JANUARY 13 • 2022 | 11

SHOULD WE BE CONCERNED? continued from page 9
interrogating our own commitments.
Urging American Muslims to write
off the majority of American Jews as
enemies from the start is to foreclose
any possibility of serious interfaith
work and undermines relationships
that could be politically valuable for
American Muslims. The strategy is
as counterproductive as it is dehu-
manizing.
I am not primarily concerned
with CAIR, but rather hope that this
kind of thinking does not become
normative in Muslim spaces (which
at present, I do not believe it has). I
am grateful to know Muslim leaders,
like my friend and colleague Imam
Abdullah Antepli, who are speak-
ing out to rebuke CAIR, AMP and
their leaders for misrepresenting
American Islam, and instead are try-
ing to forge new paths forward. After
all, the best critiques of any group or
movement comes from leaders inside
their own communities.
This has been the approach of
our Muslim Leadership Initiative
program at the Shalom Hartman
Institute since it began: to invite
Muslim leaders into the internal con-
versation of the Jewish people, and
especially our debates about Israel
and Zionism. Resilient relationships
are built through trust and charac-
ter witnessing rather than through
demarcating red lines at the outset.

INTERGROUP RELATIONSHIPS
What I fear most, however, is how
we as a Jewish community act in a
moment like this. Some of my ire
is reserved for the Jewish organiza-
tions named by AMP and the Billoo
speech as “good” Jews and who are
relishing the designation. I mean,
sure: Everyone wants to be liked,
and I understand the political logic
of using external allies to help fight
battles inside your community. Allies
are allies, I suppose, but these groups
are welcoming endorsements from
those who are actively and danger-
ously delegitimizing the majority
of world Jewry. In doing so, these
“good” Jews are giving aid to an
antisemitic stratagem.
I desperately hope the mainstream
Jewish community — those of us

named as the bad Jews — will not
allow the focus on CAIR and its fail-
ings to thwart the work we absolutely
must continue doing to build stron-
ger and more resilient intergroup
relationships. This is how polariza-
tion works: Extremists exploit fear to
create divisions, and then they reap
the returns when the massive middle
is scared away from the important
work of seeking common ground.
I appreciate that organizations like
the ADL need to confront CAIR in
a moment like this and call out the
antisemitism, but I would hate to
see this incident undermine years
of patient work — by the ADL and
many other organizations — in
reckoning with the past and build-
ing trust. It would be catastrophic if
positive Muslim-Jewish engagement
in America were to be sabotaged by
individuals and organizations unable
to imagine alternatives to acrimony.
There is so much work to be done.
Muslim-Jewish relations took on
extra political significance with the
rise of antisemitism and anti-Muslim
hatred since the 2016 election. The
Israel-Palestine conflict continues
to be exploited not just by margin-
al Jews and Muslims but by other
Americans, including in Congress, to
divide us. This is especially sad and
ironic since America could genuinely
be one of the few places on Earth
where Jews and Muslims might
forge an extraordinary bond. Even
in Israel-Palestine, a future for peace
and justice for all its inhabitants will
need to be built by Jews and Muslims
together.
If, like me, you are a member of
the Jewish community alarmed by
the CAIR story, don’t let it under-
mine your efforts in realizing such
a future. Let their leaders navigate
their own leadership failures, and
let’s not make it harder for them by
drowning them out. Instead, let’s lead
our communities, and ask: What can
we do to strengthen the relationship
with American Muslims?

Yehuda Kurtzer is the president of the
Shalom Hartman Institute of North America
and host of the Identity/Crisis podcast.

emigrants.’ The Jew points to one after another country,
but always gets a similar answer. Finally, he turns to the
agent and says: ‘Could you please show me a different
globe?’
“Of course, one has to distinguish between the past
and now. In hindsight, it is easy to judge and say that
most Jews waited too long to get out of Nazi Germany.
And this is human nature — to wait and see and think,
‘This can’t happen here.’ It can happen everywhere at
all times, as we can see.”

TIME TO WORRY
Corinne Stavish, professor at Lawrence Technological
University and director of Technical and
Professional Communication, writes: “My
worry for this country’s future is not for
my family; it’s for the country to which all
four of my grandparents fled and kissed the
ground upon arrival. I yearn for ‘The New
Colossus,’ but it’s gone.
“We have lackluster legislative leadership,
corrupt corporations, eroding education and mawkish
media. It is time to go because we who have the history
of affecting change realize that what we thought had
changed didn’t. It is ‘the unkindest cut of all.’”

Louis Finkelman is a professor at Lawrence Tech and a rabbi at
Congregation Or Chadash in Oak Park.

Yiddish Limerick

Tu b’Shevat
Tu b’Shevat

BRIAN GREEN, WIKIPEDIA

We plant a boyml, two or three
It’s Rosh Hashanah of the tree.
Un then mir vartn quite a bit
Until mir hobn a frucht to eat.
Dos iz Tu b’Shevat for you
and me.

boyml: little tree
Un: and
Mir vartn: we wait
Mir hobn: we have
frucht: fruit
Dos iz: it is

By Rachel Kapen

Corinne
Stavish