There is no point in pretending that Rocky has any interest in most of what I would call my musings about what it means to be a Jew like me at a time like this. This is true even though sometimes I do my musing out loud as we walk along the boardwalk by the bay having read or heard something that touched my heart and I cry out—that may be overstating it—in joy or sadness and sometimes, perhaps too often, in anger about what I have read or heard to a God about whose existence I am sceptical, which means that I consider that the chances are that she/he does not hear me.
Unlike God who might or might not hear me, Rocky, despite the fact that he is going deaf, does hear me which does not mean of course that he understands, literally, what I am on about, but I do believe that he gets the vibe.
That he hears me is also an indication that my crying out to God is loud enough for my fellow boardwalk walkers to hear me and be startled and then concerned about my mental health.
But so far, no-one has stopped to ask whether I need help. Or even looked at me with concern or anger or pity. When you think about it, this may be because there are quite a number of people each morning talking out loud along the boardwalk, not to God but to someone―and who knows where―on a hands-free mobile phone.
I did not call out this morning to God, not in joy or sorrow and certainly not in anger. It was a lovely warm God-given—or so it felt―early autumn morning and I noticed that very few people were talking out loud, not to God and not to their mobile phones.
This does not mean their hearts were untroubled or filled with joy, nor even that they were not talking to God or whomever, silently, not even in a whisper, inside their heads or if you like, inside their souls.
You may wonder what has prompted these musings about God and the heart and the soul and about joy and sadness and anger. It is because of David Leser a writer I admire and who is not exactly a friend but who has some regard for me too. I emailed him about an article he wrote and published in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald this morning in which he said too many Jews have dead hearts.
I wrote him that my heart is not dead as far as I can tell, nor are the hearts of the Jews I know who have not signed petitions, group letters, fierce proclamations or for that matter, articles in the Nine papers where these sorts of articles have a home. He wrote back almost immediately and reassured me that my heart is not dead. And anyway, he wrote, who knows what is going on in anyone’s heart?
I wrote to him asking him how, if as he says, no-one knows what is going on in any-one’s heart, how then did he know that the hearts of Jews who did not write articles such as the one I read in The Age/SMH this morning describing his horror, as a Jew at what was happening in Gaza―or Jews who did not sign Ceasefire Now! petitions―were dead-hearted?
He did not respond which I regret because these exchanges with him were starting to feel Talmudic. I say this because the first few paragraphs of his article, describing how he was tortured about whether he should write the piece and call out the dead-hearted Jews and how he had remained silent despite the urgings of people who said his (special) voice was needed and how finally, he had decided that he needed to tell the dead-hearted Jews to wake up and sign ceasefire petitions made me think of Maimonides, the 12th century great sage of Judaism and his book, The Guide for the Perplexed.
David, I suddenly felt—and sudden and outlandish insights are not always reliable so treat this with some scepticism― was writing like a modern-day secular Maimonides guiding the perplexed Jews—of which I am one— about what constitutes an ethical response to the deaths of many thousands of men, women and children in Gaza in Israel’s war against Hamas.
Let me make it clear that I have not read The Guide for the Perplexed but I have listened to a three part podcast about Maimonides and his work and it is on the basis of what I heard in the podcasts—I know, this is very problematic but these are the times in which we live—that I considered David Leser to be presenting himself as a modern day Maimonides.
Some of his article describes the hell-like horror of Gaza and blames Israel for it and argues that it is a genocide in Gaza by Israel. I do not think it is a genocide, but he of course has every right to see it that way even though I think it is a charge ―he implies, falsely―that the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel would have made―that is at best ahistorical.
It is his exhortation to Jews to cry out not in my name! and his excruciated despair at the dead hearts of too many Jews who just will not listen that brings to mind Maimonides and The Guide for the Perplexed.
He even cites rabbinic authorities and people he considers learned men in support of his ethical exhortations to dead hearted Jews. Maimonides like. One of the learned men, David cites is a guy called Saul Magid, a US religious studies academic about whose academic work I know very little and neither, on the face of it does David Leser. This is not a citation of great moral force. I do not think Maimonides would have approved—if David can presume to know what a dead Eli Wiesel would think, I can presume to know what a dead Maimonides would have thought of Saul Magid as a sage of Judaism.
The rabbinic authority he uses to buttress his call for an end to Jewish silence is Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss who Leser describes as an anti-Zionist rabbi who denounced Israel and is quoted by Leser as saying ``Because we are Jews, we have to stand up and say ``not in my name’ we totally object to this. We cry and hurt with the people of Palestine.’’
If you Google the name Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss—which I did because I wanted to know more about this rabbi tortured by the fate of the people of Gaza—you will find that he is a leader of the US based fundamentalist sect Naturei Karta which is not just antizionist but is virulently opposed to Israel’s existence because it believes a secular Jewish state is an abomination and that a true Israel will only come into being when the Messiah comes.
It supports the antizionist theocracy in Iran. In 2007 Weiss and a group of his followers attended a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran and were feted by senior mullahs and were welcomed by the then president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photographed with him, was this group of black-hatted, bearded, sidelock wearing Jews who were subsequently reviled—and remain so—by other fundamentalist Chassidic sects.
There is more that could be said about this small group of religious fanatics who despise Israelis and Israel and who support the most virulent antizionists, those who on any reasonable view, are seriously hostile to Jews, but there’s no point here.
But this is David Leser’s rabbinic authority in his Maimonides like exposition of what is the proper ethical action of Jews who have deadened their hearts to Palestinian suffering and are therefore, somehow complicit in the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza. Maimonides, if there is an afterlife―which I doubt but do not wholly reject—would be turning in his grave.
I shall not be taking up Leser’s invitation to cry out `not in my name! nor will I sign Ceasefire Now! petitions. My heart, however, is not dead but I am not prepared to offer up public handwringing at what is happening in Gaza. Of course, I accept that there are Jews who feel the need to do so. I understand. What I worry about, what I cannot accept, is what Leser is saying in more polite ways, echoing the calling out of genocide supporting Jews on social media, some of that calling out vile beyond comprehension, but all of it with this sinister underlying assumption: that those Jews who do not call out evil Israel are complicit in the unspeakable Gaza nightmare. And therefore, deserve contempt and cancelling and even violence.
Let me finish with this. David Leser is on page one of The Age today, with a photo pointing to his article inside about why he can no longer remain silent. Many people have asked me why I have been writing for The Australian from time to time these past five months since October 7 and have not appeared in The Age, my former paper, where I spent most of my life in journalism.
I think the answer is obvious but let me ask this rhetorical question: is there any chance this little essay I have written here would be wanted by The Age? With a page one picture by-line pointer?
Michael- so well said. The Age and the ABC have become repositories of the " I am a Jew,, but " or " "Because I am a Jew...." variety.The Adlers and Lesers of this world who hate their own far more than anyone else could. At a time when Jews are routinely being called genocidal baby killers and no-one seems to care about the remaining hostages who are seemingly left to rot in the tunnels of Gaza, it is obscene to read articles like his . Thank you.
Thank you Michael, I just read this, which was perfect timing for me. I had started to read the David Leser article but very quickly stopped. I just don't need to be told what to think or feel by someone who uses a Neturei Karta Rabbi to make his point.