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

