It’s Passover, that wonderful holiday that combines story-telling, liberation, and sacred crackers.

Passover commemorates the liberation of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt, and marks an opportunity for all to be mindful of the as yet unfulfilled redemption of all slaves. Slavery is too much with us in the modern world. In fact, according to Rabbis for Human Rights, 27 million people are currently enslaved around the world, more than at any other time in human history. Kevin Bales, founder of Free the Slaves, speaks on the problem at TED2010 and offers a simple question: Are we willing to live in a world with slavery?

This year, during the Jewish Feast of Freedom, we must acknowledge this tragedy and work to end it. Here are some things you can do:

Visit the Rabbis For Human Rights page and Act Now to Combat Slavery

Contact your elected leaders

Work hard this year to eliminate from the marketplace at least one product produced by slave labor, whether it be electronics, carpets, or even tomatoes.

Know where your dollars are going and direct them to responsible producers and away from those who profit by destroying the lives of others (pdf report).

If you want to include any of these issues in your seder, you can download a variety of Pesach materials here.

And of course, buy fair trade. I recommend Mirembe Kawomera Coffee, from the inspiring interfaith coffee cooperative in Uganda.

Thank you to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of CBST for bringing my attention to so many resources.

An ad for the Israeli cellular company CellCom has set off anger by using the Separation Barrier in its latest ad campaign.

“I think the message of this advertisement is that there are people, normal human beings, on the other side of the fence who simply want to play football. For a commercial advertisement it is a brave move and I believe it is welcome,” Peace Now’s director, Yariv Oppenheimer, told Channel 2 TV.

But some Palestinians groups are angry. This does raise the question, who has the right to decide what depictions are appropriate here? Who gets to decide what’s offensive?

Sadly, there is little that the two sides can agree on, including roadsigns. Is there a better metaphor than that for the roadmap for peace? Oy.

*The photo above is from this article about the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. The caption does not identify the Israeli, but he is Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extreme right wing settler who has spoke out in favor of right wing terrorists and even harrassed then-candidate Obama during his visit to the Western Wall during the campaign. He’s a real charmer.

The generation of Iranians born after the 1979 Revolution are the vanguard of the current protests, which have gone far beyond the questionable results of a presidential election, and become an expression of a people’s desire to cast off the stifling political environment controlled by the mullahs.

Roger Cohen has posed the problem in his piece today, The End of the Beginning:

Thirty years from the revolution, the core question of this election was: Must Iran stand apart from the forces of economic and political globalization in order to preserve its Islamic theocracy?

Or is it confident enough of its Islamic identity, and its now firmly established independence from America, to trash the nest-of-spies vitriol and an ultimately self-defeating isolation?

The answer has been devastating.

So now we must wait. The Iranian government under the “leadership” of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decided to go the route of Myanmar and try to silence the people with violent repression, but the effort seems doomed to failure. His government has lost all its legitimacy as a “guardian of human rights” as its leadership has long claimed, or as a democracy. It now functions in opposition to its own people, and, as in Myanmar, only its own brave people can change it.

The US has some real security concerns to address with whatever government Iran has in place, and dealing with the nuclear program and Khamenei and Ahmadinejad’s support for terrorism around the globe must be addressed. Cutting off the government’s gas imports is one option the internation community has to respond to the current crackdown, and further sanctions are another, but neither of these will go very far in addressing the international community’s issues with the regime. Using these sticks before entering into dialogue, precludes their use later. The system has shown it doesn’t care about international isolation or its own people.  The United States’ security concern is with the ruthless government of Iran and sadly, they are the ones with which we must engage for now.

As we do, however, we can also pray for the courage of Iran’s civilains to continue to stand up against the thugs, and pray that members of Iran’s security forces find their moral voices and refuse to attack their fellow countrymen, who want only to be a nation like any other, with its failings and opportunities and self-interests. We can continue to speak out against the violence, and we can continue to provide whatever technological aid we can to help Iranians get their messages out to the world and to communicate freely with each other. But the current crisis is an Iranian problem, two visions comepeting.

The older generation sees Iran as a messianic cult, the wellspring of the next Islamic age, while the younger generation largely wants to leave all that messianism behind and simply be equal members of the global community.  As President Obama said in a press conference this week, “Ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.”

Both groups with competing visions of the kind of Iran they live in are “patriots,” in the sense of being loyal to their country, but only one has a future. Getting to that future, as we are seeing, is ugly.

Khamenei and the regime in Iran are struggling to hold on to their power, and, as they have demonstrated, will stop at nothing to thwart the will of their people. He is desperately trying to blame foreign actors for the unrest, and trying, as usual to pin Iran’s problems on  “the Zionists,” ignoring the social and political factors around what is fairly obviously and popular movement against an attempted coup by Ahmadenijad and the hard-liners (pdf of the Chatham House Study on the dubious official election results). No one is fooled.

Attacking your own people does not give you legitimacy. Arresting your youth, who are attempting to realize the democratic ideals of the 1979 revolution does not support your system. Sewing divisiveness does not heal a society. I hope and pray that clearer heads will prevail, and that those protesters arrested will be released. Sorry for you Khamenei, but this is the people’s moment and you cannot blame the U.S., the MEK, or the Jews or the Zionists or anyone but yourself.

Watching video of the brave protesters in Iran, I think of this poem by Langston Hughes, and hope that the days of the forces of oppression and fear in Iran are numbered:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

There is shift in the debate about homosexuality in the world right now. The discourse is changing in the political and religious sphere as people realize that the old bigotries just won’t do anymore. Fank Rich has an Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes about the waning days of anti-Gay bigotry in enshrined in U.S. Law, as a reaction to the delightfully stupid and amazingly hateful video by the National Organization for Marriage, The Gathering Storm (I’m not going to link to it).  Even Karl “the gays are coming to take your guns, vote Republican” Rove’s disciple, Steve Schmidt senses the shifting winds and has thrown his support behind marriage rights for all. And in the sphere of faith, even Rick Warren is backpedaling toward less bigotry.

So, what about the Jews? Haim Watzman at South Jerusalem has a piece up about And Thou Shalt Love, a short film about a gay Orthodox Jew who cannot abandon either of those parts of himself (for more on this, of course, everyone should see Trembling before G-D, and look at the other resources on their website).

I am especially fond of this line of the post, which sums of the problem facing Orthodoxy in all religions around this issue:

What is certain is that the process must begin by the acknowledgment that current halachic attitudes to homosexuality create an injustice that the halacha and that the community of believers cannot tolerate.

The Orthodox have to find a way to square the reality of homosexuality as a valid expression of love with their own belief systems, and this will no doubt take some time (how long did it take to resolve the number of plagues issue, after all? Rabbinic arguments are eternal…), but it is a debate that must happen because, as Watzman puts it, the current condemnation“cannot be tolerated in a system that is meant to be the practical expression of God’s immanence in the world.”

There are plenty of halachic arguments out there. Rabbi Bradley Arston, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies wrote an argument (pdf) that was accepted by the Conservative Movement some time ago, and his website has a plethora of further writings on the subject.

The key point that Rabbi Arston makes, and one that is echoed in Jay Michaelson’s long piece on reconciling being gay and religously Jewish, is that

Encouraging sexual responsibility and stability among homosexuals can only strengthen family values and traditional communities for all.  Lacking any compelling reason for stigmatizing monogamous gays and lesbians, the clear moral imperative is to take a bold stand with these innocent and seeking Jews rather than with those who would oppress them.  We must find a way to draw these people into the fabric of Jewish community, with the goal of bringing them  to a life of Torah and mitzvot.

Now, as always, we must remember the fundamental goal of Jewish law: “Clearly justice is the ultimate value to which God’s will must conform; any dichotomy between them is unthinkable.  The demand of ethics and the command of God are one.”

“The demands of ethics and the commands of God are one.” Right there is the reason that all people of faith should not only support equal rights and dignity for GLBT people, they should be leading the charge.

(in the political sphere, Israel is reaching out internationally to gay rights groups to bolster its case against Iran. This is a pretty good idea and far more hepful than calling Iran the next Third Reich)

Of course, some argue that this ridiculous government in Israel right now is doomed to failure anyway. Bloated politics may be standing in the way of peace in the Middle East and might even undermine Israel’s survival. When power becomes the raison d’etre for a state, it has not only lost its soul, it has lost its future, because power, as history teaches (and Jewish history certainly teaches), comes and goes. I am worried.

And Palestinian youth are worried too: 70% of them polled do not support violence as a solution to this conflict. 80% are depressed, and they are largely defining themselves by religion, rather than my national identity, which could be good or could be bad, depending on who engages these youth. Someone should, however, engage them. There are partners for peace out there, and the new foreign minister of Israel would do well to support, rather than antagonize them. As I’ve written about at length (and as common sense dictates), marginalized youth, when not engaged constructively, will certainly be engaged destructively.

On another note, this story about the Amish touring Crown Heights with the Hasidic community tickled me.

This is beautitful. A group of children from Jenin refugee camp playing music for a group of elderly Holocaust survivors. The act of doing something kind and creating something beautiful for someone else can be extremely empowering for young people, and doing it for a group considered ‘the other’ in a conflict has an amazing power to heal wounds and show the best of the moral traditions of a people.

This is crap. Palestinian political organizations condemn the concert, basically because they think any act of peaceful expression related to Israelis is subversive and must be validating the Occupation. The director of the camp’s  Popular Committee, stated that the concert was an attempt to use the children to “destroy the Palestinian national spirit in the camp.”  I have no words to respond to that statment. The man’s idiocy and knee-jerk hatred speak for themselves.

These children from Jenin said a great deal about the human spirit with this concert, which I believe is a far more effective criticsm of any Occupation than the crap coming from the politicians.

According to Douglas Bloomfield, who spent nine years as the legislative director and chief lobbyist for AIPAC, “AIPAC worked closely with congressional Republicans to undermine the Clinton administration’s Middle East policy,” including undermining the Oslo peace process.

WHAT? Why is this not a bigger revelation? It is buried in a March 5th column in the New Jersey Jewish News about the trial against two former AIPAC staffers. (Thanks to my usual hero, Gershom Gorenberg, for bringing this to light on his blog)

Now, I believe AIPAC is just one of many lobbying groups for one of many causes, and, though it is very effective, it does not speak for America’s Jews any more than the tobacco lobby speaks for every smoker in America, and it is no more a vast Zionist conspiracy than the Armenian lobby is part of a vast Armenian conspiracy, or the Save Darfur Coalition is part of a vast Save-Darfur Conspiracy. I also believe they are perfectly allowed to lobby for what they believe, as those of us more to their left are allowed to lobby for what we believe (that’s a link to J-Street, fyi). Dialogue among interest groups is how democracy works, after all.

Bloomfield’s assertion, however, suggests that AIPAC in the 90’s was right on a moral par with the tobacco industry suppressing health information about smoking. If this assertion is true, their efforts go far beyond their stated goal of strengthening US-Israel relations, but run to a complete disregard for life, for the human costs of war. It is morally revolting, and cruel to Palestinian civilians, and perhaps more hypcritcal for them, cruel to Israeli civilians and soldiers. If they undermined the Clinton administration’s Middle East policy deliberately and covertly, how can we believe that they have either the best interests of Israel or the US at heart.

Bloomfield’s accusations also indicate a close affiliation with one particular political party in Israel, and even more frightening, with one particular political party in the United States. If AIPAC undermined Clinton administration Middle East policy in favor of the right-wing in the US and Israel, that confirms some of the worst accusations against them. If they undermined the Oslo peace process and the hope of a viable two-state solution, that is simply immoral.

None of this has been proven, of course, and we must be wary, as any ill done by AIPAC, is too easily attributed as an ill done by “the Jews.” This is due in part to a world that often wants to believe the worst about us, but also due to the success AIPAC has had in claiming to speak for all Jewish people. I am, as it is clear, biased in favor of believing these troubling statements about AIPAC, especially given who is making them, but I’d love to be shown that they are untrue. We can only hope that the truth comes to light.

Tonight is the start of Purim, a night to celebrate Jewish survival and our salvation from destruction. Let’s hope we can be saved from all those who deceive, who work against peace, and all those, perhaps with good in their hearts, who simply know not what they do.

The web exploded with angry comments, the most astute (though no less outraged) coming from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, in which he noted that personal warmth and political hatred often live happily side by side in a society, even in individuals. Others simply called Cohen a fool, duped by the Iranian regime into thinking the Jews were doing perfectly fine. Some said he would have been fooled by the Nazis (a common comparison made between Ahamedinejad and Hitler came up too)

Cohen responded, noting that Iran was not Nazi Germany and that many Jews there dislike being used as a political hot button issue. As I found during my time in Iran, speaking with community leaders and youth, average Iranian Jews on the street, and pious worshipers at synagogues, they recognize that theirs is a complex community in a complex society, suffering from some real anti-Jewish discrimination, some cruelty resulting from ignorance, and some political point-scoring at their expense, but that reducing their 3,000 year history to the status of a cowed and oppressed entity, is insulting. They have just as broad a spectrum of beliefs as the American Jewish community here. Some are fiercly anti-Zionist, some quietly long to go to Israel (which they are allowed to do, unlike other Iranians), and some openly speak of admiration for Israel, as long as they also speak for justice for the Palestinians. The Jews of Iran are as free to express dissent as any Iranian, which is, not very, but no less so.

The current member of parliament and president of Dr. Sapir Hospital in Tehran explained to me that yes, indeed, they had problems, but that they were Iranians and that they were working “with the other religious minorities” to address the problems, including the limits on employment and the sometimes anti-Jewish programming on television. They did not regard outside interference as helpful. The young people I spoke with were emphatic that they had no real problems as Jews, but their problems were those faced by all young people in Islamic Iran, the limitations of a society controlled by religious fundamentalism.

Both Cohen and Goldberg are right. The Jews in Iran live safely and openly (unlike the B’hai), AND Iran provides political, financial, and ideological support to organizations that seek to destory Israel and the Jews. The Jews of Iran seek to work inside their system to change it, as Jews have done throughout their history (in America too!). The international community (rightly) seeks to pressure an extremist regime to change its behavior. But shrill accusations and comparisons to Nazi Germany won’t fix things. The only approach that can possibly work is dialogue, and the first step is to recognize that maybe, just maybe, all the Jews still in Iran are not fools or cowards, but actually believe what they say in public and in private–that their 3,000 year history of coexistence means something, that they, as someone told me, “speak English, pray in Hebrew, but dream in Persian.”

We can acknowledge that there have been some real troubles in Iran–for all Iranians, including Jews. Jews are often under suspicion because of the assumed connection with Israel, many have lost their homes and businesses and were separated from their families after the Revolution. There are a lot of bad experiences, which are just as valid as the good ones that Cohen and I encountered on our separate trips. But sometimes, it seems, only the bad experiences get pride of place in this discussion, and I applaud Cohen for voicing this other side.

Rabbi David Wolpe has extended an invitation to Cohen to meet with the Iranian exiles at his Congregation in Los Angeles, an invitation Cohen should certainly take up.  It is the Iranians themselves–those still in Iran and those living abroad–who are stakeholders in this, and all of us in the media can comment up a storm, but it is up to them to work it out. They have a lot more history at it than we do. Perhaps we should spend more time listening to them. If Cohen doesn’t show up in LA, I’d be happy to.

As David Harris and Doug Lieb write in their rebuttal to Lieberman’s editorial, the proposed ‘loyalty oath’ that Lieberman wants Israel Arab citizens to take “would define an entire class of Israelis as suspected traitors. And it would chill Israel’s democratic political debate.” Their article does note that his rise to power is not the end of the world for moderation or democracy in Israel–he has been a player for years and the State of Israel still exists–but they do argue that the best path forward for the Jewish state is inclusiveness of all its citizens. That kind of inclusiveness, while scary and uncertain, marks the best of the Jewish people. Jews survive by embracing our neighbors, even when they do not return the favor. Jews have for a long time  been defined by those who wish them ill, as the State of Israel has also been defined by its enemies. Two efforts are needed here. One from the Jewish people, who need to show the best of our traditions everywhere we live, further interfaith dialogue and publicly renounce injustice, whoever the victims might be–Jews in Venezuela, Palestinians in Gaza, Darfuris in Sudan and Chad, Armenians in Turkey, or B’hai in Iran. Separately, the people of Israel, if they want to be a Jewish State, shoud live up to the values of the Jewish people, remember that mere survival is fine for a state and its citizens, but for one that assumes a “Jewish” character, survival is not enough. Yes, Israel is a modern, diverse, and vibrant state that has accomplished much in its 60 years. But the measure of a state is not in its accomplishments, but in the quality of its aspirations. As we learned in the U.S. from the prison at Guantanamo, a state can abandon its ideals for security, and then, be defined by who it fears, or it can strive to realize the best of its values, and inspire allies it never knew it had.