Observe the sea of humanity around you.
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Pretty, isn’t it? All those colours.
Now, look closer. You will see that humanity separates itself into bubbles
of culture and ethnic identity, smaller seas that we know as nations.
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Nations build fences around themselves and call themselves states. And more often than not a smaller bubble will get caught within the fence;
the Serbs in Croatia, the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Jews in Germany.
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This is not a problem, of course. Or it need not be. But when tough times come along, economic depression or social disorder, nations have a way of turning on the minorities within them.
It happens all of the time. In Croatia. In Rwanda. In Germany.
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The pattern by which nations indulge in these occasional bloodbaths can be well illustrated by the concept of the shibboleth.
The term “shibboleth” comes from an episode in the book of Judges, during which the Ephraimites were engaged in a war with the inhabitants of Gilead. Of the various things that we know of the Ephraimites, we know that they were a tribe characterised by an accent that made them incapable of correctly pronouncing the word “shibboleth”, which is the Hebrew term for an ear of wheat. When ever a man came to the river that divided the land of Ephraim from the land of Gilead, therefore, the Gileadites would ask him to say the word “shibboleth”. If he did not do so correctly, they killed him.
The episode recounted above was merely the first of its kind. Throughout history, the pattern has been repeated: When a nation goes through turmoil, it will often victimise members of the smaller nations within it. But how is it to identify who belongs to this nation? When skin colour, clothing or religion is clearly different, there is no need to. But when it is not, it turns to the shibboleth.
On the 18th of May, 1302, the Flemish inhabitants of the town of Bruges killed every single man, woman and child who could not correctly pronounce the term “schild en vriend”, on the basis that the French cannot pronounce these words.
In 1312, in the polish city Krakow, in a pogrom against the Germans, anyone over the age of seven who could not pronounce the term Soczewica, koło, miele, młyn ("Lentil, wheel, grinds [verb], mill)" was put to death. These words are hard for German-speakers to pronounce.
During the Peasant revolt, during which the merchants of London attacked the Flemish citizens of that city, anyone who could not pronounce the words “Bread and Cheese” correctly was put to death.
These are just three instances, but in fact, the list of shibboleths is endless; another illustration of the sheer inexorability with which nations turn on the minorities within them.
Time and time again, a nation will go through a period of stress, and a smaller nation within it, previously living in peace and prosperity, will be suddenly attacked.
In 1894, in France, it happened again. A young army officer named Dreyfus was (falsely, as was latter revealed) accused of spying for Germany. Dreyfus was a Jew, a Jew at a time when to be a Jew in France seemed no problem at all. At least, the secularised, assimilated, successful French-Jewish population had never had any problems before. But as soon as the Dreyfus trial started, all of that changed. Rioting mobs appeared in the streets, attacking Jews everywhere, sacking their shops and businesses, and chanting “Death to the Jews!”.
And that might have been the end of the story. As we have said, these things happen all of the time.
But one thing marked this event apart from all others that had preceded it. An Austrian journalist called Theodore Herzl had been covering the affair, and it profoundly changed his views on what it meant to be Jewish, an epiphany that led to the creation of the modern State of Israel.
Let us look at things from Herzl’s perspective.
Up until his time, what it meant to be Jewish was a relatively easy question to answer.
Jewishness was a combination of ethnicity and religion that had its focus in the Jewish faith.
Let us look at the Jewish faith.
Judaism is often called a religion, but this is actually an incorrect term.
Judaism is not a religion. Judaism is a relationship.
Religions divide the world into right and wrong.
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Judaism does not do that.
Jews believe that G-d set them apart, making a vow with them, and allowing them only to marry within their own nation. He also gave that nation a particular set of laws.
Religions divide the world into right and wrong, but Judaism divides the world into “right for the gentiles” and “wrong for the Jews”.
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This was ok, so long as the Jews lived in the ancient land of Israel. There, they lived in peace, worshipping at their temple in Jerusalem. But in 70 CE, the Roman Empire attacked Judea and Israel, and exiled their inhabitants from the land.
The fate of the Israelites was not an unusual one. The Romans fought many campaigns, and the inhabitants of many countries were exiled to other parts of the empire.
But the Jews were different.
Another nation would be exiled, and forced to live in a new land, surrounded by its original inhabitants.
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As such, that nation faced the constant risk of being attacked by the ethnic majority.
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And this might happen. But sooner or later, the minority nation would intermarry and assimilate into the larger nation.
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And their perilous period of exile would be over.
But the Jews were different.
Remember that Jews are allowed to marry only within their own
nation, a nation that observes the laws of the Torah.
This means that the Jews never intermarried and assimilated into the nations around them. Judaism in essence acted as an iron chain around the Jewish nation, keeping its border always clearly defined.
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The Jews never assimilated. Instead, they were attacked again and again and again, wandering from nation to nation in constant search of peace.
And it seemed that their sorrows would never be over.
Until the enlightenment.
The enlightenment was a period in world history from the 17th century onwards.
During this period, people began to turn away from religion, and towards science.
Nations began to abandon their primitive prejudices and allow equality.
Jews had always been second-class citizens, forced to live in ghettoes.
Even had they not been forced, they would still have stayed ethnically separate; their religion demanded it.
But no longer. Secularism was the new force in Jewish life. Many no longer believed in the Jewish relationship with God. They entered mainstream society.
A new age was dawning. At last, it seemed, the shackles around the Jewish nation was broken.
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Soon, it was predicted, they would diffuse into the nations around them, and their eternal wonderings would be over.
This was Herzl’s belief, until he saw the Dreyfus affair.
He had long believed that the Jews should and would assimilate, but now he thought again.
He looked at what had occurred in Europe over the centuries since the enlightenment began, and saw that this assimilation simply had not happened.
The Jews had remained separate, both by choice, and because the gentiles still hated them and would not marry them.
Even when the Jews seemed to be integrating well, the trial of a single Jew like Dreyfus could suddenly show their co-existence to be a farce.
Faced with all of this, Herzl realised that the Jews would never assimilate. And if one looks at the way that in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere Jews constantly seek to marry and associate with other Jews, very often despite having no religious convictions at all, we can see this to be the case.
The idea that the Jews would never successfully assimilate is a familiar one in Rabbinic literature, but for a secularist like Herzl, it was a dramatic new idea.
In essence, Herzl was redefining the bonds around the Jewish nation that we spoke of above.
Let us look closer at these bonds.
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Up until that time, it might have seemed that the border around the Jewish nation was enforced by a chain of halacha; belief in Jewish law.
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What Herzl was saying that was despite much of the nation abandoning halacha, the chain was still in place.
In essence, he was redefining that chain, as something deeper then halacha – as something specifically and primarily about being Jewish.
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In fact, Herzl said, not only much Jews leave the nation-states in Europe, they must leave the nation states in the Near East as well. Jews throughout the world must come to Israel.
The fact that Herzl could say this says something very special about Jews.
The conceptual “chain around the Jewish nation” that we spoke of above is very real.
It is so real that a dark-skinned Jew from Africa, an olive-skinned Jew from the Near East and a white skinned Jew from Europe all have more in common, in a way, than gentiles in the country in which they lived. They could, according to Herzl, despite their completely different backgrounds, from primitive African villages to advanced European university-towns, all come together and work together to build a state. And if you look at Israel today, you will see that this is true.
Perhaps, though, things are not that simple…
Herzl lived in a very interesting time. Although secularism was rife, the makeup of the Jewish nation was not very different from what it had been a few centuries previously, and throughout all of Jewish history. Throughout Jewish history, the makeup of the Jewish nation was determined by a religious code known as halacha, which passes down Jewish identity through the maternal line only, making rare exceptions in the case of converts who genuinely wish to embrace the Jewish faith. In Herzl’s time, Jews still married Jews, whether out of religious or merely cultural reasons.
Thus, when Herzl declared “All Jews must return to Israel and establish a state”, he was saying, “All those who are Jewish according to halacha must return to Israel and establish a state.” He did not use this more exacting language simply because there was no need to. All Jews were Jewish according to halacha, whether they believed in halacha or not, simply because very few gentiles wanted to marry Jews, and vice versa.
By the time the Jewish state was established, not much had changed.
When Israel established its “Law of Return”, therefore, no emphasis was put on the exact definition of a Jew. Everyone knew what a Jew was – it was the same as a Jew in Herzl’s time. Israel became a haven for Jew’s from all over the world. But for many, it was too late. Herzl’s philosophy had prompted many in Europe to come to Israel. But many saw Zionism’s view of the world as overly cynical. The fact that nations turn on those smaller nations within them is no reason to run away, they argued. Better to try and change mainstream society for the better. These people had good intentions, but Herzl was unfortunately right. Many of those who stayed in Europe perished.
Meanwhile, those Jews who had survived to come to Israel got down to the business of establishing the state.
And meanwhile, the world outside was changing.
In the early years of the twentieth century, Russia and the states immediately around it became the USSR. Religion was banned utterly. In this environment of enforced atheism, the Jews of Russia, deprived of their shibboleth Judaism, might easily have assimilated and disappeared. But the Russians themselves – like so many nations before them – did not let this happen. As Herzl himself complained in Der Judenstaat; “(How easily) we could assimilate – if only they would let us!” The Russians, although striving to make all workers equal, could not restrain their own anti-semitism. The soviet government, under the anti-Jewish Stalin, spread vicious official slurs against the Jews, and they also forced all Jews to state the fact of their own Jewishness, in their official identity papers. The problem was that the Soviets defined Jewishness according to their own model of patriarchy. What formed during the intervening sixty years of Soviet rule, then, was a new Jewish nation, not halachically but officially Jewish, the shibboleth that defined their Jewishness nothing more than a line in their I.D. papers, a shibboleth that was passed down from father to son, not, as in traditional, halachic Judaism, from a mother to her children. Many of these “Jews” developed a strong identity as Jews, therefore, and when the Iron Curtain finally fell, they were only too eager to emigrate to Israel.
Israel’s politicians were only too keen to accommodate them. Israel was struggling with a demographic problem. Having granted citizenship to all of it’s Arab citizens, who were increasing at a rate far greater than that of the Jews, they could foresee a time when the Jews would be outnumbered, and an Arab government voted into place. This would lead to exactly the same dangerous situation as had prompted the creation of the state. In order to accommodate as many Russians as possible, in order to increase the non-Arab Israeli population, the government relaxed the law of return, letting in “all those who are Jewish and of Jewish descent”. They defined someone as being of Jewish descent if they had at least one Jewish grandparent. After all, they argued, Hitler’s policy had been too murder anyone with “at least one Jewish grandparent”. And thus, if Israel is to provide sanctuary for Jews who would otherwise be persecuted, this should be our definition too. So convincing was this argument that many believe that Israel’s “Law of Return” is based on Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, set up as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. This is not true at all. Israel’s Law of Return, as it now stands, was only established in the 1970s. The original law was very different. Although, that said, the very idea of basing Jewish identity on the ideas of Hitler, and doing so as a result of the policies of Stalin, two of the greatest mass-murderers in history, is not an attractive one.
Israel’s adoption of a modified Law of Return, defining anyone with one Jewish grandparent as being of Jewish ancestry, had dramatic effects. Many within Russia and the former Soviet republics found that they could find a far better life in newly industrialised Israel than in Russia. Immigrants with the most tenuous “Jewish” ancestry began flooding into the country, including many members of the Russian Mafia. Shops selling pork sprang up in Tel Aviv. Nazareth’s churches filled up with Israeli citizens on Christmas day, all of whom were Russian Christians. A friend of mine met several of these Russians at his first Ulpan. “They openly boasted” he related to me, “ that their closest connection to Judaism was that their grandfathers had killed a few Jews during the war.”
In fact, as the recent discovery of an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi cell in Petach Tikvah shows, many of those “Jews” now in Israel are not only not halachically Jewish, but actually hate those who are.
If this were not bad enough, forging of family papers is very common in the corrupt former Soviet republics, which makes it easy – extremely easy – for many with absolutely no Jewish ancestry at all to falsify records in order to get an entry into Israel and thus the Western World. Corrupt members of the sochnut, eager to swell their records, and thus their standing in the sochnut, are consciously helping in this process. A friend of mine who worked with just such a bent sochnut shali’ach estimated that a busload of completely non-Jewish people are flying to Israel every week.
The lure of Israel’s successful economy is reaching wider than the impoverished of Russia.
The old testament is a powerful text, detailing the redemption of a downtrodden minority, and it’s narrative has been adopted by hundreds of tribes throughout the third world (and even several groups in Europe and the Americas) who have come in contact with one of the Abrahamic faiths, whether Christianity, Islam, or, perhaps even Judaism itself. These tribes often have folk lore describing themselves as “the lost tribes of Judah”, beliefs which never prompted them to contact mainstream Judaism before. Suddenly, however, with Israel’s standard of life being so much better than that of the third world, they are flocking to Israel and demanding entry. And the Israeli government are slowly giving way.
And on Mount Herzl, Herzl is rolling in his grave.
Or so I believe.
Actually, nobody can say what Herzl would think of the current situation.
Many of those who have read his “Autneuland”, with its depiction of a mulitcultured democracy, would say that he would be happy with this multi-ethnic situation. But that particular work was written specifically to win over his non-Jewish readership. His diaries reveal that his real beliefs were rather different; that he wanted a Jewish only population in Israel.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I have read Herzl, a shrewd but humanitarian man, and I believe I know what he would say.
If Herzl could be resurrected for a day, if he could be shown what was happening to the state, if he could speak to some Israelis on the street, and if he could then be asked what to do, I think I know what he would say. He would reply as follows:
“Who are we to define who is a Jew?
If a downtrodden tribe in India have come to identify with the Hebrews of the Old Testament, are we to blame them?
If they have started to call themselves “Jews”, are we to blame them?
If they want to come to Israel and join us, are we to blame them?
If a Russian man, spat on his whole life for being a “Jew”, even though he is not a real Jew but only patriarchally descended from one, should identify with the Jews, are we to blame him?
If he wants to come to Israel and join us, are we to blame him?
No, we are not to blame them.
Zionism is not about blame. Zionism is about stating facts as they are, looking at the dangers inherent for minority-nations, and finding a solution.
When I advised the Jews to leave Europe, did I blame the European powers for creating the situation which made this necessary?
I did not. I simply stated the facts of human nature.
And the facts of human nature are, as I have said before, that it is not safe for the Jews to live among other nations. Throughout all of history, our sages said it again and again. Israel is the nation that dwells alone. In Paris, I said it again, but this time I offered a plan of action.
The Jews must return to Israel.
I should have been more clear.
I should have said: Those who are halachically, maternally Jewish must return to Israel.
It is not my place to say whether all the others, the Russian patriarchal-“Jews”, all those tribes in India and Asia, are Jews. That is not my place.
But when I set out my ideas, I did so about a particular, homogeneous group, a group so constituted that I knew it would bond together successfully: Those who are halachically, maternally Jewish. Whether religious, secular, Sefardi, Ashkenazi or Ethiopian. Even most of the secular members of this group have not yet wavered from the ancient definition of a Jew; anyone whose mother is Jewish, or any genuine convert to that group.
And as long as you define yourself as “Zionist”, as long as your political end is a society in which you can leave freely as a member of this particular Jewish nation, you have to make some tough choices. You can just about live with the situation that you have created. But you cannot let it continue. You must change the Law of Return back to its original.
You say “but it is racist. The Russians in Israel will hate us for it.” Well, I tell you what you already know. That it is not racist. That the Russians in Israel will not hate you for it. And that if they do, it is better than bringing in even more of those who have no connection to us, or to the land.
You say “but Herzl, what about the Arabs?” Well, I tell you what you should already know. That it makes little sense to be like the old woman who swallowed a fly, and swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and swallowed a bird to catch the spider, and so on, and so on.
You say “but Herzl, it’s impossible!” And I tell you. That is exactly what everyone said to me. What is a detail in a law, compared to the establishment of a state in the teeth of seven hostile neighbours? What is it? There are neo-nazi rings in Israel. There are anti-Semitic attacks on synagogues, within Israel, by Russians who have no connection with your people. I lived my whole life for this state. I died broken and exhausted. I did it all for you. If I had known that would allow all of this, I would not have bothered. Listen to me, people of Israel. You ignored me once before, and paid the price. Don’t do it again.”
This, I believe, is what Herzl would say about the law of return.