What is Modern Israel? - Softcover

Rabkin, Yakov M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745335810 ISBN 13: 9780745335810

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Few countries provoke as much passion and controversy as Israel. What is Modern Israel? convincingly demonstrates that its founding ideology - Zionism - is anything but a simple reaction to antisemitism. Dispelling the notion that every Jew is a Zionist and therefore a natural advocate for the state of Israel, Yakov Rabkin points to the Protestant roots of Zionism, in order to explain the particular support Israel musters in the United States.

Drawing on many overlooked pages of history, including English, French, Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian sources, Yakov Rabkin shows that Zionism was conceived as a sharp break with Judaism and Jewish continuity. Israel’s past and present must be seen in the context of European ethnic nationalism, colonial expansion and geopolitical interests, rather than as an incarnation of Biblical prophecies or a culmination of Jewish history.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Yakov M. Rabkin is professor of history at the University of Montréal, Canada. He is the author of A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism.

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What is Modern Israel?

By Yakov M. Rabkin, Fred A. Reed

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2012 Les Éditions Écosociété
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-3581-0

Contents

Acknowledgements, vi, 
Glossary, vii, 
Preface, xii, 
Introduction, 1, 
1 The Land of Israel and its Place in Jewish Tradition, 10, 
2 The Jews of Europe: Between Equality and Extermination, 29, 
3 A Return to the Promised Land as a Return to History, 39, 
4 The Zionist Enterprise, 45, 
5 The Nazi Genocide, Its Memory, and Its Lessons, 89, 
6 The Making and Maintaining of the Zionist State, 109, 
7 Jewish Opposition to Zionism, 122, 
8 Israeli Society and Jewish Communities, 161, 
9 Israel in the International Arena, 171, 
Conclusion. A State Without Borders, 184, 
Notes, 189, 
Index, 219, 

CHAPTER 1

The Land of Israel and Its Place in Jewish Tradition

The relationship of the Jews with the land of Israel may at first appear paradoxical. Although it occupies a privileged place in Jewish identity, never in their pre-Zionist two-millennia-long history did the Jews attempt to settle there en masse. It should come as no surprise that the Judaic sources speak with anything but one voice when it comes to geographical boundaries. The divine promise given to Abraham in no way implies a claim to possession of the Promised Land, as clearly illustrated by Abraham's insistence on paying for the plot in which he would bury his wife Sarah (Genesis 23: 6-13). "Promised land" means, in fact, that it belongs not to the one to whom the promise was made, but to the one who made the promise.

According to Jehiel Jacob Weinberg (1884-1966), a rabbinical authority who developed a creative synthesis of Lithuanian Judaism and German Orthodoxy:

Jewish nationality is different from that of all nations in the sense that it is uniquely spiritual, and that its spirituality is nothing but the Torah. ... In this respect we are different from all other nations, and whoever does not recognize it, denies the fundamental principle of Judaism.

The founding event of Jewish identity is the epiphany at Mount Sinai. It was the instant of the gift of the Torah, written or inspired by God, that tradition celebrates as the "birth of the people of Israel." The Judaic sources trace the origins of the Jews to their shared experience during the exodus from Egypt and the reception of the Torah on Mount Sinai. As a group, the Jews were distinguished by their commitment to the precepts of the Torah. Although it contains abundant episodes of transgression and forgetfulness on the part of the children of Israel, its defining, normative relationship with them continues to this day.

More than a geographic identity, it is this relationship and the obligation to follow the commandments of the Torah that have traditionally been the hallmark of the Jews and that makes them a "chosen people" a concept that implies moral and ritual responsibilities rather than intrinsic superiority. Understandably, this concept can readily be deformed to justify attitudes of superiority, and even racism. As in every religion, the status of "chosen" whose meaning lies in the fulfillment of Judaic precepts, can give rise to a sense of ontological supremacy, particularly in our day, when the bonds between Jews and their spiritual tradition has been weakened.

In a broader sense, Jewish tradition administers a powerful antidote to racism by speaking of the origins of a personality as central as the Messiah. The sages concur that the Messiah will arise from the lineage of King David, which would appear to confer upon him a superior ascendancy. However, the same sages trace the Messiah's origin to three quite daring female initiatives, those of Ruth, Tamar, and Lot's daughters.

Ruth was a Moabite widow, the issue of a people whose origins, according to the biblical account, can be traced to Lot's daughters. For fear that the world was ending, they inebriated their father and became pregnant by him, and gave birth to Moav, the ancestor of Ruth (Genesis 19: 30-38). Ruth is she who takes her destiny into her own hands in approaching Boaz: "and she went over stealthily and uncovered his feet and lay down. In the middle of the night, the man gave a start and pulled back – there was a woman lying at his feet" (Ruth 3:7-8) The origins of Boaz, in turn, can be traced to the story of Tamar (Genesis 38: 1-30). Successively married to two of the three sons of Judah, son of Jacob, Tamar witnessed the death of her two husbands. The third brother, according to Levirate law, would then have been obliged to marry her, but Judah sent her back to her parents on the pretext that his son was a minor. Even when he reached the age of majority, Judah remained undecided for fear that his youngest son would die as his brothers had. Tamar could wait no longer, disguised herself as a prostitute, slept with Judah and gave birth to twins, one of whom became the ancestor of Boaz.

In each of the three cases the fatality of death is overcome by women affirming life through their own initiative to conceive and give birth. But above all Jewish tradition emphasizes the humble origins of the Messiah, the savior of the world meant to return the Jews to the Promised Land, which tempers any temptation to claim superiority for the Messiah's lineage.

The biblical texts put emphasis not only on the divine origin of the Torah, but also on the fact that it was granted outside the land of Israel. According to the Pentateuch, the Jews, or more precisely the children of Israel, did not originate in the land of Israel. As a group, they emerged in Egypt, having been consecrated as a distinct people near Mount Sinai only by their acceptance of the Torah. Spiritual purification, essential for entry into the Promised Land, took place — obviously — outside that land, during 40 years of wandering in the desert. As many commentators have underlined, the Holy Land cannot sanctify the Jews, but their transgressions can profane the land, which in turn will "spew" them out (Leviticus 18: 28).

Tradition defines the relation with the Holy Land in explicitly conditional terms:

Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them. For the Lord's anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is giving you.

(Deuteronomy 11: 16-17)

This conditional possession is often compared with a married couple: their relationship lasts only as long as the two spouses obey certain rules and regulations. If not, divorce ensues. Significantly, when the granting of the Torah (Shavuot or Pentecost) is celebrated in some synagogues, the scroll of the ketubah (marriage contract) that seals the relationship between the Torah (the fiancée) and her chosen one (the people of Israel) is read, one of the leitmotifs of the ceremony being the consecration of the Jews' relationship with the land of Israel.

Tradition also underlines the grave danger of living in the Holy Land, by comparing the land of Israel to a royal palace in which any transgression immediately assumes enormous proportions. Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (1838-1933), better known as Hafetz Haim (the title of his book dealing with the laws against derogatory speech), points to the grave risk of living in the Holy Land while casting aside the Torah and its commandments. The very specific fear of transgressing the Torah in the Holy...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745335810
• ISBN 13: 9780745335810
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar