The Coalition for Jewish Values would like to share with you this report on the recent graduation speech hosted by the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College (HUC). The speaker was a well-known anti-Israel activist, who used the opportunity to not only demonize Israel’s self-defense, but even to oppose Jewish endogamy, Jews marrying Jews. The Interim President of the HUC, Rabbi David Ellenson, both welcomed the speaker and reaffirmed the decision to host him afterwards.
On May 14 at the Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California, the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion held its annual graduation and ordination ceremony. The invited speaker was Michael Chabon, a known anti-Israel activist and author.
Chabon’s hostility towards Israel and its self-defense is well-known, especially due to his collaboration with “Breaking the Silence” (BtS), an anti-Israel organization that claims a domestic mission, “to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories,” but receives two-thirds of its funding from European governments and the New Israel Fund, and refuses to share evidence with the IDF for critical examination.
Chabon and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, met with BtS members before compiling an anthology called “Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation.” The book claimed to offer true accounts, although the spokesman for Breaking the Silence, Dean Issacharoff, was denounced by members of his platoon, including his commander, on video stating that he had lied about incidents in which he claimed to have participated and followed orders.
Chabon led a tour of Judea together with BtS, during which he called the occupation “the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” Regarding the Cave of the Patriarchs, “where supposedly Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rebecca and Leah are all buried” per his distorted account, he said: “to see that place being dishonored and made less sacred and less holy by the presence of this incredibly cruel and unjust machinery, some literal machinery and figurative machinery of oppression, it offends me.” He would have preferred to see Hebron with no “machinery” there to prevent a repeat murder of its Jewish visitors and residents. He claimed the Jews of Hebron see Arabs as “less truly human.”
After all of the above, HUC Interim President Rabbi David Ellenson introduced Chabon as a “moral voice,” emphasizing his book dealing with “fifty years of Israeli occupation in Palestine” — the aforementioned work inspired by BtS — and pointing out the current relevance of the book due to the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Taking to the stage, Chabon wasted no time condemning Israel’s security barrier, built to prevent further atrocities such as the Dolphinarium, Sbarro and Park Hotel suicide bombings. “Anywhere you look, it is and has always been a hand of power drawing the boundaries, putting up the separation barriers and propagandizing hatred and fear of the people on the other side of the wall. Security for some means imprisonment for all.”
He then went on to say that intermarriage is “the source of all human greatness,” while “endogamous marriage is a ghetto of two.” He condemned Judaism in particular by saying that “any religion that relies on compulsory endogamy to survive has, in my view, ceased to make the case for its continued validity in the everyday lives of human beings.”
At least one graduate, Morin Zaray, left in protest. In an op-ed in the LA Jewish Journal, Zaray wrote: “I know that the same wall he said he despised enabled me to live a normal life and to use the bus as a young girl… It was as if horrific terror attacks have never occurred against these Jews — this ‘sorriest’ and most ‘riotous’ group of ‘convicts’ Chabon has ever seen. Maybe he hasn’t seen the virulent Jew-hatred that permeates Palestinian society.
“I turned back to look at my brother, who served in a combat unit in the Israel Defense Forces. He looked sick to his stomach. I got up from my seat and approached my family… I asked my mother if not seeing me graduate would disappoint her. She responded that she would feel ashamed to see me walk on that stage after what had been said. We stood up and left the sanctuary. Standing outside, I was nearly brought to tears as I heard the crowd of Jews give Chabon a thunderous applause.
“For someone who presents himself as an intellectual — steeped in nuance — Michael Chabon has a remarkable ability to present a one-dimensional reality in which the Jews are evil oppressors and the Palestinians are powerless victims, with no agency, no responsibility and no blame. Such a careless disregard for depth and complexity dishonors an institution of higher learning — particularly a Jewish one — particularly on a graduation day.”
Ellenson responded: “it does not occur to us at HUC-JIR to quash or vilify political criticism of Israel out of a preemptive fear of controversy.” He even claimed that Zaray’s tearful essay, bemoaning how Ellenson and Chabon “ambushed” and ruined her graduation, was testament to the diversity of opinion at HUC-JIR.
These are the people demanding Israel bow to its wishes concerning Israel’s security, the peace process, the Western Wall and matters of Jewish status.
Rabbi Pesach Lerner, President
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Managing Director
Coalition for Jewish Values
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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33 Responses
Go baptize yourself to christianity or muslim or anything else just don’t call yourself Jewish!!! We don’t want you!!!
If you run away from your family is one thing but don’t come back to stab us in the back!!
I hope Mr.Zaray has woken up to the evil of what is Hellenism that is working to destroy Judaism and Jews.
Reminds me of Tal Nitzan’s thesis (2007) which won a department prize at Hebrew U, which claims that Israelis are racists (in fact genocidal), because IDF soldiers do not rape Arabs. To quote in translation:
> “The lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences — just as organized military rape would have done.”
The argument also goes that since any resulting child would not be Jewish, the non-Jewish population is being diminished when IDF does not rape women.
One sees the lunacy on this of the Ocean as well. Vice President Mike Pence In an article some 15 or 16 years ago, Pence “never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.” In response when Pence recently became Vice President, journalist Ashley Csanady wrote about such behavior: “At its core, Pence’s self-imposed ban is rape culture.” She argues (basically as follows – in my own words) that such distrust of women is itself rape in that it promotes the idea that women are sexual and can’t be trusted.
Thank you for posting this. I’ve never been exposed to the extent of the depravity that is reform judaism.
It will help me have kavana when I say Ve’lamalshinim.
Interesting that he says his personal DNA results revealed one non-Jewish ancestor, one Brit, a sub-Saharan African. I wonder if he was born with a Jewish neshama. He could in fact be a non-Jew. Either way his words are indicative of how desperately we need to protect our own pure mesorah and transmit it to our children. It’s our only protection from the malshinim who work to destroy everything good and everything that has meaning.
You should refer to them as the dogs Ellenson and Chabon. YWN disgraces itself by referring to the animal Ellenson as “Rabbi”.
This piece of trash confirms the fact that the biggest anti semites are Jews
This unfortunate individual needs Refuah Shleima in his brain. I’m wondering how some of those disturbed minds are being given such publicity and have followers also
This isnt new
Why do we have to publicize all these people’s anti-semitic and anti-israeli words. The best would be to ignore them. The people who hear these words never are exposed to your words anyway.
Thank you
are you sure that his name is Michael ‘Chabon’ and not Michael ‘ChaRbon’?
Long suspected but never quite proven, Michael Chalbon has now clearly demonstrated multiple features diagnostic of being a donkey. His parents are required to make a retroactive pinyan petter chamor.
It is time to start questioning if this people are even Jewish.
Lolrotflmto
Liberals always feel that nuance only applies to leftist philosophy.
No israeli soldier ever agonized with a decision to pull a trigger , they are all mindless psychopaths
No Israeli government ever agonized with a decision to build or not, they are all mindless racists
The most important thing to remember is that Reform is not Judaism.
moishe in gaulas
most reform and in few years all reform are not jewish as they have thier own rules
that from jewish father is also jewish
Just read Chabon’s entire speech. He’s a good writer but a poor thinker. His excuse for going off the deep end and no longer believing in God or Judaism, he says, was seeing a video of a group of Chareidi men throwing rocks at little girls on their way to school. This should be a lesson to YWN to not publish such disgusting behavior, and for the rest of us to condemn it as much as we condemn Chabon.
Att: YWN editor:
Please remove this post. The professor speaking in the video is a complete heretic, of which one is forbidden to listen to according to Jewish law. While I understand that you posted his speech to outline the depths of depravity of the modern reform movement, nonetheless watching and listening to his words would be forbidden halachicly, as it is minus. Moreover while many watch this video and cringe automatically from the lies. and self deprecation that this man spreads about our people, others won’t be able to see past his eloquence and literary acuity. This man has uses a tremendous amount of G-D given talent, and intellectual blessings, to despise his Holy Name…Please don’t be like the Rabbi of Chelm who put up a sign on the NON- Kosher butcher store, stating its lack of certification. This caused the townspeople to shop there, based on seeing the holy Rabbi’s signature hanging behind the butcher. Yearning for the day in which G-D’s name will fill the universe. Until then let us avoid any forms of this Heresy and darkness from within our midst.
What a bizarre choice of a commencement speaker even for a graduating class of reform clergy. Don’t they have any esteemed reform leaders other than that one who recently died in the Shabbos plane crash?
Close to a majority of the members of the Reform are non-Jewish. They are members by virtue of paternal descent and/or Reform conversions either directly or by decent
Close to a majority of the members of the Reform are non-Jewish. They are members by virtue of paternal descent and/or Reform conversions either directly or by descent.
Not too surprising that this college that held the graduation is named after the infamous Stephen Wise.
Is this gibberish much different than the hateful rhetoric from the NK?
what do you expect from lunatic liberals? just sit back and enjoy their stupidity like you would with a Three Stooges comedy…..
This is truly sickening. I have never heard a bigger perversion of Jewish values. He is so clueless and stupid, he should be stripped on his Bachelor’s degree.
If this depravity was caused by chareidi men stoning school girls, then that should be publicized.
A classic example of aveira gorerres aveira.
Let all Torah true yidden see the churban that extremist chareidism brings to the world.
Learn painful leasons from this humiliation, dont ignore the mussar.
Little Know….very good analogy…we have meshugaiiim at both ends of the spectrum. The NK are much easier to dismiss. Guys like him are a much greater risk to klal yisroel.
Waiting to hear that he divorced his Jewish “in” wife and married an “out” wife.
katan hador
NK are no threat to klall yisroel…if yes , tell us in what way
charei amiti jun 2 451 pm
your a classical example of am huratzos. by the way where are u posting from jun 2 4 pm shabbos
and look what becomes of not charei,aka not shomrei torah among other chillil, posting on shabbos
shprintze
what?!; tremendous amount of g-d given talent….he didnt utter one intelligent thought’
In one way–and one way only–Mr. Chabon’s speech has done us a service. It is said that, before the Redemption, there will be clarity. All too often, comments and speeches from Reform-Jewish leaders sound plausible. Without someone really knowledgeable to parse exactly what they are saying, an argument could be made for their veracity. How refreshing then for Mr. Chabon to clarify the muddy, murky waters and show us exactly where the Reform-Jewish movement stands. It is a movement that not only endorses antisemitic BDS groups and activities, but now wants to eschew the traditional Jewish family, the entity most responsible for our historic continuity. We must thank him and those who invited him to speak for making clear why we and our children must avoid anything emanating from that movement.