Israel teaching from the perch of a sovereign state

What the Masters failed to understand in the lead up to the Genocide was the political implication of the teachings of Moses. The Genocide was an instance where the world took the exilic character of the Jewish people at face value. They rendered the Jews truly stateless and homeless. In such a state, the Jews will either be cared for by the world's lovers of human rights or they will be exterminated. That was the test. We know how it turned out. 

'Never again' focuses on the wrong end of the matter. It is not about making sure the Jews are never again the butt of such a test, the point of taking lessons from the Genocide is for the world to understand how badly it failed the teachings of xenia. The UN is a pale response to so abject a failure. The world's lessons from the Genocide are going to have to be learned by Israel teaching it to them from the perch of a sovereign state. 

The political wolf in the religious sheep's clothing

It is to the extent the Orthodox community promotes what amounts to political positions rather than religious positions that the Orthodox come across as anti-liberal or anti-democratic. It is in their pushing of a silent, underlying ideology that the religious community comes off as irritating.

You can't really blame the Jews

A nation predicated on, and established on the basis of, fear of persecution and extermination will naturally not have a healthy attitude toward the minorities, living within its own borders, who belong to those ethnicities that define the peoples who represent the source of that existential threat. 

Modern Israel negates ancient Israel

Ancient Israel was built on the singular notion of God's bounty and abundance as the fundamental predicate of the Israelite state. Modern Israel is built on the singular notion of anti-Semitic threat and insecurity as the fundamental predicate of the Israelite state. Modern Israel is predicated on the ideological negation of ancient Israel. 

By framing its founding in terms of threat and insecurity Zionism defines the State of Israel as radically materialist and fundamentally anti-God. The ancient Israelite God represents Himself as the One Who extracted Israel from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage. That self-definition was not only with respect to the material extraction from servitude but with respect also to a spiritual extraction from a mindset of servility. YHWH's Decalogical objective was to extract Israel's sons from their diaspora mentality and predilections. For modern Israel to do God's work it must extract itself from its self-understanding as being eternally under existential threat and instead to deliver itself to the notion that its existence depends crucially on God's providential care. 

Deuteronomy 11:10-13 is not only about Israel as the locus of non-resource curse, it is also about Israel as the locus of non-anti-Semitism. The belief in the power of anti-Semitism is the modern day Jew's form of God-denial. The most secular thing the Jew can do is to see the fundamental Jewish condition in terms of scarcity and threat. Believing in God is believing in His providence and is about living one's life, be it individually or collectively, according to the expectation of His bounty and security. 

The Holocaust Zionist understands the Jewish people as chosen not by God but by the anti-Semites as the pariah people and Israel as the pariah state. The Arabs are the new Nazis not only because they strive to eradicate the Jewish people but also because their rejection of Israel from the region has forced onto Israel the notion of the Holocaust as the definitive existential fact. 

Ethics are diasporic

We won't accept the promotion of Jewish ethical teachings as fundamental to Israel's sons’ mission because down that path lies the cultivation of diaspora. To recognize the political/ideological character of Israelite teachings is to train the Jewish destiny to self-governance and national sovereignty. Modern Orthodoxy, defined as Judaism promoting a higher standard of ethical conduct, is essentially a diaspora teaching. It presumes a national identity predicated on ethical principles rather than principles of power management.

It ain't so bad

Israel's living in the dangerous neighborhood has embroiled it in world politics in ways that has given it a seriousness and a sense of purpose it likely would otherwise not have had. Israel's development got a slingshot boost by virtue of the central role it plays in international politics. Israel's Spartan strain could well be the antidote it needs for the millennia of servility the Jewish people were made to endure. It could be that the challenge of Arab recalcitrance is the modern equivalent to the people of Israel's surviving forty years in the wilderness. 

Exiled peoples are not good for their hosts

The end of the European civilization was presaged by the end of the European Jewish civilization. There are no more Jews in Europe, or, in any case, there shouldn't be. Europe ought by rights to be Judenrein. We should all keep it that way. 

The two major centers of Jewish life today are in America and Israel, both of which were born from massive emigrations from Europe. Once upon a time Israel made its exodus from Egypt because Israel’s presence in Egypt was not good for Egypt. Today that exodus was a genocide in Europe because the Jewish presence in Europe was not good for Europe. 

The promised land

Israel, as a homeland for American Jews, differs from the homelands of all other American ethnic groups. American ethnics identify their homelands in terms of the countries of their origins, countries and ethnicities from which they or their ancestors came; Jewish ethnics define their homeland in terms of the country of their destiny, the country and ethnicity to which they or their descendants wish to move. The typical American ethnic homeland is about the past; the Jewish American ethnic homeland is about the future, it is about a promise. 

Israel vital to American Jewry

At bottom, the American Jewish community likely depends for its continued existence and vitality on a strong identification with Israel. Remove Israel from the Jewish American consciousness and the Jewish American community will likely disappear after a few generations. It is no longer an internally viable community. 

Uncertainty and insecurity

"From biblical times to the present day, the Jews ... developed the consummate political art of living with uncertainty and insecurity; their long survival owes much to this extraordinary achievement." (Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, David Biale, 1986; page 210). 

The diaspora has taught the Jews to live with uncertainty and insecurity as their sovereign life in their homeland did not teach them how to live with confidence and abundance. 

Abandoning the Jewish people to exile

Jewish leadership is an oppressed class. That oppression however didn't particularly make them more sensitive about the people's well-being nor did it put them in touch with the sensibilities of the common Jewish man. Jewish leadership was no less elitist than any other absolutist ruling class. The ordinary ruling class used the subject class as a source of wealth and power. The Jewish ruling class used their privilege to help insulate the rulers from the worst oppressions of the surrounding culture. When YHWH abandoned the Jewish people to exile, it was the common Jewish people He was abandoning, not their rulers. 

A failed nation

If we consider Afghanistan as a failed state, it might make sense to say the Jewish people for much of the modern era have been a failed nation. 

The yearning for a vital leadership led either to the Sabbatean movement in the 17th century or the Zionist movement of the 20th century. Jewish rulers were no better at sustaining legitimate authority than any of the other ruling classes around the world over the past 300 or so years. 

The great powers’ international regime is beginning to teeter and nation-states are beginning to degenerate or to shade into post-statist regionalism. Surely the UN is a defunct institution. The non-statist leadership of the Jewish people over the same era has, however, not shown any better capacity to rule wisely. Perhaps they have been no worse but it's a low bar, and they certainly haven't cleared it. 

The mettle of a people

The establishment of a state is a national project of great consequence. Maintaining a sovereign state is a productive achievement of the first order. It tests the mettle of a people. Failed states are failures of a people's national character. 

The Bible's political/economics

The rabbinic regime was largely ad hoc and helter skelter. The rabbinic stabs at establishing political power under exilic conditions may have been sincere but they barely reflected the political/economic teachings of the biblical regime, on which they were ostensibly based. As far as the politics of the Israelite nation was concerned, the rabbinic leadership was no more continuous with the biblical teachings than either of the other daughter religions, Christianity and Islam. 

The point is not to disqualify the rabbinic perspective, it is rather to reveal the biblical perspective and to expose to the light of day the Bible's political/economics, once and for all. 

Jewish mass movements

With the collapse in Europe of the feudal system of government and its replacement with absolutist monarchs came the weakening of the local kahal's power within the Jewish community. As the geographically-based jurisdiction became thinner, mass movements began to take their place. Hassidism, the Yeshiva movement (mitnagdim), the mussar movement, and Haskala all emerged from the demise of the authority of the town’s or city's rabbinate. 

A rumor of return

"All the world here is talking of a rumor of the return of the Israelites ... to their own country. ... Should the news be confirmed, it may bring about a revolution in all things." (Heinrich Oldenburg letter to Baruch Spinoza.) 

The national patrimony of Israel's sons could well bring on a world-wide ideological change. Perhaps the Sabbateans understood something we are only beginning to fathom. Jewish sovereignty is not about Jewish survival as much as it is about revolutionizing the world's ruling structure. 

Jewish leadership was non-democratic

The rulers of the host country invested power into those members of the Jewish community who could harvest from the native Jewish population the most value for the monarch. The court Jews therefore had to be either the wealthy or from the traditional/rabbinic leadership. The non-democratic character of the Jewish political structure was thus built into the diasporic nature of Jewish politics. 

Anti-Semitism was built into the construct of the politics that bound together the host rulers, the leading Jews, the host populations, and the Jewish populations. 

Extreme piety without civic exemptions

The Haredi impulse to separate themselves away from the mainstream culture is largely diasporic in character. It makes sense for them to maintain themselves in a ghetto so long as they are interested in maintaining their exilic frame of mind. 

The State of Israel is a direct threat to that exilic frame of mind. Haredim can practice their diaspora in any country but Israel. In Israel, the ultra-Orthodox will have to re-invent their extremely pious ways of life so as not to depend on exempting its adherents from fulfilling their duties to the people and to the state. 

Ironic Orthodoxy

Modern Orthodox Jews practice their orthodoxy ironically. They do it but they don't mean it, not really. 

Weak leadership tends to self-serving leadership

Somewhere along the line the rabbinic regime shifted from being about the Jewish people and became being about the honor and privilege of the rabbinic leadership. The more practical power the rabbinic leadership lost, the more it became the focus of that leadership to promote their own privilege and honor. 

Weak leadership tends to be self-serving leadership, where the focus of the leadership is on their own welfare rather than on the stewarding of the well-being of their charges.