(The Conversation) – Mark Raphael Baker began writing his final book, A Season of Death, from his hospital bed, in the wake of his terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His second wife, Michelle, would later observe: “More than a comfort or distraction, in him it was a need.” The renowned Jewish Australian author and academic died a year later, after 13 months of illness, aged 64.

In 2022, after nearly four months of misdiagnoses and inaction from doctors – despite persistent complaints of unbearable abdominal pain – an MRI had finally revealed the grave news. Cancer would claim his life, as it had his first wife Kerryn in 2016 (aged 55), and his brother Johnny in 2017 (aged 62).

He wrote:

I kept thinking, this can’t be happening. I was invulnerable. The odds of another person in one family being hit by terminal cancer seemed impossible.

How does one write the essence of a life once it has come to an end? Baker was no stranger to this question.

Review: A Season of Death – Mark Raphael Baker (Melbourne University Press)

His first book, The Fiftieth Gate: a journey through memory (1997), is an exploration of his parents’ Holocaust survival, told through the eyes of a son grappling with his connection to their trauma. When it was reissued for its 20-year anniversary in 2017, it had sold over 70,000 copies. His second book, Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love (2017), was written after his first wife, Kerryn, lost her ten-month battle with stomach cancer.

Death shaded much of Baker’s life. Writing was his salve, a window to understanding and hope.

Baker was director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University. Religion, which was central to his family and intellectual life, is woven throughout the memoir.

Liminal grief

A Season of Death is short, at 253 pages. It is structured in five parts: Regeneration, Remarriage, Re-Creation, Retribution and Revelation. The repeated prefix “re” (meaning again, or back) speaks to the cyclical nature of life as Baker lived it.

The book begins with Kerryn’s cancer diagnosis, seven years prior to his own. Baker writes, “That experience followed me; every breath I took felt like Kerryn’s last breath.” He continues:

Death and life became inextricably bound; I was unsure which world I belonged to, and in my dreams at night I danced with her spirit, sang the songs of our courtship, reanimated her in my mind and eventually rushed to write a version of our life story, which I completed in thirty days.

Baker writes beautifully and eloquently about the liminality of existing in grief after such a profound death. Less than two years after Kerryn’s passing, Baker’s brother, Johnny, also died of cancer. This death was particularly difficult for Baker’s parents, who both survived the Holocaust.

For many survivors of genocide – who’ve lost their family, their sense of place, everything – children become the centre of their universe. This was certainly the case for Baker’s parents:

What to say to these people whose entire existence revolved vicariously around the successes of their two sons? When my mother was asked about her idea of revenge for what she had suffered, her answer came back without hesitation, “You, my children, are my revenge.”

‘Something was seriously wrong’

The book is written in a fragmented style, traversing past and present, shimmering between early childhood memories and life as an adult.

We are with Baker through his courting of Michelle Lesh, who he had first known as the stepdaughter of his close friend, Raimond Gaita. Their relationship transformed and deepened through their shared intellectual and political interests, particularly concerning Israel-Palestine, and centred around travel and their respective careers. They were married in 2018 and in 2021 welcomed a daughter, Melila.

“Fifty Gates,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

We are with him as he reflects on his parents’ survival of Holocaust Europe and the trauma they experienced. (Baker’s father died in 2020, three years after his brother Johnny. Baker’s mother, Genia, was 88 when he died in 2023.)

And we are with him in the doctor’s office as his worst fear becomes reality.

The best word for my reaction was one of bewilderment. Something was seriously wrong. We’d talked about pancreatitis but that was different from pancreatic cancer. I was numb. It didn’t feel possible, but I immediately pictured my death. The only question in my mind was if I would last as long as Kerryn and Johnny.

For anyone touched by cancer, this feeling of bewilderment is familiar. Few diseases have a more profound physical and psychological impact. Baker observes, often with searing clarity, his own corporeal degeneration and his thoughts as he confronts his own mortality.

“While no number of deaths could make me indifferent to what awaits me, watching a sequence of deaths in the family has made me more prepared,” he writes.

I feel as though I have been trained or mentored in the art of dying. My fear is less the prospect of my ultimate demise than the pain I will endure reaching the end.

What is surprising is Baker’s persistent humour and palpable energy, despite the pain and despite the closeness of his ultimate demise.

An act of love

A Season of Death is not an easy read. It is an intimate, at times harrowing portrait of grief and of death. What Baker has written is a final observation of his life, offering a rare perspective on death – and life as it comes to an end.

To persevere with a writing project in the midst of such bodily trauma, to write through and towards death for his children, for his family and descendants, is an incredibly courageous feat.

“Over the course of his illness Mark wrote almost every day, despite the ravages and debilitating side effects of his treatments, which often left him weary in body and mind,” write Lesh and his friend Raimond Gaita, in the book’s postscript.

Baker passed away before the book was published, and Lesh and Gaita brought it to publication in his absence. In their postscript, they observe:

Writing the memoir was an act of love that took possession of him. It gave him comfort and energy. He sacrificed sleep, physical and mental rest, and refrained from engaging with people and aspects of the world to which he had previously given so much of himself.

What lingers with the reader is a sense of the fragility and miracle of being alive for the very short time we each have. We are all going to die, and whether or not this fact is a preoccupation, it is moving to witness, through writing, an at once introspective and philosophical mind work through his imminent death.

There is no linear story, or discrete chapters. There is no Before or After. There is only the projection of what was and what might have been: memory – fickle, pliant, circular, fragmentary.

Tess Scholfield-Peters, Casual Academic, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jewish oral tradition, developed after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, often interprets allegorically the Biblical verses that mention the instruments of war. Thus, the sword and the bow used by Jacob the Patriarch against his enemies (Genesis 48:22) become prayer and supplication (Bereshit Rabbah 97:6); the victory of Benaiah over Moab (2 Samuel 23:20) now stands for Torah study (BT Berakhot, 18b). Tradition locates Jewish heroism in the house of study, not on the battlefield. This partly explains the refusal of thousands of observant Jews to enroll in Israel’s military.

Yet, Hanukkah, which, incidentally, is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, but can be found in the Christian one, seems to be a story of war. A comparison of Hanukkah with another popular Jewish holiday – Purim – reveals something important about traditional Jewish attitudes to collective threats, spiritual and physical.

The holiday of Purim, related in the Book of Esther, provides a peaceful model for conflict resolution. The story is as simple as it is prophetic. Haman, the Persian vizier, has planned a total massacre: “to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day” (Esther 3:13). The response of the Jews was to proclaim a fast of repentance, but at the same time to find a way to influence the king and thereby circumventing the vizier and his decree. Queen Esther intervened, revealed to the king her Jewish origins, and convinced him to stop the planned genocide. But it did not occur to any of the Jews to organize self-defence units against Haman. And the violence of the Jews against their enemies mentioned in the finale has been explicitly authorized by the king who only recently acquiesced to his vizier’s idea of exterminating the Jews.

But the resolute recourse to force is central in the story of Hanukkah, which, like Purim, also celebrates deliverance from a collective threat. The difference between the two threats to the Jews explains the differing relationship to force expressed in the stories. Haman’s threats of physical destruction induced the Jews to fast and repent. However, when King Antiochus outlawed Judaic practice and forced the Jews into idolatry, he sought their spiritual destruction. Under such a threat the use of force becomes legitimate: a Jew is duty-bound to sacrifice his or her life rather than worship idols.

This history of the Maccabees is often used to draw political conclusions. According to a contemporary commentary, clearly at odds with the traditional vision of the event : “For any thinking Jew, Hanukkah is nothing more than the day of commemoration of the heroes of Jewish self-defence. No miracle fell from the sky…. But the sword had created one: a dead people had been resurrected. The Torah could not save from the fist; it was the fist that saved the Torah. The sword, and not the skullcap, will protect the Jew in the blood-soaked lands of his enemies.” Today, this lesson resonates with many Jews who believe in the primacy of might.

Ironically, such glorification of force reverses the significance of the holiday, which celebrates allegiance to the Torah against Hellenistic influence. What is the Judaic reference to Hanukkah? A passage from the daily prayer reveals its meaning:

“Maccabees,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

“In the days of Mattisiahu, the son of Yochanan, the High Priest, the Hasmonean, and his sons — when the wicked Hellenistic kingdom rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and compel them to stray form the statutes of Your Will — You in your great mercy stood up for them in the time of their distress. You took up their grievance, judged their claim, and avenged their wrong. You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands righteous, and the wanton into the hands of the diligent students of Your Torah.” (Complete ArtScroll Siddur)

The war that the advocates of the use of force tend to invoke turns out to have been, in Jewish ritual, a victory of God and not of humans. Tradition emphasizes that the decisive factors were loyalty to the Torah and moral purity, rather than the number of soldiers and the fighting strength of the army. With regard to Hanukkah, the Talmud relegates the hostilities to a secondary position and emphasizes that the strong were the Hellenizers and the weak Jews loyal to their religion. Tradition focuses instead on the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days in the Temple that the Maccabees had liberated and purified. It links the purity of the oil untouched by the Hellenizers and the purity of heart all Jews must keep in order to fight idolatry.

Thus, even when violence is legitimate, as in the case of Hannukah, it is definitely downplayed in rabbinic Judaism. “Who is the mightiest of the mighty? One who turns an enemy into a friend.” (Avot de rabbi Nathan, 23) Conversely, new values, promoted by some followers of National Judaism (dati-leumi) as the Torah of the Land of Israel, encourage reliance on the use of force. The eight days of Hannukah should allow us to ponder the issue of recourse to violence, which has undergirded the Zionist settlement in the Holy Land for over a century. While it has led to death, dispossession and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people, it has failed to ensure peace and tranquility.

Reprinted from The Times of israel with the author’s permission.

Killing an entire world is the ultimate act of villainy in science fiction. The most memorable such fictional atrocity occurs in George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977), when the Galactic Empire’s imperial officer Grand Moff Tarkin fires a fatal beam from the newly constructed Death Star at the planet Alderaan, “the bright center of the universe,” to demonstrate its awful power to captive rebel leader Princess Leia Organa. Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi, in transit to Alderaan aboard the Millennium Falcon, senses the enormity of this casual murder of two billion individuals. He remarks, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” The Empire had committed what we might term cosmocide, or the extermination of an entire world. Although it may risk trivializing the massive atrocities our world has witnessed in the past century to evoke them through a Hollywood fantasy, we should also acknowledge that the pulverizing of Leia’s (and Luke Skywalker’s) home world has shaken millions of filmgoers sheltered by selective media journalism from exposure to the real thing.

Lamentably, cosmocide in the full sense of the destruction of a whole planet became a possibility and not merely the stuff of speculative fiction on July 16, 1945, when the first nuclear device was detonated. On that day, as physicist (and Sanskritist) Robert J. Oppenheimer witnessed the first successful test of the atomic bomb he had fathered, he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita, verse 11:12 (referring to Krishna): “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, that would be the splendor of the mighty One.” He further recalled in this connection verse 11:32, translating it as, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Today, a massive exchange of thermonuclear weapons could plunge the earth into long-term darkness, killing most life. Even short of such a planetary slaughter, nuclear-armed states, and even those with extremely powerful conventional weapons, can wipe out “worlds,” in the sense of entire cities or regions. We have beheld such orgies of desolation in wars in the Middle East in the twenty-first century that have leveled cities in Syria, Sudan, Gaza, and Israel.

They bought it because he said of Kamala Harris, “If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now,  . . .” They didn’t consider the source, and his brazen history of pathological lies. It was a simplification they wanted to believe, because many of them are not deep thinkers, despite their vast wealth and accomplishment. Not all bright people are willing to mine past what they already know, especially those who earn or inherit financial security early in life. Some “conservative” Jewish leaders were insulted by the notion that Israel’s survival depended on one man. But they supported him because of his mythical “pro-Israel record.” But while Presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama restrained Bibi’s worst instincts, Trump promoted them.

Trump is tapping super-wealthy Jews to staff some of his cabinet and agency positions, but also to provide cover for his deeply un-Jewish agenda. His supporting cast of enabling Jews have entered the “grey zone” as defined by Philosopher Primo Levi, which “blurred the lines between collaborator, perpetrator and victim.” The wealthy Jews invested in Trump are more concerned about using Trump to grow their fortunes, than safeguarding Democracy or Judaism in America. They embrace the Evangelical “love” for Israel, ignoring the fundamentalist Christians’ apocalyptic vision of a world without Jews.

They are high-class, willing stooges, enabling an anti-Semitic president, contributing to the moral decline of American Judaism, and abetting the eventual deportations and punishment of minorities other than themselves. Forget about the Biblical commandments to “welcome the stranger into the tent.” (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Deuteronomy 24:19-22). This group is about erecting barriers and fences around the country club estate.

The most prominent Jewish members of Trump’s close advisers include:

-Miriam Adelson, widow of Sheldon, who continues his legacy, of having financed numerous illegal settlements, and founded Yisrael Hayom, a sensational daily newspaper with even less credibility than Fox News. As with Elon Musk, she contributed $100M to Trump’s campaign, a move made possible by the notorious SCOTUS Citizens United decision in 2010.

-Lee Zeldin served as a New York Congressional Representative from 2015-2022, and voted against almost every environmental regulation before Congress. He is Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, portending an even greater hostility toward any environmental agenda than Ronald Reagan anti-environment EPA head, Ann Gorsuch Burford; mother of SCOTUS Associate Neal Gorsuch.

-Daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, author of the disastrous Abraham Accords will return in an advisory capacity. “Kushner runs a multi-billion dollar investment firm tied to Arab states in the Gulf, raising ethical concerns about overlapping with government affairs,” as noted in The Times of Israel.

– Former US-Israeli Ambassador David Friedman remains part of Trump’s inner circle despite his objections to Trump’s embrace of anti-Semitic figures such as Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. Friedman is still pushing hard for a total annexation of all occupied Palestinian territories, and is delighted with Trump’s selection of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, who will promote the same agenda.

-Steve Witkoff is Trump’s new Middle East envoy, despite having no diplomatic experience. His qualifications? He’s a golf buddy and made a sycophantic speech at the Republican convention.

-Howard Lutnik is being considered for Secretary of Treasury, though he has no government experience, yet has been tapped to chair Trump’s transition team. A billionaire and finance chair of the Cantor-Fitzgerald investment firm, Lutnik literally ran interference for Trump when visited the gravesite of Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, which evokes memories of when Trump’s presence was a desecration of the Western Wall of the 2^nd Temple (Wailing Wall.)

-Stephen Miller, author of the diabolical family separation policy at the Mexican border, and ban on travelers from Islamic countries, is the new Deputy Chief-of-Staff. He was a prominent speaker at Trump’s Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden last month, and founded the America First Legal Foundation to counter the work of the ACLU. Miller is unwelcome among all 12 Tribes, but has a seat at the table in Trump’s big tent of sycophants.

Some of these figures contributed to the FC PAC, which placed the Kamala Harris pro-Israel billboards in Dearborn, MI, and the pro-Palestinian billboards in Jewish enclaves of New York and Pennsylvania. They created ads allegedly on behalf of the Harris campaign, which was a brazen legal violation, but so what?  Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to entertain any form of ceasefire or truce in Gaza was a brutal form of election interference in the US, since he knew that any progress would reflect well on Biden and Harris. Now with Trump back in power, Bibi has successfully inverted the US-Israeli benefactor-client state relationship, and is comfortable dictating his agenda for Trump to follow, as Vladimir Putin does.

 Each of Trump’s picks to head Cabinet and agency positions has been calculated to inflict maximum chaos, including appointing Evangelical Zionist Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel. This discussion inevitably circles back to the question of why far-right Jews so desperately embrace Evangelical Zionism, when its ultimate intent is to erase Jews from planet Earth, either by conversion or eternal damnation. But the rich Jews such as Ms. Adelson and Kushner and company ignore that pesky inconvenience. Now for the wild card:

For many, the struggle to reconcile political beliefs with our Jewish faith is complex. As we navigate the current political landscape, it is important to abide by the teachings of our sacred scrolls and faith. This means applying what we’ve learned from those sources every day; rather than mouthing prayers and rituals without one’s heart involved. It means living our Jewish values, “walking the walk,” and standing firm against today’s political forces, which seek to undermine democracy, justice, and the rights of marginalized and oppressed people. Trump’s dark vision and agenda, and the wealthy Jews enabling his cruel and dangerous policies; bring a perilous dilemma for American Jews. We must be vigilant, and resist complicity, to safeguard and act out the values that define us as a people. We often think of ourselves as special people with a special victimhood. When we become involved in a primitive gang mentality that hurts other people, we cede any “high ground” that comes along form our victimhood. Israel as a nation under Likud’s leadership has ceded that high ground. American Jews must resist the seduction by Trump and his wealthy Jewish enablers to go along. Some of America’s Jewish leaders are supporting America’s transition away from Liberal Democracy, toward Christian Nationalism with a deeply Fascist twist. We’re supposed to be better than that.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

The Economic Times: “From Ivanka’s husband to Howard Lutnick, how key Jewish leaders are shaping Trump’s inner circle”

Dear President Harring, Provost Furge and Professor Dowd:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the announcement by Muhlenberg College that it intends to terminate Dr. Maura Finkelstein, a tenured member of the college’s faculty, because of an Instagram post that she had reposted. Even if some people may find the post objectionable, we believe that Professor Finkelstein’s reposting is protected by the First Amendment and by the principles of academic freedom. It cannot reasonably be construed as a violation of Muhlenberg College’s equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policy or justify her termination.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

Dr. Finkelstein is a cultural anthropologist whose research has addressed multiple geographies and theoretical realms. Her first book, The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai, charted the experiences of textile mill workers in the city of Mumbai. She is currently at work on a second book about equine-assisted therapy. Her scholarship and pedagogy have also engaged a range of issues relating to Palestine/Israel; her teaching includes a course on Palestine and she has published peer-reviewed work on her experiences teaching this material.

In the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 assault on Israel, Professor Finkelstein was subjected to intense attacks as a result of the criticism of Israel and of Zionism that she expressed in published work, academic forums and social media posts. Among other things, a number of donors to and alumni of Muhlenberg College circulated a petition demanding her removal from her tenured position. In January 2024 Professor Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave after reposting someone else’s Instagram post which was critical of Zionism and Zionists. The Muhlenberg College administration subsequently claimed that Professor Finkelstein’s reposting had violated its equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policy.

An outside firm hired by the college to investigate the case determined that Professor Finkelstein’s Instagram post had not constituted a violation of college policy. However, an ad hoc committee appointed by Muhlenberg’s Title IX office subsequently reversed this determination, without specifying the grounds for its decision. In late May 2024 Professor Finkelstein was informed that the college intended to terminate her for cause, because her Instagram post allegedly “met the standard for online discrimination and harassment involving hateful speech. It was severe and objectively offensive, and it denies or limits the ability to participate in the College’s programs.” She has appealed and is awaiting the decision of the college’s Faculty, Personnel and Policies Committee.

We note that Muhlenberg College has declared that it “endorses the robust, stimulating and thought-provoking exchange of ideas, which requires in-depth and complex educational experiences as well as the space for divergent perspectives.” We further note that neither college policy nor federal law defines those who adhere to or advocate for particular political ideologies (such as Zionism) as members of legally protected classes. As we have pointed out elsewhere, critiques of Israeli policies or of Zionism must not be conflated with antisemitism, nor should expressions of political opinion be sanctioned.

In these fraught times, college and university leaders have a heightened responsibility to protect the freedom of speech and academic freedom of all members of their communities. This country’s institutions of higher education should be places in which a broad range of perspectives can be expressed, debated and criticized without fear of defamation, harassment or termination. As MESA’s Board of Directors put it in a statement dated 18 December 2023: “We call on university leaders and administrations to affirmatively assert and protect the rights to academic freedom and freedom of speech on their campuses. We reaffirm that there can be no compromise of the right and ability of students, faculty, and staff at universities across North America (and elsewhere) to express their viewpoints free of harassment, intimidation, and threats to their livelihoods and safety.”

We therefore call on you to immediately reverse the decision to terminate Professor Finkelstein and to publicly declare her exonerated of the charges brought against her. We further call on you to vigorously reaffirm your commitment to uphold academic freedom and freedom of speech at Muhlenberg and to actively foster an atmosphere of free academic inquiry and discussion, including the unhindered right of faculty and other members of the campus community to express their political opinions in the public realm.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli
MESA President
Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

The verse “Shema Yisrael” is a testimony to God’s oneness. The same idea is central to Islam. A linguistic connection shows Judaism and Islam share much in common.

( The Times of Israel) – This Shabbat we read the second paragraph of the Shema, and last week we read the first paragraph which opens with a call — arguably the most famous prayer in our liturgy:

Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4).

“The first paragraph of the Shema as written in a Mezuzah or Tefillin), July 2009, Picture taken from a Mezuzah or Tefillin.” Public domain. Wikimedia Commons.

The Masoretes determined that when written in the Torah scroll – 2 letters should have special formatting: The final letter of the first word שמע, ayin, and the final letter of the last word אחד, dalet, are enlarged (see pic). These two enlarged Hebrew letters spell the word עד, or “witness.” By saying the Shema, we are acting as a “witness” testifying to the existence and oneness of the Divine.

This concept of bearing witness to God’s oneness is central to Islam too, and is referred to as the ‘testimony‘ or Shahada (الشَّهَادَةُ).

It is part of the adhān, the call to prayer, and is considered one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

The word ‘Shahada’ derives from the same root of a Biblical monument to peace. When Jacob and Laban–who both felt wronged by the other–decided to let bygones be bygones, they erected a mound of stones as a witness their peace treaty. Laban called it in Aramaic יְגַר שָׂהֲדוּתָא, Yegar Sahaduta (like Shahada), while Jacob called it גַּלְעֵד Gal-ed – both meaning “Mound Witness” (Genesis 31:47).

We see how roots and concepts are shared between Judaism and Islam.

Reprinted from The Times of Israel with the author’s permission.

Another central passage is a paraphrase of the Ten Commandments (5:6-21). Differences between the original formulation and the one we read this Sabbath constitute fertile ground for interpretation and commentary. This week, we read about the universal meaning of the commandments: “Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, ‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people’” (4:6). This highlights a crucial obligation bestowed on the Jews with respect to the rest of humanity: to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy people” (Exodus 19:6). There is nothing genetic or innate in this; only proper values and behavior would be valued by others.

Conversely, those Jews who violate these values would be abhorred by non-Jews and Jews alike. These violations are particularly grievous if they occur in the Land of Holiness, which is the proper translation of ארץ הקודש, usually referred to as “the Holy Land.” There are degrees of holiness: Jerusalem has more of it, and the Temple Mount (or Haram Al-Sharif in Arabic) is endowed with even more (Mishnah Kelim, ch. 1). This is why halacha, Jewish legal tradition, forbids Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. While a place of holiness does not make humans holy, humans may indeed desecrate it, including the Land of Holiness.

Yet, some Israeli politicians make a point of ascending the Temple Mount; this is how Ariel Sharon provoked the Second Intifada in 2000. While Sharon was not an observant Jew, those who do it nowadays observe Jewish rituals and are graduates of religious schools. They have been roundly denounced by those who remain loyal to traditional Judaism, especially because such provocative acts often lead to bloodshed. Jewish tradition affirms that the First Temple was destroyed because of three transgressions committed by the Israelites, one of them being bloodshed.

One may wonder how outwardly religious Jews can engage in such explicitly forbidden acts. What explains this is that they follow a religion that is “new and improved”; they call it דתי לאמי, National Judaism. It combines traditional practices with a commitment to Zionism, even though our weekly reading reminds us: “You shall have no other gods beside Me” (5:7). Followers of the new religion have transformed this political movement, developed mostly by atheists and agnostics, into a religious belief, overriding quite a few fundamental commandments, including “You shall not murder” (5:17), repeated in this week’s reading. Talmudic rabbis give a sharp definition of such behavior: כל ת”ח שאין בו דעת נבלה טובה הימנו, “any Torah scholar who has not internalized what he learns is worse than a carcass” (Vayikra Rabbah 1:15).

According to Jewish tradition, bloodshed led not only to the destruction of the temple built by King Solomon but also to the first exile. Moreover, this outcome is made explicit in this week’s reading: “I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you that you shall soon perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess; you shall not long endure in it but shall be utterly wiped out” (Deuteronomy 4:26).

This week marks the end of a mourning period preceding the 9th of Av, which commemorates numerous tragedies experienced by Jews. These include the destruction of the two Jerusalem temples, the expulsion from Spain, and the beginning of the First World War, which eventually led to the Second World War and the Nazi genocide.

The passage from the Prophets (haftarah) read after the weekly portion of the Pentateuch reflects a sense of relief and hope, suggesting that the worst is behind us.* This haftarah is usually referred to as “Comfort, oh comfort My people,” which is the first verse of Chapter 40 in Isaiah. Further on, the text explains one of the reasons to hope for better times. Amid the distress many of us experience, appalled by the disasters brought about by political leaders, it is comforting to be reminded that God “brings potentates to naught, makes rulers of the earth as nothing” (Isaiah 40:23). Let us pray and work to bring this about soon in our times.

—–

* “On Shabbat and holiday mornings, after the Torah is read, another biblical selection is read. Called the haftarah (plural, haftarot), this reading traditionally comes from one of the Prophets. Haftarah comes from the Hebrew root meaning ‘to conclude.'” – Reform Judaism.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Middle East Eye Video: “Israeli rabbis denounce Jewish prayers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque”

Instead of upholding a left-wing agenda and a critical lens, liberal Zionists are a mouthpiece for Israel’s occupation and genocide, writes Yoav Litvin.

( The New Arab ) – Israel’s ongoing genocide is part of a downward spiral for the Zionist project. In the words of acclaimed historian Professor Ilan Pappe: “We are witnessing a historical process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism.”

Yet Zionism’s long-standing settler goals have not only thrived through genocidal aggression masked as “self-defence” with subsequent land grabs as obscene rewards for its adherents but also via its “liberal” flank serving a crucial propaganda role, posturing as benevolent and humanitarian whilst aligned with aims of American imperialism.

Now, confronted with Israel’s failure to achieve its stated goals and international outrage over its barbaric aggression, liberal Zionist propagandists are intensifying efforts to whitewash Zionism’s genocidal criminality. Their aim is to prevent the project’s collapse by shifting from circling the wagons to rehabilitating the liberal Zionist facade, enabling a return to management of the Occupation with periodic “mowing the lawn.”

What is Liberal Zionism?

The liberal wing of Zionism sanitises and revises the movement’s reactionary, settler-colonialist, and white supremacist nature, masking its true strategy and motive of expansionism through apartheid and genocide.

It deceitfully presents Zionism as compatible with human rights, containing a right-to-left political spectrum with democratic and progressive values and a desire for peace and justice. This facade sanctifies a “peace process” of futile negotiations, while Israeli bulldozers and contractors continue to colonise Palestinian land, marketed in the US at Zionist land sales in synagogues.

Zionism’s liberal propaganda apparatus presents Israeli and Palestinian narratives as parallel truths, duplicitously portraying both peoples as victims with legitimate claims that require lengthy negotiations and concessions. This revisionist narrative equates Israeli settler colonialist aggressors, backed by the global US hegemon, with their Indigenous Palestinian targets. 

Media and Academia

Liberal Zionist media, NGOs, academia and other organizations have been busy obscuring the events of October 7, as well as Israel’s subsequent deceit, including atrocity propaganda and the Hannibal Directive.

They portray Zionist genocide as a trait of an “extreme” form of Zionism, scapegoating Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition as an anomaly rather than acknowledging it as an inherent aspect of the eliminationist project. Additionally, they suggest that by ousting Netanyahu, Zionism could revert to an acceptable trajectory.

Subject to military oversight and censorship under Israel’s “democratic” laws, Haaretz, Israel’s longest-running newspaper and a bastion of liberal Zionism, has engaged in atrocity propaganda, served as a stenography service for political and military agendas, including targeting hospitals in the Gaza Strip, alongside Islamophobic rants which conflate Zionism and Judaism, and attempts to whitewash war crimes such as looting.

“In contrast to their portrayal as aligned with humanitarian and leftist values, liberal Zionists sanitise, justify, sustain, and gatekeep the Zionist project”

Haaretz and its editorial board claim to advocate for “left-wing” and “liberal” agendas, though in fact they promote civil liberties for the privileged class (Zionists) and refuse to address the core white supremacist nature of Zionism, which has terrorised Indigenous Palestinians for over seven decades.

Indeed, anti-Zionist writers, other than a token couple of regular columnists, stand no chance of being published there. Similarly, Israel bars participation of parties in its elections if they negate “the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” clearly outlining the boundaries of acceptable debate.

Israeli academia has also served Israel’s reactionary Zionist agenda. In her recently published book, Towers of Ivory and Steel (Verso, 2024), Maya Wind lays out the case against Israeli academia and universities as embodying the apartheid typical of Israeli society and tools of Zionist settler colonialism and ongoing oppression of Palestinian people.

To this end, Israeli universities and legal scholars frequently collaborate with the Israeli military, legitimising Zionist atrocities and collective punishment of Palestinians, while developing and marketing police and military methodologies and weaponry intended for export.

Well-known liberal Zionists, including politicians, such as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Yair Golan and former Chief of Shin Bet Ami Ayalon, and academics such as Yuval Noah Harari have all stepped up to the Zionist plate, regurgitating claims of guilt on “both sides” of “the conflict,” amongst other liberal Zionist canards.

The new political movement, Standing Together, exemplifies efforts to normalise the liberal Zionist framework. Consistently strengthening the conflation of Zionism with Judaism, Standing Together blames “extremists on both sides,” recently with homophobic graphics.

As stated by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: “By trying to paint Israel as a tolerant, diverse, and normal state, and focusing on “hatred” rather than oppression as the problem, this organisation is intellectually dishonest and outright complicit. It is serving a key role in Israel’s international propaganda strategy at this time.”

Within our lifetime

Popular protest in a democracy is aimed at producing political pressure on elected representatives to create substantial change in policy. Protest is typically effective if those protesting have sufficient power to vote the target of the protest out.

Recently, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a Palestinian-led community organisation in New York City since 2015, faced strong opposition from liberal Zionists, progressives, and Democratic Party loyalists.

They protested at a rally featuring progressive Congressmembers Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez, and Sanders for their continued support of the Biden administration, demanding “pro-Palestinian” politicians: (i) rescind endorsement of Biden; (ii) declare anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and; (iii) defend Palestinian right to resist. Following WOL’s protest Nerdeen Kiswani, an organiser at WOL said: “Our action accomplished the goal of confronting the hypocrisy within the Democratic Party and not allowing the demonization of those fighting against genocide to be normalised.”

Haaretz critiqued WOL’s protest with typical liberal Zionist talking points, smearing them as a “hard-line group,” simply for reiterating the Palestinian right of self-defence in all forms against occupation as established by international law, echoing critique against the group for rightfully demanding accountability from their elected representatives.

Haaretz’s gatekeeping aligns with recent findings showing wide-ranging Israeli government efforts to shape US discourse around the genocide in Gaza.

In contrast to their portrayal as aligned with humanitarian and leftist values, liberal Zionists sanitise, justify, sustain, and gatekeep the Zionist project. Media, academia, and political figures within the liberal Zionist sphere are complicit in advancing Zionist agendas and silencing dissent. 

To effectively halt ongoing aggression and the genocide of the Palestinian people, and in line with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) it is crucial to recognise liberal Zionists who act as agents for the Israeli regime and are reactionary proponents of Zionism and to advocate for their boycott, divestment, and sanction.

Reprinted from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

Since October 2023, American Jews have been engaged in an intense, fractious debate over Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.

Media reports say that American Jews are experiencing “the great rupture,” widening “rifts,” and stand at a “moral, political crossroads.”

While most American Jews remain broadly supportive of Israel, others have protested vigorously against U.S. support for Israel and are demanding a cease-fire in the Gaza war. They carry signs saying “Not in Our Name.”

Their slogan highlights the fact that American foreign aid to Israel has long relied on the support of American Jews. Unqualified U.S. support for Israel was built, in part, on the promise that Israel kept American Jews – and all Jews – safe, especially after the Holocaust.

But American Jews have never been entirely unified in their support for Israel or in their visions of what role Israel and Palestine should play in American Jewish life.

No consensus

My new book, “The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism,” analyzes a century of debates among American Jews over Zionism and Israel.

My account begins in 1885, when elite Reform Jews, with a goal of full integration in Jim Crow America, composed the Pittsburgh Platform, which rejected Jewish nationalism out of fear that it would make them targets of antisemitic accusations of dual loyalty.

Two years later, Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl founded the modern Zionist movement, relying on European powers for support for a modern Jewish state.

The genocide of Europe’s Jewish population in the Holocaust fundamentally altered American Jews’ perspectives on Zionism.

Many believed that only a Jewish national homeland in what was then Palestine could prevent another genocide. Others insisted that the lessons of the Holocaust meant that Jews must not contribute to making refugees of another group of people: the Palestinians who were then living on the land.

The Majority Report with Sam Seder Video: “Jewish Voice For Peace Grows In North Carolina ”

There were other issues that contributed to a new understanding of Zionism in the 1950s and 1960s within American Jewish communities. Among them: the Nakba, which was the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 founding of Israel; Israel’s treatment of immigrant Jews from the Arab and Muslim world known as Mizrahi Jews; and the rise in Israel’s militarism.

Across the 20th century, mainstream Jewish leaders manufactured an American Jewish so-called consensus on Zionism and Israel, in part by silencing American Jewish critics of Zionism.

From the late 1940s through 1961, journalist William Zukerman edited The Jewish Newsletter, a publication that captured some of the voices of Jewish dissent from Zionism, including his own. He reported on Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians and documented how American Jewish funds fueled Israel’s military campaigns instead of supporting vibrant American Jewish communities.

Because Zukerman dared to publish this criticism, he faced campaigns of steep resistance, eventually losing funding and support from Jewish communal organizations.

Anxious that Zukerman’s dissent would cause “increasing trouble” for American support for Israel, Israeli diplomats wrote to American Jewish leaders, and together they convinced some Jewish journalists to exclude Zukerman’s writings from their publications.

Liberation movements, American Jews and Zionism

Into the 1960s, as mainstream Jewish leaders emphasized the urgency of Jewish unity on Israel and Zionism and showed growing intolerance for dissent, anti-colonialist activists gained momentum across the world. From 1948 through 1966, Israel held all Palestinians citizens under martial law, limiting their movement and access to opportunities and resources. Across the 1950s, Israel excluded Palestinian workers from the Histadrut, the state’s largest labor union federation.

Activists allied with the cause of Palestinian rights noted Israel’s alliance with colonial power France during the Algerian war of independence from 1954 to 1962 and criticized Israel as an occupier after the 1967 war. They spoke, too, of Israel’s growing alliance with apartheid South Africa in the 1970s.

Black and Arab leaders in the U.S. taught within, and learned from, these anti-colonial movements. Civil rights and anti-war activists offered new perspectives to debates over Israel and Zionism.

Raised in a liberal Zionist family, student Marty Blatt was learning to fight for justice. Blatt was born in 1951 in Brooklyn, New York. His grandfather had died in a Nazi prison camp. In 1970, he joined the anti-war movement at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“The Vietnam war was a horrible injustice,” Blatt said. From the movement and from members of the Israeli left, he learned that “Israel/Palestine was another great injustice.”

With no access to the history of Palestinians in school, at home or at the synogogue, young American Jews like Blatt who joined the civil rights and anti-war movements learned these lessons for the first time. When they then criticized Israel and American Zionism, they, too, met with hostility from the mainstream Jewish world.

Blatt sought to teach his fellow students at Tufts with a course in 1973 titled Zionism Reconsidered. In it, he taught the history of Zionism, Palestinian resistance and Israel’s Cold War alliance with the United States. He taught students that anti-Zionism was not antisemitism.

On March 13, 1973, in the midst of the semester, members of the Jewish Defense League, a far-right, anti-Arab, Jewish nationalist group founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane,disrupted Blatt’s class. They called it an “anti-Jewish outrage” and passed out a flyer that read, “Not since Germany in the days of Hitler has any university dared to offer a course presenting a one-sided view of any national movement.”

Boston-area Jewish leaders urged community members to write to Tufts leadership to shut down Blatt’s class. These letters used apocalyptic language to describe the damage wrought by his course, likening it to the destruction of the Jewish people. During this controversy, Blatt picked up the phone one day to hear someone who clearly knew his family history in the Holocaust tell him: “Your parents should not have been saved.”

An article about Blatt and his course in Boston’s Jewish Advocate was headlined “Tufts Anti-Zionist Course Seen as Abuse of Academic Freedom.” Though Tufts stood behind Blatt’s right to teach the class for another term, which it still touts on the university website, angry responses to the class appeared in community forums for years.

Divided on campus and beyond

In the current moment, college campuses have been riven with debates over the boundaries between student safety and free speech and whether criticism of Israel constitutes antisemitism.

Young Jews dismayed by the unconditional Zionist agenda of Jewish campus organization Hillel and who founded Open Hillel in 2013 are now active in Gaza protests as “Judaism on Our Own Terms.” They might be surprised to learn that in late 1972, even before his course began, Blatt and others founded the Tufts Hillel Non-Zionist Caucus. Hillel subsequently expelled them from the organization.

For over a century, some American Jews have modeled the idea that unqualified support for Israel and Zionism was “not in our name.” They prioritized justice as a Jewish value and were motivated not by self-hatred or antisemitism but by abiding commitments to human rights and to Jewish safety and community.

Today’s activists protesting over the devastation in Gaza are testing the threshold of dissent and the limits of free speech and academic freedom. They embrace what they view as more just visions of Israel and Palestine and more inclusive visions of an American Jewish community, one with space for dissent and earnest conversations about Israel and Zionism, and one in which Jews stand in solidarity with groups working for justice in Palestine, Israel and around the world.

Marjorie N. Feld, Professor of History and Society, Babson College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.