The Lilith Blog

July 10, 2008 by Mel Weiss

At 232, a New Day?

So, America turned 232 this past weekend. Unfortunately, it seems like lots of people aren’t feeling too good about the state of the nation. Polls indicate people are feeling bad about the direction America seems headed in. I think when kids studying U.S. political history look at our era, they’re going to be reading something about low national morale. Or at least, they should, because this feeling of low, which I think has passed beyond partisan lines.

And why not? Jobs are disappearing, the price of gas is skyrocketing towards European levels, food costs more both because grains cost more and because it costs more to ship it from place to place, and the government keeps listening to your conversations. This to say nothing of a never-ending war in Iraq, and a never-ending war on drugs at home. We’re not doing so hot in either. Morning in America, frankly, it’s not.

But we shouldn’t despair just yet, I think. I’ll admit, I’m curious. Despite all the hubbub about liberals being divided, and the fierce partisan divide, I wonder if we’re not, as a nation, slowly coming together. I wonder if I’ll get to see a wide-scale demonstration of American civic spirit. It’s a much talked-up phenomenon which I feel like I see on a small scale from time to time, but a main marker of my political growing-up has been disdain for the lack of civic interest—people simply seemed to discard the good of others if it interfered with good for them. This happens a lot in history, but when you’re born into “Morning in America,” it’s especially noticeable. Anyway, I feel a rumbling underground that we’re slowly getting there, that maybe America will react to this low by coming together for the common good.

And I hate to sound preachy here, but I do feel like liberal political philosophy encourages that. It’s a good moment for liberal causes when people come together to help one another through bad times—not issues like gay marriage, but more fundamentally populist ones, ones that actively value everyday people, like education, small-business support, national health and health care, etc. So I’m ready for a big swing to my side of the field. I learned most of my early we’re-all-responsible-for-each-other lessons from women, Jewish and otherwise, and my most recent love affairs with communal bettering have been via Jewish organizations that recognize we’re part of a larger community—not just an American community, but a global one.

I, for one, am ready to be a better neighbor. What do you think?

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 30, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Get Off the Sauce, People

It’s funny how a news cycle—and even an important policy debate—can kind of sneak up on you. When did offshore drilling become such a hot topic? How is it possible, in this post-Inconvenient Truth era, we’re somehow still having a debate about whether or not to radically curtail our consumption of oil?

Jon Stewart summarizes the issue well when he says our energy policy is now: “I have a cocaine problem. I’m out of cocaine. What say we turn the kids’ rooms into cocaineries.” Look, I understand that people are hurting now. The price of gas is actually not the commodity price hike I’ve most noticed vis-à-vis my own wallet, because I live in a big city with vast mass transit, I don’t own a car and I rarely ride in one. But I read, I hear people talking (and I pay more for shipped goods, too). And I grasp that we need some serious help here. Now, I am not a scientist, nor an economist, nor an engineer nor even a consumer in this field, so I can’t tell you what the solution is by a long shot. But even I can begin to understand that some proposed answers are just ridiculous.

For starters, there’s the ridiculous gas-tax holiday plan, supported by John McCain and, back in the day, Hillary Clinton. This holiday plan,
which at most would save the average American sixty cents a day, provides little incentive for consumers to change habits or the market to provide affordable alternatives except for the fact that it really doesn’t help very much. Sure, sixty cents a day may sound like a lot, but when you’ve seen gas jump over a dollar per gallon in a year (and barely any effect on the size of tanks) you get to thinking that maybe we need to have a little more foresight than that.

So, we can either throw a lot of money to science and to local non-carbon efforts at stuff like energy efficiency and non-oil, non-ethanol fuel, or we can…go to offshore drilling? Seriously? These are my options?

It’s not like we’re all strangers to the politicization of science or its distortion for political purposes (“partial-birth abortion”?), but this is kind of worse than that. This is messing with the heads of people who are hurting amidst price hikes on a lot of consumer items previously taken for granted, and telling them that if we start drilling pretty much anywhere we can, this will bring the price of gas down to something affordable and is the better option right now than, say, federal loans for hybrid cars. Oh, yeah, and that we should all be mad at the environmental lobby, because this is all their fault.

We’ve got a problem. Actually, we’ve got a problem and a problem with our problem, if you know what I mean. The Talmudic sage Rav warns his son in Pesachim 113a not to take drugs, because “the addiction to them will take its toll.” We’re that kid at the party who’s had too much cheap beer, and what we need is both the concerned friend (that should be the government) who will take our keys our keys away and find us a ride home. We need to let that happen—in fact, we need to encourage it to happen. Desperately searching for what will ultimately be a few more hits of oil isn’t going to save us in the long run. It’ll barely save us in the short run. So let’s put our keys in the bowl and admit we have a problem, enter the fray for better mass transit and recognize that no short-term tax “holiday” or new-and-barely-offshore-environmental-disaster-waiting-to-happen is going to put this right. We’re going to have to do some serious work.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 23, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Going by the Numbers

We’re back to the numbers this week on the campaign trail…

A new study is out about how the McCain and Obama proposed tax plans would affect two specific focus families. The families chosen were the Obama and McCain families (neat trick). Check out the results here. Essentially, if you’re in the top 1% of the population, you’re going to do okay either way. The Obama plan will give you a little cash back, and the McCain plan a little more. If you’re in the top tenth of a percentile (.1%), however, you’ll probably be voting Republican, because you’ll be getting maybe thirty times more back under McCain. Um…yeah.

I’d like to take a moment to point out while members of the McCain campaign have suggested that the economy can take cuts of this size in spite of the opinions of the experts and McCain’s voting record, other experts happily point out that neither plan will generate enough income to even begin to address of deficit. Keep that in mind.

So I don’t think that I need to make the point, if you’re already on this site, that women aren’t quite caught up economically in this country, nor suggest that the recent Ledbetter case in the Supreme Court points to the fact that may be even easier to get screwed economically as a woman in America and therefore maybe women should particularly want a tax plan that evens out the load a little. (But if you’re looking more on that follow those links for some good reading.)

No, I’d like to talk some numbers to some Jews who like numbers. I know, I know, your primary concern is Israel, but let’s talk very concretely for just a moment or two, okay? I’ve always been a big fan of voting where you live, and let’s face it: no U.S. president will be in a position to snub Israel. So let’s chill and talk about the fact that while Jews have done very well for ourselves in America, we don’t all fit neatly into the category of “top-tenth percentile.” If 20% if NYC Jews below the poverty line in 2004 doesn’t make you think twice, let me remind you that in the test run on the two plans, the poorer of the two, the Obamas, made nearly one million dollars per year—a salary comfortably inside “upper middle class” range. They may get a little more money back from the government under the McCain plan, but they’re doing all the economic work for the top tenth of their numbers. They’re getting screwed in the ratio. So we don’t even need to address how the ordinary worker is getting screwed by oil prices. Let us talk of Medicaid and Medicare and healthcare, and how the tinkering-with of these things is going to affect the upper middle class. Probably, not for the better. I’m just giving you the numbers.

–Mel Weiss.

The Lilith Blog

June 18, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Queering the Conversation

Brooklyn Pride was this past Saturday night. It was intermittently pouring, and both those of us watching and the soggy marchers got soaked and didn’t really care. I love the huge excitement of the big Pride Parade, which is weeks to come yet here in NYC, but I love Brooklyn Pride because it’s a lot, well, queerer in a way—in a good way. Occasionally the big parade feels faintly sanitized, too clean and stale. I like to see events queered, especially in a politicized way, especially when I’m caught off guard by it. So I love when social justice stuff gets mixed up in Pride events, as it always seems to in this borough.

Today, at the “Egg Creams and Egg Rolls” event rocking the Eldridge Street Synagogue and its whole block, surprise guest Sheldon Silver (Speaker of the New York State Assembly) made many disarming remarks about the synagogue and followed up on the presenter’s brief history of the egg cream. I daydreamed through much of Speaker Silver’s talk, enjoying the architecture but a bit put off by all the nostalgia, until I heard a brave question from a random audience member: “Is the arena going to be built?” The question, referring to the Atlantic Yards debacle, was said in a defiant tone, and Speaker Silver hurriedly gave a non-answer and left. And it wasn’t the question about Atlantic Yards that got me excited (although that ridiculous, harmful and unconstitutional excuse for a public works project gets me plenty exercised), so much as the realization that I was hearing it in a synagogue—a converted synagogue, but still.

And I got to thinking that the first place I heard about Atlantic Yards was at my very own neighborhood synagogue, which marched in the Pride Parade, and that all the queer friends I ran into on Brooklyn Pride night were Jewish and involved in this queer political version of tikkun olam, and it made me remember that our little battles count just as much as the big ones. So, what are your small-but-vital political fights? How are you queering the conversation? Leave your thoughts below.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 12, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Mr. Obama Goes to AIPAC

Shavuot was never a big-deal holiday in my family—it was pretty much the Festival of the Cheese Blintz. It’s only been in more recent years that I’ve learned about the lovely theological bases for this celebration, and worked towards understanding the sublime joy of receiving the Torah.

I received a number of great Shavuot-related press releases with excellent study suggestions from that mass of organizations we call the progressive Jewish front. I guess between that and my recent trip to San Francisco (my first), I feel that the rise of these progressive Jewish organizations (or at least what looks like a rise from where I’m sitting) really shows how we as Jewish communities are reshaping ourselves. It’s pretty awesome to watch, no?

Of course, we’re not The Establishment just yet. Fairly strong reminders of this were part of Obama’s recent speech to AIPAC–like the many attempts to address the out-of-control email rumor mill that would have you believe that Senator and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama is a radical Muslim fundamentalist, that he wants to normalize relations with Iran, that he hates Israel. These rumors strike me, and may strike you, as totally ridiculous, but unfortunately, there are people out there who hate Obama for just these “reasons.” The speech, even a bit too hawkish for me, certainly aligned Obama with Israel, and I wondered how his much-lauded young, liberal base was going to deal. But he also did something brilliant—he reframed the question of Jewish/black relations, and he recast the history of Jewish progressivism.

I think if anything, Jews come off as too good in Obama’s narrative, but given that he’s willing to go to AIPAC to talk about Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney, he can pretty much call it like he sees it. And he sees, or understands the possible gains to seeing, a world in which progressive Jewish values are happily fulfilled, in which we support Israel both by cheering its success but also by admitting to and learning from our failures. And in which we can be reminded of our own radical pasts.

Barack Obama is conceiving of American-Israeli political relations and Jewish-American identity in a new way, and it will be a welcome change. History, I’m learning slowly, is always happening. And I think Obama’s got the right idea. I expected to be unmoved by those speeches (it’s AIPAC!), but in light of the holiday that kicks off a vital part of our history, it was wonderful to hear a Democrat talk about the glory days
of Black-Jewish relations. Let’s get back to that—let’s live up to this vision of righteousness I heard so much about. Let’s talk about how
Jewish values and liberal values fit so well, and let’s keep staying up learning together, whenever we can.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 2, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Changing Times, Changing Minds

I was at the Strand bookstore when I found a forty-eight-cent copy of The Feminine Mystique. I’ll shamefully admit that the selfsame title heads a list entitled “Mel’s Summer Gotta Read!” if for no other reason than damn, you’ve got to read it. How did I make it this far in my life without having read Betty Friedan’s classic work? I’m not sure, but I’m happy to rectify the situation, and encourage everyone I know to do the same. Because it’s such an honest piece, and the historical picture she paints is so vivid, that I was able to work up a real appreciation for how radical the book must have been in the first place. (My bargain-rate copy is actually a crumbling original, and the cover breathlessly pushes the book as “The year’s most controversial bestseller!”) You can feel Friedan grappling with her imagined reader, repeating herself when necessary, reeling you in with a careful, historical, reportorial narrative until she’s got you. How it must have felt to have that book change your mind—and subsequently, your entire life. If you, like me, have somehow made it this far without this classical revolutionary text—as important as any Foucault or Fanon—get on it.

And so, in honor of my renewed respect for Betty Friedan and the feminists who’ve so radically changed the minds of so much of the world, a brief overview of some important mind-changes from the world of politics this week: (below the jump)

(more…)

The Lilith Blog

May 19, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Appease This

As regular readers of this blog may know, I tend to take the news a little personally. So steam was pretty much coming out of my ears this past week, although I took great pleasure in the fact that the news cycle raising my blood pressure was a news cycle that might end up making trouble for the McCain campaign. And it just wouldn’t die.

First, let me say this, in addition to the abject horrors we all feel when we hear about massive body counts in the wake of natural disasters in Myanmar (Burma) and China, there’s a chance for us to de-trench, ideologically. I know that many, many people felt the immediate need of the situation and have responded with donations and in whatever ways they can—and I’d like to say that taking to heart the idea that even nations with whom we have bad relations are nations full of people is a good way. We can recognize enemies without painting the world into good guys and bad guys with the broadest of all possible brushes, right?

But back to the latest unforgivable offense by the only president we’ve got: speaking last week from the floor of the Knesset on a much-touted trip to Israel, President Bush warned against appeasing terrorists. Over the strenuous and incoherent objections of the White House, those who speak politics out here in the real world assure us that this was a shot at Barack Obama, who has said he would speak with the heads of states like Iran. The talking point memo was written up and distributed, and what did every conservative pundit and player talk about and reference? Neville Chamberlain.

Now, if you are sitting at home, scratching your head, wondering if obliquely referencing the Munich Agreement, in which Hitler was given a solid hunk of Czechoslovakia by the heads of Western Europe, is perhaps a cheap hit for the President of the United States to take from the Israeli parliamentary floor, especially if he’s still leading the country in a war on a global terrorist organization that, hey, we helped fund and train in the first place, well, all I can say is that I was with you, big time.

After initially supporting the President, and later realizing that it was, actually, a pretty bad thing to have said (not only because it reduces much of World War II and the Holocaust to an analogy about talking with a leader we don’t like, instead of training people to overthrow him, a la Salvador Allende or Mohammed Massadegh), John McCain chose the easiest route: obfuscation of his record, covering up his initial support.

Perhaps the insult to the memories of those who lived and died because of Chamberlin’s weak politics would have been sufficient, but follow the unraveling talking points and discover this absolute gem: Chris Matthews, far from my favorite media personality, nails a right-wing suit who, while chewing the scenery over Chamberlinesque appeasment, apparently has no idea who Neville Chamberlin was. Um…excuse me? I don’t think so. You don’t get to treat history with that kind of contempt—you must at least know what it is you’re accusing. This is not only because I say so–although politics could be a lot more exciting if we always used that as the litmus test–but because we have to take a stand and demand that media be used to educate the people. That’s what media’s supposed to do.

There was a lot going this past week in Jewish and feminist news both, but I can’t watch people mess around with media and history–the two life-support systems of an open society–without saying something. So I’m appealing to these two groups, Jews and feminists, both of whom are pretty split on whose Democratic candidate will be better for them, to not get too caught up in this fight: look at the bigger picture. It’s terrifying.

The heat hasn’t completely come off of this (I know this from reading blogs, not newspapers, so somebody write me if your local newspapers does a particularly great or terrible job of coverage), which I hope works a little bit toward humbling the arrogance of those who, while on foreign soil, make vague and massively inappropriate historical allusions to trash their political enemies back on the home front. If nothing else, maybe this will inspire partisan hacks everywhere to crack open a high school social studies textbook before their next appearance in tv. Perhaps not too much to ask.

–Mel Weiss.

The Lilith Blog

May 7, 2008 by Mel Weiss

You Can Pick Your Friends, But…

But you can’t, if you’re running for president of the United States, always pick the lunatics who endorse you. Each of the candidates has learned this lesson by now, although some have had to learn it harder and faster and uglier than others. I am, of course, referring to Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. My feelings toward Rev. Wright, unfavorable though they may be, are not the issue here, and neither, frankly, are Senator Obama’s. I’d like to talk about a different candidate and his own crackpot reverend. Not sure who I’m talking about? Funny thing, that.

Maybe if, like some people I can think of, you’re addicted to the liberal media, you’re aware that the Pastor John Hagee has endorsed Senator John McCain in his bid for the presidency. Yes, Pastor John Hagee, leader of CUFI, the man who wants you, if you are Jewish, to move to Israel in order to hasten the Second Coming. The man who thinks God punished New Orleans for it tolerance of homosexuality by sending Hurricane Katrina. The man who has referred to the Catholic Church as “the great whore.” Didn’t know that? Weird! Because Jon Stewart has noticed some strange patterns in news coverage. Specifically, that while Obama has been slammed again and again for Wright’s endorsement of him, and while media meticulously documents the ferocious battle between the two Democratic contenders and how it’s, of course, tearing the liberal movement apart, there has been far too little interrogation of McCain, his policies (and the fuzzy math that far from explains how he intends to pay for them), his chummy relationship with the White House (at a time when you’d think any reasonable human being would want to distance themselves from a president with a 71% disapproval rating), his views of the war in Iraq, and his generally ability to be terrible for America.

I am so unbelievably tired of the arguments between Democrats. I am so tired of infantile, absurd threats that “If s/he gets the nomination, I swear I’ll vote Republican.” I am so tired of letting the media tell me that the story is Democrats fighting Democrats, and not the issue of how the hell the country could possibly survive (ptu ptu ptu) another Republican administration. I am tired of arguing over which Democrat is going to be better for women, and better for Israel. Of course there’s going to be continued fighting between Clinton and Obama. I understand that, and that’s fine. But for goodness’ sake! There are real issues at stake here, and most of the state primaries are over. So let’s focus on the bigger picture here, folks. Let’s get together and come up with real questions—not personality questions, but policy questions—and let’s demand that news coverage give us answers we deserve. The real fight has barely begun.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

April 28, 2008 by Mel Weiss

In the Desert

(I apologize to those of you who may be irritated by my constant references to New York. I am sad to report that, while the following is indeed local news, I bet there’s not a place in the world where you couldn’t tell a similar story, changing only what are ultimately minor details.)

The judge responsible for the Sean Bell trial returned a verdict of not guilty for all three officers, who shot Mr. Bell in Queens last year. (They thought he was armed; he was not; he was a few hours away from his own wedding, etc.) I’m still pretty much in shock about it. It saddens me immensely when something like this goes down in the first place—not just because, obviously, it’s horrible when someone dies for no reason, but also because this sort of thing serves to sour any progress made between races, between poor people and black people who feel, not without good reason, that they’re targeted by the police. The NYTimes reports that people are taking this relatively in stride—there have been no riots, no outpourings of public rage so noticeable that they affect everyday life.

As a citizen of my city, I obviously appreciate this. But reading in shul this week—it was the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, most appropriately—I was thinking about the Israelite slaves who, when the situation got bad, immediately wanted to go back to Egypt. Slavery had eroded their will to live as free people. And isn’t it true that we convince ourselves that bad situations aren’t so bad? It’s part coping mechanism, I think, and part deadly ennui that lies like a dense fog. When we live in a world where it takes bold action to puncture what Betty Friedan called “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction.”

I’m not advocating rioting in the streets of New York—that’s not a productive sort of awakening. But we quit the bonds of slavery, all of us together, and we made it through the sea, and now we’re alone together in a big, big desert. Our work, in fact, is only beginning.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

April 22, 2008 by Mel Weiss

The Economic Theory of Passover

Well, the seders have come and gone, and I for one had a wonderful holiday. Passover’s my favorite holiday, I think, but that also raises the stakes a great deal. And now that I lead seders of my own, it jacks the pressure up.

I’m also waiting, fuming, for my check from the government. No, not my tax refund—my stimulus package cash. It’s not just that I kind of feel like
it’s dirty money, money that I’d rather see in Medicare or schools or even in a fund for local affordable housing (this is not a wholly altruistic line of thinking), but that I think it’s pretty poor economic theory, too. Almost everyone I know is going to use their money for rent or credit card debt or college loan payments or the like.

During the seders, as we sang about the ways in which we can continue to struggle for liberation, I thought about how Passover and the High
Holidays really do form counterbalancing parts of the Jewish calendar. (I wrote about this in the introduction to my own patchwork Haggadah, and
it’s an idea I really enjoy.) But if Yom Kippur is when we are most compelled to ask for forgiveness for our wrongdoings, Passover seems like
when we’re most poised to act. The whole story is full of action—we can’t even tell it without singing and eating along—and so aren’t we compelled to act? With all this talk about liberation, aren’t we compelled to use this time to help liberate each other? (And, of course, I can’t think about “liberation” without adding “women’s” beforehand, almost instinctively. That’s some pretty powerful word associating.)

So, there’s plenty that we can work towards getting ourselves free of what ills us, and we’re being handed a hunk of money from the government in
which to get started. Whether you want to donate some of your share (10% is a great amount to start with) or simply use it to buy a recycled
product that might cost a little more, or local or organic produce that might cost more, whether you decide not to use it to buy gas, or whether a
new gadget is available in a more eco-friendly manner, whether you decide to spend your money on sweatshop-free goods or whatever it is you do with that check when it comes, we all have an excellent opportunity to take a moment of stupid governance and use it to forward our own liberation and those of others across the world.

–Mel Weiss