JustASC

Holy mackerel — yet another list of the “Top 100 Most Influential Jews in the World,” this one from Ma’ariv!

This is morphing from meme to trend to obsession. And now Joe Biden is getting in on the act! Jonathan Chait reports on the veep’s remarks in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, and suggests that Biden may have overdone it on praising the Jews for their influence in social justice issues, Hollywood, gay marriage, and more:

Biden indeed offered fulsome, heartfelt praise in his remarks, before wandering into highly uncomfortable terrain and delivering a speech that is likely to be quoted by anti-Semites for years and decades to come. (It’s already the subject of excited discussion among the white supremacist community.)

Biden’s remarks were not anti-Semitic. They were very, very philo-Semitic. The thrust of his largely unscripted monologue is that Jews have contributed enormously to the United States.

The problem for Jews, writes Chait, is a

fear that our success will be seen as a kind of invidious control, that the broader society will at some point say, no, you have too much. Ivy League schools in the last century imposed first overt quotas, and then more subtle geographic and “character”-based admissions standards, precisely to suppress the disproportionate Jewish share of their student body. The first generation of Hollywood moguls lived in terror that they would be seen as using their control of film to impose a particular Jewish slant upon the culture and labored endlessly to dispel any such suspicions.

Which demands, of course, that you tell the old joke (here is Joseph Telushkin’s version): In the late 1930s, a Jew is traveling on the subway reading a Yiddish newspaper, The Forward. Suddenly, to his shock, he spots a friend of his sitting just opposite him, reading the local New York Nazi newspaper. He glares at his friend in anger, “How can you read that Nazi rag?” Unabashed, the friend looks up at him. “So what are you reading?” he asks. “The Forward? And what do you read there? In America there is a depression going on and the Jews are assimilating. In Palestine, the Arabs are rioting and killing Jews. In Germany, they’ve taken away all our rights. You sit there, and read all about it, and get more and more depressed.

“I read the Nazi newspaper. We own all the banks. We control all the governments.”

My column this week is about all those lists of top rabbis and other Jews, and I mention my tongue-in-cheek stab at compiling a list of “Least Inspiring Rabbis.”

It turns out, Brad Burston of Ha’aretz also fantasizes about writing a real-life list of rabbinic malefactors:

A year ago at this time, I wrote a piece which I ultimately decided was too venom-laced, too cruel, and too socially un-redeeming even for this often problematic space.

An end of the year feature, it was called “The Top 10 Rabbis Judaism Could Do Without.” No one saw it. I threw it out.

It was a time for new beginnings, I believed. A time for granting the benefit of the doubt. A time for giving a chance, for hoping against hope. A time to refrain from tarring all rabbis with the refesh – the filth of a few.

Which rabbis would have made the list?

[T]hose whose rulings contravene some of the most fundamental moral precepts in Judaism, and also those who issued bans on living with non-Jews, as well as those who have declared it moral to kill Arab innocents, even infants, and those who preach the destruction of Palestinian property, and those who have advised IDF soldiers that mercy toward Arabs is cruelty, and those whose ardor for settlement is such that it has bent and broken the principle that the saving of human life takes precedence above all else.

Adds Burston:

What can I say? After a year of waiting and watching, I now realize that I’d been wrong in more ways than I knew. Not only was the list of 10 Rabbis that Judaism Could Do Without, mean-spirited and presumptuous, it also turned out to be much, much too short.

UPDATE: In a fun coincidence, Jeffrey Goldberg’s Bloomberg column, posted almost simultaneously with mine, is also about the proliferation of top Jew lists — meaning, of course, that my column will be doomed to even more obscurity than it usually achieves.

Goldberg indulges in some humble-bragging about making some of the lists before getting to his point:

Why are these publications aping a practice of non-Jews — singling out Jews for their special prominence in society? Please don’t misunderstand; I love playing the “Who is a Jew?” game as much as the next Semite. Scarlett Johansson! Jake Gyllenhaal! Anthony Weiner! (OK, you can keep Weiner.) The phenomenon of disproportionate Jewish representation in many high-profile fields (including, but not limited to, musical comedy, gastroenterology, the violin, physics, hedge funds, column-writing and, in an earlier period, professional basketball), combined with ancient and deeply embedded anti-Semitic ideas that are still prevalent in some parts of the world, suggests that they should resist the urge to quantify “Jewish power.”

I think it’s a weak point. Goldberg is right that the Jerusalem Post list can’t decide “whether a Jew is powerful because of his influence within the walls of the world Jewish community or because of his impact on the world around him.” But the Forward list and even Newsweek’s top rabbis list seem to focus inward — not “look at which Jews are running the world” but rather “look at the way Jewishness is being expressed in the marketplace of ideas and influence.” When the Jewish media tally Jewish power or influence we do it to describe something about what it means to be Jewish. An anti-Semite sees Sheldon Adelson as another cog in the Jewish conspiracy machine; a Jewish newspaper sees him as the embodiment of a number of converging trends: the right-ward drift of pro-Israel politics; the ability to translate minority wealth into national influence; the dissonance between a wealthy man’s philanthropic interests and his political activities. We’re not responsible for the anti-Semites’ reductionist worldview. And I don’t think anti-Semites rely on Jewish newspapers to fuel their hatred.

That’s why I like how the Forward describes its criteria for its top 50 list: it’s Jews who “made the most significant impact on the news in the past year.” The Forward 50 becomes a review of what we talked, thought, and buzzed about over the past year. Matisyahu made the list in years past not because he was “influential” (to judge by the number of Hasidic reggae artists who followed in his wake), but because he captured the Jewish imagination and the wider world’s attention in a fascinatingly Jewish way.

Take away our ability to talk about Jewish cultural, political, and economic impact, and what do we need a Jewish press for anyway?

Don’t answer that.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

Iran has vowed to respond to Israel’s alleged airstrikes in Syria earlier this week with “blows under the belt in several locations,” Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Wednesday.

The paper quotes Iranian sources as saying the response to Israel’s alleged strikes will be made on two levels. The first being “blows under the belt in several locations,” which could be done inside Syria under the policy of “contain, squeeze and crush,” or outside of it, while maintaining the “terror balance.”

A few questions:

1. Do Iranians really have the expression “blows under the belt”?

2. If so, are they aware that “hitting below the belt” means to do something that is hurtful, clearly unfair, and outside the rules?

3. What the hell is a “terror balance”? Do terrorists usually acknowledge that they engage in acts of terror?

4. Are the expressions “blows under the belt” and “contain, squeeze and crush” way more suggestive than they need to be?

Of course, the most important question is whether this is crazy ayatollah talk, or a serious threat. I bet Israel isn’t taking any chances.

Under the perverse logic of the Boycott Israel movement, no Israeli institution or achievement is innocent of the stain of “The Occupation.”

On a whim, I googled “Israel” and “ALS,” a form of which afflicts Prof. Stephen Hawking.

From MDA/ALS Newsmagazine:

The Israeli Ministry of Health has given BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics approval to accelerate its current phase 1-2 safety trial of the company’s NurOwn stem cell therapy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

A new phase 2a dose-escalating trial, designed to evaluate the safety and preliminary efficacy of the experimental therapy in ALS, will be launched immediately at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Last year, the company reported preliminary data that showed the experimental therapy was well-tolerated, and that some functional improvements were seen in participants.

From Haaretz:

At a massive scientific parley  (April 22 and 23, 2013), 18 Israeli companies and several more from around the world will meet to discuss stem cells, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine in both industry and academia…. In Israel, 18 companies — an unprecedentedly large proportion in relation to the country’s population — develop or market cell-based treatment products. Three of them develop therapies from stem cells produced from early embryos (human embryonic stem cells)….

Several products that use the patient’s own cells are already in clinical trials. A product made by the Israeli company BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, which uses cells from the patient’s own bone marrow to treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), is being tested at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Kerem.

Also from Haaretz:

A joint study by researchers from Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center and the University of Massachusetts Medical School has identified a gene mutation that is liable to cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS ), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease…. In the long term the newly discovered mutation could contribute to the discovery of the mechanism of the disease and to the development of effective drugs against the mechanism by means of which the mutation acts.

The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, which is tickled that ALS sufferer Stephen Hawking has joined the anti-Israel boycott, “is actively engaged in trying to halt the expansion of EU research links with Israel through the European Research area,” they boasted in 2009. “Along with other groups in the UK and across Europe we have been successful in halting the recent pro-posed expansion of research and trade links.”

Not successful enough, apparently: In 2010, Israel joined the exclusive Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and last year became an associate member of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

But what a goal: trying to cripple scientific activity by the Middle East’s only world class science and research center, and a major contributor to medical, tech, and agricultural advances around the world.

Physicist Stephen Hawking has cancelled a planned visit to Israel, and after some confusion it appears he did so in sympathy with a boycott of Israel promoted by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine.

Critics of Hawking say that by joining the boycott he has thrown in with anti-Semites, or at the very least undermined the spirit of academic inquiry by closing down dialogue.”It is always dismaying to see intelligent men and women commit themselves to a tactic that relies on stymieing dialogue and curbing the free exchange of ideas,” writes Liel Leibovitz.

I think both charges miss the point. I’m not offended that Hawking is refusing to travel to a country whose policies he doesn’t like — I can think of many instances where that would be understandable, and many countries people would prefer to avoid. If the goal were to shame Israel into a just resolution of the conflict and a return to negotiations toward self-determination for two peoples and two lands, even some left-wing Zionists would at least understand, if not support, his decision.

But BCUIP is not a “peace” group — it is an anti-Zionist group that does not believe in the legitimacy of Israel in any form. Its stated mission is:

to oppose the continued illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands with its concomitant breaches of international conventions of human rights, its refusal to accept UN resolutions or rulings of the International Court, and its persistent suppression of Palestinian academic freedom.

Do you get that? Palestinian lands. That’s pretty unspecific. They are not interested in negotiations, a fair division of the land, just and secure borders and self-determination for Jews and Palestinians. I’ve spent time on their site, and can’t find any reference to a future that includes Israel. Nor can I find any indication of what Israel would have to do for the boycott to be lifted. Unlike supporters of the boycott in South Africa (to which they compare themselves), BCUIP, like many BDS groups, offers no vision of what Israel needs to do to return to the world’s good graces. It’s not just that they are trying to hold Israel hostage to a one-sided, ahistorical, context-free and almost cartoonish portrayal of the conflict. It is a hostage situation with no list of demands.

Appearing at the Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on April 28, lawyer and pro-Israel activist Alan Dershowitz was booed when he proposed an idea for restarting peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In The Forward, J.J. Goldberg characterized the conference as “an odd combination of high-level exchanges on security policy and raucous, far-right pep rally,” reporting that “the most enthusiastic reception was reserved for Post columnist Caroline Glick, a passionate opponent of Israeli-Palestinian compromise known for her slashing attacks on liberals.”

Both Glick and Dershowitz wrote columns about the event.

Dershowitz, writes Glick, displays

a Western tendency, most pronounced on the anti-colonialist Left, to ignore the nature of the Islamic world generally and the Palestinians in particular, and concentrate their attention on Israel alone.

Dershowitz was booed, she writes, because a plan he presented to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — a settlement freeze in exchange for a Palestinian agreement to suspend their efforts to delegitimize and criminalize Israel — is “based on willful blindness to their nature. “ Writes Glick:

Abbas’s steadfast refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and his unceasing political warfare against Israel – in breach of signed agreements between Israel and the PLO – are just further proof that he is not a credible partner for peace…. It is the tragedy of our times that basically decent liberals like Dershowitz dismiss as marginal those who base their assessments of Israel and the Middle East on reality, rather than on policy paradigms that are the stuff of negotiations textbooks at Harvard.”

Dershowitz writes, meanwhile:

There are a small number of extremely vocal right wing Jews who believe that retaining the entire West Bank is more important than trying to make peace with the Palestinians. This noisy claque boos disrespectfully when they hear the name of President Obama, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or anyone else who favors a two-state solution that does not compromise Israel’s security.

But the alternative to a two-state solution, he writes, is a binational state that will cease being the homeland of the Jewish people. Except for the fact that the right wing loves Israel, there is little to distinguish their solution from that of the left wingers who also call for single state that extends from the “river to the sea.” Adds Dershowitz:

That’s why I will no longer lend my support to ‘far right pep’ rallies of the kind I spoke at last week.

Great moments in Jewish jurisprudence, from 1925:

On June 1, 1925, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (268 U.S. 510), the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional an Oregon law making public school attendance mandatory. In its ruling, the court upheld the right of private schools to exist and for parents to govern their children’s education.

And in 2013:

In this corner, hailing from the great state of New Jersey, weighing obligation against outreach, standing for liberalism over messianism, ladies and gentleman — it’s former president of the Union for Reform Judaism Rabbi Eric Yoffie:

[T]he personal approach of Chabad to Jewish outreach—often combined with glitzy, high-profile, one-time events—has a major negative: It is built on absolutely minimal expectations. Its message seems to be: We will love you, but we won’t require anything of you….

When Reform and Conservative leaders protest that celebrating a Bar or Bat Mitvah in a synagogue should require preparation and serious training, including membership and involvement for more than a few months, they are not simply protecting their membership model. They are pointing out that there are limits to feel-good Judaism; even as an outreach method, sweeping away requirements for study and family engagement becomes counterproductive at a certain point. Friendly is good, a little glitz is fine, and being non-judgmental has its virtues; but who wants to be part of a tradition that doesn’t ask anything of you.

And in the opposite corner — hoping to bring the crown back to Crown Heights, it’s Baila Olidort, director of communications at Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters:

What does Rabbi Yoffie mean when he says, as he did in another article back in 2007,  that Chabad represents “minimalist” Judaism because it does not make “requirements” of the parents of those celebrating their bar mitzvah? What requirements does the Reform movement make of these parents?

Membership fees. Though he denies it, protecting Reform’s membership model is Rabbi Yoffie’s only real concern….

[I]t is true, as Rabbi Yoffie says, that Chabad makes no requirements or demands of those who come knocking. But there is deep humility in this approach, and this may be one explanation for the remarkable receptivity that Chabad enjoys. It is a shame that instead of applauding this as an example of unconditional acceptance while remaining faithful to the spirit and the laws of Torah, and teaching others to do the same, Rabbi Yoffie dismisses it, incredulously, as “a tradition that doesn’t ask anything of you.”

Apparently, David Byrne’s new musical about Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos features a lot of audience participation:

[U]shers in neon pink jumpsuits, with cunning sequin accents, …herd you into position as David Korins’s modular set is reconfigured again and again.

And as the stage and the world turn, you’re expected to keep on dancing. Members of the show’s ensemble will instruct you in the Manila pop-style steps. You may also find yourself on television, simulcast on the walls, during political rallies. You’ll be asked to vote for Marcos, too, natch. And as folks tend to do when caught up in the fever of a crowd, you’ll probably find yourself smiling and nodding assent.

So far, this sounds like every bat mitzva I’ve ever attended.

Daniel Pipes finds a silver lining to the Boston Marathon bombings: Perhaps they will spawn the kind of far-right, xenophobic, anti-immigration parties that are lately thriving in Europe!

Westerners are indeed waking up to [the threat of radical Islam]. One can get a vivid sense of trends by looking at developments in Europe, which on the topics of immigration, Islam, Muslims, Islamism, and Shari’a (Islamic law) is ahead of North America and Australia by about twenty years. One sign of change is the growth of political parties focused on these issues, including the U.K. Independence Party, the National Front in France, the People’s Party in Switzerland, Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the Progress Party in Norway, and the Swedish Democrats. In a much-noted recent by-election, UKIP came in second, increasing its share of the vote from 4 percent to 28 percent, thereby creating a crisis in the Conservative party.

If anything, a good bombing every now and then is exactly what America needs, says Pipes:

Islamist aggression assures that anti-Islamism in the West is winning its race with Islamism. High-profile Muslim attacks like the ones in Boston exacerbate this trend. That is its strategic significance. That explains my cautious optimism about repulsing the Islamist threat.

Jewish groups in Europe don’t share Pipes’ admiration for the far right, nationalist groups he finds so appealing and progressive.

Last month, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, in partnership with the Community Security Trust (a sort of British Anti-Defamation League) and the Swedish National Defence College,  hosted a conference on the New Far Right.

Unlike Pipes, they are not “cautiously optimistic” about the rise of the Far Right. Below are a a few of the insights and questions that grew out of the conference:

1) “The threat is real”. As the UK’s Security Minister, James Brokenshire, noted, the threat from far-right terrorism is significant, albeit “not as systematic or widespread as the al Qaeda inspired [terrorist] threat”. In UK prisons, there are currently 17 individuals who have been charged with or convicted for terrorist offences “associated with far-fight extremism”.

2) Conspiracy theory. The New Far Right is inspired – in part – by a conspiracy theory according to which Western Muslims, allied with liberal governments, plan to destroy Western democracies and replace them with a Caliphate . This movement calls itself ”Counter-Jihad”.

3) Public disorder and social cohesion. More so than terrorism, New Far Right activists have been involved in street violence and acts of public disorder. Their aggressive rhetoric divides communities and undermines social cohesion. They also campaign against the use of Islamic practices – such as ritually slaughtered halal meat.

4) Old vs. New Far Right. There are striking differences between the “old” (neo-Nazi) Far Right and so-called Counter-Jihad members like Anders Breivik. However, there also exist many similarities, and it would be wrong to ignore the continued threat from “old” far-right groups in countries such as Greece and Germany.

5) Echoes of extremism. In the British context, the New Far Right and Islamist extremists seem to be in a symbiotic relationship, confirming each other’s stereotypes and providing motives and justifications for mobilising their respective sympathisers.

6) Addressing grievances. New Far Right activism is often rooted in social, economic and cultural fears about immigration. Mainstream politicians from across the political spectrum have failed to articulate these concerns in a way that would undercut the support for far-right extremists.

9) Countering the New Far Right. Government counter-radicalisation programmes – such as the British PREVENT – have mostly focused on Islamist extremism. Policymakers need to understand what lessons have been learned and how those programmes can be applied to the New Far Right.