Yahrzeit of my mother Edith Zahavy

We are observing today the 26th Yahrzeit of my mother Edith Zahavy (aleha hashalom).

We miss her so very much. She would have loved to see the progress of her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and take pride in all of their accomplishments. She would have loved to read books to her great-grandchildren and to watch them play and grow.

She was born in NYC and attended the public schools in Washington Heights. She watched from her classroom window as they built the George Washington Bridge.

She graduated from Hunter High School, Hunter College and went on to a career in public service at the OPA and then into the field education. 

Together with my dad, she founded the Park East Day School when my father was rabbi at the Park East Synagogue, then called Congregation Zichron Ephraim. She subsequently taught in NYC public schools for many years.

She is interred on Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem. Her beautiful memorial photo site is here.

Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy - Yahrzeit Number 11

Photos

Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy

New York City 

September 8, 1918 - May 1, 2012

Nine Minute ZZ Slideshow
edited by Barak Zahavy
200+ ZZ Sermons cited in the New York Times - Download PDF

edited by Tzvee Zahavy

Shall we fast and mourn on Tisha B'Av? No!

No. I believe we should abolish the practice of fasting to commemorate the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple on the ninth day of the month of Av, known as Tisha B'Av.

Now before you convene a synod to excommunicate me, know that I am in good company. In the third century CE the greatest Tanna, Rabbi Judah the Prince, tried to abolish Tisha B'Av.

My son Yitz called my attention to this passage below which records the rabbi's action [Soncino Babylonian Talmud (2012-04-25). Megillah and Shekalim (Kindle Locations 739-743). Kindle Edition.] and to Tosafot's glosses (at Megillah 5b) which reject the premise that someone could entertain the notion of abolishing Tisha B'Av.

R. Eleazar said in the name of R. Hanina: Rabbi planted a shoot on Purim, and bathed in the [bathhouse of the] marketplace of Sepphoris on the seventeenth of Tammuz and sought to abolish the fast of the ninth of Ab, but his colleagues would not consent. R. Abba b. Zabda ventured to remark: Rabbi, this was not the case. What happened was that the fast of Ab [on that year] fell on Sabbath, and they postponed it till after Sabbath, and he said to them, Since it has been postponed, let it be postponed altogether, but the Sages would not agree.

Of course, if Rabbi Judah the Prince (compiler of the Mishnah) once tried to abolish Tisha B'Av but the sages would not agree to it, I do not expect that the sages of our times will agree with me to abolish Tisha B'Av.

Yet here is why they should.

I concur that as a culture we need to remember the calamities of the past so that we can be vigilant and prevent the calamities of the future. But we need effective ritual memories that are clear and unequivocal. Tisha B'Av commemorates that the city of Jerusalem and the Temple in it were destroyed.

Because the city has been rebuilt in modern Israel, this befogs the symbolism of the past destruction and renders it less effective.

I have been mulling over this issue for thirty years or more. In 2012 I mused as follows (with a few edits added).

Is Tisha B'Av relevant? No I do not think that the fast of Tisha B'Av is relevant anymore. I need a holiday from Tisha B'Av.

That day was for a long time a commemoration through fasting and prayer over the destroyed city of Jerusalem and the Temple. I visited Jerusalem in May of 2011 (ed.: and again in 2013, and many more times since then) and can attest that the city is not desolate. It is without reservations, glorious.

Who then wants the bleak story to be told? Archetypally the militant "celebrity" archetype wants to keep recalling defeat, destruction and desolation, to spur team Jews on to fight the foes and to triumph at the end of time. That scheme may work for that archetype as long as the facts of reality do not fly smack in the face of the narrative. And when they do, what then? The narrative loses its force. It becomes absurd.

I cannot imagine Jerusalem in ruins. Period. And indeed, why should I perpetuate an incendiary story of gloom and doom into a diametrically opposite positive world of building and creativity? The era of desolation has ended.

For over twenty-five years, I've been lamenting the irony of lamenting over a city that is rebuilt. It's more rebuilt now -- way more -- than it was twenty five plus years ago. What do I do then about Tisha B'Av, the Jewish fast day of lament and mourning? Here is what I said those many years ago.

What were the two worst Jewish prayer decisions?

At its establishment, Chief Rabbi Herzog prescribed that the Prayer for the State of Israel be recited after the Torah reading in the synagogue on Sabbaths and Festivals. This was Jewish prayer mistake number one. He incorrectly mandated that this particular recitation remain unimportant, peripheral, second rate, and really not a part of the davening. It was a quick and dirty innovation. And it was wrong.

• First off, on account of its placement, the prayer is often recited by the gabbai, not the hazzan.
• Second, the prayer is frequently recited in a monotone, not chanted, and from the side of the bimah, not from the front and center of the synagogue.
• Third, the prayer is recited after the Torah reading and before the Musaf service - in a liminal area - between the established parts of the davening. It seems to me to be placed in a tertiary context that makes it even less prominent in the liturgy than the personal mesheberach blessings recited for individuals who receive aliyot to the Torah.

You don't have to be an expert in Jewish liturgy to conclude that this prayer is generally presented as an afterthought, recited quickly, and that it has been pasted in to our davening. In fact in many synagogues, the text is not printed in the prayerbook, It is actually pasted into the back cover of the siddur. It is high time for some prayer-book reform. We ought to be inserting a real prayer for the modern state of Israel into the crux of the actual prayer services of our tradition. We perhaps should have the chazzan chant it properly from the bimah. We perhaps should have the congregation join in responsively or together with the chazzan in singing the prayer with joy. Perhaps we should say this prayer three times a day - every day - in our Amidah or after the Alenu. For sure we must not equivocate about the State of Israel. It is real. We live in Teaneck. Most of our friends have been to Israel. Most of our community members have been inspired by the State and its history. We ourselves have lived there and visited there many times. The State of Israel is a factual, powerful, pervasive, long-lasting creator of religious moods and motivations. Yes it is time to promote the thanksgiving, praise and petition concerning the modern State of Israel as a real and central theme of all of our synagogue prayers. It is time to correct the error of the former Chief Rabbi and promote the Prayer for the State of Israel to a much more prominent place in our liturgy. At its establishment, Chief Rabbi Herzog prescribed that the Prayer for the State of Israel contain the phrase, "the beginning of the blossoming our redemption." This was Jewish prayer mistake number two. The State of Israel is the redemption of the Jewish people. Not the "beginning of the redemption." Not the "beginning of the blossoming of the redemption." It is the actual, historical, theological, political, social and cultural redemption of the Jewish people. Anyone who denies this is not in touch with reality. Anyone who hedges about it with language that is wishy-washy and ambivalent and preliminary - is just a redemption denier. We Jews of all denominations must say the Prayer for the State of Israel more frequently, more centrally and more forcefully. Meanwhile, we do not know how to cure these errors. Here for information purposes, is the current flawed prayer in translation.

Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of the people Israel; Bless the State of Israel -- the beginning of the blossoming our redemption. Shield it with Your love; spread over it the shelter of Your peace. Guide its leaders and advisers with Your light and Your truth. Help them with Your good counsel. Strengthen the hands of those who defend our Holy Land. Deliver them; crown their efforts with triumph. Bless the land with peace, and its inhabitants with lasting joy. And visit all our Brethren of the house of Israel, in all the lands where they are scattered, and bring them rapidly to Zion, Your city and to Jerusalem, where Your name lives, as it says in the Torah of Moses, Your servant: ‘Even if your dwelling is at the end of the sky, God will congregate you from there, and bring you from there, and will bring you toward the land that Your forefathers inherited and you will inherit it.’ Dedicate our hearts to love and worship Your name and to keep all that is in Your Torah, and send us the son of David, the Messiah of Your justice, to redeem those who wait for Your salvation. Appear with the glory and the pride of Your strength, in front of all the inhabitants of the Universe, and all those who have breath will say: “The God of Israel is the King, and He reigns over all.” Amen.

[Blogged previously in 4/2007.]

Is Bernie Sanders Jewish?

Yes, Bernie Sanders is a Jew, but the Times (2016) says that, "He Doesn't Like to Talk About It."

I was disappointed in Joseph Berger of the Times for interviewing his brother and not getting Bernie to talk about this.

And trust me, there are dozens of rabbis who would be happy to slam him in the Times for not being a good enough Jew.

The Times didn't give both sides very well and it skipped lightly over the surface of this complex issue

Here is the story:

When Senator Bernie Sanders thanked supporters for his landslide victory in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, he wistfully reminisced about his upbringing as “the son of a Polish immigrant who came to this country speaking no English and having no money.”

While the crowd cheered, Rabbi Michael Paley of New York was among many Jews watching the speech who were taken aback. He said he was surprised that the Vermont senator had not explicitly described his father as a “Polish Jewish immigrant,” a significant distinction given Poland’s checkered history with its Jewish population.

“Nobody in Poland would have considered Bernie a Pole,” Rabbi Paley said.

My Existentialist Zionism Answer in my Dear Rabbi Zahavy - Jewish Standard Talmudic Advice Column for May 31, 2019

Dear Rabbi Zahavy - Jewish Standard Talmudic Advice Column for May 31, 2019

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I visited Israel recently, and from what I saw I admired the continued growth of the country. But at the same time, I felt a deep apprehension about the manifold internal and external dangers that it faces. I am worried that Israel has lost its way and is no longer serving to fulfill its Zionist missions. How can I regain my confidence in the present vitality and the future prospects of the State of Israel?

Fearful in Fair Lawn

Dear Fearful,

I too have spent a lot of time in Israel of late and I do share your concerns. It’s a complex country of more than nine million inhabitants. It faces many internal conflicting points of view and differing aspirations. And yes, it is beset by the external challenges of hostile foes who seek to damage or even destroy the state.

But my take on the situations it faces is positive and confident, and not simply by virtue of any of the classical definitions of Zionism. I have a personal and original take on the matter.

Let me explain first a bit about the historical context of past Zionist visions and then tell you how I now formulate my own conception of Zionism for the modern State of Israel.

The great historians of Zionism tell us about its major forms: political Zionism, socialist Zionism, cultural Zionism, and religious Zionism. I respect and venerate all the past great Zionist thinkers and activists. To some degree the modern state is the successful expression of the four classical forms of Zionism. And to some extent it represents a failed or incomplete implementation of each of them.

New Yorker: At His 80th Birthday Party Philip Roth talked of Death

New Yorker has been churning out amazing content in the past few issues. David Remnick continues that flow with his account of Philip Roth's eightieth birthday celebration in Newark.

Remnick explains that death was Roth's main topic in his birthday remarks. An odd choice for a birthday festival for most folks but not for Roth.

Now, we usually don't dwell on the subject of death in our thoughts. But today we conclude our recitation of Kaddish for our dad. And that put us face-to-face with the subject. As we said in another post, we feel that through the public synagogue Kaddish ritual we firmly rooted our dad's soul into the community of Jews that he so loved and served with such dedication. As the community of Israel lives and flourishes, so does the energy of our dad live on. One form of immortality.

Dad's body rests in a cemetery in Israel on Har Hamenuchot overlooking the hills of Jerusalem. His presence there roots his soul in the Zionist dimension of our collective reality as a people. As the State of Israel lives and flourishes, so does the vitality of our dad live on. Another form of immortality.

Roth eloquently writes of the stones in a cemetery in New Jersey and the memory of his family. Roth has certainly rooted his soul in a public vital body of writing that will live on for a long time. A Rothian form of immortality.

Here is Remnick's teasing conclusion to his essay:

...Roth is the author of thirty-one books. His favorite, he has said, the one in which he felt the most free as he wrote it, is “Sabbath’s Theater.” Laughing a little to himself, Roth said that the novel, which was published in 1995, could easily have been titled “Death and the Art of Dying.” Its epigraph is Prospero’s line in Act V, Scene 1 in “The Tempest”: “Every third thought shall be my grave.” And within is the line from Kafka: “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

“The book is death-haunted,” Roth said. Mickey Sabbath, the turbulent, profane, and libidinous hero, is a man who is beyond discretion and taste, whose outrageous adulterous behavior is, Roth said, “his response to a place where nothing keeps its promise and everything is perishable.” As a boy, Sabbath lost the person closest to him in the world—his older brother, Morty, whose plane was shot down, in 1944, over the Japanese-occupied Philippines.

With that introduction, Roth read pages three hundred and sixty-three to three hundred and seventy of “Sabbath’s Theater,” one of the most stunning passages in all his work. He was not about to let us forget what eighty means. In the novel, Sabbath has gone south (“Tunnel, turnpike, parkway—the shore!”) to visit the Jewish cemetery where his grandparents, parents, and brother are all buried. I will not ruin it for you. To get the feel of the night, you must read the passage in full—or, better, read the novel entire. And imagine that this passage—with its great elegy of gravestones, with its memories of life lived, of a life cut short, and all of it in particular—imagine that this is what Philip Roth chose, very deliberately, as his birthday message, his greeting, his farewell. These were not his last words—please, not that!—but they were what he chose. Death-haunted but assertive of life. The passage ends with his hero putting stones on the graves of the dead. Stones that honor the dead. Stones that are also meant to speak to the dead, to mark the presence of life, as well, if only for a while. The passage ends simply. It ends with the line, “Here I am.”

Repost from 3/21/2013
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Philip Roth was Attacked and Excommunicated at Yeshiva University in 1962

Cited from my article, Judaisms and Memories: Systemic Representations of the Holocaust.

VI. The Holocaust in the Discourse of Popular American Jewish Culture

The role of the Holocaust in the civil discourse of American Jews comes more sharply into focus through critiques in contemporary imaginative fiction. It plays an important role in popular Judaic non-systemic (counterculture) folk representations. Consider the blunt example of the writings and experiences of Philip Roth. (Cf. Young, pp. 109-112, for further discussion of Roth.)
Roth in The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (New York, 1988, pp. 127-130) recounts an anecdote that he calls his "excommunication" at a Yeshiva University symposium on fiction he participated in New York in 1962. At this "trial" he tells us he was grilled mercilessly by a moderator and audience who began after him with the question: "Mr. Roth, would you write the same stories you've written if you were living in Nazi Germany?" As framed, the query was merely a cloak for a dagger aimed at the heart of Roth's literary expressions. The questioner transparently meant, "Are you not a self-hating Jew?" Roth was so shaken by the attack, he could not respond at the time. Instead, he says, he has given his answer many times over in the fiction he has published, in his discourse, since that incident.

Of course, Roth could have answered easily and obviously. He was a product of Jewish cultural processes over several generations in an American democracy. He wrote for an American non-racist audience. He was nurtured on the great achievements of English literature. Jews within German society had no such nurture and faced an openly hostile racist culture. Roth could only have written his oeuvre for us. We read him, understand him, despise him or laugh with him and respond to his characters and caricatures.

Through his fiction he challenges the basic discursive truths of Judaic life and, in my view, allows us to better judge their cultural value and purpose. Roth's recent parody of Holocaust memory within American Judaism and the Zionist setting was also one of his most radical. In The Counterlife he developed the following.

The book's protagonist Nathan Zuckerman finds himself on a jet flight from Israel sitting next to Jimmy Lustig, of the West Orange Lustigs. Jimmy is a psychotic reversioner returning from study in the Diaspora Yeshiva. He plans to hijack the plane to Germany and issue a press release aimed at "regeneration for the Jews," (Philip Roth, The Counterlife, New York, 1988, pp. 188-9)

FORGET REMEMBERING
I demand of the Israeli Government the immediate closing and dismantling of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Museum and Remembrance Hall of the Holocaust. I demand this in the name of the Jewish future. THE JEWISH FUTURE IS NOW. We must put persecution behind us forever. Never must we utter the name "Nazi" again, but instead strike it from our memory forever. No longer are we a people with an agonizing wound and a hideous scar. We have wandered nearly forty years in the wilderness of our great grief. Now is the time to stop paying tribute to that monster's memory with our Halls of Remembrance! Henceforth and forever his name shall cease to be associated with the unscarred and unscarable Land of Israel!
ISRAEL NEEDS NO HITLERS FOR THE RIGHT TO
BE ISRAEL!
JEWS NEED NO NAZIS TO BE THE REMARKABLE
JEWISH PEOPLE!
ZIONISM WITHOUT AUSCHWITZ!
JUDAISM WITHOUT VICTIMS!
THE PAST IS PAST! WE LIVE!

In the novel, but a few pages later, Jimmy backs off. The press-release was just an irrepressible, offensive Jewish joke. As Jimmy says, "Come on, you think I'd be crazy enough to f--k around with the Holocaust? I was just curious, that was all. See what you'd do. How it developed. You know. The novelist in me." (Ibid., p. 193)

Roth's artifice is an inversion of remembrance. He casts the scene in terms of the most visible contemporary context of political violence - airline hijacking. Roth pits recent reversionary forms of Judaism against accepted American communal forms, and against State-sponsored monumental discourse. These fictive memories have undoubtedly been shaped and cultivated under the repression of the corporate personality of the system of civic American Judaism. Roth's characters express as their response a fierce struggle over the acceptance or rejection of the central belief system.

Cited from my, Judaisms and Memories: Systemic Representations of the Holocaust -- keynote address, Conference on the Effects of the Holocaust on the Humanities, University of Minnesota, March, 1989.

- repost from 4/25/06

Replay: My China Jewish Studies Lecture Tour of 1991

Several years ago in 1991 I traveled to China and I prayed while touring at the Great Wall outside Beijing.

But that was a sidelight to my China trip. The real purpose of my travel to Beijing was to lecture at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and conduct other academic meetings throughout China. In Beijing I spoke to the group of fourteen Chinese academics for ninety minutes through a translator. Few of the scholars there spoke much English. I described in some detail my research on the development of Jewish prayer in the time of the Mishnah and Talmud.

Jews: on the Chinese Minds
Who would think that Chinese professors would be interested in Judaism? Professor Kong Fan, director of the Institute, my host, is a specialist in Confucianism. He is also a seventy-fourth generation descendant of that venerable teacher and happy to hear of my admiration for the teachings of Confucius. Professor Zhuo Xinping, deputy director of the Institute and specialist in Christian Studies and Dai Kangshang, specialist in Islamic Studies, and several other scholars and graduate students contributed to the discussion in this seminar.

Yitzhak Zahavy's fantastic book, "Archaeology, Stamps and Coins of the State of Israel"

Preview

A brilliant book. Available in Teaneck and worldwide on Amazon!

Archaeology, Stamps and Coins of the State of Israel

by Yitzhak Zahavy

This book explains how archaeology is used in the politics and nationalism of the State of Israel through its stamps, coins and currency. Taking the reader from the pre-state years to the modern day, Archaeology, Stamps and Coins of the State of Israel catalogs and analyzes the Israeli government issued materials that employ archaeological motifs.


Purchase this excellent book online or pick yours up today at the Judaica House on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, NJ.

Zionism Denial in the Synagogue and the Evils of Sports Betting in my June 2015 Dear Rabbi Column in the Jewish Standard

Dear Rabbi

Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi,

On Shabbat morning in the Orthodox synagogue that I attend the chazzan chants a prayer for the State of Israel after the Torah reading, before the Musaf service. Everyone in the shul stands up for this prayer, except for one man who apparently, to show his disapproval of the modern state, makes a point of sitting through the prayer. His act of passive defiance toward Israel annoys me and other people. What can I do?

Proud of Israel in Paramus

Dear Proud,

There has always been diversity in the religious response to Zionist movement. And there has often been opposition in the Jewish community of the diaspora to the methods and tactics of some Zionists.

Nevertheless you do know that the several different major streams of Zionists joined together over a period of decades to found a Jewish State. Among the streams were groups of Political, Social, Cultural and Religious Zionists who worked sometimes independently, and sometimes together, toward a common goal.

The state of Israel has always combined together diverse contributions from the politics of the left and the right, from policies and programs for society of secular socialists, from the creative artistic expressions of Jewish culture through art, music, poetry and fiction, and from the practices, devotions and traditional learning of religious Jews.

Back in the 1950s my father, Rabbi Zev Zahavy, was one of the few Orthodox rabbis who spoke and wrote often about the significance of the new State of Israel. He voiced in his sermons his view of the new state as a spiritual and cultural center for world Jewry. He was quoted on many occasions in the NY Times and elsewhere. I’m proud of how he stood up and spoke out for Israel while many of his rabbinical colleagues sat silently on the sidelines.

A Brilliant Account of Zionism - Arthur Hertzberg's, The Zionist Idea

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg passed away in 2006 at age 84. One example of Hertzberg's intellectual legacy is his reader on Zionism -- is a brilliant statement of Jewish thought in its choices and its sensitive and sharply developed contextualizations.

In the introduction to The Zionist Idea, Hertzberg placed Zionism in its historical and cultural milieu:

Zionism exists, and it has had important consequences, but historical theory does not really know what to do with it. Though modern Zionism arose within the milieu of European nationalism in the nineteenth century, the historians of that era usually content themselves with briefly noticing the movement, for the sake of "completeness." The root cause of their difficulty (the relatively few members involved and the partial inaccessibility of the source material are quite secondary reasons) is that Zionism cannot be typed, and therefore easily explained, as a "normal" kind of national risorgimento. To mention only one important difference, all of the other nineteenth century nationalisms based their struggle for political sovereignty on an already existing national land or language (generally, there were both). Zionism alone proposed to acquire both of these usual preconditions of national identity by the ... of its nationalist will. It is, therefore, a maverick in the history of modern nationalism, and it simplifies the task of general historians to regard it, at least by implication, as belonging only on the more parochial stage of the inner history of the Jewish community.

The Geniuses of Zionism: Pinsker to Herzl

The great genius founders of modern Israel wrote astounding essays and books. From The Zionist Idea by Arthur Hertzberg - introductions by Hertzberg and primary texts by the Zionist writers, here is another installment.

Part 2: Outcry in Russia -- the 1870's and 1880's. Page 141.

PERETZ SMOLENSKIN 1842-1885. Page 142.
IT IS TIME TO PLANT (1875-1877). Page 145.
LET US SEARCH OUR WAYS (1881). Page 146.
THE HASKALAH OF BERLIN (1883). Page 154.
ELIEZER BEN-YEHUDAH 1858-1923. Page 158.
A LETTER OF BEN-YEHUDAH (1880). Page 160.
MOSHE LEIB LILIENBLUM 1843-1910. Page 166.
THE WAY OF RETURN (1881). Page 168.
LET US NOT CONFUSE THE ISSUES (1882). Page 170.
THE FUTURE OF OUR PEOPLE (1883). Page 173.
LEO PINSKER 1821-1891. Page 178.
AUTO-EMANCIPATION: AN APPEAL TO HIS PEOPLE BY A RUSSIAN JEW (1882). Page 181.
Summary. Page 198.

Part 3: Headlong into the World Arena -- Theodor Herzl Appears. Page 199.

THEODOR HERZL 1860-1904. Page 200.
FIRST ENTRY IN HIS DIARY (1895). Page 204.
THE JEWISH STATE (1896). Page 204.
Preface. Page 204.
Chapter 1: Introduction. Page 207.
Chapter 2: The Jewish Question. Page 215.
PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT A SOLUTION. Page 217.
CAUSES OF ANTI-SEMITISM. Page 218.
EFFECTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM. Page 219.
THE PLAN. Page 220.
PALESTINE OR ARGENTINA? Page 222.
Conclusion. Page 223.
FIRST CONGRESS ADDRESS (1897). Page 226.
AFTER A MASS MEETING IN THE EAST END (1896). Page 231.

MAX NORDAU 1849-1923. Page 232.
SPEECH TO THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS (1897). Page 235.
ZIONISM (1902). Page 242.

Hertzberg provides this penetrating analysis of the work of Pinsker:
The most significant reaction to the events of 1881 was the pamphlet Auto-Emancipation by Leo Pinsker. Like Lilienblum, he could not avoid the knowledge that the persecution of the Jew in Russia "is...not a result of the low cultural status of the Russian people; we have found our bitterest opponents, indeed, in a large part of the press, which ought to be intelligent." Pinsker, therefore, did not pretend to himself that Jew-hatred was merely a hang-over from the medieval past. On the contrary, the historic importance of his essay is in its assertion that anti-Semitism is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, beyond the reach of any future triumphs of "humanity and enlightenment" in society as a whole. Pinsker defined three causes of anti-Semitism: the Jews are a "ghost people," unlike any other in the world, and therefore feared as a thing apart; they are everywhere foreigners and nowhere hosts in their own national right; and they are in economic competition with every majority within which they live. To hope for better days in Russia, or wherever else the Jews were under serious attack, was, therefore, a delusion, and piecemeal emigration to a variety of underdeveloped lands which might be hospitable for a moment meant merely to export and to exacerbate the problem. There was only one workable solution: the Jews must organize all their strength and, with whatever help they could muster from the world as a whole, they must find a country of their own (if possible, their ancestral home in the Holy Land) where the bulk of Jewry would at last come to rest.

Zionism's Earliest Writers - Brilliant and Controversial

One of the best books on the subject is -- The Zionist Idea by the late Arthur Hertzberg, a great scholar who passed away in 2006. He presents in this book excerpts from the greatest Zionist writers.

Part 1: Precursors
RABBI YEHUDAH ALKALAI 1798-1878
THE THIRD REDEMPTION (1843)

RABBI ZVI HIRSCH KALISCHER 1795-1874
SEEKING ZION (1862)
A Natural Beginning of the Redemption
The Holiness of Labor on the Land

MOSES HESS 1812-1875
ROME AND JERUSALEM (1862)
MY Way of Return
German Anti-Semitism and Jewish Assimilation
The Reawakening of the Nations
What is Judaism?
The Mission of Israel
The Nation as Part of Humanity
The Sabbath of History
Toward the Jewish Restoration

In the introduction, Hertzberg brilliantly placed Zionism in its historical and cultural context:

ZIONISM EXISTS, and it has had important consequences, but historical theory does not really know what to do with it. Though modern Zionism arose within the milieu of European nationalism in the nineteenth century, the historians of that era usually content themselves with briefly noticing the movement, for the sake of "completeness." The root cause of their difficulty (the relatively few members involved and the partial inaccessibility of the source material are quite secondary reasons) is that Zionism cannot be typed, and therefore easily explained, as a "normal" kind of national risorgimento. To mention only one important difference, all of the other nineteenth century nationalisms based their struggle for political sovereignty on an already existing national land or language (generally, there were both). Zionism alone proposed to acquire both of these usual preconditions of national identity by the elan of its nationalist will. It is, therefore, a maverick in the history of modern nationalism, and it simplifies the task of general historians to regard it, at least by implication, as belonging only on the more parochial stage of the inner history of the Jewish community.

It's a Good Time to Review the basics of Zionist Religious Nationalism, Zionist Mysticism and Zionist Philosophers

It's a good time (after an election) to recall some basics about Zionist Religious Nationalists, Zionist Mystics and Zionist Philosophers.

I recommend The Zionist Idea by Arthur Hertzberg.

-Part 7: Religious Nationalists, Old and New -397

-RABBI SAMUEL MOHILEVER 1824-1898 -398

-MESSAGE TO THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS (1897) -401

-YEHIEL MICHAEL PINES 1842-1912 -406

-ON RELIGIOUS REFORMS (1868-1871) -409

-The Religious Idea -409

-Methods in Reforms -410

-JEWISH NATIONALISM CANNOT BE SECULAR (1895) -411

-RELIGION IS THE SOURCE OF JEWISH NATIONALISM (1895) -412

-JEWS WILL ACCEPT HARDSHIP ONLY IN THE HOLY LAND (1892) -414

-RABBI ABRAHAM ISAAC KOOK 1865-1935 -416

-THE LAND OF ISRAEL (1910-1930) -419

-THE WAR (1910-1930) -422

-THE REBIRTH OF ISRAEL (1910-1930) -424

-LIGHTS FOR REBIRTH (1910-1930) -427

-SAMUEL HAYYIM LANDAU 1892-1928 -432

-TOWARD AN EXPLANATION OF OUR IDEOLOGY (1924) -434

-JUDAH LEON MAGNES 1877-1948 -440

-"LIKE ALL THE NATIONS?" (1930) -443

-MARTIN BUBER 1887-1965 -450

-THE JEW IN THE WORLD (1934) -453

-HEBREW HUMANISM (1942) -457

-FROM AN OPEN LETTER TO MAHATMA GANDHI (1939) -463

The early forms of religious Zionism beginning with Mohilever and continuing with Pines, Kook, Buber and others -- which led to the organization called Mizrachi and other religious arms of the movement - were peripheral to the success of Zionism overall, but important for its ultimate inclusiveness and definition.

Hertzberg summarizes Mohilever as follows:

SO FAR the selections in this reader and the biographical sketches at the head of each selection have seemed to tell the story of the Zionist idea in a straight line: it began with certain stirrings in the minds of men of religion (e.g., Alkalai and Kalischer) and went on to express itself as a secular nationalism, though Zionism always more or less assumed, and was in tension with, emotions derived from religion. This impression needs to be qualified. Religious Zionism -- that is, not mere traditional piety about the Holy Land but a conscious blending of orthodoxy in religion with modern Jewish nationalism -- has been an important, albeit minority, trend throughout the history of the modern movement.

Is the United Nations Kosher?

No, the United Nations is not kosher.

In Hebrew the abbreviation for the UN is OOM and Haaretz has a humorous historical account of the common dismissal and disparagement of the UN in Hebrew/Yiddish "Oom shmoom: Blithe dismissal, Yiddish-style". [Hat tip to Yitz!]

As a person who supports Israel, I take note of these top reasons that I think the UN is not kosher:

• The declaration in the General Assembly in 1975 that Zionism is racism.
• The creation of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1948-49 to prolong the suffering of the Palestinians and to foster terrorism.
• The appointment of Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi Wehrmacht officer, as Secretary General from 1972 to 1981.

So indeed, Oom Shmoom, not kosher!

My New Book is Free Now on Amazon for Five Days, "Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice"

My New Book is Free Now on Amazon for Five Days: 

"Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice"

 Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice
Kindle Talmud in English @ $0.99
Whence and Wherefore @ $0.99
God's Favorite Prayers @ $2.99

A Peace Prayer Proposal for the Warriors Francis, Shimon and Mahmoud

For when they meet, I propose a new Peace Prayer for the warriors, Francis, Shimon and Mahmoud:

Our Father, Avinu, Abana, Pater Nostra…
Who art in Heaven, bashamayim, al samawat, in caelis…
Hallowed be Thy name, Hashem, Allah, God…
Thy warriors come, Israelites, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Catholics, Christians;
We all have said, "Thy kill be done on earth," and we blame it on the will of Heaven.
Give us this day a respite from our daily blood;
and forgive us our atrocities, as we have committed them against each other.
Lead us away from the temptations of belligerence, arrogance and triumphalism,
and deliver us at long last from the evils of our eternal conflicts. Amen.

The Jewish Press Post that Got Yori Yanover Fired

Here is the Jewish Press Post that got my old friend Yori Yanover fired this week. He's right. The JP is wrong.

50 Thousand Haredim March So Only Other Jews Die in War

by Yori Yanover

For the record, I believe the new Shaked-Lapid-Bennett draft law is by far worse than the one it came to replace, the Tal Law. Most importantly, because the Tal Law was getting results, without the idiotic, needless, divisive rancor generated by the new legislation. Killing the Tal Law, or, rather, issuing an edict that it had to be replaced by something that worked faster, was the parting poisonous gift of Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, protégé of that beacon of light unto the nations, Chief Justice Aharon (evil genius) Barak.

Since then we've seen one demonstration of a few hundred thousand Haredim against the new law in Jerusalem (but not a single day's work was lost!), and yesterday, in downtown Manhattan, another 50 thousand Haredim marched to condemn the evil decree.

I went on the vosizneias.com website to check out the rally, because I expected them to bring the authentic stuff. I wasn't disappointed, even though they just lifted the AP story without attribution:

“We’re all united against military service for religious men in Israel because it doesn’t allow for religious learning,” said Peggy Blier, an interior designer from Brooklyn. “The Israeli government is looking to destroy religious society and make the country into a secular melting pot."

Every single point made by Peggy Blier is a blatant lie. Of course the law allows for religious learning, it merely suggests that at some point—way past the age non-Haredim serve, and for half the time that normal Israelis give freely of their lives—"religious Jews in Israel" should participate in caring for the security of their country, or, if that's too much, serve the equivalent time in vital organizations inside their own communities for their own neighbors.

Haaretz: Why so Few Streets Named for Women In Tel Aviv?

One of my favorite books about Israel is "Street People" by Helga Dudman. "This is an informative and amusing guide-book recalling the "biographies" of many Israeli streets, the stories of the famous men and women for whom they were named. Pedestrians (and drivers) can travel along Ibn Gabirol, Nordau, Ahad Ha'Am, George Eliot, Lilienblum--and know who they were and what they did!"

Haaretz now reports that, "Of 2,439 streets in Tel Aviv, only 62 - a paltry 2.5 percent - are named for women." And we cannot blame this on Orthodox rabbis. Tel Aviv is a predominantly secular city. I was taught that Zionism was a basically egalitarian movement. It seems that is not reflected in street naming.

Can Israeli women break the glass ceiling - on street signs?
By Ilan Lior

The briefest of strolls through Tel Aviv will reveal one very long road indeed: the path to gender equality in street names.

Although women constitute half the population, their names are almost entirely absent from street signs. Of 2,439 streets in Tel Aviv, only 62 — a paltry 2.5 percent — are named for women.

The number dwindles even further when you realize that in six cases, the streets bear the names of women mentioned together with their husbands.