Transcription
Well, there's a, let me start it this way. There is a major theme of Israeli humor that has been there, uh, since the state came into existence. And that major theme, for which there are hundreds and thousands of jokes, is, uh, the following: Thank God for the Arab-Israeli conflict, because if we didn't have that conflict, then the conflict between, uh, the very religious and the anti-religious Jews would tear Jewish society apart in Israel.
So, if I begin with that rather humorous approach, uh, that's an approach that still maybe goes to the essence of things. Yes, there has been and there still is a big general conflict. Um, and that conflict has, there are a good many specifics of that conflict. Um, uh, for example, right now, perhaps the number one domestic issue in Israel, if it's not number one, it's one of the top ones, is the issue of conversion, conversion to Judaism. Uh, that issue itself has a good many details, but there's a big conflict here between, um, the very orthodox who say that the only ones who should be able to conduct a conversion are orthodox rabbis, either in Israel or anywhere else. And if reformer or conservative, so-called, so-called by these ultraorthodox rabbis, conduct conversion, then that conversion is not legal or is not correct religiously. So the person hasn't really become a Jew.
A very important issue, because in Judaism, um, there are two, there are two ways to be a Jew, to be or become a Jew. One is to be born of a Jewish mother, and then no matter what you do, even if you convert to another religion, you're not a very good Jew religiously by definition, but you're still a Jew. The other way is to go through a conversion. And a person who goes through a correct conversion is every bit as much a Jew, according to Judaism, traditional Judaism, as a person born of a Jewish mother.
But the concern here is, and by the way, before I get to this concern, let me say that, uh, Judaism, as opposed to Islam and Christianity, Christianity, Judaism is not a proselytizing religion for, for clear reasons. Christianity and Islam are, because for them, a person to really be closest to God or to be saved and so on, needs to believe in the correct religion, and the correct religion is either Islam, if you're a Muslim, or Christianity, if you're a Christian. So there's a rationale for proselytizing. In Judaism, it's different. In Judaism, if a person goes to a rabbi and says to the rabbi, "I want to convert to Judaism," the first responsibility of the rabbi is to try to talk the person out of it, to say, "You don't have to become a believer in Judaism to be a good person," and so on and so forth. And only if the person insists, then would the rabbi consider going forward and taking the person through conversion.
But now we come to the issue of a correct conversion. In so far as the orthodox are concerned, a correct conversion, as I already said, has to be conducted by an orthodox rabbi, because to the, all the ultraorthodox, the very orthodox, and a greater percentage, a great percentage of the other orthodox rabbis, reform and conservative rabbis aren't rabbis anyway. And so they are not able to take a person through a conversion. And the orthodox also believe that unless it's an orthodox rabbi, then the process is not going to be a correct process. And there are a lot of details to that that we don't need to get into. Uh, but so that's a very big issue.
Now, in so far as the secular Jews in Israel and other places, too, but we're talking about Israel here. In so far as the secular people in Israel are concerned, they don't really care about conversion to the religion anyway, but they are antagonistic to the idea that only one brand of Judaism, namely the orthodox brand, should be the one that is officially recognized. And only, and only the orthodox brand is officially recognized. So within Israel, only an Orthodox rabbi within Israel can do a conversion. Only an Orthodox rabbi can conduct a marriage. And the one area in which non-Jews have more rights than Israeli Jews, the only area is in regard to marriage, because a civil marriage in Israel is possible and recognized if we're talking about non-Jews. But if we're talking about Jews, it has to be a religious marriage, and only an Orthodox rabbi can perform a religious marriage or a divorce and so on and so forth. So, of course, the secular are opposed to that. And on that, I mean, I, we could talk about each of these for hours.
Okay. Okay. So, so there are these problems now. But with conversion, since I'm using that as an example, it's a big issue now for a variety of reasons, some of which I've hinted at. But there's another big reason. We had 1 million to 1 and 1/2 million people come from the former Soviet Union, mostly Russia, to Israel and have come over and become citizens. That's, let us say, that's happened in the last 30 to 40 years, and especially in the last 20 to 25 years. Now, it so happens, the estimates in Israel, and there are, uh, these estimates are pretty well founded by, uh, founded upon a good deal of evidence. The evidence is that at least one-third of the people who came over who said they were Jews and were therefore given automatic citizenship after six weeks, weren't Jews at all. And if you go into the Russian-speaking districts in Israel, you will today see buildings that are churches with crosses on them. And those are people who came and said, "We were Jews," because they wanted to get out of Russia. They're now in Israel. They're citizens. The government allowed them to be citizens. The Orthodox rabbis are terribly upset by that. The government's not going back on it for a variety of reasons. One reason is most of these Russian Jews are among the most chauvinistic Israeli Jews, and the government likes people who are chauvinistic. But that is a big problem.
Now, some of these who came, people who came over who said they were Jews, got citizenship, were not Jews, now have said, "You know, I wasn't really a Jew, but now I want to convert to Judaism." Not all of them, not the ones who go to those Christian churches, but, and so, so now they say, "We want to be converted," and there's a big issue about whether they should even be converted within Israel. So, that's an issue. That's part of, uh, part of this issue.
And another part of the issue is, what about someone who was converted outside of Israel, in the United States, by a reformed rabbi, and came to Israel and said, "I'm a Jew because I went through a conversion." Well, the Orthodox rabbis say, "No, you're not." The Israeli government now has said, "We're going to recognize that." So the Israeli government recognizes conversions outside of Israel differently than they recognize conversions within Israel. And that disturbs the secular altogether.
And finally, let me say, though, a bigger issue for a longer time is that one segment of the religious Jews, not all of them, but one segment, that's the one segment of Jews who do not go into military service. The men, especially after high school, they've been given exemption to study Torah or to study Bible. And that, as we might understand, to say that upsets secular Jews is an understatement. They campaign against it. They campaign against it. It's a huge problem in Israel.
>> Okay. You're the Chabad. Could you discuss them? Um, Chabad, those, I mean, what their beliefs are. Um, I guess, at least in the book, there's a lot of discussion with, with Shahak and you about Rabbi Schneerson and some really horrible, um, uh, racist ideas he has, and all that. Could you address that kind of stuff?
>> Well, first of all, as is the case with a good many, uh, points, this is enormously complicated. There are different kinds of, there are different kinds of Jews. Chabad, Chabad is the center of one group of Jews, the Lubavitchers, the Lubavich group. That's the largest. There's also the Satmar group. There are also various other groups, and they agree. They're all Hasidic Jews. They agree on some things and they disagree on other things. Now, uh, so it then is difficult and dangerous to generalize, uh, very much about all of the Jews, all of the Lubavitch, and so on.
Now, in regard to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, even though some of his followers say he didn't really die, uh, even though his body did, because he was the Messiah. Others of the Lubavitch don't say that. But Schneerson, there's some difference of opinion about this. But I would say, as far as I'm concerned, without doubt, not, not only as far as I'm concerned, as far as lots of learned people are concerned, he was by far the most philosophical, with the most philosophical mind of all of the Hasidic rabbis that we've had in the 20th century into the 21st century. And as far as the Lubavitch Hasidic Jews are concerned, that's their rabbi. They call him the Rebbe, uh, which is an, sort of an honorary, it just turns the word, little honorary term. So we can say that the Lubavitch Hasidic Jews are followers of Schneerson.
Now, Israel Shahak and I wrote about Schneerson in our book. Uh, since that book was published, I've spent the better part of a decade, um, studying in depth the thought, the expressions, which are in about 36 huge volumes of letters and diaries, written mostly in Yiddish, some in Hebrew, of Menachem Schneerson. So I feel that I now know much more about Schneerson, and that means Lubavitch thought, and maybe or mystical thought itself, since he was the most philosophical, than I knew personally, even when we wrote the book. I'm not saying that the views we expressed in the book, I think, are wrong. I'm just saying that now I would put those views into a fuller context. And let me also say that I belong in New York City to a Lubavitch congregation. Now, I know, which is surprising. I love the rabbi. He and I disagree. I'm, he and I study Bible or Torah every Saturday together, one-on-one. Every Friday night that I'm in New York, I'm at Friday night services, and we have a very interesting, rather esoteric group, where we have a lot of people who disagree, and I probably am the most extreme in terms of disagreement, but there it is, but I'm a member of a Lubavitch group. Okay.
Now, so, so, uh, if one thinks that it's that, uh, things are complicated and it's difficult to generalize, I'm just putting my own personal example into that pot to illustrate that this is really true. Okay.
>> Swimming. Having read that book, my head is swimming.
>> Okay. Now, now let me say, uh, now let me say a few more things about. Okay. No question, he had a great philosophical mind. The best book that deals with Schneerson, with at least a major part of his thought on messianism, the deepest book, the most scholarly book, is a book by, uh, a person who's in a chair of Judaism at NYU, New York University. His name is Elliot Wolfson. Um, and, um, uh, I, I just point that out because that's important. Okay.
Now, Schneerson, in terms of his view that is really most controversial, and with which I disagree the most. We pinpointed it to some extent in our book. Our book, Israel Shahak and I, uh, I could go on and on for much, for a much longer time than we have together to explain it further, but let me put it this way. There is no question that in Schneerson's expressed thought, in his mind and his teachings, Jews were not only chosen by God to do certain things, bring a universal message to everybody in this world, Jews and non-Jews, and so on. No, there's some of that, but it's more than that. Jews are clearly superior to non-Jews. And I, and I, uh, choose this wording very carefully. Superior. Uh, let me give an example. We pointed out one example of this in our book on Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. Israel Shahak and I. Let me give that example. It's not the only one, but it's a good one. Uh, Schneerson goes on and on about why the soul of the Jew, which is holy, which lives on somewhere in eternity or heaven or next to God after a person dies, in terms of the physical body, that the soul of the Jew is far superior. God made it so far superior to the soul of the non-Jew. To the soul of the non-Jew. Uh, and we give a quotation or two in our book, and that's clearly the case. Now, I could go on and on with this, but there, but there, there is something superior.
But now, let me say something else that transcends just a discussion of Schneerson or Chabad Lubavitch or Hasidic Jews, or even or Karim. It transcends it and goes right into orthodoxy. If one looks at, looks at, you just have to look at and read carefully the basic, the most basic prayers in orthodox Jewish prayer books. And I just have read again these prayers in the synagogue last Saturday on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the end of the High Holy Days. If you look at these prayers, they clearly outline and specify that Jews are superior. For example, "Thank you God for not, for making me a Jew and not a member of those other nations that, that are, that only live for vanity," and so on and so on and so forth. And there are prayers that go even further than that.
So I'm saying this idea of Jews being superior, in my view, belonging to a Lubavitch Hasidic congregation, my view, it's not only mine, for Israel Shahak, it was even more severe. It's unfortunate, it's bad, it's wrong. I don't think Jews are superior to other people. And I grew up never believing that. And I, I'm now 77, and I doubt that I'm going to come to believe that, uh, uh, any time during the rest of my life. But there is that view. So my point, obviously, is finally, my point is that what Schneerson goes into in-depth philosophically, with more scholarly, in terms of the orthodox commentary, than almost anyone else in the 20th century. The point that's emphasized is the point of superiority of the Jews. That's one of the major points. But that's not limited to these people. That, unfortunately, is in traditional Judaism. Does that mean all traditional Jews believe it? No. Does that mean all traditional Orthodox rabbis believe it? No. Any more than that means that all Christian ministers or all Islamic imams all believe the same things about every point within their religion. But I'm saying that's central to the religion. Okay.
>> Okay.
>> I don't know how much that answers.
>> That's fine. So then, okay, then this is this is really complicated. If you, you're...
>> It's complicated. So I want to emphasize that's right. It's complicated.
>> Okay. So then let me ask you about the chosen people. What, what does that traditionally mean? I know there's a lot of interpretations, but in terms of the tra, quote, traditionalist, in terms of, um, so-called fundamentalists in Israel and on and on, what's the chosen people? What does that mean?
>> Uh, um, uh, that depends who it is we're talking about. Of the, I'll use your words, fundamentalist Jews, of the Orthodox, of the ultraorthodox. That depends who we're talking about. If we're talking about this person or this rabbi, well, chosen may not be nearly so extreme superior as if we're talking about someone else. If, uh, if we're talking about someone even more extreme than Schneerson, for example, Yitzchak Ginsburgh, who is a Chabad rabbi, who does live in Israel. He's an American. He came from Cleveland. He lives there. He's one of those rabbis who still supports, uh, uh, the killing of those 29 Muslims in the mid-1990s by an Orthodox Jewish doctor from the States who went into a, um, uh, into a mosque, uh, that was in a place that the religious Jews consider religious, and killed those people. Um, uh, uh, this rabbi, Yitzchak Ginsburgh, well, he's really an extremist, and he believes that, um, uh, uh, it's perfectly legitimate for Jews to kill non-Jews if the Jew really has some good reason to believe that that non-Jew might, might in the future try to kill Jews. And he goes even further than Schneerson in talking about the superiority of Jews as opposed to non-Jews. So chosen here means superior.
Now, if we, however, let me come to something else. If we go to another brand of Judaism, reformed Judaism, which theologically is more dissimilar than it is similar to orthodox or traditional Judaism, far more. It's a different theology. Well, well, there chosen doesn't necessarily mean superior at all. It means chosen to give a universal message and so on. So, it all depends who it is we're talking about. Uh, uh, what is their definition? What is their commentary? Uh, what are they saying? And by the way, I'll repeat again what I'm saying here about rabbis and what I'm saying about Judaism and what I'm saying about philosophers of Judaism is in this way similar to the same kind of people within Christianity, Islam, or other religions. We know that philosophers within all of these religions sometimes disagree and sometimes disagree intensely with one another, even though they're all considered Christians or all considered Muslims or all considered Hindus or whatever.
>> But the thing that mystifies me is so Ginsburgh is in good standing despite the things he said. He's in good standing, right?
>> Uh, that all depends who it is within Chabad you're talking about. Now, in good standing, see, that's very complicated, and it's a good question. Let me tell you, let me, let me illustrate it this way. Well, I mean, it's important that, uh, that we, that we not be simplistic in how we view this. Let me put it to you this way. When I read things Ginsburgh has written, let alone what he has said, and I, let me give you two examples. I asked the rabbi of my congregation, whom I really like, about Ginsburgh. He said, "Listen, he doesn't really speak for Chabad or Lubavitch." I said, "I understand, but no one person, except maybe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Rebbe, really spoke for all of Chabad or Lubavitch because you all agree with that. And so I understand that there are different people who say different things, but I'm asking, I ask him basically, is Ginsburgh in good standing? He can have views that you don't really agree with fully, but he could still be in good standing." I didn't really get an answer.
Now, when I asked another person who, uh, uh, is a very good friend of mine and who is one of the best scholars, theological scholars in Chabad today, his name is, his name is Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe. When I asked Shlomo Yaffe the same question, Shlomo Yaffe gave me an answer that was either, that was even further away from answering the question I asked than my own rabbi gave me. He said, "Listen, Norton, what are you spending your time studying these kinds of thoughts within Judaism for, uh, and within Chabad, when we have all these extreme Muslims who are doing all of these terrible acts, and when you say these things about Chabad that inspires them to go out and to attack us, so you shouldn't be doing that." I said, "That's not an answer to my question." That's the answer I got. So you understand that now.
But, but finally, let me say this. A few years ago, Yitzchak Ginsburgh was invited to speak on a panel discussion, a panel discussion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the number one university in Israel, and he was introduced as being a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi and representative of Chabad Lubavitch. Now, to my knowledge, and I could be wrong, but I, I doubt it because I've really searched this. To my knowledge, we have not had any Chabad spokesman, at least, and no major spokesman who ever said otherwise. That is, they all, he was introduced that way. And to my knowledge, no one has refuted that. And to my knowledge, Chabad, Chabad has a big website. Millions of people look at that website. In that Chabad website, there is no criticism whatsoever of anything Yitzchak Ginsburgh ever said. So does that indicate that he's in good standing? Let me put it this way. It does not indicate that he's in bad standing.
>> Okay. Well, with all this then, I'm really fascinated. What's your attraction to Chabad? How did you, how did a man with your background in this book, how have you, he made this migration? There's a story. What happened?
>> Ah, I'll tell you how.
>> Not, not 12 days.
>> I grew up in the middle of Iowa and I grew up in an Orthodox synagogue. And the only kind of synagogue that has any kind of atmosphere for me that I think is spiritual is an Orthodox synagogue, because I know what we call the niggun. I know the chants. I know the atmosphere, and that's positive for me. It's not positive for me to read carefully every word of every prayer in Hebrew or English, because that bothers me rationally. But I grew up in that kind of congregation. Now, in a Chabad congregation, especially the congregation that I'm in, the atmosphere in that way is the same. The niggun or the chants are the same. Uh, how they go at certain things are the same. That attracts me. There are some positive things of Chabad as well. We, we've only talked about the negative, and I know those positive things. So there was also that. And in this congregation, there's a young rabbi. He's young, but he is, he believes. He believes in the Rebbe. He believes, uh, in, uh, these things that I've just criticized. But he's extremely open-minded. Let me illustrate it this way, and this really attracts me. A year ago, on the High Holy Days, he had, as he often has, he had a number of people over for dinner on the first, not on Yom Kippur when you fast, but on Rosh Hashanah. And he had 14 people over to dinner, and I was one of them. And we went around the table, and everybody introduced themselves. One woman introduced herself and said this. She said, "My name is so-and-so. I'm an atheist, but I'm here because I love this rabbi." Another person sitting next to the rabbi, who was about 90, and who was identified as the colonel, 90-something, he fought in World War II. He went on and on about the rabbi. And the rabbi told me afterwards, he said, "This person told me when I started my congregation that I needed a Torah scroll." And Torah scrolls cost thousands of dollars because they have to be handwritten by a scribe. And so this person who has money said, "I'll give you a check for a Torah scroll on one condition." What's the condition? That you never ask me to come to the synagogue, because I don't like to go to a synagogue and I don't like to pray. Now, my rabbi had all these people around that table, and I thought to myself, "This is a good kind of group for me to be in."
And now I'll tell you the clincher. The clincher is three years ago, I'm walking to my apartment in New York City on 51st Street, and I saw this, this, I recognized he was Chabad because of the way he was dressed and so on. He was in the street. This was three buildings away from my building. And he was asking the man in front of him, "Could you come in because we need a minyan?" A minyan is 10 men because we have somebody who has to say the morning prayer for the father or mother who died. You can only do it if you have a collective service of a minyan. He said, "Could you come in to make the minyan?" I heard that and I said, "I'll come in." I went in, and I never left. Now, so that gives you some idea.
>> Okay.
>> Okay. But let me ask you, this is all very, very interesting. But then to pull it back to your, this book, which is history now.
>> Do you still have the notion that in Shahak,
>> He would he, that there are dangers to quote Jewish fundamentalism?
>> Yeah, I think that, listen, I myself, not only do I believe that, I lecture and write about that. I'm leaving next week to go to a huge Islamic conference in Istanbul where I'm comparing Schneerson to a major Islamic Turkish Islamic theologian on some points. And there I'm doing what I do often. I'm talking about the great dangers here, especially in regard to their position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is only a part of their position in regard to Jews being superior to non-Jews. Yes, I think there are dangers. Of course, I do.
>> Could you elaborate on some of those dangers then?
>> Well, I already elaborated on the one you sure. Um, let's take Chabad Lubavitch again, but it's not limited to them. It's the whole ultraorthodox. If you look at their positions in regard to the conflict, and Lubavitch Chabad, it's clear they have an official position. It's been there since N. You can look, there's a Chabad Lubavitch website, and it's there, and it's titled a long, long, long essay that's equivalent to a pamphlet. It's this title, "Eyes Upon the Land." And they take it from the Rebbe's thoughts that go back to the '70s, and then they expanded it. And I mentioned Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe before, he was one of the authors. And it states it, and it states this: "This land is, of course, Jewish land. There should be no concessions. Not one inch of, for example, what what they call Judea and Samaria or the West Bank should be given to Palestinians." And they go on and on in that way. That's a tremendous danger to any fair and reasonable kind of solution to this conflict. And as far as they're concerned, taking this land from Palestinians who have lived there for centuries and for generations, that's not theft at all, because that's really land that belonged to the Jews that was taken away from them. Even if you go back 2,000 years, so it's our land, and we shouldn't make any concessions whatsoever. And they damn any Israeli government that has made, that has even talked about any concessions. I could go on and on, but you see what I mean?
>> Could you discuss, uh, the idea of Jew, Jewish uniqueness? The, uh, the idea of nation apart, all that stuff? Could you...
>> Jewish uniqueness? Nation apart, right? In the biblical...
>> Well, I already told you that all of these Orthodox who believe Jews are superior, of course, that's uniqueness.
>> Okay. Was that all? Is that all?
>> Well, no, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Jews are unique, by the way, in some of this thought. It's not only that they're unique in terms of their soul. Sometimes even parts of their body and creativeness is also unique. Jew, why are Jews unique? According to the thought, Jews are unique, and that means superior, because God made them. So now, now, if one is going to cite God and really believe it, and if one believes that he or she believes something or is doing something because that's God's word, that's especially dangerous, because if the person sincerely believes that, then, I'll put it rhetorically, how can we expect that any human being is going to be able to talk that person out of it, because that person has a higher authority than any human being, namely God. God made, has made Jews unique, and God does make Jews unique, and therefore Jews are unique from birth. Now, let me also put one thing. I talked about conversion. What about a non-Jew who converts? If a non-Jew converts, well, how do you explain that if God has made the Jew superior? Schneerson has an answer to that, and the answer is, the only people really who can convert are the people who were born anyway with a Jewish soul, but their soul was out of kilter. So therefore, when they convert, the soul goes back into place. And so who determines that? Who determines if this person coming to a rabbi to say, "I want to be converted," is one of those people or not? Well, only the right kind of rabbi can determine this. And if one asks, as some people do, well, how does the rabbi determine? The answer to that, you can give the answer in two Yiddish words: gut-based. God knows how the rabbi does it.
>> Okay. In that view, in that realm, then anti, what about anti-Semitism in the traditional Jews? Is that from God? Is that punishment? Is that in terms of the Torah, in terms of the Talmud, and all that? What is anti-Semitism?
>> That's a very good question. But really, it's only a part of a much bigger question. And the much bigger question is a question of theodicy, which is the, as you probably know, which is and means the existence of evil in this world. That, I would say, may be singularly the number one major problem for religions to answer. Religions that believe in God, not just Judaism. How, how could a just, merciful, all-knowing God create evil in this world? And by the way, a God who creates everything. How do we explain evil? And the answer is, I always say to my rabbi when I study with him every week, and we both laugh about it on lots of things, but here on this, for sure, I say when I ask that question, I get what I call the religious non-answer. And what's the religious non-answer? "We're human beings. Our understanding and reason only goes so far. We cannot understand God's ways." That's a religious non-answer to a central question of theodicy or evil in this world, and anti-Semitism is part of that.
>> So you're, it's unknowable. Is that the answer? Not fundamentalist or...
>> How do we know?
>> How do we know?
>> Okay.
>> Okay. There's, there I've seen an argument in in some small Jewish circles that some argue that nowadays anti-Semitism is necessary to keep the diverse Jewish community together. You have a take on that?
>> Look, uh, uh, I, I would say to you that that's an idea that you shouldn't limit, uh, necessarily if you to just small groupings there. If, let me put the question another way, but then I'll come to this. The other way is, how can we explain the fact that for all of these centuries, for two millennia, 2,000 years plus of dispersion throughout the world, Jews had not all of them, but Jews have stayed together as a group of Jews. Some religious, some not. Some Jews are atheists, some, but they all say, "We're Jews." How can we explain that? One of the answers is, we can explain that by anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism, and philo-Semitism. Philo-Semitism is the awareness of non-Jews that those people are Jews and the pointing out of that. The anti-Semitism goes further, and then there's the discrimination or oppression. Well, the answer to the question, why have Jews been able to stay together? One of the answers, it's not the answer I'm giving, my answer, one of the answers is because of anti-Semitism. Because of the existence of anti-Semitism that has kept Jews together. Well, you ask, what about anti-Semitism? Is it necessary? I would say that, you know, you might say a corollary of what I just said is maybe some people would argue it's necessary to keep Jews together, because how else are you going to keep together this group of Jews when, let's take the state of Israel. State of Israel has five, let's say it has 5.7 million Jews. Okay. The estimates are that only 20 to 25% of those Jews are religious. And the estimate is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.