Starting From Faith, Unfaithfully

FONDLY I RECALL many years ago listening to an interview with a very young Hasidic Jewish rabbi, stating his point of view concering the establishment and existence of the modern nation-state of Israel. The Hasidic movement,if memory serves, is a subset of the Jewish faith, which might properly be described as "religious conservatism". It originated in Ukraine in the eighteenth century, as a sort of Judaic revivalist movement, a backward looking ideology steeped in mysticism. Hasidic folks adorn themselves in black attire, and the men do not trim their sideburns, which grow long down their their faces, with long hair length and their distinguishing black hats. Traditional, ancient Judaic beliefs and values are their characteristic religiosity. This young man in particular, speaking perfect English but with an accent with seemed to indicate that English was his second language, offered to his intrviewer only the unvarnishded truth. The establishment of the modern Israeli nation was, in his firm opinion, a mistake. When questioned as to his reasons behind this view, his answer was disarmingly forthright. Because, he said, Judaism is not a nation state, it is not a political movement or entity, it is not a superpower or military organization. It is, he stipulated, a religion, nothing more, and nothing less. I found his words thought provoking in the extreme. The "zionist" movement, predicated upon the belief that the establishemnt of a new Israel, or Zion, was ordained by God, promised by God, and thus,inevitable, right, and proper, gained ascendancy throughout international Judiasm in the late nineteenth century, and Jewish immigration into Palestine, then a British colony, gained momentum, as increasing numbers of regufees, fleeing the periodic anti-semitic purges which had always swept across and contined to sweep swept across Europe, resulted in the cumulative creation of a large Jewish population east of the Mediterranean. AS the twentieth century proceeded, the immigration continued, and, for the most part, Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived side by side, among each other, harmoniously. The declaration of a Theocratic Jewish homeland, a formal nation officially sanctioned and mandated, occurred in May of 1948, largely with the support of both the British empire and the United States, the American empire. The birth of Israel was of necessity accomplished only with the unavoidable suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who lost thier homes, having been diven from them, and, in many instances, lost their lives. All this is indisputable history, well documented, which nobody can deny. Nobody denies the Palestinian suffering, but many choose to ignore and forget it, for presumed political and ideologocal expediency. The culmination of Jewish persecution was of course Hitler, but Hitler was only the exreme, disastrous culmination of centuries of normal Christian European behavior; Jewish ghettos,ostracized in nearly all European cities, Jews themsselve treated by law as second class citizens. The founders of the United States strongly believed that theocratic societies do not function well, that they tend to devolve into religious based tyrannies, that the establishment of an official church, such as the church of England, was entirely undesirable, and that therefore the new nation would be born in the principle of freedom of religion, freedom from religion, and a complete seperation of church and state. As Jefferson and Madison both articulated, with an impenetrable, impregnable wall between church and state. That's why, when devout Amcerican conservative Christians delcare that the United States was founded upon "Christian values", and that America is a "Christian nation", or that the U.S. should formally declare itself a Christian nation with laws based upon biblical legal concepts, they are not only teaching false history, they are espousing ideals in direct opposition to the intentions of the founders. This is demonstrated not only by the first amendment to the constitution, but by the simple fact that the United States was founded as a democratic republic, and the Christian religion, far from being a democracy, is, quite simply, a dictatorship. America's Christian conservative "dominionists", who pose a gave threat to American secular demoracy, would do well to learn from the message of a brave, clear thinking young Hasidic rabbi, in an interview long ago.