From the category archives:

Religion

Egg donor and recipient must be of same religion, you-know-where

by Philip Weiss8 March 2010

In weeks to come, I am going to insist on the importance of Shlomo Sand’s book, the Invention of the Jewish People. Caricatured in the U.S. as a tract on the Khazar theory of Jewish genetics, the book is in fact a liberal’s assault on the racial politics of identity in Israel and the diaspora, [...]

25 comments

‘Haaretz’ covers NY protest of IDF (where are the NY papers?)

by Philip Weiss7 March 2010

Donna Nevel in Haaretz, on Tuesday’s protest at the Waldorf of the Israeli army fundraiser (details here), tells of her own progress on the issue:

Why am I protesting the $1,000-a-plate Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dinner honoring Chief of the IDF Staff Gabi Ashkenazi at the Waldorf on March 9?

…As a college student [...]

3 comments

Colorado interfaith group takes on ‘raw political power that stymies Obama’

by Philip Weiss7 March 2010

I’ve been waiting for this, for heartland America to take its power, for the intelligent and balanced folk out there to insist on fairness. The Denver Post has a great piece by John Kane calling on Christians to decry the injustice in Israel/Palestine. Kane is a professor of religious studies at Regis University in Colorado, [...]

20 comments

My grandmother’s trees changed the face of Palestine

by Philip Weiss6 March 2010

Peter Belmont writes:
Here’s an interesting (if a bit long-winded) PDF file law-professor article on the Israeli government and Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinian olive-trees, including a discussion of the cultural meaning of olive-trees to Palestinians.
A note: the millions of "trees" planted by Zionists, including my grandmother, were PINE TREES and had the effect of [...]

21 comments

It’s easier to be a Zionist if you don’t live there

by Philip Weiss6 March 2010

What is the difference between American Jews and Israeli Jews? Here’s one. Recently Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote an article with the headline, "Israel has its faults, but apartheid isn’t one of them." I read the column a couple times. I don’t see one fault in there.
Bradley Burston is a columnist [...]

31 comments

my critique of the leftwing critique of Israel lobby theory

by Philip Weiss6 March 2010

David Green, who has been a friend to this site, takes on my belief in the Israel lobby in this post at Palestine Chronicle. His is the standard leftist critique of the lobby theory, saying that there is nothing to praise in the so-called American interest, and the U.S. is motivated by imperial/material concerns and [...]

33 comments

My wife got a lesson

by Philip Weiss6 March 2010

This holiday season was nudnik season around my house. My father, who is deadly, used the Yiddish word to skewer a certain friend; and as a result I came to understand the word "nudnik" in all its glory. Nudnik means a bore and a pest. Webster’s says the root is Russian for boredom. Or in [...]

15 comments

Ivy League mag publishes dual-loyal dithyramb to IDF-Rambos vs swarthy Arabs

by Philip Weiss5 March 2010

My cup runneth over. The University of Pennsylvania alumni magazine publishes a memoir by Joel Chasnoff, who graduated from the school 14 years ago and thanks to an ethnocentric family background that caused him to think, "It wasn’t fair that we American Jews called Israel our homeland but left Israelis to defend it," joined the [...]

22 comments

‘JVP’ takes on the ‘epic battle’ inside the Jewish community

by Philip Weiss5 March 2010

The other night I went to a fundraiser for Jewish Voice for Peace that left me so charged that when I walked out of the apartment and on to a downtown New York street I heard myself singing an old Woody Guthrie tune. What was the song– and why did it pop into my head?
The [...]

45 comments

More on Jews, Poles and peasants

by Philip Weiss4 March 2010

A couple of weeks back I did a post on the fact that by and large my ancestors in eastern Europe were not peasants. Here’s a historical paper that explores some of the same terrain, titled "Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles," by Mark Paul, from a Polish-American perspective. I haven’t read it yet; it is [...]

19 comments

Is declaring yourself an ‘anti-Zionist’ like declaring you’re a ‘Communist’?

by Philip Weiss4 March 2010

LA Times editorial, re Tom Campbell, candidate for Republican nomination for Senate: 

We support Israel and believe Israelis have a right to live free from missile attacks and suicide bombings. We abhor terrorism and don’t want our leaders palling around with those who engage in it. But we are also convinced that it is possible to [...]

25 comments

Enlightened American Jewry is worried about– Palestinian ‘demographic time bomb’

by Philip Weiss4 March 2010

Here is Jesse Singal, a liberal American Jew and frequent contributor to the Boston Globe, saying that the "new American Jew" has the right to criticize Israel. Good reporting on a Hillel event featuring Jeremy Ben-Ami, but note the repeated invocation of an idea– the "demographic time bomb"– that in an American context would [...]

5 comments

At J Street, two young Jews said they needed to talk about privilege (and so do I)

by Philip Weiss3 March 2010

Last fall during a social justice panel at J Street’s policy conference, a Wesleyan senior named Emily Hoffman said that she needed to talk about "privilege" in the Jewish community, and Alana Alpert, a rabbinical student, promptly echoed her: "I often feel the same way." I found the exchange liberating. It seemed that these young [...]

7 comments

Chas Freeman: This time apartheid has western complicity

by Chas Freeman3 March 2010

Impolitic as it is to mention this, in rejecting the analogy with apartheid in South Africa, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen is not only denying realities on the ground in Palestine but also the principal and most awkward difference between the two cases.  South Africa’s whites did not have a dedicated cadre of coreligionists or [...]

63 comments

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