First in a series
A Preface
BOSTON — When I was Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Spare Change News, a non-profit newspaper that covered social-justice issues including poverty and homelessness while providing jobs selling the publication to homeless people, I attended a local, Passover seder in Cambridge for homeless people.
Local Jews had hosted such an event each year since the holiday celebrates freedom — literally from the ancient Egyptians for Jews and figuratively today for anyone who is in bondage towards an oppressive master like homelessness. I had always admired the idea. Besides, it was a free meal for them — and, God knows, they needed all the food and inspiration they could get.
Still, the seder that I attended in 2007 also came with a dark side (through no fault of the organizers). Since I was representing the newspaper at the time, I could not comment publicly on what had occurred, but now I presume that I am able to do so.
The seder was hosted by a local synagogue, and the institution was hosting several Israeli teenagers who were visiting to learn about the social-justice aspect of Judaism that, thankfully, is very prevalent in American Judaism. The teens had helped to prepare the meal and organize the event. Since they were obviously secular Israelis, it was nice to see them take an interest. The seder was attended by homeless people, various activists in the anti-homelessness cause, and a few interfaith representatives.
At the beginning of the seder, the leader asked every participant to give an example of something that enslaves people today. As he went around the room, each person responded with single-word answers ranging from “violence” to “greed” to “homelessness.” All nice thoughts. But then one man, whom I later learned was one of the far-left activists so common in that world, responded with a word of his own: “Zionism.”
Did he not know where he was? Did he not know that he was at a religious, Jewish event? Did he not know that there were Israeli children present?
A brief, uncomfortable silence fell over the crowd of forty people, and then the leader went onto the next person. I successfully stopped myself from glaring in his direction since I was there in an official capacity. After all, there was a reporter setting next to me who was covering the event. I did not want to cause a scene.
But it only went downhill from there. The seder continued and the food was served, so I began talking with the people sitting at my table. But then, in the middle of the event, I overheard the activist talking since he was seated at the table next to mine.
“Did you know that European Jews — the ones who colonized Israel — are not really Jews?” he opined. “They are all descended from converts! The Khazar people centuries ago all converted, and they were the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews!”
I could not hear the reaction of those at his table, but I was fuming. I could not take it any more — this was another example of the fact that anti-Semitism is primarily a left-wing phenomenon now than a right-wing one. So, after telling the reporter next to me that all my comments were off the record — besides, he was from The Jewish Advocate newspaper — I began ranting about the person’s comments.
There were several, mistaken assumptions in what the activist said:
- Converts are not real Jews;
- Israel is comprised only of Ashkenazi (European) Jews;
- Ashkenazi Jews “colonized” Israel;
- Ashkenazi Jews — the European Zionists, in other words — have no ancestral, legitimate claim to Israel since they are descended from Khazari converts.
First, converts as just as Jewish as those who were born Jews (in other words, from a Jewish mother). Jewish theology, encapsulated in the Talmud (Shavuot 39a), holds that the soul of a convert was present at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai and thereby bound by the Law, but that for some reason, the soul ended up in a non-Jewish body.
Second, some Jews had remained in Palestine — formerly known as Judea — for two-thousand years ever since the Roman Empire destroyed the province and evicted most of the Jews in 70 C.E. Many Israelis are also descended from Jews who lived in the region known as Palestine or in Arab, Middle-Eastern countries (Mizrahi Jews) before they were forced to leave after the founding of Israel. Today, a majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi rather than Ashkenazi.
Third, no one “colonized” the region known as Palestine when Israel was created. The country that controlled the region before the founding of Israel in 1948 was Great Britain, and that country tried its hardest in later years to prevent Jewish migration to minimize tensions between Jews and Arabs. Israel was founded as an independent state whose existence in the end was brought about solely by Jews and not as a result of any European country. But the far-left today still wants to relive its glory days and fight the old battles against “imperialism,” “colonization,” and “apartheid” even when it is those terms are patently inaccurate in the context of the Middle-Eastern conflict today.
Fourth, Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the Kazhars. Ashkenazi Jews, just like Mizrahi Jews, have DNA in common among Jews that goes directly back to the Middle East. I am not a geneticist, so I will refer readers to this Wikipedia entry that discusses the issue in depth. The Kazhars essentially disappeared — no one is quite sure what happened to them.
Now, why am I writing this?
As part of my part-time, yeshiva studies here in Jerusalem, I am reading “The Kuzari,” one of the famous, medieval pieces of Jewish literature that defends Judaism against its detractors. The author, Judah HaLevi, presents the story of a Khazari prince who searches for the truth by interviewing and questioning a philosopher, a Christian scholar, a Muslim imam, and a Jewish rabbi to determine which he believes. Obviously, the prince ends up converting to Judaism since the book is defending the religion.
The book is extremely fascinating on philosophical and theological grounds. I’ve read a good part of the story, so I intend to comment on it part-by-part from the beginning on an ongoing basis. But I will not say what you might predict: I personally do not like many of the prince and rabbi’s specific arguments for the Jewish religion and against other faiths, at least those that I have read so far. (I have my own defenses of Judaism that I think are superior to the arguments in “The Kuzari.”) Still, it will be interesting to discuss.
My only fear is that in discussing this book online, more people might fall under the illusion of the myth about the Kazhars and European Jews. It’s been discussed before — see here and here — in seemingly professional, academic contexts. But it is all a lie (see here and here). So, as I discuss the book, I ask that readers of mine focus only on the philosophy and theology. I hope the discussion will prove interesting to those who are interested in such subjects.
Feel free to pick up your own copy of the book before or while I go through it; I’d like to start some good discussion on theology and philosophy, and it should be interesting to everyone, regardless of his or her specific beliefs. I will start soon with the first part: the prince asks a philosopher about his view of the world.
