Searching for a Minyan: Our Response to Being Censored by J Street

Co-authored by Josh Healey.

This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace" PAC and Washington-based organization is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a workshop on how culture and spoken word create democratic spaces that sift through difficult issues and ensure a multiplicity of voices are heard: and how that can be used to open up the Israel/Palestine debate. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate.

This week, some right-wing blogs and pseudo-news organizations latched on to various lines of poems Josh wrote and churned the alarmist rumor mill saying that hateful anti-Israeli poets are keynote speakers at the J Street conference. This is not surprising. The radical right-wing, including the growing Jewish right-wing of this country and abroad, hates complex discourse, especially when it brings to light truths they seek to systematically deny. The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and their AIPAC-influenced brethren have been attacking J Street for weeks, scared that the conference will bring together the majority of American Jews who do favor a more rigorous peace process. When they found Josh's poems and took lines out of context, they had the perfect straw man: the Van Jones to J Street's Obama. Again, this is not surprising.

What is disappointing, and troubling, is J Street's response in caving to this sort of McCarthyism. The executive director of J Street called us to say "I know what I'm doing is wrong ... but there are some battles we choose not to fight," before canceling our program, and disinviting us from the conference. This accommodates their red-baiting and is the wrong response. Rather than give in, which only emboldens the right and legitimizes their attacks, we need to stand up for our principles and engage on that front. Van Jones is another perfect example: after the Fox News venom became too much and he resigned last month, the radical right hasn't stopped attacking Obama, or more accurately, the alternative, progressive voice they fear he represents. The right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies. Too often the left doesn't. And that's why we often lose -- on health care, on global warming, and on Israel/Palestine.

For the second time in two months Kevin, who is Jewish, has been told not to come to a Jewish conference because of what he will say about Palestine and Israel. This past August, the evening before the International Hillel Conference, conference planners said if he were to read poems about Palestine, they'd rather not have him. Today, Josh, who is Jewish, has had his name thrown into a mudslide of blogs and hate emails. All this because we are practicing the Jewish maxim of the refusal to be silent in the face of oppression, anyone's oppression.

One of the key teachings of Judaism is the insistence on wrestling with and debating ideas. There are a thousand years of codified arguing, recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, over the meaning of the stories in the five books of Torah. Jews debate everything. There is the old adage, "when you have two Jews in the room, you have three opinions". Our families cannot come to agreement about what constitutes a deli as opposed to a diner. (A deli must have pickles on the table with poppy seed rolls, etc.)

But when you try to talk about Palestine there is silence. When you talk about the role the United States plays in supporting Israel and its military coffers, there is no room for discourse. If you bring up Palestinians' right to return to land they were forced out of, or mention that this past January over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilian, were killed in Gaza, there is no room to speak in Jewish-centric spaces in this country.

There are many reasons why this trend of censorship is disturbing. We believe in democracy, in the right to speak and be heard and in the right be disagreed with. We are disheartened and outraged by the lack of democratic discourse in the American Jewish community and within the country as a whole.

Why are we scared of what will come from an honest conversation? What do we have to lose, or discover, or admit to if we question the policies of Israel or America's support of its government and military? It can be unsettling for one's worldview to unravel, the intricate web of white lies and half-truths pulled apart. This can be disconcerting for generations of Jews who have accepted the propaganda of a chosen people and the acting out of geostrategic nightmares via military might.

Kevin works at a Hillel for Hashem's sake! He is charged with the task of addressing why so many young Jews are distancing themselves from the religious and cultural practice of Judaism. This is one of those reasons! American Jews are told at shul to repent for our sins, but silenced if we bring up the sins of the country that acts in our name. We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.

So, we are searching for a minyan -- a crew of progressives and progressive Jews to build and connect with. We want to have a conversation. Not wait for the conversation to be dictated and have borders and walls built around acceptable topics, but to have a conversation determined by us, Jews That Are Left, that are on the Left. A conversation that is honest and open and genuinely reclaims and considers our progressive past as well as forges the future world. A conversation engaged in the work of tikkun olam for real, the work of repair and healing and wholeness.

Progressive American Jews, where you at? Holla at us! For real: [e-mail]. Let's reshape the conversation. Let's build a minyan, a coalition of progressive Jews and gentiles who want what is just and right for all people and all people in Israel and Palestine.

 

 

Comments

[Matthew Siegel]

By the way, Mr. Coval and Mr. Healey - you have just been given a gift with this. Before, you would be talking to a room of maybe 50 people. now you have the whole world.

[thused]

In terms of the poetry, I've seen Josh's poem, and frankly I don't get much out of it. With statements like "Ann Frank is Matthew Shepherd" and "Guantanamo is Auschwitz", he is apparently trying to put modern events in a historical context that endows us with an agency for creating change. Unfortunately, his unsupported equivalences paint each historical injustice with such a coarse brush that it is impossible to get any real clarity out of his poem. Was Matthew Shepherd the victim of his own government's massive industrial genocide campaign? Are we trying to wipe out all Muslims from this planet by gassing them at Guantanamo? Instead of complicating the discourse by examining the truth up close, he is oversimplifying the past. Instead of holding up the events of the day and turning them in the light like a jeweler inspecting all facets of a stone, he is smashing them with the hammer of equivalence; "Look, its all just carbon anyway." If I were head of an organization dedicated to educating and empowering American jewery, I would steer clear of such cheap similes myself.

With love, Jon

[thused]

Kevin, I love and respect you and your work, but I think you may have missed the mark here. We share relatively similar political goals, but this sort of rhetoric does more harm than good.

Censorship and black-listing is clearly inexcusable, but the loss of distinction between violence, coercion, and legitimate disagreement is arguably just as dangerous. You were not arrested or prosecuted for your views, nor were you forcibly silenced. You were disinvited from speaking at an event whose hosts disagreed with your rhetoric. If someone at J Street had invited Glenn Beck, before realizing that he rages far to the right of their political comfort zone, no one would cry McCarthyism or censorship at his removal from the program. What you are doing here is co-opting the historical oppression of censored, jailed and ruined leftist artists and intellectuals in an internal argument about the slant of modern Jewish movements. You want the movement to move to the left. The movement has other plans. This kind of "fight me and you fight justice" argument is a slippery slope. An intellectual should recognize his position on a spectrum of thought. Legitimate disagreement is a cornerstone of our democracy, even if that disagreement comes from conservatives. It was, after all, the "leftist" communist party in China and the USSR that forced its citizens to sit through endless speeches, rallies and "cultural programs." In America, nobody has to listen to us if they don't want to.
Continued below..

[Matthew Siegel]

I'm a poet and I get where you're coming from. I'm also a member of the so-called Jewish left and I think this is more of a fuzzy issue than is brought up. To bring excessive military force to the table is essential. To discuss a two-state solution is essential. To talk about return to Israel (pre-1967) is talking about abandoning a Jewish majority and the idea of a state for the Jewish people. Reparations we can even talk about, what we can do to set up a Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza - but you cannot expect any mainstream Jewish organization to want to bring Palestinian return to the table - it is just impractical, and at its core anti-Zionist - which is a viewpoint that should be respected - it works against everything these people and their parents and their parent's parents have worked for. While the injustices committed against the Palestinian people on a daily basis is important, we should understand that world Jewry is fundamentally Zionist or post-Zionist - J-street being a good example of the latter - they believe that the goals of Zionism have been achieved - a Jewish state in the Holy Land. It is unfortunate that J-street booted the poets because I think poetry is a great medium to explore the conflict.

There is a lot more to say on this, but I wanted to pass along my thoughts....

[curious a]

why not post the poems that raised the concerns so people reading this article can judge whether or not they were offensive enough to warrant the poets being shunned? my understanding is that there was holocaust imagery and ridiculous attempts at establishing a moral equivalence. if thats true, then i'm not surprised that anyone seeking appeal with mainstream american jews would feel compelled to distance themselves from those words.

[lbsaltzman]

What you describe, coupled with the fact that Rabbi Michael Lerner won't be allowed to participate in the conference deeply disappoints me, and negatively changes my attitude towards J Street. I was hoping they would be a progressive force for ending the occupation of Palestine and countering the power that AIPAC and other groups have over our foreign policy in the Middle East.

However, if J Street knuckles under to the Zionist organizations, both Christian and Jewish, that use blatant intimidation to promote the rightwing Israeli viewpoint, that does not bode well for J Streets ability to change the dialogue.

[DevonTexas]

thanks for the article. good reading. informative