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Long Shadows

Shaul Magid on the Evolution of Zionism and Israel

Hertog: How do we disentangle anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism?

Magid: I certainly don’t think that anti-Semitism is the only reason people are out in the streets protesting the war in Gaza. You just have to look at the pictures of the utter devastation in Gaza to see what they are protesting against. They are protesting against the systematic destruction of an entire society, and with TikTok videos—posted by Gazans and Israeli soldiers—we are all watching it in real time. Media censorship no longer works in our era of social media. I don’t think Israel quite understands that. Anti-Semitism exists in some of these protests, for sure, but it’s not the primary impetus. If that was the case, why weren’t there campus protests against Israel for decades? You have to make a distinction between saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” or, “All Jews are implicated in this Zionist genocide,” which is clearly anti-Semitic, and saying, “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and murdering children.” We can agree or disagree about what constitutes genocide, but opposition to what’s happening is not anti-Semitic. It has a moral justification. In my view, saying it is all anti-Semitism is just using anti-Semitism as an excuse for destroying a society. Yes, Israel had a right and a duty to respond to a horrendous, murderous act. But destroying a society in response is, in my view, a horrific choice we Jews will live with for many years.

Reason To Believe

Randall Sullivan on Faith and Evil

Cohen: Do you think part of that evil spirit is found in every human?

Sullivan: I don’t think we’re born with it, but we have receptors that can connect to it, and we decide how much attention we give it, how much we turn toward its allure.

Monotheism At Thirty Thousand Feet

Below me the world turned slowly through the night, unaware of the multilayered geopolitics my coffee-jangled brain was imposing upon it. I could find reasons to forgive Judaism and Islam their present-day sins. Christianity was another matter.

Notes On Surrender

Over and over I have discovered that my children feel alienated in environments where, at their age, I felt an automatic sense of belonging.

The Wrong Imam

If we could have been inside his heart, if we could have been offered transportation from our Jerusalem to his heaven, this is what we might have absorbed: Abkar was not leading us in prayer. He was talking to God while we happened to be behind him, squeezed in so tightly we could hardly find places for our foreheads on flawless plush carpet.

Leaving The Faith

Ali A. Rizvi On Being An Atheist Muslim

“You can’t have freedom of religion without free speech. You have to protect all of it: the Bible and the Quran and my right to say, ‘These books are full of fairy tales.’ ”

Biblioclast

My father. He wanted me to become a writer, but when I did, he didn’t like what I wrote.

He hated my first novel and called it pornography: it features lots of teenage sex and masturbation, as well as an unsavory portrayal of a narcissistic and selfish patriarch.

Blues For Allah

I was wrong. Ismail did, in fact, have powerful connections to the band, connections called “Africa” and “exile.” He under­stood what I’d failed to grasp: that when he led Aliya up the narrow stairs of the tour bus, he was leading her back to the deserts of North Africa, where those who have been driven from their homes recognize the longing in one another’s eyes, where unexpected guests are treated like nobility and children like family.