the USA, Israel, and national interest

tbf, much of that money is dog-eared to spend on american military technology, so it's going right back into american industry. there's definitely a discussion to have about US funding of Israel (and this is the perfect thread for it!), tho I find that ppl opposed to it a) greatly overestimate exactly how much it is (pittance in the scheme of things) and b) discount the very real advantages the US gets from Israel including the benefit of world class tech sector, and all the imperial influence the US loves to have in the middle east. not to mention that if you think Israeli democracy is precarious now, I'd hate to see it if it had to deal w/, say, Russia or China instead of the US.

(I don't mean the last bit as a threat like, "keep funding Israel or they'll become a dictatorship!" but more that the US has bought civic influence in Israel for years, and is partially the reason why the society has transitioned from socialism to free market capitalism. you buy that kind of influence w/ money.)

tbf, much of that money is dog-eared to spend on american military technology, so it's going right back into american industry.

yeah well it's not like I'm cool with this either really

I find that ppl opposed to it a) greatly overestimate exactly how much it is (pittance in the scheme of things)

hey if enrique wants to use some other yardstick for "good relations" with morally suspect regimes he's welcome to point them out. it's not like our support of Israel is all strictly $$$, we also bring their PM over for standing ovations from congress immediately after giving our president the finger.

b) discount the very real advantages the US gets from Israel including the benefit of world class tech sector, and all the imperial influence the US loves to have in the middle east.

yeah I dunno how well this is working out for us, really, given the current uprisings/instability/conflagrations. Israel is probably passing on lots of info to us about Syria, for example, but for all the wrong reasons.

i'm not privy to the inner corridors of power + intelligence but something like Stuxnet was probably worth some cash

okay yeah that was pretty cool

In re the piece that started this -- it did capture something for me, which is the particular way in which, for a lot of young American Jews, zionism feels like this innocent, carefree thing that you can't even imagine someone disagreeing with (except, I guess, Nazis or something). At least that was how I felt growing up -- "Cool, we have our own country! No one lived in the desert before we moved there and the British said we could have it [half truth], and we really showed the world that we could fend and fight for ourselves and no one can push us around! Plus it has pomegranates and shawarma." or something.

hurting otm

Benedikt emails Goldberg: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/allison-benedikt-makes-her-anti-israel-case/240779/

quite a url there huh

2) Every marriage is a mystery, so who knows what goes on inside the Cook-Benedikt household, but it's strange that Benedikt would write that her "husband ordered me to retweet this," given the fact that much of the criticism of her essay centers on the way she portrays her husband as a bully and a jackass.

lol

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/allison-benedikt-says-most-of-my-jewish-friends-are-disgusted-with-israel-it-seems-my-trajectory-is-not-at-all-unique

I think anti-israel is accurate.

why is john forcing his wife to tweet, is my question

"Cool, we have our own country! No one lived in the desert before we moved there and the British said we could have it [half truth], and we really showed the world that we could fend and fight for ourselves and no one can push us around! Plus it has pomegranates and shawarma.

^^^this is totally the narrative they sold us in hebrew school

"Allison Benedikt did send me a response to my original post, but it was caught in my spam filter"

yeahrite you fuck

his first thing is kind of ... a spectacularly wilful misleading, or one that evinces a basic incapacity to deal with english prose? i'd guess the former. on the other hand, i am english, and so have no idea who he is or why he is relevant to anything. i liked the essay, though.

J Street, the fairly new Jewish-American organization of liberal Jews who want a 2 state solution, also now do trips to Israel with students I see:

As director of J Street U, I have the privilege of traveling in Israel and the West Bank this week with an amazing group of 14 J Street U students – 7 of whom are in the region for the first time.

The trip is just over halfway through – with experiences ranging from visiting the Western Wall to viewing the separation barrier, from visiting with Knesset members to traveling to Palestinian villages, from exploring the meaning of Zionism today with Professor Gil Troy in West Jerusalem to hearing from Palestinians whose homes have just recently been demolished in the hills of South Hebron.

I can tell that these two weeks are making a life-long impact on the participants. And amidst the painful stories of this conflict, that fact is giving me tremendous hope. But I don't want you to hear it from me. I want you to hear it directly from the students

goldberg kinda got ethered there. why is he so condescending?

"Does she question herself about the consequences of abandoning Israel? I wouldn't go so far as to say I've abandoned Israel (did you read the essay?), but if you mean have I thought about what it would mean for there to be no such thing as a Jewish state? I have thought about this plenty of course! Who that takes this stuff seriously hasn't? (I guess you don't think I take it seriously, but you're wrong.) I bet I land, uncomfortably, about where you land: If the decision comes down to brutal occupation forever to maintain the Jewishness of the state OR true democracy, which would mean no Jewish state, I would have to choose the latter--but there is nothing easy or wishful in me writing that, and I hope it never comes to that (though more and more it seems like it will)."

This sums up my feelings pretty well.

Also, my father, now a reform rabbi and formerly a conservative cantor, told me last passover that he doesn't like the wicked child parable and thinks it should be taken out of the seder, because it suggests exclusion of those who express doubts or misgivings. I always hated it even as a kid. No idea where it even comes from in terms of source material -- it strikes me as being out of sync with other stuff you learn about Judaism and its values.

I think that's a misunderstanding of the parable (or at least not the normative interpretation). The wicked son excludes himself by asking, "what are these rituals to you / to you and not to him."

Notably the wise son also questions (in almost the exact same syntax as the wicked son, which is a huge area of interpretation), as does the simple son. The problem w/ the wicked son isn't the expressing doubts or misgivings. It's that he wants to exclude himself from the tribe.

Yeah but the wicked child is a child and you should give such children patience and understanding rather than reinforcing their self-exclusion, I think is the idea.

wait i don't get it. (i have always been confused by the difference between the wise and the wicked sons!) you're saying the wise son says "us" and the wicked one says "you"?

xp

they both say 'to you' is the point, but only one of those the haggadah says is self-exclusionary

he was just kind of a dick about it

Yeah he's the surly kid who's all like "What is this crap? What's the point of it." But in modern psych terms we're supposed to figure that that kid is already angry and already feels excluded and that the answer isn't casting him out.

also these aren't literal children -- they're symbols. the answer to the wicked son's excluding himself is making apparent the consequences of that exclusion. "if you were there, you would not have been saved." ie: the community saves you in times of trouble, and you are at risk if you leave it. It's a pretty parochial message, but the haggadah is essentially all about that theme over and over again ("in each and every generation they have raised up to destroy us.." etc etc).

the child who feels alienated is technically not the wicked son but the one who doesn't know how to ask (the tinuk sh'nishba/stolen child concept). the wicked son knows and purposefully rebels, he's an apikorsis/heretic type of figure.

Well yeah, I think you're analysis is right. But, I mean, that's also why it feels like a metaphor for pressure not to criticize Israel, which is why Jeffrey Goldberg's use of it is irritating, and why I don't like it in general.

your

of interesting note (tho probably OTT at this point), the haggadah says god did this "for me but not for him" instead of the original Mechilta text "for me but not for you" bc no one at the seder should think we're addressing them as the wicked son

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/random-thoughts-from-jerusalem.html

Oz’s speech was mostly well received by this audience of Israel’s secular/liberal elite but there was heckling especially when he said that there would have to be a two-state solution along the 67 lines (with modifications) and that Israel would have to give up biblical lands. Oddly Sarah Silverman had hit on this point earlier, “What do you want,” she asked, “acreage or values?”

nothing new really, just, conferences are pretty weird huh

Sarah Silverman OTM

but oy what a weird lineup!

j goldberg not really doing himself any favors here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/who-is-the-wicked-son/240852/

Shakira!

probably no surprise that i love the bit from Lozowick

you make up your own hagada? who in the world do you think you are? and why do you think it's a hagada?

this thread may need subtitles.

afaik, goldberg (and bachman) are right that excisions from the text are very uncommon. there are for sure haggadahs that do it (i'm pretty sure Renewel encourages finding your own way of doing the seder) and probably different denominations have varying texts. I can't imagine most remove the 'wicked son.' Interestingly, tho, some ppl have added sons. A Schechter haggadah I saw years ago talks about the son who isn't there (who didn't make it to the seder) and the Lubavticher Rebbe had a similar idea when he talked about the son who wasn't present and referred explicitly to Soviet Jewry that was still unable to celebrate their religion under communist leadership. Adding it a little different tho, esp wrt Chassidim who have a long tradition of the 5th thing in the seder (specifically Elijah's cup being the 5th cup) as a messianic reference.

(haggadot*?)

The whole thing really feels like they're secretly arguing about intermarriage but can't bear to make it explicit.

sheesh Goldberg is a colossal asshole.

seems like adding things to haggadot is more common than excisions, but the point that this stuff is subject to modification and has been throughout history is what really matters.

lol oranges etc

http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2011/06/22/3088261/in-which-i-now-opt-out-of-the-benedikt-thing

John Cook, came across as a jerk for banging not just her but her entire family

From what I could tell, there was then a nasty Twitter post, followed by I believe what is called a Re-Tweet, our own era's manifestation of scrawling messages on bathroom stalls, and that seems to be where things stand.

A much better and more worthy 'personal essay' IMO:

http://www.thenation.com/print/article/161460/romance-birthright-israel

birthright is such a fucked up thing

I don't think that's one of the opinions that are allowed, symsymsysm.

my little sister went and was horrified by the offer of a free honeymoon to israel for couples that meet on birthright

say two people who, im guessing, belong to some kind of nation-state-type set-up

Birthright Israel is kind of a fucked up thing i guess, but the concept birthright is shared by all sides i this conflict afaict

for the record i meant the program Birthright Israel, not the entire concept of citizenship in a nation-state