Allison Benedikt's memoir that might have been titled, Beginning to turn against Israel, at the Awl, is one of the most important interventions in months. It crystallizes the Jewish moment. Beautifully and sincerely written, with wrenching confessions about her family's blindness and the important influence of her non-Jewish husband (yes just as my mother-in-law who smuggled sheets into a Bethlehem hospital gave me a path on the issue), it signifies a crisis inside American Jewish consciousness that Peter Beinart and J Street and the New York Review of Books are going to have trouble catching up with.
The lies are starting to slide off the table, in a hurry, American Jews are waking up. The importance of the Benedikt piece is signalled by Jeffrey Goldberg's pugilism. Goldberg sees his own worldview becoming marginalized, and he has launched a vituperative battle with Benedikt and her husband, John Cook. But to his credit, Goldberg has run Benedikt's response to his own criticisms of the piece. This is Jewish history unfolding, with the help of our non-Jewish brothers and sisters. Excerpts of Benedikt's letter. And note, about halfway down a landmark revelation of Benedikt's that I have bolded: the revelation that Israel is not my problem....
Hi Jeffrey,
Wow, you really hated my piece on The Awl. Don't get why such a personal, angry attack of a response, but... hey, it's your blog.
To defend my husband, who needs no defending... John was not accepted by my parents or my sister for being a non-Jew long before they ever heard his opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. They didn't want me to date him let alone marry him because he wasn't Jewish. (I know, you're shocked!) He handled a lot of that with grace, not to mention being a wonderful and active partner now in raising our boys as Jews--mostly if not entirely because of how important he knows it is to me. Coming up against John's opinions on Israel was, in a way, as shocking for me as it was for him to get close to a family whose members all believed what he did on pretty much every major political issue of the day, except for this weird thing about Israel. Good, strong liberals except for this one weird thing where, oh well, if being a real democracy means not being a Jewish state, then forget democracy.
As for your questions:
...Does she wonder why her husband hates Israel with such ferocity? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I hate it as much as he does. (Though "hate" is the wrong word. Feel rage toward?) Sometimes I think he can't "get it" because he has no ethnic identity. Other times I think his remove from the situation gives him clarity. Mostly, I think he is so angry, as I am (and I believe you too?), because if Israel is to claim itself a Western democracy, it should live up to certain ideals that it does not.
Does she ever try to answer for herself why Israel exists? Why it was founded or why it continues to exist? Actually, yes, on both counts. And I read about it too. None of this has led me anywhere but toward disillusionment.
Or is she happy to subcontract out her thinking about the most important questions facing Jews first to her camp counselors, and then to her husband? Happy to? No. Have I done this at times? Yes. But just on the way to figuring out what the hell I think for myself. I'm still not there, but I'm working on it! (Which is, coincidentally, what my essay is about.)
Does she ask herself whether she has a responsibility to make Israel a better, more humane, place? I don't believe that I have that specific responsibility, no. But I have thought about it. And I think that's a lot of the reason my sister is there, for which I give her credit (in my mind if not in my piece--because frankly her politics are her own to discuss). Of course, I do think we all have a responsibility to make the world better--but specifically Israel, because I am Jewish? No.
Does she question herself about the consequences of abandoning Israel? I wouldn't go so far as to say I've abandoned Israel (did you read the essay?), but if you mean have I thought about what it would mean for there to be no such thing as a Jewish state? I have thought about this plenty of course! Who that takes this stuff seriously hasn't? (I guess you don't think I take it seriously, but you're wrong.) I bet I land, uncomfortably, about where you land: If the decision comes down to brutal occupation forever to maintain the Jewishness of the state OR true democracy, which would mean no Jewish state, I would have to choose the latter--but there is nothing easy or wishful in me writing that, and I hope it never comes to that (though more and more it seems like it will).
Does she think about the sin of the wicked son in the Passover story, and how that sin might echo in her own life? This is not meant to be snide, but John and I lead a seder every year and I've taken to making my own Haggadah because I'm not comfortable with many of the traditional stories and blessings. The wicked child bit is something I've deleted. But anyway, to you, aren't I the one who doesn't know how to ask?
Sometimes I read stuff like this from Goldberg and reflect on the PEP phenomenon, and want to shake them and scream “If you believe that the rights and interests of any one group of people is different, special, apart or more compelling to you than any other group of people, stop calling yourself a progressive. Hell, stop calling yourself a liberal.”
Im not going to read all of this– just had to express my wonderment at why elite educated American gentiles are so ready to abandon their religious/ cultural identity when they marry the tribe. Is the tribe so much superior to us that you always need to abandon your own traditions? Is Christianity such a lowly common religion that it is not worth preserving among the elites? You know, the Christianity which gave us notions like the quaint idea that all people are created equally– from Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians: “there is no Greek, nor Jew, no bondsman, nor free, no man, nor woman– all are equal before Christ.” No desire by John to preserve those ideals, or the ideal of “what one does to the least of us, one does to Christ,” which are the bedrock of what is good about Western culture?
Madrid, dude, there’s nothing wrong with being a Christian. One of my favourite things about Judaism is that it is not an evangelical religion. Judaism is one of the few religions that does claim heaven exclusively for its adherents.
Still, I think we can agree that all Christian morality, including the quaint ideas you reference, has its origins in the parent religion, Judaism.
“Still, I think we can agree that all Christian morality, including the quaint ideas you reference, has its origins in the parent religion, Judaism.”
That is false. While Christian morality has many elements (both good and ill) which originated in Judaism, not all of them did. Indeed, some of the very best of them are not particularly Jewish at all. But at the end of the day, Judaism is as narrowminded as Christianity (and any other religion, for that matter) for claiming for itself things which are inherent in human psychology. (But, amazingly, religions only take credit for the good things. Never the bad…)
Two comments:
1. We don’t agree on your idea of where Christian morality comes from. In fact, Paul’s ideas about the equality of all humans comes from the Greek influence on Pauline Christianity, not from the Judaic side. And by the way, theologians and religious historians are pretty much in agreement about where the notion of equality and universalism within Christianity comes from. Such notions, no matter how one tries to pry them out of the OT, simply don’t exist in Judaism. I’ll give you the point about Judaism not being evangelical.
2. Given that (I’ll assume) most people that read and write for this blog think that the end result of modernity is that we all become Atheists in the end, my question to you is the following: what happens to American society in general when you have a situation where the great masses of the unwashed are all Christian– and not mainline Protestant or Catholic– but “muscular Christians” as they say? Meanwhile, the elite manager class is either atheist or non-Christian. What flavor do you think the inevitable revolution is going to take in that kind of situation– given that you and I can both agree that the current path of economic stagnation is not sustainable? Don’t you think that it benefits society in general to have some component of the elite classes that remain Christian, if only in order to provide an example to the rest of the country? (I realize that you probably have no idea or interest in how the rest of the masses live or think, but try for a minute to empathize for fly-over country for one moment.)
Well, I would say that there is no guarantee that the “great unwashed” so called, in the USA will become “muscular Christians.” There are many unwashed atheists, Jews, Muslims, etc. And given the that the biggest influx of labor into the US today is probably Mexican, with it’s unique flavor of Catholicism, that result is certainly not pre-ordained, even if the working class becomes more religious.
And I think the idea of “setting an example” is rather condescending, frankly. Even at my poorest, I never considered someone worthy to be an example to me, simply because of his or her job or wealth. Why should I think that the average American is incapable of such feelings?
“We don’t agree on your idea of where Christian morality comes from. In fact, Paul’s ideas about the equality of all humans comes from the Greek influence on Pauline Christianity, not from the Judaic side.”
Or, to put it another way, the idea of human equality isn’t a religious one, but is a philosophical one which was repeatedly… adopted, we’ll say… by religions.
And by the way (Dude), our hero, Phil, ( his pal, Allison, and perhaps you also) is definitely what anthropologists call an “outlyer” within his community with regard to his views within Judaism– so much so that what he believes with regard to Zionism doesn’t look like Judaism at all from the inside of the mainstream of that religion.
That’s why I am increasingly skeptical of Phil’s efforts on this blog– I don’t think there will be any big win for Phil in the battle for the Jewish soul, since his best shot, namely reform Judaism, which is as ethnocentric as the other kind after all, is experiencing a quite death– so-called real Jews jokingly refer to it as dressed up Episcopalian-ism.
And after all, people like Phil are in fact real bigots when it comes to Christians– read Phil’s recent interview with Gilad Aztmon, which I don’t think he linked to, where he casually refers to Catholicism as the “Church of Pedophilia.” Do you think anyone could say anything equivalent about Judaism and still have a job afterward? Indeed, Phil himself, for all his bravery with regard to critiquing Judaism from the inside, remains unemployable within the field of journalism.
Madrid
I really enjoy your posts but that last swipe at Mr Weiss is below the belt and unbecoming of the high standard of the rest of your stuff.
not to mention the swipe @ reform judaism. “a quite death”? i assume madrid meant quiet. but either way reform judaism is definitely not dying.
“Church of Pedophilia” is definitely ‘below the belt’ as well.
You guys misundestood me:
Annie: I said the REFORM Judaism is dying, which is true, while Orthodox is growing, and Conservative Judaism is pretty much stable in terms of growth. Jews in general are abandoning reform Judaism in favor of the more conservative strains.
Seafroid– I was just quoting Phil who called Catholicism “the religion of pedophilia”. It’s his quote not mine. Here is the link:
link to intifada-palestine.com
And here is the quote:
“While you seem out rather reductively to prove the degeneracy of a religion which I’m sure is deeply problematic, as Islam is and the Church of Pedophilia…( sic)”
I am dead serious when I say I think he should apologize for such a disgusting comment, which he would never make about any other religion.
Madrid
I meant about the job.
Im sorry– that was not meant as a criticism of Phil. It was simply my bad writing– writing quickly. It was meant to be a criticism of editors of major newspapers.
What I meant to say is that Phil is the poster-child for what happens to a good journalist when he criticizes Israel. Phil doesn’t get work in mainstream publications, right? That’s not controversial, and it’s very sad. And I don’t think it should be that way– Phil should have a very prosperous career in journalism, not be blacklisted, which he essentially is.
Look Im one of Phil’s biggest fans– I don’t think he does himself any favors by insulting the Catholic church, and I confused the issue by combining that with my comment on his being unemployable by big name publications. I guess, in my mind at that time, what joined them is the notion that Phil can be quite undiplomatic at times. But you are right that Phil has done a wonderful thing by giving the world this website– he’s done more good here than anyone could have imagined, and I’ve been reading him, it seems like forever. So yes, I am one of his biggest fans.
Madrid, you see here a wonderful illustration of what I call the “Jewish con” the idea that any given Jew is an expert on his religion, and you’d better take his word for it, at risk of anti-you-know-what-ism.
And in fact, his statements are historically wrong, and always come from an Israel-centric POV.
Oh and look at that, he ends with a nice condescending insult towrds the “quaint ideas” of Christianity (which they wouldn’t have except for us smart, moral Jews)
Anyway, you can usually evaluate someon’s knowledge of their religion in the light of how self-serving they are. The more self-serving, the less likely to be true.
“Madrid, dude, there’s nothing wrong with being a Christian.”
Wonderful consistency! Condescension beginning and end!
For me, I’d just as soon everyone, everywhere abandon their religions. It would, in my opinion, make the world a better place.
And I would imagine that those who would flop from one religion to another to please a future spouse is merely showing that they value the person they are going to marry more than the religions (both old and new), which they clearly don’t believe in anyway.
Woody:
I hear that often–among liberals–the wish that everyone abandon their religions, and at one time, I even sympathized with it. To some degree I abandoned my own religion when I got married as well, which perhaps is why someone like John makes me so annoyed. But in the real world, within the short or the long term, I don’t think it is very realistic that everyone abandon their religion. Real people simply don’t abandon their religions…
My problem is that when one looks at how intolerant mainstream Judaism is turning out to be as it is currently turning out to be, one wonders about Allison’s children. Are they going to be the Jewish version of Ned Flanders, rejecting all of Allison’s leftist Judaism, and be the first ones to buy new apartments in the newest exclusivist settlement being built in the West Bank?
Madrid,
I don’t disagree with you about people not abandoning their religion. My wish that everyone abandon their religion is simply that: a wish. I don’t harbor any illusions that this will happen, certainly not in my lifetime.
But to answer your point, especially regarding children, I think that the best that can happen is for people to stop taking their religion seriously, especially when it comes to being a basis for their opinions and morality.
It is one thing to say to a child “X, Y, and Z are things that make one a good person and make for a good life.” but it is another to say “God mandated that we do or think X, Y, and Z, and they’re good things.” because once you teach a child that these secular and human moral principles are, in fact, the rules of God, you’ve stripped from that child the defense for when someone comes along and says “yes, God said X, Y, and Z, but He also said [fill in the blank: 'hate homosexuality' 'this land belongs to the us exclusively, so go kill that person' 'abhor polytheists and idolators'] etc., etc.”
Teach the morality. Let the child, as an adult, decide to believe or not, the theology.
I think the notion that the world is beyond religion is very naive and ignores the vast majority of people in the world whose lives are marked by chaos and who need religion.
I agree with seafoid to a certain extent. Religion is often there as the last refuge for those who have nothing else. I am not talking about comfortable American mid-westerners now, but about the people of Gaza, who like the Jewish people of the shtetls of old, find the strength to persevere in tradition. Or the people locked up in prisons who find god – as the only thing that they can collect – and keep – between 4 walls.
I do suspect that, from time immemorial, religion fulfilled that role – give a framework and a bit of hope to humans caught in great adversity where nothing makes any sense, and security is hardly existent..
I am reading a book about 14th century Europe. And what a bleak time it was – to one and all. So they all had religions to steer them through dire daily realities. Who are we, the comfortable – to cast aspersions upon the afflicted and the deprived of this or other times? those who have security have no way to understand insecurity – not in depth, at least. And religion itself was not always the cause of the bleakness, not even the enabler. The real threats to existence – individual, collective, was – in the middle ages as in antiquity, as now – the result of the strong preying upon the weak, until they got preyed on in return. My thoughts, reading the book I do, are that religion – be it christianity or judaism or islam – was a natural response to the perception – too true – that greed is inherent in human nature. That greed for evermore is probably what made humans successful as a species and it may, in the end, doom them – as a species. My theory is that the messianic cravings (raptures included) that many religions offer is just a foreshadowing of a fatal flaw in our own nature. Some religions may just be better than others in packaging – or masking – the yearning for being that which we are not.
This, of course, does not address the many ways in which religions got twisted to serve the needs of the powerful. Or exploited to win support of the populace for endless wars (talking middle ages now). Or used to persecute some unfortunate scapegoats. Or held up as a beacon to justify the conquest of the land of others (hello Israel….). But that’s another story.
Also, I couldn’t help but notice that no sooner do people abandon any vestige of formal religion, that they tend to elevate some personal values to the level of a higher truth, which then assumes spiritual undertones. Now I might as well be talking about many scientists, especially those who deal in some of the more academic areas of physical sciences or math. Physicists, for example, do tend to ruminate about god (small ‘g’) as a convenient – and shorter – substitute for a natural order that is as deep as it is mysterious.
Sometimes I think that it’s only the form that prayers take that’s different between the expressly religious and the not so professed. Some simply do it with equations. Others with software. still others got their DNA research. And the poets and playwrights have words. And Phil has the identity thing, which we all love (agree or diss or neither).
madrid, you should be a bit more generous towards Phil. It is no small thing that he does here. Not small at all.
I think that the people who live in chaos are among those most harmed by religion. But I also understand why religion is unlikely to go away.
I used to live in India, Woody and I remember once reading an article by Richard Dawkins about how progress has done away with the need for religion.
My driver used to tell me about whatever Hindu festivals were going on and he used to borrow my camera to take pictures of them . I could see from the pictures the joy that the festivals engendered in otherwise hard lives. And I couldn’t figure out how to tell him how wrong he was and how he should listen to Dawkins. I don’t think Dawkins ever lived in a slum in the third World.
The guardian website used to have very intense “discussions” on the subject of religion and it is easy to dismiss when everyone is prosperous. But also very naive.
Religion will go away as soon as poverty and injustice disappear.
People in the West may laugh at religion but what’s the difference between someone waiting for the Messiah and a Goldman Sachs banker who belives in infinite economic growth?
what’s the difference between someone waiting for the Messiah and a Goldman Sachs banker who belives in infinite economic growth?
Seafoid,
You have earned your heavenly reward :-)
Danaa,
I don’t doubt that religious beliefs offers people solace and hope, but it is a false hope. What would you say about a man who lets his child suffer and die, rather than going to a doctor to treat an easily treatable disease, because his religion tells him to trust in god? A fool. What would you say about a man who is in dire straits but does little or nothing to change the situation his children live and die in, because he is waiting for a promised messiah or is content to live in “paradise” in a world to come? How are these two people different?
And to the man in prison, god is not t the only thing he can keep within his 4 walls. He has himself.
And, yes, the strong will always prey on the weak. But sometimes the weak make it easy on the strong – out of religious conviction. How many Roman Christians willingly went to horrible, horrible deaths because they wouldn’t do a pointless act in front a piece of stone shaped like a person?? How many Spanish Jews suffered horrible torture rather than adopting different practices? If a madman will wipe out your family if you don’t convert from your religion, only a fool will keep to his faith and cost his children their lives. Yet throughout history these fools are held up as role models and saints. And, again, if your holy book counsels the slave to listen to his master, how likely is it that a religious slave will rightfully strike back at he who binds him??
“Who are we, the comfortable – to cast aspersions upon the afflicted and the deprived of this or other times?” Who are we? We are thinking, rational humans. Who else do we need to be? If one person is deprived of comfort and security salves his pain by torturing baby animals, should we withhold judgment because we are comfortable?
“My thoughts, reading the book I do, are that religion – be it christianity or judaism or islam – was a natural response to the perception – too true – that greed is inherent in human nature. That greed for evermore is probably what made humans successful as a species and it may, in the end, doom them – as a species. My theory is that the messianic cravings (raptures included) that many religions offer is just a foreshadowing of a fatal flaw in our own nature. Some religions may just be better than others in packaging – or masking – the yearning for being that which we are not.”
There is probably a truth to this. But a better response, in my opinion, is not to posit a glorious age after god or gods come to the rescue; it is to get off our butts and work to make a change.
“Also, I couldn’t help but notice that no sooner do people abandon any vestige of formal religion, that they tend to elevate some personal values to the level of a higher truth, which then assumes spiritual undertones. Now I might as well be talking about many scientists, especially those who deal in some of the more academic areas of physical sciences or math. Physicists, for example, do tend to ruminate about god (small ‘g’) as a convenient – and shorter – substitute for a natural order that is as deep as it is mysterious.”
There is some truth in this, but how much of that is the effect of growing up in a religious environment? I would suspect that religion and the awe and wonder which grips scientists about their fields (and artists and others about theirs) are tapping into the same source, but that religious expression of it is so ubiquitous that people assume that it is a particularly religious thing, when, in fact, it is merely a human thing that religions and religious have co-opted for their own.
If I go out in the desert and look at the sky at night, I am filled with awe and wonder that I have to imagine is akin to the wonder of a religious person contemplating his or her god, and yet, not for a moment do I suspect that I’m looking at or experiencing anything other than a whole lot of gas and a whole lot of space and a whole lot of time.
You are making a category error here. If religions lead to festivals which improve lives, then the religions didn’t improve lives, the festivals did. Nothing is preventing these very same people to have as enriching festivals without the religions. Cultures around the world have done so, and in many places, religious festivals have been replaced in all but name with secular holidays. (There’s no Santa Claus nor Easter Bunny in the Bible, after all…)
I don’t believe that religion is going to go away, I simply believe that it should. I think it is probably naïve to expect it to happen soon, but it is also naïve, in my view, to believe it does more good than harm.
Oh, that just demonstrates that irrational thinking takes many forms, with religion merely one of them.
“Im not going to read all of this– just had to express my wonderment at why elite educated American gentiles are so ready to abandon their religious/ cultural identity when they marry the tribe.”
Wow, you took me back twenty years, more with that. When we wanted to get married, we had an interview with the minister who had provisionally assented to do the ceremony. He seemed somewhat reluctant to committ himself, and I grew impatient (I was 37!). “What are you afraid of”, I asked the Christian minister, ‘that I’ll convert her to Judaism later”?
He gave me a look and said “Well, actually, I was more afraid of the opposite, that you might become a Christian. I have to think of the best interests of my denomination.”
True story!
As you were.
My original post was
‘”Christianity which gave us notions like the quaint idea that all people are created equally”
This idea comes from Stoic philosophy.’
But I see you acknowledge this in a later post.
“Paul’s ideas about the equality of all humans comes from the Greek influence on Pauline Christianity, not from the Judaic side”
Phil…”our non-Jewish brothers and sisters”.
Very cool, Phil.
Very cool? You think that’s cool. Listen Don, if that girl I married was my sister, I am in big trouble! Not cool at all.
“If the decision comes down to brutal occupation forever to maintain the Jewishness of the state OR true democracy”
That’s not the decision. That’s the utopian illusion. The questions are more complex. If it comes down to a two-state solution versus a one-state solution. If it comes down to an occupation to maintain the Jewishness of the state or a bloody civil war in which millions of Jews will die. If it comes down a state armed to the teeth versus the spectre of a nuclear attack from Iran. If it comes down to a wall versus a suicide bomber blowing up children. If it comes down a wall versus rocket launchers targeting children.
These are the real questions Israel deals with, the questions comfortable Westerners like me or most of you can so easily dismiss. It’s way too easy and intellectually lazy and disingenuous to say “if it comes down to a choice between a brutal occupation to maintain Jewishness and true democracy.”
So in opposition to “utopian illusion,” you fixate on dystopic paranoia. And I wonder why Zionists seem incapable of reason…
no they aren’t those are the questions it answers rather than dealing with the root problems. in the end what Israeli wants and thinks it needs are irrelevant. in the end all tyrants fall.
What I have today is a memory. Although I am nominally Christian, I was married for 20 years to a German-Jewish women, with whom I raised two children in the 1960s and 1970s. We sent them to a progressive school where Hebrew was taught, the idea being that they could get a modicum of Jewish education in a progressive milieu. They problem was the Hebrew teaching materials: they were filled with anti-Arab racism and propaganda. The reason my wife and I became aware of this was because our kids, and all their friends, were raising hell about the Hebrew instructional materials. Why, they wanted to to know, were they being given books with pictures of hook-nosed Arabs throwing bombs into the United Nations? Wasn’t that racism?
The people who ran this school gave us nothing but excuses. They also couldn’t explain why they didn’t teach the kids Yiddish, along with Hebrew. The literature in Yiddish seemed a lot more nuanced to me, and in most ways better than in Hebrew, and I felt like it had more to say about modern life. But the powers-that-were wouldn’t cop to us, couldn’t give us a straight answer. I began to feel complicit in something very bad. Sadly, we didn’t take our kids out right away, even though my wife thought we should. I should have listened to her. Eventually, however, we took the kids out of the school.
My wife had deep roots in the German Left, and she explained at length how dangerous religious nationalism was, and how it was going to hijack American Judaism. I didn’t believe her then, but I do now. It was a tremendous gift, one that I still cherish, though she has been dead these many years. She even saw how Islam was going to be attacked by the West, and how conservative Christianity and Judaism would play into that. That, too, helped me, when in another time and place I became the father of a Muslim child. Then once again I saw the truth of everything my first wife had taught me, this time from the other side of the looking-glass.
Christianity started to go downhill the moment it became an imperial religion (of the Roman Empire), and now that Judaism has been so deeply influenced by nationalism it seems to be going the same way. How can anybody recover anything good from them? Well, I saw liberation theology restoring Jesus to the poor in Latin America, and I see A Jewish Voice for Peace recovering the universal human rights of Judaism in their rabbinical council. So it’s possible. And I need to keep reminding myself of that.
The reforming movements are small, but the light never quite flickers out. Is the good they accomplish more powerful in the end than the torture, exploitation and war of the institutional structures? We don’t know the end of that story yet, since we’re all living it. These days I tend to wonder if anything can save the institutional forms of religion, but I can’t tell is that’s just me, or a more or less objective assessment.
But what I remember today is the children in that Hebrew school where I sent my kids in the 1960s, and I remember how vociferously they complained about the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in those Hebrew instructional materials. I wonder if that “progressive” school took that honesty away from some of them, or if most of them kept it. The important thing to me is the fact that the kids knew what they were seeing, they knew it was wrong, and they complained about it to anybody that would listen. That impulse, to spot evil and raise hell about it when you see it, even though everybody else tells you to shut up, is what gives me hope. And if you can write about it in interesting ways (or better yet, get people to laugh about it), so much the better.