THE JEWS VERSUS JOE LIEBERMAN…..SEE QUOTES PLEASE
Puleez!!! I’m Jewish and I don’t like Lieberman’s lock step environmentalism and opposition to water “sports” for terrorists…..but these attacks on him are over the top!!!rsk
“Under the title “Monsters,†the author described Lieberman as “speaking from a bottomless pit of pain and sorrow, where he lives on the soul-vapors of crushed children.â€
““he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.†It is not enough, apparently, for a dissident Jew to be a baby-eating monster; he must also be a mass murderer.”
And from “rabbi ” Victor Navasky: “It’s a fact whether one regards Judaism as a religion or a culture. Whether one is Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform, whether one is a Zionist or an assimilationist, whether one is a Hasid or a heretic, what unites people of the Jewish faith, persuasion, or heritage is their internalization of the ethical imperative.”
Shalom Center, which has posted an open letter online that calls for Lieberman not to obstruct the health care reform bill “on Jewish grounds of pursuing justice & [sic] saving life.â€
by Benjamin KersteinTNL Features – Politics
The Jews vs. Joe LiebermanHating Senator Joseph Lieberman has been a favorite liberal pastime for years now, but it recently reached new heights of invective, as Lieberman emerged both as a strong supporter of the Afghanistan surge and then as a possible obstacle to passage of the health care reform bill in the United States Senate. American liberalism has, since the 1960s, displayed a remarkable capacity for devouring its own, but the spectacle of an entire political movement engaging in a campaign of feverish character assassination against one of its former vice-presidential candidates was truly remarkably to see. More fascinating still was how the cavalcade of abuse seemed to return again and again, as if by some gravitational force, to the issue of Lieberman’s Judaism, which renders this latest round of hatred deserving of broader consideration.
It must be said that most of the corrosive rhetoric employed in this regard was relatively unremarkable—consisting mostly of childish insults and vaguely comprehensible outbursts of liberal antisemitism. Probably the most remarkable was a combination of the two posted at the semi-literate website Wonkette. Under the title “Monsters,†the author described Lieberman as “speaking from a bottomless pit of pain and sorrow, where he lives on the soul-vapors of crushed children.â€
While one must assume that the author in question is both too stupid to be aware of his historical forebearsand too self-satisfied to care one way or the other, it is nonetheless noteworthy that liberalism has now achieved the remarkable distinction of becoming the only mainstream political movement in American history to accuse a Jew of murdering children for essentially cannibalistic purposes.
As if one blood libel were not enough, the Washington Post’s blogger Ezra Klein went one better by claiming that Lieberman’s stance on the health care bill meant that, “he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.†It is not enough, apparently, for a dissident Jew to be a baby-eating monster; he must also be a mass murderer.
Lest there be any doubt that Lieberman’s Judaism is very much the issue here, the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait stepped in to announce that “I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers,†to which Matthew Yglesias, the shallowest member of a liberal blogosphere defined by shallowness, added, “I’ve long held a related theory about [Jewish Republican] Eric Cantor,†before going on – presumably for the benefit of liberal antisemites – to carefully separate the bad Jews from the good Jews,
This reminds me that at a meeting this morning I pitched the idea of trying to do health reform in a secret Christmas morning session that only Jewish Senators would attend. There’s a whole bunch — Boxer, Cardin, Feingold, Feinstein, Franken, Kohl, Lautenberg, Levin, Lieberman, Sanders, Schumer, Specter, and Wyden. It’s a very progressive bunch and Lieberman could easily be outvoted.
Putting aside the issue of Mr. Yglesias’s morning meetings, which apparently defy satire itself, it is worth noting that this kind of liberal Jewish Uncle Tomism – a bizarre variation on the old shuck n’ jive routine in which liberal Jews bend over backwards and into knots in order to prove their loyalty to liberal gentiles – has become remarkably common. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting attack on Lieberman that has emerged from liberal circles, overwhelmingly from Jewish commentators, is the claim that Lieberman’s politics make him not merely a bad person but a bad Jew.
The most articulate expression of this point of view came from the unlikely person of Victor Navasky, a former editor of the Nation who has spent much of his career publishing screeds both anti-Zionist and antisemitic—most famously by Gore Vidal and Edward Said—as well as defending erudite traitor Alger Hiss to the very bitter end. Once called upon to comment on Lieberman, however, the man who helped pioneer the modern resurgence of liberal antisemitism appears to have suddenly gotten the old time religion.
Writing in Tablet magazine, Navasky claims that Lieberman’s stance on the health care bill is a “betrayal of his Jewish heritage.†In order to buttress this assertion, self-appointed rabbi Navasky informs us that
It’s a fact whether one regards Judaism as a religion or a culture. Whether one is Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform, whether one is a Zionist or an assimilationist, whether one is a Hasid or a heretic, what unites people of the Jewish faith, persuasion, or heritage is their internalization of the ethical imperative.
Exactly what this ethical imperative might be is never addressed, and the closest Navasky comes to explaining it is the brief admonition that the “moral heritage†of Judaism “includes wanting to take care of those less fortunate than themselves.â€
It is true that Judaism, like all the major faiths, admonishes its people to be charitable toward the poor. The idea, however, that Judaism contains a single “ethical imperative†is an absurdity. Judaism has a series of laws and commandments that one is supposed to follow not because they are ethical but because they are the revealed word of God. Out of these various commandments, along with the admonitions of the prophets and the aphorisms of the rabbis, one can—and many scholars, ancient and modern, have— attempt to ascertain or construct an ethics or a series of ethics. To claim, however, that there is any single “imperative†about which it can be said “this is Judaism†is simply too asinine and ignorant to be taken seriously. To fault Navasky for this would be too generous, however, since he clearly knows nothing about Judaism and has no real interest in it beyond his desire to defame Joe Lieberman and to appease liberal antisemites by assuring them that good Jews like himself have no intention of forgetting their place.
Far more egregious are the misrepresentations of Judaism undertaken by openly religious Jewish groups. The most interesting of these is probably a missive from something called the Shalom Center, which has posted an open letter online that calls for Lieberman not to obstruct the health care reform bill “on Jewish grounds of pursuing justice & [sic] saving life.†The letter holds that Lieberman’s stance on the health care bill “is not the behavior of an ‘observant’ Jew†because “‘Tzedek tzedek tirdof, justice justice shall you seek,’ is among the Torah’s most important commandments.â€
To get some minor issues out of the way: the statement above both mistranslates and misrepresents the Bible. Tirdof connotes “pursue†and not “seek,†the line is not a divine commandment but a prophetic admonition, and it is not from the Torah but rather the book of Isaiah; the Torah constituting only the first five books of the Jewish Bible. Needless to say, it is also somewhat ambiguous, given that people have many different ideas of what constitutes justice. Had the prophet said “health care reform, health care reform you must pursue,†there might be a point to be made; but he didn’t and there isn’t.
Having come this far, the entire missive promptly collapses into blatant emotional blackmail (while implying corruption on Lieberman’s part) declaring, “we believe your obligation of pekuach nefesh, saving life, saving the lives of the flesh-and-blood citizens of Connecticut… is an even higher obligation than you owe to your insurance-company constituents.â€
Putting aside the ugly implications of insinuating that a Jew is a tool of moneyed interests, this constitutes an even more blatant distortion of Jewish law. The letter claims that the concept of pikuah nefesh in rabbinic law requires Lieberman to save the lives of other people, and thus he is required by Jewish law to vote for the health care bill. Unfortunately, pikuah nefesh refers to something entirely different. It does not, as the letter implies, refer to one’s obligation to adhere to the Torah’s commandments, but rather to the circumstances under which one may break them. Put simply, it holds that any commandment—with a few notable exceptions—can be violated in order to save the life of another human being. Moreover, pikuah nefesh only applies in cases where a specific individual’s life is immediately threatened; for better or worse, the “flesh-and-blood citizens of Connecticut†do not qualify.
The argument in bad faith is, of course, something that post-1960s American liberalism has raised to an art form, but it is especially egregious in this case, because it not only defames, trivializes, and insults an ancient and much-abused people and their tradition, but it does so in the service of the most sickening kind of hypocrisy. Put simply, it involves Jewish liberals—individuals and groups—who are more than willing to collaborate with liberal antisemitism so long as it serves their purposes or allays their fears of becoming its targets; but are suspiciously prone to sounding like crazed fundamentalists when they are called upon to admonish their own. Ultimately, however, this is sadder than it is infuriating, because what it reveals is the profound ignorance of and alienation from Judaism suffered by Jewish-American liberals. It is the right of every Jew, of course, to be as close to or as far from Judaism, Jewish identity, and especially Jewish law as he chooses; but when he does not even know what he is close to or far from, we inevitably end up bearing witness to pathetic and empty exhortations such as these, which lack even the slender dignity of rebellion.
Benjamin Kerstein is Senior Writer for The New Ledger.
http://newledger.com/2010/02/the-jews-vs-joe-lieberman/
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