Solomonia Archive: A Jewish State, or Just a State?

Friday, February 3, 2006

Avraham Shmuel Lewin quotes Aaron Klein on being a yarmulke-wearing Jew in Israel in, Orthodox and Israeli: When the Two Don't Mix:

..."The first time I interviewed Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Zahar," says Aaron, "I did not bring my yarmulke. I wanted to get out alive. But during the course of our conversation I ended up talking about my Orthodox Judaism. Al-Zahar asked why I didn't wear a yarmulke to meet him. I told him I'd been afraid to. He said he was insulted. He claimed he was a religious Muslim who only had a problem with the state of Israel and not with Judaism. He lectured me about not forsaking my religion or denying my Jewish identity. He said the next time we meet I had better be wearing my yarmulke. Since then I have interviewed him a number of times. Whenever we speak by phone or when he joins me on the radio, he first jokingly inquires as to whether I am wearing my yarmulke."

Asked to explain the institutionalized anti-religious practices he's encountered, Aaron replies, "It's the new nature of the cultural war in Israel. The great divide used to be the so-called right wing versus the so-called left wing. Essentially, whether or not to give up land to the Palestinians. Now the mask is coming off and the real battle is starting to be waged openly – religious nationalism versus anti-religious post-Zionism.

"More simply, is Israel supposed to be a Jewish state based on religious ideals or will it be a state like all others that just happens to be comprised mostly of Jews? At its core, it is what all the land withdrawals and proposed land withdrawals are about, and it's what my 'yarmulke problems' are about. That is the fight I am witnessing here. The victor will determine the future of Israel and the Jewish people."...

(H/T: mal)

Posted by Solomon at 8:15 PM on Friday, Feb 3, 2006 | Comments (1)
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#1 Ben-David | February 5, 2006 7:19 AM

Klein has got this exactly right. However, recent Jewish history - especially American Jewish history, but also that of European, Russian, and other Jewish communities - makes the answer clear: without Judaism, no sufficient basis remains for a national identity.

This explains the morbidly fascinating self-immolation of Israel's founding secular elite - it explains their total alienation from the imperative of national rebirth that was so immediately, naturally felt by their parents (to the point that they demonize and despise the settler movement that carries on those ideals), and it explains the venomously hateful attitudes towards the religious that is expressed on the pages of "cultured" journals like Ha'aretz.

All this is capped by the furious knowledge that Israelihood based on one-world socialism has failed as an alternative Judaism - just as socialism has failed around the world.

This all has strong, and painful - yet precise - parallels with the flameout of shame and fury that often characterizes the relationship between secular and Orthodox American Jews.