New Article by BingoProf

I don't just tweet and blog. Sometimes I actually publish scholarly material. Five years ago I delivered a paper at a conference at Bar-Ilan University. Two days ago, I received an actual bound copy of the conference proceedings, hot off the presses. The book is entitled The Convergence of Judaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions. It was edited expertly by Michael M. Laskier and Yaacov Lev, and was published by the University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2011. My article, entitled "Jewish Mysticism in the Land of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation" appears on pp. 147-167,  and is one of 16 interesting studies on the general theme of the book. Reuven Firestone liked the book. Good enough for me....

Israel: "Things have never been better"

Whenever I spend time in Israel and hear Israeli after Israeli tell me that "things have never been better," I get very, very worried.

Well, to put it mildly, I am very, very worried that the cocked trigger leading to large-scale violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict is ready to discharge. I really can't go into details just now, but suffice to say that there is an air of self-satisfied exuberance in the current Israeli national swagger which might lead the dull-witted to believe it is true. Israeli PM Netanyahu is more popular than ever; the 18th Knesset's government is self-assured and unafraid; Israel has joined the OECD because its advanced globalized service economy is running on all cylinders; and life expectancy is better than in the US.

The problem is that whenever I've encountered in Israel this level of certitude and confidence, the sky falls in. Israelis become transfixed by a certain "konseptzia" (conception) which time after time lulls them into missing the signs of an impending national crisis. I think we're in one of those times.

State-to-state war is unlikely for the medium term, insofar as neighboring Arab states are engrossed in their own internal madness. But if the 21st century has taught us anything, we must know that asymmetrical warfare can be very destabilizing. Whether it is a 3rd and ferocious intifada borne of general frustration with the comatose effort to bring about Palestine, or a missile downpour from Lebanon or Gaza, I sense in my gut that something is very wrong with this picture. It's nothing I can document or prove -- but I worry when Israelis think "things have never been better."

The Jewish Ledger Bites Back

Over at the beleaguered Jewish Ledger (with a "featured video" from the Michelle Bachmann campaign on its home page) there appears a signed editorial from the owner (-nrg, or N. Richard Greenfield) concerning an incident that I wrote about 2 weeks ago. At least I think it is a response. Hard to know what it is. Go read it, then come back.

Here's the sentence from this unbelievably slimy & self-serving editorial that absolutely made my day:

Even if we had not had difficulty over the years with one of the authors, who uses four letter words in his "blog" to describe our publication and has called for Jewish communal leaders to "ostracize and repudiate" the paper, we would have made the same decision.

Let's break that down, as Jon Stewart would dissect the crap that spews forth from Fox News. Please note: this blog you are now reading was referred to as a blog in quotation marks, I guess because my blog really isn't a bona fide blog - can you spot the difference between my blog and all the other blogs on the internet cloud? Is my blog engaging in false advertising? Is this page you are now reading falsely representing itself to be - shall we say - a communal newspaper? No, that goes on over at some other URL.

I was also accused of using "four letter words" (note the plural) in reference to the Jewish Ledger. Gee, I checked and checked again, and damn me if I can only find one 4-letter word in my entire post. And let's be clear - I didn't call the paper SHIT, I merely said it went to SHIT. Big difference. When something goes to shit, it means it has fallen apart, become a shadow of its former self, and disappeared. I looked it up. The phrase, now shortened, originally was "he went to shit and the cows ate him." But let's not quibble. The paper has gone to shit. Oh My! I've used a bad word to describe a once great institution of my community that has gone to shit. Simply inexcusable.

So then I checked my other words. Were there any other 4-letter words? Is "rag" a 4-letter word? Nope, that's three. Is "drivel" a 4-letter word? Hmm...nope, 2 too many. Shit!

I do admit to calling on members of this community to put a metaphorical and economical stake through the heart of the current configuration of the Jewish Ledger by canceling subscriptions and suspending advertising. Proudly guilty of that too. But that's such old history: the lionizing of a rabbi who praised the assassination of an Israeli Prime Minister and mocking a rally to honor Rabin's shloshim. Who even remembers that shit?

"Over the years"? I wrote one letter 16 years ago and canceled my subscription and haven't said a peep since. This is my 199th blog post, and I've been doing this for 5+ years. Have I even once mentioned the Jewish Ledger? Shit, no!

So let's dispense with the silly stuff and get down to the original offense: the 3-paragraph letter written by 5 Trinity College professors (some so much closer to AIPAC than J Street I can't even begin to describe) is characterized as "uncivil and disrespectful." Dear reader, please go back and read the original letter in question (for some reason my community's Federation web site thought it not particularly uncivil or disrespectful): can you find one uncivil or disrespectful statement? I don't see the words "rag," drivel," or "shit" anywhere in it! Was anyone slurred in our letter, as Greenfield claimed? SLURRED? Hmm, let's make sure I understand the word "slur." Dictionary.com, 3rd definition seems closest: "to cast aspersions on; calumniate; disparage; depreciate." Jeez, maybe I am not as discerning of the meaning of English words as others. Maybe Mr. Greenfield has got a dictionary that defines "slur" as "to disagree." Nice dictionary.

And since the supremely high editorial standards of the great journalistic venture known as the Jewish Ledger (35,000 "subscribers" six times a year; the rest of the time a whole lot less) will not permit its vigilant owner from publishing a letter that is uncivil, disrespectful, and full of slurs, there was only one thing that he could do with a letter from the director of one of the most highly respected academic centers for the study of religion in public life, the director of a Jewish Studies program, the foremost Jewish demographer in the world, and an internationally renowned Holocaust historian -- kill the letter.

Let's put it this way. The owner of the Ledger has one opinion. Five professors (and 2 rabbis I know of, and not a few communal leaders) have another. What makes it into the paper are some of the letters to the editors that agree with the owner's opinion, and of those which disagree - run them on the web site, pull them from the web site - but don't ever let them see newsprint. The owner claims that he received something like a 10 to 1 ratio of supportive letters for his editorial. That's something like Michael Lerner's claim that he received long-winded letters of praise from readers for his awful Tikkun. And let's not forget - for about 24 hours the letter actually appeared on the Ledger web site, and then was retroactively removed (and then the whole site went down - I bet an IT consultant might say the site went to shit - for 2 or 3 days). Let's see, was it civil on Thursday and then uncivil on Friday?

I am going to double down on my so-called "blog" posting and end it with an 8-letter word: bullshit. 

Censored by Jewish Ledger

Sometimes blogging is the only way...

I live in a Jewish community with an "independent" Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Ledger. Some local Jewish newspapers are simply arms of the local Federation, but some are "independent." As with most local community papers, The Ledger has been around for some time, since 1929 when it was founded by Samuel Neusner (yes, the father of one Jacob Neusner). By the time I arrived in Hartford, in 1983, it had been under the ownership of Bert Gaster, a very decent man and fine local journalist, for 17 years. In 1992, Bert sold the paper to N. Richard Greenfield. And then The Ledger went to shit.

Greenfield turned the paper into a mutant, extremist, right-wing rag. After Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, The Ledger published a laudatory front-page interview with one Rabbi Abraham Hecht, who had declared months before the assassination that the rabbinic rule of "pursuer" applied to Rabin, making licit (for followers of the rabbi) Rabin's murder. The Ledger editorially opposed Oslo, supported followers of the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, opposed all deals with the Arabs, and even criticized Netanyahu for making his limited deal in 1997. Before I canceled my subscription, I wrote a letter to the editor, which was published (with slight revisions) on January 12, 1996 only because I simultaneously sent it to the leaders of the local Jewish community. In part:

The Connecticut Jewish Ledger, once a beacon of civility and communal conscience, has become under the guidance of its new owner a shameful disgrace...

Hartfordites should not be surprised at this turn of events... When no other paper in America provided a platform for Rabbi Hecht, there was the Connecticut Jewish Ledger, running a front-page "exclusive" article in defense of the man who said, "if a man kills [Rabin], he has done a good deed." On the weekend leading up to the Madison Square Garden rally in Rabin’s honor, not a word could be found in the Ledger of the efforts made locally to provide transportation to the rally, nor a report of the moving shloshim ceremony held at Beth El Synagogue. Instead the Manhattan rally was snidely dismissed by the Ledger as a "Garden party" of do-gooders, and it was challenged for not providing a platform for Rabin’s enemies...

With this letter, I formally ask that my subscription to the Ledger be canceled. I also ask all readers and all communal leaders consider ostracizing and repudiating this mutant voice of extremism which has sprouted in our midst.

Needless to say, I quit following The Ledger. Nevertheless, this pathetic excuse for a newspaper sometimes comes to my attention. Two weeks ago, Greenfield published an editorial entitled "Supporting J Street Harms Israel," signed by the owner himself. The occasion for this editorial was a planned co-sponsored event between the local Jewish Community Relations Council and J Street Connecticut, at which Colette Avital, former Consul General of Israel in New York, former Labor MK and former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, was to speak. Claimed Greenfield: "J Street stands outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior for most Jews." It was an extreme, beyond-the-pale bit of drivel, typical for Greenfield. Simultaneously, The Ledger published a letter from a collection of local opponents of J Street which called upon the JCRC to sever its ties with J Street and renounce the co-sponsorship.

The event went forward on June 13 to a full house (and was not covered by The Ledger).

A group of colleagues at Trinity College, representing diverse positions when it comes to Israel (all supportive), sent in response a letter to the editor, which Greenfield refused to print, because (as I have known for nearly 20 years) he is an extremist ideologue who hasn't the slightest idea how to run a respectable communal newspaper. Here is the letter:

To the Editor:

We are writing to take exception to your editorial condemning the Hartford JCRC for joining with J Street to sponsor a talk by Colette Avital, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Israeli Consul General to New York. None of us are members or promoters of J Street. All of us, like the overwhelming majority of American Jews, support a 2-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. We are strong advocates of a safe Israel living amongst its neighbors in security and peace. At Trinity College, we have fought the proponents of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. 

The editorial attack, which claims that J Street is beyond the pale of Jewish acceptability, is supported by arguments from Frank Luntz, CAMERA, and Caroline Glick that are no more representative of  the Jewish consensus in the United States than are the views of extreme left-wing Jewish activists in our midst who try to slander Israel at every turn. For every critical interpretation of J Street’s history, one can find thoughtful Americans and Israelis who see the organization in a different light. Even a critic of J Street such as Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has repeatedly stated that J Street exists within the mainstream of American Jewish political life. Colette Avital, whom we all know well from her years of superb work in New York—and who is highly regarded as a mainstream politician in Israel—obviously agrees, because she has joined J Street as Senior Advisor to the political arm of the organization.

Contrary to what you claim, J Street exists comfortably under the umbrella of worldwide Jewish support of Israel. To be sure, there are profound disagreements beneath that large umbrella, in Israel as well as in America. While we may have our own disagreements with J Street, we believe that its policies and actions on behalf of a Jewish and democratic Israel are fully consonant with American Jewish political discourse. And we believe that it would be both wrong and counterproductive to exclude J Street from American Jewish or Diaspora-Israel discussions, as you urge. Rather, it is important to foster a respectful and constructive discussion amongst all who advocate on behalf of a Jewish and democratic state of Israel, and not rush to label those with whom we disagree as inauthentic or illegitimate. Far from being condemned, the JCRC is to be applauded for using its auspices to bring Colette Avital to our community.

Samuel Kassow

Charles H. Northam Professor of History

Trinity College

Ronald Kiener

Professor of Religion

Director, Jewish Studies Program

Trinity College

Barry Kosmin

Research Professor of Public Policy and Law

Director, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

Trinity College

Mark Silk

Professor of Religion in Public Life

Director, Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life

Trinity College

Michael Sacks

Professor of Sociology

Trinity College

Wrong Again

OK, I got it completely wrong. The longest week of empty speeches is over, and I made a bad prediction. I bet that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn't be heckled at the big AIPAC meeting or in front of a joint meeting of Congress. He was heckled at both events. My bad.
Asked one journalist, "Would Barack Obama receive a standing ovation in the Kenesset?" Answered an Israeli journalist, "Would Bibi?"
But I was right about the more important things. I predicted nothing important would arise out of President Obama's big Middle East reset speech, and nothing did. I also agreed with Nehemia Shtrasler of Haaretz: nothing would arise out of Bibi's big visit to Washington, and nothing did.