study, arts and music, social justice, spirituality, services and more.

its moments of coherence and disintegration.

whimsical exoticism

“Peoplehood” is an attempt to get our arms around what it means to be a Jew.

the tradition — and perhaps God, too

וְנָא

אֱלֺהֵֽינוּ

בִּבְשָׂרֵֽנוּ

מָרָנָן וְרַבָּנָן וְרַבּוֹתַי

What might appear as the “non-freedom” of acceptance under coercion is actually a “beyond-freedom” that makes the decision of acceptance so overwhelmingly right, that our choice to say “I will do” feels as though there really was no choice at all.

unsuccessful

without any regard to the backstory of the food being served.

what they learned is that their enemies needed to be defeated rather than just embarrassed or proven wrong

horizontalism means not just no leaders, but also no division of labor within the group, and no imposition of anyone’s will on any other individual—that is, all decisions being made by consensus

make whole what has been smashed

These words also tell me that my fulfillment rests with my willingness and ability to cleave to God

Throughout the 1950s, Kaplan expended significant energies trying to convince the World Zionist Organization to promote worldwide Jewish peoplehood. His lack of success led Kaplan to think differently about the roles of American Jewish institutions in fostering Jewish life. By 1959, Kaplan began to imagine a separate institution.

fit

delicate

הֶתֵּר

הַמְמַחֶה וְשׁוֹתֶה

קְבוּעָה

וְנִכְרְתָה

כָּל הָאוֹכֵל כְּזַיִת חָמֵץ בְּפֶסַח מִתְּחִלַּת לֵיל חֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר עַד סוֹף יוֹם אֶחָד וְעֶשְׂרִים בְּנִיסָן בְּמֵזִיד חַיָּב כָּרֵת

וְלָֽקְטוּ֙ דְּבַר־י֣וֹם בְּיוֹמ֔וֹ

rationale

inveigh

adduces

prosaic

reborn animism denies the alienation of which it is itself proof and product, and concocts surrogates for non-existent experience

Monotheism is decomposing into a second mythology

is that shadow side inevitable? Can committed, engaged communities with that kind of insular and focused (as you say “every moment … sanctified”) stance exist today without the problems we see? I think it’s possible, but I just don’t know if it can be artificially created, with long-term viability

multiple Judaisms. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

from a genetic perspective might not really be the same “people,”

I would’ve loved to see a true Hasidic movement that is also modern

Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You

Mr.Hausner (or Mr. Ben-Gurion) probably wanted to demonstrate that whatever resistance there hadbeen had come from Zionists, as though, of all Jews, only the Zionists knew that if you could notsave your life it might still be worth while to save your honor, as Mr. Zuckerman put it; that theworst that could happen to the human person under such circumstances was to be and to remain"innocent," as became clear from the tenor and drift of Mrs. Zuckerman's testimony. However,these "political" intentions misfired, for the witnesses were truthful and told the court that allJewish organizations and parties had played their role in the resistance, so the true distinctionwas not between Zionists and non-Zionists but between organized and unorganized people, and,even more important, between the young and the middle-aged. To be sure, those who resistedwere a minority, a tiny minority, but under the circumstances "the miracle was," as one of thempointed out, "that this minority existed

Of greater importance for Eichmann were the emissaries from Palestine, who would approach theGestapo and the S.S. on their own initiative, without taking orders from either the GermanZionists or the Jewish Agency for Palestine. They came in order to enlist help for the illegalimmigration of Jews into British-ruled Palestine, and both the Gestapo and the S.S. were helpful.They negotiated with Eichmann in Vienna, and they reported that he was "polite," "not theshouting type," and that he even provided them with farms and facilities for setting up vocationaltraining camps for prospective immigrants. ("On one occasion, he expelled a group of nuns froma convent to provide a training farm for young Jews," and on another "a special train [was madeavailable] and Nazi officials accompanied" a group of emigrants, ostensibly headed for Zionisttraining farms in Yugoslavia, to see them safely across the border.) According to the story told byJon and David Kimche, with "the full and generous cooperation of all the chief actors" (The SecretRoads: The "Illegal" Migration of a People, 1938-1948, London, 1954), these Jews from Palestinespoke a language not totally different from that of Eichmann. They had been sent to Europe bythe communal settlements in Palestine, and they were not interested in rescue operations: "Thatwas not their job." They wanted to select "suitable material," and their chief enemy, prior to theextermination program, was not those who made life impossible for Jews in the old countries,Germany or Austria, but those who barred access to the new homeland; that enemy wasdefinitely Britain, not Germany. Indeed, they were in a position to deal with the Nazi authorities ona footing amounting to equality, which native Jews were not, since they enjoyed the protection ofthe mandatory power; they were probably among the first Jews to talk openly about mutualinterests and were certainly the first to be given permission "to pick young Jewish pioneers" fromamong the Jews in the concentration camps.

"mutually fair solution." At the time, many German officials held this opinion, and this kind of talkseems to have been quite common up to the end. A letter from a survivor of Theresienstadt, aGerman Jew, relates that all leading positions in the Nazi-appointed Reichsvereinigung were heldby Zionists (whereas the authentically Jewish Reichsvertretung had been composed of bothZionists and non-Zionists), because Zionists, according to the Nazis, were "the `decent' Jewssince they too thought in `national' terms." To be sure, no prominent Nazi ever spoke publicly inthis vein; from beginning to end, Nazi propaganda was fiercely, unequivocally, uncompromisinglyanti-Semitic, and eventually nothing counted but what people who were still without experience inthe mysteries of totalitarian government dismissed as "mere propaganda." There existed in thosefirst years a mutually highly satisfactory agreement between the Nazi authorities and the JewishAgency for Palestine - a Ha'avarah, or Transfer Agreement, which provided that an emigrant toPalestine could transfer his money there in German goods and exchange them for pounds uponarrival. It was soon the only legal way for a Jew to take his money with him (the alternative thenbeing the establishment of a blocked account, which could be liquidated abroad only at a loss ofbetween fifty and ninety-five per cent). The result was that in the thirties, when American Jewrytook great pains to organize a boycott of German merchandise, Palestine, of all places, wasswamped with all kinds of goods "made in Germany

it was in those years a fact of everydaylife that only Zionists had any chance of negotiating with the German authorities, for the simplereason that their chief Jewish adversary, the Central Association of German Citizens of JewishFaith, to which ninety-five per cent of organized Jews in Germany then belonged, specified in itsbylaws that its chief task was the "fight against anti-Semitism"; it had suddenly become bydefinition an organization "hostile to the State," and would indeed have been persecuted - which itwas not - if it had ever dared to do what it was supposed to do. During its first few years, Hitler'srise to power appeared to the Zionists chiefly as "the decisive defeat of assimilationism." Hence,the Zionists could, for a time, at least, engage in a certain amount of non-criminal cooperationwith the Nazi authorities; the Zionists too believed that "dissimilation," combined with theemigration to Palestine of Jewish youngsters and, they hoped, Jewish capitalists, could be a

This is especially true of Eichmann's muddled general outlook and ideology with respect to "theJewish question." During cross-examination, he told the presiding judge that in Vienna he"regarded the Jews as opponents with respect to whom a mutually acceptable, a mutually fairsolution had to be found.. . . That solution I envisaged as putting firm soil under their feet so that they would have a placeof their own, soil of their own. And I was working in the direction of that solution joyfully. Icooperated in reaching such a solution, gladly and joyfully, because it was also the kind ofsolution that was approved by movements among the Jewish people themselves, and I regardedthis as the most appropriate solution to this matter."This was the true reason they had all "pulled together," the reason their work had been "basedupon mutuality." It was in the interest of the Jews, though perhaps not all Jews understood this, toget out of the country; "one had to help them, one had to help these functionaries to act, andthat's what I did." If the Jewish functionaries were "idealists," that is, Zionists, he respected them,"treated them as equals," listened to all their "requests and complaints and applications forsupport," kept his "promises" as far as he could - "People are inclined to forget that now." Whobut he, Eichmann, had saved hundreds of thousands of Jews? What but his great zeal and giftsof organization had enabled them to escape in time? True, he could not foresee at the time thecoming Final Solution, but he had saved them, that was a "fact."

Those few refugees who insist upon telling the truth, even to the point of “indecency,” get in exchange for their unpopularity one priceless advantage: history is no longer a closed book to them and politics is no longer the privilege of Gentiles. They know that the outlawing of the Jewish people in Europe has been followed closely by the outlawing of most European nations. Refugees driven from country to country represent the vanguard of their peoples—if they keep their identity.

It is the tradition of a minority of Jews who have not wanted to become upstarts, who preferred the status of “conscious paria.” All vaunted Jewish qualities—the “Jewish heart,” humanity, humor, disinterested intelligence—are pariah qualities. All Jewish shortcomings—tactlessness, political stupidity, inferiority complexes and money-grubbing—are characteristic of upstarts

Brought up in the conviction that life is the highest good and death the greatest dismay, we became witnesses and victims of worse terrors than death—without having been able to discover a higher ideal than life.

Why did you not protest?,

Jews had degenerated

The trial was supposed to show them what it meantto live among non-Jews, to convince them that only in Israel could a Jew be safe and live anhonorable life.

crimes against mankind committed on the body of the Jewish people

"if we shall charge [Eichmann]also with crimes against non-Jews, . . . this is" not because he committed them, but, surprisingly,"because we make no ethnic distinctions." Certainly a remarkable sentence for a prosecutor toutter in his opening speech; it proved to be the key sentence in the case for the prosecution

Theyare so obviously three good and honest men that one is not surprised that none of them yields tothe greatest temptation to playact in this setting - that of pretending that they, all three born andeducated in Germany, must wait for the Hebrew translation.