Last spring, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove sparked the attacks by a number of rabbis on then-New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. I found those attacks misguided and was disappointed that they missed the opportunity, recognized by New York City Jewish politicians like Brad Lander, to reach out to potential friends. Sadly, in the wake of the election, there are continuing attacks from groups like the Anti-Defamation League to undercut alliances with Mamdani, rather than to find common ground.
But, fortunately, a few days ago Rabbi Cosgrove gave a speech recognizing that the American Jewish community needs to reassess how it deals with the current reality created since the right-wing takeover of the State of Israel, a reality which is at odds with fundamental principles of Judaism held by so many American Jews.
I recommend reading the entire speech. I do not agree with everything in it, but I applaud the effort to open up the discussion we need. This excerpt shows that Rabbi Cosgrove understands the challenges we face:
"[W]e have the nerve to send that kid to a college campus expecting her to defend the policies of a government that does not reflect her values or recognize her Judaism as Judaism. I myself may be constitutionally incapable of walking away from Israel, but others have and will continue do so – before October 7th and all the more since. There is a limit to the self-flagellating exercise of supporting a state that neither recognizes you nor represents your values. For the coming generation of American Jewry, the loyalties of yesteryear will no longer suffice.
"And of all the points of difference between the 'civil religion' of American Jewry and the reality of Israel, none loom as large as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For the post-Shoah generation of American Jewish leadership, Israel’s claim to the land and need for a sovereign state were obvious, a simple matter of survival.
"In the first decades of Israel’s existence, persistent Arab hostilities sidelined any concerns American Jewry might have harbored about the democratic rights of the indigenous Palestinian population. The facts didn’t help.
"Arabs had long rejected any Jewish claim to the land, and mainstream American Jewry paid little attention to Palestinian aspirations to nationhood, focusing instead on the pressing needs of the Jewish people. Expressions of concern for the Palestinians and the conditions they lived in were beyond the bounds of Jewish communal discussions.
"But the past fifty-plus years of Israeli settlement expansion have radically changed the facts on the ground and American Jewry’s perception of Israel as a Jewish and a democratic nation. Whether American Jews know about, or care to understand, the events leading up to the Six-Day War, through which Israel gained control of the territories known as the West Bank, matters little.
"What matters is that Israel continues to occupy the territories. Whatever justifications (theological, historical, security, or otherwise) have been and continue to be marshaled in support of Israel’s ongoing presence there, in the eyes of American Jewry, the West Bank settlements and the illiberal policies they represent pose a threat to Israel’s founding promise – its commitment to democracy."
The challenge is how the Diaspora responds to a Jewish State which is hell-bent on disregarding what I believe most of us see as the essential provision of the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence:
"The state of Israel will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on precepts of liberty, justice, and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizns without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of shrines and holy places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."
I hope we are up to the challenge.
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