"There is a debilitating hesitancy around the question of conversion
[to Judaism]. It cannot be positively encouraged [by Jews] ... because,
well, it can't. Instead, it seems we should concentrate on exhorting Jews
to marry Jews -- that is (although it's usually not stated in those terms)
born Jews ... A halakhic ruling about the inclusion
of certain Jews -- namely those with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers
[i.e., the classical religious ruling of who is a Jew] seems to have been
fashioned within a discourse of racial purity into a threatening statement
of exclusion. This discourse of racial purity clouds our thoughts continuously,
in particular when the question of conversion arises."
Raphael Baaden,
Inside and Outside the Jewish Family, The Jewish Quarterly, Spring,
1996, p. 11
"Is it good to hate? ... Our tradition
does not teach us that all hatred is bad. The Bible is unambiguous on
this point: We are clearly intended to hate Amalek, whose memory we are
instructed to wipe out ... The subject is raised each year in the middle
of the Passover seder ... In fact there are few things that can be healthier
than merited hatred ... Sitting in a comfortable home today, it is easy
to see barbarity in the words of the Haggadah. When we do, we betray our
history."
David Wolpe,
Baltimore Jewish Times, 6-18-93, p. 8
"Judeo-centrism is now characteristic of Jews and non-Jews alike
... I ... remain convinced that such attitudes ... are extremely harmful,
as pernicious, for the comprehension of facts and situations, as they
are for one's ability to influence the facts ...
I neither hate nor despise myself. I have never denied my Jewish
origin. But nor have I regarded it as a mark of glory that automatically
makes me superior to others, that suffices to protect me from intellectual
or moral error..."
Maxime Rodinson,
Cult, Ghetto, and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question,
1981, p. 9]
"Is
Zionism racism? I would say yes. It's a policy that to me looks like it
has many parallels with racism. The effect is the same. Whether you call
it that or not is in a sense irrelevant."
Desmund Tutu,
South African Archbishop, Nobel prize winner, and activist against apartheid,
Hoffman, Tzippi/Fisher, Alan, 1988
"The
etymological history of the word shiksa [Yiddish for non-Jewish
woman] itself is instructive ... The Hebrew word shakaytz
means to abominate, to utterly detest. In the Bible there are other
admonitions not to eat or take the shikutz (masculine noun
form), literally, the abominated thing, into one's house."
Edwin Freedman.
The Myth of the Shiksa [in Herz/Rosen, 1982, p. 508]
"'Shagetz' and 'shikse' are always pejorative."
Siegel/Rheins,
The Jewish Almanac,
Bantam Books, NY, 1980
p. 392
"Jews
who would rather cut off their tongue than say 'nigger ' or 'spic'
and
consider 'kike' and 'Hymie' fighting words talk about 'goyim' and
'shiksas'
with blithe indifference. They assume that we can't be guilty of
prejudice
because
we are all victims ... But terms like 'shiksa'
... no
longer
sound like charming Yiddishisms to me; they seem like slurs."
Zev Chavets,
quoted in Brownfeld, A. Growing Intolerance Threatens the Humane
Jewish Tradition, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March
1999, p. 85
"Throughout their history, the Jews ... entertained feelings of superiority
over Gentiles ... It therefore became a prevalent notion among Jews that
they are supposed to use their heads, while the Gentiles do the dirty
work."
Jay Gonen.
A Psychohistory of Zionism, Mason/Charter, NY, 1973, p. 137
"Unlike
many religions, Judaism is more than simply a belief system that anyone
can adopt. To become Jewish means enlisting in a tribe. The relationship
or covenant is between God and the Jewish people, rather than between
God and
individual Jews. Judaism is a religion with a strong ancestral component."
Steven Silbiger.
The Phenomenon of the Jews, Longstreet Press, GA, 2000, p. 11]
"The
existence of Israel is the reaffirmation of Jews as the chosen people
... Israel is
suffused for me with a moral meaning absent from the existence
of
any
other nation in the world. If there was a war between the United
States and Israel, I would choose Israel. Sometimes
I think I
am secretly glad for its occasional brutality
so that the world will know
there
is a monster out there -- a monster who will never forget [the
Holocaust].
Although in general I believe in nuclear disarmament, I am glad
Israel has the
atomic bomb, and the continued existence of
Israel is the only cause for which I consider it
justifiable to use nuclear weapons. Let
me put this in its starkest and ugliest light: I am not sure, but I
believe that, if the choice
were between the survival of Israel and that
of the remaining 4
or 6 billion people of the world, I would choose
the 4 million [Jews]."
Jane Delynne,
Jewish American author, in Rosenberg, David. Testimony. Contemporary
Writers Make the Holocaust Personal. Times Books, 1985, p. 65]
"No
other people in the world is so attached to its country
of origin -- Palestine [i.e., Israel] -- as the Jews, who are bound by
feeling and religion, as well as by utterly mystical ties ... [GOLDMANN,
N., p. 7] ... The Jews are the most separatist people in the world. Their
belief in the notion of the chosen people is the basis of their religion.
All down the centuries the Jews have intensified their separation from
the non-Jewish world; they have rejected, and still do reject, mixed marriages;
they have put up one wall after another to protect their existence as
a people apart, and have built their ghettos with their own hands."
Nachum Goldmann,
head of the World Jewish Congress and World Zionist Organization, The
Jewish Paradox, Grosset & Dunlap, 1978.
"We cannot fail to recognize in the claim of Jewish superiority a
kinship and resemblance to the similar claims of othr national and racial
groups which have been used in defense of the imperialist exploitation
of the yellow and black man by the whites on the ground that they were
the 'white man's burden.' They are the grounds for the German persecution
of Jewry, in accord with the Aryan clause of the Third Reich's fundamental
law. They were in the past the grounds in which our own people rationalized
their conquest and expropriation of the Canaanites ... All such claims
to superiority of one race, nation, or caste [are] detrimentnal to the
interests of humanity, and [are] essentially vicious."
Mordecai Kaplan,
founder of the Reconstructionist Judaism movement, The Meaning of God
in Modern Judaism, The Reconstructionist Foundation, 1947, p. 94-95
"In a thirty
page study that examined all Halakhic
[Jewish religious law] authorities on the subject, [Israeli rabbi David]
Ben-Haim proves that according to the vast majority, the Torah, when speaking
about Adam (a human being), never includes Gentiles in this category.
He points out that ten recognized Halakhic authorities repeatedly proposed
that Gentiles are more beast than human and that they should be treated
accordingly; only two authorities recognize non-Jews as full human beings
created in the image of God."
Ehud Sprinzak,
The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right, Oxford University Press,
p. 273
From
a chapter entitled:
What Is It to Be Jewish?
"It's two things," said Nichola, "It's
a family thing and a thing that
has been imposed on me through blood. It's
a genetic thing, if you like."
"It's
something that has been imposed on me," said Claire, "It's a blood thing. I can't escape it." "I feel Jewish," said Sophia, "out
of history, my blood, and
it's just like a nationality.'
[A young man named Guy summed up the common
theme more
ominously]:
"Entertaining any idea about racial purity just stinks of
Hitler but it
is
an issue. I feel all sorts of people have some
pride
in their roots and they feel racial mixing dilutes your heritage.
I
think I might feel that. It frightens me."
Quoted by
Emma Klein, in
Lost Jews: The Struggle for Identity, St. Martin's Press, 1996,
, p. 191
“Unfortunately -- from my point of view and,
it would seem, from
the
perspective from which this symposium is mounted -- the number
of
followers of Meir Kahane [the profoundly racist and, some say, even fascist,
American- Israeli
leader] within the Orthodox movement is not tiny, nor has his
militant
doctrine found a positive response among small
sections of our community. On the contrary: central aspects
of
his worldview, or at least his basic attitudes, are shared by large
segments
of observant Jewry in both Israel and America ... Kahane
is
merely an unmasked version of what Zionism always was -- racist,
brutal,
rapacious ... The modern Orthodox community ... exploits...
democratic,
humanistic modes of behavior ... for its own benefit.
Exploiting
values cynically, benefiting from them but not committing oneself
to them or internalizing them, ought to be unacceptable.”
Gerald Blidstein,
Religious Zionism Revisted: A Symposium,
Tradition, 1994, p. 11, 14
"In
the thirteenth century, segregated living quarters for Jews [in Europe]
were made compulsory. The fact of the matter is that separate Jewish
streets had existed all along ... If the Jews lived together long before
segregated living quarters were imposed upon them, then their segregation
must have been voluntary. It was. Living apart, no matter how bizarre
it may appear in the light of present day concepts and attitudes, was
part of the 'privileges' accorded to the Jews in conforming with their
own wishes."
Max Weinrich,
The Reality of Jewishness Versus the Ghetto Myth, The Sociolinguistic
Roots of Yiddish, p. 105
"An estimated 50 per cent or more of American
Jews send their children to an ethnic school, and over three-quarters
of young men undergo the traditional bar mitzvah ceremony. In contrast,
counterpart systems promoting specifically Italian or German language,
culture, and history largely have disappeared in most major countries
of immigration. Even among inter-married couples ... a large majority
claim that most of their friends were Jews."
Joel Kotkin,
Tribes. How Race, Religion, an Identity Determine Success in the
New Global Economy, Random House, 1993, p. 35
"The
Talmudic mind is hostile to ethnic equality and to universalism. It
is very anxious to enforce an ideal of communal purity. All possible
contacts with Gentiles are to be avoided."
Norman Cantor,
The Sacred Chain. A History of the Jews, HarperCollins, 1994,
p. 206
"Already
at this age, these children knew that goyim
represented the
absolute
other of Yidn [Jews] -- the counterworld. The relation
between the two was
clear: 'No ideas or institutions that held in the one
were valid in the other.'"
Samuel Heilman,
commenting on the teachings in a modern school in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox
community, Defenders of the Faith. Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry,
Schocken Books, NY, 1992
"Jewish
elitist perceptions of the 'chosen people' were crystallized against
a background of humiliation, scorn, hate, and alienation in
the
diaspora. Only a belief in his unique identity could sustain the
Jew
... The selfsame precepts, transferred to a situation where the
Jews
are the majority, ruling another nation [Arabs], interacting on
an equal
basis with the [other] goyim, assume a sinister, domineering
significance.
Ahavat Israel, the love of Israel, the deep sense of affinity
and of common destiny, the belief in col
Israel haverim (all
Israel
are comrades) which sustained the diaspora Jews and gave
them
a measure of security, resulted in xenophobia -- being increasingly
perceived
as synonymous with sin'at hagoy (hate for
the goyim)."
Meron Benvenisti,
former Jerusalem city official, Sacred Landscape. The Buried
History of the Holy Land Since 1948, University of California
Press, 2000, p. 76
"The native tendency
of the Jewish race is against the doctrine of the equality
of man. They have also another characteristic -- the faculty of
acquisition
... Their bias is to religion, property, and natural
aristocracy."
Benjamin Israeli,
the famed 19th century Jewish prime minister of Great Britain,
quoted by Feldman, Bronson; The Imperial Dreams of D'Israeli,
The Psychoanalytic Review, Winter 1966-67,
p. 638
"If the notion of [a giant extended Jewish]
family is taken seriously, it affirms a biological affinity. No
amount of religious mystification can make biological Jews of
converts."
Charles Liebman/Steven M. Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism.
The Israeli and American Experiences. Yale University
Press, New Haven and London, 1990, p. 24
"But if truth be told, Lazar's anti-gentile
sentiment wasn't limited to just Hasidic [ultra-Orthodox] Jews.
The Hasidim put into practice what many Jews talked about. Lazar's
gentile-bashing reminded me of the Yiddish aphorisms Er shmekt
nit un er shtinkt nit ('He doesn't smell and he doesn't stink'),
used derisively to describe non-Jews, who are viewed as inconsequential
and unimportant. The maxim wasn't very different from the expression
my own parents used about the simpleton who's got a goyisher
kop [non-Jewish head]."
Stephen Bloom,
Postville. A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America, A
Harvest Book, Harcourt, San Diego/London/NY, 2001,
p. 196
In
a 1988 survey, "more than a third of Reform rabbis -- traditionally
the most 'integrated' and 'outreaching' of the major Jewish denominations
-- endosed the proposition that 'ideally, one ought not to have
any contact with non-Jews.'"
Peter Novick,
The Holocaust in American Life,
Houghton Mifflin, NY,
1999, p. 181
|
Favorite Son. The Jewish Journal of Greater
Los Angeles. June 15, 2001
"It was a proud moment for Sam Kermanian when his West Hollywood-based
organization, the Iranian-American Jewish Federation (IAJF), welcomed
Israeli president Moshe Katzav last week. ... An increasingly succesful
sector in the community, Persian Jews are facing challenges familiar
to previous generations of Jewish immigramts; among them, dilution of
traditional values and assimilation. 'There is no question there is
an influence of materialism,' Kermanian said. 'Some of the old values
are still holding the community together, but, obviously, this is something
that will not last forever. We know that within a generation or two,
we will assimilate into a larger landscape. Our goal is to make sure
that we assimilate into the American Jewish community rather than the
secular American landscape.' Kermanian believes that American Jewish
strategies to counter escalating rates of intermarriage and divorce,
such as education and programs in Israel, are just beginning to penetrate
the close-knit Persian community. 'We’re not waiting for assimilation
to happen before we try to correct [these lapses],' he said."
A
Gentile and an Outcast. New Statesman,
August 14, 1998
"I'm horrified by the attitude of so many Jews towards intermarriage.
It's not just in Israel. You come across the same thing in England.
Yes, my wife is Jewish. And it follows that a number of my relations
are Jewish, too. In fact, coming from a small family and having married
into an enormous one, I find that the vast majority of my relations
are Jewish ... In the wider Jewish community, sad to relate, gentiles
are by no means as welcome as spouses as I have been. The current rate
of intermarriage among Anglo-Jews is around 45 per cent. But when this
highly contentious subject arises, we outsiders frequently find ourselves
disregarded. The focus is never on the people who 'marry in,' but always
on Jews marrying out ... There's no need for me to convert. That's the
magic of being Jewish: you're born that way, even if you never set foot
in a synagogue. If I have children, they'll be Jewish by virtue of having
a Jewish mother. They, too, will be entitled to be stoned by the ultra-orthodox
in Mea She'arim. I may never become Jewish myself, but my family as
a whole will at least be Jewish."
My Sister is
Dating a Goy, Jewsweek, Issue 11, 2001
"Out of the blue one day, my sister happily announced to me that
she was seeing someone and that this someone was not Jewish. She studied
my face for a reaction, but I don’t think the one she got was what was
expected. At a time when I was still able to approach the subject without
getting yelled at or receiving the silent treatment from her, she had
told me that she would never marry someone who is not Jewish ... These
were some of the questions that I pondered as I tried to figure out
what I could do to influence the situation. Talking to her wasn’t doing
any good, and eventually my mother felt that we had discussed all there
was to discuss. What would be the point in constantly rehashing it?
So, little by little, we stopped communicating about the relationship
to the point where it was rarely talked about at all. But it seemed
to me that saying nothing merely had the effect of making it easy for
my sister to keep seeing him. And while she did, the rest of us more
or less lived with it, every now and then having to dodge questions
from relatives who asked if my sister was seeing anybody ... Don’t get
me wrong, I love my sister very much, but her relationship with a non-Jewish
guy did cause a great deal of strain upon our family. Until this point,
my mother had always believed that, of the two of us, it was my sister
who would never even consider interdating because she had attended and
worked at Jewish camps all her life, surrounding herself with Jewish
people and practices."
Lastman
Slur Hurts Games Bid.
National Post. June 21, 2001
"An 'ignorant, racist' joke by Toronto's [Jewish] Mayor may have
sunk the city's bid for the 2008 Olympics, Canadian politicians and
community groups say. Before leaving on a goodwill visit to Kenya this
month to promote the city's quest for the Summer Games, Mel Lastman
spoke to a freelance journalist about the trip. 'What the hell do I
want to go to a place like Mombasa?' Mr. Lastman asked. 'Snakes scare
the hell out of me. I'm scared about going there, but the wife is really
nervous,' he said. 'I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with
all these natives dancing around me.' The remarks met universal condemnation
yesterday."
Gershon
Explains His Racist Remarks to Knesset Panel.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 4, 2001
"Maccabi Tel Aviv's outgoing [professional] basketball coach, Pini
Gershon, yesterday offered a full explanation to the Knesset committee
for prevention of violence in sport, following the publication this
week of racist remarks that he had made several months ago ... . Yedioth
Ahronoth's Web site, Y-Net, published a report on Sunday in which
Gershon is quoted as telling a closed forum of senior IDF [Israeli military]
officers that 'even among blacks there are different colors. There is
dark black, and there is mocha. The mocha type are more clever, and
the darker color usually come from the street.' The report said that
the often overly-vivacious Gershon drew laughter from his listeners.
He then continued unfazed: 'I am not joking. You can see the standing
of those with a bit more mixture in their color, such as Andrew Kennedy.
You can see his personality. He will check you out, he is clever. The
other (darker) blacks are stupid. They will do whatever you tell them,
like slaves.' Gershon told the Knesset committee that the words were
uttered last September and that none of the officers present made any
comment to him about his remarks. 'They were happy, we spoke jovially.
I spoke about all the players and none of them criticized me,' he said
yesterday."
Some IDF Officers
Asked for Copies of Gershon's Speech.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 8, 2001
"Basketball coach Pini Gershon's speech in which he referred
to black basketball players as having a slave mentality and the color
of their skin as an indicator of their intelligence, so impressed some
of the officers who heard it last November that they asked for copies
of the videotape of the lecture. Even after the scandal broke out, many
of the reserve officers, who were in the course for brigade commanders,
don't understand why Gershon's racist remarks caused a scandal. One
said 'Gershon's comments were taken as a colorful expression, as humor.
We didn't think of it as racist. After all, he didn't incite us against
blacks, but just gave an extreme example to make his speech tangible.'
The officer called Gershon's speech 'brilliant. He gave a professional
talk about leadership and the difficulty of turning a group of very
different people, with huge egos, into a winning team. That's part of
what we face.' 'I consider myself an enlightened person,' said another
of the officers. 'But I have to admit that I didn't fall off my chair
when he said what he did. We all hear things like that here.' According
to the officers, a divisional commander, Brig. Gen. Yoav Gallant, recently
lectured in the U.S. on the relationship between the Palestinian Authority
and Hamas, and used the analogy of a dog and its master. Arabs in the
lecture complained. 'It all depends on what is said and the context,'
said one of the officers."
Jewish
Groups Ready for Racism Parley. Jerusalem
Post, July 6, 2001
"Jewish organizations from around the world are setting up operations
in Washington and Geneva to spearhead lobbying efforts to change the
tone of virulent anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic draft resolutions
to be considered at a major UN conference on racism in Durban, South
Africa at the end of August. This was one of the operative decisions
that emerged from an international 'emergency' meeting of Jewish leaders
held in London this week to discuss how to combat these proposals and
plan for the Durban conference .... Israel has become - for some of
this community - nothing less then the antichrist. [Irwin] Cotler said
that a situation is developing where human rights is the new religion,
and Israel is the enemy of that religion in every human rights sphere
- whether in dealing with labor, women's or children's issue ... [Israeli
Deputy Foreign Minister] Melchior said that the proposals being discussed
now are far worse than the UN's Zionism is racism declaration of the
1970s. These proposals aim not only to delegitimize the state of Israel
through equations of Zionism with racism, racial superiority, and the
'ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic Palestine,' but,
he said, they also aim to delegitimize Jewish death and suffering. This
was done through repeated attempts by Arab and Asian delegates at the
three previous preparatory meetings to replace all references to 'The
Holocaust' with 'holocausts.'"
Movie Targets.
Arabs Are the Latest People to Suffer the Stereotypes of Hollywood --
and Nowhere More So Than in William Friedkin's New Film.
The Independent [Great Britain], July 30, 2000
"The Arab nations - and the Islamic world in general - have become
the new stock enemy, a powerful and unreasoning force in True Lies
(1994), Executive Decision (1995), GI Jane (1997) and
The Siege (1998) - in which Bruce Willis rounded up Arab Americans
in an attempt to stop a Hezbollah-type terrorist group blowing up New
York. Even The Insider (1999) - a film about corruption in the
tobacco industry, for heaven's sake - tacked on a Syrian prologue in
which Al Pacino took on a pack of mad-ish mullahs. And Rules of Engagement?
'This film is absolutely off the scale,' says Hussein Ibish, communications
director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a Washington-based
pressure group. 'I've never seen anything quite so vile. I felt like
I was being physically beaten, which is a reaction I've never had encountering
a work of art. It was mind-bogglingly vicious. I'm amazed that a major
American entertainment company would actually release such a thing.'
He shouldn't be too amazed: the film took $15 million on its opening
weekend, a fact which doubtless pleased the chair of the Paramount Pictures'
Motion Picture Group, Sherry Lansing - who just happens to be
married to William Friedkin [the director of Rules of Engagement.
Both Friedkin and Lansing are Jewish].
All the Ironies
Bring Germany to Reconsider 'Who's a Jew.'
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper[, June 27, 2001
"Here is ironic historical twist. Before the rise of the Nazis,
German Jews regarded with scorn the 'Eastern Jews' who arrived from
Poland and Russia and who brought with them traditional Jewish values,
but not 'Western' (that is, German) values. Now German Jewry's leaders
are demanding that the new 'Eastern Jews' from the former Soviet Union
must be 'authentic Jews,' - in other words, that they have a knowledge
of (even if they do not observe) Jewish traditions. Two weeks ago, Paul
Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (CCJG),
warned that many non-Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were exploiting
the special regulations on Jewish immigration from the former Soviet
Union in order to obtain permanent resident status in the Federal Republic.
Spiegel urged the federal government to undertake measures against immigrants
posing as Jews simply to enter Germany."
A
People Apart. Haaretz [Israeli newspaper],
June 9, 2001
"In addition to being immigrants [to Israel] from Russia, [Tatiano
and Viktor Madbaneko's] Jewishness is 'in doubt' and they are forced
into hopeless shadowboxing with a society that is practiced in 'hating
gentiles.' They so much want to find a way to the heart of this society,
with all its prejudices."
College Bars
Non-Jews from Education Studies.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 16, 2001
"Druze residents of the Golan Heights who have tried to register
young women to the Ohalo College of Education and Sports in Katzrin
are angry because it refuses to accept the students on the grounds that
non-Jews are not allowed to study kindergarten and junior school education
at the college. The only studies open to non-Jews at the college are
courses in physical education, they say. In an interview with Ha'aretz,
Hagit Harel, the head of student administration at Ohalo, confirmed
that, of the 550 students at the college, 30 percent were non-Jews and
none were studying kindergarten or junior school education. Harel said
the policy was based on an Education Ministry directive which told the
college that non-Jewish students who wanted to take such courses had
to do so at the Arab College in Haifa or in a special course for Arab
teachers at Oranim College. 'The Arab College in Haifa does not offer
a course in physical education and therefore we are obliged to accept
the non-Jewish students for this path of studies,' Harel said."
Rabbi
Calls for Annihilation of Arabs, BBC,
April 10, 2001
"The spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas party, Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef, has provoked outrage with a sermon calling for
the annihilation of Arabs. 'It is forbidden to be merciful to them.
You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and
damnable,' he was quoted as saying in a sermon delivered on Monday to
mark the Jewish festival of Passover. ['The Lord shall return the Arabs'
deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them.'] Rabbi
Yosef is one of the most powerful religious figures in Israel, He is
known for his outspoken comments and has in the past referred to the
Arabs as 'vipers.' Through his influence over Shas, Israel's third largest
political party, he is also a significant political figure."
Shas
Leader Denies 'Annihilate Arabs' Claim. Totally
Jewish, April 10, 2001
"The controversial spiritual leader of Israeli ultra-Orthodox political
party Shas has claimed that his Passover sermon, in which he said that
Arabs should be annihilated, was misinterpreted. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,
a former Chief Rabbi of Israel's Sephardi Jews and one of the most influential
religious figures in Israel, said in his pre-Pesach speech: 'It is forbidden
to be merciful to Arabs. You must send missiles to them and, with relish,
annihilate them. They are evil and damnable. May the Holy Name visit
retribution on the heads of the Arabs and cause their seed to be lost.'
However, Yosef's aides moved quickly to clarify the remarks after the
words sparked public outrage in both Jewish and Arab quarters."
Birthright
Israel Gives American Jewish Youth Largest, Most Meaningful Hanukah
Gift Ever. PR Newswire [at: findarticles.com],
November 22, 1999
"Birthright Israel announced today that arrangements have been
finalized for the largest and most extensive philanthropic outreach
program ever targeting Jewish youth. This year's inaugural program will
take 5,000 North American Jewish students to visit the Jewish homeland
for free. Scheduled to take place over the turn of the new millennium,
the inaugural ten-day trips are being funded by a planned $210 million
in contributions over five years from major philanthropists, the Government
of Israel, and Jewish communities worldwide ... At the start of the
21st century, Judaism's adversity comes from within, as assimilation
threatens Jewish communities in North America and around the world.
Birthright Israel aims to reinvigorate and revitalize American Jewish
youth's commitment to Judaism by providing Jewish students (the majority
of whom are marginally affiliated Jews) with a profound and lasting
experience in Israel. Statistics have shown that Jewish youth who visit
Israel at a young age are more likely to retain ties to the Jewish community."
All We
Did for Them. The Boston Book Review.
"I later learned that this image of Jews as defenders of the rights
of all downtrodden had been carefully cultivated .... The idea that
Jewish and liberal American values and interests are perfectly harmonious
is a vast and self-serving oversimplification ... Fighting for civil
rights and liberties also advanced the interests of the Jewish community
as a whole in American society. Bundling anti-semitism with racism allowed
Jewish leaders to bring the moral gravitas of African-American suffering
to bear on issues of particular relevance to Jews. Though Jews were
excluded from some neighborhoods and denied some jobs, the discrimination
against Jews was--at least by the mid-1950s--subtle and intermittent
enough as to make it difficult to rally politicians to legislate against
it and district attorneys to prosecute it. Fighting the far more blatant
discrimination against African-Americans was a way to fight Jewish battles
by proxy and in extremis. It was thus a way to remove social and economic
barriers faced by Jews, without appearing merely self-serving. This
accounts for why Jewish civil liberties organization hewed close to
issues that were in principle relevant to Jews--free access of 'minorities'
to jobs, housing, social clubs and organizations--while they steered
away from the sorts of economic restructuring that might greatly benefit
African-Americans but offer no gains for Jews."
Simpson's Contemporary
Quotations, 1988. bartleby.com
"I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable
for many ... For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the
goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for
achieving it." -- Jean Marie Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop
of Paris. -AND- Jews
and Christians Together, by Jean Marie Cardinal Lustiger. 1998
Nostra Aetate Awards and Lecture. Lustiger: "Following the
example of the European nations and thanks to their participation in
the dramatic evolution of civilization and culture, [Jews] have managed
to create the State of Israel by picking up the standards of a particular
national identity. They have thus radically renewed the question of
the Jewish identity, which is now torn between two poles: on the one
hand, the pole of consecrated life whose only true home is given by
God at the end of times; and on the other hand, the pole of the secular
existence of a people asserting its identity, its language, at long
last reconstituted, its ambitions, and its national strength. With Israel
the Jewish people has reintegrated the common history of the nations,
as a new reference and as a mystery."
Putting Israel
First. Sobran's. November 2, 2000
"That is, all New York candidates assume, as a practical matter,
the truth of the 'canard of dual loyalty' — that Jewish voters care
as much about Israeli interests as American interests. More precisely,
they assume that Jews put Israeli interests first. American interests
don’t even come up for discussion. Nobody asks whether it’s good for
Americans for their government to support a Jewish state, even when
that alliance provokes worldwide Muslim antagonism against this country,
as witness the bombing of the USS Cole ... American politicians, including
Al Gore and George W. Bush, pander shamelessly to the powerful Israel
First lobby. In fact such pandering has become normalized, because that
lobby wields both the carrot of money and the stick of stigma. All politicians
remember the fate of Senator Charles Percy of Illinois and Senator William
Fulbright of Arkansas, whose long careers ended when they irritated
the pro-Israel lobby. That lobby intimidates even journalists, who fear
for their careers if they criticize Israel too bluntly."
Mike
in Religion Pitch. New York Daily
News, August 17, 2001
"[New York] mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg has mailed
glossy booklets to New York households attesting to his Jewish faith
and generosity to Jewish causes — an ad his opponent attacked as divisive
politics. The mailing, which arrived at homes this week, tells the story
of a student who 'broke down religious barriers' by becoming the first
Jew admitted to his college fraternity, then went on to found a media
empire. It describes the Republican billionaire as 'one of the Jewish
community's most dedicated volunteers and most generous donors,' listing
organizations he supports, including Hadassah [the Zionist Women's
organization], the American Jewish Congress and the Hebrew
Home for the Aged — under the heading 'Protecting Our Community'
... Former CUNY board chairman Herman Badillo, Bloomberg's rival in
the September primary, feels 'this type of an appeal causes divisions,'
said his spokesman, James Vlasto. Badillo 'doesn't feel that is appropriate
in a political campaign in a city as diverse as New York,' Vlasto said.
'Everybody is proud of their heritage. Bloomberg is entitled to do anything
he wants. But this is something we would not do.' Badillo, who was born
in Puerto Rico, 'knows full well the Hispanic community would resent
such an appeal.'"
Shiksa. The
American Heritage Dictionary (at bartlebycom.)
"NOUN: Offensive. [A Yiddish term] used as a disparaging term for
a non-Jewish girl or woman."
What Would a Jewish Veep Say About Intermarriage?, by Philip Weiss,
New York Observer, August 20, 2000
"Talk of Senators Joe Lieberman or Dianne Feinstein
being Al Gore’s running mate has raised the possibility of, at long
last, a Jewish president. One issue is religious observance. Senator
Lieberman is Orthodox and doesn’t work on Saturdays. He has reassured
people that the Torah commands one to do one’s duties. In a crisis,
he’d be there. That seems like a no-brainer to me. The more interesting
question is intermarriage. We live in times of enforced tolerance. George
W. Bush was strung up for visiting Bob Jones University, which had a
policy against interracial dating. So what about the dating policy in
conservative Jewish organizations: the strict stance against intermarriage?
This is not something anyone is supposed to talk about. Non-Jews give
these issues wide berth. And people like myself, who have intermarried,
are sufficiently ashamed about their choice–hastening the destruction
of the Jewish people, we’re told–that they rarely speak up to defend
it ... The rhetoric and practices surrounding opposition to intermarriage
are often so discriminatory they seem to border on racism. The Jewish
mistrust of gentile culture is deeply imbedded, and God knows Christians
have again and again given Jews ample basis for these feelings. The
Yiddish word goy is loaded with negative associations, and the word
shiksa, which everyone still uses, comes from Hebrew for 'blemish,'
according to Leo Rosten. In ancient times rabbis barred Jews from eating
or drinking with non-Jews, lest they intermarry, and such attitudes
prevailed widely in the American Jewish community just a generation
ago. They treated you like you were dead if you intermarried, they sat
shivah for you, they said that you were doing Hitler’s work.
Movies like The Heartbreak Kid reminded Jews of what they were
losing in marrying out, painting Christian culture as cold and heartless.
A lot of the details in that portrait were deadly."
A
Life of Pain and Grace. The Age [Australia],
August 6, 2001
"Cardinal [Jean-Marie] Lustiger, the 75-year-old
Archbishop of Paris, a Jew who might one day be pope, has offended both
Jews and Catholics, sparked angry debates and been shunned by those
he loved most. The strangest part of his story is not even that he was
born to Polish Jewish parents (one of whom would perish in Auschwitz),
converted to Catholicism at the age of 14 and rose through the Vatican
hierarchy ... 'I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable
for many,' Lustiger told The New York Times when he became a
cardinal in 1983. 'For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light
to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the
means for achieving it. For me, this nomination was as if all of a sudden
the crucifix began to wear a yellow star' ... He has publicly criticised
priests who indulged in more vicious criticisms of Israel ... Lustiger
explained the emotional pull of his origins to Elie Wiesel: 'I feel
Jewish. I refuse to renounce my roots, my Jewishness. How could I betray
my mother's memory? It would be cowardly and humiliating.' In theological
terms, Christianity can accommodate Lustiger's duality. One can be both
a believer in the New Testament and Jewish. Says Melbourne's Father
Gerald O'Collins: 'A Jewish cardinal is very important because if the
College of Cardinals is to be truly Christian there ought to be at least
one Jewish Catholic.' But Judaism has no such latitude. According to
Jewish law a person who is born Jewish dies Jewish. It is not a club
from which one can rescind membership."
Mensch
or Maus? Jewish.com, 1996
"Rabbi Harold Schulweis' sermon last Friday evening at Valley
Beth Shalom, encouraging outreach to potential converts to Judaism,
may draw as much heat as this week's Malibu blaze. Schulweis himself
told me that the response has been 'positive' and reassuring. But I
have heard otherwise. Orthodox critics are declaring that Schulweis
has taken a dangerous step toward proselytizing. Liberal Jews are concerned
that he is making a concession to intermarriage, that he is assuming
the battle is lost and the only hope of sustaining Jewish life is in
emphasizing conversion of the non-Jewish spouse ... It is clear that,
for the rabbi, breaking clear of the stigma attached to conversion is
a major psychological hurdle. Schulweis conceded that when Rabbi
Alexander Schindler, former head of the Reform movement, first suggested
reaching out to non-Jews, he objected. 'I always felt this wasn't Jewish.
I had to rethink my position,' he said. Last week, Schulweis wrote to
Schindler, thanking him for offering a new idea. As his speech made
clear, Schulweis considers the bias against converts part of Jewish
'racism,' the notion that even a 'chicken soup Jew' is better than a
'Jew by choice.'"
A Dangerous
Beast, by Leonard Fein.
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles,
August 24, 2001
"But no matter, not any more. Events overtake and overwhelm. [There
was a suicide bomber at] King George and Jaffa, a corner just about
everyone who has been to Israel knows. Animals. Where is the one among
them who will have the decency to say that these horrid actions disgrace
the cause they seek to promote, as well as the faith on which they allegedly
rest? Well then, what to do? Let us stipulate that they are, indeed,
animals, that it is Israel’s sorry fate to be locked in a deathly battle
with wild beasts ... But short of uprooting the population of the West
Bank and Gaza, loading them onto trucks and dumping all 2 million of
them in, say, the Sinai Desert, it is impossible to specify what the
targets or the strategic aims of an 'all-out' offensive might be ...
Well, then, what of rewards? Bribe the wild beast into domesticity ...
Rational persuasion? By definition, a wild beast is not susceptible
to rational persuasion."
A Non-Racist
Zionism? Al-Ahram [Cairo, Egypt], August
23-29, 2001
"All of this confirms that Zionism is not, as its adherents would
have the world believe, merely the national expression of Jewish self-determination,
but an intrinsically racist ideology that justifies the most brutal
acts of repression against the Palestinians as necessary for the security
of one specific racial group. How can the United Nations, which has
issued countless resolutions condemning doctrines of racial differentiation
and superiority as morally reprehensible and socially unjust, refuse
to even consider a resolution equating Zionism with racism? ... And
when it comes to equating Zionism with racism, the criterion cannot
be what Israel, or the US for that matter, has to say on the issue,
but what the parties suffering from the racist practices of Israel have
to say, notably the Palestinians, particularly with the present escalation
of violence in the occupied territories, where Israel's systematic war
of extermination and expropriation against a native civilian population
displays all the characteristics of a policy of ethnic cleansing --
which the United Nations has defined as a war crime."
Jewish
Ethics. Are They Ethical? Are They Jewish, by Tzvi Howard Adelman,
The Jewish Agency for Israel [The Department for Jewish Zionist
Education], August 22, 1999
"For example, the Torah commands the extermination of various peoples
(Deuteronomy 7:1-5) in the Mechilta it says, 'tov shebagoyim
harog,' 'kill the best among the gentiles' (14:7; cf. Soferim
ch. 15:10). There is another discussion about who has priority for drawing
water at a well in which some rabbis argued that the needs of the local
Jews to water their cattle or to do their laundry took precedence over
the lives of strangers (Tosefta Baba Metzia 11:33-36) ... By
the time of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, even the strongest
defenders of the Jews both among the Christians and among the Jews conceded
that the Jews were deficient in their ethical behavior ... The issue
of Jewish criminality was elaborated upon by Johann David Michaelis,
a German Bible scholar, who noted the high rate of Jewish criminal convictions
and membership in gangs ... As other aspects of Jewish practice and
belief are abandoned by large numbers of Jews, they are still driven
by the desire to prove that Judaism still has something to offer its
adherents and the world at large. For these reasons, Jewish Reformers
in the nineteenth century began to present Judaism in terms of its 'Mission'
which was to bring to the world the idea of 'ethical monotheism.' Such
a construction served not only as a response to Christian attacks, but
as a way to fill the void for Jews who were dissatisfied with Jewish
ritual, communal life, but yearned for a reason to hold on to being
Jewish. Many Jews, especially religious Jews today in Israel and their
supporters abroad continue to adhere to traditional Jewish ethics that
other Jews would like to ignore or explain away. For example, Rabbi
Yitzhak Ginzburg of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus/Shechem, after several
of his students were remanded on suspicion of murdering a teenage Arab
girl: 'Jewish blood is not the same as the blood of a goy.' Rabbi
Ido Elba: 'According to the Torah, we are in a situation of pikuah
nefesh (saving a life) in time of war, and in such a situation one
may kill any Gentile.' Rabbi Yisrael Ariel write [sic] in 1982
that 'Beirut is part of the Land of Israel. . . our leaders should have
entered Lebanon and Beirut without hesitation, and killed every single
one of them. Not a memory should have remained.' It is usually yeshiva
[Jewish religious school] students who chant 'Death to the Arabs' on
CNN. The stealing and corruption by religious leaders that has recently
been documented in trials in Israel and abroad continues to raise the
question of the relationship between Judaism and ethics. Thus literature
on Jewish ethics is produced because Jews feel a need for it. Jews still
feel a tension between universalistic commitments and the specific obligations
of Jewish survival."
A small collection, from scholarly sources, about
traditional Jewry's Yiddish views of itself and non-Jews, [What
Did Traditional Jewish Folklore Think of Jewish Ethics Before Jews Were
Reinvented, Post-Holocaust, as Historical Angels? And What Is the Traditional
Jewish View of Other People?]
On the
Corner. Village Voice, July 25-31,
2001
"Resentment is high between the Satmar Jews of Williamsburg [New
York] and a hundred or so Polish day laborers who clean for them. A
half-century after the war, the slaughter of their brethren burns the
Jews like a live wire. Ask nearly any Satmar to define the neighborhood
and he or she will tell you, 'We're a community of Holocaust survivors.'
They're keenly aware that Poland's large Jewish population was annihilated
during the war. Ask the Polish women how they like their work, and many
ignore the question: 'The Jews blame us for the death camps in Poland,'
they say. Echoing the Polish government's longtime position, they add,
'It was the Nazis that killed the Jews. Not the Polish people.' 'We
want to be respected,' the Polish women say, fairly seething as they
talk about standing on the corner like prostitutes, about scrubbing
someone else's floor, about the good jobs they had in Poland before
the end of Communism. ('How can they say they are so religious? God
doesn't want you to be so cheap about money,' says one disgruntled woman.)
Now the Poles are on the street corner, asking the Jews for a job, Jews
with numbers tattooed on their arms, Jews for whom the names of Polish
towns—Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor—are etched in memory. The irony
is lost on no one ... [One Polish woman's] grandchildren are back in
college. She pays for their education with 60 hours a week, scrubbing
and dusting and wiping. She cleans the refrigerator gaskets with a matchstick,
as she is asked, but won't scrub the floors on her hands and knees with
a shmatte (rag), as the Jews request. She insists on using a
mop. This costs her work and is a major source of tension between the
Poles and the Jews ... If the sun has already set, and the Jews are
proscribed from touching switches or machinery, they ask the cleaning
women to turn on the lights and stove before they leave. The Polish
women oblige, and then, with throbbing hands, pocket their money and
head back to rented rooms."
Jewish
Genes, by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman.
The Tribe. The Cohen-Levi Family Heritage
"Recently published research in the field of molecular genetics
– the study of DNA sequences – indicates that Jewish populations of
the various Diaspora communities have retained their genetic identity
throughout the exile. Despite large geographic distances between the
communities and the passage of thousands of years, far removed Jewish
communities share a similar genetic profile. This research confirms
the common ancestry and common geographical origin of world Jewry ...
'Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation
from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different
from one another at the genetic level. The results support the hypothesis
that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North
Africa and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral
population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively
isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the
Diaspora.' (M.F. Hammer, Proc. Nat'l Academy of Science, June 9, 2000)"
On Integrating My Love and Commitment to Judaism and Jewish Community
with My Love and Commitment to a Man Who Is Not Jewish, by Sarah
Tauber, Interfaith Family (interfaithfamily.com)
"It might be assumed that I would have been pleased, therefore,
to read the article reprinted in this magazine from the [Jewish ethnic
magazine] Forward entitled, 'Reform [Judaism] allows Hebrew Schools
to Hire Intermarried Teachers.' On the contrary. I was saddened and
troubled by comments cited in this article. In spite of what the rabbinical
leadership may have intended, their words and tone seemed to betray
the continuing suspicion held by Jewish establishment leaders towards
Jews married to individuals who are not Jewish, even though these Jews
demonstrate commitment to Judaism and Jewish life. They describe us
in terms akin to criminals on trial: 'Mixed marriage may be evidence
that an individual is not the sort of Jew we want as a religious school
teacher, and then again it may not. Each case must be judged on its
own merits.' As I read those words I asked myself, as a Jew and as a
trained and experienced teacher, the following questions: 'Has the Central
Conference of American Rabbis ever clarified what 'sort of Jew' they
seek as a religious school teacher? Or is it only in the case of a Jew
married to an individual who isn't Jewish that suddenly the criteria
become urgent? Is it possible that the CCAR views other Jews--for example,
untrained college students, inexperienced young singles, homosexuals
and lesbians, housewives, older divorced men--as not posing any serious
concern to the rabbinical leadership, while Jews who are married to
individuals who are not Jewish are put on trial?"
Birthright
Israel Gives American Jewish Youth Largest, Most Meaningful Hanukah
Gift, PR Newswire [at findarticles.com],
November 22, 1999
"Birthright Israel announced today that arrangements have been
finalized for the largest and most extensive philanthropic outreach
program ever targeting Jewish youth. This year's inaugural program will
take 5,000 North American Jewish students to visit the Jewish homeland
for free. Scheduled to take place over the turn of the new millennium,
the inaugural ten-day trips are being funded by a planned $210 million
in contributions over five years from major philanthropists, the Government
of Israel, and Jewish communities worldwide ... At the start of the
21st century, Judaism's adversity comes from within, as assimilation
threatens Jewish communities in North America and around the world.
Birthright Israel aims to reinvigorate and revitalize American Jewish
youth's commitment to Judaism by providing Jewish students (the majority
of whom are marginally affiliated Jews) with a profound and lasting
experience in Israel ... 'The 5,000 North American Jewish youth who
begin leaving for Israel next month will be the first in what is planned
to be a traditional rite of passage for young Jewish adults worldwide.
We hope that by experiencing Israel first hand, young Jews will forge
a lasting bond with their Jewish homeland, heritage, and community,'
commented Charles R. Bronfman, co-founder of Birthright Israel."
The
Jewish Question, National Review, December
21, 1998 [book review]
"The story of how [David] Klinghoffer, a senior editor
of NR, came to seek knowledge of God and Torah is undoubtedly
unlike that of any other Orthodox Jew ... At age five, David was told
by his adoptive parents that his biological parents were gentiles. In
eighth grade, he opened a book given to him by his maternal grandmother,
To Be a Jew, by Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin. The book introduced
the boy to the Orthodox understanding of halakha, the body of
Jewish laws derived from the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew
Bible) and its traditional interpretations (the Oral Torah). He was
struck by 'one of the most unexpected sentences of my reading life':
'A child born to a non-Jewish mother, regardless of who the father is,
has the status of a non-Jew according to Jewish law' ... In one of the
book's many sorry-I-laughed scenes, the adolescent David, after being
told by a local Lubavitcher that he is not a Jew, performs a decidedly
unorthodox self-conversion ritual in his bathroom, soaping a razor blade
with a bar of Irish Spring, cutting himself to extract the required
bead of blood for a symbolic circumcision, reciting the requisite prayer,
and dunking himself in a make-shift mikvah-a lukewarm tub standing in
for a ritual pool of water: 'I was a Jew now, I thought' ... He tracked
down his birth mother. In due course, they discussed why she chose the
Klinghoffers as his adoptive parents. 'Well, you know,' she told him,
'my mother was Jewish' by way of a Jewish great-grandfather with the
surname Goldkuhl. With a surge of tribalist adrenaline, he 'sat bolt
upright. . . . If this was true, I was part Jewish by blood! . . . I
realized that, to be precise, my blood was one-sixteenth Jewish. . .
. I could walk into a synagogue or a kosher restaurant and return the
curious glances,' for the Goldkuhl family was 'my blood link with the
Nation of Israel.'"
Doomsday Demographer Gets a Hearing at the Prime Minister's Office,
Jerusalem Report, November 5, 2001
"Haifa University [in Israel] geographer Arnon Soffer was
summoned to the Prime Minister's Office on October 15, to brief the
committee of directors general of government ministries on his doomsday
predictions. Soffer says he got a 'sympathetic hearing,' and believes
his proposed solution — unilateral separation from the Palestinians,
and from some of Israel's Arabs as well — may now be seriously examined
for policy purposes. Government officials comfirmed the meeting, but
would not comment on the content or implications. Soffer claims dramatically
that current population trends mean that Israel will 'cease to exist'
as a Jewish state by 2020, by when he's convinced that only 42 percent
of the people in Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will
be Jewish; today, the figure is 50.5 percent. He cites higher Palestinian
birthrates — a Muslim mother in Gaza has 7.5 children, on average, while
the West Bank figure is 5 (compared to the Jewish mother's average 2.8)
— and the constant influx of illegal Arab migration into Israel."
The Jewish
Stake in America's Changing Demography, by
Stephen Steinlight, formerly Director of National Affairs at the American
Jewish Committee
Center for Immigration Studies, October 2001
"We cannot consider the inevitable consequences of current [immigration]
trends -- not the least among them diminished Jewish political power
-- with detachment ... We Jews need to be especially sensitive to the
multinational model this crowd (many of them Jewish) is promoting. Why?
Because one person’s 'celebration' of his own diversity, foreign ties,
and the maintenance of cultural and religious traditions that set him
apart is another’s balkanizing identity politics. We are not immune
from the reality of multiple identities or the charge of divided loyalties,
a classic staple of anti-Semitism, and we must recognize that our own
patterns are easily assailed, and we need to find ways of defending
them more effectively as the debate goes on. Much public opinion survey
research undertaken in recent years continues to indicate that large
numbers of Americans, particularly people of color, assert that Jews
are more loyal to Israel than the United States. For Jews, it is at
best hypocritical, and, worse, an example of an utter lack of self-awareness,
not to recognize that we are up to our necks in this problem. This has
been especially true once we were sufficiently accepted in the United
States to feel confident enough to go public with our own identity politics.
But this newfound confidence carries its own costs; people are observing
us closely, and what they see in our behavior is not always distinct
from what we loudly decry in others. One has to be amused, even amazed,
when colleagues in the organized Jewish world wring their hands about
black nationalism, Afrocentrism, or with cultural separatism in general
— without considering Jewish behavioral parallels. Where has our vaunted
Jewish self-awareness flown? I’ll confess it, at least: like thousands
of other typical Jewish kids of my generation, I was reared as a Jewish
nationalist, even a quasi-separatist. Every summer for two months for
10 formative years during my childhood and adolescence I attended Jewish
summer camp. There, each morning, I saluted a foreign flag, dressed
in a uniform reflecting its colors, sang a foreign national anthem,
learned a foreign language, learned foreign folk songs and dances, and
was taught that Israel was the true homeland. Emigration to Israel was
considered the highest virtue, and, like many other Jewish teens of
my generation, I spent two summers working in Israel on a collective
farm while I contemplated that possibility. More tacitly and subconsciously,
I was taught the superiority of my people to the gentiles who had oppressed
us. We were taught to view non-Jews as untrustworthy outsiders, people
from whom sudden gusts of hatred might be anticipated, people less sensitive,
intelligent, and moral than ourselves. We were also taught that the
lesson of our dark history is that we could rely on no one."
Make It
a "March of Love," by Edward Moskol (president of the
Polish National Alliance-USA), Dialogue on Jewish-Polish
Relations
"According to the opening words of its Homepage
on the Internet, 'The March of the Living is a yearly journey where
thousands of primarily Jewish teens from around the world gather in
Poland and Israel to mark two of the most significant dates on the modern
calendar: Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israel Independence Day. The
purpose of this trip is to give students a first hand look at history
and the evils of mankind.' In actuality, each year in May, on a day
commemorated by the Jewish community as 'Holocaust Day,' Poland surrenders
a bit of its sovereignty. On that day in Oswiecim, the Polish town situated
near the German-created World War II concentration camp of Auschwitz,
Jewish organizers and Israeli agents control the streets, while thousands
of young Jews hurl insults and epithets at those Poles who dare come
upon the scene. A self-proclaimed 'March of the Living,' the parade
from Auschwitz to the neighboring Birkenau camp, has become something
more akin to a 'March of Hate.' Ostensibly held to educate the young
about a Holocaust they did not experience, it has evolved into an opportunity
for Jews to claim singular suffering at the hands of the Nazis and to
inculcate anti-Polonism within the participants."
It
Is Absurd to Say that Israel Is Not a Racist State, by Charley Reese,
King Features Syndicate (Reese is a columnist
at the Orlando Sentinal)
"It was no surprise that the United States and Israel walked out
of a United Nations conference on racism as soon as Israel came in for
criticism. It is, however, a disgrace. Israel certainly is a racist
state. Its own human-rights advocates call it that. The claim that Israel
doesn't discriminate against non-Jews is absurd on its face. Suppose,
for example, the U.S. Congress passed a law that said the United States
is a Christian, Anglo-Saxon nation and that any Christian, Anglo-Saxon
person anywhere in the world is automatically eligible to become a citizen.
Do you seriously think the Anti-Defamation League would not have a conniption
fit and scream racism? Well, Israel has such a law for Jews. Thus a
Russian Jew, for example, can become a citizen, but a Palestinian driven
out of his own country in 1948 cannot return. Suppose, for another example,
a group of wealthy people established the Christian National Fund. This
fund would be used to purchase property. Once purchased, the property
could never be sold to, rented to or leased to a non-Christian. Would
that not be called discrimination? Well, there is such a fund called
the Jewish National Fund, which has all of those restrictions on the
property it owns. It played a great part in establishing Israel. And,
of course, if American officials routinely issued building permits to
Christian Anglo-Saxons while denying them to Jews or other groups, that
would be considered racist. And neighborhoods that denied non-Christians
an opportunity to buy or rent would likewise be considered racist. All
of these forms of discrimination are practiced in Israel against Palestinians."
A Chasidic
Spokesman Espouses Modernity -- and Race Separation,
[Jewish] Forward, April 13, 2001
"A beloved teacher at Yeshiva University High School for Boys —
a Modern Orthodox, not chasidic, institution — Rabbi [Mayer]
Schiller also spent years writing and preaching in defense of
European culture, group identity and, most controversially, racial separatism.
Rabbi Schiller, 49, has made common cause with and spoken before a cast
of characters and organizations that would send most American Jews running
to the Anti- Defamation League: American white supremacists, anti-abortion
extremists, Conrad Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and right-wing European
nationalists. In a series of interviews with the Forward, Rabbi
Schiller declined to discuss for the record his published views on race.
Officials at Yeshiva University High School, also known as MTA, said
Rabbi Schiller's silence stems from an agreement that he made with school
administrators five years ago, prohibiting Rabbi Schiller from discussing
racial issues with students or in any public forum ... Several of Rabbi
Schiller's former students and rabbinical colleagues said they oppose
his separatist views, but that his fascination with controversial nationalist
causes stem not from a hatred for racial minorities, but a rejection
of post-Enlightenment universalism and secularism."
Results of Poll Sponsored by Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish Week, and
the Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies Studies,
Jewish Week, November 20, 2001
This poll of Jewish Americans found "the most important issue
or problem facing the Jewish community in the United States today"
to be 1) anti-Semitism [23%], 2) Peace and Security for Israel, 3) Terrorism
[13%], 4) Intermarriage [i.e., marrying non-Jews - 12%], and 5) U.S.-Israeli
relations [8%]. Public education was 8th, poverty and hunger 9th, and
the environment 10th [all with 1%]. 89% of respondents were "strongly
favorable' or "somewhat favorable" to Israel. (Another 5%
ventured no opinion, 1% didn't respond, 3% were "somewhat unsupportive,
and 2% "strongly unsupportive.") 59% were even "strongly
favorable" or "somewhat favorable" to Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon, who faces a possible trial in Belgium for war crimes in
Lebanon.
In
the Genes. Understanding Jewish Genetic Diseases,
Chicago Jewish News
"[A] certain group of conditions are unusually
common among Jews of Eastern European or Ashkenazi descent. (We'll come
to their Sephardic cousins later.) Although these diseases can affect
Sephardic Jews and non-Jews as well, they afflict Ashkenazi Jews more
often as much as 20 to 100 times more frequently ... Because
for centuries Jews tended to marry within their faith and their community,
the relatively high frequency of these genes among Jews stayed within
the larger Jewish community. Their effects were not diluted by the introduction
of other genes from outside the Ashkenazi Jewish community, nor did
the high frequency of these genes among Jews pass into other communities."
Critics
Charge Racism as Jewish State Places 'Quota' on Ethiopians,
[Jewish] Forward, December 28, 2001
"Critics are claiming racism is behind what they say is the Israeli
government's establishment of a 400-person monthly quota on immigration
from Ethiopia — even for those who qualify under the Law of Return.
Ethiopian Jewry activists complain that the quota and what they cite
as a lack of humanitarian aid from American Jewish philanthropies are
doubly offensive because of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent
calls for a mass immigration of Jews from Argentina, France, Australia
and South Africa. The plight of Ethiopian Jews is being ignored, activists
charge, even as Israel and the quasi governmental Jewish Agency for
Israel, the main overseas recipient of monies raised by federations
within the United Jewish Communities system, are investing millions
of dollars to encourage immigration from those countries and the former
Soviet Union. 'This is the first time that there is a quota on an ethnic
basis,' said Avraham Neguise, head of the Israel-based advocacy
group South Wing to Zion. 'In Ethiopia they created an ethnic quota.
It's clear discrimination against black Jews.'"
Pol's
Bid to Honor Slain Israeli Driving Debate Over 'Transfer,'
[Jewish] Forward, January 25, 2002
"A freshman New York City councilman is winning some powerful endorsements
for his proposal to name a street in his native Queens after slain Israeli
Tourism Minister Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, who had urged
the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The
proposal by Democrat David Weprin, who chairs the City Council's
powerful finance committee, has won the endorsement of State Assemblyman
Dov Hikind of Brooklyn, as well as Rabbi Avi Weiss of the
Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx. A representative of the
American Jewish Committee said the organization would back Mr. Weprin's
proposal if the City Council approves it. The city's Jewish Community
Relations Council said it would not object to naming a street after
the former major general, who was assassinated by a militant Palestinian
group last October. Opposition to the proposed street-naming was voiced
by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Americans for Peace Now
and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat. 'How in the hell can you
name a street after [Ze'evi] and not claim you're embracing his views?'
said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of UAHC. 'Honoring him in this
way inevitably serves to give an endorsement to his views. Those views
were unacceptable to most Jews and most Israelis before his assassination.
It is incumbent particularly upon Diaspora Jews to be reminded of what
he stood for, and having been reminded, we have to delegitimize him.'
Mr. Weprin first announced his plans to name a single city block after
Ze'evi at a memorial dinner for the slain Israeli, organized January
6 by the National Council of Young Israel. Former Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the event, praised Ze'evi for
his attention to Israel's security. Mr. Netanyahu had refused to admit
Ze'evi into his own governing coalition in 1996 because of the extremism
of Ze'evi's views. The enthusiasm of some mainstream Jewish organizations
for the street-naming proposal may be the latest sign of what communal
leaders say is a new era in which it is no longer verboten for American
Jews to discuss, or in some cases promote, Ze'evi's platform of 'transfer.'
The term 'transfer' has come to refer to the mass removal of Palestinians
from the West Bank and Gaza to other Arab countries by means that Ze'evi
himself was often vague about. Most mainstream Jewish groups, from left
to right, historically have rejected the doctrine as immoral. 'About
two years ago I heard almost no one mention the topic of transfer,'
said the national president of the Zionist Organization of America,
Morton Klein. 'Now Jews who would never breathe such a word are
saying it.'" [From the Guardian
(London), 10-17-01: "[Ze'evi] was widely respected [by
Israelis], even by political opponents, for his distinguished war record,
but his advocacy of what he called the 'transfer' of Palestinians across
the borders into the neighbouring Arab countries was condemned by many
as racist ... He sparked controversy in July for referring to Palestinians
working and living illegally in Israel as 'lice' and a 'cancer.'"
Global
Beat Syndicate, 10-21-01: "If you are Palestinian, Ze'evi
represented one of the most racist elements in the Israeli political
spectrum. His politics openly called for the expulsion of Palestinians
from their indigenous homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the rest
of the Arab world. His death comes after Israel successfully carried
out 60 political assassinations of Palestinians over the past 12 months."
Soldier's
Burial as a Non-Jew Adds to List of Israel's Pain,
New York Times, Feb. 23, 2002
"Staff Sgt. Michael Oxman died with five comrades when Palestinian
gunmen attacked an Israeli outpost in the West Bank on Tuesday night.
On Friday, he was buried apart from them, in the section of a military
cemetery set aside for non- Jews. Sergeant Oxman, a 21-year-old immigrant
from Ukraine who considered himself Jewish, like his father, did not
qualify as such under Jewish law because his mother is not Jewish. For
a society with more than enough on its mind already, the separate-but-equal
treatment accorded the sergeant introduced a new ripple of consternation.
'He was Jewish enough to enlist, to fight and to die with them,' his
commander, identified only as Barry, told Israel radio. 'It is
very regretful and very sorrowful for us all.'"
Anatomy
of a Conditionally Unresolved Conflict -- A Personal and Philosophical
Reflection, Gilad Atzmon, December
2000
"I suggest that uncovering the philosophy
behind a number of fundamental Jewish precepts will clearly manifest
the terrible truth that the Israeli-Arab conflict is conditionally unresolved
... For many years I have experienced deep feelings of disappointment
and disenchantment with my own people. As we all know, identity can
be a complicated issue. One does not have a say regarding one's parents,
place of birth, gender, racial origin or even religious inheritance.
Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born a Jew or an Israeli. Nobody consulted
me when I was just eight days old about whether I wanted to sacrifice
a part of my body in order to determine my identity. When I was just
over a week old, without proving any superiority or excellence in any
given domain, I became 'chosen'. I have to admit that most of the Jewish
people I have ever came across are more than happy with their given
identity and are proud to be Jewish. Unfortunately I am not. On the
contrary, the older I get the more I find myself ashamed of my own people
and this paper is about my shame ... I would like to address the concept
of 'choseness.' I believe that 'choseness' is one of the most fundamental
characteristics of 'Jewish understanding'. One can remove a substantial
amount of religious law and ritual from Jewish life (e.g. the Reform
movement) and one can even remove the whole of religious practice without
really affecting Jewish identity (as we know there are many secular
Jews). But whenever one removes 'choseness,' there is very little left
with which the Jew can identify. In other words, by removing 'choseness,'
the Jew, in effect, becomes converted to something else (converted into
Christianity or, more generally, into an ordinary human being). The
concept of 'choseness' is bound up with many Jewish concepts of self-alienation
or even positive discrimination such as Kosher food, Minian as well
as the process of conversion. These concepts share a common denominator
that suppress any experience of social interaction with the Other. In
other words, Jews are discouraged from assimilating with their non-Jewish
environment (the Hebrew word for assimilation is Hit-bo-le-lout
which comes from the root word Blil which is commonly understood
to mean 'mass' or 'confusion', hence le-hit-bo-lel, to assimilate,
means to get confused, to be one of the mass, to lose your authenticity
). The result of this is that the possibility of 'loving thy neighbour'
is denied. In general, as we shall see, 'Jewish understanding' (unlike
Judaism) leads to ignorance of the Other. When I talk about the Other,
I refer to that which is conditionally different from myself. The Other
is the one with whom one can empathize because, and only because, he
is different."
In Israel,
Distressed Signals from Ethiopians,
Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002
"The gap between black and white Israelis
seems, with some exceptions, to be growing. For Ethiopians, it is visible
in impoverished neighborhoods, soaring unemployment, and the highest
high-school dropout rate of any Jewish group in Israel. Twenty-six percent
of Ethiopian youths have either dropped out or do not show up for classes
most of the time, raising concerns that the community's current difficulties
may become chronic. Drug use, including glue-sniffing, is on the rise,
and criminal activity, hardly known among Ethiopians before they came
to Israel, has been growing ... to Asher Elias, a staff member at the
Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ). 'Ethiopians have lots
of motivation to become Israelis, but they are not accepted,' he says.
'In jobs, in education, people feel they are discriminated against because
they are black. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is what
we are feeling, and that is enough.' A low point in the relationship
between Ethiopian Jews and Israelis came in 1996, when it was revealed
that Israeli hospitals had thrown out all blood donated by Ethiopians.
"These were donations to help other Israelis," Mr. Elias says. "[Ethiopians]
said to each other: 'What do they think? That we are not humans?' Habad,
one of Israel's stronger orthodox religious groups, doesn't recognize
Ethiopians as Jews or allow their children into its kindergartens."
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