Israel As The Nation State Of The Jewish People Or Things That Make Me Cross

There is a long list of national flags that depict crosses but only one with a Jewish star. Now, the talk is all about elections and somewhat forgotten is the reason the Israeli government has fallen: a dispute over the bill known as Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People. Some say the bill threatens Israeli democracy.

Wikipedia Screenshot
Wikipedia screenshot

Livni was a shrill opponent of this legislation which is funny, considering it was her party, Kadima, that introduced the bill in 2011. For this reason, it is easy to come to the conclusion that Livni, along with Lapid, did indeed, as Bibi said, affect a putsch.  In other words, the proposed law does not at all threaten democracy, despite the pretense of the naysayers, including Livni, Lapid, the U.S. Department of State, and the EU. It was all about bringing down the government.

Did the Prime Minister purposely push this legislation now in order to bring about new elections that might strengthen his hand? Probably.

Will his hand be strengthened by new elections? Probably.

But back to that LONG list of national flags depicting crosses, several of which represent EU member states (think Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden, for instance). The symbol of the cross, chosen to represent this or that nation, would seem to suggest that said country is predominantly Christian and that its culture reflects values associated with Christianity. In spite of the obvious meaning of a cross emblazoned on a national symbol, many of these Christian nations espouse democracy as the favored philosophy underpinning their governments and societies. These countries see no contradiction between Christian culture and a democratic society.

Christmas_@_Rockefeller_Plaza_(11654317915)
Rockefeller Plaza, NYC.

How is it then that these very same countries see an inherent contradiction in the idea that Jewish culture can coexist with democracy? Perhaps these Christian-culture nations would like to claim that the cross only adorns their flags because of faraway past history. Maybe they’d like to submit that the crosses on those flags hearken back to a different time and that now the crosses are meaningless? Would they say that they are now democratic and that there is no such religious dynamic flavoring their cultures?

Growing up in America, I was surrounded by Christian culture. Christmas sales, Christmas lights adorning streets and department store windows, TV specials revolving around Christmas, school vacation for Christmas, Christmas was an official day off for government offices. Employees had the day off. Christmas songs written by Jews were all that played on the radio and in the Muzak on elevators. People wished me a Merry Christmas irrespective of the fact that I might not be Christian. Gifts were given to teachers or valued customers on Christmas.

Christmas was everywhere and Sunday was a day off. Every single week.

Macy's_christmas
Macy’s, NYC.

Most American Jews probably take this in stride. They see Christmas as something ecumenical, a state of mind, peace on earth goodwill to all mankind. Presents and Christmas candy. A day to goof off and drink eggnog or hot wassail.

But I felt alienated growing up in America. I felt marked, other, different. I felt like I was on the outside looking in. I didn’t yearn to be a part of the celebrations. I didn’t want to be Christian.

But I didn’t like feeling like I didn’t belong. I wanted to feel I belonged. And that was something that would never happen for me in America, where the culture is predominantly Christian.

CharlieBrownChristmas
Peanuts Christmas Special.

Jews changed their surnames to fit in with the Christians. They stopped keeping Shabbos, because honestly, who can hold down a job if you won’t work on Saturday? In some countries, Jews converted. Not because they suddenly believed the gospel, but because it was easier to fit in, to make a mark on the world, to earn a decent living.

All the time I was growing up in America, I yearned to live in Israel. I wanted to be in a place where MY culture was the dominant culture. I wanted to be in a place where everything shuts down for Shabbos and Yom Kippur, where Sunday is just another day in the week.

I wanted to be able to walk down a street in December without seeing strings of lights or displays of plastic reindeer, sleighs, and Santas. I wanted to be able to turn on the television or radio without hearing White Christmas. I wanted to be in a place where it’s okay to be Jewish, where being Jewish means I belong.

XMas_1
Christmas has infiltrated Facebook games.

I have been in Israel now for 35 years and have found myself blessedly free of the sight and sound of Christianity assaulting my senses. It’s not that I have anything against Christian societies or hold against them their culture; it is that it is not my culture and that it is alien to me. Why must I be forced to exist in such a culture?

And exactly what is it that irks these very same societies about my desire to live in a Jewish culture? Wouldn’t that be the very essence of democracy? The permission to live within my own culture in my own country?

It seems to me that the desire among the nations of the world to quell Jewish nationalism is the very antithesis of democracy. These countries would deny me the rights they guarantee their own citizens. How is that fair?

How is that democratic?

 

 

46 thoughts on “Israel As The Nation State Of The Jewish People Or Things That Make Me Cross”

  1. Thoroughly good article. Whenever someone tells me that Israel can’t be both Jewish and democratic, I struggle for a succinct response. I think I’ve found it.

  2. Hard Little Machine

    The flag of the USA is clearly racist because it doesn’t include iconography of the Native Americans as well as the pre colonial immigrants and settlers from France and elsewhere, to say nothing of the stripes which are not rainbows.

  3. I approve. But then, I seem (unwittingly) to have had the effect of causing my non-Jewish family to feel awkward about observing Christmas.

  4. Norman_In_New_York

    Thanks for the thoughtful article. I and many American Jews tend to take Christmas in stride because this holiday has become thoroughly commercialized, with its religious content drained, and because the U.S. and other Western countries are effectively no longer Christian but secular. That is why there has been no urgency to rescue Christians being persecuted in Muslim-majority countries. Israel would never stand silently and look away if diaspora Jews were subject to the same barbarities. At the same time, a Jewish state faithful to its heritage would give non-Jews equality before the law “and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

    1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

      The worst is Chrismakuh — the disgusting attempt to merge xmas with Chanukah, the chag that celebrates the Jew’s willingness to die rather than abandon Torah and assimilate.

  5. Norman_In_New_York

    Since you mentioned “White Christmas,” that song is not about religion, but about homesickness. More than fifty years ago, I used to watch a television program called “Sing Along with Mitch,” which was effectively karaoke before there was karaoke. When Mitch Miller presented “White Christmas,” he dressed his men’s chorus as GIs encamped in the North African desert in 1942, the year the song was written. Likewise, many in the U.S. military were fighting at the time in the jungles of Guadalcanal and New Guinea and at sea on two vast oceans. The thought of a tranquil winter day with family carried much appeal.

      1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

        Varda, I don’t understand how anyone could deny that. The song was written for a Bing Crosby movie about a resort that opened for holidays only. There were different songs for different holidays. Any reference to homesickness was about being homesick at — wait for it — Christmas time.

  6. Season’s Greetings, Varda. I sympathize how you used to feel during the Christmas season here in America. If I have to hear the Chipmunk Song one more time, I’m moving to Israel myself. Sounds like things are going better for you in Israel. That’s a good thing. And may all your Hanukkahs be white.

  7. Brad_Brzezinski

    As Varda points out, there is hypocrisy from the west in demanding that Israel limit its Jewishness when western countries are steeped in Christianity. This argument will probably not be available for long though as western countries seem all too eager to (stupidly IMO) drop their association with Christianity.

    In any case, Israel serves as something of a model for accommodating multiple religions.

    1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

      Of course, as part of their own myopia, even non-Christian Americans think of Christianity as normative, except for a handful of vocal atheist activists who manage to be so obnoxious that they turn everyone off. So celebrating Xmas is seen as a non-religious, cultural sharing, and declining to celebrate it is seen as somehow anti-social.

      When I came back to the US from my first trip to Israel, it was early December. We got off the plane at Kennedy and were greeted by carols on the PA system and decorated evergreens and wreaths all over. Welcome back to golus, we told ourselves.

  8. Let;s hope that Tzipi Livni (the Pierre Laval of Israel) gets such a resounding defeat that she will be permanently tainted as a loser just like her former idiot boss Ehud Olmert.

  9. I’m going to stick my neck out here and make an argument against the author’s point that Christmas gets in his face and why oh why does it have to be this way?

    There is very little observed legislation in the Western world which protects or promotes the traditions of the Christmas holiday, and nothing which prevents Hanukka from being celebrated. In this country, people largely celebrate Christmas because they want to, because it’s in our culture. It’s commercialised because it’s popular, not the other way around.

    A law reaffirming the Jewishness of the Jewish state won’t either protect or enforce Hannukah, or Saturday as the Sabbath, and it won’t depopularise Christmas. Only the people who live there can decide, collectively, which events they’d prefer to celebrate. It’s up to you, and nobody can take it away from you.

    I completely agree that this faux outrage about the law is out of order. But it’s a charge being made mainly by lowlifes who jump on every chance to demonise Israel, along with their idiotic fellow travellers – it’s not being made by every Tom, Dick and Harry in his hunt for wrapping paper and cards on the way home from work.

    Perhaps an important reason why Christmas is celebrated and recognised while Hanukkah is less well known, is this: Christmas is universal. Its entire founding message is based on the idea that, no matter who you are, Jewish or Gentile, saint or sinner, God’s gift of redemption is being delivered to the world at large. Hanukkah, on the other hand, is only relevant to the Jewish people, because it is among several other celebrations of “they tried to get rid of us, they lost”. It’s nice and all, but it has a certain ceiling on the number of people you can expect to celebrate it.

    Particularly in Britain, thanks to the delights of multiculturalism and all that goes with it, we’ve become perhaps a little too sensitive to the idea of War on Christmas. The War, as it is commonly understood, is primarily undertaken by Atheists in a quest to satisfy Muslims. Please, I implore you, the last thing we need is for elements of the Jewish community to jump on that particular bandwagon.

    Happy Hanukkah.

    1. It’s “her” face, and that was not my point at all. I was saying just the opposite. The West has a right to its Christian culture. I have a right to my Jewish culture. I only wanted to illustrate that Western culture is permeated with Christianity, which is fine and dandy. Just don’t tell me I don’t have a right to have a culture permeated with Judaism in Israel or tell me Israel is not democratic because we want a Jewish culture.

      1. So it’s fine and dandy? That’s interesting, because the article actually seemed to make it quite clear you were sick and tired of the whole thing.

        1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

          Christianity is univeralist and triumphalist. That is not meant as a perjorative. Christianity posits that the entire world must become Christian, that one who is not Chrisitan is damned, and that only Christians can be saved from sin and eternal damnation. In the west, until recently, anyway, being Christian was taken for granted as part of being a normal, civilized human being. Let’s face it — Jews are something of a freak in that world, especially if we are observant.

          By contrast, Judaism teaches that Jews have a special job to do, that non-Jews are capable of being fully decent human beings, and that being Jewish is the exception rather than the rule. It’s therefore not surprising that Varda’s being sick and tired of being a freak in your culture would appear to you as being sick and tired of your having a Christian culture. Tain’t so.

        2. I was. That’s why I MOVED. But there is a distinction between not fitting in and disapproving. I didn’t disapprove. I just wanted MY OWN CULTURE. So I moved to Israel. I think it’s lovely that Americans make Christmas a part of their culture. It’s just not for me. Because I’m not Christian.

    2. ahad_ha_amoratsim

      ‘among several other celebrations of “they tried to get rid of us, they lost”. ‘
      Yes, but what’s different about this one is “they lost because we would rather let them murder us than betray our G*d by adopting THEIR filthy culture, no matter how much more refined than ours it’s supposed to be.”

      1. Do you want to elaborate on that point? Or do you just prefer to hide behind innuendo? Because my rebuttal to your insinuation is actually in the post that you just replied to.

        1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

          No innuendo intended, but I will elaborate. In fact, I will over-elaborate. To begin with, I have no objection to non-Jews celebrating Christmas.

          The Greeks and their Jewish groupies the Hellenizers thought Torah was outmoded and that pagan Greek culture was superior intellectually, asthetically, morally, and in every other way. In fact, the filthy pagan Greek culture celebrated sexual immorality, denied the Creator, worshipped might over right, devalued human life, and posited immoral superman gods with human flaws who could be subverted for human ends. Its vaunted philosophy was child’s play compared to serious Torah study. And they were ready to murder us for not abandoning Torah in favor of their culture.

          Except for a certain historic (and in some quarters continuing) unfortunate willingness to murder or persecute us for not abandoning our faith, such is by no means the case with Christianity. Christianity has helped spread G*d’s message of monotheism, mercy and morality to a world steeped in paganism and materialism. Christianity reveres human life, recognizes our Creator, puts a high value on mercy, does not celebrate sexual immorality, and does not worship might over right.It is a huge advance over pagan Greek culture. It is far indeed from being filthy.

          But let’s not pretend that Christmas is universal. Christmas holds no room for those who believe that G*d is one (meaning, among other things, incorporeal, unique, eternal, unchanging, and indivisble) beyond any human comprehension, and gave His eternal written law, supplemented by a His inseparable eternal oral law, to the Jewish people to guide them until the end of time, thereby imposing special obligations uniquely on them, both rational and supra-rational, in order to establish a unique relationship with them and make them His witnesses to the rest of the world.

          Celebrating Christmas means agreeing that G*d surpeseded this law despite His promise never to do so, broke His bond with the Jewish people despite His promise never to do so, and abrogated His other promises to them. It means celebrating the idea that G*d is not one (rh”l) but instead has a physical form, disunity, multiplicity, and changes, all of which are incompatible with true Oneness (as Duties of the Heart explains in detail), and that, being changeable, He breaks promises. It means celebrating the mistaken idea that Moshiach came but failed to fullfill any of the prophecies that G*D gave us about Moshiach. Any Jew who would join in celebrating such a holiday either does not realize what he is celebrating, which is usually the case among those Jews who celebrate it, or is acting in complete contradiction to the ideals celebrated by Chanukah.

          So by all means celebrate. Deck every cubic centimeter of the halls, the streets and stores with boughs of holly, mistletoe, and other decorations. They’re pretty to look at, they give you joy, and your are in the majority here. Just don’t take offense (the way Bill O’Reilly does) that I won’t join your celebration. And if you ask why I won’t, please don’t take offense at my answer. It’s not wrong for us to want our homeland to reflect our own culture and faith, where our holy days and our ideas and symbols, permeate public space, the calendar, and everday expressions and values the way you take for granted that yours should do here in our exile.

          I’m getting crochety. Time to go home.

            1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

              And don’t get me started about figures of speech. Not because it would be offensive, but because this is erev Shabbos, the day is short, the work is great, and it’s not something I can explain standing on one foot. Those who understand will understand. Most American Christians missed at least 3 out of the 4 Jewish allusions in those two sentences, but would think me terribly ignorant if I did not know what they mean by the road to Damascus, kneeling in the snow at Canossa, taking something as gospel, or taking the beam out of my own eye. They might even want to have a Come to Jsus meeting with me about my attitude if I objected one iota to those Christian metaphors. I usually turn the other cheek, because if I tried to explain our metaphors to them, or why I stay away from their metaphors, we’d be here until next Tisha b’Av.

    3. “And lo and behold, the little girl did!” Varda did not like living as a member of a minority culture, and so she moved to the place where she could be part of the majority.

      And what’s this nonsense about Christmas being “universal”? You yourself state that the meaning of the holiday is that “everyone, Jew or gentile” can become a Christian. Actually, anyone can become a Jew too, but you have to really, really want to, and to understand that you cannot remain a Christian or a Moslem or a Wiccan or whatever. I converted over 30 years ago, and I would compare it in intensity to Marine training, except that the Marines won’t let you in if you have, say, asthma, or something. As with born Jews, not all of us are white, and some of us are not even intellectual. What we are is committed to the Jewish people, to observing the Torah, and to believing in one G-d. The few. The proud. The gerei tzedek. Semper Fi.

      Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with loyalty to a particularistic cause or group, and I see no reason to apologize for it. Being Southern and Scotch-Irish have been of great advantage to me in this regard.

      Excuse me, I have to finish making my chicken soup so I can watch “Braveheart” again.

        1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

          If we boycotted every movie from directors or actors who are either raving anti-semites or raving Israel-bashers, there would be very few movies we could watch. Then again, many of us don’t watch movies at all because it’s a waste of time that could be spent learning Torah. Alas, I am not yet on the level to even aspire to that level.

        1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

          Mrs. Ahad feels the same way. Does he actually get royalties from TV viewings, Netflix and the like? “aim small, miss small” is still good advice.

            1. We download it from Pirate Bay.

              The Jews need to learn that at a certain point, we need to be good for ourselves, as Jabotinsky put it.

      1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

        Well said. And what is NOT universal is the idea that you are damned for all eternity if you do not become Christian, and get a Get Out of Hell Free card if you do. Judaism says “Come on board if you really, really want to, but we’re not going to make it easy for you to do it, because we need to know you know what you’re getting into.” And we also teach that if you DON’T convert, you can still earn a share in the world to come by living righteously. The supposedly universal Christianity says “Join us or be damned” – literally damned. But two millennia of the church spreading lies about Judaism has had quite an effect on the non-Jewish world.

        Glad that you perservered. You probably know that some of our greatest Sages were gerim or the descendants of gerim. Have a good Shabbos.

  10. NOTHING does a better job of reminding me that I’m a Jew better than Christmas in America. For that… I give thanks. ;-)) I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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