Joden en de Moderniteit

In The Modernization of the Jews and the Origins of Zionism -- het tweede hoofdstuk van zijn fascinerende boek Original Sins. Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel (1992) -- wijst de Joods Israelische emeritus hoogleraar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi op een belangrijk aspect dat heeft geleid tot de huidige morele en intellectuele teloorgang van de overgrote meerderheid van de Joden in zowel Israel als in het Westen. Hij schrijf: "many Jewish leaders saw only the dangers of equality. Actually, when French Jews were offered equality after the (French)Revolution, there was little enthusiasm amon them: they were mostly concerned about surviving as an autonomous community. The Jews of Holland simply refused to accept emancipation, wishing to preserve the Jewish tradition of separateness."

Dit benauwende tribalisme zien we nu weer terugkeren als het rechts extremisme van de Joodse Apartheidsstaat. 

"Entering the modern world via the grace of emancipation meant the collapse of the Jewish consensus and society: nothing less than a complete upheaval of the Jewish world, which until then could be regarded as medieval. Tearing down the figurative wall of the ghetto and the concrete limitations on Jewish participation in society have brought about not just the weakening, but the destruction, of historical community structure. The Jewish community might have been a ghetto, but it offered a home. Now Jews lost it. This crisis of consciousness and institutions, the crisis of homelessness, is still felt today through the movements it gave birth to, including Zionism which are all reactions to the great Jewish revolution. Emancipation brought the Jews into the world, but at the same time it created the Jewish question. 

In the First World today where most Jews live, being Jewish means highly educated, liberal, cultured, secular and middle class. This is terrible unlike the Jews of the past 1800 years, a total departure from historical Jewry. But the liberation from the yokes of the ghetto and persecution was nota completely happy affair. Emancipation also a loss, and many emancipated Jews felt like strangers in the new-found world."

De Joden in de ghetto's waren al eeuwenlang vervreemd van de wereld buiten hun primitieve en geïsoleerde dorpen in Oost Europa, maar raakten door de moderniteit ook nog eens vervreemd van hun tribale wereldje, en daardoor van zichzelf. Meer daarover de volgende keer.