The Book of Job, one of the most beautiful in the Bible, has become involved in a furiouspolitical debate, caused – once again – by the inimitable Rabbi Ovadia Josef,
The book tells about a cruel game played by God and Satan. In order to prove Job’s loyalty, Godallows Satan to inflict terrible suffering on “a perfect and upright man”.
This creates a dilemma for devout Jews. The God of the Book of Job is cruel and immoral, ratherlike those pagan gods who quarrel among themselves and use human beings as instruments. Howdoes that go together with the image of a just and merciful deity? Comes Rabbi Ovadia Josef,following in the footsteps of his predecessors, and provides an answer: Job is not a victim ofGod’s whim, he is justly punished. It’s a matter of transmigration: The soul of Terah, fatherof Abraham, had passed into his body. Because Terah was an idol-worshipper, Job had to suffer.
An atheist may think that this is a ridiculous excuse. Why was Terah more of a sinner than hiscontemporaries, all of whom did worship idols? And what about the progressive principle of”In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’steeth are set on edge…”
Since the beginning of religion, believers were plagued by the question: Why do sinnerflourish? Why do the righteous suffer? How does that go together with the idea of justice,reward and punishment? Well, it’s like this: God likes to test his faithful (see Job andAbraham). Or: The righteous one suffers in this world so as to get his reward in the next one,where the sinners will suffer hell. Or: By way of transmigration, the soul of the sinner isbeing punished in the next incarnation. And anyhow, mysterious are the ways of God, better notto ask too many questions.
The dilemma came to a head in the Holocaust. Six millions were tortured and murdered,religious and agnostic, young and old, righteous and evil. Where was God when the furnaces ofAuschwitz were burning? Logical people, like Supreme Court judge Ha’im Cohen, offspring of areligious family, came to the conclusion that there is no God – or, if there is one, he is evil orindifferent. But those who held on to their belief in God who loves the human beings he createdneeded other answers. For example: God punished the Jews because of the sins of the Zionists,who usurped the job of the Messiah. Or: The victims of the Holocaust paid for the sins of formergenerations.
Thus said Rabbi Ovadia, and his words aroused the fury of “secular” Israelis. I wonder why. Whyshould I care for his utterances? Why should they concern me more that the mumbo-jumbo of amedicine-man in Papua? What do I have in common with him?
Ovadia complains that the “secular” public misunderstood his words, that it is unable even tounderstand his language. He is quiet right. His language isn’t ours, ours isn’t his. Betweenthe two lies and abyss, and not from today. The expletives of Ovadia are nothing compared to thecurses thrown in the face of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, by all the importantrabbis of his day.
Some pretend that this is an “ideological debate” between two parts of the people, one of themreligious-orthodox, the other secular. Such differences of opinion should be settled byargument. One has to “bring the hearts together”, as the Hebrew phrase goes. “Gratuitouslove” should replace “gratuitous hatred”.
(“Gratuitous hatred caused the destruction of the temple,” says the oft-repeated cliche,especially beloved by politicians and such on the 9 th of the month Av, the day the temple wasdestroyed. That is complete nonsense. Even if all the Jews in besieged Jerusalem had lovedeach other, instead of burning each other’s granaries, Jerusalem would have fallen. Thetemple was destroyed because gangs of religious fanatics had taken control of the people bymurder, terror and demagoguery and dragged the people into a crazy war against Rome, the worldpower. Such a war could only have ended in total destruction.)
The truth is that there is no debate dividing the people, because the two sides do not belong tothe same people. During the last hundred years two different peoples have evolved here, andthe distance between them is growing all the time.
When I first said so many years ago, I was accused of wild exaggeration. Lately it has becomefashionable to speak – still half in jest – of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem as the capitals of twopeoples, Well, it’s time to treat this reality seriously.
In the course of the last generations, a new nation has emerged in this country, an Israelination, a mutation of the Jewish people. This nation is Jewish in origin and historicremembrance. Mutual ties connect it with the Jewish Diaspora. But it is a new national entity,much as Australia, Canada and the US are new entities with a common British origin. Acompletely new reality, new ways of life, a new landscape, a new geo-political situation, newneighbors, a new language (since words of the old language have changed their meaning), newneeds, new aims – all these have necessarily created a new nation with a new culture.
But this is not the only new entity that has emerged in this country. The Jewish-orthodoxcommunity, too, has undergone a mutation that has turned it into something quite new. It is notjust a continuation of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, even if it seems to continue theirtraditions. Into the old flask a new cocktail has been poured, a mixture of Messianic beliefs,elements from the cabbala, ultra-nationalistic Zionism, anti-Zionism andanti-nationalism, together with a new sense of power. A forceful mixer has turned theseseemingly contradictory elements into a potent brew. The educational systems of this camp(the independent system of the orthodox, the Ma’ayan of Shass, the State-religious system ofthe “national religious” and the divers Yeshivot) have caused this mixture to become more andmore distant from Israeli education, to the point where there is now little resemblancebetween the pupils of the two camps.
A nation consists of the unity of people, territory, culture (including language andhistorical memories, real or imagined), society, education and more. In most of theseaspects there is no connection between the Israeli nation and the Jewish-orthodox communityin Israel. This community has a completely different Weltanschauung . Its differenteducation derives from quite different values and ideas and instills them in the minds of thenext generation. It sees its place in the world and in the region differently. It imagines adifferent history and longs for a different state.
It is no coincident that Ovadia spoke of snakes, with whom one cannot make peace. All”Ishmaelites” – and indeed, all Goyim – are evil, out to destroy us, God is sorry he created themin the first place. This is not ordinary racism, a kind of anti-Semitism in reverse, nor aone-time lapse or another code-word misunderstood by the secular. This is the teaching of thecabbala, which says that only Jews are full human beings, while the goyim are closer to animalsthan to Jews. Non-religious Jews, meaning the whole Israeli nation, are not Jews at all, butthe offspring of the biblical Amalekites who have succeeded in stealing into the Israelitecamp during the exodus from Egypt. And the Bible is unequivocal about them: “Remember whatAmalek did unto thee…thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven!”
This teaching means the total negation of everything that is not Jewish. It is an absoluteanti-humanism, a twin of the rejection of democracy and majority rule, to be superceded by aHalakah-state under a rabbinical dictatorship. (Halakah is the Jewish religious law.)
In the religious melting pot in Israel, the divers streams of orthodox andnational-religious, who used to be opposed to each other, are being merged into one singleorthodox-religious-messianic-cabbalistic- Zionist-nationalist entity. The poliarenais only the outward manifestation of a much more profound process.
It is important to understand that the Jewish-orthodox mutation in Israel has nothing to dowith Judaism as it evolved in the course of the last centuries in Europe, North America andNorth Africa, where religion has become tolerant, humanist and universal. Indeed, AmericanJewry may have become a third Jewish people.
It is impossible to understand the struggles in Israel without taking note of the fact that twopeoples have emerged here, without a common language or a common view of anything, two peopleswho see the past, present and future in a completely different light. Yet the border betweenthe two is not hermetically sealed. A steady thin trickle of religious individuals becomesecular, some secular individuals turn religious. Some secular nationalists in the middledo not know where they belong. But the differences between the two peoples are greater thanthose between Canadians and Australians, for example. Those two share the same culturallevel, while the Israeli nation and the Jewish-orthodox community live in two differentworlds.
This is another dimension of the problem. The Israeli nation is oriented towards the Westernworld. It competes with the United States and Europe in high-tech development, science,technology and cultural achievements. It is part of the “global village”. TheJewish-orthodox entity in Israel, on the other hand, is – by choice – a part of the Third World,not only in its mentality but also in its material level. It creates a built-in poverty, madepermanent by an excessive birth-rate, traditionalist education and the inferior status ofwomen, not to mention the profusion of holy men and cabbalists, amulets, charms andincantations. It strives for a state governed by rabbis, much as the ayatullahs and their likerule some Muslim states. The late ayatullah Humeini was not different from Rabbi Ovadia. TheAfghan Taliban are not different in their thinking from the Yeshiva-bochers in Israel -except, of course, that they work and serve in the army.
When people speak about the “gap” in material terms, this aspect of the problem, which isideological-religious, is generally ignored. But there is a mutual relationship betweenextreme religious attitudes and poverty. One feeds the other.
Can two such peoples live together in one state? Yes, but only under certain conditions. It isnot easy. Co-existence is possible only if it is based on the separation of state and religion.Different people can live together in one state if they want to (Belgium and Switzerland, forexample) and if the rules are accepted by all. The state is based on the supremacy of the law, thecitizenship of the individual and the equal rights of different communities. On this levelthere should be no difference between a Jewish-Israeli, a Jewish-orthodox and anArab-Israeli citizen. As long as all accept the framework of the system and the law, they canexist side by side. Let Rabbi Ovadia talk to his heart’s desire, and so, too, Sheikh AbdallahNimmer Hussein of the Islamic movement and Tommy Lapid of the violently anti-religiousShinui party (who, by the way, objects to the separation of state and religion.)
Trouble is, the extreme orthodox people do not really accept the framework of the state exceptas a passing evil. If they would succeed in turning Israel into an anti-democraticHalakah-state (as happened in Iran), it would cause all those who want a Western state, whereever they came from, to emigrate to Europe or the US. If this happened, Israel would descentinto the Third World (as also happened in Iran.)
If the views of Rabbi Ovadia will win, no peace between Israel and the Arab world, including thePalestiniamns – will be possible. Not tomorrow, not ever. If the Ishmaelites are snakes,there can be no peace. Without peace, the development of Israel will stop, the state willrevert to the vicious circle of wars – and this, too, will widen the gap between it and theWestern world.
So what will happen? Where is Israel going?
No political games, nor “bringing the hearts together”, nor parliamentary tricks willdetermine the fate of the state. In the end, the future will be determined by the inner strengthof each camp, its determination to defend its values.
I strongly believe that the Israeli nation will prevail. It constitutes the majority and isoriented towards the future. But it must understand what the decision is about. The fight forpeace is but one battle – although an important one – in this struggle.