Would they laud Neturei Karta too?
Sunday's New York Times featured an appalling article by Samuel Freedman (an author I used to enjoy) that portrayed more than sympathetically a group called the American Council for Judaism, a group that can only be described as an alter-ego to the 'ultra-Orthodox' Neturei Karta. As shocking as Mr. Naman’s insistence on taking Israel out of Judaism may seem, it actually adheres to a consistent strain within Jewish debate. Whether one calls it anti-Zionism or non-Zionism — and all these terms are contested and loaded — the effort to separate the Jewish state from Jewish identity has centuries-old roots.This is a gross mis-statement. What goes back centuries (to Talmudic times) is a dispute over whether and under what circumstances Jews are allowed to return to Israel before the Messiah's arrival. However, the entire notion of removing Israel and the return to Zion from the prayerbook text was a reform notion that dates back to sometime in the 18th or 19th centuries - not exactly 'hundreds' of years and not a 'consistent' strain of Jewish debate.
It is not that members are flocking to the council. The group’s mailing list is only in the low thousands, and its Web site received a modest 10,000 unique visitors in the last year. Its budget is a mere $55,000. As Mr. Naman acknowledges, the council’s history of opposition to Zionism renders it “radioactive” for even liberal American Jewish groups, like J Street and Peace Now.To put this in perspective (and keep in mind that these people are probably mostly internet users so they don't have that excuse), this modest little website that you are reading (Israel Matzav) has over 80,000 unique visitors and 115,000 page views THIS MONTH. And no one at the New York Times has contacted me about doing a story yet. Anyone think there might be an agenda here - like that the original Times ownership (the Sulzbergers) were part of this group many years ago?
The rejection of Zion, though, goes back to the Torah itself, with its accounts of the Hebrews’ rebelling against Moses on the journey toward the Promised Land and pleading to return to Egypt.And the rabbis tell us that was a small fringe group that wanted to maintain their own advantageous positions of power that would only be applicable in the desert.
Read the whole thing. It would take me an entire day's worth of posts to correct all the mistakes in this article. And I used to think Samuel Freedman was a smart guy....
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:31 AM
2 Comments:
Carl - the point is that assimilation and being good citizens of the countries in which they lived hasn't saved Jewish lives. The Holocaust made the notion risible. And so did Arab progroms that drove the Jews out of much of the Arab world. The fact is Jews are not completely safe in Europe and in America they are largely disappearing due to assimilation. The American Council for Judaism has no real answer on securing the Jewish future outside of Israel. And until they do, they are nothing more than useful idiots, like the Neturei Karta, for Israel's enemies.
How Jews could study the Tanakh [not just Torah, and not just Talmud, but TANAKH] and come away a non-Zionist...
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