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- Paperback ISBN: 9781552661710
- Paperback
- Paperback Price: $27.95 CAD
- Publication Date: 2006
- Rights: Canada
- Pages: 261
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Request Examination CopyA Threat from Within
A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism
Yakov M. Rabkin
His profound and extensive grounding in history and political science enabled the author to examine a variety of Judaic scholars whose views, however diverse, reflect the supremacy of Torah ethics over nationalism. I hope that their views, expressed mostly before the establishment of the State of Israel, will, in our post-Zionist times, help reduce anti-Semitism and show the way towards peace and security in the Middle East. —Rabbi Baruch Horovitz, Dean, Jerusalem Academy of Jewish Studies, Yeshivat Dvar Yerushalayim. This book sheds light on religious anti-Zionism, which, demographically and ideologically, represents the most serious threat to Israel as a State and as a collective identity. In fact, it is a more grievous and dangerous challenge than Arab and Palestinian hostility. The State, by increasing its achievements, leads the country straight into an abyss. To paraphrase Marx, one could say that Israel, by virtue of its spectacular development, is digging its own tomb. —Joseph Hodara, Professor of Sociology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Yakov Rabkin has written an enlightening book about the historic diversity of Jewish views on Zionism with special attention to those religious Jews who seek continuity in Jewish life that transcends the Holocaust and Israel. By daring to question Zionism as it has come to be known and practiced, Rabkin squarely poses the question of the future of Jewish life. This question will form the struggle of Jewish identity in the 21st century. —Marc H. Ellis, University Professor of American and Jewish Studies, Director, Center for American and Jewish Studies, Baylor University
”To American Jews who have been educated to believe that supporting the State of Israel is a religious duty, this book offers a different and very valuable perspective.”-Tikkun, Berkeley, CA
”A useful reminder at a time when it almost seems as if Judaism has converted to Zionism.”-The Nation, New York
”Rabkin’s book demonstrates his mastery of detail… It is rich and deserves serious attention and respect.”-The Middle East in London, London, UK
”It is a book that matters, because many Jewish and non-Jewish readers often misunderstand this aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and fail to see that Zionism is ultimately the main source of this conflict.”-Uitpers, Antwerp
”Professor Rabkin illuminates issues easily overlooked yet crucial to any understanding, from any political perspective, of the Israel/Palestine conflict. I doubt anyone can read this book without coming out much the wiser for it, and in many different ways.”-Counterpunch.org
”A powerful provocative book, exposing much of what western religious and political figures refuse to examine … a very thought provoking read that should be mandatory for anyone considering what the future of the land of Israel/Palestine might be or should be.”-PalestineChronicle.com
”An entirely scholarly, groundbreaking and sometimes shocking book, Yakov Rabkin’s masterpiece is an experience of the first order for the unbeliever . … After reading this book, the debate on the Middle East can be conducted fairly. And that is no exaggeration.”-Liberales, Antwerp
”Calm and reflective, the book raises questions that are fateful for Jewish life in the 21st century.”-The Jewish Independent, Vancouver
”Basic reading for anyone concerned with modern Judaism, and with the political and theological debates now raging in the State of Israel and the Diaspora.”-
”The book shows how dangerous Zionism can be to the Jews.”-Al Jazeera.net
”Delivers a telling argument against anti-Semitism... On putting the book down, one can no longer confuse Judaism with the behaviour of an essentially secular state that claims to speak in the name of all Jews.”-Alternatives, Montréal
”This book appears today because there is an urgent need to recall the obvious: a Jew is not necessarily a Zionist, just as a Muslim is not necessarily an Islamist…”-
”Demonstrates that Zionism and the state it created are by no means the culmination of Jewish history.”-La Distinction, Lausanne
”Sheds light on a deliberate and enduring confusion: the automatic, if not blind association of Jews with Zionists.”-Aujourd’hui Maroc, Casablanca
”It remains to be seen whether the break between Judaism and Zionism is final. But there can be no doubt that to label all opposition to Zionism anti-Semitism is as inaccurate as it is unjust.”-El Milenio, Mexico City
”This book shows why the idea that the Holy Land of Israel is a natural homeland and protector of all the Jews belongs to mythology.”-Le Figaro littéraire, Paris
”This book is the most extraordinary I have ever read. … a must for everybody … The author deserves the greatest respect for his courage.”-
”Timely, well researched and thorough treatment of probably the most controversial issue in today’s Jewish world.”-
”An extraordinary book. I am enormously impressed by the author’s historical scholarship, by his brilliant analysis of a complex literature and the lucidity of his prose.”-
”This book sheds light on Jewish religious opposition to Zionism, which, demographically and ideologically, represents the most serious threat to Israel as a State and as a collective identity. In fact, it is a more grievous and dangerous challenge than Arab and Palestinian hostility.”-Dr Joseph Hodara, Professor of Sociology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Contents
- Foreword
- Prologue
- Orientations
- A New Identity
- The Land of Israel: Exile and Return
- The Use of Force
- Collaboration and Its Limits
- Zionism, the Shoah and the State of Israel
- Prophecies of Destruction
- Epilogue
- Afterword
- References
- Glossary
- Index
About the Author
YAKOV RABKIN has taught Jewish history and the history of science at the University of Montreal since 1973.
Excerpt
Reviews
Jewish Anti-Zionism
Every once in a while an important book flies under our radar systems; this is one of them. Although the original French edition (2004) was reviewed in some small periodicals in Canada, Mexico, and Europe, it did not receive anything near the attention it deserves. The book has been published in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Dutch, Polish, Italian, and Russian, but it came to my attention only because my wife is Japanese: she reads theAsahi Shimbun every day and there was a long, highly favorable review of the Japanese edition of this book in the May 10, 2010, edition of that newspaper.
Many American Jews will be surprised to learn that when the notion of establishing the State of Israel was first proposed, and ever since, there has been strong opposition to the idea from within the Jewish community. This opposition is based on many grounds. It arises partly from the conviction that Judaism is a religion rather than an ethnicity or a political enterprise: many see Zionism as an insidious effort to transform the religion into a kind of statism, replacing its focus on God with a focus on building the kind of state that arose in Europe during the nineteenth century and that Mussolini cast as the centerpiece of a fascist, power-seeking “national identity.”
Jewish opposition to the State of Israel arises partly from the sense that Judaism is a religion of introspection rather than political action. The image of the “muscular Jew,” which is so much a part of the new State of Israel, does not fit well with the notion of the Jew who bends over a desk or table to study books. For some the opposition also arises from the Orthodox Jewish belief that the return to the Land of Israel should not take place until the Moshiach comes: to return in organized fashion before that is a sin. For other Jews it arises from a revulsion toward the violence and force used against the inhabitants of the land. Some see violence toward the Palestinians as a sin for which the Jewish people will be required to pay a heavy price — like the many sins of the Jewish people recounted in the Bible for which they paid through the destruction of the Temple and exile.
Rabkin’s book traces the history of these ideas in detail, mainly analyzing sources from the late nineteenth century through the late twentieth century, but also identifying their roots in talmudic, medieval, and renaissance Jewish texts.
Zionism was one response to the European, post-Enlightenment disillusionment with religious orthodoxy. Rabkin quotes the rhetoric of the early Zionists who said the Jewish spine needed straightening — that it was too long curved both by the weight of oppression and by the weight of the volumes of the Talmud. To them, Zionism was the way the Jewish people could take its place among the other peoples of the world and stand tall. By forming a real nation-state, the Jewish people would free itself from the “yoke of the heavenly kingdom.” Many of the founders of the State of Israel were largely unfamiliar with Jewish tradition and cared very little for it, just as many contemporary Israelis have neither patience with the Orthodox Jews who live among them, nor any knowledge of the tradition that they claim to uphold.
Rabkin is clearly striving for academic rigor and historical objectivity, and his book is sophisticated and well-researched. Even so, the author’s bias shows through. I mention this not to criticize the book but to highlight one of its virtues; by arguing his points, Rabkin persuades us to take a deeper look at Zionism by showing us how much propaganda and distortion of the truth was involved in the foundation of the State of Israel.
Rabkin’s book also dramatizes the painful irony woven into Judaism’s very DNA: the Torah’s whole narrative about the Exodus from Egypt and the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel in the “Promised Land” is itself a prototype of the Zionist myth. The Moses of the Chumash can be seen as an early Zionist who corrupted the purity and sanctity of the personal encounter with the Divine, which we read about in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and imbedded it in a hieratic, bureaucratic structure reminiscent of the Egyptian one in which he was raised. By the time the “editorial board” in Josiah’s court was putting the text of the Books of Genesis through Joshua into final form, their intention was already a propagandistic effort to justify and glorify Josiah’s kingdom by tracing its roots to the very first days of creation and by asserting that the kingdom itself was a fulfillment of destiny and of God’s intentions for human history.
Rabbinic Judaism arose and flourished in the centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, and one of Judaism’s qualities, which distinguishes it from most forms of Christianity, is its statelessness. To Rabkin and many of the thinkers he quotes, entangling religion with a political enterprise is just not Judaism’s “thing” because it necessarily involves a debasement of religion. Of course, the ideal of separating church and state is elusive because when the state insists on separating itself from this particular church or that one, it sometimes can end up becoming a church itself. Rabkin’s book focuses on this problem in a constructive way. Particularly to American Jews who have been educated to believe that supporting the State of Israel is a religious duty, this book offers a different and very valuable perspective.
— Rafael Chodos, Tikkun Magazine, Nov/Dec 2010