We Believe in Kazakhstan!

This weekend we are holding a grand conference to celebrate the glorious nation Kazakhstan!

We, the people assembled, assert that we believe in Kazakhstan, and are certain that it continues to exist. We also believe in Tinkerbell and Santa Klaus, but feel unsure about crop circles.

Do not dwell on minor internal issues (forced marriage, Jew-baiting, walrus-fighting, poof-strangling) – this will only give strength to the haters of our glorious country. Only believe! Questions are for decadent westerners and homosexuals.

We promise a wondrous range of diverse speakers – all of whom agree with each other!

We guarantee a range of fascinating themes, all within the framework of Kazakhstan as a democratic and anti-semitic state. These are the pillars of our nation, any one who does not like them can fuck off to Florida from where elderly Jewish ladies control the world.

Open to each and every supporter of the proud nation Kazakhstan without restriction! (communists, homosexuals, liberals, and girly men should check beforehand to see if they have been blacklisted)

Sessions include:

How to get better representation for rapists in the media
Oppressing minorities while keeping a ‘Happy Face’
A history of Kazakhstani potassium in 45 minutes
Why do people hate us – is it because they are communists?
The battle over university campuses – making sure our students continue to study traditional dance
‘Make ‘em laugh- Using humour to avoid being boycotted

Special track for young people -  Hugging and Wrestling/Sucking and Fucking Kazakhstan‘. Sexy!

The conference will take place at a top secret location in Western Siberia. Entry is by helicopter. To book your place email KJB@gmail.com, with photos and DNA samples.

So the world is entranced and pretty excited by the protests in Egypt. This is all well and good. After all its a big story, and pretty clear cut – millions of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators on one side and a brutal police state on the other. Everyone’s happy. Except, it seems, the Jews, who have decided that the whole one member one vote thing isn’t really  in our interests.

Not that people are coming out and saying it outright. Being an out-and-out authoritarian anti-democrat is seriously unfashionable. No, the tactic amongst right-wing Jews is to express a seemingly benevolent concern – ‘ wouldn’t it be awful if there were elections, and the Muslim brotherhood won, and then they cancelled elections and made Egypt a theocracy’. Egyptians might, they suggest, be better off with the devil they know. There is a biblical precedent for this kind of approach. Having left Egypt (cute irony) many Israelites think they would have been better off as slaves to Pharoah:

We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!

Sticking with oppression because you’re afraid of the future. Doesn’t get a good press in the Hebrew bible.

Benjamin Netanyahu (always more of a Pharoah than a Moses) has been praising Mubarak to the hilt, and talking in apocalyptic term of what happens if he goes. This, at the very least, represents bad tactics. Being best chums with Israel’s increasingly neo-fascist government is not going to add to Mubarak’s popularity with the Egyptian people. But at least Bibi is prepared to say explicitly what many commentators, bloggers and facebookers are only prepared top hint at. He’s clear that the only important consideration, the goal by which all developments must be judged, is what is good for Israel. Its a very narrow version of good for Israel, granted, but the government, backed by the old slimeball Shimon Peres, is clear that the main that has given security on Israel’s southern border for 30 years, as well as co-enforcing the blockade of Gaza, should be kept in power. Flagrant realism, blatant display of (supposed) national self interest. Is this the current state of Jewish ethics?

If Judaism is not about creating a just world for all then what the fuck is it? As the sublime Emmanuel Levinas put it:

The ethical order does not prepare us for the Divinity, it is the very accession to the divinity.

Or, as he might have said: Justice. Its good for the Jews.

In a word, no. At this time of year we ladies and gentlemen of the Mosaic persuasion find ourselves drowning in a sea of kitsch, bad arrangements,  crooning Yeshiva bochers and terrible YouTube videos desperate to convince us that this time, Channukah (and Judaism with it) is cool. No no no. Judaism- very uncool. In this lies its excellence. Like the haredim who cling to the dress of 19th century Poles for the simple reason that no-one else does, the day the rest of the world takes us Palwins, fishballs, khrein, borsht and almond pudding is the day we start to eat normal food.

So why are channukah songs so frequently lame?  The answer is twofold. Firstly, the many excellent Jewish songwriters found themselves very busy at this time of year. Writing Christmas songs. Being wise Jews, they followed the money, realising that the real dollars were not in Yiddish shtick but Yuletide hits that sensibly left Jesus out the the picture. Only now, with a range of desparate philanthropists in the Judaism industry pouring in the cash, does it pay to be Jewish, making the creation of Judaeo-kitsch extremely lucrative.

Secondly, channukah songs frequently make the schoolboy error of explaining what to do at channukah. Come light the menorah……take a potato…we light 8 candles……we play the dreidle…..enough already. What is this, choreography for stupid Jews? This sort of thing can drive a person mad/make them donate to the UJIA. Imagine if Christmas songs followed this model ‘first we stuff the turkey…then we pull crackers….the queen always wears clothes from C &A……there’s a tree, it has tinsel on it‘. No, channukah is essentially banal, and a good channukah song needs to rejoice in its triviality. The less meaning the better. And don’t make the mistake of telling the story of the Maccabees either. Unless you want to write a full blown pro guerilla warfare, terrorism condoning toe-tapper, perhaps called ‘In praise of the Taliban’. In which case, go ahead.

Given all this, we at Jewdas realised that what Yidden throughout the land were calling out for was a list of channukah songs that were, if not actually good, then vaguely decent. An approved list, a playlist for the perplexed, a musical kashrut guide for our times. So we have obliged. Anyone playing any other songs at the channukah gatherings runs the risk of being excommunicated, Tough, but fair.

Here’s our top 10, which come, unlike the Torah,  in the order in which they were written

1. Happy Chanukah – Moishe Oysher. They don’t em’ like this any more. Cantorial scat singing from the great master himself. Straight from the era when, if you were making an album and asked ‘can we have a backing choir’, the producer would reply ‘sure why don’t we add an orchestra as well’. Genius. Not on YouTube or spotify, but you can buy on iTunes or Amazon

2. Let’s Put the Ch back in Chanukah – Sid Wayne and Stanley Adams. Proper old school, American-Jewish comedy, back in the heyday. You actually learn a whole load of Yiddish vocab. Check out the whole album ‘Chanukah Carols’ all on Spotify.

3. Chanukah in Santa Monica – Tom Lehrer. The old classic, still one of the best. Wisely Lehrer does not attempt to say anything meaningful, preferring to rhyme Jewish festivals with American place names. He also keeps in under 2 minutes. An excellent move. On YouTube here

4. Ocho Candelikas – Flory Jagoda. This feels like its been around forever, but in fact dates back to the early 80s. Ok, it makes the mistake of explaining the choreography, but its Ladino, so no-one really understands it anyway. Lots of versions, but there’s a nice version by the anglo-sephardi band Los Desteraddos here.

5. Punk Rock Chanukah Song – Yidcore. Ok, this is a version of the Adam Sandler Chanukah song, which is totally unacceptable, but Yidcore make it just about ok with new lyrics and a great video. Not quite as good as their previous ‘Why won’t Adam Sandler let us sing his song, written before Sandler gave them permission.

6. How do you spell channukkahh – The Levees, from their album of the same name. This does come from a whole album of Channukah songs, which is a dangerous thing, but this does actually work. Some may be sad that 2 millenia of Jewish culture has been reduced to a debate about spelling, but screw them. Also check out ‘Goyim friend’s from the same album, on Spotify

LeeVees – How Do You Spell Channukkahh? from The LeeVees on Vimeo.

7. Lonely Jew at Christmas – Ok, not technically a Chanukah song, but a classic for any jew with christmas envy. Find it here. For those who refuse to listen to any song with Christmas in title the South Park Dreidle song is also good.

8. Hanukkah Bitch – Brad and Barry, from the album Brad and Barry Stuff Your Stocking. We know nothing about this. But its surprisingly good for a hard rock channukah number. Find it on spotify

9. Feast of Lights – They Might be Giants. A decent song, which happens to have a Channukah setting. Hurrah! There are live versions on YouTube, but head for Spotify for the album original which is far better.

10. Miracle – Matisyahu. Hot of the press, this one came out last week, and is a catchy, radio-friendly delight. Seems like Matis is gradually dropping all his chabad baggage in favour of a loose neo-chasidism/pan mysticism, making him more entertaining, and, ahem, more marketable. Always nice when spirituality dovetails with profit margins. Kudos for this – it almost manages to create a ‘feelgood Judaism’. Almost. Don’t worry, its never gonna happen.

And a few of the worst. Don’t go anywhere near:

1. Anything from  Eran Baron-Cohen’s ‘Songs in the key of Channukah‘. Feh feh feh feh feh. Made so much worse by its attempt to be cool.

2. Anything from ‘Hannukah Swings‘ by Kenny Ellis. Hanu-Calypso is the absolute nadir. Excerpt here

3. Light One Candle – Peter Paul and Mary. Beloved by Batmitzvah girls who dream of winning the X factor.

4. Don’t u wanna touch my hannukah – Eric Roth (anathema). A shocker of the Jewish rap genre. The mind boggles

5. Eight Days of Channukah, by  Utah republican senator Orin Hatch. The most wrong thing ever.

Happy Kwanzaa! And stay off the absinthe doughnuts.

xxx

Two lay hold of a cloak. This one says: “I found it!” And that one says ‘I found it!” This one says, “It’s all mine!”. And that one says, “It’s all mine!”. This one takes an oath that he has no less a share than half, and that one takes an oath that he has no less a share than half. And they divide it up.

Translation: Neusner

This little nugget of Mishna is traditionally one of the first taught to children. You can see why, it, along with the many cases that follow, is a simple expositions of one of the key aims of the rabbinic project, to present a clear legal system designed to smooth out all uncertainties, resolve conflicting claims and demonstrate a method for dealing with all social issues that might arise. The text is pretty clear, it presents a case when two people have equal claim on an object, having, presumably, both come across it simultaneously. The image suggested is a cartoonish one, each picking up one end, only then realising the presence of the other. We know that their claims are totally equal as they use totally identical language. How can they divide the garment, seeing as they both have a just claim to all of it? To ask they to say that they own only half of it would be to force them to lie. Rather, the Mishna comes up with an innovative solution, that each should swear that he owns not less than half. With this approach, both owners can maintain the integrity of their claim, while allowing a practical division of the garment to take place.

Now I’ve heard this text used several times in recent months, not as an introduction to rabbinic laws of property but as a political analogy.  There seems to be something of a fashion for using this Mishna as a metaphor for the two-state solution. It requires little explanation: just as the two characters each believe the whole cloak is theirs, each side in the Israeli Palestinian conflict believes the whole land belongs to them. They cannot say that only half the land is theirs, as this would be to make a nonsense of their deeply held beliefs. Rather, they can say that ‘not less than half’ of the land belongs to them, allowing each to maintain the theoretical purity of their position whilst permitting the land to be divided into Israeli and Palestinian states in practice.

So far so cute. I can, however see at least problems with this analogy. The first is political – why is it necessary at all? We have been told for so long that the two-state solution is the only, most just and totally inevitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If so, why the need to propagandise on its behalf, to marshal Mishnaic metaphors in support of it.

The second problem is a textual one. While most translations describe the two characters as fighting over a garment or a cloak, the Hebrew is rather more precise. It refers to a Tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl. The notable thing about a Tallit, the factor that makes it a Tallit rather than any other garment, is its fringes, 613 of them. These represent the 613 Mitzvot (commandments) and the Tallit thus reminds the wearer of their obligations. A Tallit with less than 613 fringes would not be a Tallit and thus worthless. Its value lies in its unity. Therefore an agreement which divided the Tallit in two would be an absurd, monstrous one.

This argument is bolstered by seeing a Biblical story behind the Mishnaic text. It seems to me implausible that a reader knowledgeable in Tanach would not see a connection to the story of King Solomon and the baby claimed by two mothers, found in 1 Kings 3:16-28. Here, famously the urge to divide is seen as proof of a false claim, the true mother would want the baby intact, even if it meant relinquishing ownership to the other.

This is an apt metaphor for the state affairs in what remains of ‘peacemaking’, behind the apparent inevitability and necessity of the two state solution lies its monstrous shadow, the enfant terrible of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the one state solution. Such a solution questions how the land, with its water resources, overlapping populations, criss-crossing roads and contested capital can be meaningfully/justly divided in two. Is not what is most beautiful about the land its unity? Are not borders, and the urge to police them a source of oppression as much as liberation?

Until now these ideas represent the ‘lunatic’ fringe of Israeli Jewish opinion. They were rather more popular amongst Palestinians, but were dropped by the Palestinian leadership in the 1980’s after being told that a two-state solution was all Israel would accept. It turns out however, that even that was too much to expect.

The collapse of the Oslo process in 2001 (let’s not go into reasons here) led to the total ascendancy of the Israeli right, and their associates, the settler movement. What seemed wholly possible in the 1990s, that Israeli state might evacuate almost all settlements as part of an agreement now seems impossible to conceive. The right is so dominant, and increasingly unwilling to concede anything at all to placate the ever-concerned ‘International Community’. The strongest card of what remains of the ‘Peace Camp’ (the fact thus Kadima is seen as part of it shows how far things have come) is the ‘demographic argument’ that points out that in not too many years there will be Palestinians than Jews in the strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river. If this tipping point occurs without a Palestinian state existing, then the monstrous option will occur by default, and a one state solution will inevitable occur. For this reason, it was supposed, all Jewish Israelis had to support the two-state solution in one form or another, and when rightists opposed it they were simply putting their heads in the sand, having no other solution.

Until, it seems, now. Haaretz recently published an extraordinary article by Noam Sheizaf on the seemingly impossible subject of settler bi-nationalism. It seems that a series of people within Likud and the settler movement have decided that a) their priority is not to divide the land so no settlements need be removed b) if so, Palestinians must be given the vote, otherwise the world will view Israel as a full apartheid state and thus c) they are prepared to give up on the idea of a Jewish majority. This is a mind-boggling development. Have the most racist, most nationalist Israeli Jews suddenly become the biggest doves of all? Not quite.

As Uri Averny has pointed out, these thinkers have a series of major caveats. Firstly, they try to take Gaza out of the picture, seeing it as an enemy state, and perhaps hoping it could eventually become part of Egypt. Removing Gaza from the picture takes 1.5 million Palestinians out of the equation – certainly helpful for the demographic equation. Secondly they suggest that Palestinians would only be given the vote gradually, in some cases, on some kind of ‘earned’ basis. This is obviously unacceptable to any democrat.  Thirdly, and in connection with the previous point, they maintain that this state will continue to be unambiguously a ‘Jewish state’. This is clearly delusional – if the Palestinians form, say 45% of the electorate, naturally they are going to demand that said state be neutral or bi-national.

These inconstancies, however, do not invalidate the whole idea. If this is the beginning of a total sea change it will naturally take some time to develop into a coherent political programme. Ali Abunimah, at aljazeera.net argues that once the one state principle is established, it will gain its own momentum, however these figures might want to control it. He points out, that right until the end of apartheid, most white South Africans opposed creating a universal franchise, preferring some kind of halfway house or power sharing arrangement. Once the negotiations began it became clear that this was simply a non-starter. The same would be true of any proposal to give Palestinians the vote ‘gradually’.

At the point where the two-state solution’s moment has probably passed, its adherents in the diaspora are sounding more and more desparate. There has been an increase around ‘Zionist left’ activism, through initiatives like J-Street and J-Call, that fail to notice that the Zionist left in Israel is pretty much dead and buried. The last two-staters are desperate to drown out the calls of more radical groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, and the ever-growing BDS movement. They are trying to trap a genie that has already escaped from the bottle – nowadays the whole Tallit is in sight.

A current buzzword amongst Jewish professionals is ‘peoplehood’. A strange word this, one absent from most dictionaries, and one seemingly invented by Jews, for Jews. A recent proponent of the term argued that the fact that it appears in no other cultures or languages (including Hebrew) ‘shows just how counter-cultural we are’. Or it just shows we’ve made up a stupid word.

So why is this word doing quite so well at the moment? Unsurprisingly, money has a lot to do with it. The Nadav foundation (‘advancing understanding of Jewish Peoplehood and a strengthening of the individual’s pride in being part of the Jewish Collective’) is giving substantial grants to organisations that run Jewish peoplehood themed programmes, whatever that entails

This explains the inclusion of a ‘new peoplehood track’ in the programme of the recently held Limmud UK conference. A whole host of events, panels, discussions etc, were slotted into the programme at very short notice when a grant became forthcoming. Participants could spot these by a cutesy logo of a Jewish family silhouette with a Star of David above their heads. Bless.

The sessions in said track showed the mix of quality one expects from Limmud, with some very interesting and some leading your head to sink deeper and deeper into your lap. But none could disguise the intellectual vacuity of the concept, and its utter shallowness was clearly evident. The nadir came in a supposedly high profile panel, in which David Saperstein, the respected head of the RAC (Reform Action Center) in America came up with the mind boggling statement ‘I have a dream’ (delusions of MLK here)’ that every Jewish child will go to sleep having listened to a Jewish song and played a Jewish video game’.

Sorry?   What kind of Yiddisher Stepford wives/ totalitarian dystopia is this? Is this what a few millennia of Judaism has come to? Frantic use of technology to try and guilt trip assimilated secular Jews into marrying in?  One might imagine Moses standing at the back of a Jewish Peoplehood classroom, struggling to understand how it has anything meaningful to do with Judaism, before being told by some (probably UJIA accredited) educator that, to maintain tribal loyalty above all else is the true meaning of the revelation at Sinai.

For this is the essence of Peoplehood theory, discarding all meaningful religious, linguistic, cultural, and philosophical elements, lest they offend anyone, Jewishness is reduced to a big ethnic love-in. Love your fellow Jew, the only mitzvah that remains. This is secular Judaism at is most extreme, devoid of the elements, such as the Yiddish language, or shared religious reference points, which 100 years ago made secular Judaism viable and dynamic. Jewish Peoplehood theorists take as their starting point the notion that the Jews are, in some mythic way, one people, despite the many linguistic, cultural and social barriers that separate us. From then they consider which elements can unite us, given this diversity. Religion is obviously out, given the vast gulf between the haredi and the ardently secular. Language fails to unite either, with Yiddish increasingly restricted to the Ultra-orthodox, and Hebrew hardly well spoken in the diaspora. Any gathering of European Jews immediately demonstrates the degree of linguistic separation. Culture? Jews have always had multiple cultures, dependent on geography, and this has only been disguised in modernity by the aggressive dominance of Ashkenazi culture, and the unwillingness of the state of Israel to allow the culture of its Sephardi immigrants to perpetuate judaeo-arabic culture. What about social justice/socialism, which motivated so many Jews at the turn of the last century, and was taken by liberal Jewish movements as the essence of Judaism? To the extent that this agenda has survived the embourgouisment of Western Jewry, this is now a diaspora phenomenon. In Israel, proud to be engage in realpolitik, viewing Jewish utopianism as deriving from the ‘ghetto mentality’, the tradition of centring Judaism around the ethics of the political left is virtually extinct. Social Justice Judaism is now an essentially American movement, and when its proponents turn their focus onto Israel, for example with ‘J Street’, the result shows the division rather than unity of the ‘Jewish people’. So what remains? Ultimately, we’re left with race, a (almost certainly illusory) common ethnic descent. Because to discuss race is somewhat unfashionable in polite company, terms like family (often the folksy mispocha) , common heritage or nation are used as synonyms. But make no mistake, in the absence of a genuine shared culture, religion, language, geography or philosophy, we are talking about a unity based on ethnicity, a community of race.

Despite claiming to be able to speak to the current Jewish reality, Peoplehood theory is intrinsically prescriptive rather than descriptive. It aims to return to a (perhaps somewhat imagined) more innocent age, located somewhere in the 1950s, where Jewishness was a warm club, seemed relatively homogenous and any dissent from mainstream narratives was kept firmly below the surface.  Behind Peoplehood’s shiny new façade lies an attempt to put many genies back in the box, those of intermarriage, of increased Jewish diversity and decreasing connection between Israel and diasporic communities. It is thus an agenda for reconstruction rather than renewal, to use Zalman Shachter Shalomi’s terminology, and a clue to its fearfulness is the fact that it is already moving towards dogma. Anita Shapira, of Tel Aviv University has accused Shlomo Sands (whose book ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ will given a full analysis on Jewdas at a later date) of ‘peoplehood denial’, a phrase evidently designed to ‘evoke’ holocaust denial’, and perhaps even suggest that the two are equally dangerous. This represents another, more sinister aspect to the peoplehood concept, its attempt to buttress the legitimacy of the Zionist project. Most Zionist thinkers maintain as central dogma that ‘every nation/people has the right to self-determination’ (whatever that means), and thus maintaining the notion of Jewish nation or people is necessary to ensure the survival of Israel as a state with a Jewish majority.

None of this is to suggest that all notions of ‘the Jewish people’ are nonsense. The term Am Yisrael, though probably originally meaning something closer to tribe or cultic sect rather than nation, is indeed an ancient term. Even if we accept the Shlomo Sands notion that Judaism is essentially a religion, other religions understood themselves as a coherent group, the Ummah for Islam, and Christendom for Christianity. The claim to Jewish peoplehood has always been mythic, rather than based on any empirical uniting features, but we can acknowledge that many practising Jews throughout history understood ‘am yisrael’ to be a meaningful concept, however they interpreted it. What is new, however, is the attempt to separate the notion of the Jewish people from all other elements of Judaism, and make it the sole focus. Traditional Judaism posits a triangle: God-Torah-Israel. Peoplehood eliminates two thirds of the triangle, surely leaving us with something approaching an idolising of race.  This Judaism without content eliminates halacha, aggadah, prayer, philosophy, rabbinic hermeneutics and personal and communal ethics, in the name of building a faux unity. One need not be ‘religious’ in order to appreciate this; a ‘secular’ Judaism can be equally content driven, by Yiddish song and literature, by the Ladino language, by the modern Jewish philosophical tradition, by a knowledge of Jewish history. Such content does indeed unify its practitioners, but focussing on an ‘object’ rather than ourselves, frees us of the narcissicism and exclusivity that otherwise occurs.

It is feared that a focus on particular content, such as modern Jewish philosophy, or the Yiddish language, will fail to connect us to the whole, will in fact detach us from our collective unity and belonging. It probably will. But this is inevitable; there is no unity to which we ought to be belonging, no essence that binds us all together. Judaism/Jewishness is without centre, diverse sets of cultures, practices and politics that are bound together only polemically in the service of particular ideological projects. But so what? Is that such a problem? From Mediaeval philosophers to Kabbalists, Jews have frequently been more attached to their particular ideologies and communities than to the ‘collective’. The strongest Jewish communities had the greatest diversity and argument, only the experience of 20^th century hatred coupled with the fear of corrosive modernity has driven us to strive for an imagined unity.

A recognised trend, amongst certain Jewish commentators, is a shift away from focussing on peoplehood towards a focus on meaning. Perhaps there is something in this. It is arguably a North American phenomenon rather than a global one, and it is a move toward meanings in the plural rather than singular. And it is still an attempt to introduce a meta-narrative, to reinstate an essence to Judaism by the back door. But such a shift, if there is one, towards content(s) and meaning(s) does have a major advantage. When we next meet, for our big ethnic love-in, at least we’ll have something to talk about.

On the CST blog, Mark Gardner has written:

by emphasising the supposed hidden power and influence of the “pro-Israel lobby” over politicians and the media, and promising to expose “the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying”, Dispatches was unwittingly playing up to antisemitic stereotypes.

In the guardian’s Comment is Free, David Ceserani writes:

With manipulative skill Oborne builds up the frisson of exposing a conspiracy while using publicly available information as evidence and, the ultimate chutzpah, at the same time as declaring that the lobby is doing nothing wrong

and the normally temperate Jon Boyd, of JPR, loses all perspective talking of the:

shoddy research and the barely-concealed antisemitic undertones (the idea of a shady, morally repugnant ‘cabal’ of Jews seeking to control the world is one of the classic antisemitic myths)

Both Ceserani and Gardner make great light of the fact that the comment threads that accompanied the programme on Channel 4 website contained anti semitic rhetoric.  This is about as weak as arguments get. One cannot condemn a programme by its comment thread; all internet comment pages, from the Guardian to Haaretz are packed with lunatics having their say. When we see a comment by a apocalyptic Christian telling us we’re all going to hell, we pass swiftly over it, a comment talking of a global zionist conspiracy ought to elicit the same response.

The programme itself was not exactly the finest documentary ever made. It appeared to have a relatively low budget, limited research, and like many docs, sought sensation. It clearly hoped to find some serious corruption, which never emerged. It did not find evidence that the entire British governing elite is in the pay of Zionists, because it obviously isn’t. But many of the things it did find, are, quite frankly true.

1) The Israel lobby is highly effective, probably the most effective group lobbying on behalf of another country in the UK. How else can we explain the massive attendance at Labour, and particularly Conservative Friends of Israel events? Are the canapes that good? It is a well funded, well organised lobby, and dogged and persistant enough to make any editor/journalist thinking of writing material critical of Israel wonder if its worth their while.

2) The Israel lobby takes a hard right position, on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It is, in the words on Chas Freeman, discussing the US equivalent, ‘not an Israel lobby but a Likud lobby’. Never would you hear from organisations such as CFI, Bicom and Zionist Federation the fact that there are Israelis that oppose the wall, that opposed the war on Gaza, that regularly travel to the West Bank to work in solidarity with Palestinians

3) Parts of the Israel lobby, notably the Board of Deputies, and the Jewish Leadership council consistently claim to speak in the name of the entire Jewish community.  No shit sherlock. The programme quoted Anthony Lerman and David Goldberg to prove this wrong, regular Jewdas readers will already know that it is complete nonsense. JFJFP, IJV, New Israel Fund, your old commie uncle………………

4) The Israel lobby uses anti-semitism to silence criticism of Israel. Hell Yeah. They do this all the bloody time. This is the number one tactic of the lobby, its best tool in intimidating politicians and journalists. Still, after a thousand rebuttals, anti-nationalists, binationalists, supporters of the right of return, opponents of the Gaza war, and hell, even Israel academics who deny Jewish Peoplehood can be easily tarred with the Jew hating brush. This probably should have been the focus of the programme, and would have infuriated people even more.

So what of the allegations of anti-semitism levelled at the programme itself? That it played on the antisemitic trope of a Jewish conspiracy? This is tricky. If one wants to make allegations about a particular organisation, who happen to be Jewish, and who happen to be influential and act in a shadowy way, how exactly should you critique them? Take the example of UJS (Union of Jewish Students), old friends of Jewdas. I might well wish to say that UJS exert control over NUS conference, are somewhat secretive in that their delegates never stand as UJS reps, but rather as independents. I might point out the UJS use their power and financial muscle to stop NUS ever speaking out against Israel. If I was feeling especially daring, I would point out (this is little known) that UJS has a secret staff member, whose job it is to organise infiltration of other student organisations and report back to UJS, a post funded by CST.

Now is this an antisemitic critique? I think not. It all comes down to precision-if I say that ‘the Jews’ control NUS conference, I might well be racist, but if I point out, with examples, the power of the particular organisation UJS, then the critique is a valid, and necessary one.

This was the path of the programme,  it made particular allegations, against particular organisations, with examples to justify the case. Given that making this kind of critique without being accused of anti semitism is a herculean task, I’d say they did pretty well.

But even having said all this, the programme did make one big error. It portrayed the Israel lobby as serious, powerful and controversial.

Instead, it should have portrayed them as a bunch of pillocks. These guys are sad bastards, who have little better to do than scrutinise every word of bbc reports, write pompous letters to the Times, and whose Jewish identity is so screwed up that it relies for its focus on defending Israel. Are the Board of Deputies ultimately that menacing? No, they’re a load of twats. We could have had a great film exploring the social lives of the Israel lobby, chatting to Jonathan Hoffman while he enjoys lunch in Sollys, golf drives with Board of Deputies spokesmen, Kalooki with Poju Zabludowicz. Much more enjoyable for all.

Do you really think that when David Milliband meets the Jewish Leadership Council, he quakes in fear and apprehension? No, he thinks ‘ Oh my God, another dinner with those absolute tossers’

Uncle Moishe and the Yeshiva Boys Choir.

I love this. So much. And I want it: not just chol hamoed sukkos like this video, but every bloody shabbat. Fuck shulgoing, prayers, study, every Jewish occasion should be like a circus. Think how many converts we’d get! And how many marriages! In such a messianic utopia Uncle Moishe would be acknowledged king by all.

Jonathan Sacks can only dream of singing like Uncle Moishe. All that smooth spoken words waxing lyrical while the Neimah singers provide backing lounge music? Not good enough Rabbi Sex. No wonder all the kinderle are marrying out!

Here’s another classic. Come on now, oy, yoy yoy yoy yoy, yoy  yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy yoy VAY    But can we be sure the Pizza is glatt? Looks a bit suspect to me.

Below is a brilliant article taken from Haaretz’s (Israeli daily) Makom Blog. Its written by Amichai Lau-Lavie, the pioneering founder of storahtelling, a Jewish theatre company, and one of the most innovate groups in Anerican Jewry. In it he makes a link between tranlsation and mixed marriage, exploring, and celebrating hybridity, and sourcing it in Jewish texts. The man’s on to something. His article is below, but first a few observations about translation in Judaism, digging a little deeper.

Translation has are rich and complex history in Judaism, of which the article gives just a few examples. The paradigm would be the creation, of the Septuagint, the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which is traditionally thought to have been composed by 70 Jewish scholars and scribes sent specifically for the purpose. One Talmudic text in tractate sofrim paints this as an unqualified disaster ‘The day the Torah was translated into Greek for King Ptolemy was as terrible for Israel as the day that the Golden Calf was built’. The fuller account, in tractate Megillah, comes in the context of principles of how one may write a Sefer Torah. Surprisingly we find, at least according to this gemmarah, that it is permissible to write a Torah in Greek. The story of the 70 scribes is then retold. It has (at least 2) fascinating elements. Firstly the scholars, while sitting in separate rooms to ensure that they do not confer, all miraculously hit upon the same translation. Thus the great fear of translation, that there will be no longer be one text, but endless variants, is neatly avoided. Secondly the translation deliberately mistranslates elements of the Hebrew, either so as not to anger Ptolemy or to clarify difficult and problematic elements in the Torah itself. For example, the beginning of Genesis is mis-translated to make clear that there are not 2 heavenly powers involved in creation (the new version reads ‘Elohim Bara Bereishit’ rather than ‘Bereshit Bara Elohim, fascinatingly the Talmudic account ‘retranslates’ the Greek phrases back into Hebrew). The translation also explains why Sarah was punished but not Abraham in the incident where God tells them they will have a child and they both laugh, by adding an explanation that Sarah laughed publicly and Abraham privately, an explanation which is absolutely not in the Hebrew text. It is as if the translators embed a level of early rabbinic commentary into the text itself.

Another Text, from Midrash Tanhuma, makes explicit the link between translation and boundary-crossing that Lau Lavie discusses in his article.

Rabbi Yehuda bar Shalom said: Moses requested that the Mishna too be given in writing, but the Holy One, blessed be He,  foresaw that the nations would translate the Torah and read it in Greek, and say “We are Israel”

The danger of translating, and thus losing both control and particularity is undercut by the probable fact that the Mishnah had already been written down, so the author was not prophesying, but rather lamenting an existent reality.

Finally, in modernity, the link between translation and the idea of Judaism reaching beyond ethnic Jews was made by Levinas, with his notion that ‘We must translate the Torah into Greek’. Whilst aware of the traditions around the Septuagint, here Levinas understands Greek as representing philosophy, the intellectual tradition of the west, of modernity. For Levinas, such a translation is conceptual as well as linguistic, we must learn to think Judaism in ways that make it relevant for all, that will ensure its survival, not as a tribal apologetic, but as a force that can change the world

Kissing through the veil of assimilation

original here, with insane comments from readers, as usual on Haaretz

04/09/2009 |
Amichai Lau-Lavie

“Translating Hebrew into another language is like kissing a bride through a veil” – I thought of this quote, most often attributed to Bialik, one of the greatest Hebrew poets of the 20th century, during a recent wedding in the French speaking parts of Canada. As the speeches began during the wedding banquet, an older woman turned to me and whispered, in English, with a thick (Slavic) accent, ‘can you translate mazeltov? What does it actually mean?’

I did my best to explain this generic Jewish way of congratulation, its forgotten Hebrew origin (astrology based – ‘may the planet that guides you be in alignment’), its juicy gist, but I still found it difficult to convey the indigenous essence, specific flavor. ‘Good luck’ doesn’t quite cut it, but it’s the closest and does have something to say about fate, and faith, and relentless optimism. She smiled and nodded – one of those smiles that bridged all languages. But did she ‘get’ it? Do we ever successfully convey the innards of our words when we translate into another culture? Or is it always skin deep? A kiss through a veil? And is that better than no kiss at all?

At this beautiful wedding the bride, a friend of mine, in a stunning white dress, wore no veil, and the marriage ceremony, civic and short and sweet, was also stripped of religious elements. But there was still a lot of translation going on, linguistic and cultural – as Catholic and Jewish family members and friends gathered with Muslims and Atheists in celebration of this lovely – and mixed -marriage. Any relationship is, arguably, a communication challenge, and when a Jew and Catholic marry, as these two love birds did, regardless of their current faith and allegiance to tribal heritage, making it work (for them and their loved ones) is a lot about finding common ground, the perfect translation. It’s never easy – a lot is lost in translation, we know as much, but what I find to be a really interesting challenge, especially these days, is to figure out what is also gained in translation. How do we accommodate reality and make the most of kissing through veils in this seductive multi-cultural global way of living.

With more than an estimated 55% of Jews in North America marrying out of the faith, the challenges of ‘translation’ far exceed the choice of words or the utilitarian needs of making key terms such as ‘mazeltov’ understood by a random cousin. Translation becomes a trope, a metaphor for making – or not making – sense of one’s inherited tradition in the ‘salad bar’ of Western culture where ‘mix and match’ is the accepted norm. Whether one supports or condemns intermarriage between people of different faiths, races, ethnic origins or nationalities – it is clearly a sign of the times. Rather than view it as an epidemic (and many do, see for instance the Masa video clip released this week to fight intermarriage and endorse trips to Israel) I am still wavering – and for now, prefer to see it as a compelling opportunity to think creatively about translation and transmission: a necessary, complex challenge. Possibly – a blessing in disguise.

Attending this wedding made me think a lot about the realities of intermarriage and inspired me a lot to think about what can be done with it – not stopping it – who can prevent love – but working with it. Making the most of this situation – and that’s where translation comes in. Finding smart ways of translating our languages vocabularies of faith and cultural symbols to each other can be not just a necessary tool – but also a bold attempt at visionary pluralism and peaceful co-existence – it can help us understand each other better have more compassion for those radically different from us – beyond the comfort zones and separations of similar and familiar lifestyles and behavioral codes of many many generations. Sensitive and smart translation can help our respective species to survive. Refusal to translate – to accommodate and negotiate meaning and context – can achieve the total opposite of survival.

Oy. This is a mine field. Intermarriage is a super sensitive subject for modern Jews, and it has, in fact, been a touchy subject from as far back as Jewish (or any) identity existed. So I’m treading lightly here. All through history, it seems, marrying out was a norm for a certain percentage of world Jewry, and a perpetual headache for Jewish leaders. As soon as the social walls of various ghettos went down – in Alexandria, or Toledo, or Berlin, or New York, – the ‘other’ beckoned and boundaries crossed.

The Bible is full of curses and warnings against marrying out, but also describes quite a few such unions – including Joseph, Moses, and King Solomon – all married to celebrity pagan wives. Regardless of his own vaguely acknowledged marriage to the Midyanite Zippora, and throughout the Book of D’varim, Moses’ fifth and last book, he warns against assimilating with the local folk, and demands that his people keep within the faith. As one way to remind them of their tribal obligations, he comes up with an idea for a monument – a visual reminder of the Law.

In this week’s Torah tale ‘Ki Tavo’, with only a few weeks left to the end of the saga and the entrance to Canaan, the people Israel are instructed to mark their homecoming with a construction project – to gather big rocks, plaster them white, and inscribe on them the words of God:

“And you shall write upon the stones all the words of this law very clearly.”
(D’varim 27:8)

What’s interesting about this biblical precedent of a ‘stop’ sign or other visual traffic aides is how this verse was translated into Aramaic. The words ‘very clearly’ stem from the obscure Hebrew ‘Ba’er Heytev’ which could have meant – ‘carve well’ or ‘explain in detail.’ Some 2,000 years ago, an anonymous Biblical translator translated this as ‘And you shall write upon the stones all the glorious words of this law in writing deep and plain, to be well read, and to be translated in seventy tongues.’ (Targum Yerhshalmi)

The original Hebrew may have instructed Israel to carve out the words of the law on big billboards- but the subsequent translation/interpretation already understood that the best way to keep the tradition alive – is to risk its translation into vernacular.

Translation, as many of you know, is at the core of my work. As an Israeli now living in the USA, as one born into Orthodox (one way or no way) Judaism and seeking ways of sharing my path with other paths that I encounter on my life’s journey – without diluting or losing the essence of what’s unique to my ancient and specific roadmap – translation looms large and important. Kissing through veils may not be the ideal – but is the real, and an obligation for those of us dealing with ways of making the ancient live, with dignity, in the contemporary world.

In the introduction to the King James Bible- rendering Scriptures in English for the very first time, veils flutter yet again: ‘Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place.’ (introduction to the King James Bible, 1611)

After the speeches and the dancing (no need to translate “hava nagila”) a double rainbow pierced the skies and we all went outside to ooh and ahh. It was a beautiful sign, a blessing of hope – all the clichés about the colors of the rainbow learning to live together.

So, to the bride and groom, and to all of us on the almost eve of a new Jew year – Mazal Tov! May the planet be aligned for all of us, let luck intervene, and let’s hope for good new, inventive translations, and many, creative kisses.