I didn’t know Rosanne Barr is a Kabbalist. That’s cool. Here she is talking to Kathleen Wells about the outrage of the Gaza blockade. In excerpts below, I’ve tried to elide religious ideas b/c I’m some kind of pantheist myself, and go to the spiritual importuning and political analysis, to which there is little to add except that her take on the neocons pins the tail on the donkey, the donkey Wolfowitz tried to cover with straw when he quipped "Don’t you mean Jewish?" to a questioner at AEI who asked about the neocons. (In neocons, I see a brand of Jewish thought, and so does Adam Garfinkle and so does Rosanne.) If you don’t like spirituality, read the last paragraph, it’s got a good body-check on Jon Stewart. (Thanks to Khalid)
Our prayer books then, back in the Sephardic synagogue of my childhood in Salt Lake City, Utah, (“The Congregation Montefiore”) were very different than prayer books are today. I remember when they “updated” them in the early sixties and they became all about the Holocaust and the state of Israel. The “children of Israel” was replaced/updated with the “the people of Israel” and our Uncle Ben was instructed to say ‘Shabbat’ and not ‘Shabbos’ anymore…
As the books got more and more Zionist and less and less socialist, my entire generation, at least a large percentage of it, simply left Judaism. We became Buddhist and Hindu and atheist or agnostic, all of which (except Christian) were more in keeping with peaceful self-transformative ideas that did not bow down to militarism.
Judaism is one of the last of the world’s matrilineal philosophies. Matriarchies are always the cultures that patriarchy attacks and decimates, because they don’t spend all their money on the military like patriarchy does…
These holistic and holy ideas are what I was taught about Judaism. They have been culturally wiped away by some post-Holocaust hyper-masculine militaristic Halliburton-fueled war machine that teaches about blood and honor, with none of the spirituality that I learned just fifty years ago…
Occupation is wrong, collective punishment is wrong, and the use of white phosphorous on a captive population is wrong. Zionists are wrong, Hamas is wrong, Bibi is wrong, Obama is wrong, Saudi Arabia is wrong, Egypt is wrong, Jordan is wrong, Russia is wrong, Turkey is wrong, as are the Pope and the evangelicals, and all who do nothing about this terrible failure of humanity. To me, the only hope at all is the power of grandmothers crossing cultural and religious lines to make peace together.
Kathleen Wells: Talk to me specifically about the Gaza blockade/occupation.
Roseanne Barr: When I think about the blockade and the occupation and the illegal settlements and the breaking of international law and of maritime law that Israel is indeed guilty of, as well as the use of white phosphorous on a captive people who share our DNA and look just like us and act just like us and do what we would do were our positions reversed, I cannot bear it.
I actually double over; I weep and sweat at night. I recoil from the arrogant and immoral denial of the suffering of people who are living under occupation. My stomach turns over and my soul withers when I remember that we said we, of all people, would never let this happen on earth again…
Every Shabbat I meditate for an end to the neocons and their self-destructive agenda that is pushing the entire world to the brink of war. I write letters to Jewish people. I blog everyday about Jerusalem…
I fear that we have destroyed not just innocent people, but ourselves, in Gaza. I ache for all of the people of my DNA, the Palestinians — poor, abused and suffering, wondering how long the bombings will go on and whether there will be food or water tomorrow, of dead bodies rotting in the streets and no medicine for children.
I ache for the Jews who live in fear, too, always. My G-d, what can I do? Can I go there? Can I walk food and supplies in myself? How can I live without attempting to alleviate unnecessary suffering, instead of being a part of its cause? How can I keep my soul and be a Jew now? It torments my mind….
I was asked what message to give to the President by someone who attended a lunch with him where Jewish American opinion was invited. I told my friend to tell Obama that he must end the embargo on Gaza. Two weeks later, the flotillas sailed and were attacked in international waters.
It is time for American Jews to demand that Obama instruct Israel to obey international law. Our people died for international law — laws that prohibit collective punishment and captivity, deportation, and acts of terror against an unarmed and captive population. The cost of the blood on our hands if we do not demand this now will be the loss of our souls, which, unlike the Holocaust, we cannot survive.
When the world is shown the crimes against humanity that have been executed in our names, there in that ghetto called Gaza, I fear there will be no more Judaism left in Zionism at all. Eighty percent of young American Jews under the age of 30 are not Zionists, according to Zogby polls…
Jews, this is NOW!! You are not slaves any longer! You are not being gassed and hunted now! You are living in great relative wealth compared to the rest of the world…
Neocon Zionists and Christian Zionists must abandon the warmongering. They have demonized those of us who are observant Jews (socialists) and called us self-haters. ..
Jon Stewart always has Kristol on his show and that’s why I am so upset with Jon. You say that religion and politics are not mixed, but, yes, they are, especially in Israel.
