June 26, 2011 | 10:18 am

Cognitive Dissonance

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

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Stuart Eizenstat

A flash of anger abruptly erupted during an otherwise sober discussion at the Third Israeli President’s Conference last week.  “That is an offensive statement!” bristled Stuart Eizenstat, who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, in response to Eyal Gabai, Director-General of the Israel Prime Minister’s office.  Gabai had sat listening to various proposals for Israel/Diaspora relations and flatly observed, “80 to 90% of this is irrelevant to Israelis.”  He singled out Eizenstat’s proposal for a Jewish Peace Corps that would send young Jews to Africa to do grassroots community service.  (Gabai spoke as an individual, not on behalf of the Israeli government.)

Eizenstat took the remark personally. “That is an offensive statement to those of us who work every day to fight delegitimization,” he thundered.  It was a microcosm of the emotions surging beneath the calls for a “partnership” and “collaboration” on both sides of the Jewish divide.  Here was an American Jew, deeply devoted to Israel, who felt his good intentions were spurned by an Israeli.  And here was an Israeli who felt that Diaspora Jews just don’t get it.  They speak different languages in more ways than one.

There was another, less visible sort of tension.  Pierre Besnainou, former president of the European Jewish Congress summed up an enormous change over the past 60 years in ten words: the Diaspora has become weak as Israel has become stronger.  Eizenstat similarly sees a “new paradigm” where Israel has to take responsibility for strengthening the Diaspora so there will be more Jews who support Israel.  His solution?  Israel should issue a “Diaspora Impact Statement” on every policy – as if American Jews’ identification with Israel ought to be predicated not on a shared Jewish heritage and destiny but on the politics of the moment.  It’s a paradox: as Israel becomes less dependent upon the Diaspora, Eizenstat thinks the opinions of Diaspora Jews should be treated as more important than ever.  Normally it is the stronger party, not the weaker one, that has the greater leverage.

Jews in the United States may not be cognizant of this shift.  Yet as Federations gradually redirect funding from Israel to their own communities, American Jews will hold still less sway, even as they want a greater voice on issues like conversions and the status of women at holy sites, not to mention the conflict with the Palestinians.  Of course the views of the American Jewish community will continue to carry a lot of weight for some time, but not as much as Americans might imagine.  That’s one reason the frustration and mutual incomprehension between Israelis and American Jews isn’t going away any time soon.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

June 22, 2011 | 1:29 pm

UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “The New Anti-Semitism is a Virus”

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The new anti-Semitism, in the view of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, is not a resurgence of the centuries-old hatred of Jews.  For one thing, it is not aimed at individual Jews, but rather against Jews living as a nation in their own land: it is anti-Zionism.  For another, it draws its authority not from Christian teachings or the findings of science (or pseudo-science), as in previous centuries.  It flows from a concept of human rights that is vested strictly in individuals rather than by way of communities.  And it is no longer propagated as a national ideology, but rather through new media.  The Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom spoke at the opening session at the second day of the Israeli Presidential Conference. 

One thing this new phenomenon has in common with the anti-Semitism of the past, says Dr. Sacks, is that it grows out of the politics of grievance and humiliation.  He points to the history of Christianity; Germany after the First World War; and now the Islamic world, mourning its lost glory.  Against expectations it unites radical Islamists with human-rights NGOs—the right wing and the left wing—against a common enemy, the State of Israel.

Speaking after his public comments, Lord Sacks traced the current brief against Israel to the first Durban Conference in August, 2001, in which Israel was accused of five cardinal offenses against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and genocide.  Two years later, in a live BBC interview, he was asked his reaction to a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day by the British Muslim community “because of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians.”  His response was to deplore the debasing of discourse through the casual use of that term.

A contributing factor to European anti-Semitism, he believes, is the failure of multiculturalism and the consequent deëmphasis of the rights of minority communities.  The Netherlands, the first country to embrace multiculturalism, was also the first to reject it, with the result that many voters are now willing to abridge the rights of the Muslim community—and the Jewish community.  Rabbi Sacks spoke recently in The Hague against the proposal to ban sh’chitah (kosher slaughter) in the Netherlands, which he believes may pass—followed in all likelihood by a ban of brit milah (circumcision).  [A ban on ritual circumcision is also being considered in San Francisco.]

The Chief Rabbi pointed with pride to the fact that Britain is the first country where the fight against anti-Semitism is led by non-Jews.  He held out the hope that coalitions of Jews and non-Jews throughout the world can work together to reverse the gains of the new anti-Semites.

The Israeli Presidential Conference enters its third and final day tomorrow.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

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June 22, 2011 | 12:25 pm

“Arab Spring”: Is it Good for the Jews?

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Niall Ferguson

Speaking on the second day of this year’s Israeli Presidential Conference, the brilliant historian Niall Ferguson demurred from the widespread embrace of the “Arab Spring.” For one thing, he believes its name is a misnomer.  It is patterned after the “Prague Spring” and the eventual fall of Communism in 1989, but the Harvard professor thinks that’s a bad analogy.  Today’s revolutions grow out of high unemployment, high food prices, a high proportion of young people in the population, corruption, and connectivity, which is very different from the failure of the Communist economies.

The West assumes the uprisings in the Arab world to be inherently progressive, which Ferguson terms “a profound error.”  The use of social media is not necessarily democratic because “the medium is not the message.”  Conflating them was “one of the great errors of the 1960s,” in Ferguson’s view.  Social media can convey views both democratic and undemocratic, and the outcomes in the Arab world may well be undemocratic.  History teaches that the potential for democracy is linked to the strength of civil society, a quality which is largely lacking in the Middle East.

Ferguson’s view is that all great revolutions are characterized by four phases.  First comes euphoria, as in Tahrir Square and the world’s reaction to it. Then, according to this eminent historian of economics and business, capital flees the country, unemployment consequently rises, and there is an economic crisis.  Radical elements then seize the initiative, blaming “enemies without and enemies within,” which in turn leads to civil war, external war, or both.

For Israel, this means that new Arab regimes could redouble their efforts to delegitimize Israel.  The violence from these power shifts in the region could cause economic harm. “Would-be hegemons” like Iran and Turkey might seize on these crises and use them for their own ends.  And world opinion might turn more severely against Israel if the uprisings are misread.

All this is unfolding in a time when, as Prof. Ferguson put it, Western ascendancy is ending after 500 years, Europe is gradually disintegrating, and the United States is retreating from its imperial role because of its fiscal crisis.  Amid the optimistic faith in social media and the spirit of democracy, this sobering analysis comes as a useful corrective.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

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June 21, 2011 | 4:04 pm

Sarah Silverman Steals the Show at Israeli Presidential Conference

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Sarah Silverman

The kickoff session at the Third Israeli Presidential Conference may have surprised even its organizers.  Sarah Silverman, irreverence personified, stole the show with her unexpectedly serious and specific ideas about current issues.  Her spontaneous “Recipe for a Better Tomorrow,” as the title put it, was to “look inward, not define yourself by outside forces.”  What matters more, she asked, “the acreage of where we live, or the values of how we live?”

When asked how she would deal with the conflict in the Middle East, her Hollywood-style solution was the “buddy-movie formula – you take two enemies, they’re forced to work together on a common goal, and they realize they’re not that different.”  What common goal?  “How about solar power?  Take us off gasoline, coal, nuclear power plants.  The sun can be harvested and make the whole world a better place.”  She should know: her sister’s husband is Yosef I. Abramowitz, whose Arava Power Company recently announced its first commercial solar field.  Silverman also struck a blow for gay marriage, saying “I don’t want to get married when there’s no marriage equality.”

The singer and education advocate Shakira reflected that her native country, Colombia, “has undergone decades of conflict.  Access to universal education is one of the few options as an antidote to violence and poverty.  Investing in education is the best strategy for global peace.”  This needs to begin with “early childhood nutrition and health care to develop the physical means to learn.”  A first-time visitor to Israel, she added, “I believe this the perfect place to talk about how urgent it is to make education a priority; it is a melting pot.  We are all inheritors of an Abrahamic culture, therefore we are all Israel.”

The other three participants struck a different tone. Sir Martin Sorrell, one of the world’s leading executives in advertising, marketing, and branding, quoted facts and figures pointing to a need for newer and more efficient urban infrastructures.  With 70% of the world population likely to be living in cities by 2050, he says, the management of traffic, energy, public transport, water, health, education, and social services becomes more urgent than ever.  Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales spoke mostly about Wikipedia, adding that “moving society forward takes a lot of dialogue and debate.”  Israel native Dan Ariely, an expert on economics and irrational behavior, anecdotally explained why people do things in the short term that are harmful in the long term even when they know the consequences.

Later in the day, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair cautioned against simplistic oppositions: moral versus pragmatic, values versus self-interest, idealism versus realism.  In an interdependent world, he said, values can represent interests.  “Supporting freedom goes with the grain of human progress,” he declared.  “The future will belong to the open-minded.”

The French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy made the case that Israel has little to fear from the “Arab spring.”  Citing Montesquieu and Tocqueville he argued that democracies never make war against democracies.  As for stable dictatorships, he argued that there is no such thing: “they are always overthrown.”

The politically engaged novelist Amos Oz, long an advocate of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians, articulated what he called a categorical commandment: “thou shalt not inflict pain.”  He urged moving past simple questions of right or wrong, because in effect both sides are right and both sides are wrong.  Observing that “some of the worst conflicts are between two victims of the same oppressor,” he sees both Israelis and Palestinians as victims of Europe—Israelis see Palestinians as Nazis, and Palestinians see Israelis as colonialists.  As with victims in an automobile accident, said Oz, the important question is not who was at fault; it’s how to help the victims.

The Israeli Presidential Conference continues on Wednesday and Thursday.  Sessions are streamed live at http://www.presidentconf.org.il/en/minisite2011_en.asp and available afterwards through the Video on Demand feature.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

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June 20, 2011 | 12:01 am

Facing Tomorrow

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Israeli President Shimon Peres

Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, Binyanei HaUmma, will be packed this week for the Third Israeli Presidential Conference.  Two years ago Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, convened leading figures in science, politics, technology, religion, economics, culture, philosophy and society—among them Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair—to talk about “tomorrow.”  It’s become a regular event, and this year’s Conference  begins Tuesday night.

The opening session  brings back Jimmy Wales, along with psychologist/economist Dan Ariely and marketing expert Sir Martin Sorrell, to talk about “My Recipe for a Better Tomorrow.”  They’ll share the stage with Sarah Silverman of Comedy Central fame and the singer/songwriter Shakira.  Most events will be streamed live and will be available for later viewing on demand.

Sessions over the next two days will range from the philosophical to the practical.  The politically engaged novelist Amos Oz and philosopher/journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy will talk with Simon Peres and Tony Blair about justice and moral considerations in international relations.  JStreet’s Jeremy Ben-Ami and outgoing Reform leader Eric Yoffie join French and Israeli panelists in a discussion of criticism and loyalty in Israel-Diaspora Relations.  Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents, the Palestine-Israel Journal’s Ziad Abu Zayyad, and three Israelis are to offer their visions of Jerusalem.

I’ll be blogging from Jerusalem throughout the Conference.  Stay tuned!

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, also blogs regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

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March 23, 2011 | 1:14 pm

Terror Returns to Jerusalem

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

ZAKA emergency personnel responding to the scene of a bomb explosion near a bus station in the center of Jerusalem, March 23, 2011. (ZAKA)

Around noon today I passed through the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem, as I often do.  A lot of people do.  It’s part of a large transportation hub that also includes many local bus stops at the nearby convention center, Binyanei HaUmma.  Just a few hours after I was there, a bomb concealed in a bag at one of those streetside bus stops exploded.  It reportedly injured some 40 people, one fatally and several others seriously.

Living in Israel, you get used to a certain background level of news about bombs and missile attacks, especially involving Sderot.  In recent weeks there has been a slow but noticeable rise in the number of those incidents, notably the rocket attacks a month ago on the larger city of Be’er Sheva.  Earlier this week a rocket fell in Ashkelon.  Both cities were attacked again today.  But we Jerusalemites, much farther from Gaza, have felt secure on our streets.  The ubiquitous security checks had come to seem more like a ritual than a necessity.  It had been three years since the last terror attack in the city, the massacre at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva.  Today’s news jolts us back to reality.

Signs are up around the city to mark the route of the first Jerusalem Marathon, set for this Friday.  Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, is an enthusiastic runner, and he instituted the marathon as part of his campaign to show the city as a normal, peaceful, and fun.  He says he will still participate in the marathon and called upon residents to return to their normal lives.  Most probably will.  If the past is any guide, Jerusalemites will davka make a point of keeping to their routines in the wake of this latest attack.

Sadly, the world’s commentators will probably keep to their routines too, pointing fingers of blame towards the usual targets and claiming to know who is retaliating for what.  Like the proverbial Bourbons, they learn nothing and forget nothing.  Meanwhile, those of us who live in this part of the world have more than our opinions to worry about, starting with the victims and their families.

Bob Goldfarb is the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles and Jerusalem and a regular columnist for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.  His Twitter feed on Jews, the arts, and Jewish culture can be found at Twitter.com/bobgoldfarb.

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December 22, 2010 | 2:21 pm

Life Imitates Art

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

The veteran social commentator and academic Todd Gitlin wrote for Tablet recently about a visit to East Jerusalem.  In the course of the piece he confessed, “I felt like an invader, ashamed of myself.”  His remark uncannily echoes the fictional Samuel Finkler, the title character of Howard Jacobson’s Man-Booker-Award-winning novel The Finkler Question.  After confiding in a radio interview how important his Jewishness is to him, Finkler intones, “In the matter of Palestine, I am profoundly ashamed.”

Gitlin explains why he felt shame: “I aimed my camera—discreetly, or so I intended—toward a Palestinian kid leading a picturesque donkey down the street. He wheeled and shouted, No!  [My guide] explained that the Israeli military use photos to identify Palestinian boys, who are not infrequently arrested, late at night, then taken to police stations to be interrogated.”  It seems he was not so concerned about the possible consequences to the boy, nor did he regret objectifying the young Palestinian as local color in a tourist photograph.  As he tellingly phrases it, the main thing is how he felt: “I felt like an invader.”

Feelings run high “in the matter of Palestine.”  University of Maryland professor Charles Manekin, who blogs pseudonymously as “Jeremiah Haber, The Magnes Zionist,” believes that Jacobson is guilty of “negative stereotyping” in the Finkler character, “demonizing and trivializing Jews who, as Jews, are critical of Israel’s human rights record, or of Zionism.”  More broadly, he charges that

Jacobson excludes from his Jewish universe the principled Jewish critics of Israel’s policies and some of the uglier aspects of Zionism; more, he ridicules them into cherem/ostracism.  (Boldface in original.)

Prof. Manekin is very selective about the Jacobson characters who offend him.  He takes no exception to a Holocaust denier, nor to a Jew trying strenuously to reverse his circumcision.  He makes no objection to the Jew in the novel who avers, “I can’t go on telling myself that the American swindler who has just been put in jail to serve a hundred life sentences is only coincidentally Jewish.  I can’t convince myself that it is only by chance that such men resemble every archetype of Jewish evil that Christian or Muslim history has thrown up.”  So why single out Finkler?

The Magnes Zionist deplores Jacobson’s fictional universe because it does not include people with political positions like his, and because it satirizes others whose motives might be mistaken for his own.  But fiction is not political commentary, a distinction that is paramount for Jacobson.  At one point the novelist alludes to the sort of creative work that is “a travesty of dramatic thought because it lack[s] imagination of otherness; because it accord[s] to its own self-righteousness a supremacy of truth; because it mistakes propaganda for art.”  That distinction goes both ways.  Prof. Manekin mistakes art for propaganda.

Bob Goldfarb, the president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, regularly reviews fiction and nonfiction for Jewish Book World.  He lives in Jerusalem.

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December 10, 2010 | 1:20 pm

Jews Confronting Jews

Posted by Bob Goldfarb

Roger Cohen closes his latest op-ed column with a rhetorical question that is on the minds of a lot of American Jews.  He quotes a 24-year-old man who asks, “Why is it poisoning minds to encourage [young Jews] to think critically about the actions of the Israeli government?”  Cohen and the young man are honestly puzzled about why some Jews react so viscerally against criticism of Israel.

The reasons for those reactions are not really mysterious.  Human beings have always been torn between the feelings in their hearts and the ideas in their minds, between devotion to principle and loyalty to people.  If a co-worker steals office supplies, do you report them?  If you love someone who is doing something you think is morally wrong, do you denounce them publicly?  Competing claims create difficult choices and strong feelings.  Those choices become even harder when social norms are in flux and basic assumptions are in play.

Loyalty has been considered a great virtue in many places and at many times.  The naval hero Stephen Decatur spoke for many Americans when he declared, “Our Country! May she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”  That was almost 200 years ago.  Now a lot of Americans cringe at that notion, particularly those born since 1960.  They are more likely to believe that listening to one’s conscience and voicing dissent are higher obligations.

Jews have sometimes felt such strong loyalty to one another that Jews as a group have been branded with the stereotype of “clannishness.”  In a world where Jews faced regular, tangible threats to their well-being, however, self-preservation demanded sticking together.  In America, where those threats have diminished (though they have not disappeared), many Jews now feel no pressing need to join with one another.  But they do feel impelled to stand up against injustice.  Loyalty used to trump political opinions; now it is often the other way around.  With loyalty redefined as dissent, it is not a coincidence that loyalty oaths themselves have lately become a hot-button issue.

Cohen writes, “Israel-right-or-wrong continues to be the core approach of major U.S. Jewish organizations, from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.”  He quotes J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami as saying, “These organizations’ view remains essentially that any time you engage in an activity critical of Israel you are trying to destroy the state of Israel.”  That assessment, however, doesn’t admit the possibility that AIPAC’s statements don’t represent a “view” so much as a feeling, an emotional response to what they experience as betrayal or abandonment.  It assumes that AIPAC is cynically using a political tactic to close off debate, without considering that it may be articulating a profound discomfort, anxiety, or anger about the style and methods of today’s dissenters—much like the discomfort and anger that J Street’s advocates sometimes express towards AIPAC.

That sort of emotional tone-deafness may account for Cohen’s opinion about a recent episode where hecklers of Binyamin Netanyahu were forcibly removed from the room where he was speaking.  “Where an important conversation could be held,” he writes, “confrontation prevails.”  If he sees a speech by the Prime Minister of Israel at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations as a place where “an important conversation could be held,” Cohen clearly does not understand how people actually talk to one another.

More importantly, Roger Cohen himself actively thwarts conciliation by polarizing the two sides as idealists versus thugs.  He places “thinking critically” on the side of the angels, who are doing battle with the benighted forces of “Israel-right-or-wrong.”  He talks darkly of a “small, influential group” that opposes J Street speakers and chapters.  In the real world, however, there are idealists and pragmatists on both sides, thoughtful people who try in their own ways to balance their values with their loyalties.  If Cohen truly wanted debate he would look for common ground instead of demonizing one side at the expense of the other.

That common ground between the two sides does exist.  It includes a shared belief in doing the right thing and a special concern for Israel and its people.  A welter of conflicting values, assumptions, and strategies—not to mention ad hominem attacks—can sometimes obscure that, but there is a real basis for the discourse that Cohen says he favors.  It begins with trying to understand and empathize with the people we disagree with.

Bob Goldfarb writes regularly for eJewishPhilanthropy.com and Jewish Book World.  He is president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, based in Los Angeles and Jerusalem.

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