Is the Kotel a Jewish tourist trap?

Yesterday's article by URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie at jweekly.com, about recent events at the Kotel, got me thinking.

(For those who missed it, "Women of the Wall," a group of women who meet regularly to conduct services at the Kotel, ran into trouble last November when one of their group brought a Torah scroll and put on a tallit.  That ran afoul of a previously-issued High Court ruling that required the group to adhere to the regulations for behavior at the Kotel, regulations, of course, written by Orthodox Jews who are, shall we say, unsympathetic to such behavior.  You can read a contemporary account of what happened here.)

I get why some Orthodox Jews view it as a holy place.  It's the sole remnant of the Temple.  Insofar as some pray for the restoration/rebuilding of the Temple, it stands to reason that the Kotel is hugely significant.  (Why it's considered to be a synagogue for legal purposes is another matter...)  But for the rest of us Jews who do not hope and pray for the restoration of the Temple and the resumption of sacrifices...why do we make such a big deal out of it?  Yoffie writes, "Throughout the generations, the Kotel has been a source of inspiration to Jews everywhere. It is a concrete symbol of our love for Jerusalem and our common Jewish destiny. The Wall belongs to the entire Jewish people; it must be a place that unifies our people, where all Jews are welcomed and all are respected." 

Frankly, I don't buy it. 

As far as I can tell, the Kotel is a tangible symbol of what divides Jews, not unites them:  Those who long for the restoration of the Temple vs. those who don't; those who view it as a powerful religious site vs. those who view it as a powerful nationalist site.  It may be "a source of inspiration to Jews everywhere," but if the things we're being inspired to do are widely divergent, it's hard to see how it unifies us.

The first time I went to the Kotel was in High School, on Tisha B'av.  It was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my life.  I had planned for my semester in Israel for years, hoped and dreamed it would come...and when I saw it lit up at night, thousands of Ultra-Orthodox chanting Eicha, I wept on the stones for what seemed like hours.  By the end of my six months in Israel, it still felt special.  Several years later when I returned, it felt familiar, but there was something strange about being there -- I felt as if I was supposed to feel something, and the more I thought about it, the more I didn't know what was even appropriate to feel.  And, of course, I got hit up a dozen times for money every time I went to pray. 

And then it started to feel a bit idolatrous. 

In my opinion, one of the genius things about Judaism is its distinction between real holiness and its trappings.  Jews aren't supposed to have holy places -- anywhere 10 Jews come together to pray is perfectly holy enough, thank you.  We don't need art, or things, or monuments...just Torah and people.  The Kotel, though, seems to undo all of this, as if the remnants of the retaining wall of the Second Temple could ever be imbued with any holiness beyond that brought by the people who go there...and the Orthodox certainly have no monopoly on that.

Don't get me wrong, I think people have the absolute right to feel whatever they want to feel about the Kotel.  That's none of my business.  But from where I stand, it's the ultimate Jewish tourist trap:  That place to which we're all supposed to go, supposed to feel something...supposed to put our prayers on paper and stick them between the stones where they're supposed to get to God faster.  Where we get hit up for money from every other Black Hat in Jerusalem. 

Others can have a blast there if they must, but sorry to say I think it's baloney.

Hard to even know how to respond to such bile...

Last night, before turning in for bed, I turned to a 9:30pm Queens Public Television (QPTV) program on Channel 82 called (!) "Judaism."  (Based on the programming guide, it seems like a regular spot.)

I know, I know:  big mistake.

The entire 30 minute segment was of a single guy standing in front of a bookcase, ranting directly into the camera.  I really should have known better, but photos of Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein were visible over his right shoulder, and in light of my recent foolhardy attempt to take a dip into that pool of quicksand (here, here and here), I couldn't resist.

It's not that the guy (whose exact name I can't remember) said anything I haven't heard before:

• he likened the Maccabees revolt against the Seleucids and Hellenistic Jews in the 2nd Century BCE to Yigal Amir's assassination of Rabin:  in both cases, he claimed, "real Jews" did what was necessary to save Judaism from "assimilationist, evil Jews"
• he claimed that the "so-called Chassids or Chassidic Jews" do not have the spirit to keep Judaism alive
• he repeated many times -- actually screamed -- "No Arabs, No Terror!!!"
• he discussed how "Rabin HaRasha" ("Rabin the Evil One"), among other things, was responsible for murdering unarmed, innocent people during the Altalena affair; was an alcoholic and a "nicotine addict" (!); and "ate swine, pork" when he visited the U.S. and that, in sum, "what went around, came around," viz., his assassination

And so on.

As I said, nothing new here. 

But listening to this sad, angry little man, and thinking about what he said and what he represents, I became deeply sad...and very angry.

It makes me sad and angry that bigoted, fundamentalist nutjobs like him put on their kippas and spew this hateful, murderous bile...while insisting that Jews who eat pork are the evil ones.

It makes me sad and angry that many Jews think that it's only other religions that have crazies like this guy; "goyyim, sure, but not us."

It makes me sad and angry that my religion -- the beautiful, comforting and meaningful tradition without which I don't know who or what I would be -- gets perverted and twisted by the dirty hands and foul mouths of such sick people.

It makes me sad and angry that anyone could ever turn to a literal interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago as justification for inflicting pain and suffering on other people.

It makes me sad and angry that many American Jews turn a blind eye to this billious intolerance out of a misguided and misdirected "support for Israel."

It makes me sad and angry that so many people are so narrow-minded to think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "all the Arabs fault," and that if they would all just move to the Saudi desert, everything would be perfect.

It makes me sad and angry that saying these kinds of things leads others to think I'm a "self-hating Jew."

It makes me sad and angry that some Jews have spent so much of their time and effort to give the veneer of intellectual legitimacy to philosophies that only lead to the misery and suffering of other human beings.

It makes me sad and angry that I once thought there was something different and special about Jews...only to learn that we're just as screwed up, crazy and ignorant as everyone else in the world.

But listening to the broadcast reminded me of something else as well that I don't remember enough, and is part of the reason I'm writing this blog in the first place:  What other people say, think and do affects me as a Jew, but it does not -- it cannot -- define my Jewishness.  I too get to say what I feel, think and believe and in doing so play my part in shaping what it means to be Jewish.  To paraphrase Hillel,

If I do not play an active role in defining what Judaism means to me, who will do it?  But if all I do is think and write about myself, failing to speak out against the ignorant, the intolerant, and the fundamentalists who routinely arrogate to themselves the right to define authentic Jewishness, then what does that make me?  And if not now, when?

Rabin and Goldstein: One more time...

Because the comments section won't allow extended posts, I'm again forced to migrate comments from Rabin and Goldstein: Part Deux to this post.  (The original post to which I commented is Assassination of Rabin, Massacre by Goldstein, and my first post in response was here.)

I must admit to feeling a little gross debating people who defend murder and assassination, but I think it's important to engage their arguments, both to let them know that there are plenty of other Jews out there who disagree with them and to make sure that we liberal, progressive Jews get better at communicating the holes and flaws in their logic.  I believe that the vast majority of Jews ahbor and condemn the assassination of Rabin and Goldstein's murderous rampage.  And that, at least, gives me hope.

See my responses, indented below...

Rabin and Golstein: Part Deux

An anonymouns reader posted two comments about my response to my previous posting on Rabin and Goldstein.  His comments in their entirety, and my interlineated, responses, are below.  (They wouldn't fit into the comments section!)

Anonymous said...

I am a reader of Michael's blog.

Most of what you wrote here is tripe. But I will comment on a few very grievous errors.

Michael stated: "As for Rabin, I might add that by his own admission, he was directly responsible for the murder of all those aboard the Altalena. As related by Moshe Feiglin, Rabin proudly admitted that he was responsible for the Haganah's murder of those aboard the Altalena, because it was carrying weapons for the rival Irgun group."

He then added a few sentences of editorial and you responded by saying: "You really have a poor, biased grasp of Israeli history if this is what you honestly think."

You react here very emotionally, but without basis in fact. Michael has stated facts about what occurred, and Rabin's behavior gloating about what had occurred. Yes, Rabin was the trigger-man who fired on that ship while its white flag was raised and survivors were trying to swim (for their lives) to shore. And yes he boasted in front of foreign officials about having done so (while probably drunk).

• It isn't surprising to me that some people, obviously yourself included, would simply brush aside the content of my arguments with insult rather than engage them. That's fine. It doesn't make me wrong.
  
• It's rather ironic for your to accuse me of reacting emotionally to Michael's account of the Altalena affair given the latter's calling Rabin a murderer for carrying out military orders. In any case, his focusing on what Rabin may or may not have said while ignoring the political-military-historical context in which the event occurred, is disingenuous and betrays a lack of concern with history. By the way, I've done some research on Moshe Feiglin. While I'll keep my powder dry for right now, let me just say that until someone can provide me with specific citations to things he has written that I can personally and independently verify, I'm not going to comment on what he may or may not have written, and whether or not what he has written has any scholarly merit.

The only problem with what Michael wrote was that the ship was not merely carrying arms for the Irgun, but the arms were for the entire armed forces of Israel under the Central command of Ben Gurion. Only a portion of these arms were to be delivered to the Irgun unit stationed in Jerusalem protecting the Old City, while the rest were to be apportioned by the central command to various army units, which were interspersed with Irgun members, (and Lechi members) all throughout the land of Israel. The historical fact is that the Irgun had already agreed to integrate its units within the unified army of Israel, and that administrative process was already underway. And there was an arrangement for how the arms would be allocated, even though it turned out that Ben Gurion had different plans. Regardless of that, Begin never even once suggested that all arms should go only to "Irgunists" nor did he expect that they would operate autonomously within (or without) the army.

In any case, the fact remains that Rabin jumped at the opportunity to fire on the surrendering and friendly ship while other soldiers balked at the fratricidal request. It certainly catapulted Rabin's military and political career. Those in the ship who were fired on, who were not murdered.... Enlisted in the army! (Like they had planned to do since the ship set sail). Sometimes facts can be uncomfortable, but that does not make them go away.

• Only unserious historians ever assert things like "The historical fact is that…" Unless you were there, you don't know with certainty what happened. If you want to debate whether or not Ben Gurion was justified in believing that Begin intended to establish "an army within an army," that is a debate we can have, though I must say I'm a bit "reluctant" to have that debate with someone who refers to my arguments as, what was your word, "tripe."
  
• But let's cut to the chase: Even if I were to grant everything you say here (which I do not), it doesn't in any way whatsoever justify Rabin's assassination. Let's recall what Michael originally posted:
  
  

  So Rabin was a common petty murderer, by his own explicit and proud admission. The only argument against assassinating him, then, is that practically, it did no good. Murdering him only made him a martyr and strengthened his cause. But were it not for this pragmatic consideration...
  
  Rabin's Oslo was directly responsible for Goldstein's having to do what he did. In fact, we could say that Rabin is guilty of the deaths Goldstein caused.
  

  If you want to talk about evil, twisted logic, this is it.
  

December 19, 2009 5:45 PM

Anonymous said...

One more issue.

Where you wrote what Goldstein "should have done."

I want to highlight the part that says "Just like Israel did in 1967" because that does not fit with what you listed. Particularly "(c) employed force proportionate to the scope of provocation" and "(b) waited until the attack was immanent – not "possible" or "likely" but literally on the way;"

Israel did not wait until the attack was on its way. It was indeed going to come within days, and it was very much imminent, but it had not yet begun when Israel pre-emptively struck. And I feel they were justified in pre-emptively striking, but let us not call it anything else. "On the way" implies it had already begun. And it had not.

• You're right; I was not as clear here as I could have been. The key distinction in security studies is between "necessary," "preemptive," and "preventive" actions. Concerning the first, Daniel Webster wrote that certain "immanent and unambiguous danger[s] to the state’s territory, persons or possessions" inherently demand "a necessity of self-defence…instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." The key here is the immediacy of the time frame; enemy tanks come over the border, and in a moment, the generals must order troops into battle or the state will be destroyed. "Preemptive" action, to simplify, is when you have credible evidence that an attack is immanent and so you strike first. There is time to deliberate over how to respond, but there is little or no question that an attack is coming. This is what Israel (arguably) did in 1967. "Preventive" action, on the other hand, is when attack is not immanent, but the state, believing that it may come at some unknown point in the future, it is better to attack now than wait. This is what Germany did to start WWI.

And in the sense of it being imminent, the massacre by Arabs in Hevron certainly was imminent, as well. That is, if you had seen the Hamas pamphlets that were distributed to scare the Jews, taunting them with a pending massacre, and if you believe what the IDF described to Goldstein when they told him to prepare for massive casualties. So in that way, there was a similarity perhaps with the Arab intended attack on Israel in 1967 because it was indeed imminent. That certainly doesn't help your case.

• In the first place, words never constitute evidence of immanent attack; only actions do. Second, let's be super clear here about what you're saying: You say that Goldstein "believed" a massacre was in the works, and so acted preemptively to stop it. In order to justify this claim, you'd have to know that (a) Goldstein had credible information that a specific group of individuals was preparing to carry out an attack; and (b) Goldstein had reason to believe that the specific preemptive actions he planned to take would prevent this immanent attack. Neither of these things held true. At best (and highly unlikely), Goldstein killed a random bunch of people in the hopes that this would deter others from attacking. At worst (much more likely), he murdered a bunch of innocent people because he was a sick, angry man. In any case, your logic - "an individual who thinks he knows that an attack is immanent is justified in killing whomever he wants in order to do what he thinks will stop it" – opens the floodgates to pretty much every horror known to man. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want Palestinians to operate using this logic.

As to part c "(c) employed force proportionate to the scope of provocation"

This is simply ludicrous. Did Israel do that in 1967? It will depend on how you characterize the Arab intentions there. For simplicity's sake let's take for granted that the Arabs wanted to wipe out the entire Jewish armed forces, air force, and drive all the remaining Jews into the sea (as Nasser had been promising in his broadcasts/diatribes). In that case, Israel did not even nearly reach the level of proportionality of that which was intended by the enemy side. They captured territory with strategic and security significance, and they destroyed the enemy's air force over night, but where did they massacre all of Egypt and take over entire countries? That was not proportionate, but it was decisive and victorious nonetheless.

• Without getting into a longer debate over Israeli decision-making in the lead-up to the 1967 war, and to simplify things a bit, Israel's actions were proportionate because they did what was necessary to prevent the expected attack, and no more. What mattered was not the obviously exaggerated threats coming out of Cairo, Damascus and Amman; what mattered was Israel's assessment of their military capabilities, which certainly didn't match their heated rhetoric. Regardless of what the Israeli government was saying publicly, the archival record makes it quite clear that they didn't for a second fear military defeat. The question that preoccupied them was whether and under what specific conditions launching a preemptive strike would be viewed favorably by the U.S. In the event, they did what was necessary to prevent airstrikes against civilian populations. If I follow your logic, you'd probably say Israel would be justified in dropping the bomb on Tehran because Ahmadinejad has on a couple of occasions verbally threatened to wipe out Israel. That would, of course, be insane. But don't confuse talk with action.

But what is ludicrous about the statement of yours centers around 2 issues. 1. Who says a person (or nation in this case) must react proportionately to the level of provocation? Is this some unknown handbook of Aristotle that demands this as an ethic of warfare? There is no such underlying rule governing any army or any nation in its defense and offense against enemy entities. There is no country which abides by such an overriding rule except those who self-impose it, for unknown reasons (Israel is one of those countries in many cases). As this does not regulate nations, neither does it regulate the interactions of individuals.

• These are good questions. I'd refer you in the first place to the seminal work on the question, Just and Unjust Wars, by Michael Waltzer. In the most basic sense, because the international system is anarchic (i.e., there is no overarching world government that can legitimately tell states what to do and enforce their demands), there's no one in a position to tell any person or state what to do. On the other hand, the U.N. charter, along with a slew of international conventions and agreements, has pretty much enshrined the notion that civilized nations can and should place limits on their conduct of war. The indiscriminate killing of civilians, for example, is a major no-no. Look at the international reaction to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Regardless of one's opinions about Saddam's regime, or the relative merits of the ruling clique in Kuwait, I think we can all agree that invading your neighbors is not a legitimate means of conflict resolution. This isn't to say that some situations aren't complicated; the point is that states, in word and deed, uphold certain standards of behavior most of the time, even when doing so might be in their immediate, narrowly-defined self interest. The reason Israel doesn't go around dropping atomic bombs on countries it doesn't like isn't because it's a "better" nation than the U.S.; it's because doing so would, in the big picture, not improve Israeli security. That is, it's not in Israel's interests. Isn't this obvious?

But issue #2 renders the above discussion moot. How can you say what is "proportionate" or not "proportionate" about an intended pogrom on an entire community of Jews? Can you possibly sit here and proclaim to know exactly the extent of the force the Arabs intended to use, how much violence they wished to employ, how many victims they desired to claim, but where they would draw the line and limit themselves in such a barbaric orgy of murder and pillaging as they have done to our people so many times? Of course you cannot know this, and you cannot make such claims. For all you know the Arabs may have murdered 100 people God forbid. In such a case, you argue yourself into a corner because Goldstein wasn't just lacking in proportionality, it was too polite a response!

• I absolutely can't "sit here and proclaim to know exactly the extent of the force the Arabs intended to use, how much violence they wished to employ, how many victims they desired to claim." Who said I could? But I say again, by your logic, anyone who gets it into his head that they do know such things is justified in pretty much killing anyone they wish. By your logic, the Palestinians of Hebron would have been justified in striking Kiryat Arba first, in an attempt to preempt Goldstein's attack. Where does it end?
  
  But, as is often the case, the evidence I need is right in front of us: Either I have to believe that Goldstein was some special man who alone was aware of an allegedly immanent attack or, rather, that he was a sick, crazy man who went postal. Why was he the only one to see the obviousness of the impending attack? If the evidence was so clear, so overwhelming, then why did he act alone? If there were others who saw an attack as immanent, why was he the only one to step into the mosque? Were the rest of them cowards? (And please, no conspiracy theories here.)
  
  I submit that what Goldstein did was simple: he murdered 29 innocent people in cold blood.

Shall we look at the Arabs' massacre of the Jewish Hevron community of 1929 as the precedent? Should that establish a hypothetical "proportionality" of Arab pogrom/massacre carnage? If so, Goldstein's behavior was surely too polite.

• No, I'm not going to look at something that happened 60 years ago as a way to justify murder today. And neither should you.

Your logic is greatly lacking here.

December 19, 2009 6:13 PM

Assumptions, Justifications and the Origins of Evil: The Assassination of Rabin and Goldstein's Massacre

When I first cast my cyberweb out into the blogosphere, one of the blogs I came across was "My Random Diatribes" at http://michaelmakovi.blogspot.com/.

A couple of days ago, he put up a post that caught my attention: Assassination of Rabin, Massacre by Goldstein.  I was strongly disturbed by what I read there and commented as such; the author responded, and his response was even more disturbing to me.

Normally I would have posted another comment on his blog, but I felt so strongly about what I wanted to say -- some of which is the product of my own thinking about Arab-Israeli issues over the past 20 years -- that I wanted to give it a home on my blog.  I will have a lot more to say about Israel and the Palestinians in the weeks and months to come, but this, well I couldn't not say something to this.

I recommend you read his post in its entirety before reading my interlineated response below.