Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

No, I haven’t had the honor of Marty Peretz attacking this blog yet. But he has gone after J Street, Ezra Klein and the misuse (to his feeble Jewish mind) of the term tikun olam. I knew the attacks on J Street would come fast and furious, so I’m not surprised that Peretz has jumped into the fray. I am a bit taken aback that he has widened the attack with a vicious and ignorant assault on both Ezra Klein–for invoking Heschel in his support for J Street–and that long-standing Jewish phrase. Thanks to Gershom Gorenberg, who has weighed in on the debate himself, for bringing the interesting story to my attention:

If you suspect you see a charlatan in a Jew wait for him to utter the words, “tikun olam.” “Repair of the world.” Big idea, revolutionary, utopian, progressive. In the mishna torah where the phrase first appears it really means tweaking, at best, adjustment. Imagine how many silly sermons and speeches have been given with this deliberately falsified phrase as their text.

First, you’ll notice that Reb Marty has somehow secured smicha and is opining on Jewish mysteries about whose meaning he has no special interpretive aptitude. Tikun does not mean “tweaking” or “adjustment.” It means mending or repairing. And as Gershom Gorenberg, a Jew well-versed in traditional texts, points out the term doesn’t appear first in the “mishnah torah,” but rather in the Mishnah. That little mistake makes Marty off by only 1,000 years give or take a decade or two since the Mishnah Torah was written by Rambam a thousand years after the Mishnah was compiled. Marty–before you try commenting on Jewish tradition you might want to take a few adult education Talmud courses with your local rav. I’d also urge him to read Rabbi Elliot Dorff’s seminal work on this issue of tikun olam.

I’ve always thought Marty was an intellectually coarse individual. But in the following passage he shows that he is just plain coarse. In fact, this is language I’d expect to find at Masada2000 and not in the pages of The New Republic:

Heschel marched with Dr. King…But, believe me, he had his standards, and he wouldn’t have marched with the two-bit Jewish leaders [those uttering the phrase tikun olam] who are still excited to utter Arafat’s name. (In 1993, they were so were so excited to see him at the White House that they almost pissed in their pants…and in their panties.)

I don’t know many Jewish leaders, two-bit or otherwise who “are still excited to utter Arafat’s name.” I suspect this is a bit of Marty’s typically overblown and nonsensical politically incendiary rhetoric. I do know many people, Jews, non-Jews, a president, cabinet secretaries and members of Congress who were quite excited to see Yitzhak Rabin and Yaser Arafat shake hands at the White House. Maybe those are the people he’s referring to who were pissing in their pants and panties??

All of us who write blogs sometimes write infelicitous, awkward phrases which we edit when we notice them. Marty has done this in spades but hasn’t noticed what a mess he’s made of the English language here:

It isn’t as if Heschel hadn’t written of the Israel that is a Jewish sovereign state and which sovereignty, it is my guess, that truly troubles Klein…

If you try you can sort of follow Marty’s meandering mind, but he sure makes it hard.

With the remainder of the above quoted passage, Peretz in his typically pugilistic way accuses J Street board members Ezra Klein, Matt Ygleisias and others of being anti-Zionists. Can anyone take this idiot seriously:

…and Matthew Yglesias and many of the other cold Jews or almost Jews or non-Jews who cannot stomach Zionism because it is of this world.

J Street is actually a group that is pro-Israel. Says so all over its website. But Marty doesn’t let that stop him. He uses the anti-Zionism trope as a sword to slay a dragon that isn’t even there. Typical.

I also take strong exception to Peretz’s distortion of Heschel’s notion of the impermissibility of neutrality in the face of moral evil. The former, in this quotation, seems to believe that Heschel would be as coarsely pro-Israel in the current iteration of the conflict as Peretz himself:

Having wrestled Heschel’s idea of neutrality out of context, Klein wants his Jews and others not to be neutral towards Israel. Klein wants them to feel anger towards Israel, while Heschel wanted them to love the land as the people, the miracle as the commonplace…

Of course Heschel would take sides in the conflict. He would take Israel’s side…and the Palestinian’s side. He would be critical not of Israel, but of Israeli policy. He would advocate for peace, for tolerance; against bloodshed, against hatred. Any Jewish simpleton with the faintest idea of Heschel would know this. But not the morally blind and obtuse like Peretz. For him, Heschel would be roaring like Jabotinsky for Jewish victory in its war against the Palestinian people.

If we need any further proof of where A.J. Heschel would stand on this issue we have only to look to his daughter, Susannah Heschel, his familial and spiritual heir. Her commitment to Jewish social justice and Israeli-Palestinian peace speaks volumes about where her father would come down on the issue.

Marty–go hang your head in shame. You’re the one who’s the “charlatan.” You don’t know Jewish tradition. You don’t know your Heschel. What do you know?

Returning to the phrase tikun olam, Gershom correctly notes that the phrase in the Zohar and Kabbalah connotes the Jew’s yearning to perfect the world and bring messianic redemption by performing mitzvot. There has always been an element of social justice involved in the performance of certain mitzvot. Indeed, the social justice imperative is at the heart of Judaism going all the way back to our Prophets and farther.

Contemporary Jews have adapted this ancient phrase for today and used it as shorthand to denote the Jewish commitment to perfecting the world through acts of justice and lovingkindness. For right-wing Jews like Marty who are deeply offended by such perversion (in their eyes) of an ancient tradition–all I can say is that even God is not on their side. In the Talmud, there is a debate between a rabbi and his colleagues about a particular point of halacha. The rabbi says God is on my side and summons a bat kol (”heavenly voice”) to confirm this. His fellow rabbis are not impressed. The law sides with them. Even God, who should know what his original intention was regarding halacha, is bested when the rabbis innovate.

Innovation is allowed in Jewish tradition. Consider Rabbenu Tam, prozbul and scores of other innovative halachic concepts which rabbis devised to deal with new social and economic conditions. At the time doubtless there were rabbinic figures who objected to what they saw perhaps as creating legal fictions. But in time, the new interpretations were accepted, even embraced. Jewish law is not immutable as Antonin Scalia would have you believe the U.S. constitution is. It is an ever-changing set of concepts always firmly rooted in the text but never frozen in time.

Tikun Olam is a phrase we can be proud of and our use of it is fully within our tradition’s legacy of both change and continuity.

The following is the Comment is Free article published last Tuesday when J Street launched. Before you read it, if you haven’t already visited the J Street site to join its mailing list, please consider doing so. And even more important, consider making a generous donation so J Street can begin to make a difference in Congress by promoting candidates who will engage with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and pressure our next president to make every effort to promote peace, not war. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country if we are ever to see peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Recently, I attended a private Seattle dinner featuring J Street co-founders Daniel Levy and Jeremy Ben Ami. On April 15th, J Street will launch. It will be the first American Jewish PAC dedicated to promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace:

For too long, the primary and often only voices policy makers and politicians have heard regarding American policy toward Israel and the Middle East have been those of a vocal minority at the far-right of American society.

…Neoconservative, right-wing Jewish leaders and radical Christian Zionists have turned their definition of “pro-Israel” into a driving force in the American political process…

These voices do not…represent the mainstream of American Jews or the broader community that cares about Israel or American interests in the Middle East. Their efforts have skewed American policy, undermined Israeli and American interests, and constrained the domestic political and public debate about American foreign policy.

It is time for the mainstream of Americans–Jews and others–to establish a bold, political voice that advocates for the best interests of the U.S. and Israel, including a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the 1967 borders with agreed reciprocal land swaps, and for American policy that will lead to real security for Israelis, Americans and the entire Middle East.

J Street proposes an overarching U.S. approach to the Middle East that eschews military conflict and embraces diplomatic negotiation; that advocates multilateralism over unilateralism; and dialogue over confrontation. It proposes negotiation with Syria and Iran rather than diplomatic isolation and threats. And it will advance these goals both in the legislative and electoral process as well as the media.

Daniel Levy is a British Jew and son of the leading fundraiser for Tony Blair’s Labor Party, Lord Levy. The younger Levy made aliyah to Israel in 1991, where he worked on the peace process with Labor governments. He moved to DC two years ago to become a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, where he writes the well-respected blog, Prospects for Peace. Levy is the passionate, thoughtful, philosophical member of the duo. He is the deep thinker who ponders the big questions. Ben Ami, a former deputy domestic policy advisor in the Clinton administration is the operations chief. He knows the campaigns and the politicians. He is inside the political process. They make a good team.

J Street plans to do two things. First, it will be a traditional PAC raising funds to support a limited number of candidates for Senate and Congressional races. Second, it will lobby for and against Israel-related bills and legislation. Regarding the PAC portion of its mandate: in its first year (the current election cycle), it hopes to raise around $300,000 to funnel into three to five races in which it can make a significant impact in swing districts. According to the co-founders, it sees no benefit in going after long-serving Democrats who take doctrinaire pro-AIPAC positions because they are too entrenched. Rather, J Street sees its best efforts devoted to choosing races in which there is a weak incumbent with an anti-peace agenda running against a candidate who is open to J Street’s political agenda. Norm Coleman is someone high on the group’s list since he is such a weak incumbent and is opposed by Al Franken, who is already sympathetic to a pro-peace agenda regarding the I-P conflict.

In the following (2010) election cycle, J Street hopes to raise several million dollars and target a slightly larger number of races. Ben Ami noted that he and Levy had studied two critical AIPAC campaigns against Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard. By cross-checking the donor lists they discovered that AIPAC wields an enormous amount of clout with a rather limited amount of donations (in the low millions).

However, it should be noted that AIPAC has a reach that extends far beyond merely punishing those it deems hostile to Israel. After all, it has a $60 million annual budget along with a deep volunteer base. Its power flows in many directions. In this sense, J Street really has its work cut out for itself.

The new group is studying AIPAC’s example and plans to use its tactics while turning them inside out on behalf of peace. Both co-founders reinforced that this effort is not meant to oppose, criticize or attack AIPAC. The idea is that there is room for AIPAC in this political debate while there is also room for a variety of other voices, including J Street.

Ben Ami, who was deputy domestic policy advisor in the Clinton administration, said they’d sounded out scores of politicians and their staffs about how J Street would be received. He is convinced that its message is welcomed with open arms almost universally. Of course, there will be some dyed in the wool Old School holdouts. But he believes that J Street is something the DC pols have been waiting for for a long time. They’ve been eager to break away from heterodoxy but needed the political cover to do so. J Street would help provide it for them.

In talking about what J Street planned to do differently from the mainstream Israel lobby organizations, I was heartened that it planned to pay lots of attention to voices of young people especially those represented by bloggers like Ezra Klein and Matt Ygleisias and others. Ben Ami sees the younger generation as the hope for the future as they haven’t yet bought “their father’s Oldsmobile” in terms of embracing the stereotypes and accepted wisdom of the established groups. The Israel lobby groups are heavily populated and led by the older generation and Jewish opinion surveys show that the younger generation is both more liberal on Israeli politics and more turned off by the Israel-centric issues dear to the heart of the Old School.

The J Street leaders also addressed their relationship with the three existing Jewish peace groups: Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now and Brit Tzedek. They said that J Street would not duplicate their efforts nor was it meant to replace them. Rather, J Street is the next logical step in the development of a pro-peace political agenda in which candidates would be encouraged to take an independent look at the I-P conflict and throw out old orthodoxies.

Levy, in his talk to the dinner group, emphasized that while Israelis realized that they were primarily responsible for resolving the conflict, that they also needed a good swift kick in the rear end from an energized American Jewish community and U.S. president. An Israeli prime minister like Olmert might welcome pressure coming from America to adopt a more forthcoming approach to the idea of compromise. He could then turn around to the Liebermans (Avigdor, not Joe) on his right and say: “If you want to buck our American friends, be my guest. But where will you turn once you do and they’ve abandoned you?” Levy believes that this narrative will resonate in Israeli political circles.

In fact, the group has recruited a group of distinguished Israeli academics, political analysts and former senior military officers to sign a letter of support for J Street. Among others, it includes former IDF chief of staff Amnon Lipkin Shahak, former foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, and former directors general of the foreign ministry David Kimche, Alon Liel, and Uri Savir.

It’s always important with efforts like this to examine the board member names. There are of course leaders of the main American Jewish peace groups. There are rabbis and academics. But most important there are heavy hitter political donors (Alan Solomont), policy wonks (Rob Malley), U.S. ambassadors to Israel (Samuel Lewis), high level political operatives (Eli Pariser of Moveon), Hollywood liberals (Robert Greenwald), business leaders, George Soros’ top aide (Morton Halperin), and even a former Republican senator (Lincoln Chafee) and former Congressman (Tom Downey). The major political donors and business leaders are critical to provide the funding necessary to have an impact on political campaigns.

The group founders believe that Barack Obama and his staff “get” J Street’s perspective while they believe a Clinton candidacy might not advance J Street’s mission as aggressively. In particular, Ben Ami mentioned Tony Lake, Obama’s chief foreign policy advisor as someone who was probably responsible for the candidate’s bracing Cleveland speech in which he admonished American Jews not to believe that a pro-Israel presidential candidacy need also be pro-Likud.

I came away from the dinner heartened by the J Street effort. Trying to be a realist after feeling burned by previous similar efforts, I’m not yet firmly convinced it will succeed. But it is bold, ambitious, well thought out, and doable. Many other dovish political efforts in the past had one or even two of those qualities going for them, but few have had all of them. That is in J Street’s favor.

One big question will be how AIPAC responds to the new initiative. As the big kid on the block it has the most to lose from J Street becoming a major success. So it’s got to feel threatened in some way. My only question is whether it feels defensive and threatened enough that it would take on J Street in its infancy. Already, AIPAC’s former director Morris Amitay has denounced J Street in the pages of the Jewish Forward. Amitay seems to be a surrogate for the group, which doesn’t want to lay down a marker in public yet on the matter. It remains to be seen how the big guns of the right-wing Israel lobby like Malcolm Hoenlein and Abe Foxman will react. If they do, they will only be endorsing the idea that J Street is a force to be reckoned with.

I attended a private dinner here in Seattle last week at which J Street co-founders Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy spoke about tomorrow’s launch of the new Jewish peace lobby group. It will finance federal campaigns of candidates who support Israeli-Palestinian peace and it will promote a robust U.S. policy to advance this goal.

I’ll have a new piece in Comment is Free, New Kid on the Block, timed to coincide with the launch. It will provide more detail about the group’s goals and strategy. I’m hoping the times they are a-changein’ and AIPAC’s hegemony over the U.S. policy debate regarding Israel will eventually become a thing of the past. We need a debate about Israel policy, not a monologue; a choir and not singers singing in unison.

Word is beginning to leak out about the imminent launch of J Street, the new liberal Israel lobby being founded by Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy. I reported on Gershom Gorenberg’s essay in Prospect Magazine yesterday. Today brings James Besser’s story in Jewish Week which provides a few more details:

…The new project kicks off with a hush-hush fundraiser next Monday hosted by former Clinton administration official Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative of the Century Foundation. The group will be publicly launched around the middle of April; organizers said they will not speak publicly about the group until then.

“For too long, the loudest American voices in political and policy debates have been those on the far right — often Republican neoconservatives or extreme Christian Zionists,” according to the invitation. “J Street aims to change that. We are the first and only lobby and PAC (political action committee) dedicated to ensuring Israel’s security, changing the direction of American policy in the Middle East and opening up American political debate about Israel and the Middle East.”

While sources say the structure and initial goals of the new group are still in flux, it is expected to raise money for congressional candidates who advocate a stronger U.S. leadership role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and multilateral solutions to the region’s problems.

The group will be headed by Ben-Ami, who served as deputy domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration and later as a media consultant. Ben-Ami has worked with several Jewish peace groups, including the Center for Middle East Peace and the Geneva Initiative-North America.

Unlike similar attempts in the past the board of directors of J Street seems to have the Jewish “gravitas” and fundraising clout to make it a success. It includes leaders of the three main liberal Jewish peace groups (APN, Brit Tzedek and IPF), major Democratic fundraisers, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and perhaps most importantly, Mort Halperin, George Soros’ major domo. I’m hoping that Halperin’s participation implies at least Soros’ tacit support for the group.

Keep your eyes peeled for attacks from the Jewish right which will come as sure as the spring rains in the Pacific Northwest.

AIPAC is not a real pro-Israel lobby. It is a pro-Likud lobby. As Gershom Gorenberg points out in his fine essay in Prospect Magazine, A Liberal Israel Lobby, AIPAC’s positions are regularly at variance with the Israeli government. If you’re a true pro-Israel lobby that wouldn’t be the case.

Gershom makes a cogent case that we need such a true pro-Israel lobby. One that doesn’t look only to maintain Israel’s military power so it can continue the Occupation and subjugation of several million Palestinians. One that takes a long view of Israel’s interests and lobbies for peace between the two peoples; a peace that is stable and unshakable.

There are rumblings that such a lobby, which has been bruited about for over a year, is about to come to pass. I know more than I’m allowed to say here (for once I’m in on a secret), but since Gershom, who has his Jewish journalist ear to the ground, has all but announced the imminent formation of the group I can go at least that far. Nathan Guttman reported some time ago in The Forward that the name ‘J Street’ is one being used among the supporters of the project. I’m hoping that shortly more concrete information will be announced by the founders.

One thing that should (but probably won’t) reassure AIPAC. The new group will spend much more time raising funds for political candidates than it will lobbying for policy. As such, it will be doing things that AIPAC itself cannot even directly do (though AIPAC’s donors do this themselves and with a vengeance). But certainly a goal will be to provide a countervailing weight to AIPAC on policy issues so that politicians, hitherto petrified to cross the group, might realize that their political funding sources will not dry up if they take a position counter to AIPAC.

I’ve followed the ups and downs of this project. I’ve despaired when George Soros announced he wasn’t on board. I’ve fretted when I worried that David Saperstein would sap the heart out of it by temporizing its agenda. And now, I’ve finally got something to cheer about as the new new Jewish thing is about to arrive. This baby is long overdue. Long may it thrive.