By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 10-16-09

Dear Jeremy Ben-Ami,

Allow me to respond to your open letter to Ambassador Michael Oren with an open letter of my own.

I share your worry “that the connection to Israel for a large number of Jewish Americans has become strained over time.” I love your statement to the Ambassador, and presumably to the entire pro-Israel community, that “what J-Street shares in common with you far outweighs that on which we disagree.” As someone trying to figure out how to sing a new song of Zion for the next generation of Jews and as someone who champions “big-tent” Zionism, like there was during the movement’s early days, it sounds like you’re singing my song.

Alas, when I examine what you advocate and what you ignore, when I read your statements, surf your website and look at your conference program, I am troubled. For starters, I do not see the use of the word “Zionism” anywhere. I wonder if that is tactical or ideological.

I wonder if you would display on your website the following statement:

Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland, in the face of impossible odds…. And I deeply understood the Zionist idea – that there is always a homeland at the center of our story.”

Those are the words of then-Senator Barack Obama, spoken on June 4, 2008, the day after he clinched the nomination.

Or what about this:

My starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves.”

Obama again. If President Obama is not afraid to affirm Zionist ideals, why do you seem to be?

Note on your website the comment that:

The Palestinian people are likely to continue to nurture an anger that leads some to armed struggle as long as there is no mutually accepted resolution to the underlying political conflict.”

True, Palestinian anger must be acknowledged. But why do I hear nothing about the other phenomenon that must be acknowledged, Israeli anguish? Why do I hear nothing from you about the 850,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands, decades of Arab rejectionism, Palestinian anti-Semitism, the fact that withdrawal under Oslo and after the Gaza disengagement has only fed more violence, or the pain of Israelis whose blood has been spilled over the years? Why have I not heard a J-Street statement as passionate as this one:

The first job of any nation-state is to protect its citizens…. If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

That, too, was said by President Obama, during his visit to Sderot in July, 2008. Without the assurance that Israel’s pain is felt, without understanding that Israel faces a series of untenable choices when defending its people against terrorists who hide among civilians, without noticing that Oslo and Disengagement triggered more violence, the “peace of the brave” we all seek is reduced to a delusion – or an anti-Israel mugging.

I understand your desire to be evenhanded, and believe there is room in the pro-Israel and Zionist movements for voices such as yours. I hope that from your “J-Street” address you can see the Golden Path to a solution. My fear, though, is that you can only see Israeli sins and not Palestinian crimes; that your mythical address prevents you from seeing the facts on the ground we see in Israel, on campus, in the UN and elsewhere. I would love to see progressive voices lead the fight against the ugly campaign to de-legitimize Israel. We need civil rights activists who fought against apartheid to repudiate the libel falsely comparing the Israeli-Palestinian nationalist conflict to South African whites’ ugly racist oppression. We need people with impeccable progressive credentials willing to confront the Arab dictatorships, condemn Muslim homophobia, racism, and sexism, and to denounce terrorism.

Instead, I see a conference program more comfortable with finger-pointing at Israel. Why not call your “Messaging ‘Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace’” session “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace and Anti-Delegitimization,” acknowledging how much the rejection of Israel harms the peace process (just as most Israelis learned in the 1990s that denying Palestinian nationalism is counter-productive)? Will “Israel on Campus,” address the dilemmas so many students face: Attacks on Israel are so extreme, they fear any constructive criticism of Israel they utter will be used as fodder to continue demonizing their homeland – and all too often, their people?

And I would be more comfortable with the Americans for Peace Now session “West Bank Settlements: Obstacles on the Road to Peace,” if anything in the conference program acknowledged the “Obstacles on the Road to Peace” constituted by the Hamas charter, terrorism, demagoguery in mosques, rabble-rousing on the Temple Mount, harassment of Palestinian moderates, refusal to acknowledge Jewish rights to the land, Arab anti-Semitism, etc.

I hate to sound so unwelcoming. I believe there is no inherent contradiction between being progressive and being a Zionist, that Israel represents a remarkable attempt to establish liberal, democratic and Jewish values in the Middle East. We need a broad coalition of pro-Israel forces. But my sense is that Ambassador Oren senses what I sense. You find it easier to bash Israel than to criticize Israel’s adversaries. Maybe the burden is on you to establish some street cred by fighting the anti-Israel delegitimizers, the anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who are affronts to what you so eloquently call “the values we bring to the table as Jews and as Americans.”

In friendship,

Gil

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 10-15-09

In late September, nearly 50,000 Israelis massed into the National Stadium in Ramat Gan to hear the Canadian troubadour Leonard Cohen sing.

Not only did the sponsors add an additional 1,000 seats at the last minute, but many in the crowd seemed quite familiar with Cohen’s oeuvre – and not just Hallelujah.

But perhaps most impressive, Cohen’s magic worked in the Middle East. After the concert, as thousands streamed into the overflowing parking lots, as people pulled out of their typically Israeli haphazard parking spots – it took us more than 45 minutes to leave the complex – a modern miracle occurred: I didn’t hear one shout, one sustained beep, one impatient “Nu kvar….” Cohen’s karma proved contagious.

Tragically, most of our Palestinian neighbours weren’t exposed to Cohen’s charms. The simple fact that he was willing to play a concert in Tel Aviv made Cohen persona non grata in the Palestinian Authority. He had offered to play in Ramallah, too. But as part of the hysterical, misanthropic BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement targeting Israel, Palestinians spurned his offer. Undeterred, Cohen donated the $2 million the concert generated to a special foundation he established, whose major beneficiary is the Parents Circle, a group of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict. Cohen repeatedly praised this “holy, holy” group during his transfixing 3-1/4-hour-long concert, each time triggering sustained applause.

With the Palestinians’ ridiculous, impotent Cohen ban coming days after the failed attempt to ruin the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) because it dared to celebrate Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary, the pro-Palestinian movement seems to be reaching new lows. Palestinians and their fellow travellers are trying to treat Israel as a country with cooties – the schoolyard phrase captures just how immature and self-destructive this move is. As a result, even peace-loving Zen Buddhist monks like Cohen or the many left-leaning, pro-Palestinian Israelis in the Tel Aviv film community are deemed radioactive, because they dare to interact with the Jewish state.

This is a cultural intifadah, an all-out war, not against “the occupation” or the “Gaza operation,” but against Israel itself. Just as Palestinian suicide bombers undermined their own propaganda yelling about “the settlements” by attacking Tel Aviv and Haifa, treating all of Israel as a “settlement,” these boycott bullies find everything or anyone Israeli repulsive, no matter where they stand politically. This blacklist approach treats potential allies as enemies, dooming any chance for peace. It’s hard to be open to compromise and reconciliation when your existence is threatened, when the very essence of who you are seems to trigger disgust in others.

Fortunately, the most unlikely of celebrities demonstrated how to fight this hatred. After she joined in condemning TIFF, Jane Fonda had second thoughts. Responding to a letter against the boycott signed by Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and others, Fonda realized that this proposed boycott against the Jewish state would harm the peace process and was like the despicable Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s.

People in the pro-Israel community take note: comparing the boycott to the blacklist was a masterstroke. It showed that the best way to fight these affronts is to master the insider language of the community in question and demonstrate – what is often true – that the attack on Israel is an attack on core liberal values, in this case, freedom of expression and association.

Joining Fonda in resisting the hate was Cohen. He showed that the good people of the world cannot be cowed. Cohen ended his concert by raising his hands solemnly, reaching back into his personal and communal tradition as a Kohen, a priest, and reciting the priestly benediction.

Wouldn’t it have been grand to have thousands of Israelis and Palestinians together absorbing that blessing, with its moving final lines, “May the Lord lift up his face to you and grant you peace.”

Now, when you deprive yourself of these and other cultural opportunities, preferring to perpetuate hatred instead, we must ask, “Who is the loser?” – in both its meanings.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 10-11-09

Nobel-Prize-award week was yet another split-screen week for Israel, emphasizing the gap between Israel’s noble achievements and its adversaries’ ignoble aims, as well as between Barack Obama’s worldwide popularity and his unpopularity in Israel. Israel must do more to ensure it is a country filled with people like Ada Yonath, who won Israel’s ninth Nobel prize, and the first Chemistry Nobel for a woman since 1964. But Israel must also bridge the growing gap between Barack Obama’s saintly status in Europe and the skepticism he generates in Zion.

Israelis giddily celebrated Yonath’s extraordinary achievement; further proof that this little country has disproportionate impact in bettering this world, in revolutionizing science. The headline of one Jerusalem Post article noting that nine Israelis had won the prize (counting two Sveriges Riksbank Prizes in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), read: “Closer to a Nobel Minyan.” The piece echoed my (and so many others’) Jewish parents’ questions when we came home from school with a 97: “Where are the other three points?”

Simultaneously, headlines speculated about a third intifada; rather than collecting Nobel Prizes, Palestinians were collecting stones to hide in wheelbarrows on the Temple Mount and building up rage over imagined insults. The latest trigger was the visit of French Christian tourists whom demagogic Palestinians decided were Jewish militants. The Israeli authorities had banned Jewish groups to keep order, but that did not stop the rabble rousers, led by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, who cries: “if Zionism isn’t eliminated, there will not be peace.”

Fortunately, peace reigned throughout most of Jerusalem, as tens of thousands thronged the Old City for Succot festivities. But once again, it seemed we needed a corollary to Golda Meir’s cliché. Meir supposedly said: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Peace will also come when the Palestinians are more passionate about building their state and society than destroying ours.

More ominously for Israel, the morning President Barack Obama received his Nobel Prize, Ha’aretz warned: “US administration angered over Israeli incitement against Obama.” The Nobel Prize is a collective European thumbs-up for Obama – and yet another “flip of the bird” – as we used to say in Queens – to George W. Bush. In 2002, Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize reflected European disdain for Bush’s unilateral War on Terror.

Seven years later, the counter-reaction against Bush persists. “Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee declared. “Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

The more the world deifies Obama, the harder it is for Israel to defy him. Obama, despite all the hype, is only human. Adulation is addictive. The more he is worshipped, the less open the world’s wunderkind will be to criticism from Israelis – or anyone else.

Yes, Obama won the prize prematurely. Even the pro-Obama New York Times called the award “a decidedly mixed blessing … a reminder of the gap between the ambitious promise of his words and his accomplishments.”

Yet give Obama his due. The hope his election unleashed worldwide was amazing. “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the Nobel Prize citation says. During this dark recession year, America’s single greatest export has been the hope Barack Obama transmitted to billions of the disillusioned, the oppressed, the discriminated against throughout the world. This achievement may be Nobel Prize-worthy.

Alas, even with Obama in office, the world remains menaced by ignoble characters who disdain his noble aspirations. The jury is still out whether Obama’s politics of hope and diplomacy of engagement can work in a world of al Qaeda killers, North Korean dictators, Iranian madmen, Iraqi insurgents, Taliban fanatics, Afghani warlords, Pakistani generals, Russian strongmen, Saudi Sheiks, Sudanese slaughterers, Guinea rapists and Hamas terrorists. Moreover, hope is like a balloon: if properly inflated it soars into the sky, dazzling, delighting and elevating, but if overblown, it pops. Historically, rising expectations have preceded revolutions, both constructive and destructive.

The contrast between noble societies that invest in science and ignoble societies addicted to terror, between noble political cultures that produce hope-generators like Barack Obama and ignoble political cultures that produce mass killers, remains daunting. Obama’s fate as president will not be determined by any Norwegian committee; it will be determined by how he reconciles his lofty hopes with the world’s ugly realities.

In dealing with Obamania, Israel faces a conundrum. It is not easy to stand out, to defy the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom, especially in Europe, has been wrong before, and is wrongheaded now, trusting a UN that has degenerated into the “Third World Dictators’ Debating Society.” Without that ability to think outside the box, the Zionist revolution never would have reestablished the Jewish state, nor would Ada Yonath have ever realized how antibiotics bind to ribosomes.

Professor Yonath recalled this week that experts warned her: “You won’t make it, what you want to do others have tried and failed, so it won’t happen.” Fortunately, she persisted. Eventually, her inspiration and perspiration paid off. Israel has no choice but to persist scientifically, diplomatically, militarily. This ugly world witnesses miracles every day. Ada Yonath ultimately succeeded. A self-described “skinny guy with a funny name” became a 48-year-old American president and Nobel Peace Prize Winner. Perhaps, with all the wisdom in this country, Israel can figure out how to make peace with Obama while achieving a true peace that is mutual, realistic, and brings out the best of all the peoples in the region.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book, The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, was recently published by Oxford University Press.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 10-8-09

With Israel best known for generating headlines about its troubles, its joys are too frequently overlooked. To be in Israel for “the hagim,” the High Holidays, including Sukkot, is a blessed, underreported privilege. From the shanah tovah greetings everywhere to the antacid commercials responding to bouts of holiday overeating, the holiday spirit is pervasive. But this is not simply the Jewish version of the Christmas season three months early. It is striking to an outsider how seriously so many Israelis take the Yamim Noraim, truly making them Days of Awe.

Especially in Jerusalem, the engagement with repentance feels ubiquitous. In North America, the ten days of penitence frequently divide into three holy days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and seven scrambling-to-catch-up-at-work days. In Israel, many people carve out the time for spiritual reflection, following the journey from self-evaluation to redemption our ancestors mapped out for us.

Affirming the Zionist idea that returning to the land would make us whole as a people, the spirit is in the air; the spirituality has a geography to it too. School kids hum Adon HaSlichot, the Lord of Forgiveness, a multi-stanza piyyut, poem, as they scamper about. High school students have all-night tours in the neighborhoods around Jerusalem’s Machaneh Yehudah market, culminating in pre-dawn “slichot” penitential prayers, as the magic of the night and the romance of the place enhance the prayers’ power. And for people of all ages, there are classes galore, in schools and synagogues, in community centers and private homes.

My twelve-year-old son, starting this year at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s High School, had one such all night marathon. It began at 11 o’clock with a class for parents, too. Surprisingly, impressively, my son’s teacher immediately engaged the bleary-eyed parents who showed up. The class began with a contemporary Ehud Manor-Matti Caspi song, “Slichot,” about the challenges of seeking forgiveness and the mutuality needed for it to work.

“I don’t know what to say, I didn’t want to hurt you,” the song begins, sounding like a typically sappy pop-cult lament. But, as the teacher’s literary, historical, and spiritual tour de force demonstrated, the song echoes the Talmud, the 12th century rabbi Maimonides, and Israel’s Nobel Prize winning novelist, S.Y. Agnon. Even more impressive than the teacher’s mastery of the sources was the sincerity of his engagement with the process, with these spurs for each individual to use this highly ritualized collective time to make personal, challenging adjustments.

The next night, my wife and I joined fifty thousand others at the National Stadium in Ramat Gan to hear Canadian music legend Leonard Cohen. The 75-year-old graduate of Montreal’s Herzliah High School fit right in with Israel’s addictive, characteristic, old-new mix. Cohen’s entrancing three and a half hour performance culminated with his invoking Birkat HaKohanim, the priestly blessing.

Still, as moved as I was by Cohen’s wry, impish, sensitive provocative worldview, as fascinated as I was to see how he transformed his Jewish learning and his own spiritual wanderings into popular poetry for the masses, his message was jarring. “Who by Fire” updates the stirring Unetanah tokef prayer, a High Holiday highlight. Inspired by the terrifying “Who shall live, who shall die,” riff, Cohen asks, “who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate… who in mortal chains, who in power/ And who shall I say is calling?” A Jewish prayer affirming God’s power, and prescribing “repentance, prayer and righteousness” to “avert the severe decree” becomes a modern mirror of alienation and hedonism, tempered by a dash of social criticism. Unetaneh tokef, “We Shall Ascribe Holiness to this Day,” affirms order, virtue, and authority in the world; Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire” ascribes randomness to this universe.

Nevertheless, Cohen’s karma proved contagious. After the concert, as thousands pulled out of their typically Israeli haphazard parking spots – it took us more than 45 minutes to leave the complex – a modern miracle occurred: I did not hear one shout, one sustained beep, one impatient “Nu kvar.” As we traveled back from Cohen’s world to the Jerusalem bubble – unsure which is real, which is right – we hit traffic jams at 1 a.m. – as hundreds thronged the streets, taking last-minute penitential tours of Machaneh Yehudah, Nachlaot, the Old City.

It all peaked with Yom Kippur, which concentrated the collective power of millions engaging with God, engaging with themselves, repenting, changing, fixing the world. The atmospherics outside again enhanced the piety, literacy, authenticity, intensity of the experiences inside the synagogue. Leaving the Kol Nidre prayers into the silence of a world without cars – in the center of the city – is amazing, as is the warm, communal feeling, as people promenade up and down normally hazardous streets like Emek Refaim. With the bicyclists and the pedestrians taking over the city, religious and secular mingle freely, easily, sharing the delight in the voluntary ban on driving in the Jewish people’s capital on the Jewish people’s holiest day.

The holiday season culminates now with Succot. The oft-neglected holiday in the Diaspora – with people desperate to return to work – is a national holiday here, with all schools closed. Succot blossom everywhere, lovely unexpected flowers jutting out of the urban concrete jungle. With camping trips and mass priestly blessings at the Wall, soap box car races, all day learning fests, and a 70,000-person Jerusalem parade featuring Christian Zionists from all over the world – Succot truly becomes zman simchateinu, “the holiday of our joy.”

Few moderns can relate to our ancestors’ joy during the harvest. But as meaning-seeking creatures, with all of us on some path trying to understand what life is all about, Succot’s joy derives from its proximity to Yom Kippur. Having grappled with eternal questions, struggled to improve our souls, what better way to assert our humanity and our Jewishness than through celebration? And for those of us in Israel, how lucky we are to experience this all at the point of origin, our ancient homeland, and in sync with so many others. Such joy, such spiritual satisfaction may not make headlines, but it makes life worth living.

New York Times Letters to the Editor, September 27, 2009

There has always been a peace consensus in the pro-Israel community ready to compromise. Until Israel’s critics figure out how to acknowledge the pain and suffering resulting from Palestinian terrorism and exterminationist rhetoric, by pointing the Palestinians and the Arabs toward real change, they will fail to sway those Israelis and Jews that are ready to take a shot at reconciliation.

GIL TROY

Professor of History

McGill University

Montreal

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 9-24-09

A friend of mine was born Jewish and converted to Catholicism – she double-majored in guilt. She recently moved to Abu Dhabi. She reported being appalled that lovely, progressive Westerners there paid the going wage to their help – meaning practically starvation wages. Even though the economic promises that lured her there were not paying off as she hoped, my friend paid anyone who worked for her what she considered to be a suitable, North American wage.

My friend’s indignation got me thinking about our moral blind spots in society, the abuses we don’t see because we’re so used to them, but for which we nevertheless bear responsibility because by not objecting to them, we perpetuate them. These subterranean sins are a fundamental phenomenon of modern life. Historians and philosophers talk about John Locke’s social contract, how people in society give up certain rights to get certain benefits. But it is a fiction. Most of us are born into our respective societies and simply accept the rules of the game, with no real thought, no explicit buy-in, and minimal negotiating power to change the rules.

Still, it’s worthwhile to consider those features of our society that implicate us and to ask: what communal sins are we overlooking?

Jewish thought is clear on the subject. In fact, the entire tshuva – repentance – mechanism is for sins committed beshgaga, unintentionally. The guilt of intentional sins cannot be dispatched so easily. Our inadvertent sins are the ones we can try to repent for on Yom Kippur.

The first sin the world would expect Israelis to seek atonement for would be Israel’s relations with the Palestinians. After the attempts at peace during the Oslo years and the Gaza disengagement which resulted in such Palestinian demonization and violence, I don’t think Israelis should feel guilty on a collective level. However, on the level of what the liturgy calls ben adam lechavero, one human being to another, Israelis have much to atone for. After two years in Jerusalem I am astonished by how little contact Israeli Jews have with Israeli Arabs. I am appalled that all Israeli Jewish schools do not start teaching Arabic in first grade. I am amazed that so few Israelis have been to an iftar meal to break the Ramadan fast, or even know when Ramadan was – it just ended on September 19.

We see a similar problem with haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews). Few non-haredim have attempted to reach out to haredim or bothered to learn the lay of that land. Many of us were quick to condemn the unjustifiable hooliganism of the few haredim who think the best way to preserve the Shabbat is to resort to violence. But too few of us – myself included – bothered to acknowledge those haredi rabbis who condemned the violence or learn about that community’s internal dynamics on the Shabbat parking lot issue.

In general, people-to-people ties help reduce group conflict. Personal bonds often prevent people plunging from outrage at individual bad acts to casting aspersions against groups.

People-to-people ties also establish social networks that can help mediate group conflicts that do arise. In Montreal, we talk about the “two solitudes,” how French and English speaking Quebecers live side by side with little interaction. Here in Jerusalem we have three solitudes – or even more, if we start thinking about how fragmented Israeli society can be.

More broadly, since the end of the Palestinian wave of terror, and the unfortunate wave of Moshe Katzav-Ehud Olmert political corruption, I sense too much resignation in the Israeli body politic. When I travel in North America, people always want to know: “What’s the mood” in Israel? Once upon a time, the whole society seemed to freeze every hour with the beep-beep-beep signaling a new round of news bulletins. Today too many Israelis prefer to bury their heads in the sand. Too many accept the corruption of too many politicians, the growing crime rate, the broken political system, the underfunded and increasingly dysfunctional educational system, the roughness and selfishness festering in too many corners of society.

These days of repentance really need to be days of the wake-up call, when the sound of the shofar reawakens a sense of a communal can-do spirit that problems need to be identified clearly and can be solved, individually and communally.

Of course, every society has it troubles and blind spots. Americans, who are so quick to condemn Israeli Jews for ignoring Israeli Arabs, refuse to acknowledge their own complicity in the growth of the American underclass. These days, amid the economic crisis, many talk about the newly-unemployed. But millions of chronically unemployed are not even counted any more – they are statistically invisible.

Members of this underclass are disproportionately black. Despite the rise of Obama, the despair of so many African-Americans continues. This phenomenon remains another one of America’s great subterranean sins.

Moreover, reciprocity is essential here. Palestinians, haredim and others should also ask what they can do to reach out, build bridges, reduce tensions.

Our sages taught us that subtle transgressions require more repentance. May this coming year be a year of exposing then eliminating our subterranean sins. Let us hope that right-wing Israelis denounce the anti-Arab racism of too many in their community, just as left-right repudiate the anti-Semitic anti-Zionism perverting their community. Let us find Palestinians willing to condemn terrorism and Jews willing to renounce the complacency that stalls the peace process. Let us find haredim willing to stand up against those violent elements in their community and let us find secular Jews willing to confront their anti-religious prejudices.

And let us all try to go beyond group definitions, to treat individuals as precious human beings, rooted in their communities but also united by common yearnings for peace, mutual respect, and personal satisfaction.

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 9-17-09

As an academic, I like that my work year and the Jewish New Year begin together. As Jewish professors, administrators and students return to campus for a new academic year (and as some start afresh on their academic adventure), we should set some goals for effective pro-Israel advocacy and satisfying Jewish living.These truly are the best and the worst of times on campus for Jews. There have never been so many Jewish students and staffers, or so many Jewish studies programs and vital Hillels. Unfortunately, this Golden Age is also an era of systematic demonization of Israel on campus. The challenge here is to keep perspective. Our delight in the comfort Jews have in the academic world should not blind us to the ugliness of the anti-Israel assault. Our bitterness at the attacks’ toxicity should not sour us on the joys of academic life. Neither complacency nor paranoia works. We must celebrate Israel as well as defend Israel. We must focus on Jewish life and not let our enemies set the agenda.

In forging an effective campus strategy to defend and delight in Judaism and Zionism, consider the following guidelines:

• Israel’s culture is vital and infectious, an appealing mix of the East and the West. We should change the stereotype of “Israel the warrior state.” Students – and professors – should see the Israel that Madonna recently saw, the Israel of a modern rock beat and of ancient wisdom, the Israel of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

• Never attack academic freedom, but never tolerate educational malpractice. I wholeheartedly support professors’ freedoms to draw whatever conclusions they can from their assessment of evidence, but I reject the way too many professors abuse their podiums. If a professor refuses to air opposing views, mocks students who disagree, or turns the lecturer’s stand into a political soapbox, students should document it carefully, get corroborating witnesses, ask the professor to stop and contact administrators, parents, alumni and community leaders if the complaints are ignored.

• Let’s delegitimize the delegitimizers. For too long, we have allowed those using the “racism” and “apartheid” slanders to carry the day. We must be proactive, pointing out that singling out Israel, rationalizing Palestinian terrorism, drawing false analogies with the evil South African regime and making libelous comparisons to Nazis puts Israel’s critics in league with Arab anti-Semites and outdated Soviet propagandists. The moral onus is on them to prove they are not anti-Semitic or abetting anti-Semitism by distancing themselves from the exterminationists and hate-mongers.

• Don’t fear the Z-word. Too many Jews on campus have internalized the critics’ lies and fear using the word “Zionism.” Those who have visited Israel on Birthright Israel or other programs should learn that Zionism is another name for all those warm glowy feelings they have about Israel – that sense of peoplehood and appreciation for a Jewish state.

• We need a big-tent Zionism. Our anger at the unreason of too many of Israel’s accusers shouldn’t shut our minds down. We should welcome a wide spectrum of opinions and voices, making it clear that we can disagree graciously about settlements, boundaries, strategies, even values, without demonizing or delegitimizing. There is a rich Israeli and Jewish tradition of dissent that should not be squelched. Only when people start attacking Israel disproportionately, inaccurately and with the language of those who seek its extermination should we react strongly. Beyond that, our Jewish centres should be centres of creative, vital and diverse thought and argument.

• Lo nafseek lirkod (We won’t stop dancing or singing or learning or praying or enjoying…). Outside the closed Dolphinarium, the Tel Aviv disco where a terrorist – later glorified by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat – slaughtered 21 teenagers and wounded 120, a simple monument promises defiantly: “Lo nafseek lirkod (We won’t stop dancing).” Our enemies cannot defeat us or demoralize us.

Universities should be centres of Jewish revival, places where students and professors discover the spiritual, intellectual, ideological depth of the Jewish experience. We should embrace Judaism, engage Israel, learn Torah, appreciate Jewish civilization and never, ever stop singing and dancing. Shanah tovah.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 9-15-09

These days, image often seems to be everything. Fortunately, in education, substance still counts. As the brouhaha surrounding MASA’s ill-fated advertising campaign “Lost” peters out, let’s turn the notoriety generated into an opportunity to learn about this under-appreciated program. In truth, the ad campaign’s heavy-handed apocalyptic tone contradicted MASA’s usually warm, inviting, upbeat approach.

MASA, Hebrew for journey, is more of a clearinghouse run by the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government, helping thousands of young Jews attend more than 160 long-term programs in Israel, for a semester or a year. MASA subsidizes the programs, while offering administrative, programming and — on good days – marketing expertise. The idea built on birthright israel’s tremendous success. A ten-day birthright trip offers an exciting, sweeping taste of Israel, a smorgasbord of travel delights. MASA invites participants to enjoy a longer, more focused meal.

EARLIER THIS month, seeking to encourage Israelis to invite their Diaspora relatives to join one of its programs, MASA launched an expensive advertising campaign.  Melodramatic television ads featured “Lost” posters seeking young people with obvious Jewish names in different languages, representing the supposed 50 percent of Diaspora Jewish youth who assimilate annually (absurdly distorting a controversial statistic). The railroads in the background reminded some critics of Holocaust movies. For others, the posters evoked the heartbreaking photos New Yorkers posted after 9/11. Still others resented the implication that the forces of assimilation were kidnapping young Jews. MASA wisely pulled the ads.

The “Lost” campaign does not accurately reflect MASA’s programs – and diverted hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars to Israel rather than to the Diaspora, where they are really needed. Alas, the ads reflect one constant theme in Israeli conversations about Diaspora Jewry. Israelis often simultaneously idealize and scorn Diaspora Jewish life, treating America especially as “the golden medina” and “the land of the lost.” Even as Israelis salivate about America’s riches – and mimic each new fad – they exaggerate the dangers of anti-Semitism and assimilation. All Diaspora Jews in this caricature appear rich, spoiled, happy, but Jewishly at risk or, as the MASA ad shrieked, lost.

But let’s be honest. This is the way many Diaspora Jews themselves talk about Diaspora Jewry – and have long talked about the Jewish people. In his 1948 essay “The Ever-Dying People,” Simon Rawidowicz observed that “the world makes many images of Israel” – meaning the Jewish people — “but Israel makes only one image of itself, that of a being constantly on the verge of ceasing to be, of disappearing.”

In fairness, most Diaspora Jews are less blunt than Israeli Jews and know that this generation must be wooed not hectored. But the “Lost” ads should be studied as artifacts of the constant “what about the young people” breast-beating endemic throughout the Jewish world.

NEVERTHELESS, we should learn from the way most MASA programs function rather than the way the Jewish Agency tried marketing MASA. MASA followed Birthright, Chabad, and others in seeking the joy in Judaism not the “oy.” Birthright taught that you inspire more modern Jews by inviting them on a Jewish journey rather than the traditional guilt trip.

To get some perspective on the controversy from MASA educators and participants, I called my friend Danny Hakim. Hakim is a two-time world silver medalist in karate, and managing director of  the Budokan Martial Arts and Fitness Program sponsored by MASA, the Jewish Agency, the Maccabi World Union and the JCCA. I reached him at Nitzana, by the Egyptian border, launching his MASA program with a five-day extreme sports program in the desert.  “Our program offers a five-month odyssey that will strengthen your body, mind, and spirit while giving you self-defense skills, confidence in general and confidence in your Jewish identity,” Hakim explained. “This experience will serve you for a lifetime.”

Reflecting MASA’s usually soft touch, Hakim originally called the program “the Martial Arts and Israel Leadership Program,” but changed “Israel leadership” to “fitness,” to attract students “from the periphery of the Jewish community.” This year participants arrived from Sweden, France, the UK and the US.

Jason Berman of Westfield, New Jersey, a 22-year-old Penn State University graduate, just arrived on his first overseas trip. Berman studied ancient history in college while studying karate. The martial arts program seemed custom-made for him – as so many MASA programs seem to the participants they attract. “I wanted to visit Israel, I wanted to do intensive martial arts, I was happy to study the history of Jewish heroes,” Berman reported. Having studied Greek and Roman history he “was thrilled to see real ruins, finally.”

He continued: “This has been all I could have hoped for… I just went on a short camel ride. I could see these old ancient buildings from 2000 years ago and we are just scratching the surface.”

David Hankin, an 18-year-old from Los Angeles, was equally enthusiastic. They are teaching us “focus and balance,” he said. While noting that he, too, had only arrived a week ago, he volunteered: “The program is not at all overbearing…. It has a very free feel to it.”

This, then, is the MASA its marketers should highlight. At its best MASA serves as a kind of matchmaker, linking young Diaspora Jews with programs that fit their interests in the Jewish homeland, demonstrating a hip, customized, welcoming, fluid, open-ended Zionism. Participants thrive by following their own rhythms, forging their own life plans.

“I’m really hoping to develop myself,” Jason Berman said, “to identify who I am; it’s definitely open-ended” – precisely as effective 21st century Jewish identity programs – along with their ad campaigns — should be.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book The Reagan Revolution:  A Very Short Introduction, was recently published by Oxford University Press.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 9-13-09

When one is attacked from both sides, it’s easy to feel virtuous. Having opponents from the far left and the far right does not guarantee you’re a moderate. It simply situates you in what farmers who trusted butter over its artificial modern substitute would have called the “margarine middle.”

Last week I was hit from both extremes. There seems to be a missing “nuance gene” when it comes to Israel. The most reasonable people, the most skilled professionals, somehow find themselves behaving irrationally, talking wildly and acting sloppily when the topic is raised.

My previous blog, “Israel’s self-hating Jews,” which condemned Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman for blaming the Obama settlement freeze idea on the president’s “Jew boy” advisers, triggered numerous attacks against me for daring to question the mayor’s horrific choice of words. You would have thought Mayor Nachman was the holy Reb Nachman of Breslav, given his devotees’ intensity. My critics refused to acknowledge that using such language – when trying to convince a State Department delegation, no less – was crude, rude and self-defeating.

Nachman’s followers took an attack on him as an attack on them, on Israel, on the Jewish people and on truth itself, while perceiving it as a deluded defense of Obama’s foreign policy, despite my criticisms of the administration’s Israel strategy.

Most disturbingly, they felt completely justified using offensive, racist language to describe fellow Jews with whom they disagree, thus undercutting those of us who have been forced to spend far too much time fighting anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, racism, and ethnic stereotyping of all kinds.

These rhetorical bomb-throwers confirmed every liberal caricature of the aggressive, self-righteous, my-way-or-the-highway settlers – but characteristically blamed me for helping to perpetuate that stereotype.

Let me say regarding the “Jew boy” issue what I say when anti-Semites masquerading as “mere” anti-Zionists compare Israelis to Nazis. Intelligent people can find a rich choice of words to convey disdain without resorting to cheap, ugly, inflammatory anti-Semitic language that reveals the critics’ own prejudices. It is particularly obnoxious and foolish to call Obama advisers who happen to be Jewish “Jew boys” and accuse them of dictating his policy. It absolves non-Jews like George Mitchell, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama himself of any responsibility. It perpetuates the myth of undue Jewish influence on American administrations, be they right or left. It only alienates potential allies.

At the same time, looking to the Left, I read The New York Times Magazine’s portrayal of J-Street, “The New Israel Lobby,” which defines itself as “pro-peace,” as if other Jewish political organizations were not.

This love letter masquerading as serious journalism read more like this new organization’s PR release than a piece written by the usually thoughtful, critical journalist James Traub, whose work I have long respected. As Shmuel Rosner noted in his blog, Traub failed to interview even one person “on the record” criticizing the new lobby.

Most disturbing, however, was the crude caricature of the pro-Israel community underlying Traub’s analysis. Traub pitted his heroes, the progressive, modern, post-Woodstock, charmingly American, Bohemian, Obamanian J-Street lobbyists against the villains of his piece, the old-fashioned and hopelessly anachronistic, Holocaust-obsessed paranoids running the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), who play to Jews’ “ancestral impulses.”

“This is the world that shaped the mainstream American Jewish groups,” Traub writes, describing the ADL’s Abraham Foxman’s birth in Poland, the ZOA’s Morton Klein’s birth in a displaced persons camp, and the enduring post-Holocaust obsession with “eternal vigilance” and “marketing” a sense of “besetting peril.”

There was nowhere in this dualistic universe for someone like Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, who campaigned for Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 2000, and who, being in her mid-forties, is younger than Foxman or Klein, yet founded “The Israel Project.”

Or the elegant, diplomatic, non-Holocaust obsessed head of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, who was twenty in 1969, Woodstock summer, and eloquently defends Israel as a liberal democracy.

Or, for that matter, the hundreds of thousands of even younger, hipper Jews in their 20s or 30s who have visited Israel through Birthright Israel and neither bashed Israel during the Gaza War as J Street did, nor reek of herring and the Holocaust the way Traub implied most Israel supporters do.

J-Street, President Obama, and, apparently certain New York Times reporters must understand that supporting Israel is not a psychosis, and not necessarily expansionist. Imposing “settlement freezes” and caricaturing Zionism as only being about the Holocaust ignores the central problem for many of us in the genuine middle.

Millions of peace-loving Israelis and American Jews supported Oslo but saw it feed Palestinian terror that killed over a thousand innocents. Millions even supported the Gaza disengagement, but then saw Hamas launch thousands of rockets into the Negev. Those of us in this genuine middle take seriously the vicious, exterminationist anti-Semitic rhetoric among the Palestinians, in the Hamas Charter and in the Arab media because we have seen what happens when you don’t.

Until those who fancy themselves “pro-peace” figure out how to acknowledge that pain and point the Palestinians and the Arabs toward real change, they will fail to sway that peace consensus among Israelis and Jews that has always opted for compromise and a shot at reconciliation. Call us the “twice-burned” in the middle – refusing to indulge in “Jew boy” rhetoric and not obsessed with the Holocaust.

Our historical memories are much shorter. We are justifiably worried about Palestinian terrorism, Hamas extremism, the Islamist culture of martyrdom, and the continuing calls for Israel’s destruction. We desperately await reassurance – from the Palestinians, their Arab allies and their Western enablers.

Center Field: ‘J Street’ to the Left of me, jokers to the Right…

by Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 9-13-09

When one is attacked from both sides, it’s easy to feel virtuous. Having opponents from the far left and the far right does not guarantee you’re a moderate. It simply situates you in what farmers who trusted butter over its artificial modern substitute would have called the “margarine middle.”

Last week I was hit from both extremes. There seems to be a missing “nuance gene” when it comes to Israel. The most reasonable people, the most skilled professionals, somehow find themselves behaving irrationally, talking wildly and acting sloppily when the topic is raised.

My previous blog, “Israel’s self-hating Jews,” which condemned Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman for blaming the Obama settlement freeze idea on the president’s “Jew boy” advisers, triggered numerous attacks against me for daring to question the mayor’s horrific choice of words. You would have thought Mayor Nachman was the holy Reb Nachman of Breslav, given his devotees’ intensity. My critics refused to acknowledge that using such language - when trying to convince a State Department delegation, no less - was crude, rude and self-defeating.

Nachman’s followers took an attack on him as an attack on them, on Israel, on the Jewish people and on truth itself, while perceiving it as a deluded defense of Obama’s foreign policy, despite my criticisms of the administration’s Israel strategy.

Most disturbingly, they felt completely justified using offensive, racist language to describe fellow Jews with whom they disagree, thus undercutting those of us who have been forced to spend far too much time fighting anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, racism, and ethnic stereotyping of all kinds.

These rhetorical bomb-throwers confirmed every liberal caricature of the aggressive, self-righteous, my-way-or-the-highway settlers - but characteristically blamed me for helping to perpetuate that stereotype.

Let me say regarding the “Jew boy” issue what I say when anti-Semites masquerading as “mere” anti-Zionists compare Israelis to Nazis. Intelligent people can find a rich choice of words to convey disdain without resorting to cheap, ugly, inflammatory anti-Semitic language that reveals the critics’ own prejudices. It is particularly obnoxious and foolish to call Obama advisers who happen to be Jewish “Jew boys” and accuse them of dictating his policy. It absolves non-Jews like George Mitchell, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama himself of any responsibility. It perpetuates the myth of undue Jewish influence on American administrations, be they right or left. It only alienates potential allies.

At the same time, looking to the Left, I read The New York Times Magazine’s portrayal of J-Street, “The New Israel Lobby,” which defines itself as “pro-peace,” as if other Jewish political organizations were not.

This love letter masquerading as serious journalism read more like this new organization’s PR release than a piece written by the usually thoughtful, critical journalist James Traub, whose work I have long respected. As Shmuel Rosner noted in his blog, Traub failed to interview even one person “on the record” criticizing the new lobby.

Most disturbing, however, was the crude caricature of the pro-Israel community underlying Traub’s analysis. Traub pitted his heroes, the progressive, modern, post-Woodstock, charmingly American, Bohemian, Obamanian J-Street lobbyists against the villains of his piece, the old-fashioned and hopelessly anachronistic, Holocaust-obsessed paranoids running the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), who play to Jews’ “ancestral impulses.”

“This is the world that shaped the mainstream American Jewish groups,” Traub writes, describing the ADL’s Abraham Foxman’s birth in Poland, the ZOA’s Morton Klein’s birth in a displaced persons camp, and the enduring post-Holocaust obsession with “eternal vigilance” and “marketing” a sense of “besetting peril.”

There was nowhere in this dualistic universe for someone like Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, who campaigned for Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 2000, and who, being in her mid-forties, is younger than Foxman or Klein, yet founded “The Israel Project.”

Or the elegant, diplomatic, non-Holocaust obsessed head of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, who was twenty in 1969, Woodstock summer, and eloquently defends Israel as a liberal democracy.

Or, for that matter, the hundreds of thousands of even younger, hipper Jews in their 20s or 30s who have visited Israel through Birthright Israel and neither bashed Israel during the Gaza War as J Street did, nor reek of herring and the Holocaust the way Traub implied most Israel supporters do.

J-Street, President Obama, and, apparently certain New York Times reporters must understand that supporting Israel is not a psychosis, and not necessarily expansionist. Imposing “settlement freezes” and caricaturing Zionism as only being about the Holocaust ignores the central problem for many of us in the genuine middle.

Millions of peace-loving Israelis and American Jews supported Oslo but saw it feed Palestinian terror that killed over a thousand innocents. Millions even supported the Gaza disengagement, but then saw Hamas launch thousands of rockets into the Negev. Those of us in this genuine middle take seriously the vicious, exterminationist anti-Semitic rhetoric among the Palestinians, in the Hamas Charter and in the Arab media because we have seen what happens when you don’t.

Until those who fancy themselves “pro-peace” figure out how to acknowledge that pain and point the Palestinians and the Arabs toward real change, they will fail to sway that peace consensus among Israelis and Jews that has always opted for compromise and a shot at reconciliation. Call us the “twice-burned” in the middle - refusing to indulge in “Jew boy” rhetoric and not obsessed with the Holocaust.

Our historical memories are much shorter. We are justifiably worried about Palestinian terrorism, Hamas extremism, the Islamist culture of martyrdom, and the continuing calls for Israel’s destruction. We desperately await reassurance - from the Palestinians, their Arab allies and their Western enablers.