Many people confuse "a Jewish state" with the present reality of "a state for the Jews." Here is the nuanced difference, and what it means for Israel's future.
Great article. It picks up on the theme raised by Daniel Hazony in The Jewish State, where he argued that the first half of the 20th century Zionists did not pay enough attention to the cultural dimension of Zionism, thereby producing many offspring who became Jewish apostates (see Abraham Burg, for example). Apostates not in the religious sense, but in the political-cultural sense. And of course this detachment leading to apostasy is prevalent in left-wing circles, concerned only with being a democracy like any other, even though every other democracy also has its ethnic national basis and particularity. The argument resurfaced in the left-wing and liberal opposition to the Knesset's voting a law declaring Israel is the state of the Jewish people rather than the state of all its citizens. Democracy, which is simply the political formulation of modernity that starts with bifurcation of power at the top (government and opposition), also happens to take the form of the nation-state, of which the Jewish one is a typical representative. And given that contemporary developments in western democracies seem to be driving those states to national suicide, with antisemitism as one of its drivers, it behooves the Jewish nation-state to be wary of incorporating lock, stock and barrel the misguided shibboleths of western democracies. The secular-religious divide in Israel when viewed through the ideological prism of modern democracy increases our inability to reach deep into Jewish history, Jewish tradition and Jewish religion in order to forge the identity of the Jewish state. We need to focus our energies toward that task. So definitely the Jewish state, the country which in a way is the national synagogue of the Jewish people, even for those who do not attend services, and the one country in the world where Shabbat is a national weekly holiday!
'State of Jews OR The Jewish State', is a false Dichotomy. In fact Israel is and can be Both! The Judenrat of The Nazis was an Area set aside for Jews as a prelude to murdering us. If Israel is to be more than this, (surrounded as we are by Elites maliciously harbouring Nazism up to the present day) , Israel must be and indeed is sanctified by morality itself. Modern Western Morality is based on the view of Man as the Platonic Ideal of The Individual and his/her propensity to Choose Good over Evil. But we know how Malicious actors set out to Corrupt us, and I have sent you our Monitoring Reports about how this is done here in the UK by Nazi Elements in MI6, etc. Darwinian Homo Sapiens puts survival as the sole goal of existence. But this cynical and grim Modern approach to Ethics ignores how the Judeo-Christian Virtues of Peace and Love for ALL men ACTUALLY increases our fitness to survive and facilitates the increase of our numbers, by living healthy and Disease-free lives in the image of The Ideal. Strong and Prosperous Multi-Racial Israel REQUIRES THESE PRINCIPLES AND IDEALS AS WELL. So beware the siren Far-Right voices on the Extremes of Israel's Politics who forget this! 'The Jewish State' must therefore mean Peace and Love too.
I have a basic question as an American Jew looking at Israel from the outside. I just read that the IDF paused fighting to allow even more aid into Gaza. We all know Israel is the only country that tries to protect civilians there (although the insane, ignorant f^%$ked up world sees it differently). No other country drops leaflets warning people to leave certain areas, calls them on phones, etc. But this latest move to pause fighting to allow more aid through- isn't this just a form of suicidal empathy? I don't mean to sound inhumane, but something is just not right here. And I know the U.S. is pressuring Israel on this. But I read that the High Court supported this move. Your thoughts??
Absolutely 100% lunacy. We need to be rid of all of the General Staff, from the Ramatkal on down. Quite unfortunately the majority of them, if not all, remain in an Oct. 6 mentality. These are decisions to be made at the highest political levels, not by a Chief of Staff who is highly culpable for October 7.....as Bibi recently said, "we're a State with an army, not an army with a State."
Excellent article. Israel does not have to be a theocracy. There is no third Temple, therefore we do not and cannot follow all of the laws in the Torah. However, we must keep certain areas sanctified in order to preserve our very existence! If there is not enough Torah in the Land of Israel, then we have no right to this piece of real estate; we will probably be kicked out (again), leave, and live in…Madagascar?
"In every other sense, as Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion had hoped, we would be a nation like any other nation."
But the other part of Ben Gurion's quote (and dream), and you alluded to it later, is that we would at the same time be a "light unto the nations".
That is in itself a contradiction, it can't be done. We cannot, at least for now, survive attempting both. We cannot exist in the world as it is, let alone just our neighborhood, striving to keep some moral high ground, seeking to set an example to a Jew-hating world. Pick your leader....Moses, David, Solomon, etc., etc......they would all have seen it for what it is, a suicide pact.
I see it as the challenge of all western countries. We follow enlightenment principals BUT fight like the devil when necessary. It’s hard to do both but that is what is needed.
When attacked, we defend ourselves. In War, Peace-time Morality is suspended. This is well understood across The West. The Jewish Position is unique though: Nazism and Antisemitism are permanent and continuous features of The Jewish Experience, and involve The Jewish People in the Forever War which is neither of our making nor our fault. Get used to this fact: I have become, and now I am a Zionist because of this. Also, the Services of The West see the Maintenance of The West's high living standards as a Forever War too. And they have said so as well. So Stand Tall Israel! We are amongst friends, in the civilised world, as The Jewish State; Defending The Jewish People against the threat of Genocide from Forever-Nazism (and their Hamas Allies who we have monitored as such here right here in London).
It should definitely be a Jewish State. I believe that it is in many ways already, most of the religious holidays are celebrated, for instance, on Sukkot there are Sukkah all over the country. Purim is a huge holiday. If not for the Jewish State many of the secular children would not be educated in the history. The education is not what it used to be back in the day when the Torah was used as historical. My husband z”l knew the history inside out because it was taught in the schools.
It’s critical to always have Memorial Day/Independence Day Celebrated the way it is. If it’s just a State of The Jews it will be diluted to nothing in short order.
Thank you for this piece, Susan. I am increasingly in despair over Israel and this fucked up insane world we live in with all the Jew-hatred raging across the U.S., Canada, etc. I am SO trying to reconnect with G-d, though I must admit I have felt disconnected from G-d since October 7th and the world's reaction. And I keep thinking where was G-d during the Holocaust? How can we depend on Him now? Will G-d come through for Israel NOW?
Next, re-read the link I already sent and notice how Torah’s “instructions” about not giving away territory that protected us were ignored by Israel’s leaders. Torah is from G-d. It contains the blueprint for Israel’s survival and success. But over the years Israel’s leaders had more faith in unreliable human allies serving their own interests than in our own Torah, which serves the Jewish people. That weakened us in every way possible. Moreover, before Oct 7, Israel may have been doing well economically but it had become extremely divided, socially and politically. Torah warns us against such divisions, but we go ahead and argue incessantly anyway. Where was G-d? Where were WE is a more appropriate question. Our leaders – all of us – took our eyes off the ball. We are now being challenged to do what Torah says we should do in wartime which is NOT to appease our unreliable allies and a world that hates us. Maybe when we have more faith in G-d to bring us victory instead of submitting to the whims of defectives in the White House and the United Nations, we will see G-d’s hand more clearly again.
As I understand the original conception of Zionism, it was supposed to be secular, with Israel as a homeland for the jewish people, not a theocracy; and I would not like to see it become a theocracy. In my view, theocracy is not consistent with liberal democracy. Should Israel turn into a theocracy, I would not support the US having any kind of special relationship with it any longer, and I would say that the US should treat it the same as any Moslem theocracy with which it does business in the Middle East, if that should happen.
Way too theological for my taste. It basically denies the right NOT to be a Jewish atheist, which I am! It also implies special rights and exemptions for the religiously Orthodox Jews. Disagreeing in principle!
Great essay. When I see the Israeli political infighting every day going on in the midst of an existential war for survival, I marvel at the insanity. Yet it’s no more insane than what we see in America or the rest of the West, which at least in the ruling classes, seems to be spinning out of control toward civilizational suicide. Every political system and ideology has its limitations, and when confronted by those limitations, adaptation in the form of adherence to reality must take place. I am not religious man, but there is much wisdom in the lessons of the history and philosophy of our people. We don’t need to follow a flawed model into chaos, because it’s the dominant concept of the era. We need to be smarter than that and adapt as we always have. In an insane world being iconoclastic is the only sane solution.
Great article. It picks up on the theme raised by Daniel Hazony in The Jewish State, where he argued that the first half of the 20th century Zionists did not pay enough attention to the cultural dimension of Zionism, thereby producing many offspring who became Jewish apostates (see Abraham Burg, for example). Apostates not in the religious sense, but in the political-cultural sense. And of course this detachment leading to apostasy is prevalent in left-wing circles, concerned only with being a democracy like any other, even though every other democracy also has its ethnic national basis and particularity. The argument resurfaced in the left-wing and liberal opposition to the Knesset's voting a law declaring Israel is the state of the Jewish people rather than the state of all its citizens. Democracy, which is simply the political formulation of modernity that starts with bifurcation of power at the top (government and opposition), also happens to take the form of the nation-state, of which the Jewish one is a typical representative. And given that contemporary developments in western democracies seem to be driving those states to national suicide, with antisemitism as one of its drivers, it behooves the Jewish nation-state to be wary of incorporating lock, stock and barrel the misguided shibboleths of western democracies. The secular-religious divide in Israel when viewed through the ideological prism of modern democracy increases our inability to reach deep into Jewish history, Jewish tradition and Jewish religion in order to forge the identity of the Jewish state. We need to focus our energies toward that task. So definitely the Jewish state, the country which in a way is the national synagogue of the Jewish people, even for those who do not attend services, and the one country in the world where Shabbat is a national weekly holiday!
Sorry. It was Yoram Hazony, not Daniel Hazony, who wrote The Jewish State.
'State of Jews OR The Jewish State', is a false Dichotomy. In fact Israel is and can be Both! The Judenrat of The Nazis was an Area set aside for Jews as a prelude to murdering us. If Israel is to be more than this, (surrounded as we are by Elites maliciously harbouring Nazism up to the present day) , Israel must be and indeed is sanctified by morality itself. Modern Western Morality is based on the view of Man as the Platonic Ideal of The Individual and his/her propensity to Choose Good over Evil. But we know how Malicious actors set out to Corrupt us, and I have sent you our Monitoring Reports about how this is done here in the UK by Nazi Elements in MI6, etc. Darwinian Homo Sapiens puts survival as the sole goal of existence. But this cynical and grim Modern approach to Ethics ignores how the Judeo-Christian Virtues of Peace and Love for ALL men ACTUALLY increases our fitness to survive and facilitates the increase of our numbers, by living healthy and Disease-free lives in the image of The Ideal. Strong and Prosperous Multi-Racial Israel REQUIRES THESE PRINCIPLES AND IDEALS AS WELL. So beware the siren Far-Right voices on the Extremes of Israel's Politics who forget this! 'The Jewish State' must therefore mean Peace and Love too.
I have a basic question as an American Jew looking at Israel from the outside. I just read that the IDF paused fighting to allow even more aid into Gaza. We all know Israel is the only country that tries to protect civilians there (although the insane, ignorant f^%$ked up world sees it differently). No other country drops leaflets warning people to leave certain areas, calls them on phones, etc. But this latest move to pause fighting to allow more aid through- isn't this just a form of suicidal empathy? I don't mean to sound inhumane, but something is just not right here. And I know the U.S. is pressuring Israel on this. But I read that the High Court supported this move. Your thoughts??
Absolutely 100% lunacy. We need to be rid of all of the General Staff, from the Ramatkal on down. Quite unfortunately the majority of them, if not all, remain in an Oct. 6 mentality. These are decisions to be made at the highest political levels, not by a Chief of Staff who is highly culpable for October 7.....as Bibi recently said, "we're a State with an army, not an army with a State."
Excellent article. Israel does not have to be a theocracy. There is no third Temple, therefore we do not and cannot follow all of the laws in the Torah. However, we must keep certain areas sanctified in order to preserve our very existence! If there is not enough Torah in the Land of Israel, then we have no right to this piece of real estate; we will probably be kicked out (again), leave, and live in…Madagascar?
"In every other sense, as Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion had hoped, we would be a nation like any other nation."
But the other part of Ben Gurion's quote (and dream), and you alluded to it later, is that we would at the same time be a "light unto the nations".
That is in itself a contradiction, it can't be done. We cannot, at least for now, survive attempting both. We cannot exist in the world as it is, let alone just our neighborhood, striving to keep some moral high ground, seeking to set an example to a Jew-hating world. Pick your leader....Moses, David, Solomon, etc., etc......they would all have seen it for what it is, a suicide pact.
I see it as the challenge of all western countries. We follow enlightenment principals BUT fight like the devil when necessary. It’s hard to do both but that is what is needed.
When attacked, we defend ourselves. In War, Peace-time Morality is suspended. This is well understood across The West. The Jewish Position is unique though: Nazism and Antisemitism are permanent and continuous features of The Jewish Experience, and involve The Jewish People in the Forever War which is neither of our making nor our fault. Get used to this fact: I have become, and now I am a Zionist because of this. Also, the Services of The West see the Maintenance of The West's high living standards as a Forever War too. And they have said so as well. So Stand Tall Israel! We are amongst friends, in the civilised world, as The Jewish State; Defending The Jewish People against the threat of Genocide from Forever-Nazism (and their Hamas Allies who we have monitored as such here right here in London).
It should definitely be a Jewish State. I believe that it is in many ways already, most of the religious holidays are celebrated, for instance, on Sukkot there are Sukkah all over the country. Purim is a huge holiday. If not for the Jewish State many of the secular children would not be educated in the history. The education is not what it used to be back in the day when the Torah was used as historical. My husband z”l knew the history inside out because it was taught in the schools.
It’s critical to always have Memorial Day/Independence Day Celebrated the way it is. If it’s just a State of The Jews it will be diluted to nothing in short order.
The Torah grants Israel to the Jews and obligates them to protect her people. Please read “It is Time to Declare the Truth about the Jews and Israel”.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/6148232/jewish/It-Is-Time-to-Declare-the-Truth-About-the-Jews-and-Israel.htm
Thank you for this piece, Susan. I am increasingly in despair over Israel and this fucked up insane world we live in with all the Jew-hatred raging across the U.S., Canada, etc. I am SO trying to reconnect with G-d, though I must admit I have felt disconnected from G-d since October 7th and the world's reaction. And I keep thinking where was G-d during the Holocaust? How can we depend on Him now? Will G-d come through for Israel NOW?
First, you might want to read the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s views on G-d and the Holocaust.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/64888/jewish/The-Rebbe-on-the-Holocaust.htm
Next, re-read the link I already sent and notice how Torah’s “instructions” about not giving away territory that protected us were ignored by Israel’s leaders. Torah is from G-d. It contains the blueprint for Israel’s survival and success. But over the years Israel’s leaders had more faith in unreliable human allies serving their own interests than in our own Torah, which serves the Jewish people. That weakened us in every way possible. Moreover, before Oct 7, Israel may have been doing well economically but it had become extremely divided, socially and politically. Torah warns us against such divisions, but we go ahead and argue incessantly anyway. Where was G-d? Where were WE is a more appropriate question. Our leaders – all of us – took our eyes off the ball. We are now being challenged to do what Torah says we should do in wartime which is NOT to appease our unreliable allies and a world that hates us. Maybe when we have more faith in G-d to bring us victory instead of submitting to the whims of defectives in the White House and the United Nations, we will see G-d’s hand more clearly again.
This piece was really helpful and uplifting Susan. Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure. All the best!
As I understand the original conception of Zionism, it was supposed to be secular, with Israel as a homeland for the jewish people, not a theocracy; and I would not like to see it become a theocracy. In my view, theocracy is not consistent with liberal democracy. Should Israel turn into a theocracy, I would not support the US having any kind of special relationship with it any longer, and I would say that the US should treat it the same as any Moslem theocracy with which it does business in the Middle East, if that should happen.
Accuracy about historical facts matters! The Yom Kippur War started on the 6th, NOT 5th of October, 1973. Just Google it, and you would know!
Way too theological for my taste. It basically denies the right NOT to be a Jewish atheist, which I am! It also implies special rights and exemptions for the religiously Orthodox Jews. Disagreeing in principle!
Both
Great essay. When I see the Israeli political infighting every day going on in the midst of an existential war for survival, I marvel at the insanity. Yet it’s no more insane than what we see in America or the rest of the West, which at least in the ruling classes, seems to be spinning out of control toward civilizational suicide. Every political system and ideology has its limitations, and when confronted by those limitations, adaptation in the form of adherence to reality must take place. I am not religious man, but there is much wisdom in the lessons of the history and philosophy of our people. We don’t need to follow a flawed model into chaos, because it’s the dominant concept of the era. We need to be smarter than that and adapt as we always have. In an insane world being iconoclastic is the only sane solution.