27 October 2010

Jewish interests versus Jewish values

The key question about the Zionist enterprise is how to define the mission of the state: whether the mission of the Jewish state is to promote the interests of the Jewish people or to promote their values. The biblical regime, as it happens, was less about the interests of the people and more about their values. The purpose of the biblical state was to harness the people's interests to the promotion of a certain set of values, the violation of which would redound to the impairment of the people's interests. 
The people the state serves are all the people of Israel, not merely the Jewish people. Only the rabbinic regime defines the purpose of the community's governance to be about promoting the interests of the people, since, because they are in exile and out of power, the rabbis cannot install their values on either themselves or on others, especially as those values ought to be all about the exercise of power under abundance. 
In exile there is no distinction between the Jewish people and the people of Israel because in exile there is no people of Israel, there is only a Jewish people. The point of a Jewish state is to apply Jewish values to all the people of Israel. As the failures of the rabbinic regime have shown, to promote the interests of the Jewish people over their values results in injury not just to their values but also to their interests. 
When a diaspora mind applies itself to a national interest you get a fascist. It is not unreasonable for the people of Israel to want a Jewish state so long as that Jewishness is not defined as diasporic. If we would apply Jewish interests to the definition of a Jewish state, it must be Jewish biblical interests and not rabbinic interests. 
Trying to devise a sovereign state under a diasporic mindset would be catastrophic. Those are the seeds of Jewish evil. 

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