Just Wondering
By Anonymous
Oct. 9, 10.
Of all the questions that have been raised concerning the new born mania in Israel to have non - Jews swear loyalty to the state as an incarnation of some vaguely articulated religious/folk identity, perhaps, the most painful one of all has been left unsaid. If stated, it would so thoroughly discredit the entire enterprise of post emancipation Jewish political thinking and activism as to leave all our advocacy in the social realm forever tainted by a Darwinian tribal morality. In sum, it could (should?) end all our claims to objective discussion of political matters in Europe, America and, well, just about everywhere.
Simply stated, if Jews are allowed to declare Israel a Jewish state then why can't England or France or Germany similarly declare their states to be identity based? What would have been wrong with England declaring itself a Protestant state, which indeed it did for a long time? But, weren't we always in the forefront of those who told the non - Jew that this was a most wicked thing to do? And, hasn't our triumph in history allowed us, in Europe in particular, to not only tell the Gentile how evil group identity polities are, but in many lands have we not also advocated and achieved the criminalization of such sentiments?
What is one to make of this stunning contradiction? Obviously, our first line of defense is to scream anti -Semitism at any who raise it. Alas, that seems to be a strategy that is succeeding less and less of late.
So, what then is the difference? Why is the unity of religion or folk with the state evil for the Gentile but good for us?
Might it be that when we live among Gentiles the advocacy and maintenance of an identity-less state is (or, at least we think it is) good for our own interests but, in reality, we know that if a people wishes to survive as nation, it must so define and understand itself. And, in reality, we care nary a whit about Gentile peoples' survival.
Now, I don't mean to suggest in the sense that simplistic, literal minded folks put it that there is some centrally controlled Jewish Elders group plotting this all out. "Let's sell the dumb goyim on pluralism and diversity, forbid then to see their nations as having or stating any group identity, while in Israel we'll do the reverse, ha - ha!"
No. It is far worse than that. The inability to view mankind through the lens of truly reciprocal morality seems part of our makeup, deeply embedded by a process beyond the scope of this essay.
So be it. But who wants such a playmate? You know the kind that plays with a different set of rules than those he demands of all the other children?
Really there are but three options on the table. Either we grant the Gentile the same moral legitimacy to have identity based politics and stop demonizing the nationalist right in Europe and America. Or, we state clearly that Israel is a secular state with no identity base. Of course, there is the third option of tribal morality, tell the Gentile some story about pluralism and hope that he never gets that we don't practice what we preach.
For the meantime it's the third strategy that has been selected.
An open letter to the Palestinian Authority
By Levi Goldenberg
Sep, 28, 10.
May we speak honestly for a moment?
I know that you are getting increasingly impatient with Bibi's refusal to halt construction in the West Bank.
You are understandably fed up with his feinting left and right on this and many other matters.
Why, you ask, can't building cease, if the ultimate goal of the talks is a peace deal that will transfer the West Bank to Palestinian rule? This is a question that seems not to have any logical answer.
I think there is an obvious response to the PM's double talk on this and a host of subjects. It would upset the current clichéd thinking on both sides and may, with G-d's help, pave the path to peace.
Quite simply, the PA needs to welcome the settlers as first class citizens in the new Palestinian state.
Tell them that they may keep their towns and yeshivas and farms. Let them understand that they will be able to vote and be required to pay taxes. No one will harm them and you look forward to working with them in the new Palestinian government.
This will solve the need and attendant agony of "uprooting so many families." It will show the world that the Palestinian people have no quarrel with Jews or Judaism. It will enable the settlers to fulfill their desire to live in all of what they consider Eretz Yisrael.
The immediate benefit of this position will be bypassing the "freeze question." The PA itself will ask Israel to completely end the freeze, based on the realization that the settlers, when they assume Palestinian citizenship, will need where to live.
On the most creative level this might also solve the conundrum of the large settlement blocs
surrounding Jerusalem. They too may remain in all their glory but as part of the Palestinian state.
An announcement of this nature will put the ball back in Bibi's court and force him to negotiate the real issues.
As for the settlers they may decide at some later date to either stay under Palestinian rule or move back to Israel. In any event no one loses.
It is time to get beyond the clichés of the past. This statement of welcome might be a good means to unclog the arteries of both peoples.
Levi Goldenberg
Orthodox Jews for Peace
Gilad Shalit - Why?
By Levi Goldenberg
Jul, 28, 10.
We are all, to varying degrees, hurt by the plight of Gilad Shalit.
There are those who feel that Israel should make the prisoner exchange needed to secure his release. Others say it is too dangerous to do so.
Yet others would argue that if Israel was really far harsher in its treatment of the Palestinians then this sort of thing wouldn't happen because we would be feared by one and all.
What we'd like to put on the table, not that this will solve very much today for the Shalits is why there is a problem, that is, really why. Let's trace this thing back before there were Palestinians in Israeli jails and before there was a war in Gaza.
Quite simply Gilad, and all the other prisoners and all the soldiers and all the civilians who have died and suffered for close to hundred years now, are the victims of the refusal of two peoples to make peace with each other; two peoples who refuse to think outside the box of their own suffering and narrative of total victory.
It is this collective series of refusals -- on both sides for a hundred years, that has caused all the ongoing suffering.
So if we are really to find the source, that is the real source of these two peoples' path of death and destruction, of which Gilad's plight is a another chapter among so many, Jews and Palestinians alike need look no further than the mirror. It is these two peoples together who are the sole cause of their own suffering
Nothing will change until all will look and then seek to alter their appearances, disfigured as they are now by hate and fear.
Spirituality, Economic Interdependence and the One State Solution
By Rabbi Jakov Weisz
Oct, 20, 09.
The notion that groups have moral obligations towards each other as do individuals is a difficult for many peoples to fathom. This is particularly true when the group has a firm sense of its own identity. It is often very hard to hear the cry of the Other for those whose sense of self is linked to unique religious or cultural mission.
If one's group is seen as specially blessed or chosen by the Almighty how much should or may its members worry about the sufferings of other tribes of men?
It is this dilemma which haunts any discussion of the Palestinian - Israeli conflict which speaks in terms of one unitary state. Obviously, there are many other obstacles to a peace which would unite both peoples. But, one can't escape the fear that given the current, clear economic superiority of the Jewish inhabitants of the Holy Land the beneficiaries of any merger would be the Palestinians. We are, of course, assuming that the various government benefits given at present to citizens of Israel would, in a unitary state be given to both peoples. This prospect might certainly be a daunting one for most Israeli Jews.
But beyond the transference of economic well being that One State would entail, it would also require both peoples to say openly to each other, "We feel that you have deeply wounded us over the past 60 or 100 years. Yet, we are willing to look to the future and not to the past. We are willing in order to end the pain of both our peoples to look to the future."
This clearly seems at present to be a utopian perspective. The wounds on both sides are just too deep.
But this time of year is a period of introspection for world Jewry and I offer the following ideas for communal introspection for my own people and to our Palestinians friends.
First, the concepts of charity and peace are not very difficult to implement when we must exercise them to our own. There the natural human instinct takes over. We are kind to family and friends and co -religionists because they are an extension of ourselves.
It is when we are called upon to show kindness to strangers and make peace with enemies that problems begin. So much within us rebels against these callings.
But it is precisely when so challenged that we must turn our ear to the still and holy voice within that gently nudges us in the direction of opening our hearts to the other with care and forgiveness just as the Almighty does to us.
Second, Israeli itself is speeding to its own economic meltdown. Many of its most rapidly growing constituencies are its most impoverished. I refer to the ultra- Orthodox, the Sephardim, and the religious Zionist settlers.
It is difficult to fathom how Israel can survive the enormous economic drain on its taxpayers by continuing to support these groups, especially when the nation's military budget is astronomical and continues to grow.
Thus, two undeniable givens emerge. The Israeli state must get beyond its vast military expenditures and it must accept that its current level of economic plenty is coming to an end.
A means to alleviate the former is the one sate solution. It offers the hope of wiping out almost all Israeli and, for that matter, Palestinian spending on fighting and killing. But it also plunges both peoples into the challenge of creating a sustainable economy. It will be an economy of less consumerism and spending, an economy of limits and restraint. Into that picture will step the Palestinian people long schooled in living with less. They may have much to offer in providing alternatives to the current advanced industrial and largely urban lifestyle.
Plus, the moral growth that each people's helping the other will bring to both is inestimable.
A pipe dream? Yes, it certainly looks that way today. But, with the Almighty's help all things are possible.
Economic interdependence amongst different peoples and former enemies may yet allow Jews and Palestinians to show the world a model of empathy and concern that may inspire other peoples to scale the same heights. Im yirtzeh hashem, inshallah, G-d willing.