Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 13, 2020

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the last president of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem before the Roman legions destroyed theTemple and uprooted the Jews from their capital, was a complex man. He was a trader, a scholar, a polemicist and a judge. According to the Talmud,he made one of the most crucial interventions in Jewish history when,on the eve ofitsdestruction,he realizedJerusalem was lost.

He evaded the zealots who were determined to fight to the death and sweet-talked the Roman commander,soon-to-be Emperor Vespasian,into allowing him and a small group of rabbis and students to relocate tothe coastal town of Yavne.

Rabbi Yochanan wasabove alla pragmatist. Bereft uponhissons death, he was consoled by the thought the boy had been on loan to him from God,and nowreturned to his rightful owner. He wasnt sure he had made the right decisionto leave the Holy City,and accounts of his deathvoice his fears he might goto hell for giving up on Jerusalem.

He was also a messianist. His dying words were that he must prepare himself for the arrival of Hezekiah, the last king of the house of David, the precursor of the Messiah,who wouldaccompany him to the next world.

Rabbi Yochanan had ensured thattheSanhedrins authority and center of Torah scholarship would not be lost in the great destruction. But he never meant for Yavne to be an alternative to Jerusalem and itsTemple. Just a temporary respite on the long path back home.

In his essay "Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine," published this week in Jewish Currents, AmericanJewishacademic and journalistPeter Beinart portrays Rabbi Yochanans decision differently. Beinart writes that Rabbi Yochanan "imagined an alternative" Judaism, "a new form of worship, based on prayer and study."

Im an agnostic Jew who doesnt mindhow other Jews choose to define their own Jewish identity or worship, if thats what they want to do(though it intrigues me greatly). And while Beinarts depiction of Rabbi Yochanan has no basisin the Talmudic texts, Im fine with that as well. Theyre apocryphal anyway,and we can all play fast and loose with the Talmud.

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But it is highly instructive that Beinart chooses to see Rabbi Yochanan as a utopian,rather than a pragmatist. Because it perfectly mirrors the conclusions he reaches in the essay.

I agree with three of Beinarts main conclusions. The most important of them is that one binational state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians would be a just way to end the fundamentally unjust situation, whereby millions of Palestinians do not have national or civil rights.

As Beinart points out, as long as such a binational state could remaina haven for Jews suffering persecution anywhere in the world, it would still fulfill the raison detre of the Jewish state. Unlike most of Beinarts critics, who are confident such a state would be a recipe for chaos and bloodshed, I can imagine the overwhelming majoritiesof both nations coming to terms withthe hyphenated "Israel-Palestine" and realizing it was the best possible outcome. Hell,Idlove to live in such a state-if it were indeed peaceful.

The only problem is, I cant vote for a statelike that. Not one party in Israel, no,not even the Joint List, is proposing it. And neither could the Palestinians, back when they had elections, vote for it. It simply wasnt on offer.

I agree as well with Beinart,that a large proportion of Israelis, and Israel-supporting Jews in the Diaspora, have projected a Nazi mentality on to all the Palestinians. While antisemitism is all too prevalent among Palestinians, they are not planning a genocide of Jews. To believe that is the case, as Beinart points out, opens up the way to awful atrocities. And though I dont quite share his predictions that an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is all but inevitable, itscertainlya possible outcome which hes right to warn us of.

And Beinart is right in his historical analysis that there werepast leaders (including prominent mainstream figures)who believed that Zionismdidntnecessarily have to mean a full sovereign state for Jews only,and that it could be part of a wider federation including other nations.

But this is also where his argument becomes fatally flawed.

Beinart derives inspiration from these early Zionists,because he wants to believe in a more perfect Zionism, one that can be morally justified by 21st century progressive values as well. But thats not what Zionism was about. Not because Zionism isnt morally justifiable(it was)but because Zionism wasnt about morals. There wereZionist ideologues and thinkers, but Zionism wasnt an ideology. It wasnt a vision of a better world.

Zionism was a plan to solve the acute problem of Jewish persecution, primarily in Eastern Europe, but gradually in any place where Jews faced antisemitic violence and discrimination. (Im using the past tense here because I dont believe Zionism actually exists after 1948, when the program was successfully fulfilled). It didnt have to be moral, by the standards of its day or our day. It had to be pragmatic.It had to work because millions of Jewish lives were at stake.

The different strands of Zionism and the evolution of its mainstream leadership in the half a century between the first Zionist Congress of 1897 and the foundation of Israel didnt reflectchanging moralsensibilities- they were a response to changing regional andglobal circumstances.

Political Zionisms founder, Thedor Herzl, envisaged the Jewish state existing as a semi-autonomous district of the Ottoman Empire. Because that was the most pragmaticwayof achieving it in his lifetime(he died in 1904).His heir as Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, believed for decades thatthe Jewish statewould be a protectorate of the British Empire.

David Ben-Gurion had the foresight to realize that the British would be no different than the Ottomans in lacking both the desire and then the power togivethe Jews a homeland (the British were trying to get out of their promise in the Balfour Declaration practically from the moment the inkfromArthur Balfours signature dried).

Ben-Gurion managed to convince the initially reluctant leadership of American Zionists at the Biltmore Conference in 1942 of the case for full statehood, or as they called it there a "Jewish commonwealth." By that point, after the United States had joinedWWII, it finally seemed that after the war there would be both an opportunity to achieve an independent state and the necessity to have one so that the Holocaust survivors could be resettled.

Five and a half years later, when the United Nations voted for the partition plan,Ben-Gurion was vindicated. There were those who argued thatthe allocation of56 percent of the territory was unjust to the Arabsofmandatory Palestine, who were two-thirds of the population. And the RevisionistZionists argued that it was a historical sinthatthe Jews were not getting all their historical homeland.

Neither argument budged Ben-Gurion,because he knew Zionism was a pragmatic plan and the best way of realizing it was to go with whateverwas possible.

Ben-Gurion was right. All the countless arguments since 1948 on "Zionism: Right or wrong?" are sterile hypothetical thought exercises. Zionism worked for those for whom it was intended to work. Israel as a reality is not going away. Reality doesnt care whether you think Zionism is inherently racist or that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

As many others have done before him, Beinart makes a strong case for why the two-state solution has failed. He neednt have bothered. The problem isnt with the two states, but with the solution.

Most Israelis are in principle in favor of the two-state solution. Sadly, there just arent enough of them who feel the need for a solution. The status quo isnt a problem for most Israelis. On the day they will feel that need, they will make a pragmatic choice, for two-states, a confederacy, a binational state, whatever they feel works in their interest. It simply isnt about morals.

It isnt my place to speak for the Palestinians, but they will make their choice according to how they see their own interests as well. Beinart in his essay extensively quotes Palestinians who support a binational state. On Twitter he listed even more Palestinian writers he read for research. With the exception of one single Palestinian Israeli academic, they are all Palestinian Americans.

Not that that invalidates them in any way, but the fact remains that while the binational state is popular in the relatively small community of Palestinian American academics and activists, it remains the minority view among the three much larger Palestinian communities right here West Bankers, Gazans and Arab Israelis.It seems that its not only American Jews and Israelis who have different values and perspectives. American-Palestinians and their siblings back in Palestine have them as well.

Ninety percent of Arab-Israelis voted in April for the Joint List which is emphatically in favor of two states. Beinart blithely dismisses them saying that "the Joint Lists vision of equality inside the Green Line can be extended." They actually claim to have very strong reasons fornotsupporting a binational state. Perhaps he believes that Ayman Odeh and Ahmed Tibi dont really mean what they say. Either way Beinart doesnt care to engage with them - and that is his essays biggest giveaway.

Not one line in the lengthy essay is dedicated to giving readers any idea of how the overwhelming majority of both Israelis and Palestinians actually living in his future binational state of "Israel-Palestine" will be convinced that it can work.

I believe it can, theoretically, though it would probably still need a two-state period in the interim. Beinart doesnt have to persuade me. But about everyone else around here - he doesnt seem to care one way or the other. I suspect that he hopes that a wave of BDS or a President Ocasio-Cortez will one day force Israelis and Palestinians to accept his vision.

Beinart isnt talking to anyone who will actuallylive in "Israel-Palestine." Hes having an internal conversation with a handful of Palestinian American academics and, with their blessing, has created a utopian half-Jewish state which can serve as safe space for a section of young American Jews, the readership of Jewish Currents, who are trying to reconcile their Jewish identity, their inherent affinity with Israel and their progressive values, in a period of ideological and racial turmoil in the U.S.

He is Yochanan Ben Beinart, and his utopian Yavne doesnt exist on the shores of the Mediterranean. It has, instead been transplanted 6000 miles away, to a faculty lounge on an American campus.

More:

Peter Beinart's one state solution sounds so perfect it's practically utopian - Haaretz

Category: Talmud
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