JustASC

Is the interfaith marriage of the year a sign of “a much richer and better world”?

Rabbi Irwin Kula was my boss at CLAL in the late 1990s, and he and the other rabbis on staff were intensely interested in making Judaism “bigger” — that is, a religion that spoke beyond the practitioners themselves and became part of the spiritual conversation of the wider world. That was the message Irwin brought during his appearances on Oprah. As he once told an interviewer:

 “In the past, we thought our goal in preparing rabbis was exclusively to make Jews more Jewish,” Kula said as we talked. While that remains an important calling within congregations around the world, “the new challenge is whether Jewish wisdom can be made accessible to anyone who is seeking meaning, purpose and social development.”

Although I was one of the few non-rabbis on staff, I always found myself arguing the “traditionalist” perspective. It’s all well and good to make Judaism more “accessible” to non-Jews, I’d argue, but if we don’t focus on making Judaism matter to Jews, it will become just another dead wisdom tradition in someone’s spiritual toolbox. Or the Kabbalah Centre.

Irwin’s latest essay, on the Chelsea Clinton wedding, offers a similar challenge to “traditionalists.” Their interfaith wedding, he writes, is increasingly typical of the way American religionis moving from the “cathedral” to the “bazaar” — that is, even as some faiths become more rigid and exclusivist, others ”are becoming more diverse, inclusive, and syncretistic”:

Religious leaders who do not see these changes as threatening the integrity of their faiths and groups will need to be concerned less with creating good upstanding members of their group (theologically or sociologically) and more with providing wisdom and practice drawn from their tradition that is accessible, usable, and good enough to get the job done: helping “mixers, blenders, benders, and switchers” construct ever-changing lives that are more ethical, vital, and loving within their already-existing webs of relations.

Yes, there will be loss, about which traditionalists are appropriately feeling scared and angry and which liberals and secularists tend to deny. But just as the most important part of a bowl is the empty space that can be filled, so this loss can open space for a new reality, one that holds the potential for a much richer and better world as we transcend the exclusivity of our creeds, dogmas, and tribes, and — here is the contemporary challenge — as we include the best of our inherited traditions. Loving each other across boundaries and building families to which multiple traditions are brought is far better for the planet than what our religions have too often done: demonizing the other.

Irwin’s endorsement of such “syncretism” flies directly in the face of most Jewish conventional wisdom these days, which, with most institutions freaking out about intermarriage, tends to focus on making upstanding Jewish citizens, not helping the blenders “love each other across boundaries.”

Irwin’s vision is compelling for humanity — not so much for the Jews qua Jews. He forces me to confront the very raison d’être of religious belonging — is it merely to reproduce and make more practitioners of your particular faith, or spread the sum total of happiness, wisdom and justice in the world, no matter the flavor? That’s a tough choice, and I see how one often contradicts the other.

In the case of a people as small as the Jews, however, I worry that the end result of such syncretism will be, if not extinction, then survival of its most traditionalist, most fundamentalist practitioners, while the Jewish folks most interested in “building families to which multiple traditions are brought” will disappear in a generation or two.

Discuss.

Ami Eden took time out from running the The Global News Service of the Jewish People to wonder why the gentile ad man Harry Crane used the Yiddish word “tsoris” [grief] in Sunday’s season premier of Mad Men. 

(Crane, head of the TV department at the show’s fictional ad agency, returns from a trip to California to complain, “I had a lot of tsoris with Lucy and Desi.”)

Wonders Ami:

“Is Harry Crane a Yid? Even if he is, would a Jew struggling to make it in a WASPy firm be throwing around a word like “tsoris”? Would Joan, the red-headed secretary, know what it meant?

My theory is that the terminally insecure Harry was showing off, trying to demonstrate to the others that he was so tight with the West Coast guys that he was starting to use their lingo — you know,  the way a kid spends a semester abroad in England and comes home throwing around words like “lorry” and “lift” to impress his friends.

The Jewish encroachment on the WASPy world of Madison Avenue was also a theme of Season One, with the edgy work of legendary ad man Julian Koenig used as symbol of how the Jews were storming the gates. Last season Pete mocked Duck for using the word “nosh” after a few weeks on the job at the putatively Jewish Grey Advertising. I think “tsoris” was a callback to that theme.

There was a big discussion about the “tsoris” thing on the obsessive Mad Men blogs, which I coincidentally stumbled upon yesterday (“coincidentally” as in I spent two hours reading Mad Men blogs).  Some gentile viewers had never heard of the word, which surprised me. The same blogs also delve into the plausibility that Harry would have taken a meeting with Lucy and Desi — whose marriage and business partnership had apparently ended in 1964, when Season Four takes place.

Lee Smith responds to critics (like me) of his Tablet article on anti-Israel bloggers and the “mainstreaming” of anti-Semitism. Again, he doesn’t satisfactorily explain the distinctions he is drawing between the rhetoric of the bloggers and the anti-Semitism of many of their commenters. I mean, read this drippingly sarcastic sentence and tell me how he is not calling Walt an anti-Semite:

Walt is not accountable for the rabble that hang on his every word and who feel vindicated by the fact that their dark fantasies about Jews are enhanced by a veneer of academic reasoning from a Harvard professor.

Nor does he answer the question asked in the subhed: “When the comments field turns ugly, who should be held accountable?”  

He does a much better job with his “Jew-baiter’s Lexicon” — an attempt to show, as I write in a similar attempt this week, “the list of strategies that all too easily shade into anti-Semitism.” Because I think that is his point: Walt, Sullivan, Weiss, et al may not think they are anti-Semitic, and in their hearts may not be, but when they employ the loaded themes that have long been associated with anti-Semitism, how is anyone supposed to tell the difference?

Or as I wrote this week:

Part of Smith’s point, although poorly articulated, was this: The crazies find comfort in some blogs because they so often traffic in themes that confirm the anti-Semite’s world view.

Ha’aretz is reporting that NBA star and newest Knick Amar’e Stoudemire is in Israel, exploring his Jewish roots:

Yesterday Army Radio reported that the Florida native plans to spend time in Israel learning Hebrew, having recently learned his mother is Jewish.

There is a lot of giddy coverage of this, but no one is explaining how his mother, the famously troubled Carrie Stoudemire, is Jewish. I spent way too long on this this morning, and figured out this much:

Carrie’s maiden name is Palmorn, and her mother is Bessie Palmorn ( 07/17/1923 - 01/07/1998). She’s buried next to her husband Jack at a V.A. cemetery in Bushnell, Fl. If it is true that Amar’e is “Hebrew through my mother,”  Bessie’s first name might be a clue. And if in fact she is a Jewish grandmom, that makes Carrie (and thus Amar’e) Jewish by matrilineal descent. I found a Polk County, Fl. record indicating her name as “Bessie Thomas Palmorn,” but can’t find an obit for Bessie, which would tell me more.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned that Jack Palmorn was a member of First Institutional Missionary Baptist Church in Lake Wales. Fl.]

[UPDATE TWO: Stoudemire's agent tells TMZ, "I know there are some reports that he is Jewish, but he is not. He thinks there may be some Jewish blood on his mother's side and he is researching it."

[UPDATE THREE: Jack and Bessie were married in 1940, when inter-racial marriages were still illegal in Florida. I suppose they could have married in another state, or if white, she "passed." But now, combined with her apparent maiden name, and the agent's quote, I doubt she was Jewish.]

This just in: Jewish toilet paper manufacturer to donate Santa rolls to cash-strapped Newark:

Facing a $180 million budget gap, [Newark Mayor Cory] Booker has said he plans layoffs and cutbacks on everything from toilet paper to Christmas decorations to clean up the city’s budget mess.

Mark Polish, the head of justtoiletpaper.com said, “I was so puzzled when I heard this from Mayor Booker.”

“Isn’t it someone’s right to have toilet paper at work?” Polish asked.

Polish said his company will set up a donation button on its online site that will allow customers to donate Santa Clause toilet paper to city employees. Since Booker has said that the city won’t pay for holiday decorations, Polish said the paper will also help Newark have a clean, happy Christmas in July.

“I love Christmas, even though I’m Jewish,” Polish said. “As soon as I read what was happening in Newark I knew I wanted to help out.”

By the way, isn’t it “Santa Claus,” no “e”?

Jacob Weisberg of Slate explains why cultural boycotts of Israel are wrong: it’s about “consistency and proportionality– and history.” I was hoping it would be the satisfying knock-out punch the boycott movement deserves, but he doesn’t quite connect. He makes two strong points, however. The first:

Supporters of boycotting Israel seldom focus on China, or Syria, or Zimbabwe, or other genuinely illegitimate regimes that violate human rights not in deviation from their own principles but systematically. This underscores their bad faith.

This may not apply to the pro-Palestinian leaders of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, any more than the Free Tibet movement has an obligation to also back autonomy for Quebec or the Basques. But certainly when followers like Elvis Costello and Meg Ryan jump on board, as well as various leftist groups and individuals, I’d like to know if they are planning to boycott countries like the ones named by Weisberg. Otherwise, their boycott actions are more a fashion statement than a consistent political stand.

His second strong point:

Boycotters are not trying to send a specific message, such as “We object to your settlement policy in the West Bank” or “We think you need to be willing to give up more for peace.” What they’re saying instead is: “We consider your country so intrinsically reprehensible that we are gong to treat all of your citizens as pariahs.” Instead of warning that Israel risks becoming an apartheid society if it fails to make peace, boycotters have concluded that Israel already is an irredeemable apartheid society. Like the older Arab economic boycott of Israel, which dates back to the 1940s, the cultural boycott is a weapon designed not to bring peace but to undermine the country.

This argument presumes that boycotters don’t have a coherent or specific policy goal. And truth be told, you can spend a long time on BDSMovement.net without finding a goal more specific than this:

[BDS supports a boycott] until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.

Not very specific, that. “Self-determination” defined how? Mutually recognized statehood, secure borders? And whose definition of “self-determination”? The P.A.’s? Hamas’? The UN’s?

Here’s how Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Global BDS Movement, describes the “self-determination” the boycotters are seeking:

The only way that we can exercise our right to self-determination [emphasis added], without imposing unnecessary injustice on our oppressors, is to have a secular, democratic state where nobody is thrown into the sea, nobody is sent back to Poland, and nobody is left in refugee camps.

In other words, one state, Jewish and Palestinian, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. Does Meg Ryan singer Devendra Banhart of the Gorillaz support the dissolution of Israel and a single bi-national state?

As for international law, what specific UN Security Council resolutions will Israel have to comply with before Costello agrees to play Tel Aviv? Stated another way, what would Israel have to do before the BDS people called off the boycott? They rarely say, which is intentional: When your ultimate fantasy is that your opponent disappears, it is hard to settle for anything less.

Weisberg is much less effective when he argues against the boycott from the perspective of “history,” which follows from his argument that the goal of the boycott is to “undermine the country”:

Because Israel is a refuge for persecuted Jews, this kind of existential challenge is hard to disassociate from anti-Semitism—even if people like Meg Ryan and Elvis Costello intend nothing of the kind. It is for this reason that unlike in South Africa, where the internal opposition supported sanctions, none but the most extreme voices in Israel are likely to come around to the idea that their country deserves to be boycotted, divested from, or punished with sanctions. When people are trying to murder you because of your religion, it is difficult to credit the bona fides of those who merely want to shun you because of your nationality.

I’m not sure why an effort to undermine a country is any more morally wrong or shameful because its citizens include persecuted Jews. This is an argument that folks like Norman Finkelstein relish: That Israelis use the Holocaust and anti-Semitism as an excuse to justify their illegal existence and persecution of the Palestinians. Israel may have been a haven for persecuted Jews, but its legitimacy shouldn’t have to depend on that. 

Ultimately, Weisberg comes down on the side of specific actions to protest specific Israeli policies:

For instance, the high court of the European Union ruled earlier this year that goods manufactured in the West Bank don’t qualify for preferential treatment given to Israeli exports. In a similar vein, the New York Times recently delineated the way in which American supporters of the settlements claim hundreds of millions of dollars in tax deductions. When Elvis Costello takes on that scam, I’ll be right behind him.

Are there better arguments againt the boycotts? I go with the following, which boil down to efficacy: In the guise of helping the Palestinains, the boycotters are only prolonging the misery on both sides of the conflict. To wit:

1/ By singling out Israel for condemnation, a boycott emboldens its critics and enemies, many of whom have an animus towards Israel that has nothing to do with the fate of the Palestinians.

2/It encourages Palestinians and their supporters in the belief that time and world opinion, as opposed to meaningful actions on their part, will bring them closer to their goal of “self-determination.”

3/ Israel boycotts grossly oversimplify a tragic conflict, suggesting a dualist struggle between good guys and bad guys.

4/ Boycotts strengthen Israeli extremists, whose stars rise when Israelis are feeling most isolated and vulnerable.

5/ Finally, cultural boycotts insult and disempower the many, many Israelis who have been working for peace and reconciliation, and will ultimately undermine the internal Israeli dynamic that might bring about peace.

UPDATE: Rob Eshman of the L.A. Jewish Journal did the footwork and got a blanket denial from Meg Ryan’s publicist that she ever accepted an invitation to appear at the Jerusalem Film Festival. “No news outlet has corrected the Ryan assertion or, it seems, even bothered to verify it,” writes Rob.

Andrew Sullivan stands up to his pro-Israel critics:

I will not be intimidated from examining and criticizing both the actions of the Israeli government and the lobby that does so much to enable it, against what I believe are the long-term interests of the US and the West. Neither, I suspect, will the others now routinely targeted with these lies and smears.

The headline of the post — “On Walt, Mearsheimer, Weiss, Greenwald And Me” — suggests he is defending himself and the others from Lee Smith’s highly flawed attack in Tablet. But I’m not sure Sullivan should be so eager to put himself in the company of the others, especially Walt and Weiss, whose critiques of Israel tend to quickly slide into something a lot creepier than merely ”examining and criticizing both the actions of the Israeli government and the lobby that does so much to enable it.”

I gave myself a test — how many Walt and Weiss posts would I have to read before finding one that seems to dip  into the well of classic anti-Semitic tropes?

(I say “seems to,” because it is not up to me to decide if either is anti-Semitic. I don’t care what’s in their hearts, only in their writing, and time and again I and a few other fairly reasonable people I know find these bloggers using rhetorical strategies that are often indistinguishable from those used by proud and open anti-Semites.

(I think that was part of Smith’s point, although poorly articulated: The crazies find comfort in these blogs because they so often traffic in the kinds of themes that confirm the anti-Semite’s world view. Aren’t Jews exerting an influence beyond their small numbers? Check. Does that influence work against the interests of America, the world, our government, our civilization? Check. Can we come up with any other reasonable explanations for America’s Middle East policy other than the pernicious influence of Jews (and perhaps their Evangelical allies)? No? Then check. Does the mere fact that someone is Jewish make them suspect as a government official or journalist dealing with the Middle East? Check. In understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can we ever factor in any perspective other than that which puts Israel and its supporters in the worst possible light? No? Then check.)

Weiss makes this exercise easy: I only had to go as far back as this morning for a post that traffics in classic guilt-by-association, ethnic generalizations, and Jewishness as the grand unifying theory of what ails America’s foreign policy.

In a post titled “Obama’s philosemitic network reflects the new establishment,” Weiss refers to a list of administration officals who are presumed to be Jewish. (The list was compiled by Mitchell Bard, a conservative pro-Israel blogger.)  The occasion for Weiss’ post is Maureen Dowd’s Sunday column, which he describes thus:

Maureen Dowd points out wisely that the Obama administration is too white. There are only two blacks in the administration, she says.

Weiss’ unmistakable point is that Obama’s administration is not only too white — it’s too Jewish (or why raise the list in this context?). He explains:

My impression is that Obama’s philosemitism outstrips Clinton’s and Bush’s. And the lesson is that Obama is a conservative person temperamentally who has a keen sense of where American power lies. Originally an outsider from a scattered family in the west, he gravitated unerringly toward the east coast Harvard establishment; and the American establishment today has a prominent Jewish component.

When an anti-Semite uses a phrase like “the east coast Harvard establishment” it’s usually a codeword for “Jew” — for Weiss it is not a codeword at all, it is in fact synonymous with the establishment. “This is not a sinister trend; it is the trend that lifted me,” Weiss writes, helpfully, albeit cryptically (I think he might mean that as a Jew himself he is a beneficiary of the demise of the WASP power structure, although I’m not sure).

To be fair to Weiss, Jewish papers like mine and plenty of Jews are proud of the gains made by Jews in the establishment — the Supreme Court justices, the politicians, the pundits, the academics. We remember what it meant to be blocked from the establishment. And let’s face it — we are disproportionately represented in the establishment, which long ago stopped being a WASP bastion.

But the “we” is misleading. Michael Chertoff and Ruth Ginsberg are included in that “we,” as are Andrew Breitbart and Frank Rich. So are Lawrence Tribe and Josh Bolton. Ideologically, each of these pairs could not be further apart from one another. So except for the purposes of ethnic pride, how could a tally of the “prominent Jewish component” benefit a discussion of public policy?

When we’re talking about the Middle East of course, says Weiss:

 The significance of these numbers is the effect on Middle East policy. And of course, along with that, the absence of Arab-Americans; and the fact that people like Rashid Khalidi, Chas Freeman and Rob Malley (yes, a Jew, but a progressive one) are exiled from this braintrust.

The assumption here is that because these various Jewish administration officials are Jewish, they are of one mind on Israel, or perhaps they are of one mind because they are Jewish.  And that’s what gets my anti-Semitism radar a-tingling. Weiss does this a lot — he likes to tally Jewish reporters with a “connection” to Israel, by way of suggesting that they can’t possibly be anything but slavish apologists for the Jewish state, never mind their ideological diversity or range of “connections.” 

The idea that the administration’s Jews are good for Israel would come as a surprise to the extremely anti-Obama elements in the pro-Israel world,  who are convinced that Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod are doing Hamas’ dirty work in Washington.

But Weiss doesn’t care how Emmanuel’s Mideast views might differ from Dennis Ross’, or whether Cass Sunstein or Peter Orszag contribute in any way to White House Mideast policy. He doesn’t care about the other factors that might lead the United States to favor Israel’s narrative in its Mideast policies. Those things don’t matter when religion and ethnicity explain everything. What matters to Weiss is this: Obama is too philo-Semitic, and the White House is too Jewish.

Weiss might not get how this veers into anti-Semitism, but (and here Smith also has a point), many of his readers do. Here’ a comment from his blog:

There is nothing sinister about Jewish power in the U.S. because it has lifted you? With all the complaining about Jim Crow and white privilege, you sure are giving Jewish power (and yourself) a major pass. So far the Jewish elites have proved to be nepotistic, racist, destructive, cynical and undemocratic. How long can they last, and what will be left when they are swept aside?

If you can tell me how the essence of this commenter’s argument differs from Weiss’, you are a more astute reader than I.

Daniel Schorr and I shared an employer — about 50 years apart. The famed journalist,  who died Friday at age 93, 

started as a journalist working at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from 1934 to 1941. He began at its daily newspaper, the Jewish Daily Bulletin, as a reporter and then after its demise worked for JTA as a cable rewrite man, writing news stories based on cables from around the world.

Another interesting tidbit from his Times obit:

Impressed, The Times offered him a job but suggested he return to the Netherlands for a few weeks while details were worked out…. Mr. Schorr still preferred The Times (over an offfer from Edward R. Murrow], but when he didn’t hear further, he inquired and learned that the offer had been withdrawn. As Mr. Schorr told the story, an editor later sheepishly explained that the paper was concerned that too many Jewish bylines might jeopardize its coverage of the Mideast.

One of Schorr’s last commentaries for NPR earned him raspberries from many in the pro-Israel camp, when he referred to the Israeli blockade of Gaza as “a hate blockade of Mediterranean shores.” Responded CAMERA:

NPR news analyst Dan Schorr hits rock bottom with his reference to the Israeli blockade on Hamas as “a hate blockade of Mediterranean shores.” Unfortunately, the long-time news analyst for the publicly-funded NPR failed to analyze basic information before injecting his factually-challenged view into the news report…. So who exactly is espousing hate? Hamas, intent on wiping Israel off the map, or the Israelis, determined to defend themselves against this threat?

J.J. Goldberg of the Forward posted his eulogy for David Twersky:

We first met when we were 15, in the summer of 1965, at the inter-camp jamboree of Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. Our age group was gathered in a big circle on a grassy field, listening to our counselors discuss socialism. I got up to teach a song I learned from my father, a parody of the British Labour Party anthem (“The people’s flag is turning pink/It’s not as red as people think…”). Across the circle, a skinny kid with a shock of curly red hair stood up at the same moment to teach the same song. Everyone else laughed. We looked at each other and grinned, became instant best friends and remained so for 45 years.

This is the buzz of the (admittedly incestuous) world of Jewish journalism: Mark Joffe, the longtime executive editor and publisher of JTA (the Associated Press of the Jewish world) has stepped down; Ami Eden,  its editor in chief, has been tapped to lead the agency.

I go way back with both Mark and Ami. Mark hired me at JTA in 1987, my first full time job in journalism. We had met in Philadelphia, where I was a freelance and Mark was an editor at the Jewish Exponent. When Mark was named editor of JTA, I fired off a resume. He gave me the job and my start in what is now a 20-plus year career in the field.

We still worked on typewriters in those days, and we handed our copy to a chain-smoking typist who worked at the sole PC. Nearby Times Square was getting its historic facelift, and every dynamite blast would send down a rain of ceiling dust. Within a year we were in new offices, with PCs at every desk. JTA had a union print shop, and every night we would print a daily bulletin that would then get MAILED to subscribers. Mark brought the agency into the Internet era. JTA depends on subscriptions from Jewish newspapers like my own, allocations from the Jewish federation movement, and its own direct fundraising. Scrambling for money, Mark brought the agency a polish and professionalism that belied its small staff and limited resources. And of course, he had a great eye for talent!

Ami became a reporter and editor when I was managing editor of the Forward. (He claims I argued against hiring him;  I refuse to confirm or deny his version of the events.) He also has roots in Philly and the Exponent (as did long-time JTA editor Lisa Hostein — it’s kind of a Philadelphia mafia). It was clear from the outset that he had a vision for Jewish journalism beyond that week’s story (not that his stories weren’t consistently excellent and nuanced). I wasn’t surprised when JTA hired him away as managing editor, then editor in chief, and now its head. “Let the honor of your student be as precious to you as your own” says Pirke Avot — although I probably learned more from Ami than he ever did from me.

UPATE: Alana Newhouse, another Forward alum, welcomes the news of Ami’s promotion.