Tag Archives: Judaism

A letter from an American-Israeli Jew to American-American Jews.

Posted on February 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Dahlia Scheindlin is a terrific, American-Israeli public opinion analyst based in Tel Aviv who I saw speak at last year’s J Street conference. She was cogent and engaging and willing to tell the truth, to a room full of doe-eyed peace-seekers, about the Israeli public’s opinions about peace negotiations (which are not always as positive as we would wish, btw — they want a two-state peace, they just don’t want to trust the Palestinians to negotiate for it) (though she might put it differently. With, like, numbers, and such).

She also writes, and really well, for the genuinely peerless +972 online magazine (peerless, in that it is an outstanding source, and in that I don’t know that it has anything remotely like a peer in Israeli media).

The other day she posted what can only be called a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart appealing to her American Jewish family (in both the narrow and broad senses) to not betray Israel by betraying their liberal values:

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In which I blaspheme: Monotheism’s biggest failure.

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | 22 Comments

Ok, that’s kind of a grand statement. Maybe I shouldn’t claim to have uncovered the single biggest failure of the world’s monotheistic faiths. But for my money, it’s certainly right up there.

As readers of this blog are surely aware, I believe in God.

I furthermore believe that God is loving and good, and that when we say that we’re made in His* image, we mean the best of us. “Our better angels” are, to my mind, those parts of the human spirit that fly up to meet their Creator and attempt to express His love, His goodness, on this earth.

I also believe, in what I take to be a very Jewish sense, that God is everywhere and yet nowhere. We are not God, but reflections of Him. He can be found in our homes and in our hearts, but He is neither in the heavens nor in the depths. He is not corporeal, and when we speak of His arms, or His voice, we are only making use of the only tools we have to imagine the unimaginable — yet should I call upon Him, His is the still, small voice that is as near as my child’s breath, as she whispers in my ear.

God is ultimately unknowable, because He is so entirely Not Us. Bigger, Grander, More Powerful beyond measure — how can it be otherwise, when He created the world and all that’s in it? And yes, I believe that the Big Bang was an act of God, and I honestly cannot understand how the one could possibly contradict the other.

What is God not, then? Where did monotheism get it wrong?

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Posted in Emily L. Hauser, Musings, Personal Tales

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Who is Israel to tell you that you’re not a good enough Jew?

Posted on November 30, 2011 by | 18 Comments

For information on these good American Jews: http://www.loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org/jll_jews.shtml

In the privacy of my own head, I am often very much at odds with Jeffrey Goldberg (whose book, Prisoners, I reviewed once upon a time and would still recommend) — but he got this one absolutely right: Netanyahu Government Suggests Israelis Avoid Marrying American Jews.

Looking at a series of PSAs produced by the Israeli government to encourage Israelis not to get stuck in America [how else to put it?], Goldberg writes: “I don’t think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads…. The message is: Dear American Jews, thank you for lobbying for American defense aid (and what a great show you put on at the AIPAC convention every year!) but, please, stay away from our sons and daughters.”

Exactly. But it goes well beyond this series of ads, and can be found at every level of the Israeli-Diaspora relationship — it infuriates me, and I’ve said as much before, so now I’m saying it again (with a few edits):

Bad Jews.

If I am nothing else on this earth, I am a Jew.

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Posted in Emily L. Hauser, International Shenanigans, What the Crap!?

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What the hell kind of Jew am I?

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I feel pretty strongly that I shouldn’t have to defend my Judaism in order to have my opinions about Israel taken seriously.

I feel pretty strongly about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am often called upon (just today for instance) to defend my Judaism anyway. And I often go ahead and defend my Judaism anyway, not because it needs defending, but because I hope that the news that I am not, in fact, an apikoros (heretic) will perhaps allow a few new ideas out into the marketplace. Like, for instance, the idea that one need not be an apikoros to criticize Israel.

And so, hereunder, my answer to the occasionally posed questions that boil down to: What the hell kind of Jew are you?

I am an Israeli Jew, married to an Israeli Jew who was born and raised in Jerusalem. I made aliyah as a young woman, and lived in Tel Aviv for 14 years.

I am also an active member of a Chicago-area Conservative shul. I keep a strictly kosher home — which is to say, I have different sets of dishes (and silverware, and pots, and pans, and…) for meat meals and dairy meals, PLUS two entirely different sets for Passover, in keeping with the laws governing the removal of hametz (leavening) from our homes during Passover.

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Rosh Hashana 2011 – a little grumpy, but I’m trying my best.

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Tonight is Erev Rosh Hashana – the eve of the Jewish New Year. In the Jewish calendar, days begin and end at sunset, so once the sun has set over the Greater Chicagoland Area, I will be off the grid for three solid days*: Tonight, tomorrow, Friday (the holiday is actually two days long for almost everyone but some in the Reform movement), and Saturday-until-after-sunset, because that’ll be Shabbat. Try not to let the world blow up without me, ‘kay?

Truth be told, I’m not feeling very holiday-ish today. I’ve bought a ton of special food, we have plans for services and time with friends, and it’s hard for me not to love anything that results in me getting to spend concentrated time with my family — but.

But, for me, being Jewish is hopelessly entangled with being Israeli, a thing which I very loudly announced I was tired of being the other day. I have always found the American Jewish community’s attachment to the modern State of Israel as an article of religious faith to be problematic — surely when in prayer, our thoughts are to be on our relationship to the Divine, and not the latest policies of a political construct? Surely we can be good Jews, and yet oppose some of those policies, no matter our familial relationship to the people making them? — but in light of my utter exhaustion with being Israeli this year, I feel even more knee-jerk misanthropic about the notion of spending time with my own people (the people to whom, let’s not forget, I happily joined myself of my own accord. I was at Sinai! Etc, etc, and so on. Oh, bother).

So, you know, writing about the holiday hasn’t exactly felt like a thing I wanted to do. And yet here we are! And here’s the thing that I’ve been thinking about lately, re: Rosh Hashana:

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Jews teach hate, too.

Posted on June 1, 2011 by | 3 Comments

[This post has been backdated.  It was originally posted on June 2. -ABL]

No, how would you explain this footage of Jewish Israeli marchers, parading through Palestinian parts of Jerusalem, their pieholes oozing bilious depravity?

Yesterday was Jerusalem Day, the day on which Israel officially celebrates the “reunification” of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War. I wrote about just how divided the city actually is here and here — but honestly, this tape says it all.

Let’s reverse the nouns: Replace “Muhammad” with “Moses”, “Arabs” with “Jews,” and “leftists” with “rightists” (“may your village burn” can stay the same).

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Good stuff: Jewy McJewington edition.

Posted on April 15, 2011 by | 19 Comments

Passover grows ever closer, and my time to prepare ever shorter.

The cleaning is always a monster that looms, weeks in advance, and I always hate it (really, really hate it), because it’s not just a lot of hard work, it’s also rife with anxiety and a constant see-saw of emotion (“I should be more thorough!” “I don’t think God really cares anyway!” “But God cares that I care!” “At this point I’m not sure I care!” “Of course I care — I should be more thorough!” Like that) — BUT, when all is said and done, I am always glad to have done it, and the week of Passover is invariably one of the sweetest of the year. I will never get over wishing I were in Israel among the Jews on our holidays — it’s just not the same when no one knows why you’re running out for more scouring powder or buying 12 boxes of matza (yes. 12. And six dozen eggs.) — but here in the gentle exile of American suburbia, my wee family and I have made a wonderful little corner for ourselves, and I do very much enjoy it.

HAVING SAID THAT. Of course I don’t have time for a real post! Are you barking mad? So instead, we’ll do this:

  1. Please scoot over to my new column at Americans for Peace Now – this week, in honor of Passover and my  people’s celebration of our freedom, I recommend a book that documents very thoroughly (speaking of things it’s good to be thorough about) just how painfully Israel constricts the freedom of another people, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
  2. ON A MUCH LIGHTER NOTE, please enjoy the following Jewy-McJewington-from-Jewsville parody of Cee-Lo’s towering piece of pop genius, “Fuck You.” If you’re not a Jewy McJewington (and even if you are!), you might not get all that’s going on here, but I think it’s a good bet that you’ll enjoy it anyway: “Barchu (I’m a Jew)” by the awesomely named Jew Man Group. Continue reading →
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Posted in Culture Critic, Emily L. Hauser, Musings, Personal Tales, Political Shenanigans

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Judeo-Christian is wack.

Posted on April 13, 2011 by | 3 Comments

In my on-going effort to confuse the citizens of the Angry Black Nation, you will find hereunder a post that has nothing to do with anything else being discussed on this blog. Please bear with me. The pre-Passover season is upon me, and — to be perfectly frank — in my holiday frenzy (ie: insane levels of cleaning), I haven’t even had a chance to hear the President’s speech yet. No, really.

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Hard boiled eggs on the holiday - we were doing it before you!

From the outside looking in, one might be forgiven for thinking that Christians and Jews have gotten past all that once separated our communities. And, in some ways, one would be right.

But in other ways, one really wouldn’t.

Here it is Lent, with Passover days away — our shared holy season — and the fact remains: Two thousand years later, we Judeo-Christians still really aren’t sure we can trust each other.

And lest you think I’m just talking about paranoid talking heads of the Tea Party and/or Anti-Defamation League variety, I’m not. I mean us, you and me, rubbing shoulders daily. Apparently, we still make each other nervous.

Among some members of my community, the Jews, it’s almost an article of faith that if you scratch a Christian, you’ll find an anti-Semite (not, of course, the Christians you know, but the ones who might be in the press).

Likewise, many Christians approach Jews with an almost comically  exaggerated wariness (not the Jews they know, of course, but the public Jews, the ones who are always so suspicious). Continue reading →

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So, Pete King and those hearings. What’s up with that?

Posted on March 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A quick and dirty post, with some good links for those looking to catch up on the heck is up with the King hearings into the American Muslim Community.

  1. Excellent one-stop shopping post at Mother Jones, laying out the backstory and facts of the hearings: Peter King’s Radicalization Hearings, Explained.
  2. The House Committee on Homeland Security site – the bare structure of the hearings, including panel composition, and, not for nothing, their actual name: “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”
  3. Adam Serwer’s excellent post explaining why the composition of the panels is part of the problem,”King’s Strategically Arranged Hearing Panels”: “The only Muslims on the third panel will be people prepared to parrot King’s unsubstantiated, negative views of Islam and American Muslims.”
  4. Adam Serwer’s excellent post on the inconsistencies in King’s approach to terrorism as a concept: “But How Does King Feel About Hamas?”: “If King applied his principles consistently, he’d be calling for the Obama administration to negotiate with Hamas.” Continue reading →
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