The Zionist Betrayal of Jewish Civilization

8/3/2019 The Zionist Betrayal of Jewish Civilization

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The Zionist Betrayal of Jewish Civilization: Amos Oz, Charlie Rose, and Ashkenazi

Hegemony

I have often remarked that there is a foundational paradox within Ashkenazi-European

Zionism. At its core Zionism is an attempt to resolve the so-called Jewish Question by

restoring the Jewish people to its historical homeland in the Middle East. When looked atmore carefully, the two formative elements of Zionist identity Judaism and life in an

Asiatic land are both deeply problematic.

Back in 1983 the internationally-known Israeli novelist Amos Oz published a non-fiction

work calledIn the Land of Israel (the English translation was not published until 1993)which sought to examine the troubles of his nation. In a particularly jarring chapter of

the book called The Insult and the Fury, he visits the town of Beit Shemesh filled with

angry Sephardic Jews, Jews native to the region, who confront the Ashkenazi Sabra hero

Oz and his Kibbutznik ethos with their sense of alienation and resentment at being treatedlike second class citizens in the Jewish state.

Oz is taken aback by the deep wells of Sephardi anger and resentment but lets theconfrontation play out.

Over time, the anger of the Sephardim in Israel has been sublimated in different wayswhile the acclaim and celebrity of Amos Oz as an Israeli writer of international repute

has increased. The narrative of the Middle Eastern Jews, a narrative of struggle and bitter

loss, is now almost completely unknown both inside and outside Israel.

On a recent appearance on PBS Charlie Rose Show, Oz was presented as an elder

statesman of Israeli letters and an authority on all things Israeli and Zionist. In what has

become a standard routine with Mr. Rose, Israelis and Zionist supporters are fawned overas if they are some holy objects of worship. These Israeli pundits, politicians, and

cultural figures are spoken to in tones of hushed awe and their pronouncements as we

have seen in the case of another recent Rose interview with the architect Moshe Safdie are deemed authoritative.

Oz presented a number of views in the discussion that are well-worth recounting and

examining more closely:

Mayflower Zionism

Oz (born Amos Klausner, the Hebrew name Oz means strength) recounted to Rose

that his life is more akin to that of the original American colonists than merely one that

has encompassed the events of the mid-20th

century to the present. He sees himself notsimply as a 72 year old man, but as far older in conceptual-historical terms. Imagine, he

tells Rose, that you have met Washington and Lincoln and have lived through the Boston

Tea Party, the Civil War, and the Great Depression. That is what his life has been like asan Israeli pioneer.


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In Ozs formulation, being an older Israeli is something akin and Meron Benvenisti has

been saying this in recent years as well to being part of the Mayflower generation ofAmerican history. In this context, Israel is compared to the United States as a new nation

starting out from scratch.

The problem with the Mayflower analogy is that Israel is not a new nation, but theproduct of centuries of Jewish existence. It is predicated upon a rich and varied Diaspora

life which stretches back to the end of Jewish national-territorial existence in the wake ofthe Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.

But Israelis like Amos Oz often forget that Jewish history continued after the tragedy of70.

In a mad embrace of atavism, Israel sees itself in quasi-magical terms as the resurrection

of an ancient nation that was cut off at the knees, only to be magically resurrected in1948. In this context, it is not the rabbinical tradition which in its Talmudic formulation

became normative in the Jewish Diaspora that encapsulates the current Israeli reality, butthe more ancient and less defined identity of the age of the Hebrew Bible and the Jewishcommonwealth(s). Such a benighted view was embodied in Israels most important

statesman David Ben-Gurion who typified the new ethos and relentlessly imposed it on

citizens of the state.

Mayflower Zionism as a myth of origins is a handy way of eviscerating centuries of

Jewish life in the Diaspora and marking it as essentially bereft of meaning and substance.

Israeli Jews have embarked on a new phase of Jewish history which is not beholden tothe Diaspora past. Israelis can thus create themselves out of whole cloth rather than be

forced to connect directly to what preceded them historically.

Hebrew as a Volcanic Eruption

Oz was excited to relate in the interview that the Hebrew language over the past centuryhas been completely re-invented. As if Hebrew too had no history and no cultural

standing over the course of centuries, Israelis have re-formed the language to suit their

Indo-European proclivities.

The current variant of Hebrew in Israel has changed not simply the auditory element of

how the language is pronounced, but has dealt with lexical matters, syntax, grammar, and

poetic values in ways that bypass the vast literature of the Jewish past.

Critical to any understanding of the Jewish literary heritage is an engagement with the

rabbinic tradition as well as the neo-secular movements that emerged in the SephardicWest and in the Middle East under the aegis of Arabic poetics.

Israel, having dispensed with the Diaspora Jewish past, has formulated a Hebrew thateffectively functions as a Western language and not a Semitic one.


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When Oz asserts that Hebrew is now in a state of volcanic eruption, what he means is

that, similar to the way in which Jewish history has been erased and re-formed underZionist thought, so too has the Hebrew language found a new freedom from the rubric of

the past.

It is something quite simple to prove given the almost complete absence of pre-ZionistHebrew literature most specifically that of the Sephardic heritage which did not limit

literary expression to rabbinics in the Israeli marketplace.

A Lost Jewish Civilization

Missing in this new Israeli-Zionist Jewish culture are brilliant literary prose texts like

Judah Alharizis Sefer Tahkemoni (composed in Spain around 1218) and Immanuel ofRomes Mahberot (late 13

th-early 14

thcentury); the groundbreaking poetry ofJudah

Halevi (c. 1075-1141), Solomon ibn Gabirol (c. 1021-1058), and Samuel Hanagid (c.993-1056), the most prominent of the many rabbi-poets of Spain, France, and Italy;

important historical works such as Abraham ibn Dauds Sefer ha-Qabbalah (1161),Abraham Zacutos Sefer Yuhasin (1504), Solomon ibn Vergas Shebet Yehudah(early 16th century), and Joseph ha-Kohens Emeq ha-Bakha (mid-16

th century);

philosophical classics like Abraham bar Hiyyas Hegyon ha-Nefesh ha-Azubah (early

12th

century), Meditation of the Sad Soul, which is a Jewish work akin to BoethiusLatin classic The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524), and Don Santob de Carrions

Proverbios Morales (c. 1355), a Spanish-language poetic treatise in the venerable

tradition of Jewish Wisdom literature re-cast in the lexicon of Andalusian-Sephardic

Religious Humanism; ethical-moral literary classics like Moses Cordoveros Tomer

Deborah (mid-16th century) and Moses Hayyim Luzzatos Mesillat Yesharim (1738);

and important rhetorical and linguistic achievements such as Moses ibn Ezras Kitab al-

Muhadara w-al-Mudhakara (11th

-12th

century), a book on Hebrew poetics, and Jonah

ibn Jannahs (c. 990-1050) seminal studies of Hebrew grammar and lexicography which

were written in the Arabic language, but became a central part of Hebrew culture in the

Middle Ages.

The vast production of the Andalusian, Provencal, and Italian Jewish poets alone could

fill dozens upon dozens of volumes (An excellent single volume anthology of the

Sephardic school, the only one of its kind currently available, has been published inEnglish translation by Peter Cole in his comprehensiveDream of the Poem: HebrewPoetry in Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492. It is important to note that the Hebrew

originals of the poems remain relatively inaccessible to all but the most devoted studentof this tradition, collected in out-of-print and hard-to-find academic editions).

We can point in regard to this massive stockpile of Hebrew poetry the colossalachievement ofSolomon ibn Gabirol, one of the most original and innovative poets of

the Andalusian-Sephardic school whose epic poem Keter Malkhut, The Royal Crown,

is one of the most astounding accomplishments of the Hebrew literary heritage.


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This vast library of Jewish literary production was predicated on the values of Religious

Humanism; a noble and valiant pursuit that diligently united the spiritual values ofmonotheistic religion with the great advances in the sciences and philosophy that

embraced the humanistic disciplines. Religious Humanism sought to understand the

commands of God by making use of the intellectual resources of the human mind in all

its workings. It combined sublime faith with rigorous scholastic analysis.

These great texts, if they were to become part of contemporary Israeli culture, which theyare most certainly not at the moment, would permit Israeli writers and readers to partake

of their own native Jewish cultural heritage. But an Israeli reader would be hard-pressed

to find a copy of any of these works in a local bookshop.

The Europeanization of Israeli Literature

When seeing things in light of Ozs assertions about the Hebrew language and literature,it is perfectly clear that a transformative Europeanization of Israeli letters has taken

place over the past century. In the Ashkenazi tradition that Zionism was tied to, secularliterature was a rare, if totally unknown phenomenon. It was not until the Haskalahmovement of the 19th century, which rejected the religious ethos of the Shtetl and sought

to abandon traditional rabbinic Judaism, that European Jews found an outlet for their

secular literary pursuits.

Unlike the Sephardic tradition which successfully integrated religion and general culture

under the rubric of Religious Humanism, Ashkenazi Judaism continued to maintain a

tension between Judaism and Gentile culture.

In Israel we have seen the emergence of an Ultra-Orthodoxy that rejects secularism and

has done so much to compromise the political workings of the state in a general context.Israeli literature is largely in the hands of the secularists and the religious tension remains

a critical part of the internal schism between Orthodox Judaism and Zionism.

Settler Messianism

In the interview Oz asserts with absolute authority that he knows how the Palestine

Question will be resolved by a Two-State solution.

What Oz does not discuss is how this Two-State solution has been effectively thwarted

by Israeli governments who have rejected any attempt to establish the pre-1967 armisticelines as a valid territorial entity for a Palestinian state. This is not really a negotiable

proposition for the Israelis. All sorts of contortions are undertaken by the Israeli Left in

order to try to validate what has been called the Green Line, but there has only been alot of verbiage on the part of Israel that involves arcane land swaps and a hard line on

the issue of Palestinian refugees.

It has been clear for many years that the Arabs will completely accept Israels

relinquishing of the lands it conquered in 1967 as a means to end the conflict, but it is just


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as clear that Israel has refused to even consider such a proposition. Without entering into

the tortuous details of the Israeli PILPUL over how to deal with both the affirmation anddenial of the Two-State principle in an international context where that principle is

sacrosanct, it must be said that when people like Oz affirm the Two-State solution they

are not speaking with any real clarity.

The reason for this obfuscation lies in the ongoing transformation of the reality in the

West Bank and the relative silence on the way in which Israel has built its settlementsthere.

This reality was originally planned and executed by Labor governments workingsurreptitiously with Religious Nationalists in order to create new facts on the ground that

would obviate Palestinian claims. But, at the same time, without much thought on the

part of the Labor government, the Settlement enterprise generated a new sense of

religious mission among the Settlers.

The development of the West Bank Settlements unleashed what has now become a full-blown eschatological Messianism that has raised the stakes on any possible Two-Statesettlement. Israel has yet to stop Settlement construction and has largely turned a blind

eye to Settler violence and the ongoing radicalization of this element of its society.

In addition, over time the anti-Zionist Haredim have increasingly found common cause

with the Religious Nationalist Settlers, the Mitnahalim; conflating the two camps under

the rubric of Hardalim. The new religious radicalism in Israel is not seriously

addressed by Oz in the interview as it serves to undermine the belief of Israeli secularsthat a Two-State solution is still possible.

Jews and Arabs Know Each Other

Amazingly, Oz insists to Rose that Israelis and Palestinians do not need to learn about

each other they have ample knowledge of one another.

This is even stranger given Roses question to Oz about the Palestinian activist and

prisoner Marwan Barghouti. Oz confirms that he gave a copy of one his novels to

Barghouti who he hoped would read it in his jail cell in order to better understand theIsraeli narrative. Why Barghouti would need to read Ozs novel is not clear given the

assertion that Palestinians already know their Israeli Jewish neighbors.

It is not that Israelis and Palestinians do not know about each other; it is that what they

know about each other is strictly limited to the conflict and its violent posture. Israelis

and Palestinians have been force-fed a binary narrative which asserts that they aredifferent peoples who have a primal hatred for each other. This primal conflict is then

played out simply as a fight over land.

But the truth that emerges from Ozs Mayflower Zionism relates to the alienation of

Israeli Jews from the traditional Jewish past and its organic roots in the region.


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By uncoupling Jewish identity from its Diaspora history and its literary heritage in theMediterranean where it cross-pollinated with the Arabo-Islamic civilization, Oz, ever the

good Zionist, affirms a strange, but rarely examined duality: Israel is mired in an ancient

past that has been magically transported into a virginal present. The historical ties of

Jews to the real land of Israel as it has existed in more recent times not the place foundin the Bible has been attenuated by a historical ellipse that has led to a sense of Israel

and its culture being something new and unprecedented in Jewish history.

For Zionist veterans like Oz, and willing acolytes like Charlie Rose, this historical

sleight-of-hand is something that flows directly into the Ashkenazi-Eurocentric nature ofthe state and its culture.

Such Eurocentrism marks Israel as one of us for Westerners. Indeed, Oz spends a good

deal of time discussing with Rose the writers that are most important to him. FromChekhov to Shakespeare to James Joyce and the other usual suspects, Oz as an Israeli

writer chooses a Gentile parentage rather than a Jewish one. This is not altogethersurprising given the deeply Spartan nature of Ozs new Zionist surname and therejection of the Diaspora Jewish one.

The importance of contemporary Arabic authors working to illuminate the complexitiesof life in the region is thus completely bypassed. In contrast to Arab Jewish writers such

as Nissim Rejwan and Sasson Somekh not acknowledged by Ashkenazi Sabras like Oz

as central to the Israeli cultural ethos who not only read and write about Taha Hussein,

Naguib Mahfouz, and other Arab writers, but see those Arab literary figures asindispensable in their own self-understanding and articulation of their identity, Ozs

Israeli identity finds its heritage in the climes of Europe where a once-excluded

Ashkenazi Jewish ethos can now find, paradoxically, its contemporary fulfillment.

Israeli Jews living in Asia paradoxically turn back to Europe for their literary inspiration.

It took a return to the Levant for Jews to reject the culture of the Levant and militantlyaffirm the culture of the place they left. The perceived barbarism of Arab civilization

serves to alienate the Jews returning to their homeland from the organic history and

culture of the region in which that homeland is situated.

It is a very strange thing, but something that makes perfect sense given the ways in which

Ashkenazi Zionism has tried to occlude the Jewish past and substitute for it something

altogether, as Oz confirms, new and different.

So I would maintain, contrary to Oz, that Jews and Arabs do not know each other at all.

Those Jews with roots in the region have been as we have seen time and again forced

to relinquish any sense of being Arab. These Sephardic Israelis have been stripped of

their culture and told that the true Israeli culture is Russian, German, French, British anything but Middle Eastern and Jewish.


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In this way Oz and Rose can profitably discuss European civilization in an Israeli

context. Oz expostulates on the idea of a provincial literature and tries to fit his ownAshkenazi-Zionist-Israeli writing into that niche. The two men seem to relish this fact

which serves ultimately to confirm the profound ways in which Israeli culture has de-

Judaized and de-Arabized the world of Ottoman Sephardic civilization which had once

held sway in pre-1948 Palestine.

Athens, not Jerusalem: There is no Hebrew Word for Fiction

In the interview Rose asks Oz what the Hebrew word for fiction is. Oz answers that there

is no Hebrew word for fiction; the term used is sipporet that comes from the root SPR,to narrate. In his response to the question Oz makes the educated student of Hebrew

civilization aware that he is thinking about literature in terms of European and not

indigenous Jewish categories.

In the Jewish tradition, beyond the literary production of the Biblical authors, there is the

massive literature of Rabbinic Midrash; exegetical analysis and investigation of the manyissues arising from the complexity of the Biblical narratives. Midrash is a creative andimaginative literature that deepens the Biblical texts by telling stories that often reflect a

moral-ethical sensibility. These Midrashic stories provided an important counter-point to

the heroic-mythical epics of the Greco-Roman literary tradition.

It is not that cross-cultural borrowings and influences did not take place; on the contrary,

Jewish writers and thinkers constantly found innovative ways of appropriating and

transforming Gentile culture in order to expand and enrich the Jewish literary tradition.In the Medieval period there was a profound symbiosis in Muslim Spain that brought the

entire system of Arabic poetics, philosophy, and scientific inquiry into the orbit of Jewish

letters.

Ozs cultural limitations are evident in the way that he sees the literary experience and

how Hebrew civilization works in historical terms. By seeing fiction as an exclusivelyEuropean category which is then appropriated in toto by real Israeli writers, he is

ignoring the profound cultural exchanges and reciprocal influences that have taken place

throughout Jewish history. By emphasizing an autonomous and completely independent

Israeli Hebrew culture, he has laid bare its Eurocentrism and disregard for a vast historyof Jewish literary production, some examples of which we have presented earlier.

It is in essence the triumph of a Hellenistic thinking in Zionist culture that choosesAthens over Jerusalem. It is a deeply troubling to see that the Zionist return to Israel has

engendered a profound and tragic loss of the vast cultural edifice that was erected over

the course of many centuries by thousands of Jewish writers.

Finally, a Western, not a Jewish, Writer

So in the end what we see in the conversation between Oz and Rose is a transplanted

Eurocentrism in Jewish Israel. The literary and historical antecedents that are a natural


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part of Jewish experience, both religious and secular, are denied and suppressed in favor

of a spurious sense of an international multiculturalism which is predicated on aEurocentrism that itself is rooted in the internal contradictions of Ashkenazi Jewish

culture.

This narrative is conventionally understood to be that of Israeli society to the point whereany counter-narratives most specifically that of the Sephardic-Andalusian Jewish

heritage are deemed exotic and alien to the standard understanding of contemporaryIsraeli culture.

It is through the machinations of writers like Amos Oz and cultural arbiters like CharlieRose that we see the most primal elements that inform the Arab-Jewish conflict. By

denying the organic cultural and historical realities of Jews in the context of both their

religion as well as their existence as native inhabitants of the Middle East over the course

of many unbroken centuries, the new Israeli ethos affirms an Ashkenazi-Europeanhegemony that continues to stand in the way of a rational and transparent understanding

of Jewish identity and the way in which it is rooted in the Middle East over the course ofcenturies.

The intimate links between the culture of Middle Eastern Jews and the heritage of

classical Judaism have been broken by this Ashkenazi-Eurocentric Jewish hegemony.The affirmation of such a hegemonic discourse in a Western context distorts not only the

reality of Jewish civilization as understood over the course of many centuries, but serves

to alienate Jews and Arabs who are caught on the losing end in a cruel East/West

binarism.

What might be seen as the advanced and modern culture of Israel in one context can

with equal clarity be seen from another perspective as a deeply divisive and troubledIsraeli civilization whose understanding of its own Jewish identity and place in the region

is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes.

Amos Oz, far from expressing an authentic Jewish cultural narrative, serves the cause of

a radical Ashkenazi-Zionist hegemony that has torn asunder the organic fabric of a

Jewish past that has now been subsumed and collapsed under the rubric of Europe and its

hegemonic force as filtered through the Ashkenazi sensibility.

To view the full Amos Oz interview on the Charlie Rose Show:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11968

David Shasha

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The Zionist Betrayal of Jewish Civilization