JustASC

The Los Angeles Jewish Journal profiles NJ-bred Rabbi Sharon Brous, founder of a popular L.A. “community” (don’t call it a synagogue) with a “national reputation for tapping into a rich vein of Jewish life, attracting everyone from the unaffiliated to lifelong super-Jews.”

When the NJJN profiled her in 2008, we obviously put more focus on her NJ roots (she grew up in Livingston and Short Hills) — which, she suggested, demonstrated precisely the kind of synagogue Judaism a younger generation is not interested in:

“In the 1950s, when Jews were not allowed to join country clubs, they needed a place to come together where they wouldn’t be alienated and wouldn’t be the ‘other.’ Because of the guilt they felt, and their being rooted in the sense of otherness from Christian America, the synagogue really spoke to my parents’ generation,” she explained.

But guilt and separateness are no longer motivating factors for belonging, she said.

“All doors are open to Jews in this country. We don’t need a Jewish country club. We can go to film screenings, and Jewish collectives. We have no need to be in an exclusively Jewish community,” she said.

Instead, she suggests, we ought to be looking “at what’s happening in this country and what people want to be part of.” There’s a desperate thirst for meaning, involvement, and action, she explained.

Arriving at Columbia University, Brous considered herself profoundly connected to Judaism, but suddenly discovered she was “functionally illiterate” in ritual and other aspects of Jewish life.

A spiritual journey brought her to [Manhattan's] B’nai Jeshurun, and ultimately to rabbinical school at JTS. She was ordained in 2001.

She went on to serve on the faculty of REBOOT, a Jewish think tank that encourages new ideas in Jewish community building. “I learned from this that even the best synagogues were not giving points of access for people really searching for meaning,” she said.

IKAR is not a synagogue, she will tell you, but a community. They don’t have a building, and she worries about getting too connected to a particular space.

“No matter how intensive our Torah shiur [class] is, many people won’t even look to a synagogue for spiritual inspiration,” she said.

New Jersey Jewish News won one first-place and two second-place prizes in the annual journalism contest sponsored by the American Jewish Press Association.

NJJN won the Rockower Award for excellence in cover design for
February 5, June 4, and August 20, 2009 issues.

I took home a second-place prize for Excellence in Commentary for columns on homegrown terrorism, Jewish innovation, and the Gaza war.

Editor Robin Friedman and designer Dayna Nadel shared a second-place prize for Excellence in Special Sections for the October 2009 issue of Nu, NJJN’s teen magazine.

It was an Elton John weekend for me and mine — grateful that the Rocket Man performed in Israel last Thursday, and thrilled to have seen Billy Elliot on Broadway yesterday.

I stopped paying attention to Elton as a performer starting with Rock of the Westies in 1975, when I turned 14. Until then, however, he was pretty much the soundtrack of my early adolescence. I remember the hours I’d sit listening to my brother’s copy of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and studying the lyrics and illustations on the double-album’s gatefold sleeve.  In 1974 Michael O”Shea got a few of us tickets to see Elton at Nassau Coliseum during the Caribou tour, my first concert. (I remember he opened with his orchestral “Love Lies Bleeding,” which I thought was the height of rock seriousness, and that Kiki Dee came on stage to sing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,”  which was the opposite, but which I secretly liked anway.)

I was on a sleepout in Howard Seeman’s backyard in ’75 when his father got his hands on the just-released Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy – we spent the next morning listening and sharing the photo booklet that came with it. I know I sound fogeyish, but I really miss the idea of recordings as “objects,” and the packaging that came with them.

And then I moved on — to Steely Dan, mostly, and later my lifelong obession with Balinese gamelan music (okay, I’ve never listened to Balinese gamelan music, but admit it — you were sort of  impressed there for a second).

But thanks, Elton, for many great songs, fine memories, a wonderful show, and respecting complexity and nuance enough to show up in Israel (unlike some other artists I could name).

From Israel21C:

An Israeli research team finds that older drivers are more sensitive to potential hazards, while younger drivers tend to focus only on the road ahead.

Much anticipated AJPA session on Arizona’s immigration law was a much politer affair than I supposed I’d hope it would be, partly because the three opponents and one (sort of) supporter of the law on the panel agreed that in the absence of federal action Arizona had to do something.

That one (sort of) supporter was Paulina Vazquez Morris, one of 10 Republican candidates vying for the Congressional seat of the retiring incumbent in District 3. Morris is the daughter of Cuban Jewish immigrants; asked whether she supported SB1070, she couldn’t bring herself to say “yes,” exactly, instead replying it was “inevitable.”

“In a federal vacuum states will act, and sometimes it takes states to move a nation,” she said. “Our federal government has failed to address a critical issue for Arizona. SB 1070 was inevitable. Something had to be done.”

The problem, she said, was a “hugely profitable human trafficking industry—21st century slavery.”  And from there she quickly segued into talk of Mexican drug trafficking, including reports today of 95 murders in Mexico City. “We must secure the borders for national security reasons, to stop the drug trafficking and stop the human trafficking,” she said.

Her solution? “Helping Mexico help itself, help its standard of living, help its people.” She wants to encourage the Mexican government to pass legislation that opens access to credit markets for businesses to prosper in Mexico.

Really? Our economy is in shambles and our priority is to fix Mexico? Like her focus on those scary murders in Mexico City, her approach struck me as a little distant from the everyday reality of both your average Arizona resident and your typical illegal immigrant.

I thought Gideon Aronoff, President and CEO of HIAS, came off as reasonable and bipartisan (I’m tempted to write “in contrast,” but Ms. Morris seemed like a perfectly nice politician). He called for immigration reform that addresses the borders, enforcement and a path towards legality for illegal immigrants. And he nicely pivoted off of Morris’ demagoguery deep concerns over drug cartels.

“Police should be dealing with that and not spending all their time chasing after nannies, bus boys and gardeners,” said Aronoff.

“The solution is pretty clear,” he said. “There is a framework introduced in the Senate by Sen. Schumer. It involves actually having effective enforcement at borders and the workplace.”

It also involves legal frameworks for immigration. And before legalizing, “you have to address backlogs in family immigration, people waiting in line to be reunited with family members. You need a path citizenship. The idea that you can scare 12 milion to leave America is absurd.”

That’s a quick take. I’ll probably have more to say later.

100  degrees in Scottsdale, where I am attending the American Jewish Press Association convention.  But I woke at 5 (still on NJ time) and ran along the canal path here when it was still pleasant. Actually, it’s not bad outside — nothing like the wet rag feeling on a triple H day back east.

Of course, as at any conference, you spend most of your time indoors in over-a.c’ed conference rooms staring at PowerPoint. Today’s theme: Social media. (My friend Ami’s joke: “Session one was on tweeting. Session two was on retweeting.” ) I get it, I get it – I’m firing everybody and hiring a bunch of 19-year-olds with iPhones.

And here it gets meta: one of the busiest Jewish tweeters and Facebook updaters is William Daroff, of the United Jewish Communities’ Washington office. (See JTA’s story calling him the “Fastest Tweet in the Jewish Organizational World.”)  On Facebook Bill mentioned he was at the AJPA conference, and I commented on his update — while sitting in a session on using social media … and staring at the back of Bill’s head!

I’m headed to Arizona next week for the American Jewish Press Association’s annual convention. It will include a panel on U.S. Immigration Policy and Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

When the law first passed there was talk about whether it would have been appropriate to relocate the convention, which had been planned a year in advance, although that was quickly and sensibily dismissed on the grounds that

a/ we shouldn’t assume there’s unaimous opinion on the law among our colleagues or readers

b/ ostensibly objectice press associations shouldn’t be taking blatantly partisan political positions — or boycotting whole states

c/ we could probably learn a lot more about the law by going to Arizona and talking to local proponents and opponents than by staying home, and

d/ members of the local community, including passionate opponents of the law, urged us to come, learn more, and tell the story for ourselves.

Which is my way of saying, yes, I am going to Arizona, and I’ll probably enjoy myself, unless you don’t want me to, then I won’t.

Slate’s Jack Shafer thinks Peter Beinart,  in his NYRB story on the Jewish establishment, played fast and loose with the numbers in contending that “young America Jews are giving up on Zionism”:

Convincing me that American Jewish college students have become slackers on the topic of Israel should require Beinart 1) to reach back to the past and identify a base-line period during which pro-Israel verbal ferocity was the norm on campus and then 2) to compare those strengths to the weaknesses of current student op-eds, student blogs, and debate-society transcripts. But Beinart doesn’t do that.

Shafer quotes Theodore Sasson and Leonard Saxe, who also say Beinart misread the data. 

The irony is that in at least this instance, Beinart and the Jewish establishment he attacked are both saying essentially the same thing. I can’t go to a public event without hearing a Jewish macher say, “We have to stop this apathy among our young people. Give to Birthright! Give to Hillel! Fight the anti-Israel propaganda on campus that is driving our Jewish kids underground!!” See here, here, and here.

Concerns about growing apathy among young Jews coalesced around this 2007 study by Steven M. Cohen. As Cohen wrote in the introduction:

“Indeed, a mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of the older population with younger birth cohorts leads to a growing distancing in the population overall.”

And as Cohen’s co-author told the Forward:

“Every measure indicates a decline of attachment to Israel…” 

So you can say that Beinart was right, but that he picked the wrong study to prove it, and the wrong reasons to explain it.

Where Cohen, Saxe and others disagree with Beinart is over the reasons for this disaffection. Here’s Cohen’s response to Beinart in Foreign Policy. Bottom line: American Jews are becoming increasingly disillusioned with Israel , but the reason is intermarriage, not politics:

In reading Peter Beinart’s, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” I am reminded of Sam Norich’s quip: “You exaggerate, but not enough!” Indeed, American Jews’ disillusionment with Israel is more far-reaching than Beinart portrays; the causes for distancing extend beyond dissonance with liberal values; and distancing operates differently for the Jewish public and the most engaged in Jewish life.

Beinart is right to locate detachment among the non-Orthodox. Over the years, Orthodox Jews have grown increasingly attached to Israel, as gap-year study in Israel has become de rigueur, and more than 2,000 Orthodox Jews make aliya (migrate to Israel) annually.

In contrast, the 90 percent of American Jews who are not Orthodox have been moving toward less engagement with Israel . This move has been tempered only by Birthright Israel and Masa, programs bringing thousands of young American Jews to Israel annually.

Detachment from Israel among the American Jewish public differs critically from disillusionment among the more Jewishly active and engaged. For the public, distancing is not much driven by political considerations. If Israeli policies were largely responsible for distancing, then liberal Jews should be more distant from Israel than centrist or politically conservative Jews. In fact, as Ari Kelman and I find in “Beyond Distancing,” attachment to Israel is unrelated to political identity.

If Israeli policies aren’t undermining Israel attachment, then what is? As Ari and I found, the primary driver is intermarriage. Younger Jews are far more likely to marry non-Jews, and the intermarried are far less Israel-attached than those who marry fellow Jews — and even non-married Jews. Intermarriage reflects and promotes departure from all manner of Jewish ethnic “groupiness,” of which Israel attachment is part.

By the way, for an unbelievably caustic take on this kind of debate, see Eli Valley’s recent comic in the Forward. Let’s just say Valley is not a big fan of Jewish sociologists.

From JTA:

JERUSALEM (JTA) – A day after it was reported that Israel had eased its embargo in order to allow snack foods and sweet drinks into Gaza, Hamas leaders said they would not allow the items in.

From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg: ““Our Administration strongly supported the proposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages as a way to combat the obesity epidemic and further support our schools, hospitals and clinics.”

Shmuel Rosner does a great job fact-checking (actually, mistake-finding) in response to Tony Judt’s piece in the Times today on the “cliches” that hinder discussion of the Mideast. (For example, Judt asserts that Israel has a “constitution.” It doesn’t.) As for Judt’s statement that Israel is a “democracy dominated and often governed by former professional soldiers,” Rosner responds:

No it is not. It is a democracy governed by its democratically elected leaders. Again, it is true that since most Israelis serve in the military, almost all leaders have some military background. Many of them were officers, so calling them “professional soldiers” is technically accurate. But Ehud Olmert was not a “professional soldier”, Menachem Begin was not a professional soldier, Shimon Peres was not a professional soldier, Tzipi Livni was not a professional soldier, Binyamin Netanyahu – the Prime Minister – was not a professional soldier. He was in the military for a number of years, but didn’t have [a] military career. And if you don’t see the difference maybe this example will clarify it: Eisenhower was a professional soldier, George W. Bush was not – even though he did serve for a number of years in the Texas Guard flying airplanes.

To which I’d only add that it was Yitzhak Rabin, perhaps Israel’s most highly decorated soldier-politician, who most aggressively took the “initiative” towards the kind of peaceful resolution that Judt presumably supports.