DOCSLIB.ORG

The Argumentative Jew the Jewish Tradition Is a Long and Great Challenge to the Consensualist Mentality

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Argumentative Jew the Jewish Tradition Is a Long and Great Challenge to the Consensualist Mentality JEWISH REVIEW of BOOKS CONFERENCE COMPANION SPECIAL EDITION NOVEMBER 2016 1 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Special Edition JEWISH REVIEW of BOOKS CONFERENCE COMPANION November 2016 JRB JEWISH REVIEW BOOKS Thank you to the JRB Society for helping support the only magazine dedicated to discussing Jewish books and ideas at the highest intellectual level. Chairman’s Council Blavatnik Family Foundation Publication Committee Marilyn and Michael Fedak • Ahuva and Martin J. Gross Susan and Roger Hertog • Roy J. Katsovicz The Lauder Foundation–Leonard & Judy Lauder Fund Tina & Steven Price Charitable Foundation • Pamela and George Rohr Dan Senor • Paul E. Singer Editors’ Circle Ann and Kenneth J. Bialkin/Bialkin Family Foundation Buzzy Geduld • Ben Heller • Paul Isaac • Jacobson Family Foundation Sandra Earl Mintz • Pam and Scott Schafler • Allen K. Schwartz Friend Clifford Asness • Norman Benzaquen • Judy and Howard Berkowitz Meredith Berkman and Daniel Mintz • Sara Berman Sarah Biser and Robert Kravitz • Roberta and Stanley Bogen Charles C. Cahn • Lois Chiles and Richard Gilder • Janet Doerflinger Charlene and Pierre Eilian • Karen and David Eisner Michelle Friedman and Benjamin Belfer • Barbara and Stephen Friedman Maggi and Matthew Goldstein • Tamar and Eric Goldstein Joan and Eugene Kalkin • Seth Kaller • Shelly and Michael Kassen Edward W. Kerson • George Klein • Deborah M. and Steven C. Kleinman Carole and Winston Kulok • Ruth and Sid Lapidus • Lisa and Michael Leffell Carol and Jerry Levin • Cheryl and Glen S. Lewy/Lewy Family Foundation Nathan Lindenbaum • Ira A. Lipman • Daniel Loeb • Nancy and Morris W. Offit The Pechter Foundation • Daniel Reingold/The Hebrew Home at Riverdale Amy C. Roth • David Schimel • Dr. Larry and Betty Schneck • Daniel Shuchman Sydney and Stanley Shuman • Seth M. Siegel • Diane and Thomas Smith Judy and Michael Steinhardt • David P. Stone • Harvey Stone Sandra Stotsky • Ina and Jim Strauss • Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Daria and Eric Wallach • Sue Ann Weinberg • David Werber • Lawrence Zuriff To learn more about the JRB Society, please contact Lori Dorr at [email protected] or 212-796-1665 Malka Groden at [email protected] or 646-218-9026. As of October 31, 2016 JEWISH REVIEW November 2016 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com CONFERENCE COMPANION 4 Abraham Socher Welcome to Our 2nd Annual Conference 5 Allan Arkush A Mechitza, the Mufti, and the Beginnings of the Arab-Israeli Conflict In his latest book, Hillel Cohen offers an analysis of the Arab-Jewish violence of 1929 that goes very much against the grain of the usual Zionist narrative and even the non-partisan historical research concerning this period. 9 Eric Cohen The Jewish Turn of Norman Podhoretz Thomas L. Jeffers’ biography of Norman Podhoretz charts his rise from a young voice of the anti-Communist left to a leading neoconservative and American Zionist. 13 Moshe Halbertal At the Threshold of Forgiveness: A Study of Law and Narrative in the Talmud In the season of repentance, it is not only the laws of the rabbis, but their stories as well, that teach us how—and how not—to forgive. 16 Shai Held Wonder and Indignation: Abraham's Uneasy Faith A famous midrash describes Abraham’s encounter with an illuminated palace, or was it a burning palace? 19 Dara Horn The Vanishing Point An exhibit explores the vanished world and unseen photographs of Roman Vishniac. 26 Amy Newman Smith A Spy's Life Sylvia Rafael: The Life and Death of a Mossad Spy opens not with an intrepid secret agent about to pull off a bold maneuver, as books with such titles usually do, but with nine men gathered around a table in 1977, studying a picture of an Israeli agent. 29 Meir Soloveichik Irving Kristol, Edmund Burke, and the Rabbis Irving Kristol started off as a neo-Trotskyite and famously became the “godfather of neoconservatism.” But his idiosyncratic “neo-Orthodoxy” lasted a lifetime. 33 Joseph H.H. Weiler Discrimination and Identity in London: The Jewish Free School Case How Britain’s highest court misunderstands Judaism. 36 Leon Wieseltier The Argumentative Jew The Jewish tradition is a long and great challenge to the consensualist mentality. 39 Ruth R. Wisse Coming with a Lampoon Jacobson is a world master of the art of disturbing comedy and each new work of his advances the genre—his novel J by a giant step. 43 Abraham Socher How the Baby Got Its Philtrum The idea of learning as a recovery of what we once possessed is what makes Bogart’s bubbe mayse, and ours, so memorable: We can all touch that little hollow and feel the impress of forgotten knowledge. On the cover: Simone Weil in the School of Yavne. Illustration by Mark Anderson. November 6, 2016 5 Cheshvan 5777 Dear Reader, Welcome to the Jewish Review of Books’ 2nd annual conference. As at our first conference last year, our aim today is to bring the pages of the JRB—its brilliant, accessible scholarship; trenchant criticism; and deep delight in the riches of Judaism and Jewish culture—to life today, here at the Yeshiva University Museum. Last year, we bound up 10 of our favorite articles from the first five years of the magazine to create readers for the conference participants—they were so popular we had to print more of them after the conference. This reader goes to 11 favorite pieces, including essays from seven of today’s speakers, plus the editors and our publisher. In these pages, you’ll find some of the very finest Jewish writers, scholars, and thinkers illuminating everything from classical biblical and talmudic texts to American Jewish life, Israeli political history, and the latest novel. I know that you will enjoy them, but I also know that you will understand that they are about more than literary pleasure—they are the continuation of a great conversation that has been going on now for more than 3,000 years. Since our first issue in the spring of 2010, the Jewish Review of Books has become arguably the premier venue for accessible, serious (but often witty) discussion of Judaism, Jewish life, and Jewish culture in English. We’ve built both a sterling reputation and a substantial subscriber base of serious Jewish readers advertisers are eager to reach. Nonetheless, our work would not be possible without the generous support of readers like you. Speaking personally, these last six-plus years have been the greatest intellectual adventure of my life. Much more importantly, the contributors to this magazine have also contributed to the Jewish people, whose success, perhaps uniquely, depends upon historical self-awareness, great books, and great ideas. On behalf of the Jewish Review of Books and its great sponsor, The Tikvah Fund, I thank you for your support. Sincerely, Abraham Socher Editor 4 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Conference Companion A Mechitza, the Mufti, and the Beginnings of the Arab-Israeli Conflict BY ALLAN ARKUSH Spring 2016 children, and perhaps by both. We have, as Cohen tells us, Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 two different and not necessarily mutually exclusive ac- by Hillel Cohen counts of what happened. Brandeis University Press, 312 pp., $29.95 In another book, these episodes might have served as unsettling reminders that the Jews were once at the mercy of anti-Semitic mobs not only in the diaspora but in the Land of Israel itself. They might have supplied evidence of n one of the more chilling testimonies cited in Hillel the necessity of a Jewish state as well as an explanation of Cohen’s account of the 1929 riots in Palestine, an el- derly Jewish survivor recalls how his mother had tried Ito shelter him when he was five years old from a rampaging Cohen’s penchant for highlighting the Arab mob in what looked like the safety of a friend’s home Jews’ major—if shared—culpability for in Safed. But then: what took place in 1929 raises questions The Arabs threw hundreds of stones at the house, at about his underlying convictions. the windows and shutters. They beat on the doors and shutters with huge clubs and cast blazing torches the emergence of Palestinian-born men capable of leading through the windows. The house began to burn. The the struggle to establish and preserve it. In Hillel Cohen’s ac- shutters, curtains, and even my mother’s and sister’s count, however, they represent the deplorable but inevitable nightgowns began to go up in flames. consequences of the intrusion of the Zionist movement into an area where it was unwelcome and where it had no clear The teller of this tale, Yisrael Tal, narrowly escaped the siege right to be: “As the Arabs saw it, in the summer of 1929 they (together with the other members of his family) and grew killed not their Jewish neighbors, but rather enemies who up to become first a British soldier and then a very distin- were seeking to conquer their land.” guished Israeli general. He was also, as Cohen points out, Cohen’s analysis of the situation in 1929 goes very much “the father of the Merkava tank.” against the grain of the usual Zionist narrative and even the “Talik” was by no means the only leading figure in the non-partisan historical research concerning this period. Israeli Army who had such a boyhood experience, or a worse There, the emphasis is usually on the way in which the ri- one, in August of 1929. The future general Rehavam (“Ghan- ots at the very end of the 1920s constituted a rather abrupt di”) Ze’evi, living in Jerusalem, saw his first corpse that year, departure from the peaceful conditions that had prevailed one of the victims of an attack in Bayit VeGan.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • M E O R O T a Forum of Modern Orthodox Discourse (Formerly Edah Journal)
    M e o r o t A Forum of Modern Orthodox Discourse (formerly Edah Journal) Tishrei 5770 Special Edition on Modern Orthodox Education CONTENTS Editor’s Introduction to Special Tishrei 5770 Edition Nathaniel Helfgot SYMPOSIUM On Modern Orthodox Day School Education Scot A. Berman, Todd Berman, Shlomo (Myles) Brody, Yitzchak Etshalom,Yoel Finkelman, David Flatto Zvi Grumet, Naftali Harcsztark, Rivka Kahan, Miriam Reisler, Jeremy Savitsky ARTICLES What Should a Yeshiva High School Graduate Know, Value and Be Able to Do? Moshe Sokolow Responses by Jack Bieler, Yaakov Blau, Erica Brown, Aaron Frank, Mark Gottlieb The Economics of Jewish Education The Tuition Hole: How We Dug It and How to Begin Digging Out of It Allen Friedman The Economic Crisis and Jewish Education Saul Zucker Striving for Cognitive Excellence Jack Nahmod To Teach Tsni’ut with Tsni’ut Meorot 7:2 Tishrei 5770 Tamar Biala A Publication of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah REVIEW ESSAY Rabbinical School © 2009 Life Values and Intimacy Education: Health Education for the Jewish School, Yocheved Debow and Anna Woloski-Wruble, eds. Jeffrey Kobrin STATEMENT OF PURPOSE Meorot: A Forum of Modern Orthodox Discourse (formerly The Edah Journal) Statement of Purpose Meorot is a forum for discussion of Orthodox Judaism’s engagement with modernity, published by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. It is the conviction of Meorot that this discourse is vital to nurturing the spiritual and religious experiences of Modern Orthodox Jews. Committed to the norms of halakhah and Torah, Meorot is dedicated
    [Show full text]
  • American Jewish Political Conservatism in Historical Perspective
    AMERICAN JEWISH POLITICAL CONSERVATISM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE JONATHAN D. SARNA "Jews are by nature conservative,"the American-trained British chief rabbi, Joseph H. Hertz, writes in his prayer book, completed during World War II. Hertz explains that "loyalty to the State is ingrained in the Jewish character," and that "in all those countries in which persecution has not embittered their life," Jews "are no more radical than the non­ Jewish members of the social class to which they belong." 1 Hertz's claim surprises us for at least two reasons. First, he attributes Jewish political behavior to "nature" and "ingrained" characteristics, whereas we would surely attribute such behavior to nurture and acquired characteristics. Second, and even more surprising, he considers Jews to be "naturally conservative," whereas the bulk of those who describe Jewish political behavior in the United States assume, if anything, that Jews are "naturally liberal," and, as heirs of the biblical prophets, always have been.2 Hertz's characterization of Jewish politics might be easily explained 3 away on the basis of his having been a well-known apologist , or as a generalization drawn from his experiences in England. There, the Conservative Party enjoyed at various times substantial Jewish support, especially from the Jewish establishment, although the majority of Jews in Hertz's own day actually backed the Labour Party.4 Just to dismiss Hertz on these grounds, however, would be a mistake. For, as we shall see, political conservatism does draw from a deep wellspring of Jewish political philosophy, law, and historical experience. Even in the United States, where traditional Jewish politics was transformed by the Revolu- 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Steinhardt's 1991 Corner of the U.S. Treasury Market
    Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 29, Number 30, August 9, 2002 nightmare of today’s. Some 40% of Brazil’s trillion-dollar domestic public debt is now dollarized. That means that every time the real devalues, Brazil’s debt increases. By Bloomberg News Service’s calculation, every percentage Michael Steinhardt’s point devaluation increases Brazil’s government debt by $1.4 billion. To see the absurdity of the situation, consider 1991 Corner of the that on July 29 alone, the run on the real due to panic about Brazil’s ability to pay its debt, increased Brazil’s debt by a whopping $7.56 billion, without the country receiving a U.S. Treasury Market single loan. by Richard Freeman Capital Controls Now! In this situation, the fixation on getting another $10-20 In 1991, Michael Steinhardt, in coordination with Salomon billion in new money from the IMF is ludicrous. It cannot Brothers, conducted one of the biggest corners of the U.S. solve the problem, even temporarily. And, given the IMF’s Treasury market in U.S. history, turning America’s sovereign conditionality, that all the candidates in the October 2002 debt into a speculative plaything. It was an attack on the sover- Presidential race sign on to any agreement the Cardoso gov- eignty of the United States. ernment might reach with the IMF, a new bailout is not likely Steinhardt is the son of the notorious Sol “Red” Stein- to come quickly, if at all. hardt, a leading figure in the Meyer Lanksy National Crime Brazil’s debt is unpayable, and everyone in the know, Syndicate (see “The Real Scandal: McCain and Lieberman,” knows this, and is planning accordingly.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rebbe and the Yak
    Hillel Halkin on King James: The Harold Bloom Version JEWISH REVIEW Volume 2, Number 3 Fall 2011 $6.95 OF BOOKS Alan Mintz The Rebbe and the Yak Ruth R. Wisse Yehudah Mirsky Adam Kirsch Moshe Halbertal The Faith of Reds On Law & Forgiveness Yehuda Amital Elli Fischer & Shai Secunda Footnote: the Movie! Ruth Gavison The Nation of Israel? Philip Getz Birthright & Diaspora PLUS Did Billie Holiday Sing Yo's Blues? Sermons & Anti-Sermons & MORE Editor Abraham Socher Publisher Eric Cohen The history of America — Senior Contributing Editor one fear, one monster, Allan Arkush Editorial Board at a time Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri “An unexpected guilty pleasure! Poole invites us Leora Batnitzky into an important and enlightening, if disturbing, Ruth Gavison conversation about the very real monsters that Moshe Halbertal inhabit the dark spaces of America’s past.” Hillel Halkin – J. Gordon Melton, Institute for the Study of American Religion Jon D. Levenson Anita Shapira “A well informed, thoughtful, and indeed frightening Michael Walzer angle of vision to a compelling American desire to J. H.H. Weiler be entertained by the grotesque and the horrific.” Leon Wieseltier – Gary Laderman, Emory University Ruth R. Wisse Available in October at fine booksellers everywhere. Steven J. Zipperstein Assistant Editor Philip Getz Art Director Betsy Klarfeld Business Manager baylor university press Lori Dorr baylorpress.com Interns Kif Leswing Arielle Orenstein The Jewish Review of Books (Print ISSN 2153-1978, An eloquent intellectual Online ISSN 2153-1994) is a quarterly publication of ideas and criticism published in Spring, history of the human Summer, Fall, and Winter, by Bee.Ideas, LLC., 745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1400, New York, NY 10151.
    [Show full text]
  • Nexus Conference 2009
    Nexus Conference 2009 Reflections on Man after the End of History Part i . Faith, Death, and Freedom Sunday 6 September 2009 9.15 am — 5.30 pm Muziektheater Amsterdam Speakers Jonathan Sacks - Zainab Al-Suwaij - John Gray Yossi Klein Halevi - Anne Applebaum - Ernst Hirsch Ballin Elisabeth Young-Bruehl - Marc Sageman - Slavoj Žižek - David Modell Ramin Jahanbegloo - Leon Wieseltier - Eva Hoffman - Pierre Audi Charles Rosen - Moshe Halbertal - Nina Khrushcheva Pratap Bhanu Mehta - Tariq Ramadan - John Ralston Saul Karim Wasfi - Ladan Boroumand In cooperation with the Netherlands Opera Attendance at Nexus Conference 2009 We would be happy to welcome you as a member of the audience, but advance reservation of an admission ticket is compulsory. Please register online at our website, www.nexus-instituut.nl, or contact Ms. Ilja Hijink at [email protected]. The conference admission fee is € 75. A reduced rate of € 50 is available for subscribers to the periodical Nexus, who may bring up to three guests for the same reduced rate of € 50. A special youth rate of € 25 will be charged to those under the age of 26, provided they enclose a copy of their identity document with their registration form. The conference fee includes lunch and refreshments during the reception and breaks. Only written cancellations will be accepted. Cancellations received before 21 August 2009 will be free of charge; after that date the full fee will be charged. If you decide to register after 1 September, we would advise you to contact us by telephone to check for availability. The Nexus Conference will be held at the Muziektheater Amsterdam, Amstel 3, Amsterdam (parking and subway station Waterlooplein; please check details on www.muziektheater.nl).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Beginning the Conversation
    NOTES 1 Beginning the Conversation 1. Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Schocken, 1969). 2. John Micklethwait, “In God’s Name: A Special Report on Religion and Public Life,” The Economist, London November 3–9, 2007. 3. Mark Lila, “Earthly Powers,” NYT, April 2, 2006. 4. When we mention the clash of civilizations, we think of either the Spengler battle, or a more benign interplay between cultures in individual lives. For the Spengler battle, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). For a more benign interplay in individual lives, see Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999). 5. Micklethwait, “In God’s Name.” 6. Robert Wuthnow, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). “Interview with Robert Wuthnow” Religion and Ethics Newsweekly April 26, 2002. Episode no. 534 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week534/ rwuthnow.html 7. Wuthnow, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity, 291. 8. Eric Sharpe, “Dialogue,” in Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, The Encyclopedia of Religion, first edition, volume 4 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 345–8. 9. Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald and John Borelli, Interfaith Dialogue: A Catholic View (London: SPCK, 2006). 10. Lily Edelman, Face to Face: A Primer in Dialogue (Washington, DC: B’nai B’rith, Adult Jewish Education, 1967). 11. Ben Zion Bokser, Judaism and the Christian Predicament (New York: Knopf, 1967), 5, 11. 12. Ibid., 375.
    [Show full text]
  • Tikvah Online Courses Courses.Tikvahfund.Org 2018-2019 Courses.Tikvahfund.Org Fall-Winter Courses Available 2017-2018 Now
    TIKVAH ONLINE COURSES COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG 2018-2019 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG FALL-WINTER COURSES AVAILABLE 2017-2018 NOW Daniel Deronda: A Zionist Masterpiece Ruth Wisse Decades before Herzl, George Eliot wrote Daniel Deronda, her great novel of Jewish nationalism. Explore this masterpiece with Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse. here is simply no better book to begin thinking through the imperatives for a national Jewish home than TDaniel Deronda. But it would be a mistake to think the book is simply an argument for a Jewish state in the form of a novel. It is at least as much about the nature of England and the outlook for its future. Some English readers subordinated the importance of the Jewish sections of the novel to the story of English-born Gwendolen Harleth and the issues surrounding her maturation. In fact, Eliot interwove the two plots to demonstrate the interrelated fate of the Jews and the English. She believed that English attitudes toward the Jews reflected and determined the kind of nation England was to be. From her personal experience as a lapsed Christian, George Eliot recognized that modern forces were destabilizing society without necessarily showing citizens how to manage the transformation. If a superior novel can serve as guide to the perplexed, here we have a whole education in a single volume, exploring the strengths and vulnerabilities of English liberalism, the blessings and burdens of love, marriage, and family life, the influences of memory and identity, the manners and mores of a decaying aristocratic culture, and the spir- itual qualities needed for cultural renewal.
    [Show full text]
  • The Watershed Events of 2000
    CCC-Peltz 1 (1-44) 3/12/01 6:47 PM Page 13 1 THE WATERSHED EVENTS OF 2000 Julian Robertson of Tiger Manage- ment and George Soros of Soros Fund Management had long been rec- ognized as the great hedge fund managers. For many years, Soros had been the largest hedge fund manager as determined by assets under management; but in 1998, Robertson’s assets overtook Soros’s. At their peaks, both had assets of about $22 billion. Both men had long and successful track records. Soros started his fund in 1969 and Robertson in 1980. Both evolved into global macro managers—those managers who take advantage of opportunities around the world and invest in a variety of instruments including stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, and futures, and typically take large leveraged positions. By midyear 2000, the situation had changed drastically. Robertson had retired and Soros had significantly changed his organization and fund objectives. TIGER UNRAVELS I met Julian H. Robertson Jr. for the first time in August 1998. We had breakfast in his office on the top floor of 101 Park Avenue. He fit the image of the Southern gentleman that I had heard about so often. Dur- ing the breakfast, he mentioned the problems that he had with Business 13 CCC-Peltz 1 (1-44) 3/12/01 6:47 PM Page 14 14 THE NEW INVESTMENT SUPERSTARS Week. (Business Week wrote an April 1996 cover piece on him called “The Fall of the Wizard of Wall Street.” It focused on his results in 1994 and 1995. The following March, Robertson initiated a libel lawsuit in New York State courts against Business Week; McGraw-Hill, the pub- lisher of the magazine; Gary Weiss, the author of the story; and Stephen Shepherd, the editor of Business Week, seeking to recover $1 billion in damages.
    [Show full text]
  • Assorted Matters,The Valmadonna Broadside
    Assorted Matters Assorted Matters Marc B. Shapiro My next post will take some time to prepare, but there are some other matters that I want to bring to readers’ attention, in particular a few books that I recently received. Due to space considerations, I couldn’t include these in my last post. 1. For those interested in the history of Lithuanian yeshivot, the last few years have been very fruitful. In 2014 Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky’s Ke-Tzur Halamish appeared. This book is a study of the yeshivot from World War I until the destruction of European Jewry. 2015 saw the appearance of Geoffrey D. Claussen’s Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Mussar.[1]In January 2016 Shlomo Tikoshinski’s long- awaited book appeared. Its title isLamdanut, Musar ve- Elitizm: Yeshivat Slobodka me-Lita le-Eretz Yisrael. The book can be purchased here. Eliezer Brodt is also selling the book and a portion of each sale will go to support the efforts of the Seforim Blog, so I also encourage purchasing from him. This outstanding book is full of new information, and Tikoshinski had access to a variety of private archives and letters that help bring to life a world now lost. Lamdanut, Musar ve-Elitizm is also a crucial source in understanding the development of religious life in Eretz Yisrael in the two decades before the creation of the State. When you read about the Slobodka students, and later the students of Chevron, it is impossible not to see how very different the student culture was then from what is found today in haredi yeshivot, including the contemporary Yeshivat Chevron.
    [Show full text]
  • The Neocon,The Messiah, and Cory Booker
    THE NEOCON, THE MESSIAH, AN D CORY BOOKER NSFW6_B-Side_v3ge.indd 3 8/29/13 9:07 AM “ The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression: ‘Let us differentiate’ …between totally different species.” —The Chabad-Lubavitcher Rebbe BY YASHA in its ranks. In the early 1990s, my grandparents, and nurture them Chabad’s passive-aggressive racism in a way that allowed those seeds to LEVINE helped trigger a three-day race riot in #ourish and blossom into the kind of Brooklyn. Earlier this year, a prominent work to which I have dedicated my life. Cory Booker, the Democratic Chabad rabbi mocked victims of “Right now, I am on the streets of candidate for New Jersey Senator, childhood sexual abuse who went Newark, battling what I think is one has been endorsed by the New York public, comparing their sexual abuse to of the most important battles in the Times as the next progressive hope…a “diarrhea” which is “embarrassing but city, in this nation, to try to make the younger, more populist version of Barack it’s nobody’s business.” spirit of God alive and well. As one Obama, a guy who’s not afraid to get Booker’s relationship with the sect of my rabbi friends told me—to try to down and dirty. !e Times’ op-ed goes back to the early ’90s, when he truly bring about, through e$ort and wizards described Booker as a “deeply became an active member of Chabad sweat, or whatever necessary—the unconventional politician,” known for out"ts at Oxford and Yale.
    [Show full text]
  • David Fraser Cowan Phd Thesis
    THE BEST SIN TO COMMIT: A THEOLOGICAL STRATEGY OF NIEBUHRIAN CLASSICAL REALISM TO CHALLENGE THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND NEOCONSERVATIVE ADVANCEMENT OF MANIFEST DESTINY IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY David Fraser Cowan A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St. Andrews 2012 1. Candidate’s declarations: I, David Fraser Cowan hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 80,000 words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in September, 2009 and as a candidate for the degree of PhD in May 2010; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2009 and 2012. 2. Supervisor’s declaration: I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of PhD in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date 7/9/12 signature of supervisor Stephen R. Holmes 3. Permission for electronic publication: In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Oz with Kashua
    MINORIT ARIAN INTERVENTIONS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: READING OZ WITH KASHUA Ari Ofengenden Brandeis University The "other" is never outside or beyond us; it emerges forcefully, within cultural discourse, when we think we speak most intimately and indigenously "between ourselves" (Homi Bhabha) This article attempts to read Amos Oz's celebrated autobiography, A Tale of Love and Darkness , with Sayed Kashua's autobiographical texts Dancing Arabs and Let it be Morning , as well as his television sitcom Arab Labor. Dif- ferences between the two authors are immediately apparent. More than perhaps any other writer, Oz represents the Zionist core of the political and literary establishment in Israel, as his autobiographical novel depicts one of the most important families in the early Israeli intelligentsia. Conversely, Kashua is a Palestinian Israeli and thus part of the most marginalized minority in Israeli society.1 I would like to complicate this picture of center and periphery by bringing out the major writer in Kashua and the minor writer in Oz. It is also my intention to expose the complimentary and reciprocal relations between the positions that they occupy. Thus, the article attempts to argue against a simple one-to-one correspondence between the centrality or marginal ity of an author's political position and the centrality or marginality of his or her literary en- deavors. In addition, both writers mobilize their own minority narrative and ap- peal to the traditional minority position of Judaism to bring about positive trans- formation. Amos Oz inhabits a special place in Hebrew literature. The most influential Hebrew writer in contemporary Israel and the best-selling Israeli author abroad, he is also a very influential political essayist and commentator.
    [Show full text]