By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM –Earlier this year, Edward Alexander, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, published a book with the title of this headline in which castigates the many Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere that are critical of Israel and thus, according to the author, are damaging to Judaism and the Jewish people.
On October 13, the day after Yom Kippur, Ari Shavit, Ha’aretz columnist and author of the bestseller My Promised Land, published a column which argues that the real danger to the Jewish people doesn’t come from the marginal, assimilationist, “self-hating” Jews but from ostensibly pious and patriotic Israelis. (To which we may add: and their sycophantic supporters in the Diaspora.)
Having survived anti-Semitism through the ages, including the Holocaust, and having overcome the belligerence of the Arab states as well as the intransigence of Palestinian leaders, and having established a thriving Jewish state that, despite periodic acts of terrorism against it, has become an important player on the international arena, the Jewish people and the Jewish state are again in dire straits, writes Shavit – this time because of what Jews are doing to it and to each other.
He points to one manifestation of this self-destruction: “Day by day and hour by hour does Zionism takes itself to the grave on the hilltops of Judea and Samaria and the abyss of the one state. Having defeated the anti-Semites, the Nazis, the Arabs and the Palestinians – we’re now losing it to the Israelis….. We’re turning ourselves into our most dangerous enemy.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu may be right that it’s not the settlements but the very existence of Israel that stops Palestinians from making peace, but according to Shavit and others, the settlements and their continuous expansion threaten the very fabric of Judaism and the very purpose of Israel.
The fact that this pathological patriotism is wrapped in religious language claiming Scripture as its authority takes us further into the abyss. Though Shavit doesn’t write about it this time, religious nationalism in the government and ultra-Orthodox Judaism that has both Ashkenazi and Sephardi spokesmen around the cabinet table may devastate the Jewish people in the name of fidelity to God.
I don’t know if Shavit was in synagogue on Yom Kippur. Its liturgy urges us to confess our sins and promises forgiveness and atonement if we only show willingness to change our ways. What the liturgy says to individual worshipers, this writer is trying to tell the entire people.
God promises to help each of us as individuals to turn over a new leaf. But when it comes to the collective, only it – in this case, the Jewish people – must do it for itself.
And not only Israelis. The malaise that Shavit is writing about has also afflicted much of the Diaspora. Liberal minded Jews around the world seem to have lost their bearings when it comes to Israel: they hide behind the dangerous slogans of the nationalists and the fundamentalists. Edward Alexander may be right to point to the self-haters, but the self-lover may be much more dangerous.
The reason why Jews defeated the enemies that Shavit lists – and many others – is because, when it really mattered, they came together and did the right thing. Dare we hope that the same will happen this time, too? The alternative is too frightening to contemplate.
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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Now residing in Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com.