Rabbi Joshua Waxman: December 2006 Archives

In response to Rabbi Eliyahu Stern's blog post criticizing former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," "God's Politics" guest blogger Jeff Halper, an Israeli peace activist, defended Carter's perspective on Israeli policies toward Palestinians and his use of the term "apartheid."

Read Virtual Talmud blogger Rabbi Joshua Waxman's reply to Halper:

Calling Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians "apartheid,"as both Jimmy Carter and Jeff Halper do, is both ludicrous and inflammatory–a calculated attempt to turn people against Israel by an insidious comparison with South Africa’s racist policies.

As Michael Kinsley and others point out, the comparison is absurd–South Africa was built on the racist premise that whites were superior to blacks and black citizens were required to live in specific areas with few if any rights–that’s apartheid. The Israeli citizenry, on the other hand, includes 1.4 million Arabs who are free to vote, live where they want, and enjoy equal protection under the law.

The critical questions arise around the West Bank and Gaza–areas that are not parts of Israel and whose Palestinian occupants are not Israeli citizens. Israel took possession of these territories after fending off four hostile armies in the 1967 Six-Day War. With the exception of East Jerusalem, Israel did not annex this territory, instead trying to exchange it for peace–as it did successfully with Egypt, returning the Sinai in the 1978 Camp David Accords (memo to President Carter: you earn Nobel Peace Prizes by reaching out to others and building bridges, not by writing error-ridden, one-sided screeds). Jordan and Syria refused to make peace in exchange for the West Bank and Golan Heights respectively, and so for the past 40 years these territories have remained under Israel’s control.

Now, I’m no fan of Israel’s settlement policies or the way that Israel treats Palestinians in the territories. Nevertheless, we must realize that policies toward a hostile group of people who are not your citizens (i.e., Palestinians in the territories) are going to differ from treatment of minority citizens of your country (i.e., Arabs and Druze living in Israel)–and indeed they do.

Hafrada, the Hebrew term that Halper tries to argue means "apartheid," in fact refers to the policy of separating the territories from Israel proper for security reasons, and not a separation of or discrimination between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens as he implies. Halper himself can’t recognize this difference because he refuses to make a distinction between Israel and the territories, arguing instead for a one-state solution that effectively wipes Israel off the map.

Except for some extremists on the left like Halper and the Islamist Palestinian party Hamas, and those on the right like Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party (which advocates expelling Israel's Arab population), most people on both sides of the issue today realize that a two-state solution–an independent Israel and Palestine–is the only way forward.

I want to clarify for Rabbi Stern’s benefit that I don’t mean to be the Grinch who stole Hanukkah.

Gift-giving is a fun part of the holiday, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with having some fun. The point is also well taken that a thoughtful present, generously offered, can be a truly touching expression of one’s feelings.

The difficulty can come–as it did for the parents in my office–when the emphasis is much more on the receiving than the giving–some kids relate to Hanukkah primarily as a time to grab as much loot as they can, forgetting both the giving and any other lessons of the holiday.

One suggestion that was raised is for children who receive multiple gifts to put a few aside to be donated to organizations such as Toys for Tots, so they can benefit someone less fortunate. That way, the child can have the pleasure of receiving and perhaps come to learn the deeper joy of giving as well.

Last week a group of parents from my synagogue's religious school gathered in my office with an important question about Hanukkah: How, they asked, can we make Hanukkah about more than just presents for our children?

For many parents, this is the key question–not the true meaning of Hanukkah, not how you light the candles, not even where you can find Tickle Me Elmo TMX. The fact is that for decades American Jews built up Hanukkah as the Jewish alternative to Christmas. and now we are victims of our own success.

Many school wintertime pageants feature a nominal Hanukkah "carol" along with the more numerous (and better) Christmas ones, Hanukkah decorations festoon the mall, and Hanukkah gift cards are available adjacent to the Christmas gift cards at the local Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. This is progress?

In one manner of speaking, yes. Concerned about assimilation in the face of Christmas’ allure, American Jews have successfully positioned Hanukkah as a legitimate alternative (turning it in the process from a minor festival into one of the biggest holidays on many Jewish families’ calendar). If Hanukkah is a holiday about standing firm against the temptations of assimilation–as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz asserts–then at one level, we have succeeded. At another level, of course, we’ve failed miserably. The Christmas against which Hanukkah was competing wasn’t the birth-of-Jesus version, but rather the how-many-gifts-can-we-stuff-under-the-tree version, so now Hanukkah is subject to the same materialism and excesses that my friends who are Christian clergy habitually bewail about Christmas this time of year.

Don’t get me wrong–presents are fun, and there’s nothing wrong with giving and getting them. But Christmas and Hanukkah are about more than gifts.

In my office, parents shared various ideas for connecting their children to a deeper message for Hanukkah–from giving tzedakah (charitable donations) each night when lighting the candles, to sharing nightly readings such as those created by Mazon that focus us on those in need, to planning family celebrations that don’t center around swapping gifts, to having each child light his or her own Hanukkiah to proclaim the miracle, to telling the story of hope growing in the darkness.

Ultimately, Hanukkah is about spreading light, and perhaps we can find additional ways to inject this message into our celebration this year. So long as Hanukkah’s main raison d’être remains to be an alternative gift-giving festival to Christmas, it’s all going to be about the Elmos.

It's a fact: In public life, we often tend to make judgments based on appearances. If someone looks or acts different enough from us, we tend to believe his or her views are outside of the mainstream as well. For politicians in particular, being considered "out of the mainstream" is damaging, and this raises some interesting questions when their religious beliefs cause them to act or look different from the American norm.

The current tempest in a teapot is over the (entirely irrelevant) question of whether Mitt Romney and Harry Reid wear Mormon undergarments. And there’s the despicable comment by commentator Dennis Prager that newly elected Muslim congressman Keith Ellison’s desire to take his oath of office on a Qur'an rather than a Bible “undermines American civilization.” In each case, a politician’s integrity is being called into question, either implicitly or explicitly, because his religious beliefs may cause him to behave differently from what we’ve come to expect.

Both of these non-issues will blow over because they are not so highly visible–Ellison swearing on the Qu'ran looks like Christian politicians swearing on the Bible, and the silly Mormon undergarment flap obviously takes place out of sight. But it’s an interesting question how Americans would react to a politician whose religious beliefs or practices looked really different–say, a female Muslim politician who wears hijab (headcovering), or a Sikh who wears a turban. Put differently, would Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an observant Jew, have been able to achieve the broad national success he has if he wore a kippah (skullcap) or had tzitzit (ritual fringes) hanging out from under his jacket?

The irony is that appearance is a lousy basis for deciding how extreme a politician’s religious views might be since, with the exception of groups like the Amish, Christian piety doesn’t generally express itself in distinctive garb. Believing that if someone looks like you they will think like you is as great a fallacy as the idea that if people look and dress distinctively, their views will not only be different, but in tension with your own.

When we make decisions about our politicians based on superficial features rather than their policies and positions on the issues, we only promote a system that favors superficial politicians.