1.WorldWide Religious News（http://wwrn.org）
Israel no longer a cause that unifies US Jews
by Rachel Zoll (AP, June 8, 2014)
New York — Once a unifying cause for generations of American Jews, Israel is now bitterly dividing Jewish communities.
Jewish organizations are withdrawing invitations to Jewish speakers or performers considered too critical of Israel, in what opponents have denounced as an ideological litmus test meant to squelch debate. Some Jewish activists have formed watchdog groups, such as Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art, or COPMA, and JCC Watch, to monitor programming for perceived anti-Israel bias. They argue Jewish groups that take donations for strengthening the community shouldn't be giving a platform to Israel's critics.
American campuses have become ideological battle zones over Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories, with national Jewish groups sometimes caught up on opposing sides of the internal debate among Jewish students. The "Open Hillel" movement of Jewish students is challenging speaker guidelines developed by Hillel, the major Jewish campus group, which bars speakers who "delegitimize" or "demonize" Israel. Open Hillel is planning its first national conference in October.
And in a vote testing the parameters of Jewish debate over Israel, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, a national coalition that for decades has represented the American Jewish community, denied membership in April to J Street, the 6-year-old lobby group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace and has sometimes criticized the Israeli government. Opponents of J Street have been showing a documentary called "The J Street Challenge," in synagogues and at Jewish gatherings around the country, characterizing the group as a threat from within.
"I believe this has reached a level of absurdity now," said Rabbi Sharon Brous, founder of the IKAR-LA Jewish community in California, which is considered a national model for reinvigorating religious life. "Even where people are acting from a place of love and deep commitment that Israel remains a vital and vibrant state, they are considered outside the realm. It's seen as incredibly threatening and not aligned with the script the American Jewish community expects."
In 2012, when Israel carried out an offensive in Gaza after an upsurge in rocket fire, Brous wrote an email to IKAR members that was published in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. She supported Israel's right to defend itself, while also urging recognition of Palestinian suffering.
The result? She was overwhelmed with hate mail, and inspired competing op-eds and letters in the Journal from Jewish clergy and others until a prominent rabbi called for an end to the recriminations and name-calling.
American Jews have always vigorously debated Israeli policy, but mostly within the community and with an understanding that differences would be set aside if the Jewish state faced an existential threat. But the discussion within the U.S. has become more reflective of the very broad debate within Israel.
"It's a very old issue that many countries face and now Israel faces: to what extent should domestic debate carry over when you're abroad?" said Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University scholar of American Jewish history. "The critics of J Street and the like say, 'Of course, it's fine in Israel because the minute they call up the reserves, all politics disappear. Moreover, they have to live with the results of their decision.' Their argument is that there should be a great difference between what you can do and say in Israel and what you can do or say in America. There are all sorts of enemies who make use of the words in America differently than they do in Israel."
Internal American Jewish conflict has worsened as many Israel advocates have come to feel under siege in the U.S. The international boycott movement against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians has gained some momentum in the U.S., and critics increasingly draw analogies between Israeli policies and South African apartheid.
The clashes among American Jews are partly colored by the sharp tone of overall left-right debate within the U.S. Earlier this year, the Brandeis chapter of J Street and one of its most vocal antagonists on campus, Daniel Mael, accused each other of harassment and made complaints to campus police. Mael, a 21-year-old Orthodox Jew, wrote a series of posts for the conservative site truthrevolt.org accusing J Street of bringing "Israel bashers" on campus.
J Street has said its opponents often distort the group's statements. The liberal lobby created a "Myths & Facts" page on its website challenging the claims.
Many leaders of the older, more-established organizations say the divisions are not as broad or deep as some claim. Defenders of the presidents' conference argue their 50-member association includes liberal organizations with similar views to J Street, and they blame the lobby group for whipping up a backlash to the vote.
The presidents' conference was formed in the 1950s in response to what was considered a failure of U.S. Jewish leaders during World War II to speak to American policy makers with one voice. Members were expected to keep internal discussion and voting private.
Among the 17 conference members who voted for J Street in April were the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and the Conservative and Reform Jewish movements. Twenty-two conference members voted no and three others abstained. The remaining member groups did not send a representative to vote.
Farley Weiss, president of the National Council of Young Israel, an association for Orthodox synagogues, dismissed J Street's members as students with a skewed understanding of Mideast history because of the "one-sided, left view" on U.S. college campuses. Weiss was among the few members of the Conference of Presidents who campaigned publicly to block J Street's admission to the group.
"Their views are not part of what I consider the mainstream of the Jewish community," Weiss said.
"I wouldn't characterize them as enemies of Israel," Weiss said. "I would characterize it that their self-avowed statement that they are pro-Israel is not accurate."
The split among U.S. Jews has its roots in the Jewish settlement building in the occupied territories after the 1967 Six Day War, which sparked debate in the U.S. and in Israel over whether the settlements helped or hurt Israeli security.
At the same time, American Judaism was splintering. The strictly traditional Orthodox population grew, but so did the number of Jews who left organized religious life. Jews were marrying outside the faith at a high rate, and their families were generally less involved in the Jewish community and less tied to Israel.
"We now have more people who care deeply about Israel and more people who care very little about Israel," said Steven M. Cohen, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute on Religion who specializes in research on the American Jewish community.
Meanwhile, liberal Reform Judaism, which has worked for years to underscore its deep commitment to the Jewish state, grew to become the largest movement in American Judaism. The result: a pro-Israel American Jewish community largely split between conservatives and liberals, both emotionally attached to Israel but with conflicting outlooks on many Israeli policies.
At Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel, a Reform Jewish synagogue in South Orange, New Jersey, Rabbi Daniel Cohen struggles to hold the ever-shrinking common ground among his congregants over Israel. Before Cohen delivers a sermon on the subject, he re-reads what he wrote and asks himself, "How are they going to hear it?"
From the pulpit, he tries to weave together the views of doves and hawks among the 850 families in his congregation, comparing Israel to a flawed friend who nonetheless should be defended against slander. Still, he hears complaints — about his personal involvement with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the long-established lobbying group, and his simultaneous support for congregants active in J Street.
"I'm very, very careful to focus on the importance of Israel and the American Jewish community and being involved in activism. I'm not proscriptive about how people should get involved," said Cohen, the temple's senior rabbi for 16 years.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted last year found more than two-thirds of American Jews feel somewhat or very attached to Israel, but only 38 percent believe the Israeli government is sincerely pursuing peace with the Palestinians and 44 percent said settlement construction hurts Israeli national security. (In the same poll, just 12 percent of U.S. Jews said Palestinian leaders were making a sincere effort to resolve the conflict.)
Many Jewish leaders worry the infighting could not only undermine U.S. support for Israel, but also drive away the younger American Jews who are pressing for a broader definition of what it means to be pro-Israel.
"The attacks are stronger and more vicious sometimes ...," said Cohen. "If you're not hearing other perspectives, I don't know how you can have an honest, open debate."
2.Spero（http://www.speroforum.com）
(1) Leftist polymath Noam Chomsky, who was a famed opponent of the Vietnam War and a proponent of progressive causes, expressed fear in a recent column that President Barack Obama is endangering the very liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Writing at the progressive website AlterNet, Chomsky expressed fears that the documents exposed by former National Security Agency consultant Edward Snowden shows that the Obama administration habitually and flagrantly violates the Constitution.
“It is of no slight import that the project is being executed in one of the freest countries in the world, and in radical violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures,’ and guarantees the privacy of their persons, houses, papers and effects,” Chomsky wrote.
Chomsky is renowned for his seminar work in linguistics as he is famed for his political activism and acute criticism of American foreign policy. Speaking to the concerns voiced by civil libertarians of both the left and right, Chomsky wrote “Much as government lawyers may try, there is no way to reconcile these principles with the assault on the population revealed in the Snowden documents.” Chomsky is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is thought be some to be one of the most thoughtful public intellectuals of the U.S.
Snowden famously fled arrest by first skipping out to Hong Kong and eventually landed in Russia, which granted him asylum. After he revealed thousands of pages of classified documents to journalists in 2013, he was charged by the U.S. with theft of government property, as well as two counts of violating the U.S.' 1917 Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person." He remains in Russia in an undisclosed location.
It is the depth and range of NSA’s surveillance program that troubles Chomsky, who concluded in the June 2 column that Obama is determined to undermine the foundations of American civil society.
“The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus — in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society,” Chomsky wrote. “As the colossus fulfills its visions, in principle every keystroke might be sent to President Obama’s huge and expanding databases in Utah.”
“In other ways too, the constitutional lawyer in the White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties. The principle of the presumption of innocence, which dates back to Magna Carta 800 years ago, has long been dismissed to oblivion.”
Chomsky ended his article by musing on the logic of state power, writing “….in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug lords, mad mullahs seeking nuclear weapons, and other ogres said to be seeking to attack and destroy us.”
With a nod to George Orwell’s prescient novel 1984, Chomsky wrote “Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead.”
(2)Catholic 'preference' for the poor must go beyond material poverty
Social 'safety net' programs have, for decades, been manipulated for political ends. The programs help the lame not to walk, but to become lazy, 7 June 2014
by Thomas Collins
Sadly, as leaders of the Catholic faith capitulate to allowing the secular elites to determine the language and to define the terminology that is to be used in discussing
economic issues, they have increasingly overlooked basic Biblical teaching. The "preferential option for the poor" is a dangerous challenge to the true spirit of justice enunciated clearly in Exodus 23:3 and Leviticus 19:15.
Sadly, instead of seeking fidelity to Christ, Who alone can make us righteous through His Holy Spirit, some Church leaders seem to be attempting to counter the idea that might makes right with a new paradigm that poverty makes right. Sadly, in the area of morality, this quickly leads to a mentality that asserts, "Since I am deprived, so I have a right to be depraved."
Just witness, for example, how many social "safety net" programs over the years have been so manipulated by political expediency that they have morphed into rather comfortable hammocks, which tend to help the lame not to walk, but rather to become lazy. The "preferential option for the poor" is also dangerous, in that it promotes the perpetuation of a class envy and class warfare mentality.
This is in direct opposition to the ministry of reconciliation proclaimed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It closes the path to a sanctifying solidarity with the poor, whereby we come to recognize that poverty is not merely an economic condition. Rather, it has many dimensions.
And, in the light of the Gospel of God's gracious love, we are able to appreciate our poverty as an opportunity to become more gratefully and reverently receptive
to both receiving and sharing His material and spiritual blessings.
All this can give you an idea why I have difficulty with some of the agenda guiding the New Evangelization. For example, if Church teaching says that we should allow those who came into our country illegally to continue to disregard our immigration laws, we should be consistent enough to extend such disorganized hospitality into our Church discipline by making the whole Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) process optional. We should tell people that all they do not need to follow the protocols established through the RCIA process. All they need to do is migrate on their own terms into any Catholic church and ask to be baptized or received into the Church, and we will graciously and immediately baptize or receive them into the Church on their terms.
Thus Church unity could be promoted in a more Unitarian framework.
And, if we really want to be "prophetic", we should stop requiring the recording of such baptisms and receptions in our parish sacramental records. After all, people do
allegedly have a "right" to migrate into whatever religion they want without having to go through cumbersome bureaucratic formation processes and paperwork. And
they allegedly have a "right" to privacy of conscience, which could be violated by the maintenance of such records.
In this way, we would be able to affirm an absolute autonomy and integrity of personal conscience. We could thus allow people to replace the Gospel teaching that the truth will set us free.
・Spero columnist Rev. Thomas Collins is a Catholic priest in the service of the people of Virginia.
(3)Continued influence of Socialists in churches of Louisiana
'Together Baton Rouge' - an Alinskyian affiliate - has received funds from Catholic parishes and the Campaign for Human Development. Members include Unitarians, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Freemasons dedicated to progressive political ends., 3 June 2014
by Stephanie Block
Together Baton Rouge (TBR) is a Louisiana-based community organization affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) – a association of groups around the country that have been trained in the theories and praxes of community organizer Saul Alinsky and are dedicated to the same progressive political and social ends. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were greatly influenced by Alinsky and his work, which includes the book 'Rules for Radicals.'
Like other Alinskyian community organizations, TBR has received numerous grants from various religious bodies, including the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. Some of that money has been for organizational purposes, while some has been for projects. Among the Roman Catholic parishes affiliated with TBR are:
St. George, and St. Jean Vianney.
In fact, it took about $300,000 of Catholic charitable money to get this group off the ground. In 2006, the “Louisiana Industrial Areas Foundation’s Baton Rouge Project” was awarded $30,000 to begin its organizing for “neighborhood improvement.” It took another $40,000 the next year for “organizational development” to pull together the fledgling IAF local and by 2008, with the help of another $50,000 grant, the Greater Baton Rouge IAF Sponsoring Committee was launched, hiring a second organizer and conducting hundreds of trainings.
With grants of $50,000 in 2009 and $40,000 in 2010, the Sponsoring Committee was ready to become a mature IAF local, receiving its next $60,000 grant under the name of Together Baton Rouge.
Finally, in 2011, TBR was ready to try its hand at a specific project, identified as “transportation,” for which it was given $75,000. Together with these national Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants, TBR receives local support from three Baton Rouge parishes. These Catholic communities contribute a percentage of their annual income into TBR coffers, along with leadership and “social capital.” “Social capital” is a fancy way of saying that they provide moral credibility to TBR.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, the Catholic Church is not alone in building this IAF local in Baton Rouge. There are 32 other congregation-members, including Baptists, Unitarians, Episcopalians, United Methodist, Presbyterians, and several secular organizations. Among the congregations represented are: Shiloh Baptist Church, St. Mark United Methodist, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Baton Rouge, and Mount Zion Baptist Church. In addition, the Service Employees International Union, and a lodge of Freemasons are members of TBR.
The Catholic Church is, however, the player of immediate concern, as so much of TBR’s work – not to mention the work of the IAF in general – is not merely political in nature but takes a direction that violates fundamental Catholic principles. So it’s important to look closely at these local grantees and their activities.
Transportation
As the most recent Catholic Campaign for Human Development grant indicates, one of TBR’s first projects, in April 2012, was to work for the passage of a Capital Area Transit System (CATS) tax to expand the city’s public bus system. On the back of that success, TBR immediately lobbied for a bill that would grant all nominations for the CATS board to a commission of organizations that included itself – putting the new “stakeholders” in control of $30 million dollars. The bill passed the Louisiana legislature but was vetoed by Governor Bobby Jindal.
Like them or not, the CATS tax and the effort to restructure the CATS board were both highly partisan, political proposals, with Democrats supporting both and Republicans opposing them. Further, unlike straightforward legislation based on the moral law, these were proposals about which one might legitimately debate particular merits and defects.
That’s an important point to bear in mind: Alinskyian community organizations are not assembled in response to serious moral issues but to build political power for partisan causes.
The St. George Movement
One of the IAF’s longstanding causes has been to champion “education reform.” In the 90s, the “reforms” it supported – by passage of legislation, by backing given school board seats, and by the establishment of schools under its control – went by the name of “outcome based education. Today, the goals are the same but the names have changed.
Enter irate parents, predominately white and middle-class, from East Baton Rouge Parish (county) who wanted control over their children’s education but faced such opposition that they began a movement to incorporate as the independent city of St. George. “Incorporating the city of St. George was not the original intention of our grassroots group,” their website explains. “Originally, we were attempting to provide local schools for local children through the creation of an independent school district in the southern part of the parish.”
Because this is one of the wealthier and more stable areas of the parish (county), resistance to the “St. George movement” has been ferocious. It has been depicted as “racist,” as “classist,” and as socially irresponsible. The truth, however, is that there are many complex – legitimate – issues at stake that deserve a serious, thoughtful hearing.
However, once again, there is a partisan element to this: according to a Louisiana State University Public Policy Research Lab Survey, the “St. George movement” is favored by Republicans; Democrats, by contrast, are scurrying to annex important bits of real estate (the main mall and hospital) to Baton Rouge, before the “St. George movement” gathers full steam.
In the middle of all this, Diane Hanley, co-chair of TBR’s transportation committee, sent a November 8, 2013 email that she asked to be forwarded to the priests and deacons of the South Central Deanery of the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge. Hanley, by way of a little background, had at one time worked with Catholic Charities as Associate Director of Parish Social Ministry for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, so she was on familiar “turf.”
She wrote:
“Dear Fathers, I feel that we are at a profound moral moment in our city. Good Christian men and women have decided that it is totally virtuous to carve out a place for some families. They will take with them brand new school buildings and most of the money of the city,” – that is, their own tax dollars – “as well as parts of some important parks, along with many other resources…To me, this carving of the city shows a complete loss of a moral compass.”
She’s entitled to an opinion. She’s part of TBR’s framework and TBR has organized two groups that oppose any St. George incorporation. The FaceBook pages of these TBR groups, “Better Together Baton Rouge” and “Residents Against the Breakaway,” indicate they are engaged in a lot of political activity to see that the incorporation doesn’t take place.
So what Hanley writes next is troubling:
“Dear Fathers, I have been told that you do not need to be told the arguments why this is so immoral so I won’t go on and on with why we should oppose this. What I am really asking of you is to consider that you, along with other priests in the city, are people who can make a profound impact on the situation.”
Then she calls for a “convening of our priests to explore the immorality of the breakaway” – of which she asks to part and to which she offers to bring other Catholic leaders. And then, the salient bit, she tells them that she will be meeting with pastors “in other traditions on Nov. 19 at noon at Shiloh Baptist Church….It would be powerful to have Catholic priests present at this gathering.”
Yes, it is powerful – a powerful abuse of their religious authority in the service of fleeting, secular issues. A “Better Together Baton Rouge” meeting held at St. Patrick Catholic Church on February 4, 2014 was endorsed by the pastor, presented only one side, and raised money to fight the “St. George” incorporation effort. Would the City of St. George incorporation effort also be permitted political fundraising on church property? One doubts it.
Education “Reform”
For all the mudslinging hurled against the “St. George Movement,” this is a “movement” that was sparked by “education reform” – and TBR has thrown itself behind the IAF’s vision for this reform, tasking itself with “parent organizing and training” in “support of schools.”[i] That is, TBR is pushing a nation-wide programs and pedagogy, identified here as the IAF’s “alliance schools” strategy.
If one understands this in terms of a national education/workforce development system into which Louisiana children – Catholic school or public school educated – must participate if they want employment, the understanding would be correct. But it doesn’t stop there.
Last Pentecost Sunday, TBR brought “together people from differing denominational,” including Catholics, “geographic, economic and racial backgrounds to study the Bible, organizers hope to foster an appreciation and understanding of others’ points of view.”[ii] This isn’t Scripture as the Church teaches it but as it has been reinterpreted by the Alinskyian organizers to train Christians to think about social justice and charity and “act on their concerns about the community.”
One won’t learn much about what the Church teaches but one will learn to support whatever TBR and its sister organizations in the IAF support, in all its partisan political glory.
・Spero columnist Stephanie Block is the author of the four-volume 'Change Agents: Alinskyian Organizing Among Religious Bodies,' available at Amazon.
Notes
[i] Charles Lussier, “Together BR, VIPS team up to help schools,” The Advocate, 11-6-13.
[ii] William Taylor, “Bible study meant to bring BR together for action,” The Advocate, 8-23-13.
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