Dear Dr. Hartman,
I saw you last night on David Shipler's fine PBS documentary
on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where you were billed as a "Jewish
philosopher".
I myself was raised as a Jew and attended both Hebrew School
and an orthodox synagogue in the Catskill Mountains until I was bar mitzvahed.
Nowadays, my identification with Judaism is fairly constrained. I enjoy very
early Woody Allen movies and good cantorial singing, like Josef Rosenblatt's.
As I am sure you are aware, Jews have largely abandoned
orthodoxy in the USA as they became more assimilated. My own 82 year old mother
hates orthodoxy with a passion and attends a Reform synagogue in a nearby town
with her 87 year old friend who was one of the founders of the temple. When I
asked him recently why local villagers launched a reform synagogue when they
already had an orthodox shul, he spat out, "The orthodox rabbi used to
make us feel like a bunch of goyim." My understanding is that the
orthodoxy in Israel is instilling the same feeling among many Jews who do not
pass their litmus test.
I am taking the trouble to write because of something
particularly disturbing that came out of your mouth during Shipler's show. (Now
granted nearly everything you said smacked of the kind of self-righteous Zionist
apologetics that is turning Israel into a pariah state backed only by the most
rightwing Christian sects in the USA.)
But when you likened the Palestinians to American Indians, I
nearly threw my shoe through the TV. You shrugged your shoulders and said,
"What if some Indian showed up on 57th street and asked for his land back,
nobody would take him seriously." That doesn't seem like philosophy to me,
David. It seems like justifying genocide.
What are the statues of limitations for genocide? What if
Hitler had been victorious against the allies and it took a long, protracted
war of resistance to overthrow Nazism? Would we tell Jewish victims of genocide
that they could not be compensated for crimes committed beyond some arbitrary
cutoff date, like 50 years? I would think that we Jews would have much more
compassion for the American Indians, who in fact are suffering as if their
Nazis had won the war. I speak here of course of the Andrew Jacksons and Teddy
Roosevelts of this country who considered the Indian an 'untermenschen'. Can
you imagine what it would be like for a Jew living in Nazi Germany to see
soccer teams called the "Munich Kikes"? That's what it is like for
Indians who have to put up with racist baseball team mascots like the Cleveland
Indians: http://www.aimovement.org/ncrsm/
In any case, you should be aware that many younger Jews
would find your views deeply offensive. Rather than identifying with the
victorious racist American conquerors of the indigenous peoples, we Jews should
be identifying with the oppressed of the world.
Unlike yourself, Jonathan Sacks, the chief orthodox rabbi in
Great Britain, seems to be moving slowly but surely in this direction, as
reported in the Guardian 2 days ago. He said that he was "profoundly
shocked" at the recent reports of smiling Israeli servicemen posing for a
photograph with the corpse of a slain Palestinian. As I am sure you are aware,
there are many photographs of the American cavalry gloating over Indian corpses
in the 19th century.
While Dr. Sacks has earned the wrath of uncritical
supporters of the Sharon government, there are many other Jews who back him,
including Dr Michael Harris, the Orthodox rabbi at the Hampstead Synagogue in
London, who wrote in yesterday's Guardian:
"Both in the British Jewish community and in the wider
national arena, it is the voice of the chief rabbi, Professor Jonathan Sacks,
that has in recent months provided probably the most sustained, powerful and
articulate reminder of the essential justness of Israel's cause. As reported in
yesterday's Guardian, the chief rabbi has now drawn attention to the moral
dangers inherent in a situation of prolonged conflict such as that between
Israel and the Palestinians.
"He is right to do so. As far as religiously aware
Jewish exponents of moral values are concerned, justice, compassion and
sensitivity are not merely liberal western ideals grafted on to the fabric of
faith. Rather, moral concerns and empathy with the suffering of others are
rooted in the deepest layers of Jewish tradition and belief. It is the Hebrew
Bible that first taught us to see in other human beings the image of God. In
the 12th century, Maimonides, the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle
Ages, described the purpose of the Torah as the fostering of mercy, compassion
and peace in the world. That is why, despite the healthy diversity of political
opinion concerning Israel in the British rabbinate, I am happy to be one of
several Orthodox rabbis who support Prof Sacks's wise words of caution
concerning Israel's current situation.
"In the Book of Chronicles, God tells David that he may not build the Temple because of the blood that he has spilled. Maimonides argued that David's wars were morally justified; nevertheless, he explains, the very fact that David took human life itself invalidates him for the task of constructing the House of God. Even the justified, coerced imposition of suffering on others is morally corrosive. The chief rabbi is right to warn that, in the long term, Israel has no authentically Jewish alternative but to find another way."