Long Past Time to Name Names

I promised myself that I would avoid the news after Biden won in 2020. The years before had been a nonstop deluge of awfulness under Trump, one crisis, embarrassment, or worse, after another. I stuck to my plan well, so much so that I didn’t follow the election of 2024, and woke up after Election Day still not knowing the results. And since then, I’ve mostly kept to my approach. Yes, I see headlines, but since I know most of the backstory to many of them already, I take a pass.

News from Israel is different. I read Haaretz pretty regularly, but often for stories I cannot find elsewhere, including cultural stories about Israeli artists–writers, filmmakers, painters, etc. But I also read the political articles, to varying degrees.  And I try in my own small way to honor the sacrifices of Israel’s fallen soldiers by pausing to read their names, and whatever information is provided about them.  Generally, it’s a devastating roll of child soldiers, 19, 20, 21 years old. Dying for what, at this point, I honestly don’t know.

Which brings me to the other thing I tried to jettison after Biden won–rage. That was a selfish, mental health gesture, since dwelling in and with that anger did no one any good. Certainly not me. But as the wars Israel is fighting rage on, I find my anger rising again. It started with the horror and heartbreak over the appalling attacks of October 7th, but has since morphed into rage at a government that has made more than clear that its only loyalty is to its own power, and to the heinous cliques–theocratic and fascist–that form its core. If given the chance, I would throw the entire rotten lot over the fence into Gaza in exchange for the hostages, and not lose a wink of sleep. And for their special, poisonous contributions to the well of awfulness that is this Israeli government, I would add Sara and Yair Netanyahu.

But I am not in Israel, so all I can do is be angry and heartbroken from afar. So I turn my attention to the American Jewish scene, where cowardice and complicity thrive, at least among some “prominent” American Jewish “leaders” whose voices and faces we can hardly avoid seeing. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on two, both of whom are based in New York City, where I live.

It seems you cannot swing a dead cat in the mainstream American Jewish world and not hit either Eric Goldstein of UJA, or Elliot Cosgrove, Rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue. Let me take Goldstein first. As someone who worked for many years in philanthropy, I am well aware of the politics (often ugly) of dealing with donors.  If you need to raise money, you sometimes have to hold your nose in getting it. So it’s easy for me to say that Goldstein should stand up and speak out against the appalling, cruel, and criminal abuses of Bibi’s government toward the Israeli people.  It is not just the intersection of theocratic and fascist agendas propagated by his ministers; it’s the utter disregard for human life in making the hostages barely an afterthought, and sending waves of soldiers to die so Ben-Gvir can clear more ground to resettle Gaza. Not to mention the vast destruction wrought in Gaza, and the suffering of too many civilians–including children–to count. There is no military strategy at this point. And no amount of bombing and razing will help the IDF rescue any hostages still alive in the wreckage. Yet Bibi lies repeatedly in claiming it’s military pressure that will win the day, when it was only a negotiated deal that led to the release of a significant number of hostages, more than a year ago.

And for those who will insist that Hamas is the roadblock to a deal (and perhaps it is), I would just point out that it was the same Bibi who traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners–including Yahya Sinwar–for a single kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. So maybe let’s stop harping on how Hamas is blocking a deal. All while Ben-Gvir’s allies measure land for their new homes in Northern Gaza.

In my heart of hearts, I do not believe that this worst of all Israeli governments will be brought down through protest. So what I hope for at this point is mass IDF desertion. I hope these soldiers just take their weapons, go back to their bases in Israel, and then go home. Let the Haredim and the hilltop crazies fill the void. And let’s stop pretending that these soldiers are defending “the only democracy in the Middle East.” No democracy of any worth shuns its own citizens pleading for the rescue of their loved ones. No democracy of any worth uses water cannons and police force against protesters demanding an end to war and a deal to free the hostages. No democracy of any worth doubles down on trying to neuter its judiciary and put full control of the legal system into the hands of political partisans. No democracy of any worth lets a parasitic (sorry, but that’s literally what they are) population of Haredim live off the earnings and sacrifices of others while doing nothing but taking, and taking, and taking.

So while I sympathize with the professional challenges of dealing with donors who are probably largely conservative and Bibi-leaning, it is long past time for Eric Goldstein to stop hawking olive oil from Israel as a Chanukah gift, and start talking–LOUDLY and CLEARLY–about the ways in which Bibi and Co. are corrupting, undermining, and flat-out destroying the Israel that was founded as a place of sovereignty, refuge, and yes, even a light among nations.  Short of that, he is just another complicit coward, selling out Zionism and worst of all, selling out those whose past and current sacrifices will have been in vain.

Now to Rabbi Cosgrove, whose public bio describes him as “…a leading voice of American Jewry and a preeminent spiritual guide and thought leader.”  That’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?  I’m not sure whom he speaks for, other than perhaps his well-heeled congregants (and perhaps not even for all of them), but he certainly doesn’t speak for those of us naive enough to believe that the words we recite over and over in synagogue should mean something.  Those words include our obligations toward widows and orphans, and our belief in and determination to achieve shalom, peace.

We are also the people of the prophets, who speak truth to power.  Where has that gone?  Did it get swallowed whole by the synagogue’s hedge fund donors?  Or was it never there to begin with?  Is courage too much to ask, or worse, does Rabbi Cosgrove not see what is going on with Israel’s government as a chilul hashem?  Or if not that, just a heinous offense against human and Jewish values?

Again, I know that I do not have the job of a rabbi, of dealing with perhaps competing views among my congregants.  But I also don’t count myself a spiritual guide and thought leader.  If I did, I’d damn well do my best to be that guide and that leader.  I would focus a whole lot less on getting press coverage for showing up at rallies (I showed up too, and to way more than he did), or lighting candles at the White House Chanukah party.

I would speak loudly and clearly from the bimah, telling my congregants that the Israel that has emerged under this latest Bibi government is the worst in Israel’s history.  It is without question guilty of abandoning Israelis on, before, and since October 7th.  It is guilty of treating non right wing Israelis as lesser citizens, as evidenced by Bibi’s calling protesters against his attempted judicial coup “traitors” and by earlier championing the grotesque Nation State Law, which enshrined second-class citizenship for all but Israeli Jews.

I don’t know what Rabbi Cosgrove’s version of being a spiritual guide amounts to, but from where I sit, it seems to be a total and tragic abandonment of everything that is good and noble and meaningful about Judaism.  Ours is not a religion of convenience and comfort, but Rabbi Cosgrove’s rabbinate seems to be precisely those things.  Services choreographed with Broadway-level panache, but not a ruffled feather in a single soul in the sanctuary.  That failure to demand better of us, to call out the heinous abuses of Israel’s cruel, craven, and corrupt government will surely keep Rabbi Cosgrove on the invitation list for the next exciting government opening–perhaps of the newest Israeli settlement in Gaza.  The same way his attending the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, while making a point of noting that he thought as well of the plight of Palestinians (which I’m sure they felt deep in their souls), made not a single life better, but put lipstick on the pig of Bibi’s “leadership”.

I realize that my calling out “prominent” Jewish leaders in America will not lead to changes in their behavior.  But maybe, just maybe, some version of my words will reach them and give them pause.  And maybe, just maybe, force them to consider the devil’s bargain they’ve made, and the Israel they’ve helped legitimize.  An Israel that breaks the hearts and stains the souls of those of us who know that no nation and no people are perfect, but that we once believed it was our mission to work toward being the best of who we could be.  The mirror we hold up to ourselves now is cracked nearly beyond recognition.  If we cannot repair it, and cherish once again the image we see in it, then what will it all have been for?