“It is dispiriting to find voices who otherwise support the freedom of expression speaking out to deny free expression to one country and one group of people. Despite constant existential pressure there is more freedom of expression in Israel than the majority of countries in the U.N. and more self-criticism than almost any other society on earth.”
From “Boycotting Israeli Authors Is an Affront to Free Speech” by Rabbi David Wolpe (TIME)
“I recognize high-quality, handcrafted Jew-hatred when I see it, and the far-right, which has lately been gaining attention for supporting Donald Trump’s candidacy for president (and for trolling Jews such as yours truly), is so over-the-top obvious in its deployment of anti-Semitic memes; so uncreative in the manufacturing of Judeophobic tropes (call this the banality of oven jokes); so bad at Photoshop; and so awful at spelling, that I find them as pathetic as I find them offensive.”
Source: Jeffrey Goldberg, “A Brief Introduction to Pro-Holocaust Twitter” (TheAtlantic.om)
“Centrists are committed to an Israel that is alert to both security and morality; at once Jewish and democratic, the state of the Jewish people and the state of all its citizens; modern and traditional, a secular state in a holy land. Indeed centrists embrace those paradoxes as the defining elements of our peoplehood and the animating force of Israeliness, transforming Israel into a laboratory for humanity’s challenges in the 21st century.”
Source: Yossi Klein Halevi’s keynote address at the 2016 AJC Global Forum, as re-published via The Times of Israel
“Jewish students who oppose Israel’s right to exist are welcome into Hillel’s space to practice their Judaism. Anti-Zionist students are welcome at conversations hosted by BSI, which are always open and advertised to the public. They are also free to express their anti-Zionism in history classes, university programs, existing student groups and public spaces on campus in ways that Zionist students, even those of us who are frequently critical of the policies of the current Israeli government, often are not. But Hillel does not have a responsibility to bring into our space programming that seeks the reversal of our national liberation and equality movement.”
Source: Benjamin Gladstone and Jared Samilow, “Jewish Anti-Zionism Does Not Deserve a Home in Hillel—at Brown or Anywhere Else” (Forward)
I’m going to break a bit with the usual format of these “Words of the Week” posts.
A couple of weeks ago, the wonderful 24/6: Jewish Theater Twitter feed alerted me to an amazing online offering: a full video of the recent Signature Theatre production of Arthur Miller’s play Incident at Vichy, presented via WNET-THIRTEEN’s Theater Close-Up series. I was lucky to catch a performance of the play here in New York a few months ago. It was excellent, and I recommend that you take this opportunity to see it for yourself from the comfort of your own screen.
As WNET has noted of this production: (more…)