We must not but we are getting caught in the conflicts between ultra-Orthodox and Nationalist Religious Judaism known as “hardal”, haredi subculture, hilonim, secularist Jews, weapons manufacturers, state and private military forces. All that being said, we can reduce the confusing language of the previous sentence by saying we are getting caught in the conflicts between modernists and post-modernists, people who want top-down order and people who want bottom-up policies.
We are led to believe that there is monolithic opposition to the JCPOA in the Jewish community. Guess what ... Jewish people are not in some undifferentiated smudge that can be characterized as monolithic opposition or support for anything, even including how to treat the "leper". Ask a rabbī (by which I mean a qualified official leader of a Jewish congregation) to test if I'm correct.
A rabbī is believed to have said the Torah is like a mirror. The mirror does not change as generations do; the mirror has not been broken in millenniums try as some with might have attempted countless times to do; the reflections that thousands of generations have seen in the mirror do change, often change even in a single generation. Should the discomfort and the trouble that those realities cause be remedied by throwing some limp, old, commodity tablecloth over the mirror thereby assuring none are troubled by any uncomfortable, inconvenient reflection?
Is the Bible like the Torah?
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, Iran nuclear peace agreement is not going to change and it is also like a mirror that reflects the current thoughts and beliefs of the political, economic, scientific, military and diplomatic leadership of very many nations. Should we break the mirror, blow up the JCPOA, as if that can even actually happen? A myth has it that if the U.S. Congress disapproves of the JCPOA it will be worthless. Ha.Ha.Ha. Not likely.
Get real. The JCPOA has been established; it ain't going away; many other nations, weapons manufacturers, state and private military forces, ethnic and religious groups —such as Christians, Yazidis, Yarsans or Ahl-e Haqqs, Shias or Shi’ites, Sunnis, other Muslims, and many others— will be arguing over it for decades.
What the U.S. Congress does or does not do about the JCPOA approval or its disapproval is absolutely not worth fighting about.
The reality is that Benjamin Netanyahu is not proficient in learning or in teaching how to “Love thy neighbor as thyself”; nor can he be relied upon to avoid the single worst foreign policy failure of any prime minister since the establishment of Israel; he is superb at narrating a myth that only he (Netanyahu) can solve the Iranian "crisis", have superior U.S. “Republican connections”, isolate U.S. Democratics (including Nadler and Obama) as detrimental causes for Israel finding itself sidelined and unable to constructively voice its concerns on the JCOPA agreement.
AIPAC, like "Bibi", mythologizes to the political spectrum of U.S. Jewry and Members of U.S. Congress that every Israeli in Israel and just about everywhere else except in the U.S. unite in condemnation of the JCPOA and demand it be disapproved by the U.S. Congress.
Tell the truth in this nation and in this dKos community:
1. The Truth is that at at least 340 rabbīs in the U.S. from all streams of Judaism oppose the mistaken impression that the leadership of the American Jewish community is united in opposition to the Iran agreement;
2. As Jews...as United Statesans...and as staunch supporters of the security of the State of Israel, these same 340 rabbīs urge our U.S. elected officials to support this JCPOA accord;
3. From all streams of Judaism these 340 rabbis who live and work in a hugely diverse array of local cultural mores in towns both large and small in states all across the United States from sea to shining sea and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canada side sent a letter on August 17, 2015 to all Members of Congress urging that they support the agreement between the international community and Iran on the Iranian nuclear program.
Read the rabbīs'
pithy letter here.
And read more:
http://jewschool.com/...
http://www.jpost.com/...
https://sojo.net/...
Jim Wallis in Sojourners last May wrote 5 principles that apply in the present posturing about the JCPOA as well as to many other matters:
1. There are no “holy wars.”
2. We must admit that our primarily military response to terrorism since 9/11 has not worked; it has made things worse.
3. Only new political and economic solutions in the Middle East will finally transform the current state of affairs.
4. Fundamentalism, in all our faith traditions, is a politicized use of religion based on fear and power, and it is best defeated from the inside, not the outside.
5. Understanding and addressing the roots of terror to build a strategy to defeat it does not dismiss terror’s evil, barbaric behavior.
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