R.I.P., Howard

They say you were influential. Somehow I made it through four years at Oberlin without reading even a page of A People's History; that's something I should rectify one of these years. May your work and life continue to inspire lefty activists and scholars! Lord knows they could use the inspiration these days.

"Rachel" and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

One of Dane's friends, Davey, recently wrote a terrific post about Jewish San Franciscans who pressured SFJFF not to screen Rachel, a documentary about the late activist Rachel Corrie, about whom I've also written. (It ended up being screened, as JTA reported today.) When Davey refers to

a small but wealthy segment of the Jewish community that is so Zionist that it considers it inappropriate for a Jewish film festival to screen any film that is not explicitly and completely pro-Israeli-government

the word "groupthink" comes to mind, and I feel grateful that I was raised with healthy skepticism in relation to Israel.

When I was growing up, if someone around our family's Passover table said "Next year in Jerusalem," as is customary, my father would express ambivalence about that supposedly universal Jewish yearning. I think a source of my own ambivalence with regard to Jewish identity is related to the notion that because I'm Jewish I should believe X, Y, or Z, or should support Israel in this or that particular way. I'm an individual, I have my own mind, and the Israeli government is a government, not something God created, not the 11th commandment. It's flawed, and when it's acting as an oppressor, it needs to be called out, especially by Jews.

Some aspects of my skepticism towards Judaism and certain things Jewish may reflect deep-seated ethnic self-loathing, but when it comes to questioning Israel's actions (and its incredibly suspect "internal investigations" of such incidents as Corrie's death), skepticism equals common sense.

Move the center

If you, like me, have long been intrigued by Naomi Klein (and have long intended to read No Logo), you'll likely appreciate Larissa MacFarquhar's recent New Yorker article about her. For one thing, I had no idea Klein was Canadian. And as both a staunch Obama supporter and someone who has been involved in many a debate about whether revolutionary politics are more useful, more often, than reform-minded tactics, I find that the piece raises a lot of questions without trying to answer any of them patly. Which befits Gen X, according to Klein's husband, Avi Lewis:

Suspicion of people who know what the answer is—that’s very characteristic of our generation, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve never gone into politics.