Article Archive

Gabriel Erbs’ June 14th column “Unholy alliance: evangelicals and pro-Israel campus groups” is a vicious attack on Christianity for which the author and publication ought to be ashamed. The piece is dishonest, bigoted, and preys upon people’s prejudice towards other faiths.

In the piece, Erbs seeks to delegitimize the now strong relationship between Christian and Jewish Zionists, because he disdains the former’s faith and politics. In truth however, he seems to know little about either.

As the farmer walked through his fields, he spotted a freezing viper. Taking pity on the snake, he placed the shivering reptile in his coat. Upon warming, the snake bit the man. As the farmer died, he realized his own fault: “I knew it was a snake when I picked it up.”

This fable characterizes the unholy alliance between Jewish pro-Israel organizations and Evangelical Zionist organizations here at Portland State University — and nationally.

Two weeks ago we celebrated Yom Haatzmaut – Israel’s birthday. It’s an exciting time of year for those of us who care and advocate for the state of Israel. Celebrations commemorating Israel’s Independence Day happened on college campuses all over the country. And yet I observed two troubling trends surrounding many of these events that do injustice to Israel, to pro-Israel advocacy, and to the intelligence of college students.

Daniel P. Schley argues that it’s time we found a new way to educate Jewish teens in non-Jewish high schools.

Avodah corps members protest a lack of exposure to Palestinians \xe2\x80″ and Avodah listens.

A queer solidarity activist reclaims NYC’s LGBTQ community center

This op-ed was co-published by New Voices and The Jewish Daily Forward. Last year, the author wrote a longer article, originally published by the Leviathan Jewish Journal, detailing the ongoing struggle over the Title VI Civil Rights complaint filed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which can be read at New Voices.

Last spring the United States Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism at my school, University of California, Santa Cruz. The investigation was prompted by a Title VI complaint filed by my own Hebrew teacher, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. She complains that UCSC has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because it has failed to address what she alleges to be university-sponsored anti-Semitism. The investigation is a waste of time — but worse than that, it’s also damaging UCSC’s Jewish community. I have seen friendships fall apart during arguments over the investigation as this situation has turned Jew against Jew. So as a Jew and a Zionist, one of the very students Rossman-Benjamin claims to protect, I have a few complaints of my own.

I have always anxiously anticipated the arrival of Thanksgiving, filled with the promise of time with my family and some delicious turkey. But this year my excitement has taken a new form: for the first Thanksgiving of my life, I will be celebrating as a vegetarian.


By abstaining from turkey, which is often injected with hormones and antibiotics, and choosing instead to eat from the local fall harvest available in my area, it will be possible for me to observe Thanksgiving more ethically. The Thanksgiving holiday — which I choose to look at as a harvest holiday, rather than a commemoration of a mythical story about our Native American and Pilgrim ancestors — is the perfect opportunity to be thankful for nature’s bounty and the many gifts the earth gives us year after year.

When I attend a large Jewish conference, I come into the experience with a healthy dose of cynicism and a quick trigger to critique. As a committed Zionist and Social Justice activist, not to mention a philosophy major, I consider myself to be blessed with the ability to see past the explicit messages that these organizations put forward on the surface and to the implicit messages underneath. So it was that I attended the General Assembly (GA) of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) 2011, in Denver Colo., as a part of the Do The Write Thing student journalism conference. My main question was: As JFNA focuses more on Israel experiences, are they developing a truly Zionist initiative? Or is it merely window dressing, a way to capitalize on the trend of Israel experiences?

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to meet with leading American social critic Noam Chomsky in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where we spoke about a number of issues of international youth activism regarding American involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict. One of the issues I was curious about was his youth advocacy work within the Zionist movement during the waves of foreign immigration to–and settlement of–Palestine, before Israel was established.

Jews of my parents’ generation were broadly involved in the protests of their youth: marching in Selma, Ala; riding for freedom; marching on Washington. Given that, the attempt by the establishment and by politically conservative Jews to discredit the association between Jewish ritual and the Occupy Wall Street protests is shockingly misguided. The claim that the protesters are anti-Semites is as specious as any attempt to paint an entire group of contemporary Americans as such. And the reliance of those making that claim on the presence of pro-Palestinian sentiments among the protesters shows how out of touch establishment Jews are with the younger generation of American Jews that turned out in staggering numbers (as few as 700, according to some; as many as 1,000, according to others) for a Kol Nidre service in a plaza across the street from Occupy Wall Street’s home base. This is not a group of Jews with much sympathy for the old “You’re either pro-Israel or anti-Israel” line of the Jewish establishment.

I had no idea what I was in for. The apartment was nice, for Allston. It had hardwood floors, two bathrooms, a working dishwasher, a porch and quite a bit of floor space, all for $600 dollars a month. Plus, laundry in the basement. I moved in three days after Irene didn’t hit and had my mezuzot up by the second day. The first week there was cool. Then the problems started. Let me introduce you to my fifth roommate–let’s call her Tiffani. Pink blotches in her hair, stomach bulging out from under her crop-top, omnipresent smell of stale cigarette smoke. Straight out of the trailer park, you feel me? I let her sign the lease thinking I shouldn’t be a snob, people need to co-exist, there’s enough room for everyone.

Anyone accepting Columbia International Relations Council and Association’s invitation to sit down for an intimate dinner with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next week should take a look at a photo taken at a public square in Iran, and distributed by the Associated Press on July 23, 2005. The image depicts two blindfolded boys, around 16 years of age, with nooses being affixed to their necks moments before they were publicly hanged by Ahmadinejad’s regime because they were accused of “raping boys,” or, as we call it, being gay.
I recall this photo not because it shocks–though it does–or because it will tell you anything new about the man who approved those hangings–it won’t. I bring it up because the moral burden of our Columbia University education and human dignity require us to examine whether it is right for us to sit down to dinner with a man who facilitates, even encourages, such executions.