Comments on: Rightists disrupt Nakba ceremony at Tel Aviv University

By: Jake in Jerusalem

Jake in Jerusalem — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:33:38 +0000

Such irony! Everyone seems to have forgotten that 100 years ago, when Hebron and Jerusalem were recognized by everyone everywhere as ancient Jewish cities, Tel Aviv was a new “settlement” stealing land from local Arabs. Tel Aviv University itself is infamously situated atop a former Arab village. The Hypocrisy of the Left never ceases to amaze!

By: sh

sh — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:43:07 +0000

“Who says the “Christians are more kasher”?”
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Oh pardon me, I assumed so since so many projects in the West Bank are bankrolled by them. Religious settlement Elon Moreh’s biggest patrons are Christian. I don’t hear you criticising the JNF for planting forests for Evangelical God-TV in return for their money. Doesn’t Rav Waldman from Kiryat Arba also benefit from their munificence? And what about Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and the money he pulls in by schmoozing them up. Perhaps some great West Bank scholar has ruled that if the money goes for settling Eretz Yisrael, no principles, anything goes?
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Something else for you to read.
http://www.chareidi.org/archives5760/mishpatim/mkla.htm

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:20:29 +0000

I don’t see what the left-wing is complaining about. They are the ones who started the whole “counter demonstration” i.e. interruptions, shout-downs, intimidation and general thuggery.
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Just ask Nonie Darwish and Michael Oren, not to mention countless Israeli soldiers and pro-Israel speakers who wanted to share their point of view only to be silenced by hippy college students screaming “Free Palestine.”
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What goes around comes around. I have no sympathy for them at all.

By: Rowan Berkeley

Rowan Berkeley — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:25:34 +0000

The parallel goes further than you might think. Disestablishment gets no traction, as you say, because the C of E is the result of a carefully worked-out compromise which is as loose as possible, theologically, but neverthless excludes Presbyterians, on the one side, and Catholics, on the other. In this way, it maintains English hegemony over the Scots, Welsh and Irish nationalities, particularly in the higher social strata, where marriages between members of different denominations cause loss of ‘society’ status. At the summit of it all, the monarch must by law be an Anglican. By analogy with this system, which is cynical enough in a Lockean way but certainly contributes to stability, I envisage Israeli chief rabbinates which are as loose as possible, theologically, but which nevertheless exclude the Reform, Conservative and Masorti denominations. Thus, among other things, you can maintain Israeli Jewish hegemony vis-a-vis non-orthodox Jewish immigrants. Yair Lapid’s proposal to give parity to the non-orthodox denominations would, in my view, simply force the orthodox into a more entrenched position. I’m aware that there is already what amounts to a caste distinction between orthodox (which is after all ‘modern’) and haredi. Recognising the liberal denominations would create more caste distinctions, to the left of orthodoxy as well as to the right. In any case, marriages between members of different denominations are impractical unless one member adopts the denomination of the other, but I advocate making orthodoxy easier, not harder, to adopt. I can tell you this: converting to orthodox Judaism with an English Beth Din is a fearsome ordeal which few people with any independence of spirit at all would willingly undergo.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:48:28 +0000

Rowan-
I was amazed when I found out that hardly anyone in England attends Anglican church services, there is no political pressure to disestablish the Church Of England, even though it certainly seems to be an anachronism. Even though the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury has himself come out in favor of disestablishment, it gets no political traction. The reason I found in an episode of my favorite comedy “Yes, Minister”. Humphrey Appleby said regarding institutions like the Church of England, “true, no one goes to it, but most people are happy to know that is there!”.
I would say the same about the attitude of the secular Israeli to the Rabbinate and the mild amount of “religious coercion” that exists in Israel…they may grouse about it but they don’t take any real steps to get rid of it. I stand by my statement that this represents the secular Israeli’s basic acceptance of Jewish identity that I laid out above, in which the Torah still serves, for them, as some sort of Constitution for the Jewish people.

By: Rowan Berkeley

Rowan Berkeley — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:48:30 +0000

I think I agree with you, XYZ. I certainly have no problem at all with the idea of Jewish nationhood. You may recall, a few days ago, I had a little discussion on one of these threads about how, in fact, a non-Jew could ever become a Jew except by religious conversion. The young lady I was talking to about it said there ought to be some consensual, non-religious way for a non-Jew to become a Jew, but I can’t imagine how it could ever work. I’m not so sure about this, though: “most secular Israelis accept a certain amount of religious influence on their lives by way of the Rabbinate controlling marriage and divorce and also certain aspects of Jewish tradition being observed in the public space.” My impression is that the orthodox rabbinates take their control of marriage and divorce for granted despite really substantial public opposition, and that the haredi parties are continually testing their political strength by insisting on shabbat-observant enclaves, at the very least, and other sectors of the public are pushing back against them. I find it very interesting.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:31:07 +0000

Who says the “Christians are more kasher”? That is the reason for Zionism…Jews are not secure living as a minority in any non-Jewish state, Christian, Muslim, atheist, whatever.

BTW-If I were to ask the Arab fellow who claimed that “Maimonides was an Arab” if he was an “Israeli Arab”, I’ll bet he would deny it and say he is a “Palestinian forced to carry an Israeli ID Card”. In other words, Palestinians are not Arabs, but Jews (from Arab countries) are.

By: sh

sh — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:34:00 +0000

So Egypt was also not Arab, but Kurdish at the time, XYZ. Interesting, thanks, but then you say “We are talking, however, about Muslims”
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You weren’t. But now that you are the picture becomes much clearer. You seem to be talking about a religious war.
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But how come the Christians you mention in relation to attitudes that led to the holocaust have suddenly become more kasher for you than Muslims? To use an old argument, of the two, which religion committed greater crimes against Jewish people? And if we have forgiven – if not forgotten – the greater perpetrator why have you decided in favor of subjecting the lesser – choosing what currently must be the most defenseless Muslims on the planet – to decades of deprivation and abuse? And why are PMs who make no pretense of being religious egging you on?
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An additional clip on yesterday’s Nakba ceremony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEIRvotTB7Y&feature=player_embedded#!

By: XYZ

XYZ — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:44:17 +0000

Rowan-
Traditional Jews view themselves as a nation whose constitution is the Torah with a designated territory which is Eretz Israel.
Anyone who is serious about accepting the committments that go along with observing the Torah and behaving as a member of the Jewish nation may convert to Judaism and then he or she becomes a full-fledged member of that nation with the same roots in Eretz Israel.
Obviously, with the breakdown in religious belief that went with the Enlightenment, the realization of committment to observe the Torah has declined, but the basic national identity of Jews continued down to this day, and I should point out that the fact that most secular Israelis accept a certain amount of religious influence on their lives by way of the Rabbinate controlling marriage and divorce and also certain aspects of Jewish tradition being observed in the public space (e.g. not selling leavened bread during Passover, restricting public transportation and certain other activities on Shabbat, etc) shows a certain residual acceptance by almost all Jews of the “Torah constitution” still being relevant today for the Jewish nation.

This nonsense about “Arab Jews” was part of the 19th and 20th assimilationish view of a minority of Jews that they could ingratiate themselves with the surrounding antisemitic population of both the Arab world and Europe by saying “we are no longer ‘nationalist’ Jews, we are Germans (or Arabs) of the Mosaic religion.” Only a minority of Jews, even secular Jews, ever viewed themselves as such.
A friend of mine who was born in Iraq said that if you said to the vast majority of Jews and Arabs in Baghdad that “we are all one people, Arabs” they would have doubled over laughing. That’s why there are no more Jews in Iraq.

By: Rowan Berkeley

Rowan Berkeley — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:48:29 +0000

Eliyahu, I can’t quite follow the logic of “implicit in the comment that Maimonides was not ethnically Arab but Berber, as in the comment that Maimonides was nothing more than an Arab of the Mosaic faith, is the erroneous belief that Jews are merely a religious group without a historical ethno-national identity…”
It seems to me that the erroneous belief is that ‘Jew’ is or ever has been a racial category. ‘Ethno-national identity’ is just vague enough to permit a hint of this belief, because of the ambiguous prefix ‘ethno-’ but the concept of the Jewish nation, as articulated by the Jewish religion, is almost entirely non-racial. The only formal racial legislation in it that I can think of is the rule that a Cohen may not marry a convert, or the daughter of a couple both of whom are converts. (Shulchan Aruch, Even Ha’ezer 7: 21).