jewish philosophy place

What happens at Columbia doesn’t stay at Columbia, but in many ways it starts there.

Here are points of interest related mostly to Palestine and Trump and Jews at Columbia:

–Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) is the primary group organizing and leading and setting the tone at the protests at Columbia since October 7. At their substack, they are calling, not for free speech, but for and manifesting massive disruption of campus life, memorializing Hamas leader Sinwar, celebrating the one year anniversary of the October 7 massacres in the south of Israel, cheering on Iran regime missile strikes in Israel. I wrote a long piece about the new norms on campus represented by the and pro-Hamas tilt on campus left going back to Octtober 2023. Columbia figures prominently.

— Anti-Semitism taskforces: a blogpost with links to Columbia, Harvard, Stanford (including links to Isalmophobia task forces at Harvard and Stanford).

–Unreasonable or not, here is the (first) list of Trump Administrations demands and the response from Columbia.

–Fair or not, here is the Columbia AAUP criticism of Columbia for “caving” to the Trump Administration

–An open letter with many co-signers re: Jews on campus against the weaponizing of anti-Semitism by the Trump Administration. Arguably, this letter represents mainline liberal American Jewish opinion.

–An interview with Lee Bollinger at the Chronicle of Higher Education on free speech and maybe limits on free speech. In his view, “I think our systems of discipline for violations of that kind and many others are inadequate to the moment. We lack a rule of law at universities, and that rule of law is needed for there to be a robust free-speech commitment.” On one hand, public universities are committed to the First Amendment, which  protects hate speech, including, in theory, even speech of the Klan and neo-Nazis. On the other hand, Bollinger somewhat surprisingly concedes that at a private university, there might be limits to “what people are allowed to say on a campus.” With the experience  at Columbia clearly in mind, he says, for example, that “advocating invidious discrimination against groups, or advocating physical violence, is so inconsistent with the humanistic values of the university that we should not respect it on a campus. That’s a reasonable debate and it should be had if people are so inclined.”

–Here is a big-picture view by Adam Tooze about the Trump assault on universities and the “poly-crisis” on campus. Some of this stands up, some of it doesn’t. He points to [1] the unravelling of globalization and in particular the hope of the two state solution that explodes a critical fault line on our campus and throws the weight of power massively on to the side of the Israeli government’s efforts to uphold the project of the Jewish state by violent means; [2] the MAGA assault exposes the compromise that liberal administrators thought they could create on campus, creating enclaves of left-wing thought and incipient mobilization, which are now being sacrificed pellmell to the new conservative mood; [3] the multi-faceted crisis of “big science” as a source of consensual authority in the US. [4] the bad future for U.S. and China relations.

Jews on campus are human shields for Trump’s gutting of civil society.

Open letter in response to federal funding cuts at Columbia

On March 7th, the Trump administration announced the immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University. This includes funding from the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which suggests cuts to funding for scholarship and research in law, education, and healthcare. The university was told that these funds were being withheld because they had not done enough to suppress antisemitism, and the same rationale has been since used to propose further cuts to other universities and colleges across the U.S. In other words, the federal government claims it is taking these extraordinary measures in order to protect Jewish students from discrimination.

We are Jewish faculty, scholars, and students at U.S. universities — representative of the community that this administration purports to be protecting from antisemitism on campuses. Let us be clear: These actions do not protect us.

There are many issues on which we, as a group, disagree. We have diverse views on Israel and Gaza, on American politics, and on the Trump administration. We have diverse views on the administration of Columbia University, and on the way it has responded to protests. What unites us is that we refuse to let our Jewish identities be used as a pretext for destroying institutions that have long made America great – American universities and the research and knowledge they produce.

Together, we say: Not on our behalf. Harming U.S. Universities does not protect Jewish people. Cutting funding for research does not protect Jewish people. Punishing researchers and scholars does not protect Jewish people. These actions do, however, limit opportunities for students and scholars – within the Jewish community and beyond – to receive training, conduct research, and engage in free expression.

In fact, harming universities makes everyone less safe, including Jews. History teaches us that the loss of individual rights and freedoms for any group often begins with silencing scientists and scholars, people who devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge — a pursuit that is core to Jewish culture. Moreover, destroying universities in the name of Jews risks making Jews in particular less safe by setting them up to be scapegoats. Once it becomes clear how much knowledge, and how much human potential, has been lost in the name of combating antisemitism, Jews may be blamed.

U.S. universities have partnered with the U.S. government since 1941, when university research began receiving federal funding and was integral to winning the Second World War. By expanding this partnership after the war, the U.S. has created the best research infrastructure in the world, which has, in turn, enabled the most scientific and technological progress in human history. Do not dismantle this partnership, especially not on the pretense of protecting Jewish people.
10 March 2025

A copy of the letter with the complete list of signatories can be found here.

POSTSCRIPT

Jewish students at Columbia across the ideological spectrum (Zionist, anti-Zionist, non-Zionist) issued a joint statement, Shema Koleinu, against the Trump assault on university life in the name of fighting anti-Semitism.

The concluding paragraphs read:

Jew-hatred and antisemitism are not issues of individuals but of ideology. The antidote to hatred is not sending people away, but bringing them together. We must address this volatile situation through education, not deportation. In keeping with the spirit of ancient rabbinic study-houses as well as modern-day university classrooms, we must normalize dialogue and prioritize critical scholarly debate instead of rushing to judgments.

Until steps are taken to safeguard the free expression of ideas—even those with which some of us disagree—anyone targeting individuals in the name of protecting Jewish students does not speak for us, but speaks over us.

Finally, we recognize that the heightened focus on campus activism distracts from the primary victims of this war. Many among us have cried out for 570 days as our people remain chained in captivity, facing starvation and torture beneath the streets of Gaza while, above, more innocent civilians suffer as they search for the remains of their loved ones in the rubble of war-torn neighborhoods. We commend the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis who have taken to the streets—from Gaza to Tel Aviv—to implore their leaders to end this cycle of bloodshed. We call on our leaders to do the same. We pray for a day when “nation will not lift sword against nation and they will never again study war.” (Yeshayahu 2:4).

Photography is the art of “writing with light,” or in the words of the book of Esther: light and gladness, happiness and honor (8:16). This wonderful image for Purim from the Naomi Polani Collection, Tel Aviv History Museum, Courtesy of Muza, Eretz Israel Museum) of the Queen Esther Crown throws light on modern Hebrew culture and the history of Tel Aviv, auto-orientalism and new Jewish beauty norms, decorative art and photography

From Ynet:

For several years, starting in the mid-1920s, as part of the Purim parades in Tel Aviv, Queen Esther was crowned annually. A special artistic crown was placed on her head, which is now displayed at the Tel Aviv Yafo City Museum alongside other items and photographs from the history of the Adloyada parade…In the 1920s, Baruch Agadati, one of the pioneers of Israeli dance and cinema, began organizing large-scale Purim balls in Tel Aviv. In 1926, for the first time, a beauty contest was held at the ball, in which Queen Esther was crowned. Agadati attempted to merge Jewish tradition with the beauty contest, but he faced sharp criticism for adopting a foreign custom

[…]

The Purim celebrations from 1926 to 1931 included the crowning of the Hebrew Queen Esther, who led the parade wearing the Queen Esther crown — an artistic creation designed by the artist Haim Israel….The crown, made of silver threads interwoven with gemstones, became one of the symbols of the celebrations. At the time, the mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, rode on horseback at the head of the procession and presented the crown to the chosen queen in a grand ceremony. Among the title winners was Riketa Chelouche, daughter of Avraham Haim Chelouche, one of Tel Aviv’s founders

[….]

At some point, it disappeared and was forgotten. Many years later, the crown resurfaced when an anonymous individual approached the Museum of the History of Tel Aviv and offered to sell it for several tens of thousands of shekels. The museum, unable to afford the sum, turned to the Chelouche family, who donated the money in memory of Riketa, who had passed away at a young age. After a meticulous restoration process, the Queen Esther crown is now on display at the Tel Aviv-Yafo City Museum, one of five cultural institutions in Bialik Square.

Responding to No Other Land and the mere existence of co-director Yuval Abraham along with director Basel Adra, this is one especially unhinged response from the radical, pro-Hamas wing of the Palestinian solidarity movement in the UK. David Miller is eloquent in his own perverted way. The expression of sheer hatred is immediately repellent. It’s also hypocritical on the author’s part, who stands with nothing to lose in his call for death and destruction. The language is clearly psychotic. But a stubborn kernel of truth about Israel and Jews and their fusion, about Zionism and Jewish identity, and also about Jewish anti-Zionism, about which Miller is especially harsh –all it buried in this grotesque and violent ideation by an inveterate anti-Semite on the global left.

For it’s part, the inveterate anti-Zionist and anti-Israel Mondoweis chimes in here suggesting the same about Yuval Abraham’s speech at the Oscars, calling him a “liberal Zionist.” The author Nada Elia, a diaspora Palestinian scholar notes the “very narrow” focus of Adra’s speech (and the film itself) on Masafer Yatta. She supports the film while wanting from Abraham maximalist political positioning, something consonant with the dead-end claim that “Israel, by its mere existence, dispossesses the Palestinian people.”

Lastly, PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)’s position on No Other Land), which is the organizing coordinating body of global BDS weighs in here. Taking upon itself the mantle of “[ensuring] harmony with the movement’s anti-normalization guidelines, PACBI is calling for a boycott of No Other Land. PACBI claims that the film or filmmakers did not meet movement anti-normalization guidelines, for not calling out genocide and settler-colonialism. But the core problem is the presence of Israeli co-producers. “Regardless of the above and aside from BDS guidelines,” the statement reads, “it is important to recognize that Palestinians do not need validation, legitimation or permission from Israelis to narrate our history, our present, our experiences, our dreams, and our resistance, including artistic resistance, to the colonial system of oppression that denies us our freedom and inalienable rights. It is therefore imperative for us to challenge the racist conditions, whether covert or overt, imposed by the colonial West and its hegemonic institutions, which do not platform Palestinians except with the permission or validation of Israelis.” The statement goes on to excoriate “Hollywood,” which one can read as code however one wishes.

In response, Samah Salaime at +972 interviews reports on local activists from Masafer Yatta pushing back against the blowback from activists from the Palestinian diaspora and on the global left around collaborating with Jews and Israelis. She quotes Tariq Hathaleen, an activist from the village of Umm Al-Khair, who explained: “Everything we stand for here is in real danger. We have been under daily attacks from settlers. On the same evening that the whole world was talking about [“No Other Land”] winning the Oscar, the settlers organized themselves and came to take revenge…I have personally been active in this struggle for more than two decades. After much thought and discussion, we decided back then that we would welcome all supporters who identify with us on the ground. Twenty years ago, groups from Israel and abroad came, and I accompanied them. For me, they are a force I cannot afford to give up on. All these years, we have heard the accusations from the boycott movement against us — we expected it.”

Diaspora politics have a tendency to focus attention on “identity” and “identification,” and then harden around reified identity categories. With its own tight pivot, No Other Land is a film not about identity, not about the identity of filmmakers Adra or Abraham, as it about Masafer Yatta and the people who live there. As if against the narcissism of diaspora and binary identity politics, Palestinians interviewed by Salaime reflect on the formation of local and class politics connecting people and collectives into new constellations across social difference. Against the image of black and white, good, and evil, Salaime sees in No Other Land a film that “forces us to imagine possibilities for a future with Israelis, free from occupation, genocidal violence, and Jewish supremacy.” That’s precisely why, as she says, voices on the global BDS left set out to strip the film of legitimacy. Local politics is not complex. Salaime interviews Jihad Al-Nawaja, head of the village council in Susiya, who tells her that, as far as he is concerned, namely from his own perspective, Yuval Abraham is Jewish, Israeli, and “Palestinian to the core.”  

JEWISH STUDIES SEMINAR: ISRAEL

JSP/REL 439

Spring 2025

W 3:45-6:30, Huntington Hall 103

Zachary Braiterman

Office hours: W 11-12 or by appointment

zbraiter@syr.edu

Zionism was a secular movement that aspired to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. What was the role that Judaism was to play in that homeland? Was what Herzl, a founder of modern Zionism, called the New Society to be a national home or secular state of all its citizens, a Jewish State or a state of the Jews? We will examine classical Zionism and the role of Judaism before turning to contemporary formations of religion and politics in the State of Israel after the 1967 war. Careful attention will be given to “the question of Palestine,” religion and religious violence, the challenge of democratic citizenship and inequality in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country, and the place of Israel in the Middle East.

Readings:

1/15    

Introduction to class (no assignment)

Documents: The Balfour Declaration in Document Pack

CLASSICAL ZIONISM

1/22     

Political Zionism & Cultural Zionism:

Pinsker, Auto-Emancipation in The Zionist Idea

Herzl, The Jewish State in The Zionist Idea

Ahad Ha’Am in The Zionist Idea

1/29    

Culture Critics & Socialist Zionism:

Berdichevski, Brenner, and Klatzkin in The Zionist Idea

Borochov and Gordon in The Zionist Idea

2/5       

Religious Zionism:

Ravitzky Chp 1

Selections form Abraham Isaac Kook, Orot on Blackboard

PARTITION NAKBA INDEPENDENCE

2/12    

Buber, A Land of Two People, pp.106-35 

Jabotinsky, “Iron Wall” and “Beitar Ideology” at Blackboard

Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, chapter 1-3

2/19    

Nakba

Constantine K. Zurayk, T he Meaning of the Disaster on Blackboard

2/26     

Mizrachi Jews

Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, Mongrels or Marvels, chps.12-16

RELIGION STATE SOCIETY AFTER 1967                         

3/5       

Settlers and Settlements

Ravitzky chp.3

Amos Oz selection, Here and There in the Land of Israel on Blackboard

Documents: The Palestinian National Covenant, UN Resolution 242

3/19    

Ultra Orthodox

Ravitzky chp. 4

Brown, “Jewish Political Theology: The Doctrine of Daat Torah as a Case Study”                

Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel on Blackboard

3/26     

Mizrachi Jews and Judaism in Israel:

Oz, In the Land of Israel on Blackboard      

TBA Nissim Mizrachi on Blackboard

4/2       

Religion and Culture

Ethnocracy: Gavison, Smoohah, Ghanem on Blackboard

Liebman & Katz (ed), The Jewishness of Israelis, pp.1-37 on Blackboard

Nissim Mizrachi, last chapter on Blackboard

PLACE AND SPACE

4/9       

Herzl, Old New Land

4/16    

Scheindlin, Crooked Timber of Israeli Democracy, section VI on Blackboard

Documents Hamas Charters + and Israel Nation State Law in Documents Handout

4/23     

Tawfik Canaan, Haunted Springs and Water Demons in Palestine

FINAL PAPER: DUE LAST DAY OF EXAM WEEK

I was moved by this image of St. Donatus of Arezzo, painted by Pietro Lorenzetti for the Church of Santa maria della Pieve in Arezzo (1320), and recently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Donatus is a saint for our political moment, witnessing, as we are, to incredible acts of destruction by damagers.

From Wikipedia:

“During a celebration of Mass, at the moment of the giving of Communion, in which a glass chalice was being administered, some pagans [sic] entered the church and shattered the chalice in question. Donatus, after intense prayer, collected all of the fragments and joined them together. There was a piece missing from the bottom of the cup; miraculously, however, nothing spilled from the cup”