Liora Ziv-Ami

On the one hand, we are a people, an ordinary people with a common national language, a shared religious tradition and shared history. More than that, we have the most essential defining characteristic of a people – relationship by blood – since we are descendants of one family and one tribe. Our ancestors come alive before us from the pages of the Torah. We know their names – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob (Israel), Leah and Rachel. We know how they lived and where they are buried. Even if someone manages to prove that all this is no more than a legend, it will not change a thing. Our ancestors will continue to live in our consciousness of self – and this is all that matters. We refer to ourselves not simply as Jews but as the sons of Israel, the House of Jacob.

On the other hand, we are, without a doubt, not a people at all.

A cursory glance at a crowd of Israelis makes us wonder how much of this relationship by blood is still there today. Indeed, we look as diverse as the United Nations.

What unites us then?

Is it our shared history? What does shared history imply? Does it mean living in the same area, using the same household objects, abiding by the same laws and participating in the same events? Apparently, this is not sufficient to be considered a unified people. Russians and Ukrainians, for instance, once had a shared history but they are still two distinctly different peoples. As for my individual history, my ancestors and I have shared much of it with Germans (judging by my last name), as well as with Russians and Ukrainians. Yet we definitely have no shared past with the Jews who lived in Yemen, Morocco or Turkey for centuries.

Is it a common language then? But the existence of a common language isn’t in itself a defining characteristic of a unified people. The British and American peoples are just one example. As for us, Jews, until quite recently we all spoke different languages, and even today Hebrew, our common language, is not the native tongue for most contemporary Jews.

Is it then a shared religion? The French and the Italians also have a shared religion, but no one in their right mind would assert that they are one people. In our particular case, Judaism in its present shape fails to unite the people and actually serves to divide them. This is obvious even without touching upon the sensitive issue of the tensions between the Orthodox and secular segments of the Israeli population. Religious Orthodoxy imposes a similar ethnic background as the single most essential unifying factor. These ethnic distinctions clearly hold the upper hand over what was intended to represent religious unity. The fact that the Sephardim – Jews from Muslim countries – were actually ousted from the religious Ashkenazi community of Jews from Christian Europe supports this assessment. The increasingly sharp criticism of Sephardic Jews can be explained by the radical position taken by the religious Shas Party, which Ashkenazi Jews established specifically because they wished to separate themselves from the Sephardim.

Perhaps, then, it is the shared secular culture?  If we take music as an example, we will immediately discover that secular culture doesn’t provide any foundation for unity either. I, for instance, was trained in the European musical tradition. In accordance with this tradition, I became accustomed to perceive any use of intervals closer than the half tone as dissonant and inaccurate. Jews from Islamic countries are trained in the traditions of Eastern music based on the unrestrained use of the semitone and related intervals. As a person, I can display some interest in it but, hard as I try, I will never feel that this type of music is close to my heart. My response to it will be the response of a stranger.

I won’t even attempt to address such issues as the national cuisine, people’s conduct and their attire, family relationships, and so on.

It follows that we can’t be considered a people in the usual sense of the word. 

Of course, we could try defining us as “a new community of people”.

We, Russian Jews, who were not so long ago part of such “a new community” known as “the Soviet people” could testify that nothing good comes out of this type of social experiments. Soviet ideologues went out of their way to build such a community but their efforts were in vain. The multinational community fell apart as soon as its centripetal force began to lose momentum.  The country’s different peoples broke loose and fled to join their ethnic groups.

We in Israel could be compared to yet another “new community” – the American people. Even though the American super-idea is rooted in a specific ethnic tradition, it was elevated to the status of a universal super-idea, capable of creating “a melting pot” and molding different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures into “a new community” of free people. The melting pot metaphor was recently discarded and had to be replaced with the idea of multiculturalism because it became obvious that different nationalities, ethnicities and races are in no hurry “to melt down”. Quite to the contrary, they strive to preserve their self-identity. New terminology was introduced to satisfy this desire, for instance, the term “African Americans”. But does this resolve the problem? The point is that in this immigrant “new community” the percentage of direct descendants of the founding fathers of the United States, who were Anglo-Saxons of Protestant affiliation, continues to dwindle. And this means that an ever decreasing number of Americans feel inwardly attached to the culture which shaped the United States.

We in Israel are fundamentally different from any “new community of people”.  Both the American and Soviet “new communities” brought together peoples whose roots are not entrenched in the self-consciousness of the same family and common ancestors. They are united by a certain super-idea, which does not represent the voice of blood and the call of the tribe. As for us, Jews, it is the voice of blood that makes us a people.

So who are we? A great number of thinkers tried to unravel this mystery and find a place for us in the anthropological systems they devised. They had no problem selecting a spot for everyone else, but none of them – neither Hegel, nor Toynbee or the Russian poet and philosopher Gumilyov – succeeded in finding one for us.

Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington produced yet another anthropological theory in his book “The Clash of Civilizations”, and once again it designated a place for all other peoples but not for us, Jews. 

The 2,000 years of exile must have changed something about us. Unlike the Egyptian and Babylonian exiles, which came before it, this time we were dispersed not within one nation but practically among all nations. We lived among different peoples and absorbed much of their cultures as part of our special Jewish heritage. Today, there is no such thing as a Jewish person in general. Every one of us has a place of origin as an added attribute: a Turkish Jew, a French Jew, a Russian Jew, etc. The last exile has completely transformed our nature. It acquired a dual character due to the diversity of the host societies we lived in. Only our shared ideals remained Jewish – as for the specific realities of our lives, they coincided with those of the non-Jews among whom we were destined to live as exiles. When we gathered together as “a people”, we began to defend our former host country’s non-Jew, whose culture we had obviously rejected (otherwise we would have assimilated) and in whose environment we did not want to live (otherwise we would not have made Aliyah to Israel). Moreover, our strong conviction that the values of “our own” rejected non-Jew have a universal quality absent in the values of other non-Jews makes us ready to antagonize each other as we are trying to figure out whose non-Jew is better.

Amazingly, our ingathering as a people coincides with the time when mankind is uniting into a global village. Mankind confronts the same problem of unity which we, Jews, face internally as a people. The only difference is that the peoples inhabiting the global village do not have a single spiritual root (which is why mankind is being warned about the emerging threat of a clash of civilizations), whereas our spiritual root is so powerful that we consider ourselves to be a people even after 2,000 years of separation. Our survival over the centuries is quite remarkable, but even more so is our stubborn belief that we are a people.

The 2,000 years of exile have turned us into something that defies simple definition. We are not a people, nor are we a “new community of people”. 

We are a miniature model of mankind, a mixture of different peoples within one family. If we don’t understand the true significance of this self-definition, we will fail to cope with the internal disintegration of our society. Moreover, we will not be able to explain to the rest of the world or to ourselves, for that matter, what exactly we are doing in our land after our 2,000 years of forced absence.

If we, Jews, truly have a world mission – the mission to create a model of mankind’s unity within our own people – then we have no rivals in this land. And what is happening here is not a fight over land but over whose teaching “will come from Zion” – whether it will be a teaching that fosters unity and creative efforts or one that promotes hatred and violence, inciting its followers to blow up buses, trains and skyscrapers.

Suffice it to recall what the “left” have done to implement their ideas: they legitimized Arafat as a potent political leader and armed his militants; they consistently took steps to destabilize and discredit the armed forces of their own country, inciting the world community against the Israeli state under the pretext of the need to “fight against the occupation”.

  The “policies” of the “left” have spiraled out of control, creating a situation, which endangers the very existence of the state of Israel.

  It is impossible to conceive of a policy that would intentionally seek to achieve such a result.

  Hence, it would be more logical to assume that “the Arab problem” is actually no more than a ruse for the “left”, a cover-up for another problematic issue which has no relation whatsoever to politics.

 

1. The problem of “unity and division”

 

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Such a problematic issue does, in fact, exist, and it is created by the Monotheistic Idea.

  The Monotheistic Idea brings us all face to face with the irresolvable problem of “unity and division” – that is, the problem of the unity of mankind divided into separate nations. (In the concept of “The Paradox of the Fifth Commandment”, the problem of “unity and division” is presented as the mutually irreconcilable demands of the Fifth Commandment that we worship the traditions of our fathers and mothers as bearers of the ancestral tradition, and, also, worship One G-d as the Creator of the human race.)

The Scripture explain the division of mankind into different peoples as a forced measure. The story about the building of the Tower of Babel, which led to mankind’s division into separate peoples, proves that not every kind of unity is consistent with G-d’s Will, manifested as the Law.

The kind of mankind’s unity, which is symbolized in the Tower of Babel, is not in accord with His Will; in fact, it is called Evil and condemned. Up to this day, there has been no unity of a kind, which would correspond to G-d’s Will. This kind of unity can only be achieved in the future.

This accounts for the messianic idea present in all monotheistic religions: different nations are at this point separated because the world continues to be imperfect, but in the Messianic Era, after the world has been improved, its different peoples will become united.

 

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  If the outwardly simple narrative about the Tower of Babel is ignored, the conflict between the “left” and the “right” seems amazing in its utter absence of logic. It becomes quite logical, though, as soon as we change our point of view of this conflict, and see it as metaphysical rather than political.

  The conflict between the “left” and the “right” can’t in any way be fitted into the Procrustean bed of politics: this follows from the mere fact that it involves all aspects of people’s lives and all their actions. It couldn’t be otherwise, since each of the opposing sides maintains that its version of resolving the problem of “unity and division” is the only viable one.

 

  The “left” are those who would like to recreate the unity of the human race based on an invented value system, which seems universal to representatives of the “left” because it addresses people “in general”. It is only natural that every effort to implement this supposedly universal value system faces opposition on the part of real people, who uphold traditional values.

  The “left” are quite right when they say that every traditional system of values is only relative, since they are all founded on certain assumptions which the “left” perceive as prejudices. The “left” are also correct when they say that these traditional value systems divide people.

  These undeniable truths make the “left” imagine that it is their mission to improve and unite mankind. Any opposition which people manifest in defending their sacred traditional values and sites, the “left” perceive as nothing but an obstacle that prevents them from accomplishing their imaginary mission of improving and uniting mankind. This obstacle, therefore, needs to be destroyed.

  This explains why the “left” show such antagonism toward the nation and the family – i.e., those traditional collectives that preserve traditional values, and of which every individual is a part.

 

  The “right” are those who see their goal in supporting tradition: they fervently protect the traditional system of values and, consequently, traditional collectives, such as the nation and the family.

  The “right” are selfish in their own way, because they are not so much concerned with the problem of mankind’s unity as with the problem of protecting their own kind.

That is why the “right” are quite content to wait passively for the coming of the messianic future, which will be the inevitable result of the development of the Monotheistic Idea.

And the course of its development does, indeed, lead to unity.         

 

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  If we were to examine how the Monotheistic Idea developed in the past, we would be amazed at its tremendous ability to unite people. Only because of their faith in the G-d of Abraham different nations were able to overcome their natural separation and become united, perceiving themselves as a unified whole and referring to their respective united communities as Christians and Muslims.

  Despite their conflicts (the major one occurred during the epoch of the Crusades), these two communities, called systems in “The Paradox of the Fifth Commandment”, existed side by side for many centuries.

  The situation, however, changed radically as soon as European Christians, due to their scientific and technological advances, stepped outside their sphere of influence and made their first efforts to unite mankind.

  In fact, it was colonialism, which initiated the process of globalization – a new stage in the development of the Monotheistic Idea.

  During this new stage, the need arose for a new concept of mankind’s unity, because the new experience could not be fitted into the two existing systems, the Muslim and the Christian one, each of which used to be sufficient for the nations united within it.

  In the era of globalization, resolving the problem of “unity and division” demanded a more global approach. This accounts for the appearance of globalistic conceptions of mankind’s unity – the consistently “left” Marxist theories and the consistently “right” ideology of Nazism.

 

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  Marxism proclaimed man’s labor to be the basis for mankind’s unity.

  The wide spread of Marxist influence can be explained by the fact that Marx’s followers were very shrewd in their choice of the cornerstone for the unity of all nations. It is true, indeed, that all people work, irrespective of their belonging to one nation or another. It is true that civilization was created at the result of people’s labor, which also ensures its development; it is equally true that labor defines the relations between people. Marxists drew the following conclusion from all of the above: if all people became proletarian workers, this would allow mankind to resolve all the issues that prevent it from becoming united.   

The central premise of Marxism is that labor as the cornerstone for unity legitimizes the destruction of the nation and the family.

According to Marxist theory, the nation was to be destroyed, because nations had been constructed by the exploiting classes to oppress their fellow-countrymen and unleash wars of conquest. The family was to be destroyed, because it creates the preconditions for people’s initial inequality. In the end, his enables the strong to use and exploit the weak, which makes it impossible for people to achieve unity.

Marxism insisted that mankind would overcome its separation and become unified only after all traditional collectives are destroyed, and every person becomes a person “in general”, who will, based on necessity, join hands with other people in labor collectives.

 

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In Nazism, blood and race were defined as the cornerstones for unity. That is why the nation and the family are held sacred in Nazi ideology.

This was also a perfectly good choice as the cornerstone for unity. It is true that all of mankind is divided into nations. It is similarly true that every person is united by ties of blood with members of his or her family and his or her nation, so that it would be impossible for them to “reassign” themselves to another nation. And, finally, it is true that different nations are not equal in their level of development.

In spite of this obvious disparity and division, the Nazis discovered their own method to bring about mankind’s unity. They subordinated all of mankind to the selfish vision of a single nation, “true Aryans”, proclaiming it to be a nation of supermen, whose role was to create and maintain culture and civilization.

Nazis used a single scale to join all the other nations together, placing those deemed close to “true Aryans” at one end, and viewing those at the other end as slaves, who exist for the sole purpose of satisfying the needs of the master race of creators of culture.

 

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  It is not in the least surprising that WWII continues to be a vital topic of discussion to this day. New details emerge, which reveal exactly what happened in the middle of the 20th century, and they increasingly often take us beyond the framework of politics and into the realm of mysticism.

  This is quite understandable, considering that any confrontation of warring parties hides behind it a clash between two irreconcilable factions, each of which has recreated the Tower of Babel according to its own design – a “left” Marxist one and a “right” Nazi one.

The victory over Nazism has left the “right” without a global conception of their own. This explains why the “left” are fully in charge in today’s world, as manifested by the fact that all modern doctrines of mankind’s unity are based on the destruction of traditional collectives and their values.

As for the “right”, their efforts to defend ancestral tradition invariably leads them … to adopt the symbol of the swastika. More amazing still, this is true even of the Slavs, who not only fought against the armies of the Third Reich but were designated within the Nazi hierarchy as slaves, whose function was to serve the master race.

Despite all that, the Slavs have adopted the neo-Nazi symbol of the swastika because the present-day world doesn’t offer an alternative to the “left”.

 

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  With all the many differences between the “left” Marxists and the “right” Nazis, these two “opposites” were well aware of the similarity in their world views. Thus, the bizarre history of their interrelationship.

  What was it that brought these two extremes together?

  First, both displayed global thinking and developed strategies for the reorganization of the world according to their vision.

  Second, both founded their strategies on rejecting the G-d of Abraham.  Marxists expressed this denial in the form of atheism, whereas Nazis expressed it by returning to the pagan Aryan faith of their own ancestors.

  Third, both saw the disappearance of the Jewish people as the cornerstone of their entire conceptions. 

  All Marxists (including socialists of all brands) were always convinced that the elimination of nations should begin with the Jews. The Jews were to show the rest of the world an example of self-liquidation. (That is exactly why Stalin’s anti- cosmopolitan campaign started with the elimination of Jewish intellectuals and professionals, but it was bound to end with the total genocide of Jews in the Soviet Union. Though debates about Stalin’s true intentions have not ceased to this day, the Soviet dictator’s plan to follow in Hitler’s footprints would logically follow from his Marxist ideology.)

  The Nazis, too, were bound to end up with Auschwitz.

  No matter how hard they tried to convince the world that their goal was merely to expel the Jews from the territory of the Third Reich (they initially made attempts to present it that way), their plan to eliminate the Jews was global from the very beginning. This plan was confirmed at the Wannsee Conference where details of the “practical execution of the final solution” were discussed, and is was stated that Europe would be “combed through from west to east”.

  The hostility the Nazis felt toward the Jews also has its explanation – the very existence of the Jews as witnesses to the Divine Revelation who had “poisoned” other nations with faith in the G-d of Abraham prevented “true Aryans” from becoming reunited with the spirit of their ancestors as part of Nazi ideology.

 

2. “Separateness” – the problem of “a nation that dwells alone…”

                                                        

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All the facts presented above are fairly well known.

A lot has been written about it, and this issue continues to be the subject of many discussions. Few, however, speak and write about the readiness of the Jews to engage in their own destruction.

Jewish Marxists announced with pride that they were “internationalists” by nationality. They not only effectively destroyed traditional Jewish values but taught the gentiles how to go about it.

 

  It is hard to speculate on how the Jews would have acted if “true Aryans” permitted them to become part of the “master race”, but there are some indications that provide a clue as to the position some of them might have taken.

There is a sufficient number of facts to support such an assertion.

It is known that German Jews who considered themselves to be bearers of German culture, looked down on their East European counterparts, the so-called Ostjuden.

These close bonds between German Jews and the Aryans could be seen as not particularly significant prior to Hitler’s ascent to power. However, as soon as the Nazis began to implement their ideology, many of these Jews reacted in ways that spoke of their willingness to accept any compromise, so long as they are not “expelled” from among the “Aryan race”.

A large number of German Jews supported Hitler’s policies aimed at aggrandizing Germany. They continued to do so even after the Nazi regime began introducing flagrantly anti-Semitic laws in conformity with its racial theories.

An organization of Jewish veterans of WWI responded to these racist changes in German legislation after Hitler’s rise to power in the most troubling manner. A group of its members sent Hitler a petition urging him not to apply to them these new anti-Jewish laws since they had proved their loyalty to the German fatherland on the battlefield.

 

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  None of this should surprise you, because the Jews as witnesses to the Divine Revelation who introduced the Monotheistic Idea to the world, carry a special burden. In addition to the problem of “unity and division”, which all the nations share in equal measure, the Jews have to deal with their own special problem of being “separated” from all the other world nations.

The Jewish people’s “chosenness” compels them to be “a nation that dwells alone and is not counted among the other nations”.

  The entire history of the Jewish people is filled with revolts against this state of affairs, which turns the Jews into outcasts among the other world nations.

  The Jews undertook multiple efforts to get rid of such “chosenness”, so that they could become part of united mankind. But each time they confronted an insurmountable Force, which returned the Jews to where they belonged.

 

This phenomenon is remarkable in that it has repeated itself so many times.

  “Rehearsed” on numerous occasions in ancient times, when Jewish history was just beginning, this situation emerged once again in Europe during the New Age.

  When the Jews were offered the possibility of becoming full-fledged citizens of European countries, this revived their hopes of finally resolving the problem of “division” by becoming part of the title nation. Once again, this hope did not materialize. The Jews have encountered an insurmountable Force yet another time – the readiness of the Jews to end their own “division” from other nations gave rise to contemporary racial anti-Semitism, which has made it impossible for the Jews to abandon their own people.

 

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  Hence, the idea to create a state of their own is, strange as it may seem, one more attempt to put an end to the special destiny of the Jewish people as “a nation that dwells alone and is not counted among the other nations”.

The Jewish state appeared shortly after the idea of the United Nations became reality: the League of Nations was founded after WWI, to be followed, after WWII, by the United Nations organization.

 

  These developments offered a sunny picture of the future.

  They resolved the problem of “unity and division” in a very simple fashion: on the one hand, mankind is divided into different nations, each of them receiving the right to statehood; on the other hand, mankind is united under the umbrella of a world government.

The Jewish nation thereby acquires the right to create its own state as an equal  among other world nations, and, in doing so, it resolves its specific problem of “a nation that dwells alone”.

From then on, the Jewish people could live side by side with all other nations.

Presumably, this resolved all problems.

 

Thus, the Jewish state was “conceived in sin”.

Its creation was legitimate from the point of view of the world community, which gave every people the right to national independence. It was, however, illegitimate from the point of view of the Law that prescribes the Jews to be “a nation that dwells alone and is not counted among the other nations”.

It is this special characteristic of the Jewish state, which determined the nature of the conflict between the Israeli “left” and the Israeli “right”.

 

3. Problems of the Israeli “left”

 

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Nobody disputes that is was the “left” who founded the Jewish state. It couldn’t have been otherwise, because only the “left”, who had severed their ties with the narrowly tribal traditional culture, showed themselves capable of thinking globally.

It must be admitted, though, that this latter phenomenon came at a cost, because the seeds of future destruction where planted already in the first state-building efforts of the “left”.

As is always the case with the “left”, they destroyed everything associated with the tradition, which was known to have turned Jews into outcasts of mankind in the past. This is why everything that the “left” created and called “Israeli” was meant to be different from things “Jewish”. (Shimon Peres made a clear reference to this distinction after he lost the elections to Netanyahu by saying that “the Jews beat the Israelis”.)

Everything – the revival of the land and language, the creation of Israeli government institutions, building the economy and creating a new literature – the goal of all this was to be “like everyone else”. The new state was to replace traditional forms of labor, institutions, literature, leisure, and so forth.

This rejection of old symbols and ideas was a matter of principal. It wasn’t something that had to be done, but it was nevertheless imposed because these symbols and ideas took the Jewish people back to a situation when they were “a nation that dwells alone and is not counted among the other nations”.

 

It is equally natural that the “left” focused all their attention on the Jewish family. The family as the keeper of traditional sanctities had to be destroyed. Without doing this, the goal of transforming the Jew into an Israeli (who would be able to integrate into the united mankind) could not be achieved.

The Israeli “left” not only implemented the Marxist dream about the destruction of the family in kibbutz homes (where children were separated from their parents) but they realized it in a much grander scale, making it the foundation of the state’s ideology. The ridicule and destruction of age-old traditions, which for many generations held together Jewish families that lived in different countries of the Diaspora, and inciting children to revolt against their parents have literally become the norm in Israel.

 

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  During the early stages of building Israel “like any other” state, its destructive effect on the nation themselves was an invisible process and the results were not obvious.

  This changed as time went on… When, after its victory in the Six-Day War, Israel gained control over the territories, which contained the Jewish people’s holiest sites – the Temple Mount, the shrine of the Patriarchs, and many other sites mentioned in the Scripture and venerated by the people – it became apparent that in the eyes of the “left” all these holy places and symbols contradicted the very notion of a state “like any other”.

  These holy sites and symbols of the Promised Land return the Jewish people to their former condition as “a nation that dwells alone and is not counted among the other nations”. That is why renouncing such them was supposed to send a signal to the entire world: the Israeli state has put an end to the Jewish people’s “chosenness”.

 

This explains why the “left” demonstrate such hatred toward the “occupied territories”.

For the “left”, only the territory that the United Nations has “given” to the Jewish people can be considered Israeli land. That is so, even though the Jewish state within these territorial borders was doomed to annihilation from the moment it was proclaimed.

Israeli Prime Ministers – every one of them – did not think twice before they agreed to abandon the nation’s holy sites and symbols, to which the Jews had been loyal for many centuries. Using different pretexts, they all disavowed Jewish holy sites in the Promised Land as symbols of the “occupation”.

 

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  The actions of the “left” within Israeli society produced even more frightening results. Marx’s idea about the destruction of the family has led the “left” to focus on the problem of sexual minorities. This might appear inexplicable at first sight, but the “left” have created a veritable cult of homosexuals in Israel.

  The point is not in this sexual orientation as such, but in the fact that pro-gay campaigns develop such pathological self-absorption and narcissism in the Israelis that such traditionally accepted values as “patriotism” and “homeland” (outdated from the viewpoint of the “left”) become irrelevant.

  When society consists of such self-absorbed individuals, it is bound to fall apart on its own, without any foreign interference.

 

  It has long been noted that those who participate in demonstrations against “the Israeli occupation” are the very same people who join homosexual “pride” parades, urge others to refuse to serve in the Israeli army, and appeal to the international community, asking it to attack Israeli leaders. They are also the ones who falsely accuse Israeli generals of crimes and vigorously oppose the construction of the wall, which prevents their own potential murderers from crossing into their country.

  The tragedy of the Israeli “left” is that they once again came across the invisible Force, which does not allow the Jews to resolve their problem of dwelling alone.

  Renouncing their past didn’t work for the Israelis. The United Nations refused to believe the myth that Israelis and Jews are two different things. The UN continues to demonize and de-legitimize the Jewish state, bringing the Jewish people back to their position of outcasts among the other nations.

 

  The state, therefore, was unable to perform the function for which it was designed. Envisaged as a means to encourage the self-liquidation of the “chosen people”, it became an obstacle to such self-liquidation. Once the state proved itself unable to perform this role, its existence no longer had any meaning for the “left”.

  It should, thus, not be surprising that none other than the Jews themselves were responsible for slandering Israel in the eyes of the entire world, expelling Jewish settlers from the territory of the Promised Land right in front of TV cameras, and even disseminating the opinion that the creation of the Jewish state was in itself a mistake. To illustrate just the last example: the boycott of Israeli universities by academic circles in Great Britain was not in fact organized by the British but by the “left” among the Jews and by the Israelis.

 

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  It would be impossible to comprehend all this without understanding the main point:  the “left” are only trying to resolve the problem of “unity and division”, which is made even more complicated for the Jewish “left” because they also have to deal with the issue of the “separateness” of the Jews as “a nation that dwells alone”.

  This assessment of the actions of the “left” can also explain their extraordinary love for the “Palestinian people”.

  It is not really about the “Palestinian people”. The “Palestinian people” do concern the “left” in the least, just as they are not concerned about any other people, including their own. The “Palestinian people” play a similar role for the “left” as the proletariat did for previous generations of Marxists: “left” leaning Jews have invented the fictional “Palestinian” people and the fictional world proletariat as a means of the self-liquidation of the Jewish people.

  If Judea and Samaria are recognized as “occupied” territories and are placed in the hands of the “Palestinian people”, also a supposedly ordinary people, just like the Jewish people – this confirms that there is no such thing as the Promised Land, there is no “chosen people”, and no problem of the nation’s “separateness” from other nations.

  There is clearly a dark logic in the actions of the “left”, who have initiated the “peaceful process”, proclaimed Arafat to be a national leader and armed their own murderers.

  It is the logic of self-destruction.

 

4. Problems of the Israeli “right”

 

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The reproaches, which Israeli society levels at the “left” are well deserved. Yet one may ask: Where were the “right” all this time? Why didn’t they come forward as an alternative to the “left”?

It must be admitted that the Israeli “right” have never been such an alternative.

Even at the initial stage of rebuilding the state, when the Jewish society was still sufficiently traditional, and the “right” formed the majority of the population, the “right” couldn’t use this numerical advantage.

This happened for a reason, no doubt.

 

Orthodox Jews expressed their antagonism to Zionism, a selfish position characteristic of the “right”. They zealously protected something that was valuable to them alone – their own community. They placed the responsibility for resolving tasks of national significance on the shoulders of the Messiah, and certainly those of concern to the world in general. The Messiah will come, they said, and will do everything that needs to be done instead of us, Jews.

Even those on the “right” who, like the “left”, went outside the confines of the traditional community in order to resolve problems of national significance, were unable to offer the people anything beyond the traditional ideals of national selfishness typical of all the “right” – “focus on yourself, and let the others take care of themselves”.

In this they differed in principal from the “left”, whose Marxist project of rebuilding the Tower of Babel created the illusion that by reviving their own Jewish homeland they were also creating a model society of justice for all, a society that is of major significance for united mankind.

Even if such an understanding of their “chosenness” was no more than an illusion, the “left” saw it as a realization of this “chosenness”.

 

The “left” gave the Jewish people a central Idea. This is why it was they, and not the “right”, who became the people’s leaders. They occupied all the top positions in the Zionist movement and, most importantly, the Jewish people recognized them as builders of the state and torch-bearers of society’s ideals.

The people followed the “left” and not the “right” because they must have had an intuitive sense (something their traditional leaders did not) that the world had entered the era of the Third Temple, “the end of days”.  The Jewish people were instinctively aware that at the same time as they began to rebuild unity, world nations started moving toward globalization.

The people needed a global conception, and they followed those who offered one, even if it took the shape of a Marxist illusion.

 

2

 

The Israeli “right” placed full responsibility for all of the state’s and society’s ills and failures on the “left”, without ever thinking that they, the “right”, may actually share a larger portion of the blame.

Paradoxically, Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War created conditions, which laid bare the core qualities of the Israeli “left” and, even more surprisingly, the Israeli “right”.

As soon as Israel recovered most of the territories of the Promised Land, which the United Nations took away from the Jewish people in 1947 during the division of Palestine under the British mandate, the “left” ceded to the “right” their role as leaders of the nation and torch-bearers of its ideals.    

The issue is not just that the “right” came to power in the 1977 Israeli elections, as the result of society’s disillusionment with the conduct of the “left” elite in general and during the Yom Kippur War, in particular. This was the first time the “right” had replaced the “left”, who until then seemed irreplaceable on the political arena.

More importantly, the “left” had exhausted their reserves of ideas by that time, and Israelis no longer perceived them as their unquestionable elite, which the people could follow blindly.

The “right” were celebrating victory. However, they were still unable to become a genuine alternative to the “left” because the “right” could not offer the people anything on a par with the global conception of national existence proposed by the “left”, even if the latter was rooted in Marxism.

 

3

 

The “right”, just like the “left”, defended the Jewish people’s right to be “as any other  nation” – to have their own national state protected by international laws. But it was national selfishness and self-sufficiency, typical of the “right” in general, that lay at the basis of their conception.  

  Because of the special destiny of the Jewish people, who became “unlike any other nation” as the result of being dispersed among other world nations for 2,000 years, this approach brought about the most devastating consequences.

 

First, the Israeli “right” demonstrated their remarkable inability to resolve the problem of “unity and division” in its global dimension. More than that, they proved themselves inept even in dealing with this problem internally, within the Jewish people divided into diverse cultural communities, thanks to the influence of practically all nations on Jews in the Diaspora.

Thus, diverse groups of Israeli population found themselves affiliated with the “right”, and each of them hoped to use political pressure to resolve the specific problems haunting their particular group. In the end, they joined the secular group of “right” nationalists who formed the core of the “right” movement. This secular group was of European extraction; it was elitist and, therefore, rather small.       

Some of those joining the “right” were people of Muslim origins upset with the “left” who destroyed the family and community values of “Eastern” Jews, turning them into second-rate citizens.

Others joining the “right” consisted of numerous unassociated groups of religious Jews who were used to living within the narrow confines of their own communities.

 

Second, the illusions the “right” had regarding the self-sufficiency of national experience stifled in the Israelis any need to think in categories appropriate to the era of globalization. The “left” clearly had an advantage here, since they managed to break through the boundaries of this limited experience.

 

4

 

  This essence of the “right” was camouflaged by a conception developed before the Six-Day War by Religious Zionists on the basis of Rabbi Cook’s ideas.

  This conception resolved the issue of the Jewish nation’s “separateness” from other nations, on the one hand. It allowed the people to fully preserve the traditional values, sites and precepts based on which the Jewish people considered themselves self-sufficient for centuries and perceived their “separateness” as the norm.

  On the other hand, this conception also resolved the problem of  mankind’s “unity”. As could be expected, this was accomplished with the help of Higher Powers. The rebuilding of the Jewish state begun by Marxists was proclaimed to be the first stage in building the Third Temple. And since this mystical event had always been considered a manifestation of the “end of days” relevant to all of mankind, the “right” Religious Zionists, just as the “left” Marxist Zionists, could now believe that by rebuilding their own Jewish homeland they were also acting for the good of mankind.

 

  Religious Zionists launched a powerful ideological movement on the basis of this conception. This allowed them to become the torch-bearers of ideals among the “right”.

  Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War had a totally opposite effect on the “right” and the “left”. Recapturing territories that were so significant to Jewish history and contained centuries-old monuments of the past – the Wailing War, the Tombs of the Patriarchs and other holy places indicated in the Scripture – only convinced Religious Zionist that they were not mistaken: this was the beginning of the era of the Third Temple.

 

  And they acted accordingly…

  As the torch-bearers of ideals among all the “right” they were determined to defend the Jewish homeland and build new settlements in Judea and Samaria.

  Religious Zionists failed to pay attention to one “minor” factor: as the torch-bearers of ideals they had to copy everything the “left” had been doing before them.

  They proved themselves incapable of producing a single idea of their own, or bringing forth any leaders from their own midst – not one of the level of Shimon Peres, to say nothing of Ben-Gurion.

  This was true in spite of the fact that the circumstances were most favorable to Religious Zionists at that time.

 

5

 

  Was it a coincidence?  No, it was quite logical.

  As the elite, Religious Zionists began to conduct themselves the way the “right” usually did – to cultivate the traditional values significant for their group, relegating to the Higher Power decisions of issues that were beyond the limits of their familiar experience.

  Since this experience was obtained during 2,000 years of life within the framework of the community, the new elite of the “right”, in effect, compressed all national life into rebuilding Jewish communities, with their synagogues and yeshivas, religious authorities and division of people based on gender, in other words, to recreating everything that the “left” had been destroying.

  One would expect the people to applaud such a return to the roots. This, however, did not happen because in the people’s perception traditional values and forms of existence were associated with community life and not with the state.

  That is why the people did not perceive the “right” as leaders of the state and society’s elite.

 

  This attitude found its expression in an amazing phenomenon: the people respond to the same actions differently depending on which elite initiates them – the “left” or the “right”.

  When the “left” initiated settlement construction in order to settle on a larger territory of the Promised Land, the people perceived these actions as serving national interests. As soon as the “right” began to engage in the same efforts, the people’s attitude changed dramatically and building settlements was now perceived as a private affair of a small ideological segment of the population; hence, the people were not in the least concerned about it. The Jewish people’s response was fully manifested during the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza. The people were surprisingly indifferent to the tragic fate of the flourishing settlements and the families inhabiting them.

 

6

 

  The “right” blame their failures on the influence the “left” have on public opinion. The “left”, according to them, control the media and the entire educational system, from elementary schools to colleges and universities. Even if this is true, there are reasons for it and they are quite obvious.

  The global conceptions of the “left” have taught them to look for energy, ideas and images in mankind’s cultural heritage. That is why it is the “left” who created Israel’s literature and the theater, schools, colleges and universities, entertainment centers and art studios – that is, all those things, which never existed in the Jewish national experience.  The “left” find it natural to have access to these things, and that is why the nation sees them as creators of the new national culture, which has united the people.

  As for the “right”, they are not viewed as creators of a new national culture. The images and ideas that they extract from the centuries of ancestral experience don’t unite but actually divide the people.

  This is true not only of secular Jews who refuse to build their life on the basis of tradition. Traditional culture divides even its religious observers: each community has its own rabbi, it’s own person of authority, and its own self-sufficient customs.

  The influence of the “right” on Israeli society is limited to symbols, which are intended to remind everyone (in the most general sense) that Israel is a Jewish state. This influence doesn’t in any way define a course of action. The worldview of the “right”, founded in the commentaries to the Scripture, connects them to the experience of generations of the people’s distant ancestors, ignoring the nation’s new stage of development, which these ancestors could not know.

  That is why the nation sees the “right” as an obstacle to its development. The people heed only the voices of the “left” and follow them even when the “left” lead them into an abyss.

  As for the “right”, the people do not heed their voices and refuse to follow them.

 

7

 

The difficulties faced by the “right” are not limited to the above problems. As soon as the “right” found themselves at the helm, it immediately became obvious that they lack any ability to act on the world arena, amidst the other countries of the world.

Unlike the “left”, who are in agreement with some world countries and have amassed tested forms of interaction (this is the secret of Shimon Peres, the builder of the new Middle East, who seems capable of surviving any hazard), the “right” are only supported by those who show initiative themselves, predominantly out of religious considerations. The “right” who are constrained by their vision of the world are totally incapable of creating any significant forms of interaction with representatives of other nations.

 This is true, though there are great possibilities for that.

 The actions of the “right” in the world arena appear to be aimed at one goal only (prompted by a certain lack of self-confidence) – to demonstrate their ability to be engaged with the global world. But since they lack this ability in reality, they become engaged … according to a script written by the “left”. The “right” are incapable of thinking in categories corresponding to the global era.

This phenomenon has attracted people’s attention a long time ago: it is the Israeli “right” who implement all of the most absurd projects instigated by the Israeli “left”.

 

5. The Dead End

 

1

 

The ineptness of the “right” coupled with the activism of the “left” have turned the conflict between the “left” and the “right” into a laughable phenomenon. We, in Israel, hear the situation in our country more and more often described in terms not exactly typical in normal debate – it is referred to as “an anomaly”, “a madhouse”, etc.

This is exactly what it looks like.

When the overenthusiastic friendliness toward their potential murderers, which the “left” openly demonstrate in their relations with “Palestinians”, goes hand in hand with hatred toward their own fellow countrymen – with calls for a boycott and even for murder (that the “left” demonstrate just as openly in respect to the “right”, particularly to religious settlers), – the situation that emerges does, indeed, contradict common sense.

Still, it is not as absurd as you might think.

As far as the “left” are concerned, the “Palestinians” open the door for them to become part of united mankind.

By claiming that they have equal rights to the Promised Land with the Jews, the “Palestinians” help the “left” get rid of the Jewish “chosenness”, put an end to the tortuous fate of a pariah nation and resolve the problem of “separateness”, which no one has been able to resolve throughout centuries of Jewish history.

Unlike the “Palestinians”, the “right” block the entrance for the “left” into united mankind.

When they return the eternal sacred symbols to the people – giving them back Temple Mount and the hills and valleys of Judea and Samaria with their holy sites – the “right” simultaneously return to the Jews the status of “a nation that dwells alone…”. This means that the nation once again faces the problem of its “separateness” from other nations.

Thus, the “right” who are unable to resolve the problem of “unity and division” even within the Jewish nation are, in fact, destroying everything that the “left” had in mind in building the state of Israel. 

 

2

 

Neither the “left” nor the “right” can find a way out of the dead-end situation.

Symptoms of this can be found in different areas, starting with the helplessness of the state to cut the noose tightening around Israel to its inability to cope with the damaging processes within Israeli society, which are destroying the country from within.

Let us add to this list the growing perception among other nations that the Jewish state is fully to blame for most of the devastating processes occurring worldwide, and the rising hatred toward the Jews (supposedly because of their destructive role). Once all these factors are viewed in their totality, it becomes obvious: in the era of globalization, the Jewish people have encountered a previously unknown problem, global in its scope.

The necessity to resolve this new problem lies at the core of the conflict between the “left” and the “right”.

Their failure to find a satisfactory answer has resulted in the dead-end situation the Jewish nation confronts today.

But isn’t this equally true of other nations?

Not so long ago a group of Israeli citizens organized the Forum for National Responsibility and issued the Kinneret Covenant which was supposed to clarify this matter once and for all. It stated that from now on we can all agree that Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state.

The problem remains, however, that ordinary citizens like us, who don’t have the privilege of being members of the abovementioned Forum but nevertheless consider ourselves responsible for Israel’s future are not sure what the authors of this document mean when they speak of a “democratic” and a “Jewish” state. It is, therefore, well worth the effort to try and determine the meaning of these concepts.

1

To begin with, we will have to examine more thoroughly the existing political systems and the place of “democracy”, which people supposedly understand so well, among them. When a person aspires to find answers to questions of such magnitude it is always helpful to go back to original sources. And who is a greater authority on political issues than Aristotle, the author of the famous “Politica” (“Politics”)?

So what does the great ancient thinker have to say on this matter? According to Aristotle, there are three forms of government: the first is the rule of a single man; the second is the rule of a group and the third is the rule of the people. Each of these forms of government has, to make is simple, two versions, a good and a bad one.

“In our original discussion about governments we divided them into three true forms: kingly rule (monarchy, – Author’s note), aristocracy, and constitutional government (which Aristotle also called “polity”, – Author’s note), and three corresponding perversions – tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

(“Politica”, Book 4. Chapter II)

As we can see, forms of government come in pairs. The power of a worthy monarch is perverted as the power of an unworthy tyrant; the power of a group of worthy aristocrats is perverted as the power of unworthy oligarchs. So what about the power of the people?  What happened to the “polity” – the power of the worthy people? Alas, this form of government didn’t last long. Democracy is now twice as busy, serving both as the power of the worthy and the power of the unworthy people. It has to serve two masters who are absolutely incompatible – Good and Evil. What a shame!

Here is something we may not have thought about before: when we talk of “democracy” we don’t always know for sure whether we are speaking about Good or Evil. And when we hear somebody uttering the word “democracy” we must always ask for clarification (provided that we wish to distinguish between Good and Evil): “What type of democracy are you referring to? Is it good or bad democracy?” Now, in order not to get confused, let us call the first type of democracy the democracy of Good and the second, the democracy of Evil.

You are probably wondering how the two of them differ from one another. According to Aristotle: a bad kind of democracy is one

“in which, not the law, but the multitude, have the supreme power, and supersede the law by their decrees.”

(“Politica”, Book 4. Chapter IV)

It’s all plain and simple: a worthy people accepts the power of the law, whereas an unworthy people rebels against all authority and doesn’t observe any laws. It follows that the democracy of Good is founded on law, whereas the democracy of Evil is founded on lawlessness.

Now which people is a worthy one and which is unworthy.

A worthy people is one that has a shared system of sacred values.

Someone is likely to object to this, saying that values are relative. That’s true, of course. Incidentally, the value system in ancient Greece was associated with slavery and allowed to view another human being as “a tool who could speak”. The point is that the Greeks believed that some people were born to be slaves. Even so, a worthy nation is still one that is connected by a shared system of sacred values because there is no other foundation for law. Wherever such a value system exists, the law “lives inside” the people or, as Aristotle refers to it, “they are themselves the law”.

The logical conclusion is that a nation becomes unworthy when it is not connected by a shared system of sacred values. It then becomes replaced by a set of invented rules that have no moral justification in the people’s eyes. Aristotle, who held tyranny to be “the worst of governments” because the tyrant exercises “despotic power” over the people, actually equated this kind of democracy of an unworthy people with tyranny:

“For the people becomes a monarch … and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals, but collectively. This sort of democracy … is no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot … being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy.”

(“Politica”, Book 4. Chapter IV)

Thus, an unworthy people becomes transformed into a despot. But how can that be? How can a people inflict harm upon itself?

It does happen. A nation which has no sacred values does not, in fact, rule. It is instead governed by those who manipulate the people and claim to rule on their behalf.

When values become internalized, saying to people, “No, you can’t do that,” then one stops oneself from doing wrong, and so does everybody else. “Do not steal” – each person stops himself from being a thief, and then stealing becomes a crime in the eyes of the people.

When a nation’s values urge, “You must…” then everybody strives to do the same thing that others are also doing. “You must fight for your country” – and everybody takes up arms. This way defending one’s country becomes the law of the nation.

When a value loses its internal meaning, nothing prevents a person from acting in his own immediate self-interest. “Why can’t I steal this thing, if I want to have it so badly? Why should I take up arms when I could get hurt?”

When sacred values disappear, manipulators emerge to fill the gap. “Let us unite, then we can make stealing the law,” they tell the thieves. It is equally possible to make desertion the law. Actually, anything is possible, if enough people want it. The main thing is to join hands with interested parties. That is how chaos begins to reign in society. Each group tries to impose its will on the others, and manipulators turn into the most popular figures. They are those who are ready to discredit any sacred value for the benefit of the group which they represent.

What are these manipulators called? They are called by a name well familiar to all of us – they are demagogues.

“The demagogues make the decrees of the people override the laws... And therefore they grow great, because the people have all things in their hands, and they hold in their hands the votes of the people, who are too ready to listen to them.”

(“Politica”, Book 4. Chapter IV)

That is why the democracy of a state whose people are not connected by a shared system of values is democracy of Evil and, truly, a tyranny of demagogues.

2

Every people has its own system of sacred values, and, consequently, it has laws of its own. For instance, according to Muslim law, it is a brother’s duty to kill his sister for behavior that “besmirches” the honor of the family. In such a situation the brother responsible for the murder can’t be held accountable as a criminal.

Jews consider murder to be a serious crime. A murderer is unquestionably a felon, and defending family honor can’t serve as justification for the crime. So what should be recognized as the overriding law if these two people, the Muslim and the Jew, are citizens of one state? Either both of them must observe one and the same law … or else the door is wide open for demagogues, and they are free to invent “values”, and propose their own rules and regulations passing them for laws.

It follows that the law, and, correspondingly, a worthy people, can exist only in a national state which is governed by one people, the ruling nation. Of course, other peoples may also live in its midst but only on condition that they accept the law established by this nation. They don’t necessarily have to like this law and may even find it objectionable. It doesn’t mean, however, that the law has to be changed to pacify them, because this might lead to chaos in the entire society. So if some group is displeased or insulted by the law, they might have to look for another state to live in. It would probably be best if they chose to settle in their own state.

How then should we understand the wording of the Kinneret Covenant? (This is a citation from paragraph 2.)

“…The state of Israel … bears responsibility for ensuring the equal rights of all its citizens … for guaranteeing their rights in… choice of … upbringing, education and culture.”

If everyone has equal rights to their culture, it means that there can basically be no law.

Let us review just one example.

Imagine a certain citizen A, who has the right to his culture. In accordance with this culture he takes 4 wives and they each bear him 6 children. There is, of course, no need for the wives to get an education (he believes it’s not for women anyway … are you rejecting his right to his own culture?). And, naturally, they cannot be expected to get jobs (they have their hands full taking care of the children).

In the same society, there is another citizen – citizen B. His culture, to which, incidentally, he also has a right, is founded on monogamy. Both he and his wife bring up their children together, introducing them to the treasures of world civilization. Citizen B’s wife is well-educated, just as he is; she holds a job and has an equal say in important family decisions.

One doesn’t need much to imagine how different the outcome of citizen A’s cultural choices will be from that of citizen B’s. But since they are both citizens of one and the same state, and this state has promised everyone equal access to education, healthcare, and the infrastructure (since everyone is equal and presumably needs these things in equal measure), then the government has to find additional funding sources. It will have to pass a special law, which indicates that citizen B has a number of obligations with respect to citizen A. Citizen B must cover all the expenses of citizen A, which the latter cannot be responsible for while he executes his rights to his own culture. More specifically, citizen B has to pay for his and his family’s living expenses, medical care, his children’s education, etc. What kind of equality is it when citizen A has only rights and no responsibilities, whereas citizen B has responsibilities for himself and also for citizen A, but he does not have the right to enjoy the fruits of his culture?

There is clearly no real equality in a situation such as this, and, even more so, it is fraught with conflict. The law that guaranteed equal rights becomes a myth, and this allows demagogues to begin their manipulations around the notion of “equality”.

Equal rights to enjoy one’s own culture are replaced by equal rights to consume the products of somebody else’s culture. With such an interpretation of equality citizen A is entitled to enjoy the same benefits as citizen B. In other words, if citizen B has a house with a green lawn and citizen A has only 20 pairs of shoes for his 24 children, then citizen A has every right to protest such inequality, blaming citizen B for all his hardships… And citizen B should feel embarrassed and very much ashamed of himself.

All this has nothing to do with the law. Such unauthorized harassment of citizen B leaves him with several options: he can try to hide or conceal his assets; he can lose interest in public matters, or even leave the country which is ruled by demagogues. Whatever path he chooses, he will recluse himself as a citizen.

This is exactly what Aristotle says in his book:

“The spirit of both extreme democracy and tyranny is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens.”

(“Politica”, Book 4. Chaper IV)

“The better citizens” abandon such a society which is why its people become unworthy.

3

Someone might object, saying that all the countries in the world face a similar problem.

This is not exactly true. Egypt does not have to deal with this problem and neither does Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t exist in China. Only the Christian world has this problem, and there are reasons for it.

The ideas of a “multicultural society” and a “a state of all its citizens”, are deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. And even if the person who espouses these views is an atheist or agnostic he will nevertheless think like a Christian in this respect. It doesn’t matter that he has never been in church or read the Gospels.

The point is that alongside with the Monotheistic Idea the Jews brought into the world the idea of a united mankind. That is why Judaism, and Christianity, and Islam all want mankind to become united. The only problem is that each of these religions has its own formula for unity.

The formula of the Jews declares:

“And he shall judge between the nations and reprove many peoples”

(Isaiah. Chapter 2:4)

“And many peoples shall go, and they shall say, ‘Come, let us go up to the Lord's mount…’”

“…for out of Zion shall the Torah come forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem…”

(Isaiah. Chapter 2:3)

It follows from the above that:

1. united mankind should be divided into nations:

2. every nation has a collective responsibility for its sacred values, which is why it can be judged;

3. every nation must come to understand the erroneousness of its values and turn toward “G-d’s Mount” – toward the universal Law;

4. unity is possible only when everybody is prepared for "the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”.

This formula serves to protect the nation, on the one hand, and with it – law and order, and, on the other, it motivates every nation to revise its values. It stimulates the growth of better citizens, who are capable of perfecting the value system of their own people and gradually making it more universal.

The Jewish formula for unity is founded on “national isolation”, and it presupposes the people’s self-improvement.

The Muslim and Christian formulas for mankind’s unity are cosmopolitan, which means that they absolutely require forcing upon everyone else their “patent” for world order. Each of these concepts is based on the belief in a united mankind, provided that all nations will accept their particular formula.

Still, Christianity and Islam are fundamentally different in this regard.

Christianity was originally disseminated by single Jews whose new teaching was not accepted by their own people. That is why they infused religion with ideas of individual freedom from the nation and from family, both of which connect a person to one or another cultural tradition. A Christian is someone who can be a self-made person. He is “just a person as any other.” He needs to make a personal effort, and to have personal faith to build a personal relationship with God. Mankind will become united when every person on earth makes an effort and shows faith. Anyone can be that person… It doesn’t matter if he is a Greek or a Jew. “There is neither Greek nor Jew,” states the Christian doctrine.

People disseminated Islam alongside their ethnic tradition. That’s why this faith does not exist on its own but is an integral part of the family code. It is also deeply incorporated in political and cultural life. A Muslim is created by the collective. Islam does not understand a person who doesn’t belong to his family and his tribe. Everybody must be part of a collective, and all of mankind should be one Muslim family.

Those of us gifted with good foresight have realized already where the Christian ideal of “neither Greek nor Jew” leads the modern world. While Christians, in following their ideal, have turned their countries into “states of all their citizens”, Muslims, who view the world as one great Muslim family, continue to resettle among these societies and feel very much at home there.

That is why a local sheikh can deliver a sermon in support of Bin-Laden right in the center of London, with local authorities doing nothing to stop him.

The London authorities think that in a united world where everybody has the right to be himself, the sheikh has a similar right. While the sheikh sees if differently: he thinks that the British are quite ready to become Islam’s adopted children.

Naturally, the question about Muslim countries being transformed into “states of all their citizens” is never raised and never will be on the agenda.

4

Do the respectable signatories to the Kinneret Covenant even realize that the document’s statement provided below strives to implement the Christian ideal, “There is neither Greek nor Jew,” and not the Jewish one, “he shall judge between the nations.”

“All citizens of Israel are full and equal partners in determining its character and its direction.” (Paragraph 2)

Why then should anybody attack the Knesset Member Talab El-Sana who urges Palestinians to fight against Israel? He is merely outlining the future of the Israeli state according to the ideals of his own culture. He sincerely believes that there can’t be any Jewish rule in areas inhabited by Arabs. Nor can there be any Jewish rule in areas inhabited by Jews because everything should belong to the Arabs. Talab El-Sana doesn’t think that way because he is an evil man – he is simply presenting his culture’s ideal. And Arab members of the Knesset act accordingly.

Arab Parliament members of the Jewish state are rightfully outraged that the Jews are opposing the realization of the Arab ideal – one world, as a single Muslim family, where the Jews are graciously allowed to live under Muslim protection, as in the good old days. Don’t the Israeli Arabs have the right to their own culture? Aren’t they equal partners in determining the character and direction of the Jewish state?

For Arab Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, former advisor to Yasser Arafat who has recently been elected Deputy Speaker of Israel’s Parliament, a shahid is a national hero. He is a martyr for the faith who blows himself up to kill as many infidels as possible. Ahmed Tibi, too, had a hard time understanding why he couldn’t pay Arafat a visit and support his call for jihad against the Jews for the glory of Islam. Doesn’t he have a right to his own culture?

Yet the problem isn’t so much the Arabs but the Jews who decided that the Jewish state should for some reason implement a Christian ideal, an ideal which presently endangers the very existence of Christian civilization.

Let me cite another example as proof that the issue is the Jews, not the Arabs.

According to Israel’s Law of Return immediate non-Jewish family members of a Jewish person also become Israeli citizens. Naturally, they may not abide by the laws of Kashrut, since they don’t see them as sacred. If they like pork, they have no desire to give up their favorite pork chops. And I can understand their feelings.

If the Jews had a clear stance in this matter – sacred Jewish values are binding for all in a Jewish state – nobody would consider breaking the law. But the moment democracy is perceived as a “state of all its citizens”, it turns out that the country can do without shared sacred values. Moreover, it is also permissible to insist on having others observe your values, since everybody has been invited to shape the country’s character and direction. Not surprisingly, demagogues emerge from among the Jews who make the following suggestion to the non-Jews: “If you vote for me and I’m elected, I promise to pass a law which will allow pork.”

This is not just about the pork – the point is that Kosher Laws have always been a sacred value for the Jewish people. And if Kashrut was discarded today as a sacred value there can be no guarantee that the commandment “do not kill” will continue to be observed tomorrow. Sadly, we can see this happening more and more frequently.

5

The problem being discussed here is the problem of minorities, the issue of compatibility of different value systems. We, Jews, are well familiar with this problem, since we have been a minority for nearly 2,000 years, living in the midst of other peoples.

The majorities exercising power in these countries were often at a loss what to do with these strange people who were living in their lands. When the Jews insisted that they wanted autonomy, they were reprimanded.

“Why are you showing us such disrespect?” Their hosts were obviously hurt.

But no sooner did the Jews give up their autonomous existence and begin to actively participate in different areas of life as equal citizens, they were reproached even more:

“You seem to think you own these lands. Get out. Go to your Palestine!”

But in spite of their long and diverse experience as minorities, the Jews don’t seem to have fully understood the role of minority groups.

Minorities play the part of “bridges” that connect different peoples. Both these people’s positive traits and weaknesses can “cross” that “bridge”. The choice depends on the existential concept which the minority lives by in another nation’s state, i.e., whether it is the concept of universalism (the Jewish principle “he shall judge between the nations”) or cosmopolitanism (“There is neither Greek nor Jew”). In other words, minorities form the battlefield where these two mutually exclusive principles collide.

We, Jews, have always served as such a “bridge”. We have always brought new ideas, methods, technologies, goods, etc. to the host nation. In doing this we expanded the host nation’s horizons and increased opportunities for its development. Favorable disposition toward the Jews, whose arrival stimulated societal progress, expressed the prevailing conviction that Jews bring success. Many rulers indeed made an effort to get the Jews to settle in their lands because they knew that this would mean livelier trade, greater enterprise and initiative, financial growth and other benefits.

Minorities act as a link between different peoples, and this goes both ways. It appears that every people would like some part of it to live in the midst of another nation, acting as a “bridge” for transmitting foreign ideas into its own culture.

We, Jews, have witnessed this happen. If we hadn’t lived among different peoples of Europe where would the Jews of Israel have gotten their own ideas of statehood, their own scientists, and the knowledge and skills needed to rebuild a state? Where would their accomplishments in science and art that they are so proud of come from if Jews hadn’t experienced European influence?

If these accomplishments were the result of Jewish genius alone, these talents would have manifested themselves with equal power in all Diaspora communities. But this was not the case!

But as soon as we, Israeli Jews, substituted the principle “he shall judge between the nations” for the principle “there is neither Greek nor Jew” and decided to live by it, everything turned upside down: we began to interfere in the affairs of other peoples and fight their battles, convinced that we know best how they should live. Anti-Semitism alone can’t explain the fierce opposition we encountered: when we imposed our own notions of society and the individual we actually did cause destabilization. It would be ridiculous to accuse us of some kind of conspiracy because the principle “there is neither Greek nor Jew” turned out to be just as deadly for us in our own national state. We began to import within ourselves such alien cosmopolitan ideas as “proletarian internationalism”, “the cult of the worker”, “socialist commune” and … “a state of all its citizens”.

This means that it is not the nation that causes the problem but its guiding principle: whether it is the principle of universalism or the principle of cosmopolitanism.

This is true both in regards to us a minority and in regards to minorities in our own national state. Perhaps, if relations with the Israeli Arab population were established as the relations with a community which is mandated to follow the law of the state and which has collective responsibility for its members, this would have motivated the Arabs to revise their values and brought forth new distinguished and responsible leaders. And then the Arabs of Israel may have become a “bridge” connecting the Jews with the broader Muslim world.

But Israeli Jews have chosen a different path – a “state of all its citizens”. Has this turned the Arabs living in this state into Zionists? Alas, no. Today they are demanding that we change the Israeli hymn and get rid of Zionist symbols. The state’s cosmopolitan principle brought about a desire among the Arabs to strengthen their own sacred values. The increase in extremism is a natural outgrowth of this tendency.

The Arabs consider themselves to be ordinary members of a “state of all its citizens”, and now this state is being held responsible for the problems that are caused exclusively by the Arab system of values. From now on the Israeli state is held responsible for poverty which is the result of high birth rates among women who don’t work, for the poor quality of school education, and for the war of Hamulites and blood feuds.

6

Apart from the role of a “bridge”, minorities have another, no less important function. They are a “mirror” in which the state’s majority nation can observe its reflection. One glance at the different Jews who have arrived in Israel from around the world is enough to form a good picture of the country’s majority population. Whereas Russian Jews were at some point eager to join the revolution to solve world problems, British Jews dreamed of joining respectable bourgeois society.

Germans also “saw their reflection” in the Jews. Germans have every reason to pride themselves on their respect for orderliness and proper accounting practices but when these same commendable traits were manifested in methodically organized rows of shoes taken off children’s feet before they were taken to the gas chambers, the problematic nature of such fanatical faith in order became quite striking.

The Israeli state, too, can “see” its own reflection in its attitude to the Arabs. Endless speeches about respect for the working people don’t change the fact that in real life the Arabs are viewed as cheap labor. Employing them doesn’t require observing labor safety and allows to do without the use of machinery. The aliyah from the former Soviet Union also unveiled the true face of this society when highly qualified professionals were used for jobs in unskilled and low-paying services.

Minorities suffer more than anyone else from the need to exist simultaneously in two value systems. If they live according to a set of traditional values, then, despite all its limitations, they are still able to respond more or less properly to the surrounding reality. But if members of the minority are being convinced that they are free people and can do whatever they please (“There is neither Greek nor Jew”), they become completely disoriented.

Here is a real-life situation. An Arab student was attracted to a young Arab woman, also a university student. His feelings were not reciprocated, and he decided to avenge himself. The opportunity presented itself when the young woman accepted his offer to give her a lift home. Along the way, the young man drove off the road, took her to a deserted spot by the seaside and raped her. The young woman was an Israeli citizen, and she responded the same way any other member of a “state of all its citizens” would respond – she reported the rape to the police.

But in the eyes of her family everything that happened was entirely the girl’s fault because loss of virginity is a disgrace for the whole family. The family shunned her, and even her own sisters looked at her with loathing. At a family gathering the young woman’s grandmother suggested the simplest solution to the situation: “Kill her and let’s be done with it.”

If the young woman had followed the rules accepted in her community, she would have concealed what happened to her. But she had heard over and over again that she was “a person like any other”. So what we have now is this desperate young Arab woman who sits there, expecting the family verdict to be executed at any time, and, meanwhile, demagogues of the “state of all its citizens” continue to sermonize about “people in general” and “rights in general”, without taking any notice of culturally specific values and behaviors.

Nothing and no one can really help her until her own community revises the values it holds sacred.

Only a national state whose value system is appealing to everyone can accelerate this process. How can the state of Israel expect to accomplish something like that when it doesn’t value the professional potential of its citizens, when the government is fleecing the population and those who execute laws are the same people who pass them, making lawlessness an inevitable evil?

This is a rhetorical question. All such a state can do is make enemies out of its own minorities.

7

The point is that it’s impossible “to improve” the state by inviting all its citizens to determine “its character and its direction” as Paragraph 2 of the Kinneret Covenant suggests. Such a recommendation is irresponsible to say the least. The Jewish state can only be a national state because only a national state can truly have a system of values that are held sacred, and thereby, it can be ruled by law.

Present-day nationalism was born together with the modern state, which revealed the need to connect a vast number of people by a cohesive system of laws. The Jewish people felt that it was necessary for them to determine what the law is on their own, so they were now faced with a choice: they could either go on record as citizens of non-Jewish states, imagining themselves to be French (British, Polish, Russian, etc.) citizens who follow the Law of Moses or else they could build their own state.

Those who made the first choice, decided to join countries that promised equality for all – “states of all their citizens”, whereas those who made the second choice, that is, the Zionists, rejected such a solution.

In other words, Zionism was in itself a rejection of the idea of a “state of all its citizens”.

But instead of drawing the conclusion that it is actually impossible to implement the cosmopolitan principle “there is neither Greek nor Jew”, we, in Israel, have decided that we will be able to apply it in practice in our own state.

The example of the United States is frequently cited as a good example. Everybody seems to forget, however, that freedom of the individual, the rule of law, genuine respect for work which increases American society’s prosperity and honesty in business did not appear out of nowhere or fall like manna from the skies. All these commendable things are a reflection of the system of sacred values which have taken shape over time among Protestant Anglo-Saxons. And the United States as the dream of millions across the planet who are prepared to wait endlessly for a work visa will remain that way only so long as it remains a country with Protestant Anglo-Saxon values.

One wonders whether all its new citizens are aware of this.

I have heard some former Soviet citizens who continue to believe that the state is there to be cheated make the following comments: “Americans are so naïve. They trust everything you tell them.”

People such as these begin to build “their own America” in the United States, one in tune with their thinking. They ignore the fact that there is a limit to their choices, and this framework of opportunity is determined by the majority nation. When different groups try to enforce their own laws, advocating their freedom and their equal right to impose their own rules, all they do is create chaos in the common home. This destructive process is in full swing in the United States today. The Chinese are building new Chinatowns, the Hispanics are Latinizing the American South and our ultra-liberal American Jews are fighting for homosexual rights and promulgation of atheist beliefs in public schools.

In doing this each group is shaking the pillars on which the entire edifice rests – the United States of America is a state of Protestant sacred values.

The implementation of the principle “there is neither Greek nor Jew” leads to chaos in any society. It will happen sooner or later – it’s just a matter of time. Perhaps, we, Jews, are the only ones who could save the situation because the principle “he shall judge between the nations” is an inherent part of our own value system.

Will we be able to implement it? We definitely won’t so long as our country is headed by demagogues. It is they who, by manipulating the concept of “democracy”, have made us accept that white can be called black, war can be called peace and Good can be called Evil.

That is why we are afraid to call Azmi Bishara to order – we are told that when he urges Syria to launch war against the Israeli state of which Bishara himself is a citizen and which provides for him, he is merely realizing “his legitimate democratic right” to his own opinion.

Are the Arabs to blame for this? Only partially. I think that they are, to a large extent, victims of the demagogues who in their manipulation of “democracy” have established a regime of all-out tyranny in Israel, messing with the everyone’s minds.

So what is being described as the democratic Jewish state? It is not a Jewish state because it advances the non-Jewish principle “there is neither Greek nor Jew”. It is also a democracy of Evil, or, in other words, a tyranny of demagogues.

Then what form of government do we find there?

Perhaps, Aristotle will help us bring clarity to this issue.

“Such a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not a constitution at all; for where the laws have no authority, there is no constitution. So that if democracy be a real form of government, the sort of system in which all things are regulated by decrees is clearly not even a democracy in the true sense of the word, for decrees relate only to particulars.”

(“Politica”, Book 4. Chapter IV)

Don’t we see ourselves what is happening in our state?

Even Israel’s greatest supporters shrug their shoulders in bewilderment, trying their best to understand Israeli realities.

In fact, it is possible to understand “the riddle” of Israel – one need only examine more closely the terminology used to define different aspects of those realities.

On the Significance of Definitions

In the early 1990 when large waves of former Soviet citizens arrived to different countries around world, nobody in Israel was paying any special attention to the more or less natural terminological confusion in designating this event as it was taking place within the Jewish state.

New Israelis sometimes called themselves immigrants, at other times repatriates or olim. Interestingly, in conversations on the subject, they frequently used this special Hebrew word – olim – to describe their former compatriots who were now new Americans.

This seemed to make total sense. On the whole, no matter where they found refuge, people faced very similar problems – they needed a roof over their heads; they had to try and find a job, organize their children’s lives and immerse themselves into a new world – master a new language and enter a new environment, absorbing its customs.

These real-life problems were more important for ordinary, rank-and-file people than the words they used as newcomers in referring to themselves and others like them.

That was not really the case with academics because people in academic circles know the importance of selecting the right words very well, particularly in regards to choice of terminology. The chosen terminology expresses the essence of a phenomenon, and this determines how we perceive it. If the term we use to express the essence of a phenomenon reflects this essence precisely, the world around us acquires order in our eyes. We begin to understand surrounding reality, and this enables us to act effectively and productively in our environment.

If, on the contrary, we use a term, which fails to express the essence of a phenomenon, we lose our ability to understand what is happening around us. We begin to see the world as a chaotic collection of random events, and, as the result, we are likely to make irrational and senseless choices, destroying the very life we are trying to build.

But there is also a third scenario – an arrogant choice that can only be made by someone who has the insolence to believe that he is capable of forcibly and purposefully changing the very essence of a phenomenon. All one needs to do is to give this phenomenon a different name.

Those who fled from the former Soviet Union are more familiar with this than anyone else, since they actually participated in such an experiment when Marxist-Leninist “scholars” used specially devised terminology to create their model for a new society and a new man.

It appears that the Israeli academic circles have set themselves a similar goal. The unique word “olim”, a name always used to describe Jews who had returned to the land of their ancestors, almost entirely disappeared from the vocabulary of local “scholarly minds” in recent years, replaced by the word “immigrants”. More than that, they have retroactively renamed into “immigrants” even those Jews from Eastern countries who arrived in Israel in the late 1940s – early 1950s. So what are Israeli academics implying by this change of terminology?

What Do These Different Terms Express?

To find an answer to this question, it is important to specify exactly what the words – immigrants, repatriates and olim – designating phenomena with many similar characteristics, imply.  
“Immigrants” are people who have made a personal decision to leave their country of birth and settle among a nation to which they do not belong. Considering the complex and frequently painful experiences associated with entering a new society, i.e., immigration, there is no doubt that only those people who are disillusioned about their own nation and somewhat distrustful of it are likely to make the decision to immigrate.

Of course, someone may question this fact and come up with various proofs testifying to the contrary. Still, the very choice he has made expresses the immigrant’s unwillingness to remain in the midst of his own nation. This explains the psychology of an immigrant, his attitude to the new society he has entered and the new society’s attitude to him.

An immigrant tries to understand and accept the new rules, to change when necessary, to adapt to his new environment and become a part of his new nation so that he has the right to use the word “we”, including himself in the nation he has joined.

This makes total sense, because if the immigrant fails to do those things, but, instead, decided to preserve and cultivate the way of life characteristic of the nation from which he escaped, he will soon recreate his previous environment and once again find himself immersed in it.

As for the society, which accepts him, it also has the right to demand that he conforms to its rules. As the saying goes, “when in Rome do as the Romans do”.  Every society is the result of the cultural and historical experience of a specific nation, and this nation cannot allow anything to undermine this experience, because it shapes the foundation of the state. If this foundation is destroyed, nobody will be able to claim ownership of the state.

It is noteworthy that even in such a country as the United States, created by immigrants and for immigrants, there is a growing recognition that reality does not always correspond to the use of this legitimate term. The reason is quite clear: the founding fathers of the United States were bearers of the cultural and historical experience of European Protestants, and they established the state based on this experience.

It is in “their” America that everyone wants to make their home, and those who would like it to remain the country it is should always bear this in mind.

“Repatriates” – is another term used to designate people who have resettled in a new environment. True enough, this environment is not entirely new to them, but, rather, one that has been forgotten, because the repatriate is returning to the land of his ancestors. Repatriation has its specific characteristic that determines the relationship between the repatriate and his own nation. The nation to which the repatriate belongs lived in the lands of their common ancestors, preserved its unique identity, created its history and developed its culture.

The nation’s destiny embodied the set of laws that determine its entire organization of life – the life of a single person as well as the life of everyone in the nation. A nation is like a tree: the roots grip the native land and get their nourishment from it.

For many years (and frequently for several generations) a repatriate lived in foreign lands and assimilated himself to a foreign environment. While they were adjusting to that environment, repatriates were distancing themselves more and more from their own nation. Still, a repatriate always preserves ties with his own nation – genetic, cultural and historical ones. That is why a repatriate can be compared to a tree branch – no matter how far from the tree trunk the branch may find itself, it is still connected to it, which is why all the branches coming from one tree are similar to each other. The tree trunk has determined what the branch should look like. But the branch does not determine the life of the tree trunk. The same is true of a repatriate who returns to his “nourishing mother” – the land of his ancestors.  His relationship with his own nation is similar to that between the branch and the tree trunk. The nation has already determined what the repatriate should be like, if he truly intends to become part of his nation. Just as the branch, he has two choices – to become acclimated or to wither. Germans from the former Soviet Union who are returning to Germany are a typical example of repatriates.

“Olim” – is a term expressing the essence of a phenomenon that does not and cannot have an analogue.

An oleh (m. singular) or olah (f. singular) is a Jewish person returning to the land of his/her ancestors. “Oleh” means “to ascend” in Hebrew, because one can only ascend to the Promised Land. On the contrary, someone who emigrates from Israel, is called a “yored” – a Jew who goes down, comes down, descends, because one cannot leave, one can only “descend” from the Promised Land.

An oleh returns to his national home from which the entire Jewish people has been absent for 2,000 years. Therefore, there is not and cannot be any group that considers itself to be the native people in this national home and that could legitimately claim that while the oleh was absent for the past 2,000 years, it – this group – remained in the ancestral land, preserved the people’s national identity, created national history and developed national culture.

The Jewish people preserved, created and developed all this in the Diaspora, living parallel lives among other nations and not in the land of their ancestors.

It was only a 100 years ago that the Jewish people have gradually begun their return to their homeland. The goal of their return was to once again take root in their native land and turn into that independent nation which is capable of preserving, creating and developing the land and itself, without trying to blend in or adjust to anyone.

This unique process of the renewed formation of an eternal people has a unique name: it is called “kibbutz galuyot” – the ingathering of exiles. That is why in our case there is nobody and could not be anybody who could say: “I represent the tree trunk and you, oleh, are only a tiny branch.” In our case, every person returns to the homeland to become a part of the tree trunk, claiming a portion of the commonly shared land where he too could grow roots.

And there is nobody who could assume that an oleh, like a branch, has only two choices – to become acclimated or to wither – and refuse him his rights.

True Olim

1

As we can see, the uniqueness of the Jewish destiny is expressed by appropriate terminology.

There is no analogue to the terms “oleh” (plural “olim”) and “kibbutz galuyot” (the ingathering of the dispersed people in the land of their ancestors). And this circumstance presupposes a unique process for the formation of a new society and the creation of a unique state, without an analogue in the world.

But we, Jews, did not burden ourselves with thoughts about the kind of state we would like Israel to be. We simply imitated our national state from the Europeans. This expressed itself in the total confusion of used terminology.

2

At the initial stage of rebuilding the state this was not obvious. Every builder of the state felt that he was a true oleh, since there was no group in the land of his ancestors that alleged to belong to the native people (the dispersed Jewish communities that already existed there could not lay claims to such a role).

The oleh tilled the land and built new schools and settlements, creating the foundations for government institutions and the system of self-defense. After 2000 years of being restricted by others, the oleh finally breathed the air of freedom. “Productivity and creativity” became his motto, and no matter what kind of work he engaged in – he always acted according to this motto.

In spite of all the difficulties the first olim encountered, circumstances were favorable to them. The Zionist authorities who were collecting funds from the Diaspora Jews for the needs of the builders of the new state had their headquarters in Europe. Only those representatives of the authorities who were invested in seeing the halutsim (pioneers) productive and creative acted in the land of ancestors.

That is why this generation of true olim gave birth to so many outstanding personalities, who assured the success of the initial efforts and to this day remain in the memory of descendants as the founders of the state and bearers of its ideals.

True Israelis

1

The trend, which showed the olim turning into repatriates, became increasingly more apparent with every new generation.  Now living in the land of their ancestors, later generations of olim soon discovered the existence of another group of Jews, no different from them, but laying claim to the role of “the native people”. Assuming the role of the main preservers and identifiers of holy national symbols and places, they took it upon themselves to develop the set of rules, which all newcomers were supposed to abide by as repatriates.

No one paid any special attention to this transformation of olim into repatriates, since the situation was taken more or less for granted. This, however, was the beginning of the process that is responsible for the current condition of the Jewish state and its society.

2

The gradual transformation of the new olim into repatriates is linked directly to another, this time unofficial term – “true Israelis”. The very appearance of this expression reflects the established conviction that the formation of the native people in Israel has already been completed.

True Israelis have a number of main characteristics: they were born in Israel; Hebrew is their native language; they share different memories, starting with their first childhood games in the backyard; they share family friendships, which began at a time when their grandmothers and grandfathers were building Tel Aviv and other settlements…

This is quite a lot, considering the importance of everything the founding fathers of Israel accomplished when they laid down the foundations of the state.

But this is clearly not sufficient for their descendants to assume themselves to be the native people, bearers of the national identity, creators of the nation’s history and culture. It is clearly not enough for them to receive repatriates in that capacity, and to take over the process of their absorption, something officially endorsed in Israel.

This allocation of roles is the result of the nation’s illusory vision of reality.

Who Built the Jewish State?

1

Let us imagine for a moment that the founding fathers and their descendants stayed in the settlements they created, on their fields and plantations, with their factories, learning institutions, etc.!

Let us imagine that the people did not show any support for their undertaking!

What kind of state would we be talking about then?

Everything that they started would have deteriorated before it had a chance to grow and strengthen, and, sooner or later, it would have wasted away altogether.

Precisely because this was clear form the beginning, the founding fathers of the state fought with such determination for the Aliyah already far back then, while opponents of the state fought with equal determination against the Aliyah. Later, after Israel became a sovereign state, true Israelis always urged Jews to make Aliyah, because they needed and still need to ensure the continued participation of all the Jewish people in the destiny of the Jewish state.

The reason behind such interest in the Aliyah is that true Israelis never were, not could they be the tree trunk, compared to which all other Jews arriving to Israel are merely branches – repatriates without whom the tree trunk could easily exist.

In reality, a true Israeli has always been only a seedling, which was supposed to strengthen and nurture the whole nation.

The state was rebuilt by the collective efforts of the entire people. It is important to emphasize that the diversity of the experience amassed by the people in the Diaspora was essential for the success of these efforts.

What Jews from Western Europe could do for the state, particularly the emancipated German Jews and later Jews from the United States, Jews from Eastern Europe could not have done without them, because they had no experience of functioning within the framework of a modern state. At the same time, one could not expect from the well-off Western Jews (who were urged to leave their homes and a familiar lifestyle by Hitler’s rise to power) the same kind of personal enthusiasm and readiness for self-sacrifice that was demonstrated by Jews from Eastern Europe.

The powerful wave of Aliyah from Germany– the most elite segment of the Jewish people – completely changed the situation in the 1930s. This influx of German Jews not only resolved the acute demographic crisis but also brought with it essential cultural experience which was previously missing. Without such experience, the state would have been unable to move forward and get on its feet even if it faced no opposition.

2

The situation has not changed to this day, which we can see for ourselves. We observed the state making an enormous leap forward in its development solely due to the tremendous wealth of experience the Jews acquired in former socialist countries. The Israeli economy diversified and reached new heights after a large number of highly qualified Jewish professionals arrived in Israel from the Soviet Union, Romania, Poland, and other countries, turning Israel into an economically advanced state. We must bear in mind that these olim did not become qualified professionals thanks to true Israelis and the development of their experience.

The experience of these olim took shape independently, and this process went parallel to the experience of true Israelis.

All this rebuffs the prevailing conviction that true Israelis were the ones who built the Jewish state. The point is that they simply could not have done it on their own, simply by developing their own experience.

The state was built by the concerted efforts of the Jewish people.

Nevertheless, the substitution of the term “repatriates” for the term “olim”, which the nation accepted without notable dissent, indicates that it has formed a different notion and believes that true Israelis are indeed the builders of the state, something that is not in any way confirmed by reality.

Such erroneous conclusions always have consequences.

3

For a better understanding of the issue let us compare two states – Germany which is opening its doors to Germans from the former Soviet Union and accepting them as repatriates and Israel which has reinterpreted the notion of former Soviet Jews as olim by referring to them as repatriates.

The German nation took shape long ago, and it is long been self-sufficient.  Everything that has made Germany an advanced state developed gradually through the efforts of the entire nation, and the whole nation assimilated it as a commonly shared heritage.

That is why no matter what experience the German repatriate brings with him to the land of his ancestors, he is bound to find among the native people something analogous to his own experience. As a patriot, he would probably love to be of great service to his newly found homeland, and he may have a burning desire to enrich it with his own experience. But with all this he cannot fail to understand that a country such as Germany does not really need this kind of input.

In Israel, such an entity as the native people has yet to be formed. True Israelis cannot be considered native people because they are not self-sufficient. Everything that turned Israel into an advanced state was borrowed from the experience of other nations. The Jewish people simply adopted these elements of experience while they were living among other nations and transferred them to their own state.

That is why the oleh who arrives in Israel strives to do more than organize his own life in the best possible way as an immigrant or repatriate. The oleh has an entirely different psychological motive – he is eager to make his own contribution to the national treasure.

His motivation becomes even stronger when he discovers how many areas of life still need to be developed, areas where his specific experience could be valuable to the state. He assumes that the true Israeli, or the one whom the state has trusted to represent him, pursues the same goal – to use his potential for the thriving of the state they share together.

4

He is mistaken in his assumption because the true Israeli, who imagines himself to be a representative of the native people, has no doubt about the self-sufficiency of his own experience.  
Proposing his own experience as a special Israeli standard, he has no idea what a narrow standard that is. He does not understand how much it misses of the tremendous experience, which the nation amassed due to its life in the Diaspora and introduced, through shared efforts, into its own state.

The personal experience of the true Israeli is incomparably more limited compared to the tremendous experience of the entire nation.

The incompatibility of these two types of experience is not a drawback in itself. It is only a special feature of the unique phenomenon of kibbutz galuyot – the unique process of the renewed formation of an eternal people that has no analogue in his history.

But if this phenomenon – kibbutz galuyot – is incorrectly interpreted, moreover, if it is distorted by renaming Aliyah into repatriation and immigration, this special feature becomes something far worse than a mere drawback.

It turns into a major flaw.

One can understand exactly how this happens by following the line of reasoning suggested here.

What has happened to the Jewish state?

The problem lies right at the core, the very foundation on which the Jewish state is built.

For the moment, it manifests itself in a host of disparate symptoms that everyone tries – out of habit – to analogize to the experiences of other peoples, hoping in this manner to find a solution for the concrete issues that seem to arise constantly.

But whatever is happening to the Jewish state has nothing in common with the experiences of other peoples. The phenomena of Israeli life that give rise to these purportedly resolvable problems are, in fact, the symptoms of a malignant tumor. This tumor threatens all of the organs of the state’s organism, an organism that might otherwise have been a healthy and thriving one.

Yet the nation won’t stand a chance even of diagnosing its own condition, until it recognizes the consequences of trading in the unique Aliyah for a hodge-podge immigration and repatriationcopied from other nations.

At the same time, a diagnosis must be made before it is too late.

And to make a diagnosis, one must behave the way people do in critical situations: reject the easy labels, cast aside preconceived notions, break through the limitations, and not be afraid to ask the most piercing questions – questions that are already being asked by people who, for various reasons, manifest a heightened and not always a friendly interest in the destiny of the Jewish people.

Question 1. Why are there no more leaders left in Israel?

With every election, people continue to lose hope that a leader will eventually emerge who will be able to extricate the society from crisis. All the potential leaders have already been tested in the capacity of acting prime ministers, but the persona everyone is waiting for has not even appeared on the horizon.

The mystics are quick to argue that this absence of leaders has been brought down upon the Jewish nation to punish it for some kind of sins.

Yet the situation is perfectly clear even without resorting to mysticism. One must simply grasp the influence of replacing Aliyah with immigration and repatriation on the formation of the Jewish elite.

Imagining themselves to be the “title nation”, the true Israelis have developed the consciousness of the natural elite of Israeli society – an elite by right of birth.

Yet a birthright is simply not reason enough for the existence of an elite. It is also critical for the elite to be able to perform the functions that are expected of it. Otherwise, an elite by right of birth slowly disappears and, consequently, cannot be the milieu that will produce leaders for the people.

A natural elite will be the repository of those ideals that unite a given society. It represents the creative force of the society: by generating various forms of activity, it would help the society grow and develop. Finally, an elite is an organizing force in the society since its most important role is to create a system whereby all of the members of the society interact with and complement one another.

In this sense, already the founding fathers of Israeli society constituted a fairly problematic elite.

They were unquestionably the bearers of ideals – ideals concerning the building of a socialist society, based on individual labor.

Yet the people as a whole did not share these ideals. The large Diaspora supported their endeavor only because the centuries-old tradition taught the people to support those Jews who decided to settle in the land of their ancestors. And the situation remains much the same to this day – the Diaspora supports the Jewish state without showing any particular interest in the ideology of its citizens.

It was not the ideals of the founding fathers that prompted the Jews to abandon their homes and familiar lives but the acute rise in anti-Semitism during the twentieth century – the biggest Aliyah in the period before Israel became a state, the Fifth Aliyah, arrived from Germany after Hitler came to power. A massive Aliyah likewise arrived from Arab countries after the Israeli state was declared because Jews were starting to be perceived as a fifth column in those countries. The last wave of Aliyahfrom the former Soviet Union rose in response to the break-up of that state.

None of this has anything to do with the ideals of the founding fathers. More than that, it has nothing to do with the “ideals” of the true Israelis, since they themselves not only rejected the ideals of their fathers and grandfathers long ago, but also laughed them out of existence to boot.

It is clear that the true Israelissimply cannot be the bearers of those ideals that will unify the nation. They do not possess any such ideals.

Nor can the true Israelis fulfill the functions of the elite by demonstrating their capacity to further develop the society.

Even those Jews who belonged to the generation that built the infrastructure of the future state during the period of the British mandate were not true originators but only the carriers of the knowledge and the skills that they acquired among other nations. During the existence of the Israeli state, the situation has not changed much, as was already explained above, and the proof of this is evident in the final wave of Aliyahfrom the former Soviet Union. These Jews brought to the country the knowledge and the skills they acquired in their country of origin. And the true Israelis received all this readymade – they didn’t have to lift a finger for it.

But the clearest proof of this notion comes from those Jews who never acquired in their countries of origin the knowledge and the skills necessary to life in a modern state. For this reason, they remain a difficult demographic for the state up to the present day. And it isn’t because they are incapable of learning all that is necessary but because the true Israelis – not being a creative elite – are not capable of teaching them.

The founding fathers were also problematic as organizers of the state. The majority of them arrived in the land of their ancestors from provincial shtetls in the so-called Pale of Settlement along the periphery of the Russian empire, where they obviously could not have gained any experience as political actors.

The state-building was instead conducted by experienced Englishmen in keeping with the mandate of the League of Nations, just as they had done in all of their colonies.

But if these first generations of state leaders could still copy their European teachers, they certainly could not cement a tradition of ruling the state on a foundation of imitation. It is natural, therefore, that they had nothing to pass onto the true Israelis, their children and grandchildren, who, in their capacity as a natural elite, could have carried on and developed the tradition of their fathers and grandfathers, if such a tradition existed.

That is why the true Israelis wound up in a far worse position than that of the founding fathers.

On the one hand, they could no longer benefit from the source of the experiences of the advanced nations, which taught their fathers and grandfathers, since that experience could be obtained only while remaining inside that culture. The true Israelis, for their part, were born and raised on the land of their ancestors, where this critical experience was lacking.

On the other hand, they could not make use of traditional Jewish experience because this was the experience of life in a closed community, and it had nothing to do with the Jewish state.

Once we recognize the uniqueness of the situation in which the true Israelis find themselves, it becomes possible to diagnose to the two main qualities they possess that deprive the people of any hope that a true leader of the Jewish people can emerge from their midst.

The first of these qualities is insufficient civilization development.

This is not at all meant to be an insult. It is the diagnosis of an illness, that true Israelis had no choice but to succumb to, once the notion of Aliyah was replaced by immigrationand repatriation.

This illness is caused by the inequality in the development of Jews in the Diaspora, who continue to live among other nations, and the population of true Israelis, who created their own environment in the land of their ancestors.

Thus, while the Jews in the Diaspora, in deciding various problems as the citizens of modern states, have formed a conception of the world befitting their citizenship, true Israelis, who have come of age in the land of their ancestors, where the core problems of survival need to be resolved, have also formed the corresponding world conception – a conception of people belonging to an “ishuv”, or pre-state settlement.

Deprived of the experience of living in a modern state, true Israelis have quite instinctually recreated the traditional shtetl on the basis of the only form of life the Jews had – the experience of living in a closed community.

This is apparent from the way that true Israelis think and act.

In order to become fully cognizant of this, one must remember how Jews in the shtetl thought and acted within the restrictions of traditional community life.

The main problem for the Jewish community was the problem of procuring money. And this is natural, since a people without land could only buy its right to exist with money. The procurement of money was also the key goal for satisfying all the needs within the community: building a synagogue, a mikvah, supplying kosher food, writing a scroll of the Torah, providing for the poor and the sick, etc.

The community did not resolve problems critical to the development of a state. It was the job of the nation, in whose midst the Jewish community existed.

The problem is that this is the way that true Israelis think and act in trying to resolve problems at the state level, using the same methods that were used to solve problems in traditional Jewish communities. They also believe that all problems are decided with infusions of money. They continue to believe that even though the experience of many peoples who have prospered thanks to substantial natural resources proves that there are a lot of things that cannot be bought. Among these are traditions and cultural capital.

The consequences of the government elite failing to understand such fundamental things are apparent in the crisis that has engulfed the Israeli educational system.

True Israelis don’t recognize that the prior accomplishments of this system were made possible exclusively thanks to the achievements of individual Jews who brought with them ready knowledge and skills from developed countries. Yet tradition cannot be created on the basis of imitation, just as it is impossible to look for experience to a national educational system, consisting of heders and yeshivas, which excludes instruction in the “unholy” exact and natural sciences.

This is exactly the kind of tradition that explains why the majority of the population lacks any motivation to educate itself in areas that are “unholy” in the Jewish tradition and why the teaching vocation is held in such low esteem by the whole society.

There is thus nothing surprising about the fact that the true Israelis themselves – having spent the cultural capital they brought with them from the Diaspora and not having the ability to lean on their own tradition – created methods and conceptions that ensure that the much touted Jewish brains are disappearing from the Jewish state on a daily basis. Only now is it becoming clear that these brains exhibit their true potential only in the midst of a foreign culture.

In Israel, everyone has grown tired of hearing about the great reforms of the educational system – every government has supported it. But the whole reform amounts to nothing more than financial reorganization. The “reformers” are unable to grasp the core problem – the lack of tradition. They hope that a more efficient use of funds will enable them to resolve the system-wide problems by injecting good specialists into the educational sphere.

But all of these hopes are in vain.

First of all, the fact that the people as a whole lack tradition means that each individual member of that group likewise lacks tradition, no matter how much you offer to pay him. That’s why there won’t be any specialists coming to the rescue – they don’t exist, and why would they? This is all the more true when we are talking about pedagogy, which is more closely tied to the tradition of the people and their psychology than any other field. It is indicative that the nation has not even been able to retain whatever arrived ready-made from the Diaspora.

Second, the lack of tradition makes itself known not only in the educational system, but in every other sphere as well. Tradition is equally lacking in the training of the police, for instance, which is why the society can no longer count on “my police protecting me.” Things have gotten so dire than even the highest levels of the officer corps lack the preparation needed to do their job, something that the last war in Lebanon made all too clear.

But where would this preparation come from if military leaders, having barely finished a tour duty, rush into the private sector to make money instead of working within their own field to strengthen and develop the state?

An infusion of additional funding into the system is not the answer to solving all of these state-level problems. It is the motivation of the people to create, strengthen, and develop its cultural tradition in various spheres that plays the pivotal role in resolving problems. The Jews themselves confirm the critical importance of this motivation in their attitude toward Orthodox culture.

But true Israelis lack the motivation to maintain, strengthen, and develop the cultural capital that has been acquired through the hard work of generations living amongst other nations of the world, because they believe that they “built the state” by themselves and so have convinced themselves that everything works out just fine if they improvise.

Third, true Israelis don’t recognize the intrinsic value of the non-monetizable cultural capital that they are used to receiving ready-made from the Diaspora. The problem lies in the fact that they don’t augment this cultural capital but deplete it, using it exclusively to enhance their own wellbeing, in the hope that it will continue to be delivered uninterrupted in the future. After all, that’s exactly what happened in the past, for instance when the Soviet Union fell apart.

Given this kind of attitude toward this irreplaceable capital, the money will run out sooner or later.

Finally, it is this glorification of money as a panacea that will save the society from all its ills – and not the “Arab problem” – that represents the cause of the pathological politicization of society. Vast numbers of people vie to take part in politics, not so they can benefit the state, but so they can play a role in allocating the money.

Therein lies the definition of the political culture of true Israelis; these are political leaders who surround themselves not with likeminded leaders but with stakeholders.

The insufficient civilization development also explains the situation that true Israelis have created within their government.

It is not fortuitous that the people started calling it the “Tel Aviv state.” The people themselves have determined the absence of vision in the people who have managed, in fact, to recreate a shtetlon the land of their ancestors.

Without understanding this, it is impossible to grasp, for example, what is happening in the city of Sderot, which is being subjected to constant fire from the Gaza strip. This absurdity is often explained in the terms of some particularly sophisticated policy, high-minded restraint, or finally, humanitarian considerations.

But the true explanation lies in another sphere entirely: the city of Sderot simply lies outside the boundaries of the world that true Israelis consider their own. One citizen of the “Tel Aviv state” asked a rhetorical question: “Who lives there anyway?” What she meant was that the people who live there are not “our people” – they are immigrantsand repatriates, those who fled from Arab countries and the former Soviet republics. Sadly, everyone understood what she meant.

Of course, the situation in Sderot is not the whole issue. The problem is that true Israelis won’t have control over the situation anywhere as long as they continue to live as in a shtetl: everything outside the realm of my little world has nothing to do with me.

In the South, Bedouins are settling the Negev and engaging in racketeering at the population’s expense; in the North, more and more Arabs are turning into opponents of the state; even the Druze, who were historically loyal subjects of the state, have started to mutiny. But the true Israeli lives as though things that take place a few miles away from his house are actually happening on another planet.

The sheer scope of the problems that national minorities face in Israel is simply beyond the true Israeli’s capacity to understand. And is it really all that surprising if he cannot understand even the problems of that part of the population that he so hurriedly wrote off as immigrants and repatriates?

Everyone loses patience, sensing that the problems will never be resolved, because all the resolutions come down to nothing more than the distribution of money.

The true Israelis’ ability to keep cool in this sea of passions is often explained by the fact that the state has been at war for the entire duration of its existence. That is supposedly why its citizens have learned not to react to each and every incident.

It stands to reason that a permanent state of war affects the mentality of every Jew who ties his fate with the Jewish state. But that’s not the whole story. The point is that the true Israeli’sattitude toward the future resembles the attitude of a Jew living in a shtetl.

The traditional Jew had only a very murky vision of the future – someday the Messiah will come and everything will be good. Yet when it came to real, ordinary life, the Jew lived pretty much in the present day. And that’s understandable – the host country could shift overnight from being kindly disposed to hostile, and this would bring with it pogroms and even expulsion

The founding fathers of the state transformed their faith in a messianic future into faith in an ideal, exemplary society that they were going to build. But reality also forced them to live exclusively in the present.

The true Israeli completely lacks any notion of “tomorrow.” He is not waiting for the Messiah; nor is he building an ideal, exemplary society. He is just living in the moment in a “post-Zionist” era of his own imagination.

He resolves all problems in his relations with the Arabs accordingly – the true Israeli needs “peace today,” so give him peace right at this moment.

He behaved no differently when he left Lebanon and Gaza in a rush, solving the problem that stood before him that very day, without the slightest notion of what the next would bring. Consequences in the form of “Hezbollah” and HAMAS were not far behind.

Accordingly, over the entire course of the state’s existence the true Israeli welcomed the olim: the most important thing was to bring them over and to feed them. What shape the society would take and what it would look like in the future were questions that did not concern him – somehow it would work itself out.

He shaped the network of industrial enterprises and institutions in the same fashion: professionals and specialists were ready to take charge and help solve local problems.

But the true Israeli never gave a moment’s thought to creating a system that would allow these specialists to interact with each other or that would be capable of generating replacements for them. That is why the specialists, who are now approaching retirement age, are sounding the alarm: who will man the ship after they’re gone? Even the business people have starting talking about the problem: they are ready to invest money, but they’re confronting a shortage of qualified workers. Even the high-tech sector is likely to require an influx of specialists from abroad, and all for the same reason – a lack of vision and perspective. And this after a massive Aliyah from the former Soviet Union.

It should come as little surprise then that thanks to the true Israelis the domestic situation in their state has devolved into systemic crisis.

Yet the problems of the Jewish state are not limited to what the true Israelis have wrought within its borders. Having turned the state into a shtetl, they’ve managed to drive into a dead end in the international sphere.

One doesn’t need to be a great sage to be cognizant of how problematic the Jews’ existence among various peoples of the world is. The creation of the Jewish state did not definitely resolve the “Jewish question” as Hertzl and his followers had hoped. In some sense, the problem has even grown more acute.

Nonetheless, the creation of the Jewish state has undoubtedly changed the lay of the land. And this leads inexorably to the thought that the traditional interconnection among Jews has taken on a new shape, in the form of the connection between the Diaspora and the state of Israel.

And this form requires new approaches, new ideas.

Yet it is clear from the entrenched status quo that there has been no innovation at all. The relationship between the Diaspora and the state is based on two fundamentally traditional ideas.

First: all Jews are responsible for one another. That is why, on the one hand, the state cannot exist without the Diaspora, and on the other hand, the Diaspora is interested in the state’s well-being, at least to ensure that it has a potential place of refuge. Second: Jews all over the world, in their capacity as citizens of different states, can provide Israel with support.

And that’s it?

One need look no farther than the situation that has taken shape in the “global village,” and the ideas come to mind of their own accord.

In the contemporary world, almost all nations find themselves in a position analogous to Jews, since today they, like Jews, have their own Diasporas. The only difference is that the Jews have always had a Diaspora but no state, whereas the nations of the world have always had states but no Diaspora dispersed all of over the world. They have Diasporas now only thanks to the advent of globalization.

And this means that a great number of people live in the contemporary world who, just as the Jews, are viscerally interested in seeing two countries flourish: the state of their ethnic origin and the state of which they are now citizens. They are interested in seeing the latter succeed because they live in it, work in it, raise their children in it. They are interested in seeing the former succeed not only because, as a rule, their relatives live there, but also because their own personal prestige in large part depends on the prestige of that state. No one wants to carry the stigma of a failed nation.

This situation is so unprecedented that it can’t help but change the very principles of diplomacy. Classic diplomacy was based on the interrelationships between unified communities of people who are fundamentally alien to one another – it was this dynamic that determined the particularities of the work that diplomats engaged in everywhere and always.

The formation of vast Diasporas changes the scenario.

Today, the people themselves are personally, and not just professionally, invested in the cooperation of different states. Possessing a hybrid mentality themselves, they recognize the possibilities such cooperation opens up and are able to be the carriers of cultural experience who can help establish mutual understanding among nations not by means of separate, preplanned events, but on the basis of constant individual contacts with people, etc.

One need only find the broadest base for cooperation between the Diaspora and the state-metropolis for every nation to be able to organize itself from within. (Incidentally, those who plan terrorist attacks with the goal of undermining states have already understood this.)

Here, like in no other field, Jews might have stepped up as innovators in establishing their own school of diplomacy. It is precisely in knowing how to organize a scattered Diaspora in order to achieve broad national goals that the Jews have shown unprecedented talent over the past 2000 years.

They might have . . . if the diplomacy of the Jewish state were not in the hands of the true Israelis.

The behavior of the Jewish state’s representatives in the international arena is just as perplexing as their actions within the country.

Why is the prestige of the Jewish state falling in the eyes of the world? Why have the opponents of the state been so successful in erecting a malign image of Israel, and why has the diplomatic corps of the Jewish state been powerless to stop them?

And once again, people try to explain the behavior of the diplomatic corps as the implementation of a strange, secret plans orchestrated by some intelligent Jews. Yet the real explanation is much simpler: true Israelis have failed in international relations, too, because the people have no tradition of international relations to draw upon, and the “title nation’s” false sense of self-sufficiency deprives them of the last drop of motivation to sow the seeds of a new tradition.

We need only recall the situation surrounding the supposed death of the Arab boy, Mohammed al-Dura in order to understand what the true Israelis have to offer as representatives of the Jewish state before the international community.

Mohammed al-Dura became the symbol of the intifada in 2000 because the mass media were trumpeting the “news” that Israeli soldiers had executed the child in cold blood. Yet the investigation of experts, and not only Israeli ones, revealed that these accusations were false: the Israeli soldiers were shooting at such an angle that the boy could not have been in the zone of fire.

A persistent French Jewish journalist – Philippe Carsenti turned up who demanded in court for the channel France-2 to broadcast all of the footage so that the viewers could see that the scene of the boy’s death had been fabricated.

The reaction of the court, that rejected the journalist’s complaint, is quite telling: why is the journalist so concerned, if the Jewish state itself isn’t getting involved or demanding that justice be restored.

No one who is familiar with true Israelisfrom personal experience should be surprised by their handling of this affair. In all international issues, they prove themselves to be people of the “ishuv”, the pre-state Jewish community. They constantly confirm the prescient words of Henry Kissinger who said that Israel has no foreign policy, just a domestic one.

True Israelis have no concept of what the international community’s opinion might be because they are used to exchanging opinions only with one another. They grew up in an atmosphere where they knew of anti-Semitism only from stories. They do not understand the way an anti-Semite thinks, or the depth of his conviction, in the way that Jews of the Diaspora understand it. That’s why they don’t realize that a fabricated montage such as this one could be the spark that ignites a flame. And so they act accordingly.

No one prepares true Israelis for diplomatic service. And the issue is not even that there aren’t schools of diplomacy but that the whole educational system treats as core a subject for the formation of world views as history, as a useless appendage to those subjects that will someday help the students earn money.

Come to think of it, could a people that has lived based on legends for 2,000 years even have a different attitude toward history?

But the provincial limitations of true Israelis are only half the problem.

The critical piece is that true Israelishave created in their international relations a “diplomacy” of the shtetl, which is the equivalent of suicide, under the prevailing rules of state existence.

In order to understand what is happening here, we must remember what traditional Jewish “diplomacy” in the Diaspora looked like.

The landless Jews were dependent on the caprice of the rulers of those nations in whose midst the Jews lived. This explains why this “diplomacy” was always built on three pillars.

A key feature of “Jewish diplomacy” in the Diaspora was the dependence on the personal attitude of the ruler toward the Jews.

Although personal relationships with the elite have played a tremendous role always and everywhere, the Jews, who lived among other nations, had their own specific dynamic. It took no more than a new “Pharaoh who doesn’t know Joseph” and the benign attitude of the old ruler could shift, like the weather at sea, not just to dislike but to virulent hatred on the part of the new ruler.

Examples abound.

The relationships among states are built on a fundamentally different premise: reciprocal self-interest. That is why building foreign policy exclusively on the personal attitude of one ruler or another to a different state is categorically unacceptable.

Yet, it is impossible, in assessing the Jewish state’s standing on the international scene, not to take into the account the problematic nature of the Jews’ existence among the nations of the world.

The return of the Jews to the land of their forefathers after 2,000 years of absence, predicted by the prophets, is an event of world magnitude. It cannot be reduced simply to a mutually beneficial trade arrangement (you can always change the partner), or even to a strategic partnership (the strategy can always change).

Thus, in order for the nations of the world to make their peace with the existence of Israel, they need to develop a need for its existence.

But true Israelis don’t understand this. That is why, as people of the shtetl, they view all their diplomacy as consisting of nothing more than personal interrelationships. As in the times when Jews were dispersed all over the world, they make use of the fact that there are enough rulers in the world, who for various reasons are personally sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish state.

So what of it?

Can that really be the basis on which the Jewish state will build long-term relationships with other states? A Jewish community that leaves any time the local moods change can build its relationships in this manner. But a state can’t be nomadic.

True enough, President Bush, thanks to his personal religious conviction has a special attitude toward Israel. That is why true Israelis are constantly jabbering about especially close relations with the United States. They think that these relations will stay the same for the rest of their lives.

But even today we can recognize the first signs of a “Pharaoh who doesn’t know Joseph.” We need look no further than the new anti-Israeli elite being molded at American universities in order to understand how untenable it is to connect the policies of a state to interpersonal relationships with one leader or another.

And the problem is not limited to the United States.

The current generation of true Israelisrefuses to let go of the subject of the Holocaust on which they build their policies in the hope that the whole world will continue to beg the Jews’ forgiveness for the death of 6,000,000.

But we can see the tell-tale signs of a new “Pharaoh who doesn’t know Joseph.”

The new generation of Europeans have different problems. They feel no guilt before the Jews, because they were not the ones who killed them. At the same time, they see that the Holocaust of the European Jewry has been transformed into the symbol of the struggle with the natural desire of every people to defend the territory of its forefathers from the destructive influence of immigrants. And from this Europeans draw a natural inference: we are losing control over the situation in our own country because of the Jews and their fight against “xenophobia.”

Sooner or later, they will place the blame for the chaos that has engulfed their own states on the “politics of the Holocaust.”

Today, we can see only the first signs of the future burst of indignation. For the moment, the old ruling elite is able to contain the indignation. But a new elite will come to power, an elite that will react to all talk of the Holocaust with nothing but rage.

What then?

True Israelis don’t sense the disaster that’s just around the bend. They enjoy that they are being coddled in the here and now, that today there are still leaders who connect the Holocaust with them, despite the fact that until recently the true Israelis were busy contrasting themselves with European Jews who, in their estimation, went to the gas chambers like sheep.

They think that their current position will last forever. But the age of repentance is coming to an end. And with it all the “diplomacy” of the true Israelis.

Another peculiarity of “Jewish diplomacy,” defined by the dependencies of a people in exile, was the defense of the interests of fellow Jews in the countries they inhabited. And here, the reason is obvious: Jews who found themselves in more favorable situations tried to help their less fortunate brethren, if only because they could imagine finding themselves in a position where they would similarly need help.

Yet lobbying on behalf of another state threatens the possibility of competing interests. And that means that the lobbyists could always be accused of double loyalties.

But true Israelis earnestly depend on the Israeli lobby. And here is the result – there are already hints being spread that Jews are foisting inadvisable foreign policies on the American people in order to benefit Israel.

Right now, we can hear only the disparate voices, just a few individuals writing articles and books. But we can already get a glimpse of future accusations that it was Jews who pulled the Americans into the wars they are waging in the Middle East.

Finally, “Jewish diplomacy” in exile had one more peculiarity – the institute of shtadlanut (private diplomacy).

Shtadlanut efforts played an indispensable role in the lives of the Jewish people over the course of many centuries, representing the interest of the community to the authorities. The role of these Jewish emissaries was particularly significant when the community faced various types of threats.

A shtadlan (intercessor) was a Jew, capable of acting in the non-Jewish outside world because he had the requisite statute, connections, knowledge, and capabilities – qualities that the average member of the community not only did not have, but was not even allowed to possess.

The ordinary Jew of the shtetl had no right to resolve his personal problems with the non-Jewish authorities. He could only do this through the intercession of a shtadlan.

This role of liaison officers and negotiator elevated shtadlans over the masses and guaranteed them not only a higher status and money, but also the right to live according to special rules. It is natural that their attitude toward the rest of the people was shaped accordingly.

If we look closely at how the people of Israel were sold the Oslo Accords, it is easy to see that the instigators of this ill-fated venture were acting just like the traditional shtadlans from the shtetl.

A small group that was never elected or endowed with this level of authority, elevated itself above the people and assigned to itself the right to act according to its own rules and in violation of the laws of the state. In essence, this group took on the role of the shtadlansonly because it had connections in the outside world with those who were interested in the legitimization of Arafat and “the Palestinian people.”

In all this, no one was evening denying that the work of the Israeli shtadlans on behalf of the state was being paid for from overseas.

The citizens of the state understood perfectly well the absurdity of the grand vision propagated by the instigators of “the peace process,” and their predictions of how events would turn out were fully confirmed. But the self-proclaimed shtadlans looked upon the people the way they always had in the shtetl – as a brainless herd of second class citizens that had no right to determine its own destiny.

The nation paid for the results of their “diplomacy” with thousands of people dead and maimed. And this is only the beginning of the tragedy that will play out in the future.

In this regard, the traditional shtadlansfrom the days of exile were principally different from the self-proclaimed shtadlansof the Jewish state.

The Jews in exile truly needed the services of the traditional shtadlans, who often performed functions that were vitally necessary for the people to survive. But who needs the shtadlansof the state, people who, due to their insufficient civilization development not only pulled their own people into a vicious cycle of Death and Destruction, but also introduced chaos into international politics?

Thus, the problems created by the true Israelis are not limited to the fact that they turned out to be completely incapable of creating a new Jewish diplomacy, using the opportunities that the nation possesses, or even giving the Jewish nation just one useful, creative idea.

Things are actually much worse than that – the true Israelis have managed to recreate a “diplomacy” of the shtetl that is completely incompatible with the existence of a state, and thereby to endanger not only the citizens of the state but the Diaspora Jews as well.

****

We can therefore see some clearly defined alarming symptoms that legitimately lead us to diagnose Israeli society as being civilizationally underdeveloped. This insufficient civilization development is the result of 2000 years of life in the Diaspora, which deprived the Jewish people of any experience needed to build a state of their own.

Such insufficient civilization development could have been easily overcome, considering the ability of the Jewish people to self-regenerate, which was proved so many times throughout history. But this could happen only if the Jewish people took into account the specifics of their unique history while they were engaged in building Israeli society. Drawing the right conclusions from their experience would have prevented Jews from making one crucial mistake. It was the grave mistake of gradually replacing the Aliyah with immigration and repatriation.

Regretfully, the Jewish people did not take into account the uniqueness of their history. As a result, the true Israelis developed another quality that may also warrant a diagnosis – it is called inadequacy.

Their inadequacy also has a genetic origin. The true Israelis “inherited” this inadequacyfrom the Jewish people themselves who raised them to believe, first, in socialist ideals; second, in Israelis as a new population of supermen, who would embody the most positive qualities of the Jewish people and would be free of all the negative ones; and, third, in the possibility to achieve political “normality” for the Jewish state through cooperation with other countries.

Belief in socialist ideas, which the founders of the nation saw as their analogy to the wisdom of Biblical prophets, brought the most enthusiastic and creative segment of the Jewish people to the land of their ancestors. This fact should not come as a big surprise given that in the early 20th century socialist ideas also fascinated many other nations around the world.

The irony is that while other nations subjected to the socialist experiment were gradually getting rid of this epidemic disease, for the true Israelis building socialism in the Promised Land became the culminating point in expressing their idealism and creativity.

This has its own reasons. Whereas all the states founded on Marxist ideology ultimately collapsed, only one was established – the state of Israel.

This fact of major historic significance prevented the true Israelis from understanding that the pronouncements of the founding fathers made in the1930—40s, are currently, in the 21stcentury, perceived as obsolete mantras, which make little sense, if any.

These pretentious diatribes come across as farcical when the true Israelis in all seriousness preach about Zionism, the rights of the working people and such like – things which had true meaning during the times of the founding fathers when the olim were indeed olim.

In present-day Israel, this initial meaning is lost, however, because of the double standards of the true Israelis who have announced that they are living in the era of post-Zionism (which in simple terms implies that they have already built their own state the way they wanted it to be). In the meantime, it is suggested that repatriatesand immigrants should continue living in the Zionist era, where they should demonstrate creative enthusiasm and their belief in the ideals of the founding fathers.

We all know quite well what this state looks like in the “post-Zionist era”: it took only a couple of decades to build a deeply divided society with a bunch of fat cats wallowing in luxury, and masses of hard working people barely making ends meet. This is a self-indulgent and vulgar society, steeped in a culture of corruption and shady deals. It is not a society where everybody enjoys equal rights. To the contrary, the privileged few benefit from the laws created specifically for them, as for ordinary law-abiding citizens, their rights are cynically violated. This is a society, which has raised a large contingent of the population as worthless, useless drains on their country’s public resources, people who do not contribute anything in return.

If Israel were an ordinary state, we could just say: “Well, we have to accept the fact that people aren’t perfect; they are certainly far from being angels. Israel is not the only country in the world where social inequality exists, where there is embezzlement of public funds and where injustice often prevails.

The point is that Israel is not an ordinary state.

This state was established by the Jewish nation, which was denied the right to its own state for 2000 years. Jews returned from the Diaspora inspired by the idea that they would be united once again in the state they would built by themselves on the basis of their shared value system.

The failure to match this ideal model with its implementation is fraught with unpleasant consequences. Anyone could arrive at the logical conclusion verbalized by Avrum Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset and presently a French citizen. Burg said that this whole experiment with the restoration of the Jewish state did not make any sense. He said that we have made a mistake; we are not able to have a state of our own. All we have done is restore a shtetl (actually, Burg called it a ghetto).

Burg is undoubtedly right when he applies the word ghetto to the Jewish state. However, the Jews did not make a mistake when they came back to the land of their ancestors. They made a mistake in how they chose to restore their state, in replacing Aliyahwith repatriation and immigration.

The essence of the problem becomes clear when we examine how Israeli culture took shape based on the Hebrew language.

There is no doubt that language is the basis of any national culture and that Hebrew is the native language of the Jewish people.

However, the culture of Hebrew in Biblical times has very little to do with modern civilization and a modern state. For that reason, the founding fathers of Israel, while restoring Hebrew, had to introduce a multitude of new words, obviously not needed by previous generations who lived within the confines of Jewish communities.

The Jews would have never been able to lead and active, full life in their rebuilt state if not for the tremendous work the founding fathers had accomplished for them.

The Jews have easily adopted Hebrew as their native language, which is more than a miracle. It is compelling proof of the innate connection between the Jews and the language of the Scriptures. This connection proved to be extremely strong 2000 years later.

Nevertheless, Hebrew does not have something that other languages do –languages of those nations, which reached the level of modern civilization in a gradual and natural manner. Such languages continually accumulated cultural experience, developing their own system of cultural codes. With time, they amassed a powerful energy felt by all those who spoke the same language.

Hebrew as a language is quite different in this respect. For 2000 years Jews were dispersed among other nations, so the Jewish people developed by adjusting and using the cultural experience of their host nations.

Naturally, this experience was expressed in the language of these host nations.

If modern Israel was fortunate enough to have a genuinely creative elite it would be able to process and take a broad view of the experience (that actually reflects the experience of all mankind), which the olim bring with them to the Promised Land after 2000 years of life in the Diaspora. Instead, the elite blindly copies the experience, utterly unacceptable for the Jewish people, of other nations which bring over immigrants and repatriates.

If Israel had a genuinely creative elite, it would have realized that the founding fathers made only the first step in restoring the Jewish state. They restored Hebrew as its national language. As for the generations that came after them, they had to address another highly meaningful goal - to utilize the cultural experience accumulated while living among other nations in an appropriate way in their own land.

This experience is quite unique, because Jews coming from different countries differ from each other as do the people of the host nations. Therefore, bringing this kind of experience into the new environment of building a state of your own – is a gradual process. It is a subtle and intimate process that requires patience, and what’s most important, everything that many generations of Jews acquired over centuries of living among other nations should be handled with care and respect. This is a formidable goal, which can only be achieved by unleashing the people’s creative energies and searching for new ways and unique ideas that were never before explored.

A multilingual society is absolutely essential to cope with such a monumental task, provided that it was the norm for Jews even before their life in Diaspora.

But the true Israelis, who imagine themselves to be a new breed of supermen, the only ones to represent all the people and know all the answers, chose a different path. They used Hebrew as the basis for the entire Israeli culture, claiming this culture to be self-sufficient. As the result, the culture they created has meaning for them alone but otherwise does not make much sense.

This shift to the Hebrew language became a case of adoption in Israel. It allowed to classify everything the Jews brought with them from the Diaspora as belonging to Israeli culture.

But this is absurd.

The fact that highly professional scientists came to Israel and succeeded in their field, is not enough for Israel and its science to take credit for that even if all these scientists speak Hebrew. It’s not an achievement of Israeli culture that Israel now has a great symphony orchestra from Germany, with most of the musicians being graduates from the best Russian conservatories. And, finally, the athletes that made Aliyah to Israel and contributed substantially to Israel’s success at international competitions were not born and trained in Israel. Their great performance cannot, strictly speaking, be viewed as achievements of Israeli sport.

None of these brilliant scientists, talented musicians and gifted athletes were produced on Israeli soil. All their achievements are the result of a long process of development that took place while they lived among the European nations, which created their culture independently, including the political culture of those countries that attract immigrants.

Though the Jews were attracted by European culture earlier than any other non-Europeans, they got the opportunity to become its part considerably later, after their emancipation. Thanks to emancipation, the Jews could join this culture, acquaint themselves with its values, receive an education and acquire certain work skills, ultimately immersing themselves in the atmosphere of this particular culture.

That is why it is so important to understand and appreciate what a great heritage we received from other nations because our own native soil did not prove to be particularly fertile in this respect.

We must admit that even Israeli literature in Hebrew and the Israeli theater, also in Hebrew, did not fully result from the natural development of the Jewish national experience but rather from translations into Hebrew and using foreign cultural experience. This should not come as a surprise to the true Israelis. On the contrary, they are well aware that Israeli literature and the Israeli theatre would have never existed without Russian literature and the Russian theatre.

What they don’t understand is that in view of the questionable origins of Israeli culture any substitution of Aliyahwith immigration and repatriation has grave consequences. The fact that the Jews of the Diaspora were so strongly influenced and inspired by European culture that they decided to create a similar culture based on the revived Hebrew language doesn’t make it genuinely Israeli culture, which has meaning and value for the entire nation. No, only a certain part of Jews in Israel experienced this admiration for European culture.

If Aliyah were not replaced with immigration and repatriation, the people of Israel would have the opportunity to gradually develop a genuinely national Israeli culture – a concept embracing the experience of all the Jews who now live in a totally new environment.

The Jews have acquired enough experience to confront a goal of such importance and magnitude.

Learning from the parallel experience of Jews in the 20th century might be very helpful in this respect.

While the true Israelis were making their first steps in building their own state, another part of the Jewish people, confined behind the Iron Curtain, was going through a unique test, not known in Jewish history. The Jews of the former Soviet Union managed to develop and attain a completely new kind of national self-identity outside the boundaries of the Jewish community with its traditional Judaic values.

This remarkable phenomenon is worthy of serious analysis within the entire concept of national experience, because experience is the very essence on which the formation of culture is based. Orthodox Jewish culture for which the Jewish people have not found an adequate substitute drew upon the experience of life in the Diaspora.

Assuming that they represent the “title nation”, the true Israelis lost interest in any other experience but their own. Consequently, they ignore all other experience as insignificant.

This narrow-minded way of thinking separates the true Israelis from the cultural environment in which the founding fathers were raised. At the same time, their own environment is so restricted that they cannot develop any kind of experience that could be meaningful to the Jewish people, to say nothing of other nations.

This explains the “ghetto” effect, which caused Mr. Avrum Burg to flee to Europe in search of a real, not artificial “culture”.

The small-mindedness of the true Israelis condemned them to estrangement from their own people, because they narrowed down national experience to their own attitudes, emotions and vulnerabilities, and their own memories and associations. This interpretation of national experience turned out to be alien to the Jewish people.

Little is left of the original willingness of all olim to recognize the cultural experience of the true Israelis as the basis of the entire people’s experience. More and more Jewish Israelis, to say nothing of non-Jewish Israeli citizens attempt to find their own formula in life, and to develop their own sense of self-identity that makes it possible for them to oppose themselves to the true Israelis.

This is the reason behind the appearance of various groups in society, which exhibit waning mutual interest and exist parallel to one another.

Such a development is tantamount to a death warrant against the elite. The elite no longer understands what is happening in society. Many members of society perceive its declarations and actions as being utterly devoid of meaning. It appears that even the true Israelis themselves no longer fully understand what they are saying or doing.

One such example is the cult of mourning that has grown up around the death of Yitzhak Rabin, which begs comparison with the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow.

Rabin’s assassination shocked Israeli society to its core. The true Israelis were particularly traumatized by the Prime Minister’s tragic death. Rabin was the first “sabra” (native-born) Prime Minister (all the Prime Ministers before him were born in the Diaspora). This fact was always emphasized in respect to him personally and to his family who were held in high esteem as members of the hereditary elite of true Israelis.

It is obvious that the Oslo conspirators used Rabin’s assassination to crush everyone who opposed his mythical “peace process”.  The methods they employ by perpetuating the cult of mourning is quite familiar to former Soviet Jews who were subjected to ideological terror in their native country. Former Soviet citizens know in reality, not from hearsay, how the image of “the enemy of the people” was inculcated deep in the minds and hearts of Soviet citizens and how those whose only crime was their disagreement with the ideology of the ruling Communist party were forced to publicly confess their guilt.

However, the cult of mourning that has grown up around the Prime Minister’s death encompasses also “Rabin’s legacy”. No one can explain precisely what this legacy presents. Schoolchildren are mandated to study “Rabin’s legacy”. However, it is hopeless to question them about it because the “legacy” is limited to a study of Yitzhak Rabin’s biography (“you must know what an amazing guy he was”) and the declaration of slogans, such as, “Let there be peace on Earth.”

It is scary to think of the actual impact of “Rabin’s legacy” on the life of the Israeli people: blown-up buses, weapons provided to our potential murderers who are building their own army in front of our eyes and the reality Kassam rockets routinely shelling Sderot and neighboring settlements. But the most frightening of all is the demoralization of the population which feels doomed and prepares itself for the unavoidable catastrophic outcome.

“Mr. Bitahon,” (“Mr. Security”), as the people referred to Rabin before he initiated “the peace process”, could not have left the Israelis with such a “legacy”. He certainly did not intend anything of this sort because “Rabin’s legacy” does not really exist.

It is generally recognized that Rabin was not much of an intellectual, that the Oslo conspirators presented these developments to him as irreversible, that he was brainwashed by “political technologists” and befuddled by writers who saw themselves as great thinkers. Acting in concert, they transformed “Mr. Bitahon” into a “dove of peace”. (This explains the steady rumors that it was not Yigal Amir who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin but Oslo supporters who conspired to kill him when “Mr. Bitahon” changed his mind and decided to reject the suicidal Oslo Accords.)

Despite evidence to the contrary, the true Israelis continue to believe in the existence of “Rabin’s legacy”, which holds the promise of long-awaited peace. They believe this myth because have been comfortably living in a virtual world for years, distancing themselves not only from their people but from reality as well.

When they rally together, thetrue Israelis rhythmically chant slogans, which electrify them, propelling them into an ecstatic state. They listen to the speakers from among their ranks, believing without a shadow of a doubt that the slogans they aim at the crowd will definitely transform reality, and they are puzzled when this does not happen.

In the beginning of the 20thcentury, the speeches of various dictators captivated audiences and slogans “let there be peace on Earth”, “Communism is our goal,” “death to Trotskyites,” “Deutchland über Alles,” and the like had a similarly hypnotic, dominating effect.

But mankind has matured since then. This is true at least of those who actually witnessed this horror happening.

Regretfully, the true Israelis continue to remain in the early 20th century.

Imprisoned by their own cultural experience, they failed to understand that the limitations of this experience atrophied their ability to perceive reality adequately.

Despite this clearly expressed inadequacy, the true Israelis are convinced without a shadow of a doubt that they embody the most positive qualities of the Jewish people and are free of all the negative ones. Thus, the true Israelis see themselves as the Jewish people’s natural leaders, believing that Jews in the Diaspora who could not possibly match their level of perfection.

The problem is that their “leadership” has only worsened the situation in Israel, which is already dealing with heightened security concerns.

In their role as leaders, the true Israelis take leadership in areas they know nothing about. In the meantime, the olim who arrive to Israel from advanced counties bring with them different types of experience in various areas of science and technology, in art and education – all this is experience with which the true Israelis are unfamiliar for natural reasons.

This makes the situation in Israel different from the one in countries, which bring over immigrants and repatriates: the British, the French, the Germans, etc. are self-sufficient as creators of their own cultural experience.

The situation comes across as particularly ridiculous when management responsibilities are delegated to people who came to Israel from counties without advanced economies and became familiar with modern civilization through the leadership of Jews who arrived years earlier from the shtetls of Russia’s “Pale of Settlement”. These managers are included among the true Israelis but hold positions of lesser power because their grandfathers and grandmothers were not involved in building Tel Aviv. They take it upon themselves to instruct the new olim, though they are completely incapable of understanding their qualifications and true worth, since they cannot even imagine the level of civilization attained by Diaspora Jews in the most advanced countries of the world.

Their own professional credentials for management positions are quite “impressive” – they … speak Hebrew. What exactly they are saying in Hebrew is of secondary importance.

Those staunch advocates of the Hebrew language feel that they are following in the footsteps of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who devoted his life’s work to the revival of Hebrew as a reborn spoken language. In his time the slogan “one nation – one language” was indeed of major practical importance.

What does any of this have to do with the true Israelis, however?

Were they the ones who preserved the Hebrew language for 2000 years? Of course not. It was the Jewish people who preserved their own language, and it was the people who revived it. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda could not have done anything if the Jewish people rejected it. There is no indication that the people have changed their minds.

Indeed, it was the Diaspora Jews, not the true Israelis, who revived the Hebrew language. Jews in the Diaspora experienced a deep trauma when they compared the cultural development of the European peoples and their own cultural stagnation in the traditional ghetto. As for Jews living behind the Iron Curtain, they began to revive Hebrew in the underground, because instruction in this language was outlawed by the regime. They clearly did that without the leadership of the true Israelis.

Only a Diaspora Jew is capable of understanding all these circumstances. They are incomprehensible for a true Israeli who quite naturally begins to speak

Hebrew when he is still a toddler.

Have the true Israelis developed the Hebrew language? I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have heard many times from people who are that Hebrew has become much more primitive. Could it be otherwise, considering that language always reflects cultural experience?

The point is that the issue of the Hebrew language is not a language issue at all – it is an issue of power and power alone.

The true Israelis have more than enough reasons to lay claim to positions of power: one of them is a friend of the mayor or belong to the same party, another belongs to a well-respected family, and still another is a former general who has no doubt that his military experience allows him to show leadership in any field.

The formation of a ruling elite on this basis is a genuine disaster for the state. However, once we come to understand how the elite takes shape, we need not wonder why all normal countries try to bring over qualified professionals, whereas in Israel such professionals are “retrained” to do manual work.   The true Israelis assert that the transformation of engineers, scientists and teachers into janitors and security men is inevitable as a condition of immigrationand repatriation. They claim that immigrants have language problems, difficulties with adapting to another mentality, etc., in any country.

Yes, immigrants do indeed have to deal with these problems. But the country which opened its doors to the immigrant does not really need him, since its people are self-sufficient. If the immigrant fails to build a life for himself in this new environment, it is his personal problem, perhaps even a tragedy.

In Israel, however, it becomes a tragedy for the entire people, because unrepeatable experience dies together with this oleh, experience which the people of Israel never possessed and for which they have no other source.

The Hebrew-speaking elite is incapable of amassing new experience because all it has ever done is use the experience of others. That is why it has serious problems when it lays claim to power. These problems were exacerbated after the arrival of the million-strong Aliyah from a country, which used to be a superpower. These new olim – for the most part highly educated people – complicated matters. The result was a sudden boom: managers and Knesset members hurried to obtain diplomas verifying their expertise in political science, sociology or any other speech communication discipline.

A close look at two ministries demonstrates how all this affects the life of the true Israelis.

Let us start with the Ministry of Science, Technology, Culture and Sports. Everything that the true Israelis see as having little value and no immediate relevance to them, i.e., science, technology, culture and sports, has been placed under the roof of this one, not particularly prestigious department.

Of course, how could the Ministry of Science, Technology, Culture and Sports compare, let us say, with the Ministry of Finances that has real levers of power and influence?!

However, these areas in which the Israelis don’t have any significant

experience require a very special approach, a special leadership, “crowned thinkers,” if you will. But in order to recognize their importance, one has to understand that the Jewish people are going through a unique process called kibbutz galuyot – ingathering of exiles.

Nevertheless, only second-ranking officials were always placed in

charge of this Department. They were offered this opportunity “to put to use their leadership skills” after the departments which “really mattered” were divided between prominent politicians.

A recent development was the appointment of an Arab as Minister of Science, Technology, Culture and Sports. It is a strange choice to make considering that the Arabs deal with their own unresolved problem of self-identity within the Israeli society. So it appears very unlikely that a non-Jewish minister would thoughtfully approach the specifically Jewish problem of kibbutz galuyot. And frankly speaking, nobody expects him to do that since even the true Israelis don’t see this problem as something demanding their undivided attention.

Another factor worthy of mention is that this Minister of Science, Technology, Culture and Sports doesn’t even have a higher education. He was selected for this position not because of his merits but because his party leader was trying to increase his chances with other Arab Knesset members in the Labor party. Yes, we are talking about Mr. Amir Peretz, the trade union boss who later became Israel’s Defense Minister as the result of negotiations in the coalition government. His disgraceful performance as  Minister of Defense during the Second Lebanon War revealed a great deal of incompetence.

Another example of a Ministry, which enjoys similar prestige or rather absence of the above, is the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and Galilee. It’s hard to believe that there is a Ministry of this kind in a country the size of New Jersey and has a population of less than 7 million!

So what are the successes this Ministry reports? None whatsoever. People are fleeing from these areas, and this tendency will continue since the true Israelis have not offered any ingenious solutions to deal with this problem. Pinning their hopes on trivial financial benefits, they offered people additional subsidies and decreased mortgage rates.

But the main reason why people are leaving the Negev and Galilee is the Israeli culture, or, to be precise, its absence, provided that we interpret culture as a concept of life, not just a series of novels and guides written in Hebrew.

This is the fundamental difference between the traditional Jewish culture and the one based exclusively on the Hebrew language. It took centuries for the Jewish people to build and develop their own traditional culture that helped each of them not only to create their own microcosm in any environment but also to organize a rich and varied cultural life.

The knowledge, skills and customs of the traditional Jewish culture were passed on from generation to generation. Thanks to that Jews always knew and cherished their system of values, they knew how to behave, how to bring up their children, how to spend their leisure time, and how to take care of each other. In other words, they knew everything needed to feel self-sufficient. That is why the Orthodox community is not tempted to flee anywhere today; quite the opposite, they stay to build new settlements.

Those Israelis who abandoned this traditional culture in favor of the so-called “Israeli culture” don’t have any of that. All the true Israelis can offer them as some semblance of “culture” is an array of programs and activity groups at the Cultural Center. Not surprisingly, when the population in the outlying areas has access only to such “culture”, people begin to feel disadvantaged and marginalized to the sidelines of civilization. As the result, they move in droves to Tel Aviv, the heart of this “culture”, thus forming what is becoming known as the “Tel Aviv state”, which couldn’t care less about Galilee or the Negev.

Only the true Israelis could create such an artificial body as the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and Galilee because they don’t understand what a real state is, how it functions and the essence of the people of this state.

The true Israelis think and act accordingly as inadequate people who sincerely believe that their state is a sort of gift which their Mommy and Daddy gave them for their birthday.

The founding fathers of Israel were convinced that a spiritual center would emerge in the Promised Land, which will become a magnet for the dispersed Jewish people. Quite the opposite happened, though: the people felt a magnetic pull but it took them on a reverse course.

There is hardly a place in the world today where one would not find true Israelis. Remarkably, many of them became more successful than ever after they left Israel and settled in a normal cultural environment.

It goes without saying that this mass exodus from Israel back into the Diaspora has a devastating effect on Zionist ideals. Even so, we continue to hear that messengers of the Jewish state are reaching every corner of the world in an effort to improve Jewish education and act as mentors to Diaspora Jews.

How did the true Israelis end up as the Jewish people’s teachers and mentors?

Do they really have an understanding of what “Jewish education” means?

The point is that the true Israelis do not have the slightest idea about the true essence of Jewish education, since it is a most complicated issue for a nation that spent 2,000 years living among other nations.

Education and mentoring comprise a special area where the people reproduce themselves according to life’s demands. But life in an independent state places entirely different demands on the people compared to those made upon them in the traditional Jewish community both in the past and present.

Jews in the traditional Jewish community didn’t have to be told what “Jewish education” meant. It meant attending a traditional heder and yeshiva, studying the Talmud and other sacred texts. But this represents the overall heritage of the Jewish people, and the true Israelis have as much to do with this heritage as any other Jews. So the people do not need the help of the true Israelis when it comes to the issue of traditional education and upbringing.

Then perhaps the true Israelis have in mind the study and understanding of Jewish history when they refer to the issue of “Jewish education”? Taking into account the unique destiny of a nation, which had been dispersed among all world nations and returned after 2,000 years to the land of its ancestors, history is bound to be considered one of the basic sciences. No “Jewish education” could be viable without the most profound study of Jewish history.

However, the true Israelis were unable to ensure that the population of their own country has a sufficient knowledge of Jewish history: most Israelis are confused even when asked about events that took place after the creation of the state. It is not surprising, therefore, that the true Israelis listed among true “intellectuals” Shimon Peres who announced that there is no need at all to study history because the shape of Cleopatra’s nose it of no importance to anyone.

Maybe “Jewish education” is viewed as the study of the natural and exact sciences? The Jewish people have always felt a special pride in the accomplishments of recent generations of Jews in these areas, and meticulously calculate the percentage of Jewish blood in every Nobel Prize Winner.

Incidentally, the Jews behind the “iron curtain” had just such a perception of “Jewish education”. That is why immediately upon its arrival to Israel the Great Aliyah enthusiastically started to recreate the system of math and physics schools, traditionally popular among the Jews in their country of origin. Apart from all else, such “Jewish education” secured an advanced status to that country.

But Israel’s Ministry of Education bristled up and made every effort to kill this initiative by former Soviet citizens declaring that math and physics schools are “at odds with Israeli realities”. The results are already apparent: the true Israelis made shop assistants out of the children of the Great Aliyah, returning them to the occupations of their grandparents. These are the very children whose parents went out of their way for their offspring to receive a good “Jewish education”, becoming enrolled at the Department of Mathematics and Physics at some prestigious university.

So how did it happen that the true Israelis took upon themselves the role of experts in “Jewish education”? Probably the same way that they took upon themselves the role of experts in “Jewish mentorship”.

Only inadequate people could imagine themselves to be capable of mentoring Jews in the Diaspora, when in their own country they successfully managed to bring young Israelis to levels of such depraved behavior that some hotels around the world have posted a notice: “Israelis not welcome”. It is not because the people who work there are anti-Semitic, but because they have learned about “Israeli upbringing” from their own experience, witnessing Israelis demonstrate impudence, rudeness and arrogance, and their proclivity to vandalism.

Recently, some demands have been voiced to discontinue the traditional trips to visit the sites of the destruction of European Jewry at concentration camps in Poland. The stated reason was the same – the depraved behavior of young Israeli visitors.

So how could those who so badly messed up the young people in their own country imagine themselves to be the mentors of world Jewry?

This inadequate behavior of the true Israelis in respect to Diaspora Jews at times created anecdotal situations. During his visit to Russia, the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to express his concern about the fate of the oligarch Khodorkovsky to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He voiced his opinion only proceeding from the fact that the oligarch’s father was Jewish. The Israeli “Russians” found such behavior by the self-proclaimed Father of the nation laughable to say the least.

However, it is not even about Sharon, but more about the paternalistic attitude the true Israelis have adopted toward world Jewry.

“The chic fancies that it has given birth to the mother hen and taught the rooster to crow!”

Only inadequate people can be so deluded and unable to understand that reality is nothing like what they imagine it to be.

This inadequacy also determines the conduct of the true Israelis in the international sphere. That is why those who try to find logic in their behavior are never able to see it.

The founding fathers nurtured the true Israelis within the system of ideas that emerged following the bankruptcy of Marxist materialism. That is why they are utterly incapable of recognizing the role religion plays in history or understanding the logic behind political processes determined by religious beliefs. Unsurprisingly, the emergence of HAMAS in the South and “Hizbollah” in the North came as a total surprise to them.

They grew up in the pampered conditions of a national state and never experienced the shock-like effect of anti-Semitism. That is why they continue to believe that the “Jewish question” is bound to disappear with the creation of the Jewish state. They cannot even imagine that in the new conditions of statehood the “Jewish question” surfaced at a new level, unknown to previous generations.

They believe in the possibility of resolving the problem of the Jewish state’s existence through international agreements, never giving a thought to the fact that the return of the Jews to the Promised Land after their 2,000 years in exile unavoidably leads to a crisis of world religions, whose doctrines are founded on the impossibility of this return.

These are very real issues but the true Israelis cannot see them because they live in a world of their imagination. Their inadequacy in the international sphere is so stark that even some among them have begun to comment upon it. Netanyahu stated, for instance, that by agreeing to the peace conference in Annapolis Olmert demonstrated that he was living in a virtual world. The problem is that Netanyahu himself also lives in the same virtual world.

Obviously, there is no need to resort to mysticism when trying to figure out why there are no more leaders left in Israel.

As one follows the way of thinking of Israeli politicians and the actions they take it becomes clear that they all have some kind of a shared intrinsic problem, as the result of which the change in leadership practically does not have any visible impact on anything. This makes total sense logically speaking: whatever personal potential a true Israeli may naturally possess, he is doomed to carry with him the intrinsic traits of the population to which he belongs – insufficient civilization developmentand inadequacy.

There is absolutely no doubt that the people in power in Israel today have tremendous potential. Their individual qualities are just as good as everybody else’s, probably better, since they have a more forceful personality. In any case, they are outstanding people because they agree to carry the burden of problems not of their own making. It was the Jewish nation itself which created these problems when it replaced the notion of Aliyah with immigration and repatriation, and in doing so, determined the development of an unviable society in Israel.

Once in a while we hear voices in the Israeli street urging the Prime Minister to resign: “Go home, we’ll elect another Premier.” Let us stop for a minute and think: “So what is going to happen if everyone who is willing to carry the burden of this state on their shoulders do indeed go home?”

It’s a no-win situation. There is really no one to choose.

In other words, as soon as we sort out the issue of use of terminology everything falls into place. Things that were incomprehensible and hidden from sight become obvious and comprehensible.

This is true not only of the vitally important issue of why there are no more leaders left in Israel but also of other equally critical matters.

– We simply can’t miss this opportunity, – I tell my husband. – There are lots of plays we could see, but where and when will be able to attend a Torah lesson?

 

My husband is shocked. He is interested in the play while I’m seeking Jewish wisdom.

 

Each side puts forward its arguments.

 

I stand my ground, like the 300 Spartans: I want Jewish wisdom and nothing else from this life. I deploy the usual threats of a woman: “So what? What do I care! I’m not even asking you to come with. I’ll go on my own.”

 

This my knight in shining armor could not allow.

 

We’re not speaking to each other. We leave the hotel in silence – in silence we drag ourselves through the whole city. On the outskirts, amidst the grim new Moscow developments, we find the building that looks like every other building, and in it the apartment that’s just like the apartments of all the neighbors.

 

We go inside. We are warmly welcomed. Yes, they confirm, this is the place where Jews are going to study the Torah. Where? In this room here.

 

I enter the room. It’s very neat. The air is fresh. The atmosphere is calm. In the center of the room, there is a table with a white tablecloth. Books are lying on it. I come up to the table and open the first one I see.

 

So this is what Jewish wisdom looks like! Pretty confusing is what it looks like. In the center, something is written in big letters, then all around, the writing is in small letters, and for some reason, different passages appear in different fonts.

 

What does it all mean? I’ll find out soon enough.

 

Finally, the regular participants arrived.

 

Just your ordinary intellectual Jewish guys from Moscow, who get used from their early days to talking with the mannerisms of elderly professors. They’ve changed, of course. All have grown beards, put kippas on their heads, and all of a sudden, though with those same mannerisms, started addressing each other as “Reb so-and-so.”

 

Having looked them over, I turned my attention to the books. And suddenly, I hear the host say:

 

– I’m afraid you will have to leave.

 

I started looking around me. Someone said something? Someone was talking to someone else?

 

– Yes, I’m talking to you. Please leave the room.

 

The host is looking me right in the eye while saying these words. What does he mean? I reacted to his request as a person completely convinced that someone is playing a joke on him.

 

That they weren’t kidding only became clear to me when the host physically pushed me out of the room, and then slammed the door in my face.

 

Contrary to my expectations, my husband didn’t rush to help me. He silently watched as I was being expelled. How dare he?!

 

I could surmise the reason for his behavior from the bitingly ironic glance I saw on his face during those last seconds of my brief stay in the sanctuary of Jewish wisdom: “Well, well? Seems like you got exactly what you fought for. Needless to say, no one would have thrown you out of the theater.”

 

I found myself on the women’s side, separated from Jewish wisdom by a locked door.

 

The ladies also looked at me with irony, as if to say: get used to it, honey, to the “proper” life. Forget about women’s emancipation and the International Women’s Day.

 

– Morons, all of them! In my heart of hearts, I called them all dirty names and retired to the kitchen, where I smoked cigarettes non-stop for the entire duration of the lesson.

 

 

Finally, the door opened. My husband came out of the room where he was imbibing Jewish wisdom without me, along with the other men. A few minutes later, we were energetically walking toward the subway…

 

My husband is ominously silent. And then, all of a sudden, I hear his voice through the blizzard, as though at a distance.

 

– I think I asked them a perfectly normal question: how do you who the father of the cats is?

 

–What??? What cats?

 

Later we found out that our “sages” really were discussing the issue of cats. But they discussed such a wide array of questions during their sessions that the likelihood of stumbling upon them when they were dealing with the cats was infinitesimally small. We were just “lucky.”

 

What a mess! The one time, we had a chance to partake of Jewish wisdom, and what happened? I was thrown out the door, and my husband took part in discussing, what the breed of a cat’s father should be so that she would be considered “kosher” – black or white.

 

It’s true, one cannot know all the paths to Jewish happiness.

 

But I don’t think the evening was a total loss. I got my share of wisdom after all.

 

When the wise Moscow “sages” joined the women, I immediately approached the host.

– Fine. You threw me out of the room. Perhaps you could at least explain the point of doing so?

 

So he explained.

 

– You see, a Woman, by her very nature, is closer to G-d. She grasps the answers from the start. In order to attain wisdom, a man must make real efforts. Studying the Torah helps a man to come closer to G-d, to refine his thoughts. Just imagine what would happen if a woman got her hands on such a weapon? Who could ever make peace with her?!

 

In the years to come, I heard many explanations for the status of women in traditional Jewish culture. Perhaps, the last phrase of this man who wronged me is his own personal opinion on the topic, though it’s more likely that it’s the opinion of some authorities.

 

I just think that it’s in his last phrase that the real Jewish wisdom is contained. Finally, I understood why our world is such a miserable place: the rules of the game in it are determined by those who are too far from G-d.

Let’s say, we heard on “Kol Israel” (the Voice of Israel) the following statement: “In our small country we don’t have a wealth of natural resources – the greatest treasure we have are our Jewish minds.” The next instant our imagination created a recognizable picture of how Jewish brains were being cultivated by Israeli society: we visualized in our mind’s how bright little children with biblical eyes check out endless library shelves, and scientists, acting as mentors, reveal to their young prodigies the mysteries of the scientific world. Or, let’s say, we read in the “Israel Today” magazine about some ecologically clean manufacturing plant, and our heart is filled with joy – isn’t it wonderful that there is such a country, a country that values life and people’s health, and takes good care of the environment. We felt particularly proud to know that this country was Israel, the Jewish state!

It wasn’t just us, mind you… I remember a short news brief about Anatoly Dobrynin, a long-time diplomat and Soviet Ambassador to Washington who, unlike the rest of us in the Soviet Union, was not a stranger to life on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Even so, his responses were similar to ours. According to a newspaper report, he often bought Kosher food because he believed that something certified as “Jewish” was synonymous with “high-quality and healthy eating”. Many Jews from Western countries who visited Israel or lived there for a while felt the same way.

There is probably nothing surprising about it. It’s quite logical to assume that over its centuries of torturous exile this ancient, scholarly and eternal nation had learned to infuse the solemn words of its prayers and the wisdom of its special Jewish world view into the mundane realities of everyday life. Such a belief is clearly justified, considering that Moses himself addressed the following parting words to the Jews:

“For this commandment which I command you this day, is not concealed from you, nor is it far away. It is not in heaven… Rather, [this] thing is very close to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it.”

2

Alas, it was already after our arrival to our own state that we were forced to admit that the penchant for complex rhetoric does not guarantee the ability to act in accordance with professed principles, not even in a people with 2,000 years of experience. And the things that are being presented to us as the Torah are to be sought in heaven and cannot be found here on earth.

Sadly, a person is once again reminded of this when thinking of how much the proclaimed truth of “the sanctity of human life” has became twisted in Israeli reality.

And still, one would like to think that life’s sanctity is not only meant to be discussed behind the walls of synagogues and yeshivas but that this belief is also reflected in people’s concrete actions.

It is acceptable, in Torah’s name, to explain to folks that they must open bottles of Coke before the beginning of Shabbat so that they show proper regard for the sanctity of this special day. So why, in the name of the Torah, can’t we teach people, let’s say, not to change lanes suddenly while speeding on a highway, to use turn signals to indicate a turn and to cross the streets only at designated pedestrian crossings? We must realize that all grandiose words about the sanctity of human life lose their meaning when these simple rules are violated because such violations could result in a person’s death.

At this point we are likely to be rebuffed… We will hear another comment – something our Jewish sages are apt to do – that will venture to explain the specific behavioral characteristics of the Jewish Orthodox who frequently act in ways which conflict with the high principles of the Torah. The most tested method would be to justify this by asserting that various “not real Jews” have imposed upon “real” Jews (meaning the Orthodox) a whole lot of problems which have no relation whatsoever to the Torah, and now the Orthodox are, sadly, being distracted from their holy work to waste their time on all sorts of nonsense.

Since that is the case, one wouldn’t be amiss to look back at the not so distant past to become convinced that the rift between theory and practice has been a flaw of ours for quite some time. As an example, let’s examine the conduct of our Orthodox Jews at a time when the “not real Jews” could not have been in the way of “the holy life of the righteous”.

3

Imagine for a second that you are in Holy Jerusalem, let’s say, about 150 years ago, that is, in the mid-nineteenth century. As my esteemed reader has probably guessed, there was nobody but “real” Jews in those days, since all the Jews lived a traditional Orthodox lifestyle and studied the Torah. As for Jerusalem, its Jews were “super-real”, because that was their one and only occupation – such was the condition put forward in the famous system of “Haluka”.

“Haluka” was a system of charitable donations from the Jewish Diaspora community meant to support those Jews who intended to settle in Eretz Yizrael. The idea was originally clear and simple: the Jewish land had been robbed and reduced to shambles; living conditions there were intolerably hard, and so long as the Jews of the Diaspora would like to maintain a permanent Jewish presence in the land of their forefathers, they should support those who settle in the Promised Land and who take upon themselves the very real burdens of such a life. Diaspora Jews collected funds designated for that purpose, delivered them to Eretz Yizrael and divided them among the local Jews. That’s where the word “haluka”, or charity distribution money, came from.

But in the early 19th century the Jews of Holland and Germany presented a series of new ideas – Eretz Yizrael must become the central point of Jewish scholarship, and for this to happen financial support should be limited to those who fully dedicate their lives to Torah study. It was more than simple economics. Receiving financial aid from the Jews of Western Europe was now linked directly to complete rejection of any form of “productive”, “earthly” activities in favor of the sacred and holy undertaking of studying the Torah. In other words, from now on, those who don’t study, don’t eat. So those who naively assume that the task of widespread Torah study as the main activity of “real” Jews was given to Moshe Rabbeinu at Mt. Sinai are slightly off target. It is the Jews of Western Europe who did it, not the venerable sage, and this happened during the relatively recent past.

We can determine how this new ideology of “super-holiness” affected the Jews in Eretz Yizrael by analyzing the testimonials left by their contemporaries who had the opportunity to personally observe the life of Jerusalem residents. But even without these testimonials it isn’t hard to figure out what came of this “sacred” idea in reality. It resulted in mass poverty, widespread epidemics and deaths among the population.

Thomas Chaplin, a British physician who was working in Jerusalem, published an article in 1864 in the medical journal “The Lancet”, where he offered an analysis of the causes of the epidemic in the Holy City. In doing this, he described the way of life of the local Jewish population. Abraham Moshe Luntz, a scholar and researcher of Israel, published a book of his own in 1876 where he included entire passages from Chaplin’s article because it offered an objective picture of reality.

Among the causes behind the high mortality rate Chaplin singled out the absence of a material foundation and the people’s life style.

Of course, the material foundation in this devastated land couldn’t be anything but poor, which naturally led to high population density, inadequate nutrition, absence of warm clothing to protect people from the cold, and abominable sanitary conditions. But it is the people’s attitude to this intolerable situation that is most amazing. They demonstrated total indifference to one obvious fact: the ideas they were induced to believe – that productive work is somehow incompatible with their “sacred” work of Torah study – have turned into nothing all their discourse about “the sanctity of human life”. The point is that in such conditions people are altogether deprived of any ordinary, earthly human existence.

Chaplin described in his article how the issue of water supply, always a vital one for Israel, was resolved in those days. People would dig wells which filled with water during the rainy season. Normally, this kind of water can be safely used for drinking, Chaplin noted, and wells may provide a sufficient supply of water to satisfy the needs of the population. But the condition of the wells constantly needs checking – they must be cleaned on a regular basis of accumulated waste and insects. The “holy” Jerusalem residents, however, could not be burdened with such mundane tasks, so the wells were never maintained; the water became polluted and unsafe for drinking. With the beginning of the next rainy season the hazardous slush which had sunk to the bottom of the wells was covered with fresh water which instantly became contaminated. Was it surprising that this led to widespread epidemic? No wonder people were dying like flies if they perceived the Torah as the obligation to sit in yeshivas and not to get out and clean their wells of filth.

But it was not negligence toward the people’s living conditions alone that caused the high mortality rates among Jerusalem residents in the middle of the 19th century. Researches also pointed at early marriages as a serious cause of mortality.

Children entered into marriage at a very early age, out of the most “holy” considerations, of course. At the age of 13 a girl already became a mother. However, the outcome was often disastrous. In the words of Eliezer Ben-Ehuda, “…we wanted to obtain an early seed but we got one that couldn’t survive.” Most of the children died young and, frequently, so did the mothers.

This situation also created another problem – multiple divorces. The early age, at which the children got married, their inability to make independent decisions and the fact that some of these families remained childless destabilized these marriages and they frequently fell apart.

The census conducted since 1839 at the initiative of famous financier and philanthropist Moshe Montefiore presents a frightful picture: 70% of the families whose heads of family were 15 to 24 years old in 1839 didn’t have a single child. The average number of children in the families belonging to this category was 0.37 children per family. The Jewish population census conducted in 1866 revealed that 64% of families in this age group had no children, and the average number of children in these families was 0.45. The number of orphans was quite striking: 29% in 1839 and 24% in 1866. The birth rate during these years was quite high but human life was worth very little.

What kind of “brachot eladim” where the sages talking about?

Nevertheless, the population of Jerusalem continued to grow… How did this happen, you may ask? Thanks to the influx of newcomers. This is the way, it seems, that problems have long been resolved in the land of our forefathers. Due to the constant Aliyah it was possible to stay afloat: the local ones died but there were new ones coming.

The situation started to change noticeably only after the appearance in the Promised Land of those Jews who brought with them the fruits of education and emancipation, that is, the ones whose influence many of the Orthodox Jews tried to escape when they fled to Jerusalem from Europe. Construction work was begun beyond the city limits; hospitals were built, as well as general education and agricultural schools. As soon as the Jews began to get involved in these “unholy” undertakings there was an immediate population increase. In 1839 there were only 3,000 Jews in Jerusalem; in 1856 there were only 5,000 but in 1880 their number grew to 13,000. Then again, in 1895 the number of Jews increased to 28,000 and in 1914 to 45,000. We can see that the situation changed as soon as people appeared who took it upon themselves to bring the Torah from heaven down to earth.

4

I always recall these findings when hearing different variations of the “haluka” ideology being drummed into our ears: “real” Jews spend day and night studying the Torah, and it is they who implement the biblical commandment “pru u rvu” – “to be fruitful and multiply”. True enough, the system of “haluka” has put on different clothes nowadays: the money is being distributed in the form of salaries to members of religious councils and employees of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and as monthly payments from the community’s national insurance fund to “real” Jews and their families. These families have become used to the fact that their husbands and fathers are entrusted with the “sacred” duty to study the Torah and ensure the growth of the Jewish population, even though some 150 years ago it was precisely Torah study as its single occupation which has led to completely the opposite – nearly wiping out this population. It seems that present-day rabbis whose actual deeds we have the opportunity to observe have lost the main quality which has always distinguished genuine Jewish leaders – the sense of realism.

Over the past 200 years the rabbis have proved that they have no understanding of the challenges faced by Israeli Jews in our day and age. They have confirmed that the Torah of the rabbis is anywhere but not in our real life here on earth. They have provided such ample proof of this that it would have been impossible to cite all the examples.

It is sufficient to say that for the past 200 years the rabbis have not come forward with a single essential idea which would be capable of uniting the Jewish people and guiding them forward. Not a single generally accepted leader has emerged from their midst who would be capable of influencing Jewish history the way the “not real” Jew Theodore Herzl was able to do.

It is enough to remember the conduct of the rabbis on the eve of WWII, when Zeev Zhabotinsky rushed all over Europe trying to warn Jews about the imminent danger and urge them to emigrate as soon as possible, while at that same time the rabbis were telling the Jews to stay put and not go anywhere. “Isn’t Jewish life in Poland so wonderfully well organized?” the rabbis said. There was everything – yeshivas, synagogues, mikvas(Jewish ritual baths, – Translator’s note) and Kosher food. What else could a Jew possibly need to be a “real” Jew?”

Events of the more recent past have also contributed to this general picture, when the spiritual leader of the Shas Party (an Israeli political party representing mostly Haredi Sephardic Jews, – Translator’s note) came forward with the rabbinical ruling stating that “the sanctity of Jewish life is more important than the holiness of the land of Israel.” It was this ruling which has led the Israeli people into the bloodshed of Oslo. Some 1,100 Jews have already paid with their lives for this distorted interpretation of “the sanctity of life”.

That is why there is nothing surprising about the position the rabbis have taken on the issue of state subsidies for large families. They are completely ignoring the fact that their policy further encourages the incubator-style child-bearing abilities of the four wives of some sheikh, and that in the future this may put the rabbis themselves and their families in mortal danger – just like 150 years ago the rabbis were not concerned with the price their people had to pay for the flawed idea behind the “haluka”.

The most perilous consequence of the rabbis’ views on the problems posed by contemporary life is the impact they have on the Orthodox Jews in Israel. The story of Pnina Shoshan reported in the “Yediot Achronot” is a good example. The photo of this young Jewish woman who has a very large family was printed on the front page of the newspaper.

“I am a single mother now,” Pnina said. “Three years ago my husband and I got divorced. I have 10 children. My youngest is just one year old.”

“How is that possible?” you may ask. “How could her youngest child be a year old if she hasn’t been with her husband for three years?”

“My husband left because he couldn’t stand our family’s miserable financial situation any more,” Pnina explains. “A year ago we tried to get back together but it didn’t work. He left again – he really doesn’t have a choice.” (!?)

True enough, they produced one more child. (May he have many years of health and mazel till 120.)

But who has taught these entirely normal people to understand fairness and their own responsibility for their children in such a perverse way if it wasn’t their teachers who have long stopped showing any interest in the consequences of the truths they profess? But these consequences are apparent and quite obvious, which has been manifested with such clarity in Jerusalem during the mid-19th century.

5

Real life is the only true test for any ideology. This is what Moshe Rabbeinumeans when he says, “It is not in heaven.” The power of the Torah lies in its application to life’s realities.

We, Jews from the former Soviet Union, have experienced in our “prehistoric” homeland what awaits an ideology which fails to correspond to life’s reality. The socialists justified their own failures by claiming that it was the people who did a poor job of implementing their ideals. We now understand that it was the ideology itself that was at fault – nobody could turn its ideals into reality because they were absolutely not realizable.

But in our case the situation is quite different: as Jews we firmly believe that “the Eternal One of Israel does not lie” and that the Torah of Almighty G-d is truth. It means that in our case it is clearly the people who must have got everything confused. Because of their interpretation the Torah has not been on earth for a long time now.

It is not even in heaven really.

It is simply building castles in the air.

Does this not mean that it is time to ask the question: is the Torah of the rabbis the same Torah which Moshe Rabbeinu received from G-d at Mt. Sinai, or perhaps some sort of substitution has taken place?

It is a legitimate question, not one asked as a brazen act of defiance. All the more so, since Isaiah had predicted the possibility of a similar scenario in his prophesy:

“Because this people has come near; with their mouth and with their lips they honor Me, but their heart they draw far away from Me, and their fear of Me has become a command of people, which has been taught. Therefore, I will continue to perform obscurity to this people, obscurity upon obscurity, and the wisdom of his wise men shall be lost, and the understanding of his geniuses shall be hidden.”

(Isaiah 29:13, 14)

Sooner or later we will have to realize that the situation described by the Prophet is precisely the one that we are facing in Israel today. This is the reason behind the lack of cohesion between the realities of our life, and the high-sounding words, and the people’s hopes and expectations.

Sooner or later we will have to ask the question whether the Torah of the rabbis is the same one as the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu, because today, as never before, Israeli Jews are in need of fresh religious ideas that could lead us out of the impasse in which we have found ourselves.

However, as long as our faith continues to languish in the tenets of rabbinical demagoguery, we will continue to listen to endless discourses on the sanctity of human life, which will become transformed in reality into multiple deaths of Israelis on the country’s roads, an absence of purifiers at plants and factories, and insufficient protective gear for Israeli soldiers. We will hear talk about the cultivation of great Jewish minds, while in reality we will be dealing with the degradation of the Israeli system of education, and we will listen to lengthy tirades about honesty and justice, while we are being cheated in grocery stores and encounter endless disinformation presented in official reports that are typed in small print.

A glaring gap between words and deeds, manifestations of which are too many to be continuously ignored in the future – that is the consequence of a culture which has tried to convince us over many years that our Torah is in heaven...

It’s not really concerned with what is happening here, on earth.

Here are the problems:

1. Internal organization;

2. The place of the Jews among the peoples of the world; and

3. The religious evolution of the Jews.

1. The logic behind the changes in the principles of the Jewish people’s internal organization.

Over the course of its history, the Jewish nation has frequently been forced to reconsider the basic principles of its internal organization. And, in the past, it has always been equal to the task both in times when the Jews lived on their own territory and during periods when they were scattered among other nations.

The situation changed radically, however, at the beginning of the modern era. The development of human civilization has ushered in a new reality that is quite different from the old, familiar experiences of the Jewish people.

From its very onset, globalization instigated processes that have led to the destruction of all traditional societies. The first blow fell on European Jewry, who felt that the traditional unity of the Jewish people was in jeopardy.

This situation was caused by objective factors: the disparity in the development of the West and the East led to an unequal development of Jewish communities, some of which were dispersed among the peoples of the West, while others were scattered among the peoples of the East. Under these new conditions, Rabbinism, which had previously served to unite the people was no longer capable of carrying out this function. There is simply no longer a Rabbi who is capable of understanding the experience of the entire nation, as was the case in the early years of the Jews’ dispersal throughout the nations of the world.

The Rabbi has become fully transformed into the leader of a local community.

This disparity in the development of Jewish communities suggested to the people new forms of internal organization – the creation of national civic organizations, which took upon themselves the role of uniting the people. Thus, the emancipated Jews of France brought the European Enlightenment to the Jews of the East under the auspices of the single system, “Alliance Israelite Universelle,” while the emancipated Jews of Germany and other European countries brought with them notions of political unity seen through the prism of a Zionist organization.

With the creation of the Jewish state, this form of internal organization, too, stopped satisfying the needs of the people. And the reason is obvious.

The citizens of the state have taken upon themselves the responsibility for deciding many of its problems. Thus, the Jews of the diaspora find that they are extremely limited in their ability to participate in the processes that take place in Israeli society to the detriment of both the diaspora itself and Israeli society.

A new form of governance is needed that will allow the entire people, not just those who live on its territory, to participate in a meaningful way in the life of the state.

This new form is the “diaspora-metropolis” state.

2. What makes this new form of state, the “diaspora-metropolis,” so vital?

The “diaspora-metropolis” state is indispensable to the Jews for two reasons.

The first is internal, and is connected to the conditions of Jewish existence over 2000 years of life in the diaspora.

During these 2000 years, the Jewish people lived in profoundly communal ways. That is why the Jewish nation was only able to create its own state thanks to the cultural experience that the people borrowed from the advanced nations of Europe, i.e., scientific and technological achievements; an educational system; political paradigms, and the like.

The problem lies in the fact that all of this borrowed cultural capital, that is so indispensable to the development of a modern society and modern state, was formed in the womb of Christianity. It is impossible to copy or imitate: as it turns out, when Jews tried to transplant it to their native land, it grew deformed and ultimately perished.

This explains why the diaspora’s support for the state loses its meaning. The people sense this and become indifferent not only to the state, but also to the fate of the Jewish nation as a whole. The pace of assimilation is on the rise.

And so the people require a new form of internal organization that differs fundamentally from the one that was called for in Hertzl’s times.

The critical tasks the people must confront today are as follows: a) prevent the disintegration of cultural capital, without which the state would face certain degradation and ruin; b) rethink the people’s conception of its existence in such a way that this capital becomes an integral part of the Jews’ national experience; and c) reunite the people in order to achieve national goals.

These problems can all be resolved in the “diaspora-metropolis” state.

The second reason is external, and is tied into the special status of the Jewish people among the nations of the world. As the Witnesses of Revelation who brought the Monotheistic Idea into the world, the Jews provoked massive resistance to the creation of their state by the sheer fact of their return to the land of their ancestors. That is why the Promised Land is plagued with endless wars, and security issues loom above all others.

All this can be solved by framing the issue properly. The Jewish state must stop playing the role of a state “like any other,” which was created to be a refuge for a persecuted people. It must make itself indispensable to the nations of the world. And it can become indispensable thanks to the advent of globalization. Globalization has created a new global configuration in which all the nations have become similar to the Jews in that every people in the world now has its own diaspora. What makes the Jews different is that they have always had a diaspora, but did not have their own state; other nations, by contrast, have always had a state but no diaspora.

The “diaspora-metropolis” state is a universal model that allows all nations to unite and direct their efforts toward improving their own states. It is impossible to overstate the usefulness of this model for a nation’s internal organization, enabling it resolve such existential problems as the issue of refugees and the problem of terrorism, which is caused by the destruction of traditional communities and the resulting alienation of many people who fail to find their rightful place in the global domain.

3. What functions must the diaspora assume?

The diaspora must take upon itself three main functions, which require the formation of a United Diaspora Parliament

1. The accumulation of cultural capital among the nations of the world and its routing into the metropolis.

One example of this type of work is the activity of the Zionist organization in the period before the founding of the state. The creation of the Jewish state was made possible thanks only to the utilization of the collective cultural capital of Jews of different countries. (Thus, the German Jews brought with them their political culture and laid down the foundations of a system of higher education, etc – experience they accumulated in Germany; the Russian Jews contributed their faith and a readiness for self-sacrifice in the name of great ideals – an aesthetic culture they imbibed in Orthodox Russia, etc.)

Today, there are two immediate problems that the state is incapable of resolving.

The first is the problem of education that leads young Israelis to embark upon their life course unprepared for the demands of contemporary civilization. The diaspora must take part in reversing this trend by creating its own educational network.

The second is the problem of professionals losing their qualifications. The Jews of the diaspora who are united by a common country of origin can take this problem upon themselves, since they are the ones who are able to see opportunities that the intractable bureaucratic machine of the state is unable or unwilling to see.

The transfer of cultural capital from the diaspora to the metropolis is precisely the constructive goal that numerous diasporas lack in the global world. The “diaspora-metropolis” state allows peoples to start working for their own kind, while they are nominally citizens of another state. It is the absence of such a goal that breeds worldwide chaos.

2. The transformation of the family in accordance with the demands of contemporary civilization.

In the “global village,” different peoples can have only one unifying feature – every human being on the planet is (or will be) a child and a parent.

The problem lies in the fact that the traditions of family culture are so disparate among different peoples that incompatible conceptions of the world already start taking root in early childhood. And all this renders mutual understanding among people impossible.

In this regard, the Jewish people are truly unique. The broader civilizational conflict actually turned into an internal problem of the Jewish nation that was transformed into a unique collective – a union of different peoples who identify as the descendants of the same ancestors – by 2000 years of wandering the globe.

Over the course of 2000 years in the diaspora, the single system of the Jewish people’s cultural codes fragmented into a number of subsystems. In the diaspora, the Jews understandably raised their children in accordance with the prevailing local conditions, and so, they did it differently in Europe than in Asia or in Africa.

On the one hand, many families that find themselves in the conditions of contemporary civilization do not know how to prepare their children for it. On the other hand, among the teachers and the caretakers are people who do not understand the cultural codes of newcomers from different countries and so, purposely or unwittingly, undermine them, breeding conflicts within and ultimately destroying families. No committees can redress the resulting chaos that reigns over society, since the disintegration of society begins with the disintegration of the family.

This is why Israeli society is besieged by irresolvable conflicts that, in turn, breed truly “baseless hatred.” The predictable result is increasing criminality.

The United Diaspora Parliament would provide a forum within which Jews who share a common country of origin could reconnect with one another in order to revive and develop cultures of the family.

The crisis of the modern family is the greatest problem.

This is the same problem that plagues the diasporas of other peoples as well, since it touches an area that unites people with one another emotionally. This emotional connection can open channels of cooperation for people of different ethnic backgrounds who share a common country of origin and therefore understand one another’s problems. It is impossible to overstate the significant of such “intra-parliamentary” activity for international cooperation.

3. The defense of civil rights.

Facing external danger, the traditional community is used to shielding its own transgressors. The aim of the state, however, is diametrically opposite – its goal is to investigate crime. But in the Israeli conditions of rule by an oligarchy, this system simply does not work. Judges cannot judge themselves.

The people are tired of lawlessness. That is why the diaspora must come to their rescue and take upon itself the responsibility for transparency, control and the legal defense of Israeli citizens.

4. What are the problems that the “diaspora-metropolis” state helps to resolve?

The “diaspora-metropolis” state can help resolve a number of problems that carry

within them potential danger for the diaspora itself, such as, for instance, divided

loyalty and lobbying for the interests of another state.

The “diaspora-metropolis” state allows the people to benefit from the new reality ushered in by globalization: today, every state has citizens who are personally invested in the flourishing of both states – the state of their citizenship and the state to which they belong ethnically.

5. New solutions to the problems of world politics

1. Democratization.

Every nation wants to decide for itself how it should live. That is why attempting to impose a single formula on all peoples only provokes a backlash, which is the stage we are currently witnessing.

The “diaspora-metropolis” state provides an opportunity for that segment of the people, which lives in the diaspora, is protected by the laws of another state, and is therefore free of tyrants, to act for the benefit of the motherland. Its activity does not impinge on anyone’s patriotism and is not susceptible of being accused of meddling in the internal affairs of the people, as demagogues are want to do when they attempt to justify their own citizens’ lack of rights with reference to the right of self-determination.

2. The Arab problem.

The Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be resolved because it is artificially created by those who seek to smite the Jews with the hand of the Arabs.

The main problem of the Arabs is not Jews at all. The Arabs who are used to being the religious elite within Islam, now find themselves being among the most backward peoples in the context of a globalized world. This is in particularly stark contrast to the Iranians who are demonstrating their creative potential and transforming into an elite within the new governing parameters. The Arabs’ loss of status in the Muslim world is inevitable. It is already apparent in the form of HAMAS and “Hezbollah.” This represents the true root of the Arabs’ problem, and not the “Palestinian issue” that has been foisted on the Jews and the Arabs alike.

Those recommendations that the Arabs receive from the international community are incompatible with the culture of the Arabs, which is founded upon the family, just like the culture of the Jews. That is why the Jews and the Arabs must work together in resolving their common concern – how to render the family unit fit for the new civilization by cultivating mothers and fathers who are capable of raising successful children. There is every reason to suppose that a people which was so receptive to civilization in the period of the initial formation of Islam will be capable of demonstrating the same acumen under novel conditions.

G-d delivered on His promise to the Arabs, and they suffer no want of land. And so what is needed is not a return of the Arabs onto the Landof Israel, which could only lead to the destruction of the Jewish state, but instead the creation of a United Diaspora of the Arabs of the Land of Israel.

If the Jewish state is destroyed, the Arabs will never resolve their problems.

3. The Iranian problem.

Globalization has undoubtedly awakened the Iranian people. These are Aryans with proven abilities to create culture who thought in global terms even in antiquity, when many different peoples found themselves under the rule of the Persian  Empire.

The problem lies in the fact that the combination of this historical memory with the Monotheistic Idea has repeatedly been the cause of religious dualism, the roots of which lie in Iranian paganism.

Religious hatred toward Israel, the belief that its destruction will call forth the Messiah, and the preaching of an ideology of Death – all this has nothing to do with monotheism. Indeed, such beliefs are antithetical to it.

This is nothing but naked dualism, which has always given birth to fanatics. This, and not its programs for nuclear development, is the weapon with which the current Iranian leadership is threatening world nations.

Only the Iranian people itself can cope with this problem.

Any external pressure on such a nation rightly provokes a splash of patriotic sentiment. Yet the Iranian diaspora cannot be faulted with not comprising part of the people. The legitimization that comes with the “diaspora-metropolis” state is the only protection from tyranny, especially the one that transformed G-d into an instrument of man’s power over the world.

There is no conception in existence today that would allow the Iranian diaspora to save its native land from disaster.

6. A new covenant with G-d

The catastrophes that have plagued the Jewish people since the onset of globalization have come about due to a crisis in Rabbinism. The Rabbis do not understand that the people have outgrown Rabbinism. In order to staunch the changes and preserve the status quo, Rabbis have spoken out against the Jews’ participating in the new forms of activity that contemporary civilization has created.

The reasons for their position are quite obvious: these new fields of endeavor in the sciences, technology, education, art, and the like, have objectively weakened ties among the different segments of the people. Thanks to these different forms of activity, the Jews now had interests in common with the peoples among whom they resided rather than their scattered Jewish brethren.

That is why the Rabbis made the fateful mistake of speaking out against civilization itself.

And the people responded by breaking away from Rabbinism.

Today, the people must return to their roots to seek in them a fertile source of new ideas. And such ideas exist.

1. The onset of the age of the Third Temple and the Exodus from the Northern Country and all countries.

The age of the Third Temple has very clear parameters: humanity has united, and the dispersed people returns to the Promised Land from the Northern Country and from all countries, carrying within them the collective experience of all humanity.

Serving G-d within the frame of Rabbinism is no longer sufficient. It is necessary to address the problem of the universal unity of all peoples.

This is the essence of globalization and the problems it has sown.

2. Jews as the chosen people.

The creation of the “diaspora-metropolis” state makes it possible to implement the chosen status of the Jewish people without the need for mysticism or speculation. From the very beginning, the everyday lives of the Jewish people became the Holy History of all mankind. And this is why imposing any other notion of the people’s chosen status – which was quite natural when the people were dispersing into the diaspora – is utterly unacceptable today.

The very transformation of the Jewish nation into humanity within the family context sheds light on the inner meaning of 2000 years of dispersal and wandering. To ignore this new quality within the people is to ignore G-d.

3. The responsibility of the Witnesses of Revelation.

It is critical to understand unequivocally that the Jewish people, like the Prophet Jonah cannot hide from their role as Witnesses of Revelation. That is why responsibility for the chaos that reigns throughout the world will be laid at the feet of the Jews, if for no other reason than because the Jews did nothing.

Rabbinism has tied the hands of the Jewish people with its notion of serving G-d. And this means that the Rabbis have cast off the authority that comes with taking responsibility for the nation’s fate and, in the words of Scripture, turned into shepherds who herd only themselves.

The nation needs Ezra and Nehemiah. But even in the absence of such great Jewish teachers, the people must embark on a new way of serving G-d.

4. The preparation of a united mankind for G-d’s Revelation.

The “diaspora-metropolis” state is not simply a political idea. It is the form of organizing mankind that allows it to feel that we are all united as the children of One Creator and to prepare for the Revelation that all monotheists have awaited for centuries.

One such decision is newly planned simplified giyur (religious conversion to Judaism –Translator’s note) for hundreds of thousands of non-Jews according to the Halachah (collective corpus of Jewish religious law –Translator’s note) who received Israeli citizenship after making aliyah under the Law of Return.  Implementation of such a law would give Israel’s Chief Rabbinate unilateral control over conversions to Judaism in the country.

2

There is actually nothing new about the giyur procedure itself. Conversion to Judaism has existed since times immemorial, and so did the opposite process – Christian conversion and conversion to Islam, because other confessions also saw the need to offer corresponding procedures for conversion.

Unlike Christianity and Islam, however, Judaism rejected any forms of proselytizing. Conversion to Judaism has always been seen as a purely personal act. There is good reason for that. Apart from the specific traits of Jewish mentality, which can sometimes be complicated even for the Jews themselves, there is also the unique and difficult destiny of the Jewish people. So a person who wishes to become Jewish must understand fully and completely with what exactly he intends to connect his life.

It therefore should not be surprising that rabbis have traditionally discouraged people from converting to Judaism.

So what could have suddenly changed? Where did these plans to conduct a giyur for 300,000 all at once come from?

False arguments

1

Let us only ignore the myth that the Israeli government is concerned about the need for national unity, which could supposedly be achieved by mass Jewish conversion.

There is no indication that Israeli leadership is concerned with the issue of national unity.

This is definitely not a matter of concern for the rabbis, since no other segment of Israeli society is more elitist than the Orthodox.

The rabbis have long stopped concerning themselves with the problems of the Jewish people. They are busy dealing exclusively with issues of the Jewish community, which is why the synagogue became a community home long ago.

But if in the Diaspora it plays the role of a national symbol and attracts Jews as a cultural center, the synagogue does not have that role in Israel. The Jewish people are united by different national symbols and other cultural centers.

However, the rabbis succeeded brilliantly in dividing the nation. When ritual laws become so excessive that even Jews who observe a traditional lifestyle cannot sit down together for dinner because the rabbi of one Jew allows him to eat from a jar that the rabbi of the other Jews does not consider sufficiently kosher, how can we even begin to talk about national unity?

2

Sadly, nobody believes any more in the myths about the openness of Israeli society, which is supposedly ready to embrace anyone who feels a connection with the Jewish people and the state.

There is good reason for that.

It is enough for one to compare the results of the adaptation of former Soviet citizens in the USA and Israel, and this elaborate creation of Israeli myth-making in the best traditions of the East instantly collapses.

True enough, their own elites, their own closed circles which do not reveal themselves and do not welcome the stranger exist in any society. But closing themselves from the stranger is not the same thing as being intolerant, aggressive and authoritarian toward the stranger.

Those who immigrated to the USA from the former Soviet Union cannot imagine what their former compatriots encountered when they arrived in Israel.

No one in the United States drummed it into their heads that they are criminals, members of the mafia and prostitutes, that they don’t have the slightest idea about freedom, hygiene, morality and upbringing and that their children are morons who cannot even finish high school. Israeli society aimed this avalanche of strongly negative attitudes at millions of arriving “Russians”, mobilizing all its resources for that purpose – the media, the educational system, government institutions, including the police and the courts and personal connections.

This explains why former Soviet citizens who fled to the USA acquired over the past fifteen or so years the status and self-identity of full-fledged American citizens, whereas in Israel those very same former Soviet citizens gained the status of a socially weak population, problematic in every possible way.

There is nothing surprising about this result. The openness of American society is based on the ideology of a law-governed state and the Anglo-Saxon tradition of respect for the individual, not on declarations and mythmaking.

These notions are completely alien to Israeli society.

That is why mocking and humiliating someone who is a stranger, who is not “one of us” has become the norm in Israel, a tradition imported from the old-time shtetl, belligerent toward any stranger.

The bearers of the so-called Israeli culture don’t even realize what an ugly tradition it is and how it fragments the nation and poisons it with bitter feelings, nor are they aware that they accept such ugly attitudes as a matter of course.

How could mass giyur bring the non-Jew closer to Israeli society if boorishness elevated to the norm drives out from this society even pure-blooded Jews?

3

Those who initiated mass giyur have another consideration in its support. They say that a united nation must share the same culture. And since most symbols of Jewish culture are associated with the Jewish religious tradition, one should be drawn into this culture through these symbols.

But culture is more than symbols alone. Culture encompasses the entire content of life.

If Jews were not dispersed around the world for the 2,000 years, there would not have been any contradiction between symbols and the content of Jewish culture.

This contradiction arose naturally over these 2,000 years, because under the impact of their non-Jewish environment the content of life for different parts of the Jewish nation became so dissimilar that it became totally impossible to speak about any commonly shared Jewish culture.

This is what the rabbis fail to understand.

A present-day rabbi is a man of the community, for whom the Jewish nation has become no more than an abstraction, precisely because he does not understand the special characteristics of the culture the Jewish nation developed in different countries of the Diaspora. The rabbi is used to talking about the nation behind the four walls of the yeshiva and connecting the content of life of the modern Jewish people to the practice of life that existed 2,000 years ago. Why won’t he look out the window at the real Jewish people? This was exactly what men of authority did in the past – they knew the real, living Jewish nation, deriving wisdom from the realities of its life.

But the present-day rabbi is not interested in the Jewish people. He is content to address that part of it which he addresses inside the yeshiva.

This distinguishes him fundamentally from the rabbis of the early years of Jewish exile whom he quotes as authoritative sources: the rabbis of the past knew the Jewish nation, while present-day rabbis know quotations about the Jewish nation.

Soviet Jewry is a component part of the Jewish nation with its own understanding of life, formed in unique conditions behind the “iron curtain”.

Soviet Jews value as sacred acquired basic knowledge in exact sciences that is essential for modern civilization as well as knowledge of history, without which a person cannot comprehend the logic of present-day events. It was no less important for a Soviet Jew to introduce his child to these areas of knowledge than for an Orthodox Jew to introduce his child to the laws of Kashrut.

How can anyone assert that this understanding of life, new to the Jews, is not part of G-d’s plan? In any case, this understanding of life allows one not only to engage in discourse but also to live according to the instructions of learned Jewish sages who taught the people that those who fail to teach a son some trade, teach him to steal.

They turned out to be so right!

The most amazing thing is that the former Soviet Jew’s attitude to education and work, which he derives from his overall understanding of life, places him closer in terms of shared culture to the former Soviet Russian, or the former Tatar, Uzbek or any other ethnic group belonging to what used to be the Soviet people. On the contrary, it pushes him away most forcefully from Orthodox Jews who have obtained from the state the right not to teach their children such sciences as math, physics and other unnecessary “goyish” wisdoms, unbecoming of Jews.

So what kind of commonly shared culture can we talk about?

There is no commonly shared culture in Israel, and there cannot be one.

4

Someone may believe the myth that the rabbis are responsible for the destiny of the Jewish people, and this is why no one but they have the honor to conduct a giyur for 300,000 Israeli citizens, non-Jews according to the Halachah.

But the rabbis do not carry the responsibility for the Jewish people.

The Jewish nation has long outpaced the rabbis, who now drag along at the rear. The Jewish nation pursues various sciences and arts in violation of rabbinical prohibitions, and it developed agriculture, revived the land of its ancestors and built the Jewish state despite rabbinical prohibitions.

The rabbis benefited from the fruits of these endeavors. As everybody knows, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The Israeli secular elite is aware of this, which is why it used the rabbis to carry out special requests from the state.

It involves not only such issues as mass giyur. The involvement of the rabbis in politics has legitimized corruption and made it the norm precisely because the rabbis are willing to sacrifice the interests of the people to the interests of their community. That is why it was so easy to get them to consent to the provisions of the Oslo Accords, to the expulsion of Jews from Gaza and to the election of Shimon Peres as President of Israel.

In short, the rabbis will carry out any request from the state’s leaders so long as they can preserve their entitlements, with hardly any concern about their responsibility for that state and its people.

What is the purpose of the proposed mass conversion?

1

The answer is immediately apparent when one looks around at those who fill numerous jobs and who put on a military uniform.

No doubt, mass giyur is necessary for those who received under their control the tremendous cultural capital amassed by Jews in the Diaspora and managed to destroy it in the Jewish state. They brought about such a sorry state of affairs that the Jewish people are no longer interested in coming to live in their national home and have even started to leave it. In fact, those born in the country are largely represented in this trend.

In such circumstances mass giyur opens up great opportunities for bringing over a fresh flow of newcomers to supplement the continuously depleting resources of the Jewish nation, so that there are enough people to serve the ruling elite and to ensure that it has enough of a population to rule. The leaders also reap another benefit of such an approach: they do not have to deal with the problem of foreign workers, which other nations have to confront. It is so much more convenient to use such a simplified method when there is a need to expand the numbers of the Jewish people.

Incidentally, some Kabbalists believe that the Chinese are descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. What a stroke of luck! This could be a virtually infinite reserve of slaves and laborers!

2

Then again, mass giyur is like manna from heaven for “Russian politicians”. This is not just because they will increase their electorate base. There is a more serious reason.

Mass giyur will help “Russian politicians” to conceal the truth, which has long revealed itself: because of their flagrant incompetence, “Russian politicians” are incapable of resolving problems – they simply cannot do it. And they have successfully proved it by not solving a single serious problem among those the Great Aliyah encountered in Israel.

Problems will be aplenty after the mass giyur. So who will the bewildered native-born Israelis go to for help when they once again discover in retrospect what they had done with their own hands?  They will no doubt appeal to “Russian politicians” who will claim to be experts in this matter.

In this imaginative way “Russian politicians” will continue building their questionable careers as representatives of their community who defend the rights of the poor and destitute, those who cannot speak for themselves.

There must be a reason why there are so few poor and destitute among the “Russians” living in the United States. Perhaps it is because the state has made an effort to create appropriate life conditions for the people instead of expanding the numbers of community representatives in the government apparatus.

Now even a child will understand that mass giyur is a blessing for Judaism experts.

It will make it so much easier for them to show their disdain for such “goyish” subjects as math and biology. If the work of swelling the numbers of the Jewish people should turn into a common practice, there will be a growing need for other kind of experts – those who will teach hundreds of thousands of people how they can become Jewish and those who will determine the qualifications of those converting to the Jewish people.

What is most important, this will give a large group of people a sense of being irreplaceable, something that would have been impossible to obtain in any other way.

Why is mass conversion dangerous for the Jewish people?

1

It’s certainly true that the Jewish nation positively does not need such a mass giyur. Moreover, it is extremely dangerous for the people.

First,mass giyur will gravely undermine Jewish self-identity.

The Jewish nation knows how to preserve itself and who should be considered Jewish. The nation’s vital resources of intuition guide it to find the right answers. That is why the unique course of Jewish existence can be completely spontaneous and unrestrained.

Experience has shown this to be true.

Even in the Soviet Union where three generations of Jewish people had no access to Judaism they did not lose themselves. Soviet Jews did not have a traditional community, did not have rabbis and did not have anyone to tell them what it meant to be Jewish. So what happened to these Jews? They survived and found their own method for self-identification. Moreover, when the time came, they began their fight to make Aliyah to Israel, and restored and invigorated Jewish life in the country.

This serves to prove that the nation’s real experience is considerably more extensive and powerful than its self-appointed shepherds can possibly imagine.

The process of taking on the Jewish identity can also be completely spontaneous and unrestrained.

Those non-Jews who wished to become Jewish by accepting the Torah always found the way to do it. This path exists today as well: one can find a suitable community, a teacher and can simply begin to live according to the Jewish tradition. People will welcome the ger (“stranger” or “proselyte”) and guide him. There is no need for any government institutions or exams to determine the qualifications of those converting to Judaism.

The government’s brazen intervention in the natural flow of the Jewish nation’s life will bring the people nothing but harm. Acting through its representatives the government will undermine the nation’s instinct for self-preservation and will make meaningless the cherished sentiment of sharing the uniqueness of the Jewish national destiny, which is the source of the nation’s vitality.

2

Second, mass giyur will produce the impression that the problem, which has existed for at least two hundred years, has been solved.

It is the problem of the relationship between the Jews and non-Jews in modern conditions.

Two hundred years ago the traditional Jewish community began to fall apart and the Jews were at a loss. Part of the people isolated themselves from strangers and from the problems of the modern world, which from then on they considered exclusively as the problems of those strangers, even more than before. The other part of the people did the opposite: they rushed to fraternize with other world nations and to involve themselves most actively in their destiny.

Everybody is well aware of how it all ended in Europe.

But it is becoming increasingly more obvious today that the destruction of the traditional Jewish community is the result of a general world-wide process. Dynamic world forces have been set in motion, destroying the traditional lives of all nations.

These dynamic forces brought the Jews to the land of their ancestors, where they rebuilt the Jewish state.

This event is no less important than the destruction of the Temple, which led to the dispersion of the Jews. That is why this generation, returning from the Diaspora, needs a new paradigm of national existence as much as the generation exiled into the Diaspora 2,000 years ago.

It turns out, however, that the Jews were totally unprepared for this momentous event of this era. This is not in the least surprising.

It turns out, however that the Jews were totally unprepared for this momentous event of our times. This is not in the least surprising.

The Jewish nation spent 2,000 years learning how to become dispersed among world nations. It must now learn the opposite: how to gather the nation and rebuild its unity.

The Jewish nation spent 2,000 years learning how to live among other world nations. It must now learn the opposite: it must receive in its own environment those representatives of these nations who have chosen to connect their lives with the Jews. But the Jewish nation has no idea how this can be accomplished.

Instances when soldiers who gave their lives to defend the Jewish state were buried under some fence because they were non-Jews according to the Halachah showed such an outrageous aspect of this problem that there was a general outcry of indignation in Israel.

However, no matter how appalling these instances may be of themselves, they exposed something on a wider scale. They showed the ineffectiveness of the entire system of relationships between people – not only between Jews and non-Jews but also between the Jews themselves. So the 300,000 non-Jews according to the Halachah are actually just a part of an enormous and serious problem. That is why the intention of all the explicitly interested parties to turn the resolution of this problem into a farce absolutely cannot be tolerated.

The fact that it is impossible to resolve all these accumulated problems within the framework of the tradition established in the Diaspora is the result of the stagnation of our religious thought. We have lost any sense of direction and go from one catastrophic failure to another, blaming our spiritual inadequacy on the G-d’s inscrutable ways.

This stagnation of thought is responsible for the fact that we live with a double standard and are not even aware of it.

We find it natural for us to demand that word nations recognize the right of the Jews to have their own national identity. But in our own state we find it acceptable to deny non-Jews the right to freedom of conscience, and we demand that they renounce their identity.

We pride ourselves on withstanding the pressure to convert to Christianity or Islam. Yet we, in effect, demand from others that they undergo Jewish conversion, because we deprive them of the most basic civil rights unless they do.

Without a doubt, such conduct is not merely dubious but so reprehensible that it evokes a warranted wave of indignation against us and gives our adversaries justification for their hatred of the Jews.

Such an attitude to life also disorients our Jewish nation, which no longer understands the world it lives in.

Why do we need bogus Jews, Jews by coercion? In the end they will start hating us for this coercion not because they are hostile toward Jews due to their background and origins but because we are infringing on the individual’s self-identity which is inadmissible.

Why are we doing something like that? Is it just because the rabbis cannot offer the Jewish nation anything except for the things they have become accustomed to over the 2,000 years in the Diaspora? But this should be the problem of the rabbis – the problem of their limited religious experience.

We can ask ourselves: should we continue to reinforce their misconception, should we sustain them in their conviction that they continue to have some kind of objective authority in the nation’s eyes?

Undoubtedly, the answer is no, we should not. Moreover, we should protest against it. We are not looking to introduce religious reforms, no, that’s not the issue. It is the rabbis who would like to get off with nothing more than reforms.

We need something entirely different: we should find a new interpretation for our entire existence in the era of return, the era of kibbutz galuyot, and it must be a religious reinterpretation. Our protest must have a clear-cut goal – to awaken Jewish religious thought, taking it out of its stagnation and to make people think instead of continuing to build castles in the air.

In this respect, the presence of non-Jews among us can become a genuine catalyst.

What is the meaning of their coming to the Promised Land together with us? The rabbis would like us to believe that they are similar to the Egyptians who tagged along with the Jews during the Exodus from Egypt and provoked them to revolt against G-d. But the rabbis squeeze Jewish life into the rigid mold of familiar stereotypes, whereas we know what it is like in reality.

We know these non-Jewish people. The rabbis did not live side by side with them, we did. We were deeply immersed in their lives, and they shared with us the achievements of their centuries-old culture. We went to school and worked together with them; we built and defended the country with them; we went through good time together and endured trials and tribulations together.

It is now they who are becoming immersed in our lives. They see our strengths and weaknesses from the inside; they see how we struggle in vain to climb out of the tangled web of our problems, and they recognize us for what we really are as a people, not in anti-Semitic myths.

Perhaps all this is happening so that we should contemplate the problems of our times together, the problems our rabbis do not wish to contemplate?  Perhaps this is happening so that we should join efforts and start seeking out new solutions to common problems, solutions that could never occur to those who did not walk together the same difficult road behind the iron curtain?

Then again, maybe they are sent to pull us out of the isolation in which the rabbis have plunged us and to become  the connecting link between our nation and the nations to which they belong by birth according to G-d’s will?

In that case, we need each other the way we are: as honest, direct, open and staunch people. It is only possible to lean on that which offers resistance.

Mass giyur would crush everything – both the people and their interrelationships, so there is nothing left to lean on. We cannot allow this happen.

3

Finally, there is a third reason why we cannot permit conducting a facilitated mass giyur.

Mass giyur would exceed the possibility of the Jewish people to withstand the tremendous damage they have already suffered at the hands of native-born Israelis referred to lovingly as sabras.

Israeli sabras are undoubtedly the favorite children of their mother-and-father, the Jewish nation. If that were not the case, the Jewish nation would not have invested so much in this new population, which was born and raised in the land of the ancestors.

The nation invested without evaluating its input, bringing along into its state everything of value it acquired living among cultured nations. It imported political ideas to the ancestral land and formed the structure of the state, where native-born Israelis were going to live; it revived the Hebrew language so that they could speak one language, and it created the economy, science, literature and the arts for them. The nations made a maximum amount of effort for native-born Israelis to have what any cultured people enjoy.

Yet, unfortunately, these efforts did not benefit native-born Israelis but caused harm because it led to the appearance of the most devastating of all Israeli myths – the myth of “we built the state”.

Native-born Israelis got it into their heads that they – and they alone –

built the state.

The sabra – Israel’s favorite child – failed to understand the most essential point: for him to enjoy all those wonderful and expensive toys, his mother and father, his grandmother and grandfather, as well as many generations before them had to work tirelessly and live through a lot of hardship among the various nations, which spent centuries creating their great culture.

But the Israeli sabra imagines that all this is his own accomplishment since as “the builder of the state” he possesses unique qualities and special innate genius. He can do absolutely anything and understands everything, and that is why there is no reason for him to be concerned. Why should he when he accomplishes any task with such remarkable ease.

It is not the fault of the Israeli sabra that he has developed a mentality consistent with this kind of thinking. Its main characteristics are megalomania and inability to perceive reality in its true dimensions. The blame lies on the sabra’s mother-and-father – the Jewish nation – who drummed into the youngster’s immature head the ridiculous idea that there is nothing difficult about building the state.

What happened next was only natural: the state grew and blossomed, but the adolescent, the Israeli sabra, did not grow and mature together with the state. He remained an infantile adolescent – young, inexperienced and … foolish.

He was not foolish on a personal level – native-born Israelis, just as people everywhere, are different in that respect, some are smart and others foolish, but the majority is definitely smart. But collectively they undoubtedly manifest a mentality that is more than problematic.

There are so many attractive features about this mentality that it makes one wonder: what wonderful people the Israeli sabras would have become as adults if they were not spoiled by the mythical claim that “we built the state”.

The Jewish state system is consistent with this very myth. Only the Jewish nation looks the other way and refuses to acknowledge that.

The very fact of the existence of the Jewish state, with its parliament, cabinet ministers and other administration officials flatters the Jewish nation. But the adoring mother-and-father, i.e., the Jewish nation, close their eyes to the fact that these officials have never matured to become government figures but remain people from some local neighborhood with a corresponding limited worldview. Therefore, they tend to resolve problems within the narrow circle of their friends and schoolmates – those who lived next-door and played soccer with them in the backyard.

They do not see or understand broader problems that lie outside their neighborhood and their intimate circle of friends. That is why their vision is narrow and limited, and they are unable to see far into the future.

The Jewish nation has every right to be proud that the Israeli sabra  is speaking in Hebrew – the ancient language of our ancestors. But native-born Israelis used this language to introduce a new type of Jew, who they called “social Jews”. So perhaps this is the time for the Jewish nation to ponder on the issues presented in Hebrew and listen more attentively to this smooth-sounding childish gibberish.

Israeli sabras have not disappointed the Jewish nation in that they were able to get rid of their galut image as humiliated and humble Jews. But having rejected this stereotype of insecurity they simultaneously lost the acute awareness of Amalek’s danger – that special irrational hatred of Jews coming from an anti-Semite. The Israeli sabra lost that special seventh sense – the anticipation of the imminent threat of a pogrom always present in a Diaspora Jew.

That is why native-born Israelis act recklessly both internationally and within the country’s borders, without any awareness of the consequences of their decisions.

The results are there for all to see: together with the mass Aliyah, native-born Israelis managed to bring open anti-Semites into the country. The immature sabra refers to these people as repatriates because he is unable to distinguish between the different types of non-sabras. They all seem the same to him.

No one could imagine that there would be so much anti-Semitism in the Jewish state. But it is an unfortunate fact.

It is now suggested that all anti-Semites should also be converted to Judaism with great fanfare through an accelerated program and in the spirit of universal approval. There are, perhaps, those who assume that anti-Semites might change their ways after they affiliate themselves with Jews?  Or, perhaps, some assume that anti-Semites will refuse to undergo giyur because it is against their convictions?

Nothing of the sort will happen. People of honor might refuse to convert because they were always honorable people. They connected their lives with Jews at a time when this meant nothing but trouble to them. They did not do it to receive Israeli citizenship as a desired prize. They did not lie in the past and will not do it now.

Mass giyur will, sooner or later, bring about such a devaluation of the Jewish identity that it will attract various low lives who will rush to convert as fast as their feet will carry them and even egg on their buddies: “Hurry up, pals. They’re writing folks down as kikes here.”

Won’t that be something?! We will hear so many new jokes that people will split their sides laughing!

But the immature sabras do not understand any of this because they are young, inexperienced and … foolish.

It is no longer news that Israeli sabras do not value the Jewish nation’s contributions to Israel because of their myth of “we built the state”. The cultural capital amassed by the Diaspora has turned into a toy in the hands of native-born Israelis, which the favorite child simply broke to pieces and destroyed.

The Great Aliyah saw it all happening and felt its impact.

This is not the subjective opinion of a number of individuals. There are objective criteria, which allow us to evaluate the activities of the “builders of the state” – the high level of corruption and crime, lawlessness and absence of civil or criminal prosecution against wrongdoers. There is also the growing gap between the poor and the wealthy, the native Israeli’s role in the crisis of the educational system and the weakening of the army, and, finally, the mass fleeing of intellectuals from Israel.

It is painful to remember the human cost to Israel of the adventure of the Oslo Accords: the daily barrage of rockets fired at Israeli towns, the circle of enemy armies growing in front of our eyes and closing around us.

Not surprisingly, with “successes” such as these, native-born Israelis, the pampered children of the Jewish nation, would like their mother-and-father, that is, the Jewish nation, to continue to take care of them, support them in everything, indulge their whims, look the other way when the “children” misbehave and, most importantly! – supply them with more and more new toys in the shape of repatriates, volunteers, contributions, and such like.

But the resources of toys seem to be running out.

That is why they demanded the Jewish nation as their new toy, so that they can ruin it as well.

Issues must be addressed by the government at the national level

1

Now is the time for the Jewish nation to say its resolute “NO”.

The Jewish nation is not a toy. And if the nation wants native-born Israelis to finally understand this, it should immediately intervene in the farcical plan referred to as the mass giyur and prevent it.

Native-born Israelis went too far with their plan for a mass giyur. It is time to curtail everything that has become the norm of life in Israel: absence of any accountability among those who exercise power, cynicism of interested parties, and speculative use of national symbols and sentiments.

Nevertheless, the problem that brought forth the plan to conduct a mass giyur exists in reality and it must be solved.

In fact, it is possible to solve it.

2

First,Israel must reinterpret its Law of Return.

We should just put an end to the hypocrisy of elevating this law to the status of the sacred cow of Zionism. Native-born Israelis who announced the era of post-Zionism have so little trouble slaughtering any other sacred cows that their “tremulous” attitude to the Law of Return makes one unwillingly suspect something dubious here.

There is good reason for that because there is no other law that is more deceitful and immoral than the Law of Return in its current wording.

This law makes all the people, Jews and non-Jews alike, assume that the new population of Israeli sabras are the natural continuation of the Jewish people who returned to the land of their ancestors.

The point is that this is no more than an illusion. Native-born Israelis were conceived as the renunciation of the Jewish nation, and this is how they see themselves. In order for them to be born, the Jewish nation has to disappear.

The Law of Return gives native-born Israelis, as legitimate heirs of the Jewish nation, the right to claim as theirs the property of the entire nation: the right to its ancestral land, to its symbols and to its cultural and financial resources. Misled by this law, the nation provides all this to the native-born Israelis without interruption, without the slightest suspicion that the nation itself is nothing but a fertilizer to speed up the growth and maturation of the new population.

We owe it to the Law of Return that Israel loves the Aliyah but hates the olim, no matter what their country of origin is.

The Law of Return also misleads those who meet Israelis outside of Israel: they see them as Jews, without understanding that the Law of Return made it possible to replace the mother-and-father, i.e., the Jewish people by their immature child, which behaves according to his infantile experience.

This explains Israel’s doubtful successes in the world.

3

The effect the Law of Return has on people who were born from mixed marriages is totally inconceivable and shocking in its cynicism.

According to the Law of Return, children of Jews and members of their families, as well as grandchildren of Jews have a right to Israeli citizenship. Yet when people arrive in Israel they do not suspect that they are about to go through a selection process: according to Jewish law, a Jew is one who has a Jewish mother. Having a Jewish father does not make one Jewish. This means that only “real” Jews can enter into a marriage, whereas “not real” Jews are deprived of this right.

The situation becomes quite absurd: the state that extended citizenship to people who are not Jewish according to the Halachah deprived them of their rights once they were in the country, because the rabbis have monopoly on legal unions, and they protect the sanctity of marriage according to the law of Orthodox Judaism. Mass giyur was intended as a way out – to make it possible to have one’s cake and eat it too.

It is here that the glaring discrepancy manifests itself between the rabbinical notion of the Jewish nation and the Jewish nation’s actual life.

Mixed marriages are indeed problematic. It surfaces as the problem of self-identification for children born to such a family: they have a hard time deciding what they are: are they like their mother or like their father?

We could, of course, engage in a discourse about universal human values, but life itself brings this problem to the foreground. No discussions or slogans could change that, particularly when the environment only exacerbates it.

The environment in the Soviet Union exacerbated “the Jewish problem”, and that is why the Jews had to encounter it, whether they wanted to or not.

The paradox of the situation is that a father’s non-Jewish name allowed many of those who were half-Jewish to portray themselves as non-Jews. Because their anti-Semitic environment demanded proof that they are, in fact, not Jewish, many of these “Jews through their mother” eventually became fiercely anti-Semitic. Examples are galore, and those who know the Jewish nation from its real problems and not through books are well familiar with them.

At the same time, many “Jews through their father”, who carried Jewish family names and frequently encountered anti-Semitic attitudes often turned into Jewish nationalists.

Every one of them came across a “pleasant “surprise in Israel: “Jews through their mother” who had an anti-Semitic self-identity were accepted as Jews on legitimate grounds and honor, but “Jews through their father” who proudly carried their fathers’ names were “expelled” from the Jews.

The problem of people with mixed parentage is not new, nor is it exclusively Jewish. It appears wherever the environment is antagonistic toward the ethnicity of one of the parents, and the person born in a mixed marriage confronts a difficult choice.

The marriage partner defines what this choice is: if someone half-Jewish chooses a Jewish spouse, it means the person made a Jewish choice; if he or she marries a non-Jew, it means they made a non-Jewish choice.

This is a personal matter, and a person does not owe any explanation to anyone as to his choice, but the law must take into account these circumstances.

Grandchildren become problematic in a situation where only one of their grandmothers or grandfathers is Jewish. That is why such a chain stemming from the rejection of a Jewish choice and with the potential to become infinite must be interrupted through legislative means. A mass giyur will not accomplish anything positive in this respect because absence of government regulation leads to a dangerous situation: eventually the state will be inundated with people who shall call the country where they have arrived a “kike state”, and not the state of Israel.

There are quite a few indications already now that the process is moving in that direction.

4

The Law of Return must be nationalistic. Was it not envisaged that way from the start? From the very outset, the declared goal of the state was to be the ingathering of the Jewish people

Those who muddled everybody’s minds with talk about the harmfulness of nationalism will thrust all sorts of accusations at us. But we have been nationalists for over 3,000 years, and have heard plenty of diatribes launched at us. What is new here, and since when are we afraid of accusations?

What is so bad about nationalism? Weren’t  the founding fathers of the state willing to cope with all the hardships because they were reviving their homeland and not merely some plot of land? Nationalism evokes the most sacred feelings in people – love, loyalty and heroism. No one doubted this truth, until through use of brainwashing everybody was assured of the contrary.

The example of present-day Europe shows us what happens when people no longer have these feelings and when the state no longer has a master, i.e., a nation responsible for it.

When the nation that is the master of the state loses its self-identification, it disorients all the citizens of its state, irrespective of their nationality. They can no longer understand what is considered “right” and “wrong” in this state, and what rules they should abide by. In the end, it makes matters worse for everybody, because society sinks into chaos that is dangerous for all of the state’s citizens, those belonging and not belonging to the title nation.

If those who arrive in Israel accepted our conditions in advance there would be no need to advance new conditions, like mass giyur, for instance, once they receive Israeli citizenship. But for this to be possible the law must not mislead anyone.

This is a normal approach to the issue: when the law no longer corresponds to the realities of life, it is revised – because laws are there to resolve problems and not create them.

5

Second,we must take a resolute stance against those who think that they have the right to hate Jews and the right to obtain citizenship in the Jewish state. They will have to choose: it’s either this or that.

They have every right to hate Jews, if they wish to, whereas we have every right to rid of them our society and our state. We know the price Jews pay for hatred aimed at them all too well.

That is why immediately revoking their citizenship and expelling such “citizens” from the country would be a justifiable response.

6

Third, we should clearly define our state not as the Jewish state, but the state of the Jewish nation – the Jewish nation in its current shape that it has acquired as the result of its 2,000 years of Diaspora existence.

Then everything will fall into place and it will be natural that some of the people living in the state of Israel are non-Jews who connected their lives with our people and want to live side by side with them.

But by proposing to us the religious ceremony of the mass giyur we are told that ours’ is a Jewish state.

Does anyone really know, what is a Jewish state?

Is it the state, where the Jerusalem police protect the homosexual and lesbian marchers during the “Gay Pride parade”? This does not quite agree with the opinions of our religious authorities about the Jewish state, does it?

Another question is what, in fact, do Jewish religious authorities understand about matters of state, when for 2,000 years they were involved exclusively in the problems of the community? What relationship can they have with the modern state, which we imitated from European Christians?

Europeans created the modern state for a genuinely sacred goal – to create conditions of absolute equality of all citizens, so that some citizens could not use G-d to exert their power over other citizens.

It is more relevant to us in Israel than anywhere else, because if we fail to understand the Sacred Meaning of this state idea, it may not be too long before we have religious wars, with everybody fighting against everybody, including religious wars between Jews.

If it so happens that rabbis will begin to fight against each other, it is possible that non-Jews will be the ones to try to stop them. Unfortunately, our history is replete with such examples.

That is why it is necessary to return rabbinism to the community, its natural environment. Let there be spiritual leaders, but only for those members of the community who recognize their authority and, most importantly, who provide for them out of their own pockets – as was the case for 2,000 years and as it is in the Diaspora to this very day.

Many questions that plague us today will then resolve themselves, the issue of marriage registration being one of them. This issue must be the responsibility of the government and no one else.

As for the Jewish nation, there is no need for concern. It will not abandon the traditional huppah during Jewish weddings just as it did not forsake the Jewish circumcision rite, though nobody forced the people to do it.

It is far more important for the people to move beyond the limited vision of serving G-d that the rabbis prescribe. Only when cognition of the laws governing the physical world built by the Creator, productive work, self-discipline and responsibility to uphold the law become just as sacred to the Jewish people as prayer, the dietary laws of Kashrut and study of the Torah will the nation notice how much its life has changed.

7

The state must take upon itself the task of self-identification, as a national and not confessional issue. The title nation ought to decide what it would like its state to be. If the title nation adapts its value system to be consistent with modern civilization, if it elevates moral norms to such a height that people begin to see themselves as children of One G-d (instead of being lowered to the level of every confession and encouraging its prejudices), both Jews and non-Jews with legitimate rights of residence will be proud to live in such a state.

People will then realize how much they have in common and how important it is to preserve the state, which gives protection to each of us so that we can build a home for ourselves, work and bring up our children.

Incidentally, the rabbis will continue to be irreplaceable, because nobody can resolve the issue of confirming someone’s Jewishness, so important in Israel, better that they can. Bu they should perform this work as citizens, not spiritual shepherds.

As for how one relates to G-d, every person will define his or her own personal relationship with G-d the way he or she identifies it.

In fact, who does the “national camp” represent?

For one reason or another, our “national camp” includes the Israeli Orthodox. This strikes me as somewhat of a paradox, considering that Ahudat Israelis the party of the European Orthodox Jewry – does not recognize this “godless” state at all. Because of that, this party’s representatives demonstratively refuse to become ministers in the cabinet. Truth be told, their tactics is just an example of false tricks. How come they gladly agree to get the position of Deputy ministers? The reason for that is simple and obvious: they want to govern this “godless state” and get money from it. As for the position of the Chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, this is just the biggest prize. No wonder! It is so nice to decide how to divide state money!

In other words, what we see is typical galut hypocrisy: kosher words and stinky actions.

As for the Shas Party, i.e. the party of Sephardic Orthodox Jews, it recognizes the state. More than that, Shas Party representatives are overjoyed when they manage to climb up the ladder of success and become heads of different ministries. They thrive on such success! But the Party’s ideology is based on the values and Jewish knowledge which are good only for the traditional community. That is why Shas Party members do not qualify for statesmanship.

The fact that the Shas Orthodox  recognize the state of Israel actually does not make it any different from the rejection of the Jewish state by the Ahudat Orthodoxy. Both religious parties cultivate the absolute authority of their spiritual leaders, limitations on women’s rights, a negative attitude to science and productive labor, to observing state-introduced laws and not those imposed by spiritual leaders, and much , much else that they refer to as the “sacred” Jewish tradition. The problem is that all this so-called “sacred” tradition is incompatible with the state.

Religious Zionists continue to be considered the cornerstones of the “national camp”. (They are known in Israelas “knitted kippahs”.) At first glance it seems that placing them at the top of the political hierarchy is quite justified. The “knitted kippahs” have succeeded in combining tradition with present-day life. They work, study and serve in the Israeli army just as any other Israeli citizens. At the same time, they all observe the laws and regulations encapsulated in the Jewish tradition. They also cultivate their people’s traditional wisdom.

But that is not all. They would like us to believe that everything they discovered has provided them with some sort of patent which elevates them to the position of the nation’s vanguard. In a show of modesty, they have proclaimed themselves to be the most advanced segment of Israeli society.

Such smug conceit is founded on a specific ideology that is based on ideas put forward by Rabbi Cook. Years ago, when Jews in large numbers parted with their ancestral tradition, severed their ties with the Jewish community and even began rebuilding the Jewish state without waiting for the coming of the Messiah, Rabbi Cook displayed something characteristic only of truly great men – he trusted his people. After all, it was not just any people – Jews were Witnesses of Revelation! If the nation felt the need to step outside the tradition that took shape in the galut, it must mean that there are sparks of holiness beyond this tradition which a Jew who is serving G-d is obligated to sanctify.

It goes without saying that the Temple remains the most vivid symbol which illustrates Rabbi Cook's idea: the Templewas built by ordinary people, and they treaded upon this Holiest of Holy places. But after they were through with their work, only the High Priest was allowed to stand at this holy site, and that only once a year. Extrapolating this situation to the present, it is fair to say that the state is being rebuilt by ordinary people; however, they are doing it with the understanding that those Jews who are serving G-d will sanctify the state after they complete their work.

The Religious Zionists fancied themselves to be those very Jews who are serving G-d. They condescendingly “permitted” the godless Socialists to work it to the bone building the foundations of the state, so that they could come, neat as a pin, righteous and pure, and sanctify that state.

How they understood the notion of “sanctifying” the state, I heard from some of them personally on more than one occasion. I can therefore assert that their approach not only dooms them to failure but also distorts the ideas of Rabbi Cook.

First, the Religious Zionists failed to understand that rebuilding the modern state of Israel qualitatively changes what it means to serve G-d. Something of fundamental significance had to have happened for the Jews to return to the Promised Land after centuries which they spent reading the texts about their return. This “something” became self-sufficient and no longer required the realization of the sacred texts.

The “knitted kippahs” do precisely the opposite: they rely on the selfsame culture of reading texts from original sources, and they try to prove that nothing has changed and that we, Jews, had everything required to build a modern state from the very outset, i.e. fundamental ideas, political doctrines and scientific knowledge. All other nations, they claim, have learned these things from us and read about them from our sacred texts.

The natural conclusion drawn from this is as follows: emancipated Jews made a terrible mistake when they severed their ties with our ancestral tradition. All that was needed was simply to have a more profound understanding of this tradition. And only the “godless” Zionists knew how to do that, which is why they had the last word.

When I happened to be present during these verbal escapades (I used to frequent their gatherings but I don’t do that any more), I would always ask one and the same question: “If the Europeans had borrowed the state idea from us, Jews, why did we have to wait for centuries until they implemented it into practice?” Nobody ever tried to answer this question, not even once.

Meanwhile, the Europeans rectified the mistake which the Jews had made during the time of the Prophet Samuel. They asked for a king to be chosen from among humans. Our sources clearly indicate that the Jews chose to obey man instead of obeying G-d. The modern state came into being only when the very development of civilization brought the European ideologists to understand that it is wrong to obey man who uses G-d as an instrument for imposing one man’s power over another. Thus, they separated state and religion… in the Name of G-d’s Power. It is obvious that European statesmen reviewed our sources very thoroughly. As deeply religious people, they studied the Scriptures most diligently.

Getting rid of the religious authorities is the core precondition for political development. By eliminating religious authorities, Europeans created the opportunity to unite on the ground of common ideas. The ambitions of all these spiritual leaders, on the contrary, resulted in fragmentation and collapse. The only way to prevent these processes from taking place is to establish a dictatorship.

So what have the Religious Zionists done? The first thing they did was to restore spiritual authorities, i.e. they took the state back to the times of the Prophet Samuel. By doing this, they put an end to the state because each separate group now has its own spiritual authority. The results are disastrous: the Religious Zionists cannot even dream about political unity. They passionately talk about the nation but, truth be told, their interests are focused on “their own kind”. This is reflected in every area of life. They become more and more fragmented and create new alliances, proving that they never stopped being people of the shtetl. They were never able to understand the essence of the state.

Second, Religious Zionists doomed themselves to playing second fiddle. They will never be able to be in the vanguard because of their false interpretation of Rabbi Cook’s ideas. Rabbi Cook has opened the door for them into the world, a world totally unknown to the Orthodox Jews. But the Religious Zionists are afraid to enter this world because that would require studying the Torah according to the realities of life. That’s what our sages did in the past. Now, these Religious Zionists study the Torah in yeshivas. In other words, they have turned the Living Torah into a scholastic teaching. Incidentally, such an approach contradicts our main spiritual sources. What else can one expect from them if they are simply not interested in what is going on in real life because they are so confident in their abilities to squeeze all the modern phenomena of life into the Procrustean bed of their quotations.

It is not that hard to see the consequences: the “knitted kippas” constantly have to imitate the “godless sinners” and to react belatedly to their “godless initiatives”, such as the Supreme Court activity, the Oslo Accords, and so forth. It appears that the “godless” people are the ones who promote ideas because both in the past and in the present they have always tried to understand the realities of life. Probably they do not always get it right but that is already a totally different story. In fact, it is the “godless” people who offer initiative.

The Israeli people are insightful enough to see the situation the way it is, and they think of Religious Zionists accordingly. They perceive Religious Zionists as pure plagiarists not as leaders who are capable of leading the nation forward. These “knitted kippas” produce an impression as if they were doing the same things the founding fathers did: they populate the Promised Land with new settlers, they work in agriculture, and they are also patriots and soldiers. However, when the “godless” Socialists were taking care of business, the Israeli people viewed their actions as something of nationwide significance. Now the Israeli people view exactly the same actions when they are performed by the Religious Zionists as something purely sectoral and required by a small group.

Obviously, the Religious Zionists are absolutely incapable of uniting the nation around their vision. No wonder, they cannot become united on the basis of these ideas alone.

There is a third large group in our “national camp”. Basically, it consists of Jews of non-European descent who mostly come from Muslim countries. These folks in large numbers form our main national Party Likud.

The Sephardim came to big politics mainly thanks to Menachem Begin who used the unavoidable antagonism between the leftist Europeans and the Sephardi traditionalists. His message was: “Welcome aboard, brothers”. The “leftists” look down upon you, while we, the “right wing”, greatly respect you.”

But who is talking here about respect? This is all about the mentality of the European Jewry. Thanks to their mentality, they proved to be the only ones capable of rebuilding the Jewish state. In order to obtain this kind of mentality, several generations of European Jews had to go through a torturous chain of events: they had to sever their ties with the traditional community, expose themselves to the hostile world around them, attempt to accommodate with the civilized Europeans, and even betray their own selfhood. Since all these attempts to adjust to the Europeans were basically futile, the price they paid was heavy: the Jews developed enormous inferiority complexes. The tragic end of the European Jewry is well known: millions perished in the Holocaust.  But they also gained something: they learned to think and act at the level of abstract ideas. No wonder, all the greatest Jews of the last centuries were solely of Ashkenazi descent, which resulted in the shift of elites.

Nothing can be done about this until the nation invents its own patent, which will allow members of the traditional society to change their way of thinking. The state makes it possible to achieve this in the least traumatic way in the natural environment of the galut. But it is unwise to pretend that there is no problem. Unfortunately, there is a problem, which becomes absolutely clear from the following episode which happened at the end of the first term of Benjamin Netanyahu’s service as Prime Minister when the deserters from his party organized another party under the name of “The Third Way”.

I still remember those debates on television. The participants were Benjamin Netanyahu and his former party fellow, a Sephardic Jew and a decorated general.

“What are you planning to do?” Netanyahu asked, meaning what would be the new party’s ideology. The response barely had anything to do with the question asked: “We have gathered a very solid team”. This is an example of a totally different way of thinking. Such people think that any problem can be solved through the opinions expressed by the council of respected elders.

But the modern state expects a different way of thinking. At least, it is expected from the elite. People should be united by ideas not by their physical contacts with each other. That is the essence of the problem, since the traditional society is build on these contacts, on personal relations. Thus, the traditional society shapes the way people think, which is equally true in respect to the elite. For that reason the traditional society settles its problems with all these “sulkhas” and “hudnas”, just the way the Arab people do it.

In this sense, our Sephardic Jews are no different from the Arabs, regardless of their personal credentials, natural intelligence, heroism and even education. The things they do not possess belong to a totally different realm. What we are talking about is called cultural historic experience. Unfortunately, the Sephardic Jews just do not have it.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the descendants of the European Jews who used to unite around Jabotinsky and who comprise the bulk of his party, have been losing this experience most drastically. Likud is viewed as the heir of these people, the party of Jabotinsky. But what is left there is just Jabotinsky’s portrait, under which the Likud leaders sit.

So, what does unite such different characters in one, supposedly, “national camp”? Not much – the same set of quotations they use, and, regretfully, the same shtetl mentality, which doom them to narrow-mindedness and stagnation of political thought.

That is why our “national camp” is not a camp at all.

First of all, it has become a dump of various groups that lack any cohesive system of ideas. It seems that they have zero chances to develop such a system. Secondly, this so-called “national camp” is totally unable to generate these kinds of ideas. Given these two reasons, the “national camp” is just not strong enough to resist the “leftist” cosmopolitans. Indeed, the relations between the “leftists” and the “national camp” remind me of those between a man and his little donkey. The man leads his donkey showing the animal where to go. Most likely the donkey does not want to obey his master and go there. The donkey is stubborn, and he shows his character. But deep in his heart he knows that he is powerless, and sooner or later he will have to obey the orders of his master, who shows the way, even if the way leads to an abyss.

Similarly, our “national camp” follows the path outlined by “godless” people because this camp cannot suggest any alternatives. The “national camp” never had and will never have any.

Однако если мы сводим свою миссию исключительно к выполнению предписаний традиционного раввинизма, сформированного в рассеянии и приспособленного к условиям рассеяния, наше возвращение становится не менее проблематичным.

Зачем нам государство, если все эти предписания можно выполнять без него? Ведь обходились же евреи без государства 2000 лет!

Наша собственная неубедительность в вопросе возвращения укрепила всех во мнении, что настоящей причиной является европейский антисемитизм. А такая причина возвращения обессмысливает всю нашу историю, лишает наше общество идеалов и целей, к которым нужно стремиться, и направляет наши интересы исключительно на выяснения отношений с внешним миром при полном игнорировании ужасающей внутренней деградации израильского общества.

Противникам нашего возвращения, считающим себя исконными обитателями Земли Обетованной, такая якобы причина дает мотивацию противодействовать нашему возвращению.

Они справедливо полагают, что за европейский антисемитизм ответственности не несут. Уникальность нашего народа, неосознанная прежде всего нами, приводит их к мысли, что евреев, которые через 2000 лет пришли на Землю Обетованную из разных стран мира, на самом деле ничто не связывает друг с другом. А это значит - делают они вывод, - что рано или поздно эти евреи сами вернутся туда, откуда пришли.

В их глазах наше возвращение выглядит не только незаконным как с исламской, так и с христианской точек зрения, но и бессмысленным, а, наблюдение за саморазрушением израильского общества лишь укрепляет их во мнении, что наше государство является временным "сионистским образованием".

И возразить им на сегодняшний день нечем.

2

Совсем иначе выглядит наше возвращение, если оно совершается ради миссии, значимой для всех. Что собой представляет эта миссия, логично вытекает из всей концепции "Парадокса Пятой заповеди".

Эта миссия состоит в создании новой основы человеческого единства.

В соотвествии с "Парадоксом Пятой заповеди" у 2000-летнего процесса преображения еврейского народа в уникальный коллектив - "человечество" внутри единой семьи потомков праотцев - есть сверхцель.

Только благодаря этому преображению евреи смогли принести на Землю Обетованную особую духовную субстанцию, которую они не только извлекли из традиций разных народов мира, но и сконцентрировали внутри самих себя как общее наследие потомков праотцев Авраама-Ицхака-Яакова.

Эта духовная субстанция есть тот "строительный материал", из которого евреям предстоит на Земле Обетованной создать значимые для всего человечества универсальные модели взаимодействия людей, связанных Пятой заповедью, то есть традицией предков.

Историософская концепция "Парадокса Пятой заповеди", позволяет нам, евреям, осмыслив таким образом собственную Историю, претендовать на то, что наше возвращение - закономерный этап ее развития.

О каких же универсальных моделях идет речь?

3

Если, как это следует из изложенной в книге концепции, человеческий универсализм основан на том, что все люди на земле - родители и дети, то задача еврейского народа - создать модель семьи эпохи Третьего Храма, обобщив и переработав духовную субстанцию, которую евреи извлекли из традиций народов мира.

Основой этой модели провозглашается Знание, что вызывает множество вопросов.

Как должны люди получать Знания, в каком возрасте, от кого? Как сделать так, чтобы вместе со Знаниями о Творении, человек проникался и любовью к Нему? Ведь от этого зависит само продолжение Жизни на земле.

Единственными людьми, заинтересованными в продолжении жизни на земле, являются только те, кто связан общей кровью, Пятой заповедью - родители и дети. Именно эта заинтересованность не надуманна, не является плодом идеологии. Она обусловлена самой природой человека.

Из концепции "Парадокса Пятой заповеди" следует, что все проблемы, вплоть до общемировых, закладываются внутри первичного коллектива, внутри семьи во взаимоотношениях "родители - дети". И никакая внешняя по отношению к семье сила не в состоянии решить современные проблемы без исправления этих взаимоотношений.

Отсюда следует, что универсальной задачей человечества в эпоху Третьего Храма является исправление взаимоотношений между членами семьи в соотвествии с требованиями современной цивилизации.

Универсализм Знания - это и есть та основа, на которой родители и дети должны взаимодействовать, чтобы сами люди, уровень их индивидуального развития и их взаимоотношения с себе подобными соответствовали требованиям эпохи Третьего Храма.

Творенье Б-жье, включая созданную людьми цивилизацию, вручено Творцом всему человечеству. И потому отношения "родители-дети", направленные на то, чтобы постичь и сберечь Творение, поднимут Пятую заповедь на высоту, которая была недостижимой до наступления эпохи Третьего Храма.

В современном же мире Знания, накопленные человечеством, превратились в угрозу существованию самому Творению, включая созданную людьми цивилизацию. Самым полным выражением этой угрозы является новый тип "семьи", прежде никогда не существовавший, по существу "антисемья", в которой матери надевают на собственных детей пояса со взрывчаткой.

Именно такому типу семьи Смерти евреи призваны противопоставить семью Жизни.

4

Но созданием модели "семья эпохи Третьего Храма" миссия еврейского народа на Земле Обетованной не ограничивается.

В книге "Парадокс Пятой заповеди" обращается внимание на факт для всех очевидный, но не осмысленный: в современном мире в положении евреев оказались практически все народы мира - у каждого народа теперь есть собственная диаспора, собственное "рассеяние", собственный "галут".

"Галут" на иврите это вовсе не только "изгнание". Этот же корень означает и "открытие". В "галуте" евреи открывали для себя мир других народов, впитывали их культурную субстанцию, чтобы перерости рамки народа, ограниченного собственным опытом.

Та же возможность теперь появляется и у других народов мира.

Отсюда делается вывод, что "галут" - это метод, посредством которого создается основа человеческого единства и тем самым развивается Монотеистическая Идея.

Наличие собственной диаспоры дает возможность каждому народу получать через собственных соплеменников культурный опыт других народов, и постепенно его перерабытывая, отбирать универсальные элементы этого опыта. И делать все это каждый народ может без вмешательства чужаков, пересматривая, если необходимо, в диалоге "родители-дети" те или иные элементы традиции собственных предков. Тем самым с одной стороны осуществляется самоисправление народа, Б-жественный суд народа над самим собой, а с другой стороны народы делают это на основе собственной традиции, то есть не нарушая Пятую заповедь.

Естественно, возникает вопрос: а как должен идти этот процесс? Ответ на этот вопрос могут дать только евреи, создав государство нового типа, основанное на взаимодействии диаспоры с метрополией.

Такой подход совершенно отрицает то, что сегодня принято в мире.

Современный мировой порядок сформировали западные христиане-"монотеисты" (как носители монотеистического менталитета, который остается таковым даже в том случае, если строго в конфессиональном смысле люди являются атеистами). Выйдя за пределы своего ареала, западные христиане-"монотеисты" (тех, кто подоразумевается под противостоящим миру "Западом") предстали перед всеми остальными народами мира как внешние силы, которые навязывают народам ценности, чуждые традиции отцов этих народов.

Для того, чтобы эти чуждые ценности усвоить, народы должны нарушить Пятую заповедь, то есть от традиции собственных отцов отказаться. Такой отказ вносит хаос в организацию всей их жизни.

А это вызвало соотвествующую реакцию.

С одной стороны, огромная разноэтническая и разноконфессиональная иммиграция, хлынувшая на Запад, начала разваливать западные государства, основанные на идеалах, которое могли сформироваться только в лоне христианства, причем исключительно в его протестантском варианте.

С другой же стороны чуждость ценностей, навязанных народам мира "Западом", вызывает ненависть этих народов к самому "Западу", ненависть часто даже неосознаваемую и необъяснимую, и превращает борьбу против "Запада" в оправданную в глазах народов.

Модель "диаспора-метрополия" призвана остановить этот всеобщий процесс разрушения.

5

Итак, мы, евреи, вернулись на Землю Обетованную, чтобы, решая внутренюю проблему народа-свидетеля Откровения, создать универсальную основу человеческого единства: модель "семья" и модель "государство" эпохи Третьего Храма. Самим Провидением Б-жьим мы приспособлены для этой цели. Результатами же смогут воспользоваться все люди по собственному усмотрению.

По моему глубокому убеждению, это - единственное средство, способное предотвратить мировую Катастрофу.

Сущность нашей миссии подчеркивают силы, которые противостоят еврейскому государству.

Ими прежде всего являются все адепты религий-антитез: марксизма, нацизма и хомейнизма. Противостояние еврейскому государству связывает их с создателями всех разрушительных моделей мирового порядка - от советского коммунизма до насильственной демократизации всех народов, с ООН, с Евросоюзом, со Вторым Интернационал и всеми прочими подобными "интернационалами", основанными на нарушении Пятой заповеди. (Именно по этой причине в их среде так много евреев-"интернационалистов".)

Внешне часто непримиримые, они тем не менее в одном вопросе едины - их связывает отрицающая Синайское Откровение безумная вера в "оккупацию евреями Земли Обетованной". Только благодаря их сплоченности в этом вопросе стало возможным формирование такого искусственного явления как "палестинский народ", у которой нет никакой иной миссии, кроме сопротивления возвращению евреев.

Эта миссия и запрограммировала "палестинский народ" на культуру Смерти, которая стала основой воспитания молодого поколения как в системе образования, так и в семье.

И теперь эта культура Смерти у нас на глазах делает свое дело: бушует на на Земле Обетованной и расползается по всему миру, подрывая все государства, угрожая всем народам, и подтверждая с леденящей душу очевидностью слова Писания: "проклят проклинающий тебя".

Все, кто противостоят возвращению евреев на Землю Обетованную, объединенными силами толкают Творение в Смерти.

Наша же задача как задача избранного Б-гом народа объединить тех, кто жаждет Жизни Творения. Мы можем это сделать путем создания модели "семья" и модели "государство" эпохи Третьего Храма.

Вот для этого мы и вернулись.

Обмен вызывает двойственное чувство.

Вчера мы об этом говорили с Р. Она недавно демобилизовалась из армии, так что солдатские чувства свежи.

- Ты не представляешь себе, как это важно для всех солдат. Знать, что о тебе не забудут, что тебя не бросят. Я горжусь нашей страной.

Она сказала это с таким воодушлевлением, что мне пришлось поднапрячься, чтобы смягчить свой скептицизм.

- Ну, допустим, не за всех боролись так, как за Гилъада. За Гилъада  неистово боролись, потому что его семья, видно, обладает серьезными возможностями влияния. Не о каждом будут говорить премьер-министры других стран. Так что особо не обольщайтесь.

Но то, что освобождение Гилъада Шалита взволновало всех, ― чистая правда. По себе чувствую, как горло сжалось, когда отец Гилъада обнял сына. И взволнованному лицу Бенъямина Нетаниягу верю, хоть он и политик. Почему? Да потому что у всех у нас дети ― солдаты. А в еврейской семье любовь к детям - самое святое.

Об этом нельзя рассказать. Это можно только почувствовать. Можно и подметить в самых малоприметных деталях, в том, что называется body language. Вот Гилъад впервые появляется в военной форме. К нему приближается израильский офицер и обнимает его, едва касаясь, но как-то по-отечески тепло. Вот Гилъад поднимается в вертолет. Его встречает другой офицер и бережно подставляет руку, когда Гилъад заходит внутрь, чтобы ребенок не ударился головкой. А ведь все они - боевые офицеры в воюющей стране.

Семья ― это , конечно, наше еврейское ВСЕ. Но тут возникают и проблемы.

Семья ― это замечательно. Но не семейственность в государственном масштабе.

Журналисты отметили, что для произнесения приветственных речей сбежалось все руководство: и сам Банъямин Нетаниягу, и министр обороны Эхуд Барак, и начальник Генштаба Бени Ганц. Заметили и сравнили. Обмены были и после всех войн. Но никто из руководства ― ни Бен-Гурион после войны 1956 года, ни Леви Эшколь после войны 1967 года, ни Голда Меир после войны 1973 года ― при обменах не присутствовали. Сравнение, вроде бы, неуместно. После войн меняли солдат на солдат, а убийцы солдатами не являются, как бы английская ВВС ни пыжилась поставить знак равенства между теми и другими. И все же журналисты не случайно с ностальгией вспомнили былых лидеров. Тогда еще государство не воспринималось, как семейный междусобойчик.

Теперь же воспринимается. И не в последнюю очередь потому, что этот междусобойчик ограничен узким кругом, к которому принадлежит семья Гилъада. Если бы с детьми из этого круга (не дай Б-г!) случилось то, что случилось с "русскими" детьми 1 июня 2001 года ― взрыв у входа в дискотеку "Дольфи", унесший 21 молодую жизнь и искалечивший 120, ― этот день бы помнила вся страна. А так никто и не вспоминает: это ведь "чужие" дети.

Отметили журналисты и реакцию арабов. В сценах арабского ликования ничего неожиданного не было. Неожиданно другое - вопросы, которые арабы начали задавать самим себе: "А мы бы поменяли одного араба на 1000 евреев?" Вопрос риторический. Ответ знают все: "Да даже мысль такая никому бы в голову не пришла".

А вот почему?

Я вспомнила рассказ своей приятельницы. Как-то раз пошла она со своей дочкой на рынок. Вдруг дочке стало плохо. Приятельница моя обратилась к ближайшей торговке с просьбой о помощи. Торговка оказалась арабкой. Приятельнице помогла, дочку усадила и воды принесла. А потом спрашивает:

- И чего ты так волнуешься? Это же дочка, а не сын. Сыновья-то у тебя есть?

Вот и все. Дочки не нужны. Дочка - не человек. Дочку можно убить, чтобы защитить "честь семьи". Дочку можно даже изнасиловать в семье, а потом ее же обвинить в оскорблении все той же "чести" со всеми вытекающими последствиями. А ведь дочки ― будущие матери и каждая из них живет с ощущением, что самые близкие ей люди являются ее потенциальными убийцами. К мысли о том, что жизнь ничего не стоит, будущая мать привыкает с детства. Такая мать никогда не научит своих детей дорожить жизнью.

И пока арабы не будут зреть в этот корень ― в отношение к женщине, которое начинается с отношения к дочери ― ничто им не поможет, никакие революции, никакие арабские "весны" с последующей проверкой девственности ревоюционерок с площади Тахрир у гинеколога. Если арабы и в самом деле намерены понять, почему им наплевать на собственных сыновей, пусть задумаются над тем, почему в их семьях лишены любви их собственные дочери.

Ну как тут не вспомнить крылатые слова Голды Меир: "Мир с арабами наступит тогда, когда они научатся любить своих детей также, как они ненавидят наших".

Естественно, что обмен вновь всколыхнул вечную дискуссию о введении смертной казни в Израиле. И в самом деле: кому нужны эти 8 или 16 пожизненных заключений за гибель в теракте соответственно 8-ми или 16-ти человек (искалеченных вообще никто не считает!), если результатом будет освобождение исполнителя теракта под вопли ликующей толпы и выплата ему пособия "за героизм" из денег европейских спонсоров? Нелепо и другое: массовые убийства евреев арабами оказались безнаказанными, а вот евреев, убивших арабов, никто освобождать не собирается. Тут же, конечно, раздались еврейские голоса: освободите наших тоже.

Почему же все это происходит? Да потому, что мы, евреи, еще не сформировали образ собственного государства. Да, да, именно образ, который рисуется всего двумя цветами ― Добро и Зло.

Государство ― это Добро, так как вносит порядок в хаос. Государство - слишком хрупкая структура, которая создавалась трудом поколений и связала множество людей. Разрушается же эта структура очень легко, разрушая саму жизнь его граждан. Поэтому разрушение Государства есть Зло и любое посягательство на Государство должно пресекаться самым решительным образом.

Однако, это верно не только в отношении арабов, но и в отношении евреев.

У меня нет сомнения в том, что любое позиционирование израильскими арабами себя в качестве "палестинцев" не может оставаться безответным. Араб не дорожит Израилем, единственным государством на Ближнем Востоке, где арабов сегодня не убивают? Его никто не заставляет быть гражданином Израиля. Лишение израильского гражданства ― адекватный ответ любому израильскому "палестинцу". Членов кнессета это должно касаться в первую очередь.

Но как можно допускать, чтобы евреи в день независимости вывешивали черные флаги? Как может партия ортодоксальных евреев, не признающая государство Израиля, не только заседать в кнессете, но еще и руководить в лице своих представителей финансовой комиссией кнессета и министерствами (правда в должности замминистра, ибо негоже еврею быть министром в государстве, которое он не признает)? Еврей, не признающий государства, должен быть полностью лишен доступа к его ресурсам. Вы считаете это государство гойским? Платите ему налог. О каком-либо участии в руководстве государством, даже речи быть не должно.

Ортодоксы вывесили черный флаг в День независимости? Начать расследование: кто научил, в каком заведении? Учителей к следователю прокуратуры, заведение закрыть, все имущество заведения в пользу государства без права на аппеляцию.

Это не кровожадные меры. Это необходимость защищать государство, ибо Государство ― это святыня. Если люди будут знать, что таковы правила игры, на Государство никто не посмеет посягать. Поэтому нельзя освобождать от ответственности евреев, которые взяли закон в свои руки. Освобождение Гилъада Шалита ― это сделка, а не повод отменять законы государства.

Но ведь государство, которое фактически сделало легитимным убийство евреев, несет отвественность за то, что само подтолкнуло своих еврейских граждан к мысли о самозащите. Разве дело только в убийцах, которых обменяли на Гилъада Шалита? А как же Самир Кунтар, который собственноручно размозжил голову еврейской девочки после того, как у нее на глазах убил ее отца? Этот нелюдь в израильской тюрьме получил образование, был обменен на трупы двоих израильских солдат и теперь в Ливане наслаждается радостями молодого отца. Ведь этот абсурд узаконен нашим собственным государством. Почему же нужно преследовать старца Демьянюка за службу нацистам, если "самирам кунтарам" еврейское государство выдает призы за убийство евреев?

Несомненно, в государстве народа, который подвергся геноциду за свое еврейство, смертная казнь должна быть введена отдельным законом именно за убийство евреев. И закон этот должен связать геноцид европейского еврейства с идеологией геноцида под вывеской "Палестина".

Никому не нужна возведенная в культ "Катастрофа", с ее музеями, торжественными митингами, учреждениями, где нашли свои тепленькие места политики, исследователи, делатели шальных денег, да и попросту бездельники и проходимцы. У Кататстрофы может быть один-единственный адекватный памятник - Государство Израиля. И поэтому каждый, кто считает, что Земля Израиля ― это Освенцим, предназначенный для убийства евреев, должен знать: его ждет судьба Адольфа Эйхмана, так как суть намерений и деяний "эйхманов" и "палестинцев" одна и та же.

Народ, который не видит связи между геноцидом европейского еврейства и геноцидом под вывеской "Палестина", открыто провозглашенным и пока осуществляемым по мере сил отдельными "палестинцами", платит отсутствием решимости ввести смертную казнь там, где сделать это необходимо. И Гилъад Шалит здесь ни при чем.

Итог обмена Гилъада Шалита на 1027 арабов, по моему мнению, таков.

Несомненный проигрыш.

1) Государство превратило еврея в галутское ничтожество, которое можно безнаказанно убить и считать себя при этом героем. Сколько бы наши политики не раздували щеки, якобы демонстрируя силу, налицо слабость, причем слабость с мерзким галутским привкусом.

2) Похищение солдат превратилось в беспроигрышное дело.

3) За свободу Гилъада заплатят другие похищенные израильтяне. У них не будет той мощной поддержки, какая была у семьи Шалитов, да и народ не выдержит еще одной такой кампании.

Несомненный выигрыш.

Фундамент национальной памяти окреп. Мы все пережили волнение, наблюдая за возвращением из плена еврейского мальчика. Мы все разделили радость отца, обнявшего сына. Мы доказали и себе, и другим, что в самом деле являемся потомками библейских праотцев, заложивших основы еврейской семьи. Мы любим своих детей, учим их любить жизнь и поэтому меняем одного против 1027.

Нет лучшего длоказательства того, что именно нам принадлежит эта Земля Обетованная.

Кризис охватил весь мир, однако нет народа, чье положение можно бы было сравнить с положением евреев. Всего несколько десятилетий отделяет нас от эпохи Освенцима, когда на глазах у всего мира осуществлялся нацистский план тотального уничтожения еврейского народа. И вот опять во всеуслышанье, на весь мир, практически не встречая возражений оглашается новый план уничтожения евреев.

На сей раз план замаскирован под уничтожение еврейского государства.

Что все это означает? Это случайное совпадение или закономерность? Давно начала я искать ответы на вопросы, которые задает нам История.   Каким образом развитие человечества привело его к тому состоянию, в котором оно оказалось?   Логично ли, что результатом усилий творцов цивилизации стал хаос, в который погружается современное человечество? Чем объясняется единодушная ненависть к еврейскому народу, которая проходит через всю историю и объединяет тех, кто ни на какой иной основе не смог бы объединиться? Почему в наше время эта ненависть докатилась даже до тех уголков земного шара, где еще совсем недавно евреями не интересовались, и почему она свирепствует там, где евреев практически уже не осталось, так как их всех уничтожили нацисты, с воодушевлением поддержанные местным населением?

Концепция "Парадокса Пятой заповеди"

1

Размышляя над этими вопросами, я пришла к выводу, что все это - лишь следствие одной первопричины. Первопричиной же является Монотеистическая Идея, которую в мир принесли евреи.

Укоренившись в миропонимании одного единственного человека, праотца Авраама, Монотеистическая Идея полностью изменила менталитет человека и задала вектор Истории. Отныне человек стал воспринимать все человечество как единое целое, а у Истории появилась конечная цель - всечеловеческое единство на основе единого мирового порядка.

Процесс объединения людей начался с монотеистической семьи праотцев еврейского народа Авраама-Ицхака-Яакова, цель которой - воспитание наследственных монотеистов. Их потомкам понадобились века, чтобы превратить Монотеистическую Идею в основу единства народа. И лишь пройдя этот инкубационный период Монотеистическая Идея прорвала границу, отделяющую первый народ-монотеист от всех народов мира, чтобы объединить разные народы в две монотеистические системы - христианскую и мусульманскую.

Образование "глобальной деревни" поставило перед человечеством проблему, которая не могла возникнуть прежде, однако была задана самим развитием Монотеистической Идеи - проблему всечеловеческого единства на основе единого мирового порядка.

Таким образом в проблематику, порожденную Монотеистической Идеей, оказались втянутыми и те народы, которые в конфессиональном смысле монотеистами не являются.

2

Такое понимание Истории позволяет увидеть совершенно в новом свете ситуацию, в которой оказалось современное человечество.

Во-первых, оно отвергает идею столкновения цивилизаций.

Трудно не заметить, что столкновение "цивилизаций" фактически сводится к столкновению "монотеистов". Все прочие "цивилизации", хотя и втянуты в проблематику, порожденную Монотеистической Идеей, остаются равнодушными свидетелями и недоумевающими жертвами битвы "монотеистов" за единый мировой порядок.

Столкновение "монотеистов" вызвано тем, что, будучи на самом деле сотрудниками, работающими на достижение общей цели – укоренение Монотеистической Идеи в среде народов мира, – они превратились в соперников. Причина превращения задана целью, к которой ведет развитие Монотеистической Идеи: единый мир, единый Б-г, единое человечество.

Поэтому, как только мир действительно стал единым, именно между "монотеистами" развернулась непримиримая борьба за право навязать всему миру собственный мировой порядок как единственно возможный.

Во-вторых, изложенное в "Парадоксе Пятой заповеди" понимание Истории позволяет объяснить сущность отношений между "монотеистами". Эта сущность также обусловлена Монотеистической Идеей.

Уже в Десяти Заповедях, адресованных всему человечеству, содержится парадоксальное требование, несовместимое с всечеловеческим единством: Пятая Заповедь предписывает почитание отца и матери, которые передают традицию от предков потомкам. В силу того, что традиции предков у всех народов разные, предписанное Пятой заповедью почитание отца и матери превращает всечеловеческое единство в недостижимую цель.

3

И в самом деле - как достичь всечеловеческого единства, если один народ от другого отделяет наследие собственных отцов и дедов?

Христиане нашли собственный способ, позволивший им объединить народы, обойдя Парадокс Пятой заповеди - индивидуальный союз с Б-гом. Уйдя в монастырь, христианин порвал с наследием предков-язычников и обрел свободу от власти отцов. Благодаря этому у любого человека (теоретически у всех людей мира) появилась возможность стать членом единого братства, основанного на принципе "нет эллина и нет иудея".

С одной стороны, обретенная свобода психологически освободила христиан от власти всех авторитетов, что позволило им, единственным из всех "монотеистов", вырвать цивилизацию из ее естественного состояния и поднять на современный уровень.

Но с другой стороны она же, обретенная свобода, позволила освободиться и от самой Монотеистической Идеи, отказаться от Б-га, в результате чего начали разваливаться все христианские коллективы - семья, народ, вся христианская система.

Мусульмане нашли собственный способ, позволивший им объединить народы, обойдя Парадокс Пятой заповеди - единый для всего мусульманского мира жесткий семейный кодекс. Этот кодекс позволяет им не только укреплять мусульманские коллективы, но и вовлекать в них новых членов. Это происходит потому, что семейный кодекс, во-первых, организует тот первичный коллектив, который является естественной основой жизни любого народа - семью, а во-вторых, приучает человека с детства подчиняться авторитету.

Результат очевиден: способ, при помощи которого мусульманам удалось обойти Парадокс Пятой заповеди, с одной стороны сковал свободу личности, лишив мусульманский мир потенций развития, но с другой стороны крепко-накрепко укоренил в самосознании мусульман Монотеистическую Идею, благодаря чему их иллюзорная вера в то, что именно ислам станет основой вселенского единства крепнет с каждым днем.

Такое видение природы конфликта приводит к возражению и против другого принятого, но не проясняющего ситуацию понятия – международный терроризм.

Мы являемся свидетелями и, к сожалению, участниками монотеистических войн, которые вспыхнули из-за несовместимых представлений о мировом порядке, порожденных разными способами обхода Парадокса Пятой заповеди в христианстве и исламе.

4

Выход из сложившейся ситуации в руках евреев.

Только евреи могут объединить народы на основе универсализма, в то время как в распоряжении христиан и мусульман есть только одна иллюзорная возможность - космополитизм. В обоих случаях - как в христианском, так и в мусульманском - космополитизм основан на насильственном навязывании собственной концепции всем народам, которые в соответствии с Пятой заповедью разделены традициями своих предков.

Несовместимость космополитических концепций и порождает войну, в которой может быть только один победитель, так как ни одна сторона в конфликте не успокоится, пока порядок, представляющийся ей единственно возможным, не распространится на весь мир.

Принципиальное отличие иудаизма от христианства и ислама в том, что иудаизм нераспространяем, но ...распространяемы евреи.

В течение 2000 лет пребывания в среде народов мира евреи впитывали в себя культурную субстанцию, порожденную религиозным опытом христиан и мусульман. Разнообразие этого опыта незаметно превращало еврейский народ в уникальный коллектив - в конгломерат народов, связанных самосознанием потомков общих праотцев Авраама-Ицхака-Яакова. И только лишь вернувшись через 2000 лет на Землю Обетованную, и обнаружив в собственном государстве это новое свое качество, еврейский народ столкнулся с проблемой, которой прежде не знал - проблемой универсализма.

Уникальность этой проблемы состоит в том, что, одновременно являясь и внутренней проблемой еврейского народа, и проблемой всего человечества, она возникла как закономерный результат развития Монотеистической Идеи.

Решение проблемы универсализма нужно искать в самой природе человека, на которую и указывает Пятая заповедь: все люди на земле – родители и дети.

Из концепции "Парадокса Пятой заповеди" следует однозначный вывод: только лишь при условии, что любовь к Б-гу и Его Творению все родители будут передавать своим детям, человечество обретет единство. Такую принципиально новую культуру семьи могут создать только потомки Авраама-Ицхака-Яакова, которые за 2000 лет рассеяния накопили необходимую для этой цели духовную субстанцию.

От того, смогут ли евреи решить проблему человеческого универсализма, зависит, обретет мир единство или будет самоуничтожен. Таким образом у нас на глазах раскрывается смысл слов Писания: "в семени твоем благословятся все народы земли за то, что ты вслушивался в голос Мой".

Новые ответы на старые вопросы

Ну, а теперь самое главное: имеет ли все изложенное выше практическую ценность? Я утверждаю, что изложенное в "Парадоксе Пятой заповеди" миропонимание, позволяет найти ответы на вопросы, на которые у нас на сегодняшний день ответов нет. Вот лишь некоторые из них.

Вопрос 1. Есть ли логика в том, что развитие цивилизации привело нас к царящему в мире хаосу?

1

Логика есть, и она определена развитием Монотеистической Идеи, которое проходит в несколько этапов-эпох:

эпоха Первого Храма - первый, крайне проблематичный опыт укоренения Монотеистической Идеи в среде потомков праотцев-монотеистов;

эпоха Второго Храма - формирование первого народа-монотеиста и приобщение к монотеизму других народов мира;

эпоха междухрамья - 2000-летний этап между Вторым и Третьим Храмами - укоренение монотеизма в среде народов мира и рассеяние евреев.

Время, в которое всем нам выпало жить, – эпоха Третьего Храма. Хаос вызван наступлением этой эпохи, которая является всего лишь новым этапом развития Монотеистической Идеи.

Признаки этого этапа очевидны – все человечество объединилось в одну "глобальную деревню", а потомки праотцев Авраама-Ицхака-Яакова возвращаются из рассеяния и воссоединяются на Земле Обетованной, теперь уже представляя собой модель человечества.

Естественно, что с наступлением нового этапа развития Монотеистической Идеи изменился мировой порядок.

Технологический уровень человечества вызвал необходимость в новом типе взаимоотношений между людьми. В результате начали разваливаться все традиционные коллективы. Стало очевидным, что единому человечеству требуется новая, отличная от прежней основа единства, так как прежняя основа более не вмещает новый опыт.

Это требование и вызвало кризис всех традиционных монотеистических конфессий.

2

Беспомощность традиционных конфессий перед вызовом новой эпохи Третьего Храма привела к формированию внутри этих конфессий собственных глобалистских религий-антитез. И в этом отношении положение, сложившееся в современном исламе, нисколько не отличается от того, что произошло внутри христианства и иудаизма.

И тут у меня вновь возникает принципиальное возражение против понятия – на сей раз против понятия исламский фундаментализм. Фундаментализм есть неукоснительная верность любой доктрине, и в этом качестве существует как в христианстве, так и в иудаизме. Я называю хомейнизмом ту глобалистскую религию-антитезу, которая сформировалась внутри ислама, и под знаменем которой сегодня насаждается новый мировой якобы исламский порядок.

В качестве религии-антитезы хомейнизм подобен двум другим глобалистским религиям-антитезам – марксизму как антитезе иудаизму и нацизму как антитезе христианству.

Обвиняя мусульман в развязывании войны за новый мировой порядок, мы как-то забыли, что совсем недавно с той же целью войны вели европейцы под знаменами марксизма и нацизма. В отличии от Первой мировой войны, в которой нации сражались за раздел мира, Вторая мировая война была уже религиозной войной между адептами марксизма и адептами нацизма.

Третью мировую войну миру объявили миру агенты хомейнизма.

Мир, таким образом, разрушается посредством религий-антитез, для адептов которых уничтожение существующего мирового порядка есть условие торжества порядка нового, который они проповедуют. Адепты этих религий-антитез заняли непримиримую позицию прежде всего по отношению к традиционным конфессиям, в рамках которых веками создавался тот порядок, который религии-антитезы отрицают.

Именно религии-антитезы – каждая в соответствии с отрицаемой традиционной конфессией, – определили ужасающие своей иррациональной ненавистью к Жизни события XX и пока только начала XXI века.

Сопротивление, которое вынуждены оказывать традиционные конфессии собственным религиям-антитезам, толкает эти конфессии к объединению перед общей угрозой.

Этим и объясняется совершенно удивительный факт - представители традиционных монотеистических конфессий, чьи религиозные идеологии всегда были непримиримы по отношению друг к другу, в новых условиях ищут пути диалога и призывают к миру и сосуществованию в тщетной попытке предотвратить всеобщий хаос.

Вопрос 2. Для чего евреи вернулись на родину предков?

1

Вразумительного ответа на этот законный вопрос у нас, евреев, нет, несмотря на то, что мы никогда не скрывали своей веры в возвращение, предсказанное всеми еврейскими пророками.

Совершенно очевидно, что, если мы отказываемся от некой миссии, в которую всегда верили и из-за которой себя хранили, превращаемся в обычный "народ, как все", наше возвращение лишается какого-либо оправдания.

Мало ли кто где жил 2000 лет назад! Ну а уж о справедливости в отношениях между народами вообще говорить не приходится, особенно, когда дело касается претензий на одну и ту же землю.

Однако если мы сводим свою миссию исключительно к выполнению предписаний традиционного раввинизма, сформированного в рассеянии и приспособленного к условиям рассеяния, наше возвращение становится не менее проблематичным.

Зачем нам государство, если все эти предписания можно выполнять без него? Ведь обходились же евреи без государства 2000 лет!

Наша собственная неубедительность в вопросе возвращения укрепила всех во мнении, что настоящей причиной является европейский антисемитизм. А такая причина возвращения обессмысливает всю нашу историю, лишает наше общество идеалов и целей, к которым нужно стремиться, и направляет наши интересы исключительно на выяснения отношений с внешним миром при полном игнорировании ужасающей внутренней деградации израильского общества.

Противникам нашего возвращения, считающим себя исконными обитателями Земли Обетованной, такая якобы причина дает мотивацию противодействовать нашему возвращению.

Они справедливо полагают, что за европейский антисемитизм ответственности не несут. Уникальность нашего народа, неосознанная прежде всего нами, приводит их к мысли, что евреев, которые через 2000 лет пришли на Землю Обетованную из разных стран мира, на самом деле ничто не связывает друг с другом. А это значит - делают они вывод, – что рано или поздно эти евреи сами вернутся туда, откуда пришли.

В их глазах наше возвращение выглядит не только незаконным как с исламской, так и с христианской точек зрения, но и бессмысленным, а, наблюдение за саморазрушением израильского общества лишь укрепляет их во мнении, что наше государство является временным "сионистским образованием".

И возразить им на сегодняшний день нечем.

2

Совсем иначе выглядит наше возвращение, если оно совершается ради миссии, значимой для всех. Что собой представляет эта миссия, логично вытекает из всей концепции "Парадокса Пятой заповеди".

Эта миссия состоит в создании новой основы человеческого единства.

В соответствии с "Парадоксом Пятой заповеди" у 2000-летнего процесса преображения еврейского народа в уникальный коллектив - "человечество" внутри единой семьи потомков праотцев - есть сверхцель.

Только благодаря этому преображению евреи смогли принести на Землю Обетованную особую духовную субстанцию, которую они не только извлекли из традиций разных народов мира, но и сконцентрировали внутри самих себя как общее наследие потомков праотцев Авраама-Ицхака-Яакова.

Эта духовная субстанция есть тот "строительный материал", из которого евреям предстоит на Земле Обетованной создать значимые для всего человечества универсальные модели взаимодействия людей, связанных Пятой заповедью, то есть традицией предков.

Историософская концепция "Парадокса Пятой заповеди", позволяет нам, евреям, осмыслив таким образом собственную Историю, претендовать на то, что наше возвращение - закономерный этап ее развития.

О каких же универсальных моделях идет речь?

3

Если, как это следует из изложенной в книге концепции, человеческий универсализм основан на том, что все люди на земле - родители и дети, то задача еврейского народа – создать модель семьи эпохи Третьего Храма, обобщив и переработав духовную субстанцию, которую евреи извлекли из традиций народов мира.

Основой этой модели провозглашается Знание, что вызывает множество вопросов.

Как должны люди получать Знания, в каком возрасте, от кого? Как сделать так, чтобы вместе со Знаниями о Творении, человек проникался и любовью к Нему? Ведь от этого зависит само продолжение Жизни на земле.

Единственными людьми, заинтересованными в продолжении жизни на земле, являются только те, кто связан общей кровью, Пятой заповедью - родители и дети. Именно эта заинтересованность не надуманна, не является плодом идеологии. Она обусловлена самой природой человека.

Из концепции "Парадокса Пятой заповеди" следует, что все проблемы, вплоть до общемировых, закладываются внутри первичного коллектива, внутри семьи во взаимоотношениях "родители - дети". И никакая внешняя по отношению к семье сила не в состоянии решить современные проблемы без исправления этих взаимоотношений.

Отсюда следует, что универсальной задачей человечества в эпоху Третьего Храма является исправление взаимоотношений между членами семьи в соответствии с требованиями современной цивилизации.

Универсализм Знания - это и есть та основа, на которой родители и дети должны взаимодействовать, чтобы сами люди, уровень их индивидуального развития и их взаимоотношения с себе подобными соответствовали требованиям эпохи Третьего Храма.

Творенье Б-жье, включая созданную людьми цивилизацию, вручено Творцом всему человечеству. И потому отношения "родители-дети", направленные на то, чтобы постичь и сберечь Творение, поднимут Пятую заповедь на высоту, которая была недостижимой до наступления эпохи Третьего Храма.

В современном же мире Знания, накопленные человечеством, превратились в угрозу существованию самому Творению, включая созданную людьми цивилизацию. Самым полным выражением этой угрозы является новый тип "семьи", прежде никогда не существовавший, по существу "антисемья", в которой матери надевают на собственных детей пояса со взрывчаткой.

Именно такому типу семьи Смерти евреи призваны противопоставить семью Жизни.

4

Но созданием модели "семья эпохи Третьего Храма" миссия еврейского народа на Земле Обетованной не ограничивается.

В книге "Парадокс Пятой заповеди" обращается внимание на факт для всех очевидный, но не осмысленный: в современном мире в положении евреев оказались практически все народы мира - у каждого народа теперь есть собственная диаспора, собственное "рассеяние", собственный "галут".

"Галут" на иврите это вовсе не только "изгнание". Этот же корень означает и "открытие". В "галуте" евреи открывали для себя мир других народов, впитывали их культурную субстанцию, чтобы перерости рамки народа, ограниченного собственным опытом.

Та же возможность теперь появляется и у других народов мира.

Отсюда делается вывод, что "галут" - это метод, посредством которого создается основа человеческого единства и тем самым развивается Монотеистическая Идея.

Наличие собственной диаспоры дает возможность каждому народу получать через собственных соплеменников культурный опыт других народов, и постепенно его перерабатывая, отбирать универсальные элементы этого опыта. И делать все это каждый народ может без вмешательства чужаков, пересматривая, если необходимо, в диалоге "родители-дети" те или иные элементы традиции собственных предков. Тем самым с одной стороны осуществляется самоисправление народа, Б-жественный суд народа над самим собой, а с другой стороны народы делают это на основе собственной традиции, то есть, не нарушая Пятую заповедь.

Естественно, возникает вопрос: а как должен идти этот процесс? Ответ на этот вопрос могут дать только евреи, создав государство нового типа, основанное на взаимодействии диаспоры с метрополией.

Такой подход совершенно отрицает то, что сегодня принято в мире.

Современный мировой порядок сформировали западные христиане-"монотеисты" (как носители монотеистического менталитета, который остается таковым даже в том случае, если строго в конфессиональном смысле люди являются атеистами). Выйдя за пределы своего ареала, западные христиане-"монотеисты" (тех, кто подразумевается под противостоящим миру "Западом") предстали перед всеми остальными народами мира как внешние силы, которые навязывают народам ценности, чуждые традиции отцов этих народов.

Для того, чтобы эти чуждые ценности усвоить, народы должны нарушить Пятую заповедь, то есть от традиции собственных отцов отказаться. Такой отказ вносит хаос в организацию всей их жизни.

А это вызвало соответствующую реакцию.

С одной стороны, огромная разноэтническая и разноконфессиональная иммиграция, хлынувшая на Запад, начала разваливать западные государства, основанные на идеалах, которое могли сформироваться только в лоне христианства, причем исключительно в его протестантском варианте.

С другой же стороны чуждость ценностей, навязанных народам мира "Западом", вызывает ненависть этих народов к самому "Западу", ненависть часто даже неосознаваемую и необъяснимую, и превращает борьбу против "Запада" в оправданную в глазах народов.

Модель "Диаспора-Метрополия" призвана остановить этот всеобщий процесс разрушения.

5

Итак, мы, евреи, вернулись на Землю Обетованную, чтобы, решая внутреннюю проблему народа-свидетеля Откровения, создать универсальную основу человеческого единства: модель "семья" и модель "государство" эпохи Третьего Храма. Самим Провидением Б-жьим мы приспособлены для этой цели. Результатами же смогут воспользоваться все люди по собственному усмотрению.

По моему глубокому убеждению, это - единственное средство, способное предотвратить мировую Катастрофу.

Сущность нашей миссии подчеркивают силы, которые противостоят еврейскому государству.

Ими прежде всего являются все адепты религий-антитез: марксизма, нацизма и хомейнизма. Противостояние еврейскому государству связывает их с создателями всех разрушительных моделей мирового порядка - от советского коммунизма до насильственной демократизации всех народов, с ООН, с Евросоюзом, со Вторым Интернационал и всеми прочими подобными "интернационалами", основанными на нарушении Пятой заповеди. (Именно по этой причине в их среде так много евреев-"интернационалистов".)

Внешне часто непримиримые, они тем не менее в одном вопросе едины – их связывает отрицающая Синайское Откровение безумная вера в "оккупацию евреями Земли Обетованной". Только благодаря их сплоченности в этом вопросе стало возможным формирование такого искусственного явления как "палестинский народ", у которой нет никакой иной миссии, кроме сопротивления возвращению евреев.

Эта миссия и запрограммировала "палестинский народ" на культуру Смерти, которая стала основой воспитания молодого поколения как в системе образования, так и в семье.

И теперь эта культура Смерти у нас на глазах делает свое дело: бушует на Земле Обетованной и расползается по всему миру, подрывая все государства, угрожая всем народам, и подтверждая с леденящей душу очевидностью слова Писания: "проклят проклинающий тебя".

Все, кто противостоят возвращению евреев на Землю Обетованную, объединенными силами толкают Творение в Смерти.

Наша же задача как задача избранного Б-гом народа объединить тех, кто жаждет Жизни Творения. Мы можем это сделать путем создания модели "Семья" и модели "Государство" эпохи Третьего Храма.

Вот для этого мы и вернулись.

My presentation was so roundly criticized that a relative of mine, who also came to listen to me, commented sarcastically.

- Lena was ostracized.

I cannot agree with this fully. I think that it is always an encouraging sign when people do not leave right away. Instead, they continued the discussion in small groups. To me the worst kind of reaction is indifference. Fortunately, I did not get that reaction either in New York or in Boston.

Now, having gotten substantial experience with these two presentations, it is time to recap.

First of all, I have to reveal my obvious weak point. It is true that I somehow limit all my thoughts to the problem of education. However, the way I approach this problem enables my audience “to guess” what I am aiming at, at least in theory: look how smart, educated and intelligent all these Russians are, while all the non-Russians are dumb, ignorant people. Even in New   York, where people were listening to my presentation with the utmost attention, the next day I found out, to my big surprise, that that was exactly how they perceived what I had said.

Frankly, this is not what I actually had in mind. What I am saying is that all the problems of the modern world originate in man himself and are caused by his not being ready to meet the challenges of modern civilization. Naturally, it is impossible to bring up these issues without criticizing the educational system.  But the educational system is not my main concern. I am actually talking about the basic transfer of knowledge.

Who said that knowledge can be taught only by means of the present, generally accepted, system of education? It is important to point out that this current system has one peculiar feature: it was created by the monks. The monks were the ones who shaped the approach toward knowledge, which later determined the distinct features of Western-style Enlightenment. What happens when people with a corrupt attitude to knowledge begin to control and own it, we know from the entire European history of the 20thcentury.

Yes, it is true that the problem of attitude toward knowledge has to do with Russia since the Russian nation was the first one to confront this problem. The famous Slavophile Kireevsky made an attempt to juxtapose the Russian approach toward knowledge with the Western one. The fact that this problem actually exists was proven by the general crisis of the Enlightenment, which was caused not by knowledge per se but rather by the attitude toward it. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the non-Europeans are becoming familiar with the European Enlightenment. Time will show what will be the outcome of this mix of European knowledge with the non-European attitude toward knowledge. It becomes clear how dangerous are the people who have education but hate the West and its standards.

But I am trying to emphasize something different, and this is the role of family in obtaining knowledge. While using the word “Knowledge” with a capital letter I encompass not only information but the attitude toward G-d’s Creation. Just information without any “soul” is destructive. But the “soul” depends on who conveys this knowledge, how, and for what purpose. And family plays the major role in this.

I base my ideas on the assertion that an obvious fact constitutes the basis for universalism. And this fact is that all people on Earth are parents and children. This is why simply changing the culture of the family leads to the solution of currently “unsolvable” problems. This is possible because the key to such a solution is kept within man himself. In the state “Diaspora-Metropolis” I see a new universal model of self-organization, which allows each nation to make the necessary changes in the most intimate sphere of every national culture. I am talking about family relations, and each nation is capable of influencing this transformation by deploying its own potential.

Apparently, I have failed to make myself clear. How else can I explain the fact that people quote me as saying things I never said? We have to address the main issue, as Jabotinsky taught.

The question still remains – what is exactly the main issue?

In order to determine this “main issue” I had to compose a whole symphony with a number of variations, among which I would like to point out the following six most important ones:

1. The development of civilization led to a fundamentally new situation:

· traditional societies are being destroyed;

· the destruction of traditional societies throws part of each nation out into the Diaspora;

· the development of multiple Diasporas destroys already existing developed states;

· these interconnected processes create masses of disoriented people;

· the great numbers of disoriented people threaten the very existence of mankind;

· The outcome of this situation is the creation of a new model of national self-organization.

2. The Jews are the only ones who are capable of creating such a model for two key reasons:

· The unique nature of the diverse experience of our nation in self-organization. This experience was accumulated over 2500 years, from the moment when the first diaspora emerged in Babylon;

· The unique nature of the structure of our nation, which transformed into “mankind” in the process of 2000-long dispersion;

3. When it comes to contemporary Jewry, the Russian Jews can play the role of the sole uniting factor – again for two reasons:

· Only the Russian Jews have personal ties practically with all the other nations of the world;

· Only the Russian Jews are the carriers of the new Jewish self-identification, which is based not on confession but on civilization.

4. Creation of a new form of self-organization of nations – this is the ultimate goal, for the sake of which the Jews had been dispersed among other nations of the world. For that reason it is the highest possible form of serving G-d. Nations come to the Unity of His Name not via confessions, as it was the case before, but via civilization.

5. The Jews do not fulfill their obligation before G-d because they are hostages of stereotypes. Primarily, they are the hostages of the stereotype of serving G-d. This stereotype is explained by a 2000-year long existence without a state of their own.

6. The fact that the Jews do not fulfill their duty before G-d engenders the indignation of the world’s nations. This indignation is actually a new type of anti-Semitism, which is clearly becoming a phenomenon of global magnitude.

I think that all this is pretty clear and obvious, though it took a substantial effort on my part to unite these separate links into a united system of ideas. However, that was not the main problem. The main problem is rooted in existing stereotypes.

Actually, the reason why I start my presentation by criticizing these stereotypes is because I see my mission in trying to liberate my listeners from their captivity. Unfortunately, I do not see any results. Even when I am positive that I succeeded in conveying my thought to them I discover that it is still lost, as if in the wilderness, in the stereotypical thinking of people.

As soon as I start talking about G-d, there is immediately a wall between me and my audience.

Secular people have already adopted a steady stereotype: any appeal to G-d is not serious, since anybody can usurp the right to say any kind of nonsense in the Name of G-d. I cannot agree more because I can see for myself how many jabbers are out there. No wonder, I am perceived as one of them. Because of that perception, as soon as I first utter the words – “G-d”, “Creator”, and so forth - before I can even finish my first sentence, the audience begins to show signs of skepticism. It seems that everybody already knows that all this talk of G-d have nothing to do with reality.

- Please answer, - I ask. – Is there any other scenario that would fulfill with such unprecedented punctuality the scenario predicted by the Jewish prophets? I am talking about the scenario when the entirety of mankind is united. Do you really believe that human fantasy can come up with something like that? And you are living at a time when this prophesy has become a reality. This is a true miracle! However, you call this miracle simply globalization.

Still, people are not convinced. They will start telling you about the objective character of processes – historic, technological, social, etc. Wonder? What wonder? There is no way we are going to believe in that. We do not believe in miracles like that. Yes, we do believe in magicians, in horoscopes. But in G-d’s Foresight? – no way.

The “religious” part of the audience expresses skepticism for a different reason. The religious people already know how to counter-argue any thought by quoting the sources. They respond very sarcastically to any of my ideas with citations to sources and quotations. “There is nothing new in what you are saying. Rabbi X was discussing it in his treatise, and Rabbi Y deals with the same issue in another one”. They reject right away anything that, from their point of view, does not correspond to the respective quotations. Neither Rabbi X, nor Rabbi Y mentioned that, they insist.

For them I have another question:

- Please, explain. Did the great sages of the past, including Rabbi X and Rabbi Y, have to solve the kinds of problems our nation is dealing with currently? Just take a very close look at our nation that after 2000 years of dispersion changed completely, transformed into “mankind”, in order to understand: the changes that occurred should inevitably fill our chosenness with the Highest Sense, which could not be revealed in times of Rabbi X and Rabbi Y. Let us just believe that all these changes occurred thanks to the Will of G-d Almighty, provided that our sources not only allow such an assumption, but they command it. As soon as we did it, the experience of Rabbi X and Rabbi Y immediately reveals its limitations.  Do you mean to say that you equate Rabbi X and Rabbi Y to G-d Who knows upfront what should happen to our nation?

No, my logic does not persuade them. In these religious people’s opinion, I have no idea what I am talking about because only those who studied the treatises of Rabbi X and Rabbi Y do know. That is true, I have not studied them. The fact that I draw my own conclusions by analyzing not treatises but rather real life of our people here in Israel– that does not count. Treatises are more meaningful than real life. That is why any part of life that does not fit into this Procrustean bed of treatises, is proclaimed to be non-existent.

As soon as I mention Russia, I am immediately confronted by another stereotype.

Russia? No, it is irrelevant. This is our past, we already left it behind.

- What do you mean by “left behind”? – I ask, - Admit that you were all shaped in the environment of Russian culture. Not only you did you speak Russian, you expressed your thoughts in Russian. What is most important, you continue to do so. Look at what you have achieved in immigration. Do you really think it is only you who can take credit for that?  You got your education from the Russian universities, you visited Russian museums and libraries. Let us face it – it was another nation that was creating what is now your knowledge base throughout the centuries. The Russian people did it. By the way, they were doing it for themselves, not for you. Don’t you understand that this past of many generations lives in your present, you benefit from this past of another nation?

Again, this does not convince anyone. Any reference I make to Russiais explained away very easily: I am just suffering from narrow-mindedness and nostalgia, there in my Levant remoteness. On the contrary, they live in the United   States, the most developed nation on Earth, and for that reason, they do not have to think in these terms. Here in the United Stateseverybody can fully appreciate the fact that culture is a global phenomenon, not just a Russian one. Right away I am given an example of some scientist in the field of genetics of Swiss descent who all day long works on his outstanding discovery in a leading American university, and in the evening plays the cello a la Pablo Casals. This is their argument for me to stop thinking that Russiais the absolute center of world culture.

But why are they preaching to the choir? Of course, I understand that culture is a global phenomenon. But that’s not what I am talking about here.  What I am referring to are the cultural acquisitions, which we the Jews made in the environment of different nations of the world. Moreover, I insist that those gains were not used solely for their own benefit. There is a Higher Sense that obliges all of us. The past lives in the present and determines the future. Erroneous assessment of the past can be destructive for the future. It is so obvious in Israelwhere the entire culture is based on such an error.

Then I ask another question.

- You say that we are connected with Russiaonly through the past. Has it ever occurred to you that our future is connected with Russia? Why has Russiaplayed such a unique role in our destiny? It is well known that the Jews lived not only in Russia. However, all the founding fathers were Jews from Russia. Jews coming from all over the world have been bringing into our country ready cultural acquisitions, which they perpetuate in our state. But only something that can be determined as “Russian Spirit” made it possible to do something very different in our state that never ever took place anywhere else. This irrational “Russian Spirit” carried by the Russian Jews created new forms of political thought (besides the abstract idea of Theodore Herzl, all the rest of the ideas were generated in minds of those Jews who were natives of Russia), new forms of social life (unique kibbutzim, which rightfully symbolize Israeli idealism). Hebrew has been revived by the Jews from Russia. Even in the second generation of “the Russians” this creative “Russian Spirit” was still preserved. But all the miracles came to an end as soon as “the Russian Spirit” began to fade. Unless you think that it was Russian anti-Semitism and not the “Russian Spirit” that triggered this remarkable ability to create something that was neverthere in the country of Exodus. We punish ourselves for failing to see the divine nature of this “Russian Spirit”: we have betrayed the dream, and we have lost its scope.

Once again, I failed miserably. Now they are Americans. They are not interested in things like “the Russian Spirit”. Today they worship the Anglo-Saxon “American spirit”. But I do not believe that somebody who is not capable of appreciating the Russian Spirit might be able to appreciate the spirit of America. This has become very clear to me. Americawas built by the immigrants. I hear these words everywhere.

Yes, - they seemed to agree with me. – We know that the basis of the United States was built by the Anglo-Saxons. But, after all, this is not that important because eventually everybody becomes an American.

On the contrary, it is profoundly important. All the immigrants are “Americans” while the “American Spirit” is alive, the one kept by the descendants of the founding fathers of this nation. They keep this spirit precisely as the legacy of their fathers because such concepts as “spirit” are entirely irrational. You cannot learn these things.  In my opinion, everything will collapse as soon as this Sprit will expire in the souls of the heirs. There are signs that unfortunately that might be the case.  I quote President Clinton in my presentation. He said that by 2050 the descendants of the founding fathers will constitute the minority in the United States.

As soon as I mention Israel, new stereotypes emerge. They reflect a certain philosophy of a particular Jewish individual on “Jewish issues”. The mere fact that this particular individual chose not to go to Israelproves that this individual wants to be “a Jew of the world”. There is not enough room for this individual in the national Jewish state.

But somehow he has to justify his choice. How can you do it without certain stereotypes? There is no way that it will work. That is exactly what the Jews of the world are doing – they invent stereotypes.

There are convinced cosmopolitans among the “Jews of the World”. They just love this idea of globalization, which, in their opinion, helps them to hide among the herds of immigrants from different countries. That is why Israel annoys them: unfortunately that country reminds them of the “national issue”, and – what is even more upsetting – about their own affiliation with this particular people. They plainly do not want that. In this respect they are no different from their grandfathers-forefathers and grand-mothers-foremothers. The only difference is that their grandparents believed in proletarian internationalism, and they believe in a multicultural society.

- What kind of a multicultural society are you talking about? - I ask. – Read G-d’s Book. G-d has divided mankind into various peoples. By doing that he shaped mankind in a certain structural order, which has become the Law of Nature. Any attempt to violate this order leads to destruction. OK, you do not believe in G-d, you do not believe in His revelation. But face then the realities of life. You will see that all people, in one way or another, feel this structure by experiencing an irrational sense of belonging to their own nation. This irrational solidarity enables each nation to create its own environment. While immigrating into the environment of a different nation each individual, first of all, endangers this irrational sense of his. And if the first generation of immigrants still retains some kind of illusions that they might join the other nation the way they join any organization, the second generation finds out that they are left out from the national structure. Because of this unpleasant discovery they start organizing all kinds of artificial international “structures”. Some of them sign up for communist groups, some become hippies, and some join “Al Qaida”.

This argument of mine does not work either. Our cosmopolitans are obsessed with mankind, with world culture. They do not want to see a concrete man with his concrete problems, which are determined precisely by the cultural tradition of the nation he belongs to. By the way, the problems of Jews are determined by our cultural tradition in no way less than the problems of all other nations.

This very idea drives Jewish cosmopolitans crazy. They want to liberate themselves from all the problems caused by Jewish tradition. They make gigantic efforts to destroy the structure of mankind. What they fail to understand is that they take on the Law, which they have to honor exactly the way they honor the Law of gravity. By performing their destructive actions they cause counter-actions, i.e. they trigger forces aiming to restore the law.

Unfortunately, Nazism is one of these forces.

These Jewish cosmopolitans think that Nazism vanished because of the Holocaust of the European Jewry, which “the Jews of the World” managed to use as a weapon in their struggle for a new, better world order, as they see it. Under the banner of the Holocaust they struggle vehemently against intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, and all kind of phobias. Look, who else but the Jews should know better what these phobias lead to. “The Jews of the World” passionately advocate tolerance and other pillars of multicultural society.

The only problem is that the Catastrophe of the European Jewry, interpreted in this manner, has become means of struggle against Law, which divides mankind into different nations. Now the immigrants in the countries of European culture are guarded by the blood of 6 million Jews. As soon as anyone in Europe tries to pacify their rage they get a slap right back in the face: “You are doing it again, you, Nazis, racists, xenophobes!”

But the patience of nations has certain limits. Sooner or later, the result will be just the opposite to the one our Jewish cosmopolitans have been expecting.  Chaos grows. And the question “Who to blame” is still asked. As for the answer, it sounds more and more assertive: “Those Jews are causing more chaos with their Holocaust”.  The logical conclusion is: “Hitler was right”.

That makes the revival of Nazism inevitable. The popularity of swastikas grows from day to day. And we are not talking about sporadic incidents – we are witnessing symptoms of an upcoming pandemic.

There is one more category among the “Jews of the World” who are totally opposite to the cosmopolitans – ardent patriots. Naturally, they have their own stereotypes.

The ardent patriots are proud of their belonging to Jewry. They comprise lists of prominent Jews, search for traces of Jewish blood in anybody who is famous for something. They passionately support Israel. They keep track of every possible achievement of Israel, speaking out loud about their pride.

However, I resent their patriotism, obviously not because they chose another country than Israel. I insist that without any direct involvement into the matters of our national state their patriotism is not only useless, it is harmful because of its futility and because of the illusions it originates.

I explain my resentment of such patriotism in the following way. A state is not just an assembly of different people, no matter how talented and hard working they are. A state is a system of interaction between people who are united by a common understanding of the world order, which is the basis for any national culture. If this requirement is not met there is no place for this common understanding of the world order. As a result, the state collapses, and there is no force that can prevent it from collapsing. I desperately want to be understood: our Jewish nation does not have this common understanding of world order. What does it mean that, first of all, we do not have our national culture, and secondly, that we lack the opportunity to create the necessary system of interaction of people, which is essential for building our own state. Our cultural tradition is of tribal origin.  It is not good for a nation, and for this reason it hinders the very idea of creating a nation.  All our problems stem from this fact. In the course of history, we found ourselves to be culturally dependent on other peoples, primarily on the Europeans. Because of that, a significant part of our nation – the one you belong to – requires the right to live in civilizationally developed countries of the European culture. The other significant part of our nation, which, for one reason or another, did not go through the European cultural influence, is fully satisfied with the material benefits of civilization. These people do not realize how unprepared they are for modern civilization.  You preferred to distance yourself from the truth. But in Israelyou do not have this kind of escape.  Here the truth reveals itself at each step. It is useless to hide it or cover it up with the achievements of particular Jewish individuals. Our state degrades but not because of our people. It is happening because of our tribal culture.

It is useless. These patriots do not want even to hear about the real problems of our independent state. And I know exactly why not: our problems in Israel prevent the patriots from being proud of their Jewishness. These problems spoil their joy of praising the Jewish culture, though they distance themselves from its realities. They are convinced that everything in Israelmust be better than anywhere else. They want to travel the world as proud people.

- You, Israelis, should be up to the highest standards there, so we can be proud of you here. This is the way the most sincere patriots express their point of view.

These patriots gladly blame the Arabs for all our problems. It is not that difficult since, indeed, the Arabs give plenty of reasons to do so. No wonder that it became a patriotic brand to expound on how wonderful the Jews are and how awful the Arabs are.

- Can you stop this self-admiration, - I beg. - Look at this world. It was only 200 years ago when we were in a situation similar to the one of the Arabs today. Our traditional community was falling apart, and we were so eager to belong to the European culture. Children would break with the parents and leave their families for the sake of revolution in order to transform the world. It is true, it was different than it is now with the Arabs. But this problem is of a universal nature: the collapse of the traditional society, initiation of young people to European knowledge, bitterness toward this wicked world that resents strangers along with being dizzy with the prospect of destroying this world, which supposedly is Evil for the sake of the triumph of the World of Good, as they see it. The Arabs are not the last fighters for the new world order. They will be followed by many others.  But what is most upsetting is that they explain the Evil of the World with reference to the “Jewish conspiracy” because somebody has to be blamed for the destruction of the traditional world. Do not even think that we have a chance to be spared of this accusation. No chance we can avoid it because, in fact, we are responsible: we brought into this world the Idea of Unity – of One G-d, of a united mankind, of common world order. We have to face the challenges caused by globalization. We have to create a new model of Unity. That was the reason why we came back to the land where we always created something that would ultimately belong to the entire human race. Unfortunately, our tribal culture, the one you are so proud of, does not allow us to unite even our own nation. True patriots do not have the luxury of ignoring this fact.

No, it is useless. Our patriots prefer to explain all our problems by our enemies’ hostile actions. This is an easy and comfortable way to live, just to travel around the world as proud people and not to bother thinking about unwanted problems.

There is a third group among the “Jews of the World”. I would call them strangers. They live in different countries and fully assimilate into them. As for Israel, they are interested in her but no more than they would be interested in any other state of the world – Chile, Romania, Honduras. This category of “the Jews of the World” is deeply convinced that whichever problems we confront in Israel, only the Israeli people should be concerned about them. The Jews of this category think that that has nothing to with them whatsoever because in the modern world, people are united by citizenship not by nationality.

- You are making a mistake by ignoring our sages, - I say to these strangers. – Our sages warned us: the Jews are united by their Jewishness. For that reason, the Jews are responsible for each other. Look, life itself proves that this is true. Just remember how all the Jews in the former Soviet Union were accused of being Zionists even those who did not have a slightest idea of what the word “Zionism” actually meant. If you think that things changed, you are dead wrong. Just go on the Internet and you will find multiple proofs for this assertion.  The Israelis are fighting a war, in the course of which, unfortunately, people are killed? The verdict of world society comes immediately: all the Jews are murderers (they killed G-d, Christian infants, the “Palestinian people”). The Israeli system of education is collapsing?  The conclusion: all the Jews are parasites, they need someone else’s cultural environment in order to be intelligent. The Jews are trading land for peace?  The conclusion: Voltaire was right when he wrote: “give the Jews their own state and they will sell it”. All the Jews are hucksters.

It is a waste of time to try to explain all this to the strangers. The strangers ignore obvious facts. In all their thoughts and efforts they are oriented toward integrating themselves into their new respective countries of residence. They reject anything that interferes with this goal.

The people I met in Boston, at a glance, produced the impression that they had nothing in common with these three groups of the “Jews of the World”. But this first impression was deceptive. In actuality, this audience surprisingly combines all the qualities of the three groups mentioned above.

All the people who came to listen to my presentation, are, in one way or another, happy that they live in a multicultural society. They are big proponents of freedom, tolerance and similar “politically correct” concepts. In this respect, they are almost no different from the Cosmopolitans. The reason for this is obvious: while considering themselves Jewish, they integrate into any given society. By doing that, they do not just guarantee that they will not be persecuted the way their ancestors were throughout the centuries, but also get direct access to all the cultural achievements of other nations, primarily, the nations of Europe.

The truth is that the Jews are not the only ones who integrate themselves into a multicultural society and get exactly the same access to the cultural achievements of Europe. Just like the Jews, other people enter European universities where they learn not only science and technology, but also the art of creating ideological philosophy, and the art of spreading ideas. They build their temples of worship, i.e. mosques, next to the synagogues.

And why not?  This order is good for anyone.

The problem is that these universities, in which the future elite of society are brought up, have transformed themselves over time into a nursery of hatred for the Jews. Similarly, the mosques are used for preaching hatred for the Jews along with the calls to launch a new Holocaust. Naturally, the Jews are concerned about this turn of events because they thought that in a multicultural society nothing will endanger their well-being. Boy, were they wrong. The danger becomes more and more evident.

There is no doubt that all the people who came to see me were patriots. They are proud of their Jewishness. They support Israelby means of various organized actions. Thinking of  themselves as patriots, they vigorously resented my criticism of Israel. Foaming at the mouth they confronted me with arguments very typical for this category of patriots. They mentioned all the achievements of the Israelis in certain fields, in which apparently they were high class experts themselves. As for the problems of Israel, they do not see any special ones, except, of course, for the problem “with the Arabs”. They counter-argue that Israelis not the only country that has bureaucracy, corruption, an inadequate educational system. If compared to many other countries Israel does not look that bad at all.

When it comes to the Jewish culture, they cannot help expressing their triumphant joy: look what happened. The Jews were sitting in their yeshivas, developing their brains, and as soon as they entered the big world, they immediately conquered all the sciences and art. They do not see any specific problems rooted in our tribal culture. Moreover, they do not want to deal with these problems in first place, which explains why they went somewhere else, not to Israel.

However, they missed the main point of my presentation. Not because they were not able to understand, they just did not want to. My point is: a national state is incompatible with a multicultural society. No matter how imperfect a national state is, it maintains order. Multicultural society creates chaos. Actually, multicultural society symbolizes the death sentence of a national state.

There is no need to go far for examples – we can look at what has been happening in Europeto prove that we are right. In Europe, where all the nations throughout the centuries were building their national states and now are transforming themselves into a multicultural society, the immigrants demand to be recognized as privileged citizens who have the right to establish their own rules and standards. But by doing that, they just help to restore exactly those kinds of orders, from which they fled to Europe. Besides, they ruin these European countries.  A similar process is taking place in the United States. As for Israel, it has no chance to survive if the society turns into a multicultural one.

Thus, we a face a paradox: those Jews who advocate the multicultural society, in which they, obviously, feel very comfortable, in other words, acting as Cosmopolitans, they sign a death sentence to Israelwhile still claiming to be patriots of the Jewish state.

The reason I invited all these people was to remove this contradiction between Cosmopolitism and patriotism. What I suggest is a new form of national self-organization called the “Diaspora-Metropolis”. As you can guess, I am not an agent of Sochnut. Never ever have I called for people to move to Israel. On the contrary, while analyzing the situation our nation has found itself in, I came to the conclusion that the Diaspora is essential for creating a national state of a new type.  This is not about the Jews alone; this is about globalization, which originated diasporas of practically all peoples of the world.

This means that millions of people have to deal with the necessity of being simultaneously “people of the world” and patriots. In other words, the problem of the interconnection between the diaspora and its respective nation has become universal. But I am absolutely convinced that there is a solution to this problem. It is necessary to understand the essence of the universal problems of contemporary nations and to see how they are influenced by and dealt with in the environment of concrete people.

Actually, there are not that many of these universal problems. I referred to just two, which I think are the most important ones.

One of them is the problem of “human rights”, which is solved neither by the interference on behalf of the state nor by the actions of self-proclaimed representatives of public groups, as it is often the case these days. Only the nation itself is capable of solving this problem.

But how can this problem can be solved if the concept of “human rights” is solely a European achievement, which became possible because of the development of Christian Protestant ideas? A long process of forming the self-consciousness of man was necessary in order to come to the idea of separation of powers, equality for all before the law, etc.

It is quite obvious that it is impossible just to emulate this kind of experience. The West is indeed on the other side of the aisle because any non-Western society is based on the cult of patriarchs, the fathers of that particular nation, who dominate in any state structure filling up all the positions by their own clan members. In Israel, it happened very fast. It took us only a couple of decades to restore the political and social culture of our traditional society that originates the absence of rights for ordinary people and all the power in the hands of the elite. The fact that we still do not have separation of powers between the legislative and executive bodies, and the Supreme Court has usurped all the functions of the spiritual mentors of the nation is not accidental. Every year we are stunned by the reports of the state comptroller. Our people already know how impotent all these reports are because the main problem is rooted in the culture that prevents us from forming the self-consciousness of true citizens.

Since we cannot use the Christian patent we have to come up with a different patent of our own. This is what I am suggesting – a patent based on a very special interaction of one group of our nation, which lives in the Diaspora with the other one, which lives in the national Jewish state. The Diaspora being free from the fathers of the nation and from any traditional cultural stereotypes has to take upon herself the function of protecting human rights. This is the only way toward gradual formation of a state and the self-consciousness of its citizens.

The second problem is to prepare man for modern civilization. Let us admit, the Europeans have imposed the modern civilization upon other peoples. Again, it was not accidental. Cultural violence determined the very traditional society that stands in the way of man’s development. We cannot help but pay attention to the fact that all the knowledge and skills, vital for the rebuilding of the state, we have acquired only after breaking with the traditional society and its educational system.

However, in a state of our own it did not take long to discover how significant is the absence of our own tradition of preparing man for modern civilization. Our educational system has been failing. Several geniuses, or even many of them, will not change this situation because the goal of the state educational system is to create a society of civilized people.  Using established channels of transferring the intellectual capital from the Diaspora to the Metropolis of your own nation – is the only way of achieving this goal. Actually, we, the Jews, have already tested this patent when we were restoring the state Israel. Our people would not be able to do anything by utilizing only their own cultural capital.

The peculiarity of this situation stems from the fact that these problems cannot be perceived as strictly Israeli/Jewish ones. On the contrary, they are very typical for all the non-Western nations. Moreover, the Jewish environment is not an example of how acute this problem might be. But the irrational necessity of the Jews to feel themselves as “people of the World” motivates them to experience the connection to the global problems.  The Jews are capable of creating such a type of self-organization of a nation that meets the demands of others. Cooperation with the diasporas of other nations is highly desirable. In this respect, the United Statesrepresents a unique arena for such cooperation.

What are we witnessing instead? The Jews of the Diaspora lack the algorithm of interaction with the diasporas of other peoples populating the USA. Sure these diasporas want to see their respective nations prospering. Absence of such goal-oriented strategy creates general disorientation and confusion.

The Diaspora-Metropolis state offers such an algorithm of interaction between diasporas.

For example, such a model enables the Iranian diaspora to get involved in the state problems of Iran. This involvement completely changes the political situation in that country. This model enables the Arabs to deal with problems, which are indeed essential to them, not like the artificial one, imposed from outside, the “Palestinian problem”. The Arabs themselves got totally lost in trying to solve it. The model we are talking about allows each nation to mobilize its own forces to improve the motherland. I think this is the only way to stop the migration of people because people leave their native places out of desperation.

Finally, such an interaction of nations is the ultimate Goal explaining the Chosenness of the Jews. They were chosen not for just boasting about it but to bring all the nations to one universal code of the Seven Laws of Noah’s sons.

Unity is a basic concept. Unity is an ideal formulated by our confession, but this confession is impotent at achieving it even in the environment of our own nation.  There is not one other segment of Israeli society that is as plagued by divisions as the Orthodox one. Civilization only, for the sake of which the Jews fled from their confession with such an enormous speed, unites people. This is why the Jews have an objective to create a model of Unity on the basis of civilization in order to unite all the nations, and simultaneously to preserve the separation determined by the Law.

I think this is simple to understand. Why then has my presentation bee met with such vigorous resentment?  The only reason I see is that the people who came combine the qualities not only of the Cosmopolitans and patriots but also the qualities of the third group, which we already discussed, i.e. strangers. These people are so eager to integrate themselves into American society.  To integrate is their main, and basically, the only goal. Anything else is just the means of achieving it.

I can accept this on a personal level. They made an enormous effort to climb up to the step where they are right now. They want comfort and rest, which they deserve.  So, they do not need me, who comes from nowhere, and agitates them with my categorical – NO!

In order to integrate themselves into American society they took as a model the experience of the American Jews. They want to communicate with the elite the same way the American Jews do, eventually entering its ranks, wearing tuxes and gowns at gala receptions and in the meantime, in the capacity of the representatives of a super power, to help our “little heroic and miserable Israel”.

And I say to them: NO. Don’t do it. The American Jews have destroyed Israel. The American Jews have imposed their galut-type ideals that have nothing to do with the dream of the founding fathers about productive work. The American Jews have brought the Israelis back to the old habit of counting on charity, which makes it unnecessary to develop your own Jewish statehood. The Osloconspiracy and the expulsion from Gazawould not be possible if not for the American Jews.  The critical situation, in which the leftist marginals, who dragged us into this “peace process” have found themselves, clearly indicates that without help from outside they would not be able to impose this lunacy upon the nation. The American Jewry that was so delighted to see Itzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat, the murderer of thousands of Jews, as well as Arabs, is to be blamed for that. The American Jewry has come to an end. Do not copy them.  You should follow a new, “Russian” path, and may be, who knows, you will be able to save whatever is still alive in American Jewry.

The unimaginable success story of the Jews from the former Soviet Union in the United States, where many of them had to start from scratch, undoubtedly confirmed my listeners’ belief in their own self-sufficiency. Then why again do I insist on my NO?

- Do not get so flattered by your own achievements. Apparently, you forget that it happened because other nations had created certain conditions, which helped you to become what you are. You have brought your knowledge from Russia. But even if you got this knowledge somewhere else – in Franceor Switzerland– it would not be just your personal success. Do not forget that the Americans have created the necessary conditions for you to be able to leave the collapsing Soviet Union for the West. Don’t you think that you are indebted to these nations? As is well known, debts have to be repaid. Otherwise, the nations to whom you owe, will try to collect the dues in their own way.

There is no doubt that all my listeners not only think of themselves as being Jewish but also are extremely proud of their Jewishness. But I continue to insist on my resolute NO.

All your Jewishness is a mere show with Jewish decorations because the essence of modern Jewishness is the search of Unity, not only on the national level but on the global one. A state of a new type represents this new essence of the modern Jewishness.

Too bad, they do not need it. They are fully satisfied and comfortable with the way it is. Somebody honestly admitted: “Americais a very convenient country”.

It is hard to argue with the notion that it is comfortable to be Jewish in America. You can go to the synagogue on the Sabbath in order to feel that you are “Jewish indeed”. Besides, you can attend different lectures and clubs on week days, to talk to your own or to listen what the Rabbi has to say. Otherwise, you can just enjoy life, the way a “Man of the World” should: Monday – tennis court, Tuesday - Book Club. You will find how to fill up the rest of the week: concerts, parties, and naturally, the most important thing to do – shopping. Life is beautiful!

All the people who attended were obviously very happy to belong to the “golden billion”. The dream of the former Soviet citizens has become true – they are prosperous. So, they resent my NO.

- The material well-being of the “golden billion” cannot be based on the disastrous situation of billions of people elsewhere. It cannot be based on the barbaric destruction of their environment. Sooner or later, these nations will ask: “Who imposed on us this kind of world order?’  They will ask the Jews for one obvious reason: the Jews introduced to this world the idea of Unity and Common world order. It does not matter that the “golden billion” does not consist of the Jews.  The thing is that the Jews have to work on inventing the patent for Unity. However, we, the Jews, have set a totally different goal: to make sure that Israel has the status of statehood like all the rest of the nations. But such an objective not only devaluates the Jewish existence and leads to the degradation of Israeli society but also makes Israela target of world hatred. This lunacy around Israel on the world stage can be compared only to a few clouds on the horizon that precede the upcoming tsunami. Do not blame all of that on the “Palestinian problem” sponsored by Arab petro-dollars. The fight for Palestinehas long ago become the form of protest of those who failed to make it to the “golden billion”. This is the protest against the existing world order.  The Europeans offered to the whole world the idea of the conspiracy of the “Zionelders”, which gradually got implanted in the minds of people. The UN gladly offered its podium for spelling out all the criticism of the Jews. Listen to me, think about what I am saying!

No, they do not want to listen, they do not want to think!

Okay, I can keep my mouth shut and stop bothering them with my NO. But I cannot help but see that we are just going around in circles: we started with emancipation and ended up with the destruction of the European Jewry.

At that time we thought that we also had a very convenient life. The church that was persecuting us for centuries eventually lost its influence in Europe. Encouraged by this, we rushed to associate ourselves with the European people being absolutely confident that nothing will ever threaten us again.  We could not even think that Christian anti-Semitism will be replaced by a racial one. The latter was precisely directed toward eliminating us from the ranks of nations and toward restoring the Law of separation into nations.

Now the violation of this Law has grown to universal magnitude. Again we are highly interested in this matter. What this means is that the restoration of the law will also be of universal magnitude and anti-Semitism will become global.  Consequently, the situation might become even worse than under the Nazis because there will not be a united force capable of confronting our enemies, as was the case with the anti-Hitler coalition. Everybody will be our enemy, though for different reasons.

In order to prevent this from happening, our nation has to understand that the unique situation of comfort, in which we found ourselves in the second half of the 20th century, is just a condition of serving the Highest Goal. It cannot be used just to satisfy our personal pleasures. G-d Almighty created these conditions so that we could serve Him on a new level. Sadly, our people do not see it this way.

I shared my thoughts about this level of service with the audience. I suggested to take Jewishness seriously. No, they want it the easy way.

I remembered a post card, the picture of which was published in one of the Israeli magazines. The card was sent by a Jewish woman from Germanyto “Palestine” on the eve of 1930-1931. This was time when there was unrest in “Palestine”: a Jewish pogrom in Hebron, conflict around the Arab claims on the Western wall of the Jerusalem Temple. Naturally, this Jewish woman from Germany expressed her worries about the plight of her relatives, maybe friends, and wished them be well. But the most amazing thing was what she wrote in the end, and I cannot forget these words:  “There is not another paradise for Jews like Germany".

This was on the eve of Hitler.

What was it? Blindness? If that was the case, in my opinion it is no different from the one I witnessed yesterday.  Sometimes, I thought I was not in the United States of the 21st century but rather in the Weimar Republicof the 20th.

2009-06-15 (evening)

How do you like that?!

It happened to me before. I come to conclusions that are not substantiated by facts. Magically, these facts jump out at me from nowhere: look, if you think this way, here is the supporting evidence”.

I just went on the Internet to look through the latest news. The first news I found was information supporting a fact that I predicted by logic alone.

To make a long story short, in Calgary, Canada, an anti-Israeli (anti-Jewish) rally took place. It was organized by a group called “the Aryan Guard”. This remarkable name speaks volumes especially in the context of the “Jewish issue”.

But this is not about the name: to that we have already been accustomed. The most peculiar fact is that one of the organizers was somebody by the name Shadi Abud, a Muslim, who stressed that “various groups were unanimously represented at the rally”.

The Muslims played a very noticeable role in these “various groups”.  But Shadi Abud, as the authors of this material say, did not expect such a degree of solidarity among the participants. But I was not surprised. It was precisely because of that that I explained to the audience yesterday why this alliance between “the Aryans” and the “non-Europeans” is inevitable.

The essence of the problem, however, is not why the Socialists have built a “bad” state but, primarily, why the rest did not build a better one.

Where were the rest?

The point is that they simply lacked a viable idea, which could rouse them to leave their homes and the places dear to them. They did not have a powerful idea that could inspire them enough to believe that they are capable of doing anything they want. An idea, which could convince the Jews that while transforming themselves and the entire nation they were transforming humanity.
The truth is that the Socialists offered such an idea.

Socialism became widely popular among the Jews. But were the Jewish people the only ones to embrace these ideas? No, many other people became obsessed with Socialism – from the elitist intellectuals in Europe to the tribal chiefs in Africa.

The socialist ideology became so popular because it managed to create a doctrine, which connected the individual to mankind at the dawn of globalization.
This doctrine made a simple hard-working man believe that he was exploited not by his immediate sovereign but by global Evil that took over all of mankind. Whichever personal problems this simple hard-working man had, they were all caused by a wrong world order. The solution offered to resolve this problem was clear – he, this hard-working proletarian, could rectify this Evil by transforming the imperfect world order if he unites with other men like him in their common struggle for new and better life.

“Mankind needs individuals such as you”. This was the main message conveyed by Socialists, and everybody got this message despite the fact that the majority of people in the world resented the ideas of personal self-value and global unity, and continue to resent them to this day.
This amazing response is explained by the universal value of these ideas. Thanks to that not only did they gradually win the hearts of many people all over the world but also elicited intense emotional feelings in representatives of different cultures (for the most part, conflicting with the traditions of their own cultures).

The Socialists, though, cannot take credit for inventing these ideas. They simply suggested their own interpretation of those ideas.

As for us, Jews, as soon as even the slightest hint at ideas associated with individual self-value and global unity reaches us from any direction, we immediately wake up and turn in that direction. These ideas revive us like living water. One drop of this water is more than enough to inspire us. We rise from the ashes of our own selves as the Phoenix, even if just a moment before we thought that this world of ours was heading towards disaster. Thus, the ideas of self-value and global unity transform something within us into something very personal. They give us a sense of inner comfort and quite joy as if we are sitting by a warm fireside in the middle of a cold winter night.

There is nothing surprising about our response. We just have to remember that we as a nation descend from Abraham, our Patriarch and the person from whom we have inherited our national identity.
Frankly, it is a little bit scary to introduce the notion involving the “voice of the ancestors” because it always leaves room for all kinds of speculations. However, some circumstances in our experience cannot be explained by tangible and visible causes.

“The Voice of the Ancestors”

I remember that on the eve of my departure from what was then the Soviet Union we had a discussion in our group of friends. The topic of that discussion was very typical for that time: “where to go?” Naturally, in the process of discussing this difficult choice we were about to make we used such sacramental terms as “the voice of the ancestors”, “historical motherland”, and the “heritage of our fathers”. One of the group said that he sincerely does not understand how he can relate to and associate himself with those ancient nomads traveling the remote desert by camel:  
– “What would you like me to do now? How can I make myself love them? Do I have to go to this strange and distant land only because my ancestors were shepherds there centuries ago?”  
It is difficult to present valid arguments to somebody who does not hear the “voice of the ancestors”. And if he does not hear their call he will not allow himself to be swayed by what other people see as their historical motherland, he will not think of the “heritage of our fathers”.

In my understanding, only those people whose ancestors have lived in a state of their own through generations have the luxury not to think about their real motherland and not to hear the “voice of the ancestors”. For the person whose forefathers had their own state all these things become a matter of customs and habits.

On the contrary, nomad people hear the “voice of the ancestors” telling them about their real motherland but they interpret it in a pragmatic way – their motherland is where the pastures are better.

But how are we, Jews, able to hear this “voice of the ancestors” reminding us during 2000 thousand years of wandering that we actually do have a real motherland?

Anti-Semitism is the simplest way to explain this unique phenomenon. In other words, if any nation had agreed to share its land with us we would not even think about our historical motherland.

Nevertheless, anti-Semitism alone is not enough to explain the strikingly persistent belief of the Jews that one day they would return to their land.  
Traditionally, Jewish religious authorities cultivated the sense of “motherland” through strict guidance and a set of mandatory rules, which constantly reminded the Jews that their association with gentile life is only temporary.

It is hard to tell whether such a system would be able to survive over many centuries if our sages, while cultivating the “voice of the ancestors”, did not support this system by relying heavily on the Jewish family tradition. This family tradition made it possible to perceive our distant ancestors as our contemporaries who are very close to us spiritually.

A friend of mine who grew up in a Hassidic family in Western Ukraine recalled how, as a child, she listened to her grandmother’s stories about Abraham.

– “He was so close to me that I was fully convinced she was talking about her own grandfather”.  
Of course, the majority of us did not grow up in Hassidic families. In our childhood, we heard numerous stories about the Russian hero Ilya from Murom and Sinbad the Sailor from the Middle  East. Nobody told us anything about Abraham. Despite that, already as adults, Jews living in the Soviet Union re-discovered this world of Jewish writings and ideas stolen from them. Many of us experienced quite a new feeling of kinship. It manifested itself as a genetic predisposition towards absorbing certain kinds of ideas, which were formulated by our forefather Abraham and expressed in his experience.

Possibly, our predisposition towards them constitutes the very special Jewish heritage and sense of Jewishness. That is what we call the “voice of the ancestors” and the sense of the motherland.

“The First Jew”

Abraham’s existential experience is the experience of a lone man who had introduced Monotheism to this world. The lessons of this experience are of a universal nature.

Lesson 1. A Lone Man Is Free “From Everybody Else”  
Abraham was quite young when began to understand that the people’s widespread convictions are far from the realities of life.

The Jewish Haggadah tells the story of how young Abraham discovers the Creator. Just like everyone else, he started by believing that it was right to worship celestial bodies but very soon he realized that the prevailing perception of their omnipotence is based on nothing.

“Does it make any sense to worship the Moon if during the day it is replaced by the Sun? Why should we worship the Sun if it may be hidden behind a cloud?” Those were the kind of questions he asked himself until he logically arrived at the conclusion that the Creator is not to be sought in the system of worldviews created by men but in objective reality.

There were plenty of facts supporting the following conclusions: the Truth exists regardless of what the rest of the people think of it. In order to uncover the Truth the Lone Man must engage in a personal revolution, in other words, he must liberate himself “from everybody else”.

Lesson 2. A Lone Man Ahead of “Everybody Else”   
A Lone Man cannot accept the fact that others think differently as an argument against the Truth. He can, therefore, become the only one who sees things the way they are while “everybody else” is blind. And since he is the only one who sees things the way they are he can lead “everybody else” who is blind.
After he becomes inwardly free from “everybody else” Abraham starts acting independently. He makes a covenant with the Creator. G-d is revealed to him as the One who created all living things. He is the One Who will be accepted by “everybody else”. It just takes time.

Lesson 3. A Lone Man for the Sake of “Everybody Else”  
Acceptance of the One Creator by “everybody else” is the essence of the unity of “everybody else”. So, Abraham who made a covenant with the Creator becomes not only the forefather of one family, or a clan, or even a nation. He becomes the forefather of “everybody else”. But it will take time before “everybody else” admits this role of his.  Looking into the distant future and following the Creator’s order, he changes his name from Avram (father of the nation) to Abraham (father of nations).  
Despite the fact that he still does not have a son of his own, Abraham starts to act, mostly not for the sake for his generation but for the sake of the generations to come.

Lesson 4. Life in Two Realms  
As it appears, it is not an easy thing to live in two realms simultaneously. It is difficult to live in an ideal world, in which “everybody else” accepts the Creator and at the same time in the real world, in which “everybody else” does not have a clue of His existence.

But Abraham is capable of that. He knows how to distinguish between the world of eternal ideas and the world where everyday life changes constantly. He knows how to distinguish between “everybody else” in the future and “everybody else” in the present.

Abraham knows that the land where he lives is a Promised Land. This land has been promised to him and his descendants. But this is an eternal ideal. In the reality of Abraham’s time this land belongs to the Canaanites. And Abraham purchases a field from Ephron the Hittite to bury his wife.

Abraham knows that all of mankind consists of children of one Father. But he knows something else: He, Abraham, and all his descendants will have to work very hard and make many sacrifices before all the nations are “blessed in Abraham’s seed”. What it means is that “everybody else” has to accept the Creator.

Abraham was not the first righteous man since the world was created. There were other righteous men before him. The problem was that their children did not inherit the righteousness of their fathers. Therefore, Abraham had a mission to fulfill. He had to learn how to transfer this legacy of righteousness from father to son. In other words, he had to discover a method that enables one to transform an ideal into reality.

Abraham’s method was founded on creating a basic “cell of society”: a special family, which will be able to teach every one of its members to build a real life in accordance with a certain ideal. Only when one nation follows this practice, and then all of mankind follows their example, will global unity become possible.

Global unity starts in the family. It is where an individual who has self-value is created. When the time came to look for a bride for Isaac, Abraham’s son, the woman who is predestined to take over the mission started by Abraham – i.e, service to the Creator, Abraham takes harsh steps to prevent “everybody else” from entering his family. Two great ideals – that of the individual’s self-value and mankind’s global unity – could not yet exist simultaneously.

The fourth lesson of Abraham teaches us that an ideal that has not become the ideal of a Lone Man will never become an ideal for the family. The ideal that has not become an ideal for the family will never become an ideal for the nation. The ideal that has not become an ideal for the nation will never become an ideal of the entire mankind.

The way from a Lone Man to mankind is a long one because it is a path from ever-changing reality to an eternal ideal.

The Most Difficult Lesson We Learn from Abraham

All the lessons we learn from Abraham are difficult enough but the Fourth lesson is particularly hard. Our parallel existence in two domains – the real and the ideal one –causes us to constantly search for a compromise between them. One should have unshakable faith in the ultimate triumph of the ideal for it not to turn into a figment of one’s imagination. Otherwise, cruel reality which is so far removed from this ideal and to which we have to adjust at every step of the way will turn this ideal into fiction.

For our faith to survive we must have a clear picture of the role the ideal plays in our lives. Strange as it may sound, an ideal is not meant to be realized “here and now”. An ideal is like a star guiding a person in the right direction so that he can be confident that he has not gone astray.

In our Jewish tradition, this triumph of the ideal is connected to the coming of the Messianic era. For instance, in Messianic times the ideal for peace is such a situation when “nation shall not lift sword against nation”.

But does it mean that the ideal can be implemented “here and now” and we can put away our swords?

Definitely not. For that to happen, certain conditions should be met.

Of course there is a perfect imaginary situation where “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb … And the cow and the bear feed … and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” However, peace can be achieved only provided that all of them undergo certain transformations in real life, which will make everybody happy with what they have: if the lion will be completely satisfied by eating straw, and he will not have to kill the ox to satisfy his hunger, then the ox, in his turn, won’t need his horns.
It is only possible to achieve a universal ideal when each individual corresponds to the standards of this ideal.

Abraham showed the path everybody must take in order to achieve – over time – the goals common for everybody.

This path of chosen by Abraham starts within family where every human being is, so to say, “produced”. The family represents the one and only collective, which is capable of bringing up a human being in such a way that a person’s individual value and mankind’s global unity become real, whereas they previously seemed to be divorced from reality.

The family unites people biologically: they are united by blood, by a unique genetic code. The self-value of an individual in the family is so real because only in the family is each human being indeed genuinely indispensable and unique. In any other collective, a person loses his individual self-value because he can easily be replaced by someone else (for instance, when a soldier is killed on the battlefield he is replaced by another soldier but when parents lose their son he is irreplaceable).

It might sound like a paradox but only the family – this most conservative of collectives! – is genuinely interested in implementing universal ideals into life, which is absolutely necessary in order to achieve mankind’s global unity.

As I have mentioned before, every human being is “produced” by a certain concrete family. But this human being is born into his or her family not just physically. The family is responsible for the so-called “humanization” of this newly born individual: from the very beginning, he subconsciously learns how to be human by following the example of those who surround him. That is how the law, which the real people who surround this particular individual abide by, becomes a real law for him as well. The only question is how this adopted law corresponds to Universal ideals.

Universal ideals are not figments of one’s imagination, nor are they fictional. They are ultimately achievable but there implementation is possible on one condition: all people in the human family have to abide by Universal Laws, which are known in the Jewish tradition as the Commandments of Noah’s Sons (Noachide Laws or the Seven Laws of Noah – Sheva mitzvot Bnai Noach in Hebrew – Translator’s note). Here are these laws:

1. To establish courts of justice

2. Not to worship idols (not to deny G-d by idolatry)

3. Not to engage in sexual immorality

4. Not to blaspheme or curse G-d or His Name

5. Not to murder (not to shed the blood of man)

6. Not to steal

7. Not to eat flesh from a living animal

However, if, for instance, a father teaches his son from the early years of the boy’s life that the child must kill his neighbor’s son and avenge the death of his ancestor, it becomes pointless to preach the ideals of peace to such a person. It is equally pointless to expect that he will respect the Law, which forbids shedding the blood of man. In other words, an ideal, which does not correspond to the reality of life, becomes a pure abstraction and for this reason cannot influence that reality. Moreover, if such a person should choose to observe the law forbidding murder he will become a laughing stock in the eyes of those whom their families have taught to perceive anybody who refuses to follow the laws of vendetta as a traitor. They will think of him not only as a traitor but also as a coward who does not have any moral principles or ideals.

If the nations were completely isolated from each other, it would not have been necessary to rethink this kind of mentality: they would all act according to the patterns set by their ancestors, “as their fathers had demanded”.  
However, the nations do interact with each other – they engage in mutual trade, and sometimes they fight against each other. And this makes the nations compare the results achieved due to their convictions, which sooner or later brings them to an obvious conclusion: there are ideals that lead a nation to prosperity, and there are also false ideals that lead it to depression and decline.

For instance, a child may view strict obedience of his mother to his father or the younger members of the family to the older ones as a model of ethical conduct. Here is the problem: family relations founded on the absolute dominance of some family members and the strict obedience on the part of others, are gradually transferred to all areas of human endeavor, i.e. relations at work and also relations between the ruler and his subjects. In the process, we find out that this kind of “obedience” chokes the people’s creative energy. A society built on obedience will not produce enterprising people. Such a society will never motivate science to flourish, great discoveries to be made, or justice to rule. This is what makes us doubt: “Do we think the right way, do we act the right way, and do we believe in what we are supposed to believe?” These kinds of doubts can exacerbate when we see our neighbor who has quite different ideals demonstrating the successful results of his beliefs.

The family is objectively interested in preserving relations between its members, which are based on such ideals that bring prosperity and self-sufficiency to the household. It is not surprising because children represent the continuation of their parents’ life. The interest the parents have in the health, development, well-being and happiness of their children is dictated by nature itself, not by any conceived notions or convictions. Conversely, those convictions, which are widely spread in society, may motivate parents to act in ways contrary to the call of nature (for example, to sacrifice their own daughter to please “god” who will then send them rain, or to agree that their son blows himself up using a belt with explosives).

Universal ideals are those that motivate people to live and develop. False ideals, no matter how sincerely people may believe in them, will lead, sooner or later, to decline and death.  
The closer different nations become, the more acute the problem of ideals gets to be, causing the family to reconsider the values, which seemed to be so eternal. This process is fraught with grave dangers. It may result in the loss of the value compass, which helps people to keep their ideals and reality in balance, and that contradicts the Fourth lesson of Abraham.

Abraham began his long journey from being a Lonely Stranger to being embraced by mankind by building a family because the family is the most problematic collective, which carries simultaneously two opposite functions – to preserve traditions and to ensure the possibility of changes. Without solving the problem of relations within family, it is not possible to solve any problem in collective life. The family becomes the first victim of people’s failure to live in two realms – the ideal one (the way it is supposed to be) and the real one (the way it is in reality).  
If the family turns out to be too conservative and incapable of accepting fresh ideas, it is doomed to “produce” people, who are designed to be unable to develop closer relations with other people on the bases of universal ideals. Any ideals that do not correspond to a tradition “written in stone”, will be subjected to distortion in real life. Thus, these ideals will not serve as a guiding star in their life.
If the family is not capable of preserving traditions threatened by the onslaught of new ideas, which do not have any roots in these traditions, sooner or later these new ideas will undermine the real life based on tradition. Such a family will be unable to “produce” people because it will lose the ability to bring them up.

This problem of ideals clashing with reality can clearly be seen in the confrontation between the West and the East.

Not only does the family from the East require strict subordination and obedience to the head of the clan but it also allows killing the rebels. It teaches members of society to act in a subservient way towards those in power. A person accustomed to a strict family hierarchy, which excludes any equality between family members as well as the right for individual development – something that enables an individual to be self-sufficient – looks up to his boss as his father who is supposed to take good care of his subordinates. This habit of subordination inherited with one’s mother’s milk makes it impossible to see a state ruler as a mortal human just as all of us. The people are willing to accept all kinds of bullying from “the father of the nation”, in the same way as each member of the family bears with the authoritarian rule of the father, the head of the family. This adherence to the traditions of a patriarchal family unable to embrace the western ideals of individualism, ridicules these ideals. That is the Eastern version of democracy, which stunned the world with such an invention as “the president’s heir”.

The people of the East perceive the Western ideal of individual freedom as an example of immorality. They certainly have reasons to see it that way. The human psyche, being influenced by the Western ideal of individual freedom, changes so much that this individual eventually loses any ties to his family or to his nation. As the result, the ties of family become loose, and ultimately it leads to family destruction.  
There is no doubt that the conservative pattern of family traditions makes the path to the ideal very lengthy and unreliable. The Western way, which is an alternative to the one adopted in the East, implements the ideal into real life bypassing the family. It entrusts somebody else to take care of the children’s upbringing. Among these “educators” are all manner of institutions: “progressive” social organizations, professional teachers, leaders of youth movements, and so forth. All these institutions have no problem formulating an ideal, since they address not a concrete person, as is the case with an individual in the family, but a human being “in general”.

The family is the only collective that takes care of the “production” of life. As for various organizations, they mainly focus on the “production” of regulations and ideals, such as celibacy, for instance, drug abuse, homosexuality, women’s abortion rights, which different institutions may proclaim as ideals. But they will never be ideals from the traditional family point of view, since they conflict with procreation. Due to the Western ideal of freedom, the individual has become free from ties of family. In fact, it has taken away the only collective a human being had where his perception of his own self-value did not contradict reality.
Both the West and the East – each in its own way – reject the Fourth Lesson of Abraham. That is why the “West-East” dialogue, which aims at creating global unity, is in reality more like a dialogue between the deaf and the blind. Whereas the cruel dictators from the East, who use the podium of the United Nations to vent their “concerns” about the abuse of human rights, devaluate and make a travesty of Western ideals (which have nothing to do with real life in the East), the idealists from the West, using the selfsame United Nations’ podium, talk about their support for human rights and, in doing so, they devaluate real life and make a travesty of it. These Western idealists seem to overlook the fact that in order to have human rights, a human being should at least be born.

The Fourth Lesson of Abraham in the Jewish Tradition

Until recently, the Jewish national tradition embodied the profound wisdom of the Fourth lesson of Abraham. Shabbat has become the enlightening symbol of this wisdom.

Shabbat is not just a day when people rest. Shabbat is a day of the ideal, which makes it very different from the six other days of reality. Shabbat has taught the Jews how to live in two realms simultaneously: no matter what kind of reality a person lives in during his six days of work, when the seventh day comes nothing should remind him of this reality’s imperfection. Even if somebody is penniless in real life and cannot make ends meet, tradition taught him to forget about all his hardships on this “ideal” day – Sabbath. On Sabbath everybody has too see himself as a king.

This ability to live simultaneously in two realms was probably the main quality that allowed us, Jews, to believe – amidst the travails of exile and the horrors of the pogroms – that the day of redemption would inevitably come. Our people lived in humiliation and yet they truly believed that they had a mission: “Thy G-d hath chosen thee to be His own treasure out of all peoples that are upon the face of the earth”. It made it possible for them to combine within themselves features that from the point of view of their non-Jewish environment seemed ridiculous and even absurd. It was the combination of their stubborn belief in the prophetic vision of mankind’s global unity and their persistent and strict national isolationism.

It is most doubtful that the people would have been able to preserve their ability to live in two realms simultaneously throughout the centuries, if not for the Jewish spiritual teachers who managed to transform the traditional Jewish house into a place where the ideal was implemented into reality.

Where else if not at home could a poor and oppressed Jew feel so good about himself as if he were king? Where else would somebody who is despised and persecuted be treated with love and affection? The Jewish family was designed in such a way that it could survive even in an environment practically without any Jews. No matter how varied the contacts the Jews had with the surrounding world may have been, their homes were like a sanctuary to them, meant only for their own kind.

The Jewish community is not just a group of people practicing the same religion and worshiping one G-d. The Jewish community is, rather, a union of families, bound by common interests that exceed the boundaries of religion.

So long as their gentile environment preserved the traditional patriarchal way of life, the Jews, adhering to the tradition they had developed in exile, did not face the need to revise the habits and customs of their own life.

However, the era of the industrial revolution came, and it has changed the world order dramatically. The main consequence of these changes was the transformation of interpersonal relations. Before that, people could resolve their core problems in a relatively small circle of family, friends and acquaintances. In this new world, however,  they were interconnected with such an abundance of mutual problems that it would have been possible to continue living the old way only by intentionally narrowing the scope of these problems.

Meanwhile, people started having more and more of these common problems. The most surprising outcome was that while solving these problems, people would transform their real life so drastically, that the outlines of the new world, which was thought of as an ideal one, could already been seen on the horizon.

Such inventions as the Internet, telephone and aviation were yet to come but the sense of mutual connectedness, something we call mankind’s global unity, was already in the air.

Mankind was very far from manufacturing the first robots, who could replace humans in certain fields of manual labor and but who simultaneously created another problem, unknown till then, the problem of free time. Yet the unimaginable technological achievements were bringing people closer and closer to the wonderful future, which corresponded very closely to the Jewish definition of a “weekday being like Sabbath”.

The young countries of Europe had just begun their struggle for the new democratic order, which abolished one man’s power over another and which made everybody equal under the law. This struggle reflected the Jewish political ideal: “…you cannot be a slave of My slave, because you are My slave.”  
The development of science awakened people’s interest in understanding Creation and its laws. It is only natural that this decreased the level of interest in endless discussions about “god” held by people who falsely claimed to have all the answers concerning the Creator Himself. The cognition of the world created by G-d was no longer consisted of meaningless empty words. It was becoming a reality.

What was before no more than a fairy tale was now becoming a reality. The ideal did not look like a remote star anymore. It looked, rather, like a road sign.

The new situation triggered an influx of new ideas that caused people to rethink the basis of tradition, which was shaped by Jewish spiritual leaders over the centuries. New life demanded that people revise their deeply rooted notions about the relations between men and women. Parents had to rethink how they were bringing up their children, how they were preparing them for the activities of the changing world. There were many other things to be reconsidered, among them, the attitude towards work and a new approach to what work means; interrelations with the gentile world, provided that the non-Jews stopped the practice of strict isolationism in their national states, as was the case in prior years.

This new situation required a great deal of courage from the spiritual leaders. It became obvious at this point that no one had that kind of courage. Nobody could understand, like Abraham did, that the Creator had to be found not in the system of views created by men but in objective reality.

“The ideal can only be achieved when the Moshiach comes.” That was the conclusion drawn by these Jewish leaders. “So let him come and take care of all that. As for us, we would rather leave everything the way it is. The way our forefathers taught us.”

The extreme caution that spiritual leader demonstrated towards any kind of change is usually associated with the scandalous 17th-18thcentury messianic movements of Shabbatai-Zevi and Jacob Franc. However, it is one thing when messianic ideas are proclaimed by impostors and quite another when the first traits of the messianic future are reflected in the rapidly changing reality.

The people could not help seeing that there are objective reasons for these changes, and that is why they cannot be reversed. In the absence of leaders courageous enough to search for and discover a new relationship between the ideal and the surrounding reality, the people began to take the initiative into their own hands.

“We will just try it out and see what happens, – the new leaders verbalized the collective thoughts of the nation. – We will continue to act as Jews in our own homes, whereas publicly we will behave as people do “in general”.

But they discovered very soon that people “in general” are no more than a myth. All people speak a specific language and believe in their own sacred symbols, and it cannot be otherwise, since they are brought up in specific families and belong to a specific nation. Such is the reality!

They had to make a choice between the traditional world in which messianic ideas turned into a string of meaningless words because nobody intended to connect them with reality, and the real world of a specific state, but one without any messianic ideals.

The Orthodox Jews continued to live as if nothing at all had changed. They chose ideals that were disconnected from reality.

As for the newly assimilated Jews, they chose the real life of citizens of national states, thus becoming Frenchmen (British, German, etc) of Mosaic Law. New generations followed one another, and this Law, with all its ideals, became less and less relevant.

The Fourth Lesson of Abraham and the Socialists

Jewish Socialists were the only ones who decided to bridge the gap between the ideal and reality. They perceived the socialist idea as a very recognizable prophecy of the future world, in which a wolf will lie down peacefully next to a lamb, everybody will sit peacefully under his or her fig tree, and no nation will raise the sword against any other nation because by then all swords will be cast into ploughshares.

This bright future was predicted by the Jewish prophets. Most of the Jews heard about this prophesy from their Jewish teachers! So, who else but the Jews should work in the sweat of the face to get closer to this bright future?

The Socialist doctrine was seen pretty much as an implementation of Messianic hopes and aspirations. In reality, however, it was naïve to believe that the Socialist doctrine was the path towards realizing the Messianic ideals of the Jewish prophets.

The Jewish path towards the ideals of the prophets is the path Abraham took. It is about the gradual transformation of the individual, which becomes possible only after improving the collectives that “produce” individuals. In the course of history, every nation faces the challenge of re-evaluating its traditional values. And that inevitably results in the transformation of traditional family culture.

The Socialist doctrine is based on the ideal, which stems from the ethics of the ancient Hellenes who were the first to try to unite the West and the East. The cosmopolitan ideal of the ancient Greeks was adopted by Christianity, which proclaimed: “There is neither Jew nor Greek”. This postulate, in turn, led to the rejection of the role of family and nation, which “produce” both the Jew and the Greek. The Socialist doctrine views the family and nation as its immediate enemies because these two collectives prevent all the people from becoming absolutely the same.

The destinies of two types of Socialists – Socialist internationalists and Zionist Socialists – are living proof of how important these circumstances are.

The Socialist internationalists convinced themselves that the Messianic era is around the corner, and, for that reason, the division of mankind into nations is an obstacle on the way towards the ideal of mankind’s global unity. The conclusion is obvious: the Jewish nation, which has given its prophets to the rest of the world, must set an example of true internationalism. What it really means, is self-annihilation. Their dedication to their “class brothers”, which in theory should have been closer to them than their real brothers in blood, could not undermine the truth of proven facts: those selfsame “class brothers” organized pogroms, destroyed homes and killed family members of the Jewish Socialists. The unshakeable devotion of the Jewish Socialists to their tormentors was not just a desperate attempt to adjust to reality. In fact, it reflected a sincere belief in the ideal, which is right no matter what, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The Jewish Zionists were convinced that it is wrong to ignore the misery of the Jewish people, a nation without land. As for the unique abilities of the Jews, they should have been used in the best possible way. After all, we should never forget that the Prophets were Jewish as well.

“It looks like the Jewish people were chosen to implement the prophetic ideal into reality”. That was the conclusion drawn by Socialist Zionists.

In order to understand the fundamental difference between these two categories of Jewish Socialists, it will be helpful to compare two statements by two different people. The first belongs to Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most prominent figures in the Socialist internationalist movement:

“Why do you tire me with all these stories about Jewish suffering? I feel just as much pity for indigenous Indians in Putumayo and for the black people of Africa… There is no place in my heart for the ghetto.”

(Quote from Paul Johnson’s book “A History of the Jews”)

The other one belongs to a Jewish Socialist as well. He used to work at the newspaper “Rheinische Zeitung” along with Karl Marx. Despite that, Moses Hess is rightfully remembered as one of the forerunners of Zionism. Here is what he says:

“Thanks to Judaism the history of mankind has become sacred history if we see it as a unified natural process of development rooted in the love of the family – this will only be accomplished when all mankind becomes a single family whose members will unite in a brotherly union of divine spirit.”

(Quote from “Rome and Jerusalem” by Moses Hess)

It will take time before the Jewish internationalists unwillingly admit that it was premature to abolish nations and nationalities. There is no point dreaming of any ideals, while ignoring the national cultural traditions, in accordance with which families “produce” human beings. This explains why the proletarians of one country are different from the proletarians of another. Those differences, in turn, are responsible for specific societal problems in different countries. It follows that there is no such thing as one common path to Socialism. There is something that would later be defined as “the national way of Socialist development”.

The Zionist Socialists were the only ones who decided, from the very beginning, to separate “their” version of Socialism from the global one. They filled it with specifically Jewish national content, which nobody else but the Jews could ever possess. Among those Zionist Socialists there were some skeptics who thought that Ben-Gurion had become too isolationist, locking himself up within narrowly national concerns, and that he was way too much fixated on strictly Jewish issues instead of thinking how to liberate world proletarians. These people eventually became Jewish internationalists. They came back to the Soviet  Union where they finally got the opportunity to make their point – in the Gulag.

Socialism turned out to be a false Messiah precisely because attempted to implement the Messianic ideas of the Prophets, while ignoring the lesson of Abraham: we cannot speed up the future. The future is not built upon declarations and volitional efforts. The future grows out of the deepest areas of the human culture, starting with relations in the family and in the nation.

By setting an impossible goal before all the nations, the Socialists proved to be unable to create an ideal new world. Unfortunately, they turned out to be masters at destroying the old world. True, it was an imperfect world but after they were gone, the Socialists left behind cultural ruins.

Contrary to them, the Zionist Socialists who limited their ideals to national concerns came up with an idea that proved to be viable. It was an idea that helped to rebuild a national Jewish state.

“The value and greatness of our movement lies in the fact that from its very birth, when it consisted of a tiny group of lone men, both within the Jewish people and within the context of the international worker’s movement, it understood the momentous truth that there existed a necessary internal connection between national liberation and social liberation, the connection of the people’s liberation and that of mankind.”

(Ben Gurion, “National Liberation and Social Liberation”)

So, mankind is good, but let us start with the nation!

The Call of Abraham in Socialist Zionism

When one takes a closer look at the thoughts and actions of the Socialist Zionists one has the feeling that they are children of a concrete father. This happens because the existential experience of Abraham has become transformed within them into something deeply personal. The lessons of Abraham were implanted into them as if they were some kind of genetic code.  

Lesson 1. A Lone Man Is Free “From Everybody Else”  
Among the Zionists there were different people, not all of them were Socialists. But only the Socialists spoke in terms of the Messiah – the Messiah of Socialism. They believed that they, and nobody else, were capable of materializing the great prophetic ideal if the worked really hard.  
“Nobody could but a working man managed to do it,” – Ben-Gurion used to say proudly.

So, if the Jewish national tradition no longer believes in the power of a Lone Man, it means that the time has come to reject this tradition and obtain freedom from “everybody else”.

While re-creating the state, the builders of the new society were treading on unknown ground. Each of them was making his or her personal choice, which greatly influenced and shaped every one of them. Whoever had the good fortune to meet any of these people, the old guard, as they are sometimes called, cannot help admiring the strength of their spirit, and the unshakeable faith in themselves and their abilities.  
Abraham could be proud of such descendants!  

2. A Lone Man Ahead of  “Everybody Else”

Zionist Socialists were not disturbed by the fact that the Jewish people were unprepared for Zionism. They firmly believed that a small group of enthusiasts could lay the path for the others, and they were prepare to sacrifice their lives for the return of the people whom they could only imagine and whom, as it later became apparent, they did not really know.

They saw themselves as pathfinders. But that was not all. They believed that they were laying the path for one purpose only: to make it possible for the others to follow them. This approach referred equally to the new morality, to the new way of thinking and acting.
“The Jewish worker is actually the Jewish people but in the way we see him today but the way he is going to be in the future.”

Ben Gurion, “Winning Over the People”

This refers in equal measure to building the state, where the entire nation will settle in the future. They were ready to compromise on many issues but they never questioned the right of the Jews to return to their homeland.

“We are the people’s messengers not in its present but in its future.”

Ben Gurion, “Winning Over the People”

Lesson 3. A Lone Man for the Sake of “Everybody Else”  
This slogan has a particularly tragic tone. These people had to carry within them a genuinely sacrificial feeling to see their own tribulations as the condition for the Jewish nation’s redemption. Zionist Socialists who replaced Messianism as the historical process with the laws of historical materialism, and replaced the readiness for self-sacrifice in the Name of the Creator (“ sanctifying the Name) with the readiness for self-sacrifice in the name of the happy future of a society with justice for all.

These emotions were most eloquently expressed in Nachman Syrkin work “The Jewish Question and the Jewish Socialist State”.

“Since the Jews have been placed in exclusive circumstances and are forced to look for a place they can call their homeland and where they can build a state, they are the first to have the opportunity to implement the socialist ideal. Therein lies the tragedy of their historical destiny, as well as their unique mission. That which is a dream of a selected few or a utopia in other circumstances is a necessity for the Jews.”

This new life could only be born out of the hardships and deprivations of everyday life. But the Jews were ready to overcome anything for the sake of the ideal.

“The Jews will create the highest moral code with their hard work, and out of the hardships of everyday life they will build the model of a noble human life.”

This “noble human life” is the goal that the Jews prophesied as the dawn of their history, the ideal, which they were trying to materialize and for which they paid a high price, accepting persecution and humiliation from the nations around them. Sacrificing so much in the name of future redemption, the Jews believed that the time should come when their persecutors will understand: Jewish tenacity was more than simple stubbornness. The Jews withstood the rigors of their wandering for a future that is good for everyone. Here are the elevated words which Nachman Syrkin used to express this thought:

“Its image (that of the Jewish people) projects an aura of all of the world’s misfortunes that have befallen it. Its tragic history has led it to a great mission. It will save the world which has crucified it.”

Lesson 4. Life in Two Realms

Zionist Socialists learned three of Abraham’s lessons quite well but they stumbled on the Fourth lesson. They did not take into account the specific characteristics of the nation for whose sake they were exerting such tremendous efforts.

During the 2,000 years of the Diaspora, when they were dispersed throughout the world, the Jewish people changed in the most fundamental way. Being surrounded by non-Jews, they began to look more like the gentiles among whom they lived than like their Jewish brothers who were dispersed not just among other nations but also among different civilizations.

A unique situation developed within the Jewish people: the reality and the ideal switched places. Every Jewish community brought along with it from the Diaspora such an abundance of different traditions, convictions, tastes and ways of life that the real Jews were transformed into mankind compressed within the Jewish people. The question of molding the Jewish nation anew actually turned into the problem of uniting mankind.

If before the Diaspora “mankind” was an ideal, whereas what we had in reality was an ordinary people, now the Jewish people containing within them all of mankind have become reality, no matter how paradoxical this might seem, whereas the Jewish “nation” has turned into the ideal, which simply has to be implemented in reality.

The Socialists could only realize the ideal the way their socialist doctrine demanded from them: by shaping uniform personalities, destroying families and those special values which unite Jews from different countries into ethnic communities. Thus, the Socialist Zionists were forced to observe a doctrine, which opposed Abraham’s Fourth lesson. They began to act within the national state according to the principle: “I have given birth to you, and it will be I who will kill you.”

Those who had built the Jewish state were destined to be the ones who would destroy it.

“I can give you life and I can take it away”

When you listen to the stories of native-born Israelis about the heartless and alienating pursuits of the Socialist leaders in their own country, it is difficult to imagine that these people were born and raised in the warm atmosphere of a Jewish family. Such outright hatred for the very nature of man, such readiness to destroy everything that normal people perceive as valuable and deserving of love in real, not imaginary, life, can be attributed only to the fanatical devotion of the Socialists to the ideal of mankind’s global unity.
A friend of mine, who was born in Israel, told me the story of his own family. His family came to Israelfrom one of the European countries. His father and mother preserved sentimental, even nostalgic feelings towards the country of their youth for decades. More than that, my friend, too, had real longing for the atmosphere of that house in Europe, though he, personally, had never seen it. His was an ordinary solid Jewish family, where at an early age the children were taught to think about the land of their ancestors which had been lost centuries ago and to be willing to open their wallets to support its revival. When the children were a bit older, the family left Europe so that they could participate in building a state of their own. The children grew up to be strong, persistent and dedicated to their ideals.

After just one generation, all these worthy and commendable qualities went to waste. My friend’s aunt was a Kibbutz member when she gave birth to a child. Since the guiding principle of Kibbutz life was individual equality this woman appeared to violate its premise of justice and equality by having more breast milk than her baby needed, while others did not have enough. She was therefore told to breastfeed her own baby last, provided that there was any milk left over after she had finished feeding the other infants. The consequences of the Kibbutz social experiment are very symptomatic of Israel’s problems: as all of us, this baby grew up to become an adult but he does not live in Israelany more. He left the country years ago, married a non-Jewish woman and is presently an active participant in all kinds of anti-Zionist activities. He is totally lacking in any sense of attachment to his motherland. Moreover, he is deeply convinced that the Jews do not have the right to their own state.

This story reflects the essence of Socialism. The great ideals of this utopian doctrine are totally disconnected with reality so that everything the Socialists lay there hands on is doomed to die.

The Socialist ideals of universal happiness do not have a chance to survive. But there is more to it than that. The human personality cannot survive either, and when it dies, all the ideals that people cherished for generations die along with it.

*    *    *

Perhaps, one of the best examples to illustrate how tragic this situation is in Israel, has to do with the language problem. This problem occurred precisely because of the fact that Israelwas built by the Socialists. The unique ability of the Jewish people to live in two realms simultaneously has revealed itself most vividly in their approach towards language. For 2,000 thousand years of their life in dispersion the Jews remained loyal to Hebrew, their native language. Hebrew was a connecting link between fractured communities. Despite the distance between them, it helped the Jews to preserve the integrity of the national culture and loyalty to their eternal ideals. In fact, Hebrew was the language of such an ideal. However, their real life in dispersion required certain means of communication with the surrounding real world. The spirit of the nation proved to be so strong that it enabled the Jews to develop other Jewish languages, i.e. a combination of the language of the ideal (Hebrew) and the language of reality – German (Yiddish) and Spanish (Ladino).

Jews were always multilingual precisely because they were the descendants of Abraham. The Jews who subconsciously carry within them the existential experience of Abraham, with its unique ability to live in two realms simultaneously, proved capable of recreating the Hebrew language when they acquired their own state. This happened because their unique existential experience helped to preserve this ideal as a viable one.

Thus, an unprecedented historic example was set. An ancient language has been revived though all its “peers” were long dead. I

How tragic that that the Socialists turned Hebrew into a tool for the destruction of our nation’s unique ability – to live in two realms simultaneously!

The Socialists refused to recognize that the Jews who came from different countries were bringing along with them their own unique traditions, which they had developed over many centuries. Each community had its own unique destiny tied to the title nation of the country of exodus. Finally, they spoke the language of that nation. Nobody is going to deny that the absence of a common language posed concrete communication problems in everyday life. But it would be equally erroneous to exaggerate this circumstance. In fact, in a way, it turned out to be quite convenient, since it helped the Socialists to deal with people in their own way, i.e. to destroy the people’s identity. If somebody arrived to Israel from an Arab state, the Socialists would have him speak Yiddish, while they expected somebody who came from a European country to speak Hebrew. It is clear that this practice was not so much a matter of linguistics but, rather, reflected the overall Socialist treatment of people. Proof of this is that they manifested the same attitude in many other areas of life. For instance, if the elderly parents were given an apartment in the Northern part of the country, rest assured that their kids were going to be resettled in the South. The idea behind this was to ensure that family members lose touch with each other so that they can “melt down” with the rest of the population, integrating into one nation.

The consequences of exterminating the cultural traditions of the Jews who came from Islamic countries frightened the Socialists themselves, and they even apologized for their mistakes. But their apologies mean nothing. They are worthless because the Socialists cannot act in any other way.

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Socialism is not capable of having “a human face” because it is impervious to any genuine reforms. Even when the Socialists recognize the right to private property this does not indicate that they have demonstrates certain human attributes. The Socialist doctrine is not limited to the implementation of artificial economic equality and imposed mandatory atheism because both artificial equality and atheism are just means that enable the Socialists to deprive individuals of the essential right to be themselves. We have to give them credit for handling this task brilliantly by denying the people their sacred right to enjoy the cultural heritage of their own ancestors.

The Socialists have not changed one bit since the time they humiliated Jewish men in front of their children, when they cut off the peyes (side-locks) of their Orthodox Jewish fathers who came from Islamic countries. They have not changed much since then, though they have become more “politically correct”. The way of thinking, which they designed, as well as the practice of forcefully assigning a separate individual to a nation, which is not yet shaped, became vividly revealed when the collapsing Socialist Empire finally opened its rusted gates. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who had endured the 70-year-long experiment launched by other Socialists came pouring into Israel.

It was taken as a given that the former Soviet Jews must accept and join the tradition and culture of those who had built Israel.

The point is that while the native Israelis were making history: while they fought several wars, and developed their industry, agriculture, art and literature, the Soviet Jews were also making history in their own way. It was a different kind of history. This page of Jewish history was unique in that the Soviet Jews were challenged to preserve their Jewish self-identity in the environment of an authoritarian dictatorship where they were deprived of any opportunity to get support from the Jewish national tradition. This unprecedented odyssey resulted in a very special approach towards education. I would even take the liberty to define it as a religion of enlightenment. It became a unique tradition formed under very unusual circumstances. More than that, it could be passed on to the children only by their parents who were the natural bearers of this tradition.

The Jewish state was happy to use the fruit of this tradition. This mass Aliyah was rightfully considered a blessing for the country because it brought in an enormous number of highly educated specialists. Too bad nobody in the state bothered to think that such a “blessing” does not come from nothing. Every fruit grows because the tree has roots. Nobody bothered to think that this tradition must be passed on to the generations to come, so that the blessing would never expire.

Though the state officials could not understand this, the new olim felt from the start that something was wrong. The initiative came from the bottom up. Without any resources at hand, just by their own effort and enthusiasm, the former Soviet Jews created a nationwide network of Russian-language schools. The only thing they wanted was to preserve something precious to them and to pass on this legacy to their children. But very soon the Soviet Jews found out that the problem was deeper than the apparatchiks’ inability to understand why it was necessary to preserve traditions. The bureaucratic system created by the Socialists vehemently resented this initiative, labeling it “a harmful social experiment”, and even “the Russian ghetto”.

As a result, the children started losing any motivation and interest in education very rapidly. They also began to lose any interest in work and meaningful leisure. As for the parents, they gradually lost the common language of understanding with their children (as the unintended consequence of the state’s purposeful policies). But that was not all. They also lost the ability to pass on their heritage to their children and finally lost their ability to exercise influence upon them.

Unfortunately, these developments led to the rapid degradation of the youth. The mother of friends of mine who were born and grew up in Haifa, in a neighborhood currently populated by immigrants from the former Soviet  Union, went to the local bakery to bye challah for Shabbat. She was attacked by a gang of teenagers who snatched her wallet and ran away. The old woman fell and badly hurt herself. The injuries she suffered were so serious that she had to be taken to hospital. No, you will not hear about something like that in the latest news. They will say that such incidents are not typical.

That is a very wrong perception. They are no longer individual incidents but a social phenomenon, sad Israeli reality. A special commission in presently being formed to deal with the alarming increase in criminal activities among the children of the same very Aliyah that the state placed so many hopes upon.
– We do not recognize our Haifa, the city we grew up in, – my friends often complain.

I am afraid they will not recognize the whole country in ten and something years. The problem is that the criminal activities of the teenagers is just the top of an iceberg.

The magnitude of the problem will be fully revealed when these teenagers grow up and start building their own families. What kind of lessons can they teach their children? What family traditions will they be able to pass on to these kids, who for the most part come from a one parent household, brought up by single mothers who are themselves victims of social experiments in their country of exodus? What sacred values will they be able to preserve in order to pass them to their children as ancestral heritage? No, most of them will not go back to candle-lighting on Shabbat, the way the Jews from Eastern countries do, or to attending synagogue prayers. Soviet Socialists spent 70 years to root out these traditions. Nor will they be able to teach their children to be dedicated to the ideas of Zionism, because their own parents were not involved in building the Jewish state. Besides, thanks to the efforts of local Socialists, Zionism has been transformed into post-Zionism when these people were already in Israel. And, finally, they will not be able to pass on the educational tradition that took shape under extremely harsh circumstances thanks to their fathers and grandfathers. This tradition has no chance to survive in the absence of a common language.

It is pointless to try to cover up this situation with over-optimistic statistics telling us how many Jews from the Soviet Union received all kinds of State Prizes, how many mechanical or civil engineers have found jobs in their respective fields or to name scientists who lecture at some elite University.

The nation does not care about prizes, discoveries and lectures, no matter how important they might actually be. The preservation of a nation requires that it should be able to pass on its heritage from generation to generation.

One does not have to be a great prophet to foresee already now what will be the outcome of this dire situation. Something meant to be a blessing for this country will turn out to be its curse for one and only reason: this country was built by the Socialists.

The Socialists had sacrificed the Jewish people for the ideals they worshipped. But could the ideals themselves have survived?

I wish! Who is talking today about the pride of the proletarians? Well, probably the voracious state officials are the only ones left, because the Socialists were exceptionally good at creating all kinds of bureaucracy.

Maybe Socialist ideals helped to develop a special attitude to work? If that is the case, then why are there so many foreign workers in Israel?

Maybe the Israelis continue to be proud of the wheat fields grown and harvested by their own hard work? What are we talking about here, in the country of never-ending lotteries?

*    *    *

I wish they would have lost only their own ideals! But they somehow managed to waste the ideals, which were preserved and cherished by our ancestors for centuries!  
Throughout many centuries, the Jews would turn towards Jerusalem while saying a prayer. There, in Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount there was a Temple long ago. In the beginning, it was the First Temple, where the Tablets of Moses were kept, and then it was the Second Templedestroyed by the Romans. There has been a belief passed on from one generation to another that some day the Third Temple will be erected on the Temple Mount.

The Socialists managed to ruin this ideal as well. What do they care about the Temple Mount? It is just another hill, nothing else. They did not hesitate to give away to the Arabs the most eternally sacred Jewish site, hoping that in exchange they would be left in peace, to live their way of life without any ideals at all. Could this indifference to ancient values be the result of their growing up in special homes in Kibbutzim where the mother could see her child only during specially designated days and hours? The Socialists were the ones who issued these inhuman rules.

When the ideal of individual self-value turn into fiction, all the other ideals eventually become fictitious as well. The same is true about the ideal of mankind’s global unity.

So, what has happened to mankind’s global unity as it was envisaged by the Socialists?

Could it be that friendly relations with their comrades from the Second International, have helped the Israeli Socialists to pacify the anti-Semitism of every government in those countries where the Socialists are in power? Obviously, not. However, such things as a shared ideology, which customarily ignores such fundamental concepts as national self-identity and sees no value in the traditional culture of upbringing, have helped to launch “the peace process”.

*    *    *

Undoubtedly, there is a direct link between the nation’s degradation caused by the initiatives of the Socialists and the so-called Oslo Accord. They both resulted from the initial inability of the Socialists to live in two realms simultaneously. They are unable to distinguish between the desired ideal and the realities of life.

The sense of individual self-identity determines all the thoughts and actions of people in real life. Thus, the self-identity of the “Palestinians” developed among the Arabs determines their demand that Israelshould me replace by “Palestine” (keep in mind, the entire Israel, not just selected territories). That was precisely why this land was given the name “Palestine” in ancient times – to take it away from Israel. This self-identity determines not only the readiness of the Palestinians to die for their idea but it also shapes the tradition of family upbringing, which is being implemented in such a dramatic way. Probably, the Arabs themselves would not mind putting an end to this kind of self-identity, which produces a certain way of thinking and acting. But our Socialists have convinced everybody, including the Arabs themselves, that the existence of the “Palestinian people” is already a fact of history.

Only an obsession with ideals, which do not have any grounds in real life, could nourish such illusions about Arafat that he could be influenced to become a different person and change his views. Or to dream that it was possible to establish something similar to the European Council here in the Middle  East, ignoring the fact that the nations which inhabit these lands barely know what life in a civilized state means.

The belief of the Socialists who sacrifice real life for the sake of ideals is dangerous because it makes people act irrationally.

How can one understand the mentality of those Jews who do not have any sympathy towards the victims of Arab terrorism, and yet are so willing, whenever they can, to demonstrate their solidarity with the murderers of innocent people?

How can one understand the Kibbutzniks who care so much about the plight of the residents of Jenin, when these same people have turned this place into a real haven for terrorists? Numerous shakhids wearing belts with explosives come from Jenin with the same age-old aim of anti-Semites of all generations – to kill as many Jews as possible.

Have you known a single Socialist who, while embracing the terrorists, would pay a visit to the victims of terror to express his or her condolences?

The greatest flaw of the Socialist doctrine is that while imposing their illusory path to the ideal of mankind’s global unity upon all the people – an ideal that is totally disconnected from reality – it triggers irrational hatred against any given individual who is part of that very mankind.

When the Steps of the Moshiah are Heard

The predictions of our Jewish prophets about the world in which all the people will gather together, come true today before our eyes. Mankind’s global unity is becoming a fact of reality. As it appears, the problem lies in the fact that nobody is ready for this unity. The situation where all people communicate with each other creates the illusion that the individual belongs to the entire mankind, which is why such obsolete rudiments of the past as family and nation are no longer necessary for him. In a new global environment the traditional interconnections between people have been severed, which results in the devaluation of the human being. This fact leads to the emergence of hate-filled new ideologies. What they all have in common is an irrational hatred against Man, whose self-identity does not fit into the narrow framework of a global ideology.

The history of Socialist regimes is so bloody that a normal human being cannot grasp the magnitude of the committed crimes. Not only because these regimes have murdered millions of people and crippled the lives of millions others. As long as man exists on earth, people have always been killed by cruel tyrants and vicious conquerors. However, even the most inhumane cruelty had some rationale behind it.

Socialism is entirely irrational. The obsession of the Socialists with the ideal of mankind’s global unity leads them to denying the very existence of a concrete living person. These people stop understanding what they are doing. That explains why the mass graves of Stalin’s Gulags, the cultural revolution in China under Mao-Tse tung, and Pol Pot’s concentration camps in Cambodia have become possible.

Bin Laden has emerged as part of the same irresolvable problem of mankind’s global unity though there is a wrong perception that he simply a product of Islam. On the contrary, Islam itself has fallen victim to this emerging common problem facing all mankind. The same way that Christianity fell victim before Islam when the Socialist doctrine arose among Christian civilization.

*    *    *

It would be fair to say, however, that the Jews were the first to sense the advent of the new era of globalization. It happened some 200 years ago when they suddenly discovered that the entire system of rules and moral codes, which kept every Jew within the framework of the traditional community, started to collapse.

The steps of the Moshiah could already be heard. The centuries-long dispersion of the Jewish people was coming to an end. It was time to go back home. It was necessary to start looking for a new correlation between the ideal and reality. It was time to come up with new ideas of building a Jewish state, which would allow implementing into real life our eternal ideals, that of the self-value of the human being and mankind’s global unity.

Here was when the greatest national tragedy occurred. When it was time to gather the dispersed nation and to rebuild the Jewish state an unforeseen problem arose. The Socialists turned out to be the only ones who truly possessed the kind of creative power needed for building the state. They were the only ones who knew how to bring together “the personal revolution and the social revolution”, as Ben-Gurion put it.

At least, the Socialists did their best to implement the ideas of the Jewish prophets about mankind’s global unity. Our official religious ideologues did not even try to do something similar. They were so used to living within the narrow confines of communal interests that they were just incapable of suggesting any fresh idea that could work nationwide. Such categories as “nation” and “mankind” are totally foreign to them. They just do not know how to deal with all that.

The only thing they are capable of is debating these ideals, lecturing others on them and organizing seminars.

Can you imagine that these people would ever recognize the fact that these real individuals getting off the plane represent the new Jewish nation that requires a totally new approach to the connection between the ideal and reality?

Do they bother to ask what kind of state system we should have in order for each particular individual not to lose his or her self-value and not to become melted in the multi-faced crowd?

What have they offered the nation besides their unique ability to circle around the path laid out by our ancestors?

Were they capable of being pathfinders themselves?

Unfortunately, the reason why the Socialists, and not the official religious Jews, built the state has not gone away. It could not be otherwise because all these religious officials claiming to be mentors for the nation, have never changed. They are still doing the same old things they had been doing all along. Mainly, they have adjusted to what others have actually accomplished. They have adjusted their new philosophy of life to what the Socialists have done in reality, the same way they used to adjust to the gentile world throughout the centuries of life in dispersion.

That is why, while condemning the Socialist utopia, they nevertheless follow in the footsteps of the Socialists in government policy, acting according to the rules and moral codes set by the Socialists.

After paying their respect for the commandment “honor thy father and thy mother … that thy days may be prolonged” and referring to a lengthy list of quotations, which support this point, they take exactly the same stand their predecessors did 200 hundred years earlier: the ideal does not exist in order to be implemented in real life.

Did any of the officials at the Ministry of Education bother to think how this ideal should be implemented in real life? Did anyone wonder how is it possible to honor your mother and your father if the three of you do not speak a common language?

By transforming the ideal into meaningless highfaluting talk and a means for strengthening their own power, when it comes to real life they simply copycat the Socialists whom they continue to criticize for the state, which has been built in the “wrong” way.

Undoubtedly, the principles upon which the Socialists have built the Jewish state are lethal for the nation. But there is only one way to stop the destructive process, which the Socialists have started: it is necessary to create an alternative system of ideas that will combine our eternal sacred principles – that of individual self-value and mankind’s global unity. If we fail, our nation and our state about which we have dreamed for centuries will be doomed to degradation and death.

We absolutely must regain our strength and heed the call of Abraham. The Socialists have built Israelonly because they managed to do so.

Why has not anybody else heard the “call of Abraham”?

And why cannot anybody hear the “call of Abraham” even now?