The Forward and its Mahmoud Khalil Ventures …To American Jews |
The Forward, the journalism founded by Abe Cahan in a Yiddish speaking era of Socialism and NY worker solidarity is struggling to become the inluence of the Jewish Left; we have a variety of Jewish, Yiddish ventures bravely doing the same and I salute them; but of course who are the people answering the call.
In the short time of Jewish Leftist history in NYC: lets set that at 1897 when Abe Cahan founded the newspaper noting the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander III creating the first flood of immigration, there may have been as many as 15 Yiddish newspapers more than half Socialist competing with Abe; so there’s no end to the political differences even antagonisms, intelligences among us that we jokingly say is genetic in character; yes, we are modern, pluralist- without which you can’t have the elements of Democracy.
But we’ve never been on the world stage in a media age before; we have never before as a nation been connected to policies and personalities over which we have no direct control and know through TV alone; the reality of the Jews in America is that we have no Congress no governing institution in which to debate and vote and decide about identity. Our avenue at best, we think, is the Democratic or Republican party but this is certainly second best. And since October 7th more and more unreliable; and if we wanted to see ourselves purely as a religion, in my opinion, the world won’t agree to that anymore.
So our Rabbi and the Shul is indeed personal conviction under US law while our burdens communal, intertwined, etc., are as they have been for thousands of years; in a world of giants, we’re still 16 million worldwide without change, this is no time for the rejection of any of our parts native historical to us as Jews born in the faith of The Prophets- our social religion; this is the inheritance of all jews irrespective of temporality; let’s remember all we’ve accomplished for ourselves and for others in less than 150 years – as a people as a whole.
Let me briefly tell you a story. My cousin Steve Shalom Lerman was the only jew to survive from our shteytl Drohitsyn; When I asked about religious jews he said this: every morning a knock at every door, ‘ Shaharis davenen’; so I asked, “What happened if you didn’t want to go, after all, Shomer Haair, Communists, Bund,??” and he said, ‘You had to go; there was no such thing, no question’. And I’ve thought about it – no police, no civic law, no economic tax – and yet quietly even automatically the atheists, the social rebels that despise orthodoxy went- no problems of a minyan, 1939…..
I made Aliya with family in 1975 and have never had a regret. I’m Left, my word to the Forward staff interested in the future of the American Jewish Left and the personality of Kalil, is that everything hangs on getting rid of Netanyahu, for American Jews as well…if in the next election, assuming he lets us have an election, Bibi and company isn’t thrown out I don’t see how Israel will survive; this is what American Jews should be worried about.
In the Bennett coalition that preceded this coalition (Ben Gvir- Yariv Levin, etc) there was a member of the Arab parties, Mansour Abbas (Dentist, graduate of Hebrew Univ). We Left members were very happy and we thought this was a new beginning for Israel. Our problem is Likud, Bibi. Thanks and lila tov.