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A Response to Accusations of Fighting a Colonialist War

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“…to a large extent the impact of the war, including displacement of Gazans, is due to its urban nature and Hamas’s choice to embed among civilians. It’s true that going into Rafih much earlier would have most likely avoided the length and the scale of the impact, and we hold Bibi accountable for that. But it would not have been avoided entirely.

Regarding colonialism. Israel vacated the Gaza Strip over a decade ago. Despite what a vocal minority of thugs want, there are no plans to return. Even if security and/or political control was retained by Israel, it still wouldn’t be colonialism.

Furthermore. Western Leftists need to stop throwing around colonialism as if they actually understand it in its full ugliness and start seeing the nuanced ways in which their suppositions about the world conflict with it. Islam is foreign to this land and was spread here by colonizers. Despite the influence of the colonized (!) diaspora, Israel’s presence here goes back 3000 years and has been characterized more by an agenda of self-determination and self-defense than one of colonization. We don’t represent a foreign power or culture here and even the military occupation of the West Bank (which followed the Jordanian ethnic cleansing and occupation of the same area) is driven by internal issues, not foreign policy.

Regarding the issues you raised:

1) we already have large reserves of natural gas. This war is not about plunder. The Gaza Marine will most likely be developed by Gulf partners with local Gazan leadership and will hopefully finance much of Gaza’s reconstruction.

2) Putin is definitely involved with Hamas. He is definitely a factor in the war’s prolongation but if you’re assuming he’s on the Israeli side, you’re looking at it upside down.

3) there’s an antisemitic canard about Jews (and/or the Jewish state) having undue influence on American politics. Let’s not go there. The American Left is messed up because of its own problems with theory and praxis (and because Americans are extremely susceptible to propaganda).

…. You know it’s a world of lies. But here’s to Bibi being replaced, Harris beating Trump, Gaza being rebuilt, and the occupation ending. If we have no hope, then we have nothing.”

Some Controversial Opinions

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A controversial opinion: As long as I can call this country Yisrael in Hebrew, I don’t mind if you call it Falastin in Arabic. Who cares what we call it in English. Call it Israel, call it Palestine, just don’t call it Canaan. 🤦

A controversialer opinion: The national anthem is an alternative version of a nice poem set to an Ashkenazi tune that forces us to mispronounce almost every word. And it speaks only of a Jewish soul where it should at least be speaking of a Hebrew soul, if not the soul of every child of Adam. If we want to get Zionistic about it: The goal is ultimately to build a place of prayer for all people (which of course requires a truly just society, which of course requires safety for Israel, etc). Surely we can sing a song that reflects that goal?

Even controversialer opinion: We’re eventually going to need to draft everyone who lives here (I’ve rethought my position on the draft). Everyone. And personally, I’m okay with an Islamic or Christian prime minister… so long as we have a constitution that limits the power of the government and its institutions over the citizenry, and a strong separation between the domain of the current parliament and the domain of the Torah. In order for Zionism to succeed, it needs to grow beyond the reductive vision of state-sponsored identity and into its own as a fully expressed Torah-infused society, which can not be threatened by a popular leader’s personal opinions or practices. Our society must escape the shadow of its great men.

The controversialest opinion: Political parties should be banned in government.

What Zionism is About

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Zionism is not about building an ethno-state.

Bené Yisrael include all ethnicities from all continents except Antarctica.

What ties us all together is a covenant of justice, solidarity, and holiness.

This covenant is the foundation of Zionism and provides it with a concrete goal: building the city, the state, of Zion.

A society in awe of, and in love with, truth.

A society in which the poor, the migrants, the indigent are included and cared for by their fellow human beings.

A society in which the divine image is cultivated rather than suppressed, erased, defaced by prejudice and exploitation.

A society in which land belongs to its Creator and is respected and cherished by the people it supports and shapes.

A society in which justice is pursued. As a social ideal and as a matter of wide-ranging policy.

Naturally, in such a society, Jewish people expect to find a freedom we have never known, never even tasted save in the brief legendary golden ages of bygone days – a freedom to worship the Creator of all worlds and all beings and all nations of the family of humankind, in truth and with clarity, according to the precepts of the covenant we have faithfully kept for thousands of years, without the danger of pogroms, expulsions, and death-camps. Go figure.

Anyway, this is what Zionism is about.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Rambam and Women

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The Mishne Torah overall reflects Rambam’s relatively objective interpretation of Talmudic law. Where he records his own opinion, he makes it clear; and even the nuances of his application of the accepted rules of interpretation (interwoven with explicit and implicit Geonic guidance) can be discerned in comparison to the original sugiyoth themselves (often hinging on a particular keyword). So MT’s sometimes negative description of women as a class and their roles within the Talmudic society overall reflects the perceptions and prejudices of the classical era, and not necessarily those of Rambam himself. (And certainly, we should learn and practice accordingly – we’re under no obligation to adopt the same perceptions and prejudices.)

But what about the actual women of Rambam’s life? What about his mother, his sister, his first wife, or his second? How did he feel about them, their intellectual abilities, their relationship with Torah? What lessons did he learn from them, if any? How did they figure into his world of Torah?

The mind rebels against the thought of a man as intelligent and wise as Rambam retreating into a dim misogyny that admits of no female philosophers.

But when it comes to these primary figures in his life, we have less than silence, we mostly don’t even have names.

Diplomacy Gone Bad: A Response and a Rant

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This damned war is continuing not because of diplomatic cover and arms for Israel but for Hamas. It would be over in a day if Hamas was not still being propped up as an active threat (!) to Israel seven months into Hamas’s failed war (waged in violation of local ceasefire agreements and of international law).

Meaningless photo ops like the Irish, Norwegian, and Spanish politicians’ paper recognition of a state with no contiguous borders, no independent monetary policy, no actual army, and no functional popular government, are simply divorced from reality – the reality of state-building and the reality on the ground.

1948 was the last year an independent Palestinian State could have emerged. That ship sailed long ago and it doesn’t help Palestinians to pretend it still would be a viable option but were it not for Israeli obstinacy.

For a long time I’ve thought that people advocating a 2 State Solution are generally (but innocently) working against Palestinian interests, out of ideological bias. This impression was understandably strengthened by the USA’s injection of 2 State discourse into strategic talks during this war (as if establishing a paper state will prevent a new generation from taking up Hamas’s banner for Iran) and is confirmed by this latest episode of European “diplomacy” in attempting to reshape the Middle East (as if their new policy will change any facts on the ground and end the various conflicts in this region).

Enough of the endless foreign meddling and paper-pushing – and of trying to fit ourselves and our situation into the cultural categories and geopolitical theories of the West. Regardless of how the agents of imperialism and colonialism distort our histories and our identities, we are one people with one common destiny. Time to return to what we know.

The Butcher of Tehran

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Ebrahim Raisolsadati (Raisi) שם רשעים ירקב was known as “the Butcher of Tehran” for his tenure on the government’s prosecutorial committee, in which he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of political prisoners (that’s totalitarian-speak for dissidents). His fundamentalist politics represented the betrayal of the ostensibly liberal student movement which won the Iranian ayatollahs their revolution. Note: That wasn’t the last time Iranian totalitarian fundamentalists would recruit student revolutionary movements to their cause.

May Khomeini and his cronies take note: Death comes to us all and we all face the consequences of our thoughts, words, and actions on that day of judgment. Better to build a better world of which the true prophets taught than to amass worldly power under the banner of hating Israel, a people selected by the Creator to teach the world of the Creator’s involvement in human history, as the prophets of the truth taught. Who knows what went on in the mind of the Butcher of Tehran in the seconds before he died – even the shamelessly wicked can still repent their ways and gain a sliver of some true meaning in existence, if not actual rectification for their crimes.

As for us, the living witnesses of the Creator’s judgement – it’s never too late to reconsider what we think, say, and do.

“Controversial” Thoughts on Public Spiritual Health

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I’m raced as White by American cultural standards. My rabbi is raced as Black.

In reality, that pesky intruder into social fantasies, neither of us is either White or Black.

Not just because both of us are Jewish by birth and American cultural standards have nothing to do with our traditional culture.

But because race is a pure abstraction without a real physical correlate, a social construct created explicitly for the purpose of exploiting (African) human beings and violating their human rights for monetary gain – a mental virus that systemically infects entire countries to this day and (violently) disrupts the lives of (hundreds of) millions of people.

Due to the toxic influences of this long Exile, many Jewish people have become vulnerable to infection by this mental virus. We must all guard ourselves against it, and return to the world and words of our sages – the physicians of souls – for regular inoculation (first ensuring of course that the physicians to whom we turn are not themselves infected).

But during such a pandemic we must always remain vigilant, especially with our language, the main vector of this disease.

חוֹלֵי הַגּוּף טוֹעֲמִים הַמַּר מָתוֹק וּמָתוֹק מַר. וְיֵשׁ מִן הַחוֹלִים מִי שֶׁמִּתְאַוְּה וְתָאֵב לְמַאֲכָלוֹת שֶׁאֵינָן רְאוּיִין לַאֲכִילָה כְּגוֹן הֶעָפָר וְהַפֶּחָם וְשׂוֹנֵא הַמַּאֲכָלוֹת הַטּוֹבִים כְּגוֹן הַפַּת וְהַבָּשָׂר הַכּל לְפִי רֹב הַחלִי. כָּךְ בְּנֵי אָדָם שֶׁנַּפְשׁוֹתֵיהֶם חוֹלוֹת מִתְאַוִּים וְאוֹהֲבִים הַדֵּעוֹת הָרָעוֹת וְשׂוֹנְאִים הַדֶּרֶךְ הַטּוֹבָה וּמִתְעַצְּלִים לָלֶכֶת בָּהּ וְהִיא כְּבֵדָה עֲלֵיהֶם לִמְאֹד לְפִי חָלְיָם. וְכֵן יְשַׁעְיָהוּ אוֹמֵר בַּאֲנָשִׁים הַלָּלוּ (ישעיה ה כ) “הוֹי הָאֹמְרִים לָרַע טוֹב וְלַטּוֹב רָע שָׂמִים חשֶׁךְ לְאוֹר וְאוֹר לְחשֶׁךְ שָׂמִים מַר לְמָתוֹק וּמָתוֹק לְמָר”. וַעֲלֵיהֶם נֶאֱמַר (משלי ב יג) “הַעֹזְבִים אָרְחוֹת ישֶׁר לָלֶכֶת בְּדַרְכֵי חשֶׁךְ”. וּמַה הִיא תַּקָּנַת חוֹלֵי הַנְּפָשׁוֹת. יֵלְכוּ אֵצֶל הַחֲכָמִים שֶׁהֵן רוֹפְאֵי הַנְּפָשׁוֹת וִירַפְּאוּ חָלְיָם בַּדֵּעוֹת שֶׁמְּלַמְּדִין אוֹתָם עַד שֶׁיַּחֲזִירוּם לַדֶּרֶךְ הַטּוֹבָה. וְהַמַּכִּירִים בַּדֵּעוֹת הָרָעוֹת שֶׁלָּהֶם וְאֵינָם הוֹלְכִים אֵצֶל הַחֲכָמִים לְרַפֵּא אוֹתָם עֲלֵיהֶם אָמַר שְׁלֹמֹה (משלי א ז) “חָכְמָה וּמוּסָר אֱוִילִים בָּזוּ”:

A Response to the Day of Catastrophe

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I’m sorry your grandparents lost their house. Their orchard. Their field.

I’m sorry if it was my grandparents who drove them out, I’m sorry if they fled, willingly or unwillingly, away from advancing armies and militias, deep into the fog of war.

I’m sorry that their home, that they built with their own hands or that they inherited from their own grandparents, is just a bitter memory to you. I’m sorry that the past 76 years have been for you a story of what could have been, what should have been, and not a story of family life continuing for generations in the only place your grandparents knew as home.

There is always so much to say and to clarify and to debate and to refute.

But today is a day to listen, to hear what happened to real people and to hold space for their families’ real pain.

1948 was a year that we took the next step forward in rebuilding our people. But 1948 was also a year when – to some people – some really bad stuff happened.

And you know what? I’m sorry it did.

“The Beginning of the Sprouting of Our Liberation”

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What do we call this state, when we pray for its survival?

Even when I was anti-Zionist, the words still caught my ear and made me think:

ראשית צמיחת גאולתנו

Not yet the final liberation from the idolatrous world of hierarchy, empire, and colonialism…

Not even the full blossoming of that liberation, a bright dawn after the longest night…

Just the very beginning, the start of it all.

Here’s to the past 76 years, in which the story of that beginning has unfolded around us and through us.

Here’s to the next 76 years; may they bring us the full bloom of a new day, may they bring us the peace and justice promised to us by our prophets, may they finally bring us all home, to Zion.

Here’s to good dreams that should never – will never – die.

לחיים

A Controversial Thought on the Jewish Present

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Diaspora Judaism is an anachronistic extension of the experience of exile, and lacking both a stable national existence (let alone the social institutions of a nation) and a coherent collective identity, can not hope to adequately address itself to the full condition of humanity. Land Judaism was revived in the image of Diaspora Judaism and while it arguably includes a stable national existence and some modern national institutions, ignores the bulk of its collective heritage and has yet to develop a coherent collective identity of its own. Idolizing either Judaism in its present form is a path beyond continuing irrelevance to eventual national suicide.

What it means for the Jewish future:

A holistic Judaism must re-emerge in order to address the full human condition and for Israel to resume its place in the human family. The Diaspora must find its collective identity and stability in the Land, and the Land must find a coherent identity not only of its own but that includes the reality of the Diaspora. The Diaspora must become an organic extension of the reality of the Land and the Land must breathe political, intellectual, ethical, and spiritual life into the Diaspora.

Perhaps the ingathering of the tribes, a necessary part of Israel’s process of decolonization, can be described in this light, as part of the natural act of respiration – inhale. Exhale. Inhale…