levy@pyuxww.UUCP (S Levy) (03/01/85)
I believe that Israel is a state for Jews with the "Orthodox" faction attempting to make it a "Jewish state". The government of Israel is composed of PEOPLE elected by the PEOPLE and not a divinely appointed group of beaurocrats. In the U.S. I am very against laws mixing religion and politics and think it would be an act of hipocracy and self righteousness to encourage this in Israel and adamantly oppose it throughout the rest of the world. I believe in Israel as a state for Jews in which total religious freedom is given to all, and particular care is taken so that Jews can practice their religion freely This does not mean that one group of people should impose there views on others. Although I am a practicing Orthodox Jew, it bothered me that in most communities Shabbos is forced on people, I would hope that the norm in Israel would be for businesses which close one day a week to choose Saturday as opposed to Sunday because either they themselves are Shomer Shabbat or because as keen businessmen they would realize that on Sunday more people can transact business with them than on Saturday, or possibly just as the accepted norm. ( As Sunday is in the U.S. even where the Sunday "Blue Laws" have been revoked.) It is accepted by most Jews that Israel is the one place in the world that might possibly be considered a haven for the oppressed Jew and (Chas V'Sholem) if even the U.S. were the oppressor or not openning its doors to Jews, one could flee to Israel. This is all confirmed by the almost immediate passing of the "Law of Return" after Israel's initial declared statehood.... Or is it???? Now we get to the age old question of Who is a Jew??? Well enough people are arguing this point on the net and I won't waste my fingers on it. However I do question whether Israel should only allow those considered Jews by Jews ( particularly if we are only talking about the Orthodox community as being able to judge ) use it as their haven. The who is a Jew question might be perfectly valid in private matters, i.e. marriage, conversion, children, or even minyans and aliyot, but should Israel turn away another human being who is being persecuted for being a Jew ( whether or not they meet our criteria ) from its tiny borders??? Hitler wasn't so particular he murdered the Orthodox, the Conservative, the Reform, and the Chasidim side by side; he didn't care if they were converted by a Reform Rabbi. His criteria was simply that any one of your 4 grandparents was Jewish ... that made you a Jew. I know the sad story of a woman whose father was Jewish and her mother was not. Her mother had passed away when she was about 2 and she grew up raised by her Jewish grandparents; that meant keeping kashruth and for the most part keeping Shabbos. It also meant that she suffered through the concentration camps. Having been fortunate ( if you could call it that ) to survive Auschwitz she longed to go to Israel, her father having instilled in her the Zionistic urge. She attempted to shortly after the State of Israel was formed and found that despite the numbers tattooed on her arm she could not enter under the "Law of Return". ( I realize had the grandparents been Orthodox they would made sure that the girl was converted as soon as possible ) She had always considered herself a Jew. She was very disillusioned, and upon hearing the story so was I. Please note I realize that without a conversion no faction of Judaism would consider her Jewish and I am not saying that she is; what I question here is the "Law of Return" and its purpose in saving the persecuted "Jew". The purpose of this article is not to cause friction but simply to extoll my viewpoint hoping that some of you will think about it. I realize that many of these views might be controversial to the outspoken on this newsgroup. To whom it may concern, I know you disagree so don't bother flaming!!! Just some of my own opinions------ ------Sharon Levy pyuxn!levy
martillo@mit-athena.UUCP (Joaquim Martillo) (03/03/85)
>I believe that Israel is a state for Jews with the "Orthodox" faction >attempting to make it a "Jewish state". The government of Israel >is composed of PEOPLE elected by the PEOPLE and not a divinely appointed >group of beaurocrats. Well, if you do not make it a Jewish state it will soon be an Arab state. In any case my family went to Israel from Fezzan specifically under the assumption that they would be living under Halakah. When they found out that the dominant ifranj wanted to make a pety imitation of European society along with concommittant humiliation of orientals, they decided to leave. If one is going to be subject to Europeans, they may as well be real Europeans and not Jews pretending to be Europeans -- which I will point out was popular among Turkish Jews who had been under influence of the Aliance Israelite for several decades already and were in many respects 3/4 VusVusim. >In the U.S. I am very against laws mixing religion and politics and think >it would be an act of hipocracy and self righteousness to encourage this in >Israel and adamantly oppose it throughout the rest of the world. This is true. Many American Jews are hypocrites. The problem is really fossilized Ashkenazi mental attitudes. When Ashkenazim think of governments combining religion and government, they think of Tsarist Russia. They do not think of England or Italy. England is officially a Christian nation. Until 3 years ago, Italy was officially a Catholic nation. I would prefer to live in Catholic Italy than in the secular Soviet Union. The problem with Tsarist Russia or Shiite Iran is there are many rotten antisemitic Slavs and Persians. While there are many Italians who are not fans of Jewry, Italians are basically decent on the whole so that Jews for the last 3 decades have had no particular problems. I have lived in the Midwest. Americans in the heartland away from the leftist and rightist scum on the coasts are basically decent. These Americans make the United States a decent place for Jews to live. When VusVusim oppose programs like prayer in the public school, they merely prove to the right-wing all the nasty ideas they ever had about leftist atheistic Jews who subvert the public morality, they gain nothing from the left who had assumed Jewish support anyway, and they disaffect the heartland. I attended for five years a elite school which was officially Episcopalian, which had morning Chapels. It was insignificant and the local VusVusim keep on spending money on such a silly campaign against prayer in the Classroom. The non-Jews especially the elite do not view prayer in the classroom as a way to bring Christianity to the infidel, but merely as a way to make clear to children that religion is important. Opposing prayer in the classroom is like opposing motherhood (which unfortunately too many non-Jews think Jews oppose). Likewise when prominent Jews oppose funding for private and parochial schools, they screw their own parochial schools, gain nothing from the left, strengthen right-wing anti-Jewish views, and disaffect Italians and other ethnic groups which previously had no strong antiJewish views. >I believe in Israel as a state for Jews in which total religious freedom >is given to all, and particular care is taken so that Jews can practice >their religion freely Eh chikitika -- dime ke mi familia no tene liberdad relihioza en Italia. La esta es una stupididad di lus VusVusim. Hafakt levusvusit ka'asher haemet lo mashpi`ah lak et hashkafat ha`olam. VusVusim tend to confuse freedom of religion with freedom from seeing that there are people who take religion seriously. > This does not mean that one group of people >should impose there views on others. These are just buzzwords for telling the religious to keep out of politics. Only secular, Westernized, European Jews may impose their Western immorality. If the Qafihs or Makfuds or Hardoons try to impose Jewish morality it's wrong. There are many East Asians who view American laws forbidding the cooking of living animals as some outmoded religious superstition. I see nothing wrong with eating kasher locust. If I serve them in Boston, I will be arrested even though they look like shrimp -- but of course Westerners find eating shrimp acceptable but eating locust disgusting. You see -- to enshrine Western attitudes and morality in the legal system is ok but if a non-Western people tries to have the legal system reflect their standards, their morality, and their culture -- this is an intolerable imposition. I see no reason to have laws forbidding non-Jewish women in the USA to have more than one husband but accepted secular morality forbids this; therefor women may not be polyandrous. Of course imposition of religious morality is wrong. > Although I am a practicing Orthodox >Jew, it bothered me that in most communities Shabbos is forced on people, Well, it happens to bother us, that so many of our family were murdered by Europeans and then all these VusVusim come to Israel whose only desire is to adopt the culture of the murderers and to teach oriental children who previously had no contact with European barbarism to grow up to be European barbarians and then these VusVusim make a point of showing a contempt for Jewish tradition which would have pleased the Nazis by publically desecrating the Shabbat. I think in Saloniki we had a better class of kofer, since my father claims that even the kofrim there were proud that there was one port in all the world where the Shabbat was respected but of course Ashkenazi kofrim have no pride in Jewish traditions. >I would hope that the norm in Israel would be for businesses which close >one day a week to choose Saturday as opposed to Sunday because either they >themselves are Shomer Shabbat or because as keen businessmen they would >realize that on Sunday more people can transact business with them than >on Saturday, or possibly just as the accepted norm. ( As Sunday is in >the U.S. even where the Sunday "Blue Laws" have been revoked.) A lot of the secular scum make a specific practise to go out of their way to offend mesoratiim. You seem to have the idea that de novo mesoratiim have suddenly started trying to impose Jewish morality on the kofrim. This is just warped history. First, the kofrim started to dump on Jewish practices in a grovelling attempt to say to non-Jews -- "Hey, we're modern European not-primitive savages like those crude ill-educated slobs who keep kashrut and Shabbat." As the kofrim learned modern political techniques 50 years ago which the datiim and mesoratiim are only just learning now, the kofrim began to enshrine their disgusting attitudes in the government and legal system first of the new yishub and and then state of Israel. Now that the mesoratiim have learned the political techniques and have gotten tired of taking shit from the kofrim, the Westernized Jews sometimes even datiim who have grown accustomed to the status quo cry fowl -- especially when the kofrim begin to worry that demographic trends in the democratic state are against them. Basically, when you are afraid you might loose at the polls you change the rules. >It is accepted by most Jews that Israel is the one place in the world >that might possibly be considered a haven for the oppressed Jew >and (Chas V'Sholem) if even the U.S. were the oppressor or not openning >its doors to Jews, one could flee to Israel. This is all confirmed by the >almost immediate passing of the "Law of Return" after Israel's initial >declared statehood.... Or is it???? >Now we get to the age old question of Who is a Jew??? Well enough people are >arguing this point on the net and I won't waste my fingers >on it. However I do question whether Israel should only allow those >considered Jews by Jews ( particularly if we are only talking about >the Orthodox community as being able to judge ) use it as their haven. The law of return happens to be a secular law passed by a secular government for a secular state. Most Sefardi hakamim with whom I have discussed it, have pointed out that given the origin of the law, it could not help but be a stupid law. It should also permit refugee status to be given to people who are being persecuted because the local population considers them to be Jewish. In any case as far as I can tell the secular officials who actually oversee the enforcement of the law have a very liberal interpretation when it comes to fair-skinned immigrants from Russia or the USA. >The who is a Jew question might be perfectly valid in private matters, >i.e. marriage, conversion, children, or even minyans and aliyot, but >should Israel turn away another human being who is being persecuted >for being a Jew ( whether or not they meet our criteria ) from its >tiny borders??? Hitler wasn't so particular he murdered the Orthodox, >the Conservative, the Reform, and the Chasidim side by side; he didn't >care if they were converted by a Reform Rabbi. His criteria was simply >that any one of your 4 grandparents was Jewish ... that made you a Jew. Actually, those Germans converted by Reform Rabbis in Germany were considered Aryan by the German government. In the few cases of Reform converts, with which the Nazis dealt, it turned out the non-Jew had only converted to marry a Jewish spouse. The non-Jew divorced the Jewish spouse and successfully reAryanized. As for the assimilated Jews whom the Germans murdered, I can not consider them my brothers and sisters any more than I consider ths slavs whom the Germans murdered my brothers although my family did save many non-Jews who were under the threat of Nazi persecution. At one point my grandfather brought eight Jewish children via Palermo to North Africa. The Italians were at that point under great pressure to turn over non-Italian Jews to the Germans so that the Italian officials stopped my Grandfather's agent and seized the children. My Grandfather went to the a local mafioso Luigi Fantauzza explained that the Germans were going to murder the children if the Italians turned them over and offered him all his money for weapons and explosives to attack the police and spring his agent and the children. Fantauzza refused the money and offered his own thugs to do the job gratis with no debt of honor on my grandfather's part because Sicilian honor required protection of children. My grandfather in fact later repaid Fantauzza by engineering the escape of two of his sons from being deported to Germany as slave-laborers. Fantauzza and his wife were shot for aiding Jews. The Fantauzza family later tortured to death the responsible Italians and Germans as was their right. Anyway, it would be an insult to the memory of people like Fantauzza for me to consider as my brothers Jews whose highest aspiration was to be accepted as Germans by the Germans and who therefore wished to be among the murderers. [An interesting sidenote: unlike the Vallachi and Scapa (names apparently from Hebrew Palgi and Aramaic Shakafa) mafia families who also supplied the Yishub with weapons to fight Arabs the Fantauzzas seem to have no Jewish background whatsoever although Luigi Fantauzza's father seems to have been a good friend of Don Giuseppe Parde of the famous South Italian crypto-Jewish Grande family.] >I know the sad story of a woman whose father was Jewish and her mother >was not. Her mother had passed away when she was about 2 and she grew >up raised by her Jewish grandparents; I must wonder what sort of Jews her grandparents were. My mother's and father's family have always taken care to properly establish the Jewish status of the children of non-Jewish concubines via get shihrut or proper conversion. > that meant keeping kashruth and >for the most part keeping Shabbos. It also meant that she suffered >through the concentration camps. Having been fortunate ( if you could >call it that ) to survive Auschwitz she longed to go to Israel, her >father having instilled in her the Zionistic urge. She attempted to >shortly after the State of Israel was formed and found that despite the >numbers tattooed on her arm she could not enter under the "Law of >Return". What bullshit! Non-Jews may become citizens via normal citizenship procedures which are even now comparatively easy and then were practically no work at all. At that time checking into people's parentage was notoriously lax and she could have claimed all the documentation had been lost. >( I realize had the grandparents been Orthodox they would made sure >that the girl was converted as soon as possible ) She had always >considered herself a Jew. She was very disillusioned, and upon hearing >the story so was I. Please note I realize that without a conversion >no faction of Judaism would consider her Jewish and I am not saying >that she is; what I question here is the "Law of Return" and its purpose >in saving the persecuted "Jew". I do not quite understand what would have been so terrible for this woman to convert. Having experience the finest of European cultures (the German culture) at the peak of its achievements, I should think she would have welcomed the opportunity to publically reject European civilization and accept the Torah. I should point out that Sefardim do not have this relatively silly custom of refusing a non-Jew conversion three times, and in a case like this the woman could probably find an Ashkenazi rabbi who did not insist on being an asshole. >The purpose of this article is not to cause friction but simply to >extoll my viewpoint hoping that some of you will think about it. I >realize that many of these views might be controversial to the >outspoken on this newsgroup. >To whom it may concern, I know you disagree so don't bother flaming!!! >Just some of my own opinions------