On August 10, 1999, I was a carefree sixteen-year-old working as a counselor at a day camp. I could never have anticipated what would happen that day and I will never forget the details of that morning. At 9:45am a self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center (outside Los Angeles) and shot over 70 rounds of ammunition. I was shot, along with four others (including three children). We were the targets of a senseless act of hatred; the crime, according to the shooter, Bufford Furrow, was “a wake-up call for America to kill Jews.” All five of the victims survived. Ironically, we were the lucky ones. Joseph Ileto, a Filipino postal worker shot later that day by Bufford Furrow, was not so fortunate.

I remember the details of that day precisely. I recall, as though it were yesterday, how the detectives spoke with me. Beyond concern about the crime, they were sensitive about how it would affect me, given that as a sixteen-year-old, I was perhaps more impressionable. But more than anything, it was being attacked as a Jew that most devastated me.

For about a year after I was shot, I did what any normal sixteen-year-old would do; I basked in my glory. I took advantage of the attention it brought me: I met the president and the first lady; my house overflowed every day with visitors, providing a surreal sense of a continuous party in my honor. But the attention soon faded and the reality — that I had been shot and someone tried to kill me — set in. I was left alone with my fears and my memories, haunted by the sounds of helicopters, sirens, hammering, and the sight of guns. I experienced such emotional trauma that after my first freshman week when some students on the dorm floor were playing with a nerf gun, my parents had to come and move me back home. I needed to heal and I couldn’t do so in a new place where I felt unsafe.

People rarely understand that although someone survives gun violence, it does not mean that they return to living a normal life. A part of me was robbed, not to ever, probably, be redeemed. The shooting will affect me for the rest of my life. Though time might make the memories fade, they won’t disappear. Ten years later, I still remember every detail of that day.

At the time of the shooting, Bufford Furrow was out on parole from the state of Washington; by all measures, he was criminally insane. He tried to have himself committed to a mental hospital and was denied entrance. He was so sick that the Aryan Nations kicked him out for being “a threat to their cause.” But all this did not prevent him from legally purchasing a semi-automatic weapon at a gun show. I’m convinced that — just as a car is to drive from one point to another — the sole purpose of a gun is to kill. Having a license to operate one should be regulated.

According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the “current federal law requires criminal background checks only for guns sold through licensed firearm dealers.” The “loophole in the law allows individuals [criminal, mentally disturbed, and everyday citizens alike] not engaged in the business of selling firearms to sell guns without a license and without processing any paperwork.” This is how Furrow obtained the weapon he used against me. This so-called loophole needs to be closed so people like Furrow cannot attempt to commit such heinous acts with ease.

I have devoted much time over the past years to work for common sense gun laws. My goal in life is to prevent others from experiencing gun violence. I’ve accepted this responsibility on behalf of the people who weren’t as lucky as I was — people like Joseph Ileto. Parents of murdered children have told me that I can represent their children, children who no longer have voices. Though I will never bring their children’s voices back to life, I can draw on my experiences, my face, and my voice to show how gun violence destroys. Hopefully, that might create something positive from the bullets that ripped through my leg ten years ago.

Two separate episodes, which occurred in September 2009, can shed a light on Israel’s policy of arms sales. The first was the “secret” visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders. Mr. Netanyahu discussed with his hosts the Iranian nuclear program — which, understandably, is of deep concern to Israel — and tried also to persuade them to reverse their decision to sell Tehran the Russian-made anti-aircraft missile defense S-300. The second episode was the visit of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to five major African nations. While the proclaimed aim of his tour was the discussion of malnutrition, hunger, and disease in Africa, Lieberman and his entourage dealt with less humanitarian and elevated subjects and laid the groundwork for future weapons deals.

The two episodes illustrate Israel’s problematic and controversial behavior: On the one hand it is asking the world to take into consideration its security needs. On the other hand Israel itself shows no consideration of other nations’ concerns. Israel preaches morality, values, and ideals, and it portrays itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. Yet behind the scenes it is involved in murky and dubious arms deals.

The request that Russia refrains from selling arms to Iran in particular demonstrates a measure of chutzpa and hypocrisy. Israel has surpassed Russia already in 2008 as the world’s third largest arms exporter. Israel has (almost) no inhibitions in selling weapons on the global market. And, in fact, Israel ignored Russian protests when it equipped the country of Georgia with military hardware, technology, and military training.

Nevertheless, one shouldn’t be so naïve as to ask Israel to be an exception to the dominant rule, or to become a role model. The dream and aspiration of the founding fathers of the Jewish state, rooted in the ideals of the prophets to become “a light to nations,” have long ago faded and crashed on the hard surface of Middle East political and military reality. But one might have expected Israel to play down its rule in this shady and dark business. Instead of showing some remorse and justifying its arms sales policy as a necessity, Israel prides itself on and boasts about becoming a leading power in the field.

With arms sales of between $4–7 billion annually in the last five years, Israel positioned itself as the third largest arms exporter after the U.S. and France, and before world powers such as the U.K., Russia, China, or India.

It all started modestly and humbly. During the first 20 years of its independence, Israel had difficulties finding sources of military supplies to satisfy its legitimate defense needs. After approval from the then Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Czechoslovakia provided Israel with airplanes, weapons, and ammunition, which turned the balance in Israel’s favor in its struggle against the Arab invading armies in the 1948–9 War of Independence. But once the Soviet Union realized that Israel would not become another “socialist” satellite, it abandoned Israel in the early 1950s and Israel was forced to search for new suppliers. The West was a natural candidate. But having strong oil interests in the Arab world, both the U.S. and Britain rejected Israeli appeals. Eventually, temporary and limited mutual interests formed a French–Israeli alliance. It lasted for more than a decade and resulted in the 1956 conspiracy (together with the U.K.) to invade Egypt during the Suez War. France continued the cooperation by providing Israel with its nuclear reactor and weapons. But the “Bridge over the Mediterranean,” as the French–Israeli alliance was dubbed, ended after Israel found itself in another round of war with its Arab neighbors. France declared an arms embargo on Israel in 1967 and refused to honor its commitments.

The 1967 Six Day War turned out to be a watershed in Israeli history for several reasons, among them: a smashing victory over the Arab states and the occupation of Arab territories, a rise in economic prosperity, and the replacement of France with the U.S. as its major political patron and arms supplier. Still, Israel realized that it had to develop its own small military industry to ensure that its needs would be met should an arms embargo recur. Originally the aim was to research and develop state-of-the-art sophisticated systems, enabling the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to maintain a technological edge over its Arab adversaries, especially those systems that Israel couldn’t purchase from the Americans. Nowadays Israel is manufacturing missiles, tanks, boats, aviation systems, artillery, rifles, ammunition, and intelligence equipment.

Over time the raison d’être for the weapons industry changed. The scope and the range of the Israeli military-industrial complex extended and its mission turned upside down. When the cost of research and development skyrocketed, the IDF justified the expense by seeking markets in which to sell its military merchandise. Since the 1980s, the Israeli military industry has been hiring more workers and salesmen, who travel the world offering Israel’s “battle-proven” goods.

The name of the game, sanctioned by the Israeli Ministry of Defense and government, was commerce — at any cost. Israel, it was claimed, needed to produce weapons and
military systems not only for its defense needs but also for economic reasons: to gain hard currency, to provide work, and to sustain a larger workforce. “If we don’t do it the British, French, South Africans, Russians, Ukrainians, and others will fill the gap.” A new brand of Israelis surfaced and prospered: arms dealers, middlemen, security advisors, and military experts. Restrictions were lifted. Weapons were sold to Israel’s enemies such as Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Israeli weapons found their ways to fuel civil wars in Africa and to support dictators in Asia and South America.

In the meantime Israel’s reputation has been stained and involvement in conflicts has given Israel a bad name. With good intentions Israel gave birth to an industry that suddenly and unintentionally turned into an uncontrolled beast that has to be fed.

I know a Jewish scholar who works at a think tank and keeps a handgun in his suburban home. I work with Jewish advocates who favor the most stringent regulation of firearms. I watched a Hassidic rabbi banter with his pro-gun gentile peers at a national gun industry convention, lamenting the designs of liberals on their “rights.” And the scientist father of one of my child’s classmates in a Jewish day school wouldn’t own a gun but has no problem with those who do.

So, what do Jews in America think about guns and gun control? The question reflects our broad sociopolitical spectrum. And it is talmudic; an exquisitely ambiguous Second Amendment text demands explication. The obvious answers turn out to be touchstones for more questions. There are conflicting opinions on everything.

Although the use of firearms raises interesting halakhic issues about self-defense and hunting, Jews in America are not divided over guns by religious dogma. To the extent that they are divided, it is because of social and political views, held by some with the intensity and certainty of religious conviction.

These convictions are grounded in the urban orientation of most Jews, which conflicts sometimes with the views of American Jews in the western and southern states. The most comprehensive recent exploration of the landscape of Jews in America — the American Jewish
Committee’s 2005 publication, Jewish Distinctiveness in America: A Statistical Portrait — noted that Jews are “heavily concentrated in large metropolitan areas…[and] are the group most fearful of walking alone at night and among the least likely to own a gun or hunt.” Jews are also said to have “the greatest support for gun control.”

Moreover, Jews are “solidly Democratic in party identification and presidential voting and self-identifying as liberal.” Jews have voted overwhelmingly Democratic in every presidential election since 1968, with the exception of the 1980 contest between Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson.

On the other hand, Democrats in Congress have run away from gun control ever since their loss of the House of Representatives in 1994, a disaster conventional wisdom blames on the passage of an assault weapons ban. Voting Democratic today does not mean voting for gun control. The issue has a low priority, shunned to give political breathing room to other issues, such as health care. Jewish legislators who were once leaders in gun control are now conspicuously silent. It is not clear whether American Jews as a whole have made the same calculation. But it is difficult to discern a Jewish tidal wave of gun-control activism.

At the same time, Jews strongly support civil liberties, even for “various socially and/or politically suspect groups.”  Jews believe in the very American concept of inalienable rights, the foundation of what some have called our “civic religion.” It is not clear how Jewish support for gun control reconciles itself with gun rights. For that matter, it is not clear what exactly “gun rights” are.

What precisely does this grammatically fractured congeries of words mean? “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The great houses of constitutional interpretation have been split for nearly a century between the view that these words articulate an individual right and the view that they protect only a collective right to arm state militias. The difference is eminently practical, defining the limits of state regulation.

There is no “Jewish” interpretation. American Jews, constitutional scholars, lawyers, and individual activists, have advocated on both sides. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the right to bear arms is personal. Yet it left room for gloss. The keeping and bearing of arms may not be wholly denied, but it may be reasonably regulated. Some gun control is still allowed, but how much and of what kind?

Exactly what form of gun control do Jews favor? Banning all firearms? Banning only handguns? Would they allow “concealed carry,” if the carriers were strictly trained and licensed? There are dozens of similar questions lurking in the miasma of gun control. There is no discernible Jewish answer to these questions.

That can be said with confidence. And the abstract right to keep and bear arms is made manifest by the ritual, part intellectual, part gut feeling, of risk assessment. Like other Americans, Jews ask themselves, given my “right,” do I feel safer with or without a gun?

More than any other ethnic or religious group in America, Jews would rather not pack a gun. But their answer as to what others may or should do might be less predictable than one might think or hope.

American Jews like their guns at a distance. Despite the participation of Jewish soldiers in each of America’s wars — going back to 1776 — it wasn’t until 1948 that Jews finally found guns that fit them, culturally speaking. But there was one catch: Those guns were in Israel.

And even more: they fell in love with the young, tanned, fit, Hebrew-speaking kibbutznik who knew how to handle them. As American Jews moved into the suburbs and white collar professions, Israelis both worked and defended the land with their hands. As American Jews inaugurated their own Jewish adulthoods in lavish celebrations of b’nai mitzvah, the kibbutznik-cum-soldier became an adult in the line of fire. From the comfort of their own homes, American Jews cheered on their Israeli counterparts, absorbing and adopting the images of Jewish soldiers while keeping the guns themselves at a safe distance.

Nothing captures this exchange better than “Exodus,” the 1960 film of Leon Uris’ 1958 novel of the same name. The film follows Ari ben Canaan (Paul Newman) as he leads a boat of refugees through a hunger strike from Cypress to Palestine, and then helps orchestrate the defense of Jewish settlements in Israel’s War of Independence.

From the first, ben Canaan is not your average Jew. In fact, the first time we lay eyes on him, he is shirtless, emerging from the cold Mediterranean water, sneaking his way into Cypress. From then on, he takes the form of the prototypical “new Jew”: a self-confident and self-sufficient Israeli who is not afraid of getting his hands dirty with either mud or blood.

As Jewish historian Deborah Dash Moore reminds us, “Exodus” succeeded because it sold the Zionist project as western — a genre in which both farmers and guns played a major role. By folding Palestine into mythic visions of the American frontier, “Exodus” drew American Jews into its epic wake and helped set the template for American visions of Israel and Israelis. Moreover, it let American Jews — who famously did not line up at El Al counters to purchase one-way tickets — export philanthropic dollars and import images of Jews fighting Jewish fights with guns.

Ben Canaan became the poster boy for the new Jew. And his image proved so popular and powerful that for about 45 years, American audiences did not see another blockbuster film with an Israeli main character, until Americans were treated to the double feature of Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” (2005) and Adam Sandler’s “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” (2008).

Like the epic “Exodus,” both recent films employ a version of the Israeli superstud/soldier myth. But unlike “Exodus,” both temper that depiction with heavy doses of ambivalence and regret. “Munich” focuses on the character of Avner (Eric Bana), who leads a team of Mossad agents to exact revenge on those responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Avner never sits comfortably in his role as hired killer, and even though he carries out his task, by the end of the film he literally disappears into the New York skyline.

Sandler’s “Zohan,” a parody of the Israeli super-soldier, shares Avner’s discomfort. He moves to New York to start his life over as a hairdresser in an effort to make the world “silky smooth.” Like Bana’s Avner, but with a perverse sense of humor, Zohan eventually partners with and marries the sister of his long-time nemesis and they build a mall together. In Brooklyn.

In both films, the U.S. (and specifically New York) serves as an alternate fantasy of the new Jewish future — a peaceful place where people can start their lives anew and leave their Israeli guns and battles behind.

“Munich” and “Zohan” are no less reflections of American Jewish fantasies of Israel than their predecessor. All three films strive, on some level, to explain the Israel-Palestine conflict to American audiences — both Jewish and not. “Exodus” did this in terms of the myth of the American frontier; “Zohan” and “Munich” do this in a more sentimental register, allowing their characters to embody America’s collective ambivalence around the meaning of Israel and its ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Yet, despite their different endings, each film participates in a similar exchange of arms for images. Each exports guns and violence to the Middle East, leaving American Jews to watch, support, cheer, cry, sympathize, and criticize from their seats. The relationship between Jews and guns remains exportable, as American Jews can thrill vicariously at films like “Exodus,” and express their ambivalence through characters like Zohan and Avner, as long as those images keep their guns at a distance. Despite their differences, all three films agree that Jews and guns still only belong over there, even or especially as over there seems to grow ever more distant from right here.

In light of last year’s scandal at the Agri­processors meat plant, Bema’aglei Tzedek (“Circles of Justice”) is probably best known for being a pioneer in the field of ethical kashrut. Our Tav Chevrati, a certificate granted free of charge to restaurants that treat their employees ethically and are handicapped accessible, now graces over 350 establishments throughout Israel in places as diverse as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Kfar Saba, Beer-Sheva, Maale-Adumim, Givat Shmuel, Efrat, and Emek Israel.

My journey with Bema’aglei Tzedek, in general, and the Tav Chevrati in particular, began four years ago shortly after the organization’s inception. At that time, I made a very personal decision to eat only in establishments that bear a Tav Chevrati. Although today there are hundreds of certified restaurants, the pickings were rather slim back then. This meant that every time I met a friend or colleague for coffee, I couldn’t help but think about workers’ rights, handicapped accessibility, and what it means to be a Jewish-ethical consumer living in a Jewish state. Although I had been involved in many social justice ventures before, it wasn’t until I switched my eating habits that my entire outlook shifted. All of a sudden, I saw things that I had not seen before and became sensitive to the suffering of people whom I had previously ignored. Anyone who has changed their diet — for religious, health, or other reasons — knows that such a decision not only impacts oneself but also one’s friends, family, and associates. Indeed, there is not a single person in my address book who does not know that I only eat in places that are accessible and comply with basic Israeli labor laws — i.e. pay minimum wage, overtime, and social security; register work hours properly; and reimburse expenses related to travel and in-service training.

Several months ago, I had the privilege of sharing our organization’s hard-earned wisdom in the field of ethical kashrut with a group of rabbis and lay leaders in Los Angeles who wanted to launch a similar initiative in their own community. Skeptical as to the efficacy of ethical kashrut certification, one of the people at the meeting asked: “In my day job as a labor lawyer, I file class action suits helping thousands of exploited workers. Why should I spend my precious free time worrying about the rights of two Mexican kitchen staff at the local kosher pizzeria? Wouldn’t my time be better spent staying at work an extra hour a day?” I answered that an ethical kashrut certificate without a built-in enforcement mechanism is worthless. Consumers will not have faith in a certificate that lacks teeth nor will restaurant proprietors regard such a certificate with seriousness. But, to speak solely in terms of compliance, is missing the point. The power of this certification far surpasses questions of compliance and civic enforcement. Ethical kashrut is about shifting the discourse and behavioral norms in the Jewish community and rediscovering what it means to be a Jew in the modern age. It is about educating an entire generation of young Jews to use ethical considerations in their daily actions and to appreciate the inherent connection between ethical considerations and their Jewish identities. A certificate must not only help exploited workers but must also seize what might be “teachable moments” of the grandest proportions.

With the Tav Chevrati having reached a certain degree of maturity, I no longer assess its success simply in terms of the number of new restaurants that join our ranks on a monthly basis. For me, success is the world-renowned Rosh Yeshiva who proudly tells his students that, when entering a restaurant, he first looks for a Tav Chevrati and only afterward for a traditional kashrut certificate. Success is the 50-year-old mother who boasts that her ninth-grader only eats in places bearing our certificate. Success is knowing that we have not only made a difference in the lives of thousands of restaurant workers who now receive their due, or thousands of people with disabilities who can now enjoy a night out like anyone else, but it is the knowledge that we are educating the next generation of young Israelis to take small steps to create a more just society inspired and informed by Jewish values.

My name is Amitai Adler, and right here, right now, I am coming out of the mystical closet. I don’t have a tie-dyed tallis. I don’t identify as “Renewal.” I don’t even really like drum circles. I am actually a rather studious rabbinical student — with a bent for halakhah — at a Conservative movement seminary. But I believe in energy. I believe in magic. I believe in angels and in demons. I believe in a universe of both the seen and the unseen. I believe in the ability of human beings to see the unseen. And I believe I have caught glimpses of it. There. Now you know my secret.

How did I get here, and what stood in my way? In some ways, my upbringing could not have prepared me better for what I aim to do — be a rabbi and teacher. But the question we ask ourselves in the context of this discussion is: In what ways were we shaped that ultimately proved to be impediments to becoming who we needed to be?

With me, it was rationalism — by which I mean not the Rationalism of classical philosophy but a rationality reflecting an absence of the mystical. Both my parents are, intellectually, children of the 1950s. I appreciate their optimistic streaks, and how they taught me about civil rights early and often. But less helpful was their reasoned approach to Judaism. Though spiritual, they are not comfortable with the mystical. My mother is a deeply pragmatic Reform-oriented thinker and my father was trained by Rav Eliezer Berkovits, z”l, a master of reasoned traditional thought.

I, on the other hand, instinctively relate to God and to the universe first and foremost in terms of energy and essence. While I view this world as key (that being a primary tenet of all Jewish understandings of life), I see it as one world among many, and I view it — as I mentioned — as a mix of the seen and unseen, as a living network of energy. Thus I was fascinated early on with magic, mythology, and tales of the Hassidic wonder-workers, though I shunned the “crunchy granola” that so often seemed to accompany such interests in American society. Additionally, by disappearing into books, into silent contemplation, into creative artistic experiments, I began to develop a reputation with my family and teachers as a “daydreamer” with his “head in the clouds.” It must have seemed to my parents that I made less and less sense the older I got.

For me, my life began to make sense after I taught myself to meditate. I probably made a hash of it, seeing as I was only eleven, but I kept at it, both the practice and the inexhaustible reading and research; by the time I entered college, I was seriously meditating on an almost-daily basis. That practice helped me reconcile that although I had instinctively seen the universe I had never accessed the language to understand how it worked. I always instinctively felt as though I were walking in many worlds at once. Deeply empathic, I had always felt what others felt; perceived to some small extent things that were intangible, sensed the invisible; by college, I even began to catch glimpses of the patterns of force and energy that make up the world around us. Naturally, since modern Western society doesn’t even acknowledge the phenomena of the mystical, I had always felt constrained to keep my perceptions and feelings to myself since, as a child, there was apparently no place for them in the world around me. Meditation — with its discipline to calmness, to channeling and controlling feelings and perceptions, to balancing one’s energies toward inner peace — not only gave me tools to control my sensory input, it gave me a sense of harmony with who I was, thus freeing me to explore the larger universe that beckoned me.

Meditation also influenced my desire to major in theater arts, as acting is a craft well-suited to working by feeling and not reason, and one that is entirely dependent upon the ability to freely embrace the truth and the totality of one’s being. That decision bewildered and slightly horrified my uncomprehending parents, who understood the desire to teach and write, but really didn’t think a person could make a living as an actor, and never understood the more spiritual and psychological elements of my attraction to acting. Finally, meditation kept me grounded, and, completely unconsciously, it worked its way into my practice of tefillah, which probably ultimately saved me as a Jew.

When I was a teenager I took a rumspringa, as the Amish phrase puts it: I stopped going to shul, kept zealously treyf, and so forth. Then, a few years later, on Rosh Hashanah I went home to go to shul — ostensibly to please my family and enjoy some home cooking. But as I stood in services, bringing to bear the focus and concentration I had learned through meditation, I felt answered; I felt not alone. Not in a wacky sense of hearing voices, of course, but in a real sense, unjustifiable by any rational measurements. This moment of brushing up to devekut, a clinging closeness with God, was the payoff for my years of sensing energy and expanding awareness in a controlled way, through the practice of meditating — of channeling experiences through the liturgy rather than approaching the liturgy as an intellectual or abstractly spiritual practice.

I am finishing rabbinical school now at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. My teacher, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, introduced me at long last to the word “arational” — not something rational and not something “irrational” as in senseless, but something that simply falls outside the paradigm of rationalism. Mysticism, which is the term I have used to describe my relationship with Judaism and the world, is “arational.” I never knew the word until recently, but I had to find its meaning on my own. Rationalism was the idol of my parents — their worldview and their engagement with Judaism.  It was the idol I had to destroy in order to become the person my Creator meant me to be. And it has provided an extremely fine grounding for studying rabbinics — even those areas most rational.

]]> http://www.shma.com/2009/11/living-with-the-%e2%80%9carational%e2%80%9d/feed/ 1 http://www.shma.com/2009/11/discussion-guide-%e2%80%93-gun-control/ http://www.shma.com/2009/11/discussion-guide-%e2%80%93-gun-control/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:12:25 +0000 admin http://www.shma.com/?p=1278