Shabbat Gathering: Being a Jew and an anti-Zionist.

Dear Chevrei, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

Let me try to be brief.

I want to take advantage of this platform to communicate to you some of my beliefs, specifically, the idea that a Jew can be anti-Zionist. Here’s what some well-regarded Jews have said about Zionism.

Sigmund Freud
“I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.”

Albert Einstein
“The (Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.”

Erich Fromm
“The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.”

Primo Levi, writer and Auschwitz survivor
“Everyone has their Jews. For the Israelis they are the Palestinians.”

Isaac Asimov, novelist
“I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist … I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”

I.F. Stone, US journalist
“Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be legalized, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.”

Noam Chomsky
“In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by “apartheid” you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.”

Henry Siegman, Rabbi and director of the U.S./Middle East Project
“Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.”

Richard Cohen, US columnist
“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake … the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.”

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine
“If a Jew today goes into any synagogue in the U.S. or around the world and says, ‘I don’t believe in God or Torah and I don’t follow the commandments,’ most will still welcome you in and urge you to become involved. But say, ‘I don’t support the State of Israel,’ and you are likely to be labeled a ‘self-hating Jew’ or anti-Semite, scorned and dismissed.”

Let’s get personal.

I have no right to citizenship in Israel because I had a Reform conversion and the state of Israel doesn’t recognize it. I have no right to return or sanctuary in Israel. I try not to let this influence my regard of Israel, but it is difficult for me to support a country that doesn’t support me. And I doubt that even if I were accepted in Israel that would change my regard of Israel.

Israel doesn’t recognize gay marriage. I’m not gay, but consider myself an ally. It’s difficult for me to support a country that doesn’t embrace its LGTBQ citizens.

A Palestinian who marries an Israeli cannot become an Israeli citizen.

Israel doesn’t extend the right to vote to its Palestinian citizens. There are 1,890,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel (nearly 21% of the country's population) and they don’t have the right to vote.

America, at its best, embraces diversity, welcomes everyone regardless of their faith, race, or sexual orientation. Okay, so these are relatively rare moments in this country’s history, but when we do act with love and compassion and from a position of justice, this country is great. Calling Israel a democracy now is a shonda for the goyim.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Gut Shabbes!

All my love,
brian.

PS

And, a blog post from Jewitches about Christian Zionism.

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