Gorenberg
The latest Hadassah magazine has an interesting letter from Gershom Gorenberg to an American progressive Jew urging him or her not to give up on Israel. The insight here is that Israel has now become the basis of American Jewish identity. And so if you Americans lose Israel, Gorenberg warns, there goes Jewish communal life.
As Peter Beinart, former New Republic editor, wrote last year, “For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now…they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.”
Beinart’s warning was correct, and belated. The danger is that young Jews will not only check their Zionism at the door, but their connection to all things Jewish. The existence of a Jewish country is too large a part of the 21st-century Jewish reality to be excised from Jewish communal life in America. But when students find Jewish campus organizations devoting their energy to refuting any criticism of Israeli policy (including criticisms voiced daily here in Israel), many stay away from campus Jewish life entirely.
Nor will Israel disappear from congregational life. If you allow the Israel conversation at your congregation to be dominated by the advocates of siege Zionism, you risk letting your community be shaped by the fearful mentality of “the world is against us” rather than by a universalist commitment to tikkun olam...
Gorenberg's latest book is incisive on the issue of the Israeli crisis, the domination of the society by intolerant voices. The problem with his thinking, as I have said often, is that he is ethnocentric: he believes that Jews can come up with answers to the Israeli crisis of legitimacy inside the Jewish community. When the truth is that if a government is only representing the interests of half the people it governs, it must consult with the entire population if it is going to find a way forward.
This contradiction is evident in Gorenberg's Rx for us Jews in the Diaspora:
Israel presents the opportunity for Jews to have power over their lives as a collective—to express our values not just as individuals but as the majority in a sovereign state. The critical contribution that diaspora Jews can make in engagement with Israel is to remind those of us here of the sharp experience of being the outsider, the stranger, so that we Israelis don’t forget where we came from.
But what if our contribution is true to our experience here-- Liberalism? Democracy that honors minority rights?
To understand Gorenberg's crisis, you should have a look at a second piece in Hadassah, this an interview with Danny Danon, a Likudnik who is the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. Danon says that Israel will reject pressure to give up the West Bank, because no political majority exists to do such a thing. Under these intolerant political circumstances, liberal Jews must imagine other political coalitions than ones of only Jews hanging on to the idea of a majority state. They must be imagining ways of establishing equal representation.
Q. You have both criticized and supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. How did you feel after his speech on Capitol Hill earlier this year?
A. I sincerely applauded the prime minister’s effective and eloquent defense of the Jewish people’s historic ties to the Land of Israel. His speech was inspiring and rousing. His single most compelling duty was to reject President Obama’s pressure. When he returned home to Jerusalem, he realized there was no majority in Israel, and certainly not in his own Likud Party, to cede large portions of Judea and Samaria to Arab control, nor to relinquish our permanent presence in the Jordan Valley. We were elected to safeguard our historic homeland, not to abandon it. I try with all my heart and soul to remind him of these commitments, even when others seek to cloud his view. I am hopeful the visions that nurtured both [of us] will prevail and his policies will remain faithful to these commitments. No matter what, I will be nearby to remind him.
Phil,
I think it’s time you considered that your target audience should be the average American Joe, Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist or Atheist alike, between the ages of 16 and 40.
You seem to be under the impression that your target audience is Jewish-only, between the ages of 50 and 90.
How does that idiom go? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; well, the average ‘liberal’ Zionist is that old dog.
It’s time to move on.
Avi_G, what do you suggest Phil & Adam do to more effectively target all Americans between age 16-40? Some here, for example, might say endorse Ron Paul who already has the most young followers, including the majority of our young soldiers. Get more involved with OWS? Start doing more college audience speeches? How can we get more young folks to come to MW? Spread awareness of the site on campuses?
Avi…..
It would be great if the site could attract average Joes. Those not bogged down and overload with what they already know would be fresh voices on this issue.
How do you that though?
To initially attract the average Joes an attack on Iran would do nicely as immediately the price of gas at the pump would sky rocket–I think that’s one good reason why campaigning Obama is trying to back Bibi off a bit at the moment. But even that would not bring many Joes to MW. To bring a lot of Joes (& Janes), reinstating the Military Draft would work, a possible eventual follow-up to the US allowing Israeli jets to fly over airspace to Iran we control since the best laid plans of mice and mice often go astray. I can’t think of anything else Anybody else?
Danon says “cede” as if it were Israeli already!
This is the problem in one word.
The danger is that young Jews will not only check their Zionism at the door, but their connection to all things Jewish.
They should have thought about that before putting all of their communal eggs in the Israel basket. The answer at this point (if it’s not too late already) is not more Zionism, but the creation of a viable alternative. A Jewish commitment to cleaning up Zionism’s mess would be a good place to start.
Israel is at the heart of Jewish identity as America is at the heart of American identity–It appears to me that both the majority of Jews and majority of Americans had a change of heart about their respective values since WW2; this change grew proportionately as said respective nations became the most powerful, US in the world, Israel in the ME. The test of virtue is power. I think if non-Jewish Americans on average actually knew the facts about the I-P conflict they would reassert the old American sense of fairness and favoring the underdog. And if Jewish Americans on average looked more to the best of Judaic values, they too would reassert them–and bring that message towards getting the facts out about Israel, the state.
Intelligent and logical response, Shmuel.
January 23, 2012 at 10:52 am
“The danger is that young Jews will not only check their Zionism at the door, but their connection to all things Jewish.”
Why is that a danger?
“Israel presents the opportunity for Jews to have power over their lives as a collective—to express our values not just as individuals but as the majority in a sovereign state.”
And those values are expressed by the collective and they are in large part values such as hatred , fear and untreated trauma. What is with the white phosphorous and the torture and the 15% of GDP on the army and the Shoah survivors below the poverty line? Where is the compassion , the respect, the integrity?
Danon should be in psychiatric care. I guess the Jewish power thing isn’t working out so well.
And the majority is only possible because the Palestinians don’t have the vote.
And it isn’t even a sovereign state- the US props it up
Re: “Israel presents the opportunity for Jews to have power over their lives as a collective—to express our values not just as individuals but as the majority in a sovereign state.”
The problem is “universalist commitment to tikkun olam,” or “repairing the World,” entails a commitment to universal values applicable to all, not just as to one group of humans. Can a Jew be a Jew and be equally committed to universal human rights, as in your rights end where mine begin? Just asking. Do any other people or groups have this identity problem when they work for universal human rights?
Tikkun Olam is a nice figleaf but it’s too small to cover all of the bad news that comes out of Israel these days.
“…nice figleaf…”
It’s a holiday decoration, designed to dupe.
the most meaningful collective in america isn’t that of any single group or affiliation but of the 99% of us united in pursuit of a better world. the occupy movement very well could be a step in this direction. mic check, anyone?
i agree yourstruly
“We were elected to safeguard our historic homeland, not to abandon it.”
this insanity is going to crash into a wall called political economy.
Too bad reality is not an Opera.
best abandon the so-called historic homeland, because the dream’s turned into a nightmare which can only get worse
but wouldn’t one have to have a sharp experience of being an outsider, a stranger, to be able to remind israelis of this? and if one felt like that why wouldn’t they just move to israel?
it is just hard for me to wrap my head around the idea american jews are outside of the american experience. even if some do put israel first it doesn’t mean they are outsiders here. it sounds like he is nurturing an idea of diaspora jews not being home where their home is. it’s weird.
You’re right, Annie. It’s not often I agree with you, but in this case you’re spot on.
On the other hand, Jews in just about every single other country – with the exception perhaps of Australia and Canada – often do indeed recognize themselves to be not fully at home in the society they live in.
with the exception perhaps of Australia and Canada – often do indeed recognize themselves to be not fully at home in the society they live in.
hmm, the UK? and i wonder what it’s like for the president of france to feel not fully at home.
Indeed, the UK, Annie. And France is a no-brainer. (Sarkozy,by the way, isn’t Jewish, doesn’t regard himself as Jewish, and isn’t regarded as Jew except perhaps by the antisemites. He had one Jewish grandparent, that’s all).
Just to be clear about this, Annie, since it’s pretty basic: for the millennia prior to the Enlightenment, Jews were ALWAYS distinguishable from their non-Jewish neighbors. Their legal status was different, and their social status even more so. At no point prior to the 18th century could anyone even have formulated the concept of being simply a regular citizen of the country one lived in. (Of course, the whole idea of citizenship was largely on freeze between the Roman era and Modernity). In the 19th and early 20th century there were some Jews who told themselves they were on their way to being just regular citizens, but their surrounding societies didn’t concur. Even in the US, American Jews didn’t reach the level of feeling at home and accepted as they do today until sometime in the 1950s or 1960, as the anguished story of the Jewish leadership’s relationship to Roosevelt and American society as the news of the Holocaust seeped in, shows.
Even today, in the early 21st century, the level of self-confidence and feeling at home enjoyed by the Jews of the US is unusual. You can find Jews who feel totally French (not many) or totally Dutch, but in most cases this will be accompanied with the permanent feeling that they’re also different, and perhaps not as secure as their neighbors. I personally have a relative who is a prominent elected politician in a West European country, secular, left-wing, committed to her country – but the idea that her being Jewish is simply a statistical data-point with no significance to her or to her voters would set her roaring with bitter laughter.
which is not to say Jews were always persecuted. But always diferent? Somehow outsiders? Of course!
Sarkozy,by the way, isn’t Jewish, doesn’t regard himself as Jewish
really?
In most medieval kingdoms in Europe Jews hardly suffered “second class” citizenship. In fact, Jews enjoyed more privileges than the average Christian; ranging from special royal protection to specific privileges that were denied to Christian peasants, such as bearing arms, owning land and slaves and engaging in international trade. I will suggest a good reference work that deals with these issues: “Power & Powerlessness in Jewish History” by David Biale.
Sarkozy,by the way, isn’t Jewish, doesn’t regard himself as Jewish
really?
Really. He isn’t and doesn’t.
oh. i don’t know why i thought he was jewish. i should have looked it up.
Annie, you don’t need to look it up. Maybe you had this in mind.
Sarkozy is a very common name in the European Roma community.
What rubbish about the UK. It’s what you, and others, want to believe, mixed in with a historical narrative which is grossly self-serving and inaccurate as most of Israeli ‘history’, otherwise known as the foundation myth.
Really.
Even today, in the early 21st century, the level of self-confidence and feeling at home enjoyed by the Jews of the US is unusual.
On the other hand, Jews in just about every single other country – with the exception perhaps of Australia and Canada – often do indeed recognize themselves to be not fully at home in the society they live in.
Winnica, Where are you getting this stuff from? Please provide sources.
“But always diferent? Somehow outsiders? Of course!”
And it is their own fault.
About Sarkozy, Winnica was being too modest.
“Who is Nocolas Sarkozy?”
link to jewishworldreview.com
PTJ,
Sarkozy’s grandad was born Jewish (but converted to Catholicism). If that makes Sarko Jewish, I’m an Austro-Hungarian.
If that makes Sarko Jewish, I’m an Austro-Hungarian.
I thought you were Etruscan. ;-)
link to mondoweiss.net
I thought you were Etruscan.
Is there a hyphen shortage or something?
Can I ask where you live Winnica because you seem to claim a grasp of the feelings of people in a large number of nations which would be quite an achievement. You have also been proven woefully wrong on issues of UK immigration and once again are pontificating on that group of countries so are you a UK citizen who is ignorant of your own immigration laws or are you just using your special diving powers to judge that all Jews there don’t really feel at home?
As distinguished from whom, Madaleine Albright? That congress woman who was shot in the head?
What about the UK and most of Europe? What about the Jews in Oran who refuse to migrate to Israel in spite of generous bribes?
“often do indeed recognize themselves to be not fully at home in the society they live in.”
Then they should try harder. I don’t hear of massive amounts of Jews leaving Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, China, and Curacao. And I’ll bet you Shmuel is learning Italian just fine, and his daughter is picking up being a Roman without losing her Jewish roots.
“often do indeed recognize themselves to be not fully at home in the society they live in.”
MRW: “Then they should try harder. I don’t hear of massive amounts of Jews leaving Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, China, and Curacao”
The notion that Jews dont feel welcomed or at home anywhere but Israel is outrageous. Just another Jewish identity “crisis” that Zionists want Jews around the world to believe.
MRW,
My ethnicity is not a problem where I live. My non-adherence to the state ideology in Israel was a problem, and my anti-Zionist “heresy” is a problem in my local Jewish community.
My non-adherence to the state ideology in Israel was a problem…
So I suppose one could say that you didn’t feel completely at home in Israel. Don’t tell Winnica, it might upset her grand stereotype. And whatever you do, don’t mention the large number of Israelis living abroad. That would really confuse her.
BTW, I’ve just started reading Rachel Shabi’s “We look Like the Enemy”. Her father grew up in Iraq, came to Israel, where Rachel was born, with the great exodus in 1950, and then moved to Great Britain. He identifies most strongly as an Iraqi, not an Israeli, and now firmly and happily considers himself a Londoner.
Annie, it’s been noted here often enough that many Jewish Americans have a tough time recognizing that they are The Establishment here, and that the self-described Jewish State is in fact a powerful state with Jews in systematic control of non-Jewish Israeli minorities, and total control in the OT–all of this real power, including the police power In Israel & OT–for better, or worse. They cannot seem to get their heads around the fact said power as wielded has not been overwhelmingly for the better, but is rather a net worse for Gentiles subject to it. Or, they do know it, and don’t ultimately give a crap about Gentiles. I’m reminded of what Truman wrote in his diary about what happens when the unterhund becomes the uberhund in human history, when he was pointedly talking about the Zionists banging on his oval office door.
here is something beinart wrote in that article:
so i think the kids are not buying into the ‘sharp experience of being the outsider, the stranger’.
it sounds like he is nurturing an idea of diaspora jews not being home where their home is.
Exactly. The fundamental tenet of Zionism.
shmuel, he is either being dishonest with his readers or he is so blind to his own agenda he can’t see he is doing it. ei, he says:
so for him, if he is honest with himself…there are elements of jewishness that are not confined within a zionist context. iow, he sees liberalism and commitment to social justice wedded to his identity as a jew. now listen to beirnart:
so gorenberg quotes beinart, and skips the glue that both he himself and beinart identify as jewish
why would he say this? it makes no sense. if the kids think their liberalism and commitment to social justice is part of their jewish values (and it seems he would agree by his own statements) then if/when zionism asks them to check their liberalism at the door the kids are making a choice between their jewish values (or their personal identification of what they like about themselves, their own jewishness) vs zionism, they are not severing their connection to all things Jewish, they are doing the opposite. they are choosing what they perceive as their jewish values OVER zionism.
how can he not see this?
why would he say this? … if the kids think their liberalism and commitment to social justice is part of their jewish values …
Liberalism and social justice aren’t Jewish per se (neither are fascism and ethnic cleansing for that matter), but they can be expressed in Jewish language and be a part of Jewish identity. I think what Gorenberg is saying is that the kids are still liberal, but everything Jewish around them seems to reject those values or at least be very inconsistent about them, so they no longer identify their liberalism with their Judaism. They reject Judaism as reactionary and/or hypocritical.
They reject Judaism as reactionary and/or hypocritical.
i know some jewish activists who are into their judaism and not really into zionism or israel.
i know some jewish activists who are into their judaism and not really into zionism or israel.
So do I ;-)
Michael Lerner, for example. But it would be intellectually honest to accept that people like him are unusual in the context of most Jews in the world today, and very much at odds with much of Jewish history – though of course he would say otherwise, which is his right.
unless zionism’s claim that zionism = judaism is exposed for the lie that it is, young liberal jews will continue to reject judaism. what’s the alternative, hold your nose and become a zionist?
And of course, an existential condition of all Jews everywhere for most of their long diaspora history. Or would you re-write Jewish history, Shmuel? Because that will take a lot of re-writing.
And of course, an existential condition of all Jews everywhere for most of their long diaspora history.
Only if you view Jewish history as one long persecution. Sometime home was home and sometimes it wasn’t. Gorenberg – as per Zionist ideology – posits it as an eternal law of nature.
i think it is you re writing history winnica. there’s a lot written about zionism and jewish nationalism, if it’s been around for centuries as you say perhaps you can direct us to some non biblical literature that references it pre 17-1800′s.
there have always been secular jews. certainly some of them wrote about this nationalism back then, no?
Annie: there were no secular Jews prior to Spinoza, and only a handful of them before the 19th century. There were hardly any secular anybody else, either.
I sent you to the literature in a previous comment on this post. Or to the most famous sections of it, at any rate. The number of relevant books has been estimated at anywhere from 30-60 thousand.
no secular jews prior to spinoza?
you’re just a wealth of information winnica.
and my question was regarding non biblical literature. but i suppose if there were no secular jews back then..which frankly i find hard to fathom.
no secular jews prior to spinoza?
In terms of beliefs, I don’t think that Spinoza would necessarily qualify as “secular”, but to the extent that he would, Epicurean atheism is an ancient Jewish tradition ;-)
In terms of civil status, yes, Spinoza was probably the first modern European to be a “citizen” without being subject to the authority of a religious community. It’s no wonder some Zionists have tried to pin the “proto-Zionist” label on him as well (Judaism-supernaturalism=nationalism, no?).
Why, Shmuel? Jews regarded themselves as being in Galut – exile, even though most of them had no intention of returning to Jerusalem in any immediate way, and indeed, they didn’t most of the time. This doesn’t mean they were persecuted at all times. I never said that, and it’s not historically true even if I did say it.
History, like any part of human life and the story of people, is complex. People can – actually, people almost always do – live with conflicting emotions, conflicting conditions, complications, incoherencies, inconsistencies, and so on. You can fully believe one thing, and also another not-compatable thing, and both will still be sincere convictions. So Jews yearned to return “home”, and stayed at home, simultaneously, and managed to live with both concepts. And they lived among their neighbors, and didn’t regard them as neighbors, all at the same time. They still do.
Annie: no one was secular, in the modern sense, before modernity. Not Jews, not Christians, not Muslims, and probably not anyone else either though I won’t hazard any guesses about Asian cultures I know nothing about.
Secularism was invented by men such as Voltaire (a crass Jew-hater) and Descarte (who seems not to have thought much about Jews). Remember Charles Darwin, dismantling entire chunks of religious belief, even as he himself continued to believe and was probably uneasy by the implications of what he was doing? In historical terms, Darwin was just yesterday.
Winnica: It’s an established fact there was not a single Jewish historical text written between 1st ce (Josephus Flavius) & early 19th ce (Isaak Markus Jost). For almost 2000yrs Jews were not interested in their own or anyone else’s past, at least not enough to chronicle it. As a matter of convenience, an adequate scrutiny of past was never a primary concern within Rabbinical tradition. As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand puts it,“a secular chronological time was foreign to the ‘Diaspora time’ that was shaped by coming of Messiah”
Prof Shlomo Sand’s explanation of the birth of the MYTH of Jews as a group with a common, ethnic origin has been summarized as follows: “at a certain stage in the 19th century intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of INVENTING A PEOPLE RETROSPECTIVELY. Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as a history of a “nation” that became a wandering people that went back to its “birthplace”.
In his recent book The Invention of the Jewish People, Countering official Zionist historiography, Sand questions whether Jewish People ever existed as a national group with a common origin in Land of Israel/Palestine. He concludes that Jews should be seen as a religious community comprising a mishmash of individuals & groups that had converted to the ancient monotheistic religion but do not have any historical right to establish an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land. In short, the Jewish People, according to Sand, are not really a “people” in the sense of having a common ethnic origin and national heritage. They certainly do not have a political claim over the territory that today constitutes Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.”
The legend of the “diaspora”: While Roman Empire did brutally put down Jewish revolts in A.D. 70 & A.D. 135, Romans were not in business of ethnic cleansing. Taxes & tribute could only flow into Roman coffers from people who were continuing to work land & otherwise laboring. In any case, even if they were so inclined, Romans did not have the technological means to accomplish such a dastardly thing. So where did the Jewish diaspora come from? Sand’s answer is simple, logical &backed up with ample evidence from primary & secondary sources: While it is not so today, Judaism at that time was a proselyting religion (like Christianity &, later, Islam). Jews living elsewhere are mainly descendants of converted peoples. Ashkenazi Jews (E.European Jews) are mainly descendants of Khazars whose King converted in 8th Century. Sephardic Jews (on Iberian Peninsula & N.Africa) come from converted Berbers.
As you say, Winnica: human life is complex. A religious sense of galut does not necessarily translate into a distant “homeland”. As a matter of fact, even religious Zionists today retain the fundamental religious component of exile – distance from the Creator, lack of spiritual redemption (“mipenei hata’einu galinu me’artzenu” – for our sins we were exiled from our land). That’s why they say Next Year in Jerusalem, even if they’re sitting in the heart of the former Mughrabi Quarter now known as Rehavat ha-Kotel.
The bottom line, if I may recapitulate, is that Zionism believes that Jews will always be out of place except as masters in “their own” land. This is not inherent to Jewish tradition or experience, but a modern reinterpretation of the concepts of exile and redemption – one of many.
Galut was a spiritual concept and not a physical concept until Spanish or Portuguese converso returnees brought a confused amalgam of Catholic and Jewish theology into the Jewish community.
Annie-
I think it all depends on the way one defines the term zionism.
Of course there where no “Zionists” prior to the late 19 century since the term was only invented then. However once you examine some of the basic ideas of Zionism you realize that they were always part and parcel of jewish identity. Thus before the first secular Zionist stepped on the land of Israel orthodox charedi jews were already involved in establishing new communities (mea shearim, petach tikva. Rosh pina, mazkeret batya), Engaging in agriculture and attempting to make Israel once more a viable country fo jews, all as part of the commandment of “yishuv haretz” – settling the land [of Israel].
Latter on many of these same chareidi jews became fierce opponents of Zionism because of Zionism’s strong secular streak and because of disagreement with the methods and values espoused by Zionism not because of a denial the basic Jewish connection to the land of Israel or the dream of rebuilding it.
Blake –
“It’s an established fact there was not a single Jewish historical text written between 1st ce (Josephus Flavius) & early 19th ce (Isaak Markus Jost)”
What you write is fairly ridiculous. As I am writing these words I can think of half a dozen historical writing during the aforementioned period. for example: large parts of Talmud and medrash, eegeret rav shrira gaon, shalshelet hakabala, seder hadorot, shevet yehuda, tzemach david.
Pray tell, how can an established fact ignore all the sources I mentioned?
benedict,
With the exception of Mea Shearim (which was simply badly-needed housing), the settlements you named were all founded and populated by Zionists in the modern sense (albeit religious Zionists) – with the help of the Hovevei Tziyon movement and Baron Edmond de Rothschild.
Even in his prophecy and argument for establishing a state for the Jews- in Der Judenstaat (1896) – Herzl was not trying to return to the promised land of the Jews, rather he was merely dreaming of a new land, any land- not necessarily Palestine, he would have settled for a place in Uganda or Russia for that matter – that could well be the home for a new society of emancipated seculars like himself.
The Zionists could have settled somewhere else than Palestine, Uganda for example, as Herzl had proposed at the Sixth Zionist Congress
Judaism was an important international religion in the earlier centuries CE. Its relationship with the Romans was quite complex, with Jewish people in high positions and with yet another Jewish Revolt, this time entirely outside Palestine (indicating a strong Jewish presence in many places), around 115, not well reported but probably extremely bloody. And the Jewish forces east of Roman territory had their own stories.
Still, since converts are regarded as fully Jewish it was presumably always the intention of Palestinian Jews to share their patrimony with any converts whom they had accepted and with those converts’ descendants. So it would seem that the rights of a convert and their families are equal to the rights of Jewish people whose bloodline connects them to ancient Palestine with the fullest purity. Conversion may well bring with it a desire for and a sense of entitlement to the patrimony of very full strength.
But of course you don’t have a right to a thing because you want it, however strongly and totally, and you don’t make any proposition true by wanting it to be true or by thinking that it is true, even with the greatest passion. And it is not right to assign political rights by reference to principles based on a religion that not everyone shares. Political rights in any polity arise equally for all because of, and only because of, genuinely peaceful residence in the appropriate place.
ANNIE- Winnica’s comment concerning no secular Jews, or secular anybody prior to the enlightenment and modernity is essentially correct. One thing we must all keep in mind is that it is both natural and an error to project our current reality onto past events. Two quick examples. Classical Judaism, which was the only Judaism up until about two-hundred years ago, was most similar to what we now refer to as Orthodox Judaism. Reform Judaism didn’t exist and Jerry Seinfeld would have been subjected to Rabbinical discipline. Things were different then. A lot different. The second example concerns Islam. While Islam has been relatively tolerant of both Christians and Jews as believers in the book, Islam historically has been quite harsh towards infidels, that is, secular folk. Separation of church and state is a modern concept necessitated by the need for capitalism to wrest social control away from religion justified monarchy. A short and highly informative book on historical Judaism and how it relates to Israel and the Diaspora is “Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years” by Israel Shahak, one of Israel’s greatest dissidents.
And they lived among their neighbors, and didn’t regard them as neighbors, all at the same time. They still do.
winnica, a wealth of information. it’s always so informative when a jew speaks for jews as if they were all the same.
keith, it is just hard for me to grasp there weren’t always people like me who were atheist. they must have existed.
ANNIE- Of course there were atheists way back when! They were called withches and burned at the stake. In this regard, the monotheistic religions were much more strict than the fun loving pagans. To be accused of heresy was no joke.
Epicurean atheism is an ancient Jewish tradition ;-) Shmuel
Just the other day I heard someone on the TV refer to himself as a “gastronomic Jew”.
settling in uganda would have been colonialism with eventual native resistance to be expected. unless the settlers came not to conquer but as welcomed immigrants.
Look, Blake, if you say the sun rises in the west, it still rises in the east.
As for Sand, whose book I read very carefully and a number of times before I reviewed it, even he doesn’t say what you’re saying he said. But even if he had it would make no difference. He can’t make the sun rise in the west, either, tho he does try valiantly.
Pray tell, how can an established fact ignore all the sources I mentioned?
Sand’s assertion that Jews wrote no history of themselves from Josephus to the 19th century is a little cryptic, but he cites Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, who indeed argues, in Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, that Judaism did not produce historiography in the sense of the chronicles found in the Christian world (although it did produce some “historical writings”), until the Modern Era. Yerushalmi does not see this as a shortcoming, but the result of a different approach to history and memory.
link to books.google.it
Please do not repeat Khazar fallacy. Khazars left descendants, Karaim, who are not “rabbinical Jews”.
It is enough to imagine Welch diasporah returning to England to restore Arthurian kingdom and throwing all English out except for some remnants in East Anglia.
The most logical aspect of Zionism is that Israel is needed as a safe home to Jews. And because Israel is in constant danger … Wait a minute — what good is a safe place if it is in constant danger?
So Sand *doesnt* say what Blake claims but at the same time makes a valiant attempt to do just that. Get some rest, your Hasbara is getting increasingly sloppy.
Shmuel,
I don’t understand why you describe sands contention that there was no historical Jewish writing prior to 19 century as “cryptic”. A simpler and more accurate description will be that he is just plain wrong.
Yerushalmis book seems to be very interesting. The way he describes and compares various modes of historical memory is definitely fascinating. Yet nothing he writes even remotely supports blakes (or sands) position.
I guess blake doesn’t really understand the issues involved. He is merely copy past. As for sand he seems to be a charlatan.
benedict,
Sand’s statement is terse and an oversimplification, but it is consistent with Yerushalmi’s thesis (to which he refers in his footnote – n. 74 in the Hebrew edition – also mentioning a number of examples of Jewish historical writings).
Blake’s exaggeration of Sand’s statement, without qualification, is simply wrong.
You can say a lot of things about Sand (and many have), but a charlatan he is not.
“While Islam has been relatively tolerant of both Christians and Jews as believers in the book, Islam historically has been quite harsh towards infidel that is, secular folk.” could you flesh that out a bit, what do you mean by secular folk, say abu ala alma’ari say
“Al-Ma’arri’s skepticism of all religions reminds us of Xenophanes, Carvaka, and Lucretius, and does not re-appear in Western thought until the Enlightenment. He was equally sarcastic towards the religions of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Al-Ma’arri remarked that monks in their cloisters or devotees in their mosques were blindly following the beliefs of their locality: if they were born among Magians or Sabians they would have become Magians or Sabians. Al-Ma’arri was a rationalist who valued reason above tradition or revelation. Like Carvaka he saw religion in general as a human institution invented as a source of power and income for its founders and priesthood, who pursued worldly ends with forged documents attributed to divine inspiration. Like Vardhamana and the Jains, al-Ma’arri believed in the sanctity of life, urging that no living creature should be harmed. He became a vegetarian and opposed all killing of animals, and the use of animal skins for clothing.”
er and a wiki
” In fact, religious and political life developed distinct spheres of experience, with independent values, leaders, and organizations. From the middle of the tenth century effective control of the Arab-Muslim empire had passed into the hands of generals, administrators, governors, and local provincial lords; the Caliphs had lost all effective political power. Governments in Islamic lands were henceforth secular regimes – Sultanates – in theory authorized by the Caliphs, but actually legitimized by the need for public order. Henceforth, Muslim states were fully differentiated political bodies without any intrinsic religious character, though they were officially loyal to Islam and committed to its defense.[10]
In the same period, religious communities developed independently of the states or empires that ruled them. The ulama regulated local communal and religious life by serving as judges, administrators, teachers, and religious advisers to Muslims. The religious elites were organized according to religious affiliation into Sunni schools of law, Shi’ite sects, or Sufi tariqas. [...] In the wide range of matters arising from the Shari’a – the Muslim law – the ‘ulama’ of the schools formed a local administrative and social elite whose authority was based upon religion. Thus though the Muslim madhahib were not organized in the same way as Christian churches, they had many of the religious and social functions we associate with churches. But whether or not we wish to speak of churches, religious organizations, institutions, personnel and activities were clearly separate from the ruling regimes.[11]
As long as two decades ago, Sir Hamilton Gibb, in his essay ‘Constitutional Organization’, showed that Muslim political thinkers themselves had become aware of the separation of state and religion and recognized the emergence of an autonomous sphere of religious activity and organization. For example, Ibn Taymiyya held that apart from the Caliphate, the ulama constituted the true umma of Islam, and that ruling regimes were ‘Muslim’ regimes not by any intrinsic quality but by virtue of the support they lent the Muslim religion and religious communities.[12]
In early Islamic philosophy, Averroes presented an argument in The Decisive Treatise providing a justification for the emancipation of science and philosophy from official Ash’ari{ al ashari was a rationalist( mautazalite) dissident, the dominant theology of the first two hundred years of the muslim period) theology, thus Averroism has been considered a precursor to modern secularism.[13][14]“
The fundamental tenet of nationalist/Romantic pre-Zionism, perhaps? I’m not that familiar with the Wandering Jew story and its variations but isn’t there one where the wandering Ahasuerus starts old and grows steadily younger, his beard blacker by the day? A stranger everywhere and therefore stronger and more independent than anyone? You could accept the dignity of this position, if that was how you saw things, or else exchange it for a return to what nationalists conceive as normality, taking the Zionist horn of the dilemma.
what sharp experience? is he talking about native americans, or the descendents of african slaves?
“Hear, O Israel” will have to be modernized from the old fashioned Deuteronomy 6:4 to something acceptable to Gorenberg.
Phil,
It isn’t Gorenberg who says that Israel is at the heart of Jewish identity. It’s the entirety of Jewish life and creation until sometime in the 19th century, when for the first time in millennia some European Jews, first in France and then in Germany, tried to create a version of Judaism which would be disconnected from Jewish nationalism and the idea of the centrality of the homeland. This new concept had its run for a few generations during which a large majority of the Jews never subscribed to it; after the Shoah it was laid to rest. Here and there one can find small groups of Jews who would like to revive the idea, but this is mostly a lost case. Having wished for something for centuries, it will be hard to write it off now that it’s here. As of 2012, a large majority of the Jewish people is Zionist in one form or another.
So far for the facts. Now, one can say that if the Jews support Israel they must all be racists and worse, as is often suggested here at Mondoweiss: that’s one way of seeing it. Another is that the descriptions of Israel here at MW bear very little connection to reality, and most Jews in the world know perfectly well that there’s no problem in being democratic, and humanist, and Zionist. Having lived among Jews in many countries, I think most of them disagree with the Mondoweiss portrayal, and are comfortable with a complex identity which recognizes tensions in reality wthout insisting on black-and-white dichotomies.
Israel is at the heart of Jewish identity. It’s the entirety of Jewish life
apparently, not for everyone.
for the first time in millennia some European Jews, first in France and then in Germany, tried to create a version of Judaism which would be disconnected from Jewish nationalism and the idea of the centrality of the homeland. This new concept had its run for a few generations during which a large majority of the Jews never subscribed to it; after the Shoah it was laid to rest. Here and there one can find small groups of Jews who would like to revive the idea, but this is mostly a lost case.
you make it sound like every jew was a zionist at heart for all that time and there was this spurt of non zionism that tried to exert itself for a little while but went kapoot.
not sure if i can really buy that theory.
Here’s a potted history of Judaism, Annie. Judaism has always been grounded in books. The fundamental book, of course, is the Bible (Old Testament), which is mostly the story of the Jews in their land, and partially a story of Jews pining for their land (Izekiel, say, and Daniel). Then you’ve got the Talmud, a 5,500-page communal creation written over 500 years in the first five centuries after the destruction of Jerusalem. There is no book more central in Judaism. Written in a mishmash of Hebrew and Aramaic, with no punctuation and extreme brevity of wording, it must be studied, not read. I’ve done about 4,000 of the 5,500 pages so far, and estimate that the land of Israel is mentioned about every second page, on average, in one form or another.
Concurrent to the Talmud you’ve got the various forms of Midrash (hermeneutical literature). That’s all about the land of Israel and the Jews’ life on it.
The mediaeval literature (thousands of books) is all about the Bible (which took place where, you’ll remember) and the Talmud (see above). The Kaballa is all about the Exile and Redemption.
Empty the land of Israel from Jewish liturgy and all you’ll have left will be Swiss cheese.
As I’ve said above, in the 19th century some Europeans (not the majority in any country) but not the Muslims seemed to be offering the Jews a new path. The first important historical figure to do this was Napoleon, who insisted the Jews could be good Frenchmen if they gave up the nationalism of their Jewishness and parts of their outlandish tradition (from his perspective). Over the next 150 years a minority of European Jews tried to take him up on his offer, with mixed results.
So yes, to your question, Annie: for most of the three millennia of Jewish history, most Jews regarded Israel as their homeland, and spent part of their spiritual and cultural lives engaging with it. This isn’t to say they all pined to move there at all moments, of course not. But the centrality of the land in Judaism cannot be denied. Even when things changed in the 19th century, at any given moment a majority of Jews always retained a version of the traditional position.
Habits die hard, and this one isn’t dying. The Phil Weisses of this world may hope otherwise, but it’s not going to happen. You can’t create a sustainable version of Judaism which doesn’t regard Israel as the homeland, and still call it Judaism. It has never been done (note my use of the word “sustainable”), and there’s no sign it will happen anytime in the future.
Winnica,
No one in their right mind would argue that the Land of Israel is not central to Jewish religious tradition and literature – as the land of the Covenant and future redemption (understood in various ways in traditional literature as well).
The question is, how did that element of Jewish culture make the transition to modernity in which divine covenants and supernatural redemption were no longer what they used to be. Some turned it into a form of organic nationalism that was all the rage at the time, while others sought redemption in ethics, social justice, new lands, new statuses in old lands, science, music, art, literature, etc. Theologians such as Hermann Cohen saw the diaspora as both the essence of the covenant and the path to redemption. A.I. Kook took a different view, and Yoelish of Satmar (probably closer to Cohen than to Kook in this regard) yet another.
“Empty the land of Israel from Jewish liturgy and all you’ll have left will be Swiss cheese.”
It’s not about the land. It’s about how to live in a difficult world. And torturing the neighbours never works long term. The land is desecrated when Israelis torture on it.
Judaism along with the rest of religion needs to be retuned for climate change. There is no second planet.
And don’t get me started on what Israel has meant for the environment.
“most Jews regarded Israel as their homeland…”
It was a metaphor!
Less than 400 years ago, all stories were metaphors and symbolic of the abstract.
Israel was never a physical place. Only in the modern mind of embracing blut und boden ideologies. That started about 170 years ago in central Europe. Tied in with romanticism, ideas of “Heimat.” Stuff like that.
And that spawned justifications of the more “modern” Colonial enterprises, all of which used religion as a justification. And Israel is a relic of this colonialist and ultimately racists mind set.
The idea that “most of the three millennia of Jewish history, most Jews regarded Israel as their homeland, and spent part of their spiritual and cultural lives engaging with it.” are the words of someone who is completely brainwashed and has embraced the Golden Calf — conceiving of the spiritual as physical.
I can never figure out why, if Jews were so eager for the homeland in Israel, why didn’t every single Jew return to Jerusalem from Babylon when Cyrus was supporting Jews there? Instead, around 40% of Jews who had been exiled to Babylon remained there — left behind??
And why did Esther have 75000 Persians AND the Persian prime minister AND Persian King Ahaseurus’s 10 sons killed, and why did Mordechai have himself installed as prime minister of Persia, and Esther as queen of Persia, if their longing was for “zion?” They were not only free to return to Jerusalem, they were supported by Cyrus in doing so.
And why do Jews celebrate Esther and Mordechai TO THIS DAY, when they did NOT return to zion but stayed in Persia?
for most of the three millenia, jews, like everyone else, have been preoccupied with the day to day. so what if on passover, “next year in jerusalem” is recited? what’s this in comparison to more than a thousand years of continuous residence by palestinians? as for a sustainable version of judaism, how about peace on earth and goodwill to all living beings? not just saying it, working to attain it.
…are the words of someone who is completely brainwashed and has embraced the Golden Calf — conceiving of the spiritual as physical. Ellen
I think Winnica has embraced more than the Golden Calf. What we have here in my opinion is an agent from Hasbara Central.
First, Esther is a tale, a tall tale with no historical value.
2nd, the people who were killed we Amelek, not Persian. Amelek were already duly exterminated in prior books of the Bible, so some commentators reasonably concluded that Haman was Armenian, so “we” should hate the Armenian for being Amelek, and fake Amelek at that.
The Book Of Esther is not supported by any historical evidence but it’s a tale with a strong moral: We Jews can prevent any attempt to exterminate us by rescuing ourselves, and we may even be able to exact good revenge–to survive we need to embed ourselves in the halls of power wherever we live.
“not sure if i can really buy that theory.”
me either.
A country as a religion, too weird…..it’s like primitives who use to worship and make sacrifices to volcanoes and other earthly objects.
what scares me about Christian zionism in the US is that they can bring about an “Easter Island” situation in the United States — they will consume all their resources in order to worship their idols, and be left to starve.
A country as a religion, too weird…..it’s like primitives who use to worship and make sacrifices to volcanoes and other earthly objects.
Yes, a great description, American.
” too weird…..it’s like primitives who use to worship and make sacrifices to volcanoes and other earthly objects.”
I think that “primative,” so-called, earth religions are much less weird than those which are focused on unseen dieties, spirits, etc. At the very least, the person making a sacrifice to a volcano has some evidence that the volcano exists and is actually powerful, even if he is mistaken as to what it is. The same cannot be said for someone who sacrifices to Oden or YHWH or Ganesh or the like.
also, if what you suggest is true (“Israel is at the heart of Jewish identity. It’s the entirety of Jewish life”) why wouldn’t it be appropriate to call most jews israel firsters?
It’s the entirety of Jewish life and creation until sometime in the 19th century, when for the first time in millennia some European Jews, first in France and then in Germany, tried to create a version of Judaism which would be disconnected from Jewish nationalism and the idea of the centrality of the homeland.
Really? No God? No Torah? No Mitzvot? Just an incredibly precocious predilection for blood and soil? Sounds almost anti-Semitic to me (Annie seems to have picked up on that as well).
The fact is that Zionism – like Jewish Reform, Neo-Orthodoxy and other movements – was a 19th century attempt by Judaism to contend with modernity. And Jews weren’t the only ones. Everyone was doing it. The historical break was with traditional religion and society, and Zionism was only one answer – no more (and possibly less) “authentic” than any other.
This overlooks that with the coming of the French Revolution came the modern version of citizenship which became the right of individuals, not of groups. Religious leaders, including rabbis, no longer were the necessary go-betweens that separated the rabble from the rulers. This released people from the old and necessary group identity to a whole new range of identities based on individual sensibilities. Loyalty was transferred from the group to the nation state. Nineteenth Century rabbis remined Jews in Poland that their loyalty was owed to the nation including the obligation to serve in Poland’s military.
I think that Locke had worked out a theory of individual rights 100 years before the French revolution. A theory of individual rights was the necessary alternative to a theory of compulsory conformity in the aftermath of the Reformation.
” I think most of them disagree with the Mondoweiss portrayal, and are comfortable with a complex identity which recognizes tensions in reality wthout insisting on black-and-white dichotomies.”…..Winnica
The ‘complex identity’ of Jews and whether or not they are comfortable with it, is not the deciding factor that counts when it becomes a political issue in a nation that is not a Jewish state and conflicts with the majority.
The reality is the only way for that kind of complex identity of loyalities or attachments to exist without being challenged and or condemned is for it to stay cultural and not become political.
and exactly how has the existence of a so-called jewish state resolved this ‘complex identity’ dilemma? are there no longer ‘black-and-white dichotomies’? and are israeli jews so tension-free that they never have to wrestle with thoughts such as why the hell did i ever leave the u.s. of a., &/or how do i get out of this trap?
Apartheid colonialism is at the heart of Jewish identity, Gorenberg says.
We can only hope not.
Think about how, how many years are we away from the fact that most of the Jews in the world will be in Israel? I wouldn’t be surprised if most Jewish newborn were born in Israel already.
Zionism will only dominate more and more of Jewish life, and this false conflation between Zionism and Judaism is killing me.
These people, by constantly playing the anti-Semitism card, are debasing it. I am seeing real anti-Semitism emerge, and it scares me. I’ve become blinded by it, naturally dismissive. I don’t even flinch when I read things like “The Jews have too much influence in America, problem is that most American Jews care more about Israel than their own country”.
I wasn’t until a good 20 seconds, after I had already closed the page, that I realised what I had read and I didn’t even react one bit, until afterwards. It makes you think how much more of that stuff you read and don’t even remember reading.
That scares me.
Hopefully Zionist (both Christian and Jewish) will get over the idea of the abstract country (as all countries are only abstract judicial borders) has nothing to do with a religion and culture.
No reason to be “afraid.” The one who is fearful, is controlled.
How often do we hear you cannot trust Catholics because they are Papists……or Muslims are terrorists. Groups such as Muslim or even African Americans have MUCH more to be fearful of than any.
when a jewish billionaire israel-firster can decide who’ll be president, why is it antisemitic to point this out? and when most of the neocons who pushed for the iraq war also happen to be jewish israel-firsters, shouldn’t the public know about this? if, that is the public’s to decide on, say, matters of war and peace? what has to be avoided, of course, is the “therefore, all jews are israel-firsters.” zionists make it difficult for the public not to infer this, however, with their claim that israel speaks for all jews. the increasing number of jews in the palestinian liberation movement puts the lie to this claim.
@Krauss,
“The Jews have too much influence in America, problem is that most American Jews care more about Israel than their own country”.
Now you can understand why many American Gentiles with open eyes are rooting for the American Jews who care more the US and human rights than an apartheid state that claims to represent them. Unfortunately, many of the influential, organized, super-wealthy American Jews fall into the category of caring more about Israel than their own country, and they weild their influence accordingly; they are single-issue contributors. They make no bones about it; they state it openly. So are you saying that truth = anti-semitism?
FPM
I read that Adelson is not a single issue booster of Gingrich: he also hates unions and Social Security.
Makes one despair: is it better when Sheldon Adelson focuses on his foreign hobby or domestic preoccupations?
Gorenberg is right on.
“The interesting insight here is that Israel has now become the basis of American Jewish identity. And so if you Americans lose Israel, there goes Jewish life.” is a misread of Gorenberg’s point.
He is describing the commonly stated liberal Zionist theme that there is an existential communal connection between American Jews and Israeli, and a reasonable criticism of Israeli policies and practices.
I think it is accurate to describe that the shift from sympathy with Zionism, even with severe criticisms, to antipathy for Zionism, is part of the process in the vast majority that undertake that, of renunciation of Judaism.
Peter Beinart writes and speaks about Phil’s point of Zionism instead of individual spiritual and community engagement as comprising too much of American Jewish identity.
Beinart writes about the substantive effort to continue to run and attend Jewish education and ongoing ritual as that effort, to make Judaism a phenomena that happens here, not only there.
The generation gap issues are not new at all in Jewish community.
I, and likely Phil, very very rarely spoke of Israel at all. Even at 14, we did speak of Vietnam and civil rights.
I guess ultimately all Jewish discussion of Israel is either in denial or else trying to see a way out of the darkness that the Zionist project has unleashed.
link to haaretz.com
“A Jewish minority in enlightened countries cannot identify with a country that passes racist laws, persecutes human rights groups and besmirches the press. Some lovers of Israel have found a way to preserve their connection to the country by supporting groups that defend Israeli democracy.
Most of them, especially the younger generation, prefer to cut their ties. They are ashamed of us.”
Gorenberg is still in denial
“Israel presents the opportunity for Jews to have power over their lives as a collective”
What about the sentence that preceded that one?
“the only way for people to act morally is to have power over their lives”
Is that true?
Also, what if “the only way to have power over” your life is to have power over somebody else’s life?
Safe to say that’s a terrible position to be in if it’s true?
“The critical contribution that diaspora Jews can make in engagement with Israel is to remind those of us here of the sharp experience of being the outsider, the stranger, so that we Israelis don’t forget where we came from.”
Three more questions.
1) By “the outsider, the stranger” does he mean the Palestinians?
2) Is that “the critical contribution”?
3) Does “where we came from” outweigh “what we’re doing”? and “where we’re going”? and “what we’ve become”?
Your remark about the Palestinian stranger points out just how extraordinary, convoluted and horrible this pseudo-moralistic essay is.
It’s a Christian principle that those who, like Jesus on Good Friday, have no power over their lives can still act morally. I would have thought that it was a principle of Judaism too. That doesn’t prove it true, of course – but there is a good conceptual argument that even in extremely bad situations there can still be a possibility of making morally significant choices.
Collective power isn’t a high degree of individual power but a limitation on what an individual can do. Intense nationalist pressure on an individual to conform isn’t a liberating force.
RE: “Israel is at the heart of Jewish identity, Gorenberg says” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Or, as Howard Sachar puts it, Israel is a “much-loved surrogate homeland and ethnic status symbol”!
SACHAR EXCERPT:
SOURCE – link to mondoweiss.net
Ugh. I was going to pick up Gorenberg’s book, but after not recognizing his own contradictions, it just doesn’t seem worthwhile. More logic, please!
As you pointed out, Phil, the prescription for Jews in the diaspora is an expression of ethnocentricity, the exact ethnocentricity which Gorenberg asked the reader to reject in the previous paragraph!
“Think about it: You don’t believe in the inborn superiority of particular ethnic groups any more than you believe in the opposite, the inherent inferiority of ethnic groups.”
Think about it, Gorenberg! Then don’t ask for a Jewish majority in a sovereign state on somebody else’s land!
Does he really want to say that? Child torture, apartheid, racism, segretation, dispossession, espionage, political assassinations, massacres – all of that at the heart of Jewish identity? I wouldn’t have thought he would be so anti-semitic to suggest such a horrific thing.
It’s funny: You listen and read jewish sources and, in a variety of different forms, you commonly hear as Phil puts it that indeed Israel is “the basis for American jewish identity.”
Sure would be nice though to hear at least *some* equally nice, clear, direct discussion of what this means for their identification with me and my country.
I would be interested to know whether you can have more than one identity in this sense, how you possess, acquire and divest yourself of them.
Bascially SN it means trouble for everyone…to be blunt.
Here is our dilemma in the question of Jews and Israel today.
First, we have a group of Israel Firsters who do have inordinate influence in US policies and politics. We can’t deny that, it’s fact.
Then we have a entire community of specific people, some who may identify strongly and politically with a foreign nation and some who don’t, but a public that may identify them as a whole with a foreign country dangerous to their own US interest.
This is the rock and hard place in the Israel problem.
I don’t know anyone that can say exactly how much support for Israel there is among the Jewish community as a whole. It ‘appears’ there is ‘general’ support for Israel among the Jewish community and I say appears based on regional Jewish publications and comments within and polls which I don’t give that much credence to since they can be skewed to reflect more support than exist.
My ‘guess’ is there is general support for Israel because of Jewish identification but it is probably like the much touted American support of Israel…3,000 miles wide and only an inch deep…if push ever came to shove.
So the question is how can you disabuse a group of people who are in some ways like a third or fourth US political party of the belief that they can merge their dedication to their foreign homeland, so to speak, with their rights as US citizens to exert pressure for their other land? Or there is any way they could do this without conflict with other citizens it is imposed on?
How do you do that in a strong enough way to make them accept this isn’t acceptable to the majority of the country and make them as a community in enough numbers denounce and turn away from the US zionist exceptionalist meme without doing it in a way that would be construed as anti Jewish and making the public anti Jewish.
That is the problem we have….go too soft and understanding and we just perpetuate the attitudinal problem and let it continue, go too hard and we risk encouraging anti semitism where it does become a problem in the public.
Someone like myself telling a Jew attached to Israel or a Donald who holds that belief and insist that America should serve and protect a foreign country for a minority of US citizens that it is dangerous and crazy means nothing to them.
For people of this mind the rejection of their attitudes or beliefs must come from some authority …US political rejection…refusal of our government to play this role for their other country affection or loyalty.
For that reason the direct targets of our protest and ire should be the politicians who allow this kind of aberration.
I don’t see any signs of that happening though before some push to shove like Iran or similar occurs. The zionist anti semite slur has held off a lot of Americans speaking some simple un-rancorous truths for so long now that we don’t have time left to do what we should have long ago and nipped the Israel fetish in it’s political bud before it got this far.
israel firsters would have the public look upon the mideast conflict as if it concerns jews only. they also expect the public to believe that only antisemites oppose america’s unconditional support of israel. only a jewish concern, even though, should israel make good on its threat to attack iran, our sailors aboard u.s. naval vessels in the gulf of hormus would be at risk? and their playing the antisemitic card, what’s that about? intimidation, perhaps? not to fall for such tricks fellow americans, because the me conflict involves all pf is, not just jewish-americans, and because america, not israel, is our homeland.
Gorenburg is a very vain man.
“The insight here is that Israel has now become the basis of American Jewish identity. And so if you Americans lose Israel, Gorenberg warns, there goes Jewish communal life.”
Israel and Zionism have indeed become the grand unifiers of the various strands of world Jewry. What else unites Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Reformed Jews and secular Jews? The Judaic religion has splintered from the unifying orthodoxy of Classical Judaism. Zionism and Israel is the means by which blood and soil nationalism is utilized to counter the trend toward assimilation, the bane of Jewish tribalism. The “Jewish communal life” which Gorenberg fears will be lost is in reality the psychological sense of separation from the surrounding community which Jewish tribalism promotes. Zionism is an attempt to preserve Jews as a people apart, a function previously performed by Classical Judaism.
There’s a kind of “replacement theology” thing going on with Zionism. They have defined the New Jew, the New Israel and the Only True Path to Salvation. All else is heresy.
Like the Rabbinic Judaism it claims to replace, Zionism engages in pseudo-history, in order to assert that things were always so. Abraham observed all of the Rabbinic precepts, Jacob studied the Torah (in its Rabbinic sense) with Shem and Eber, and everything said by the Rabbis at Jamnia was revealed to Moses at Sinai. Abraham Ibn Ezra, Jacob Tam and Moses Maimonides were all Zionists, of course.
so preserving jews as a people apart justifies taking over someone else’s homeland? only if one considers jews to be superior to and more worthy than palestinians. and who makes this decision, certainly not palestinians. factoring in the liklihood that an israeli attack upon iran could lead to ww iii, if communal jewish life is dependent upon the existence of israel, whither israel* & STAT.
*the entity, not its people
YOURSTRULY- Of course the Zionist imperative to maintain Jews as a people apart doesn’t justify the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinians anymore than Manifest Destiny justified the ethnic cleansing and near annihilation of the Native Americans. It is important to remember, however, that group actions reflect the goals of the group elite, usually involving the struggle for power in its various forms. In order to understand the organizational dynamics behind political Zionism, we need to try to understand why Zionists do what they do. That is what this thread is all about. Gershom Gorenberg is making the case for Jewish tribal solidarity utilizing myth speak which I am attempting to translate into straight talk.
Political Zionism appears to me to be an attempt to maintain the internal cohesion and exclusivity of the Jewish tribe. We can assume that the Jewish elites perceive that this benefits them somehow, a discussion I don’t intend to pursue here. Jewish elites, like elites everywhere, are focused on power accumulation and ruthless in attaining their objectives. They are as unconcerned over the plight of the Palestinians as the American founding fathers were over the plight of the American Indians and Negro slaves, or of the rulers of empire over Iraqi and Afghanistan deaths. In my view, this is the main reason why there has been so much death and destruction down through the ages. There seems to be a tendency for positions of power to be held by power seeking sociopaths.
excellent comment keith
most jewish-americans are americans first, israelis only if they’ve been force fed zionism from an early age, and even then, dissolusionment with israel sets in quickly, once one is exposed to facts about the racist nature of the zionist entity, better, of zionism itself. as for israel being central to jewish identity, zionists can imagine this all they want, but the refusal of the overwhelming majority of jewish-americans to emigrate there says otherwise. as for some jews not feeling comfortable in america, the ease with which jews find success here suggests that, real or imagined, said uncomfortableness rarely, if ever, is an obstacle to attaining the american dream. as for the one about israel being central to jewish identity? if this is so, how come so much anti-zionism among jewish youth? brainwashing by leftist teachers? or the truth’s capacity to free us all?
“Under these intolerant political circumstances, liberal Jews must imagine other political coalitions than ones of only Jews hanging on to the idea of a majority state.”
Is there any doubt that when Gorenberg’s “universalist commitment to tikkun olam” comes up against the appeals of “Jewish communal life,” it’s the first that’s going to go, just as it always has?
“The insight here is that Israel has now become the basis of American Jewish identity. And so if you Americans lose Israel, Gorenberg warns, there goes Jewish communal life.”
If (moderaters, you do understand the word “if”, don’t you?)this is true, then American Jews are morally obliged to change their “identity” and find a different communal life. (With the neighbours, perhaps?)
damnation, i missed some good commentary. as an antidote to wineka’s seemless ‘potted history’ of judaism and his swiss cheese analogy, please read the following pertinent passages, the arguments already being ably made in previous commentary.
Political Zionism, which originated in the conditions of the late-nineteenth century eastern and central Europe, was a radical break from 2,000 years of Jewish tradition and rabbinical Judaism. . . . [L]ike other nationalist movement there, it looked for ‘historical roots’ and sought to interpret distant pasts in light of newly invented nationalist ideologies. According to American Jewish historian and theoretician of nationalism Hans Kohn, Zionist nationalism ‘had nothing to do with Jewish traditions; it was in many ways opposed to them’. Furthemore, according to the adopted German volkish theory, people of common descent should form one common state. But such ideas of tribal nationalism ran counter to those held by liberal nationalism in Western Europe, whereby equal citizenship, regardless of religion or ethnicity – not ‘common descent’ – that (sic) determined the national character of the state.
Secular Jewish nationalism is a classical case of the invention of tradition in the late-nineteenth century Europe and a synthesizing of a nation project. Political Zionism mobilized a re-imagined biblical narrative – a post-exilic tradition invented during the Persian empire by urban intellectuals many centuries after the events they describe – which was reworked in the late nineteenth century for the political purposes of a modern European movement intent on colonizing the land of Palestine. As an invented (European) tradition, Zionism was bound to be a synthesizing project. Zionism’s rejection of a perceived ‘feminized’ diaspora and its obsession with synthesizing a nation are reflected by the fact that its symbols were an amalgam, chosen not only from the Jewish religion and the militant parts of the Old Testament but also from diverse modern traditions and sources . . ..
the bible and zionism, nur masalha
Zionism borrows central ingredients from the Bible and Jewish Religion, “but gives them different meanings and contexts. These were . . . . (1) The definition of the boundaries of the collectivity as including all the Jews in the world. (2) The target territory, from the a priori perspective the emigration from Europe and establishing a society on another continent and amidst other peoples is an acceptable and legitimate practice in the context of the colonial world order. (3) Large, if selective, selections from the religious symbols of Judaism, including the Holy tongue, Hebrew, and the attempt to secularize it and to transform it to a modern language. (4) The Bible and especially the Books of Joshua, Isaiah and Amos. The Book of Joshua provided the muscular and militaristic dimension of conquest of the land and the annihilation of the Canaanites and other ancient people that populated the ‘Promised Land’, while the Books of Isaiah and Amos were considered as preaching for social justice and equality.
the invention and decline of israeliness, baruch kimmerling
Ben-Gurion’s approach to the Bible was Protestant. I should first clarify what I do not mean by Protestant: nothing that has anything to do with identity politics and the theme of identity in general. In other words, I am not arguing that Ben-Gurion, or for that matter the Zionist-Israeli settlers, were Protestants or were fond of Protestantism in a simple, straightforward way. That is not the point. The point is, rather, that the modern resort to the Old Testament in a certain way is perforce Protestant, as the earlier contextual presentation of what was termed a history of the prefix re has shown. The certain way of resorting to the Old Testament has three related characteristics: the direct approach to the text, and the concomitant disregard for (and removal of) the layers of commentary that mediate between the reading individual and the scriptures; the assumption that it is the right of the individual subject to engage with the scriptures precisely because he is an individual subject; the emphasis laid upon the narrative parts of the Old Testament, under the assumption that the narrative is veracious, and that its occurrence is a source of authoritative legitimating for all sorts of returns, re-enactments, re-establishments and restorations.
For Ben-Gurion pushing the Talmud and Mishnah to one side, and addressing the Old Testament directly, as an autonomous and authoritative interpreting subject was a central constituent of his negation of exile, which receives ample attention in my book and I shall dwell on it here. Ben-Gurion’s removal of the Jewish commentary literature is precisely analogous to the Protestant removal of the Catholic commentary literature. Then there is the resort to the Bible, which is not just Protestant, but Protestant-settler. Zeev Herzog, perhaps the most radical among the critical Israeli archaelogists, has marvelled at the opposition to one of their main theses that Early Israel emerged out of a very long long process, in which various autochthonous elements had been fused into one “ethnicity” (whatever that means). Wouldn’t this be a viable ideological alternative, Herzog asks, to the biblical narrative of conquest, annihilation and settlement? The obvious answer that Herzog cannot see, perhaps does not wish to see, is precisely that the project for which the Old Testament has been mobilised is a settler one; and it is a settler project not only in terms of the conquest of land and labour, of settlement patterns and institutions, but also in terms of historical consciousness, ideology and literary imagination. And for settler nations there is a twofold sine qua non, as the American biblical archaeologist W.F. Albright exemplified so tangibly: invasion and conquest as a foundational origin, and ethnic purity and impregnability vis-à-vis the indigenous population.
The uniqueness and boldness of Ben-Gurion’s exegeses lie in the attempt to square the circle and make the oxymoron “autochthonous settler” look feasible. In other words, Ben-Gurion’s reading of the Book of Joshua, and in a related way Genesis, is an exegetical attempt to endow the Hebrew nation with an autochthonous origination, but simultaneously to retain the formative foundation of conquest and ethnic purity. Although Ben-Gurion’s daring biblical exegesis is not unknown, its content, with two exceptions that miss the Protestant-settler foundation entirely , has not been seriously addressed and the significance of the ideological enterprise just stated has gone unnoticed or at the very least misunderstood.
an autochthonous settler’s bible: ben-gurion reads the book of Joshua, gabriel piterberg
so, no, 19-20th century zionism is not a natural outgrowth of a multi-millennia erertz israel project.
Very helpful excerpts indeed, marc b. Piterberg on Ben-Gurion’s “daring biblical exegesis” caught my attention.
MHughes writes upthread that “A theory of individual rights was the necessary alternative to a theory of compulsory conformity in the aftermath of the Reformation.” Such a theory would have been in the air B-G breathed. If the Protestants could interpret their bible, why not the Jews?
and another thing, if anyone has had the opportunity to read shalom auslander’s ‘hope: a tragedy’ (i haven’t yet), it seems from what i have read/heard, that his writing, fiction and non-fiction, might add a fews strands to this discussion of jewish identity, the so-called ‘replacement’ of the bible with the holocaust as the primary ‘text’ for jewish identity, etc. or something like that.
MARC B- “…add a fews strands to this discussion of jewish identity, the so-called ‘replacement’ of the bible with the holocaust as the primary ‘text’ for jewish identity, etc. or something like that.”
In “The Wandering Who?”, Gilad Atzmon quotes Uri Avnery as follows: “Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an observant Orthodox Jew, told me once: ‘The Jewish religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from the Holocaust.’”