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Israel Shahak (Template:Lang-he, April 28, 1933 – July 2, 2001) was a Polish-born Israeli Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the former president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and of Israeli society in general. Shahak's writings on Judaism have been the source of considerable controversy.

Biography

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Shahak was the youngest child of a cultured Polish Jewish family. After Germany occupied Poland, his family was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. His brother escaped and joined the Royal Air Force 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 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Israel Shahak was liberated in 1945, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, where he volunteered for a kibbutz, but was turned down as "too weedy".

After graduating from high school, Shahak served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an elite regiment. After completing service with the IDF, he attended Hebrew University where he received his doctorate in chemistry. In 1961, he left Israel for the United States to study as a postdoctoral student at Stanford University. He returned two years later to become a teacher and researcher in chemistry at Hebrew University, where he remained until his retirement in 1990.

After the 1967 Six-Day War Shahak became critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and a supporter of a Palestinian state, and wrote many articles and several books outlining his views of Israeli society and Judaism.

Shahak died in Israel at the age of 68 due to complications from diabetes.

Politics and works

Shahak reports having been radicalized first by the Suez War and his feeling of betrayal by David Ben-Gurion's push to occupy the Sinai Peninsula, and then through his experiences in the United States. In the 1960s he became involved in the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion. Following the Six-Day War 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 Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, was elected president of the League in 1970. That same year he established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions.

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 Western audiences. This practice, along with writing letters to the editor, remained staples of his work for decades.

He became a well-known activist in international circles, co-authoring papers and giving joint speaking engagements with American activist Noam Chomsky, and winning plaudits from Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said.

Reviewer Sheldon Richman 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."

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."

Alleged telephone incident

In 1965 Ha'aretz printed a letter from Shahak in which he claimed to have witnessed a Haredi Jewish man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew as it was the Jewish Sabbath. In the letter, Shahak also claimed that members of the rabbinical court of Jerusalem confirmed that the man was correct in his understanding of Jewish law, and that they backed this assertion by quoting from a passage from a recent compilation of law. The issue was subsequently taken up in The Jewish Chronicle, leading to significant publicity.

In 1966, Immanuel Jakobovits, who was later appointed Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, 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 Protocols style") in order to support his thesis. Jakobovits also cites a lengthy responsum by Isser Yehuda Unterman, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time, who stated that, "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives."

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." He also notes that, as long ago as the 13th Century, "R. Menachem Meiri 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.'"

Shahak repeated his account in the opening chapter of his 1994 book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, stating 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." Reviewing the book, this claim, and the clamor surrounding it in the Jewish press, Werner Cohn 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."

Reviewing Shahak's account after Shahak's death, Rabbi Gil Student 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.

Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years

In 1994 Shahak published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years. In it he proposes that most nations' histories are initially ethnocentric. However they then evolve through a period of critical self-analysis to incorporate other perspectives. This, he argues, largely hasn't happened with Jewish history.

Shahak alleges that Talmudic Judaism is a totalitarian religion where rabbinical law governs every aspect of Jewish behaviour. He also claims that these laws result in religious chauvinism and thereby govern Jewish thought. This, according to Shahak, has two important consequences:

  • Attempts by Western analysts to explain contemporary Israeli politics in purely secular terms such as imperialism are fundamentally flawed.
  • More controversially, that 'Jewish chauvinism' can be a causal factor in anti-Semitism, and that both must be fought simultaneously.

Shahak also analyses the period from the beginning of the last millennium (CE) to the advent of the modern state when most Jews lived under rabbinical law in segregated communities. These communities, writes Shahak, were under the patronage of non-Jewish nobles who typically used them to enforce their authority on a non-Jewish peasant class. Rebellions by such peasants in which all feudal 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.

Shahak also claims that Zionism 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."

The work was praised by Gore Vidal and Edward Said, both of whom wrote introductions to the book at various times. Robert Fisk wrote that his "examination of Jewish religious fundamentalism" was "invaluable":

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."

Specific claims made in the book have been described as "tall tales" and "grotesque charges" and are alleged to have been fabricated by Shahak.

Reception

In his memoirs, To Be an Arab in Israel, Palestinian poet Fouzi El-Asmar described Shahak as a "remarkable and outstanding individual", and Gore Vidal, 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".

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 Edward Said described him as "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity." Christopher Hitchens, 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." On Antiwar.com Alexander Cockburn described him as a "tireless translator and erudite footnoter" and "a singular man, an original", while Allen C. Brownfield writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, said he had a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights." In his obituary in The Guardian Elfi Pallis described him as "an old-fashioned liberal", and Michel Warschawski 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."

Others accused Shahak of fabricating incidents, "blaming the victim", distorting the normative meaning of Jewish texts, and misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.

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 Radio Islam, Bible Believers, Jew Watch, CODOH, and "Historical Review Press".Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Accusations of antisemitism

In reaction to his writings about Judaism and the Talmud, Shahak has been accused of antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League listed Shahak as one of four authors of polemics in its paper The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics,. Many conservative activists have made similar accusations: Paul Bogdanor accused Shahak of "recycling Soviet antisemitic propaganda"; Steven Plaut and the Conservative Voice described him as an "anti-semite," and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America asserted that he was "one of the world's leading anti-Semites."

In 1995 Werner Cohn wrote of Shahak:

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, Johann Eisenmenger."

Irfan Khawaja has argued that Israel Shahak - and other anti-Zionist writers like Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens - 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:

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.

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:

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.

Notes

  1. "I was born in Warsaw (the subject of a large part of the essay) and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end;" 'The Life of Death': An Exchange By Israel Shahak, Reply by Timothy Garton Ash, The New York Review of Books], Volume 34, Number 1, January 29, 1987.
  2. "Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw," Adams, Michael. "Israel Shahak", The Independent, July 26, 2001.
  3. "After setbacks - he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz - he became a model citizen." Pallis, Elfi. "Israel Shahak", The Guardian, July 6, 2001.
  4. ^ Pallis, Elfi. "Israel Shahak", The Guardian, July 6, 2001.
  5. Sheldon Richman. "Book Review of Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections (eds. Roselle Tekiner et al. 1989, 358 pages)". Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: 38 url=http://www.middleeastbooks.com/html/books/tekiner.html. {{cite journal}}: Missing pipe in: |page= (help); Text "June 1989" ignored (help)
  6. Jakobovits, Immanuel. A Modern Blood Libel--L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966, p. 59.
  7. Jakobovits, op. cit., p. 62.
  8. Jakobovits, op. cit., p. 63.
  9. "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).
    Dr. Shahak, whose nose is longer than Pinocchio's in any case, does not tell us the whole story of the incident." Cohn, Werner. "The Jews are Bad! (review of 'Jewish History, Jewish Religion,' by Israel Shahak)", Israel Horizons, vo. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994, pp. 28-9.
  10. ^ Student, Gil. "Shabbat and Gentile Lives", AishDas Society website, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2006.
  11. "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
  12. Comment: Religion in the Middle East: the fundamental problem 03 December 1997, The independent
  13. ^
    • 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?" Cohn, Werner. "The Jews are Bad! (review of 'Jewish History, Jewish Religion,' by Israel Shahak)", 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)". Edward Said's Documented Deceptions, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, 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 Chomsky File, The Conservative Voice, January 6, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2005.
  14. El-Asmar, Fouzi (1975). To Be an Arab in Israel. London: Frances Pinter. p. 138. ISBN 0903804085.
  15. Genizi, Haim. The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches, McGill-Queen's Press, 2002, p. 94.
  16. Mezvinsky, Morton. "In Memoriam: Israel Shahak (1933-2001)", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2001, page 11.
  17. Hitchens, Christopher. Israel Shahak, 1933-2001, The Nation, "Minority Report", July 23, 2001.
  18. Cockburn, Alexander. "Remembering Israel Shahak", Left Coast, Antiwar.com, July 13, 2001. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  19. Brownfield, Allen C. "With Israel Shahak’s Death, A Prophetic Voice Is Stilled", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2001, p. 71. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  20. Warschawski, Michel. "Israel Shahak", Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 13, Summer 2001.
  21. Mathis, Andrew. "The Interpretational Errors of Israel Shahak", June 8, 2000. Retrieved May 12, 2006.
  22. Jakobovits, Immanuel. A Modern Blood Libel--L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.
  23. Edward Said's Documented Deceptions, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, August 1999. Retrieved July 7, 2006.
  24. Cohn, Werner. "The Jews are Bad! (review of 'Jewish History, Jewish Religion,' by Israel Shahak)", Israel Horizons, vol. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994.
  25. The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, Anti-Defamation League, February 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2006.
  26. Bogdanor, op. cit., p. 122.
  27. Plaut, Steven. The Jihadnik Prof at UC-Santa Barbara, FrontPageMag.com, June 7, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2006.
  28. Neuwirth, Rachel. The Chomsky File, The Conservative Voice, January 6, 2005. Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  29. Cohn, Werner. Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers, Avukah Press, 1995, p. 18.
  30. Irfan Khawaja (28 March 2005). "Poisoning the Well: The False Equation of Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism". History News Network.
  31. Ottolenghi, Emanuele. "The War of the Jews", National Review, September 20, 2006.

References

Bibliography

Books (partial)

  • 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, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Stylus Publishing, LLC, December, 1994, trade paperback, ISBN 0-7453-0819-8
  • 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, Israel's Global Role : Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback

Articles by Shahak (partial list):

Collections of articles:

Interviews with Shahak (partial list)

  • An Interview with Israel Shahak, interview in Journal of Palestine Studies, 4, no. 3 (Spr. 1975): 3-20.
  • No Change in Zion, interview in Journal of Palestine Studies, 7, no. 3 (Spr. 1978): 3-16.
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