What does Judaism mean to me....
Well, I've been on sort of an extended vacation, but I'm back (I think)!
When I was growing up in Chicago, Judaism was fairly important to me. As a child I moved to a town neighboring Skokie, IL, which as you can guess helped shape my early perceptions.
I had the good fortune to have been welcomed at many festivities at the homes of Jewish friends, which did nothing but expand my mind, and widen my perception of the religion I was raised in. In many ways the Jewish culture I was raised with represented everything I loved about my country. Opposition to fascism, freedom, love of thought and philosophy.
As I told a friend the other day, I cannot even conceive of a world without a Jewish state.
But...yea there is always a but, isn't there?
But...since around 1980 I've been having some problems. You see, I completely stand behind Israel, yet I have always realized what a challenge having a state based on religion/race could be. I don't need to go into all the challenges the Jewish state has faced, you know many of them. First and foremost is the absolute racism that Israel faces from the surrounding countries. America ignored this at its own peril and sure enough it came home to roost. Using events like the Munich Olympics, and the atrocities that Palestinian radicals unleashed on Israelites and the world, I have spent most of my life being more concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack on US soil than I ever was about nuclear missiles. I once got into a heated argument with a conservative friend of mine back in the late eighties, when the gov was investing so much money in the "Star Wars" defensive shield.
I told him that the next attack would not come from Russia or China, but from the middle east, and that it would not be missiles, but an attack squad of some sort, not unlike Munich. I felt if conservatives were really serious about protecting us, they would have been channeling some of those billions of dollars into anti-terrorism intelligence. He thought I was a fool. He (like most republicans) accused me of being swayed by my love of Israel and the Jewish culture. (one of the reasons I mention all this, is he sent me an e-mails apologizing about 4 months after 9/11).
I did learn about this from watching Israel, and the terrible external challenges they faced. But, I learned something else too....the second challenge: Becoming like your enemy.
Modern Israel was born out of the the Nightmare that was fascism. But, even though I have always supported Israel, I have been concerned with how they have changed in the last 25 years. More and more as the eighties went on I was dumbfounded as Israel rejected the lessons of fascism. I remember one story I had read in the early eighties, about how Israel deported a moderate (born in "Palestine", because he was advocating a boycott against Israeli cigarettes to try to get them to allow more freedom of movement and basic human rights). This was a common strategy, and one that was extremely confusing. Deporting people who were born there, whose grandparents were born there, for being politically moderate, but difficult. One of the net results of this period was the end of moderate politics in Israeli Palestine, leaving only those who hated Israel.
More and more the Israelis took a hard line towards the descendants of the people who had lived there prior to the arrival of the Jewish state. Much of this was understandable, but much just fermented the crisis. One former IDF officer that I heard speak here in the states, actually compared the occupied territories to the Warsaw ghetto (his Grandfather had been a survivor of that nightmare), his reward for standing up for the Heart of Judaism? He said he was in hiding here from Israel.
I still stand with Israel. I still support them. I still get upset everytime I see our president making kissy face with someone from Saudi Arabia, when I think that official government publications from that country have printed articles within the last 3 years that claim that Rabbi's use the blood of Palestinian youths to make purim holiday cakes. The countries around Israel, some of our best "friends", are no better than the Nazi's.
Which is why two recent incidents upset me so much. The first is the rejection of the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. Held for years without problems, the Mayor and city council of Jerusalem tried to stop it...although the courts seem to have reversed that (here is a BBC article on that).
But there is a bit in the article that makes you wonder:
Three months ago, Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders held a news conference calling for gay festivals in Jerusalem to be banned.
They said a gay parade through the city could spark violence. One Muslim cleric suggested gay events in Jerusalem would attract divine wrath similar to that which destroyed the biblical city of Sodom.
So? Does anybody remember the Pink Triangle? Jews were not the only folks that the Nazi's terrorized.
But then you add this, an article from the Tribune, "Settlers in Gaza stone Palestinian". Now remember, I do not, explicitly not, approve of the anti-Israeli Palestinian movement stone trowing movement (however I support all humankinds right, everywhere, to actively advocate for human rights, including fighting back when required, just as the Founding Fathers of this nation did, just as the founders of modern Israel did). And you can make the argument that the Palestinians threw the first stones, but there is some disturbing stuff there too:
The violence in the Gaza Strip erupted near a vacant Palestinian house taken over by the settlers, many of them extremist youths from West Bank settlements who have come to Gaza to help resist the planned withdrawal.
The youths had turned the three-story house into a makeshift outpost, raising a flag of the banned anti-Arab Kach party and daubing the words "Muhammad is a pig" high on a wall, a reference to the Prophet Muhammad.
According to reports from the scene, the Jewish militants went on a stone-throwing spree after Israeli troops and police raided the building and arrested nine people suspected of involvement in previous clashes. The settlers attacked Palestinian homes in the surrounding al-Mawasi area, residents said, drawing volleys of stones from Palestinians. Israeli soldiers fired several shots in the air in a futile attempt to stop the fighting.
One Palestinian youth was wounded in the head by a rock, and as he lay senseless on the ground, young settlers ran up and stoned him at close range while an Israeli soldier tried to shield him.
"Don't touch him, let him die," shouted one settler in footage of the assault shown on Israeli television.
What has happened here?!? This sounds more like the Hitler youth movement than Jewish tradition. Is this what comes of a Jewish state? Evolving downward till they are no better than the Nazi's they fled from. I hope not, they have meant too much to me, and too much for the world.
Muslims and Jews can't agree on anything, except that Gays are bad and deserve to be persecuted?
God forgive them, for they know not what they do. I don't know anymore, stories like this shake my faith in the existence of Israel to it's very foundations. If Israel moves into this kind of hate, that makes it impossible to tell the difference between them and the evil countries, like Saudi Arabia, than what am I to think?
It is a sad day when Jews agree with Muslims on the right to hate those who are different, and it is a sad day for all of us when Israeli kids emulate a nightmarish scenario from the past.
Don't touch him. Let him die.
What did he do? He was born of the wrong mother, and in the wrong place. And for that, apparently he deserved to die.
When I was growing up in Chicago, Judaism was fairly important to me. As a child I moved to a town neighboring Skokie, IL, which as you can guess helped shape my early perceptions.
I had the good fortune to have been welcomed at many festivities at the homes of Jewish friends, which did nothing but expand my mind, and widen my perception of the religion I was raised in. In many ways the Jewish culture I was raised with represented everything I loved about my country. Opposition to fascism, freedom, love of thought and philosophy.
As I told a friend the other day, I cannot even conceive of a world without a Jewish state.
But...yea there is always a but, isn't there?
But...since around 1980 I've been having some problems. You see, I completely stand behind Israel, yet I have always realized what a challenge having a state based on religion/race could be. I don't need to go into all the challenges the Jewish state has faced, you know many of them. First and foremost is the absolute racism that Israel faces from the surrounding countries. America ignored this at its own peril and sure enough it came home to roost. Using events like the Munich Olympics, and the atrocities that Palestinian radicals unleashed on Israelites and the world, I have spent most of my life being more concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack on US soil than I ever was about nuclear missiles. I once got into a heated argument with a conservative friend of mine back in the late eighties, when the gov was investing so much money in the "Star Wars" defensive shield.
I told him that the next attack would not come from Russia or China, but from the middle east, and that it would not be missiles, but an attack squad of some sort, not unlike Munich. I felt if conservatives were really serious about protecting us, they would have been channeling some of those billions of dollars into anti-terrorism intelligence. He thought I was a fool. He (like most republicans) accused me of being swayed by my love of Israel and the Jewish culture. (one of the reasons I mention all this, is he sent me an e-mails apologizing about 4 months after 9/11).
I did learn about this from watching Israel, and the terrible external challenges they faced. But, I learned something else too....the second challenge: Becoming like your enemy.
Modern Israel was born out of the the Nightmare that was fascism. But, even though I have always supported Israel, I have been concerned with how they have changed in the last 25 years. More and more as the eighties went on I was dumbfounded as Israel rejected the lessons of fascism. I remember one story I had read in the early eighties, about how Israel deported a moderate (born in "Palestine", because he was advocating a boycott against Israeli cigarettes to try to get them to allow more freedom of movement and basic human rights). This was a common strategy, and one that was extremely confusing. Deporting people who were born there, whose grandparents were born there, for being politically moderate, but difficult. One of the net results of this period was the end of moderate politics in Israeli Palestine, leaving only those who hated Israel.
More and more the Israelis took a hard line towards the descendants of the people who had lived there prior to the arrival of the Jewish state. Much of this was understandable, but much just fermented the crisis. One former IDF officer that I heard speak here in the states, actually compared the occupied territories to the Warsaw ghetto (his Grandfather had been a survivor of that nightmare), his reward for standing up for the Heart of Judaism? He said he was in hiding here from Israel.
I still stand with Israel. I still support them. I still get upset everytime I see our president making kissy face with someone from Saudi Arabia, when I think that official government publications from that country have printed articles within the last 3 years that claim that Rabbi's use the blood of Palestinian youths to make purim holiday cakes. The countries around Israel, some of our best "friends", are no better than the Nazi's.
Which is why two recent incidents upset me so much. The first is the rejection of the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. Held for years without problems, the Mayor and city council of Jerusalem tried to stop it...although the courts seem to have reversed that (here is a BBC article on that).
But there is a bit in the article that makes you wonder:
Three months ago, Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders held a news conference calling for gay festivals in Jerusalem to be banned.
They said a gay parade through the city could spark violence. One Muslim cleric suggested gay events in Jerusalem would attract divine wrath similar to that which destroyed the biblical city of Sodom.
So? Does anybody remember the Pink Triangle? Jews were not the only folks that the Nazi's terrorized.
But then you add this, an article from the Tribune, "Settlers in Gaza stone Palestinian". Now remember, I do not, explicitly not, approve of the anti-Israeli Palestinian movement stone trowing movement (however I support all humankinds right, everywhere, to actively advocate for human rights, including fighting back when required, just as the Founding Fathers of this nation did, just as the founders of modern Israel did). And you can make the argument that the Palestinians threw the first stones, but there is some disturbing stuff there too:
The violence in the Gaza Strip erupted near a vacant Palestinian house taken over by the settlers, many of them extremist youths from West Bank settlements who have come to Gaza to help resist the planned withdrawal.
The youths had turned the three-story house into a makeshift outpost, raising a flag of the banned anti-Arab Kach party and daubing the words "Muhammad is a pig" high on a wall, a reference to the Prophet Muhammad.
According to reports from the scene, the Jewish militants went on a stone-throwing spree after Israeli troops and police raided the building and arrested nine people suspected of involvement in previous clashes. The settlers attacked Palestinian homes in the surrounding al-Mawasi area, residents said, drawing volleys of stones from Palestinians. Israeli soldiers fired several shots in the air in a futile attempt to stop the fighting.
One Palestinian youth was wounded in the head by a rock, and as he lay senseless on the ground, young settlers ran up and stoned him at close range while an Israeli soldier tried to shield him.
"Don't touch him, let him die," shouted one settler in footage of the assault shown on Israeli television.
What has happened here?!? This sounds more like the Hitler youth movement than Jewish tradition. Is this what comes of a Jewish state? Evolving downward till they are no better than the Nazi's they fled from. I hope not, they have meant too much to me, and too much for the world.
Muslims and Jews can't agree on anything, except that Gays are bad and deserve to be persecuted?
God forgive them, for they know not what they do. I don't know anymore, stories like this shake my faith in the existence of Israel to it's very foundations. If Israel moves into this kind of hate, that makes it impossible to tell the difference between them and the evil countries, like Saudi Arabia, than what am I to think?
It is a sad day when Jews agree with Muslims on the right to hate those who are different, and it is a sad day for all of us when Israeli kids emulate a nightmarish scenario from the past.
Don't touch him. Let him die.
What did he do? He was born of the wrong mother, and in the wrong place. And for that, apparently he deserved to die.
posted by Johnny Lightheart at 8:43 AM
3 Comments:
i'm an ex-israeli, lived in israel for 17 years, served in the IDF, currently living in SF.
I agree with what you wrote, but the issue here isn't about Israel as a state or even about Judaism - what you describe applies to all 3 major religions. Fear and desire for control/power are the main motivators for the religious right all over the world. Naturally a Muslim, Jew and a Christian would all agree that they hate gays or any other minority that threatens them. And yes, you'd think Jews would be more sensitive to these things after the Holocaust. How easily we forget.
Thanx Rachel,
You are definitely right. We've already seen the church burnings start on United church of Christ here in the good ole US of A for excepting gay marriage, and as we see young men recruited by Islamic radicals to bomb thier own country in England...yep...it is power, and fear that unites these people. Something I've been contemplating lately is how much in common the religious right of each branch of faith, Christianity, Judiasm and Islam, have. And how they all are in agreement about Hate.
well, i think they have more in common than they would like to admit. religion, to me, is the other side of the coin to politics. if you think about how it originated - religion was a means to control and govern the people. later on it evolved into forms of government that we know today. separation of church and state - an illusion.
at least Israel doesn't pretend to separate church and state....
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