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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: aliyah

The Mysterious Case of India’s Jews

14 Tue May 2019

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on The Mysterious Case of India’s Jews

Tags

aliyah, anti-Semitism, Baghdadi Jews, Bene Israel, Bene Israel Zionist Organisation, Calcutta Zionist Organisation, Chola, David Erulkar, Dua Aftekar, Eliyahu Moses, Ezekiel Talkar, halakha, Hebrew, Immanuel Olsvanger, India, Israel, Israel Cohen, Jawaharlal Nehru, Judaism, Mohandas Gandhi, Rabbi Samuel Abe, Rabbi Yaakov Sapir, Rachel’s Tomb, racism, Samuel Ezekiel Dibker, Zionism

Why did India’s Jews leave? Since 1881, Jews began to arrive in what was then called Palestine mainly from Europe but also parts of the Middle East. Most of them were escaping persecution in their homelands, from a deeply unequal status such as in Yemen to outright violence such as in Eastern Europe. Yet a study of their migration patterns and the conditions reveal that many were still reluctant to make that journey to Zion and clung to a sense of belonging to their countries of domicile. In contrast, the Jews of India have never faced persecution of any kind and were in a relatively good position economically and socially in their country. However, most of them left the subcontinent soon after the creation of the State of Israel. What explains this unusual phenomenon?

It is beyond the scope of this essay to answer this question. However, I wish to highlight the incompatibility of the general Jewish experience or even the Israeli nationalist narrative when we discuss Indian Jews. Four primary motives are ascribed to migrations: 1.) persecution, be it on the basis of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or something else; 2.) economics, in search of greater opportunities to create wealth, better governance, and an overall higher quality of life; 3.) nationalism, for a feeling of belonging to a community, especially if one is alienated in the culture of one’s residence; and 4.) religion, as a belief in transcendental promises, obligations, and belonging to a particular geography or community. It is also understood that there are factors that push for migration from the resident country and there are corresponding pull factors in the migratory destination. Although each of these four reasons are problematic in describing the considerations of Indian Jews for leaving India, the scant evidence suggests that a mix of nationalism and religion explains their actions the best. I shall consider each of these briefly to capture a sense of the Jewish experience in India and bring out the unsatisfactory answers they provide.

My focus on the Bene Israel rather than on, say, the Baghdadi Jews, is for one simple reason – the Bene Israel had been in India so long and were disconnected from the Jewish world for most of that time. Many of the Cochin Jews, though not all, came fleeing Iberia after the Alhambra Decree of Queen Isabella of and King Ferdinand II in 1492 and the Baghdadi Jews came to India in the early eighteenth century escaping the pogroms of Dawud Pasha. Their far more recent connection to the world Jewish community makes their exodus from India far more understandable than that of the Bene Israel or the kala (Black) Cochin Jews.

Persecution:

In his 2003 visit to India, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon commented that India was the only country in the world that had not known anti-Semitism. While Sharon was no scholar of history, his words can easily be fact-checked: although it is not certain when the first Jews arrived in India, the myths of the Bene Israel, the largest Jewish community in India, claim that they arrived in India around approximately 200 BCE, shipwrecked off the coast of Goa and given shelter and refuge by local villagers in the region. This is supported by the similarity of some Bene Israel rituals – malida, for example, to those practiced in the Northern Kingdom’s Asher and Zebulon tribes after the separation from the Kingdom of Judah. Some stories about the origins of the Cochin Jews push that date further back to the eighth century BCE, using the presence of South Indian loan words in the Bible as evidence.

Documentary evidence is scarce from this period but the earliest definitive proof of harmonious Jewish existence in India comes from a copper plate from around 1000 CE issued by the Chola emperor, of what is now the modern Indian province of Tamil Nadu, that listed the rights granted to the Jewish community of Cranganore, including the right to adjudicate all disputes in their town. Several other stories abound about how the Jewish community was always protected by the Hindu rulers of India. For example, when the Portuguese conquered Goa in 1510, neighbouring Hindu kings gave refuge to Jews fleeing from the Goan Inquisition.

Similar behaviour was witnessed when Jews were persecuted, to a much lesser extent, by the Dutch in Cochin or occasionally by India’s Muslim rulers from time to time. In general, Jews were treated on par with any of India’s myriad communities, and the Indian polity was used to dealing with hundreds of different customs, rituals, and languages between them. Nathan Katz writes of the kingdom of Cochin even as late as 1550, “Probably India is the only country on earth so civilized that in war, out of deference to its esteemed Jewish soldiers, no battles were fought on the Sabbath.” As one Cochin Jew expressed the place of Jews in India, the Jewish and Hindu communities lived “side-by-side but not submerged, acculturated but not assimilated.”

This fraternity between Hindus and Jews did not change under British rule. For example, a Bene Israel professor, Ezekiel Talkar, was able to persuade the Bombay municipality in 1870 to allow Hebrew as a second official language for the civil service exams – this was almost 80 years before the State of Israel would be formed and before the efforts of Eliezer Ben Yehuda to revive Hebrew as the unifying Jewish language. India was thus the only place in the world where Hebrew was an official language for national examinations. Interestingly, the only problems the Bene Israel faced over their Jewish identity from Indians was from another Jewish community, the Baghdadi Jews!

An interesting counterpoint is raised by some scholars that the readiness of the Bene Israel to emigrate to Israel began after the partition of India and the departure of the British from the subcontinent because of their concern that the Indian population would not forgive the collaborative role of the Jewish community with the British imperial masters. However, none seem clear on what these fears are based – after all, millions of Indians – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, as well as others – also collaborated with the British as civil servants, soldiers, and servants. Even in that part of the Indian subcontinent that became Pakistan, animosity against the Jewish community was based on their religion rather than any grudge for siding with the British Raj.

Furthermore, although Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru did not support the Zionist aspiration of creating a national homeland in Palestine, this was more out of ignorance of Jewish history and circumstances rather than any animosity. At most, one might argue that Indian reluctance to support the Jewish cause was based on the pragmatic evaluation, with which even the British agreed, that it might cause unrest among India’s vast population of Muslims.

In fact, it was the British who tried to stop Jews fleeing fascist Europe from entering India – Hindu Indian leaders welcomed them and allowed philanthropic organisations to be established by the Jewish community to help the refugees (Hodes, 69). Many of these European Jews even made long-lasting connections with the Indian people despite their brief stay in the country and contributed much to the cultural milieu of the subcontinent.

Thus, persecution does not seem a probably cause for the departure of the Bene Israel from India. There is simply not an iota of evidence that they had ever been the target of discrimination nor was there any realistic fear that they might become targets in the near future.

Economics:

Most migration theories today focus on economic factors that pull migrants to their destinations. Although there was, as with any community, a wide variance in personal wealth among the Bene Israel, their economic conditions nor those of the newly established State of Israel warrant any migration from India to Israel during at least the first two waves of Jewish emigration from India between 1948 and 1951 and 1953 and 1954 when the overwhelming number of Indian Jews – some 80 percent – left the country.

The Bene Israel may not have been as affluent as their Baghdadi cousins, but there is ample evidence that they were a generally prosperous community. After their initial arrival in India, they took up the profession of oil merchants and were called shaniwar taelis for the refused to work on Shabbat. However, they were restricted to that profession and the Bene Israel were also found in carpentry, masonry, trade, money lending, and several other professions. With the advent of the European modernity in the seventeenth century, the Bene Israel also became journalists, architects, writers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, professors, civil servants, social workers, and even politicians. Among the financially lower classes who could not afford much education, they became millworkers, tailors, soldiers, and hospital assistants in addition to their traditional trades.

In 1796, Samuel Ezekiel Dibker opened in Bombay the first Bene Israel synagogue (the first synagogue in India was built in the fourth century in Kodungallur). Until then, they had congregated in the homes of leading Jewish families of the neighbourhood or village for prayer for they were kept out of Baghdadi Jewish synagogues as they were not seen as pure Jews by the newer entrants to India and although the Cochin Jews allowed them to pray together, they were made to sit on the floor or outside the synagogue. In 1841, another synagogue was built and a third in 1886. Away from home, the Bene Israel contributed funds through Rabbi Yaakov Sapir in 1864 for the renovation of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. This indicates the relative prosperity of the Bene Israel community.

The advent of the British in India increased the fortunes on the Bene Israel. With access to modern education, they were able to create contacts with the international Jewish community and move into international trade as well like their Baghdadi brethren. Furthermore, the British policy of favouring minorities in staffing their local administrations helped the Bene Israel tremendously. Several Bene Israel such as David Erulkar were even able to go to England to receive advanced degrees and others such as Dua Aftekar and Eliyahu Moses were elected mayors of Bombay. Jacob Israel, another prominent Bene Israel member, became the ruler of Janjira.

The Bene Israel benefited from the Christian Missions that followed European imperialism not just in terms of education that made them professionals and an introduction to the international Jewish trading community but also in terms access to services such as sanitation, hospitals, child day-care, orphanages, and other such amenities that truly modernised them in outlook. It was a case of colonised people demanding – and receiving – what they wanted from their imperial masters; what they did not want – Christianity – the Bene Israel did not hesitate to reject.

However, with the departure of the British the new Indian government implemented socialistic economic policies and Jewish trading, particularly Baghdadi, was hurt. This policy was not directed at the Jews specifically but nonetheless it created an impetus for many among the Jewish community to leave the country in search of greener pastures. It is noteworthy that the preferred destinations of these Jews were the United States and Canada where they had cultivated networks over the past century rather than the newly formed Jewish state. Another change the new Indian administration brought in was the end to a preference for minorities in the civil services and other posts. Although Jews were not specifically discriminated against, the new policy meant that they had no special privilege and would have to compete for jobs as ordinary Indians. This reduced any additional benefit the Bene Israel might have felt that their country of domicile offered them and increased the attractiveness of Israel and the wider world.

Still, given the economic uncertainties and difficulties in Israel, it is difficult to understand how economics might have played a role in making the Bene Israel emigrate from India. Jean Roland notes that this can be partially explained by the international political climate and the public perception it created of the Jews. Being a minuscule community, the Bene Israel lacked networks in the Indian economy and administration. When applying for corporate jobs, they were sometimes told, “We’re reluctant to hire you because we’ll invest in your training and then you’ll leave for Israel.” Without significant ties to India, such as land holdings or domestic trade networks, the more mobile urban professionals found it easier to migrate to Israel and the West.

If this is indeed a motivation, it seems trivial in comparison to the travails of European and Middle Eastern Jewry, who withstood the greatest of pressures for centuries before they were finally forced to leave their homes for Israel. Nonetheless, it is still surprising that such a sentiment was felt across the community rather than among a few educated, cosmopolitan, and mobile professionals.

Judaism:

The Bene Israel, having arrived in India before the destruction of the Second Temple and having been disconnected from the world Jewish community for so long, was not even aware of rabbinic Judaism until the eighteenth century. It was the Cochin Jews at first and later the Baghdadi Jews who introduced them to Judaism and the Hebrew script again. Although Shirley Isenberg argues that the first sign of contact between the Bene Israel and the Cochin Jews is recorded a chronicle called the Maggid Hadshoth circa 340 CE, it is believed that the Bene Israel, in their travels for trade, came across Jewish merchants in Surat in the mid-1700s. Regardless, clear evidence exists that David Ezekiel Rahaby was instrumental in sending the Bene Israel books from Cochin to reintroduce the community to Judaism and the Cochin community henceforth was influential in bringing the Bene Israel back into the Jewish world after having been isolated for centuries. This meant that the Judaism of the Bene Israel came to resemble that of Sephardic Jewry.

Even before their rediscovery of Judaism, the Bene Israel maintained Jewish customs and rituals to the best of their ability. They observed the Shabbat, maintained kosher, and commemorated Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Pesach, and other important Jewish events. However, due to the understandable development of certain customs peculiar to them – pronunciations or rituals – the Bene Israel were castigated by the Baghdadi and Cochin Jewish communities for not being “proper” Jews and did not allow intermarriage as the resulting offspring would be mamzerim. This was despite proclamations of Jewish authorities in Safed and Tiberias, such as Rabbi Samuel Abe, claiming that it was a great mitzvah to be close to the Bene Israel, who were good Jews in every sense. The Bene Israel were thus accepted into the Jewish community but not fully; this problem would continue to plague them even after their arrival in Israel well into the 1960s.

For their part, the Bene Israel followed halacha to the best of their ability. Marriage with non-Jews was rare and when it did occur, the children were not allowed to marry other Bene Israel. Circumcision was practiced, and ritual slaughter, marriage, funerals, and adjudication of disputes was done by the Jewish code as much as they were aware. Yet with modernity, and unaware that their religious identity needed to be protected since they had never been persecuted on its account, the Bene Israel secularised like most other communities around the world. By the twentieth century, the Bene Israel ceased to ascribe the same prestige to religious positions within their community as they previously had soon after the encounter with the Cochin Jews. Secular success marked importance now, and combined with their relative inexperience with halacha and religious regulations, the Bene Israel remained dependent on the Cochin Jews for religious leadership.

Despite this lukewarm attitude towards Judaism, it is interesting to note that many of the Bene Israel who came to Israel stated that it was their faith that brought them to the Holy Land. Immigrants interviewed held that the creation of the State of Israel excited them and suddenly, there arose thoughts of Zion and the Holy City in their minds which would not let them rest. Of course, to interview subjects so long after the event and acculturation into their new home might taint their recollection of the past but it is surprising to see that a community not known for its religiosity either in India or in Israel insist that Judaism was one of the key motivators for them to leave India. More importantly, this goes against the narrative of the overwhelming number of Jews from Europe and the Middle East – who were fully immersed in Judaism and the Jewish world – who came to Israel fleeing persecution, often as a last resort; it goes against the grain also of the experience of the many Jews who came to Palestine and then left for ideological reasons – communism – or economic and environmental hardship. While the Baghdadi and Cochin communities might have found it appealing to return to their networks, the Bene Israel had no such excuse and stand out as an interesting case of migration.

Zionism:

Zionism was always a lukewarm enterprise in the subcontinent. Paradoxically, it was Christian attempts at proselytism that strengthened the Jewish identity of the Bene Israel. In 1815, the American Mission opened schools 35 schools in Bombay that taught in Marathi, the language of the Bene Israel; in 1826, the Bible was translated into Marathi and in 1832, a Hebrew grammar was published in Marathi. Although the Bene Israel learned had conventional Jewish liturgy and forms of worship from the Cochin Jews, their knowledge of Hebrew and Biblical knowledge came from American, Anglican, and Scottish missionaries. This interaction did not convert the Bene Israel to Christianity but the community later used the tools and knowledge gained to criticise Christianity and embrace rabbinic Judaism.

Pace these stronger ties to Judaism and international Jewry, the Bene Israel remained disconnected from the political developments in Europe and the Middle East and did not understand the significance of some of the events news of which trickled through to India. When invited to attend the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, they hesitated to send an envoy. Nonetheless, as the Yishuv sent emissaries to India – the first in 1917 – to try and win the support of Gandhi, Nehru, and other Indian leaders, the Bene Israel learned more about the plight of their brothers in Europe. Consequently, the All India Israelite League was created the same year with a publication called Friend of Israel. Although this group supported Zionism, they did not see it as necessary for themselves.

In 1920, the Bene Israel Zionist Organisation was created and after the visit of Israel Cohen from the World Zionist Organisation in 1921, the Calcutta Zionist Organisation was also established. Cohen remarked in his report a strong Jewish consciousness among the Bene Israel, a love of Jewish learning, and a willingness to do their share in restoring the land of Israel. All this paved the way for the visit of Immanuel Olsvanger in 1936, who, according to one Bene Israel member, first awoke in them the idea of emigrating to Israel. An Indian Zionist journal, The Jewish Advocate, wrote at the time of Olsvanger’s visit, “[he] had forged a link between Indian Jewry and Palestine as no other delegate before him had done.”

Even if this claim is a bit of an exaggeration, there is no doubt that the Polish Zionist activist made a tremendous impact among Indian Jews. By the time of his visit, the Jewish community had begun to become worried about Muslim political mobilisation in favour of their religious brethren in Palestine and fervour for Zionism has dissipated somewhat since Cohen’s visit twelve years earlier. During Olsvanger’s visit to Bombay in 1941, he proclaimed to the Bene Israel emotionally, “Your ancestors came here at the time of the destruction of Second Temple; we want you in Palestine to assist us in building the Third Temple.” He went back with the largest collection of funds for the Zionist cause until then from the city.

However, the Bene Israel were not completely convinced by the Zionist public relations efforts. Some members recounted their own experience and were not sure that the Bene Israel community would be treated as equals in Israel by the same European Jews who were racist towards the Bene Israel when they visited Europe for further studies. Furthermore, the Baghdadi Jews, with whom the Bene Israel had much friction despite welcoming them when they first arrived, saw themselves as European and superior to the native Jews of India. These experiences gave pause to some of the Bene Israel who cautioned against the possibility of racial discrimination in Palestine and warned that this heedless mixing of Jews of such diverse cultures from all around the world might end up hurting world Jewry more than was anticipated.

To this end, the Bene Israel questioned visiting Zionist emissaries about potential racial tensions in the Yishuv. Cohen responded that the Bene Israel would be “just as welcome as the Yemenite Jews or any other Easterners who had recently arrived.” Their poor knowledge of the world and Zionism meant that the Bene Israel interpreted this positively but at the time of Cohen’s answer, division of labour based on race and ethnicity existed in Palestine. In 1943, “The Uniform Pioneer of Eastern Lands,” a plan drawn up by the Yishuv for integrating olim, demarcated a zone from Haifa to Gaza for internment camps for European Jews who would have to stay there for three months for acculturation while Eastern immigrants would be hosted in the Negev for a year. Though never implemented, this shows that the Bene Israel fears were not entirely unfounded.

The arrival of Jews fleeing Europe in the 1930s stirred up support for Zionism among Indian Jews. The communities set up the Jewish Relief Agency (JRA) in 1934 to assist the refugees and promised to compensate the British for every Jew they allowed into the country; much as in Mandatory Palestine, the British were reluctant to allow Jews to come to India for fear of upsetting the local Muslim population. In fact, Jews coming from countries friendly to the Axis Powers were held in internment camps by the British to ensure that they were not spies. However, the JRA was supported fully by the Indians and was able to rapidly expand with relief services in Madras and Calcutta.

None of this is to suggest that the feeling of belonging to India in the Bene Israel was weak. As elsewhere, the question of dual loyalty arose among the Jews of India (but not among the Indians themselves). The conclusion of their discussions was that they felt both, strongly Indian and fiercely Jewish. As Solomon Moses argued forcefully, “If any of you is asked whom you love more, your father or your mother, what would you say? Rightly, India has become our mother. It is our motherland and Israel is our fatherland.”

Although Jews worked in the British colonial administration – as did other Indians – they were also supportive of Indian nationalism. Gandhi had couched it in terms of a moral struggle against cruelty and they saw Zionism in the same light as they saw the Indian independence struggle. Many Jews were also involved in social work in India and helped rid society of discriminations of various kinds. They were also philanthropic beyond their own communities and also contributed greatly to Indian cultural production.

Thus, it might be accurate to think of Indian Jews as Zionists not necessarily for themselves but for those who had faced unremitting persecution for centuries. Naturally, they felt for their religious family; however, those ties were not, on their own, strong enough to loosen the bonds they felt to India.

Conclusion:

I have outlined the four primary motivations the Indian Jewish community might have wanted to emigrate to Israel after the independence of India and the creation of the Jewish state. No reason appears convincing by itself to initiate the uprooting of one’s entire family to go into the unknown. However, a combination of factors might have played a role and swung the balance sufficiently to make the Bene Israel want to leave. Still, in comparison to the situation of the Jews from other parts of the world that were flooding into Israel, these reasons still seem wanting.

The most common reason the immigrants themselves have given in later interviews is Judaism with a twist of Zionism. Since it is methodologically problematic to base our conclusions on interviews alone, that too done so many decades after the events, we are left with no choice but to accept the immigrants’ answer with caution.  The answer is unconvincing also because a large number of Indian Jews who left India went to the United States, Canada, and other destinations rather than Israel. This points to a multicausal phenomenon but we return to the same question of if any one reason was sufficient to trigger a mass exodus.

With scant documentary evidence from local sources, with so few members of that generation left, and those remaining probably fully integrated into the Israeli national narrative, along with their children and grandchildren, it is unlikely we will ever be able to fully understand this small sliver of Jewish migration unless creative scholars invent new methods of mining history.

It is true that the Bene Israel – and perhaps Indian Jewry in general – did not understand Zionism properly because of their distance from Europe and the Yishuv. Might their rosier-than-warranted picture of Israel have played the role of a fifth element in their decision? Plausible, but the best explanation I have come across for the migration of Indian Jews from India comes from an interview with a Bene Israel immigrant: asked why he chose to come to Israel, the respondent said, “I cannot remember exactly why I decided to come to Israel but I can remember the exact moment – I was reading The Jewish Advocate and was overwhelmed with emotion. I made up my mind to move there and then.” Perhaps, as Roger Peterson cautions us, we should not discount emotion, as empirically unsatisfactory as that is, in favour of rational decisions when considering historical events.

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The End of Zionism?

12 Tue Dec 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on The End of Zionism?

Tags

aliyah, Conservative, conversion, diaspora, divorce, haskalah, immigration, Israel, Jewish Theological Seminary, Judaism, Kotel, marriage, Naftali Bennett, Orthodox, Palestine, Rabbinate, Reconstructionist, Reform, Sabra, Soviet Union, Tzipi Hotovely, United States, Western Wall, yerida, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Zionism

The Reform Jewish movement’s response to US president Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city may only be the first incontrovertible sign that the ideology of Zionism has come to an end. To be certain, the diaspora has never in concurrence with the policies of the Israeli state but for decades now, the gap between them and the Jews in Israel has been widening. This latest manifestation from J Street, the Union for Reform Judaism, and their fellow travellers is an unpleasant yet not wholly unexpected wake-up call for the community as a whole.

An end to Zionism does not imply the politics of post-Zionism which questions the very foundations of the Jewish state. Rather, it recognises that most of the Diaspora who wish to immigrate to Israel have already done so and the different environments in which sabra and diaspora find themselves has, over decades, altered their perspectives on some of the core issues that concern the Jewish community. An end of Zionism, for our purpose, does not question the existence of Israel or even comment on the ethics of central issues of identity and existence such as the drafting of a constitution, Judea and Samaria, the Orthodox Rabbinate, counter-terrorism, or foreign relations within the region.

There are several indications that Zionism may be on its last legs, if not over. One benchmark is Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. It is no secret that the numbers of Jews making aliyah to Israel have been dwindling over the past several years. The first couple of years of the Jewish state understandably saw a high number of olim arrive from Europe and the Middle East, while another spike in numbers occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The highest immigration has been from the Soviet Union and its successor states, with approximately 1.3 million immigrants over the years. Less than a tenth of that number made aliyah from the United States in the same period. To be fair, American Jews have historically been opposed to Zionism, initially seeing it as a wrinkle in their efforts to assimilate into mainstream American society. The ideology was only made palatable by Louis Brandeis when he refashioned it as a cultural project of rebuilding Palestine as a Jewish home towards which American Jews need only make financial contributions.

Jewish immigration to Israel last year fell to 27,000 new arrivals of which 70 percent were from Russia, Ukraine, and France – whose combined Jewish diaspora population is barely 10 percent of the total. These numbers are even more depressing when considered in context of yerida – Israelis leaving the country to settle abroad. Since 1948, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that over 720,000 Israelis have emigrated; US Department of Homeland Security figures reveal that some 250,000 of those have settled in America. This means that the net flow of people has been from Israel to the United States rather than the other way around. Of course, emigration does not necessitate a rejection of Zionism and may well be in most cases for the usual reasons of employment and education. Nonetheless, the primary call of Zionism seems to have weakened on not only the diaspora but even a small number of Israelis who left in search of material prosperity. As the Jews of the Anglosphere generally indicate, prosperity cools the fervour of Zionism.

The unspoken truth about aliyah is that American emigration has been viewed as most important. After all, it is not just the most populous Jewish diaspora but also the most prosperous one as well. The American attitude of “buying into” Zionism with their wealth irked several of the early Zionist leaders and many saw the refusal to move to Israel as a deep betrayal. Yet the same attitude was common even among European Jews before World War II and the Shoah – 19th century Zionists found it difficult to convince European Jews to move to Palestine or even to financially aid the few pioneers who made the first aliyah at the end of the century.

The tension between aid and ideology can be seen even today. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely’s statement at Princeton deriding American Jewry for not serving in the military was denounced by her own prime minister while everyone else studiously ignored the real meaning of Hotovely’s words – service in the Israeli Defence Forces – and loudly proclaimed that US Jews have proudly served in the US armed forces. Regardless of the differences between American Jews and Israelis, it was poor politics to insult the most useful if irritating of diasporas.

Besides prosperity, another factor that has spelled the demise of Zionism is the relative safety in which Jews around the world live today. Anti-semitism is indeed still present and at times lurking just below the superficial calm, even in the new Zion of the United States, but the dangers are nowhere near as severe or mainstream as a century earlier. The irony of history is that the greatest physical threat to Jews in the world today is exactly where was supposed to be their place of refuge – Israel. The security in the diaspora has led many of them to come to different conclusions about the internal and external challenges that face Israel.

One area of disagreement has been Israel’s Palestine conundrum and the plethora of issues that it contains – the international boundary, civil rights for Palestinians, counter-terrorism. As Israelis – even on the Left – are quick to point out, life is substantially different in Morningside as compared to, say, Pisgat Ze’ev, in terms of rocket attacks, shootings, stabbings, vehicular attacks, and suicide bombings. Yet more and more of the diaspora seem to see Israel as the aggressor whose occupation of Arab lands after the Six-Day War is the immediate cause of violence. The same thinking is evident in how American and Israeli Jews think about the Iranian nuclear threat.

Sabra and diaspora are also at odds over the soul of Judaism, so to speak. A large and vocal minority of the Jewish diaspora in the United States are Reform or Conservative Jews who resent the monopoly the Orthodox have acquired over important rituals of faith such as marriage, divorce, prayer, and the rare conversion. The latest crossing of swords occurred in June 2017 when the Israeli government reneged on an agreement from January 2016 that promised to set up a plaza for egalitarian prayer at the Kotel. However, the sects have long been at war over the refusal of the Rabbinate to recognise non-Orthodox marriages and conversions and in 1997, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York even called on American Jews to stop sending money to organisations with Orthodox leanings in Israel. He even called for the dismemberment of the Rabbinate and its network of courts. The theological debate has transformed into a political one largely because of the association of the Israeli state with Orthodox Judaism, a great irony given the strong haskalah influence on Zionism and the beliefs of its early activists.

It is also perhaps not a wise idea for Israelis to emphasise Zionism and a strong Jewish identity, especially as Jews remain a minuscule minority in every country they are present. First, it is clear that these bonds are not as strong as depicted from either side, sabra or diaspora. Second, if the majority communities do begin to believe that their Jewish fellow citizens have a second loyalty, it could create unnecessary fault lines where there are none. It is psychologically understandable that constant additional proofs of loyalty are always required of suspect minorities, be they Catholics in Tudor England or Muslims in the 21st century. Professions of Zionism could well hurt assimilation and though that is what Israel wants, immigration has sharply been ruled out by a diaspora that measures almost as much as the population of Israel itself.

What Israel must also understand is that if it keeps claiming a moral authority on the diaspora, it will open itself to diaspora claims on Israeli accountability to them. Jerusalem cannot continue to speak on behalf of all Jews, even implicitly, if it is not willing to listen to half of them and treats them as a lost cause. The attachment of many Israelis to the diaspora is understandable, not only from a sense of religious community but also a cultural perspective – a full quarter of Israelis today are not sabra and these immigrants retain an emotional bonding with their country of origin. Yet even these immigrants cannot deny that the different kind of “nurture” in Israel plays an important role in shaping opinions.

The dissociation with the diaspora is not its rejection; it is a recognition of the limits of the Israeli state. As Diaspora Minister Naftali Bennett admitted after the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Israel cannot protect all Jews at all times. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the sovereign state to defend its own citizens; situations like Entebbe are few and far between. This does not mean that Israel cease to be a place of last refuge for the Jewish people – we do not have to go as far as Ze’ev Jabotinsky when he famously warned in his Tisha B’Av column from Warsaw to eliminate the diaspora before it eliminates you. While not actively seeking immigration, Israel can still allow a priority status for those making aliyah and provide resettlement assistance. The reality is that anti-semitism is still very much prevalent in the world and it would be irresponsible for the only Jewish state in the world to become like all other countries that restrict immigration.

To the pernickety reader: categories are not absolute – the entire diaspora is not locked in a Kulturkampf with the Jewish state. Personal politics also plays a role and there are plenty of people in Israel who support some of the diaspora’s positions while there is a sizable portion of the diaspora that does support Israeli policies. Nonetheless, the most common denominator in the divide on security and identity remains domicile.

If this is truly the beginning of the end of Zionism, there is nothing to despair. An ideology that was once useful and has served its purpose has been cast away. In its place, Israelis may feel a better-defined sense of nationalism for their state and its achievements over the past seven decades. In the parlance of contemporary political campaigning, this would be a position of “Israel First.” The diaspora are still family but more like distant cousins…from out of town.

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American ‘Pioneers’ in the Holy Land

03 Sat Jun 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on American ‘Pioneers’ in the Holy Land

Tags

aliyah, City on a Hilltop, Efrat, Gush Emunim, intifada, Israel, Jewish Agency, Ministry for Immigrant Absorption, Ne'emanei Eretz Yisrael, Palestine, Sara Yael Hirschhorn, settlements, Tekoa, Yamit

Hirschhorn, Sara Yael. City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. 368 pp.

The image that comes to mind when one hears the word ‘settler’ is an angry man in a tallit with a kippah, probably toting a firearm with an ever-pregnant wife trailing him. His attire speaks for his conservatism even before he opens his mouth, telling you that is his land and that Palestinians do not belong there. Yet imagine this person was actually a liberal, probably someone who supported the Civil Rights movement back in the United States or other such causes. Here were liberals involved in an illiberal ideological project. That discordance is the theme of Sara Yael Hirschhorn’s book, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement. The book’s provocative argument stems from dozens of interviews of settlers the author conducted as well as newspapers and state and institutional archives.

There are approximately 60,000 Jewish-American settlers, about 15 percent, by the Hirschhorn’s estimate, of the total number of Israelis who live beyond the Green Line in the disputed territories. Like most humans, they represent a complicated amalgam of beliefs and values, “combining tropes of messianic redemption with modern-day pioneering, hawkish territorialism with Jewish history, sacred promise with suburbanization, [and] ultra-nationalism with utopian idealism.” Hirschhorn examines the American settlers along three axes of Israeli ultra-nationalism: territorial maximalism, exclusionary ethnonationalism, and cultural hegemony.

City on a Hilltop looks at three settlements in particular: Yamit in the Sinai and Efrat and Tekoa in the West Bank. Immigration to these three particular “Anglo-Saxon” settlements started in the early 1970s, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. The blitzkrieg Israeli triumph affected American Jewry like nothing else. Despite the Zionist call over the past 70 years – slightly less than two centuries, actually – for the diaspora to return to the Holy Land, American Jews had never really been swept by the Zionist fervour and had not made their aliyah. Instead, Jewish American Zionism took the form of political influence and monetary assistance to the new State of Israel. The reverberations of June 1967, however, had a profound impact on not just Israel and the Middle East but also American Jewry. In fact, it tore the community apart between liberal internationalism and Jewish nationalism. Hirschhorn’s work looks at those who chose Jewish nationalism and how they evolved from typical liberal American Jews to…settlers.

An interesting dynamic the book reveals is the ambiguity with which Israel pursued settlements and attracted settlers. On the one hand, there is plenty of vocal support for settlements in the Knesset as well as Israeli society but on the other, it was a struggle for the newcomers to extract assistance from the government in terms of loans, infrastructure, employment, or security, nor did it hesitate to give up the settlements in negotiations. In fact, American settlers were frequently displeased with the Jewish Agency and the Ministry for Immigrant Absorption and exchanged scathing correspondence over the failure of the Israeli government to deliver on their promises.

Americans also ran afoul of the Gush Emunim, the Israeli settler movement, now known as the Ne’emanei Eretz Yisrael. While the Americans saw themselves as pioneers in the Holy Land, wanted clean land records before settling in, and often reached out to Palestinian communities in the vicinity, the Israelis had a more realistic understanding of the situation and were willing to squat on the land, provoke the locals, and kept to themselves. The American immigrants felt alienated by the Israeli government and the could not fit into the sabra social settings either, making the start-up settlements more appealing to them.

The new arrivals from America were usually young, single, highly educated, upwardly mobile, and traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious practice; they came for personal reasons rather than financial ones, struggling with their Jewish identity in the American melting pot. As historian Matthew Frye Jacobson explained, “the question was asked: ‘Given who I am, where do I belong?’ Many even saw their role as an antidote to the increasing “Levantinization” of Israeli civilization and spoke of a “white man’s burden” incumbent upon immigrants from the United States!

The culture clash is visible even earlier, when Jewish American plans for a Shalom City were nixed by the Israeli government upon advice from a prominent Canadian Zionist. The “‘Americans know best’ theme would antagonize many Israelis,” the Canadian observed, “and that the native population would not ‘accept kindly a campaign— let alone an actual city— whose second major goal is to teach Israelis how to live and do things in the American way.'” Later on, the settlement at Efrat would prove these observations accurate.

American idealism came in for a rude awakening when the First Intifada broke out. Palestinians who had interacted with the Jewish Americans for so long suddenly turned their back on them. Worse, the settlements were rocked by violence which the settlers did not see as deserved: it was beyond them to understand that their very presence in the West Bank, despite their earlier friendliness, was an affront to Palestinians. The two intifadas, combined with the Arab-Israeli peace talks and what they perceived as callous attitude by the Israeli government towards their security and holding the land that had been promised them by G-d, served to radicalise Jewish American settlers.

A string of incidents of Jewish terrorism, from the attempted assassination of the mayor of Nablus to the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, struck the disputed territories. Hirschhorn’s interviews reveal that although most condemned the terrorist attacks, there was still some support for it. Living in a war zone for years, the original liberal ideals of many Jewish Americans frayed. A few returned to the United States but a handful crossed the rubicon into extremism. In a scene reminiscent of that West Wing episode where an Israeli soldier tells Donna Moss that his comrades are good people who were driven to do a bad thing because of the unremitting hostile situation they were in, Hirschhorn also discovered that some of her interviewees who had once marched with Martin Luther King Jr were now contemplating or condoning violence against Palestinians.

This is deeply concerning – if incessant low-intensity conflict drives even some people to extreme acts, that Israel has been at war ever since its creation does not bode well for the peace process or the mental health of its people. It is unlikely, however, that this urgency will be heeded and we risk the creation of more Baruch Goldsteins, Era Rapaports, and Yaakov Teitels.

By the very questions it asks and to whom it asks them gives City on a Hilltop the feeling of a micro-history – there are no great (wo)men driving history nor are there particularly cataclysmic events that realign the priorities and beliefs of millions. Yet history rolls on, shaped by the daily choices made by hundreds of ordinary people. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is the way the author condemns the settler movement for the dispossession and cycle of violence it causes yet at the same time is sympathetic to the experiences of American Jews. Rather than usurpation or some other politically slanted descriptor, Hirschhorn argues that aliyah is ethnic return migration; despite viewing settlements as an illiberal project, she condemns violence of the Palestinians.

More importantly, the author makes a genuine attempt to walk a mile in the shoes of the American settlers. The result is an uncomfortable picture of rational, idealistic people who yet hold some strong views about Eretz Israel. Some of them, under different circumstances, may have easily been her friends. This brings a sensitivity to the subject that is rarely seen – normally, researchers warm up to their subjects or simply abhor them. Hirschhorn, however, demonstrates a capability to embrace the settlers but reject their project. Readers, even those who strongly oppose settlements, are left with an appreciation of how the other side thinks.

City on a Hilltop is an important contribution to not just the understanding of the settler movement but also to Israel’s relations with the United States as well as its relations with the diaspora. Given how Israel continues to speak for all Jews and how the diaspora has begun to hold the state to a higher standard – such as the recent spat over conversion and a pluralistic prayer space at the Kotel – understanding of such micro-dynamics will be in dire need.

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