The Debate Link

For starters, it's my blog's birthday! It is a whopping 25 years old today, with over 7,400 posts. That's a lot of writing!

In addition, Nathaniel turns five months old today. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, though -- he's 20 and a half pounds and over 27 inches long! We've already got him in nine-month old clothing, and he stretches some of that.

And of course, related to the above, it is my very first Father's Day as a father. I am so lucky to have the best baby in the world, co-parented by the best wife in the world.

I cannot express how lucky, grateful, and blessed I feel.

My least favorite part of the Passover Seder, by far, is the recitation of the Ten Plagues. It is tradition to spill a drop of wine for each plague, to acknowledge the suffering of the Egyptians and how it lessens our own joy at liberation.

For nine of the ten plagues, I'd consider this sufficient. For the Tenth Plague -- death of the first born -- I never have. A single drop of wine as a response to dead children is woefully, horrifyingly grotesque; even when those deaths are in pursuit of the most noble cause of liberation from slavery (though I continue to assert that, as told in the Passover tale, the Tenth Plague was absolutely unnecessary -- it was the Lord who "hardened Pharoah's heart" and precluded an earlier resolution). 

Again, this is something I've believed for many, many years (the above-linked post is from 2007). But it is all the more resonant right now. When one thinks of the Israeli children butchered on October 7, or those murdered in Hamas captivity, or the Palestinian children torn asunder by bombs, or dying in want of adequate nutrition or medical care -- what kind of holiday treats such horrors as a literal drop in the bucket? How can we think that way?

Here, too, the lesson is that such atrocities must not be downplayed, in particular downplayed on the grounds that some overarching "cause" behind them is just; here, too, the lesson also is that what is presented as "necessary" rarely actually is.

Next year without murdered children.

I'm celebrating the ringing in of 2023 in two main ways:

(1) We're hosting a group of my college friends at my house (this group has met for new year's every year since graduation).

(2) I'm taking my laptop in for repairs, since it overheats constantly even when doing comparatively minor tasks, has done so since basically the day I bought it, and I want to get it fixed while it's still under warranty.

The latter, I imagine, means I will be without this laptop for at least a few weeks. It's possible I get a cheap netbook to tide me over. But it's possible I'll be computer-free for a little while. I can scarcely think of anything scarier (cornea surgery? Definitely not).

So if I am quieter around these parts through the beginning of the new year, that might be why. Regardless, I hope you have a happy and healthy new year, one full of all the best milestones and celebrations.

How do I handle holiday greetings as a Jew? Here's the order of operations:

• If you say "happy holidays" to me and I don't know you or what you celebrate, then I say "happy holidays" to you in return.
• If I know you're Jewish, I say "happy Chanukah."
• If you wish me "Merry Christmas" and you don't know I'm Jewish, then I say "happy holidays."
• If you wish me "Merry Christmas" and you do know I'm Jewish, or if you say "merry Christmas" in any way that suggests that doing so is your way of striking back against PC liberal elites, then I say "happy Chanukah."
• Finally, if I know you celebrate Christmas but you nonetheless wish me "happy Chanukah" because you know that's what I celebrate, then I will wish you a "merry Christmas" in return as that's what you celebrate.

Today, my wife and I continued the process of moving into our new home -- the "American dream". We also watched the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating contest, ate a slice of apple pie, and mourned a mass shooting.

Hard to imagine a more American day than that.

I'm off to the Florida panhandle to spend time with my in-laws -- then back to California where my college buddies will come to me for New Year's!

Whatever you're celebrating this season (Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus ....), I hope it is suitably celebratory.

It's been a hellacious semester for me -- I massively overcommitted, and have been traveling nearly every week for the past month or so. But we're approaching the end of the tunnel. This weekend I'm flying to Chicago for a conference, and then I have one more trip scheduled after that, and then I should be pretty well clear until Winter Break.

I was home this year for the high holidays, which is always nice -- I got to see old friends, and my family hosts a Rosh Hashanah luncheon which is a highlight of the Bethesda social season.

Each year at Yom Kippur, between the morning and the afternoon services, my synagogue hosts a panel discussion with some foreign policy luminaries (it is a DC-area congregation) who give their thoughts on various international issues afflicting the world today. Israel is obviously typically discussed, but it's not the only topic -- the Kurds, Russia, and China were high on the agenda this year as well. It's mostly a way to keep our minds distracted from our stomachs as the fast rolls on, but it's still interesting nonetheless.

Anyway, this year I got to ask a question to the panel, and here's what I said (paraphrased -- I don't remember the exact words):

When I was growing up (and well into my adulthood) it was an article of faith in the Jewish community that if a fair deal between the Israelis and Palestinians was put on the table -- one that created a viable, democratic state with reasonable borders for both an Israel and a Palestine -- Israel would accept it, while Palestine would have to be induced or pressured into accepting it. Today, I don't think that assumption can be taken for granted, and we need to reckon with the possibility that Israel will have to be induced or pressured into accepting a fair deal as well.

My question is what sorts of inducements or pressures on the Israeli government are viable and appropriate to achieve this end? It seems boycotts are out -- fine. But when I talk to my students at Berkeley about BDS, many of them are receptive to the concerns the Jewish community has about boycotts, but then they ask me "okay, I hear you, but if not that, then what?" What are the alternative modes of pressure or inducement -- either from the U.S. government, or from American Jewish institutions -- that should be on the table?

I asked this question because it's one I'm genuinely curious about. I tell all of you that I asked this question because I think there is a lesson in how it was received, when asked at a synagogue, on the high holidays.

On the one hand, pages and pages of internet analysis tell me that asking this question, at a synagogue, on the high holidays!, should have gotten me run out of my congregation on a rail. But I would have been very surprised had that happen, and indeed that didn't happen. To the contrary, the question was appreciated; several congregants (including one staffer at the Israeli embassy -- again, DC-area congregation) came up to me afterwards to say they thought it was an important question and they were glad I asked it.

Not for the first time, I'm left wondering whether my home congregation is just very, very atypical in the Jewish community. Because as much as I read about "unquestioning support" this and "silencing" that, my experience continues to be that so long as you're not a gratuitous provocateur people in my Jewish spaces -- growing up and today -- are receptive to and willing to grapple with hard, probing, and challenge questions on matters that are often portrayed as communal third rails. So either my circle of Jewish community is highly anomalous -- or maybe we should think twice about some of the narratives we spread about collective Jewish intransigence around these issues.

On the other hand, and lest I brag too much about my community's willingness to dive into the hardest questions fearlessly and without flinching -- well, the panelists didn't give a straight answer to the actual question I asked. They were quite explicit that Israel is rolling down a one-state annexationist path and that this is not acceptable, that it's sort of all hands on deck in insisting that this isn't acceptable, and that we in the Jewish community need to emphasize the dangers of one-stateism at every available opportunity -- which was a bracing and important message, to be sure. But that litany, welcome as it was, didn't actually answer my question about "viable/valid forms of inducement and pressure on the Israeli government."

On the other, other hand, the congregants I talked to later had no trouble coming up with ideas on that score -- ranging from conditioning American aid to Israel to supporting more pointed UN security council resolutions on issues like the settlements and occupations. This conversation came with no fulminations, no recriminations, no screaming about how I was a self-hating Jew. Just a thoughtful, considered discussion.

So take from all of that what you will.

Ramadan has begun, and with it a month of daytime fasting. Speaking as a Jew, that doesn't sound fun (I only fast for one day -- during Yom Kippur -- but we go for the full 24 hours). But at least at night you can eat and drunk what you want.

Just watch out for fizzy drinks, apparently:

A man speaking in Urdu talks about the importance of not having fizzy drinks to open your fast.

He goes on to say cold and fizzy drinks can have a negative effect on your long-term health and could even cause death.

But then a link is made to the fact that many of the major fizzy drinks companies are owned and run by Jews. The speaker also claims that according to the Quran, Muslims are not permitted to have relations or friendships with Jews in any way.

It further adds that during the month of Ramadan they have ‘purposely planned’ to increase the gas content in fizzy drinks so whoever consumes them will be affected.

I don't know much about the health effects of fizzy drinks -- though to the extent they're unhealthy I suspect it's the sugar more than the carbonation that's doing the work, so increasing the gas content seems like more of an annoyance than a devious plot.

But then again, I rarely consume fizzy drinks -- an admission which in the antisemitic imagination probably ranks right up there with saying that I skipped work in New York on 9/11. So take my advice with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if you're Muslim and fasting this month, I hope it is an easy one. And if you do like to break fast with a soda, I'm pretty sure you're in the clear.

Whether you march, or write, or sit in or stand up or speak out, here's wishing a great MLK day to all those putting in the work to making our society more fair, more just, more equitable, and more egalitarian than it was yesterday.

This feels as good as any for this Fourth of July:

There’s an argument floating around that the evils of American hegemonic practice, especially during the Cold War, means that we should not be concerned about Trump’s efforts to dismantle the infrastructure of US power. There are a number of problems with this claim. One is that there are different ways to transition away from American hegemony. Washington can pursue a policy of judicious retrenchment. Another is to pursue a more progressive, multilateral order to address global commons problems and reduce the chances of great-power conflict. These, and other strategies for managing hegemonic decline are going to be much more difficult if Trump continues on his current path. 

A related problem also lies in the specifics of where Trumpism aims to take the United States: ethnonationalism, support for authoritarian regimes, and the like. America’s current human-rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers are indicative of a shift toward “illiberal hegemony“: one less concerned with generating international goods, trying to reduce civilian casualties during military operations, and so forth. You don’t have to have a pollyannaish view of American international affairs to recognize that US foreign policy can get much, much worse. We’ve been there and done that. 

Why am I talking about this? Because we need to also consider the alternatives. If domestic practice is any guide—and we have reasons to think that it is—then the wane of liberal order is unlikely to usher in a more benign world. It’s not only the concentration camps in the United States that should worry us.

We are witnessing a global decline of the liberal order. In the United States, in Europe, in India, in the Philippines, in Israel, in Turkey, and obviously in many more places where liberalism barely had a toehold to begin with.

I'm not sure how it can be reversed. I'm not sure if it can be reversed. I am sure that I do not trust any of the alternatives to "usher in a more benign world".

Richard Rorty once remarked that there is no knockout philosophical argument that can compel people to be liberal if we don't want to or don't agree to. It'd just be "sad" if we don't. We'd miss out on many occasions for human happiness and flourishing, and unnecessarily provide for much more suffering and misery than is necessary. But there's nothing written into the fabric of human history that demands that we avoid the sadder choices.

Off to the final leg of our holiday travels: Cambridge, Massachusetts, for an annual New Year's Celebration with some of my best college buddies. Since this is 2016, we need to catch a 6:15 AM (4:15 AM Pacific) airport shuttle to travel hundreds of miles away from where we went to college (Owatonna is just a hop, skip, and jump away from Carleton). But so it goes.

Quite possible this is my sign-off for the year. Soon 2016's reign of terror will close, and 2017 can bring in a new reign of terror all its own. In any event, I hope everyone's celebrations are fun and safe, and if I don't write again, see you on the flipside!

In the future, when skyscrapers yield to spacescrapers that reach out into the heavens, there will be no 2016th floor.

— David Schraub (@schraubd) December 29, 2016

Greetings from Owatonna, Minnesota, where I am celebrating Christmas with my girlfriend's family. Of course, for many of you this post is a sheer impossibility, as we all know that liberals (especially Berkeley liberals) never venture and in fact are incapable of surviving outside of our "bubble", and Steele County went for Trump 58/33.

Yet here I am, alive, safe, sound, and perfectly content. It's almost like that narrative was ridiculous on its face (admittedly, the incredible mashed potatoes that were served with dinner tonight are certainly doing their fair share to help with the "content" part, though perhaps not the "alive" part).

Hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season, and best wishes that 2017 somehow is at least slightly better from the flaming trainwreck that has been 2016.

The Wednesday after election day, I woke up to an email announcing that an article I submitted -- my first ever political theory piece -- had gotten a "revise and resubmit" request.

It was that kind of year: Decent, except for the part where America seems on the brink of immolating itself. It was tough to even email my graduate advisors with the "good" news that day: "So, I know that we're all reeling from America electing a proto-fascist, but a paper I wrote three months ago was officially not-rejected (yet)!"

I'm thankful, nonetheless, for the parts of my year which were very good. On a professional level, my writing got more attention. I gave my first invited talk, and developed great new contacts with various elements of the institutional Jewish community. Both the key figures I wanted to serve on my dissertation committee agreed to do so.

On a personal level, I'm also thankful for having an incredible family (with whom I'm currently enjoying a "non-traditional" Las Vegas Thanksgiving), an amazing girlfriend who has stolen the show at both(!) of her two jobs, and great friends both in Berkeley and around the country.

Finally, I'm thankful because I'm well aware of how lucky I am. I'm financially secure. I'm ensconced at an incredible university. I'm no DC power broker, but I "know-people-who-know-people". While things aren't the best for people like me at Berkeley, they're by no means the worst. Knowing people -- brilliant scholars and great human beings -- who are, for example, undocumented keeps things in perspective. And -- keeping on the selfish theme -- my life is better because they're in my life. So I'm thankful for that too.

The next few years could go all manner of different ways. They could just be generically bad, in the same way that having a conservative President tends to be usually be pretty bad. They could be truly appalling, in the same way that the grotesque erosion of basic liberal and democratic norms -- far beyond the normal liberal/conservative divide -- we've witnessed over the past year tends to yield appalling results.

But I'm thankful that -- for the moment, at least -- I still have the wherewithal and the motivation to keep speaking out for what I believe in, and I deeply, deeply believe in both liberalism and democracy. I hope you still do too. And in seeking to keep that spark of liberty and self-governance alive, everybody does their part in their own way. Some march. Some write letters. Some organize. I write.

We all have our part to do. Whether we elect to do it or not is a choice we make every day. But I'll try to keep making a better choice today than I made yesterday, and I hope you will try to do so too. It's never too late to be a little kinder, a little more empathic, a little more responsible, a little more welcoming. And it's never too late to be a little less fearful, a little less close-minded, a little less parochial, a little less callous, a little less uncharitable. It's never too late for any of that.

But it's nice to do it with company.

Because while we all should, individually, try to make better choices today no matter what our fellows do; it will always be apparent that Americans are stronger together.

What is complete repentance? It is so when an opportunity presents itself for repeating an offense and the offender refrains from doing so because he has repented, not out of fear or lack of strength. -- Maimonides

To be contrite in our failures is holier than to be complacent in perfection. -- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Another Yom Kippur has concluded, and as my dad likes to say, the best part is that we're never farther away from another Yom Kippur than we are at this moment. A favored pastime of Jewish intellectuals this time of year is to point out various sins of the Jewish community as a whole -- Israel is a frequent target, though not the only one -- and urge repentance.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, framed properly. Over Rosh Hashanah, my home Rabbi gave a compelling sermon about the need to create a positive Jewish spiritual identity that went beyond "survive!", arguing that our communal Jewish institutions had given my generation the short shrift by failing to conceptualize Judaism as anything other than Fackenheim's 614th Commandment (a Commandment which, to be fair, actually does resonate with Millennial-generation-me). Repentance is about becoming better than we were before, and it's never a bad thing for the Jewish community to be better. The idea of being a "light unto nations" imposes a heavy burden on ourselves, but one we should be proud of striving towards even as we know our light could always shine brighter.

I thought about this while reflecting on Mira Sucharov's thoughtful column about the new "non-Zionist" synagogue that recently opened in Chicago. As Sucharov observes, the synagogue is not really "non-Zionist" in the way that she is a "non-NFL fan". It is by no means indifferent to Zionism. It has very strong opinions about Zionism and Israel generally. In a sense, they care a lot about Israel (in the same way that Sucharov does). But in a sense, it seems quite different. Perhaps they "care" about Israel in the same way they "care" about North Korea: "they simply think that Israel is responsible for a significant amount of evil in the world, and are working to try and rectify it -- there is no sentimentality behind it, anymore than efforts to end North Korean brutality are motivated by deep caring about North Korea."

Maybe that pushes too far -- the synagogue does seem to "care" especially about Israel because it is Jewish. But even here, the linkage to Jewishness is of a contingent and regretful kind: they don't want Israel to change so that it becomes a better emblem of Jewishness in the world, they view it as objectionable that it represents Jewishness to begin with -- that it is a Jewish state. They're concerned with Israel because it gives Jews a bad name, but they don't otherwise view Israel as legitimately part of a Jewish future. Instead, the synagogue is based around the concept of "Diasporism" -- that the Jewish home is everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere, because Jews should view their home as wherever they happen to reside. Nowhere, because there is no particular spot -- Israel included -- that we can claim as ours.

The ideal Jewish role in diasporism is a critical one -- we imagine ourselves as the conscience, the gadfly, the light unto that nation. Sometimes, of course, diasporism keeps us busy simply to remain a surviving group, a clinging-by-the-fingernails group, a deeply marginalized and vulnerable group. By definition we are not the dominant group, the powerful group, the in-control group. We certainly are not the oppressor group.

Prior to the establishment of Israel, the Jewish existence was diasporic. It did, largely, take on the qualities identified above. It can be and is romanticized, of course -- more focus on the first sentence (conscientiousness and critique) and less on the second (vulnerability and marginalization). The reason diasporism failed in the 20th century is that, between the roughly 50 years of having a state and 50 years of not having one, Zionism decisively beat diasporism on the all-important "not nearly being annihilated in a cataclysmic genocide" scoreboard. But there is no question that having a state, having a place where Jews were more than just a critical voice but a dominant voice, an in-control voice, a powerful voice was a very novel experience for Jews. And one upshot of having power is abusing that power. Of using that power to deeply, seriously, significantly wrong others. As Israel as done. As happens with power. Power gives one the opportunity to do things: terrible things and great things alike. The same dynamic that allows Jews to govern ourselves rather than exist as supplicants, also allows us to dominate others rather than coexist in equality. The same dynamic that allows Jews to save ourselves rather than pray for salvation, also allows us to hurt others rather than to respect their dignity. The coin of power allows either and both to be purchased -- one cannot have the opportunity for one without the opportunity for the other.

Diasporism sees Jewish wrongs -- genuine wrongs -- and yearns to go back to a time when Jews didn't act that way. And it is true: before there was an Israel, there was also no occupation, no Gaza incursions, no military law over Palestinians, no West Bank barrier, and so on. Jews in the diaspora did not need to worry about occupying anyone; we had no nation that could occupy. We would never be responsible for promulgating unjust laws; the laws were not ours to promulgate. We had no risk of significantly hurting others; the hand on the sovereign sword was not ours. Even our uprisings and resistances were blessed in their hopelessness. In Max Weber's terms, we could live a pure ethics of conviction, with zero concern for the ethics of responsibility. There is no true responsibility in diaspora, nothing really falls on our shoulders.

Diasporism is, at root, the Jewish fear of Jewish power. It knows that powerful Jews have the potential to be bad Jews -- in fact, it sees powerful Jews acting as bad Jews -- and its solution, its teshuvah, is to give up the trappings of power and return to the disempowered diaspora state. But as Maimonides observes, this is not repentance. The man who cuts off his tongue so that he cannot slander his neighbor has not repented, he has made true repentance impossible. Complete repentance must coexist with the opportunity, the strength, the power to commit the sin once again and the free choice not to. To "repent" for the sins derived from Jewish power by abolishing that power is no repentance at all -- it is a tacit belief that Jewish power will always, unavoidably, inherently be sinful power. It is a choice precisely to avoid the hard work of repentance, to avoid uncomfortable holiness of having to be contrite in our failures.

Diasporism is in some ways the mirror image of a completely self-satisfied Zionism, the sort that is convinced that nothing is Israel's fault, that all the problems and tribulations of the region are completely attributable to the malfeasance of Palestinians or other Arabs (or the UN, or the EU, or Iran....). In both cases, there is a complacency in (imagined) perfection. And both, in their own way, exhibit a preference for Jewish weakness, a desire to not have the choice to do right.

So on this Yom Kippur, I say we reject both. I say we recommit to Jewish strength -- including the strength to recognize and correct our sins, not because we have no choice, but because we once again are faced precisely with that choice.

Even five years ago, the dominant conservative complaint about American university culture was that it was too offensive. They'd seize upon some program or event they found outrageous -- typically something sex-related like the "Vagina Monologues" -- and talk about how colleges were imposing libertine corruption on our nation's youth. Or they'd pull out some class focusing on Marxism and complain about "leftist indoctrination" of radical ideas. Presentation of such views in an academic setting was, we were told, offensive to conservative and Christian students and hostile to traditional American values. Even as recently as this past summer we saw shades of this at Duke University, where conservatives complained about a freshman reading assignment of an LGBT-themed graphic novel. Such an assignment was uncomfortable and at odds with some students' Christian outlooks and, the argument went, they should not be exposed to it.

Then, seemingly without skipping a beat, the talking points did a complete 180. Now the line is that there is absolutely no right not to be "offended" in a university setting, and persons who register such complaints are whiny, coddled millennials who don't understand the point of a liberal arts education. Any concerns or protests regarding what content is and is not presented in university events, classes, and lectures pose a dire threat to free speech. Is something making you uncomfortable on campus? Good, because that's the whole point of college: it exists to challenge students and make them think critically about what they believe, not to make them comfortable and quiescent.

I write this because, well, I think Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey missed the transition memo.

Students attend college to study great thinkers and prepare for an increasingly competitive job market. They don't go to have their values and traditions sidelined and undermined. I can assure you that university offices of diversity will be subject to increased scrutiny during our upcoming legislative session.

This was in response to a non-binding university recommendation that holiday parties be non-sectarian rather than be overtly about Christmas. (And -- brief digression -- how is that Republican Jewish voter outreach going, Mr. Ramsey?).

Anyway, the clear principle being affirmed here is that the American college experience is not about undermining people's values and sidelining their traditions, unless those people are not white Christian men. In which case, we should all deeply worry about how these groups haven't inculcated the value that college is about being challenged and being uncomfortable.

The motivating question behind Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is why Europeans came and conquered America, Africa, etc., rather than the other way around. And one can make a similar observation with respect to religion: Why did Christianity flourish and become the largest faith in the world, while Judaism remains comparatively tiny?

Today, I think I hit upon the answer. And it relies on "once-a-year" faith adherents.

Suppose you're a once-a-year Christian. What is that one day of the year like? It's pretty good! Presents, and bright lights, and beautiful conifers, and carols that remind you of the happy innocence of childhood. It's a great celebration had by all.

And if you're Jewish? Well, your one day a year involves fasting the entire time while thinking about how bad a person you are. It also involves no songs that remind you of your childhood, because the High Holidays are when we give Cantors a free pass to simply make up tunes that are never remotely familiar but are always 64x longer than their every day equivalents.

What I'm saying is, have an easy fast and a contemplative Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur.

Our closest friend in Berkeley is coming to our apartment for the traditional meal of hot dogs (probably other things too, but I care only about the hot dogs). So no real blogging today. I will say that having independence -- autonomy, sovereignty, the freedom to choose one's path as a people -- is a great gift. The United States is hardly unique in purchasing that gift at the expense of considerable pain and death, but nonetheless that does remain an indelible fact of our history. On the other hand, that is not and should not be the only fact of history either. It's up to each generation to justify the charge, by making this nation into something great.

At a Menorah lighting in Springfield, Massachusetts, a local city councilor has a message:

“Jesus is the reason for the season."

“I thought it added something to the service, it didn’t take away,” [Bud] Williams, who is not Jewish, told MassLive.com on Tuesday night.

Williams went on to say that his message was not meant to be one of "dominance".

I almost can't be mad, because, let's face it, Jesus is the "reason for the season." As it stands, a goodly portion of secular Jews are in some ways more invested in not celebrating Christmas than they are in celebrating the Chanukah (or any other Jewish holiday). I know of a great many Jews who have long since ceased setting foot inside a synagogue, but who take great pride in grabbing Chinese food and a movie on December 25th. We certainly have Jesus to thank for that. More importantly, Chanukah, as every good Jew knows, is a minor holiday that received a battlefield promotion because we needed something to compete with Christmas. If it wasn't for Christmas, Jews wouldn't care (much) about the Festival of Lights.

Then again, as any good historian knows, the reason we celebrate Christmas on December 25 is due to its resonance with various pagan winter festivals. So in reality, the reason for the season is Roman celebrations of the Winter Solstice.

What I want for Christmas is better "best of Buffy [character]" videos on YouTube. Important note: If it's set to any sort of music -- any sort of music -- it doesn't count.

Have a happy holiday, everyone!