 |
A copy of a book by author Peter Beinart
under the chair of an audience
member
as Beinart speaks at an event in Atlanta,
apart from the book
fair, on Nov. 14, 2012.
(David Goldman/AP) |
Like many, I have spent a fair amount of time monitoring a variety
of sources to see what is going on in Israel. And like some I feel torn
that I am not there sharing the stresses and helping. The truth is,
given my lack of training and experience, I would probably just be in
the way their. But I can help spread the word. There are two postings I
have rad over the past several days that I want to make sure as many
people as possible read and think about and hopefully act on. Here is
one of them. It was posted Friday on Tablet and written by Rabbi Daniel Gordis.
As rockets rain down on Israel, an Atlanta JCC bans Peter Beinart. When did we become so narrow-minded?
This has been a frightening and sad week in
Israel. First, Hamas unleashed 160 rockets on Israeli towns. Then the
IDF responded, and Israeli civilians were ordered—and many remain—in
bomb shelters. And as was almost inevitable, some who did not heed the
warnings were
killed by rocket fire. At this writing, the end is nowhere in sight.
If there can be said to be a silver lining in this horrendous
situation, it’s in the broad range of support for the prime minister’s
decision to protect his citizens. “Labor, Kadima, Olmert, Livni back
government’s air assault on Hamas,”
reported the
Times of Israel.
But it shouldn’t take war for Jews to acknowledge that we’re utterly
dependent on each other, no matter how deeply we may disagree.
Far from the fighting, the conversation among American Jews about
Israel has become so toxic that it’s often impossible even for people
who are allies to listen to each other. Not long ago, I was invited by a
major national Jewish organization to give a lecture in the United
States. Soon after, the person who’d invited me called me in Jerusalem
to tell me that the major sponsors of the event had pulled their support
and their funding because I’d
signed
a letter asking the Prime Minister Netanyahu to ignore a legal report
claiming that Israel’s presence in the West Bank is not technically an
occupation.
“You’re not embarrassed?” I asked her. She couldn’t understand why
she should possibly be embarrassed. She explained that her organization
believed that the report was important for defending Israel’s
international legitimacy. “That’s fine,” I said, “and I think that
adopting it would do us great damage. But so what? Doesn’t the fact that
we disagree make it all the more critical that we talk to each other?
Or have we reached the point where your supporters will listen only to
those with whom they agree completely? Your sponsors based their
decision to invite me on a record of 15 years of writing and speaking. I
do one thing that they don’t approve of, and they pull the plug?”
That’s precisely what they did. I ended up giving the lecture, but the sponsors never restored their support.
They represent, I believe, a scary anti-intellectual trend in the
Jewish community. These people believe that an increasingly narrow tent
will best protect the state of Israel, and so they continue to move the
tent’s pegs. But they are doing just the opposite of bolstering the
Jewish state: They weaken Israel and make it more vulnerable because
they exclude enormous swaths of the community that we need—particularly
on a week like this.
The latest example of this narrowing happened this week in Atlanta, where one of the country’s major Jewish book fairs
canceled
an appearance by the writer Peter Beinart. “As leaders of our agency,
we want the center to always serve as a safe place for honest debate,
but we want to balance that against the concerns of our patrons,” said
Steven Cadranel, president of the Marcus Jewish Community Center. I have
no unique knowledge of what actually transpired, but this has become an
old story: Many Jewish organizations have been pushed into such corners
by donors who refused to contribute to festivals or organizations who
will host people whose views they find reprehensible. Jewish community
professionals regularly find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
I disagree with Peter Beinart on more issues than I can count. I was appalled by his oped in the
Times calling for a
boycott
on some Israelis, and I found his most recent book far too
accommodating of Israel’s enemies and unfairly critical of Israel. I
think he’s completely wrong when he asserts the occupation is the core
cause of Israel’s marginality. But his views represent those of a not
inconsiderable swath of American Jewry, so I agreed to debate him at
Columbia University. Our
debate was fun—and far more important, it was civil.
I don’t know how many minds were changed that night; Beinart’s
wasn’t, and neither was mine. But we did model for the hundreds of
people who were there and the many more who watched the debate online
that the Jewish community doesn’t have the luxury of refusing to speak
to those who disagree with us. Instead, Peter and I did what the Jews
have always done: We engaged the ideas, assumptions, and moral positions
of the other, and in the spirit of the brave marketplace of ideas that
Judaism has always been, tried to make our most compelling case.
Are there no limits to who’s in the Zionist tent? Of course there
are. For me, the litmus tests are Israel’s Jewishness, democracy, and
security. Anyone publicly committed to those three—even if I believe
that their policy ideas are wrong-minded—is in the tent. There are many
Israeli politicians whose ideas I believe are naïve or dangerous. But
should I say that they’re not Zionists? That would absurd. For the same
reason, Beinart is in my tent.
Speaking with people who agree with me is no challenge. Engaging with
those whose views seem to me dangerous is infinitely harder, but far
more important. That sort of conversation is perhaps the most critical
lesson that we inherit from centuries of Talmudic Judaism. The Talmud is
essentially a 20-volume argument, in which even positions that “lost”
the battle and were not codified into law are subjected to reverential
examination. When Hillel and Shammai debate, Jewish law, or
halakhah,
almost always follows Hillel. But we still study Shammai with
reverence. Even those views not codified, we believe, have insights to
share and moral positions worth considering.
The American Jewish community is the most secure diaspora community
the Jews have ever known. Economically, socially, politically,
culturally—we have made it, and what we say and model is watched by
countless others. Yet
New York Times readers this week can only
conclude that in the midst of that security and comfort, we’ve utterly
abandoned the intellectual curiosity that has long been Judaism’s
hallmark.
Are we not ashamed to have created a community so shrill that any
semblance of that Talmudic curiosity has been banished? Has the People
of the Book really become so uninterested in thinking?
Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His book Saving Israel won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award.
