The Sermons I Needed to Hear Right Now
Listen to Ezra Klein’s interview with Rabbi Sharon Brous. You’ll thank me later.
No other podcast or article has gotten to the very feelings and tensions I’m feeling as someone who feels abandoned by the left, holding fierce compassion for Palestinians, and balancing the polarized tensions between the particular and the universal.
Especially in light of revelations that the Israeli security forces knew of Hamas’s plans over a year ago, you should also listen to Rabbi Brous’s Women Wage Peace sermon.
Also check out Ezra Klein’s The Best Primer I’ve Heard on Israel-Palestinian Peace Efforts with Aaron David Miller, who worked on peace negotiations for Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes.
Note: Both podcasts were recorded before any hostage releases and temporary ceasefire.
In addition to the podcast, here are a few other resources that got me thinking. I don’t agree with everything, but they got me thinking:
How Oct. 7 is reshaping the Zionist — and anti-Zionist — left in the US
“A principled Zionist left here in the U.S. will look and sound a lot more like the Zionist left in Israel. That means a basic paradigm of respecting the dignity and legitimacy of Jewish lives and Jewish self-determination while advancing the cause of Palestinian human, civil, and national rights in the same breath….The strengthening of the Zionist left within the messy mainstream is a major cause for optimism; it wards off the ferocity of the anti-Zionist left while simultaneously representing a vision for Jewish politics that blends integrity with belonging, the universal and the particular.”
'Most U.S. Jews Don't Want to Choose: They Can Stand With Israel, and Stand With Palestinians'
“You know, the LGBT world is so focused on non-binary thinking. We’ve rejected the binary about sexuality, we’ve rejected the binary about gender identity. And yet at the same time, so many in this world have adopted a very binary approach to Israel-Palestine issues.”
Thomas Friedman: Understanding the True Nature of the Hamas-Israel War
Israel and its U.S. backer cannot create a sustainable post-Hamas regional alliance or permanently stabilize Gaza while Netanyahu reigns as the prime minister of Israel.
Hamas is not as popular in Gaza as it seems. But Israel’s tactics will ensure their survival
Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 terror attacks has killed thousands of civilians, and may strengthen the terrorist group
Dear Progressive 'Freedom Fighters,' I'm a Palestinian Israeli. I Don't Need your 'Liberation'
“I have to wonder – how are your souls, which are supposedly oh-so-sensitive to human injustices, able to blithely contemplate the ethnic cleansing of Jews from this land? And does this also include kidnapping them, murdering their children, their women, their elderly? Decapitating and burning them? Or would you make some grand humane gesture and make do with simply deporting them all?”
Chuck Schumer: What American Jews Fear Most
“…when criticism against Israel is allowed to cross over into something different — into a denial of a Jewish state in any form, into open calls for the very destruction of Israel, while at the same time the self-determination of other peoples is exalted — that is an example of the discriminatory double standard Jewish people have always found so hurtful. And we worry about what could come next.”
Israel-Hamas War: What if There's Another Way to Fight Fundamentalism?
“The loss of compass and conscience by the progressive left and the wacky woke crowd is capable of normalizing even murder and the kidnapping of children.”
Israelis and Palestinians Can No Longer Avoid a Fateful Choice About Their Future
“In fact, the cycle of unresolved conflict dilemmas leading to life or death crises that raise even worse dilemmas characterizes the conflict more broadly. When Hamas rose to power in Gaza in 2007, Israel was faced with a tough choice: tolerate its presence, or take action to try to undermine and contain it? The first could endanger everyone, and the government chose the latter – tightening a closure over Gaza to make life unbearable there, hoping that Palestinian residents would topple Hamas in anger, or at least that the closure could contain the security threat. Neither worked; instead, Israel and Hamas fought a series of wars…”
"Many Jews, especially Jewish women, feel betrayed by their allies with whom they have protested, lobbied, marched and advocated in support of human rights regardless of the race, ethnicity, religion or nationality of the victims. Sadly, the morally indefensible effort to deflect blame from Hamas has now entered an even more egregious period of moral blindness, cruelty and, yes, antisemitism."
Let’s celebrate all freed hostages, not just Israeli citizens
“The Thai and Filipino workers released Friday are a reminder this war is a worldwide crisis”
Oakland Brainwashed: When Oakland’s city council considered condemning Hamas, Oct. 7 conspiracy theorists turned out en masse. Thinking of my former JCRC Bay Area colleagues and wider Bay Area community.
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