“Our heart a prisoner in Gaza” with no political horizon and no foreseeable way out of this terrible war and civilian suffering. Under the pall of a deep collective political and moral crisis, Passover this year was unlike any other in recent memory. “Redemption” is a bitter word that sticks in the throat. Facing implacable and wicked enemies, the ones who rise up to destroy them, the people in Israel are led by callous political leaders who, in their own wickedness, abandon them to perpetual war. In Israel, they are the sovereign co-creators of the ugly and narrow-place or mitzrayim, the dun ..read more

Our Heart is a Prisoner in Gaza ..read more

“This house no longer exists….The house went up in flames on October 7 in Hamas’ attack on Be’eri. I went over family photos and chose to focus on a picture of life that deliberately perpetuates the past – the house before the destruction and obliteration…All the people in the painting are well,” she says. “The house in the painting was destroyed, but Sahar is in good condition and the whole family has been staying since the massacre at a hotel on the Dead Sea.” [Tigist Yoseph Ron’s is winner of the Haim Shiff Prize for figurative-realistic art for 2019. You can find her work featured here a ..read more

I’m getting all of this from Marc Ponte, a public historian researching 17th century migration and slavery in Amsterdam, Brazil and Suriname. Ponte shared a wonderful twitter thread about the performance of Hester, of Verloosing der jooden by Johanne Serwouters, performed almost annually at the Amsterdam Schowburg starting in 1659. Before that the Purim story was performed at improvised theaters in warehouses and cellars in the city’s Jewish neighborhood. Ponte found a piece of historical evidence from the city’s notarial department. The case involved the appeal of 4 Jews appealing against an ..read more

“To blame the victims for their own suffering is simply an easy way to distance oneself from them. Blaming the victims is just like idealizing them—at best superfluous, perhaps a sign of the difficulty of facing cruelty at all. It is, however, not only undignified to idealize political victims; it is also very dangerous. One of our political actualities is that the victims of political torture and injustice are often no better than their tormentors. They are only waiting to change places with the latter. Of course, if one puts cruelty first this makes no difference. It does not matter whethe ..read more

The last many months have been a demoralizing and disorienting nightmare, a nauseating disequilibrium for Israel and Palestine, and for anyone who cares about the people who live there and the violence they suffer. The people of Israel and Palestine have been dragged by their leaders into a deep and destabilizing miasma of shock and disbelief, grief and rage with no end in sight beyond death and destruction. In place of political leadership, hollow slogans of “resistance” and “total victory” paper over a narrow and debilitating horizon of perpetual war. No thought and no care are given to pro ..read more

Philosophers and other theorists distinguish between the wide-open, harsh infinity of space as opposed to the buffered configuration of being in place. This structural distinction conforms also to digital space and place. Digital space is full of malevolent chaos. It is a miserable universe, out of joint, subject to malevolent beings who wish you emotional and even physical harm. In contrast to digital space, there is the place of digital home. One keeps and maintains digital home with and against the omniscience of the algorithm. A digital home creates a sense of place in the larger digital ..read more

Moral shock constellates into a complex of disbelief, rage, and grief. In response to human violence, it is both an instinctive and normative motor of human action, one that consumes attention and commands action. As a structure of affect, moral shock, in and of itself, is blind; on its own, it determines nothing and comprehends less. It is a brute fact. For its part, the “political” is not the same as moral shock. Political are a distinct and narrow but not separate set of questions regarding action and attribution. What is the cause of an action and what is its end-purpose? Who are the agen ..read more

Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University organized three vigils relating to October 7 and the Hamas Israel war, responding to the staggering loss of human life. A few other protests have been more narrowly circumscribed as political. I’m sharing here a letter to the editor I wrote that was published here at the Daily Orange. I would not have responded necessarily except for two things. The first was that I wanted to reflect on the genuine insistence by activists that the protests against Israel (the charge of genocide, calls to liberate Palestine from “the River to the Sea,” and that justify ..read more

President Biden delivered a powerful speech outlining support for Israel in this war against the Hamas terror regime in Gaza. The 12 minute speech, which you can read here was unlike anything said by anyone in the current government in Israel. First, because the government in Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the weakest and most ineffectual government in the history of the country. The government under his leadership has led the country into the worse military fiasco suffered by the State in half a century. Second and not incidentally, this government is the ..read more