After the conclave, JNS reported:
"The meeting was a 'feel good thing where the administration's support for Israel' was celebrated, an attendee told JNS."How nice that JFNA was there!!
I was sitting at my computer trying to determine how best to approach this thing when I heard from a wonderful friend, a great and dedicated professional, a mentor. Here is what he wrote:
"I had just noted your comments about some kind of special new relationship between ADL and JFNA....then I saw this story about the White House convening a meeting without ADL and, more significantly, without representation of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstruction movements, which reflect the affiliations and practices of most American Jews. Am I correct that this is a missed opportunity for an organization like JFNA to assert real national leadership?"
" One alternative would be to lead a boycott of such a meeting and just leave it to the three invited Orthodox organizations and Mort Klein to attend. Another, less militant, alternative would be to take the lead in a strong statement on behalf of all the others (with the likely exception of those just mentioned) expressing concern and dismay that the leadership of our country has made a decision to exclude the most prominent and heavily supported Jewish defense organization and, on the eve of Passover, the most representative religious streams in the American Jewish community. Shouldn't we all hate it that folks are passive in the face of such behavior? Where is the outrage?"Of course we know that no one at JFNA thought about any of these options because that's not what they do. What they do is jump at an invitation to the White House -- it's all about the photo ops, the "I was there." To these leaders, invitations like these are some form of faux "validation" -- "see how important we are?"
Yes, as to JFNA, as we say about others: "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
My friends, there is never any outrage.
Never.
Rwexler
Posts
4 comments:
A couple of points…
1) If anyone at the WH had been reading your blog, Silverman probably would not have been invited :-). However, the umbrella organization of the Federation movement, the JNFA, fiasco that it has become, certainly should have been invited.
2) While you are factual in stating that the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements were not invited, you were not being honest in explaining why. They were not invited, not because of their religious beliefs, but because of their constant and loud criticism of the President. It seems as if they hate the President more than they love the Jewish People and Israel. Of course they should not have been invited. Had nothing to do with religious beliefs. The same goes with others not invited (ADL, NCJW, JStreet, etc).
3) I also question your use of the term 'mainstream' in describing Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements.
--Reconstructionist - what are you smoking?
--Conservative - going through a long and painful death - sorry to say.
--Reform - the movement that is the loudest in terms of criticism of Israel; the movement whose members make up the vast majority of JStreeters; the movement from which the past co-Chair of the JStreet Rabbinical Cabinet comes from (he described Israel as an drunken addict!). Mainstream? I certainly don't think so...
One of the real problems our American Jewish community now faces is that there is NO mainstream left...
To Anonymous 10:22:
You are seriously suggesting only inviting people (or folks) to the WH who always agree with the President?
There have been no shortage of Jewish leaders invited by the WH on other occasions who have disagreed with whoever is President. The most prominent, of course, was Elie Wiesel who told Ronald Reagan in a full public ceremony that his place was not to be at Bitburg but rather with the victims of the Nazis.
OK, friends, given the trend of some of your Comments, I have failed to make my point clearly in this Post (or some of you wish to treat the Post as a point of departure to express your strong political points). So, I will not entertain any more Comments to the Post inquisition.
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