Group accuses rabbis of stifling free speech
Unable to find a local venue for a lecturer with controversial views on Israel, 'Riverdalians for Free Inquiry' has lashed out at Jewish religious leaders who protested his past appearances.
The Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture canceled a recent lecture for fear that the topic and the lecturer would draw the ire of local rabbis.
The Feb. 19 lecture was to be delivered by New York University Professor Tony Judt, an outspoken critic of Israeli government policy and a lightning rod for controversy in Riverdale ever since he spoke at a Fieldston School event in 2006.
Protest, which included picketing at the school and numerous letters to the editor of The Riverdale Press, was a factor in his decision to withdraw from a subsequent speaking engagement at Manhattan College's Holocaust Resource Center later that year.
Rabbi Steven Burton of Congregation Shaarei Shalom of Riverdale, one of several rabbis who opposed Mr. Judt's appearance at Manhattan College, discouraged his most recent lecture, according to Ethical Society leadership.
Florence Gold, Samuel Goldman and Steve Siegelbaum, the Riverdale residents who pressed for Mr. Judt's February lecture, found themselves at loggerheads with Ethical Society Leader Curt Collier over the event. Mr. Collier wanted to heavily restrict the subject and content of the professor's discussion for fear of drawing the kind of response Mr. Judt fostered after his Fieldston School appearance.
The three organizers, who call themselves "Riverdalians for Free Inquiry," now claim that area Jewish religious leaders are attempting to prohibit a free discussion of Israel in their neighborhood.
Ethical Society Leader Curt Collier says he consulted Rabbi Burton about Mr. Judt's Feb. 19 lecture - and the rabbi, concerned about the consequences should the topic turn to the Middle East, told him to call it off.
When a reporter first asked Rabbi Burton about Mr. Judt's Feb. 19 lecture, he said he wasn't aware the professor had been invited to the Ethical Society to speak. When confronted with Mr. Collier's recollection of events, he would neither confirm nor deny having a conversation about Mr. Judt's engagement at the Ethical Society.
"I don't care to comment on who I've spoken to and what I've spoken to them about," Rabbi Burton said, when asked about his conversation with Mr. Collier. "I just don't think that's an appropriate thing to talk about."
But Florence Gold, Samuel Goldman and Steve Siegelbaum are more than willing to talk about what they see as undue influence being exerted by Jewish leaders.
"I kept on asking, 'What did he say that was so impermissible, that could not be discussed openly?'" said Ms. Gold. "And everybody said, 'Well, we're friendly with the rabbis, we have a relationship with the rabbis. We're not going to make waves.'"
Mr. Judt's work is highly critical of the state of Israel. In a 2003 article for The New York Review of Books, he calls Israel an "anachronism" of late-19th-century ethnic nationalism.
"I certainly don't deny the state of Israel's existence, nor do I deny the state of Israel's right to exist," Mr. Judt said in a recent interview. "The only thing I've ever said was that I think now it is more of a handicap than an advantage for Israel to exist as an exclusively Jewish state."
Rabbi Burton said he finds Mr. Judt's viewpoint, in the context of remembering the Holocaust, to be offensive.
"I don't care where he speaks," Rabbi Burton said of the Manhattan College lecture. "I just don't think a place that is dedicated to the memory of the destruction of six million Jews is the place for a man to speak who does not believe that Jews are entitled to a state of their own."
Looking for a venue
Riverdalians for Free Inquiry, searching for a place to host Mr. Judt despite the reservations of local rabbis, found the Ethical Society was the only one of several venues which would consider him - but Mr. Collier entertained the idea only with reservations.
"I said, well, given the controversy surrounding him, I didn't think it was a good idea, and I would check with some local rabbis and see how they felt," said Mr. Collier.
"Steven Burton basically told me that he thought it would not be a good idea," Mr. Collier said, "that a lot of people don't like Tony to begin with, no matter what he might say, and would misconstrue his presence as just another jab in the side." The Ethical Society had recently hosted a discussion on Israel between Rabbi Burton and Frederick Schweitzer, former head of the Holocaust Resource Center, which was another reason the rabbi was opposed to Mr. Judt broaching the topic again.
Seeking advice
Mr. Collier also asked Mr. Schweitzer if he thought Mr. Judt should be invited to speak.
"I said, yes, and that we would be willing to publicize it internally at the college so that students at the college could go and hear him, because he was thwarted in coming in, I think it would be, October 2006," Mr. Schweitzer said Monday.
Mr. Collier said he brought these points of view to the executive committee of the Ethical Society's board of directors, who sided with Rabbi Burton.
Mr. Collier says he offered a final compromise: Mr. Judt could speak if the professor didn't discuss the Middle East, and focused instead on his European research. Mr. Collier would also moderate the session and reject any questions that turned the discussion toward Israel.
"We came to this conclusion that we had a long way to go before people can have a conversation about Israel," Mr. Collier said - meaning a conversation that wouldn't become a shouting match.
For the parties involved, that was a deal-breaker.
"… This un-democratic demand to pre-censor was rejected," the Riverdalians for Free Inquiry wrote in a joint April 10 letter to the Ethical Society's board of directors.
"They don't want an open, democratic discussion," Ms. Gold said on April 11.
Mr. Collier argued that he had suggested Mr. Judt come to Riverdale as one member of a severalmember panel and was refused.
"As I understand it, the point was, they wanted to establish that they had the perfect right to invite me to give a lecture, and I didn't need to be, so to speak, carefully controlled by countervailing voices in order for me to appear," Mr. Judt said.
A point of free speech for Mr. Judt smacks of politics for Mr. Collier, who seemed less concerned with the content of Mr. Judt's speech and more with the potentially ugly fallout from what was quickly becoming a power struggle between the Riverdalians for Free Inquiry and a portion of Riverdale's rabbinical establishment.
"The sadness in all of this is that this is just another example of what not to do," said Mr. Collier. "To say the Ethical Society has denied free speech - there's a difference between free speech and political one-upmanship."
Still searching
Mr. Goldman said the Riverdalians for Free Inquiry are still searching for a venue for Mr. Judt, who says he'd be more than happy to come to Riverdale and is perplexed that his appearance is an issue in the first place.
"Riverdale is the only place in my experience where the topic and the speaker are so controversial you can't have them," said Mr. Judt, who said members of his family died in the Holocaust. "It does seem to me just very odd."
Which isn't to say Mr. Judt doesn't know he's walking through an ideological minefield.
"… All criticism of Israel is drawn ineluctably back to the memory of [the Holocaust], something that Israel's American apologists are shamefully quick to exploit," the professor wrote in his 2003 article. "To find fault with the Jewish state is to think ill of Jews; even to imagine an alternative configuration in the Middle East is to indulge the moral equivalent of genocide."
Just the same, said the Englishman, "You can't have pre-censorship in a discussion, because that really is, if you'll forgive me, un- American."