No Silent Holocaust

While Israel maintains that it is the Jewish state, the majority of the world Jewry doesn’t reside in Israel. Based on 2007 figures, only 41 per cent of world Jewry actually do live in Israel. But Israel’s legitimacy as a self proclaimed nation state, while it should be questioned, isn’t as important as its determination to affect not only the lives of its own citizens, but also the lives of Jews residing in other countries – mainly, the United States.

The last such attempt to influence the citizens of other countries is a new campaign by MASA (Hebrew: Journey), a joint project of the Jewish Agency and the government of Israel. MASA operates a programme to bring young Diaspora Jews to Israel for long term seminars. The campaign seeks the help of Israelis in locating young Jews worldwide, so that they will arrange for them to come to Israel for one of these seminars. It does so by addressing a sensitive Israeli nerve – assimilation.

The video shows photos of young people with Jewish names and the caption “Lost”. The announcer then goes on to tell the viewers that more than 50 per cent of world’s young Jews are “Lost” to assimilation. The ad requests anyone who knows such young Jews to surrender their details to MASA, to “strengthen his or her bond to Israel, so that we don’t lose them”.

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This campaign, while it seems an innocent outcome of an all round racist and isolationist perception, is dangerous both externally and internally – that is, to Jews residing outside Israel as well as to those residing within it. It has all the ingredients of a disaster. Such are any talks of “assimilation”, often referred to as “a Silent Holocaust”.

Israel is probably the only country in the whole world that wastes public funds on preventing the integration of minority groups in other countries. There are two reasons for that: The first is that as mentioned, hardly any other nation-state is not also the home of the majority of nation’s members. The second is that Israel doesn’t really have a national perception. It perceives Judaism as a religion that is also a nationality, which, of course, means that one cannot separate the whitefish and Talmud from the ethnic origin.

Once membership in the national group requires membership in the religion, religious criteria apply and thus talks of “assimilation” find their place, because “assimilation” is basically a nice way of saying “not belonging to the faith any more”.

Such is the case of Judaism. Judaism perpetuates itself by birth: To be Jewish, you must be born to a Jewish mother, or to go through a long conversion process. That means that if a Jewish boy marries – G-d forbid – a gentile, their children will no longer be Jewish. Thus, he is “Lost” to assimilation. (Noteworthy is that the opposite is not true – Jewish women could have children from whoever they want, and those children will be Jewish regardless of how they were raised. However, it seems the campaign addresses men and women alike, probably due to the perception that mix marriage between a Jewish woman and a non-Jew would result in their children losing touch with Judaism and thus assimilating themselves).

The amazing thing here is that Israel itself doesn’t subscribe only to this religious rule. The Israeli Law of Return (Hok Hashvut) states that immediate citizenship will be granted to any Jew (the offspring of a Jewish mother or someone who had converted and doesn’t belong to any other faith), the son of a Jew or the grandson of a Jew – regardless of that Jew’s gender. This means that Israel acknowledges as members in the national group not only members in the religious group, but also their offspring. In the case of a Jewish guy marrying a gentile, this means their children are indeed members of the national group, although they are not members of the faith.

So, where is the assimilation and the loss of young Jewish spirits? I mean, if the State of Israel, by its own laws, acknowledges the offspring of “assimilated” couples as members of the Jewish people, what’s the problem? Well, there is none, nationally speaking. Israel, via the Jewish agency, is campaigning for the Jewish religion.

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Not only that: Israel is campaigning for a very specific form of the Jewish religion, and easily the one less practiced among world Jewry: it’s campaigning for the orthodox Jewish religion. Israel refuses time and again to acknowledge the Progressive, Conservative, Reform or any other non-orthodox conversion for certain purposes within Israel, such as marriage. That means that the offsprings of a Jewish guy who married a woman that converted in a reform community, while acknowledged as citizens, will not be able to get married in Israel, to Israelis. This is important since marriage is in question here: Apparently, marrying a gentile or a reform convert or the offspring of a reform convert is all the same to Israel. Being Jewish means one thing – being an orthodox Jew. By not accepting non-orthodox Jewish streams Israel doesn’t only monopolize faith and forces all its Jewish citizens into a particular way of keeping their faith, but it also assists the very assimilation it seeks to prevent. It also betrays the very cause of Israel, to become the state of the Jews. If Israel alienates the faith of most practicing Jews worldwide, they will have no reason to support Israel. In fact, Israel is, today, the only country in the world in which they aren’t free to practice their religion.

So, the very same logic can be applied to advise against marrying conservative or reform Jews, and also – goes without saying – secular Jews. What this campaign means is the complete acceptance of the orthodox Jewish perspective, and annihilating the concept of a Jewish nationality completely.

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But this campaign means a lot more than that. Note the logical leap the campaign is making: The campaign is offering no real answer to the so called problem it raises. A year in Israel and strengthening the bond between Jews living abroad and Israel doesn’t mean one will not go on and marry whoever they want to, regardless of their religious background. This campaign presupposes two things: that Jews loyal to Israel will never marry non-Jews; and the other side of this assumption: that Jews as a group are loyal to Israel and not to their home country. As long as Jews remain Jews – in the religious sense – and do not assimilate, they are “Ours”, the campaign assumes. This assertion gives ammunition to those anti-Semitic claims about a Jewish inherent double loyalty. In fact, it asserts the very same thing: That some people are obligated to be loyal to Israel, simply because they were born to a certain mother.

Besides being a blunt attempt at creating an influential political group in other countries – as mentioned earlier, mainly the US – this is also a blunt attempt at manipulating the life of world Jewry. The very need for names and details of young Jews means that MASA isn’t doing so well. Now, they’re trying to force Israel’s needs on people’s most private and personal decisions.

And of course, the assertion that loyalty to Israel makes itself apparent by marrying Jews only means outcasting the many non-Jews residing in Israel – indeed, as second grade citizens – and makes sure that Israel will never become a normal nation state. It is a step further down the road to a full orthodox Jewish theocracy. It is a step closer to the complete annihilation of the concept of a Jewish nationality, and the acceptance of judaism as a faith only. Israel is shaking off the very essence of its being, in favour of the worst kind of isolationism. It is not assimilation we need to fight. It is the isolationism, one of the core elements of orthodox Judaism, that poses the biggest threat to Jewish nationality.