LETTER OF RESIGNATION AS A MEMBER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

By Bertell Ollman

    

       Did you ever wonder what your last thought would be before you died or believed you were about to die? Well, I did, and a few years ago just before going under the knife for a life threatening heart operation I got my answer. As the nurses wheeled me into the operating room what took over my mind was not, as might be expected, the fear of dying but an overwhelming disgust at the idea of dying a Jew. I didn't want to finish my life with the umbilical cord that ties me to a people with whom I do not identify still  in place. That this should be my "last" thought greatly surprised me at the time, and it still does.

       What did it all mean… and why is it so hard to resign from a people? I was born in Milwaukee to Russian Jewish parents, who never went to synagogue or followed other Jewish customs but often spoke Yiddish at home and considered themselves Jews. I went to Hebrew School for five years and had a Bar Mitzvah. With this background, I held some vaguely Jewish religious beliefs until my late teens when I became an athiest but still identified myself as a Jew in a sense that became increasingly hard to define. Some of my friends had become Zionists, but they made no headway in converting me to their cause, chiefly - I think - because its main plank seemed to call for my moving to Israel. Still, what I learned in these years about the Holaucaust, the plight of Jews around the world and Israel was enough to make me sypathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland, assuming - I always added - some kind of arrangement could be made with the Palestinians who already lived there.

     It was in college - the University of Wisconsin in the mid-l950s - that I became a socialist and an internationalist. Milwaukee, at least my Milwaukee, had been very ingrown, and I rejoiced in the opportunities Madison gave me for meeting people from all over the world, including a couple Arab countries. I think I joined every foreign student organizatioin in my first year there, and not a few of the progressive political clubs. It was also there that I began learning a lot more about Israel/Palestine, except now I was learning about it not as a Jew from Milwaukee but from the vantage point of an internationalist, a member of the human community, to which Jews and Arabs belonged as equals.

       In the following years, as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians deteriorated from bad to worse and then much worse, two strange developments began to unfold. I found myself, despite my best efforts to be fair to both sides,  becoming increasingly anti-Israel, and I found most American Jews, including many Jewish friends who never considered themselves Zionists, becoming enthusiastic supporters of the Israeli cause. Already in the 1980s with the first antifada, Israel's oppression and humiliation of the Palestinians  got so bad and still its support among world Jewry so widespread that I winced at the thought of belonging to the same people that they did. It was then that the thought first struck me that maybe I should resign from the Jewish people. The problem was to figure out how to do it. One can quit a club, a religion (one can convert), a country (one can take out another citizenship and go live elsewhere), and even a gender (given current medical science), but how do you quit being part of a people into which you were born?

       My purpose in providing all these personal details is not to win readers' sympathy but to provide a context for

From what I've said so far, it will be easy for some to dismiss me as a self-hating Jew, but to do so would only miss the point. If anything, I am a self-loving Jew, but the Jew in me that I love is the Diaspora Jew, the Jew that was BLESSED for 2,000 years by having no country to call his/her own. That this was accompanied by many cruel disadvantages is well known, but it had one crowning advantage that towered over all the rest. By being an outsider in  every country and  belonging to the family of outsiders throughout the world, Jews on the whole suffered less from the small-minded prejudices that disfigure all forms of nationalism. If you couldn't be  a full and equal citizen of the country in which you lived, you could be a citizen of the world, or at least begin to think of yourself as such even before the concepts existed  that would help to clarify what this meant. I'm not saying, of course,  that this is how most  diaspora Jews actually thought, but many did, and the opportunity as well as the inclination for others to do so came from the very rejection they all experienced in their different countries. The anti-semitic charge that Jews have always and everywhere been cosmopolitan and insufficiently patriotic had at least this much truth to it. 

 

      Not many Jews today, of course, take this position. In a 1990 interview, Britain's most famous intellectual and  Zionist, Isaiah Berlin,  told of a conversation he had with the French philosopher, …..Kojeve, who said, "You're a Jew. The Jewish people probably have the most interesting history of any people that ever lived. And now you want to be Albania?". Berlin's reply was, "Yes, we do. For our purposes, for Jews, Albania is a step forward."  I think this represents the view of most Jews in the  world today. It's called "Zionism".

     This was a surprising answer from a culturally sophisticated liberal, an athiest, someone who claims never to have experienced any anti-semitism in England and who wrote extensively about nationalism and its perils. What overrode all such considerations for Berlin was the human need to belong, which he understood as belonging to a particular place.   Without their own country, Jews had suffered  all manner of oppression as well as  the pervasive discomfort and self-consciousness that goes along with extended exile. Berlin was fond of repeating that all he wanted for Jews is that they be allowed to be a "normal people" - with a homeland - just like others. Yes, just like the Albanians.

 

 

 

 

      The two questions that remain to be asked, however,  is l) whether the natural drive to belong to something, that served Berlin as his main premise, could be satisfied by something other than a national state, and 2) whether  in becoming like Albania (even Greater Albania) Jews have been forced to give up what was most valuable in the Judaism of the diaspora. If it is true - and I am ready to admit that it is - that our mental and emotional health requires a strong bond with other people, there is no reason to believe that only a national group occupying a particular territory can satisfy this need. There are  racial,  religious,  gender,  cultural,  political, and class groups without special ties to one country that might do as well. Blacks, Catholics,  Free Masons, and class conscious workers are but a few populations that found ways to satisfy a need to belong which dispensed with national borders.  Membership in our common species is still another. Given the range of  possibilities, which  group (s) we "join" and identify with will depend largely on what is available in the time and place in which we live and on how we are socialized into viewing the alternatives.

 

        As for what was lost in acquiring a homeland, it is important to recognize that

Zionism is a form of nationalism like any other. Like all nationalisms, it is based on an exaggerated sense of superiority  as applied to  members of the in-group and a feeling of  indifference, bordering on contempt, for members of other groups. What room does this leave for a belief in the inherent equality of all human beings? The organic tie that Zionism - as in with other nationalist movements - takes for granted between its people and their territory is also bathed in the kind of mysticism that renders any rational discussion of their situation impossible. This is as true for religious Zionists who actually believe that God made a real estate deal with their ancestors  as it is for secular Zionists who conveniently forget 2,000 years of the Jewish diaspora in staking their legal claim to the "Holy Land", only to recall their suffering in the diaspora when the discussion shifts to their moral right to reclaim it. What room does this leave for dealing rationally with the problems of life in the 21^st century? With both morality and reason tailored to serve tribal needs first…and last, the chamber of horrors that Zionism has constructed for the Palestinian people was only a matter of time in coming.  Could this be what the ancient prophets  had in mind when they predicted that the Jewish people would become "a light onto the nations"? No, nor was it something that Jews could even conceive of doing during the period of the diaspora, when probably no people gave  human equality and human reason  as high a status as the Jews. 

 

   If the diaspora for all its material inadequacies left the Jews, morally speaking, on a kind of  pedestal, why did they come down from it?. They came down  when the pedestal broke. The conditions that underly Jewish  life in the diaspora began to disintegrate with the progress of capitalism, democracy and the enlightenment long before the Halocaust, which only delivered the final blow.    As odd as this may sound for something that lasted almost 2,000 years, diaspora Judaism was and could only be a period of transition.  Emerging out of Biblical Judaism,  Diaspora Judaism   was constructed from the start on a contradiction between nostalgia for the country that was lost and a forward looking commitment to the people and places in which they came to live. The one looked backward to the tribe and the land it once called its own, and the other looked out upon the whole species and the entire world into which the Jews, more than any other people, had spread. Except for the longest time, the ties that bound different peoples and places -  culturally, religiously, commercially (much of that by Jews) -  was loose at best, so that the possibility of taking their new situation to its logical conclusion and declaring themselves citizens of the world is something that most Jews could not even conceive. Still, their attitude toward the rest of humanity, if not yet their actions, made Jews increasingly suspect to the peoples among whom they lived, who never ceased to condemn Jews for their "cosmopolitanism" (a swear word it seems to virtually everybody but Jews).  Then, with the multiple refigurations of the globe associated with capitalism, democracy the enlightenment, and finally socialism,  more Jews could recognize that they were indeed citizens of the world and were free to declare so publicly.

       But the same social and economic turmoil that led many Jews to expand their prime  identity in the tribe for one in the human species led other Jews to reject their evolving cosmopolitanism in favor of a renewed  nationalist project. It is no coincidence that so many Jews became either socialists or Zionists at the end of the l9 and in the early part of the 20^th century. Where no change in the condition of the Jewish people had seemed possible earlier, now two alternatives emerged and vied with each other for popular support. The one sought to do away with the oppression of Jews by doing away with all oppressions, and the other sought the same end by removing the Jews to a safe haven in Palestine. The same plrocess that led to these two alternatives led to the gradual and then rapid disintegration of the Diaspora Judaism that had preceeded them. Though most Jews today live outside Israel in what is still called the "diaspora",  the great majority belong to either the socialist or Zionist camps (including the weak versions of each) and what remains will probably be drawn into one or the other of these camps in the near future. Diaspora Judaism, as it existed for almost 2,000 years, has practically ceased to exist. It has divided along the lines of its major contradiction into a socialism that is concerned with the well being of humanity and a nationalism that is only interested in the well being of the Jewish people and their occupation of Israel. To put it even more strikingly - but not less correctly -  since Judaism has always tried to synthesize these unreconciable

Projects, their definitive separation -  forget the reified artfully packaged nostalgia that finds its way into the media -  can be viewed as the end of Judaism itself. Perhaps all there is left are ex-Jews who call themselves socialists or communists and ex-Jews who call themselves Zionists (the secular/religious divide among the latter has little relevance to my schema).

      If neither socialists who reject the nationalist and religious aspects Diaspora Judaism nor Zionists who reject its universal and humanist dimensions (and often its religious aspects as well) are Jews, then the real debate is over who which tradition retained the best of what their  common Jewish heritage contained. Despite their constant chatter about Jews, I would maintain that it is Zionism that has least in common in Judaism. It is not by breaking the limbs of Palestinian youth that the Jewish sages of the past predicted that our people would "become a light onto the nations". In a country where "tsadik" (righteous person) and "mensch" (decent one) can only be applied to a few people who are spat on by the great majority of the population, and "chutzbah" (risk taker) has come to mean the defense of the indefensable, there is little to remind us of the moral core of a once noble tradition. When I was growing up, my Yiddish speaking mother would often try to correct some abberant behavior on my part by claiming that it was a "shandeh fur die goyim" (that I would be shaming not only me and my family but all Jews in front of the gentiles). What I want to cry out loudest in front of all the crimes of Zionism, and all those who try to defend them, is that what they are doing is a "shandeh fur die goyim" . They themselves, the big names and the small fry, are all a "shandeh fur die goyim". (Ma, I remember) Socialist and ex-Jew that I am, I guess I just have too much respect for the Jewish tradition that I left to want the world view it in the same way as they rightly view and condemn what the ex-Jews who call themselves Zionists are doing in their name. 

     Here I am almost at the end of my article on Judaism and I haven't mentioned the Halocaust yet. For many Zionists that would be enough to reject what I have to say. In response I'd like to share a story that Joseph Murphy, a former Vice Chancellor of the City University of New York, used to tell about his Jewish mother. "Joe", she said, "there are two kinds of Jews. One kind has reacted to the unspeakable horror of the Halocaust by vowing that they will do anything to make sure it doesn't happen to their people again. And the other kind of Jews took from the same terrible event the message that they must do whatever they can to make sure it doesn't happen  again to any people, to any nation. Joe", she went on, "I want you to promise me that you will always be the second kind of Jew". He promised.

         The first kind of Jew, most of whom are Zionists and therefore in my language really "ex-Jews", have gone so far as to transform the Halocaust itself into a club with which to bash any critic who has the timerity to question what they are doing to the Palestinians, supposedly in self-defense. Any crtiticism of Zionism, no matter how mild and justified, is equated with anti-semitism, and anti-semitism has become a short-hand for people who bear some responsibility for the Halocaust and are really hoping for another one to complete the job of the first. This is a heavy charge, and it has proved very effective in silencing many potential critics. It is no coincidence, therefore,  that the striking revival of media interest in the Halocaust comes at a time when Zionism is in greatest need of such a protective cloak.  In the process, the worst human rights violation in history is misused to rationalize some of the worst human rights violations of our time. Joe Murphy's mother would expect the second kind of Jews to be the first in pointing this out and condemning it.

 

          That leaves the question of safety. Zionists insist that by creating their own  state they have improved the safety of Jews not only in Israel but everywhere that they live. Unfortunately, Israel's abominable treatment of the Palestinians together with its unique brand of hypocrisy and its constant rebuffs to the world community has created more real anti-semitism not only in the Arab countries but throughout the world than has proably ever existed before. Its main support is limited  to certain sections of the American ruling class and its political representatives who are themselves kept in line by the political, economic and media power of the Zionist lobby in the U.S. When the American public finally wake up to the enormous and still growing costs of this support  - as is beginning to happen in the current confrontation with the Islamic world and at a time of steep budget cuts for all kinds of popular government programs - the surge of anti-semitism here in the U.S. will be such as to threaten the security of Jews and all kinds of ex-Jews everywhere. Nationalism, especially in its more virulent forms, such as Zionism,  has always been a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. It is only a matter of time before it explodes in the face of person who is holding it.

      At this point - if not earlier - many readers of this journal will fault me for appearing to treat all Zionists as if they are alike. I am aware, of course, of the many differences in the Zionist camp, and am full of admiration for the courageous efforts by more progressive and humanitarian Zionists in Meretz, Peace Now and Tikkun, among other groups, to oppose the Israeli establishment. They cannot be exempted from my analysis, however - and it's not because their reforms seemed doomed to failure - but because as moderate or even "socialist" Zionists they share the basic assumptions on which  Zionism is based. Setting up a state in which only Jews were to be full citizens, setting it up in a land already inhabited by millions of non-Jews,  seeking to respond to  anti-semitism in the world by a display of Jewish strength, seeking to make Jews everywhere feel safer because they now had a country to run away to (should the need arise), and  seeking to rationalize all this  through a combination of religious myth and the experience of the Halocaust - all this lies at the heart  of Zionism, but it is also the logic inherent in  these views that have brought us to the present impasse, and I don't see how it could have been otherwise. The occasions where it appears that the history of Israel might have taken another turn are but face saving chimeras. Further, it is only by rejecting these views root and branch that we can see Zionism and the situation that it has brought about for what they really are, and begin to orient ourselves socially and politically accordingly.

      Israel does not present us with a clash of two rights, as some moderate Zionists have put it. There is one right, and the Zionists, who are the invaders and the oppressors, are in the wrong. Only the assumptions that underly the Zionist project have kept  some people from recognizing this. This also means that we cannot regard the violence perpetrated by the Zionist government  against Arabs and by Arabs against Zionists in Israel today in the same manner. Certainly, I can and do deeply regret all the killing and destruction that is taking place, and I sympathize and suffer more than I can say with the victims and their loved ones on both sides. Only Israel, however, its government and its supporters deserve to be condemned, and not just because they've made use of planes and tanks and have killed far more innocent people. Of greater relevance here is the fact that it is the Israeli government that has the monopoly of power in the country, and it is the government  that has created  the rules of this grisly game along with the horrid conditions in which the Palestinians are forced to participate in it. They, and only they, can change these rules and conditions at any time, and  therefore must be held responsible for keeping them as they are. They are the real terrorists, and not the poor souls who have been driven so crazy by their escalating oppression and the accompanying humiliation that they are willing to strike out against anyone, including their own persons. State terror and not individual terror is the main problem that everyone who would like to bring an end to this conflict must confront, and that  needs to be reflected in our tactics.  Sharon is right in at least one respect: Arafat is irrelevant. So too, perhaps unfortunately, are the rest of the Palestinians when it comes to arriving at a stable peace. Instead, all attention should go to putting pressure, all forms of pressure, on Israel.

 

        This means avoiding any association with  Israel whatsoever, boycotting it economically and otherwise, bringing pressure on our politicians to stop  all U.S. aid to Israel and to  introduce  various  sanctions against it, and denouncing Zionist human rights abuses in all available forums. If Zionism is indeed a particularly virulent form of nationalism and racism and if Israel is acting toward its captive minority in ways that ressemble more and more how the Nazis treated their Jews, then we must also say so. For obvious reasons, the Zionists are very sensitive about being compared to the Nazis, not so sensitive that it has restrained them in their actions but enough to bellow "unfair" and to charge "anti-semitism" when it happens. Yet, the facts on the ground , when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worse anti-semites in the world today, oppressing a semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazi oppression of the Jews. No, the Zionists are not yet quite as bad as the Nazis, not yet, but isn't the world witnesssing  a creeping Halocaust against the Palestinians at this very moment?  If  Zionists find this comparison unduly insulting and unjust, they have only to stop acting as they are, but I fear that the logic of their position will only drive them to committing even greater atrocities in the future, including ethnic cleansing - another Nazi specialty - than they have up to now. What, if anything, has such Zionism got to do with traditional Jewish values?

1.      The commedian, Lenny Bruce, provides me with a way to answer this questiion and summarize the main point of my article at the same time. "Dig, I'm Jewish", Bruce says. "Count Bassie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor is Goyish. B'nai B'rith is Goyish. Hadassah, Jewish. If you live in New York or any other big city, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be Goyish even if you're Jewish… Kool-Aid is Goyish. Evaporated milk is Goyish even if Jews invented it. Chocolate is Jewish and fudge is Goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very Goyish. Instant potatoes, Goyish. Negroes are all Jews. Italians are all Jews. Irishmen who have rejected their religion are Jewish. Mouths are very Jewish. And bossoms. Baton twirling is very Goyish… "

      To this I can now add, "Edward Said is Jewish. Ellie Weisel is Goyish. Socialism and communism are Jewish. Zionism, very Goyish".  And, who knows, if this reading of Judaism takes hold, I may one day apply for readmission into the Jewish people.