w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m Last update - 02:30 30/04/2006 Shared values By Shmuel Rosner
WASHINGTON - Last Wednesday, Rabbi Eric Yoffie set out on an unusual mission, traveling to Lynchburg, Virginia, the site of Evangelist preacher Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Lynchburg is a rather sleepy town, perched in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which have bedecked themselves in green in honor of spring. An hour's drive to the north is Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson - the most important American advocate for the separation of religion and state. "Religion," he wrote, "is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle."
Yoffie, a Jewish liberal and the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, is pro-choice, against school prayer and supports gay and lesbian rights. He would be in full agreement with the third president of the United States.
Falwell, his host in Lynchburg, takes a more complex and less adamant approach to this issue. Still, Yoffie came as a friend, as Falwell's guest, to speak at the university Falwell founded 35 years ago. Falwell noted that he has been invited often to speak in synagogues and that no one has jeered him - even though what he says is definitely not always music to the ears of the audience. Similarly, Yoffie's address - a planned mixture of praise and critique - was applauded at its conclusion.
"As religious Americans, there is much that we share," Yoffie told the Liberty University students, and the first item he mentioned was a great love for Israel. Falwell related that he has guided 31 groups on visits to Israel, and that there will be more. For Yoffie it was important to emphasize that a moderate government was elected in Israel, whereas in Palestine a government committed "to terror and death" won power. He then went on to list more common subjects: love of America and shared pride at its being a religious and believing society, a "common concern about the moral crisis of America." And remember, he enjoined the students: "More Americans attend church or synagogue each week than attend professional sports in an entire year."
Liberal as he may be, Yoffie constantly reminded his listeners that he heads a religious movement and is also very proud of that. Thus, of television he said that it "assails our children with mindless reality shows" every night. And pornography, he asserted, "which debases the sexual act and detaches it from love and commitment, has become a staple of our culture."
But he also referred to disagreements, to attempts to find easy solutions for difficult problems. I do not think we have to look for anti-Semitism in every nook and cranny, he said, but neither do I believe that Christianity in America is under attack. The founding fathers "did not want government to be an agent of religion," and it must not be allowed to become such. On another burning issue he said, at Falwell's university, "Gay Americans pose no threat to their friends, neighbors or co-workers, and when two people make a lifelong commitment to each other, we believe it is wrong to deny them the legal guarantees that protect them and their children."
The Mall. Demonstration
However, Yoffie said, as significant as the differences between Reform Jews and Christian Evangelists may be, the dialogue between the groups is important and should be conducted respectfully and in a civilized manner. This is not the first time he has spoken out in this vein. In a lengthy address he delivered a few months ago to the Reform Movement's biannual conference, he spoke about possible friendship between the different streams and cooperation in various spheres, "such as battling religious persecution and fighting sex trafficking abroad." Last week he again raised those issues, but spoke also about Christian-Jewish and liberal-conservative partnerships in the more general struggle for human rights. And what is more human rights than Darfur?
Between Jefferson Drive and Madison Drive on the Washington Mall, Jewish groups were planning to meet today for a large demonstration against the large-scale killing in Darfur, Sudan. The rally included Reform Jews, but also Jews from other groups. And Christians, too - many, it was hoped. In the past few weeks some of the organizers expressed concern about the possibility of a low turnout. But of one thing there was hardly any doubt: the percentage of Jews among the demonstrators would far exceed their proportion within the country's population.
The Jews have decided that Darfur is important to them and they are going to prove it. On Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, speakers used every platform to remind their audiences that in our generation, too, murder and atrocities have not ceased and it is the duty of everyone to fight such acts.
The Save Darfur Coalition, of which the American Jewish World Service (a nonprofit organization that provides nonsectarian humanitarian assistance worldwide) is a leading member, is exerting pressure on legislators and decision makers to take action.
A year and a half ago, in September 2004, President George W. Bush uttered the defining word: "genocide." This is the term - moral and legal - that invokes external prevention, follow-up and punishment against perpetrators of the mass murder of another nation. Nevertheless, the needed large-scale intervention did not occur. Rifles do their work far faster than the diplomatic track - as evidenced in Rwanda, a few years later in Yugoslavia and now in Sudan. Hundreds of thousands have been murdered - no one knows how many - and more hundreds of thousands have been uprooted, raped and robbed of all their earthly possessions, yet there is no salvation. If the Jewish lobby were as powerful as its critics and detesters claim, the victims in Darfur would have been saved.
On Friday, President Bush announced a series of sanctions against those involved in the Sudan genocide. He has banned trade with those people, and frozen their assets. Congress, too, has shown some signs of life - although most of the headlines were made by George Clooney, who decided to add his voice to those calling on Bush to take a more determined stand. Clooney has visited Darfur, and will attend a rally today, as will Senators Barack Obama (Dem.) and Sam Brownbank (Rep.)
Washington. Migration
The American Jewish Committee will this week celebrate its centenary conference with pomp and circumstance and with a guest list to match: the president of the United States, the chancellor of Germany, the secretary general of the United Nations, and even the prime minister of Israel, via video.
Last week Ehud Olmert delivered such a speech to the annual Anti- Defamation League leadership conference. Right at the outset of his remarks, Olmert stated that the ADL is perhaps the most important Jewish organization in the world - a dangerous thing to say. Fortunately he qualified this with "perhaps," because this week he will have to say similar things about another important organization, and there are undoubtedly more waiting.
But it was not Olmert who was at the center of the ADL gathering but the organization's leader, Abe Foxman. And the subject he chose to address in his keynote speech was not related to Israel but to America, to a "social" issue on the Jewish agenda. It is a burning, divisive issue that has been making headlines here for the past few months and will continue to do so at least until the midterm Congressional elections in November. It is the issue of immigration from Mexico.
There is a common denominator here which is obvious to everyone. The Jews, who have undergone massacre, are acting to prevent it in distant lands; the Jews, who have undergone immigration difficulties, are acting on behalf of the immigrants who are coming after them. "I came to America, as a survivor of the Holocaust, with my parents from a displaced persons camp in Austria," Foxman told the audience. "I know what it means to be an immigrant, and as a Jew I know what it means to be the target of hatred."
No, he does not deny that there is a problem with the illegal immigration from Mexico. The existing method needs to be shaken up and overhauled, he said, and a trenchant public debate on the subject must continue. However, he noted, politicians and public leaders must beware of using divisive rhetoric based on race, gender or religion.
"There is a direct connection between the national policy debate and the atmosphere surrounding the daily lives of immigrants," he noted. Concurrently, the ADL has published a new paper containing an appalling collection of quotations, posters and declarations against the migrants entering America. In his address Foxman quoted Hal Turner, a New Jersey radio broadcaster, who urged that "Mexican illegal aliens be shot dead as they cross into the U.S."
A poster appended to the paper states, above a photograph of a Mexican wearing a traditional sombrero, "If it's brown, flush the water." The racist group behind this is the same one that is calling for an atomic bomb to be dropped on Israel. /hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=710878 close window
On May 3, 2006, at 7:39 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> On 5/4/06, Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
>> > Anyhow, if I said, "establishment Japanese," "establishment
>> Muslims,"
>> > "establishment Blacks," or establishment whatever, writing about a
>> > comparable problem of using ethnic/religious identity politics to
>> > support US imperialism, would you have a problem with that?
>>
>> Not being a word cop, none of this really bugs me, esp since I
>> know what
>> you're trying to get at. I was speaking about how others a little
>> more
>> sensitive to how the word "Jew" is used might view it, and how,
>> however
>> unfair or beside the point, that would allow them to divert the
>> issue, which
>> is exactly what happened here. My critique, such as it is, is more
>> tactical
>> than anything else.
>
> Well, "Jews" is not a dirty word, so I believe that it should be
> treated the same as "Blacks," "whites," "Asians," "Latinos,"
> "Americans," etc. A claim that "the Jews" have disproportionate power
> is an odious anti-Semitic stereotype, but a claim that establishment
> Jews have power over ordinary Jews (mainly the power to cow them, by
> saying "Are you a self-hating Jew?" "Do you hate Israel?" etc.) in
> their communities to manufacture a semblance of consensus to serve
> imperialism, just as establishment Cubans, establishment Blacks,
> establishment whatever do, isn't.
>
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>