Avrum Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset, writes:

There is no single definition that defines all who identify themselves as Jewish. Is Jewishness a religion? A gene? A culture? A nationality? A legal status? In the confusion of these overlapping and contradicting identities, modern Israel has forged its own unprecedented synthesis; a fusion of five elements never fully welded in Jewish history: religion, land, power, language, and sovereignty. The product of this Israeli crucible is a cultural mutation that dares to call itself Judaism.

At this moment in Israeli history, three of those elements; religion, power, and land, have metastasized into malignant growths. Power has become too great and is now wielded in service of the most pathological interpretations of Judaism, bent on conquest and domination. The immediate cost of this cancer is the unraveling of Israeli sovereignty. Power has been handed over to violent messianic militias; their gang leaders now serve as government ministers. Together, from the top and the bottom simultanously, they have dismantled the Israeli state. That country no longer exists.

These destructive elements were always present in the Jewish whole, but they were usually contained, marginalized, restrained. Today, after two thousand years, they have seized control and are implementing their darkest impulses. Every Jew must now confront two fundamental questions: What is my Jewish identity? And am I with them, or against them?

There is no middle ground. There mustn’t be.

To stand with them is to align oneself with the ruinous forces of our past. With those who launched a reckless and delusional revolt against the Roman Empire, bringing the destruction of the Second Temple and untold suffering upon our people. To stand with them is to embrace the biblical commandments of annihilation of the native nations and the myth of mass suicide at Masada. It is to follow a separatist, supremacist culture: a world where non-Jews are reviled, and Jews are chosen and exalted.

There are thick, unbroken lines stretching from Bar Kokhba’s hubris to Ben-Gvir’s thuggery; from Rabbi Akiva’s messianic madness to Smotrich’s crudity and zealotry. The lords of ruin in Jewish history never truly died and now they even kill.

But Judaism has always held within it another civilization. One rooted in introspection, critique, compassion, and moral action. The prophet Nathan stood before King David, Israel’s most powerful ruler, and indicted him for corruption and bloodshed. Centuries later, the prophet Jeremiah warned the decadent elites of Jerusalem of the looming First Temple’s destruction. In the year 70 CE, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai fled the city of zealots and blood-lust and inaugurated the new alternative Judaism: a faith of worship without temple, of identity without territory, of strength without force, and of spiritual authority without political sovereignty.

This was the Judaism that later embraced Yiddish, the language Isaac Bashevis Singer once described as “the language of exile… a language without land and without borders, unsupported by any government, a language with no words for weapons, for ammunition, for military maneuvers or warfare tactics. In the ghettos, Yiddish speakers lived out what the great religions merely preached: a daily practice of studying humanity and human relations. What they called Torah, Talmud, ethics, and mysticism. The ghetto, far from just a refuge for the persecuted, was a grand experiment in peaceful living, self-meaning, and care for others. And it still survives, refusing to surrender, despite the cruelty that surrounds it”.

This inner tension in the Jewish soul is still alive. Between the forces of domination, bloodlust, and silencing of others, and that Judaism of tolerance, openness, and dialogue.

Now, a great moral exaltation is required of all who refuse to accept the dictatorship of power and corruption led by Caesar Netanyahu and his coalition of apocalyptic zealots.

Now is the time to walk out of the city, as Yohanan ben Zakkai did, and rekindle a Judaism of morality and humanity. We have no institutions, no vast resources. We are scattered, often alone. We possess no military or governmental power. But we do have the spiritual and ethical strength of our past. We have Jewish history on our side.

That is why we can and must stop the flow of blood.

Here is how we can begin: We need one million Jews. Less than ten percent of the global Jewish population to file a joint appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. A collective legal complaint against the State of Israel for crimes against humanity committed in our name and under the false banner of our Jewish identity.

It is time to say: enough! [Continue reading…]