Tema Okun writes:
I am a Jew. I am a religious Jew. I am an anti-Zionist Jew. I realize that to make this last claim is to risk that you will stop reading, as often any claim of anti-Zionism brings with it a label of traitor, anti-Semite, self-hating Jew. I hope, however, that you will give me the benefit of the doubt, at least for the few minutes that it will take you to read what I have to say.
I’ve been a Jew all my life although I was not raised with a Jewish education. In my late 40s, I began to study. I read, I joined a synagogue, I helped start a Talmud study group. I was and am drawn to the essential command, attributed to the great Rabbi Hillel, that our task as Jews is essentially to “not do to others that which is hateful to you.” I love how, in very Jewish fashion, Hillel tells us what not to do. I love and am daily challenged by how extremely difficult such a simple command can be.
I did not know much about Israel until I became more engaged as a religious Jew. The organized Jewish community teaches us that the Israeli narrative is the Jewish narrative. Support for Israel, the story goes, is synonymous with being a good Jew.
Now, some ten years and four trips to Israel/Palestine later, I invite you, if you think you can bear it, to hear why I care more about Hillel’s commandment than I do about a state.
With my partner who is also Jewish, I have just returned from 15 days of staying with friends, a family who lives in Samiramis, technically a Jerusalem neighborhood, but one that sits on the Palestine side of the Wall, less than a mile from the infamous Qalandia checkpoint.
Unlike previous years where we participated in delegations, house rebuilding, or activism related to our work with ICAHD-USA (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA), this time we frequently walked the streets of Ramallah, stopping for homemade ice cream at Baladna’s, shopping for shoes and handmade embroidery. We traveled north to Nablus and Tulkarem to visit family members and share succulent meals that left us bursting. We took one late night trip to Jericho to sit in the local park, drink cola, and talk; another to Jaffa Beach where we shared a picnic, conversation, laughter; we went to multiple weddings where men and women danced late into the night to the beat of loud, pulsing music.
We were privileged to see again what we have seen before — how rich and full and engaging life in Palestine can be, how the people here are like people everywhere, attempting to live with some degree of happiness in a culture that deeply values familial relationships, good food, education, meaningful work, laughter.
We also bore witness, as we do on each trip, to encroaching apartheid. As we drove deep in the West Bank along the road snaking north to Nablus from Ramallah, we could look up and see virtually every hillside topped by a Jewish settlement. In some cases, the settlement is recent, a few caravans dotting the hilltop, their electric lights strung from pole to pole, glowing bright yellow through the night, a display of dominance. More often, the settlements are permanent, neat rows of identical houses with their prototypical orange roofs, poised on the top of the hill, ready to dip down onto the Palestinian farmland below. These are announced by the row of modern streetlights on the two-lane road we are traveling, beacons proclaiming the presence of Israeli Jews on the landscape. The lights illuminate the stretches of Arab road where Jewish settlers have to drive because the infamous “bypass” roads (the Palestinians call them apartheid roads) have yet to be built, the ones that allow only Jews to travel from mainland Israel into the West Bank without encountering Palestinians.
The omnipresence of these smaller settlements on the road to Nablus is new since our last trip in 2005; a look at the latest UN map shows the Palestinian landscape dotted with them like an x-ray showing a virulent, spreading cancer.
When President Obama talks about stopping the spread of settlements most people probably have little idea of what he means. Somehow the word “settlement” invokes an image of tents, a kind of unstable, fragile community. The first settlement I ever saw had to be pointed out to me because it looked like any modern suburb in the U.S., row upon row of contemporary houses set along well paved roads. I certainly did not expect what I saw – a solidly interwoven infrastructure common to any town or city – housing, water, lights, streets, stores planted immutably on the landscape. I soon came to understand their function. The massively large ones, housing hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, are designed to penetrate deep into the West Bank. Pisgat Ze’ev, Mod’in, Ma’eleh Adumim – each is protected by the Wall whose crooked path illegally pilfers huge swaths of Palestinian land. Each functions to divide Palestine into separate cantons making a contiguous state impossible. The newer smaller ones, the ones I see on the hilltops between Ramallah and Nablus, act like beachheads, strategically positioned to continue the slow but sure process of Israeli land grab.
The stories about how these settlers take over this territory deep in the West Bank are horrible. These are Jewish idealogues, often newly arrived from the U.S. Once they seize a hilltop, they move down the hill by harassing the unfortunate Palestinians who happen to live or farm the valleys below, sometimes poisoning their water and fields, killing their animals, introducing hostile plant and animal life, burning precious olive trees. Their goal is to intimidate farmers and families physically until they leave, making room for more settlement construction in their place. What you could not know, because no one ever says so, is that whenever a group of Jews establish a settlement, soldiers come in to protect them, making it possible for the Israeli government to hide this theft of land in plain sight.
As I ride along the road, any road, I realize that a Palestinian cannot drive from here to there anywhere in the West Bank now without encountering a settlement, or two, or three. I begin to take in how it feels to be surrounded, literally, by entitlement and hostility. I think about the ubiquitous story told in the Jewish community, crafted carefully by the ideology makers, painting Israel victim to a hostile Arab population that wants nothing more than to drive us into the sea. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony of such a story, for it’s not us, the Jews, who are being driven out. It’s us, the Jews, it’s Israel, the state designed for us the Jews, that is driving Palestinian people off of their land and into exile.
I think too, of the irony in the Israeli mantra that the Palestinians, the PLO, the PA, Hamas, all Arab nations, must recognize Israel, something that each of these groups has done in one way or another, although Israel refuses to acknowledge it. Again, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this recurring argument for the incursion of Gaza, the killing of innocent men, women, and children, the essential incarceration of a culture for over 40 years of Occupation. We have to do these awful things, the story goes, until they, the hated Other, recognize us, declare our right to exist. From my seat in the car, traveling to Nablus, looking up at settlement after settlement, it is not Israel’s right to exist that is in question.
The only way to justify this literal occupation of other people’s lives and land is to make them inhuman. Israel, with the help of AIPAC, B’nai Brith, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federations, and a myriad of other mainstream Jewish organizations, have done this well. In conversation after conversation here in this country, I witness their success as otherwise compassionate Jews deftly generalize about Palestinian men, women, and children in ways that we swiftly condemn when done about us. An elderly couple almost spits their anger at me, describing the fear their Israeli daughter feels living in such close proximity to the threat of rockets and suicide bombs.
I want to invite them to consider that their daughter’s fear is shared, often many times over, by daughters and mothers and sisters and sons in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. I want to invite them, and any of you who have never been, to come and live, as I did, for two weeks in Occupied Palestine. Come with me to the checkpoints, where you will be herded into metal troughs so narrow you can’t turn around, through turnstiles designed specifically to be too small for the average human body, yelled at by young 18, 19, 20 year olds whose contempt and disregard for those they control reeks off their skin like sweat. Come with me as we attempt to travel the short trip to Nablus on a Saturday to meet up with friends and family, only to find that Israel has closed all the roads leading out of Ramallah, a city of over 25,000 people, trapping us here on the Jewish Sabbath day without explanation or care.
Come and hear the stories, told at every gathering of Palestinians, of the latest injustice endured by a family member, a friend, at the hands of an Israeli soldier or settler. Point as I did, to inquire about a man dancing, full of joy, in a wedding picture. Hear the story of how he was taking his pregnant wife to Gaza to meet his parents, how he was stopped by Israeli soldiers, forcibly taken to Gaza while his wife was sent back to Ramallah. Two years have passed and he has yet to meet his young child because Israel will not give him the identity papers they require so he can see his family. Meet Fadi, a member of the family we are visiting, a young man in his late twenties who spends his days and many of his nights working, trying to make a living as we all have to do. Fadi cannot go with us to Jaffa Beach, next to Tel Aviv, literally half an hour from his home on the Palestinian side of the Wall, because he does not have and will never get Israel’s permission to go. These two people, and millions like them, are not a security risk of any kind; their crime is to be Palestinian.
Come with me and talk to the family whose home, built on their own land, was demolished for lack of a permit that Israel will not give, a family who has only to raise their eyes to see Jewish homes constructed at a fervid pace on a Palestinian hillside a half mile away. Come with me to the fields of a man, the mayor of a local village, who has been separated from his fields by the Wall, forbidden to ever reach them again by an Israel who tells the world that all he has to do is petition for permission to get to them, when the reality is that his petition has been permanently denied without explanation. Come meet the grieving father and mother whose young boy was killed when Israeli tanks parading through the town sprayed bullets sending one through their gate and into their son’s back. These people, and millions like them, are not a security risk of any kind; their crime is to be Palestinian.
Come with me, I beg you, and tell me that your safety, mine, depends on treating people this way. I have not even spoken the worst of it. I have not described the legalized theft of water, land, crops, trees; the complex system of laws that rob Palestinians of both livelihood and a future. I grew up as a white girl in the Jim Crow South and I have spent my adult life in the study of racism; what I see when I go to Palestine is Jim Crow on steroids. What I’m saying to you, although I’m not supposed to say it, is that Zionism is indeed racism – the supremacy of one race over another for the benefit of the first.
The Jewish community is not in danger from Palestinians or Arab nations. We are in danger because we interpret “never again” to mean never again for us when we should mean anyone and everyone. We are in danger because we continue to engage in a community-wide denial about what Israel is doing in our name.
I remember the time when a respected member of the Jewish community in my town called me a “shonda” (shameful) when, with my partner, I talked to a Jewish Sunday school class about what we had witnessed in Palestine (an unusual occurrence, for few synagogues will allow us to speak). I was struck, as I have been when attempting to address racism here in the U.S., that the focus of his anger was not Israel’s transgressions but the fact that we were speaking about them.
What does it mean that we are silent while the very meaning of what it means to be Jewish is becoming irreparably damaged? Our survival does not depend on a state that violates our fundamental values; our survival depends on honoring those values, the ones that instruct us “not to do to others that which is hateful to you.”
I invite you to consider what I’ve witnessed, or, if you can, to go and witness for yourself. I invite you to consider what it means to be a Jew today, when literally millions of people experience us as a people who control their every movement, their ability to access water, farm their land, build houses, live their lives. I invite you to consider what you hope it will mean tomorrow and the day after. For me, the question is not what are we willing to do for the sake of Israel. The question is what are we going to do for the sake of Judaism?
Tema, wow, what a stunning narrative. Speechless, really.
I dunno. How could you not know this has been going on? And the religious baloney you subscribe to validates this potent discrimination against non-Jews. It's all over jewish religious texts…the master race lunacy one trips over. And the overwhelming majority of religious Jews (including the settlers) are racists and the major obstacle to peace. Free yourself. Judaism is boorish and dumb. You don't need it and you'll be a more effective advocate without it, because frankly, adopting a Judaic world view is a denial of science and modernity. Small wonder so many Jews of character reject it outright and view it as an item of childishness at best, a source of virulent, racist (also misogynist) hatred at worst.
Tema, you and your "partner" whatever that means in the context of a religious Jew are a shonda!!
Thank you, Tema. Discrimination, injustice, hate crimes can happen anywhere, by anyone, to anyone. It's never the religion. It is the person with an individualistic mindset that forms the problem. Here in Indonesia we are often taught to stereotype and generalize things and people. I don't want to raise my children that way. Because when it comes to humanity, have no borders in mind.
As a fellow Jew I respectfully disagree. I hope we can build a new outpost dedicated to this well meaning Jew.
Wonderfully written, Tema. Thank you.
thank you tema..speechless
Tema has passed through the zionist program of bigotry fear and hate, that many if not most Jews feel towards Palestinians. she has humanized the Other. Eitan, maybe one day soon you could crack your shell and join Tema in her 'new outpost' . you would have a whole new experience of being human, and i know you would meet some of the most heart-full people, the Palestinians, and they would be your caring neighbors. (or you can continue with hate and violence)
I said "respectfully disagree" not "hatefully" We are building a handful of new outposts along with http://www.obamahill.tk I hope we can make one dedicated to her.
moving indeed, your thoughts on this … http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/midd... ?
RE: A Jewish state — or Jewish values? MY COMMENT: A beautiful, poetic 'call to alms'.
Anyone interested in supporting the new outpost Tema Hill please contact me
No well meaning Jews would move to the outposts. They are illegal.
I was raised an Orthodox Jew and agree with Tema. Zionism runs counter to traditional Jewish values. If we avoid the pitfall of applying progressive 21st-century standards to ancient Jewish texts, and realise that these texts have always been interpreted and reinterpreted throughout the generations – even by the most extreme "fundementalists" – we will find that the core values are completely in keeping with the best modern values. Moreover, as Tema also intimates, Zionism runs counter to the historical Jewish experience. If "never again" is limited to Jews, it is not a moral imperative – according to Kant, or according to Hillel. Condemning Judaism as "boorish and dumb" shows ignorance and prejudice – precisely the kind of thinking Tema rejects, in the name of Jewish values. Thank you Tema, for an important and inspiring article.
Don't worry. Tema Okun ia religious Jew the same way that Shulamit Aloni is. Both the same ideology. Both the same lies. Both present themselves as "religious Jews" when in truth they despise the very concept. Real MondoLiars. This is why Phil MondoLies quotes her at such length.
Tema Okun is not Jewish. http://icahdusa.org/2009/295 She is certainly not a "religious Jew". Plain lie, as evidenced by her "partner's" own statements in her presence. The rest of her babbling has the same moral authority and intellectual dishonesty. Real MondoGarbage.
I find it quite stunning that all you can come up with is ad hominem attacks on her person questioning her Judaism. Because she clearly can’t be jewish and feel the way she does? Is anti-zionism only incompatible with certain movements of Judaism? If she’d said she was reform or reconstructionist, would you still spend time trying to debunk her Jewishness?
Regardless, it is not a substantive reply to her argument, beliefs, feelings. I grew up conservadox, I’m in a program to be a talmud teacher now and I agree with her sentiments. You may not like what I believe but questioning my Jewishness will not make my opinions disappear.
Great sentiment, great motivation to be a good person. Anti is the kicker. Better to be anti a policy or a practice. Phil and Adam are looking for substantiation of their investment. But, they have only made a token investment even into their inquiry into "Jewish values". More than insignificant, but not yet INVESTED. Eitan and Jake similarly token. Me as well. I know NOONE that I've ever met, that I regard as invested in humanity and in Judaism (even Torah scholars) to the extent that they could be regarded as authority, even convincing. Eitan ignores the consideration that his "outpost construction" is a violation of Torah, rationalized by fanatics, forbidden food willingly eaten.
Witty,
You know nothing about my Jewish studies so don’t pontificate. You have displayed considerable ignorance of Jewish philosophy in the past. Why you are so proud of this is beyond me.
Wonderful, thanks. The only way to justify this literal occupation of other people’s lives and land is to make them inhuman. That's the central point. It accompanies the many words of the ideologues like a shadow, for the observer often the shadow takes over. In what strange ways do people have to knot up their brains to avoid this simple realization?
I also liked that phrase. It applies 360 degrees.
Thanks, Phil. Beautifully expressed. Your piece makes me wonder anew, how many Israeli and American Jews have ever been to the West Bank or even seen East Jerusalem, except for the very specific Old Quarter and Western Wall? How many have ever seen a settlement? How many have ever met the sort of zealot who lives in a settlement? Peace Now says the settlement enterprise costs Israel $556 million a year. What percentage of Israeli adults are aware of the infrastructure of occupation on whch this money is spent? Thanks again. Your writing has truly opened my eyes. Eileen White Read Peacemakers blog http://www.trueslant.com/eileenread/
I agree. Tema, you are eloquent! Keep it up!
Perhaps, but aren't Jewish values more complicated? Where does the Talmud fit in with Jewish core values? Don't many passages and opinions in it reflect directly the notion that "never again" is limited to Jews? To what extent does the Talmud instill a double standard, one for Jews, the other for the Other?
Yeah, Tema, you shouldn't air dirty Jewish laundry in public so eloquently. Somehow you missed the prime directive sunshine is only for dirty Gentile laundry.
As a non-tribal humanist, in other words a full humanist, I respectfully disagree with you. I hope we can uproot every outpost and settlement. We dedicate our plan to all the original victims of the Shoah and all Allied soldiers who fought the Axis powers in WW2.
Yes she is, in the highest sense of Judiasm. You are the one babbling lies; she simply spoke of what she has personally witnessed.
If Tema were a decent person, he would follow the example of Marlene Dietrich: Noa Does a ‘Benny Morris,’ Calls Hamas ‘Nazi-Like’. Rabbinic Judaism especially in the modern German Jewish and ethnic Ashkenazi context has selectively emphasized texts that encourage hatred and exploitation of non-Jews: Zionist Parable: Yosef Mokir Shabbat.
I think she illustrated very clearly what policies and practices she is against (anti). And why. She has been an eye witness on the ground for all of us, a very articulate witness. All of these horrible policies and practices have been defended by people and their leaders claiming to be proud Zionists. You say there's no connection? She clearly thinks there is. The creed is in the deed.
I agree with you both.
I've never been to a settlement, but I have been to the West Bank (and not on a tour).
I have studied the Talmud since childhood, and continue to view it as a remarkable source of enlightenment and creativity, although I no longer accept the religious framework in which I was raised. Many passages in the Talmud do reflect values that we would term misogynist or racist, but we are talking about texts some fifteen-hundred years old! There is a spirit of compassion, reason and love of truth behind the corpus that does not allow us to dismiss the whole simply because the authors were not feminists or universalists, centuries before such concepts existed. The vast majority of extant literature was created in societies that oppressed women and Others of various kinds. Does that mean that we have nothing to learn from them? Nothing to appreciate in them? Cherry-picking objectionable bits from the Talmud is on old habit with a less-than-illustrious history. It is intellectually dishonest, and does a great injustice to Judaism and Jewish tradition. Hillel's "categorical imperative" also comes from the Talmud, and is far more representative of its spirit than any tribalistic curiosities we may dig up in order to discredit Jews and Judaism.
As I point out below in the discussion of Yosef Mokir Shabbos, Jews often cherry-pick the Talmud themselves for various purposes while the Quran makes a very valid critique of Mishnaic/Talmudic particularism: Zionizing Muslims via Interfaith.
Which means: Before you ever look at the wrong done by the sponsored crusading forces, you have always keep in mind that the Palestinians do not want them there. And their claim to the land is a result of that? Which is the racist counter face or your 360degree? Basically I would agree with you. The problem is that they have only 22% of the land left by now, and that Israel–in spite of it's image cultivation as part of the West–would never dare to do it to any other Western people. I am much less interested in the settlers, I would be much more interested in an "archeology" of interests behind the whole enterprise. ****************************************************************************** http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/ A Jew walks into a bar with a parrot on his head "What can I get for you?" asks the bartender. The parrot says, "Awk! We are going to remove all the illegal outposts" The bartender says, "Yeah, I know, you say that every time you come in here. But what can I get for you?" The parrot says, "Awk! We are going to remove all the illegal outposts" The bartender says, "Look you said that yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before that. What can I get for you?" The parrot says, "Awk! But this time we are going to remove all of them in one day." The bartender bursts out in uncontrollable laughter, doubles over and drops dead. The parrot looks down at the Jew and says, "Now can I have a gin and tonic?"
I respect your point of view. But how much "interpretation" is involved in the yearly celebration of the angel of death passing over jewish homes to kill the first born arab child?( I cite but one one of nnumerable possible examples) Even when Sara Roy (whom I revere) gets on about israeli behavior violating "Jewish values" i get queazy. Religious Jews are involved in some pretty beastly behavior and they invariably underwrite it with scripture. ..must run
To each his own cherries. My impression is based on a lifetime of study and familiarity with Jewish texts and tradition. My own values are humanist and anti-Zionist, and are a product of my understanding of the tradition in which I was raised. I am no apologist, and when it comes to criticising Zionists or Jews for their views or actions, I do not hold my punches. I just believe that judging the Talmud or Judaism on the basis of certain texts expressing opinions that were perfectly legitimate, in moral terms, at the time of their writing, is at best superficial, at worst dishonest. Such cherry-picking is of course equally dishonest and odious when applied to the Koran or the Hadith, as it is all too often these days. To go back to Citizen's question, the core values of the Talmud, if taken in their historical context, are perfectly sound, and imply no double standard. If some Jews or Zionists are racist, it is certainly not because of the Talmud – of which most Jews have little knowledge, and for which they have even less respect. With regard to the very small minority of Jews (Zionist or otherwise) who actually cite the Talmud (or the Bible) as the source of their racism, I truly believe they have missed the point.
I did not publish a passage from the Talmud but the content of a popular Jewish children's book, with which there is probably far greater familiarity among Jews. In any case, there is substantive disagreement in matters of morality among Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Greco-Roman Hellenism, and modern Western secularism. The texts of each way of thinking are perfectly legitimate in their own moral terms but not necessarity to each other. The problem lies in finding a way for mutual coexistance, and claiming that humanism is part of the religious traditions is facile at best.
None whatsoever (with or without inverted commas), because it is not the "celebration of the angel of death passing over jewish homes to kill the first born arab child", but a celebration of freedom and the birth of the Jewish civilisation. The myth certainly includes the element you mention (although the biblical Egyptians were not Arabs), but that is not what is celebrated. In fact the Talmud and the Midrash, written many centuries after the composition of the biblical story, grappled with the suffering inflicted upon innocent Egyptians, because it was incompatible with the morality of their time. That is what I mean by core values. The constant is freedom and identification with the innocent – Jewish and non-Jewish. As Hillel says, the rest is commentary.
Claiming that humanism is part of the religious traditions may be facile – and the flipside of the anachronism of judging ancient authors by modern standards – but claiming that some of the roots of humanism can be found in the religious traditions seems pretty self-evident.
The problem (as with all religious texts) is that there is plenty there for everybody. If you're basic constitution is racist, you'll have a field day with Judaism, particularly some of the lunacy on the hallacha, etc. If on the other hand, you're a decent and compassionate soul (as I gather you are, Shmuel), then you can find lovely verses to support the idea that the essence of Judaism is love of one's neighbor and mutual respect. For me, someone like Sara Roy is a model of humanity as much in spite of her judaism as because of it. gain…just my opinion. Certainly, among observant Jews today, her opinions are in the minority, I'm afraid.
Tema, thank you for your brave words here, and your brave and loving actions everywhere.
Eitan. Will this outpost be open to Jews from the U.S., Russia, England, Poland, etc… Sounds good. WHo would you exclude, and why.
You are right that it is easy to find what one is looking for in religious texts (the Talmud is the first to admit that and caution against it). But this is a far cry from dismissing an entire tradition that has inspired both good and bad, as "boorish and dumb", asking why a person of good faith would continue to adhere to it.. I value much of Jewish tradition, while I reject parts of it and bitterly oppose many of its exponents. I believe that Zionism – rejected by most Jews prior to the Holocaust – has succeeded in corrupting traditional Jewish values. That is not to say that Judaism is or was ever perfect (or monolithic), merely that the evils of political Zionism should not be laid at the doorstep of a value system it has largely ignored or twisted. My position is of course debatable, but I don't believe that it is merely wishful thinking.
Tema, thanks for your courageous challenge to live into the values that stand for justice for all people – not just our "own." The planet cannot be sustained by shortsightedness. I am proud to be your sister in the fight for Peace for Palestinians and for Jews alike. I'm sorry there's still so much room for hate in the human heart. Love you! Evangeline
Tema, thank you for sharing so vulnerably and poignantly so many emotions I carry with me every day. Kol haCavod, with all my respect. -ari lev
"Tema Okun is not Jewish. " According to the state of Israel she is, as is her partner. According to her professed belief and her membership in a synagogue, she is a religious Jew. Give it up, Jake. You just keep digging yourself a bigger hole.
I think what Jake is trying to say is that only Ms. Okun's father was Jewish, and her father's religious identity is insufficient for her to be one of the "chosen people". I guess that to Jake, purity of essence –having the "right" parental lineage — is what makes someone Jewish. And keeping the bloodlines pure and the races separate and easily identified is part of what his ethnic and religious identity is all about. Having spent some time in Jerusalem and Palestine myself recently, I can only say that Jake's view of Jewish identity is not unusual among many of the Jewish residents in this part of the world.
Jon, silly, it’s not a matter of “purity”. It’s a technical issue. The same issue that makes Arnold Shwazenegger not eligible for the Presidency according to US law. Technically, she is not Jewish. Practically, she is OBVIOUSLY not Jewish. Some people, like Tema Okun, ONLY claim Jewish identity as something to fight against. The MondoPeople who run this site are exactly the same.
The 360 degrees comment, refers to the propensity to dehumanize the other.
Hi Shmuel I ought to be clearer. I haven't any objections naturally, to one following whatever one finds inspiring, life-affirming, etc..be it Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, psychedelic drugs, molecular biology, insect acoustics, bingo or snow-shoe-ing. I only question the application of so-called Jewish values to the tragedy in the occupied territories. I think it's better to oppose it on the basis of human values. Indeed, linking humanistic values with this or that religious or ethnic group as though it is the favored province of jews seems to lead to the very air of superiority and arrogance I think we're trying to combat. In the interest of full disclosure, I've always been an atheist and found Israel Shahak's revelations on Jewish religion particularly eye-opening and disturbing. His initial foray into this domain was a ha'aretz story about jews refusing to call an ambulance for a non-Jew in israel, because it was the sabbath. Shahak's official rabbinical sources informed him that this was indeed proper behavior under Jewish religious law. Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg. here in its entirety with gore vidal's intro: http://www.geocities.com/israel_shahak/book1.htm Hold on to your hat!
The Israel-Palestine conflict simply is not symmetric, and racist Jews like Witty continue to dehumanize Palestinians when they fail to advocate a solution that fully restores Palestinian residence and property rights, which are basic human rights. Any settlement that does not fully recognize Palestinian humanity, which Zionists as adherents of ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism reject, creates a moral hazard, for Zionists would perceive no downside if they decided to go on a murderous genocidal rampage once again some time in the future. My wife discusses the issue in Zioshmooze versus Plain English .
Dear Lovely, For the record, I too consider myself an atheist (although, as I mentioned, I was once an Orthodox Jew). I am familiar with Shahak's work, and briefly belonged to a one-state group with which he was involved in Jerusalem. He was a great man, and a great champion of Palestinian rights. I strongly disagreed however, with his approach to Judaism and Jewish texts. I think he fell into the trap of anachronism and made the mistake of judging the whole by the extreme. To borrow your metaphor, I think he mistook a part of the tip for the entire iceberg. My point was not to defend my right to believe or draw inspiration from whatever I like, nor was it to assert that Judaism has any monopoly over human decency. What I have been trying to say, perhaps a little long-windedly (apologies), is that there is nothing strange or contradictory about someone drawing positive ethical conclusions from Jewish tradition and history, or even believing that those who fail to do so in fact violate that tradition. I am currently hatless.
Thank you so much for having the courage to speak out, Tema. You know well the hatred targeted at the Jewish bearers of such testimony and insight, but you continue to speak out anyway because it is the right thing to do. Very courageous. Now we just need millions more like you.
I particularly appreciated your explanation of the settlements and their role. I have read about them before but never felt the hurt, insult and humiliation that Palestinians must feel when they look up at these settlements with their lights and signs of permanence – all protected by formidable military might.
@lovelyisraelis. Your last post went missing during the facelift, but I’d like to answer anyway.
Thank God (figure of speech) that culture and literature cannot be scientifically observed, weighed and measured. That is not to say that convincing arguments cannot be made, but that there are no definitive answers. Rabbinical control however, is quite another matter – one with which Jews have not really had to contend for a good couple of centuries, thanks to the recognition of the equal citizenship of Jews in the countries in which they reside. Without the political powers invested in Jewish religious communities by the ruling elite, Judaism has returned to a blissful state of intellectual anarchy in which all are free to interpret Judaism as they see fit, without the interference of pesky and often ill-intentioned intermediaries. Ironically, it is Zionism and the State of Israel that have attempted to return us to the ghetto, by establishing an official “rabbinate” and interfering with such highly personal and subjective questions as “who is a Jew?”. The Jewish ethno-religious state thus belies its declared goal of ultimate emancipation for the Jews. It is not my intention to equate Jewish and Palestinian suffering at the hands of political Zionism, and our current focus must certainly be Palestinian liberation. Nevertheless, I also believe that Zionism has inflicted terrible and possibly irreparable damage upon Jewish culture, religion and life.
Shmuel
but for the fact that mainstream jewry overwhelmingly identifies with Zionism and finds no contradiction between Zionist ambitions and the teachings of Judaism, I find your case compelling. Unfortunately, most Jews do not agree. I don’t see the argument as qualitatively different from the case made by Christians that the massacre (on Christian principles) of indigenous peoples of the Americas was a perversion of Christian ideals. If that is indeed so, we can only say that such perversions of the true faith are so ubiquitous as to render this true faith, essentially meaningless in any practical terms.
I don’t think you can win an argument as to your version of Judaism being more legitimate than Avigdor Leiberman’s. You CAN objectively say that according to humanist, enlightenment principles, he’s a monster and according to well-recognized legal principles, he is a criminal. That seems to me the better way to go,
what exactly about Tema Okun qualifies her to call herself a “religious” Jew?
She and her “partner”? not her spouse, I take it….
I have seen her in pictures. Never noticed her in a head-covering, or appropriate dress for a “religious” Jew….oh, she is a REFORM Jew….hmmm someone should point that fact out, otherwise people may get the impression that real religious Jews are against Zionism. There are plenty of reform jews who are against zionism or even against traditional jews, in fact, what is christianity? is it not a form of “reform” judaism?
Dear reform Jews, please stop co-opting our religion. Tema should not pretend that she speaks for religious Jewry. If she can speak for Jews, then I can speak as a devout Muslim in support of Israel’s complete annexation of the occupied territories.