Doubting the Story of Exodus

By TERESA WATANABE | LATIMES April 13, 2001 TIMES RELIGION WRITER

It’s one of the greatest stories ever told:

A baby is found in a basket adrift in the Egyptian Nile and is adopted into the pharaoh’s household. He grows up as Moses, rediscovers his roots and leads his enslaved Israelite brethren to freedom after God sends down 10 plagues against Egypt and parts the Red Sea to allow them to escape. They wander for 40 years in the wilderness and, under the leadership of Joshua, conquer the land of Canaan to enter their promised land.

For centuries, the biblical account of the Exodus has been revered as the founding story of the Jewish people, sacred scripture for three world religions and a universal symbol of freedom that has inspired liberation movements around the globe.

But did the Exodus ever actually occur?

On Passover last Sunday, Rabbi David Wolpe raised that provocative question before 2,200 faithful at Sinai Temple in Westwood. He minced no words.

“The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all,” Wolpe told his congregants.

Wolpe’s startling sermon may have seemed blasphemy to some. In fact, however, the rabbi was merely telling his flock what scholars have known for more than a decade. Slowly and often outside wide public purview, archeologists are radically reshaping modern understanding of the Bible. It was time for his people to know about it, Wolpe decided.

After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua’s leadership. To the contrary, the prevailing view is that most of Joshua’s fabled military campaigns never occurred--archeologists have uncovered ash layers and other signs of destruction at the relevant time at only one of the many battlegrounds mentioned in the Bible.

Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan--modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel--whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt--explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say. As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges.

“Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we’ve broken the news very gently,” said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona and one of America’s preeminent archeologists.

Dever’s view is emblematic of a fundamental shift in archeology. Three decades ago as a Christian seminary student, he wrote a paper defending the Exodus and got an A, but “no one would do that today,” he says. The old emphasis on trying to prove the Bible--often in excavations by amateur archeologists funded by religious groups--has given way to more objective professionals aiming to piece together the reality of ancient lifestyles.

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But the modern archeological consensus over the Exodus is just beginning to reach the public. In 1999, an Israeli archeologist, Ze’ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, set off a furor in Israel by writing in a popular magazine that stories of the patriarchs were myths and that neither the Exodus nor Joshua’s conquests ever occurred. In the hottest controversy today, Herzog also argued that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, described as grand and glorious in the Bible, was at best a small tribal kingdom.

In a new book this year, “The Bible Unearthed,” Israeli archeologist Israel Finklestein of Tel Aviv University and archeological journalist Neil Asher Silberman raised similar doubts and offered a new theory about the roots of the Exodus story. The authors argue that the story was written during the time of King Josia of Judah in the 7th century BC--600 years after the Exodus supposedly occurred in 1250 BC--as a political manifesto to unite Israelites against the rival Egyptian empire as both states sought to expand their territory.

Dever argued that the Exodus story was produced for theological reasons: to give an origin and history to a people and distinguish them from others by claiming a divine destiny.

Some scholars, of course, still maintain that the Exodus story is basically factual.

Bryant Wood, director of the Associates for Biblical Research in Maryland, argued that the evidence falls into place if the story is dated back to 1450 BC. He said that indications of destruction around that time at Hazor, Jericho and a site he is excavating that he believes is the biblical city of Ai support accounts of Joshua’s conquests.

He also cited the documented presence of “Asiatic” slaves in Egypt who could have been Israelites, and said they would not have left evidence of their wanderings because they were nomads with no material culture. But Wood said he can’t get his research published in serious archeological journals.

“There’s a definite anti-Bible bias,” Wood said.

The revisionist view, however, is not necessarily publicly popular.

Herzog, Finklestein and others have been attacked for everything from faulty logic to pro-Palestinian political agendas that undermine Israel’s land claims. Dever, a former Protestant minister who converted to Judaism 12 years ago, says he gets “hissed and booed” when he speaks about the lack of evidence for the Exodus, and regularly receives letters and calls offering prayers or telling him he’s headed for hell.

At Sinai Temple, Sunday’s sermon--and a follow-up discussion at Monday’s service--provoked tremendous, and varied, response. Many praised Wolpe for his courage and vision. “It was the best sermon possible, because it is preparing the young generation to understand all the truth about religion,” said Eddia Mirharooni, a Beverly Hills fashion designer.

A few said they were hurt--”I didn’t want to hear this,” one woman said--or even a bit angry. Others said the sermon did nothing to shake their faith that the Exodus story is true.

“Science can always be proven wrong,” said Kalanit Benji, a UCLA undergraduate in psychobiology.

Added Aman Massi, a 60-year-old Los Angeles businessman: “For sure it was true, 100%. If it were not true, how could we follow it for 3,300 years?”

But most congregants, along with secular Jews and several rabbis interviewed, said that whether the Exodus is historically true or not is almost beside the point. The power of the sweeping epic lies in its profound and timeless message about freedom, they say.

The story of liberation from bondage into a promised land has inspired the haunting spirituals of African American slaves, the emancipation and civil rights movements, Latin America’s liberation theology, peasant revolts in Germany, nationalist struggles in South Africa, the American Revolution, even Leninist politics, according to Michael Walzer in the book “Exodus and Revolution.”

Many of Wolpe’s congregants said the story of the Exodus has been personally true for them even if the details are not factual: when they fled the Nazis during World War II, for instance, or, more recently, the Islamic revolution in Iran. Daniel Navid Rastein, an Encino medical professional, said he has always regarded the story as a metaphor for a greater truth: “We all have our own Egypts--we are prisoners of something, either alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, overeating. We have to use [the story] as a way to free ourselves from difficulty and make ourselves a better person.”

Wolpe, Sinai Temple’s senior rabbi, said he decided to deliver the sermon to lead his congregation into a deeper understanding of their faith. On Sunday, he told his flock that questioning the Jewish people’s founding story could be justified for one reason alone: to honor the ancient rabbinical declaration that “You do not serve God if you do not seek truth.”

“I think faith ought not rest on splitting seas,” Wolpe said in an interview. “For a Jew, it should rest on the wonder of God’s world, the marvel of the human soul and the miracle of this small people’s survival through the millennia.”

Next year, the rabbi plans to teach a course on the Bible that he says will “pull no punches” in presenting the latest scholarship questioning the text’s historical basis.

But he and others say that Judaism has also traditionally been more open to nonliteral interpretations of the text than, say, some conservative Christian traditions.

“Among Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews, there is a much greater willingness to see the Torah as an extended metaphor in which truth comes through story and law,” said Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

Among scholars, the case against the Exodus began crystallizing about 13 years ago. That’s when Finklestein, director of Tel Aviv University’s archeology institute, published the first English-language book detailing the results of intensive archeological surveys of what is believed to be the first Israelite settlements in the hilly regions of the West Bank.

The surveys, conducted during the 1970s and 1980s while Israel possessed what are now Palestinian territories, documented a lack of evidence for Joshua’s conquests in the 13th century BC and the indistinguishable nature of pottery, architecture, literary conventions and other cultural details between the Canaanites and the new settlers.

If there was no conquest, no evidence of a massive new settlement of an ethnically distinct people, scholars argue, then the case for a literal reading of Exodus all but collapses. The surveys’ final results were published three years ago.

The settlement research marked the turning point in archeological consensus on the issue, Dever said. It added to previous research that showed that Egypt’s voluminous ancient records contained not one mention of Israelites in the country, although one 1210 BC inscription did mention them in Canaan.

Kadesh Barnea in the east Sinai desert, where the Bible says the fleeing Israelites sojourned, was excavated twice in the 1950s and 1960s and produced no sign of settlement until three centuries after the Exodus was supposed to have occurred. The famous city of Jericho has been excavated several times and was found to have been abandoned during the 13th and 14th centuries BC.

Moreover, specialists in the Hebrew Bible say that the Exodus story is riddled with internal contradictions stemming from the fact that it was spliced together from two or three texts written at different times. One passage in Exodus, for instance, says that the bodies of the pharaoh’s charioteers were found on the shore, while the next verse says they sank to the bottom of the sea.

And some of the story’s features are mythic motifs found in other Near Eastern legends, said Ron Hendel, a professor of Hebrew Bible at UC Berkeley. Stories of babies found in baskets in the water by gods or royalty are common, he said, and half of the 10 plagues fall into a “formulaic genre of catastrophe” found in other Near Eastern texts.

Carol Meyers, a professor specializing in biblical studies and archeology at Duke University, said the ancients never intended their texts to be read literally. “People who try to find scientific explanations for the splitting of the Red Sea are missing the boat in understanding how ancient literature often mixed mythic ideas with historical recollections,” she said. “That wasn’t considered lying or deceit; it was a way to get ideas across.”

Virtually no scholar, for instance, accepts the biblical figure of 600,000 men fleeing Egypt, which would have meant there were a few million people, including women and children. The ancient desert at the time could not support so many nomads, scholars say, and the powerful Egyptian state kept tight security over the area, guarded by fortresses along the way.

Even Orthodox Jewish scholar Lawrence Schiffman said “you’d have to be a bit crazy” to accept that figure. He believes that the account in Joshua of a swift military campaign is less accurate than the Judges account of a gradual takeover of Canaan. But Schiffman, chairman of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, still maintains that a significant number of Israelite slaves fled Egypt for Canaan.

“I’m not arguing that archeology proves the Exodus,” he said. “I’m arguing that archeology allows you, in ambiguity, to reach whatever conclusion you want to.”

Wood argued that the 600,000 figure was mistranslated and the real number amounted to a more plausible 20,000. He also said the early Israelite settlements and their similarity to Canaanite culture could be explained as the result of pastoralists with no material culture moving into a settled farming life and absorbing their neighbors’ pottery styles and other cultural forms.

The scholarly consensus seems to be that the story is a brilliant mix of myth, cultural memories and kernels of historical truth. Perhaps, muses Hendel, a small group of Semites who escaped from Egypt became the “intellectual vanguard of a new nation that called itself Israel,” stressing social justice and freedom.

Whatever the facts of the story, those core values have endured and inspired the world for more than three millenniums--and that, many say, is the point.

“What are the Egypts I need to free myself from? How does the story inspire me in some way to work for the freedom of all?” asked Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben of Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades. “These are the things that matter--not whether we built the pyramids.”

Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

From <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-apr-13-mn-50481-story.html>

Wrestling With the Origins of the Torah

By TERESA WATANABE TIMES STAFF WRITER | March 23, 2002  | LATIMES

A year after Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles ignited an international furor by publicly questioning the biblical story of the Exodus, Jews are still arguing.

This week, five rabbis from each of Judaism’s four major movements came together for the first time in Los Angeles to debate the timeless question of who wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that include Exodus. The rabbis agreed: No one knows.

After that, however, they did what rabbis do famously well. They questioned and questioned, argued and argued over everything from whether God or people wrote the sacred Scripture, whether all of it is historically true and why any of this even matters.

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, a Reconstructionist Jew and president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, quoted one of his confirmation students as saying the question of who wrote the Torah is less important than why it was written. But many of the other rabbis--who were asked to base their discussion on the book “Who Wrote the Bible?”--disagreed.

“The question of revelation, of who wrote the Torah and what happened at Sinai, is the core issue for the Jewish people,” said Conservative Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the rabbinical board, which sponsored the event. “Depending on your answer, it has to inform your Jewish beliefs and practices.”

Reform Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles told the 350 people gathered Wednesday at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino that he could not be a believing Jew if he thought that God had literally dictated the Torah. He said the Scripture contains too many exhortations he rejects: that people suffer because they sin, that homosexuals and rebellious children should be stoned, that slavery and concubinage are permissible.

“If you attribute all of this to God as opposed to human beings, I would feel shackled to a theology that I would reject,” Leder said. He made a distinction between the Torah’s supposed facts, some of which he doubts, and its truth, all of which he said he embraces.

Leder’s remarks drew a sharp dissent from Orthodox Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City.

Muskin said traditionalists believe that God did dictate the Torah to Moses; but they also believe God handed down an oral tradition that eventually became the Talmud to help believers make sense of the written law.

Although the Torah’s literal passages may exhort the stoning of a “rebellious son,” he said, the oral tradition as compiled in the Talmud says the practice “never was and never will be.” The Deuteronomy passages are meant to teach parenting responsibility and how to avoid raising such a child, Muskin said.

“The traditionalist position is not one of blind faith,” he said. But he added that if he did not believe the Torah was divinely authored, there would be no reason for him to observe its laws.

Although Jews have debated the Torah’s origins for 1,500 years, questions of its historicity exploded last Passover, when Wolpe told his congregants that most modern archeologists agreed that the Exodus did not occur precisely as described in the Bible. The bombshell sermon reverberated around the world, prompting more than 1,000 e-mails, letters and calls to Wolpe.

The impact of that single sermon lingers today. Among other things, Diamond said it opened the door for more rabbis to discuss the issue of the Bible’s historicity with their congregants. Although most non-Orthodox rabbis are trained not to view the Bible as literal truth, Diamond said, they did not often present this to their congregants--mainly because, in his words, such sermons were often “duds.”

“People don’t generally come to synagogue to hear rabbis pick apart sacred Scripture,” he said. “They want to be inspired.”

Conservative Rabbi Mimi Wiesel of the University of Judaism said some of her rabbinical students get upset by her textual analysis, complaining that she is taking God out of the Torah. “What is this that makes us afraid?” she asked the crowd. “What would be missing if we said this book is indeed a compilation of humans?”

That is a question that Wolpe himself says he intends to pursue. The rabbi did not attend the Torah discussion but said in an interview that he remains “unrepentant” about his views.

“I believe in the inexhaustible spiritual richness of these stories and the God who inspired them,” said Wolpe, who is Conservative. “But the insistence on their factuality is, at this point in history, just untenable.”

The rabbi, who is just completing a yearlong Bible study on the issues raised by his sermon last year, said he intends to explore, possibly in a book, why the debate touched such raw nerves in people’s spiritual psyches.

“Something very deep and important was touched on in the whole debate,” he said. “It’s the belief that if the historical claims of their faith aren’t entirely factual, the spiritual claims of their faith cannot be true. That’s what I was arguing against.”

He added that he won’t be preaching on the Exodus this Passover, which starts Wednesday evening. Instead, he’ll be pleading for major humanitarian aid for Israel and the mounting toll of victims of the current Mideast violence.

At the Torah event, which was sponsored by KOCHAV, a rabbinical board initiative that promotes trans-denominational programming, the Exodus was not discussed either. Instead, both the rabbis and the small-group discussions focused on the biblical flood story.

At one table, six Conservative members of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, one Reform Jew and two unaffiliated Jews agreed that the story seemed to have at least two authors. Among other things, noted Debby and Norman Frank of Tarzana, one part of the story said God asked for one pair of each creature and another part said seven pairs were called for.

Leder told the crowd that even his 9-year-old daughter, Hannah, knew that God didn’t actually get all those animals on a boat. When she first asked about it, he says, he told her that even if the facts of the story weren’t true, its truth was: the need to assume responsibility for all creatures on Earth.

In remarks after the panel, Muskin said anyone who understands Hebrew would see that the story bears no inconsistencies. The single pair of animals came to the ark, according to the Hebrew, but the seven pairs were taken.

Therefore, he said, Noah took seven pairs and allowed the others to come of their own accord. Somehow, everyone managed to squeeze into the ark.

“Miracles happen,” the bearded and bespectacled rabbi said, shrugging.

It is safe to say they will keep arguing.

Teresa Watanabe

Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

From <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-23-me-torah23-story.html>

Furor over L.A. rabbi David Wolpe's reading of Exodus - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

By Tom Tugend | JTA APRIL 26, 2001

LOS ANGELES, April 26 (JTA) — Passover has passed, but Los Angeles Jews are still heatedly discussing whether the Exodus actually happened.

The controversy, labeled a “hurricane” by the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, was triggered by Rabbi David Wolpe, the spiritual leader of Conservative congregation Sinai Temple and the author of numerous popular books on Judaism.

In three sermons at the beginning and end of Passover, Wolpe examined current research in biblical archaeology and concluded that “virtually every modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

Some of Wolpe’s congregants were shocked, but normally the sermon would have caused only a few ripples within the temple. However, during the latter part of Passover The Los Angeles Times ran a prominent front- page article on biblical archaeology, leading with the Wolpe sermons under the headline, “Doubting the story of the Exodus.”

The reaction was strong.

“Everybody was in shock,” said Orthodox Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City.

Even at liberal congregations, many worshipers asked, “did he have to say it during Passover?”

Wolpe forcefully defended his position.

“It’s a well-known fact that millions of Jews have doubts about the literal veracity of Bible stories. My sermons emphasized that faith is independent of doubt. I wanted the millions of doubting Jews to know that they can still be faithful Jews,” Wolpe said in a statement.

“If scholarly books are written that question the literal veracity of Bible stories, it does not help our credibility to pretend that they don’t exist. By discussing these books, we maintain the Jewish tradition of sustaining faith by seeking truth,” he continued. “Ignoring the books, on the other hand, conveys a message of fear: We are afraid that science will shake our faith. I don’t believe it should, and that is why I spoke out.”

The controversy continues unabated, however. In the current issue of the Jewish Journal, the entire letters to the editor section is taken up by 17 pro-and-con arguments.

Actor Kirk Douglas, who at 83 celebrated his second Bar Mitzvah under Wolpe’s auspices last year, wrote that “Rabbi Wolpe had tremendous courage to stand up and speak about what is essentially a search for truth. That is the highest form of Jewish learning.”

By contrast, Orthodox Rabbi Ari Hier — the son of Simon Wiesenthal Center founder Rabbi Marvin Hier — wrote that “Rabbi Wolpe has chosen Aristotle over Maimonides, theories and scientific method over facts.”

Earlier, author and national talk show host Dennis Prager sharply attacked Wolpe’s thesis in a lengthy article.

“If the Exodus did not occur, there is no Judaism. Judaism stands on two pillars — Creation and Exodus,” Prager wrote. “Judaism no more survives the denial of the Exodus than it does the denial of the Creator.”

In an opposing view, Reform Rabbi Steven Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple argued that “defending a rabbi in the 21st century for saying the Exodus story isn’t factual is like defending him for saying the earth isn’t flat. It’s neither new nor shocking to most of us that the earth is round or that the Torah isn’t a history book dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.”

Wolpe himself re-emphasized his position in a sermon last week, addressing a jammed sanctuary of 1,300 congregants.

“The Torah is about the spiritual truth of the Jewish people, not about particulars,” he said. “Let us be brave together.”

The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.

https://www.jta.org/archive/furor-over-l-a-rabbis-reading-of-exodus

Wrestling With the Origins of the Torah

By TERESA WATANABE TIMES STAFF WRITER | March 23, 2002  | LATIMES

A year after Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles ignited an international furor by publicly questioning the biblical story of the Exodus, Jews are still arguing.

This week, five rabbis from each of Judaism’s four major movements came together for the first time in Los Angeles to debate the timeless question of who wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that include Exodus. The rabbis agreed: No one knows.

After that, however, they did what rabbis do famously well. They questioned and questioned, argued and argued over everything from whether God or people wrote the sacred Scripture, whether all of it is historically true and why any of this even matters.

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, a Reconstructionist Jew and president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, quoted one of his confirmation students as saying the question of who wrote the Torah is less important than why it was written. But many of the other rabbis--who were asked to base their discussion on the book “Who Wrote the Bible?”--disagreed.

“The question of revelation, of who wrote the Torah and what happened at Sinai, is the core issue for the Jewish people,” said Conservative Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the rabbinical board, which sponsored the event. “Depending on your answer, it has to inform your Jewish beliefs and practices.”

Reform Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles told the 350 people gathered Wednesday at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino that he could not be a believing Jew if he thought that God had literally dictated the Torah. He said the Scripture contains too many exhortations he rejects: that people suffer because they sin, that homosexuals and rebellious children should be stoned, that slavery and concubinage are permissible.

“If you attribute all of this to God as opposed to human beings, I would feel shackled to a theology that I would reject,” Leder said. He made a distinction between the Torah’s supposed facts, some of which he doubts, and its truth, all of which he said he embraces.

Leder’s remarks drew a sharp dissent from Orthodox Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City.

Muskin said traditionalists believe that God did dictate the Torah to Moses; but they also believe God handed down an oral tradition that eventually became the Talmud to help believers make sense of the written law.

Although the Torah’s literal passages may exhort the stoning of a “rebellious son,” he said, the oral tradition as compiled in the Talmud says the practice “never was and never will be.” The Deuteronomy passages are meant to teach parenting responsibility and how to avoid raising such a child, Muskin said.

“The traditionalist position is not one of blind faith,” he said. But he added that if he did not believe the Torah was divinely authored, there would be no reason for him to observe its laws.

Although Jews have debated the Torah’s origins for 1,500 years, questions of its historicity exploded last Passover, when Wolpe told his congregants that most modern archeologists agreed that the Exodus did not occur precisely as described in the Bible. The bombshell sermon reverberated around the world, prompting more than 1,000 e-mails, letters and calls to Wolpe.

The impact of that single sermon lingers today. Among other things, Diamond said it opened the door for more rabbis to discuss the issue of the Bible’s historicity with their congregants. Although most non-Orthodox rabbis are trained not to view the Bible as literal truth, Diamond said, they did not often present this to their congregants--mainly because, in his words, such sermons were often “duds.”

“People don’t generally come to synagogue to hear rabbis pick apart sacred Scripture,” he said. “They want to be inspired.”

Conservative Rabbi Mimi Wiesel of the University of Judaism said some of her rabbinical students get upset by her textual analysis, complaining that she is taking God out of the Torah. “What is this that makes us afraid?” she asked the crowd. “What would be missing if we said this book is indeed a compilation of humans?”

That is a question that Wolpe himself says he intends to pursue. The rabbi did not attend the Torah discussion but said in an interview that he remains “unrepentant” about his views.

“I believe in the inexhaustible spiritual richness of these stories and the God who inspired them,” said Wolpe, who is Conservative. “But the insistence on their factuality is, at this point in history, just untenable.”

The rabbi, who is just completing a yearlong Bible study on the issues raised by his sermon last year, said he intends to explore, possibly in a book, why the debate touched such raw nerves in people’s spiritual psyches.

“Something very deep and important was touched on in the whole debate,” he said. “It’s the belief that if the historical claims of their faith aren’t entirely factual, the spiritual claims of their faith cannot be true. That’s what I was arguing against.”

He added that he won’t be preaching on the Exodus this Passover, which starts Wednesday evening. Instead, he’ll be pleading for major humanitarian aid for Israel and the mounting toll of victims of the current Mideast violence.

At the Torah event, which was sponsored by KOCHAV, a rabbinical board initiative that promotes trans-denominational programming, the Exodus was not discussed either. Instead, both the rabbis and the small-group discussions focused on the biblical flood story.

At one table, six Conservative members of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, one Reform Jew and two unaffiliated Jews agreed that the story seemed to have at least two authors. Among other things, noted Debby and Norman Frank of Tarzana, one part of the story said God asked for one pair of each creature and another part said seven pairs were called for.

Leder told the crowd that even his 9-year-old daughter, Hannah, knew that God didn’t actually get all those animals on a boat. When she first asked about it, he says, he told her that even if the facts of the story weren’t true, its truth was: the need to assume responsibility for all creatures on Earth.

In remarks after the panel, Muskin said anyone who understands Hebrew would see that the story bears no inconsistencies. The single pair of animals came to the ark, according to the Hebrew, but the seven pairs were taken.

Therefore, he said, Noah took seven pairs and allowed the others to come of their own accord. Somehow, everyone managed to squeeze into the ark.

“Miracles happen,” the bearded and bespectacled rabbi said, shrugging.

It is safe to say they will keep arguing.

Teresa Watanabe

Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

From <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-23-me-torah23-story.html>

Dear Dean Rakesh Khurana, Harvard College--

CC: Billionaire Plutocrat Harvard Alum Bill Ackman, National Security Advisor ret. Adm. John Kirby, Muslim Indian journalist Hasan Suroor, and Anti-Semantic Hustlers Harvard Law Professors Noah Feldman (Time Mag-New Anti-semitism) Alan Dershowitz (Jeff Epstein attorney & house-guest & defender of multiple child traffickers & Israel co-Sharansky ISGAP propagandist

In deciding to punish students for minor infractions--and reportedly break a deal made with students---Harvard has sunk to standards beneath Attila the Hun.

Let me suggest that Harvard is an illustration of Conrad's Heart of Darkness---the point being there is not a shade of difference between so-called savages and civilized peoples. Let me take this a step further. My Uncle V.S. Naipaul--the only Nobel Laureate in Literature of South Asian heritage—perhaps more out of a possible inferiority complex than he would ever acknowledge had a preoccupation with the "darkness" of the "bush" which he saw as the backwardness and lack of civilization in Chaguanas, Trinidad. 

I know Chaguanas well, and it’s a remarkable place but it is not Oxford and there was no internet during Naipaul’s youth. This is where I believe I have a more neutral lens for seeing the world—not free of bias—but not distorted by British occupation. I had the privilege of growing up in an unremarkable middle-middle-class, cookie-cutter suburban home outside a military base where my parents instilled me with good old-fashioned American values and a belief in our American's Creed about being equal among equals in a society with no caste system or master-race. Whereas my Uncle had hangups about the ‘backwards’ bush,  I can tell you the "Bush" is looking a lot better these days than the so-called civilized 'western' world represented by Harvard. Indeed, I could make the case that the 'periphery' or 'third world' was never "less than" Kipling's civilized 'western' man, which of course is not my original idea since it is the same argument made by Joseph Conrad in his novella The Heart of Darkness. Indeed, the "Cambridge center" of the empire is actually proving to be a genuine heart of darkness; Cruel to students; Callous about adhering to its mission and responsibilities for protecting American education and academic integrity against patron plutocrats who believe their ‘tax planning’ charitable contributions for laundering their oft sullied reputations also buys them the right to say who graduates and who does not.

Naipaul has been criticized for some cutting remarks about Muslims. Allow me to show the very criticisms Naipaul lodged against Muslims in South Asia and Islam in general would have--if Uncle had widened his aperture--been more appropriately applied to Israel and ethno-religious-thin-skinned Zionism, and even more so to cruel, inhumane, barbaric western powers backing their little colonial outpost in Palestine to this very day and to the detriment of peace and security for Jews in Palestine, Arabs, Americans and everybody else! 

My great-uncle is a Nobel Laureate and a Brahmin. I am neither, but I have his grandmother's genetic endowment; and I see with my Uncle's eyes; and have No fear of having my book banned by India (as happened to Uncle)  or Israel or Iran or Florida.  In fact--the best authors are the ones who get banned---Naipaul in India (but not in Trinidad); Hannah Arendt in Israel; and Salman Rushdie in Iran. Like my jail time and torture in GTMO on the Westside (LA County jail), being banned or jailed is merely a rite of passage.

The decision by the Harvard Corporation to deny the graduation of 13 students as reported in the New York Times for alleged trivial infractions smacks of Mullah-mentality and vaudeville rabbinical tearing of robes for the purposes of propping up plutocracy with shameless hypocrisy. The means is by abusing administrative authority to charge, prosecute, and sentence students for absurdities in a manner tantamount to being hauled in front of the Sanhedrin religious court to face charges of Blasphemy. How dare you say Israel is a racist, cruel, terroristic Apartheid regime from its founding and presently is perpetrating a Holocaust in the Holy Land!  Whether you are Jew or non-Jew, we at Harvard Inc. will label your thought-crime and criticism as blasphemy, which the Zion-Con Imams like Law Professors Feldman and Alan (Jeff Epstein-defender) Dershowitz have rebranded the “new anti-semitism.” We all know some Zionist, pouting plutocrats are puffing their billionaire-blowhard chests to demonstrate their dominion over the House of Harvard.

Instead of standing up for American freedoms of speech; freedom to peacefully assembly; and freedom to petition authorities for redress of grievances--What does Harvard do? Call into session the Board Inquisition? So the Ayatollah Ackman is now in charge at Harvard?

Let us apply my uncle's own words [WITH MY APPLICATION TO ISRAEL] and those who reviewed his works on the pages of the New York Times. Out of respect for Islam as a non-terrorist global faith and Muslims as equal people to anybody anywhere on this planet, I offer an excerpt from a 2012 book review on "Censorship in an Age of Freedom" written by Jewish free-speech campaigner Nick Cohen and reviewed by a Muslim journalist Hasan Suroor who deftly demonstrates some Muslims have far thicker skins than Zio-Con billionaires and students; Suroor show stronger support for American freedoms than anybody serving on the Harvard Corporation.The same can be said of the commencement speakers. Quoting from the Times:

“This semester, our freedom of speech and expressions of solidarity became punishable, leaving our graduation uncertain,” Shruthi Kumar, the undergraduate student speaker, said before acknowledging the students who had been barred from graduating.

“Harvard, do you hear us?” she asked, to thunderous applause.

The commencement speaker, Maria Ressa, a veteran journalist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime champion of free speech, also invoked the student protests. “Harvard, you are being tested,” she said. 

In fact, Harvard has failed multiple tests on multiple occasions this past year---each time, succumbing to pressure from patron plutocrats. Each time sacrificing Truth and Reality itself to the Totalitarian Ayatollahs who believe in their divine right to define objective reality. I offer a prescription for Palestine as well. Hard medicine is required for body politic suffering from metastatic tumor that is destroying civil society in Israel, the Americas, and Europe, and now ranks as the greatest single security threat to Jews in Israel and worldwide; to Americans; and to all people on this planet.

Enjoy the quotes below FROM Nobe Laureate in Literature V.S Naipaul re Israel ANN my [SATANIC COMMENTS ON ZIO-CONS IN RED].

--Bryan C. Gobin

(Great-Grandson of Augustus Bharat Gobin, who bought the House for Mr. Biswas and bought the Brahmin Pundit Capildeo out of indentured bondage for his sister Soogie whose grandson would be a literary gift to the largest democracy in global history...BJP & Congress need to place a statue of him in Bombay--just because his words hurt feelings don't mean his words don't matter--they do, and we all know he conveys powerful ideas and astute observations worthy of a great nation).

My website: www.TULPPP.com

Quotes from:

• Review by Hasan Suroor

• Book of Matthew, Conviction of Jesus on Charge of Blasphemy

• Quotes from NYT Reviews of 'uncle' V.S. Naipaul's writings

• [my brief comments bracketed in red]

***

#1 Review by  Hasan Suroor | thehindu |March 3, 2012--You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom is the somewhat self-consciously rhetorical title of a new book by British journalist and free speech campaigner Nick Cohen. Mercifully, nobody has yet called for it to be banned but...in the current climate of intolerance who knows when someone, somewhere might invoke “hurt feelings” to try and suppress it.

And it is this fear (that a writer could end up “offending” someone, somewhere) is what Cohen's book is about:

How in an age of supposedly “unparalleled freedom” and free exchange of ideas, free speech faces a grave threat from intolerant religious and cultural groups on the one hand and stifling pro-rich privacy laws on the other.

So grave is the threat, he argues, that you can actually “end up dead” for simply writing a book.

And it is this fear (that a writer could end up “offending” someone, somewhere) is what Cohen's book is about:

“The traditional opponents of freedom of speech — religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states — are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th,” the book argues.

This is best illustrated by the continuing campaign of harassment and intimidation of Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses , published over 20 years ago.

***

#2 Jesus Faces the Sanhedrin | Book of Matthew | The Interrogation by Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhendrin

And the high priest arose and said to Him, “Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?” 

But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest answered and said to Him, “I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!”

Jesus said to him, “It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his clothes, saying, “He has spoken blasphemy! What further need do we have of witnesses? Look, now you have heard His blasphemy! What do you think?”

[So theatrical & vaudeville-like of high priest Anti-Defamation League Abe Foxman to tear his robes in a fit of revulsion against blasphemous anti-semitism]

From < https://biblehub.com/nkjv/matthew/26.htm>

***#3 Quotes from NYT reviews of V.S. Naipaul's works [And my comments in red]***

“India [ISRAEL] needed a new code, but it had none. There were no rules; and India [Israel] was discovering again that it was cruel and horribly violent. [just as during the Nakba expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians]”

---V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Million Mutinies Now, 1990

***

He argued that Pakistan was the living proof of the damage Islam [Jabotinsky Territorial Maximalist Zionism] could wreak.

"The story of Pakistan [israel] is a terror story actually. It started with a poet [journalist & playwright]  who thought that Muslims [Jews] were so highly evolved that they should have a special place in India [Palestine] for themselves.

"This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant [indigenous Palestinian] populations is terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan. [PALESTINE]"

"VS Naipaul launches attack on Islam," by Fiachra Gibbons, The Guardian, 4 Oct 2001

***

He is now in the grip of a complex entangling vision of what happens in those unfortunate countries that have just toppled out of a tribal past, or freed themselves from colonial rule, but cannot reach the uncertain blessings of modernity. He is obsessed with the shallowness of proclaimed liberations [in a newly self-proclaimed exclusive 'Jewish homeland'] and the low cost of spilling [Palestinian] blood.

---"A Dark Vision" Review By IRVING HOWE, May 13, 1979, A BEND IN THE RIVER By V. S. Naipaul New York Times.

***

In an interview last year, he said that his dark vision of third-world people on the margins of society ''came from living in the bush…It came from a fear of being swallowed up by the bush, and it's a fear I haven't altogether lost. They are the enemies of the civilization I cherish.''

[But to me the Bush in Vietnam and Trinidad and the riverine Gulf Coast deltas are full of life; the 'bush' for me is like the awesome ancient Sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove. The people in the 'bush' are not malignant narcissistic psychopaths who are capable of contemplating destroying fields, pastures, and residential apartments--let alone actually engaging in such crimes against humanity]

In his brief foreword to ''The Return of Eva Peron,'' he spoke of the ''obsessional nature'' of the essays in the book and admitted that his ''themes repeat.'' Those themes have by now become Naipaul trademarks:

third-world revolutionaries who rant about cultural ''authenticity'' [ZIONIST IDENTITY] but who at bottom are really [Hebrew-Holocaust Racketeering & Preying-on-Jewish fear] ''hustlers,''

their heritage [for 2,000 year absentee landlords reassigned title by the divine realtor] a ''bogus past,''

their causes nothing but ''jargon'' and ''borrowed ideas'' and ''sentimental hoax,''

 ['Eretz Israel' aka Manifest Destiny or Lebensraum and South-Africa-Apartheid Democracy and Kipling's White Man's colonial burden and war on indigenous-communist-Islamist-Christian-whatever terrorists]

He has written again and again about the ''frenzy'' that drives third-world people to undo their world and brings them face to face with their own limits and mediocrity.

[which is aptly displayed by the sheer incompetence, cruelty, and 'western' barbarism on display by war criminals slaughtering civilians under the pretense of a 'war on terror' against an invisible army without tanks or artillery or a navy or advanced drones or combat jets]

''Rejection and dependence: it was hard for the half-evolved to break out of the circle.'' And here is one of his favorite themes, the redeemer who leads men into calamity - in this case Iran's Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini: ''Interpreter of God's will, leader of the faithful, he expressed all the confusion of his people and made it appear like glory, like the familiar faith: the confusion of a people of high medieval culture awakening to oil and money, a sense of power and violation, and a knowledge of a great new encircling civilization. That civilization couldn't be mastered. It was to be rejected; at the same time it was to be depended on.''

---Review  Naipauls In Search of Islam | By FOUAD AJAM | October 25, 1981 NewYorkTimes

[this is the imperial cult, the deified personification of the sovereign in Fuhrer Bibi Netenyahu and his Kourt of Klowns & Krooks  (KKK)---Elections are NOT sufficient to cure the evil infecting Israeli culture and its body politic...The country is literally and figuratively bankrupt; a third-world failed state with only trappings of modernity in the form of weapons, security-technology, and delegated relevance as token dependency of a hyper-power and its gangster hanger-on group of ex-colonizers. The prescription--the hard medicine for Zion-Cons--is the reality that there can ONLY be a one-state solution; a demilitarized and deNazified Palestine remade into a constitutional democracy and reconstructed to remedy the scourge of 75 years of apartheid]

  ***

It is Mr. Naipaul's unique achievement to have passed that amount of time in India without meeting a single worthwhile human being. He finds faults in almost everything he sees: the people's habits and their manners, the cities, villages, bureaucracy, railways, army. Even the Taj Mahal is not spared. "The Taj Mahal is exquisite. Transported slab by slab to the United States and reerected, it might be wholly admirable. But in India it is a building tastefully without a function; it is only a despot's monument to a woman not of India, who bore a child every year for fifteen years." What is this supposed to mean? It is at once fine prose and rough nonsense.

---"Unhappy Pilgrim" Review by K. Natwar Singh,  July 11, 1965, V.S. Naipaul's AN AREA OF DARKNESS.. New York Times

[At least the Mughal emperor left the Taj! -- The whole Hebrew origin story is Hustle by the Zio-Cons--Word Up! 

"Build back Better Temples" says Biden--Where is the Hebrew Architectural Record in Jerusalem?]

According to this Harvard account of the destruction of the 2nd Hebrew temple, All that the apparently not-so-handyman ancient Hebrews left behind in the 'monumental-scale' architectural digest are remnants of their destroyed temple footer walls from what I suspect in fact a shoddily constructed temple. Off the top of my head, I can think of no ancient anecdote of the sacking or destruction of a city by means of natural disaster or manmade calamity when almost nothing is left behind.

When the Romans told Yahweh to get out of the way when Romans destroyed the 2nd temple while defeating rebellious Jewish terrorists who did not respect rightful Roman rulers of metro-Jerusalem,

  which did not satisfy Yahweh who said ‘No way’ and went away after Romans destroyed their Temple! Perhaps had pharisees and their amigos not been so busy grifting and peddling inside the temple, they could have focused on maintenance--or learing about engineering from the Romans so the Hebrews could have learned how to do the President Biden "Build Back Better Plan" for crumbling Hebrew infrastructure or for periodically destroyed temples following failed Israelite insurrections!

Hebrew  Engineering of Pyramids? There are some Zio-Cons who claim it was "the Jews" held captive in Egypt who built the pyramids. The historical record of Hebrew engineering suggests otherwise. Ancient civilizaitons all over the world have left behind extraordinary, colossal artifacts that persist to this day even in situations when there is hardly a trace of the creating civilization! survived wars, famines,

And legend has it that the Israelite tribes dispersed…

Why did the tribes never execise their so-called right to return for  2000 years until after the 1880? 

It's not like Palestine was on a lost continent! 20,000 or so Jews (NON-Zio-Cons) resided in Palestine in 1880 and got along just fine with their Palestinian neighbors. Perhaps not trying to rob, steal, cheat, expel, and massacre their neighbors contributed to harmonious relations!

Perhaps European Jews preferred living in Europe? Or were they Lost in the Desert again for 40 years—which is absurd! But let's assume  Moses was a moron unable to follow the Sinai coastline to Gaza and Jaffa. With 39.8 years of 'extra time' on his hands, why did Moses NOT bother to transcribe the ‘oral’ bible (Mishnah)God gave to him after scribbling God's holy words for the ‘written’ bible (Pentateuch)

Did Moses get Carpel tunnel syndrome? Or did he not pack enough papyrus after parting ways with Egypt.

Given that Moses had to rely on Aaron for public speaking, can we assume someone else was relied upon as a scribe to take dictation from God? Surely among 12 tribes wandering in the wilderness there could be found more than one scribe to take notes from the almighty--or from the Almighty's Personal Assistant and "People's" representative. Isn't a bit suspicious that only Moses received memos from Yahweh? 

If you’ve never been to Jerusalem, it’s like Athens without the ruins. What remains of ancient Jerusalem from Hebrew days is some rocks from old walls and other stuff that is indistinguishable from a decorative boulder in your garden. What's left of Hebrew heritage is basically what you'll see driving I-15 through San Bernardino County en route to Vegas. No need to stop in San Bernardino (same land area as Israel) except for gas in Barstow.

The only notable architecture and cultural heritage in Jerusalem is the Church of Sepulchre and Al Aqsa Mosque (stunningly beautiful). Yet the Zio-Cons wish to claim all of Jerusalem for themselves despite having the least claim and the least amount of cultural heritage, which amounts to various piles of rubble from a Flinstone's cartoon episode and their so-so-holy remnant footer wall! The Zio-Cons nevertheless have attempted to run everyone else out of town. They have made much progress in achieving their goals.  

Every civilization—every group forming the Mediterranean cultural mosaic for the past 2,000 years has left its mark in Palestine—from Greek & Roman aqueducts, temples, and roads to Ottoman railroads and ports to Armenian and Maronite churches to various mosques to an overall vibrant culture---but other than a footer wall for a temple destroyed 2,000 years ago, what is the architectural record for the ancient Hebrews whose European cousins now claim all of Palestine, Transjordan, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the Sinai? What did the Zionists bring other than utter destruction to those whose descendants had lived in Palestine for centuries if not longer? The Zionist slogan is “A land without a people for a people without a land,” which is genocidal by definition. In just 75 years, the Zionist colonizers have left their mark in terms of utter destruction of Palestinian civilization. They did not ‘make the desert’ bloom so much as they siphoned off the Jordan River for themselves and denied water to anyone else.”

As for the Taj…..the shocking thing to me when visiting the Taj is that it had No function whatsoever; I considered it a mausoleum memorializing megalomania--with monkeys roaming around…Yet I still felt awestruck by this marvel of engineering, exquisite beauty, and craftsmanship. I was also impressed by the mob of guides which I could not dodge despite my best efforts at pretending to speak some language they didn't speak--No luck--English, Spanish, French, and and…they would find someone who spoke whatever I pretended to speak…I settled on a Persian guide--which proved to be an interesting cultural experience]

---"Unhappy Pilgrim" Review by K. Natwar Singh,  July 11, 1965, V.S. Naipaul's AN AREA OF DARKNESS.. New York Times

It is Mr. Naipaul's unique achievement to have passed that amount of time in India without meeting a single worthwhile human being. He finds faults in almost everything he sees: the people's habits and their manners, the cities, villages, bureaucracy, railways, army. Even the Taj Mahal is not spared. "The Taj Mahal is exquisite. Transported slab by slab to the United States and reerected, it might be wholly admirable. But in India it is a building tastefully without a function; it is only a despot's monument to a woman not of India, who bore a child every year for fifteen years." What is this supposed to mean? It is at once fine prose and rough nonsense.

[At least the Mughal emperor left the Taj! -- The whole Hebrew origin story is Hustle by the Zio-Cons--Word Up! 

"Build back Better Temples" says Biden--Where is the Hebrew Architectural Record in Jerusalem?]

According to this Harvard account of the destruction of the 2nd Hebrew temple, All that the apparently not-so-handyman ancient Hebrews left behind in the 'monumental-scale' architectural digest are remnants of their destroyed temple footer walls from what I suspect in fact a shoddily constructed temple. Off the top of my head, I can think of no ancient anecdote of the sacking or destruction of a city by means of natural disaster or manmade calamity when almost nothing is left behind.

When the Romans told Yahweh to get out of the way when Romans destroyed the 2nd temple while defeating rebellious Jewish terrorists who did not respect rightful Roman rulers of metro-Jerusalem,

  which did not satisfy Yahweh who said ‘No way’ and went away after Romans destroyed their Temple! Perhaps had pharisees and their amigos not been so busy grifting and peddling inside the temple, they could have focused on maintenance--or learing about engineering from the Romans so the Hebrews could have learned how to do the President Biden "Build Back Better Plan" for crumbling Hebrew infrastructure or for periodically destroyed temples following failed Israelite insurrections!

Hebrew  Engineering of Pyramids? There are some Zio-Cons who claim it was "the Jews" held captive in Egypt who built the pyramids. The historical record of Hebrew engineering suggests otherwise. Ancient civilizaitons all over the world have left behind extraordinary, colossal artifacts that persist to this day even in situations when there is hardly a trace of the creating civilization! survived wars, famines,

And legend has it that the Israelite tribes dispersed…

Why did the tribes never execise their so-called right to return for  2000 years until after the 1880? 

It's not like Palestine was on a lost continent! 20,000 or so Jews (NON-Zio-Cons) resided in Palestine in 1880 and got along just fine with their Palestinian neighbors. Perhaps not trying to rob, steal, cheat, expel, and massacre their neighbors contributed to harmonious relations!

Perhaps European Jews preferred living in Europe? Or were they Lost in the Desert again for 40 years—which is absurd! But let's assume  Moses was a moron unable to follow the Sinai coastline to Gaza and Jaffa. With 39.8 years of 'extra time' on his hands, why did Moses NOT bother to transcribe the ‘oral’ bible (Mishnah)God gave to him after scribbling God's holy words for the ‘written’ bible (Pentateuch)

Did Moses get Carpel tunnel syndrome? Or did he not pack enough papyrus after parting ways with Egypt.

Given that Moses had to rely on Aaron for public speaking, can we assume someone else was relied upon as a scribe to take dictation from God? Surely among 12 tribes wandering in the wilderness there could be found more than one scribe to take notes from the almighty--or from the Almighty's Personal Assistant and "People's" representative. Isn't a bit suspicious that only Moses received memos from Yahweh? 

If you’ve never been to Jerusalem, it’s like Athens without the ruins. What remains of ancient Jerusalem from Hebrew days is some rocks from old walls and other stuff that is indistinguishable from a decorative boulder in your garden. What's left of Hebrew heritage is basically what you'll see driving I-15 through San Bernardino County en route to Vegas. No need to stop in San Bernardino (same land area as Israel) except for gas in Barstow.

The only notable architecture and cultural heritage in Jerusalem is the Church of Sepulchre and Al Aqsa Mosque (stunningly beautiful). Yet the Zio-Cons wish to claim all of Jerusalem for themselves despite having the least claim and the least amount of cultural heritage, which amounts to various piles of rubble from a Flinstone's cartoon episode and their so-so-holy remnant footer wall! The Zio-Cons nevertheless have attempted to run everyone else out of town. They have made much progress in achieving their goals.  

Every civilization—every group forming the Mediterranean cultural mosaic for the past 2,000 years has left its mark in Palestine—from Greek & Roman aqueducts, temples, and roads to Ottoman railroads and ports to Armenian and Maronite churches to various mosques to an overall vibrant culture---but other than a footer wall for a temple destroyed 2,000 years ago, what is the architectural record for the ancient Hebrews whose European cousins now claim all of Palestine, Transjordan, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the Sinai? What did the Zionists bring other than utter destruction to those whose descendants had lived in Palestine for centuries if not longer? The Zionist slogan is “A land without a people for a people without a land,” which is genocidal by definition. In just 75 years, the Zionist colonizers have left their mark in terms of utter destruction of Palestinian civilization. They did not ‘make the desert’ bloom so much as they siphoned off the Jordan River for themselves and denied water to anyone else.”

As for the Taj…..the shocking thing to me when visiting the Taj is that it had No function whatsoever; I considered it a mausoleum memorializing megalomania--with monkeys roaming around…Yet I still felt awestruck by this marvel of engineering, exquisite beauty, and craftsmanship. I was also impressed by the mob of guides which I could not dodge despite my best efforts at pretending to speak some language they didn't speak--No luck--English, Spanish, French, and and…they would find someone who spoke whatever I pretended to speak…I settled on a Persian guide--which proved to be an interesting cultural experience]

---"Unhappy Pilgrim" Review by K. Natwar Singh,  July 11, 1965, V.S. Naipaul's AN AREA OF DARKNESS.. New York Times

From <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#sent/WhctKLbFQsDtLgrqKmvFpbrHnBklkvGntHGBRVVlxqkdmbNKHnQRsFWmrtTzJvmwtWZQZRV>

Response to Hamas horror shows the feminist movement has lost its moral compass

October 19, 2023 Flashpoint 95 by Phyllis Chesler | ZIO-CON ISGAP Anti-Semitism Hustler

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D, is an Emerita Professor of Psychology at City University of New York. She is a best-selling author, a legendary feminist leader, and a retired psychotherapist. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious, and human rights campaigns in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Central Asia, and the Far East.

I have pioneered women’s rights for more than 50 years.

Sadly, I must conclude that what was once a diverse and independent-minded movement has become hijacked by a “woke” death cult.

Those American feminists left standing, including the icons among us, primarily favor gender over sex identity; are pro-trans rather than pro-biological-womankind; and are more obsessed with the alleged occupation of a country that has never existed (Palestine, Gaza) than they are with the occupation of female bodies in Gaza — where girls and women are forced into child and polygamous marriages, made to veil and, together with male homosexuals, “honor” killed by their families.

At this horrifying moment in history, when Hamas, an ISIS-like, Taliban-like terrorist group, has savagely and sadistically murdered, tortured, mutilated, raped and burned Israeli civilians alive, including babies, young women and grandmothers, I note a terrible silence, a moral failure, among those women, including women activists, who live in freedom in America.

Feminists, including academics and human-rights-organization officials, rose up and at least cried out when Afghan, Saudi, Iranian, Pakistani, Yazidi and Ukrainian women were raped, kidnapped into sex slavery or murdered.

Mandy Sanghera and I formed a grassroots feminist team in 2021 that rescued 400 women from Afghanistan.

We cannot believe feminists’ almost absolute silence after Hamas launched its terrorist attack against Jews this month — which included raping young women next to their dead friends and then parading them, bloodied between their legs, through Gaza streets.

Rape in a war zone is considered a crime — as long as the victims are not Jews.

Indeed, now that Hamas has launched both an old-fashioned and a new-fashioned livestreamed pogrom against Israeli Jews and against all those non-Jews, including Americans, who live in Israel, feminists have maintained a strange silence.

A quick survey of surviving feminist websites, including Ms., Women’s eNews, Jezebel, Slate, Salon, Lilith, etc. revealed nothing that specifically condemned Hamas for raping, kidnapping and mutilating women.

Why?

The failure to even grapple with this subject speaks volumes.

Mandy and I recently published a piece — “Rape as a Weapon of War, This Time in Israel. Why are Feminists Silent?” — posted it online and sent it to many feminists, including grassroots activists.

Mandy (who lives in the United Kingdom) was defriended, bullied and excoriated as a “Zionist.”

In my case, few feminists have reached out to me, personally, privately, to express awareness, concern or sympathy.

Perhaps 10 women responded positively; to her credit, Gloria Steinem said she’d “ask the Feminist Majority folks, which has been for years where Ms. resides, if they have responded.” (They haven’t.)

Others have said nothing.

Eleanor Smeal, a former National Organization for Women president and head of the Feminist Majority Foundation (which publishes Ms. Magazine), campaigned from the 1990s through last month on behalf of Afghan women; I cannot find anything she’s written condemning the rape and murder of Israeli Jewish women.

Not a word from Christian F. Nunes, NOW’s current president; nor from Equality Now, founded by Jessica Neuwirth and Navi Pillay (the latter of United Nations anti-Israel infamy); Laurie Adams, Women for Women International chief executive officer; or Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood president.

UN Women, “the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women,” says it “condemns the attacks on civilians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and is deeply alarmed by the devastating impact on civilians including women and girls.”

But its statement doesn’t mention Hamas at all — and calls Israel’s efforts to have civilians evacuate Gaza so it can root out the terrorists “extremely dangerous.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez keeps calling for a cease-fire and declared a key problem between Israel and Hamas is . . . Christian fundamentalists and Donald Trump.

This confirms that the feminist movement I once knew, but long ago, has lost its moral compass.

It is moribund, hijacked, “Palestinianized” and Stalinized. It is, at best, an arm of the Democratic Party, which shows every sign of restraining if not betraying Israel.

After World War II, the scenes of concentration camps, crematoria and living, human skeletons were crucial in showing the world what the Nazis had done to the Jews (and dissidents), proof of why their leaders and collaborators needed to be put on trial.

Feminists — we all — should be calling for a Nuremberg-like trial here, extraditing Hamas leaders who have murdered and kidnapped Americans as well as Israelis and citizens of other nations or ordered it.

This is why I favor showing all the images of the atrocities.

Can American military might and Israeli military intelligence unite to find and free the Israeli hostages?

Can we capture and put the Iran-backed Hamas fiends on trial?

Force Egypt to open the Rafah crossing and other Arab and Muslim countries to welcome Gazan civilians?

Can we finally wrestle with the existential and global threat that a nearly nuclear Iran poses to both America and the Middle East?

Feminists aren’t grappling with any of these questions.

Their silence speaks volumes.

From <https://isgap.org/flashpoint/response-to-hamas-horror-shows-the-feminist-movement-has-lost-its-moral-compass/>

Chester Wikipedia Entry - Activist against racism and anti-Semitism

In the 1960s, Chesler was active in the Northern Student Movement.[24] Chesler has written about the participation of African-American women in the American civil rights movement in the 1960s,[44] and was interviewed on camera in a documentary about Viola Liuzzo, a white female civil rights activist who was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members.[45] In 1973, Chesler co-organized the first press conference about feminism and anti-Semitism, and in 1974–1975, she co-organized the first Jewish feminist speakout in New York City.[46] In 1981, Chesler organized the first-ever panel on racism, anti-Semitism, and feminism for the National Women's Studies Association in Storrs, Connecticut.[47]

In 2013, Chesler was appointed a Fellow of the Middle East Forum.[48]

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Chesler>

Phyllis Chesler on the Campbell Conversations

By Grant Reeher WRVO NPR News for Central New York State

Published December 16, 2023 | Phyllis Chesler

[KEY TALKING POINTS]

[ANTI-ISRAEL = ANTI-AMERICAN]

[ANTI-RACISM = ANTI-OPPRESSOR = ANTI-ISRAEL, THEREFORE BE ANTI-ANTI-RACISM]

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Hi, this is Grant Reeher. Some of you may strongly disagree with some of the views you're about to hear from my guest on this week's program. That in itself doesn't make it any different from other programs, but the topic this week is extremely politically charged and has deep emotions attached to it. For that reason, I want to remind you that these are the views of one guest, and not those of NPR or WRVO. Thank you.

Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is a lifelong feminist scholar and writer who is deeply concerned with some of the rhetoric from self-styled feminists that is critical of Israel and its war with Hamas and supportive of Hamas in Palestine. Phyllis Chesler is a psychotherapist and a professor emerita at City University of New York. She's written many books among them, “Women and Madness”, “An American Bride in Kabul”, and, “The New anti-Semitism”. Professor Chesler, welcome to the program.

Phyllis Chesler: My pleasure to be with you.

GR: Well, thanks for making the time. So let me just start right at the beginning with something very basic. Give me some examples, if you could, of the public expressions that you have been seeing recently and hearing that worry you and concern you.

PC: More than 62 days after Hamas launched a pogrom on steroids from Gaza into Israel, the public (audio cuts out) feminism (audio cuts out)… Nobody said this is rape, this is barbarism, we believe this happened. They shot their own footage joyfully.

• And yet feminist icon after feminist icon, feminist listserv after feminist listserv said nothing. They didn't decry it. When they spoke, most said yes.

• But the Palestinian civilians are in danger and they see as the rest of the academy and the United Nations, all human rights groups and the media in general, they see Israel as the Nazi apartheid nation state, complete big lie, a lethal lie and they think that Hamas, funded by Iran, which has America in its gunsights, they think that Hamas, a terrorist group, are resistance fighters.

And in the streets of our country, they're marching in favor of death, in favor of genocide. They denying what they've seen with their own eyes. So that's one example.

GR: Well, I made a, give you perhaps another one you'll want to put on your list, and unfortunately it's from Syracuse University. But I wanted to get your reaction to this, this one caught my eye. This was a statement that was made public from the Department of Women's and Gender Studies. And well, let me read it to you, and I'll just read you the first paragraph.

“We…” and this was this was a statement that was made public, and it was also repeated by some faculty in their classes, “We, members of the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University mourn the lives claimed by the violence in Palestine and Israel and denounce the escalating Israeli military attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. This position reflects our longstanding feminist commitments to anti-racist education, emancipatory politics and decolonial praxis. We are in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli settler colonialism and occupation and support Palestinians in Gaza who are being subjected to ongoing Israeli military violence through indiscriminate bombing, collective punishment of civilians, and the prohibition of life sustaining resources such as water, food and electricity. We oppose the act of genocide…”

I want to repeat that, “We oppose the act of genocide of a dispossessed people and population who are trapped and what the UN, Israeli and international human rights organizations have long called an open-air prison”. Okay, so that seems to be in the same vein then, of the things you’re talking about?

[KEY TALKING POINT--ANTI-ISRAEL = ANTI-AMERICAN]

PC: Oh, absolutely, yes. But alas, or to cover my shame as a feminist, a real one, it's not just feminists. However, they have long been since the 1980’s, they are Stalinized and they are Palestinianized and they view America as the Big Satan as Iran does, and Israel as the little Satan.
  

And they really are concerned with the occupation of a country called Palestine, which has never existed in history, more so than with the occupation of women's bodies in Gaza or on the British mandatory West Bank I call Judea and Samaria. They do not care.

They will not say, well, Hamas is forcing women to a face veil and wear hijab and marry as children and marry into polygamous unions and they risk being honor killed if they won't marry their first cousin or want to leave a violent marriage.

[THIS BLACK STUFF ISN'T ABOUT FEMINISM, IT'S ANTI-OPPRESSOR-ANTI-ISRAEL]

Because for them, what used to be radical feminism or real women's studies, which lasted about a decade I think, maybe 15 years at most, their concern now is with the abolition of prisons on behalf of black men with anti-racism, as long as it doesn't mean Jew hatred, that's not seen as racism.

[ISRAEL IS OPPRESSOR]

They're concerned with, if there's a colonizer, that means someone's colonized, someone's got to be blamed. And they have, against all evidence based truth, against proof, footage, videos, they've decided that Israel must be the oppressor.

And so they repeat these indoctrinated lies, open-air prison, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, what occupation are they talking about? What open air prison? Unless they mean that Hamas, which is true enough, has created their own people, turn them into human shields for the purpose of debt, for good propaganda. But that's not what they mean. So why are they teaching at universities? Who are they?

GR: Well, I wanted to focus in on one phrase because it's something that I've been struggling with, and it is this use of the word genocide to describe what Israel is doing right now. And certainly it seems to me that people can have disagreements over whether the response of Israel is proportionate and whether it is careful enough or discriminate enough, I suppose to use the language here of the Women's Studies Department, but I have heard this a number of times, this use of the word genocide to describe it. First of all, by my understanding of what that word is, what Israel is doing cannot be considered genocide, it's not the indiscriminate and complete effort to eradicate a people. They're not rounding up people, civilians by the hundreds of thousands and just killing them and so that concerns me. But the other piece of this that concerns me is, given the history of the Jewish people, given the Holocaust and World War Two, to use that word, seems to me to be at the very best, incredibly insensitive. Now, I guess I'm giving my own opinion here, but I wanted to ask you about this, that's a hell of a loaded question I just asked you, and I apologize for that, but I just wanted to get your sense of the use of that word in this context.

PC: It's post-Orwellian. Black is white. It is such a reversal of reality. First, the Palestinian population or the Gazan population has grown while Israel did occupy

Gaza and since it left Gaza. So if we're talking genocide, you would imagine the numbers would be down by millions, but that is hardly the case. But I think also, one thing I didn't mention, and the hysteric herd-like overstatement of certain brainwashed words like genocide, genocide is everywhere, Palestine is everything, anything is equal to anything else. There is no objective standard or reality left in the academy. But what the feminists and the, everyone, public intellectuals, human rights activists, they do not want to accuse men of color, especially if they're Muslim, especially if they have been in countries that were once occupied by Britain, for example, or by Turkey before that. They don't want to accuse them of committing any kind of barbaric crimes because that would be a colonialist (audio cuts out) overreach. So the fact their victims are other people of color who are also Muslims for the most part, it seems to be a blind spot.

So, are these professors? And I have to say, I'm happy to hear that they're still calling Women's Studies, “Women and Gender”, that's very good, because in general, women have been disappeared and it's gender and sexuality studies. And the sexuality studies have been totally taken over by, quote, queer and transgender profiles and these are the courses. I did a survey of the Ivy Leagues a few years ago in terms of gender studies, I couldn't believe what I was reading. Queer people in the Caribbean in the 19th century. And I thought, all right, I'm open minded, but what has this got to do with the violence (audio cuts out) issues that we raised in the second wave, which began with rape, went to sexual harassment, then incest, then woman battering. These are not sexy issues anymore, even though, I mean, rape, what's the slogan at #metoo, believe what a woman says. Never believe a man, always believe a woman. Well, but not if she's Jewish, not if she's in Israel and half of Israelis are not white. They are Jews from Arab and African countries who were forced to flee by the Muslims who hate Jews. And on that subject, I work with Muslims and for Muslims who do not hate Jews and who are pro-Israel, God bless them, as well as Christians. So, and many of them are feminists, so I don't know who these feminists are in women's studies, do you?

GR: Well, I'm asking you, you're the expert. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the psychotherapist and feminist writer, Phyllis Chesler. So, you mentioned a couple of things I want to get into a bit later about where some of these views might be coming from in terms of the history behind who these groups are. But I did want to ask you something else that's in the news cycle in the last few days. The other day, there was an incident that has gone viral. It was Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s challenge of the presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. They are all female presidents, as it happens, I believe. And their refusal to state that, in the hearing, their refusal to state that calling for the genocide of Jewish people violates their university's code of conduct and none of them would be willing to do that. They all said it depends on the context and whether it leads to behavior. And Congresswoman Stefanik, I think, was genuinely shocked by this, I don't think it was just political theater. Do you have any reactions to what these presidents were saying? If you've seen this video clip?

PC: I've watched it, it's outrageous. I doubt that they would have the same response if students marched and said, shoot all the blacks, kill them now, lynch them, hang them from trees, let's get rid of the Hispanics, or let's build a wall on the southern border of America. That would be seen as inflammatory, incendiary, it would be seen as hate speech and it would be condemned. But Jews, it's cool, it's okay, that's free speech. And for years in the 21st Century, I kept writing about the way in which the concept of academic freedom and free speech are being increasingly used to engage in Jew hatred. And anti-Semitism is now anti-Zionism, they are one and the same. There's only one Jewish state, and that seems to be considered the very worst country on Earth, not Sudan, wait, I'm remembering something. Remember how the feminists and the women activists were so quick to condemn the so-called rape camps in Bosnia? The rapes in Rwanda, the rapes in Africa, in North Africa, done by paramilitary Islamist groups? Certainly I called it a gender cleansing in the Sudan, the public repeated gang rapes of girls and women by the Janjaweed. And on this utter silence, what conclusions can I draw other than the anti-American, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, that's the Stalinization. And in a terrible way, the anti-woman, I mean, rape is rape no matter who was being raped and in Israel, boys and men were raped by these barbarians as well. And I think that the way to handle this, and I wrote a quick piece, is to have an Eichmann like or a Nuremberg like trial in Jerusalem after Israel, only after Israel is militarily victorious.

GR: I want to follow up on a couple of things you said, but we have to take a break. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Phyllis Chesler. She's an emeritus professor at City University of New York and a psychotherapist and feminist writer. We've been discussing her concerns about some of the public rhetoric about the Israeli-Hamas war. So, Professor Chesler, you've mentioned this at a couple of points in the first part of our conversation, I want to draw it out a little more directly. And it has to do with where some of this stuff might be coming from that you're concerned about. And from day one, I've had this theory and you seem to be saying it's a similar version of it, and that is that the criticism among some of the left of Israel seems to me to be criticism of the United States by proxy and in the extreme form, anti-Americanism. And it does seem like something that was already pent up came forward like the day after the attack. And it does seem like, I wanted to get your sense of that, I wonder if that's one of the things that's really driving this.

[ALL ABOUT IRAN]

PC: The sight of Jewish blood thrilled and excited the long prepared, globalized intifada activists who've been funded by left wing people like Soros, the Tides Foundation, who have been funded by, to some extent, the Arab oil countries and by, certainly by the Rockefeller Fund Foundation. So this has been long in coming. And you're right, this is anti-Americanism, Israel's taking the hard hit. And America with the academics, the intellectuals and the politicians are not paying attention to the danger to us from Iran. Iran right now is causing the kind of international conflict that the secretary general just said he's got to invoke Article 99 because the conflict is spreading all on Israel, excuse me, Iran is having Hezbollah in Lebanon, rocket after rocket. They're shooting during a so-called cease fire into the north of Israel. And the Houthis in Yemen are attacking American warships in the Red Sea in the Mediterranean, excuse me, the international conflict or if you will, the increasing visibility of World War Three is clear to me.

And why the American presidents, why Congress doesn't get this and doesn't act on it instead of funding Iran and appeasing Iran is everything that President Obama started. So I think that there are all these factors at play. And then add to it, the left wing academic curriculum. America once had slavery, the fact that we had a civil war to abolish it matters not, it did exist, original sin can't be cleansed, no awareness that Islam practices slavery to this day and always has, as well as being a colonial power. I mean, once I lived in Afghanistan, which was, believe it or not, a Buddhist country, until Arab Muslims came and took it down and turned it Islamic. So every continent and every religion has committed all kinds of crimes, it's not just America and America might be the best relatively speaking. And so the way of thinking that one culture is really the same as another, one culture can't judge another, everything is kind of equal and everything is relative, but America is to blame. White people are to blame, Israel is to blame. This is Stalinist thinking and there was a huge amount of Russian propaganda that became absorbed in the bloodstream of Westerners. And then add to that Arab League propaganda, then add to that Islamic, basic quintessential Koranic propaganda and you have this brew, this dangerous brew that bubbles up as Jew hatred to start with, soon will be infidel hatred acted on in the West.

GR: Now, let me interject here and say now, my thought about the anti-Americanism driving it, it wasn't as deeply rooted as what you just said. I was thinking more in terms of the fact that the United States is Israel's single biggest, or Israel is the single biggest recipient of foreign aid and a lot of that is military aid and the fact that we have stood by Israel over the years. And so I wanted to ask you though, two questions here. One is, some people hearing this, I think, are going to be very concerned about some of the ways that you're talking about this and that it's going to sound to them like you are engaging in a similar kind of thinking that you are criticizing just from the other side. And so I wanted to get your reaction to that and then I'll come back with the other thing. But what how would you respond to that?[

[ANTI-ZIONISM = ANTI-SEMITISM]

PC: Well, unfortunately, the anti-Zionist anti-Semites have been fed propaganda, I have not. I have researched and I've read and I've thought and I've consulted with military experts, counterterrorism experts, psychologists, psychiatrists. I'm now thinking about the trauma of people who have been not only held captive but who have been brainwashed as well, I'm talking about the Israeli hostages. And while I can't, let me say this, of course I'm concerned about the death of innocents, and that includes innocents in Gaza. But most of the innocents in Gaza voted Hamas in and now, of course, can't get rid of them, can't get rid of them even though they're being used horribly as human shields and always have been, even though Hamas, clearly we can see even though people are excelling in denying their own eyes, they're choosing their narrative above reality. And I'm not sure how to break that hold. So I don't, I mean, while I could be not expressing at this moment enough sympathy for Gazans who are in a dreadful situation caused by their own leadership, and it could be ended in a moment, all Hamas has to do is return all the hostages safe and sound to Israel, all Egypt has to do is accept these Gazan civilians, let them out. All right, keep them in a camp if you don't want them to become citizens, which, by the way, no Arab country, 57 of them have refused the populations in the areas as we have after every single war in human history. Refugees in flight have been, they've become citizens elsewhere and life moved on. Only in this instance, the Palestinians are being used from the river to the sea to get rid of the single Jewish state. So, this could end in a minute.

GR: My understanding also, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Arab countries have not in the past provided much support or help to Palestine.

PC: No support, none. It is, you know I was part of a grassroots team that rescued 400 women from Afghanistan, one of whom I've made my granddaughter from Afghanistan and she's excelling in graduate school here, she's an amazing young woman. And we could not get Arab countries to accept them. And these are Sunni Arabs as they are, not Shia from Iran. And the lack of responsibility for, I mean, the whole this entire disaster could have been solved if Jordan had said, yes, you know, actually, we're the Palestinian state, come home, everyone come home to Jordan. But that never happened because they wanted a fake Hashemite dynasty. So this is not on Israel, this is on the Arab world. It's on Iran, it's on Hamas.

GR: Well, we've only got about 3 minutes left or so. But there's another kind of topic I wanted to make sure that I covered with you here and it's a more personal question, if I could. I wanted to know how you have experienced this personally. Obviously, you've got very strong views of your own. And if I could just share one thing very quickly on this or in this context, is I'm a little different from a lot of other academics in that I have friends and acquaintances that span the entire ideological spectrum. And I'm proud of this in the last seven years, I've managed to avoid losing any friends over politics throughout all of this. But, I have lost my first friendship over this issue and I'm struggling with it. So I just want to know, have you have you dealt with this kind of thing since this war has started?

PC: Oh, my dear, when I published after many, many purely feminist works, some bestsellers, some very influential in the academic world and beyond, when I published, “The New Anti-Semitism” in 2003 because I absolutely felt I had to speak out, that was the first time that The New York Times didn't review a book of mine. That was the first time that major left liberal venues, wouldn't interview me even to fight with me because I held the left liberal intelligentsia in the West as responsible as the 9/11’ers, as the Islamists and terrorists. And then, funny thing began to happen on the way to the forum. But this was going on before, that's a longer story. Yeah, there are feminists now who have not reached out to me, some of whom I've sent one of my pieces about the rape issue and their silence, asked for something and either no response or very hostile response. These are not close friends though. And a lot of distance kept, a lot of silence, which is profound. So I'm thinking you know, I work with Muslims who are feminists, men and women. I work with Christians who are feminists, men and women. I'm not going to say that feminists have failed entirely because it's not true, not true. I'm a founding member of something called the Clarity Coalition, go look it up, they have a website. So, but the feminists of the second wave, third wave, fourth wave, their silence is reverberating down in history and will never be forgotten. Never.

GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Phyllis Chesler. Professor Chesler, thanks so much again for taking the time to talk with me. I really appreciated it.

PC: It's my pleasure. Good questions.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Tags

Campbell Conversations Phyllis CheslerIsrael Hamas Warfeminism

Grant Reeher

Grant Reeher is Director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and a professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is also creator, host and program director of “The Campbell Conversations” on WRVO, a weekly regional public affairs program featuring extended in-depth interviews with regional and national writers, politicians, activists, public officials, and business professionals.

From <https://www.wrvo.org/show/campbell-conversations-0/2023-12-16/phyllis-chesler-on-the-campbell-conversations>

Opinion | A Yom Kippur Response to Cancel Culture

David Wolpe

Sept. 12, 2021

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opinion/yom-kippur-forgiveness.html>

Guest Essay

A Rabbi’s Guide on Making Amends and Letting Those Grudges Go

Video

CreditCredit...Artwork by Claire Merchlinsky / The New York Times

David Wolpe

Rabbi Wolpe is the senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

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A friend of mine was publicly canceled. He deserved it and he knew it. He spent a year working with a rabbi and a therapist, during which time he tried to track down those he had hurt and apologize to them, often more than once. We can’t see inside one another’s hearts, but I believe in the sincerity of his change.

What I sometimes wonder — both in my role as a rabbi myself and as a denizen of our broader culture of accountability — is how my friend, or any one of us, can find a path back from shame to acceptance.

To answer the question, I turn to my religious tradition, which is predicated on the perhaps unfashionable belief that people can change. It’s a tenet that is especially on my mind as we approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on which Jews fast, pray and ask forgiveness of one another and of God. Not everyone observes this holiday, of course. But in its practices, I believe there is wisdom that can help all of us navigate the sometimes unforgiving nature of our contemporary culture.

There will always be things we cannot fully forgive and people who do not deserve to be restored to good reputation. And forgiving someone does not necessarily mean readmitting that person to your life. In most cases, however, Jewish teachings insist that fair judgment does not require damnation. Judaism, like many other world religions, maintains that human beings are capable of transformation. For example, one of the figures of the Talmud, Resh Lakish, began as a bandit and became one of the greatest rabbis of the age. His conversion was fueled by the belief of another rabbi, Johanan, who saw potential in him. The more we believe in judging by potential, that what people do is not the sum of who they can be, the more likely we are to create a society that can help people move past shame.

Judaism offers a series of ideas and guidelines for how to cope with offense and foster forgiveness. On Yom Kippur, it’s traditional to wear white, not only because white shows the slightest stain, but to remind us of the shrouds in which we will one day be buried. We do not have forever; we must struggle to right our souls now.

If you have caused offense or harm, Yom Kippur does not magically buy you absolution. But the traditions surrounding the day do offer guidance for seeking forgiveness. First, you must apologize to those you’ve hurt, sincerely, as many as three times. The apology should not come weighed down with justification, but rather should acknowledge the other person’s hurt and express sincere regret.

Second, serious, sustained reflection is required to try to change who you are. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, also means return. To repent is to return to what once was, what became hidden through coarseness or impulse. It is also to return to God and to the community. But slow, careful restoration takes time. The one who is sorry today and expects to stride right back, unblemished, is naïve or conniving.

Third, you must change your ways. The sage Maimonides teaches that one who says to himself, “I’ll sin and then, repent” cannot be forgiven. Sorrow is not a strategy. It is a vulnerability and it is a promise.

And what if you are the one who has been hurt? Jewish tradition urges us to consider why it is so hard to forgive. There is a savage self-righteousness to public shaming. If I forgive you, truly forgive you, then I must restore moral parity; I am no better than you. Accepting that steals the satisfactions of resentment, but it is essential: Jewish law insists that once someone has been forgiven, you must never remind the person of that fact. To do so is to re-establish a hierarchy that true forgiveness disavows.

To forgive also forswears vengeance. When I have been hurt, I wish to see you hurt. There is both a personal and an abstract desire for justice: People who do bad things should be punished, and especially people who do bad things to me. We rarely admit to ourselves how often this desire to punish wrongdoing is a personal impulse in moralistic clothing.

It’s also worth noting that anger at others, even when merited, can be personally destructive. In the Bible, the words “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18) are preceded by “you shall not bear a grudge.” As has been aptly said, to bear a grudge is to drink poison hoping the other person will die. It gnaws away at us, embittering the life of the hater. Forgiving your neighbors is one way of loving them, and learning to love yourself.

Public shame is a powerful and sometimes necessary punishment. In the case of my friend, it made him realize that the trigger for his anger was in him, not in the conduct of others. But it can also be brutal, and I believe that too often, lifetimes are remembered by their worst moments, and complex personalities reduced to their basest elements.

On Yom Kippur, as Jews all over the world confess our sins, we will beat our chests, a sort of spiritual defibrillator to get our hearts beating anew. The liturgy asks of the “court on high” permission to pray with those who sin.

And who among us is exempt from that group? I stand each year with a congregation of people who have hurt one another, families and friends and strangers and co-workers. Like my friend, all of us seek to be forgiven — for we are imperfect and striving and in need of love.

Jews and the Dilemmas of Social Justice

by  Bret Stephens

Download Print-Edition PDF | Volume One Spring 2021

https://sapirjournal.org/social-justice/2021/04/jews-and-the-dilemmas-of-social-justice/

s with so many of the world’s big ideas, social justice — the term denotes the fair distribution of wealth, power, opportunity, and status within society — is a concept with deep roots in Jewish tradition and, at times, disquieting consequences in Jewish life.

Take many of the most prominent contemporary social justice movements, and they are shot through with militant anti-Zionism, if not unconcealed antisemitism.

In 2016, the Movement for Black Lives published a platform (since deleted) calling Israel “an apartheid state” that was committing “genocide” against Palestinians. In 2017, marchers carrying Jewish Pride flags were expelled from the Chicago Dyke March. In 2018, leaders of the Women’s March were revealed as proud sympathizers of Louis Farrakhan’s. In 2019, the U.K.’s Labour Party ran under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, a man who, as James Kirchick notes in our inaugural issue of Sapir, petulantly denies being an antisemite even as he delights in making common cause with them. In 2020, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar courageously denounced the shocking indifference of so many social justice warriors to antisemitic outbursts from prominent black athletes and artists.

Examples such as these have persuaded Jews of the political Right and center that “social justice,” whatever it may be in theory, is profoundly hostile to Jewish interests in practice. And progressive Jews are themselves frequently dismayed by the degree to which movements that tout their tolerance and inclusivity are anything but tolerant and inclusive when it comes to Jews. In the progressive world’s new intersectional hierarchies of race and oppression, American Jews who enjoy economic privilege and “conditional whiteness” while participating, through their support for Israel, in the oppression of Palestinians are now considered leading malefactors in the American system of “white supremacy.” 

Did it really have to be this way?

Rabbi Shlomo Brody reminds us here that “social justice is a foundational biblical value” — at least insofar as social justice is conceived as concern for the poor and vulnerable, fair treatment of workers, national solidarity in the face of common needs and challenges, and a belief in the dignity of every human being, regardless of wealth or status.

These tenets of Jewish moral identity, coming down to us from the prophets, would be developed over 19 centuries of diasporic life. As early as the 13th century, as Moshe Halbertal notes, Jewish communities in medieval Spain were pioneering early versions of a welfare state, complete with public education, provisions for orphans, and alms for the poor distributed from social funds. Over time, this sense of concern for the communal good would be matched by an ever-expanding sense of Jewish obligation to the world at large, in what Rabbi David Wolpe calls “an ascending spiral of insularity and openness” in terms of the locus of Jewish social concern.

Our struggle for individual justice as Jewish persons has been predicated on a collective struggle for justice as a Jewish people.

This is not accidental. Other nations, with sovereign powers and normal politics, could aggressively pursue their interests with only glancing regard for moral issues. The Jewish nation, with neither sovereign powers nor normal politics until the creation of the State of Israel, had much less latitude as far as its interests were concerned, but more scope to explore its values. For better and worse, political powerlessness went a long way to spark Jewish moral imagination as well as indignation — a self-reinforcing process.

Consider the Jewish names associated with major social justice movements in the United States. Samuel Gompers (né Gumpertz) was the founder and longest-serving leader of the American Federation of Labor. Julius Rosenwald was the single greatest sponsor of public schools for African Americans. Lillian Wald was a pioneer in community nursing. Joel Spingarn was, next to W.E.B. DuBois, arguably the most influential early leader of the NAACP. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan all but defined the modern feminist movement. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were, with James Chaney, martyrs of Mississippi’s Freedom Summer of 1964. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California. 

Look elsewhere in the world — Léon Blum in France, Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Nadine Gordimer in South Africa — and similar patterns emerge. To be Jewish is to belong to a justice-minded community of perennial social outcasts. Jewish concepts of justice and social justice have been entwined not only because of our religious traditions but also because of our historical experience — because our struggle for individual justice as Jewish persons has been predicated on a collective struggle for justice as a Jewish people. Social justice, for Jews, has historically been at least as much about self-preservation as it is about altruism.

Similarly, it should come as no surprise that Jews have been at the forefront of championing social justice for other marginalized or oppressed communities. Justice for me but not for thee is not a Jewish value. When Jews fight for the rights of others, as we did so conspicuously and courageously during the civil rights era [NOT THE ZIO-CONS--NOT 'WE', but the OTHER JEWS who are being CENSORED by Zio-Cons today], we are also fighting to strengthen a moral and political order that is good for us. As Jeremy Burton argues in these pages, “it is profoundly within the Jewish self-interest to defend the American liberal project.”

Yet if intellectual honesty requires that we recognize the deep connection between Jewishness and social justice, honesty also requires noting the ways in which that connection has been profoundly problematic. The paradoxical essence of the problem is this: Social justice, as it is often conceived and practiced, is both too worldly and not worldly enough.

Too worldly: Social justice may be a foundational biblical value, but it is neither the only nor the central value. Tikkun olam is an evolving aspect of Jewish tradition, not the sum total of it, just as social justice can be only one component of true justice, not a substitute for it. One becomes a good Jew not by seeking to repair the world but by putting the commandments of personal decency ahead of the dictates of political ideology. The direction of Jewish loyalties flows from the inside out, in concentric circles that diminish as they expand: God, family, neighbor, community, and only then to a wider world. To the extent that many versions of social justice attempt to reverse those priorities — putting the interests of the faraway stranger ahead of the beloved kinsman — they betray Judaism and Jews alike.

Not worldly enough: If the Jewish experience of social justice has been characterized by its sense of engagement and high purpose, it has also been marked by an often fatal innocence. The Jews who signed up (in characteristically disproportionate numbers) for the proletarian revolutions of the early 20th century did not see the Doctor’s Plot coming [Stalin's plan to ship out all the Jews using a scapegoat of fake story about a 'doctor's plot'].

But that’s what they got, along with decades of systemic Soviet antisemitism, brought about by an ideology that left-wing Jews believed would make antisemitism impossible. Many Jews who participated proudly in the civil rights movement of the 1960s believed it would be the birth of a beautiful partnership between Jews and African Americans. But, as Joshua Muravchik pointedly writes here, the friendship hasn’t always been reciprocated and has often been betrayed. More recently, Jews are beginning to see how social justice concepts associated with critical race theory and ethnic studies have become backdoor routes to ever-more-virulent strains of antisemitism. As Pamela Paresky observes, “Jews, who have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a moral good, are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an unmitigated evil.”

This combination of earnestness and naïveté leads to another paradox: As social justice work became something of a substitute religion for many Jews — often making them, at least in matters of observance, “less Jewish” — it has not reduced their exposure to antisemitism and, in certain ways, has increased it. 

A version of this story has played out when it comes to Jewish debates over Israel and its relations with the Palestinians. There are normal arguments, pro and con, to be made about the wisdom of Israel’s efforts since the 1993 Oslo Accords to accommodate a Palestinian state. But it’s also hard to deny that many of the arguments in favor of such an accommodation were only superficially about Israel’s strategic needs, rationally considered. They were also an attempt to implement a vision of social justice, with all the pitfalls that vision entailed.

One becomes a good Jew not by seeking to repair the world but by putting the commandments of personal decency ahead of the dictates of political ideology.

The too-worldly desire to invest a moralistic fervor into achieving a peace agreement calamitously divided the Israeli public, weakened Israel’s bargaining position, and gave rise to a new antisemitic caricature — the evil “Likudnik” — whose misgivings about the wisdom of the process were treated as mindless lust for Palestinian land and blood. And, as Ethan Felson, Matti Friedman, and Einat Wilf each point out, it turned Israel into a blank canvas upon which outsiders could sketch their own social justice fantasies, with only superficial regard for the actual country they were talking about.

At the same time, the not-worldly-enough approach failed to appreciate how untrustworthy Yasser Arafat would prove to be, how Palestinian ambitions simply did not conform to Israeli needs, how brutally world opinion would turn on Israel after it had taken “risks for peace,” how easily Israel’s territorial withdrawals would be read by groups such as Hamas as evidence of weakness rather than reasonableness, and how little popular support the Israeli peace camp would be left with after its approach had failed strategically, politically, and diplomatically.  

Again, the point here is not that Israel was foolish to explore the possibilities of peace with the Palestinians. It’s that the process came to be driven by a set of aspirations that were treated as ends in themselves, irrespective of the way things turned out on the ground. This was social justice as foreign policy: Israel would earn the acclaim of a doubting world, and put all future enmity to rest, by making its enemy’s interests its own. In doing so, it would also justify itself to itself, putting to rest the gnawing sense of guilt that came with the exercise of sovereign political power.

It failed. As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg observes, moral concepts drawn from religion and social justice theories may be a useful way of critiquing politics. They tend to be a foolhardy way of practicing it. Thundering prophets rarely make for good statesmen.

Where does this leave us?

The first point is that those Jews who want to erase social justice from the Jewish script are ignoring rich veins of Jewish scriptural and philosophical tradition, along with centuries of Jewish struggle for acceptance and equal rights. The second point is that those Jews who want to reduce Jewishness to a social justice calling are committing both an injustice to Judaism as well as injury to actual Jews, both in Israel and abroad.

In theory, it shouldn’t be hard to reconcile these positions. The least socially progressive Jew should have no trouble acknowledging that, from the time of Abraham or Moses, Jews have been a nation

of social reformers, for whom politics is inconceivable without a broad and insistent moral dimension. When Menachem Begin ordered the air strike on Iraq’s reactor at Osirak in 1981, he did so in part out of recognition that allowing Saddam Hussein to get a bomb would not only put Israel in mortal danger of being attacked with nuclear weapons, it would also put Israel in moral danger of having to use nuclear weapons.

By the same token, progressive Jews — at least those who haven’t become hard-bitten anti-Zionists — are coming to the realization that many of their fellow travelers on the left are traveling the road toward antisemitism, if they haven’t arrived there already. For these Jews, the answer to this is not to endlessly try to prove their progressive bona fides, which will always be found wanting. It is to find recourse in a quiet but justified pride — pride in Judaism; pride in what Israel is and strives to become; pride in an intellectual tradition that offers the ability to criticize even what we love; pride in a moral inheritance that provides a richer articulation of what it means to be a just and righteous person than anything current ideology can offer.

Pride alone is not a program. But pride in fundamental Jewish principles is an essential bulwark against the twin threats of anti-Jewish calumnies that denigrate Jewish identity, and pseudo-Jewish concepts that aim to dissolve Jewish identity.

The essays in this issue of Sapir are intended to inspire leaders of the Jewish community — particularly those engaged in its religious, philanthropic, educational, activist, and communal arms — to think more deeply as well as more pragmatically about how they can address these issues in ways that can unite us more than divide us. But we also aim to publish essays that allow readers to reach their own conclusions. As Kylie Unell, a doctoral student at New York University and the freshest voice in this issue, rightly says, “it is for each person to discover what God intends for us, as long as we are alive to help shape the world for the better.”

March 17, 2021

 https://sapirjournal.org/social-justice/2021/04/jews-and-the-dilemmas-of-social-justice/

What the Torah and Talmud Teach about Cancel Culture

Monday, May 8, 2023

posted by Roger Price

https://www.judaismandscience.com/what-the-torah-and-talmud-teach-about-cancel-culture/

[I'M NOT SURE IF PRICE IS A ZIO-CON, BUT SOME OF HIS ARGUMENTS ARE LIFTED FROM THE ZIO-CON TEMPLATE; CERTAINLY BRET STEPHENS (NYT) AND RABBI WOLPE ARE ZIO-CONS]

In August, 2022, Rabbi David Wolpe, then senior rabbi of one at the largest congregations in the United States, wrote an essay in Sapir Journal titled “To Err Is Human; to Disagree Jewish.”

His point of departure is a story related in the Talmud which tells of how Rabbi Gamliel, at one point the leader of the rabbinic community, publicly shamed another rabbi, Yehoshua, who dared to challenge him on the issue of whether evening prayer was obligatory or optional.

The sages were so offended by Rabbi Gamliel’s behavior that they deposed him as Nasi (presiding leader) and elevated another, Rabbi Elazar, who instituted changes that allowed more and fresher perspectives to presented. (See BT Berakhot 27b.) This alone might have been a dayenu moment, but chastened, Rabbi Gamliel apologized for his behavior and was awarded an opportunity to lead the academy again. 

In more modern times, Jewish censorship for political and cultural, as well as religious, reasons, was also not unknown.

Perhaps most (in)famously, at the beginning of the Enlightenment in Europe, Baruch Spinoza, then only 23 years old, was excommunicated by his community.  

And, in the past eighty years, The Sabbath Prayerbook edited by Mordecai Kaplan was burned (he was also excommunicated) and three books by Natan Slifkin, containing his considerations of science, cosmology, and evolution, were banned.  

In each instance, these activities were undertaken by Jews who apparently missed their tolerance class, although the excommunication of Spinoza, while undoubtedly related to Jewish objections to his revisionist, but not yet published, ideas, may have been as much out of concern for the opinions of the Dutch governors of Amsterdam in which his Portuguese refugee community resided. 

That the record of Jewish tolerance has been neither complete nor unblemished should not surprise us. As one contemporary Talmud scholar, Mark Washofsky, teaches, religious communities need limits in order to define their beliefs and practices and to distinguish themselves from others. Still, the reality of such limits cannot diminish either the fact or the scope of the dominant communal impulse over two and a half millennia. The list of excommunications and book burnings and bannings is, after all, relatively short.

Moreover, religious groups are hardly the only social organizations that draw lines. As Conor Friedersdorf points out in “The Atlantic,” secular societies, even “fair” societies, “(i)nevitably . . . impose social sanctions on some bad behavior,” as well. (Emphasis in the original.) But, because “(t)hey frown on arbitrary or excessive sanctions . . . they reserve the most extreme extralegal punishments, such as public shaming, shunning, or depriving people of their livelihood, for extreme cases.”

[AMERICAN CANCEL CULTURE]

Unfortunately, in much of America today, not necessarily in particularly Jewish settings (though they are not immune), but especially and sadly in places which should know better, a worrisome number of individuals and institutions have lost their willingness or ability to tolerate diverse viewpoints on issues of public policy and matters of public interest, and have instead succumb to the cancer of cancel culture, an attitude which, with minor exceptions acknowledged, runs counter to Jewish practice from the creation of the Torah, through the Talmudic period, until now.

Now, cancel culture can mean different things to different people. Some years ago, one of my law professors, Harry Kalven,Jr., coined the term “Heckler’s veto” with respect to a limited action to prevent a person from speaking or performing. Cancel culture, though, is the Heckler’s veto writ large. Hardly restrained or reserved, cancel culture is an arrogant effort to impose intellectual orthodoxy by those who fear or despise heterodoxy.
  

In “Jews and Cancel Culture,” an essay in the Sapir Journal that accompanied Rabbi Wolpe’s, Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning commentator and currently writer-at-large for the New York Times, identified five elements of cancel culture:

[COINCENDTALLY--SAME POINTS BEING MADE BY ZIO-CONS AND PRESIDENT ZIO-CON ALAN GARBER @ HARVARD]

• Cancel culture emerges from a certain mentality, that of a “cry-bully” who combines “self-pity and vindictiveness.” 

• Cancel culture involves action to deprive a person not just of a chance to speak, but destroys a reputation, a career, and sometimes a life.

• Cancel culture employs social pressure directed not just at the primary target, but widely in order to intimidate.

• Cancel culture depends on capitulation. It “flourishes because coward culture allows it.”

• Cancel culture becomes pervasive, as self-censorship limits what people are willing to say. 

These elements distinguish cancel culture from callout culture. Both approaches, in their most productive form, arguably attempt to secure accountability for some perceived wrong. But callout culture seeks to educate rather than shut down. It allows for t’shuvah, or repentance, rather than demanding resignation or termination of employment. Similarly, these elements distinguish cancel culture from boycotts. The latter encourages third parties to avoid contact or commerce with an alleged transgressor, but does not interfere with the rights of others to access ideas, services, or goods of a purported offender. 

Contemporary cancel culture, though, is a type of tyranny, a phenomenon at odds with the spirit of liberty which has guided our country for over two centuries and far worse than the red-baiting witch hunts of one deranged junior senator from Wisconsin in the 1950s. Cancel culture warriors arrogantly appoint themselves as indictors, prosecutors, evaluators, and punishers of some perceived wrong, and the punishment, generally severe, rarely fits the alleged crime.

Evidence of cancel culture unfortunately abounds, and it does so even, and maybe especially, in circumstances where free speech ought to be encouraged not punished. One survey, by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,  has identified over 500 incidents in which scholars at colleges and universities were targeted between 2015 and early 2022. About two-thirds of the complaints came from the political left of the scholar and just under one-third from the political right of the scholar. The universities with the most incidents were Stanford, Harvard, Georgetown, and UCLA. (See “Scholars Under Fire: 2021 Year in Review.”) We should not be surprised then that another survey, this of almost 1500 professors at colleges and universities across the country, revealed that half are “worried about losing their jobs or reputation because someone misunderstands something they have said or done, takes it out of context, or posts something from their past online.” (See “The Academic Mind in 2022: What Faculty Think About Free Expression and Academic Freedom on Campus.”)

If professors are under pressure, what about students? A survey of college students, released in in 2022 by Heterodox Academy, reveals that almost three of every five students is reluctant to talk about a significant controversial topic for fear of generating negative social reaction or retribution from other students. (See “Understanding Campus Expression Across Higher Ed.”)  

Consequently, when colleges and universities are not welcoming to full and free expression of viewpoints, it is not surprising, though perhaps simultaneously horrifying and depressing, that cancel culture has reared its unenlightened head in what should be the places most dedicated to and accepting of argumentation and the value of the adversary process: law schools. Yet we have seen would-be attorneys so unable to deal calmly and rationally with viewpoints with which they disagree that they take action to silence proponents of those viewpoints.  

[DEFENSE OF NAZI RIGHTS TO SPEAK AND BE INVITED BY FELLOW NAZIS]

In March, 2023, some Stanford law students shouted down United States Appellate Court Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan (5th Cir.) who was invited to speak by another group of law students. Whether the opposing students disapproved of the president who nominated the judge, the senate that confirmed the nomination, the judge’s viewpoints expressed prior to nomination, any of his decisions, or all of the foregoing is not entirely clear. One student reportedly expressed her thoughts by saying “We hope your daughters get raped,” not exactly a cogent argument for restricting speech.

[PUNISH THE SPEECH THOSE WHO DECRY NAZIS] 

The incident led Stanford’s president and the law school dean to issue an apology to the judge for the behavior of the students and, also, to reprimand a Stanford administrator who piled on during the cancelling, but the effort to cancel was successful in that Judge Duncan never did get to talk with the students who invited him. 

Subsequently, it was a liberal commentator, writing from another coast across the country and not a fan of the judge who was attacked, who well understood part of what was lost. Said Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, the students “lost a chance to learn.” She could have added that because they failed to come to listen, they also failed, presumably, to take advantage of an opportunity to challenge the judge’s opinions and the assumptions and logic underlying them. In short, they also lost a chance to teach and hold the judge accountable for his allegedly erroneous views. The incident at Stanford was, sadly, not an isolated one. For a sample of cancellation activity imperiling free speech at law schools like Georgetown, Yale, BYU, and elsewhere, look here, here, here, and here.

And as bad as it is for Americans generally, because it restricts critical thinking and inventiveness and enterprise, and because it punishes disproportionately, cancel culture may well be worse of Jews, in particular. We are the spiritual descendants of the patriarch Abraham, who tradition portrays while young as a literal iconoclast, a destroyer of crafted idols, and who, as a more mature adult, was also brave enough to debate with a deity he acknowledged over the fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. (See Gen. 18:16-33.)

We are also a people who thrive in liberal societies where civil rights are protected and opportunity abounds. So, as a people, we serve as the canary in a cultural coal mine. Decades ago, Jews were accused, simultaneously, of being communists and capitalists. Today, in circles that would divide Americans by race or ethnicity, and rank degrees of oppression and victimization, Jews, who historically have been oppressed, are now seen as oppressors, Jews who historically have been wanderers and immigrants, are now seen as colonialists, and Jews who historically have been restricted from engaging in preferred occupations and living in desired neighborhoods are now seen as privileged.

[IRONIC-THE TOTALITARIAN DOING DOUBLESPEAK ON ORWELL HIMSELF]

It’s all very Orwellian, this creation and application of Newspeak, but it is, basically, just new speech in service of an ancient prejudice which lives among the closed minded, those who are unwilling to examine facts, test premises, and engage in critical thinking and dialogue, among whom are those who engage in cancel culture. 

These are, then, challenging times, and the challenge is, without exaggeration, an existential one, for it asks us to determine the kind of society in which we would live. In this space, we have tended to focus on how Judaism meets challenges arising from the natural sciences. Cancel culture, though, is a social phenomenon, not fundamentally an exercise based on factual inquiry to ascertain truth, but, rather, an effort to support a preexisting narrative by excluding constant testing and retesting which activities are both valued by the natural sciences and on which they are dependent. Constant, respectful give and take are also markers of a healthy, open society.

The present challenge, therefore, falls within the realm of the social sciences, especially political science and social psychology. Consequently, we can learn from NYU professor of Ethical Leadership Jonathan Haidt who wisely counsels that there are different interests that motivate those who engage in cancel culture. He suggests that students may be acting out of a tenuous concern for “safety” which goes beyond physical and emotional safety to include things that might “offend” them. Here cancel culture may be a means to strengthen a group which seeks to further a political end favored by the student, and may be seen as a means to the strengthen the student as well. As for faculty who facilitate or pile on, rather than doing so for prestige, they may be acting out of “fear that they will be next.” 

If we Jews are, as Stephens describes us, “a people of argument, not excommunication,” we must resist the closed-mindedness of cancel culture. We must do so because we are a people who, by and large, value tolerance, but, truthfully, also a community that needs tolerance in order to be Jewish. Our experience and memory is such that we do not need to be a degreed historian or political or social scientist to recognize what fate awaits us if diversity of thought and expression is curtailed, if minority viewpoints and those who hold them are canceled. 

Defending freedom of thought and expression is not always easy, especially when the thoughts involved may be distasteful or worse, and a mob is howling for censorship. But Judaism teaches us to be better than those who would silence and punish others. In Hillel’s formulation of the golden rule, he urged us to not do to others what is hateful to ourselves. (See BT, Shabbat 31a.) It is an approach that could profitably inform those tempted to engage in cancel culture. It does not preclude disagreement, far from it. But it does require that we disagree without being disagreeable.

We must, therefore, encourage critical thinking, develop skills that promote it, and accompany this with an attitude open to learning on the one hand and repentance on the other. Rather than curse perceived darkness, we need to shed light. Rather than act based on what we feel like, we need to proceed based on what we think about a matter, and then only if we have deliberately and skeptically reviewed the applicable facts, and considered the possibilities of various responses. We need to be slow to anger, and if not compassionate in our responses, at least humble enough to be cognizant of our biases. 

Cancel culture is neither thoughtful, nor humble. It is the culture of the cul de sac, set off, if not closed, to the larger community, admitting no flow except from one direction, and circular in its operation. And it is shortsighted, not just in its vision, but in its urgency to act.

Even when it wins some battles, cancel culture is, ultimately, also both unproductive and counterproductive. As the Religious Freedom Institute recognizes:

From <https://www.judaismandscience.com/what-the-torah-and-talmud-teach-about-cancel-culture/>

To Err is Human; to Disagree, Jewish | Wolpe & Bret Stephens

by  Rabbi David Wolpe Volume Seven Autumn 2022 | Download Print-Edition PDF

Sapir Watch our Zoom interview with author Rabbi David Wolpe and Editor-in-Chief Bret Stephens

The defects of the world, both material and the spiritual, all derive from the fact that every individual sees the aspect of existence that pleases him, and all other aspects that are baffling to him seem to deserve purging from the world. This thought leaves its imprint on individuals and groups, on generations and epochs—whatever is outside one’s own is destructive and disturbing.

—Rav Kook, Orot HaKodesh 1:121

That is the quintessential Jewish attitude toward controversy? Rabbi Abraham Twerski relates that, growing up in the yeshiva, his teacher would say to him, in accented English:

“You right! You 100 prozent right! Now I show you where you wrong.”

What kind of tradition insists both on the rightness and wrongness of the other? A tradition that, in the words of scholar Moshe Halbertal, “codifies controversy.”

A student of Talmud is a student of argument.

On almost every page of that massive series of tomes is an argument. I remember one of my own teachers, Rabbi Ben Zion Bergman, telling us that when he grew up in the yeshiva, if you weren’t paying attention and the teacher called on you, you always answered “there’s a machloket” — a dispute — and you were always right. These were not empty or academic disagreements; alongside deeper questions, the rabbis wrestled with profound social dilemmas and urgent political issues.

We live in a time when words are called violence and differences of opinion are seen by one side as evidence of the moral degeneracy of the other. The wheel of inclusion has turned to exclusion, reminding us of the double meaning of “revolution.” The revolution of exclusion is here.

The Jewish tradition powerfully addresses this dynamic. It teaches us how we can grow past and heal the cleavages rending our culture.

A story from the Talmud (Berakhot 27b, 28a): Rabban Gamliel, the patriarch (the leader of the rabbinic community), has a disagreement with Rabbi Yehoshua about whether the evening prayer is mandatory or optional. Rabban Gamliel summons Rabbi Yehoshua and not only challenges him in public, but forces him to stand during Rabban Gamliel’s entire lecture, embarrassing Rabbi Yehoshua and emphasizing Rabban Gamliel’s powerful position.

Rabban Gamliel had abused his authority before, quelling dissent and forcing his own views. He had mistreated other rabbis and limited the number of students who could study in the Beit Midrash, the House of Study. But the shaming of Rabbi Yehoshua is the last straw: The sages depose Rabban Gamliel from his position, elevating Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah in his place.

But the story does not end there. Rabban Gamliel apologizes to Rabbi Yehoshua — and one version says he apologies to each of the sages — for his behavior. With a less exclusionary leader in place, the sages add benches to the study hall to accommodate the many new students who want to join. With all of these fresh perspectives, the scholars are able to resolve all of the legal debates in front of them. And seeing how many students have joined the Beit Midrash and the impact of adding so many voices to the debate, Rabban Gamliel regrets his earlier decision. He realizes that by limiting diverse perspectives, he has limited the spread of Torah.

The original dispute about the evening prayer is adjudicated through argument, and a conclusion is reached. And because he realized the errors of his ways and authentically repented and changed, Rabban Gamliel is offered a path back to social esteem. He and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah rotate as head of the academy, thereby ensuring that no single view will dominate without challenge. Argument is vindicated as a way to achieve solutions, and a system of pluralistic leadership emerges.

What would become of Rabban Gamliel in our climate? There would be no road back. Cancellation in America is relentless. Your mistake or your crime or your sin defines you forever; it becomes the totality of who you are. We distrust regret or change. This is unfair and profoundly un-Jewish.

Another counter-narrative from the Talmud, this one even greater in its poignancy: When the great Rabbi Resh Lakish dies, his brother-in-law and intellectual sparring partner, Rabbi Yohanan, is inconsolable. The other rabbis seek to comfort Rabbi Yohanan by sending Rabbi Eliezer ben Pedat, a very fine legal mind, to engage and perhaps distract him. It does not go well.

Every time Rabbi Yohanan offers a teaching, the learned Rabbi Eliezer ben Pedat responds with “there is a baraita [rabbinic statement] that supports you.” Finally, Rabbi Yohanan bursts out:

“Are you comparable to the son of Lakish?  . . .  [W]hen I would state a matter, he would raise twenty-four difficulties against me in an attempt to disprove my claim, and I would answer him with twenty-four answers, and the halakha by itself would become broadened and clarified” (Bava Metzia 84a).

Rather than excluding opposing views, Rabbi Yohanan seeks them out, since they improve his own thinking. There are few parallels in our own world of warring camps. We all know what to read, listen to, and watch to reinforce our views, rather than upset or challenge them.

The wheel of inclusion has turned to exclusion, reminding us of the double meaning of ‘revolution.’ The revolution of exclusion is here.

Methodological pluralism — the practice of encouraging many views in an attempt to arrive at a conclusion — is central to the Jewish ethos. One justification for this is that truth is sometimes plural: While some inarguable realities exist, there are also many questions of life that are not reducible to a single perspective. In our political life, liberals blame conservatives for all of the problems of the world, and vice versa. But the Talmud rejects that binary: Rather, we learn, “both these and those are the words of the living God” (Eruvin 13b).

One cannot really understand the truth if one does not understand the arguments and views that can be urged against it. Just as we appreciate our blessings when we feel the lack of them, we sharpen our perception of truth when we are confronted by arguments that appear to contradict it. As we can see from the example of Rabban Gamliel above, openness to others, including those with whom we might vehemently disagree, is also essential for creating a robust and living culture. Totalitarian regimes strangle dissent; they produce, in Nabokov’s memorable phrase about the Soviet Union, “poker-faced bullies and smiling slaves.” Thriving cultures cannot draw narrow bounds to speech.

Moreover, how many statements that began as outrageous or seemingly ridiculous over time have proved to be not only true but commonplace? The person in the ancient world who said “slavery is wrong” would be seen as an outcast and a fool. The person in modern times who says “slavery is right” would be seen the same way. Jewish texts preserve minority opinions out of a recognition that circumstances change, and that answers to complicated questions can evolve over time. It’s important to preserve elements of reasoning that might prove important in the future.

Just as we appreciate our blessings when we feel the lack of them, we sharpen our perception of truth when we are confronted by arguments that appear to contradict it.

Even our most traditional ritual objects enshrine an understanding of the value of viewpoint diversity: The tefillin of the arm, we are told, has one compartment, since action must be unified to be successful, but the tefillin placed on the head has four compartments, because people’s ideas will always be varied.

Therefore it is improper on the grounds of love of inquiry and knowledge to dismiss anything that contradicts your view . . .  even if the words run counter to your belief or religion. One should not say to him, “Do not speak! Shut your mouth!” For otherwise the true religion would not be clarified.

—Maharal of Prague (Be’er HaGolah, Well 1:7)

How should we respond when someone promulgates a view with which we disagree, or one that we find offensive, repugnant, even dangerous? What is our approach?

First, we need to separate the view from the individual who espouses it. We can argue without attacking. Once you assault an individual instead of his opinion, or conflate an individual with his opinion (“you are an anti-Zionist”), you make it much harder to change his mind — he is even more on the defensive, even more entrenched, and his view is now his identity, not simply his opinion.

Second, we must engage. Instead of walking away, shouting down, or deriding disagreeable opinions, we must take the more difficult but more responsible course of listening and marshaling opposing arguments. Even if you think your opinion is obviously correct, arguing for it is productive and important, both to clarify your reasoning to yourself, and to expose your views to the scrutiny of others. Immediate rejection is less helpful in the long run than serious engagement.

“I’m the boss” is also not an answer. Argument from authority, including “lived experience,” is never sufficient. Despite the reverence for teachers in the Jewish tradition, for example, there are limitations. The great Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin puts it this way: “A student must not accept his teacher’s words if he has an objection to them. Sometimes a student will be right, just as a small piece of wood can set a large one aflame.” Many teachers throughout history have refused to give their students the space to disagree, but Rabbi Hayyim realizes that to silence someone is not to answer him.

Third, we must take care to argue in the right way. How one argues is as important as the freedom to do so. The Talmud states: “Regarding two scholars who live in the same town and are not kind to one another, of them Scripture says, ‘I gave them laws that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live’ (Ezekiel 20:25)”(Megillah 32a). In other words, you can sour the very teaching itself if you do not present it in a way that can be heard. The rulings of the school of Hillel are preferred to those of Shammai not because they were more logical, but because Hillel and his students were “kindly and modest, studied both their own views and those of the house of Shammai, and they quoted the words of the house of Shammai before their own” (Eruvin 13b).

Social media is the antithesis of such generosity. It might simply not be possible to use the medium for the messages we want to promote and for the arguments we want to have. People are regularly belittled, doxxed, called all sorts of names, and associated with views that are not their own, though their words can be twisted to accommodate them. We need to use such platforms as town squares, not firing ranges — more of a place where views can be civilly exchanged than a mechanism for target practice. This requires an elementary respect for the humanity of those who disagree, and the expectation that such respect will prove an ultimate good. As Talmud scholar Richard Hidary notes in Dispute for the Sake of Heaven, “the motivation directing attitudes of pluralism is peace, that is, communal unity through acceptance of diversity.”

Social media is too powerful and ubiquitous to simply renounce. Instead we should subject it to the same rules we apply to interaction in real life: Would I say this to a person’s face? Do I use the platform as a tool for connection or a channel for aggression? The medium is new and we need to learn, as a child learns socializing rules, what is permissible and what violates human decency. Attacks, snide mockery, and cruelty should be off the table.

Beyond that, a few simple rules to get us started:

• For anything controversial, argumentative, or angry, do not allow yourself to post until at least an hour has passed. “My moods don’t believe one another,” wrote Emerson. What seems justified in this moment can later be a cause of great regret.

• When someone is unkind or aggressive toward you, try to reach out with a soft tone. Often you will discover that the recognition that there is a person on the other end of the interaction changes it entirely. I have had this experience many times, including eliciting public apologies once I did not react angrily. (I have sometimes reacted angrily and almost uniformly regret it.)

• It is not wrong, unethical, or unwise to block people. Indecency has a cost in availability.

• There is indeed cherem, excommunication, a practice much more common in ancient and medieval times than it is today. However big the playing field, there has to be a line that declares one out of bounds. Judaism, like any other nation, tradition, or religion, is not without limits, and there are Talmudic precedents for removing people from the study hall (although exile was not permanent). 

• As the ’70s pop song put it, “I bruise you / You bruise me  / We both bruise too easily.” Harmlessness is a prescription for the anodyne and the inessential. Giving “offense” cannot be a reason to exclude someone, since our capacity to be offended is virtually limitless. The overwhelming Jewish ethos is that of encouraging multiple perspectives. But controversy is not synonymous with savagery; we can encourage robust argument without sanctioning insult, mockery, or cruelty.

What then happens when there is a deviation that cannot be ignored or dismissed? There are a few cases, the most egregious, where there is no way back. In general, however, Judaism knows that people transgress and has a lot to say about what to do next. Specifically, it offers a central concept too often neglected in our retributive age: teshuva, repentance.

Some Jews are under the mistaken impression that Judaism asks people to confess to their misdeeds once a year, on Yom Kippur. In fact, there is a confessional in each morning service. The tradition’s assumption is correct not only psychologically but logically: There are more ways to get an answer wrong than to get it right, more possibilities to mess up in this world than can be avoided day in and day out. Therefore we need a constant mechanism of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is required in Judaism not only from God but from one another. The medieval scholar Eleazar ben Judah wrote that “the most beautiful thing a man can do is to forgive.” It can be difficult. If I forgive you, truly forgive you, then I must restore moral parity; I am no better than you. Accepting that steals the satisfactions of resentment, but it is essential. Jewish law insists that once someone has been forgiven, you must never remind the person of that fact. To do so is to reestablish a hierarchy that true forgiveness disavows.

To forgive is to forswear vengeance. It is to recognize that we too are in need of forgiveness, and our venom toward the other is often less about justice than about the satisfactions of vented anger. There are things of which one should be ashamed, of course, and public disapproval is a powerful and important tool of social cohesion. But all of us are imperfect and seek compassion. A society that casts others out because they did something wrong will soon find that it has swallowed poison assuming that the other will die from it.

The fundamental Jewish teaching is that every human being is in the image of God. We are all deserving of respect, a word that comes from the root meaning “to look again.” We deserve a second look and a second chance. Wider boundaries of condemnation and more expansive embraces of forgiveness — this is the Jewish teaching needed for our time.

Let us close by returning to the words of Rav Kook cited at the opening of this piece. How accurately he described the dilemmas of our age of cancellation: an inability to entertain one’s own fallibility, a failure of humility, an excess of defensive self-justification. We throw others on the waste pile because they are flawed, but we are the avatars of what is right and true. We make no allowance for the changing of culture over time, or for the soul growth of human beings over their lives. We encase ourselves in a virtue that explains all and forgives nothing. We wield both the gavel and the axe, no matter how ugly, unproductive, and wrong.

We can and should do better. Jewish tradition, in its deep wisdom of both disagreement and forgiveness, can help. Both reason and faith should persuade us that listening and forgiving are more productive than disregarding and shaming. As the prophet says: “Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we break faith with one another?” (Malachi 2:10).

RABBI DAVID WOLPE is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. His most recent book is David: The Divided Heart.

From <https://sapirjournal.org/cancellation/2022/10/to-err-is-human-to-disagree-jewish/>