Having watched Shoah, Sophie's Choice, The Counterfeiters

My goal was to have some contact with the experience of the holocaust, since my family was not in Europe during the Nazi era, although going back a couple of generations, my ancestors undoubtedly had experience of pogroms in Russian and Eastern Europe. I worried that it was too easy for me to attribute the cycle of violence in the Middle East to a vicious circle, to which Israelis contribute at least as much as Palestinians. I worried that I was dismissively psychologizing Israeli actions, attributing Israeli violence against Palestinians to “post traumatic” reactions in the wake of the holocaust, perhaps missing aspects of the experience of those with roots in the holocaust that might make them more, rather than less, attuned to current realities. I did not expect to stop feeling critical of Israeli government violence, but I hoped to earn my opposition with a respectful recognition of the experiences people have had that form a backdrop to violence. I felt that I accorded that kind of recognition to Palestinian experiences leading to Palestinian violence against Israelis, while somehow failing to accord that recognition to Jewish and Israeli experiences. I had thought that this imbalance reflected my sense of shame as a Jew about Israeli government violence against innocent people, and about what seemed to me to be disproportionate violence considering the nature of the provocation in some cases---shame that I did not feel, as a non-Palestinian, about Palestinian actions. I also seemed to be expecting more of Jews than of Palestinians, perhaps in a way that is denigrating of Palestinians. I had always of thought of the Jewish people as especially committed to ethical action, to sympathy with the oppressed, I thought that an understandable commitment to “never again” be helplessly victimized had led to a rigid and misguided equation of violence with power. I did not expect to change these understandings in a fundamental way, and I will not give up being horrified by violence and its justification, but I did want to take seriously the possibility that I had defensively avoided an awareness of Jewish suffering that might make me more understanding of how Israelis, and many of my fellow American Jews, see the world. My strategy seemed to be to take equal account of experiences of victimization suffered by those who perpetrate violence on both sides. The choice of this strategy now seems perhaps revealing in itself:
Perpetrator-victim-perpetrator-victim-------victim?- Perpetrator?- Victim?-----victim! -Perpetrator! -Victim!
Each moment in the cycle seems sufficient unto itself, yet each seems inexorably (but for Gandhi, who really struggled with this problem) to lead into the other. (Gandhi’s struggle seems the prerogative of the “powerless”).
Trying to get out of being trapped by each term of the cycle, in terms of a cycle, is an effort to escape the confine of each term as sufficient unto itself, yet ultimately the cycle itself seems confining.
So what would it be like not to be confined by this cycle, at least in thought?
So here is one reaction to watching these three movies: some people who lived through the holocaust, having witnessed an unthinkable human capacity (unfeelingly to destroy feeling beings) sometimes can’t stop seeing that side of humanity somewhere, out there. While those of us who have not suffered this fate can’t stop hoping that side of humanity can be avoided, if not mastered.
I’ll stop, for the moment.

Israel and Gaza

In this posting, I will restrict myself to raising some questions growing out of Israel's attacks on Gaza, without attempting to answer them. This is not because I don't have strong feelings on the subject, but because I have so many, and mixed, feelings, and because conversations on this topic so rapidly degenerate into heated impasses. Of course, my own views will be manifest in the way I pose questions, but the format may nonetheless promote thoughtfulness, in myself and others, better than a point-counterpoint format. I also believe that there is value in disentangling some of these questions from each other, because I believe they get conflated in many discussions/arguments. In future postings I will set forth some of my views more explicitly.
1. Does Israel have a right to exist? Subsidiary questions: in what form and at what cost? Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state, even if Jews were to be outnumbered by non-Jews? What does Israel have a right to do to ensure that Jews are the majority within its boundaries? What, if any, are the limits to Israel's right to use violence to address immediate or long term threats to its existence?
2. Do the Jewish people have a right to exist? Is the existence of a Jewish state the best or only way to ensure the survival of the Jewish people?
3. Do the Palestinian people exist? Do they have a right to exist? Is a Palestinian state the best or only way to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people?
4. How does one reconcile the commandment not to murder, with war? Is there an exception for self-defense? Who decides what is self-defense, and what is unjustifiable murder? Can these always be distinguished? What if they can't be?
5. How does one value a Jewish life in relation to the value of a Palestinian life, and vice versa? 6. Is it ever justified to respond to the murder of a single person, or a small group of people, by killing a large number of people? Is it ever justifiable to kill innocent people as "collateral damage"?
7. Do Jews in the diaspora have the right to criticize, or second guess, the Israeli government?
8. Is it desirable to make public space to think about such questions? Does thinking about such questions disable the capacity to take action as needed?

The attacks in India

These attacks of November 26, 2008 hit home, occurring in places I know well and visited in the recent past with my family. I can vividly imagine the horror, as with 9/11. Also, like 9/11, this bears all the marks of Al Qaeda. The skillful exploitation of holes in security, the focus on U.S. (and British, in this case) citizens as well as Jews, the choice of target for dramatic effect and to exploit media attention. The choice of the Taj Mahal hotel as the centerpiece of the attacks, rather than an American-owned hotel, indicates that the focus is on the Indian elite, and Indian collaboration with the United States as evidenced in the recent U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. Although the killing is indiscriminate, the attack itself is a precisely condensed dramatic statement. These attacks also show the limits of Al Qaeda power at a particular moment. The attack was not on US or British soil, it did not involve weapons of mass destruction.

Barack Obama needs to go beyond expressions of outrage, horror, and sympathy for the victims to indicate quickly that he understands that this was an attack on the United States, on whomever else it may have also have been an attack. He needs to pre-empt a neo-conservative seizing on the attack to justify the fear mongering that has characterized the last eight years, and that the people of the United States so recently refused to be stampeded by.

What I'm still worrying about

I'm still worrying about poor people. Obama, like all politicians these days, talks about "working people", to signal he's concerned about people who aren't rich. But what about the unemployed, especially those who've been to prison, rightly or wrongly?
What about the backlash against gay and lesbian people? I'm troubled by the movement against gay marriage, and the outrageous proposition that passed in Arkansas to deny gay couples the right to adopt or take in foster children.
I'm sure there are other issues as well that we will need to keep on the front burner. There is a danger that Obama's election will lead to complacency among white, well off people, a feeling that race, especially as it intersects with poverty, is now no longer an issue. The successes of the Civil Rights movement, while real and valuable, had the same side effect of allowing some people to think that we no longer need to be vigilant or address racial discrimination and prejudice. I'm afraid that poverty as an issue in particular may suffer collateral damage from this election. I don't mean we shouldn't be celebrating, but that we must be realistic about the potential limitations of an Obama administration as well, and the need to keep advocating.

Now is this a post-racial society?

Well, yes and no. Did the election of Obama reflect an already-existing post-racial situation, or did the election itself create a new reality? I believe the reality is somewhere in the middle. The election of Obama, which we owe to some extent to non-racial factors like his intelligence and articulateness, the incompetence and arrogance of the Bush administration, and the timing of the economic meltdown, is one of those things that potentiates a situation that is latent and ready to crystallize given the right constellation of events. The election of Obama shows that in this country white people, at least a good number of them, are ready to be led by an upper middle class black person. It also shows that lower social class blacks will identify with, and have their hopes and aspirations stimulated by, an upper middle class black person. Finally, I think it shows that for younger white people, race may not be as salient in the choice of a leader as it is and has been for their elders.
I was in North Philadelphia over the weekend and on election day. This is almost entirely an impoverished African-American community. The volunteers were young white people from all over, and mostly local black people, including children and adolescents and whole families. I walked through the neighborhood canvassing, and here are some of the things I saw:
A group of three black men sitting on a stoop, all of them with the bloodshot eyes, I guessed, of alcoholism. one of them said "Its our turn now" with a big smile that revealed both pleasure and the fact that there were almost no teeth in his mouth.
Many people who said hello to me, wished me God's blessing, and so on. Numbers of people sitting on stoops or folding chairs on the sidewalk who volunteered that so and so was not home, had already voted, was too sick to answer the door, etc. Much more welcoming, and a much stronger feeling of community, than in the white or mixed suburban neighborhoods where I had done canvassing in the past.
Leaving North Philly last Friday, passing through Center City, where there were 2 million people, I'd say 99% white, who were celebrating the Philly's baseball championship. Drunk people were scattered around the sidewalks.
My first partner in canvassing said, when I noticed a beautiful mural on the wall of a school, that he had contributed to making the grid for the mural when he was in prison. Now he's an HIV counselor with Americorps.
Children answering the door. A parent responding from some back room to my shouted questions: "I'm from the Obama campaign. Have you voted?" One child, asked by his mother, "who is it?" said "Barack Obama"!

On Calls for Personal Responsibility

I wrote this shortly after Obama's "Father's Day Speech"


Recent statements by Barack Obama and Bill Cosby, calling on African-American men to take responsibility for their children (see,for example, USA Today, July 15, 2008, "Obama to NAACP: Blacks Must Seize Responsibility") raise some questions that are crucial to sort out at this moment in our history. It is easy to confuse talk of holding people accountable with blaming them. Calling on a father to acknowledge his responsibility to his children is not the same as blaming him. It is asking him, going forward, to think about the consequences of his actions and how to deal with problems that he inherited from his own family of origin and from a social history of oppression and disadvantage. Blame is backward looking; it entails accusing a person of a misdeed without taking account of the problems he was born into and that shaped his circumstances. If one wants to think in terms of guilt for various social problems, there is usually more than enough to go around. It is more productive, and ultimately empowering, to encourage the individual to think about responsibility going forward than to blame. Blaming is shaming, and shame is counter-productive if what we want is change.

There is a history of blaming the victim in this country, and especially of racist blaming of African-Americans, so it is understandable that people would be sensitive to this possibility. By the same token, it is crucial to clarify that Senator Obama and Dr. Cosby are not asking people to forget about historical and ongoing suffering and oppression. They are asking that we contemplate what to do going forward. They are asking that men take account of what they can contribute as fathers, and to think about the consequences of not taking on that responsibility.

Calls for personal responsibility and efforts to remedy systemic problems are not mutually exclusive. Senator Obama, in his speech on race, and Dr. Cosby at numerous points, have recognized the history and persistence of systemic racism in the United States. As Senator Obama points out, his assumption of the burdens and risks of running for President flows from his recognition of the need for political change. Further, a major reason that he and Dr. Cosby call on fathers to be present for their children is that they recognize that sons of absent fathers are more likely to become absent fathers to their own children. In this way, they do not dismiss the fact that there are historical forces in the culture and in the family that contribute to our social problems. This recognition only strengthens their determination to hold each generation accountable for the consequences of their behavior. We can only hope that the history of poor fathering will not rule out the sense of possibility, in future generations, that the cycle can be broken. Senator Obama and Dr. Cosby themselves are both examples of men who took responsibility for blazing a new trail in their personal lives. To promote personal responsibility is not to negate that there is much social and political change that needs to occur to support families. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, the best kind of social change is
produced by those who try to live the change they, and we, want to see in the world around us.

It might be tempting for white people in the United States to assume that this conversation is happening among African Americans because that is the only place it needs to happen. White people, however, should not assume that calls to responsibility are not needed in the white community as well. All Americans can learn from the way African-American people are facing up to the problems in their community. White people should be inspired by the strength being shown to acknowledge shortcomings and to address them, rather than, in self-congratulatory fashion, choosing to see therein only evidence of African-American family pathology. Rather than African-Americans feeling only shame about their dirty laundry being washed in public, there is an opportunity to feel a sense of pride in leading the way for all Americans in productive self-examination. Whatever our backgrounds, Americans need much more of the kind of self-reflection and willingness to challenge oneself shown by Senator Obama, Dr. Cosby and others who call for renewal through courageous and honest self reflection.

The One Thing No One Can Say---

in this election campaign is we've done something(s) awful, damaging and destroying people, for no good reason. Full stop. Then, having let that sink in, maybe we were deluded, we didn't know, we were careless, we meant well, we've done good things too---all that matters as well, but it doesn't undo anything.
How burdensome is it not to be able to say and mean you're sorry?
How would you like to be married to someone who can't say and mean (s)he is sorry, or trapped in a personality that can't?
Unable, then, to get to the tragic part---