The people of Israel gather this week to celebrate the festival of freedom, with Matzah ball, charoset, and other delicacies, while the State of Israel is at war, a war that is no longer about its own freedom (for it is, after all, a “regional power”), but about its desire to continue subjugating another people.
At its founding, the Jewish state sought peace with its neighbors, aspired to integrate into the region, to become a moral exemplar (or at least to strive toward that ideal). It was a Jewish state that wished to embody a Judaism of compassion, of freedom, and of equality, in the spirit of the vision of the prophets of Israel.
But since the Six-Day War, the Jewish state has changed its face.
Judaism itself has changed: the vision of the prophet Isaiah, who destined the Jewish people to be “a light unto the nations” - a moral exemplar - has been replaced by a vision of a forceful, messianic Judaism, a kind of “super-Sparta.” We have already forgotten what is hateful to us… or perhaps we remember, only to invert the teaching of Hillel the Elder.
The image of Judaism has been darkened. The sense of guilt the world once carried in the wake of the Holocaust is now being transformed into hatred of Judaism and Jews (old and new forms of antisemitism alike), without distinguishing between Judaism itself and the conduct of Israel’s leadership.
Were Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai among us today, he would surely understand that Judaism must be saved from the destruction of messianic madness, and he would act accordingly. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai is no longer here, but there are rabbis who are aware of the magnitude of the danger facing Judaism, and who can and must cry out on its behalf: what is happening here is not our Judaism. There is another Judaism. We must recalibrate the course.
This change cannot be merely external. It must include a return to the mission of the people of Israel, to bring the message of freedom to all the peoples of the world, to all human beings who are oppressed.
And perhaps it is also worth remembering that the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people also enslaves us.
On the enslavement of the enslaver, Natan Alterman wrote in his “Seventh Column” in 1946 (before the establishment of the state):
…yet it is fate, it is decre
that the people who build the prisons
build them also for their children to inherit! \
For a people can still dream, even ringed with wire
but what do their jailers dream within the cage
The prisoner waits for tomorrow from the heart of night
yet his guards, from the heart of night
are afraid of tomorrow.
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Reform Rabbi Ishai Ron lives in the Galilee and teaches, on behalf of Rabbis for Human Rights, about the image of God (tzelem Elohim) in pre-military preparatory programs.
At its founding, the Jewish state sought peace with its neighbors, aspired to integrate into the region, to become a moral exemplar (or at least to strive toward that ideal). It was a Jewish state that wished to embody a Judaism of compassion, of freedom, and of equality, in the spirit of the vision of the prophets of Israel.
But since the Six-Day War, the Jewish state has changed its face.
Judaism itself has changed: the vision of the prophet Isaiah, who destined the Jewish people to be “a light unto the nations” - a moral exemplar - has been replaced by a vision of a forceful, messianic Judaism, a kind of “super-Sparta.” We have already forgotten what is hateful to us… or perhaps we remember, only to invert the teaching of Hillel the Elder.
The image of Judaism has been darkened. The sense of guilt the world once carried in the wake of the Holocaust is now being transformed into hatred of Judaism and Jews (old and new forms of antisemitism alike), without distinguishing between Judaism itself and the conduct of Israel’s leadership.
Were Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai among us today, he would surely understand that Judaism must be saved from the destruction of messianic madness, and he would act accordingly. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai is no longer here, but there are rabbis who are aware of the magnitude of the danger facing Judaism, and who can and must cry out on its behalf: what is happening here is not our Judaism. There is another Judaism. We must recalibrate the course.
This change cannot be merely external. It must include a return to the mission of the people of Israel, to bring the message of freedom to all the peoples of the world, to all human beings who are oppressed.
And perhaps it is also worth remembering that the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people also enslaves us.
On the enslavement of the enslaver, Natan Alterman wrote in his “Seventh Column” in 1946 (before the establishment of the state):
…yet it is fate, it is decre
that the people who build the prisons
build them also for their children to inherit! \
For a people can still dream, even ringed with wire
but what do their jailers dream within the cage
The prisoner waits for tomorrow from the heart of night
yet his guards, from the heart of night
are afraid of tomorrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reform Rabbi Ishai Ron lives in the Galilee and teaches, on behalf of Rabbis for Human Rights, about the image of God (tzelem Elohim) in pre-military preparatory programs.