{"id":4924,"date":"2022-01-01T15:49:34","date_gmt":"2022-01-01T15:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/?p=4924"},"modified":"2022-01-01T15:49:36","modified_gmt":"2022-01-01T15:49:36","slug":"the-jewish-schism-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/the-jewish-schism-deepens\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jewish Schism Deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Jewish Schism Deepens\u2014An Analysis (1 January 2022) by Lawrence Davidson<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part I\u2014Trump Lectures the Jews<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Donald Trump has always admired the leadership style of a tough-guy dictator-type. This is because a tough-guy dictator was and still is what he aspires to be. Thus, he publicly applauded the leadership of Egypt, the Philippines, Russia and, yes, Israel as well. Israel, in particular, was important to him because of the power of the Jewish lobby in the United States, and until recently, Trump considered the authoritarian Benjamin Netanyahu something of an alter-ego\u2014someone fighting to assert himself against democratic fetters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It should come as no surprise that Trump\u2019s support for Israel has nothing to do with the country\u2019s increasingly suspect claim to being \u201cthe only democracy in the Middle East.\u201d Instead, Trump adopted Israel\u2019s discriminatory domestic policies and aggressive foreign goals as causes to sponsor. But then, because those same practices have alienated many Jews, Trump has periodically taken it upon himself to lecture and castigate Jewish Americans\u2014he does this even though he now holds no official office and has been reduced to the \u201cpresident\u201d of a community sowing lies and harvesting hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In mid-December, Trump declared that U.S. Jews \u201cdon\u2019t like Israel or don\u2019t care about Israel.\u201d This reiterated earlier claims such as \u201cJews don\u2019t love Israel enough\u201d and \u201cJewish Americans who vote for Democrats are being disloyal to Israel.\u201d Oddly, Trump\u2019s complaints imply that U.S. Jews are at fault because they do not exhibit sufficient dual loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part II\u2014American Ultra-Orthodox Heading for Israel<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the meantime, the English edition of the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz announced that the American \u201cUltra-Orthodox Aliyah [immigration] to Israel Is Breaking Records.\u201d This would indicate that there is at least one sub-group of U.S. Jewry that doesn\u2019t warrant Trump\u2019s charges. This particular migration to Israel is surprising because the Haredim, as they are also called, traditionally remained aloof from Zionism. They once insisted that there could be no legitimate state of Israel until the coming of the Messiah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why should these U.S. Jews, the most religious of them all, now be moving to Israel? The reasons given range from anti-Semitism in the U.S. to economic issues such as the increasing cost of living. Significantly, many cite Donald Trump\u2019s defeat in 2020 (75% of the Orthodox are Republican or lean Republican) and the \u201crise of the progressive left\u201d as a reason for leaving. Haaretz noted that \u201cHaredim in the United States were among Trump\u2019s staunchest supporters, sharing many of same \u2018family values\u2019 \u2013 i.e., opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights \u2013 as his evangelical base.\u201d One Haredim leader is quoted as saying, \u201cToday, we are witnessing the rapid decline of morality and values in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just to complicate this part of the story, one can note that as the U.S. Haredim rationalize their move to Israel with \u201cthe rapid decline\u201d of American morality, at least some Orthodox Jews native to Israel are questioning the alliance between religious Jewry and the Israeli state. They fear that this alliance has undermined traditional Jewish morality\u2014essentially asserting that when religious leadership becomes too closely wedded to state power, ethical values become corrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part III\u2014Orthodox Judaism\u2019s \u201cAddiction to State Power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Mikhael Manekin\u2019s The Dawn of Redemption: Ethics and Tradition in a Time of Power (Evrit, 2021), the author says the main challenge of Zionism has always been the \u201cintegration of political power into a religious vision that would maintain a moral compass developed over centuries.\u201d Manekin, who is at once an Israeli progressive and an Orthodox religious Jew, concludes \u201cthat religious Zionism has failed that test.\u201d Instead, it has brought forth a new sort of Jew, \u201cconvinced that power, not mercy, stands at the epicenter of religious life.\u201d So, while the \u201critualistic practices\u201d of Judaism \u201cremain operational \u2026 its moral foundations have collapsed into a vision of sovereignty through conquest.\u201d One of the more recent false prophets leading this march into hell is none other than the American-educated (MIT Sloan School of Management) Benjamin Netanyahu\u2014Donald Trump\u2019s Israeli alter-ego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Manekin\u2019s conclusion is not new or unique. It follows in a long line of Jewish religious thinkers, both rabbis and lay leaders. Yet, these warnings have been to no avail when it comes to most contemporary pious Jews, among them the Haredim now exiting the U.S. for another promised land where \u201cpower is perceived as a divine gift.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part IV\u2014Reform Judaism\u2019s Fractures<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the Ultra-Orthodox pack their bags, other American Jews remain in place and continue an increasingly heated debate over the impact of Israeli behavior on the worldwide Jewish community. This includes American Reform Jews, who are on the opposite end of the Jewish religious spectrum from the Orthodox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reform Jews may also be Zionist. Back in May 2021, Reform Rabbi Wendi Geffen told her Long Island-based Congregation Israel that \u201canti-Zionist Jews are \u2018Jews in name only\u2019 who must be kept out of the Jewish \u2018tent.\u2019\u201d She took this position just prior to the release of a survey by the Jewish Electoral Institute that reported 25% Jewish respondents believed that Israel is an apartheid state. Some 34% think Israel\u2019s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States, and 22% think Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. It would make no difference to Rabbi Geffen that these findings reflect assessments about the policies of a state\u2014the state of Israel\u2014and not Jews as a people. Just like the Haredim making aliyah, this reform rabbi appears incapable of telling the difference between a Jewish population of multiple nationalities living across the globe, and a specific political institution controlling limited territory and pushing expansionist and racist policies. And, doing so falsely in the name of all the Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Geffen\u2019s myopia is shared by other high-placed American Reform Jews. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch is the spiritual leader at the Steven Wise Free Synagogue of New York, as well as the former head of Arza, Reform Judaism\u2019s major Zionist organization. He insists that \u201cwe need to pressure Reform Jews and ask are you committed to the Jewish Nation\u2026. Do you believe the Jewish Nation, like all other nations, has the right to self-determination \u2013 or are Jews somehow different?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is an interesting way of putting the problem. Hirsch is implying that if the \u201cJewish nation\u201d (here he means people) is like all other nations, then the Jewish state also cannot be expected to act differently from other states, nor should it be judged differently. However, for many of those Jews who are appalled by Israeli behavior, a Jewish state can only be representative of Jewish tradition if it is different from the world\u2019s other states. Different because it upholds \u201cuniversal Jewish ideals,\u201d which comes close to the modern concept of human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hirsch will have none of this. He believes that the experience of the Holocaust and subsequent anti-Semitism demonstrates that such ideals as \u201cuniversal brotherhood\u201d and international law are but dreams. \u201cWestern liberal values would not prevent the murder of Jews\u201d he says. Hirsch insists that what is now meaningful is Jewish peoplehood defended by the state of Israel. Indeed, he insists that there is no future for Reform Jews in the U.S. \u201cif we aren\u2019t anchored in Jewish peoplehood and Israel.\u201d Given this point of view, Hirsch concludes that Israel is necessary to Jewish survival and therefore questioning that state\u2019s claim to represent all Jews is anti-Semitic\u2014despite its dehumanizing behavior. \u201cThere is a large wave of antisemitism,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich is hard to identify because they often hide it behind rhetorics of human rights and apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part V\u2014Peoplehood vs. Human Rights<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hirsch\u2019s position is easy to understand in light of the Holocaust. That tragedy is so near in history that it is hard for many Jews to believe that the diaspora, which sustained Jews for thousands of years, is safe unless there is a fortress state to retreat to if history repeats itself. On the other hand, it is significant that Jews who made it to the United States after the Holocaust often reached a very different conclusion, based on their own experiences. Here in the U.S. they fought in the Civil Rights Movement, they went into the helping professions, they adopted a stance against intolerance.\u00a0They recognized\u00a0that it is the diaspora\u2019s multiethnic, multinational quality that is the key to its tolerance and their safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, the only time we find anti-Semitism or any other anti-ethnic\/group attitude reaching the point of murder and mayhem is when in-group identity or \u201cpeoplehood,\u201d to use Hirsch\u2019s term, is exploited to excess. Of course, it is true that somewhere in the world, or perhaps several places, at any particular time, this happens, and then one group will ghettoize, persecute, murder, or expel another because of some exaggerated ethnic or economic difference. One can think of Myanmar and the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims; Rwanda and the genocidal persecution of the Tutsi; the behavior of the Serbian leaders during the Bosnian civil war; ethnic warfare in Darfur and Southern Sudan; the slaughter in Cambodia; and the massacres conducted by the so-called Islamic State. To be forthright, it is the fear that Israel is approaching this level of extreme peoplehood that now motivates the concern of progressive Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A sure sign of this concern was publicly presented in mid-May 2021, when an open letter signed by 93 rabbinical and cantorial students (cantors lead the singing during Jewish worship) asked American Jews to rethink their relationship with Israel. In essence, the letter asked Jews to apply the same human rights standard for Israel as they do for interracial relations in the United States. The letter reads in part:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis year, American Jews have been part of a racial reckoning in our community. \u2026 How are we complicit with racial violence? Jewish communities \u2026 have had teach-ins and workshops, held vigils, and commissioned studies.\u00a0And yet \u2026 so many of us ignore the day-to-day indignity that the Israeli military and police forces enact on Palestinians, and sit idly by as Israel upholds two separate legal systems for the same region. And, in the same breath, we are shocked by escalations of violence, as though these things are not a part of the same dehumanizing status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This letter was met with \u201cthundering silence\u201d by all official U.S. Jewish organizations, the leaders of which probably hope that this too shall pass. However, among the rabbis who did counterattack was Ammiel Hirsch, who, as noted, sees Israel as the foundation of Jewish \u201cpeoplehood.\u201d This stood to reason, for what the open letter did was reassert that \u201cuniversal principles\u201d such as human rights are of foundational importance for Jews\u2014that they are synonymous with that \u201cmoral compass developed over the centuries,\u201d and thus serve as a baseline for both Jewish individual and group behavior. A Jewish \u201cpeoplehood\u201d that behaves in violation of these principles has gone seriously astray and cannot provide a safe haven for anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part VI\u2014Conclusion<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we want to get biblical about this, today\u2019s Israel cannot be a \u201cJewish\u201d state and simultaneously be a state just like all others. It can\u2019t be both because it would go against the Hebrew God\u2019s plans for the Jews: \u201cIt is too light a thing that you should be my servant to \u2026 bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth\u201d (Isaiah 49:6). One would assume this command helped shaped traditional Jewish mores. So, what is Israel going to be: (1) just another run-of-the-mill, vulgar, armed-to-the-teeth-and-ready-for- slaughter, greedy, racist, self-centered nation-state or (2) a community with principles like those, for example, set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It might be noted that we have never witnessed a state (Jewish or Gentile) that is principled and law-abiding in the way Isaiah 49:6 would have it. This may or may not have something to do with human evolution and genetic propensities. But, to the chagrin of the political Zionists, this absence offers no excuse for breaking the bonds of Jewish moral standards when it comes to Israeli behavior. This problem has caused all manner of psychic disturbance within the Jewish diaspora, sustaining a growing schism among Reform Jews and generally establishing fault lines between the political Zionists and idealistic progressive Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that is where the Jews are at this moment in history. The pressure is on, and as the old saying goes, if you are not in support of the solution\u2014Israel becoming a truly democratic and humane state for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion\u2014you are really part of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Jewish Schism Deepens\u2014An Analysis (1 January 2022) by Lawrence Davidson Part I\u2014Trump Lectures the Jews Donald Trump has always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[36,135,136],"class_list":["post-4924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel","tag-israel","tag-jews","tag-schism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4925,"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924\/revisions\/4925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tothepointanalyses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}