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Multiple efforts in Jewish sovereignty have self-destructed after 75 years. Can Israel defy history — again?
(JTA) — This week marks Yom Haatzmaut, our beloved Israel’s 75th birthday — the day on the Hebrew calendar when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate” by establishing a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Together with countless Jews around the world, we express our gratitude to be alive at this moment in history when the Jewish people have sovereignty and a nation to call their own.
But on this anniversary, Yom Haatzmaut’s special prayers and festive afternoon barbecues fail to capture the fraught feelings many of us are experiencing. Jews across the globe in all our different peculiarities and particularities — from all political orientations, religious and secular, progressive and conservative, for and against the judicial overhaul being proposed by the current government — are reeling.
The past few months of terrible turmoil in Israel surrounding the judicial overhaul proposal have shown us how fragile our singular and precious Jewish state is. While Israel’s history is replete with instances when external forces threatened its people, this moment is unique in revealing internal threats to its democracy and social cohesion. We have seen toxic hatred rising among Israeli Jews, with fears of a civil war at an all-time high.
How, then, are we supposed to celebrate Israel on its 75th birthday?
The answer to this question lies at the heart of Jewish history and reveals that now is the moment for a new Zionist revolution led by both Israeli and Diaspora Jews.
Zionism was never just about establishing a Jewish state. It was about defying Jewish history. In 1948, when Ben-Gurion and his fellow Zionist leaders declared Israeli independence, it was nothing less than a radical assault on diasporic Jewish history. It defied the thousands of years of Jews being a minority in other countries, subject to the whims and caprice of other rulers. It defied the image of the weak and defenseless Jew. It even defied Jewish tradition itself, which for centuries was understood by many of its adherents to demand passivity by Jews as they waited for divine deliverance.
For two millennia, Jewish existence was one of vulnerability and victimhood — most often either hiding who we are or suffering for it. The Zionism of 1948 defied diasporic Jewish history by giving Jews power, self-determination and sovereignty to respond to external threats and establish a Jewish state.
Understandably, most of the work of early Zionism was focused on mere survival — establishing a state, providing safe refuge to the millions of Jews fleeing inhospitable lands and contending with enemy countries sworn to destroy the new nation. It succeeded beyond any of the wildest imaginations of its founders. The first 75 years of Israel, in which it has become a powerful and thriving state, are a testament to the success of Zionism in defying diasporic Jewish history.
But the next 75 years of Zionism present and impose on us a different task: To be Zionists today means we must defy a different chapter of Jewish history — one that might be called sovereign Jewish history.
Historians and educators have pointed out a critically important pattern in the history of Jewish self-rule. There are two pre-modern eras in which the Jewish nation enjoyed sovereignty in the land of Israel: at the end of the 11th century BCE with the Davidic Kingdom and the first Temple in Jerusalem, and in 140 BCE when the Hasmonean dynasty reestablished Jewish independence in Judea. But as each approached their 75th year of existence, each started to disintegrate because of internal strife and infighting. The Davidic reign over a united Israel effectively ended when it was split into the two competing kingdoms of Judea and Israel. The Hasmonean kingdom began to fall apart due to infighting between the sons of Alexander and Shlomtzion, the rulers of Judea in the first century BCE.
Sovereign Jewish history tells us that at around the 75th year, experiments in Jewish self-determination faced the most dangerous threat of all: self-destruction.
On its 75th birthday, Israel and its supporters face the internal tensions of sovereignty: What does it mean for Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state and a home to all its citizens? How can Israel be both at home in the Middle East while modeled on Western democracies? How should its leaders balance majority Jewish culture with minority rights?
The concerns of the old Zionism certainly still exist: how to pursue peace even as Jewish vulnerability and safety continue to be threatened. But they take on a new character in this day and age, forcing us to ask how we can manage and embrace conflicting visions of Jewishness and Israeliness while nurturing social solidarity and cooperation across deep and painful divides.
This Yom Haatzmaut comes at a moment of rupture. But the current crisis in Israel represents an opportunity – a moment for our generation to ensure this rupture defies the pattern of sovereign Jewish history. The generations before us proved that we can rewrite diasporic history, turning a tale of vulnerability and weakness into one of strength and power. Our generation and those that follow must likewise defy sovereign Jewish history and prove that we can protect our Jewish state from the internal threats it faces. Our generation’s task is to overcome our divisions and not let fraternal hatred destroy our shared home.
On this 75th birthday, then, let us learn from our past and look forward toward a new future. Let us continue to celebrate the incredible success by writing a new chapter in the magnificent story of Israel and Zionism.
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UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools
(JTA) — The U.K. has adopted sweeping measures to combat antisemitism in English schools, prompting pushback from the country’s largest teachers’ union.
The move came after a new government-commissioned review found that three in five Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism in English schools. The most common incidents were jokes, stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. About half of respondents who witnessed or experienced antisemitism said the incidents were not reported, most often because they did not think they would be taken seriously.
The government on Wednesday accepted 27 recommendations from the report, including dedicated antisemitism training for leaders and staff, improved recording of antisemitic incidents and moves to build a better understanding of Jewish life, identity and contemporary antisemitism.
The government commissioned the report following a spate of high-profile attacks on Jews in Britain, including an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year that left two men dead.
The report’s author, Sir David Bell, the vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and former chief inspector of schools in England, recommended addressing antisemitism distinctly from other forms of racism. He argued that antisemitism was a “uniquely complex” problem because of intertwined racial and religious dimensions, since Jewish identity can encompass both an ethnicity and a religion, along with expressions of prejudice that hold all Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
The government will also encourage English schools to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition is supported by many mainstream Jewish organizations and has been adopted by 47 countries, including the U.K., but critics say that it conflates some forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.
British Education Secretary Lucy Powell called Bell’s review a “generational moment” and said that “implementation is now my priority.”
However, the National Education Union, the largest union representing teachers, lecturers, teaching assistants and support staff in the United Kingdom and Europe, raised concerns on Wednesday about recommending the IHRA definition for schools. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said in a statement that the definition “risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism.”
“The IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza, leaving teachers with uncertainty when they need clarity,” said Kebede. He cited a risk that “children who cannot critically explore issues through classroom discussion will instead seek their answers in online and unsafe groups.”
Kebede also encouraged Britain’s Department for Education to strengthen guidance on all forms of racism, not only antisemitism, saying that 65% of teachers report they have not received any antiracism training in the past year.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella organization for British Jewish communities, celebrated the antisemitism report and the government’s adoption of its proposed measures. The group specifically praised the report’s “clear recommendations that schools and local authorities follow government guidelines by adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a tool to deepen understanding of contemporary antisemitism.”
“We remain concerned about undue external influence on schools driven by narrow political agendas, and tendentious materials seeping into schools and increasing disharmony, and we will continue to press for vigilance against this,” said the Board of Deputies.
The post UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools appeared first on The Forward.
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Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — An Orthodox Jewish man is in stable condition after being stabbed on Wednesday evening in the Diamond District of midtown Manhattan. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible antisemitic attack, and Manhattan Shomrim — the Jewish community watch group — has asked people to share footage as police search for the suspect. No arrests have been made.
The victim was identified by police as a 26-year-old man, and Orthodox Jewish outlet COLLive identified him as a resident of Crown Heights, the neighborhood that is home to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement’s headquarters.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Police said they were called at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday after the man was stabbed in the back with “an unknown sharp object” on 47th Street near Fifth Avenue. ABC7 reported that the victim told investigators he believed he was stabbed with a needle or syringe.
According to the Chabad website, which published an interview with the victim, he is a recently ordained Hasidic rabbi named Joseph, who commutes to Midtown each day to wrap tefillin with Jewish merchants. The attacker, Joseph told the website, was a woman who seemed to be following him prior to the stabbing.
The attack comes as Jewish New Yorkers have been targeted in more than half of the hate crimes committed in New York City this year, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
In July, an assailant stabbed two men on the Upper West Side, including one who was leaving a synagogue, while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was charged with committing hate crimes.
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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