You know the story so far:
Allison Benedikt wrote about her conflicted feelings about Israel. Her husband, John Cook, came across as a jerk for banging not just her but her entire family over the head with what seemed to be his fierce hatred of Israel. Jeffrey Goldberg excoriated her and Cook. He likened her to the wicked child.
I’ve blogged about this, and I didn’t comment on it at the time, but that struck me as a bridge too far — Benedikt, perhaps, is the child trying to figure out how to ask, and certainly her essay, once published, deserved picking apart. But the fact of her essay, of her repeat and recent visits to Israel, of her continued confessions of love for the place — these separate her from the child who does not give a damn.
In her reply, she says she hates that bit of the Hagaddah and strikes it from her family’s reading.
Goldberg, to his credit, published her entire reply, but in a follow-up today engages only with this bit, about the wicked child. Yaacov Lozowick, a frequent correspondent with Goldberg, tweeted the following to Benedict:
you make up your own hagada? who in the world do you think you are? and why do you think it’s a hagada?
The last question — fair enough. One might argue, as Rabbi Andy Bachman (quoted by Goldberg) does with great eloquence, that each child is necessary to a true reading of the agonies of exile.
The middle question? Whoa.
I’m going to get slammed for this, but "Who in the world do you think you are?," addressed to a mother describing the choices she makes for her children, not for anyone else’s children — this is male prerogative at its bluntest.
This is what is repellent about the Twitter exchange between Lozowick and Benedikt, and not her obscene reply, as Goldberg says. (And I recall Goldberg using some choice epithets in his blogging.) Her epithet is an inappropriate expression of appropriate anger. He should give her that.
What’s fascinated me about this exchange, so far, is how Benedikt puts up with her husband’s emotional abuse, his assertions of male prerogative — even why she puts up with him at all.
But there’s something deeply unsettling about a bunch of men acting like jerks to berate a woman for being married to a jerk.
I hope I haven’t done that, but as of now, I’m not happy joining this mob, so I won’t be posting on Benedikt again.
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