Read other letters about this article

• Monday, May 19, 2008 10:58 PM

  something else that Neusner is too polite to mention

  Neusner is not "ultra-Orthodox", "anti-Zionist", or anything like Neturei Karta and the hassidic groups, if anyone might have considered that possibility. He really is mainstream, with a very respectable university seat and scores of books on Talmud to his credit, that are used in all, I repeat, all talmudic academies.

  Anyway, the thing he doesn't say is this : the dynamics of "The Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption" resemble those of Christianity far more closely that they do those of classical Judaism. Death and resurrection is not, after all, a classical Jewish theme. In classical Judaism there is only one bodily resurrection, which is the universal resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgment. However, in the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption, as in the religious zionist teaching of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook, which lies at the basis of the narrowly defined 'religious-zionist' settler movement, the people of Israel collectively constitute their own Moschiach.

  Putting these two considerations together, one can say that the people of Israel itself, like the Christian Messiah but unlike anything in any previous form of Judaism, have been ritually sacrificed, have passed through the realm of death and hell, and have been resurrected (the interim being three years rather than three days : the three years between 1945 and 1948).

  This hopefully shows how, wherever it came from, it slotted perfectly into the need of the USA for an omnimorphous, materialistic, doctrine of salvation.

  —Rowan Berkeley Read Rowan Berkeley's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel