As American Jews, we are proud and engaged citizens of the United States. We are loyal to America, pay taxes to her, support and often have fought in her armed forces, often giving our lives for her. See, e.g., the website of the Jewish War Veterans of America at www.jwv.org . Many Jews have served America as public office holders, government administration professionals, and military professionals. We celebrate America’s holidays as our own, because they are own: Thanksgiving as a day to thank G-d for bringing us to these shores of a New World, far away from the continents of blood libels, Crusades, and Inquisitions. Columbus Day with thanks that he took that wrong turn and found this place. Veterans Day with gratitude for all who have fought under our flag for freedom. Presidents’ Day to celebrate a tradition of American political leadership that consistently has affirmed our place in America. Memorial Day to remember our fallen soldiers who fought so that America could be safe for liberty. Independence Day for marking the historic break from tyranny and the pursuit of liberty. Thus, our commitment to the country of America is primary and all-engrossing.
At the same time, we also are part of an eternal people, the Jewish People, with our eyes and hearts always turned to Tzion – to Zion – to the heart of Jerusalem where G-d set His eternal dwelling place on the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. For two thousand years of bitter Jewish Exile, through dispersion and persecution, we never abandoned our bond with and yearning for Zion. In our daily prayers, we faced and still face towards the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. Three times daily, we prayed and still pray for G-d’s return to Jerusalem. After meals that we eat with bread, we recited and still recite our prayer that He rebuild Jerusalem speedily in our days. For two thousand years, we sat and still sit on floors, weeping bitter tears by candlelight as we remembered Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av Night and Day, mourning and fasting for a return to the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem and for restoration of the Jewish People to the land that G-d promised Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (Jacob). The Holy Land, then, is part of our core heritage as Jewish People, and we cannot be separated from the Land of Israel and our connection to our forebears who lived and died there. Indeed, many proud American Jews, like Jews all over the world, arranged through the centuries, and still arrange, to be laid to rest in Israel after a full and rich life.
When the State of Israel was reestablished in 1948, that event marked an historically awesome and momentous event in Jewish faith. After nearly two thousand years of never ever giving up the claim and the hope, we saw its fulfillment begun: a Jewish Commonwealth reborn in the land we spiritually never had left. By 1967, when three Arab armies based in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan forced Israel to fight for her survival in a fearsome and ultimately miraculous defensive war that resulted with Israel’s liberation of East Jerusalem and the reunification of the City of Jerusalem as the temporal capital of the State of Israel and as the Eternal Spiritual Capital of the Jewish People, our lives as Jews everywhere were changed forever.
Israel’s independence, then, is part of our essence as Jews. Militarily, our loyalties are to America. Politically, to America. Economically, to America. Spiritually, even as Catholics throughout the world turn to the Vatican and as Moslems make their haj to Mecca, our eyes and hearts turn to Jerusalem and to Israel. We celebrate her independence as our own. We send money to support her institutions. We lobby our elected officials to take steps to offset those who would endanger her. We visit her, again and again. We send our children to learn there, whether at a yeshiva seminary for a year after high school, or for a Birthright trip, or an Aish program in spiritual discovery, or any of scores of other programs. We learn the ancient Hebrew language with modern inflections, pray almost exclusively in Hebrew, and we visit the holy sites in Bethlehem (where Rachel is buried), Shechem (Nablus, where Joseph lies), and of course Hebron (the resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah). Some of us plan our retirements to include significant time in Israel. So many of us, by now, have family living in Israel – cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, grandchildren, and others – who not only speak pure Hebrew but with Israeli accents.
Israel Independence Day, then, is in good measure our celebration, too. We are invested in Israel – spiritually, emotionally, historically through our ancestors, materially. We take pride in Israel’s strides and advances, concern ourselves with her evolution, and plan our lives with the knowledge and understanding that we live in the most miraculous of times, an era that our grandparents and theirs barely could have imagined – an age and a time when many millions of Jews have returned to live in a Jewish country in Israel, with borders open to Jews everywhere so that we never again need be a people with nowhere to flee from persecution. Ours is the miracle era with the city of Jerusalem reunited and now with many hundreds of thousands more pouring into and rebuilding the cities of Judea and Samaria in the heart of our patrimony where Judaism all began. Regardless of whether a particular American Jew personally ever will set foot in Israel, much less live there, the day of Israel’s independence – Yom HaAtzma’ut – is a day for each and every American Jew to celebrate heartily and gratefully, within our hearts, among our families, as part of our communities, and as an eternal Jewish people whose spark never will cease and to whose eternal existence the modern State of Israel bears existential witness.
Showing posts with label Jerusalem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerusalem. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
Open Letter to a Jewish Student re the Olive Tree Initiative
Dear Friend,
You have written several people to explain the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) to them. I have read your words, and I share some thoughts.
1. You are active in something you cannot control. You will not always be at UCI. Not everyone thinks like you. With each ensuing year, the OTI becomes something that less-devoted Jews will choose to do also. Some will do it because they hear it is “awesome.” Cool foods, cool music, and you get to meet people who even know terrorists. (But don’t worry – Gomez will be there, so it’s safe.) Some will hear that it is fabulous on a resumé if you want to apply to a major law school or MBA program. Little by little, the founding generation and its successor passes, and what is left is an institutional protoplasm that takes on a life of its own, which you no longer can control. Not every trip to Jenin will be met with responses by Jews who understand why Israel had to smash through those alleys and kill terrorists, in the aftermath of an interminable series of suicide bombings emanating specifically from Jenin-trained suicide terrorists. They will see the propaganda movie that is shown to UCI Olive Tree Initiative students in Jenin, with the Arab body parts, and they will wonder why Israel had to be so cruel. They will hear about Jenin as a “Palestinian Refugee Camp” and will not even have the presence of mind to ask how the people in Jenin can call themselves “refugees” if they now supposedly are repatriated and live in the land from which they supposedly fled, “Palestine.” They will hear the George Rishmawis telling them at OTI programs about how Israelis literally shoot live ammunition randomly at Arabs. They will see the Israeli military checkpoints at the Security Fence, and it will lack context. It would be like someone who died in the 1990s coming back to life and seeing the TSA security lines at the airport. If people do not like the long oines and invasive body searches with context, imagine the impact of seeing it without context. Maybe there will be one or two Jews on the trip who know a bit, although definitely not what you know. But you will not be there. Who will be there to ask the Arab Palestine propagandist – who bemoans the “Israeli occupation” and says “all we ever wanted was our land” – the obvious question: “You had the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip before June 1967, so what were you trying to accomplish when you founded the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964? What were you trying to liberate when the anti-Israel Arab terrorist movement formally began in 1964?” Instead, the least-ignorant-Jew on the trip – a far cry from the most knowledgeable Jew – will become the Zionist voice: “Well, East Jerusalem. I guess Israel should let that be the capital of Arab Palestine, but Israel also should be allowed to have some of Jerusalem. And Israel should not have cut so deeply into the Arab West Bank – “Palestine” – with that fence just to protect a few settlers who probably don’t belong there. OK, guys, that’s my compromise, what’s yours?” Yes, there will be OTI visits with the Israel side, too, for “balance.” But, unlike the monolithic Palestine side that does not accept a permanent Jewish-sovereign polity anywhere in the Middle East, the Israel side will be diverse. There will even be the retired Israeli general who looks back on the 1967 liberation of Jerusalem – “haKotel b’yadeinu!” – and will apologize to the UCI students on the OTI adventure for his having been caught in the same "mindless euphoria” back then that caused Israelis to lose sight of the big picture. But he will assure his UCI OTI audience that he has atoned over the years and has been active in several “peace” campaigns in recent years, even writing the Israeli Prime Minister that Israel has it all wrong – and, after all, he knows because he served under the Prime Minister’s brother.
2. You continually are under the misapprehension that Daniel Wehrenfennig is something more than a grad student who just got a Ph.D. a year ago. Despite what has been conveyed to you, which you have conveyed to me, he is not a world-famous nor even a significant peace maker. He has some publications. I have publications, too. I published a law review study that was cited by at least nine different prominent federal judges in handing down significant multi-million-dollar federal decisions. That does not make me a Supreme Court justice. This fellow is not Richard Holbrooke. He is not Henry Kissinger. He is a fellow with some publications on ideas for citizen involvement in peacemaking, from Northern Ireland to “Occupied Palestine.” It is like a lovely slim blonde woman or a great-looking hunk of a guy coming to Hollywood and expecting to be hired immediately for a starring role in the first movie for which she or he auditions. In time, she or he is waiting tables. At a seedy bar. You see, the problem is that I come at it from the perspective of someone who not only loves all of Israel, including the communities of Yehuda and Shomron, including the Neve Aliza community I helped establish in 1985 in Karnei Shomron, but also from the perspective of a rabbi. I am a rabbi who cares about Jews. This is not a good program for Jews, and it does not bring Jewish students an inch closer to Judaism, to Torah, to Shabbat, to mitzvot. An OTI Friday night at Aish HaTorah with a group that is 80 percent non-Jewish doesn’t cut it, particularly when the program spends Shabbat Day in “Arab Palestine.” A program that appallingly but predictably spends most of Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine” and Jordan doesn’t cut it – even if they tell the Jews that “Hey, if you want to leave the group for two days for your holiday, that’s OK.” I expect that from a law firm where I work. I expect that at a public school in Iowa. That does not cut it as a program for Jewish students to be spending two weeks in Israel.
3. Note that this issue never really energized me until the salaried Hillel director and the Hillel student president each opted to launch mass-distributed character-assassination letters against a member of my shul. Those letters were sent to me and thousands of other Jews on Shabbat. What Jewish organization publicly desecrates Shabbat so blithely? And they really calumniated her. Can you imagine? Based on the dozens upon dozens upon dozens of signatures to the letter defaming this woman, every single UCI Jewish student leader, every UCI Jewish student group president and vice-president, every last Jewish group on campus, and dozens other present and former UCI Jewish students all supposedly were so infuriated by her that they supposedly all signed onto a hate-filled letter within a day? In a lifetime, you will meet many Jewish leaders and even rabbis whom you will think have sold out a bit, slowed down a bit, lost whatever idealism or gleam in their eyes they may ever have had. You will hear them patronize you and talk to you about “life experience.” Well, let me tell you: I have been there, done that. I also am an activist. I still respect your fire without seeing you as “some stupid dopey kid who needs to grow up.” If I thought you were unworthy, I never would be devoting this kind of time and effort to write you as extensively as I am writing you here. I cherish and value student activists for Israel. But just as I do not superimpose on you a prejudice that you are too young for a serious discussion, don’t you superimpose on me a prejudice that I am too old. And, as a Jewish activist myself, I will tell you that in forty years of activism, going back to my first campaign – to convince NBC to renew “Star Trek” for another season – I never have gotten that many signatures onto a petition or a letter, that 100% a response, in less than a day. So there was something rotten immediately. I am telling you that the two letters that were mass-distributed that Shabbat bordered on legally actionable slander. More, the three separate letters were coordinated – a campaign coordinated among the Federation professional, the Hillel professional, and the Hillel student leader. And those letters not only were nasty, not only may have been legally actionable, but also included – in at least one case – significant forgery of names who did not sign onto it and even opposed it. Those letters attempted to a destroy a good woman over a possible scrivener’s error, but instead they opened huge new cans of worms, revealing far more than any of us had expected. That is what it took to wake up many people in this community that something here is not right. If they can defame and destroy this woman today, and we remain silent, what will stop them from defaming someone else next time? So those of us who never stopped being activists – just got detoured a few extra exits by the need to rear children, put them through high school and college, and earn income to pay bills for the kinds of personal needs (electric, gas, water) that are not funded by the Federation’s Rose Project – woke up. We found each other. We started doing some research. And we could not believe what we learned.
4. We found, as much to our shock as to our chagrin, that there is a cover-up in play. Suddenly UCI Hillel conveys that it never has supported or advocated or encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. First of all, that is a lie. It is not merely a fabrication, a falsification, or a mendacity. This is not Foggy Bottom nor “Cat on a Hit Tin Roof.” Here, we talk plainly. I am a congregational rabbi in Irvine, a member of the national executive committee of one national rabbinic body, a leader in another national rabbinic body, a former Chief Articles Editor of a prominent law review and former clerk to a nationally prominent federal appeals court judge, and I am saying it plainly: It is an outright lie by UCI Hillel. By contrast, the truth is that UCI Hillel actively advocated for and encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. I know what Tzvi Raviv told me, and I know what Bruce Manning told me. And I am a bit surprised that you seem unaware that Hillel encouraged the formation of OTI. So, as always happens in politics when the truth gets uncomfortable and difficult to answer, people give up on answering the truth and start creating “straw men” instead, knocking them down gleefully. So we now are being told by certain Hillel spokespeople that the activists are accusing Hillel of paying money towards OTI. Not true. That Hillel is accused of supporting OTI with money. Not true. Rather, Hillel stands accused of having been among those encouraging the formation and establishment of OTI, and it stands accused of having used its resources to encourage UCI Jewish students to go on OTI programs. And it is time for UCI Hillel to stop covering up and instead to admit the truth of its role in the formative year of Olive Tree Initiative. That – along with an apology to the Jewish community and to the Jewish students it misguided. Similarly, we now are being told that the activists accuse Federation of funding OTI. Not True. Of financially supporting OTI. Not true. Rather, Federation stands accused of taking Jewish charitable funds during this Great Recession, a time when Jewish Family Services of Orange County was forced to abandon its independence and to merge into Federation because there no longer was enough Jewish charitable money available to it, and giving those Jewish funds towards the airfare and tuition of Jewish students attending the Olive Tree Initiative program. Again, that Federation money made it possible for those UCI Jewish students to travel with OTI to “Palestine” to hear those terrible anti-Israel speeches in “Palestine,” to see that hateful movie in Jenin, to hear George Rishmawi threaten that, if the demands of the “Palestinian peacemakers” are not met this year, then the “peace activists” of “Palestine” may well have no alternative but to turn to violence next year.
5. More “straw men” ensued. We were told that, in our ignorance, we are calling OTI anti-Semitic. Not true. That we are calling Daniel Wehrenfennig anti-Semitic. Not true. That we oppose Wehrenfennig because he is a German. Not true. That we regard OTI as anti-Israel. Not true. That we regard Wehrenfennig as anti-Israel. Not true. Rather, what is true is that we regard the OTI as a terribly unfortunate and misguided initiative, clutched at by Dean Michael Drake and Vice President Gomez as a publicity bonanza to show their donors that, you see, we are doing something about the Muslim Student Union and its annual “Hate Israel Week” and its incessant disruptions of Jewish speakers ranging from Prof. Daniel Pipes to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. To paraphrase in common parlance, once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “Look, Jews, we have the Olive Tree Initiative. So stop bothering us. And stop telling Merage that, all because he is a Jew, he should stop giving us tens of millions of dollars. OK?” Likewise, originally, the Federation and Hillel proudly also bragged about their OTI involvement. It was once upon a time. Now, in the face of the revelations about what actually happens at OTI programs, they have reverted. Now they deny, and once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “We never said that. We don’t support it. We don’t fund it.” It is like Bill Clinton denying that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky. “I did not have sex with that woman.” Then they tell him she preserved a dress with his DNA on it. “Oh. Well, in that case . . . .” So now we are told that it is not Federation money; rather, it is Rose Project money. But the Federation is the Rose Project, and the Rose Project is the Federation. Let us hypothesize that Rose came and said to Federation “We want to donate money to start an Institute for Historical Review, to do research disproving that the Holocaust ever happened. We will fund research to prove the Holocaust is a hoax.” Would that project be accepted as an utterly independent “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Denying the Holocaust”? Let us hypothesize, with greater warmth, that Rose came and said “We have met and tested Jewish kids in Orange County who go to TVT, and we are beyond-shocked at how little they know after twelve years at TVT, so we want to start a million-dollar-fund to start a Modern Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine for grades 1-12.” Do you think – for a nano-second – that there would be a “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Establishing an Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine?” D’ya think so? The reality is that the Rose Project’s funding of those airfares and tuitions for the Olive Tree Initiative students is part-and-parcel of a project that the Jewish Federation of Orange County proudly has accepted under its wings, and Federation boastfully has bragged about that financial subventing of OTI whenever it has suited Federation’s public relations purposes.
6. More straw men: We are being told that activists have written that [student name withheld] is anti-Israel because he/ she supported OTI. Not true. Rather, we regret that the student or students, who care about Israel, have failed to see the longer-term consequences of their promoting OTI now. It is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. In the end, then, Jews are the losers – primarily Jewish students. Think about it: If this Olive Tree Initiative, which you tell us is so good for the Jews, really were so sound and worthwhile, why would UCI Hillel and the Jewish Federation of Orange County now, before your very eyes, be denying their demonstrable direct involvement in OTI? Alas, this misguided initiative now has spread to two other far-flung UC campuses where there are even fewer Jewish students like you who would know what to say in Jenin. This is not what may have been intended by those within the Jewish community who helped create it, but this is what has been created, a program that neither will bring peace to the region nor harm it, but will be used manipulatively by third-parties who were not on the original radar, including but not limited to: (i) the UCI Administration, manipulating this OTI program to excuse themselves for their abysmal record on protecting Jewish students walking along Ring Road during the worst moments of “Hate Israel Week” and failing to assure that the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel could speak with dignity to a UCI audience; and (ii) future Jewish students looking for something awesome for their resumes, while also enjoying an awesome Mideast experience in the hot spots like Jenin, in the company of people who count terrorists among their acquaintances, and maybe parlaying it to a great law or business graduate school – devoting their Mideast experience to “doing OTI” rather than, say, doing Birthright-Israel. And is it not ironic? The Olive Tree Initiative already was in full bloom, supposedly having peeled away layers of animosity and distrust that underlay prior Muslim Student Union (MSU) actions endangering UCI as a campus safe for Jews to hear Jewish speakers, when – nevertheless and despite OTI – the MSU still broke up Ambassador Oren’s appearance at UCI.
7. A final “straw,” perhaps better characterized as “the last straw.” One of the students would tell us that “We students are the new leaders of the American Jewish community. We are the future. We know best what is best for UCI. Your role in the community is to give us the funds. And otherwise – just butt out.” And so, a word to a friend. Irvine is our community, too. We, too, are its leaders. In the Irvine and greater Orange County Jewish community, there are nationally prominent experts on Israel and the Middle East, published authors, trained and experienced teachers, leaders capable of offering Israel advocacy training and teaching, Jewish leaders who actually fly across the country to teach and train others. There are Ph.D.s and scholars, scholarly researchers and exciting speakers. We are not called upon. Our offered services repeatedly are rejected. So be it. A $5,000 honorarium from an East Coast Jewish audience pays more than would the pro bono (free of charge) presentation that the same expert among us offers locally as a loving service to the community. But let us be clear: This issue transcends the students on campus. Perhaps you may have seen Breaking Away, an Academy Award®-winning flick. Its subplot is instructive. We the Jewish community live here in Irvine today, and we will be living here tomorrow, long after several of today’s UCI college and grad students have moved on. We have a long-term stake in the community, and we therefore have a stake in the neighborhood campus that brings occasional Jew-haters (including Jewish Jew-haters) out of their respective rat holes and into our midst. We are asked – even guilted – to contribute money to UCI Hillel, apprised that it is our obligation to do so because we have a stake. I personally have made such a donation to UCI Hillel. Some of us even have devoted hundreds of hours of our own personal time to students at UCI, even at the expense of personal family time, vacation time, and at the expense of money. We have seen students come into Irvine, then move on, much as I moved on in my life 35 years ago from the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, and subsequently from the Westwood campus of UCLA Law School. Thus, it is important to recognize that, in the course of a lifetime, many of our respective lives are intersecting concentric circles, elliptical encounters. The world does not revolve around me, and it does not revolve around this or that student. One day it is about mobilizing the Irvine and Orange County Jewish community to help the former salaried Hillel Director actualize his hopes and agenda, and then he is gone, forgotten, but we still are here. Jewish organizational professionals come and go. We have seen the revolving doors at the Irvine Bureau of Jewish Education, the American Jewish Committee, the Tarbut v’ Torah school, and yes at UCI Hillel. Through each of the transitions, we donate money and time, patience and passion and participation. One day it is the new Hillel Program Director arriving all excited with big plans, and another day it is someone else with a different program agenda. But we the Orange County Jewish community remain here, committed and devoted to this place and to our friends and families and dreams, realizing that our tzedakah dollars are being allocated in ways that we find objectionable. While phantom students’ names are signed to documents without the signatories’ knowledge, assent, authorization – and in some cases over their explicit objections – it is we, the community, that receive the defamatory letters, breaking the peaceful moment as the Shabbat ends. We do not heatedly return the letters with overheated, over-exercised verbiage, telling the senders: “The students on campus are the leaders of tomorrow, so solicit the Big Gifts and Major Donations from them. It is they, the students at UCI, who alone are impacted at UCI, so let them tend to themselves, and how dare you approach with a fundraiser’s solicitations those of us who are not on campus?”
But there is a time for everything under the heavens: A time to be still, and a time to speak. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Among us as Jews there always is a time to love and a time for peace. But this also is a time to speak and time to refrain from embracing. There will be absolutely no support for the Federation of Orange County from this quarter, nor from those who share my concerns, until the Federation and Hillel publicly withdraw from their associations with the Olive Tree Initiative. Not one penny. My desk is loaded with ample Jewish charitable alternatives to support, and tzedakah never stops in my home. But tzedakah must be just. And there is never a shortage of worthy Jewish causes to support that never would spend a penny of Jewish tzedakah money to fly a local Jewish student to “Palestine” for a film viewing in Jenin depicting the Israeli people as barbaric and cruel murderers. No, not a charity for me.
-- Rabbi Dov Fischer
You have written several people to explain the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) to them. I have read your words, and I share some thoughts.
1. You are active in something you cannot control. You will not always be at UCI. Not everyone thinks like you. With each ensuing year, the OTI becomes something that less-devoted Jews will choose to do also. Some will do it because they hear it is “awesome.” Cool foods, cool music, and you get to meet people who even know terrorists. (But don’t worry – Gomez will be there, so it’s safe.) Some will hear that it is fabulous on a resumé if you want to apply to a major law school or MBA program. Little by little, the founding generation and its successor passes, and what is left is an institutional protoplasm that takes on a life of its own, which you no longer can control. Not every trip to Jenin will be met with responses by Jews who understand why Israel had to smash through those alleys and kill terrorists, in the aftermath of an interminable series of suicide bombings emanating specifically from Jenin-trained suicide terrorists. They will see the propaganda movie that is shown to UCI Olive Tree Initiative students in Jenin, with the Arab body parts, and they will wonder why Israel had to be so cruel. They will hear about Jenin as a “Palestinian Refugee Camp” and will not even have the presence of mind to ask how the people in Jenin can call themselves “refugees” if they now supposedly are repatriated and live in the land from which they supposedly fled, “Palestine.” They will hear the George Rishmawis telling them at OTI programs about how Israelis literally shoot live ammunition randomly at Arabs. They will see the Israeli military checkpoints at the Security Fence, and it will lack context. It would be like someone who died in the 1990s coming back to life and seeing the TSA security lines at the airport. If people do not like the long oines and invasive body searches with context, imagine the impact of seeing it without context. Maybe there will be one or two Jews on the trip who know a bit, although definitely not what you know. But you will not be there. Who will be there to ask the Arab Palestine propagandist – who bemoans the “Israeli occupation” and says “all we ever wanted was our land” – the obvious question: “You had the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip before June 1967, so what were you trying to accomplish when you founded the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964? What were you trying to liberate when the anti-Israel Arab terrorist movement formally began in 1964?” Instead, the least-ignorant-Jew on the trip – a far cry from the most knowledgeable Jew – will become the Zionist voice: “Well, East Jerusalem. I guess Israel should let that be the capital of Arab Palestine, but Israel also should be allowed to have some of Jerusalem. And Israel should not have cut so deeply into the Arab West Bank – “Palestine” – with that fence just to protect a few settlers who probably don’t belong there. OK, guys, that’s my compromise, what’s yours?” Yes, there will be OTI visits with the Israel side, too, for “balance.” But, unlike the monolithic Palestine side that does not accept a permanent Jewish-sovereign polity anywhere in the Middle East, the Israel side will be diverse. There will even be the retired Israeli general who looks back on the 1967 liberation of Jerusalem – “haKotel b’yadeinu!” – and will apologize to the UCI students on the OTI adventure for his having been caught in the same "mindless euphoria” back then that caused Israelis to lose sight of the big picture. But he will assure his UCI OTI audience that he has atoned over the years and has been active in several “peace” campaigns in recent years, even writing the Israeli Prime Minister that Israel has it all wrong – and, after all, he knows because he served under the Prime Minister’s brother.
2. You continually are under the misapprehension that Daniel Wehrenfennig is something more than a grad student who just got a Ph.D. a year ago. Despite what has been conveyed to you, which you have conveyed to me, he is not a world-famous nor even a significant peace maker. He has some publications. I have publications, too. I published a law review study that was cited by at least nine different prominent federal judges in handing down significant multi-million-dollar federal decisions. That does not make me a Supreme Court justice. This fellow is not Richard Holbrooke. He is not Henry Kissinger. He is a fellow with some publications on ideas for citizen involvement in peacemaking, from Northern Ireland to “Occupied Palestine.” It is like a lovely slim blonde woman or a great-looking hunk of a guy coming to Hollywood and expecting to be hired immediately for a starring role in the first movie for which she or he auditions. In time, she or he is waiting tables. At a seedy bar. You see, the problem is that I come at it from the perspective of someone who not only loves all of Israel, including the communities of Yehuda and Shomron, including the Neve Aliza community I helped establish in 1985 in Karnei Shomron, but also from the perspective of a rabbi. I am a rabbi who cares about Jews. This is not a good program for Jews, and it does not bring Jewish students an inch closer to Judaism, to Torah, to Shabbat, to mitzvot. An OTI Friday night at Aish HaTorah with a group that is 80 percent non-Jewish doesn’t cut it, particularly when the program spends Shabbat Day in “Arab Palestine.” A program that appallingly but predictably spends most of Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine” and Jordan doesn’t cut it – even if they tell the Jews that “Hey, if you want to leave the group for two days for your holiday, that’s OK.” I expect that from a law firm where I work. I expect that at a public school in Iowa. That does not cut it as a program for Jewish students to be spending two weeks in Israel.
3. Note that this issue never really energized me until the salaried Hillel director and the Hillel student president each opted to launch mass-distributed character-assassination letters against a member of my shul. Those letters were sent to me and thousands of other Jews on Shabbat. What Jewish organization publicly desecrates Shabbat so blithely? And they really calumniated her. Can you imagine? Based on the dozens upon dozens upon dozens of signatures to the letter defaming this woman, every single UCI Jewish student leader, every UCI Jewish student group president and vice-president, every last Jewish group on campus, and dozens other present and former UCI Jewish students all supposedly were so infuriated by her that they supposedly all signed onto a hate-filled letter within a day? In a lifetime, you will meet many Jewish leaders and even rabbis whom you will think have sold out a bit, slowed down a bit, lost whatever idealism or gleam in their eyes they may ever have had. You will hear them patronize you and talk to you about “life experience.” Well, let me tell you: I have been there, done that. I also am an activist. I still respect your fire without seeing you as “some stupid dopey kid who needs to grow up.” If I thought you were unworthy, I never would be devoting this kind of time and effort to write you as extensively as I am writing you here. I cherish and value student activists for Israel. But just as I do not superimpose on you a prejudice that you are too young for a serious discussion, don’t you superimpose on me a prejudice that I am too old. And, as a Jewish activist myself, I will tell you that in forty years of activism, going back to my first campaign – to convince NBC to renew “Star Trek” for another season – I never have gotten that many signatures onto a petition or a letter, that 100% a response, in less than a day. So there was something rotten immediately. I am telling you that the two letters that were mass-distributed that Shabbat bordered on legally actionable slander. More, the three separate letters were coordinated – a campaign coordinated among the Federation professional, the Hillel professional, and the Hillel student leader. And those letters not only were nasty, not only may have been legally actionable, but also included – in at least one case – significant forgery of names who did not sign onto it and even opposed it. Those letters attempted to a destroy a good woman over a possible scrivener’s error, but instead they opened huge new cans of worms, revealing far more than any of us had expected. That is what it took to wake up many people in this community that something here is not right. If they can defame and destroy this woman today, and we remain silent, what will stop them from defaming someone else next time? So those of us who never stopped being activists – just got detoured a few extra exits by the need to rear children, put them through high school and college, and earn income to pay bills for the kinds of personal needs (electric, gas, water) that are not funded by the Federation’s Rose Project – woke up. We found each other. We started doing some research. And we could not believe what we learned.
4. We found, as much to our shock as to our chagrin, that there is a cover-up in play. Suddenly UCI Hillel conveys that it never has supported or advocated or encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. First of all, that is a lie. It is not merely a fabrication, a falsification, or a mendacity. This is not Foggy Bottom nor “Cat on a Hit Tin Roof.” Here, we talk plainly. I am a congregational rabbi in Irvine, a member of the national executive committee of one national rabbinic body, a leader in another national rabbinic body, a former Chief Articles Editor of a prominent law review and former clerk to a nationally prominent federal appeals court judge, and I am saying it plainly: It is an outright lie by UCI Hillel. By contrast, the truth is that UCI Hillel actively advocated for and encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. I know what Tzvi Raviv told me, and I know what Bruce Manning told me. And I am a bit surprised that you seem unaware that Hillel encouraged the formation of OTI. So, as always happens in politics when the truth gets uncomfortable and difficult to answer, people give up on answering the truth and start creating “straw men” instead, knocking them down gleefully. So we now are being told by certain Hillel spokespeople that the activists are accusing Hillel of paying money towards OTI. Not true. That Hillel is accused of supporting OTI with money. Not true. Rather, Hillel stands accused of having been among those encouraging the formation and establishment of OTI, and it stands accused of having used its resources to encourage UCI Jewish students to go on OTI programs. And it is time for UCI Hillel to stop covering up and instead to admit the truth of its role in the formative year of Olive Tree Initiative. That – along with an apology to the Jewish community and to the Jewish students it misguided. Similarly, we now are being told that the activists accuse Federation of funding OTI. Not True. Of financially supporting OTI. Not true. Rather, Federation stands accused of taking Jewish charitable funds during this Great Recession, a time when Jewish Family Services of Orange County was forced to abandon its independence and to merge into Federation because there no longer was enough Jewish charitable money available to it, and giving those Jewish funds towards the airfare and tuition of Jewish students attending the Olive Tree Initiative program. Again, that Federation money made it possible for those UCI Jewish students to travel with OTI to “Palestine” to hear those terrible anti-Israel speeches in “Palestine,” to see that hateful movie in Jenin, to hear George Rishmawi threaten that, if the demands of the “Palestinian peacemakers” are not met this year, then the “peace activists” of “Palestine” may well have no alternative but to turn to violence next year.
5. More “straw men” ensued. We were told that, in our ignorance, we are calling OTI anti-Semitic. Not true. That we are calling Daniel Wehrenfennig anti-Semitic. Not true. That we oppose Wehrenfennig because he is a German. Not true. That we regard OTI as anti-Israel. Not true. That we regard Wehrenfennig as anti-Israel. Not true. Rather, what is true is that we regard the OTI as a terribly unfortunate and misguided initiative, clutched at by Dean Michael Drake and Vice President Gomez as a publicity bonanza to show their donors that, you see, we are doing something about the Muslim Student Union and its annual “Hate Israel Week” and its incessant disruptions of Jewish speakers ranging from Prof. Daniel Pipes to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. To paraphrase in common parlance, once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “Look, Jews, we have the Olive Tree Initiative. So stop bothering us. And stop telling Merage that, all because he is a Jew, he should stop giving us tens of millions of dollars. OK?” Likewise, originally, the Federation and Hillel proudly also bragged about their OTI involvement. It was once upon a time. Now, in the face of the revelations about what actually happens at OTI programs, they have reverted. Now they deny, and once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “We never said that. We don’t support it. We don’t fund it.” It is like Bill Clinton denying that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky. “I did not have sex with that woman.” Then they tell him she preserved a dress with his DNA on it. “Oh. Well, in that case . . . .” So now we are told that it is not Federation money; rather, it is Rose Project money. But the Federation is the Rose Project, and the Rose Project is the Federation. Let us hypothesize that Rose came and said to Federation “We want to donate money to start an Institute for Historical Review, to do research disproving that the Holocaust ever happened. We will fund research to prove the Holocaust is a hoax.” Would that project be accepted as an utterly independent “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Denying the Holocaust”? Let us hypothesize, with greater warmth, that Rose came and said “We have met and tested Jewish kids in Orange County who go to TVT, and we are beyond-shocked at how little they know after twelve years at TVT, so we want to start a million-dollar-fund to start a Modern Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine for grades 1-12.” Do you think – for a nano-second – that there would be a “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Establishing an Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine?” D’ya think so? The reality is that the Rose Project’s funding of those airfares and tuitions for the Olive Tree Initiative students is part-and-parcel of a project that the Jewish Federation of Orange County proudly has accepted under its wings, and Federation boastfully has bragged about that financial subventing of OTI whenever it has suited Federation’s public relations purposes.
6. More straw men: We are being told that activists have written that [student name withheld] is anti-Israel because he/ she supported OTI. Not true. Rather, we regret that the student or students, who care about Israel, have failed to see the longer-term consequences of their promoting OTI now. It is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. In the end, then, Jews are the losers – primarily Jewish students. Think about it: If this Olive Tree Initiative, which you tell us is so good for the Jews, really were so sound and worthwhile, why would UCI Hillel and the Jewish Federation of Orange County now, before your very eyes, be denying their demonstrable direct involvement in OTI? Alas, this misguided initiative now has spread to two other far-flung UC campuses where there are even fewer Jewish students like you who would know what to say in Jenin. This is not what may have been intended by those within the Jewish community who helped create it, but this is what has been created, a program that neither will bring peace to the region nor harm it, but will be used manipulatively by third-parties who were not on the original radar, including but not limited to: (i) the UCI Administration, manipulating this OTI program to excuse themselves for their abysmal record on protecting Jewish students walking along Ring Road during the worst moments of “Hate Israel Week” and failing to assure that the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel could speak with dignity to a UCI audience; and (ii) future Jewish students looking for something awesome for their resumes, while also enjoying an awesome Mideast experience in the hot spots like Jenin, in the company of people who count terrorists among their acquaintances, and maybe parlaying it to a great law or business graduate school – devoting their Mideast experience to “doing OTI” rather than, say, doing Birthright-Israel. And is it not ironic? The Olive Tree Initiative already was in full bloom, supposedly having peeled away layers of animosity and distrust that underlay prior Muslim Student Union (MSU) actions endangering UCI as a campus safe for Jews to hear Jewish speakers, when – nevertheless and despite OTI – the MSU still broke up Ambassador Oren’s appearance at UCI.
7. A final “straw,” perhaps better characterized as “the last straw.” One of the students would tell us that “We students are the new leaders of the American Jewish community. We are the future. We know best what is best for UCI. Your role in the community is to give us the funds. And otherwise – just butt out.” And so, a word to a friend. Irvine is our community, too. We, too, are its leaders. In the Irvine and greater Orange County Jewish community, there are nationally prominent experts on Israel and the Middle East, published authors, trained and experienced teachers, leaders capable of offering Israel advocacy training and teaching, Jewish leaders who actually fly across the country to teach and train others. There are Ph.D.s and scholars, scholarly researchers and exciting speakers. We are not called upon. Our offered services repeatedly are rejected. So be it. A $5,000 honorarium from an East Coast Jewish audience pays more than would the pro bono (free of charge) presentation that the same expert among us offers locally as a loving service to the community. But let us be clear: This issue transcends the students on campus. Perhaps you may have seen Breaking Away, an Academy Award®-winning flick. Its subplot is instructive. We the Jewish community live here in Irvine today, and we will be living here tomorrow, long after several of today’s UCI college and grad students have moved on. We have a long-term stake in the community, and we therefore have a stake in the neighborhood campus that brings occasional Jew-haters (including Jewish Jew-haters) out of their respective rat holes and into our midst. We are asked – even guilted – to contribute money to UCI Hillel, apprised that it is our obligation to do so because we have a stake. I personally have made such a donation to UCI Hillel. Some of us even have devoted hundreds of hours of our own personal time to students at UCI, even at the expense of personal family time, vacation time, and at the expense of money. We have seen students come into Irvine, then move on, much as I moved on in my life 35 years ago from the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, and subsequently from the Westwood campus of UCLA Law School. Thus, it is important to recognize that, in the course of a lifetime, many of our respective lives are intersecting concentric circles, elliptical encounters. The world does not revolve around me, and it does not revolve around this or that student. One day it is about mobilizing the Irvine and Orange County Jewish community to help the former salaried Hillel Director actualize his hopes and agenda, and then he is gone, forgotten, but we still are here. Jewish organizational professionals come and go. We have seen the revolving doors at the Irvine Bureau of Jewish Education, the American Jewish Committee, the Tarbut v’ Torah school, and yes at UCI Hillel. Through each of the transitions, we donate money and time, patience and passion and participation. One day it is the new Hillel Program Director arriving all excited with big plans, and another day it is someone else with a different program agenda. But we the Orange County Jewish community remain here, committed and devoted to this place and to our friends and families and dreams, realizing that our tzedakah dollars are being allocated in ways that we find objectionable. While phantom students’ names are signed to documents without the signatories’ knowledge, assent, authorization – and in some cases over their explicit objections – it is we, the community, that receive the defamatory letters, breaking the peaceful moment as the Shabbat ends. We do not heatedly return the letters with overheated, over-exercised verbiage, telling the senders: “The students on campus are the leaders of tomorrow, so solicit the Big Gifts and Major Donations from them. It is they, the students at UCI, who alone are impacted at UCI, so let them tend to themselves, and how dare you approach with a fundraiser’s solicitations those of us who are not on campus?”
But there is a time for everything under the heavens: A time to be still, and a time to speak. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Among us as Jews there always is a time to love and a time for peace. But this also is a time to speak and time to refrain from embracing. There will be absolutely no support for the Federation of Orange County from this quarter, nor from those who share my concerns, until the Federation and Hillel publicly withdraw from their associations with the Olive Tree Initiative. Not one penny. My desk is loaded with ample Jewish charitable alternatives to support, and tzedakah never stops in my home. But tzedakah must be just. And there is never a shortage of worthy Jewish causes to support that never would spend a penny of Jewish tzedakah money to fly a local Jewish student to “Palestine” for a film viewing in Jenin depicting the Israeli people as barbaric and cruel murderers. No, not a charity for me.
-- Rabbi Dov Fischer
Thursday, June 4, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S GREAT PYRAMID SCHEME: The Two-State Solution as Final Solution
The Obama Administration has endeavored to move American Mideast policy away from a traditional understanding of Israel's security concerns and historic rights, towards a view that renders undue currency towards Mideast political theories that have not served America well, aimed more at appeasing terrorism than at assuring justice.
My extensive commentary on the subject may be found at: http://rabbidov.com/twostate.htm
After you have read it, you may circulate it as you wish, even reprinting the text rather than merely forwarding the link, but you are limited only by these two caveats: (i) you may not edit the text; (ii) the link must appear with any forwarding you do.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
"J" Street, Growing up on the Street, and Street Survival: Why Israel Cannot Abide the Morons Who Call Themselves "Friend"
Today’s “J Street” was yesterday’s Peace Now and Breira. Always rushing to “make peace,” to trust Arafat to keep his word, to encourage and push Israel to sign Oslo Accords.
I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.
Israel has a real problem -- because she is not bordered by Mexico and Canada. She is bordered by Hezbollah and Hamas. Every time Israel has conceded land, the result has been the opposite of what the J Streeters predicted. She gave up Southern Lebanon unilaterally on the theory that the cession of land would bring peace in the north. “After all, what would Arabs have to complain about up north?” Yeah. So Hezbollah moved in and eventually put Haifa within range of its shelling.
Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. When the air raid sounds in Sderot, a person has 15 seconds lead time to get to safety underground before the shell strikes. So people cannot shower.
Israel is not dealing with post-war Germany or Japan, with France or England. She is dealing with a theology that is sworn to subjugate all Jews and to destroy a Jewish country. There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.
I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.
Israel has a real problem -- because she is not bordered by Mexico and Canada. She is bordered by Hezbollah and Hamas. Every time Israel has conceded land, the result has been the opposite of what the J Streeters predicted. She gave up Southern Lebanon unilaterally on the theory that the cession of land would bring peace in the north. “After all, what would Arabs have to complain about up north?” Yeah. So Hezbollah moved in and eventually put Haifa within range of its shelling.
Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. When the air raid sounds in Sderot, a person has 15 seconds lead time to get to safety underground before the shell strikes. So people cannot shower.
Israel is not dealing with post-war Germany or Japan, with France or England. She is dealing with a theology that is sworn to subjugate all Jews and to destroy a Jewish country. There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
On Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Israel, and the Futility of Knowing Who Are Friends
I did not vote for Obama, instead choosing to vote as the exit polls told us that most Jews in Orthodox circles did. Still, I view Obama's election with fascination and a touch of wonder.
Clearly, Hashem has a plan that we do not yet see or understand regarding Obama. By the natural course of events, Obama should never have been elected or, frankly, even nominated. Historians will not understand it. Nevertheless, he now is the President-elect, and we will recite the same blessing in Shul for his welfare and that of his Government as we have recited for his predecessors.
As Geraldine Ferraro said -- and she got canned for telling the truth -- rather than being victim for not looking like all those guys on the dollar bills (whose skin presumably was green?), Obama actually was the beneficiary of being quasi-African-American. Any other guy who would have sought the Presidency with his skimpy public record, youthful inexperience, and circle of corrupt acquaintances and associations, never would have gotten past Iowa and New Hampshire.
A State Senator who voted "present" 130 times, or whatever? A guy with no known record of accomplishment but with a coterie of personal associations ranging from Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres to Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and Father Phleger?
Gimme a break.
A law school professor, former president of the Harvard Law Review, who never published an article in a legal journal? Who among us in the legal field -- among those who practice, among those who focus in the halls of scholarship -- ever has heard of such a thing?
He has lived what-some-might-see as a charmed life. Hashem has a plan. This all is too aberrant to be natural life. There is a plan. G-d apparently has a plan in which Obama factors particularly.
So many of us -- half the country -- voted against Obama (not really for McCain, who was not the right choice of the moment) because we do not know what Obama stands for, do not trust him an iota, believe that he stands mostly for himself, has no record of meaningful achievement, shifted 180 degrees on Jerusalem in hours, surrounds himself with the same Clinton crowd that forced Oslo down Israel's throat and that made Arafat the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House.
All that said -- and one can go on -- I have to put my faith in Hashem and know that He has an ultimate plan, and His plan will go forth. Hubert Humphrey was a great friend of Israel, but it was Nixon-the-anti-Semite who acted rapidly and forcefully as Hashem's tool to assist Israel meaningfully during the 1973 War. Gerald Ford had a record of friendship for Israel through decades in the House, and he had Kissinger in Foggy Bottom, but they surprisingly combined to subject Israel to a searing "reassessment" of the traditional American friendship.
So many of us voted for Jimmy Carter the first time he ran. Many thought that Evangelicals --given the pro-Israel leadership models of Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend John Hagee, etc. -- are among Israel's biggest backers, inspired by the mandate of Genesis 12:3. Go figure -- it turned out that Carter was not evangelical on that verse, while his sister was missionizing to Jews and his brother was in bed with Kaddafi.
When Reagan came, so many of us expected George Shultz of Bechtel Corporation, which makes so much money from Arabs, to be a disastrous Secretary of State for Israel -- and, yet, Shultz probably was the best friend Israel ever had in the State Department. We thought the First Bush would follow Reagan's pro-Israel policies, and yet his Secretary of State seems to have been the worst anti-Semite in State since Cordell Hull and WWII. We figured the Second Bush would be as bad as the First, particularly after James Baker played so active a role in the legal fight over ballot-chads, and instead Bush II proved a great friend of Israel when Sharon invaded Jenin.
Thus, when Bush II was reelected, we thought we now have a proven friend in the White House and, with Sharon in Jerusalem, we now have some good strong leadership; in place. Instead, Bush turned his Mideast Policy on its head and made a point of his second term to press Sharon for a "Palestinian State" -- i.e., not really a "state" but a country called by that phony name -- and the Great Sharon unexpectedly went along with it, starting with Gush Katif and then the Gaza.
What stopped the momentum of Bush and Sharon, after the Gaza retreat, to move the retreat-pressure kadimah (forward, eastward to Judea and Samaria)? Only the combination of Sharon being felled by a stroke, then another, and Olmert thereafter being felled by a Hezbollah War and then a debilitating financial scandal and another, and Bush being felled by an incomprehensible economic collapse that started unfolding with mortgage problems just as Condoleezza was flying to the Middle East to start the pressure against Israel for new retreat.
Only that extraordinary confluence of incredible events stopped the Gush-Katification of Yehudah-Shomron.
So, I am long past predicting who among the princes of flesh-and-blood is good for Israel and who bad. I vote based on commonsense natural analyses, but I know I can be wrong because good politicians can fool you, and so can bad ones. I know that all we can do is vote based on what we reasonably expect. But, in the end, it is all in Hashem's hands. Politicians often surprise.
For the many of us who voted against Obama during this recent round, a man who entered the national stage as Tisha B'Av was ending in 2004, we could vote only based on what we thought is best. In the end, what do we know? We don't know. We absolutely do not know.
Our parents' generation bullet-voted for FDR, whom they regarded as the best American friend that Jews ever had in the White House. Turns out he and his State Department were not our best friends. Rather, they hated us and in some real measure were accessories to the mass murder of six million of us.
Democrats-Republicans. We don't know. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel in an full-blast urgent airlift. Bill Clinton gave us Oslo and Arafat.
Shalom Chaver.
Clearly, Hashem has a plan that we do not yet see or understand regarding Obama. By the natural course of events, Obama should never have been elected or, frankly, even nominated. Historians will not understand it. Nevertheless, he now is the President-elect, and we will recite the same blessing in Shul for his welfare and that of his Government as we have recited for his predecessors.
As Geraldine Ferraro said -- and she got canned for telling the truth -- rather than being victim for not looking like all those guys on the dollar bills (whose skin presumably was green?), Obama actually was the beneficiary of being quasi-African-American. Any other guy who would have sought the Presidency with his skimpy public record, youthful inexperience, and circle of corrupt acquaintances and associations, never would have gotten past Iowa and New Hampshire.
A State Senator who voted "present" 130 times, or whatever? A guy with no known record of accomplishment but with a coterie of personal associations ranging from Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres to Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and Father Phleger?
Gimme a break.
A law school professor, former president of the Harvard Law Review, who never published an article in a legal journal? Who among us in the legal field -- among those who practice, among those who focus in the halls of scholarship -- ever has heard of such a thing?
He has lived what-some-might-see as a charmed life. Hashem has a plan. This all is too aberrant to be natural life. There is a plan. G-d apparently has a plan in which Obama factors particularly.
So many of us -- half the country -- voted against Obama (not really for McCain, who was not the right choice of the moment) because we do not know what Obama stands for, do not trust him an iota, believe that he stands mostly for himself, has no record of meaningful achievement, shifted 180 degrees on Jerusalem in hours, surrounds himself with the same Clinton crowd that forced Oslo down Israel's throat and that made Arafat the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House.
All that said -- and one can go on -- I have to put my faith in Hashem and know that He has an ultimate plan, and His plan will go forth. Hubert Humphrey was a great friend of Israel, but it was Nixon-the-anti-Semite who acted rapidly and forcefully as Hashem's tool to assist Israel meaningfully during the 1973 War. Gerald Ford had a record of friendship for Israel through decades in the House, and he had Kissinger in Foggy Bottom, but they surprisingly combined to subject Israel to a searing "reassessment" of the traditional American friendship.
So many of us voted for Jimmy Carter the first time he ran. Many thought that Evangelicals --given the pro-Israel leadership models of Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend John Hagee, etc. -- are among Israel's biggest backers, inspired by the mandate of Genesis 12:3. Go figure -- it turned out that Carter was not evangelical on that verse, while his sister was missionizing to Jews and his brother was in bed with Kaddafi.
When Reagan came, so many of us expected George Shultz of Bechtel Corporation, which makes so much money from Arabs, to be a disastrous Secretary of State for Israel -- and, yet, Shultz probably was the best friend Israel ever had in the State Department. We thought the First Bush would follow Reagan's pro-Israel policies, and yet his Secretary of State seems to have been the worst anti-Semite in State since Cordell Hull and WWII. We figured the Second Bush would be as bad as the First, particularly after James Baker played so active a role in the legal fight over ballot-chads, and instead Bush II proved a great friend of Israel when Sharon invaded Jenin.
Thus, when Bush II was reelected, we thought we now have a proven friend in the White House and, with Sharon in Jerusalem, we now have some good strong leadership; in place. Instead, Bush turned his Mideast Policy on its head and made a point of his second term to press Sharon for a "Palestinian State" -- i.e., not really a "state" but a country called by that phony name -- and the Great Sharon unexpectedly went along with it, starting with Gush Katif and then the Gaza.
What stopped the momentum of Bush and Sharon, after the Gaza retreat, to move the retreat-pressure kadimah (forward, eastward to Judea and Samaria)? Only the combination of Sharon being felled by a stroke, then another, and Olmert thereafter being felled by a Hezbollah War and then a debilitating financial scandal and another, and Bush being felled by an incomprehensible economic collapse that started unfolding with mortgage problems just as Condoleezza was flying to the Middle East to start the pressure against Israel for new retreat.
Only that extraordinary confluence of incredible events stopped the Gush-Katification of Yehudah-Shomron.
So, I am long past predicting who among the princes of flesh-and-blood is good for Israel and who bad. I vote based on commonsense natural analyses, but I know I can be wrong because good politicians can fool you, and so can bad ones. I know that all we can do is vote based on what we reasonably expect. But, in the end, it is all in Hashem's hands. Politicians often surprise.
For the many of us who voted against Obama during this recent round, a man who entered the national stage as Tisha B'Av was ending in 2004, we could vote only based on what we thought is best. In the end, what do we know? We don't know. We absolutely do not know.
Our parents' generation bullet-voted for FDR, whom they regarded as the best American friend that Jews ever had in the White House. Turns out he and his State Department were not our best friends. Rather, they hated us and in some real measure were accessories to the mass murder of six million of us.
Democrats-Republicans. We don't know. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel in an full-blast urgent airlift. Bill Clinton gave us Oslo and Arafat.
Shalom Chaver.
Revisiting the Extraordinary Obstacles that Stopped Politicians Forcing a Retreat from Judea-Samaria
I believe, as we all do in your and my circles, that things happen for reasons that HaKadosh Barukh Hu understands better than we. As we say in the Haftorah for the fast day, His thoughts are not our thoughts.
Every single time, since June 1967, that an Israeli Prime Minister has tried to give up any part of Yesha, or that an American president has pushed the Israelis to cede part of Yesha, something unnatural has happened. Highlights: Shamir, after Madrid, rapidly lost control of Government. After Rabin was assassinated, Peres had some 80-90% popularity, so called early elections with a goal to have a strong Knesset to support massive Yesha concessions. Yet, a few months later, he had lost all support in the face of an absolutely unprecedented wave of bus bombings, and Netanyahu was elected. Netanyahu went to Wye Plantation, conceded on Hebron, and almost immediately ran into a complete turn-around from heavy popularity to a nose-dive. Ehud Barak came to Washington, offering to give up so much, and he returned to Intifada II and a landslide loss to Sharon. Sharon initially pursued targeted assassinations of terrorists and was fantastically successful and popular. Then he turned to giving up land, and he was given a potch. He proceeded to give up Gaza and announced that his next focus was kadimah – to give up land in the east. He has been in a coma ever since. Olmert had initial popularity and success, then turned to giving up Yesha, and he was hit with the war in Lebanon, which destroyed the rationale for giving up land. He persisted, so was brought down remarkably.
Meanwhile, Ford turned on Israel with the Kissinger reassessment. Soon after, Ford’s popularity declined, unrelated to the Middle East, culminating with his slipping, falling, and then saying that eastern Europe was not under Soviet hegemony. Carter came in, was immensely popular. He turned anti-Israel, brutally pressed Begin. And soon the Iranians were holding hostages while inflation hit 20%, and he was out. Reagan was mostly pro-Israel and made it through eight years with his name mostly intact. But he did press Begin on Lebanon during the 1982 War, leading to the events that caused the worst security debacle in Reagan’s Presidency – the 241 Marines blown up in South Lebanon. Bush I pressed Israel, with James Baker. There were horrible words spoken. And a strange thing happened: in the midst of an election campaign, he was in Japan at a banquet, and he was televised suddenly vomiting on the Japanese Premier. He went from 80+ popularity overnight to a nothing. The Clinton White House pressed Israel and ended up with its own crises. Bush II was the best friend Israel ever had, for most of his first 4-5 years, and he was blessed at home with great popularity. He then began pressing Sharon to give up Gaza, recognizing a “Palestinian State” and pushing a “Road Map,” and suddenly he nose-dived with huge losses two years ago. He did not learn from his potch, started talking about pursuing the Road map with Olmert, and further was reduced.
I am not sure that all this is coincidence. The past 40 years do not show that Hashem disturbed the momentum of giving up the Sinai, as He seems absolutely to have changed the course of nature to prevent every effort to give up parts of Yehuda and Shomron. But, even there, Begin went from glory and a Nobel Prize to an incalculable mental breakdown that left him spending his last years as a mentally distraught recluse in his apartment.
Every single time, since June 1967, that an Israeli Prime Minister has tried to give up any part of Yesha, or that an American president has pushed the Israelis to cede part of Yesha, something unnatural has happened. Highlights: Shamir, after Madrid, rapidly lost control of Government. After Rabin was assassinated, Peres had some 80-90% popularity, so called early elections with a goal to have a strong Knesset to support massive Yesha concessions. Yet, a few months later, he had lost all support in the face of an absolutely unprecedented wave of bus bombings, and Netanyahu was elected. Netanyahu went to Wye Plantation, conceded on Hebron, and almost immediately ran into a complete turn-around from heavy popularity to a nose-dive. Ehud Barak came to Washington, offering to give up so much, and he returned to Intifada II and a landslide loss to Sharon. Sharon initially pursued targeted assassinations of terrorists and was fantastically successful and popular. Then he turned to giving up land, and he was given a potch. He proceeded to give up Gaza and announced that his next focus was kadimah – to give up land in the east. He has been in a coma ever since. Olmert had initial popularity and success, then turned to giving up Yesha, and he was hit with the war in Lebanon, which destroyed the rationale for giving up land. He persisted, so was brought down remarkably.
Meanwhile, Ford turned on Israel with the Kissinger reassessment. Soon after, Ford’s popularity declined, unrelated to the Middle East, culminating with his slipping, falling, and then saying that eastern Europe was not under Soviet hegemony. Carter came in, was immensely popular. He turned anti-Israel, brutally pressed Begin. And soon the Iranians were holding hostages while inflation hit 20%, and he was out. Reagan was mostly pro-Israel and made it through eight years with his name mostly intact. But he did press Begin on Lebanon during the 1982 War, leading to the events that caused the worst security debacle in Reagan’s Presidency – the 241 Marines blown up in South Lebanon. Bush I pressed Israel, with James Baker. There were horrible words spoken. And a strange thing happened: in the midst of an election campaign, he was in Japan at a banquet, and he was televised suddenly vomiting on the Japanese Premier. He went from 80+ popularity overnight to a nothing. The Clinton White House pressed Israel and ended up with its own crises. Bush II was the best friend Israel ever had, for most of his first 4-5 years, and he was blessed at home with great popularity. He then began pressing Sharon to give up Gaza, recognizing a “Palestinian State” and pushing a “Road Map,” and suddenly he nose-dived with huge losses two years ago. He did not learn from his potch, started talking about pursuing the Road map with Olmert, and further was reduced.
I am not sure that all this is coincidence. The past 40 years do not show that Hashem disturbed the momentum of giving up the Sinai, as He seems absolutely to have changed the course of nature to prevent every effort to give up parts of Yehuda and Shomron. But, even there, Begin went from glory and a Nobel Prize to an incalculable mental breakdown that left him spending his last years as a mentally distraught recluse in his apartment.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Ezras Torah Luach, Yom Yerushalayim, and Centrist Orthodoxy
It is fascinating that, 41 years after the liberation and reunification of Jersualem, and 60 years after the creation of the State of Israel, the Ezras Torah luach still does not list either day. It lists Yom Kippur Koton. It lists Pesach Sheini. It lists Taanis B’hab. But Jews need to e-mail each other to determine and confirm the days for Yom Ha’Atzma’ut and Yom Yerushalayim. Yes, the days float because of Shabbat concerns and the desire to avoid public celebrations that can threaten her sanctity. Well, the Ezras Torah calendar advises when the Fast of Tisha B’Av floats into Motz’ei Shabbat or when Bedikat Chametz and Biur Chametz floats because of Shabbat. But, to get the date of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim, there is no point looking in the Ezras Torah luach. It ain’t listed. Period.
This meaningfully points to why the Center Ground of Torah-Observant Judaism is a most precious, yet most demanding, theological ground to stand and hold. There is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
It is understandable that, for one halakhic reason or another, one or another hashkafah-group may choose to daven on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim as though it were a regular day in the calendar. Fine. But not to even note the day’s existence in the definitive halakhic calendar of the year, used by Shuls and Gabbaim throughout the world? Not to even note that it exists?
No, there is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
This meaningfully points to why the Center Ground of Torah-Observant Judaism is a most precious, yet most demanding, theological ground to stand and hold. There is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
It is understandable that, for one halakhic reason or another, one or another hashkafah-group may choose to daven on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim as though it were a regular day in the calendar. Fine. But not to even note the day’s existence in the definitive halakhic calendar of the year, used by Shuls and Gabbaim throughout the world? Not to even note that it exists?
No, there is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
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