The asymmetric legal situation in Israel, through the Absentee Property Law, makes it possible for Jews to return to property that was owned by Jews before 1948 — while Palestinian property return is completely impossible. This is both unjust and unwise. In Sheikh Jarrah, this has resulted in Palestinian refugees, originally housed in the neighborhood by the Jordanian government after 1948, becoming refugees a second time. Of course, unlike the settlers forcing the Palestinians out of their homes, the Palestinians cannot return to the homes they owned before 1948 — not in Jaffa, nor in West Jerusalem or anywhere else.

So far, four families have lost their homes: Al-Rawi, Hanoon, and the two Al-Kurd families. Many more families face a similar fate if the plans of the Simeon the Just Company materialize, to destroy their homes and instead build 200 housing units for Jewish settlers.

By itself, what is described above is already more than sufficient to require us to demonstrate against. But the injustice does not stop with that: what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is part of a larger process — the Hebronization of East Jerusalem. In the raging struggle over Jerusalem’s future, facts are already being determined on the ground, and the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are forced to pay the price upfront, their human rights violated in a great variety of ways. Inadequate to non-existent infrastructure, shortage in classrooms, social, health and mail services, revocation of residency status, lack of planning programs that would have allowed for legal construction and the constant fear of house demolitions – all these are added to the destructive processes sadly familiar to us from another city: Hebron.

As if watching the replay of a movie whose ending we have already seen, here in front of our eyes the Hebron processes are taking place once again, this time in Jerusalem: the entry of settlers to the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, the provocations and violence, the one-sided actions of the security forces – always serving the interests of the Jewish settlers over the rights of the Palestinian residents. And then, what follows: restrictions of movement, segregation, life becoming a nightmare, and all this in the name of “security considerations”. Shuhada Street in Hebron is already closed for Palestinians for years — a street that was part of the bustling heart of one of the largest Palestinian cities, and has become a ghost road in the service of extremist settlers, the human rights of local Palestinians thrown to the roadside.

A similar process to what has already happened in Hebron is now happening in Jerusalem. Sheikh Jarrah now has police checkpoints at the entrance to the neighborhood. During certain hours on Friday the entrance to the neighborhood is generally blocked, but is open to Jewish worshipers. In contrast, Jews wishing to enter Sheikh Jarrah to express solidarity with the Palestinian families are prevented from entering the neighborhood. Violence against Palestinians ends with arrests — of Palestinians. The mechanism of dispossession and the construction of security excuses are already at work. And all this is happening right here, in Jerusalem.

In tandem, the Jerusalem Police tried to break the Israeli activists who wanted to express solidarity with the Palestinian families and protest against the injustice done to them. Only after nearly a hundred false arrests and a series of hearings at the Jerusalem Magistrate Court, did the police finally allow for the protest vigils to take place. For many weeks, each Friday, rain or cold, arrests or no arrests, hundreds of Israelis gather to protest in Sheikh Jarrah. Now, the Police is trying to keep Saturday’s planned demonstration as far as possible from the neighborhood, perhaps fearing the thought that the Palestinians will be able to hear the voices of those who consider them human beings, not objects for removal. High Court justices will hear an urgent petition on this matter Thursday morning; hopefully they will not forget the Court’s ruling in a similar context almost twenty years ago: “The location’s effectiveness is the lifeblood of a people’s assembly.”

Whether the police will succeed in distancing the demonstration or the Court will intervene in defense of freedom of speech is yet to be seen. Either way, what is at stake is the process that has not begun in Sheikh Jarrah nor will be stopped there, unless we begin to change course. It is the process of dispossession and the constant injustices against the Palestinian residents – while canonizing acts of violence. Israelis demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrah are no longer regularly arrested, but that is not the heart of the matter. The question that should concern all of us — and mobilize all of us — to demonstrate in Sheikh Jarrah this Saturday night is this: How to stop injustice and how in its stead promise a shared future, common to all people, based on foundations of human rights and equality. It is this voice that will ring this Saturday night from Sheikh Jarrah — a strong voice that we must ring for Israelis and Palestinians, a resonant voice that we must ring for the world to hear, a personal voice that we must ring for ourselves. And this can only happen in one way: for each and every one of us to come this Saturday night at 7pm to Sheikh Jarrah. Together, let us bring justice to ring in Sheikh Jarrah.

Hagai El-Ad is the Director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). He blogs at the Huffington Post.

Now in the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king’s commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have rule over them; whereas it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them

This notion, of things being turned on their heads, called “venahafoch hu” in Hebrew, is at the core of this lively, raucous little holiday. The very purpose of our celebrating is intertwined with this overturning “from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a holiday” (Esther 9:22). As Rabbi Irving Greenberg puts it in his essay “Confronting Jewish Destiny: Purim,” in his book The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays:

Part of the dizzying paradox of Purim is the extraordinary and capricious reversals it reflects. Vashti is deposed as queen for showing modesty. Esther wins favor for the queenship because of her modesty…Mordecai, in one day, is raised from gallows candidate to prime minister. The very name of the holiday – Purim (meaning lottery) – suggests the absurdity and vulnerability of historical events when a turn of the wheel, a night’s insomnia, a moment of jealousy on the part of a drunken king, spells the difference between degradation and exaltation, between genocide and survival.

On Purim, we wear costumes, get drunk, and let go of the daily inhibitions – the cloak of order – that characterizes our lives, in order to acknowledge that our lives can change on a dime, and that a situation that looks devastating and grim can in fact become uplifting and celebratory.

But what is lurking beneath this notion of “venahafoch hu?” And what does it have to teach us, as a Jewish community, about our relationship to innovation and change, and those who turn, and sometimes overturn, the strictures of our community?

The Jewish Bible uses the term “hafach,” often translated as “turned,” in a number of different ways. Often, it is used to convey a reversal from one state to its opposite state, as in the case of the Megillah, or, as in Deuteronomy 33:6, “God turned the curse into a blessing for you.” It is also used to indicate any change, and not always necessarily as predictable as from a state to its opposite. Exodus tells of Moses’ staff, which turned into a snake (7:15) and of the water in the Nile river, which turned to blood (7:17), and the psalmist reminds us of God’s having turned the rock into a pool of water (Psalms 114:8). The term is also used to convey destruction, as in Jonah’s warning to the people of Ninveh: “Another forty days and Ninveh shall be overturned” (Jonah 3:4). This is not only a change from one state to another, but a change from a state of order to a state of chaos, from civilization to destruction. And, finally, the term is used, simply, to convey movement. Lamentations refers to the heart that spins and turns within our midst (1:20), and Genesis describes the Garden of Eden as being guarded by the cherubim, holding a flaming sword “turning every which way” (3:24). This is not simply motion, but implies a spinning that is just barely in control, hovering at the edge of turmoil.

On Purim, then, we are not simply acknowledging that despair can turn to joyous exaltation. That is merely the tip of the Purim iceberg. The holiday, in fact, is intensely sobering. It reminds us that the world is spinning beyond our control, and, despite what we think, we cannot predict its direction, nor can we be certain that it won’t spin into a state of total destruction. This, perhaps, is why joy must be dictated during this month: mishenichnas Adar marbim be’simcha – when the month of Adar arrives we abound in joy (Talmud Megillah 29a) – because it is counter-intuitive to face the notion of “venahafoch hu” and to celebrate.

Perhaps this understanding of Purim can shed light on the Jewish community’s complex relationship to its innovators.

Our innovators keep us spinning. Paul Light, in his article “Social Entrepreneurship Revisited” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, describes social entrepreneurship as “a wave of creative destruction that remakes society.” Innovators are involved in all levels of the “venahafoch hu” process, changing things from one state to another, sometimes to their opposite states, and keeping the world in motion, even sending it into turmoil. Jewish social entrepreneurs, as they spin and blow through the community, hover on the brink of overturning the Jewish world as we know it.

The field of Jewish innovation, like the holiday of Purim, may appear celebratory and joyous on its surface. It marks the possibility of renewal, which, in the Jewish community, ultimately means survival. But, like Purim, there are cold depths beneath this surface. There is something profoundly threatening about the field. New Jewish ideas and institutions often, and sometimes by definition, threaten traditional modes of operating and thinking in the Jewish world. In creating something new, Jewish social entrepreneurs sometimes destroy the old. In painting a new portrait of our community, they sometimes eradicate the faces and images that have defined us over time.

This Purim, perhaps our challenge as a community is to approach this field of innovation, this realm of “venahafoch hu,” with the same simultaneously tremulous and unwavering joy we bring into the month of Adar. Light writes: “social entrepreneurs are driven by a persistent, almost unshakable optimism.” This attitude of hope in the face of potential adversity is a very Jewish notion, one of which we are reminded during the month of Adar. When we face the spinning world, the possibility of unending turmoil and the potential destruction of all that we hold dear, we are reminded to approach it with joy and hope, with an eye towards redemption and possibility, with merry-making and feasting. With a celebration of our innovators, and the belief that, ultimately, when the book ends, we will have survived, flourished, thrived, and come out stronger for all the motion.

Daniel is the founder and president of the One Percent Foundation.

Tell me about the One Percent Foundation.

The One Percent Foundation is basically the missing piece of the civic engagement puzzle. There’s a lot of engagement around voting, volunteering, and activism, and we’re trying to be the giving piece. We want to create an infrastructure that will engage and empower people in their 20s and 30s – average, run-of-the-mill millennials – who perhaps haven’t thought of what it means to be a philanthropist.

The core program is the One Percent Giving Circle. We ask people to commit to giving one percent of their annual income, and at least half of that through the One Percent Foundation. Once people start giving, they’re considered Partners, and can nominate organizations to receive our quarterly grants. Our Working Group identifies the top five nominees, posts them online, and all Partners log in and rank them from 1-5. The top nominee gets the grant. The whole process lets us see what we’re doing as civic engagement.

There are three barriers to philanthropy for young people. First off, they feel like they can’t afford it. They’re earning money for the first time, and there are lots of demands on that money. Secondly, they don’t have the tools to identify a good nonprofit from the hundreds out there, so they don’t know who they want to give to. Finally, even if they have the money and know who they want to give to, they think, what’s the point? It’s not going to make a difference. So we really want to get people engaged.

What made you decide to make philanthropy your primary form of activism?

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine – actually, the cofounder of the organization – when I was in law school. He was working with big donors, linking them with political organizations. I had never really thought about philanthropy in my entire life, but as we were talking, I realized that there wasn’t really an infrastructure to support people who wanted to learn to give in a meaningful way. There were programs that targeted young kids or wealthier high-end donors, and there were some programs for people in their 20s and 30s, but those were very targeted. So we started talking to friends and creating this infrastructure. There was more and more unsolicited interest, and that organically became the One Percent Foundation. I gradually acquired an interest in philanthropy – I never set out to do it.

Where do you think you’ve made the biggest impact?

I think more and more people are taking notice and starting to think more strategically about what it means to create a broad-based movement for philanthropy. Our goal is to make giving a core component of the average citizen’s engagement portfolio, like voting. People who give to and engage with innovative nonprofits are more able to engage with their communities. Even giving a couple of dollars a month is very valuable to supporting good ideas.

The concept of ordinary people coming together to give sounds like it’s very rooted in traditional forms of tzedakah. Do you view your work as grounded in Jewish tradition?

Totally. I grew up in the Reform movement, which shaped who I am, and how I view the world. This organization sprouted from a group of friends who worked together at a Jewish camp. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jewish values drove the creation of the One Percent Foundation and continue to drive the growth of it. One of the things that’s so appealing to people about it is that it allows them to express their Jewish values in a very broad way, a community-based way. It’s not as insular as other Jewish experiences that they’ve had. Not that insular experiences are bad – this is just a different way to think about it. But, yes, my work is driven by Jewish values, tzedakah, and tikkun olam.

Do you have any goals for Inside the Activists’ Studio? Any particular ideas you want to bring to the table?

I don’t have a specific agenda. I love the concept and I’m excited to participate. It’s going to be an incredible program. The One Percent Foundation is totally organic and peer to peer, and what we’ve found and what has really surprised me is that there’s incredible interest when the demographic is presented with an opportunity to engage in a really meaningful way. They feel really empowered. It’s going to be very helpful in building the next generation’s philanthropy movement, which is ultimately what we’re trying to do.

During the oneg, after the service, this woman comes up to me. Let’s just call her “S”. The discussion went something like:

S: “Hi my name is S.” I replied with same. “…are ya Jewish”
Me: “I’m wearing a Kippah (pause breath)…Yes I’m Jewish”
S: “Well obviously you weren’t born Jewish!”
Me: “Why do you say that.”
S: “Well…Because you’re black!”
Me: “Well at least you’re honest.”

What was so surprising about this exchange was not that she asked me, “was I Jewish?,” or that she assumed I wasn’t born Jewish. It’s the fact that she was actually, to quote Mixedjewgirl, an honest bigot. Does that mean she should get applause? No, of course not. But usually when faced with these questions, and I ask back, I get every conceivable tap dance that one can imagine.

I did use the opportunity as a teaching moment and quickly educated S. on the diversity of the Jewish community, and the sheer numbers of Jews of color in the United States.

x-posted from TBLJ

But is that really all they have done?

Goldfarb points out that leadership and management are two separate activities. He claims that “leaders [should] resist institutional inertia, challenge fashionable ideas, question the trends of the moment, articulate new visions, and rally a broad following so that true transformation is possible.” Leadership, then, is as an activity that draws attention to a community’s pressing hidden issues, and that challenges and mobilizes the community to deal productively with those issues. I would argue, then, that the innovation movement as a whole, and many of today’s Jewish social entrepreneurs, are exerting vital leadership in our community.

The San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s 2004 demographic study revealed that the vast majority (80%) of Bay Area Jews do not participate in programs offered by existing Jewish institutions. This is a profound challenge for the Bay Area Jewish community. People do not agree on the problem – why do these people who self-identify as Jews not participate in communal offerings? Is it a problem with the institutions? Is it the nature of the Bay Area Jewish community? And people do not agree on the solution – should we reevaluate our existing institutions, and change them? Should we offer new programs for this 80%? Should we focus on providing quality programs for the 20% who are engaged?

The Bay Area Jewish social entrepreneurs are exerting leadership around this issue by virtue of the nature of the work they are doing. Organizations such as Jewish Milestones, which provide meaningful Jewish ritual opportunities outside of synagogues, and G-dcast, which creates Jewish literacy opportunities outside of formal Jewish school environments, are “articulating new visions, questioning trends, and rallying a broad following.” In founding these organizations, thereby drawing the community’s attention to the institutional inertia and tried and no longer true patterns that are plaguing this community, the innovators behind these projects are beginning the process of communal transformation, and, therefore, are exerting leadership.

Today’s Jewish innovators are part of a movement that is squarely facing the challenges and opportunities in today’s Jewish communities. They are grappling with some of our most pressing questions – at the end of the paradigm shift currently underway in Jewish life, what will Jewish life look like, and who will be living it? Leadership is a reflective act, and, if nothing else, the flurry and bustle of the innovation ecosystem is giving our community pause, and challenging the perceptions we have taken for granted. Today’s Jewish social entrepreneurs are constantly adjusting their directions in light of their learnings, and, therefore, are poised to profoundly alter human relationships. Let us hope that the broader Jewish community joins their conversations and engages with them in the risky, difficult processes that leadership involves.

Maya Bernstein works as the Director of Education for UpStart Bay Area, which supports Jewish social entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. Her writings appear regularly online at Lilith Magazine and e-jewishphilanthropy.com.

If you need any more proof that modern civilization has a waste problem, this is it: despite all of our sanitation and waste disposal systems, despite our countless landfills, incinerators, and photos of seagulls with soda rings around their necks, unprecedented amounts of nonbiodegradable garbage is ending up in the ocean. Social justice issues often seem disconnected from environmentalism – and with the gyres as far from people as you can get, this issue seems like environmentalism in its purest form – but when you examine the root causes of human exploitation and environmental degradation, they often turn out to be one and the same. Consider, for example, the sweatshops that churn out cheap goods, which are then quickly thrown away because – well, they’re so cheap!

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Miriam Goldstein, the chief scientist on the SEAPLEX expedition, who gave me some information on the trip, the findings, and her outlook in general. Miriam is a fourth-year graduate student at Scripps and a science blogger at Double X and The Oyster’s Garter.

Tell me about the North Pacific Trash Gyre. What is it? How did it form? How is it developing?

First of all, there are lots of gyres. They’re natural features formed when a jet stream goes to the east and an ocean current goes to the west. It pushes the top of the ocean east and the bottom west while the Earth is rotating, creating a big, slow whirlpool. There are five major gyres, and all the stuff that falls off of continents falls into them. Since plastic doesn’t break down, it all gets sucked into these whirlpools. We don’t really know what happens to it then. One of the big open questions we’re trying to answer is whether the plastic eventually breaks down or whether it keeps accumulating. Right now there aren’t any good measures of it.

On the SEAPLEX website, there’s a picture of a stuffed animal caught in a fishing net. What other sorts of recognizable garbage did you find this summer? Anything interesting or bizarre?

The stuffed dog was definitely the most bizarre. We found Lucky the Dog in a ghost net, which is a piece of fishing debris that gets lost. Nets are also made of plastic, so they don’t go anywhere, either, which is a big problem because they go on killing [sea life] even though no one is using them. Lucky was stuck in one and we had no idea how he got there. He’d only been in there for a couple of weeks, because he wasn’t too stinky. Other things we found were plastic bottles, pieces of combs, and seawater filters, which are pieces of boat engines. We saw recognizable debris like construction hats and bits of plastic crates, but the vast majority of it was tiny pieces of plastic.

What effects do these have on local ecosystems? How are humans affected, or how will we be in the future?

That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out. It’s well known that big animals like albatrosses will ingest the plastic and feed it to their young, so they end up with lots of plastic in their stomachs. But with the little pieces, the effects are a lot less clear. They’re about the right size to be eaten, the same size as zooplankton, but we’re not sure if they’re being eaten or what effect that might have. One thing I’m looking at is fouling communities, like barnacles, that live on the debris, and where these communities are transporting animals that grow on them across the ocean, where they wouldn’t naturally go.

It’s unclear if there’s a direct effect in terms of toxins. The gyres are an unproductive ecosystem, which is to say that they have cool animals that are adapted to live in a food-limited environment, but they don’t have nutrients. Our fisheries aren’t there, so the big fish we eat aren’t in the gyres, and it’s unclear if there would be food chain effects all the way up to people. But the saddest thing about the situation is that it’s a wilderness area filled with trash. People need to know that there are these places out there that are frontiers. If an open ocean can’t be a frontier, there really are none left.

A lot of people are skeptical because the pieces of plastic are too small to show up on satellite photos, so it doesn’t look like the massive island of garbage that you might expect. A lot of other people don’t see what the big deal is. Does this skepticism affect your work? Do you run into problems because of it?

Scientifically, you can count me as one of the skeptics, in that I want to see good data before I say this is the worst thing in the world. [Our research on the gyres] has been the reverse of a lot of other environmental issues. Certainly no one is in favor of plastic in the ocean, but in terms of actual science the evidence is really not yet there. On the internet there’s a lot of misinformation, which goes beyond what we can realistically say right now. My favorite piece of misinformation is a picture that purports to be a satellite picture of the trash, but is actually a natural plankton bloom off of Japan.

I think that because the idea of trash in a far away area is so arresting, it’s something that people can latch onto, unlike global warming. There’s trash in the ocean – everyone knows what that looks like. I don’t know if it’s harmful yet. I tend to try to be the person who’s sticking to the scientific facts, and not saying that the trash is harming people, because we don’t know that yet.

What does the average person need to know about the trash gyre? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

It’s not an island, it’s lots of little pieces! When I tell regular people, they say it doesn’t look like anything. When I tell scientists, they’re utterly shocked and depressed about the consistency of the pieces. In 100 straight tows [dragging a net through the water to collect debris], we got visible plastic. If you’re trying to find the most common animal in the world, you couldn’t get it in 100 straight tows. That’s what I think is really depressing. We’re not sampling that much. So if we’re getting it in every one, that means there’s a lot. It’s disturbing! It’s a huge area, and it really is covered in little pieces of plastic. It poses a significant challenge to clean up.

I would tell people that 80% of the trash is coming from improperly disposed-of garbage from land. One thing everyone can certainly do is make sure that trash is disposed of properly. Kaisei is looking into potential cleanup solutions, so I hope they come up with something.

Maybe it’s tacky to refer to one interview in another interview, but in an interview with ScienceOnline, you described yourself as a “Yiddish-spouting biological oceanographer with a love for naughty invertebrate hijinks.” Do you feel that your Jewish identity is connected with your writing and research? Does your identity inform your work at all?

I think you can’t really do this kind of work without thinking about Tikkun Olam, but I’m not particularly religious. I was raised more religious than I am now, and environmental action was always a part of that. I do really enjoy the remnants of Yiddish culture that have been passed down by my family. They say that when you’re at sea, you swear a lot, and Yiddish has the best swearing.

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.

I’m back from the national J Street Conference in DC and its been a whirlwind. There’s so much to tell, but I’m not sure I can do it any better than the myriad of bloggers who have already weighed in. For your reading pleasure, I recommend the missives from the good folks at Jewschool and the Velveteen Rabbi’s thorough session transcriptions. Also worthwhile: Adam Horowitz’s insightful piece in Mondoweiss and Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam. Wade through all of those and you can consider yourself an honorary conference participant.

My proverbial two cents:

There is no denying that this was a milestone event for the American Jewish left. In a breathtakingly short amount of time, Jeremy Ben-Ami and his cohorts have rallied the “Pro- Israel, Pro-Peace” troops in an undeniably impressive show of force. For years, this message has been languishing in the hands of too many small groups that did little but wring their hands at the institutional strength of AIPAC. The American Jewish left is clearly ready to play with the big boys now.

Even before the conference began, however, it became obvious that it would not be a simple matter to gather the various progressive Jewish factions under a single tent. I was personally disappointed when J Street ominously bowed to pressure from the right wing press and rescinded its invitation to poets Kevin Coval and Josh Healy, who were scheduled to perform at the conference.

Now that the conference is over, it’s even clearer to me that this will be J Street’s greatest challenge: can it be a “big Israel tent” for the progressive Jewish community as well as a political lobbying force that must necessarily hew closely to its two-state solution talking points?

The JTA viewed this challenge in largely generational terms:

Older conference goers appeared to be virtually unanimous in expressing support for a two-state solution, calling themselves Zionists and saying that while they back more U.S. pressure on the parties, they reject cutting aid to Israel if it does not accede to U.S. demands.

But a number of delegates under 40, especially college students and recent graduates, appeared to be much more equivocal on the idea of two states for two peoples. Some were hesitant about identifying as Zionists, and some were open to the idea of making U.S. aid to Israel conditional on progress in the peace process.

Whether this divide is strictly generational or not, I can attest that it was clearly apparent from the very beginning of the conference. While virtually everyone I spoke to agreed that the conference was remarkable and often inspiring, I also heard widespread frustration that the content of most of the sessions revealed nothing particularly new.

Over the course of the three days, we repeatedly heard professions of love for Israel, concern over the endangered “Jewishness” of the Jewish state, and expert analysis of the peace process. But for many in the crowd, it seemed that the conference was most galvanizing during the relatively rare and unscripted moments when presenters and participants delved more deeply into the inherent injustice of the situation on the ground.

Indeed, this dynamic was apparent from the very beginning of the conference. During Jeremy B-A’s opening words, for instance, it was lost on no one that the only applause he received was when he acknowledged the suffering of Palestinian children. This kind of energy played out in notable ways over and over again. I can’t help but wonder if by pitching a wide tent, J Street has unwittingly opened a Pandora’s Box that will not easily be closed back up.

For me, the most unabashedly diverse and honest sharing of ideas occurred during the “bloggers lunch.” Interestingly enough the session was not officially sponsored by J Street – and given the free-wheeling nature of the opinions expressed it was to their credit that they allowed it to take place at all. (In a much-discussed Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Jeremy B-A defended his decision thus: “Come on Jeffrey, I’m letting them have a room for lunch.”)

Therein lies J Street’s genius – and its challenge.

This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” PAC and Washington-based organization is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a workshop on how culture and spoken word create democratic spaces that sift through difficult issues and ensure a multiplicity of voices are heard: and how that can be used to open up the Israel/Palestine debate. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate.

This week, some right-wing blogs and pseudo-news organizations latched on to various lines of poems Josh wrote and churned the alarmist rumor mill saying that hateful anti-Israeli poets are keynote speakers at the J Street conference. This is not surprising. The radical right-wing, including the growing Jewish right-wing of this country and abroad, hates complex discourse, especially when it brings to light truths they seek to systematically deny. The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and their AIPAC-influenced brethren have been attacking J Street for weeks, scared that the conference will bring together the majority of American Jews who do favor a more rigorous peace process. When they found Josh’s poems and took lines out of context, they had the perfect straw man: the Van Jones to J Street’s Obama. Again, this is not surprising.

What is disappointing, and troubling, is J Street’s response in caving to this sort of McCarthyism. The executive director of J Street called us to say “I know what I’m doing is wrong…but there are some battles we choose not to fight,” before canceling our program, and disinviting us from the conference. This accommodates their red-baiting and is the wrong response. Rather than give in, which only emboldens the right and legitimizes their attacks, we need to stand up for our principles and engage on that front. Van Jones is another perfect example: after the Fox News venom became too much and he resigned last month, the radical Right hasn’t stopped attacking Obama, or more accurately, the alternative, progressive voice they fear he represents. The Right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies. Too often the Left doesn’t. And that’s why we often lose – on health care, on global warming, and on Israel/Palestine.

For the second time in two months Kevin, who is Jewish, has been told not to come to a Jewish conference because of what he will say about Palestine and Israel. This past August, the evening before the International Hillel Conference, conference planners said if he were to read poems about Palestine, they’d rather not have him. Today, Josh, who is Jewish, has had his name thrown into a mudslide of blogs and hate emails. All this because we are practicing the Jewish maxim of the refusal to be silent in the face of oppression, anyone’s oppression.

One of the key teachings of Judaism is the insistence on wrestling with and debating ideas. There are a thousand years of codified arguing, recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, over the meaning of the stories in the five books of Torah. Jews debate everything. There is the old adage, “when you have two Jews in the room, you have three opinions”. Our families cannot come to agreement about what constitutes a deli as opposed to a diner. (A deli must have pickles on the table with poppy seed rolls, etc….)

But when you try to talk about Palestine there is silence. When you talk about the role the United States plays in supporting Israel and its military coffers, there is no room for discourse. If you bring up Palestinians’ right to return to land they were forced out of, or mention that this past January over 1400 Palestinians, mostly civilian, were killed in Gaza, there is no room to speak in Jewish-centric spaces in this country.

There are many reasons why this trend of censorship is disturbing. We believe in democracy, in the right to speak and be heard and in the right be disagreed with. We are disheartened and outraged by the lack of democratic discourse in the American Jewish community and within the country as a whole.

Why are we scared of what will come from an honest conversation? What do we have to lose, or discover, or admit to if we question the policies of Israel or America’s support of its government and military? It can be unsettling for one’s worldview to unravel, the intricate web of white lies and half-truths pulled apart. This can be disconcerting for generations of Jews who have accepted the propaganda of a chosen people and the acting out of geostrategic nightmares via military might.

Kevin works at a Hillel for Hashem’s sake! He is charged with the task of addressing why so many young Jews are distancing themselves from the religious and cultural practice of Judaism. This is one of those reasons! American Jews are told at shul to repent for our sins, but silenced if we bring up the sins of the country that acts in our name. We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.

So, we are searching for a minyan—a crew of progressives and progressive Jews to build and connect with. We want to have a conversation. Not wait for the conversation to be dictated and have borders and walls built around acceptable topics, but to have a conversation determined by us, Jews That Are Left, that are on the Left. A conversation that is honest and open and genuinely reclaims and considers our progressive past as well as forges the future world. A conversation engaged in the work of tikkun olam for real, the work of repair and healing and wholeness.

Contact: Progressive American Jews where you at? Holla at us! For real: jewsthatareleft@gmail.com. Let’s reshape the conversation. Let’s build a minyan, a coalition of progressive Jews and gentiles who want what is just and right for ALL people and all people in Israel and Palestine.

For more context, here’s an interview that Josh with Haaretz, and a statement/response by the third poet, Tracy Soren.

We are all community activists and contribute in various ways to a variety of sectors in the Israeli society. We believe that contribution, cooperation and volunteerism are a way of life, and should not be limited to just two or three years. Our conscientious objection stems directly from our volunteer experience, from the values we believe in, from our love of the society that we are a part of and in which we live, from our respect of every human being, and from the aim of making our country a better place for all of its inhabitants.

The occupation creates an unbearable actuality for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. The checkpoint policy, land annexation, the building of the apartheid wall, paving of roads for Israeli’s only, settlement projects, and assassinations – all these have been sowing destruction in the West Bank for over 4 decades. The siege on Gaza and the prevention of importing materials, including basic food products and humanitarian aid, undermines the basic minimal living conditions of Gaza’s residents. We cannot tolerate such a reality.

The claim put forth by the spokespersons of the government and the army, that the continuation of the occupation arises from security reasons, has no substance. No country that has fought for its independence has ever been defeated by military means. The suffering of the Palestinian people and their subjugation is the cause of violent resistance. Israel’s public will never be safe as long as the Palestinian nation is under occupation. There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – only peace will ensure life and security for Jews and Arabs in this country.

The Israeli government frequently boasts that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East”. The occupation is a complete contradiction to this claim. Can a government that controls the lives of millions of people who did not take part in elections be called a “democracy”? Can military rule of a civilian population be considered anything other than a dictatorship?

The Israeli Army claims that it is “the most ethical army in the world”. However, time and again reality proves that occupation and ethics cannot stand together. When young armed men are sent on policing missions in the midst of occupied disenfranchised persons, when the government attempts to repress the struggle of the disenfranchised for independence by force – the stage is set for the injury of civilian population and committing of war crimes. Those who carry out such actions are not “exceptions” or “bad apples”. The occupation is the cess pool from in which such actions fester. The occupation has led the Israel Army to breach international treaties, UN decisions, and recommendations of the international court, and even Israeli law, time and again.

Settlement policy is racist in principle. In the name of a Messianic ideology, it has created a reality of apartheid in the West Bank. Disenfranchised Palestinians and privileged settlers live contrastive lives side by side. Settlers participate in the election of the government that administers their affairs, while the Palestinians live under military rule. Settlers enjoy social security benefits, and economic benefits, while Palestinians live a life of poverty and enslavement. Settlers are tried under Israeli law in Israeli courts, while Palestinians are tried at military courts with out the basic right of a fair proceeding. Any human opposed to racism finds this reality repulsive and untenable.

There are those who claim that we are objectors, although the Israeli government is the most consistent objector – in objecting to peace. The Israeli Army is not a “defense force”, but an aggressive occupation force. The Israeli government does not extend an olive branch, rather it upholds violent nationalism.

The occupation is a continuous crime against Israeli society. Employment of Palestinians under slave conditions in the Israeli job market causes a deterioration of conditions for all workers in the market and brings about a violation of their rights. Instead of investing in social budgets, the Israeli government has been investing for more than 40 years in the building of villas and by-pass roads in the settlements, in order to alter ground reality. The warped norms and the violence that young soldiers confess to in the territories have permeated the green line, and are expressed in a rise in violence and racism throughout Israeli society.

Out of sense of responsibility and concern for the two nations that live in this country, we cannot stand idle. We were born into a reality of occupation, and many of our generation see this as a “natural” state. In Israeli society it is a matter of fact that at 18, every young man and woman partakes in military service. However, we cannot ignore the truth – the occupation is an extreme situation, violent, racist, inhuman, illegal, non democratic, and immoral, that is life threatening for both nations. We that have been brought up on values of liberty, justice, righteousness and peace cannot accept it.

Our objection to becoming soldiers of the occupation stems from our loyalty to our values and to the society surrounding us, and it is part of our ongoing struggle for peace and equality, a struggle whose Jewish-Arab nature proves that peace and co-existence is possible. This is our way, and we are willing to pay the price.

The Undersigned,
Members of the Seniors’ Letter Group 2009-2010