By all outward appearances, the JFS applicant, identified only as “M” in court papers, is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — and neither was her son. It turned down his application.

As we say in my home town, oh no you DIDN’T!

However irritating the school’s selection criteria are to me and some other liberal, progressive, Reform, unaffiliated, Conservative, take-your-pick-of-non-Orthodox Jews, this is hardly the first time that non-Orthodox Jews, especially non-Orthodox converts, have been classified as “insufficiently Jewish.” So the situation is hardly surprising.

What is surprising, at least to me, is a) that the court ruled that the policy was against British law and b) their rationale for that decision. While religious groups in the U.K. are allowed to practice discrimination based on religion, the ruling classified this school’s policy as race- and/or ethnicity-based discrimination, which is illegal.

To wit:

The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.
“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”
The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

Fascinating.

The actions of the Jewish State ultimately reflect upon the Jewish people throughout the world. We in the Diaspora Jewish community have long taken pride in the accomplishments of the Jewish State. As with any family, the success of some reflects a warm light on us all. But pride cannot blind us to the capacity for error on the part of the country we hold so dear. We cannot identify with the successes, but refuse to see the failures.

As we approach Yom Kippur, I call on America’s Jews to examine the Goldstone findings, and consider their implications. In the spirit of the season, we must consider the painful truth of Israel’s behavior in Gaza, and understand that we must work, together, to discover the truth — and then urge on all relevant parties in the search for peace.

… and from each other: “For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones,” the New Union Prayer Book reads, “but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another.”

That’s the part about Judaism that makes it tough to practice sometimes. It’s easy to ask God for forgiveness; unless a bolt of lightning says otherwise, it’s probably accepted. But having to individually ask humans is much harder, and humbling.

It’s not a wholly owned franchise of Judaism. During the height of the Catholic church sex abuse scandal, I sat, reporters’ notebook in hand, in the pews of Boston’s cathedral as the embattled Bernard Cardinal Law gave his homily one Sunday, protesters picketing outside. Some ventured into the church when, for reasons of his own if not of Catholic liturgy, Law stated the above concept of forgiveness among fellow humans.

One abuse victim — in fact, one of the most vociferous — perked up to listen, and at the sermon’s conclusion, got into the line for the Eucharist. Other protesters joined him. Suddenly, the cleric to whom most of their anger was directed was giving them the host. Law recognized them and said to each “Pray for me,” and they did. “Walls came down,” abuse victim Steve Lynch said afterward.

True, the truce lasted barely a day and could never erase the victims’ lifelong suffering, but it was nonetheless moving, serene.

Transgressions demanding atonement need not be as serious as having enabled child molestation, and lest we forget our lesser sins, the prayer book enumerates many. “We are arrogant, brutal, careless, destructive, egocentric, false, greedy” — all the way to “xenophobic, yielding to temptation, zealots for bad causes … our sins are an alphabet of woe.”

And if not in actions, then in words, intentional or not.

That last one embarrassingly hits home. After a taping of DNTV not long ago, I left the microphone on while giving editing instructions to Jimmy Bellamy, our multimedia editor. “No, no. Don’t ever do it that way. You have to do it like this…” and so on. The words weren’t very strong, but the tone was, I learned, when playing back the accidental recording.

Jimmy is thick-skinned and can take it, but not so everyone. In another editing job several years earlier, I was surprised to learn a proofreader had quit because, I was told, “She said you swore at her every week.”

“Whaa?” I wondered — until I realized that my weekly greeting (“What the blank is this blank?”) when she would deliver the publisher’s editorial to me had been interpreted personally. Of course I knew what it was, and I intended the remark as a commentary about the publisher, not her. But I failed to let her in on the joke.

Then there are times when this curmudgeonly editor has unambiguously let loose a stream of invective. Apologies to all within earshot.

Sins of words are not limited to those spoken, and I know what I write here carries the power to tear down as much as to uplift. Journalism, I often say, is the one profession where you know someone’s going to have a bad day before that person does. But regardless of whatever my subjects did or didn’t do, if the way I told it was careless or caused pain, I humbly apologize. Even to those who I think should know better: “It was satire!” I cry out when someone misses my point. No matter; they were hurt nonetheless. I am sorry.

And those, of course, are the easy ones. The rest are too personal or painful for public discussion.

“For all that was done
For all that was not done
Let there be no forgetfulness before the Throne of Glory
Let there be remembrance within the human heart.”

Originally Published in Duluth News Tribune

Serwer draws a parallel between divisions in Jewish communities over Israel and divisions in (U.S.) Black communities “about loyalty and authenticity.” Describing Netanyahu’s characterization of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel as “self-hating Jews” based on their support of a settlement freeze, Serwer writes,

What makes this kind of argument particularly interesting, however, is how much it resembles intraracial arguments between black folks about loyalty and authenticity. In the eyes of those who support all of Israel’s actions uncritically, the “Juicebox Mafia” are “House Jews”: Jews whose positions on Israel are motivated by their internalizing long-standing anti-Semitic myths and identifying with those who seek to oppress the Jewish people. These Jewish conservatives are, ironically enough, embracing the same kind of bare-knuckle identity politics as the blacks they love to hate.

Also, this totally resonated with me:

I’ll cop to caring about Israel more because I’m Jewish—but that doesn’t mean I’ll evaluate its actions uncritically out of blind loyalty. In fact, in most cases it’s precisely because liberal Jewish bloggers care about Israel that they’re critical of its actions: They see Israel’s behavior in the region, particularly its treatment of the Palestinians, as harming Israel’s long-term interests.

Serwer’s post hits on a particular type of parallel between Jewish communities and U.S. Black communities that (while perhaps ignoring the overlap between the two groups) is too often left by the wayside when these communities are discussed. How can we learn from the way different groups handle intra-community tensions and accusations of self-hatred? How can we use a grounding in identity as a strategic move, positioning ourselves as uniquely able to critique specific actions because they have been taken in our name(s)?

Nonetheless, it cracks me up to read that Charles Bronfman, of all people, is

worried that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is hurting the country’s relationship with young Jews in the Diaspora.

That’s right, Bronfman’s considering tweaking his position on Israel because might just be getting in the way of the only thing more important to him than Zionism – Jewish survival!

“We turned from David to Goliath in 1982, with the invasion into Lebanon, and the Arabs became David,” he told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz last week. “Now everybody’s worried about the Palestinians. Now we’re occupiers, oppressors, who live by the sword. That’s what you see in the media, and it festers and has effects on the general population and on Jews as well.”

Goldberg takes Bronfman’s seeming reconsideration of his position on Israeli politics as a sign that the Establishment is finally “younger Jews are more ambivalent about their ostensible birthright than their parents are [and] don’t share past generations’ automatic support for Israeli policies.” She seems to take J Street as representative of the positions of these elusive “young Jews,” which is an improvement – I suppose – but doesn’t begin to show the diversity of critiques of Zionism and of Israeli policy that exist among Jews (not all of us young, either.)

I would have liked to see Goldberg look at more grassroots, localized engagement by young Jews (since they/we seem to be her object of study) with Israeli policies and politics, and with their relationship to Zionism as a philosophy and a movement. J Street and other lobbying groups may be a useful counterweight to the efforts of AIPAC & co. in Washington, but they don’t represent the extent of the discussion, and can’t alone be the basis for political or communal change.

Until this year, I had never counted the Omer — the ritual of marking each of the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot with a nightly blessing.

But when Passover came to an end this year, I felt I could use more of that “liberation” our tradition speaks of. Armed with no more than a leaflet and my enthusiasm, I began counting toward Shavuot, which begins Thursday, May 28.

As I had hoped, the short nightly study gave me a frame for my days that grounded me in something outside of myself, something powerful.

But what I didn’t expect was the response when I told friends about counting. One turned me onto a daily online resource. An “unaffiliated” friend shocked me by pulling a book on Kabbalah from his backpack. My housemate asked, somewhat hesitantly, if she could count, too. As a first-year teacher in Oakland, she has not had an easy year (facing staggering class, language and resource battles).

To her, and the rest of us, somewhat obscure Jewish practices — not only of celebration, but of daily commitment — can begin to feel valuable and relevant.

As we sat pouring over “Seasons of Our Joy,” a primer on Jewish holidays, it struck me — the irony of young adult Jewish outreach.

Here we are, young Jews looking for something to hang our hats on.

But what do many of us face when approaching the Jewish community looking for “young adult” events? Cocktails, cocktails everywhere and not a drop of depth.

Sure, a dance party is a good way to get us 20- and 30-somethings through the door. But what makes us stay is feeling connected to something lasting, to something that came before us.

Things are different these days. While members of the Boomer generation couldn’t stand to be like their parents, my contemporaries are often not only friends with their parents, but sometimes — gasp — they even ask them for advice.

In my opinion, we’d turn to Judaism, too, if it felt accessible to us.

After all, when people are searching — for a career path, for the education to match, for a partner, for a community — wouldn’t a great place to turn for support and guidance be a faith community?

But that turn is not being taken.

I often look at this problem through the lens of my day job as a community organizer: One of the central tenets of organizing people to do things is to involve them in the process of getting it done. Give someone a picket sign, ask someone to draft a brochure; there are no better hands for a project than those of an excited new leader eager to add his or her own thinking, strategy and drive.

Young Jews, too, want to roll up their sleeves, a fact that has been borne out in study after study. Service learning is on the rise, as is community engagement around progressive values and civic participation — and all this is happening among a group of young Jews that is supposedly “directionless” or “unreachable.”

A 2004 study titled “OMG! How Generation Y is redefining faith in the iPod era” showed that civic participation is high, even among the least-religious young adults. So arguments about us not being “joiners” paints an incomplete picture.

Sure, getting us into synagogue might be like herding cats, but hand us a hammer and you might just have a new house for a low-income family. We’ve been largely credited for President Barack Obama’s rise, and through him we are calling for a new era of responsibility.

In this changing context, even programs such as Birthright Israel, long lauded and well-resourced, fall short of the tough task of sustained involvement. A recent study commissioned by Birthright found that even after being given a free, all-expenses paid trip to Israel, participants have only modest engagement with post-trip events — they’re still “tourists” in their own community.

While everyone likes free stuff, or an open bar, I’d argue that those entry points are not the best way to truly engage my generation.

The big welcome sign for young adults, and the community resources to support it, should point toward give-and-take engagement, something that welcomes our leadership.

And as has been learned by the organizations that welcome deep engagement, if we as young Jews are rolling up our sleeves to participate and lead, we are also crafting, challenging and molding something that could appeal to us and our friends.

Even if it takes commitment, even if it takes time, we might just want to count the Omer — and be counted by it. Having spaces to grab hold of the Judaism that speaks to us, and to build something of ourselves into it, will keep us coming back.

Sarah Leiber Church is an Oakland resident. She is the program director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

As I write, Israel is pounding Gaza with bombs and bullets, not yet satisfied with having killed and injured 1500 people, over a third women and children. Israel claims they don’t target civilians. Six little girls in one family were shot dead in front of their house, making this claim meaningless. The U.S. media tells us Israel is “at war” with Hamas. To call the relentless bombing of a 139 square mile area by the world’s 4th largest military “war” is ludicrous, just one more trick to keep us distracted from thinking too long or hard about the power imbalance of a 4-decades long inhumane Occupation.

I can hear the howl of protests now from the organized Jewish community, which would prefer to label me a self-hating anti-Semitic Jew than face the realities of how Israel is changing the face of Judaism. We forget that less than 50 years ago the Jewish community was hotly debating the pros and cons of statehood; we were free to argue either side without the vicious labels that function as labels always do – to stop people from thinking about what is being said and instead focus on the person saying it. The anti-Zionist arguments of the ‘30s and ‘40s have become dangerously and heartbreakingly realized – we are so obsessed with the mechanisms of statehood that we have willingly forsaken the meaning of our identity as Jews.

Every bomb dropped, every concrete slab of wall built, every acre of land illegally taken, every demolition of a Palestinian home, should force us to come to grips with the fact that to be Jewish in 2008 is no longer about our cultural ties one to the other, our shared values, our collective history. To be Jewish is now measured by our allegiance to Israel; if it was more than that, then our communities would be alive with protests about what we are doing in Gaza.

We are like the child who has been abused and grows up to recycle the abuse on a less powerful woman or child. We make all kinds of excuses for why we have to be abusive; we run the familiar tapes about the threat of anti-Semitism, the hatred of Hamas, the continued shelling of rockets from Gaza into Israel… the list is long and familiar. Yet I have not met a single American Jew (or American, for that matter) who has spent any time in Palestine who continues to recite this list. I do not claim that Israelis live in the kind of stability most of us know here or that the solutions are simple. I do claim, however, that the life Israel forces on the Palestinian people in the name of safety and security is not one any of us would be willing or able to endure.

For the most part the Jewish community here doesn’t know, doesn’t see because to know and to see would mean admitting that we are paying too steep a price for this homeland, this state. We have become comfortable believing that a Jewish life is worth more than a Palestinian one. I’ve sat across the table from devout Jews screaming at me that all Arabs do is breed suicide bombers, without seeing that their screaming hatred of Palestinians is the flip side of our experience. I’ve been called names by respected elders in the Jewish community because I dared to speak about the inhumanity I witnessed in Palestine with my own eyes; this in a community once proud of its ability to argue multiple sides of any issue. I’ve had Jewish leaders of all kinds tell me to keep quiet, now is not the time, don’t speak of it, urging a conditioned silence that is terrifyingly familiar.

As a Jew, I take to heart the teachings of Rabbi Hillel, who instructs us across the ages not to do to others that which we would not want done to us. As a Jew, I understand our invocation of “never again” as universal, a lesson from the Holocaust we should apply to all people. As a Jew, I am proud of our strong cultural commitment to justice. I thought once that these were the things that defined what it meant to be Jewish.

I no longer think so, for what seems to matter most to us now is our unquestioning allegiance to a state that does horrific things in our name. Judaism is not at risk from Hamas, Palestinians, or anti-Semitism. Judaism is at risk because we are silent when we should speak up, blind when we should see. In our haste to be like every other nation, to be powerful regardless of the price, we are indeed killing the very thing that makes us who and what we are. Bent on achieving a security bought with the lives of innocent people, we can’t seem to grasp the age-old lesson that raw force only strengthens the resolve of people to resist. I can’t help but wonder what we have saved, what we have made secure, when the only experience that literally millions of people have of us is one of daily injustice and oppression.

I refuse to conflate Judaism with Israel. I am driven by my deep concern for our future as a people. We may have already gone too far to reclaim Judaism to itself. I do not know. I only know I do not want us to lose ourselves to the continued justification of that which cannot be justified.