Sometime in 1980 or thereabouts, during my four year stint at AIPAC, the powerful organization that is the main component of the pro-Israel lobby, I asked Tom Dine, its executive director, if a president of the United States could ever change Israeli behavior even in cases where U.S. national security interests were clearly at stake.

My question related specifically to the occupation of the West Bank that began in 1967 and which seemingly made an Israeli-Palestinian agreement impossible. It also was even three decades ago, the source of intensifying Arab and Muslim anger against the United States.

It is hard to believe that the lobby (call it the Israel Lobby, the Jewish Lobby or whatever) is going to oppose President Obama’s choice of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense in the name of Jews.

And don’t kid yourself, when the lobby speaks, it is in the name of all of us.

At this point, it is still not clear who will be appointed Secretary of Defense. I continue to believe that former Senator Chuck Hagel will not get the job because President Obama has never said “no” to the lobby about anything. And the lobby (whether you call it the Israel Lobby or the Jewish Lobby) has never been as united about any internal U.S. matter as it is about stopping Hagel. My guess is that Obama will choose former Pentagon official, Michele Flournoy, in the hope that the excitement about a woman as Defense secretary will make observers forget that she only got the appointment because Obama was afraid to take on AIPAC.

I’ve chosen to repost this particular essay for its uncanny relevance to the recent tragedy at Newtown, particularly the final teaching by the Aish Kodesh, prefaced by an additional teaching not in the original, that resonates with the tragedy. One of the points made in the essay, which deals with a textual hint of silence on the part of Jacob when blessing his sons, is that there are times when language is not adequate to the task at hand, but rather there are times when action, not words, is the necessary response. Clearly this is one of those times. Interestingly, the relevant addition to this reading is also based on a lacuna, in this case a missing letter:

Rabbenu Bachye, a late medieval mystic and commentator, notes that in the blessing given to Judah, the blessing that most hints at a transformative “end” to history, all of the letters of the alphabet are present except for the seventh letter, zayin. According to Rabbenu Bachye, the reason is to hint that the world order of Judah will be one that will not seek its victory from tools of violence; in Hebrew the term for “weapons” is “kli zayin“, weapons will not be needed, because the ultimate society is to be one free of violence, based on spiritual and intellectual understanding, thus it will be a society of “Yehuda”, where the tools of violence are absent, but the letters forming the name of God are present (the Hebrew spelling of Judah, Yehuda, contains the four letters of the biblical name of God). It is time for us to act, to bring about the end of a gun society, and thus directly replacing a society of violence, and its daily body counts, with a society of peace, where children can grow free and with love. (MK)

“Disclosure, however, does not simply result in something disclosed as unclosed. Instead, the dis-closure is at the same time an en-closure…. Disclosure- that now means to bring into a sheltering enclosure….” Heidegger, Parmenides pp133.

Nothing regarding Torah goes unnoticed and unexamined by the commentators, not even spacing on the written line. This week’s Perasha (Torah reading) begins, “Vayehi Yaakov B’eretz Mitzrayim“; And Yaakov (Jacob) dwelled (lit., “lived”) in the land of Egypt. The authors of the Midrash note that normally there are nine letters between the end of one perasha introducing the perasha that follows, whereas here there are no extra spaces at all. This perasha is thus “setuma”, closed off, oblique, which is unique, usually there is some form of spacing in the written text that marks off the beginning of a new portion, here there is none. Is this lack of indentation itself a commentary, does it signify a silence or hidden-ness within the context of the story of the death of Jacob and the beginning of the enslavement of a people?

The neoconservatives’ battle to sink the potential nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel has again raised the issue of the power of the Israel lobby. And it should. Hagel, as a respected former senator would be sailing to an easy confirmation, if not for the power of the Israel lobby which considers him insufficiently loyal to the policies of the Israeli government.

The assault on Hagel is truly ugly and opposing a highly respected ex-senator and decorated war hero out of fear he won’t defer to Netanyahu is also stupid. Unlike John McCain whose war record is ambiguous, Hagel’s record was indisputably heroic. He and his brother Tom served side by side in Vietnam as infantry squad leaders and earned military decorations and honors, including two Purple Hearts. To put it bluntly, how does it look to be opposing this American war hero for being insufficiently devoted to a foreign country?

It has long been clear that the label “pro-Israel” is almost always misapplied. When the lobby or its friends in the media call a politician “pro-Israel” they mean that he supports everything Israel does, without question, no matter what he may think privately. (In fact, AIPAC tells officials who are upset by any Israeli action to not “go public” but rather to tell the ambassador who, of course, will simply ignore the critique.)

Those who dare to issue public criticism are almost surely going to be punished. If they are politicians, they will be threatened with the loss of campaign funding. Those threats may not be uttered directly but will be conveyed by calls – organized by AIPAC – from a politician’s top donors.

The Middle East is the cradle of monotheistic religion. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all born there. All three of these religions, at their best, speak about reconciliation and living with your neighbor in peace. And yet last month Israel and Gaza were at war again in what has become a repetitious pattern of military confrontation.

What has gone so terribly wrong? Why have these three religions failed so miserably in inspiring their adherents to act in terms of their highest values of peace and reconciliation? The answer is simple. For most of these adherents, religion is about belief. Take the city of Jerusalem as an example. Religious beliefs centering on Jerusalem have transformed the city into a sacred piece of real estate for Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Jews believe that God gave them Jerusalem as a gift to be their eternal capital. A look at this gift from the perspective of history is interesting. Prior to David invading and conquering the city around 1,000 BCE, Jerusalem was settled by a wide array of peoples. David ruled a united Israel from Jerusalem until 970 BCE. His son Solomon succeeded him, and ruled to 930 BCE. Following Solomon’s death, Israel split into a Southern and a Northern kingdom. Jerusalem remained the capital of the Southern Kingdom while Shechem became the capital for the North.

"For all of my adult life," the author writes, "I have been struggling with my relationship to Israel/Palestine. My identity as a half-Israeli Jew often comes in conflict with my critical liberalism." Credit: Savyonne Steindler.

Savyonne Steindler is a 2012 graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in Anthropology and Jewish Studies. After commencement, she decided to pursue a different kind of education and enrolled in the Yahel Social Change Program. This 9 month service-learning program focuses on community-centered empowerment work with Ethiopian Israelis in Gedera, Israel. The following are her reflections on the recent escalation of violence between Israel and Gaza.

During the period of intensive rocket fire that accompanied Operation Pillar of Defense, the Yahelnikim were in the north at Kibbutz Hanaton. This kibbutz is a community unlike any other I have experienced. Most communities form around some commonality – whether socioeconomic, ethnic, or ideological. Hanaton’s founders, however, intentionally chose to disrupt this tendency. The only qualities the residents share is that they self-identify as Jewish and value pluralism. Hanaton’s potential to become a truly pluralistic Jewish society is limited by the simple fact that many Jewish Israelis would prefer to live among people like themselves. Even so, the kibbutz boasts considerable diversity. Its membership includes Ashkenazim and Sephardim; Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews; conventional and non-traditional families.

Ariela Graetz, a Reform rabbi who lives in Hanaton with her Orthodox husband and their children, explained to us that for her, “pluralism means staying with your own identity and compromising just until it hurts.” Kibbutzniks like Ariela acknowledge that living in a mixed community can be uncomfortable. But instead of understanding this discomfort as a deterrent, they see it as an essential challenge.

Very OFTEN, dear friends, have we told here the tale of Israel’s sorrow at the breaking of her city walls, the smashing of her temple, the forced marching out to exile of her nobles, her leaders, her men of law and letters, and all their families. Of how in a city far away they despaired of help from their God, how some defected to other gods, how some abandoned hope, and some heard a new song, to whose strains we listened again just now. Thus says the Lord, Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. For behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?

We tell this tale often for two reasons. One, because it’s much in the Bible. Isaiah intones it, Jeremiah joins it, Ezekiel’s bones bear it, 2 Kings will make you weep for the last day of Israel’s last king, who was brought before his captors, who slew his two young sons before his two eyes then scooped them both from their sockets and led him to Babylon with only visions of grief in his solitude. And the Psalms sing it. + By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down / And there we wept when remembered Zion. One reason we tell this story over and again is that it’s all over the book.

I don’t think I need to retell the story of the akedah, the “sacrifice of Isaac” by his father Abraham, following the word of God, I find it emotionally difficult to retell the tale in a literal manner. I do think the entire episode demands a dramatic reevaluation.

I suppose, if I wanted to put my problem with this passage in an inflammatory manner, I could ask, what kind of God is it that puts any person through this kind of “test”, and what kind of man is Abraham if he chooses to follow such a command? Eli Wiesel tells the story of a woman at the gates of Auschwitz (a story borrowed and corrupted in Sophie’s Choice) who is asked to choose which of her two children will be sent to the crematorium, her immediate response is a howling, shrieking insanity; her tormentors shot her on the spot.

No human being can or should ever be put through what may be the cruelest form of torture, the loss of a child, certainly not by a compassionate God.

Furthermore, if Abraham’s action is the apogee of the religious experience, as is commonly accepted particularly after the classic book of Kierkegaard on the subject, then why do we shudder nowadays when children are sent by their parents to die for a political cause? Are others truer to the words of our text than we are? Let us ask frankly, what kind of lesson are we supposed to derive from this perasha?