Chosen or Frozen? Jewish History and Destiny
In the mid-1990’s I, a religious skeptic, wanted to learn more about the significance of religion in the lives of people, so I attended an interfaith seminary. After two years I was ordained as an Interfaith Minister at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City – ironically, by a Hungarian Hasidic Rabbi who had lost 47 of his relatives in the Holocaust, including his wife and child, and later founded the Interfaith Seminary in order to teach religious tolerance.
By inclination and training I had for a long time respectfully kept my distance from the religious beliefs of other people. But it has become increasingly difficult not to notice that some beliefs within the Jewish tradition are being rigidly applied for political advantage. Until recently, I have felt compelled (in part by virtue of my non-Jewish, German background) to resist personal comment, particularly upon the fact that ultra-orthodox and religious national Jews are known to proclaim the conviction that “This land was given to us by God” and that “We are God's Chosen People”.
The first statement fuels the fundamentalist/messianic belief that Palestine is Jewish land and that the Palestinians do not belong – that they can be disregarded, disenfranchised, robbed of their human dignity, transferred, their land stolen from them and "redeemed" for the Jewish people without impunity and without guilt.
The second statement could be interpreted to mean that God chose the Jewish people “to be a light unto the nations” and to work for the good of the world and humanity. But more often it has led to the assertion (already debated in the Talmud 2000 years ago) that Jewish life is of higher value than gentile life, and that other humans are created by God to serve the divine destiny of the Jews.
The latter interpretation fuels contempt for the lives, needs and aspirations of gentiles and particularly of the Palestinian people, with indefensible indifference to their current suffering.
The Holocaust, the most recent history of Jewish displacement, disenfranchisement and suffering is built into Israeli national consciousness. But the Naqba, the escalation of Palestinian suffering, does not seem to matter. This is supposedly the price that has to be paid in fulfillment of God’s Will for the Jewish people.
This perspective is not true for all Jews - not for all those who live in Israel itself, nor for all those who live peacefully in other parts of the world. I am heartened by and grateful to all those who recognize the irony of the growing injustice against the Palestinian people - those who are moved with compassion wherever suffering exists, who march and demonstrate and testify and stand up for oppressed people. Their courage, their commitments and sacrifices on behalf of human dignity and peace, is invaluable and a vital source of hope.
Until now, I have been reluctant to openly relay my thoughts on this terrible irony for a variety of reasons. But no longer.
I am encouraged by the Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, incarcerated for his moral stand against the Holocaust and executed by the Nazis on the last day of World War II. In his Letters from Prison he wrote:
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the
wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
Before any new peace efforts, road maps, frame works and negotiations can be effectively initiated, it is imperative for the Jews to reexamine the two biblically-sourced traditional interpretations (cited above), and to seek alternate insights and conclusions. Those that will more readily foster peaceful co-existence.
Which, if there is a God, I believe, must be what He has in mind for all his children.
By inclination and training I had for a long time respectfully kept my distance from the religious beliefs of other people. But it has become increasingly difficult not to notice that some beliefs within the Jewish tradition are being rigidly applied for political advantage. Until recently, I have felt compelled (in part by virtue of my non-Jewish, German background) to resist personal comment, particularly upon the fact that ultra-orthodox and religious national Jews are known to proclaim the conviction that “This land was given to us by God” and that “We are God's Chosen People”.
The first statement fuels the fundamentalist/messianic belief that Palestine is Jewish land and that the Palestinians do not belong – that they can be disregarded, disenfranchised, robbed of their human dignity, transferred, their land stolen from them and "redeemed" for the Jewish people without impunity and without guilt.
The second statement could be interpreted to mean that God chose the Jewish people “to be a light unto the nations” and to work for the good of the world and humanity. But more often it has led to the assertion (already debated in the Talmud 2000 years ago) that Jewish life is of higher value than gentile life, and that other humans are created by God to serve the divine destiny of the Jews.
The latter interpretation fuels contempt for the lives, needs and aspirations of gentiles and particularly of the Palestinian people, with indefensible indifference to their current suffering.
The Holocaust, the most recent history of Jewish displacement, disenfranchisement and suffering is built into Israeli national consciousness. But the Naqba, the escalation of Palestinian suffering, does not seem to matter. This is supposedly the price that has to be paid in fulfillment of God’s Will for the Jewish people.
This perspective is not true for all Jews - not for all those who live in Israel itself, nor for all those who live peacefully in other parts of the world. I am heartened by and grateful to all those who recognize the irony of the growing injustice against the Palestinian people - those who are moved with compassion wherever suffering exists, who march and demonstrate and testify and stand up for oppressed people. Their courage, their commitments and sacrifices on behalf of human dignity and peace, is invaluable and a vital source of hope.
Until now, I have been reluctant to openly relay my thoughts on this terrible irony for a variety of reasons. But no longer.
I am encouraged by the Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, incarcerated for his moral stand against the Holocaust and executed by the Nazis on the last day of World War II. In his Letters from Prison he wrote:
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the
wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
Before any new peace efforts, road maps, frame works and negotiations can be effectively initiated, it is imperative for the Jews to reexamine the two biblically-sourced traditional interpretations (cited above), and to seek alternate insights and conclusions. Those that will more readily foster peaceful co-existence.
Which, if there is a God, I believe, must be what He has in mind for all his children.