Judaism- An Introduction, page 35
And Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, wrote in The Times Weekend (18 April 1998):
If we search, as the prophets did, for the presence of God in human history, surely it is here. And it will be to God that on Israel’s Jubilee we will give thanks. But the search for peace remains. Jews did not return home to make others homeless. Nor did they escape millennia of suffering to inflict suffering on others. Isaiah’s words 25 centuries ago still define Israel’s challenge and its hope: ‘I will make peace your governor and righteousness your ruler. No longer will violence be heard in your land.’
JUSTICE
We noted earlier the danger of Jews accepting the biblical promises of land while rejecting the accompanying demands for morality. That ‘peace without justice is another form of oppression’ is the chief claim of Canon Naim Ateek. In his book of Palestinian liberation theology, Justice, and Only Justice (Orbis, 1990), he writes as Pastor of the Arabic-speaking congregation of St George’s Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem. He is surely correct in his view that there can be theological justification for a political State and that the State of Israel cannot survive on injustice. If God’s prophets are to be appealed to in a people’s return to a land, then there must be genuine attempts to meet the covenant requirements: ‘to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8). Ateek’s point is, of course, the one made by the moderate religious Zionists. However, in a country where many have dropped at least the last part of the three-fold requirement, the emphasis must be on justice. Israel sometimes protests that a higher standard of morality is demanded of it than of any other state. Israel is, in fact, a state like any other of which neither a higher nor a lower morality should be demanded. The accusation is sometimes made that Jews above all people should avoid humiliating and oppressing those over whom they now have control. Taking this further, Zionism has been charged with being racist and the State of operating a system of apartheid. Those engaged in the actual struggle to find a way forward avoid this sort of emotive link with the Holocaust. One of the most impressive Palestinian representatives is Hanan Ashrawi, Professor of English at the University of the West Bank. She firmly rejects the analogy between Israel and Nazism but, as she said in the powerful television documentary series The Longest Hatred: ‘I will not allow other people’s suffering to give them the right to make me suffer.’ As she went on, you cannot say who has suffered most since you cannot measure pain. Traumatized and scarred memories are no justification for further suffering. Rather, the causes of the pain and suffering of both peoples need to be avoided altogether.
OTHER REQUIREMENTS FOR PEACE
If justice is the starting point, then what about peace? When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the document of mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO, Jewish responses ranged from jubilation at ‘entering a new era’ to ‘condemning it as a black day for the State of Israel’. Verdicts from Arabs were similarly divided, with Chairman Arafat being described as both a hero and a traitor. One person’s peacemaker is another’s betrayer.
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Insight
It is often difficult not to react with hostility to the position of someone whom they consider to be, or to have been, a member of a ‘terrorist’ organization. The significant peacemaking contributions of people on both sides of the divide, including Palestinian Ashrawi and Israeli Begin, tend not to be recognized by those with a black and white, essentially inconsistent, approach to the conflict.
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One may feel that the Intifada (Palestinian uprising) was altogether justified given the refugee camps and the military confrontations experienced by Palestinians over the years but, as with any embattled hostility, the question is not whether it is justifiable but how to bring it equitably and permanently to an end. In his speech in Washington, Yitzhak Rabin spoke of how one makes peace with enemies, not with friends. His assassination in November 1995 by a right-wing Jewish extremist at a peace rally in Tel Aviv demonstrates not only the rift between Jews over what constitutes Jewish loyalty but also the cost of the compromises involved in such peacemaking.
Today, there are widely differing perspectives among both Israelis and Palestinians on prospects for peace. Israelis of all persuasions are concerned about security implications. Religious nationalists object strongly to the relinquishing of parts of the biblical heartland of Judaea and Samaria. More moderate Israelis support the transfer of power as essential to any long-term settlement and lasting peace. Mainstream Palestinians demand a state in the West Bank and Gaza. In final state negotiations the Israeli government agreed to a demilitarized Palestinian state with limited control over its borders and resources. The Palestinians have a commitment from the United Nations and from former US President George W. Bush for a state, and the Road Map peace plan is intended to result in a Palestinian state. The Oslo Accords and the Road Map are, however, opposed by extremists among both Israelis and Palestinians, notably by Hamas who continue to reject Israel’s right to exist.
Figure 17.6. On the stones at this point on the Lebanese-Israeli border are the words in Arabic, Hebrew, and English: … they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah 2:4). At the centre of the Israeli flag is the Magen David (‘Shield of David’) which has become a symbol for the Jewish people.
Major disagreement also remains over the return of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, and Jewish settlements. Within days of the Annapolis summit in November 2007, Israel announced plans to build new Jewish homes in disputed east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2008. Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian negotiator, responded: ‘It is impossible to make peace and settlements at the same time. We consider these steps as threatening the beginning of the final negotiations between the two sides.’ There is also sharp division of opinion over the security barrier being built inside the West Bank. Palestinians maintain that it cuts them off from their land and from other towns and destroys olive groves and other Palestinian property. Israelis maintain that the route of the barrier has been changed several times under international pressure, that its erection has decreased Israeli casualties dramatically, and that it is vital in preventing terrorist attacks.
Long-time Israeli peace campaigner Amos Oz adopted the slogan: ‘Make peace not love.’ He has consistently argued that the Palestinians deserve not love but peace and that this rests on a fair and decent division of the land. Many of his novels, for example, In the Land of Israel and Black Box, follow this line. Though Oz himself fought in the wars of 1967 and 1973, the latter he judges as marking the collapse of Israel’s self-image as a dazzling success story. In the 1980s, the invasion of the Lebanon and the massacres of the Sabra and Chatila camps which took place within Israeli military jurisdiction divided Jewish opinion both inside and outside Israel. Amos Oz once described Israel as ‘neither a nation nor a country’ but ‘a fiery collection of arguments’ and ‘a tense and divided federation of dreams’.
Developments in the 1990s made this truer than ever. As a result, Israel became less embattled and this in two ways, showing the vital link between security and identity. First, its sense of survival and declining incidences of attack – both militarily from Arab terrorists and verbally from the rest of the world – help give it a feeling of security. Also important is international acceptance of Israel’s civil rights record which is necessary for membership of the United Nations. In an article about Israel’s recognition that security matters must no longer be judged by the military but now by the Supreme Court in Israel, The Jewish Chronicle of 5 May 2000 maintains: ‘Israeli society is changing dramatically – becoming more open – not least because its sense of siege has been lifting. And along with key social values of the pioneering years, the consensus on security issues is also now open to challenge.’ (Eric Silver, ‘Another taboo goes: judges v generals’.) Second, the changing ethnic and social geography of Israel renders it less likely to think of itself in terms of shared Jewishness as distinct from the non-Jewishness of the Palestinians.
The range of Jewish identities described earlier has become even more diffuse in recent years. There is a tendency towards hyphenated identities along American lines. The massive immigration of Russian Jews (more than 700,000 since 1989, now amounting to more than 15 per cent of the population) was initially seen as a welcome reinforcement for Zionism. But these Jews have changed the face of Israel, notably by choosing to create the country’s first successful ethnic party. Under Soviet communism they were hardly united in their Jewishness and yet they have contested elections as a Russian-Israeli party named Ba’aliyah. They were led by Natan Sharansky who, as a consequence of trying to emigrate to Israel in the 1970s, spent nine years in a Soviet jail. Sharansky served in the Knesset from 1996 to 2005.
Other ethnic constituencies have also asserted themselves in political parties. Consequently, the European-Ashkenazi dominance of cultural life has come ‘under siege’, as one eminent academic has described it. Israeli Arabs are not the only ones who seek not so much social integration as equal status with those Jews who until now have determined how the State of Israel expresses itself ‘Jewishly’. Country of origin is now accentuated, with people divided not only into hawk or dove, right or left, religious or secular, but also into Moroccan or Russian. There have always been distinctions, even divisions and inequalities, between western and oriental Jews in Israel. But Ashkenazim and Sefardim, respectively, now subdivide even more and voting patterns can be surprising, even for such an inherently surprising political system as Israel’s. Zionist or non-Zionist is not always the defining character.
The term ‘post-Zionist’ is being increasingly used of Israel post-1998. The State has achieved its half-century. In a survey of Israel at 50, a writer for the Economist concluded that ‘modern Israeli politics is not only about peace and war. It is also about what sort of society an Israel at peace intends to be’ (Peter David in ‘After Zionism’, 25 April 1998). The State may yet, as its first Prime Minister claimed, ‘prove itself not by material wealth, not by military might or technical achievement, but by its moral character and human values’. It all rather depends on what sort of peace Israel is aiming for. The motivation for withdrawal from the Lebanon in 2000 was, after all, to stop further loss of Israeli soldiers. It is no longer simply a question of where Israel’s borders lie, but of what flows in and out of the country, literally and metaphorically. As has been remarked, the gap between Syria and Israel is only a matter of eight square miles, but this includes the shores of the Sea of Galilee which gives 40 per cent of Israel’s water supply. The question now concerns the sort of society cultivated within Israel’s borders. The biblical perspective, as expressed by Jonathan Sacks quoted earlier in the chapter, would go beyond this and ask what Israel hopes to give the world. This is essentially a religious question, the question of the purpose of the survival of Israel and the religion of Judaism. Whether or not religion can be in any sense a unifying rather than a divisive factor in Israel becomes all the more pertinent now that Zionism is no longer the strong binding force that it was when survival was everything. Israel has survived but survived for what? To satisfy both fidelity to the purposes of Judaism and political realism, the answer must somehow entail justice and security for all the inhabitants.
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THINGS TO REMEMBER
The sense of peoplehood is vital to what it means to be Jewish and a focal point of this is the land of Israel.
The land takes its name from the renaming of the patriarch, Jacob-Israel as described in Genesis 35:10–12.
An identification of the modern State of Israel with the biblical land of Israel or of Zionism with Judaism is the source of much conflict and confusion.
The different forms of Zionism had different origins. Political Zionism’s most vigorous advocate was Theodor Herzl, who believed that a Jewish state was essential in the face of anti-Semitism.
The founding father of cultural Zionism was Asher Ginzberg, who adopted the pen-name Ahad Ha-am.
Within the State of Israel, there is a wide range of religious responses to Zionism, including those who, at one end of the spectrum, see the State of Israel as a distortion of Judaism into nationalism and those who, at the other end, regard it as a sign of the Messianic redemption.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 rooted ‘Jewishness’, whether centred on faith ideals or on the Jewish community, in the land of Israel as home-base.
The Israeli Law of Return is a secular law not within the jurisdiction of the rabbinic courts and its definition of Jewishness differs from the one used in these courts to decide issues of personal status (adoption, conversion, marriage, and divorce).
Decades of conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours have left a background of insecurity, mistrust, and aggression on both sides.
Those committed to securing peace concentrate on promoting an equitable and just future for all inhabitants rather than on trying to measure past suffering and on labelling those of contrary opinions.
There is wide division of opinion on the current prospects for peace. The main points at issue relate to transfer of land and power, the status of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.
Politically and religiously, Israel can now be described as ‘post-Zionist’ in the sense that Zionism is no longer the strong binding force for Jews that it was when mere survival was the paramount consideration. Judaism challenges its adherents, both inside and outside Israel, to work out their understanding of fidelity to God’s purposes not only for themselves but also for humankind.
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Afterword
Since the aim of the series of titles on World Faiths is avowedly practical rather than purely academic, it may be in order to hope that mention of some of the pitfalls may improve relations between Jews and people of other faiths. Most of these relate to Christian-Jewish encounter, since it is often those with Christian affiliation who have a particular interest in this religion and who perhaps make the most assumptions.
The first one is the assumption that Judaism and Christianity are fundamentally the same. This is a particular danger for those Christians who, quite rightly, have got the message that the roots of their own faith lie here. Though this is an improvement on the viewpoint reflected in such exclamations as: ‘They even have our Psalms!’, it can lead to a failure to see the very real and important differences. What has been described as a ‘juxtaposed monologue’ rather than a dialogue can be the consequence.
This sometimes surfaces in the surprise with which the news is received that a Jew may be unable to take part in occasions where Christian terminology or symbolism pertains. ‘I cannot see why not, when we all believe in the same God’ is more likely to be directed at Jews rather than at any other religious group. A sense of the power of the key Christian symbol of the Cross to evoke accusations of deicide, the Crusades, and later attempts to convert needs to be grasped. Not wanting to sing hymns and say prayers which focus on Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Suffering Servant should, by now, not be difficult to understand. The fact that Christians can see Jewish symbolism and recite Jewish liturgy without being similarly offended further adds to their bewilderment at Jewish non-participation. It can too easily seem as if Jews are being over-sensitive or plain awkward.
It was remarkable that, on the day in 1995 when the liberation of Auschwitz was being commemorated, an otherwise apt and sensitive religious service on the radio included a missionary hymn which included the lines: ‘And where the gospel day sheds not its glorious ray, let there be light.’ It might, of course, be argued that it was mainly Christians who would be tuned in to such a service but even to them, at a time when Christian culpability in the Holocaust was being much explored, this line might have had a hollow ring. Then a television newsman reported that at Auschwitz ‘the Christian names’ of the victims were being read out. That 90 per cent of these people would not have Christian names, while most of the perpetrators would, and that the silent yet knowing powers of the world included Christian leaders, made the phrase deeply unfortunate. In both these cases, no offence would be remotely intended and the choice of words would be much regretted once it was pointed out to those responsible.
A second pitfall is closely related to the first. It is the tendency of Christians to assume that Christianity is ‘Judaism plus Jesus’ or conversely that Judaism is ‘Christianity minus Jesus’. In one sense, the first description is quite accurate. For people of a Jewish background who come to believe in Jesus as the unique revelation of God, their new religion is indeed Christianity. But the things which such a belief about Jesus does to their Judaism are far more radical than adding a sort of optional extra. Atonement, for example, is the key to Judaism and yet in Christianity the understanding of Atonement is something quite different. More importantly, Judaism can certainly not be summarized as Christianity without Jesus. It is good that much recent biblical scholarship has stressed the Jewishness of Jesus, but the religion which then developed from his teaching has quite a different focus (namely Jesus himself) from Judaism’s focus in the Torah.
