This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
These last days have seen commentary after commentary about the platform placed before the Jewish community and the world by the Movement for Black Lives. The central controversy over the statement for the Jewish community has been Israel and the labeling of its behavior as genocidal. This, coupled with the statement’s linking of police violence in America with Israeli police training and the calling out of the US aid to Israel’s apartheid regime, has struck a controversial note with Jews in general and the Jewish establishments in America and Israel.
In general, the Jewish establishments have taken out their Jewish chalkboard and lectured African Americans on their place in society and global discourse. The accusation, with a long tradition, is that African Americans should stick with Black issues – as defined by the Jewish establishment. Progressive Jews, always closer to the Jewish establishment than they want to admit, have defended the statement by the Movement for Black Lives as a whole, while admonishing references to genocide and aid to Israel as too much but excusable. In their mind, Jews should listen to Blacks overall and let the Israel issue slide. After all, they’re fed up with the American Jewish establishment and Israel as well, at least to a certain extent. Jews of Conscience take defense of the Black Lives statement to another level. If aid to Israel, training of American police and genocide fit the bill, why not call out the Jewish establishments for what they are doing?
Largely unaddressed in this discussion, however, is what the Black Lives broadside means within the always fraught Black-Jewish dialogue. Since Blacks and Jews play on an unequal playing field with no prospect of equality in sight, and since taking on the Jewish establishment and Israel yields little or no positive political points on the American scene, why would the Black Lives Matter movement venture onto this terrain? Could it be that Black Lives Matter, on behalf of its own community, decided to slap the face of Jewish innocence by dramatically entering the hugely symbolic and crucially important aspect of the Jewish witness to the world?
Variations of the Black Power movement have been taking on American and Israeli Jewish establishments in this way for years. For the most part, these attacks have been beaten back through invocations of the Holocaust, Jews as at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement and Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Yet times have changed. None of these invocations work well anymore or at all. The fallback position of Jewish defense against charges of dislocation, oppressing and ghettoizing the Palestinians has worn thin. Hardly anyone in the world accepts this defense, including increasing number of Jews.
The slap across the face of Jewish innocence stings. When the language of genocide offends us more than ghettoizing another people, Jews on all sides of the debate about the Jewish witness to the world have entered a realm where symbolism takes on a new power. This, coupled with the knowledge that the ghettoization of the Palestinians is permanent and thus the Jewish establishments in America and Israel will triumph, leaves Jews of Conscience little room to maneuver.
The Movement for Black Lives has placed Jews on notice that we have arrived at the end of ethical Jewish history. What can be done, if anything, at the end, is the almost impossible question before us.
” Could it be that Black Lives Matter, on behalf of its own community, decided to slap the face of Jewish innocence by dramatically entering the hugely symbolic and crucially important aspect of the Jewish witness to the world?”
could it be that you are not the center of the universe
“Variations of the Black Power movement have been taking on American and Israeli Jewish establishments in this way for years. For the most part, these attacks have been beaten back through invocations of the Holocaust, Jews as at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement and Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East”
and vociferous denunciations of Black antisemitism, why leave that out
“The fallback position of Jewish defense against charges of dislocation, oppressing and ghettoizing the Palestinians has worn thin”
it was always threadbare
“The slap across the face of Jewish innocence stings.”
“Jewish innocence” more properly racist obliviousness
“When the language of genocide offends us more than ghettoizing another people”
who likes being roused roughly from a profound slumber
“The Movement for Black Lives has placed Jews on notice that we have arrived at the end of ethical Jewish history. What can be done, if anything, at the end, is the almost impossible question before us.”
right go back to sleep,
i see the “prophetic” is excitingly solipsistic,
no wonder so many Jews turn to Buddhism, which doesn’t pretend to innocence or some vacuous “moral” mission.
“What can be done, if anything, at the end, is the almost impossible question before us.”
you know Marc one day Tsong Rinpoche was walking on Pig Alley in Kathmandu being berated by an irate American denouncing him for sitting up on high expensive thrones while we prostrated to him, Rinpoche a little grizzled old man listened quietly to the increasingly incensed American,
Pig Alley is a slaughter house the gutters run with a mixture of blood, shit and filth, Lama’s often go about with skull cups hidden in the folds of their robes, they hold, being a human cranium about a litre,
Rinpoche stooped down and filled his cup to the brim with this revolting black scummy fluid, the American stepped back in disgust as Rinpoche drank the whole lot down in one
and smiling said “but i’m not proud”, you should try it, being free of self regard is real freedom and its very good for Jews, it makes you interesting, you will definitely have more sex and lose weight, you want abs?
Islam. Judaism and Christianity have no mission other than to help beings we owe them nothing, Priests, Alim and Rabbi’s have together raped religion over many centuries you all seem united by your miraculous ability to court irrelevance at best or depravity more consistently, you and all the other “divines’ are more responsible for the growth of pitiless fundamentalisms within the Middle Eastern origin faiths than any other single factor, i am genuinely surprised when any of you have the gall to speak this hopeless confusion, its time you represent or hold your peace.
Mr Pesner and posse –
You don’t like the wording. That’s your problem. No one asked for your permission to use it. It isn’t your word. It’s used to describe a situation you that continue to choose to ignore. Maybe prayer will help you realize the error in your ways?
You have no problem with the state of affairs in Palestine? That’s a problem. If you don’t want to support MBL or BLM fine. Just get the fuck out of the way. They don’t want or need you.
On a different note, all this drama about the proper use of the word genocide reminds me of something. That young woman from the Sander’s campaign, Simone Zimmerman, who was sought because she was young, relevant and pulled no punches. Funny, as soon as she told it like it was, she was silenced and so ridiculously, the crap about her ‘foul’ language, as if her words were too offensive for the delicate sensitivities of zionists, who have no problem with ‘mowing the lawn’ and ‘putting the Palestinians on a diet’. HYPOCRITES. Bernie was never going to stand up for Palestine, he just needed a convenient way to get out of his false commitment.
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who responded to the Black Lives Matter platform by saying, “Anti-Israel rhetoric like that found in the Movement for Black Lives policy platform is especially troubling because it falsely suggests American Jews – both of color and white – must choose between their commitment to combatting racism in the United States and their Zionism.”
It doesn’t say you must choose, Mr. Pesner. What it says is that if you profess to be against racism in the US, but favor the racist ideology of Zionism in Palestine, don’t expect people to be “polite” and ignore the clear and utter hypocrisy in your position. Simply put, Mr. Pesner, if you favor Zionism, you favor racism (or an ethno-religious bigotry that is racism’s absolute equivalent). Pure and simple. Zionism = Racism.
“… and since taking on the Jewish establishment and Israel yields little or no positive political points on the American scene,”
Oh, it didn’t used to, anyway. And people used to be charmed by the South.
The ‘invocations’ – incantations, spells – used to beat back radicals who speak harshly of Israel have not lost their dark magical power as much as Marc might suppose. I looked the other day at what is happening to Joy Karega at Oberlin and had the impression that she is paying for her temerity with her career amid proclamations that anti-Semitism at Oberlin is at last being addressed. I wholly don’t share her false flag theories but I do think that it’s a free speech issue and do think that equally weird theories where Israel was not involved would not attract the same penalties or ‘invocations’.