[ April 19, 2024 ]
I did an interview with The Washington Times concerning Zionism. It is going to run in four parts. Today part one was published. I must say that the anti-zionist views expressed by political
columnist Allan C. Brownfeld in the article best reflect the repugnant and essentially anti-Jewish views held by the "reform" movement. But certainly explains the vicious attacks on me by certain Reform "rabbis."
I do not know any Jews that share his sentiments.
Does Zionism help or hurt Jews in the Diaspora? Joseph Cotto, Washington Times, October 2, 2013Story continues below advertisementOne of the most controversial issues facing the international community is Zionism.
These days, the word gets thrown around quite often, almost
always by those who have strong opinions on the matter. Stripping away
any political agendas, Zionism is the philosophy of building and
supporting a Jewish state. While certain religions such as Roman
Catholicism have a nation to call their own, Zionism takes the matter to
an entirely different level.It calls for Israel to be the home of every Jew, and extends
from a strictly theological perspective to the realm of culture and
ethnicity. With all of the religious, ethnic, and nationalistic
differences among Jews, such a thing generates a treasure trove of
opinions.
In America, Zionism was opposed by the majority-Reform
Jewish community for generations. This has changed over the last few
decades, though.
“For Reform Jews, the idea of Zionism contradicted almost
completely their belief in a universal Judaism,” explains political
columnist Allan C. Brownfeld. “The first Reform prayer book eliminated
references to Jews being in exile and to a Messiah who would
miraculously restore Jews throughout the world to the historic land of
Israel and who would rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. The prayer book
eliminated all prayers for a return to Zion.”
Brownfeld is the publications editor at the American Council
for Judaism, one of our country’s longstanding Jewish-interest
political groups. He says that the Council “opposes the Zionist
philosophy of Jewish nationalism which holds that Israel is the
‘homeland’ of all Jews and that Jews living outside of Israel are in
‘exile.’
“It is the Council’s view, which we believe represents the
thinking of the majority of American Jews, that Judaism is a religion of
universal values, not a nationality. American Jews are American by
nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Catholic,
Protestant or Muslim.
“The Council has been advocating this view for more than 70
years–but this belief is much older than that. In 1841, at the
dedication ceremonies of Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South
Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski declared: ‘This country is our
Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.’”
Of course, a perspective like this has its counterpoints.
“Zionism is only a controversial issue because its opponents
have made it so,” states Pamela Geller, one of America’s most outspoken
Jewish political pundits. “The Jews have a historical claim to the land
of Israel. Contrary to myth, they began returning long before the
Holocaust, bought the land fair and square, and were determined to live
in peace with their neighbors. The Arab leaders called on the Arabs to
leave the area in 1948, thinking they would return in peace when Israel
was annihilated. They were wrong.
“After centuries of persecution, subjugation and oppression,
the intenrational mandate of the White Paper and San Remo a Jewish
homeland is an absolute right, a human right.
“[According to the Council on Foreign Relations,] (t)he San
Remo Resolution ‘agreement between post-World War I allied powers
(Britain, France, Italy, Japan) was adopted on April 25, 1920 during the
San Remo Conference. The Mandate for Palestine was based on this
resolution; it incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the
Covenant of the League of Nation’s Article 22. Britain was charged with
establishing a ‘national home for the Jewish people.’’
“Nonetheless, antisemites and their useful idiots viciously
fight this still, almost a hundred years later. There are scores of
Muslim countries – scores. Why is that sanctioned, but not one tiny
Jewish state?”
Some say that by replacing Jewish religious philosophy with a
nationalistic focus on Israel, diaspora Jews will not fully partake in
the societies where they were born. Is this true?
“It is important to remember that Zionism is a rather recent
phenomenon in Jewish life. Prior to the mid-20th century, the
overwhelming majority of Jews rejected Zionism,” Brownfeld tells.
He later says that “American Jews, in the very fabric of
their lives, reject the Zionist philosophy which some in the organized
Jewish community proclaim in their name. Jews have been an integral part
of America from its earliest days, and never suffered the disabilities
their ancestors endured in Europe….When George Washington led an
expedition in 1754 to warn the French away from the Falls of Ohio, two
Jews, Michael Franks and Jacob Myers, accompanied him.
“Thomas Jefferson credited a Jew, Dr, John de Sequeyra, with
introducing the custom of eating tomatoes, which previously had been
grown only as ornamental plants. Jews have been engaged in every event
in American history, from Valley Forge to the Alamo to Normandy.
“The Zionist narrative of Jewish history, largely crafted in
Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries exhibited no
knowledge or understanding of the Jewish experience in America.
“As ideas of Jewish nationalism began to emerge in Europe,
the leader of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, speaking
of Theodor Herzl and the nascent movement, declared: ‘We denounce the
whole question of a Jewish state as foreign to the spirit of the modern
Jew in this land, who looks upon America as his Palestine and whose
interests are centered here.’
“Since most American Jews reject the Zionist view of Jewish
nationalism, they are, and will remain, full participants in every
aspect of American society.”
Geller’s opinion is different for the most part, yet bears
one striking similarity: “Why ‘replace’? Why are they mutually
exclusive? This would only be true if the values of Jewish religious
philosophy were incompatible with those of the larger society. This has
never been true in the U.S., where Jews have participated in the life of
the nation from the beginning.”
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15 Comments
10 years ago
Silly people, just read the Torah (Instruction), from the very beginning to the very end, which is all about, first and foremost, the obligation (responsibility as “the chosen”) of Jews to strive for and uphold, relentlessly, an ethical existence, above all else. That is the only real “dogma”, the rest is simply its history. Second, that striving is in the context of a “national” identity (like it or not), the foundation of which is clearly rooted in the land (real dirt, real geography) of Israel, as early history unfolds from Genesis on; and this theme is repeated, over and over, from the very beginning of the Torah, to its end. Denial is not a river in… Humanist-revisionist, Reform Jewish blather is something else, entirely, probably more of a well intentioned, Messianic-Christianized Judaic, socially convenient variety of ethnic identity…
10 years ago
Allan C. Brownfeld does not reflect the position of the Reform movement toward Israel either of the past or the present. Talk about misinformation.
After my mother’s passing in 2005 I found among her treasured papers a speech given in 1933 at her Confirmation from the Reform Congregation of Keneseth Israel. The Rabbi said among other things, ” … Our beloved Rabbis and your devoted teachers have imparted to you the lessons of wisdom as contained in the sacred writings which are our common heritage, and because of this knowledge which is yours you will take your stand with Israel’s worthy sons and daughters. Always remember that society has much to gain from the professing Jew, but very little from those who imagine they can be loyal to mankind only by disloyalty to their own people and to their conscience …”
Israel was not a fictitious concept then or now.
As for the present:
“The Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) was established in 1978 at a Biennial of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now URJ – Union for Reform Judaism) after nearly 50 years of growing identification by Reform Jews with the national aspirations of the Jewish people and ultimately with the State of Israel.
Inspired by the vision of Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn, and guided by ideological structures shaped by Rabbi David Polish, ARZA was created out of the recognition that in Jewish tradition there is no division between the religious domain and the polity of the Jewish people, and that the religious mandate of our prophetic and rabbinic traditions requires all Jews to participate in the issues and institutions that affect Jewish existence.
ARZA sees Jewish nationalism as a seamless aspect of 21st century Reform Jewish identities, and through instrumentalities such as ARZA’s Institute for Reform Zionism, seeks contemporary understandings of Zionism and of Jewish peoplehood.
A membership organization, ARZA is an affiliate of the Union for Reform Judaism (the umbrella organization for the more than 920 Reform synagogues in North America). ARZA represents the URJ in its dealings with the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, and is a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and of the URJ’s Commission on Social Action.
see: http://www.arza.org/aboutus/history/
10 years ago
Jews ought to support Zionism the nationalist aspirations of the Jewish people for a homeland in their traditional country of Israel because they have been victims of Antisemitism throughout history while in Diaspora and also because God promised the land as an eternal inheritance to the Jewish people. most Christians i know support the Jewish people and Israel
10 years ago
Allan C. Brownfeld does not reflect the position of the Reform movement toward Israel either of the past or the present.
Thank you for pointing that out. I have been the guest at a number of sermons at a Reform Temple, including those conducted during the High Holidays, and have heard the strong devotion of the rabbi to the Land of Israel.
I gather it is true that, at its inception in the 19th century, the Reform movement did stipulate that Jerusalem was more in the heart and mind and less a point on the map. I presume that leaders of the movement were motivated by a certain practical necessity. The idea that the nation of Israel could be reborn would have been regarded as a practical impossibility.
10 years ago
This short discussion sums up of the dilemma faced by the Jewish people well.
It is less a question of religion than maintaining the sovereignty of a people robbed of their land and forced into exile, yet determined to survive:
“As time passed, however, it became clear that the Jews faced a lengthy exile. Their rabbinic leaders therefore began a centuries-long project of converting Judaism into a form capable of surviving outside its land.”
Though I do not agree with the writer’s conclusion; Israel has already shown that it can and has developed its own sorts of distinctly Jewish-secular “solutions” to modern life extremely well.
Winter 5771 / 2011, no. 43
Halacha’s Moment of Truth
By Evelyn Gordon, Hadassah Levy
Judaism has yet to rise to the challenge of a sovereign state.
Preview:
In one of the Talmud’s most famous stories, the invading Romans are readying their final blow to the Second Temple in Jerusalem. R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, realizing that defeat is imminent, sneaks out of the city and escapes to the tent of the Roman general Vespasian, who he announces will soon be appointed emperor. When the prophecy comes true shortly thereafter, Vespasian grants ben Zakkai a boon. Yet instead of asking the emperor to spare Jerusalem and its Temple, as might be expected, ben Zakkai pleads for a seemingly marginal coastal town: “Give me Yavneh and its sages!”1 Less known, however, is what many scholars consider an earlier version of this story, found in Lamentations Rabba. In this telling, ben Zakkai does ask for Jerusalem. And when Vespasian refuses, but lets him try again, ben Zakkai still does not ask for Yavneh and its sages; rather, he asks that one of Jerusalem’s gates be left unguarded for several hours, thus enabling the sages of Jerusalem to escape.2
The difference between these two versions reflects the wrenching change that Judaism underwent following the Temple’s destruction in 70 C.E. and the Jews’ subsequent exile from the Land of Israel. For more than 1,200 years, a Hebrew commonwealth had existed in that land, interrupted only by the relatively brief Babylonian exile (587-538 B.C.E.). For the last 1,000 of those years, Jerusalem had served as the Jews’ political capital, and the Temple as the center of their religious life. Moreover, the Torah was clearly intended for a sovereign people in its own territory: Numerous commandments, such as those connected to the Temple service or agriculture, can be performed only in the Land of Israel. Many others, on issues ranging from commerce to the courts to a prototypical welfare system, are the type of regulation only applicable to, and enforceable by, a sovereign state. Understandably, then, in the immediate aftermath of the destruction, the idea of Judaism’s surviving without sovereignty would have been almost inconceivable. It was likely hard for the author of the version in Lamentations Rabba to imagine a Jewish leader of that time making anything but the requests he cited: first, the survival of Jerusalem, the Jews’ capital city, and second, the survival of the Jews’ political leadership. (The sages of Jerusalem for whom ben Zakkai pleaded included the members of the Sanhedrin, a combination legislature/supreme court.)
As time passed, however, it became clear that the Jews faced a lengthy exile. Their rabbinic leaders therefore began a centuries-long project of converting Judaism into a form capable of surviving outside its land. The Temple service was replaced by prayer. Holidays were reinterpreted. A fixed calendar was instituted. Torah study became the supreme value, compensating for all the commandments that could no longer be performed. And the importance of sovereignty was downplayed: For the sake of Jewish survival, the message had to be that sovereignty was not essential so long as rabbinic leadership—“Yavneh and its sages”—remained.
Today, Judaism again confronts a shift of tectonic proportions, although this time in the opposite direction. Just as ben Zakkai and his successors eventually transformed Judaism from a religion of sovereignty into a religion of exile, Judaism must now reconstitute itself as the religion of a sovereign nation—a religion, that is, whose legal code is ready and willing to grapple with the challenges sovereignty poses. How should a Jewish army operate? How should a Jewish state regulate marriage and divorce? What are the rules for acquiring citizenship? How should commerce, agriculture, education, welfare, and the legal system be run? The answers are not obvious. The world has changed too much in the last two millennia for many biblical prescriptions to be applied literally. In addition, even the vast corpus of subsequent halachic development has relatively little to say on many of these issues, and what it does say is often inapplicable to a modern, sovereign state. Yet unless Jewish tradition can help answer these questions, Israel will have no alternative to the wholesale adoption of the secular West’s solutions. And then, there will be nothing “Jewish” about the Jewish state at all.
Evelyn Gordon is a journalist and commentator on public affairs. Hadassah Levy is website manager for Jewish Ideas Daily.
10 years ago
“Silly people” huh? I love the “just read Torah” spewing from certain sects AS IF they have sole propriety over Tirah and history and interpretation. Always the is the fussing about Chritians or Messianic whatever. NEVER is there fussing about ISLAM and the existential threat it poses to Jews and Israel. No. Always castigating Christians. Very annoying because you make it seem like Jews hate Christians as a rule.
Your voice sounds familiar to me. I bet you post on Israel National News… And it’s the same there.
Why don’t you tell us about Islam for a change…
10 years ago
Allen Brownfeld is a longtime Jewish enemy of Israel. During Israel’s 1982 Lebanon war Brownfeld praised Yasser Arafat and quote Jewish self haters like himself in their smears of then Premier Begin and support for the Palestinian fiction. Brownfeld’s smears of Israel trying to defend itself were one of the main reasons back then that I didn’t renew my subscription to “Human Events” (a Conservative periodical). Incidentally, even if I a not that religious a Jew, I always attend Orthodox services because I dislike the lack of structure Reform and Conservative temples have.
10 years ago
p.s. I also think the “Washington Times” has someone named Arnaud Debouchgrave as its chief editor. He is an anti-Semite who thinks all Jews are spies for Israel and Israel’s attempts to defend itself — say in taking out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor — are merely self defeating folly.
10 years ago
I believe that we need a strong Israel nation which includes Gaza, the west bank, and the Sinai. YHWH gave this land to Israel and man cannot take it away from you. Does that make me a Zionist. I don’t think so since I am not Jew neither by birth nor by conversion. I am a Canadian and a Christian born of German, Irish and Scottish ancestry. From reading the Bible I have come to this conclusion and pray for the cleansing of the Temple Mount in preparation for the rebuilding of the Temple of YHWH and the daily worship restored. I hope that someday I could be a part of the worship of YHWH at His Temple.
10 years ago
Zionism is not a political party but an existential premise of a people exiled, barred from returning while placed in ghettoes. It appears as much as the word Jerusalem in the Hebrew bible from the term ‘Zion’.
Anti-Zionism is a covert genocidal aspiration same as ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’. Proof: the corruption of the Balfour and the ‘White Paper’ caused the Holocaust. Israel is now being asked to self-destruct via serial 2-state demands, when it is actually a 5-state in the small land allocated for ‘one only Jewish state’. Do the maths: Jordan – the first 2-state; P.A. – the 3-state; Hamas in Gaza = the 4-state. Israel = the 5-state. Add to this the transfer of the name Palestinian from Jews to Muslims, and changing the 3,000 Hebrew name of Samaria to ‘West Bank’ – and what have you got? Exactly!
10 years ago
Why when the Jewish speak of Abraham, they always refer to Issac and Jacob, and leave out Ishmael the first born son of Abraham. The original Jews and Muslims are brothers from the same father, Abraham.
Since Abraham married his half sister his bloodline was altered and Ishmael became the the first son of Abraham, and even though Sarah was offended by this , God did bless Ishmael as well as Issac, so the story is complicated in a way that was not planned by God, necessitating the coming of God’s only begotten son.
Jesus is the Temple of God now.
The Temple was REBUILT IN THREE DAYS, the reason Jerusalem is important is because Jesus was born a Jew, and God’s blessing and protection is in the existence of Jesus, The Jews and Muslims must accept the fact that their ” chosen one’s” status has changed and that all men are equal in God’s eyes, the Jew and Muslim family must accept the real Jesus, because Jesus is real, and if they refuse to follow Jesus, they will not be protected or blessed now that they’ve been made aware of Jesus, Jesus didn’t come to bring peace, it is up to the people to live in peace, to Love their enemies, Love is God and Love’s law will rule on Earth as it does in Heaven.
10 years ago
Sorry “friend”, you’re entirely wrong in your interpretation of my comments. First, I’ve never posted on INN, second I’m not inferring any kind of “hatred” of Christians, and third, one of the reasons that Atlas Shrugs is my favorite blog is because it has long been the leading edge of the truth about Islamic culture, among other issues.
I referred to a “Christianized” aspect of Reform Judaism in a context of its modern-westernized and lib-left culture, a kind of watered down Judaic orientation of at least some obvious aspects of Reform Judaism; and by no stretch of the imagination am I any kind of Orthodox Jew simply being critical of the reform branch, I’m far more secular than most Reform Jews, actually. But anyone who thinks that issues of Zionism, Torah, and their “essential” connection to the “Land of Israel” is an issue simply of “interpretation”, and open to debate, are missing a vital point, ie. the charade at J Street. Concerning the issue of “fussing about … Chri(s)tians or Messianic whatever”, history well documents the reality of a (tragically) supercessionist fabric in the history of Christian cultural evolution, and which I hope to believe is becoming reconciled in favor of authentic mutual respect, including of the essential identity of Judaism as the foundation stone (if you will) of Christianity; and as well, within a context of a unified coalition of Christians and Jews for our mutual survival (especially from the Muslim and left-wing onslaught). Toward that end I even (modestly) support CUFI as a gesture of solidarity.
10 years ago
“Since most American Jews reject the Zionist view of Jewish nationalism, they are, and will remain, full participants in every aspect of American society.”
Geller’s opinion is different for the most part, yet bears one striking similarity
……………………………………………………………………………..
This is so far from the truth. Most American Jews support Israel. Only the fringe radical left opposes it. BTW, so do the majority of American Christians.
10 years ago
I didn’t realize the Washington Times was anti-Israel. It just goes to show that we can’t assume that being conservative means being pro-Israel.
