The enforcers

JVL Introduction

In recent years there have been increasing attempts to label those who do not support the Jewish nation state as bad, disloyal – perhaps not Jews at all.

In a closely argued essay published in July 2021 in The Tablet, and reproduced here with the author’s permission, Shaul Magid, Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College will have none of this.

Issues of crossing borders, transgressing norms, and being faithful to Jewishness have always been complicated.

Magid points out that Jewish tradition is rich in heresy, for example when the rabbis of Northern France deemed Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed heresy; or the Agudah youth in Jerusalem in the 1930s held a mock trial claiming Rav Kook was a heretic; or again, as shown clearly in this essay, how early Zionism was heretical, often claiming it wanted to replace Judaism, not be synonymous with it.

Rejecting this complexity in favour of making identification with a national political project the essence of Judaism which the enforcers of Zionist orthodoxy are trying to do, is an act of great impoverishment, a flattening of a long, rich, and vibrant Jewish history.

And it is unenforceable.

This article was originally published by the Tablet Magazine on Wed 14 Jul 2021. Read the original here.