This congress is devoted to the problems of Jews among the Nations.
This stems from the definition of the Jewish nation as an entirely unique nation. And I believe in the uniqueness of the Jewish nation, for the simple reason that I believe every nation in the world is unique. Every nation in the world is so unique that we cannot even find a single definition that fits all nations. It is with the word nation as it is with the word people. There is no single definition that can encompass or define a nation such as the Swiss nation, or the Welsh nation, or the Zulu, or the Inuit. There is no single definition that holds good for the Jews and for the Roma. Each of us is unique, and the Jews are too. One of the characteristics of our nation is that it has been influenced by other nations; more so than others, sometimes. Many nations close in upon themselves, as for example the Gypsies.
The Jewish nation has, since its beginnings, been open to influences: Canaanite influence, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hellenistic, Christian, Muslim, European, and in our day American influence.
And it is possible that the fact of having been open to other nations always — even in biblical times, even in talmudic times — is the cause of its being one of the cultures that have had the most influence in the world since the Roman Empire.
Judaism is not a religion, it is a culture.
Our nation has developed cultures in many languages, in many countries, in interaction with other cultures. Judaism is not a religion. Judaism is a culture in which religion played an important role for several centuries, when religion played an important role in the cultures of all nations. But our culture accumulates what it acquires; our culture grows from one generation to the next. And the wisdom of the Jews is to know themselves to be a culture and not a religion, for religion in our day is not the predominant power in our life. In the famous dialogue between Begin and Bashevis Singer, Begin tried to explain to him, in a not very intelligent way, that we Israelis do not know Yiddish, that we do not use it, because with Yiddish one cannot have an army, one cannot train an army. Bashevis Singer replied to him: “Yiddish does not need an army.” The real question being: does the army need Yiddish? Does the army know the culture that has been developed in Yiddish, in Ladino, in French, in Russian, in English, and chiefly, over the last hundred years, renewed in Hebrew?
In the twentieth century we discovered the pluralism of Judaism throughout all eras.
Can our army, our youth, live without this accumulated culture? I believe not. And I believe that the greatest error of Jewish education is the abandonment of so many areas of our culture, the sense that it is enough to dwell within a single part of this culture, to shut oneself up in Hebrew culture alone, in Yiddish culture alone, in French culture alone. Jewish culture is based on interaction with other nations, other cultures, other languages. There are many Jewish languages, but there are also many creations of Jewish culture in the languages of other nations. That is why the bond between the Jewish nation and the other nations has so many facets, and that is why we cannot ignore any of them.
Too many Jews think of Judaism solely in terms of the past; but we cannot understand our past without knowing the present culture of the Jews, because in the twentieth century all the notions concerning that past have changed. In the twentieth century we discovered the pluralism of Judaism throughout all eras. And to be a Jew, a cultivated Jew, today, it is necessary to know the culture of the twentieth century, and the way in which twentieth-century Jewish culture looked at itself in a mirror. Every generation changes the past.
It can only look at the past through the eyes of the present, for those are the only ones it has, for that is the only education, the only vision it has.
If some visitor from the past — from the last century or from a thousand years ago — were to come and visit us, he would not recognize himself. He would not know who he is, if he looked at himself. And that is positive, it is the change of history. A talmudic story tells of Moses, who one day, being weary of paradise, came down to earth and went to attend a lecture by Rabbi Akiva. He sat down, the story says, in the row. And he listened to Rabbi Akiva, and realized that he did not understand a word. He looked around him. One of the students, seated beside him, asked Rabbi Akiva: “What do you mean by that? Why do you think you are right?” Then Rabbi Akiva answered him: “This was said by Moses.” And Moses, who understood nothing, rose and left.
The present is the light that allows us to see the past. And the present is unknown to us.
I say this because we live within a controversy, within what Pierre Vidal-Naquet calls “the conflict of interpretations.” The conflict of interpretation that began chiefly at the end of the Second Temple period continues in our own day. The conflict of interpretation of all our sources: of the Bible and of all the other sources. This conflict of interpretation is that of the factions laying claim to Judaism. Controversy is the cause of our unity. Controversy makes us one. Controversy is not bad, it is good.
Many Orthodox Jews have begun to develop a Jewish racism.
This view that I have just proposed — namely that Jewish culture is interaction with other cultures — this view is foreign to the great majority of Orthodox Jews.
They are against the secular because they are against interaction with other nations, other cultures. Particularly in Israel, and in the latest generation, many Orthodox Jews have begun to develop a Jewish racism; a feeling of superiority with respect to other nations. Namely that everyone has rights, but we have more rights than the others. This is not only anti-ethical; for me it is also anti-Jewish. It is exactly this that sets us against those who refuse to recognize the rights of the Palestinians, for example, because they belong to a nation different from ours. I believe that this orthodoxy ignores the fact that, since the prophet Amos, we are no longer a chosen people. We are a people that chooses but not a people that is chosen. We are a people obliged to choose a position within all our controversies, but we are no longer a chosen people, as Amos said.
Jewish orthodoxy ignores the fact that, since the prophet Amos, we are no longer a chosen people.
For Amos, speaking in the name of God, said: “You Jews are to me like the children of Ethiopia.” All nations are the same; the question is “how do you behave,” and not “who you are.” And sometimes, as you know, especially when we have a bad government, we behave very badly. Among us, in Israel, only half the population supports the current government. It is a government that has halted the peace process, as a consequence of the Jewish religious fanaticism that killed our Prime Minister, and of the Arab religious fanaticism that killed in the center of Tel Aviv and of Jerusalem just before the elections. The result is that we have a government that is trying to halt, to reverse the process of recognizing the right of all nations to self-determination, the right of all nations to define themselves and to define their own State.
This is a crime, and we are among those who may be condemned for this crime, for the militant educational effort of Orthodox Jews throughout the world has convinced a large part of the Jewish population in Israel that it has a right that the other nation, the Palestinians, does not have. All the Orthodox parties in Israel, except one small Orthodox party in favor of peace, point at us — the secular and the other cultivated citizens — aggressively. The Jewish public believes that Jews are superior, and that they are always persecuted, that the only relation between the Jews and the other nations concerns antisemitism or the Holocaust, that we have no interaction with other nations, because our culture is better than that of anyone else.
In the second half of the twentieth century a great change took place in the life of the Jewish nation. At the start of the century there was a great diaspora and a small Jewish settlement, of no importance, in Israel. Even when the State was born, in the middle of the century, most Jews did not think it was a serious matter. It is only after the war that saved us from annihilation, the Six-Day War, that people recognized that Israel was there to stay. Israel is a major power, perhaps the most important in the Middle East. But if that war saved us from annihilation, it also transformed us into an occupying nation.
Israel is a State that belongs to a nation, and not only to its inhabitants, not only to those who hold an Israeli passport.
And suddenly all the Jews of the world felt that they had to have an opinion about this occupying nation. Some were very proud, others were ashamed. Today Israel represents one of the greatest concentrations of Jews in the world. The birth rate of the Jews is one of the lowest in the Western hemisphere. In about twenty years the Jews in Israel will form the majority of the Jews in the world. For a long time it was thought that Israel was the center of a great military power, but not an intellectual power. Today the greatest spiritual, artistic, literary, and scientific Jewish centers are in Israel. Israel has become the center of the Jewish nation. That is why it has become justified for all Jews throughout the world to feel a part of it, because it is a State that belongs to a nation, and not only to its inhabitants, not only to those who hold an Israeli passport. This is another unique characteristic of our nation. And when terrorists attack Jews in various places, including here in Paris, they attack them because they regard them as responsible for what their government, the Israeli government, has done — signifying thereby that the situation in the world has changed. We are now like the Italians or the Irish, who have a nation and a large diaspora. But the nation, the center of the nation, is in Israel.
That is why the relation between Israel and its neighbors, between Israel and the other nations of the Middle East and of Asia, is crucial for the relations between the Jews and the other nations. It is, I believe, one of the central problems. The challenge is to change Israel, and to make of it once again a country that can be proud of its ethical origins.
For Zionism was not a religion, but the result of a struggle between secular Jews who thought a solution had to be found for the Jews in the world, and Orthodox Jews who still believe one must wait for the Messiah. This controversy became a real struggle between secular Zionist Jews and non-Zionist Orthodox Jews. This controversy was founded on the principle that the Jews must have not only a State, but a just State. Not only a victorious State, living in security, but also a State that lives in peace, that makes the ideals of the Jewish nation live, as they are defined by the prophets. That lives in accordance with ideals of justice.
Judaism is a plural culture, an open culture, that enriches itself through the influences of other cultures.
This is the reason why, at this congress, we speak not only of the relations between Jews and other nations, but also of the role that justice plays in Jewish culture and in Judaism as we understand them. This is the reason why I believe that we have the obligation to change Jewish education throughout the world.
We must rise up to face the Orthodox threat of making us revert to an anachronistic definition of Judaism conceived solely as a religion. We must once again make Judaism progressive. We must build an open society and a plural culture, an open culture, that enriches itself through the influences of other cultures and that can thereby also influence the other cultures. To achieve this, we humanist, secular Jews, we free Jews, in the world, free of religious obligations, of the obligations of the Halacha, have the obligation to change education, to be as militant as the Orthodox Jews in our education. Aggressive in the most peaceful sense — and it is possible to be aggressive and peaceful at the same time.