While often appalled by your relentless extremist animus for our Israeli leadership and our loyal Zionist community here, I chose not to respond…until today. Letter.
I write from my mamad (safe room) in southern Jerusalem concerning your recent Truah email. Perhaps you penned that missive from your lovely Washington Heights residence or from your well-appointed Truah suite on 37th and 8th Ave. Having grown up and gone to school in Washington Heights as well as having passed your offices on my way to countless Ranger games at Madison Square Garden before making aliyah in 2007, I can well appreciate the enriched Manhattan lived experience you and your family enjoy and, with God’s help, will continue to enjoy until 120.
(We also share a certain Morningside Heights alma mater of which I am deeply ashamed of, but that’s a subject for another conversation.)
As the former Zionist Organization of America’s Israel director, I suspect we do not share even remotely similar views regarding the conflict in the Middle East. Despite that I continue to closely follow Truah, Partners for a Progressive Israel, New Israel Fund and a host of other like-minded organizations in an attempt to understand what informs and animates the progressive Jewish Left.
A few months ago while visiting my kids in New York I attended an event at Congregation Bnai Yeshurun on the Upper West Side at which you, a conservative rabbi, and humanistic non-denominational Rabbi Avi Dabush, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, spoke. I wonder. Have you or any of your colleagues made a similar attempt to attend events from my “camp” in order to better understand our reality? Me thinks not, but I would be ecstatic to be proven wrong.
While often appalled by your relentless extremist animus for our Israeli leadership and our loyal Zionist community here, I chose not to respond…until today.
You wrote in boldface: “Both Iran and Israel are governed by people who don’t care about their own citizens and who prefer military escalation to seeking alternate pathways to safety.”
You literally drew an immoral equivalency between the ayatollahs in Tehran and Israel’s leaders in Jerusalem. That is unconscionable! Your cynical attempt to also draw a parallel of common Iranian and Israeli humanity does not mitigate the contemptibility of your comparison and needs to be called out and condemned in the most unequivocal terms.
Moreover, your reflexive condemnation of the US and Israel backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund before the IDF had an opportunity to investigate the alleged 34 deaths at a food distribution center as reported by the Gaza (read: Hamas) Health Ministry, suggests a readiness to condemn us for anything and everything under the sun, perhaps just so you can brand yourself with your progressive cohort before they reach the DONATE button at the end of your email.
Of course, the shooting turned out not to have happened at the food center, which is giving millions of meals to Gazans directly without having them stolen by Hamas. The terrorists, about half a kilometer away, shot at those coming for food, and the IDF shot at the terrorists.
Haven’t you learned anything since the Al Ahli Hospital blood libel and all the subsequent grotesque distortions that ultimately had to be walked back by the MSM and even anti-Israel UN agencies? And where is your voice condemning Iran for shooting a missile that hit an Israeli hospital – and claims to be proud of it?
I call upon the Conference of Presidents and its constituent organizations, including your very own Conservative Movement’s Merkaz USA and Rabbinical Assembly to censure you and to demand a full retraction.
To end on a more positive note, my prescriptive for you is as follows:
1. Shortly after October 7, two amazing women in my neighborhood organized a weekly Thursday trip to various hard hit kibbutzim and moshavim in the Gaza Envelope area to help with their harvests because almost all their agricultural workers were either killed or left. The equally amazing food rescue organization, Leket Israel, graciously agreed to sponsor our weekly bus.
We would love it if you would join our 35+ regular volunteers who come from every walk of Israeli political and religious life. It matters not a wit to those of us on the right that we are helping communities that prior to October 7 would have put themselves squarely in your Labor/Meretz camp.
Every week the farmer in charge — often also a member of the local security team — instructs us about what and how to harvest. They also brief us on how they and their communities were impacted by October 7. Some of their own personal stories of courage and sacrifice in the face of pure Hamas evil are truly inspiring. It would also be instructive for you to hear from them and their neighbors how their worldviews, especially vis-a-vis their neighbors to the west, have changed since October 7.
2. If you are not up to meeting us at 6am, we can gladly set you up with babysitting and sundry other tasks assisting miluimnikim (reservists) wives and widows who have been coping alone for months.
To put a Truah twist on Sir Thomas Browne’s 1642 aphorism — Social Justice and Human Rights begin at home.
Jeff Daube lives in Jerusalem and is the former Zionist Organization of America’s Israel director.
