Sunday Feb 03, 2008

The next holocaust?

Posted by David Turner

A recent survey of Israeli high schoolers found that 82% believed another holocaust was possible. In light of the fact that Israeli education is justly criticized for not promoting Jewish and Zionist identity among our youth, the number is astounding. How is it that, if our young can clearly see the danger, that our leaders in Israel and in the Diaspora do not? Are we too timid, too concerned with offending non-Jews, to recognize and admit the danger, a danger which, if not appreciated may well exceed the price we paid in the previous effort at solving the Jewish Problem?

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Monday Dec 17, 2007

Hands off the Law of return, Part II: Jewish Denial

Posted by David Turner

In a previous submission, Hands off the Law of Return , respondents covered the spectrum of issues related, it seemed to me, to the title, but few spoke of the issues raised in the article itself. For instance, why was the Law and its Grandparent Clause among the first Basic Laws enacted by the new State of Israel, why was this law considered a priority? Why, if it was to be the gatekeeper regarding persons to be granted instant refuge and citizenship did it not defer to Halacha, Jewish traditional law, defining a Jew as born of a Jewish mother? Why instead was the Law written to include the child of a single Jewish grandparent, regardless of the grandchild's present religion, as gateway to Jewish identity for purposes of refuge? All of these questions relate back to the foundations of Zionism, to the very need and quest for a state of the Jews.

I

Religious Jews had, as far back as the fall of Jerusalem and the Roman dispersion, returned to Zion in small numbers to fulfill the Halachic injunction to physically live on the land. With the Enlightenment, Europe broke the bonds of Christian theocracy and emancipated the Jews. For the first time in the Diaspora, Jews were accepted as equals and citizens in the lands of their residence. But with "European enlightenment" came a new theory of Jewish difference. No longer seen through the lens of religion, Jews were now designated biologically different, a race separate from their neighbors. And the secular version of anti-Judaism, racial antisemitism was born. Faced with this new and even more virulent discrimination and persecution, Jews came to realize that ,even as they were now granted civil citizenship in their countries of residence they were still, and would always remain the 'Other', foreign in the eyes of their hosts and neighbors.

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