Bruce Ash has even more reason to be ashamed of himself than usual
by David Safier
Part of me hopes Bruce Ash knows he's nothing but a political hack and doesn't actually believe half of what he writes and says. It's hard for me to imagine he really believes the incredible crap that pours out of him.
R-Cubed has a post containing a letter Bruce Ash wrote to what he calls "our religious/ spiritual community." It's on Doug Martin's website, which proclaims on its header, "As followers of Jesus Christ we believe that we are on this earth to make a difference." Ash is Jewish, but he's clearly is tailoring his message to a right wing Christian community. [You can read the letter after the jump, as well as a letter written in response.]
The thrust of Ash's letter is that the faith based community should "oppose the Democrat candidates who do not represent our values and views." He's talking about the CD-7 and CD-8 races, but the main target of his wrath is Giffords and Jews who vote for Democrats. In his world, only Orthodox Jews, who tend to be more conservative, are upholding Jewish principles.
Ash is upset because Jews tend to be moderate-to-progessive-to-very-liberal. During the last election, some people worried that Jews might not support Obama, but he got over 75% of the Jewish vote. For Ash, that must mean they're not true to their faith, because they don't agree with him.
Ash seems to forget a few things about Jews' tendency to support social justice, which tends to move them to the left of the political spectrum. Our history of being second class citizens who were persecuted though the ages and sometimes, like during the Inquisition, the Progroms and World War II, beaten and murdered for being Jewish, makes many Jews very sensitive to intolerance. That's why so many Jews were on the front lines during the Civil Rights movement as well as other similar causes, past and present.
Ash also condemns these "liberal Jews" for not agreeing with him about the best way to support Israel. Ash is a hawk who wants Israel to act according to Neocon ideology, and he thinks all good Jews should believe the same. He seems to forget that Israeli Jews who love their country are divided about whether Israel should make compromises and pursue peace talks or adopt a Cheney-like militarist stance. Sometimes Israel has tended to be more dovish, and sometimes, like right now, it has been more hawkish. But the people on different sides of the debate aren't more or less Jewish or more or less Israeli for their differences. They have different opinions about what's best for Israel, just like Jews — as well as others — here in the U.S.
Ash may also be forgetting some of the history of the early founders and supporters of the Israeli state. Lots of them from the early 1900s through the creation of Israel were Eastern European lefties, the type of people who thought the communal kibbutzim were a good idea. Ash would have to call these people socialists, at the very least, based on the current conservative definition of the term. I wonder if he would question their Jewishness.
Ash's use a political litmus test for someone's Jewishness is a foreign concept to me, as I believe it is for most Jews. I certainly don't question Ash's Jewishness because of his political beliefs. But I guess Ash thinks he has the religious wisdom to separate the "true Jews" from the "false Jews."
Click on the link to read Ash's entire letter. After his letter, you can read a response which also points out factual inaccuracies in Ash's letter, signed by prominent members of the Jewish community, including a rabbi. But according to Ash's definition, the rabbi may not be a real Jew, because she disagrees with him.
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