Campus protests manifesting anti-Zionism as an organized political force became a test-case this year for claims regarding the correlation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As Dov Waxman said here at the Forward about the pro-Palestine-anti-Zionist demonstrations that dominated U.S. campuses in the wake of October 7 and the Hamas-Israel war, “If you don’t characterize the protests as antisemitic in any way then it’s easy to just characterize this as free speech and put the onus on those who wish to restrict it. Whereas, if you characterize it as antisemitism, then it becomes h ..read more

It is possible to be of one mind. This op-ed by Hanin Majadli at Ha’aretz is a Palestinian reflection on Gaza an Palestinian identity that mirrors the thoughts of so many of us this year who care about this place and people. The usual refrain on the Jewish left is to talk about 2 narratives, a Jewish one and a Palestinian one. But this year of total catastrophe for two peoples calls for people of good will to start figuring out how to thread Nakba-Memorial-Independence Day into a single narrative. The narrative starts in the bleak and utter grief. It compares to what she describes is the fate ..read more

“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