President Jehuda Reinharz
Brandeis University
April 25, 2006
Dear President Reinharz,
I don’t want to ruin anyone’s graduation but on the other hand, the world’s a big, scary mess, and there’s no reason why graduation, which is when students leave academia and enter the world, ought to be stress-, dissent- or anger-free. Ma nishtanah, if you don’t mind my saying so, why should this gathering be different from all other gatherings? Graduation is a celebration and a transition.
I don’t mean that I actually want to be a source of stress, dissent or anger at Brandeis’s graduation. As I wrote to you when I was first informed that I had been chosen to receive an honorary doctorate from Brandeis, I was flattered and delighted, particularly because Brandeis is an institution with a strong Jewish identity, and my own Jewish identity is immeasurably precious to me. Louis Dembitz Brandeis, that Jewish-American lion of jurisprudence, is a hero of mine, which makes the honor even sweeter.
I have no problem with anyone taking issue with my opinions about the state of Israel, and I am always willing to engage in debate, as long as it doesn’t degenerate into a shouting contest. I think it’s possible to disagree with me and not be an idiot or a spawn of the devil. I think it’s even possible to disagree with me and still be deserving of an honorary doctorate from Brandeis.
You haven’t asked me to earn this degree by clearing my name or by doing a better job than I’ve done already articulating my opinions about Israel. It would be wrong to ask that of me, and foolish of me to agree to attempt it. I’ve already done my best in essays and lengthy interviews. I always try to do better, to advance my thinking and writing, not to defend it.
If any among your students, faculty, parents or trustees decide that they disagree with what I have said about Israel, I hope first they’ll take the time to read what I’ve said about Israel, read a whole complete word-for-word interview or essay from start to finish, read two or more of them, in fact, rather than a half-dozen tasty tidbits emailed to them by people looking only to provoke outrage.
I don’t think, write or speak in soundbites, and people at a university shouldn’t either. Israel, and everything else on earth worth arguing about, deserves more than a sentence-worth’s consideration, and a person shouldn’t be judged on the basis of surgically selected quotes gleaned from right-wing websites. My essays and interviews aren’t hard to find. I haven’t been particularly reticent about sharing my views. If, after actually familiarizing themselves with what I’ve written, people think that I want to destroy Israel, that I’m an anti-Semite and a self-loathing Jew, well, they’re completely wrong, and there are lots of Jews besides me and my immediate family who’ll happily tell them they’re wrong; but at least their error was earned by honest labor, by grappling with reality – in this case my actual completed thoughts, my words and my writing – and not with a simple schematic version of me, painted in garish hues by people who believe that discrediting me, rather than telling the truth about me, is what matters.
I am a proud Jew, a Jewish-American man, and my opinions about Israel are characterized by a serious ambivalence – a word, I know, that instantly raises the hackles and blood-pressure of neocon tough guys and gals. But ambivalence, doubt, confession of uncertainty, confusion even are all things that thoughtful people experience when confronting terribly tangled political situations. Resolving the hard-to-resolve is necessary to plot a course for action, but in public discourse it’s dishonest and unsafe to pretend that we don’t encounter difficulties, complexities, even the tragically unresolvable (which doesn’t mean there’s no solution, just that the solution will entail profound loss). The middle east has always seemed to me to be a paradigm of near-insuperable political difficulty.
I love Israel, but as a great fan of pluralist secular democracy, I don’t have faith in nationalist or tribalist solutions for the problems of oppressed and persecuted minorities; I have great faith the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and in a steadfast, absolute refusal to conflate government with religious principle or ethnic identity. I love Israel, but I am neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zionist; I’m a Diasporan Jew who isn’t willing to say that the history and culture of the Diaspora was merely a long prelude of weakness and misery leading to the founding of a Jewish state and the invention of Jewish military power – I think there are other kinds of power, there’s an alternative history of power to which Jews have made important contributions. Though I think nationalist solutions to the problems of oppressed minorities are usually mistakes, I love Israel, I am moved and excited by its culture, its meaning in Jewish history, but I’m critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, I’m opposed to the occupation, the settlements, the barrier wall, and attacks on civilians, whether the civilians are Palestinian or Israeli. I love and admire the Palestinians but I believe that in the midst of their suffering some Palestinians have made their own terrible mistakes. I tend to believe that people make mistakes because of their suffering rather than some inherent evil. Threading through all of this error and anger, on the Israeli and Palestinian sides, I see histories of persecution, injustice and suffering in collision. Though I don’t believe in nationalist solutions to the problems of minorities, I want a two-state solution to the crisis in the middle east through courageous, honest peace talks supported by the international community.
Those who have shopped through my interviews and essays looking for “proof” that I hate Jews, Israel, Zionism , have produced the single sheet of quotes you sent me. These have been passed around before, talismans of my wickedness.
What’s excluded from that page of quotes is all of the inconvenient complexity hurriedly noted above – and behind every sentence of that paragraph of shorthand opinion is a long, complicated discussion I obviously can’t provide in this context; I’m writing a letter, not a book. What’s excluded is any mention of the fact that in every interview and essay on the subject I’ve declared that Israel’s existence must be defended, its borders secure and its people safe. I believe that by criticizing a country’s policies you strengthen rather than weaken it, and in patriotism as in human relationships, uncritical adoration is idolatry, not love. And idolatry is forbidden by the Second Commandment.
I’ve been willing to explain myself, not in defense or apology, but because I know that the world is not a safe place for Jews. Anti-Semitism is very real and very threatening, and we’re all entitled – wise in fact – to be vigilant. So even though I think critical thinking is necessary, even in times of danger, I understand that my criticism of Israel raises alarms. I want to be understood – not agreed with, but understood.
In the past several months, since I wrote the screenplay for the film Munich, I’ve become exhaustively familiar with a small but energetic and strident group of people who have called me immoral, an anti-Semite, a self-loathing Jew. In the hysteria of their invective there’s a discernible desire to establish an orthodoxy, dissension from which is heresy. I hope that the intellectual curiosity, skepticism and integrity of the Brandeis community will be proof against their tactics and their intentions, which are dishonorable and all too familiar.
Brandeis teachers, trustees, alumni, students or their parents may still angrily disagree with me, even after giving me a fair hearing. I will arrive on campus at the time I was invited to arrive, confident in and appreciative of the University community’s adherence to the laudable norms of liberal arts institutions, which encompass and encourage vigorous, civil disagreement, which preclude only violence, the urge to punish, to silence, to excommunicate.
All my very best, and shalom.
Tony Kushner
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