Jews Not Zionists
The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism
http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/differencejudzion.html
G. Neuburger
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Where the Torah tells about the creation of the first human
being, the most prominent Jewish commentator, Rashi, explains
that the earth from which Adam was formed was not taken
from one spot but from various parts of the globe. Thus
human dignity does not depend on the place of one's birth
nor is it limited to one region.
The greatness or worth of a person is not measured by
his or her outward appearance. Jews believe that Adam was
created in G-d's image and that he is the common ancestor
of all mankind. At this stage in human history, there is
no room for privileged people who can do with others as
they please. Human life is sacred and human rights are not
to be denied by those who would subvert them for "national
security" or for any other reason. No one knows this
better than the Jews, who have been second-class citizens
so often and for so long. Some Zionists, however, may differ.
This is understandable because Judaism and Zionism are by
no means the same. Indeed they are incompatible and irreconcilable:
If one is a good Jew, one cannot be a Zionist; if one is
a Zionist, one cannot be a good Jew.
For over 60 years I have fought Zionism, as did my father
before me, and I am therefore quite familiar with it. For
those who have been in this fight for only the last ten
or twenty years, what I have to say may be surprising or
even shocking. Nevertheless these matters must be stated
clearly and openly, because unless the disease of Zionism
is diagnosed accurately, it cannot be cured. Too long have
those opposed to Zionism engaged in daydreaming and wishful
thinking. In order to recognize Zionism for what it is,
one has to know about Judaism, about Zionism -- the opposite
and negation of Judaism, and about Jewish history. In the
time allotted to me, I am not going to talk about the actions
of the Zionists; they will be adequately dealt with by others.
As a Jew, I plan to discuss Zionism, which is rebellion
against G-d and treason to the Jewish people.
To begin with, a few definitions: Who is a Jew? A Jew
is anyone who has a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism
in conformity with Halacha, Jewish religious law. This definition
alone excludes racism. Judaism does not seek converts, but
those who do convert are accepted on a basis of equality.
Let us see how far this goes. Some of the most eminent and
respected rabbis were converts to Judaism. Jewish parents
throughout the world bless their children every Sabbath
and holiday eve, and they have done it in the same way for
millennia. If the children are girls, the blessing is, "May
G-d let you be like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah."
Not one of these matriarchs was born a Jewess; they were
all converts to Judaism. If the children are boys, the blessing
is, "May G-d let you be like Ephraim and Menashe."
The mother of these two was an Egyptian woman who became
Jewish and had married Joseph. Moses himself, the greatest
Jew who ever lived, married a Midianite woman who became
Jewish. Finally, the Tenach, the holy writings of the Jew,
contains the book of Ruth. This woman was not only not Jewish
by birth, but she came from the Moabites, traditional enemies
of the Jewish people. This book describes Ruth's conversion
to Judaism and is read annually on the holiday commemorating
the giving of the Torah, the "Law," i.e. the Pentateuch.
At its very end, the book of Ruth traces the ancestry of
King David, the greatest king the Jews ever had, to Ruth,
his great-grandmother.
Apart from the Zionists, the only ones who consistently
considered the Jews a race were the Nazis. And they only
served to prove the stupidity and irrationality of racism.
There was no way to prove racially whether a Mrs. Muller
or a Mr. Meyer were Jews or Aryans (the Nazi term for non-Jewish
Germans. The only way to decide whether a person was Jewish
was to trace the religious affiliation of the parents or
grandparents. So much for the this racial nonsense.
Racial pride has been the downfall of those Jews in the
past who were blinded by their own narrow-minded chauvinism.
This brings us to a second definition. Is there a Jewish
people? If so, what is its mission? Let us make this completely
clear: The Jewish nation was not born or reconstituted a
generation ago by some Zionist politicians. The Jewish nation
was born on Mount Sinai when the Jews by their response,
"let us do and let us hear," adopted the Torah
given to them by G-d for all future generations. `This day
you become a people," though valid still today, was
spoken thousands of years ago.
According to Jewish tradition, there are seven Noachide
laws which apply to all human beings. Then there are the
Ten Commandments which form basic standard of morality and
conduct for adherents of all monotheistic religions. In
addition to these, there are 613 laws obligatory for Jews,
and every Jew has to observe those which are applicable
to him or her according to Halacha. It is the carrying out
of these mitzvoth, "commandments," which constitutes
the essence of being Jewish, and therefore of the Jewish
people and their covenant with G-d.
In what way are the Jews a "chosen people"?
Every Jewish man anywhere and at any time when called to
the reading of the Torah says, "Who has chosen us from
all the peoples and gave us His Torah." This is the
way in which the Jews are chosen. The Jewish people are
chosen not for domination over others, not for conquest
or warfare, but to serve G-d and thus to serve mankind.
"And the hands are the hands of Esau," has been
traditionally interpreted to mean that while "the voice
is Jacob's," the hands- - symbolizing violence - are
Esau's. Thus physical violence is not a tradition or a value
of the Jews. The task for which the Jewish people were chosen
is not to set an example of military superiority or technical
achievements, but to seek perfection in moral behavior and
spiritual purity. Of all the crimes of political Zionism,
the worst and most basic, and which explains all its other
misdeeds, is that from its beginning Zionism has sought
to separate the Jewish people from their G-d, to render
the divine covenant null and void, and to substitute a "modern"
statehood and fraudulent sovereignty for the lofty ideals
of the Jewish people.
One means of misleading many Jews and all too many non-Jews
is the Zionist misuse of names and symbols sacred in Judaism.
They use the holy name Israel for their Zionist state. They
have named their land acquisition fund with a term that
traditionally implies the reward for piety, good deeds,
and charitable work. They have adopted as a state symbol
the menorah (candlebrum). What hypocrisy, what perversion
it is to have the Israeli army fight under an emblem, the
meaning of which is explained in the Tenach (on the occasion
of a previous return to the Holy Land) as, "not with
armed force and not with power, but in My spirit says the
Lord of Hosts."
The infamous founder of political Zionism, may his name
be cursed, who only discovered his own Jewishness because
of anti-Semitism displayed at the Dreyfus trial in France,
proposed various solutions to what he called the "Jewish
problem." At one point he proposed to resettle the
Jews in Uganda. At another he proposed to convert them to
Catholicism. He finally hit on the idea of a Judenstaat,
an exclusive Jewish state. Thus from its very beginning
Zionism was a result of Anti-Semitism and indeed is completely
compatible with it, because Zionists and anti-Semites had
(and have) a common goal: To bring all Jews from their places
of domicile to the Zionist state, thus uprooting Jewish
communities that had existed for hundreds and even thousands
of years. Loyalty to the Zionist state was substituted for
loyalty to G-d, and the state was made into the modern "golden
calf". Belief in the Torah and fulfillment of religious
obligations in Zionist eyes became a private matter and
not a duty for every Jew or for the Jewish people. The Zionists
made divine law subject to party or parliamentary votes,
and they set their own standards of conduct and ethics.
Neither the founder of political Zionism nor any of the
prime ministers of the Zionist state believed in the divine
origin of the Torah nor even in the existence of G-d. All
prime ministers were members of a party that opposed religion
in principle and that considered the Bible a document of
ancient folklore, devoid of any religious meaning. And yet
these same Zionists base their claim to the Holy Land on
this same Bible, the divine origin of which they deny. At
the same time they conveniently forget the Jewish holiday
prayer "and for our sins have we been exiled from our
land," and ignore the fact that the present exile of
the Jewish people is divinely decreed and that the Jewish
people are neither commanded nor permitted to conquer or
rule the Holy Land before the coming of the Messiah. The
Jewish people do, of course, recognize special spiritual
ties to that land they call it Eretz Yisrael. Every morning,
afternoon, and evening, and night they mention it and Zion
and Jerusalem in their prayers, and indeed a Jew does not
sit down to a meal without doing likewise. To the Jew, the
very soil of the Holy Land is different from that of any
other spot on this globe, and wherever he is he turns his
face toward Jerusalem during prayers. To live in the Holy
Land or even to be buried there was always considered to
be of high merit.
This love of the land and the Jewish longing for a return
to it and for the coming of the Messiah have been exploited
innumerable times during the past 2,000 years. Zionism has
had many precursors and each has been a curse for the Jews.
Individuals who proclaimed themselves the Messiah and messianic
movements have sprung up from time to time, from the Roman
era through the Middle Ages and down to the modern Zionists.
Many of these pseudo-Messiahs posed as rabbis or as national
leaders, though some of them eventually professed other
faiths; many temporarily - some for longer periods - succeeded
in misleading Jews, rabbis, and entire Jewish communities.
All were in due course exposed and recognized as frauds,
and those who had set their hope on them found only disappointment
and all too often disaster.
In the early stages of the development of modern Zionism,
the Mizrachi was founded, an organization of so-called religious
Zionists who tried to combine their faith with political
Zionism. This led to constant conflict between the dictates
of divine law and the demands of Jewish nationalism. Most
of the time, the Mizrachi was outvoted at Zionist congresses
and served only to give the Zionist movement a false religious
aura. Whenever expediency called for it, these "religious"
Zionist fellow-travelers have been used by the Zionist government
to underpin national claims with "religious" authority.
The National Religious Party in the Zionist state has been
well rewarded for giving its stamp of approval to nationalistic
measures and enactments, whether these rewards were of financial
nature or in the form of cabinet or other government posts.
The chauvinism of these religious Zionists frequently exceeded
that of other Zionists, and it was always couched in religious
terms - a prime example of the abuse of religion. The fraudulence
of these "religious" Zionists was demonstrated
during the past year when it was revealed that two of their
world leaders had committed million-dollar thefts.
A Jewish world organization was founded in 1912 on the
German-Polish border with the specific purpose of fighting
Zionism. This organization, Agudath Israel, "Union
of Israel," was to represent the true Jewish people
in the world and to unmask the unwarranted and unjust claims
of the Zionists. Rabbis everywhere joined Agudath Israel,
as did masses of observant Jews. Anti-Zionist congresses
were convened in Vienna and in Marienbad. In countries such
as Poland, Agudists were members of parliament. Under Agudah
leadership more than 50 years ago, Jews in the Holy Land
opposed to Zionism obtained permission from Britain, the
mandatory power in Palestine, to declare in writing that
they did not wish to be represented by the Zionists or any
of their groups, particularly not by the Zionist quasi-governmental
organizations such as the Va'ad Leumi, "National Council."
Shortly thereafter, Jacob de Haan, a former distinguished
Dutch diplomat who was then leader of Agudath Israel in
Palestine, initiated talks with Arab leaders with a view
toward the eventual establishments of a state there in which
Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. In this way he hoped
to forestall the creation of a Zionist state. Despite threats
to his life, de Haan, fully aware of the ultimate dangers
of a Zionist state, continued his talks and negotiations.
On the eve of his departure in 1924 for Britain to meet
with authorities there, he was assassinated by the Haganah,
the Zionist paramilitary force, in the center of Jerusalem
as he came from evening prayers. More than a half a century
ago, this devout and visionary Jew gave his life in a fight
that he considered paramount, at a time when the world at
large was still blind and deaf to the difficulties and problems
that a future Zionist state would entail.
As a result of such terrorism and increasing Zionist pressure,
Agudath Israel gradually began to weaken and to compromise.
During the Nazi period, it entered indo deals and arrangements
with the Zionists, despite the fact that its fundamental
aim had been to combat Zionism. After the Zionist state
was established, Agudath Israel broke off with its past,
participated in the Zionist government on the cabinet level
and elected Agudists to the Zionist parliament. Still professing
a nominal anti-Zionism, Agudath Israel established a network
of "independent" schools in the Holy Land, but
today the overwhelming part of the budget of these schools
comes from the Zionist government.
In view of these developments, those Jews who wanted to
continue the fight against Zionism without any compromise
left Agudath Israel and constituted themselves as the Neturei
Karta, an Aramaic phrase meaning "Guardians of the
City," i.e. the city of Jerusalem. The Neturei Karta
in turn became a worldwide movement, known in some places
as "Friends of Jerusalem."
The greatest leader of the Neturei Karta was Rabbi Amram
Blau, an inspired and dedicated leader whose compassion
equaled his courage. He could not keep silent in the face
of injustice, immorality, or hypocrisy. He was beloved by
Jews and respected by Christians and Muslims. Born in Jerusalem,
he never left the Holy Land during his entire life. In his
writings he stressed many times that Jews and Arabs had
lived in harmony until the advent of political Zionism.
Rabbi Blau was imprisoned in Jerusalem, not by the Ottoman
authorities, not by the British, and not by the Arabs, but
by the Zionists. What was his crime? He defended with vigor
and honesty, without regard for his own safety, the holy
character of Jerusalem against the "innovations"
and encroachments of the Zionists. He fought for the sanctity
of the Sabbath and actively opposed the inroads of indecency
and immorality made under the Zionist regime. Unceasingly
he denounced the establishment of a Jewish state before
the coming of the Messiah as an acct of infamy and blasphemy.
Under his leadership, the Neturei Karta declared year after
year that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist
state or the validity of its laws.
During the first period of fighting between the Zionist
state and the Arabs, the rabbis of the Neturei Karta went
toward the combat lines, carrying a white flag, and stated
that they wanted no part in this war and that they were
absolutely opposed to the creation of a Zionist state. In
his last proclamation, Rabbi Blau deplored the actions of
the Zionists against the Muslim and Christian Palestinians
and the grievous harm done by the Zionists to the Jewish
people in endeavoring to change them from "a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation" to a modern state, devoid
of spiritual foundation, based on chauvinism, built on conquest,
and relying on military prowess. "The number of your
cities constitute your gods," the prophet Jeremiah
had thundered to the chauvinist and idolatrous Jewish government
of this day. Like it, the Zionists are now establishing
a new status quo and expanding their position by founding
new settlements in he territories occupied since 1967.
Rabbi Blau in his last statement severely condemned the
UN for recognizing and accepting as a member the Zionist
state, thus giving the Zionists unprecedented prestige and
power. It is high time that the anti-Zionist nations listen
to him, heed his plea, and undo this great wrong and correct
this fatal error. It is well known that no action was taken
concerning the expulsion of the Zionist state because of
the fear that financial support for the UN would be withdrawn.
Let those states, opposed to Zionism, who have become affluent
during the past generation, show that they mean what they
say by offering to replace any financial loss the UN may
suffer as a consequence, and let the member states vote
their conscience without fear and regardless of any intimidation.
There has been times before in Jewish history, as related
in the Bible, when the masses were misled and only a minority
of Jews clung to the true mission of the Jewish people.
One of the first such of the occasions was the worship of
the golden calf; today we unfortunately see a repetition
of this, with the Zionist state now being the object of
worship. Until the appearance and growing influence of political
Zionism, Jewish leaders were chosen on the basis of their
piety, decency, learning, and their love of justice and
mercy. Today only too often so-called Jewish leaders, completely
unqualified under Jewish law and traditional concepts, make
pronouncements and decisions in the name and on behalf of
the Jewish people. This is particularly true in the USA
where there is the largest Jewish community in our time.
I can never forget the remark of a woman in Oklahoma: "Isn't
today's Judaism wonderful! All you have to do is give money."
Even at his death
Rabbi Blau refuted the Zionists who had often claimed that
the Neturei Karta was nothing but an insignificant sect
of a few hundred souls.
Yet when Rabbi Blau died in Jerusalem on a Friday morning
two years ago, a few hours later no fewer than 22,000 men
attended his funeral.
At all times in the past, the misleaders of the Jews have
sooner or later fallen by the wayside, and only those who
upheld the validity of the Torah and the Talmud (the written
and oral law) and of Halachah, and who resisted the demagogues,
prevailed. The Neturei Karta follow in this tradition. They
continue as a living rebuke to Zionism and speak in our
time for the true Jewish people, those who have not been
misled by Zionism.
During the Roman conquest of the Holy Land, there were
Jews who on the basis of nationalism and racial pride were
sure that they could not lose a war. They, like the Zionists
of our day, were opposed to any compromise or settlement;
there were determined to fight to the end. At that time,
however almost 2,000 years ago, the fore most rabbi, Rabbi
Yochanan ben Sakkai, chose a different way. The military
adventurers prevented him from leaving beleaguered Jerusalem
to negotiate with the Romans, so the rabbi had himself carried
out in a coffin by his disciples to the Roman headquarters.
He said to the Romans that the Jews need neither an army
nor weapons and asked for permission to establish a yeshiva,
a Jewish religious school, at Yavneh. It was this religious
school, and not the militarists or generals of the time,
that helped to perpetuate Judaism and the identity of the
Jewish people.
It must be stated explicitly that while not all Jews are
Zionists, not all Zionists are Jews. The motives of some
of these non-Jewish Zionists, e.g. Lord Balfour and General
Smuts, are at least open to question. From the beginning
of the Zionist movement, some of the most articulate and
fervent Zionists have been Christian clergymen, especially
"fundamentalists," who hail Zionism as an important
"religious" movement and welcome it as a fulfillment
of prophecy. They also, and significantly, serve the cause
of Zionism.
One of the basic aims of Zionism is aliyah, the immigration
to the Zionist state of Jews from all countries. Nevertheless,
during the past few years hundreds of thousands of Israelis
have outgathered themselves from the Zionist paradise, and
American Jews have "voted with their feet" and
have chosen not to be ingathered. These Jews recognize that
the Zionist state is in fact nothing but a giant ghetto.
Instead of being able to render assistance to Jewish communities
in other countries, American Jews have been mobilized to
concentrate on helping the Zionist state, making the USA
the real and major source of Zionist power and influence.
The Zionists, true to the nature of their movement, rely
on technical superiority and on a forbidding military deterrent
- provided largely by the USA - for their security.
Nothing could be farther from the true ideals of the Jewish
people. The Jewish people were chosen in the first place
"for you are the leas of all nations." As the
Psalm says, "they rely on vehicles and horsepower,
but we invoke the name of the Eternal, our G-d."
One most vital point deserves mention. A former president
of the World Zionist Organization has stated explicitly
that a Zionist owes unqualified loyalty to the Zionist state
and that, in the case of a conflict, the first loyalty of
a Zionist must be to the Zionist state. According to Jewish
law, however, a Jew owes allegiance and loyalty to the country
of which he is a citizen, and, of course, no faithful Jews
owes any loyalty or allegiance to the Zionist state which
has been condemned by the foremost rabbis of our age.
It is not my purpose to detail how Zionism should be dealt
with. Let me state, however, that isolated or spontaneous
acts against individuals or the mere adoption of resolutions
in the UN or elsewhere are not effective means of bringing
an end to Zionism.
Let me state also that the battle
against Zionism must be waged first, not on the shores of
the Mediterranean, but in Zionism's most powerful bastion
-- the USA
As an American citizen, I deplore that
our government and our politicians have adopted an attitude
that is in complete contradiction to the advice of the father
of our country George Washington. Instead of shying away
from foreign entanglements and permanent alliances with
foreign powers, the establishment in Washington has embraced
Zionism so wholeheartedly that in their eyes any criticism
of the Zionist state and any opposition to political Zionism
in the UN by any nation has become a punishable offense.
And the docile American media do not dare to speak out against
such an absurdity.
Unfortunately, thus far, each year sees still further gains
in influence by American Zionists. This fact has made possible
events and developments that were unthinkable even ten years
ago. It takes a lot of courage to be opposed to Zionism
in the USA today. It also took a lot of courage during the
Second World War to be anti-Fascist in Italy or anti-Nazi
in Germany. In the long run Zionism is nothing but a passing
aberration in the long history of the Jewish people and
of the world.
Let us take faith and hope in the certainty that eventually
prejudice, hatred, and injustice will disappear, and that
the prophecy will come true that all nations of the world
will participate in the pilgrimage to Jerusalem "for
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations."
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