Q&A: Cynical Use of People for Political Needs
Cynical Use of People for Political Needs
Question
Hello,
Regarding the controversy over conversions of people with Jewish roots, an interesting observation has occurred to me over the years—
Everyone accuses the rabbis who are unwilling to bend the definition of Jewish law regarding who is a Jew so that it will fit the wishes of Yair Lapid, Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, and so on and so forth, according to whom anyone who is an Israeli patriot is basically a Jew. In practice they are asking rabbis to be precise in declaring even complete atheists, or at the very least people who do not really believe in any obligation to keep commandments, as Jews.
These are of course accusations and nonsense. The very demand is ridiculous, and I assume there is no need to explain why it is ridiculous.
But I had a further question in this context: about the morality of secular Zionism in the early years of the state, in bringing non-Jews to the country in order to serve as a political tool for strengthening secular identity in Israel. These people are called on to leave their homeland after being told that this is their land, that they will be welcomed here warmly as full brothers, and that this is a fully secular state that just also happens to belong to the Jewish nation. Then they get here and hear in civics and history classes that their Christian grandfather and grandmother were scum, that they tried to steal the Jews' identity, that Jewish culture and the Jewish people are a moral glory whereas the rest of the nations are degenerate and defective. They hear on the news that they are an existential threat, agents of the New Israel Fund, the Reform movement, and Zehava Galon, here to Christianize, secularize, and bring about spiritual destruction for the entire Jewish people. I am exaggerating the picture a bit on purpose. This is not an indictment of the very nationalistic atmosphere, very extreme and hostile toward the whole world in recent years in many parts of society. About that my opinion is fairly neutral; I even tend to think that although it is childish, it may be fairly healthy in light of the Holocaust and other events.
But is this not intellectual dishonesty, and literally deceiving people, when state institutions try to encourage people to immigrate here and forget to inform them that, with all due respect, in the eyes of very many people in the population they are not wanted at all?
And already in my teenage years I encountered cases of youths from these populations who later developed attitudes bordering on (and perhaps, from their perspective, justifiably) a mild antisemitism because of these experiences.
What do you think? Beyond all the danger of assimilation and causing people (both non-Jews and Jews) to violate Torah prohibitions by marrying one another, isn’t the reason I mentioned itself a sufficient reason to abolish the father-and-grandchild clause, which God knows why it was inserted in the first place?
And why is no one in the Israeli public crying out at all about this important point?
Answer
I think you are overestimating the state institutions. If there were some body here coordinating all the agencies and setting an overall policy, your claim would have merit. There is no policy here to bring up non-Jews. The policy is to bring up Jews (which in the view of many includes anyone who has Jewish consciousness in some sense). But institutions have an annoying trait: they must justify their own existence, and therefore an institution like the Jewish Agency has to bring up everyone it can motivate to immigrate.
Discussion on Answer
Shulyata,
And indeed, precisely because of the things I wrote there, I think this is a moral problem. (My generalization there about a culture of drunkenness and prostitution did indeed have something crude in it. But that is how I know it from familiarity with this population.) A tendency to violence in the home? That too is indeed something accepted there. Because honoring parents is considered there a value higher than anything else, and parents are basically allowed to do anything. Here this is no longer a crude generalization but simply a national character (in the sense of the children of Edom, whose only merit for flourishing and political success is the virtue of Esau and their own virtue—the commandment of honoring parents…). And once the mentality is different, the education from home is education for destruction. And on top of that, the teenager gets the message of a negative attitude because of his origin from many people in society—the situation gets worse and worse (especially when an anti-Jewish scent is already present in the homes themselves).
True, it does not sound nice to say this, not polite. But I really think that bringing here, in the current climate, all sorts of people from cultures that are inferior in any case, as minorities whose grandfather or father just happens to be Jewish, is not moral. Not toward them, and in the end it contributes nothing to society either.
Jewish*
It’s not moral*
I too meant only to point out, regarding your words there, that although they are poorer in quantity, they expand the idea. I do not judge an opinion in terms of nice or polite, and I also think that if their integration really is difficult and it cannot be solved on the part of the state’s citizens, then that too is a moral problem in bringing them.
And the discerning reader will understand that when I sit as an apprentice, I am Shulyata, and I will not give my glory to idols.
NoPoint, are you A.?
My poor but (relatively) rational words elsewhere:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA