FOR MORE AND MORE JEWISH AMERICANS, ZIONISM LOOKS LIKE
A DANGEROUS WRONG TURN
By
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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In
recent months increasing attention has been focused upon developments
in the Middle East. The October 7 terrorist assault on Israel by Hamas
and Israel’s response, which has already cost the lives of more than
34,000 Palestinians, including thousands of women and children, has
focused attention upon the way in which Zionism has come to dominate
American Jewish life.
More
and more Jewish Americans are coming to the conclusion that Zionism was
a dangerous wrong turn for American Judaism, as the American Council
for Judaism has argued from the beginning. In the Council’s view,
Judaism is a religion of universal values, not a nationality. American
Jews are American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other
Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim. Zionism on the other
hand, argues that, somehow, Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews, and
Jews living elsewhere are in “exile.” Zionism has come to dominate
American Jewish life, with Israeli flags on synagogue pulpits and Jewish
schools promoting the idea that emigration to Israel is the highest
ideal for Jewish young people.
Much
of American Judaism seems to place the state of Israel in the position
of a virtual object of worship, a form of pagan idolatry much like the
worship of the golden calf in the Bible. This is not Judaism, which is a
religion of universal values dedicated to the long Jewish moral and
ethical tradition which declares that men and women of every racial and
ethnic background are created in the image of God.
Jewish Americans Are Not In “Exile”
Jewish
Americans are not, as Zionism proclaims, in “exile,” but are very much
at home, and always have been. In 1841, in the dedication of America’s
first Reform synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav
Poznanski told the congregation, “This country is our Palestine, this
city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”
Zionism,
many forget, was a minority view in Jewish life until the rise of
Nazism in Europe. Even then, many Jewish voices warned against
substituting nationalism for the humane and universal Jewish prophetic
tradition. In 1938, alluding to Nazism, Albert Einstein warned an
audience of Zionist activists against the temptation to create a state
imbued with “a narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we
have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.”
The
prominent Jewish philosopher Martin Buber spoke out in 1942 against
“the aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of
international maneuvers.” From Jerusalem, where he was teaching at the
Hebrew University, Buber, speaking at the time hostilities broke out
after Israel unilaterally declared independence in May 1948, cried with
despair, “This sort of ‘Zionism’ blasphemes the name of Zion ; it is
nothing more than one of the crude forms of nationalism.”
A Rupture In American Jewish Life
In
an article titled “The Great Rupture In American Jewish Life” (New York
Times, March 22, 2024), Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents,
notes that, “For the last decade or so, an ideological tremor has been
unsettling American Jewish life. Since Oct. 7, it has become an
earthquake. It concerns the relationship between liberalism and
Zionism, two creeds that for more than half a century have defined
American Jewish identity. In the years to come, American Jews will face
growing pressure to choose between them.”
Beinart
points out that, “The American Jews who are making a different choice
—-jettisoning Zionism because they can’t reconcile it with the liberal
principle of equality under the law…their numbers are larger than many
recognize, especially among millennials and Generation Z…The emerging
rupture between American liberalism and American Zionism constitutes the
greatest transformation in American Jewish life for decades to come.”
American
Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism in 1988, “have
made of Israel an icon—-a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue,
surrogate God.” In the years to come, Peter Beinart believes, “For an
American Jewish establishment that equates anti-Zionism with
antisemitism, these anti-Zionist Jews are inconvenient. There’s nothing
antisemitic about envisioning a future in which Palestinians and Jews
coexist on the basis of legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy…For
many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on
contradictions. Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy
there. Now, here and there are converging. In the years to come we will
have to choose.”
No Liberal Rights For Palestinians
Many
are in the process of choosing now. Noah Feldman, the Harvard Law
School professor and First Amendment scholar, and author of the book “To
Be A Jew Today,” declares: “Today, many progressive American Jews find
it difficult to see Israel as a genuine liberal democracy, mostly
because some 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli
authority with no realistic prospect of liberal rights.” Shaul Magid, a
professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, says, “In my
view, the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates
an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into
ethnonational chauvinism.” Oren Kroc-zeldin, director of Jewish Studies
at the University of San Francisco, says that, “Jewish liberation in
Israel was predicated on the oppression and ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians.” He says he rejects “a monolithic Pro-Israel identity.”
Within
Reform Judaism, there have been calls for a move away from Zionism. A
letter signed by more than 1200 alumni and current members of the Union
for Reform Judaism (URJ) addressed to the organization on Dec. 16,2023
declares, “We grieve for the 1,200 killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7th attack
and the more than 18,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli
military—-almost half of whom have been children —-since then. Israel
has cut off water, electricity, fuel and supplies to Gaza. We are
deeply concerned that tax dollars have been so easily provided to
support Israel’s military assault on Gaza, while we struggle for the
basic needs of our communities.”
The
letter declares that, “The URJ teaches practicing Pikuach Nefeshz,
‘saving a life,’ and Tikkun Olam, ‘repairing the world.’ An immediate
cease-fire is in line with these Jewish values.”
“Atrocities committed In Our Name”
At
the same time, a letter was released from descendants of progressive
rabbis and leaders to express “our horror at URJ’s failure to call for a
cease-fire in Gaza. We are alarmed that the leadership of our community
has not demanded an end to Israel’s devastating violence against
Palestinians in addition to the safe and immediate return of the
hostages…A decades-long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians has hardened
the American Jewish community’s hearts. Atrocities are being committed
in our name. We do not consider the killing of thousands of innocent
civilians to be a justifiable consequence of ensuring our community’s
protection.”
The letter
concludes: “The URJ continues to actively alienate alumni with its
uncompromising Zionist rhetoric…We will reconsider our and the next
generation’s membership and support for the URJ unless there is a public
and dramatic shift in the way the movement addresses Israel.”
Among
the original signers of the letter are Zippy Janas, a descendant of
Rabbi Julius Julius Rappaport, Chana Powell, daughter of current URF
rabbi Talia Yudkin Toffany, and Zachariah Sippy, son Rabbi David
Wirtschaffer.
Reform Jews For Justice
At the same time, an organization called Reform Jews for Justice has been established (https//
reformjewsforjustice.com).
It declares that, “As Reform Jews we stand together for Justice in
solidarity with Palestine. We unite in our values to call for a
ceasefire , the release of hostages, and an end to U.S. military aid to
Israel. …We have come together to call on our movement to engage in
Solidarity with Palestine. We envision a Reform Jewish movement
that…rejects the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism…The URJ
leaders have unabashedly demonstrated shameful tactics of
ethno-nationalism and tribal political priorities over simple ethics and
the illegitimate and dangerous conflation of Zionism and Judaism. We
have been alienated from the movement that raised us to ask ‘If I am
only for myself, what am I?’—-through binary language suggesting that
our affiliation is conditional on Zionism. We will not stand by.”
In
recent years, there has been a growing effort to redefine
“antisemitism” to include not simply bigotry toward Jews and Judaism,
but also criticism of Israel and Zionism. In May 2022, Jonathan
Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared that
“anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Ignoring the long history of Jewish
opposition to Zionism, he has been strenuously promoting this false and
ahistoric notion ever since. Some Israelis admit that falsely equating
anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a tactic to silence criticism of
Israel. Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli Minister of Education, and
winner of the Israel Prize, described how this works: “It’s a trick.
We always use it. When from Europe, somebody criticizes Israel, we
bring up the Holocaust. When in the United States, people are critical
of Israel, then they are antisemitic.”
The
tactic of equating criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism
has come under widespread criticism. Writing in Slate (April 29, 2024),
Emily Tamkin headlined her article, “The ADL has abandoned some of the
people it exists to protect: For those with the wrong opinions, the
group is now a threat to Jewish Safety.”
Muddying The Waters About Antisemitism
Tamkin
writes: “Over the past six months, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the
ADL, has stressed repeatedly that he is concerned about rising
antisemitism. Unfortunately, he has also made clear that he cares about
antisemitism only as he defines it and as it affects people who agree
with him on the definition…The ADL…is insisting on conflating
anti-Zionism with antisemitism and it has made its conflation central to
the ADL’s work. This has not only muddied the waters of its own
antisemitism research, it has also undermined the safety, security and
pluralism of American Jews.”
One
example is the fact that ADL evidently mapped protests for a cease-fire
led by the Jewish groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow as
“antisemitic incidents” on its calculation of how much antisemitism has
risen. This makes it more difficult to assess the year-over-year change
in antisemitic incidents. Tamkin notes that, “Of course, an increase
will seem more dramatic if you are now counting incidents you weren’t
before—-but it also arguably undermines the rest of the ADL’s reporting
of antisemitism.”
When it
comes to Jonathan Greenblatt, a story in Jewish Currents from 2021
revealed that former ADL employees felt that Greenblatt was choosing
defense of Israel over protecting civil liberties, one of the group’s-
stated missions. In March, 2023, Jewish Currents published a report on
internal dissent at ADL over Greenblatt publishing a report comparing
pro-Palestinian groups to the extreme right. Greenblatt has compared
pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University to the explicitly
neo-Nazi march in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He likened the
group Jewish Voice for Peace to the terrorist group Hezbollah and called
it an “on campus proxy for Iran.”
Younger Jews Disconnected From Israel
In
Emily Tamkin’s view, “I wonder how likening a Jewish student group to a
terrorist organization helps stop the defamation of the Jewish
people,or scores justice and fair treatment to all…Younger American Jews
are increasingly critical of and feel disconnected from Israel. The
Pew 2020 study on American Jews found 51% of those between the ages of
18 and 29 were not emotionally connected at all to Israel…Young American
Jews were “less likely to view antisemitism as ‘a very serious
problem.’…Greenblatt is failing to stand up for the rights of all
American Jews. He is using his position to make clear that some Jews
are more worthy of protection and political representation than others.
He’ll have powerful allies, including non-Jews who have made common
cause with open antisemites.”
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely described student protestors
in behalf of Palestinian rights as “antisemitic mobs” and likened the
demonstrations
to “what happened in German
universities in the 1930s.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (IND-VT), who is
Jewish and lost members of his family in the Holocaust, pushed back
against Netanyahu’s characterization of the pro-Palestinian
demonstrations. He declared to Netanyahu: “It is not antisemitic to
point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000
housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people
homeless—-almost half the population.”
Sanders
continued: “Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that
has done unspeakable things to many millions of people. But, please
do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to
distract us from the illegal and immoral policies of your extremist and
racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from
the criminal indictment you are facing in Israeli courts.”
Protesting Against Slaughter Is Not Antisemitism
Robert
Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and now professor of public
philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, writing in The
Guardian (April 3, 2024) makes the point that, “Protesting against this
slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate
speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should
be done on a college campus—-taking a stand against a perceived wrong,
thereby provoking discussion and debate.”
In
the view of Robert Reich, who is Jewish, “Education is all about
provocation. Without being provoked—-stirred, unsettled, goaded—-even
young minds can can remain stuck in old tracks…The Israel-Hamas war is
horrifying. The atrocities committed by both sides illustrate the
capacities of human beings for inhumanity, show the vile consequences
of hate. Or it presents an opportunity for students to re-examine their
preconceptions and learn from one another…Peaceful demonstrations
should be encouraged, not shut down…To tar all offensive speech ‘hate
speech’ and ban it removes a central pillar of education…”
Jewish
critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are receiving increasing
attention. The Forward (May 6, 2024) carried a feature article with the
headline, “This 100-year-old Jewish activist is speaking up again—-this
time about Gaza.”
It reports that, “Jules Rabin
stood at the busiest intersection of Montpelier, Vermont in early April
with snow still on the sidewalks, protesting the war in Gaza.
Accompanied by about 75 friends and family members —-holding a sign that
asked, ‘How could the Nazi genocide of Jews 1933-45 be followed by the
Israeli genocide of Palestinians today?’ He was celebrating his 100th
birthday.”
“A Piecemeal Holocaust”
Jules
Rabin, a World War 11 veteran, graduate of Harvard, former Goddard
College professor and a pioneer in Vermont’s bread-making renaissance
who, with his wife, ran a bakery for more than 40 years, appeared on a
podcast on the nonprofit Vermont Digger. He referred to the tragedy
unfolding in Gaza as a “piecemeal Holocaust.” He told podcast host
David Goodman that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza
“resembles what the Germans did to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and
everywhere else in Europe.” In Rabin’s view, the Jewish claim for
restitution after World War 11 should have resulted in the Germans
awarding Prussia or Bavaria to the Jewish people. Concerning the latest
news from Gaza and the West Bank, Rabin says, “One can’t look the other
way when something dreadful is going on.”
In
May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would
enshrine a contentious definition of antisemitism into U.S. law. The
Antisemitic Awareness Act (AAA) passed the House by a wide margin. It
mandates government civil rights offices to adopt the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
This definition has drawn widespread criticism because most of its
examples of antisemitism involve criticism of the state of Israel, such
as calling it a “racist endeavor.”
If
this bill is passed by the Senate, which will consider it at a later
date, it would mean that this definition would apply when officials
adjudicate Title V1 complaints alleging campus antisemitism. Opponents
say it chills legitimate criticism of Israel. The bill passed by a vote
of 320-91. Opponents of the IHRA definition include Rep. Jerry Nadler
(D-NY), the House’s longest serving Jewish member.. He declared that,
“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful
discrimination. By encompassing purely political speech about Israel
into Title V1’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”
The
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (May 2, 2024) reported that, “Americans for
Peace Now, a dovish pro-Israel group worried that the bill, should it
become law, would be used as ‘a cudgel against the millions of
Americans, including many Jewish Americans, who object to the Netanyahu
government’s decisions and actions.”
Jewish Critics Of AAA Legislation
Even
some members of the Jewish establishment are critical of the AAA
legislation. Alan Solow, who serves on the board of the Nexus
leadership Project and and is a former Chair of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote this in The
Forward (May 3, 2024): “Distinctions…are vital for developing
strategies to fight this prejudice. If those with whom we disagree
about Israel—-sometimes vehemently—-are labeled antisemitic without
regard to nuance or context —-they will not join us in coalition against
anti-Jewish bigotry…A viable strategy against this scourge…must
recognize this….It cannot ignore…the diversity that exists in this
country, a diversity reflected in an intense debate about Israel within
the Jewish community, on college campuses as beyond…If the Senate passes
the AAA, it will alienate our political allies, including stalwart
supporters of Jewish causes and Israel, and narrow the coalition we need
to confront the spread of antisemitism.”
An
editorial, “Not In Our Name” appeared in the Jewish journal Tablet
(May 3,2024). It declared, “There is no exception for hate speech in
the Constitution—-it is not, according to the Constitution of the United
States of America, illegal to say that the State of Israel ‘has no
right to exist’…No governmental authority has the standing to penalize
you for (making such a statement)…That includes Congress. The fact that
a word or idea is annoying or upsetting to you—-or us!—-does not make
it illegal.”
Tablet
declares that, “This includes the phrase ‘From the River to the sea,’
which the House of Representatives voted to condemn last month. This is
wrong. No citizen of America, Jewish or not, should support the
condemnation of speech by those whose conditional authority is entrusted
to them by the people. You are American citizens . However noxious
your beliefs, as long as they stay beliefs, they should be done the
business of government.”
Danger Of “Weaponizing Antisemitism”
The
staff attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee,
Chris Godshall-Bennett, who is Jewish, provided this assessment: “In
weaponizing antisemitism by equating it with criticism of Israel, this
bill evades the fundamental principles of free _expression_ and academic
freedom. As a Jewish person, who stands hand-in-hand with my
Palestinian brothers and sisters, and who works daily against anti-Arab
hate, I found this weaponization of my identity particularly
disgusting. Criticism of Zionism and of the Israeli government is not
antisemitism and conflating this only serves to provide cover for
Israel’s ongoing human rights abuses in violation of international law…”
The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strongly condemned the House of
Representatives for passing this legislation (H.R. 6090) which, it
declared, threatens to censor political speech critical of Israel on
college campuses under the guise of addressing antisemitism.
Christopher Zanders, director of ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Policy
Division declared that, “The House’s approval of this misguided and
harmful bill is a direct attack on the First Amendment. Addressing
rising antisemitism is critically important, but criticizing America’s
free speech rights is not the way to solve the problem. This bill would
throw the full weight of the federal government behind an effort to
stifle criticism of Israel and risks politicizing the enforcement of
federal civil rights statutes precisely when their robust protections
are most needed. The Senate must block this bill that undermines the
First Amendment protections before it is too late.”
As
a recent ACLU letter to Congress made clear, a federal law already
prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded
entities, and the Antisemitism Awareness Act is not needed to protect
Jewish students from discrimination. Additionally, as the Supreme Court
ruled more than fifty years ago in the landmark decision of Healy v.
James, “This Court leaves no room for the view that, because of the
acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply
with less force on college campuses than in the community at large.
Quite to the contrary, the vigilant protection of Constitutional
freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of America’s
schools.”
“Netanyahu Making Israel Radioactive”
Many
of Israel’s long time supporters are expressing dismay over recent
events. In a column, “Netanyahu is making Israel Radioactive” (New York
Times, March 12, 2024),columnist Thomas Friedman writes: “Israel today
is in grave danger, with enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and
Iran, Israel should be enjoying the sympathy of much of the world. But
it is not. Because of the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
his extremist coalition have been conducting the war in Gaza and the
occupation of the West Bank, Israel is becoming radioactive…”.
Friedman
argues that, “I fear it is about to get worse…No fair-minded person
could deny Israel the right of self-defense after the Hamas attack…But
no fair-minded person can look at the Israeli campaign…that has killed
more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza…and not conclude that something
has gone terribly wrong there. The dead include thousands of children,
and the survivors many orphans…This is a stain on the Jewish
state…Netanyahu has sent the IDF into Gaza without a coherent plan for
governing it after any Hamas dismantling or cease-fire…Israel has a
prime minister who apparently would rather see Gaza devolve into
Somalia, ruled by warlords…than partner with the Palestinian Authority
or any legitimate broad-based non-Hamas Palestinian governing body
because his far-right Cabinet allies also dream of Israel controlling
all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean,
including Gaza, and will oust him from power if he does.”
In
an important and much discussed article entitled “We Need An Exodus
>From Zionism” (The Guardian April 24, 2024), Naomi Klein, a Guardian
columnist and director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the
University of British Columbia, writes: “I’ve been thinking about Moses
and his rage when he came down from the Mount to find the Israelites
worshipping a golden calf. It is about false idols, about the human
tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and
material rather than the large and transcendent.”
Worshipping A False Idol
In
Klein’s view, “Too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once
again…Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised
land and turned it onto a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.
It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of
Justice and emancipation from slavery—-the story of Passover itself—-and
turned them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, road maps
for ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
The
whole concept of a “promised land” has, Klein declares, become “a false
idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land — a
metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths
to every corner of this globe——and dared to turn it into a deed of sale
for a militaristic ethnic state…Political Zionism’s version of
liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the expulsion
of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the
Nakba…Zionism has brought us to our current moment of cataclysm and it
is time that we said it clearly: it has always been leading here….It is
a false idol that has led far too many of our people down a deeply
immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core
Commandments: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not
covet…We seek to elevate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to
be perennially afraid.”
More
and more One-time advocates of Zionism have moved away from this
position. One of these is Daniel Boyarin, professor of Talmudic Culture
Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. In his book,
“The No-State Solution, A Jewish Manifesto” (Yale University Press), he
writes, “I was a Zionist in my youth. In those years, I thought of
myself as a left-wing Zionist. I was very active in Habonim (a
Socialist Zionist youth movement). I think I ultimately caught the
leftism and socialism more than the Zionism. And when it became clear
to me that I had to make a choice, I finally realized I had to let the
Zionism go. That choice came when Yitzhak Rabin stated that the Israeli
Army should break the legs of Palestinian kids who threw stones at
soldiers. I asked at that time, what is this cruel idea of breaking the
arms and legs of little boys? And somebody explained to me that this
was necessary in order to maintain the state. I said, if that’s
necessary…then the state is clearly a wrong thing…I remember the first
time I wanted to say I was an anti-Zionist….I couldn’t say the words.
That’s how hard it was for me.”
For
Dr. Boyarin, “…the dilemma is how to maintain a truly , vital,
authentic, rich, lively and compelling Jewish cultural life without
falling into the kinds of nationalism and ethnocentrism that we find all
over the world today.”
Zionism Was A Minority View
Zionism,
many now forget, has, before the Holocaust, always been a minority view
among Jews. It seems likely that it is on its way to becoming a
minority view once again. Only during the period of the Holocaust, when
Jews were endangered by Nazism, did the idea of a Jewish state in
Palestine gain support. The fact that Palestine was already fully
populated was largely ignored. Deena Dallasheh, a historian of
Palestine and Israel who has taught at Columbia University and Rice
University, told the New York Times ((Feb. 4, 2024) that, “The Holocaust
was a horrible massacre committed by Europeans. But I don’t think the
Palestinians figure that they will have to pay for it. Yet the world
sees this as an acceptable equation. Orientalist and colonial ideology
were very much at the heart of thinking, that while we Europeans and the
U.S. were part of this massive human tragedy, we are going to fix it at
the expense of someone else. And the someone else is not important
because they are Arabs. They’re Palestinians and thus constructed as
not important.”
Most Jews
historically believed that their Jewish identity rests on their
religious faith, not any national identification. Jews in the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Italy and other
countries never viewed themselves living in “exile,” as Zionist
philosophy holds. Instead, they believe that their religion and
nationality are separate and distinct. The God they believe in is a
universal God, not tied to a particular geographic site in the Middle
East.
An
early leader of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Abraham Geiger, pointed out in
the 19th century that the underlying essence of Judaism was ethical
monotheism. The Jewish people were a religious community destined to
carry on the mission to “serve as a light to the nations,” to bear
witness to God and His moral law. The dispersion of the Jews was not a
punishment for their sins, but part of God’s plan whereby they were to
disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism.
Not A Nation But A Religious Community
In
1885, Reform rabbis meeting in Pittsburgh adopted a platform which
declared, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious
community.” In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a
resolution disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state and
declaring that, “America is our Zion.” In 1904, The American Israelite
declared, “There is not one solitary native Jewish-American who is an
advocate of Zionism.”
To
the question of whether Jews constitute “a people,” Yeshayahua
Leibowitz, the Orthodox Jewish thinker and long-time Hebrew University
professor, provides this assessment: “The historical Jewish people was
defined neither as a race , nor a people of this country or that, nor as
a people which speaks the same language, but as the people of Torah
Judaism and its commandments…The words spoken by Rabbi Saadia Gaon
(882-942) more than a thousand years ago: ‘Our nation exists only
within the Torah’ have not only a normative but also an empirical
meaning. They testified to a historical reality whose power could be
felt up until the 19th century. It was then that the fracture which has
not ceased to widen with time, first occurred: the fissure between
Jewishness and Judaism.”
An
early leader of the American Council for Judaism, Rabbi Irving Reichart
of San Francisco, made his first significant declaration of opposition
to Zionism in a January 1936 sermon: “If my reading of Jewish history
is correct, Israel took upon itself the yoke of the law not in
Palestine, but in the wilderness at Mt. Sinai and by far the greater
part of its deathless and distinguished contribution to world culture
was produced not in Palestine but in Babylon and the lands of the
Dispersion. Jewish states May rise and fall, as they have risen and
fallen in the past, but the people of Israel will continue to minister
at the altar of the Most High God in all the lands in which they
dwell…There is too dangerous a parallel between the insistence of some
Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood, and similar
pronouncements by Fascist leaders in Europe.”
Zionism: A Dangerous Wrong Turn
In
America at the present time, Zionism looks to more and more Jewish
Americans like a dangerous wrong turn. Those who resisted Zionism from
the beginning appear to have been prophetic in their warnings and
misgivings. Let us hope that prophetic, universal Judaism will be
restored.
##
————————————
Allan
C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and serves as editor
of ISSUES. The author of five books, he has served on the staff of the
U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and the Office of the Vice
President.