{"id":8498,"date":"2009-03-17T07:21:02","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T15:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8498"},"modified":"2009-03-17T07:21:02","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T15:21:02","slug":"roger-cohens-dialogue-with-rabbi-wolpe-at-sinai-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8498","title":{"rendered":"Roger Cohen’s Dialogue With Rabbi Wolpe At Sinai Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Tugend writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The audience politely applauded Cohen at the end of the talk, but when Wolpe opened the dialogue, some sparks – leavened by humor – were ignited.<\/p>\n

Wolpe to Cohen: “You draw a distinction between the Iranian people and their rulers, but Iran has a long history of anti-Semitism…the Iranian government has republished the notorious anti-Semitic forgery ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and your New York Times column ran in the Teheran Post.<\/p>\n

Cohen:<\/strong> “Then they stole my column.”<\/p>\n

Wolpe:<\/strong> “That shows that it was worth stealing.”<\/p>\n

Finally, it was the audience’s turn to confront Cohen directly, and the questions ranged from thoughtful to bitter.<\/p>\n

“Were you paid by the Iranian government for your trip?” asked one audience member. “No,” said Cohen, though he paid an Iranian “agency” $150 a day for the services of a translator, who acknowledged that he would have to file a report on Cohen’s doings with the authorities.<\/p>\n

Wolpe interjected that Cohen had paid for his own trip to speak at Sinai Temple.<\/p>\n

Several questioners wondered how Cohen could take the answers of fearful Iranian Jews at face value, especially with a government translator at his side.<\/p>\n

Cohen responded that he recognized the possibility of self-censorship by those he talked to, “but that doesn’t mean that nothing they said is of any value.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Tugend writes: The audience politely applauded Cohen at the end of the talk, but when Wolpe opened the dialogue, some sparks – leavened by humor – were ignited. Wolpe to Cohen: “You draw a distinction between the Iranian people … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,48,16526,149],"tags":[1329,16803,15155,16804,16805,29871],"class_list":["post-8498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran","category-david-wolpe","category-roger-cohen","category-sinai-temple","tag-elders-of-zion","tag-history-of-anti-semitism","tag-iranian-jews","tag-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion","tag-self-censorship","tag-sinai-temple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}