General News

On the Road Again

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Did you ever have one of those moments when you were having a discussion with people you knew, loved, and respected, and one of them said something that made your jaw drop, or, in the case of our friend Julie, something that left you standing there with a clicking noise in your head? Have you ever found yourself wondering “How did this person come to think this particular way, especially when I see things SO differently?” That clicking sound, or the jaw dropping, also represents a moment in many cases where we STOP really listening to each other. We dismiss the other person as being misguided, wrong, out of touch… different.

General News

In Loving Memory: The Yizkor Booklet

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No – what gives me pause is the yizkor (memorial) booklet that’s compiled for the afternoon service on Yom Kippur. For a small donation to my synagogue, I can include the names of my parents in this booklet.Given that I’m a longtime congregant whose parents are both deceased, this would appear to be a straightforward matter. Yet I struggle each year as if newly faced with a baffling choice.

Culture

A Family Story: John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children

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Still, there is one moment where the viewer ponders the Jewish question. An ink and wash drawing in the exhibit of Carl Meyer by his friend Max Beerbohm (1910) highlights Meyer’s head and mustache as well as his prominent large nose. We ask ourselves: Was this a common perception of Jews in England? But, the wall text reminds the viewer, that although Carl’s nose might be read as reflecting an anti-Semitic undertone, Beerbohm had many Jewish friends. He once remarked that “he would be delighted to know that we Beerbohms have that very admirable and engaging thing, Jewish blood. But there seems to be no reason for supposing that we have.”
Beerbohm’s disclaimer aside, the inclusion of his caricature of Carl Meyer is an important one. However perfect the Meyers’ world seems to be, the specter of anti-Semitism remains.

General News

5 Things the Sanders Revolution is Not

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Today Globalism has outsourced the factory proletariat. Rust belt cities and towns are full of former factory proletarians who are no longer led by trade unions and can be induced to vote for anyone on the right or left who speaks to their economic plight or even to their resentments. Trade unions are still prominent in the public sector as defenders of the alimentary needs of all wage workers, but just as often they are called upon to defend professional standards, for example in education, or the public stake in health care, pensions, and the commons in general. The political revolution is not an attempt to segregate them politically but to join them to the population as a whole to promote the public interest.

General News

LA Jews for Peace Endorses the Platform of The Movement for Black Lives and Demands Gov. Brown Veto AB-2844

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LA Jews for Peace does not believe that The Movement for Black Lives platform’s incorrect use of the term “genocide” negates an otherwise powerful statement for social, racial, political, and economic justice enunciated in the Platform’s other 37,000 words. That is why LA Jews for Peace proudly endorses the platform of the Movement for Black Lives.

General News

A Response to Cherie Brown's Article on The Movement for Black Lives Platform and Israel

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Cherie Brown’s piece on what progressive Jews should be thinking about in relation to this platform – specifically what it says about Israel and Palestine – does not remotely reflect the deeply thoughtful, kind, loving, liberatory nature of that platform or of the Palestinian-led work for justice in Palestine and the world-wide solidarity among so many different communities. Rather, her article caricatured and misrepresented that work for justice.

General News

The Ethics and Efficacy of the War on Terrorism: Fighting Terror without Terror? Or How to Give Peace a Chance

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On September 11, 2016, although most Americans and virtually all global media will appropriately “remember” the tragic day fifteen years earlier, few will pause to analyze the reasons for the attacks and the “effectiveness” of the world war that has ensued. Even fewer will perform a dispassionate “cost/benefit” analysis of the GWOT, both from strategic and ethical standpoints.In contrast, I argue that the US-led counterterrorist strategy initiated by the Bush administration and largely preserved by Obama’s should be reexamined because it has been shown to be largely ineffective in reducing the global incidence and lethality of acts of political violence Western leaders brand “terrorist.”

General News

Another Pipeline War? By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – With a responce from Stephen Zunes responds

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As we focus on the rise of ISIS and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology and focus on the more complex rationales of history and oil, which mostly point the finger of blame for terrorism back at the champions of militarism, imperialism and petroleum here on our own shores. America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria — obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians — sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely to only compound the crisis. Moreover, our enemies delight in our ignorance.

General News

Brexit, Conflict Resolution and Democracy: Missing the Woods of Democracy for the Trees of Expediency

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Most folks, who voted for Brexit, worried about the costs of globalization, feared open borders bringing mass migration into Britain and agonized about ‘faceless’ bureaucrats in Brussels threatening their national sovereignty. Those who voted to remain in the EU, and others who were appalled at the eventual outcome, reacted predictably. Most blamed manipulative politicians, Britain’s infamous tabloid press, xenophobic Little Englanders or even the ill informed rubes who didn’t know any better. Pundits bemoaned the end of post WW2 internationalism; the downing of protectionist shutters; the resumption of nationalistic passions or even the return to the bad old days of European wars and collective bloodletting. Some political scientists questioned the use of a single referendum and said Cameron should have asked for three, spaced, so people would have time to consider the ramifications. Presumably having faith that after casting one (trial balloon of a) vote, we would reflect and make the second (slightly more deliberate one) after which, we would be in a better position to make the third (and finally intelligent) vote. Phew, third time lucky. Playing rock, paper, scissors for as long as it takes to get the right result. Does the democratic process have to look like a visit to one of Trump’s casinos to make it work for us?