Why love such a country [as ours]? Why celebrate its birth? The answer was given from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Independence Day 1965.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that America has a "schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against herself." But we are redeemed, he argued, by our creed, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which manages "to forever challenge us; to forever give us a sense of urgency; to forever stand in the midst of the 'isness' of our terrible injustices; to remind us of the 'oughtness' of our noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood." Americans, he said, believe in "certain basic rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state... They are God-given, gifts from his hands."

"You may take my life," King said, "but you can't take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can't take my right to liberty." And this creed of "amazing universalism" calls "America to do a special job for mankind and the world ... because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large."

The privileged and powerful can love America for many reasons. The oppressed and powerless, stripped of selfish motives for their love, have found America lovely because of its ideals.

Legislation to extend SSI benefits until 2010 (H.R.2608), sponsored by Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington and Pennsylvania Rep. Phil English among others, has been referred to the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

To the Editor:

You report that the Black Caucus threatens to hold up Pennsylvania's budget until the Legislature opens debate on gun control. Gun violence takes an awful toll of both intended victims and innocent bystanders, often just children. We share the frustration these Representatives feel when gun legislation is permanently bottled up in committee. The loopholes in our state's present gun laws must be closed.

The Jewish Social Policy Action Network urges our legislators from all sections of Pennsylvania and both parties to recognize this urgent problem, and to seriously address gun violence now.

Susan P. Myers, Chair of the Board
Jewish Social Policy Action Network

Telephone screening interviews are close to complete, and we will soon begin meeting with candidates. Each inquiry is shared only with the search and JSPAN Executive Committees until we have spoken with the candidate.

Here is a great opportunity to work professionally on matters we all care deeply about, to experience the Jewish and secular structures that set social policy in our society, and because JSPAN is a young organization, to try new and innovative ideas in both "real and "virtual" space.

If you know someone who fits the description and would be interested, please encourage that person to write to Ken@JSPAN.org immediately.

Not surprisingly, neocons and other elements in the far right flank of the pro-Israel community are celebrating what they hope is the end of the two-state solution. . All the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to proclaim the two-state solution dead. Not that they believe it; they know that establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with a negotiated presence in East Jerusalem is inevitable.

But the rejectionists believe that predicting the death of "the dream that was Palestine" can help make it happen. It won't. It won't happen because the entire world - including the Americans - have come around to the understanding that the Palestinians have a right to statehood. That right, like the Jewish right to Israel, is not conditional. It is a right...

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The right's answer to all this is "no problem." . Israel should simply let . Fatah nominally control [THE West Bank] (although not its borders or air space) while Israel maintains the checkpoints and settlements. As for Gaza, it is essentially a prison anyway; the Israelis withdrew but control its points of entry, its air space and its sea lanes. And the IDF can enter Gaza whenever it so chooses. For the right, this is the perfect solution: the conflict ends not with compromise but exclusively on the settlers' terms.

In other words, Bantustans.

It is no coincidence that the people who have this vision of Israel and Palestine's future are pretty much the same ones who believed that the Iraq war would be a "cake walk" . ideologues who tend not to think of actual people when they discuss geopolitics. For them, Palestinians do not exist . "just Arabs." Ideology trumps reality. They are determined to bury Palestinian nationhood with a smothering embrace of the West Bank regime while rejecting Gaza's. Divide and conquer. It won't work.

Anyone who, like me, believes in the separation of religion and state cannot support the "Jewish-democratic" formula. A state whose algorithm is so heavily weighted with religion can never fully contain democracy as well. Between "Jewish" and "democratic," Jewish theocracy will prevail. The fact is that the "Jewish" is getting stronger and more insular while the "democratic" - encompassing liberty, equality, rights and humanism - is growing very weak and ebbing away.

The assertion that, whatever the circumstances, the state will always be "Jewish" no matter what coercion that entails, is the starting point on the road to an Israeli state based on halakha (Jewish law). The alternative? The transition from defining Israel as "a Jewish state" to defining it as "the state of the Jews." It's the citizens, not the state, who define the identity. The individual is responsible for the contents and values of the society, for preserving its cultural and spiritual character, historical heritage, and for private and collective memory. The most profound, fundamental questions are to be decided only in a completely democratic manner.

Watermarks (2005)

Sixty-five years after fleeing Austria to evade the Nazis, a group of champion women swimmers from the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna reunite to tell their inspiring story in this documentary. Now in their eighties, the women return to the Vienna pool where they trained for Hakoah Vienna, which was founded in 1909 after Austrian sports clubs were forbidden to admit Jews. The film captures the reunion and chronicles the athletes' story.

Shanghai Ghetto (2002)

Actor Martin Landau narrates this riveting documentary about Shanghai's little-known Jewish ghetto, settled in the 1930s by Jews who fled Nazi Germany. The filmmakers head to Shanghai with two ex-residents, who relate tales of life in the squalid enclave. Through interviews, letters, archival and modern-day footage, and family photos, the saga chronicles the survivors' escape, relocation, life in Shanghai and ultimate exodus to the United States

Bisk is optimistic about the future for Jews, stating that the "flat (globalized) world... enables the Jewish people to relate to the 21st century as the century in which one's Jewishness will no longer be a burden or barrier, or constitute a sacrifice... [N]o people on earth is better prepared by virtue of education, temperament, and proven historical adaptability to embrace the challenges of the 21st century."

Zionism in the 21st century, agues Bisk, must provide "a framework for the optimal self-actualization of the Jewish individual, inside or outside of Israel. Zionism must resonate with meaning for the life, experiences and challenges of the modern Jew... Israel must become the tool of Jewish civilization not its aim. Jews do not exist for Israel; Israel exists for the Jews. Moreover, the Diaspora should take a larger responsibility for addressing the challenges of creating an enhanced Jewish future and not be satisfied with being subordinate to Israel's needs."

Relations with Palestinians, Bisk says, have not considered "the notion that the settlements might be both obnoxious to the Arabs and dysfunctional to Jewish interests. David Ben Gurion once remarked that the Jewish People have an absolute moral and historical right to the entire Land of Israel but that we also have the right not to exercise this moral and historical right if it interferes with other more vital rights and needs of the Jewish people."

As for Judaism itself, Bisk argues for multiculturalism: "It would not be an exaggeration to claim that alienation from the community is a greater cause of assimilation than one's lack of ritual observance or religious agreement. This is because being Jewish manifests itself in a sense of belonging and an active desire on the part of the Jewish individual to attach himself or herself to some aspect of Jewish communal life no matter what his or her level of religious observance. Judaism might be a religion, but Jewishness is an ethnicity."

Bisk will appear in Philadelphia on Thursday, July 12, from 4 to 6:00 pm at a book signing at 1816 Chestnut Street.