One of the signal events of the Gaza slaughter in the U.S. was the brave statement by "J Street" against the disproportionate violence, and the subsequent attack on J Street by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, which for some reason the Forward saw fit to print. Here Yoffie belittled the new Israel lobby group as "morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve."
The article was titled "On Gaza, Sense and Centrism." Jews are "commonsensical," Yoffie said. And you will see that his teaching lacked any religious mumbo-jumbo:
Well I was just in the bathtub reading I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl. It includes a selection from Eric Yoffie:
I am convinced, to the depth of my being, that Jewish destiny is a collective destiny. And I believe as well that the concept of the Jews being one people is a religious idea and not an ethnic, political, or cultural one. The foundations of peoplehood are not to be found in nostalgia, gastronomy, or a shared sense of vulnerability, but in the covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people. It is the covenant at Sinai that links all Jew, including nonobservant ones, in a bond of shared responsibility...
I am Jewish. This means that the State of Israel has a special hold on my soul. Jewish life, I believe, cannot be sustained without Israel at its core. The Torah that spells out for us a way of life and a religious destiny also binds us to a land... The religious significance of the Jewish state lies in the fact that it provides a framework in which Torah is to be observed and a holy community is to be created. But barely half a century old and located in a hostile neighborhood, Israel until now has focused its attention on saving Jews and ensuring the security of its citizens. Yet the day will come, I know, when Israel will not only save Jews but will also save Judaism. The day will come when the State of Israel will become the classroom of the diaspora, providing ongoing seminars in Jewish identity and restoring to Jewish life its public dimension and collective pulse. And to be Jewish means not only to support Israel's security concerns...
I think you get the picture. This weekend I saw Sarah Silverman's great comedy video, called Jesus Is Magic. She makes fun of Christians and other religious crazies the way a lot of secular Jews do. Well if you believe that a 5000 year old deal with God means that you are now bound to a land whether you like it or not, and that there is a collective responsibility of a special group of people to watch out for the people who are bound to that land, say, when they slaughter 400 children, in part because you believe in the depth of your soul that those people are going to save you later, then there's a ready description of you in the American political vocabulary: you are a religious crazy.
We want religious crazies out of our politics. Or when they're in there, we would like to know they're religious, also what visions they've been having lately. It would have been nice if Rabbi Yoffie had spelled out some of these beliefs in Jewish collective responsibility for saving our ancient bond with the land of Israel to preserve Jewish life when he lectured J Street. For that matter, when any Jew in public life holds forth about Israel, it would be nice to know where they stand on these religious ideas. Because believe me, they're not helping.
(Phil Weiss)
"Shouldn't we be getting religious crazies, like Eric Yoffie, out of our politics?'
Absolutely not. He is entitled to get as involved in our political system as you, David Duke or Martillo.
Brilliant.
@ Julian February 16, 2009 at 03:36 PM
Phil didn't say that religious crazies should be disenfranchised. He said that the rest of us should wake up and marginalize them.
So Colin, tell me again how Phil Weiss qualifies has Jewish. He doesn't believe in God, He doesn't observe any Jewish practices or anything about the religion. And he is an advocate of the destruction of Israel. Which would entail the death and dispersion of the Jews there. He thinks shooting Jews is 'charming" and feel that we got into WW2 on the wrong side. So what qualifies him to write anything from a Jewish perspective otherthan some sick accident of birth.
SOG.
So what qualifies YOU to write anything from a Jewish perspective because of your accident of birth. Your interpretation of Jewishness? And, you are what? A Jewish god?
Tell me how Phil Weiss is Jewish, Give me something. You can't do it can you. The only thing is an accident of birth, that;s it. Your talking about a guy who hates being Jewish, can't stand other jews. And wants the jewish state eradicated. That makes him more of a Duke, Farrakhan, or Nasralllah. Not a Jew.
@Sword
Well, clearly Phil's sole claim to being Jewish is his accident of birth. Please post a link to him saying he wants Israel eradicated.
As for the "charming" thing. Let it go. "Charming" is often meant sarcastically and that was the context of the post that I think you are citing.
BTW. Whether it is the usual "SoG" or someone posting in his name, no more racial slurs please.
As I recall, Saddam slaughtered 500,000 children. Yet no outcry from the Islamic world. Except to condemn Israel for causing Saddam to slaughter 500,000 Iraqi children.
"Phil didn't say that religious crazies should be disenfranchised. He said that the rest of us should wake up and marginalize them.
Posted by: Colin Murray"
Exactly, Colin–good catch. Need to quickly catch all these hasbara dissemblers. They need to be marginalized like David Duke or Martillo are. David Duke is only interested in his own group, same
as the Israel Firsters. Martillo is marginalized only because the Israel First 5th column has control over
the US government and MSM. Martillo is a USA citizen first, and a humanist, thus representing the highest
values of the USA proposition nation's premise that all humans are born free, and equal, and entitle to
all opportunity to live without having to put up it with intolerance based on institutionalized intolerance
and discrimination.
Nobody has ever posted in SOG's name on this blog. It is SOG who has the record of posting in other people's names, including real ID names. And, it is SOG who continually posts racial slurs, and has been doing so for a long time–lately joined by the likes of Chris Berel (direct slurs) and Suzanne (less direct, though that does not take much).
Causing Saddam? My understanding is the U.S. pushed for and got the U.N. to slap sanctions on Iraq. Here's the problem. We knew Saddam was a pr*ck. You mean to tell me that our government actually thought that Saddam would stop being a pr*ck if we tried to harm his government? We did it to collectively punish the Iraqis so they would over throw the guy.
No sanctions and quite possibly the 500,000 Iraqis would be alive today.
It's not Israel's fault. It's the neocons that pushed for this and it's Clinton's administration that carried it out.
Maybe those West Palm Beach voters who accidently voted for Pat Buchanon knew something that we didn't. Had he became president there would have been no sanctions. No sanctions and Israel wouldn't be blamed, right?
@ SOG
"Tell me how Phil Weiss is Jewish, Give me something. You can't do it can you. The only thing is an accident of birth, that;s it."
Well, Soggy, that "only thing" has always been good enough for jewish traditional ID criteria: Mom or Conversion. If you don't even know that, check out Wikipedia at least.
Besides, its not the "only thing" that makes Phil Jewish. Here's just one example of a group of Jews
who mirror Phil's take on the I-P situation and how Phil's POV is in the best tradition of being a Jew more than simply by accident of birth:
http://www.ijsn.net/about_us/purpose/
So, as somebody asked above, what other than accident of birth through your mother makes you a Jew?
Spell it out for us non-Jews. And please don't conflate Israel with Judaism. And don't conflate Zionism with Judaism. There are plenty of Jews and non-Jews who know the difference. In other words, do you have any non-hasbara talking points?
@Citizen moron
I don't know what SOG would say, but here is what I say.
Phil is saying "I am Jewish" as a shorthand for "I am credible because a Jewish person would not lie about the actions of Jews in order to make the Jews look bad."
The theory stems from various assumptions:
1) Someone with any loyal at all to a group would not lie to make it look bad (mostly correct).
2) Someone born into a group has some loyalty to the group (incorrect in Phil's case).
Since we can't assume that someone born Jewish has any loyalty to the Jews, the statement from Phil of "I am Jewish" does not make his attacks against Jews any more likely to be true. For example, if he is Jewish merely by accident of birth and has no actual loyalty to the Jews, the fact that he was born Jewish is irrelevant to his credibility.
The questions about his Judaism that Phil ignores, presumably because he doesn't want to get caught lying or hurt the credibility of his attacks, are intended to explore whether his statement "I am Jewish" should give him credibility or not.
Since Phil is a Jew only by a technicality, hates the fact that he is Jewish, and projects that hatred onto Jews in general, he is actually more likely to lie about Jews to make them look bad than a random person with no connection to Judaism.
It is like someone with Stockholm syndrome saying "I am a hostage" to give credibility to their statements about how wonderful their captors are.
Thom, of course thinking individuals question their own assumptions. But it's the tribal nature to not
question tribal assumptions. There are exceptions regarding a few individuals born into the tribe–this merely proves the general rule. "Since we can't assume that someone born Jewish has any loyalty to the Jew" is false in that respect. And you well know it. Nice try though.