- What I'll do with you this morning,
this lovely New Year's morning,
is to introduce you to the concept
that I believe is the
most misunderstood idea
when it comes to Israel.
It is often willfully abused,
and if I do my job well
at the end of my talk
you will be far more confused about it
than you are right now.
So what do I want to address?
What I want to address is the
question of what does it mean
when we say that Israel
is the Jewish state.
What is that?
What does it mean to say
that we've established a
Jewish state, what is it?
So for that, I have to
say a few words about
what it means to be Jewish, right?
Now when we speak of being Jewish,
we often talk about history, tradition
we emphasize thousands of years of history
and for good reason,
we go all the way back to
speaking of the ancestors
of the Hebrews.
The Hebrew are people
who emerged from Abraham
went to Egypt, supposedly
built the pyramids
or something else,
stayed there for few hundred years
and through exodus came back to this land.
Then they established a kingdom
and became known as the
Israelites, the Kingdom of Israel,
Israel being the grandson of Abraham,
the Israelites, the Kingdom of Israel,
and then we speak later,
the Israelites too were
exiled by the Babylonians
later brought back by the Persians,
establishing the Kingdom of Judaism.
And when we speak with the Jewish people
were really beginning with Judaism.
Now you can help me
there seemed to be between you quite a few
language knowledge.
And literally every language in the world
to the best of my knowledge
other than English and French,
where you say Jew or Juif,
all languages acknowledge that the Jews
are essentially the people of Judaic.
Certainly in Hebrew we
say Yahudi in Arabic Yahud
in Japanese or Chinese I believe
it's something like Udaya
I was told in Portuguese
something like Yahudi
or in Hindi as,
if anyone wants to continue
the language they're welcome.
But I think pretty much, which one is the?
- In Spanish Judio.
- Judio
there we go.
So literally every language in the world
recognized this is who
the Jewish people are.
The Jewish people are the people of Judea.
Now already with the
Hebrews and the Israelites
we have a story
that is the people have
of leaving and coming back
back and forth.
Part of the history of
this emerging people
is this connection to this place
that is about leaving and coming
back, leaving, coming back.
The most recent phase of that
is when the Kingdom of Judea
known for repeatedly
rebelling against the empire's
most recently that part
of the Roman Empire.
Basically one point the
Roman empire decides
to put an end to this annoying kingdom
that repeatedly rebels,
the Romans being Romans
they're very effective at it.
They raised a place to the ground
and sent many of the leadership notables
and people into exile dispersing them.
And this is really when
we begin to speak of the Jewish people,
the Jewish people is really the story
of the people of Judea in exile.
Now, the people of Judea
given their history,
the kind of the predecessors
the Israelites, the Hebrews
have an expectation of returning
it's already part of their history,
exodus, the Persian return
after the Babylonian exile.
So they have an expectation of return,
but this time it lasts for a while
and it lasts for nearly 2000 years.
Now what happens during those 2000 years
when people have today up are in exile.
The two most important developments
for the people of Judah.
It's actually the emergence
of two great civilizations
to emerge from Judaic thinking,
especially the idea of
law, equality before God
and especially in monotheistic,
one God, unknowable, unsayable.
The two civilizations to
emerge from Judaic thinking
are initially Christianity
and later Islam.
Why are these very important developments
for the people of Judea?
Because both Christianity and Islam
claim to be the truth, correct,
better interpretation of Judaic thinking.
And both of them are also
converting religions,
converting civilizations.
And indeed a lot of Jews, Judeans convert.
Accepting the idea that
this is a better truth,
a better interpretation.
In fact, if they had not converted
we would be several hundreds
of millions of Jews today.
Who knows, maybe a billion.
We're obviously not.
There are 16 million Jews in
the world today, one, six.
Who are the Jews today?
By definition, we are the ancestors
of those who didn't convert, right?
We are the heirs of those
who insisted on not
accepting this new truth,
this new interpretation.
Now I asked you to leave for a moment
your 21st century thinking,
the idea that we are all
respectful of each other's ideas,
hates, religions,
put yourself a little bit for moment
in the mindset of Game of Thrones
(mumbling)
you know you win or you die.
So imagine this kind of mindset.
You come here within new
truth and you interpretation
and there is this people who say no.
They say, look, Christ
might be a very good Rabbi
he's no messiah,
Muhammad might be a great
leader, he's no prophet.
How tolerant are you going
to be of that people.
Obviously not a lot.
And in deepest Christianity and Islam
develop towards their remaining Judaism's,
a very adverse attitude
that also becomes part of social norms,
theology, legal practice
that basically says
these people don't belong,
they are headed to the dustbin of history.
They can't be considered moral beings.
The choose well because good
between good and evil
because it can't be that in rejecting
the new testament,
rejecting the new prophesy
they are choosing morally.
And in both these civilizations
the idea of the Jew as the other,
as an immortal being
becomes very much part of the fabric
of pretty much every cultural output.
Now, being a Jew under these conditions
is four centuries of one thing.
If you choose not to
convert, if you remain a Jew,
being Jewish is essentially one package,
one coherent whole.
What does it mean?
It means that you belong
to a people, to a nation,
to a tribe.
You have a covenant with God,
you have a common tradition in history,
you have common rituals and practices
and most important to have common future.
What is the future?
It's the future of restoration
when your people will be
returned to their original land,
restored to sovereignty,
the Messiah will come
that is the common future,
the one that keeps Jews believing
that it's still worthwhile
to be who they are.
And if you're Jewish, you are
in with the entire package.
You're part of a people,
of a nation, of a tribe,
a covenant with God.
You're in with the entire package
no picking and choosing.
What if you want out,
you don't want to be
part of this denigrated,
discriminated against marginalized group.
Well, you're only out is conversion
converts to Christianity,
converts to Islam and you're out.
If you're out, you're out completely.
You no longer are with your
people, with your family
you're out.
The dominant culture
might still suspect you
as they do converts,
but your children and
grandchildren will probably before
and obviously a lot of people did.
And that's a situation for centuries,
1500, 1600, 1700 years
and then modernity,
the modern era
and the modern era introduces
a whole lot of new ideas,
the ideas known as the enlightenment,
the idea that the radical idea
that human beings are
masters of their fate,
that human beings need not accept
a divinely ordained hierarchical order
where everyone knows their place.
This is the essence of
the modern revolution.
The modern revolution says
we no longer accept if in fact
the idea that there is a God
and certainly we do not accept
that there is a divinely
ordained, a hierarchical order
where everyone has a
place in the hierarchy
where everyone knows their place
and where no one challenging
their place, right?
it's the essence of premodernity.
You don't challenge your place
how you were born, whatever
station you're born into,
whatever role you're born
into, that's your life,
and that's how you die.
Modernity challenges all of that
brings the idea of the enlightenment
of the mastery of faith.
The idea that how you are born
should not determine
the course of your life
and how you die.
And with the ideas there
emerges the idea of the nation,
the people,
the people who give
the authority to rulers
rather than God.
So the idea of the nation
and it is the idea of the secular nation
and all of the ideas really
explode on the world stage
with the French revolution.
The idea of the quality, of the liberty
and the solidarity of human beings
in pursuit of their essence.
And the French revolution also brings
the idea of the French Republic, right?
That secular republic where
everyone is a citizen.
This new idea of the citizen
rather than the subject
and something new is born
France, the nation, the secular republic,
the citizen,
and as Napoleon sweeps across Europe
with the ideas of the French Revolution.
I'm sure you know in his mind,
he was the liberator of
Europe, not a conqueror.
And when he brings the ideas,
he also brings them to the Jews
and he tells them, look,
you are hereby emancipated,
and what does it mean that
the Jews are emancipated?
He tells them, look, you can be French.
You can be equal, a citizens
of the French republic
and it will no longer matter
that you weren't Jewish.
Think how radical that is
for Jews who spent hundreds of years
knowing their place in a hierarchy,
they are being told you
can be equal in our society
and the fact that you're
Jewish, it doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters
is that you are a citizen of France
or Germany or Italy or Spain
or all of the nations
that begin to be created
in that moment of history.
There was a caveat and the caveat is this,
in the words of Napoleon
to the Jews that says,
as individuals you shall have every
but as it people, nothing.
Why as individuals everything
and as a people nothing.
Because it's individuals,
you are citizens,
equal citizens of a republic.
Everything, equality.
Why as a people nothing.
Because this is the moment
that the French nation is born,
the idea of solidarity
among all French people,
the idea of the German nation,
the idea of the Italian nation.
Well, if there's a French nation,
there cannot be a Jewish
nation within it, right?
Only a French nation and all
our loyal to that nation.
So this is the first moment in history
when Jews are basically told to set aside
the tribal national people aspect
of their identity
and leave only the elements
of ritual, faith, religion.
This is in fact the moment in history
where Judaism is denigrated
to the role of religion.
Now, a lot of people are
surprised by this comment.
They say, but Judaism is a religion
and the answer is no.
That is a common mistake,
it is a western mistake
because it is a western construct
to say that Judaism is a religion only
the idea of Judaism as a religion
separate from the idea
of a people and a nation
and the tribe,
mergers particularly at
that moment in history
when other nations are being formed
and this for the first time
creates a new way of being Jewish
by picking and choosing, right?
Up until this moment I
said it's one package
you're either in or out.
But for the first time
you pick and choose.
You say, okay, I leave
the elements of faith,
ritual, religion,
and I set aside the elements
of people nation tribe
and I become French or German or Italian.
And this is how many
Jews lived to this day.
This is one creation of the modern era
the idea that Judaism is your
private or communal religion,
but your national belonging
and loyalty is to the nation.
And this was something
that a lot of Jews loved,
they finally left the ghettos
with the ideas of
enlightenment and emancipation,
going to the big cities, becoming German,
becoming French, becoming
Italian was a great moment
when we speak of a lot
of Jewish achievements
and science and arts,
a lot of them are from that moment
when people leave they're
enclosed surroundings
into the big world.
One person who did that,
his name is Theodor Herzl,
he left his native
Budapest to go to Vienna
to pursue his dream of
being a German playwright.
Herzl believe that he was
finally living at the right time.
The time when Jews are emancipated, equal,
when it will no longer
matter that one is Jewish.
It will not be a baggage,
it will not be a problem.
He is as Viennese, as
German as anyone else.
He goes to college in Vienna
to university in Vienna.
He joins a very prestigious club
which he's very happy to join.
But then he begins to see
the rise of the new ideology.
It is under the idea that
it's scientific, progressive
and the ideology says,
actually humanities divided into races
and there's a hierarchy of races
and suddenly the Jews are
designated as a different race.
They're being told that
they aren't Semitic
from the name Shem, the son of Noah.
Why Semitic?
Many Jews were in Europe
long before most Europeans were in Europe.
Why were the Jews designated
as a different race?
Simply to say that they're
not European that's all.
And Herzl sees the rise of this new idea.
He later graduates, he goes to Paris,
he covers the Dreyfus
affair as a journalist,
he notices the cries and the
squares against the Jews.
He sees how Captain Dreyfus,
a man who believed in the
idea of the French Republic
of loyalty to the nation of
France is charged with treason
for no good reason that he's a Jew.
Herzl takes in all that and
he says, okay, I get it.
You Europeans, you talk
the talk of equality,
but you can't walk the walk.
You tell us we are the same,
you tell us we are your equals,
but when it actually comes to behaving
like we are your equals,
you just can't do it.
So religion is no longer
an acceptable idea,
so now you come up with a new idea
and you tell us we're a different race,
but you just always
come up with a new idea
to tell us that we don't belong.
So Herzl says and other people with him
thinking at that time noticing
that phenomena that hypocrisy
and they're saying, you know what?
The price that we paid in saying
that the Jews are not a
people that were not a nation
there were only a religion.
That was actually too high a price to pay.
If anything were one of
the world's first peoples,
first nations.
The story of exodus, what
is the story of exodus,
but it's story of a
people and a nation born,
we have given the world the mythology
and the mythology and imagery
of what it means to be
a people in the nation.
So we are a people and we are a nation,
and if we're living in an
era where every people,
a nation is beginning to
free themselves from empire,
to claim the right to govern themselves,
what is ultimately called the
right to self determination.
Well, if we are living in that era
than we the Jews have that right to,
we are people, we are a nation
and therefore we partake in
what is a universal right
of every people's to govern themselves,
to be masters of their
fate, not just individually
but the collectively.
And this is the birth of Zionism,
as a political movement to
liberate the Jewish people
to make them sovereign
again in where else,
but the only land to which they ever held
a historical and cultural connection.
Now Zionism creates a
new way of being Jewish
because Zionism is a very secular idea.
Zionism at its birth
is even an atheist idea
because it's a rebellion.
It's a rebellion against God and Messiah.
Why?
So many people think of
Zionism in terms of religion
God returned to the land.
Zionism is a modern secular rebellion
in which the Zionists leaders
go to the Jews around Europe
and basically tell them this,
I'm paraphrasing obviously.
Look, you've been praying
for God and Messiah
for how long now?
1800 years, 1900 years.
How well did that work out for you, right?
So if you want to change
the course of history,
if you want to emerge
from your current phase,
if you want to be masters of your faith,
we do it on our own.
We wait for no one, we wait for no God,
we wait for no Messiah,
we do it by ourselves.
And Zionism is born out
of the secular rebellion
to take charge over the
course of Jewish history.
And therefore it has
very secular beginnings
and it creates a new way of being Jewish.
When Theodor Herzl writes his book,
we came to talk of
Vienna, (foreign language)
the state of the Jews, the Jewish state,
he thinks Jews or Jewish
not like Christian,
not like Catholic, not like
Protestant, not like Muslim.
He thinks Jewish like French,
Jewish like Italian, Jewish like Spanish.
He thinks of it as a
secular national republic
and it's not for Jews only,
egalitarian, inclusive, it's secular idea,
a republic.
A lot of Jews who live today in Israel
and by extension around the world
continue to live under
this way of being Jewish,
national, tribal people,
but not religious.
I call myself a devout atheist
many Jews are.
A lot of people who
hear of a Jewish atheist
think that it doesn't compute
the reason being that they
are under the mistaken
historical notion that
Judaism is a religion.
But there is no need in Judaism
to believe to profess faith
there's no requirement
you could be very Jewish,
absolutely no belief in the existence
of a transcendental God.
This is why Judaism is
generally very comfortable
with atheism it does not
make the requirement or faith
and belief.
So many Israelis, many Jews
have a sense of being Jewish
in the modern era that is about
solidarity with their people
with their nation say with their tribe,
but not at all about a
matter of faith and belief.
So in other way of being Jewish
since the modern era, right?
The era that began to picking
apart of the Jewish identity.
In Zionism and early Zionism
you take the national tribal aspect,
the people aspect, you set
aside the faith, the ritual.
Now, one of the most powerful
forces in Israel today
politically is called religious Zionism,
was Zionism is such a secular idea
how can there be religious Zionism?
Well, religious Zionism is
based on a very simple premise.
God works in mysterious ways, right?
People of faith have that idea
that God works in mysterious ways.
Religious Zionists saw what
early Zionists doing and said
we kind of liked that,
but we don't like the rebellion
against religion aspect,
so what we're going to say
is that God works in mysterious ways.
For some reason, God has
chosen atheist to do his work,
which is a bizarre choice
on behalf of God granted,
but unbeknownst to them,
these Godless people
were doing God's work.
God is now in the process
of redeeming his people.
We are living in the era of redemption,
of bringing the people
back to the Holy Land,
like the prophecy,
and it began by people
who didn't believe in God,
but it doesn't matter
it is still God's work.
And religious Zionism,
although a very marginal
movement for much of Zionism
became powerful in the last 40 years
after two main events, two wars,
1967 and 1973.
Served for many people as supposedly proof
that they were living indeed
in the era of redemption.
Right, what happened in the Six-Day War,
Israel moved from a day
where it felt that it was
about to be annihilated
and within six days and amazing triumph.
Israel triumph is over five Arab armies
captures land tripled the size of Israel,
the Sinai peninsula in the south,
the Golan Heights in the north,
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Now the West Bank is
not just the West Bank
of the Jordan River source of its name
it is Judea, much of Judea is there.
I live in Tel Aviv, I love Tel Aviv
and I would live nowhere else,
but even secular atheist Tel Aviv in me
recognizes that there
is a greater historical
cultural connection
between the Jewish people,
the Judeans and Judea.
Six years later, 1973, the Yom Kippur War
on the holiest day to the Jewish people,
the Day of atonement Yom Kippur.
Israel is attacked from
the north and the south,
truly about to face inhalation,
ultimately able to eek
victory at a tremendous cost.
You live through 67
and 73 two close events
and you've been raised
your life to believe
that God works in mysterious ways
to bring about the redemption
of the Jewish people
at this time, this is proof.
You've seen it with your eyes.
You've seen the return
to the biblical lands
to the places of the
cradle of the civilization
of the Jewish people.
So religious Zionism becomes another way
of being Jewish.
And then I'm sure there is
what you often think of as Jewish people
wearing these black very
traditional clothes.
Have you ever wondered
why people who claim to
be very religiously devout
wear clothes that were
very popular in Poland
in the 17th century, the height of that.
Why?
Because that's the time and
place that they want to freeze.
In that sense, Jewish Orthodoxy
is also a modern movement
because it is a response to modernity
by raising the walls and saying,
we want to freeze Jewish life
before all these crazy
ideas began to infiltrate,
emancipation and it being a religious Jew
have a different nations,
Zionism, communism.
I mean, stop, stop, all that.
Have you ever seen the movie
or the play fiddler on
the roof or the book?
That's what it's about.
It's a parable about the
change in Jewish life
about the assault and the
traditional form of Jewish life
through the daughters.
Each daughter represents
a different challenge
to the tradition.
So that's another way of being Jewish.
And on the very extreme part of that
maybe you've ever wondering
if you've seen very religious looking Jews
in anti Israel demonstrations.
They hold up signs, Jews against Israel,
and you must be thinking well,
if Jews are against Israel.
Israel must be doing something awful
and it literally has no connection.
Israel could be the most
perfect nation on Earth.
Their opposition to Israel is theological
because they got Zionism right,
they understood the Zionism
was a secular rebellion
against God and Messiah
and they said,
you do not get to decide
when you return to the land,
you do not get to do it on your own.
You wait, you wait, you pray
and God and Messiah will come
into their own good time.
So that's another way of being Jewish.
And there are also many ways in America,
there are strains, reform and conservative
and what do we do
everyone's been picking and
choosing their Jewish identity.
And who gets to say what's
the right way to be Jewish
or the wrong way to be Jewish, right?
How do we decide, we have no church,
we have no pope, we have no
superior arbiter of doctrine
who says that's the right way to think
or the wrong way to think.
So what do we do?
How do we decide what's
the right way to be Jewish
or the wrong way to be Jewish.
Well, what the Jews do we argue, right?
That's what we do
we argue and we debate.
And that is basically
what we've been doing.
Arguing and debating what
it means to be Jewish
in the modern era.
And based on that, I have the definition
for what it means to be the Jewish state.
I call it the definition
to end all definition,
will need none of it.
My definition of the Jewish state
is that it's the one state in the world
where you get to argue
about what it means to
be the Jewish state.
And I want to content with
some very accurate definition.
Israel from day one and
Zionism from day one,
120 years ago with the first
convention of Zionist Congress
has been a fierce debate
about what it means to
be the Jewish state.
Now why can this debate be so fierce
Well, two main reasons.
The first, as I said,
we have no arbiter of what's the right way
to interpret Judaism.
So we argue
and the reason is that Judaism
is an ancient civilizations.
What do you have in ancient civilizations?
You have a whole lot of texts
and a whole lot of traditions,
a whole lot of people who said
a whole lot of things, right?
Over thousands of years.
You can literally pick and choose
anything you want to justify
any position you want.
I was a member of
parliament for few years.
I would sit at the Israeli plenary
listening to people defined
the most opposing views
and claiming that that is
the correct interpretation
of what it means to be Jewish
and they are all correct.
There is no correct interpretation.
Ultimately Judaism is in the
hands of its interpreters
and the idea of the Jewish state
is in the hands of its
interpreters, Jews and non Jews.
And this is by the way why Israel
is such a strong democracy.
We often like to mention
that we're a democracy.
I'm sure you've heard that.
We'd like to emphasize
that we're the only
democracy in the region
and by the way, from good reason.
Israel by now, not just in the region
is one of the world's longest
continuous democracies.
There aren't many countries in the world
that by now have been in existence
for all seven years and over
who have been continuously democratic,
no military coups, new civil wars,
no suspension of elections,
continuous.
And one of the reasons is because
we have been so fiercely
arguing for so long.
I have a colleague who says
that if you want to understand democracy,
and what makes democracy.
It's not voting everyone
votes, it's not parliaments
every dictatorship has a parliament.
He calls it the habit of
legitimate disagreement.
The idea that you have a habit,
and certainly Israelis,
Zionist is even Jews
have been inhabit of disagreeing
and that it is a legitimate disagreement
in the sense that you will
look at the other person
even though they are saying things
that in your view are awful,
will take this country on the road to hell
and you accept their legitimacy
as your counterpart to this debate.
That's actually quite remarkable.
I would sit at parliament look at people
whom I believed were doing our country
like the worst path,
they're taking us in the
worst possible direction,
and yet I sat with him.
And I agreed to vote as a mechanism
between us and that if they won the vote,
I accepted the outcome
I tried to change it,
but I accept the rules.
It's actually a remarkable
achievement in general
of all democracies.
So this habit of legitimate disagreement
is what has made Israel
such a vibrant democracy.
It is very much rooted in our Zionist
and Jewish is recruiting.
So I hope I have succeeded
in thoroughly confusing you
about what it means to be Jewish
and the Jewish state that is purpose.
Thank you.
and I think we have plenty
of time for comments.
