The New Republic: Darfur

Last week's issue of The New Republic was entirely devoted to Darfur, including a stark front-cover editorial that begins with: "Never again? What nonsense. Again and again is more like it. In Darfur, we are witnessing a genocide again, and again we are witnessing ourselves witnessing it and doing nothing to stop it." This is a powerful piece, and worth taking a long look at.

On a related note, check out today's New York Times which reports on an encouraging Security Council resolution that puts some teeth into the U.N. peacekeeping role.

Slavery and Kashrut

This review of "Inhuman Bondage" by Prof. David Davis of Yale is well worth a read. Prof. Davis has been one of the most important people in putting the discussion of slavery onto the world's agenda, and this book gets a glowing review.

The most interesting graf to me is this one:

"Tracing slavery back to its beginnings, Davis links it to the domestication of wild animals. Associations with animals range from Aristotle's musing that an ox is a poor man's slave to the brutish treatment of enslaved people — throughout history, slaves, like domesticated beasts, have been given the names of barnyard animals and household pets, branded with hot irons and forced to wear collars, making it easy for slave masters to dehumanize them. Although the masters often rationalized slavery as a variation of patriarchal paternalism, Davis sees bestialization as the means by which slaveholders elevated themselves, creating the illusion that they enjoyed 'something approaching divine power.'"

The French philosopher Emanuel Levinas, among others, finds the center of Judaism in the attempt to condition human beings away from abusing one another and towards concern and empathy with beings beyond ourselves. Hence the story of liberation from slavery becomes the central narrative of Jewish life. In this paragraph, Davis appears to be arguing that slavery--one of the ultimate expressions of dehuanization--finds its roots in humans' treatment of animals. Levinas would argue that the laws of Kashrut and rules against cruelty to animals are part of the broader Jewish vision of promoting mercy. In light of recent revelations of abuses at kosher slaughterhouses, I find this message particularly powerful. If we turn a blind eye to inhumane practices of animal treatment and slaughter, can our meat really be kosher? Are we being true to the deepest essence of Torah?

Organ Donation

Here's an important question and answer I recently had from a student, on a subject of utmost importance.

Shalom Rabbi Josh,I was wondering, what does the Judaism (or if the opinions are split what domain branches of it) say about being an organ donor? And what do youhonestly think? I'm not exactly sure of Judaism's stance on after life butwould organ donation affect any aspect of this in any way (so let's say if alot of a person was disassembled. how would it affect the preservation ofthe soul in your opinion). And lastly independent of the above ( and sorryif this is personal, you don't have to answer) would you become an organ donor?

Dear____,

Thanks for your question. I'm actually considering speaking about this next fall during Yom Kippur. Judaism's approach to organ donation is fundamentally a conflict between the overriding principle of 'pikuach nefesh,' or the duty to protect and save human life, versus another important principle of 'nivul ha-met,' or treating a human corpse with the utmost respect. There is virtually no disagreement that organ donation after death, when it leads to saving a life, is at least commendable and possibly obligatory. The disagreement among Orthodox authorities has to do with the definition of death--whether it occurs with the cessation of brain activity (brain death) or the cessation of heart beat. If the latter, there are many fewer organs that can be harvested; if the former, virtually all organs are usable.

I personally subscribe to the view that the end of brain activity marks death, and have myself signed up to be an organ donor. More information on this topic can be found at www.hods.org, the Halakhic Organ Donor Society.

As to the question of what this does to the soul, resurrection, etc.: On eschatological topics such as these, there are a wide range of opinions. In general, however, the ability to save a life in this world always trumps open-ended questions about our existence in the next. The Torah famously says 'v'chai bahem'--we are supposed to live by the mitzvot, to which Rabbi Akiba added, 'v'lo yamutu,' and not to die by them. Our tradition is one that upholds the value of human life above anything else.

Best,

Rabbi Josh

Perceptions III

One final thought, which has to do with how the Jewish community responds to criticism of Israel, of support for Israel (as in the Walt-Mearsheimer paper), of Holocaust scholarship (as in the recent visit of Norman Finkelstein to NU's campus): A lot of this boils down to how we each individually, and collectively, answer the question, "Are Jews powerful?"

For my parents' generation, which lived through the Six-Day War, which grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, which lived with the remnants of quotas in universities, the answer to that question seemed, for a long time at least, to be emphatically "No." For people of my generation, however, who have grown up with an Israel that dwarfs its neighbors in military power and economic output; in an America in which Jewish wealth and political power have achieved unprecedented levels; and an academic setting in which 85 percent of American Jews go to college, and 20 to 25 percent of the student population at many of America's best universities are Jews, the answer feels much more like, "Of course Jews are powerful."

Depending on how we answer this question--and it's never so simple as "yes" or "no"--we assume a posture vis-a-vis the rest of the world. If we say Jews are weak, we invest much more in shoring up the Jewish community and its institutions, and we respond to criticism and perceived threats with all our might, with our loudest and shrillest voice. But if we say Jews are strong, we begin to think about investing our efforts outside the Jewish community--because the Jews don't need us, right?. We respond to criticism and perceived threats strategically, sometimes avoiding them or dealing with them quietly, rather than loudly and publicly.

In the past few months at NU, we have endured Arthur Butz and Norman Finkelstein. We have also had the occasional letter to the editor (see below) which paints a very negative portrait of Israel and potentially of Jewish power. Some alums and concerned parties write me emails asking, "Where is Hillel's loud and vociferous reponse?"

Perhaps because I am a child of the generation into which I was born, perhaps for other reasons, I believe our best response is not an argument or debate, but putting on our best face. So I rode on the bus with 100 NU students coming back to Chicago from the DC rally to save Darfur; and Hillel sponsored the Israel IndepenDANCE party, where 500 kids danced and moved and rocked to Israeli music.

The public consciousness--at least the one I'm familiar with--has tired of the debates of victimhood, and who suffered more. It's time to end the suffering, of the Jews, of the Palestinians, of the Darfuri. We all agree on that. So let's end the suffering. Let's get out of Gaza, let's get out of the West Bank, let's do what we can to help the Palestinians succeed--it's in our own interest--and let's demand some responsibility from them. But let's not kid ourselves or let our neighbors kid themselves--we may be powerful, and we will do everything we can, but at the end of the day, the victim has to want to stop being a victim if he is ever going to be whole.

Perceptions II: Letters in the Daily

A series of Letters to the Editor in the Daily Northwestern over the last few days have underscored some essential issues in the question of how different communities perceive reality. Two letters have appeared which accuse Israel of perpetuating crimes against the Palestinian people.

Okay, nothing new there. But the letters seem to be written in a reality before August 2005--neither makes any mention of the Gaza disengagement, of the political earthquake that has occurred in Israel since Ariel Sharon left the Likud in December 2005, or of the election in Israel in which the public voted for a Prime Minister committed to withdrawing Israelis from most of the West Bank by 2008.

When Nitesh Gandhi writes of the numbers of Israeli soldiers who have committed suicide in the last ten years, he doesn't take the next step and say: Yes, and this is why Israeli soceity has realized it's time to get out of the territories! Israelis are tired of sending their children to die for an ideology they no longer believe in, and a mission they no longer support. Hence Kadima, hence Olmert, hence the "Big Bang" of Israeli politics.

Perception of Jews I: Muslims and Darfur

Apologies again for a long absence. A number of articles to tie together on the theme of Jewish self-perception and perception of Jews by others, starting with this one:

From the Toronto Globe and Mail

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Darfur: Why Are We Muslims So Silent?
By Tarek Fatah

Tarek Fatah is host of a weekly TV show on CTS-TV, The Muslim Chronicle, and is the communication director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

The remark by a prominent Muslim refugee-rights activist troubled me greatly: "Zionists [are] abusing this issue," he announced curtly when he said he would not be joining me and hundreds of other people on Sunday at a "Scream for Darfur" rally at Queen's Park in Toronto.

This line of thinking, that Jews have somehow stolen the issue of Darfur's genocide by actively campaigning against it, has been making the rounds in cyberspace and needs a rebuttal.The fact that more than 200,000 Darfurians, almost all of them Muslims, have been killed in an ongoing genocide; the fact that more than a million Muslim Darfurians are displaced refugees living in squalor and fear, appears not to have registered with the leadership of traditional Muslim organizations and mosques in this country.

One would have expected Muslim organizations to be leading the call for this week's debate on Darfur in Parliament. One expected them this past weekend to stand in solidarity with their fellow Muslims suffering in Sudan, but that did not happen. The city's Muslim elite was conspicuous by its absence.

Elfadl Elsharief, the Muslim Sudanese who organized the rally, angrily dismissed the notion that the Darfur tragedy is an exaggeration and that he and his organizers were being used by Zionists."It is nonsense to suggest that the death, destruction and the suffering of the Darfurian people is imaginary or that Zionists are using us as propaganda," he told me at the rally. "The Sudanese government-backed militias are the people who are killing their fellow Sudanese. The tragedy is that it is Muslims who are killing other Muslims."

Indeed, it certainly appears that some kind of Arabic-Islamic ideology is being used in Sudan to ethnically cleanse marginalized citizens who are not considered true Muslims by virtue of being black. "To suggest that this is some sort of a U.S.-Israel conspiracy is ludicrous and insane," said Mr. Elsharief. "Muslims of Arab background should stand shoulder to shoulder with the Darfurian Muslims; unfortunately, they are not. That is a shame," he added, as he walked away shaking his head in despair.

Mr. Elsharief's frustration was shared by Mohamed Haroun, the eloquent president of the [Darfur] Association of Canada. "A lot of us feel that some Muslims, who dominate the community, do not consider us African Muslims as equals. I am afraid there is widespread racism against African Muslims by other Muslims. How many more Darfuri Muslims should die before other Muslims will stand up against the Sudanese government?"

The sentiments of hurt expressed by my two Sudanese Muslim colleagues are shared by Muslims across the world, but do not find expression in the Muslim leadership. Last month, Fatema Abdul Rasul wrote angrily in The Daily Star of Lebanon: "For the entire Muslim and Arab world to remain silent when thousands of people in Darfur continue to be killed is shameful and hypocritical."El-Farouk Khaki, the immigration lawyer who was accused of being used by Zionists because he had sent out the invitation to Sunday's rally, agreed that there is widespread internal discrimination within some Muslim societies. "This is racism at its worst. I am an African-Canadian; I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Darfur crisis has not made news in the traditional Muslim organizations because Darfurians are black. Had they been Bosnian, Kosovar, Arab, Pakistani or Iranian, I can bet you, these grounds would have been full of slogan-chanting Muslims demanding justice. Muslims need to address their internalized racism before they ask others to respect us," said Mr. Khaki, who is secretary-general of the Muslim Canadian Congress.