Israel Matzav

Shameless equating of Judaism with Liberalism

It's bad enough that they insist on supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement while ignoring its rank anti-Semitism. 'Occupy Judaism' has really gone overboard this time. Matthew Ackerman explains.

On Wednesday, the Forward published an op-ed by “Occupy Judaism’s” chief organizer in which without blushing he compares the clearing of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan of Occupy Wall Street protesters by the NYPD to the destruction of ancient Jerusalem by the Roman army.

You read that correctly.

One might think that however far Judaism’s occupiers might take their association of Judaism with radical politics, they would stop short at saying the shechina (the Divine Presence said to have rested in the lost Temple) was with them, or comparing themselves to Yohanan ben Zakkai who, by escaping Jerusalem when it was encircled by the Roman legions and establishing his yeshiva in Yavneh, ensured the perpetuation of Judaism even after Jerusalem’s destruction. That destruction, after all, meant the death of at least tens of thousands, the enslavement of countless others, the first forced exile of Jews from the Land of Israel in a half millennium, and represented the end of any semblance of Jewish political independence for 1,878 years. On that score, alas, you would be wrong. Shame does not seem to register in the operating paradigm of these Jews.

While not surprising, it is strange that this new low would be reached now, after “Occupy Judaism’s” leaders have done a better job than anyone of chronicling
the anti-Israelism endemic in the Occupy movement. Getting called a genocidaire for refusing to condemn the existence of a Jewish state just isn’t enough for some, I guess, to walk away from their supposed comrades.

Hey guys - God didn't hand down liberalism at Sinai, as difficult as that may be for you to accept. Liberalism isn't the Torah and it isn't mandated by the Torah.

As to the Forward, sadly, we can't expect any better from them. They may as well make Mikey Lerner the Editor-in-Chief. Read the whole thing.

Labels: Forward, liberalism, Occupy Judaism, Occupy Wall Street

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:53 AM