QUESTIONS
1.In recent years you have produced a substantial body of work criticizing members of your religion. However, in your recent Times of Israel piece you extend your target by launching a crude assault on so-called ‘antisemites.’ What led to your shift?
2. Do you believe that it is down to an orthodox Jew to set the boundaries of the discussion of the Jewish State and its crimes, Jewish global politics, Jewish culture, Jewish bankers and Jewish ideology?
3.Do you agree that by attempting to prevent others from talking about the above topics you display a sense of exceptionalism? (by accepting that Jewish global bankers or Jewish culture are beyond criticism).
4. You have published your thoughts on different outlets including my site. You chose to publish your recent attack on ‘antisemites’ within the Palestinian movement on an Israeli ultra Zionist outlet. Unusual decision; if you want the movement to consider your thoughts and make changes,wouldn’ta pro Palestinian outlet be the appropriate medium for yourpiece? Why did you choose the Times of Israel?
5.In your Times of Israel article you write, “I will not tolerate attacks on my religious life just because they come wrapped in a Palestinian flag.” This seemsreasonable, but then you continue: “I will not ‘discuss’ whether all Jews are racists who seek ‘world domination; whether Israel is just the most visible fruit of ‘Jewish power’; whether the Talmud consists entirely of ‘tools and techniques’ for lording it over ‘the Goyim’; or whether ‘Jewish ideology…’” Why do you consider the above questions an attack on your ‘religious life”? Does the questioningof Jewish ideology or Talmudic teaching prevent you from celebrating the Sabbath, conducting your prayers or putting ontefilin?
6.You seem to be troubled by anti-Semitism, butit is not clear what anti-Semitism means to you. Is it hatred towards Jews for being Jews? Your piece indicates that you are offended by notions such as ‘Jewish power’ and ‘Jewish racism. You don’t like others pointing at Jewish bankers. Where do you believe opposition to Jews stops being kosher, when does it become ‘anti-Semitsm’?
7. By taking offense at criticism of ‘Jewish global politics, Jewish lobbying,Jewish tribalism, references to Rothschild and Soros’ banking, aren’t youalso conflating Judaism, with Jews and Jewishness? Or maybe you think that Soros’ global interventionist strategy shouldn’t be criticised because some Jews may perceive it as an offense to their religion?
8. In your piece you refer to the following quote as a piece of“dreck”(poop –Yiddish): “[W]e are now demanding an exposure of the SUPREMACY and RACISM within Jewish IDEOLOGY.”
Do you believe that using such terminology in reference to criticism of an ideology reflects on you as a religious Jew?Would you refer to the work of professor Israel Shahak as a piece of ‘dreck’?Do you believe that my book, ‘The Wandering Who’ that aims at an understanding of Jewish ideology is a piece ofdreck? And if it it’s a piece of dreck, why have you submitted articles to my site? Or maybe you use this derogatory terminology only when you communicate with Jews via Zionist sites?
9. You write- “there are the well-meaning campaigners for Palestinian rights who say, ‘This is about politics, not religion.”Do you believe that solidarity with Palestinians should be shaped by Jewish sensitivities? Is it incumbent upon the Palestinian solidarity movement to be rabbinically friendly? Despite your critique, your piece does not cite a single example of an ‘attack’ on Judaism. Shouldn’t we all learn to differentiate between Jews (the people), Judaism (the religion) and Jewishness (the ideology)?
10. In your article you fail to mention the fact that Israel defines itself as the Jewish State. Orthodox Jews are at the forefront of the crimes against Palestinians. Influential Rabbis and rabbinical schools have integrated the Zionist project into the contemporaryRabbinical realm (Rabbi Kook, Chabbad etc). Do you believe that your take on Judaism or your humanist stand ‘as a Jew’ vindicates Judaism as a whole?
11. In your Times of Israel article you refer a few times to those who point at Jewish conspiracies. I have studied the topic and come to the conclusion that there are no Jewish conspiracies. Jews tend to act in the open. They just make sure that we can’t discuss it. AIPAC openly dominates American Foreign policy. AIPAC, LFI, CFI and the CRIFF make no secret of their advocacy of immoral interventionist wars. Soros funds a large number of progressive bodies and institutes that are committed to changing our social realm and culture. JVP openly dominates the Palestinian solidarity movement. As a result, instead of fighting for the Palestinians’ right of return, solidarity has been reduced to an eternal internal Jewish debate about ‘the right to BDS’. Are you, Michael, an exception to the above rule? On a Zionist outlet, you tell the rest of us what solidarity with Palestine is, what we should speak about and what we shouldn’t, what iskosherand who istaref. Can you see that by vetting the discourse you become an instrument of Jewish politics that transcends the realm of your religion? Or maybe, this is what your religion is all about. It deliberately conflates the distinction between thereligion, the tribal, the political and even the race.
12. You end your article,“I will not be asked to choose between Judaism and justice. If any of you expect me to make that choice — expect trouble.” This sound like a threat. You are a lawyer, can you please advise me in categorical and ethical terms where Dershowitz ends and Lesher starts?
RESPONSE
Mindful of my offer to answer your questions as fully as possible, I have reviewed them carefully, with a view to giving each of them the answer it deserves. Having done so, I find, rather to my dismay, that to do this in a really thorough way would require me to write a great deal, much more than I have time to compose at the moment, or you to read.
To make matters worse, the form of the questions themselves does not admit of a simple approach to answering them. Several of the questions are not questions at all – at least not as they are phrased – and some are practically meaningless without reference to other questions. For example, your second and third questions both appear to assume that I have somehow attempted to curtail critical “discussion” about Israel, its crimes, and various other topics. That’s a peculiar charge to press against someone who has repeatedly condemned efforts to stifle free speech on exactly that subject. But in fact it’s more than peculiar: it’s downright unintelligible, until one considers the strictures implied by several of your other challenges. And those, in turn, hinge on assumptions that strike me as equally dubious.
There’s yet another problem, one (I admit) of my own making but not, I think, grounds for apology. That problem concerns my reluctance to “explain” my writing. As a writer – and, after all, writing is my vocation – I feel that it’s never appropriate to try to restate something I’ve already put into print. What’s done is done. If I’ve succeeded in what I set out to do with a given column or essay or story or poem, any restatement, clarification, explanation, etc. can only be a fly in the ointment; and if I’ve failed, then no amount of “explanation” can salvage the wreck. I prefer to let what I’ve written speak for itself. This attitude of mine may have drawbacks. Certainly it has deprived me of some opportunities to soften the feelings of people who, over the years, have been shocked or incensed or simply baffled by this or that piece of my writing. But on the whole, I think it’s the more honest approach.
So how can I answer your questions? In particular, how can I answer them without resorting to the kind of personal attacks and question-begging that inform the queries themselves – something that will almost inevitably result if I allow your specific questions, as you’ve written them, to frame each answer? I can see only one way to proceed. I will write one continuous response to what I take to be the actual thrust of your questions, pausing where appropriate to address something specific in what you’ve written – all of this with the goal of answering everything you’ve asked, while at the same time preserving the integrity of what I want to say. Where this approach leads me in the direction of a disquisition too large for this exchange, I’ll make note of such a limitation. If this means you don’t get the specific sort of answer you may have hoped for to this or that question, I can only say that I can’t think of another way of answering you at all, unless I were to take the lawyer’s approach of explaining why your questions are too objectionable to be answered in the first place. I prefer to answer, though I must do so in my own way.
First of all, I want to emphasize that I write with no personal animus against you. I appreciated your invitation to speak on the same panel with you, Stanley Cohen and Norton Mezvinsky earlier this year; I am similarly grateful for your willingness to publish a couple of my pieces by way of your blog. On top of that, you’re an excellent musician, and I have a permanent soft spot in my heart for artists.
As for your writing, I rather liked The Wandering Who?; I was disappointed by the attacks on the book (and on you personally) from such activists as Max Blumenthal. I was particularly dismayed over the charge of anti-Semitism. In fact, one reason I accepted your invitation to speak was the opportunity to meet Dr. Mezvinsky, a man I admired for (among other things) having rejected that calumny in the case of a book that, in my opinion, inquired interestingly if provocatively into questions of Jewish identity.
At the same time, I’m afraid I will have very little good to say about what you have written me this time. And yes, it does seem to me that I will have to express opinions about your questions in the course of answering them. I say this at the outset, lest it appear that I am avoiding the challenges you have posed for me by changing the subject. I am not. But if I am to respond to questions that misrepresent my writings, that assume things that aren’t true, and that mask personal attacks under a façade of interrogatives, I must devote at least part of my answers to unraveling the fallacies implicit in the questions. All the more so, I think, because you’re a person of some real ability, too intelligent to be unable to extricate yourself from such fallacies – if you wish to.
Let’s begin at a sufficiently obvious starting point. My column, as its title made clear, complained of “anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.” I don’t think there ought to have been any doubt about what I meant. Still, if you weren’t sure before reading the column, the examples I quoted there should have removed any uncertainty. And if you still wanted more, you needn’t have looked far: the conversations on your own blog are rife with them. Some of these conspiracy theories are aimed at very stale targets indeed (the Rothschilds), while a few single out a relatively new accomplice of Satan (George Soros). But the contents are depressingly familiar. They accuse the assorted whipping boys – and behind them, “the Jews” – of plotting “world domination,” of controlling all the world’s wealth, of undermining social justice, attacking “our” culture, threatening the United States or “the West,” and so forth. These paranoid clichés have been thrown at Jews for centuries. Surely everyone knows that much.
Yet nowhere in your questions – which frequently refer to the contents of my column – do you acknowledge that the ravings I quoted are anything but “criticism”; nowhere do you even attempt to describe such anti-Jewish paranoia by its right (and obvious) name. Given that this was the very keystone of my criticism, I cannot consider this a minor or an accidental omission. Is it possible you don’t recognize bigotry when you see it – even in such naked form? If you don’t, you should no more be discussing these matters than a color-blind man should criticize paintings; if you do recognize it, and pretend not to for the sake of a specious attack on me (of which more presently), I suggest that the position you’re taking is not only intellectually but morally unsound. Certainly it is unworthy of the author of The Wandering Who?
The problem with your questions begins with this very obvious sin of omission, and is quickly compounded by two related sins of misrepresentation. First, as I’ve already noted, you repeatedly misrepresent bigoted ravings as “discussion,” “questioning,” etc. I am chagrined at having to emphasize what ought to be obvious: that bigotry is not “discussion.” On the contrary, it is inimical to genuine inquiry; it short-circuits debate and paralyzes thought. That is precisely its intellectual danger. When you ask me, therefore, why I condemned the sort of ravings I did (as if that really had to be asked in the first place!), you’re asking the wrong question; if you want a real discussion, as you say you do, you should be asking yourself why you are defending bigotry. You can’t do that and insist you seek “discussion” at the same time.
The related fallacy is the suggestion that, by condemning anti-Jewish bigotry and runaway paranoia emanating from pro-Palestinian “activists,” I am somehow trying to “set the boundaries of the discussion of the Jewish State.” Leaving aside the fact (already mentioned) that bigotry is of no benefit to any authentic conversation, it is absurd to conflate criticism with suppression. I have no wish to suppress any sort of writing I can readily think of, and obviously I lack the power to do it even if I wanted to. But I do insist on my own right to say what I want to say and to write what I want to write. And that includes more than the right to expose bad writing by others; in also includes the right to criticize those who encourage it, whether with praise or with benign silence. My insistence on this right is not only consistent with free discussion but is part and parcel of it. The fallacy in your accusation against me – that I’m somehow closing down free speech by criticizing what other people have written – is transparent once you notice that it applies with equal force to your own questions. If criticizing another writer is tantamount to shutting him down, your criticism of me is as much a violation of free speech as my comments about others.
While I clearly do not, and cannot, “set the boundaries of discussion,” I can point out what seem to me the limits within which legitimate discourse is possible. And just as I place bigotry outside those limits, I locate nonsense there as well – and by “nonsense” I mean not only the gobbledygook of conspiracy theorists but, more fundamentally, what is literally nonsense – that is, words or phrases or propositions to which I can attach no coherent sense. I suspect it is no accident that your questions – the evident of purpose of which is to discredit my criticism of anti-Jewish bigotry – rely rather heavily on such nonsensical phrases as “Jewish ideology” and “Jewish global politics.” After all, what can give epithets like those any sort of meaning, if the option of anti-Semitism is foreclosed? What (in any rational sense) makes an ideology “Jewish”? Certainly ideologies may be created by Jews; in some cases they may even be intended for general adoption among Jews. But to speak blandly of “Jewish ideology” as if such an amorphous thing could be defined in general, let alone encountered anywhere but in the fantasies of anti-Semites, is as meaningless as the Nazi government’s dismissal of Einstein’s General Relativity as “Jewish physics.” And as for “Jewish global politics” – well, if that doesn’t refer to some cabal of Jewish conspirators manipulating the future of the world (and I assume you don’t intend that), I’ll leave it to someone more imaginative than I to suggest how the phrase can be given any rational meaning at all. The task looks hopeless to me.
Along similar lines, while I am prepared to believe that you have reasons for some of the labels you seem to enjoy pinning on your enemies, I confess I cannot divine them from a reading of your questions, even though the dark phrases pop up with distressing regularity. What are “Jewish bankers”? (Or, as you expand the phrase in one place, “Jewish global bankers”?) It must be true – trivially true – that some of the world’s high-level banking executives are Jews. But you suggest that there ought to be some sort of “criticism” directed specifically at “Jewish bankers.” Barring any anti-Semitic imputation, what on earth would such a criticism look like? Do you really mean to imply the existence of a Jewish banking conspiracy, a chestnut plucked right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Together with these species of nonsense in your challenges goes something I can only describe as blindness – an inability or unwillingness to see some of the things I’ve criticized, even where I’ve quoted from them so as to eliminate (I thought) any possible misunderstanding. You insist that my recent column “does not cite a single example of an ‘attack’ on Judaism.” Yet you actually quote the comment, cited in my column, of a writer who reduced the Talmud to a repository of “‘tools and techniques’ for lording it over ‘the Goyim.’” Isn’t a slander of the text at the heart of traditional Judaism an attack on Judaism? Or did you miss the helpful hint I received not long ago, also specifically noted in the column, “that I have only partly liberated myself from Judaism, and would have to do better”? Perhaps you intend a quibble over the exact definition of Judaism. I cannot undertake an attempt at such a definition here. But it’s obvious that the writers I cited aren’t looking for an exact definition either: they want to attack my religion, not to understand it. And if they’re swinging wild, that hardly makes the assault less offensive. Your inability to see this is as baffling as it is inexcusable.