In the latest Commentary, Hillel Halkin, a New York-born columnist for the Forward who made aliyah after the 6-Day War and who I have pointed out before sees the Bible as a deed to the land of Israel for the Jewish people (that’s forward-thinking!), confronts the problem of Avraham Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset whose prophetic criticisms of Israeli society as militaristic and colonialist I’ve praised and The New Yorker has covered quite respectfully.
Halkin’s having none of Burg. He says that in the "intellectual war" that is on now over Israel for American and European and Israeli minds, Burg is a Benedict Arnold.
One of the greatest dangers facing Israel is that, under this kind of unrelenting pressure, its intellectual elite will eventually "crack" in precisely the way that Avraham Burg has cracked. A country whose best minds no longer believe in it is a country whose ordinary minds will sooner or later follow. The only way to contain apostasy is, as Jews traditionally have done, to place the apostate beyond the pale. Yosef Burg’s son should be made to understand that this is where he is now.
Maybe Halkin’s right: that is the traditional punishment. And traditionally adulterers should be killed. What modern people do in this situation is to try and deal with the crisis in their society, by seeking to reform it…
