L ifestyle /C ulture
Reviews: Failed Case, Compelling Treasure Hunt
B OOKS
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
Weak Argument
“Except for Palestine:
The Limits of Progressive
Politics” Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell
Plitnick The New Press
“EXCEPT FOR PALESTINE”
is a muddled, confusing book.

Marc Lamont Hill, a
professor at Temple University,
and Mitchell Plitnick, co-
director of Jewish Voice for
Peace, seem to have written the
book before they knew exactly
what they wanted to accom-
plish. The book’s introduction
and conclusion both read as if
they were tacked on as an after-
thought, as the book’s chapters
often have no bearing on or
relevance to the main claim.

“Except for Palestine,” in its
promotional copy, promises to
be “a searing polemic and cri
de coeur for elected officials,
activists and everyday citizens
alike to align their beliefs and
politics with their values.” The
authors say they seek to explore
why mainstream American
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22 MARCH 18, 2021
Courtesy of The New Press
liberals seem reluctant to apply
the humanistic values that
they claim to hold dear to the
plight of the Palestinians. They
wonder: Why would those
whose impulse is to support
the rights of the downtrodden
at home not take seriously the
rights of Palestinians abroad?
The problem is that the
authors don’t make a serious
attempt to answer these questions
or even substantiate the book’s
central claim: that progressives
exceptionalize Palestine. The
only evidence they present are
the actions of some Democrats
in Congress in recent years and a
few unsourced assertions about
apathy and silence.

There’s no attempt to grapple
with what made support for
Israel a rallying point for large
portions of the left for many
years. And there’s a long history
of the term “Progressive Except
Palestine” on the British left, an
exploration of which might have
provided some useful context;
this goes unmentioned.

The book, instead, is a
retelling of the story of contem-
porary Israel and U.S. support
for its ascendant right wing,
which makes for a weird disso-
nance between what the authors
claim to be arguing and the
actual words between the covers.

In the meat of the book,
the authors consistently dodge
chances to make the case for
specific points.

How can an argument
decrying the end of U.S. aid to
the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East
interact so superficially with
the objections made to its
continued existence?
How can the authors argue
that the Israeli government
unfairly stonewalled Yasser
Arafat during negotiations
without saying why they
believe the government’s objec-
tions were incorrect?
How can they assert Hamas
“showed flexibility” following
its ascension to power in Gaza
without detailing this flexibility?
How can they make the
serious claim that Israel had a
hand in the creation of its “bad
neighborhood,” as the region
is often called, and devote only
one line to the government’s
treatment of the Palestinians?
This is all bad argumentation.

It’s not as if they’re not
capable of solid rhetoric. When
Hill and Plitnick discuss the
criminalization and stigma-
tization of the boycott,
divestment and sanctions
movement in this country, or
the despicable treatment of
Jews and non-Jews alike who
deviate from the received
JEWISH EXPONENT
wisdom on Israel and Palestine,
they use facts to back up their
arguments. Those are points with the
moral power to persuade. But
given their relatively small
place in the larger argument,
it’s hard to say that persuasion
was really the goal here.

One Man’s Treasure
“Plunder: A Memoir of
Family Property and Nazi
Treasure” Menachem Kaiser
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
What distinguishes memora-
bilia from curios, or either
category from treasure? What’s
the difference between plunder,
spoils and mementos? How do
we unpack something that is
at once fetish object, family
heirloom, sacred relic and
despicable artifact?
Menachem Kaiser does not
claim to have the answers to
these questions — one of the
many delightful things about
his new memoir, “Plunder” —
but he’s willing to ask them of
himself and of you.

Kaiser’s story about his
attempt to reclaim a Polish
apartment building that was
expropriated from his grand-
father prior to the Holocaust is
a fascinating tale. His commit-
ment to ambiguity, along with
a keen sense of story, genre
and the weight of expectations,
makes for a compelling read.

Kaiser, a magazine writer,
understands that the story he’s
written will be read by readers
who have encountered many
such variations before, and
that those readers have ideas
about how these stories should
go. So he’s weary of “dancing
my stupid nostalgia dance,”
of taking a “memory-safari”
where he’d treat readers to
some preordained emotional
journey that didn’t really
belong to him.

Though he never says it
Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
directly, Kaiser is writing an
“American-Jew-returns-to- the-old-country-for-family-
but-a lso-persona l-grow t h ”
story in the world that
Jonathan Safran Foer created,
and there’s a readership to be
won by sticking to the basics.

It’s easy to see why Kaiser
once felt inclined to write this
book as a novel: There’s his
pink velour tracksuit-wearing
Polish lawyer nicknamed The
Killer, bizarre and seemingly
anti-Semitic questions from
reactionary Polish judges, a
massive network of treasure-
hunting conspiracy theorists
with ideas about a secret under-
ground Nazi train, mistaken
identities and long-dormant
familial strife brought back
into the light.

But he went with a memoir,
which makes the absurdi-
ties, strange coincidences and
trajectory-changing twists
more compelling. Kaiser writes
as if he’s speaking aloud, like a
stranger telling you a surpris-
ingly interesting story on a
night you didn’t expect to be
out so late.

He builds his narrative with
reporting, memory, poetry, court
transcripts, legal documents
and memoir, and never fails to
treat the people he encounters
with humanity on the page,
even if he had contemplated
See Books, Page 23
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



T orah P ortion
Getting Back Up Again
THE BOOK OF Leviticus is
my favorite book in the Torah.

Its first parshah, also called
Vayikra, deals with the priestly
cult and laws of sacrifice.

The Book of Leviticus it is
about communication. The
opening section of the Book of
Leviticus begins with the word
Vayikra, “and [God] called.” God
calls out to Moses, an amazing and
inspiring concept with the first
word. Every Torah portion begins
with the more common vay’dabeir,
“[God] spoke” or vayomer, “[God]
said,” but Leviticus beings not
with these two phrases but with
“[God] called.”
Verse 2 goes on to instruct
Moses to “Speak to the Israelite
people and say to them …” using
both the roots dalet-bet-reish
and alef-mem-reish: “speak”
and “say.” The first two verses
use three kinds of communica-
tion: call (God to Moses); and
speak and say (Moses to the
Israelite people). It seems that
the Book of Leviticus is about
sacrifices, leprosy and blood.

While it does deal with those
subjects, the essence of the book
is about communication.

And it makes us ask: Who
calls us and how are we called?
How do we know if we are
ever “called” by God? The
word for sacrifice, korban,
comes from the root kuf-re-
ish-bet, meaning “to bring
close. Communication is all
about closeness.” A form of
this word appears four times in
the second verse and numerous
times throughout the book.

How do we achieve closeness
with God without knowing our
sacrifices are accepted? How do
we achieve closeness to each
other while still retaining our
individuality? We call out to a
person, we call upon a person
and we call to a person.

Each way of relating to
another human being is an
attempt at closeness. We call out
to gain attention, to be heard, to
be recognized, to be found or
to find. We call upon to build
a community. We call to for a
Books Sinensky
less noble actions in the reality
he recounts. His friends and
colleagues provide substantive
objections to the ethical nature
of his reclamation project, and
Kaiser’s responses may or may
not convince you.

There are long digressions
on the nature of conspiracy
theories, especially as they
relate to Nazis and the occult,
and vignettes that illustrate the
curious, semi-mystical status of
the region in Poland where the
story takes place. Every place
he found to dig with purpose
and respect, Kaiser grabbed a
shovel, and “Plunder” is better
off for it. l
that perpetuated Breitbart’s
memory. But his legend has not
fully disappeared. A 2001 movie,
“Invincible,” featured a fictional
account of his life. A children’s
book titled “Zishe the Strongman”
appeared in 2010.

What do we make of this
seeming paradox: a Jewish
superhero who at a time of rising
anti-Semitism, and during an era
when Jewish men were derided
as sissies, became a folk hero of
able-bodied masculinity?
Some saw Breitbart as a sort of
vindication of the then-German
and Austrian embrace of male
bravado. In this view, that he
was also Jewish rendered him
something of a freak to the average
German, making him all the more
compelling as entertainment on
BY RABBI JON CUTLER
PARSHAT VAYIKRA
Continued from Page 22
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Continued from Page 18
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
March 19
March 26
6:54 p.m.

7:01 p.m.

conversation that will help us
understand one another better.

The purpose of the animal
sacrifices was to call out to us,
to call upon us and to call to us.

The Torah’s insistence
on the boundaries of purity
and impurity are misunder-
stood. There are many taboos
in Leviticus, most notably
food and sex taboos. What
the Torah deems as tamei,
“impure,” or tahor, “pure,” are
not actually attached to cleanli-
ness. Anthropologists note that
taboos are the system by which
certain objects or persons
are set aside as either sacred
or accursed. Such objects or
persons inspire both fear and
respect. How can we under-
stand boundaries today and a
sacredness so holy it is taboo?
The Book of Leviticus, while
seemingly about the priesthood
and priestly functions, also
suggests for the first time the
democratization of holiness. It
is not just the priests who offer
sacrifices. All the people bring
sacrifices — men and women,
Jew and non-Jew — at times of
anxiety, celebration, sorrow, sin
and also everyday normalcy.

All this leads to the state-
ment, “Speak to the whole
Israelite community and say
to them: You shall be holy!”
K’doshim tih’yu (Leviticus
19:2, see also 20:26). Such a
provocative statement in the
ancient world — that laypeople
as well as priests can attain
holiness — will eventually lead
to the total democratization of
Judaism post-priesthood.

The text offers a framework
for one who has anxiety over
his or her status with God to
regain a sense of order — even
closure: I have sinned, I will
sin, but I will be forgiven!
In today’s world, we shy
away from the concept of sin.

Yet Vayikra reminds us that
we are fully human and, as
such, flawed. In that humanity,
we will all stumble and fall.

Leviticus offers us a formula
for getting back up. While that
formula may seem antiquated,
we humans still seem to need
ritualized ways to feel clean,
forgiven and able to start fresh.

Yom Kippur proves that.

Vayikra and the sacrifices tell
us how our services should be:
Dramatic. Emotive. Reactive.

Tactile. The “sacrificial rites”
were called avodah in Hebrew.

The other meaning of the word
avodah is “work.” To sacrifice an
animal was hard work — you had
to schlep it to the priest and hear
him sing over it, slaughter it, and
offer it with all sorts of incense
and other accoutrements. Today
prayer is avodah shebalev, “sacri-
fices from the heart.” But it’s still
hard work — inner hard work. l
the vaudeville circuit.

Others saw Breitbart as
a model for the new Zionist
muscular Judaism. A popular
Yiddish saying went, “If a
thousand Breitbarts were
to arise among the Jews, the
Jewish people would cease
being persecuted.” Breitbart
was a proud Jew and often
performed while flanked by
the Zionist flag. He refused
to return to a Warsaw restau-
rant that declined to play
“Hatikvah” to greet him. He
supported Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s
idea of a Jewish army. Legend
has it that Jabotinsky and
Breitbart hatched a plan in
which Breitbart would become
the general of a one-day Jewish
army in Palestine.

But Breitbart was more than
just a proud Jewish strongman.

He highly esteemed rabbis
and Jewish intellectuals, and
reportedly amassed a personal
library with 2,000 books on
Roman history. He performed
for a group of Yiddish thinkers
and wrote a letter of support
on their behalf. He met and
performed on behalf of the
Radzhiner Chasidic rebbe and
donated 30 pounds of Passover
flour to the rebbe’s followers
following the meeting.

Even more remarkable,
“Zishe” (literally “sweet”) was
eulogized as highly emotional.

One reporter who met with
Breitbart expected a tough
guy. Instead, he subsequently
characterized The Iron King as
“the embodiment of edelkeit”
— Yiddish for “sweetness of
character.” Similarly, the chief rabbi
of the Orthodox Jewish
Community (Adass Yisroel)
in Berlin, Dr. Esra Monk, saw
Breitbart as a “modern Samson,”
who also possessed a tender
demeanor. “It is greatly symbolic,”
Monk declared in his 1925
eulogy, “that for a man who
broke chains, it was enough
for one person’s good word to
render his heart soft as butter.”
Like Clark Kent, Breitbart’s
persona was far richer and
well-rounded than his stage
persona allowed. He was a
mixture of elements — brains,
brawn, a gentle nature and
fierce Jewish pride. And he’s
still inspiring nearly 100 years
after his untimely death. l
JEWISH EXPONENT
Rabbi Jon Cutler is the rabbi
at Beth Israel Congregation
of Chester County in Chester
Springs. The Board of Rabbis of
Greater Philadelphia is proud to
provide diverse perspectives on
Torah commentary for the Jewish
Exponent. The opinions expressed
in this column are the author’s own
and do not reflect the view of the
Board of Rabbis.

Tzvi Sinensky serves as Rosh
Yeshiva of the Gur Aryeh program
at Main Line Classical Academy
in Bryn Mawr, This piece was first
published by JTA.

MARCH 18, 2021
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