This Week in Tikvah Tablet "The ACLU is Ours!" (6/20)
David Shasha
Tikvah Meir Soloveichik Proudly Promotes the Leadership of Rabbi Norman Lamm!
It is not strictly Tikvah Tablet, but when this came to my in-box on Thursday, I became very excited:
https://files.constantcontact.com/9a50190d001/8ce7618d-ba8a-48bc-93a3-3eb325f856f3.pdf
Here is the key announcement:
RETURNING THIS WEEK
Rabbi Soloveichik's Shabbat Afternoon Outdoor Class
(with Beer & Shiur!)
THIS Shabbat, June 19 | 7:30 pm
Masks optional but not required
This week's session will be held outdoors on Paved Paradise,
and is currently limited to fully vaccinated congregants only
A Hard Place and a Rock:
Poussin's Painting & Rabbi Lamm's Lessons in Leadership
For those not familiar with the Lamm SHANDA:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/Wg8q-rEXhhs/m/bnQVskmTBQAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/1FZAvTWyM6Y/m/BUhi_Xb6BQAJ
After you read all the relevant articles, you will better understand what true YU “leadership” really is!
Enjoy the beer.
Tikvah Chair Elliott Abrams Promotes “Religious Pluralism” in the New Convivencia
Sticking with the Tikvah Fund leadership, we have this blog post – replete with a sample letter to be signed by Evangelical Christian leaders – from the incoming chair Elliott Abrams:
https://www.cfr.org/blog/christians-and-israel
The post does not discuss violence against Palestinian Arabs, or racism against Sephardim, but apparently sees Evangelical Christians as part of Israel’s “religious pluralism”:
Dear Prime Minister Bennett:
It is with great pleasure that we write to congratulate you on the successful formation of a new government for the State of Israel, the world's only Jewish state.
We are Christian leaders from different traditions who feel a strong sense of friendship with Israel based on shared values that originate in the Hebrew Bible. Israel embodies these values every day in its commitment to democracy and human rights, and serves as a bold model of ethnic and religious pluralism for others to follow.
We are grateful for the work of your predecessor, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, for all he did to strengthen Israel and its alliances over the past twelve years, and look forward to all that you and your coalition will accomplish in the years to come. We want to thank you in advance for protecting our shared values as they apply to Israel’s citizens, whether Jews, Christians, Muslims, or Druze; for guarding the holy sites and welcoming religious pilgrims from around the world to discover the birthplace of their faith; for defending Israel from outside aggression; and for continuing to work toward peace with Israel’s neighbors. In return, we pledge to deepen our friendship with your country and its wonderful people.
For many centuries, the Jewish people did not have friends; indeed, Christians were often counted among their greatest enemies. But today the situation is different. Hundreds of millions of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia are united in their love for – and strong defense of – a sovereign Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital.
As the heir of a great tradition of Jewish leadership going back thousands of years, you will be standing on the shoulders of giants. But now your shoulders, too, will be burdened by the responsibilities of statesmanship as you lead your country in difficult times. We pray that God grants you wisdom and strength as you make hard decisions that will affect the lives of millions, and we trust that He will answer those prayers.
May you, your family, and your coalition partners be blessed as you lead the people of Israel into a new phase of its history. Please consider us friends in the spirit of our common values and allies in a common mission. We look forward to meeting you in person the next time we are in Jerusalem.
It is a fascinating document that speaks to a new consciousness among Neo-Con Jews that is rooted in the Reagan-era Moral Majority-Podhoretz-Kristol alliance, as it extends into Netanyahu-era Palestinian denialism and Israel’s rejection of the Two-State Solution to Christian Zionism and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The Tikvah Fund’s priorities are clear.
Tikvah Tablet Loves the New FOX News ACLU!
The New York Times recently published a piece on the ACLU that apparently found favor with the Right Wingers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
Michelle Goldberg went along with it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/opinion/aclu-free-speech.html
Though apparently Alan Dershowitz did not!
https://www.newsweek.com/requiem-american-civil-liberties-union-opinion-1600579
The New Republic was not on board at all, but not for the same Dersh reasons:
https://newrepublic.com/article/162674/new-york-times-aclu-free-speech-culture-war
The NYT article highlights the views of former ACLU president Nadine Strossen in a way that has apparently found favor with Tikvah Tablet:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/censhorship-nadine-strossen
Is it a coincidence that her Tikvah Tablet debut came right after she was prominently defending the Right Wingers?
I decided to look into Ms. Strossen, and found that she is a favorite of both The Federalist Society and FIRE:
https://fedsoc.org/contributors/nadine-strossen
https://www.thefire.org/former-aclu-president-nadine-strossen-on-fires-critical-role/
Like the ACLU, FIRE is a group that is being used by the Right to support its hate:
https://www.thefire.org/about-us/campus-rights/
We should of course note that The Federalist Society was in the news this week, when its primary political stooge Moscow Mitch once again vowed to block any Biden SCOTUS nominee if he is restored to Majority Leader:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/15/politics/mitch-mcconnell-biden-agenda-manchin/index.html
As we have seen with Tikvah Tablet favorite Traitor Joe, Free Speech is a tricky thing.
Does one give that awesome power to those who would deny others their rights?
Tikvah Tablet is a part of a radical Right Wing movement that seeks to Cancel speech from those it finds offensive, but is all for demanding speech for those who would deny it to the rest of us.
Yiddish Means Jewish, Jewish Means Zionist!
On Wednesday Tikvah Tablet pulled out the big guns – Anatoly Sharansky and Gil Troy doing their militant HASBARAH thing:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-un-jews-natan-sharansky
It came as no surprise that the article was announced with a Yiddish image and text:
Here the text and its origin:
Der khazer iz undzer hoypmashin af tsu prutsirn fleysh in di noeyntste yorn!’ (‘The pig is our main machine for production of meat in the coming years!’) — Yiddish poster promoting the campaign of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture for development of the Soviet meat-producing industryDesigner unknown, published by Tsenroizdat (Central Publishing House for the USSR Peoples, 1924-1931)/Blavatnik Archive
Being Jewish means processing your identity through the Eastern European Shtetl experience and through the eternal Anti-Semitism.
Do not eat bacon!
Israel is always David to the Palestinian Goliath:
In May, when Israelis were attacked by Hamas missiles from Gaza, the criticism from some voices within the American Jewish community seemed not only more intense but categorical, escalating very quickly from what Israel did to what Israel is. In many blue state cathedrals, it was no longer good enough for critics to call themselves “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace” or affirm their Zionist credentials while blasting Israel for real or supposed misdeeds. Echoing social justice talk, dozens of Jewish and Israel studies scholars defined Zionism as “a diverse set of linked ethnonationalist ideologies … shaped by settler colonial paradigms … that assumed a hierarchy of civilizations” and “contributed to unjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy,” while the CUNY Jewish Law Students’ Association more concisely demanded “a Palestinian right to return, a free and just Palestine from the river to the sea, and an end to the ongoing Nakba.” This language effectively denied the need for a Jewish state, thereby declaring war not just on Israel’s existence but on modern Judaism as we know it.
American Jews are threatened by Cancel Culture:
Within American Jewry, this surge in anti-Zionism openly targets the broad Zionist consensus the Jewish world developed after the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel—as well as the post-1990s Birthright consensus embracing Israel and Israel experiences as central Jewish-identity building tools. Admittedly, anti-Zionist Jews are a small fraction of American Jewry, wildly outnumbered by polls showing 70% to 80% of the American Jewish community supports Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. But at a time when 85% of American Jews also say that it’s “important” or “very important” for them to “stand up for the marginalized or oppressed,” it is no wonder that for many American Jews, especially those in public spaces, Israel has become the ball and chain that endangers their standing as good progressives. It is also no surprise that this threat to their cherished identities as “progressives” is met by a corresponding fury that leaves no room for reasoned argument about specific Israeli policies or actions.
The article never mentions that Zionism is a White Jewish Supremacy movement, that has never been in better evidence than in the current battle between two Ashkenazim, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, and the ubiquitous Sephardi-hater Netanyahu.
“Jewish Peoplehood” means Ashkenazi racism:
But we can only have those debates if we have empathy for one another and are willing to look out for one another. Ultimately, a broad, welcoming dialogue is important. But those who are set on denying the essence of Jewish peoplehood are rarely interested in the kind of respectful, mutual exchange that builds us all up. Rather, they are bent on destroying the most powerful force that has kept us together as a people through the ages—and without which they, too, will paradoxically wither away.
A “respectful, mutual exchange.”
That is good coming from the White Jewish Supremacists being run by the Whore of Trump.
Too Much Yiddish is Never Enough
On Thursday there was more Yiddish dysfunction:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-flight-from-jewish-peoplehood
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/under-the-hammer-of-history
The article by YU macher Joshua Karlip is an embittered attack on Yiddish cosmopolitanism and the current flight from Zionist HASBARAH by many Judaic Studies professors.
The article begins with a discussion of someone called Zelig Kalmanovitch who apparently presaged this anger towards those who do not tow the HASBARAH line.
With the complete absence of any mention of Sephardim, we see how Tikvah Tablet understands Jewish Modernity as an internal battle being waged inside the Ashkenazi community.
Yiddish is all that matters.
David Shasha