[Photo from Jiser's Flickr collection]
Yesterday Adam Horowitz did a great post here about Rabbi Brant Rosen's beautiful group, Rabbis Speak Out! condemning the Gaza massacres. Adam pointed out that Rabbi David Saperstein of the Reform Jews is not on the list. While Rabbi Josh Boettiger is. I need to talk about these two rabbis for a moment.
I saw Saperstein at a big conclave on Progressive Jews and the war last fall defending Reform Judaism's collapse on the Iraq war in 2002. I didn't know who he was; and I found his manner grating. He spoke angrily and defensively, using a lot of Hebrew expressions. When noble Elizabeth Holtzman rose to say in plain English that Jewish neoconservatives in high places had helped to bring this war on us, and the Jewish community must examine this if it wants to heal itself, Saperstein brushed that idea off.
And now this man who was a featured speaker at "Jews Uniting to End the War & Heal America" has nothing to say about Iraq's offspring, the Gaza slaughter. Of course.
According to Wikipedia, Saperstein is married to Ellen Weiss, vice president for news at NPR. That's my mother's name; and I can imagine that Ellen Weiss says all the right things about the Iraq War and maybe Gaza too. Anyone else's marriage is hard to fathom, though I've noticed that people tend to share political values. And of course I also wonder how much of Saperstein's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing-neoconservatism affected his wife's views of the Iraq War, and Gaza, and how that affected NPR's coverage. Ms. Weiss, I'd love to talk to you about this. Because, believe me, if there was anything like this connection with the religious right in our public life, NPR would be on it. If a Christian in public life was married to someone who had a religious view of the good wars in the Middle East–we would talk about it.
As to Josh Boettiger, he is, famously the great-grandson of Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR. The New York Times did an article about him becoming a rabbi. Not knowing anything about Boettiger's story, I know that it goes into the important category of Philosemitism. The United States has, in the last generation, fallen in love with Jews, and who can blame the United States? We're smart, we're funny, we care about close-knit family, etc. Oh, and we're the richest group by religious category. That obviously has something to do with the 62 percent intermarriage rate, for Jews under age 35.
What intrigues me about Boettiger, though, is that he did not grow up with an ethnocentric charge–Is it good for the Jews?–as so many Jews did, that attitude that Saperstein radiates, and he is obviously bringing his worldly background to the Rabbis Speak Out group. Their website is down, but I'm sure I'd find a lot of worldly rabbis, or a few anyway, whom he is now joining. Universalist Jews. A minority in Jewish life, but an insurgent minority.
So I'd pose this simple question about power in America: Which Jew is more outside the American establishment? Saperstein, the pro-war rabbi of the leading religious organization who is married to the news vp of NPR? Or Boettiger, the great grandson of Eleanor Roosevelt? The answer is Boettiger, and it challenges Jews to reckon with their new status in the power structure and its consequences. (Phil Weiss)
