To his great credit, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times does an Avraham Burg story today. A little late, but there it is. Adam Horowitz writes:
Two things that stand out. First, I had not heard the Appalachian Trail
story, which is interesting. Times:
Connecticut, New York and New Jersey by himself. âIn five weeks I met
11 people, none of them Jewish,â he said. He realized that life here
[Israel] was too insular for him, that it was time to step outside the
provincial concerns of the extended Jewish family.
Second, my only worry with a review like this is that it could
bolster the "there is vibrant debate in Israel" storyline. The article
does say that Burg's recommendations have been ignored although he is
still accepted as a public figure. While I think Burg deserves credit
for starting the conversation, I don't think Israeli society should be
given similar credit until it wrestles with the ideas and implications
he brings up.
Weiss: Agreed. It's a very good piece. Good to have these views out. Thanks Bronner! As Leila Abu-Saba said in tipping me to it, a sign of real change but "deeply imperfect." The piece, like Burg's book itself, elides the true source of the crisis in Israel: it is discriminating against Palestinians on a racial basis, imposing apartheid conditions in the West Bank and collective punishment in Gaza. When will the American media pay attention?
The beauty of Bronner's piece is that he knows full well about the crisis in Jewish identity and means to point his readers there, quietly. He knows that Jewish identity must move–as Rhoda Rosen, the director of a Jewish museum in Chicago said, when an exhibit she curated was censored–"from the parochial to the civic." But Bronner notes that Burg's rage against the "particular" –ie, the selfish–isn't catching in Israel.
recommendations. Yet what is perhaps most interesting of all is that
Mr. Burg continues to play a public role in Israel. [Unlike American Jews who address these questions!] He is invited to
speak to young people, he writes occasional opinion columns, and he is
greeted warmly, even embraced, in this cityâs cafes. This may be
because, despite it all, Avrum Burg is family. And whether he likes it
or not, Israelis look out for family.
There's no traction because Israel is deeply compromised and in crisis. In the U.S. we have elected a mutt president who would have been a slave 150 years ago and enjoyed limited freedom just 40 years ago. We changed minority rights here. We did that! We are climbing Jacob's ladder. Yet in Palestine, there is apartheid. It's no wonder that Burg's epiphany took place on the Appalachian trail. It runs a few miles from my house here in NY. It is thousands of miles from where Burg is now. When will American Jews, the most powerful minority in the world (as Burg noted, smartly) at last look where we stand, and lead the way?
