Can there be a non-fascist Judaism?

The privilege of the (former) victim is not to be able to act as if injustice cannot be predicated of him, but to be more, not less, sensitive to its possibility. It is not the right to make sure that he is henceforth invulnerable, or innocent, because now powerful enough that he cannot again be hurt in that way.

Zionism has become a largely a haven of fascist tendencies, if not equivalent to them wholly. This contradicts everything about Jewish history and Judaism that made the Jewish people special. 'Chosenness' did not mean the right to dominate others. It did not mean a superior right to life or existence, a special will to power, nor any kind of privileged superiority morally. It designated rather a particularity that defined itself as a window onto a universality. It was linked to the idea of one God, concerned for all of humanity, whose messianic end of history would redeem and liberate all of humanity (indeed, it would end the separate existence of the Jewish people as such). The Jews were an avant-garde, ethically and politically. Indeed, that was a principal reason for their existence and the sufficient reason for their particularity and separation.

There is now a crisis of Zionism, thrown into relief by the further revelation, which should not have been needed as it was already known, that the Jewish state is a bully state propped up by a racist, colonialist, imperialist, militarist and fascist ideology. This crisis of Zionism is also a crisis of Judaism today. Jews should recognize this as a problem. As with any crisis, the solution may yet to be fully developed and implemented, but a question is starkly and painfully posed. In fact, most Jews recognize the forms, rituals, and texts of the religion proper as insufficient to how they see the meaning of their existence and their role in the world. This fact raises the question of what else is there. The answer usually is either Israel or something about the Holocaust, or both, usually linked, so that the latter justifies the former. It does not. It may not justify anything except a certain curiosity about what needs to be done to stop further large-scale exercises of barbarism, including the displacement or annihilation of peoples. The Holocaust is too little understood, with the idea that the Allied victory and the establishment of the Jewish state answers the questions and solves the problems posed by it. But it does not. It is part of a larger history that is not just about the Jews, and now is mainly not about not about them but other groups. This larger history continues. That is the scandal. To the extent that Judaism itself, meaning being religious on the part of people who do or might be thought to belong to this religion, is put in question by it. If only by virtue of the simple fact that, apparently, observing the forms and practices, and studying the texts, of the religion does not seem at all sufficient to enable and motivate people to work to stop the continuing displacements and destructions of whole populations. Contemporary ghettoes are different from medieval and early modern ones, but they exist. One of them, with its people, most of whom are not warriors and do not threaten Israel, is under attack by it. Jewish leaders, recognize this crisis and think about finding better responses to it. It is not necessarily a bad thing, as many Jews have known, to be faced with crises, if they can lead to better responses, better forms of understanding and thought, and of being-in-the-world. Jews were once a vanguard of social progress; they still are, often, happily not alone in this, but Israel is not that at all, and does not want to be. It is a place for Jews to just be themselves. It is a reactionary state tied into capitalist, police, and military domination and structures thereof. It is part of the problem. Creative responses are needed. You can try to improve the world, a classic Jewish obligation, or you can try to live in a fortress protected from it. Meet the new Middle Ages.