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{{short description|Israeli professor, Holocaust survivor, and civil-rights activist (1933–2001)}}
'''Israel Shahak''' ({{lang-he|ישראל שחק}}, ], ] – ], ]) was a Polish-born Israeli Professor of ] at ] in ], the former president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and an outspoken critic of the ]i government and of Israeli society in general. Shahak's writings on ] have been the source of considerable controversy.
{{pp-extended|small=yes}}
{{use dmy dates|date=December 2018}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Israel Shahak
| native_name = ישראל שחק
| native_name_lang = he
| image = Israel Shahak.jpg
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Israel Himmelstaub
| birth_date = {{birth date|1933|4|29}}
| birth_place = ], ]
| death_date = {{death date and age|2001|7|2|1933|4|29}}
| death_place = ], ]
| nationality =
| other_names =
| occupation = Professor of chemistry, political scientist, civil rights activist, author
| known_for =
| signature = Israel Shahak signature.png
}}
'''Israel Shahak''' ({{langx|he|ישראל שחק}}; born '''Israel Himmelstaub''', 28 April 1933 – 2 July 2001) was an ] ] of ] at the ], a ], an ] of ], and a ] on behalf of both ] and ] (non-Jews). For twenty years, he headed the ] (1970–90) and was a ]. As a public intellectual, Shahak's works about ] proved controversial, especially the book ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'' (1994).{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}}

==Biography== ==Biography==
Israel Shahak was born Israel Himmelstaub, in 1933, in ], ], and was the youngest child of a cultured, ] family of ].{{sfn|Adams|2001|loc="Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw ..."}}{{sfn|Shahak|Ash|1987|loc="I was born in Warsaw and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end"}} During the Second World War, the ] (1939–1945) interned the Shahak family to the ]; yet his elder brother escaped from Poland to the ], where he joined the ]. Life in occupied Poland forced Shahak's mother to pay a Roman Catholic family to hide Israel, whom they returned when she could not afford their safe-keeping him from the Nazis.
Born in ], ],<ref>"I was born in Warsaw (the subject of a large part of the essay) and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end;" , '']]'', Volume 34, Number 1, ], 1987.</ref> Shahak was the youngest child of a cultured Polish ]ish family.<ref>"Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw," Adams, Michael. , '']'', ], 2001.</ref> After ], his family was forced into the ]. His brother escaped and joined the ] and his father disappeared. His mother paid a poor Catholic family to hide him, but when her money ran out he was returned, and in 1943 they were both sent to ]. Israel Shahak was liberated in 1945, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the ], where he volunteered for a ], but was turned down as "too weedy".<ref>"After setbacks - he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz - he became a model citizen." Pallis, Elfi. , '']'', July 6, 2001.</ref>


In 1943, the Nazis sent the Shahak family to the ], to the west of Lublin, where his father died. Fortuitously, the ten-year-old boy and his mother escaped from the Poniatowa camp, and returned to Warsaw; yet, within a year, whilst emptying the city of Jews, the Nazis recaptured Israel and his mother, and imprisoned them in the ], where they survived for 2 years,{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2001}} until the camp and its inmates were liberated in 1945 by the ]. At age 13, in 1946, he re-examined the ] and concluded that evidence for the theory was lacking.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} As ], mother and son ] to the ], where Shahak's application to join a ] was denied, because he was judged to be physically too slender.{{sfn|Pallis|2001|loc="After setbacks—he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz—he became a model citizen."}}
After graduating from high school, Shahak served in the ] (IDF) in an elite regiment.<ref name=Pallis>Pallis, Elfi. , '']'', July 6, 2001.</ref> After completing service with the IDF, he attended ] where he received his ] in ]. In 1961, he left Israel for the ] to study as a postdoctoral student at ]. He returned two years later to become a teacher and researcher in chemistry at ], where he remained until his retirement in 1990.


Post-war, the twelve-year-old Israel worked and studied and supported his mother, whose health had deteriorated in Bergen-Belsen. After a ] at boarding school in the village of ], Israel and his mother moved to the city of ]. Upon graduation from secondary school, Shahak ] in the ] (IDF). After the military service, he earned a ] in chemistry, at ].{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}
After the 1967 ] Shahak became critical of Israel's treatment of ]s, and a supporter of a ], and wrote many articles and several books outlining his views of Israeli society and Judaism.


In the course of his professional career as a scientist, Shahak's work in ] produced science about ] of the element ] (F), contributed to cancer research, for which he gained an international reputation{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2001}} and included posting as an assistant to ], the ] who was chairman (1952) of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}{{sfn|Adams|2001}} In 1961, Shahak pursued post-doctoral studies at ], in the U.S.; in 1963, he returned to Israel, where he became a popular lecturer and researcher in chemistry, at Hebrew University; moreover, by 1965, Shahak actively participated in the Israeli politics of the day.{{sfn|Hitchens|2001}}
Shahak died in Israel at the age of 68 due to complications from ].<ref name=Pallis/>


In 1990, the academic Shahak retired from the faculty of Hebrew University, because of poor health (]) and greater interest in research work in other fields of intellectual enquiry.{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} For most of his adult life, Shahak resided in the ] neighborhood in ]; at the age of 68 years, he died of diabetic complications, and was buried in the ] cemetery.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}
==Politics and works==
Shahak reports having been radicalized first by the ] and his feeling of betrayal by ]'s push to occupy the ], and then through his experiences in the ]. In the 1960s he became involved in the ]. Following the ] of 1967, he disavowed his former affiliation with the Israeli League against Religious Coercion, believing them to be "fake liberals" who used liberal principles to fight religious influence in Israeli society, but failed to use those same principles to fight Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Shahak instead joined the ], was elected president of the League in 1970. That same year he established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions.


Shahak had a deep affinity with ]:{{sfn|Hitchens|2001|loc="He had no heroes and no dogmas and no party allegiances. If he admitted to any intellectual model, it would have been Spinoza."}} he always packed a copy of ] in his suitcase for reading during his periodic stints of service in the ],{{sfn|Cooley|2015|p=217}} and had been writing a book on the philosopher before his death.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} His activities as a ] fighting for human rights causes and for a secular state earned him a reputation for controversy, and frequent abuse. He was regularly spat on,{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} frequently given death threats,{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} and decried variously as an Israel basher, ], traitor, and ].{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2001|loc="He was known by other names: Israel basher, self-hating Jew, traitor, enemy of the people. The entire lexicon of standard if unimaginative Israeli abuse was thrown at him, accompanied by calls to have him dismissed from the university or barred from leaving the country (to prevent him attacking it abroad). When he was branded (like many Jewish critics of Israel) with the old cliche of 'self-hating Jew', he always responded with his first-hand knowledge of the price of being a Jew. 'That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans.{{' "}}}}
He began publishing translations of the Hebrew press into English, alongside his own commentaries, arguing that Western activists needed better knowledge about conditions in Israel, and that the English-language editions of Hebrew newspapers were being intentionally distorted for ] audiences. This practice, along with writing letters to the editor, remained staples of his work for decades.


==Politics==
He became a well-known activist in international circles, co-authoring papers and giving joint speaking engagements with American activist ], and winning plaudits from ] and ].
=== Public intellectual ===
In the late 1950s, as a citizen of Israel, Shahak became politically engaged on hearing a comment of ] that, with the ] (29 October 1956 – 7 November 1956), the State of Israel was fighting to achieve "the kingdom of David and Solomon".{{sfn|Hitchens|2001}}
In the 1960s he joined the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion.{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}} In 1965, he began political activism against "Classical Judaism" and Zionism;{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} and wrote a letter to '']'' about having witnessed an Orthodox Jew "refusing to let his phone be used on the Sabbath to help a non-Jew who had collapsed nearby"; in Israel, Shahak's complaint began a long-running debate about the attitudes (religious and cultural) of ] towards gentiles.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}


In 1967, after the ] (5–10 June 1967), Shahak ended his membership to the League Against Religious Coercion, because they were "fake liberals" who used the principles of Liberalism to combat coercive religious influence in Israeli society — but did not apply such protections to the Israeli Palestinians living in the IDF-occupied ] and in the ].{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}} In the event, Shahak joined the ], and became its president in 1970.{{sfn|Adams|2001}} The League, composed of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, protested and publicized Israel's restrictive policies against Palestinians and provided legal aid to them. Some settlers in the West Bank city of ] so hated him that in 1971 they had their pick-up truck painted with "Dr. Shahak To The Gallows".{{sfn|Davis|1972|p=66}}
Reviewer ] explains that for Shahak, Zionism was both a reflection of, and capitulation to, European anti-Semitism, "since it, like the anti-Semites, holds that Jews are everywhere aliens who would best be isolated from the rest of the world."<ref name=Richman>{{cite journal|title=Book Review of ''Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections'' (eds. Roselle Tekiner et al. 1989, 358 pages) |author= ]|journal=]|date=|June 1989|page=38 url=http://www.middleeastbooks.com/html/books/tekiner.html}}</ref>


In 1969, Shahak and another member of the faculty of Hebrew University staged a sit-down protest against the Israeli government's policy of jailing politically active Palestinian students, by way of ] authorised by state-of-emergency laws; likewise, Shahak supported the political efforts of Palestinian students to achieve equal rights, like those granted to Jewish Israelis, at Hebrew University.{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} In 1970, Shahak established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions to formally oppose such legalised political repression.{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}}
In 1994 he published ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', in 1997 he published ''Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear and Foreign Policies'', and in 1999 he published ''Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel'', co-authored with Norton Mezvinsky. In the introduction to the latter book, Mezvinksy and Shahak explained that, "We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others."


To make public what he considered the anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian legalised discrimination, Shahak published English translations of Hebrew-language reportage about illegal and unjust actions of the Israeli government against the gentile citizens of Israel; Shahak's English reports were intended for the Jewish community of the U.S.{{sfn|Adams|2001}}{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} The translated reports featured headlines such as "Torture in Israel," and "Collective Punishment in the West Bank", which Shahak sent to journalists, academics, and human rights activists, and so ensured that the mainstream population of the U.S. would be informed of the religious discrimination practised by the government of Israel.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}
== Alleged telephone incident ==
In 1965 '']'' printed a letter from Shahak in which he claimed to have witnessed a ] man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew as it was the Jewish ]. In the letter, Shahak also claimed that members of the ] confirmed that the man was correct in his understanding of ], and that they backed this assertion by quoting from a passage from a recent compilation of law. The issue was subsequently taken up in '']'', leading to significant publicity.


===Civil rights advocate===
In ], ], who was later appointed ] of the ], disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, and asserted that Shahak had subsequently been forced to admit that he had fabricated the incident (according to Jackobovits, "in true '']'' style") in order to support his thesis. Jakobovits also cites a lengthy '']'' by ], the ] ] of Israel at the time, who stated that, "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives."<ref name=Tradition59>]. , ''Tradition'', Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966, p. 59.</ref>
As a ], Shahak wrote about the Israeli government's actions against the non-Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, such as the suppression of freedom of speech and general political activity; land ordinances, living restrictions, and the confiscation of lands from non-Jews; the destruction of houses; legally-sanctioned unequal pay and work restrictions; emergency-defence regulations allowing the summary arrest, detention, and torture of prisoners (civil and military); the collective punishment of communities; the assassinations of leaders (religious, political, academic); racial discrimination in access to education; and the deprivation of Israeli citizenship.{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} Such political activities earned Shahak much hostility and death threats; after the ] (June 1982 – June 1985), Shahak also reported Israeli abuses of the populations of Lebanon.{{sfn|Adams|2001}}


In effort to explain the behaviour of the State of Israel towards their Arab neighbours, Shahak proposed that the Israeli interpretation of Jewish history produced a society who disregard the human rights of the Arab peoples, within Israel and around Israel.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}} That Zionism was a "régime based on structural discrimination and racism".
Jakobovits gives two possible rationales for this ruling; first, that "Even biblical violations of the Sabbath are warranted for non-Jews 'on account of enmity', i.e., if the refusal to render such aid may imperil Jews," and second, that the Rabbis may have "deliberately introduced...a purely ethical counter-indication to laws which might otherwise be conducive to immoral results."<ref name=Tradition62>Jakobovits, ''op. cit.'', p. 62.</ref> He also notes that, as long ago as the 13th Century, "R. ] had stated that the prohibition to desecrate the Sabbath for the sake of Gentiles applied only to 'the ancient heathens ... because they professed no religion at all, nor did they acknowledge their duty to human society.'"<ref name=Tradition63>Jakobovits, ''op. cit.'', p. 63.</ref>


In the book review of a ] in honour of ] ''Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections'' (1988), Sheldon Richman characterized Shahak's interpretation of Zionism as viewing it as an ] reaction against the European ]'s individualism that strove to revive the suffocating world of the ]. The founders of the movement did not believe Jews could lead a normal existence in democratic societies. In this sense, for Shahak, Zionism can be thought of as "a mirror image of anti-Semitism," in that, in common with antisemites, Zionists considered Jews to be aliens who must be quarantined from the rest of the world, a viewpoint Shahak read as capitulating to European antisemitism. For Richman, Shahak's analysis shed light on the tragic consequences that followed upon the establishment of Israel, as Arabs were swept away to forge a state for Jews alone.{{sfn|Richman|1989}}
Shahak repeated his account in the opening chapter of his ] book, ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'', stating that "Neither the Israeli, nor the ], rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake." Reviewing the book, this claim, and the clamor surrounding it in the Jewish press, ] stated that "Dr. Shahak does not seem to notice that this clamor, which he duly notes, is in itself a refutation of his charge that current Jewish life is dominated by orthodox inhumanity. Dr. Shahak, whose nose is longer than Pinocchio's in any case, does not tell us the whole story of the incident."<ref name=Cohn1>"In Shahak's version, with which he begins this book, the Jew here followed the ruling the of orthodox rabbinate. The story was taken up by Ha-Arets in Israel, then by the Jewish Chronicle in London and other publications, all joining in a clamor against the barbaric orthodox. (Dr. Shahak does not seem to notice that this clamor, which he duly notes, is in itself a refutation of his charge that current Jewish life is dominated by orthodox inhumanity).
<br>
Dr. Shahak, whose nose is longer than Pinocchio's in any case, does not tell us the whole story of the incident." ]. , ''Israel Horizons'', vo. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994, pp. 28-9.</ref>


In letters published in the ''Ha'aretz'' and '']'' newspapers, Shahak criticized the political hypocrisy demonstrated by the radical Left in their uncritical support of the Palestinian nationalist movements.{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}} In his obituary of Shahak, ] said that Shahak's house was "a library of information about the human rights of the oppressed", and that:{{sfn|Hitchens|2001}}{{efn|Hitchens acknowledged a personal debt to Shahak, one of several people who "had to undergo considerable intellectual trial and evince notable courage, in order to break with the faith of their tribes", for having introduced him to the thinking of Spinoza.{{sfn|Hitchens|2011|p=285}}}}
Reviewing Shahak's account after Shahak's death, Rabbi ] questions whether there was any actual rationale for the alleged actions in the first place, stating: "it is certainly difficult to understand exactly what prohibition is involved in allowing someone else to use one's telephone on Shabbat." Student criticized Shahak's claim that Judaism was racist for denying medical treatment to gentiles on the Shabbath on three separate grounds:
*First, that Talmudic injunctions against providing medical aid on the Sabbath are not practiced today, as Orthodox Jewish medical professionals routinely treat both Jews and non-Jews on the Sabbath.
*Second, that even though purely theoretical, in any event the determination of who should not be treated on the Sabbath is not determined by race, but rather by belief and behavior; thus there are non-Jews who ''may'' be treated on the Sabbath, and Jews who ''may not'' be treated.
*Third, that the prohibitions against violating the Sabbath are not a measure of relative worth of an individual's life.<ref name=Student>]. , AishDas Society website, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2006.</ref>


<blockquote>The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation — none were ever turned away. I have met influential "civil society" Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to generalize about Jews. And they respected him, not just for his consistent stand against discrimination, but also because — he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and religion, and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, as he once put it to me, "I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the country. I have some severe criticisms to present to them. But I cannot do this while they are living under occupation, and I can 'visit' them as a privileged citizen."</blockquote>
== ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years'' ==


Shahak was also active in protesting the public burning of Christian books such as occurred on 23 March 1980 when ], a religious organization that was at the time a beneficiary of subsidies from the ], ceremonially incinerated hundreds of copies of the ] publicly in Jerusalem.{{sfn|Shahak|Mezvinsky|2004|p=23}}
In 1994 Shahak published ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years''. In it he proposes that most nations' histories are initially ]. However they then evolve through a period of critical self-analysis to incorporate other perspectives. This, he argues, largely hasn't happened with ].


===Author===
Shahak alleges that ]ic ] is a totalitarian ] where rabbinical law governs every aspect of Jewish behaviour.<ref> "The legal system of the Talmud can be described as totally comprehensive, rigidly authoritarian, and yet capable of infinite development, without however any change in its dogmatic base. Every aspect of Jewish life, both individual and social, is covered, usually in considerable detail, with sanctions and punishments for every conceivable sin or infringement of the rules" p 40 </ref> He also claims that these laws result in religious ] and thereby govern Jewish thought.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} This, according to Shahak, has two important consequences:
Among the books publish by Israel Shahak are ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel'' (1994), co-authored by ], ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'' (1994), and ''Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear and Foreign Policies'' (1997). In the introduction to the 2004 edition of ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel'', the historian Mezvinsky said, "We realize that, by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism, we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others."{{sfn|Shahak|Mezvinsky|2004|p=xxi}}
* Attempts by Western analysts to explain contemporary ]i politics in purely secular terms such as ] are fundamentally flawed.
* More controversially, that 'Jewish chauvinism' can be a causal factor in ], and that both must be fought simultaneously.


==Alleged telephone incident==
Shahak also analyses the period from the beginning of the last millennium (CE) to the advent of the modern state when most ]s lived under ] in segregated communities. These communities, writes Shahak, were under the patronage of ] nobles who typically used them to enforce their authority on a non-Jewish ] class. Rebellions by such peasants in which all ] agents were attacked, Shahak argues, have wrongly been perceived as anti-Jewish persecutions. Consequently, he calls for significant parts of Jewish history to be re-evaluated from a universal perspective.
In 1965, Shahak wrote a letter to the '']'' newspaper, about an injustice he witnessed; that letter originated "the current major debate within and outside Israel about Orthodox Jewish attitudes to non-Jews."{{sfn|Rickman|2009}} In the letter, Shahak said he witnessed an Orthodox Jew refuse the use of his telephone to call for an ambulance for a non-Jew, because it was the ].{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}{{sfn|Segev|2007|pp=99–100}}{{sfn|Bogdanor|2006|p=121}}{{sfn|Boteach|2008}} Shahak added that the ], the rabbinical court of Jerusalem, had confirmed that the Orthodox Jew correctly understood '']'' law on ] regarding non-Jews and the Sabbath, and quoted passages from a recent legal compilation.


Consequently, the cultural matter of a religiously-denied telephone became public political discussion in the Israeli press and the Jewish press abroad, all of which directed attention to Shahak as a ] in the cultural politics of Israel.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}{{sfn|Segev|2007|pp=99–100}}{{sfn|Boteach|2008}} '']'' in London stated that "The halakha (Jewish law) abounds in such abominations ... in conflict with the humane instincts within which anyone raised in Jewish tradition is imbued."{{sfn|Rickman|2009}} In the '']'' newspaper, the minister of religious affairs, Rabbi Dr. ] said that the Orthodox rabbinical ruling was correct, but quoted traditional Jewish passages that allowed a Jewish physician to save the life of a non-Jew on the Sabbath, despite not being religiously required to do so.{{sfn|Segev|2007|pp=99–100}}
Shahak also claims that ] is an attempt to re-establish a closed Jewish community and that this has resulted in discrimination against non-Jews. He concludes the book by stating, "Although the struggle against antisemitism (and of all other forms of racism) should never cease, the struggle against Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism, which must include a critique of classical Judaism, is now of equal or greater importance."


===Public controversy===
The work was praised by ] and ], both of whom wrote introductions to the book at various times. ] wrote that his "examination of Jewish religious fundamentalism" was "invaluable":<blockquote> concludes that "there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism." He quotes from an official exhortation to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, published by the Israeli army's Central Region Command in which the chief chaplain writes: "When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah (the legal system of classical Judaism) they may and even should be killed ... In no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised ... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good."<ref> 03 December 1997, ]</ref></blockquote>
In 1966, Rabbi ] disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, claiming that Israel Shahak had been compelled to admit that the incident had not occurred.{{sfn|The Times|1999}}{{sfn|Jakobovits|1966|pp=58–65}} He cited a lengthy '']'', by ], the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, who said that "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives", and cited a ruling by Rabbi ] that Jews ''should'' desecrate the Sabbath to save a gentile's life.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}{{sfn|Boteach|2008}}{{sfn|Schwartz|2002|p=19}}{{sfn|Jakobovits|1966|p=59}} The opinions of these rabbis derived from the book ''Noda B'Yehuda'' (''Known in Judah''), in which the 18th-century religious authority ] said: "I emphatically declare that in all laws contained in the Jewish writings concerning theft, fraud, etc. no distinction is made between Jew and Gentile; that the (Talmudic) legal categories ], ''akum'' (idolater) etc., in no way apply to the people among whom we live."{{sfn|Schwartz|2002|p=19}}


In 1967,{{citation needed|date=July 2017}} Ze'ev Falk, while dissociating himself from Shahak's Sabbath story which he regarded as an invention, acknowledged that it was this "fiction" and method of action which had indeed brought about Rabbi Unterman's ruling that allowed the Sabbath to be violated to save the lives of Gentiles. For him, Unterman's ruling may have opened a "new page" in Orthodox Jewish attitudes to righteous Gentiles and non-Jews alike.{{sfn|Falk|1997|loc=pp. 47–53: "It is incumbent upon the State of Israel to appear as a kingdom of mercy and not to be stringent in applying the law. While I dissociate myself from the methods of action of Dr. Israel Shahak, who invented the case of a Gentile who was not given treatment on the Sabbath, it was this fiction that led Chief Rabbi Unterman to issue a ruling permitting the violation of the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. While no explicit permit has yet been discovered concerning prohibitions stated in the Torah itself. perhaps this was the opening of a new page in our attitude towards righteous Gentiles and non-Jews in general, the culmination to be hoped for being that there will be no gulf between moral feeling on the one hand and the Halakha on the other.{{' "}}}}
Specific claims made in the book have been described as "]s" and "grotesque charges" and are alleged to have been fabricated by Shahak.<ref name=JHJR>
*Dr. Shahak is full of startling revelations, if that is the word, about Jewish history and the Jewish religion. None of those I was able to check had any foundation. Some are just funny. He says (pp. 23-4) that "Jewish children are actually taught" to utter a ritual curse when passing a non-Jewish cemetery. He also tells us (p. 34) that "both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands....On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God... but on the other he is worshiping Satan..." I did take the trouble to question my orthodox rabbi nephew to find what might be behind such tall tales. He had no clue. If orthodox Jews were actually taught such hateful things, surely someone would have heard. Whom is Dr. Shahak kidding?" ]. , ''Israel Horizons'', vo. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994, pp. 28-9.
*"Shahak is one of the world's leading anti-Semites. Indeed, notwithstanding Shahak's claims that he opposes anti-Semitism, hatred for the Jewish religion is the defining characteristic of his writings. For example, in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Shahak levels numerous grotesque charges, such as that Jewish children are taught 'whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non-Jewish.' (pages 23-24) Later Shahak accuses Jews of worshiping Satan: 'both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God ... but on the other he is worshiping Satan ...' (page34)". , ], August 1999. Retrieved March 28, 2006.
*"...a book by the late Hebrew University professor Israel Shahak (yet another Jewish anti-Semite) which attacks the Jewish religion as such as inherently racist. Shahak is especially harsh in his attacks on the Talmud - a traditional target of anti-Semites for centuries... Shahak even justifies the notorious Chmeilnitsky pogroms in the 17th century Ukraine, which may have killed up to 100,000 Jews, on the grounds that the Jews had exploited the Ukrainian peasantry and deserved what they got. Amongst so many accusations against the Jews and Judaism, one, perhaps, especially stands out: Shahak's claim that the Jews worship Satan." Neuwirth, Rachel. , ''The Conservative Voice'', January 6, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2005.</ref>


===The history book===
==Reception==
Despite the controversy, Shahak published his account of the telephone in the first chapter of ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' (1994), and said that "neither the Israeli, nor the ] rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that, if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake."{{sfn|Shahak|2002|pp=4–5}}
In his memoirs, ''To Be an Arab in Israel'', Palestinian poet ] described Shahak as a "remarkable and outstanding individual",<ref name="El-Asmar">{{cite book |last= El-Asmar|first= Fouzi|title= To Be an Arab in Israel|year= 1975|publisher= Frances Pinter|location= London|isbn= 0903804085|pages= 138}}</ref> and ], who wrote the introduction to Shahak's ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', described him there as 'the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets.'" According to Haim Genizi, "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed by the PLO and widely circulated in pro-Arab circles".<ref>Genizi, Haim. ''The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches'', McGill-Queen's Press, 2002, p. 94.</ref>


In 2008, seven years after Shahak's death, the controversy of religious interpretation continued when Rabbi ] doubted the veracity of Shahak's report of Jewish injustice against a non-Jew: "From the beginning, the story was curious. What prohibition could there possibly be, in allowing someone else to use one's phone on the Sabbath?" In support, he cited Eli Beer, the chief coordinator of Israel's volunteer ambulance service (1,100 medical personnel, 60 per cent Orthodox), who said, "If someone would say we won't save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath, he is a liar. If he is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim we save everyone's life on any day of the year, including the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, and I have done so myself. Indeed, as an Orthodox Jew it is my greatest honor to save the life of a non-Jew, and I would violate any of the Jewish holy days to do so."{{sfn|Boteach|2008}}
After his death, Shahak received tributes from a number of sources. His co-author Morton Mezvinsky stated he was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist", and ] described him as "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity."<ref>Mezvinsky, Morton. , '']'', August/September 2001, page 11.</ref> ], who considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade", said he was a "a brilliant and devoted student of the archeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", and that "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate." <ref>]. , '']'', "Minority Report", July 23, 2001.</ref> On ] ] described him as a "tireless translator and erudite footnoter" and "a singular man, an original",<ref>]. , ''Left Coast'', ], July 13, 2001. Retrieved July 21, 2006.</ref> while Allen C. Brownfield writing in the ], said he had a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights."<ref>Brownfield, Allen C. , '']'', October 2001, p. 71. Retrieved July 21, 2006.</ref> In his obituary in '']'' Elfi Pallis described him as "an old-fashioned ]",<ref name=Pallis/> and ] stated that he was "above all one of the last philosophers of the 18th century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept."<ref>]. , '']'', Issue 13, Summer 2001.</ref>


==''Jewish History, Jewish Religion''==
Others accused Shahak of fabricating incidents, "]", distorting the normative meaning of Jewish texts, and misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.<ref name=Student/><ref>Mathis, Andrew. , June 8, 2000. Retrieved May 12, 2006.</ref><ref name=Tradition>]. , ''Tradition'', Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.</ref><ref name=CAMERA>, ], August 1999. Retrieved July 7, 2006.</ref><ref>]. , ''Israel Horizons'', vol. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994.</ref>
In 1994, Shahak published ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', about Jewish fundamentalism, which history professor ], at Central Connecticut State University, said is a:


<blockquote>Scathing attack upon Classical Judaism and its more modern outgrowth, Orthodox Judaism.... As a lover of prophetic Judaism and as a disciple of Spinoza, Shahak, in a learned and rational manner, condemned the parochialism, racism, and hatred of non-Jews, which too often appeared in the Judaism that developed during and after the Talmudic period, and which, to a goodly extent, still exists.{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}}</blockquote>
In the introduction to his 2002 edition of ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel'', Shahak's co-author Norton Mezvinsky wrote that antisemites and antisemitic groups "utilize unduly Shahak's criticisms in trying to justify their hatred of Jews. They have continued to do this either by citing and/or using out-of-context some of Shahak's points." The full texts of his works can be found on websites such as ], ], ], ], and "Historical Review Press".<ref><ref>
*"...his writings appear on neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial websites around the world." "Solomon Socrates", , '']'', Fall 2001.
*"It's a truism that you can tell a man by the company he keeps, and if you go to just about any neo-Nazi or fundamentalist Islamic website you'll see the company that keeps Shahak: His articles and commentaries are lovingly preserved under such titles as 'The Jewish Hatred Towards Christianity'; 'The Jewish Laundry of Drug Money'; and Israel's Discriminatory Practices Are Rooted in Jewish Law." Jason Maoz, , '']'', September 19, 2001.
*"Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994) is... more likely to be cited on a neo-Nazi website, than your local synagogue's... (Radio Islam contains the full text of Shahak's work) as well as groups that are often openly anti-Semitic (David Duke and Bradley Smith include Shahak's book on their websites)." Ari Alexander. , ''MyJewishLearning.com''. Accessed January 1, 2007.
*"The site , it turns out, does not present Islam as the only victim of Judaism, but speaks of other religions whose followers allegedly have been persecuted by Jews. One column by Professor Israel Shahak, for example, discusses a supposed Jewish tradition of spitting on the Christian cross, a practice he contends has gone on since 200 A.D. and continues to grow in popularity." Ron Strom. , '']'', May 27, 2002. Accessed January 1, 2007.
*"it should be noted that the French edition of Shahak’s book is published by La Vielle Taupe, described by Cohn as a “neo-Nazi sect in Paris that publishes books denying the holocaust.”" Alex Safian. , ], September 30, 2002. Accessed January 1, 2007.
*"...the present-day disciples of Hitler were equally enthusiastic: 'Dr. Israel Shahak risked all...' mourned the American Nazi leader David Duke..." ]. "Chomsky's Ayatollahs", in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), , Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 124.
*"In most of these anti-Semitic websites, homage is paid to one Professor Israel Shahak who is described as a courageous and knowledgeable Jew presumably for his resurrection of the old distortions and canards about the Talmud in his book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion. Laudable reviews, quotations and even whole chapters from the book appear on many anti-Semitic websites." Posner, Laurence. , '']'', September 17 - September 30, 1999.
*"Shahak's book and the articles may also be found on Radio Islam's Internet site, and Radio Islam acts as a retailer for the book." , ''Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today'', Institute for Jewish Policy Research, December 1996.
*"... Radio Islam's voluminous online library such anti-Semitic "classics" as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Hitler's Mein Kampf, Henry Ford's The International Jews, and the works of Israel Shahak." Neuwirth, Rachel. , ''The Conservative Voice'', January 6, 2005. Retrieved March 15, 2007.</ref>


That the initial history of most nations is ], and that, in time, by way of a period of critical self-analysis, the nation incorporates the social perspectives of ], of the ethnic groups living among them. That, after the ], the ] from legal and religious social subordination was a dual liberation — from Christian ] and from the rabbinate of conservative ], and their "imposed scriptural control" upon daily Jewish life.{{sfn|Hitchens|1997|p=xi}}
==Accusations of antisemitism==
In reaction to his writings about ] and the ], Shahak has been accused of ].<ref name=JHJR/> The ] listed Shahak as one of four authors of polemics in its paper ''The ] in ] Polemics'',<ref>, ], February 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2006.</ref>. Many conservative activists have made similar accusations: ] accused Shahak of "recycling Soviet antisemitic propaganda"<ref>Bogdanor, ''op. cit.'', p. 122.</ref>; ] and the ''Conservative Voice'' described him as an "anti-semite,"<ref>]. , FrontPageMag.com, June 7, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2006.</ref><ref>Neuwirth, Rachel. , ''The Conservative Voice'', January 6, 2005. Retrieved March 28, 2007.</ref> and the ] asserted that he was "one of the world's leading anti-Semites."<ref name=JHJR/>


The journalist ] said that the examination of ] is invaluable, because Shahak concludes that:
In 1995 ] wrote of Shahak:
<blockquote>There can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism." He quotes from an official exhortation to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, published by the Israeli army's Central Region Command, in which the chief chaplain writes: "When our forces come across civilians during a war, or in hot pursuit, or a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then, according to the '']'' (the legal system of Classical Judaism) they may and even should be killed... In no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised.... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined, by the ''Halakhah'' to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.{{sfn|Fisk|1997}}{{dead link|date=April 2022}}</blockquote>
<blockquote>Without question, he is the world's most conspicuous Jewish antisemite... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life's work to popularize the anti-Talmud ruminations of the 18th century German antisemite, ]."<ref>]. ''Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers'', Avukah Press, 1995, p. 18.</ref></blockquote>


In his foreword to the second edition (1997), ] said that Shahak was "one of the most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Middle East" who he credits with doing more to dissipate the "ideological smoke screen" of Zionism than any other single individual. He goes on to describe Shahak as "un- and anti-racist" and emphasizes Shahak's consistency in applying a single standard for infractions against human rights. Said describes Shahak's writing as "rigorous and uncompromising", often at the expense of putting things "'nicely'".<ref name=":0">Shahak, Israel. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. United Kingdom, Pluto Press, 1994.</ref>
Irfan Khawaja has argued that Israel Shahak - and other ] writers like ] and ] - are often accused of antisemitism due to what he describes as a "reflexive equation, by defenders of Israel, of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism." He argues:
<blockquote>Focusing on the undeniable fact that many anti-Zionists are anti-Semites, and that anti-Zionism can easily be used as a disguise for anti-Semitism, writers in this genre simply insist over and over that no one can be an anti-Zionist without simultaneously being an anti-Semite ... What is at work here is less a discernible principle than a robotic sort of cut-and-paste procedure: Come up with a list of people who a priori must be anti-Semites; then cast about for ‘evidence’ of this claim by finding sentences here or there to which you give an anti-Semitic interpretation regardless of the intention of the author or the context of the utterance. Where the evidence is simply too thin to support a straightforward accusation, insinuate that anti-Semitism is at work without actually making an assertion that it is. Repeat the process until you run out of people.<ref>{{cite web|title=Poisoning the Well: The False Equation of Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism|author= Irfan Khawaja|publisher=History News Network|date=28 March 2005|url= http://hnn.us/articles/10866.html}}</ref></blockquote>


Said comments specifically about ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' as a powerful contribution to the study of Judaism and rabbinical and Talmudic traditions and it's associated scholarship. In summary, he describes this work:<blockquote>Shahak shows that the obscure, narrowly chauvinist prescriptions against various undesirable Others are to be found in Judaism (as well of course as other monotheistic traditions) but he also then goes on to show the continuity between those and the way Israel treats Palestinians, Christians and other non-Jews. A devastating portrait of prejudice, hypocrisy and religious intolerance emerges.<ref name=":0" /></blockquote>About his other writing, Said also emphasized Shahak's willingness to criticize Palestinian policies, addressing "the PLO's sloppiness, its ignorance of Israel, its inability to resolutely oppose Israel, its shabby compromises and cult of personality, its general lack of seriousness." {{sfn|Said|2002|pp=ix–xiv}}
Emanuele Ottolenghi argues that Jews like Shahak act as enablers for antisemites, stating that their rhetoric plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his view:
<blockquote>Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism for making the same arguments? The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel’s new historians... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the ].<ref>Ottolenghi, Emanuele. , '']'', ], 2006.</ref></blockquote>


In his book review, ] said that Shahak was making "grotesque charges" and that specific passages in ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' are without foundation:{{sfn|Cohn|1994|pp=28–29}}
== Notes ==
{{reflist|2}}


<blockquote>Some are just funny. He says (pp. 23-4) that "Jewish children are actually taught" to utter a ritual curse when passing a non-Jewish cemetery.{{efn|"So now, one can read quite freely—and Jewish children are actually taught—passages such as that, which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non-Jewish."{{sfn|Shahak|1994|pp=23–24}}}} He also tells us (p. 34) that "both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands....On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God... but on the other he is worshiping Satan..." I did take the trouble to question my orthodox rabbi nephew to find what might be behind such tall tales. He had no clue. If orthodox Jews were actually taught such hateful things, surely someone would have heard. Whom is Dr. Shahak kidding?.{{efn|"Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan... both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God, by promoting the divine union of Son and Daughter; but on the other he is worshiping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that, when he is offered a few of them, it keeps him busy for a while, and he forgets to pester the divine Daughter."{{sfn|Shahak|2002|p=34}}}}</blockquote>
==References==
<div class="references-small">
*, ''Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today'', Institute for Jewish Policy Research, December 1996.
*, The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism, 2006. Retrieved March 15, 2007.
*. ], ''Special Dispatch Series - No. 1035'', ], 2005.
*{{PDFlink||199&nbsp;]<!-- application/pdf, 204237 bytes -->}}, ], February 2003.
*, ], August 1999.
*, '']]'', Volume 34, Number 1, ], 1987.
*Adams, Michael. , '']'', ], 2001.
*Alexander, Ari. , ''MyJewishLearning.com''.
*]. "Chomsky's Ayatollahs", in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), , Transaction Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0765803275
*Brownfield, Allen C. , '']'', October 2001.
*]. , ''Left Coast'', ], July 13, 2001.
*]. , ''Israel Horizons'', vo. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994.
*]. ''Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers'', Avukah Press, 1995. ISBN 0964589702
*Genizi, Haim. ''The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches'', McGill-Queen's Press, 2002. ISBN 0773524010
*Glazov, Jamie. , '']'', February 22, 2006.
*]. , '']'', "Minority Report", July 23, 2001.
*El-Asmar, Fouzi (1975). ''To Be an Arab in Israel'', London: Frances Pinter. ISBN 0903804085.
*]. , ''Tradition'', Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.
*Maoz, Jason. , '']'', September 19, 2001.
*Mathis, Andrew. , June 8, 2000.
*Mezvinsky, Morton. , '']'', August/September 2001.
*Neuwirth, Rachel. , ''The Conservative Voice'', January 6, 2005.
*Ottolenghi, Emanuele. , '']'', ], 2006.
*Pallis, Elfi. , '']'', July 6, 2001.
*]. , ], June 7, 2005.
*Posner, Laurence . , '']'', September 17 - September 30, 1999.
*Safian, Alex. , ], September 30, 2002.
*"Solomon Socrates". , '']'', Fall 2001.
*Strom, Ron. , '']'', May 27, 2002.
*]. , AishDas Society website, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2006.
*]. , '']'', Issue 13, Summer 2001.
</div>


The remark regarding children passing a cemetery occurs in Shahak's discussion of passages modified by rabbis who, under pressure from antisemitic Christian authorities such as those in Tzarist Russia, altered the texts, while keeping private copies of the originals which, according to Shahak were restored as the proper manuscript readings and published in Israel after the founding of the state of Israel.{{sfn|Shahak|2002|pp=23–24}}
==Bibliography==

===Books (partial)===
] writing for the ] gave a negative review and proposed to dispose the book " into the same dustbin as the infamous anti-Jewish tract and fraud, ]."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Heilman|first=Samuel|date=2001|title=Review of Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, (Pluto Middle Eastern Series)|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23063425|journal=Middle East Studies Association Bulletin|volume=35|issue=1|pages=112–113|doi=10.1017/S0026318400041997 |jstor=23063425 |s2cid=164310024 |issn=0026-3184}}</ref>

==Critical reception==
As a public intellectual, Israel Shahak was accused of fabricating the incidents he reported, of ], of distorting the ] meaning of Jewish religious texts, and of misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.{{sfn|Jakobovits|1966}} Paul Bogdanor claimed that Shahak "regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention."{{sfn|Bogdanor|2006|p=119}} Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Organization for Jewish–Islamic dialogue, said that, despite the use of Shahak's works by neo-Nazis and anti-Israel organisations in Arab countries:

<blockquote>The texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak's sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Often, the interpretation of these texts is debatable, and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but, nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition, and, therefore, cannot be ignored.{{sfn|Alexander}}</blockquote>

Accusations of being an antisemite were among the responses to Shahak's works about ] and the ].{{sfn|Cohn|1994|pp=28–29}} In that vein, in ''The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics'', the ] (ADL) listed Shahak as one of four authors of antisemitic polemics, and Bogdanor said that in his works, Shahak was "recycling Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda".{{sfn|Bogdanor|2006|p=122}} ] said, "without question, he is the world's most conspicuous Jewish anti-Semite.... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life's work to popularize the anti–Talmud ruminations of the eighteenth-century German anti-Semite, ]".{{sfn|Cohn|1995|p=18}} ], reviewing Alexander and Bogdanor's book, argued that Jews such as Shahak, ], ], ], ], ] and ] act as enablers for antisemites, because the rhetoric of antisemitic Jews plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his opinion, "Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language, and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism, for making the same arguments?... The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel's new historians.... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the ]".{{sfn|Ottolenghi|2006}}

The journalist Dan Rickman argues that

<blockquote>Shahak ignores aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating his case, his analysis fits into anti-Semitic traditions of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned, and the text of the Talmud that is studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources in any way 'justifies' anti-Semitism is also very troubling. However, I do believe that his trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, not without some force. The contemporary situation is that we do see some modern Orthodox rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as ] are sadly the exception rather than the rule.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}</blockquote>

==Death==
Shahak died of diabetes in July 2001 and was buried in ] cemetery, Jerusalem.{{sfn|Katzman|2001}} His death was the occasion of tribute and criticism; the ] historian Haim Genizi, said that "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed by the ], and widely circulated in pro–Arab circles", in detriment to the interests of the State of Israel.{{sfn|Genizi|2002|p=94}} ] said Shahak was "the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets",{{sfn|Vidal|2002|p=4}} regarding the influence of religion upon the ] of society. ], said that his friend and collaborator was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist"; in that vein, ] said that Shahak was "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity."{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} An obituary in ''Haaretz'' called him "the scourge of nationalists".{{sfn|Katzman|2001}}

] considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade... a brilliant and devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", who, "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate."{{sfn|Hitchens|2001}} ], writing in ], described Shahak the intellectual, the "tireless translator and erudite foot-noter... a singular man, an original."{{sfn|Cockburn|2001}} Allan C. Brownfeld, of the ], recalled a ] who actively opposed "racism and oppression in any form and in any country"; that Shahak possessed a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights."{{sfn|Brownfeld|2001}} In an obituary, the journalist Elfi Pallis called Shahak essentially "an old-fashioned liberal" in principle, thought, and action.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} Moreover, ] said that Israel Shahak was "the last Israeli liberal", who was "above all, one of the last philosophers of the eighteenth-century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept."{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}}

==Selected bibliography==
{{main|Israel Shahak bibliography}}
* Israel Shahak, (ed.), ''The Non-Jew in the Jewish State; a collection of Documents'', Jerusalem, 1975 * Israel Shahak, (ed.), ''The Non-Jew in the Jewish State; a collection of Documents'', Jerusalem, 1975
* Israel Shahak (ed), ''Begin & Co as they really are'', Glasgow 1977 * Israel Shahak (ed), ''Begin & Co as they really are'', Glasgow 1977
* Israel Shahak and ], ''Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Studies in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing)'', Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., April 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-51-7 * Israel Shahak and ], ''Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Studies in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing)'', Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., April 1982, paperback, {{ISBN|0-937694-51-7}}
* Israel Shahak, ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', Stylus Publishing, LLC, December, 1994, trade paperback, ISBN 0-7453-0819-8 * Israel Shahak, ''Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4)'', Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback
* Israel Shahak, (ed.), ''] (a translation of Oded Yinon's "]" or the "]"'', Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., October 1982, paperback, {{ISBN|0-937694-56-8}}
* Israel Shahak, ''Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies'', Stylus Publishing, December, 1997, hardcover, 193 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1152-0
* Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Middle Eastern Series)'', Pluto Press (UK), October, 1999, hardcover, 176 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1281-0; trade paperback, Pluto Press, (UK), October, 1999, ISBN 0-7453-1276-4; 2nd edition with new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky, trade paperback July, 2004, 224 pages, ISBN 0-7453-2090-2 * Israel Shahak, ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'': Pluto Press, London, 1994, {{ISBN|978-0-7453-0819-7}}; Pluto Press, London, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-7453-2840-9}}
* Israel Shahak, ''Israel's Global Role : Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4)'', Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback * Israel Shahak, ''Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies'', Pluto Press, London, 1997
* Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Middle Eastern Series)'', Pluto Press (UK), October 1999, hardcover, 176 pages, {{ISBN|0-7453-1281-0}}; trade paperback, Pluto Press, (UK), October 1999, {{ISBN|0-7453-1276-4}}; 2nd edition with new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky, trade paperback July 2004, 224 pages


==References==
=== Articles by Shahak (partial list):===
===Notes===
* March - April 1975 The Link - Volume 8, Issue 2
{{notelist}}
* The Link, volume 8, issue 5 Winter 1975
* ''The `Historical Right' and the Other Holocaust'', in ''],'' 10, no. 3 (Spr. 1981): 27-34.
* ''Israeli Apartheid and the Intifada'', in ''Race and Class,'' 1988: Volume 30, no. 1: 1-13.
* December 1988, Page 17 ].
* ''A History of the Concept of `Transfer' in Zionism'', in ''Journal of Palestine Studies,'' 18, no. 3 (Spr. 1989): 22-37.
* Extra! Summer 1989
* January 1991, Page 6 WRMEA
* January 1991, Page 27 WRMEA
* January 1991, Page 67 WRMEA
* Lies of Our Times, February 1991, p. 8.
* March 1991, Page 27 WRMEA
* July 1991, Page 20 WRMEA
* August/September 1991, Page 23 WRMEA
* October 1991, Page 19 WRMEA
* November 1991, Page 17 WRMEA
* December/January 1991/92, Page 11, WRMEA
* February 1993, Page 28, WRMEA
* April/May 1993, Page 15 WRMEA
* By July/August 1993, Page 11
* November/December 1993, Page 7-16 WRMEA
* January 1994, Page 18 WRMEA
* February/March 1994, Page 16 WRMEA
* July/August 1994, Page 19 WRMEA
* April/May 1995, Pages 15, 108-110 WRMEA
* March 1995, pgs. 11, 97-98 WRMEA
* July/August 1995, pgs. 18, 119 WRMEA
* December 1995, Pages 18, 82 WRMEA
* January 1996, pgs. 8, 97-98 WRMEA
* , in WRMEA, July 1996, pgs. 19, 11
* November/December 1996, pages 19, 106 WRMEA
* March 1998, Pages 8, 86 WRMEA
'''Collections of articles:'''
*, list of articles and interviews with Shahak in Middle East Policy Journal
* comments & articles in ]


===Citations===
===Interviews with Shahak (partial list)===
{{wikiquote}} {{Reflist|3}}
*''An Interview with Israel Shahak'', interview in '']'', 4, no. 3 (Spr. 1975): 3-20.
*''No Change in Zion'', interview in ''Journal of Palestine Studies,'' 7, no. 3 (Spr. 1978): 3-16.


===Sources===
<!--Note: The antisemitism category is for articles which discuss antisemitism in some way. It is not a category of antisemites, and contains many people who have never been accused of antisemitism. If you wish to remove this category please discuss it on the Talk: page first. Removals of this category without agreement on the Talk: page will simply be reverted.-->
{{refbegin|2}}
*{{Cite news |title=Israel Shahak |last=Adams |first=Michael |newspaper=] |url=http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article35445.ece |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071001090906/http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article35445.ece |date=26 July 2001 |archive-date=1 October 2007}}
*{{Cite news |title=Israel and Anti-Gentile Traditions |last=Alexander |first=Ari |page=71 |publisher=MyJewishLearning.com |url=https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/israel-and-anti-gentile-traditions/}}
*{{Cite book |title=Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections |last1=Berger |first1=Elmer |last2=Shahak |first2=Israel |last3=Tekiner |first3=Roselle |last4=Abed-Rabbo |first4=Samir |last5=Mezvinsky |first5=Norton |author1-link=Elmer Berger (rabbi) |author2-link=Israel Shahak |author5-link=Norton Mezvinsky |year=1989 |publisher=Amana Books |url=https://archive.org/details/antizionismanaly0000berg |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-915-59773-4}}
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*{{Cite book |title=Green March, Black September (RLE Israel and Palestine): The Story of the Palestinian Arabs |last=Cooley |first=John K. |author-link=John K. Cooley |year=2015 |orig-year=First published 1973 |publisher=] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ID-sCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA217 |pages=115–134 |isbn=9781317444510}}
*{{Cite journal |title=Journey out of Zionism: The Radicalization of an Israeli Pacifist |last=Davis |first=Uri |author-link=Uri Davis |journal=] |year=1972 |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=59–72 |doi=10.2307/2535663 |jstor=2535663 |url=http://jps.ucpress.edu/content/1/4/59.full.pdf}}
*{{Cite journal |title=Gentile and Stranger in Jewish Law |last=Falk |first=Ze'ev |editor-last=Rubinstein |editor-first=Arieh |journal=Steps |publisher=Movement for Torah Judaism |date=3 December 1997 |pages=47–53}}
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*{{cite web |title=The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics |publisher=] |url=http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/the_talmud.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100805220714/http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/the_talmud.pdf |archive-date=5 August 2010}}&nbsp;{{small|(199&nbsp;KB)}}, ], February 2003.
*{{Cite book |chapter=Introduction |last=Vidal |first=Gore |author-link=Gore Vidal |year=2002 |orig-year=First published 1994 |title=Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years |publisher=] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=avh6dkSop0EC&pg=PA1 |isbn=978-0-745-30819-7}}
*{{Cite journal |title=The Last Israeli Liberal: Remembering Israel Shahak (1933-2001) |last=Warschawski |first=Michel |author-link=Michel Warschawski |journal=] |date=Summer 2001 |issue=13 |page=32 |url=http://www.palestine-studies.org/jq/fulltext/78062}}
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Israeli professor, Holocaust survivor, and civil-rights activist (1933–2001)

Israel Shahak
ישראל שחק
BornIsrael Himmelstaub
(1933-04-29)April 29, 1933
Warsaw, Poland
DiedJuly 2, 2001(2001-07-02) (aged 68)
Jerusalem, Israel
Occupation(s)Professor of chemistry, political scientist, civil rights activist, author
Signature

Israel Shahak (Hebrew: ישראל שחק; born Israel Himmelstaub, 28 April 1933 – 2 July 2001) was an Israeli professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Holocaust survivor, an intellectual of liberal political bent, and a civil-rights advocate and activist on behalf of both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). For twenty years, he headed the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights (1970–90) and was a public critic of the policies of the governments of Israel. As a public intellectual, Shahak's works about Judaism proved controversial, especially the book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (1994).

Biography

Israel Shahak was born Israel Himmelstaub, in 1933, in Warsaw, Poland, and was the youngest child of a cultured, Zionist family of Ashkenazi Jews. During the Second World War, the Nazi occupation of Poland (1939–1945) interned the Shahak family to the Warsaw Ghetto; yet his elder brother escaped from Poland to the United Kingdom, where he joined the Royal Air Force. Life in occupied Poland forced Shahak's mother to pay a Roman Catholic family to hide Israel, whom they returned when she could not afford their safe-keeping him from the Nazis.

In 1943, the Nazis sent the Shahak family to the Poniatowa concentration camp, to the west of Lublin, where his father died. Fortuitously, the ten-year-old boy and his mother escaped from the Poniatowa camp, and returned to Warsaw; yet, within a year, whilst emptying the city of Jews, the Nazis recaptured Israel and his mother, and imprisoned them in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they survived for 2 years, until the camp and its inmates were liberated in 1945 by the British Army. At age 13, in 1946, he re-examined the idea of God's existence and concluded that evidence for the theory was lacking. As displaced persons, mother and son managed to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine, where Shahak's application to join a kibbutz was denied, because he was judged to be physically too slender.

Post-war, the twelve-year-old Israel worked and studied and supported his mother, whose health had deteriorated in Bergen-Belsen. After a religious Jewish education at boarding school in the village of Kfar Hassidim, Israel and his mother moved to the city of Tel Aviv. Upon graduation from secondary school, Shahak served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). After the military service, he earned a doctorate in chemistry, at Hebrew University.

In the course of his professional career as a scientist, Shahak's work in organic chemistry produced science about organic compounds of the element fluorine (F), contributed to cancer research, for which he gained an international reputation and included posting as an assistant to Ernst David Bergmann, the nuclear physicist who was chairman (1952) of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). In 1961, Shahak pursued post-doctoral studies at Stanford University, in the U.S.; in 1963, he returned to Israel, where he became a popular lecturer and researcher in chemistry, at Hebrew University; moreover, by 1965, Shahak actively participated in the Israeli politics of the day.

In 1990, the academic Shahak retired from the faculty of Hebrew University, because of poor health (diabetes mellitus) and greater interest in research work in other fields of intellectual enquiry. For most of his adult life, Shahak resided in the Rehavia neighborhood in West Jerusalem; at the age of 68 years, he died of diabetic complications, and was buried in the Givat Shaul cemetery.

Shahak had a deep affinity with Spinoza: he always packed a copy of The Ethics in his suitcase for reading during his periodic stints of service in the Israel Defense Forces, and had been writing a book on the philosopher before his death. His activities as a public intellectual fighting for human rights causes and for a secular state earned him a reputation for controversy, and frequent abuse. He was regularly spat on, frequently given death threats, and decried variously as an Israel basher, self-hating Jew, traitor, and enemy of the people.

Politics

Public intellectual

In the late 1950s, as a citizen of Israel, Shahak became politically engaged on hearing a comment of David Ben-Gurion that, with the Suez War (29 October 1956 – 7 November 1956), the State of Israel was fighting to achieve "the kingdom of David and Solomon". In the 1960s he joined the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion. In 1965, he began political activism against "Classical Judaism" and Zionism; and wrote a letter to Haaretz about having witnessed an Orthodox Jew "refusing to let his phone be used on the Sabbath to help a non-Jew who had collapsed nearby"; in Israel, Shahak's complaint began a long-running debate about the attitudes (religious and cultural) of Orthodox Judaism towards gentiles.

In 1967, after the Six-Day War (5–10 June 1967), Shahak ended his membership to the League Against Religious Coercion, because they were "fake liberals" who used the principles of Liberalism to combat coercive religious influence in Israeli society — but did not apply such protections to the Israeli Palestinians living in the IDF-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. In the event, Shahak joined the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and became its president in 1970. The League, composed of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, protested and publicized Israel's restrictive policies against Palestinians and provided legal aid to them. Some settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron so hated him that in 1971 they had their pick-up truck painted with "Dr. Shahak To The Gallows".

In 1969, Shahak and another member of the faculty of Hebrew University staged a sit-down protest against the Israeli government's policy of jailing politically active Palestinian students, by way of administrative detention authorised by state-of-emergency laws; likewise, Shahak supported the political efforts of Palestinian students to achieve equal rights, like those granted to Jewish Israelis, at Hebrew University. In 1970, Shahak established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions to formally oppose such legalised political repression.

To make public what he considered the anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian legalised discrimination, Shahak published English translations of Hebrew-language reportage about illegal and unjust actions of the Israeli government against the gentile citizens of Israel; Shahak's English reports were intended for the Jewish community of the U.S. The translated reports featured headlines such as "Torture in Israel," and "Collective Punishment in the West Bank", which Shahak sent to journalists, academics, and human rights activists, and so ensured that the mainstream population of the U.S. would be informed of the religious discrimination practised by the government of Israel.

Civil rights advocate

As a public intellectual, Shahak wrote about the Israeli government's actions against the non-Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, such as the suppression of freedom of speech and general political activity; land ordinances, living restrictions, and the confiscation of lands from non-Jews; the destruction of houses; legally-sanctioned unequal pay and work restrictions; emergency-defence regulations allowing the summary arrest, detention, and torture of prisoners (civil and military); the collective punishment of communities; the assassinations of leaders (religious, political, academic); racial discrimination in access to education; and the deprivation of Israeli citizenship. Such political activities earned Shahak much hostility and death threats; after the 1982 Lebanon War (June 1982 – June 1985), Shahak also reported Israeli abuses of the populations of Lebanon.

In effort to explain the behaviour of the State of Israel towards their Arab neighbours, Shahak proposed that the Israeli interpretation of Jewish history produced a society who disregard the human rights of the Arab peoples, within Israel and around Israel. That Zionism was a "régime based on structural discrimination and racism".

In the book review of a festschrift in honour of Rabbi Elmer Berger Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections (1988), Sheldon Richman characterized Shahak's interpretation of Zionism as viewing it as an atavistic reaction against the European Enlightenment's individualism that strove to revive the suffocating world of the Jewish ghetto. The founders of the movement did not believe Jews could lead a normal existence in democratic societies. In this sense, for Shahak, Zionism can be thought of as "a mirror image of anti-Semitism," in that, in common with antisemites, Zionists considered Jews to be aliens who must be quarantined from the rest of the world, a viewpoint Shahak read as capitulating to European antisemitism. For Richman, Shahak's analysis shed light on the tragic consequences that followed upon the establishment of Israel, as Arabs were swept away to forge a state for Jews alone.

In letters published in the Ha'aretz and Kol Ha'ir newspapers, Shahak criticized the political hypocrisy demonstrated by the radical Left in their uncritical support of the Palestinian nationalist movements. In his obituary of Shahak, Christopher Hitchens said that Shahak's house was "a library of information about the human rights of the oppressed", and that:

The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation — none were ever turned away. I have met influential "civil society" Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to generalize about Jews. And they respected him, not just for his consistent stand against discrimination, but also because — he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and religion, and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, as he once put it to me, "I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the country. I have some severe criticisms to present to them. But I cannot do this while they are living under occupation, and I can 'visit' them as a privileged citizen."

Shahak was also active in protesting the public burning of Christian books such as occurred on 23 March 1980 when Yad Le-akhim, a religious organization that was at the time a beneficiary of subsidies from the Ministry of Religion, ceremonially incinerated hundreds of copies of the New Testament publicly in Jerusalem.

Author

Among the books publish by Israel Shahak are Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1994), co-authored by Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (1994), and Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear and Foreign Policies (1997). In the introduction to the 2004 edition of Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, the historian Mezvinsky said, "We realize that, by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism, we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others."

Alleged telephone incident

In 1965, Shahak wrote a letter to the Haaretz newspaper, about an injustice he witnessed; that letter originated "the current major debate within and outside Israel about Orthodox Jewish attitudes to non-Jews." In the letter, Shahak said he witnessed an Orthodox Jew refuse the use of his telephone to call for an ambulance for a non-Jew, because it was the Shabbat. Shahak added that the Beth din, the rabbinical court of Jerusalem, had confirmed that the Orthodox Jew correctly understood Halakha law on Pikuach nefesh regarding non-Jews and the Sabbath, and quoted passages from a recent legal compilation.

Consequently, the cultural matter of a religiously-denied telephone became public political discussion in the Israeli press and the Jewish press abroad, all of which directed attention to Shahak as a public intellectual in the cultural politics of Israel. The Jewish Chronicle in London stated that "The halakha (Jewish law) abounds in such abominations ... in conflict with the humane instincts within which anyone raised in Jewish tradition is imbued." In the Maariv newspaper, the minister of religious affairs, Rabbi Dr. Zerach Warhaftig said that the Orthodox rabbinical ruling was correct, but quoted traditional Jewish passages that allowed a Jewish physician to save the life of a non-Jew on the Sabbath, despite not being religiously required to do so.

Public controversy

In 1966, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, claiming that Israel Shahak had been compelled to admit that the incident had not occurred. He cited a lengthy responsum, by Isser Yehuda Unterman, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, who said that "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives", and cited a ruling by Rabbi Menachem Meiri that Jews should desecrate the Sabbath to save a gentile's life. The opinions of these rabbis derived from the book Noda B'Yehuda (Known in Judah), in which the 18th-century religious authority Yechezkel Landau said: "I emphatically declare that in all laws contained in the Jewish writings concerning theft, fraud, etc. no distinction is made between Jew and Gentile; that the (Talmudic) legal categories goy, akum (idolater) etc., in no way apply to the people among whom we live."

In 1967, Ze'ev Falk, while dissociating himself from Shahak's Sabbath story which he regarded as an invention, acknowledged that it was this "fiction" and method of action which had indeed brought about Rabbi Unterman's ruling that allowed the Sabbath to be violated to save the lives of Gentiles. For him, Unterman's ruling may have opened a "new page" in Orthodox Jewish attitudes to righteous Gentiles and non-Jews alike.

The history book

Despite the controversy, Shahak published his account of the telephone in the first chapter of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994), and said that "neither the Israeli, nor the diaspora rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that, if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake."

In 2008, seven years after Shahak's death, the controversy of religious interpretation continued when Rabbi Shmuley Boteach doubted the veracity of Shahak's report of Jewish injustice against a non-Jew: "From the beginning, the story was curious. What prohibition could there possibly be, in allowing someone else to use one's phone on the Sabbath?" In support, he cited Eli Beer, the chief coordinator of Israel's volunteer ambulance service (1,100 medical personnel, 60 per cent Orthodox), who said, "If someone would say we won't save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath, he is a liar. If he is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim we save everyone's life on any day of the year, including the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, and I have done so myself. Indeed, as an Orthodox Jew it is my greatest honor to save the life of a non-Jew, and I would violate any of the Jewish holy days to do so."

Jewish History, Jewish Religion

In 1994, Shahak published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, about Jewish fundamentalism, which history professor Norton Mezvinsky, at Central Connecticut State University, said is a:

Scathing attack upon Classical Judaism and its more modern outgrowth, Orthodox Judaism.... As a lover of prophetic Judaism and as a disciple of Spinoza, Shahak, in a learned and rational manner, condemned the parochialism, racism, and hatred of non-Jews, which too often appeared in the Judaism that developed during and after the Talmudic period, and which, to a goodly extent, still exists.

That the initial history of most nations is ethnocentric, and that, in time, by way of a period of critical self-analysis, the nation incorporates the social perspectives of the Other, of the ethnic groups living among them. That, after the Age of Enlightenment, the Jewish emancipation from legal and religious social subordination was a dual liberation — from Christian antisemitism and from the rabbinate of conservative Judaism, and their "imposed scriptural control" upon daily Jewish life.

The journalist Robert Fisk said that the examination of Jewish fundamentalism is invaluable, because Shahak concludes that:

There can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism." He quotes from an official exhortation to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, published by the Israeli army's Central Region Command, in which the chief chaplain writes: "When our forces come across civilians during a war, or in hot pursuit, or a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then, according to the Halakhah (the legal system of Classical Judaism) they may and even should be killed... In no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised.... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined, by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.

In his foreword to the second edition (1997), Edward Said said that Shahak was "one of the most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Middle East" who he credits with doing more to dissipate the "ideological smoke screen" of Zionism than any other single individual. He goes on to describe Shahak as "un- and anti-racist" and emphasizes Shahak's consistency in applying a single standard for infractions against human rights. Said describes Shahak's writing as "rigorous and uncompromising", often at the expense of putting things "'nicely'".

Said comments specifically about Jewish History, Jewish Religion as a powerful contribution to the study of Judaism and rabbinical and Talmudic traditions and it's associated scholarship. In summary, he describes this work:

Shahak shows that the obscure, narrowly chauvinist prescriptions against various undesirable Others are to be found in Judaism (as well of course as other monotheistic traditions) but he also then goes on to show the continuity between those and the way Israel treats Palestinians, Christians and other non-Jews. A devastating portrait of prejudice, hypocrisy and religious intolerance emerges.

About his other writing, Said also emphasized Shahak's willingness to criticize Palestinian policies, addressing "the PLO's sloppiness, its ignorance of Israel, its inability to resolutely oppose Israel, its shabby compromises and cult of personality, its general lack of seriousness."

In his book review, Werner Cohn said that Shahak was making "grotesque charges" and that specific passages in Jewish History, Jewish Religion are without foundation:

Some are just funny. He says (pp. 23-4) that "Jewish children are actually taught" to utter a ritual curse when passing a non-Jewish cemetery. He also tells us (p. 34) that "both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands....On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God... but on the other he is worshiping Satan..." I did take the trouble to question my orthodox rabbi nephew to find what might be behind such tall tales. He had no clue. If orthodox Jews were actually taught such hateful things, surely someone would have heard. Whom is Dr. Shahak kidding?.

The remark regarding children passing a cemetery occurs in Shahak's discussion of passages modified by rabbis who, under pressure from antisemitic Christian authorities such as those in Tzarist Russia, altered the texts, while keeping private copies of the originals which, according to Shahak were restored as the proper manuscript readings and published in Israel after the founding of the state of Israel.

Samuel Heilman writing for the Review of Middle East Studies gave a negative review and proposed to dispose the book " into the same dustbin as the infamous anti-Jewish tract and fraud, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Critical reception

As a public intellectual, Israel Shahak was accused of fabricating the incidents he reported, of blaming the victim, of distorting the normative meaning of Jewish religious texts, and of misrepresenting Jewish belief and law. Paul Bogdanor claimed that Shahak "regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention." Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Organization for Jewish–Islamic dialogue, said that, despite the use of Shahak's works by neo-Nazis and anti-Israel organisations in Arab countries:

The texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak's sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Often, the interpretation of these texts is debatable, and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but, nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition, and, therefore, cannot be ignored.

Accusations of being an antisemite were among the responses to Shahak's works about Judaism and the Talmud. In that vein, in The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) listed Shahak as one of four authors of antisemitic polemics, and Bogdanor said that in his works, Shahak was "recycling Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda". Werner Cohn said, "without question, he is the world's most conspicuous Jewish anti-Semite.... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life's work to popularize the anti–Talmud ruminations of the eighteenth-century German anti-Semite, Johann Eisenmenger". Emanuele Ottolenghi, reviewing Alexander and Bogdanor's book, argued that Jews such as Shahak, George Steiner, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Avi Shlaim, Seymour Hersh and Daniel Boyarin act as enablers for antisemites, because the rhetoric of antisemitic Jews plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his opinion, "Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language, and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism, for making the same arguments?... The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel's new historians.... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the blood libel".

The journalist Dan Rickman argues that

Shahak ignores aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating his case, his analysis fits into anti-Semitic traditions of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned, and the text of the Talmud that is studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources in any way 'justifies' anti-Semitism is also very troubling. However, I do believe that his trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, not without some force. The contemporary situation is that we do see some modern Orthodox rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as Rabbis for Human Rights are sadly the exception rather than the rule.

Death

Shahak died of diabetes in July 2001 and was buried in Giv'at Shaul cemetery, Jerusalem. His death was the occasion of tribute and criticism; the Bar-Ilan University historian Haim Genizi, said that "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed by the PLO, and widely circulated in pro–Arab circles", in detriment to the interests of the State of Israel. Gore Vidal said Shahak was "the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets", regarding the influence of religion upon the civil law of society. Norton Mezvinsky, said that his friend and collaborator was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist"; in that vein, Edward Said said that Shahak was "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity." An obituary in Haaretz called him "the scourge of nationalists".

Christopher Hitchens considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade... a brilliant and devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", who, "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate." Alexander Cockburn, writing in Antiwar.com, described Shahak the intellectual, the "tireless translator and erudite foot-noter... a singular man, an original." Allan C. Brownfeld, of the American Council for Judaism, recalled a humanist who actively opposed "racism and oppression in any form and in any country"; that Shahak possessed a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights." In an obituary, the journalist Elfi Pallis called Shahak essentially "an old-fashioned liberal" in principle, thought, and action. Moreover, Michel Warschawski said that Israel Shahak was "the last Israeli liberal", who was "above all, one of the last philosophers of the eighteenth-century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept."

Selected bibliography

Main article: Israel Shahak bibliography
  • Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Non-Jew in the Jewish State; a collection of Documents, Jerusalem, 1975
  • Israel Shahak (ed), Begin & Co as they really are, Glasgow 1977
  • Israel Shahak and Noam Chomsky, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Studies in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., April 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-51-7
  • Israel Shahak, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback
  • Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Zionist Plan for the Middle East (a translation of Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" or the "Yinon Plan", Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., October 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-56-8
  • Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years: Pluto Press, London, 1994, ISBN 978-0-7453-0819-7; Pluto Press, London, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7453-2840-9
  • Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies, Pluto Press, London, 1997
  • Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Middle Eastern Series), Pluto Press (UK), October 1999, hardcover, 176 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1281-0; trade paperback, Pluto Press, (UK), October 1999, ISBN 0-7453-1276-4; 2nd edition with new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky, trade paperback July 2004, 224 pages

References

Notes

  1. Hitchens acknowledged a personal debt to Shahak, one of several people who "had to undergo considerable intellectual trial and evince notable courage, in order to break with the faith of their tribes", for having introduced him to the thinking of Spinoza.
  2. "So now, one can read quite freely—and Jewish children are actually taught—passages such as that, which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non-Jewish."
  3. "Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan... both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God, by promoting the divine union of Son and Daughter; but on the other he is worshiping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that, when he is offered a few of them, it keeps him busy for a while, and he forgets to pester the divine Daughter."

Citations

  1. ^ Warschawski 2001.
  2. Adams 2001, "Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw ...".
  3. Shahak & Ash 1987, "I was born in Warsaw and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end".
  4. ^ Pallis 2001.
  5. ^ O'Dwyer 2001.
  6. Pallis 2001, "After setbacks—he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz—he became a model citizen.".
  7. ^ Adams 2001.
  8. ^ Hitchens 2001.
  9. ^ Mezvinsky 2001.
  10. Hitchens 2001, "He had no heroes and no dogmas and no party allegiances. If he admitted to any intellectual model, it would have been Spinoza.".
  11. Cooley 2015, p. 217.
  12. O'Dwyer 2001, "He was known by other names: Israel basher, self-hating Jew, traitor, enemy of the people. The entire lexicon of standard if unimaginative Israeli abuse was thrown at him, accompanied by calls to have him dismissed from the university or barred from leaving the country (to prevent him attacking it abroad). When he was branded (like many Jewish critics of Israel) with the old cliche of 'self-hating Jew', he always responded with his first-hand knowledge of the price of being a Jew. 'That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans.'".
  13. ^ Rickman 2009.
  14. Davis 1972, p. 66.
  15. Richman 1989.
  16. Hitchens 2011, p. 285.
  17. Shahak & Mezvinsky 2004, p. 23.
  18. Shahak & Mezvinsky 2004, p. xxi.
  19. ^ Segev 2007, pp. 99–100.
  20. Bogdanor 2006, p. 121.
  21. ^ Boteach 2008.
  22. The Times 1999.
  23. Jakobovits 1966, pp. 58–65.
  24. ^ Schwartz 2002, p. 19.
  25. Jakobovits 1966, p. 59.
  26. Falk 1997, pp. 47–53: "It is incumbent upon the State of Israel to appear as a kingdom of mercy and not to be stringent in applying the law. While I dissociate myself from the methods of action of Dr. Israel Shahak, who invented the case of a Gentile who was not given treatment on the Sabbath, it was this fiction that led Chief Rabbi Unterman to issue a ruling permitting the violation of the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. While no explicit permit has yet been discovered concerning prohibitions stated in the Torah itself. perhaps this was the opening of a new page in our attitude towards righteous Gentiles and non-Jews in general, the culmination to be hoped for being that there will be no gulf between moral feeling on the one hand and the Halakha on the other.'".
  27. Shahak 2002, pp. 4–5.
  28. Hitchens 1997, p. xi.
  29. Fisk 1997.
  30. ^ Shahak, Israel. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. United Kingdom, Pluto Press, 1994.
  31. Said 2002, pp. ix–xiv.
  32. ^ Cohn 1994, pp. 28–29.
  33. Shahak 1994, pp. 23–24.
  34. Shahak 2002, p. 34.
  35. Shahak 2002, pp. 23–24.
  36. Heilman, Samuel (2001). "Review of Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, (Pluto Middle Eastern Series)". Middle East Studies Association Bulletin. 35 (1): 112–113. doi:10.1017/S0026318400041997. ISSN 0026-3184. JSTOR 23063425. S2CID 164310024.
  37. Jakobovits 1966.
  38. Bogdanor 2006, p. 119.
  39. Alexander.
  40. Bogdanor 2006, p. 122.
  41. Cohn 1995, p. 18.
  42. Ottolenghi 2006.
  43. ^ Katzman 2001.
  44. Genizi 2002, p. 94.
  45. Vidal 2002, p. 4.
  46. Cockburn 2001.
  47. Brownfeld 2001.

Sources

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