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I wonder if my remarks about 'religious zionism' are being construed too narrowly. I fully realise that I am walking a very fine line in opening up the psychological aspects of this, and as i said a couple of days ago (to Bucky's amusement) there are only three or four places on the web I can really talk about things like this that concern me).
When I gave the URL for the spoof "Night at the Holocaust Museum" trailer I suppose I was being deliberately provocative in order to demonstrate the way we are all, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, deeply conditioned to a sort of frozen reverence. This has been called "a false religion" by an extremely eminent and respectable US Orthodox rabbi, Jacob Neusner. There is unfortunately not much by him about it on the web, but I can offer you this much:
Exile and Return as the Structure of All Judaism
...the Judaic system as presented by the five books of Moses, [the Pentateuch], as well as by some of the prophetic books, did two things. First, it precipitated resentment, a sense of insecurity and unease, by selecting as events only a narrow sample of what had happened (exile). Second, it appeased the same resentment by its formula of how to resolve the tensions of events of dislocation and alienation (return). That is, Judaism in its initial model not only guaranteed its own persistence by creating resentment at how things were, but also provided a remedy for that anger...
Clearly, the paradigm that has imprinted itself on the history of this period did not emerge from, was not generated by, the events of the age. First came the system, its worldview and way of life -- formed whole we know not where or by whom. Then came the selection by the system, of consequential events, and their patterning into systemic propositions. And finally, at a third stage (of indeterminate length) came the formation and composition of holy writings that would express the logic of the system and state those "events" that the system would select or invent for its own expression...
The Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption
The "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption" focuses on Germany's destruction of most European Jews (1933-1945) and on the creation of the State of Israel (1948). It transforms these events from secular, this-worldly occurences to generative symbols of mythic proportions. This particular Judaism is communal, stressing public policy and practical action...
....Whereas the Judaism of the dual Torah proves compelling only on specific occasions (rites of passage such as puberty, marriage, and death), the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption enjoys a perpetual and nearly universal response. That is, for a great many Jews, this recent Judaism asks an urgent question and answers it with a self-evident and compelling response... Jews in North America respond to the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption by imagining that they are someone else, living somewhere else, at another time and in another circumstance. That somewhere else is Poland in 1944, or the earthly Jerusalem of the State of Israel. Evidently, people define their everyday reality in terms of "Holocaust" and "redemption". So for this Judaism, the Holocaust defines the question, the State of Israel the answer, to the Jewish condition....
Is the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption a religion? Of course it is, because it has the power to turn "being Jewish" into a mode of transcendent and mythic being. What that means is that things are not what they seem, and "we" are more than what "we" appear to be. Specifically, "we" were there in Auschwitz, which stands for all of the centers for the murder of Jews, and "we" share, too, in the everyday life in that faraway place in which we do not live but should, the State of Israel. So the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption turns things into something other than what they seem, teaches lessons that change the everyday into the remarkable. The Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption tells me that the everyday -- the here and now of home and family -- ends not in a new Eden but in a cloud of poisonous gas, that salvation lives today, if I will it, but not here and not now. And it teaches me not to trouble to sanctify, but also not to trust, the present circumstance. ...A mark of importance of this other Judaism is that it has the capacity to draw more people into public activity than the synagogue and its Judaism. Most of the organized and collective life of the Jews as an ethnic group appeals to the myth and symbols of this Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption. That is why it is important.
[end of excerpts from "Judaism", by Jacob Neusner]
