A week ago, Professor Alan Dershowitz came to Vancouver for an event sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. I was in attendance, along with a host of Hillel students from the Vancouver area and other members of the Vancouver Jewish community. This was my second time hearing Dershowitz speak, and once again, I was incredibly impressed. If you have never attended a Dershowitz lecture, I highly recommend you jump on the next opportunity to do so.
Set up in a Q&A format, the atmosphere was somewhat informal and relaxed. The moderator asked predetermined questions, but left room for some improvisation and even a few jokes. Like many Jews, Dershowitz has a great sense of humor. During a bit about assimilation and intermarriage, he remarked, “Everyone says to me, ‘your generation was so good, you only married Jews.’ Of course we married other Jews, they were the only ones who would marry us!”
But the evening was memorable not because of the laughs, but because of the truly stimulating content that Dershowitz spoke about. Obviously he had a lot to say about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He maintained that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the peace process, but some of his other points seemed to suggest otherwise. One that stood out to me was his comment that he felt the Palestinian Authority had very little to offer Israel today. Ten years ago, he said, they could have offered them peace in Gaza, the West Bank, and even in the North. Today, Israel is flanked by Hezbollah and Hamas, which the PA has no authority over. Consequently, the PA can only offer Israel “a piece of peace” in the West Bank. Despite referring to PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as a “pragmatist,” it was clear he saw this as a serious problem.
However, Dershowitz touched on other important issues facing the Jewish world. Besides his well-delivered intermarriage comment, he spoke about his desire for the Jewish people to not just survive, but to thrive. And, much to the chagrin of some of the Chabad members in the audience, he implied that the rabbinic law of matrilineal descent was a bit out-dated, saying, “If anyone wants to take on the burden of being a Jew,” they should be allowed to do so. This tied in with his thoughts about the controversial conversion bill. He doubted that the issue of conversion would ever be solved, but said it would be a shame if Israel ever reached a point where it turned away Jews because they were “not Jewish enough.”
While I feel like I could write a whole article and engage in countless debates about each particular topic listed above, I will not take the time to do that in this post. I will, however, share a few thoughts that have been running through my mind since the evening with Alan Dershowitz. Bear with me.
In my mind, Alan Dershowitz represents some characteristics of the Jewish people of my parent’s and grandparent’s generation. Much like them, he is successful, witty, and smart on a personal level. He is also over 70, embodying the ageing North American Jewish population. It is this ageing population that has fostered the vitality of the Jewish spirit and the strength of our communal organizations over the last 100 years. Leaders like Dershowitz have been at the forefront of this movement. Which is why I was a little dismayed when, towards the end of the night, Dershowitz lamented that with so much energy spent on the various conflicts in the Middle East, him and other Jewish leaders do not devote as much time as they would like to the internal problems of the Jewish people.
That seemed a little worrisome at first. I immediately thought, “Great, so no one is looking out for our intrinsic unity? How will we ever weather the storm? Orthodox versus Reform, liberal versus conservative…a house divided cannot succeed!” Now I realize that it is an opportunity, a challenge. Because even if the older generations cannot focus on these issues, we college-aged Jews certainly can. This is why it is so important for everyone to make their voice and their opinion heard. Get involved in the conversation, in your communities, online, anywhere! At some point, we will have to meet the challenges of modern Jewish life. Why not start now?
