JUDAISM AND ZIONISM

A broadcast by one of our members over Station WBAI-FM, New York (8/27/69)

I am a member of the Friends of Jerusalem, an American affiliate of the world wide Jewish Neturei Karta movement, the leadership of which is in Jerusalem. In commenting on Jewish affairs, there is no topic more vital today than a clarification on the differences between Judaism and Zionism. All too many Americans are still under the impression that these terms are more or less synonymous - that being a Jew means automatically to be a Zionist and that this also implies a certain loyalty to the State of Israel. Let me there state right at the beginning that Judaism and Zionism are completely incompatible and are mutually exclusive. If you are a good Jew, you cannot be a Zionist. If you are a Zionist, you cannot be a good Jew. The reason for this is fairly simple to explain. The Jews are not a race, such as Caucausians or Negroes, as Hitler contended. The Jews are not a nation, like France, Great Britain, the United States, or any other of the nations. And they are not just a religion, like Catholicism, Buddhism, or any of the Protestant denominations. They are, rather, a unique combination, unlike any other. It is true that Jews are, according to the Bible and their own belief, the Chosen People. But they are not chosen for domination; they are not elected to rule over other people; but they are chosen for one purpose only: for service - to serve the Creator of the Universe and the Father of us all in a very special way, and thereby to serve all mankind.

While, according to the Jewish faith, there are only seven laws that are automatically binding and valid for each human being and while there are the Ten Commandments which have been accepted by the civilized world and particularly by the monotheistic faiths as appropriate basic rules for human behavior, the Jews are subject to 613 commandments which are in one way or another mentioned in the Five Books of Moses. These laws, which have been codified and spelled out and commented on throughout the centuries in an immense number of books, constituting the Rabbinic and Halachic literature, are obligatory for everyone born of a Jewish mother or one who has voluntarily accepted the Jewish faith.

Political Zionism started in Europe more then seventy years ago under the impact of anti-semitism. It is a complete departure from this ancient and holy tradition. The leading figures in Zionism from the very beginning have always been men and women who rejceted the obligatory nature of these Jewish religious laws, who have never lived by this code and who indeed deny categoricallyeven that the Bible is of divine origin, there by reducing the Five Books of Moses, the writing of the Prophets, and the other books which together make up the Tenach - the Hebrew Bible - to mere foklore and ancient sagas and tales [heaven forfend].

The aims of Zionism are: to give the Jewish people a country of their own, to revive Hebrew as its everyday language, to give it a government of its own, a plariament, an army, navy and air force - and all the other paraphernalia and characteristics of a nation like all others. The Jews, who in the words of the Bible are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, are supposed to lose their special character.

Zionists consider it a great day when they declared the State of Israel to be in existence and again when the flag of their state was raised on a flagstaff in front of the United Nations among the banners of all other countries.

This creation of a secular, so-called Jewish state is treason to the Jewish people, as constituted on Mount Sinai. It is not only a crass degradation from a lofty and singular level, but in thus changing the character and mission of the Jewish people, it would also do the following:

Free the Jews as a people from their religious obligation as outlined above.
Subject the Jewish people to the ordinary laws of national existence, thus ending the unique and extraordinary qualities that let the Jews, as a people, survive through the milennia, and make these people (G-d forbid) vanish like all the other nations that have apperared on the surface of the earth and long since have been relegated to history.
It would automatically and inevitably - the State of Israel now being a nation like the others, but claiming a special relationship to Jews everywhere - force these Jews, in case of conflict, to face and decide questions of their primary loyalty. It is hardly necessary to add that this problem of loyalty has already been posed in a number of countries during the past twenty years.

In this short presentation, it is impossible to deal with the impact of Zionism on the United States, although this would be a very interesting topic, or with the danger that it creates for other countries. We are tonight concerned only with the difference between Zionists - and Jews who are loyal to their faith.

It might be mentioned that there are minority groups and parties in Israel and elsewhere who try to combine the traditional practice of Jewish faith with Zionist activity, but by its very nature, this is a hopeless cause. By accepting the leadership of irreligious or anti-religious Jews, who under Jewish law are not qualified to exercise any leadership or occupy a position of trust within the Jewish community, and also by subjecting matters of faith and religious law to parliamentary and other majority votes, they actually admit the priority of the secular national Jewish state over the divinely instituted special nationhood of the Jewish people.

After these basic considerations, the remaining minutes will be used to answer some obvious questions, such as:

Isn't it very beneficial for the self-respect of the Jews that they now have a country of their own and a highly efficient and dependable army?
If Zionism is so absolutely contrary to Judaism, how is that so many Jews are sympathetic toward Zionism?
If there were no State of Israel, where would persecuted Jews find a place of refuge?
Who is going to speak in the name of those Jews who are helpless and who is going to defend them?

Let us answer these questions in order:

The Holy Land is and always has been beloved by religious Jews and that land, and the city of Jerusalem, are mentioned innumerable times every single day in prayers said by Jews everywhere. These prayers have been said for thousands of years, but they have nothing to do with the atheists who founded the State of Israel or with their state. On the contrary, these prayers also state [that] the Jews' exile from Eretz Yisroel is willed by the Ruler and Father of us all; and as to self-respect because of victitious army and bombers, the Bible states that the Jews have been chosen because they are the most humble and self-demeaning of all nations, not because of their worldly or military power. And the fact, that during the past twenty years more Jews have been killed in the Israeli wars than anywhere else on earth and that more non-Jews have been killed there by Jews than anywhere else, is not a source of pride, but one of the deepest regret to all Jews who have not been infected by the poison of Zionism.
It is not all suprising that so many Jews have been swayed by Zionism. Anyone who is suprised by this fact reveals an abysmal ignorance of Jewish history. Right from the start of Jewish peoplehood - and it is significant that the Bible tells us that the Jews became a nation in the wilderness, not in the land of Israel - it happened all too often that the vast majority of Jews were misled and followed false prophets and false gods - from the Golden Calf and the Baal, to the fake messianic movements of all ages down to today's Zionism. But any student of Jewish history knows that in the long run, all these movements failed and that only that Judaism and those Jews survived as Jews who accepted the primacy and totality of the Jewish Written and Oral Law.
As to the State of Israel as a place of refuge, this is perhaps the greatest fallacy of them all. Anyone who has read such books as Min Hametzar by the late Rabbi Weissmandl or Perfidy by the late Ben Hecht is aware of Zionist treachery during the most critical time of the Nazi persecution. In fact, Zionism is most interested in undermining the position of Jews in other countries so as to make them emigrate to the State of Israel and this plan has already been systematically carried out in a number of countries. One prime example is the burning of the synagogues in Iraq sixteen years ago, not by anti-Jewish enemies but admittedly by Zionist emissaries, who actually succeeded thereby in uprooting a Jewish community that had endured literally for thousands of years. The Zionist giant ghetto, far from being able to support Jewish communities elsewhere, has its hands full and needs support from abroad just to defend itself!

And finally, as to the Zionists as the legitimate spokesmen for all Jews, they have been neither appointed nor elected by a majority of Jews to speak or act for them.* From a religious point of view, they are completely and utterly disqualified from exercising any function, even within a local Jewish community, let alone being authorized to act on a national or international basis, except, of course, for Zionist party members.

Let me sum up by repeating what I said initially. A good Jew cannot be a Zionist. A Zionist cannot be a good Jew.

*Note: During the convention of the Zionist Organization of America in August 1969 it was announced that their membership decreased from 250,000 members to 100,000.