Jewish Journal writer Danielle Berrin blogs about Friday night’s dialogue:
The truth is, you can only really edit a Jewish publication, if you love being Jewish, if you love Israel with your soul. Yet among the crowd gathered at Sinai Temple late Friday night, The Journal’s support of Israel was challenged; its "service" to the community was challenged. I thought: if only these people visited The Journal, they would feel how much love there is…
Real love is not unbiased love. Real love is complex; it’s complicated. And really loving something or someone is not believing in their perfection or in their flawlessness, but in learning of their weaknesses and accepting their vulnerabilities–and challenging them to grow. Robert Frost once said, "I have never learned anything from any man who has agreed with me."
Danielle’s emotional reaction reminds me of how I used to feel when my daddy was attacked.
In this case, I don’t think love has anything to do with it. Love is such an amorphous term in America today that it is meaningless. Many Christians will say that executing a murderer is a loving act.
If you gave a traditional rabbi a choice between a congregant who professes great love for Torah but doesn’t observe it with that same person constantly complaining about the Torah yet observing it (like me), there’s no question that the rav would prefer the complainer (that’s why the rabbis love me).
So too those who think the Journal is left-wing and too frequently anti-Israel would much rather the entire Journal staff hated Israel in their hearts yet shifted their coverage to the right.
You can edit a Jewish publication such as the Jewish Journal if you know next to nothing about Judaism, feel uncomfortable with traditional Jews and their particularist lives, are completely on the left and hire editors who reflect your left-wing views. For example, Gene Lichtenstein, the founding editor of the Jewish Journal.
None of this is meant as a criticism of Gene. It’s an honest description to show that editing a Jewish publication is no guarantee that a person is a normative part of Jewish life. Most journalists, particularly Jewish journalists are on the left (I don’t think there’s been a Republican staff writer at the Journal in 20 years) while most of those who practice Judaism most seriously, the Orthodox, tilt right.
Those who criticized the Jewish Journal Friday night are not concerned with whether or not Rob Eshman and his staff love the Jews and the Jewish state. They are concerned with what the Jewish Journal publishes.
I have little concern with what the Jewish Journal publishes about anything outside of Los Angeles Jewish life because that’s the only thing where its staff has expertise (if they had expertise elsewhere they’d be employed elsewhere, do you think any of them have turned down offers from the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times to rewrite press releases from American Jewish University?). Anyone who looks to the Jewish Journal to learn about Israel and Islamic terrorism and American politics and culture is retarded.
The Journal’s non-staff contributors would much rather be published in the New York Times but aren’t good enough to land there regularly. So we’re stuck with commentaries by such third-rate minds as Raphael J. Sonenshein, a poli-sci prof at Cal State Northridge.
Rob Eshman insists on blowing his wad (aka spending much of his meager resources) covering topics done far better and quicker by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other media.
The Journal goes to press Wednesday afternoon. What kind of moron depends on news that is guaranteed to be at least 36 hours old?
Perhaps I can best teach here by analogy. If I go to Friday Night Live and spend all of my sweaty aging charms chasing Danielle Berrin, then I’m going to go home alone (with a restraining order arriving on Monday). But if I pay court to some chubby 45-year old matron with four kids, three divorces, and two chins, I may well find someone with genuine gratitude for what I have to give.
If people only thought of the Jewish Journal as a socially marginal 41-year old bachelor who drives a serial-killer van and sleeps on the floor of a hovel but yearns to hook up at Friday Night Live with the young hotties, then we’d avoid much unpleasantness. We’d replace feelings of frustration with fascination. Anger would turn into compassion.
The latest cover of the Journal is by Amy Klein on Jewish pulp fiction. It’s a solid article but nothing special. Amy’s kinda cute but she’s no James Wood (famous literary critic). The space could’ve been better used to explore how wonderfully fascinating I am.
I’d like to be profiled by every hot single female writer in L.A.
Note to editors — next time you assign a profile on me, bestow this great gift upon someone truly deserving, someone young, needy and breasty.
