I stared at the words on my computer screen in utter disbelief:

BETH SHOLOM SYNAGOGUE
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
PLEASE VOTE
FOR THE SHVARTZEH!

Everybody knows that you can't trust everything you read these days. Websites disgorge tons of stuff that leave you scratching your head. But, the fact that readers have to wonder if this synagogue really exists, makes a point: racism is still quite prevalent on the American landscape and Jews cannot be automatically exempted. Our history of oppression and our early involvement in civil rights cannot fully inoculate us from the disease.

If we are candid with ourselves, Jews of my generation certainly have limited contact with any communities of color. Many of us are reflexively liberal on matters of race, but if ever a scarce slot in an Ivy League College goes to an African American when we feel a bit more deserving, or when a plum job goes to a person of color instead of to us, are we still so liberal?

I do think there are generational differences at work. Younger Jews do not seem terribly phased by differences in race, gender or sexual orientation. The respect that this generation shows, for people as people, is heartening news for older Jews who need to confront their cultural biases and cannot simply presume that our historic role as victim gives us the requisite motivation to love all of God's children.

Some people will claim that the casual turn of the phrase does not mean much, that we can use phrases like shiksa and not feel or act prejudiced. Maybe. But, when Jews use the word shvartzeh, German and Yiddish for Black, the term often drips with condescension and bitterness. Putting it in plain terms, Sara Silverman would not have to urge you to shlep to Florida to get your Bubbie to vote for Obama if race were not a factor.

Racism seems to be the only force capable of stopping Obama now, but it is indeed a powerful force. The election of Sen. Obama would show the world the promise of America. His defeat would show how far we still have to go. So, Jews of all ages have to dig deep to discover the values their tradition has firmly implanted within them, but is temporarily obscured.

This week we begin the reading of Torah at the beginning, with the creation in Parashat Bereshit. The rabbis teach that only one person appeared in the beginning so that no group can claim supremacy over another. We are all equal before God. Soon we will know how much God's will has become our own.

Rabbi Robert Levine, author of What God Can Do for You Now, is guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Thanks to some killer PR and the hard work of folks like Mik Moore at the Jewish Council for Education & Research, among many others, The Great Schlep goes down on Columbus Day weekend. It's a mass pilgrimage of young Jews to Florida and other swing states, where they will endeavor to convince their older, often "low-information" relatives to vote for Obama.

I attended a beautiful fundraiser for said initiative the other night. It was held at the mansion-like home of some very generous entertainment-industry peeps, and I met a couple of mega-hot Jewish celebrities there who nearly made my knees buckle. The food, provided by the reliably brilliant Provisions (aka very haute Jew Lisa Feinstein and crew), was a gourmandish series of twists on classic bubbie nosh: brisket on toast, borscht shots (with crème fraîche and orange zest), mini-kugels, paté (chopped liver), succulent smoked salmon. The wine flowed freely. Handsomely attired Hebrews strolled the lush environs.

And yet, from the cocktail-hour chatter, you'd think we were all about to be herded onto trains to Dachau. Everyone was so worried. So terribly concerned. Worried about racist voters. Concerned about easily misled voters. Worried that Sarah Palin would become President in ten minutes and life would turn into The Handmaid's Tale. Concerned about what Bill Clinton said on TV. Worried about what their neighbors said in the driveway. Anecdotal blips on the radar screen were described like incoming ballistic missiles. For sheer doom-and-gloom certainty, I'd put any random bunch of Jews, even a well-heeled, high-information batch of Hollywood activist types such as these, up against the most rabid evangelicals in full apocalypse mode.

Fortunately, the presentation — by Mik and various other folks from JCER, JewsVote.org and other cool outfits (including friend of this blog and mightily pregnant genius Jill Soloway) soothed some of these fears by describing the Schlep and making a charming appeal for support before screening this inspired, typically raunchy promotional video by Sarah Silverman.

 

 

Before I go on, I'd like to say a couple of quick things about this video. First: Our Sarah will kick their Sarah's ass. Next: I don't wanna hear about how you found this video offensive or untoward or how it made you uncomfortable. It isn't for you. It's for the kids who are going to journey to the heart of their grandparents' couches to close the deal for Obama, and they fully get and love her spiel. So shut your homentaschen hole.

Now I'd like to speak to the kids.

We often hear that children are the future, and ordinarily I don't agree. I just don't see the proof. But in this case, yes, children — specifically motivated and liberal teenage and twentysomething children and grandchildren of poorly informed, slightly confused elderly voters in swing states – emphatically are the future.

So you know your job, right, kinder? It's up to you to convince Bubbie and Zayde (and great aunt Rivke and cousin Manny and all their friends at the Senior Center) to cast their vote for our guy. This may not be as simple as it sounds. All kinds of ridiculous lies about Obama being a Muslim or not supporting Israel or whatever have been circulating like swamp gas among Jewish retirees, fueled by the Karl Rove innuendo factory. Then there's plain old ingrained racism, about which we'd like to think Jews would be more enlightened, but there you go. You will encounter resistance.

You must crush that resistance with everything you've got.

If you think I mean "Ply nana with an extra pot of Russian tea and tell her about Barack's thoughtful foreign-policy stances," you need to get real. I'm talking about tough love. I'm talking about winning this thing. Like Sarah S. suggests, I'm talking about emotional blackmail.

Nana has to understand that if she doesn't vote for Obama she's endangering her relationship with you.

This may seem harsh, but let's face it: If McCain wins this thing, we're mega-fucked. So it's time to put all our chips on the table, including our willingness to stay in touch with low-info relatives in swing states.

Look, I just want to help. I don't have any relatives in Boca, and my peeps are all voting for Obama anyway. But I thought I'd just sketch out a couple of talking points for you.

Of course, you do want to blow away the nonsense: No, he's not a Muslim, and a prominent Chicago rabbi wrote an editorial about how spreading this smear is lashon ha-ra. Barack's been endorsed by 900 rabbis. The Israelis like and respect him. You'll also want to make it clear that McCain's campaign is full of classic Jew-haters, and that Sarah Palin is a dangerous fanatic who scares the crap out of Israel. She believes Jews must be converted, she quoted racist Westbrook Pegler in her acceptance speech, and her church hosted a witch-hunting wacko who made some classically anti-Semitic inferences that can be found here. You might imply casually that she writes erotic fiction about the Third Reich under a nom de plume; can anyone prove she doesn't?

And given the age of your audience, it wouldn't hurt to remind them that McCain, not Obama, wants to bet their Social Security check on the same stock market that just fell apart.

Still, we both know that voting often comes down to abstract, emotional issues. For whatever reason, many older Jews have inhaled enough miasmic right-wing spew to feel an ingrained distrust of our candidate. That's where the tough love comes in. So let me offer you a few constructive dramatizations.

"Nana, you're going to vote for Obama. He's a wonderful candidate and the only one who can save our country. A vote for him is a vote for my future. So if you love me and want me to have a future, you will vote for him."

Let's say she looks down at the plate of kichel, heaves a weary sigh and says, "I'm sorry; I just can't vote for him." What are you gonna do, pack up your stuff and head for the bus station? I think not. You're gonna double down.

"Bubbie, let's be clear: You will vote for Obama. If you don't, you are dead to me. Because you will have chosen your wretched fears over my fondest hopes and flushed my dreams down the crapper because some idiot alteh cocker down the hall told you the shvartzeh won't stand up for Israel. And I don't care if you call him by that vile word as you pull the lever for him, even though every time you old Jews say it the little children who died in the camps and are now in heaven cry tears of blood that stain the fluffy clouds beneath their angel feet. You will vote for Obama because you if you don't, I'm going to come back here and we're going to get a knife from the kitchen and you can stab me right in the heart, just as Abraham was prepared to do with Isaac before the Lord stayed his hand. Is that what you want to do?"

I'm thinking by this time she's going to start to come around.

Sure, it's a risky gambit to fire these emotional cannons at our frail old family members. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Plus, when Obama wins in November and you come back to show them a bunch of family videos and have a nice picnic at the wrought-iron tables in the condo courtyard, they'll be delighted beyond belief. And so will you.

If, like me, you can't personally go on the Great Schlep, why not make a contribution?

  [Cross-posted from Simon's wonderful blog, Very Hot Jews]

 

You know when you get the same link from like six different trusted friends in the span of a single day?  And you’re like, fine, okay, I’ll click, wtf?

Yeah, so, enjoy: 

 

 

(Jimmy Kimmel, you’re a douche-nozzle for letting her go.)

This Land is Our Land: Palin's church says Jews deserve to be victims of terrorismJews in America have, essentially since 1932, felt far at home with one Party and voted accordingly. Democrats could rely on a solid 75% plus of the Jewish vote and the Jewish community could comfortably feel that they had a home in a party which embraced positions and values with which they could identify. It looked for a time as if 2008 might be different and that the percentage of Jewish support for the Democratic presidential candidate might slip into the low 60s or worse. A considerable effort was invested in scare-tactics and smear campaigns against Barack Obama. Joe Lieberman was thrown into the mix. The McCain campaign had reason to be cautiously optimistic.

That McCain hope may now be receding as the latest turn in the Republican campaign seems to have one unifying theme when it comes to the Jewish community: a determination to put as many Jews as possible back in their place -- in the Democratic camp. The GOP have scored an amazing trifecta -- choose a Veep candidate who is a neophyte on Israel and foreign policy and has never stepped foot in the Holy Land, stoke the kind of cultural wars that make the Jewish community distinctly antsy, and then deploy old and crude anti-Semitic stereotypes when attacking Obama.

Sure, there is about a quarter of the Jewish vote that is now solidly Republican. These are people who are Republicans because they want lower taxes on the most wealthy, more religion in the public sphere and a hard-line foreign policy both as it relates to America and to Israel. That demographic will remain Republican. But the additional 10-15% of the Jewish vote that the GOP tried to put in play this November is now feeling not only alienated, but downright offended by the latest offerings of the McCain message machine. That new Palin-powered propaganda effort may play well in parts of the country, and it may be enough to get McCain elected, but it is likely to have the opposite effect on the floating Jewish voter -- which could matter (perhaps a lot) in Florida and elsewhere such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, or even Nevada

The Obama campaign had already made significant inroads in pushing back the slur tactics and in creating a comfort level amongst Jewish voters with Obama's personal life story, his message, and him visiting Israel again recently. Putting Senator Joe Biden on the ticket -- someone with a long and strong history of trusted relations and closeness to the Jewish community, and deep, unquestioned foreign policy experience -- likely strengthened that trend. But the more important development is likely to be the GOP's decision to tightly embrace a politics and style that creates a maximum discomfort amongst even those parts of the Jewish community that were beginning to be susceptible to McCain's appeal. Part of this is a deep seated, understandable, and very real tension between the world views of the Christian right and of the mainstream Jewish community.

Three moves in particular have the potential to create a backlash amongst Jewish voters and to drive the Jewish community to find its place with the Obama-Biden ticket in numbers that match historical levels of Democratic support.

First, McCain chose a candidate for Veep who has no history whatsoever of interest in, understanding of, or concern for Israel. The Israel issue does not move all or even most Jewish voters, but it matters to many. Sarah Palin has never been to Israel. The only place she has ever visited in the Middle East is Kuwait. Her website issues page lists nothing on foreign policy or Israel, as others have pointed out (here and here). Governor Palin did meet with AIPAC during the recent RNC convention in Minneapolis and they did give her the kosher stamp. But one can fairly assume that this had more to do with AIPAC's confidence in its own ability to sway the possible future V.P. than with any deep appreciation for Israel's predicament displayed by the candidate. Surely all the pro-Israel groups from right and left could agree that a politician who has never visited Israel, who doesn't know the issues affecting Israel, and has so little national security and foreign policy experience should not be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Second, and as part of the Palin-fest, the Republicans have made a strategic decision to place cultural wars front and center in this election campaign. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch has called Sarah Palin and what she represents "scary", and one can understand why. Palin is about as right-wing as it gets when it comes to the ideological and value issues she promotes. She has the hard right, Christian conservative wing of the electorate highly enthused and mobilized. Jewish voters and Jewish values tend to sit uneasily with positions such as making abortion illegal (even in cases of rape and incest), teaching creationism in school and blurring the separation of religion and state, and banning books--all positions espoused by Governor Palin. As Salon.com pointed out, such theocratic tendencies are more normally associated with Muslim fundamentalists. This is bigger than Palin; this now a cultural values election as much as it is an economics or national security policy election -- it is a defining moment, especially when Supreme Court nominations enter the calculation.

But there is also a Jewish specific cause for concern in the Palin pick. Just three weeks ago, with Sarah in attendance, Palin's church hosted the Executive Director of Jews for Jesus, David Brickner -- a group much criticized by the ADL. As Ben Smith pointed out in Politico, Brickner "described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's 'judgment of unbelief' of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity". Palin's Pastor at the Wasilla Bible Church, Larry Kroon, warns of God taking retribution on a sinning America. She trades on an anti-intellectualism and playing of small town vs big city or suburban America that is alienating to most Jews. Mayor Koch is right: this is "scary" stuff.

Third, and perhaps most bizarrely, the types of attacks used by leading Republicans against Senator Obama should be making Jewish voters feel distinctly uneasy -- they are taken straight from the vernacular of classical anti-Semitism. When Rudy Giuliani during his RNC keynote address put a big sneer on his face and used the word 'cosmopolitan' to attack Obama, I was rattled -- literally shocked. Words have coded meanings, and I don't think it would be Jewish paranoia to remind ourselves of the coded meaning of 'cosmopolitan' when used in that insulting, demeaning, and group-defining political fashion. We Jews are after all the quintessential, rootless cosmopolitans. 'Cosmopolitan', 'elites', 'urbane', 'liberal media' -- in trying to negatively define Barack Obama, the Republicans have chosen to use a convenient and familiar existing vocabulary for defining the 'other' -- the vocabulary of anti-Semitic stereotypes. At the very least this is deeply insensitive to Jewish opinion.

It is shameful that Republican Jewish circles have been silent in the wake of this ugliness. It would be even more shameful if it was allowed to succeed. Fortunately Jewish voters, in Florida and elsewhere, will have a big say in the matter.