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An American Jew’s Response to Avraham Burg
Avraham Burg, former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset begins his extended personal reflection on Israel/Palestine telling us that he was born in “Germany”! The “Germany” of his childhood was Rehavia, the Jerusalem neighborhood, filled with Bauhaus-style houses built by the Jews who had fled from Hitler. Martin Buber and other notable German intellectuals were neighbors. His mother, an Arab Jew born in Hebron, was a survivor of the Arab riots of 1929. His father, who was born in Dresden, never lost his German accent or manner. In later years, when Burg’s son was piloting transport planes in the Israeli air force, Burg’s mother was “very relieved that her grandson was not in the position of dropping bombs on other people.” His sharing of these poignant memories are among the many that illustrate his thesis that his parents, who were survivors of catastrophe, had converted their negative life experiences into visions of love and hope. He tells us that his mother had lost her childhood in Hebron and that his father’s identity was eternally German. When Burg introduced Yael, the French woman who later became his wife, to his family — his father’s suspicion of her only dissolved when he learned that her family had come from Strasbourg in Alsace, the part of France that Bismarck had “given” to Germany in the 1870s. In subsequent chapters he continues to share his understanding of the current Middle East conflict refracted through the lens of his family life. He illustrates how the unceasing pressure of Holocaust experience and memory is reinforced and reaffirmed regularly in Israel and throughout the world Jewish communities. The impact of Holocaust on Ashkenazic Jews is stressed, but also that the traditions and culture of the Jews who came from the ancient communities of Africa and the Middle East were ignored in many ways by Israeli government policy in “integrating” them. The many positive aspects of their cultural and religious lives that had flourished in the Arab world were buried, in their process being reborn as “Israelis.” He asserts that “Israel is today the least safe place in the world for Jews to live.” He urges Israelis to re-connect with the humanistic visions of Judaism that he sees more alive in the “integrative” approach of American Jewry, as reflected in the wide varieties of Jewish expression that have developed in the USA, with its long traditions of religious freedom and no state religion. In describing the complex and the multilayered history of the development of Zionism and the birth of the Jewish state, he cites the work of Rabbi Julian Morgenstern, an American-born rabbi, who published a thesis in 1915 which described Zionism as an admission of defeat and an acceptance of anti Semitic values, because it was an attempt at escape from—not reform of—Judeophobic societies! Morgenstem believed that integration into Western, [essentially] American society was the most effective remedy to the centuries-old Jewish problem. This is in great contrast to the Zionism—strengthened by the ascendancy of the Third Reich and the minimal response to fascism by much of the Western world to its destruction of European Jewry—which proclaimed the formation of a Jewish State among the nations of the world. (Morgenstern did later become a supporter of the establishment of this Jewish state in response to the Shoah.) Burg goes on to describe how he believes the Holocaust changed the course of American Jewish history and moved this community to its current dominant support of Zionism. He takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the contemporary Jewish world in these reflections. The examples are diverse, stimulating and rich. He quotes the Riga-born Israeli Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s prescient response to the Israeli “victories” of 1967 saying “The inclusion of one and a half million Arabs within Jewish jurisdiction means undermining the human and Jewish essence of the state....The state [that will result] will necessarily be a police state, and its central institution will be the General Security Services.” Burg further suggests that when Jews release Arabs from the Nazi role we have assigned to them, “it will be easier to solve the existential problem.” These are a very few selections from a compact, powerful book that is filled with wisdom and anguish. Avraham Burg is loyal to Judaism and to the hope that Israel can be an honest reflection of its humanistic values to the world. He knows that the country is dependent on Israelis being guided by humane values and behavior. He challenges each of us to question the current Israeli and American policies that subjugate the Palestinians and block all significant attempts at making peace. I believe that this book can help every reader to gain a better understanding of the many complex human issues that have contributed to the negative impact of the Occupation on Israelis and Palestinians. This book has strengthened my resolve as an American Jew to continue to work for a shift in US policy that will force honest and meaningful peace negotiations between Arabs and Jews. Cy Swartz |