The Assault on Breira

...Some six weeks after sending his letter, it was published— presumably too late for it to be noticed by Joseph Shattan, whose article in the April issue of Commentary repeats the Isaac charges without amendment...

...Among other things, its charge that Hillel foundations are "incubators of Breira" has led several B'nai B'rith chapters to propose to their national organization that Hillel rabbis who support Breira be dismissed, and several local Jewish federations have been under considerable pressure to withdraw their funding from Hillel groups led by Breira members...

...But in 1971, when Rubin made his incriminating proposal, he was 18 years old...

...The pamphlet has created quite a stir in Jewish circles, because it alleges, among other things, that Breira is a front group for the Fatah...

...And there is a Breira problem...

...But the United States is not a passive party to the Middle East conflict, and it is in the United States that Breira is noticed, and wants to be...

...They are dangerous because they risk dividing the American Jewish community, one of Israel's few and most precious assets...

...See how gullible the Establishment is...

...If the question of motive is ever relevant, it is relevant only after, and not before, the policies of the people whose motives we examine have been shown to be dangerous...

...it does not fit the American facts...

...American friends of Israel will rejoice or mourn...

...Breira alleges that it cares about Israel's welfare...

...I believe that, even though I sometimes wonder whether Breira's members are sufficiently sensitive to the sinews of a nation's welfare, not merely to its disembodied symbols...

...Because of the drama of the accusation, and the scholarly tone in which it is couched, the Isaac pamphlet has been taken much more seriously than earlier barbs...

...he is the Head Rat, the Devil himself, and he craftily manipulates innocent children and rabbis to carry out his nefarious intentions...

...Instead, the argument swirls around pedigrees and plots...

...That, as they say, is a heavy trip...

...For this information, we are indebted to Dr...

...Let us not, however, make too much of Dr...

...Many of the rabbis who have supported Breira are simply "unaware of its more radical aspects...

...On the eve of the Yom Kippur War, I was in Israel...

...In this light, I now think it was wrong for me to agree to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last summer, knowing that I would disagree with some aspects of Israeli policy...

...Breira defends its dissent by reference to the precedent of dissent in Israel...

...If these things are so, would it not make sense for Breira now to turn its attentions and energies to the other items on its agenda, and for its members to seek, through their network of (I connections with other organizations (most Breira members are, after all, thoroughly immersed in Jewish life) to bring the debate over Israel's wisdom out of the public arena, where it can so easily do harm, and into the Jewish world, where it might, just might, do good...

...In addition to its indictment of non-halachic Judaism in general, it offers an indictment of Arthur Waskow's theology in particular...

...But in the name of that love, it does vast harm to Israel...

...The presence of such esteemed people has until now effectively insulated Breira from frontal attack...

...Breira emphasizes the centrality of the Palestinian question, which is one of several issues the Israelis think important...

...The community takes those who pay their dues more seriously than it takes dilettantes, and Breira has been all too happy to accept and even to honor the dilettantes it attracts...

...Third, Breira assumes that the *Which may not trouble the Isaacs, whose moral posture may be deduced from the fact that on two occasions, they cite statements by Breira rabbis who express anguish over the fact that the Middle East conflict has caused us to rejoice in the death of our enemies They term such anguish "the end of all morality...

...It is the Israelis who will live or die...

...its own criticisms of the organized Jewish community and of Israeli policies have invited rebuff...

...If they want to suggest that the perversions of theology which these seminaries have inflicted upon us have led to confusion regarding Israel's proper place in the scheme of things, let them do that...

...But voting is not the only form of exercising political influence, and Israeli policy is not the only policy that matters in the Middle East...

...But I do believe Breira and its members to be mistaken in their assumptions and in their actions...

...That pamphlet—very widely distributed—presents itself as a re-vealer of hidden and ugly truths, and it does one more thing...

...Rael Isaac knows how: "Innocents abroad," she asserts in her pamphlet...

...There is, of course, the possibility that Breira's critics avoid substance precisely because they genuinely believe that it is improper to debate these matters in America, that the State Department will seize on evidence of Jewish division to push a pro-Arab line...

...Erich Isaac, inform us that "it is tempting but inaccurate to view the rabbis who joined Breira as dupes of the radical left hard core," that Breira should be viewed "as the most dangerous organization ever to have appeared on the American Jewish scene," that if Breira succeeds in pursuading the rest of us of the merits of its case, "the fate of German Jews stands as a warning and a prophecy...

...Weeks after my meeting, the Yom Kippur War happened...

...It is because The Jewish Week and Rael Isaac and Joseph Shattan have insisted on arguing background and motive alone that they have been accused of McCarthyism...

...All proposed solutions do—Breira's, Likud's, all...

...so might the American Jewish Committee or the B'nai B'rith...

...My conclusion was wrong...

...But is this because of repression, or because the dissenters have chosen to separate themselves from the community...

...There are better and safer ways to achieve those ends...

...Joseph Shattan also seeks to explain away Breira's respectables...

...See how clever these anti-Zionists are...

...The strongest argument that can be made against Breira (not the most exciting, merely the strongest) is surely this: American Jews are not Israeli Jews...

...When it finally gets down to behavior, this is what it comes up with: Breira is dangerous because it professes to love Israel...

...Not one of these assumptions is valid...

...Isaac's incomplete presentation...

...And it does—or could—gum up the works for Jews in this country to make public pronouncements that differ from Israeli policy...

...No one who criticizes Israeli policy in this country can safely make that assumption, not when he speaks to a general audience...

...Not, at least, since the Isaac pamphlet was published...

...Is that why the critics have persistently fudged the distinction between the Palestinians and the PLO, implying that Breira actively seeks a PLO-dominated state on the West Bank when, in fact, Breira has never said more than that Israel should talk with any Arab group—including the PLO—that is willing to acknowledge Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state— a position taken by most of Israel's leadership...

...I do not believe that Breira and its members are manipulated by sinister forces that seek to damage Israel...

...The answer to the argument is that precisely because there is so much at stake, those who care must speak...

...Breira assumes, first, that dissent from established Israeli policies is discouraged within the organized Jewish community in this country...

...But we did not, and today we live not after 1967...

...It is true, of course, as some Breira members argue, that nothing Breira does prevents the Israelis themselves from having the last word...

...The Israelis vote, and make policy...

...Hence my doubts as to Israel's wisdom had best be muted...

...Among the many people who sought to persuade me that my relatively dovish views were inappropriate was the then-Chief of Intelligence of the Israel Defense Forces...

...If the Isaacs want to argue the authority of halachah with Reform and Conservative seminaries, they are at liberty to do so...

...If there were thirty years of assured safety ahead, we could afford the luxury of public disagreement...

...Breira may be a front organization for some more sinister group...

...Breira believes that the Palestinians themselves should determine the political character of the West Bank-Gaza state...

...What is it that Breira assumes...

...I speak here from considerable personal experience...

...Others are "confused," enthralled by Waskow, a "rabbi's 'rebbe...

...Shat-tan's division is a bit more balanced, and there is one other thing to be said in his favor: he is somewhat embarrassed to And himself on the same side as The Jewish Week, whose excesses he convolutedly excuses by asserting that since Israel's survival is here at stake, "it is not to be wondered at that the criticism should sometimes be harsh and the opposition passionate...

...From 1971 to 1974, he was active in MERIP, a bitterly anti-Israel organization...

...Isaac and her husband, Dr...

...Or the answer is that real partners ("we are one") must be free to speak their minds to one another...

...Breira is evidently an inadequate target for the Isaacs' anger, a stand-in for the real villain of the piece: bolstered by the success of the original pamphlet, they now seek to take on the Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary...

...it almost surely will not be so...

...Most are not...

...There are, after all, only two possibilities...

...The Isaac article is quite long...

...the seminaries of these movements have promulgated an in-authentic Judaism, which, among other things, preaches the pernicious doctrine that Judaism as a religion cares about the social and political condition of mankind...

...Is it not an act of unseemly arrogance for Americans, however devoted to Israel's welfare, to announce that one set of risks rather than another is the more acceptable...

...The most trenchant criticism of Israel's behavior between 1967 and 1973 I have ever heard came from the mouth of Shlomo Avineri, now Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, and it was delivered at a retreat of the National Young Leadership Cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal...

...Months later, in a new installment, she makes darker charges...

...I have begun here not with Breira, but with its would-be assassins, because thay have so diverted the argument that it is necessary to extinguish their flames before clearing the air of Breira's fuzzy smoke...

...American Jews are entitled to reach whatever conclusions they will on the substance of the Middle East dispute, but because they will not have to pay the ultimate price if they are mistaken, they are required to be considerably more circumspect in their actions and in their statements...

...This young man was Waskow's protege, that Hillel rabbi is naive...

...Second, Breira assumes that since such dissent is commonplace in Israel, it is entirely appropriate, and surely no evidence of disloyalty, for concerned American Jews to endorse it...

...The reasoning behind these wild conclusions tells us much more about the Isaacs than about Breira: the dethronement of hala-chah 200 years ago led directly to the corruption of the Reform and Conservative movements today...

...expression of such dissent in this country can make a positive contribution to peace in the Middle East...

...One wonders who will be the next victim of this effort to help the State of Israel...

...And they continue to do so...

...How silly...

...And what is one young man's reputation worth anyway, when—as Isaac believes—the very survival of the Jewish People is at stake...

...I presume that most Breira members will grant that their proposed solution to the Middle East conflict—a solution to which I am, in general, sympathetic—involves a set of risks...

...While I still might hope that legitimate Palestinian grievances would be redressed, clearly there was time to work out a solution that would not jeopardize Israel's security...

...It has been a favored technique of demagogues to avoid arguments on substance, instead to try to drag their victims through the mud...

...It is less exciting, to be sure, than being noticed in the New York Times, or in Congressional committees, but it is infinitely more constructive...

...The latest contribution to the guttersniping is an article in the April issue of Midstream, "The Rabbis of Breira" (but entitled "Rabbis for the PLO: The Breira Syndrome" in pre-publication galleys...

...And if the answer to that question is that Breira's policies are so terribly dangerous that the apoplectic critics feel it is their duty to discredit the organization itself, then the next question is obvious: if Breira's policies are so terribly dangerous, why do the critics not tell us what those policies are and show us why they are so wrong...

...If that is what it wants to do, it cannot be stopped...

...Given the chance that they may cause harm, given that there is a war going on, given their distance from the killing, and given, Anally, that they claim to care, are they not bound to march in step...

...People of good will should praise the national leadership of B'nai B'rith, which has honorably withstood the pressures it has faced, and Rabbis Emanuel Rackman and Steven Shaw and others who have tried, behind the scenes, to restore dignity to the debate...

...He has also written for the Canadian Zionist, the Jerusalem Post, and Zionist Comments...

...If she knew, but chose to tell only some of the truth, she is guilty of nothing more than an evil distortion...

...Why, then, does it arise so persistently in the case of Breira...

...Then let the agenda for the dissidents be to find ways to be heard in Israel...

...Were it the case that Israel's professed friends were working to force a PLO state upon Israel, that would be dangerous indeed...

...But it is one thing to be criticized, to be called wrong, or naive, or misguided, or even dangerous, and quite another to be called an ally of the PLO, a front for Fatah...

...Rael Jean Isaac, who offers it in her recently published pamphlet, Breira, Counsel for Judaism...

...Acceptable to whom...

...The precedent of Israeli dissent is no precedent at all...

...it has not been so...

...The chief offender is Arthur Waskow...

...Out of such mistakes, harm might come to Israel, and it will not matter whether the harm was ever intended...

...If they want, finally, to argue that out of that confusion, people are led to naive political conclusions and to dangerous political actions, that, too, is within the realm of civil discourse...

...There is, of course, a difference...

...But it is the Israelis, and the Israelis alone, who have both the right and the duty to decide which risks they can live with...

...Joe McCarthy was wrong, of course, but the Communist Party was no blessing...

...What the Isaacs carefully omit is that it is not so...

...To those who make the announcement, or to those who will have to live or die according to their wisdom...

...Breira's third assumption is ethically flawed...

...Thus, "If (Breira's rabbis) work to change United States policy so as to force upon Israel a PLO state on the West Bank, they will work 'lovingly' for that change...

...And the matter of Breira's policies is one the critics have carefully avoided...

...Both Moshe Dayan and Arik Sharon, for example, have suggested that Israel talk with the PLO—and, so far as I am aware, have not insisted, as Breira has, that such discussions be based on prior mutual recognition...

...But here we must confront the dreary fact that it is the critics themselves, with their venomous attacks and distortions, who have offered up the most visible evidence of Jewish division...

...Since its inception, Breira has counted among its halo-affording stars a number of "safe" and thoroughly respectable Jews—at one time or another Joachim Prinz, Jacob Neusner, Robert Gordis, Eugene Borowitz, Balfour Brickner, and Max Tick-tin...

...THE ASSAULT ON BREIRA LEONARD FEIN SENSE AND NONSENSE IN JEWISH DEBATE PHOTOGRAPHS BY BILL ARON Let us begin with Barry Rubin, whom I do not know...

...That is a difficult agenda, but it is an important one, and it is seemly...

...These are interesting and even important differences, worthy of debate...

...The logic is simply marvelous: either a Breira supporter has a checkered past (usually involving a connection to Waskow), or he is a dupe...

...And Rubin never joined Breira...

...That may or may not be a good idea, but given the number and nature of the people who endorse it, it is not a self-evident-ly preposterous idea...

...Notice, however, the conditional "if" in the quotation...

...We live at a time when American policy towards the Middle East is framed by global considerations, and not merely by domestic political considerations...

...in the end, it is far more likely to affect American policy...

...We live at a time of uncommon danger, and that is no time for distant amateurs to gum up the works...

...If there is an effort at repression, it is directed against public dissent, and it is more specifically directed against those dissenters whose ultimate commitment to Israel's safety cannot be taken for granted...

...But let them not seek to frighten us into imagining that the halls of Congress are crowded with earnest rabbis seeking to force the PLO upon us...

...I left his office appropriately chastened...

...Then what are we to make of the tradition which holds that God wept when Phar-oah's armies drowned'' But that, of course, is not halachah...

...Soon thereafter, my chastener was relieved of his responsibilities in the intelligence field...

...If she did not know, she is guilty of nothing worse than irresponsible sloppiness...

...Israel holds that such a state must be tied to Jordan...

...For if dissent were made the issue rather than motive, we would all learn quickly that the most vocal and most extravagant dissent from Israeli policy within the American Jewish community is the dissent of the Right, the dissent of those who want Israel to annex the West Bank, the dissent of organizations such as Emunim, USA, on whose advisory board Dr...

...I rather suspect that other Breira activists find him to be something of an embarrassment, for most of them would surely prefer to be able to debate the issues rather than to have to defend against guilt by association with Devil Arthur...

...Shattan grudgingly allows that the rabbis and liberal Jewish intellectuals and academics "who may well form" Breira's majority are "far from being 'anti-Israel' in any simple sense of the term...

...How can you tar an organization with such redeeming virtues...

...And Breira insists that it is fruitful to discuss these matters in the United States, and out loud, while the Israelis strongly prefer to mute the debate in America...

...And I came to believe that those of us who feel bound up with Israel's destiny are not only permitted but actually obliged to speak out...

...There is plenty of mud to go around, and it can be fun to play in the gutter, a remembrance of childhood delights...

...But if we count ourselves responsible as well as free, then we are bound to weigh the consequences of our actions, to pick and choose our targets with precision, with modesty, with sensitivity to who we are, and where we speak, and who it is that listens...

...Breira has been around for four years now, and for four years it has been proposing that Israel should be more flexible in its international stance...

...It is true, of course, that Waskow is an exceedingly controversial person...

...In this installment, Dr...

...Every time The Jewish Week sniffs out some new connections between Waskow and Breira, it gleefully presents it to us all...

...Here the flaw is not in perception, but in logic...

...I have voiced them within the community on many occasions, and I have yet to perceive an effort by the "establishment" to separate me from Jewish life...

...they also inhibit serious discussion of the Breira problem...

...And then, after the justification for self-righteous indignation is gone, we are entitled to remind those members of Breira who really care that being a front for the PLO is not the only way to bring harm to Israel...

...Three years ago, when he was 21, he publicly repudiated his earlier anti-Zionism...

...The chief offender, according to Isaac—and according to Shattan and The Jewish Week as well— is not, however, Barry Rubin...

...Surrogate therapy...

...The question does not arise in the case of other organizations...

...No, we are not mindless followers of Israel's lead...

...While the assault on Breira raises serious questions regarding the capacity of the community to tolerate dissent, even a cursory examination of the institutions and agencies of the community shows, again and again, that internal discussion of the wisdom of Israel's policies is entirely welcome...

...Since that time, he has lectured on a number of American campuses under the auspices of the American Zionist Youth Foundation...

...Or is it that the critics fear that an open discussion of Breira's policies would show that they are not so outlandish after all, would show that there is considerably less support for their own hawkish views than they would like us to believe...

...Breira, which was founded in 1973, has been the target of criticism ever since its inception...

...But these days, they are not permitted that...

...We live at a time when Israel is devastatingly alone, save for us...

...A clever man, he spent a good deal of time attempting to prove to me that I suffered from a "golus mentality," that my fears for Israel's safety were ill-founded...

...Breira alleges that it is not a one issue organization...

...He wrapped up his presentation by suggesting that it would be "thirty years" before the Arabs could touch Israel...

...They are not, however, so vast as to suggest that Breira is inherently a subversive organization...

...Isaac's confusion between Jacob and Esau is not without precedent...

...Or the answer is that there is no coherent Israeli policy on these matters anyway, so that it is not possible "to walk in step...

...Breira may seek to affect Israeli policy...

...For the fact is that even if Rael Isaac had told the whole truth about the background of Breira members, and nothing but the truth—and she did not—the issue of background and motive is irrelevant...

...What will be there decided is the way our community debates issues...

...It undermines Breira's efforts to achieve innocence by association...

...I believe that, even though its present notoriety derives exclusively from the one issue of Israel's foreign policy...

...we live after 1973...

...But there are no thirty years, there may not be three years...

...Or the answer is that now that the Middle East has become an issue of global concern, Jews cannot leave the field of debate to others, often less committed to Israel's survival...

...But if that is what it wants to do, the organized community can—and should—seek responsibly to blunt its edge at every turn...

...The survival of Israel is almost surely at stake, but will not, happily, be decided on the seamy battlefield of American Jewish journalism...

...I say this with considerable reluctance...

...Indeed, it has by now become somewhat tedious to observe that debate within Israel over Israel's international posture is far more intense and covers a wider set of options than most American Jews imagine...

...And it is these seminaries that have produced Breira's rabbis...

...It is on these grounds that Breira is vulnerable...

...And if that is not what it wants to do—if what it really seeks is to open the Jewish community to a wider range of views than is common, and even to help persuade the Israelis that they are mistaken in their policies—then Breira should reexamine its assumptions and reorient its behavior...

...There are, to be sure, substantial differences between Breira and Israel's leadership...

...In civil discourse, that kind of argument is called a lie.* Such lies are not only reprehensible on grounds of communal and personal decency...

...And that is why these pamphlets and articles are so scurrilous, so reprehensible...

...At least some people who are generally accepted as lovers of Israel have espoused it...

...Where there's fire, these days, there's usually an arsonist...

...If Joseph Shattan can propose that Breira's academic supporters are prompted by "liberal guilt," shall others then suggest that those who, from the safety of America's distance, encourage Israelis to settle in the West Bank (in defiance of the regulations of their government) are motivated by "non-aliyah guilt...

...The argument goes back and forth—or would, if anyone were arguing these things...

...He goes on to propose that a variety of motives have led them to be anti-Israel (in what is presumably a complex sense of the term): they wish Israel no harm consciously, but have nonetheless provided Jewish endorsement to the notion that Israel is the party at fault in the Middle East dispute...

...I have not been reticent in my own criticisms of Israel's policies...

...What is true, without question, is that the wisdom of Israel's policies is not adequately discussed within the community...

...Yes, the gutter can be fun, but it does none of us credit...

...In 1975, Rubin became an associate editor of Breira's publication, interchange...

...Either she knew that Rubin had not only recanted but had actively sought to atone for his childish errors—an honorable estate in Judaism—or she did not know...

...For Waskow is not just a rat...

...Rael Jean Isaac sits...

...We shall come to those...

...It is the Israelis who must decide, and they will...

...We know, do we not, that such letters are rarely read...

...The first thing to know is that Breira is no front for the PLO...

...In 1971, Rubin proposed the creation of a Jewish organization that would wage "a really strong ideological struggle against Zionism in the Jewish community...

...From 1971 to 1973 Rubin was Foreign Editor of The Guardian, a radical and bitterly anti-Israel paper...

...Or shall others propose that Breira's critics know that the best defense is a good offense...

...This, Isaac suggests, was his way of becoming involved in precisely the kind of Jewish anti-Zionist organization he had proposed four years earlier...

...And if Americans who differ with Israel's international policy speak out, and they are wrong—and surely they must admit the possibility—they are also dangerous...

...Lacking the courage of their Zionist convictions, these heroic types now ask Israelis to make aliyah a second time—once for themselves, once for us...

...Had we spoken more insistently after 1967, perhaps the kinds of delusions that led to the debacle of 1973 would have been averted...

...We are free to dissent...

...Crocodiles, all...

...That is why Isaac can devote 20 of her 28 pages of text to a byzantine exploration of Was-kow's pernicious influence on the course of modern Jewish history, reserving only eight for her comments on the thing itself...

...Rubin tried to tell his story in a letter to the editor of The Jewish Week, New York's facsimile of a Jewish newspaper, which had made much ado about the Isaac nothing...

...Does this mean that, as a community, we are to restrict ourselves to parroting Israeli views in public while reserving such criticisms as we may have for letters to Israeli editors...

...And if," he said, "they are so foolish as to try anything sooner, then I promise you—promise you, I say—that inside of three days, we shall be in Cairo and Damascus...

...The difference between dissent in Israel and dissent in America is that Israeli dissenters can confidently assume that those to whom they speak share their commitment to the security and the survival of the Jewish state...

...Barry Rubin matters to the Isaac argument because he provides an important link between MERIP— manifestly anti-Israel—and Breira—ostensibly pro-Israel, but, in Isaac's view, a sinister agent of PLO interests...

...Which means, of course, that the issues Breira raises do not require examination...

...And if they cannot, out of principle, are they not bound quietly to perform alternative service...