Anna Quindlen
The other day Terry Gross did a great interview with author Anna Quindlen about her new memoir, and Quindlen spoke openly about her disaffection from the Catholic church. Quindlen is a good liberal feminist. She was deeply offended by the church's handling of the pedophilia scandal and then later by the obsession of the church with "gynecology," women's rights. Hey that turned me off too! So Quindlen voted with her feet.
I said, 'Enough' ... Every time I sit in the pew I ratify this behavior, and I'm not going to ratify it anymore.
Today Brian Lehrer on WYNC did an interview with NYT columnist Russ Douthat about his book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, on the disaffection of American Catholics and why their abandonment of the church is bad for society. A commenter states, "The last time Roman Catholic polemicists got exercised about heresy, a whole lot of people got burned. I find this topic incredibly offensive."
Let's be clear. Quindlen is a liberal, Douthat is a conservative.
Where is that bandwidth within the American Jewish community in our media?
No: Author Peter Beinart is the liberal, even though he's for Jewish nationalism in the name of God. And author Jack Ross is simply off the reservation, although he sounds very much like Anna Quindlen when he writes:
[I]s the rich American Jewish social justice tradition, the legacy of Meyer London, Rose Schneiderman, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer really supposed to be reduced to assisting in Washington bureaucratic wrangling on behalf of the loyal opposition of a foreign country, as the closely aligned J Street has essentially asked?
Beinart’s alternative is an idealized liberal Zionist tradition of the civil rights era. But liberal American Judaism in the 1950s and ’60s was ultimately defined less by the civil rights movement than by the garish Scientology-style demands for financial obeisance to the United Jewish Appeal,
Terry and Brian, please open up the Jewish conversation to liberal non-nationalist voices.
Excerpts from Quindlen summary by Fresh Air:
In Lots of Cake, she frankly describes her decision to give up alcohol as well as her reasoning for recently leaving the Catholic Church.
"The pedophilia scandals, the church's reaction to them, and their constant obsession with gynecology — taken together at a certain point, it was probably two or three years ago, I said, 'Enough,' " she says. "Every time I sit in the pew I ratify this behavior, and I'm not going to ratify it anymore."
Quindlen says she realizes that she doesn't need a service or Mass to get what she needs out of her faith.
"I think not going anymore made me realize how much of the good had been imprinted deep inside me, and how much of the rest I didn't need," she says. "I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7. And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go."
But Quindlen says she still relies on her faith.
"I still walk around some mornings and look at the world and think, 'Oh my God. This is so fantastic, and there's so many opportunities to do good and to be happy,' " she says. "And I think that comes from some deep-faith place that started in religion and now transcends it."
Phil, great point! Is the iron hot yet?
As to Terry Gross and Brian Lehrer opening the conversation to hear the views of disaffected Jews, ahem, “Amen”.
that was an incredible interview, the ‘incredible’ part having nothing to do with gross’s bumbling style. gross is a lost cause in my estimation. i don’t sense the slightest inclination ‘to open up the Jewish conversation to liberal non-nationalist voices.’ her post-cast lead interview of bronner was embarrassing.
Terry Gross and NPR have a history of tendentious reporting on the Palestinian predicament. Henry Norr, writing on Mondoweiss a couple of years ago, asks, “How can NPR have so much trouble getting the basic facts right about Israel’s occupation of Palestine?”
link to mondoweiss.net
Good question, Henry!!
Possibly you cannot see where the analogy is really apt:
Judaism, for any remaining religious people, is nothing but the handmaiden of Zionism (at the risk of almost-hijacking Mooser’s apt characterization.) It’s way late, for whoever among them wants to imitate the progressive Catholics, to “vote with their feet” and get out of the synagogues, nationalist and criminal headquarters –the fundamentalists among them can join the admirable Neturei Karta rabbis.
For those who are not religious, the very fact of calling themselves “Jewish” instead of by the name of their particular judaic-influenced subculture is a typically Zionist gesture and marks them as tribal figures, people out of the Dark Ages that get in the movement to try and save some of the old respect for the Tribe.
As for your comment board, I love it how you censor what pinches you even a little tight, while fascist propaganda is practically unlimited (at least as long as the Tribe isn’t the victim.)
Okay, I just wanted to highlight the above comment as an example of how ludicrously far out, and how deeply uninformed, the discussions about Judaism can get here. I’m having trouble even getting where an idea like this comes from, it’s so weird and so impressively creative, but just so HATEFUL too, ya know? (That calling ourselves Jewish is a part of a super-important and super-complex conspiracy that all the Jews are doing totally unconsciously. It’s such a secret conspiracy that not even the people executing it have ever heard about it! That’s so weird, I really dig on it!)
Personally, I call myself Jewish simply because I am. It’s my primary ethnic identity, but not because I chose it. I was born into a certain culture. Now I’m part of it.
So in this world, I am actually marking myself as a Dark Age Tribalist, which is probably bad cause it sounds really scary. So I’m clearly bad. Yet the certifiable rabbis over at Neturei Karta are admirable! (To me that sounds like calling David Duke admirable because he is an accomplished public speaker.)
i too found it to be a weird ptv, as well as inaccurate for there are many ordinary jews not associated to Neturei Karta who practice judaism and are not zionists.
plus, it’s not uncommon in the least here to have zionist commenters claim the two are wedded, crazy stuff and literally challenge certain jews here (including phil on many occasion) about their identity as jews to the point of claiming they are not even jews if they don’t show their zionist bonafide (i call it de-jewing)!
so yes, we get these arguments about the relationship between zionism and judaism, sometimes frequently. obviously, they are not interchangeable. there are extreme views on all sides of this issue.
just out of curiosity, since you found this comment so “ludicrously far out” why did you feel the need to make claims about it that didn’t exist in the original comment and make it even more far out? (“calling ourselves Jewish is a part of a super-important and super-complex conspiracy …….a secret conspiracy “) you must realize the term ‘conspiracy’ does not exist in the comment. so i am curious where you extrapolated the term conspiracy from? was it typically Zionist gesture and marks them as tribal figures?
do tell. and by all means try explaining the ludicrously far out-ness sans the strawman crutch of arguing against what wasn’t actually addressed.
edit, one more thing…re David Duke. i noticed you mentioned stormfront the other day. do you get a particular thrill about ratcheting up the discourse with the insertion of the inflammatory? a tad of a drama queeen eh?
PFP obviously spends a lot fo time on those blogs, based on his/her first hand experience. Makes sense if you think about it. Neo Nazis are wielding Nisraeli flags at neo nazi demonstrations, so it’s a natural mother ship for PFP .
“i too found it to be a weird ptv, as well as inaccurate for there are many ordinary jews not associated to Neturei Karta who practice judaism and are not zionists.”
Just one thing, Annie, and still sticking to our parallel with the progressive Catholics who walk out: would you care to count the anti-Zionist congregations? Of course there might be some, but not one of the religious people I know seems to have heard of them. Obviously we are not talking about individual practices, but of places where people congregate and do whatever they do together.
sarde, i am not on the inside and not familiar with congregations. sticking to your parallel with the progressive Catholics, i know there are many people who practice religion or observe religious practices in an informal way. i was just reading the other day about a woman who was catholic and decided not to go to services anymore after the sex scandal, but still considers herself very much catholic.
i don’t think one can really gauge how many people are religious based on being a member of a congregation. i know some relgious jews, in fact one in this photo link to mondoweiss.net
also my son’s girlfriend, i know she is not affiliated with any synagoges, and she was telling me all about what she loved about passover the last time we met. so people observe in different ways. some people just do not go in for organized religion or weekly visitations to churches and synagogues or mosques for that matter, and they still consider themselves religious. they find beauty and wisdom in what works for themselves and pride and honor in their own version of observance. who am i to judge if they are making mitzvahs based on their own interpretations on what will heal the world?
religion is not owned by the organizers, it is owned by the people. and when the system gets weird people leave the system, they do not necessarily leave the religion. when i think of judaism or christianity or islam i do not think of all the extreme parts, i think of what they hold in common, the good parts. and i remember most religious people observe for the good of mankind. for i believe most people are good and instinctively extract the love and healing and good for their practice.
which reminds me (totally OT) i was enjoying a casual get together with a good friend recently and she is jewish, very much so in her own way, very much of the tikun olam variety always doing good deeds and making the world a better place, it’s so in her blood. and she was telling me (not sure if this is just her theory or what) it was a fable there were only whatever million jews they say there are in the US, she said it was much much more than that. she said they only say that to sustain the myth 1/2 the world’s jews were in israel and it was simply no longer true. she thinks there are probably many many jews who are just not counted, and even among the ones who might self identify as secular (like my son’s girlfriend) they love their jewishness and it isn’t only in the secular identification. they pick up the parts they like and give them fullness and perpetuate the faith in a beautiful way. we just do not hear about them so much. organized religion always seeks to speak for the masses, but they do not.
so, it’s kind of irrelevant..the question about anti zionist congregations, because..just like catholics..the people are out there regardless and not always counted. they do not walk around with signs on their chests but inside their hearts they carry a torch of goodness. and they pray, probably more than we imagine. collectively they make a big difference.
one more thing sarde, i am awarding you the virtual active imagine award for the weekend of 4/28-4/29, and it’s not even sunday yet:
I love it how you censor what pinches you even a little tight, while fascist propaganda is practically unlimited (at least as long as the Tribe isn’t the victim.)
All this is nice, but sticking to our comparison with the Catholics who walk out (of organized Church, mind you) it’s worth repeating that the only anti-Zionist Jewish institution I heard of remains Neturei Karta.
Would be interested to hear of more, at least so late in the game. This being so, it is urgent that any non-Zionist Jew with a conscience walk out at once from the Synagogues.
fact
Annie,
I appreciate what you are saying. Obviously Zionism and Judaism have many connections but to say that all Jews are Zionist is as absurd as saying that Judaism only exists to service Zionism.
Regarding the word conspiracy. I wasn’t aiming for hyperbole. What sardelapasti described was a literal conspiracy; to call oneself Jewish was to utilize a secret code in the service of achieving some shadowy benefit for the tribe. He was attributing hidden motives to the everyday language of identity.
Re: David Duke. Do you really think I was ratcheting up the discourse or making a statement that violated the understood terms of civility here? For the record, I find Neturei Karta just as offensive in many ways as DD.
‘
Of course you do. You’re a Zionist, and both Neturei Kart and DD are anti Zionist, though I suspect Stormfront has become a bastion of Zionism of late.
>> Personally, I call myself Jewish simply because I am. It’s my primary ethnic identity, but not because I chose it. I was born into a certain culture. Now I’m part of it.
I’m first-generation Canadian, “born into” the European cultures of my parents (Croatian and Italian). A number of years ago, I chose to drop my “European identities” and to be the one thing I unquestionably* am: Canadian.
To say you do not have a choice is a lie.
———————
*Seeing as how I don’t care for hockey or Tim Hortons coffee, some folks might question my Canadian cred. ;-)
I am human, also called homo sapiens individual. Group where we all belong. Rest is a man made inventions. State, tribal group etc.
“I don’t care for hockey or Tim Hortons coffee”
You’re obviously not Canadian, or you would choose Hockey and TH over any other sports/coffee. “To say you do not have a choice is a lie.” Why did you not choose H and TH?
>> Why did you not choose H and TH?
Because I had the power to choose something else. :-)
you win, pick and choose:)
“Seeing as how I don’t care for hockey or Tim Hortons coffee, some folks might question my Canadian cred. ;-)”
You aren’t really boring enough to be a Real Canadian.
>> You aren’t really boring enough to be a Real Canadian.
Thanks…I think. ;-)
(I’d heard that we have a reputation for being overly-polite; I hadn’t heard that we were boring, too. :-) )
eljay.
No, it’s not really a choice. It’s how I feel, I did not decide to feel it. That isn’t to say I dislike it. I could obviously choose to reject it, sure. But why would I? Is there something to be gained by abandoning my “ethno-religous” culture just because I also have a modern national identity? They are not in conflict in any way.
Beyond that, what IS Candian or American culture anyway if not an amalgamation of the cultures of its inhabitants? Such a nation’s culture is fluid and constantly reinvents itself according to who its citizens are.
Now that I think about it, your comment confuses me. What do you mean you dropped your “European identities”? What did that entail exactly? And why did the idea appeal to you in the first place?
>> No, it’s not really a choice. … I could obviously choose to reject it, sure.
Then it’s a choice.
>> But why would I?
That is an issue entirely separate from your false claim that you have no choice in the matter.
>> Beyond that, what IS Candian or American culture anyway if not an amalgamation of the cultures of its inhabitants? Such a nation’s culture is fluid and constantly reinvents itself according to who its citizens are.
Sounds good to me.
>> Now that I think about it, your comment confuses me. What do you mean you dropped your “European identities”? What did that entail exactly? And why did the idea appeal to you in the first place?
I was born to European parents. The idea of being Croatian and Italian “appealed” to me in the same way being Roman Catholic “appealed” to me: It’s how I was raised. At some point, I decided that those identities – and that religion – did not “appeal” to me anymore, so I stopped “living” them.
I had a choice. No one was holding me captive to the culture I was “born into” or the religion I had been indoctrinated into.
You have the same choice. To say you don’t is a lie.
“So in this world, I am actually marking myself as a Dark Age Tribalist, which is probably bad cause it sounds really scary. So I’m clearly bad.”
No doubt, but you’re not worth discussing with. I’m responding only to clarify the below:
” Yet the certifiable rabbis over at Neturei Karta are admirable!”
They certainly are courageous, steadfast, and in the Judaic tradition of respect for human beings. They braved beatings and uprooting by the armed Zionist entity, which they called usurpers at a time in which these were the flavor of the month. They were friends to the Palestinians when today’s Anti-Zionist Zoinists were nowhere. They continue to be the only specifically Jewish (=religious) institution opposing Zionism, or close to the only one. As for “certifiable”, for a lot of people anyone religious is certifiable in the meaning you use it; at least these babies are religious without becoming accessory to theft and murder.
“Personally, I call myself Jewish simply because I am. It’s my primary ethnic identity, but not because I chose it. I was born into a certain culture. Now I’m part of it.”
Well, no. One more, huge, canard.
Do you speak Yiddish? Or Ladino? What specific culture are we talking about, among the many who are regrouped by their only and exclusively religious element? Or just a secular guy in an urban European environment? None of these is “Jewish” but specific.
Or are you one of those Americans who grew up post-WWII saluting an Israeli flag, acquiring a smattering, not of traditional Hebrew but of the constructed 19th-century language of the Zionist nationalists, and generally herding together in schuls without even having the excuse of being religious? If the latter, calling it “Jewish” is an insult to centuries of Judaism and calling it a “culture” an insult to culture. Call it by its name: Zionist.
Well I, for one, am glad we finally have a guy out there who can definitely tell u who is and who isn’t a Jew, and when something is, or isn’t, Jewish. I won’t harp on your qualifications or authority to make such pronouncements all on your own; you seem extremely sure of yourself, which is probably the most crucial trait to have if you’re going to go around telling people they don’t qualify as members to their own identities.
You’re just in time too, because I’ve been seeing less and less of the Black Hebrew Israelites around, who are the individuals who traditionally determine who qualifies as an authentic Jew or not. Someone has to pick up the slack.
Good luck with your endeavor.
>> Well I, for one, am glad we finally have a guy out there who can definitely tell u who is and who isn’t a Jew …
You evidently missed the many pronouncements and “excommunications” made by former MW poster, eee (atheist Jew, Israeli, hard-core Zionist).
playforpalestine: Judaism is a religion you can convert to. You cannot convert to being a black or an Asian for example. Judaism is not an ethnicity.
Judaism is not an ethnicity.
Nope, but the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights ruled a while back that Jews are members of an ethnic minority group. The US Commission on Civil Rights recommended that Congress amend Title VI to make clear that discrimination on the basis of Jewish heritage constitutes prohibited national origin discrimination. link to usccr.gov
Oddly enough, that all happened after the major Jewish organizations had spent years quietly lobbying the Congress, OMB, and Census Bureau to exclude “Jewish” from their official lists as a separate ethnic group or groups.
There is a region attached to Judaism, sure, but you don’t need to follow it in order to be Jewish. Judaism is not just a religion, it’s certainly not a single race, and in truth it has characteristics of a few different things without fitting perfectly into any one. Words like race, ethnicity, tribe, nation and so on are notoriously fluid anyway, having no real verifiable characteristics.
So when I say things like ethnicity or nation, I’m just using imperfect language to describe a group that exists inside famously hard-to-define lines. It’s not the only such group. What is an Arab or a Hispanic person, exactly? Is that their ethnicity? Their identity?
The bigger question is “who cares?” Why is this of such importance to you?
>> There is a re[li]gion attached to Judaism, sure, but you don’t need to follow it in order to be Jewish.
So…any person can become “culturally Jewish” simply by adopting the Jewish culture. No religious conversion required. That’s great!
And once Muslims, Christians, Palestinians and others have become “culturally Jewish”, the Jewish state of Israel will embrace them upon their “return” to the Promised (Home)Land. Wonderful!
:-)
Judaism is not just a religion, it’s certainly not a single race, and in truth it has characteristics of a few different things without fitting perfectly into any one. Words like race, ethnicity, tribe, nation and so on are notoriously fluid anyway, having no real verifiable characteristics.
You are mistaken. When the US Commission on Civil Rights says that discrimination on the basis of Jewish heritage constitutes prohibited national origin discrimination, that has a very precise legal meaning.
“The bigger question is “who cares?” Why is this of such importance to you?”
Because it is the pretext used, with absolutely no objective basis as you just acknowledged above, the phony pretext used by the murderous nationalists you belong to.
Because, as opposed to those non-religious Ostyiddish or (Spanish-speaking) Sefardí proper, etc. who have conserved their language and culture, any non-religious “Jews tout court” are joining the Zionist abomination just by declaring themselves part of such a recent nationalist invention.
Because of the non-religious “Jews” of the Zionist entity, where that qualification is equivalent to “White” in South Africa, or “Arian” you know where.
I don’t care for hockey or Tim Hortons coffee, some folks might question my Canadian cred.
Those are vestiges of the colonial settler era. They called them “settlers”, because of the things, like Canadian hockey or Tim Hortons coffee, that they were willing to settle for;-)
>> Hostage @ April 28, 2012 at 11:57 am
:-)
I think it’s oh so ever cute and polite of so many of you here to view Ms. Gross’ behavior at least (I dunno so much about Lehrer) as just essentially and innocently being a teensy bit selective when it comes to religious stories.
Instead, frankly, just like so many other jewish media figures and outlets, it strikes me that what we’re seeing is not just some oh-so-natural-and-even-sweet-essentially-innocent aversion to telling jewish stories out of school as it as a … fuck-you-in-you-face refusal to do so coupled with a fuck-you-in-the-face-manifest hostility to and hatred of the Catholic Church.
If even 1/10000000000 of the anti-Catholic (leaving out even just the anti-Christian) slanting of the media were directed at judaism and jews we would be told that this country had gone over to Joseph Goebbels.
What story, no matter how small even, that casts the Catholic Church in a bad light doesn’t go lovingly dug into and repeated by the media over and over?
And the absolute topper, the absolute undeniable proof, is the sexual scandal in the Catholic Church. Oh you bet it was bad; bad bad bad. But oh you bet has it been covered.
Go take a look then at failedmessiah.com on the relevant issue in the jewish community in the NE especially apparently. Hundreds and hundreds of kids—there’s no way of telling because lots of the scandal has been the jewish communities covering same up, and with these seemingly involving mostly real children rather than the adolescents the Catholic priests preyed upon—apparently abused by rabbi after rabbi for decades and … something like three little stories in the New York Times in all about same. Three, over the last decade or so. Grotesque evidence even of entire jewish communities of suborning the local District Attorney to not prosecute these cases, not give out info on them, keep them quiet and/or etc., and still … where’s Ms. Gross? Where’s ABC/CBS/NBC the Washington Post and on and on and on?
Rabbis fleeing prosecution to Israel, story after story about families being put under incredible in-group pressure to hush things up, and … silence from the Ms. Grosses of the world. Too busy digging for the next angle to slime the Church.
I’m no Catholic, not even a Christian, but this is so obvious and palpable it’s not even funny. Let some mere Catholic priest somewhere say something even arguably non-universalist and … wham, front page stories somewhere. Terry Grosses here and there exploring in microscopic detail the guilt some woman felt as a girl growing up due to her feelings of repressed sexuality due to the Church, or f0r using contraceptives … and absolutely *nothing* about jewish women who were damn near *captives* of this or that jewish community here somewhere and basically had their children and lives ripped from them by that community when they decided to break free. Absolutely *nothing* similar from the Catholic communities comes to mind, and yet … silence.
Or let such a mere priest either here or in Rome (much less the Pope) making any even arguable anti-jewish statement and … the media world explodes. Indeed, decades now pumping the story about how the Pope during the Holocaust didn’t do enough or etc. *Decades* worth of stories about same.
But—and I speak here just of statements topically made, recently—Israeli jews or American jews of high and even official standing saying that even basic mercy in war is not a jewish value, or that millions of non-jews are not worth one jewish fingernail, or that non-jews are as cattle for jews and … not a freaking peep.
Suddenly, the “whole world and its issues are our microscope slides” for the Grosses of the world don’t exist anymore.
And I’d even bolster this via looking at popular culture: Oh the uproarious laughs jewish (and admittedly many non-jewish) comedians get out of, say, mentioning Catholic priests when touching on the subject of pedophilia! What freaking fun! Or the idea that the Church warns of blindness with regard to masturbation! God how many laughs has *that* been good for? Or Catholics involved in politics wearing their religion on their sleeves and too openly talking about it, such as Sarah Palin? What a freaking *blast* to ridicule that! You couldn’t find a talk-show host who uttered even a peep of discomfort about that kind of thing to save your life! Nuts, what joke at the expense of the Catholic Church can you even *imagine* generating any objection much less such a peep?
And the balance is…? About the most modern savage laughter one can think of gotten at the expense of jews is … Seinfeld. Oh ho ho that Uncle Leo. Bobka bopka bobka….
So let’s not pretend that the “jewish Establishment” that Phil talks of somehow oddly is a purely defensive thing all the time and in all its workings. While I have no doubt that most American jews at least reject anti-Catholic or anti-Christian bigotry like crazy, and that even the majority of that “Establishment” rejects it too, that Establishment at the very least tolerates the hell out of it by its members who *are* bigots.
i have to agree with you sin, the proliferation of rabbi pedophile stories that never break out of the local news is rather staggering. and just last week the DA was outted for lying and covering up for a bunch of them and that didn’t burst out into the mainstream either. it’s weird, whereas that princeton story just took off.
Ditto. The Catholic church have bad press (not as much as Islam mind you).