Saturday, 04 September 2010
Flashback: Israeli Judaism And German Nazism
Written by Moshe Amon   
Currently Jews all over the world are facing a very interesting road junction, at least those Jews who bother to look for identity road signs.  Just lately, when I told a new neighbour that I’m from Israel she asked if I’m an Arab.  Without thinking, my instant and spontaneous answer was:  I’m Hebrew.  Thinking of it later, it occurred to me that I didn’t say that I’m Jewish because the term “Jew” may have a religious connotation.  In typical Israeli fashion, concerning the nature of religion in Israel, even subconsciously I didn’t want to be associated with religious Judaism.  I’m a Jew not because of any religious affiliation but simply because I’m a Jew.  That is a fact.  Full stop.  This way I identify with some millions of people who, like myself, are bonded, more or less, by a common history, some even say – common fate.  The accent should be on “more or less.”  We are bonded by the experiences of our ancestors, what we understand about this experience and by the part our memories and understanding play in our current life.  Our present common denominator stems from past history while the persistent question is: do we also have a future? The topic of my doctorate dissertation was: Israel and the Jewish Identity Crisis.  That was about 40 years ago.  The current situation in Israel clearly justifies a new look on this topic.  Within the wide range of Jews and Judaism, Israel holds a special case.  Even if only because the Israeli landscape is encumbered with so many contradicting road signs.  Its unique peculiarities justify placing it in the epicentre of the cross roads in any discussing about the future of Jews and Judaism.  One question, maybe, the leading one, should be: are we looking for a future of a religion or of a national culture and heritage?

My personal opinion is that humanity at large is now at the threshold of transition to a new stage in human evolution.  Assuming that a Neanderthal was unable to figure out the nature of Homo Sapient society and its achievements, it is reasonable to also assume that we are in no position to figure out the shape of future human society when the evolutionary process will be more ripened.  Nevertheless, we can assume that some kind of a form based on the current order will survive long enough to justify an effort to fathom the shape of things to come, at least such things that stem from the current situation.  It also can be an interesting and challenging enterprise by itself.  Because Israel is in the hub, if not of the Jewish people at large then at least in the problem of Jewish identity, it makes sense to start there.

After more than 60 years since coming into being, I believe that Israel represents an interesting case study of a new country that is clearly advancing towards getting annihilated by its own ideological petard.  It is also an interesting case study because the settlements that preceded the state and enabled its establishment were a product of Zionist ideology.  However, the character of the new state has been shaped not by Zionism but rather by the randomness of daily necessities of a new situation.  The character of Israel has been shaped first by the needs of millions of new immigrants who were either survivors of the Holocaust or refugees from Arab countries and later, by new waves of immigrants.

The main fissure in the process that allowed the insertion of the explosive petard into the body of the state was the act of making Orthodoxy, i.e. Talmudic Judaism, the only legally recognized brand of Judaism in Israel.  The problem is that Orthodoxy has been the newest form created in religious Judaism.  It was formed in the 19th century as an answer to the already existing Reform and Conservative movements, claiming to be the only true representative of “traditional Judaism.”  However, Orthodoxy was dead on arrival, as, contrary to the long Talmudic tradition that helped preserve Judaism through the ages by adopting rules and customs to necessity, its main tenet of belief has been that anything new is forbidden by the Torah.

It is an old truism that creatures unable to adapt to changing situations cannot survive in a new environment.  Orthodoxy presumably lives by the tenets of the Talmud - an open-ended code of law that was created to fit life in exile and accordingly had continuously been reinterpreted to fit new environments and new situations.  However, the Orthodox principle that changes are forbidden by a divine decree didn’t allow the Orthodox Rabbis to adopt the Talmudic laws, or even spirit of the laws, to fit the daily needs of a Jewish state, especially a state constructed and ruled by secular Jews who strived to replace the religious definition of Judaism with a national one.  The accent of Orthodox teaching shifted thus from a meaningful content to what have become meaningless traditional rituals.  Also, because of the peculiar Israeli political system, during time, the influence of the religious political parties grew consistently.  David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the state and its first Prime Minister, granted the Orthodox Rabbis the sole authority to rule in matters of marital status.  Much worse, his main policies were directed to dismantle organizations like the Palmah , Lechi and Izl, that in 1948 still had kind of “private” armies, with independent headquarters.  Nevertheless, he allowed the religious parties to have their own separate education systems, even though in the content of their teaching they resembled more radical Islamic madrasas rather than regular schools.  It didn’t take long until those independent schools extended to include yeshivas of hundreds of thousands of students who do not serve in the army but who mainly spend their lives studying the dead and no longer relevant pages of the Talmud, all financed by the state.  With the settlement of the West Bank after the 1967 War, numerous yeshivas were installed there while the state financed and propped up new settlements, mostly on private Palestinians land.  Following special arrangements with the army many yeshiva students have been recruited, albeit they serve only half the time of regular secular soldiers.  Within a few years the radical sector of the religious segment have seemingly been in control of an even greater independent army than those of the Palmah, Izl and Lehi  ever had before.  It is an army whose soldiers have been considering the instructions of their Rabbis more obligatory than those of army officers.  The Golem is now in a position to threaten even the life of its creator.

cossackMuch of this situation is due to the changes that occurred in the nature and character of the Israeli Orthodox sector that has been in the uniquely advantageous position of not only being the official religion of the “Jewish” state, but also in gaining an immense and consistently growing political sway.  With the formation of each coalition government, the religious political parties played a crucial role in deciding the structure of this or that government and for such services have been gaining more influence and extra monies to finance more madarasas-like schools, and create thousands of phoney jobs for their supporters.

 Not possessing a viable outlook applicable to the present rather than to a presumed idyllic utopian future, the accent of the Talmudic religious worship shifted to growing extremism and fanaticisms in observance of rituals.  To what end?  A renowned scholar like the late Yeshayahu Leibovitz, who advocated replacing or adding to the exilic Talmudic teaching laws fit for the reality and the demands of current life in a Jewish state[i], believed that rituals form the essence of Judaism by representing divine commandments that should be observed if only because they represent His Will.  Accordingly he also denied the existence of unique Jewish ethics, as all “ethical” laws in the Bible are in the form of commandments and should therefore be observed as such and not because of their intrinsic ethical value.  However, most religious people are not as sophisticated as Leibivitz and naturally have been striving for a more direct contact with the divine rather than just observing commandments.

Studying the Talmudic texts (written 400/600) has been an established tradition during the last 1500 years of Jewish exilic history, but the phenomenon of myriad yeshivas is a new experience.  The fact that all those yeshivas didn’t produce even one exceptional scholar indicates that their purpose is different than that of just studying and that it is a unique Israeli, rather than a Jewish, phenomenon.  Nevertheless, the system did produce some so called Rabbis even after studying only a year or two in a yeshiva.  The role of such Israeli Rabbis shifted thus away from scholars to some kind of group leaders.  To a large extent this transition points to an identity crisis among a certain section of the population and the solution produced kind of a shallow culture, granting identity by a framework rather than by content.

A blend between the traditions of the Hassidic movements with Mid-Eastern customs filled Israel with hallowed people and hallowed graves.  The Hassidic movements consider their leaders, the Zadikim, to be semi-divine and intermediaries between their followers and God.  Mid-Eastern people worship dead or alive “holy” figures that can affect the divine acts.  The cult-like nature of the groups that follow such leaders, be they Hassidic Rabbis, head of yeshivas or just “holy” personalities, leads to a reality in which the leaders posses immense, basically complete, authority on the thoughts and conduct of their followers.  Jewish history knows people who had great authority due to the level of their scholarship, personality or social position, but the typical characteristic of Judaism throughout history had been that each person was entitled to interpret the scriptures his own way.  This tradition had been buttressed by the beautiful legend that on the foothill of Sinai all Jews listened to the Word of God but each understood it in his own way according to his own ability and capacity.  Thus, each person has been entitled to lawfully evoke his own understanding of the divine instruction.  More, each person is not only entitled but also obliged to share his own understanding with others, leading thus to a better understanding of the whole message as delivered by God in Sinai.  That of course is contradictory to the nature of all cults, and in today’s Israel, typical to eras of messianic expectations, a large part of the Orthodoxy is grouped in cult-like formations characterized by complete adherence to the dictates of their “leaders.”  Presumably such “leaders,” head of yeshivas or Rabbis, decide according to the Halacha – the Talmudic religious law, only there is nothing in this law fit for the problems of a modern state because the Orthodox doctrine forbids changing or adding to the Law.  Their judgment and rule is based on a concept called Daat Torah [ii] that assumes that scholars of the Torah should have the authority to decide upon all topics because, apparently, they know how the Torah would relate to such questions.  Only, such decisions, many of which are political, necessitate a good knowledge of Jewish history and of the secular narrative of which usually they know nothing.  We are witnessing here the consolidation of cultish sectors that, under the umbrella of the state and with its support, abrogated for themselves the term “Jewish” even though, their conduct is very different from any form in traditional Judaism, and to a very large extent, also from most of the current Diaspora Jewish communities.

However, the decisive factor in enhancing the power of Orthodoxy to the point of a probable self-destruction, very likely coupled with the possibility of annihilating the state of Israel, was the occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and settling it with fanatic, radically jingoistic Orthodox people, often organized in cult-like groups.

cossackThe most common characteristics of the West Bank settlers has been, first, that the incipient stages of most of the settlements were accomplished through a lie.  Second, that most of the settlements were built upon private Palestinian land[iii].  Thirdly – that the whole process has been saturated with messianic sentiments.[iv]

The most common characteristics in the state’s conduct towards the settlers have been, first, legitimizing the situations created by the false pretences and the illegal constructions upon private Palestinian land.  Second, using the Israeli army in order to guard and validate each pip of a settlement, even if it consists of no more than one tenuous structure, two or three people and a goat.  Thirdly, to pave a wide road to any such “settlement” while forbidding its use by all Palestinian Arabs, including the original owners of the land.  And lastly, to inundate the settlements with boundless sums of money (some estimates cite one hundred billion dollars) to the point of driving a large percentage of Israeli population into poverty, lacking means for education, health, welfare, and infrastructure.[v]

The most common characteristics in the conduct of the state, e.g. all governmental offices, army, police, military (and some times also civil) courts, is equivalent to apartheid and persecution.[vi]  The most peculiar characteristic is the fact that it is so despite the experience of the Holocaust, especially considering the role the Nazi Holocaust played in the UN approval of the Jewish state (November 1947), and despite the fact that the memory of the Holocaust is still playing a decisive role in Israel’s own justification for its existence, politics and general demeanour.

The Zionist justification for establishing a Jewish state was the belief that the existence of such a state will put an end to the animosity and discrimination towards the Jews, mostly in the European countries, but not only there.[vii]  It is peculiar therefore, to find such levels of animosity and discrimination in a state like Israel.  The other Zionist rationale for having a Jewish/Hebrew state was to put an end to the sickening ghetto-like demeanour of the Orthodox and Hassidic movements and replace them with a healthy mode of existence and national, rather than religious, definition of Jewish identity.  However, the Zionist era ended with the establishment of the state in 1948.

In fact, not only did Israel renew, revitalize and legitimize scores of such ghetto enclaves, but also endowed them with enormous political power.  That is especially true in relation to the numerous settlements in the West Bank where the settlers, backed up by all the institutions of the state, persecute and treat the Palestinians in a manner reminiscent of the way Germans treated the Jews (including pogroms) before the implementation of the Final Solution.

Personally, I had been brought up in the pre-Israel (then called Eretz Israel, i.e. the Land of Israel) Zionist era, at the time of the British Mandate, when all Jewish actions were saturated with ideologies that strived to create a better, more beautiful and just society.  I came to age at the time when Kibbutz members were the elite of the population, precisely because of their claimed effort to create an equal, ethical and just society where the community as a whole was responsible for the well being of each individual.  Coming from a vantage point set at such times I’m not only overwhelmed by the current behaviour of the Israeli government and its West Bank denizens, but also am incapable of explaining the existence in Israel of hundred thousands of fiends dressed in Jewish praying shawl and phylacteries.  Also beyond me is the existence of sects that worship the ground of what they call The Promised Land, permeating it with Palestinian blood, emulating, to some extent, those ancient Hebrews who worshiped the blood thirsty Moloch.  (The Prophet Jeremiah prophesied that the worshipping of Moloch will bring to the destruction of the Temple (7:31).  Indeed, associations of small groups, often around a central figure, were known in Judaism for over 500 years, especially since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal.  However, the accent in those, mainly mystical groups was on ethical behaviour, believing that in this way they will hasten the coming of the Messiah.  On the other hand, the current cultish groups, mainly in the West Bank, believe that we are already in messianic times and therefore are free from ethical bonds while, assumingly, fulfilling the wishes of their god.  They also abrogated to themselves not only the term Jews but also that of Zionists, creating in the process an ersatz theory about Judaism and Zionism.  I’m not sure whether the state of Israel could or will survive the settlers, but I’m quite sure that if some of the sects among the West Bank settlers or the Israeli Orthodoxy will survive they will remain with this label of Jews or even Zionists, and claim to be the keepers of the original spirit of Judaism and Zionism.

It is most significant that the state of Israel has recognized the West Bank Orthodox settlers as authentic Jews and supports their despicable behaviour with all its means and institutions, espousing their phoney pretext to be the “real” Jews and Zionists.  Maybe it is more difficult for me to understand their and the state’s behaviour because, personally, I have never been exposed to any expression of anti-Semitism and my parents were not survivors of the Holocaust.  Maybe the explanation for this weird behaviour is in the well known fact that many people who can have full control over others, especially when there is no fear of punishment, tend to abuse their power - a common phenomena in the army and in prisons.[viii]   However, what is happening in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is much beyond this kind of explanation because it so much resembles the behaviour of Nazi Germany toward the Jews.  Is it a national delayed response of the Stockholm syndrome in which victims, (like Patty Hearst), identify with the controller?  Or is it an intrinsic characteristic stemming from the social and political structure of Israel?

Avraham Burg, currently probably the leading Jewish thinker, noted in his 2007 book, Victory Over Hitler[ix] that “From the vantage point of an earlier period I have to admit to myself and acknowledge to the nation and the world at large that the biggest surprise I encountered while writing this book has been that the political, social and national structures that most resemble Israel are those of Germany at the time of its formation, from the beginning of the Second Reich until the chaos and anarchy that led to the rise of the Nazis.”  The formation and unification of Germany occurred after the victory of the Prussian army over France (1871) that filled all Germans with pride, but also led to the rise of the Yunkers who as “elite” class held sway over German politics and industry, filled most of the higher civil and military ranks and politically supported the radical political right (including its violent gangs), until the rise of Hitler.  As Burg notices, this blend of army and power led to chauvinism, militarism, bigotry and jingoism.

In some respects the resemblance to Israel is both amazing and shocking.  Since the triumph over the Arab armies in the War of Independence (1948), army officers, generals, retired officers and soldiers who served in commando units have become the social, industrial, and political elites, holding most of the top positions in all fields.   The retirement age, with full pension, to all those who serve in the army is 42, leaving enough time for a lucrative second career, often being helped by other retired officers.  In 1949 the first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion decided on retirement at such early age believing that this will prevent the formation of elite privileged class, but the result has been just the opposite.  The army with his current retired and reserve personal forms thus the institutional hub in Israel.  Beside innate characteristics common among many army officers, such as flagrant patriotism, mediocrity and narrow-mindedness, the self interest of the army as an institution leads it to convince the multitude that the country is in a continuous threat from the Palestinians and the Arab countries and therefore the army should be the most cared for institution, money and otherwise.  As most of the leading politicians and their coteries are retired army generals and officers, it is in their interest to also convince all citizens that, (not necessarily according to the real situation), the Palestinians and all the Arab countries presumably refuse to negotiate peace and just plot how to destroy Israel.

The resemblance between the central position the army had played in Germany and still plays in Israel can account for the wide spread of right wing tendencies.  The aspirations of Israel to extend its living space into the West Bank is reminiscence of Hitler’s desire to extend the German living spaces into Russia, Poland and other countries.  However, this does not explain why the settlers, the army and the police force, with the backing of the Israeli government, adopted a policy similar to that of Nazi Germans in their conduct towards the Palestinians in the West Bank, followed by the two and a half years siege on the Gaza Strip, that in many, if not all respects, is reminiscent (in my opinion) of the Germans siege over the Warsaw Ghetto.  The common denominator between the Nazi Germans and the settlers is in the belief that they represent the elite human beings.  The settlers believe that they belong to the “chosen people,” chosen by the same God who according to the Bible promised them all the Land of Israel and ordered then to eradicate all those who stand on their way.  Accordingly, many of their Rabbis, including army Rabbis, preach that it is a divine commandment to decimate the Palestinians whom they equate to Amalek, the ancient nation that the ancient Jews were commanded to eliminate.

It’s interesting that since the early seventies, the settlers have been comparing everybody, especially Israeli governments, prime ministers and generals, everybody who in deed or word hinted on the need to restrain them, to the actions of the Nazis.  Their speeches and writings are inundated by and saturated by a feeling of an imminent catastrophe that presumably could be evaded only by supporting their actions.  Judging by the actions of the army generals, who until very lately, preferred to support the settlers in any possible way rather than train and prepare the soldiers for war, they probably are in the same opinion.  Turning the Nazi Holocaust into a common term in the daily speech of state officials and the settlers probably leads to the well known phenomenon of adopting the ways of a long time adversary.  Maybe that is the reason for the behaviour of the Israeli government and its institution toward the Palestinians.

What ever is the rationale for the evil and loathsome behaviour of the state and the settlers towards the Palestinians, nothing can justify inhuman behaviour, either German or Israeli.  Can Israel survive the settlers who have been dragging it to an abysmal void?  I’m not sure; however, most Israelis are not religious and if the state would cut off its links with the Orthodoxy[x], the “Junkers” culture, and the jingoistic right, it might be able to follow a similar course as Germany did.  Can Judaism survive if Israel wouldn’t?  Concerning the essential place Israel still holds among many Jews all over the world, maybe not.  In any case it will have to find new rationale for its existence, not an impossible task considering the rich historical and cultural heritage of Judaism.  But it would have to be based on much more than “traditional” rituals.


[i] See footnote 3 in my Can Israel Survive the West Bank Settlements? On this website.
[ii] Please see footnote 4 in my article Can Israel Survive the West Bank Settlements
[iii] Please see footnote 32 in my Can Israel Survive
[iv] Please see footnote 23 in my Can Israel Survive
[v] Please see footnote 11 in my Can Israel Survive
[vi] Please see footnote 30 in my Can Israel Survive
[vii] See for instance the 1947 American movie Gentlemen’s Agreement.
[viii] While writing this paragraph I found in today’s YNET (Jan. 29,10) testimonies of female soldiers who served in the West Bank about how common is the cruel and humiliating behaviour of the soldiers there towards the Palestinians, either out of boredom or just because they can.
[ix] Hebrew, P.89, Yedioth Aharonot and Chemed  publishers. (The translation of this passage into English was done by me).
[x] Indeed, there are many kinds and sects of Orthodox Jews but the common and consistence tendency of  them all is to adopt the code of the more radical  ultra Orthodoxy. I think that this justifies speaking of them all as one and very much, the same sector, at least for the sake of this article.
 
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