zionism_unsettled_scan

eligion has historically been at its best when
it acts prophetically, when it holds power to
account, and when it is leveraged on behalf of
the powerless, the oppressed, and the voiceless.
Conversely, we inevitably witness religion at its
very worst when faith becomes wedded to empire-when
religion is used by powerful nations
to justify the subjugation of others.15
For Rosen and Ellis, the state of Israel has become
"the living embodiment of judaism as empire."16
For centuries Rabbinic Judaism served as a spiritual
alternative to the veneration of human power. Tragically,
says Rosen, Zionism has traded this "unique
spiritual vision in favor of idolatrous nation-statism
and militarism." A jewish theology of liberation
would recover the insight of I Samuel 8-that the
hunger for national power
is in itself a kind of idolatry and a turning away
from God .... [And] it would affirm that when we
put our faith in the power of empire, we may well
be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.17
THE BIBLE AND LIBERATION
Rosen recognizes that the Bible contains texts that
liberate and texts that oppress. A jewish theology
of liberation must lift up those texts that "help us to
understand Jewish values as universal values and
connect jewish liberation with the liberation of all nations."
Conversely, he asserts, we must recognize that
.. .those aspects of biblical and religious tradition
that espouse triumphalism, xenophobia, and the
extermination of indigenous peoples are not the
voice of God at all, but are, as Rabbi Michael Lerner
has suggested, "the voice of pain and cruelty
masquerading as God."lS
This means, among other things, that biblical
texts cannot be used to justify claims for the expropriation
of Palestinian land. As Rabbi Mordecai
Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist judaism,
has written
We cannot fall to recognize in the claims of jewish
superiority a kinship and resemblance to the
similar claims of other national and racial groups
which have been advanced to justify oppression
and exploitation.
In the past colonialism, slavery, European persecution
of jewry, as well as the Israelite conquest and
expropriation of the Canaanites, all used similar
justification. All claims "to the superiority of the one
race, nation or caste ... [are] essentiallyvicious."2o
We must be
prepared to read
the story of the
Exodus through
the eyes of the
Israelites and
the story of the
Eisodus through
the eyes of the
Canaanites.
Israeli Rabbis Stand in Solidarity with Palestinians
October 2001, Haris, northern West Bank. Rabbi Arik Ascherman (left) co-founded the Israeli human rights organization, Rabbis
for Human Rights (RHR), In 1988. Here, Ascherman joins a small group of Israelis providing the Palestinian residents of Haris with a
Jewish human shield against violence from settlers during their olive harvest. RHR's positions are not popular with the Israeli public
and the group has limited Impact on Israeli public opinion. "Neither the public nor the religious community are receptive to their
messages," observes Menachem Klein, a political scientist at Bar Uan University in Tel Aviv. 19 The non-Orthodox streams of Judaism
from which most of RHR's members are drawn have small followings in Israel and are widely viewed as foreign imports.
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ZIONISM UNSETTlED