[PEN-L:29959] An open letter to Dr. David Hartman

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Dr. Hartman,

I saw you last night on David Shipler's fine PBS documentary on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict where you were billed as a "Jewish philosopher".

I myself was raised as a Jew and attended both Hebrew School and an
orthodox synagogue in the Catskill Mountains until I was bar mitzvahed.
Nowadays, my identification with Judaism is fairly constrained. I enjoy
very early Woody Allen movies and good cantorial singing, like Josef
Rosenblatt's.

As I am sure you are aware, Jews have largely abandoned orthodoxy in the
USA as they became more assimilated. My own 82 year old mother hates
orthodoxy with a passion and attends a Reform synagogue in a nearby town
with her 87 year old friend who was one of the founders of the temple. When
I asked him recently why local villagers launched a reform synagogue when
they already had an orthodox shul, he spat out, "The orthodox rabbi used to
make us feel like a bunch of goyim." My understanding is that the orthodoxy
in Israel is instilling the same feeling among many Jews who do not pass
their litmus test.

I am taking the trouble to write because of something particularly
disturbing that came out of your mouth during Shipler's show. (Now granted
nearly everything you said smacked of the kind of self-righteous Zionist
apologetics that is turning Israel into a pariah state backed only by the
most rightwing Christian sects in the USA.)

But when you likened the Palestinians to American Indians, I nearly threw
my shoe through the TV. You shrugged your shoulders and said, "What if some
Indian showed up on 57th street and asked for his land back, nobody would
take him seriously." That doesn't seem like philosophy to me, David. It
seems like justifying genocide.

What are the statues of limitations for genocide? What if Hitler had been
victorious against the allies and it took a long, protracted war of
resistance to overthrow Nazism? Would we tell Jewish victims of genocide
that they could not be compensated for crimes committed  beyond some
arbitrary cutoff date, like 50 years? I would think that we Jews would have
much more compassion for the American Indians, who in fact are suffering as
if their Nazis had won the war. I speak here of course of the Andrew
Jacksons and Teddy Roosevelts of this country who considered the Indian an
'untermenschen'. Can you imagine what it would be like for a Jew living in
Nazi Germany to see soccer teams called the "Munich Kikes"? That's what it
is like for Indians who have to put up with racist baseball team mascots
like the Cleveland Indians: http://www.aimovement.org/ncrsm/

In any case, you should be aware that many younger Jews would find your
views deeply offensive. Rather than identifying with the victorious racist
American conquerors of the indigenous peoples, we Jews should be
identifying with the oppressed of the world.

Unlike yourself, Jonathan Sacks, the chief orthodox rabbi in Great Britain,
seems to be moving slowly but surely in this direction, as reported in the
Guardian 2 days ago. He said that he was "profoundly shocked" at the recent
reports of smiling Israeli servicemen posing for a photograph with the
corpse of a slain Palestinian. As I am sure you are aware, there are many
photographs of the American cavalry gloating over Indian corpses in the
19th century.

While Dr. Sacks has earned the wrath of uncritical supporters of the Sharon
government, there are many other Jews who back him, including Dr Michael
Harris, the Orthodox rabbi at the Hampstead Synagogue in London, who wrote
in yesterday's Guardian:

"Both in the British Jewish community and in the wider national arena, it
is the voice of the chief rabbi, Professor Jonathan Sacks, that has in
recent months provided probably the most sustained, powerful and articulate
reminder of the essential justness of Israel's cause. As reported in
yesterday's Guardian, the chief rabbi has now drawn attention to the moral
dangers inherent in a situation of prolonged conflict such as that between
Israel and the Palestinians.

"He is right to do so. As far as religiously aware Jewish exponents of
moral values are concerned, justice, compassion and sensitivity are not
merely liberal western ideals grafted on to the fabric of faith. Rather,
moral concerns and empathy with the suffering of others are rooted in the
deepest layers of Jewish tradition and belief. It is the Hebrew Bible that
first taught us to see in other human beings the image of God. In the 12th
century, Maimonides, the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages,
described the purpose of the Torah as the fostering of mercy, compassion
and peace in the world. That is why, despite the healthy diversity of
political opinion concerning Israel in the British rabbinate, I am happy to
be one of several Orthodox rabbis who support Prof Sacks's wise words of
caution concerning Israel's current situation.

"In the Book of Chronicles, God tells David that he may not build the
Temple because of the blood that he has spilled. Maimonides argued that
David's wars were morally justified; nevertheless, he explains, the very
fact that David took human life itself invalidates him for the task of
constructing the House of God. Even the justified, coerced imposition of
suffering on others is morally corrosive. The chief rabbi is right to warn
that, in the long term, Israel has no authentically Jewish alternative but
to find another way."



Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org