The Evolving Jew

In Ferguson, I think we can all agree, violence is absolutely unacceptable. And those who engage in violence should be subject to due legal process and punished. However, I think we can also all agree that the fact that some engage in violence doesn't mean that the protesters don't have legitimate grievances and that those grievances shouldn't be addressed. Further, I think we can agree that those engaging in violence, wrong as they might be, wouldn't be doing such things without the injustice present that created the underlying tension. Now, with due disclaimers that I am not drawing a 1:1 comparison, just for a thought experiment, please replace the word "Ferguson", above, with "Gaza", and read the paragraph again. Thoughts?

DISCLAIMER: I am in NO way making excuses for the terrorism of Hamas. I'm just musing on the nature of warfare. It's interesting - Israel is negotiating with Hamas for a long term cease-fire. So even though we say that terrorism, in the form of shooting rockets into cities indiscriminately, is not legal warfare and should only be answered with force, we nonetheless negotiate with them as if they were playing by the rules. Of course, the idea that innocents shouldn't be targeted during wartime is a fairly recent one. For most of human history, war, people expected war to bring rape, massacres, expulsion, and people being taken into slavery. That was just the way of things. The notion of human rights didn't exist. Now, we pretend to be more civilized. Yet only 70 years ago, the United States, which is supposed to be a bastion of human rights. dropped weapons of mass destruction on innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 150,000 and 200,00 peopl

Earlier, on Facebook, I criticized the establishment of a new settlement in the memory of the 3 boys. I suggested that if they really wanted to honor their memory, they could give tzedaka, learn mishnayot, even establish a new yishuv inside the green line, rather than creating a political provocation for the PA at a time when Yehuda and Shomron has, thankfully, stayed relatively quiet as compared to Gaza. Of course, a number of you strongly disagreed with me, as I expected. But one comment really bothered me, implying that since I don't live there, I shouldn't question these types of decisions. Here's my issue with that attitude. Even if you accept the "you're in chutz la-Artez, you can't judge the war in Gaza" argument (which I don't), this case is entirely different. This has nothing to do with protecting people. I happen to have consistently supported the incursion into Gaza (despite the horrific consequences, which I blame on Hamas). This

From 2010 (slightly edited): There are voices that assert that we should no longer fast on Tisha B'Av, that if we wanted to rebuild the temple, we could simply do so, and that with a rebuilt Israel and a rebuilt Jerusalem, Tisha B'Av should be obsolete. These people certainly have a point. It’s ironic to see people who live in fancy houses in Flatbush, travel to Israel on El Al several times a year, and have full religious freedoms in America begging Hashem to “end the terrible golus!” But there’s another way of looking at it, and it’s the way I choose to look at many of our traditions. What we commemorate on Tisha B’Av isn’t just the loss of the Temple. It isn’t just a yearning for the Beit HaMikdash to be rebuilt and for sacrifices and a monarchy to be reinstituted. To tell the truth, how likely, practical, or even desirable does that really seem? Instead, it's about something much bigger. We fast because we’ve fasted for 2,000 years. We mourn for the very real