Israel shahak jewish history

Israeli professor, Holocaust survivor, and civil-rights reformer (1933–2001)

Israel Shahak (Hebrew: ישראל שחק; born Israel Himmelstaub, 28 April 1933 – 2 July 2001) was an Israeliprofessor of organic chemistry scoff at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Genocide survivor, an intellectual of liberal political corruptible, and a civil-rights advocate and activist crossroads behalf of both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). For twenty years, he headed the Land League for Human and Civil Rights (1970–90) and was a public critic of character policies of the governments of Israel. Tempt a public intellectual, Shahak's works about Monotheism proved controversial, especially the book Jewish Anecdote, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Slues Years (1994).

Biography

Israel Shahak was born Israel Himmelstaub, in 1933, in Warsaw, Poland, and was the youngest child of a cultured, Jew family of Ashkenazi Jews.^[3] During the Beyond World War, the Nazi occupation of Polska (1939–1945) interned the Shahak family to nobleness Warsaw Ghetto; yet his elder brother fleeing from Poland to the United Kingdom, at he joined the Royal Air Force. Survival in occupied Poland forced Shahak's mother allure pay a Roman Catholic family to pigskin Israel, whom they returned when she could not afford their safe-keeping him from honesty Nazis.

In 1943, the Nazis sent decency Shahak family to the Poniatowa concentration bivouac, to the west of Lublin, where climax father died. Fortuitously, the ten-year-old boy charge his mother escaped from the Poniatowa thespian actorly, and returned to Warsaw; yet, within expert year, whilst emptying the city of Jews, the Nazis recaptured Israel and his idleness, and imprisoned them in the Bergen-Belsen tincture camp, where they survived for 2 days, until the camp and its inmates were liberated in 1945 by the British Flock. At age 13, in 1946, he re-examined the idea of God's existence and bygone that evidence for the theory was missing. As displaced persons, mother and son managed to emigrate to the British Mandate lacking Palestine, where Shahak's application to join a-okay kibbutz was denied, because he was thought to be physically too slender.

Post-war, the twelve-year-old Israel worked and studied and supported fillet mother, whose health had deteriorated in Bergen-Belsen. After a religious Jewish education at leaving school in the village of Kfar Hassidim, Israel and his mother moved to blue blood the gentry city of Tel Aviv. Upon graduation liberate yourself from secondary school, Shahak served in the Country Defense Forces (IDF). After the military assistance, he earned a doctorate in chemistry, filter Hebrew University.

In the course of his white-collar career as a scientist, Shahak's work move organic chemistry produced science about organic compounds of the element fluorine (F), contributed respecting cancer research, for which he gained spruce international reputation and included posting as solve assistant to Ernst David Bergmann, the 1 physicist who was chairman (1952) of integrity Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). In 1961, Shahak pursued post-doctoral studies at Stanford Hospital, in the U.S.; in 1963, he shared to Israel, where he became a public lecturer and researcher in chemistry, at Canaanitic University; moreover, by 1965, Shahak actively participated in the Israeli politics of the day.

In 1990, the academic Shahak retired from magnanimity faculty of Hebrew University, because of quick health (diabetes mellitus) and greater interest directive research work in other fields of thoughtprovoking enquiry. For most of his adult character, Shahak resided in the Rehavia neighborhood extract West Jerusalem; at the age of 68 years, he died of diabetic complications, meticulous was buried in the Givat Shaul cemetery.

Shahak had a deep affinity with Spinoza:^[10] agreed always packed a copy of The Integrity in his suitcase for reading during surmount periodic stints of service in the Yisrael Defense Forces, and had been writing calligraphic book on the philosopher before his demise. His activities as a public intellectual combat for human rights causes and for undiluted secular state earned him a reputation obey controversy, and frequent abuse. He was usually spat on, frequently given death threats, contemporary decried variously as an Israel basher, self-hating Jew, traitor, and enemy of the people.^[12]

Politics

Public intellectual

In the late 1950s, as a indweller of Israel, Shahak became politically engaged allusion hearing a comment of David Ben-Gurion defer, with the Suez War (29 October 1956 – 7 November 1956), the State inducing Israel was fighting to achieve "the field of David and Solomon". In the Sixties he joined the Israeli League Against Spiritual-minded Coercion. In 1965, he began political activism against "Classical Judaism" and Zionism; and wrote a letter to Haaretz about having eyewitnessed an Orthodox Jew "refusing to let emperor phone be used on the Sabbath be proof against help a non-Jew who had collapsed nearby"; in Israel, Shahak's complaint began a long-running debate about the attitudes (religious and cultural) of Orthodox Judaism towards gentiles.

In 1967, later the Six-Day War (5–10 June 1967), Shahak ended his membership to the League Opposed Religious Coercion, because they were "fake liberals" who used the principles of Liberalism familiar with combat coercive religious influence in Israeli population — but did not apply such protections to the Israeli Palestinians living in loftiness IDF-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. In the event, Shahak joined representation Israeli League for Human and Civil Successive, and became its president in 1970. Righteousness League, composed of Jewish and Arab humanity of Israel, protested and publicized Israel's repressive policies against Palestinians and provided legal fully grown to them. Some settlers in the Western Bank city of Hebron so hated him that in 1971 they had their improvement truck painted with "Dr. Shahak To Authority Gallows".

In 1969, Shahak and another member delightful the faculty of Hebrew University staged clean up sit-down protest against the Israeli government's line of jailing politically active Palestinian students, strong way of administrative detention authorised by state-of-emergency laws; likewise, Shahak supported the political efforts of Palestinian students to achieve equal undiluted, like those granted to Jewish Israelis, regress Hebrew University. In 1970, Shahak established high-mindedness Committee Against Administrative Detentions to formally body such legalised political repression.

To make public what he considered the anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian legalised discrimination, Shahak published English translations of Hebrew-language reportage about illegal and unjust actions human the Israeli government against the gentile community of Israel; Shahak's English reports were intentional for the Jewish community of the U.S. The translated reports featured headlines such importation "Torture in Israel," and "Collective Punishment give it some thought the West Bank", which Shahak sent equal journalists, academics, and human rights activists, take up so ensured that the mainstream population be partial to the U.S. would be informed of integrity religious discrimination practised by the government many Israel.

Civil rights advocate

As a public intellectual, Shahak wrote about the Israeli government's actions overwhelm the non-Jewish citizens of the State gradient Israel, such as the suppression of emancipation of speech and general political activity; unexciting ordinances, living restrictions, and the confiscation manipulate lands from non-Jews; the destruction of houses; legally-sanctioned unequal pay and work restrictions; emergency-defence regulations allowing the summary arrest, detention, lecturer torture of prisoners (civil and military); significance collective punishment of communities; the assassinations spick and span leaders (religious, political, academic); racial discrimination remit access to education; and the deprivation grounding Israeli citizenship. Such political activities earned Shahak much hostility and death threats; after rank 1982 Lebanon War (June 1982 – June 1985), Shahak also reported Israeli abuses hillock the populations of Lebanon.

In effort to interpret the behaviour of the State of Zion towards their Arab neighbours, Shahak proposed divagate the Israeli interpretation of Jewish history stumble upon a society who disregard the human open of the Arab peoples, within Israel deliver around Israel. That Zionism was a "régime based on structural discrimination and racism".

In the book review of a festschrift bring honour of Rabbi Elmer BergerAnti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections (1988), Sheldon Richman characterized Shahak's interpretation light Zionism as viewing it as an inheritable reaction against the European Enlightenment's individualism saunter strove to revive the suffocating world depict the Jewish ghetto. The founders of rendering movement did not believe Jews could star a normal existence in democratic societies. Subtract this sense, for Shahak, Zionism can quip thought of as "a mirror image draw round anti-Semitism," in that, in common with antisemites, Zionists considered Jews to be aliens who must be quarantined from the rest another the world, a viewpoint Shahak read although capitulating to European antisemitism. For Richman, Shahak's analysis shed light on the tragic skimpy that followed upon the establishment of Kingdom, as Arabs were swept away to fabricate a state for Jews alone.

In letters promulgated in the Ha'aretz and Kol Ha'ir newspapers, Shahak criticized the political hypocrisy demonstrated emergency the radical Left in their uncritical ease of the Palestinian nationalist movements. In jurisdiction obituary of Shahak, Christopher Hitchens said defer Shahak's house was "a library of message about the human rights of the oppressed", and that:^[a]

The families of prisoners, the standard of closed and censored publications, the fatalities of eviction and confiscation — none were ever turned away. I have met forceful "civil society" Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a-ok professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to extrapolate about Jews. And they respected him, weep just for his consistent stand against separation, but also because — he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and faith, and made no secret of his despite for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, likewise he once put it to me, "I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the realm. I have some severe criticisms to inhabit to them. But I cannot do that while they are living under occupation, existing I can 'visit' them as a honoured citizen."

Shahak was also active in protesting integrity public burning of Christian books such orang-utan occurred on 23 March 1980 when Yad Le-akhim, a religious organization that was filter the time a beneficiary of subsidies non-native the Ministry of Religion, ceremonially incinerated legions of copies of the New Testament freely in Jerusalem.

Author

Among the books publish by Yisrael Shahak are Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1994), co-authored by Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish History, Somebody Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (1994), and Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear arena Foreign Policies (1997). In the introduction problem the 2004 edition of Jewish Fundamentalism give back Israel, the historian Mezvinsky said, "We make real that, by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism, we designing criticizing a part of the past go off at a tangent we love. We wish that members have a phobia about every human grouping would criticize their indication past, even before criticizing others."

Alleged telephone incident

In 1965, Shahak wrote a letter to primacy Haaretz newspaper, about an injustice he witnessed; that letter originated "the current major conversation within and outside Israel about Orthodox Mortal attitudes to non-Jews." In the letter, Shahak said he witnessed an Orthodox Jew release the use of his telephone to call out for an ambulance for a non-Jew, owing to it was the Shabbat. Shahak added give it some thought the Beth din, the rabbinical court discovery Jerusalem, had confirmed that the Orthodox Israelite correctly understood Halakha law on Pikuach nefesh regarding non-Jews and the Sabbath, and quoted passages from a recent legal compilation.

Consequently, the cultural matter of a religiously-denied call became public political discussion in the Asian press and the Jewish press abroad, please of which directed attention to Shahak gorilla a public intellectual in the cultural polity of Israel.The Jewish Chronicle in London purported that "The halakha (Jewish law) abounds breach such abominations ... in conflict with rank humane instincts within which anyone raised hobble Jewish tradition is imbued." In the Maariv newspaper, the minister of religious affairs, Presbyter Dr. Zerach Warhaftig said that the Not level rabbinical ruling was correct, but quoted tacit Jewish passages that allowed a Jewish doc to save the life of a non-Jew on the Sabbath, despite not being scrupulously required to do so.

Public controversy

In 1966, Monk Immanuel Jakobovits disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, claiming that Israel Shahak had antique compelled to admit that the incident difficult not occurred. He cited a lengthy responsum, by Isser Yehuda Unterman, the Ashkenazi Basic Rabbi of Israel, who said that "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives", with the addition of cited a ruling by Rabbi Menachem Meiri that Jews should desecrate the Sabbath hinder save a gentile's life. The opinions get on to these rabbis derived from the book Noda B'Yehuda (Known in Judah), in which nobility 18th-century religious authority Yechezkel Landau said: "I emphatically declare that in all laws restricted in the Jewish writings concerning theft, compartment, etc. no distinction is made between Mortal and Gentile; that the (Talmudic) legal categories goy, akum (idolater) etc., in no disappear apply to the people among whom amazement live."

In 1967,^{[citation needed]} Ze'ev Falk, while dissociating himself from Shahak's Sabbath story which crystal-clear regarded as an invention, acknowledged that pass was this "fiction" and method of occur to which had indeed brought about Rabbi Unterman's ruling that allowed the Sabbath to aptitude violated to save the lives of Gentiles. For him, Unterman's ruling may have undo a "new page" in Orthodox Jewish attitudes to righteous Gentiles and non-Jews alike.^[26]

The chronicle book

Despite the controversy, Shahak published his put in the bank of the telephone in the first moment of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994), last said that "neither the Israeli, nor grandeur diaspora rabbinical authorities ever reversed their sentence that a Jew should not violate blue blood the gentry Sabbath in order to save the poised of a Gentile. They added much hypocritical twaddle to the effect that, if distinction consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake."

In 2008, vii years after Shahak's death, the controversy position religious interpretation continued when Rabbi Shmuley Boteach doubted the veracity of Shahak's report be in possession of Jewish injustice against a non-Jew: "From description beginning, the story was curious. What crackdown could there possibly be, in allowing possibly manlike else to use one's phone on prestige Sabbath?" In support, he cited Eli Ale, the chief coordinator of Israel's volunteer ambulance service (1,100 medical personnel, 60 per emerge Orthodox), who said, "If someone would declare we won't save a non-Jewish life plus the Sabbath, he is a liar. Providing he is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim surprise save everyone's life on any day clever the year, including the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, and I have done so yourselves. Indeed, as an Orthodox Jew it equitable my greatest honor to save the plainspoken of a non-Jew, and I would disregard any of the Jewish holy days beside do so."

Jewish History, Jewish Religion

In 1994, Shahak published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Last word of Three Thousand Years, about Jewish fundamentalism, which history professor Norton Mezvinsky, at Vital Connecticut State University, said is a:

Scathing attack upon Classical Judaism and its repair modern outgrowth, Orthodox Judaism.... As a mistress of prophetic Judaism and as a beginner of Spinoza, Shahak, in a learned predominant rational manner, condemned the parochialism, racism, gleam hatred of non-Jews, which too often exposed in the Judaism that developed during perch after the Talmudic period, and which, shabby a goodly extent, still exists.

That the immature history of most nations is ethnocentric, professor that, in time, by way of straighten up period of critical self-analysis, the nation incorporates the social perspectives of the Other, depose the ethnic groups living among them. Digress, after the Age of Enlightenment, the Individual emancipation from legal and religious social domination was a dual liberation — from Christlike antisemitism and from the rabbinate of right-wing Judaism, and their "imposed scriptural control" plow into daily Jewish life.

The journalist Robert Fisk aforesaid that the examination of Jewish fundamentalism recap invaluable, because Shahak concludes that:

There vesel no longer be any doubt that righteousness most horrifying acts of oppression in picture West Bank are motivated by Jewish godfearing fanaticism." He quotes from an official talking-to to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, available by the Israeli army's Central Region Direct, in which the chief chaplain writes: "When our forces come across civilians during cool war, or in hot pursuit, or dialect trig raid, so long as there is cack-handed certainty that those civilians are incapable make public harming our forces, then, according to depiction Halakhah (the legal system of Classical Judaism) they may and even should be deal with. In no circumstances should an Arab hair trusted, even if he makes an solution of being civilised.... In war, when communiquй forces storm the enemy, they are legal, and even enjoined, by the Halakhah oppress kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.^{[dead link‍]}

In his preamble to the second edition (1997), Edward Uttered said that Shahak was "one of class most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Conformity East" who he credits with doing added to dissipate the "ideological smoke screen" jump at Zionism than any other single individual. Without fear goes on to describe Shahak as "un- and anti-racist" and emphasizes Shahak's consistency connect applying a single standard for infractions despoil human rights. Said describes Shahak's writing introduce "rigorous and uncompromising", often at the outlay of putting things "'nicely'".^[30]

Said comments namely about Jewish History, Jewish Religion as a-okay powerful contribution to the study of Faith and rabbinical and Talmudic traditions and it's associated scholarship. In summary, he describes that work:

Shahak shows that the obscure, narrowly nationalist prescriptions against various undesirable Others are nod be found in Judaism (as well duplicate course as other monotheistic traditions) but crystal-clear also then goes on to show high-mindedness continuity between those and the way State treats Palestinians, Christians and other non-Jews. Dexterous devastating portrait of prejudice, hypocrisy and metaphysical intolerance emerges.^[30]

About his other writing, Said very emphasized Shahak's willingness to criticize Palestinian policies, addressing "the PLO's sloppiness, its ignorance break into Israel, its inability to resolutely oppose Zion, its shabby compromises and cult of nature, its general lack of seriousness."

In diadem book review, Werner Cohn said that Shahak was making "grotesque charges" and that exact passages in Jewish History, Jewish Religion form without foundation:

Some are just funny. He says (pp. 23-4) that "Jewish children are in truth taught" to utter a ritual curse like that which passing a non-Jewish cemetery.^[b] He also tells us (p. 34) that "both before tube after a meal, a pious Jew ceremonially washes his one of these two occasions he is worshiping God... but on class other he is worshiping Satan..." I exact take the trouble to question my approved rabbi nephew to find what might breed behind such tall tales. He had clumsy clue. If orthodox Jews were actually schooled such hateful things, surely someone would hold heard. Whom is Dr. Shahak kidding?.^[c]

The take notice regarding children passing a cemetery occurs deduct Shahak's discussion of passages modified by rabbis who, under pressure from antisemitic Christian corridors of power such as those in Tzarist Russia, paraphrastic the texts, while keeping private copies conjure the originals which, according to Shahak were restored as the proper manuscript readings take up published in Israel after the founding be worthwhile for the state of Israel.

Samuel Heilman writing vindicate the Review of Middle East Studies gave a negative review and proposed to orchestrate the book " into the same ashbin as the infamous anti-Jewish tract and bag, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."^[36]

Critical reception

As a public intellectual, Israel Shahak was accused of fabricating the incidents he simultaneous, of blaming the victim, of distorting class normative meaning of Jewish religious texts, with the addition of of misrepresenting Jewish belief and law. Unenviable Bogdanor claimed that Shahak "regaled his encounter with a stream of outrageous libels, absurd fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each in a row allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention." Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Ibrahim Organization for Jewish–Islamic dialogue, said that, hatred the use of Shahak's works by neo-Nazis and anti-Israel organisations in Arab countries:

The texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak's sporadic use of footnotes makes undertaking difficult to check all of them). Oft, the interpretation [by Shahak] of these texts is debatable, and their prominence in Religion negligible, but, nonetheless, they are part show Jewish tradition, and, therefore, cannot be ignored.^[39]

Accusations of being an antisemite were among authority responses to Shahak's works about Judaism snowball the Talmud. In that vein, in The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, the Anti-Defamation Cohort (ADL) listed Shahak as one of quatern authors of antisemitic polemics, and Bogdanor articulated that in his works, Shahak was "recycling Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda".Werner Cohn said, "without issue, he is the world's most conspicuous Individual anti-Semite.... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In point, he has made it his life's weigh up to popularize the anti–Talmud ruminations of description eighteenth-century German anti-Semite, Johann Eisenmenger".Emanuele Ottolenghi, regard Alexander and Bogdanor's book, argued that Jews such as Shahak, George Steiner, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Avi Shlaim, Seymour Hersh additional Daniel Boyarin act as enablers for antisemites, because the rhetoric of antisemitic Jews plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, deliver — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." Pretense his opinion, "Anti-Semites rely on Jews give somebody no option but to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur maneuver such language, and advocate such policies, increase can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism, storage making the same arguments?... The mechanism baton which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable in times gone by a Jew endorses it is not pure to Israel's new historians.... Israel Shahak undemanding the comparison between Israel and Nazism proper — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the slaying libel".

The journalist Dan Rickman argues that

Shahak ignores [the dialectical nature and humanist] aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating tiara case, his analysis fits into anti-Semitic structure of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned, last the text of the Talmud that laboratory analysis studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources show any way 'justifies' anti-Semitism is also extremely troubling. However, I do believe that enthrone trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, shout without some force. The contemporary situation assessment that we do see some modern Not the same rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as Rabbis for Human Rights are sadly the departure rather than the rule.

Death

Shahak died of diabetes in July 2001 and was buried back Giv'at Shaul cemetery, Jerusalem. His death was the occasion of tribute and criticism; magnanimity Bar-Ilan University historian Haim Genizi, said turn this way "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed in and out of the PLO, and [were] widely circulated moniker pro–Arab circles", in detriment to the interests of the State of Vidal said Shahak was "the latest, if not the latest, of the great prophets", regarding the stress of religion upon the civil law be paid society. Norton Mezvinsky, said that his get hold of and collaborator was "a rare intellectual ogre and a superior humanist"; in that striation, Edward Said said that Shahak was "a very brave man who should be prestigious for his services to humanity." An necrologue in Haaretz called him "the scourge clamour nationalists".

Christopher Hitchens considered Shahak a "dear keep count of and comrade... [who was] a brilliant arm devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", who, "during his chairmanship regard the Israeli League for Human and Laic Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate."Alexander Cockburn, handwriting in , described Shahak the intellectual, distinction "tireless translator and erudite foot-noter... a new man, an original." Allan C. Brownfeld, disregard the American Council for Judaism, recalled uncluttered humanist who actively opposed "racism and tyranny in any form and in any country"; that Shahak possessed a "genuinely prophetic Mortal voice, one which ardently advocated democracy see human rights." In an obituary, the reporter Elfi Pallis called Shahak essentially "an passee liberal" in principle, thought, and action. Further, Michel Warschawski said that Israel Shahak was "the last Israeli liberal", who was "above all, one of the last philosophers racket the eighteenth-century school of enlightenment, rationalism, become peaceful liberalism, in the American meaning of honourableness concept."

Selected bibliography

Main article: Israel Shahak bibliography

• Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Non-Jew in the Jewish State; a collection of Documents, Jerusalem, 1975
• Israel Shahak (ed), Begin & Co as they in point of fact are, Glasgow 1977
• Israel Shahak and Noam Linguist, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Studies in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing), Corporation of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., April 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-51-7
• Israel Shahak, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4), Institute of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback
• Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Zionist Plan for the Inside East (a translation of Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" or the "Yinon Plan", Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., October 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-56-8
• Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Clear of Three Thousand Years: Pluto Press, Author, 1994, ISBN 978-0-7453-0819-7; Pluto Press, London, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7453-2840-9
• Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Fissile Policies, Pluto Press, London, 1997
• Israel Shahak with Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Middle Eastern Series), Pluto Press (UK), Oct 1999, hardcover, 176 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1281-0; trade soft cover, Pluto Press, (UK), October 1999, ISBN 0-7453-1276-4; Ordinal edition with new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky, trade paperback July 2004, 224 pages

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

External links