|
 - Download
Ofra
Yeshua-Lyth
Nimrod Publishing House, 2004, 315
pp.
www.eretzbrith.com
This book examines the basic
failure of Zionism whose root is -- in the opinion of the author -- the
definition of the State of Israel as a state based on the Jewish religion. The
separation between church and state has been a fundamental requirement for the
development of democracy in most enlightened countries. No religion is fit to
conduct egalitarian and unbiased civilian life. The unique character of the
Jewish religion, meant to preserve an elite minority within the non-Jewish
society, is no less problematic, and perhaps even more problematic than
religions with a "missionary" approach, which are at least prepared
to accept strangers instead of rejecting them out-of-hand. The
"demographic danger" which is part of the loss of a Jewish majority
is a direct result of the rules of Jewish laws, which were adopted whole-cloth
into the law books and the secular Israeli consensus.
The author uses a series of
personal and reported anecdotes -- some quite amusing -- as examples of her
claim that the Israeli political right-wing, in all its variety of nationalism
and religion, sucks the legitimacy of its claims directly from the ideological
base of the left-wing secular Zionists. She wonders that the Israel left
steadfastly refuses the idea of "a state of all its citizens" which
draws no distinction between residents based on religion. The book also fosters
discussion of why utterly secular Israelis do not try to shake off the ancient
Jewish practice of circumcising
their sons. Circumcision (practiced also by Muslims) is presented as a metaphor
of the human difficulty in freeing itself from the chains of tradition, even
when that tradition causes harm.
|
|
