Israeli Jew speaks out about the racism, discrimination and

Posted on: November 20, 2023 at 13:58:51 CT

xenophobia that is prevalent among Jews:

This short book* can be read online or downloaded in various ebook formats, including .pdf at the link below.
* The book is about 80 pages sans the footnotes and forward.

Jewish History, Jewish Religion
The Weight of Three Thousand Years
by Israel Shahak
https://archive.org/details/IsraelShahakJewishHistoryJewishReligionTheWeightOfThreeThousandYears

Forward:

...Fortunately, the voice of reason is alive and well, and in Israel, of all places.
From Jerusalem, Israel Shahak never ceases to analyse not only the dismal politics of
Israel today but the Talmud itself, and the effect of the entire rabbinical tradition on a
small state that the right-wing rabbinate means to turn into a theocracy for Jews
only. I have been reading Shahak for years. He has a satirist's eye for the confusions
to be found in any religion that tries to rationalise the irrational. He has a scholar's
sharp eye for textual contradictions. He is a joy to read on the great Gentile-hating Dr
Maimonides.

Needless to say, Israel's authorities deplore Shahak. But there is not much to be
done with a retired professor of chemistry who was born in Warsaw in 1933 and
spent his childhood in the concentration camp at Belsen. In 1945, he came to Israel;
served in the Israeli military; did not become a Marxist in the years when it was
fashionable. He was - and still is - a humanist who detests imperialism whether in the
names of the God of Abraham or of George Bush. Equally, he opposes with great wit
and learning the totalitarian strain in Judaism. Like a highly learned Thomas Paine,
Shahank illustrates the prospect before us, as well as the long history behind us, and
thus he continues to reason, year after year...

Chapter 1

THIS BOOK, although written in English and addressed to people living
outside the State of Israel, is, in a way, a continuation of my political activities as an
Israeli Jew. Those activities began in 1965-6 with a protest which caused a
considerable scandal at the time: I had personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew
refuse to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for
a non-Jew who happened to have collapsed in his Jerusalem neighbourhood. Instead
of simply publishing the incident in the press, I asked for a meeting which is
composed of rabbis nominated by the State of Israel. I asked them whether such
behavior was consistent with their interpretation of the Jewish religion. They
answered that the Jew in question had behaved correctly, indeed piously, and backed
their statement by referring me to a passage in an authoritative compendium of
Talmudic laws, written in this century. I reported the incident to the main Hebrew
daily, Ha'aretz, whose publication of the story caused a media scandal.
The results of the scandal were, for me, rather negative. Neither the Israeli, nor
the diaspora, rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not
violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much
sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews
in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake.

...I am not trying to ignore the political or strategic
considerations which may have also influenced the rulers of Israel. I am merely
saying that actual politics is an interaction between realistic considerations (whether
valid or mistaken, moral or immoral in my view) and ideological influences. The
latter tend to be more influential the less they are discussed and 'dragged into the
light'. Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes more potent and
politically influential if it is taken for granted by the society which indulges in it. This
is especially so if its discussion is prohibited, either formally or by tacit agreement.
When racism, discrimination and xenophobia is prevalent among Jews, and directed
against non-Jews, being fueled by religious motivations, it is like its opposite case,
that of antisemitism and its religious motivations. Today, however, while the second
is being discussed, the very existence of the first is generally ignored, more outside
Israel than within it. ...