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Peace, Justice and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition

My friend, Stefan Merken, has just published Peace, Justice and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition, a book that argues that peace is one of the "purest and highest" values in our tradition. If there are any skeptics reading this they will … Read More

By / August 4, 2007

My friend, Stefan Merken, has just published Peace, Justice and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition, a book that argues that peace is one of the "purest and highest" values in our tradition. If there are any skeptics reading this they will say–been there, done that. How many similar books have already been published on precisely the same subject before? While this is true, I believe that this book comes at a most opportune time. In the period since 9/11, the world has become obsessed with terror as THE only important issue facing us. In this country, all that has been important to our government has been security. Everything else has fallen by the wayside. The neocons, prominent among them many Jews, have ruled the roost for the past six years.

But now that the Bush Administration and its agenda have become discredited by the overreaching and failure of their own policies the pendulum is shifting back. It is time that we reexamine the relevance of the Jewish prophetic tradition to issues of war and peace, environmentalism, and economic justice. In an age when war and hatred are everywhere, it would profit us to study the words of the contributors to this volume who have embraced a peaceful way to resolve such conflicts. If there was nothing else worthwhile in this volume, this comment by the editors about my favorite historic Zionist figure would make the entire venture worth it:

Our chapter on…Israel calls to mind a major–if sadly, largely forgotten–figure of the Jewish past: Ahad Ha'am…whose prescient essay This is Not the Way warned that a future Jewish nation would not succeed if it emulated colonialistic thinking. "The main point, upon which everything depends, is not how much we do but how we do it," he wrote in The Truth from Palestine after he arrived home in Odessa from Palestine in 1891. He also cautioned the Jewish settlers in Palestine to consider the rights of the Arabs living there. "We think…that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening…This is, however, a great error.

A strong dose of Ahad Ha'am is a powerful antidote to the most virulent nationalist views expressed by many on the Israeli right and their Diaspora supporters.

Murray Polner, former editor of the late, lamented Present Tense Magazine, was this book's co-editor.

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  • Anonymous

    Proof he is a full time asshole jerking himself off to the tune of Biladi Biladi is at

    http://www.richardsilversteins.blogspot.com

  • richards1052

    "His entire life's work was dedicated to the revival of a nationalist Jewish culture not only separate from gentile culture, but also from the Haskalah, Reform Judaism (which he despised) and other attempts at Jewish revival which he saw as dangerously assimilationist. What can we call this except virulent nationalism?"

    Jabotinsky was a virulent nationalist. Ahad Ha'am was not. Despising Reform Judaism does not make you "virulent."

    "I think I can summarize Richard's philosophy as the following…"

    As I wrote earlier in another thread, don't trust anyone here who attempts to summarize my philosophy as they are undoubtedly liars or ideologues or as is likely in the case of this jerk, both.

    Richard Silverstein

    Tikun Olam (blog)

  • Anonymous

    I think I can summarize Richard’s philosophy as the following. We need to tell the family of Malki Roth to get over it and MOVEON! On the other hand, we need to express profound sympathy for Azmi Bishara, Norman Finkelstein and other victims of zionism.
    Number of Richards blogs about Norman Finkelstein 4
    Number of Richards blogs about Azmi Bishra 4
    Number of Richards blogs about Rachel Corrie 3
    Number of Richards blogs about Malki Roth 0
    Number of Richards blogs showing sympathy to victims of homicide bombers 0

    The facts speak for themselves

  • Anonymous

    What happens when you give up land for peace and you discover that they don’t want peace? What happens when they decide that they don’t have enough?

    Peace is desirable. However, the desire for peace should not blind us to the fact that peace requires two parties. Right now, we have self-delusion, not peacemaking.

  • Benjamin Kerstein

    His entire life's work was dedicated to the revival of a nationalist Jewish culture not only separate from gentile culture, but also from the Haskalah, Reform Judaism (which he despised) and other attempts at Jewish revival which he saw as dangerously assimilationist. What can we call this except virulent nationalism? Or is nationalism now a dirty word in any context?

    As for Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, we may take the quote you cite, in which Echad HaAm holds that the Arabs are not savages who "live like animals." Both Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky agreed. I did not state that they reached the same conclusions as Echad HaAm (you really enjoy mischaracterizing people's views don't you?) and both men were writing in a later era in any case, but on this essential issue they were clearly in agreement.

  • richards1052

    "to claim that he was not a virulent nationalist is hugely mistaken."

    You provide no evidence that he WAS a "virulent nationalist." Do you have any?

    "it is completely inaccurate to claim that Ehad HaAm was the only Zionist who saw the Arabs as more than a rabble of savages."

    I never said that. You really enjoy mischaracterizing people's views don't you. I know the Zionist texts as well as you. I know there were others with similar views. I merely said that Ahad Ha'am is one of my favorite Zionist thinkers.  To claim that Jabotinsky or Ben Gurion had views of the Arabs that were substantively similar to Ahad Ha'am's seems a serious distortion.

    "Broken Link"

    Sorry about that. I've e mailed the webmaster the correct URL & hope he will add it to the post ASAP.

    Richard Silverstein

    Tikun Olam (blog)

  • Anonymous

    “It is time that we reexamine the relevance of the Jewish prophetic tradition to issues of war and peace, environmentalism, and economic justice. In an age when war and hatred are everywhere, it would profit us to study the words of the contributors to this volume who have embraced a peaceful way to resolve such conflicts.”

    Any time is a good time to reexamine passivity in the face of “the most virulent nationalist views expressed by many on the Israeli right and their Diaspora supporters,” regardless of the success of the neocon agenda.

    Secure the greater realm.

  • Adam Shprintzen

    Just to second Benjamin's point, I think one of the highly overlooked points about many of the Zionists (there were so many that no blanket statements can be made) was there efforts towards reconciliation with the Palestinian Arabs, ranging from Henrietta Szold, Judah Magnes all the way to Chaim Weitzman. In some ways the big wigs thought that Arab nationalistic desires would be satiated through economic and material gains. Clearly that has been proven to be a mistake.  However, the efforts towards reproachment are often overlooked in the master historical narrative framing the Zionists as foreign, colonialist conquerers. 

  • François Blumenfeld-Kouchner
  • Benjamin Kerstein

    First, context is everything.  Ehad HaAm was not writing about the socialist yishuv which eventually formed the State of Israel but rather the early settlements of the First Aliyah which used Arab labor rather than forming their own labor force — i.e. what became the Histadrut.

    Secondly, to claim that he was not a virulent nationalist is hugely mistaken.  He simply saw culture and not the realm of territorial politics as the most important arena of nationalist development.  To a great extent, he was the Antonio Gramsci of Zionism.  This belief, moreover, was based on his conviction that the Jews would never constitute a majority in a future Jewish state.  In this, he was quite obviously mistaken.

    Most importantly, however, it is completely inaccurate to claim that Ehad HaAm was the only Zionist who saw the Arabs as more than a rabble of savages.  Jabotinsky, for instance, the Zionist left's favored object of hate and contempt, was fully cognizant of the Arabs as a nation.  This was, in fact, what led him to his Iron Wall theory.  He believed the Arabs would have to be defied with military force not because they were savages but because they were a proud nation who would not cede victory to Zionism easily.  Ben-Gurion, while less despairing than Jabotinsky as to the prospects for peace, ultimately came to similar conclusions.

    As for the prophetic tradition, it may well contain the call for beating our swords into plowshares, but let us not forget Joel's often conveniently forgotten admonition: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.  Let the weak rise and say: I am strong."