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Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“‘Israel-themed sermons this year should help people understand what Israel is up against in its confrontation with Hamas — which is not about borders or settlements or who’s at fault for peace talk going nowhere, but about Israel’s very existence, which Hamas seeks to eradicate, and Jews everywhere, whom Hamas aspires to exterminate,’ Rabbi Block told The Jewish Week in an email. ‘Rabbis have a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to sermonize about the “other Israel,” the vibrant democracy whose culture of compassion and innovation is contributing so much to the world.’

But underscoring the complexity of the issue, Rabbi Block, in a sermon this spring to his Central Conference colleagues, said: ‘Israel needs many things, but one thing it does not need is more public criticism, which is ubiquitous. Some of it is legitimate, but it lacks context. Much of it is exaggerated, unfair, uninformed or plainly wrong.

‘I am not suggesting that we pretend Israel is perfect, ignore the complex moral challenges it faces, disregard its occasional failures or excesses in the exercise of power or encourage unquestioning approval of whatever its government does,’ the rabbi continued. ‘We have precious few opportunities to address our entire congregation or community on matters of paramount concern. To me, it feels unconsciously self-indulgent to squander them criticizing Israel, even when it may be deserved.'”

–Rabbi Richard Block, quoted in “Gaza War Pushes Israel, Reluctantly, Onto Holiday Bima” (The Jewish Week)

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“Israelis can listen to the views of dissenters. They are used to it. But they also want to trust that their dissenters are still a part of the family.”
Shmuel Rosner, “Who Killed the Israeli Left?” (The New York Times)

“The presumption that Jews must choose between liberalism and Zionism—and always had to—turns each into a kind of historical cartoon. Zionism is not just tribal primacy, and liberalism is not just an empathy for history’s dispossessed.”
Bernard Avishai, “Is Liberal Zionism Impossible?” (The New Yorker)

“Something feels different now.”
Marjorie Ingall, “Anxiously Sending Little Jews to School” (Tablet) (more…)

Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Coming in 2016: a new book by Jeffrey Goldberg, on “the Middle East through the prism of President Obama’s years in power.”
  • On my more immediate TBR list: Stuart Rojstaczer’s The Mathematician’s Shiva. According to this Jewlicious post, it’s a novel that “mixes Jewish family life, comedy, academia, mystery, greed, chaos shiva, lust and math.”
  • Matthue Roth on Heinrich Heine’s “love song to cholent.”
  • On the Moment blog, Linda Tucker reviews Rabbi David Wolpe’s new book on the biblical David.
  • If you still don’t have enough books on your own TBR list, you’ll find a few more in Sandee Brawarsky’s fall books preview for The Jewish Week. (Coming soon: a similar overview piece by yours truly, elsewhere. Stay tuned!)

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Words of the Week

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    “But forgive us if we experience a special kind of grief for the Jewish kid from Miami, who played rugby and video games and tweeted about American basketball and risked his life to tell an important story.”
    “Steven Sotloff Was Jewish,” editorial in The Forward

    “We only wish your response and your voice against this crime and the crime Hamas has committed against their own people.”
    “Letter by Parents of Daniel Tregerman to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.”

    “Vigilance means speaking out whenever protests devolve into the classic rhetoric and symbolism of Jew hatred: swastikas, blood libels, conspiracy theories. We must reject depictions of Israel as a spearhead of Western colonialism — a clash between ‘European’ and ‘brown’ people — and explain how that narrative depends on a stereotypical and caricatured image of the ‘Jew’ that ignores the diverse reality of Israel (which includes, not coincidentally, brown and black people who were either thrown out of or made miserable in a wide range of non-European, ‘post-colonial’ countries). And we need to keep reminding people that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is not anti-Semitic because it seeks justice for the Palestinians, but because it sees no place for the Jewish state or the Jews who live there.”
    “Fight Anti-Semitism, Embrace Zionism,” by Andrew Silow-Carroll (New Jersey Jewish News) (more…)

    Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • New poetry: “Almost Like the Blues,” by Leonard Cohen, and “Stolpersteine,” by Rachel Unkefer.
  • The new issue of JewishFiction.Net features work by Steve Stern, Joan Leegant, David Bezmozgis, and many more.
  • The Jewish Week‘s Well Versed blog spotlights The Jerusalem Lover, a novella by Shira Dicker that is described as “a prescient and courageous look at the ongoing battle between Israel’s staunch defenders and her harsh critics.”
  • In which D.G. Myers reverses the famous Tolstoy line–“unhappy families are more alike than happy families”–with reference to Joshua Henkin’s The World Without You (and to his own circumstances).
  • On my weekend agenda: listening to the first episode of “Israel Story,” which is being billed as an Israeli version of “This American Life.”

    • Shabbat shalom.