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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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Trump nominee for Kuwait ambassador, grilled at confirmation hearing, loses support over Israel views
(JTA) — After Amer Ghalib became the most prominent Muslim politician in the country to endorse Donald Trump for president last year, he did so on pro-Palestinian grounds. And he was rewarded with a plum position: the administration’s ambassadorship to Kuwait.
But the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, had to get through Senate approval first. And at Thursday’s confirmation hearing before the foreign relations committee, multiple Republicans broke rank and took Ghalib to task for his past social media posts and actions about Jews and Israel.
“It appears you have a deep-felt and passionate view about the Middle East,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Ghalib. “But it is a view that is in direct conflict with the policy positions of President Trump and this administration.”
Cruz grilled the Yemen-born mayor on Hamtramck becoming the first American city to adopt a boycott, divestment and sanctions policy against Israel; on his previous “liking” of Facebook posts comparing Jews to monkeys; and on his past stances opposing the Abraham Accords.
He wasn’t the only Republican to take issue with Ghalib. Sens. David McCormick of Pennsylvania and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska also harshly questioned the mayor on his views on Jews and Israel.
Ghalib did not disavow any of his past stances or posts. The BDS resolution, he said, had been drafted by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and approved unanimously by the city council. “It wasn’t my idea,” he said. “We don’t have any companies that deal with Israel in our city.” He said he had no power to remove a city council official who had said the Holocaust was advance punishment for Israel.
He “liked” the Facebook post about monkeys, he said, because he used to “like” every post on his feed before becoming mayor. “The person who wrote it is mentally challenged in our community,” he said of the post, later adding, “It’s definitely antisemitism, but clicking on it doesn’t mean I endorse that.”
“Actually, ‘like’ means exactly that,” Cruz retorted.
In response to a question from McCormick about whether he would “accept President Trump’s view that Israel is and should be the national home of the Jewish people,” Ghalib dodged. “I think we can coexist in the region and that’s the answer, that everybody has the right to exist now,” he said. “I trust the president’s policies and I will support his policies.”
At the end of the hearing, Cruz said he would vote no on confirming Ghalib, putting the mayor’s appointment on shaky ground.
Ghalib had endorsed Trump after previously siding with the “Uncommitted” movement that had targeted President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. In a meeting with Trump prior to his endorsement, the mayor said the two had discussed the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza. Michigan, which has a large Arab population, wound up swinging to Trump.
A separate nominee at the same hearing, South Africa ambassador hopeful Leo Bozell, pledged to push the country to end its genocide charge against Israel in front of the International Court of Justice.
The post Trump nominee for Kuwait ambassador, grilled at confirmation hearing, loses support over Israel views appeared first on The Forward.
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The best Shabbat I ever kept, or how to dodge the biggest World Series spoiler ever
This time a year ago, with Sukkot ending and the World Series upon us, I and many other Shabbat-observant Jews were coming apart at the spiritual seams.
Naturally, I wrote about it: The New York Yankees and the Los Angeles (formerly Brooklyn) Dodgers were facing off in the Fall Classic for the 12th time in their storied rivalry and the first time in 43 years. But because the first two games overlapped with Shabbat — falling on Friday and Saturday evenings — thousands of diehards in the two biggest Jewish communities in the U.S. couldn’t watch.
Or could we?
When I asked those fans about the quandary, a few of them told me they’d found ways to watch: A friend’s apartment, the in-laws downstairs, little loopholes with which I was well-versed. (When I was a kid, the dry cleaner’s flatscreen usually sufficed.) Others who couldn’t or wouldn’t watch planned to learn the outcome through the grapevine the next day.
No one I spoke to, however, planned to record the game and watch it after Shabbat ended. Sure, starting a replay of Game 1 on Saturday night meant you couldn’t join Game 2 in progress. But the bigger reason was also kind of funny: In a community that insists on unplugging for 25 hours, finding out a sports score — even inadvertently — was generally seen as inevitable. The only person who believed it was possible to avoid World Series spoilers and watch the whole thing, start-to-finish, 24 hours after the fact, was me.
I also just wanted my precious Shabbat left alone. On the job, I am regularly contending with a firehose of information — much of it discouraging — and the intensity hardly lessens when I’m off the clock. When people ask me whether it’s hard to turn off my phone on Friday afternoon, my answer is that it’s really not. The challenge — the imperative — is protecting the feeling of rest that comes with it. So: No sports fandom, either.
Now, the problem of spoilers is close to my heart. I once wrote an article for this publication about a Harry Potter spoiler that became the most devastating Camp Ramah prank of all time. I now believe that Jewish law actually regards ruining an ending without consent as an act of theft — one called g’neivat da’at (literally, “theft of knowledge”). Of course, the harder a person works to avoid spoilers, the more easily something is spoiled; friends know not to text me asking if I watched the game because that means it ended!!!
Staying out of the loop would be difficult, but I’d spent half a lifetime watching Saturday games on tape delay. In case you weren’t aware, streaming apps are all apparently hell-bent on revealing the outcome of a game that’s just happened before you watch it, by, to take one infuriating example, making the thumbnail image a picture of one of the teams celebrating. In the face of this adversity, I’ve developed the specific muscle of keeping my eyes just focused enough to find the game I want and put it on. These ocular reps would surely prepare me for the World Series.
The Saturday morning after Game 1, I walked to shul with my sister. Well, I was headed to shul; she was headed first to the shul security guard, that singular oracle of contemporary American Orthodox Judaism, who would have the scoop. I escaped that spoiler by skipping ahead as we approached, but my plan faced some resistance in the pews. Everyone else knew what had happened and wanted to discuss it. And I’ll never forget the look of sheer annoyance one in-the-know friend had when I explained my choice. “You’re just gonna go the whole day not knowing?” Sir, that was the whole point.
Several hours later, I was pacing in front of the television in my apartment. There were two outs, bases loaded, bottom of the 10th inning, Dodgers down one. All of it had already happened, and yet none of it had, when I watched Freddie Freeman limp to the plate. You don’t need me to tell you what happened next.
A walk-off grand slam. Reader, I was screaming. I started a replay of Game 2 a few minutes later.
Now, I titled this column “the best Shabbat I ever kept,” but the truth is I don’t really remember too much about that Shabbat. I probably spent it like most others — whiling away a few hours in shul, seeing family and friends, nodding off on the couch. I’m sure only that it wasn’t spoiled. Dodgers history awaited me after Havdalah.
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Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch? Or a Jewitch?
When I was a little girl, I played Witch all the time. I was The Grande Madame — the Queen of all the Witches. I even wrote spooky musicals for the neighborhood kids. We set up lawn chairs in my friend Susie’s backyard in Queens, and made our parents watch. If I had been more business minded, I would have sold tickets.
Now I teach music and something must have stayed with me, because October is my favorite month — Witchy Music Month. This week, I put on my pointy hat, plugged in my spooky orange lights, and played some scenes from The Wizard of Oz and Snow White for the kiddos.
Then I noticed something.
Both witches had big, hooked noses. What they used to call “Jewish Noses.” The noses that kept New York surgeons busy when we hit 18. Many of us got nose jobs. It wasn’t a secret. It was expected.
My mother said no, so I couldn’t get one, but it didn’t stop me from kvetching. (I also asked to be sent to a Swiss Finishing School — again, no.)
I looked it up. A big study in 1914 debunked the theory that Jews actually had big noses — 14% aquiline, compared with 10% of the regular population. Considering that Jews are a people sometimes “bottlenecked from geographic diversity” in a more modern study in 2022, meaning that we weren’t allowed to live anywhere we wanted, and definitely meaning that we inbred, it doesn’t sound like we owned Big Nose.
Tell everybody.
Still, the “hook-nosed” Jewish stereotype remains. Hard to get rid of stereotypes, and harder to get rid of what most people find conventionally attractive. Especially when Disney adds to the Big Hooked Nose in Snow White’s witch — with some well-placed warts.
The most famous Jewish Witch story was when King Saul wanted to go to battle with the Philistines and consulted the Witch of Endor. She summoned Prophet Samuel’s Spirit for the King. Alas Samuel prophesied Doom, and King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed the next day.
The irony was that King Saul had banned all witches, until he needed one himself.
And do you remember what TV writer Sol Sacks named Samantha’s mother in the TV series, Bewitched? Yes, Endora. I bet Sacks’ Hebrew School teacher was proud.
My son, Aaron, is most like me, and I guess most susceptible to my witchiness. He really believed when he was little, and I remember once picking him up from his second grade class. As I bent down to tie Aaron’s shoe, I felt 100 little eyes on me. When I straightened up, I was surrounded by a solemn crowd. A little girl pointed and said, “Aaron, she doesn’t look like a witch.”
I have to admit, I was a little insulted.
I also have to admit that I did use my powers on Aaron and I am a little ashamed. When he was six, he hated Shabbos because of its restrictions. No TV, no piano, no trips in the car to the 7-Eleven for Slurpees; and endless synagogue.
But this happened on a Wednesday night. He was in a mood and was smashing all her plastic swords and yelling, and I was on the phone trying to accept a music gig with a bride and groom. I told the couple I’d call them right back.
“Aaron,” I looked at him. “If you don’t stop right now — I’m gonna make it SHABBOS!”
He dropped his swords in petrified horror. “C-c-can you really DO that?”
And then I did something I’m even more ashamed of. I smiled.
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