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PDF FormatThe Israeli Declaration of Independence called on “the Jewish people throughout the diaspora to join in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by us in the great struggle to realize the age-old dream: The redemption of Israel.”
Speaking in 1967, Eshkol declared: “We need more Jews here.” Now, after the great war, the awakening and the exhilaration, after the electric jolt that has coursed through the Jewish world, thousands and tens of thousands of olim should come to Israel. We cannot possibly resign ourselves to the immigration of a few thousand, who could offer little help if a new war were to arise, one that might be more trying and bitter than the Six Day War. If, heaven forbid, our strength failed us, your children would have to ask: “You had a land, you had a country, you had wars, you defeated the enemy, but what has become of Israel?’ It was given to you in trust, but you did not know how to keep it.”
The choices seem so clear. Do we take part in the heroic experience of ensuring and creating Jewish sovereignty or do we delude ourselves while eating kosher at Disney World?
Stuart Schnee
Jerusalem
TO THE EDITORS:
Jeff Jacoby’s statement that six weeks before he died in 1994, Irving Howe conceded that the secular Judaism he had so prized was doomed is a muddle. First, Howe had no opinions on this or any other subject at that time because he died on May 5, 1993. Second, Howe would never have used the term “secular Judaism” because he made a point of distinguishing sharply between Judaism and Jewishness. Third, he had already given up on secular Jewishness in 1977 after reading Hillel Halkin’s Letters to an American Jewish Friend.
Edward Alexander
Seattle, Washington
Not Normal
TO THE EDITORS:
In “Not Normal” (Editorial, AZURE 11, Autumn 2001), Assaf Sagiv agonizes over the desire of many Jews for “normalization” of the Jewish people. He lists several factors that contribute to this phenomenon, among them “the deep rifts that have emerged in Israeli society” that “led many Israelis to doubt the idea of a unified ‘Chosen People,’ which has come to be seen as reflecting a kind of religious fundamentalism or nationalist chauvinism.”
But where do these doubts come from? Sagiv correctly notes that “the belief that our people is slated for a particular calling, to be ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,’ has been the cornerstone of Jewish identity in all its forms, from the time of the Bible to the modern era,” and that “the idea of the Jews as a special, unique, ‘chosen’ nation cannot be erased from Judaism.” But the expressions that Sagiv uses are clearly religious, or at least had religious meaning in their original context. Priesthood and sanctity are patently religious concepts. The idea of chosenness originates in the declaration by God to the people of Israel, “You shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples,” (Exodus 19:5) and therefore pertains to the special relationship between the people of Israel and God. Chosenness is chosenness by God—as can be seen, for example, in the following verse, which binds together all the above-mentioned concepts: “For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God: the Eternal your God chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be his treasured people.” (Deuteronomy 14:2) Sagiv wants to translate the idea of chosenness into secular language and to speak ofׂa spiritual community “[that] has always accepted upon itself a sense of mission…and moral excellence” or of the “dream of spiritual and moral elevation…of an ethos of excellence and a clear sense of moral purpose.”
But how are the aspiration to excellence (which is certainly commendable, but not necessarily religious) and the belief in a shared destiny (which according to Sagiv is shared by many peoples) connected to the religious, particularist values of priesthood and sanctity? Is this translation possible, and can it at all be justified?
A number of essays appearing in AZURE have made just such an attempt to translate the values of Jewish tradition into a form that will be meaningful to the non-Orthodox reader. Examples include Yoram Hazony’s essay on disobedience in Jewish tradition (“The Jewish Origins of the Western Disobedience Tradition,” AZURE 4, Summer 1998), and Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz’s essay on the Sabbath (“Secret of the Sabbath,” AZURE 10, Winter 2001). Yet before attempting such a translation, it seems necessary first to discuss its methodology, its justification, and its meaning. There exists an enormous range of opinion, from Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s conviction that such a translation is impossible, to Ahad Ha’am’s belief that traditional values could be totally secularized, continuing with Haim Nahman Bialik and A.D. Gordon’s attempts to bring religious elements into their secular world, and concluding with R. Abraham Isaac Kook, who translated in reverse, finding the sacred in apparently secular values. It is fair to assume that if the question is taken seriously, many more answers will be produced.
A deliberate ambiguity on this issue may have its advantages, but a price is paid as well. Because Sagiv does not clearly explain his position, he runs the risk of triggering a sense of alienation or even suspicion among some of his more skeptical readers.
Avi Kanai
Jerusalem
Eliezer Berkovits
TO THE EDITORS:
AZURE 11 (Autumn 2001) devoted two of its eight articles to the late rabbi and professor Eliezer Berkovits. The first, which appeared in both the English and Hebrew editions, was by David Hazony (“Eliezer Berkovits and the Revival of Jewish Moral Thought”), whereas the second, which appeared in the Hebrew edition only, was an essay by Berkovits himself (“A Jewish Sexual Ethics”). That AZURE allotted so much space to Berkovits should not be surprising, since, as Hazony writes, he “may prove to be the most significant Jewish moral theorist of the last generation.” Nevertheless, I cannot recall him having received such extensive and valuable treatment in any Israeli publication until now.
Since few in Israel know Berkovits’ name, and even fewer his teachings, Hazony also gives his biography in a few lines. Surprisingly, though, Hazony makes no mention of the fact that in the 1980s Berkovits was one of the three members of the national commission of inquiry into the 1933 murder of the Zionist leader Chaim Arlosoroff. Prime Minister Menachem Begin appointed the commission in 1982, and it delivered its findings on June 4, 1985.
Unlike the two other members of the committee, the late justices David Bechor and Max Kenneth, Berkovits was not a judge. This did not prevent him, however, from writing a comprehensive twenty-four-page opinion at the end of the deliberations. The opinion’s opening paragraph tells us something about its author, and certainly strengthens Hazony’s characterization of him as a “Jewish moral theorist.” Berkovits writes:
There is no doubt not only that the accused, Avraham Stavsky and Tzvi Rosenblatt [members of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionist movement], had no part in the murder of Dr. Arlosoroff, but that there was no basis on which to charge them. Since the murder was a national tragedy, around which an entire episode in the history of the yishuv [Jewish community] in the land of Israel was woven—an episode that, unfortunately, has not until now come to a close—we must emphasize the main arguments that led us to our conclusion. My conclusion is founded on the examination of the witnesses who appeared before the commission, and a personal investigation of police files from the preliminary investigation and the records of the district court that at the time deliberated on the murder investigation prior to the trial of the accused.
