#or diaspora and Israeli Jews have to give up our own safety

[madtomedgar]

The thing that's scaring me right now is how many well meaning gentiles just genuinely have no idea when something is an antisemitic canard and so they are internalizing and parrotting ideas that can will and do get Jews killed everywhere because it's couched in pro Palestinian rhetoric and all they know about this is that settler colonialism is bad and they are trusting any leftist or or professed leftists who are actually alt-right types actively using this horror to recruit. And all they knew about antisemitism is like. The Holocaust happened and right wingers are often antisemitic and that anti-zionism isn't necessarily antisemitism. So you have people who honestly do not know better reblogging excerpts from fucking Protocols and thinking it's good information that explains and supports the Palestinian struggle because someone replaced the word "Jew" with "Zionist," and misatributed it. And I know it sounds wrong to say that you need to learn about what antisemitism looks like and how it works in order to effectively advocate for the one group of people in history who are actually being oppressed by Jews-as-Jews, but if you can understand why you need to learn about and recognize transphobia in order to be an effective feminist, you can understand that.

Rootless cosmopolitan tropes, dual loyalty tropes, blood libel, accusations that (((they))) control the media, banks, or governments of other countries, assertions that it's all rich white privileged landlords from nyc/jersey, accusations of making up atrocities or causing their own oppression or using misplaced sympathy to silence criticism for nefarious ends or always lying doesn't stop being antisemitic just because someone used the word Zionist instead of Jews. Go read "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" so you can avoid becoming Jackson Hinkle's stooge on accident.

[sethshead]

BDS always dissembled, claiming it would not ban individual Israelis, but only that which was “tainted” by contact with the Israeli government.

We’ve been pointing out the lie for years and no one listened.

So now the activists have been emboldened. They’ll boycott non-Israeli Jews for being among the 90% of us who believe in our own self-determination. The goal was always to ostracize and isolate Jews in diaspora.

And now that the mask is off, I see no one else coming to our defense who hadn’t stood with us before. This is why that self-determination is such a non-negotiable point for us: we know how few friends we really have in galut, and how easy it would be to rationalize another regime of exclusion, humiliation, and quotas on us.

There is one place on earth were we need rely on no one else for our safety, and we will never give that place up.

[mikhalsarah]

Ill-omened Things

“Fine weapons are, nonetheless, ill-omened things.” -Tao Te Ching

I saw the Tree of Life shooting coming. Not specifically, of course. Generally.

 I said more than a decade ago that bad things were coming and I take no pleasure in being right. I said, over and again, as I watched the Jewish community wooed and courted by this and that purveyor of polite racism (be it Fox News, the Tories, or some little Evangelical church around the corner) that we were naive to think that just because we rubbed elbows with these people that we’d be spared from what they would set loose in the world. 

Why did the Jewish community keep it up? Your guess is ultimately as good as mine.... these were the sorts of bigots and nutjobs we wouldn’t have been caught dead with normally...but my guess is that waving an Israeli flag enthusiastically covereth a multitude of sins. We didn’t like them...oh, we didn’t like them, but for a long time we smiled and shock hands and nodded politely, as directed by the powers that be in the Jewish Community, who adored them. Those powers saw in our new philosemitic friends a weapon. A weapon in the fight to promote the nation of Israel, for the good of Jews everywhere. 

I saw an ill omen.

In some ways it was understandable. This is the way that the Jewish community has coped for nearly two millenia: Cozy up to power for protection even if it means making a deal with the devil and losing your soul. In the short-term this has worked well, but the long view of history betrays the truth...we get used by the powerful, who ultimately betray us to the mobs whose resentment we have incurred by standing by as the powerful exploit them. When they rise up in outrage the powerful will hand us over on a silver platter or simply flee to safety, leaving us behind. We took a whole new route in North America: For the first time we started making common cause with other groups who were oppressed and fighting to change the system. Realistically, it probably was the first time we were able to.

“In the 1950s, Jewish leaders, from rabbis to intellectuals to the heads of prominent institutions, argued that Jews would be only as accepted as the least-accepted people in America.” 

We had choices, and as the decades passed we chose to be....hypocritical, for one. To be right-wing in Israel where we were a powerful but resented majority and left-wing in North America where we were a tiny minority. And the world began to notice that we did not practice what we preached. Those on the Left began to criticise Israel (and increasingly, on the fringes, Jews), and those on the Right....well, some of them wanted to “support us” (for the dubious reasons of needing us for their Armageddon) and others wanted to emulate us and be rid of us in one fell sweep. After all, we had our own country now. Why should we get a country of our own, just for the Jews, and still get to hang about their countries giving them sanctimonious lectures on pluralism and tolerance? (Whilst also just having way too much influence, in their opinions)

We also chose to be at each other’s throats. We, too, divided into camps of Left and Right, particularly from the 80s onward, when acceptance opened the doors of country clubs and gated communities and we started receiving callers from Team Moral Majority. I suspect some Jews on both sides of the divide forgot there was ever a time it was otherwise. And it goes without saying that we divided religiously, which is not at all new under the sun, or that the political divides often went hand in hand with the religious divides. Often, but by no means always.

I must admit a certain admiration for the organizers of Jewish life. It was no mean feat to keep the rank and file Jews united for the better part of four decades....selling left-wing Jews on Israel being a modern civilization with feminism, gay rights, beaches, and nightclubs... and selling right-wing Jews on Israel as a bastion of strength and security amongst the Muslim hordes....all while selling religious Jews on the chance of living to see the Messiah via the Flowering of the Redemption. I’m not anti-Israel, nor am I pro-Israel. The early Zionists aspired for Israel to be a country like any other, and like any other country it is complex and often contradictory. There was a little of something to sell everyone on. Any good salesperson is part stage magician. It’s important to keep an audience’s eyes on what you want them to see and away from what will ruin the show....and the organized Jewish community has certainly excelled at misdirection where Israel is concerned. It was bound to unravel eventually, but kudos where due. Getting Jews to do anything en masse is like herding cats, and they kept us all on the same page for nearly half a century...so willing to support Israel that we eventually got into bed with the very sorts of people who had spent two millenia driving us out of Israel and nearly every other country we’d lived in.

Am I blaming the victims in Pittsburgh or intimating that they deserved it in any fashion for supporting Israel, as I’m sure the many groups meeting in the Tree of Life synagogue did? Absolutely not...I believe this, or something like it, would have happened regardless. Even leaving aside that Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and were always bound to catch flak for it in the event of a rightward lurch, Jews are a tiny proportion of the population and our votes and voices hardly carry the day in any direction. The Evangelicals would have used Israel  for their own devices with or without us...that’s the wondrous thing about Christian Zionism, no actual Jews required. For most of history Christianity considered itself the New Israel so in our absence the Jews 2.0 would, sooner or later, simply have set out to reconquer the Holy Land themselves...as they have tried to do so many times before. Some Jews continue to harbour a sneaking suspicion that they might one day revert to form and try again.

But we might have slowed the descent into madness down, just a little. And we didn’t have to give it our blessing and allow our name to be used to justify it. It was just easier to go on not looking at what was happening with Israel...either in Israel itself or with her supporters abroad. Diaspora Jews could remain critical of the countries they remained married to, yet continue to carry a torch for Israel... a beautiful ideal untouched by the harsh reality of living with her everyday and seeing her skivvies hanging over the shower bar. 

"One thing that I think was made stark this week is that there are many Jews who have liked many of Trump's policies on Israel, but I hope this week that American Jews have woken up to the price of that bargain: They have traded policies that they like for the values that have sustained the Jewish people – and frankly, this country –  forever: Welcoming the stranger; dignity for all human beings; equality under the law; respect for dissent; love of truth. These are the things we are losing under this president – and no policy is worth that price." -Bari Weiss

 Ultimately I’m discussing the WAY in which Israel was supported, not the fact of it....unquestioningly, uncritically and surpassing all other values in importance. As if it were one of the Ten Commandments themselves. With a willingness to turn a blind eye to what was oozing out from the underbelly of the Right in exchange for “support”...an ooze which which didn’t stay among the Gentiles. The things I heard said around the kiddush table sometimes, chiefly about Muslims but not limited to them, sometimes chilled me to the bone (and keep in mind this is a liberal synagogue that I attended at the time). Discussion about nuking entire nations to rid us of a few jihadis hiding in the hills, abuse towards recent immigrants, you name it. The increasingly impolite racism of our new friends was creeping in, putting its feet up and making itself quite at home. 

The Jewish leadership was so enamoured of its new weapons, so dazzled, that the ill omens gathering on the horizon were simply not on the radar. Like so many fearful people given a gun, some felt suddenly invincible...which tends to  bring a reckless disregard for reality as its plus-one. What? Our new friends turn on us? Blasphemy! To be fair the Pittsburgh shooter is neither evangelical, nor is he a fan of Trump...mainly because Trump is “surrounded by kikes” (his words, not mine) and is “not enough of an asshole” (Bill Maher’s words, not mine)....so he can’t really be called a fair-weather friend but some of the stuff written by alleged Evangelicals in the wake of Trump has been only marginally better. (Following is a screenshot from the comments section of a major Jewish site, most of which have more regular commentators who are Christians than Jews these days)

 It’s more that our so-called friends have no real control over the rabid dogs at their feet, but also don’t want to put them down. Sort of a, “It’s sad when they maul our friends, but they might be useful later so we don’t want to be hasty.”, thing. We might need shock troops for the war against a caravan of Mexican converts to Islam, or something.  So in the wake of this, they will shed a few tears, make a few heartfelt (but suitably vague) condemnations about hatred and violence “on both sides” and wait for it to all blow over. But they won’t really DO anything.

They won’t, for example, make any attempt at gun control. Instead they will litter the comments of major news websites with advice to Jews on the need to be armed, vigilant and vehemently opposed to the idea of the synagogue as a gun-free space. The average age of Jews shot in this attack was 73. Exactly how many septegenarians do these people know who could get the drop on someone who surprised them with an assault rifle? 

As if we need weapons in the hands of untrained civilians, who are as likely to shoot each other as the assailant, assuming they can even reach their gun before the bullets start flying and haven’t dropped it on the floor from their hands shaking in panic. And like we need guns in the hands of most Jews...I’ve seen Jews attempt to assemble a tool-free Sukkah kit and put a pole through the stained glass window of the Sanctuary in the process. I wouldn’t give most of my fellow Jews power tools, much less ballistic weaponry. Jews who grew up in the age of the First-person Shooter might be an exception to that, but most of them have been recently bar-mitzvahed and won’t be seen or heard from until marriage or the bris of their first born sons, whichever comes first. You want Jews who can defend themselves?.. teach them krav maga. And shut the doors before services start. If nothing else people will be forced to show up in time to avoid a collision with the Torah procession. (If I begin to sound glib here I’m not. Sarcasm and dark humour are my coping mechanisms)

Which is the gist of the problem. People don’t care about the Torah procession, or the Torah itself, anymore. Israel has long eclipsed Torah as the central value of modern Jewish communal life. Not to say we have no other values, but Israel trumps every one...even tikkun olam, which is hardly enough to base a religion on either, though not for lack of trying. Israel is, at least, a Torah value of a sort, since it has saved lives and continues to have potential to do so, and Torah does allow us to set aside most laws to save a life....most laws, but not all.  As one Rabbi so wryly put it, “I could get up on the bimah and say that God doesn’t exist and no one would bat an eye, but if I criticized Israel all hell would break loose”. (I paraphrase here as I seem to have lost the link to that quote but that’s the gist of it). You always know what’s really important to people by paying attention to what will piss them off most if you attack it.

The Hasids I studied with would say that this alone is the reason for the uptick in antisemitism and violence...we have lost our way and the gentiles are being sent to remind us that we don’t belong in their country clubs in the first place. I can’t speak to the divine incitation of the gentiles to violence, but we certainly have forgotten a lot. I went to my city’s vigil for Tree of Life and spent much of it shaking my head in disbelief. The presiding Rabbi recited “All the world is a very narrow bridge, the essential thing is to have no fear at all” which he then attributed to Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlov. Aside from being a very cynical and paranoid quotation, it doesn’t belong to R. Nahman at all. It belongs to a popular  musician, Rabbi Baruch Chait, who took the liberty of paraphrasing the Bratzlover Rebbe for a song he performed for soldiers during the Yom Kippur War. The depressing sentiment of the whole world being a dangerous and insecure place being meant to inspire the soldiers, I can only assume. Ofra Haza’s vocals notwithstanding, it certainly never inspired me.

 Despite R. Nahman’s frequent bouts of depression and struggles with his faith, I assure you, no such depressing phrase crossed his actual lips...what he said was more along the lines of “When a person must cross a very narrow bridge the essential thing is not to frighten yourself at all”. Sage advice: don’t recklessly forget the danger, yet don’t dwell on it until you are too paralyzed to put one foot in front of the other. But we cannot distinguish one Rav from another, and so we take the advice of the lesser thinking it from the greater. That and we seem to perversely delight in scaring ourselves half to death.

Not that a better grasp of Who’s Who in Rabbinical History necessarily helps. Many of the Orthodox are in a state of profound denial about either the dangers of the Right, or the ability and willingness of God to bail them out....something God neglected to do during the Holocaust, when the frei who ran to the treifah medinah were saved while pious rabbis were burned alongside their yeshivas. I suspect they, too, have spent too much time around Evangelicals and have picked up their belief in a god who always pulls off a win for the home team. Jews spend three weeks a year mourning a Temple that got destroyed twice, the rebuilding of which we’ve been awaiting for all of a two millenia exile that God still hasn’t bailed us out of. You’d think we’d know better. 

And Israel is no help. Liberal Jews in America, like secular Jews in Israel, don’t breed. At least, they rarely breed and seldom with other Jews. It is rather inevitable that they will diminish in numbers, in enthusiasm, or both. So Israel spends much of its time courting the growing number of very enthusiastic Evangelical Gentiles and ignoring any groups of Jews with an average of four children or fewer. As with the aforementioned comments sections of Jewish sites, it leads to a bizarre state of affairs in which Christians now have more say, and sway, regarding Israel than the Jews whose eternal homeland it supposedly is. I await with trepidation the day when Israel finally decides that it should just amend the Law of Return accordingly.

Despite knowing that they explicity want to christianize the Jews, their numbers and political clout are just too tempting to pass up; Israel and the establishment Zionists are now utterly dependant on them. There is a sort of delusional belief that this strain of philosemitic Christianity and its cheerleading will continue on forever when, truthfully, it might not last another generation. Neither millenial Evangelicals nor non-White/European ones are all that fussed, and even some older White Evangelicals are suffering from “End-times Fatigue” or starting to ask how American Evangelicals have been able to turn their backs on fellow Christians in Israel for so long now. Jews are not the only ones who have carved an idol out of a country, it seems. 

To my relief only one speaker was crass enough to play the Israel card at the vigil, and it didn’t go over well. Though undoubtedly well-intentioned, it really did come across a bit like capitalizing on someone’s disaster to score points. I think the phrase is, “Too soon”. The only speaker to get riotous applause was the Rabbi who simply told the crowd more or less the same thing as R. Nahman, “We must not let fear stop us!” before he sang a Leonard Cohen song to end the vigil. Two nice ladies walking home in front of me wondered who this Leonard Cohen was. “He must be another Rabbi” they decided.

In the words of the immortal R. Cohen, “Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”. And the reality is we are standing before a very narrow bridge that we have no choice but to cross.