Editor's Notebook

Community Views

Giving Religion
A Bad Name

Do We As Jews
Wink At Oppressors?

GARY ROSENBLATT EDITOR

BERL FALBAUM SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Religious fa-
naticism is the
media topic of
the day. After
all, in the
same week we
can read about
a man in
A
Waco, Texas,
who claims to be Jesus, en-
gaged in a deadly shootout
with federal agents, and
growing evidence
that Islamic fun-
damentalists
may have been
behind the bomb-
ing at the World
Trade Center.
Are we simply
to assume that
the more reli-
gious a person is,
and the more fer-
vent he is in his
belief, the less
stable he is? Is
fundamentalism
another word for
religious
zealotry? Time
Magazine's cover
story this week
makes the con-
nection between
religious extremism and vio-
lence. Its headline reads, "In
The Name Of God," and fea-
tures photos of David Kore-
sh, leader of the Branch
Davidians cult in Waco, and
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman,
the blind Islamic fundamen-
talist in Jersey City, New
Jersey, whose follower is un-
der arrest for the World
Trade Center bombing. The
subhead for the cover says,
"What happens when believ-
ers embrace the dark side of
faith."
A lead essay in the maga-
zine notes how "faith, the
sweetest refuge and consola-
tion, may harden by perverse
miracle, into a sword — or
anyway into a club or a torch
or an assault rifle." One need
only look at the violence be-
tween Hindus and Muslims
of India, among Orthodox
Serbs and Bosnian Muslims
and Catholic Croats, and
among Islamic fundamen-
talists in the Arab world to
understand that religious be-
liefs can fuel the deadliest
feelings of violence and ha-
tred.
Judaism, of course, has
had its zealots, too, and there
is a distinct ambivalence in
our compassion, and for tak-
ing up arms only when ab-
solutely necessary.
Rabbi Meir Kahane, the
late militant founder of the
Jewish Defense League, was
adept at exploiting the dif-
ferences between biblical and

later talmudic approaches to
zealotry. In debates, he
would cite incidents in the
Bible where violence was
praised, such as Phineas'
spearing to death an Israelite
who had brought a Midian-
ite woman into the encamp-
ment. But he was selective in
his use of biblical references
and he ignored passages that
speak of the requirement to

ago, it meant very, very-
religious. Today it means,
simply, religious." Not sur-
prisingly, there is a certain
hostility toward religion it-
self in connecting faith with
a form of stubbornness that
can turn violent. But not
every believer in God who
prays and observes ritual
laws is a fundamentalist, or
someone whose orthodoxy re-

Is violence part of the message?

care for the stranger in your
midst.
In Judaism, even among
those who believe that every
word of the Torah is the lit-
eral truth, there is no insis-
tence that the law ended
with the Torah. Rather, our
religion is based on the
notion that later rabbinic
commentary, through the
Talmud and other important
writings, is elevated to au-
thority. The Written Law

One can be a
God-fearing
person and still
have genuine
tolerance for
those who think
differently.

cannot be studied without
the later Oral Law, and this
is a powerful difference be-
tween Judaism and what we
think of as fundamentalist
faiths.
The truth is that "funda-
mentalist" is an over-used
word that contributes to a
negative image of religion in
general. As Leon Wieseltier
pointed out in an essay on
fundamentalism, "Ten years

sists modernism as evil, who

cannot tolerate doubt or am-
biguity, and who wants to re-
turn to sacred history.
Even those Israeli militant
nationalists like Gush Emu-
nim, who cite the Bible as
their source for reclaiming
land now inhabited mostly by
Arabs, believe in rabbinic in-
terpretation, and use it to
support their views.
Like other religions,
though, Judaism has seen a
rise in fundamentalism in re-
cent years, from those in the
yeshiva world who seek to
distance themselves ever fur-
ther from secular society to
those Chasidim who are pre-
pared to crown the ailing, 90-
year-old Lubavitcher Rebbe
as Moshiach, or Messiah.
What is frightening about
what we have come to call
fundamentalism is not the
fervor of one's religious be-
liefs but the conviction that
absolute faith cannot abide
any other belief, or no belief
at all. Our religious leaders
need to stress that one can be
a God-fearing person and
still have genuine tolerance
for those who think differ-
ently.
Until that time, too many
religious people will be de-
fined not by their faith or
good deeds but by the David
Koreshes and Sheik Rah-
mans who pervert religion in
the name of God. El

There is an old
story about two
Jews who, fac-
ing a firing
squad, were
asked by the
commander if
either had a last

request.
As one of the two raised his
hand, the other turns to him
and says: "Don't start any
trouble."
It is a funny, cute little
anecdote but, unfortunately,
says much about the Jewish
body politic and psyche.
One might even go further
and speculate that as the con-
demned man warned his col-
league not to challenge his
oppressor, he gave the com-
mander a wink.
We Jews, as a people, have
historically "winked" at our
oppressors, implying that we
are partly to blame for our
fate and, in a complementary
strategy, reached out to sup-
port as many causes of oth-
er oppressed people as we
possibly could find.
History certainly speaks to
our limitless endurance for
masochism and it also bears
testimony to our penchant for
liberal causes.
Why we have behaved in
this manner is not easily ex.:
plained. It rests on deep his-
torical, political, religious,
economic and social reasons.
And no one has examined
these better than Dr. Ruth R.
Wisse in her most recent
book, If I Am Not For Mysplf

In is a powerful, cogent
statement, Dr. Wisse articu-
lates how the liberal philoso-
phy hardly has served the
interests of Jews, leading to
the fact that anti-Semitism
has been the 20th century's
most durable ideology.
One is tempted to "correct"
her and broaden the concept
to read that it has been his-
tory's most durable ideology.
The book is more im-
portant than Chutzpah by
Harvard Professor Alan Der-
showitz. Mr. Dershowitz was
right in his premise that
Jews need to speak out and
do so forcefully; the problem
is that Jewish history and
politics are always defined
around Alan Dershowitz who
certainly understands how to
attract media attention. If the
"I" had been removed from
his keyboard, he probably
would not have been able to
write the book.
Dr. Wisse articulates much

Berl Falbaum is a freelance writer
and regular contributor to
Community Views.

of the same theme but does
so in a more scholarly, mean-
ingful way.
Her work is steeped in his-
tory and scholarship, and she
is probably one of the most
perceptive commentators on
Jewish political affairs pres-
ently analyzing either do-
mestic issues or the Mideast
conflict.
She is a "graduate" of Pod-
horetz-Kristol neo-conserv-
ative politics and much of her
work appears in Commentary
and, more recently, The For-

ward.

Throughout the book Dr.
Wisse, former professor of
Yiddish literature at McGill
who recently moved to Har-
vard, takes the liberal com-
munity to task.
Indeed, her book is subti-
tled "The Liberal Betrayal of
the Jews." Pointing out how
Jews have historically always
been politically liberal, even
when it was not in their best
interests, she observes:
"The Jewish will to good-
ness may be a wonderful
thing, but not when it comes
at the expense of defending
the Jews as a people."
One can take her principle
a little further, a point she
does not cover: It does not
have to be an "either-or"
proposition; it can be both —
liberal while serving the Jew-
ish people's own interests.
The trouble with Jews is
that they have always been
prepared to work for others

"History certainly
speaks to our
limitless
endurance for
masochism and it
may also bear
testimony to our
penchant for
liberal causes."

— commendable indeed —
but not themselves.
She also discusses at great
length the reluctance of Jews
to speak out when it comes to
their interests, whether it is
against anti-Semitism or in
defense of Israel.
She points out how Jewish
leaders in the community
work to deflect "the forces of
hatred."
"As his (the Jewish lead-
er's) enemies try to drive a
wedge between the Jews and
all others, he tries to demon-
strate his attachment to the
others by proving his inde-