Israel against its becoming
For Manitou Rabbi Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi, zatsal
Two major events have marked the past year. On the one hand the draft agreement agreed in Oslo between the present government of Israel and the PLO, on the other hand, even though difficult negotiations are developing to make it succeed, the announcement of the establishment of relations diplomatic ties between the Vatican and the State of Israel. Only time will tell the true extent and consequences Any change made to the history of Israel on both occasions. However, it is clear that in both cases, something irreversible has happened. 
This is certainly the main topic that will occupy, now, and Israeli Jewish intellectuals in their attempts, never fully accomplished, to clarify the nature of what they have in common. Inheritance a common ancestral memory, hopes and values converge, an undeniable sense of familiarity in the sense of participation in the historical adventure of the same family, shows that despite the difference it inserts sociological this is the same people .... However, the cultural environment of rapidly changing pace. For the Diaspora - and that was the case originally for the founders of Israeli society - there is still a Christian environment. Even largely de-Christianized, Western humanism is one the Christian soul. For Israeli society, however, the direction that the current political commitment is a nesting increasingly evident in the "personality" Arab and Islamic world.
Now no one can predict the practical development of a company as dynamic as the Israeli society. It depends more obviously political options properly. No one knows what will be the results of future elections, and therefore the ins key positions of Education and Interior.
And indeed, the purpose of these reflections not at all reflect the extraordinary complexity of the fluid political and ideological Israel. But everything else, trying to highlight a number of trends, breaklines, which already promises from the beginning, but which reveal themselves with such intensity that since the events of the past year. In such a business, you can not hide his personal equation. And I do not deny that these two problems before, just as delicate as the other one, the relationship to Christianity and against Islam, my feeling is radically different. I plan as much in the long term, a regularization of our positive links with the Christian world, as I saw the incidents and the method of negotiations with the Arab world, including Syria and the PLO, with puzzlement and concern. I say maybe another time what would the price of profound peace with the Christian world and how the Jewish Diaspora must inevitably pay the price. I confine myself to a few remarks today on the consequences of current options vis-à-vis peace with the Arabs, regarding the cultural perspectives of Israeli society.
In fact, it is the nature of "Jewish" of the Jewish state. Leaving aside the debate is whether the State of Israel must be a "Jewish" state within the meaning of the term theocracy, or the state of the Jews, their religion is Judaism. I am among those who think that Herzl was primarily a project Jewish State [4] where they could take control of their destiny and political history. The history of mankind, and as a believer it means to me as Providence, made the Jewish state, or more exactly is in the process of doing. A mutation in which the subject identity is to transform Jewish identity Jewish identity found, can not be done in one instant magic. To understand what it is, and far more secular than religious Israeli intellectuals had understood, he must make the effort to distinguish between the sociopolitical sense of the word Jew, and his sense of cultural identity, spiritual and religious. In the sociopolitical sense, the Jew has always been a Hebrew of exile, indexed to the identity of foreign cities, in other words a "Judeo-someone-else". In this sense, all Israelis are certainly no pun intended, of Jewish origin. But for the vast majority of them, "Zionism" is to lead the Hebrew nation who would have nothing to do with socio-political status of Jews in exile.
It is from here that a serious problem, a problem that the draft agreement with the PLO, even in his philosophy, and reveals accuser. It turns out that the solidarity of members of a society under siege, the jubilation to meet, in Hebrew, among survivors of one hundred twenty exiles, had masked the fact that the motivations of the same Zionism was critically different. I identify four main arbitrarily schematized, all amalgams are possible at the individual, human being, as we know highly paradoxical.
First, Jews were Zionists who wanted to abandon Judaism as a religion and spirituality as if culture and history, together status of the Jew in exile. Their diagnosis was that even emancipation could not ensure their cultural survival, and that therefore he had to taken from Jews in Hebrew. This type of Israel is both the right and left of the political spectrum.
Secondly, those who wanted to regain Hebrew finally be fully and authentically Jewish, and not only hope to ever postponed implementation deadline.
Thirdly, those who reject Zionism of the Jewish state, because it is a state that was not founded by the Messiah, but living the Israeli life in their own way, for the privilege it accords to live in the Holy Land.
And then, ultimately, a number of Jews forever cosmopolitan, fluent in Hebrew of course, but are there because they are there, nothing more. Several of them also hold important positions in large institutions.
All this is the entire Israeli society maelstrom of change and who lives in the acceleration history is known. Now that company suddenly discovers she is in a position to have to experience the cultural life of a binational state in which culture will have to integrate Jewish values but also the Hebrew Arab-Islamic values. Those Israeli Arabs first and foremost, but also those of so-called Palestinian Arabs, who form a single set nationally, although they are distinguished sociologically. In Israel itself, this discovery will not long prevail. The real question is what will the reaction of the entire Jewish diaspora. Everything suggests that the apparent spiritual upheaval and ideological ensue. What form it takes, we can not already prejudged. But the debate is emerging traumatize many consciences.
And indeed, it is difficult, given the current state of things, which side would appear the instance of unanimity that could guarantee a minimum coherence of a society faced, without adequate preparation, to irreversible decisions for the future of his identity project. Many believe, and I'm one of them, it's absolutely a problem for Israel and the Diaspora. While we are the same people, it is also true that Israel's future played in a certain way, in every Jewish community. Are we already in the post-Zionist or, on the contrary, a new Zionism, that of maturity, it is dawning? And that the price of what schisms, which emergencies separation?
The classic pattern of our three criteria for identification, by the people, by the earth, the Torah, will always remain the basis of profound debate. However, until then, the question mark in all walks of roughly formulated as follows: which of these three sets must include the other two: which is supposed to define how sine qua non of genuine community, the other two to be reserved for the individual option?
Today, it seems that the equation must be renewed. Which of these three fights he is most urgent, which is the current fight for the survival of the three? I would say clearly the option of my political awareness. But before that, I want to say that I appreciate the consistency, if the current legitimacy, other options. The real problem is not who would be right in absolute terms: those that emphasize the People, those of the Torah or those of the Earth at any cost, the real problem is I think: Now, now, what is the fight he would be foolish to lose?
For two thousand years we've been busy as a people to survive and preserve knowledge and practice of Torah. I do not know if the heroism of these two fights has been sufficiently told. But it is clear that they have earned. At what cost of suffering, humiliation, dilution and sometimes distorted identity - also with great moments of true elevation above - each of us tells the story in its own way. But we have reached the end of this long march, as a people and existing holders of our heritage. Both battles have to be pursued. Anti-Semitism has not disappeared and the Torah is not acquired once and for all. These two struggles are still very necessary, but we know that we have won.
Meanwhile huge two thousand years, we were cut off from our land. Today is that this fight is current, and hopefully have sufficiently indicated that the challenge in my opinion, is not only a question of extent of territory and sovereignty. At stake is the future of our identity.
[1] Thus the Bible (Gen.XL, 15) names the countries conquered by the Canaanites in the time of the Patriarchs, and the Romans called Palestine.
[2] Interview given to the newspaper La Croix, 29 December 1993;
[3] Gen. XXI, 10.
[4] Such is the title given in German by Herzl in his book Der Judenstaat , the Jewish state, not Der Staat Judische , the Jewish state.
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