This is part five of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Word on the Congolese street is that our intrepid French decolonizer, Victoria Fontan, who I will write about in the near future, attended a Pentecostal church service there. Being an intensely secular daughter of French republican tradition, she was shocked by some of what she saw and heard as Jesus Christ was extolled for more than two hours. If you’re not into something like that, church can feel like eternity itself. Then it got interesting. Israel entered the picture as the featured guest of all things good surrounded by all things evil which no doubt translated into Palestinians.
As I’ve often thought, in the end there will only be two supporters of Israel around the world, the Jewish establishment and evangelical Christians. When you think how evangelical Christians celebrate Israel, the (un)reality should strike fear into every living Jew and Palestinian. Along with a boat load of others, including those Americans who watched the Republican primary debates this spring. The debates were an “I love Israel more than you” competition. And by the way, nuke Iran. So (un)real
Can’t remember whether she saw an Israeli flag in the church as is often the case. But lo and behold, on my walk today to pick up some errant food items I noticed the American flag proudly being flown in front of a home. Then I noticed with another flag right beside it – the Israeli flag. I took a picture as I have of the rabbi’s home – the mezuzah on the beach. Perhaps a book cover to be, both pictures side by side.
Kairos, the right or opportune moment. If South Africa is not us but only the image we see reflected back in the mirror, as in – we are on the verge of becoming, or have become, everything we loathed about our oppressors – then as Jews who are we? If kairos is Greek and Kairos documents abound, migrating now to Palestine and recently to America as Christian responses to the heresy their co-religionists propogate, what time is Jewish time? What, Jewishly-speaking is the right or opportune moment?
First, let’s step back for a moment. It isn’t clear to me at all that bad behavior on the part of Christians is aberrational or heretical. Not by a long shot. The civil war among Christians moves to the very heart of the way Christians have practiced their faith historically. So much of that history has been violent toward Jews but that is only part of Christianity’s amazingly violent history. In fact, a majority of Christians around the world were conquered by Christianity or, as I often think of it, they were “conquered by the Gospels.” If violence has been with Christianity since its founding, it is a stretch to call it heretical. When does heresy become the norm? When we label actions heretical is it a call to reform a faith community or the need to create something radically new?
Perhaps this isn’t the time to think Christian in negative terms. Let the present-day good stuff roll. It’s easy for Jews to get off cheap shots at Christian history. Easy target! The hard truth is that parts of Christianity have a taken global turn for the better and are content to leave the Ken Starr’s of our world to draw their million dollar plus salaries. Christians interested in global justice are fighting the right-wingers tooth and nail. Even if part of their fight is to prove to themselves and others that Christianity took a wrong turn eons ago, what the hell, let’s root them on. Besides, there is a lesson here for Jews, since we are taking the exact same wrong turn that Christians took more than fifteen hundred years ago. This may be part of our newly acquired empire fate. Fifteen hundred years from now we may be arguing whether being Jewish isn’t violence, injustice and atrocity – only.
This argument is already brewing. Wherever I travel the reception of Jewishness is difficult at best. Admittedly, I often travel off the global Jewish track. Most Jews today hardly wander beyond America’s shores. Europe is far as most will go. Even in Europe it’s tough sledding. If you really want a Jewish workout try Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa or almost anywhere else on the globe. Few want to hear about “Jewish.” Fewer still about the Holocaust. Israel is considered a pariah. In relation to Israel, the most frequent word I hear applied is genocide. The reference is to Palestinians not the Holocaust.
But what do they know, I hear the doyens of the Jewish establishment (safely tucked away in New York and Los Angeles) speak in unison. Of “Jewish” they know little, I respond. However, what they do know is not far off. It isn’t fantasy or made up. I can and sometimes do advise my interlocutors of the nuances that might make some difference in their thinking. However, I don’t try to turn them around. I listen to the line they’ve drawn in the sand. That line is freedom for Palestinians. I share that line.
Besides genocide, the word routinely applied to Israel is “colonialism.” By association colonialism is also applied to “Jewish.” As in, Israel is, Jews are. Reality and myth become one. Disentangling the two without losing the main thread is almost impossible. Is it worth the time and effort?
Especially when the jetlag kicks in, I wonder. Yet when I speak the truth as a Jew, the audience’s built-up anger often gives way to a hope that the Jewish community is divided and that the struggle within the Jewish community is real. Then I wonder if such a hope is real, if my own expression of what I see and want doesn’t function as a panacea that serves as a cover to protect Jews and Israel. That’s the modus operandi of Progressive Jews. I can’t abide stupid things said about Jews. I want to avoid using a fake honesty to cover our injustice.
Parenthetically, I don’t delude myself into thinking that Jews of Conscience transcend other parts of the Jewish world. I experience Empire and Progressive Jewish sensibilities within me. I want to be empowered. I want to cover over the realities of what we are doing. I want to be honest. I also want another way. The only way forward is through a brutal honesty. This is how I claim my Jewishness. But it is certainly not because I am above or have transcended the Jewish condition. Claiming my Jewishness is a choice. It also carries a cost.
The Jewish establishment has more or less given up on the world outside of America. Years ago the newly minted countries emerging from the colonized world were lost to Israel, then more and more of Europe. Now Israel – with America by its side – stands alone in the world. Exempting, of course, Germany, Israel’s great friend, who proudly provides nuclear submarines for Israel’s navy.
What a great friend Israel has in Germany. Israel is being armed to the teeth by the country that provided industrial mass death for Jews without losing any sleep over it. Until it was over. I wonder if Germany – and America – is preparing Israel for another round of fatedness, this time through an “unbreakable” friendship.
So kairos, that Greek moment, translated into Jewish. Or is it the other way around? Regardless, we know it well. Kairos translated into Jewish is the prophetic, the indigenous of the people Israel.
“…Fifteen hundred years from now we may be arguing whether being Jewish isn’t violence, injustice and atrocity – only…”
This is a point. I consider myself pretty broadly educated — but I really couldn’t tell you with any precision what ‘Jewishness’ consists of. I wonder if many Jews could.
I can, however, tell you in great detail what Israel is and does. So ‘Judaism’ is becoming the sum of Israel’s crimes. That’s not really the best survival strategy I’ve ever heard of.
There really is an irony here. Hitler — the arch-fiend — used to endlessly go on about a massive Jewish conspiracy to do down everyone else in general and the Germans in particular. This conspiracy consisted of more or less cloaked control of political parties, financial machinery, the press, labor movements, and so on.
It was transparently absurd then. But in their efforts to protect and exalt Israel, many Jews and their sympathizers are actually lending a veneer of plausibility to the charge now. One can see the naked kow-towing of politicians to the interests of a tiny state that continually fights with its neighbors and carries on one of the nastier campaigns of racist oppression going. One can see the press either openly propagandizing in behalf of it, or at least cowed into silence. One can read of all the corporations willingly doing business with Israel.
If Hitler were around now, he’d be having a field day. Israel and its supporters seem to be bent on clothing his fantasy with reality.
“Most Jews today hardly wander beyond America’s shores. Europe is far as most will go. Even in Europe it’s tough sledding. If you really want a Jewish workout try Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa or almost anywhere else on the globe. Few want to hear about “Jewish.” Fewer still about the Holocaust. Israel is considered a pariah. In relation to Israel, the most frequent word I hear applied is genocide. The reference is to Palestinians not the Holocaust.”
Based on what? I know plenty of Jews who have been to Australia, for sure. I’ve been to South Africa. Most South Africans do not talk about Israel. They talk about getting livable housing. You wrongly suggest that the average South African cares. They do not. As far as South African leaders, the Board of Deputies in South Africa has plenty of the friends in the ANC, most of whom also really do not care much about Israel. Most of the criticism of Israel comes from the hard-left. To the extent that the ANC cares, it’s mostly out of an historical relationship with the PLO that dates from Apartheid days. But most ANC leaders care about South Africa, not Israel.
As far as Pakistan; are you surprised that people in Pakistan don’t like Israelis? Are you critical of all of a society that hates Israelis so much they turn a tennis star who dared to play with an Israeli into a pariah? And Malaysia, where the President once talked about how Jews rule the world by proxy? Who cares what Pakistan’s opinion of Israel is? Why on Earth should we give a shit?
“Parenthetically, I don’t delude myself into thinking that Jews of Conscience transcend other parts of the Jewish world.”
Maybe what you need to do is drop the self-righteous bullshit. So-called “Jews of Conscience” are not “good” and so-called “Jews of Empire” (whatever that means) are not bad. Drop the ultra-leftist elitist nonsense. You’re not better than I am because you subscribe to leftist politics. Indeed, by talking like this, you only further marginalize yourself. You don’t sound like a very humble person; perhaps this is why in your writing you suggest that people who think like you are good and those who do not are bad. Michael Lerner suffers from the same disease.
“I want to be honest.”
But you aren’t. When you suggest that Israel is committing genocide, that’s not honest. That’s just an attempt to apply an inflammatory word with Nazi connotations to a situation that does not approach genocide. It’s a way to simplify a situation that is more complex than you are willing to admit. It’s not honesty. It’s extremist politics, no different than describing all Palestinians as terrorists.
“The Jewish establishment has more or less given up on the world outside of America. ”
How so? There are Jewish communities all over the world. They happen not to be as big as the communities in the US and Israel. I wonder why that is. No one is giving up on these communities. The reality is that there are around 14 million Jews, and more than 12 million of them are in two places.
“What a great friend Israel has in Germany. ”
Yes, Germany is a good friend. Unlike the rest of Europe, which achieved wealth and homogeneity through mercantilism, murder, and discrimination, Germany recognizes that given its history, it has no right to deny Jews the right to self-determination or criticize its record, which is much better than Europe’s in terms of how many people died to establish the country.
“Being an intensely secular daughter of French republican tradition, she was shocked by some of what she saw and heard as Jesus Christ was extolled for more than two hours”.
I am confused. What is surprising for her? It’s a Pentacostal church.
You ask: If South Africa is not us but only the image we see reflected back in the mirror, as in – we are on the verge of becoming, or have become, everything we loathed about our oppressors – then as Jews who are we?
It’s like the end of the book Animal farm where the leading animals can’t distinguish themselves from the farmers.
You ask:
“Kairos, the right or opportune moment… If kairos is Greek and Kairos documents abound, migrating now to Palestine and recently to America as Christian responses to the heresy their co-religionists propogate, what time is Jewish time? What, Jewishly-speaking is the right or opportune moment?”
Kairos also means “moment of truth”. It is a moment of truth, so to speak, for people to speak up about the mistreatment of the native people’s in the Holy Land. Obviously, this “moment of truth” isn’t limited to Christians, but to all kinds of powerful global religious and social groups.”
I disagree when you write: “It isn’t clear to me at all that bad behavior on the part of Christians is aberrational or heretical. Not by a long shot.”
One of the main foundations of Christianity is the moralistic Sermon on the Mount. Another is the teaching to follow righteousness and do good. So such strong “bad behaviour” or bad Christian ideas (eg. those that reject the basis of Christianity) are obviously heretical or a “missing the mark” (aberration) as to Christianity.
If you really want a Jewish workout try Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa or almost anywhere else on the globe.
Australia? Australian Jews do very well. And our press and politicians suck up to Israel in nearly as disgusting a way as the Americans do.
Few want to hear about “Jewish.”
Why would they?
Fewer still about the Holocaust.
Since we’ve had an unending stream of films, TV shows, books, stories, and articles about it thrust down our throats during the last four or five decades, we are fed up with hearing about it.