A few years ago over coffee, an acquaintance told me that his family always treated Israel differently from all other places. As a child, he was encouraged to use his critical judgment on every topic except Israel. On Israel, he knew exactly how he “had to” feel.

That clearly didn’t sit right with him. And he believed his discomfort with Israel resonated with many other people he knew.

Given this story and many others like it, I was not surprised to read the recent study on American Jews and Israel by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman, Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and their Alienation from Israel. Airtight analysis and manifold charts demonstrate incontrovertibly a declining attachment to Israel among younger generations. Hardly the news most Israel supporters wanted to hear on the eve of the country’s 60th anniversary.

continue reading "Israel and You – Perfect Together?"

Isra Yaghoubi, Guest Writer

When Leo Frank, a New York Jew, was unlawfully lynched in 1915 by a mob in Georgia, Josephus Daniels, then Secretary of Navy, called it “the worst blot” on the history of the state of Georgia. The Brooklyn Eagle called it the act of “a mob of barbarians who have brought their civilization to a standstill”. The Evening Post declared, “Let a society be founded…with the specific aim of stamping out lynching.”

92-years later, the lynching noose is back in the public eye.

continue reading "Blood at the Root"

[audio:http://ajcarchives.org/ajchomepage/audio/Simcha_Torah_Shemini_Atzeret.mp3]

Steven Bayme, AJC’s director of Contemporary Jewish Life, discusses the traditions of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah. “Much too much is invested in a language of Jewish woes,” says Bayme. “The message of the holiday is that fundamentally the reason to be a Jew is not because terrible things have happened to Jews. The reason to be a Jew is the tremendous sense of joy and celebration in Judaic heritage.”

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At first glance, the two books inhabit different worlds. One, carrying the imprint of a prestigious publisher, is riding high in the Amazon bestseller chart. The other, from a tiny publisher in Atlanta, would not make a bestseller list on Amazon or anywhere else. The first book is splendidly printed and bound, reflecting the gravitas of the authors. The second looks and feels cheap, like a trinket from a murky political gathering.

And yet this is one instance where packaging tells us very little. What counts is that the two books – Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby, which everyone is talking about, and James Petras’s The Power of Israel in the United States, an unabashedly conspiratorial tome unnoticed by the reviewers – focus upon the same subject. What counts even more – lest readers should think that my purpose is to damn by association – are the arresting similarities between the two books in terms of argument.

continue reading "Mainstream or Just Extreme?"

Decades ago a criminal defense attorney offered a credo for the zealous defense of a client: “Contest everything, concede nothing, and when defeated allege fraud.”John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in their new book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, go to similar lengths to defend their thesis that Israel is a strategic liability.

While The Israel Lobby is a more nuanced effort than their earlier London Review of Books article, the main problem is the same: Walt and Mearsheimer genuinely believe that U.S. interests in the Middle East are overwhelmingly tied to the Arab states, not to Israel. They are at a loss to understand why what seems obvious to them is lost on the majority of Americans, including those who make policy decisions.

continue reading "When All Else Fails: The Israel Lobby"

Several months ago I was on Capitol Hill meeting a prominent Congresswoman in the Rayburn Room. We met in a corner of the large room, while at its center a technical crew was preparing for a press conference. The banner behind the podium read “Energy Independence.” The House energy bill was going to be presented under that banner later in the day.

She asked, half jokingly, if we had come to talk with her about energy, it being the subject du jour.

Yes, I responded. She was somewhat surprised, as were some of the other Representatives and Senators I had approached. After all, what do Jews have to do with energy policy?

continue reading "Putting Some Bite in U.S. Energy Policy"

Some of Noah Feldman’s “Orthodox Paradox” resonated with me. Like him, I am an alumnus of Boston’s Maimonides Hebrew Day School, which “made me who I am”. Like him, I have since struggled to integrate the precepts of two very different world views and value systems, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Some of Feldman’s arguments are compelling. The rabbi who challenged a physician on treating gentile patients on Shabbat was guilty not only of a serious error of judgment, but also of perverting Judaism’s fundamental teaching that all of humanity are created in God’s image. I well understand Feldman’s discomfort with the injunction to exterminate the Amalekites, but long ago chose to historicize the teaching rather than struggle to discover its contemporary salience. To be sure his disingenuousness in claiming that he had been deliberately airbrushed out of the reunion photo badly undermines his credibility.

continue reading "Commentary on Noah Feldman"

The Holy See recently announced that it is proud to be neutral – carbon neutral. Very shortly, in fact, the Vatican will become the fist sovereign state in the world to become entirely carbon neutral. It intends to plant trees in Hungary to offset the emissions used in Vatican City, to begin to convert their facilities’ energy sources to solar power and raise awareness through conferences and teaching about environmental responsibilities.

While the Catholic Church is by far the largest single Christian body in the world, they are by no means the only one concerned over the future of the environment. Concern for the future of our planet has quickly become a religious issue that transcends liberal and conservative labels, cuts across interreligious lines, and takes on theological significance in the sermons of religious leaders.

Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, Presbyterians, American Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews have begun to make “earth stewardship” both a political and religious imperative.

continue reading "“Caring for Creation” Gains Speed"

Friends, colleagues, even family members frequently admonish me that my universe of Jewish discourse consists primarily of active Jews. As a result, these well-wishers tell me, I am spending too much time addressing AJC leadership, where I work, the modern Orthodox community where I live, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I frequently teach. Rather than address the universe of committed Jews primarily, I am therefore urged to “get out of the bubble” and find out what is on the minds and hearts of Jews in the street.

continue reading "Jewish Identity and Jewish Peoplehood: Convergence or Divergence?"

[audio:http://www.ajcarchives.org/ajchomepage/audio/tishabav072307.mp3]

Steven Bayme, AJC’s director of Contemporary Jewish Life, discusses Tisha B’Av, the holiday commemorating the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and other major tragedies in Jewish history. Bayme reviews the holiday’s origins, how it has been observed over the centuries, as well as how memory reinforces commitment to Jewish continuity. “Tisha B’Av is a permanent reminder to us of the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people,” says Bayme.

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