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Israel, Ready to Respond
Learn to respond and discuss the
important issues facing Israel today
Dauid Illakousky
Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. His keynote topic will be "Israel's Latest War"
Sunday, March 2, 2003 • 1 to 3:30 pm
Jewish Community Center, D. Dan & Betty Kahn Building
Eugene & Marcia Applebaum Jewish Community Campus
6600 W. Maple Road,West Bloomfield
David Makovsky is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy,where he focuses on Arab-Israeli relations and US
foreign policy on the Middle East. An award-winning journalist who
has covered the Middle East peace process since 1989, Mr.
Makovsky is currently a contributing editor of US News and World
Report. Mr. Makovsky appears frequently on the PBS NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer, ABC News, and many other television programs.
no charge • Registration required by feb. 25
Call Cherron Jackson at (248) 642-4260, ext. 225
or jackson@jfmd.org
Special Israeli menu available at Milk & Honey Restaurant
Reservations required, call (248) 661-2327
Break-out sessions will feature the following:
Dauid Makousky
Keynote speaker
Question and Answer Session
Owen Alterman
Research assistant to Alan Dershowitz
The Palestinian Argument and Their Strategy
David Gad-Hart
Executive Director, Jewish Community Council
Advocating For Israel:
What To Say and Whom to Say It To
Rabbi Elazar Meisels
Dirshu Institute of Torah Education
Why This Plot of Land?
Michael Weiss
Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit
Land of Miracles: Eretz Yisrael in the Midrash
2/14
2003
78
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Journalist probes the historical intolerance
Jews have displayed toward one another —
and its effect on today's Middle East.
AARON LEIBEL
The liberal, secular ideas of that
movement, which the Jews absorbed as
they burst out of the ghettos, under-
mined rabbinical authority and created
here is a danger of civil war
a world of denominational Judaism.
if Israel reaches a territorial
Then, as anti-Semitism rose in the
compromise with the
19th century, the Jewish people coun-
Palestinians, but the risk of
tered -it with the Zionist movement,
not making such a deal due to pressure
from Orthodox settlers in the West Bank Viorst continues.
Within that movement, religious
and Gaza Strip is even more dangerous,
Zionism arose, which at first was a very
says a journalist-historian who has writ-
small minority, claiming to combine
ten extensively on the Middle East.
traditional Judaism with a return to the
"By not compromising with the
Jewish people's historical land.
Palestinians, we will see more and more
After the 1967 Six-Day War, those
bloodshed on both sides," said Milton
religious Zionists combined with the
Viorst of Washington, D.C., whose
Revisionist movement,
What Shall I Do With This
then led by Knesset
People: Jews and the Fractious
WHA T SHALL I DO
Politics ofJudaism (Free Press;
member and later
WITH THIS PEOPLE?
Prime Minister
$25) deals with the divisive-
Menachem Begin, to
ness of the Jewish people and
prevent the return of
its effects on Jews and Israel. -
the land taken in that
Viorst concedes there is a
war, Viorst says.
danger of Israeli civil war, as
"We are in crisis," he
settlers may resist giving up
says. "Not only are
territory
Jews and tbeframious
Jews deeply divided by
"But if it requires a cer-
}VW. of Judaism
.• .•
.•
conflicting concepts of
tain amount of coercion
MILTON
Judaism,
but also reli-
and pressure from outside
VIORST .1
. •
gious Zionists — who
forces like the U.S., so be
have substituted the
it," he said. "I would hope
Viorst sees himself as an
worship of land for the
that pressure from the out-
analyst of the problems in
worship of God — in
side would prevent civil
the Jewish world and in
alliance with the
war. But I can't imagine
Israeli not someone who
Revisionists have
allowing settlers to prevent
necessarily has the solutions.
become the dominant
Israel from arriving at a
political force in Israel
peace settlement."
making it difficult to compromise."
The problem is, the author noted,
These forces came together, he
that "if you believe you are doing God's
believes, in the assassination of former
work [as those settlers do], you have no
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
incentive for compromise."
"In retrospect, it is clear the anger
What Shall I Do With These People
that produced the assassination [of
— the title refers to a rhetorical ques-
Rabin] had been simmering not just
tion a frustrated Moses asked God in
since 1967 but since the schism
the Sinai about the "stiff-necked"
between religious and secular Jews dur-
Israelites — chronicles the fractious
ing the Enlightenment," he writes.
nature of the Jewish people.
"Though the breach seemed harmless
But, Viorst argues, the intolerance of
for many decades, it had never healed.
Jews for the opinions of other Jews has
The Six-Day War only reopened it. When
grown worse in recent years.
Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, religious
Jews seemed to lose all interest in bridging
Out Of The Ghetto
their differences with Jewish secularism."
This radicalism can be traced to the
effects of the 18th-century
New Jersey Roots
Enlightenment, which fractured Jewish
Viorst, who is a member of Adas Israel
unity, says the author.
Washington Jewish Week
7
•
Special session for high school seniors and college students from
F
3 e edercton
Crisis In Judaism
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Arrangements for
David Makovsky made
through B'nai Brkh
Lecture Bureau
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