PJA Hosts Annual Progressive Passover Seder

Looking for a different kind of seder this year?

Come to the PJA Progressive Passover Seder!

Join us for the second night of Passover (Saturday, April 7th) as we explore the Jewish commitment to social justice through contemporary instances of oppression and liberation that parallel the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt. Enjoy good food, wine, and company, free on the undergraduate meal plan if you sign up below!

Sign up here!

The Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance is committed to a wide variety of programming related to both Israeli and domestic issues. We explore progressive issues from a Jewish perspective, as well as Judaism from a standpoint of progressivism.

For more information, please contact eunger@college.harvard.edu

Is Peace Possible? TONIGHT!

Join us tonight, at 8:30PM in Emerson 210, for a discussion with Zvilka Krieger of the S. Daniel Abraham Foundation on the question of "IS PEACE POSSIBLE?"

Here's the blurb:

The S. Daniel Abraham Foundation's award-winning interactive multimedia program on the challenges of Israeli-Palestinian peace is coming to Harvard! In a fact-based, balanced presentation, Senior Vice President Zvika Krieger will discuss the specific challenges posed by the issues of Borders and Refugees.

Brought to you by Harvard Students for Israel, with the help of our cosponsors: Harvard Democrats, Harvard Republican Club, Harvard Kennedy School Israel Caucus, Harvard Law School Alliance for Israel, Just Peace at Harvard, and the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

We welcome all students from Harvard and other schools, as well as community members of all stripes, to join us in a civil, thoughtful discussion on how to resolve the tragic cycle of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

For a Just Israel TONIGHT!

Tonight, we will be cosponsoring a discussion with Just Peace Harvard entitled For a Just Israel: Democracy and Jewish Values in an Era of Occupation.

Join us from 7:30-8:30PM in Sever 102 for a provocative conversation between Israeli activist Hillel Ben Sasson and Daniel May as they discuss the ongoing battle for a democratic Israel amidst hostility from the leadership of both the America Jewish community and the Israeli government.

Op-ed from the Crimson: Working Toward a Solution

This op-ed, written by Emily and Sandra, appeared in the Harvard Crimson today:

Working Toward a Solution

The One State Conference that took place this weekend at the Harvard Kennedy School triggered an outpouring of furious debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference, featuring speakers from various universities and diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, explored a solution in which Israel and the Palestinian Territories would unite into a single secular state with equal rights for all. Some members of the pro-Israel Jewish community have declared the conference “anti-Semitic;” others, such as Harvard Students for Israel havedisagreed with the conference’s ideas but emphasized its right to take place. As members of the Progressive Jewish Alliance and supporters of a two-state solution, we believe that this conference raised important issues that have a valuable place in the campus discourse on Israel-Palestine, but are concerned by some of the extreme rhetoric that it has triggered.

As progressives, we believe in principle that ethnicity should not be intertwined with the state. All citizens should be treated as equals; no voting laws, housing laws, immigration laws, or indeed any laws should distinguish based on ethnicity. To do otherwise inevitably leads to inequity and social injustice. Even declaring an official state ethnicity without enacting discriminatory laws symbolically designates certain people as second-class citizens. Of course, this equality need not detract from the cultural diversity, which would continue to exist on a local and personal level. The state simply should not be in the business of privileging one culture or religion over another.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to enact progressive principles in a world mired in racism and oppression. Abolishing all ethnic state lines today would simply be impractical in a world where ethnic states abound, from Slovenia to Japan to Bangladesh. Moreover, historical attempts at multi-ethnic states have frequently failed dramatically and violently—consider, for example, the Balkan states and Sudan. Even in multi-ethnic states that haven’t broken apart, one group is often oppressed or discriminated against.

Attempting to enforce our ideal on states with a long history of ethnic and religious conflict would simply cause more violence and perpetuate violations of human rights. Thus, while we would love to see a peaceful and egalitarian one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we think it only practical to continue working toward a two-state solution. It is unfair to ask the Israelis and Palestinians who dream of having their own ethnic nation-states to give up these aspirations without demanding the same of every country in the world. While we theoretically admire the ideals of a one-state solution, in practice, a single state seems an ineffective and dangerous policy solution—and so we cannot endorse or advocate for it in today’s world. It is essential to end the oppression that many One-State Conference speakers noted occurs in Palestine today, but we doubt that a one-state solution could do this successfully. Thus, we hope that the Conference’s call for a re-envisioning of peace negotiations will galvanize those who truly support a peaceful two-state solution not to lash out, but to work harder for a truly just and effective path toward a two-state solution.

Although we cannot imagine that a one-state solution would effectively resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, alternatives to a two-state solution are legitimate topics of discussion, and the One State Conference was a good-faith attempt to propose a peaceful solution to the conflict in which all people are given equal rights. We understand the frustration that many—ourselves included—feel about the possibility of a two-state solution, as negotiations seem to be constantly unproductive and stalled. Indeed, fair negotiations are incredibly difficult given the current power dynamic in Israel and Palestine and Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. These flaws have provided the impetus for academic conversation about other peace-making options, including the discussion that took place at the One State Conference last weekend. Thus, the conference should not be regarded as an attempt to delegitimize Israel but rather as an attempt, albeit an imperfect one, to resolve the problems inherent in the negotiations for a two-state solution.

While we believe that there should be space on campus for discussion of a one-state solution, we are concerned about the inflammatory responses it has elicited from some in both the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian communities. No solution to the conflict will be possible unless people engage each other in meaningful dialogue instead of exchanging insults of “anti-Semitism” and “racism.” Any statement that seeks mainly to demonize the other side and blame the entire conflict on one group is a step away from peace. We hope that Jews and Palestinians alike can participate in respectful dialogue, seek to understand each others’ perspectives, and thereby work towards a practical, peaceful, and just solution to the conflict.

Emily S. Unger ’13 is an organismic and evolutionary biology concentrator in Quincy House. Sandra Y. L. Korn ’14, a Crimson associate editorial editor, is a history of science and studies of women, gender, and sexuality joint concentrator in Eliot House. Both are on the board of the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

The Politics of Being Fabulous in the Holy Land

Event on Monday!

The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee & Progressive Jewish Alliance present:

"Tel Aviv Night Clubs & West Bank Checkpoints: The Politics of Being Fabulous in the Holy Land"

Please join us Monday, March 5 at 7:30PM in Sever 103

for a discussion with Sa'ed Atshan, Harvard doctoral student and member of Al Qaws, a grassroots organization of LGBTQ Palestinians throughout Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories who work collaboratively to break down gendered and hetero-normative barries.

He will discuss the various ways in which discourses of LGBTQ rights are deployed strategically by Israel and Palestinians as part of the conflict.

RSVP on Facebook here.

No more sustainable development for Palestinians?

In September 2010, PJA, along with Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, Engineers without Borders, and J Street U Harvard, hosted an Israeli/Palestinian group called COMET-ME on campus. Founder of the organization Elad Orion spoke about his work building sustainable windmills and energy generators for Palestinian villages that lack electricity.

This work, done by a coalition of Israelis and Palestinians and funded predominantly by donations, improved the quality of life of Palestinian villagers in a sustainable and peace-building way.

We are frustrated to learn that the Israeli government will be shutting this program down. Read this powerful quote from a Der Speigel article:

The women here no longer have to make their butter by hand; they can refrigerate the sheep's cheese, which is their livelihood; and their children can do their homework at night. Now they can sit together and watch TV -- and connect to a world that seems far removed from their lives on the edge of the Judaean Desert. It is but a small revolution, achieved at little cost. But it is a good example of successful development aid.

The success, though, could soon be a thing of the past. Israel has threatened to tear them down with five municipalities in recent weeks having received "stop work" orders -- the first step on the road to demolition. The problem is that the facilities are in the so-called Area C, which covers 60 percent of the West Bank and is administered by Israel. Permission from the Israelis is a requirement before construction projects can move ahead -- and permits are almost never given to Palestinians.

D'var Torah: Money in Politics

A d'var Torah I wrote for Open Scroll, Hillel's weekly parsha sheet, on parshat Yitro:

At the beginning of last week’s Torah portion, Moses is acting as the judge for all the Israelites. All day, the people bring their disputes before him, and he rules on them according to the laws God has given him. This is exhausting both for him and for the people who must wait for his ruling, and Moses’ father-in-law tells him that this can’t go on. Instead, he should delegate the tasks out to other judges, and limit himself to ruling on only the most difficult cases. These lower judges, Moses’ father-in-law explains, should be “men of substance, God fearers, men of truth, who hate monetary gain”.

Ignoring for a moment the sexism inherent in the idea that only men should be judges, most of these prescriptions seem like obvious qualifications for a judge. A judge must be fair and honest, an upstanding person who values God’s law. However, there is a seeming contradiction here: Rashi explains that “men of substance” means “wealthy men”, yet the Torah also specifies that the judges must be men who “hate monetary gain”. What does it mean to say that a judge must be both wealthy and uninterested in making money?

This is not merely an intellectual question. In the modern day, money is an enormous factor in who becomes a leader in our country. Although we’ve moved past the times when only those rich enough to own land could vote, the wealthy still have a disproportionate political influence. The average member of Congress is far wealthier than the average American citizen, and many politicians and bureaucrats move seamlessly between the public service of governing and the lucrative business of lobbying the government on behalf of the wealthy industries they were so recently responsible for regulating. Moreover, with lax campaign finance laws, donors can give unlimited, anonymous funds to super PACs, which flood television stations with ads for one candidate or against another, while claiming not to be “coordinating” with any particular candidate’s campaign. All the current candidates for president have super PACs that are not-so-secretly working to support them.

As political candidates increasingly find their support coming from the wealthy, they have an ever-stronger incentive to pass laws that favor them. Increasingly, we hear rhetoric from politicians about how it is wrong to “punish” the wealthy for their success by raising their taxes. The assumption behind this statement is that those who are wealthy worked hard to get there and thus deserve the money they’ve made — an assumption that stems from the cultural idiom of the “American dream”. Yet if we continue to craft policy that disproportionally favors the wealthy, this promise of class mobility will grow even dimmer than it already has.

What does this Torah portion tell us about the current political climate? At first, it might suggest that it is proper for the wealthy to be in power. Yet Rashi explains that the reason for requiring a judge to be wealthy was to reduce the incentive for him to accept bribes or flattery — in other words, to reduce conflicts of interest. Having wealthy donors as the main source of funding for candidates achieves exactly the opposite effect, encouraging our political leaders to be biased in their choices. In addition, the current enormous influence of lobbyists and the revolving door between politics and lobbying demonstrates that our politicians hardly “hate monetary gain”.

The message of this parsha is clear — if governance is to be fair, it must be uninfluenced by outside money. In biblical times, the best way to achieve this may have been to have leaders that were independently wealthy. In modern times, however, there are ways of achieving the same goals without limiting public office to the already-rich: public campaign financing, a ban on gifts from lobbyists, and a law preventing congresspeople and other federal employees from lobbying for the industries they once regulated after they leave office. By enacting these policies, we will come much closer to ensuring that our leaders are as the Torah demands: honest, just, and unbiased.