I see that Cynthia Greenberg of Brooklyn posted the following fine statement as a comment on the post about the Brooklyn congregation Kolot Chayeinu's encounter meeting following the Gaza attack. Seems to me it should be a post:
member of the Board of Trustees of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives
Congregation which helped to plan the 2/24 community gathering about
Israel and Gaza which is referred to in the posts "The Rabbi said 'All
those stand up who believe Israel should remain a Jewish state," I want
to be sure to set the record straight. The conversation itself was one
of 2 community-wide gatherings we at Kolot Chayeinu held in February in
response to the deep concerns and wide range of opinions and
perspectives our community has about Israel and had expressed about the
conflict with Gaza in particular. The convening was planned by a group
of Board and staff leaders at Kolot and I, along with two other Kolot
leaders, one from the Board and one from our membership, facilitated
the discussions, NOT our rabbi. In fact it was ME who asked—along
with many other questions like "I love Israel" "I believe the solution
to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a lasting, peaceful
two-state solution" and "I believe American Jews have a right to speak
out about policies of the Israeli government that we don’t agree
with"—the question "I believe Israel should always be a Jewish
state."
Participants were asked to stand up or sit down in response to
dozens of questions (including some about personal and family history
"I have family that lives in Israel" "I have personally experienced
anti-Semitism") to indicate whether right then, in that moment, the
questions represented their experience, beliefs, opinions. The exercise
itself was meant to help us as a community draw out and note the wide
range of experiences and perspectives we shared and was, by all
accounts of those at the gathering—because we had significant
conversation following this exercise, which itself was part of a 2-hour
discussion touching on many issues about what it means to be in a
sacred, synagogue community and have differences and diversity among
our membership—a thoughtful, meaningful tool and happened in a
context where participants felt respected, heard by the others there
and able to speak openly about their views and feelings. Taken as
wildly out of context as it is posted here on mondoweiss and
mis-attributed to be the words of our wonderful rabbi, who is a
longtime and well-respected leader of Rabbis for Human Rights-North
America, the statement we asked Kolot Chayeinu members to respond to
which actually helped us talk openly with each other about our deep
passions about Israel sounds instead like it was used as a litmus test.
It was not. As our mission and values statement
(http://www.kolotchayeinu.org/values.html) makes very clear: "We
believe that Jews have an obligation to grapple with the many issues
and emotions connected to our historic attachment to Israel and the
current political situation in Israel and Palestine. While we join Jews
everywhere in facing Jerusalem while we pray, we have no consensus on
political solutions nor their philosophical underpinnings."
Weiss responds: I'm sorry I got that wrong about Rabbi Ellen Lippmann. (Though my source got it wrong; and as Ben Bradlee always said, we depend on what people tell us.) I completely honor what Kolot Chayeinu was trying to do. In fact, I wish I'd had a videotape of this, or a full record, I'd post it. This is an essential conversation. Was I sensationalizing? This is a news site. I try and report news. This was an important moment. As a reporter, I have always seized on things. I believe the spirit I offered this in–of encounter, self-interrogation–was the spirit of the meeting. I love the statement, I have family that lives in Israel (Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz both stand up). I can only repeat, this is an essential conversation, and we must bring this spirit of transparency to the Jewish engagement in public life. The blogosphere is the royal road to the discourse…
