Why liberal Jews think I am a colonial settler guilty of genocide
I spend much time and effort connecting with Christians who love Israel. The relationship is growing in intensity, though it is by no means simple. Our common bond is the Bible, as it is the driving force in our lives. But our connection to the Bible is also the source of our differences. October 7 and the ensuing war have thrown Israel into a fight for its existence, and US Christians have overwhelmingly stepped forward as our spiritual big brother, helping both sides to overcome these differences.
However, the political struggle has brought forth an equal and opposite reaction that is deeply troubling. Just as I have encountered fervent support from many Christians, I have recently come under fire from secular Jews in America. In a recent online dialogue concerning a religious issue, a secular Jewish participant called me evil, accusing me (as an Israeli) of being guilty of genocide. As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t believe this to be an anomaly. I believe it is indicative of one possible future that will uproot a large segment of Jews from the Jewish people.
There is a growing divide separating Jews in America from Israel. When I was growing up as a secular Jew in the US, Jews universally stood with Israel. The issue was bipartisan, and since most Jews were liberal, we traditionally voted Democrat. Secular Jews’ spiritual energy was focused on social issues and Israel was their spiritual identity. These two aspects of the Jewish psyche were not at odds and could be compartmentalized within the collective unconscious.
But this was not always the case. The roots of Reform Judaism are incompatible with Zionism, as expressed in the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885. The declaration had theological implications, putting Judaism in a universal context. More significantly, it turned Israel into a theoretical ideal, rejecting any national aspect of Judaism and any aspiration of return to the Jewish homeland. Instead of a nation, the Pittsburgh Platform defines Jews in the modern world as a religious community within their pluralistic nations. The Pittsburgh Platform remained in place until the New Pittsburgh Platform endorsed aliyah in 1999.
This aspect of Reform Judaism was rooted in the Jewish Enlightenment, also known as the Haskalah, an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe in the late 18th century. The Haskalah advocated for Jewish integration into non-Jewish society and the growing liberalism and minimized the existence of the Jews as a defined collective. Its proponents equated the Messiah with the reign of universal peace and toleration. Prayers were recited in the vernacular and not in Hebrew. Many of the movement’s leaders called to remove the prayer, expressing an aspiration to return to Zion as well as the liturgy mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. They saw themselves as permanent citizens of the host country with Jerusalem as an analogy for a universal ideal.
The Reform movement’s redefinition of Judaism divided them from traditional Torah-observant Jews, but until 1948, the implications remained theoretical. Indeed, Zionism began as a redefining of Judaism as a national identity with a very real manifestation in Palestine. While many, if not most, Torah-observant Jews rejected Zionism because of its secular nature, Orthodox Jews did not reject Israel as the main component of God’s covenant.
The creation of the modern state of Israel seemed to repair the divide between Torah-observant and secular Jews. Secular Jews could now be proud, waving their non-Torah Zionism as an equally valid expression of their Jewishness. Jewish nationalism still presented theological difficulties and left secular Jews open to accusations of dual loyalty. But it allowed them to remain secular and proudly Jewish. And since the US had a strong political alliance with Israel, they could remain politically Jewish.
But this changed drastically under the administration of Barack Obama. Driven by social issues, secular US Jews rallied behind the first Black president with 78% voting for him. Despite his anti-Israel policies, 68% voted for Obama in his second presidential run for the White House. Secular US Jews remained loyal to their liberal values even when Obama pushed the JCPOA deal that revived the Islamist regime in Iran, opening the door to a nuclear program focused on destroying Israel.
The divide between Orthodox Jewish voters for whom support for Israel remained a central issue and secular Jewish voters for whom liberal values were essential became even greater during Trump’s candidacies. While more than 70% of US Jews voted for Biden, over 75% of Orthodox Jews voted Republican, up from 57% in 2013.
October 7 presented a crisis for secular US Jews. Their support for Israel had never conflicted with their identification with the liberal movement. But on October 7, liberal Jews were confronted by their former liberal allies dancing in joy. Jews found themselves threatened and even excluded from campuses that had been their temples of liberal thought.
Logically, liberal Jews should have stood with Israel, the sole representative of liberal values in the Middle East. But in an entirely counterintuitive manner, the liberal movement was allied with the most extreme anti-liberal ideology on the planet: radical Islam.
How did this happen? This was due to an insidious tactic of the “Palestinian” (anti-Israel) movement that used the liberal victim ideology against Israel. While Israel was clearly the underdog in the Middle East, after 1967, Israel slowly began to lose this status in the regional conflict. We were seen as the overly strong oppressor. Suddenly, Arabs who rejected the label “Palestinian” as a symbol of British colonialism insisted on this new label. Rather than being part of the Arab nations that had conquered so much of the region and threatened Israel, the newly formed and unprecedented “Palestinian” nation was an oppressed minority. Palestine jumped into existence with a freshly minted 5,000-year history that erased what had been, until that moment, the accepted version of human history, aligning perfectly with the left-wing strategy of rewriting history to favor their choice of “the oppressed.”
And since secular Jews rejected the Bible, they believed that the Jews had no historical claim to the land. In the new, secular approved version of history, Jews originated in Europe and had no right to exist in the region.
I must add that it is acutely painful for me to watch the Nazi-allied Arabs of Palestine being presented as an oppressed minority a mere 80 years after the Holocaust.
With a basis in a rejection of Jewish nationalism, secular Jews have allied with the Palestinian anti-Israel movement. This is fueled by partisan politics. Trump, demonized by the media, is unacceptable. Prior to his political career, Trump was a Democrat who, as a businessman and celebrity, had friends of all ethnicities. But the media rewrote Trump, who, despite his countless statements and policies to the contrary, as a white supremacist. Harris has been presented as the African-American candidate. With a veneer of not-entirely-anti-Israel platitudes, Harris and Walz are already indicating that, if (God forbid) they are elected, their administration will cater to the extreme elements of the Democratic party and become the most rabidly anti-Israel government the world has ever seen.
But this does not dissuade the secular US Jews from being their most avid supporters. One day after the bodies of six Israeli hostages were discovered murdered by Hamas, I was accused by a secular US Jew of being guilty of genocide. They said that the murders of “a few white supremacist colonialists” were justified and expressed hope that many more Israelis would be killed by “Palestinian freedom fighters.”.
To be honest, this did not entirely concern me. According to Jewish tradition, 80% of the nation perished in Egypt during the plague of darkness. These were the Hebrews who would have objected to God bringing them out of Egypt. Even fewer returned from Babylon. Despite being the chosen people and partners in the covenant, many Jews are reluctant to manifest that covenant when given the opportunity. Indeed, despite the war, it has never been easier to move to Israel or live a comfortable life in the Holy Land.
One might expect that the sudden wave of antisemitism would drive Jews to seek refuge in Israel, but this isn’t the case. Many liberal Jews have chosen to remain in places where antisemitism is on the rise.
So be it. I continue to pray for my fellow Jews but unless they wake up to their own Jewish identity. But if they do not, their fate will be the same as the Jews who never left Egypt. For now, liberal Jews have chosen to take themselves out of the Jewish story.
In any case, there is no future for the Jews in the diaspora. Jewish law dictates that Jewish identity is established by the mother’s status as a Jew. Non-Orthodox Judaism has rejected that, choosing to define a Jew as anyone who has a Jewish parent. After several generations, few non-Torah observant Jews can be Halachically defined as Jews. Even Orthodox Jews who marry a self-defined Jew will be technically marrying a non-Jew. In a few generations, there will not be any Jews in America who could be Halachically defined as Jewish.
When I made aliyah, I was asked (for the first time in my life) to prove that I was Jewish. Again, when I registered with the rabbinate to get married, I had to produce documented proof of my status as a Jew. Very soon, Israeli citizenship will become proof of Jewish identity.
This could very well result in dividing Jews in two: members of the Jewish nation and Israel and self-declared Jews who have no connection to Israel. Israeli Jews will be permitted to serve as witnesses in a religious court and enter a rebuilt Temple. Foreign Jews will not.
Indeed, the Sanhedrin ruled several years ago that we could begin counting the Jubilee. Halacha dictates that the majority of the Jewish nation must be in Israel to do so. The Sanhedrin ruled that the majority of Jews were in Israel. Those Jews who are outside of Israel have had ample opportunity but have chosen to remove themselves from klal Yisrael (the congregation of Israel).
It is tragic and intensely painful for me to say ‘goodbye’ to the Jews in America, but they have chosen to ignore God’s call to return home and manifest the covenant. Jewish tradition teaches that the Exodus from Egypt was a template for the Final Redemption. We have been blessed to see far more than 20% of the Jews return.
I will end with words of encouragement. Rabbi Pinchas Winston taught me that according to the Midrash, the Messiah will gather the remnants of the Jewish people and bring them to Israel. When they arrive, they will see winged angels flying overhead. They will ask the Messiah who these angels are. The Messiah will explain that the angels are the Jews who made aliyah before he revealed himself.
When I look at my Israeli children, I can literally see their wings.
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