see played out in the extreme in Israel is also true here in the United States; the separation between Jewish progressives and the Jewish mainstream is just one mani- festation of this intolerance. This gap must be bridged. And the initiators of such bridging must, of course, be the progressives and radicals. It is they who need to develop the foresight, need to set the example. By incorporating the best of radical politics and Jewish tradition, they can serve as a role model and also as a draw to Jews in the mainstream. We Jews are living in a strange historical period in which our sense of history is often quite warped. For many American Jews, the Holocaust and Israel have reduced Jewish hisrory to the years 1939 to 1945 or 1948 to the present. This extremely limited view of Jewish history naturally nar- rows the concept of Jewish identity, and progressives ought to be countering this narrowness. Progressives and radicals should not only offer a critique, but again should serve as role models by showing how cultural identity can function in contemporary American society and how it can be intertwined with Jewish tradition and progressive ideals. The sphere in which progressives have been mOSt visible outside the political arena is the religious one. There is much being done now by feminists?women PAPER: ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE LEFT and men?to transform the liturgy and religious con- cepts, and to bring them in line with progressive ideals. But this movement does not touch most of us who remain intransigently secular and who need greater sec- ular knowledge and a stronger connection to Jewish history and culture. This lack of emphasis on secular knowledge also plagues the mainstream community, and a greater coucern for secular Jewish culture may serve as common ground for both progressive and main- stream Jews. In the end, let us not take the attitude that because of our politics we must remain pure and not mix with the Jewish ?rabble?-?-the mainstream. Let us be as willing to meet with Jews in small community centers in our neighborhoods as we are to meet with Pales- tinians. The work to be done at these centers and synagogues is as critical as the work needed to resolve the con?ict between Palestinians and Israelis. The Jews at these centers and synagogues are our people, the people we need to reach and persuade. And they have valuable cultural and historical gifts to offer in exchange ?in Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino. In order to maintain our Jewish identity and our sense of peoplehood, we need to work together and be mutually supportive in our struggle to make a reality of our political ideals. Anti-Semitisrn Parading as Anti-Zionism Daniel Lander overs of Zion who are critical of Israel?s policy on the West Bank face a dilemma. They feel duty- bound by their Judaism and by their Zionism to continue the criticism?believing that it is in the best interests of Israel and the Jewish people that criticism be made. At the same time, they know that much of the worldwide uproar against Israel is not inspired by true concern for Israel?s safe, secure, and morally correct future. It is important for us to become aware of the problematic nature of the growing anti-Israel forces. Many people tend to dismiss the various hateful ex- pressions against Israel that one frequently hears as only overheated rhetoric that will disappear as soon as Daniel lander, an Orthodox rabbi, teacher at University in Los Aizgetes and is the director of the National Education Project at the Simon lVierezzt/Jal Center: the Palestinian crisis is resolved. But many of the anti- Israel sentiments being expressed today are not produced by the current situation nor will they disappear Once the Palesrinian issue has been resolved. Rather, many leftist anti-Israel sentiments musr be understood for what they are?a structural extension of earlier forms of anti-Semitism. To understand the contemporary anti-Israel stance of the left, one must ?rst understand the speci?c forms that anti~Semitism has taken in the past. Let us start by considering the anti-Jewish hatred of the Greco-Roman world. The root cause of this hatred seems to be the prominence of Jewish The Jews in the classical world said ?no? to a variety of appealing offers. They said ?no? to intermarriage, the sharing of holidays, communal sacri?ces, the perfect body (since Jews insisted on retaining the ?mutilation? of circumcision), shared 85 4- meals, and especially to the gods of the Empire. From the standpoint of the Empire, the Jews were guilty of racial pride, religious exclusiveness, and contempt for their neighbors. How could a Jew fail to become part of the great Roman self-celebration? How could a Jew reject the incredible accomplishments of Greek and then Roman culture? The Jews bene?ted from the scienti?c, technological, and eventually even the artistic and philo- sophical advances of the Empire?how could they reject the invitation to become a full, equal part? Yet, from a Jewish worldview, Rome was the embodi- ment of evil. Rome had enslaved most of the civilized world. A society built on oppression and exploitatiou, a brutal military force as the core instrument that held the Empire together, gladiatorsend humans forced to fight bare-handed against animals in the Roman arenas, an ethos of power as the ultimate justi?cation?this was the Rome that Jews saw behind the friendly invita- - tions to ?become like everybody else." The Jews saw the Empire as Edam, the spiritual descendant of the capri- cious and murderous hunter Esauma social order that denigrated the human, both through the hedonistic and self-serving lifestyle of the ruling elite and through the cruel, demeaning, and destructive treatment of the powerless. The Jews thought of themselves as the keepers of the promise that humanity was created in the image of Godutzelem eiobz'm. Their refusal to join the universal club of the classical world was based on their seeing through its super?cial openness and their witnessing the moral bankruptcy at its core. The Romans coined a term to express the Jewish rude refusal to join in the good and full citizenship of the poiz'r, and for that matter of the cosmos: misanthropy. Later, left anti-Semitism, emerging from the En- lightenment, was based on similar ideas. Jews were egotistical and dangerous because they wanted to con- tinue their own existence and refused to merge with the larger mass of humanity. Marx, looking forward to the emergence of a universal class, talked of liberating Jews by having them abandon their Jewishness (?the social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism?). The ultimate rejection of the left?s plan for universal revolution was the Jew?s decision to return to theJewish homeland, giving credibility to nationalism at the very moment when the left was calling for a new inter- nationalism. No wonder that the left vented its rage on the Jews, now updating the ancient charges?converting the claim of ?racial pride" into the charge of ?racism,? religious exclusiveness into theological fanaticism, and contempt for one?s neighbors into persecution of the non-Jewish minority and refusal to make peace. It is important to recognize that this way of thinking about Zionism predates the present crisis and even the 86 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3 establishment of the State of Israel. It is the source of the left?s opposition to Zionism from its very beginning. This hostility to Zionism is anti-Semitism, and one recognizes it as such the moment one realizes that the left does not level similar criticism at any other ethnic or religious group, but rather lionizes and identi?es with the national liberation struggle of virtually every other people but the Jews. Moreover, no matter what Israel does?~including its praiseworthy acts?its conduct is interpreted as some- thing bad. Anything good must ultimately be judged as bad, precisely because the good props up and legitimates a deviant and anachronistic nationalism. ionism emerged out of two realizations made by modern Jews: that the world has no place for Jews to actualize their autonomous social vision, and that the world might simply have no place forJews at all. The collapse of Western civilization upon the head of European Jewry in the years 1933 to 1945 tragically con?rmed these two notions. "The creation of the State of Israel is the ?nal attempt on the part of Jews to establish a place where they can attempt to actualize their own vision and where they can physically survive. Yet the left does not accept the legitimacy of these two concerns. Its active support of, or quiet acquiescence to, the United Nations? ?Zionism is Racism? declaration is the legal manifestation of its charge that Zionism is really misanthropy. In effect, the left calls for the Jew to assimilate or perish. This is a classic manifestation of anti-Semitism. Leftist anger at Zionism must be understood also in terms of the cultural legacy of the second major historical manifesration of wrath against the Jews: church anti- Judaism. Christians attacked Jews nor for their failure to join in the social and cultural framework of the here and now, but rather for their refusal to accept the Kingdom of God beyond the dictates of Torah law. These Jews, children of Abraham, rooted in the Flesh, were unable to accept the Spirit and thereby lost their covenantal destiny. The Church presented itself as the Israel of the Spirit, thus the items Israel, the true Israel. The Jews? continued focus on the need to transform this world, and their insistence that ethical action in this world is of fundamental importance, seemed to indicate a Jewish tilt toward the world of the Flesh as opposed to the realm of the Spirit. Indeed, it was this insistence on changing this world that made the various left-wing approaches to salvation feel like a continuation and culmination of Jewish ethics. The left?s emphasis on liberating people resonated with a Jewish ethical impulse and the desire for tz'kkzm ofam. Jews who joined the left could feel that they were being true to the best ideals of their heritage and to the lessons learned from their history of suffering. At the same time, the left, like the church, had no tolerance for those who should have known better but refused the Messiah anyway. So the left was angry at the Jewish people for refusing to be swallowed up by communism or socialism. Though many Jews did join the left, there remained a continual tension between Judaism and the left, which manifested itself in three ways. First, the Jews found the program of the left to be too immanent and too material. Judaism and its adherents refused to sacri?ce the transcendent and the spiritual. Jews rejected the shallow leftist reductionism that saw God as nothing but a projection of our fears, needs, weaknesses, or inadequacies. While social action is central to Judaism, there is more to Judaism than that. Second, Jews felt uncomfortable with the left?s messianism, which has often led to serious ?short-term? violations of Jewish ethical standards for the sake of some ?long-term? good that would be accomplished through the triumph of the revolution. And third, Jews refused to relinquish the challenge of the chosen status of Israel?their claim to have a special set of obligations deriving from their historical encounter with God. There reality are Jews who have intertwined the anti?Semz?tz'sm 0f the soa?etz'es zit which they hive, and who feel angry at the parts of themselves that are Jewish. I?m aware that many people think that the notion of being chosen automatically proves that the Jews claim to be better than other people; but this is not at all what is being claimed. The Jewish sense of being chosen is not meant to take away from anyone else?s humanity or sense of vocation. Part of the Jewish messianic vision is that each nation need not abandon its own particular identity, its own insights developed over the course of history. For Jews, to be chosen means to play a certain role, to affirm a high ethic and a responsibility toward tihhun clam. And that responsibility requires Jews to engage in a critical dialogue with the resc of humanity. The Zionist enterprise has been a necessary af?rmation of Jewish particularism for the sake of self-protection. As part of this process, Jews have managed to create within the State of Israel some very wonderful things; and hopefully, as Israel's security increases, Israel will become a place where Judaism?s more universal message can increasingly manifest itself. Unfortunately, sometimes these two goals are at odds with each other: security has required a withdrawal of energy from the higher task of articulating and embodying an ethical message. The more secure the Jewish people feel about their own physical safety, the less central the issue of survival will be to their daily consciousness. Consequently, Jews who remain true to a traditional Jewish conception of being chosen will have even more of their energy avail- able for the task of tz'hkmz Glam. he left?s dif?culty with the Jews is linked to its approach to the Holocaust. Unlike the Neo- Fascist right, which claims thatJews invented the Holocaust to hoodwink the world into granting them a state, the left takes the Holocaust very seriously and has misappropriated it in at least three ways. First, the USSR has misused the Holocaust by converting the graves of brutally murdered Jewish victims at Babi Yar into a memorial to the children of Mother Russia fallen in the valiant ?ght against fascism. While no one doubts that there were many non-Jewish victims of World War II, the self-described Communist countries of Eastern Europe have felt a need virtually to erase the memory of the specifically anti-Jewish campaign of mass extermination and thereby to bury all memory of the deep anti- Semitism that the invading Fascist armies appealed to during the war. Second, in a related way the left has universalizcd the Holocaust, as though it had nothing to do with anti- Jewish racism speci?cally, but was rather merely a manifestation of some global potential for human de- structiveness. It?s as though the people who want to warn about the danger of nuclear war, the destruction of the ecosystem, and other potential global disasters are afraid that they can?t make their case on its own terms, so they must appropriate the Holocaust in order to bolster the moral legitimacy of their position. In the process, the speci?c campaign of extermination against Jews gets obliterated, and we who insist on remembering that reality are seen as too parochial. A third (and more sickening) abuse of the Holocaust by some leftists comes from those who equate Jewish Israelis with the Nazis, and Arab Palestinians with the persecuted Jews. This reversal uses the full force of a personal and national tragedy to make a polemical point and to relieve the left of its own guilt for its many failures during the Holocaust. Leftist guilt is based on the following realities: (1) the Stalin-Hitler pact; (2) the failure of the left in the Soviet Union and in the United States to make opposition to the destruction of European Jewry a central part of their political and educational work during World War (3) the very real anti~Semitism inside Communist and Socialist parties that made many of their members un- 87 willing to provide substantial assistance to Jewish resis- tance efforts; (4) the failure of the leftist dream of proletarian solidarity, caused in part by the working classes of Europe allowing their anti-Semitism to take precedence over their class consciousness when they were faced with the rise of fascism. For all these reasons, the left feels that it can exonerate itself by equating Jewish Israelis with the Nazis. Rather than come to grips with the facr that, had it abandoned its early opposition to Zionism and encouraged people to go to Palestine in the 19305, many hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives would have been saved, the left prefers to excuse itself by ?discovering? that Zionism has trans- formed the Jews into little Hitlers and their state into a mini-Reich. Tikkzm magazine is living proof?that one can be critical of Israel without being a self-hating Jew. Indeed, the term ?self-hating Jew? has been thrown around as a way of suppressing all dissent, and hence many people think it is essentially meaningless. But it is not meaningless. There really are Jews who have internalized the anti~ Semitism of the societies in which they live, and who feel angry at the parts of themselves that are distinguish- ably Jewish. The self-hatingJews have a quandary. On some level they identify as Jews, but they simultaneously deny an essential part of that de?nition: either people- hood, religious culture, or the Jews? historical relation- ship to the land of Israel. The Israel/ Nazi analogy relieves the self-hating Jews of this tension: they can be good prophetic Jews by opposing exclusivistic Jews, fanatical Judaism, and the ?Fascist? Jewish state. The attack on the Jewish state thus gives them an explanation for why they are not involved in Jewish concerns and simul- taneously allows them to claim that they are still con- nected to their Jewishness. Leftists also try to delegitimate all references to the Holocaust in the context of assessments of contemporary political reality. Anyone who shows concern about the possible destruction of Israel and the Jewish community is accused of paranoia or ?Holocaust obsession.? The Holocaust, it is charged, has clouded these people?s judgment. Leftists try to convince the Jewish people that drawing lessons from twentieth-century Jewish history is an inappropriate move and that Jews who do so are somehow stuck in the past. 88 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3 As the Holocaust imagery is inverted upon the Jews, so once again do the Christian symbols of Jewish per?dy emerge from the substrata of the Western unconscious. Israel becomes Judas?betraying both humanistic values and the Jewish people. Israel is a hateful, suspicious people, interested only in grabbing land for itself. Israel is obdurate, stupidly refusing to realize where its salva- tion lies?in giving up its existence. And Israel, ul- timately, is the crucifier of the innocent. All the ancient lies are now dressed up in contemporary garb by the left! Now that Jews have abandoned a position that the left respects (a position of Jews as victims), the only other way to see Jews is as victimizers. The left has no neutral category, no way of imagining the Jews as simply another people wanting to live their own lives. For this reason, everyone who settles on the West Bank must be seen as evil, and the physical attacks on them are auto- matically regarded as legitimate. Every one of these people becomes a trigger-happy messianist ready to hurt anyone in his or'her way. There is no room in leftist categories for people who moved to the West Bank settlements with the hope that Jews and Arabs might live together in peace. As a result, leftists end up supporting a Judenrez?n West Bank in which Jews would be prohibited from staying in the homes they have built fer themselves?a policy of racial exclusion that these leftists would not support if aimed at any other racial, ethnic, or religious community in the world. What I have tried to show here is how easily the attacks on Israel?s policies turn into anti-Zionism, and how anti-Zionism becomes a contemporary manifesta- tion of a long tradition of anti-Semitism. I have great respect for the integrity of many of the people who are now criticizing Israeli policy, but I do think that they are on a slippery slope. For that reason I find it par- ticularly important for a Jewish left to examine itself carefully, to eliminate all self-hatred, and to combat all those who malte the illegitimate move from criticism of Shamir to criticism of Zionism itself. Treker is on the right path in making these distinctions. But I thinlt a Jewish left needs to remind itself over and over again that, without consciously and publicly facing up to these issues, it will have dif?culty getting a respectful hearing from many others whom it hopes to influence in the Jewish world.