Culture

Gore Vidal’s Contradictory Legacy with Jews

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Upon learning of Gore Vidal’s passing, I immediately thought of this highbrow celebrity’s flirtation with antisemitism. But an illuminating article in The Forward gave me pause about seeing him as fundamentally antisemitic. It mentioned that his live-in companion from 1950 to 2003, Howard Austen, was Jewish and that he assisted him to overcome the antisemitism of the advertising industry that had excluded him from a job in the 1950s. Vidal’s suggestion to change his Jewish-sounding family name of “Auster” to the WASP-y sounding “Austen” got him hired at a prominent firm. The NY Times obit did not mention his Jewish controversies, but rather covered his remarkable record as a novelist, playwright, essayist and acerbic wit, often featured on late-night television talk shows.

Politics & Society

New Film: Did the Kibbutz Really Fail?

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…people in the early pioneering generations were willing to sacrifice in ways that they don’t today because they felt motivated by the historic goal of creating a new society. Material incentives pale when individuals find deeper meaning in their lives….

Empathy

The Holocaust and Arab Nationalism

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The clash of vital interests between Jews and Arabs was best illustrated by the Arab Revolt of 1936-’39: although defeated militarily, it resulted in an Arab political victory with Britain’s 1939 White Paper sharply restricting the legal immigration of Jews to Palestine—a virtual death sentence for countless Jews who might otherwise have survived.

Healing Israel/Palestine

A Progressive Zionist Message for Passover

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The following teaching is adapted from the Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) weblog:
As we sit with families and friends for the Passover Seder, we rightly celebrate the liberation of the Jewish people. “Liberation” means the legendary emergence from slavery in Egypt, of course, but also the story of the Jewish people’s national liberation, which led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In the wake of centuries of persecution suffered by the Jewish people, Israel’s establishment was in keeping with the first of Rabbi Hillel’s great ethical guidelines, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But, however important, the many aspects of statehood–territory, a flag, a currency, a government, an army–they do little to answer Hillel’s inseparable follow-up question, “And if I am only for myself, then what am I?” For progressive Zionists, Passover is a time when we are challenged to reconcile the tension in Hillel’s dualism: We celebrate national liberation as a Jewish success story, even as we realize today that Israel’s creation was also a Naqba, a catastrophe, for others.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Massacre in Hebron: Enacting a Purim Revenge Fantasy

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Meretz (Yitzhak Rabin’s main coalition partner), and other dovish elements, argued for Israel to forcibly remove the extremist settlers from Hebron and/or nearby Kiryat Arba (where Goldstein lived). We don’t know if such a resolute act of contrition would have changed history by allaying Palestinian anger, but it might have….