you know, a few years ago, let alone, you know, where we are today, and it’s accelerating in real time in a deeply, deeply alarming way,” said Newsom.
Calls to strip U.S. military aid from Israel have gained traction among progressive Democrats in recent months, with a record number of Senate Democrats voting to block weapons sales to Israel in July.
In January, Netanyahu said for the first time that he wanted to “taper off” U.S. military aid to Israel over the next decade, a goal that was quickly welcomed by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham as pockets of the Republican party have grown increasingly skeptical of U.S. aid to Israel.
The post Gavin Newsom says some ‘appropriately’ call Israel an ‘apartheid state’ while questioning US military aid appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Andrea Weiss, trailblazing Reform rabbi who merged scholarship and activism, dies at 60
(JTA) — Rabbi Andrea Weiss, a former provost of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who made history as the first woman to ordain rabbis in the Reform movement, has died.
Weiss died on Tuesday surrounded by family at her home in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, following a year-long battle with cancer. She was 60.
“Andrea brought lev shalem — a whole heart to everything she did,” Cantor Jill Abramson, HUC’s interim head of seminary and director of its Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, said in a statement. “Whether in a classroom or a hallway discussion, she has always been a model of what it means to live a life guided by scholarship and sacred purpose. We will miss her presence in these halls and hold her family in our prayers.”
Weiss’ death strikes another blow for the leadership of the Reform movement, which has also buried two leaders of HUC who died prematurely while Weiss worked there — Rabbi Aaron Panken, then the seminary’s president, in 2018, and Rabbi David Ellenson, its past president, in 2023. The school of sacred music, meanwhile, is named for another luminary of the movement who died prematurely at 59 in 2011.
Born on Sept. 9, 1965, Weiss was raised in San Diego where her family belonged to Temple Emanu-El. In 1987, Weiss received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and was ordained as a rabbi at HUC in 1993.
Weiss joined the HUC faculty in 2000 alongside Rabbi Lisa Grant, who served as the director of the school’s rabbinical program.
“There was actually four of us, four women, who started at the same time, and we really changed the whole gender balance of the faculty, which was very exciting and thinking about, long term potential of what that would mean for the culture of the school,” Grant told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
During her tenure at the school, Weiss led multiple initiatives including a curricular redesign, the launch of the Virtual Pathway for Rabbinical students and the creation of the Seminary Hebrew Program.
Weiss taught several courses at the school, including “The Poetry and Power of the Psalms,” “Literary Artistry of the Bible” and “Teaching Bible to Adult Learners,” a course she co-taught with Grant beginning in 2003.
“Rabbi Weiss has been a transformative presence at Hebrew Union College for more than two decades,” said the school’s current president, Andrew Rehfeld, in a statement. “Her scholarship, vision, and fierce commitment to the formation of Jewish clergy have shaped this institution in ways that will endure for generations. We are grateful beyond measure for her service and hold her and her loved ones in our hearts.”
Weiss received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, where her research centered on metaphor and biblical poetry, scholarship that informed her later work including her 2006 book, “Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor in the Book of Samuel.”
In 2008, Weiss won the National Jewish Book Awards Book of the Year as the associate editor of “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary,” the first comprehensive collection of Torah commentary written entirely by female scholars. Sen. Elissa Slotkin chose the text to be sworn in on last year.
In 2016 and 2020, Weiss led a nonpartisan, interfaith initiative titled “American Values, Religious Voices” that brought together 100 faith leaders to write letters to former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump as well as Congress during the first 100 days of their administrations. The letters were later published as two books.
Weiss described the initiative at the time as “a national, nonpartisan campaign created from the conviction that scholars who study and teach our diverse religious traditions have something important to say about our shared American values.”
Grant said Weiss offered a model of Jewish engagement that was validated by the ancient rabbis.
“There’s a great Talmudic debate about which is more important, which is greater, study or action, and the rabbis have this back and forth about it, and in the end, they conclude study because it leads to action,” Grant said. “She certainly lived that, that her study and her teaching led her to be an activist as well.”
In 2018, Weiss was appointed as HUC’s provost, becoming the first female rabbi to ordain rabbis in the Reform movement.
Grant said the honor was “extraordinarily meaningful and very heavy” for Weiss.
“She would make the time every year to meet individually for an hour with every single student, to hear about their story, their journey, their learning,” said Grant. “And she would craft that into a short blessing upon ordination.”
As news of Weiss’ death spread on Tuesday, many of her former students and rabbis whom she ordained eulogized her on social media.
“Rabbi Andrea Weiss helped me to grasp and appreciate biblical poetry in a way that nobody else could,” wrote Evan Schultz, the senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a post on Facebook. “Her wisdom helped shape me as a rabbi and a writer. She was brilliant, kind, and genuine.”
Rabbi Binyamin Minich, the leader of Kehilat Daniel in Tel Aviv, recalled in a post on Facebook being a part of Weiss’ first ordination cohort.
“I remember this feeling of awe, understanding that our 2019 cohort of Israeli Rabbinical Program alumni would be the first ordained by a woman,” wrote Minich. “That meant the idea of women being rabbis settled fully in the Jewish contemporary life and ascended to a next level. It was the real proof of [lalmud velelemed leshmor vela’ashot] – ‘to study and to teach, to preserve and to act.’”
Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, the executive director of Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation, recalled connecting with Weiss in 2019 in Jerusalem and hearing about a bar mitzvah project Weiss had helped organize for her son. The project brought his baseball team to Cuba, where they donated equipment and met with locals.
“It was a big project that they did that was really inspirational; it inspired my son, Ami, to do a baseball-related mitzvah project for his bar mitzvah,” said Epstein. “Definitely not as ambitious as theirs, but Rabbi Weiss really taught me both Torah and the living Torah, of how to turn what you care about and your interests into tzedakah and action in the world.”
Weiss is survived by her husband Alan; her two children, Rebecca and Ilan; her father, Marty; her siblings, Mitch, Laura and Roger; her sister-in-law Catherine; and her nieces, nephews and cousins.
The post Andrea Weiss, trailblazing Reform rabbi who merged scholarship and activism, dies at 60 appeared first on The Forward.