Ok, so I have something Jewish to write about. Or, you know, semi-Jewish. Or not Jewish… Jewish related. Depending on how you define what is or is not “Jewish.” I’m talking about the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding. This was the subject of a d’var Torah I gave last week at my shul. Before I begin, let me reiterate the basics of how I think about and practice my religion:

I am Jewish. I hold by The Conservative Movement of Judaism, as I understand it, because it it what makes sense to me. I also happen to have been raised in this Movement, but my practice and philosophy have changed since I was a child and are currently quite different from that of my parents. I believe that Jewish law, halacha, is binding upon each individual Jew. I believe that a Jew, halachically speaking, is someone whose mother is halachically Jewish at the time of their birth, or who undergoes a kosher conversion. I believe that, since it is against Jewish law for a Jew to marry a non-Jew, it is obligatory upon Jews not to do so, and not to facilitate such an occurrence.

I also believe that we are commanded to love all Jews, even those who do not uphold or adhere to the law. Further, I believe that we are commanded to love all people, and that to be a “Light Unto The Nations,” a “Holy Nation,” a “Nation of Priests” necessarily entails our living and demonstrating three principles above all: Love God. Love your neighbor. Pursue justice.

So now, we come to a question of humility. Humility is a Jewish value. It is high praise indeed to be referred to in Judaism as a humble person. It is said that even God practices humility (nice midrash, Breishit Rabbah 1:12 that I learned from my Rav, Shmuel Lewis). Humility, I believe, is an essential quality in anyone who hopes to work with people in a religious capacity. In the field of “doing God’s work,” one must always be cognizant of where ego creeps in and blinds us to the needs of our employers, God, and the People. I try to remind myself daily of how little I know, and that I must remain teachable. I must remember that my job is to trust in God and God’s will for me and for the world, and to remember that I do not have all of the answers.

On the one hand, my humility in my religion very often means trusting in the Tradition, setting aside my personal biases in favor of the Law and the Text and the Rabbis, learning and DOING what I can, while being patient about understanding. The commandments are not contingent upon my being satisfied with their reasons, and often I must first do the practice in order for the Truth to come to me, to realize where the value lies in something that might initially seem distasteful to me… realizing why I should adhere to a law that is particularly inconvenient, why the seemingly ridiculous minutiae of Shabbat observance makes sense, what makes texts which, on the surface, are contradictory, fit together with a little Midrash and why that process is good, and how it can be understood as The Word Of God… my holding by the binding nature of Jewish law is an exercise in humility for me. It is my challenge to the comfortable easy “well this is how I feel and this is what I want” attitude which is so seductive in our society. It is acknowledging that God has a will that supersedes my own, that what *feels* right is not always what *is* right, that sometimes you cannot understand until you get down to the *doing.*

Of course, the other side of this coin is that everything I stated above constitutes a belief system… a belief system to which I strongly adhere. On the inside, it is a practice of humility. From the outside though, it may seem like an arrogant certainty. I am studying to be a rabbi. A rabbi is a teacher. In order to teach something, you must have something to teach. We no longer have prophets, it is the rabbis who carry the prophetic message to the people. I have been already blessed with the opportunity to do more study of Judaism and Jewish law than your average Conservative Jew can even dream of… and I’ve only been at it seriously for 3 years, and I have another 5 to go at least before, God willing, I am ordained. I have some knowledge… I know some things that they don’t.

Marc Mezvinsky, a Jew, has married Chelsea Clinton, a non-Jew. They were married in an interfaith ceremony where clergy from two different religions, a Reform rabbi and a Methodist minister, co-officiated. This is something that Jewish law forbids. For a person who doesn’t believe that Jewish law is binding, they’re likely not going to care about that… though even the Reform Movement’s main Rabbinic body, the CCAR, advises their clergy not to co-officiate with non-Jewish clergy in performing marriages. For someone like me, who does believe that Jewish law is binding, I have to look at this marriage, and I have to say that it is forbidden, I believe, by God’s law for us, the Children of Israel, the Jews.

So. Love God. Love your neighbor. Pursue justice. Above all. Do I condemn Jews who do not adhere to Jewish law? Nobody is a perfect adherent to Jewish law, even the most observant. Nobody knows everything about Jewish law. Not everybody has been given sufficient reason in their life to believe that Jewish law is binding. This is reality. This is understanding that other people live different lives. This is knowing that I don’t walk in other people’s shoes, have their experiences, fully understand their thought processes.

This is not me congratulating myself on how tolerant and accepting and open-minded I am… this is rather something of which I have to constantly remind myself. When you take the time to study very intensely in Yeshiva, and then you come back to the real world, it is very easy to be become very intolerant. I know I was after my first year of study. When I first stepped into the Beit Midrash of The Yeshiva, one of my earliest lessons was one of humility: the realization of just how little I knew, and how much there was to learn. Stepping out after a year and coming back to visit home and my community, that humility was flipped on its head. Here I was, only a year of study, knowing that if I studied nonstop for the rest of my life I would still not know all there was to know, even all I wanted to know about my religion. And here I was suddenly thrown back into an environment where the people around me didn’t have even that… and didn’t care. Not only didn’t they have the learning, not only didn’t they know, they had NO IDEA even what it was they didn’t know. And it didn’t even matter to them. It tore me apart inside. I didn’t know how to handle this new reality, how to live in such a community after spending a year with a learning community, a group of people who learned and grew Jewishly alongside me, who helped each other along in coming to understand the vast richness of our tradition. Suddenly I was in a barren soulless wasteland. How was I to cope?

I have since calmed down. I have come to be gentler with others and with myself, trying to teach wherever the opportunity arises for me to do so, if it is wanted and welcomed. I have worked hard to get better at accepting people where they are and celebrating what they, what we have rather than lamenting what they, and I, do not. All that said, I am not willing to do or say certain things.

I am not willing to disregard Jewish law, to say that it is unimportant, ever.
I am not willing to say that I think someone is living in accordance with Jewish law when I truly believe that they are not, based on my learning.
I am not willing to perform an action that I believe to be in violation of Jewish law for the sake of pluralism.
I am not willing to say directly that it is ok for a Jewish person to violate Jewish law. What I will say is that Jewish observance is a journey that we all travel at our own pace according to our own abilities. The best any of us can do is to be as honest with ourselves and with God as we possibly can, and to try our best to do what we hear as God’s will. If we live with honesty and integrity, we are on a path of holiness, and God always loves us no matter what.

There are multiple legitimate interpretations of halacha, and what one person may hold as halachic another may hold as a violation. That is nothing new. That is one thing. Sometimes, some people, for some reason, are compelled to violate halacha. Sometimes it is out of ignorance, sometimes it is out of a personal necessity. That is another thing. It’s not for me to judge them morally. I do not believe it makes someone a “bad Jew.” I do not believe that it makes God love any of us any less. But it doesn’t mean that the halacha is in accordance with whatever they do. It doesn’t mean that the halacha goes away.

I have my understanding of what my religion dictates. That understanding is not my own invention. It is based on the learning I have been blessed to receive from many wonderful teachers, who in turn learned from their teachers, and so on back until God only knows how long ago. I work very hard at using the language of humility when speaking of my religion, but I also have to take a stand at some point and admit that there is a limit to the boundaries of Judaism. In many ways Judaism is about boundaries, about distinctions. Many call this exclusivism, tribalism, elitism. Arrogance. That may be true in some ways, to some people, and in the way some Jews practice and speak of the faith and the peoplehood. Personally, I believe it is about something else… about having the humility to admit that you don’t understand everything, that those who came before had wisdom worth listening to, and that we do dishonor to ourselves and to our predecessors by forgetting who we are and where we came from.

Sometimes I feel as though my even having any sort of belief or boundary is grounds to be accused of arrogance and small-mindedness. But if (future) clergy can’t have beliefs and faith and principles, then where have we gotten ourselves to?

I spoke to Reb Shmuel, our rosh yeshiva, about some of the thoughts I had yesterday, about being troubled that the attack at the Yeshiva didn’t hit me more immediately, that I was as blinded by our differences as I was and that my own mind was revealed to me as being as bad at this klal yisrael thing as those by whom I feel excluded.

Reb Shmuel told me a few things.

First of all, the people in this Yeshiva, specifically this institution, were Jew loving people. What he meant is that, while we as (small l) liberal or (big C) Conservative Jews feel and often are excluded by the Orthodox in various ways, while we feel that we are not included in their vision of Judaism and often we aren’t, these people specifically did include people like us in their vision of klal yisrael. These are not the people who I think of when I think of “The Orthodox who hate us” as I inevitably do.

Second… Reb shmuel studied in that Yeshiva, for two years, when he was a teenager. The same age as the boys who were killed.

He asked me if it had been just 8 random Israelis standing at a bus stop of various backgrounds and ethnicities, would I feel differently? I thought a minute and said I probably would… because I stand at Israeli bus stops. And if it were in America? I thought and said “It would depend on where.”

Thinking about it… I thought back to katrina and to the tsunami… the disasters of the past several years, the things that have upset people, the big events that people have cried over, that have deeply touched even the unaffected. I have hardly felt touched by any of these events. The last time I viscerally felt a disaster was September 11th 2001. And I remember feeling guilty that I felt it so strongly, having personally lost no one I knew. And I remember that my initial reaction was not even to the people, it was to the building… I couldn’t see the people until I could see the building. I had to visualize the building and then visualize the people in the building… and I felt it specifically when the first building fell. Because the people left in the second building saw the first building fall. And there was no way they didn’t know what was going to happen next.

The first problem is the number. After 3000 people dying in one day in my hometown, about two blocks from my high school, 8 feels like nothing.

That needs to change.

I keep reading biographies. I’m reading everything I can about these boys, finding them, feeling them, feeling who they were and how they were like me. One of them, it is reported, was seen alone in the beit midrash studying until 1 am Wednesday night. I can relate to that. He was buried with the Masechet he was studying when he was murdered, which was soaked in his blood. Masechet Nedarim. I haven’t studied it. I am studying masechet Shabbat.

One of the boys, Avraham David Moses, is the son of a friend of Rabbi Diamond, one of the directors of our program, and of Shaiya, one of my favorite teachers. Avraham David’s mother came to study for a year in Israel in the early ’90s and decided to stay. She studied at Pardes, where I have many friends. This morning Rabbi Diamond said to us, “Imagine your vision of a crazy right wing settler and everything that goes along with that in your mind. Avraham David’s mother and family are just about the exact opposite of that.”

We dedicated a special learning session this morning to the memory of the boys who were murdered. Rabbi Diamond taught us a psalm that had been said at Avraham David’s funeral.

One of my initial thoughts was that, like I’ve had wakeup calls to start thinking again about theology, about philosophy, about halachic theory, this is my wakeup call to start reading the news again… to integrate some of real life back into my consciousness. I’ve been in my study bubble long enough. I have to become an integrated person again. I’m not diving back into analysis at this point, I just need to know what’s going on.

But right now, this is not about that. This is not about politics or analysis or about religious fanaticism or extremism. This is about me and my relation to my fellow Jews, and to my fellow human beings. This right now is an exploration of my emotional reactions, to gauge where my humanity needs adjustment.

***
I just remembered I was wrong… the last time I felt viscerally connected was not September 11th, but the Lebanon war.

Wednesday we went on a field trip to a museum on the border between East and West Jerusalem, formerly the border between Israel and Jordan. It is called Museum on the Seam in English, מוזיאון על התפר in Hebrew. It calls itself a socio-political art museum. We haven’t had a whole lot of discussion about how we all felt about it. It’s kind of difficult to describe on the whole, but the current exhibition is called Bare Life. From the website:

Bare Life is the third in a series of exhibitions on themes of human rights that we are presenting at the Museum. This exhibition aims to touch upon the increasingly unraveling seam between deviant states and normative states, and to point resolutely at the place where the temporary emergency situation turns into a legitimized ongoing situation that in the end leads to a paranoia of suspicion and to the use of violence to re-establish public order.

A couple of people have talked to me about liking or not liking the museum, liking or not liking the art, liking or not liking the message. I found myself unable or unwilling to express or admit to, even to myself, a solid opinion on the content. I was very aware, as I wandered though the exhibits, of an analytical aloofness that completely overtook me. I found myself not judging the art or its message, but merely decoding, dissecting, pulling out from each image the message that the artist and/or curator seemed to be putting forth and… doing nothing with it. I thought a great deal about the manipulative nature of art, and the resultant roles of responsibility of the artist and viewer. Art by its nature, tends to elicit emotional reactions in people. It is visceral. Political art seeks to bypass reason and go for the jugular, to reach the opinionated part of the mind without the messiness of the critical faculties getting in the way, slowing it up, blocking it out. I hate when people use the word “powerful” with regards to most things, but especially with art. In certain contexts at least, the “power” to which people refer is a combination of the artist’s skill at manipulation of the audience and the audience’s ability or willingness to be manipulated. It is the meeting place of the speaker’s strength and the receiver’s weakness.

There are times when I do not mind, or when I even like to be manipulated. There are certain media, certain contexts, in which I want a feeling to be elicited from me. But I resent it when it is overt, and moreso when it seeks to persuade in a context which should be subject to critical examination rather than emotional reactionism.

Whoo… first week of classes over. Dear Lord I’m surprised I even remember my name after this week!

The day before yesterday was, as most of you probably are aware, the 4th of July, A.K.A. U.S. Independence Day. Being in Israel I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Well, it turned out to be quite an interesting and eventful day.

First point of interest… I got a package! And not at the apartment where I’m staying, oh no… I got a package at The Yeshiva! After tefillah I was hunting for coffee for the old beit midrash and Rabbi Lebeau intercepted me. “Oh, did you get your package?” he asked.

“Package? I got a package?”

“Yes, you got a package! Hang on…”

He disappeared briefly into a room and emerged with… that’s right… a package. And it was from none other than Ms. Jen Taylor Friedman, A.K.A. Hatam Soferet. The package was an “Instant Yeshiva Bochur Kit.”

Yes, that is a miniature Vilna Shas. You might even think it was made for a… a…

Oh come on, you know the answer.

Anyway, THANKS SO MUCH JEN! You made my day, like, for realz.

In ulpan, our instructor told us about a CD shop on Rechov Shammai off Ben Yehuda. Rebecca (one of my classmates) and I decided to go find it.

And find it we did. On the way back, two interesting things happened. One, we ran into Cantor Simon. This was the third time I had run into him on the street since he gave a presentation at the Fuchsberg Center on the great chazzanim on the golden age. I decided that this time I had to take a picture.

The next interesting this was that we came across a group of folks sitting on the midrachov playing Apples to Apples. Just sitting there. In the middle of the road.

We followed the sign’s instructions.

This guy knows two of my friends. I’m telling you, Jewish geography is scary.

The guy with the parasol, Dovid, told us that there was going to be a barbecue in Independence Park across from the consulate and that we should come. So after we took our leave of the A – A group we got some food (cause we were hungry and couldn’t either of us wait for 8 o’ clock barbecuage) and headed over at a leisurely pace to supersol to pick up a 6 of Heineken. By the time we got to the park Dovid was already there with a couple of other folks from the A – A group and some others setting up disposable grills.

Ok, so I had a hot dog. I bit into it. And… it was… well… it was…

The hot dog was fluffy. I ate a fluffy hot dog. I tried to get a picture of it but I couldn’t get it to come out right in the dark. I mean, it was like a sponge.

It was tasty, don’t get me wrong. I think it was a chicken dog. But… dude… fluffy hot dog.

Dovid and I talked most of the night. Turns out we like a lot of the same music and we stood and recited the Penguin Sketch from Monty Python together. Someone else. I found someone else who recites the penguin sketch word for word. No one was listening or watching us, it was purely for our own amusement. After a bit we got into a friendly argument about whether or not it was problematic for women to wear tzitziot while niddah. He said it was problematic and I said that it wasn’t… and neither of us could back up our claims, so we just left it. (I have subsequently asked one of my ravs and am satisfied with his answer and with my ability to make the point better in the future.) At some point we could hear fireworks but we couldn’t see them. Someone broke into The Star Spangled Banner. When everyone finished with “And the home of the brave” I launched into the other two stanzas.

I got strange looks.

It was a lot of fun. I still smell like smoke.

And yes, I am proud to be an American. I will never apologize for that.

So, I’m not alone.

At that moment in the Japanese restaurant, I faced a dilemma that I have faced literally hundreds of times, before and since, in my 42 years on this fair planet: Divulge the truth—or let the comment slide by. Usually, I play along—simply because it’s the path of least resistance and least awkwardness. On a blind date, though, I thought open disclosure was the more honorable route.

I live a great deal of my life in fear of certain people finding out the truth about me. I do a lot of smiling and nodding when people say things that they don’t realize apply to me. It’s a hard game, weighing the consequences of divulging to whoever is the company present, shattering their assumptions, and quite likely, their positive feelings toward me… deciding who I can and cannot trust.

I hear them, well, practically everywhere…at Starbucks, at job interviews, and while picking up my son at Congregation Micah, Nashville’s open-minded reform synagogue. I hear them in the hallways of Vanderbilt University (where I teach part-time), around the copy machines at the Nashville Scene (the alternative newspaper which employs me) and in the carpool line at the University School of Nashville, (the progressive private school which my older child attends).

It is inescapable. It’s everywhere I go. It is the default position for everyone with whom I interact. And I have to say, it makes life pretty hard and pretty uncomfortable.

I’m not in exactly the same boat as this fellow of course, because I reject the sorts of labels that people tend to like to apply to other people and to themselves. I don’t know what to call myself so I generally don’t. This fellow uses the dreaded word that I don’t dare to touch…

Republican.

I don’t use the word because it is not who I am. But what I am is pro-war, pro-military, pro-free market economics. I’m a capitalist anti-socialist Zionist. I consider myself to be a true liberal because I support active defense of true liberal values against forces of tyranny and fascism. I also believe in honest journalism and reasoned debate. What does any of this say about me? Well, many would have you believe that it means that I am brainwashed, unthinking, amoral, unethical, bloodthirsty, ignorant, and racist. What really gets me is that people can one minute be going on and on about how I am one of the most intelligent and aware people that they have ever met, and the second they catch wind of my politics, they immediately jump to “How could you believe something so ridiculous and stupid?” rather than, going by their previous, supposedly objective assessment of my intelligence and awareness, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I have good reason to think the way that I do.

Their arguments are predictable. They are well summarized by Loretta J. Williams, director of the Boston-based Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, a national network involved in anti-oppression training. A self-described “sociologist, educator and activist,” Williams tilts far Left in her political views. Herewith, her reasoning:

The author of this piece attempts to dismantle each of the following points. I think he does it badly. Here’s my go at it:

Unlike women, African-Americans or homosexuals, Republicans have chosen to be Republicans; one cannot be bigoted towards a group that is self-selecting.

In America, people ultimately choose their religion. It is not generally accepted as, shall we say, good and proper, to deride people based on their religious beliefs. Unless they are Scientologists.

Republicans do not stand to be hurt by bigoted activity. Since the derogatory words do not trigger actual harmful behavior towards Republicans (who clearly can look after themselves), there is no bigotry. No harm, no foul.

Try being the only gay person in a room full of vocal homophobes. Even if you’re closeted, you are excluded. You feel fear. You are in a hostile environment.

A personal decision to take strong exception to Republicans as a group can be perceived as a rational and warranted act. Since the policies and actions of the Republican Party are worthy of derision, those who say they intensely dislike Republicans—and what Republicans stand for—are exercising legitimate forms of self-expression.

This is the most compelling point that is put forth… after all, few rational people, myself included, object to a general derision of, say, racial supremacists. It is an ideology that is chosen and which is generally agreed by rational people to be assholish and idiotic and not deserving of consideration.

But the reasons for the level of vitriol lobbed indiscriminately at a perceived half of the political spectrum is neither reasoned nor reasonable. It is based often on misinformation and misunderstandings and misquotes, assertions with no backing, declarations of intentions with no hard evidence, ad hominem personal attacks on character… the best argument a lot of the folks I end up contending with is “Oh, please!” And because everyone agrees, they win.

Not to mention that there is no more correlation between republicans and racial supremacists than there is with democrats and racial supremacists.

In short, the justification for bigoted comments directed at those with whom the educated Left disagrees politically is based on two foundations: 1) We’re a lot smarter than they are; and 2) We’re better people than they are. That logic leads to three inescapable conclusions: We’re right. They’re wrong. QED: All Republicans are assholes.

Interestingly, proponents of this logic seem all too eager to ignore the point that I mentioned at the very beginning… that a lot of the people against whom I come up (or is it “up against whom I come?”) will of their own accord, before I reveal my dark secret, express to me their opinion that I am as intelligent or more intelligent than they are. But that makes no difference. If it did, they might have to do some re-examining of their assumptions, like I did when I first started to realize that I didn’t agree with the political views of my parents or of most of the people around me. I almost can’t blame them… facing the possibility that you might be wrong about certain fundamental beliefs that you have been taught and held since infancy is a very hard and very scary prospect. Easier to attack a challenger than to take on a challenge.

Upshot? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of assumptions and labels, which is a pretty standard liberal line. I’m tired of making the arguments and then having them not refuted but ignored. I’m tired of pointing out the misinformation and still seeing it disseminated as fact. I’m tired of slogans and “Who can shout loudest” competitions, of “everybody scream if you think I’m right” and “Put your fist in the air if you agree” with no thought for the fact that someone might actually dare to have a different thought. What makes me the most tired is that I have no reason to think that this will change any time soon.

Rescue vehicles exploited as Terrorist Tools:

…an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) — which has received more than $2.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies. Palestinian gunmen used the UN emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers. Senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official UN vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives and terrorists to and from attacks. Nidal ‘Abd al-Fataah ‘Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist, worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and admitted he, too, had used an emergency vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists.

It continually amazes me how people can see and hear such reports as these and continue to lay blame and cries of “disproportionate response” at the feet of Israel, how they can still naively believe that what looks like a civilian facility must necessarily be a civilian facility and only a civillian facility, and when all else fails, fall back on the ever-popular “Well, if they really hate Israel that much, then I guess Israel doesn’t belong there.

I mean, really. The mind boggles.

Orin Kerr is right. Along with everyone else, apparently.

Hat tip to Insta

I’m not a blogger. I wish I could be, but I’m not, I’m a journaler. I have a livejournal which I update frequently (no I will not tell you where, silly) with personal stuff, feelings, passions, anxieties… here I try to keep things relevant and within a certain standard of… cleanness. Cleanness in terms of the writing, and in terms of what I’m writing about. No kitty blogging, no talking about crushes on people or camping weekends or irrational anxieties about personal situations or family drama. That is not… pertinent to the world at large.

When things get heated, like with what’s happening in Israel, I know I should be writing here. What I write though tends to be very emotional. Often angry. I want things that I post here to be well thought out. I want things to be logical, to make sense. I need to be prepared for arguments that may ensue as a result. I’m terrified of saying something wrong because if Judaism teaches anything it is that words are something that you cannot take back.

I apologize to those of you who have commented in recent weeks. I have not been paying attention lately, and I’m so accustomed to the spam bot comments that flood my mailbox that I just tuned them out. Your comments are now visible and will be responded to shortly.

And I’ll try to do better here. Again.

I just finished watching the live webcast of the Taglit-birthright israel Mega Event at Latrun. I’d forgotten just how exciting and inspiring the Mega Event experience is. What happens is that during each cycle of trips, an event is held where all birthright israel participants in Israel at the time come together in a hall or stadium and there are speeches and performances and dancing and singing. It’s an amazing experience. The most amazing part for me of the Mega Event that I attended in January of 2002 when I went on my Taglit-birthright israel trip was the experience of seeing young Jews amassed together… thousands of people my own age… from all over the world. From Russia, Austrailia, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, all waving their respective countries’ flags, chanting their football cheers in their own languages and accents, showing their national pride… but at the same time waving the kachol v’lavan, the blue and white, singing together in Hebrew, showing another national pride, another national identity, a kinship that transcended our residential homes and linked us together. All of us are Jews. All of us are family. All of us are Israel.

I turned off the simulcast with tears in my eyes. I want to go back, I thought. I want to be there and feel that kinship, that sense of home. I understood once more the feeling that floods my heart everyday when I come to work and realize all over again that I’m here working with other Jews for the sake of other Jews to connect them to their birthright… which is not just about israel, it’s about national identity. It’s about unity. It’s about that kinship. It’s mishpocha, family. Every Jew has a right to that feeling of belonging. Even growing up in the alternate Jewish capital, Brooklyn NY, I never felt that before. Not in Hebrew school, not in shul, not at camp. It takes a trip to Israel. It takes seeing thousands of your kinsfolk of all different backgrounds, skin tones, languages, all sharing that common thread of peoplehood, knowing that we all came from the same place and finally, finally, here we are together again. It’s like standing again at Sinai.

Hitting the “home” icon on my browser I came to my customized Google front page. My eyes were assaulted by articles declaring Israel Missile Strike Kills 11 Palestinians, Injures 30 and Israel Denies Its Forces Killed Palestinian Family on Beach and similar reports variously mentioning and not mentioning Israel’s denial of responsibility.

And I am angry.

It’s hard to put this anger effectively into words. I’m angry at news agencies who willfully leave out details in order to make one side look good and one side look bad, though I know that this is an inevidability and that almost everyone (if not everyone) does it. I’m angry at the hypocrisy of the various Palestinian Authorities and “leaders” who dance and sing and praise God when they kill Jewish civilians and bewail the atrocity of every accidental civilian death brought down upon them by Israelis targeting the elements that target them. I’m angry that while the Palestinian groups all jump at the opportunity to claim responsibility for attacks in Israel, Israel investigates its own botches, and while her leaders may place the responsibility on the shoulders of the Palestinian leadership, they still express sorrow and do not celebrate innocent deaths.

Neither, though, does Israel routinely deny such botches. If Israel is responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians, the leadership generally owns up to it. This denial is atypical and as such, I’m more inclined to believe Israel than the Palestinians who can’t even keep their own house in order.

My support of Israel is not too popular these days among my peers and it’s easy for anyone opposing to say that I’ve been brainwashed and indoctrinated to be sympathetic to Israel. Frankly, I don’t care. I’ve seen enough to make up my own mind, I’ve had forces pulling me in both directions my whole life. I have no reason to trust the Palestinian leadership or terrorist organizations who claim to speak for the people. I have no reason to sympathize with people who keep such groups in power. I have no reason to sympathize, for that matter, with any of the many Arab countries (and Iran) who boldly state their desires to see Israel destroyed and reclaimed into the vast Muslim empire.

This conflict is not about people and their homes. The refugees are pawns of the Islamist imperialists and while I may sympathize with their individual situations, I will never conceed to a Palestinian “right of return” anymore that I would demand a Jewish “right of return” to Baghdad, Tehran, Ghazni, or any of the other places in the middle east from whence Jews have been forcibly expelled or forced to flee.

Phew. Okay, I’m done.

This Just In: Howard Dean is an Idiot.

“The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman,” Dean said May 10 during a “700 Club” program hosted by conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network.

Um… really? Actually… no.

“Howard Dean puts his foot in his mouth so often that he should open a pedicure wing in the DNC during his tenure,” Log Cabin Republicans President Patrick Guerriero said Wednesday. “Howard Dean’s positions on LGBT issues have changed more often than the weather in New England, where he’s from.”

Bwahahahahahaha!

(Via the venerable Insta.)