Saturday, October 01, 2011

Headline of the day

I want to call your attention to this article from Time Magazine:

Why Fewer Young American Jews Share Their Parents' View of Israel

Here's an illuminating passage:

My mom has a master's degree in Jewish history and is the program director of a large synagogue. Her youthful experiences in Israel, volunteering on a kibbutz and meeting descendants of my great-grandmother's siblings, are part of my own mythology. Raised within the Conservative movement, I learned at Hebrew school that Israel was the "land of milk and honey," where Holocaust survivors irrigated the deserts and made flowers bloom.

What I didn't hear much about was the lives of Palestinians. It was only after I went to college, met Muslim friends and enrolled in a Middle Eastern history and politics course that I was challenged to reconcile my liberal, humanist worldview with the fact that the Jewish state of which I was so proud was occupying the land of 4.4 million stateless Palestinians, many of them refugees displaced by Israel's creation.


I do recommend that you read the rest of it. For me it's offers the reassuring perspective that being critical of Israel is not necessarily the same as being anti-semitic - no matter what some people may claim about the matter.
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2 comments:

  1. Tracie H9:20 AM

    I have rassled with this for a long time. This is right where I'm at. Great stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad you think so, Tracie!

    ReplyDelete

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