As a cultural battle wages between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestine protesters, Mira Fox asks if art can ever really be as political as its artists.
At a Seder at Yale’s protest encampment this spring, students put their arms around each other and swayed. “If we build this world from love, then God will build this world from love,” they sang, gathered around a sheet painted as a Seder table.
The words are lyrics from Olam Chesed Yibaneh, a Hebrew folk song composed by Rabbi Menachem Creditor, who wrote it for his oldest child’s naming ceremony in 2002. But despite the fact that Creditor himself has a long history of progressive activism, he was irate to see his tune sung at a pro-Palestinian protest.
In an interview with the Forward, he said that the students were “misappropriating its message of love and support for Israel,” using his song about peace to obscure the antisemitism that he believes lies at the heart of the pro-Palestinian protests... Keep reading on Forward.
At a Seder at Yale’s protest encampment this spring, students put their arms around each other and swayed. “If we build this world from love, then God will build this world from love,” they sang, gathered around a sheet painted as a Seder table.
The words are lyrics from Olam Chesed Yibaneh, a Hebrew folk song composed by Rabbi Menachem Creditor, who wrote it for his oldest child’s naming ceremony in 2002. But despite the fact that Creditor himself has a long history of progressive activism, he was irate to see his tune sung at a pro-Palestinian protest.
In an interview with the Forward, he said that the students were “misappropriating its message of love and support for Israel,” using his song about peace to obscure the antisemitism that he believes lies at the heart of the pro-Palestinian protests... Keep reading on Forward.