Marc Ellis comments on Noam Chomsky’s recent appearance at the United Nations.
John Kerry’s address to the Gaza Donors Conference in Cairo on Sunday was remarkably vacant, if not disingenuous. Reading through Kerry’s address paragraph by paragraph is an exercise in futility. Yet the political ramifications are extreme. Everyone knows that after the Gaza war a profound reckoning is needed. Yet John Kerry – and the Gaza Donors Conference – isn’t even close
Marc Ellis says Shlomo Sand may have trouble resigning from Judaism. Shlomo, your article sounds like the Jewish prophetic tradition you so ably deconstructed and now you seek to resign? Is it so hard to see your own life here?
Is it time to pay up for what has become all too easy verbiage as the people of Gaza were slaughtered? Marc Ellis reflects on the prophetic message of minister Loren McGrail, who quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer on opposing fascism
Marc Ellis on his latest book “Burning Children: A Jewish View of the War in Gaza.”
Devastation as far as the eye can see is our Yom Kippur geography. If a closing prayer is a must, chant the Amidah. The Shema. Anything that comes to mind. With a caveat. Stop the prayers if they don’t make sense in the Gaza rubble. If a prayer doesn’t make sense when the names of the murdered are read, call up another prayer. This goes for any comments that are made as well. If they make sense in the presence of the Gazan dead. Otherwise be silent.
According to retired church personnel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America the new presiding bishop, The Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, is seeking to retrench the church’s position on Israel/Palestine. And they fear a witch-hunt against those church workers who demand substantive action.
The deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in the sea fleeing Gaza ought to be acknowledged around the world as evidence that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands is not just “unsustainable” — Obama’s mantra — but “unconscionable.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs’s words are worth considering as the High Holiday season begins: “To be a rabbi is to be a moral leader. Moral leadership requires us to move beyond cheerleading to drawing on our tradition acknowledge fear, address ethical questions, offer loving critique, and inspire the hope that will move our communities toward supporting peace.” As Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, Rabbi Jacobs is a religious leader with ethics at the core of her Jewishness. She should be congratulated for her efforts. But no matter how much passion she brings to her task, there’s something essential missing from her analysis.
It is the time to end the “ecumenical deal” that creates a Christian code of silence on Palestine. It’s time for a new and officially recognized dialogue/solidarity between Jews of Conscience and Christians, to answer the World Council of Churches’ call for a just peace in the conflict.