In This Moment: The Home Front; The Sui Generis nature of Oct. 7; Developing God's Image

 

In This Moment I invite you to read my latest column on Substack, "Developing God's Image." And please subscribe. It's free and you'll better be able to stay connected with me over the coming months, and beyond, The Home Front & The Sui Generis Nature of Oct. 7 We are all very much on edge these days. This past Shabbat we heard the news that a 40 year old woman in Detroit, the president of her synagogue, had been found murdered outside her home. In an update this morning, police say there is no evidence of this being a hate crime. It's still horrible, but synagogue presidents everywhere, you can come out of your basements! Of course, we all assumed it was a hate crime, didn't we? Does this make us no better than those nations who just assumed Israel might have been responsible for last week's terrible hospital explosion in Gaza (I'm looking at you, Canada), or media companies who to this moment have yet to admit culpability in spreading a wildfire of lies? Except...oh wait! This morning, the Times website included this. What does this mean? It means that the Messiah may have arrived - or maybe there will be some more media accountability from here on, but I seriously doubt that. However, it might mean that the new post Oct. 7 reality, which most Jews are feeling deeply but cannot yet articulate, might be starting to sink in. That new reality demands that any coverage of the current conflict - indeed, any individual comment - must take into account the sui generis nature of what happened on that day. What does sui generis mean? According to Collins Dictionary If you describe a person or thing as sui generis, you mean that there is no one else or nothing else of the same kind and so you cannot make judgments about them based on other things. The implications of this new doctrine have yet to be understood fully by Jews or non-Jews. But is so clearly being felt by everyone, particularly Jews. If you have not given an unqualified condemnation of what happened on that day, and if you do not see that Hamas IS Isis and NOT a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, nothing else matters. If you can't bring yourself to do that, it's not about being cancelled - people are cancelled and uncancelled all the time (just look at what happened at the 92nd St Y this weekend, where we saw a perfect example of this doctrine in practice) - we just can't stomach talking to you at the moment. We can agree on many things, including Israel's foibles and the sad state of affairs for innocent Palestinians. But if you try for a moment to say that Israel is in any way responsible for what was done on October 7, call me when you're ready to have a really serious conversation about the topic. Call me when the sui generis nature of October 7 has begun to sink in. Evidently it has begun to sink in at the New York Times. But people, we've got to calm down! On Shabbat, after I had heard about the Detroit killing, I was outside playing with my dogs and I noticed a car slowly circling the temple parking lot. Four, five, six times. Why would someone do that? I grabbed my cell phone, which unfortunately I've had to resort to on Shabbat much more than I could ever have imagined, and walked over to the parking lot, waiting for the car to come around again. My dogs' barking gave me some cover, but I suppose they were nervous too. The car came around and I approached it. The window rolled down. It turned out to be a congregant, giving driving lessons to her mom. I taught my kids how to drive in the temple parking lot too. How many of you did? It looks like we can't do that anymore. We've got to calm down! Last night i was stopped by security at the front entrance to Agudath Sholom. Evidently my name was not on the list for a dinner that was being held there. First time I've ever been kept out of a synagogue. If that had happened a half century ago, I'd be writing about cancelled poets for the New York Times. Rabbi Cohen happened by, vouched for me, and we entered together. The guy was just doing his job and I thanked him. I'll try to look less suspicious next time. That's what life is like on the Home Front. This thing is hitting us all in a very personal place. Monday's Israel Headlines The Jerusalem Post Ha'aretz (English) Yediot Achronot The names and faces of Israel's fallen heroes Recommended articles will appear in the next dispatch Temple Beth El 350 Roxbury Road Stamford, Connecticut 06902 203-322-6901 | www.tbe.org    A Conservative, Inclusive, Spiritual Community

Reuters hits rock bottom

thanks to Jami Shapiro for sharing this with me. the reluctance of some media outlets to use the word "terrorism" in relation to attacks on Israeli civilians has now hit a new low...

Dear Reuters, You Must Be Kidding

By Jeffrey Goldberg

This is from a Reuters story on the Jerusalem bombing earlier today:

Police said it was a "terrorist attack" -- Israel's term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.

Those Israelis and their crazy terms! I mean, referring to a fatal bombing of civilians as a "terrorist attack"? Who are they kidding? Everyone knows that a fatal bombing of Israeli civilians should be referred to as a "teachable moment." Or as a "venting of certain frustrations." Or as "an understandable reaction to Jewish perfidy." Or perhaps as "a very special episode of 'Cheers.'" Anything but "a terrorist attack." I suppose Reuters will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by referring to the attacks as "an exercise in urban renewal." The mind reels.

Start Spreadin' the News (The Jewish Week, April 15, 2009)

by Joshua Hammerman, Special To The Jewish Week

As a devoted technophile, I should be delighted by the new wave of Web 3.0 options for information sharing: the proliferation of blogs, social networks and video streaming, and the increasingly collaborative nature of online journalism. But with newspapers rapidly going the way of the dinosaur, I’ve become more sentimental lately, waxing nostalgic for the old-fashioned printed word.

There will likely be a time, not too far off, when even Twitter will seem verbose, and when the Kindle, Amazon’s cool wireless reading gadget, will seem cumbersome and old fashioned. No doubt my grandchildren will have news-gathering devices implanted directly in their brains so that they’ll be able to bypass reading altogether.

They will be the poorer for it. True, a newspaper might be environmentally inefficient, messy, bulky, smelly and best for lining birdcages and training puppies. But that’s all part of the charm.

One of the highlights of my stint in journalism school was when, while interning at the Daily News, I had the pleasure of seeing a complete stranger on the subway reading an article with my byline. The next day, when I saw that same page, shredded, on the platform, I was reminded of the fleeting nature both of fame and of news itself.

Years ago, someone had the brilliant idea of imagining what a Jewish newspaper would have looked like back in ancient times, and “Chronicles: News of the Past” was born. The three-volume set, beginning with Abraham and ending with Herzl, was my all-time favorite Chanukah gift, combining my passions for Judaism and journalism. Their Exodus headline is a classic: “We Quit Egypt Today!”

Imagine Moses Twittering: “9:30. Arrive at Red Sea. Egyptians giving chase. Oy vey.”

It’s just not the same as “We Quit Egypt Today.”

Newspapers organize our lives in a manner that cannot possibly occur online. Much like the Passover seder, there is a beginning, middle and end. There’s a front page, containing the day’s top story (the Exodus), followed by some sidebar features, lending depth and perspective (the Four Children, Ten Plagues), an interview with some rabbis in B’nai Brak, and an op-ed by a wandering Aramean’s son. Then, tucked neatly in the back pages, the soft news: a lengthy Food section, the comics (featuring a little goat) and assorted columns and editorials about wiping out our enemies, beckoning Elijah and, at the very end, the travel section, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”

We read every Friday evening in Psalm 96, “Spread the news each day, of God’s saving help.” Shabbat is itself found on the back page of Creation, reminding us that real life is lived not in the banner headlines, but tucked away in the small print. The front page tells of war, famine and corruption. But it is in the back sections where salvation can be found: the weddings and bake sales, the deaths and births, the song of life that never ends.

For 2,000 years the Jewish people lived quite nicely on those back pages. Now that we make the headlines more often, we need to remember that, at its very core, Judaism thrives most in these everyday happenings. We live in the Living section, create in Arts and Leisure, dream our own dreams in the Classifieds, spin the tales of our heroes in Sports — and then confront our own mortality in Obituaries. Letters to the Editor are actually newfangled prayers, public pleas for salvation, far more effective than a fax to the Kotel.

In these days of instant global communications, there is something quaintly inefficient about a paper’s delivery. We’ve lost the human factor almost everywhere else (except for getting gas in New Jersey), but here it remains. True, the idyllic “delivery boy” is no more. That bike-riding teen has been replaced by an adult, in my case an immigrant, who swerves wildly in his jalopy, chucking papers out the window, in a desperate attempt keep his family fed.

The New York Times guarantees delivery by 6:30 a.m., a deadline that hasn’t been met, in my experience, since the Carter administration. Since I have to leave for school drop-off and morning minyan at 7, a late paper presents a problem.

I’ve tried everything from calling the 800 number to scribbling a note on the guy’s Christmas gratuity check. Yes, the slaves in Egypt had to wait four centuries for their deliverance, as compared to my 15 minutes, but darn it, I want my news to arrive on time. So I started calling daily, to complain and to be reimbursed.

On the second of March, the region woke up to several inches of snow. Naturally, I was not going to be so cruel as to complain on this nasty day. But when morning turned to afternoon and no Times appeared, my impatience got the best of me. So I called.

The next day a scribbled note fell out of my newspaper, saying, “Wy you call? It sno. They no pay me.”

I felt badly, but my Pharaoh-heart soon hardened again. He got what he deserved, I thought. No paper — no pay.

Four days later the temperature churned up to 60, the snow banks melted and I saw, peeking out from the bottom of a bank that had been ploughed closest to the street, the corner of a blue bag poking its way through the gray snow like spring’s first crocus. I haven’t complained since, having conquered my inner Pharaoh, and I’ve come to appreciate that what’s “fit to print” is also worth waiting for.