Passionate & well written. Again, I have learned a great deal. Thanks.
Still, one is reminded of the story (which you've undoubtedly heard before in some form) of a certain Mr. Fishman who stood at the doorway of his house while a tremendous downpour flooded his town. A rescue truck comes by.
No, calls Fishman, save the others. God will provide for me.
The downpour continues, flood waters rise. Mr. Fishman retreats to the second floor. A boat draws near.
No, calls Fishman, save the others. God will provide for me.
The downpour rages on & now Mr. Fishelson huddles on the roof of his house. A helicopter hovers close in.
No, calls Fishman, save the others. God will provide for me.
Yet the downpour is relentless & finally Mr. Fishman drowns. His spirit comes into the presence of the Almighty. God, says Fishman in mild rebuke, I thought you would provide for & not let me drown.
Fishman, you dumb schmuck, says the Almighty, first I sent a truck, then I sent a boat, then I sent a helicopter!
Might we argue that the past millennium was a downpour against which the Almighty finally made it possible for Jews to find safety in a nation of our own?
I agree with those historians who argue that inclusive, humanist Zionism, open to the idea of a true multi-ethnic, multi-religious state, took a fatal blow not during the Holocaust, but afterwards, when the Allied powers, the evidence of mass murder on a scale they could not previously have imagined right before them, did nothing to help survivors. Britain continued White Paper restrictions, while the US maintained its strict immigration quotas. Survivors could go back to the places where they had been dragged away to be murdered & where their erstwhile neighbors stood ready to murder rather than return their properties. Or they might languish, stateless, in DP camps. Some of which were populated into the 1950s.
I think that destroyed the credibility of liberal, humanist Zionism, & put the Revisionists in charge. Where they remain today.
Rabbinic pacifism (for that it what it seems) evolved in a diaspora where Jews were always a minority people in someone else's nation. Of course they disdained military solutions, for they had none.
