The “most of my Jewish friends are disgusted with Israel” piece by Allison Benedikt in Awl and the Kiera Feldman piece in the Nation on Birthright indoctrination/sexual tourism continue to resonate. Both are powerful blows in the new construction of Jewish identity. A sign of their importance is this nasty and self-destructive attack on the pair by Gil Troy in the JPost:
these posturing progressives are the new galut Jews, the court-Jews of 21st-century elite society, purchasing acceptance from others by mocking their own. While the 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine saw conversion as an admission ticket to European culture, some American Jewish extremists now use anti-Zionism as their admission ticket to progressive circles.
And then there was Jeffrey Goldberg’s attack on Allison Benedikt, saying she was the “wicked son” of the Passover service. Jack Ross, anti-Zionist author, has written this letter to Goldberg:
I am typically loath to write emails in response to the blogs of strangers, but I had to take great exception when you referred to Andy Bachman as the leading leftist rabbi in America. If by this you mean the most leftist rabbi of a large and historic congregation, that is probably correct. But just down 8th Avenue in Brooklyn I attend the congregation of Ellen Lippmann, a long-time leader of Rabbis for Human Rights and a member of the Newsweek list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America. She has given High Holiday sermons before hundreds of New York Jews wisely saying that it is a simple fact that the sacred narrative of 20th century Jewish history, equal to if not greater than any biblical narrative is passing away. As one whose favorite philosopher of Judaism is Will Herberg, I can only consider it cause for rejoicing that this rank idolatry called Jewish nationalism is meeting its maker.
Incidentally, you may be interested in my book being released this month, as well as in this Youtube interview I taped just yesterday. And you think Allison Benedikt is the wicked son! But if I and the heroic subjects of my book were wicked sons for opposing the idolatry of “Jewish peoplehood”, than so were all the biblical prophets for opposing the idol worship of their day, indeed so was Abraham!
As for Rabbi Bachman, he is no leftist (unless one refers to the Israeli attempt to refound the World Peace Council known as the Euston Manifesto) – in a Facebook exchange he insisted he could not even accept Peter Beinart’s statement that “the problems facing an Israel with dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons when its adversary, however despicable, has one, are not the problems of the Warsaw Ghetto.” And I have lost most of my remaining respect for him after reading him denounce Allison Benedikt’s writing her own hagaddah as a crime against the Jewish people by invoking the one true science, numerology. Who is he, Louis Farrakhan?
And for the record, at probably half the seders I’ve attended in my 26 years we skipped over the four sons. This includes this past year at a distant cousin’s in North Carolina, a Bensonhurst yeshiva boy turned on-again-off-again Reconstructionist, who when I was telling him about attending the Jewish Voice for Peace conference in March, he replied “oh is there an anti-Zionist trend among the Reconstructionists now? I’m so glad to hear it!”
Speaking of JVP, this is the heart of the matter. Believe me having written my book and knowing more about the subject than anyone else alive, there are at least twice as many rabbis on the JVP Rabbinic Council as were ever seriously active with the American Council for Judaism. And twice that number still signed on to the fellow-traveling Jewish Fast for Gaza.
I do not want to take any cheap shots at you personally because I have awe for the horrible human tragedy facing Zionism’s true believers such as yourself. But let there be no mistake. For those of my generation who are committed to building a progressive religious alternative to the American Jewish establishment, what we seek from Israel and that establishment is, as Yitzhak Rabin might have said, a divorce, not a marriage. We refuse to believe that the worship of God without the worship of peoplehood is heresy, indeed, we refuse to believe that anything but the opposite is the case.
Sincerely and Respectfully,
Jack Ross (Imperfect follower of the Literary Prophets)
