Writer of Wrongs

Prosecutorial Indiscretion

2011-10-16T01:23:00.000-07:00

On February 8, 2010, Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, rose to speak before a crowd of students and local residents gathered at the University of California, Irvine. But not everybody in attendance was there to hear what he had to say.

As is well known by now, a group of students from UCI's Muslim Student Union (along with some of their peers from UC Riverside) stood up one at a time to shout down Ambassador Oren, in accordance with a plan the group had prepared in advance. They were successful: Oren was unable to continue with his remarks until the last of the eleven "activists" had been led from the hall in handcuffs.

The University, having long remained silent despite numerous instances of hostile behavior on the part of the MSU, finally took action. The administration banned the MSU from campus for one year (later shortening the already minimal suspension to a single academic quarter). Faced with overwhelming outrage from the Jewish community, Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas filed charges against the eleven participants for "disrupting a public meeting" and for conspiring to do so. The students (save one who had earlier agreed to a plea bargain) were recently convicted and sentenced to 56 hours of community service, probation, and a token fine.

Victory? Maybe. But I tend to agree with noted Constitutional scholar and dean of UCI's law school Erwin Chemerinsky, who wrote:

Unless there is harm to persons or property–or a serious threat of this–district attorneys are almost always content to leave discipline to school authorities. This is exactly what Rackauckas should have done. No one was hurt, and no property was damaged. After the disruptive students were escorted away, Ambassador Oren finished his speech. The students acted wrongly, and they were punished by the campus; there was no need for anything more.

Dr. Chemerinsky goes on to conclude that the DA "failed... to do justice". Here we part ways: there is no question that justice was done. The students broke the law and were arrested, tried by a jury, and properly convicted. But in his main argument, that Rackauckas should have exercised his discretion to avoid filing charges in the first place, Chemerinsky is correct.

The dean's primary interest may be the intrusion of law enforcement into internal University matters. But I'm more concerned with the megaphone that the prosecution has put into the hands of MSU and their supporters. Thanks to the trial, the self-described "Irvine 11" have become the darlings of the far left, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas mobs. Coverage of the trial and verdict has gone global, from the Jerusalem Post to the New York Times to al Jazeera. Most of this coverage inclines favorably towards the students, who have engaged in a relentless publicity campaign, making hay while the sun shines.

It's hard to blame those who view the "Irvine 11" sympathetically. Yes, the kids are bullies, and anti-Semitic bullies at that. But my own kids will be in college very soon, and it seems to me that if they were to get arrested and tried for shouting at a lecture, I would be outraged. It would matter little what agenda they were promoting—such questions would be eclipsed by the seemingly greater injustice of the prosecutors' abuse of discretion. It shouldn't surprise us then when the MSU kids' families and community respond in the same way.

This didn't have to happen. Without a trial, there are no op-eds in national and international journals, no speaking engagements before crowded mosques, no fundraising letters hinting darkly at the justice-perverting power of "the Israel lobby". Without a trial, there are no new martyrs inspiring the enemies of Israel and America. Without a trial, the event is local, the consequences local, and the media coverage local.

We have only ourselves to blame. The Orange County Jewish community, in its appropriate but overwrought outrage at the MSU's frequent thuggish behavior, has played right into the hands of our opponents. In exchange for the dim comfort offered by the convictions, we have handed our enemies two invaluable assets: a cause célèbre and a set of attractive young icons. If this is victory, it is a Pyrrhic one at best.

When will we learn? Some anti-Israel or anti-Semitic incidents, galling though they may be, simply do not merit a sustained, pugnacious response. Nuance, too, has its place. Discretion has its place. And, frankly, simple good judgment has its place as well.

There are times when a quiet conversation will accomplish far more than a public prosecution. Irritating and offensive though it was, the UCI incident was one of those occasions.

For Randall

2011-09-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

I've been told that each time its web is destroyed, the spider rebuilds it with less precision, less symmetry. Eventually the web barely resembles its original design.

Randall Menter (ז"ל ( 1964-2011

My world was recently shattered by the sudden and unexpected death of my brother on his 47th birthday. Losing Randall only two weeks before the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks was especially cruel, as that event has special meaning for the two of us. I'd looked forward—no, that's not exactly right—I'd planned to spend some time with him on the anniversary, perhaps buying him a drink or two to thank him for what he had done for me a decade earlier.

Instead, I spent that day mourning him, mourning the memory of the attacks, mourning the contentment and balance my brother had helped create in my life.

I was unprepared for the devastation of this event, and its consequences for the rest of my family. And so, as has been the habit among Jews for thousands of years, I sought solace and guidance in the experiences of generations past.

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1135-1204 CE), known generally as Maimonides or the Rambam, lived, worked and taught in Egypt. His family had been chased out of Spain by Moslem conquerers, and he briefly lived in Morocco and Israel before settling in the great medieval Egyptian port of Alexandria. A rabbi, community leader, and writer, the Rambam is today considered to have been one of the greatest exegetes and philosophers in all of Jewish history.

The Rambam was able to dedicate himself to his studies and writings thanks to the financial support of his younger brother David, a businessman. In that period, Jews enjoyed a considerable advantage as international merchants, as they could travel almost anywhere and find Jewish trading partners who spoke the same language and held the same traditions. It was also not unusual for one family member to support another who spent his days studying Torah (though, as a side note, it would have been rare to find somebody studying full time at the expense of the greater community, an all-too common phenomenon in the Israeli and even US Orthodox communities of today).

Tragically, when the Rambam was in his 40s—secure in his lifestyle and comfortable in the love and support of his brother—David was lost at sea. Moshe was bereft, inconsolable. Years afterward, he wrote to a friend:

The greatest misfortune that has befallen me during my entire life—worse than anything else—was the demise of [David,] the saint, may his memory be blessed, who drowned in the Indian sea, carrying much money belonging to me, him, and to others, and left with me a little daughter and a widow. On the day I received that terrible news I fell ill and remained in bed for about a year, suffering from a sore boil, fever, and depression, and was almost given up. About eight years have passed, but I am still mourning and unable to accept consolation. And how should I console myself? He grew up on my knees, he was my brother, [and] he was my student.

And yet, by the time the Rambam wrote these words, he had made significant changes to his life, changes whose effects would be felt throughout the world and across history. For, inasmuch as David's sudden death left Moshe in need of financial support, he took advantage of the medical training he had undergone earlier and became a practicing doctor. Due to his brilliance, and his incredibly hard work, the Rambam eventually rose to the position of personal physician to the Egyptian sultan and royal family. Nearly as prolific in his medical writings as in his philosophical and religious works, the Rambam influenced the philosophy and practice of medicine for centuries after his death, and is still widely studied and quoted today.

I find Rambam's experience relevant and comforting, and beyond that, instructive. I have taken to heart some important lessons from the Rambam's response to his tragedy:

It is permitted to mourn. This may seem obvious to a 21st century American reader, but it has not been true of all times and all cultures. Even in our society we talk of "celebrating a life", but when that life has been cut short, it seems to me to be more appropriate to mourn what has been lost than it is to "celebrate" the incomplete story, the unfulfilled potential.
One should let their mourning run its natural course. If even as great a figure as the Rambam spent a year in bed mourning the loss of his brother, who am I to think I might recover more quickly?
One may mourn not only the loss of a loved one, but the loss of a familiar and comforting lifestyle as well. David left enormous burdens for his brother to confront, including a wife and child, and business debts. Moshe's life was clearly going to become much harder in every way imaginable, at an age when he had long since settled into a comfortable routine. The Rambam found himself straining to accept and bear this additional load even as he mourned the loss of his brother whom he had loved so much.

The death of his brother signaled the irreversible loss of the Rambam's cherished way of life. The same is true for me and other members of my family. So the most important thing I have learned from the experience of the Rambam is this: if we give ourselves both the permission and the time to mourn, we can try to construct meaningful new lives even as we grieve for the loss of the old.

Like the spider's web, my rebuilt life will not be quite as perfect as its earlier incarnation. But while my younger brother's life has been cruelly and prematurely taken, my family and I remain, our previous responsibilities intact, our additional new burdens weighing heavily on us. I miss my brother; I will miss him every day of my life, a life I hope will honor him through accomplishments and good works inspired by his memory.

Looks Like Rain

2011-08-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

You're at work. Today is Sunday, a normal work day here in Israel. But this is no normal Sunday.

Every hour, people in their cars, on the street, and at home stop what they are doing and listen intently to the radio. They're listening for news of the expanding conflict in Gaza, and for warnings of new terror attacks in Beer Sheva, Ashkelon, even Jerusalem. But mostly, they're listening for names, code words really, each individual waiting for the specific words that mean them, their unit.

Some rights reserved by Israel Defense Forces

In some places, it's not the voice on the radio that carries the message. Your phone rings; the conversation is brief. Set your job aside. Take that uniform out of the closet, see if you can still get it on without popping any buttons. Kiss your children, promise them you'll be back soon. Embrace your wife, making the same promise—but she knows the subtext, b'mirtza Hashem—an unspoken acknowledgment that fate will also play a role.

In the army as a kid you were in electronic communications, something fancy. But that's a regular army billet. As a reservist, you'll be assigned the type of duty that doesn't require year-around training. Maybe you'll dig a trench around a base, or stand guard by a gate. That wouldn't be too bad—relatively safe. Or maybe they'll decide that "electronic communications" means you are just the guy to carry a radio through the mean streets of Gaza while soldiers half your age go door-to-door to search for terrorists. Some of those doors explode, having been booby-trapped by an enemy who wants to kill you so badly that he doesn't care if he's also murdering his own civilians living in that house.

You tramp a ride on a southbound Jeep to meet up with your unit. Shit, you realize, I forgot to tell Rivka to deposit that check to cover the rent. There's too much to think about; there's nothing to think about. The Jeep never seems to miss a bump or pothole. Time goes slowly, but you're not in a hurry. You remember a song, a classic really, by Arik Einstein:

.ואני חושב עוד מעט זה עזה, ורק שלא יעוף איזה רימון, ונלך לעזאזל. סע לאט. סע לאט
And I think just a bit longer until Gaza... I just hope there's no grenade flying our way to send us all to hell. Go slow; go slow.

The driver is in his 30s, religious but not not the kind who get their kids exemptions from the army. He's got four at home, ages 2 to 10. He shrugs when you ask him how his wife is going to take care of the whole brood while he's on active duty: savta, he smiles. Grandma. Neither of you know any of the people killed in the recent terror attack, but then again, they were just like everybody you do know: the sisters headed down to Eilat for a relaxing weekend. The 22-year-old kid shot as he arrived at the scene to help rescue the survivors of the initial attack.

The world, which could not bring itself to denounce calculated attacks on women and children in Eilat, will certainly have something to say about your arrival at Gaza. Dozens of rockets rain down on the Negev—your nephew's high school gym took a direct hit, though it was, baruch Hashem, empty at the time. Mostly they fall into open fields, because nobody's aiming: if they hit a stalk of wheat or a room full of kindergartners, it's all the same to Hamas.

You suddenly comprehend a strange lyric from the same song, one you had never really understood before:

צבי אומר שגשמים כאלה מזיקים לחקלאות
Tzvi says that rain like this ruins the crops

A land flowing with milk and honey. And steel rain. You wonder if you restocked the bomb shelter after the last time. You wonder if Rivka will remember the parent-teacher conference tomorrow.

Here's the base. Finally. You thank the driver, hop down from the Jeep, and glance up at the sky. Looks like rain.

Barbarians at the Gate

2011-07-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

If you heard about the legislative efforts in Oklahoma, Tennessee and elsewhere to ban Islamic sharia law, you may have asked yourself, as I did: What. The. Fuck. Are they seriously concerned that sharia law is somehow threatening to engulf the American heartland? Did al Qaeda land some seats in the Tennessee state legislature? Have the Taliban opened a campaign office in Oklahoma? Whence, precisely, arises this imminent danger?

Tracing the history and personalities of this phenomenon, today's New York Times piece, "The Man Behind the Shariah Movement", paints a troubling picture of anti-sharia hysteria in the US. The author, investigative reporter Andrea Elliott, "has reported extensively on Islam in a post-9/11 America", according to the Times.

Elliott tracks the anti-sharia scare to the offices of one man, Brooklyn attorney and Chabad Lubavitcher David Yerushalmi. In 2006, Yerushalmi founded the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), dedicated to fighting a "war against Islam and all Muslim faithful". SANE's platform is anti-sharia, anti-immigration, and anti-Muslim, even proposing that promoting sharia law (perhaps by selling halal meat, for example? It's hard to say) should become a "felony punishable by 20 years in prison".

Common sense suggests a reasonable level of concern with the rise of Islamism around the world and its propensity for oppression, violence, and fanaticism. Furthermore, it's important to recognize the problem of mainstream Muslims in the US who preach co-existence and tolerance, yet offer political, moral, and financial support to terrorists overseas. (More on them in a moment.) But Yerushalmi and his ironically named organization have crossed the bright line from thoughtful awareness into paranoia and racism.

According to the ADL, Yerushalmi has written that "most of the fundamental differences between the races [are] genetic," and that African-Americans in particular are a "relatively murderous race killing itself". Unsurprisingly, he has also suggested that liberal Jews, such as your humble blogger, are "anti-American". Even more shocking, for an organization founded by a Jew, is SANE's recommendation that undocumented immigrants be detained in "special criminal camps" for three years before deportation.

So we've learned that Yerushalmi is a bad guy, and that SANE is anything but. But that doesn't mean we should close our eyes to the kernel of truth hidden within their giant pile of manure.

Early in the 2800-word article, for instance, the author refers to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The unstated irony is that what Yerushalmi would have us believe is true of virtually all American Muslims may in fact be true of CAIR. Painting itself as a civil rights defender, CAIR stands accused of working for the benefit of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. For example, according to the century-old human relations organization, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), CAIR "undermines efforts by federal law enforcement authorities to stem the flow of funds from this country to terrorist organizations".

(By the way, kudos to Elliott for her description of CAIR as a "Muslim advocacy group", disregarding the phrase "civil rights organization" used by CAIR and too often parroted by the press. While even "Muslim advocacy group" doesn't paint nearly as dark a portrait as CAIR deserves, it is, at least, technically accurate.)

Elliott also quotes a handful of Islamic studies scholars. But an examination of the funding and organization of Islamic studies in the US suggests that a certain amount of skepticism is definitely warranted. At the University of South Florida, a former Islamic studies scholar went on to lead a Palestinian terror organization. Yale's faculty includes two of the leading American proponents of the Iranian regime. The influence of Islamists in American universities is as undeniable as it is disturbing.

At the end of the day, it appears that everybody agrees that the barbarians are at the gate. But exactly who are the barbarians? Islamic extremists, bent on dominating and, ultimately, destroying Western society? Or the xenophobic, alarmist, religious fundamentalists raising the alarm? Rational Americans are fighting a two-front war to defend our values and our way of life against these opposing threats.

Jake's Vision

2011-07-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

[Note: I wrote “Jake's Vision” for a contest. As it did not win (I know—I was shocked, too!), I thought I'd share it here with you. Enjoy.]

By the 18th floor, we were breathing pretty heavy. The trucks were staged outside, but the ladders could only reach as high as the 10th floor. So we grabbed our gear and headed up the stairwell, clearing casualties and trapped victims as we made our way to the top of the smoke-filled, 25-story apartment complex, one landing at a time.

Jesse was on point, as usual. He wasn't the senior guy, but ever since we were kids his air of leadership had been as undeniable as his lanky build and blue eyes. "How many cops does it take to get a cat out of a tree?" Jesse's voice betrayed none of the effort of our ascent.

Somebody groaned. Most of the guys knew this routine already, Jesse using humor to distract us from the heat, the stress.

"Two. One to call the fire department and one to fetch the donuts."

Hoarse laughter crackled through the speakers as we turned and started up the next flight of stairs. A small, crumpled form came into view through the haze as we approached the landing. "Jake!"

"On it." I scrambled up the remaining steps and knelt beside the tiny figure, setting my medical kit on the ground. "She's unconscious. Nine, ten years old." I leaned over her, took her pulse, watched her chest rise and fall. "She's breathing. Thank God."

Jesse reached the landing. "Same God trapped her in this hell-hole, little brother?"

A long-running disagreement, one that would never be settled. "Same God that left her right here where we'd find her." That's how I saw it, anyway.

The last casualty had suffered a broken ankle, couldn't make it down the stairs. Didn't occur to her to remove her heels when escaping a burning building, I guess. One of the other guys carried her down, but the kid was going to need a paramedic to stay with her, make sure she kept breathing.

"Think you can handle her alone, Jake?" More ribbing: the girl weighed maybe 60 pounds soaking wet.

"I'll manage."

Preparing to head back downstairs, I slung my med kit over my shoulder and picked up the limp child, oxygen mask snug on her face. Along the way, her eyes opened. Terrified, tears streamed down her cheeks. I tried to soothe her, but she refused to be comforted.

At least the kid was awake, active. One for my side. Despite her squirming, I managed to keep hold of her long enough to reach the windows on the tenth floor. I handed her off to another firefighter just as a voice came over my radio: "Jake, they're starting to pile up down here. We need you."

"On my way, captain. Jess, you copy that?"

"Roger. See you in a few."

Swinging around, I grabbed the ladder and started my descent. I was still climbing down when the explosion blasted out the windows somewhere high above me. The concussion blew off my helmet, threw me to the ground ten feet below. I blacked out.

Eventually my vision began to clear. As though in a dream, the building rose up before me, its upper floors engulfed in a cloud of smoke. Firefighters raced up and down the ladders with renewed urgency. The cloud swallowed them up as they ascended, sometimes reappearing with one of their own slung over their shoulders.

Well, big brother, I thought, a lump forming in my throat. Looks like we're gonna settle that argument after all.

I laid my head against the hard asphalt and waited.

Divide and Conquer

2011-06-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last time, my wife Jackie is currently in Israel leading a trip for Jewish twenty-somethings as part of the Taglit Birthright Israel program. So it was with some interest that I clicked over to a piece entitled Birthright’s True Aim, and Is Its Aim True? by Marc Tracy in the online journal Tablet.

Tracy briefly reviews a 4,000-word piece by Kiera Feldman entitled The Romance of Birthright Israel in the left-wing magazine, The Nation. Tracy correctly notes that “Birthright is a central aspect of Israeli-diaspora relations,” and that it therefore deserves close examination. He praises Feldman's essay in those places in which it “earnestly relays what Birthright is about, for its organizers as well as its participants.”

But Tracy also identifies some troubling aspects of Feldman's analysis. He notes that Feldman seems to have “cherrypicked her data and interviewees,” and identifies a past Birthright participant quoted in Feldman's piece who, as it turns out, had a running dispute with the Israeli government—a fact left undisclosed by Feldman.

So kudos to Marc Tracy for uncovering some of the less-than-savory techniques used by Feldman to tarnish the Birthright program. But he misses the big picture, which is not Feldman's overt attack on Birthright's agenda, but rather her covert rhetorical campaign against Israel itself:

Israel is an “ethnocracy” built on the “forty-four-year illegal occupation of Palestinian lands”. The Green Line is an “internationally recognized border”. Seven hundred thousand Palestinians were “expelled” in 1948. These allegations require no support because, naturally, The Nation's readership already knows them to be true.

Birthright Israel indoctrinees, er, I mean, participants

I've used this forum in the past to make the liberal case for Zionism. Others, such as Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, have also done so, far more effectively than I ever could. This case needs to be made, in part, because there are those, such as the Republican Jewish Coalition, who would claim the mantle of Zionism exclusively for the right.

They are wrong to do so. As Harris and Hirsch so clearly explain, there is a compelling liberal interest in the Zionist cause. The right has its Zionist argument, and so does the left: all that remains are the anti-Zionists, who have sought to divide and conquer by clothing themselves in the rhetoric of the left, as Feldman has done, or in the politics of the right. This strategy has proven tragically effective: as Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the US, has stated, “Israel has become a partisan issue in the U.S., and this... is bad for us.”

If support for Israel does split along party lines in the years to come, it will not only be the fault of the Republican Jewish Coalition and its cynical campaign to make the GOP the home of pro-Israel American politics. No, it will also be the fault of writers like Ms. Feldman, whose casual and presumptive misrepresentations of history can be immediately transformed into fodder for the next RJC appeal.

Exceptionally Normal

2011-06-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

Here in Southern California, we're fortunate enough to be able to watch Israel's IBA News on the local PBS affiliate, KCET. I've taken an even keener than usual interest in news from the region this week, as my gorgeous and very, very busy wife Jackie is in Israel leading a Taglit Birthright Israel trip.

As I was watching the other night, I was almost mechanically tweeting the various headlines. Here are a few examples:

Unlike American “news” programs, the IBA (Israel Broadcast Authority) news usually spends several minutes covering one or more important topics in depth with a guest. In this instance, the interview focused on the cottage cheese boycott. Around the time the anchors turned their attention to sports and weather, it dawned on me: there had not been one single terrorism-related news item, and only brief coverage of the peace process, featuring yet another prattling EU technocrat.

Reviewing my posts, it occurred to me what normal stories these were, the type that could easily have been featured on the local news anywhere in America. Don't get me wrong: rising food prices are a serious matter. Unfortunately, the Israeli economy is still in some ways a prisoner to its socialist past, and perhaps to an overheated rush to deregulation as well. But compared to bus bombings, missile attacks, and coerced cross-border rioters, well... all in all, I found it rather refreshing.

Israel, like any country—indeed, like any human enterprise—is imperfect. The government, the society, the leaders: they err, they are tempted into corruption, they lose their way, and we do the Zionist cause no favors by pretending otherwise. So the evening news will, no doubt, continue to be filled with stories of individuals and groups failing to live up to our millennia-old, hope-sustaining vision of Israel as a beacon to the other nations of the Earth.

So I make this offer to the universe: give me news of visiting musicians and student competitions—I'll gladly embrace them, even if they are mere sidebars to headlines filled with consumer revolt and labor unrest. Take away the terror, the baseless hatred, and the nuclear saber-rattling, and I'll accept the scandals, the crime, and the poverty as unavoidable subplots to the ongoing story of a normal country struggling to become exceptional.

Untimely

2011-05-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

These should be heady days for Israel. The world is awakening, at long last, to the true villain in the modern history of Islamic medievalism and ignorance: the corrupt Arab ruling class. The rejectionist front dictators of the Arab world are either under siege or already fallen, and the horrifying crimes they have for decades committed against their own people have been exposed. The international community, armed with this new evidence, could in theory draw the surprising conclusion that Israel may not be the root cause of all the world's conflicts after all.

Not so fast.

In an ill-timed speech earlier this week, President Obama declared his vision for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors:

The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states... The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous... non-militarized state.

(Emphasis mine.)

The pro-Israel community has reacted strongly, but the plain fact is that the President's remarks were neither surprising nor novel. Yes, it's true: Mr. Obama did make reference to the hated, illegitimate, and (in Prime Minister Netanyahu's words) "indefensible" 1949 armistice lines (commonly—but misleadingly—referred to in diplomatic and media circles as the "1967 lines"). But pundits seem to have overlooked the fact that he qualified his statement carefully, carving a vitally important semantic safe harbor. As my son has observed, the phrase "with mutually agreed swaps" essentially leaves every option open.

(White House Photo)

And let's be honest: the armistice lines, with modifications, have formed the basis for negotiations since there has been anything to negotiate about. Israeli governments have offered the Palestinians nearly all the territory captured in 1967, with adjustments for demographic changes and large settlements (mostly, suburbs of Jerusalem) that have appeared in the decades since. Few harbor any illusion that a final deal, if one is ever reached, will differ substantially from those on the table previously. (According to reports, the President resisted calls from within his administration to outline a tougher stance, even accepting the resignation of his hand-picked envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, barely a week prior to the address.)

Although Jewish groups had mobilized against the President's invocation of the armistice lines in the days leading up to the speech, it is difficult to ask the leader of the free world to be more conservative in his dealings with the Palestinians than the Israelis themselves have been. If this President, or any other, is seen as a hostage to Israeli policy, his effectiveness—and, ultimately, his ability to wield American leverage to Israel's advantage—will only be weakened.

So what, if anything, was new in Mr. Obama's message? To my ears, the real novelty was the use of the phrase "non-militarized" in referring to the future Palestinian state. Ultimately, if one believes, as indeed most Israelis do, in a two-state solution, one can hardly expect a better outcome than "mutually agreed" borders and a "non-militarized" Palestine.

It's also useful to review what the President did not do. He did not summon the parties to negotiations. He did not issue new peremptory demands on Israel, as he disastrously attempted to do in 2009. He did not threaten that a solution would be imposed by the United States; in fact, he said quite the opposite. And, ultimately, he did no harm to Mr. Netanyahu, who is certainly going to reap political rewards at home for his direct and immediate dismissal of the President's vision.

Mr. Obama's real mistake is not in his formulation but in his focus. This should be a time of great hope. The long-suppressed bill of grievances of the Arab everyman has finally been aired, and there is nary a word about Israel. Poverty, ignorance, and oppression have been revealed as the essential casus belli of the Middle East, not the presence a few million Jews on a narrow strip of previously neglected real estate. Now is not the time to bury the lead of Arab self-liberation within the mythology of Israeli misbehavior. In trying to make history, Mr. Obama has instead misjudged it, shining a light on Israeli/Palestinian discord just as it was becoming clear how small a role that conflict actually plays in the larger tragedy of the Arab Middle East.

Does anybody remember what the President said about Iran in his address? About Syria? Egypt? Has there been any coverage at all of any topic raised by Mr. Obama in three-quarters of an hour of continuous speaking besides the Israeli/Palestinian matter? Through his insistence on dredging up that issue, Mr. Obama gave the remaining strongmen of the Arab world the one gift they most wanted: an alternative target for the world's reprobation. You're welcome, Muammar.

The drama will continue to play out this weekend at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC. With 10,000 supporters of the American-Israel relationship in attendance, President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu will each have an opportunity further to lay out his vision for peace and security for Israel and the region. Netanyahu is guaranteed a warm and welcoming reception, but, having chosen this time to refocus on Israel, the President will have to work hard to win over an audience understandably suspicious of his priorities.

Sept 11, 2001

2011-05-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

This is a nine-year-old piece I was planning on reposting on Sept 11, 2011. But in light of this week's events, I feel that now would be the right time.
It was originally published in the Jewish Journal (LA and Orange County Editions) on the occasion of the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001 atrocities.

Although I was there, I can't tell you much about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, that you don't already know. After all, you had CNN; I only had my two eyes and the prescription lenses I thankfully remembered to grab as I fled the apartment. Yes, I watched from a few blocks away as the towers fell, but without the benefit of a zoom lens or slow motion video (thank God for that—there was nothing that I saw I wished to see again or in greater detail).

Indeed, the overwhelming personal tragedies and the incredible acts of heroism have been recorded and retold. I cannot add to them. But I can tell you one story, a small one, about two brothers from Long Beach who found themselves that morning on opposite sides of a river.

A decade ago, my wife, Jackie, and I returned to Southern California from New York City, where we had lived for five years. I continued to make frequent business trips there. On the bright, clear morning of Sept. 11, I lazed sleepily in the apartment my company keeps in lower Manhattan.

I was alone. My brother, with whom I share the place when I come to New York, had an early plane to catch, and had left a couple of hours earlier. As I debated whether or not to get up and shower, he was sitting in the terminal at Newark Airport waiting for his Atlanta flight to be called. At the next gate, passengers lined up to board United Flight 93, bound for San Francisco. Randall casually watched them embark; he would be one of the last to see them alive.

Within minutes of the first attack, my building was evacuated. I stood in the park, 37 floors below my apartment window, with my eyes squinting against the sunlight, my heart racing, my mind recoiling, rejecting the evidence of my senses.

As the first tower fell, I was speaking with Jackie on my cell phone, reassuring her that I was alright, although she surely knew otherwise from the sound of my voice. I stood, a couple of hundred yards from the billowing smoke, trembling and terrorized. Randall watched helplessly from the airport, from which the towers were... had been... clearly visible.

Stunned, I began wandering the city, dazed and aimless. Randall, however, had the opposite reaction: he was galvanized, committed and determined to find a way back into Manhattan. His goal was to reach me and make sure I was OK.

Like me, Randall grew up in Long Beach, attended Jewish day school and celebrated his bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Shalom. Unlike me, though, he never left the neighborhood until the day I asked him to come work with me. Within a couple of weeks, he was setting up an apartment on Manhattan's Chambers Street, learning the subway system and discovering ways to have videos and snack food delivered on demand via the Internet. By Sept. 11, my brother had been working with me for three years, spending about one week a month in Southern California and the rest of the time in New York City.

And so it was that morning, as about 8 million people worked desperately to leave Manhattan as quickly as possible, Randall focused his considerable ingenuity and sales ability on doing just the opposite.

The obstacles to reaching this goal were fairly considerable. Of course, all of the usual routes into Manhattan—subways, ferries and bridges—were closed. River traffic was warned away from the city's many docks.

Randall, through a combination of persuasion, bribery and alert observation, finally reached Manhattan's Upper West Side. Like our great-grandparents over a century earlier, he arrived on the island without a dime in his pocket. He set out on foot for SoHo, about 3 miles away, where he found me a couple hours later.

I was shaken, but fine. He was exhausted, but fine. I was relieved to have him with me. We spent the rest of the week together before finally coming home. Our flight was on Rosh Hashana; as Randall said at the time, "It's not a problem. God is on vacation this week."

Soon it will be Rosh Hashana again. The High Holiday prayerbook, the Machzor, includes the words "These things I will remember." I carry hundreds of memories of Sept. 11, 2001, many of them terrifying that I would gladly be rid of. But I will also remember that somebody crossed a blockaded river and walked half the length of a city just to look in my eyes, to be reassured that I was OK.

Thanks, Randall.

Zionism: Left, Right and Center—A Quick Postscript

2011-04-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

I do my best here in my little blog, but there are many others out there who can make the liberal case for Israel better than I ever could. I mentioned one such advocate, AJC's David Harris, in my earlier post. Since then I've also discovered (thanks to friend and Jewish social networker extraordinaire William Daroff) another outstanding piece, written by Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch. Rabbi Hirsch delivered this tour de force at a meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis just a couple of weeks ago. It's a quick read: don't miss it.

Zionism: Left, Right, and Center

2011-03-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

As a Zionist, I welcome the support of my conservative friends for Israel. I can understand where they're coming from: quite apart from religious concerns, the pro-Israel position is not inconsistent with the conservative worldview. Israel is a democracy, standing for decades as a bulwark against Soviet imperialism in a Middle East largely controlled and supported by the USSR. Israeli society, though historically to the left of the American conservative ideal, is thriving and entrepreneurial, rewarding risk and innovation, governed by the rule of law.

And yet, while support for Israel is compatible with American conservatism, it is absolutely essential to American liberalism. Israel pioneered individual rights in the Middle East, built a social safety net for its citizens, and established the kibbutz, the world's only example of successful communal living.

The American Jewish Committee's David Harris recently gave an interview in which he discussed the relationship between liberal values and Zionism:

I am a liberal, in the sense that I believe in liberal values. I believe in human freedom; I believe in human rights; I believe in human dignity... I believe that supporting Israel means defending those values... In fact I believe that Israel is a liberal cause, and I believe that pro-Israel advocates who have given up on defending Israel as a liberal cause are really giving up [on those values]... Who exactly is it they are defending, and what are the values [they] espouse?

Is Harris correct? Let's look at the facts:

Unlike its neighbors, Israel is a robust democracy with strong, transparent democratic institutions, including labor unions, advocacy organizations, and political parties.
Unlike its neighbors, Israel operates a policy of full access to holy sites to all religions.
Unlike its neighbors, Israel guarantees equal rights to its thriving LGBT community.
Unlike its neighbors, Israel has accepted millions of refugees—black, white, and brown—offering them assistance, equality, and the privileges of citizenship.
Unlike its neighbors, Israel has an energetic free press that is openly—sometimes brutally—critical of the government.
Unlike its neighbors, Israel's universities offer its faculty and students unfettered academic freedom.
Unlike its neighbors, Israel is not afraid to investigate, and, when appropriate, convict, even its highest leaders when they have violated the law.

All these and more represent beliefs and actions not only consistent with, but absolutely essential to the liberal ideal. But if support for Israel is such a key liberal value, what then should we make of that minority of self-styled American "liberals" who express contempt for Israel, call for the boycott of Israeli goods, seek to prevent Israeli academics from working with their counterparts outside of Israel, and even voice solidarity with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah? David Harris says these individuals have "abandoned" liberal values; if he is right, as I have suggested, then they are not true liberals—so what are they?

On the extreme end of the political spectrum lives a political philosophy unconcerned with traditional liberal values like freedom of the press and equal rights for all. To denizens of this dark corner of the left, the wealthy are always evil and the poor always worthy. Power exercised by the strong is never appropriate, no matter how carefully deployed; power exercised by the weak is never unjustified, no matter how brutal. If a terrorist bomber targets and murders teenagers at a dance club, that is because the killer had no other way to vent his justifiable rage. If a soldier fires on an armed thug who is attacking him, that soldier is no better than a Nazi.

Such a belief system is not compatible with liberalism, regardless of how its practitioners choose to identify themselves. The correct term for this worldview is Communism—yes, that Communism, the utterly discredited ideology of the last century: the movement that gave the world Stalin, Castro, and the KGB; that destroyed Russia, leaving it a broken and lawless kleptocracy; that murdered millions of its own people and brought the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. There is simply no other political ideology compatible with support for oppressive totalitarian regimes whose only appeal is the poverty in which it traps its citizens.

No nation or political philosophy is without flaw, but support for Israel is as intrinsic to liberal values as it is consistent with conservative ideals. The Zionist enterprise appeals to left, right, and center—until, that is, one reaches the fringes, the extreme endpoints of the political spectrum. Fortunately for Israel, Americans of both parties, having universally shunned 20th century Communism, are also bound to disavow that movement's 21st century ideological heir, anti-Zionism.

156 Pages

2011-02-18T21:29:00.000-08:00

This week I received my copy of The Hummingbird Review. I had awaited this particular edition—Volume 2, No. 1—with what can only be described as childish impatience. Now, at long last, the unremarkable manila envelope was waiting in my mailbox. Recognizing the return address, I tore into the pouch as though it were the only thing standing between me and a tray of freshly baked cookies. I took a deep breath and slid the eagerly anticipated journal into my palm.

It was smaller than I expected. But thicker. There are a lot of words in there, I realized. And about 1500 of them are mine.

As of this writing, the issue of THR containing my story, Dolphinarium, is #160,658 on Amazon. Of course, I am not concerned with such matters, which is why I scoured the Internet in an effort to determine exactly how many sales that figure represents. I was impressed to learn, according to one source, that I can reasonably estimate that at least ten copies of this rare and precious paperback are flying off the shelves each and every week.

Meanwhile, as literally dozens of books make their way into the hands of discerning, highly educated, and extremely attractive readers, I have begun the rich journey through the volume that ended up in my mailbox. My little story is swaddled in 156 pages of incredible prose, poetry, and journalism—and I am determined to read each entry, seriatim, from page one onward.

Did you ever eat at one of those restaurants famous for its chocolate souffle, the kind you have to order with your dinner because it takes so long to prepare? I don't care how good the dinner is—how flavorful the soup, how succulent the chicken, how crispy the fries—a little bit of your mind is just marking time until dessert.

Dolphinarium begins on page 150. In case you were wondering.

You should buy The Hummingbird Review. No, really: it's only twelve bucks. And while I'm very proud of Dolphinarium, I can assure you that you'll find that the other 151 pages are filled with memorable characters, revealing portraits, and moving verse at least as deserving of your thoughtful attention.

But if you want to start with the souffle, I'll understand.

Birthing Democracy

2011-02-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

As I write these words, I'm sitting in a large room crammed with people called to appear for jury duty. Along with voting, jury duty is the experience that best exposes ordinary Americans to the democratic ideal envisioned by the founders. Arguably, in fact, jury duty is the purest form of democracy, in that a jury can nullify laws by refusing to enforce them, thus providing a mechanism by which the people can override the decisions of their elected representatives.

Is this what is happening in Egypt and the Arab world today? Are the people, through their demonstrations, expressing a desire for freedom and democracy that has been denied them by their (illegitimately) elected rulers?

To a certain extent, yes. Those happy young faces you see being interviewed on TV belong to young idealists, born and raised under the thumb of the present leader. They seem certain that the only thing standing between them and their liberty is Mubarak, or Hussein, or Assad. So all they need to do is get that bad guy out and poof! ...democracy will descend from heaven to rest gently on their shoulders for all time.


Draft of the Declaration of Independence (Library of Congress)

Our Forefathers were under no such misgivings. But then, they were no schoolchildren; rather, they were, by and large, highly educated civic leaders, scholars, and property owners. They had a list of grievances, to be sure. "The history of the present King of Great Britain," Jefferson wrote, "is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."

But Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams and the rest knew that airing grievances and fomenting revolution weren't sufficient to the cause. They also needed to communicate a vision of what they planned to build to compete in the public mind with the reality they were already experiencing. Yes, it would take them another decade and more after independence for this vision to find its ultimate expression in the Constitution. But even in the years of the Continental Congress, even before the revolution, the Founders were driven not only to divorce themselves from Great Britain, but even more importantly, to build a nation of virtue on the ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, and others.

One searches in vain for the Jefferson of the Arab street. Certainly, Egyptian revolutionary figurehead Mohamed ElBaradei does not fit the bill. Known internationally but lacking any local constituency, ElBaradei is useful as a placeholder that all sides can live with until the post-Mubarak power struggle begins. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood remains the best prepared and most likely successor to Mubarak.

In the past couple of days, the Muslim Brotherhood has become more visibly involved in the struggle to overthrow Mubarak. The group has been proclaiming its commitment to democracy, but as journalist Yossi Klein Halevi points out in the New York Times:

Israelis fear that the Brotherhood’s nonviolence has been a tactical maneuver and know that its worldview is rooted in crude anti-Semitism. The Brotherhood and its offshoots have been the main purveyors of the Muslim world’s widespread conspiracy theories about the Jews, from blaming the Israeli intelligence service for 9/11 to accusing Zionists of inventing the Holocaust to blackmail the West.

Others argue that the responsibilities of governance would moderate the Brotherhood, but [among Israelis] that is dismissed as Western naïveté: the same prediction, after all, was made about the Iranian regime, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The incredible treasury of documents left us by our Founders testify to the great democracy they would eventually form. We can only assume that the past statements and writings of the eventual leadership of Egypt are similarly indicative, however hard we wish it were otherwise.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2011-01-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of the wave of anti-government protests sweeping through the Arab world. As Americans, our first instinct is to view every revolution against tyranny through the lens of our own history. Reflexively, we root against the dictators, corrupt fascists who have denied freedom to their people for decades. Such an instinct is entirely appropriate: our democracy means nothing if it is used as a pillar of oppression overseas.

Unfortunately, misreading history is also an American instinct. Revolution may be common, but democracy is precious and rare. The upheaval in the Muslim world is not inspired by a philosophy of what those governments should be; they are inspired by a revulsion at what those governments have become. The common goal of the rioters in the streets is change, but once they have successfully forced the autocrats from their palaces, that goal will have been met. What will be left is a vacuum demanding to be filled. If history is a guide, it is likely to be filled by the largest, best organized, or most heavily armed aspirant to leadership.

In the Muslim Middle East, revolution has never yielded democracy. Indeed, the only Muslim democracy in that part of the globe was not the result of popular rebellion, but rather, imposed by the United States on Iraq (and, let's face it, the long-term viability of that experiment is still very much in doubt). If, as George W. Bush suggested, "liberty... is God's gift to the world", it is a gift rejected time and again, not only by Middle Eastern tyrants, but by the revolutionaries who supplant them.

The situation in Egypt is no different. Modern Egypt was born of a revolution against British rule led in part by Gamal Abdul Nasser. Assuming the premiership in 1956, Nasser, a military dictator, ruled Egypt with an iron hand, even as he maneuvered to become the leader of the Arab world. Nasser's position only deteriorated after his humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967 in a war he precipitated.

The correlation of Nasser's career with his military success—or lack thereof—against Israel is unsurprising. Egypt's leaders in the latter half of the 20th century depended on the average Egyptian's antipathy towards Israel for their popularity. One of Nasser's first acts in office was to provoke the 1956 Suez Canal crisis; the resulting failure of Israel, Britain and France to hold the Suez, and Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai, firmly established Nasser's position at the head of the Egyptian regime.

As the sun sets on Mubarak, will the peace with
Israel be plunged into darkness?

Indeed, one contributor to the current unrest—unmentioned on CNN but implied in the cheerleading coverage of al Jazeera—is dissatisfaction with Egypt's peace with Israel. Don't get me wrong: the cold peace with Israel, the status of which has remained unchanged for some time, probably didn't spark the outbreak of popular revolt. But it is and remains an irritant, a perennial entry on the list of grievances nursed by Egyptians against their leader.

So what can we expect in post-revolutionary Egypt? The main players in the revolt are the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization with ties to Middle Eastern terror groups, and Kefaya, a more secular opposition movement. Neither has asserted itself as a successor so far—it is still too early for such positioning. But perhaps we can get a clue to the outcome from the reaction of other Muslim nations.

The most important Islamic revolution in my lifetime took place in Iran in 1979. Fed up with the history of oppression under their US-backed dictator, the Iranians rose up, successfully replacing their secular autocracy with an Islamic theocracy. Most Iranians today were not yet born in 1979—the only oppression they've known has been at the hands of the Imams. Their 2009 revolt, perhaps the first such rebellion in the region with any chance of producing a native-born Islamic democracy, was ruthlessly crushed by the Ayatollah's regime.

And so, the Islamists remain in charge in Tehran. Their reaction to rioting in Egypt? They are cheering on the revolution:

[In Egypt], Muslims are more active in political agitation and, God willing, they will establish the regime that they want... Today, as a result of the gifts of the Islamic revolution in Iran, freedom-loving Islamic peoples such as the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt and nearby Arab countries are standing up to their oppressive governments.

Clearly, the Islamists are betting on the Muslim Brotherhood. American intellectuals, such as Leon Wieseltier, fear that the Iranian analysis may be on the mark:

[T]he politics of the revolt are murky. Its early stages have not been the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is hard to believe that the Islamist organization will not be tempted to play the Bolshevik role in this revolution: it has the ideology and the organization with which to seize control of the situation, and it is the regime’s most formidable political adversary.

Whatever Egypt looks like in the post-Mubarak era, we can be pretty sure of a few things:

The government will be hostile to Israel. While the Egypt-Israel relationship under Mubarak has hardly been a love affair, it's entirely possible that a new Egyptian regime could scuttle the peace treaty entirely. That treaty, brittle though it may be, has been the platform on which decades of relative stability between Israel and its neighbors (Lebanon being the notable exception) has rested.
The government will be hostile to the United States. As an incentive for its treaty with Israel, the US has gifted Egypt with about $2 billion per year of foreign aid. The average Egyptian, not without reason, has viewed this money as a means of propping up the dictator they hate and as a reward for their sworn enemy, Israel. Make no mistake: anti-US sentiment is a significant driver behind the protests in Egypt's streets.
Jordan will be next. If anything, Jordan's relatively enlightened monarch, King Hussein, is even more hated by his subjects than Mubarak. Perhaps as much as half of Jordan's population is of Palestinian extraction; in 1970, the PLO even tried (unsuccessfully) to overthrow the father of the current king. Needless to say, Jordan's peace with Israel and solid friendship with the United States are deeply unpopular with Jordanians.

When all is said and done, we can shed few tears for a dictator who is at long last deposed by those he has oppressed. At the same time, however, it's imperative to take a clear-eyed view of developments in the Islamic world, armed with a thorough understanding of the threats and opportunities presented by these events.

Unbalanced Gunman, Unbalanced Policy

2011-01-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a seriously disturbed young man shot twenty innocent people, killing a nine-year old girl, a federal judge, a 30-year old political staffer, an elderly gentleman trying to protect his wife, and two others, and wounding the rest, including Jewish Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. His precise motives remain unknown, although he clearly held some extreme political views, and there is some evidence that anti-Semitism may have played a role as well.

Many, including me, have pointed a finger at the irresponsible and violent rhetoric that has overtaken politics since the Obama election. It is so self-evident that the hateful, often racist, occasionally treasonous rhetoric coming from the Tea Party and other extremists contributed to this incident, it's hardly worth exploring here. In any event, that discussion will dominate the national debate for a while, just as it did in Israel following the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

I began to wonder, though, about the shooter. By all early accounts, he suffers from a degenerative, paranoid, and violent mental illness. While we cannot know at this point what diagnosis, if any, might be appropriate for him, it does appear that he began displaying abnormal behavior in his teens—typical of schizophrenia.

The shooter had attended Pima County Community College, where his increasingly erratic behavior did not go unnoticed. As a student in one of his classes observed, "He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts." He'd had brushes with the law as well. All in all, there were many people—his classmates, the school administration, and law enforcement—in a position to recognize the urgent need for some kind of intervention.

Unfortunately, the options for such intervention have narrowed considerably in the past decades. And so, like hundreds of thousands of others, the killer will spend his life in jail after committing a heinous, violent act, rather than spending time in a therapeutic setting that might have prevented such behavior in the first place. According to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik:

Back in 1960, when I was a young cop on the beat, we put mentally ill people who were threats into a system that incarcerated them. Today they're out on the street and we're paying a price for it.

The history is fairly well known. Ronald Reagan dismantled the federal system of mental health care. While state mental institutions deserved, by and large, to be shuttered, the Regan administration offered no safety net for the mentally ill who suddenly found themselves thrust back into society. According to one paper on the subject:

[T]he number of beds available to the mentally ill in public and private hospitals dropped over forty percent between 1970 and 1984. Most of this decline was due to cuts in public hospitals. During the 1980s, the number of beds provided by general hospitals in psychiatric wards and in private hospitals for the mentally ill increased. In 1970, there were 150 private psychiatric centers... by 1988, there were 450 in the United States. General hospitals offering psychiatric services increased from 1,259 in 1984 to over two thousand in 1988. With such growth in the private sector, there were substantial profits to be made in mental illness, assuming that the patient had adequate health insurance. Those without medical insurance frequently did not receive adequate care.

(Emphasis added.) Mental illness isn't going away any time soon. In addition to the normal statistical occurrence of mental illness within a population of our size, we are adding thousands of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) victims, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tragically, the Reagan administration's abandonment of mental health care has left many in the mentally ill population with only two places to go: the streets or the prison system.

What does all this have to do with Tea Party and Republican policy? The Tea Party was founded on the wrong, but at least defensible, principle that federal bailouts had grown out of control. Since then, however, the platform has grown to encompass opposition to all things Obama. By last year, the Tea Party had targeted (quite literally) Gabby Giffords, not for her position on government bailouts, but rather, for her support of health care reform.

Indeed, the Republican majority in the 112th Congress, assiduously ignoring all manner of pressing issues on which they might realistically have some impact, have decided that their first order of business will be purely symbolic: the repeal of health care reform. I say "purely symbolic" because, of course, such legislation will never make it to the floor of the Senate, and even if it were to pass the Senate, it would promptly be vetoed by the president. Thus, the Republicans are simply spinning their wheels on America's dime to score political points with the minority in this country who believe that health care reform was "too liberal".

Health care reform: hope for the mentally ill

One of the innovations of the health care reform legislation was to force insurance companies to cover mental health care to the same extent they cover traditional health care. This policy, known as "parity", has been the law since 2008, but only for group policies for employers with 50 or more covered employees. This loophole not only leaves out the 49 million previously uninsured, who of course also lack mental health coverage; it also excludes the over 30 million people who work for small businesses in America.

Permit me to suggest that leaving nearly 80 million Americans—call it one in four of us—without recourse to adequate mental health care hardly qualifies as "equity". Apparently the 111th Congress agreed, including parity in the health care reform legislation that became law last year. By guaranteeing adequate mental health care for nearly all Americans, health care reform assists the mentally ill to get off the streets and stay out of the prisons. Such a policy benefits not only the mentally ill, but all of society.

This, then, is the progressive reform that Tea Partiers and Republicans consider "socialist", evil, or simply unconstitutional. In the coming days and weeks you will hear right wing apologists defensively argue that the Giffords shooting was the work of an "unbalanced" individual, and not in any way the fault of their incendiary demagoguery. Perhaps. And yet, the policies that the Republicans put into effect in the Reagan era, and which they hope to continue through the repeal of health care reform, will ensure an uninterrupted supply of such individuals—untreated, uncared for, and unnoticed, until the next preventable atrocity splatters across our TV screens.

The Davener's Mantra

2010-12-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

As my clever and creative spouse noted recently, I've got some pretty hardcore davening skills. (Davening, for the uninitiated, is the word for participation in a Jewish liturgical service; in other words, "prayer".) I developed these skills the old fashioned way: through practice. Every school day of every year through 7th grade, I spent an hour or so each morning davening. Say what you will about my elementary school—and take my word for it, one day in these pages I will—you cannot say we didn't learn to daven.

Over the years, though, I've become less and less comfortable davening. I'm like an artist who loves to draw but develops an allergy to paint, or in this case, the text. The liturgical text, directed at the Almighty, has some pretty basic themes: thank you God for this, God grant me that, hey God you are really terrific, and so forth. All this focus on God gets pretty uncomfortable for somebody who believes that there is no God, somebody who could never accept that, even if God existed, He would ever be motivated, mollified, or moved in any way by human prayer.

OK, then: if I have such a God problem, why not give up davening altogether?

Well, for one thing, like the artist to whom I alluded earlier, I simply like doing it. I find it comforting and comfortable, in spite of the fact that when I daven, nobody is listening. In spite of the fact that the text praises an imaginary deity for "miracles" that never occurred. In spite of the fact that millions of my people have been slaughtered over the centuries because our imaginary God had a conflict with somebody else's imaginary God.

So now I face a dilemma: I can stop davening, because the words make no sense, or I can continue davening, and immerse myself in the calming and introspective experience that I know it to be. How can I find the experience so valuable when I am so uncomfortable with the text?

Part of my answer came from the late Rabbi Alan Lew, ז"ל. Rabbi Lew was a fascinating man who spent years practicing meditation as a Zen Buddhist, one of a group he referred to as "Bu-Jews", Jews seeking spirituality through Buddhism. Eventually, Rabbi Lew felt that Buddhism was denying him access to his own traditions, and he returned to Judaism, became a rabbi, and assumed the pulpit at Temple Beth Sholom in San Francisco.

But Rabbi Lew brought some of his own traditions with him, including meditation. He opened a first-of-its-kind meditation center affiliated with his synagogue, and published books on combining meditation with davening. When I met him years ago at a retreat, he told the story of inviting some other Bu-Jews to join him in davening. As they finished, one remarked to him, "If it weren't for meditation, I would have no idea what davening is all about."

That comment resonated strongly for me. A certain amount of the service is devoted to communal prayer; however, the majority of davening is conducted quietly, even silently, to oneself. In other words, it is focused inward, providing the davener with the opportunity to find peace in the rhythm and familiarity of the words. This quiet recitation becomes a sort of mantra, focusing the davener on the sounds of his own breath, the interior of his own feelings. Over the years the mantra becomes familiar—I had fully memorized long passages by the time I was in middle school. Repeating the phrases, over and over, year after year, forms the basis for an intellectual meditation that is both cathartic, in that it helps me leave unnecessary things behind, and revelatory, in that it helps me find both new insights and new questions.

The davening framework is over a millennium old, with sections that are much older. In all that time, Jews have always doubted—but Jews have always davened anyway. Perhaps, like me, they have been able to find a way to continue davening by taking a step back from the plain meaning of the words. The rhythm, the familiarity, the choreography, and the sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeful motifs enable us to concentrate, not on praising a non-existent God who, if He did exist, would hardly need our admiration, but rather on more tangible, Earthly concerns: our communities, our families, and ourselves.

You're Welcome

2010-12-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

On September 5, 2007, beneath a waning quarter moon, ten Israeli F-15I fighter jets departed the Ramat David IAF base near Haifa. Favored with a 15-knot wind and 6-mile visibility, weather was not a factor. The pilots headed west, over the Mediterranean, but before long three of the pilots were called back, as the remaining seven pivoted north, skirting Lebanese airspace. Just a few hundred kilometers from the Turkish border, the aircraft, American F-15 Eagles customized to Israeli requirements, banked to the right, taking out a Syrian radar installation before heading deep into the country. Their target lay a short flight ahead of them, on the banks of the Euphrates: the al-Kibar nuclear weapons facility.

It would have been news to most of the world, that fall evening, that Syria had any kind of nuclear program at all. Unlike its supporters and suppliers in Iran and North Korea, Syria had little reason to broadcast its intentions, and every reason to keep them quiet. Neither Iran nor North Korea could afford to be seen publicly as arming the terrorist haven; for its part, Syria could not build such a facility without North Korean technology and Iranian funding.

F-15 Eagle

But the Americans knew, and the Israelis knew. If such a development was unwelcome in Iran, it was even more threatening in Syria, which is at once less stable and less distant than its patron. Fortunately, unlike the Iranians, the Syrians had not had the time, money, or perhaps even the capability for developing their facility in bunkers deep underground. And so, in the wee hours of September 6th, 2007, Israel destroyed the al-Kibar facility, dealing a fatal blow to Syria's fledgling covert nuclear program.

Neither Israel nor Syria wanted the event publicized, and though rumors abounded, it would take some time before the world knew for certain what had occurred. About a year ago, a well-researched piece in Spiegel Online put many of the facts into place, and though the article is marred by a number of absurd, unsupported, and, in places, contradictory attacks on Israel, it is well worth reading.

Only today, however, is there any official confirmation that Syria was, indeed, building a nuclear facility at al-Kibar, that it was doing so with North Korean assistance, and that the United States, as well as Israel, were aware of the project. A JTA story reveals that the most recent set of Wikileaks disclosures includes a cable from then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice confirming the details.

Whatever else you think about Wikileaks, you can thank them for this particular morsel, which demonstrates, once again, the lengths to which Israel is willing to go to protect itself, and by extension, the world, from nuclear blackmail. Of course, the whole affair has also demonstrated, once again, that where Israel is concerned, no good deed goes unpunished.

Consider Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. At the time, virtually every nation on Earth, including the United States, condemned Israel's action. Ronald Reagan condemned the operation, and the British called it a "violation of international law" (an indefensible position shared, incidentally, by the co-authors of the Speigel Online piece).

It took time, but eventually, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof pointed out in 2002, anybody paying attention could see that "the condemnations were completely wrong." Without the Osirak strike, Kristof continued,

Iraq would have gained nuclear weapons in the 1980s, it might now have a province called Kuwait and a chunk of Iran, and the region might have suffered nuclear devastation.

al-Kibar: Before and After

Thanks to Wikileaks, today we all know the truth about al-Kibar, just as we knew the truth in 1981 about Osirak. And yet, even as the world calls (publicly, at least) for Iran to step away from its nuclear ambitions, it gives no quarter to those who would actually do something about it.

The undeniable fact is that Israel is the only reason Iraq, and then Syria, were denied the ability to arm Islamic terrorists with nuclear weapons. If Iran's facilities were not so well protected, they, too, would have long ago been stripped of their power to hold the world hostage. But the end of that particular story has not yet been written.

And so, self-righteous nations of the world, living comfortably under the safety net created by Israel's actions, the very actions you have repeatedly condemned, the very actions that have saved each and every one of you from the tyranny of an Islamist nuclear reign of terror, allow me to say to you, on behalf of the State of Israel: you're welcome.

Sharing the Love

2010-12-23T02:08:00.000-08:00

Hello there! If this is your first visit to Writer of Wrongs, thank you for stopping by. If you're a regular reader, thank you even more!

I'm up late (a pharmaceutical failure, I'm afraid, one that won't be addressed through health care reform), so I thought I'd take the opportunity to address a couple of administrative items. Don't worry, right after this I'm sure I'll get back on my soapbox and write another 800 words on the Senate or some other equally compelling topic. (I know, I know: I myself cannot believe I spent so much time on that one.)

So, on to the needs of the moment: If you are enjoying Writer of Wrongs, you can make sure you never miss a single post by clicking the "Follow" button to the right, the one that looks like this:

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Democracy, Interrupted

2010-12-18T22:40:00.000-08:00

Prior to the adoption of the Constitution, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which had no provision for popular representation. Each state, regardless of population, enjoyed equal representation under the Articles, just as they had in the pre-Revolutionary Continental Congress. In that sense, the Articles were more like a treaty between friendly states than a compact forming a new nation.

But then, on July 16, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia adopted the Connecticut Compromise. Under this plan, the legislature was to be divided into two houses, based on two entirely different forms of representation. Each member of the House of Representatives would be elected on the basis of population, whereas each state, regardless of population, was to be represented by exactly two senators. The Compromise was ultimately enshrined in the new Constitution.

Surely the endurance of those institutions, and the greatness of the nation they serve, attest to the wisdom of the delegates and evince the power of their Compromise. Right?

Well, sorry to come to the party 223 years late, and with a negative attitude at that, but as has been amply demonstrated just this week, the system created over two centuries ago is utterly broken, neither establishing justice nor ensuring domestic tranquility.

There are a variety of quick fixes proposed by pundits. The most obvious is the elimination of the filibuster, a parliamentary quirk arming the Senate minority with the power to prevent a vote on any bill or nomination. The filibuster is not democracy, but rather, an obstruction to democracy.

Certainly the filibuster must go, but perhaps the roots of the issue reach beyond Robert's Rules of Order. Perhaps, in fact, the problem is the Senate itself, an undemocratic body created by those flawed and brilliant Philadelphia Founders for the purpose of getting the Constitution out the door. It is cameral designed by committee, a consensus expedient meeting the needs of the moment but ultimately failing to perform as desired.

In a representational democracy, it should be anathema for each resident of Rhode Island to wield 30 times the Senate voting power of each resident of California. Furthermore, in 21st century America the idea of per-state representation is quaint at best. Few if any issues today are drawn along state borders; our dialog is national, not geographic. The Senate's agenda, largely focused on the executive branch and the management of international affairs, is particularly unsuited to narrow geographic constituencies.

Disproportionate representation is just one of the many, many Senate defects covered at length in an incredible (and lengthy) New Yorker piece by George Packer. For example, Packer points out that "in the current Senate, it has become normal for a handful of senators, sometimes representing just ten or twenty per cent of the country’s population, to hold everything up."

So what's needed is not a parliamentary tune-up, but rather a complete overhaul. I propose that the Senate become a truly national representational body. Candidates would be chosen by the nation as a whole, just as the President and Vice-President are (but without the absurdity of the Electoral College).

The result would be democratic, yet different enough from the local-constituency-based House of Representatives to provide the desired checks and balances that form the basis of the bicameral system. A national Senate favors neither large state nor small, except in matters that truly break along state lines, which, as already observed, are few and far between (and can perhaps be accommodated through some procedural innovations).

Even more important, though, would be the uniting effect such a body could have on the country. Our representatives in this new house would be accountable to all of us. To get elected, he or she would have to support measures popular across a broad swath of the nation. Gone would be the days when a Senator could—or would even want to—put a hold on an uncontroversial measure in order to extort funds for his state. The constituency, in short, would be the entire population.

Perhaps in some future post I'll speculate on the technical details of how such a goal could be accomplished, or on some of the other benefits this model would yield for the country. For now, though, it's enough to give voice to the dream of truly representational democracy, even as I acknowledge that this idea will never, ever come to pass. There are limits to the ability of a broken system to heal itself. The Constitutional Convention itself had to bypass the Articles, appealing directly to the citizenry through the state legislatures. The result was revolutionary, but that was well before the American system had hardened into the atherosclerotic plaque that today threatens the heart of our democracy.

Amnesia

2010-12-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

As some of you already know, my short story, Dolphinarium, has been selected as the 2010 SCWC-LA Hummingbird Review writing contest winner. The Hummingbird Review will publish the story in February. I'm really excited about this, although not quite as excited as my mom, who I believe may have scheduled a press conference.

Dolphinarium was inspired by a particularly horrendous terrorist attack in Israel in 2001. Although it involves an incident that may be unfamiliar to many Americans, I hope the story will resonate with a general readership; I hope that our collective experience of terror on September 11th has sensitized us to the suffering of the victims of other such crimes.

Dolphinarium Memorial, Tel Aviv

Unfortunately, some in this country remain immune to empathy. Time recently ran a piece on the psychological effects of Israel's separation barrier on young Palestinians. The article could have—even should have—become an important part of the discussion in Israel concerning its relationship to its neighbors. Unfortunately, though, there are so many false, misleading, or simply outrageous assertions to be found in the article that one is forced, in the end, to dismiss it.

In one example, the author visits a Palestinian classroom in which only a small minority of students favor a peaceful settlement with Israel. According to the article:

The rest of the 10th-grade computer-science class insists upon getting all of Palestine back—every acre, from the Jordan River to the sea, the way it was before 1948.

Excuse me? Perhaps Time is referring to 1948 BCE. In the more recent 1948, there were over half a million Jews between the river and the Mediterranean, with major Jewish population centers in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, and throughout the country. In fact, Jews comprised a significant majority in the land identified by the UN partition plan as the future state of Israel.

No surprises so far—just the media presenting Palestinian propaganda as unchallenged truth. Business as usual.

The most galling declaration, however, is found closer to the beginning of the article:

But the Wall has done more than keep out suicide bombers. No less important, it has created a separation of the mind.

GOP to 9/11 First Responders:
"Drop Dead"

Don't misunderstand me: the reduction in routine daily contact between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is indeed a negative consequence of the barrier, one that should concern us. But to cast that consideration as "no less important" than the elimination of murderous attacks on civilians—men, women, and, as was overwhelmingly the case in the Dolphinarium atrocity, children—is as reprehensible as it is irresponsible.

It is simply stunning, only 9 years after September 11th, that Time can create, and expect its readers to accept, such a callous equivalence. Perhaps I'm giving too much credit to our fellow citizens, the same folks whose elected representatives can't be bothered to allocate funds for health care for September 11th first responders. If so, shame on us for our short memories, for our lack of empathy, for our abandonment of those who were sacrificed and those who sacrificed to save them.

And shame on Time for its careless historical revisionism and its casual devaluation of Jewish lives.

All About Me

2010-11-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked to write a short bio of myself (I'll tell you why in the next post). Like many people in this situation, I find it hard to strike the right balance between modesty and self-promotion (or, to put it another way, between the hard truth and my own inflated self-image). So I figured I'd look at myself through the eyes of some of the people who know me well, and try to tell my story from their point of view.

For example, here is how I imagine my beautiful, talented, and devoted wife would describe me: Scott is a moderately funny guy who is going to make me a widow if he doesn't lay off the french fries. He is a workaholic, except when it comes to cleaning a dish or folding a towel, at which point he is suddenly less productive than a government bureaucrat on medical leave. He is very talented in a number of areas, none of which generate any income whatsoever.

My karate instructor: Scott bruises easily. He enjoys his infrequent workouts, as long as we all agree not to knock him down, twist his arm, or make him bend at the knees. He is not even close to being the oldest student in the dojo, but he is definitely the most likely to be injured. Scott would prefer to talk his opponent out of hitting him, which can be a useful technique on the street but is kind of distracting in sparring class.

One of the members of my writing critique group: I don't know why you're asking me to write this. The guy likes nothing more than talking about himself... except for pointing out the flaws in everybody else's writing—that he seems to really enjoy.

My college roommate: I've never seen anybody go through more Doritos after just two bong hits. No, seriously.

My psychologist (after receiving my signed stack of releases and waivers, of course): Scott has a beautiful wife who loves him; great kids who are growing to be exceptional adults; a gorgeous house and a great job. He should stop complaining so much.

My rabbi: Scott? Ver vais—I never see him, even on the High Holidays. And with his education—such a waste.

The lovely woman who works behind the counter at Bruegger's: Mr. Scott is very nice man. He always orders the same thing: bagel with egg and cheese, no bacon. He even makes me get him an egg from the refrigerator instead of one that is in the tray where we put sometimes meat. I think he is a Muslim.

So, there you have it: the complete picture. I am a whiny, hypercritical, overeating, underachieving, non-observant Jewish Muslim with very limited self-defense skills.

Wow, that wasn't so hard after all.

A Modest Proposal

2010-11-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

Most California voters are complete idiots.

That's right. I've thought long and hard about this, examined the data, considered it from every angle, and determined that the majority of adult citizens in our state are of extremely questionable intellect.

Mind you, this evaluation has nothing to do with the actual results of the balloting. Sure, California elected a Democrat to every (or almost every) state-wide office, while at the same time defeating a number of ballot initiatives any sane Democrat would have supported. And no, that type of confusion does not speak well for the sophistication of our electorate.

But, while the outcome of the election certainly does not paint a flattering picture of the voting public, I am focused here instead on the process itself. Let's start with the obvious: as far as I can tell, close to 100% of Californians, at one time or another, bitch and moan about the state of the state. Taxes are too high, the beaches too dirty, the schools too crowded. And yet, even in an election as hotly contested—and broadly advertised—as this one, only a bit over half of our neighbors cast a ballot. I expect this problem to resolve itself as these people starve to death, one by one, while waiting for somebody to bring them something to eat. From the kitchen. In their own house.

Shifting our focus to those who did put forth the effort required to make a few marks on a piece of paper, the picture is no more impressive. Roughly half of these folks actually show up at a polling place to vote. Let me say that again: given the option of receiving a ballot in the mail weeks before election day, filling it out at one's leisure, and dropping it in a mailbox, about half of Californians have decided that it would be more fun to take time off from work, drive to a nearby elementary school, wait in line, and use a keyboard or hole punch device that has been handled by about 100 other people in the past hour.

My friends, I don't wait in line for so much as a burrito. And who among you, dear readers, would even consider showing up at the DMV without an appointment? You read my blog; surely that suggests that you are far too clever for that sort of behavior.

Oregon, a state whose primary purpose heretofore was to increase the flight time from Orange County to Seattle, has gone to all-mail balloting (not to be confused with "all-male" balloting, a term used to describe either pre-19th Amendment America, or the modern Republican constituency). The result? Voter turnout this week in Oregon exceeded 71%.

Nonetheless, as a staunch (yet humble) defender of individual liberty, I take offense at Oregon's inflexible insistence on intelligent behavior. After all, if we force everybody to act sensibly, how will we weed out the senseless?

Instead, for our next election, I propose that we set some secret ground rules in advance. First, if you don't vote, you lose your right to vote altogether. Sorry: you had your chance. Oh, and also, we take away your children: after all, the children are our future, and we simply can't entrust our future to people like you.

If you do vote, but you show up at a polling place to do so, here's what happens: we let you wait in line, find your name on the giant hardcopy list, get your ballot, and enter the little booth. When you return, ballot in hand and self-satisfied smile on your face, we graciously accept your ballot and then burn it in front of you. As you watch, horrified, while the flames engulf your precious envelope, we thank you for voting, hand you your "I Voted" sticker, and shoo you away. Then we take your kids.

I estimate that this policy alone will increase the average IQ of the electorate (those whose votes weren't incinerated, that is) by 20-30%. It may be hard finding vote-by-mail foster parents for all the kids we saved, but it will have been worth it.

Satire

2010-10-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

In an age of politicians who practice witchcraft (not that I'm judging), seek homoerotic liaisons (still not judging) in public bathrooms (OK, judging a bit now), and wear Nazi uniforms (definitely judging), it is hard to imagine any epithet, any distasteful revelation, or any slung mud that could stick to a candidate, tarnishing his or her image so severely as to make that candidate unelectable. If a politician's bad behavior, extreme ideas, or inarticulate rambling don't turn away the great voting public, what will?

Actually, there is one weapon in the arsenal of thoughtful moderates that can still find its mark, wounding or even killing a candidate's chance of reaching office. And what, you ask, is this silver bullet, this wooden stake?

Clever Satire

Satire. Satire has a long, successful history in American politics, from the colonial period right up through today. It is considered so fundamental to political discourse that there is a carve-out in the copyright laws specifically permitting the use of copyrighted materials for satirical purposes. Americans seem to respond to satire in a way they don't respond to simple recitations of fact. The evidence is fresh: surely no radio ads, no newspaper editorials, no televised debates played as significant a role in the deterioration of the 2008 McCain/Palin ticket than Tina Fey's razor's edge satire of the inarticulate yet perky vice presidential hopeful.

Still, there are those on whom satire is completely lost. You know them: they're the ones who express shock and dismay that Stephen Colbert could testify in character before Congress on the issue of immigration. They're the ones who find offense, rather than humor, in poking fun at the foibles of one group or another. They're the ones who are sure this country is going straight to hell in a handbasket, and are dumbfounded that the rest of us don't share their righteous outrage.

These people—the humor-challenged, the extremists, the narrow-minded—are, in fact, so blind to satire that they eventually become self-parodies. Tina Fey has said that she used Sarah Palin's own words to skewer her. Dick Cheney's Voldemort impression, straight out of Evil Overlord central casting, is clearly not an act. And Glen Beck... well, really, is there any figure in America today more self-satirical than Beck? His transparent racism, his manufactured tears, his blatant historical revisionism—surely he can't be serious... can he?

In contrast, consider New York politician Anthony Wiener. Wiener, a personal friend of master satirist Jon Stewart and prime satirical target Bill Clinton, has a well developed sense of humor, and knows how to deploy it in support of his cause. No matter what your politics, it is easy to appreciate Wiener's sharp wit; and when you do, you (consciously or otherwise) become more open to Wiener's argument.

Self Satire

Not everyone gets the joke. The Tea Party is perhaps the largest collection of self-satirical characters the country has ever seen. There is no point of view so off the charts, so wildly inappropriate, that some Teabagger is unwilling to advocate for it. Obama is a socialist? Certainly. Obama is a Kenyan? Sure. Obama is a Nazi? Why, yes, he's exactly like Hitler. As the rest of us look on in increasing dismay, the Teabaggers caricature every extremist position in American politics, and proceed to nominate and, soon, apparently, actually elect politicians who share their paranoid delusions.

Beware, then, the parody-immune, the satire-impermeable. They are destined to become more and more like the caricatures the rest of us find so entertaining—that is, until they turn out to be real.

Ki ai *

2010-10-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

I've been a student of kempo karate, also known as Shaolin chuan fa,for 9 years. It's unusual for somebody to start in the martial arts in their late 30s, perhaps, but I'm not lonely—in the dojo in which I train, there are several students in their 40s and older (though nearly all of them have trained longer and hold higher ranks than I).

I've probably reached the highest level I will ever attain in the system, but I'm not ruling anything out. Hell, even the progress I've made to date is far beyond that which anybody who knows me (including me) would ever have predicted. Who knows: even as my fifth decade on this planet draws to an end, maybe there is one more rank left in me. But, regardless of whether or not I ever earn another official stripe, I am improving, ever so slightly, with every lesson, every new technique, every sparring match.

One of the most emotionally complex experiences I've had since beginning my training took place about a year ago, on my last belt test. This was an important test, a milestone, and I'd prepared for it with a vigor and focus that are, frankly, kind of unusual for me. Let's face it: I'm no athlete. Even with my extra training, and even though I'd dropped at least ten pounds in the weeks leading up to the big day, I still carried several handicaps: my weight, my asthma, and my chronically injured back, to name just a few.

As it turned out, though, the actual difficulty, when it arose, came from another area entirely.

Mr. Miyagi never made
Daniel-san do 5 hours of forms
& techniques before sparring!

As the test began, I was very confident. I knew my techniques, I knew my forms. I was ready. But I began to notice a problem, and it started early, during the first stage of the test: I was becoming dizzy. I felt weak and exhausted, in spite of my training, in spite of my comfort with the material.

I was confused. What was happening here? I'd survived, and passed, a number of six-hour tests that seemed specifically designed to make a grown man (specifically: me) cry. I normally trained for 2-4 hours at a time, and yet, here I was, barely half an hour into the program, already wondering if I was going to be able to continue. One of the Masters approached me and asked me if I was OK—apparently, I was pretty pale. (A few days after the test, my own Sensei told me that, when he had stopped by to see how I was doing, expecting to find me red in the face, he had been surprised to see instead that I was white as a sheet.)

Pale, dizzy, exhausted: what the hell was going on?

It was only months later, after another bout of similar symptoms, that I got my answer: having lost weight, my blood pressure had dropped. Because I was taking medication for hypertension, my blood pressure was now too low to support intense exercise. I stopped taking the meds and the symptoms disappeared.

During the test, though, all I knew was that I was in danger of not finishing, of failing. As the morning wore on, the vertigo and exhaustion worsened. During the final portion of the test, sparring, I performed dismally, which is to say: I got my ass kicked by a lesser fighter. Sparring requires creativity, adaptability, and explosiveness, none of which seemed to be available to me.

Nonetheless, when the sparring was over, I had made it all the way to the end of the test. And when I left the building, I carried a brand new belt with me.

An earlier test: sweaty but happy

So what did I learn? Well, first of all: training pays off. Had I been less thoroughly prepared, the symptoms would have done me in. I performed my techniques and forms instinctively; if I'd had to think about them, I simply could not have executed them.

More importantly, though, I realized that there is a reservoir of will within me, a driving energy that I can access, giving me the ability to persevere when my body is failing and my mind is crying out for surrender. It was the search for just this internal strength that had led me to martial arts in the first place. Yes, I'd struggled during tests, even during training, many times before; but I'd never faced any obstacle close to the one with which I was confronted that morning. In the end, it turned out to be this very trial that finally revealed what I'd set out to find eight years before.

*) Ki ai (pronounced "key eye") is a Japanese term that I use here to mean the outward expression of one's inner strength or energy (ki, sometimes known by its Chinese equivalent, chi). I was pleased to discover a very nice, brief article on ki ai in Wikipedia.

How I Learned to Love Our Two-Party System

2010-10-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

If you've been living in America at any time in the past, oh, two years or so, perhaps you share my disdain for our major political parties. The Republicans are intolerant, lying old white men whose primary purpose in life is to protect the money they inherited from their rich grandparents, while the Democrats are incompetent, lying old white men whose primary purpose in life is to protect the unions that got them elected to office. A pox on both their houses!

And so it was, armed with my usual cranky, jaded, anti-Establishment attitude, that I perused my recently-received November 2010 California Voter Guide. And what did I find? The usual suspects; the same lame rhetoric.

But wait... what's this? Why—these look like alternatives! New choices! Can it really be so?

Yes, it can. The Voter Guide includes a section called "Political Party Statements of Purpose". Comprising 2 full pages of the thick Guide, the PPS of P includes a couple of paragraphs provided by each of a variety of political parties. And they make for fun reading indeed.

Take, for example, the statement of the American Independent Party. The AIP proclaims its devotion to the 2nd and 10th Amendments; admirable, perhaps, but with 25 other Amendments out there, I'm not sure those would have been the two I would have highlighted.

I was quite interested to learn that the AIP considers itself "the party of ordered liberty in a nation under God." Really, you have to admire a phrase like "ordered liberty", which, if it doesn't appear in an Orwell novel, definitely ought to. The statement goes on to profess a belief in "strict adherence to written law," and looks forward to the day when we will all be "[f]reed from the lawless oppression of Liberal rule". I'm pretty sure "lawless oppression" comes from the same dictionary as "ordered liberty".

Somewhat shaken, I turned to another statement, this one submitted by the Peace and Freedom Party. I remember these guys from my youth—we once had a polling place at my house, in the 70s. You know, you really want to root for a party called "Peace and Freedom". Until, that is, you read that they plan to support the many, many, MANY social services they hope to provide by "tax[ing] the rich, whose wealth is entirely created by workers, to pay for the people’s needs." No word on what happens when there are no rich people left: presumably "the people" will no longer have any "needs". The party helpfully goes on to explain their guiding philosophy: "We advocate socialism." I can hardly think of a political credo more likely to generate voter support this election season.

Finally, I visited with the Green Party. With everyone going green, who knows: maybe soon everyone will be going Green. The Green Party is in favor of "habeas corpus, repealing mandatory sentencing, and amending the Three Strikes Law"—OK, I'm with them so far, except for my sneaking suspicion that the "habeas corpus" they're promoting is aimed at Guantanamo Bay. Makes me wonder why they don't come right out and say so, but I'd guess it's because we would not vote for them.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The Greens also believe in "ending torture and unwarranted surveillance," an idea I could perhaps get behind with a certain number of qualifiers attached. But then, in a startling declaration that one might imagine was inserted without their knowledge by somebody who wishes to see the Greens fall this autumn, they announce their support for "undocumented immigrants’ right to work." Oh dear. No matter how you feel about the poor folks who risk life and limb to come to this country, legally or illegally, it's hard to imagine a sudden groundswell of support for their "right to work".

All in all, the Political Parties Statements of Purpose is a house of political horrors appropriate to an election falling only two days after Halloween. In fact, if I were an Establishment Republicrat politician whose goal was to design a Voter Guide, the sole purpose of which was to scare voters into sticking with the major parties, I could hardly have produced anything better.

Hey, wait a minute...

Making Life

2010-10-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

I had an opportunity recently to think a little about the Israeli expression לעשות חיים. Loosely translated as “having a good time” or “enjoying oneself”, it literally means “to make life”. It seems to me that this expression is emblematic of what separates Israel from the other countries of the Middle East.

Israelis “Making Life”

The Jewish tradition of valuing life above all else is ancient. The original, and most famous, evidence of this norm is found in Deut. 30:19, which reads, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life.” This text was utterly innovative, written at a time when human sacrifice was common.

Later Jewish sages expanded on this basic concept, allowing even the violation of the Sabbath—a transgression that itself was considered a capital offense—in order to save a life. Indeed, Sabbath restrictions could be disregarded not only to save a life, but even to provide comfort for somebody whose life was in jeopardy, such as a woman in labor (BT Shabbat 129a).

What is truly amazing is the value that Jews continued to place on life, even after centuries of oppression, expulsion, and slaughter. One might easily imagine a desire for revenge, born of righteous outrage, would ignite the passions of those who had suffered generation after generation of injustice. After all, the very same book that tells us to “choose life” also instructs “Justice! You shall pursue justice.” (Deut. 16:20)

Interestingly (to me, at least), the injunctions to choose life and to pursue justice are each followed by the qualifying phrase “that you may live.” Jewish tradition links the two concepts, tying them both to the idea that the ultimate goal is the continuity of life. Even justice, which sometimes may appear to demand the death of another, can only be achieved if it is pursued with the ultimate goal of cherishing and preserving life.

In contrast, Israel's enemies exalt death. Hamas educates its children to die for the cause. Iran used children to clear minefields, wrapping them in blankets so the explosions wouldn't scatter their body parts. And all over the Arab world, the “shahid”—“martyr”—who dies while taking the lives of Jews, is celebrated and adored.

After September 11th, many of us asked how we can defeat an opponent so corrupted that he eagerly plans to die for his cause, an opponent so brainwashed that he believes that the life that awaits him after his act of murder is many times better than that which he surrenders as a result. We choose to live: can we possibly overcome a foe who chooses to die?

Research in Israel: Targeting Cancer

Every day, nobody faces this question more directly than Israel. They send their sons and daughters into battle; they are attacked by missiles and threatened by tyrants. And yet, each day Israelis “make life”—they create art, embrace freedom, and pursue economic success. They engage in ground-breaking research, and hold themselves to the highest ethical principles. This is their answer to those who choose death: we will live. We will stop you if we can, and sacrifice if we must, but we will live, and as a result, we will still be here long after you and your barbaric allies have passed into history.

Dude, Where's My Tax Revenue?

2010-10-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

It can be embarrassing to live in California. We have a reputation as uncultured airheads living in a haze of smog within huge, sprawling megalopoli, waiting for the next earthquake, landslide, or fire to lend interest to our otherwise mundane existence. Adding to our shame, we recently decided to deny the basic human right of marriage to about 10% of our population because, well, somebody on TV said it would hurt our children if we didn't (gee, maybe that “airhead” thing isn't that far off base).

Can this plant save California?

On the other hand, there are moments when I am genuinely proud to live here. I fully expect one of these moments to arrive in November, as voters (yes, the same crowd that defeated same-sex marriage) finally legalize marijuana by passing ballot initiative Proposition 19. Pot will remain illegal under Federal law, but it's an open question whether the Feds will choose to put any effort into enforcement under such circumstances.

Legalizing pot is the right thing to do, both socially and fiscally. In pure dollars and cents, legalization is likely to create a substantial new source of much-needed revenue for the state. At a time when teachers are being furloughed and the neediest citizens are being denied essential services, these funds have never been more critical.

In addition, Prop 19 will eliminate the expense of prosecuting and incarcerating non-violent individuals whose only crime is the possession of a substance that grows freely in the ground beneath our feet. Think there are no savings there? Think again:

According to the American Corrections Association, the average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the US is $67.55. State prisons held 253,300 inmates for drug offenses in 2007. That means states spent approximately $17,110,415 per day to imprison drug offenders, or $6,245,301,475 per year.

— from drugwarfacts.org

License and registration please

And this brings us to the social benefits of legalization. It is already far too easy for the government to take away our freedom, for any reason it sees fit. The Miranda protections are undergoing a long, painful emasculation at the hands of a right-wing, activist Supreme Court, while the police are empowered stop you pretty much any time they like, even if it's only because you aren't wearing a seat belt.

A society that so little values the freedom of its members is not one likely to endure, at least, not in a form any of us would find familiar or desirable. I'm looking forward to striking a small blow for individual liberty by voting "Yes" on Prop 19 in November.

Shifting Gears

2010-10-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

It has been a week of late arrivals and late departures, changed plans and reworked strategies--in other words: a giant, unrelenting pain in the ass.

I was thinking about writing a post entitled Am I in Hell, or is this just another airport?, and probably one day soon I will. But as the nature of my trip has morphed from business to pleasure, my attitude about the whole thing has been refreshed as well.

Writer's Nirvana

At the moment, I'm sitting outside in Northern New Jersey on one of the most beautiful days I can remember. There's a strong, cool breeze, but the sky is clear and the sun still has enough strength left, even in early October, to keep me warm inside my windbreaker and jeans. I will be going out soon with my hosts, two of my oldest friends in the world; but this moment I have to myself.

Leaving home, even on a short trip, is something I no longer handle gracefully. There was a time, a mere decade ago, when I spent three nights or more of every week in Chicago or New York. I worked this way for about a year, and honestly, I enjoyed it. It wasn't only about the restaurant dining and the nice hotels: being away gave me the opportunity to reach the end of a long work day without facing new demands on my energy and attention at home.

The reason that arrangement was successful for me is that I do not easily shift gears from one condition to another. My internal state machine has rusty gears. If I am in work mode, I need some time to move back into daddy mode. If I'm in daddy mode, I do not slide easily into writer mode. And so forth.

OK, not quite THIS big

Jackie is different. She can come home from work, walk in the door, drop her giant über-purse on the counter and start sorting through the mail, or helping the kids with their homework, all without missing a beat. I have no idea how that works. She finds it equally hard to understand why I can't just look up from a story I'm working on, answer a question about how to do something on the Mac, and then jump right back into writing.

So I'm grateful to Jackie, our kids, my friends Andy and Sarah, and their kids, for managing to find room in their lives to give me this extra day of transition between my insane, annoying week of travel and my return to my normal day to day existence.

#Twitter

2010-10-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

If you look to the right of this post—no, just a bit lower—you'll see a few of my most recent tweets. In case you happen to be Osama bin Laden (rumored to be an avid reader of mine) and have therefore been living in a cave for the past decade, I will explain that a “tweet” is a short message posted via Twitter. If you're still not sure what I'm talking about, well... here's hoping my next post will be of more interest to you.

As a short-form writer, Twitter holds a certain appeal for me. I believe there is beauty in brevity. I enjoy the challenge of being witty, or relevant, or at least not boring, in 140 characters or less. For my wife, though, Twitter represents all that is good and right and fun about the Internet. She tosses clever bon mots back and forth with other Twitterers all over the world. She turns to Twitter for updates on developing news stories. And she is active on Foursquare, a Twitter-related service whose main purpose, as I understand it, is to alert criminals as to your exact location.

But, when it comes to actual human communication, it turns out that you can't really delve into a topic with any subtlety or nuance using less characters than are contained in this sentence. And so Twitter at its worst (and it is often at its worst) is a forum for slogans and sound bites. In other words, tweets are the bumper stickers on the information superhighway.

To illustrate this problem, I've decided to render some famous quotes here as tweets. See if you think they are more or less effective than the original:

87 yrs ago, our 4fathers created this nation concvd in liberty, dedicated to prop that all men are created =.
Yestrday, 12/7/41, day that will live N infamy, Japan attacked Pearl Harb. Many lives lost. Now we're at war.
N beginning, God created hvn, earth. Then plants, birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, 2ppl (Adam&Eve). Etc.

I can't help but feel something has been lost in the translation.

And so, while I plan to continue to enjoy Twitter (if only to keep track of where my wife is at any given moment), I'm pleased to have the opportunity, through this blog, to explore my topics in slightly more depth.

Still, let's give Twitter the final word here. Because, as it turns out, some of the greatest utterances in history work just fine as a tweet:

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

Beauty in brevity? Absolutely.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Rick

2010-10-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

Why, thank you, Rick Sanchez, for sacrificing your career for the sake of helping me make my point.

One of the most boring and irrelevant talking heads on CNN, Sanchez finally had something interesting to say. Unfortunately for him, it was this:

Everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart. And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Yet another minority oppressed
by the International Jewish Conspiracy

Sanchez was presumably pissed off that Stewart had referred to him as a "lightweight"—hardly controversial for anybody who has seen Sanchez' Twitter-based "news" show. Yes, that's right: the Sanchez program consisted mainly of light topical tete a tete, followed by the tweeted reactions from his viewers. This is what makes CNN such an important American institution: where else are you offered a stream of unedited opinions from people with nothing better to do in the middle of the day than watch TV and tweet?

As a side note, there is real irony in the casting of Stewart as avatar for the entire Jewish people. Really? Jon Stewart? The same Jon Stewart who changed his last name from Liebowitz, who married a non-Jewish woman, and who regularly trashes Israel on his TV show—the one from which he takes many, many, MANY days off, but not Yom Kippur? THAT Jon Stewart?

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Well, never mind that. To the anti-Semite, we all look alike.

Nobody coaxed, or tricked, or cajoled Sanchez into saying what he said. The same goes for other recent paragons of bigotry such as Helen Thomas and Mel Gibson. In truth, they couldn't wait to say it. Gibson was drunk—in vino veritas—Thomas was asked a simple question about Israel, and Sanchez was simply reminded that Stewart is Jewish. Their beliefs lie just below the surface, and what's more, they see nothing wrong with them. No doubt the career-ending opprobrium that followed was a complete surprise: "...but, all my friends feel the same way!"

What is the real lesson here? Simply this: anti-Semitism is returning to the mainstream. The anti-Semitic disease, underground for over half a century, has mutated, adapting to the post-Holocaust era by posing first as Israel-basher, then as anti-Zionist, before finally exploding into a malignant and virulent strain of pure anti-Semitism.

It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you

2010-09-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Like most Jewish kids of the latter part of the 20th century, I do not see eye-to-eye with those of my parents' generation on the topic of anti-Semitism. Don't get me wrong: it's not like I think that this most ancient of hatreds has vanished from the Earth. But I don't find anti-Semitism to be an animating force in most American discourse.

Combination Skin

Which is why, when I do run across it, I react with a little bit of surprise, combined with a sneaking suspicion that perhaps the alte kackers are right. I feel a sudden need to scratch a few nearby non-Jews to see if I find an anti-Semite lurking underneath, like the aliens in V who are actually lizards in human skin.

I had such a moment today. First, though, some background. I have an addiction. I can't get enough of lectures on CD from The Teaching Company. I've listened to lectures on the American Revolution, the Dead Sea Scrolls, World War II, and I'm about to embark on another series on the medieval world.

Recently I was enticed to acquire a series called Between Cross and Crescent: Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza. The lectures cover one of the richest periods of Jewish history, one with which I am insufficiently familiar, so I'm really excited to get it.

I do, however, like to read the reviews posted by other customers before buying. And so I came across a review from a "Top 100 Contributor" (nope, no idea what that means). Interestingly, the reviewer, "JoeR" from Toronto, gave the course 4/5 stars. But he went on to identify a "bias of the instructor", to wit:

The root causes for the Jewish persecutions from the West were always investigated by looking at Christian failings, presuming that the Jewish nation were for the most part innocent victims. The fact that multiple nations treated the Jews unfairly stretching over a vast time period and across many cultures should have given more serious pause to the way that the Jews lived amongst their host nations in order to consider if their interaction consistently agitated the relationship

Well, sure: Jews were raped, slaughtered, and left homeless throughout medieval Europe. Should they not therefore have taken a moment to examine their own behavior?

"JoeR"'s comments represent the type of classic anti-Semitism that has its roots in early Christianity. Indeed, he entitles his review "Humbling of a Nation," implying, of course, that the stiff-necked, haughty Jews were not simply the victims of the overwhelming force of the Roman Empire, but rather, were "humbled", brought down from their position as the Chosen People by a God who blames them for the death of His Son. It was in fact this narrative that dominated medieval Christianity, though to my knowledge there is no parallel lesson drawn from the fall of Rome so soon after Constantine's conversion to that religion.

Unfortunately, the "blame the victim" philosophy, which had taken a well-deserved holiday following the Holocaust, seems to be on its way back. No doubt we will soon be asked to consider European Jewry's culpability in its own destruction by the Nazis. But we see the same idea in other places, as well, most notably in the garment-rending of some Americans in the wake of the terrorist murders of September 11, 2001. "Why do they hate us?" we asked. Is it our policy on the Middle East? Our permissive media culture? The popularity of ham at Easter?

Q. Why do they hate us?
A. Who cares?

And here is my response, my response to the "nobody would hate us if we were only better people" morons, my response to "JoeR" and his ilk, my response to fundamentalist Jews who believe we were scattered throughout the world for our sins and my response to fundamentalist Christians who believe... well, more or less the same thing as the fundamentalist Jews.

My response is: go fuck yourself. As long as I am strong, you will not hurt me again, so I will remain strong. As soon as I become weak, no matter the moral beauty of my existence nor the peaceful transcendence for which I strive, you will attack me. Morality guides my actions, but survival dictates my choices: there is no morality in my death. If you kill me and survive, then my insistence on morality has failed not only me, but the entirety of the world, because all that will remain is your evil.

The Beginning

2010-09-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

As noted by my friend and critic Melanie, the Southern California Writer's Conference was in town this past weekend. I spent an entire weekend having my plot examined, evaluated, and ultimately eviscerated.

And I loved every minute of it.

Well, OK, to be honest, I loved every minute that was about me. My interest flagged slightly when we were talking about somebody else's plot. Hey, I'm only human.

Plot is my nemesis, my white whale. I imagined that novel writing works sort of like short story writing: you think of a story. It has a beginning, middle, and tragic, triumphant, or hilarious ending. Then you write it down. I've written many a short piece in more or less this way, and no doubt there are those who produce novels in just such a manner.

But no, not me. I know the theme of my novel, the major symbols, the motivations and feelings of the main characters, and what happens when the shit hits the fan. I know the voice, the tense, the point of view. I know where to use humor and where to lay on the pathos. What I don't know is how it ends.

So I went to the conference, having signed up for the unattractively entitled NovelCram. NovelCram was led by author Drusilla Campbell, a petite woman with a brilliant smile and the unrelenting energy of a plutonium reactor. Dru led the class from one end of the weekend to the other, barely taking a breath, much less a break, outlasting even her much younger students who crept out seriatim for a coffee or a pee before returning a few minutes later to be swept up again into the Drunado.

I, too, was sucked into the vortex, eventually finding myself deposited at the end of a winding path of saffron-colored brick. Squinting, I could make out a curve here, a sharp turn there; a surprise around one corner, a complication around the next. And, in the distance, the vaguest outline of an emerald city. I can't quite see beyond the walls of the city, but I'm pretty sure that if I can just get a little closer, I may discover...

The End.