Author and former Israel ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, tells the Jewish Journal:
And one of the issues I had to deal with was the fact that Jews were disproportionately represented in the US media. You just need to look at the op-ed pages. There is this anti-Semitic trope out here that ‘Jews control the media and that that’s why the media is pro-Israel’. They are disproportionately represented in the media, but the media isn’t necessarily pro-Israel…
Because Tikkun Olam, by nature, is a universalist notion. Zionism, Jewish peoplehood, is a particularistic notion. I put it in a very pedestrian way in the book – I say ‘if you have a hundred dollars, do you give it to Birthright, or do you give it to building a school in Guatemala?’ That’s the challenge of Tikkun Olam…
When I grew up and went to Hebrew school we never heard about Tikkun Olam. It’s in the Aleinu prayer, I know, but it’s originally a rather obscure medieval Kabalistic notion that has to do with the broken vessels and divine light of creation. It has been adapted to 21st century liberal American Jewish thought, to mean that our purpose in the world is to light the world’s injustices, make the world a better place. It’s a beautiful notion. But you have to reconcile it with the fact that we have Jewish peoplehood, and that we have a Jewish state to support…
…the other day I was sitting in the Knesset, and I went to a lobby meeting focused on educating Israelis about transgenderism. And sitting on the dais there were representatives from Meretz and Labor, but also from Likud, Israel Beitenu, all the different parties. So we’re having this discussion, and there were about a hundred kids in this room who are transgender, or transitioning, and there are two extraordinary things going on here: one is that this discussion is happening just a two hour drive from ISIS.
