Jack Ross, who is writing a book about anti-Zionist rabbis, writes re the post on Rabbi Eric Yoffie's religious nationalism:
While I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment you express, I feel
that once again you miss an important point. That is, the official
belief system of the Reform Union which you quote owes more to Moses Hess and G.W.F. Hegel
than to any authentically Judaic source. Yes, it is religion, but to
merely dismiss it as "religious craziness" does not do it justice.
I find it an increasingly inescapable conclusion that was first proffered in the years leading up to statehood by Hans Kohn and Frank Chodorov - Zionism and Naziism are fundamentally of the same genus: an attempt to glorify a largely imagined nation-race by somehow resurrecting its semi-mythological past in the form of a modern and expansionist nation-state, which in both cases only led to mass murder.
I find it an increasingly inescapable conclusion that was first proffered in the years leading up to statehood by Hans Kohn and Frank Chodorov - Zionism and Naziism are fundamentally of the same genus: an attempt to glorify a largely imagined nation-race by somehow resurrecting its semi-mythological past in the form of a modern and expansionist nation-state, which in both cases only led to mass murder.
Pretty good, Mr. Ross!!
With all due respect, Jack, I find this a bit simplistic. Maybe you should consult specialists on the origins of Reform.
And as a German I am highly allergic to straight lines from Hegel to the Nazis, and I feel pretty much the same concerning Reform. I could give you a couple of specialists that could prevent you from winging it, even on early Reform in the States.
What about considering the close alignment of religious authorities with worldly power?
Whatever, LeaNder. The close connection between Nazism and Zionism is obvious, and not only in terms of date and location escalating origination. Blood & soil, a mythical past justification, Darwin, lebensraum, the Volk. Wake UP!
Nowadays there really is not much difference between Central Conference Reform Judaism, ACJ Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism and the Judaism of the vast majority of Orthodox/Haredi Jewish groups, for service to God plays at most only an insignificant role in the religious consciousness of the adherents to the major currents of modern Judaism.
The vast majority of modern Jews express their Yiddishkeit/Yahudut/Judaism/Jewishness via ethnic narcissism, Holocaust obsession, and worship of the State of Israel.
Because modern Judaism has so little similarity to a genuine religion, I have recommended that all Christian and Muslim organizations abandon interfaith dialogue with Jewish groups as pointless. See Open Letter to MPAC.
As for the similarities or differences between Zionism and German Nazism, there is a distinction between the "Left/Labor" Zionists and the dominant Jabotinskians. (Neoconservatism is the current incarnation of American Jabotinskianism.)
Left/Labor Zionists are ethnic fundamentalists just like the German Nazis as discussed in the The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz. At the start Left/Labor Zionists were probably closest to Fascists or to the Strasser faction of the German Nazi party,* but they moved closer to mainstream German Nazism after the consolidation of the State and since the 1980s have been for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from mainstream German Nazis after the obvious ethnic substitutions are made in comparing operative ideologies.
Ethnic fundamentalists are extreme and dangerous. Jabotinskians are even more extreme and even more dangerous, for they are ethnic monists as discussed by Eran Kaplan in The Jewish Radical Right, Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy. See (Revisionist) Zionists Desiring Arabs for some tangential discussion.
Note
* One could argue that Borokhov's thinking was an extremist and highly racist version of that of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz of the Polish Socialist Party.
LeaNder,
In the USA Zionism essentially cannibalized Central Conference Reform Judaism with the founding of the State of Israel while ACJ Judaism was absorbed into Zionism in the 1990s, but people like Brandeis and Abba Hillel Silver were working to Zionize American Jews since the late teens and early 20s of the twentieth century.
The effective alliance of an assimilationist like Brandeis with a völkisch racist like Silver makes sense within the context of the Zionist culture that developed among West European Jewry from the 1890s through the beginning of WW1 because this Zionist culture coated a particular vicious and extreme form of E. European völkisch racism with a veneer of liberal enlightenment Kultur.
We really do not have to bring Hegelian thought into the discussion to understand the social-religious evolution of American Jews.
BTW, I use the term völkisch racism to distinguish Zionist and ethnic Ashkenazi racism from the common American color racism.
The vast majority of modern Jews express their Yiddishkeit/Yahudut/Judaism/Jewishness via ethnic narcissism, Holocaust obsession, and worship of the State of Israel.
And no doubt chris berel and Suzanne will be arriving to demonstrate this point shortly.
Phil says…
"I find it an increasingly inescapable conclusion that was first proffered in the years leading up to statehood by Hans Kohn and Frank Chodorov – Zionism and Naziism are fundamentally of the same genus: an attempt to glorify a largely imagined nation-race by somehow resurrecting its semi-mythological past in the form of a modern and expansionist nation-state, …"
Gee, how long have I said that? Six or seven years at least.
Master Race Aryan Nation – Jewish Chosen Nation..same thing, same mentality,same tactics. Same insanity. Everyone but the jews learned their lesson from it. How ironic.
Now I see, The Jews are really Nazi's. Which makes the Palestinians, what Jews. And I love the fact that Phil gives such a prominent role to his favorite psychotic Martillo who doesn't think that Judaism is a religion. No anti-semitism there. So go ahead guys, If the Jews are worse than the Nazi's comparison gives you a thrill, go to it. And if you don't think the holocaust happened, fine. But if Israel applied German tactics how come the Arab population keeps going up geometrically.
Zionist racists are so tedious.
The Jewish population of German Nazi controlled territory went up tremendously between January 1933 and December 1940, but the increase hardly meant that German Nazis were not genocidal.
I never said the Holocaust never happened. I merely point out that the Holocaust had a context and that ethnic Ashkenazim were up to their eyeballs in sabotage, radical violence, targeted assassinations, mass killing, ethnic cleansing, and genocide before Hitler took power — and I should not forget to mention the major financial corruption, conspiracy and manipulation since the 1870s.
As far as I can tell none of this behavior has stopped, and I document it all on my website.
There is even a recent article in which my wife addresses the hysterical violence of the rants of Jewish Zionists like SOG. See The Emotional Violence of Israel Advocacy. With my help she discusses some of the common psychoses of Jewish Zionists like SOG.
As for my analysis of the nature of modern Jewish religion, I am just following the logic of Gershom Scholem's discussion of Sabbatianism in the late 17th century, which was another time period when Judaism did not have much resemblance to "normal religion."
BTW, don't think for a moment that I consider someone like SOG to be part of the Zionist oligarchy or the Zionist intelligentsia, and I doubt that either group would even offer him a low rank job.
SOG is just the type of idiot that provides the two groups with camouflage for free as he happily serves the Zionist cause by catching the bullets or finding the mines associated with the anti-Semitism that Zionist outrages have been inspiring for the last 100 years or so.
The difference between Zionism and Nazism is merely a matter of scale, and by studying the Jewish Bolsheviks, we know that it's only a matter of time before the degree of scale will increase exponentially, likely to the millions. The Jewish Zionists wouldn't bat an eye, nor did the Jewish Bolsheviks.
In many ways, Western Christendom did its job by flogging the Judeofascists from its midst and into Palestine. Of course, its deeply unfortunate and tragic for the Palestinians and bad luck for the Arabs. But the insult to injury has come at the hands of American useful idiots, who've allowed the Judeofascists to gain footing here, and leverage American Empire on behalf of Zionism. If these weak and faithless buffoons hadn't given the Zionists purchase in America, the Jews and Palestinians would likely have peacefully integrated long ago, as the Jews would have been left with no other choice. There is no expression of contempt strong enough for every American nitwit who has been in any way party to this. And the epic stupidity is ongoing in the two-party-regime today.
No anti-semitism there. Still waiting for you with my.50 Israeli made desert eagle ED. Or maybe they'll find you dead in a snowbank clutching you iron cross souvenir. Not to mention your kaffiyeh
Sword, Ed is all hat.
The best favor we Zionists can do the Palestinians is NOT give them a state. After all, they have their own "blood, religion, tribe" myths, too. So by NOT giving them a state, we can make them advanced, universalist, non-ethnic, agnostic liberals just like Martillo wants for us Jews. In fact, the large majority of the population in the wealthy oil Gulf States are foreign workers, many being from the Phillipines, India, China, etc. Instead of having all these idol worshipping pagans filling their streets, we can have all the Palestinians move to these Gulf States and replace these non-Muslim workers. The Arabs in these Gulf States would welcome them because, as we all know, all Muslims are brothers and all Arabs love one another….so no doubt they are waiting for this influx of Palestinians. This would also solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, having all the Palestinians leave. Everyone will be happier. Maybe I will E-mail this suggestion to Obama and King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia.
Maybe we should just move the jews to a secluded island in the middle of nowhere so they don't destroy the lives of everyone around them? how about that.
Jack: "That is, the official belief system of the Reform Union which you quote owes more to Moses Hess and G.W.F. Hegel than to any authentically Judaic source. Yes, it is religion, but to merely dismiss it as "religious craziness" does not do it justice."
Jack, I also think you may be way off base here. The history of the Reform movement is one of my interests, and I have no idea how you are linking it to Hess and Hegel.
The Reform movement explicitly renounced Jewish nationalism and focused its theology on the Prophets rather than rabbinic law. Its goal was to accommodate both social assimilation and the practice of Judaism as a pro-enlightenment rational religion.
The Zionism was awkwardly spliced onto the official movement as more Reform Jews became Zionist. There is no real theology behind Yoffie's statement–he's certainly not a religious crazy. His editorial seems indistinguishable from any number of similar ones written by the leaders of Jewish organizations.
Thanks, David F., admittedly some of the German Jews among the early American Reform movement felt very "German" to me. They even partly wrote their publications in German.
Jack, here is an article about the two US cradles of reform: Baltimore and Charleston via Internet Archive by Mark K. Bauman. This may give you an impression.
This is the essential point:
Admittedly Einhorn's stern authoritarian conduct amused me, as in fact did some anecdotes in an early still German article on Reform he published in his periodical. Einhorn kept correcting the author of the text in footnotes, were he considered something he wrote incorrect.
I forgot though that Einhorn was an abolitionist.
correction: In an early, still German article on the history of Reform in the US.
I think the core contribution given (towards what would become known as
Reform Judaism) by Maimonides way back in the 12th century was exposure to systematic logic.
Early Reform theologians such as Abraham Geiger and Samuel Holdheim in the 1800's were influenced by the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel, who emphasized ethics and a belief in human progress. I once took a Jewish Culture class taught by one Rabbi Weinstein, who, if memory serves, came from the Spertucus (sic?) institution in downtown Chicago. He emphasized the contributions
of Maimonides and Hegel in every single class. BTW: He defined Judaism as "a portable culture."
Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War by Michael Berkowitz indicates some of the early common ground that was shared by Zionism and Reform Judaism and that facilitated cohabitation between apparently incompatible philosophies and ideals.
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/?articleid=14256
Abe Foxman's 'Anti-Semitic Pandemic'
Ran Hacohen
If there were a Nobel Prize for Hypocrisy, Abraham Foxman would have been a great candidate. The director of the Anti-Defamation League, who once interpreted even International Holocaust Remembrance Day as an expression of the Gentiles' latent desire to see Jews dead, has published a new survey on anti-Semitism in Europe [.pdf]. One of the assertions respondents were asked to agree or disagree with was "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country"; an affirmative response was considered indicative of anti-Semitism.
Indeed, doubting the loyalty of a minority is not nice. And the fact that many Zionists would affirm that assertion, or at least expect a Jew to be more loyal to Israel than to his country of residence, is a weak excuse for agreeing with such a characterization of all Jews. But let's put things in perspective: even if about half of Europeans say it's "probably true" that Jews are more loyal to Israel, not a single European party is pledging to revoke Jews' citizenship unless they prove their loyalty. I haven't heard of such a demand toward any other native minority either, in Europe or elsewhere. Even the late Joerg Haider did not go that far.
There is one exception, of course. The foremost campaign slogan of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party has been "No Loyalty – No Citizenship," which is aimed at Israel's Arab minority. Thirteen percent of Israelis gave Lieberman their vote. What does Abe Foxman have to say about that? Well, Foxman actually defends Lieberman, describing him as harmless: "He's not saying expel them. He's not saying punish them." Not at all: he's just demonizing them and threatening to deprive them of their citizenship. No big deal.
Big difference. Europe is a blood soaked continent when it come to jews. Yet no European Jew wants their respective countries wrecked. The Arabs in Israel take an active part on behalf of the enemies of Israel and take an active part there in. They reject the country yet take the benefits. And if there aren't benefits they would want to leave, wouldn't they. Yet they don't seem to want to do that, do they?
@Sword of Gideonthe point
No difference at all. Palestine is a blood soaked, stifled, and starved land when it comes to palestinian arabs and christians, ever since the jews first stole palestinian land in the name of their God, the mythical real estate agent
under exclusive contract to them, and also in the name of solely jewish victims of Hitler's legions, the theft and genocide that had happened in Europe, not in the Middle East.
No Palestinian Christian or Arab wants their land, buildings, crops, wrecked, confiscated, etc. The palestinians in Israel naturally feel sympathy for their cousins in Gaza and the West Bank. Although they
are second class citizens in Israel, they stay there as the open prison of Gaza and daily humiliation in the West Bank makes not a fat carrot–who'd want even a fat one if it was conditional on air strikes at any time, for example?
Cf: "And if there aren't benefits they would want to leave, wouldn't they. Yet they don't seem to want to do that, do they?"
Precisely. For the same exact reason, Israel First American Jews such as SOG stay in the USA; these
characters compose the 5th column here. Joachim Martillo's wife delineates their SOP very well in
her article The Emotional Violence of Israel Advocacy, which he references above.
Further @Sword of Gideonthe point
"They reject the country yet take the benefits."
This is a capsule description of the Israel Firsters ensconced in the USA, England, Canada, and Australia, for example–their propaganda has been most effective in the USA.
Their Big Lie, repeated endlessly, is that the USA's and Israel's interests are always identical. Ike didn't (booted Israel away from Egypt) thinks so, neither did Kennedy (attacked ponzi dollar & Israel's secret nuke project) nor does Carter (read his books). Nor did the state department under Truman. Nor did Truman, who kicked that can down the road just to get cash for his whistle stop campaign and due also to a large NY Jewish vote (check out his comments and diary at his library). Even Shrub I got stomped
for daring to tell Israel to stop the settlements. Check out the USS Liberty attack and Rachael Corrie
media and congressional and military cover-ups. What's up with the AIPAC spy case?
I don't know any American Jews that want America to be destroyed and identify with its enemies. Do you.
If you consider Israel and enemy of the United States fine. But your comparing apples and tire irons.
thanks, for alerting us to this, samuelburke, that's a very good critique. I used similar arguments in my critique once in "enlightened" academic circles, that usually distribute the polls. Everybody that knows just a little about empirical social research must realize this. Strictly there is no other explanation that they only carry it out to get the message in the news, since the polls miss any strategic dimension are much to rudimentary for serious consideration, even if one considers realistic limits to the amount of questions that can be asked.
That is also the main reason, why I was such a fan of the very differentiated poll done for J-Street. It is miles beyond the ADL "polls".
And yes, maybe some remember, I expected that the Gaza war would trigger a new poll on European ground.
One tiny final note. I do not think, "the Jews" talk too much about the Holocaust. In fact it is one of the issues I usually agree with the Zentralrat der Juden (the German institution representing German Jews). But yes, I think it is occasionally exploited for not so kosher reasons. Would the poll give me a chance to differentiate?
Which makes the Palestinians, what…
Descendants of Israelites.
SOG: "I don't know any American Jews that want America to be destroyed"
Look in the mirror. Jewish Zionist ideologues are systematically doing to America what Jewish Bolshevik ideologues did to the Russia after the Communist coup. The pattern of utilizing big government to wage war against resistant populations, be they Christians, Muslims, dissidents, or Gentiles is well established, consistent and predictable. This is why America is currently going the way of the Soviet Union, and will continue to decline until the parasite is extracted, or final collapse.
As long as we are selectively quoting, here is Rabbi Yoffie in 2002:. (This is his criticism of the Jews of the right. He also scolds Jews of the left for making apologies for suicide bombings.)
"my experience is that in times of crisis, we are more resistant than ever to changing ourselves, scrutinizing our innermost thoughts, and confronting our own sins…we forget that without dignity for the Palestinians there can be no dignity for Israelis and that without peace for the Palestinians there can be no peace for Israel. We forget the humanity of the Palestinians who live under Israeli control, and we ignore their suffering. We forget that even now — indeed, especially now — the Jew must sympathize not only with his own people but also with the stranger, the Other."
Probably not the 'religious crazy Zionist rabbi' imagined by the recent posts.
He is critical of left and right in the piece, but if you are looking for a 'religious crazy' Jewish leader to paint a picture of "Jews=Nazis and Palestinians=Jews", it is an odd choice, given the rejection of Reform Judaism by Israel. It seems Rabbi Yoffie might have fallen prey to the traits he himself identified, but this is a leader who was writing just weeks before Gaza about Israel needing to crack down on settler pogroms.
Phil, I think the adoration of your blog by people making much more extreme arguments than you does it a disservice. You shouldn't censor the crackpots, but their adoration of your blog certainly damages your credibility, and thus ability to garner support for human rights of everyone.
LD: "Maybe we should just move the jews to a secluded island in the middle of nowhere so they don't destroy the lives of everyone around them"
How about Cuba? We can make a trade with the Castros: Zionists for dissidents. It's a win-win.
Shlomo Sand makes a persuasive case in his How the Jewish People Was Invented that Zionism arose in imitation of German romantic nationalism.
Sand teaches at the University of Tel Aviv. His book is, I understand, a bestseller in Israel in the Hebrew original. I have read the French translation, Comment le peuple juif fut inventé : De la Bible au sionisme . Perhaps it will be translated into English one of these days.
One could have said much the same thing about Hitler's Nuremburg Laws in 1935.
Madagascar, Ed? Too much Zyklon B in the air, there, you know.
A common pesticide.
Melting icebergs would be more eco-friendly, true Eurosabra.